Abstract

Continental philosophy since Hegel pursues as one of its critical objectives the understanding of finitude, the imposed limits restricting the possibilities of being, time, and history. If finitude, as an internal limit to being and not simply assumed to designate an end or finality, is contingent and ordered according to certain specific if diverse world-disclosures, then post-Hegelian philosophy can be interpreted as motivated by a complicated singularity: the attempt, across divergent interests, at different historical moments, to define, encounter and ultimately exceed those limits appearing intractable but whose emergence and continuity are, nonetheless, contingent and therefore alterable. Since finitude and the structure of Greek tragedy are complicitous in sustaining the movement of being and time within certain defined limits, how have post-Hegelian philosophers--despite their respective differences and concerns--argued for the historical contingency of finitude? How has the tradition of modern hermeneutic thought and its recent developments in archaeology and deconstruction continually emphasized the influence of Greek tragedy on philosophy's self-understanding? Continental philosophy attempts to consider how thought has been regulated by finitude and, therefore, has had to engage with the meaning of the finite beyond the notion of death, end, or finality