Moses May-Hobbs

Jacques Lacan introduces revisions to Freudian theories of psychoanalysis, transference, and the nature of our drives. These revisions are articulated in his seminar of 1964.

Spinoza wrote extensively about religion and theology. The key to understanding this work, however, lies in Spinoza’s ethics rather than in scripture.

Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics proposes an alternative dialectical approach to Hegel’s, which seeks to overcome the limits of subjectivity through negation.

Baruch Spinoza’s political philosophy attempts to weld his overarching naturalism and determinism with prescriptions for good governance.

Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History is an ambiguous and controversial text, which blends theology and revolutionary politics to lay out the proper study of history.

Aristotle and Descartes both use the term “first philosophy” to refer to metaphysics, but Emmanuel Levinas uses the term to describe ethics, in a gesture of philosophical iconoclasm.

Emmanuel Levinas identifies the face-to-face encounter with another human – the Other – as the foundational experience of ethical responsibility.

Gottfried Leibniz’s Monadology theorizes about the smallest, indivisible parts that make up all things.