Abstract

“Life” has become an enigmatic keyword in diverse fields of contemporary philosophy in the past years – from political thought and its reflections on biopolitics to practical philosophy and its recourse to forms of life, to aesthetics and its reflections on the modes of life and liveliness in aesthetic representation. The contributions included in the following special section investigate the peculiar way this keyword functions in a diversity of fields, in order to bring to light the underlying conceptual and structural implications of this term in these different domains. As these contributions show, the use of the marker “life” is more than a fleeting fashion – it articulates a modern predicament with deep historical roots.