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In a 1987 lecture, Heidegger: Open Questions, given by Jacques Derrida and afterwards transposed into a volume entitled, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, Derrida presents a critical analysis of the question of Being and the questioning of its meaning which is the focal point of Heideggerian philosophy. He examines this specifically in the light of another recurrent aspect of Heidegger’s work—that of Geist or spirit. Regarding this concept as one that is chronologically developed over the course of his works between 1927 and 1953, Derrida probes the shifting role of Geist and changes in Heidegger’s attitude toward it—between avoidance and glorification— and this is done especially in reference to philosophical nationalism and national socialism, in which Heidegger was involved. Moreover, three central themes are undertaken dealing with the question, animals, and technology. It is due to this variance of spirit in Heidegger, coupled with the nature of translation itself, that the meaning of “spirit” must be deconstructed, and given an “analytic of Gemüt” [disposition]. (22)
Derrida begins by questioning that which he has chosen to be the title this work, “Of Spirit”, acknowledging that “spirit” was never a title of any of Heidegger’s philosophical discourses, and hardly ever is there mention of spirit in terms of essence. While commenting how “no one ever speaks of spirit in Heidegger…even the anti-Heideggerrian specialists”, he still asserts that “…people avoid in their turn speaking of spirit in a work which nonetheless lets itself be magnetized, from its first to its last word, by that very thing”. He aims to perform an experiment of language, putting both German and his own native French to a “test of translation” so as to determine any level of interchangeability between Geist (including geistig, geistlich) and de l’Esprit. The objective here is to gain a transparency of meaning across languages, if possible, through translation and via deconstruction. Three initial arguments are given to this end. First, the aim of explicating the “quarrel” between the German language, and that of Rome, Latin, and Greek.(and thus to treat “of spirit”, as denoted by the Franco-Latin de) as well as attempting to describe a certain powerful force given to spirit in the German language particularly; second, Derrida wants to address a thematic element of spirit which is frequently inherent to very tense political atmospheres; lastly he says that if spirit cannot be classified thematically as just now mentioned, it needs another category of definition and is therefore not only “inscribed” in the political arena, but defines the “meaning…as such”. (1-13)
Delving into the question, Derrida says of Geist that “it is perhaps the name Heidegger gives…to this unquestioned possibility of the question”, and he says also that this is what “Heidegger wants to save from any destitution.” For him, Geist is contrary to the “thing” or “thing-ness”—it cannot be reified as with “the thingification of the subject, of the subjectivity of Descartes”; this must be partitioned in order to save the analytic of Dasein. Spirit, and similar words, is thus avoided, for they are tied to the Cartesian subjectum. Hence, the Fragen, the question itself and its possibility as such, provides the only “correct point of departure”. While Dasein is that which has “care for its Being”, Derrida says it can be indifferent by virtue of the fact that its being indifferent allows for the possibility of its interesting itself in the question of its own being—“[Dasein’s] indifference in this case is a modalization of its non-indifference.” He further elaborates on three types of indifference: the vorhandene being, such as an inanimate object; secondly, indifference as a “positive phenomenon of Dasein”; and lastly, that of the lack of urgency to ask the questions of Being, present before and since Descartes (to include Hegel), which allows for a “vulgar concept of time.” Desiring to escape such a paradigm, Heidegger avoids using the term “spirit” (much in the fashion of a Husserlian epoche, in a sense) by placing it in quotation marks; but in so doing, Derrida remarks that this is also an “un-avoidance” of the term. In this process, there is a “re-Germanization” of spirit occurring as the term comes to be appropriated again in relation to space and time. He avoids the traditional notion of spirit, for as Derrida explains, “it is by virtue of this ‘spirituality’ that Dasein is a being of space, and Heidegger even underlines it, only by virtue of such a spirituality.” As for time, Heidegger distinguishes his conception as different from that “vulgar” view of Hegel (since Hegel’s view of spirit continues in the path of the Cartesian cogito)—spirit is not external to time, it “exists as originary temporalization of temporality.” Furthermore, spirit does not “fall” into time, but from time to time, and hence, from spirit to spirit, thus into itself; in a related note Derrida says that, regardless of the presence of quotation marks or not, “spirit is not other than time”. (14-30)
In 1933 Martin Heidegger became rectorate of the German university in Freiburg, and spirit, free from quotation marks, returns to the fore anew as its own “double”, its own Geist, and “ghost”. In his Rectorship Address the face of spirit is transformed, in a “self-affirmation” of the German university and the “destiny” of the German people. In the address Heidegger defines spirit in terms of four categories: questioning (Fragen), and the responsibility that comes with it; the world; earth-and-blood; and resolution which gives its possibility of the opening to the authenticity of Dasein. In the address, spirit is first and foremost placed high on a pedestal. It is tied with history, “historicity”, in such a way that according to Derrida, their “union…makes of the Fragen the very assignment of spirit.” Here, the possibility of the Fragen is how one should interpret the “spirit of spiritual conduction”—spirit is then a “leap” to a questioning, the question—and this leap can only take place in a world which is necessarily spiritual. In fact, Heidegger says, “Spirituality is the name of that without which there is no world.” (51) Regarding this world of spirit, Derrida next continues to explain Dasein in relation to this spiritual having-of-a-world. The animal, though not Dasein, is described as having and not having a world. For instance, it has access to some tools, but not to art, or craftsmanship—thus, it is incapable of techné. It is not a “closed” entity such as being inanimate, rather the “animal is closed to the very o p e n ing of the entity” and has no access to faculties of meaningfully differentiating entities as such. This middle position of animality in regard to Dasein is described by Derrida as a difficulty present throughout Heidegger’s work which is “fundamentally teleological and traditional, not to say dialectical” (31-59)
As for the motivation from which Heidegger’s shifting expression of spirit gains direction, this is grounded in his desire to address a “destitution of spirit” which Heidegger views as a moving toward spirit, “from within it.” This again relates back to the movement of away from Cartesian preconceptions, but particularly Heidegger is concerned with spiritual “resignation” that he says is the cause of a misinterpretation of the meaning of spirit and thus also, of spirit itself. He focuses on four forms of this: that alongside understanding and mass-distribution (a debasement through over-rationalization of spirit); instrumentalization or “falsification” of spirit concerning technology and the precedence of the Fragen; the becoming of culture through resigning the spiritual world to instrumentalization; and finally a political appeal to spirit through cultural propaganda. Additionally, Heidegger sees evil as the “tormenting” of spirit, existing due to the division of Geist among men, and one source for this is the lack of “originary questioning.” Thus, spirit must be “re-awakened”; this task is a correlative aspect of the responsibility Heidegger attaches to a questioning, and for that matter, a questioning that is common to “a people”, and hence a linguistic community. German and Greek are given privilege in the question of Being (which is always has a ground in meaning), based on a spiritual quality made present in thought by their corresponding terminologies; but German ultimately surpasses this joint quality for Heidegger—“it is the only language in which spirit comes to name itself.” (58-72)
Moreover, Geist is “the unconditioned absolute which determines and gathers every entity.” (76) Derrida describes this as “that which gathers or in which what gathers is gathered.” Similarly, Heidegger has said, “In that it is a unity, spirit is das Wehen [breath].” Heidegger uses metaphor to describe spirit—aligning it with breath and respiration, its unity is brought about through love. As Heidegger sees spirit as a continual return to itself, (as Derrida states, “it is never at home”), spirit is characterized by a “nostalgia for its own essence.” Another metaphor employed is that of the likening of spirit to fire. This has bearing on the movement of spirit or soul, the latter being “given” by spirit (and not just lost by spirit upon one’s death). This movement Heidegger interprets conversely to Platonism, in that he sees meaning itself as what gives the soul direction; this occurs through a “listening to language.” (87-88) Geschlect, while nearly above translation and meaning anything from race, nation, stock, or generation, it is a geopolitical gathering of spirit, and it is said to be “fallen”. It is compared to its “following of a stranger” within the physical realm, not as though the soul or spirit were imprisoned but as though on a spiritual journey. Thus Derrida makes use of the term “revenant”, to describe Heidegger’s interpretive outlook of soul and spirit in his evaluation of Trakl’s poetry, for it is constantly returning to itself and its originary essence.
At the close, we are asked again, then, what is Geist? Derrida’s answer: “spirit-in-flames.” To help us understand this, he explains:
It is not a figure, not a metaphor. Heidegger, at least, would contest any rhetoricizing reading. One could attempt to bring the concepts of rhetoric to bear here only after making sure of some proper meaning for one or other of these words, spirit, flame, in such and such a determinate language, in such and such a text, in such and such a sentence. We are far from that and everything comes back to this difficulty. (96)
Indeed, everything does return to this ultimate difficulty, this paradoxical (inter)subjectivity of the metaphor—and this is especially so in regard to Geist, a spirit within its own spirit. We are constantly becoming lost within translation—yet it seems that it is here in the provenance of meaning in which we continually find ourselves. Thus as Derrida states, referring to the responsibility of questioning, “one must indeed sign this theorem over in one’s own language”, for the metaphorical symbolism of language is the medium of any thought, and thus any questioning of any Being. What is Being? How does one come to arrive at the opening of this questioning? The answer resides precisely in the consciousness of the asking, and certainly also the possibility of such an inquirer; but what of the conditions for the possibility of this interrogative experience? For Heidegger, this question (Fragen) is the condition, a conditionality revolving around the “care” of Da-sein, “the being for whom being is in question”; yet this inquiry is inextricably linked with Geist, or “spirit”, for Dasein is always a being-in-the-world, that is, a spiritual world. Geist makes possible such an existential inquiry—it allows for any sort of deconstruction of any meaning. In questioning Being, the complexity and breadth of inquiry is entirely contingent upon the contextual framework within which an individual may perform such an existential inquisition. The answer then, and hence the question, may well be one in the same. Just as Geist is to itself a duplicity, the two-fold question of being can become its own answer, via the materialization of the very inquiry. Certainly this question is solely one’s own, for the ‘individual’ [of] Dasein must affirm this responsibility within the idiom that guides their spiritual path to Truth—this is as it must be, if we are to learn to live within, live as, the Question.
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
William Earle, Phenomenology of Mysticism
Thomas Landes
10/22/08
Phenomenology of Mysticism
Dr. Davis
Contemporary Philosophy
In order to break down a phenomenology of mysticism, the mystical experience is to be seen as being the same experience across all cultures, from ancient Greece to modern Christianity. The mystical experiences which are being considered range from, the alteration of time (making and eternity fit into an hour), a pure white light which is found in darkness (a Tibetan Buddhist concept of ego loss ), or really anything which contradicts reason. Even though these concepts arguably create completely different feelings and serve completely different purposes, it is through Phenomenology that we can reduce these to the essence of what is Absolute reality. Now if they are more or less the same experience then are Mystics just playing around with language to demonstrate a poetic that negates reason? William Earle excerpts an effort to show that it is more than simple word play across cultures but of an experience to demonstrate an individual perception of absolute reality.
William Earle, early on in his method sets out to make his approach to be independent of mystic terms. He first lays bare the essence of mysticism to be “the experience of identity of the soul and God” and he translates it to be “the experience of the identity of myself with Absolute Reality.” By doing this he throws out all questions as to what the soul is, what God is and what the relation between soul and God are in a mystic sense and merely attempts to define what myself, Absolute Reality, and the relation of the two are.
Here we start with an epoche of what myself (also to be considered in the epoche as being the same as I or Ego,) should embody. Myself when used as a reflection toward experience should bracket out anything to do with physical, biological or logical associations if it is to be considered a Mystic experience. To take the I or Ego phenomenologically we should only take it to be of itself, for it is within itself that it experiences the Mystical experience with the Absolute Reality. So in order to get to this non objective formation of a phenomenological myself we are to see it out of any context that objectifies myself such as thinking about, drawing a conclusion about, placing in temporality and spatiality, and we are to see it with the context of I Myself.
Now I feel as though this separating of the myself from the thinking about myself, explains very well the relationship of the mystic experience with the common experience. If it is for the fact that there is a mystic experience that is not perceived from outside of the Ego then the common experience would not be possible, unless the mystic experience could be observed through thinking about myself (or outside of the Ego, as laid down previously). So the terms of the mystics although are irrational (such as an eternity in a minute, pure white light in darkness, etc…) this irrationality is the only way to explain what it is that is experienced, for I myself is experienced only during the mystical experience.
In the process of defining what myself is, William Earle determines its existence in relation with temporality and spatiality. The example of the I myself in a room, and even though the I myself perceives itself in a spatial room does not mean that the I is in itself is spatial. So for the simple fact that the I exists in a “body” which takes up mass, does not mean that the I is in fact spatial (I feel this is a good example of what the meaning of soul is to be since in fact I myself is the soul from our original definition of the essence of mysticism. Soul, at least in the Christian sense of the word is what is carried beyond after the body has failed, giving us yet another separation between thinking about myself and I myself.) The question of the I myself and its relation with temporality, comes into definition through what William Earle describes as the “flux and flow of the world.” The flux would be that each moment is different from the next which is different from the previous even though the I myself did not necessarily move/change because of the ability for it to remember, and predict. So the Ego exists in temporality and not spatiality (this relation with time will later be explain how a mystics ability to alter time is a possibility through the relationship with absolute reality).
Absolute reality in a much easier light than Myself, because we only have two terms which are of themselves not at a need to be bracketed out in a Husserl fashion as extensively. William Earle explains it as what is infinite cannot be finite, what is true cannot be false and so what is in reality cannot be outside of reality, and vise versa. This is explained in what William Earle explains as the ontological argument of all contributions of this argument summarized as “I can conceive of an absolutely perfect Being; since existence is a perfection, such a Being must necessarily exist as I conceive it. That is, it is not a mere hypothesis that God exists, or suggestion that needs additional support.” If we agree that there is an absolute reality, which is what holds all reality together and gives us the ability to communicate, interact, rationalize, etc…, then there is by necessity an absolute reality. The list of what exists in reality is infinite whether it is possible or not, impossibilities are still present in reality. This infinite definition of Absolute Reality, is what defines itself with in what the mystics call God but only transcendental to absolute reality.
What makes the Mystic experience possible is this defining of something philosophically known as being finite, such as I myself and making it infinite, such as the soul. The way in which the Mystical experience takes the finitude of the single absolute reality and turning it into a transcendental infinitude known as God. These together make the Mystical experience differ from the common experience for the mere fact that it is impossible to have the concept of soul and God separate, as phenomenologically defined.
I think that there is more to the Mystical experience than a mere experience that isn’t the common one, as William Earle laid forth, and to a certain extent is different within most religions. The goals behind such experiences may be the same whether they be the ego loss for a Tibetan causing a euphoric white light and the Goal for a Christian to be in touch with God, both want to achieve a comfort but the experience in itself is not the same. If the average man were to seek ego loss he would have an experience of much agony in the process, but if he were to strive to find his relation with the Christian God he would experience much despair. What William Earle defines as the essence may be the same for all Mystic experience, but differ greatly in the process at which the Mystic experiences.
Phenomenology of Mysticism, William Earle, p. 97
Experience of the sacred readings in the phenomenology of religion
Hanover, N.H. : University Press of New England, c1992
x, 294 p. ; 23 cm
10/22/08
Phenomenology of Mysticism
Dr. Davis
Contemporary Philosophy
In order to break down a phenomenology of mysticism, the mystical experience is to be seen as being the same experience across all cultures, from ancient Greece to modern Christianity. The mystical experiences which are being considered range from, the alteration of time (making and eternity fit into an hour), a pure white light which is found in darkness (a Tibetan Buddhist concept of ego loss ), or really anything which contradicts reason. Even though these concepts arguably create completely different feelings and serve completely different purposes, it is through Phenomenology that we can reduce these to the essence of what is Absolute reality. Now if they are more or less the same experience then are Mystics just playing around with language to demonstrate a poetic that negates reason? William Earle excerpts an effort to show that it is more than simple word play across cultures but of an experience to demonstrate an individual perception of absolute reality.
William Earle, early on in his method sets out to make his approach to be independent of mystic terms. He first lays bare the essence of mysticism to be “the experience of identity of the soul and God” and he translates it to be “the experience of the identity of myself with Absolute Reality.” By doing this he throws out all questions as to what the soul is, what God is and what the relation between soul and God are in a mystic sense and merely attempts to define what myself, Absolute Reality, and the relation of the two are.
