The Honor of Thinking investigates the limits of criticism, theory,
and philosophy in light of what Martin Heidegger and French
post-Heideggerian philosophers have established about the nature and
tasks of thinking. In addition to in-depth analyses of Walter Benjamin's
conception of critique--and in particular the relation of critique to
ethics, as well as alternative models of criticism (such as Heidegger's
notion of "Auseinandersetzung," and Derridean deconstruction)--this book
contains essays on the notion of theory from the Greeks and the early
German Romantics to the contemporary use of this notion in literary
studies. The last part of the book investigates the different ways of
understanding philosophical thinking that are found in contemporary
French thought, examining works of Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, and
Derrida.