traces.

what would nietzsche think of the strangler fig tree?

2010-03-01T16:33:00.005-05:00

The strangler fig is a tree found in forests and jungles in warmer areas of the world. Its action is a peculiar one; its seeds germinate, after being distributed by birds, in crevices near the tops of other trees. It grows, then, by extending long, wrapping roots down the trunk of the host tree, eventually reaching the ground. By this time, it has invaded the host tree to such an extent that it is consuming a large number of the natural resources (sunlight, nutrition from air and soil) that were originally available to the host tree. In the vast majority of cases, the host tree will eventually die, and it will then decompose, providing further nutrition for the victorious strangler fig. What is left after the death of the host tree is an odd, hollow column of twisting roots, a sort of living monument, a spire, attesting to the victory of the strangler fig over its weaker, less-capable adversary. And when the strangler fig produces seeds, the process begins again; the seeds, carried by birds, find their way to a new host tree...

There is a Nietzschean interpretation to be found in this story, but it is not a moral one. Indeed, how could a story about two trees ever be about morality? Trees do what trees do. It would be unjustifiably anthropomorphic, surely, for us to somehow hold the strangler fig as responsible for its actions against the weaker and helpless host tree. As if the strangler fig was somehow capable of choosing to act otherwise, as if the strangler fig had been assigned a sort of subjectivity, and then had a certain morality applied to it. How dare you behave so violently, so selfishly, towards this other tree?!

Now, if we take seriously the call to not unduly moralize a strangler fig – if we refuse to hold it responsible as if it is submitted before a law that it has the freedom to break or obey, if we refuse to burden it with primordial subjectivity that reconstitutes it as a being within a moral universe – and at the same time we are to posit it as more than just a single instance of an evolutionary unit, without a will, merely following the genetic path before it according to a rule of natural selection, then we are posed a question that I want to examine in light of what I have said above: what is a strangler fig and how can we think about what it does? Since we began looking at this tale of two trees from a Nietzschean perspective, it might be best to start looking for an answer to this question in his own writings. I want to begin with Nietzsche's characterization of mechanistic theory (and more implicitly, vitalism) as part of a moralistic picture of the world.

Part 1: What is a strangler fig?

"'Things' do not behave regularly, not according to a rule: there are no things (– they are our fiction), and nor do they behave under the compulsion of necessity. Here there is no obeying [a moral term if there ever was one – DS]: for that something is at it is, as strong or as weak, is not the consequence of an obeying or of a rule or of a compulsion... if, for our day-to-day habits of calculation, we are able to express it in formulas of 'laws,' all the better for us! But feigning the world as obedient doesn't mean we have put 'morality' into it." (14[79], pp. 245)

There are two claims being made here, and I want to go through both of them in detail because they will underpin the rest of the work I want to do in this essay. We've touched on the first of them briefly, above. The first claim is that 'things' do not behave according to rules imposed from without, nor do they act the way they do because they are compelled to do so by some necessity (“survive at all costs,” for example). The strangler fig does not “strangle” because it is made to do so by a law of nature or a “natural” disposition to self-preservation. We could say: to assume as much would be to reconstitute the strangler fig as a moral entity, one that “obeys” and “follows laws,” and has the capability of breaking those laws; and this is the very claim that my inquiry is trying to avoid. Or: this positing of laws which compel 'things' to act constitutes a world in which 'things' like strangler figs have the capacity to act otherwise; to not strangle a host tree, for example. This element of “free will” is a moral dimension, the introduction of which we are attempting to evade.

This claim might, at first glance, appear to be a rejection of mechanistic theory in favour of vitalism, but as we examine the following complimentary assertion we will see that this is clearly not the case for Nietzsche's argument. Nietzsche's second claim is that there are no 'things' at all! This is a critique of unity and not explicitly a critique of a moral reading of a mechanistic world, but it is easy to see how a concept of unity is a necessary component of a mechanistic interpretation of the world (and, yes, a vitalistic one, too), and therefore a critique of unity – of things – plainly amounts to an indirect critique of mechanism and vitalism.

Now, Nietzsche's assertion is that there is something other going on than discrete entities interacting with other discrete entities. Better put, it is that the theories Nietzsche is critiquing (mechanism and vitalism) have forgotten their origins and so rest on fictional foundations. He is trying to create an interpretation of the world which does not fall prey to fictional foundations, but which is grounded by genealogical enterprise. Mechanism and vitalism are not replaced by an “in itself” that once-and-for-all posits the world as it is, but rather by an interpretation which, in Nietzsche's eyes, does better justice to the world as it affects us and as we affect it. For example (and speaking directly to Nietzsche's second claim), he traces the origination of a belief in discrete entities back to a psychological prejudice – the concept of 'I.' He writes, “if we didn't consider ourselves to be unities, we would never have created the concept of 'thing'” (14[79], pp. 245). We have posited the existence of 'things' in the world as a projection of our own psychological experience, and even if we now do not take the 'I'-as-unity quite as seriously as we once did, even if we no longer confidently think of ourselves as unities, the original prejudice concerning our belief in 'things' still remains.

Nietzsche's second claim without a doubt radicalizes his first one. In fact, one may be left puzzled as to whether or not there is any_____ (I can't say thing!) at all in Nietzsche's world. No laws; no things; so what is there? Of course, Nietzsche's interpretation of the world is not empty. This is where we can see Nietzsche's most world-shakingly radical move: he characterizes all of the events of the world as a play of 'thing-less' forces in a disparate, stratified relation with other 'thing-less' forces. There are no things, nor any laws to compel or to be obeyed, but merely forces, or “quanta of will to power” as Nietzsche clarifies in a note, engaged in (and deriving their “essence” through) a struggle for “power” with themselves and with each other. Let's allow Nietzsche to speak for himself on this point:

"...what remains [after his critique of psychological and sensible prejudices occluding the origin of mechanistic theory – DS] are not things, but dynamic quanta in a relationship of tension with all other dynamic quanta, whose essence exists in their relation to all other quanta, in their 'effects' on these – the will to power not a being, not a becoming, but a pathos, is the most elementary fact, and becoming, effecting, is only a result of this..." (14[79], pp. 247)

All of this suggests that the question I asked earlier (“what is a strangler fig and how can we think about what it does?”) has become something very different than it first appeared, if we take Nietzsche seriously (which, as you can see, we are currently doing). No longer does the question suggest an obvious answer. We can't say, for example, that a strangler fig is a type of tree (most generally, a type of thing) that has developed a survival mechanism that involves parasitically choking a host tree, and we can't do this because of the reasons I have outlined above. Nor can we understand the strangler fig morally, as an entity that could act otherwise and should be judged for its harmful action against other trees. And in fact, in many ways the former articulation is contained in the latter; think of the morally-loaded way we use the word “parasite,” for example. For one, the strangler fig does not operate according to a compulsion to survive, nor from any exterior influence such as a principle or a law. Further, the strangler fig is not a thing. So, what is the strangler fig according to this strange grocery-list of conditions?

"This world is the will to power – and nothing besides!

And you yourselves too are this will to power – and nothing besides!" (38[12], pp. 39)

And the strangler fig, too, is this will to power – and nothing besides! Unless the strangler fig is somehow not a part of “the world” (and we get no indication from Nietzsche that it would not be) then this statement follows from the above quotation. We know that will to power is, for Nietzsche, the most elementary fact, and that this will to power can be thought in terms of dynamic quanta in tension with other dynamic quanta. I assert, therefore, that the strangler fig is a quantum, or collection of quanta of will to power which derives its essence based on its relationship of tension with other quanta it is engaged with. Throughout this essay, we have been using one particular example of what the strangler fig does; it “strangles” a host tree. We can conceive of this example as one instance of a quantum of will to power in tension with another, “characterized by the effect it exerts [upon other quanta] and the effects it resists,” not by its relation to an entity which acts but by its relation to other quanta. The “strangling” of a host tree by a strangler fig is, in this sense, an act which is set apart from the world of entities, a world which is, for Nietzsche, one of calculation instantiated by a reliance on psychological and sensible prejudices.

Now, if we are to think of the will to power behind the strangling of a host tree to be an event which stems from the unity of the “strangler fig,” as an entity, then we are to conceptualize Nietzsche's intent incorrectly. The unity of a plant, a strangler fig, is a fiction that allows us to calculate, a fiction that is overlayed atop a complicated and largely imperceptible world of tension, and so to think of a quantum of will as emanating from a unity of something like a stranger fig, well, that is to “turn truth on its head!” To see quanta of will to power emanating from a unified entity is, for Nietzsche, to obscure the origin of such events and give the will to power a faulty foundation. In Nietzsche's own words, he writes, quite appropriately:

"To understand what life is, what kind of striving and tension life is, the formula [for striving] must be applicable to trees and plants as well as to animals... – but here we've already fabricated a false unity that does not exist: the fact of a millionfold growth, with initiatives of its own and half its own, is hidden and denied if we begin by positing the crude unity 'plant.' But all expanding, incorporating, growing is a striving against what it resists... what do the trees in a jungle fight each other for? For power..." (11[111], pp. 221)

The strangler fig is thus not a unified entity but the calculative coordinate which localizes a number of quanta of will to power, each of them in tension with others, each of them striving to increase their 'feeling of power' through the tension or struggle they exert or resist. The strangler fig's act of strangling is not done so that the strangler fig as a unified entity might survive, or because it is exerting some sort of malicious moral intent; rather, it is the act of strangling itself (this localized quantum of will to power) that wishes not simply to preserve itself, but to increase its feeling of power through exerting itself upon some quanta and resisting the exertion of power of others. This is not done because the will to power is a “principle” which must be obeyed by the quanta we are thinking about, but because these quanta are quanta of will to power themselves.

Part 2: How can we think about what a strangler fig does?

Now that I have outlined in some detail what a strangler fig “is” in this context, we are presented with several complications that result from this odd and evasive definition. Most of these stem from the way in which we employ language. That is, many of the ways language seems to implicitly describe “what is going on” seem to preclude any discussion about the world we have posited for the strangler fig above. Having to clarify that a strangler fig is not a unified entity, but instead a “calculative coordinate which localizes a number of quanta of will to power,” for example, is a bit of a pain at first. But part of Nietzsche's project seems to be to increase the 'feeling of power' in the quanta of will to power behind specific linguistic terms; that is, he seems to be attempting to “reappropriate” terms and use them to his own ends, in the manner of quanta of will to power striving for power through tension with others.

We can see evidence of this in the quotation above, when Nietzsche critiques the “crude unity” of the word “tree,” and then, to make a point about the nature of striving, uses “the trees in a jungle” as an example! It is evident that here, Nietzsche is not being hypocritical or forgetting his previous arguments, but is attempting to reappropriate the use of the word “tree” to work in the context of a world of will to power. No longer does “tree” suggest a metaphysical unity, but instead the word “tree” becomes the coordinate for representing the “milionfold growth” that he refers to in the previous sentence. If we understand how Nietzsche is deploying his context, if we “have ears for” what Nietzsche is asserting, then our conception of the strangler fig is reconfigured; no longer does “strangler fig” imply a metaphysical unity, but instead, it implies a “calculative coordinate which localizes a number of quanta of will to power” in not so many words.

This “rehabilitation” of certain terms highlights a greater problem with language in this context, a problem which Nietzsche diagnoses in his book, The Genealogy of Morals, as well as in his notebooks. This is the problem of the separate of doer and deed, and indeed, the creation of a “doer” behind the deed itself. The most famous illustration of this problem is that of how we describe the action of lightning. We say, “lightning flashes.” We use two words to represent a single event, and we implicitly suggest that there is a “doer” (lightning) that perpetrates a “deed” (flashing). This is a problem because it seems that the prejudice towards metaphysical entities that act thus and could act otherwise seems to be built in to very way we use language itself. We can see the same problem in the way we talk about the strangler fig. We say, “the strangler fig strangles,” and we end up building the action of strangling (the localization of a quanta of will to power) atop the foundation of a unified subject who then performs the action.

This presents us with a performative obstacle to successfully thinking of a strangler fig in the context of a world of will to power. Is this just a matter of changing the way we use language? Might we, instead of asking “what does a strangler fig do?” ask instead, “what is happening under the coordinate of this strangler tree?” This does better justice to the kind of world Nietzsche is talking about, yes, but it might do more to occlude the problem we are facing that first appears. We are not facing a problem of individual statements needing to be rethought, at least not directly. Our problem is one of the way in which language itself seems to work, that language makes the distinction between doer and deed to begin with. Language is itself a form of calculation which requires discrete and ostensibly static entities in order to properly function. To cover that up by saying that we can better approximate “what is going on” in Nietzsche's interpretation, and present that as a solution, is to miss the point and actually obscure the actual goal in this matter; finding a way of speaking and thinking something like a strangler fig that does justice to Nietzsche's view in its entirety and, more specifically in this essay's context, that does justice to the life of the strangler fig.

There is one further complication, and that is the way in which we think of quanta of will to power themselves. It is very easy to fall into thinking of such quanta as unities themselves, somehow whole and only constituting tension between themselves. This could not be further from the truth and I want to take some time to examine just why these quanta are not unities in the matter of atoms. For one, there is an “internal” tension to a quantum of will to power in addition to the “external” tension we have talked about above. But even this falls prey to conceptualizing a quantum in the same way we conceptualize a unity. Quanta are not “containers” which hold themselves as a cohesive unity and contain a tension inside of that unity; they are themselves a tension that is the result of the play of quanta of will to power that themselves are constituted by their relationship. This is to say, that the play of quanta does not “stop” at a certain level, but goes down to an infinitely imperceptible degree. This is why Nietzsche can say that the will to power is the most elementary fact; what makes up quanta of will to power? Will to power. And so on, and so on.

Of course, we are still thinking of this on the level of localizeable phenomena. The real trick is to look at this situation from the side of the will to power; that it is only one grand pathos, one insurmountable occurrence that is seen as a composite of separate parts when those parts are localized through a coordinate like, for example, our strangler fig tree.

Conclusion.

Each of us has seen a photograph of, say, a running man, taken with a camera with a shutter speed slower than the motion of that moving body. We all know the characteristic “blur” of those photographs, of the person somehow exceeding their frame. The slow shutter speed metaphorically captures the ecstatic-ness of that captured moment; the running man overflows himself in that moment, and if the shutter were to remain open indefinitely, the running man would overflow himself into infinity. The picture of a man running with only a small blur, or none at all, is the picture of a running man localized, in the same way that Nietzsche localizes the coordinate of a plant or a human in order to be able to talk about them in his terms; never are they apart from the whole, even when they are separate.

So too, each of us has felt the feeling of power inside of ourselves increasing when, say, we are exercising or when we are playing a game of soccer, and winning. In those moments, in each moment, there is a perceptible tension that complicates our usual perception of a unified self; we can feel where we are going and where we are coming from, and each of those coordinates are themselves constitutive of an increasingly-imperceptible tension, down to infinity, down to the will to power. The tension we feel when our feeling of power is increasing is a picture of what our belief in unity covers up, in the same way that the concept of “strangler fig,” when we first examined it, covered up a complex and dynamic life-world underneath of it.

The strangler fig is not a unified entity, nor a thing which can perform actions at all. We asked the question, “what is a strangler fig?,” and in the course of our examination we have discovered that this question is the same question as “what does a strangler fig do?,” for we have discovered that, in this context, at least, a strangler fig is precisely, and no more than, what it does. This question, too, implies another that we see now is analogous; what is going on where we have located a strangler fig? How can we define what we find at that location, and what do our findings suggest about the whole context, even outside of our localization? These questions do away with both problems I identified in my introduction; we no longer have to think of a strangler fig as either a moral entity which could act otherwise, or an evolutionary unit that follows laws and principles imposed from without.

All of this is to say, we now have some wiggle-room when it comes to thinking about and speaking about the life of a strangler fig tree, and how it is connected to, for example, a host tree in a manner of tension which suggests the very constitution of life itself. The strangler fig tree has led us to a general picture of a Nietzschean cosmology! The very life of the strangler fig is an expression of the will to power, and is constituted through a relationship of struggle with other quanta and, indirectly, all quanta. The quanta of will to power behind the strangler fig posit values for themselves – what is it that would allow for the increase in the feeling of power? – and it is through the struggle between those values and their relative strengths that either world, the world of unity or the world of will to power, could have come to be at all.

WORKS CITED:

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Writings from the Late Notebooks,” ed. Rudiger Bittner, trans. Kate Sturge. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2003.

apodictic evidence in Husserl's cartesian meditations.

2009-11-20T14:14:00.000-05:00

Introduction.
In this essay I intend to lay out what Husserl means, in the Cartesian Meditations, by evidence that is “apodictic and first in itself and its incompleteness.” To do so, I will have to investigate a few Husserlian terms, including the meaning of evidence, and specific the meaning of evidence that is adequate and evidence that is apodictic. I will also have to examine the importance of the incompleteness of evidence in order to properly characterize Husserl's intentions. In order to better elucidate the goal of my essay, I will ground my thoughts and deployments in a real-life example; for this example, I will choose my perception of sitting in a restaurant and writing this essay on my laptop computer.

Evidence, adequate and apodictic.
In the Cartesian Meditations, the first Meditation in particular, Husserl is interested in uncovering a proper grounding for the idea of a genuine science. By science, here, he does not mean a natural science like biology or chemistry necessarily, but rather he means the field of a universally-grounded discipline in general. As such, he wants to establish philosophy as one of these disciplines (indeed, the foremost discipline), and rescue it from the dispersive non-coherence that he saw philosophy take on during his life. As such, Husserl wants to ground the philosophical endeavour by means of evidence. He writes, “as someone beginning philosophically, since I am striving toward [making it a] genuine science, must neither make nor go on accepting any judgment as scientific that I have not derived from evidence, from 'experiences' in which the affairs and affair-complexes in question are present to me as 'they-themselves.'” (Husserl, p. 13). This is a dense statement that deserves a good deal of unpacking.

“Affairs” in this quotation refer to those specific atomistic pieces of any given experience (a term which can be taken self-evidently at this point), and by “affair-complexes” he means affairs which have been compounded in a way such that they do not make up the whole of my experience, but which do contain more than one affair. While the eventual division of evidence into two specific categories has not occurred at this point, we can see that one of the general properties of evidence is that a given affair or affair-complex is made present to me as 'they-themselves,' that is, that the judgment made of such affairs is present in the affairs themselves and not present as something distant from them (ie. an erroneous and unsupported hypothesis, a judgment that does not match up with what is judged). Judgments, thus, do not necessarily lead to evidence, but all evidence requires a manner of judging.

Later, Husserl makes an important distinction between two different sorts of evidence; evidence that is adequate, and evidence that is apodictic. As both of these sorts of evidence are important in the larger scope of this essay, let me examine them one by one and characterize them sufficiently.

Adequate evidence is the “corresponding idea of perfection” to prescientific experiences (and even synthesized, predicative experiences) which are incomplete and infected with “unfulfilled components, with expectant and attendant meanings” (Husserl, p. 15). This is, for Husserl, a guiding idea of the ideal scientist; that experiences are pregnant with unfulfilled meanings which can be clarified and synthesized into the actual experience itself, and this clarification is delineated by Husserl as a process of perfection, whereupon the arrival of this perfection such evidence will be deemed adequate. Husserl surmises, however, that since adequate evidence is a guiding idea of the genuine scientist, then the notion of a truly adequate evidence would lie precisely at the end of the scientific endeavour. Thus, Husserl leaves open the question as to whether or not adequate evidence may “lie at infinity,” suggesting that the scientist's work in the context of finding adequate evidence may never be complete.

Beyond adequate evidence, though, Husserl delineates another sort of evidence which, he claims, holds a “higher dignity” than that of the former. This evidence is apodictic evidence, which holds “absolute indubitability in a quite definite and peculiar sense” (Husserl, p. 15). It is apodictic evidence that, more than being a simple guiding idea for a genuine science, serves as an absolute grounding for such a science. It is that grounding which provides for the “absolute indubitability that the scientist demands of all 'principles.'” We can begin to see how apodictic evidence may be related to adequate evidence; whereas apodictic evidence need not meet demands for adequacy, adequate evidence, in order to fulfill the expectations of a genuine science, must satisfy the demand for apodicticity. That is, adequate evidence must be grounded apodictically in order for it to be considered a contributing factor to a genuine science. The absolute grounding of a genuine science must be apodictic and first in itself, ie., it must be absolute indubitable such that thinking its non-being become impossible, and it must be “before” any substantial work-towards-adequation takes place.

Thus, when Husserl is looking for an evidence that is “apodictic and first in itself and its incompleteness,” he must refer to both his characterization of adequate evidence (ie. for the incompleteness) and his characterization of apodictic evidence (to be absolutely indubitable and first in itself) in order to sufficiently deploy it for his purposes.

We can see, thus, the place that “meaning” has for Husserl, an important place within the scientific and in the prescientific. He writes, “judging is meaning” (Husserl, p. 10). Here, Husserl clarifies that judging is a “merely supposing,” and thus that meanings that are to be made scientific must be clarified by means of a becoming-adjusted to the affairs and affair-complexes themselves, and this accounts for the conversation of “mere” meaning into evidence. “This conversion is inherently characterized as the fulfilling of what was merely meant, a synthesis in which what was meant coincides and agrees with what is itself given; it is an evidence possessing of the correctness of what was previously meant at a distance from affairs” (Husserl, p. 10). The relation of meaning to evidence could thus be characterized as the relationship of hypothesis to experimental data, as in both cases what is supposed or intended is fulfilled (or not fulfilled, the case of judgments which are erroneous) by a relation to and an agreement with “what is itself given” by the manner of scientific, evidential inquiry.

I have now developed the ideas surrounding evidence that is “apodictic and first in itself and its incompleteness” sufficiently such that I can engage my development in the example I mentioned at the end of my introduction.

An example of evidence that is apodictic and first in itself and its incompleteness.
As with any evidence, we must begin with a judgment, a merely supposed meaning. I judge, currently, that I am sitting in a restaurant enjoying some green dragon maki as I am writing this essay on my laptop. The restaurant itself is a bustle of activity, and Korean-speaking servers flutter around attending to tables like damselflies examining different coordinates of the water of a lake. I am regarded oddly by other patrons of the restaurant, who look at my laptop and perhaps ponder to themselves what an odd place to write an essay a sushi-restaurant is.

What conditions for evidence can this judgment of sitting in a restaurant meet? At first glance, it might appear that it meets the conditions for apodictic evidence; because, after all, when I regard anything at all what is immediately given to me is the world. Does the world in general – and my regarding this sushi restaurant in particular – meet the conditions for apodictic evidence, then? Unfortunately not. While the world does appear to be what is immediately given to me, it is indeed possible for me to doubt the veracity of my experience in this restaurant. I could be experiencing a particularly cogent and linear dream, for example – although one would hope my dreams contain content somewhat more bracing than essay-writing. I could one day realize that my entire life has been an illusion. These are definite doubts that I can hold regarding the indubitability of the world, and thus we must call into question the hypothesis that my experience of the world can be held as evidence that is apodictic and first in itself. Husserl comes to similar conclusions regarding a similar hypothesis on p. 17 of the Meditations.

There is something in my initial example, though, that may effectively be used as an example of evidence that is apodictic and first in itself and its incompleteness. While I can, indeed, doubt that I am in a restaurant eating sushi and typing on a laptop (ie., I can doubt that I am actually there, that the judgement that I am there corresponds evidentially to what is given to me), what I cannot doubt about my experience is the form of my perceiving (ie., that I am perceiving something). This “form” can stand in and indeed implies that, while the content of my perception may be called into doubt, I cannot in fact doubt that there is an I, an I which is engaged in the process of perception, of perceiving something which does not in itself satisfy the conditions of apodictic evidence but which suggests something that does. The fact of my perceiving can stand as an example of apodictic evidence, as it is indubitable and the thought of not perceiving (its non-being) is otherwise unthinkable.

This movement from the content of my perception (which can be doubted) to the form of said perception (the fact that I am perceiving, the cogitatione, which cannot be doubted) is an inward turn which characterizes the starting points of Husserl's phenomenological enterprise. It is with this starting point, this turning-away from the world, that the role of adequate evidence can now be seen. It exists, as it does in any grounded and genuine science for Husserl, as a guiding principle for the proper deployment of transcendental philosophy. The turning-away from the world “brackets” the world, a movement which leaves it where it is, but suspends consideration of it in favour of what is outside of that bracketing (which is the transcendental “I” that is the intentional source of cogitationes concerning the world). We can see, then, that the perceiving cogitatione of my being in a restaurant and typing on a computer is not only evidence that is apodictic and first in itself, but also incomplete in the sense of as-yet inadequate.

If the fact that this evidence is apodictic and first in itself means that this evidence is radically indubitable and before any form of adequation of evidence (ie., that it serves as a grounding principle for all further evidential investigation), then the fact that it is “incomplete” means that there is still work to be done, that there are still unfulfilled and attendant meanings to be clarified and related to 'them-themselves'. The field for this orientation-towards adequate evidence is not the world which I experience, but that I experience at all, the form of experience, of perceiving, doubting, thinking, believing, etc. This will be the preliminary object of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, and the source of all of his meditating as the book continues past the First Meditation.

Now we can see, too, where Husserl's conception of the cogito differs from Descartes. Whereas Descartes focuses his attention on clear and distinct meanings once he has established the indubitability of the “I think,” Husserl focuses on the incompleteness (inadequacy) of evidence to very different effects. This difference is accounted for in Descartes' failure to turn away from the world and recognize the transcendental implications that he had unearthed. As such, the ego takes on the character of a “little tag-end of the world,” (Husserl, p. 24). That is, the ego remains a part of the world, and res cogitans becomes substantia cogitans. As such, the ego becomes employed as an axiom for further investigation of the world, rather than becoming employed as the starting-point for a transcendental phenomenology which makes a marked separation between the world and the subject which is intentional towards it.

Conclusion.
In this essay, I have performed the required tasks to elucidate what Husserl means by evidence that is “apodictic and first in itself and its incompleteness.” I have analyzed and critiqued the notion of evidence such that it has become divided into two categories, adequate and apodictic. I have examined the implied conception of meaning that can be derived from Husserl's process of finding agreement between the act of judging and what is itself judged. Finally, I have presented and interrogated an example which fits with the above explorations, and derived from that example some conclusions about Husserl's initial phenomenological project, and its relation to the project of Descartes in his own Meditations.

WORKS CITED:

Husserl, Edmund. “Cartesian Meditations,” trans. Dorion Cairns. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.

the transcendental object in Kant's critique of pure reason.

2009-11-16T14:02:00.001-05:00

Introduction.
In this essay, I will explore Kant's characterization of the “transcendental object” and some implications that follow therein. In order to illustrate the concept of the transcendental object in a suitably robust manner, I resort to characterizing the milieu which it operates within, detailing Kant's conceptions of original, transcendental apperception, of the unity of the synthesis of production in the imagination, and of the play of appearances which the transcendental object, along with transcendental apperception, gives synthetic unity to.

The transcendental object = X.
The transcendental object is, in the simplest yet most accurate possible terms, a logical necessity of the unity of the synthesis of representations. It is a concept, not something intuited but something that has logical necessity and plays a role as such. When Kant says, earlier in the Critique of Pure Reason, that concepts without intuitions are empty, this is precisely the case for the transcendental object, which by its very definition is non-empirical and thus is simply represented by the placeholder, “X.” In a footnote at A109, Guyer and Wood note another passage where Kant speaks of the transcendental object, namely in the published collection, Notes and Fragments. In fragment 5554, Kant writes that the transcendental object is “no real object or given thing, but a concept, in relation to which appearances have unity” (R 5554, 18:230). Immediately, we can see that the significance of the transcendental object is precisely in its relation to appearances.

What is the nature of this relation between transcendental object and representations of sensibility (appearances)? We saw in the quotation above that the relation is one of the unity of appearances. We can begin to understand this unity-through-relation by understanding what Kant means by a representation/appearance. First of all, Kant writes that “all representations, as representations, have their object, and can themselves be objects of other representations in turn” (A109). This means that representations are fundamentally related things in the context of transcendental idealism; they are related to an object. A representation without a distinct and corresponding object is “determined at pleasure or arbitrarily,” (A104). Kant further writes that the only objects that can be immediately given to us (ie. before the synthesis of imagination) are appearances, ie., that which is presented to us by empirical intuition. This is not a problem in itself, except when we consider that appearances are themselves representations which, then, must have an object which they are related to.

If appearances did not have this non-empirical concept as their object, then there would be nothing to ground the representation of objects a priori and thus nothing to unify the concept of the object in general. That is, because there is nothing lasting or constant (ie. numerically identical) about empirical concepts, they cannot serve as a unifying principle for representations/appearances in general. Thus, a pure, a priori concept is reasoned, one which “cannot contain any determinate intuition at all, and therefore concerns nothing but that unity which must be encountered in a manifold of cognition insofar as it stands in relation to an object” (A109). The “X” is a placeholder which is almost entirely on the empirical side of the transcendental divide; only the tiniest bit of it (precisely the kernel; that which is being represented by the X) touches the non-empirical, just enough to be grounded a priori.

For Kant, then, the transcendental object “is that which in all of our empirical concepts in general can provide relation to an object, ie. objective reality” (A109). It is that non-empirical, non-intuitive and pre-categorial concept which alone makes appearances thinkable as objects of consciousness, which interposes a distinction between representation and object, and establishes the necessary agreement between the two. Because it is non-empirical, it cannot contain any intuitive content, and thus it stands as a formal unity, a unifying and relational entity that exists as a logical necessity, but not anything empirically real.

