Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The so-named rhetorical question, an ironic trope at first blush, is in truth an example of the speculative question. The ignorance of the speaker doesn't really amount to much in this case. The totally ironic question is something altogether different, for total irony points to an irrevocable split between phenomenon and essence "beyond their recuperable identity" (Kierkegaard's Instant, p. 29). The opening up of the possibility for total ironic questioning readies thinking for philosophy, philosophy in its post-Socratic phase, which has become synonymous with philosophy itself. The ironic question, ironically both phenomenon and condition for a phenomenon of questioning, exists as a prepatory gesture, and hence its eidos remains in withdrawal. Its eidos forever becomes recallable as the unrecallable: "The infinite absolute negativity of the Socratic standpoint. . . is to have the Idea merely as limit, to recollect it only as the non-recollectable" (p. 33, Kangas' emphasis).
The critique of the eroticization of the question, which eroticism almost amounts to a paraphilia among the clerisy (as does, ironically, critique), paradoxically calls for a poetics of inquiry, and implies not the temperament—poetic temperament could only be determined in its cold state—but the life of a poet. Philosophy gives us to think, poetically as must needs be, the enigmatic existence of an original preparatory thinker, of a *Socrates, in the spasm of the question. Is it possible to emulate Socrates and still be critical of the philosophical question? How do we emulate enigma, or simply admire the enigmatic existence, without succumbing to obscurantism?
In the Socratic movement, philosophy, the question "receives a radical priority over any expository discourse aiming at knowledge" (p. 24, my emphasis). Is the search for knowledge via the question supervened in favor of an apeironic priority of questioning, a priority indifferent to being and nothingness? Kangas here at this juncture equates the radical priority of Socrates' question concerning the good with the radical priority of "the original possibility of questioning—Socrates maintains a relation to the excess implied in any new beginning. Remaining faithful to this excess is the condition for remaining faithful to Socrates' 'historical-actual, phenomenological existence'" (ibid.). Fidelity to Socrates' enigmatic existence paradoxically means allowing the figure of Socrates to recede behind the absolute priority of inquiry.
Having drawn a distinction between the ironic and the speculative, between the preparation and the journey, do we then, in inquiry, seek knowledge? Not in an expository way, one might answer. Yet we might still investigate how we imagine these things are put against one another, journey and preparation, if that's how our imagination approaches the problematic. Does the absolute irony of the question ever cross paths with the expository? Or is this crossing of paths what is meant by the "enigmatic existence" of the philosopher?
Labels: anamnesis, apeiron, excess, existence, ideation, Kangas, Kierkegaard, philosophy, questions, totality Socrates
Saturday, April 11, 2009
The habit, which has become second nature, of conceiving one's relationship to oneself and to one’s surroundings as an activity of neutral cognition of objective circumstances bestows over time a reified form on human activity, without ever being able to eradicate the original "caring" character of this activity completely. This antecedent characteristic must, in the form of prereflective knowledge or marginal practices, remain present in such a way that critical analysis could make us aware of it at any time.
(Alex Honneth, Reification: A Recognition-Theoretical View (pdf), p. 19/107)
. . . [O]ur actions do not primarily have the character of an affectively neutral, cognitive stance toward the world but rather that of an affirmative, existentially colored style of caring comportment. In living we constantly concede the situational circumstances of our world a value of their own, which brings us to be concerned with our relationship to them. On this elementary level, the concept of "recognition" thus shares a fundamental notion not only with Dewey's concept of "practical involvement" but also with Heidegger's "care" and Lukács's "engaged praxis"—namely, the notion that the stance of empathetic engagement in the world, arising from the experience of the world's significance and value [Werthaftigkeit], is prior to our acts of detached cognition. A recognitional stance therefore embodies our active and constant assessment of the value that persons or things have in themselves.
(p. 23/111)
Honneth defines recognition as empathetic engagement, and goes on to define reification as "the process by which we lose the consciousness of the degree to which we owe our knowledge and cognition of other persons to an antecedent stance of empathetic engagement" (p. 40/128). He further defines forgetfulness in this instance as "reduced attentiveness" (p. 42/130). His theme is ultimately the reification of nature (by which he means a world of impersonal things?) and how this is related to the reification of persons. He says, en route to a conclusion, "our recognition of the individuality of other persons demands that we perceive objects in the particularity of all those aspects that they attach to these objects in their respective views of them" (p. 45/133).
