En deçà de la tautologie symbolique du cogito Variations sur Descartes et Augustin à travers Levinas et Marion
Below the symbolic tautology of the cogito Variations on Descartes and Augustine through Levinas and Marion
Author(s): István FazakasSubject(s): Phenomenology
Published by: Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Nakladatelství Karolinum
Keywords: philosophy; symbolic tautology; Rene Descartes;
Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I explore the thesis according to which ipseity cannot be conceived of without acknowledging a radical absence and alterity in its very core that makes it possible. To develop this thesis, I draw on Levinas’ reading of Descartes and Marion’s reading of Augustine. After a brief introductory part on what we could call, with Marc Richir’s term, the symbolic tautology of ipseity, I show how such a tautology is deconstructed by Levinas’ interpretation of the idea of the infinite in Descartes’ Third Meditation. I then proceed to contrast the results of this reading with Marion’s take on the problem of the memoria in Augustin’s Confessions. Both readings point towards a radical and immemorial dimension of absence that – by impeding the self from fully possessing itself – makes paradoxically ipseity possible in the first place. In the conclusion, I pose the question of whether – in order to account for this absence that reveals a transcendence in the most inner intimate of the self – one has to abandon phenomenology for ethics or some kind of new theology or if a strictly phenomenological description of this dimension of the experience of ipseity is possible.
Journal: Acta Universitatis Carolinae Interpretationes
- Issue Year: 10/2020
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 97-116
- Page Count: 20
- Language: French