Dialectics Beyond Dialectics

Dialectics beyond Dialectics is a study of contemporary French philosophy from Bataille to Derrida. It analyses, on the first level of generalization, the decomposition of Hegelianism understood as philosophy of totality. Many French philosophers of the 20th century deconstruct Hegelian dialectics and harshly criticize the very idea of totality as either dangerous or impossible. The thesis of the book is that, on doing so, they do not really break with dialectics, but transform it. On the second level of generalization, the issue of the book is modernity and the thesis is that transformations of dialectics reveal transformations of modern consciousness which - despite hasty declarations on the end of modernity - still remains ours.

Cover; Table of contents; Introduction: On Contemporary French Philosophy, Specters of Hegel, Dialectics, and Modernity; Part 1: Specters of Totality; Preliminary remarks; Chapter 1: The Insufficient Totality; Ecstasy Beyond Totality; Ethics beyond Totality; Chapter 2: The Impossible Totality; Un-divine History; Inhuman History; Chapter 3: The Dangerous Totality; Ideology and the Problem of Communism; The Crisis of Meta-narratives and the Problem of Capitalism; The Ethical Relation and the Problem of Politics; Part 2: Specters of Rupture; Preliminary remarks; Chapter 1: Ruptures with Being.

Chapter 2: The Ruptured Subject and the Problem of the OtherChapter 3: Ruptured History. Toward Dispersion; Part 3: Specters of Dispersion; Preliminary remarks; Chapter 1: The Differend as the Stakes of Thought; Philosophy and Science; Philosophy, Language, and Metalanguage; Beyond Ethics and Politics: Philosophy as Art; Chapter 2: Difference as Repetition; Chapter 3: Deconstruction of différance; Afterword: Post-dialectics and Postmodernity; Main references.