IV Balvant Parekh Memorial Lecture

Europe and the Stranger

By
Rodolphe Gasch
Distinguished Professor &
Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature
The State University of New York at Buffalo
Date and Time: Friday, 30 October 2015
Venue: Dr. I.G. Patel Seminar Hall
Faculty of Social Work
The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda

Synopsis of the Lecture (Prepared by Rodolphe Gasch)

With few exceptions, the prominent role of the Stranger in Platos late dialogue on the
Sophist has drawn little attention in Plato scholarship. Yet, in this dialogue Plato charges the
expatriated Stranger, who, furthermore, lacks a patronym and thus is not identifiable,
remaining a stranger to the end, with the task not only of rejecting all philosophy hitherto as
nothing more than a kind of storytelling about Being but also of committing the parricide of
Parmenides, the father of Greek philosophy itself. By refuting Parmenidess thesis on Being,
including the claim that Non-being is unthinkable and unsayable, the Stranger develops a
philosophy that for the first time merits this title. The core of his doctrine of the greatest
kinds consists in recasting Non-being in terms of otherness, thus unseating the priority of the
principle of opposition that, until then, dominated philosophical thinking. This paper inquires
into what it means for Greek philosophy to invite a stranger to uproot its founding principles
and replace them with a philosophy of alterity. I argue that, insofar as Europe, or the West,
claims to have its origin in Greece, the Strangers philosophy of alterity is, perhaps, Europes
most important but also least attended origin.
Rodolphe Gasch is Distinguished Professor & Eugenio Donato Chair of
Comparative Literature at The College of Arts and Sciences, the State
University of New York at Buffalo. He studied philosophy and
comparative literature in Munich, Berlin, and Paris. He holds an M.A. and
Ph.D. in philosophy from the Freie Universitt Berlin (Germany). Besides
translating major works by Derrida and Lacan into German and publishing
numerous articles in a variety of scholarly journals, he has published

several books: Die hybride Wissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1973), System und Metaphorik in
der Philosophie von Georges Bataille (Bern: Lang, 1978), The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and
the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard, 1986), Inventions of Difference: On Jacques
Derrida (Cambridge: Harvard, 1994), The Wild Card of Reading: On Paul de Man (Harvard,
1998), Of Minimal Things: Studies on the Notion of Relation (Stanford, 1999), The Idea of Form:
Rethinking Kants Aesthetics (Stanford, 2003), Views and Interviews: On Deconstruction in
America (The Davies Group, Publishers, 2006), The Honor of Thinking: Critique, Theory,
Philosophy (Stanford, 2007), Europe, or The Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept
(Stanford, 2009), Un Arte Muy Fragil: Sobre la Retorica de Aristoteles (Metales Pesados,
2010), The Stelliferous Fold: Toward a Virtual Law of Literatures Self-Formation (Fordham,
2011), Imada Nai Sekai Wo Motomete: Heidegger, Derrida, Lwith (Getsuyosha Limited, 2012),
Georges Bataille: Phenomenology and Phantasmatology (Stanford, 2012), Geophilosophy: On
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattaris What is Philosophy? (Northwestern University Press,
2014). His interests concern nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, critical theory,
and its relation to continental philosophy since early romanticism. Before coming to Buffalo, he
taught at the Freie Universitt, Berlin and the Johns Hopkins University.

The National Symposium Based on the Lecture

31 October 2015, 10.30 am -6 pm
Venue:
Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences
A One-Day National Symposium based on the Memorial lecture and the works of Professor Rodolphe Gasch
will be organized on 31 October 2015. Those who are interested in participating may send their abstracts to
Professor Prafulla C. Kar (prafullakar@gmail.com) as an email attachment before August 31, 2015. Balvant
Parekh Centre would provide accommodation for those who are making presentation. Registration fee for those
who are attending without presenting papers would be Rs. 1000/- One may send a DD or cheque drawn in
favour of Balvant parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences payable in Baroda.
Participants are requested to make their own travel arrangements.

Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences
C-302, Siddhi Vinayak Complex, Behind Baroda Railway Station
Faramji Road, Baroda 390007
Ph: 0265- 2320870
www.balvantparekhcentre.org.in