I’ve made a page with a list of pieces by Kostas Axelos in English with links, along with a few suggestions of secondary reading. It includes all the pieces of which I am aware. Additions or corrections welcome. The picture in this post comes from his publisher site; the painting on the page is from the Voyages to Freedom series by Anna Filini – a series of portraits of Greek figures who fled the country in 1945 on the Mataroa ship, also including Cornelius Castoriadis.
Axelos is a very interesting figure who can perhaps best be described as a ‘left Heideggerian’. He has been important to my thinking of the concept of ‘world’. He was a lifelong Marxist, but connected to a wide range of figures across Europe – from Greece to France and Germany and beyond. Among other things, he was the interpreter when Heideggger met Lacan – picture here – and knew Pablo Picasso well. Much more of his work is available in other European languages – he wrote mainly in French, but also in Greek and German, and there are Italian and Spanish translations of major works. He became editor of the journal Arguments, and launched the Arguments book series with Les Éditions de Minuit, which published works by Barthes, Blanchot, Deleuze, Lefebvre, Lukács and many others.
