Thinking the Event. François Raffoul
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THINKING THE EVENT
STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT
John Sallis, editor
Consulting Editors
Robert Bernasconi
John D. Caputo
David Carr
Edward S. Casey
David Farrell Krell
Lenore Langsdorf
James Risser
Dennis J. Schmidt
Calvin O. Schrag
Charles E. Scott
Daniela Vallega-Neu
David Wood
THINKING THE EVENT
François Raffoul
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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© 2020 by François Raffoul
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Raffoul, François, 1960- author.
Title: Thinking the event / François Raffoul.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana, USA : Indiana University Press, 2020. | Series: Studies in continental thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019055954 (print) | LCCN 2019055955 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253045133 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253045362 (paperback) | ISBN 9780253045379 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Events (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC B105.E7 R34 2020 (print) | LCC B105.E7 (ebook) | DDC 111—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055954
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019055955
ISBN 978-0-253-04513-3 (hdbk.)
ISBN 978-0-253-04536-2 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-253-04537-9 (web PDF)
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Contents
5Historical Happening and the Motion of Life
Conclusion: The Ethics of the Event
I WOULD LIKE TO thank all those who have accompanied the preparation and publication of this work. At Indiana University Press, I am first grateful to John Sallis, general editor of Studies in Continental Thought, for welcoming me in his prestigious series. I am also thankful to Dee Mortensen and Ashante Thomas for their crucial help during the production of this book as well as Jennifer Crane.
I am thankful to Edward Casey for his invitation to present an early version of the project in the Philosophy department at Stony Brook University. The encouragement that I received after my talk and the exchanges I had with the graduate students and other faculty were a great source of inspiration for the subsequent years of writing and have accompanied me throughout this work. I also would like to acknowledge David Kleinberg-Levin for the stimulating intellectual exchanges we have had over the years and Pierre Jacerme for his philosophical guidance and friendship. I am also very grateful to Anne O’Byrne for her thoughtful response to my lecture on the event at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) and for helping me clarify my thoughts and question my own assumptions.
At Louisiana State University, I would like to thank my colleagues in Philosophy, as well as Delbert Burkett, in Religious Studies, for his mentoring and friendship. My warm thanks go to Margaret Toups for her always diligent work.
In Costa Rica, my thanks go to the staff at the Maragato, Luis Daniel Venegas, Luis Sandi, Warren Montana, Doña Rosa, and I am thankful for the companionship of Charlie Johnson, John Copp, Roland Ridal, and Brian Mock.
THINKING THE EVENT
I.
Engaging in the project of “thinking the event” consists in undertaking a philosophical inquiry into what constitutes an event as an event, its very eventfulness: not what happens, not why it happens, but that it happens, and what does “happening” mean. Not the eventum, what has happened, but the evenire, the sheer happening of what happens. However, at the outset of such a work, one is immediately confronted with the following obstacle: the event has traditionally been understood and neutralized within a philosophy of substance or essence, a metaphysics of causality, subjectivity, and reason—in a word, subjected to the demands of rational thought. An event is interpreted either as the accident of a substrate or substance, as the effect or deed