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Publication details

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Place: Bloomington, In

Year: 2020

Series: Studies in Continental Thought

ISBN (Paperback): 9780253045362

Full citation:

François Raffoul, Thinking the event, Bloomington, In, Indiana University Press, 2020

Thinking the event

François Raffoul

Studies in Continental Thought | 1

Indiana University Press

2020

Abstract

What happens when something happens? In Thinking the Event, senior continental philosophy scholar François Raffoul undertakes a philosophical inquiry into what constitutes an event as event, its very eventfulness: not what happens or why it happens, but that it happens, and what "happening" means. If, as Leibniz posited, it is true that nothing happens without a reason, does this principle of reason have a reason? For Raffoul, the event always breaks the demands of rational thought. Bringing together philosophical insights from Heidegger, Derrida, Nancy, and Marion, Raffoul shows how the event, in its disruptive unpredictability, always exceeds causality, subjectivity, and reason. It is that "pure event," each time happening outside or without reason, which remains to be thought, and which is the focus of this work. In the final movement of the book, Raffoul takes on questions about the inappropriability of the event and the implications this carries for ethical and political considerations when thinking the event. In the wake of the exhaustion of traditional metaphysics, the notion of the event comes to the fore in an unprecedented way, with key implications for philosophy, ontology, ethics, and theories of selfhood.

Cited authors

Publication details

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Place: Bloomington, In

Year: 2020

Series: Studies in Continental Thought

ISBN (Paperback): 9780253045362

Full citation:

François Raffoul, Thinking the event, Bloomington, In, Indiana University Press, 2020