The Possibility of the Im-possible: Heidegger and Derrida on Responsibility

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Deconstructive Aporias: Quasi-Transcendental and Normative

This paper argues that Derrida’s aporetic conclusions regarding moral and political concepts, from hospitality to democracy, can only be understood and accepted if the notion of différance and similar infrastructures are taken into account. This is because it is the infrastructures that expose and commit moral and political practices to a double and conflictual (thus aporetic) future: the conditional future that projects horizonal limits and conditions upon the relation to others, and the unconditional future without horizons of anticipation. The argument thus turns against two kinds of interpretation: the first accepts normative unconditionality in ethics but misses its support by the infrastructures. The second rejects unconditionality as a normative commitment precisely because the infrastructural support for unconditionality seems to rule out that it is normatively required. In conclusion, the article thus reconsiders the relation between a quasi-transcendental argument and its normative implications, suggesting that Derrida avoids the naturalistic fallacy

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\u27s 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\u27s Thinking the Event is essential reading on this fascinating topic.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1337/thumbnail.jp

A Psychoanalyst on the Couch

In A Psychoanalyst on the Couch, we find the noted psychoanalyst and Lacan commentator Juan-David Nasio on the analyst s couch himself. In the interview that makes up this book, he provides insight into his forty-year career as a writer and practitioner, elaborating on Freudian and Lacanian concepts important to his work and reflecting on broad issues related to psychology and culture as well as personal remembrances. The result is an intimate and wide-ranging look at the man and thinker, both an introduction to his work and a deeper look at his approach and outlook.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1504/thumbnail.jp

Rethinking Facticity

The concept of facticity has undergone crucial transformations over the last century in hermeneutics and phenomenology, but it has not yet received the attention that it warrants. Following a suggestion by Merleau-Ponty that philosophy is not about essences but rather the facticity of existence, prominent philosophers examine the significance of facticity in its historical context and reflect on its contemporary relevance. Focusing on the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, and Fanon, among others, they trace its significance from life-philosophy to contemporary European thought and explore its philosophical implications. The following questions are addressed: What thoughts of experience, of subjectivity, of finitude, of nature, of the body, of racial and sexual difference does facticity provoke? What thinking of language, of history, of birth and death, of our ethical being-in-the-world does it mobilize? Exploring these questions, the contributors offer new interpretations of facticity.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1436/thumbnail.jp

The Origins of Responsibility

François Raffoul approaches the concept of responsibility in a manner that is distinct from its traditional interpretation as accountability of the wilful subject. Exploring responsibility in the works of Nietzsche, Sartre, Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida, Raffoul identifies decisive moments in the development of the concept, retrieves its origins, and explores new reflections on it. For Raffoul, responsibility is less about a sovereign subject establishing a sphere of power and control than about exposure to an event that does not come from us and yet calls to us. These original and thoughtful investigations of the post-metaphysical senses of responsibility chart new directions for ethics in the continental tradition.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1363/thumbnail.jp