Emmanuel Falque

The relation between life and death is a subject of perennial relevance for all human beings--and indeed, the whole world and the entire universe, in as much as, according to the saying of ancient Greek philosophy, all things that come into being pass away. Yet it is also a topic of increasing complexity, for life and death now appear to be more intertwined than previously or commonly thought. Moreover, the relation between life and death is also one of increasing urgency, as through the twin phenomena of an increase in longevity unprecedented in human history and the rendering of death, dying, and the dead person all but invisible, people living in the industrialized and post-industrialized Western world of today have lost touch with the reality of death. This radically new situation, and predicament, has implications--medical, ethical, economic, philosophical, and, not least, theological--that have barely begun to be addressed. This volume gathers together essays by a distinguished and diverse group of scientists, theologians, philosophers, and health practitioners, originally presented in a symposium sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

In France today, philosophy—phenomenology in particular—finds itself in a paradoxical relation to theology. Some debate a “theological turn." Others disavow theological arguments as if such arguments would tarnish their philosophical integrity, while nevertheless carrying out theology in other venues. In Crossing the Rubicon, Emmanuel Falque seeks to end this face-off. Convinced that “the more one theologizes, the better one philosophizes," he proposes a counterblow by theology against phenomenology. Instead of another philosophy of “the threshold" or “the leap"—and through a retrospective and forward-looking examination of his own method—he argues that an encounter between the two disciplines will reveal their mutual fruitfulness and their true distinctive borders. Falque shows that he has made the crossing between philosophy and theology and back again with audacity and perhaps a little recklessness, knowing full well that no one thinks without exposing himself to risk.

"Ce livre repose sur une décision et fait fond sur un pari : il est possible de lire aujourd'hui philosophiquement les pères de l'Église et les médiévaux, jusques et y compris dans les objets de la théologie. Certes, on n'a pas attendu ni la phénoménologie pour interroger à nouveaux frais le corpus de la théologie, ni les textes patristiques et médiévaux pour y découvrir une posture inédite pour la phénoménologie. Reste cependant que de l'une à l'autre - de la philosophie patristique et médiévale à la phénoménologie - le rapport est décisif tout autant qu'exemplaire. On ne se contentera pas, dans cet ouvrage, de sonder les racines patristiques et médiévales de la phénoménologie, mais on fera travailler la phénoménologie elle-même dans le corpus de la théologie, pour y faire voir ce que ni l'une ni l'autre n'ont peut-être pas encore vu : l'ultime possibilité de décrire phénoménologiquement les modes de manifestation de la théologie, jusques et y compris dans le vécu interne des textes de la tradition aujourd'hui à (re)découvrir. Indépendamment de leur effectivité, les concepts théologiques se traduisent ainsi en des termes philosophiques que la phénoménologie doit légitimement interroger : relation et substance dans la trinité et onto-théologie (Augustin), théophanie et apparition du phénomène (Jean Scot Érigène), détachement et réduction (Maître Eckhart), création d'Adam et visibilité de la chair (Irénée), incarnation christologique et épaisseur du corps (Tertullien), conversion des sens et intercorporéité (Bonaventure), communion des saints et genèse de la communauté (Origène), traité des anges et inter-subjectivité (Thomas d'Aquin), appel du nom et singularité d'autrui (Duns Scot)"--P. of cover.

Already widely debated upon its publication in French, this book offers a provocative account of Christ's Passion in terms not of faith but of a "credible Christianity" that can remain meaningful to nonbelievers. For Falque, anxiety, suffering, and death are not simply the "ills" of our society but the essential horizon of what we confront as humans. Doubtful of Heidegger's famous statement that the notion of salvation renders Christians unable authentically to experience anxiety in the face of death, Falque explores the Passion with a radical emphasis on the physicality and corporeality of Christ's suffering and death, and on continuities with the mortality of our bodies. Written in the wake of a friend's death, Falques's study is theologically and philosophically rigorous, yet engagingly written and deeply humane. —description from JSTOR