The invisible appears under a dark light

Preliminary remarks to a phenomenology of the nocturne

Abstract

The western philosophical tradition has always favoured light and brightness when broaching the analysis and the description of phenomena, both from an ontological and epistemological point of view. Conversely, in the present work we try to examine the concrete way of manifestation characteristic of the nocturnal, that is to say, the posible types of giveness that may take place inside the darkness: in that dark space where the invisible is paradoxically revealed. Following the guidelines set in this regard by phenomenologists like Michel Henry and Jean-Luc Marion, our purpose is to highlight the fact that maybe the nocturnal darkness constitutes, in a certain way, the supreme form of manifestation, the point zero of phenomenality.