Here we start with an epoche of what myself (also to be considered in the epoche as being the same as I or Ego,) should embody. Myself when used as a reflection toward experience should bracket out anything to do with physical, biological or logical associations if it is to be considered a Mystic experience. To take the I or Ego phenomenologically we should only take it to be of itself, for it is within itself that it experiences the Mystical experience with the Absolute Reality. So in order to get to this non objective formation of a phenomenological myself we are to see it out of any context that objectifies myself such as thinking about, drawing a conclusion about, placing in temporality and spatiality, and we are to see it with the context of I Myself.
Now I feel as though this separating of the myself from the thinking about myself, explains very well the relationship of the mystic experience with the common experience. If it is for the fact that there is a mystic experience that is not perceived from outside of the Ego then the common experience would not be possible, unless the mystic experience could be observed through thinking about myself (or outside of the Ego, as laid down previously). So the terms of the mystics although are irrational (such as an eternity in a minute, pure white light in darkness, etc…) this irrationality is the only way to explain what it is that is experienced, for I myself is experienced only during the mystical experience.
In the process of defining what myself is, William Earle determines its existence in relation with temporality and spatiality. The example of the I myself in a room, and even though the I myself perceives itself in a spatial room does not mean that the I is in itself is spatial. So for the simple fact that the I exists in a “body” which takes up mass, does not mean that the I is in fact spatial (I feel this is a good example of what the meaning of soul is to be since in fact I myself is the soul from our original definition of the essence of mysticism. Soul, at least in the Christian sense of the word is what is carried beyond after the body has failed, giving us yet another separation between thinking about myself and I myself.) The question of the I myself and its relation with temporality, comes into definition through what William Earle describes as the “flux and flow of the world.” The flux would be that each moment is different from the next which is different from the previous even though the I myself did not necessarily move/change because of the ability for it to remember, and predict. So the Ego exists in temporality and not spatiality (this relation with time will later be explain how a mystics ability to alter time is a possibility through the relationship with absolute reality).
Absolute reality in a much easier light than Myself, because we only have two terms which are of themselves not at a need to be bracketed out in a Husserl fashion as extensively. William Earle explains it as what is infinite cannot be finite, what is true cannot be false and so what is in reality cannot be outside of reality, and vise versa. This is explained in what William Earle explains as the ontological argument of all contributions of this argument summarized as “I can conceive of an absolutely perfect Being; since existence is a perfection, such a Being must necessarily exist as I conceive it. That is, it is not a mere hypothesis that God exists, or suggestion that needs additional support.” If we agree that there is an absolute reality, which is what holds all reality together and gives us the ability to communicate, interact, rationalize, etc…, then there is by necessity an absolute reality. The list of what exists in reality is infinite whether it is possible or not, impossibilities are still present in reality. This infinite definition of Absolute Reality, is what defines itself with in what the mystics call God but only transcendental to absolute reality.
What makes the Mystic experience possible is this defining of something philosophically known as being finite, such as I myself and making it infinite, such as the soul. The way in which the Mystical experience takes the finitude of the single absolute reality and turning it into a transcendental infinitude known as God. These together make the Mystical experience differ from the common experience for the mere fact that it is impossible to have the concept of soul and God separate, as phenomenologically defined.
I think that there is more to the Mystical experience than a mere experience that isn’t the common one, as William Earle laid forth, and to a certain extent is different within most religions. The goals behind such experiences may be the same whether they be the ego loss for a Tibetan causing a euphoric white light and the Goal for a Christian to be in touch with God, both want to achieve a comfort but the experience in itself is not the same. If the average man were to seek ego loss he would have an experience of much agony in the process, but if he were to strive to find his relation with the Christian God he would experience much despair. What William Earle defines as the essence may be the same for all Mystic experience, but differ greatly in the process at which the Mystic experiences.
Phenomenology of Mysticism, William Earle, p. 97
Experience of the sacred readings in the phenomenology of religion
Hanover, N.H. : University Press of New England, c1992
x, 294 p. ; 23 cm
Fanon and the Crisis of European Man
Katie O’Donnell
PHIL 352 22 October 2008
Philosophical Report II
Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the
Human Sciences. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Frantz Fanon, a younger contemporary of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, was not, strictly speaking, a phenomenologist. He was a philosopher and a psychiatrist, an ardent supporter and participant in the struggle for Algerian independence, and a passionate and controversial critic of the degradation of humanity caused by colonialism. And, being born on the French-colonized island of Martinique, he shared not only an era but, in name at least, a nationality with the aforementioned philosophers, though the racial designator “black” qualified Fanon’s status/existence as a Frenchman. In his essay Fanon and the Crisis of European Man Lewis Gordon engages Fanon and postcolonial discourse to examine what it means to be black in a world that remains constructed on and with the logic of European/white superiority. Gordon uses Fanon’s work to advance postcolonial studies into the realm of postcolonial existential-phenomenology, contending primarily with Husserl and Sartre and arguing convincingly for the necessity of a phenomenological account of colonialism.
Gordon begins his essay with a short section entitled “Fanon as Critique of European Man,” designed to present Fanon’s humanism in a phenomenological light and provide introduction to the crisis of European Man. Gordon writes that “…France is not Fanon’s Other; he is France’s Other. Like the African American, Fanon finds himself inextricably linked to a society that not only rejects him, but also attempts to deny his existence as a legitimate point of view…” (6). The colonial attitude that Fanon fights against is one that equates European Culture with culture in general and the White Man with humanity in general. The particular is universalized, structuring reality in such a way as to deny the humanity of each individual who does not fit the description required, rendering these individuals essentially invisible within a structure of antiblack racism. Both Fanon and Gordon assert that to reduce humanity in this fashion is to kill it. While this claim finds a considerable amount of support around the world, Gordon argues that we still live within the structure of antiblack racism; it is bad faith institutionalized, and engenders the crisis of European man. Gordon writes: “…the white man looks at the black man and wonders when it will all end, but the white man knows deep down that a just future is one in which he himself no longer exists in virtue of his ceasing to function as the End, or less ambiguously, the telos of Man” (12). Both concepts, “black man” and “white man”, are co-constructed, and the complete eradication of one implies the complete eradication of the other. Gordon argues that European man continues to act out of bad faith as he flees from true responsibility and choice into the arms of the nostalgic pseudo-responsibility invoked by the “white man’s burden.”
Gordon goes on to argue that the two terms comprising “postcolonial phenomenology” are, in a sense, equivalent to one another as each demands a radically critical stance be taken toward colonizing influences. Husserl famously asserted the phenomenological attitude’s need to bracket the natural attitude in order to reflect upon it and its intentionalities. Gordon argues that a similar ontological suspension is required when dealing with the logic of colonization. He writes, “Fanon rejects traditional ontological dimensions of human beings in favor of existential ones” (10). This is because his description as a “black man” within his society did not resonate with who Fanon was, with his ontological status; rather, it involved who he was interpreted to be. Gordon, in his effort to critique ontology, introduces Sartre who then is used to discuss different modes of human embodiment. Three, specifically: the human being as “the perspective from a standpoint in the world; the perspective seen from other standpoints in the world; and the…perspective that is aware of itself being seen from other standpoints in the world” (19). There is, then, a social dimension necessary to embodiment, which Gordon argues is essential to the “recognition of human being” (21) and conversely allows for the study of institutional bad faith. Evasion of responsibility is not just an individual refusal to choose; analyzing the phenomenon of racism shows it to be a social refusal. The refusal to choose that characterizes the crisis of European Man results not only in a distortion of historical understanding, but the denial of History (as in the history of humanity) to those men and women whose humanity is rendered invisible. Yet, Gordon writes, “Every black person faces history—his or her story—every day as a situation, as a choice, of how to stand in relation to oppression, of whether to live as a being subsumed by oppression or to live as active resistance towards liberation, or to live as mere indifference. This conception of history is rooted in daily life” (29). The recognition of one’s everyday oppression, of the structural manner of their oppression Liberation from oppression has its source in the everyday existences of the oppressed. Gordon defines oppression in this context as extraordinary conditions of everyday life being placed on individuals in such a way as to make them appear ordinary, even natural.
Gordon argues that, “…we find the uniqueness of our circumstances subject to a peculiar sense of anonymity—it takes on a form that may not be uniquely our own, although there is a very real sense in which it is our own by virtue of the fact that we are the ones who are living it at the time of consideration” (43). Similar considerations prompted WEB Du Bois to ask not what it feels like to be a problem, but what it means to be a problem, as Gordon points out in other works. What modes of existence, what constructed institutions allow for the anonymity of a significant portion of humanity? How is everyday existence informed and itself constructed by the logics of colonialism and racism? Gordon continues: “Racism renders the individual anonymous even to himself. The very standpoint of consciousness, embodiment itself, is saturated with a strangeness that either locks the individual into the mechanism of things or sends him away and transforms him into an observer hovering over that very thing” (58). He makes a distinction between authentic embodiment and alienated embodiment, arguing that, “…to be seen in a racist way is an ironic way of not being seen through being seen.” (58). According to Gordon, racism is not sustained by a dialect between Self and Other, because this relationship demands the status of a relationship between human beings, a status which black people are not afforded within the structure of antiblack racism. So the struggle for liberation under oppression becomes the struggle to be epistemologically acknowledged as Other. Gordon does not conclude his discussion without addressing the most controversial element of Fanon’s own work, namely, his reliance on violence as a component of true liberation. Gordon uses the concept of tragedy to characterize and expand on Fanon’s ideas. Tragedy as conceived by the Greeks involved the powerful taking responsibility for their actions through the recognition of duty. Gordon writes that in a racist society “…the burden of bearing the community’s evils is placed upon the powerless instead of the powerful. In effect, the tragic stage has been turned upside down. Thus, the revolutionary possibility of tragedy is that its object of degradation, if you will, is always the powerful. But the irony of tragedy is that it promises a form of restoration that can never truly be ‘as things were before.’ Tragedy is, fundamentally, in Sartrean language, progressive-regressive” (75). Violence to others or to oneself often plays a central role in tragedy. Nevertheless, the political question that ultimately arises out of Gordon’s examination of racism and the crisis of European Man is how we can conceive and practice a political reality that is not structured on the degradation of humanity. Though the logistics of this structure remain unclear, Gordon does throughout his text lay out three general points/issues that require implementation in the restructuring of everyday life. The first is an articulation of a philosophical anthropology that promotes humanizing sociopolitical change. Secondly, we must realign the concept of human flourishing with an understanding of humanity that takes all human being into account in order to build political institutions that promote humanity. And thirdly the inquiries into humanity and human flourishing must be marked by a radical degree of self-reflection in order to avoid epistemological colonization and the fleeing from responsibility that characterizes bad faith. Overall, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man is a worthwhile, interesting read, and it is certainly both an important and necessary contribution to postcolonial and phenomenological discourses.
PHIL 352 22 October 2008
Philosophical Report II
Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the
Human Sciences. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Frantz Fanon, a younger contemporary of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, was not, strictly speaking, a phenomenologist. He was a philosopher and a psychiatrist, an ardent supporter and participant in the struggle for Algerian independence, and a passionate and controversial critic of the degradation of humanity caused by colonialism. And, being born on the French-colonized island of Martinique, he shared not only an era but, in name at least, a nationality with the aforementioned philosophers, though the racial designator “black” qualified Fanon’s status/existence as a Frenchman. In his essay Fanon and the Crisis of European Man Lewis Gordon engages Fanon and postcolonial discourse to examine what it means to be black in a world that remains constructed on and with the logic of European/white superiority. Gordon uses Fanon’s work to advance postcolonial studies into the realm of postcolonial existential-phenomenology, contending primarily with Husserl and Sartre and arguing convincingly for the necessity of a phenomenological account of colonialism.
Gordon begins his essay with a short section entitled “Fanon as Critique of European Man,” designed to present Fanon’s humanism in a phenomenological light and provide introduction to the crisis of European Man. Gordon writes that “…France is not Fanon’s Other; he is France’s Other. Like the African American, Fanon finds himself inextricably linked to a society that not only rejects him, but also attempts to deny his existence as a legitimate point of view…” (6). The colonial attitude that Fanon fights against is one that equates European Culture with culture in general and the White Man with humanity in general. The particular is universalized, structuring reality in such a way as to deny the humanity of each individual who does not fit the description required, rendering these individuals essentially invisible within a structure of antiblack racism. Both Fanon and Gordon assert that to reduce humanity in this fashion is to kill it. While this claim finds a considerable amount of support around the world, Gordon argues that we still live within the structure of antiblack racism; it is bad faith institutionalized, and engenders the crisis of European man. Gordon writes: “…the white man looks at the black man and wonders when it will all end, but the white man knows deep down that a just future is one in which he himself no longer exists in virtue of his ceasing to function as the End, or less ambiguously, the telos of Man” (12). Both concepts, “black man” and “white man”, are co-constructed, and the complete eradication of one implies the complete eradication of the other. Gordon argues that European man continues to act out of bad faith as he flees from true responsibility and choice into the arms of the nostalgic pseudo-responsibility invoked by the “white man’s burden.”
Gordon goes on to argue that the two terms comprising “postcolonial phenomenology” are, in a sense, equivalent to one another as each demands a radically critical stance be taken toward colonizing influences. Husserl famously asserted the phenomenological attitude’s need to bracket the natural attitude in order to reflect upon it and its intentionalities. Gordon argues that a similar ontological suspension is required when dealing with the logic of colonization. He writes, “Fanon rejects traditional ontological dimensions of human beings in favor of existential ones” (10). This is because his description as a “black man” within his society did not resonate with who Fanon was, with his ontological status; rather, it involved who he was interpreted to be. Gordon, in his effort to critique ontology, introduces Sartre who then is used to discuss different modes of human embodiment. Three, specifically: the human being as “the perspective from a standpoint in the world; the perspective seen from other standpoints in the world; and the…perspective that is aware of itself being seen from other standpoints in the world” (19). There is, then, a social dimension necessary to embodiment, which Gordon argues is essential to the “recognition of human being” (21) and conversely allows for the study of institutional bad faith. Evasion of responsibility is not just an individual refusal to choose; analyzing the phenomenon of racism shows it to be a social refusal. The refusal to choose that characterizes the crisis of European Man results not only in a distortion of historical understanding, but the denial of History (as in the history of humanity) to those men and women whose humanity is rendered invisible. Yet, Gordon writes, “Every black person faces history—his or her story—every day as a situation, as a choice, of how to stand in relation to oppression, of whether to live as a being subsumed by oppression or to live as active resistance towards liberation, or to live as mere indifference. This conception of history is rooted in daily life” (29). The recognition of one’s everyday oppression, of the structural manner of their oppression Liberation from oppression has its source in the everyday existences of the oppressed. Gordon defines oppression in this context as extraordinary conditions of everyday life being placed on individuals in such a way as to make them appear ordinary, even natural.
Gordon argues that, “…we find the uniqueness of our circumstances subject to a peculiar sense of anonymity—it takes on a form that may not be uniquely our own, although there is a very real sense in which it is our own by virtue of the fact that we are the ones who are living it at the time of consideration” (43). Similar considerations prompted WEB Du Bois to ask not what it feels like to be a problem, but what it means to be a problem, as Gordon points out in other works. What modes of existence, what constructed institutions allow for the anonymity of a significant portion of humanity? How is everyday existence informed and itself constructed by the logics of colonialism and racism? Gordon continues: “Racism renders the individual anonymous even to himself. The very standpoint of consciousness, embodiment itself, is saturated with a strangeness that either locks the individual into the mechanism of things or sends him away and transforms him into an observer hovering over that very thing” (58). He makes a distinction between authentic embodiment and alienated embodiment, arguing that, “…to be seen in a racist way is an ironic way of not being seen through being seen.” (58). According to Gordon, racism is not sustained by a dialect between Self and Other, because this relationship demands the status of a relationship between human beings, a status which black people are not afforded within the structure of antiblack racism. So the struggle for liberation under oppression becomes the struggle to be epistemologically acknowledged as Other. Gordon does not conclude his discussion without addressing the most controversial element of Fanon’s own work, namely, his reliance on violence as a component of true liberation. Gordon uses the concept of tragedy to characterize and expand on Fanon’s ideas. Tragedy as conceived by the Greeks involved the powerful taking responsibility for their actions through the recognition of duty. Gordon writes that in a racist society “…the burden of bearing the community’s evils is placed upon the powerless instead of the powerful. In effect, the tragic stage has been turned upside down. Thus, the revolutionary possibility of tragedy is that its object of degradation, if you will, is always the powerful. But the irony of tragedy is that it promises a form of restoration that can never truly be ‘as things were before.’ Tragedy is, fundamentally, in Sartrean language, progressive-regressive” (75). Violence to others or to oneself often plays a central role in tragedy. Nevertheless, the political question that ultimately arises out of Gordon’s examination of racism and the crisis of European Man is how we can conceive and practice a political reality that is not structured on the degradation of humanity. Though the logistics of this structure remain unclear, Gordon does throughout his text lay out three general points/issues that require implementation in the restructuring of everyday life. The first is an articulation of a philosophical anthropology that promotes humanizing sociopolitical change. Secondly, we must realign the concept of human flourishing with an understanding of humanity that takes all human being into account in order to build political institutions that promote humanity. And thirdly the inquiries into humanity and human flourishing must be marked by a radical degree of self-reflection in order to avoid epistemological colonization and the fleeing from responsibility that characterizes bad faith. Overall, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man is a worthwhile, interesting read, and it is certainly both an important and necessary contribution to postcolonial and phenomenological discourses.
Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought
The collection, Poetry, Language, Thought, is composed of several essays linked together in that each speaks independently to a certain aspect of art. In full, this work is, for the avid and intent reader of any discourse on existentiality, an illuminating source which reveals much regarding the purposeful direction behind that extensive line of thought that belonged to none other than Martin Heidegger. This is so, as it reflects the directional shift in his pathway of thinking, over the course of his career. Later in life, Heidegger was swayed by art and poetry, drawn conceptually toward them due to their relative bearing on the interconnected natures of language, thought, and the meaning of Being. He viewed truly poetic thinking (surely being inclusive of art; even prose does not oppose poetry) as unsurpassed in terms of its genuine relation to authenticity and Being, particularly, that of human being—for, our being, especially if at the height of potential, exists as poetic. Of this, Being is aware, even if its own latency is unbeknownst to it. Thinking itself is of a poetic form, for thinking can only be, as it is. Hence, as such, Heidegger directs his circumspection toward these realms of the poetic, essentially letting his thinking be guided by their truth. Clairvoyantly, this prescient contemplation is fluently expressed in the unity of these insightful selections.
This book is organized into seven headings, in which the running threads chiefly hovering around this interrogative pursuit point namely toward these aspects of Being: of things, the world, and man. We enter into our first angle of discourse through the question of the origin of art, entailing the pursuit of the essence of art in its being what, how, and as it is. Dealt with first is a differentiation between the artist and art, the maker and made. Heidegger makes a point of the inevitable circularity in which we find ourselves here, trapped within this line of questioning. For what determines the artist as artist? The art. Apparently, and what constitutes art as it is? The artist, naturally. Though tautological, Heidegger still aims to “go to the actual work and ask the work what and how it is.” (18) Thus it is asked, to better understand artwork since it is a thing itself, what are things? To which the philosophical reply is: anything that is. This question Heidegger sees as destitute in its supply of askers, past and present, and one whose answer is presupposed and taken for granted, as well as covered over by centuries of misconceptions and misguided notions—it has caused the so-called “rootlessness of Western thought.” The task of the poet, laid out in What Are Poets For?, is precisely to remedy this destitution, which is like an abyss to the world, for it cannot truly establish a ground for itself—but, “song still lingers in a destitute land”, and “[true] Song is existence.” (90, 94, 135) The latter excerpt is referring to the idea that language is the “precinct” or “house”, the primary domain of Being. He traces this destitution to the “appropriation of Greek words” by Rome, where the real meanings of Greek linguistic experience were not carried over with their symbols. The Greek word hypokeimenon represents the key attributes surrounding a thing, its grounds for the very constitution of its being as that thing, how it is; this surrounding core set of qualities is there already, a pre-established essence of the actual being of a thing. (23)
On to the self-evident “thingly” aspect of the work, which is discussed in three sections, Thing and Work, The Work and Truth, and Truth and Art. In defining the thing as thing, where the “exertion of thought seems to meet its greatest resistance”, one centers in on its essence (as it is in its “thingness”); but, also, we necessarily must ask after the essences of equipment and work as they are, for these are not simply ‘mere’ things, but are endowed with form being purposeful creations that in themselves serve a function outside themselves, going beyond the insignificant being of the mere things, like pebbles, which simply chance to exist. The essence of equipment is its reliability and usefulness. The work’s ‘thingness’ implies: 1. that it is made, and 2. its creation serves a symbolic ulterior purpose such that it is projected beyond its own thingly self—designedly, art, and thus poetry, are of this self-surpassing character, for “the work makes public something other than itself; it manifests something other; it is an allegory.”(19)
An important example is given, referencing a painting by Van Gogh, a portrait of peasant shoes for field-work. What is conveyed through this image? A being in the truth of its Being. In this case, the shoes, as they are. They belong to someone for some end—they exist in that place and for that person, in a particular space and time. Heidegger posits art as “the truth of beings setting itself to work,” but, the meaning of truth, since ancient Greece, as unconcealedness, has been most hidden (even for Greeks). For instance, breaking a stone in half only reveals two more stones, and no inherent knowledge about that initial stone—it seems only measurable numerically. But, the focus on mathematically rational analyses of existence loses the real scope of that which is being analyzed in actuality. For some thing to truly show it self, it “remains undisclosed and unexplained.” (45) Our traditions tend toward the opposite direction, and this has led to that conception of truth as correctness which has been in force since Descartes, and this attribute is what keeps the sciences from rising above philosophy (rather giving them a need to be constituted by it). In short, art is a giving of purposeful form, to matter—an expression that “sets up a world”.
We do this because we have a world, a dwelling on earth, which we portray in this setting up and that we are cognizant of in our belonging to it—earth shapes us and we cannot escape the Life and Death of any of its paths, this is why Heidegger says: “the world worlds”(43) So, what are worlds? The world is that subjective projection grounded on earth, an envisioning of that earth, in view of the life, death, and everything else in existential proximity that goes along with contemplation of it. This one could be the culture of a people, or an opining individual. World and earth are striving—they are ‘different’, but they “raise each other into the self-assertion of their natures…each opponent carries the other beyond itself.” (47, 48) Moreover, there is a “fourfold oneness” between earth and sky, mortals and divinities—this is seen by the world’s worlding, as well as the “thing’s thinging”, which presences nearness and “stays” the fourfold, as one in their remoteness. (175) Artwork exhibits this oneness, holding it “within its Open.” (59) Since it is the “creative preserving of truth” it is also the “becoming and happening of truth.” (69) Equipment on the other hand, never does this in a direct fashion, because one has generally become used to such things, such as the keys of this keyboard, or an alarm clock, and displace their for qualities in the everydayness of our minds. The work differs here in that it has this specification about it: it projects the as character of its own being. In so doing, it also personifies the conflict between world and earth, and as such man expresses his conscious concerns and vision in this setting up of the Open. This setting-up is to be thought of as in the sense carried by the Greek word thesis, which is “a setting-up in the unconcealed”, to “let lie forth in its…presence”, a “disclosure of appropriation.” Moreover, there is an “essential ambiguity” of truth as it is set forth in the work of art, for it is both subject and object (82-5)
“Dif-ference”, is the middle ground that fuses things of the fourfold. It is a “dimension for world and thing.” This difference is what constitutes the intimacy between world and thing. It is a difference which essentially gets defined as pain, a rift between two. This rift though, is itself a “stillness”, a repose found between things that are different, a unity residing precisely in their contrast. “Language goes on as the taking place or occurring of the dif-ference for world and things.” (199-205)
Ultimately, Being, is itself the “venture”. The venture is that which draws us inward toward Being, the way in which we are all some how purposefully driven, but to cite Heidegger directly, “ ‘venture’, is, as a metaphysical term, ambiguous.”(103-104) Yes indeed, and what is not ambiguous, other than the certitude of sometimes certain, but mostly ambiguous thoughts? And yet poetry and art are those mediums which depict the venture, they put that very ambiguity on display. Man must use relations to clear this ambiguity, through language and reason—logos. In relations, man perceives Nature. At the close, it would be suitable to return to the opening, The Thinker As Poet, where the context of this work is brought to our direct presence, by demonstrating the German word dichten, for which there is no translation, and its dual meaning, which synthesizes poetry or composition, as one with thinking. (xi) The reader is presented with a portion of Heidegger’s poetry, circa 1947. His words are proverbial and almost mystical in their tone and aura, as gathered ideas arranged poetically among themselves and, though they immediately dwell on pages, they always retain their being in and of Nature, that which is their ever-present canvas.
Forests spread Meadows wait
Brooks plunge Springs well
Rocks persist Winds dwell
Mist diffuses Blessing muses (14)
Works Cited
Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: HarperCollins Inc., 1971.
This book is organized into seven headings, in which the running threads chiefly hovering around this interrogative pursuit point namely toward these aspects of Being: of things, the world, and man. We enter into our first angle of discourse through the question of the origin of art, entailing the pursuit of the essence of art in its being what, how, and as it is. Dealt with first is a differentiation between the artist and art, the maker and made. Heidegger makes a point of the inevitable circularity in which we find ourselves here, trapped within this line of questioning. For what determines the artist as artist? The art. Apparently, and what constitutes art as it is? The artist, naturally. Though tautological, Heidegger still aims to “go to the actual work and ask the work what and how it is.” (18) Thus it is asked, to better understand artwork since it is a thing itself, what are things? To which the philosophical reply is: anything that is. This question Heidegger sees as destitute in its supply of askers, past and present, and one whose answer is presupposed and taken for granted, as well as covered over by centuries of misconceptions and misguided notions—it has caused the so-called “rootlessness of Western thought.” The task of the poet, laid out in What Are Poets For?, is precisely to remedy this destitution, which is like an abyss to the world, for it cannot truly establish a ground for itself—but, “song still lingers in a destitute land”, and “[true] Song is existence.” (90, 94, 135) The latter excerpt is referring to the idea that language is the “precinct” or “house”, the primary domain of Being. He traces this destitution to the “appropriation of Greek words” by Rome, where the real meanings of Greek linguistic experience were not carried over with their symbols. The Greek word hypokeimenon represents the key attributes surrounding a thing, its grounds for the very constitution of its being as that thing, how it is; this surrounding core set of qualities is there already, a pre-established essence of the actual being of a thing. (23)
On to the self-evident “thingly” aspect of the work, which is discussed in three sections, Thing and Work, The Work and Truth, and Truth and Art. In defining the thing as thing, where the “exertion of thought seems to meet its greatest resistance”, one centers in on its essence (as it is in its “thingness”); but, also, we necessarily must ask after the essences of equipment and work as they are, for these are not simply ‘mere’ things, but are endowed with form being purposeful creations that in themselves serve a function outside themselves, going beyond the insignificant being of the mere things, like pebbles, which simply chance to exist. The essence of equipment is its reliability and usefulness. The work’s ‘thingness’ implies: 1. that it is made, and 2. its creation serves a symbolic ulterior purpose such that it is projected beyond its own thingly self—designedly, art, and thus poetry, are of this self-surpassing character, for “the work makes public something other than itself; it manifests something other; it is an allegory.”(19)
An important example is given, referencing a painting by Van Gogh, a portrait of peasant shoes for field-work. What is conveyed through this image? A being in the truth of its Being. In this case, the shoes, as they are. They belong to someone for some end—they exist in that place and for that person, in a particular space and time. Heidegger posits art as “the truth of beings setting itself to work,” but, the meaning of truth, since ancient Greece, as unconcealedness, has been most hidden (even for Greeks). For instance, breaking a stone in half only reveals two more stones, and no inherent knowledge about that initial stone—it seems only measurable numerically. But, the focus on mathematically rational analyses of existence loses the real scope of that which is being analyzed in actuality. For some thing to truly show it self, it “remains undisclosed and unexplained.” (45) Our traditions tend toward the opposite direction, and this has led to that conception of truth as correctness which has been in force since Descartes, and this attribute is what keeps the sciences from rising above philosophy (rather giving them a need to be constituted by it). In short, art is a giving of purposeful form, to matter—an expression that “sets up a world”.
We do this because we have a world, a dwelling on earth, which we portray in this setting up and that we are cognizant of in our belonging to it—earth shapes us and we cannot escape the Life and Death of any of its paths, this is why Heidegger says: “the world worlds”(43) So, what are worlds? The world is that subjective projection grounded on earth, an envisioning of that earth, in view of the life, death, and everything else in existential proximity that goes along with contemplation of it. This one could be the culture of a people, or an opining individual. World and earth are striving—they are ‘different’, but they “raise each other into the self-assertion of their natures…each opponent carries the other beyond itself.” (47, 48) Moreover, there is a “fourfold oneness” between earth and sky, mortals and divinities—this is seen by the world’s worlding, as well as the “thing’s thinging”, which presences nearness and “stays” the fourfold, as one in their remoteness. (175) Artwork exhibits this oneness, holding it “within its Open.” (59) Since it is the “creative preserving of truth” it is also the “becoming and happening of truth.” (69) Equipment on the other hand, never does this in a direct fashion, because one has generally become used to such things, such as the keys of this keyboard, or an alarm clock, and displace their for qualities in the everydayness of our minds. The work differs here in that it has this specification about it: it projects the as character of its own being. In so doing, it also personifies the conflict between world and earth, and as such man expresses his conscious concerns and vision in this setting up of the Open. This setting-up is to be thought of as in the sense carried by the Greek word thesis, which is “a setting-up in the unconcealed”, to “let lie forth in its…presence”, a “disclosure of appropriation.” Moreover, there is an “essential ambiguity” of truth as it is set forth in the work of art, for it is both subject and object (82-5)
“Dif-ference”, is the middle ground that fuses things of the fourfold. It is a “dimension for world and thing.” This difference is what constitutes the intimacy between world and thing. It is a difference which essentially gets defined as pain, a rift between two. This rift though, is itself a “stillness”, a repose found between things that are different, a unity residing precisely in their contrast. “Language goes on as the taking place or occurring of the dif-ference for world and things.” (199-205)
Ultimately, Being, is itself the “venture”. The venture is that which draws us inward toward Being, the way in which we are all some how purposefully driven, but to cite Heidegger directly, “ ‘venture’, is, as a metaphysical term, ambiguous.”(103-104) Yes indeed, and what is not ambiguous, other than the certitude of sometimes certain, but mostly ambiguous thoughts? And yet poetry and art are those mediums which depict the venture, they put that very ambiguity on display. Man must use relations to clear this ambiguity, through language and reason—logos. In relations, man perceives Nature. At the close, it would be suitable to return to the opening, The Thinker As Poet, where the context of this work is brought to our direct presence, by demonstrating the German word dichten, for which there is no translation, and its dual meaning, which synthesizes poetry or composition, as one with thinking. (xi) The reader is presented with a portion of Heidegger’s poetry, circa 1947. His words are proverbial and almost mystical in their tone and aura, as gathered ideas arranged poetically among themselves and, though they immediately dwell on pages, they always retain their being in and of Nature, that which is their ever-present canvas.
Forests spread Meadows wait
Brooks plunge Springs well
Rocks persist Winds dwell
Mist diffuses Blessing muses (14)
Works Cited
Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: HarperCollins Inc., 1971.
Maxine Sheets, The Phenomenology of Dance
Philosophy 352
October 18, 2008
Chris Harris
Maxine Sheets’s book The Phenomenology of Dance explores the structure, movement, and frame in which dance appears as a phenomenon in our world. Utilizing the- phenomenological tradition Sheets sweeps through the elements of dance approaching them as a “lived experience” revealing dance’s forms in time and space while laying out her arguments for an aesthetic and academic appreciation of dance.
Sheets begins by framing a perspective of dance. She states when dance is present for us it is a lived experience, and recognized as a created phenomenon. From the created experience of a dancer or the experience regarded by a spectator dance forms a dynamic totality. This totality is built, respectively from forms that the dancers themselves are “implicitly” aware of. In this respect dancers have a: “Lived experience of the sheer dynamic flow of force…the dancers are reflexively aware neither of themselves, nor of the dance as a pre-existing form through which they move” (p.6). The overlaying reason Sheets gives for this phenomenon is that the dancers in this instance are not aware of the form because the dancers are not merely “agents” of the dance, but are rather the focal point and creators of the dance itself. Sheets further states that: “Only when we reflect upon the experience of the work as it is being created and presented, we remove ourselves from our immediate encounter with it, that we interrupt the flow and fragmentize its inherent totality” (p.6). By reflecting on the dance itself either as a spectator or as a dancer the presented totality ceases to be a lived experience and becomes a reflective past event. After giving a perspective of dance, Sheets then designates her intentions: to explore the “nature” of dance, its structures and the encounter of dance as “a formed and performed art”.
