Disassembling Descola: Phenomenological Intersections in Onto-Typological Anthropology

Abstract

One of the effects of the so-called ontological turn has been to take the other so seriously that radical difference has been conceptualized ontologically. This stance has given rise, in some authors, as Descola, to a typological classification. However, we would suggest the possibility of a non-onto-typological anthropology based on Marion’s phenomenology of givenness. With the phenomenology of givenness, from which phenomena are given to a gifted – and therefore secondary – subject, this new understanding of subject allows us to think of phenomena as significations much more than as representations and to replace the discontinuity of ontological categories with the continuity of hermeneutics.

Keywords

• philippe descola
• jean-luc marion
• phenomenology of givenness
• representation
• ontological typology