A style of empathic engagement does not merely persist in the margins of a hegemony, like a fossil waiting to be discovered; rather, it is grown from practices of marginality. Marginality may condition cathexis–not, however, as purely a response to hegemony, in a way that could be too easily misconstrued as its overflow, but as a region of wild empathies where the existence of stances is realized. There remains a sense, though, in which the wild empathy carves out its own wildness, making a home within marginality, yes, setting up a wild house, but even more than that, engendering marginality as its habitation. This is a difficult area. Do we say of a practice of empathy that it is destined for marginality, and therefore not destined for hegemony, thereby allowing any transition between the two to be shrouded, or allowing for the escape from telos which would entail the radical transformation of practice so little understood that we should question how it is we could ever know that empathy has been completely eradicated or, conversely, transplanted anew? Why should I insist that marginality cannot be grasped as merely a response to hegemony? It is a condition of possibility of the movement between stances, felt stances–or is it a modality of such a condition, grasped intellectually as something capable of presenting itself modally–a hegemonic thought? It would be naive to think that we could easily take up residence in the marginal, even as we frequently find ourselves at the margins in our day to day lives, experiencing a marginality we have, in some part, engendered. From what corner will the question "How did we arrive here?" come?
Labels: development, existence, Honneth, reification
Barbaras offers a critique of Merleau-Ponty's concept of existence, first as it appears in The Structure of Behavior, then in Phenomenology of Perception. I need to quote at length before commenting on Barbaras' criticisms.
. . .Merleau-Ponty must show in a descending movement that if the notion of form grounds a critique of naturalism, it allows us just as much, and for the same reasons, to call intellectualism into question. The meaningful relation of the organism to its environment is still a relation to a reality, to a transcendence, and is not therefore based on a consciousness transparent to itself; it is not based on an act of knowledge. The study of behavior reveals what Merleau-Ponty calls an existence, a being-in-the-world, a tacit relation to a presence rather than a possession of something in a representation. The Structure of Behavior therefore concludes: "The natural 'thing,' the organism, the behaviors of others and my own behavior exist not only by their sense; but this sense which springs forth in them is not yet a Kantian object; the intentional life which constitutes them is not yet a representation; and the 'understanding' which gives access to them is not yet an intellection" (SC 241/225).
(The Being of the Phenomenon (hereafter Being), pp. 4-5, my bold)
Let's push aside the question of whether my philodendron relates to a transcendence (whatever that means) in the same way as organism that are typically thought to behave, which happens to coincide with the class of organisms that typically display motility, such the amoeba, the anole lizard or the elephant who sees itself in mirrors, and also the question of whether organisms ever meaningfully relate to irrealities, or relate without meaning (or form)–we are after all not really doing biology at this juncture, though we are on the verge of Barbaras' cosmobiology–so we can focus on the idea of consciousness which Barbaras seems to believe ought to have been jettisoned early on in the development of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Consciousnesses transparent to themselves are not the only kind of consciousnesses, and transparency is not the only imaginable mode of a reflexive relation of consciousness. (I realize an idea of the cogito is being implicitly criticized, fairly or unfairly; the criticism is itself an idea offered in a specific form and it will be tested.) Furthermore, a preintellectual or prerepresentational intentional life is not completely at odds with knowledge or acts of knowledge. Merleau-Ponty doesn't say as much. Why should he? He proposes another kind of "understanding," but he still conceives of it as understanding, a praktognosis he will go on to say in Phenomenology. In fact we might think that understanding is the inflected form of "understanding," once the latter concept has been established in our thinking, without then really doing away with either or being stuck with some antiquated (and derivative, ever problematic) notion of existence which witholds more than it emancipates.
Before carrying on let's look at another passage dealing with Merleau-Ponty's concept of existence as presented in Phenomenology. Barbaras notes that the concept of existence is omnipresent in Phenomenology but disappears in later works.
