Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;This thesis is a provisional attempt at working out the possible transcendental ground of sociality. The thesis proposes that the contract tradition of social and political philosophy has also informed the parameters of debate in the investigation of a post-metaphysical philosophy. The thesis suggests that an inquiry into the ground of the contract tradition is called for. The precise focus of this ground is in the location of obligation in the contract tradition. If obligation is not merely a secondary effect of the rights of the individual as the contract tradition supposes then there is the possibility that the grounds of sociality may have been defined erroneously. In a series of attempts to uncover this other location of obligation the thesis highlights problems in three quite diverse areas: social and political philosophy, anthropology, and contemporary philosophy. It is argued that the general topography of the contract tradition with its assumptions of the rights, obligations, and ground of sovereignty, has been carried on into these other areas of thought without modification. The thesis proposes that all areas demur from a frontal inquiry into what would be an other ground to the individualism of the contract tradition. It is claimed that the excessive character of the gift may provide this. That is, the unilateral giving of one's self or of valued objects to an other, without benefit, gain or influence. In contemporary philosophy the excessive gift is transposed to a trusteeship of Being or language but its grounding in sociality is then lost. The thesis concludes that the transcendental ground of sociality may be detected in the excessive character of the gift. But because the excessive gift is also the opening of sociality then this notion of the transcendental must also make way for a critical philosophy that negotiates the formal and material conditions of sociality