ABSTRACT
One could be forgiven for thinking that, by 2011, continental philosophy’s distinctively temporalized approach, in which everything is mortal, was moribund itself. e anglophone lands remained generally in the grip of philosophical traditionalists, while continental philosophy’s original habitat in Germany had dried up decades before. Already in his 2001 Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Simon Critchley had characterized Germany as philosophically “becalmed”, while in France, he found only Derrida himself “still very much going strong” (Critchley 2001: 124). and with Derrida’s death in October 2004, the last of the great founding thinkers of French postmodernity went o into what Beauvoir had called “formless night”. A certain amount of gloom seemed appropriate.
