Renaud Barbaras and the “Nature” of the Appearing

Abstract

The thought of Renaud Barbaras is undeniably in the process of giving birth, in France, to a new phenomenological paradigm. This article intends to discuss this paradigm by developing two hypotheses. The first is that, behind the expression “phenomenological cosmology” that he himself uses to designate it and which is in itself not devoid of ambiguity (if “cosmos” means “world”, it is basically all phenomenology that presents itself as a “cosmology”), it conceals a phenomenological turn that is too little noticed, and that Ricoeur had already diagnosed in his reading of Dufrenne: a turn from a phenomenology of consciousness - or of Dasein - to a phenomenology of nature - or of physis - which obliges us to redefine its conceptual coordinates in depth. The second is that, while instituting such a paradigm, the work itself of Renaud Barbaras, because of its subtle evolutions, allows us to grasp its difficulties or ambiguities, and in so doing, to inherit it in our turn in a critical manner.