Revista da Abordagem Gestáltica
Print version ISSN 1809-6867
Abstract
BEATO, José Manuel. Approaches to the phenomenological and metaphysical problem of feeling in Renaud Barbaras. Rev. abordagem gestalt. [online]. 2019, vol.25, n.2, pp.130-137. ISSN 1809-6867. https://doi.org/10.18065/RAG.2019v25n2.3.
With Métaphysique du sentiment (2016), Renaud Barbaras proposes a unique and radical theory of feeling, which, at the same time, constitutes a new stage in the pursuit, extension and deepening of his "phenomenology of life". Acknowledging his debt to Mikel Dufrenne, this theoretical elaboration nevertheless affirms its originality through a critical dialogue with the phenomenologists who have problematized the issues of sensibility and affectivity: Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry and Henri Maldiney. Below and beyond the subjectivist dimension of affections and emotions, feeling, for Barbaras, consists in the archi-affective experience of openness to the deepness of the world, below and beyond finite entities. This notion, however, only gains its full meaning, of course, as articulated with the theory of "transcendental desire", understood as the phenomenalizing advancement of the subject. Feeling initiates the desire to the desired. It arouses and directs the insatiable movement of desire towards the inexhaustible deepness of the World - the world to which it opened us in an originary way.
Keywords : Feeling; Metaphysics; Desire.