Spring 2019

The Light of the Gift in Homo Abyssus

Marine de la Tour

The gift in the philosophy of Ferdinand Ulrich, especially in Homo Abyssus, is an ever-present and fundamental light. But paradoxically, it is not a phenomenon that Ulrich considers in its concrete human reality, whether personal or social. The gift will be the great explicit theme of Gabe und Vergebung, his last work. In Homo Abyssus, the work that presents the metaphysical heart of Ulrich’s thought, there is no phenomenology of the gift; the logic of the gift is rather the implicit logic in which the great questions of metaphysics are clarified and certain difficulties or contradictions resolved. But it is neither a model for thinking nor a total logic or idea that would grasp the totality of the real in its concept.

__________________

To read this article in its entirety, please download the free PDF available above or buy this issue.