Introduction : the meanings of history

As the Journal of Continental Philosophy enters its second year of production, it is becoming clear that one of its missions will be to retrieve documents that might otherwise drop out of the historical record, or that have heretofore failed, for one reason or another, to cross a boundary between languages, disciplines, idioms, or fields. Thus, along with original contemporary research of the highest quality, we publish new translations of vital but heretofore overlooked or underappreciated texts in the continental tradition. This means that our purpose is partly archival—that, unlike most academic journals, we seek to inhabit, not only the present, but the past as well. We have come to understand that what is timely or even urgent might not always be what is most recent. The current issue was initially conceived as an effort both to enact this historical mission, or put it into practice, and to reflect on it, and on the meaning of history more generally. It gathers together a wide range of texts: an essay by one of the great French classicists of the twentieth century, Nicole Loraux; a piece by and an article about the German philosopher of technology and cultural critic Günther Anders; profound reflections on history and war composed at moments of crisis by Karl Löwith and by Simone Weil respectively; intensely close archival research on the work of the philosopher Reiner Schürmann; an examination of the meaning and possibility of intergenerational ethics by one of the leading scholars in this emerging field; and a long, programmatic statement from the influential Italian feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. But what unifies these works is an effort to come to terms with our essential relationships with history, and with our existences as historical creatures.