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Time and Philosophy: A History of Continental Thought
Looking at the development of continental philosophy in both Europe and America, McCumber discusses philosophers ranging from Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt, Adorno and Horkheimer, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Foucault, and Derrida to the most influential thinkers of today - Agamben, Badiou, Bulter, and Ranciere. Throughout, McCumber's concern is to elucidate the primary texts for readers coming to these thinkers for the first time, while revealing the philosophical rigour that underpins and connects the history of continental thought.
424 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
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About the author
John McCumber
26 books6 followersJohn McCumber is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the UCLA Department of Germanic Languages. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Greek from the University of Toronto. Prior to his tenure at UCLA, Prof. McCumber taught at Northwestern University, The Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, and the University of Michigan–Dearborn.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 27, 2012
McCumber's project is an ambitious one, to provide a historical and intellectual account of continental philosophy, and give notes on its development through time. Any of the subsections in the book could have been full fledged doctoral dissertations, given the content, and many certainly have been. I'm not generally a fan of these sorts of broad projects, because they try to do far too much and often end up shirking many of their subjects. McCumber does a great job at staying faithful to many of his subjects, though he does have to be brief in some of his accounting for the thought, given the page length, but he does a good job at keeping his focus and moving through an enormous amount of historical content.
The book is long and sometimes tedious. McCumber is never redundant, but he does hit his central themes fairly hard, and some of the things that he addresses are not really developed as much as reiterated through the book. What he means when he talks about "temporality" doesn't get enough development, and becomes the central flag of the book, and could probably do to be a bit more interesting. He spends a lot of time exploring the temporality of the thinkers and not a lot of time developing the concept of temporality proper.
At any rate, to those interested in an interesting perspective on continental thought, I do recommend it. McCumber is thorough and thoughtful, and very honest [perhaps one of the most refreshing feature of the book is his willingness to acknowledge lapses in judgement in historical features instead of attempting the appearance of being unbiased, whatever that is supposed to mean]. He provides a good narration of some of the more difficult thinkers in the recent history of philosophy, and does a fair job at contextualizing an oft written about but poorly understood movement in philosophy.
The book is long and sometimes tedious. McCumber is never redundant, but he does hit his central themes fairly hard, and some of the things that he addresses are not really developed as much as reiterated through the book. What he means when he talks about "temporality" doesn't get enough development, and becomes the central flag of the book, and could probably do to be a bit more interesting. He spends a lot of time exploring the temporality of the thinkers and not a lot of time developing the concept of temporality proper.
At any rate, to those interested in an interesting perspective on continental thought, I do recommend it. McCumber is thorough and thoughtful, and very honest [perhaps one of the most refreshing feature of the book is his willingness to acknowledge lapses in judgement in historical features instead of attempting the appearance of being unbiased, whatever that is supposed to mean]. He provides a good narration of some of the more difficult thinkers in the recent history of philosophy, and does a fair job at contextualizing an oft written about but poorly understood movement in philosophy.
March 31, 2021
John McCumber’s Time and Philosophy is one of the finest continental anthologies I’ve ever read, if not the finest. This isn't your typical anthology – it’s focused, robust, and it reads more like an extended critical precis than a synopsis. Spanning a wide-ranging and eclectic group of thinkers from Hegel to Butler, McCumber’s book amounts to no less than a defence of their categorical belonging to the tradition commonly referred to as 'continental philosophy'.
The task that McCumber sets out for himself is by no means an easy one. What do all of these disparate, highly unique thinkers have in common? How do you define a tradition – if it can even be called that – which seems to thwart any attempt at definition itself? According to McCumber, the answer to those questions can be located in time. In support of his thesis, he posits the following: 1) continental philosophers are generally concerned with the question of time, specifically in response to Kant’s Critiques; 2) continental philosophy is therefore a post-Kantian tradition; 3) continental philosophers recognize temporalities and situate everything in time, including their own ideas; 4) continental philosophers are interested in the subject of history as an outgrowth of their affinity for temporality; and finally, because of these commonalities, 5) the continental tradition is a useful organizational label.