The transcendental unity of apperception.
If the transcendental object is that pure concept which alone makes appearances thinkable as empirical objects of intuitive cognition, in what context are they thus “thinkable?” For Kant, this thinkability only exists in the context of a synthetic unity of consciousness that he calls the transcendental unity of apperception. This is contrasted with empirical apperception, which is constituted in the “inner sense,” which was the topic of our previous essay on the Transcendental Aesthetic in this course. In my previous essay, I noted that empirical apperception could never be anything constant, unified or lasting, and would indeed look like something similar to Hume's conception of a “bundle” of representations that makes up a (necessarily disjointed) self.

Transcendental apperception, on the other hand, is a “pure, original, unchanging consciousness” which is “numerically identical” and “grounds all concepts a priori” (A107). This means that transcendental apperception is necessarily a priori. It is pre-categorial in the same way that the transcendental object, and it is determined from without sensibility or experience. For one, it serves as a principle of formal unity; as Kant says, “it is... one consciousness that unifies the manifold that has been successfully intuited, and then also reproduced, into one representation” (A103). Secondly, the transcendental unity of apperception is numerically identical; all representations, in order to be representations of an object in the context of transcendental idealism, must be related back to something which is the same; as Kant writes, “the I think must be able to accompany all my representations” (B131). And, because this numerical identicality is transcendental rather than empirical, the substance or character of that selfsame unity is unknowable; “I am conscious of myself [according to transcendental apperception] not as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that I am” (B157).

In addition to being a simple formal unity of the manifold of representations, the transcendental unity of apperception plays an important role in the establishment and maintenance of the transcendental object, and vice versa, the transcendental object plays a necessary role in the establishment and maintenance of the transcendental unity of apperception. If the transcendental object plays the role of establishing or determining the unity of appearances as objects for thought, then the transcendental unity of apperception is the “subject” for which those objects gain and maintain meaning. Without the transcendental unity of apperception, appearances determined as objects for thought through the unity of the manifold resulting from the logical inference of the transcendental object would have no constant, numerically-identical “I” to relate themselves to. Thus the transcendental object conditions the transcendental unity of apperception, and vice versa.

The threefold synthesis of imagination.
We have seen, now, the role of the transcendental object and its constitutedness in the context of the transcendental unity of apperception. Now we must examine how appearances/representations come to be taken up as a synthetic unity by transcendental apperception. The is essentially the question, how is experience in general possible? This question is answered, and our task accomplished, by the movement of the threefold synthesis of the imagination.

At A115, Kant states that “the possibility of an experience in general and cognition of its objects rest on three subjective sources of cognition: sense, imagination and apperception.” We have already examine the significance of apperception as a source of cognition in the above passages, and I have addressed the role of sense (the representation of appearances empirically in perception) in my previous essay for this course. This leaves the pure synthesis of the imagination. The movement of thus synthesis consists in three parts, two of which are strictly dependent on one another and on sense, the last of which is that which determines the relation to apperception.

First, there is the synthesis of apprehension in the intuition. Time plays an important role here; because all representations are “modifications of the mind,” they are subject to the formal condition of inner sense (as stated in my previous essay), which is time. Time is “that in which [representations] must all be ordered, connected and brought into relations” (A99). Time determines the succession of impressions of representations, orders them and gives them shape to be taken up by the next synthesis. Kant calls the synthetic operation which performs this ordering the synthesis of apprehension in intuition. There is precisely a small “interval” before intuition is given to us (hence Kant's usage of the word “apprehension”) which gives representations the ordering they receive in time. Sense itself, as a purely receptive faculty, cannot provide this ordering and relating.

Secondly, there is the synthesis of reproduction in the imagination. This synthesis is associative, as it brings the representations which were previously ordered and related to one another by the synthesis of apprehension into view as having the ability to effect “transitions of the mind.” If the synthesis of apprehension was an atomising and relational synthesis, then the synthesis of reproduction is one that produces lasting connections between representations, which allows me to grasp a manifold representation without “los[ing] the preceding representation from my thoughts” (A102). This connecting/reproducing of representations is nothing like conscious memory, though; it is the mere ability to relate, and to relate simultaneously. From all this we can see that both syntheses we have addressed so far are intimately related to one another. The latter synthesis is required to grasp more than one representation at once; the former, required to make a distinction between representations in the first place.

Finally, there is the synthesis of recognition in the concept. This synthesis is intimately related to the transcendental unity of apperception, but its operation is not the same. Kant writes, “without consciousness that that which we think is the very same as what we thought a moment before, all reproduction in the series of representations would be in vain” (A103). Thus, it is in the third synthesis which we see the introduction of consciousness, and the unity of consciousness. The third synthesis, that of recognition in the concept, is that synthesis which makes apprehended and reproduced representations products of a single consciousness. “It is one consciousness that unifies the manifold that has been successively intuited, and then also reproduced, into one representation” (A103). We cognize an object if we have performed a synthesis of unity upon the manifold of intuition.

Here we can again see where the transcendental object comes into play. As each representation in turn has its object, there must be, thus, an object which grounds the concept of the object even after the most immediately-given representation, namely appearances. Representations are thus determined by a rule that is established and maintained by the transcendental object. This rule “determines every manifold, and limits it to conditions that make the unity of apperception possible, and the concept of this unity is the representation of the object = X” (A105). The conditions of the possibility of experience (threefold synthesis, sense, imagination and apperception) are also fundamentally the conditions of the possibility of objects of experience.

The rules of representations which are a priori are, for Kant, the categories. They are the conditions of thinking in a possible experience, and also the fundamental concepts for thinking objects in general (A111). For Kant, all appearances in the context of transcendental idealism must be connected to necessary laws, which are derived from the thinking of representations through the categories after the threefold synthesis has determined, associated and finally related representations to a single, numerically-identical and grounded “I” and to the logically necessary transcendental object that must therefore exist and is only representable as an “X”.

Conclusion.
I have shown how all of the terms I have presented in this essay are connected. In regards to the threefold synthesis, I have shown how apprehension and reproduction are dependent on one another, and how they determine and associate representations in order to be related to (by the third synthesis) a transcendental unity of apperception, a unity of self-consciousness, a single “I”; through the relation between imagination and apperception. I have shown how the nature of an appearance in the context of transcendental idealism logically necessitates the existence of a non-empirical object which determines and maintains the concept of an object in general for all representations. I have shown how the transcendental unity of apperception and the transcendental object are mutually-established and maintained, and I have show how the combination of all these points I have listed above determine and condition the possibility of thought through the pure concepts of the understanding, or the categories.

good starting points and their significance in Husserl's transcendental phenomenology.

2009-11-15T14:07:00.000-05:00

Introduction.
Begin well! is the implicit command which betrays the spirit behind Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. I want to take the time to explore what this methodical and ethical demand means, both in the context of Husserl's general comportment towards philosophy and in the specific context of the Meditations. My presentation will take on the character of a repeated doubling-back, and in this way I will travel from the general to the specific over the course of my presentation. I will present to you a series of coordinates, each one being connected to those preceding and proceeding by means of a “doubling-back” in the manner I have just described.

Oddly enough, the end of my presentation will be the beginning of actually being able to think phenomenology qua Husserl. All of the work I shall do here is preliminary and preparatory in nature; that is, we needed to come this far in order to begin, we needed to make or uncover the space that phenomenological work (in Husserl's sense) will reside in hereafter. And so it is quite appropriate that my presentation be focused on “beginnings” and, indeed, that it begin and begin again so many times. Each turn of a coordinate will re-examine a specific space and cast it in a new light, reconfigure it so that it can be taken to new (or uncovered) ends.

Coordination.
Husserl as a writer of “introductions to phenomenology.”
The Cartesian Meditations is a relatively difficult book to be considered an introduction to a topic – it presupposes a lot of language and, indeed, seems more suited to someone who has had experience with Husserl's earlier writings than it is to someone coming to the subject of phenomenology for the first time – that is nonetheless the way he viewed it. It is explicitly billed as “an introduction to phenomenology.” This is not the only such “introduction” that Husserl produced in his lifetime; many, if not the majority of the works in his corpus are billed as such. This seemingly-innocuous fact provides us with our first starting point, our first coordinate. Husserl is very concerned with beginning well. So concerned, in fact, that he wrote introduction after introduction in an attempt to best present the workings of his thought. It's known, too, that Husserl modified his thought as new insights came to him, further impressing upon us his focus on finding clearer and more robust entry points.

The ethical demand of philosophy as a unified community.
What was the aim of this focus on introductions and beginnings? Husserl's aim was a methodical and ethical one (the method and the ethics being tied up in the same project), and he was responding to what he saw at the unproductive dispersion of the philosophical tradition and enterprise in his time. In the Meditations, he writes that, “instead of a unitary living philosophy, we have a philosophical literature growing beyond all bounds and almost without coherence. Instead of a serious discussion among conflicting theories that, in their very conflict, demonstrate the intimacy with which they belong together, the commonness of their underlying convictions, and an unswerving belief in a true philosophy, we have a pseudo-reporting and a pseudo-criticizing, a mere semblance of philosophizing seriously with and for one another” (Husserl, p. 5). Which is to say, Husserl's project became one of uniting the philosophical enterprise under a common set of presuppositions, a set that would allow it to work cohesively together even when it disagreed with one another. If the ethics of Husserl's endeavor is now clear, we should focus on the method by which we might arrive at such a location.

The search for a universal ground to suit a philosophical unification.
Husserl's ethical demand (and the space it will eventually take up) is elucidated if we examine, in the same space, the methodical kernel of his idea; a universal grounding of philosophy and the sciences. As such, Husserl will have to find a suitable location for such a grounding to occur. He finds such a location in what he sees as a “lost spirit” of philosophy, one which pushes the discipline forward with a sense of purpose and camaraderie, and which starts (of course) at the beginning of any subjects experience of the world. “Philosophy is the philosophizer's quite personal affair,” writes Husserl, “and it must arise as his wisdom, as his self-acquired knowledge tending towards universality, a knowledge for which he can answer from the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute insights” (Husserl, p. 2). The series of presuppositions underlying much of the philosophy at his time was unsatisfactory to Husserl, who wanted to experience and confirm each step, each supposition on the way to a philosophical system.

A selection of a suitable outcropping of “spirit.”
What better way to approach this now-delineated space again, then, than with Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy? Here is, for Husserl, the prime example of philosophy as a “quite personal affair,” by which Descartes starts by doubting everything and proceeding from the ground up. Husserl will take Descartes' effort as the model for his own. He starts, then, with...

Attempting to doubt everything.
We have come to a much more specific understanding, now, of the space which Husserl is working in. Husserl starts, after pushing all aside, by interrogating the very idea of a science (not necessarily a natural science, but a scientific discipline generally) and that idea's overall legitimacy. In order to determine that, however, Husserl must first determine what that “final” and “guiding” idea of science actually is.

Establishing the goal and identifying the idea of a genuine science.
After some examination of this now-even-further delineated space, Husserl concludes that every scientist “intends to let no judgment be accepted by himself or others as 'scientific knowledge,' unless he has grounded it perfectly and can therefore justify it completely at any time by a freely actualizable return to his repeatable act of grounding” (Husserl, p. 11). This is to say, the guiding idea of science is that it shall be grounded in a certain repeatable and confirmable manner. Again, he writes, “I must neither make no go on accepting any judgment as scientific that I have not derived from evidence, from 'experiences' in which the affairs and affair-complexes in question are present to me as 'they-themselves.'” (Husserl, p. 13). In order to proceed further, then, Husserl my examine the idea of evidence in the space that he has delineated for himself.

The idea of evidence; adequation and apodicticy.
There are two types of evidence that Husserl is interested in. The first is adequate evidence, which is results from the process of perfecting prescientific experiences/evidences, which themselves are always pregnant with “unfulfilled components” and “attendant meanings.” It is the synthetic combination of experience-upon-experience until those components and meanings are fulfilled that constitutes the process of adequate evidence. This is a major part of the guiding idea of a genuine science; and as such, because the process of gather adequate evidence is difficult to fully complete, Husserl muses that “the question whether adequate evidence does not necessarily lie at infinity may be left open” (Husserl, p. 15). The second type of evidence, then, is apodictic evidence, which is not necessarily adequate, but which holds “the peculiarity of being the absolute unimaginableness of its [its] non-being” (Husserl, p. 16). Apodictic evidence is evidence such that thinking its non-existence is inconceivable.

Evidence of the world as possible apodictic grounding for a genuine science.
If adequate evidence will not provide a suitable absolute grounding for a genuine science, and apodictic evidence may, then Husserl must ask the question whether he can identify something which is apodictic in itself and which also may serve as an absolute grounding. His first hypothesis is that this evidence might be the world itself. He writes, “all the sciences relate to it... more than anything else the being of the world is obvious. It is so very obvious that no one would think of asserting it expressly in a proposition. After all, we have our continuous experience in which this world incessantly stands before our eyes, as existing without question” (Husserl, p. 17). But he soon abandons this hypothesis, because “not only can a particular experienced thing suffer devaluation as an illusion of the senses; the whole surveyable nexus, experienced throughout a period of time, can prove to be an illusion, a coherent dream” (Husserl, p. 17). The world cannot be apodictic because doubting it is not inconceivable, not impossible. Husserl, thus, must look elsewhere for his absolute grounding.

The sum cogitans as apodictically certain.
This leads us to reexamine the space in which Husserl is operating one last time. Whereas the world cannot be seen to hold apodictic certainty, Husserl reasons that the sum cogitans can and, indeed, does. He writes, “if I abstained – as I was free to do and as I did – and still abstain from every believing involved in or founded on sensuous experiencing, so that the being of the experienced world remains unaccepted by me, still this abstaining is what it is; and it exists, together with the whole stream of my experiencing life” (Husserl, p. 19). While I can successfully doubt the existence of the world, I cannot doubt the existence of something which is doubting the existence of the world; I cannot doubt that I am doing something in the mode of thinking, perceiving, feeling, doubting, etc. Thus, the sum cogitans (what Husserl calls the “transcendental ego”) holds a sort of apodictic certainty and can serve as the absolute ground of a genuine science that Husserl has been searching for.

Interrogation.
What follows are some questions I have that have arisen out of my above inquiry. Can the “Husserl as systematized beginner” thread be followed further into Husserl's philosophy in general, and further into the Cartesian Meditations in particular? Are there other conclusions we can arrive at in the context of the First Meditations that depart from Husserl's own? Specifically, I ask about the non-apodicticity of the world and the assumption of the apodicticity of the transcendental ego.

WORKS CITED:

Husserl, Edmund. “Cartesian Meditations,” trans. Dorion Cairns. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.

space and time in Kant's transcendental aesthetic.

2009-10-30T13:57:00.000-04:00

INTRODUCTION.
In this essay I will be concerned with showing how time, as a pure intuition, determines what Kant calls the “inner sense.” To do so, I will extrapolate upon what Kant means when he calls time the “a priori formal condition of all appearances in general,” which itself entails that time is the formal condition of inner intuition, under which we find intuitions of our self and our inner state (ie., our inner sense). In order to succeed in this elucidation, I will be made to define and outline several terms and other technical determinations in Kant's Critique that will aid in the illustration of the place and role of time. I will begin by briefly summarizing some terms that Kant employs that will be useful in my elucidation, followed by a brief exegesis of Kant's claim that space is a pure intuition. From there, I will be able to note how Kant's notion of time differs from his notion of space, and this will allow me to more deeply explore my original plan.

PART I: Elucidation of terms.
Here, I will be chiefly be concerned with certain sorts of cognitions: namely, pure intuitions and empirical intuitions (as well as the objects of those intuitions, which Kant calls appearances). Empirical intuitions are arrived at through the way in which an object affects a mind's capacity for representation. Representation in Kantian terms can refer to intuitions, thoughts, or ideas, but I will here limit the word's usage to intuitions only. The way our capacity for representation is affected by an object is called sensation, and “that intuition which is related to the object through sensation is called empirical” (B34). Thus, an intuition which is arrived at through sensation can be called empirical.

Whereas empirical intuition is concerned with the matter of appearances (“that...which corresponds to sensation” B34), pure intuition is concerned with the form of appearance. Kant argues that since sensations themselves cannot be given form by another sensation (or empirically), the matter of appearances is given a posteriori and the form, thus must be given a priori. That is to say, if all empirical intuitions necessarily presuppose a form of their sensible appearance, then that form cannot also be given sensibly. The form of appearance is thus all that is left after both concepts in the understanding and empirical intuitions are stripped away. Nothing belonging to the understanding or to sensation would remain, and we would be left with pure forms of sensible intuition, namely space and time (B36).

PART II: Space as a priori pure intuition of outer appearances, in brief.
It is time that I am primarily concerned with in this essay, as a pure form of intuition, and further, as I will explore, as “the a priori formal condition of all appearances in general.” Of the two pure forms of intuition, space and time, time is concerned with what Kant calls the inner sense, and space with what he calls the outer sense. We would do well to briefly explore what Kant means by space as “nothing other than merely the form of all appearances of outer sense” (B42), in order that I may contrast and situate time in relation to it.

First of all, Kant puts forth that space is an a priori intuition rather than a concept or something arrived at through sensation. He supports this claim in a few ways: (1), that any sensation of spaces arrived at empirically must presuppose space as their ground, a priori, else we would be left without a necessary form of appearance in which we would represent space. (2), that one can represent a space without intuitions of objects, but one encounter or represent objects without first presupposing space, a form of pure intuition. (3) and (4), finally, that space is no amalgamation of related intuitions, but that space as a pure intuition is taken as a single space, a unity, and that discrete “spaces” within it are not subsumed as though under a concept (as in many instantiations of a car subsumed under the concept of a car), but are in space, within it, and thus are infinite instantiations of limitations within a single pure form of intuition. (B38-40)

Furthermore, Kant asserts both the empirical reality and the transcendental ideality of space, stemming from its status as an a priori pure intuition. That is, space has objective validity when viewed from the “human standpoint,” (B42) but when considered from the position outside the human subject, it does not have validity in regards to, or rather cannot speak to, the reality of things-in-themselves. Time has objective validity in terms of appearances, but because appearances are a product of our intuitions of things, that objectivity has a subjective basis.

Finally, space is the necessary form of all appearances of outer sense, and not inner sense. All things which I consider to be external to myself are first grounded by my pure form of intuition, which is space. In order to think the term “external” at all, I must presuppose space. When I posit something outside of myself (here, to clarify, an appearance of something outside myself), I posit something existing, precisely, simultaneously with myself. This is what Kant means when he says that “different spaces are... simultaneous” (B46); relations of space occur in the same time but in different places in relation to one another. It is here that I can make a strong connection between what I have just extrapolated about space, and time, which will be my object for the remainder of this essay.

PART III: Timeu as a priori formal condition of all appearances in general.
Kant argues for time as a pure intuition using many of the same reasons as he argues for space. For one, an a priori intuition of time is required, necessarily, to ground empirical appearances in time. Secondly, one can remove appearances from time, but not time from appearances, suggesting that time is necessarily prior to the appearances in it. Third, that different times are merely parts of a single, unified time. Even the word unified is deceptive, here, as it suggests that it is unified of different parts; whereas Kant wants to say that time is precisely one. Finally, different times are merely limitations within a single time, rather than being infinite combinations subsumed under a would-be concept of time, and thus time cannot be a concept.

There are some key differences between the way the two are presented, however, and they will be elucidated below.

As mentioned above, Kant argues that different spaces are simultaneous. Different times, on the other hand, are “not simultaneous, but successive” (B47). As is easy to see, both terms, simultaneity and succession, themselves presuppose time, as they are temporal terms. Simultaneity denotes; at the same time. Succession denotes; at different times, one after the other. Certainly, these terms can imply space as well, but only after time is presupposed. In that sense, it would read: Simultaneity, in different spaces at the same time, and succession, in the same space in different times.

This suggests strongly Kant's claim, that time is the a priori formal condition of all appearances in general. Appearances are given to us in space, are also given to us as intuitions in time as the necessary condition of their existence as appearances in general. Kant claims, “all representations, whether or not they have outer thing as their object, nevertheless as determinations of the mind themselves belong to the inner state, while this inner state belongs under the formal condition of inner intuition, and thus of time, so time is an a priori condition of all appearance in general” (B50). Let me unpack this a little bit. I have already shown Kant's argument that space is the necessary condition of the appearance outer objects, and here he proposes going one step further. He reasons that all representations of outer objects (and so, too, all representations which are internal as well) are themselves determinations of the mind, and thus belong to the inner state.

All appearances in general belong to the inner state. The inner state belongs to the formal condition of inner intuition, which is time. That is, time is the necessary condition of all appearances belonging to the inner state (which are all appearances in general). Time is, thus, the immediate condition of the inner state and also a mediate, or secondary, condition of outer appearances, or the outer state. Thus, Kant can say that just as all outer appearances are determined a priori according to the relations of space, all appearances in general are in time, and necessarily stand in relations of time. It is not that Kant is saying that spatial appearances are subsumed under temporal ones; merely that all outer appearances as appearances in general are determinations of mind, and thus also belong to the inner state. (B50)

To clarify: time cannot determine outer appearances as outer appearances, but as an outer appearance is also an appearance in general, time determines them mediately, in this way. However, time immediately determines inner appearances immediately.

Time, like space, has both empirical reality and transcendental ideality. It is “objectively valid in regard to all objects that may ever be given to our senses,” (B52), that is, insofar as sensible objects are the only objects which can be given to us in experience, there is no object in experience that would not be given in time. But, on the other hand, regarded from the position of things themselves, removed from the “human viewpoint,” time would have no domain, no validity. The reality of time is only true in the context of appearances, rather than things-in-themselves. Time thus has transcendental ideality, but merely empirical reality.

PART IV: Time, inner sense, and the self.
Let me now address my initial question about time and its relation to the inner sense. What, first, is the inner sense? Kant suggests that the inner sense is “the intuition of our self and our inner state” (B49). I have shown that the inner state is constituted of appearances given in time as the formal condition for all appearances in general. I have also shown how Kant arrives at the inner state; we arrive through sensible intuitions of appearances in general, which are necessarily determined in time; that is, successively rather than simultaneously. What of the self, though? If the inner sense is made up of sensible intuitions of appearances determined in time, then the self given in this context would be a mere appearance as well. Because time is transcendentally ideal, it does not go all the way to representing things-in-themselves, and thus can only speak to appearances of objects.

The inner state and the self as an object of representation in time would thus be mere appearances. In this sense, the subject that is representing appearances would be outside of time and space, and thus an empirical conception of the self that is determined by the inner sense in time would be the manner in which the subject appears to itself in sensibility. It would only be given through one of the two pure forms of intuition (time), granted, because the represented empirical self would be primarily concerned with internal intuitions and not external objects, but it would remain an appearance and thus not a thing-in-itself. The subject or self as thing-in-itself would thus be unknowable for Kant, as we would be unable to represent it through sensible intuition without instead representing the way the subject appears to itself. Kant states, “it intuits itself not as it would immediately self-actively represent itself, but in accordance with the way in which it is affected from within, consequently as it appears to itself, not as it is” (B68).

an exposition of Slavoj Zizek's coordination of violence(s).

2009-10-17T13:51:00.000-04:00

In this essay, my goal is to write an exposition of Zizek's characterization of violence in two of his books, Violence and In Defense of Lost Causes. There are three forms of violence I am interested in in the former book, and one in the latter. I will attempt to synthesize these forms, along with their implications, and, finally, conclude whether or not we can discern a clear and rational definition of violence that exists as a kernel in each of the forms examinated.

In Zizek's book Violence, the author concerns himself with two delineations of violence: subjective and objective, each with deeper conceptual coordinates that spell out the applied characters of each. Subjective violence is, in basic terms, violence that is visible to you or I, the bully making fun of me at school or the bomb being dropped on a city. Subjective violence is visible because it is determined only in relation to a “normative” state, a “bottom” of my social/political world which I can then contrast departures from that state against. For example, the violence of the bully beating me up in public school is visible precisely because there is what Zizek calls a “non-violent zero level” (Violence, p. 2) which conditions the way in which such violence affects me noticeably. The “normal” or “peaceful” state here could be, for example, not getting beaten up.

Another example of subjective violence, before I continue my exposition, can be seen in my laptop computer's inability to add the correct linguistic characters atop both “Z's” in Zizek's last name. It does not have the proper character map loaded in order to represent these “specialized” markings. This inability to represent Zizek's name properly is a noticeable kind of violence, precisely because I have assumed (and been told, by my book, by articles, by Zizek himself, in interviews) that “Zizek” with additional linguistic marks above both “Z's” is the proper way of spelling the name. That “proper” way serves precisely as the sort of “zero level” that Zizek is talking about in his book.

However, the “zero level” that conditions the visibility of subjective violence is itself conditioned by violence, in this case what Zizek delineates as objective violence. Whereas subjective violence is visible and determined, after a fashion, by a “zero level” or a state of (conditioned) normativity, objective violence is that violence which conditions and sustains a normative state itself. Hence, it is invisible and Zizek compares it, cheekily, to “dark matter” in physics (Violence, p. 2). Here, the example of being beaten up by a public school bully will not suffice, as Zizek determines two separate instantiations of objective violence, and neither of them are done sufficient justice in that particularly playground. The two types of objective violence that Zizek determines are systemic violence, and symbolic violence. Each of these will require different examples to properly elucidate.

Systemic violence is the violence that establishes and maintains a given economic/political order. It results from the “proper” function of economic or political systems. By “proper” I mean ideal, the picturesque operation of, for example, liberal capitalism (a favourite example of Zizek in his book), or, far more obviously, a fascist dictatorship. In Zizek's words, and generally, systemic violence is “not only direct physical violence, but also the more subtle forms of coercion that sustain relations of domination and exploitation, including the threat of violence” (Violence, p. 8). The constrast between our ease of grasping these two examples of systemic violence (fascism easier than liberalism) itself illustrates Zizek's concept. It is far easier to see the systemic violence in the deployment and sustenance of a fascist dictatorship because such a deployment would appear as subjective violence to those of us who live in a liberal-capitalist society. It is harder to see the systemic violence in the same sort of deployment or sustenance of a capitalist democracy precisely because the necessary operations of liberal capitalism are already the “zero level” which conditions our apprehension of subjective violence.

The systemic violence inherent in a fascist dictatorship is visible because it is hypothetical, or if not quite hypothetical, then not a part of our immediate political/economic experience here in Canada. Because of this it can serve as an example only if we imagine it underlying a person's conditioned view of subjective violence in the same way that we can critically reason the systemic violence of liberal capitalism underlying our own. Victims of global capitalism (say, farmers in Jamaica unable to sell products because of free trade), for example, because they are, from our perspective, victims of no crime, but merely the proper progression of the globalizing liberal-capitalist world.

Symbolic violence, finally, is inherent in the deployment and sustenance of language and its forms. There are two instantiations of this sort of violence, one of them “deeper” than the other. The first is the symbolic violence inherent in specific language; terms we use which may include hidden instantiations of domination. An obvious example of this sort of symbolic violence could be using the word “Man” when one is referring to the whole of mankind. But there, the violence inherent in that speech act has become quite visible and obvious over time (and thus it would be, realistically in many circles, subjective violence), and the point of making a delineation like symbolic violence is that it, like all objective violence, is invisible and sustains various structures of domination, subjugation or limitation unbeknownst to the user within the structure.

The other, deeper sort of symbolic violence is violence not within specific language, but inherent in language as such (Violence, p. 2). This form of violence would exude from language's imposition of itself as a whole, and not simply from parts of it that can be seen to be upholding structures of domination. The entire structure of language would purvey and impose a certain sphere of meaning, of what counts as meaning. In this case, the symbolic violence here would not be present in mere specific instances of language, but in the very organization of the coordinates of language as a whole, and the addition of coordinates to that whole.

The very act of speaking or writing these words is an act of symbolic violence, then. Zizek writes, “there is something violent in the very symbolisation of a thing, which equals its mortification” (Violence, p. 52). My characterization of Zizek's examination of violence does symbolic violence to that text, by arranging the discursive coordinates in a specific way, at the behest of other ways, or the behest of the original arrangement of coordinates put forth by Zizek. This symbolic violence is also present in the very naming of a thing; of a thing's entry into a linguistic structure. The word “candle,” for example, introduces a kind of stagnation to the thing it represents, in that the thing, with all its latent potentiality, becomes something which is subordinated to the word “candle” which acts as a signifier to the thing. But here the autonomy of the thing is lost, as it has become introduced into a whole system of signifiers.

There is one more kind of violence that Zizek refers to, although it is not paid attention to in Violence. It is another book of Zizek's, In Defense of Lost Causes, which pays attention to this last kind of violence, which I will refer to here as “revolutionary violence.” To be fair, Zizek never relates revolutionary violence to his other three forms of Violence, but it is certainly relatable and I hope to work out some of the details of this relation in the coming paragraphs. This form of violence does not fit into the “SOS” trinity that Zizek introduces in On Violence, but rather exists separately while overlapping some of the territory staked out by the others. Revolutionary violence exists not as a difference in coordinates (location) compared to subjective, objective and symbolic violence, but as a difference in quality. True to its name, revolutionary violence would be the impetus for a ground-up overthrow of established linguistic and/or ideological systems which are established and maintained through systemic and symbolic violence.

