What is Philosophy? Author: [Italy] Giorgio Agamben Publisher: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press Translator: Lan Jiang

-Editor's Recommendation-

★A summary of Agamben’s 50-year academic career

★After Heidegger and Deleuze, Agamben picked up the question of "what is philosophy" again and gave a completely different interpretation.

★If you expect this book to directly answer the question "What is philosophy?", you will be greatly disappointed.

★Philosophy can only appear at the moment it is created, and it also dies at the same moment. For philosophy that only exists in our language, once we stop our creative activities, it will die.

★Finally, what Agamben wants to show us in this book is not just a philosophical question.

-Content Introduction-

In the preface to Childhood and History, Agamben mentioned that he had an unfinished book, and even all his works up to that point could only be regarded as prefaces to this unfinished book. In a sense, What is Philosophy? is the book that Agamben mentioned. The book consists of the following five articles:

(1) "Phonetic Experiments". This article can be seen as a response to Derrida's On Grammatology. In Agamben's view, we cannot equate letters with the corresponding pronunciation system; on the contrary, we can find an original voice, a voice that cannot be reduced to words.

(2) On the Concept of Needs. Different from the interpretation of “needs” in ethics, this article regards “needs” as an ontological category rather than a moral category. On this basis, this article proposes a new understanding of the categories of necessity, possibility, and reality.

(3) On Things That Can Be Said and Ideas. This article starts from Plato’s Seventh Letter and uses the Stoic concept of “things that can be said” to reinterpret Plato’s “ideas.” As Agamben said, “When philosophy no longer questions itself in language through ideas, it loses its necessary connection with the sensible world.”

(4) On Writing Preface. This article is also inspired by Letter VII. In rereading Plato’s works, Agamben shows us the preface, indirectness, and non-dogmatic characteristics of philosophy. Undoubtedly, these are also the characteristics of Agamben’s own philosophy.

(5) “Supreme Music. Music and Politics”. At first glance, this appendix on music seems a bit out of place in this book. But it is not. Through Agamben’s unique interpretation of music history, we have gained a completely new concept of music. In a sense, we can regard this as the answer to the question raised in the title of this book.

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