At first, I was suspicious of the thematic orientation of McCumber’s project. ‘Time’ just seemed far too neat and tidy, far too reductionist and oversimplified. However, I’m surprised with how much I enjoyed this book. McCumber is an excellent writer. His prose is clear, his descriptions are informative, and his style is arresting. He’s also a wickedly funny author. Each chapter begins with a short preface, quickly introducing the philosopher and outlining the broader historical context within which they are situated. Some of the biographical details that McCumber shares are mundane; others are hilarious and pathetic, even bordering on the absurd.
Introducing Sartre, for example, McCumber touches on his military service and then moves to his physical attributes: “He was certainly an odd-looking soldier. Barely five feet tall, he had bulging eyes, the right of which was cocked up and to the right”. This made me realize that in all of the secondary sources I’ve read about Sartre, none of them comment on his physical appearance. And what could be more uniquely Sartrean than existentialism? Why, exotropia, of course! Even better, in the preface of my favourite chapter – the chapter on Foucault – McCumber writes: “Michel Foucault was not merely drinking and driving, however. He was working hard. In addition to his academic appointment, he was director of the local French cultural mission, the Maison de France”… Pause for laughter…
Throughout the book, we are given the opportunity to see a different side of these monumental thinkers, whether it be Hegel’s alcoholism and philandering, Kierkegaard’s hunched back and antisocial personality, or Derrida’s arrest and incarceration for drug possession. McCumber’s sense of humour is more than just opportunistic jesting, though. By drawing attention to their physicality, their bad habits, and their failures, he embodies and humanizes these figures, giving their character a textual presence rarely seen elsewhere. As an historian myself, I understand that the history of philosophy can be pretty dry, but, as McCumber shows, it doesn’t have to be that way. I really appreciated his narrative approach and comedic musings.
Although I’m generally quite satisfied with McCumber’s organization of continental philosophy around the question of time, there is a nagging tension that I want to quickly discuss. To write a history of continental philosophy is a paradoxical endeavor. The defence of both ‘continental philosophy’ as an intellectual tradition, and ‘time’ as an organizing principle of that tradition, seems to run contrary to what most of these philosophers wrote about time – namely, that atemporalities are to be cast aside in favour of historically situated and highly contextualized temporalities. It seems to me that the ‘continental philosophy’ label – much like ‘analytic philosophy’, or any other philosophical tradition for that matter – qualifies as an atemporal abstraction. And although McCumber goes to great lengths to show how the continental tradition changed over, through and in response to time, it is his very reliance on the theme of ‘time’ as a kind of unifying ‘family resemblance’ that seems to infer its presence as a transcendental signifier. If that’s the case, then McCumber’s history of continental philosophy seems to contradict the spirit of the entire tradition.
McCumber is acutely aware of this tension, and he openly acknowledges the ontological and epistemological challenges in using both ‘time’ as an organizing theme, and ‘continental philosophy’ as a philosophical tradition. However, I don’t think his response to these challenges is very persuasive. He writes: “These, to be sure, must be understood correctly: not ontologically, as binding statements about the nature of all reality, or epistemologically, as statements about what we can know, but practically, as counsels of philosophical prudence”. If we organize continental philosophy around the theme of temporality in a practical sense, as a mere suggestion or kind of “philosophical advice”, McCumber thinks we can avoid pushing matters into the realm of transhistorical atemporalities. For McCumber, ‘time’ is a pragmatic organizational tool, not a truth-claim. It says nothing Absolute or Universal about ‘continental philosophy’, but merely suggests the idea of its cohesion. Put another way, the philosophers he covers are interconnected through the suggestion of a mutually shared concern for temporality, in the way that a colon in close proximity to a closed bracket suggests a smiley face, but makes no Absolute claim to something greater than the sum of its constituent parts.
I can agree that, for the sake of studying these thinkers, it does make sense to group them together. Yet I remain unconvinced that McCumber’s pragmatism cancels out or neutralizes the atemporal constructs that emerge when we refer to ‘continental philosophy’. It makes me wonder how these philosophers would have received McCumber’s categorization, and whether they would agree that ‘continental philosophy’ is a label worth keeping...
