Force, Drive, Desire: A Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) - Softcover

Bernet, Rudolf

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810140004 ISBN 13: 9780810140004

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1983

Synopsis

In Force, Drive, Desire, Rudolf Bernet develops a philosophical foundation of psychoanalysis focusing on human drives. Rather than simply drawing up a list of Freud's borrowings from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, or Lacan's from Hegel and Sartre, Bernet orchestrates a dialogue between philosophy and psychoanalysis that goes far beyond what these eminent psychoanalysts knew about philosophy. By relating the writings of Freud, Lacan, and other psychoanalysts to those of Aristotle, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, and, more tacitly, Bergson and Deleuze, Bernet brings to light how psychoanalysis both prolongs and breaks with the history of Western metaphysics and philosophy of nature. Rereading the long history of metaphysics (or at least a few of its key moments) in light of psychoanalytic inquiries into the nature and function of drive and desire also allows for a rewriting of the history of philosophy. Specifically, it allows Bernet to bring to light a different history of metaphysics, one centered less on Aristotelian substance (ousia) and more on the concept of dunamis-a power or potentiality for a realization toward which it strives with all its might. Relating human drives to metaphysical forces also bears fruit for a renewed philosophy of life and subjectivity.

About this title

Review

"This unique book is sure to be a classic. Bernet's masterful study unearths remarkably deep connections between psychoanalytic concepts of drive and desire, and philosophical problems of force, movement, agency, negativity and passivity, offering extraordinary insights into what drives us in our relations to each other and nature." --David Morris, author of Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology
"Clear and erudite, challenging and exciting, this work is a literal tour de force. The aim of Rudolf Bernet's Force, Drive, Desire is nothing less than a renewal of both philosophy and psychoanalysis by way of a powerful reconstruction of the concepts of drive and desire as fundamental to each." --James Dodd, author of Phenomenology, Architecture, and the Built World

"Rudolf Bernet's Force, Drive, Desire is a highly welcome contribution to contemporary philosophy. Bernet offers an impressive, multifaceted account of the fundamental forces that move human beings, individually and collectively. This is crucial not just to phenomenology and psychoanalysis but also to political philosophy, ontology, and metaphysics." --Sara Heinämaa, author of Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference

About the Author

Rudolf Bernet is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Leuven in Belgium and president of the Husserl Archives. He has been a visiting professor at the Universite Nice Sophia Antipolis, the University of Copenhagen, Boston College, the Sapienza University of Rome, Stony Brook University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. He is the editor of Edmund Husserl's Texte zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, the coauthor of An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology, and the author of La vie du sujet: recherches sur l'interpretation de Husserl dans la phenomenologie and Conscience et existence: perspectives phenomenologiques.

Edition details

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0810140004
• ISBN 13: 9780810140004
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 440