Calvin O. Schrag and the Task of Philosophy After Postmodernity (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy)

Devoted to the most important American Continental philosopher of his generation and one of the discipline's founding fathers, and featuring some of the field's most distinguished luminaries, this anthology constitutes a critical document in Continental philosophy, reflecting its recent history, its present state, and its debt to Calvin O. Schrag. Taking up themes central to Schrag's own philosophical concerns, these essays refer throughout to his salient interventions in the dialogue of late twentieth-century thought characterized as postmodernity. In doing so, all contributors address, implicitly or directly, the question of philosophy's role and responsibility, or task. The volume begins with an overview of this task and of Schrag's contributions to it, written from the perspective of a resolute defender of the phenomenological tradition that Schrag's work has extended and reconfigured. The following essays are organized around the four conceptual figures that are widely considered Schrag's most significant and original philosophical achievements: transversal rationality, the self after modernity, the fourth cultural value sphere, and communicative praxis. Following and ex