Focusing on nineteenth-century philosophers from Schelling and Hegel to Nietzsche, and on contemporary theorists from Derrida to Kristeva and Lyotard, the essays in this book suggest that the two areas are most similar at the points where they seem most unlike. Tracing the links of contemporary thought to its nineteenth-century precursors, the authors explore such issues as the re-theorizing of history and the subject, the limits and persistence of the metaphysical, and the ends of theory.