To Declare or to Confess?
Approaches to an Evential Thinking of Confession
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to revisit a reading of confession and testimony as examined by Paul Ricoeur, in order to enrich the concept of the event as proposed in its variations by the phenomenology of givenness. This is relevant because, when approaching a phenomenon as complex as the theatrical scenic event, we encounter that it points to the limits of the regime of saturated givenness, urging us to attend to the singularity of its mode of appearing. For this part of the study, we will focus on exploring the possibility of an evential dimension of confession, or rather, a confessional dimension of the event. Thus, we shall revisit – through the reflections of Ricoeur and Derrida – a selection of issues proper to the phenomenology of the event: the figure of the witness, its epistemic relation to the event, the latter’s mode of givenness, and its consequences for hermeneutics. Although the event presents itself as an excessive phenomenon, we will chart our path from the reverse side of givenness; that is, beginning with the figures of loss.
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References
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