Existence designates the movement by which the body, which is irreducible, as we have seen, to a pure object, gives sense. In fact, "the human body is defined in terms of its property of appropriating, in an indefinite series of discontinuous acts, meaningful kernels which overcome and transfigure its natural abilities" (PHP 226/193). Existence is thus "this open and indefinite power of meaning–that is, simultaneously of grasping and communicating a sense–by which man transcends himself toward a new behavior or toward others, or toward his own thought, across his body and his speech" (PHP 226/194). The central intention of Phenomenology of Perception is this power of escape, this sense always already at work, which is not distinguished from its own accomplishment, and which, in this way, cannot be opposed to the factical foundation from which it would emerge. But by grasping this power by means of the notion of existence, Merleau-Ponty does not allow himself in Phenomenology of Perception to understand what he has discovered, for existence is conceived as human existence, that is, as the subject of the movement of transcendence rather than as the very advent of sense. It is finally "man" who "transcends himself toward a new behavior." Existence is grasped as man's facticity, even though the experience to which it refers leads us to overcome the frontal relation of man to being, to overcome the duality of subject and object. Prisoner of a dualist framework, Merleau-Ponty can therefore describe it only in a negative way: it coincides neither with the passivity of the anthropological subject situated in the objective world nor with the pure activity of the constituting subject. But existence is still really that of a subject, or rather is the subject itself, so that the fullness of the experience to which it refers cannot be attained. The notion of pre-personal consciousness, which is a term synonymous with existence, crystallizes the ambiguity. Even though Merleau-Ponty discovers an experience that is no longer personal, an experience in which the category of the person finds itself contested, he grasps it still on the basis of the personal subject, as a negation that is already its affirmation.
(pp. 8-9, Barbaras' emphasis, my bold)
I don't believe Barbaras has adequately established that for Merleau-Ponty human existence, much less existence, equates to the subject, though it is of course attestable. (One should give Merleau-Ponty a chance to explain what he means by "subject," and how he is intending us to understand the concept, for it is not after all transparent.) Additionally, it would be helpful to have an exact citation to Merleau-Ponty's discovery of prepersonal consciousness, because, off the top of my head, that could mean a few things other than what Barbaras' interpretation would have us believe. Prepersonal consciousness could be imminently personal, for instance, pregnant with the who, or with the existence through-sound, or with the sense-giving subject.
If I had to choose between existence and the very advent of sense I would choose existence. However, I'm not sure I have to choose. In what essential way is the very advent of sense not existential? We need to hear more from the anti-existential ontologist before we decide this point. For the moment, let's take a peek at Merleau-Ponty's thoughts on communication (which has perhaps been glossed over), on the existential meaning of words beneath the conceptual meanings of words, a "primordial" silence and the act that breaks the silence, simultaneously an expression and a grasping of a sense. He says:
What I communicate with primarily is not 'representations' or thought, but a speaking subject, with a certain style of being and with the 'world' at which he directs his aim. Just as the sense-giving intention which has set in motion the other person's speech is not an explicit thought, but a certain lack which is asking to be made good, so my taking up this intention is not a process of thinking on my part, but a synchronizing change of my own existence, a transformation of my being.
(Phenomenology, p. 183-184)
"I communicate with . . . a speaking subject." This is not an equation, but neither is it properly prepersonal (though logically one might think a preperson is implied). As I interpret it, nonetheless, it is precisely a with. Even if it is intended to simply state that the speaking subject is the instrument of an ego's communication, the with holds the meaning of a togetherness. Communication–synkairoticized, perhaps, with the advent of sense, a transfiguration and a trajectory–is existential through and through. What reason have we been given for thinking otherwise? Primordial silence, by which the body is refered to, its taking up of meaning prior to representation? But the body is enigmatic, which is far from saying that the body can never be understood. It secretes in itself a "significance" (p. 197, the quotes are Merleau-Ponty's). Our idea of "sense-giving" should have been transformed by Merleau-Ponty's analysis of the body as expression; the idea of significance has been challenged. The "disclosure of an immanent or incipient significance in the living body extends, as we shall see, to the whole sensible world, and our gaze, prompted by the experience of our own body, will discover in all other 'objects' the miracle of expression" (ibid., Merleau-Ponty's quotes, my bold.) It is Merleau-Ponty who has problematized the object and by implication its other pole, the subject. Barbaras would hardly disagree. Incipience, however, rather than contestation, is the key to Merleau-Ponty's thinking here. To the extent that Merleau-Ponty did abandon existence, there might be other explanations for that besides the concept being superseded by the development of a superior ontology. That said, Barbaras' reading is certainly meritorious and thought-provoking.
