Series: Reader's Guides

First published in 1989, The Sublime Object of Ideology was Žižek’s breakthrough work and is still regarded by many as his masterpiece. It was an iconoclastic reinvention of ideology critique that introduced the English-speaking world to Žižek’s scorching brand of cultural and philosophical commentary and the multifaceted ways in which he explained it. Tying together concepts from aesthetics, psychoanalytic theory,...

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus is the first part of a two-volume project entitled Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Challenging the twin orthodoxies of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Althusserian Marxism, Anti-Oedipus is an important and exciting, yet challenging piece of philosophical writing. Ian Buchanan's Reader's Guide to Anti-Oedipus is the ideal companion to one of the twentieth century's most influential philosophical works....

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit is probably his most famous work. First published in 1807, it has exercised considerable influence on subsequent thinkers from Feuerbach and Marx to Heidegger, Kojève, Adorno, and Derrida. The book contains many memorable analyses, for example, the master/slave dialectic, the unhappy consciousness, Sophocles' Antigone, and the French Revolution. It is one of the most important works...

Heidegger’s Being and Time is one of the most influential and controversial philosophical treatises of the 20th century. But what exactly are the ideas that so profoundly impacted Sartre’s existentialism, influenced Gadamer’s hermeneutics, and paved the way for the emergence of deconstruction? And what or who is ‘Dasein’? Answering these questions and more, this guide is an essential resource for...