Phenomenology of Love as Event

Rescuing Rudolf Bultmann from Heidegger's shadow, Nikolaas Cassidy-Deketelaere presents a philosophical reading of his theology, which reveals his unique phenomenology of love as an event. Bultmann (1884-1976) is widely regarded as a mere footnote to Heidegger's philosophy: a theologian whose thought was principally built on the Heideggerian analytic of human finitude. Yet, by reading Bultmann anew, in light of other continental philosophers' engagement with Heidegger - from Jaspers and Levinas to Marion and Falque - this book rejects this idea as a misunderstanding. Instead it contends that Bultmann radically develops and even improves Heidegger's phenomenology. Guiding the reader through his argument in a clear and compelling style, Cassidy-Deketelaere reveals how Bultmann understands the experience of love as not being limited to empirical occurrence but rather having a truly transcendental scope: what phenomenologists would now call 'event' (événement). With this, Bultmann's theology not only resolves the contemporary critique of Heidegger's method as precluding the dynamic between the empirical and transcendental, but further provides a new alternative paradigm of human finitude based on love, and not death (Heidegger) or birth (Arendt). Far more than a footnote, The Phenomenology of Love as Event uncovers Bultmann's significant contribution to philosophy. Through his theological writings, Bultmann shows us that love is a central experience to human existence, one that transforms the being of Dasein, despite Heidegger never allowing for it.