It's funny how essays and thoughts that I have considered "major" in the past year or so have been, at the time, what I have felt to be the "culmination" of my thoughts to date. My (flawed) attempt to define and delineate a concept of "relational criticism" has been one; my (again flawed) essay comparing Nietzsche's conception of "democracy" to Plato's has been another. And yet again I have come to a place where I have arrived at a new and (I feel) important delineation of my philosophical development.
Could this be the very implicit statement of this blog, "Traces."? It seems likely.
I do not presume to state something beyond the so-called "limits" of philosophy already posited. Nor do I wish to take credit, solely or completely, for what I am about to say. For I owe a debt to many a thinker before me, owe a debt to those that have influenced me until this point. Nietzsche, Derrida, Deleuze, Gadamer, Heidegger, among others. Bernard. Emilia. Byron. Moira. Legakis. Barton.
We are all within images of thought. Many of them. We share some of the same images. As if we have seen and giggled at, incorporated, some of the same internet memes. Many of us have seen and laughed at those being "rick-rolled." But many of us have not. Some of us know what it means to say "Dude. You're doing it wrong," but others do not.
And good for us for not being gods. Good for us for not seeing it all. We can't; we won't.
What I mean to say is that we are not finished "thinking the future" of our many diverging images of thought? We share some, but not others. "Science" and "philosophy" are two that many of us share in many ways. They, in turn, suggest different images, both categories by themselves. And what are those categories without their futures?
I speak to each of us in our unique "images." I have some; you have some, and some others. Don't they interact? Don't we see them in ways others do not, and don't we try to express those ways to others? Perhaps, at times, we express approaches, conceptions and concepts that others have not seen, that others do not hold as foundational, or recognized, or acknowledged. We relate them, for ourselves, to each other. I relate science to philosophy only in the way that I see science, and only the way that I see philosophy.
But what does this say about science? About philosophy? What does this say about me, and the way in which I imagine?
And what does it mean to express those things to others?
We do not know. This would require "thinking the future." I do not know how my images will relate to someone else's. Science and philosophy? Whose notion of it? Scientists can claim, egotistically, to have it figured out, to know "the interpretation." So can philosophers, almost moreso. But; does this address the problem of multiple images of thought that interact with one another in our minds and with others? Certainly not.
No one says, seriously, that we should give up on either one's image of science, or image of philosophy. No one says this except oxen, and we shant not listen to them. They are productive, these images! I am typing this on a computer. In the last sentence, the term "I" was used. Each presupposes the importance of both "science" and "philosophy." But none presupposes their future.
I think that it is high time that someone, not necessarily a "scientist" or a "philosopher," began to think the future of their image(s) of thought. Scientists should keep being scientists. Philosophers should keep being philosophers. And notice that I have ceased using quotations to describe the two, here. Science is "as such," and so is philosophy. This is why I can use the labels, use the distinctions. But who will think the future?
Perhaps it needs a new label. It shan't be a philosopher or a scientist, if we understand either label "as such."
Who will think the future, where no one else has interest? Think: make space for, engage with the idea of, consider, create, impose? WE MUST DANCE IN OUR CHAINS!
a "response" to derrida's essay, "différance."
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Any attempt to respond to a text like “Differance” is a laughably enormous task. Enormous as in hard, yes, but moreso enormous as in the question, “where to begin?” Where to begin, when the very idea of a starting point is called into question by Derrida's essay, by the neographism that is its title? “The myth of the origin” makes my starting point, any one I choose, problematic for a number of reasons. It seems impossible to enter. Impossible to decide. Undecidable. Where to start, when starting at a point, at a point of substance, perpetuates the very violence Derrida, with the neographism “differance,” seeks to overcome?
Curiously, without starting anywhere, without picking a place to begin (“In Derrida's essay, he argues...” etc.), we have begun already. Perhaps this is a beginning fitting of escaping an origination. Let us examine my introduction.
One can begin anywhere and not have begun, but be continuing. One cannot begin, but can contribute to a process of beginning. But then, if we think like that, beginning is also ending. So these terms seem to provide us with little help. Let us keep “continuing.” Have I begun an essay, here? Yes and no. I started with a blank page and now there are words on it. So yes, I began writing an essay. But what of the material my essay is engaging in? There's the word. I am engaging. Engaging with something else, something I am responding to. It's in the very name of the assignment, too: this is a “response paper.” I am continuing something. Did it need to be continued? Was it complete already?
We can think of the supplement. Here, I've added (am adding, perhaps trivially) to a whole of a work. The essay, “Differance,” has a beginning and an end. There is a first word and a last word. But it, too, is a response (to structuralism, to phenomenology, to conceptual stability) and I am responding to it. What is it responding to? What is it adding to? How can it be adding to something if it has a beginning and an end? How, too, can I be adding something to it if it is complete? It is as if Derrida's essay has its hands in all those texts it is responding to, as if, also, it has its hands in this response, too. It supplements a text, and here I am, supplementing it. So, was it complete in the first place, or incomplete? Why are we using a word like “complete?” Why are we looking for completeness?
This is something that seems to be implied by “differance”; that completeness and incompleteness are problematic terms, when they are related to each other. In “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” Derrida identifies the same problematic in the anthropological writings of Levi-Strauss. The latter calls it bricolage, although it is unclear whether or not he sees the implications that Derrida does: it is “the necessity of borrowing one's concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined,” and for Derrida, every text is a bricoleur. Unless we can think of the origin; the “engineer,” the “subject who would supposedly be the absolute origin of his own discourse and supposedly would construct it” (W&D, p. 285), every text is a response and is itself open to response. Derrida calls the “engineer” a myth of sorts. If we disbelieve in the engineer myth, and agree that all discourse is a form of bricolage, then the very idea of bricolage as different from the discourse we a propounding becomes unstabilized. There is no longer any difference!
This leaves us with massive implications. The stability of all discourse is called into question. We can no longer call it complete. Further still, calling it “incomplete” seems to fall short of what we're looking for, too, because it implies there is a category called “complete.” But if all discourse is bricolage and thus engaged in a process of continuing, then there is no complete. There is no category we can call “complete.” What term do we use to describe it, then? There is no beginning, no end to speak of, but only continuing.
Another word for it is play. Derrida uses this word, in the subject-essay and also in “Structure, Sign and Play.” Complete / incomplete could also be presence / absence. Completion suggests that everything has arrived, here. Absence suggests that something is missing. If we remember, the supplement is both. It adds to a whole as surplus, but also fills a lack in what it is supplementing. And even more thought-provoking: Play is the condition for an opposition like complete/incomplete or present/absent to exist in the first place. If all systems of discourse are bricolage, then such oppositions, which are included under the category “discourse,” are, too. They have been established because they are, for lack of a better way of putting it (and skipping a whole lot of structuralist theory which, tragically, I do not have room for here), a response to something. They can also be (and have been) responded to. Their “final meaning,” their totalization, has been deferred, like all discourse, into the future. So, the play that is the very possibility of the existence of an opposition like present/absent is at the same time the very impossibility of that opposition ever being complete or stable.
Curiously, without starting anywhere, without picking a place to begin (“In Derrida's essay, he argues...” etc.), we have begun already. Perhaps this is a beginning fitting of escaping an origination. Let us examine my introduction.
One can begin anywhere and not have begun, but be continuing. One cannot begin, but can contribute to a process of beginning. But then, if we think like that, beginning is also ending. So these terms seem to provide us with little help. Let us keep “continuing.” Have I begun an essay, here? Yes and no. I started with a blank page and now there are words on it. So yes, I began writing an essay. But what of the material my essay is engaging in? There's the word. I am engaging. Engaging with something else, something I am responding to. It's in the very name of the assignment, too: this is a “response paper.” I am continuing something. Did it need to be continued? Was it complete already?
We can think of the supplement. Here, I've added (am adding, perhaps trivially) to a whole of a work. The essay, “Differance,” has a beginning and an end. There is a first word and a last word. But it, too, is a response (to structuralism, to phenomenology, to conceptual stability) and I am responding to it. What is it responding to? What is it adding to? How can it be adding to something if it has a beginning and an end? How, too, can I be adding something to it if it is complete? It is as if Derrida's essay has its hands in all those texts it is responding to, as if, also, it has its hands in this response, too. It supplements a text, and here I am, supplementing it. So, was it complete in the first place, or incomplete? Why are we using a word like “complete?” Why are we looking for completeness?
This is something that seems to be implied by “differance”; that completeness and incompleteness are problematic terms, when they are related to each other. In “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” Derrida identifies the same problematic in the anthropological writings of Levi-Strauss. The latter calls it bricolage, although it is unclear whether or not he sees the implications that Derrida does: it is “the necessity of borrowing one's concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined,” and for Derrida, every text is a bricoleur. Unless we can think of the origin; the “engineer,” the “subject who would supposedly be the absolute origin of his own discourse and supposedly would construct it” (W&D, p. 285), every text is a response and is itself open to response. Derrida calls the “engineer” a myth of sorts. If we disbelieve in the engineer myth, and agree that all discourse is a form of bricolage, then the very idea of bricolage as different from the discourse we a propounding becomes unstabilized. There is no longer any difference!
This leaves us with massive implications. The stability of all discourse is called into question. We can no longer call it complete. Further still, calling it “incomplete” seems to fall short of what we're looking for, too, because it implies there is a category called “complete.” But if all discourse is bricolage and thus engaged in a process of continuing, then there is no complete. There is no category we can call “complete.” What term do we use to describe it, then? There is no beginning, no end to speak of, but only continuing.
Another word for it is play. Derrida uses this word, in the subject-essay and also in “Structure, Sign and Play.” Complete / incomplete could also be presence / absence. Completion suggests that everything has arrived, here. Absence suggests that something is missing. If we remember, the supplement is both. It adds to a whole as surplus, but also fills a lack in what it is supplementing. And even more thought-provoking: Play is the condition for an opposition like complete/incomplete or present/absent to exist in the first place. If all systems of discourse are bricolage, then such oppositions, which are included under the category “discourse,” are, too. They have been established because they are, for lack of a better way of putting it (and skipping a whole lot of structuralist theory which, tragically, I do not have room for here), a response to something. They can also be (and have been) responded to. Their “final meaning,” their totalization, has been deferred, like all discourse, into the future. So, the play that is the very possibility of the existence of an opposition like present/absent is at the same time the very impossibility of that opposition ever being complete or stable.
gadamer's theory of historical understanding.
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One of Gadamer's projects in Truth and Method is to develop a new approach to the way we understand historical texts. This approach would not be a method per se (that is, there would not be an objective list of “rules” to follow in order to properly understand a text) but rather a general comportment towards understanding that could be employed (and employed differently, contextually) in the region of each interpretation that is conducted. Gadamer's hermeneutic project, I will argue, is not guilty of falling into an objectivism or cognitivism as historically defined; but this does not preclude that there is an inescapable objective/cognitive element to Gadamer's three-fold conception of understanding. This essay will explore in greater depth Gadamer's conception of understanding, and illustrate how this approach escapes from objectivism while still maintaining a necessarily “objective” element. Along the way, I want to explore what Gadamer calls the “subject matter” of a text, along with specific conceptions of temporal distance and application.
It is difficult to read Gadamer without acknowledging his large debt to Heidegger, especially when we consider (as we shall, later) the notion of “prejudice” that plays such a large role in the foundational aspects of the former's project. Heidegger and Gadamer are “up to” different things, however, and this much is recognized by Gadamer in section 4 of Truth and Method. Whereas Heidegger addressed and engaged with the historical hermeneutic question “only in order to explicate the fore-structure of understanding for the purposes of ontology,” Gadamer wants to examine how hermeneutics (after some contribution by Heidegger, granted) “can do justice to the historicity of understanding (p. 268). Essentially, Gadamer wants to use Heidegger's approach to understanding (which was originally outlined only as a part of the latter's ontological explorations) to new ends, to address and overcome “Romantic” hermeneutics and their attachment to an objective reconstruction of “epoch”-based authorial intent.
What does Gadamer mean by “Romantic?” Again in section 4 of Truth and Method, Gadamer traces what he calls the “discrediting of prejudice by the Enlightenment” (p. 274). This could go by many other names, among them, for example, the rise of objectivism or the method of the natural sciences. Summarily, thinking during the Enlightenment wanted to think itself “perfect”; the ideal held was one of holding a “view from nowhere,” of being free from prejudice or bias towards any object of its thought. Gadamer argues that this “prejudice against prejudice” implicitly encompassed the Romantic hermeneutic project that wanted to critique the ideals of the Enlightenment. Spearheaded, among others, by Schliermacher and Dilthey, the Romantic hermeneutic project wished to understand a text by constructing a supposedly objective idea of a history without recourse to the “absolute” rational values of the present (the word “epoch” again seems fitting here). He calls this a “restorative tendency” that “no longer measures the past by the standards of the present, as if they were an absolute, but ascribes to past ages a value of their own” (p. 276).
While Gadamer recognizes the important contribution of a Romantic conception of historicity, it is his project to overcome the supposed “objectivity” towards historical texts that it entails. The problem for Gadamer is that “the romantic critique of the Enlightenment itself ends in Enlightenment, for it evolves as historical science and draws everything into the orbit of historicism” (p. 277). The Romantic critique of the Enlightenment is, according to Gadamer, guilty of the same “prejudice against prejudice” as the subject it is critiquing. Gadamer's first order of business, then, is to rehabilitate a notion of prejudice, a word tarnished and vilified by Enlightenment reason. This is where Gadamer's use of Heidegger comes definitively into play. Gadamer bases his notion of the word “prejudice” on Heidegger's own notion of “fore-structures of understanding” (p. 269). As soon as we receive the tiniest bit of information regarding a historical text, we create or “project” (p. 269) a fore-structure, a fore-meaning that we must evaluate as being either representative of the “thing itself” or not. If not, then a fore-meaning is not conducive to understanding and should be discarded. Interpretation, then, is a process of sorting-out fore-conceptions, of investigating whether or not they are confirmed by “the things themselves.”
For Gadamer, “this constant process of new projection constitutes the movement of understanding and interpretation” (p. 269). Instead of the notion of fore-conception (Gadamer, departing from Heidegger, uses the word “prejudice”) held by the Romantic hermeneuticists, that it was a thing to escape from in favour of a “view from nowhere,” a perfectly objective point of view regarding a historical epoch, Gadamer argues for a rehabilitated notion. Prejudice becomes, rather than a condition to be escaped in order to understand properly, the very condition of proper understanding. Prejudice is not something to be escaped from entirely, but Gadamer argues that the process of understanding and interpretation requires the revision of prejudices, of rejecting them when they do not represent the “subject matter” and of slowly, carefully coming closer to a “unity” of understanding.
This approach is difficult to delineate theoretically, but harder still to practice. How does one recognize that a prejudice is arbitrary, not reflecting “what is there” or the subject matter? This is “the constant task of understanding.” It would require the “foregrounding of one's own prejudices” (p. 271). That is, it would require recognizing one's prejudices, bringing them out into the open so they can be seen and thought in the context of a process of understanding, so a “text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth” (p. 272). This process would allow us to recognize legitimate prejudices, ones that cohere with the truth of a text, historical or otherwise. The tricky part is to not think of historical understanding as researching an “object in itself.” For Gadamer, the “subject matter” expressed by a text is not cognitively or linguistically (thus objectively) accessible, but rather exists in a sort of interplay between the narrative of an interpreter and the narrative of the text being interpreted. But even this is too simplistic. Gadamer argues that there is a tension between a text's familiarity and strangeness to us, but that this tension should “not be regarded psychologically... but truly hermeneutically” (p. 295).
It is here that we can see the grandest departure from Romantic hermeneutics. Whereas Dilthey and Schliermacher were primarily concerned with the text as a historically-intended object, Gadamer recognizes the inescapable tension between this attempt at “objectivity” and our own prejudices, our own situatedness within historical tradition. “The true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (p. 295). The in-between is between the strangeness/otherness of a text and its familiarity to us as being situated within tradition. We are not isolated from a historical text because we are as well, for all intents and purposes, within history, within tradition. To “historicize” history in this sense (to simply regard a historical text as an object) is to close the cycle of interpretation and to fail to recognize that the interpreter “has a hand in,” so to speak, what is being interpreted. The circle of understanding Gadamer paints “describes understanding as the interplay of the movement of tradition and the movement of the interpreter” (p. 293).
We can now see that the only “objectivism” to be found here is that of a fore-structure or prejudice before it has been evaluated, when one can state “this is my understanding of this text.” This understanding, though, hermeneutically understood, is contingent and never complete. There will always be a way of understanding that is clearer or “better” than one that has already been established; there will always be a new interpreter, a new interplay to be explored. This is the message, in a sense, of Gadamer's hermeneutic project; that understanding is a “constant task” and that every “generation” (recognizing of course the problematic of epochal thinking) must understand texts anew. To understand is thus to be open to the otherness of a text, of a conversation or of a historical event, to allow its truth to express itself so that it may be expressed anew to an ever-changing world. Truth, then, is not “cognitively accessible” in the sense that it will never arrive here, finally and completely, in the present. Rather, it is always caught up in the interplay between the past of a text and the interpreter in the present. Truth, and understanding, the “subject matter,” “what is there,” they all exist in the in-between, which is why each of these cannot properly be called “objective.”
It is difficult to read Gadamer without acknowledging his large debt to Heidegger, especially when we consider (as we shall, later) the notion of “prejudice” that plays such a large role in the foundational aspects of the former's project. Heidegger and Gadamer are “up to” different things, however, and this much is recognized by Gadamer in section 4 of Truth and Method. Whereas Heidegger addressed and engaged with the historical hermeneutic question “only in order to explicate the fore-structure of understanding for the purposes of ontology,” Gadamer wants to examine how hermeneutics (after some contribution by Heidegger, granted) “can do justice to the historicity of understanding (p. 268). Essentially, Gadamer wants to use Heidegger's approach to understanding (which was originally outlined only as a part of the latter's ontological explorations) to new ends, to address and overcome “Romantic” hermeneutics and their attachment to an objective reconstruction of “epoch”-based authorial intent.
What does Gadamer mean by “Romantic?” Again in section 4 of Truth and Method, Gadamer traces what he calls the “discrediting of prejudice by the Enlightenment” (p. 274). This could go by many other names, among them, for example, the rise of objectivism or the method of the natural sciences. Summarily, thinking during the Enlightenment wanted to think itself “perfect”; the ideal held was one of holding a “view from nowhere,” of being free from prejudice or bias towards any object of its thought. Gadamer argues that this “prejudice against prejudice” implicitly encompassed the Romantic hermeneutic project that wanted to critique the ideals of the Enlightenment. Spearheaded, among others, by Schliermacher and Dilthey, the Romantic hermeneutic project wished to understand a text by constructing a supposedly objective idea of a history without recourse to the “absolute” rational values of the present (the word “epoch” again seems fitting here). He calls this a “restorative tendency” that “no longer measures the past by the standards of the present, as if they were an absolute, but ascribes to past ages a value of their own” (p. 276).
