Editor’s introduction

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. It begins by sketching something of the prodigious profile of the theme of difference in the history of philosophy (from Parmenides and Plato to Kant and Hegel), the general quest to find higher senses of identity, and how this provides a larger context for twentieth-century German and French phenomenology. The part provides a re-reading of the idea of ipseity in Heidegger (Selbstheit) and Ricœur (ipséité), and how this fundamentally differs from the Cartesian and Lockean traditions with their egologies or conceptions of the self as a matter of (numerical) identity. It brings Foucault’s late work into the mix with his “Starting from Heidegger, Arriving at Augustine: Selfhood and Christianity in Michel Foucault’s Late Work.” At the core of Peden’s discussion is the attempt to identify the deeply Heideggerian roots of Foucault’s evolving project even given the obvious differences between their respective bodies of work.