While continuing to explore questions introduced in "Given Time" such as the possibility, or impossibility, of giving and the economic and anthropological nature of gifts, this work focuses on the notion of responsibility and the ultimate gifts of life and death. Jacques Derrida divides the book into four parts, which deal respectively with: the development of the notion of responsibility in the Platonic and Christian traditions; the relation between sacrifice and mortality; the contemporary meaning of the story of Abraham and Isaac; and the relation between religious ideology and economic rationality. The texts under discussion include the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, as well as writings from Patocka, Heidegger, Levinas and Kierkegaard. Derrida's main concern is with the meaning of moral and ethical responsibility in Western religion and philosophy. He questions the limits of the rational and the responsible that is reached in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution or suicide. Beginning with a discussion of Patocka's "Heretical Essays on the History of Philosophy", Derrida develops Patocka's ideas concerning the sacred and responsibility through comparisons with the works of Heidegger, Levinas and Kierkegaard. Derrida's treatment of Kierkegaard makes clear that the two philosophers share some of the same concerns. He then undertakes a reading of Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling", comparing and contrasting his own conception of responsibility with that of Kierkegaard, and extending and deepening his recent accounts of the gift and sacrifice. For Derrida, the very possibility of sacrifice, especially the ultimate sacrifice of one's own life for the sake of another, comes into question.

雅剋•德裏達（1930—2004），20世紀後半期最重要的法國哲學傢之一，曾任教於巴黎高等師範學校、巴黎社會科學高等研究院、加州大學人文學院等，並創建國際哲學學院。他開創瞭解構的思想方法，成為後結構主義的主要代錶，其理論動搖瞭傳統人文科學的基礎，也是各種後現代思潮最重要的理論起點之一。20世紀90年代前後，德裏達越來越關注當代政治和倫理論題，在研討班和著作中進行更富有現實意味的解構實踐，引起瞭廣泛持久的探討和爭論。

王欽，畢業於美國紐約大學比較文學係，哲學博士，現為北京大學國際批評理論研究中心博士後。譯著有《新自由主義簡史》、《根本惡》（閤譯）、《野性唯物主義》（主譯）等。