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.

Philosophers are accustomed to thinking about human existence as finite and deathbound. Anne O'Byrne focuses instead on birth as a way to make sense of being alive. Building on the work of Heidegger, Dilthey, Arendt, and Nancy, O'Byrne discusses how the world becomes ours and how meaning emerges from our relations to generations past and to come. Themes such as creation, time, inheritance, birth and action, embodiment, biological determinism, and cloning anchor this sensitive and powerful analysis. O'Byrne's thinking advances and deepens important discussions at the intersections of feminism, continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and social and political thought.

After Finitude provides readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy. Author Quentin Meillassoux introduces a philosophical alternative to the forced choice between dogmatism and critique. After Finitude proposes a new alliance between philosophy and science and calls for an unequivocal halt to the creeping return of religiosity in contemporary philosophical discourse.

This book explains how to read Plato, emphasizing the philosophic importance of the dramatic aspects of the dialogues, and showing that Plato is an ironic thinker and that his irony is deeply rooted in his philosophy.

Beginning from the notion of finite life, Another Finitude takes this staple subject from post-Heideggerian philosophy and opposes it to the onto-theological concept of infinity, represented by an eternal absolute. Although critical of Heidegger and his definition of finitude as 'being-towards-death', this book does not revert to the ontological idea of infinity secured in the sacred image of immortality. But it also does not want to give up on infinity altogether; the infinite is transposed, so it can become a necessary moment of the finite life. A theological framework for the new elaboration of the concept of finitude is crucial; but instead of following the Lutheran formula, Agata Bielik-Robson turns to the sources of Judaism. Taking inspiration from the Jewish idea of torat hayim, the principle of finite life, which found the best expression in the biblical sentence: love strong as death; love emerges as the alternative marker of finitude, allowing to us redefine it in an affirmative way. By tracing the avatars of love in the group of 20th-century thinkers, or 'messianic vitalists'–Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Arendt, Derrida, and (deeply revised) Freud–the book attempts to demonstrate the possibility of such affirmation. Love becomes the new 'infinite-in-the-finite'; love in all its forms, from the original libidinal endowment of the human psyche to the last metamorphoses of agape, the Greco-Christian divine love.

The author then elaborates a systematic reconstruction of Dilthey's ontology of life. In the final section of the book, Dilthey's hermeneutic ontology is confronted with the works of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida, and its relevance in current philosophical debate is evaluated."--Jacket.

Takes Heidegger’s later thought as a point of departure for exploring the boundaries of post-conceptual thinking.

Ludwig Heyde's award winning examination of the weight of finitude and its relation to God is translated here for the first time in English. Though philosophers may question if there still is room for God in philosophy after Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead," Heyde suggests that a full acceptance of the finitude of existence can lead to the affirmation of God. He criticizes conceptions that have unconsciously dominated our thinking since the Enlightenment. In relation to the philosophical tradition—Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Descartes, Kant, and primarily Hegel, among others—certain "experiences" are developed which thought can undergo when it goes to its limits and asks after the ground of all that is. At the same time, Heyde investigates how well the affirmation of God stands up against various intellectual and existential challenges such as Kant's critique, the experience of evil and suffering, and the thought of Heidegger and Nietzsche.

This book explores what anyone interested in ethics can draw from Heidegger's thinking. Heidegger argues for the radical finitude of being. But finitude is not only an ontological matter; it is also located in ethical life. Moral matters are responses to finite limit-conditions, and ethics itself is finite in its modes of disclosure, appropriation, and performance. With Heidegger's help, Lawrence Hatab argues that ethics should be understood as the contingent engagement of basic practical questions, such as how should human beings live?