The Remains of Being

Santiago Zabala, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Potsdam University Institute of Philosophy, has a new book: The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology After Metaphysics. Below is the book jacket description. There is also an interview with the author on the Columbia University Press (CUP) website, which—though I do not understand it too well—I found tantalizing enough to want to read the book.

In Basic Concepts, Heidegger claims that "Being is the most worn-out" and yet also that Being "remains constantly available." Santiago Zabala radicalizes the consequences of these little known but significant affirmations. Revisiting the work of Jacques Derrida, Reiner Schürmann, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernst Tugendhat, and Gianni Vattimo, he finds these remains of Being within which ontological thought can still operate.

Being is an event, Zabala argues, a kind of generosity and gift that generates astonishment in those who experience it. This sense of wonder has fueled questions of meaning for centuries—from Plato to the present day. Postmetaphysical accounts of Being, as exemplified by the thinkers of Zabala's analysis, as well as by Nietzsche, Dewey, and others he encounters, don't abandon Being. Rather, they reject rigid, determined modes of essentialist thought in favor of more fluid, malleable, and adaptable conceptions, redefining the pursuit and meaning of philosophy itself.

I learned about this book when I saw the CUP interview linked on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has generated a great deal of energetic debate that I find revealing on multiple fronts, including analytical vs. continetal philosophy, entrenched attitudes to Heidegger, knee jerk distrust of foreign traditions not immediately comprehensible, etc. Yours truly has added his voice to it. Check it out.