Living with Concepts: Anthropology in the Grip of Reality - Paperback

by Andrew Brandel (Editor), Marco Motta (Editor), Jocelyn Benoist (Contribution by)

This volume examines an often taken for granted concept--that of the concept itself. How do we picture what concepts are, what they do, how they arise in the course of everyday life? Challenging conventional approaches that treat concepts as mere tools at our disposal for analysis, or as straightforwardly equivalent to signs to be deciphered, the anthropologists and philosophers in this volume turn instead to the ways concepts are already intrinsically embedded in our forms of life and how they constitute the very substrate of our existence as humans who lead lives in language.

Attending to our ordinary lives with concepts requires not an ascent from the rough ground of reality into the skies of theory, but rather acceptance of the fact that thinking is congenital to living with and through concepts. The volume offers a critical and timely intervention into both contemporary philosophy and anthropological theory by unsettling the distinction between thought and reality that continues to be too often assumed and showing how the supposed need to grasp reality may be replaced by an acknowledgement that we are in its grip.

Contributors: Jocelyn Benoist, Andrew Brandel, Michael Cordey, Veena Das, Rasmus Dyring and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Michael D. Jackson, Michael Lambek, Sandra Laugier, Marco Motta, Michael J. Puett, and Lotte Buch Segal

Back Jacket

"A remarkable collection with genuine interdisciplinary reach, Living with Concepts opens up a critical dialogue between philosophers and anthropologists about the various paths that thinking can take when concepts are rethought as intrinsic to forms of life."--Jason Throop, UCLA

"Living with Concepts moves between anthropology and philosophy in fresh and fruitful ways that powerfully bring out the moral and political urgency of understanding what is involved in trafficking in concepts. The contributors are united in questioning the legitimacy of assumptions so widespread they might be described as belonging to the zeitgeist."--Alice Crary, New School for Social Research

This volume examines an often taken for granted concept--that of the concept itself. How do we picture what concepts are, what they do, how they arise in the course of everyday life? Challenging conventional approaches that treat concepts as mere tools at our disposal for analysis, or as straightforwardly equivalent to signs to be deciphered, the anthropologists and philosophers in this volume turn instead to the ways concepts are already intrinsically embedded in our forms of life and how they constitute the very substrate of our existence as humans who lead lives in language.

Attending to our ordinary lives with concepts requires not an ascent from the rough ground of reality into the skies of theory, but rather acceptance of the fact that thinking is congenital to living with and through concepts. The volume offers a critical and timely intervention into both contemporary philosophy and anthropological theory by unsettling the distinction between thought and reality that continues to be too often assumed and showing how the supposed need to grasp reality may be replaced by an acknowledgement that we are in its grip.

Contributors: Jocelyn Benoist, Andrew Brandel, Michael Cordey, Veena Das, Rasmus Dyring and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Michael D. Jackson, Michael Lambek, Sandra Laugier, Marco Motta, Michael J. Puett, and Lotte Buch Segal

Andrew Brandel is Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University.
Marco Motta is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bern.

Author Biography

Andrew Brandel (Edited By)
Andrew Brandel is Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University.

Marco Motta (Edited By)
Marco Motta is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bern.