Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Marion argues that being clear about what one cannot know is philosophically important, because such acknowledgement makes one realize that even some properly formed questions will remain unanswerable.” * Choice *
“A rich and profound philosophical vision that liberates us from our self-imposed nihilistic chains.” * The Review of Metaphysics *
“The concluding work in the phenomenological project in which [Marion] has been engaged for the past twenty-five years: the broadening of the field of phenomenality.” * The Journal of Religion *
“Crowned by the Académie Française . . . the philosopher in a bow tie, Jean-Luc Marion, loosens our Borromean knots: the human enigma, the mystery of God, and the unknown of birth as well as death, are so many inexplicable events.
Negative Certainties, his latest book, questions the very possibility of these impossibilities.” * Le Monde, on the French edition *
“Marion is one of today’s most important philosophers. . . . If certain knowledge is impossible, must we condemn ourselves to hazardous understandings and skepticism? For Marion, there is a third way, through negative certainty.” * Libération, on the French edition *
Table of ContentsForeword
Translator’s Acknowledgments
Introduction
§ 1 Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Certainties into Philosophy
I The Undefinable, or the Face of Man
§ 2 “What Is Man?”
§ 3
“Ipse mihi magna quaestio”
§ 4 What It Costs to Know (Oneself)
§ 5 Proscription
§ 6 The Fund of Incomprehensibility
§ 7 The Indefinite and the Unstable
II The Impossible, or What Is Proper to God
§ 8 The Impossible Phenomenon
§ 9 The Irreducible
§ 10 Possibility without Conditions
§ 11 The (Im)possible: From Contradiction to Event
§ 12 The (Im)possible from My Point of View
§ 13 The (Im)possible from God’s Point of View
III The Unconditioned, or the Strength of the Gift
§ 14 The Contradictions of the Gift
§ 15 The Terms of Exchange
§ 16 Reducing the Gift to Givenness
§ 17 Without the Principle of Identity
§ 18 Without the Principle of Sufficient Reason
IV The Unconditioned and the Variations of the Gift
§ 19 Sacrifice According to the Terms of Exchange
§ 20 Regiving, Beginning from the Recipient
§ 21 The Confirmation of Abraham
§ 22 Forgiveness According to the Terms of Exchange
§ 23 Regiving, Beginning from the Giver
§ 24 The Return of the Prodigal Son
V The Unforeseeable, or the Event
§ 25 What the Object Excludes
§ 26 The Condition of the Object
§ 27 Concerning the Distinction of Phenomena into Objects and Events
§ 28 Without Cause
§ 29 The Original Unknown
§ 30 The Double Interpretation
Conclusion
§ 31 In Praise of the Paradox
Bibliographical Note
Notes
Index
