On Ceasing to Be Human - by Gerald Bruns (Paperback)

About the Book

On Ceasing to be Human explores and develops a question posed by Stanley Cavell, "Can a human being be free of human nature?" particularly in terms of the link between freedom and nonidentity.

Book Synopsis

On Ceasing to be Human explores and develops a question posed by Stanley Cavell, "Can a human being be free of human nature?" particularly in terms of the link between freedom and nonidentity.

Review Quotes

"On Ceasing to be Human is a must read in terms of recent discussions relating to the man/animal distinction. It does a brilliant job of bringing together strands of intellectual history--Deleuze, Nancy, Derrida, Agamben, Bataille, Blanchot, and Levinas--whose interconnections enable us to read French theory in an entirely new way even as they inform questions about the end of the human."--Herman Rapaport

"On Ceasing to be Human lays out with exemplary clarity the stakes of recent debates over the human. Bruns provides a commentary on the major positions presently in play, placing them in dialogue with one another and sketching out alternatives, fault lines, and disagreements. In his account, the human, as a concept or category, is inseparable from a conservative program to shore up currently dominant practices and institutions. He asks whether, in conceiving non-human others principally on the basis of their lack of human capacities, we remain fully human ourselves."--R.M. Berry

"Bruns has written yet another interesting book on his lifelong passions: the relation of literature and philosophy to their language; and the theme of poetry and ethics belonging to the domain of openness, responsibility, the singular, and the irreducible--versus traditional respect for rules . . . Overall, this short book is a wonderful aid in understanding current French thought on the title's topic . . . Recommended."--S. Correa "CHOICE"

About the Author

Gerald L. Bruns is William P. & Hazel B. White Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame. His most recent books are On the Anarchy of Poetry and Philosophy (2006) and The Material of Poetry (2005).