Through the lens that phenomenology provides Sheets begins to explore the structures of lived experiences though temporality. Sheets views the structure of temporality as two distinct substructures:”static and dynamic temporality. Static temporality each moment or experience is recognized as separate from the rest and as such becomes: past, present, future. Having rendered static temporality to parts, Sheets claims that the parts are only meaningful because they exist in relation to each other and are thus diasporatic; subsequently human consciousness exists in this way as a whole and in separate parts. The second sub-structure of dynamic temporality is a “pre-awareness” of time such that a person recognizes the passing, or passed time. This state of awareness is experienced in a backward manner, a person walking experiences walking at present toward a future, yet are creating a past as they move forward. It though this dynamic that “human consciousness attains a permanency” (Sheets, p.19), that it is a synthesis of the parts that create the whole or in this case the permanency of a person. The reflective state of either dynamic or static temporality reveals, what both Sartre and Sheets see as a unity of consciousness that does not conclude the self as an object because the awareness of the apparent other part such as the past is synthesized and altered as reflection occurs and is never the direct past or present of what was or is being analyzed. Sheets directly relates Sartre’s work here as she utilizes parts from Sartre’s examples of temporality in Being and Nothingness. Sartre states that this synthesis must occur because it will otherwise meet a paradox: “the past is no longer; the future is not yet; as for the instantaneous present everyone knows that this does not exist at all but is the limit of an infinite division, like a point without dimension” (Sartre, p.159), by utilizing an analysis of temporality as this whole Sheets can provide an overview of dance as a phenomenon in time and subsequently examine each part of dance in this way giving each part in relation to the whole of the experience.
From this examination of temporality Sheets begins to address the elements of force, rhythm and line in dance. Sheets begins by addressing what she refers to as “the illusion of force”. This illusion of force is created by the act of dance itself and is concluded as a virtual force in the world. The body, being corporeality is part of the physical structure in dance and provides a piece of the whole, but the illusion of force created by dance “transcends” its material aspect and becomes the source of the virtual force and the symbol of dance. Sheets concludes that this virtual force is the condition of dance, but dance like the structures of temporality are parts and thus are in perpetual motion. Sheets also notes that the: “amount of force refers not to a contained, static amount held by the body but to the manifest dynamic of the projection itself” (Sheets, p.52) which creates the symbol or abstraction in dance. Dance then is always in the making throughout time and space and is created though dimensions that exist when the dance itself exists. Rhythm in dance pertains to the composing form and is a dynamic fluidity of dance. “At any moment in composing the form, the dancer may either decide in advance where she wants to move, or the movement may be freely developed with no predetermined end point” (Sheets, p.102) in either case to Sheets the dance is controlled by temporality in the specific projection of force and affected by its range. The dance’s flow, its quality in the dynamic defines the movement. Sheets states here that “it is phenomenologically evident that each successive movement creates a qualitative change, and this, in turn, creates an accentual pattern, changing intensities, within the dynamic line. The dynamic line serves as a way for a virtual force to move as the dancer is creating the dance and is a pre-reflective awareness that guides the action through the temporality of the dance. This qualifies the parts of the dynamic that make up the spatial-temporal aspect and provides a comprehension of what dance is in the temporality of its state.
After laying out the respective aspects of dance Sheets elaborates on the abstraction in dance. “Abstraction is inherent in the creation of a symbolic form, through abstraction the symbolic form achieves a significance in and of itself; its meaning or import is intrinsic to it” (Sheets, p.59). These abstractions are the human feeling which is abstracted from an everyday context, and the abstraction of dance as an expressive mode. The human feeling is abstracted because it is separated from an everyday pattern and when set apart is “sheer dynamic form” a bridge which reveals a difference in common actions and actions in form. Sheets refers to everyday movements as movements that directly express feelings not separated by intended expressions but as a whole. Sartre relates this as such as possibilities in the world he concludes: “my body indicates my possibilities in the world, seeing my body or touching it is to transform these possibilities of mine into dead-possibilities” (Sartre, p.403). This parallel between possibilities in the world and possibilities that are “dead” to the world support Sheets’s claims about abstractions. The abstraction is altered from an everyday movement to a created form and thus transcends it creating the abstracted symbol. “The dancer abstracts movement…in order that it may become aesthetically plastic, in order that it may be freely developed according to the demands of a symbolic form” (Sheets, p.67). This abstraction eliminates possibilities in the world because the potential body has become a potential form; this form however is not set and is variable to the creator of the form and thus dance becomes a symbol in present to a performer or an audience viewing the symbol. Sheets sees this form as valid and valuable, as she proclaims that we have found “dance as art” and that the evaluation of dance through a phenomenological perspective expounds the greatest possibility in the analysis of what dance is.
Works Cited
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Philosophical Library, Inc. Washington Square Press, 1992.
October 18, 2008
Chris Harris
Maxine Sheets’s book The Phenomenology of Dance explores the structure, movement, and frame in which dance appears as a phenomenon in our world. Utilizing the- phenomenological tradition Sheets sweeps through the elements of dance approaching them as a “lived experience” revealing dance’s forms in time and space while laying out her arguments for an aesthetic and academic appreciation of dance.
Sheets begins by framing a perspective of dance. She states when dance is present for us it is a lived experience, and recognized as a created phenomenon. From the created experience of a dancer or the experience regarded by a spectator dance forms a dynamic totality. This totality is built, respectively from forms that the dancers themselves are “implicitly” aware of. In this respect dancers have a: “Lived experience of the sheer dynamic flow of force…the dancers are reflexively aware neither of themselves, nor of the dance as a pre-existing form through which they move” (p.6). The overlaying reason Sheets gives for this phenomenon is that the dancers in this instance are not aware of the form because the dancers are not merely “agents” of the dance, but are rather the focal point and creators of the dance itself. Sheets further states that: “Only when we reflect upon the experience of the work as it is being created and presented, we remove ourselves from our immediate encounter with it, that we interrupt the flow and fragmentize its inherent totality” (p.6). By reflecting on the dance itself either as a spectator or as a dancer the presented totality ceases to be a lived experience and becomes a reflective past event. After giving a perspective of dance, Sheets then designates her intentions: to explore the “nature” of dance, its structures and the encounter of dance as “a formed and performed art”.
Through the lens that phenomenology provides Sheets begins to explore the structures of lived experiences though temporality. Sheets views the structure of temporality as two distinct substructures:”static and dynamic temporality. Static temporality each moment or experience is recognized as separate from the rest and as such becomes: past, present, future. Having rendered static temporality to parts, Sheets claims that the parts are only meaningful because they exist in relation to each other and are thus diasporatic; subsequently human consciousness exists in this way as a whole and in separate parts. The second sub-structure of dynamic temporality is a “pre-awareness” of time such that a person recognizes the passing, or passed time. This state of awareness is experienced in a backward manner, a person walking experiences walking at present toward a future, yet are creating a past as they move forward. It though this dynamic that “human consciousness attains a permanency” (Sheets, p.19), that it is a synthesis of the parts that create the whole or in this case the permanency of a person. The reflective state of either dynamic or static temporality reveals, what both Sartre and Sheets see as a unity of consciousness that does not conclude the self as an object because the awareness of the apparent other part such as the past is synthesized and altered as reflection occurs and is never the direct past or present of what was or is being analyzed. Sheets directly relates Sartre’s work here as she utilizes parts from Sartre’s examples of temporality in Being and Nothingness. Sartre states that this synthesis must occur because it will otherwise meet a paradox: “the past is no longer; the future is not yet; as for the instantaneous present everyone knows that this does not exist at all but is the limit of an infinite division, like a point without dimension” (Sartre, p.159), by utilizing an analysis of temporality as this whole Sheets can provide an overview of dance as a phenomenon in time and subsequently examine each part of dance in this way giving each part in relation to the whole of the experience.
From this examination of temporality Sheets begins to address the elements of force, rhythm and line in dance. Sheets begins by addressing what she refers to as “the illusion of force”. This illusion of force is created by the act of dance itself and is concluded as a virtual force in the world. The body, being corporeality is part of the physical structure in dance and provides a piece of the whole, but the illusion of force created by dance “transcends” its material aspect and becomes the source of the virtual force and the symbol of dance. Sheets concludes that this virtual force is the condition of dance, but dance like the structures of temporality are parts and thus are in perpetual motion. Sheets also notes that the: “amount of force refers not to a contained, static amount held by the body but to the manifest dynamic of the projection itself” (Sheets, p.52) which creates the symbol or abstraction in dance. Dance then is always in the making throughout time and space and is created though dimensions that exist when the dance itself exists. Rhythm in dance pertains to the composing form and is a dynamic fluidity of dance. “At any moment in composing the form, the dancer may either decide in advance where she wants to move, or the movement may be freely developed with no predetermined end point” (Sheets, p.102) in either case to Sheets the dance is controlled by temporality in the specific projection of force and affected by its range. The dance’s flow, its quality in the dynamic defines the movement. Sheets states here that “it is phenomenologically evident that each successive movement creates a qualitative change, and this, in turn, creates an accentual pattern, changing intensities, within the dynamic line. The dynamic line serves as a way for a virtual force to move as the dancer is creating the dance and is a pre-reflective awareness that guides the action through the temporality of the dance. This qualifies the parts of the dynamic that make up the spatial-temporal aspect and provides a comprehension of what dance is in the temporality of its state.
After laying out the respective aspects of dance Sheets elaborates on the abstraction in dance. “Abstraction is inherent in the creation of a symbolic form, through abstraction the symbolic form achieves a significance in and of itself; its meaning or import is intrinsic to it” (Sheets, p.59). These abstractions are the human feeling which is abstracted from an everyday context, and the abstraction of dance as an expressive mode. The human feeling is abstracted because it is separated from an everyday pattern and when set apart is “sheer dynamic form” a bridge which reveals a difference in common actions and actions in form. Sheets refers to everyday movements as movements that directly express feelings not separated by intended expressions but as a whole. Sartre relates this as such as possibilities in the world he concludes: “my body indicates my possibilities in the world, seeing my body or touching it is to transform these possibilities of mine into dead-possibilities” (Sartre, p.403). This parallel between possibilities in the world and possibilities that are “dead” to the world support Sheets’s claims about abstractions. The abstraction is altered from an everyday movement to a created form and thus transcends it creating the abstracted symbol. “The dancer abstracts movement…in order that it may become aesthetically plastic, in order that it may be freely developed according to the demands of a symbolic form” (Sheets, p.67). This abstraction eliminates possibilities in the world because the potential body has become a potential form; this form however is not set and is variable to the creator of the form and thus dance becomes a symbol in present to a performer or an audience viewing the symbol. Sheets sees this form as valid and valuable, as she proclaims that we have found “dance as art” and that the evaluation of dance through a phenomenological perspective expounds the greatest possibility in the analysis of what dance is.
Works Cited
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Philosophical Library, Inc. Washington Square Press, 1992.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology. Including Texts by Edmund Husserl. Edited by Leonard Lawlor with Bettina Bergo.
Michael Culbreth
9-17-08
Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology is a valuable and interesting read, partly because it offers us original material from 4 thinkers: Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, as well as writings from editors Lawlor and Bergo. The primary value in this text, however, is Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of Husserl’s incomplete philosophy that he was putting forth before he died, which, in turn, gives us valuable insight into Merleau-Ponty’s own unfinished thought just prior to his own demise.
Also of importance, writes Lawlor in his forward, is the convergences between the late Husserl and Heidegger that Merleau-Ponty notices in his readings of The Origin of Geometry and other Husserl manuscripts. According to Merleau-Ponty, Husserl’s concept of the genesis of sense is very similar to Heidegger’s notion of the Ereignis (event of appropriation) of Being. What the two ideas have in common in ‘vertical history’, which (roughly) means being in the present (but a deep present, that connects with other things). The Abgrund (abyss, without ground) is another similarity between Husserl and Heidegger that Merleau-Ponty brings to light. The past is an Abgrund, and it constitutes the depth of the present. Merleau-Ponty then touches on Heidegger and the late Husserl’s similar approach to language as an Abgrund (or the Abgrund, as Lawlor puts it).
Lawlor also discusses the ties between Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Derrida. Husserl’s own The Origin of Geometry discusses the process of writing, and how it can validate (or institute) geometrical concepts. Lawlor mentions this is a convergence of Derrida and Merleau-Ponty; they both think that writing is necessary in the creation of an ideal, or, more specifically, the grounding of them as ideals, once they’ve become ideals. There are also important differences between Derrida and Merleau-Ponty, which Lawlor discusses.
The first writing by Merleau-Ponty featured is his summary for a course primarily dedicated to The Origin of Geometry. Here Merleau-Ponty touches on the same issues Husserl grapples with in his late career, primarily, the problem of a truly phenomenological approach to history that can show us a things epistemological roots (in this case, geometry). How do we activate a geometry’s original self-evidence that spawned it? How is geometry made to be ‘for everyone’?
There is also the issue of language. How is speech involved in the transference of our thoughts into ideals? Husserl mulls over this problem in Origin a good deal. It’s a very complicated process, and Husserl does not fully resolve it. Backtracking a bit, how is geometry true and readily available for everyone, in spite of whatever their spatiotemporal bearings might be? How can people a hundred years ago access a body of knowledge that we can access today? And how can we build onto these handed down ideals, in any meaningful way, if we didn’t participate in the originary experiences that originally made these ideals? We still don’t know how these ideals were formed in a way that made that available to all throughout space and time.
Husserl seems to say that we can’t reactivate geometry’s originary giveness, because to do so, we would have to reactivate all the retentions within geometry, from our present and back to the beginning of geometry. How could we ever add to geometry if we are always directing ourselves actively to the swarms of retentions that constitute it? But if we don’t access that originary, self-evident, given foundation of geometry, how are we really interacting with the real experience, and not with what it has handed to us in passing conversation of textbooks? Merleau-Ponty deals with all this in a very unique way, but first I want to stay on Husserl first.
Husserl wants to find a way that allows for us to access the original experiences behind geometry (Merleau-Ponty will later say that we can never fully do that). He delves into the intersubjective experience, and much like in his Crisis of the European Sciences, he tries to say empathy is roughly equivalent to experiencing something in it’s most given nature. And that is how experience is exchanged among egos in an intersubjective world, according to Husserl. Language is part of the transference of meaning between us egos. Written language keeps an idea readily available to all, even when the originater(s) of that thought sleep or perish. In a way, this sediments the written, but it doesn’t quite make it ideal. Language constitutes part of the horizon through which the ideals make themselves known to us, but it is not language which elevates something like geometry into the ideal we know it as.
Merleau-Ponty is struggling with how to reactivate the originary sense of geometry too, in his course notes. He seems to argue a point that we can never fully reactivate the originary sense of geometry, and that part of the thought isn’t reactivated, but stays as part of the sedimentation that founds the series of retentions which we encounter. And Merleau-Ponty goes on to say that our retentions mingle with current phenomenon, the past somehow couples with the present as we understand it.
Merleau-Ponty then goes on to discuss Husserl’s empathy. Elaborating on the concept, he redefines empathy with others as something as an ‘interweaving’, an important facet of Merleau-Ponty’s later work. Because we are always connected to ‘others’, through a systematized language, and a cultural context, our intersubjective experience, our experience is a synthesized interweaving of our personal experience and that which we acquire through empathy with others.
In other writings featured in the text, Husserl discusses the planet Earth, and how we interact with it, phenomenologically. Yes, this planet is a sphere. But we don’t directly perceive it as a sphere, no, we can’t directly perceive this planet all at once, in it’s totality. Rather it manifests to us as a series of experiences that can be brought together in a synthesis as the “unified Earth”. But intuitively, how could we account for the fact that the planet is moving around the sun, and spinning on an axis? Is this possible without a relapse back into the handed down science of Copernicus?
Well, Husserl goes on to say that we can at least perceive of the planet as being a corporeal body, through our continuous experience on it, and through empathy in the intersubjective world of others, which informs us more of earth’s vastness. Through the unity of all of these experiences, we are able to constitute earth as a corporeal body that grounds us all. This doesn’t solve the problem of earth’s movement, and our ability to be aware of it. Merleau-Ponty dips into describing bodies. We see our flesh differently than we see the flesh of other bodies. We experience flesh that is outside our own as only ‘external’. Our bodies, our flesh, don’t move as spatial objects to us. According to Husserl, they are only experiencable as inner phenomena. Instead of perceiving ourselves move, we, more often than not, will the emotions, and are aware of our actions as willed.
