The idea of a limit of reason, a measure that defines reason and that it must not overstep, has been a constitutive part of philosophy since its beginnings in Greek thought. Placing itself in opposition to the madness of hubris, the excesses of tragedy, and the stories of religion and myth, philosophy expels its others just as much as it thrives on them. It begins and ends at the limit; it is drawn towards its outside, and exists as a perpetual attempt to find a line of demarcation that always ends up passing through its interior.

The present collection analyzes the phenomenon of limit and excess, through readings that range from tragedy and Greek thought, through early Christianity and the Renaissance, to modern phenomenology and philosophy of language.

Adorno’s understanding of realism in the present is often taken to have been simply negative. In the posthumously published Aesthetic Theory, too, the negative view is predominant; there are, however, traces of another concep-tion of realism. Adorno proposes, although with some caveats, that what he calls an adequate conception of realism is not only possible, but also something that art in the present cannot and must not avoid.