Patrick Stokes

Paolo Diego Bubbio's Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition offers a valuable and insightful discussion of the place of sacrifice plays in nineteenth century European philosophy, setting the stage for its emergence as a central theme in subsequent continental thought. Bubbio offers a strong case for the claim that the foundational move of the post-Kantian tradition is a fundamentally kenotic one. Bubbio is also critical of certain excesses in the way sacrifice is discussed in more recent work. However, the case of Kierkegaard in particular suggests kenosis is not so easily kept within the comfortable boundaries Bubbio prescribes for it: its excesses may be an integral part, rather than a hyperbolic distortion, of the logic of sacrifice.

Few philosophers have devoted such sustained, almost obsessive attention to the topic of death as Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard and Death brings together new work on Kierkegaard's multifaceted discussions of death and provides a thorough guide to the development, in various texts and contexts, of Kierkegaard’s ideas concerning death. Essays by an international group of scholars take up essential topics such as dying to the world, living death, immortality, suicide, mortality and subjectivity, death and the meaning of life, remembrance of the dead, and the question of the afterlife. While bringing Kierkegaard's philosophy of death into focus, this volume connects Kierkegaard with important debates in contemporary philosophy.