While Gadamer recognizes the important contribution of a Romantic conception of historicity, it is his project to overcome the supposed “objectivity” towards historical texts that it entails. The problem for Gadamer is that “the romantic critique of the Enlightenment itself ends in Enlightenment, for it evolves as historical science and draws everything into the orbit of historicism” (p. 277). The Romantic critique of the Enlightenment is, according to Gadamer, guilty of the same “prejudice against prejudice” as the subject it is critiquing. Gadamer's first order of business, then, is to rehabilitate a notion of prejudice, a word tarnished and vilified by Enlightenment reason. This is where Gadamer's use of Heidegger comes definitively into play. Gadamer bases his notion of the word “prejudice” on Heidegger's own notion of “fore-structures of understanding” (p. 269). As soon as we receive the tiniest bit of information regarding a historical text, we create or “project” (p. 269) a fore-structure, a fore-meaning that we must evaluate as being either representative of the “thing itself” or not. If not, then a fore-meaning is not conducive to understanding and should be discarded. Interpretation, then, is a process of sorting-out fore-conceptions, of investigating whether or not they are confirmed by “the things themselves.”
For Gadamer, “this constant process of new projection constitutes the movement of understanding and interpretation” (p. 269). Instead of the notion of fore-conception (Gadamer, departing from Heidegger, uses the word “prejudice”) held by the Romantic hermeneuticists, that it was a thing to escape from in favour of a “view from nowhere,” a perfectly objective point of view regarding a historical epoch, Gadamer argues for a rehabilitated notion. Prejudice becomes, rather than a condition to be escaped in order to understand properly, the very condition of proper understanding. Prejudice is not something to be escaped from entirely, but Gadamer argues that the process of understanding and interpretation requires the revision of prejudices, of rejecting them when they do not represent the “subject matter” and of slowly, carefully coming closer to a “unity” of understanding.
This approach is difficult to delineate theoretically, but harder still to practice. How does one recognize that a prejudice is arbitrary, not reflecting “what is there” or the subject matter? This is “the constant task of understanding.” It would require the “foregrounding of one's own prejudices” (p. 271). That is, it would require recognizing one's prejudices, bringing them out into the open so they can be seen and thought in the context of a process of understanding, so a “text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth” (p. 272). This process would allow us to recognize legitimate prejudices, ones that cohere with the truth of a text, historical or otherwise. The tricky part is to not think of historical understanding as researching an “object in itself.” For Gadamer, the “subject matter” expressed by a text is not cognitively or linguistically (thus objectively) accessible, but rather exists in a sort of interplay between the narrative of an interpreter and the narrative of the text being interpreted. But even this is too simplistic. Gadamer argues that there is a tension between a text's familiarity and strangeness to us, but that this tension should “not be regarded psychologically... but truly hermeneutically” (p. 295).
It is here that we can see the grandest departure from Romantic hermeneutics. Whereas Dilthey and Schliermacher were primarily concerned with the text as a historically-intended object, Gadamer recognizes the inescapable tension between this attempt at “objectivity” and our own prejudices, our own situatedness within historical tradition. “The true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (p. 295). The in-between is between the strangeness/otherness of a text and its familiarity to us as being situated within tradition. We are not isolated from a historical text because we are as well, for all intents and purposes, within history, within tradition. To “historicize” history in this sense (to simply regard a historical text as an object) is to close the cycle of interpretation and to fail to recognize that the interpreter “has a hand in,” so to speak, what is being interpreted. The circle of understanding Gadamer paints “describes understanding as the interplay of the movement of tradition and the movement of the interpreter” (p. 293).
We can now see that the only “objectivism” to be found here is that of a fore-structure or prejudice before it has been evaluated, when one can state “this is my understanding of this text.” This understanding, though, hermeneutically understood, is contingent and never complete. There will always be a way of understanding that is clearer or “better” than one that has already been established; there will always be a new interpreter, a new interplay to be explored. This is the message, in a sense, of Gadamer's hermeneutic project; that understanding is a “constant task” and that every “generation” (recognizing of course the problematic of epochal thinking) must understand texts anew. To understand is thus to be open to the otherness of a text, of a conversation or of a historical event, to allow its truth to express itself so that it may be expressed anew to an ever-changing world. Truth, then, is not “cognitively accessible” in the sense that it will never arrive here, finally and completely, in the present. Rather, it is always caught up in the interplay between the past of a text and the interpreter in the present. Truth, and understanding, the “subject matter,” “what is there,” they all exist in the in-between, which is why each of these cannot properly be called “objective.”
socrates and thrasymachus: consistency in plato's republic.
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“You say that justice is what is to the advantage of the stronger party, but what on earth do you mean by this, Thrasymachus?” (338c)
Thrasymachus' arguments in favour of his conception of justice revolve around this summation by Socrates; justice is “what is to the advantage of the stronger party.” Book I of Plato's Republic is largely spent addressing Socrates' follow-up question to Thrasymachus: “what on earth do you mean by this?” It is evident that not even Thrasymachus has a well-developed defense for his position ready at 338c, as the twists and turns that Socrates follows in the remainder of the book illustrate that there are many trajectories for interrogating this claim. But do these trajectories all arrive at the same eventual location, or does the telos change with the approach? In other words, is Thrasymachus' account of justice consistent, or does he, in parrying the incisive discursive advances of Socrates, give different accounts of justice? This essay will address this question and, carefully examining the turns of the text, claim that, in the end, the answer is that Thrasymachus does indeed present two differing accounts of justice, the identification of which revolves around the manner in which the statement “to the advantage of the stronger party” is interpreted. These differing accounts, though, have strong similarities and even some overlap as to their implications, and so the possibility of consistency between the two remains open.
I will conduct this examination by conducting a close reading of the text in question, combined with an interrogation of the phrase “what is to the advantage of the stronger party” and the multiple methods of interpretation it seems to entail.
When Thrasymachus aggressively enters into the chain of dialogue, interrupting Socrates at 336b, the conversation – previously addressing the concept of justice – gets briefly derailed while the former seems to engage in some posturing. It isn't until 338c that Thrasymachus gives a positive account of justice; as “nothing other than the advantage of the stronger party” (338c). This mere definition does not satisfy Socrates, who asks him for clarification. Thrasymachus complies, and uses the example – at 338e and 339a – of governments which “pass laws with a view to their own advantage.” He argues that justice is established and defined by the government, making “clear that what is right and moral for its subjects is what is to its own advantage.” Here we come across the first interpretation of the claim that justice is “what is to the advantage of the stronger party;” justice is doing what is to the advantage / in the best interests of the strongest party. Thus, a person who acts in the best interests of – to use Thrasymachus' example – his government, is acting justly.
Plato successfully challenges Thrasymachus' first formulation at 339c, by pointing out the difference between what appears to be in the best interests of the strongest party, and what is actually in the strongest party's best interests; that the stronger party is still liable to error in judgment concerning what is indeed in their best interests. Socrates responds, “it follows from your line of argument that it is no more right to act to the advantage of the stronger party than it is to do the opposite, to act to their disadvantage” (339d). Thrasymachus' response here keeps the first interpretation of “what is to the advantage of the stronger party” intact. Rather than modifying it, he instead opts, at 341a, to clarify that a ruler is not a ruler when they are making a mistake. Socrates does not like this defense, and refutes the claim that a ruler – in the “precise sense” that Thrasymachus claims – would not act in their best interests, but rather in the best interests of those subject to that ruler (342c). It is suggested by Socrates' narration, at 342d, that Thrasymachus can find no way out of this and thus accepts the former's redress of his claim. The definition of justice “had been turned upside down” (343a).
It is here that we find the first great break from Thrasymachus' original account of justice; and a new interpretation of the phrase “what is to the advantage of the stronger party.” Thrasymachus has an extended monologue here, where he outlines how Socrates is “so far off understanding right and wrong, justice and injustice, that [he doesn't] even realize that justice and right are actually good for someone else – they are the advantage of the stronger party, the ruler – and bad for the underling at the receiving end” (343c). Thrasymachus is arguing (explicitly in 343d) that a just person is worse off than an unjust one, that the just person acts in accordance with their moral law, while the unjust person takes advantage of that adherence. Here, we see a second interpretation of our orienting phrase; justice is “what is to the advantage of the stronger party.” That is, justice is that act which is to the advantage / can be taken advantage of (by) the stronger party.
We can see the different character that this interpretation gives Thrasymachus' account of justice. No longer does justice carry with it a direct, positive normative character; something to do, a rule to obey. Instead, justice is that which can be taken advantage of by a stronger (unjust) party. In this sense we get a more positive definition of injustice than we get of justice. This is the difference which is established by the two different interpretations of the phrase “what is to the advantage of the stronger party”; to act in the best interests of vs. being taken advantage of (by) a stronger party; a positive definition of justice vs. a positive definition of injustice with the former definition yet to be determined.
Another difference between these two interpretations is that of activity. Specifically, I mean that in the first interpretation, the just person actively pursues what is in the best interests of the stronger party (such as a citizen acting according to the rules laid out by their government), and in the second interpretation, the just person plays a passive (their just actions are not highlighted by Thrasymachus' second account) role regarding the “advantage of the stronger party” and is actively taken advantage of by that stronger party (as in a criminal acting outside an established “just” rule).
Barring this difference in activity/passivity though, do the two interpretations really imply radically different accounts of justice? From this writer's perspective, it is not clear. For example, is it not possible that a just person by the first account could be taken advantage of by a government instead of that person willingly acceding to the action? Conversely, is it not possible that a just person might know that he is being taken advantage of and continue along the same path of action anyway, because that person wishes to ascribe to a conception of justice; as such, is this really being “taken advantage of” in the sense that Thrasymachus means? These exceptions seem to conflate some of the implications of the two interpretations. While there are definite differences in the approaches the two interpretations provide (for example, in the first interpretation, an explicit – pragmatic – definition of justice is dependent on what the best interests of the stronger party are; in the second interpretation it is not) the fact that some overlap between the two might exist belies the possibility that the accounts of justice these two interpretations suggest may not be as different as some have attested.
The defender of this “overlap” approach might make an argument that goes like this: the first interpretation is an example, an instantiation of the broader second argument. Both suggest that justice is that which is done for someone else, for a stronger party (whether that be criminals taking advantage of just people or governments giving orders to their citizens); and, that the stronger party is in a position to benefit and the weaker party may suffer as a result (the criminal stealing from the just person or the dictator stealing what doesn't belong to him). As such, both fit a third, less specific interpretation of our phrase: justice is “what is to the advantage of the stronger party.” That is, justice is “what is to the advantage of another, stronger party.” The inverse being, “justice is not to the advantage of oneself.” To act to the advantage of oneself would be unjust.
The critic of the overlap argument might respond, here, that this proves the separation the two interpretations because in the first, justice was acting in the best interests of the state, as defined by the state. The implications of that response are that the state appears to be acting justly by creating the laws that are to its advantage, “what is of advantage to the current government” (339a). If this action by a government is just and done in its own interests, then the first interpretation is not consistent with the second. However, Thrasymachus makes it clear who “justice” in the first interpretation is directed at: the citizens, the “weaker party.” Nowhere does Thrasymachus claim that the government is bound by its own laws. As the institution making those laws, the government would be “above the law,” and indeed the government could thus act unjustly (by acting in its own interests) to define the laws for a citizenry that themselves are acting in the government's own interests. In other words, the government creates laws in its own interest; thus it acts unjustly. This argument seems compelling. However, it is not clear whether or not an identification of the first interpretation as an “example” of the second provides any sound basis for a claim of consistency.
The two interpretations are not identical. Their “areas of expression” have different diameters, even if they do “overlap.” It is not clear if the shared foundational assumptions of the two interpretations are enough to establish a clear claim of consistency. In order to more firmly establish an argument for the overlapping diameters of these interpretations, a careful interrogation of the meaning of “consistency” in this context and a more complete analysis of the foundational assumptions of the two interpretations would be needed, and there is not space for that here. In the end, we do not have sufficient evidence to support the overlap theory with confidence. I have demonstrated quite clearly, though, that the two interpretations of Socrates' phrase “what is to the advantage of the stronger party” indicate a semantic and diametric difference between the two grand statements made by Thrasymachus. Barring further development of our overlap theory, this difference is enough to, at least contingently, establish a claim of inconsistency between the two interpretations.
Thrasymachus' arguments in favour of his conception of justice revolve around this summation by Socrates; justice is “what is to the advantage of the stronger party.” Book I of Plato's Republic is largely spent addressing Socrates' follow-up question to Thrasymachus: “what on earth do you mean by this?” It is evident that not even Thrasymachus has a well-developed defense for his position ready at 338c, as the twists and turns that Socrates follows in the remainder of the book illustrate that there are many trajectories for interrogating this claim. But do these trajectories all arrive at the same eventual location, or does the telos change with the approach? In other words, is Thrasymachus' account of justice consistent, or does he, in parrying the incisive discursive advances of Socrates, give different accounts of justice? This essay will address this question and, carefully examining the turns of the text, claim that, in the end, the answer is that Thrasymachus does indeed present two differing accounts of justice, the identification of which revolves around the manner in which the statement “to the advantage of the stronger party” is interpreted. These differing accounts, though, have strong similarities and even some overlap as to their implications, and so the possibility of consistency between the two remains open.
I will conduct this examination by conducting a close reading of the text in question, combined with an interrogation of the phrase “what is to the advantage of the stronger party” and the multiple methods of interpretation it seems to entail.
When Thrasymachus aggressively enters into the chain of dialogue, interrupting Socrates at 336b, the conversation – previously addressing the concept of justice – gets briefly derailed while the former seems to engage in some posturing. It isn't until 338c that Thrasymachus gives a positive account of justice; as “nothing other than the advantage of the stronger party” (338c). This mere definition does not satisfy Socrates, who asks him for clarification. Thrasymachus complies, and uses the example – at 338e and 339a – of governments which “pass laws with a view to their own advantage.” He argues that justice is established and defined by the government, making “clear that what is right and moral for its subjects is what is to its own advantage.” Here we come across the first interpretation of the claim that justice is “what is to the advantage of the stronger party;” justice is doing what is to the advantage / in the best interests of the strongest party. Thus, a person who acts in the best interests of – to use Thrasymachus' example – his government, is acting justly.
Plato successfully challenges Thrasymachus' first formulation at 339c, by pointing out the difference between what appears to be in the best interests of the strongest party, and what is actually in the strongest party's best interests; that the stronger party is still liable to error in judgment concerning what is indeed in their best interests. Socrates responds, “it follows from your line of argument that it is no more right to act to the advantage of the stronger party than it is to do the opposite, to act to their disadvantage” (339d). Thrasymachus' response here keeps the first interpretation of “what is to the advantage of the stronger party” intact. Rather than modifying it, he instead opts, at 341a, to clarify that a ruler is not a ruler when they are making a mistake. Socrates does not like this defense, and refutes the claim that a ruler – in the “precise sense” that Thrasymachus claims – would not act in their best interests, but rather in the best interests of those subject to that ruler (342c). It is suggested by Socrates' narration, at 342d, that Thrasymachus can find no way out of this and thus accepts the former's redress of his claim. The definition of justice “had been turned upside down” (343a).
It is here that we find the first great break from Thrasymachus' original account of justice; and a new interpretation of the phrase “what is to the advantage of the stronger party.” Thrasymachus has an extended monologue here, where he outlines how Socrates is “so far off understanding right and wrong, justice and injustice, that [he doesn't] even realize that justice and right are actually good for someone else – they are the advantage of the stronger party, the ruler – and bad for the underling at the receiving end” (343c). Thrasymachus is arguing (explicitly in 343d) that a just person is worse off than an unjust one, that the just person acts in accordance with their moral law, while the unjust person takes advantage of that adherence. Here, we see a second interpretation of our orienting phrase; justice is “what is to the advantage of the stronger party.” That is, justice is that act which is to the advantage / can be taken advantage of (by) the stronger party.
We can see the different character that this interpretation gives Thrasymachus' account of justice. No longer does justice carry with it a direct, positive normative character; something to do, a rule to obey. Instead, justice is that which can be taken advantage of by a stronger (unjust) party. In this sense we get a more positive definition of injustice than we get of justice. This is the difference which is established by the two different interpretations of the phrase “what is to the advantage of the stronger party”; to act in the best interests of vs. being taken advantage of (by) a stronger party; a positive definition of justice vs. a positive definition of injustice with the former definition yet to be determined.
Another difference between these two interpretations is that of activity. Specifically, I mean that in the first interpretation, the just person actively pursues what is in the best interests of the stronger party (such as a citizen acting according to the rules laid out by their government), and in the second interpretation, the just person plays a passive (their just actions are not highlighted by Thrasymachus' second account) role regarding the “advantage of the stronger party” and is actively taken advantage of by that stronger party (as in a criminal acting outside an established “just” rule).
Barring this difference in activity/passivity though, do the two interpretations really imply radically different accounts of justice? From this writer's perspective, it is not clear. For example, is it not possible that a just person by the first account could be taken advantage of by a government instead of that person willingly acceding to the action? Conversely, is it not possible that a just person might know that he is being taken advantage of and continue along the same path of action anyway, because that person wishes to ascribe to a conception of justice; as such, is this really being “taken advantage of” in the sense that Thrasymachus means? These exceptions seem to conflate some of the implications of the two interpretations. While there are definite differences in the approaches the two interpretations provide (for example, in the first interpretation, an explicit – pragmatic – definition of justice is dependent on what the best interests of the stronger party are; in the second interpretation it is not) the fact that some overlap between the two might exist belies the possibility that the accounts of justice these two interpretations suggest may not be as different as some have attested.
The defender of this “overlap” approach might make an argument that goes like this: the first interpretation is an example, an instantiation of the broader second argument. Both suggest that justice is that which is done for someone else, for a stronger party (whether that be criminals taking advantage of just people or governments giving orders to their citizens); and, that the stronger party is in a position to benefit and the weaker party may suffer as a result (the criminal stealing from the just person or the dictator stealing what doesn't belong to him). As such, both fit a third, less specific interpretation of our phrase: justice is “what is to the advantage of the stronger party.” That is, justice is “what is to the advantage of another, stronger party.” The inverse being, “justice is not to the advantage of oneself.” To act to the advantage of oneself would be unjust.
