Why is the philosopher Hegel returning as a potent force in contemporary thinking? Why, after a long period when Hegel and his dialectics of history have seemed less compelling than they were for previous generations of philosophers, is study of Hegel again becoming important? Fashionably contemporary theorists like Francis Fukuyama and Slavoj Zižek, as well as radical theologians like Thomas Altizer, have all recently been influenced by Hegel, the philosopher whose philosophy seems somehow perennial - or, to borrow an idea from Nietzsche, eternally returning. Exploring this revival via...

Why is the philosopher Hegel returning as a potent force in contemporary thinking? Why, after a long period when Hegel and his dialectics of history have seemed less compelling than they were for previous generations of philosophers, is study of Hegel again becoming important? Fashionably contemporary theorists like Francis Fukuyama and Slavoj Zižek, as well as radical theologians like Thomas Altizer, have all recently been influenced by Hegel, the philosopher whose philosophy seems somehow perennial - or, to borrow an idea from Nietzsche, eternally returning. Exploring this revival via...

Finalist for the 2014 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, constructive-reflective category, presented by the American Academy of Religion

In this groundbreaking, interdisciplinary history of ideas, Andrew W. Hass explores the ascendency of the concept of nothing into late modernity. He argues that the rise of the reality of nothing in religion, philosophy, and literature has taken place only against the decline of the concept of One: a shift from a sovereign understanding of the One (unity, universality) toward the "figure of the O"--a cipher figure that, as nonentity, is...