The catch, though, the reason that revolutionary violence differs in quality rather than location, is that a revolutionary violence may present itself as symbolic or systemic, or even subjective; but it may not be confined to one, or even all three of these categories. Revolutionary violence, more than just being “invisible” in the sense of systemic or symbolic violence (which serve as zero-levels, as grounds upon which we can discern subjective violence), is unthinkable. A truly revolutionary would exude a force which would protrude beyond any symbolic or systemic violence. Language shapes and informs the way we think, and thus a violence which extended beyond the symbolic violence of a linguistic system would necessarily be unthinkable. All of this exposition on revolutionary violence can be seen, implicitly, in the following example from Zizek's book.

In In Defense of Lost Causes, Zizek uses Hitler's so-called “revolution” to illustrate how even the violence of Nazi Germany (of which there are numerous examples of subjective, systemic and symbolic violence) falls short of the violence required for an act to be viewed as revolutionary violence. Zizek writes, “crazy, tasteless even as it may sound, the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough, that his violence was not 'essential' enough. Nazism was not radical enough, it did not dare to disturb the basic structure of the modern capitalist social space (which is why it had to focus on destroying an invented external enemy, Jews)” (iDoLC, p. 151). Violent in many ways as Nazi Germany's project was, it was not revolutionary because it could not escape the “modern capitalist social space” which still, in the end, acted as the movement's “zero level.”

It is with this “zero level” in Nazi Germany that we can see a kernel of revolutionary violence; precisely, that it does not have an established “zero level,” that it acts as a sort of Nietzschean free spirit, unencumbered by the imposed linguistic and ideological structures that surround it. This is why revolutionary violence can appear as any or all of subjective, systemic or symbolic violence, and still exist outside of those boundaries; because its fundamental action exists independently of these categories and any overlap that is inevitably seen is merely coincidental.

After all of this exposition, what can be seen as Zizek's definition of violence? Further, does Zizek actually manage to talk, discursively and rationally, about violence? Let me address these questions below.

In speaking of the violence of Nazi Germany and its failure to be truly revolutionary, and specifically of Hitler, Zizek writes, in an effort to illustrate why he failed to be revolutionary in this sense, that “all of his actions were fundamentally reactions.” (iDoLC, p. 151). In this sense we can begin to see the character of violence itself. That character is action, movement, alteration. But more than just an open embrace of “difference” as such, violence is selective, too.

Working from this newly-introduced opposition and terms – action vs. reaction, selection, etc. – is there some definition that unites Zizek's “SOS” trinity of violence, such that we can isolate the kernel from the additions, something that reconciles action, reaction and selection? Precisely, that reconciliation is found in “limitation.” All three of subjective, symbolic and systemic violence have to do with limitations. In subjective violence, the limitation exists in the very way we perceive that violence. That is, we are limited in what can be seen as subjective violence by the “zero level” that is presupposed before subjective violence emerges. It is also limiting in the sense that it places a limitation on a subject's ability to act upon the zero-level of their ideological and linguistic engagements; if one is constantly engaged with the threat of subjective violence, then there is no time to think, no time to act upon other forms of violence.

Systemic violence acts as a limitation because it precisely is the forceful imposition and maintenance of political or economic structures upon a populous and a world. It is a limitation by definition, the active sustenance of a boundary. Symbolic violence, too, is by definition a limitation; I choose the word “coffee” over any other, I separate a thing with its ability to “speak for” itself and introduce it into the world of language, its autonomy cut off and now subordinated to its signifier. Clearly, then, one kernel that unites all three of Zizek's “SOS” trinity is that of limitation. The character of each of these forms of violence is precisely one that limits through action.

Does revolutionary violence contain limitation as a kernel, as well? If so, it would be a limitation beyond limitation as such; the coming of a limitation that would be unthinkable itself, a new limitation, an Event requiring legislation rather than an action built upon an already-established ground.

Finally, I want to address whether or not Zizek has, indeed, actually been able to speak of violence as such, without resorting to myth or other non-rational forms of discourse. It seems, here, that only with the introduction of a “radical” form of violence that would overlay and exceed Zizek's “SOS” trinity are we able to speak of violence outside political, economic or linguistic spheres. That is, regarding the “SOS” we are only about speak of violence in particular instantiations, of a violence based on such-and-such a ground here, or there. It is only with the introduction of the “coordinate” of revolutionary violence that we are able to see (through opposition of activity and reactivity) the kernel of violence as Zizek characterizes it.

WORKS CITED:
Zizek, Slavoj, “In Defence of Lost Causes,” Verso Books, 2008.
Zizek, Slavoj, “Violence,” Picador Books, 2008.

in conversation with Gadamer's theory of openness, via Heidegger and truth as unconcealment.

2009-05-27T14:36:00.000-04:00

Introduction.
What does it mean to understand a text? This is the question that Gadamer takes up explicitly in Chapter 5 of Truth and Method, “Language as the Medium of Hermeneutic Experience.” My object in this essay is to delineate, in a way, Gadamer's elucidation of a hermeneutics of understanding in language. To do so, I want to address what is meant by maintaining an “openness” to an other, and what it means to “grasp” the substantive rightness of an other's opinion, as Gadamer states on p. 387. Before I begin, I want to state the path which my exploration will take.
First I will address what Gadamer means when he says that in a “true conversation... each person opens himself to the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the particular individual but what he says” (Gadamer, p. 387). In order to do this, I will have to examine in detail Gadamer's distinction between the “particular individual” and “what he says.” This will involve some investigation of the essence of the “subject matter” of a text, as well as an examination of the importance of “interpretation” within the frame of a hermeneutical conversation.
I will then address, with the above considerations still in mind, what it means to “grasp the substantive rightness” of an other's opinion. This will involve a detour into Heidegger's essay “On the Essence of Truth,” in which Heidegger investigates in painstaking depth the notion of “correctness” as truth, which I here relate to Gadamer's use of the word “rightness.” When I (re)turn from the detour, I will have extrapolated sufficiently a notion of “rightness” such that I will be able to orient the quotation that is my subject.
Without further structural delineation, let me begin.

Part I: Gadamer, openness and the subject matter of a text.
What is a “true conversation”? At the beginning of the chapter, Gadamer points explicitly and immediately to the fact that such a conversation “has a spirit of its own, and that the language in which it is conducted bears its own truth within it – i.e., that it allows something to 'emerge' which henceforth exists” (Gadamer, p. 385). But what is the “spirit” of a conversation? What is the essence of the “truth” that a real conversation bears within itself?
Gadamer has many names for this. He calls it, at times, the “subject matter” of a text, “what is there,” the “truth,” and the “spirit.” While each of these terms bears some interesting and unique trajectories for addressing my need for a definition, let me make things more simple by choosing just one for the purposes of this essay. In the interests of my later consideration of Heidegger, I elect to use “truth.” What, then, is truth? For Gadamer, truth would be that which can be commonly expressed by both parties in a conversation; not the simple, psychologistic “opinions” of either party, but that which the goal of which is to be understood (if contingently) by both parties. Truth, thus, would not be something “sayable” in the sense of having an ultimate or final manner of expression, but rather that which “orients,” in a non-representable sense, two parties who have in mind the goal of coming to an understanding.
If I may be allowed to take a brief detour in order to ensure the lucidity of my meaning: This non-representable, orientational aspect of a conversation, the “truth” of a conversation, is explicitly what we above referred to as the “spirit” of a conversation that does not belong, in a linguistic or spoken sense, to either party of that conversation. If it does “belong,” it belongs to language itself, which Gadamer notes is the “universal medium in which understanding [the truth of a text] occurs” (Gadamer, p. 390). It is, to echo Heidegger, something that is “unconcealed” in a progressing conversation, although necessarily at the expense of a “concealment” that occurs in the same process. Gadamer says as much when he says that an interpretation “that takes its task seriously is at once clearer and flatter than the original” (Gadamer, p. 388).
I return. If I have now sufficiently addressed the notion of the “truth” of a conversation, then what I must do next is ask how such a truth comes to bear on a process of hermeneutic understanding. Let me use an explicit example of the sort of conversation Gadamer is most interested in; that of the interpreter and a text which is the object of interpretation. Gadamer here clarifies his chosen meaning of a text by quoting Droysen; texts are “'enduringly fixed expressions of life' that are to be understood; and that means that one partner in the hermeneutical conversation, the text, speaks only through the other partner, the interpreter” (Gadamer, p. 388). The text “speaks” through the interpreter only through the text's interpretation.
But how can a text as an “enduringly fixed expression” speak through an interpretation? Can the text not “speak” for itself? For Gadamer, interpretation is evidently the only way a text can speak. Here can see, partially, the way Gadamer has delineated the relationship between text and interpreter. A text is merely a collection of “written marks,” which must be interpreted through the establishment of a common language in order for a conversation between text and interpreter to reach an understanding. Since the text is “fixed,” it falls upon the interpreter to assume the responsibility of honestly and “truthfully” interpreting the text. That is, the interpreter may not interpret the text outside of the truth that is unconcealed in conversation with it, if that interpretation is to make claim to having responsibly understood a text.
What does it mean to responsibly come to an understanding of a text? Here we return to the conversation, as hermeneutic understanding can only occur through an open dialog between text and interpreter, such that the truth of a text can emerge. “Thus it belongs to every true conversation that each person opens himself to the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the particular individual but what he says” (Gadamer, p. 387). The openness that Gadamer speaks of here is to comport oneself towards a text such that its truth may emerge. This requires, as Gadamer discusses in the previous chapter, the “foregrounding” of one's own prejudices (Gadamer, p. 273).
I might bypass the need for immediate technical elucidation, here, by drawing attention to the problems that Gadamer sees are inherent in the modern historian:
“The historian usually chooses concepts to describe the historical particularity of his objects without expressly reflecting on their origin and justification. He simply follows his interest in the material and takes no account of the fact that the descriptive concepts he chooses can be highly different to what is familiar and thus, despite all impartiality, subordinate the alien being of the object to his own preconceptions. Thus, despite his scientific method, he behaves just like everyone else – as a child of his time who is unquestioningly dominated by the concepts and prejudices of his own age.” (Gadamer, p. 397)
The conversation between text and interpreter, and the openness that such a conversation entails, is not simply an engagement from the interpreter to the text, but also an engagement by the interpreter, taking what “written marks” he has from a text, towards themselves in order to identify those preconceptions that may not be useful, helpful or responsibly held in order to come to an understanding of the text being interpreted. It is a question not only of being open to the text's manner of expression, but also of being open to the text's expression affecting the interpreter.
It would be easier to express this sort of dialog in the manner of a conversation between two people. If I were to engage in a discussion with someone – the goal of which was to genuinely understand where the other person was “coming from” – then I would approach such a discussion with openness. The character of this openness, though, would not simply be one of hearing the other party's opinion, of recognizing it as an opinion, but instead would be one of genuinely accepting the validity of the other party's opinion. I would, in order to responsibly attempt to “understand,” take that opinion and examine my own fore-conceptions of that party's expression and the world in which I find myself, with the goal of eventually clearing away all of the unhelpful prejudices I had previously held such that I would be able to interpret and re-create that opinion from my own position.
The same holds for the interpretation of a text. These two contexts are analogous. The interpreter must open himself to the expression of a text not only to the extent that they “hear” the words uttered or written, but further to the extent that they internalize that textual expression and let its truth affect them, overturning prejudices which may not be helpful in a process of understanding, and keeping those prejudices which do make for a responsible and truthful understanding. There is one important difference between a conversation between two people and the interpretation of a text, however. Gadamer says, as I noted earlier, “one partner in the hermeneutical conversation, the text, speaks only through the other partner, the interpreter. Only through him are the written marks changed back into meaning... the common subject matter [truth] is what binds the two partners, the text and the interpreter, to each other” (Gadamer, p. 389). Thus we can see that the conversation between a text and an interpreter goes two ways (in that the text affects the interpreter and those affectations in turn affect the interpretation of the text) and only one way (in that the process in not reversed for the text, which is already “open,” in a sense) at the same time.
Now that I have delineated Gadamer's conception of openness sufficiently, let me now turn to examining what Gadamer means by an other's “substantial rightness of opinion.” To do so, I will first have to examine Heidegger's own conception of openness and truth as “correctness” in his essay, “On the Essence of Truth.”

Part II: Heidegger and openness as the possibility of correctness.
In “On the Essence of Truth,” Heidegger writes, “the openness of comportment as the inner condition of the possibility of correctness [truth] is grounded in freedom. The essence of truth, as the correctness of a statement, is freedom” (Heidegger, p. 142). This is a dense statement and I would do well to unpack it so that I may explore its implications.
Let me start with truth as the possibility of correctness. This notion comes from Heidegger's exploration of accordance between objects and statements. He uses the example of a coin; I say, “this coin is round” and we can see that my statement is in accordance with the object in question. Heidegger is quick to clarify that the use of the word “correspondence”, as in “my statement about the coin corresponds with the coin itself” is problematic. He asks, “how can what is completely dissimilar, the statement, correspond to the coin?” (Heidegger, p. 140). It would have to “become to coin” in Heidegger's estimation, something which it is obvious would never be possible. Something “material” could never become something which is “immaterial.” And so the possibility of correctness is not that a statement corresponds with an object, but that the two are in accordance.
Heidegger is here concerned with the “relation” between the two, the presentative statement and the object. “The statement regarding the coin relates 'itself' to this thing in that it presents it and says of what is presented how, according to the particular perspective that guides it, it is disposed” (Heidegger, p. 141). For Heidegger, to “present” means to let a thing stand opposed as object, an opposition which “must traverse an open field of opposedness.” Which is to say, the manner in which an object is opposed to a statement is open, and that one who is making a statement must be comported to beings, to, specifically, the thing in question.
This is where we see Heidegger's own conception of openness come into play. “Comportment stands open to beings.” I noted earlier in this section that the openness of comportment is the inner possibility of truth as correctness. There is a chain of reasoning that Heidegger performs, here, that I feel cannot be said in a way more succinct or clear than the original appearance. Let me quote it, and then we can discuss its implications:
“A statement is invested with its correctness by the openness of comportment; for only through the latter can what is opened up really become the standard for the presentative correspondence. Open comportment must let itself be assigned this standard. This means that it must take over a pregiven standard for all presenting. This belongs to the openness of comportment. But if the correctness (truth) of statements becomes possible only through this openness of comportment, then what first makes correctness possible must with more original legitimacy be taken as the essence of truth.” (Heidegger, p. 142).
We can see, here, how this new characterization between a statement and an object, and further, the openness of comportment that makes possible truth as correctness, revaluates the “traditional” notion of truth and turns it on its head. Heidegger says, “Truth does not originally reside in the proposition,” but rather in the openness of comportment that makes that proposition possible. What, then, makes the openness of comportment possible?
Heidegger says that what makes the openness of comportment possible is freedom, and here assigns to the word “freedom” the definition of “letting beings be” (Heidegger, p. 144). Here, he does not mean to ignore beings, to not address them and not engage with them, but precisely the opposite; to engage with beings as they are, to let the truth of that being emerge without previously defining or thinking it. “To let be – that is, to let beings be as the beings that they are – means to engage oneself with the open region and its openness into which every being comes to stand, bringing that openness, as it were, along with itself” (Heidegger, p. 144). This is the essence of freedom which makes possible the openness of comportment which, in turn, makes possible or conditions the possibility of truth as correctness.

Part III and Conclusion.
We can see, then, how Heidegger's notion of truth as correctness fits in and adds depth to Gadamer's notion of openness. But how does the discourse we just delineated fit in with Gadamer's conception of an interpreter recognizing the “substantive rightness” of an other's opinion? For Gadamer, an other would always be someone or something that, in order to be understood, must be engaged with in conversation. The true conversation would have an “open” character, in that the two participants (whether two humans or otherwise) would let the conversation lead itself rather than letting their own prejudices push the conversation in one direction or another. The very same can be said for Heidegger, who, in conceptualizing openness of comportment and truth as correctness, thinks we must leave room for freedom; that is, for a being to be.
Another way of looking at this is to remind ourselves, recalling Heidegger, that it is not the presentative statement that “comes first,” but the “object,” that may or may not accord with a statement. This speaks with Gadamer's call to foreground our prejudices when engaging in conversation. Just like we must let a being “speak” for itself (lest we make the error of assuming that the statement comes before the being), we must, in conversation, not let our preconceptions and prejudices blind us to the truth that emerges in a conversation between a text and an interpreter, or two people having a conversation.
What Gadamer calls “substantive rightness” I take to mean something very similar to Heidegger's own notion of truth as correctness. Correctness, rightness, are these two terms not so close together that they may be interchangeable in translation from one language to another? It is odd, too, that in a text so focused on the implications of translation, “rightness” may be used instead of “correctness.” Should I think, perhaps, that the translators of this edition of Truth and Method might be having some fun with their audience?
In any case, Heidegger's treatment of openness and of truth as correctness is very similar to Gadamer's own notions of the former and of “substantive rightness,” such that we can plainly see the influence that the former's own theory exerted on the latter. Both of them want “freedom” in Heidegger's sense; to let a being or a text speak for itself. Both of them characterize the space of this freedom as openness; for Heidegger, openness of comportment in an open field towards a being (letting a being be itself), and for Gadamer, openness towards the truth of a text such that its subject matter maybe revealed and we might see a “fusion of horizons.”
I believe I have now explored Gadamer's conceptualizations of openness and “substantive rightness” sufficiently. Obviously, there would be no way to adeptly summarize an entire book's worth of theory (historical and productive) in an undergraduate essay, and so I have undoubtedly left important aspects of Gadamer's overall hermeneutic investigation out, in favour of highlighting others. That said, this essay has also served to highlight the debt that Gadamer owes Heidegger in the context of the former's project in the process of exploring the two concepts noted above. In addition, more than simply highlighting the similarity, my exploration of Heidegger's own conceptions of openness and truth as correctness have served to deepen the explication of Gadamer's work.

WORKS CITED:

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Truth and Method,” trans. J. Weinsheimer, D.G. Marshall. Continuum Books, London. 2004.

Heidegger, Martin. “On the Essence of Truth,” in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill. Transl. J. Sallis. Cambridge University Press, New York. 1998.

derrida's "force of law": an enquiry into aporetic ethics.

2009-04-15T13:46:00.002-04:00

Introduction.
As I have much to say, and because introductions to essays like this one are frequently superfluous and unnecessary (such as the preceding clarification... and this one...), I will keep my opening comments brief. But already the words of this introduction have performed something different, something other than their stated intention. In establishing a prescriptive structure for this introduction, I have already exceeded it, already gone beyond it. The mode of my attempt to not to write superfluous and unnecessary things in this introduction has proved superfluous and unnecessary. Thus one can accuse me of breaking the law, my law, one that I established, and gave credit to so that it might have enforced itself. It was broken as it was made. And in exceeding the law while establishing the law, I have done violence to it, a double violence. Violence all around; in establishment and enforcement, and in exception.
I should, however, be cautious regarding how long I keep this dance going, as I fear if I “perform” it for too long, I shall do violence to you, my reader, as well. But this is my topic: the “originary” violence of enforceable law; through Derrida and his lecture, Force of Law, to think the law and that which exceeds the law, and to examine the necessarily unrepresentable relationship between the two.

The groundless authorization of justice as law.
What authorizes law? What gives it a ground, a foundation on which to stand and be justified? This investigation is the object of the first paragraphs of Derrida's lecture. Through an investigation of “force” (enforceability, authorization) and “credit,” (faith, belief, or even debt) he concludes that the “ultimate foundation [of law] is by definition unfounded” (p. 242). Here, I will summarize, lawfully but unjustly, the trajectory of Derrida's investigation:
Derrida begins (does he?) by looking at an “idiomatic expression” in English; “to enforce the law” (p. 233). Recalling a recollecting Kant (“no law without force”), he finds that law and its enforcement are inseparable. Force is “not an exterior or secondary possibility that may or may not be added as a supplement to law,” but something implied in the very essence of the concept of the law, or justice as law. That is, the possibility of law is the possibility of the law's ability to be enforced. Further, Derrida posits that this force, essentially intertwined with law, is a force that “comes from within... that justifies itself or is justified in applying itself.” No law without force, no justification other than itself in its singularity.
But here, we have returned to our previous question. What authorizes, enforces law? If law and the enforceability of law are inseparable, then the authorization of law is internal to a law itself, and the foundation of a law necessarily cannot refer to any external prescription (as those external aspects, taken to their 'originary' instance, cannot have been enforced by, “cannot rest on” anything but themselves). This is the discursive point at which Derrida uncovers what he calls the “mystical foundation of authority,” and where we first see the concept of “credit” introduced into the enforceability of law.
The force of law that authorizes itself is “mystical” because it is accepted (granted the ability to enforce itself) as law as one accepts a myth; as a point of faith or belief rather than a point of “ontological or rational” (p. 240) justification. In this sense, laws that have been granted the ability to enforce themselves owe a debt to the “subjects” of that law. “The authority of laws rests only on the credit that is granted them,” and that credit is granted to law each time one sees it enforced, in every singular application of law to context. One has faith in law, believes in it, gives it credit; and that is the beginning and the end of it.
It is in this sense that “law,” as Derrida has characterized it, and which we have granted credit to in our above delineation, is deconstructible. If there is no arkhē to a law other than its own ability to be enforced and the credit which represented entities grant to it, no “ultimate foundation” that exists outside and prior to an enforced prescription, then the construction of a law is always “interpretable and transformable” (p. 242), that is to say, deconstructible. This, for one, means that the traditional opposition between “natural” (descriptive) laws and “normative” (prescriptive) laws becomes destabilized, so that essentially description is a manner of prescription; all law is prescription, and all prescription is interpretable and transformable. But interpretable and transformable in the name of what, or who? And why, as Derrida claims, is this necessary lack of ultimate ground not bad news? The “answer” to both questions is, in an uncertain manner, and never without clarificatory problems, what is called “justice”.

The unrepresentable monstrosity of “justice” as an exceeding-the-law.
Derrida is very adamant in suggesting that “law is not justice” (p. 244). In fact, this may be the most explicit statement in the entire lecture, Force of Law. If law is not justice, then, and justice not law, then what is justice? This question necessarily remains a positively or descriptively unanswerable one for Derrida, and will, too, remain one for us. For any representation of the nature or substance of “justice-in-itself” will necessarily be a prescription, a rule or a law. This evidently conflicts with Derrida's assertion that justice is not law. But what, then, is it? Why can justice not be law? I want to take the time to explore a sort of “negative theology” concerning this “justice” that is not law, a “justice” set apart from “justice as law.” Let us see where this exploration will lead us:
Law is not justice. It will be helpful to pick up where we left off at the end of the previous section, and start from Derrida's conclusion about law; that it is deconstructible. As if to clarify and give some direction, Derrida quickly points out that what is “outside or beyond law,” “justice-in-itself, if such a thing exist,” is not deconstructible (p. 243). Thus, what Derrida here problematically represents as “justice” cannot be given structure, cannot be a “universal,” whether prescriptive or descriptive. What we mean by “justice” is not, thus, representable. If this is the case (and we take it on a kind of faith, we give it credit), then there is nothing in “justice” to be “interpreted” and “transformed” on the order of a law that is deconstructible.
We would have been misleading in characterizing our detour if we did not point out, here, that our earlier characterization (a “negative theology”) has become problematic over the course of its execution. Whereas such “negative theology” has traditionally defined a sort of exploration of an order we may not immediately access (for example, if there are too many conditions for a “subject” of such an order to cognitively possess at one time), we have seen that justice, set apart from law, cannot have such a structure or order, accessible or not. And here is the crux of the matter, the interval so easily missed: justice is that which exceeds order or law, as well as the law of laws or the order of orders. It would exceed the very notion of structure, of constructibility and thus of deconstructibility. It is in this sense that, more than simply being undeconstructible, justice is the movement of deconstruction, and deconstruction is justice. But to what end? We will address this in the next section, when we speak of the aporia and a “responsibility without limits.”
It is interesting and important to note that it is the deconstructibility of law that reveals and makes relevant the undeconstructibility of justice, or rather that conditions or “ensures the possibility of deconstruction” (p. 243). That is, it is the groundless structure of law, the “mystical foundation of authority” that conditions the possibility of justice. This marks a sort of relationship between law and “justice,” one that Derrida characterizes as “aporetic” (p. 244). No justice without law, and no law without justice. It is in this sense that the deconstructibility of law is not bad news, but in fact “the political chance of all historical progress” (p. 242). But while this summarizes a contingent piece of this relationship, there is more to the aporia, more to the relationship between the conditional and the unconditional. In the next section, let me examine this negotiation between law and justice, between calculable and incalculable, deconstructible and undeconstructible, in greater detail.

Negotiations, demands and aporias: the relationship between law and “justice.”
Law is present and representable (a representation), and “justice” never seems to arrive, cannot by definition arrive. How, then (if they never “meet”) can they have a relationship? It is certainly not a “traditional” one, on the order of the relationship between (for example) nature and culture, just and unjust (where justice is justice as law). In fact, the relationship between law and “justice” is the result of a destabilization of such “traditional” relationships. The relationship in question here is aporetic, a passage identifiable but unable to be passed through, a “nonpath” (p. 244). This is why justice can, as stated above, never arrive; because it is “the experience of what we are unable to experience... an experience of the impossible” (p. 244).
Whereas law, as we have delineated above, is representable and calculable, “justice” is unrepresentable and incalculable. Thus, the relationship between law and justice “demands that one calculate with the incalculable... in which the decision between just and unjust is never insured by a rule” (p. 244). This is to say: there is no prescription in which we can properly and universally delineate the opposition just/unjust, no rule in which the dualism can be established fully and completely for all time. And yet, every “decision” in the field of law, every established operating structure has itself been, or has come from, a prescription that has exceeded prescription in its institution. It is the mystical foundation of authority that unveils the aporia we are here concerned with, the “possibility of justice” and “a responsibility without limits” (p. 247), and the work of deconstruction oscillates between the establishment/enforcement of law on one hand, the the infinite responsibility of justice on the other. No law without justice; no justice without law.
Where can we glimpse this aporetic relationship? One example that delineates space for “justice” without naming it or representing it is what Derrida calls the haunting of the undecidable. He says, “only a decision is just” (p. 253). The just decision (and for Derrida there seemingly would be no other kind) would necessarily have to justify itself, have to be founded upon itself; it could not appeal to another instance of prescription, for in that case the decision has, as such, already been made. Thus, the just decision would be one of re-evaluating possible approaches to a given context, one of “learning, reading, understanding, interpreting the rule” (p. 252). The just decision would stem from an undecidability; it would have to negotiate between the established representation of law and the singular incalculability of what is called “justice,” a negotiation that is not a simple opposition, that has no evident answer or presupposed judgment.
Further, the moment of the decision would curtail the presencing of justice such that it would never arrive, fully, in the present. The moment of a decision would once again be reduced to the order of laws, it would be following a rule, even if that rule has been “invented or reinvented... reaffirmed” (p. 253). Thus justice would never be present, even though movement is happening, even though the law has perhaps been exceeded or transformed or reinvented or affirmed.

Conclusion
The moment of the “just” decision is not a moment in time. In this essay, our wandering through the meadows of Derrida's paper has lead us here. We have examined Derrida's characterization of law and force, and the conditionality of both. We have examined the mystical foundations of authority and of law. We have attempted to delineate, always conditionally and always “failing” in a manner, the way in which Derrida considers justice, its necessary relation to law, and charted in the same contingent way the always-aporetic path between law and justice. But we are not done; this is the call of justice.

a "response" to derrida's essay, "différance."

2009-03-03T19:04:00.000-05:00

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.

gadamer's theory of historical understanding.

2009-03-03T19:03:00.000-05:00

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.”

socrates and thrasymachus: consistency in plato's republic.

2009-02-18T19:00:00.000-05:00

“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.

is ovid's rape-poetry pornographic?

2009-02-17T18:58:00.000-05:00

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.

how can a reason be reasoned with? derrida and the necessary unconditional.

2008-12-30T16:32:00.000-05:00

“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.

towards a conception of relational criticism.

2008-12-12T11:32:00.001-05:00

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.

wittgenstein: a critique of certainty, and movement towards a heterological epistemology.

2008-12-12T11:23:00.003-05:00

Introduction.
The critique that Ludwig Wittgenstein launches upon traditional conceptions of epistemology is a dramatic one, and one whose implications have yet to be adequately explored. Wittgenstein essentially is declaring the end of epistemology with his critique of certainty in the context of knowledge-claims. His anti-foundationalism and anti-universalism addresses the entire philosophical tradition, and asks some serious questions about the validity of many philosophical enterprises up until now. Wittgenstein's conclusions, however, appear to leave the one who is interested in continuing philosophical discourse within the scope a certain paralysis; some, indeed, have labelled this paralysis a mode of conceptual relativism, the implications of which have not yet been adequately explored. The aim of this essay is not to defend Wittgenstein's epistemological systematic from allegations of relativism (though such a defense may be implicit within it), but rather to examine one possible direction for philosophy and epistemology after Wittgenstein's dismantling of the epistemological tradition.

