Edmund Husserl. Infinite tasks -- Universality and spatial form -- Universality in the making -- Martin Heidegger. Singular essence -- The strangeness of beginnings -- The originary world of tragedy -- Jan Patoka. Care of the soul -- The genealogy of Europe-responsibility -- Jacques Derrida. European memories -- This little thing that is Europe -- De-closing the horizon.

Against the assumption that aesthetic form relates to a harmonious arrangement of parts into a beautiful whole, this book argues that reason is the real theme of the _Critique of Judgment_ as of the two earlier _Critiques_. Since aesthetic judgment of the beautiful becomes possible only when the mind is confronted with things of nature, for which no determined concepts of understanding are available, aesthetic judgment is involved in an epistemological or, rather, para-epistemological task. The predicate "beautiful" indicates that something (...) has minimal form and is cognizable. This book explores this concept of form, in particular the role of presentation in what Kant refers to as "mere form," which involves not only the understanding, but also reason as the faculty of ideas. Such a notion of form reveals why the beautiful can be related to the morally good. On the basis of this reinterpreted concept of form, most major concepts and themes of the _Critique of Judgment_—such as disinterestedness, free play, the sublime, genius, and beautiful arts—are examined by the author and shown in a new light. (shrink)

"This book in the main consists of lectures that I first delivered in 2010 at the Collegium Phenomenologicum at Citta di Castello, Italy, and subsequently expanded for a three-day seminar at the Universidad Diego Portales at Santiago, Chile, in 2011. In spring 2012 my graduate lecture course in the Department of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo was devoted to the subject "geophilosophy." It was on this occasion that I expanded the earlier lectures to the (...) dimensions of the book in its present form.". (shrink)

In the aftermath of Kant, that is, with Schelling and Hegel, the natural beautiful is no longer a major concern of aesthetic theory. According to Adorno, an evil star hangs over the theory of natural beauty. The essay examines the reasons for this neglect of the beautiful of nature by confronting Kant's account of natural beauty with Hegel's theory about the fundamental deficiencies of beauty in nature and locates them in the essential indeterminacy of everything that belongs to nature. Inquiring (...) into what Adorno seeks to achieve by playing Kant and Hegel off against one another, it is shown that this indeterminacy of nature is both an index of nature's interconnectedness with mythical violence and the promise of a freedom from myth. (shrink)

This book investigates what Bataille, in "The Pineal Eye," calls mythological representation: the mythological anthropology with which this unusual thinker wished to outflank and undo scientific anthropology. Gasché probes that anthropology by situating Bataille's thought with respect to the quatrumvirate of Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. He begins by showing what Bataille's understanding of the mythological owes to Schelling. Drawing on Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud, he then explores the notion of image that constitutes the sort of representation that Bataille's innovative (...) approach entails. Gasché concludes that Bataille's mythological anthropology takes on Hegel's phenomenology in a systematic fashion. By reading it backwards, he not only dismantles its architecture, he also ties each level to the preceding one, replacing the idealities of philosophy with the phantasmatic representations of what he dubs "low materialism." Phenomenology, Gasché argues, thus paves the way for a new "science" of phantasms. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWith few exceptions, the prominent role of the Stranger in Plato’s late dialogue on the Sophist has drawn little attention in Plato scholarship. Yet, in this dialogue Plato charges the expatriated Stranger, who, furthermore, lacks a patronym and thus is not identifiable, remaining a stranger to the end, with the task not only of rejecting all philosophy hitherto as nothing more than a kind of storytelling about Being, but also of committing the parricide of Parmenides, the father of Greek philosophy (...) itself. By refuting Parmenides’ thesis on Being, including the claim that Non-being is unthinkable and unsayable, the Stranger develops a philosophy that for the first time merits this title. The core of his doctrine of the “greatest kinds” consists in recasting Non-being in terms of otherness, thus unseating the priority of the principle of opposition that, until then, dominated philosophical thinking. This paper delves into what it means for Greek philosophy to invite a stranger to uproot its foundin... (shrink)

This essay is an inquiry into Derrida’s elaborations on the concept of method, and the frequent discussions in his work of questions of method, particularly, in the context of the conception of a “science of writing.” The aim of the essay is to clarify what Derrida calls “a discourse of method in general,” that is, the discourse that represents the founda­tion of Descartes’s reflections on method, as well as Heidegger’s retracing of the concept of method back to the problematic of (...) methodos, and hodos, in short, to the problematic of “the way of thinking.” Centering on how this way becomes method, and how method brings about the narrowing of thought deplored by Heidegger, Derrida explores what it is in the way itself that makes such becoming, and hence “perversion” of itself inevitable. (shrink)

This essay is an inquiry into Derrida’s elaborations on the concept of method, and the frequent discussions in his work of questions of method, particularly, in the context of the conception of a “science of writing.” The aim of the essay is to clarify what Derrida calls “a discourse of method in general,” that is, the discourse that represents the founda­tion of Descartes’s reflections on method, as well as Heidegger’s retracing of the concept of method back to the problematic of (...) methodos, and hodos, in short, to the problematic of “the way of thinking.” Centering on how this way becomes method, and how method brings about the narrowing of thought deplored by Heidegger, Derrida explores what it is in the way itself that makes such becoming, and hence “perversion” of itself inevitable. (shrink)

Abstract:Francesco Vitale discusses with Rodolphe Gasché the history of Heidegger reception in France and Germany, and more.

