There Is: The Event and the Finitude of Appearing (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)

A genuinely innovative contribution to philosophical accounts of subjectivity and temporality. Romano develops what he calls an evential hermeneutics that takes as its starting point the life-changing events that upend our world. He studies the structure of these events in terms of the genuine change and novelty that they open up, distinguishing them from mere occurrences, which can be explained as a subject realizing pre-existing possibilities. Because such events introduce radically new possibilities by transforming me and my world, Romano argues that they must be understood as establishing a world rather than as happening in the world.Shane Mackinlay, Catholic Theological College, University of Divinity, Melbourne Frontmatter Preface (page xi) Part I: Event and Metaphysics 1. Some Sources and Prolongations of "Evential Hermeneutics" (page 3) 2. Possibility and Event (page 26) 3. Bergson as Metaphysician and Critic of Metaphysics (page 67) Part II: Beyond Subject and Object? 4. Sartrean Freedom, or Adam's Dream (page 87) 5. The Mirror of Narcissus: On the Phenomenology of the Flesh (page 114) 6. The Ecological Phenomenology of J.J. Gibson (page 149) Part III: The Nothing and the "There Is" 7. Is a Phenomenology of Nothingness Possible? The Carnap-Heidegger Controversy (page 177) 8. "Between Emptiness and the Pure Event": Phenomenology (page 213) Notes (page 237) Romano develops what he calls an 'evential hermeneutics' that takes as its starting point the life-changing events that upend our world. He studies the structure of these events in terms of the genuine change and novelty that they open up, distinguishing them from mere occurrences, which can be explained as a subject realizing pre-existing possibilities. Because such events introduce radically new possibilities by transforming me and my world, Romano argues that they must be understood as establishing a world rather than as happening in the world. --Publisher description