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Philosophical thinking is interrupted by the finitude of what cannot be named, on the one hand, and that within which it is subsumed as one of multiple modes of sense-making, on the other. Sense and Singularity elaborates Jean-Luc Nancy's philosophical project as an inquiry into the limits or finitude of philosophy itself, where it is interrupted, and as a practice of critical intervention where philosophy serves to interrupt otherwise unquestioned ways of thinking. Nancy's interruption of philosophy, Van Den Abbeele argues, reveals the limits of what philosophy is and what it can do, its apocalyptic end and its endless renewal, its Sisyphean interruption between the bounds of infinitely replicating sense and the conceptual vanishing point that is singularity. In examinations of Nancy's foundational rereading of Descartes's cogito as iterative, his formal experimentations with the genres of philosophical writing, the account of “retreat” in understanding the political, and the interruptive play of sense and singularity in writings on the body, sexuality, and aesthetics, Van Den Abbeele offers a fresh account of one of our major thinkers as well as a provocative inquiry into what philosophy can do.

Konečnost patří mezi výrazné motivy soudobého myšlení i ústřední témata Pavla Kouby. Kniha přináší soubor filosofických úvah, básní, uměleckých fotografií a ohlédnutí, které vznikly u příležitosti jeho životního jubilea a pocházejí od významných českých i zahraničních autorů. Některé přímo navazují na vybrané teze Koubových textů (k pojmu pravdy, subjektu, vztahu času a prostoru či kritice morálního vidění světa) či se vymezují vůči jeho filosofické pozici vcelku, jiné se vyjadřují ke stěžejním myšlenkám pro Koubu určující filosofické tradice (fenomenologie, hermeneutika, Nietzsche). Shodně tak činí v návaznosti na to, co jejich autoři s Pavlem Koubou promýšleli a prožívali. Knihu uzavírá dialog o povaze duše mezi aristotelským a platónským filosofem, do něhož se zapojí i postava anonymního hermeneutika.

In By Way of Obstacles, Emmanuel Falque revisits the major themes of his work--finitude, the body, and the call for philosophers and theologians to'cross the Rubicon'by entering into dialogue--in light of objections that have been offered. In so doing, he offers a pathway through a work that will offer valuable insights both to newcomers to his thought and to those who are already familiar with it. For it is only after one has carved out one's pathway that one may see more clearly where one has been and where one might be going. Here readers will discover the profound relation between Falque's emphasis on the human experience of the world and his desire for philosophy and Christian theology to enter into conversation. For only by speaking within the human horizon of finitude can Christianity be credible for human beings, and it is because Christian theology teaches that God entered into our finitude that it can also teach us something of what it is to be human. Contemporary phenomenology, Falque warns, over-privileges an encounter with the infinite that cannot be originary. Calling us back to finitude, he calls us to a deeper understanding of our humanity.

This book is the first exploration of an essential theme in the thought of the 7th c. East-Syriac solitary and mystic Isaac of Nineveh, that of creatural'weakness'(mihiluta), a term which, in Isaac, alludes to the ontological condition of exposure to limitation and suffering that characterizes all humans. Based on the analysis of Isaac's edited and unedited writings in the original Syriac, the book sheds light on his understanding of creatural vulnerability and the phenomenology of the relationship with vulnerability that he outlines, with references to the authors who influenced him (Evagrius, the Syriac Pseudo-Macarian corpus, and others). The reader is thus introduced to Isaac's view of human finitude which, if experienced and'inhabited', can be taken on by the subject and disclose an experience of integrity. The solitary life, in this perspective, involves entering the mystery of suffering that marks every creatural life.

Can finite humans grasp universal truth? Is it possible to think beyond the limits of reason? Are we doomed to failure because of our finitude? In this clear and accessible book, Barnabas Aspray presents Ricœur's response to these perennial philosophical questions through an analysis of human finitude at the intersection of philosophy and theology. Using unpublished and previously untranslated archival sources, he shows how Ricœur's groundbreaking concept of symbols leads to a view of creation, not as a theological doctrine, but as a mystery beyond the limits of thought that gives rise to philosophical insight. If finitude is created, then it can be distinguished from both the Creator and evil, leading to a view of human existence that, instead of the'anguish of no'proclaims the'joy of yes.'

