Simon Critchley is Reader in Philosophy at Essex and Directeur de Programme at the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris. He is author of The Ethics of Deconstruction (Blackwell, 1992), Very Little Almost Nothing (Routledge, 1997), and Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity (Verso, 1998), and has also edited a number of collections, including the Blackwell Companion to Continental Philosophy.

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• List of Illustrations ; Introduction ; 1. The gap between knowledge and wisdom ; 2. Origins of Continental Philosophy - How to get from Kant to German Idealism ; 3. Two Cultures in Philosophy - the need for both spectacles and eyes to see with ; 4. Can philosophy change the world? Critique, praxis, emancipation ; 5. What is to be done? How to respond to nihilism ; 6. A case study in misunderstanding: Heidegger and Carnap ; 7. Scientism versus obscurantism: avoiding the traditional predicament in philosophy ; 8. Sapere aude - the exhaustion of theory and the promise of philosophy ; Further Reading ; References ; Index