The critic of the overlap argument might respond, here, that this proves the separation the two interpretations because in the first, justice was acting in the best interests of the state, as defined by the state. The implications of that response are that the state appears to be acting justly by creating the laws that are to its advantage, “what is of advantage to the current government” (339a). If this action by a government is just and done in its own interests, then the first interpretation is not consistent with the second. However, Thrasymachus makes it clear who “justice” in the first interpretation is directed at: the citizens, the “weaker party.” Nowhere does Thrasymachus claim that the government is bound by its own laws. As the institution making those laws, the government would be “above the law,” and indeed the government could thus act unjustly (by acting in its own interests) to define the laws for a citizenry that themselves are acting in the government's own interests. In other words, the government creates laws in its own interest; thus it acts unjustly. This argument seems compelling. However, it is not clear whether or not an identification of the first interpretation as an “example” of the second provides any sound basis for a claim of consistency.
The two interpretations are not identical. Their “areas of expression” have different diameters, even if they do “overlap.” It is not clear if the shared foundational assumptions of the two interpretations are enough to establish a clear claim of consistency. In order to more firmly establish an argument for the overlapping diameters of these interpretations, a careful interrogation of the meaning of “consistency” in this context and a more complete analysis of the foundational assumptions of the two interpretations would be needed, and there is not space for that here. In the end, we do not have sufficient evidence to support the overlap theory with confidence. I have demonstrated quite clearly, though, that the two interpretations of Socrates' phrase “what is to the advantage of the stronger party” indicate a semantic and diametric difference between the two grand statements made by Thrasymachus. Barring further development of our overlap theory, this difference is enough to, at least contingently, establish a claim of inconsistency between the two interpretations.
is ovid's rape-poetry pornographic?
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In Amy Richlin's piece “Reading Ovid's Rapes,” the Roman poet's works are presented in a problematic light. After laying out a theoretical framework for her analysis, Richlin systematically examines several poems by Ovid and, specifically, the position on rape they suggest. Her thesis is this; that, rather than ignoring the discursive and social implications of Ovid's illustrations of rape, rather than simply “tracing the literary origins” of these treatments or claiming that they impicitly contain evidence suggesting that Ovid had “sympathy” for women, Ovid's use of sexual violence as an illustrative device betrays a pornographic (and anachronistically sadistic) pleasure taken from these writings and from sexual violence in general. Richlin is writing against centuries of discursive tradition, here, and is attempting to draw out/identify/create narratives or frames from Ovid's historical texts that have been ignored, or that have gone uncovered within the canon of Western literature. In this essay I want to argue that, while the readings of Ovid's works that Richlin conducts are of definite merit, the definition of “pornography” that frames her text makes their overall critical impact less powerful than it could, and perhaps – if I may be excused for making a normative statement – should be. My goal, here, is to examine Richlin's valuable (re)readings and find a definition that gives them the discursive punch that they deserve.
To begin, let us see if we find Richlin's treatment of pornography agreeable. She purports to define the term as “that which converts living beings into objects.” This is, perhaps, a definition that is too strong for the case Richlin is making here. If “pornography” is any instantiation of a subject/object relationship between living beings, then the term loses is critical force because almost every interaction with living beings becomes pornographic. If we take Richlin's strong definition at face value, then Ovid's treatments of sexual violence are pornographic, but so is my expectation of the waiter who serves me at a restaurant to serve me without reservation. Are we willing to suggest that such an objectification – while theoretically problematic, perhaps – should be called “pornography?” This is, thus, a definition that is too radical, too ideal for the “metapornographic” work it exists within. We are left with two options: (1) accept Richlin's definition and the discursive consequences such an acceptance comes with, or (2) reinterpret the definition, creating in its place one that better fits what Richlin is doing in this text. Because the former would constitute a radical reworking of Richlin's historical interpretations (which, aside from their relationship to the initial definition, appear to have discursive merit), I propose to take the latter route, thus keeping her readings of Ovid intact. Looking at what Richlin's text is implicitly doing, I want to propose a definition that will better fit the text's performativity.
Richlin first puts the writing of Ovid into historical context, drawing on recent sources that suggest Roman life was full of depictions of sexual violence. From theatrical shows and games that “exhibit[ed] the same traits as Ovid's writing,” to humour, to methods of education, the themes of rape and violence appear to have been pervasive in Roman culture. It is no surprise, then, that “Ovid's rapes play a significant role in his work.” Here, Richlin seems to be suggesting that Ovid's treatment of sexual violence is reflective of a general comportment towards sexual violence in Roman society and culture. At the least, Richlin is suggesting that “Ovid's rapes” were conditioned at least in part by the society he was a part of (“texts are inseparable from their cultures”). This marks part of the theoretical significance of the work Richlin is conducting here; Ovid's writings are indicative of Roman culture in general and are not isolated. Richlin states that “in the tradition of Western literature [Ovid's] influence has been great.” If Ovid was influenced by a society with a so-called “pornographic” comportment towards sexual violence, then is that comportment also present in discursive traditions that have been influenced by Ovid?
Let us examine just what this comportment is.
After historically situation Ovid's writing, Richlin engages in a close reading of some of Ovid's poetry. In one, where Apollo attempts to rape Daphne, Richlin identifies that “looking at [Daphne] is the point.” The female as one who falls under the objectifying “gaze” of powerful men is a theme that Richlin uncovers again and again in the rape-poetry of Ovid. Richlin rejects Curran's suggestion that Ovid's in-depth treatment of the fear displayed by rape victims “shows empathy for them.” This rejection is made in favour of the “gaze” argument highlighted above. Such illustrations “surely stress how visually attractive the... fear... made the victim.” In other words, rather than illustrating the fear of a victim in order to create some sympathy for them (rather than granting the victim a certain subjectivity), these illustrations were included because they were titillating for the typical Roman reader; a wealthy male. Further, Richlin identifies that even when the tables are turned and a female character turns a male into a victim (as in the case of Philomela), the focus on bodily mutilation (Philomela had her tongue cut out after redressing Tereus for raping her) overshadows this element; an objectifying pleasure that even conditions the role-reversal. Ovid's explicit focus on mutilation that occurs (again in Philomela) right after a stylistically-implicit rape also suggests a conflation between violence and sex that Richlin finds problematic; “violence against the body stands in for rape.”
Also identified by Richlin in her readings of Ovid's treatments of sexual violence is a linguistic pattern that separates women as the object of such treatments. “The men are subjects of action verbs, especially of the gaze.” In Ovid's poetry, claims Richlin, the men are those who act and the women are those who passively accept the actions of men. Further in support of Richlin's argument is that, when women in Ovid's rape-poetry do act, they “act only to show their fear.” We earlier identified Richlin's connection between women showing fear in Ovid's poetry and the “gaze” of the subject, and the same connection exists here; women are, here, denied a subjectivity and remain constantly the object of a subjective male “gaze.”
Richlin's readings are undoubtedly of merit to the Western discursive tradition, and also to attempts to expand such a tradition so that it may represent with equity a plurality of narratives. However, the label of “pornography” that Richlin attaches to her readings, and the strong, broad definition she attaches to the term appear to undermine the importance of these readings. I have outlined the reasoning behind this argument above, and now wish to present a new definition that fits more faithfully with the readings Richlin has conducted here. Taking into account the brief outline of Richlin's work I have conducted above, it seems quite obvious that the intrinsic objectification of the “gaze” that Richlin identifies in Ovid's work is objectification of quite a different sort than that of the objectification I am guilty of perpetrating upon my server at a restaurant. What is the relevant difference, here?
The greatest difference seems to stem from the vast variation in scope-of-context. A server at a restaurant, for example, is the victim of an objectification that is, practically speaking, escapable. If I were to meet that server outside of the context of a restaurant, I would treat them as I would any other human. In other words, the context of objectification is small, and thus escapable. The example of “the gaze” as identified by Richlin in Ovid's work, however, is pervasive. One can escape being a server (indeed one does whenever one leaves the place of employment), but one can never (or very rarely) escape the fact that one has been categorized/socialized/identified as a woman in society. It is this difference in scope that I believe should inform our new definition of “pornography.” It might be written like this: “that which inescapably and pervasively converts living beings into objects.”
What effect does this re-definition have upon Richlin's re-readings of Ovid? It appears to give her illustrations more theoretical impact, for one; it separates “pornography” – truly pervasive, practically-inescapable objectification – from objectification that, while still in need of theoretical address, is less concerning, less in need of immediate action. It identifies – together with the suggestion that Ovid's writings have influenced the Western literary tradition – the “gaze” of Ovid's poetry as something that must be critically and quickly addressed, puts emphasis on the problem of the objectification of women, the denial of female subjectivities, and separates this from less pressing concerns.
In the end, is Ovid's poetry guilty of falling under the definition of “pornography?” By both Richlin's original definition and our new, revised one, the answer is yes. Ovid's rape-poetry objectifies women, victimizes them, seemingly for the pleasure of the subject who is reading it.
To begin, let us see if we find Richlin's treatment of pornography agreeable. She purports to define the term as “that which converts living beings into objects.” This is, perhaps, a definition that is too strong for the case Richlin is making here. If “pornography” is any instantiation of a subject/object relationship between living beings, then the term loses is critical force because almost every interaction with living beings becomes pornographic. If we take Richlin's strong definition at face value, then Ovid's treatments of sexual violence are pornographic, but so is my expectation of the waiter who serves me at a restaurant to serve me without reservation. Are we willing to suggest that such an objectification – while theoretically problematic, perhaps – should be called “pornography?” This is, thus, a definition that is too radical, too ideal for the “metapornographic” work it exists within. We are left with two options: (1) accept Richlin's definition and the discursive consequences such an acceptance comes with, or (2) reinterpret the definition, creating in its place one that better fits what Richlin is doing in this text. Because the former would constitute a radical reworking of Richlin's historical interpretations (which, aside from their relationship to the initial definition, appear to have discursive merit), I propose to take the latter route, thus keeping her readings of Ovid intact. Looking at what Richlin's text is implicitly doing, I want to propose a definition that will better fit the text's performativity.
Richlin first puts the writing of Ovid into historical context, drawing on recent sources that suggest Roman life was full of depictions of sexual violence. From theatrical shows and games that “exhibit[ed] the same traits as Ovid's writing,” to humour, to methods of education, the themes of rape and violence appear to have been pervasive in Roman culture. It is no surprise, then, that “Ovid's rapes play a significant role in his work.” Here, Richlin seems to be suggesting that Ovid's treatment of sexual violence is reflective of a general comportment towards sexual violence in Roman society and culture. At the least, Richlin is suggesting that “Ovid's rapes” were conditioned at least in part by the society he was a part of (“texts are inseparable from their cultures”). This marks part of the theoretical significance of the work Richlin is conducting here; Ovid's writings are indicative of Roman culture in general and are not isolated. Richlin states that “in the tradition of Western literature [Ovid's] influence has been great.” If Ovid was influenced by a society with a so-called “pornographic” comportment towards sexual violence, then is that comportment also present in discursive traditions that have been influenced by Ovid?
Let us examine just what this comportment is.
After historically situation Ovid's writing, Richlin engages in a close reading of some of Ovid's poetry. In one, where Apollo attempts to rape Daphne, Richlin identifies that “looking at [Daphne] is the point.” The female as one who falls under the objectifying “gaze” of powerful men is a theme that Richlin uncovers again and again in the rape-poetry of Ovid. Richlin rejects Curran's suggestion that Ovid's in-depth treatment of the fear displayed by rape victims “shows empathy for them.” This rejection is made in favour of the “gaze” argument highlighted above. Such illustrations “surely stress how visually attractive the... fear... made the victim.” In other words, rather than illustrating the fear of a victim in order to create some sympathy for them (rather than granting the victim a certain subjectivity), these illustrations were included because they were titillating for the typical Roman reader; a wealthy male. Further, Richlin identifies that even when the tables are turned and a female character turns a male into a victim (as in the case of Philomela), the focus on bodily mutilation (Philomela had her tongue cut out after redressing Tereus for raping her) overshadows this element; an objectifying pleasure that even conditions the role-reversal. Ovid's explicit focus on mutilation that occurs (again in Philomela) right after a stylistically-implicit rape also suggests a conflation between violence and sex that Richlin finds problematic; “violence against the body stands in for rape.”
Also identified by Richlin in her readings of Ovid's treatments of sexual violence is a linguistic pattern that separates women as the object of such treatments. “The men are subjects of action verbs, especially of the gaze.” In Ovid's poetry, claims Richlin, the men are those who act and the women are those who passively accept the actions of men. Further in support of Richlin's argument is that, when women in Ovid's rape-poetry do act, they “act only to show their fear.” We earlier identified Richlin's connection between women showing fear in Ovid's poetry and the “gaze” of the subject, and the same connection exists here; women are, here, denied a subjectivity and remain constantly the object of a subjective male “gaze.”
Richlin's readings are undoubtedly of merit to the Western discursive tradition, and also to attempts to expand such a tradition so that it may represent with equity a plurality of narratives. However, the label of “pornography” that Richlin attaches to her readings, and the strong, broad definition she attaches to the term appear to undermine the importance of these readings. I have outlined the reasoning behind this argument above, and now wish to present a new definition that fits more faithfully with the readings Richlin has conducted here. Taking into account the brief outline of Richlin's work I have conducted above, it seems quite obvious that the intrinsic objectification of the “gaze” that Richlin identifies in Ovid's work is objectification of quite a different sort than that of the objectification I am guilty of perpetrating upon my server at a restaurant. What is the relevant difference, here?
The greatest difference seems to stem from the vast variation in scope-of-context. A server at a restaurant, for example, is the victim of an objectification that is, practically speaking, escapable. If I were to meet that server outside of the context of a restaurant, I would treat them as I would any other human. In other words, the context of objectification is small, and thus escapable. The example of “the gaze” as identified by Richlin in Ovid's work, however, is pervasive. One can escape being a server (indeed one does whenever one leaves the place of employment), but one can never (or very rarely) escape the fact that one has been categorized/socialized/identified as a woman in society. It is this difference in scope that I believe should inform our new definition of “pornography.” It might be written like this: “that which inescapably and pervasively converts living beings into objects.”
What effect does this re-definition have upon Richlin's re-readings of Ovid? It appears to give her illustrations more theoretical impact, for one; it separates “pornography” – truly pervasive, practically-inescapable objectification – from objectification that, while still in need of theoretical address, is less concerning, less in need of immediate action. It identifies – together with the suggestion that Ovid's writings have influenced the Western literary tradition – the “gaze” of Ovid's poetry as something that must be critically and quickly addressed, puts emphasis on the problem of the objectification of women, the denial of female subjectivities, and separates this from less pressing concerns.
In the end, is Ovid's poetry guilty of falling under the definition of “pornography?” By both Richlin's original definition and our new, revised one, the answer is yes. Ovid's rape-poetry objectifies women, victimizes them, seemingly for the pleasure of the subject who is reading it.
how can a reason be reasoned with? derrida and the necessary unconditional.
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“Man himself must first of all have become calculable, regular, necessary, even in his own image of himself, if he to be able to stand security for his own future...”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, p. 494
Introduction.
“A reason must let itself be reasoned with” (Rogues, p. 159). This is a sentence that comes at the end of Derrida's book, Rogues. It also summarizes the direction in which he thinks we must travel and the destination at which we must arrive (it is a certain manner of destination). We want a reason, any reason, every reason, to be reasoned with! Looking to the end, the telos, leaves us with this statement, but with no context, no distance, and with no ability to openly and reasonably – that is, to responsibly – address it and comprehend it. When telos is taken as telos, we are presented with a fictional grounding that we, as philosophers, and as individuals within a given social system, are bound to work within, only within. Derrida wants to dig: “A reason must let itself be reasoned with.” There is more to it; more to the text than that which comes at its end; more to a concept or a framework than the direction it looks like it is headed in; and further, addressing the theme of Derrida's essay and indeed of this essay, more to reason than that which is contained within a specific and contextual Idea of it.
In this essay, my aim is to elucidate Derrida's analysis of reason and calculability (and by extension the incalculable) that can be found in Rogues, and further to engage with these ideas critically to observe their applicability to practical life. In particular, I want to focus on Derrida's critique of teleology and his insistence on the heterogenous relationship between unconditional and conditional rationality. I will begin by defining some of Derrida's terminology. In order to preserve the fluid nature of Derrida's conceptual terms, my examination of these terms will, of course, remain contingent on further readings; these definitions do not claim to be teleologically complete. Secondly, I will attempt to derive a cohesive statement that outlines a space-making method for conceptualizing and conceiving rationalit(ies), based on the ideas and concepts contained within Rogues. Any of my own major departures from or reconceptualizations of Derrida's thought will be noted and examined. Finally, I will briefly examine the practical applicability of the conceptualized framework; are Derrida's ideas usable? Further, if so, what might their application look like in a world so gripped by a love for, or a desire to honour, reason?
PART ONE: Terminological/conceptual analysis and explication.
“A reason must let itself be reasoned with”; a complicated claim, to be sure. There are many aspects of this statement that we can address. To begin, “a,” implying more than one reason, a plurality and heterogeneity. Secondly, “must,” an imperative, implying a necessity or a requirement. Further, two instances of “reason,” seeming, superficially, to be implying a tautology. What does it mean to reason with reason? Finally, the “let itself”; a submission or a revealing that opens itself to the “be reasoned with.”
i. The “a” as representing a pluralistic, heterogeneous rationality.
First of all, let us address the “a.” Why does Derrida not just say “reason”? Why does he itemize it, numerate it? He does not say “a” by mistake. Indeed, we must consider “reason” to be “reasons,” not only in the sense of justification, of multiple justifications, but further of a multiplicity of rationalities, of schemas or systems of reason. The “a” is used here as a reminder that there is more than one reason, more than one rationality that Derrida is considering, including. At least, there is more than one that he wishes to include. This plurality of reasons can be seen in “all the differences between mathematics, the natural or life sciences, the human sciences, the social sciences or the humanities, physics as well as biology, law and political economy, politology, psychology, psychoanalysis, and literary theory, along with all the techniques and institutional communities that are inseparable from their knowledge... paradigm, themata, episteme...” (Rogues, p. 120). The impression we get from this long numeration of disciplines and topical delineations is that the number of “reasons” that are suggested by Derrida's “a” are innumerable; at any rate, they are terrifyingly large in quantity, shifting and dividing, connecting and reforming with time and distance. I would propose this: in reason(s), there is a certain mitosis and a certain iterability.
