Voice of Misery

Gert-Jan van der Heiden is Full Professor of Metaphysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands. His books include Ontology after Ontotheology: Plurality, Event, and Contingency in Contemporary Philosophy and The Truth (and Untruth) of Language: Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I. To Give a Voice: Six Literary Experiments 1. Letters for the Soul2. Experiment I. Socrates, the Interpreter3. Experiment II. Alice, the Secretarious4. Experiment III. Helena, the Poetess5. Experiment IV. Johannes, the Poet6. Experiment V. Bartleby, the Scrivener7. Experiment VI. Er, the MessengerPart II. A Distinctive Sense of Testimony 8. Elements of Testimony9. An Exceptional Attestation10. A Typology of the WitnessPart III. On the Threshold of Being and Language 11. An Ontology of Testimony12. The Truth and Untruth of Testimony13. Subject and Commitment14. In Lieu of a Conclusion: Celan’s Poetics of TestimonyNotesWorks CitedIndex

"Van der Heiden's Voice of Misery is an important contribution to philosophy. It is also a fitting companion for our historical moment. The events of our times bring into focus the demand that we bear witness to human beings' vulnerability to what van der Heiden aptly terms the misery of bare existence. His book is itself a testament to this demand, as well as to the vigilance we need for the profound challenges we face today as we attempt to give voice to one another." — Research in Phenomenology"…this work moves the concept [of testimony] forward in important and significant ways." — CHOICE"The Voice of Misery is a special book. Van der Heiden has presented an argument that is poised to challenge discourse in analytic philosophy, reshape approaches in continental philosophy, and give new orientation to interdisciplinary research in continental philosophy and literary theory. The book will find a large readership across the discipline of philosophy and in several areas of the humanities." — Theodore George, author of Tragedies of Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel's Phenomenology