Title:   Thinking With Borges Authors/editors: William Egginton and David E. Johnson Imprint:  The Davies Group, Publishers soft cover 234 pp. USD 24.00 ISBN 9781934542118 2009 Thinking With Borges engages the most pressing and persistent questions of the philosophical tradition—including those of time, eternity, politics, law, justice, language, reality, memory— through original and often brilliant readings of the Borgesian archive. Eschewing the tired debate as to whether Borges is a writer or a thinker and going beyond Borges’s own self-deprecating claims that he deployed the philosophical canon only for aesthetic purposes, the contributors to Thinking With Borges demonstrate that he seeks to answer the most enduring philosophical questions in ways that both contest and extend the philosophical tradition. The essays included in Thinking With Borges take seriously Borges’s references to Heidegger, Kant, Spinoza, and Wilkins, among so many others. In short, rather than providing a mere catalogue of the philosophers, schools of thought, and themes that appear in Borges's writing, Thinking With Borges represents a sustained reflection on Borges's contribution to the art of thinking. In essays whose topics range from Borges's relation to Jewish mysticism to the paradoxes of time in his fiction, from the decision and constitution of the enemy to the impossible possibility of the law, the authors gathered in this volume show time and again how Borges's writing undermines any facile distinction between literature and philosophy. Contents David E. Johnson, Introduction: Borges and the Letter of Philosophy Stephen Gingerich, Nothing and Everything: Theoretical and Practical Nihilism in Borges Bruno Bosteels, Borges as Antiphilosopher William Egginton, Three Versions of Divisibility: Borges, Kant, and the Quantum Krzysztof Ziarek, The "Fiction" of Possibility Santiago Colás, The Difference that Time Makes: Hopelessness and Potency in Borges's 'El Aleph' Brett Levinson, Crossbreeds: Aesthetics Misencounters Politics in "El evangelio según Marcos" Alberto Moreiras, Newness, World Language, Alterity: On Borges's Mark Kate Jenckes, Borges Before the Law Eva Horn, Borges's Duels: Friends, Enemies, and the Fictions of History Lisa Block de Behar, Antecedents of an Unexpected Poetic Affinity:  Jorge Luis Borges as Reader of Martin Buber Review "In the worldly sense in which literature and philosophy ought to connect with social hope or else perish into irrelevance, the writings of Jorge Luis Borges speak to the philosopher at risk in any reader. This effervescent, learned, and burning-bright collection of essays represents the best effort yet to keep the dialogue alive. I am keeping it under my pillow and on occasions will read it aloud to the philosopher I would love to love." — Eduardo González, The Johns Hopkins University About the Editors: William Egginton is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures at the John Hopkins University, where he teaches on Spanish and Latin American literature, literary theory, and the relation between literature and philosophy. He is the author of How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher's Desire (2007), and The Theater of Truth (2010). He is also co-editor with Mike Sandbothe of The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy (2004), translator of Lisa Block de Behar's Borges, the Passion of an Endless Quotation (2003), and co-editor with David E. Johnson of Thinking With Borges (2009). His most recent book, In Defense of Religious Moderation, was published by Columbia University Press in 2011. David E. Johnson is associate professor and chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, where he teaches Latin American literature and continental philosophy. He is the co-author of Anthropology’s Wake: Attending to the End of Culture (2008), and the co-editor of Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics  (1997), as well as of the journal CR: The New Centennial Review.