Derrida further argues – in a theme that will appear again in the second section of this essay – that the consideration of multiple reasons, of a plurality of rationalities, is something that a certain view of justice, Derrida's view, necessarily calls us to do. “It is also the just as rational necessity, rational, that is, from the point of view of a history and of a development of the sciences, to take into account plural rationalities [emphasis mine]...” This plurality at once (as we will examine in greater detail later on) problematises the claim of an architectonic of reason, a systematic unity to reason, one that has a telos. Each reason's relationship to another is “untranslatable” and “without analogy” (Rogues, p. 121), but what Derrida calls the “architectonic desire” of the sovereign reason attempts to force these disparate and singular reasons to submit to an order, its order. Indeed, for Derrida it is “in the name of” these plural rationalities that we must call into question this “architectonic desire.”
ii: The “must” as an unconditional moral imperative that suggests a Derridean justice.
This commentary regarding “architectonic desire” reveals to us a helpful, but incomplete notion of Derrida's conception of justice; that such a justice would be a calling-into-question of a unifying system, a topology and direction that leads to a goal, a telos. This calling-into-question is done in the interests of the existent narratives that are excluded by the unifying system. In the case of reason, specifically, doing reason justice (“saving the honour of reason”) means calling into question the grand narrative of a hegemonic, calculable and architectonic conception in the name of all those rational narratives that are lost, forgotten, covered up or excluded by that grand narrative. But it is, as always, more than this still. Let us continue our examination of Derrida's sentence.
The topic of justice brings us to the second aspect of the sentence “a reason must let itself be reasoned with” that I wish to address; the “must.” This entails, as I said above, an imperative, a moral imperative if we are here reading Derrida as an ethicist. This “must” would be one of the conditions of a Derridean justice, a “there can be justice only if.” What does this look like in the context of Derrida's thoughts on reason? “A reason must let itself be reasoned with.” There can be justice perpetuated for reason(s) only if a reason forgoes its architectonic desire and lets itself be reasoned with. Why? Conveniently, an answer is suggested by an analysis of the following two aspects of Derrida's sentence, the final ones I will engage with in this paper: the “let itself” and the “be reasoned with.” In Part Two, we will see how the “must” fits into a larger schematization of Derrida's discourse on reason.
iii: The “to be reasoned with” as a heterogeneous relationship between the calculable and the incalculable.
What does it mean, here, “to be reasoned with”? At first glance, the interplay of the first “reason” (the reason that must let itself) and the second “reason” (the one that is doing the reasoning) appears tautologous. How can one reason with reason? Another reading of the statement, however (especially considering our previous explication of the “a” as a plurality of reasons) suggests something quite different. The statement is still problematic, however. If reason(s) are “untranslatable” and “without analogy,” how can one reason with another? It seems as though, by suggesting that there can be, indeed, some translation between rationalities, that Derrida is not escaping the desire for an architectonic systematic that he claims to disapprove of. Is this really what Derrida is suggesting, though? That to “be reasoned with” means to be rationally analyzed and critiqued from the vantage point of another reason, another rationality? Surely not, if we are to maintain the thesis that the reason(s) named or suggested by Derrida are untranslatable, heterogenous and that they possess a unique alterity only repeated in their own iterability (as Derrida says on p. 150, there is no perfect repetition). What is Derrida suggesting, then? Let us examine this carefully.
To begin, it is safe to say that, in Derrida's estimation, the distance between two “reasons” is incalculable. Derrida also uses the word untranslatable, and we can use this word to illustrate what Derrida is attempting to say about justice in the context of reason. We can say this: the “knowledge” of one reason cannot be translated into “knowledge” for another reason; that is, you cannot hope to interpret and evaluate one reason from the vantage point of another. Far from being the final resting place for reason's hope for pluralistic recognition and justice for reason(s), though, this farthest impassable boundary is indeed the very condition for that responsibility. “A 'responsibility' or a 'decision' cannot be founded on or justified by any knowledge as such, that is, without a leap between two discontinuous and radically heterogeneous orders” (Rogues, p. 146). Responsibility and justice for pluralistic rationalities become possible, for Derrida, when a calculable reason makes a “leap” into what is incalculable. I will elaborate upon this theme slightly further in the next section on the “let itself,” and further still in Part Two.
iv. The “let itself” as a conditional's opening to interaction with the unconditional.
To “be reasoned with” means a reason taking a leap outside its own calculable and evaluative rule; means being open to a higher, incalculable rule, one that cannot be called a “rule” in the same sense as a calculable one. The reason that “lets itself” be reasoned with is the reason that opens itself to unconditional reason, one that is to-come. “Without the absolute singularity of the incalculable and the exceptional, no thing and no one, nothing other and thus nothing, arrives or happens” (Rogues, p. 148). Here we see the “must” return to the relationship between calculable and incalculable, between conditional and unconditional; a reason must “let itself” be reasoned with in order to do justice to a pluralistic rationality.
What does it mean that without this recourse to a reason “letting itself,” then “nothing other and thus nothing arrives or happens”? A reason is isolated; “untranslatable” as Derrida says. Other reasons (the ones suggested as a part of Derrida's “pluralistic rationality”) are thus necessarily other to that reason. I am reminded here of late Wittgenstein's notion of “language games” (in his On Certainty) that can only be played by those who know “the rules.” In Wittgenstein as well as in Derrida, the rule of a reason/language game is the determining factor for what is considered “knowledge.” The difference between the two conceptualizations, however, is that, for Wittgenstein, what is “outside” the rule of a language game is nonsensical and not worthy of attention. Derrida, however, argues that unconditional justice that is heterogeneously separate from an unconditional rule of a reason (and yet at the same time inextricably and necessarily linked to it) is absolutely essential to a proper or responsible thinking of reason; thus both the conditional and the unconditional are required to think reason justly. Reason is not just a rule; it is an unconditional openness the exceeds the rule and creates for it the very possibility of a movement of justice.
Such a sentiment can be seen explicitly in Rogues: “The heterogeneity between justice and law does not exclude but, on the contrary, calls for their in-separability: there can be no justice without an appeal to juridical determinations and to the force of law; and there can be no becoming, no transformation, history, or perfectibility of law without an appeal to a justice that will nonetheless always exceed it” (Rogues, p. 150). Indeed, rather than the conditional law of a reason being removed and inaccessible to its conditional (incalculable) aspect, the existence and development of the conditional is the necessary circumstance for the existence and development of the unconditional, and vice versa!
PART TWO: An approach to, and thoughts on responsibly thinking reason.
i. A theoretical summation and characterization of justice in the name of pluralistic reason(s).
a) Summation and characterization: of the terminology above.
Our terminological and conceptual analysis has left us with a mass of ideas and conceptions that it would now be helpful to tie together into something a little bit more cohesive. Let us start somewhere simple, somewhere known: the reason of the nation-state, which Derrida identifies as the rationality that expresses its sovereignty on top of others (the implicit plurality of the “a”) out of a desire for an architectonic and teleological schematic of reason (Rogues, p. 155). This architectonic desire does an injustice to the pluralism of reasons that exist, hoping instead for a cohesive and analogous ability to state and summarize the whole of reasons as a calculable totality.
The problem that Derrida sees is this: the attempts at translation and incorporation that one rationality attempts to do in order to summarize a calculable totality of reason is always done from the vantage point of the conditional law of one specific reason. The conditional laws or rules of “other” reasons are thus interpreted and incorporated on the basis of the laws of rules of the reason doing the interpreting or evaluating. The singularity, the alterity, of the “other” reasons (the singularity that Derrida, here, wishes to preserve, celebrate and do justice to) is thus destroyed by the overriding sovereignty of the reason that can express that sovereignty on top of others. In Derrida's own words, when a single reason attempts to evaluate another without recourse to some unconditional form of justice, then “no thing and no one, nothing other and thus nothing, arrives or happens.” Indeed, the arrival is prevented! The absolute adherence to the rule of that specific reason, and thus the failure to open itself to the possibility of another rule, the possibility of exceeding that rule. prevents the arrival of a reason that exceeds the grand narrative in question in the name of justice.
What, then, does this opening look like? This is, indeed, the “letting itself be reasoned with”; we can now finally understand that phrase as a whole. A reason must open itself to the possibility of rules outside of itself, of recognizing them and of welcoming them with open arms; and this can only be done, in Derrida's estimation, by recognizing the heterogeneous but inseparable relationship between the calculable and the incalculable, between the conditional and the unconditional. Let us go further, let us say the whole thing: “A reason must let itself be reasoned with.” In order to justly represent reason(s), in order to “do honour to reason,” to make space for those not included, we must allow each reason (especially those who have the ability to express a sovereign power over others) to relate to and engage with its unconditional aspect. Without this openness to a rule of no rules, the indivisible, untranslatable and incalculable space between reason(s) and that inseparably relates to those reason(s) individually, there can be no welcoming of the other(s) of reason.
Still, though, there is more than that: a reason's interaction between conditional and unconditional is not just the requirement of the welcoming of others. The welcoming of other reasons, indeed, must become a condition for reason as it exists always. The relation should not be the exception; it should be, in a roundabout manner, the rule. For Derrida, the reason that the two (calculable and incalculable, conditional and unconditional) are inseparable is because the relation is a condition of a just reason itself. “According to a transaction that is each time novel, each time without precedent, reason goes through and goes between, on the one side, the reasoned exigency of calculation or conditionality and, on the other, the intransigent, nonnegotiable exigency of unconditional incalculability. This intractable exigency wins out [a raison de] and must win out over everything. On both sides, then, whether it is a question of singularity or universality, and each time both at once, both calculation and the incalculable are necessary” (Rogues, p. 150). Both the calculable and incalculable are necessary to save the honour of reason; and indeed, a just reason includes both.
The incalculable is without a rule, without a law, and so the interaction between conditional and unconditional must be novel in every instance. The calculable does not dominate the incalculable, but interacts with it. The reason is simple enough; if we were to place a rule atop the relation we speak of (if the relationship were one of domination), we would relegate the unconditional back into the conditional and thus not achieve the justice we seek at all. And because there is always more to include, always more to say, always something else to make space for (another rule, another reason), the totalized arrival of the unconditional is always deferred, always a to-come rather than something we can ever welcome in its completeness. Though the relationship between conditional and unconditional is a necessity, the unconditional will always exceed (untranslatably so) its conditional relative. Here, it is the process that is celebrated, the orientation towards welcoming a stranger into your home that is the implicit goal; not the final entrance of everything but the opening up to the possibility of anything (any rule, any reason) arriving and being treated with a space-making hospitality that is in itself unconditional and incalculable.
b) Summation and characterization: of dirt and of shovels.
Let's consider this situation in another way. This is not a Derridean conceptualization, but rather my own recasting of Derrida's framework for an unconditional justice of reason. Imagine ourselves to be in a cave, our cave. We have lived there our whole lives. I want to paint a rationality (one that has a “architectonic desire”) here as a “ground” (the ground of our cave!) that is taken, it the context of that rationality, to be stable and secure, complete and closed. The rules of a given rationality with this attitude are calculable and thus knowable, but limited and conditional. They are comfortable! We know the dimensions of our cave; we know what is inside of it. But their stability, the stability of our knowledge, is also a fiction, and thus our comfort at its completeness is one, too. Indeed, we have forgotten how to dig; how to pierce the border of our comfortable, knowable and calculable world with the recognition of the possibility of something new bubbling up from the hole we are digging.
What appears might be monstrous, might be horrifying; but also might be wonderful. It will certainly not fit within the rules, within the space, of our previously-comfortable bubble. But then; if it does not fit within those rules, then we are presented with further proof that they were not complete to begin with.
The conclusion we are left with is that, if there is more “out there,” more that we have not seen and made space for, then we have a responsibility towards finding those things we have missed, left out, or have yet to discover, and towards making space for them. This can be said of reason. The rules of a nation-state rationality are like the comforting dimensions and contents of our cave. But the just reason is one that digs, one that is not content with the boundaries and contents of its dwelling because it recognizes that there is more to be seen. Because there is more that we have not seen, that we have yet to recognize, we do not know how the way in which we are living in our cave is affecting that “more,” whether or not we are subjecting it to our rule without our knowledge, or even with our knowledge that fails, itself to recognize that transgression.
Justice digs; it is not satisfied, never satisfied with what it knows and always seeks to exceed itself.
ii. Observations of the “let itself”; examples in popular culture and society.
We have yet to see a wholesale practical application of thinking Derridan justice in our society. I want to address whether such a notion can possibly be incorporated into practical life in this society, and I will do so in the next section. For, now, however, I want to address a few instances where we might briefly see glimmers of a Derridean justice surfacing within our society and our popular culture.
a) Battlestar Galactica, suicide bombing, and a shift in perspective.
In Ronald D. Moore's popular reimagining of the television series Battlestar Galactica, the science-fiction setting allows the showrunners to address issues that pertain to our society without launching a direct critique, and makes space for those who watch to open the horizons of their “rational” opinions of such-and-such an issue. We will examine one of those issues, and the space made for an opening, a “letting itself”, here. The main plot is as follows: Humans have lost their homes, formerly spanning thirteen planets, to the Cylons (machines of their own invention) who infiltrated human security installations and launched a nuclear attack, many of them sacrificing themselves in the process. The theme of a sacrificial attack, of “suicide bombing” has already been established, and it parallels the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
In the following seasons, we see a certain stance towards the idea of suicide bombing developed and maintained among the surviving humans; that the act of the suicide bomber as sacrificing themselves in an attack upon their enemies is inhuman, something only a machine could do, a “toaster” as the Cylons are referred to. The parallel with the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, and the buildup of racism against Muslims is clear. This orientation towards the suicide bomber changes drastically, however, when the humans settle on a planet that is soon overrun by the Cylons, who enslave the human population under the guise of “working together.”
When the Cylons found a human-constituted police force on the planet, members of the human resistance group see an opportunity; convince one of the newly-inaugurated police officers to strap a bomb to themselves and detonate it at a high-profile Cylon-attended event. This opportunity (taken by the humans) is an opening up of a previously-established rationality surrounding the suicide bomber; what was once unthinkable now, indeed, is understandable. The fiction of Battlestar Galactica does affect the world outside; not only are the characters in the show made to face the limits of their ethical rationality surrounding the suicide bomber, but viewers of the show are also made to question the absolute moral decisions they have made surrounding the topic. We are made, ever so briefly, to engage with the unconditional that opens up the horizons (a horizon without horizon) of our rational thought to new possibilities.
b) Nine Inch Nails, the music industry, and the internet.
When Trent Reznor released the most recent Nine Inch Nails album, “The Slip,” on the internet for free, people took notice. The album's success (a worldwide tour, millions of downloads, and increased hype for the band) triggered a rethinking of traditional music-industry strategies of promotion, and made space for an opening-up of the possibilities of such strategies. The introduction of a “real” album for sale in music stores also made space for an opening-up of how art and music is valued in our society.
For a long time before the release of “The Slip,” the music industry worked for and promoted its artists within the scope of a certain reason. It was a reason of capitalism, one of the “nation-state” model that Derrida examines in Rogues. Reznor's “internet-model,” though, called the supremacy and the sovereignty of the music industry's institution into question, and punctured a hole in the rationality of that industry that made space for new possibilities of promotion, distribution and appreciation. Music consumers could now access an artist's album for free; the “viral” quality of internet memes helped to spread the word; the download page asked for a user's e-mail address that can be used for further promotion for the band, as well.
Further, the introduction of the “real” album in stores (with a jewel-case, artwork, and a bonus DVD) made space for a reconceptualization of the “value” of music. Whereas before, one was ostensibly paying for the music (one bought an album for, say, $12.99 and paid for the music, the jewel-case, the CD and the artwork), now that the album was available for free on the internet, one was only paying for the material product and the not the art it contained. What, then, is the value of music? Needless to say, Reznor's internet-release has opened the horizon of the possibilities of the value of music.
c) Is the “let itself” letting itself?
For all of the hope and possibility opened up by the two examples above, they are brief examples that close their horizons once more after their affect has been produced. The question remains; is there space for an opening on the scale of Derridean justice to remain open and not simply make one insertion, only to disappear as if it had never existed? I want to explore this possibility in the following section.
iii. Can Derridean justice exist on a mass scale?
Can an appeal to the unconditional aspect of a reason remain intact? We have not seen evidence of this possibility yet, not in a sustained way. We can navigate this question by way of examining the ability, in the context of Derrida's thoughts on the relation between conditional and unconditional, of such a thing occurring.
First, let us examine the nature of Derrida's illustration of justice. From a practical point of view (and Derrida himself admits this in other works) unconditional justice cannot be reached absolutely. Indeed, unconditional justice must remain what is appealed to by the conditional. The arrival of an unconditional justice is thus always deferred into the future, never knowable or assimilable into a conditional and calculable structure of reason. It is thus not a question of the absolute arrival of an absolute and indivisible unconditional justice. Is is, rather, a question of the maintaining of a relationship between conditional and unconditional.
Further, because every relation between a conditional and unconditional is novel, it is not the simple maintenance of a relationship but rather a constant process of relation. One must relate again and again, not stopping. What caused the disappearance of the opening in our two cultural examples above was that the process of relation came to an end. How, then, is it possible to maintain a process of constant relation between conditional and unconditional? It certainly appears to be a lot of work; are members of our society, already weighed down by social and cultural pressures, going to open themselves up to the conditional aspects of their lives on top of it all?
Further, are those who subscribe to a architectonic conception of reason going to open themselves up to new possibilities? Analytic philosophers? How are they to overcome the dogma of their cave if they believe that the dogma is actually their salvation? These are questions that I do not have the time nor space to address here. They are, however, pressing questions; ones that demand answers if Derrida's treatise on justice is to be engaged with further.
Conclusion.
Reason has allowed itself to become closed-off from its unconditional aspect. In doing so, it has prevented itself from being reasoned with. In this essay, I have examined the phrase “a reason must let itself be reasoned with” and come to some contingent conclusions as to the complexity that this sentence contains. It suggests a plurality of rationalities that must allow space for each other if justice is to be done; this allowing for space is how a reason might itself be reasoned with; by the relationship of a conditional rule of a reason with its unconditional aspect.
I have also examined the nature of this conception of rational justice as it has existed in our society previously, and how a more constant relationship between conditional and unconditional might increase the scope of this Derridean justice. There is more, always more; more work to be done, more to discover, more to make space for, and more to learn.
WORKS CITED:
Derrida, Jacques. “Rogues: Two Essays on Reason.” trans. Pascale-Anne Brault, Michael Naas. 2005, Stanford University Press.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, p. 494
Introduction.