The Being and Event trilogy is the philosophical basis of Alain Badiou's entire oeuvre. It is formed of three major texts, which constitute a kind of metaphysical saga: Being and Event (1988).), Logics of the Worlds (2006) and finally The Immanence of Truths, which he has been working on for 15 years. The new volume reverses the perspective adopted in Logics of Worlds. Where in that book, Badiou saw fit to analyze how truths, qua events, appear from the perspective of particular worlds that by definition exclude them, in The Immanence of Truths Badiou asks instead how the irruption of truths transforms the worlds within which they by necessity must arise. An emphasis on regularity and continuity has given way to an attempt, one unquestionable in its philosophical power and implications, to formalize rupture and reconfiguration.The Being and Event trilogy is a unique and ambitious work that reveals how truths can be at once context-specific and universal, situational and eternal.

The notion of ‘the end'has long occupied philosophical thought. In light of the horrors of the twentieth century, some writers have gone so far as to declare the end of philosophy itself, emphasizing the impossibility of thinking after Auschwitz. In this book the distinguished philosopher Alain Badiou, in dialogue with Giovanbattista Tusa, argues that we must renounce ‘the pathos of completion'and continue to think philosophically. To accept the atrocities of the twentieth century as marking the end of philosophy is intolerable precisely because it buys into the totalizing doctrines of the perpetrators. Badiou contends that philosophical thinking is needed now more than ever to counter the totalizing effects of globalized capitalism, which prescribes no objective for human life other than integration into its system, giving rise to a widespread sense of hopelessness and nihilism. This book will appeal to the many followers of Badiou's work and to anyone interested in contemporary philosophy and radical political theory.

Winner of the René Wellek PrizeNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Millions, and The Sydney Morning HeraldA profound, original, and accessible book that offers a new secular vision of how we can lead our lives. Ranging from fundamental existential questions to the most pressing social issues of our time, This Life shows why our commitment to freedom and democracy should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism.In this groundbreaking book, the philosopher Martin Hägglund challenges our received notions of faith and freedom. The faith we need to cultivate, he argues, is not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions. What ultimately matters is how we treat one another in this life, and what we do with our time together. Hägglund develops new existential and political principles while transforming our understanding of spiritual life. His critique of religion takes us to the heart of what it means to mourn our loved ones, be committed, and care about a sustainable world. His critique of capitalism demonstrates that we fail to sustain our democratic values because our lives depend on wage labor. In clear and pathbreaking terms, Hägglund explains why capitalism is inimical to our freedom, and why we should instead pursue a novel form of democratic socialism. In developing his vision of an emancipated secular life, Hägglund engages with great philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr. This Life gives us new access to our past—for the sake of a different future.

Memento mori--remember death--this is how the medieval monks exhort us. Our life, given in birth and taken by death, is radically marked by finitude, which can be a source of great fear and anguish. Our finitude, however, does not in itself need to be something negative. It confronts us with the question of our life's meaning and spurs us on to treasure our days. Our contingency, as evidenced in our birth and death, reminds us that we have not made ourselves and that there is nothing necessary about the marvelous fact that we exist. Particularly from a Judeo-Christian perspective, embracing our finitude will mean gratefully accepting life as a completely gratuitous gift and living one's days informed by a sense of this gratitude.

Navigating Everyday Life explores the special moments, big and small, that rupture the surface of everyday life and that can help readers adjust to the disrupting effects of major life crises. Peter Adams delves into the two forces, finitude (the aspects that constrain a person to a situation) and transcendence (those aspects that enable movement beyond such constraints). Building on this framework, Adams looks at the processes and circumstances that both facilitate and block the tensions between finitude and transcendence. He then illustrates how these tensions function in the personal and existential challenges faced by five members of a modern suburban family. Their stories traverse life transitions such as separation, depression, chronic illness, injury, violence, addiction, aging, death, and forgiveness. This book is recommended for scholars and others interested in the intersections between psychology and philosophy.

The long tradition of pessimism in philosophy and poetry notoriously laments suffering caused by vulnerabilities of the human body. The most familiar and contemporary version is antinatalism, the view that it is wrong to bring sentient life into existence because birth inevitably produces suffering. Technotopianism, which stems from a similarly negative view of embodied limitations, claims that we should escape sickness and death through radical human-enhancement technologies. In Embodiment and the Meaning of Life Jeff Noonan presents pessimism and technotopianism as two sides of the same coin, as both begin from the premise that the limitations of embodied life are inherently negative. He argues that rather than rendering life pointless, the tragic failures that mark life are fundamental to the good of human existence. The necessary limitations of embodied being are challenges for each person to live well, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of the future of the human project. Meaning is not a given, Noonan suggests, but rather the product of labour upon ourselves, others, and the world. Meaningful labour is threatened equally by unjust social systems and runaway technological development that aims to replace human action, rather than liberate it. Calling on us to draw conceptual connections between finitude, embodiment, and the meaning of life, this book shows that seeking the common good is our most viable and materially realistic source of optimism about the future.

