The Ruse of Techne by Dimitris Vardoulakis

The Ruse of Techne by Dimitris Vardoulakis

The Ruse of Techne offers a reappraisal of Heidegger's entire work by focusing on the forms of activity he regards as separate from instrumentality. Non-instrumental activities like authenticity, poetry, and thinking—in short, the ineffectual—are critical for Heidegger as they offer the only path to the truth of being throughout his work.
By unearthing the source of the conception of non-instrumental action in Heidegger's reading of Aristotle, Vardoulakis elaborates how it forms part of Heidegger's response to an old problem, namely, how to account for difference after positing a single and unified being that is not amenable to change. He further demonstrates that an action without ends and effects leads to an ethics and politics rife with difficulties and contradictions that only become starker when compared to other responses to the same problem that we find in the philosophical tradition and which rely on instrumentality.
Heidegger's conception of an action without ends or effect forgets the role of instrumentality in the tradition that posits a single, unified being. And yet, the ineffectual has had a profound influence in how continental philosophy determines the ethical and the political since World War II. The critique of the ineffectual in Heidegger is thus effectively a critique of the conception of praxis in continental philosophy. Vardoulakis proposes that it is urgent to undo the forgetting of instrumentality if we are to conceive of a democratic politics and an ethics fit to respond to the challenges of high capitalism.

Dimitris Vardoulakis is Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. He is the author of Spinoza, the Epicurean: Authority and Utility in Materialism (2020); Stasis Before the State: Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy (2018); Freedom from the Free Will: On Kafka's Laughter (2016); Sovereignty and Its Other: Toward the Dejustification of Violence (2013); and The Doppelgänger: Literature's Philosophy (2010).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781531506742
ISBN 10	1531506747
Title	The Ruse of Techne
Author	Dimitris Vardoulakis
Series	Perspectives In Continental Philosophy
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Fordham University Press
Year published	2024-09-03
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.