“A reason must let itself be reasoned with” (Rogues, p. 159). This is a sentence that comes at the end of Derrida's book, Rogues. It also summarizes the direction in which he thinks we must travel and the destination at which we must arrive (it is a certain manner of destination). We want a reason, any reason, every reason, to be reasoned with! Looking to the end, the telos, leaves us with this statement, but with no context, no distance, and with no ability to openly and reasonably – that is, to responsibly – address it and comprehend it. When telos is taken as telos, we are presented with a fictional grounding that we, as philosophers, and as individuals within a given social system, are bound to work within, only within. Derrida wants to dig: “A reason must let itself be reasoned with.” There is more to it; more to the text than that which comes at its end; more to a concept or a framework than the direction it looks like it is headed in; and further, addressing the theme of Derrida's essay and indeed of this essay, more to reason than that which is contained within a specific and contextual Idea of it.
In this essay, my aim is to elucidate Derrida's analysis of reason and calculability (and by extension the incalculable) that can be found in Rogues, and further to engage with these ideas critically to observe their applicability to practical life. In particular, I want to focus on Derrida's critique of teleology and his insistence on the heterogenous relationship between unconditional and conditional rationality. I will begin by defining some of Derrida's terminology. In order to preserve the fluid nature of Derrida's conceptual terms, my examination of these terms will, of course, remain contingent on further readings; these definitions do not claim to be teleologically complete. Secondly, I will attempt to derive a cohesive statement that outlines a space-making method for conceptualizing and conceiving rationalit(ies), based on the ideas and concepts contained within Rogues. Any of my own major departures from or reconceptualizations of Derrida's thought will be noted and examined. Finally, I will briefly examine the practical applicability of the conceptualized framework; are Derrida's ideas usable? Further, if so, what might their application look like in a world so gripped by a love for, or a desire to honour, reason?
PART ONE: Terminological/conceptual analysis and explication.
“A reason must let itself be reasoned with”; a complicated claim, to be sure. There are many aspects of this statement that we can address. To begin, “a,” implying more than one reason, a plurality and heterogeneity. Secondly, “must,” an imperative, implying a necessity or a requirement. Further, two instances of “reason,” seeming, superficially, to be implying a tautology. What does it mean to reason with reason? Finally, the “let itself”; a submission or a revealing that opens itself to the “be reasoned with.”
i. The “a” as representing a pluralistic, heterogeneous rationality.
First of all, let us address the “a.” Why does Derrida not just say “reason”? Why does he itemize it, numerate it? He does not say “a” by mistake. Indeed, we must consider “reason” to be “reasons,” not only in the sense of justification, of multiple justifications, but further of a multiplicity of rationalities, of schemas or systems of reason. The “a” is used here as a reminder that there is more than one reason, more than one rationality that Derrida is considering, including. At least, there is more than one that he wishes to include. This plurality of reasons can be seen in “all the differences between mathematics, the natural or life sciences, the human sciences, the social sciences or the humanities, physics as well as biology, law and political economy, politology, psychology, psychoanalysis, and literary theory, along with all the techniques and institutional communities that are inseparable from their knowledge... paradigm, themata, episteme...” (Rogues, p. 120). The impression we get from this long numeration of disciplines and topical delineations is that the number of “reasons” that are suggested by Derrida's “a” are innumerable; at any rate, they are terrifyingly large in quantity, shifting and dividing, connecting and reforming with time and distance. I would propose this: in reason(s), there is a certain mitosis and a certain iterability.
Derrida further argues – in a theme that will appear again in the second section of this essay – that the consideration of multiple reasons, of a plurality of rationalities, is something that a certain view of justice, Derrida's view, necessarily calls us to do. “It is also the just as rational necessity, rational, that is, from the point of view of a history and of a development of the sciences, to take into account plural rationalities [emphasis mine]...” This plurality at once (as we will examine in greater detail later on) problematises the claim of an architectonic of reason, a systematic unity to reason, one that has a telos. Each reason's relationship to another is “untranslatable” and “without analogy” (Rogues, p. 121), but what Derrida calls the “architectonic desire” of the sovereign reason attempts to force these disparate and singular reasons to submit to an order, its order. Indeed, for Derrida it is “in the name of” these plural rationalities that we must call into question this “architectonic desire.”
ii: The “must” as an unconditional moral imperative that suggests a Derridean justice.
This commentary regarding “architectonic desire” reveals to us a helpful, but incomplete notion of Derrida's conception of justice; that such a justice would be a calling-into-question of a unifying system, a topology and direction that leads to a goal, a telos. This calling-into-question is done in the interests of the existent narratives that are excluded by the unifying system. In the case of reason, specifically, doing reason justice (“saving the honour of reason”) means calling into question the grand narrative of a hegemonic, calculable and architectonic conception in the name of all those rational narratives that are lost, forgotten, covered up or excluded by that grand narrative. But it is, as always, more than this still. Let us continue our examination of Derrida's sentence.
The topic of justice brings us to the second aspect of the sentence “a reason must let itself be reasoned with” that I wish to address; the “must.” This entails, as I said above, an imperative, a moral imperative if we are here reading Derrida as an ethicist. This “must” would be one of the conditions of a Derridean justice, a “there can be justice only if.” What does this look like in the context of Derrida's thoughts on reason? “A reason must let itself be reasoned with.” There can be justice perpetuated for reason(s) only if a reason forgoes its architectonic desire and lets itself be reasoned with. Why? Conveniently, an answer is suggested by an analysis of the following two aspects of Derrida's sentence, the final ones I will engage with in this paper: the “let itself” and the “be reasoned with.” In Part Two, we will see how the “must” fits into a larger schematization of Derrida's discourse on reason.
iii: The “to be reasoned with” as a heterogeneous relationship between the calculable and the incalculable.
What does it mean, here, “to be reasoned with”? At first glance, the interplay of the first “reason” (the reason that must let itself) and the second “reason” (the one that is doing the reasoning) appears tautologous. How can one reason with reason? Another reading of the statement, however (especially considering our previous explication of the “a” as a plurality of reasons) suggests something quite different. The statement is still problematic, however. If reason(s) are “untranslatable” and “without analogy,” how can one reason with another? It seems as though, by suggesting that there can be, indeed, some translation between rationalities, that Derrida is not escaping the desire for an architectonic systematic that he claims to disapprove of. Is this really what Derrida is suggesting, though? That to “be reasoned with” means to be rationally analyzed and critiqued from the vantage point of another reason, another rationality? Surely not, if we are to maintain the thesis that the reason(s) named or suggested by Derrida are untranslatable, heterogenous and that they possess a unique alterity only repeated in their own iterability (as Derrida says on p. 150, there is no perfect repetition). What is Derrida suggesting, then? Let us examine this carefully.
To begin, it is safe to say that, in Derrida's estimation, the distance between two “reasons” is incalculable. Derrida also uses the word untranslatable, and we can use this word to illustrate what Derrida is attempting to say about justice in the context of reason. We can say this: the “knowledge” of one reason cannot be translated into “knowledge” for another reason; that is, you cannot hope to interpret and evaluate one reason from the vantage point of another. Far from being the final resting place for reason's hope for pluralistic recognition and justice for reason(s), though, this farthest impassable boundary is indeed the very condition for that responsibility. “A 'responsibility' or a 'decision' cannot be founded on or justified by any knowledge as such, that is, without a leap between two discontinuous and radically heterogeneous orders” (Rogues, p. 146). Responsibility and justice for pluralistic rationalities become possible, for Derrida, when a calculable reason makes a “leap” into what is incalculable. I will elaborate upon this theme slightly further in the next section on the “let itself,” and further still in Part Two.
iv. The “let itself” as a conditional's opening to interaction with the unconditional.
To “be reasoned with” means a reason taking a leap outside its own calculable and evaluative rule; means being open to a higher, incalculable rule, one that cannot be called a “rule” in the same sense as a calculable one. The reason that “lets itself” be reasoned with is the reason that opens itself to unconditional reason, one that is to-come. “Without the absolute singularity of the incalculable and the exceptional, no thing and no one, nothing other and thus nothing, arrives or happens” (Rogues, p. 148). Here we see the “must” return to the relationship between calculable and incalculable, between conditional and unconditional; a reason must “let itself” be reasoned with in order to do justice to a pluralistic rationality.
What does it mean that without this recourse to a reason “letting itself,” then “nothing other and thus nothing arrives or happens”? A reason is isolated; “untranslatable” as Derrida says. Other reasons (the ones suggested as a part of Derrida's “pluralistic rationality”) are thus necessarily other to that reason. I am reminded here of late Wittgenstein's notion of “language games” (in his On Certainty) that can only be played by those who know “the rules.” In Wittgenstein as well as in Derrida, the rule of a reason/language game is the determining factor for what is considered “knowledge.” The difference between the two conceptualizations, however, is that, for Wittgenstein, what is “outside” the rule of a language game is nonsensical and not worthy of attention. Derrida, however, argues that unconditional justice that is heterogeneously separate from an unconditional rule of a reason (and yet at the same time inextricably and necessarily linked to it) is absolutely essential to a proper or responsible thinking of reason; thus both the conditional and the unconditional are required to think reason justly. Reason is not just a rule; it is an unconditional openness the exceeds the rule and creates for it the very possibility of a movement of justice.
Such a sentiment can be seen explicitly in Rogues: “The heterogeneity between justice and law does not exclude but, on the contrary, calls for their in-separability: there can be no justice without an appeal to juridical determinations and to the force of law; and there can be no becoming, no transformation, history, or perfectibility of law without an appeal to a justice that will nonetheless always exceed it” (Rogues, p. 150). Indeed, rather than the conditional law of a reason being removed and inaccessible to its conditional (incalculable) aspect, the existence and development of the conditional is the necessary circumstance for the existence and development of the unconditional, and vice versa!
PART TWO: An approach to, and thoughts on responsibly thinking reason.
i. A theoretical summation and characterization of justice in the name of pluralistic reason(s).
a) Summation and characterization: of the terminology above.
Our terminological and conceptual analysis has left us with a mass of ideas and conceptions that it would now be helpful to tie together into something a little bit more cohesive. Let us start somewhere simple, somewhere known: the reason of the nation-state, which Derrida identifies as the rationality that expresses its sovereignty on top of others (the implicit plurality of the “a”) out of a desire for an architectonic and teleological schematic of reason (Rogues, p. 155). This architectonic desire does an injustice to the pluralism of reasons that exist, hoping instead for a cohesive and analogous ability to state and summarize the whole of reasons as a calculable totality.
The problem that Derrida sees is this: the attempts at translation and incorporation that one rationality attempts to do in order to summarize a calculable totality of reason is always done from the vantage point of the conditional law of one specific reason. The conditional laws or rules of “other” reasons are thus interpreted and incorporated on the basis of the laws of rules of the reason doing the interpreting or evaluating. The singularity, the alterity, of the “other” reasons (the singularity that Derrida, here, wishes to preserve, celebrate and do justice to) is thus destroyed by the overriding sovereignty of the reason that can express that sovereignty on top of others. In Derrida's own words, when a single reason attempts to evaluate another without recourse to some unconditional form of justice, then “no thing and no one, nothing other and thus nothing, arrives or happens.” Indeed, the arrival is prevented! The absolute adherence to the rule of that specific reason, and thus the failure to open itself to the possibility of another rule, the possibility of exceeding that rule. prevents the arrival of a reason that exceeds the grand narrative in question in the name of justice.
What, then, does this opening look like? This is, indeed, the “letting itself be reasoned with”; we can now finally understand that phrase as a whole. A reason must open itself to the possibility of rules outside of itself, of recognizing them and of welcoming them with open arms; and this can only be done, in Derrida's estimation, by recognizing the heterogeneous but inseparable relationship between the calculable and the incalculable, between the conditional and the unconditional. Let us go further, let us say the whole thing: “A reason must let itself be reasoned with.” In order to justly represent reason(s), in order to “do honour to reason,” to make space for those not included, we must allow each reason (especially those who have the ability to express a sovereign power over others) to relate to and engage with its unconditional aspect. Without this openness to a rule of no rules, the indivisible, untranslatable and incalculable space between reason(s) and that inseparably relates to those reason(s) individually, there can be no welcoming of the other(s) of reason.
Still, though, there is more than that: a reason's interaction between conditional and unconditional is not just the requirement of the welcoming of others. The welcoming of other reasons, indeed, must become a condition for reason as it exists always. The relation should not be the exception; it should be, in a roundabout manner, the rule. For Derrida, the reason that the two (calculable and incalculable, conditional and unconditional) are inseparable is because the relation is a condition of a just reason itself. “According to a transaction that is each time novel, each time without precedent, reason goes through and goes between, on the one side, the reasoned exigency of calculation or conditionality and, on the other, the intransigent, nonnegotiable exigency of unconditional incalculability. This intractable exigency wins out [a raison de] and must win out over everything. On both sides, then, whether it is a question of singularity or universality, and each time both at once, both calculation and the incalculable are necessary” (Rogues, p. 150). Both the calculable and incalculable are necessary to save the honour of reason; and indeed, a just reason includes both.
The incalculable is without a rule, without a law, and so the interaction between conditional and unconditional must be novel in every instance. The calculable does not dominate the incalculable, but interacts with it. The reason is simple enough; if we were to place a rule atop the relation we speak of (if the relationship were one of domination), we would relegate the unconditional back into the conditional and thus not achieve the justice we seek at all. And because there is always more to include, always more to say, always something else to make space for (another rule, another reason), the totalized arrival of the unconditional is always deferred, always a to-come rather than something we can ever welcome in its completeness. Though the relationship between conditional and unconditional is a necessity, the unconditional will always exceed (untranslatably so) its conditional relative. Here, it is the process that is celebrated, the orientation towards welcoming a stranger into your home that is the implicit goal; not the final entrance of everything but the opening up to the possibility of anything (any rule, any reason) arriving and being treated with a space-making hospitality that is in itself unconditional and incalculable.
b) Summation and characterization: of dirt and of shovels.
Let's consider this situation in another way. This is not a Derridean conceptualization, but rather my own recasting of Derrida's framework for an unconditional justice of reason. Imagine ourselves to be in a cave, our cave. We have lived there our whole lives. I want to paint a rationality (one that has a “architectonic desire”) here as a “ground” (the ground of our cave!) that is taken, it the context of that rationality, to be stable and secure, complete and closed. The rules of a given rationality with this attitude are calculable and thus knowable, but limited and conditional. They are comfortable! We know the dimensions of our cave; we know what is inside of it. But their stability, the stability of our knowledge, is also a fiction, and thus our comfort at its completeness is one, too. Indeed, we have forgotten how to dig; how to pierce the border of our comfortable, knowable and calculable world with the recognition of the possibility of something new bubbling up from the hole we are digging.
What appears might be monstrous, might be horrifying; but also might be wonderful. It will certainly not fit within the rules, within the space, of our previously-comfortable bubble. But then; if it does not fit within those rules, then we are presented with further proof that they were not complete to begin with.
The conclusion we are left with is that, if there is more “out there,” more that we have not seen and made space for, then we have a responsibility towards finding those things we have missed, left out, or have yet to discover, and towards making space for them. This can be said of reason. The rules of a nation-state rationality are like the comforting dimensions and contents of our cave. But the just reason is one that digs, one that is not content with the boundaries and contents of its dwelling because it recognizes that there is more to be seen. Because there is more that we have not seen, that we have yet to recognize, we do not know how the way in which we are living in our cave is affecting that “more,” whether or not we are subjecting it to our rule without our knowledge, or even with our knowledge that fails, itself to recognize that transgression.
Justice digs; it is not satisfied, never satisfied with what it knows and always seeks to exceed itself.
ii. Observations of the “let itself”; examples in popular culture and society.
We have yet to see a wholesale practical application of thinking Derridan justice in our society. I want to address whether such a notion can possibly be incorporated into practical life in this society, and I will do so in the next section. For, now, however, I want to address a few instances where we might briefly see glimmers of a Derridean justice surfacing within our society and our popular culture.
a) Battlestar Galactica, suicide bombing, and a shift in perspective.
In Ronald D. Moore's popular reimagining of the television series Battlestar Galactica, the science-fiction setting allows the showrunners to address issues that pertain to our society without launching a direct critique, and makes space for those who watch to open the horizons of their “rational” opinions of such-and-such an issue. We will examine one of those issues, and the space made for an opening, a “letting itself”, here. The main plot is as follows: Humans have lost their homes, formerly spanning thirteen planets, to the Cylons (machines of their own invention) who infiltrated human security installations and launched a nuclear attack, many of them sacrificing themselves in the process. The theme of a sacrificial attack, of “suicide bombing” has already been established, and it parallels the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
In the following seasons, we see a certain stance towards the idea of suicide bombing developed and maintained among the surviving humans; that the act of the suicide bomber as sacrificing themselves in an attack upon their enemies is inhuman, something only a machine could do, a “toaster” as the Cylons are referred to. The parallel with the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, and the buildup of racism against Muslims is clear. This orientation towards the suicide bomber changes drastically, however, when the humans settle on a planet that is soon overrun by the Cylons, who enslave the human population under the guise of “working together.”
When the Cylons found a human-constituted police force on the planet, members of the human resistance group see an opportunity; convince one of the newly-inaugurated police officers to strap a bomb to themselves and detonate it at a high-profile Cylon-attended event. This opportunity (taken by the humans) is an opening up of a previously-established rationality surrounding the suicide bomber; what was once unthinkable now, indeed, is understandable. The fiction of Battlestar Galactica does affect the world outside; not only are the characters in the show made to face the limits of their ethical rationality surrounding the suicide bomber, but viewers of the show are also made to question the absolute moral decisions they have made surrounding the topic. We are made, ever so briefly, to engage with the unconditional that opens up the horizons (a horizon without horizon) of our rational thought to new possibilities.
b) Nine Inch Nails, the music industry, and the internet.
When Trent Reznor released the most recent Nine Inch Nails album, “The Slip,” on the internet for free, people took notice. The album's success (a worldwide tour, millions of downloads, and increased hype for the band) triggered a rethinking of traditional music-industry strategies of promotion, and made space for an opening-up of the possibilities of such strategies. The introduction of a “real” album for sale in music stores also made space for an opening-up of how art and music is valued in our society.
For a long time before the release of “The Slip,” the music industry worked for and promoted its artists within the scope of a certain reason. It was a reason of capitalism, one of the “nation-state” model that Derrida examines in Rogues. Reznor's “internet-model,” though, called the supremacy and the sovereignty of the music industry's institution into question, and punctured a hole in the rationality of that industry that made space for new possibilities of promotion, distribution and appreciation. Music consumers could now access an artist's album for free; the “viral” quality of internet memes helped to spread the word; the download page asked for a user's e-mail address that can be used for further promotion for the band, as well.
