“… thought thinks speech speaks, the glance glances. But each time between the two identical words there is a whole spread one straddles in order to think, speak, and see.”[1]
“Speech represents itself; it is its representation. Even better, speech is the representation of itself.”[2]
What does the thought of presence make manifest? Or, rather, what absence does the thought of presence illuminate? Perhaps, even further, what does the thought of presence fail to illuminate? If, as is the case with Husserl, we attempt to ground our project in the presence of the present, what becomes of a project whose ground, seemingly, fails to appear? The appearance, or the failed appearance, at the limit of Husserl’s phenomenological project is the opening, or the space, which animates. What occurs within the “indivisible blink of an eye?”[3] If “thought thinks, speech speaks,” and “the glance glances,”[4] across this space, this gap, this failed appearance, who thinks? Who speaks? And who sees? Where does one begin in this type of examination? Are beginnings possible? If we phrase our question in terms of a “who,” as a search for the “who,” do we not already presuppose what we are looking for? We are seemingly confined to take up a thought already in motion (perhaps this is always the case insofar as we are able to take up anything at all). We must engage with the critique of a tradition, of a philosophical tradition, of a metaphysics at work in the work of Husserl.[5] For both Derrida and Merleau-Ponty the thought of presence is a kind of absence, an absence which undermines the Husserlian project, yet is at the same time a kind of enabling. The current, (within the use of the current the metaphysics of the present seem to lurk) examination is therefore a kind of reckoning with thought, which has already represented itself.
What we have here is a thought, or style of thinking, which we can call forth, elicit, or bring to bear upon the present. We have this thought as part of our history, as part of the “pyramid” upon which we are “installed,” and from which we protend. Perhaps, as it were, we are in a “wake of thought which we do not retrace but follow along in.”[6] But what of this thought? What of its history? What remains hidden, or invisible within it? I have an ‘idea’ of the present ‘now,’ where the actual present evades me, it seems to exist in the moment once thought has brought itself to bear upon me. By bringing, eliciting, or invoking, this thought as presence in the present, what is evidenced, and what remains hidden?[7] Even further who brings, elicits, or invokes this thought? At present, it seems we are caught within a space somewhere between the ideality and the thing itself. In what sense is the current offering merely a detour?[8] If we speak ‘now’ of a present, are we not dealing with a present which is no longer present. Have we lost it? Did we ever have it? Or, rather, did it have us? I can recall it as a past present, as a present which is no longer; although I am no longer the self I was when I recalled it. Furthermore, it seems that the ‘present’ present cannot be contained within the current examination as the examination itself necessarily contains a plurality of presents, within which the “I” that “I am” ‘now,’ although treated as the same, as a re-petition of the same, is no longer the selfsame “I” that “I” was at the onset. My “I,” as it was, has been taken up countless times and constituted anew each time. The present moment, therefore, appears as an opening, or an anticipation, for the next moment in which I can re-present or re-constitute my “I” once again. If we have lost the actual presence of the present, precisely in the moment we constitute it, can we not say, therefore, that every act of constitution is but a re-constitution or a repetition?
“We are in the field of history as we are in the field of language or existence.”[9] Within this field of history there seems to lurk “words behind words,” “thoughts behind thoughts,” “meanings” and “dimensions,” which we seem to take possession of, or responsibility for, yet they are not of our own creation; perhaps they bear the names of Derrida, Merleau-Ponty, or Husserl and further, countless other, names before them. The “ideas” which “are the centers of our gravitation,” are ways of navigating within the world of “things,” or perhaps, as Merleau Ponty indicates:
“Should we even say “thing,” should we say “imaginary” or “idea,” when each thing exists beyond itself, when each fact can be a dimension, when ideas have their regions?”[10]
If this idea of the present is imaginary, a mere phantasy, or perhaps a fiction, does not appear as such, but rather, is merely anticipated and recollected; what then becomes of presence, or the self-presence, of the present? If “protention” is the anticipation of a present not yet, in view of a past present, or a present previously retained, the present as such, as an absolute ‘nowness,’ is markedly absent. This absence is the “whole spread one straddles in order to think, speak and see.” The body appears to be paramount to this movement which gives us access to ourselves, to others, and a here and now
“There is here no problem of the alter ego because it is not I who sees, not he who sees, because an anonymous visibility inhabits both of us, a vision in general, in virtue of that primordial property that belongs to the flesh, being here and now, of radiating everywhere and forever, being an individual, of being also a dimension and a universal[11]
The visible must inhabit us in order to be seen, thought thinks itself through our speech, through this space, the abyss, where the present seems to fail, somewhere between the idea and the thing itself. Have we reached the limit, the zero degree, the invisible, which opens up the visible?