Labels: Barbaras, cosmobiology, existence, Merleau-Ponty, signification, subject
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Saying that people exist is almost like attributing a quality to them. It modifies existence, metasemantically, so to speak, which is how existence can come to be something like a quality. People exist suggests that existence is a potential which may or may not be activated, when in fact existence probably has an altogether different relation to activity. For some philosophical purposes, then, it would be better to say that existence peoples.
Perhaps it is only through its peopling that we can understand that existence peoples. That is, we may credit an existence that peoples with an anthropomorphism which we would ordinarily regard as our own, and this is how we begin to grasp its agency, such as it may be. This would be our limitation provided to us by existence, this anthropomorphism. But is this really the right word, anthropomorphism? Are people given as forms, or through forms? By saying that existence peoples aren't we attempting to say something like people are given through or as an activity of existence? Where do forms come in?
We might say that existence peoples epigenetically, in a movement from the amorphous, an emergence. Is the amorphous ever really shaken off by the living? Is a living form ever full?
We might also say that existence peoples phylogenetically, as it lives. Are we existents left to recapitulate, to inhabit forms handed down to us, or do we give epigenesis some fuller meaning, something even approaching transcendence? What is this living we are passing through?
We should reflect on transitivity, the through. Does it go to far to attribute agency to existence when all that we have said is that existence peoples? Who or what does existence people? What would be capable of being peopled? You? Me? Is the peopling of existence in fact reflexive? Does it pass through you and me only on its way to peopling itself? In that case would it be a proper it?
It must somehow be an error to think a pluralism of pluralities, to think existences as Existences. Consider these alternatives: existences people existences, existences people peoples; or, existence peoples existence, existence peoples people. Surely we are talking about *existence, a topic of conversation rather than existences themselves. Do we surrender to conversation? Is that a limitation provided to us by (*)existence? And yet, how do I presume to talk sensibly about the nonexistence of existence (in the singular)?
I see chaoses and things and people. Obviously existences have many modalities. Could existence be one of those modalities? Do existences single out?
What kind of relation is there between peopling and singling out? I venture to say it is a wild relation. There would be nothing necessary or essential about it. One thing I mean by saying that I do in fact see chaoses is that many if not most relations are wild relations, and sense bestowal is both limiting and limited. At the limits of sense bestowal existence peoples.
Whose limits are the limits of sense bestowal?
Sometimes I feel as if existence didn't people for me or through me or anyhow about me.
One can only commit to a personal philosophy. It doesn't come naturally, without reserve, without doubts. Do you suppose that existence is committed to you? I suppose you are committed to existence, but reasons for commitment are opaque to me. Does existence reciprocate commitments? Does existence people in order to reciprocate? Somehow I feel that would be a backwards reading, as if reciprocity were an accident of peopling. And commitment too were an accident.
Accidents happen at the limits of sense bestowal. We can only own them by an accident, or by a series of accidents: that existence peoples, that people reciprocate, that people commit. One can only commit to being given a gift, that is, to be given a gift one must give oneself to being with being given a gift, one must give oneself with giving. Is that asking too much of people? On the contrary, would it be asking too much for people to own commitment just like that without cause or reason, as if they were taking commitment from existence without acknowledging its having been given to them as people? (Yeah, yeah, the gift requires just such a taking.) Possibly many of your commitments will be met with ingratitude. People can be rough that way.
Labels: existence, gift, humans
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
It was a mistake for me to have said that isochrony is wrong. I should have restricted my criticism to a characteristic abuse of time, or of a way of being overcome by measurement. Surely isocrhony has its uses.