Further, the introduction of the “real” album in stores (with a jewel-case, artwork, and a bonus DVD) made space for a reconceptualization of the “value” of music. Whereas before, one was ostensibly paying for the music (one bought an album for, say, $12.99 and paid for the music, the jewel-case, the CD and the artwork), now that the album was available for free on the internet, one was only paying for the material product and the not the art it contained. What, then, is the value of music? Needless to say, Reznor's internet-release has opened the horizon of the possibilities of the value of music.
c) Is the “let itself” letting itself?
For all of the hope and possibility opened up by the two examples above, they are brief examples that close their horizons once more after their affect has been produced. The question remains; is there space for an opening on the scale of Derridean justice to remain open and not simply make one insertion, only to disappear as if it had never existed? I want to explore this possibility in the following section.
iii. Can Derridean justice exist on a mass scale?
Can an appeal to the unconditional aspect of a reason remain intact? We have not seen evidence of this possibility yet, not in a sustained way. We can navigate this question by way of examining the ability, in the context of Derrida's thoughts on the relation between conditional and unconditional, of such a thing occurring.
First, let us examine the nature of Derrida's illustration of justice. From a practical point of view (and Derrida himself admits this in other works) unconditional justice cannot be reached absolutely. Indeed, unconditional justice must remain what is appealed to by the conditional. The arrival of an unconditional justice is thus always deferred into the future, never knowable or assimilable into a conditional and calculable structure of reason. It is thus not a question of the absolute arrival of an absolute and indivisible unconditional justice. Is is, rather, a question of the maintaining of a relationship between conditional and unconditional.
Further, because every relation between a conditional and unconditional is novel, it is not the simple maintenance of a relationship but rather a constant process of relation. One must relate again and again, not stopping. What caused the disappearance of the opening in our two cultural examples above was that the process of relation came to an end. How, then, is it possible to maintain a process of constant relation between conditional and unconditional? It certainly appears to be a lot of work; are members of our society, already weighed down by social and cultural pressures, going to open themselves up to the conditional aspects of their lives on top of it all?
Further, are those who subscribe to a architectonic conception of reason going to open themselves up to new possibilities? Analytic philosophers? How are they to overcome the dogma of their cave if they believe that the dogma is actually their salvation? These are questions that I do not have the time nor space to address here. They are, however, pressing questions; ones that demand answers if Derrida's treatise on justice is to be engaged with further.
Conclusion.
Reason has allowed itself to become closed-off from its unconditional aspect. In doing so, it has prevented itself from being reasoned with. In this essay, I have examined the phrase “a reason must let itself be reasoned with” and come to some contingent conclusions as to the complexity that this sentence contains. It suggests a plurality of rationalities that must allow space for each other if justice is to be done; this allowing for space is how a reason might itself be reasoned with; by the relationship of a conditional rule of a reason with its unconditional aspect.
I have also examined the nature of this conception of rational justice as it has existed in our society previously, and how a more constant relationship between conditional and unconditional might increase the scope of this Derridean justice. There is more, always more; more work to be done, more to discover, more to make space for, and more to learn.
WORKS CITED:
Derrida, Jacques. “Rogues: Two Essays on Reason.” trans. Pascale-Anne Brault, Michael Naas. 2005, Stanford University Press.
towards a conception of relational criticism.
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Introduction: the problem, the question, the approach
Traditional realizations of critique have always presupposed a closed circle of interpretation, one that is unable to overcome itself and is made to work within the functionality that is laid out before it. The critical enterprise has been constituted, generally, by one value critiquing its conception of another value, the former's understanding of which may or may not be well-developed, space-making or otherwise open to reinterpretation. Thus, in the context of traditional conceptions of critique, the question has rarely, if ever, been asked: Is there an escape from the hermeneutic circle of a relation of values? The rarity of this question has brought about a pronounced deadening, a notable and dangerous stagnation, in the context of many social, textual and philosophical discussions. At the very least, the failure to ask such a question in these debates has led to the devaluation of the virtual or as-yet-hidden, but nonetheless real capability of implicated values, and of their related concepts and structural frameworks.
This essay aims to delineate a theoretical space for this question to be asked. In order for this space to be made, we must conduct a host of other inquiries and interrogations. What might constitute an escape from hermeneutic relations of values? How do values relate to one another, generally? Does such an escape destroy their pre-established structures? If so, is there a restructurability present that may once again create the space for structured movement and allow for a new, active identity of a value (one that may, too, call for us to escape it)?
i. Planning our escape; the self-overcoming of a relation of values.
What might constitute the escape, which Deleuze might call, with Guattari, a deterritorialization? Perhaps we can glean some direction to this question through analogy:
We are in a prison, held against our will, denied movement and freedom and detained in a cell from which the possibility of escape looks grim. We have, it seems to me, two apparent options for escape; one, to wait for rescue, for a movement from the outside to free us from our captivity; or two, to use the tools at our disposal (perhaps even the very tools that also maintain the integrity of our chains) to devise a manner of freeing ourselves. A spoon, used to keep us healthy enough to survive, for example, might be used to dig our way to freedom; a pillow, a small amount of comfort, to smother a guard come in to respond to a call for help.
The two options, while theoretically present, may be separated by an illusory understanding of the situation; specifically, I mean that relying on help from “the outside” quickly becomes problematic when the idea is interrogated. Where is, applying this analogy to the context of our question, this “outside,” and who is there to help us? A thorough interrogation of this option reveals that we do not know who is there, “outside,” to help us escape. Further, why would they aid us in our escape if they were not already “on our side,” so to speak, already in line and subscribing to one of the values in the relation we wish to escape? If we trusted such help it would be already here, inside, with us, within the prison of a hermeneutic relation of values. Any aid from the outside would always already be inside, therefore destroying or negating the possibility of such an “outside” at the outset of our interrogation. In any case, if there is anyone on the “outside,” they have yet to arrive or announce themselves.
An escape from a traditionally-conceptualized, hermeneutic relation of values must thus occur from within the context of that relationship; it must be observant, to see the subtleties of the prison which keeps it in order to use those to the ends of an escape. We must want to escape, yes (in wanting to make space for an “outside,” it becomes our responsibility), but to do so we must also use the context we have been given, turn it, twist and manipulate it until it too wants to aid us in escaping it. The inside can be employed as, thus, the “outside” that is implicit and can be engaged to self-destruct, that wants to escape not because it supports our value, but because it has turned inwards to examine itself and find the tools that will eventually overcome it.
Every relation of values, every circle, has, perhaps, the built-in capability for overcoming itself. This capability must be uncovered; it is hidden in a given relation of values. Where might we find it, in a most general and conceptual sense?
A discovery of this sort implies first a looking. We do not yet know what a relation of values is capable of. The implicit self-destructive, self-overcoming capability of a relation of values must be found; or at least, there must be an orientation towards looking for it. If not, then it will remain hidden, unrealized, veiled. In traditional implementations of critique, one value always looks at its comprehension of another value; is this the sort of looking we must be doing? Certainly not only that. Identity versus identity, value versus value; I propose that we must be looking, too, at the “versus”; how is it constituted and what is its character? Is it a productive character? An active character? Opposing two values in a traditional critical structure will inevitably miss this “versus,” the content of the relationship itself. Therefore, to overcome that structure, we might gain ground by examining the “versus” that has, as yet, been ignored.
Before we can go further, however, we must investigate a general conception of a relationship with the “other” value in a relation of values.
ii. The relation: “otherness” and the possibility of understanding
There are many implications that come with engaging with the other, perhaps more than can be addressed here in the context of a small investigative essay. One of these implications, and one that is relevant here, is our general and necessarily fractured relationship with the other. The other, by definition, cannot be an object of knowledge. We see evidence and support of this conception of the other in Levinas as well as in Derrida.
For Levinas, “being in direct relation with the Other is not to thematize the Other and consider him in the same manner as one considers a known object, nor to communicate a knowledge to him” (EaI, p. 57). The other exists in pure alterity, cannot be categorized or assimilated into a framework of ontology or of knowledge; the other full “substance” is outside all of those, by definition and necessarily. What, who is the other, here? A person, a value, any relation we have to an existent that is only separated from us in solitude, representable in part, only nameable in an attempt to orient ourselves and never in an effort to do what is behind the name, what is outside the veil of representation, any sort of justice.
“The relationship with the Other, the face-to-face with the Other, the encounter with a face that at once gives and conceals the Other, is the situation in which an event happens to a subject who does not assume it, who is utterly unable in its regard, but where nonetheless in a certain way it is in front of the subject. The other 'assumed' is the Other” (TatO, p. 78). We can relate this conception of the other back to a relation of values, though we will do so in more depth in further sections of this essay: a relation of values constitutes the relationship between one value and another value whose substance is assumed, that is at once “given” (named) and “concealed” (more than what is named). We will approach our question from this assumption; that the comprehension of the other is necessarily contingent and always, thus, open to reinterpretation.
Derrida examines a similar conception of the other (reading Kierkegaard and also Levinas) in his essay “Tout autre est tout autre”: every other (one) is every (bit) other; every other is wholly other. “If the first tout is an indefinite pro-nominal adjective, then the first autre becomes a noun and the second, in all probability, an adjective or attribute... indeed this introduces the principle of the most irreducible heterology” (tGoD, p. 83). The attribute of every other is absolute alterity, utter otherness. We may thus know something of the category “other”, alterity's appearance; we might know how we interact with it, but we can never know the substance of that alterity. Derrida, too, speaks of “a visible in-visible, an invisible of the order of the visible that I can keep in secret by keeping it out of sight... as if I hide a part of my body under clothes or a veil” (tGoD, p. 90).
As such, speaking of coming to an "understanding" of the irreducible and differential identity of the other cannot be done authentically or in good faith. Understanding denotes knowledge, knowledge denotes assimilation, and assimilation denotes identity. The implication of the concept “other” we are considering here is that it necessarily cannot be assimilated, "known" or understood in a final and fully-realized way. The otherness of the other cannot be properly represented in technological discourse, because to attempt (or to presume to) represent it in this manner would be to negate the difference, the alterity of that other. We must be careful to delineate the distinction between our conception of the other and our conception of the otherness of the other, the alterity of the other. We can know and understand how the other appears to us; but grasping the identity, the substance of the alterity that we can recognize is separate from understanding that it is, that it exists and can not be made to be fully present.
iii. The (re)action of relating: how we interact, how it appears; what we can do differently
What are we left with if we cannot speak of understanding the other? We are left with a void between ourselves (the "subject") and the other (the un-graspable "object", the "non-object-object" in a sense). We are separated from others, not simply because we hold differing values, but further because others are, precisely, other to us, ungraspable in their alterity. Not knowing what else to do, not, until perhaps now, having anything else to do, we would fill this void, would project into this field of separation our own values, interpretations, subjective apprehensions of issues and problems, ideas and other subjectivities; ones that did not and could not take into account what is outside of understanding. The space would be filled, and then sealed shut. In our solitude we would construct a world filled with only the appearances of others, only the glittering “blinking” that is on the surface of our interactions with others. Everywhere, in our solitude, we take symptoms to be causes, and react to them. How might we begin to act?
What are the implications of this reflexive and unconscious filling-up, this sentence to see only how another (an other) appears to us? One is that there fails to remain any space for the other. With the space between ourselves and the other filled up by ideals taken to be static, identical, and by many accounts transcendent and teleological, there is no room for the other, its its irreducible alterity, to move or affect us, or to be affirmed by us. Further; there is no room to see the capability of a relation of values, of the relation between one and another.
The question here is not how we might be able to understand the other, but rather, how do we make space for the other, for the identity of the other that can never be made fully present to us? This question has Deleuzian and, especially, Derridean overtones; our interrogation of both in the following sections will take us part of the way to producing a sort of response, conceptual but practically applicable, to the question of our escape from traditional conceptions of criticism. To make space here is to allow the entry of a certain undecidability into the conceptual void between oneself and the other, one that demands a new sort of decision to be made and, perhaps, repeated; that delineates an understandable, knowable space for considering how our conceptions of an other form a relationship with our own identity, our own values.
Deleuze's contribution to this problem is implicit rather than being a question he engages with directly. We can find this implicit commentary in many of his works – his work on Spinoza, especially focusing on the relationship between mind and body, speaks to it, as well as his own philosophical conceptualizations, alone and with Guattari – but here I will focus on his treatment of Nietzsche in Nietzsche and Philosophy, first because our question is most explicitly treated here, and second because it will be helpful to examine Nietzsche himself later in this essay. Derrida's contribution is more explicitly topical and takes an approach at once more ethically-concerned and seemingly paralyzing than that of Deleuze. Specifically in this work, I will examine his conception of the “community without community” and a new, hospitable friendship that is outlined in the second essay of The Politics of Friendship. Let us begin this interrogation now.
iv. The question: space for affirmation; calling ourselves “good” and the active type
Deleuze's project in Nietzsche and Philosophy is to construct a systematic approach to Nietzsche's philosophy of forces, of sense and value; to examine and dramatize conceptions of “active” and “reactive” that can be used as a new, non-dialectical and plastic, “essentially pluralist and immanent” (NaP, p. 112) means of evaluation based on Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power and the eternal return. For the purposes of this section, I will examine a single implementation of Deleuze's proposed method of dramatisation, and what that usage implies: a newfound focus on ideas of activity and reactivity. What does the active type imply about its relationships with others? And the reactive type? Let us start with a quotation from the fourth essay in this text:
“The one who says 'I am good' does not wait to be called good” (NaP, p. 112); the quotation could usher in a discussion about the nature of values and Nietzsche's ideas about how they are created, certainly, but that is not our intention here, at least at this time. Specifically, I want to ask, who says “I am good,” and what does this imply about that type's relationship with the other, with other values? “Here are the two formulae: 'I am good, therefore you are evil' – 'You are evil therefore I am good.' We can use the method of dramatisation. Who utters the first of these formulae, who utters the second?” (NaP, p. 111). It is the active type that utters the first, the reactive type the second. And the active type's statement brings with it the sort of plasticity we are looking for when considering the value of another. Why? Precisely because the latter (the reactive type's statement) supposes an opposing value – the “evil” one – to be static and unchanging and, because the related (the “other”) value is posited first, that the identical value in the relationship is created based on the character of the other's. The active type’s statement does not. Let us examine it further:
The implications of all of this are that the reactive type's apprehension of the relation of values build that understanding (including the understanding of the identical value) upon an assumed appearance. This engages in what I have called earlier the “traditional conception” of critique. The active type, however, may indeed manage to escape that closed circle. The active type recognizes that the “evil” value in a given relation is merely an appearance, the “assuming” of a value that can be named but never done justice. Because the active type takes its own value first – because it says “I am good” before it says “you are evil” – it leaves room for considering the relationship between one value and another, thus changing the timbre of the relationship itself into something that is, perhaps, able to escape the confines of the relationship that it itself is.
But let us not be too hasty: we are still left with questions, problems and further interrogations. It is all well and good to simply declare “I am good” – without, perhaps, really meaning it – and go about one's business as if activity had been achieved, but if we are to really move towards a conception of relational criticism, if we are to really escape the circle of the hermeneutic conception of critique, then we must delve into the idea in a much deeper way than we have yet to attempt. What is the character of the relationship that the active type has with the other? No one has yet been able to say “I am good” and mean it, to make the claim of positing one's value first and before an opposition to one that it considers to be “evil.” The one who can say “I am good” before “you are evil” makes space for an affirmation of difference; an acknowledgment of the space of another that we cannot access but can merely name. The character of the active type in their relationship to the other is one who recognizes that their perception of the value of another is merely an appearance – a value that is given yet concealed – and who makes space for what is hidden by lending a structure to that appearance that is merely contingent, always becoming and never staticized.
Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche will also be helpful in examining the deeper essence of this relationship between one value and the subjective appearance of another. It will aid us in answering several questions: One, what is the character of the identical value; how is its sense determined? Two, what is the connection between the essence of a value and the relationship that it holds with another value? Three, how does this reveal a possible path of escape out of a traditional circle of critique? These questions and the accompanying examination of Deleuze's book will be addressed in a later section. For now, let us turn to Derrida and examine his more explicit ethical engagements with our question.
v. The question: space for solitude, space for difference; the community without community
Derrida's response to the problem of an escape from closed relations of values is one of death, but of a death that heralds a new life, that gives birth, that calls for it and awaits its possible arrival. “'O my friends, there is no friend' states the death of friends. It says it” (tPoF, p. 27). Who is the friend, and why have they died? Here, in this context, the “friend” is not only the value that we hold in a relation (the identical value) but also the comfort and support that we look to in a closed value relationship. The friendship denoted here is indeed one of comfort; of “the same” and of knowability; of a value which we feel an affinity with (politically, ethically or otherwise) and our comfort in already knowing the way it might interact with other values. In the previous section, we noted that we, ensconced safely within the reactive type, may do this because we have posited the other value first and before our own. It is this comfort, this reliance on “the same” and on the presupposition of possibilities of interaction that dies; this conception of friendship (and here, of a relation of values) that must be declared dead so that a new one may be born to orient us anew.
The escape, the death of the friendship of a closed relation of values would thus appear as an “interruption. It would inscribe in that history the scansion of an unprecedented event – it would interrupt less than recall (and call again for) a rupture already inscribed in the speech it interrupts” (tPoF, p. 27). We can see in this quotation the affinity it shares with our earlier-used analogy of the escape that must use the very tools that keep it captive to execute itself. A closed relation of values contains within itself the tools that may lead to its own overcoming; it alone is the force of that which interrupts it, and nothing outside. Where does the interruption, the rupture, lead us? It leads us to recognize our solitude, a solitude whose incorporation into a relation of values is as yet beyond our reach. We are “jealous of solitude” (tPoF, p. 37).
The character of this solitude is one of difference. We are alone because we are; precisely, we are first and before any relation to another, unique in the alterity that we, as an other to others, present to those we engage with. It is tragic, then, to recognize this solitude and yet be prevented from rejoicing in it, and in the escape it may entail, because of a reactive friendship that has yet to die. This is why we are jealous of solitude; because we see it, but do not possess that which it is capable of. We are jealous of solitude precisely because it is, so far, other to us. And yet, what solitude is capable of doing is uniting us in a community of solitude, who recognize themselves as utter singularities and, by extension, others as well. This would be what Derrida (perhaps) calls, with Nietzsche, “the community of those without community” (tPoF, p. 37), a community of those united in their solitude, and further, united in their celebration and affirmation of radical difference.
We have not arrived here, yet. These solitary and singular difference-affirmers, they are Nietzsche's “philosophers of the future.” We are not yet among them, “we who are calling them and calling them the philosophers of the future, but we are in advance their friends and, in this gesture of the call, we establish ourselves as their heralds and precursors” (tPoF, p. 37). Put in the context of language used here, these “philosophers of the future” are the ones who have escaped; they are the ones who can say “I am good” first and with conviction. We are their precursors, we come before them and make way for them; how? There are, by nature of the problem, undoubtedly multiple paths. But one of them is by engaging faithfully in the question, “how do we escape from a closed circle of interpretation in the context of a relation between values?”
