In this concentrated and detailed look at questions surrounding the act of sacrifice, Dennis King Keenan discusses both the role and the meaning of sacrifice in our lives. Building on recent philosophical discussions on the gift and transcendence, Keenan covers new ground with this exploration of the religious, psychological, and ethical issues that sacrifice entails. According to Keenan, sacrifice is paradoxically called to sacrifice itself. But what does this necessary, yet impossible condition mean for living an ethical life? Along the way to an answer, Keenan considers the views of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Lacan, Levinas, Blanchot, Irigaray, Derrida, Kristeva, Nancy, and Zizek. This thoughtful and provocative work affords a sophisticated philosophical treatment of the question of sacrifice.

Contemporary continental philosophy stands in the wake ofthe work of G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831). This invaluablecollection is the first to gather the most important works onHegel from the following luminaries of contemporary continental thought: Aclorno, Agamben, Althusser, Bataille, Blanchot, Butler, Deleuze, Derrida, Fanon, Gadamer, Hyppolite, Irigaray, Kojeve, Kristeva, Lacan, Levinas, Lukacs, Merleau-Ponty; Nancy, Sallis, Sartre, Wahl, and Zizek. Thewritings cover significant movements within continental philosophy, including phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, critical theory, feminism, literary criticism, and cleconstruction. These thought-provoking analyses provide support for Merleau Panty's observation: "All of the great philosophical ideas of the past century--the philosophies of Marx and Nietzsche, phenomenology, German existentialism, and psychoanalysis--had their beginnings in Hegel."