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Continental Philosophy in the Twentieth Century , edited by Richard Kearney. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xlv, 524, ISBN 0-415-30880-1 (pbk), £16.99.

Continental philosophy is a patchwork of diverse strands and this collection, the eighth volume of Routledge's History of Philosophy series, does an admirable job in bringing together such an array of different theories. The collection's editor Richard Kearney argues that perhaps the most persistent feature of continental philosophy is the questioning of foundations. Meaning is not a metaphysical essence and truth cannot be grounded on a system of being or mind (p. 2). From the start the collection refers to the Kantian aspect of continental philosophy and distinguishes it from the analytical tradition on the basis that continental philosophers tend to privilege the moral and aesthetic questions of Kant's second and third Critiques over the epistemological readings of the first. The tradition tends to support the transcendental aesthetic and the origination of experience in sensible time and space, rather than a transcendental analytic of categories of the understanding. As Kearney puts it, continental philosophers are more likely 'to bypass the confines of pure reason, venturing into the liminal areas of noumenal experience and dialectic' (p. 3). William Desmond, in his chapter on Jaspers and philosophy of religion argues that in Anglo-American philosophy, Kant has been read through the Critique of Pure Reason as anti-metaphysical or as wanting to make metaphysics into a secure science. But outside this tradition more comprehensive insights are recognized. The heart of Kant's philosophy is the second Critique. This inspires existentialists like Jaspers who see the Kantian architectonic in tension with the singularity of human being as Existenz (p. 145). What are termed 'boundary situations' are not just about the limit of science, but are questions on the edge, simpliciter (p. 146). However, we are always