Reading Continental Philosophy and the History of Thought

Christian Lotz is professor of philosophy at Michigan State University.Antonio Calcagno is professor of philosophy at King's University College at Western University Canada.

• Introduction by Christian Lotz and Antonio CalcagnoPart One: Rethinking the Constitutive Layers of the Histories of PhilosophyChapter One: The Drift into Metaphysics: Jean-Luc Marion’s Reading of the Relation between Francisco Suárez and René Descartes by Christina M. Gschwandtner Chapter Two: Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truths by Marguerite La CazeChapter Three: On Arendt and Luxemburg by Christian Lotz Part Two: Imagining a New Social WorldChapter Four: The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the World by Elena Pulcini Chapter Five: Michel Serres and Ecological Crisis: Listening to the World’s Expressions by Marjolein Oele and Brian Treanor Chapter Six: Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Till by Ryan Johnson Chapter Seven: On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Community: Gerda Walther and the Possibilities of Personal Freedom by Antonio Calcagno Part Three: Politics and the History of ThoughtChapter Eight: María Zambrano and Hannah

As the first publication in a promised series on the development of Continental philosophy, this volume focuses on “understudied thinkers and ideas” (p. 1) of the history of philosophy. The book is divided into three parts with ten essays in total. Part 1 explores the influence of less-known philosophers on Jean-Luc Marion, French existentialism, and Hannah Arendt. Part 2, comprising four essays, examines responses on the part of Continental thinkers to social issues of environmental destruction, racial oppression, and inauthentic communities. The third part addresses questions of political exile, the meaning of democracy, and biopolitics through major Continental thinkers such as Arendt, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas. The volume is largely successful in broadening the conception of Continental philosophy through introduction of Marjorie Glicksman Grene, Maria Zambrano, and Gerda Walther, and by exhibiting the relevance of Continental thought to contemporary issues of concern. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.”