Review Articles Kenotic Sacrifice and Philosophy: Paolo Diego Bubbio

research in phenomenology 45 (�0�5) 43�–435 Research in Phenomenology brill.com/rp Review Articles ∵ Kenotic Sacrifice and Philosophy: Paolo Diego Bubbio Paolo Diego Bubbio Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition. Perspectivism, Intersubjectivity, and Recognition. SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014. 212 pp. Paolo Diego Bubbio is an Italian philosopher who lives and works in Australia. His recent book, Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition, can be regarded as the mature expression of his long engagement with the topic of sacrifice. In this book Bubbio restructures the development of the notion of sacrifice in the nineteenth century (through a study of Kant, Solger, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche) in a way that emphasizes how all these thinkers are indebted to Kant and that highlights a group of recurring themes. The most important of these themes, Bubbio argues, is the emergence of a notion of sacrifice differ- ent from the standard one: not sacrifice as a destruction of something for the sake of something else, but a kenotic sacrifice, conceived as withdrawal or as a “making room” for others. The first question that presents itself to the reader is to clarify whether and to what extent the employment of sacrifice as the focus used to reconsider so wide a part of modern thought is a choice imposed by the “thing itself” or, rather, reflects a preliminary decision already inspired by a theoretical purpose and by an “extrinsic” expectation. I raise this point because, having studied (like many others) the history of modern thought after Kant, the question of sacrifice never appeared to me as obvious. Is there not an excess of religious inspiration in this choice? This question does not challenge the validity of the chosen point of view but is useful here to approach the book’s topic with more analytical attention. For example: does the interpretative centrality of the notion of sacrifice work specifically for post-Kantian thought, or does it © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi �0.��63/�569�640-��34�3�� 432 Review Articles work for any philosophical research in general? Already for the Presocratics, and then obviously for Plato, we must not follow the way of the senses, but we must choose “the path of day”. Is the journey of the Platonic Symposium a sacrificial itinerary? It is certainly an initiatory journey that implies surrender and overcomings. Does it make sense, therefore, to study sacrifice in the post- Kantian tradition as a specific theme? Most likely, the answer to this question is found in the central notion of kenotic sacrifice. Much more than the sacrifice required by the overcoming of appearances, which is requested of any philosophical research at least from Parmenides onward, Bubbio’s book suggests (or rather shows) that post- Kantian philosophy, since its inception and until today, is characterized, so to say, by a self-sacrificial tendency that culminates, in the context of contemporary thought, in the aim to “make room” for the other. More than a histo- riographical choice, Bubbio’s is a sharp theoretical stance. In other words, the idea of sacrifice is not only functional in shedding light on aspects and themes of the thinkers under scrutiny (often with very convincing critical results—Bubbio’s pages on Hegel and those on Kierkegaard are exemplary in this respect). Most prominently, the idea of sacrifice is functional in providing a coherent and productive point of view on contemporary thought. Here I am “using” Bubbio’s suggestions for a theoretical purpose, perhaps even beyond his intentions. For example, I cannot avoid thinking that there is a sacrificial-kenotic spirit in the Heidegger who aims at the overcoming of metaphysics: the “letting go of Being as foundation” (das Sein als den Grund des Seienden fahren zu lassen) of Time and Being—is this not kenosis?1 But this Heideggerian expression comes here to mind mainly because it expresses, in my view, that which Bubbio’s study “says,” and the extent to which the kenotic vocation seems to epitomize its meaning and point the way of any possible development of it. As Bubbio stresses in the concluding pages of the book, the kenosis that is considered here has two meanings that are fundamental for philosophy as a whole: an epistemological meaning and an ethical meaning (see “Conclusion,” 164ff.). It is easily seen that the two meanings correspond to two of the three fundamental questions that define Kant’s philosophy: What can I know, what should I do, and what may I hope.2 That the third question, the one about the eschaton, is missing from Bubbio’s work, is perhaps not unrelated to the very 1 Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1969), 5–6; translated by J. Stambaugh as On Time and Being (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 6. 2 Immanuel Kant, Logik, in vol 9 of Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften, ed. the Royal Prussian— later German—Academy of Sciences (Berlin: Georg Reimer, later Walter de Gruyter & Co., research in phenomenology 45 (2015) 431–435.

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