For Merleau-Ponty, empathy, and his interweaving, will connect us to the other perspectives of this planet, and gives us a greater sense of it’s corporeality. And if we fly on an airplane, we have retentions of standing on the ground, and the two different modes of being on it can synthesize for us on expand on our accepted notions of possible being on the earth. Eventually a spherical shape could be deduced, based on the experiences of ending back up at one singular point after traveling in a straight direction long enough.
Merleau-Ponty concludes his notes on Husserl, citing a paradox in his thinking. There seems to be an unreconciled split in how we constitute the world; namely, the “realist-causal order and the idealist-constituting order (Merleau-Ponty, 76)”. Simplified, the realization of the idealizations out there causes problems for Merleau-Ponty. What happens to our geometrical constructs, if the constituting minds that constitute them cease to be? Do the idealizations stay, even without us to activate and reactivate them? If so, would they be of a greater validity than our direct experiences? Or do they just not exist, until we ‘re-produce’ them? Merleau-Ponty is bothered by this suggestion within Husserl’s thought.
Bettina Bergo’s afterward gives further context into the importance of Merleau-Ponty’s nuanced reading of Husserl, from his take on the epoche to other divergences with the father of phenomenology. All in all, this is a valuable book, though garbled in some parts, due to the fact that the bulk of the text is Merleau-Ponty’s loosely organized course notes. But sifting through them provides the reader with needed explanations and re-workings of concepts from late Husserl, which serve to make them thinker more comprehensible, or at least considered from a fresh new perspective. More importantly, it shows Husserl’s influence on the thought of Merleau-Ponty, and the subtle and not so subtle ways he differs from him, and the turn Merleau-Ponty’s thought was taking just before his death.
Works Cited:
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology. Edited by Leonard Lawlor with Bettina Bergo. 2002. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0-8101-1747-9.
Michael Culbreth
9-17-08
Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology is a valuable and interesting read, partly because it offers us original material from 4 thinkers: Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, as well as writings from editors Lawlor and Bergo. The primary value in this text, however, is Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of Husserl’s incomplete philosophy that he was putting forth before he died, which, in turn, gives us valuable insight into Merleau-Ponty’s own unfinished thought just prior to his own demise.
Also of importance, writes Lawlor in his forward, is the convergences between the late Husserl and Heidegger that Merleau-Ponty notices in his readings of The Origin of Geometry and other Husserl manuscripts. According to Merleau-Ponty, Husserl’s concept of the genesis of sense is very similar to Heidegger’s notion of the Ereignis (event of appropriation) of Being. What the two ideas have in common in ‘vertical history’, which (roughly) means being in the present (but a deep present, that connects with other things). The Abgrund (abyss, without ground) is another similarity between Husserl and Heidegger that Merleau-Ponty brings to light. The past is an Abgrund, and it constitutes the depth of the present. Merleau-Ponty then touches on Heidegger and the late Husserl’s similar approach to language as an Abgrund (or the Abgrund, as Lawlor puts it).
Lawlor also discusses the ties between Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Derrida. Husserl’s own The Origin of Geometry discusses the process of writing, and how it can validate (or institute) geometrical concepts. Lawlor mentions this is a convergence of Derrida and Merleau-Ponty; they both think that writing is necessary in the creation of an ideal, or, more specifically, the grounding of them as ideals, once they’ve become ideals. There are also important differences between Derrida and Merleau-Ponty, which Lawlor discusses.
The first writing by Merleau-Ponty featured is his summary for a course primarily dedicated to The Origin of Geometry. Here Merleau-Ponty touches on the same issues Husserl grapples with in his late career, primarily, the problem of a truly phenomenological approach to history that can show us a things epistemological roots (in this case, geometry). How do we activate a geometry’s original self-evidence that spawned it? How is geometry made to be ‘for everyone’?
There is also the issue of language. How is speech involved in the transference of our thoughts into ideals? Husserl mulls over this problem in Origin a good deal. It’s a very complicated process, and Husserl does not fully resolve it. Backtracking a bit, how is geometry true and readily available for everyone, in spite of whatever their spatiotemporal bearings might be? How can people a hundred years ago access a body of knowledge that we can access today? And how can we build onto these handed down ideals, in any meaningful way, if we didn’t participate in the originary experiences that originally made these ideals? We still don’t know how these ideals were formed in a way that made that available to all throughout space and time.
Husserl seems to say that we can’t reactivate geometry’s originary giveness, because to do so, we would have to reactivate all the retentions within geometry, from our present and back to the beginning of geometry. How could we ever add to geometry if we are always directing ourselves actively to the swarms of retentions that constitute it? But if we don’t access that originary, self-evident, given foundation of geometry, how are we really interacting with the real experience, and not with what it has handed to us in passing conversation of textbooks? Merleau-Ponty deals with all this in a very unique way, but first I want to stay on Husserl first.
Husserl wants to find a way that allows for us to access the original experiences behind geometry (Merleau-Ponty will later say that we can never fully do that). He delves into the intersubjective experience, and much like in his Crisis of the European Sciences, he tries to say empathy is roughly equivalent to experiencing something in it’s most given nature. And that is how experience is exchanged among egos in an intersubjective world, according to Husserl. Language is part of the transference of meaning between us egos. Written language keeps an idea readily available to all, even when the originater(s) of that thought sleep or perish. In a way, this sediments the written, but it doesn’t quite make it ideal. Language constitutes part of the horizon through which the ideals make themselves known to us, but it is not language which elevates something like geometry into the ideal we know it as.
Merleau-Ponty is struggling with how to reactivate the originary sense of geometry too, in his course notes. He seems to argue a point that we can never fully reactivate the originary sense of geometry, and that part of the thought isn’t reactivated, but stays as part of the sedimentation that founds the series of retentions which we encounter. And Merleau-Ponty goes on to say that our retentions mingle with current phenomenon, the past somehow couples with the present as we understand it.
Merleau-Ponty then goes on to discuss Husserl’s empathy. Elaborating on the concept, he redefines empathy with others as something as an ‘interweaving’, an important facet of Merleau-Ponty’s later work. Because we are always connected to ‘others’, through a systematized language, and a cultural context, our intersubjective experience, our experience is a synthesized interweaving of our personal experience and that which we acquire through empathy with others.
In other writings featured in the text, Husserl discusses the planet Earth, and how we interact with it, phenomenologically. Yes, this planet is a sphere. But we don’t directly perceive it as a sphere, no, we can’t directly perceive this planet all at once, in it’s totality. Rather it manifests to us as a series of experiences that can be brought together in a synthesis as the “unified Earth”. But intuitively, how could we account for the fact that the planet is moving around the sun, and spinning on an axis? Is this possible without a relapse back into the handed down science of Copernicus?
Well, Husserl goes on to say that we can at least perceive of the planet as being a corporeal body, through our continuous experience on it, and through empathy in the intersubjective world of others, which informs us more of earth’s vastness. Through the unity of all of these experiences, we are able to constitute earth as a corporeal body that grounds us all. This doesn’t solve the problem of earth’s movement, and our ability to be aware of it. Merleau-Ponty dips into describing bodies. We see our flesh differently than we see the flesh of other bodies. We experience flesh that is outside our own as only ‘external’. Our bodies, our flesh, don’t move as spatial objects to us. According to Husserl, they are only experiencable as inner phenomena. Instead of perceiving ourselves move, we, more often than not, will the emotions, and are aware of our actions as willed.
For Merleau-Ponty, empathy, and his interweaving, will connect us to the other perspectives of this planet, and gives us a greater sense of it’s corporeality. And if we fly on an airplane, we have retentions of standing on the ground, and the two different modes of being on it can synthesize for us on expand on our accepted notions of possible being on the earth. Eventually a spherical shape could be deduced, based on the experiences of ending back up at one singular point after traveling in a straight direction long enough.
Merleau-Ponty concludes his notes on Husserl, citing a paradox in his thinking. There seems to be an unreconciled split in how we constitute the world; namely, the “realist-causal order and the idealist-constituting order (Merleau-Ponty, 76)”. Simplified, the realization of the idealizations out there causes problems for Merleau-Ponty. What happens to our geometrical constructs, if the constituting minds that constitute them cease to be? Do the idealizations stay, even without us to activate and reactivate them? If so, would they be of a greater validity than our direct experiences? Or do they just not exist, until we ‘re-produce’ them? Merleau-Ponty is bothered by this suggestion within Husserl’s thought.
Bettina Bergo’s afterward gives further context into the importance of Merleau-Ponty’s nuanced reading of Husserl, from his take on the epoche to other divergences with the father of phenomenology. All in all, this is a valuable book, though garbled in some parts, due to the fact that the bulk of the text is Merleau-Ponty’s loosely organized course notes. But sifting through them provides the reader with needed explanations and re-workings of concepts from late Husserl, which serve to make them thinker more comprehensible, or at least considered from a fresh new perspective. More importantly, it shows Husserl’s influence on the thought of Merleau-Ponty, and the subtle and not so subtle ways he differs from him, and the turn Merleau-Ponty’s thought was taking just before his death.
Works Cited:
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology. Edited by Leonard Lawlor with Bettina Bergo. 2002. Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0-8101-1747-9.
Michael Simpkins
Philosophy 352 – Report #1
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Nature is a vast connection of desiring-machines endlessly linked through the coupling of flows and desires. But these flows are constantly blocked and let loose, stalled, interfered with, and dispersed. Yet they are necessary and allow the machine to function, even more, they define it. Without the disjunctions there is no machine. In Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia they sought to reformulate the understanding of the world and an individual’s place in it. No longer would a split exist between man and nature and gone is the idea of “independent spheres or circuits…everything is production.”[i] They proposed a “new ontology of the social, of social being…a fundamental departure from the dominant Western ontological tradition.”[ii] Within this project also exists the complete dismantling of the Oedipal tradition and its misrepresentation of desire and repression: they expose it, proclaiming the simplicity of its structure absurd, its efficacy tragic, and the ends to which psychotherapists will go to force patients into its narrow framework laughable. The breadth of their work is remarkable and is nearly matched by the density of the writing. Words, ideas, and concepts are difficult to comprehend as “everything is absorbed and endowed with new meaning in this vast, paranoid synthesis,” with the synthesis realized “through images, metaphors, and motifs.”[iii]
Deleuze and Guattari unmercifully attack pychoanalysts and Oedipus throughout the entire work. Early in the first section they recall Freud’s position that he never liked schizophrenics because of their resistance to being Oedipalized. In opposition to Freud, Deleuze and Guattari believe they resist because they live outside of the daddy-mommy-me triangle, their “flows ooze, they traverse the triangle, breaking apart its vertices.”[iv] Their resistance reveals the gross limitations of the psychoanalytic framework. Unable to classify the particular malady of the Schizophrenic they force, if successful, him or her into the triangle, and in the end the individual is left no more than “a rag.” Empty of all of their former projections and extensions and possibilities they merely lay on the couch parroting their therapist, “yes, it is daddy and mommy and only them.” The possibilities of “Either…or…or,” are replaced by “So it is.” Those bent to these regressions have learned through habit and punishment not to challenge the supremacy of this idea, to which Deleuze and Guattari offer some truly horrific examples of therapists forcing people, children in some cases even, to accept all of this. Whereas the afflicted had moved beyond these familial issues (if they were ever present at all), they are forced back to the deal with them and become autistic.
A key split between Freudian theory and Deleuze and Guattari occurs over the nature of the unconscious. The latter “do not deny that there is an Oedipal sexuality…an Oedipal castration, as well as complete objects, global images, and specific egos. [They] deny that these are the productions of the unconscious.”[v] Whereas Freud believed the unconscious affected by the desire of one’s mother and the repression of this as the foundation of mental illness, Deleuze and Guattari believe that “the unconscious is an orphan.”[vi] The unconscious is formed through processes extending beyond the family, even children begin to understand and identify with “the economic, financial, social, and cultural problems that cross through [their] family.”[vii] These undercurrents continually expose the limitations of Oedipal theorizing which Deleuze and Guattari are attempting to supplant and move beyond. The unconscious “is the Real in itself,”[viii] and is more accurately understood when schizophrenized, that is, allowed to transcend the bounds continually constraining it through psychoanalysis. Oedipus transforms the unconscious from a “factory” to a “theatre.” The Oedipal story is played over and over again as if before an audience, destroying the productive capacities that had once existed. And to those who refuse this treatment, there is always “the asylum or the police.”[ix] Furthermore, it is not even clear what is achieved through this supposed treatment. Do the patients ever move beyond their triangulation and become cured? Deleuze and Guattari believe they are healed, but only by passing their illness on to their offspring.
The answer offered in place of psychoanalysis by Deleuze and Guattari is schizoanalysis. This can be used to identify and analyze societal problems. It seeks to explain one of the most troubling questions, how “desire can be made to desire its own repression.”[x] Here is the link showing that Oedipus is more than just a failed psychological theory, how it serves as the underpinnings of the ruling class, and is intimately connected with capitalism.
Before moving on to this analysis it will be helpful to introduce the concepts of desiring-production, the body without organs, and the socius. Deleuze and Guattari liken the body without organs to an egg which stands opposed to the desiring-machines continually acting on it. An endless string of machines connect to the body and siphon off the subsequent productions. This organization, however, is detrimental to the body and causes repression, the continual struggle, or rather “repulsion,” against these desiring-machines.[xi] As stated earlier, machines function, in a sense, by breaking down. This process, too, wears on the body without organs. In its production the surplus is taken away, manipulated and stored by other machines. The body without organs comes to desire this desiring-production, but is misled by the recording process. The socius is a body that can take any shape (that of the Earth, a tyrant, property, etc.), and forms a surface on which all the flows of desire are recorded and codified.[xii] It forever regulates the movements and limitations of these flows. The recording process is, however, inaccurate as it attributes the production to the desiring-machines rather than to the body. Capitalism intrudes upon the vulnerabilities of the socius and seeks to destroy its mechanism of recording, and in the process, “unleash the flows of desire.”[xiii] Although this unleashing occurs, it is not without new territories being continually established. This entire “process of the production of desire and desiring-machines [is schizophrenia].”[xiv] In seeking to appropriate the body without organs for its own designs it first inscribes the ideas of “races, cultures, and…gods.”[xv]
Capitalism struggles within itself. By decoding the socius from “intrinsic codes…[to] abstract quantities in the form of money,” it unleashes desire but within new parameters that are constantly shifting.[xvi] The tension drives it into constant opposition with itself, hence schizophrenia as “the absolute limit, [while] capitalism is the relative limit.”[xvii] Psychoanalysis serves the ends of capitalism by supplanting the myth of Oedipus as a distraction away from real societal problems, be they political, economic, legal, etc. It also serves to keep the problem localized to prevent the flows from exceeding their boundaries. Modern society has thus undergone a vast privatization to amass the surplus of each part. But the parts themselves, at one point, were appropriated for the entire community. For the “primitive machine is not ignorant of exchange, commerce, and industry; it exorcises them, localizes them, cordons them off, encastes them…so that the flows of exchange and the flows of production do not manage to break the codes in favor of their abstract or fictional qualities.”[xviii] This is exactly what capitalism has achieved, the rearrangement of the socius to remake itself as the originator of all production.
This belief can even be transferred from a capitalistic society to one that is not by colonization. The progenitors of the Oedipal myth travel from country to country, dissecting various cultures and fallaciously trying to find the universality of Oedipus in every local myth, legend, and custom. They miss the mark, however, not because Oedipus is not universal, but from a misunderstanding of the universal condition, that every society fears “the decoded flows of desire,” and thus works to reign in these flows in one-way or another.[xix] The myth of Oedipus can therefore be easily inscribed into the unique beliefs and practices of each society (as can capitalism). And this is the project that must come next, the complete liberty of these flows towards whatever ends may be found.
Schizoanalysis seeks to free the unconscious from the internal discord between decoded flows and arbitrary limits. The field of inquiry ceases to close in upon itself, as capitalism does, and the process of schizoanalysis “sets out to explore a transcendental unconscious, rather than a metaphysical one; an unconscious that is material rather than ideological; schizophrenic rather than Oedipal…real rather than symbolic.”[xx] It does this by recognizing the errors of psychoanalysis, its substitution of representation for production. For representation is a form of production even if endowed with myth and tragedy.[xxi] Schizoanalysis seeks a complete deterritorialization, one that is freed from the ever-resurfacing territorializations that accompany the deterritorializations found in capitalism. It is the destruction of all limits and artificial constraints, “a whole scouring of the unconscious, a complete curettage.”[xxii] It will continually work to transcend any and all artificial boundaries and constraints.