Bachelard says, "The time of thought is in fact so superior to the time of life that it can sometimes command life's action and life's repose" (The Dialectic of Duration, p. 102). One can disagree with this statement readily enough. However, isn't the modern discomfort with isochrony predicated on just such an intuition? On what grounds would one object to the superiority of the time of thought? Is it the mind that revolts at the proposition of such a superiority?
One of Bachelard's riffs on Pinheiro dos Santos' unpublished Rhythmanalysis:
If a particle ceased to vibrate, it would cease to be. It is now impossible to conceive the existence of an element of matter without adding to that element a specific frequency. We can therefore say that vibratory energy is the energy of existence. Why then should we not have the right to place vibration at the heart of time in its original form? We do so without any hesitation. For us, this first form of time is time that vibrates. Matter exists in and only in a time that vibrates, and it is because it rests on this time that it has energy even in repose. We would therefore be forgetting a fundamental characteristic if were to take time to be a principle of uniformity. We must ascribe fundamental duality to time since the duality inherent in vibration is its operative attribute. We now understand why Pinheiro dos Santos has no hesitation in writing that 'matter and radiation exist only in and through rhythm' (volume 2, section I, p. 18). This is not, as is so often the case, a declaration inspired by a mystique of rhythm; it really is a new intuition, firmly based on the principles of modern wave physics.
(p. 138, Bachelard's emphases, my bold)
Is existence capable of revolution? The question What is capable of revolution? strikes me as wrongheaded in that it would be better to ask who revolts (and who commands), yet we should wonder what is meant by "existence." We should take it upon ourselves to existentialize rhythmanalysis, to follow that path whithersoever it leads, or to lead it whithersoever it follows. Shall we resist dipping our toes into the cosmos? Water symbolizes mystique. Does it also provide a means for comprehending clarity? Tremendous experiments will be conducted. Toes will be dipped.
To begin to meander in an out of Bachelard's text, is the following formula too uncomfortable for vamping (or imaginary vamping as the case may be): ((rhythm)2(rhythm)3)2? If emergent rhythms are comfortably achieved (with practice), would that be precisely because one can assume tacit isochronous pulsations? Or, would it be the case that a stricture against making isochronous pulsation explicit enables the synchronous expression of alternative isochronies? Does a polychronic facility signify a mastery of disparate isochronies, or does it follow its own path? (I'll be rereading Simha Arom's African Polyphony and Polyrhythm shortly so I'll get back to the idea of isochronic pulsation in music in future posts.)
How should we question generic isochronic periodicity, if there is such a beast? The freedom to vary tempos in daily life is essential to good living. For all the good that regularity can accomplish, to live life at a single pace amounts to passing the time under hypnosis. Is life lived within a single horizon, on a single plane without superiorities or inferiorities, also a kind of hypnosis? Would we be able to endure a life totally stripped of hypnotic moments? That is to say, perhaps rhythm is only possible as (rhythm)2, and so on.
Labels: Arom, Bachelard, existence, exponential reflexivities, Pinheiro dos Santos, rhythm, synchrony, vibration
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Nancy says, emphatically, "Evil is the hatred of existence as such" (The Experience of Freedom, p. 128). As it happens existence is met with a plethora of attitudes and emotions. Most of them are ambiguous. Indifference is ambiguous (I could say "ambivalent" to tip the scales). Emotionlessness may be a kind of banality, make of banality what you will.
I'm curious about, teased by, fine shades of malice. Would the contempt of existence be more or less evil than the loathing of existence? Contempt may be more bourgeois, for what it's worth.
Resentment (I'll mention "ressentiment" out of fondness for the Gaulish tongue) may be a bourgeois feeling, but the word itself has been a polyphiboly ampolyboly. I enjoyed delicious resentments at your party (the lamb kabobs, etc.), for which I thoroughly resent you. How did a word meaning "to feel deeply or sharply" come to overwhelmingly mean "to feel oneself injured or insulted"? What sadness and pain accretes to the joys we've shared? Does recent European history tell of the proliferation of inferiorities or of injuries? Well, there's only so much the history of a single word can tell us. Can "resentment" tell us that evil begins with the feeling of existence as such? That evil is neither simply pain or hatred, but the whole pithos of feeling? Can resentment tell us that? Nah.
