The seven essays collected in this book address the history of modern ideas and contemporary cultural issues. The first is the discourse of Marquard's acceptance of the Sigmund Freud prize; the second addresses the equivalence of modernity and the theodice'e; the third confronts the idea of "meaning"; the fourth considers the notion of world history; the fifth addresses world alienation; the sixth deals with the human sciences; and the seventh is a mediation on chance and luck as essential aspects (...) of the human condition. (shrink)

This book is the latest addition to the Odeon series, a multidisciplinary series devoted to original works and translations by European writers in the areas of literature, criticism, philosophy, history and politics. An English translation of the German best-seller Abschied vom Prinzipiellen, the book offers a series of essays that present a philosophy of human morality critical of philosophical utopianism. Marquard, widely considered the heir of Gadamer, Habermas, and Blumenberg, describes his role as "skeptical philosopher" and discusses the 18th-century (...) formation of such themes and disciplines as aesthetics, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of history, the nature of myth and attempts to account for it, and hermeneutics. (shrink)

Vers la moitié du XVIII-ème siècle la crise de la théodiocèe de Leibniz provoque le remplacement du Dieu-créateur par ľ homme-createur et depuis c’est l'homme qui sera coupable du mal existent dans le monde. A partir de ce moment-lá l'homme est oblige á se justifier perpetuellement. Il en reśulte l'evasion d l'homme dans le doméne dont il ne se sent pas responsable, par exemple: l'evasion dans la Nature-vierge, dans les voyages, dans la maladie, dans ľ'esthétique.