INFLECTIONS OF THE EVENT: THE DEATH OF THE OTHER AS EVENT A Dissertation by HARRIS BENNETT BECHTOL Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, Theodore George Committee Members, John J. McDermott Daniel Conway Donnalee Dox John D. Caputo Head of Department, Theodore George May 2016 Major Subject: Philosophy Copyright 2016 Harris Bennett Bechtol ABSTRACT This project brings into focus the nature of an event in continental philosophy as it relates to the phenomenon of the death of another person. In this, I offer a description of what is philosophically happening when another person dies for those who survive this person with particular focus on the ontological, ethical, and theological implications of such a death. I maintain that the best such phenomenological description comes through engaging the death of the other in terms of the technical usage of the event in continental philosophy. In short, I argue that the death of the other is an event because such a death is not only the loss of the person but also the loss of the meaning of the world to and with this person. So the death of the other is a death of the world. To argue this, I trace the discussion about the nature of an event from Martin Heidegger’s account of the event through the French reception of this aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy in the works of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion. Moreover, through unfolding these complex accounts on the nature of an event, I develop the relationality that attends this event of the death of the other by focusing on the disclosivity of such death. The death of the other as an event shows us not only the ontological insight that being itself is relational but also that this event impacts our ethical life. When an other dies, we have a responsibility to mourn and remember the other. Through this ontology and ethical impetus of the death of the other, I maintain that we broach an important distinction between modalities of otherness based on the relational involvement that we have with people in our lives. Such a relational, existential difference within alterity spans from the !ii others with whom we have little relation to the others whose relation structures our understanding of the world. By using this existential difference, my account of the death of the other includes the death of not only humans but also animals and even God. !iii DEDICATION To Jen, Avery, Sutton, and Jude. For those others who have died and whose world we now bear: Kyle, Malibu, and Scott. !iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the help, suggestions, and support from many people. I first want to thank my committee. The first person that I have to thank is Ted George. Thank you, Ted, for teaching a course on Being and Time my first semester at A&M. This course became the beginning of much that is contained here. And thank you for the wonderful conversation one afternoon in the halls of the philosophy department in the YMCA building on A&M’s campus about the idea of writing a paper on the development of the event into the topic of the gift in continental philosophy. This was the first of many conversations that we had that helped germinate the seed from which this project grew. Throughout our many conversations, you have time and again shown me how to be a mentor to students by not thinking their thoughts for them, but by helping them arrive at their own thoughts. In this way, you have been an exemplar of leaping ahead (vorausspringen). Without such leaping ahead, I am not sure that I could have completed this project. In addition, I also would like to thank Jack Caputo for agreeing to be a part of this committee despite having retired from his positions at Villanova University and Syracuse University. I thank you for welcoming me to Villanova one weekend in the Fall of 2014 to talk about this project. And I apologize again for making you talk so much that you lost your voice. Your comments, suggestions, and criticisms have been immensely helpful but also deeply encouraging. Working with you has been the chance of a lifetime. I would also like to thank Dan Conway for always keeping me on my toes and pushing the boundaries of my project. !v Thank you, also, to Donnalee Dox for your encouragement and probing questions. And, thank you, John McDermott for agreeing to join the committee in the eleventh hour after the death of your colleague and, at the time, a member of my committee, Scott Austin. You have been a source of existential and spiritual nourishment for me not only during my time at A&M but especially for the last developments of this project. Second, I would like thank the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University for its generous support of my project. With the generous grant as Graduate Research Fellow from 2013-2014, I was able to begin working on this project by attending the Collegium Phaenomenologicum where I intensively studied Heidegger’s works on the event. Moreover, as a recipient of the Brown-Kruse dissertation fellowship for 2014-2015, I was able to finish this project. Lastly, I would like to thank my family. Thank you to Rick and Janice and David and Shirley for encouraging me on this project, especially when it came with me during holidays and family trips together. Thank you, Mom and Dad, also for always believing in me and for instilling in me the virtue of hard work and determination. Without all of these, I am not sure that I would have been able to finish this project. Thank you also to my children, Avery, Sutton, and Jude, for listening, or at least pretending to listen, when I would occasionally discuss this project at the dinner table. And thank you, in general, for all of the life that you guys have given me. And, Jen, my lovely wife, thank you for shaping and nurturing this project through our conversations and all of the life we have !vi lived together. Thank you for your love, support, and comfort, especially during the most difficult times of this project. !vii NOMENCLATURE Works by Jacques Derrida AR Acts of Religion. Edited by Gil Anidjar. New York: Routledge, 2002. DE “Une certaine possibilité impossible de dire l’événement.” In Dire l’événement, est-ce possible? Seminaire de Montréal, pour Jacques Derrida, edited by Gad Soussana, Alexis Nouss, and Jacques Derrida, 79-112. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001. GD The Gift of Death Second Edition. Translated by David Wills. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008. GGP “On the Gift: A Discussion between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion.” In God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, edited by John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, 54-78. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999. GT Given Time: 1 Counterfeit Money. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. MP Margins of Philosophy. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982. OG Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997. OH Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond. Translated by Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford, 2000. SM Specters of Marx. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994. SQ Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan. Edited by Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. VP Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Translated by Leonard Lawlor. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011. WD Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1978. !viii Works by Martin Heidegger BF Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking. Translated by Andrew Mitchell. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012. BT Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh and Dennis J. Schmidt. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010. CP Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012. E The Event. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013. FS Four Seminars. Translated by François Raffoul and Andrew Mitchell. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012. ID Identity and Difference. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. LH “Letter on ‘Humanism.’” In Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill, 239-276. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. PLT Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper Perennial, 2013. QCT The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. TB On Time and Being. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. Works by Jean-Luc Marion BG Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. !ix IE In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena. Translated by Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002. RG Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998. !x TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................ii