Introduction -- 1. A New Beginning for Western Philosophy: after Schelling and Nietzsche -- 2. Heidegger's Reading of Schelling -- 3. The Unyielding Excess of Being -- 4. The Positive Beyond the Presence -- 5. Being that can (make happen) being -- Index.

The two principles of the Transient and the Absolute are fundamental to man's self-perception. While we perceive ourselves as transient biological phenomena, with a limited span of existence, we also view ourselves as immaterial creatures whose personalities persist and are not subject to change. This original philosophical essay surveys the totality of human experience from this dual perspective, showing the presence and the constant interaction of the two principles in the civilizational endeavors of humanity. The author analyzes our constant search for the absolute among transient manifestations in diverse domains, such as religion, philosophy, art, society, and politics. This volume offers a unifying view of the great diversity of human experience, based on the author's insight into man's self-perception.

A Theory of the Absolute develops a worldview that is opposed to the dominant paradigm of physicalism and atheism. It provides powerful arguments for the existence of the soul and the existence of the Absolute. It shows that faith is not in contradiction to reason.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Chouraqui argues, are linked by how they conceive the question of truth. Although both thinkers criticize the traditional concept of truth as objectivity, they both find that rejecting it does not solve the problem. What is it in our natural existence that gave rise to the notion of truth? The answer to that question is threefold. First, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty both propose a genealogy of “truth” in which to exist means to make implicit truth claims. Second, both seek to recover the preobjective ground from which truth as an erroneous concept arose. Finally, this attempt at recovery leads both thinkers to ontological considerations regarding how we must conceive of a being whose structure allows for the existence of the belief in truth. In conclusion, Chouraqui suggests that both thinkers’ investigations of the question of truth lead them to conceive of being as the process of self-falsification by which indeterminate being presents itself as determinate.

I have purposely limited myself to a rather brief statement in this introduc tion, in order that the summing up be not misrepresented for the discursive development of the whole. There is something more than mildly dangerous in setting oneself a series of goals in an introduction only to find them happily attained in the conclusion, as if getting from the beginning to the end was simply a question of transition. Of course, the destination of a speculative presentation includes the process of development in such a way that the end is always implicitly the beginning: each configuration simply forms a deter minate moment within the on-going manifestation of the "absolute". It is around Hegel's concept of the absolute, how it is known and how it presents itself, which the bulk of our discussion turns. We may say tentatively that the absolute speaks. This speaking is the manifestation of the absolute itself, not a dissimulation or mere appearance, and consequently can be known and known most perfectly in language. In Hegel's system, this speak ing or discourse has exhausted itself and is complete, but in what manner this "close" is achieved remains the question which disturbs and provokes our own speech in what is to come.

When the Hungarian composer Gyrgy Ligeti passed away in June 2006, he was widely feted as being one of the greatest composers of our time. His complete published works were recorded during his lifetime and his music continues to inspire a steady stream of performances and scholarship. Ligeti's Laments provides a critical analysis of the composer's works, considering both the compositions themselves and the larger cultural implications of their reception. Bauer both synthesizes and challenges the prevailing narratives surrounding the composer's long career and uses the theme of lament to inform a discussion of specific musical topics, including descending melodic motives, passacaglia and the influence of folk music. But Ligeti 'laments' in a larger sense; his music fuses rigour and sensuality, tradition and the new and influences from disparate high and low cultures, with a certain critical and ironic distance, reflected in his spoken commentary as well as in the substance of his music. The notions of nostalgia, exoticism and the absolute are used to relate works of different eras and genres, along with associated concepts of allegory, melancholy, contemporary subjectivity and the voice.