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