Abstract

The Larousse defines recoupement as "the verification of a fact by means of information drawn from various sources." Literally, the word carries the idea of one thing cutting into another and thus suggests an overlapping or intersection. What interests Jacques Taminiaux, professor of philosophy at the University of Louvain, is intersecting ideas that provide a new context for constructive thought. As he claims in his preface, the overlapping theme of the seven essays in his book is finitude "and some of the ways that modernity obliterates it." Believing with Heidegger that finitude is the basic characteristic of existence, Taminiaux shows how it can be "concealed where it is most strongly avowed and... announced where it is most casually dismissed." Thus, philosophies such as those of Heidegger and Marx come clearly together with philosophies such as those of Hegel and Plato. And the very overlapping attests to the finitude, or nonfinality, of thinking itself.