The Second Edition Contradictory interpretations have been applied to history-making events that led to the end of the Cold War: Vaclav Havel, using Kierkegaardian terms, called the demise of totalitarianism in East-Central Europe an "existential revolution" (i.e. an awakening of human responsibility, spirit, and reason), while others hailed it as a victory for the "New World Order." Regardless of one's point of view, however, it is clear that the global landscape has been dramatically altered. Where once the competition between capitalism and communism provided a basis for establishing political- and self-identity, today the destructive forces of nationalist identity and religious and secular fundamentalism are filling the void. Offering the most extensive examination of Habermas's and Kierkegaard's critiques of nationalist identity available, Postnational Identity dramatically confronts the traditional view of existential philosophy as antisocial and uncritical. This book shows how Kierkegaardian theory and practice of radically honest communication allows us to rethink the existential in terms of Habermas's communicative action, and vice versa. As the author explains, the foundations of his work in the critical theory and existential philosophy, brought together in this book, engender two forms of suspicion of the present age. The critical theorist, such as Jurgen Habermas, unmasks the forms in which social and cultural life become systema-tically distorted by the imperatives of political power and economic gain. The existential critic, like Soren Kierkegaard and Vaclav Havel, is suspicious of the various ways in which individuals deceive themselves or other people. This study aims to integrate Kierkegaard's and Havel's existential critique of motives informing human identity formation with Habermas's critique of the colonialization of fragmented, anomic modern life by systems of power and money... The author's argument is that existential critique and social critique complement each other and overcome their respective limitations. One of the first works to treat seriously the existential thought of Havel, the book will hold enormous appeal for students and professionals involved in existential philosophy, critical theory, philosophy, and, more generally, political science, literary theory, communications, and cultural studies.

No one will deny that we live in a world where evil exists. But how are we to come to grips with human atrocity and its diabolical intensity? Martin Beck Matu tik considers evil to be even more radically evil than previously thought and to have become all too familiar in everyday life. While we can name various moral wrongs and specific cruelties, Matu tik maintains that radical evil understood as a religious phenomenon requires a religious response where the language of hope, forgiveness, redemption, and love can take us beyond unspeakable harm and irreparable violence. Drawing upon the work of Kant, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida, and Marion, this work is written as a series of meditations. Matu tik presents a bold new way of dealing with one of humanity's most intractable problems."

"This volume represents a fine assessment of the continuing applicability of Kierkegaard s thought for the 21st century." The Reader s Review

"Matustik and Westphal have set some agile minds to the task of drawing out the threads of Kierkegaard s influence on postmodern and contemporary philosophy, from gender to politics and from Buber to Derrida." Choice

..". Usefully and effectively establishes Kierkegaard as a living presence in contemporary thought. It will help students of Kierkegaard attend to aspects of his thought that have eluded their attention, and it will challenge those engaged with contemporary continental philosophy not to shelter themselves from the provocations and interrogrations still uncomfortably pressing in Kierkegaard s writings." International Philosophical Quarterly

"The standard of the essays and the calibre of the contributors are uniformly high. This is indeed one of the better collections relating to Kierkegaard published in recent years, and should do much to extend discussion of his work..." Modern Believing

..". a text of immense significance and value.... As a research tool it will surely prove indispensable." Soren Kierkegaard Newsletter

"It will be a helpful supplementary areading for teaching... the contemporary readings of Kierkegaard introduced here continue to reveal new and more exciting depths to his extraordinary philosophy." Teaching Philosophy

These essays engage Kierkegaard in conversation with critical social theory and postmodern thought. Covering a diversity of themes, this collection still reflects consensus Kierkegaard is to be taken seriously as a philosopher at the turn of the twenty-first century."

Over the course of the last four decades, William Leon McBride has distinguished himself as a teacher, mentor, and scholar without peer. The author of seven books and more than two hundred book chapters, articles, and reviews, he is a world-renowned expert on the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and a leader in the international community of philosophers. This volume-which celebrates the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday-includes contributions from colleagues, friends, and formers students. Together, they pay tribute to the intellectual, philosophical, and professional achievements of one of the most esteemed and accomplished scholars of his generation.

