A philosophy of the possible : : modalities in thought and culture / / by Mikhail Epstein ; translated from the Russian by Vern W. McGee and Marina Eskina.

• VerfasserIn: Epstein, Mikhail,
• TeilnehmendeR: McGee, Vern,; Ėskina, Marina,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill Rodopi,, [2019]
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English; Russian
• Series: Value Inquiry Book Series 333.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (379 pages).

In this book, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic theory of modalities (the actual, possible, and necessary), as applied to the discourse of philosophy in its post-Kantian and especially post-Derridean perspectives. He relies on his own experience of living in the USSR and the US, dominated respectively by imperative and possibilist modalities. Possibilism assumes that a thing or event acquires meaning only in the context of its multiple possibilities, inviting counterfactual and conditional modes of description. The author focuses on the creative potentials of possibilistic thinking and its heuristic value. The book demonstrates the range of modal approaches to society, culture, ethics, and language, and outlines potentiology as a new philosophical discipline interacting with ontology and epistemology.

Table of Contents

Front Matter -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Preface -- Introduction: Fundamental Concepts of the Theory of the Possible -- The Possible in Philosophy -- Criticism and Activism -- Philosophy and Reality -- Change of Modalities in the History of Philosophy -- Philosophy as Possibilistic Thinking -- The Area of the Thinkable: the Value of Thinking in Itself -- Theory, Utopia, and Hypothesis -- Catharsis of Thinking -- Personified Thinking -- Possible and Impossible: Aporia of Thinking -- Language, Thinking, and Signifiability -- Universals as Potentials: Conceptualism -- From the General to the Concrete and Universal -- Multiplication of Entities -- Philosophy as Parody and Grotesque -- The Fate of Metaphysics: from Deconstruction to Possibilization -- Introduction to Part 2 -- Reverse Metaphysics: Critique and Deconstruction -- Beyond Being and Nothingness: the Feeling of the Possible -- A Worldview, Not a Point of View: “A Net with No Knots” -- The Possible in Jean Derrida -- The Metaphysics of Deconstruction: the Main Terms -- The Radical Nature of Difference: Profit and Transcendence -- Center and Structure -- Reverse Metaphysics: the Other, the Play, and the Writing -- Différance and the Tao -- Construction and Possibilization -- From Deconstruction to Construction -- Construction and Creativity -- De- and Con- -- Potentiation as Method: Eros of Thinking -- What Is “the Interesting”? Proposed Criteria -- Small Metaphysics: the Unique -- The Worlds of the Possible -- Introduction to Part 3 -- Society -- Culture -- Ethics -- Psychology -- Religion -- Conclusion -- Back Matter -- To Be Able, to Be, and to Know: a System of Modalities -- Index of Names.