Paul RicIur, with Rawls, Walzer, and Habermas as some of his main interlocuters, has developed a substantial and distinctive body of political thought. On the one hand, it articulates a rich conception of the paradoxical character of the domain of politics. On the other, it provides a fresh approach to such major topics as the relationship among politics, economics, and ethics and between concern for universal human rights and respect for cultural plurality. His work, rooted as it is in Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, also provides resources for a fruitful rethinking of the issues at stake in the liberal-communitarian debate.

The relationship between philosophy and history has long been a matter of contention. Philosophers have claimed that their pursuit of universal law and eternal verities elevated them beyond historians, who merely dabbled with the vagaries of the particular and the contingent. Historians responded with the argument that philosophy was important only in relation to its contribution to concrete, historical truth.

A greater challenge for both philosophers and historians than the defense of either of these positions has been to understand the convoluted issues surrounding the intersection of their respective disciplines. In "At the Nexus of Philosophy and History, " Bernard P. Dauenhauer has collected eleven essays that explore the relationship between the two disciplines and provide a significant, innovative response to the problems created by such exploration.

The original essays collected in this volume challenge the artificial distinctions and disciplinary parochialism that have too often characterized traditional academic debate. Instead of advancing any one elaborate theory, "At the Nexus of Philosophy and History" seeks to encourage a balanced approach toward the exploration of the two fields by demonstrating that a full understanding of the one is impossible without knowledge of the other.

Traditional conceptions of citizenship have dealt almost exclusively with political life within one state. But the internationalization of so much economic, cultural, and political life today presents new opportunities and problems_including the potential to extinguish human life. Taking these new features as a point of departure, Dauenhauer exposes the flaws in standard communitarian and liberal democratic theory, focusing on the work of Charles Taylor, John Rawls, and JYrgen Habermas. He articulates a concept of 'complex citizenship' that recognizes citizens' responsibilities beyond borders, and shows its fruitfulness for educating children and dealing with foreign states and their peoples.