The ‘principle of principles,’ the project of Husserlian phenomenology seems to rest upon that which is not given to this principle. Primordial presence, as certainty, as the absolute ‘now’ of the moment of self-evidence, of self-presence, is that ideality which cannot be given to the detour of the sign. This thought of presence is that which allows me to transgress my factual, empirical existence, and is furthermore the form of my transcendent existence. Thus it would seem that the ‘now,’ existing between the dialectic of ‘retention’ and ‘protention,’ must occur when “perception and non-perception,” “pass over into one another.”[12] The self-giving perception is not, therefore, mediated by the sign, which is, seemingly, why one cannot signify anything to oneself in “solitary mental life.” This tension, which seems to exist in the Husserlian thought of presence makes language secondary as consciousness is self-given in the self-presence of the ‘now.’ Language, in this case would teach us nothing about ourselves, rather it would merely articulate an already available thought. However, what is this ‘now,’ but a sign, as a possible repetition which anticipation awaits in view of the sign that it has passed. Is this the detour, which removes the ground beneath the phenomenological project? Perhaps, this is what Derrida intends to say when he claims that: The presence-of-the-present is derived from repetition and not the reverse.”[13] For Derrida, Husserl’s argument for ‘being as ideality,’ is harmonious with the metaphysical presupposition of ‘being as presence.” The idea, the ‘now,’ which depends upon repetition, or the possibility of repetition, is therefore, a kind of imaginary fiction. Derrida refers also to the abyss, the space, the site of difference, not as the sight of a dialectic,[14] or an intersection, but rather of an interweaving, a temporalizing, between “retention,” or a non-perception and “representation” which is the constitution of this fiction of the ‘now.’ This movement, this failed intersection, is that which splices, or parses, the present, making the detour of the sign necessary. This movement, furthermore, brings the ‘other’ into our purview, and makes language paramount in the process of living becoming aware of my thought.
In what sense was our attempt at a beginning doomed to failure? It would seem that beginnings are always arbitrary, perhaps as Derrida would suggest they are subject to a kind of strategy. As we attempt to think the present, the presence of the present, or the presently constituted present, is the constituted present not marked by the absence of the present “as such?” Perhaps, it is precisely this absence, which affords, or allows, for its presence as constituted? Does our present, as constituted, take the place of the present as such? Or, perhaps, even further, does it make any sense; is it even possible to speak of something like a present as such? The absence of this present as such, is that which makes language paramount as the primary mode of communication. We are not simply transparently given to ourselves in a privileged moment; rather, we are subject to language as the primary mode of meaning. Presence has been our present task, insofar as we have been able or, perhaps, unable, to subject presence to some kind of vision.
[1] Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Signs. Trans. Robert C. McCleary. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. p 21.
[2] Jacques Derrida. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays On Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. p 57.
[3] Derrida. Speech and Phenomena. p 59.
[4] Merleau-Ponty. Signs. p 21.
[5] Husserl, as an exemplar, as a representative of a tradition, of a metaphysics, of an unquestioning self-presence, as the presence of certainty in the absolute present.
[6] Merleau-ponty. Signs, p. 18.
[7] For Husserl in this presence, there seems to lurk my self-presence, in the moment, which is never anything but an idea. “Retention constitutes the living horizon of the now; I have it in a consciousness of the “just past.” [7] Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. James S. Churchill. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1971. p 66. The idea of the ‘now’ is such that it is not. The questioning of this privilege of presence, which exists solely as a kind of non-presence, as a “just past,” is the site of the beginning that I attempt to make.
[8] “Signs represent the present in its absence; they take the place of the present.” Derrida. Speech and Phenomena. p 138.
[9] Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p 20.
[10] Ibid., p. 15.
[11] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and The Invisible, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. p. 142.
[12] Husserl, Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, p. 62.
[13] Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, p. 52.
[14] In Husserl the movement between ‘retention’ and protention seems to be characterized by the word “dialectic,” although, the term is not used as such.
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