By Francois Raffoul
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Date: 06/01/2020
Description:
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 ethics and politics.