The Concept of World from Kant to Derrida [Hardcover]

Sean Gaston's The Concept of World from Kant to Derrida is a thorough and thoroughly compelling study of a range of essential concepts associated with 'world' in modernity ... Students of phenomenology, in particular, will benefit from this work, not least of all in its brilliant reading of Jacques Derrida.This is a rich and original book ... [It] exemplifies the richness of continental philosophy for contemporary issues, social, ethical or political.Gaston (English & philosophy, Brunel Univ., UK; The Impossible Mourning of Jacques Derrida) examines how certain prominent 19th- and 20th-century Western and continental philosophersImmanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derridadealt with the concept of world. In particular, Gaston is concerned with what he explains as the need to establish an essential difference between what is merely in the world and a wider viewing of the world as a whole. Beginning with Kants transcendental idea of the world and ending with Derridas theory of the world as a necessary fiction, Gaston does a fantastic job of using each philosophers writings and his own final chapter on contemporary philosophical problems to show how the concept of world is still problematic: we cant become immersed in the world and simultaneously transcend it to create a unified whole. VERDICT While the work isnt meant to be an introduction to each philosophers theories, its writing is clear and easy to follow so that it will appeal to both readers who are new to philosophy and also to scholars with an interest in continental philosophy.One of the greatest strengths of the book is the engagement with Derridas newly published series of seminars and lectures ... it should be read by anyone interested in the way that the concept of world has been interpreted in Continental philosophy.A clear and concise account of the metaphysical concept of world, its possibilities and limitations, from Kant to Derril#&