Thinking the Event

The author of The Origins of Responsibility presents "a major contribution to philosophical scholarship on . . . the very idea of the event" (Edward S. Casey, author of The World on Edge). In Thinking the Event, continental philosopher François Raffoul explores the question of what constitutes an event as an event: not what happens or why it happens, but what "happening" means. If it's true that nothing happens without a reason, as Leibniz famously posited, then does this principle of reason have a reason? Bringing together philosophical insights from Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jean-Luc Marion, Raffoul shows how the event, in its disruptive unpredictability, always exceeds causality, subjectivity, and reason. He then goes on to examine the inappropriability of this "pure event" and how this inappropriability may inform ethical and political considerations. In the wake of the exhaustion of traditional metaphysics, the notion of the event comes to the fore, with key implications for philosophy, ontology, ethics, and theories of selfhood. Raffoul's Thinking the Event is essential reading on this fascinating topic.

Autorentext

François Raffoul

Inhalt

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Event Outside of Thought

2. The Event without Ground

3. Event and Phenomenology

4. Things as Events

5. Historical Happening and the Motion of Life

6. The Event of Being

7. Event, World, Democracy

8. The Secret of the Event

Conclusion: The Ethics of the Event

Bibliography