The task that McCumber sets out for himself is by no means an easy one. What do all of these disparate, highly unique thinkers have in common? How do you define a tradition – if it can even be called that – which seems to thwart any attempt at definition itself? According to McCumber, the answer to those questions can be located in time. In support of his thesis, he posits the following: 1) continental philosophers are generally concerned with the question of time, specifically in response to Kant’s Critiques; 2) continental philosophy is therefore a post-Kantian tradition; 3) continental philosophers recognize temporalities and situate everything in time, including their own ideas; 4) continental philosophers are interested in the subject of history as an outgrowth of their affinity for temporality; and finally, because of these commonalities, 5) the continental tradition is a useful organizational label.
At first, I was suspicious of the thematic orientation of McCumber’s project. ‘Time’ just seemed far too neat and tidy, far too reductionist and oversimplified. However, I’m surprised with how much I enjoyed this book. McCumber is an excellent writer. His prose is clear, his descriptions are informative, and his style is arresting. He’s also a wickedly funny author. Each chapter begins with a short preface, quickly introducing the philosopher and outlining the broader historical context within which they are situated. Some of the biographical details that McCumber shares are mundane; others are hilarious and pathetic, even bordering on the absurd.
Introducing Sartre, for example, McCumber touches on his military service and then moves to his physical attributes: “He was certainly an odd-looking soldier. Barely five feet tall, he had bulging eyes, the right of which was cocked up and to the right”. This made me realize that in all of the secondary sources I’ve read about Sartre, none of them comment on his physical appearance. And what could be more uniquely Sartrean than existentialism? Why, exotropia, of course! Even better, in the preface of my favourite chapter – the chapter on Foucault – McCumber writes: “Michel Foucault was not merely drinking and driving, however. He was working hard. In addition to his academic appointment, he was director of the local French cultural mission, the Maison de France”… Pause for laughter…
Throughout the book, we are given the opportunity to see a different side of these monumental thinkers, whether it be Hegel’s alcoholism and philandering, Kierkegaard’s hunched back and antisocial personality, or Derrida’s arrest and incarceration for drug possession. McCumber’s sense of humour is more than just opportunistic jesting, though. By drawing attention to their physicality, their bad habits, and their failures, he embodies and humanizes these figures, giving their character a textual presence rarely seen elsewhere. As an historian myself, I understand that the history of philosophy can be pretty dry, but, as McCumber shows, it doesn’t have to be that way. I really appreciated his narrative approach and comedic musings.
Although I’m generally quite satisfied with McCumber’s organization of continental philosophy around the question of time, there is a nagging tension that I want to quickly discuss. To write a history of continental philosophy is a paradoxical endeavor. The defence of both ‘continental philosophy’ as an intellectual tradition, and ‘time’ as an organizing principle of that tradition, seems to run contrary to what most of these philosophers wrote about time – namely, that atemporalities are to be cast aside in favour of historically situated and highly contextualized temporalities. It seems to me that the ‘continental philosophy’ label – much like ‘analytic philosophy’, or any other philosophical tradition for that matter – qualifies as an atemporal abstraction. And although McCumber goes to great lengths to show how the continental tradition changed over, through and in response to time, it is his very reliance on the theme of ‘time’ as a kind of unifying ‘family resemblance’ that seems to infer its presence as a transcendental signifier. If that’s the case, then McCumber’s history of continental philosophy seems to contradict the spirit of the entire tradition.
McCumber is acutely aware of this tension, and he openly acknowledges the ontological and epistemological challenges in using both ‘time’ as an organizing theme, and ‘continental philosophy’ as a philosophical tradition. However, I don’t think his response to these challenges is very persuasive. He writes: “These, to be sure, must be understood correctly: not ontologically, as binding statements about the nature of all reality, or epistemologically, as statements about what we can know, but practically, as counsels of philosophical prudence”. If we organize continental philosophy around the theme of temporality in a practical sense, as a mere suggestion or kind of “philosophical advice”, McCumber thinks we can avoid pushing matters into the realm of transhistorical atemporalities. For McCumber, ‘time’ is a pragmatic organizational tool, not a truth-claim. It says nothing Absolute or Universal about ‘continental philosophy’, but merely suggests the idea of its cohesion. Put another way, the philosophers he covers are interconnected through the suggestion of a mutually shared concern for temporality, in the way that a colon in close proximity to a closed bracket suggests a smiley face, but makes no Absolute claim to something greater than the sum of its constituent parts.