Towards such an end, this paper will assume the following structure: I will first examine the claims that Wittgenstein is making about knowledge-claims and the nature of knowledge in our world. I will use Wittgenstein's book On Certainty to explore his criticism of certainty and his explication of what he terms a “language-game.” Secondly, I will examine what Wittgenstein's epistemological claims say about the state of epistemology in our world; that is, I will look at the implications of Wittgenstein's writing, and how, so to speak, they declare the end of epistemology and perhaps even the end of philosophy. Finally, I will suggest and delineate a possible answer to the lingering question of Wittgenstein's work; “is there space for conceptual and/or critical movement within a heterological epistemology?” This delineation will address how cross-language-game critique or conceptual understanding might be possible even if we are always entrapped within a culturally-situated language game.

i. Wittgenstein on knowledge; his critique of “certainty” as traditionally conceptualized.
Wittgenstein, in On Certainty, immediately launches into his critique of the epistemological concept of “certainty.” One might guess that his criticism would take its form by opposing doubt to certainty; but isn't this still within the structure of certainty that Wittgenstein is trying to overcome? “From [something's] seeming to me – or to everyone – to be so, it doesn't follow that it is so. What we can ask is whether it can make sense to doubt it” (2). The first sentence in this quotation echoes a traditional problem or fallacy in epistemology; even if something appears as such, it doesn't follow that it actually is as such in reality. That is, we can't be certain, we can doubt that its appearance really corresponds with its essence. This sort of reasoning is precisely the problem for Wittgenstein. The expression “I doubt that you are certain” still presupposes absolute, universal certainty as a privileged value. “If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty” (115). Wittgenstein is seeking to doubt the certainty / doubt dualism itself – to reveal its senselessness – and replace the meaning of the concept with a structure that is more linguistically sound, and further, more representative of what Wittgenstein sees as the reality of heterologically existing language-games.

The question that remains, then, is whether or not we are justified in doubting something that seems “to me – or to everyone – to be so.” Wittgenstein calls into doubt our ability to meaningfully doubt something that is accepted by a group of people. Indeed, we are justified in this ability to doubt if we place our faith or belief in the concept of absolute certainty; but this is the very belief that Wittgenstein wants us to call into question. To do so, he examines the statement “I know.” “'I know' seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression 'I thought I knew'” (12). When one says “I know,” traditionally, they are stating something as an inalienable fact, as in “I know this to be true, now and forever.” Wittgenstein calls this notion of absolute fact as epistemological concept into question by reminding people of another expression that can come along with the statement “I know.” This statement is “I thought I knew.” How many times have we taken something to be absolutely factual, only to have our opinion changed by a change of perspective or by discovering additional information?

“The truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference” (83). This much is apparent simply by looking at how our societies have developed throughout history; scientifically, ethically, epistemologically. As such, now that we, as humans, can observe the interaction of different “systems” of language with different rules and different constitutive structures, Wittgenstein implicitly argues, should we not alter our conception of epistemology to fit with our new frame of reference? “I make assertions about reality, assertions which have different degrees of assurance. How does the degree of assurance come out? What consequences has it? We may be dealing, for example, with the certainty of memory, or again of perception. I may be sure of something, but still know what test ma convince me of error. I am e.g. quite sure of the date of a battle, but if I should find a different date in a recognized work of history, I should alter my opinion, and this would not mean I lost all faith in judging” (66). We can draw a parallel to the state of epistemological inquiry, here, which may too be ready to alter its opinion of the substance of that which it is examining. How is it composed and how do we understand that composition?

For Wittgenstein, it is time that those engaged in epistemological inquiry recognized that “we use judgments as principles of judgment” (124). If Wittgenstein is right, if all sensible transference of information, cultural, scientific, or ethical, it conducted through “language-games,” then the principles which we use to evaluate such information (whether within our language game or not) are judgments themselves, not absolutely factual or a foundational requirement of all knowledge. This holds implications for judgment-itself; it follows from Wittgenstein's analysis that judgment-itself is always situated, always already within a language game. In order for an evaluation to make sense it must be occurring within a language game that has established the boundaries and “rules” that the evaluation must work within. If not, then the evaluation has no bedrock, has no ground, and thus is set adrift into a sea of nonsense that Wittgenstein calls “taking language on a holiday.”

ii. Implications: the end of epistemology, the end of criticism, and the end of philosophy?
If Wittgenstein's philosophical approach is to be believed and acknowledged, then what are we left with?

First of all, we are left with a drastically reduced account of what it means to engage in criticism. The implicit strangle-hold of a doctrine of language games is that one cannot critique a language game unless one is already engaged in it, a member and rule-follower so to speak. This means that I cannot critique the way another culture (for example) understands a tree to be a tree. If another culture were to see a tree in a different way and were to believe with certainty that this is what a tree is, I would be unable to approach people from that culture and say to them, “you're wrong, you've understood this tree in an incorrect way.” This attempt at critique would fail in two ways; one, because I am not “playing” the language game of the culture I am addressing (they may view my “correct” way of seeing the tree as incorrect); and two, because their explanation of the tree is not within my own language game; and thus I have no grounds for judging it.

I could say, “I doubt your way of viewing the tree is the right one, because I know it should be conceptualized in this manner” and Wittgenstein might respond “Doesn't one need grounds for doubt?” (122) A language game is a ground for criticism and evaluation, a ground for doubt; and any attempt to critique or “doubt” that which is outside of a language game you yourself are situated in becomes nonsensical, takes “language on a holiday.” Ergo, we can see the way in which Wittgenstein's philosophy complicates and makes problematic the ability to evaluate or critique; if we are not engaged in “the rules” of the game in which the object of our evaluation resides, we fall into nonsense.

Further, Wittgenstein's philosophical project heralds the end of a certain mode of epistemology; one that is based on a particular conception of certainty (one which we addressed in the previous section). Wittgenstein argues for a certainty that is always (and can only be) contained within a language game, and thus is incapable of critiquing that which falls outside of the language game; that is, such a critique lacks sense. This much is clear when Wittgenstein says that “the child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief” (160). We are certain at first because we believe; we believe our parents, our teachers (and even I, writing this, am to a certain extent believing Wittgenstein). Doubt comes afterwards, after we have already been situated within beliefs,within a language game. Further, we are not justified in doubting that which is outside the structural framework (language game) which houses or grounds our belief; to do so would be nonsensical. “For how do I know that someone is in doubt? How do I know that he uses the words 'I doubt it' as I do?” (127) Wittgenstein is, here, proposing that what we have taken certainty to be for long time is, perhaps, not what it really is; Wittgenstein's project in On Certainty is a new characterization of certainty, a repainting, a reappraisal. He attempts to contextualize certain knowledge (and thus knowledge itself), to situate it and relegate it to the system in which it is situated. Wittgenstein's project seems to be a demystification of knowledge.

This demystification, as we can see, reveals that traditional conceptions of epistemological inquiry are problematic. These conceptions address issues and make claims that exit the language games from whence they came, that “take language on a holiday.” These issues and claims are taken to exist with absolute, universal certainty rather than being taken for the nonsense that Wittgenstein claims that they are. If Wittgenstein is to be taken seriously, if his demystification is to be considered rigorously in the context that it is affecting, then we must pronounce the end of a certain mode of doing epistemology, a certain mode of knowledge.

This pronouncement may indeed entail consequences that are beyond itself; if epistemological inquiry has been made problematic by Wittgenstein's analysis, how then does this “end” of sorts affect philosophical inquiry as a whole? This is certainly a question for a different, more rigorously conceived paper; we have not the space nor the breadth for it here. However, I leave the question open with suspicion in my tone; if Wittgenstein's demystification of epistemology heralds its “end,” what does that end speak to about philosophy itself? Might the end of epistemology also herald the end of a certain mode of philosophy?

iii. Directions; towards a new, heterological conception of epistemology.
This talk of the “ends” of things is frightening talk, certainly. Frightening for the philosophical labourer; if epistemology, and even philosophy, is at its “end,” then what more do we have to work on? Are we done? Is the philosophical enterprise finished? Certainly not. While this declaration of the end or completion of a certain project may trouble the philosophical labourer (I am, here, working from Nietzsche's definition), it should appear as frighteningly exiting news to the philosopher. A whole new question, a broad question – perhaps beyond talk even “on the horizon” – has been opened up for those who wish to engage with it; “where do we go from here?” Undoubtedly, in the context of this essay, we cannot launch a sustained and rigorous inquiry into this question, we cannot answer it satisfactorily. We can, however, point to a new direction, one that has become possible because an old direction appears, via Wittgenstein, to have come to a close.

We have thrown a notion of universal certainty out the window in favour of a certainty that is situated and bordered within a language game. Let us look at the presuppositions we are left with; one, that any attempt at critique or evaluation will always occur within the language game that we ourselves are playing; and two, that the same goes for one who is critiquing us. So, is movement still possible if we critique that exits a language game is nonsensical? Perhaps there is a way; it requires changing the essence of a language game to include interaction with other language games into its own rulebook. This seems an odd statement to make, and we are left with the question, change the essence how? Until Wittgenstein's critique of certainty and his doctrine of language games, such a change might not have been possible. However, now that we can conceptualize ourselves within a language game and further, conceptualize the existence of other language games (the correctness or incorrectness of we cannot presuppose knowing), we can begin to look at how, for example, my language game interacts with another.

Take, for example, the ongoing societal debate about the ethicality of abortion. There are seemingly two “sides,” each engaged in a different language game. This much is obvious to the extent that neither side of this issue really seems to understand the other. Quite obviously this is not the space to engage in an extended analysis of the issue, but we can come to a preliminary conclusion that this lack of understanding occurs because each side has a different hierarchal structure of values. That is, each side has a different rulebook; each side is working within a different language game. Let us, for simplicity's sake, refer to these sides as the “liberal” and “moralist” side of the issue.

Traditionally, in the context of these issue, both the liberal and moralist side have neglected the fact that the other side does not seem to understand their point of view; thus they have bludgeoned their opinion upon the other side without really understanding the implications of that blunt attack. This attack falls within the nonsensical evaluation that Wittgenstein seeks to avoid; it is the evaluation of an object inside one language game from the context of another. Taking Wittgenstein at face value, we appear to be paralyzed; are the two sides doomed to be unable to engage with one another? Not if we take seriously the notion of building into our language game the notion of interaction with others. The liberal conception of the moralist's stance on abortion is just that; the liberal conception. That understanding is within the liberal's language game. The liberal would thus be able to examine their understanding of the moralist's value and evaluate that in the context of their own value. The evaluation thus becomes focused on the relation itself and not on the exterior language game that is being critiqued.

What purpose does this serve? It does not allow for critique as it has been traditionally conceptualized. But Wittgenstein has already invalidated this form of critique. If a new critique is to emerge, it will emerge from the items we are left with, ones that may have gone unnoticed within previous epistemological structures. One of these is how language games relate to each other, or, at the very least, the capability of language games to recognize a capability of relation. In the context of our abortion-ethics example, this sort of critique does not solve the issue, does not prove one side correct and one side incorrect “one and for all.” Rather, this sort of critique opens up the possibility for the relation between the two sides itself to grow and evolve; and so too, the same for the sides themselves.

Conclusion.
Wittgenstein's powerful critique of traditional conceptions of epistemological discourse has far-reaching implications. His examination of the flaws of an adherence to a doctrine of absolute, universal certainty reveal significant problems with the way epistemology has been done within the philosophical tradition. However, while many have taken Wittgenstein's work to have left the philosophical world in paralysis, we see differently; instead, Wittgenstein has opened up a whole new field of investigation, one that we have merely begun to scratch the surface of, here. Wittgenstein's philosophy reveals that there is a topic on the horizon of philosophy that has gone largely unexamined; further, his philosophy reveals that there may well be a new horizon, one that goes further and is more easily visible, once it has been found. Traditional forms of criticism may be problematic; but we can still look to the way our values, our rulebooks and our language games inevitably interact with one another. Far from being the depraved and disenchanted result of a “destruction of philosophy,” this new horizon appears to be more open, more ripe for development and conceptual creation, than any before it. Will we answer its call?

WORKS CITED:

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. “On Certainty.” ed. G.E.M. Anscombe, G.H. Von Wright. trans. Denis Paul, G.E.M. Anscombe. Harper Torchbooks, 1969.

descartes and spinoza, mind and body: the problem of interaction.

2008-12-12T11:15:00.002-05:00

Introduction.
The distinction between mind and body is a problem dating back to the advent of modern philosophy; it is Descartes who first conceptualized a relation between mind and body, using his analytic mode of evaluation which utilized his concept of “clear and distinct ideas.” Descartes' exploration of the interaction between mind and body, however, is not without problems, and indeed considering more modern delineations of mind and body his claim that the pineal gland is the source of that interaction (tR, p. 131) seems faulty. One of the first philosophers to respond to this problematic with a new conceptualization of mind vs. body is Spinoza, who spoke of the two as different modes of expression of a single substance.

This essay aims to delineate the exploration of the problem of interaction conducted by both Descartes and Spinoza. I will begin by summarizing the positions of both philosophers; further, I will compare and contrast their arguments (Spinoza's argument is, in places, a response to Descartes) and evaluate their claims, looking for what each position suggests about the capability of mind and body. Finally, I will evaluate what each position has to say about the superiority of mind vs. body; and conclude that Spinoza does a great justice to the relation by illustrating that, unlike Descartes' view, mind is not superior to body.

i. Descartes' mind-body dualism.
In The Rationalists, John Cottingham argues that Descartes' claim of the mind as immaterial substance contains a “nest of problems that were to become notorious stumbling blocks for Cartesian philosophy” (tR, p. 124). Cottingham's argument seems valid; he appeals to every day experience to lead the reader to the conclusion that they are, indeed, an embodied being. Further, he notes that Descartes' own claim that the mind's essence is “diffused” throughout the body comes dangerously close to lending the mind an element of extension; a claim that puts Descartes' entire interaction-argument on shaky ground. Descartes' position was that “the soul 'must be of such a nature that it has no relation to extension, or to the dimensions or other properties of the matter of which the body is composed'” (tR, p. 124). In later sections, we will explore how this claim has been shown to be problematic by Spinoza.

What are some of the primary suppositions of Descartes' examination of the problem of interaction? We know, so far, that mind and body are claimed to be separate substances, one material and one immaterial; there is an “absolute distinction between mind and body” (MoFP, p. 109). We also know that this distinction has been observed using Descartes' analytic method of examining “clear and distinct ideas” (MoFP, p. 119). How, then, do the mind and the body interact, if they have, as Cottingham puts it, “utterly alien and incompatible natures” (tR, p. 129)? Descartes' hypothesis is that “animal spirits” flow “back and forth via the nerves between the brain and the relevant organs” and that the pineal gland “is ideally suited to initiate and respond to [these] movements” (tR, p. 125).

This interaction, however, remains problematic because at a certain point the material movements of the body and the immaterial “spirits” of the mind must interact, two “wholly alien substances” must interact with each other, and the claim that the pineal gland is the arbiter between these two substances goes no distance to explaining how the interaction actually occurs. Cottingham points out that this problem, at the heart of Descartes' explication of mind-body interaction, is “the central difficulty for Descartes' account of the mind” (tR, p. 126). As such, the interaction between mind and body is, if we follow Descartes logic, no interaction at all; that is, he gives no real account of how this interaction is to occur, and himself admits, in “Ouvres de Descartes,” that the interaction is “very difficult to explain.”

This seems an odd statement for a philosopher to make. Cottingham agrees, and sees through Descartes' apparent purposeful obscuration of explanation, calling the Descartes' explanation “not just difficult, but impossible” (tR, p. 126). Even more questionably, Descartes goes onto use the logically-evasive argument that the interaction itself is managed, given and overseen by God. Descartes “invoke[s] God's decrees to explain why such and such sensations follow on such and such brain events” (tR, p. 127). To the modern intellect, this account of primary interaction seems evasive and suggestive that Descartes did not understand the interaction between mind and body himself.

In a footnote to his book, Cottingham notes that Descartes “readily concedes that he is not yet in a position to give a satisfactory account of the mind-body relation,” and that Descartes observes “that his own views are no harder to accept than the scholastic account of sense-perception” (tR, p. 212). This latter defense appears to be no defense at all, seeing as the “scholastic” accounts of sense-perception and ontology were precisely the systems that Descartes wished to overcome with his own philosophical structures. Descartes himself seems confused as to the possibility of his claims about the mind-body relation being logically graspable.

We are thus left with a problematic sketch of a possible relationship between mind and body. The inability of Descartes to find an agreeable and workable theory that illustrated the relationship between material and immaterial substance perhaps speaks to a flaw in his overall systematic itself. If there is seemingly an interaction between mind and body (one that we can see in our daily lives as well as one suggested by many philosophical systems) and Descartes' philosophical structure cannot adequately account for it, then this seems indicative of a problem with the structure itself. In a later section, we will discuss how Spinoza's theory of mind-body interaction tries to overcome the problems inherent in Descartes'. First, however, let us outline Spinoza's philosophy briefly, in the same manner which we have done for Descartes.

ii. Spinoza's 'dual aspect' theory of mind and body.
On the surface, Spinoza's theory of the mind and body appears to be deceptively simple. The human mind is “a certain modification of the divine intelligence,” an “idea,” and for each of idea there is a “corresponding object” (tR, p. 131). The object which corresponds to the human mind is, for Spinoza, the human body. Two aspects, idea and object, that correspond and relate to one another. However, this picture of Spinoza is, as we noted above, deceptive. How do the two relate? This, indeed, is our question. It would be easy, from this illustration, to come to the conclusion that for Spinoza, as well as Descartes, mind and body are two separate substances that somehow “correspond” to one another even though their essences are incompatible. This is not the case; for Spinoza, there is only one substance. “There can be only one substance with an identical attribute, and existence follows from its nature” (Spinoza, p. 182); also, “the idea of God, from which an infinite number of things follow in infinite ways, can only be one” (Spinoza, p. 219).

Spinoza agrees with Descartes that the mind and body are “united,” but Cottingham notes that “what he means by this 'union' is very different from what Descartes meant” (tR, p. 131). In Part Two of the Ethics, Spinoza writes that “thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing,” and also “extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing” (Spinoza, p. 217, 218). Here, “God” or “Nature” and “substance” may be used interchangeably, as, we have noted above, there is only one substance from which “an infinite number of things follow in infinite ways.” What these two quoted propositions suggest is not that the mind and the body are two separate substances that intermingle and relate through a special gland in the body; rather, these quotations suggest that the mind are body are two modifications of the same substance.

This seems, at first, to be an odd way of characterizing the relation between mind and body. If the two are merely modifications of the same substance, why is the distinction required? The solution is gleaned when the statement that there is only one substance anywhere is replayed. If there is only one substance, then distinctions are required in order to make sense of it; the world as one substance would not be comprehensible without distinctions of attributes and modes. By attribute, Spinoza means “that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance,” and by mode, he means “the modifications of substance, or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself” (Spinoza, p. 179).

Because both thought and extension are attributes of God, then we can say that God is both “rens cognitans” and a “rens extensa,” or that “thought and extension characterize different aspects of one and the same being” (tR, p. 129). Thus, for every combination of idea and object, as we noted above as always corresponding to one another, there are not “two separate items but just one.” This conception of the 'relation' between mind and body does away with the problem of interaction because mind and body are the same substance, and thus are not “wholly alien” in character to one another. Spinoza's treatment also leaves the intellection of mind and body open to further modification; if there is one substance whose attributes and modifications are infinite, then we may yet experience new understandings of mind and body.

iii. Spinoza's criticism of Descartes and transcendence of the problem of interaction.
While Spinoza was inspired greatly by Descartes and maintains many of the same terms and concepts of the latter, Spinoza's appropriation and delineation of these concepts differs greatly from Descartes' own. “Spinoza broadly accepted Descartes' account of the physical world as extended stuff; and just as Descartes argued that the apparent diversity and variety of physical phenomena around us was to be explained simply as a set of modifications or 'modes' of extension,” (tR, p. 127) Spinoza echoed this sentiment that the multitude of delineated bodies and forces around us are distinguished by “a modification of the attribute of extension.” One of the biggest departures from Descartes, however, is Spinoza's thesis that matter as extension is not divisible. Whereas Descartes put forth that immaterial substance (mind) is indivisible and material substance (body) is divisible, this delineation will not hold in the context of Spinoza's thought because, as we have noted in the previous section, there is only one substance.

Spinoza argues in the Ethics that “no attribute of substance can be conceived from which it would follow that substance can be divided... if the whole of substance were divided into equal parts, it would lose the nature of substance and would cease to exist, which is absurd” (Spinoza, p. 188). Even though the attribute of substance that is extension is extended, it is not divisible as substance itself. Spinoza argues that things may appear to be divided, such as “water as separable into two parts,” (tR, p. 128) it remains inseparable and indivisible as substance itself.

The main consequence of Spinoza's characterization here is that it escapes the problem of interaction that plagues Descartes' own philosophy. No longer are mind and body incompatible, no longer are they “alien” to one another, requiring a special (if problematic) physical organ to delineate their interaction. Following from this criticism of Descartes and this transcendence of the mind-body interaction problem are some interesting implications as to the superiority of mind vs. body. We will explore these implications in the next section.

iv. Superiority or dominance of mind or body in a relation.
In his book “Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza,” Gilles Deleuze examines the implications of Spinoza's “parallelism,” a term he does not accept without carefully delineating its meaning in the context of Spinoza. Here, one example of such a parallelism is that of the relation between mind and body; one could call it an “immanent parallelism” if pressed for clarity. “Spinoza... does not use the word, but the word suits his system, as he does suppose the equality of the principles from which independent and corresponding series follow” (Deleuze, p. 109). That is, Spinoza's system does not presuppose, through Occasionalist arguments, that the mind is superior in some sense to the body.

This is something that Descartes' system of philosophy does do. For Descartes, the mind contains the immortal soul of a human, the “true essence” of a person that will not disintegrate when the body dies. The mind is, in this sense, superior to the body. This is not the case in Spinoza, for whom the absolute equation of mind and body, thought and extension as attributive expressions of one and the same substance, do not lend a dominance to one expression or the other. “There is no more any superiority of soul over body, than of the attribute of Thought over that of Extension” (Deleuze, p. 109). Spinoza's conception of relation, then, of parallelism, becomes ontological in nature. “The modes of different attributes have not only the same order and the same connection, but the same being; the are the same things, distinguished only by the attribute whose concept they involve” (Delezue, p. 109).

If thought and extension are one and the same thing, the same substance, distinguished by modification of attribute, then there cannot be a superiority of one over the other; the very idea of dominance in this conception of relation or parallelism is absurd.

Conclusion.
Spinoza's conception of the relation between mind and body seems less problematic than Descartes' from the very beginning; at once, we can see that Spinoza has evaded the problem of interaction that Descartes encounters when he characterizes thought and extension as two separate substances, one indivisible and the other divisible. With his doctrine of immanence and of a single substance, thought and extension of which are simply expressions of that substance, attributes of that substance which are modified in specific ways, Spinoza not only transcends the problem of interaction, but also implicitly refutes the dominance or superiority of mind over body, or thought over extension.

WORKS CITED:
Cottingham, John. “The Rationalists.” Oxford University Press, 1988.
Deleuze, Gilles. “Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza,” trans. Martin Joughin. Zone Books, 1968.
Descartes, “Meditations on the First Philosophy,” in The Rationalists. Anchor Books, 1960.
Spinoza, “The Ethics,” in The Rationalists. Anchor Books, 1960.

the TCSA in disarray: a guide and proposal.

2008-11-19T12:32:00.001-05:00

The TCSA in Disarray: A Guide and Proposal for Frustrated Students

Preamble

The TCSA is paralyzed: this is something I think we can all agree with. Whether you support Liam Mooney's presidency, you don't, or you haven't chosen a side, we can all agree that something must be done to fix this situation. Over the past few weeks I've heard many people voice their frustration over this paralysis, and further about general feelings of hopelessness that many members of the Trent community share. What is to be done? We can we, as students not directly involved with the TCSA, as students without a vote at Meetings of the Board, do to get the TCSA on the right track again? The document you’re reading now attempts to answer this question. Here’s a blueprint for how we might approach these issues:

1. The first step is to learn about the by-laws of the TCSA, and about the sets of rules that govern their meetings. We cannot effect change – nor can we even have a viable blueprint for doing so – until we have understood the guidelines that, ideally, orient the TCSA. At the end of this document, you’ll find a list of relevant TCSA by-laws and a link to Robert’s Rules of Order, along with my explanation of the listed by-laws in clear language.

This is an enormous issue. As students who are not directly involved, how should we approach it? Preceding the list of by-laws and rules, I’m going to propose a strategy for approaching this issue that will, hopefully, allow us to orient ourselves, as well as make space for progress to be made. Here’s what I will do:

2. I will look at the way the two “sides” of this issue are interacting. This involves taking a step back and regarding all claims, on either side, with a healthy amount of skepticism. That means, at this point, regarding neither side's discourse as more inherently “legitimate” than the other. Further, it involves asking whether or not the arguments from either side are making room for discussion.

3. I will address the issue of “bias” that both sides have been throwing around as if it is a dirty word. We must do this because the term has not been understood in a rigorous way in context of this discussion; it is being abused. A point of view is, by definition, a biased position; there is no “view from nowhere.” We must, thus, rethink our approach to accusations of “bias” coming from either side.

4. The investigative committee that was looking into this issue has been dissolved. Whereas I had hoped the committee’s findings would give us some information that we could trust and work with, this dissolution has left us essentially paralyzed. As such, I will recommend that we, as students and general members of the TCSA, must demand a proper and rigorous inquiry into what is going on in the TCSA. This student government will not function properly until the issues paralyzing it are investigated, and we must hold it accountable so that it can begin to act again in our best interests. We must have information if we are to take any action.

This document does not claim to be unbiased. In fact, it wears its influences and ideological orientations plainly and proudly on its sleeve. It hopes to:

address issues of paralysis that plague the TCSA and the polarization within the Trent community
empower students with the information necessary for them to make informed and rigorous decisions regarding this matter
create conditions in the Trent community that make space to allow a functional, healthy TCSA that is governed in the interests of its constituency

The TCSA is in trouble, and so, by extension, is the Trent community. However, it is in our power to inform ourselves and hold our elected representatives accountable to their mandates. That path cannot be found through partisanship and blind support of one side or the other. There’s information in the air from both sides, and because this issue is so polarized, it’s hard to know what information we can trust. It is time for us to drop our ideological and personal allegiances and make a concerted attempt to get to the bottom of this issue. The intent of this document is to create the space for these goals to occur.

Part One: Proposal for a Space-making and Progress-oriented Approach

Where to start?

There is rhetoric being thrown around on either side of this issue. What of it? What are the arguments being made, and how should we be interpreting them? First of all, let's look at the emotional impact of this issue. It's obvious that there is a lot of bitterness, resentment and fear in the air right now; that should be our first sign that we should approach this issue with caution and with a calm head. If we are to get to the bottom of this situation, it will be carefully and rationally, not quickly and emotionally. Secondly, let's examine the stakes. President Mooney's job is at risk; his competence and motives have been called into question. One side claims that President Mooney has not fulfilled his mandate to the general membership; that he has created a “hostile work environment,” manipulated the rules and prevented the TCSA from upholding its stated mission. Another side claims that he has done good work, gotten much accomplished, and that the issues surrounding the first side's claims are “minor.” Who is to be believed, here?

Who to believe?

The problem is, we simply don't know. We don’t have enough information, and the information we do have is coming from places that have an obvious conflict of interest. If you ask me, we should be treating none of these claims with legitimacy until we have further information. Each of them may, or may not, have veracity. Before leaping to unfounded conclusions and assigning your trust to one side or the other, the logical thing to do would be to wait for the result from the body that is not working to support either side of this issue, but working to collect information so that a decision can be made. This is what the investigative committee was for, and I was hoping to get the results. But now, the committee has been dissolved. We are left in a bind: if we are to approach this issue rationally, we are paralyzed until we can gather some information that we can trust. The solution is to demand a proper inquiry into these issues.

Bias: what the heck?

One claim that each side seems to be making is worthy of particular attention. That is the issue of “bias.” Each side is claiming that the other holds a bias, be it political, personal or otherwise. My response to that is: of course they do! You have a bias. I have a bias. Bias is inherent in having a point of view. The scary thing in this situation is that the word is being painted as if it is a bad thing; the word is being abused to suit the ends of either side. What each side's argument amounts to is “the other side holds values that you should be frightened of!” I ask you, haven't we seen enough fear-mongering politics in our federal government for us to be tolerating it here? One solution is to see for yourself. Are you actually frightened of what a side has to say? Why not send someone an e-mail with your questions? It can't hurt, unless you're afraid you'll die of fright.

What can we do?

i.Hold directors accountable to their own by-laws and rules. This year, the TCSA has been notorious for not following the rules of meetings properly, and you could argue that this has greatly contributed to the current conundrum we're facing. If we are to work through this issue calmly and through negotiation, we must encourage – nay, demand! – that any further proceedings are chaired by someone who is familiar with Robert's Rules, and who can point out when they are being broken. We should also be holding the TCSA accountable for following its own by-laws. There is simply no excuse for these to be overlooked, glossed over or otherwise forgotten! I've listed quite a few of them below; read through them, know them well, and speak up when you see them being ignored.
ii.Demand that an impartial Chair be appointed to all future meetings. Robert’s Rules are used by the TCSA to ensure fair and productive proceedings at Meetings of the Board. In order to prevent future abuses of authority from any director, we must ensure that the TCSA employs a Chair at their meetings who is well-versed in these rules, and who can hold TCSA directors accountable to following them.
iii.Demand a proper inquiry into this issue. With the dissolution of the investigative committee, our hopes of gleaning information to help us get to the bottom of this issue have been quashed. It should be obvious by now that neither side is willing to give up their positions, and that there is a willingness to play the game unfairly. As students who want proper representation in their student government, we should not stand for this! We need to remind the TCSA that, as our elected representatives, they still answer to us. As such, we want information so that we can evaluate the situation for ourselves, and we want a functional TCSA. E-mail the directors; change your Facebook status; talk to your friends and explain why it’s important to ask for an inquiry; use your power (whether as an authority or just as a student) to send the message to the TCSA that you are not satisfied.
iv.Keep in mind the interests of the whole community. It’s easy to get involved in this issue and support one side to the exclusion of other voices. We must remember, though, that the TCSA is mandated to represent all of its members, and further (I 1.2 in the TCSA by-laws) to not marginalize those who have dissenting points of view. No matter their “bias,” every voice has the right to be heard. This is an important part of why the TCSA is such an essential institution at Trent, and part of the reason why this issue exists in the first place. The motion to impeach President Mooney was presented under the allegation that he was not making space for dissenting points of view. In order to get to the bottom of this issue, those points of view must be heard and weighed. How do we accomplish this? See point ii and iii, above.