This escape, thus far delineated, will entail an engagement with the ungraspable with the knowledge that it is ungraspable, recognized as such and noted that our subjective grasp of it is merely a “blinking,” a looking to what is on the surface. Perhaps, too, "ungraspable" is not the most appropriate word we can use here. I like Nietzsche's conception of the word "inevaluable"; perhaps it fits better. In any case, we can say this: we cannot hope to fully grasp the perspectives, values and points of view of the other, but we can, perhaps, understand the space between ourselves and the other. We can hope to grasp our own value and its relationship with a certain picture of another's value whose ungraspability we have presupposed. Perhaps, at this point, we have delineated enough space to examine the character of an orientation towards relational critique.
vi. Approaching a new conception of critique: genetic and differential
Now that we have delineated a certain ethical space for our question to reside in, it is necessary to take a more forceful approach to begin to populate such space with possibilities and directions. If we are unable to evaluate an “other” value, then we are seemingly caught up in a sort of paralysis, a sort of “we can't, so how can we?” that, from the perspective of a traditionally-closed circle of criticism, leaves us with few, if any, tools for movement. We must, thus, attempt to conceive of a new approach to critique that allows for movement within value-relationships that are defined by their differential solitude rather than a presupposed and incorrect apprehension of our relationship to another value. For this investigation we can turn, once again, to Deleuze's treatment of Nietzsche, and his focus on the will to power as the differential and genetic element of force.
“The will to power is the differential element of forces, that is to say the element that produces the differences in quantity between two or more force whose relationship is presupposed. The will to power is the genetic element of force, that is to say the element that produces the quality due to each force in this relation” (NaP, p. 49). The will to power is differential and genetic. Genetic because the will determines the quality of a force; that is, whether a force is active or reactive. Differential because the will to power also determines the relative quantity of forces in a relationship; that is, it determines which force is dominant and which force is dominated. This relationship is itself determined by the genetic quality of each force in question; active forces always dominate reactive ones, at least in the “normal or healthy state” (NaP, p. 104). A healthy relation of forces produces a value that is active; that says “I am good” before it posits another value taken to be “bad.” An unhealthy relation of forces (present in every closed circle of criticism) produces a value that is reactive, that takes its understanding of another value (which is posited as static and dead) and posits itself in relation to this other value. A reactive value becomes dead, lifeless, without recourse to any future reinterpretation.
We must be careful, here, to delineate what a relation of values in the context of our examination of the other implies about the “other” value; that it is merely an incomplete representation of that other value, never presented in its entirety, always given yet veiled from full comprehension or understanding. How, then, does an active value relate to another value? How does a reactive value relate? An active value would include in its circle of interpretation its relationship to the other value; it would recognize in that relationship the contingency and the constantly-present potential for overcoming that understanding of the other value. The value itself includes within it how it relates to the other, how it recognizes the other. That recognition is built-in.
A reactive value, on the other hand, would not include the apprehension (and the constant responsibility of reapprehension) of another value into its circle of interpretation. Because it says “You are evil, therefore I am good,” it presumes to already know the possibilities for relating to it. “I already know what you are, I already understand,” it might say. The circle of interpretation stops and is replaced by a circular relation of values that takes both values to be static. It remains blind to the potentiality of the other value, to what the other value is capable of, choosing only to see that opposed value as such. Further, because both values are taken to be static, a reactive value remains blind to the capability of the relation itself. Where can it go? What can it do? These questions disappear when reactivity is allowed to preside over a relation of values.
An active value would thus be in the position to create new senses for a relation of values; this potential for creation is the escape from a closed circle of interpretation we have been looking for. It is an orientation towards using the tools that originally signified our captivity within a relation of values to overcome that relation and create a new, more comprehensive relationship in its place. I see my value; I see my understanding of yours; and I see how they relate to one another. Because I know my understanding of your value is always incomplete, always in need of deepening, always becoming-nuanced – and because my contingent-understanding is always deferred to the context of my own value – my value gains the tools to constantly overcome itself. Both values enter a state of becoming in which they are consistently, with every turn of a circle of interpretation, being revised, revaluated and restated. The result is movement in a situation where, traditionally, we have only had stagnancy. Critique thus becomes relational. “Critique is destruction as joy, the aggression of the creator. The creator of values cannot be distinguished from a destroyer” (NaP, p. 81).
This sort of critique becomes possible only when we make space for the other. Indeed, an active value and a reactive value would always look the same to an observer on the outside; that value's dramatisation would be lost to a traditional conception of critique in which both values are viewed as static, already-realized entities within an already-established and final relationship. This is why such a relation (one that is active in its character) would always appear to be its opposite. Consciousness can only see reactivity, even if it can, in earnest and in context, perpetuate activity (NaP, p. 105). But in making space for the unknowable other within the context of our own value, we use the tools of our captivity to escape that captivity; we create the potential for relational criticism to overcome a closed circle of values. Relational criticism becomes possible when we allow a value to become active; when we begin to critique a relation of values by a method that is constituted by a genetic and differential approach to the relationship itself.
vii. The to-come: the character of an active value, space for what has not yet arrived
But why? This is the question that might be addressed to us, we, friends of the philosophers of the future, their heralds and precursors. Why, in our attempt to reintroduce activity into closed relations of values, must we make space for that which has not yet arrived, that which we have yet to assimilate into our understanding? We could sit and wait patiently for this arrival, some might interject. Why meet them if they will arrive anyway? The admission: they may not arrive. That is, there may be no one on the outside to help us escape from our prison of closed circles. We should indeed be apprehensive about this possibility, seeing as we have had no inkling as to their arrival any time in the future. The philosophers are the future are to-come, but they are our to-come. And they will certainly not arrive without us first making the space for them. We maintain their space, keep it open and strive to come closer to them, even if we may never reach them, even if they are always just slightly beyond our grasp.
In Derrida's estimation, the friends of the philosophers of the future (friends “jealous of solitude”) carry with them an inestimable burden of responsibility. “I must answer at the same time before the philosophers of the future to come (before them), before the spectre of those who are not yet here, and before the philosophers of the future that we (we) already are, we who are already capable of thinking the future or the coming of philosophers of the future. A double responsibility which doubles up again endlessly: I must answer for myself or before myself by answering for us and before us. I/we must answer for the present we for and before the we of the future, while presently addressing myself to you, and inviting you to join up with this 'us' of which you are already but not yet a member” (tPoF, p. 37).
In approaching a relation of values with activity built-in to our own value, we delineate the space for a to-come of a new understanding of the other's value. That understanding is not yet here, but in a sense it is never here; there will always be another interpretation, another circulation of expositional exchange. There is more to the other; always more. And yet, in making space for this to-come, by delineating an entry-point for that “more,” we have, in a sense, already escaped, already thought “the future” and incorporated it into our approach. The future may never arrive. Some might say that it will never arrive. But the arrival of an orientation towards a future-to-come is always possible, always in a certain manner already here. We could say that the orientation towards the “more” is hidden, but very much present in the very orientation that predicts that the “more” cannot arrive.
Let's examine this further. An orientation towards the future-to-come always constitutes a certain not-knowing what will happen, “a certain non-knowledge” (tPoF, p. 31). It rests on predicting, perhaps hoping, that the future-to-come will bring difference, will bring something different. But we cannot know this difference, we cannot say “It will come, I know it” without destroying its otherness and difference in the process. We leave the light on, so to speak, for something different (something which affirms difference) to arrive, without ever knowing, really, when or even if it will. And yet it is that hope that creates the space for a radical difference, and so too a radical revaluation, to arrive in the first place, that orientation towards a “what if?” and a “maybe soon” that initiates the very possibility for it to arrive at all.
“'Alas, if you only knew how soon, how very soon, things will be different!' ... Do we not already know that? Can that be measured by knowledge? If we knew that, things would no longer be different. We must not totally know this in order for a change to occur again” (tPoF, p. 31). As we have seen, the not-knowing is built-in to our orientation towards relational critique. It is, in fact, the not-knowing that makes the space for an open horizon to constantly allow the possibility of the revision of a relation of values. We cannot fully know the other; the other is only representable in part, always veiled and prevented from being made fully present. And it is in that “certain non-knowledge” that the possibility for an escape from a closed relation of values can be realized.
Conclusion: towards a conception of relational criticism
A will to escape; a relationship to the unknowable other; a Yes-saying; a hope for a community without community; a value that is active rather than reactive; a double and bottomless responsibility towards a to-come that has, in a sense, already arrived; a certain non-knowledge. This is has been and remains the character of our orientation towards relational criticism.
All around us we see relations of values. In social interactions, in political and philosophical debates, in our internal “monologues” and in the way we engage a text. Everywhere, we relate. But until now the character of this relation has gone woefully unexamined, has been pushed to the sidelines in favour of more immediate exchanges. The exchanges involved are important, yes; debates ethical concerns (abortion, euthanasia, human rights, etc.); political squabbles and questions of ideology; the understanding of the intention of an author or the sovereign of any text; finding peace and agreement within ourselves. These are all important engagements. However, it is because these relationships are important that we must examine the nature of how we interact, consider the relation involved, to allow the space for conversations of all sorts that have stagnated and grown cold to be reinvigorated, to be given the chance to live and breathe once more.
We are alone because we are, and we are, as such, because we are unique, without equal and without repetition. We are singularities. Traditional conceptions of critique have always forgotten this, always paved over the utter alterity of the other in reactive jealousy, in fear and resentment. It must be said that if we are ever to gain ground regarding some of the most heated and contentious differences that engage us today, we must look to how values on each “side” of these issues are relating to one another, and understand that we can create a relationship that paves the way for new connections, ideas and relationships to come tomorrow. It is here, in this relation, and in the space that the recognition of this relation can create for recognition, movement, and hope for the to-come, that an escape from captivity can be found.
It seems to be my pattern; but here, it is also in a bid to make space for a relationship to another I have implicitly engaged with (in spirit and in letter) throughout this essay. I leave, with hope and space, the last word to Nietzsche: “Indeed, we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel, when we hear the news that 'the old god is dead,' as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an 'open sea'” (tGS, p. 280).
WORKS CITED:
Deleuze, Gilles. “Nietzsche and Philosophy”, trans. H. Tomlinson. The Athlone Press, 2006.
Derrida, Jacques. “The Gift of Death”, trans. D. Willis. University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. “The Politics of Friendship”, trans. G. Collins. Verso Books, 2005.
Levinas, Emmanuel. “Ethics and Infinity”, trans. R. Cohen. Duquesne University Press, 1985.
Levinas, Emmanuel. “Time and the Other”, trans. R. Cohen. Duquesne University Press, 1987.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “The Gay Science”, trans. W. Kaufmann. Vintage Books, 1974.
Traditional realizations of critique have always presupposed a closed circle of interpretation, one that is unable to overcome itself and is made to work within the functionality that is laid out before it. The critical enterprise has been constituted, generally, by one value critiquing its conception of another value, the former's understanding of which may or may not be well-developed, space-making or otherwise open to reinterpretation. Thus, in the context of traditional conceptions of critique, the question has rarely, if ever, been asked: Is there an escape from the hermeneutic circle of a relation of values? The rarity of this question has brought about a pronounced deadening, a notable and dangerous stagnation, in the context of many social, textual and philosophical discussions. At the very least, the failure to ask such a question in these debates has led to the devaluation of the virtual or as-yet-hidden, but nonetheless real capability of implicated values, and of their related concepts and structural frameworks.
This essay aims to delineate a theoretical space for this question to be asked. In order for this space to be made, we must conduct a host of other inquiries and interrogations. What might constitute an escape from hermeneutic relations of values? How do values relate to one another, generally? Does such an escape destroy their pre-established structures? If so, is there a restructurability present that may once again create the space for structured movement and allow for a new, active identity of a value (one that may, too, call for us to escape it)?
i. Planning our escape; the self-overcoming of a relation of values.
What might constitute the escape, which Deleuze might call, with Guattari, a deterritorialization? Perhaps we can glean some direction to this question through analogy:
We are in a prison, held against our will, denied movement and freedom and detained in a cell from which the possibility of escape looks grim. We have, it seems to me, two apparent options for escape; one, to wait for rescue, for a movement from the outside to free us from our captivity; or two, to use the tools at our disposal (perhaps even the very tools that also maintain the integrity of our chains) to devise a manner of freeing ourselves. A spoon, used to keep us healthy enough to survive, for example, might be used to dig our way to freedom; a pillow, a small amount of comfort, to smother a guard come in to respond to a call for help.
The two options, while theoretically present, may be separated by an illusory understanding of the situation; specifically, I mean that relying on help from “the outside” quickly becomes problematic when the idea is interrogated. Where is, applying this analogy to the context of our question, this “outside,” and who is there to help us? A thorough interrogation of this option reveals that we do not know who is there, “outside,” to help us escape. Further, why would they aid us in our escape if they were not already “on our side,” so to speak, already in line and subscribing to one of the values in the relation we wish to escape? If we trusted such help it would be already here, inside, with us, within the prison of a hermeneutic relation of values. Any aid from the outside would always already be inside, therefore destroying or negating the possibility of such an “outside” at the outset of our interrogation. In any case, if there is anyone on the “outside,” they have yet to arrive or announce themselves.
An escape from a traditionally-conceptualized, hermeneutic relation of values must thus occur from within the context of that relationship; it must be observant, to see the subtleties of the prison which keeps it in order to use those to the ends of an escape. We must want to escape, yes (in wanting to make space for an “outside,” it becomes our responsibility), but to do so we must also use the context we have been given, turn it, twist and manipulate it until it too wants to aid us in escaping it. The inside can be employed as, thus, the “outside” that is implicit and can be engaged to self-destruct, that wants to escape not because it supports our value, but because it has turned inwards to examine itself and find the tools that will eventually overcome it.
Every relation of values, every circle, has, perhaps, the built-in capability for overcoming itself. This capability must be uncovered; it is hidden in a given relation of values. Where might we find it, in a most general and conceptual sense?
A discovery of this sort implies first a looking. We do not yet know what a relation of values is capable of. The implicit self-destructive, self-overcoming capability of a relation of values must be found; or at least, there must be an orientation towards looking for it. If not, then it will remain hidden, unrealized, veiled. In traditional implementations of critique, one value always looks at its comprehension of another value; is this the sort of looking we must be doing? Certainly not only that. Identity versus identity, value versus value; I propose that we must be looking, too, at the “versus”; how is it constituted and what is its character? Is it a productive character? An active character? Opposing two values in a traditional critical structure will inevitably miss this “versus,” the content of the relationship itself. Therefore, to overcome that structure, we might gain ground by examining the “versus” that has, as yet, been ignored.
Before we can go further, however, we must investigate a general conception of a relationship with the “other” value in a relation of values.
ii. The relation: “otherness” and the possibility of understanding
There are many implications that come with engaging with the other, perhaps more than can be addressed here in the context of a small investigative essay. One of these implications, and one that is relevant here, is our general and necessarily fractured relationship with the other. The other, by definition, cannot be an object of knowledge. We see evidence and support of this conception of the other in Levinas as well as in Derrida.
For Levinas, “being in direct relation with the Other is not to thematize the Other and consider him in the same manner as one considers a known object, nor to communicate a knowledge to him” (EaI, p. 57). The other exists in pure alterity, cannot be categorized or assimilated into a framework of ontology or of knowledge; the other full “substance” is outside all of those, by definition and necessarily. What, who is the other, here? A person, a value, any relation we have to an existent that is only separated from us in solitude, representable in part, only nameable in an attempt to orient ourselves and never in an effort to do what is behind the name, what is outside the veil of representation, any sort of justice.
“The relationship with the Other, the face-to-face with the Other, the encounter with a face that at once gives and conceals the Other, is the situation in which an event happens to a subject who does not assume it, who is utterly unable in its regard, but where nonetheless in a certain way it is in front of the subject. The other 'assumed' is the Other” (TatO, p. 78). We can relate this conception of the other back to a relation of values, though we will do so in more depth in further sections of this essay: a relation of values constitutes the relationship between one value and another value whose substance is assumed, that is at once “given” (named) and “concealed” (more than what is named). We will approach our question from this assumption; that the comprehension of the other is necessarily contingent and always, thus, open to reinterpretation.
Derrida examines a similar conception of the other (reading Kierkegaard and also Levinas) in his essay “Tout autre est tout autre”: every other (one) is every (bit) other; every other is wholly other. “If the first tout is an indefinite pro-nominal adjective, then the first autre becomes a noun and the second, in all probability, an adjective or attribute... indeed this introduces the principle of the most irreducible heterology” (tGoD, p. 83). The attribute of every other is absolute alterity, utter otherness. We may thus know something of the category “other”, alterity's appearance; we might know how we interact with it, but we can never know the substance of that alterity. Derrida, too, speaks of “a visible in-visible, an invisible of the order of the visible that I can keep in secret by keeping it out of sight... as if I hide a part of my body under clothes or a veil” (tGoD, p. 90).
As such, speaking of coming to an "understanding" of the irreducible and differential identity of the other cannot be done authentically or in good faith. Understanding denotes knowledge, knowledge denotes assimilation, and assimilation denotes identity. The implication of the concept “other” we are considering here is that it necessarily cannot be assimilated, "known" or understood in a final and fully-realized way. The otherness of the other cannot be properly represented in technological discourse, because to attempt (or to presume to) represent it in this manner would be to negate the difference, the alterity of that other. We must be careful to delineate the distinction between our conception of the other and our conception of the otherness of the other, the alterity of the other. We can know and understand how the other appears to us; but grasping the identity, the substance of the alterity that we can recognize is separate from understanding that it is, that it exists and can not be made to be fully present.
iii. The (re)action of relating: how we interact, how it appears; what we can do differently
What are we left with if we cannot speak of understanding the other? We are left with a void between ourselves (the "subject") and the other (the un-graspable "object", the "non-object-object" in a sense). We are separated from others, not simply because we hold differing values, but further because others are, precisely, other to us, ungraspable in their alterity. Not knowing what else to do, not, until perhaps now, having anything else to do, we would fill this void, would project into this field of separation our own values, interpretations, subjective apprehensions of issues and problems, ideas and other subjectivities; ones that did not and could not take into account what is outside of understanding. The space would be filled, and then sealed shut. In our solitude we would construct a world filled with only the appearances of others, only the glittering “blinking” that is on the surface of our interactions with others. Everywhere, in our solitude, we take symptoms to be causes, and react to them. How might we begin to act?