This philosophical-political profile offers the first of its kind intellectual reconstruction of Habermas s defining existential and historical situations, his generational profile and interventions, his impact on as well as the discontents that his life work generates in others. Written as a lively dramatic engagement with major themes of Habermas s adult life in postwar Germany, the entire study occupies a unique place between the standard genres of a biography and a theoretical commentary on the oeuvre. In this work the reader is taken on a journey with Habermas through the 20th-century intellectual and political history from the defeat of Nazism, to the Cold War restoration of the '50s, the student movement of the '60s, the historical revisions of the '70s and '80s, the hope of the post-Wall era after 1989, all the way to the controversies surrounding the allied wars of intervention against Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s. Both beginning and advanced readers of 20th century socio-political thought gain greater insight into the existential, political, and philosophical influences that proved to be formative of Habermas s writing and activism in the public sphere. The first part of the study emphasizes the unfolding, linear view of Habermas s postwar history, punctuated by the major existential and political situations of his young adult life from 1945 to 2000. The second part returns to the same time-span in order to reconstruct Habermas s mature post-Wall intellectual profile in contrast to the profiles of the preceding generation of 1945 and the later protesting generation of 1968. The third part examines the tremendous Habermas-effect exercised on 20th-century thought and public policy. The concluding chapters discuss critically the lasting place as well as the limits of Habermas s achievement in contribution to a development of new critical theory. The book is enhanced by an introduction that provides a historical and conceptual background to the major themes discussed, twelve helpful thematic table"

This philosophical-political profile offers the first of its kind intellectual reconstruction of HabermasOs defining existential and historical situations, his generational profile and interventions, his impact on as well as the discontents that his life work generates in others. Written as a lively dramatic engagement with major themes of HabermasOs adult life in postwar Germany, the entire study occupies a unique place between the standard genres of a biography and a theoretical commentary on the oeuvre. In this work the reader is taken on a journey with Habermas through the 20th-century intellectual and political history from the defeat of Nazism, to the Cold War restoration of the '50s, the student movement of the '60s, the historical revisions of the '70s and '80s, the hope of the post-Wall era after 1989, all the way to the controversies surrounding the allied wars of intervention against Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s. Both beginning and advanced readers of 20th century socio-political thought gain greater insight into the existential, political, and philosophical influences that proved to be formative of HabermasOs writing and activism in the public sphere. The first part of the study emphasizes the unfolding, linear view of HabermasOs postwar history, punctuated by the major existential and political situations of his young adult life from 1945 to 2000. The second part returns to the same time-span in order to reconstruct HabermasOs mature post-Wall intellectual profile in contrast to the profiles of the preceding generation of 1945 and the later protesting generation of 1968. The third part examines the tremendous Habermas-effect exercised on 20th-century thought and public policy. The concluding chapters discuss critically the lasting place as well as the limits of HabermasOs achievement in contribution to a development of new critical theory. The book is enhanced by an introduction that provides a historical and conceptual background to the major themes discussed, twelve helpful thematic tables and figures, and a glossary of foreign terms.

Devoted to the most important American Continental philosopher of his generation and one of the discipline's founding fathers, and featuring some of the field's most distinguished luminaries, this anthology constitutes a critical document in Continental philosophy, reflecting its recent history, its present state, and its debt to Calvin O. Schrag. Taking up themes central to Schrag's own philosophical concerns, these essays refer throughout to his salient ""interventions"" in the dialogue of late twentieth-century thought characterized as ""postmodernity."" In doing so, all contributors address, implicitly or directly, the question of philosophy's role and responsibility, or ""task."" The volume begins with an overview of this task and of Schrag's contributions to it, written from the perspective of a resolute defender of the phenomenological tradition that Schrag's work has extended and reconfigured. The following essays are organized around the four conceptual figures that are widely considered Schrag's most significant and original philosophical achievements: transversal rationality, the self after modernity, the fourth cultural value sphere, and communicative praxis. Following and expanding on the implications of these themes, the authors focus on topics ranging from Cartesian rationality to Foucauldian rational relativism; from transcendence in relation to the self to the Schragean self's connections with discourse, action, and community; from religion's disruptive presence in contemporary philosophy to recent developments in the philosophy of language. Taken together, these essays go beyond an appreciation of Calvin Schrag's contribution to Continental philosophy to substantially elaborate upon and extend that contribution.