On Ceasing to Be Human

by Gerald L. Bruns

The philosopher Stanley Cavell once asked, "Can a human being be free of human nature?" On Ceasing to Be Human examines philosophical as well as literary texts and contexts, in which various senses of Cavell's question might be explored and developed. During the past thirty or so years, the very concept of "being human" has been called into question within such fields as cybernetics, animal-rights theory, analytic philosophy (neurophilosophy in particular). This book examines these issues, but its main concern is the link between freedom and nonidentity that Cavell's question implies, and which turns out to be a major concern among the thinkers Bruns takes up in this Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and Jacques Derrida. Each of these is, in different ways, a philosopher of the "singular" for whom the singular cannot be reduced to concepts, categories, distinctions, or the rule of identity.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

151 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2010

About the author

Gerald L. Bruns is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame. His previous books include The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a Philosophical Poetics, and What Are Poets For? An Anthropology of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.