Ethics and times in the philosophy of history : a cross-cultural approach

This interdisciplinary volume connects the philosophy of history to moral philosophy with a unique focus on time. Taking in a range of intellectual traditions, cultural, and geographical contexts, the volume provides a rich tapestry of approaches to time, morality, and history. By extending the philosophical discussion on the ethical importance of temporality, the editors disentangle some of the disciplinary tensions between analytical and hermeneutic philosophy of history, cultural theory, meta-ethical theory and normative ethics. The ethical and existential character of temporality reveals itself within a collection that resists the methodological underpinnings of any one philosophical school. The book's distinctive cross-cultural approach ensures a wide range of perspectives with contributions on life and death in Tanabe’s philosophy, ethics and time in Maori philosophy, and Islamic phenomenology. These new directions of study highlight the importance of the ethical in the temporal, inviting further points of departure in this burgeoning field. Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Contributors 8 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 14 Temporal Humanity: Involvement with Ethics and Time Across Cultures 16 Part I: History as Ethics 36 Chapter 1: Past Deeds and the On-going Work of History 38 Chapter 2: The Time of Ghosts and the Ghosts of Time 53 Chapter 3: Gifts from the Dead: Heritage and the Ligatures of History 66 Chapter 4: Multilayered Temporalities Underlying Transitional Justice: Rethinking Resentment and Melancholia from Jean Améry and Walter Benjamin 82 Part II: Agency, Relativity, and Affect 100 Chapter 5: The Relativism of Historical Distance and the Contextual Constitution of Agency 102 Chapter 6: Heroism, Self-determination, and Magnanimity: Hegel and Brandom on Self-conscious Agency 118 Chapter 7: Farness and Immemorial Time: An Ontology of Vestiges 135 Part III: Mortality and Personal Identity 152 Chapter 8: Neither to Be, Nor Not to Be: The Interrelation of Life and Death in Tanabe’s Later Philosophy of Death 154 Chapter 9: Arresting Time’s Arrow: Death, Loss, and the Preservation of Real Union 171 Chapter 10: Heidegger’s Process Metaphysics of Personhood 186 Part IV: Reconsidering Ontology 206 Chapter 11: “When the Time Is Right . . .” In the Māori World 208 Chapter 12: Levinas on Time: The Ethical Import of our Existential Chronological Inconsistency 223 Chapter 13: Historical Time, Collective Memory, and the Finitude of Historical Understanding 238 Chapter 14: The Time of History 252 Part V: Concluding Reflections from Existential Anthropology 268 Chapter 15: The Death of the Angel: In Search of a Tango of Temporal Humanity 270 Index 286 This interdisciplinary volume connects the philosophy of history to moral philosophy with a unique focus on time. Taking in a range of intellectual traditions, cultural, and geographical contexts, the volume provides a rich tapestry of approaches to time, morality, culture, and history. By extending the philosophical discussion on the ethical importance of temporality, the editors disentangle some of the disciplinary tensions between analytical and hermeneutic philosophy of history, cultural theory, meta-ethical theory, and normative ethics. The ethical and existential character of temporality reveals itself within a collection that resists the methodological underpinnings of any one philosophical school. The book's distinctive cross-cultural approach ensures a wide range of perspectives with contributions on life and death in Japanese philosophy, ethics and time in Maori philosophy, non-traditional temporalities and philosophical anthropology, as well as global approaches to ethics. These new directions of study highlight the importance of the ethical in the temporal, inviting further points of departure in this burgeoning field.