Is there hope?

You may feel powerless in this situation; you may feel you do not have a voice; that your student government is letting you down. Perhaps they are. But you have a say in that! Hold them accountable by holding yourself and your peers accountable to the ideals of negotiation, discussion and democracy. You may not realize it (hell, right now it may not look like it), but the TCSA continues to be greatly affected by the community they represent. So, if they can look back on the general membership, and one side can say “look at all of my supporters!,” and so can the other side, then of course this paralysis is going to continue. But we have to remind them that just because they've got supporters, that doesn't mean they're doing the right thing by preventing discussion. We have to remind them that what we support most is a healthy, functioning TCSA that operates in the interests of the students! And we have to make sure of that, first of all by demanding a rigorous and intensive investigation into the events that have been causing paralysis within the TCSA. Instead of trusting one side or the other, let's trust ourselves.

Part Two: By-laws and rules

The TCSA's list of by-laws, as well as Robert's Rules, are long, and there is not space for them all here. For those who wish to examine these documents in their entirety, the by-laws are available in the “About Us” section of the TCSA's website and a simple Google search will reveal pages containing Robert's Rules. The goal of this section is to list and lucidly explain TCSA by-laws that are relevant to this issue. It is by no means a complete list. I will start by listing TCSA by-laws and, at the bottom, provide a link to Robert's Rules available on the internet.

Relevant TCSA By-Laws (in order of appearance in original document)

I. 1.1 Mission: “To facilitate and provide an environment wherein our members can pursue academic excellence as well as personal and social growth free from all forms of discrimination, harassment, oppression and persecution” :: TCSA directors are mandated to foster a non-discriminatory environment both within their own organization and in the Trent community at large.

I. 1.2 Principles: “Free speech and effective communication of all opinions in the University community” :: TCSA directors are mandated to uphold and support principles of free speech. This means not supporting the marginalization of dissenting points of view. Dissolving a committee with the intent of preventing the communication of information to the Trent community, for example, is in violation of this principle.

III. 2 Motto: “The motto of the Corporation shall be 'CONSOCIATI FORTIORES SUMUS' or, in English, 'United We Are Stronger.'” :: Come on, it's even in the damned motto. Let's start listening to one another again; let's show everyone by setting the example ourselves.

IV. 1.1 Membership: “Any student registered for undergraduate full-time study at Trent University is a member of the Corporation, upon payment of the membership fee pursuant to the by-law hereof and shall be known as a member.” :: If you are a full-time, paid student at Trent, you are a member of the TCSA; its mandate is to act in your interests and, in certain circumstances, you receive a vote.

IV. 1.2 Membership: “Any other student of the University may become a member of the Corporation on payment to the Corporation of the annual membership fee and shall be known as a member.” :: If you are a part-time student at Trent, you can still be a member of the TCSA.

V. 1.1 Board of Directors: “Directors shall act with diligence, honesty and good faith in the best interest of the membership of the Corporation. Directors shall report on the activities of the Board of Directors on a regular basis to the general membership and to their respective constituencies.” :: TCSA directors are mandated to be honest and transparent. This is an important step in being accountable to the general membership; to hold directors accountable for their actions, we must have a clear, honest and accurate idea of what those actions are.

V. 6.1 Speaker: “It shall be the duty of the Board to appoint a Speaker to act as Chairperson of the meetings of the Board, or other such meetings provided by the by-law herein, or other such meetings as determined by the Board.” :: TCSA directors are required to select an “impartial” (from V. 6.3) chairperson to facilitate meetings and ensure TCSA by-laws and Robert's Rules are being respected. For the record, this did not happen for the current academic year.

V. 9.1 Vacant Positions: “Should the position of President become vacant at anytime, it shall fall to the Vice President Finance to act in the capacity of President.” :: If President Mooney is impeached, his duties and responsibilities will fall to Vice President Liden until a new president can be elected. Further, as President Mooney's responsibilities have been temporarily suspended, they currently fall under the jurisdiction of Vice President Liden.

VII. 1 Resignation of Office: “Directors resign their office by the submission of a signed letter to the Association’s head office written under their hand and addressing same to the Speaker. The resignation shall take effect at such time as the Board of Directors has received the letter from the Speaker at a duly constituted meeting of the Board of Directors, whereupon the office shall become vacant. Until such time, the director remains responsible for all duties, obligations and tasks resulting therefrom.” :: To resign, President Mooney must present a signed letter to the appointed Speaker (at this point not selected) who will then present it to a meeting of the Board of Directors. Before this final presentation, President Mooney remains responsible for his duties (excepting his current state of suspension).

VII. 2.2 Termination of Office: “Due cause for termination may include, but is not limited to:
Dereliction of duty where the director is found to have abandoned his or her duties as outlined in the Letters Patent, the by-laws hereof or any policy or lawful resolution of the Board, or any revision thereof;
Lack of attendance without notice for more than three (3) meetings of the Board pursuant to the terms and conditions of the by-laws hereof;
Any other serious act or actions injurious to the Corporation or its Mission and Principles.” :: There will be due cause to terminate President Mooney's office if he has not fulfilled his duties outlined in the TCSA by-laws, or if he took actions which hurt or impeded the TCSA's ability to fulfill its mission or uphold its principles.

VII. 2.8 Termination of Office: “Any director who has been removed from office under the terms and conditions herein will be eligible to serve again as a director of the Corporation in the next duly called election provided herein.” :: If President Mooney is impeached, he may run again in the next election called by the TCSA.

VII. 3.3 Process for Termination: “At the time of the hearing the following process will be followed:
i.A resolution shall be tabled to remove the director. This resolution shall be duly moved and seconded. In the event that the resolution fails to achieve a seconder, the item of impeachment will be considered resolved, the director shall remain in office, and no further hearing will be required.
ii.The director moving the resolution for removal from office shall have the opportunity to state his or her arguments in support of the removal of the director.
iii.The director in question shall have the opportunity to speak against the question of removal from office and defend his or her case.
iv.The floor shall be opened up to other directors to debate the resolution, subject to the parliamentary authority designated herein.
v.The question of removal from office must obtain a two-thirds (2/3) majority vote in favour in order for the director to be considered impeached and removed from office.”

IX. 2.1 Attendance: “Directors will make every effort to attend meetings of the Corporation or the Board. In the event that a director is unable to attend, said director will submit written notice of such, no less than twenty-four (24) hours prior to the meeting to the Speaker or the President. Said notice is valid for only one (1) meeting unless otherwise authorized by the Board.” :: TCSA directors are mandated to attend all board meetings. If a director cannot attend, 24 hours written notice must be given, and the notice can only be in effect for one meeting.

X. 2.2 Special Meeting Appointments: “Membership on a Special Committee of the Board of Directors shall consist of a minimum of three (3) directors in addition to the Chairperson of the Committee, all of which will be appointed by the Board of Directors. Directors of the Board may sit on any or all Special Committees if they are appointed. Membership on a Special Committee of the Association is not limited to directors and other members may be appointed to a Special Committee by the Chairperson of the Special Committee when authorized by the Board of Directors.” :: The investigative committee must be made up of at least three TCSA directors, not including the appointed Chairperson. Other members do not need to be TCSA directors, and may be general members of the TCSA.

Robert’s Rules

Robert’s Rules of Order are the guidelines that TCSA members use to facilitate their meetings. This year in the TCSA, there have been many problems with implementing these rules and making sure they are followed in letter and in spirit. Part of this stems from the fact that no impartial Chair was selected to facilitate meetings. To my knowledge, President Mooney has acted as Chair for many meetings this year. In order to ensure that the TCSA operates properly, these rules must be followed; that is why they are there. We must demand that any further proceedings in the TCSA abide by these rules; for the sake of transparency, productivity and the Trent community in general. Here is a link where you can access them, and read them for yourself:

http://www.rulesonline.com/rror--00.htm

Part Three: Final Recommendations

For those of you short on time, here is a list of my final recommendations, all of which are contained in the commentary above:

1.Everyone is biased. There’s no escape. Get over it, and don’t let either side abuse the word to perpetuate fear or hatred. Let's see how we can make space for discussion.
2.Neither side's arguments should be considered more legitimate than the other's at this point. We don't have enough information. Not nearly enough.
3.Read and know the rules! Familiarize yourself with the TCSA by-laws and Robert's Rules.
4.Demand information from a source that is trustworthy! There can be no movement until what’s at stake can be properly understood by everyone.

This chapter in the life of the TCSA has been an embarrassment. People have forgotten how to listen, forgotten how to negotiate, and gotten so caught up in ideologies and personal attachments that they no longer know how to see another side's point of view. We must not let this happen again. By holding our TCSA directors accountable to the values we want to see in our student government – negotiation, discussion and democracy – then we can ensure that it doesn't. Good luck and good reason to all of you, and please, try to have hope; if you don't, then we are sure to fail. The stakes are too high to give up.

Here, at the end of this document, it is time for my own passion to come out. Take what’s below for what it is. Biased, yes. Angry, yes. Frustrated, yes. Self-righteous? Certainly. Hopeful? Always. Here is my final statement:

To those who aim to prevent necessary and important information from being released to further their own goals, I say to you: WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS. To those who side with a group because of personal or ideological allegiances, and who forego negotiation in favour of brute force or political gamesmanship, I say to you: WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS. To those who have given up hope and who think their voice is meaningless, I say to you: WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS. To all members of the Trent community, all of us who have helped, in the past, contribute to an atmosphere of polarization and hostility, those of us who have, until now, refused to recognize their own responsibility, I say: WE CAN BE, AND ARE BETTER THAN THIS. Let us begin to work together once more, for the good of every member of the Trent community. The TCSA’s motto is 'CONSOCIATI FORTIORES SUMUS’: United, we are stronger. Let’s start trying to live up to that ideal.

With respect and hope,
Dan Siksay '10
Philosophy major

hope.

2008-11-03T16:41:00.012-05:00

I've had enough time and considered the subject enough, I think, to finally write a few preliminary thoughts about hope. Previous notes of mine on the subject have been muddled, at best, and off-topic at worst; in any case they have been failures, in the sense that they have not made space for hope. Here, I will attempt to delineate such space, by way of a host of underlying considerations, inversions, and paradoxical formulations. Bear with me, or don't, but know that this has been written with a sort of hope in mind for you.

At the outset, hope is a problematic word. Problematic for pessimists, who see in the term a kind of naive optimism, a kind of "get with the real world, will you?" Also problematic for those who have considered the world in a temporal sense; towards what time does one have hope? Where is the "towards"? Further still, we can see from this the opportunity for hope to be projected into the suprasensory world, Plato's "real" world, the world of forms, absolutes and transcendent ideals. The Nietszchean will no doubt find this form of hopeful projection problematic.

With these considerations in mind, we begin to get the impression that hope is something not easily placed, not easily summarized, and further not easily implemented. Here, I hope to move towards all three; at the very least create the orientation so that such a movement is possible. It is here, in this "moving-towards", that we find our first inversion, one that - as we will see - will underlie every movement we make after. Simply put, this is the inversion of process and goal (telos).

This will no doubt be a strange attempt at inversion; first of all we much look to see how the original relationship between process and telos has been realized. We start here: process ends. Funny, to start at an end, no? Funnier still to end at a start, no doubt. Start and end; what these words, what do they do? What to they imply. We will explore this later. But: process ends. This is an underlying assumption, one that informs many, if not all, of our comportments in life. We are always oriented towards a goal, we say, "I am engaged in this activity to end up with x end-point." Goal; ideal; end. We start so that we may finish. This is, if I am reading it correctly, somewhat problematic.

How so, problematic? Certainly we can see it in the context of hope. How does a pre-conceived end-goal leave room for hope? Certainly, we can say "I hope I will finish, I hope I will acheive my goal"; but is this not already a bastardized version of the term, suited to the needs of an already-established, static end posited in a transcendent world that, for Nietzsche, denies and negates life? What of hope? What of hope as a making-space, an opening up of possibilities and directions? Start-end does not leave room for this sort of hope. In fact, this use of the word cannot even conceive of a hope outside of its limited and staticized self.

What is to be done? This sentence should prompt us to giggle, if we are thinking about it in the above context. What is to be done? Better, how can we begin to move? How can we begin to move towards a celebration of process instead of constantly deferring ourselves towards a goal? We can see how problematic this investigation is becoming. Maybe we are already on our way. How could we tell? And on our way to where? To process as our goal? This is becoming more and more paradoxical with each passing paragraph. Is making process our goal a way to make space for hope?

More importantly, more immediately, is it possible to perform this inversion? Likely not, not in the context of the way in which we use language. Even here we are talking about making an emphasis or privileging of process our goal; how contradictory! Even our most noble, most space-making intentions end up in failure.

Perhaps failure is our entry-point. Sounds very hopeful, no? Bear with me.

The worst thing about transcendent ideals, apart from their non-existence, is that they are never fully realized. Being unreal, we always fall short of them. Take justice; here's an ideal that we all strive for. But what does it mean and how do we realize it in today's world? There's that finality again; "how do we realize it?" As if the ideal is something we will reach, when really we never will. One could say that our attempts to reach for justice and bring it down to earth will always fail. But is this not what we attempt to do, at least in theory, with our system of laws? Is not law the conditional instance of the unconditional justice that we strive for?

There is something here, then, isn't there? Granted and much agreed; law does not do justice to justice. But is there not something noble in the striving-for, the reaching-towards? And; is that striving-towards not in itself process? We reach-for and fall back, consistently failing in our attempts, but continuing to do so anyway. Unconditional justice can never be the application of a rule; thus it would have acheived its end and this essay would be for naught. It would not be necessary! But few of us are satisfied with law, satisfied that it does justice to justice. Just as few of us are satisfied with our conditional realizations of any unconditional ideal; hospitality would be Derrida's example.

Might this be where we find the sort of opening-up of an orientation towards hopefulness? A hopening-up? Stupid playfulness with language aside, I think there is something here. It may seem paradoxical to claim that hope exists in failure, but if we place "hope" on the side of process and "failure" on the side of goal, then the relation itself might begin to make some sense. They might mean similar things, if we let them. Perhaps - and this may be a stretch without further interrogation, most likely not possible here - failure to achieve an unconditional ideal is a condition that makes space for hope in the broadest sense.

For now, I stop here. More time for thinking is required. Comments are welcome.

on locke: against innate ideas, towards an empirical conception of human understanding.

2008-11-03T15:30:00.001-05:00

i. On “innate ideas.”

In his work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke launches a sustained attack on the notion that ideas are innate; that is, that ideas can be present in us at birth or simply “there” without recourse to experience or sense data. Locke takes the position that all ideas we have are derived from experience, and thus argues that the notion of “already there” ideas is problematic (p. 9). He executes an attack on this position. This offensive takes the shape of a consideration of the essence of knowledge; “No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of." (p. 11) For Locke, it is a logical contradiction for an idea to be unconscious, for an idea to be “there” without having been made aware of it. This illustrates the inconsistency in assuming that an idea can be innate. We might further understand Locke's view of cognition, and this first argument, by regarding his thought that ideas are "nothing but the immediate objects of our minds in thinking" (p. 8) If knowledge is the apprehension of “objects of our minds” and we cannot think an idea we have not yet been made conscious of, then the argument for innate ideas falls apart. If one can die without such an “innate idea” being made apparent, then how can it be innate?

ii. On “simple ideas.”

Simple ideas, for Locke, come solely from experience. There are ideas that come solely from sensation, both from one sense and from the combination of more than one. There are those ideas, too, that come solely from reflection, and further ideas that appear to us from a combination of multiple sensations and modes of reflection. (p. 17) It is, essentially, a breakdown of our sensory experience into its fundamental parts. A specific smell, touch, or sight could count as a simple idea. The orangeness of an orange, the smell of a rose, the tactile sensation of my hands running over a velvet coat, these are all singular simple ideas. Further, simple ideas are fundamental parts that cannot be broken down any further; I cannot go further down than the blackness of a cat, for example; blackness cannot be broken down into further, smaller, more fundamental parts.

iii. On “complex ideas” and their relation to “simple ideas.”

Complex ideas are “made by the mind out of simple ones.” (p. 37) When we use the cognitive power of our mind, we synthesize complex ideas using simple ones. There are three kinds of complex ideas; modes, relations, and substances. A mode is a complex idea made up of different combinations or situations of a single simple idea. (p. 38) A relation is the complex ideas that derives from the mental comparison of two distinct simple ideas.

iv. On “primary qualities” and “secondary qualities.”

For Locke, primary qualities are qualities of an object that appear to be inseparable or essential to that object; the material extension of an object, for example, or the motion of an object, would be primary qualities. These qualities would remain present even if the object itself were separated into different parts. (p. 24) Secondary qualities, on the other hand, are qualities of an object which are not essential to the object itself. Secondary qualities are produced by the essential, primary qualities of an object; the colour of an object, or its taste, or its smell. (p. 25)

discussion and becoming: how we work with the Other.

2008-10-27T12:15:00.002-04:00

There are several implications that come with engaging with the Other. The first of these is our relationship, in general, with the Other. I'm taking a fairly Levinasian stance on this; that the Other by definition cannot be an object of knowledge. As such, speaking of coming to an "understanding" of the Other cannot be done authentically. Understanding denotes knowledge, knowledge denotes assimilation, assimilation denotes identity. The implications of the concept "Other" is that it necessarily cannot be assimilated, "known" or understood. The otherness of the Other cannot be represented in technological discourse. This, I think (and for example), is what some feminists mean when they state that "a man cannot understand."

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). Not knowing what else to do, we tend to fill this void with our own values, interpretations, subjective apprehensions of issues and problems. What are the implications of this reflexive and unconscious filling-up? 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 frequently transcended, there is no room for the Other to move or affect us, or to be affirmed by us.

So the question that I am asking here is not how we might be able to understand the Other, but rather, how do we make space for the Other? This question has Deleuzian and, especially, Derridean overtones. One answer, of course among many (and still in need of much fleshing-out), is what Derrida calls "negotiation." This is essentially what my original piece is talking about; an engagement with the ungraspable with the notion presupposed that it is ungraspable.

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. The other's point of view is inevaluable; the space in between is open for evaluation. And what is beautiful about this is that evaluation no longer becomes a critique of a value. Rather, evaluation becomes a critical perspective on a relation of values. We no longer critique your values or my values, rather we engage with how a value on either "side" (it's important to note that this is not a dialectic as traditionally conceptualized) interacts with the Other. You could say that critique becomes both genetic and differential.

This sort of critique becomes possible only when we make space for the Other. This is related to, but not entirely indicative of, what Derrida means when he speaks of "unconditional hospitality," an unrelational relation to the guest without the claim of sovereignty, without the presupposition of expectations that the Other must follow or abide by. It's also related to Deleuze-reading-Nietzsche's conception of affirming difference; where we say "yes" to ourselves first ("the one who calls themselves good does not wait to be called good") and critique becomes relational rather than identical; or rather, were relational critique embodies and affects identity.

There's some further deconstruction that should be observed here (relation/identity, "subject"/"non-object object") but we can leave that for another time.

we have to stop masturbating.

2008-10-22T01:52:00.001-04:00

Something that's been concerning me quite a bit recently is the manner in which some of us approach points of view that don't compliment our own. What got me thinking about it was an ad I saw on Facebook a few weeks ago, which talked about Canada's former Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty. It said, "Jim Flaherty hates the arts, hates Toronto, and he hates you." And I thought to myself, now that's simply not true. What a stupid, stupid attempt to polarize an already-divided electorate. What negating and totalizing language! Thinking about the ad further, though, and talking to some of my friends and colleagues about their view of Jim Flaherty and other members of the Conservative Party running for re-election, I realized that not everyone has seen through this sort of stupidity. It's not just in politics, either; the "villainization" of a political, social or economic Other seems to penetrate to the very core of many of our points of view. I'll be honest; it's got me very worried that the opportunity for real, productive and non-polemical discussion is in critical condition (no pun intended).

It's made easier when you're surrounded by a group of people who share your ideological beliefs and bolster your gut feeling that your position is the "right one." At the Student Issues All-Candidates Meeting a few weeks ago, a Trent student got up to ask the candidates a question about abortion; he was clearly what some may term a "pro-lifer." He was booed as soon as people realized what political stance he was taking. Now, in this particular situation, the question was being posed in a rather standoffish way, and some may argue that this is what triggered the audience reaction. I worry, though, that this student would have been booed even if his question had been posed in a respectful manner that left the table open for discussion.

Perhaps, because of this indeterminacy of result, my example is not the best one. I'm sure, though, that you can think of examples yourselves. Politically, do you villainize a certain party or ideology? Socially, for example, how do you look upon people who are against abortion? Or people who are in favour of supporting a woman's choice? Economically, are you willing to engage in a fair and open discussion with a hard-leaning capitalist? An avowed Marxist? I believe that it is time to call upon ourselves to stop polarizing debates and allow ourselves to engage in real discussion, discussion that establishes a safe space so that ideas may be communicated and debated, not thrown out or called "ignorant" because they are attached to this or that ideology; or worse, because they aren't attached to a certain ideology. We've all seen it; Trent leftists ganging up on a lone Conservative voice and drowning out a dissenting point of view with cries of naivety and ignorance. We've seen it for years and years in the United States; just look how Barack Obama is painted by radical Republicans as a "socialist"; as if the very label is a bad thing?

It's time to stop this. The "left" (I shudder as I write that label) is supposed to stand for making space for the Other; for maintaining an open mind; for looking towards the possibilities of the future. I tell you right now that painting differing ideals as "ignorant" and "wrong" without first fairly and openly engaging with the people who hold those ideals is buying into the very game we have supposedly transcended. An example: I have been invited speak on a radio show hosted by a self-declared "voice for the Christian right" (taken from his show's description). I've had friends and colleagues ask me, "why are you going on THAT show? Don't you know what he believes?" and "God, you better put him in his place." Well, I've had enough of that and I find those comments, frankly, to be completely irresponsible, and somewhat, if I may use the word, masturbatory. Yes, let's all make ourselves feel better about our beliefs by segregating ourselves from everyone who doesn't share them! This is certainly an excellent way of celebrating difference and fulfilling our supposed want of making space for the Other.

And please, spare me the arguments of "but I KNOW what these people stand for" and other claims that just further declare your own personal ideologies. I'm not talking about giving in and joining "the other side"; I'm talking about listening to them! I'm talking about engaging with them in a respectful and passionate way, so that the opportunity for both parties to take something away from the discussion is kept alive. The very idea of there being a grand ideology that everyone on a specific "side" subscribes to universally is ludicrous anyway. Look at ourselves! Do you know one "environmentalist" or "Marxist" or "queer activist" who has exactly, precisely the same views on their respective areas of activism as someone else? I doubt it. I'm afraid the same goes for the "Other." If you're one of those people who thinks they understand the "other side" of an issue they're passionate about, please remember that you still haven't heard THIS or THAT particular person's take on it. Perhaps they'll remember the same thing about you, and your discussion can become about more than mudslinging.

We owe it to ourselves to engage with people, all people, not immediately shoot them down. I know it feels good to yell and "put someone in their place", but tell me, if someone were to do the same to you, would you listen? Or would you just laugh it off as another "radical idiot" who just doesn't understand the issues? Maybe it's time for us to consider that there might be other issues to consider; not always, but sometimes. Maybe it's time for us to start living up to this great "open-mindedness" we "leftists" supposedly champion. And again, for all of you who aren't getting me yet, I'm not talking about saying "yes, yes, you, Stephen Harper, are right!"; I'm talking about not calling him evil. I'm talking about engaging with his policies and looking at the issues that inform them. I'm talking about listening to a person rather than listening to the ideology of another person that you think you understand.

Please heed this advice. At least think about it. Stop jerking off to ideological cheerleading and start having discussions. How else are we to learn from one another, to grow and better ourselves?

how to blink thinking: heidegger through nietzsche and deleuze.

2008-10-21T15:39:00.004-04:00

“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is star? The last man asks this and blinks” (TSZ, p. 15). This paints Heidegger's claim that we are “still not thinking” in an inter-theoretical light, one that speaks at the same time within and outside of Heidegger's own claims on the subject. We, the last men, those who form ideas through representational means, are blinking (and very good at it) but not yet thinking.a

How does Heidegger distinguish between these two things we have dubbed “thinking” and “blinking”? The latter is certainly a Nietzschean term, used to describe the movement of his “last man.” Heidegger takes this terminology up in his lecture series, What is Called Thinking? Here, the last man's movement is not a movement at all, but a paralysis, a forgetting of unobjectifiying language and speech; a suspension of movement within representational thinking. “All forming of ideas is itself a kind of blinking. Ideas formed in this way present and propose of everything only the glitter, only the appearance of surfaces and foreground facts” (WCT?, p. 82). By viewing all thinking and speaking as technological, as objectifying (in the context of the “technical-scientistic view of language” PT, p. 56) we become paralyzed in such thinking and thus are sentenced to see “only the glitter”. Deleuze, in his reading of Nietzsche, would take this as saying that “ignorance of origins... is obvious everywhere... the philosopher as such is a symptomatologist” (NP, p. 68).

Heidegger would certainly not conceptualize this paralysis within technological-scientific (objectifying) language in the same way as Deleuze, but he does offer, arguing with Nietzsche and Deleuze, that “the last man must move in a realm of ideas which blink at everything and can do nothing else but blink” (WCT?, p. 83). Nonetheless, this difference in conceptual terms obscures a certain fidelity between Deleuze-reading-Nietzsche and Heidegger's conception of the last man and the ubermensche; both are looking towards a revealing of the essence of “Being” in order to reconceptualize and reorganize the hierarchical structures of philosophy, the sciences, and ontology itself with these thoughts about essence in mind. Both, also, find representational thinking inadequate at best, dangerous at worst (the latter when representational thinking becomes the only option for thought). For Deleuze, “the slave only conceives of power as the object of a recognition, the content of a representation... and therefore makes it depend... on a simple attribution of established values” (NP, p. 10). For Heidegger, “any decision in this realm of ideas [blinking] must by its very nature fall short” (WCT?, p. 84).

Granted, and quite evident, is that both philosophers end up conceptualizing and affecting the thinking of Being in radically different ways. Deleuze, for example, notes the contingency of the traditionally-thought concept “essence”, and thus makes the claim (also in his reading of Nietzsche) that the idea of Being par excellence is the being of becoming (in Nietzschean terms, “Being as will” WCT, p. 92). This is, quite evidently, a drastic departure from Heidegger, who has not thought becoming and contingency to be at the heart of Being. Heidegger claims, in his Appendix to the essay Phenomenology and Theology, that the focus on becoming in Nietzsche, Deleuze and others uncritically assumes that all forms of language are necessarily objectifying. “The assertion that all thinking as thinking is objectifying is without foundation” (TP, p. 59). In any case, though, the delineation of a thinking outside of scientific-technological language elucidated here in both philosophers holds the key to a representation of thinking as a sort of “launching pad”, a place of preparation for a leap into thinking, which we here contrast with blinking.

These ways of thinking – different for both Deleuze and Heidegger – exist outside of objectifying language and thus cannot be “thought” in the context of this language. Thinking in this sense cannot be said. That is, nonobjectifying thinking cannot be asserted within an objectifying speaking. This is why Heidegger, like Deleuze, and both of them with Nietzsche, discerns the coming of the last man (a time very much at hand as conceptualized by these thinkers) as worrying and worthy of overcoming. The last man has paralyzed himself and thus cannot think outside of objectifying language. In order to escape this fate, he must learn how to think.

We have not yet learned how to think. Thinking in this sense must be a thinking-to-come, a thinking we have not yet realized. “...we are still not thinking... This 'still not' contains a peculiar reference of something still to come, of which we absolutely do not know whether it will come to us” (WCT?, p. 35). For Heidegger, this thinking-to-come has two meanings; a representational one and a self-reflexive one. Our thinking has not yet arrived; we are the “last men”, who have “no other choice but to search among [our] type of ideas – blinking – for the form of those measures that are to create a world order” (WCT?, p. 84). Secondly, technological or propositional language cannot by definition speak of anything other than a thinking-to-come. Any attempt to introduce a true thinking into such language would be reduced to blinking – superficial and abstracting – and thus not thinking at all. Such language cannot by definition “think”, or explicate what it is to think; it cannot give us a list of instructions that illustrate thinking for us.

That thinking cannot be reduced to a list of applicable rules or instructions, further that it is outside of language and the institutions that are housed in language (science, culture, literature, law) – that it must be “done”, carried out individually and specifically, never in the abstract – echoes Kierkegaard's teleological suspension of the ethical in its mode of movement, as well as Nietzsche's symptomatology.

We are still, thus, confronted with the question, Heidegger's question; what is called thinking? What might we call thinking, were we now capable of it, and comported in such a way that the action of thinking (a curious phrase, seeing as thinking is not an action in the context of representational thinking), the movement of thinking, were visible to us?

