“Derrida stated in Given Time I that the seminar laid bare the premises of a problematic central to his work, but it is only now that readers have access to the full range of premises indicating places of his divergence from Heidegger, among them: Heidegger’s evaluations of narrative, Husserl’s thing, Kant’s moral laws, the proper. In the precise, highly readable English of the translation, this volume facing off these two foremost philosophers will be a welcome addition to every library of Derrida."

E. S. Burt, University of California, Irvine

“Translated with elegance and clarity, this second installment of Given Time returns to Derrida’s thinking of the gift in nine unpublished sessions (including an inspired, improvised session on Blanchot). Drawing on his readings of Baudelaire, Mauss, Benveniste, Lévi-Strauss, and Lacan in Given Time I, Derrida here gives a brilliant analysis of Heidegger’s es gibt—‘there is,’ or, literally, ‘it gives’—as a way of thinking of ‘giving’ as more originary than time and being.”

Elizabeth Rottenberg, DePaul University