I can agree that, for the sake of studying these thinkers, it does make sense to group them together. Yet I remain unconvinced that McCumber’s pragmatism cancels out or neutralizes the atemporal constructs that emerge when we refer to ‘continental philosophy’. It makes me wonder how these philosophers would have received McCumber’s categorization, and whether they would agree that ‘continental philosophy’ is a label worth keeping...
July 20, 2014
This is a great primer on continental thought. I didn't mind the lack of Habermas — who needs that modern square, anyway!
The best part of this book is the introduction to each thinker via a usually comical story about their wacky character or social failures.
The chapter on Hannah Ardent is one of the best and most important. It has sadly been ignored by most reviewers.
If you're passionate about philosophy, but don't have the money for a masters degree, read this book!
The best part of this book is the introduction to each thinker via a usually comical story about their wacky character or social failures.
The chapter on Hannah Ardent is one of the best and most important. It has sadly been ignored by most reviewers.
If you're passionate about philosophy, but don't have the money for a masters degree, read this book!
June 12, 2019
It’s difficult for me to express how much I appreciate the work McCumber has put into this book. Trying to run a common thread (time) through the big players of continental philosophy is a very difficult task—hell, just summarizing these philosophers alone is something that seems impossible. McCumber’s book, however, succeeds in building a chronological account of how each philosopher builds on the previous one. They can be understood broadly by how they dealt with the relationship between the temporal and the ideal.
The book serves as a dense introduction and a big picture view of how the continental philosophers relate to one another. I had to reread certain sections and take lots of notes, but McCumber’s book is super helpful overall. My only complaint is that the chapter on Derrida is a little weak. I was expecting a thorough treatment of Derrida’s Of Grammatology but was surprised that McCumber focuses on Derrida’s lesser-known The Politics of Friendship instead. I understand that McCumber is trying to fit Derrida into the larger picture here, but I think Of Grammatology would’ve worked better than The Politics of Friendship because the former is Derrida’s attempt to demystify and deconstruct language into a temporal construct.
The book serves as a dense introduction and a big picture view of how the continental philosophers relate to one another. I had to reread certain sections and take lots of notes, but McCumber’s book is super helpful overall. My only complaint is that the chapter on Derrida is a little weak. I was expecting a thorough treatment of Derrida’s Of Grammatology but was surprised that McCumber focuses on Derrida’s lesser-known The Politics of Friendship instead. I understand that McCumber is trying to fit Derrida into the larger picture here, but I think Of Grammatology would’ve worked better than The Politics of Friendship because the former is Derrida’s attempt to demystify and deconstruct language into a temporal construct.
September 7, 2023
A brilliant, consise anthology on conteninetal philosophy.
September 22, 2025
130316: this is best read after the subtitle, as it is not any specific 'continental' theory of time, but how various thinkers of said tradition all are influenced and influence in turn, that aspect of thought called 'time'. it is therefore sort of a useful primer, resource, reminder, of how a) everything is 'in time' and b) philosophers must never forget a). and whether such assertion has metaphysical value or more correct 'practical' value...
perhaps this text could be used for class, but it helps me at least to have read the works cited. i do not know how complete is this selection (very little bergson), i do not know if the biographical snippets that start each chapter are more than mildly interesting, i do not know many of the more recent thinkers- i am stimulated to look again at some works, try some more, but then this is in the interests of intellectual 'fun' and no more... i like to read this sort of philosophy, not logic-obsessed analytic work as reminds me of reading math...
perhaps this text could be used for class, but it helps me at least to have read the works cited. i do not know how complete is this selection (very little bergson), i do not know if the biographical snippets that start each chapter are more than mildly interesting, i do not know many of the more recent thinkers- i am stimulated to look again at some works, try some more, but then this is in the interests of intellectual 'fun' and no more... i like to read this sort of philosophy, not logic-obsessed analytic work as reminds me of reading math...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews