Evil and Givenness

The Thanatonic Phenomenon

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

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Beskrivning

Evil and Givenness: The Thanatonic Phenomenon provides a phenomenological study of evil in its conceptual integrity.Describing a phenomenological situation exclusive to evil in its distinct mode of givenness and manners of manifestation, the account of evil in this book centers on the thanatonic as that phenomenality proper to evil. Although situated within a phenomenology of givenness via Jean-Luc Marion, the thanatonic is distinguished from saturated phenomena by giving itself in a parasitic mode. Brian W. Becker identifies four figures as displaying characteristics of this parasitic givenness—trauma, evil eye, foreign-body, and abject—each expressing a dimension of the thanatonic and paralleling the four figures of the saturated phenomenon. Like the four horsemen who serve as heralds for the destruction of the world, these figures beckon the destruction of our lifeworld, diminishing the self who encounters them. Upon losing the will to bear the excess of saturated phenomena, the receding of horizons, and the loss of singularity, this impoverished self misrecognizes itself in a manner that begins to resemble the metaphysical ego and, in doing so, becomes a vector for retransmitting the thanatonic’s suffering unto others.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2022-02-23
Mått:161 x 227 x 20 mm
Vikt:458 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:184
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:9781793651167

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Mer om författaren

Brian W. Becker is professor of neuropsychology at Lesley University and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion.

Recensioner i media

Philosophers in the Platonist tradition understood evil as nonbeing. That is to say, if being and goodness are convertible, then logically evil must be understood as nonbeing. In short, evil is not a thing but the absence of something, a gap in existence that parasitically perverts the underlying good of being. The classic example here is blindness understood as the absence of sight. Phenomenology, since at least the work of Martin Heidegger, has wanted to break with this kind of metaphysics. Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology replaces the metaphysical analysis of being with an investigation of the givenness of phenomena in all forms. In this volume, Becker develops Marion's phenomenology into a phenomenology of evil. In other words, in response to the question of how evil is given, Becker answers that it is given in a parasitic mode—repeating classical metaphysics in a phenomenological register. The parasitic givenness of evil subdivides into four modes, which Becker calls "The Four Horsemen of the Thanatonic" (the second part of three of this volume). A careful, rigorous development of Marion's phenomenology, the book is unique and thought-provoking, but it is not for the faint-hearted or those unfamiliar with recent French phenomenology in general and Marion's work in particular. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

Innehållsförteckning

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Problem of the Problem of EvilPart I: Modes of GivennessChapter 1: “They Shall Know Them by Their Fruits”: A Phenomenology of GivennessChapter 2: Parasitic GivennessPart II: The Four Horsemen of the ThanatonicChapter 3: Lost Time: The Event of TraumaChapter 4: The Evil EyeChapter 5: “It is No Longer I Who Do it”: The Foreign-bodyChapter 6: “Surely it is Not I”: The AbjectPart III: Amputation of the PossibleChapter 7: Being Diminished: The Thanatonic EgoConclusionBibliography IndexNotesAbout the Author