Examining the legacies of Heidegger, along with Derrida, Levinas and Nietzsche, Rafael Winkler argues that it is not the search for truth or even contradictions that stimulates philosophical thought. Instead, it is our exposure to the unthinkable or the impossible – to thought's own limits. An experience of the unthinkable is possible in our encounter with the uniqueness of death, the singularity of being, and of the self and the other. This'thinking of finitude'also has political implications, as it provides us with a way to talk about, and evaluate, absolute strangeness and, by implication, the absolute stranger or foreigner. Illuminating Heidegger's writings on the question of ontology, ethics and history, Winkler proves that this encounter with thought's limits is one of the mainstays of the philosophies of difference of Heidegger, Levinas, and Nietzsche.

A bold philosophical investigation into technology and the limits of the human A daring, original work of philosophical speculation, Neurotechnology and the End of Finitude mounts a sustained investigation into the possibility that human beings may technologically overcome the transcendental limits of possible experience and envisages what such a transition would look like. Focusing on emergent neurotechnologies, which establish a direct channel of communication between brain and machine, Michael Haworth argues that such technologies intervene at the border between interiority and exteriority, offering the promise of immediacy and the possibility of the mind directly affecting the outside world or even other minds. Through detailed, targeted readings of Kant, Freud, Heidegger, Croce, Jung, and Derrida, Haworth explores the effect of this transformation on human creativity and our relationships with others. He pursues these questions across four distinct but interrelated spheres: the act of artistic creation and the potential for a technologically enabled coincidence of idea and object; the possibility of humanity achieving the infinite creativity that Kant attributed only to God; the relationship between the psyche and the external world in Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology; and the viability and impact of techno-telepathic communication. Addressing readers interested in contemporary continental philosophy and philosophy of technology, media and communications, and science and technology studies, Neurotechnology and the End of Finitude critically envisions a plausible posthuman future.

Člověk ví, že musí zemřít, a toto vědomí patří mezi základní charakteristiky lidskosti, náboženství, metafyzika a kultura si však kladou za cíl smrt přemoci. Západní filosofie od Platóna po Hegela tvrdí, že sám výkon myšlení je překonáním smrti a konečnosti. Kniha F. Dasturové nejprve podává analýzu těchto pokusů vyměřit oblast, která se smrti vymyká, a následně ukazuje, že lze ke smrti zaujmout i vztah, který před ní neuhýbá a nesnaží se ji „zneškodnit“: s oporou v Heideggerově rozboru bytí k smrti se autorka snaží ukázat, že lze o smrti hovořit i jinak – a že tento druh rozpravy nutně vyžaduje svobodné přijetí konečnosti lidské existence. Konečnost, která již nestojí v kontrastu vůči nekonečnosti božského bytí mimo smrt a mimo čas, navrací lidské bytí k jeho pozemskosti, časovosti a tělesnosti. Myšlení smrtelnosti jakožto momentu konstitutivního pro naši otevřenost vůči světu je též myšlením narození jakožto konečné, omezené schopnosti mít svět: umírání je podmínkou narození, smrt je podmínkou života. Nejautentičtější vztah k vlastní smrtelnosti paradoxně nacházíme v radosti a smíchu. Françoise Dasturová (• 1942) patří mezi nejvýznamnější fenomenologické myslitele současnosti, publikuje především k širšímu kontextu této tradice od německého idealismu po dekonstrukci.

This collection addresses the perennial philosophical and theological issues of human finitude and the potentiality for evil. The contributors approach these issues from perspectives in Continental philosophy relating to phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, rabbinical traditions, drawing upon the work of Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Paul Ricoeur. While centering on the traditional theme of theodicy, this volume is also oriented to the phenomenology of religion, with contributions across religions and intellectual traditions.