We have observed that to make thinking substantive in scientific-technological language is to destroy it in its essential nature; to categorize and make abstract thinking is to subjugate it into forms of discourse that are thinking differently, that, as such, are blinking, operating in the context of scientific-technological language and nothing outside. But does the same destructive outcome apply to objectifying the movement of thinking linguistically? Is there something performatively valid about Heidegger's inquisitions into the nature of thinking? Arguably so; while the linguistic-conceptual examination of the movement of thinking would never do justice to thinking itself – it would never teach us how to think – it does allow for a technological examination of thinking that can act, as Heidegger himself seems to attempt to create, in the manner of a launch-pad, preparing us for the possibility of a “leap” into thinking.

We are, finally, lead to the question: what is the movement of thinking for Heidegger, outside of our explications of Nietzsche and our comparisons with Deleuze? What is called thinking? We can look to a quotation from What is Called Thinking? to aid us in our preliminary analysis:

“So far, an answer has suggested itself only in vague outline: the forming of [representational] ideas could even be the universally prevailing basic characteristic of traditional thinking. Our own way derives from such thinking. It therefore remains necessarily bound to a dialogue with traditional thinking. And since our way is concerned with thinking for the specific purpose of learning it, the dialogue must discuss the nature of traditional thinking.” - we have, until this point in our examination of thinking vs. blinking, explicated this very idea - “But while such thinking has already become aware that it is a kind of forming ideas, there is absolutely no assurance that traditional thinking has ever given sufficient thought to the essence of idea-forming, or even could do so. In any dialogue with the nature of prevailing thinking, then, the essence of idea-forming is probably the first thing that must be put into the language of thinking. If we respond to that language, not only do we come to know thinking in its historic nature and destiny – we come to learn thinking itself.” (WCT?, p. 55)

Heidegger's thinking thus comes down to a thinking of the essence of a thing – of idea-forming, for example, or technology, or ontology – which necessarily must be thought and said in a way that does not employ objectifying language. This unobjectifying thought and speech is “in each case a letting be said of what shows itself, and accordingly a co-responding (saying) to that which shows itself” (PT, p. 59). We can take “in each case” to mean that a thinking of the essence of a thing is always a specific activity and cannot be placed into an abstract relation of rules or instructions. “Follow such and such a formula, express it in such and such a layout, and the essence is revealed”: this way of thinking an essence is objectifying, abstracting, and thus falls short of Heidegger's nonobjectifying thinking. It does not, as such, think.

What does it mean to think or speak in a nonobjectifying manner? While Heidegger may speak of a “letting be said of what shows itself” and a going-back towards the essence of a thing, a nonobjectifying thinking or speaking cannot be thought or said using objectifying language. We cannot speak it or think it here, nor can any “text”or form of scholarly or common discourse do thinking justice. It is thus up to us as individuals comported towards Being and idea-forming to bring thinking to ourselves; to answer the call of thinking is a movement of “faith”, invisible to technological-scientistic discourse. It is not something teachable, but rather a “letting learn” (WCT?, p. 15).

No doubt this short piece cannot do justice to the sublime complexity of Heidegger's discourse on thinking. We can, however, illustrate the technological “appearance” of this thinking by illustrating what it is not, and further by delineating the space in which such thinking might occur in by revealing other attempts at escaping from technological thinking. We spend our days blinking; when will be learn to think? When will we start? Have we started? How does one start? We, the last men, must overcome ourselves. “I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?” (TSZ, p. 124)

a present future, a present past.

2008-10-06T01:13:00.005-04:00

If we look back at the history of philosophy, of morals, even the history of history, it is easy to admire how far we have come. The idea of progress is an enticing one when we are looking back at it. We can see our achievements and our failures and rest assured in the knowledge that they are not really ours. They are in the past, happened already, gone; all that remains is the memory.

It is something much different - much more intimidating - to regard progress in the face of the present. For the present entails not just the moment but, further, tied up in that moment, our recollections of the past and our projections of the future, our actualizations of these two immense, chaotic virtualities. Both the past and future are bound up in the now. The now is thus necessarily vague in its temporal location, if we take time to be a thing that unfolds in a linear fashion. If we think of our last birthday: where are we? Are we here, or are we somewhere else? What of the the somewhere else? Can we even speak of such a thing? Further: can we speak of a here, and if we can, does that "here" mean what we think?

It is problematic to think this way, at best. Impossible at worst. There cannot be a "somewhere else." There cannot be a "here." All we can say of the present is that it is actualization, it is the actual-itself. All that is virtual actualizes itself in the present; the past and the future cannot be actual. It is nonsensical to think of an actualized past or future that is not, in its context, an actualization occurring necessarily in the present.

Such it is that we are never "here, now" in the sense that we commonly infer that statement. To talk of a present, separate from past and from future; this is to oversimplify, to abstract where there cannot sensibly be abstraction; to generalize and isolate a theory of temporality. This is a movement that undoubtedly destroys a complex notion of temporality. We could go as far as to say that thinking the present as separate from the past and future in its Realness would be to prevent a real thinking of temporality to take place.

To regard progress in the face of the present, then, is to actively actualize that progress in the face of the present. One must consider, to use Nietzschean terminology, the will to power and the eternal return. A present-progress must be an active one.

how is the how? how the how.

2008-10-04T20:15:00.011-04:00

Just as Heidegger has said that we have forgotten the question of Being, I propose another forgetting, one that was perhaps lost on Heidegger, and further lost to every theorist to come out of Heidegger's movement in theory. We must find it once more.

I propose that we have forgotten the question of the "how." What is the essence of the how? This is a poor formulation of the question we should now begin to ask. To put this interrogation into the conceptual framework of examining essence is an oversimplification, and thus brings us back to the problem of a "how" that is yet to be thought. "How" has an essence, indeed, but I want to illustrate that its essence is at once essential and differential, novel and relational. This should lead us to ask, in the manner of eschewing essence in favour of a deeper examination: how is it with the how? How is the how? What does it do? How does it operate and, further, what of its operation, what of its performativity, has yet to be thought?

To ask "how is the how?" is, at first glance, a circular question. We are attempting to use the movement of one word to examine its own movement. It appears to remain always on the same level and not deepen itself. In any other case, with any other form of linguistic interrogation (what, where, when, who) I believe this criticism would be valid. What I would like to argue here is that the "how" is something special; a movement within language that is the stepping-stone into a successful Nietzschean-Deleuzian inversion of metaphysics.

Much of immanent theory in the 20th century has been stalled by the question; how do we make room for affirmation and pure difference in language? The how, far from being yet another reactive term that further embeds us within the reactive apparatus, may indeed prove to be the way out of this yet-unsolved problematic; a direction where direction-itself is impossible. Its movement involves an unrivaled conceptual deepening, one that remains on-level within reactivity and yet reaches forth into the virtual and allows us the chance to bring something back that is novel. It is a link to the virtual; it reminds us that, even in language (which, as now conceptualized, reveals itself to be reactive and nihilating), more is possible, and all is not lost. We are never at the end of the how.

Let us first examine the movement of the how; how does it work? How does it move, how does it affect an interrogation? When we examine a tool or object (say, a hammer) and want to know more, we ask "how does a hammer work?" This reveals more to us that meets the eye. At once, we remain engaged on the level of the hammer (understanding more of the workings of the hammer) and also engage with a deeper ontological construction (the ground upon which the hammer is allowed to make a movement). It is this dual-movement of the how that concerns me in this essay.

The dual-movement becomes a more profound discursive discovery when we consider it in a context. Take our example of a hammer. Not only is there a "how" involved in the revealing of the workings of this hammer, but further the hammer itself is also part of a how; it can be part of the ontological construction of, say, "how do you build a table?" The how, as we can see, works and moves on differing and non-objective ontological levels, many of which we are not privy to. It moves up and down; as in the case of the hammer, we can ask "how" of the hammer, but further we can ask "how" of the "how" of the hammer, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum. This interrogation reveals an answer to our earlier question, "How is the how?"; the answer, the essential and differential movement of the how is "how the how ad infinitum of...", or more simply, just "how the how." This is how the how moves.

The movement of the how is thus essential and differential. It contains both; the conceptual construction of an ontological level (the hammer), and the differential element that links that level with one below it (the ontological grounding that answers the how). This illustrates that the essential and differential are not engaged in dialectical warfare, but are, rather, complementary. They work with one another (in the same movement) to explode or deepen one ontological framework into a deeper one, one that goes further.

Importantly, though, to conceptualize one ontological level as utterly separate from another would be a grave error. A deeper level, in this sense, is not a complete break that separates itself entirely from the one that is shallow; though it may appear that way if standing from either perspective. A deeper level would contain all of the qualitative "data" of a more shallow one, albeit reconfigured and actualized in a different way, such that the view from one to the other always merely looks utterly different. It is an issue of immanence; the deepening dual-movement of the how does not transcend, it reconfigures and machinates. From the perspective of one level, though, a deepening always superficially (reactively) appears as a transcendence.

Though the fact that how's double-movement can deepen itself ad infinitum might be viewed by some as a problematic ("it would paralyze us!" these people might say), I would urge caution when accepting this charge blindly. The nature of discourse is such that we can always only go so deep when confronted with multiple ontological levels. We will be confronted with a lack of properly developed language or concepts, or a lack of helpful ontological orientation, such that further interrogation "down the line" would be fruitless and viciously circular. Even Nietzsche had to stop and catch his breath; with the will to power, the overman, and the eternal return. In such an interrogation we will inevitably, if contingently, be made to stop asking "how" and start building upon a level of ontological discourse. Even this is built into the movement of the how; it is the on-level aspect of its dual-movement.

This "end of the chain-of-how" is always contingent, always temporary. Oddly enough, we have come full circle here; this contingency is why the question of the how has been, for us, forgotten. We forget that the how never stops, even when we stop to take a breath, gather ourselves, and take stock of our conceptual surroundings. In the how there is both; it waits and presses us onwards, holds us steady yet beckons us into chaos, gives us rigor here while all the same granting us the promise of a here that has not yet arrived. The how both is and is not the level it is moving on. It helps us examine a level and yet allows us the linguistic and conceptual movement of deepening, of reconfiguring that level to yield new ideas, new directions and new possibilities. This is the paradox of the how.

post-structuralism and orienting ontological implications. (part one)

2008-09-30T13:05:00.004-04:00

The advent of post-structuralism – an integral set of theories that are largely within the scope of the linguistic turn of philosophy and theory in the late 20th century – can be generally summarized as a dispersed and dispersing statement of how and why Western discourse fails; why, in more philosophical language, it is problematic. What is the nature of this failure? At once, we can trace its lineage back to two quite connected notions. One, that philosophy, notwithstanding the discourses it has influenced, has not gone far enough in recognizing and appreciating the immense diversity of methods, perspectives and applications that do not fit into the Western discursive cannon. And two, that philosophy has set out for itself projects that take certain, limiting frameworks and concepts too far, privileging presence and representation over ideas and concepts that fall outside of structures of logocentrism and a dogmatic image of thought.

Western discourse since Plato has been walking down a hallway, and it has failed – with notable exceptions – to examine or even notice the doors, windows, and unseemly crevices in that hallway that lead to new possibilities and the chance of a reconfiguration of thought. Philosophy has been attempting to walk in a straight line, at the expense of what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze might call ideas and concepts that, while not necessarily corresponding to a dogmatic and transcendent ideal of “truth”, are nonetheless Interesting, Remarking and Important; that is, worthy of pursuit and investigation. This essay aims to examine the impact of this philosopher, along with the impact of fellow French thinker Jacques Derrida, on the philosophical tradition and, on a grander scale, their impact on Western discursive tradition itself.

This examination will be aided by interrogating the origins and ontological implications of certain orienting ethical questions; questions that not only gave direction and inspiration to a philosophical era, but further that trace and delineate the invisible boundaries of thought that those eras built around themselves. The first pertains to the Ancient philosophers; they asked “How should one live?”; the second, to Modern philosophy, which subtly changes the first question - “How should one act?”; finally, the third question, that summarizes well (albeit with some later elaboration) post-structuralist theory and specifically here the respective philosophies of Deleuze and Derrida, is “How might one live?”. Integral to the orientation of the final question is the idea that there are possibilities that have yet to be thought, yet to be actualized. “There is more, always more.” This is the theme of my essay.

The first question, “How should one live?”, carries with it certain ontological assumptions; one, that there is a cosmological order, a “shape of things”; and two, that there is an ideal of the Human (Plato would call it “the Good”), a “shape” or proper way of living for human beings that should be aspired and ascribed to. In all, we can take from this that the Ancient philosophical question we are addressing here assumes that there is one “Good” way that a human life should unfold.

The second question, that of “Modernity,” is similar to the first, as I have noted above. “How should one act?” It is the question implicitly asked, among others, by Kant. At first glance, the distinction between living and acting appears insignificant, trivial. But it is an important distinction, especially in the context of a third question, the full significance of which we will see later. The distinction lies precisely in the elimination of the importance of human complicity in a cosmological order, in a universally correct realization of humanity in the context of the whole of things. Modernity jettisoned the evaluation of a human based on their role in the whole of things, and put new focus on the celebration of the individual, of the “subject”. The focus of the second question is not the overall mode and timbre of one's life, but rather the effectiveness and manner in which one's actions may fulfill their responsibilities and obligations; to themselves, to a community, to the world. It is the “act” rather than the “life” that holds privileged significance in the context of the second question.

In investigating what ontological changes occur in the movement from the first question to the second, we can identify the beginnings of the ontological implications of the third, “how might one live?”. What has changed in the movement from the first to the second question? We have outlined some of these changes above; that the second rids itself of the notion of a transcendent, cosmological order that humans must fit into the whole of; and that this riddance implies a shift in privilege from the cosmological whole to the existent individual. The ontological implications of this shift are staggering. We can immediately see that, implicit in the transition between first and second, is an expansion of the boundaries of the possibilities of living. No longer is there a single prescribed “life” that a human must ascribe to to live well, but rather the individual must fulfill the obligations and responsibilities that are given to them; integral to the shift from the first to the second question is an intensification and partial recognition of the complexity of life. The path is no longer fully and totally prescribed; no list of specific instructions (get up, walk the dog, talk to seven people, etc.) is fully adequate to evaluate a single life, because the specificity of that life may differ from the specificity of another.

The path to the third question can be delineated in the second. Where does the third question, then, depart from the second? “How might one live?” A reading of the word “live” in the third as a return to the “live” of the first question would be incorrect; indeed, implicit in the third question are two more ideas to be investigated. The third question calls forward for interrogation and investigation terms that are presupposed and static in the context of the first. First, what does it mean to “live”? Secondly, what is meant by “one”? These questions are important. More important, though (and speaking too to both former questions, of “live” and “one”) is this fundamental shift from the second to the third orienting question: it is in asking the third question that, for the first time, the asking of the question takes a privileged position over the answer that it might entail.

passive bodies.

2008-09-30T13:03:00.001-04:00

What happens when we begin stagnate in an outlook to activity? By outlook I mean a reaching out towards, an affirmative approach to concepts and evaluation. A stagnation in this sense would mean a reactive turnaround of a dangerous sort; one that masquerades as activity in thought and approach but is - in its genetic element - reactive and no-saying.

This is complicated because such a turnaround is a subtly distinguished sort of reactivity. It takes place within the (subjective) interpretive perspective after a call to activity is realized; a posthumous (deadening) reaction within a mode of thinking already oriented towards affirmation and yes-saying.

Such a mode of thinking is active in appearance but reactive in practice. It would celebrate the primacy of the individual perspective and multiplicity implied therein, but approach the very idea of celebration with a heaviness and resentment. I would like to call this active-becoming-reactive.

What would this look like? An approach to, for example, a social interaction that follows the framework I am highlighting (active-becoming-reactive)

might realize itself as the internalization of other perceived points of view as the celebration of a certain timbre of perspectivism and its implied primacy of multiplicity. This is problematic, as I stated above, because it veils the thought and will-to-activity in a reactive skin that reconfigures a personal notion of celebration as a strategy of resentment.

how we move.

2008-09-30T13:01:00.001-04:00

Put expectations that others have of you aside for a moment. I'm not saying brush them aside entirely, just for the moment. Now sit back and think about yourself and the way you live. Is something missing? Are you satisfied with what you see?

The expectations that others have of us are empty if we have nothing of our own inside of ourselves. I hear so often people talking about "living up to their responsibilities". How do we characterize those responsibilities? Are they expectations that others have of us that we have internalized to the point of thinking they are our own? Is a responsibility that we feel ever truly ours?

I feel myself and others being tempted down paths in which we do not give thought to these considerations. How do we remain faithful to "ourselves"?

It is tricky. If we let our orientations and opinions be solely informed by "society" and those around us, we can lose out on our own creativity and passions. But expressing such an activity may not make a movement within those societies, communities and intersubjective groups. It may be (and likely is) invisible.

This can lead us to the question, "why does this matter?" It's a valid question. If "engaging with ourselves" in this sense doesn't penetrate the social bubble, why should we engage in such an activity? My response: why do we always have to be noticed? Is this the road to our happiness, having our lives recognized by the people around us?

The hardest part to understand is that there IS more than this. What about the little things that can thrill you, excite you? How many of those can you really express to someone else, how many of those little things can excite others? If you're anything like me, then there are many things that excite you that are really difficult to share with others. How a really great song makes you feel; how objects speak to you.

There are so many things that happen inside our own heads that can't be expressed socially. And when we orient our lives solely towards being recognized in society then, sadly, we downplay the importance of these subjective things and fail to see how those things really do influence our entire lives, socially or personally. We fail to realize our creativity and run the risk of becoming automatons in a vast, impersonal and antiseptic social machine.

Sometimes we want to respond with "I'm not in a place right now where I can deal with all of this", or "Maybe next week, when I'm not so busy and engaged with my real-life responsibilities." But in making these excuses (and I am arguing that they are, in fact, excuses) we fail to recognize that every movement that we make (whether visible by society or not) comes from this place. Our inner expressions (the ones not seen by anyone else) are an incredibly important part of our "real life."

These "inner expressions" are the very foundation of our lives; all of our social interactions and bids for recognition by our peers and comrades come from them. The ones that are noticed are just the ones that are "translatable," that our outwardly-expressed languages have the ability to speak.

We know that language always falls short of perfectly expressing something. This entails much more than it seems; what falls "outside of language" isn't unimportant, it's just (for all social intents and purposes) invisible. Does this mean that the "inexpressible" should be tossed aside, forgotten? Or does it mean that all of our visible interactions with "society" as such are never the whole story, never a complete picture or a fully-realized life? I vouch for the latter.

It's a matter of celebrating ourselves and what is inside of us that is inexpressible, of letting those invisible and internal expressions breathe and give themselves life. In doing so, we can give ourselves life and deepen all of our expressions, invisible or not. It's a matter of learning to love ourselves by celebrating who we are in the context of how things speak to us.

I'm not talking about an indifference towards our social responsibilities; celebrating the inexpressible will deepen our connection to what is expressible. By paying attention to ourselves and opening ourselves in this way to our own learning and thought, we can deepen our appreciation of and dedication to all forms of our expression. By digging down deep into our love and passion we make its visible expression more meaningful to ourselves and to others; by feeling more (by recognizing our feeling to a greater degree) we inevitably find ourselves with more to contribute.

Life is beautiful, exciting and worthy of celebration, but I don't know what that statement means to you. No one can know but yourself. I challenge and implore each one of you: listen to yourselves, you innermost passions, expressions and feelings. Not just the ones that can be expressed, but most importantly the ones that will never be heard by anyone but you. Let them move you, let them affect you, even with the knowledge that they will never move or affect anyone but you. Allow yourselves a life that has room for celebration!

deleuze, badiou, nietzsche: the anti-philosophical event (part two)

2008-04-18T19:13:00.003-04:00

“Nietzsche is not a philosopher, he is an anti-philosopher.” In his essay Who is Nietzsche?, Alain Badiou outlines his conception of Nietzsche's philosophical act as identified (in its philosophical announcement and anti-philosophical activity) with the proper name, which is Nietzsche. This name comes at the end of a list of proper names that are identified themselves as events or acts as such; Christ (or the Crucified), Socrates, Dionysus-Ariadne, Saint Paul, Socrates, and Nietzsche's own Zarathustra. Badiou opposes the rupture represented by the proper name to common concepts that have their roots in pre-established discursive traditions.

This essay is the second of two parts which explore the implications of Badiou's conception of Nietzsche. In the first part, I outlined how Badiou conceptualizes Nietzsche, focusing on the “discovering, finding and losing” of Nietzsche (the prophet, the actor and the name) and, foundational to all of these, the idea of Nietzsche's anti-philosophy as a radical break from the tradition of philosophy and history that came before it. In this part, I will introduce Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche (as outlined in Nietzsche and Philosophy) and present it, with some stipulations and reconsiderations, as being able to “fit within” one aspect of Badiou's conception; that is, the “finding” or understanding of Nietzsche in the context of a newly-posited evental truth. There are aspects of both that compliment the other, and these ideas are the ones I wish to focus on in this essay. In this way, I will illustrate how Badiou's conception of Nietzsche prompts a reconsideration of Deleuze's interpretation, and not a rejection outright.

My analysis will be conducted in three steps: first, I will outline some important points of Deleuze's conception of Nietzsche succinctly. Secondly, I will explore which considerations must be made within the contexts of both Deleuze and Badiou's Nietzschean conceptions before the two can be incorporated in the way I will suggest. The third part will be to execute this incorporation and outline what it might look like within the framework of an already-posited philosophical tradition (one which, despite my efforts, I will not be able to escape; a much longer – and evental – treatise and examination would be required on my part to succeed in such a feat).

Deleuze's general project in Nietzsche and Philosophy is to extrapolate upon what he sees as Nietzsche's introduction of the concepts of sense and value into philosophy. This involves an enquiry into forces and wills; forces, for Deleuze, make up everything – all is force – and within each force is a will – the differential and genetic element of force. The will is plastic; it is not an object or thing with specific characteristics as such, but rather conforms, bends or stretches to fit the specific force it is the genetic and differential element of. In this way we can see Deleuze's wariness of abstraction and equation. In fact, in Nietzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze specifically warns that forces and wills cannot be abstracted into over-arching concepts – that every force or every will has universal defining characteristics – or equated with one another. To do so would be to fall into the transcendentalism that Deleuze and Nietzsche seek to avoid in their philosophies.

This idea of forces and of the plasticity of the will illustrates how Deleuze's conception of Nietzsche responds to the idea that concepts or values can be transcendent; in his conception, they cannot be and so every value comes from a force appropriated or dominated by another force, through the will. The will, in fact, presupposes evaluation; the act of the will is to evaluate, to interpret and as such to create. Creation, though (and from that, evaluation and interpretation) is lost when forces are separated from what they can do, from their ability to act. The ability to create is forgotten or ceases to be an option, and – as the name ressentiment suggests – reactions cease to be acted and become, instead, something that is felt. This is to respond to values or interpretations as if they were transcendent. To let pre-established values and conceptions define you instead of you defining them.

When the former is allowed to happen, a dialectical struggle is set up that negates life instead of affirming it. “I am not the whole, I am not this, thus I am me.” Nietzsche would say, in the first essay of his Genealogy of Morals, that the reactive person, the one ensconced in ressentiment, first defines what is evil, and then, from that, themselves and what is good. The person who is active and creative, however, “does not wait to be called good” (Deleuze, 4th essay). For the one within ressentiment, concepts are static; evil, for example, is thus and thus, always and forever. Concepts for the one within ressentiment and taken as transcendental. In a real sense, because the reactive individual cannot create or act and can only feel – because they take pre-posited values as transcendental – they cannot “have done” with those values and concepts and thus remain tied to them, slaves to representation and blind to the origin of their values.

Badiou's conception of Nietzsche is certainly not opposed to Deleuze's. Badiou's worry is that Deleuze's focus on systems of force and the will bring Nietzsche's philosophy “back into the commonality of sense.” Further, he is concerned that such a return to commonality will absorb Nietzsche back “into the stream of interpretation.” The concern, stated succinctly, is this: if there is no “event” to break radically from previously-established tradition, no “breaking of history in two”, then Nietzsche's anti-philosophical enterprise must fail, because any attempt to understand or “find” Nietzsche within a framework still inside the “stream of interpretation” will remain inside that stream, and ergo inside the Christian apparatus as such.

What are the implications of Badiou's concerns upon Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche? This is a question I would to explore in the remainder of this essay. The problem, as such, is that Deleuze's explication does not go far enough to break with established tradition and posit itself “outside” of that tradition. Badiou might say that Deleuze has found Nietzsche, but has not “discovered” him. The discovery here would be the announcement of an event that breaks with pre-established tradition, breaks with history, and posits something new, singular and unique outside of those traditions. This break and event would posit a truth that would remain inevaluable; to evaluate would be to do so from within a tradition and further would destroy the event, destroy the new truth in favour of what has come before. To evaluate would be to reconnect a broken history and negate the important of an event at all. We might take some time now to consider Badiou and Deleuze's different conceptions of an “event”, and further, the “privileging” as such of the virtual or the actual in the context of each.

Deleuze conceptualizes the event as the “immanent intensification of a becoming” (Badiou, “Deleuze and Event”, p. 3). That is to say that it is not separated or apart from becoming. Thus, the event would not be something that radically breaks, but rather a recognition and concentration of the unity of multiplicity; “the becoming(-One) of (unlimited)becoming” (D&E, p. 2). As such, there is one “event” of many events. With his equation “UNITY=MULTIPLICITY” and this idea of the event, we can see how every intensification, every evaluation, is an event that is One with the event. For Deleuze, the event is the “immanent consequence of becoming, or Life” (D&E, p. 4). In contrast to this, Badiou posits his conception of the event as “the immanent principle of exceptions to becoming, or of Truths” (D&E, p. 4). For Badiou, the event is a separation of “paths” of becoming, one that separates so vividly and absolutely the before and the after that the before no longer has any authority, “a pure break of the becoming of an object in the world” (D&E, p. 3). For Deleuze, “events” as such happen all the time; they are everything, they are “one.” For Badiou, the event is something much rarer, something that happens only occasionally and breaks with a chain of becoming.

This distinction allows us to see the different importance that each philosopher places upon conceptions of the actual and the virtual. Because Deleuze sees the event as a becoming(-One) of (unlimited)becoming, for him the virtual is “privileged” in a sense, and the actual is marginally subordinated to it. What is actual is a single evaluation of the multiplicity of the virtual, and because every evaluation can be seen as an “event” of unified multiplicity, Deleuze places more importance upon the virtual. That is, he posits the actual as contingent to the virtual. Badiou, on the other hand, would argue that the virtual is contingent to the actual; that the “event” as a radical break in history separates a becoming from itself, subtracts a new truth from itself and “reconfigures” what is actual through entry into the virtual. As can be seen, it is the actual that is “privileged” in a sense, leaving what is virtual only as a sort of reconfiguring border crossing on the way to a new conception of truth.

We can see how this subtle difference in the philosophies of both of these thinkers results in major differences in their explications of Nietzsche. For Deleuze, Nietzsche is a philosopher of value and sense; for Badiou, Nietzsche's main focus is on the philosophical act, the announcement of “a crisis without equal on the earth.” From both of these considerations, however, follows the revaluation of all values and Nietzsche's project of “philosophizing with a hammer.” The distinction between the two comes from the consideration of how both interpretations are introduced; Badiou's as an event that breaks absolutely from the traditions that precede it, and Deleuze's as a recognition of the intensification of sense, value and the being of becoming.

Can it be had both ways? This remains to be seen; there are some considerations that must be made before we can come to one conclusion or the other. First of all, does Deleuze's conception of Nietzsche really follow his conception of the event? That Deleuze's interpretation takes a systematic approach is problematic when considering his evental ontology. How can something like a system champion the idea of the event as the becoming(-One) of (unlimited)becoming? Deleuze's system has no recourse to the virtual, does not allow for itself to be reinterpreted and revaluated in the way that he proposes we must revaluate concepts of sense. How, then, does Deleuze's system affirm the multiple Oneness of his event? Badiou might answer that it does not; in fact, Deleuze's system takes on a character that is much closer to that of an actualized “Truth” along the lines of Badiou than an illustration of the intensification of sense. Systems of forces and the will, as well as genealogical analysis, take themselves to be a “true” way of evaluating. It is in this consideration that we might be able to begin to reconcile Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche with Badiou's.

I contend that Deleuze's interpretation unwittingly fits into Badiou's as the “finding” of Nietzsche, a way of conceptualizing thought after the announcement, the “discovery,” that breaks radically from methods of thinking that have come before it, but that is thoroughly enmeshed in what is actual, not leaving room for reconfiguration within the virtual until a new event (in Badiou's conception) occurs. Deleuze's interpretation is the actualization (the deployment) of the anti-philosophical event that is discovered by the its own philosophical announcement. It destroys philosophy that comes before it in favour of a new way of conceptualizing sense, and value. It is, in itself, inevaluable because any evaluation would come from a previous tradition of evaluation. This is why Badiou can say, in his essay Who is Nietzsche?, that “Nietzsche's last word is not sense, but the inevaluable” (WN?, p. 2). What, exactly, is inevaluable? Precisely “Nietzsche's... own category of truth” (WN?, p. 2).

For Badiou, it is the proper name of Nietzsche that deposes the commonality of sense and allows for the creation of a new conception of truth. It is one that “is lost” in Deleuze's interpretation; but only if we follow his conception of the event and not Badiou's. If we consider Deleuze's interpretation as the deployment of an anti-philosophical and destructive event, one that breaks history in two and then “loses” its destructive capability in favour of the creation of a new category of truth, then this interpretation fits in well with Badiou's conception of Nietzsche. This manner of considering Deleuze's interpretation privileges actualized Truth over the virtual; the virtual, as such, is a means to an end, much like real, active “culture” is a means to an end as Deleuze suggests at the end of the fourth essay in Nietzsche and Philosophy.

