Raoul Moati

Can we say that metaphysics is over? That we live, as post-phenomenology claims, after “end of metaphysics”? Through a close reading of Levinas's masterpiece Totality and Infinity, Raoul Moati shows that things are much more complicated. Totality and Infinity proposes not so much an alternative to Heidegger’s ontology as a deeper elucidation of the meaning of “being” beyond Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. The metaphor of the night becomes crucial in order to explore a nocturnal face of the events of being beyond their ontological reduction to the understanding of being. The deployment of being beyond its intentional or ontological reduction coincides with what Levinas calls “nocturnal events.” Insofar as the light of understanding hides them, it is only through deformalizing the traditional phenomenological approach to phenomena that Levinas leads us to their exploration and their systematic and mutual implications. Following Levinas's account of these "nocturnal events," Moati elaborates the possibility of what he calls a "metaphysics of society" that cannot be integrated into the deconstructive grasp of the "metaphysics of presence." Ultimately, Levinas and the Night of Being opens the possibility of a revival of metaphysics after the "end of metaphysics".

A Guide to Totality and Infinity

Levinas and the Night of Being

Ruedi Imbach

Jean-Clet Martin

Thibaut Gress

Alexandre Feron

Jean-Joël Duhot

David Zapero

Damien Theillier

Sandrine Alexandre

Sébastien Barbara

Victor Béguin

Jean-Pierre Clero

Yoann Colin

Florian Cova

Roselyne Dégremont

Nour el Houda Ismaïl-Battikh

Pierre Fasula

Florian Forestier

Katia Kanban

Arnaud Lalanne

Marion Lieutaud

François Loiret

Paul Mirault

Hervé Pasqua

Etienne PINAT

Stéphane Toussaint

Cet ouvrage présente les plus grandes œuvres de la philosophie en 60 fiches de lecture, depuis les présocratiques jusqu’aux contemporains, avec : Des explications complètes et une remise en contexte des textes,Des panoramas sur les mouvements philosophiques,Des synthèses originales pour faire le point sur ces différentes formes de philosophie.

La philosophie en 60 livres

Raoul Moati intervenes in the critical debate that divided two prominent philosophers in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin advanced a theory of speech acts, or the "performative," that Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle interpreted in fundamentally different ways. Their disagreement centered on the issue of intentionality, which Derrida understood phenomenologically and Searle read pragmatically. The controversy had profound implications for the development of contemporary philosophy, which, Moati argues, can profit greatly by returning to this classic debate. In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology and its deconstruction. The key issue, Moati argues, is not whether "intentionality," a concept derived from Husserl's phenomenology, can or cannot be linked to Austin's speech-acts as defined in his groundbreaking How to Do Things with Words, but rather the emphasis Searle placed on the performativity and determined pragmatic values of Austin's speech-acts, whereas Derrida insisted on the trace of writing behind every act of speech and the iterability of signs in different contexts.

Deconstruction and Ordinary Language

Derrida/Searle

Raoul Moati

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