One of the challenges facing Continental Philosophy is how to maintain its identity as “Continental” (and thus as “European”) while avoiding the dangers of Euro-centrism. This challenge calls for many approaches, but one entry point is through the question of Europe—can we think a European identity that is pluralistic and radically open to its others, a Europe that is not Euro-centric? Rodolphe Gasché, in his recently published Europe, or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept (Stanford 2009), articulates (...) just such a concept of Europe, providing careful studies of Husserl, Heidegger, Patočka, and Derrida, as well as his own insights. In spring of 2009, the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University invited Prof. Gasché for a discussion of Europe, or the Infinite Task. Peg Birmingham and Franklin Perkins presented papers engaging and responding to the book, and Rodolphe Gasché subsequently offered his response. The three essays are published together here, with slight revisions but retaining their original character as a dialogue. We hope that the lively debate they express will serve to stimulate further discussion of the relationships among philosophy, Europe, and openness to others. (shrink)

The debt and responsibility toward what thus withholds itself in any heritage will become clearer once we focus on the irreducible remainder in the double memory of Europe, in particular, within its Greek memory. Indeed, in the context of Derrida elucidation in “Faith and Knowledge” of the notion of the “most barren and desert‐like” abstraction, two names are invoked, the Greek name “khōra,” and the Jewish name of the “messianic”. This chapter reconstructs, at least in a very succinct manner, the (...) arguments that impel the invocation of these two names. Like “the messianic without messianicity” in one part of the double memory of Europe, khōra in its Greek part is an immemorial remainder that withdraws from what it renders possible. According to “Faith and Knowledge,” “this Greek noun [khōra] says in our memory that which is not reappropriable, even by our memory, even by our ‘Greek’ memory. (shrink)

As a discipline, that is, a department of knowledge and learning, philosophy, inevitably, must have a system of rules or a method, for the maintenance, proper conduct, and transmission of its specific task. But philosophy’s task is not only to be executed in an orderly fashion: it is itself constituted by a set of rules, the rules of orderly or disciplined thinking. As a branch of knowledge and instruction, the discipline ‘philosophy’ thus has its own proper canon. Without the canon (...) of its elected books, the harmonic ordering of its corpus, and the strict rules to be observed not only in learning or teaching it, but in philosophizing as well, philosophy would not be recognizable as a discipline. For these are what give it its identity. Hence, this canonicity, and in particular, the domain of established fundamental rules for thought within it, profoundly affects our understanding of philosophy. Indeed, depending on what these rules are said to be, the discipline of philosophy fans out into the diverse definitions that it has been historically assigned. (shrink)

As a discipline, that is, a department of knowledge and learning, philosophy, inevitably, must have a system of rules or a method, for the maintenance, proper conduct, and transmission of its specific task. But philosophy’s task is not only to be executed in an orderly fashion: it is itself constituted by a set of rules, the rules of orderly or disciplined thinking. As a branch of knowledge and instruction, the discipline ‘philosophy’ thus has its own proper canon. Without the canon (...) of its elected books, the harmonic ordering of its corpus, and the strict rules to be observed not only in learning or teaching it, but in philosophizing as well, philosophy would not be recognizable as a discipline. For these are what give it its identity. Hence, this canonicity, and in particular, the domain of established fundamental rules for thought within it, profoundly affects our understanding of philosophy. Indeed, depending on what these rules are said to be, the discipline of philosophy fans out into the diverse definitions that it has been historically assigned. (shrink)

In La Agonia de Europa, María Zambrano writes: “Europe is not dead, Europe cannot die completely; it agonizes. For Europe is perhaps the only thing—in history—that cannot die; it is the only thing capable of resurrection.” How to understand this provocative statement? What must Europe be for it not being able to completely die, but only to agonize? How to understand the mode of being Europe as one of continuous agonization? What kind of resurrection does European life refer to, and (...) what is its significance in the context of Zambrano’s heretical Christianity? These are among the questions raised in the paper. (shrink)

This book investigates what Bataille, in "The Pineal Eye," calls mythological representation: the mythological anthropology with which this unusual thinker wished to outflank and undo scientific (and philosophical) anthropology. Gasché probes that anthropology by situating Bataille's thought with respect to the quatrumvirate of Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. He begins by showing what Bataille's understanding of the mythological owes to Schelling. Drawing on Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud, he then explores the notion of image that constitutes the sort of representation that (...) Bataille's innovative approach entails. Gasché concludes that Bataille's mythological anthropology takes on Hegel's phenomenology in a systematic fashion. By reading it backwards, he not only dismantles its architecture, he also ties each level to the preceding one, replacing the idealities of philosophy with the phantasmatic representations of what he dubs "low materialism." Phenomenology, Gasché argues, thus paves the way for a new "science" of phantasms. (shrink)

Jan Patočka’s elaborations in ‘Europe after Europe’ concern a kind of irrationalism and nativism proper to European thought that has prohibited the embryonic core of the idea of Europe, namely, the renewed Socratic-Platonic motif of the ‘care of the soul’ in Christian Europe, to unfold its full potential. The article investigates a further ‘irrationalism’ that narrows the universalist thrust of the idea of Europe, precisely, by conceiving of it in terms of the Greek concept of an idea. This article draws (...) on the inner resources of the notion of the idea in order to recast Europe as a Europe beyond the idea. (shrink)