Deconstructive Subjectivities

Simon Critchley is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex, England. He is the author of The Ethics of Deconstruction and Very Little...Almost Nothing. He is co-editor of Re-reading Levinas; Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings; and editor of Blackwell's Companion to Continental Philosophy. Peter Dews is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex. He is the author of Logics of Disintegration and of The Limits of Disenchantment. He is editor of Jurgen Habermas, Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews and of Habermas: A Critical Reader.

"Critchley and Dews have assembled an impressive collection of essays that focus on one of many splits within contemporary continental philosophy. But the purpose of this collection is not to exacerbate an already contentious scene. The purpose is to demonstrate surprising similarities and convictions traversing divergent approaches and traditions. More directly, Critchley and Dews set out to display, between the divergent traditions influenced by Heidegger, Habermas, Lacan, and Derrida, a strange alliance for the overcoming of the subject. Critchley and Dews have succeeded in attaining this goal." — Gayle L. Ormiston, Kent State University"This is an outstanding collection of essays by some of the most talented and important figures now working in continental philosophy—not all of them well known in this country. The essays address a family of questions that many are struggling with across a range of disciplines and traditions—the chief problem being that philosophy (of a certain kind) can celebrate the achievement of its critique of the subject, but the achievement has produced a good deal of theoretical, not to say practical, confusion in political and social theory, the relations of politics and ethics, feminist thinking, and cultural studies. This volume of essays will give orientation to a wide range of debates." — Gerald L. Bruns, William & Hazel White Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

• Sources and Acknowledgments 1. IntroductionSimon Critchley and Peter Dews 2. Prolegomena to Any Post-Deconstructive SubjectivitySimon Critchley 3. The Question of Subjectivity in Heidegger's Being and TimeDominique Janicaud 4. Dropping—The "Subject" of Authenticity: Being and Time on Disappearing Existentials and True Friendship with BeingRudi Visker 5. The Final Appeal of the SubjectJean-Luc Mario 6. Rethinking the History of the Subject: Jacobi, Schelling, and HeideggerAndrew Bowie 7. Identity and SubjectivityManfred Frank 8. The Truth of the Subject: Language, Validity, and Transcendence in Lacan and HabermasPeter Dews 9. The Other in MyselfRudolf Bernet 10. Law, Guilt, and Subjectivity: Some Reflections on Freud, Nancy, and DerridaPhilippe Van Haute 11. Do We Still Want to be Subjects?Ute Guzzoni NotesNotes on ContributorsIndex