This book offers an ethical interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason by establishing the historical connection between the problematic of Temporality in the philosophies of Heidegger and Levinas on the one hand, and the ground-laying of metaphysics in the schematism of Kant’s critical philosophy on the other. Drawing on Levinas’s ethical critique of the Heideggerian problematic of Temporality together with his destructive proposal to carry out the deformalization of the Kantian notion of time in a manner consistent with Rosenzweig’s philosophy, the book argues that this historical connection should be established at the point where Kant determines the ethical status of the schematism according to the regulative schemas of the ideas of pure reason, and not, as in Heidegger’s ontological destruction, at the point of his determination of the sensible schemas of the pure concepts of understanding alone.

This book reconstructs Heidegger’s philosophy of time by reading his work with and against a series of key interlocutors that he nominates as being central to his own critical history of time. In doing so, it explains what makes time of such significance for Heidegger and argues that Heidegger can contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of time. Time is a central concern for Heidegger, yet his thinking on the subject is fragmented, making it difficult to grasp its depth, complexity, and promise. Heidegger traces out a history that focuses on the conceptualisations of time put forward by Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Husserl – an “alternative history of time” that challenges how time has been defined and studied within both philosophy and the sciences. This book explores what happens when we take seriously Heidegger’s claim that these seven figures are essential to any understanding of time, setting out what this can tell us about existence, possibility, and philosophy as a historical discipline. Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on Heidegger, phenomenology, the philosophy of time, and the history of philosophy.

The limit of language is one of the most pervasive notions found in Wittgenstein’s work, both in his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later writings. Moreover, the idea of a limit of language is intimately related to important scholarly debates on Wittgenstein’s philosophy, such as the debate between the so-called traditional and resolute interpretations, Wittgenstein’s stance on transcendental idealism, and the philosophical import of Wittgenstein’s latest work On Certainty. This collection includes thirteen original essays that provide a comprehensive overview of the various ways in which Wittgenstein appeals to the limit of language at different stages of his philosophical development. The essays connect the idea of a limit of language to the most important themes discussed by Wittgenstein—his conception of logic and grammar, the method of philosophy, the nature of the subject, and the foundations of knowledge—as well as his views on ethics, aesthetics, and religion. The essays also relate Wittgenstein’s thought to his contemporaries, including Carnap, Frege, Heidegger, Levinas, and Moore.

Heidegger’s Shadow is an important contribution to the understanding of Heidegger’s ambivalent relation to transcendental philosophy. Its contention is that Heidegger recognizes the importance of transcendental philosophy as the necessary point of entry to his thought, but he nonetheless comes to regard it as something that he must strive to overcome even though he knows such an attempt can never succeed. Engelland thoroughly engages with major texts such as Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Being and Time, and Contributions and traces the progression of Heidegger’s readings of Kant and Husserl to show that Heidegger cannot abandon his own earlier breakthrough work in transcendental philosophy. This book will be of interest to those working on phenomenology, continental philosophy, and transcendental philosophy.

Christophe Bouton's Time and Freedom addresses the problem of the relationship between time and freedom as a matter of practical philosophy, examining how the individual lives time and how her freedom is effective in time. Bouton first charts the history of modern philosophy's reengagement with the Aristotelian debate about future contingents, beginning with Leibniz. While Kant, Husserl, and their followers would engage time through theories of knowledge, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Kierkegaard, and (later), Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas applied a phenomenological and existential methodology to time, but faced a problem of the temporality of human freedom. Bouton's is the first major work of its kind since Bergson's Time and Free Will (1889), and Bouton's "mystery of the future," in which the individual has freedom within the shifting bounds dictated by time, charts a new direction.

While many scholars have noted Martin Heidegger's indebtedness to Christian mystical sources, as well as his affinity with Taoism and Buddhism, Elliot R. Wolfson expands connections between Heidegger's thought and kabbalistic material. By arguing that the Jewish esoteric tradition impacted Heidegger, Wolfson presents an alternative way of understanding the history of Western philosophy. Wolfson's comparison between Heidegger and kabbalah sheds light on key concepts such as hermeneutics, temporality, language, and being and nothingness, while yielding surprising reflections on their common philosophical ground. Given Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism and his use of antisemitic language, these innovative readings are all the more remarkable for their juxtaposition of incongruent fields of discourse. Wolfson's entanglement with Heidegger and kabbalah not only enhances understandings of both but, more profoundly, serves as an ethical corrective to their respective ethnocentrism and essentialism. Wolfson masterfully illustrates the redemptive capacity of thought to illuminate common ground in seemingly disparate philosophical traditions.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) emerged as an influential philosophical voice in the final decades of the twentieth century, and his reputation has continued to flourish and increase in our own day. His central themes--the primacy of the ethical and the core of ethics as our responsibility to and for others--speak to readers from a host of disciplines and perspectives. However, his writings and thought are challenging and difficult. The Oxford Handbook of Levinas contains essays that aim to clarify and engage Levinas and his writings in a number of ways. Some focus on central themes of his work, others on the ways in which he read and was influenced by figures from Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant to Blanchot, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida. And there are essays on how his thinking has been appropriated in moral and political thought, psychology, film criticism, and more, and on the relation between his thinking and religious themes and traditions. Finally, several essays deal primarily with how readers have criticized him and found him wanting. The volume exposes and explores both the depth of Levinas's philosophical work and the range of applications to which it has been put, with special attention to clarifying why his interests in the human condition, the crisis of civilization, the centrality and character of ethics and morality, and the very meaning of human experience should be of interest to the widest range of readers.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

By virtue of the originality and depth of its thought, Emmanuel Levinas’s masterpiece, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, is destined to endure as one of the great works of philosophy. It is an essential text for understanding Levinas’s discussion of “the Other,” yet it is known as a “difficult” book. Modeled after Norman Kemp Smith’s commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Levinas’s Existential Analytic guides both new and experienced readers through Levinas’s text. James R. Mensch explicates Levinas’s arguments and shows their historical referents, particularly with regard to Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida. Students using this book alongside Totality and Infinity will be able to follow its arguments and grasp the subtle phenomenological analyses that fill it.