Books by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Heidegger's politically motivated use of poetry and its relation to currents of modern thought

Poetics of History places Rousseau at the origin of modern speculative philosophy by showing that his thinking on the theater, despite its dependence on a false and conventional reading of Aristotle, nonetheless articulates a radical thinking of originary mimesis, and, well before Hegel, an understanding of catharsis as Aufhebung.

Translation of a posthumous work by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe on Maurice Blanchot. Discusses such topics as literature, myth, the experience of death, autobiography, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, as well as the political and ethical implications thereof.

Det politiskes fiktion er Philippe Lacoue-Labarthes (1940-2007) hovedværk. Bogen diskuterer Martin Heideggers forhold til politikken, den historiske betydning af nazismen samt kulminationen på metafysikken – alt sammen set gennem ”kunstens” prisme, i overensstemmelse med Heideggers udlægning af den græske technê – der både oversættes med ”viden” og ”kunst”.Det er på denne baggrund, at man kan forstå dels Heideggers tilslutning til NSDAP, og dels nazismen som kulminationen af Vestens metafysik. Denne kulmination finder sted i udryddelseslejren, der fuldbyrder den vestlige udlægning af technê som moderne teknik. Det er denne specifikke kulmination, som Heidegger aldrig selv har villet tænke – hvorfor han er genstand for Lacoue-Labarthes fordømmelse –, til trods for at Heideggers filosofi, paradoksalt nok, er nøglen til at begribe forholdet mellem nazisme og filosofi.Indledning ved Esben Korsgaard Rasmussen

An analysis of the historical position of Paul Celan's poetry, this book addresses the question of a lyric language that would not be the expression of subjectivity. Lacoue-Labarthe defines the subject as the principle that founds, organizes, and secures both cognition and action, a figure not only of domination but of the extermination of everything other than itself.

This is a pioneering attempt to rearticulate the relationship between music and the problem of mimesis, of presentation and re-presentation. Four "scenes" compose this book, all four of them responses to Wagner: two by French poets (Baudelaire and Mallarme), two by German philosophers (Heidegger and Adorno).