The aim of these essays is to disentangle us from the opposition between universalism and relativism in which so many of the debates in recent contemporary philosophy have been caught. This volume shows that what is in fact returning in these discussions and maneuvering them into a pre-set course is the very ambiguity, `the subject', which they seek to repress.

Inhalt

Abbreviations. Introduction. I: Truth and Finitude. 1. Heidegger's Cave. Being and Time on Disappearing Existentials. 2. From Foucault to Heidegger. A One Way-Ticket? 3. Meaning and Validity. Habermas on Heidegger and Foucault. 4. Raw Being and Violent Discourse. Foucault, Merleau-Ponty and the (Dis-)order of Things. II: A Silence Which Escapes Intersubjectivity. 5. Dis-possessed. How to Remain Silent after' Levinas. 6. Uneuropean Desires. Toward a Provincialism without Romanticism. 7. The Untouchable. Merleau-Ponty's Last Subject. 8. A Western Problem? Merleau-Ponty on Intersubjectivity. III: The Loneliness of a Subject Unable to Disappear. 9. No Privacy? Levinas' Intrigue of the Infinite. 10. Can Only a Yes' Save Us Now? Anti-Racism's First Word in Derrida and Levinas. 11. The Gaze of the Big Other. Levinas and Sartre on Racism. 12. Losing Face. Richard Rorty's Last Words. Conclusion. Acknowledgements. Index.