Dieser Band setzt sich zum Ziel, Möglichkeiten guten und gelingenden Lebens angesichts des Todes auszuloten. Von Anfang an gehört das Eingedenk-Sein der eigenen Endlichkeit (memento mori) aber auch zu den Grundthemen der akademischen Philosophie und Theologie. Zugleich stellt es einen wesentlichen Teil der abendländischen Geistesgeschichte dar, indem es sich als zentraler kulturgenerierender Faktor erweist. Denn wirklich zu begreifen, »dass [es] ein Ende mit mir haben muss«, wie Luther das Wort des Psalmisten übersetzt und Brahms es dann im »Deutschen Requiem« kongenial vertont – dieses Wissen um die irreversible und universale Faktizität des Sterbenmüssens verlangt nicht nur nach rationalen Konzepten der Kontingenzbewältigung, sondern auch nach entsprechenden praktisch-sozialen Handlungsstrategien. Im Zentrum der Beiträge stehen weniger abstrakte Theoreme der Endlichkeit und Sterblichkeit, sondern vielmehr emotionale wie volitionale (Lebens-)Einstellungen, rationale Sinnkonzepte (sog. Denkformen) und praktisch-ethische Handlungsoptionen des Menschen angesichts seiner Konfrontation mit diesem noch ausständigen Punkt seines Endes in der Zeit und seiner relativen Nähe zu ihm.

Der Mensch ist das Wesen, das sich zu seiner Vergänglichkeit, seiner Sterblichkeit und Endlichkeit verhält. Das führt ihn zu Selbstdeutungen unterschiedlichster Art, aber die Frage, die der Mensch sich in Anbetracht von Geburt, Liebe und Tod selbst ist, bleibt letztlich offen. Rainer Marten zeigt, wie literarische, theologische und philosophische Entwürfe, die Seins- und Lebensfrage zu beantworten, kritisch besehen Gestaltungen ihrer Unbeantwortbarkeit sind. Von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart haben Dichter, Theologen und Philosophen kraft ihrer poetischen Selbstauslegung an das Geheimnis endlichen menschlichen Lebens gerührt. Es ist der Mensch, der sich zum einen auf seine Endlichkeit zu besinnen vermag und der zum anderen anfängt zu verstehen, dass er mehr ist, als er weiß und wissen kann.

Endlichkeit ist eine essentielle Erfahrung der menschlichen Existenz. Als universelles Reflexiv schließt sie individuelle wie kollektive Perspektiven ein, umgreift Zeit und Raum, Materielles wie Ideelles und ist zudem ein Resonanzraum für ethische Debatten. Endlichkeit bezeichnet nicht nur die individuelle existentielle Erfahrung der Sterblichkeit und deren Transzendierung, sondern Endlichkeitserfahrungen sind immer auch Bestandteil gesellschaftlicher Wahrnehmungen von Krisen. Dazu gehört auch die Erkenntnis der Begrenztheit natürlicher Ressourcen. Die Beiträge des Bandes untersuchen die Erfahrungen und den Umgang mit Endlichkeit in verschiedenen Epochen und Kulturen.

This book starts off from a philosophical premise: nobody can be in the world unless they are born into the world. It examines this premise in the light of the theological belief that birth serves, or ought to serve, as a model for understanding what resurrection could signify for us today. After all, the modern Christian needs to find some way of understanding resurrection, and the dogma of the resurrection of the body is vacuous unless we can relate it philosophically to our own world of experience. Nicodemus first posed the question'How can anyone be born after having grown old?Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?'This book reads that problem in the context of contemporary philosophy (particularly the thought of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze). A phenomenology of the body born'from below'is seen as a paradigm for a theology of spiritual rebirth, and for rebirth of the body from'on high.'The Resurrection changes everything in Christianity—but it is also our own bodies that must be transformed in resurrection, as Christ is transfigured. And the way in which I hope to be resurrected bodily in God, in the future, depends upon the way in which I live bodily today.

La finitud no es la muerte sino la vida. Si somos finitos es porque vivimos siempre en despedida y no podemos controlar los deseos, recuerdos y olvidos, porque el nuestro es un mundo que nunca nos pertenece del todo, ni será plenamente cósmico, ordenado o paradisíaco. Somos el resultado del azar y de la contingencia y no tenemos más remedio que elegir en medio de una terrible y dolorosa incertidumbre. Una vida finita no conseguirá eludir la amenaza del caos, ni estará capacitada para cruzar las puertas del paraíso. Ser finito significa que no podemos crear a voluntad nuestra existencia, porque, querámoslo o no, recibimos una herencia que nos obliga a resituarnos a cada instante. Se trazan en esta obra algunas escenas antropológicas que configuran nuestra vida cotidiana: la experiencia, el olvido, el mal, el deseo, el placer, el silencio. La filosofía aquí esbozada tratará de mostrar la fragilidad y la vulnerabilidad de la vida y de pensar la ética y la educación desde esta perspectiva. Estamos ante el relato fragmentario del recorrido por unas sendas para las que no contamos con brújulas ni cartas de navegación.

