Thinking the Event

<p>What happens when something happens? In <i>Thinking the Event</i> senior continental philosophy scholar François Raffoul undertakes a philosophical inquiry into what constitutes an event as event its very eventfulness: not what happens or why it happens but that it happens and what happening means. If as Leibniz posited it is true that nothing happens without a reason does this principle of reason have a reason? For Raffoul the event always breaks the demands of rational thought. Bringing together philosophical insights from Heidegger Derrida Nancy and Marion Raffoul shows how the event in its disruptive unpredictability always exceeds causality subjectivity and reason. It is that pure event each time happening outside or without reason which remains to be thought and which is the focus of this work. In the final movement of the book Raffoul takes on questions about the inappropriability of the event and the implications this carries for ethical and political considerations when thinking the event. In the wake of the exhaustion of traditional metaphysics the notion of the event comes to the fore in an unprecedented way with key implications for philosophy ontology ethics and theories of selfhood.</p>