But it's a strange thing to resent existence, no less so for its being ordinary. (Insert ontodicy here.) If we were completely at the mercy of our feelings it wouldn't make sense to speak of good and evil. An existence of pure feelings would be like early infancy, a time without memory, and yeah, innocent of evil and good. But I regress, which reminds that to yearn to be at the mercy of feelings can't be morally unambiguous.
Once we acknowledge that existence as such can be felt, perhaps even that it must be felt, then what is existence? Is its whatness a big impossible nada? Only if we're not attuned to our feelings. And yet the big nada hangs around with its friend passivity, and it looks like existence may be in with a bad crowd. Do I resent existence, or is it feeling I resent, pure feeling? Hmm, I'm just as sharply resentful of pure thought. The resentment of feeling as such can't be good, though it may have once seemed harmless enough. As it happens feeling is felt in a plethora of ways, most of them ambiguous.
Labels: existence, Nancy, resentment
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Nancy draws a distinction between the body and the existence of the body, which at first blush may appear to set his thinking apart from other approaches to embodiment. He equates the reality of freedom with the existence of the body, and says:
The existence of a body is a free force which does not disappear even when the body is destroyed and which does not disappear as such except when the relation of this existence to another and destructive existence is itself destroyed as a relation of existences, becoming a relation of essences in a causality: such is the difference of relation between the murderer and his victim, and the difference of nonrelation between the exterminator and his mass grave. This force is neither of the "spirit" nor of the "body"; it is existence itself, impossible to confuse with a subjectivity (since it can be deprived of consciousness and will) or with an objectivity (since it can be deprived of power).
(p. 102)
There's room here to explore the ethics of abandodment and also withdrawal, to question whether Nancy's communitarianism is up to the task of outlining a livable ethics. I'd like to stay focused, however, on his notion of the body and the kind of materialism he calls ontological. He argues that because existence as such has its being in the act of existing, i.e. as a praxis, it has the actual character of a force. Thinking the force of existence implies "the thought of a transcendental materiality, or if we prefer, an ontological materiality: the withdrawal of being as a material Setzung of singularity, and the difference of singularities as a difference of forces. Prior to every determination of matter, this materiality of existence, which sets down the fact of freedom, is no less endowed with the material properties of exteriority and resistance" (p. 103). So there is something about Nancy's existence of the body, in contrast to the body as such, which is impervious or resistant to outside forces– even the annihilation of the body can't touch the existence of the body.
I think a careful reading of the phenomenologists of embodiment (Merleau-Ponty, Henry, Patočka) would show that their conceptions of the body are praxiological in key respects, are neither subjective nor objective, and tend to be existential. But where they would recognize a distinction between the body as object and the body as it is lived, Nancy has a distinction between the existence of the body and the body. Is Nancy's formulation simple and elegant, or is it a kind of metaphysical trickery? If we want to appreciate its elegance we need to be mindful of all that Nancy has said about existence. That's a dizzying prospect. Here's a start: once existence neither precedes nor follows essence, but precisely "lies in," that is constitutes essence, then, "Freedom can no longer be either 'essential' or 'existential,' but is implicated in the chiasmus of these concepts: we have to consider what makes existence, which is in its essence abandonded to a freedom, free for this abandonment, offered to it and available in it" (p. 9). Nancy's topic is freedom, and to mind the chiasmus of existence and essence we can't ignore this; however, the idea of the persistence of the existence of the body as a free force strikes me as similar to a concept of the soul, an existential soul, but precisely a soul. And though I am unsure of exactly what Nancy thinks about the soul, I wonder whether his ontological materialism is a materialism solely of living organisms who maintain a transcendental relationship to "dead" matter, or, indeed, whether it is a materialism only of those who are born. Nancy says, cryptically, that "all existence is new, in its birth and in its death to the world" (p. 11). What does death matter to an existence that is always and forever new?
