Kairós - by Giacomo Marramao (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Shedding new light on the fundamental philosophical problem of time, leading Italian philosopher Giacomo Marramao offers a solution to today's 24/7 culture.

If we were asked to name the social syndrome of our age under capitalism, it would no doubt be "rush". Intentional animals as we are, we experience the meaningless acceleration of time, which devours instants and misses its target just like its opposite, undue hesitation. For Marramao, rush and slowness or rashness and hesitation are two mirror forms of untimeliness: two unsuitable ways of seizing time.

Through engagement with sources including Heidegger, Bergson, Saint Paul the Apostle, Newtonian physics, and postmodern theory, Marramao calls for a change to how we perceive time. Delving into the Greek and Roman concepts of tempus, chronos, and aión, he argues that there should be no opposition between the scientific-objective time and the existential-subjective one. As such, he introduces his own theory of kairós, or "due time", as the notion of fertile and decisive timeliness. A timely decision, Marramao advances, is generated by the productive tension between opposites: a tension created equally by swiftness and caution, promptness and conformity with the action's purpose.

Originally published in 1992, this updated edition of Kairós: In Defence of "Due Time'' includes a new preface speaking to today's social and political climate, as well as an introduction by Marramao himself, in which he reflects on his long engagement with temporality from Power and Secularization up until today.

Review Quotes

"I applaud the English re-edition of this classic. The message could not be clearer or more controversial. Overhauling time requires work but can be got right - no need to be done with this civilisation, not at least on these grounds. The burnout society finds its antidote in Kairós." --Federica G. Pedriali, Professor of Literary Metatheory and Modern Italian Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK

"In this thought-provoking book, by framing from a 'perspectival deangulation' the philosophical issue of time, Giacomo Marramao succeeds in exploring the semantic density of crucial terms like tempus, chronos and kairos, and in providing an original conceptual body that addresses the need for a plural rearticulation of our experience of temporality." --Adriana Cavarero, President of the Hannah Arendt Center for Political Studies, University of Verona, Italy

"The question of time returns after Heidegger to interrogate philosophy. Secularization, Marramao tells us, delivers the urgency of understanding that profanity that dissolves the sacred. It is time. But what time differs from the mere flowing? Perhaps a due time, Kairos, time of difference, a present that is not instant." --Ugo Perone, Professor Emeritus, Guardini Lehrstuhl, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

I applaud the English re-edition of this classic. The message could not be clearer or more controversial. Overhauling time requires work but can be got right - no need to be done with this civilisation, not at least on these grounds. The burnout society finds its antidote in Kairós.
Federica G. Pedriali, Professor of Literary Metatheory and Modern Italian Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK

In this thought-provoking book, by framing from a 'perspectival deangulation' the philosophical issue of time, Giacomo Marramao succeeds in exploring the semantic density of crucial terms like tempus, chronos and kairos, and in providing an original conceptual body that addresses the need for a plural rearticulation of our experience of temporality.
Adriana Cavarero, President of the Hannah Arendt Center for Political Studies, University of Verona, Italy

The question of time returns after Heidegger to interrogate philosophy. Secularization, Marramao tells us, delivers the urgency of understanding that profanity that dissolves the sacred. It is time. But what time differs from the mere flowing? Perhaps a due time, Kairos, time of difference, a present that is not instant.
Ugo Perone, Professor Emeritus, Guardini Lehrstuhl, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

About the Author

Giacomo Marramao is Professor of Political and Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Rome III, Italy and Director of the Fondazione Basso. His publications available in English include The Passage West: Philosophy After the Age of the Nation-State (2012), Against Power: For an Overhaul of Critical Theory (2016), Interregnum: Between Biopolitics and Posthegemony (2020) and The Bewitched World of Capital Economic Crisis and the Metamorphosis of the Political (2023).