“THINKING THE IMPOSSIBLE”: THE EVENT AS A POST-HEIDEGGERIAN DIVIDE IN FRENCH PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

This paper argues that the concept of the Event in post-1960 French philosophy constitutes a dual reaction to Heidegger’s legacy, particularly concerning the problem of “thinking the impossible”. For Heidegger, the limits of thought are tied to the limits of being, raising the question of whether that which transcends being can be thought at all. Drawing on Garry Gutting’s Thinking the Impossible, the paper examines a key divide between two forms of skepticism: absolute and relative. Absolute skeptics — such as Levinas, Derrida, and Marion — argue that certain aspects of reality remain fundamentally beyond conceptual grasp. Their Event is an irreducible rupture: Levinas’s ethical encounter, Derrida’s différance, and Marion’s saturated phenomenon all resist conceptual containment. Relative skeptics — like Deleuze and Badiou — treat the Event as conceptually challenging but not unthinkable. For them, Events prompt revisions of our frameworks: Deleuze’s ontological difference and Badiou’s evental rupture can be integrated within philosophical systems. The paper further explores Claude Romano’s position as a potential third path. Rejecting both ineffability and formal abstraction, Romano presents the Event as a lived transformation
that reshapes the subject’s temporal and spatial experience. By situating these divergent approaches within the legacy of Heidegger, the paper reveals a
deeper tension in post-Heideggerian thought: whether the impossible must remain conceptually inaccessible or can be rendered thinkable through renewed frameworks. In doing so, it clarifies the stakes of the Event as a philosophical concept and its role in mapping the fractures within contemporary thought.