LIFE AS A FESTIVE OCCASION: ON MANFRED KERKHOFF‘S KAIROSOPHY

Abstract

The philosophical work of Manfred Kerkhoff focuses on the study of the notion of kairos or fit (or right) time. Gradually, Kerkhoff ‘s kairological studies turn into a kairosophy. The latter understood as a wisdom or practice orientated towards living, that takes into account the favorable opportunities that permit the flourishing of a human life. This wisdom of kairos opens up to the consideration of the accidental, including its presence in human existence. The following article wishes to emphasize that kairosophy is not only a tragic wisdom –concerned with human vulnerability, in particular with its limit, death– but it is also a wisdom of gratitude. In the last period of Kerkhoff ‘s thought, the occasion of thinking about death is intermingled with the occasion of being born, overturning his previous notions which were seemingly dominated by a thanatological point of view, that is, by a discourse centered on death.