The Philosophy of Emmanuel Falque: A Christian Phenomenology of Incarnation

This volume provides the first comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of key contemporary French thinker, Emmanuel Falque.

Dedicating each chapter to the main themes in his thought, this book unpacks Falque’s methodology, anthropology, phenomenology, Christian philosophy, and notions of embodiment, and further demonstrates how the concept of ’incarnation’ is Falque’s guiding thread throughout.

Following Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, continental philosophy of religion has to a large extent become a philosophy of religious experience. Emmanuel Falque, however, leads a new generation of philosophers urging a more careful consideration of human finitude, the interaction between philosophy and theology, and the position of atheism. Offering not just an alternative way of doing philosophy and theology, Falque argues that thinking itself exists in the transformation of one by the other.

The Philosophy of Emmanuel Falque presupposes no detailed knowledge of Falque or topics animating contemporary French philosophy and Catholicism. Rather, in a clear and accessible style, Deketelaere contextualises the development of Falque’s philosophy in the French intellectual landscape and showcases the originality and internal coherence of his distinct philosophical approach.

Drawing on all of Falque’s major works, including The Loving Struggle, The Metamorphosis of Finitude, and his most recent yet-to-be-translated text, Hors phénomène, this is an indispensable guide to the pioneering thought of one of today’s leading philosophers of religion.

Nikolaas Cassidy-Deketelaere is a Researcher at the Catholic University of Paris, France and the Australian Catholic University, Australia. Previously, he studied Philosophy at the University of Leuven and Theology at the University of Oxford. He is the translator of numerous texts by Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Falque and Paul Monette.