In a new interpretation of Parmenides'philosophical poem On Nature, Vishwa Adluri considers Parmenides as a thinker of mortal singularity, a thinker who is concerned with the fate of irreducibly unique individuals. Adluri argues that the tripartite division of Parmenides'poem allows the thinker to brilliantly hold together the paradox of speaking about being in time and articulates a tragic knowing: mortals may aspire to the transcendence of metaphysics, but are inescapably returned to their mortal condition. Hence, Parmenides'poem articulates a'tragic return', i.e., a turn away from metaphysics to the community of mortals. In this interpretation, Parmenides'philosophy resonates with post-metaphysical and contemporary thought. The themes of human finitude, mortality, love, and singularity echo in thinkers such as Arendt, and Schürmann as well. Plato, Parmenides and Mortal Philosophy also includes a complete new translation of'On Nature'and a substantial overview and bibliography of contemporary scholarship on Parmenides.

Human finitude and its implications have long been one of the central themes of Western philosophy. The essays gathered together in this volume explore various facets of this not altogether pleasing fact with which we must realistically come to terms.

Reorienting our approach to fundamental questions about human existence.

The early Heidegger of Being and Time is generally believed to locate finitude strictly within the individual, based on an understanding that this individual will have to face its death alone and in its singularity. Facing death is characterized by the mood of Angst (anxiety), as death is not an experience one can otherwise access outside of one's own demise. In the later Heidegger, the finitude of the individual is rooted in the finitude of the world it lives in and within which it actualizes its possibilities, or Being. Against the standard reading that the early Heidegger places the emphasis on individual finitude, this important new book shows how the later model of the finitude of Being is developed in Being and Time. Elkholy questions the role of Angst in Heidegger's discussion of death and it is at the point of transition from the nothing back to the world of projects that the author locates finitude and shows that Heidegger's later thinking of the finitude of Being is rooted in Being and Time.

When attempting to generalize recursion theory to admissible ordinals, it may seem as if all classical priority constructions can be lifted to any admissible ordinal satisfying a sufficiently strong fragment of the replacement scheme. We show, however, that this is not always the case. In fact, there are some constructions which make an essential use of the notion of finiteness which cannot be replaced by the generalized notion of $\alpha$-finiteness. As examples we discuss both codings of models of arithmetic into the recursively enumerable degrees, and non-distributive lattice embeddings into these degrees. We show that if an admissible ordinal $\alpha$ is effectively close to $\omega$ (where this closeness can be measured by size or by cofinality) then such constructions may be performed in the $\alpha$-r.e. degrees, but otherwise they fail. The results of these constructions can be expressed in the first-order language of partially ordered sets, and so these results also show that there are natural elementary differences between the structures of $\alpha$-r.e. degrees for various classes of admissible ordinals $\alpha$. Together with coding work which shows that for some $\alpha$, the theory of the $\alpha$-r.e. degrees is complicated, we get that for every admissible ordinal $\alpha$, the $\alpha$-r.e. degrees and the classical r.e. degrees are not elementarily equivalent.

In Tragedies of Spirit, Theodore D. George engages Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit to explore the philosophical significance of tragedy in post-Kantian continental thought. George follows lines of inquiry originally developed by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida, and takes as his point of departure the concern that Hegel's speculative philosophy forms a summit of modernity that the present historical time is called to interrogate. Yet, George argues that Hegel's larger speculative ambitions in the Phenomenology compel him to turn to the resource of tragedy in order to give voice to issues of incommensurability, discontinuity, otherness, strife, and crisis. From this standpoint, Hegel's interest in the tragic proves to be more pervasive and to run deeper than has previously been recognized. The author shows that Hegel's reliance upon the tragic not only stretches and tests assumptions of speculative philosophy, but also illuminates original insights into human finitude. While situating Hegel's approach to tragedy as part of a broader response to Kant, George also contextualizes Hegel's interest in tragedy with reference to figures in German Idealism and Romanticism, such as Schelling, Hölderlin, and Schlegel.

Sarah Schmidt's systematic interpretation of Schleiermacher's philosophical work focuses on his concept of'mutual determination'. This is where his answer is to be found to the question of a possible orientation in a world of the finite. This particular focus underlines Schleiermacher's relevance and proves to be particularly fruitful in emphasising the unity of his philosophical oeuvre, which has received little attention to date. The occupation with Schleiermacher's philosophy of mutual determination proceeds in four systematic steps, each of which turns to a particular text corpus - the early Berlin writings, the lectures on dialectics, the lectures on hermeneutics and critique, and finally the lectures on philosophical ethics.

Explores how philosophical thanatology - from Plato to Levinas - relates to psychoanalysis and the anthropology of Western and Oriental religions and myths.