Harald Lemke Books

	CULTURE \| NATURE ART AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE CONTEXT OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT Anke Haarmann, Harald Lemke (eds.) , 2 Volumes in Box Berlin: Jovis Publisher 2009, 416 pages At present, metropolises all over the world are looking for answers to the challenges of climatic change as well as for better perspectives for urban life. Too often, possible strategies are being designed by city planners and are implemented top-down. But is a 'masterplan' really the only way to tackle complex questions of a socially and ecologically fair future, and to meet the demands of a conscious and committed urban population? Examining the complex relationship of 'urban culture' and 'threatened nature', this book presents cooperative planning processes, artistic interventions and philosophical reflections. Community gardening, gentrification processes, and citizens' participation are only some of the subjects dealt with by German and American artists and experts in this inspiring two volumes on sustainable urban development. Contributions by Gernot Boehme, Critical Art Ensemble, Mike Davis, Lisa Heldke, Susan Leibovitz Steinman, Dan Peterman et. al.
	ETHICS OF FOOD INTRODUCTION TO GASTROSOPHY Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2007, 468 pages This book reconstructs the philosophical concern with food in western tradition, including chapters on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Jesus, Augustinus, Platina, Rousseau, Kant, Feuerbach, Nietzsche and 'Critical Theory'. Two different genealogies of food philosophy are outlined. One (the tradition of 'diet morality') that degrades our culinary life. The other one (the 'gastrosophical tradition') dignifies our culinary life as a crucial dimension of good living. My thesis, then, is that we should build on the gastrosophical tradition of western philosophy in order to develop a new ethics of food as the everyday praxis of a good life.
	EAT ART TOWARD AN AESTHETICS OF CULINARY TASTE Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2007, 216 pages The book portrays the various ways food becomes thematized in contemporary art. Mostly ignored, we may realize that many famous artist rely on culinary practices to do their work. Like the avantgardist of the Italian futurism who announced 'a revolution of the kitchen and of our taste', or Daniel Spoerris 'Eat Art' and Joseph Beuys's 'extended notion of art' that includes that everyone could be an artist of good cooking, many artists deal with food aesthetically. Realizing this, the intention of my book is to analyze this aesthetisizing of our everyday relation to the world of food, taste and culinary arts.
	THE DINING SOCIETY PHILOSOPHICAL AND CULTURAL THEORETICAL APPROACHES edited with Iris Därmann Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2008 Preface: The Meal Ahead (GERMAN) Including articles by Gerhard Baudy, Iris Därmann, Tobias N. Klass, Harald Lemke, Gerhard Neumann, Tadashi Ogawa, Kurt Rüttgers, Marianne Schuller, Bernhard Waldenfels
	WISDOM OF EATING GASTROSOPHICAL FIELD RESEARCH Munich: Iudicium 2008 This book accesses an intercultural gastrosophy. By investigating whether there is an eastern, especially a Chinese and Japanese, wisdom of eating, I try to find answers to the question why the cultures in the Far East - opposed to the West - have developed a culturally acknowledged 'way' of food, an profound ethics and aesthetics of 'good eating'? I then argue that our planet needs a global gastrosophical ethics which goes beyond the western and even the eastern philosophies ('wisdoms') of food, to cope with the environmental crisis and the nutritional crisis of hunger and obesity. If we are willing to better our world, then there is - among other and may be more complicated things - a rather easy and attractive way: the 'way' to enjoy ethically good food.
	EATING KNOWLEDGE INVESTIGATIONS OF FOOD CULTURE edited with Tadashi Ogawa Munich: Iudicium 2008 Including articles by Rudophe Gasche, Anke Haarmann, Klaus Held, Shinji Kashitani, Harald Lemke, Tadashi Ogawa, Wilhelm Schmid
	FRIENDSHIP A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY Darmstadt: Primus Verlag / WBG 2000, 220 pages The contemporary forms of socializing offer us the possiblity to self-determine our social live. In this gain of freedom, relationships to friends become growing importance. Empowered by ourselves being-a-friend shapes a fragile luck, a piece of freedom and democratic sociality on an everyday level. What do I do to be a good friend? I think that there are philosophical answers possible to this underestimated question. Epilog: Praxlogy of being-a-good-friend (GERMAN)
	MICHEL FOUCAULT. IN CONSTELLATIONS Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Academy 1995, 196 pages Sapere aude! (pdf) Foucault, Kant und die Aufklärung Critique of Political Reason (pdf) The Foundation of the Political in the Practical Philosophy of Foucault, Lyotard, and Arendt Das Echo des Schwertes (pdf) Foucault, Elias and Oestreich zum Sozialdisziplinierungsprozess der Moderne Die schwierige Lebenskunst (pdf) Foucault, Schiller und Marcuse über den ästhetischen Begriff der Freiheit Zum Kynismus der Kritik (pdf) Deutsches Banditentum im 18. Jahrhundert On the actuality of Foucault's late philosophy: Kritik des Gouvernementalitäts-Diskurses (pdf) in: Aufklärung & Kritik, Nr. 1/2007, S. 110-123
	PRAXIS OF POLITICAL FREEDOM THE RELEVANCE OF HANNAH ARENDT'S THEORY OF POLITICAL ACTION FOR A CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Academy 1996, 196 pages Contents (German) Text (German) Bibliography (German)