Søren Tinning

This book brings together insights from border scholars and philosophers to ask how we are to define and understand concepts of borders today. Borders have a defining role in contemporary societies. Take, for example, the 2016 US election and the UK Brexit referendum, and subsequent debate, where the rhetoric and symbolism of border controls proved fundamental to the outcomes. However, borders are also becoming ever more multifaceted and complex, representing intersections of political, economical, social, and cultural interests. For some, borders are tangible, situated in time and place; for others, the nature of borders can be abstracted and discussed in general terms. By discussing borders philosophically and theoretically, this edited collection tackles head on the most defi ning and challenging questions within the fi eld of border studies regarding the defi nition of its very object of study. Part 1 of the book consists of theoretical contributions from border scholars, Part 2 takes a philosophical approach, and Part 3 brings together chapters where philosophy and border studies are directly related. Borders intersect with the key issues of our time, from migration, climate change vulnerability, terror, globalization, inequality, and nationalism, to intertwining questions of culture, identity, ideology, and religion. This book will be of interest to those studying in these fields, and most especially to researchers of border studies and philosophy.

Following Aristotle’s statement, introducing the Book Z of his Metaphysics, that is “Being has many senses”, which is also so important to Heidegger, this paper will develop the hypothesis that Being, as we find it addressed in Heidegger, can be considered as a radical re-articulation of the question of limitation in its most general sense. This re-statement is to be conceived: A) as radical in the sense of bringing the question of limitation into the center of philosophical inquiry or rather to consider it the center of inquiry; B) as radical in the sense of a return to what we will consider the fundamental question of limitation - the question of the aporia of limitation; and C) as radical in the sense of a re-articulating the metaphysical interpretation of limitation.