Retreating the Political

This collection of essays presents some of the key issues at the heart of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy's work. This volume offers perspectives on the relationship between philosophy and the political. The authors ask if we can talk of an a priori link between the philosophical and the political; they investigate the significance of the "figure" - the human being as political subject - in the history of metaphysics; and they inquire how we can "re-treat" the political today in the face of those who argue that philosophy is at an "end". This text brings together some of their responses to these investigations. We see as a result some of the key motifs that have characterized their work: their debt to a Heideggerian pre-understanding of philosophy, the centrality of the "figure" in western philosophy and the totalitarianism of both politics and the political.