Books by joeri schrijvers
edited volume on the work of Jean-Yves Lacoste
uitgegeven door Noordboek, 2021.
an assesment of today's philosophical stance toward religion
In het licht van de eindigheid. Het einde van de metafysica en de deconstructie van het christendom
An Introduction to Jean-Yves Lacoste
Ontotheological Turnings? The Decentering of the Subject in Recent french Phenomenology (SUNY Press)
journal articles by joeri schrijvers
Meta. Research in Hemeneutics, Phenomenology and Pratical Philosophy, 2024
This essay discusses the recent works of Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben on the coronavirus. Q... more This essay discusses the recent works of Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben on the coronavirus. Quite some continental thinkers, such as Peter Sloterdijk and Slavoj Žižek, offered their take on the epidemic already, yet those of Nancy and Agamben gained the most traction in the field. In the first section we elaborate Agamben’s somewhat formidable interpretation of “the invention” of the epidemic: Agamben apparently believed the epidemic to be one more biopolitical device deployed by governments to suit the masses. In the second section we present Nancy’s account of the philosophical consequences of the epidemic. Nancy’s work is, in large part, an oblique response to Agamben’s position, insisting that science and medicine would be the least bad mode of procedure available to halt the epidemic. It is, furthermore, not a question of the free, unlimited ego against biopolitical systems but rather of recognizing our frailty since all egos, well before saying ‘I’, are bound to each other from the very outset. The third section considers the most important critiques of Agamben’s work, which has caused quite the debate, in the secondary literature. The thesis of this article is that these, somehow, affirm the correctness of Nancy’s account of the epidemic on a number of themes, such as the fate of the sovereign, and sovereignty in an age of (mis)information: even the sovereign is not absolute. Yet, even if true, I will wonder: if there is too much critique of our democratic institutions in Agamben, is there enough critique of democracy in Nancy’s work? Are we satisfied with a spirituality alone?
Diakrisis
This article discusses the final volume of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe. It does so by contextualizi... more This article discusses the final volume of Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe. It does so by contextualizing its main themes, that is, by relating it to other writings of Heidegger of roughly the same period. Three such themes can be discovered in Heidegger's "final" writing: a discussion of the nature of phenomenology, the abandonment of the ontological difference and the relation between the thought of being and the discipline of theology. The essay concludes with a comparison of Heidegger's thinking of Ereignis to how theology configured the relation between God and the human being, so arguing that Heidegger seemed more indebted to the tradition of theology that he at times could acknowledge.
A round-up of continental philosophy's response to the coronavirus. English translation available
This essay serves two purposes. First, it wants to introduce readers to John D. Caputo’s Radical ... more This essay serves two purposes. First, it wants to introduce readers to John D. Caputo’s Radical Theology by way of his recent Spectres of God (2022) in which his radical theology truly comes to fruition. The essay provides in this introduction through elucidating this recent work and by pointing to earlier discussions of similar themes and figures in Caputo’s corpus. It will be shown that Caputo’s work is a genuine contemporary search for transcendence, asking all the right questions at the right time. Recently, for instance, Caputo is asking what becomes of the human search for meaning if this entire cosmos is destined to fade away in a Big Crunch. Second, this essay wants to critically address some remaining unclarities in this radical theology. It is to be noted for instance that at crucial stages Caputo repeats some aspects of the thought of divinity in theism that he nonetheless says he wants to overcome: at these stages, then, ‘God’ is allowed to be an exception to the worries of the world after all. This essay, too, wants to investigate Caputo’s rather enigmatic insistence of the possibility of joy and happiness in a mortal, and finite world that would celebrate only a finite, mortal God. That finitude, instead of lasting and eternal salvation, serves as the very condition of possibility of true joy is an unexamined axiom running through Caputo’s recent works. In this regard, this essay wants to point to both the beauty but also the frailty of this thought.
This article articulates Jean-Yves Lacoste’s account of phenomenology. It does so by tracing Laco... more This article articulates Jean-Yves Lacoste’s account of phenomenology. It does so by tracing Lacoste’s relation to Husserl. Although the influence of Heidegger on Lacoste’s thinking has been sufficiently studied, his relation to the father of phenomenology perhaps is not. The aim of this essay is to see whether Lacoste’s practice of phenomenology still qualifies as phenomenology proper or whether, as some might be inclined to think, it is an improper venturing into the terrain of theology. For this, we offer an account both of Lacoste’s conception of “theological thinking” and of the phenomenon he describes so beautifully, the presence of God in liturgical and sacramental presence. The article concludes by, perhaps, putting into parentheses some of Lacoste’s findings by pointing to Jacques Derrida’s take on Husserl’s Origin of Geometry so questioning once more the bounds and boundaries of Lacoste’s phenomenology of faith and opening avenues for further research.
This essay joins the ongoing conversation comparing the thought of Bruno Latour to Martin Heidegg... more This essay joins the ongoing conversation comparing the thought of Bruno Latour to Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology in particular and the phenomenological tradition in general. The article queries whether or not there is a metaphysics at work in Latour's philosophy and, if so, whether this metaphysics would be at a sufficient distance from what Heidegger labelled as ontotheology, "grasping" and "comprehending" being and beings in its totality. The essay finds that at crucial stages Latour repeats features of ontotheological modes of thinking that make for the fact that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Latour is not so distant from modern attempts that reveal beings as they truly are or even beings as they always will be. Throughout, we query what Latour's account of scientific practice and its concomitant crossing of contingency and meaning can contribute to recent debates in phenomenology.
At one point in We will never have been modern Latour notes that his thinking is a "challenge to ... more At one point in We will never have been modern Latour notes that his thinking is a "challenge to philosophy". This article argues that Latour's challenge lies in his repeated claim that his ontology makes us able to think again about the "passing of time". If this is indeed the case then, this essay looks to Martin Heidegger to think of the question of temporality and ontology. This essay will in effect find that on a deeper level Latour repeats crucial Heideggerian insights with regard to the ontological difference between being and beings. Yet on other points too Heidegger's impact is notable: for Heidegger too, something has gone wary with modernity and our modern constitution. Here too Latour's metaphors point in a rather Heideggerian direction, for the "invisible" modern constitution has become "visible" in certain ontic events-Latour notes the end of communism. This recalls Heidegger's critique of metaphysics. The article will then focus on Latour's distinction between delegation and what is being delegated, a distinction that pervades the conclusion of his 1991 book. Latour thus introduces a difference between (atemporal?) delegation and what is being delegated (humans, hybrids, angels, etc.). How not to recognize a duplicate of Heidegger's ontological difference? And, once recognized, what does this mean for our thinking of being and the thinking of the event of world which has been delegated to us?
Een essay over Erik Megancks Religieus atheïsme
An account of Nancy's dealings with Christianity
Crossing: The INPR Journal, 2020
continental philosophy review, 2020
A commentary of Lacoste's Thèses sur la vérité
journal of continental philosophy of religion, 2020
te verskynen in: Tydskrif vir geesteswetenskappe