[.ca] Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, ... (ISBN 0520060288)

ONE STAR FOR THE TYPING WORK:
ONE OF THE WORST PIECES I HAVE READ. NOT A SENTENCE THAT SAYS ANYTHING IMPORTANT ABOUT ANYTHING - MOVE ON... NO EASY PATHS TO SOUNDING SMART

Making Sense of the Senseless:
Professor Megill does a good job with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault, but less so with Derrida, I think. For the new reader this book is not their best introduction, but if you kind of know the stories already, the book is readable and pretty entertaining. Stylistically, Megill uses many of the same words and phrases over and over (example: toward the end I was cringing every time I came across the word 'corpus'), and the author tends to come across as, perhaps, a bit to highbrow for my liking, but obviously he knows the material well. I give him a lot of credit trying to deal with writers who tend to defy understanding.

An excellent, incisive study of P-M's prime exponents...:
THE PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY is comprehensive exploration of four key...if not The Key...exponents of the philosophical counter-movement known as POST-MODERNISM.The entire DECONSTRUCTION...of Western thought; ethics, politics, art, sexuality; and language itself...PROJECT is interpreted by Professor Allan Megill as a revolutionary assault on LOGOS itself.That is, the metaphysical principal of intelligibility and Order (posited as subsistent guaranteer of Truth and Reality) is challenged by "Nietzschean" madmen...The first is Nietzsche, THE MADMAN himself: GOD IS DEAD...WE HAVE KILLED HIM! The abandonment of Judaeo-Christian Order of Being/ethics proclaims birth of Ubermenschen who, in will to Power,defy and define a New Age beyond Good and Evil.(Nietzsche spent the final 11 years of his life a bedridden psychotic). Heidegger follows(1927)with his obscurantist, vastly overrated BEING & TIME. The nature of this study of DASEIN (his phenomenological terminology for humans) reveals itself (1933)as PLACE where BEING manifests (unconceals,"aletheia")itself in INCARNATED VOICE, as "shepherd-guardian". For Heidegger, this Voice was Adoph Hitler. And Heidegger, great herald of anti-metaphysics and POWER (the anti-logos of Truth and knowledge)dies unrepentant,if cagily equivocal NAZI, pedantically defiant to the last... MICHEL FOUCAULT dies in 1984 of deliberately contracted AIDS in bath houses of San Francisco. He is his own WILLFUL(Amor fati)Project in self-DECONSTRUCTION. He lived life "mystifying" would-be adepts with various, contradictory pronouncements on knowledge (The Order of Things)and power. POWER is(to Michele-the-Dark Angel)KNOWLEDGE; and BIO-POWER(will to "manifest sexual identity/Destiny")PRIMORDIAL telos. Jacques DERRIDA is POST-MODERNISM'S cosmic clown. His Project is DECONSTRUCTION of Language itself.(In extremis, where alphabets--fundamental constructs/logoi of Words--become arbitrary,if not meaningless, because even these "text traces" are only visual "differences". Therefore, "meanings" are meaningless!). His entire opus is a bewildering exercise in verbal-ontological onanism. Yet within linguistic gymnastics of Jacques "Clouseau" Derrida is the Historical Revisionism warned by Orwell, Koestler and Czeslaw Milosz to the poisonous formulations of Today's Politically Correct media culture. PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY is a challenging, important book for serious students of philosophy and history of Ideas. Allan Megill is kind to these very dangerous thinkers. He approves reading them with appreciation of radical ironies intrinsic to their anti-ENLIGHTENMENT; anti-Western; anti-Christian postures. All...with perhaps exception of Nietzsche as genuine prophet& poet; madman& gnostic...are nihilists. Each embraces POWER as basis of Self-Apotheosis in DESPAIR. Soren Kierkegaard, the "other" Prophet of Extremity, knew where to "leap in Faith" to defeat these PM Prophets of sickness-unto-death. Professor Megill's book is highly recommended as singularly incisive and comprehensive. It is a tough read and requires background.But its worth will be self-evident to any reader making the effort by this contemporary Prophet to reveal the intellectually mortal essences underlying the PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY.

Amazing work on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida:
Perhaps the first, and certainly the most successful synthesis to date of these philosophers. Each section of analysis highlights the important contributions of each philosopher that influenced those later in the book. Allan Megill makes them understandable and speak for themselves through lucid commentary and extensive quotes. The reader of this book will walk away with a solid feeling for and extensive familiarity with each of the philosopher's works, and have an understanding of the rise and tenets of postmodernism. The development of the book is natural and captivating. The breadth and depth of research alone is impressive, and accompanied by detailed explanations. Finer points are discussed and made clear in this book that are never mentioned elsewhere. The analysis of Nietzsche in particular is among the best I have seen. The chapters on Heidegger, Faucoult, and Derrida are also well done. After reading this book there should be little doubt why Prophets of Extremity should be considered the primary entry point for those interested in these philosophers.

A Break from the Past:
In "The Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida" Allan Megill provides us a framework to consider where we are. It is the role of intellectual historians to give us pause to think. According to writers like Milan Kundera, "Life is but a sketch." Without a pause to think, life becomes light. The major advantage that Megill has is that he comes to this project as an intellectual historian and not a philosopher. His framework is supposed to be pedagogical. Megill does tend though to play the critic with his selective reading of his chosen foursome. Having said that, it is clear though that his examination of discontinuity is important and the alternatives he provides in terms of options, necessary. Megill's framework is premised on the idea that modern" thought is grounded on the idea, and the problematic surrounding the idea of the Enlightenment project of an epistemology modeled against science. Following along a fairly traditional or conventional model, Megill reads some Enlightenment thinkers saw man (as seen by the sciences) to be pre-determined "objects." Conversely, Megill sees the opposite occur with other Enlightenment thinkers saw man as moral "subjects." subjects of free thought who sought to exercise that sense of free will. The central question that came out of the Enlightenment, as premised by Kant, is how free are we REALLY within this deterministic scientific view? Using Kant as his fulcrum, man is a fragmented unit fraught with issues of dualism, the main area of concern being the duality of the theoretical versus the practical. Megill takes this one step further (taking the queue from Kant) that Aesthetic deliberation provides an alternative space of consideration. Megill introduces, at this junction, a sense of "crisis." Within a traditional perspective, we see a loss of a sense of moral standards. On the other hand, there is the loss of faith in historicism. This is where Megill take off. The question we need to ask then is: Is this view of seeing things as a "lack of continuity" really a break with tradition? Is it really? Is it a new sense of historicity? A sense of discontinuity. Could it also be seen as Nietzsche setting up a new "tradition" as he sets this sense of discontinuity? Contrary to the simplistic notion that Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida are no more than convenient illustrations of the "irrationalism," writ large, in the twentieth century European mind. I argue the reverse is true, as I am certain Megill does too in "The Prophets of Extremity." The three thinkers examined who follow Nietzsche are not simple nihilists but rather have a richer and more developed project that, in a lot of ways, Nietzsche began. Where the break is, the rest are a "footnote" to Nietzsche, with a creative and extended project. Is Megill ignoring the other areas (purposeful or otherwise) of deliberations by such creative minds as Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida a risky move? Certainly. It is a risk worth taking and one worth reading, but reading critically. For as much as these other thinkers (and yes, even Nietzsche) one cannot escape the notion that this sense of crisis really needs to presuppose what it denies. Moreover, these thinkers (Megill included) make us re-examine our positions: that there is not only one way of thinking (and to problematize everything). Megill opens up a new space of deliberation for us. Miguel Llora