Does an ontological materialism for which "dead" matter ceases to matter warrant being called a materialism? It is a kind of dynamism, which may be implied in materialism but doesn't itself necessarily imply materialism. It is significant, I think, that Nancy chooses to come down on the side of materialism, and that he sees exteriority and resistance as material properties. I ask myself whether Maine de Biran was a materialist, and the question seems unduly limiting. For all I can tell, Nancy's ontological materialism could also be a materialism of the soul. I remind you, dear reader, that I am agnostic about animism and other doctrines of the soul, and ignorant of theology, though of course I have some curiousities. So, sticking with Nancy's terms, I am being asked to believe in freedom and to believe in its chiasmatic relation to existence and essence, concepts which might also require some belief. The question for me though is not quite one of belief, but of what kind of commitment I should have to freedom even though I don't fully understand it. What kind of commitment does an ontological materialism call for?
Labels: body, existence, freedom, materialism, Nancy, ontology
Friday, October 05, 2007
The problem with infinity is that it exhausts itself in saying "inexhaustible."
I've taken the stance that exhaustion is a condition of existing in this universe. My ambivalence towards the abyss of nothingness amounts to this: if it exists, it is woven into the fabric of being. Perhaps we need a new word for the intersistence of being and its annhiliation. Flopping down in exhaustion, the mind launches into space, thoughtless. But no condition is permanent. Thoughts return. Strength returns. The ground again becomes a ground. Someday, we imagine, impermanence too will be exhausted. When exhaustion exhausts itself, it will realize its finitude which has always been real. I don't want to exhaust myself waiting for a day that has already arrived.
Labels: exhaustion, existence, infinity
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Nancy says that "freedom remains incomprehensible as long as it exposes its necessity to the core of a thought that orders it to an infinite necessity of being, and not as a finitude for which being is not the foundation" (The Experience of Freedom, p. 37). I don't quite comprehend his meaning. Does he mean that the necessity of freedom should be thought as a finitude for which being is not the foundation? He adds, "It is not so much that freedom would become 'comprehensible' in the 'more originary thinking,' but the question of freedom would certainly no longer be posed in these terms–unless it were necessary, in order to gain distance from a problematic of 'comprehensibility,' also to gain distance from 'freedom' itself" (ibidem). As far as I can make sense of it, Nancy's reading of Heidegger in this chapter invites us to abandon a metaphysical concept of freedom as a capacity to be a cause of and by oneself. He says "causality belongs to beingness [étantité], not to existence" (p. 38). Now would I want to abandon metaphysical freedom for existential freedom for the sake of comprehensibility, or do I need to gain distance from "comprehensibility" and "freedom"? When I think finititude I don't rush to a conclusion about any kind of abyss of nothingness. Death is less than nothing to me. Am I thus not thinking death, and is freedom therefore incomprehensible to me? Can existence have a hither side without a yon? Is freedom more comprehensible if we grasp existence at the limit between hither and yon? Should freedom be comprehensible?
Labels: causality, existence, finitude, freedom, Nancy
Friday, December 29, 2006
Marion asks, "Would the displacement of phenomenology from beings to (the) Being (of beings) coincide with its displacement from the 'mere phenomena' to their phenomenality?" (Reduction and Givenness, p. 46). Marion puts off answering the question immediately, but already it seems he has tipped the scales by asking whether ontology is about being (Husserl) or the Being of being and its mode of encounter (Heidegger). I'm not totally following Marion on this point. Supposing ontology could be about the mode of encounter with being, does it then necessarily follow that one must speak of the Being of beings? Is the ontological difference at all warranted by phenomenology? I myself have already spoken against the ontological difference so the scales here are not perfectly balanced; nonetheless my prejudice could be poorly grounded, so I'd like to set it aside while I look into what kind of ontology if any is called for by the phenomenological reduction.
From the outset phenomelogy sets aside the problem of being. Instead of questioning whether phenomena really exist in some way other than phenomenally, phenomenology focuses on their manner of appearing. Surely there is a kind of existence claim being made for phenomena, but it is not clear that phenomena merit the name of being. If we were to call objects that appear to conciousness from within the epoché "beings," it would have to be understood in a special sense, as a specifically phenomenological ontology. The claim of phenomenological ontology in this sense would be weaker than the claim made by ontology proper because it is only to or for consciousness that phenomenology posits the existence of something.