This process will take much time as everything must be reevaluated and reexamined. Indeed, it may be a process for which there is no end as Deleuze and Guattari compare it to an infinite spider-web always being undone. The end, or the process, results not in an answer to, “what does it mean?” but rather, “how does it work?” This process is grounded in the idea of schizophrenia for the schizophrenic is one who has had too much and “can no longer bear ‘all that:’ money, the stock market, the death forces…values, morals, homelands, religions…”[xxiii] They recede into their own world, never quite finding the means to make all that disappear. The revolutionary individual is similar, but in addition to wanting leave of it all he or she will also know “how to make what he [or she] is escaping escape.”[xxiv]
[i] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 4.
[ii] William Bogard, “Sense and Segmentarity: Some Markers of a Deleuzian-Guattarian Sociology.” Sociological Theory, no. 1 (March 1998): 54.
[iii] Eugene W. Holland, “Deterritorializing ‘Deterritorialization’: From the ‘Anti-Oedipus’ to ‘A Thousand Plateaus.” SubStance, Vol. 20, No. 3, Issue 66 (1991): 291.
[iv] Deleuze-Guattari, 67.
[v] Deleuze-Guattari, 74.
[vi] Deleuze-Guattari, 49.
[vii] Deleuze-Guattari, 278.
[viii] Deleuze-Guattari, 53.
[ix] Deleuze-Guattari, 81.
[x] Deleuze-Guattari, 105.
[xi] Deleuze-Guattari, 9.
[xii] Deleuze-Guattari, 10 and 33.
[xiii] Deleuze-Guattari, 33.
[xiv] Deleuze-Guattari, 24.
[xv] Deleuze-Guattari, 85.
[xvi] Deleuze-Guattari, 139.
[xvii] Deleuze-Guattari, 176.
[xviii] Deleuze-Guattari, 153.
[xix] Deleuze-Guattari, 177 and 179.
[xx] Deleuze-Guattari, 278 and 109.
[xxi] Deleuze-Guattari, 296 and 297.
[xxii] Deleuze-Guattari, 311.
[xxiii] Deleuze-Guattari, 341.
[xxiv] Deleuze-Guattari, 341.
Philosophy 352 – Report #1
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Nature is a vast connection of desiring-machines endlessly linked through the coupling of flows and desires. But these flows are constantly blocked and let loose, stalled, interfered with, and dispersed. Yet they are necessary and allow the machine to function, even more, they define it. Without the disjunctions there is no machine. In Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia they sought to reformulate the understanding of the world and an individual’s place in it. No longer would a split exist between man and nature and gone is the idea of “independent spheres or circuits…everything is production.”[i] They proposed a “new ontology of the social, of social being…a fundamental departure from the dominant Western ontological tradition.”[ii] Within this project also exists the complete dismantling of the Oedipal tradition and its misrepresentation of desire and repression: they expose it, proclaiming the simplicity of its structure absurd, its efficacy tragic, and the ends to which psychotherapists will go to force patients into its narrow framework laughable. The breadth of their work is remarkable and is nearly matched by the density of the writing. Words, ideas, and concepts are difficult to comprehend as “everything is absorbed and endowed with new meaning in this vast, paranoid synthesis,” with the synthesis realized “through images, metaphors, and motifs.”[iii]
Deleuze and Guattari unmercifully attack pychoanalysts and Oedipus throughout the entire work. Early in the first section they recall Freud’s position that he never liked schizophrenics because of their resistance to being Oedipalized. In opposition to Freud, Deleuze and Guattari believe they resist because they live outside of the daddy-mommy-me triangle, their “flows ooze, they traverse the triangle, breaking apart its vertices.”[iv] Their resistance reveals the gross limitations of the psychoanalytic framework. Unable to classify the particular malady of the Schizophrenic they force, if successful, him or her into the triangle, and in the end the individual is left no more than “a rag.” Empty of all of their former projections and extensions and possibilities they merely lay on the couch parroting their therapist, “yes, it is daddy and mommy and only them.” The possibilities of “Either…or…or,” are replaced by “So it is.” Those bent to these regressions have learned through habit and punishment not to challenge the supremacy of this idea, to which Deleuze and Guattari offer some truly horrific examples of therapists forcing people, children in some cases even, to accept all of this. Whereas the afflicted had moved beyond these familial issues (if they were ever present at all), they are forced back to the deal with them and become autistic.
A key split between Freudian theory and Deleuze and Guattari occurs over the nature of the unconscious. The latter “do not deny that there is an Oedipal sexuality…an Oedipal castration, as well as complete objects, global images, and specific egos. [They] deny that these are the productions of the unconscious.”[v] Whereas Freud believed the unconscious affected by the desire of one’s mother and the repression of this as the foundation of mental illness, Deleuze and Guattari believe that “the unconscious is an orphan.”[vi] The unconscious is formed through processes extending beyond the family, even children begin to understand and identify with “the economic, financial, social, and cultural problems that cross through [their] family.”[vii] These undercurrents continually expose the limitations of Oedipal theorizing which Deleuze and Guattari are attempting to supplant and move beyond. The unconscious “is the Real in itself,”[viii] and is more accurately understood when schizophrenized, that is, allowed to transcend the bounds continually constraining it through psychoanalysis. Oedipus transforms the unconscious from a “factory” to a “theatre.” The Oedipal story is played over and over again as if before an audience, destroying the productive capacities that had once existed. And to those who refuse this treatment, there is always “the asylum or the police.”[ix] Furthermore, it is not even clear what is achieved through this supposed treatment. Do the patients ever move beyond their triangulation and become cured? Deleuze and Guattari believe they are healed, but only by passing their illness on to their offspring.
The answer offered in place of psychoanalysis by Deleuze and Guattari is schizoanalysis. This can be used to identify and analyze societal problems. It seeks to explain one of the most troubling questions, how “desire can be made to desire its own repression.”[x] Here is the link showing that Oedipus is more than just a failed psychological theory, how it serves as the underpinnings of the ruling class, and is intimately connected with capitalism.
Before moving on to this analysis it will be helpful to introduce the concepts of desiring-production, the body without organs, and the socius. Deleuze and Guattari liken the body without organs to an egg which stands opposed to the desiring-machines continually acting on it. An endless string of machines connect to the body and siphon off the subsequent productions. This organization, however, is detrimental to the body and causes repression, the continual struggle, or rather “repulsion,” against these desiring-machines.[xi] As stated earlier, machines function, in a sense, by breaking down. This process, too, wears on the body without organs. In its production the surplus is taken away, manipulated and stored by other machines. The body without organs comes to desire this desiring-production, but is misled by the recording process. The socius is a body that can take any shape (that of the Earth, a tyrant, property, etc.), and forms a surface on which all the flows of desire are recorded and codified.[xii] It forever regulates the movements and limitations of these flows. The recording process is, however, inaccurate as it attributes the production to the desiring-machines rather than to the body. Capitalism intrudes upon the vulnerabilities of the socius and seeks to destroy its mechanism of recording, and in the process, “unleash the flows of desire.”[xiii] Although this unleashing occurs, it is not without new territories being continually established. This entire “process of the production of desire and desiring-machines [is schizophrenia].”[xiv] In seeking to appropriate the body without organs for its own designs it first inscribes the ideas of “races, cultures, and…gods.”[xv]
Capitalism struggles within itself. By decoding the socius from “intrinsic codes…[to] abstract quantities in the form of money,” it unleashes desire but within new parameters that are constantly shifting.[xvi] The tension drives it into constant opposition with itself, hence schizophrenia as “the absolute limit, [while] capitalism is the relative limit.”[xvii] Psychoanalysis serves the ends of capitalism by supplanting the myth of Oedipus as a distraction away from real societal problems, be they political, economic, legal, etc. It also serves to keep the problem localized to prevent the flows from exceeding their boundaries. Modern society has thus undergone a vast privatization to amass the surplus of each part. But the parts themselves, at one point, were appropriated for the entire community. For the “primitive machine is not ignorant of exchange, commerce, and industry; it exorcises them, localizes them, cordons them off, encastes them…so that the flows of exchange and the flows of production do not manage to break the codes in favor of their abstract or fictional qualities.”[xviii] This is exactly what capitalism has achieved, the rearrangement of the socius to remake itself as the originator of all production.
This belief can even be transferred from a capitalistic society to one that is not by colonization. The progenitors of the Oedipal myth travel from country to country, dissecting various cultures and fallaciously trying to find the universality of Oedipus in every local myth, legend, and custom. They miss the mark, however, not because Oedipus is not universal, but from a misunderstanding of the universal condition, that every society fears “the decoded flows of desire,” and thus works to reign in these flows in one-way or another.[xix] The myth of Oedipus can therefore be easily inscribed into the unique beliefs and practices of each society (as can capitalism). And this is the project that must come next, the complete liberty of these flows towards whatever ends may be found.
Schizoanalysis seeks to free the unconscious from the internal discord between decoded flows and arbitrary limits. The field of inquiry ceases to close in upon itself, as capitalism does, and the process of schizoanalysis “sets out to explore a transcendental unconscious, rather than a metaphysical one; an unconscious that is material rather than ideological; schizophrenic rather than Oedipal…real rather than symbolic.”[xx] It does this by recognizing the errors of psychoanalysis, its substitution of representation for production. For representation is a form of production even if endowed with myth and tragedy.[xxi] Schizoanalysis seeks a complete deterritorialization, one that is freed from the ever-resurfacing territorializations that accompany the deterritorializations found in capitalism. It is the destruction of all limits and artificial constraints, “a whole scouring of the unconscious, a complete curettage.”[xxii] It will continually work to transcend any and all artificial boundaries and constraints.
This process will take much time as everything must be reevaluated and reexamined. Indeed, it may be a process for which there is no end as Deleuze and Guattari compare it to an infinite spider-web always being undone. The end, or the process, results not in an answer to, “what does it mean?” but rather, “how does it work?” This process is grounded in the idea of schizophrenia for the schizophrenic is one who has had too much and “can no longer bear ‘all that:’ money, the stock market, the death forces…values, morals, homelands, religions…”[xxiii] They recede into their own world, never quite finding the means to make all that disappear. The revolutionary individual is similar, but in addition to wanting leave of it all he or she will also know “how to make what he [or she] is escaping escape.”[xxiv]
[i] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 4.
[ii] William Bogard, “Sense and Segmentarity: Some Markers of a Deleuzian-Guattarian Sociology.” Sociological Theory, no. 1 (March 1998): 54.
[iii] Eugene W. Holland, “Deterritorializing ‘Deterritorialization’: From the ‘Anti-Oedipus’ to ‘A Thousand Plateaus.” SubStance, Vol. 20, No. 3, Issue 66 (1991): 291.
[iv] Deleuze-Guattari, 67.
[v] Deleuze-Guattari, 74.
[vi] Deleuze-Guattari, 49.
[vii] Deleuze-Guattari, 278.
[viii] Deleuze-Guattari, 53.
[ix] Deleuze-Guattari, 81.
[x] Deleuze-Guattari, 105.
[xi] Deleuze-Guattari, 9.
[xii] Deleuze-Guattari, 10 and 33.
[xiii] Deleuze-Guattari, 33.
[xiv] Deleuze-Guattari, 24.
[xv] Deleuze-Guattari, 85.
[xvi] Deleuze-Guattari, 139.
[xvii] Deleuze-Guattari, 176.
[xviii] Deleuze-Guattari, 153.
[xix] Deleuze-Guattari, 177 and 179.
[xx] Deleuze-Guattari, 278 and 109.
[xxi] Deleuze-Guattari, 296 and 297.
[xxii] Deleuze-Guattari, 311.
[xxiii] Deleuze-Guattari, 341.
[xxiv] Deleuze-Guattari, 341.
Jessica Rugh
Dr. Duane Davis
Phil 352
24 September 2008
Kockelmans, Joseph J., Editor. A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s “Being and Time”. USA: University Press of America, Inc., 1986.
This book is a collection of essays by writers seeking to explore, clarify, and criticize topics and issues presented in Being and Time. In the introduction to the anthology Kockelmans points out that this is not a commentary or a summary of Being and Time. Instead, it is meant to “point to issues with which the reader should be familiar if he or she is to understand Heidegger’s text correctly” (p.xi). In the introduction Kockelmans also provides a short summary of Being and Time as well as a brief synopsis of each of the essays included in the collection. The text also includes an extensive bibliography (of the works cited in the essays) that could serve as a source of useful suggestions for further research.
There are twelve essays by twelve different authors in this anthology, one of which is by Kockelmans himself. As I was unable to read them all, I will report on those I did and only list the others.
1. “Signification and Radical Subjectivity in Heidegger’s Habilitationsschrift” by Roderick M. Stewart.
2. “Heidegger’s Early Lecture Courses” by Theodore J. Kisiel.
This essay examines the importance of the early lecture courses that contributed to Heidegger’s thought in Being and Time. Kisiel believes that “the importance of these earliest courses cannot be overestimated” (p.22) as they form the foundation of the progression of Heidegger’s thought throughout his career.
He begins by describing methods for obtaining transcripts of the lectures…student notes translated from shorthand, paraphrased summaries of the lectures, even notes copied in longhand during the lecture itself…these are what we have today as our manuscripts of Heidegger’s lectures. Kisiel then draws attention to the fact that there are discrepancies between Heidegger’s published curriculum vitae and what Heidegger himself was citing about the dates of his works. The student transcripts, or Nachschriften, can be useful in “setting the record straight” (p.26). Kisiel then provides some suggestions for the discrepancies.
The essay then shifts topics to a separate section titled, “Is the Return to Origins Scientific or ‘Historical’?” In this section, Kisiel traces the development of major terms and ideas from Heidegger’s early lectures to major works such as Being and Time. These include Dasein, Zu-sein, facticity, hermeneutics, and Existenz (p.29). He concludes the article by reiterating that the importance of the early lecture courses is based on the fact that they are the developmental stages of the major issues presented in Heidegger’s later works.
This essay was very easy to read and provides an interesting and concise description of some of Heidegger’s early works and their connections to his later works. This source could be a good starting reference for further research on the development of Heidegger’s ideas throughout his career.
3. “Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion’, 1920-1921” by Thomas J. Sheehan.
4. “Heidegger and Husserl’s Logical Investigations. In Remembrance of Heidegger’s Last Seminar…” by Jacques Taminiaux.
5. “The Origins of Heidegger’s Thought” by John Sallis.
This essay seeks to answer the question “what are the origins of Heidegger’s thought?” Sallis identifies three distinct concepts or levels of origin that will contribute to our understanding of the origin of Heidegger’s thought. These are: 1) the historical origin; 2) the original or basic issue and how it serves as origin; and 3) that which grants philosophical thought its content (p. 91). Sallis then divides the remaining portion of the essay into individual exposition of each of these three concepts.
The historical origin is taken to be the earlier thinkers who “served to set Heidegger’s thought on its way” (p.91). Sallis targets Husserl’s phenomenology as the historical origin of influence for Heidegger. He then includes a brief description of phenomenology and shows how Being and Time employs a type of phenomenology for its goals. Other historical influences on Heidegger’s thought were the Greek philosophers, namely Plato and Aristotle (p.94).
The second concept of origin is the more basic sense of origin, or “the issue from which originates Heidegger’s approach to other issues” (p.97). Sallis identifies this issue as “disclosedness”. He believes that disclosedness is exemplified as the original issue in Being and Time in Heidegger’s understanding and use of the concept of Dasein. Before moving on to the next section Sallis explains a terminology shift evident in Heidegger’s later works: the use of the term “alethia”, which has more of a sense of truth, instead of “disclosedness” (p.99).
The third sense of origin is a “radicalizing” of the concept of origin. Sallis argues that Dasein must be allowed to disclose itself so that philosophical analysis can identify original truth as the origin of thought.
This essay could be helpful for strengthening the understanding of Dasein. It was well written, though difficult to work through at times, but could serve as a useful secondary source for grasping the project of Being and Time.
6. “Husserl, Heidegger and the Question of a ‘Hermeneutic’ Phenomenology” by John D. Caputo.
7. “Heidegger and the Destruction of Ontology” by Samuel IJsseling.
In this essay IJsseling seeks to clarify Heidegger’s phenomenology, particularly his use of the word “destruction.” IJsseling identifies three basic components that characterize phenomenology. These are: 1) the phenomenological reduction, or the “leading back from beings to Being”; 2) the phenomenological construction, or the “projection of pregiven beings against the background of their Being and the structures of their Being”; and 3) the phenomenological destruction, or the “critical dismantling” of concepts handed down to us (p.128-129).
