One of the most pressing concerns for contemporary society is the issue of violence and the factors that promote it. In Altared Ground, Brian Schroeder stages an engagement between Emmanuel Levinas, one of the leading figures in twentieth century Continental philosophy, and Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and others. Not merely an exposition of Levinas's original and complex thinking, Altared Ground seeks to re-read the history of Western philosophy and religion by going beyond Levinas's alternatives to traditional theories of the self in order to suggest a notion of subjectivity that is not grounded in violence.
Schroeder contributes to current discussions of reconceiving subjectivity as inter-subjectivity in a postmodern context through a sustained analysis of interpersonal violence. In addition, he takes up the themes of alterity, ground, transcendence, responsibility, language, community, politics, divinity, and futurity.

Challenging the idea that nihilism has supplanted metaphysics, Vittorio Possenti finds in this philosophical turn the grounds for a mature renewal of metaphysics. Possenti takes the reader on a third voyage that goes beyond the second voyage indicated by Plato in the "Phaedo." He traces the ascendancy of nihilism in philosophy, offering critical examinations of Nietzsche, Gentile, Heidegger, Habermas, Husserl, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Vattimo. With penetrating accounts of philosophical movements such as hermeneutics and logical empiricism, rich with both historical and theoretical insights, Possenti provides a compelling defense of the power of human reason to apprehend the most obvious but also the most profound aspect of things: that they exist. By exploring the ubiquity of nihilism and probing its philosophical roots, Possenti clears the way for a fresh reformulation of metaphysics."

Italian philosophy can provide a long-overdue and much-needed supplement to continental thinking. This book offers some living and lively examples, some for the first time in English, of original thought from the Italian philosophical scene.

One of the most pressing concerns for contemporary society is the issue of violence and the factors that promote it. In this book, the author stages an engagement between Emmanuel Levinas, one of the leading figures in 20th century Continental philosophy, and Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and others. The text seeks to re-read the history of Western philosophy and religion by going beyond Levinas's alternatives to traditional theories of the self in order to suggest a notion of subjectivity that is not grounded in violence. Schroeder contributes to current discussions of reconceiving subjectivity as inter-subjectivity in a postmodern context through a sustained analysis of interpersonal violence. In addition, he takes up the themes of alterity, ground, transcendence, responsibility, language, community, politics, divinity and futurity.

Recognizing the importance of the Kyoto School and its influence on philosophy, politics, religion, and Asian studies, Japanese and Continental Philosophy initiates a conversation between Japanese and Western philosophers. The essays in this cross-cultural volume put Kyoto School thinkers in conversation with German Idealism, Nietzsche, phenomenology, and other figures and schools of the continental tradition such as Levinas and Irigaray. Set in the context of global philosophy, this volume offers critical, innovative, and productive dialogue between some of the most influential philosophical figures from East and West.

The relation between the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions is "the great problem" of Western philosophy, according to Emmanuel Levinas. In this book Brian Schroeder, Silvia Benso, and an international group of philosophers address the relationship between Levinas and the world of ancient thought. In addition to philosophy, themes touching on religion, mythology, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics are also explored. The volume as a whole provides a unified and extended discussion of how an engagement between Levinas and thinkers from the ancient tradition works to enrich understandings of both. This book opens new pathways in ancient and modern philosophical studies as it illuminates new interpretations of Levinas' ethics and his social and political philosophy.

The Possible Present unfolds from within a freely reinterpreted hermeneutic perspective and provides an original theoretical proposal on the topic of time. In dialogue especially with the philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger, but resorting also to suggestions coming from a theological background (Barth and Bonhoeffer), the work proposes a personal and original theory of time centered on a conception of the present that does not reduce temporality to a succession of mere instants. When one claims that time is ungraspable, one refers neither to the past (which is rather irretrievable) nor to the future (which is rather uncertain) but to the present. The present in which we are is in fact what fades from our hands without break. The present is a decisive threshold for finite existence. It is the threshold where past and future meet and can give birth to a livable horizon of meaning. Dilating the present and giving it a meaningful chance to be is a task for philosophy. It is the attempt of giving time to time and also giving it shape, place, and space. To succeed at this task while rediscovering the sources of a narrative way of thinking that in truth it has never abandoned, philosophy must go back and turn time into the primary object of discourse, like in stories, which are precisely the attempt at disposing the temporal flow of events according to a meaning. Perone argues that in time, however, what passes is not simply decline, but rather something irreducible, an exteriority that must be said.