Phenomenology also entails another kind of existence claim: the transcendental ego must necessarily exist. The transendental ego is not apparent in the same way that the objects of consciousness are apparent. Therefore, if one wishes to speak phenomenologically of the being of the transcendental ego and one has already spoken of the being of phenomena, another designation, "Being," seems to be warranted. Furthermore, the expression "Being of beings" captures the essence of the relationship between the two designations of being.
Against this line of reasoning I wonder whether it was necessary to identify phenomena with being in the first place. That leaves open the question of the mode of encounter with being. Can this be pursued phenomologically without introducing an ontological difference? I'm not sure. What do we make of the existence of the transcendental ego, and how we do begin to describe the encounter with being?
Labels: existence, Heidegger, Husserl, Marion, ontology, phenomenology
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Ernesto Grassi (The Primordial Metaphor, p.10, footnotes omitted) muses:
Is there a tradition which offers a foundation for a conception of knowledge rooted in the historicity of ontological experience? Does the humanist tradition offer us such a possibility? A correct understanding of Humanism has been hindered by the pre-eminence of German idealism, which denied it any philosophical value precisely because it is grounded on rhetorical and metaphorical thought; by Heidegger's antihumanistic thesis; and by the interpetation of Humanism as essentially a Christian reflection on Platonism.
With regard to the concept of knowledge, Western philosophy rejected, from the very beginning, the speculative function of rhetorical language for its being anchored to the here and now of existence; consequently, it expressed a negative judgement on metaphor, since metaphor transfers and transforms the meaning of a word and, in so doing, destroys its rational precision.
We would like to propose a different thesis: That which is–namely, individual beings, participants in and participles of being, for only as such do they exist–manifests itself in reality exclusively in a concrete historical situation, defined by the here and now of existence. All beings, in their openness to being, are expressions of a call, an appeal that must be answered in the urgency of every moment. The appeals, in whose realm we exist, are everchanging and new, and the meaning of beings is transformed according to the modality of our responses to the appeals.
We shall reformulate our question: Is there a tradition which allows us to identify a nonrational foundation of knowledge, by virtue of which metaphor and rhetorical language acquire a philosophical function? I have tried elsewhere to reconstruct this tradition and here I shall summarize it with references to De Laboribus Herculis by Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406).
Although Salutati holds that knowledge is enabled by the activity of the Muses, not just one, but all nine, Grassi considers only six of them, excluding Urania, Terpsichore, and, if I'm not mistaken, Calliope (the passage in question seems to describe Thalia, though she is not named).
So what's it to me if Grassi neglects to mention Terpsichore? So she doesn't appeal to him, so what? Does a defense of erudition–for that's what Grassi offers, its urgency unmistakable if you travel in certain circles–require anything like a Terpsichore?
Terpsichore, in any event, never seems to get any respect. If you live in the Bay Area of California, you can see a painting of Terpsichore hanging in the Fine Arts Museum of San Fransisco (which, incidentally, has claimed for itself the domain "thinker.org"). The painting, by Jean-Marc Nattier, shows Terpsichore with one breast exposed. Her cheeks appear a little rosy. her eyes glazed over. She's a little tipsy. But this isn't precisely what I mean by no respect, not the all of it. The very idea of a museum is an offense to the Muses, especially Terpsichore. Who dances in a museum? It might as well be a mausoleum for the narrowness of the inspirations it permits. And I say this as one who loves graphic arts, one who loves the feeling that comes after being in a good art museum.
I know that many fine art museums have made attempts to cultivate an appreciation of performance art, hosting poetry readings, jazz recitals (ahem) and the like. It's just not the same as permitting people to dance. The seediest discothèque provides a more fitting tribute to Terpsichore than any museum ever will. Is this perhaps at the heart of the reason why Terpsichore gets no respect? Is the company she keeps just a little too democratic for modern sensibilities?
The promise of human order, or culture, concieved without room for dance is revolting. Always, in every historical epoch, the people will revolt with their feet. Kwassa Kwassa is but one example, the greatly maligned and misunderstood Chic another. The denigration of Terpsichore is unacceptable to the masses of humanity, yet every political movement that claims to speak for the masses or to represent a perfection of humanity begins and ends with the denigration of Terpsichore. What's up with that? It doesn't speak well for intellectuals, to say the least.
Labels: dance, existence, humanity, metaphor, muses, Terpsichore