The systematicity of Deleuze's interpretation prevents it from being truly active, from truly acheiving in itself what Deleuze claims that Nietzsche's philosophical enterprise sets out to do. To be active in Deleuze's conception is precisely the opposite of conforming to a system of action. It seems almost as if the way Deleuze systematizes Nietzsche's philosophy posits it as a sort of transcendent “value”, a framework to fall back on, and this is Badiou's worry when he says that Deleuze's focus on forces and wills must always come back to “the commonality of sense”. What Deleuze's interpretation does do, however, is posit a new actuality, a new Truth that allows for a revaluation of all that has come before, a “crisis without equal on the earth”, a framework that is very much outside of the traditions that inform it, and as such is inevaluable by those traditions. In this way, it fits inside Badiou's framework (if we do not consider further Deleuzian ontology, such as his conception of the event) as the anti-philosophical destruction and the philosophical-creative heir to that destruction that allows for the establishment of a new actuality of Truth.

This is certainly not Deleuze as Deleuze would have wanted it. This essay does not seek to illustrate that Deleuze and Badiou are reconcilable in themselves, that the full body of their works are compatible with one another; that would require a much longer and, indeed, more advanced treatise than this, if it is possible at all. This essay does, however, seek to illustrate how Deleuze's conception of Nietzsche (taken by itself, outside of the Deleuzian corpus) in Nietzsche and Philosophy is compatible with Badiou's conception in Who is Nietzsche?, with some considerations and stipulations as to how this compatibility is possible. If we accept Badiou's conception of the event over Deleuze's then Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche, taken by itself, fits into the category of an evental truth represented by a proper name, which, in this case, is Nietzsche. If Nietzsche is the prophet, the actor, and the name, then we may be able to conceptualize Deleuze as an actor as well. Deleuze, in the context of Nietzsche and Philosophy is a subject the Truth posited by the philosophical act of Nietzsche.

And, if Badiou is to be believed, Deleuze's truth – Nietzsche's truth – is only waiting for us because we are waiting for it.

deleuze, badiou, nietzsche: the anti-philosophical event (part one)

2008-04-11T15:13:00.004-04:00

“Nietzsche is not a philosopher, he is an anti-philosopher.” – So says Alain Badiou in his essay Who is Nietzsche?, and this is undoubtedly the most important and, dare I say, foundational aspect of Nietzsche's struggle against the dogmatic, or in Badiou's words “religious”, conflation of sense and truth. Nietzsche's endeavour against this nihilistic and dangerous conflation is not a contribution to previously-established philosophy, a deepening or broadening of concepts already presented by philosophy. Nor is it a “project” in the sense that Deleuze declares in the opening pages of his interpretation of Nietzsche, Nietzsche and Philosophy. Rather, the proclamation of Nietzsche (“the prophet, the actor, and the name”) to the external world is at once an “explosion” and “an act that will in fact destroy philosophy” (WN?, p. 4, 2, 1). I would like to explore this conception of Nietzsche as an anti-philosopher, and further as a thinker who is primarily concerned with the philosophical act as the founding event of his metaphysical ontology.

This exploration will take its form in two parts. In this, the first part, I will examine Nietzsche's anti-philosophy in the context of Badiou and his philosophy of the event. This process of examination will follow through three distinct “phases”, as stated by the philosopher himself in a letter near the end of his writing career, and further singled out by Badiou as integral to a holistic understanding of Nietzsche. These phases are that of “discovering, finding, and losing” (WN?, p. 10) Nietzsche, the prophet, the actor, and the name. I will argue, citing Badiou and Nietzsche himself, that anti-philosophy must eventually give way, or concede, to a new conception of philosophy, a new “duty” for philosophy. Further, the anti-philosophical process of dispersing dogmatic connections between sense and truth (a singular and evental “breaking in two” of history) is essential to, but not the final step in, positing this new “duty”. In Badiou's words, “the truth must, once again and always, be secularized” (WN?, p. 10).

In the second part of my exploration, I will conduct an in-depth examination of the shortcomings, but also the continued relevance and importance of Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche in the context of Badiou's conception of the latter. Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche is excellent in that it identifies the significance of ideas of force and will within Nietzschean ontology, but as Badiou would have it, Deleuze fails to recognize the importance of a singular and evental rupture at the heart of this ontology. Deleuze's interpretation is unsuccessful in that it posits a Nietzschean framework without consideration of this radical break. As such, it does not and cannot truly escape from the “Christian apparatus” that both Nietzsche and Deleuze write of with a critical disdain for the ressentiment and dogmatism that comes attached to it. Deleuze does succeed, however, in providing us a direction to be followed to a point, and given weighty consideration in the context of finding or understanding Nietzsche's anti-philosophical enterprise; Badiou's concern for the “event” of Nietzsche prompts a reconsideration, rather than a rejection of Deleuze's interpretation.

Badiou is a philosopher of the event, and this is made abundantly clear in his essay on Nietzsche. It remains, though, that there is textual evidence within the Nietzschean corpus itself that supports and reinforces Badiou's claims of an anti-philosophical and evental rupture at the core of Nietzsche's ontology. In exploring the importance of this evental interpretation, I will endeavour to support Badiou's claims with as much primary textual evidence as possible.

For Badiou, Nietzsche's singularity is “entirely contained in his conception of the philosophical act” (WN?, p. 1), an act which philosophy, historically-conceived, can only announce or declare. Philosophy as such cannot be the act; this task is left to anti-philosophy, the task of destroying dogmatic conceptions of philosophy, of the rejection of a doctrinal conflation of truth and sense. It is the task of secularizing truth, “once again and always.” Nietzsche the philosopher, thus, announces this event, but it is only Nietzsche the anti-philosopher who can produce it. This is why Nietzsche can declare (noted by Badiou) that he is his own predecessor, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Among these people I am my own forerunner, my own cock-crow through dark lanes.” The philosophical announcement of Nietzsche's act of philosophy coincides with and is presupposed by his production of that act. The consequences of this separation of the philosophical and anti-philosophical Nietzsche are such that his ontology is within a given tradition or discourse, but paradoxically and singularly, that ontology radically breaks from received tradition and posits something singular, new, and unique. Indeed, this break in effect destroys that tradition in an explosion of evental singularity, separating truth from sense and allowing for a “revaluation of all values” (EH, p. 782).

Nietzsche himself posits this revaluation as his “formula for an act of supreme self-examination on the part of humanity, become flesh and genius in me” (EH, p. 782). His mention of the word “act” is of particular importance in the context of this examination. Indeed, Badiou identifies this act, Nietzsche's act of philosophy, as “an event”, and not as an “overcoming” (WN?, p. 3). The distinction between these two words is of vital significance; if Nietzsche's act is taken as an overcoming, then it must remain inside pre-established philosophical tradition and therefore cannot escape the “Christian apparatus” that it is critical of. The act as event, as I have outlined above, is something singular, new, unique; something that is established in presupposed ontological theory but radically breaks with those presuppositions and “destroys” them in favour of a transvaluation of all values. This, indeed, is Nietzsche's anti-philosophical endeavour; it is “philosophizing with a hammer.”, the breaking of history in two, and with that break the shattering of all pre-established ideals.

At the opening of his essay “Why I Am a Destiny” in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes, “I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous – a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far” (EH, p. 782). That's Nietzsche's name will be associated with this speaks to the usage of proper names as a method of dissolving concepts through the former's opacity. Badiou writes, “the name of a philosophical event can be nothing other than a figure, and ultimately a proper name” (WN?, p. 2). He notes a series of proper names that Nietzsche does not identify as “events” as such, but which we can interpret to be so, in that they are opaque figures that have broken radically from the ontology that preceded them. These are Christ (or the crucified), Dionysus-Ariadne, Socrates, Saint Paul, and Wagner (WN?, p. 2). To this list Nietzsche adds his own: Zarathustra and, finally, his own name, which is or will be, as we have seen, associated with the memory of something tremendous. “...the first and the last, the philosophers and old women – excepting five, six moments in history, and me as the seventh – at this point all of them are worthy of each other” (EH, p. 788).

In this, the figure or proper name of Nietzsche that identifies and speaks to his philosophical event – and considering our previous examination of Nietzsche's anti-philosophy – we can see how Nietzsche is the “prophet”, the philosopher who announces his event, the “actor”, the anti-philosopher who performs the act, and the “name”, the opaque figure which is associated with the evental rupture as such. It is, further, important to note that Nietzsche's act is not dialectically opposed to what Badiou calls the “Christian dynamite” (WH?, p. 6); it is an event and not a response, a singular act and not an overcoming.

What, then, does Nietzsche mean when he quotes his own Thus Spoke Zarathustra at the end of the preface to Ecce Homo? “You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers – but what matter all believers? You had not yet sought yourselves; and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little. Now I bid you to lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you” (EH, p. 676). In this quotation we can see a vital point that Badiou also draws attention to; the philosophical/anti-philosophical/evental process of discovering, finding and losing Nietzsche; a process that Nietzsche himself, evidently, attached a great importance to. In this process, which I will explore in detail below, the proper ontological function of anti-philosophy is revealed; to “secularize truth, once again and always”, anti-philosophy in Nietzsche's conception must be discovered, found, and lost once again once it has achieved its active, creative intent. Finally, this process must be repeated “once again and always”, every time truth and sense become falsely conflated, every time dogmatic and base ressentiment is allowed to permeate the hearts and minds of humanity.

What is it to discover Nietzsche, the prophet, the actor, the name? In section 7 of “Why I Am a Destiny”, Nietzsche criticizes the Christian apparatus as “the greatest uncleanliness that humanity has on its conscience; as self-deception become instinctive; as a fundamental will not to see any event” (EH, p. 788). Society ensconced in ressentiment, in the Christian apparatus, lives (although Nietzsche might say that such a living is not really “life”) with a “blindness” towards itself and the origin of the values that inform that society, and this blindness is a “crime against life” (EH, p. 788). To this blindness, this crime, we can propose the discovery of Nietzsche. This is not a response to ressentiment as such, but a naming of it (“the crucified”) and a move outside of it. In this discovery we come to realize that the Nietzsche's philosophical act has been announced. It is an introductory realization of the virtual potentialities of what Nietzsche is proposing in his ontology.

Notably, the conception of an evental rupture is important here because without this conception any so-called “discovery” of Nietzsche as philosophical rupture will not be a rupture at all, and will remain safely within the boundaries of pre-established, base discourse and ontology. A discovery without rupture denies anti-philosophy, denies a “revaluation of all values”, and leaves Nietzsche's anti-philosophical enterprise to toil in misunderstood frustration, bidding farewell to the possibility of discovering what it can do. This is where Deleuze's interpretation falters (it fails to presuppose the event, the break, the rupture), and further, where we now come to the notion of finding Nietzsche; this is, as we will see, distinct from the idea of discovering him. Badiou includes in his essay a quotation from one of Nietzsche's mad letters: “Once you discovered me, it was no great feat to find me” (WN?, p. 6).

Deleuze succeeds in finding Nietzsche in a way; but this I will leave to the succeeding part of this essay when I will examine his interpretation in greater detail. The important notion to grasp at this point is that Deleuze succeeds – apart from failing to note the importance of the evental rupture – in understanding Nietzsche; that is, once again, in finding him. For Badiou, to find Nietzsche means to “provoke the theme of truth towards a new demand, as he who forces the philosophical stance to invent a new figure of truth, a new rupture with sense” (WN?, p. 6). The understanding or finding of Nietzsche is the phase of properly understanding Nietzsche's ontology that “breaks the history of mankind [sic] in two” (EH, p. 789). If the discovery is the announcement of Nietzsche's philosophical act, the finding is the anti-philosophical deployment or acting of that act that destroys previous philosophy, that “philosophizes with a hammer” and uncovers the dogmatic conflation of truth and sense for what it is; sickness and folly. The discovery is the proclamation of the event and the finding is the event. Nietzsche the philosopher, the prophet, proclaims the philosophical act, and Nietzsche the anti-philosopher, the actor, deploys it.

Important to Badiou's conception of the finding is that it itself is not the “new figure of truth” that the finding provokes. The finding is the provocation itself; the anti-philosophy that destroys dogmatic and ungenealogical conceptions of truth and paves the way for a “new demand”, that forces the invention of a new figure of truth. The one who finds Nietzsche is the one who “conceives reality as it is, being strong enough to do so”, who feels “Christian morality [values] as beneath him [sic]” (EH, p. 787). Nietzsche himself, however, recognizes that this discovery and finding is not enough. Nietzsche's ontology is one of creation, not just destruction. Certainly, his ontology affirms destruction; but it is, paradoxically, a creative destruction. There is where Nietzsche's anti-philosophical enterprise ends; before the creation. It makes possible creation, but it is not creation. It is, again, the provocation that paves the way a new figure of truth, and not that new truth itself. Once one finds Nietzsche and gains the power to destroy old conceptions in an evental break or rupture, he must too be lost or silenced in order for that new figure of truth to establish itself.

What does it mean to lose Nietzsche? As Badiou would have it, “there is in anti-philosophy a movement of putting itself to death, or of silencing itself, so that something imperative may be bequeathed to philosophy” (WN?, p. 6). Anti-philosophy must silence itself so that philosophy may assume the new figure of meaning that anti-philosophy has revealed for it. This is why Badiou can say that “philosophy is always the heir to anti-philosophy” (WN?, p. 6). Anti-philosophy destroys philosophy, but it does this so that a new figure of philosophy – a new “duty” for philosophy – may take its place, not in a dialectical opposition to the old, but in a breaking-in-two of history and ontology. The new “duty” will always be something precisely that: new, unique, and radical. The discovery and the finding of the figure of Nietzsche – the prophet, the actor, the name – precipitates this necessary and important destruction, but it is only through the silencing of anti-philosophy that a new figure of truth can be created. The death of anti-philosophy is the birth of philosophy. One must lose Nietzsche to find or create truth.

This silencing of anti-philosophy is, for Badiou, the hardest part, the most challenging and important aspect of Nietzsche's ontology. “The great difficulty for us all, that which demands of us a creation, is not to discover and to understand Nietzsche. The difficulty is to know, philosophically, how to lose him” (WN?, p. 6). This is hard for numerous reasons. It is difficult, first of all, because the temptation exists to not lose Nietzsche, to stay safely within the walls of a destructive and critical anti-philosophy. It is so much easier to destroy than to create. This, in itself, is contrary to the spirit of Nietzsche's creative and affirmative ontology, and so the fact remains that we must lose Nietzsche, or risk losing ourselves. Failure to do so would be akin to the abolishment of Deleuze's actual; it is impossible to hold down anything in the chaos of the virtual without the actual to structure it.

Further, it is difficult to lose Nietzsche because “when the herd animal is irradiated by the glory of the purest virtue, the exceptional man [sic] must have been devaluated into evil. The really truthful man [sic] is bound to be branded with the worst names” (EH, p. 786). To be creative and affirmative in a negating and nihilistic society is a challenge. It is tempting, when the pressures of a resentful and base society are pressing down, to forget creation – to forget even the discovery of the possibility of creation – and remain within the Christian apparatus. It is further tempting to only go so far; to destroy only so much and leave intact some of the more dangerous and inbred aspects of the Christian apparatus. But this would negate or abolish the very notion of a radical, evental break! To go only so far is always to not go far enough. The active, affirmative and creative type “is not estranged or removed from reality but is reality itself and exemplifies all that is terrible and questionable in it” (EH, p. 787).

To discover, to find, and to lose; this is the name Nietzsche, “associated with the memory of something tremendous.” The discovery is the proclamation or announcement of the event; it is the aspect of the event that philosophy declares, but does not and cannot act on that announcement. The finding is the action of the event; it is the event deployed, the anti-philosophy that destroys and makes room for creation. The losing, or silencing, of this anti-philosophy is the creation itself, conditioned and made possible by the announcement of the discovery and the understanding of the finding. A full and proper understanding of Nietzsche must take into account all three of these phases, else fall prey to the deeply embedded baseness and moralistic blindness of ressentiment and the Christian apparatus. Truth must be secularized, “once again and always”. Truth gives way to destruction – chaotic virtuality – which in turn gives way to a new conception of truth; and all of this is within the grasp of humanity, if we are willing to reach. In short, the truth is waiting for us only because we are waiting for it.

sartre: vertigo, anguish and the apprehension of nothingness.

2008-04-06T17:53:00.001-04:00

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre briefly discusses some Kierkegaardian and Heideggerian conceptions of anguish, and notes that “these two descriptions of do not appear to us contradictory; on the contrary the one implies the other” (p. 119). Kierkegaard conceptualizes anguish as fear “in the face of freedom”, and further, Heidegger (whom Sartre notes has been greatly influenced by the Danish philosopher) conceptualizes it as “the apprehension of nothingness” (p. 119). Sartre is right when he claims that these two claims are not contradictory; to consider or realize one's freedom is to apprehend the nothingness of one's own being. This apprehension of nothingness is an anguish precisely because there is nothing that comes between a human being and their freedom; thus I feel “anguish before myself” (p. 119). Here, I will examine three conceptions of this existential anguish that Sartre outlines in Being and Nothingness, which are, in sum, the example of the gambler's freedom to gamble in the face of a past decision, the self-deception of bad faith in the present, and vertigo, the fear of throwing oneself off a precipice in the future. These illustrations of anguish – that respectively address this idea in the context or “face” of the past, present and future – illustrate Sartre's view of existential freedom in that they reveal the nothingness that is the essence-without-essence of human existence.

Sartre's example of the gambler who wishes to stop gambling is an illustration of anguish as it relates to the past, “anguish in the face of the past” (p. 125). The gambler has resolved, in the past, to stop gambling because (for example) they recognize the toll their habit is taking on their lives. In the moment of that resolution, that choice to no longer gamble seemed “a real barrier” between gambling and the one who gambles, between the human being and their freedom. However, in the light of a new moment, minutes, hours or days later, that earlier resolution seems nothing more than a “memory of an idea, a memory of a feeling” (p. 126) when the gambler is presented once again with the opportunity to gamble. Precisely nothing (no previous decision that attempts to put a “barrier” – a something – between a subject and their freedom) stops the gambler from gambling again; they are always free to choose, to gamble or not to gamble. “The resolution is still me to the extent that I realize constantly my identity with myself across the temporal flux”. The gambler thus feels anguish in the face of their own freedom; they have apprehended the nothingness of their own being; they “perceive with anguish that nothing prevents [them] from gambling” (p. 126).

Here, one can begin to observe the distinction Sartre makes between anguish and fear; whereas anguish is a fear in the face of one's own freedom, fear is a “fear of beings in the world” (p. 119). Sartre's conception of fear is a fear of events, people or things that happen or are in the world; “The artillery preparation which precedes the attack can provoke fear in the soldier who undergoes the bombardment” (p. 120). This quotation speaks to simple fear; fear of being killed by a bombardment of shells; fear in the face of a thing in the world. “A situation provokes fear if there is a possibility of my life being changed from without” (p. 120). Anguish, on the other hand, is fear in the face of oneself; fear in the face of the nothingness that characterizes one's own freedom. “...anguish is born [in the soldier] when he tries to foresee the conduct with which he will face the bombardment, when he asks himself if he is going to be able to 'hold up'” (p. 120). “...my being provokes anguish to the extent that I distrust myself and my own reactions in that situation” (p. 120). In the case of the gambler, they may experience fear that they will lose their children or their livelihood (a fear of events in the world), but they experience anguish when they are presented with the choice to gamble or not to gamble (a fear of the choice that no past choice or “transcendent possibility” can take away from them).

It is evident that the example of anguish above (the soldier who is fearful of whether or not he will “hold up”) is not one of anguish in the face of the past. Another illustration of anguish that Sartre gives in Being and Nothingness is that of anguish “in the face of the future” (p. 125). This is an illustration of what Sartre terms as “vertigo”. “Vertigo is anguish to the extent that I am afraid not of falling over the precipice, but of throwing myself over” (p. 120). Two important considerations arise from this quotation. One, that this illustration of anguish is anguish in the face of the future; that is, anguish in the face of a choice that I will make as opposed (in the instance of the gambler) to a choice that I have made in the past. Whereas the gambler feels anguish when confronted with their own freedom after they have made a choice (that the previous choice has become a “memory of an idea”), to experience vertigo is to experience anguish in the face of my own freedom before I have made a choice (that what stops me from throwing myself off the cliff is precisely nothing). This latter parenthetical statement is the second consideration arising from the cited quotation above. Vertigo is not a fear of falling (simple fear) but rather a fear of choosing to throw myself over (and here again we see the distinction between fear and anguish). Vertigo is, in sum, the realization of anguish in the face my own freedom.

“Vertigo announces itself through fear... the apprehension of myself as a destructible transcendent in the midst of transcendents, as an object which does not contain in itself the origin of its future disappearance” (p. 121). When I see the edge of the cliff, I imagine various possibilities (“transcendent possibilities” p. 122, “originating in universal determinism” p. 121) that lead to myself falling over it, that “transform that threat of death into reality” (p. 121). In seeing these possibilities and assuming one as my possibility, I negate or nihilate the others “in order to cause my possibility to appear” (p. 122). But Sartre observes that this positing of my possibility over others (thus the nihilation of other possibilities) cannot be thought of as a causally-determined relationship, for then the possibility would be “strictly determined” and would cease to be a possibility. It would become an “about-to-happen”, in Sartre's words. I would “apprehend in myself a strict psychological determinism” (p. 123). This is not the case, however, and my possibility remains, inevitably, a possibility. “I do not apprehend it as the cause of these final developments but as need, appeal, etc” (p. 123). Because I can only appeal to these possibilities to prevent my falling over or throwing myself off the cliff (I cannot determine them absolutely), they remain only possibilities and in the end there is nothing that prevents me from jumping. What I posit as my possibility is not a wall that prevents me from an action, in the same way that the gambler’s previous decision to stop gambling is not a wall that prevents them from gambling in the present.

Even though there is a subtle distinction to be made between anguish in the face of the future and anguish in the face of the past, we can see the common thread running between the two ideas; anguish in both cases is an apprehension of the nothingness of my own being, whether it comes as a result of recalling a past action or as a result of considering a future action. If anguish in the face of the past and the future are put oneself at a distance from both my past and future self, then Sartre's conception of bad faith – which we can characterize as anguish in the face of the present – puts oneself at a distance from my present self. That is, I am at a distance not from an object of reflection (which could be an object in the world, a memory of myself, a projection of myself into the future, etc.), and negation or nihilation is not just expressed in the relationship between my consciousness and objects that consciousness apprehends, but exists as a necessary and originating aspect of my consciousness itself. This is why it is important to consider bad faith when positing Sartre's conception of existential freedom; vertigo and the example of the gambler merely illustrate that negation exists within the relation between consciousness and an object of reflection, whereas bad faith illustrates that negation or nothingness is at the very heart of our consciousness. If vertigo and the gambler illustrate that there is a nothingness in between my consciousness and an object of reflection (my past or future self), then bad faith illustrates that there is a nothingness at the heart of my consciousness in the present.

Through bad faith we hide from the anguish of acknowledging our freedom by attempting to become a being-in-itself; the waiter, for example, might define himself as a waiter and nothing more, with no further potentialities other than his being a waiter. In this way, the waiter denies his transcendence and affirms only his facticity. The waiter’s facticity is, among other things (time, location, etc.) that his job is to be a waiter. In this sense the waiter is, of course, a waiter (p. 169). But the waiter’s transcendence is that his possibilities always transcend or go beyond his facticity as a waiter. He is more than a waiter. “I am a waiter in the mode of being what I am not” (p. 169). His possibilities always transcend any received essence, like being a waiter. His possibilities are always more than this. This self-deception is comforting; we do not have to confront the fear of our own freedom and we can settle comfortably into a role with set expectations. In doing so, however, we deny the very stuff of our consciousness, of our freedom; a being-in-itself has no consciousness to speak of. Such a self-deception is merely a distraction; there is no escape from anguish, from being aware of the bottomless chasm that is our freedom. For the waiter, to assume that he is just a waiter is to distract himself from the fact that there is precisely nothing stopping him from not being a waiter. This knowledge that nothing is stopping the waiter is precisely the waiter's anguish, which he is distracted from by ascribing himself the absolute essence of the waiter. But it is a fleeing distraction, a fleeting comfort; the waiter knows that they are free, that there is nothing stopping them from not going to work in the morning, from dumping hot coffee on a customer, or from the very abstract notion of simply not being a waiter. “On all sides I escape being, and yet I am” (p. 169).

We can see from considering these three forms of anguish that Sartre’s ontology takes into account a particular view of time. A given point in time that I existed in – say, three o’clock on Friday afternoon – is a facticity. Just as the waiter’s existence is always a combination of his facticity and his transcendence – he is a waiter but his existence, his freedom always transcends the essence he posits for himself as a waiter – so our all of our existences involve and transcend our facticities, too. My (non)being transcends the facticity that I existed at a given point in time. If it is 8:00pm as I write this, the nothingness at the heart of my existence transcends the facticity of me existing at 8:00pm.

From our considerations of vertigo, the gambler, and bad faith we can now come to some conclusions about Sartre's conception of existential freedom. The most important of these is that freedom is at the very core of our existence; it defines our consciousness and further our interactions with objects in the world. Secondly, this freedom stems from “nothingness”. There is “nothing” but me between myself and my possibilities, between myself and the choices I will make in the future, between myself and the resolutions I have made in the past; this is a nothingness between consciousness and what it objectifies. There is also “nothing” between my existence and my possibilities in the present. In this way, human beings have a “non-being”. Our being or consciousness has, at its heart, a nothingness.

fire: difference and becoming in nietzsche and heraclitus.

2008-03-18T16:27:00.001-04:00

“But I give life. I can rarely wield death. Yet I have the power to destroy. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire, I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life.”
- Anaïs Nin, Fire

Nietzsche’s philosophy owes a debt to the Pre-Socratic philosophy of Heraclitus; this much is indicated when, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche admits that the “doctrine of Zarathustra might in the end have been taught already by Heraclitus” (EH, p. 730), and earlier when he speaks to a “proximity” to the Pre-Socratic philosopher “[in which] I feel altogether warmer and better than anywhere else” (EH, p. 729). Earlier on in Ecce Homo, the significance of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra’s doctrine in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is made explicitly clear; “Among my writings my Zarathustra stands to my mind by itself. With that I have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to it so far” (EC, p. 675). At the very least these quotations illustrate a certain affinity that Nietzsche felt with Heraclitean philosophy. Walter Kaufmann confirms this in his book Nietzsche; Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, when he speaks of this affinity for Heraclitus explicitly. “Nietzsche and Hegel were at one in their high esteem for Heraclitus… both thinkers admired the ‘dark’ philosopher for the same reason: …they denied the peaceful self-identity of the basic cosmic force and considered strife a definitive feature of the ‘Absolute’” (Kaufmann, p. 241). In this essay I will compare the philosophies of Heraclitus and Nietzsche, focusing on the ideas of becoming and difference that are inherent in both.

Some considerations concerning this comparison must be made before I begin. The corpus of material surviving from the work of Heraclitus is small in comparison to that of Nietzsche; what does survive of the philosophy of Heraclitus is fragmented and “often deliberately unclear” (Hussey, p. 88). In contrast, there is a large body of Nietzsche’s work that has survived, although Nietzsche is similar to Heraclitus in his frequently aphoristic and paradoxical style. This larger body of material available means that we have much more opportunity to understand Nietzsche’s thought in its full complexity than we do with Heraclitus’.

“Heraclitus [pursues] a broad and recognisably philosophical project: a radical critique and reformulation of cosmology, and indeed of all knowledge, on a new and surer foundation” (Hussey, p. 89). This reformulation – with an emphasis, as we will see, on becoming over being and process over conclusion – seems to echo, or more appropriately, seems to precede Nietzsche’s project of a “revaluation of all values: …my formula for an act of supreme self-examination on the part of humanity” (EH, p. 782). Nowhere is this shared project of revaluation/reformation illustrated more clearly than the decidedly important place that difference holds in the philosophies of both men. In Heraclitus, the importance of “affirming difference” (Deleuze, p. 9) can be seen in the group of fragments that speak to “unity-in-opposites” (Hussey, p. 93). This can be seen in fragment 61, “The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive” (Heraclitus, fr. 61) and fragment 88, “And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former” (Heraclitus, fr. 88), among others. For Heraclitus read by Hussey, “the unity” of these things “is more fundamental than the opposites”, but further, the essential or genetic aspect of these unities is their difference, “the opposites are the essential features of the unity” (Hussey, p. 96).

We can see a similar important distinction being made between similarity and difference in Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche in Nietzsche and Philosophy. This emphasis on difference is introduced with the concept of the “will to power” (Deleuze, p. 49). Interestingly there is a reference to Heraclitus on the preceding page: “With the exception of Heraclitus, [Pre-Socratic philosophers] did not face up to the thought of pure becoming, nor the opportunity for this thought” (Deleuze, p. 47). I will examine the ideas of becoming in the thought of both philosophers in greater detail later, but for now all that is important to consider is what becoming has as its genetic element: difference. Deleuze interprets Nietzsche as conceptualizing the will to power as “the characteristic that cannot be thought out of the mechanistic order without thinking away this order itself” (Deleuze, p. 49). This “mechanistic order” is an order of being over becoming, one that starts with similarity and makes difference contingent to it. The will to power as the element that causes one to think away the order itself, however, “is never superior to the ways that it determines a relation between forces, it is always plastic and changing” (p. 50). The will to power is the genetic and differential element of force; and just as Heraclitus identifies that opposites (objects with difference) are the essential feature of a unity of opposites, so too Nietzsche posits the will to power as the force of plastic difference as the genetic element of a unity of difference. The will to power is the genetic element of forces (Deleuze, p. 48) but it is also the differential element; that which links two connected but unequal forces, one that dominates and one that is dominated. “Inseparable does not mean identical” (Deleuze, p. 50).

