Abstract

ExcerptIEven after they met in 1992 in order to discuss The Ending (Das Ende), the members of the Poetics and Hermeneutics group convened once again in 1994. The theme that they chose for what was to become their true last gathering was contingency (Kontingenz). That which can be or not, which can take place or not take place—the contingent event—came after the end.1 The group had arguably been the single most important forum of debate in the humanities in West Germany between the first conference in 1963 and the last one in 1994.2 Those three decades coincide with what…