Heidegger thought seriously about the implications of human coexistence, and this book shows that conceptions of trust and responsibility that lie at the very heart of morality are to be found in the sketch of Mitsein--our being together with one another in the world--offered in Being and Time. Written by one of the preeminent interpreters of Heidegger, this book is an important statement about the basis of human sociality that is a major contribution to the continuing debates about Heidegger in particular, and ethics in general.

Against the background of early modernism - a period that justified punishment by general deterrence - Kant is usually thought to represent a radical turn towards retributivism. For Kant, and later for Fichte and Hegel, a just punishment respects the humanity inherent in the criminal, and serves no external ends - it is instituted only because the criminal deserves it. In this original study, Jean-Christophe Merle uses close analysis of texts to show that these philosophers did not in fact hold a retributivist position, or even a mixed position; instead he traces in their work the gradual...

The philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer interests a wide audience that spans the traditional distinction between European (continental) and Anglo-American (analytic) philosophy. Yet one of the most important and complex aspects of his work - his engagement with German Idealism - has received comparatively little attention. In this book, Kristin Gjesdal uses a close analysis and critical investigation of Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960) to show that his engagement with Kant, Hegel, and Schleiermacher is integral to his conception of hermeneutics. She argues that a failure to engage with this...

Explores Kierkegaard's belief that earthly love and religious life do not conflict but rather enhance and perfect one another.

This book provides an extensive treatment of Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness. Nicolas de Warren uses detailed analysis of texts by Husserl, some only recently published in German, to examine Husserl's treatment of time-consciousness and its significance for his conception of subjectivity. He traces the development of Husserl's thinking on the problem of time from Franz Brentano's descriptive psychology, and situates it in the framework of his transcendental project as a whole. Particular discussions include the significance of time-consciousness for other phenomenological...

Debates over the end of art' have tended to obscure Hegel's work on the arts themselves. Benjamin Rutter opens this study with a defence of art's indispensability to Hegel's conception of modernity; he then seeks to reorient discussion toward the distinctive values of painting, poetry, and the novel. Working carefully through Hegel's four lecture series on aesthetics, he identifies the expressive possibilities particular to each medium. Thus, Dutch genre scenes animate the everyday with an appearance of vitality; metaphor frees language from prose; and Goethe's lyrics revive the banal...

Unlike those who view Heidegger as an idealist, Taylor Carman asserts that Heidegger is best understood as a realist and offers a new interpretation of his major work, Being and Time. Among the book's distinctive features are an interpretation explicitly oriented within a Kantian framework (often taken for granted in readings of Heidegger) and an analysis of Dasein in relation to recent theories of intentionality; notably those of Dennett and Searle.