IJsseling connects Heidegger’s phenomenological destruction to Husserl’s epochē but points out differences between their uses. “Destruction does not mean demolishing or destroying” but rather signifies a “freeing of oneself from the tradition stock of ontological concepts” (p.130). For IJsseling, the meaning of destruction is still ambiguous. The rest of the essay is divided into two sections with the goal of elaborating and attempting to clarify the problems associated with Heidegger’s conception of destruction.
In my opinion, this essay contained an excessive amount of quotes that made reading difficult. On the other hand, IJsseling could have included so many quotes in order to get Heidegger’s meaning across better than would be possible with paraphrasing. This essay could be useful while reading later sections of Being and Time and also for furthering the understanding of Heidegger’s ontology.
8. “Being-True as the Basic Determination of Being” by Joseph J. Kockelmans.
The goal of this essay is to examine and clarify Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of truth in order to contribute to the understanding of the problem of the conception of the question of Being in relation to the question of alethia. More specifically, Kockelmans is seeking to make the connection between Heidegger’s 1920’s conception of the question concerning the meaning of Being with his later conception of alethia. He points out that Heidegger seemed to avoid discussing his own opinions about truth and instead focused his lectures and writings on exploring historical and critical interpretations, perhaps because he was “not yet completely ready” to share his own ideas (p.146).
Kockelmans then points out main differences between the ideas about truth presented in Heidegger’s 1925 lecture on truth (Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs) and Being and Time. He then includes a short summary (p.148-150) of “On the Essence of Truth” (an essay by Heidegger published in 1930). This is followed by a summary of “On the Essence of Human Freedom”, a lecture on the relationship between truth and freedom, also from 1930. Kockelmans provides a detailed analysis of Heidegger on Aristotle based on passages from this lecture and Aristotle’s Metaphysics. He also points out some of the apparent contradictions in the work and includes others’ solutions/suggestions about the problems as well as proposes his own. He concludes by claiming that his examination of Heidegger’s different approaches to the question of the meaning of being between 1925 and 1930 show that there was “very little development in Heidegger’s thinking with respect to his conception of truth” (p.157).
This essay was well written and easy to read. It would be most helpful for information on the development of Heidegger’s thought through time, not necessarily on enlightening any of the specific concepts themselves, though it does provide good descriptions and comparison analysis of some of the more important topics in Being and Time.
9. “Heidegger and the Quest of Freedom” by William J. Richardson.
10. “The Concept of Time in Heidegger’s Early Works” by Marion Heinz.
11. “Ekstatic Temporality in Sein und Zeit” by Graeme Nicholson.
This essay focuses on concept of Time in Heidegger’s works, not just in Being and Time. Nicholson points out that the study of Heidegger’s conception of ideas has been primarily on Dasein and Being. He wants to focus on an analysis of the themes of Temporality and Time but does not seek to push for a separation or prioritizing of the concepts.
Nicholson conducts his investigation by dividing his work into different sections. The first of these is “Dasein and Care” wherein he identifies three components of care that are important in the understanding of Temporality. The first component is known by two different names (Verstehen, or projection, and Existenzialitat, or existentiality). Nicholson defines Verstehen as a power of disclosure in us, whereas Existenzialitat is that which becomes disclosed by projection (p.210). The second component of care is also referred to by two names. Befindlichkeit, or affectivity, and Faktizitat, or facticity. Befindlichkeit is, for Nicholson, a mode of disclosure that qualifies all of Dasein’s projecting. Moods are an aspect of this. Faktizitat is also a mode of disclosure (p.211). The third component of care is Verfallen. Nicholson seems to gloss over the definition of this term, saying that it is “colorful” and that it “summons up images of the fall of man…and of the collapse and decline of civilization,” though Heidegger himself denied these shadings of the term (p.211). He decides to define it as “Dasein’s constant compromise” since Dasein is always at risk of being diverted, to conform, or to become compromised (p.211).
Nicholson then develops the relationship between these three terms and how they relate to temporality in the remaining section of the essay. He also suggests ways of reading Heidegger's works with these concepts in minds and provides very detailed, paragraph-by-paragraph analyses of different works concerning temporality and care. His exploration of temporality leads him to point out parts of temporality known as “ekstases” (p.216). Ekstasis can be understood as “being placed out of self” or “displacement” (p. 220). Though Heidegger doesn’t explicitly state it, Nicholson believes that you can infer from his word choice that “whatever is touched by temporality, or participates in it, will acquire some degree of ekstasis from it” (p.220). He provides further elaboration of this sense of ekstasis presented in Being and Time. Nicholson ends the article by making conclusions about Dasein’s relation to ekstases, namely that the interplay of the different ekstases cannot by foreseen by Dasein, and encourages the reader to explore the nature of ekstasis itself.
This essay was especially difficult because of the large number of German words included in the body of the text. It could serve as a good source for anyone seeking to do an in-depth study of the Time aspect of Being and Time.
12. “Metaphysics and Topology of Being in Heidegger” by Otto Poggeler.
Overall, I think A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ is a practical compilation of essays pertaining to Heidegger’s Being and Time. The topics of each essay range greatly, but individually and as a collection they can contribute helpful and insightful information for a deeper understanding of Being and Time and Heidegger’s philosophical project as a whole. The main drawback, at this point at least, is that most of the essays draw extensively on sections of Being and Time that we have not yet read for class and site other works by Heidegger that I am unfamiliar with. All of the essays also frequently use the original German terminology, so it may also be helpful to have a background in German if you are going to use any of these articles for serious research, or at least have a German dictionary handy!
Dr. Duane Davis
Phil 352
24 September 2008
Kockelmans, Joseph J., Editor. A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s “Being and Time”. USA: University Press of America, Inc., 1986.
This book is a collection of essays by writers seeking to explore, clarify, and criticize topics and issues presented in Being and Time. In the introduction to the anthology Kockelmans points out that this is not a commentary or a summary of Being and Time. Instead, it is meant to “point to issues with which the reader should be familiar if he or she is to understand Heidegger’s text correctly” (p.xi). In the introduction Kockelmans also provides a short summary of Being and Time as well as a brief synopsis of each of the essays included in the collection. The text also includes an extensive bibliography (of the works cited in the essays) that could serve as a source of useful suggestions for further research.
There are twelve essays by twelve different authors in this anthology, one of which is by Kockelmans himself. As I was unable to read them all, I will report on those I did and only list the others.
1. “Signification and Radical Subjectivity in Heidegger’s Habilitationsschrift” by Roderick M. Stewart.
2. “Heidegger’s Early Lecture Courses” by Theodore J. Kisiel.
This essay examines the importance of the early lecture courses that contributed to Heidegger’s thought in Being and Time. Kisiel believes that “the importance of these earliest courses cannot be overestimated” (p.22) as they form the foundation of the progression of Heidegger’s thought throughout his career.
He begins by describing methods for obtaining transcripts of the lectures…student notes translated from shorthand, paraphrased summaries of the lectures, even notes copied in longhand during the lecture itself…these are what we have today as our manuscripts of Heidegger’s lectures. Kisiel then draws attention to the fact that there are discrepancies between Heidegger’s published curriculum vitae and what Heidegger himself was citing about the dates of his works. The student transcripts, or Nachschriften, can be useful in “setting the record straight” (p.26). Kisiel then provides some suggestions for the discrepancies.
The essay then shifts topics to a separate section titled, “Is the Return to Origins Scientific or ‘Historical’?” In this section, Kisiel traces the development of major terms and ideas from Heidegger’s early lectures to major works such as Being and Time. These include Dasein, Zu-sein, facticity, hermeneutics, and Existenz (p.29). He concludes the article by reiterating that the importance of the early lecture courses is based on the fact that they are the developmental stages of the major issues presented in Heidegger’s later works.
This essay was very easy to read and provides an interesting and concise description of some of Heidegger’s early works and their connections to his later works. This source could be a good starting reference for further research on the development of Heidegger’s ideas throughout his career.
3. “Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion’, 1920-1921” by Thomas J. Sheehan.
4. “Heidegger and Husserl’s Logical Investigations. In Remembrance of Heidegger’s Last Seminar…” by Jacques Taminiaux.
5. “The Origins of Heidegger’s Thought” by John Sallis.
This essay seeks to answer the question “what are the origins of Heidegger’s thought?” Sallis identifies three distinct concepts or levels of origin that will contribute to our understanding of the origin of Heidegger’s thought. These are: 1) the historical origin; 2) the original or basic issue and how it serves as origin; and 3) that which grants philosophical thought its content (p. 91). Sallis then divides the remaining portion of the essay into individual exposition of each of these three concepts.
The historical origin is taken to be the earlier thinkers who “served to set Heidegger’s thought on its way” (p.91). Sallis targets Husserl’s phenomenology as the historical origin of influence for Heidegger. He then includes a brief description of phenomenology and shows how Being and Time employs a type of phenomenology for its goals. Other historical influences on Heidegger’s thought were the Greek philosophers, namely Plato and Aristotle (p.94).
The second concept of origin is the more basic sense of origin, or “the issue from which originates Heidegger’s approach to other issues” (p.97). Sallis identifies this issue as “disclosedness”. He believes that disclosedness is exemplified as the original issue in Being and Time in Heidegger’s understanding and use of the concept of Dasein. Before moving on to the next section Sallis explains a terminology shift evident in Heidegger’s later works: the use of the term “alethia”, which has more of a sense of truth, instead of “disclosedness” (p.99).
The third sense of origin is a “radicalizing” of the concept of origin. Sallis argues that Dasein must be allowed to disclose itself so that philosophical analysis can identify original truth as the origin of thought.
This essay could be helpful for strengthening the understanding of Dasein. It was well written, though difficult to work through at times, but could serve as a useful secondary source for grasping the project of Being and Time.
6. “Husserl, Heidegger and the Question of a ‘Hermeneutic’ Phenomenology” by John D. Caputo.
7. “Heidegger and the Destruction of Ontology” by Samuel IJsseling.
In this essay IJsseling seeks to clarify Heidegger’s phenomenology, particularly his use of the word “destruction.” IJsseling identifies three basic components that characterize phenomenology. These are: 1) the phenomenological reduction, or the “leading back from beings to Being”; 2) the phenomenological construction, or the “projection of pregiven beings against the background of their Being and the structures of their Being”; and 3) the phenomenological destruction, or the “critical dismantling” of concepts handed down to us (p.128-129).
IJsseling connects Heidegger’s phenomenological destruction to Husserl’s epochē but points out differences between their uses. “Destruction does not mean demolishing or destroying” but rather signifies a “freeing of oneself from the tradition stock of ontological concepts” (p.130). For IJsseling, the meaning of destruction is still ambiguous. The rest of the essay is divided into two sections with the goal of elaborating and attempting to clarify the problems associated with Heidegger’s conception of destruction.
In my opinion, this essay contained an excessive amount of quotes that made reading difficult. On the other hand, IJsseling could have included so many quotes in order to get Heidegger’s meaning across better than would be possible with paraphrasing. This essay could be useful while reading later sections of Being and Time and also for furthering the understanding of Heidegger’s ontology.
8. “Being-True as the Basic Determination of Being” by Joseph J. Kockelmans.
The goal of this essay is to examine and clarify Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of truth in order to contribute to the understanding of the problem of the conception of the question of Being in relation to the question of alethia. More specifically, Kockelmans is seeking to make the connection between Heidegger’s 1920’s conception of the question concerning the meaning of Being with his later conception of alethia. He points out that Heidegger seemed to avoid discussing his own opinions about truth and instead focused his lectures and writings on exploring historical and critical interpretations, perhaps because he was “not yet completely ready” to share his own ideas (p.146).
Kockelmans then points out main differences between the ideas about truth presented in Heidegger’s 1925 lecture on truth (Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs) and Being and Time. He then includes a short summary (p.148-150) of “On the Essence of Truth” (an essay by Heidegger published in 1930). This is followed by a summary of “On the Essence of Human Freedom”, a lecture on the relationship between truth and freedom, also from 1930. Kockelmans provides a detailed analysis of Heidegger on Aristotle based on passages from this lecture and Aristotle’s Metaphysics. He also points out some of the apparent contradictions in the work and includes others’ solutions/suggestions about the problems as well as proposes his own. He concludes by claiming that his examination of Heidegger’s different approaches to the question of the meaning of being between 1925 and 1930 show that there was “very little development in Heidegger’s thinking with respect to his conception of truth” (p.157).
This essay was well written and easy to read. It would be most helpful for information on the development of Heidegger’s thought through time, not necessarily on enlightening any of the specific concepts themselves, though it does provide good descriptions and comparison analysis of some of the more important topics in Being and Time.
9. “Heidegger and the Quest of Freedom” by William J. Richardson.
10. “The Concept of Time in Heidegger’s Early Works” by Marion Heinz.
11. “Ekstatic Temporality in Sein und Zeit” by Graeme Nicholson.
This essay focuses on concept of Time in Heidegger’s works, not just in Being and Time. Nicholson points out that the study of Heidegger’s conception of ideas has been primarily on Dasein and Being. He wants to focus on an analysis of the themes of Temporality and Time but does not seek to push for a separation or prioritizing of the concepts.
Nicholson conducts his investigation by dividing his work into different sections. The first of these is “Dasein and Care” wherein he identifies three components of care that are important in the understanding of Temporality. The first component is known by two different names (Verstehen, or projection, and Existenzialitat, or existentiality). Nicholson defines Verstehen as a power of disclosure in us, whereas Existenzialitat is that which becomes disclosed by projection (p.210). The second component of care is also referred to by two names. Befindlichkeit, or affectivity, and Faktizitat, or facticity. Befindlichkeit is, for Nicholson, a mode of disclosure that qualifies all of Dasein’s projecting. Moods are an aspect of this. Faktizitat is also a mode of disclosure (p.211). The third component of care is Verfallen. Nicholson seems to gloss over the definition of this term, saying that it is “colorful” and that it “summons up images of the fall of man…and of the collapse and decline of civilization,” though Heidegger himself denied these shadings of the term (p.211). He decides to define it as “Dasein’s constant compromise” since Dasein is always at risk of being diverted, to conform, or to become compromised (p.211).
Nicholson then develops the relationship between these three terms and how they relate to temporality in the remaining section of the essay. He also suggests ways of reading Heidegger's works with these concepts in minds and provides very detailed, paragraph-by-paragraph analyses of different works concerning temporality and care. His exploration of temporality leads him to point out parts of temporality known as “ekstases” (p.216). Ekstasis can be understood as “being placed out of self” or “displacement” (p. 220). Though Heidegger doesn’t explicitly state it, Nicholson believes that you can infer from his word choice that “whatever is touched by temporality, or participates in it, will acquire some degree of ekstasis from it” (p.220). He provides further elaboration of this sense of ekstasis presented in Being and Time. Nicholson ends the article by making conclusions about Dasein’s relation to ekstases, namely that the interplay of the different ekstases cannot by foreseen by Dasein, and encourages the reader to explore the nature of ekstasis itself.
This essay was especially difficult because of the large number of German words included in the body of the text. It could serve as a good source for anyone seeking to do an in-depth study of the Time aspect of Being and Time.
12. “Metaphysics and Topology of Being in Heidegger” by Otto Poggeler.
Overall, I think A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ is a practical compilation of essays pertaining to Heidegger’s Being and Time. The topics of each essay range greatly, but individually and as a collection they can contribute helpful and insightful information for a deeper understanding of Being and Time and Heidegger’s philosophical project as a whole. The main drawback, at this point at least, is that most of the essays draw extensively on sections of Being and Time that we have not yet read for class and site other works by Heidegger that I am unfamiliar with. All of the essays also frequently use the original German terminology, so it may also be helpful to have a background in German if you are going to use any of these articles for serious research, or at least have a German dictionary handy!
Jacob Riley
Phenomenology
Dr. Davis
9/24/08
To Tympanize--Philosophy: A brief commentary on Derrida’s Margins of Philosophy
Jacques Derrida is arguably one of the most notorious thinkers in the history of human thought—along with Nietzsche and Freud. This is probably because he has been accused of claiming that there exists no distinction between philosophy and literature[1]. Indeed, there is no doubt that his reading of philosophical texts is radical, but they are not just thrown together without any supporting evidence or argumentation. If nothing else, actually reading Margins of Philosophy will dispel with the myth that Derrida’s thought can be dismissed as post-modern babble.
