God and Human Being. An Ellipse in Emmanuel Falque’s Work

Emmanuel Falque’s work could be defined by the biblical episode of Jacob wrestling with the angel on the banks of the Jabbok. Falque himself confirms this interpretation when, in “Le combat amoureux”, he comments on Eugène Delacroix’s painting Jacob’s Struggle with the Angel and declares that his work is nothing other than this hand-to-hand combat. Falque’s work, in other words, sketches an ellipse in which two irreducibles, i.e., God and human beings, can recognize each other in mutual union, without one being assimilated into the other, and indeed still remaining in a loving struggle (combat amoureux). These two irreducibles, that are held together as the two foci of the ellipse are, also appear in a Cartesian expression that Falque likes to quote and which closes “Crossing the Rubicon: The Borderlands of Philosophy and Theology”, the well-known Larvatus prodeo, which he transforms into Larvatus pro Deo. If larvatus in Latin means covering one’s face with a mask, Falque instead removes this mask by doing philosophy bare-faced or with the face uncovered, an expression that opens his book “Le combat amoureux”. This texte means to show how this mask is definitely removed.