A01=Andrzej Waskiewicz
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Agnieszka
Author_Andrzej Waskiewicz
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JHBA
COP=Switzerland
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Language_English
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9783631640401
- Weight: 500g
- Dimensions: 148 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 29 Dec 2014
- Publisher: Peter Lang AG
- Publication City/Country: CH
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Strangers by Choice explores voluntary otherness as a philosophy of life. This philosophy is asocial in the sense that its followers tend to privilege separateness over belonging, and yet it does not lead to alienation or isolation from society. Building on Simmel’s notion of the stranger, the author sheds light on the experience of spiritual idealists, both real and fictional, who maintain a distance from mainstream society in order to live by the laws of their transcendental homelands. Waśkiewicz addresses representations of strangeness from a broad spectrum of Western culture, including Stoic philosophy, Augustine of Hippo, Henry David Thoreau, the physicist Richard Feynman, and finally Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Highlighting how these writers and thinkers have negotiated individuality and community, this interdisciplinary study contributes to debates on identity in both practical philosophy and the history of ideas.
Andrzej Waśkiewicz teaches the history of social and political ideas at the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Sociology and the Collegium Artes Liberales (Poland). The Polish original of Strangers by Choice was shortlisted for the Gdynia Literary Prize in 2009.