Derrida starts the book with an introductory essay called “Tympan.” The essay has a very unique and at first confusing structure because in the margin of the main text is a long quote from Biffures by Michel Leiris. The reason for this is hinted at within the main text of the essay: “They [the essays in the book] are to blur the line which separates a text from its controlled margin. They interrogate philosophy beyond its meaning…which is doubtless to recall that beyond the philosophical text there is not a blank, virgin, empty margin, but another text, a weave of differences of forces without any present center of reference,” (Derrida, xxiii). Thus, the marginal text by Leiris is not pointless, but shows that beyond Derrida’s main text (the “philosophical text), there is another text that exists just outside the main text. Indeed, one of the themes of Leiris’ text is the margin: “a margin, a fringe surrounding the object, isolating it at the same time as it underlines its presence, masking it even as it qualifies it,” (Leiris, Biffures). This infinite play on meanings is a major part of Derrida’s style, which oftentimes makes it difficult to discern what he is actually saying—but this reinforces his main point.
The essay that I will be focusing on is called “The Ends of Man.” However, the thought in this essay is intimately connected with the rest of the work and thus it will lead to discussion of other essays. “The Ends of Man” is written adaptation of a lecture given at an international philosophy colloquium on “Philosophy and Anthropology.” After a witty introduction concerning the democratic conditions for an international philosophy colloquium, Derrida proceeds to raise the question of how humanism is essentially connected to metaphysics, which he finds in the use of a first person plural pronoun: “There is an uninterrupted metaphysical familiarity with that which, so naturally, links the ‘we’ of the philosophy to the ‘we men’” (Derrida, 116). The “we” of philosophy will become important later on in the essay, but in the immediately following section Derrida wishes to address the most “serious mistake” of anthropologistic reading of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. However, instead of directly defending Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger from their anthropologistic readings, Derrida asks how these mistaken readings could have come about: “what authorizes us today to consider as essentially anthropic or anthropocentric everything in metaphysics, or at the limits of metaphysics, that believed itself to be a critique or delimitation of anthropologism? What is the relève[2] of man in the thought of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger?” (Derrida, 119).
The most useful analysis is how Derrida attempts to show that Heidegger is still within the metaphysical humanistic tradition, especially since Derrida himself points to Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism to show that Heidegger was attempting to critique such metaphysical humanism: “The [Heidegger’s] ‘destruction’ of metaphysics or of classical ontology was even directed against humanism,” (Derrida, 118). However, Derrida affirms that the thinking of the truth of Being is related to a kind of humanism. In Being and Time, Heidegger asks how one should go about find the meaning of Being. To do this, Heidegger needs a particular entity to begin his investigation—he chooses Dasein (human existence). Derrida explains “We can see then that Dasein, though not man, is nevertheless nothing other than man. It is, as we shall see, a repetition of the essence of man permitting a return to what is before the metaphysical concept of humanitas” (Derrida, 127).
Although in Being and Time the essence of man and the analytic of Dasein was only to be a small part of the question of the meaning of Being, this concern with an essence of man that would reach further than the one defined by humanism would continue in Heidegger’s later work such as Letter on Humanism. In this work, Heidegger claims that “language is the house of being in which man ek-sists by dwelling, in that he belongs to the truth of Being, guarding it” (Heidegger, 213). Even though Heidegger is careful to say that the proximity to being is not ontic proximity, Derrida points out that language (even though Heidegger thinks it is the house of being) cannot name Being as such and thus remains within the ontic: “It remains that Being, which is nothing, is not a being, cannot be said, cannot say itself, except in ontic metaphor…It is within this metaphorical insistence, then, that the interpretation of the meaning of Being is produced” (Derrida, 131). For if one were to actually name Being, then would this not be the end of man?
Because we cannot name Being except by ontic metaphorization, then is not this metaphorization exactly what is really proper to man? In “White Mythology,” Derrida says exactly this: “Metaphor then is what is proper to man,” (Derrida, 246). But philosophy has always attempted to get rid of metaphors: “Univocity is its essence, or better, the telos of language…this ideal is philosophy,” (Derrida 247). As much as philosophy has wished to stay away from metaphor, Derrida claims that it is essentially bound up with one metaphor in particular—the heliotrope: “The very opposition of appearing and disappearing, the entire lexicon of…day and night, of the visible and invisible, of the present and the absent—all this is possible only under the sun,” (Derrida, 251). In other words, since philosophy has always thought of truth as a bringing to light of the truth, they have privileged this metaphor as to seem completely “natural.” This means that philosophy does not see itself as being metaphorical, but rather as catechresis (forced metaphor): “indeed, this is how philosophy traditionally has interpreted its powerful catechresis: the twisting return toward the already-there of a meaning, production (of signs, or rather of values), but as revelation, unveiling, bringing to light, truth,” (Derrida, 257).
In the next section of “White Mythology,” Derrida asks: “Are not all metaphors, strictly speaking, concepts, and is there any sense in setting metaphor against concept?” (Derrida, 264). To “illustrate” this (but alas, I am already trapped), Derrida gives Descartes concept (metaphor?) of “natural light”: “Natural light, and all the axioms it brings into our field of vision, is never subjected to radical doubt. The latter unfolds in light…natural light constitutes the very ether of thought and of its proper discourse,” (Derrida, 267). If as Derrida tentatively claims concepts are just metaphors, and the metaphor of light essentially constitutes all metaphysics, then philosophy is a constant rediscovery of the same: “Presence, disappearing in its own radiance, the hidden source of light, of truth, and of meaning, the erasure of the visage of Being—such must be the insistent return of that which subjects metaphysics to metaphor,” (Derrida, 268).
In “Signature, Event, Context,” the last essay of the work, Derrida tries to give an alternative to inevitable sameness resulting from the metaphysical tradition by affirming the primacy of the characteristics of writing over voice—mark over presence. Throughout the work, Derrida has hinted at the importance of the written mark by the different-but-same translation of Aufhebung and the insistence upon the “a” (even though there is no change in the sound) in the word différance. Instead of only hinting at such themes, in this essay he explictly lays out the essential predicates of a written sign. This basically amounts to the fact that it can be taken out of context and repeated in another such that it means something different beyond the presence of any of the original addressers or addressees. In fact, it is this separation from the referent that is necessary for words to have meaning: “Every sign, linguistic or non-linguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or lag unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion,” (Derrida 320).
Thus my project has been doomed from the start. I have attempted to find the meaning of Derrida’s text, but this is precisely what he does not think is definitely possible. There is not one single meaning I can “trace” back to Derrida: I can only “trace” the endless play of marks on the page.
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982.
Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. “Letter on Humanism.” Ed. David Farrell Krell.
San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993.
[1] This may be because critics have read his essay on Valery “Qual Quelle” and taken one phrase from the text out of context and using this to dismiss his entire project: “In a word, the task is to consider philosophy also as a ‘particular literary genre,’” (Derrida, 293). While this ripping out of context may be the critics of Derrida getting back at him for doing the same thing to philosophical texts, I think this reading requires at least the amount of evidence and subtlety Derrida gives to his own deconstructed texts in order for such a simplified statement to be considered valid.
[2] The word relève is an untranslatable word that Derrida constantly plays with in this and other essays. The translator explains to the reader that it is Derrida’s translation of Hegel’s concept Aufhebung and gives several reasons for such a translation throughout the work. The footnote to “Différance,” explains how this translation differs from its original meaning: “For Hegel, dialectics is a process of Aufhebung: every concept is to be negated and lifted up to a higher sphere in which it is thereby conserved…However, as Derrida points out, there is always an effect of différance when the same word has two contradictory meanings. Indeed it is this différance—the excess of the trace Aufhebung itself—that is precisely what the Aufhebung can never aufheben: lift up, conserve, and negate,” (see Derrida, footnote 23, pg 20). Derrida also uses the verbal form of the word in order to attempt to free himself from the implicit onto-theology in the construction of the word Aufheben: “Further the auf—[meaning ‘up’] is related to negation-and-preservation in a higher sphere; the ‘re’ questions the metaphysics of negation, the theology implicit in dialectical negation of raising up,” (see footnote to “Ousia and Gramme” pg 43).
Phenomenology
Dr. Davis
9/24/08
To Tympanize--Philosophy: A brief commentary on Derrida’s Margins of Philosophy
Jacques Derrida is arguably one of the most notorious thinkers in the history of human thought—along with Nietzsche and Freud. This is probably because he has been accused of claiming that there exists no distinction between philosophy and literature[1]. Indeed, there is no doubt that his reading of philosophical texts is radical, but they are not just thrown together without any supporting evidence or argumentation. If nothing else, actually reading Margins of Philosophy will dispel with the myth that Derrida’s thought can be dismissed as post-modern babble.
Derrida starts the book with an introductory essay called “Tympan.” The essay has a very unique and at first confusing structure because in the margin of the main text is a long quote from Biffures by Michel Leiris. The reason for this is hinted at within the main text of the essay: “They [the essays in the book] are to blur the line which separates a text from its controlled margin. They interrogate philosophy beyond its meaning…which is doubtless to recall that beyond the philosophical text there is not a blank, virgin, empty margin, but another text, a weave of differences of forces without any present center of reference,” (Derrida, xxiii). Thus, the marginal text by Leiris is not pointless, but shows that beyond Derrida’s main text (the “philosophical text), there is another text that exists just outside the main text. Indeed, one of the themes of Leiris’ text is the margin: “a margin, a fringe surrounding the object, isolating it at the same time as it underlines its presence, masking it even as it qualifies it,” (Leiris, Biffures). This infinite play on meanings is a major part of Derrida’s style, which oftentimes makes it difficult to discern what he is actually saying—but this reinforces his main point.
The essay that I will be focusing on is called “The Ends of Man.” However, the thought in this essay is intimately connected with the rest of the work and thus it will lead to discussion of other essays. “The Ends of Man” is written adaptation of a lecture given at an international philosophy colloquium on “Philosophy and Anthropology.” After a witty introduction concerning the democratic conditions for an international philosophy colloquium, Derrida proceeds to raise the question of how humanism is essentially connected to metaphysics, which he finds in the use of a first person plural pronoun: “There is an uninterrupted metaphysical familiarity with that which, so naturally, links the ‘we’ of the philosophy to the ‘we men’” (Derrida, 116). The “we” of philosophy will become important later on in the essay, but in the immediately following section Derrida wishes to address the most “serious mistake” of anthropologistic reading of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. However, instead of directly defending Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger from their anthropologistic readings, Derrida asks how these mistaken readings could have come about: “what authorizes us today to consider as essentially anthropic or anthropocentric everything in metaphysics, or at the limits of metaphysics, that believed itself to be a critique or delimitation of anthropologism? What is the relève[2] of man in the thought of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger?” (Derrida, 119).
The most useful analysis is how Derrida attempts to show that Heidegger is still within the metaphysical humanistic tradition, especially since Derrida himself points to Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism to show that Heidegger was attempting to critique such metaphysical humanism: “The [Heidegger’s] ‘destruction’ of metaphysics or of classical ontology was even directed against humanism,” (Derrida, 118). However, Derrida affirms that the thinking of the truth of Being is related to a kind of humanism. In Being and Time, Heidegger asks how one should go about find the meaning of Being. To do this, Heidegger needs a particular entity to begin his investigation—he chooses Dasein (human existence). Derrida explains “We can see then that Dasein, though not man, is nevertheless nothing other than man. It is, as we shall see, a repetition of the essence of man permitting a return to what is before the metaphysical concept of humanitas” (Derrida, 127).
Although in Being and Time the essence of man and the analytic of Dasein was only to be a small part of the question of the meaning of Being, this concern with an essence of man that would reach further than the one defined by humanism would continue in Heidegger’s later work such as Letter on Humanism. In this work, Heidegger claims that “language is the house of being in which man ek-sists by dwelling, in that he belongs to the truth of Being, guarding it” (Heidegger, 213). Even though Heidegger is careful to say that the proximity to being is not ontic proximity, Derrida points out that language (even though Heidegger thinks it is the house of being) cannot name Being as such and thus remains within the ontic: “It remains that Being, which is nothing, is not a being, cannot be said, cannot say itself, except in ontic metaphor…It is within this metaphorical insistence, then, that the interpretation of the meaning of Being is produced” (Derrida, 131). For if one were to actually name Being, then would this not be the end of man?
Because we cannot name Being except by ontic metaphorization, then is not this metaphorization exactly what is really proper to man? In “White Mythology,” Derrida says exactly this: “Metaphor then is what is proper to man,” (Derrida, 246). But philosophy has always attempted to get rid of metaphors: “Univocity is its essence, or better, the telos of language…this ideal is philosophy,” (Derrida 247). As much as philosophy has wished to stay away from metaphor, Derrida claims that it is essentially bound up with one metaphor in particular—the heliotrope: “The very opposition of appearing and disappearing, the entire lexicon of…day and night, of the visible and invisible, of the present and the absent—all this is possible only under the sun,” (Derrida, 251). In other words, since philosophy has always thought of truth as a bringing to light of the truth, they have privileged this metaphor as to seem completely “natural.” This means that philosophy does not see itself as being metaphorical, but rather as catechresis (forced metaphor): “indeed, this is how philosophy traditionally has interpreted its powerful catechresis: the twisting return toward the already-there of a meaning, production (of signs, or rather of values), but as revelation, unveiling, bringing to light, truth,” (Derrida, 257).
In the next section of “White Mythology,” Derrida asks: “Are not all metaphors, strictly speaking, concepts, and is there any sense in setting metaphor against concept?” (Derrida, 264). To “illustrate” this (but alas, I am already trapped), Derrida gives Descartes concept (metaphor?) of “natural light”: “Natural light, and all the axioms it brings into our field of vision, is never subjected to radical doubt. The latter unfolds in light…natural light constitutes the very ether of thought and of its proper discourse,” (Derrida, 267). If as Derrida tentatively claims concepts are just metaphors, and the metaphor of light essentially constitutes all metaphysics, then philosophy is a constant rediscovery of the same: “Presence, disappearing in its own radiance, the hidden source of light, of truth, and of meaning, the erasure of the visage of Being—such must be the insistent return of that which subjects metaphysics to metaphor,” (Derrida, 268).
In “Signature, Event, Context,” the last essay of the work, Derrida tries to give an alternative to inevitable sameness resulting from the metaphysical tradition by affirming the primacy of the characteristics of writing over voice—mark over presence. Throughout the work, Derrida has hinted at the importance of the written mark by the different-but-same translation of Aufhebung and the insistence upon the “a” (even though there is no change in the sound) in the word différance. Instead of only hinting at such themes, in this essay he explictly lays out the essential predicates of a written sign. This basically amounts to the fact that it can be taken out of context and repeated in another such that it means something different beyond the presence of any of the original addressers or addressees. In fact, it is this separation from the referent that is necessary for words to have meaning: “Every sign, linguistic or non-linguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or lag unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion,” (Derrida 320).
Thus my project has been doomed from the start. I have attempted to find the meaning of Derrida’s text, but this is precisely what he does not think is definitely possible. There is not one single meaning I can “trace” back to Derrida: I can only “trace” the endless play of marks on the page.
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982.
Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. “Letter on Humanism.” Ed. David Farrell Krell.
San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993.
[1] This may be because critics have read his essay on Valery “Qual Quelle” and taken one phrase from the text out of context and using this to dismiss his entire project: “In a word, the task is to consider philosophy also as a ‘particular literary genre,’” (Derrida, 293). While this ripping out of context may be the critics of Derrida getting back at him for doing the same thing to philosophical texts, I think this reading requires at least the amount of evidence and subtlety Derrida gives to his own deconstructed texts in order for such a simplified statement to be considered valid.
[2] The word relève is an untranslatable word that Derrida constantly plays with in this and other essays. The translator explains to the reader that it is Derrida’s translation of Hegel’s concept Aufhebung and gives several reasons for such a translation throughout the work. The footnote to “Différance,” explains how this translation differs from its original meaning: “For Hegel, dialectics is a process of Aufhebung: every concept is to be negated and lifted up to a higher sphere in which it is thereby conserved…However, as Derrida points out, there is always an effect of différance when the same word has two contradictory meanings. Indeed it is this différance—the excess of the trace Aufhebung itself—that is precisely what the Aufhebung can never aufheben: lift up, conserve, and negate,” (see Derrida, footnote 23, pg 20). Derrida also uses the verbal form of the word in order to attempt to free himself from the implicit onto-theology in the construction of the word Aufheben: “Further the auf—[meaning ‘up’] is related to negation-and-preservation in a higher sphere; the ‘re’ questions the metaphysics of negation, the theology implicit in dialectical negation of raising up,” (see footnote to “Ousia and Gramme” pg 43).
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