The Event “Sets us Thinking”

Résumé 0

Elaborating the concept of “event” confronts us with a task similar to that which Paul Ricœur took up in his renowned article : “Le symbole donne à penser” (“The symbol sets us thinking”). One must ponder the articulation of thinking that is given to itself by something else and thinking that is capable of handling concepts and correctly positing a problem. The article follows the development of reflections upon the notion of event in the writings of D. Davidson, J.L. Marion, C. Romano, M. Heidegger and A. Badiou. Sooner or later linguistic distinctions that help us enter the complex universe of “events” must be completed by a phenomenological description of the role that events play in our life-world. This in turn confronts us with the problem of the ontological status of the notion.