What are the implications of this reflexive and unconscious filling-up, this sentence to see only how another (an other) appears to us? One is that there fails to remain any space for the other. With the space between ourselves and the other filled up by ideals taken to be static, identical, and by many accounts transcendent and teleological, there is no room for the other, its its irreducible alterity, to move or affect us, or to be affirmed by us. Further; there is no room to see the capability of a relation of values, of the relation between one and another.
The question here is not how we might be able to understand the other, but rather, how do we make space for the other, for the identity of the other that can never be made fully present to us? This question has Deleuzian and, especially, Derridean overtones; our interrogation of both in the following sections will take us part of the way to producing a sort of response, conceptual but practically applicable, to the question of our escape from traditional conceptions of criticism. To make space here is to allow the entry of a certain undecidability into the conceptual void between oneself and the other, one that demands a new sort of decision to be made and, perhaps, repeated; that delineates an understandable, knowable space for considering how our conceptions of an other form a relationship with our own identity, our own values.
Deleuze's contribution to this problem is implicit rather than being a question he engages with directly. We can find this implicit commentary in many of his works – his work on Spinoza, especially focusing on the relationship between mind and body, speaks to it, as well as his own philosophical conceptualizations, alone and with Guattari – but here I will focus on his treatment of Nietzsche in Nietzsche and Philosophy, first because our question is most explicitly treated here, and second because it will be helpful to examine Nietzsche himself later in this essay. Derrida's contribution is more explicitly topical and takes an approach at once more ethically-concerned and seemingly paralyzing than that of Deleuze. Specifically in this work, I will examine his conception of the “community without community” and a new, hospitable friendship that is outlined in the second essay of The Politics of Friendship. Let us begin this interrogation now.
iv. The question: space for affirmation; calling ourselves “good” and the active type
Deleuze's project in Nietzsche and Philosophy is to construct a systematic approach to Nietzsche's philosophy of forces, of sense and value; to examine and dramatize conceptions of “active” and “reactive” that can be used as a new, non-dialectical and plastic, “essentially pluralist and immanent” (NaP, p. 112) means of evaluation based on Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power and the eternal return. For the purposes of this section, I will examine a single implementation of Deleuze's proposed method of dramatisation, and what that usage implies: a newfound focus on ideas of activity and reactivity. What does the active type imply about its relationships with others? And the reactive type? Let us start with a quotation from the fourth essay in this text:
“The one who says 'I am good' does not wait to be called good” (NaP, p. 112); the quotation could usher in a discussion about the nature of values and Nietzsche's ideas about how they are created, certainly, but that is not our intention here, at least at this time. Specifically, I want to ask, who says “I am good,” and what does this imply about that type's relationship with the other, with other values? “Here are the two formulae: 'I am good, therefore you are evil' – 'You are evil therefore I am good.' We can use the method of dramatisation. Who utters the first of these formulae, who utters the second?” (NaP, p. 111). It is the active type that utters the first, the reactive type the second. And the active type's statement brings with it the sort of plasticity we are looking for when considering the value of another. Why? Precisely because the latter (the reactive type's statement) supposes an opposing value – the “evil” one – to be static and unchanging and, because the related (the “other”) value is posited first, that the identical value in the relationship is created based on the character of the other's. The active type’s statement does not. Let us examine it further:
The implications of all of this are that the reactive type's apprehension of the relation of values build that understanding (including the understanding of the identical value) upon an assumed appearance. This engages in what I have called earlier the “traditional conception” of critique. The active type, however, may indeed manage to escape that closed circle. The active type recognizes that the “evil” value in a given relation is merely an appearance, the “assuming” of a value that can be named but never done justice. Because the active type takes its own value first – because it says “I am good” before it says “you are evil” – it leaves room for considering the relationship between one value and another, thus changing the timbre of the relationship itself into something that is, perhaps, able to escape the confines of the relationship that it itself is.
But let us not be too hasty: we are still left with questions, problems and further interrogations. It is all well and good to simply declare “I am good” – without, perhaps, really meaning it – and go about one's business as if activity had been achieved, but if we are to really move towards a conception of relational criticism, if we are to really escape the circle of the hermeneutic conception of critique, then we must delve into the idea in a much deeper way than we have yet to attempt. What is the character of the relationship that the active type has with the other? No one has yet been able to say “I am good” and mean it, to make the claim of positing one's value first and before an opposition to one that it considers to be “evil.” The one who can say “I am good” before “you are evil” makes space for an affirmation of difference; an acknowledgment of the space of another that we cannot access but can merely name. The character of the active type in their relationship to the other is one who recognizes that their perception of the value of another is merely an appearance – a value that is given yet concealed – and who makes space for what is hidden by lending a structure to that appearance that is merely contingent, always becoming and never staticized.
Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche will also be helpful in examining the deeper essence of this relationship between one value and the subjective appearance of another. It will aid us in answering several questions: One, what is the character of the identical value; how is its sense determined? Two, what is the connection between the essence of a value and the relationship that it holds with another value? Three, how does this reveal a possible path of escape out of a traditional circle of critique? These questions and the accompanying examination of Deleuze's book will be addressed in a later section. For now, let us turn to Derrida and examine his more explicit ethical engagements with our question.
v. The question: space for solitude, space for difference; the community without community
Derrida's response to the problem of an escape from closed relations of values is one of death, but of a death that heralds a new life, that gives birth, that calls for it and awaits its possible arrival. “'O my friends, there is no friend' states the death of friends. It says it” (tPoF, p. 27). Who is the friend, and why have they died? Here, in this context, the “friend” is not only the value that we hold in a relation (the identical value) but also the comfort and support that we look to in a closed value relationship. The friendship denoted here is indeed one of comfort; of “the same” and of knowability; of a value which we feel an affinity with (politically, ethically or otherwise) and our comfort in already knowing the way it might interact with other values. In the previous section, we noted that we, ensconced safely within the reactive type, may do this because we have posited the other value first and before our own. It is this comfort, this reliance on “the same” and on the presupposition of possibilities of interaction that dies; this conception of friendship (and here, of a relation of values) that must be declared dead so that a new one may be born to orient us anew.
The escape, the death of the friendship of a closed relation of values would thus appear as an “interruption. It would inscribe in that history the scansion of an unprecedented event – it would interrupt less than recall (and call again for) a rupture already inscribed in the speech it interrupts” (tPoF, p. 27). We can see in this quotation the affinity it shares with our earlier-used analogy of the escape that must use the very tools that keep it captive to execute itself. A closed relation of values contains within itself the tools that may lead to its own overcoming; it alone is the force of that which interrupts it, and nothing outside. Where does the interruption, the rupture, lead us? It leads us to recognize our solitude, a solitude whose incorporation into a relation of values is as yet beyond our reach. We are “jealous of solitude” (tPoF, p. 37).
The character of this solitude is one of difference. We are alone because we are; precisely, we are first and before any relation to another, unique in the alterity that we, as an other to others, present to those we engage with. It is tragic, then, to recognize this solitude and yet be prevented from rejoicing in it, and in the escape it may entail, because of a reactive friendship that has yet to die. This is why we are jealous of solitude; because we see it, but do not possess that which it is capable of. We are jealous of solitude precisely because it is, so far, other to us. And yet, what solitude is capable of doing is uniting us in a community of solitude, who recognize themselves as utter singularities and, by extension, others as well. This would be what Derrida (perhaps) calls, with Nietzsche, “the community of those without community” (tPoF, p. 37), a community of those united in their solitude, and further, united in their celebration and affirmation of radical difference.
We have not arrived here, yet. These solitary and singular difference-affirmers, they are Nietzsche's “philosophers of the future.” We are not yet among them, “we who are calling them and calling them the philosophers of the future, but we are in advance their friends and, in this gesture of the call, we establish ourselves as their heralds and precursors” (tPoF, p. 37). Put in the context of language used here, these “philosophers of the future” are the ones who have escaped; they are the ones who can say “I am good” first and with conviction. We are their precursors, we come before them and make way for them; how? There are, by nature of the problem, undoubtedly multiple paths. But one of them is by engaging faithfully in the question, “how do we escape from a closed circle of interpretation in the context of a relation between values?”
This escape, thus far delineated, will entail an engagement with the ungraspable with the knowledge that it is ungraspable, recognized as such and noted that our subjective grasp of it is merely a “blinking,” a looking to what is on the surface. Perhaps, too, "ungraspable" is not the most appropriate word we can use here. I like Nietzsche's conception of the word "inevaluable"; perhaps it fits better. In any case, we can say this: we cannot hope to fully grasp the perspectives, values and points of view of the other, but we can, perhaps, understand the space between ourselves and the other. We can hope to grasp our own value and its relationship with a certain picture of another's value whose ungraspability we have presupposed. Perhaps, at this point, we have delineated enough space to examine the character of an orientation towards relational critique.
vi. Approaching a new conception of critique: genetic and differential
Now that we have delineated a certain ethical space for our question to reside in, it is necessary to take a more forceful approach to begin to populate such space with possibilities and directions. If we are unable to evaluate an “other” value, then we are seemingly caught up in a sort of paralysis, a sort of “we can't, so how can we?” that, from the perspective of a traditionally-closed circle of criticism, leaves us with few, if any, tools for movement. We must, thus, attempt to conceive of a new approach to critique that allows for movement within value-relationships that are defined by their differential solitude rather than a presupposed and incorrect apprehension of our relationship to another value. For this investigation we can turn, once again, to Deleuze's treatment of Nietzsche, and his focus on the will to power as the differential and genetic element of force.
“The will to power is the differential element of forces, that is to say the element that produces the differences in quantity between two or more force whose relationship is presupposed. The will to power is the genetic element of force, that is to say the element that produces the quality due to each force in this relation” (NaP, p. 49). The will to power is differential and genetic. Genetic because the will determines the quality of a force; that is, whether a force is active or reactive. Differential because the will to power also determines the relative quantity of forces in a relationship; that is, it determines which force is dominant and which force is dominated. This relationship is itself determined by the genetic quality of each force in question; active forces always dominate reactive ones, at least in the “normal or healthy state” (NaP, p. 104). A healthy relation of forces produces a value that is active; that says “I am good” before it posits another value taken to be “bad.” An unhealthy relation of forces (present in every closed circle of criticism) produces a value that is reactive, that takes its understanding of another value (which is posited as static and dead) and posits itself in relation to this other value. A reactive value becomes dead, lifeless, without recourse to any future reinterpretation.
We must be careful, here, to delineate what a relation of values in the context of our examination of the other implies about the “other” value; that it is merely an incomplete representation of that other value, never presented in its entirety, always given yet veiled from full comprehension or understanding. How, then, does an active value relate to another value? How does a reactive value relate? An active value would include in its circle of interpretation its relationship to the other value; it would recognize in that relationship the contingency and the constantly-present potential for overcoming that understanding of the other value. The value itself includes within it how it relates to the other, how it recognizes the other. That recognition is built-in.
A reactive value, on the other hand, would not include the apprehension (and the constant responsibility of reapprehension) of another value into its circle of interpretation. Because it says “You are evil, therefore I am good,” it presumes to already know the possibilities for relating to it. “I already know what you are, I already understand,” it might say. The circle of interpretation stops and is replaced by a circular relation of values that takes both values to be static. It remains blind to the potentiality of the other value, to what the other value is capable of, choosing only to see that opposed value as such. Further, because both values are taken to be static, a reactive value remains blind to the capability of the relation itself. Where can it go? What can it do? These questions disappear when reactivity is allowed to preside over a relation of values.
An active value would thus be in the position to create new senses for a relation of values; this potential for creation is the escape from a closed circle of interpretation we have been looking for. It is an orientation towards using the tools that originally signified our captivity within a relation of values to overcome that relation and create a new, more comprehensive relationship in its place. I see my value; I see my understanding of yours; and I see how they relate to one another. Because I know my understanding of your value is always incomplete, always in need of deepening, always becoming-nuanced – and because my contingent-understanding is always deferred to the context of my own value – my value gains the tools to constantly overcome itself. Both values enter a state of becoming in which they are consistently, with every turn of a circle of interpretation, being revised, revaluated and restated. The result is movement in a situation where, traditionally, we have only had stagnancy. Critique thus becomes relational. “Critique is destruction as joy, the aggression of the creator. The creator of values cannot be distinguished from a destroyer” (NaP, p. 81).
This sort of critique becomes possible only when we make space for the other. Indeed, an active value and a reactive value would always look the same to an observer on the outside; that value's dramatisation would be lost to a traditional conception of critique in which both values are viewed as static, already-realized entities within an already-established and final relationship. This is why such a relation (one that is active in its character) would always appear to be its opposite. Consciousness can only see reactivity, even if it can, in earnest and in context, perpetuate activity (NaP, p. 105). But in making space for the unknowable other within the context of our own value, we use the tools of our captivity to escape that captivity; we create the potential for relational criticism to overcome a closed circle of values. Relational criticism becomes possible when we allow a value to become active; when we begin to critique a relation of values by a method that is constituted by a genetic and differential approach to the relationship itself.
vii. The to-come: the character of an active value, space for what has not yet arrived
But why? This is the question that might be addressed to us, we, friends of the philosophers of the future, their heralds and precursors. Why, in our attempt to reintroduce activity into closed relations of values, must we make space for that which has not yet arrived, that which we have yet to assimilate into our understanding? We could sit and wait patiently for this arrival, some might interject. Why meet them if they will arrive anyway? The admission: they may not arrive. That is, there may be no one on the outside to help us escape from our prison of closed circles. We should indeed be apprehensive about this possibility, seeing as we have had no inkling as to their arrival any time in the future. The philosophers are the future are to-come, but they are our to-come. And they will certainly not arrive without us first making the space for them. We maintain their space, keep it open and strive to come closer to them, even if we may never reach them, even if they are always just slightly beyond our grasp.
In Derrida's estimation, the friends of the philosophers of the future (friends “jealous of solitude”) carry with them an inestimable burden of responsibility. “I must answer at the same time before the philosophers of the future to come (before them), before the spectre of those who are not yet here, and before the philosophers of the future that we (we) already are, we who are already capable of thinking the future or the coming of philosophers of the future. A double responsibility which doubles up again endlessly: I must answer for myself or before myself by answering for us and before us. I/we must answer for the present we for and before the we of the future, while presently addressing myself to you, and inviting you to join up with this 'us' of which you are already but not yet a member” (tPoF, p. 37).
In approaching a relation of values with activity built-in to our own value, we delineate the space for a to-come of a new understanding of the other's value. That understanding is not yet here, but in a sense it is never here; there will always be another interpretation, another circulation of expositional exchange. There is more to the other; always more. And yet, in making space for this to-come, by delineating an entry-point for that “more,” we have, in a sense, already escaped, already thought “the future” and incorporated it into our approach. The future may never arrive. Some might say that it will never arrive. But the arrival of an orientation towards a future-to-come is always possible, always in a certain manner already here. We could say that the orientation towards the “more” is hidden, but very much present in the very orientation that predicts that the “more” cannot arrive.
Let's examine this further. An orientation towards the future-to-come always constitutes a certain not-knowing what will happen, “a certain non-knowledge” (tPoF, p. 31). It rests on predicting, perhaps hoping, that the future-to-come will bring difference, will bring something different. But we cannot know this difference, we cannot say “It will come, I know it” without destroying its otherness and difference in the process. We leave the light on, so to speak, for something different (something which affirms difference) to arrive, without ever knowing, really, when or even if it will. And yet it is that hope that creates the space for a radical difference, and so too a radical revaluation, to arrive in the first place, that orientation towards a “what if?” and a “maybe soon” that initiates the very possibility for it to arrive at all.
“'Alas, if you only knew how soon, how very soon, things will be different!' ... Do we not already know that? Can that be measured by knowledge? If we knew that, things would no longer be different. We must not totally know this in order for a change to occur again” (tPoF, p. 31). As we have seen, the not-knowing is built-in to our orientation towards relational critique. It is, in fact, the not-knowing that makes the space for an open horizon to constantly allow the possibility of the revision of a relation of values. We cannot fully know the other; the other is only representable in part, always veiled and prevented from being made fully present. And it is in that “certain non-knowledge” that the possibility for an escape from a closed relation of values can be realized.
Conclusion: towards a conception of relational criticism
A will to escape; a relationship to the unknowable other; a Yes-saying; a hope for a community without community; a value that is active rather than reactive; a double and bottomless responsibility towards a to-come that has, in a sense, already arrived; a certain non-knowledge. This is has been and remains the character of our orientation towards relational criticism.
All around us we see relations of values. In social interactions, in political and philosophical debates, in our internal “monologues” and in the way we engage a text. Everywhere, we relate. But until now the character of this relation has gone woefully unexamined, has been pushed to the sidelines in favour of more immediate exchanges. The exchanges involved are important, yes; debates ethical concerns (abortion, euthanasia, human rights, etc.); political squabbles and questions of ideology; the understanding of the intention of an author or the sovereign of any text; finding peace and agreement within ourselves. These are all important engagements. However, it is because these relationships are important that we must examine the nature of how we interact, consider the relation involved, to allow the space for conversations of all sorts that have stagnated and grown cold to be reinvigorated, to be given the chance to live and breathe once more.
We are alone because we are, and we are, as such, because we are unique, without equal and without repetition. We are singularities. Traditional conceptions of critique have always forgotten this, always paved over the utter alterity of the other in reactive jealousy, in fear and resentment. It must be said that if we are ever to gain ground regarding some of the most heated and contentious differences that engage us today, we must look to how values on each “side” of these issues are relating to one another, and understand that we can create a relationship that paves the way for new connections, ideas and relationships to come tomorrow. It is here, in this relation, and in the space that the recognition of this relation can create for recognition, movement, and hope for the to-come, that an escape from captivity can be found.
It seems to be my pattern; but here, it is also in a bid to make space for a relationship to another I have implicitly engaged with (in spirit and in letter) throughout this essay. I leave, with hope and space, the last word to Nietzsche: “Indeed, we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel, when we hear the news that 'the old god is dead,' as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an 'open sea'” (tGS, p. 280).
WORKS CITED:
Deleuze, Gilles. “Nietzsche and Philosophy”, trans. H. Tomlinson. The Athlone Press, 2006.
Derrida, Jacques. “The Gift of Death”, trans. D. Willis. University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. “The Politics of Friendship”, trans. G. Collins. Verso Books, 2005.
Levinas, Emmanuel. “Ethics and Infinity”, trans. R. Cohen. Duquesne University Press, 1985.
Levinas, Emmanuel. “Time and the Other”, trans. R. Cohen. Duquesne University Press, 1987.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “The Gay Science”, trans. W. Kaufmann. Vintage Books, 1974.
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