Abstract

This highly original collection of essays contributes to a critique of the common understanding of modernity as an enlightened project that provides rational grounds for orientation in all aspects and dimensions of the world. An international team of contributors contend that the modern principles of foundation show in themselves rather how modernity is disorienting itself.

The book brings together discussions on the writings of philosophers who treat more systematically the questions of foundation and orientation, such as Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Pascal, and Patočka, and studies of literary works that explicitly thematize this question, such as Novalis, Hölderlin, Beckett, Platonov, and Benjamin. This multi-disciplinary approach brings to the fore the paradox that modern figures of grounding and orientation unground and disorient and demonstrates a critical path to review current understandings of modernity and post-modernity.

A thought-provoking and compelling inquiry into the predicaments of our times, Dis-orientations challenges us to see a gain rather than a loss in the modern ‘loss of grounds’
Jayne Svenungsson, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Stockholm School of Theology
This is a carefully put together and astonishingly coherent collection of insightful philosophical reflections on how major Modern thinkers and writers oriented themselves in a thoroughly disoriented world, where all metaphysical grounding had lost its footing and nothing could have been taken for granted. A vast and illuminating scope of essays, ranging from Novalis to Kundera, from Heidegger to Platonov, from Kierkegaard to Benjamin, this volume is an invaluable contribution to understanding Modernity at its existential best.
Michał Paweł Markowski, Professor at University of Illinois
A provocative collection of essays exploring “disorientation” as the moving force of the present. Reflecting on disorientation in thought, in existence, in being, and in language, these essays examine the theoretical challenges of thinking our present situation of suspension, hovering, homelessness, and exile that have emerged from the lost grounds of modernity.
Peg Birmingham, Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University
Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback is professor of philosophy at Södertörn University, Sweden. She has published widely in both English and Portuguese, including the Portuguese translation of Heidegger’s Being and Time.

Tora Lane is a Project Researcher at CBEES, Södertörn University, Sweden.

Contributors: Ludger Hagedorn, Research Fellow, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Austria; Peter Hanly, Research Fellow, Boston College, USA; Krystof Kasprzak, PhD Student in Philosophy, Södertörn University, Sweden; Tora Lane, Project Researcher, CBEES, Södertörn University, Sweden; Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy, University of the Basque Country, Spain; Helena Martins, Associate Professor, Pontifícia Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Jan Patočka; Johan Redin, Research Fellow, Södertörn University, Sweden; Marcia Sá Cavalcante, Schuback Professor of Philosophy, Södertörn University, Sweden; Irina Sandomirskaja, Professor in Cultural Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden; Gustav Strandberg, PhD student in Philosophy, Södertörn University, Sweden; Peter Trawny, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Martin Heidegger Institute, Wuppertal University, Germany; Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Professor of Philosophy, Södertörn University, Sweden.