These considerations lead us to draw some similarities between the philosophies of Heraclitus and Nietzsche. Both philosophers seem to acknowledge that difference is the genetic element of similarity (that similarity is contingent to difference); indeed, that things “are the same because they are different”. Heraclitus’ examination of unity-in-opposites speaks to this, as it posits the fundamental essentiality of difference at the heart of unity. Nietzsche’s positing of the will to power as a genetic, differential and plastic element of force speaks to this as well. Indeed, it seems that Heraclitus and Nietzsche could both, in this way, seem to be propounding “philosophies of difference”.

Another common thread to the philosophies of both men is that of the idea of “becoming”. Hussey refers to this term as “process”, in that what is fundamental to cosmology and knowledge in Heraclitus is not goal-oriented or teleological, not mired in already-actualized “being”, but rather a process of becoming. Heraclitus speaks to this directly in fragment 30: “This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it always was, is, and will be: an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out” (Heraclitus, fr. 30). For Heraclitus, fire is an element that is not merely destructive nor creative; it is both and, if the cosmos is considered to be an “ever-living Fire”, then we can see how this speaks to the process of cosmology that Heraclitus is positing here. “It is natural to think of the ever-living fire as a process. (Hussey, p. 99).

This emphasis on becoming is inherent in Nietzsche’s philosophy as well. When Nietzsche speaks of “saying Yes rather than No” (EH, p. 783) he is talking about an approach to metaphysics that affirms difference before it denies or limits it, that posits becoming before being. Nietzsche posits that if being were primary and becoming were contingent to it, being would already have become and thus no change would be possible. “If the universe had reached an equilibrium position, if becoming had an end or final state” – if becoming were subordinated to being in the way that the “mechanistic order” claims – “it would already have been attained” (Deleuze, p. 47). This is what Nietzsche, according to Deleuze, calls the “infinity of past time”. Deleuze quotes from the Will to Power, “if the universe were capable of permanence and fixity, and if there were in its entire course a single moment of being in the strict sense it could no longer have anything to do with becoming, thus one could no longer observe any becoming whatsoever” (Deleuze, p. 47). Nietzsche’s concept of the infinity of past time illustrates that if there were being rather than becoming (if Being were posited “first” and becoming was contingent to it) then Being would already have become, and thus becoming itself (the “being of becoming” Deleuze, p. 51) could not exist.

From this examination we can see that the philosophies of both Heraclitus and Nietzsche are philosophies of becoming over being, and that this is part of the reason why Nietzsche claims to share such a “proximity” to the Pre-Socratic philosopher. In Mixed Opinions and Maxims, Nietzsche writes “My ancestors: Heraclitus, Empedocles, Spinoza, Goethe” (MOM, p. 159). Important similarities can be drawn between the Heraclitean fire, and Nietzsche’s infinity of past time, both of which posit that becoming (or the “being of becoming”) is integral to understanding the universe. The former posits that the cosmos are in a constant state of becoming, that they are an “ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out”. The latter posits that the existence of change in the cosmos illustrates the necessity of thinking or willing becoming first, and of doing the same for being, which is conceptualized as contingent to becoming.

In the end (which for these two philosophers might be a “becoming-end”), we can see that there are some undeniable similarities between the philosophies of Heraclitus and Nietzsche. Heraclitus’ “unity-in-opposites” speaks to the integral and genetic role that difference plays in similarity. The role of Nietzsche’s will to power also illustrates the primacy of difference, as it is posited as a plastic force that is the genetic and differential element of forces. These two philosophers also place importance on becoming over being; Heraclitus with his thoughts about fire as an “ever-living” substance of the cosmos, and Nietzsche with this idea of the infinity of past time. The former’s fire displays qualities of both destruction and creation, which speaks to becoming in that both destruction and creation are required for becoming. The latter’s infinity of past time speaks to the primacy of becoming over being; if becoming was contingent to being then being would already have become and change (creation and destruction) would be impossible. Finally, through various references in his work, Nietzsche refers to his respect for (his “proximity to”) and relation to (Heraclitus is Nietzsche’s “ancestor) Heraclitus and his philosophy, further solidifying the link between the two philosophers. This connection is noteworthy; it begins to illustrate a tradition of becoming, of “affirming difference” in Western philosophy that has gone largely unexamined.

deleuze: the faculty of forgetting and the eternal return of the same.

2008-02-28T13:32:00.002-05:00

The ressentiment that is received in human beings today prevents us from affirming life. Reactive forces have been allowed to dominate active ones and thus have separated creation itself from what it can do. Humans today have lost the ability to posit new values for themselves, content instead – within an atmosphere of resentment and supposedly transcendental ideals – to live a reactive life, accepting values that have already been established for them. The will to power has thus become a will that wants power, rather than a power that wills. Too weak to create new values for themselves, humans today settle for wanting their power represented within pre-established structures of morality, economy, biology, and social life. These structures are taken as transcendental; that is, they are considered already given, written “in the sky” and unquestionable, written in the very fabric of existence. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze presents a reading of Nietzsche that calls into question this “herd mentality” that prevents active forces from creating and reactive forces from acting.

Several important considerations arise from Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche. One of them is the faculty of forgetting; that faculty which, in between unconscious traces of memory and conscious excitation, allows us to “forget” values that have already been posited and replace them with new ones as we receive new excitations. For Deleuze, there is no place for memory in the conscious, and when memory (“mnemonic traces”) are allowed to invade it then the ability to “forget” is lost. We thus cannot “have done” with actualized concepts and values posited before us, “above” us, and ressentiment is born. The second consideration is the eternal return of the same, which “serves as an explanation of diversity and its reproduction, of difference and its repetition” (p. 49). Over the course of this essay, I will illustrate that the eternal return presupposes a faculty of forgetting which is not damaged and maintains the healthy separation of mnemonic traces in the unconscious and received excitation in the conscious. When considering the eternal return, one must keep in mind the immanent potentiality (the “becoming) it represents instead of a stagnant and already-established actuality (a “being”).

The essence of the eternal is virtuality and not an actualized, pre-posited transcendent. The actualized eternal is only the collection of each of the perceptions of will that appropriate it. It is not a question of “what is the eternal”, but rather a question of “which one wills the eternal?”. This distinction between modes of inquiry is an important one for Nietzsche and Deleuze. Asking “what is the eternal?” constitutes a reactive linguistics, one that presupposes an already-posited ontology that limits active force in that there is only one conception of the eternal, one that is referred back to instead of being posited anew. Deleuze uses the example of Socrates, who asks those he questions “what is beauty”? Again, we can see that this presupposes that “beauty” is a transcendent ideal that is, in a manner of speaking, “in the sky”. Deleuze, through Nietzsche, argues that positing beauty as a transcendent concept obscures the origin of that concept, and that only through a genealogical analysis can we apprehend the origin of what is further conceptualized by Deleuze as a contingent and immanent. The question is not “what is beauty?”, but rather “which one wills beauty?” or “where does this conception of beauty come from? What is its origin?”; an active linguistics that leaves open the possibility that “beauty” will be appropriated by another will.

We can (and indeed, Deleuze does) apply this same way of approaching the issue to the eternal. To ask “what is the eternal?” is to presuppose a concrete actualization that comes before the creation of values and thus separates that creation from what it can do. “The eternal return presupposes a critique of the terminal or equilibrium state” (p. 47). For Deleuze and Nietzsche, there is no single transcendent idea that the eternal refers back to, only a succession of wills that appropriate forces that they have more or less similarity to. If there were such a pre-given concrete eternal, there would simply be no virtual; becoming would be denied in the face of being. Becoming would have become already, possibility would be denied and change would be impossible. This is Nietzsche's “infinity of past time” (p. 47). The eternal would not be eternal, but would instead have an end. “If becoming had an end or final state, it would already have been attained” (p. 47). The virtual would be subsumed into the actual. But “in the active or healthy state” (p. 111), difference and the virtual are affirmed, and thus the “return” is the affirmation becoming, of the Being of becoming. “Returning is the being of that which becomes” (p. 48).

Only the appropriation of the eternal by active forces will allow for the possibility of a “return”. The return is the will to power in the context of active forces; not a will that wants power but rather the power that wills, that reaches into the chaotic possibility of the virtual and, so doing, becomes an active and essentially affirming force. Such an extension into virtuality must inevitably come back (return) and posit or create a new crease or fold in the actualized eternal. This actualized eternal stagnates when reactive forces become dominant; when they subvert the faculty of forgetting (an active force that has an abstract delegation to work with reactive forces) that regulates the gap between unconscious mnemonic memory (“traces”, “lasting imprints”) and consciousness, which is “born at the point where the mnemonic trace stops” (p. 112). The separation of the conscious and the subconscious (maintained by the faculty of forgetting) is essential to the activity of the eternal return. Without this separation, mnemonic trace becomes perceptible, active force is separated from what it can do, and thus it cannot posit values beyond what has already been established.

Deleuze posits that “psychology's mistake was to treat forgetting as a negative determination, not to discover its active and positive character” (p. 113). Indeed, the faculty of forgetting is the active or affirming faculty that prevents reactive force from separating other active forces from what they can do; it prevents mnemonic traces from being confused with conscious excitation by maintaining the barrier between the conscious and the subconscious. However, when this “repressive”, anti-subversive faculty is itself subverted or dominated by reactive force – when forgetting is damaged, or separated from what it can do – mnemonic traces are allowed to spill forth from the unconscious into the conscious, and then “it is as if the wax of consciousness were hardened, excitation tends to get confused with its trace in the unconscious and conversely, reaction to traces rises into consciousness and overruns it” (p. 114). We can see how the active faculty of forgetting is an important consideration in the affirmation of life; when this faculty is subverted by reactive forces, active force is separated from what it can do, and thus “reaction ceases to be acted in order to become something felt” (p. 111). To affirm difference, reaction must be acted, and thus such affirmation depends upon the faculty of forgetting in order to reach into the virtual and posit new conceptions of (new folds in) the actualized eternal. It is “the ascent of memory into consciousness itself” (p. 114) that separates active force from what it can do.

We can see how this faculty of forgetting, and further its essential role in the affirmation of life, plays an important role in the thematics of the eternal return of the same. The eternal return is an affirmation of chance and possibility over causality and calculation (utility). This latter “affirmation” is really a negation – a symptom of ressentiment – as it presupposes a transcendent rationality and does not consider the value of origin or the origin of values. In this way, the affirmation of causality and calculation is the result of this consideration being buried, and further of forces being separated from what they can do; a result of mnemonic traces spilling into the conscious from the unconscious and creating a foundational ontology that cannot “have done” with anything (p. 114). Through this subversion of the faculty of forgetting, not only is the eternal not allowed to “return” from the virtual and posit a new actuality, but possibility and the virtual are themselves denied and creative forces are separated from what they can do, thus denying the affirmation of difference and creation entirely; the relation is never even entered into. Active forces, thus, cease to create and affirm, reactive forces cease to be acted (merely felt) and ressentiment, bad conscience and the championing of the ascetic ideal are introduced into the metaphysics of humanity.

The consideration of calculation as a symptom of ressentiment and the triumph of reactive forces also speaks to the conception of time that Deleuze and Nietzsche strive to avoid. Time itself is not a transcendent outside of the interplay of forces; there is nothing outside of force, and all forces is appropriation, either being dominated or dominating. Time itself is, thus, a force, subject to the same reappropriation of forces which can be either active or reactive. When calculation is championed, time has been appropriated by reactive forces and separated from what it can do, separated from its ability to posit itself (or for it to be posited) outside of a predetermined system of sequential calculation that is always already actualized. Time, in this way, becomes mechanistic. If, as Deleuze and Nietzsche say, philosophy as such is a symptomatology, then the reactive appropriation of time as sequential calculation is a symptom of ressentiment, and ressentiment is a symptom of the subversion of the faculty of forgetting and the separation of forces from what they can do. Everything comes down to forces and wills, and the qualities they express.

If everything comes down to forces and wills, then we can see the importance of linking the eternal return to the will to power (of going “all the way down”). Without examining this bottom level (what is at the bottom of the masks covering masks covering masks, p. 56) we will inevitably remain stuck within a mechanistic, reactive and negating order that separates forces from their ability to act. For Deleuze, the failure to consider this smallest posited atomic level neglects to recognize and interpret the origin of values and the value of origin of a given force. It still asks “what is?” rather than “which one is?” and the origin of a value remains hidden. We must find – through genealogical examination – the will which appropriates a force in order to repair a subverted faculty of forgetting and reunite active forces with creation, and reactive forces with their action, with what they can do.

In conclusion, I want to revisit and emphasize the connection between the value of forgetting and the eternal return of the same. The value of forgetting is essential when considering the affirmation of life; to affirm chance and necessity it is important that the mnemonic traces contained in the unconscious (derived from conscious excitation) are not allowed to spill over into the conscious and “harden” conscious excitation, thus preventing the creation of new values and separating active forces from what they can do. The faculty of forgetting allows for this separation to be maintained, and when this faculty is damaged then reactive forces become dominant and prevent not only the eternal from returning, but further prevent difference from being affirmed – or even recognized – at all. In sum, the faculty of forgetting is a precondition of the eternal return of the same, which “serves as an explanation of diversity and its reproduction, of difference and its repetition” (p. 49). If damaged, then the eternal becomes posited as nothing more than a stagnant actuality, and becoming is denied in favour of an already-posited Being.

on vacation.

2008-02-19T17:44:00.002-05:00

There will be no forthcoming updates this week, because it is reading break and I am on vacation in Fort Myers Beach, Florida until the 23rd of February. Regular updates will resume on February 27th! Until then, you can browse my journal-style beach blog, at http://danielonthebeach.blogspot.com. Cheers everyone.

on categorical sexuality: why should i call myself bisexual?

2008-02-09T23:50:00.000-05:00

Why should I call myself bisexual? It is a limited category among other limited categories, and certainly not one that the whole of my being (if there is such a thing made fully present) fits into. It goes without saying that I, Daniel Siksay, or further and more directly my sexuality, are not summarized in any sort of complete or rigorous manner by the term. Someone asks: “what is your sexual orientation”, and I answer “bisexual”; this inevitably leaves questions about my sexuality unanswered, and this is due to a plain and simple limitation of the category in question. Am I attracted to all men and all women? Surely not. Further, then, what sorts of women or men am I attracted to? If we place women and men (two questionable categories in themselves) into smaller organized categories (hair/skin/eye colour, weight, height; the possibilities for organizing such a thing seem endless) then inevitably we run into exactly the same problem in a more diversified manner. Am I attracted to all women with red hair? Or all men with brown hair, tanned skin, blue eyes, between 140-180lbs., between 5'7”-6'4”, straight teeth, glasses and a big smile? Inevitably I will not be attracted to every single person meeting this description, even if, in abstraction, it sounds pleasant to my imagination. We can get down to the most minuscule and insignificant differences and still such a system of categorization will not be foolproof or complete. There is always going to be an “exception” . This is not even considering personality, and how we might categorize it; a topic which is arguably much more complicated and robust than considering physical attributes.

This issue exists within the categories "gay" and "straight" as well. What of someone who has identified as “straight” her whole life, and one day meets a woman who she finds herself attracted to? What of a man who has known himself as “gay” his whole life who falls in love with a woman? Or a man transitioning to become a woman? Or someone who does not identify with a gender or sex at all? What then? These “exceptions” reveal the inherent problems with categorizing sexuality in any sort of absolute systematic way.

Where, then, does this leave us? The category of “bisexual” seems hopelessly insufficient. So too do the categories of “straight” or “gay”. Those words are not sexual orientations, or not complete ones in any sense; they are caricatures of the beauty and complexity of human sexuality. They are limiting and, in my experience, frequently lead to misunderstanding and confusion. This prompts a question: why are we still using these outdated and unquestionably incomplete terms to classify human sexuality? Presumably one working within the system would respond that “it is the best we have” to summarize a vast and seemingly unknowable issue. I disagree with this, and I think there is a very obvious solution to this issue of categorization, one that is staring the world right in the face. The solution is this: stop trying to universalize sexuality. What I mean by that is that no system of categories can ever hope to universally and absolutely summarize the subjective complexity of human sexuality. One could devise fifty categories beyond “gay” and “straight”, and that would certainly go further to acknowledge the diversity of sexuality, but inevitably, I think, one would find exceptions and problems involving those categories just like one finds the same exceptions and problems with terms like “bisexual”. Why are we still trying? Is it not obvious by now that a universal system will not work to fully represent the sexuality of every human being?

The alternative is sitting right in front of us: take sexuality case-by-case. What do I mean by this? I mean this: the most robust system, the one closest to a supposed “perfection”, is not one of static and absolute categories, but rather one of plurality and fluidity. Forget terms like “straight” and “gay” and ask yourself this: are you attracted to a person, or are you not? There should be no criteria for determining what constitutes an “attraction” beyond the subjectivity of a given person. There should be no criteria for defining the boundaries of one's sexuality beyond whether or not one is attracted to another. Such criteria outside of said interpersonal attraction only serve to illegitimately limit human sexuality. I am Dan and I am attracted to John. I am Dan and I am attracted to Nicole. I am Dan and I am not attracted to Allison. I am Dan and I am not attracted to Mark. It is up to me to determine who I am attracted to and who I am not, not up to a category or a system that limits my sexuality based on some misguided notion of universality or completeness. For those looking for simplicity, this approach is simple. For those looking for a robust and complex way of representing human sexuality, this approach is that as well.

In real life, we don't think in abstractions when it comes to sexuality. When I see Samantha at a party, I don't think “oh, she's a woman and thus I find her attractive. I'm going to go and talk to her.” No. Instead, what might unconsciously pass through my head might be more like “oh, there's Samantha, when I was talking to her last week she seemed really interesting, and I think she's really cute. I'm attracted to her. I'm going to go and talk to her.” Why, then, are we so intent on categorization when it comes to the sexuality of other people? Just stop! Stop assuming that people are gay, straight, bisexual, or whatever universal category you may want to use. If you're attracted to someone, talk to them. If you're both attracted to each other then wonderful, you can take things from there. If not, well then that's unfortunate. Too bad! But if you're not attracted to someone then why does it matter what their sexuality is “like”? Why do you need to abstract and put people into boxes? You shouldn't care! Or at the very least it shouldn't matter. Society seems to be obsessed with other people's sexuality, and this leads to the "need" to represent sexuality using these insufficient categories. I think we should question whether or not that is at all an important or useful thing to do. My sexuality is my own and it doesn't fit into any box that people might be willing to put it into out of some wanting of simplicity, or categorization. My sexuality is more complicated than any term or box that might strive to encompass it. I suggest we throw out such useless pursuits and strive instead to consider the beauty of human sexuality on the most complicated and yet simple level we can; interpersonally instead of universally. Sexuality is between two people (or one, or three...) and it should be defined as such by the two, or one, or three people involved. Anything else is just a hideous, hopeless oversimplification.

deleuze: immanence, chaos and the enslaved society.

2008-02-05T22:13:00.000-05:00

Bear with me; this, now, is where I would like to start. But a “start”, beginning within that which has already begun, a situated beginning, a situated beginning that we must recognize and affirm as such, a beginning within which we have always already begun; a beginning-as-becoming, a becoming itself. A starting-point without arche, without foundation. An entry that exceeds a foundation. Here I start. Or have I already? We are a society, individuals within a society, and further still an unending and essential interplay of force upon force, will upon will that constitutes and apprehends such an “individuality” and, from the point of view of the slave, gives it a static, pre-ordained meaning. Here, I will strive to show that we must exceed such a limiting, limited and static being in favour of an affirmative and creative becoming in which reactive forces serve as a limiting and secondary factor for active forces, and not an essence in-and-of-themselves. I will strive to show the primacy of chaos over order, activity over reactivity, the virtual over actuality, possibility over the “real”, while still maintaining that the latter term in each case serves to limit the former, but in an essentially subordinative manner. That this piece will take on the character of a system is inescapable, but I believe my point will become clear: we must strive at all costs to affirm the being of becoming, and conceive of the will-to-power as an essentially affirming and creative force in order for a truly creative and active “progress” and a free future to be realized. We must, like all great artists, poets and philosophers, posit a new plane of immanence.

“In the end, does not every great philosopher lay out a new plane of immanence, introduce a new substance of being and draw up a new image of thought, so that there could not be two great philosophers on the same plane? It is true that we cannot imagine a great philosopher for whom it could not be said that he [sic] has changed what it means to think?” (WiP, p. 51)

The ontology espoused in Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy is not one of pure chaos, of chaos without a limiting factor. This is not to say that Deleuze denies the existence or necessity of chaos, or conversely that he denies the primacy of the virtual. Rather, Deleuze suggests only that one exposed to such a chaotic virtuality in a pure and unadulterated way – without reactive forces to limit it “by means of another action whose effects we feel” (NaP, p. 104) – “would be confronted with with nothing more than a disorderly manifold or a multiplicity of such perceptions” (Patton, p. 21). In this way, order – or the ability to grant a methodical order or method to our perceptions – is what gives us the ability to live our lives in a meaningful and directed way. This may be seen as the proper role of reactive forces if engaged properly; to limit active forces, while remaining a secondary movement, an afterthought. In their work What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari (interpreting D. H. Lawrence in a writing on the production of poetry) metaphorically conceptualize order as manifested in our perceptions of life; “people are constantly putting up an umbrella that shelters them, and on the underside of which they draw a firmament, and write their conventions and opinions” (WiP, p. 203). They further posit the role of the poet or the artist (or the “great philosopher”) as the one who “make[s] a slit in the umbrella; they tear open the firmament itself to let in a bit of free and windy chaos and to frame in a sudden light a vision that appears through the rent” (WiP, p. 204).

Let me unpack this metaphor a little; in everyday perception, “humans” hide from or deny the “disorderly manifold” of chaos through their opinions and conventions – which are essentially reactive and always already posited – as one shelters themselves from a storm with an umbrella. The role of the poet or artist as posited by Deleuze is, then, to puncture the skin of the umbrella, to create a fissure or “rent” in these pre-posited conventions and established values in order to glimpse a “sudden light” that will allow for the creation of new values and the overthrow of pre-posited actuality. Such is also the role of the will of the active type in Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy; “against [the] fettering of the will, Nietzsche announces that willing liberates... against the image of a will which dreams of having established values attributed to it, Nietzsche announces that to will is to create new values” (NaP, p. 79). Against the idea of actual difference (that difference can only be posited within a pre-established system of substances or points that represent the “true” order of things) Deleuze posits a concept of virtual difference, “which begins as the production of intensities from virtual tendencies” (Colebrook, p. xxx).

This idea of opening up pre-established actuality to the possibility and difference of a “chaotic” virtuality is at the core of Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche. In What is Philosophy?, a late work, Deleuze still adheres to “a Nietzschean idea of thought as creation” (Patton, p. 22). Indeed, the rigourous espousal of Deleuze's affirmative and creative difference in his work Repetition and Difference elucidates the importance of this concept in his overall project. For Deleuze, what is actual is subordinated to what is virtual; possibility is a more philosophically significant conception than the “real”. This is why Deleuze can say that “in the normal or healthy state” - an idea I will address in detail later - “the role of reactive forces is always to limit action... but, conversely, active forces produce a burst of creativity” (NaP, p. 104). The poet's slit in the umbrella illustrates this primacy of active forces. Without such an opening up to possibility, to the active and creative affirmation of difference, the will to power and life in society appear as a dialectical (and limited) struggle in which those who are slaves to pre-posited values strive not to shatter those values (akin to Nietzsche's “hammer”) and posit, through an affirming creativity, a new plane of immanence in their place, but to have their own will to power represented or recognized in the contexts of those pre-established conventions (NaP, p. 79).

The enslaved society – that society, whose constituent members conceive of power as representation rather than joy and creation – is thus trapped within a “dialectic of progress” in which it is prevented from engaging in a truly affirmative and creative revaluation or reconsideration of itself, its values, and the forces that appropriate or “will” those values. It is trapped in a state of static being which is inescapable if the society remains enslaved. In this enslaved society, then, Lawrence-via-Deleuze's umbrella cannot be punctured because there is no one in a position to puncture it. Reactive forces are triumphant and the slaves are nothing more than “successful slaves.” “Underneath the Hegelian [dialectical] image of the master” – the master as one who struggles within a given systematic – “we always find the slave” (NaP, p. 10). We can see here how the master of Nietzsche and Deleuze is not involved in this Hegelian dialectic; their master does not see struggle, only creation. “It is the intrinsic right of masters to create values” (BGE, 261). When reactive forces triumph over active ones, when slaves overthrow their masters in this sense, because “they are greater in number”, they are no less slaves than they were before, because they still do not comprehend their own will-to-power as the affirmation of difference and the creation of new values. Indeed, we are still caught up in a systematic in which we wish to have our will-to-power represented in the manner of that already-established system, unable to pierce the umbrella of actuality to glimpse the affirmative freshness of virtual difference. “Vanity is an avatism” (BGE, 261); to will recognition, to take interest in your neighbour out of a want to see their suffering, and to take pleasure in this; this is an enslavement.

Even now I wish to have this piece recognized within a pre-posited system of values. I am a slave to a system, a limiting and limited system, posited by a will within a dominating force, and as such can only “feel” myself within it, only react to it.

The enslaved society and its constituent members could thus rise up against and triumph over our masters, however we may recognize them; we still would not be free of our enslavement, but still within an inescapable dialectic of ressentiment. We have convinced ourselves that we are slaves, and we believe our lie! The slave feels the power that the master has, and wants that very power. This is why, for the slave, power is conceived as a representation. We are slaves to static being, a being which must be exceeded in order to free the enslaved society from its shackles. For the virtual exceeds the actual; that is, the actual is but a single representation of unlimited and pure intensity; the possibility of the virtual. This is why Deleuze can say that “the word ressentiment gives a definite clue: reaction ceases to be acted in order to become something felt” (NaP, p. 104). A society within ressentiment does not see the virtual beyond the actual; such a society has separated active forces from what they can do, and as such can only recognize forces that are reactive. Thus we cannot act, only “feel”.

We must recognize this enslavement if we are ever to escape this “dialectic of progress” and act our reactions once more. We must “appeal to the structural form of a perpetually open future” (Patton, p. 22) if we are ever to realize a truly active “progress” that affirms becoming, and the being of becoming, rather than being-itself. Like the Deleuze's artist-poet, like “every great philosopher”, we must “tear into the firmament and plunge into the chaos” (WiP, p. 202) and posit a new plane of immanence that will bring about a new way of thinking, a new substance of being. To pierce the umbrella of the actual is to affirm difference and reattach a force with what it can do; it is to welcome chaos, to say “yes” to what is virtual. However, inescapable for Deleuze is the fact that any affirmation of difference, any new plane of immanence will eventually result in another sort of enslavement, another ressentiment; “thought cannot stop itself from interpreting immanence as immanent to something... transcendence is inevitably reintroduced” (WiP, p. 51). This is why Deleuze's poet can only tear the skin of the umbrella and not destroy the umbrella fully itself. To grapple with pure chaos would be to lose our very thought, to affirm difference but to forget that a reactive force must always limit that affirmation as a secondary movement. We would lose ourselves. But finally (a finality-without-telos, a becoming-finality) we must recall that order is subordinate to chaos, the actual is subordinate to the virtual, and the “real” is subordinate to possibility. If life is becoming, then we must remove transcendence again and again; we must break free of our slavery continuously and posit new planes of immanence (or is there only one?) to affirm becoming and the being of becoming. This is our resignation in a sense, but also, triumphantly, masterfully, our joy.

the year we lived.

2008-02-02T21:45:00.001-05:00

I rarely think of you darling

but tonight, I'll indulge myself

and remember the beauty we lost, naïve as it was,

in our thirteenth; the year we lived!

where inspiration failed

and being thirteen, fail it did

calculation began

your voice trailed away into a cacophony of

pistons and gears, pumping

with other such industrial mediations

that blocked the exuberant noise of our thievery

and I tell people I've not stolen.

yes, those assembly lines

they're still there, still with me.

Darling, we were a factory!

A production house of leaves, the construction irregardless,

the bottom line, supreme

and what else when you're thirteen?

you were queen, reigning queen

raining softly and with cautious abandon

a wetness falling, time and again, drop, dropping upon my chest

until the revolution came... and went

We missed it

It enticed the Beautiful along for the ride.

So much for ideals.

Those fickle fucking generalities, always looking for something beyond this.

And where our authority failed

(fail it did, no surprise)

diplomacy began and failed us just as well

that clockwork changing master with the hour

the end being the becoming of the beginning of something else we may soon be

where will we go now? My hands asked your thigh, which didn't know, I could tell

I saw you the other day

with embarrassed eyes I watched

as you crossed the street and walked

and stopped, looking at a sedan, passing;

as if your ideal might have returned, a revolution revolving back to you.

You turned, then, and walked into a tattoo shop that calls itself “Sinful Inflictions”.

What was I thinking? We've no room for dreams and idealities. We're not thirteen anymore.

Now we know that ideals will always get in the car with someone else.