In order to attend to what Heidegger outlines in his discussion of interpretation, the ‘as’ structure, and meaning, we must first be able to attend to the structure of the understanding itself. What is required, therefore, is a certain kind of attention, a way of seeing, or an attentiveness to the understanding, such that it comes to light, or is made manifest, in terms of itself. Through this kind of attentiveness, we might be able to grasp the understanding, as it were, understandingly, in terms of the possibilities it projects. Attention, mindfulness, or a vision of this sort, cannot be a presuppositionless undertaking, but rather must base itself upon the very understanding it seeks to attend to. This movement, which we are now attuned to–this movement of becoming attentive, the cultivation of our interpretive powers–is precisely the move Heidegger would have us attend to. The understanding is essentially circular in that the fore-structures of the understanding are the ground from which the interpretation interprets. By becoming attentive, by recognizing the hermeneutic circle, we are able to cultivate the movement of interpretation such that the fore-structures of the understanding might unfold in light of a responsibility to the things themselves. The understanding is a projection of Dasein’s possibilities, or fore-structures, which it may, or may not, attend to in an interpretive way, that is to say, meaningfully. In other words the understanding is always already engaged meaningfully when it comes to interpret the fore-structures of the understanding. Through this circle, we are provided with the ontological structure of meaning.
If we attend carefully to the movement that Heidegger unfolds–and to the attention we are able to give to it–we see that through our attentiveness we do not add anything to the understanding that wasn’t already there in advance, rather we realize the understanding in terms of the possibilities it already has. We must keep in mind the structure of the ready-to-hand– encountered circumspectively in terms of the ‘in-order-to’ that it possesses in reference to a totality of equipment– with which the understanding is always already actively involved. The understanding engages with ready-to-hand entities in terms of the background, the totality of involvements, the world of significance, which is a shared one. The understanding occurs, as it were, pre-cognitively, as a kind of pre-thematic engagement with the shared world. The prefix ‘pre’, does not mean to suggest that this way of engaging with the world must necessarily be thematized, but rather, that it always possesses this as a possibility of itself. When Heidegger says that, “in interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself” (MR, 188) he is pointing to the movement whereby interpretation accomplishes the understanding as something. The ‘as’ structure of interpretation is such that it is already involved in the unfolding of Dasein in terms of a totality of involvements, and opens up the possibility of making explicit the meaning structures latent therein. If this world of significance is indeed a shared one, as Heidegger suggests it is, then how often are we given over to the interpretations of others? How often do we engage in the movement of interpretation and surrender ourselves to the ready-made interpretations? It is only through this movement of becoming attentive that we are able to engage with the strange movement of the hermeneutic circle.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Heidegger- "Being in Time" II
If we are attentive to Heidegger’s formulation, we are, as it were, presented with the gradual unfolding of an account or an Interpretation of the Being of Dasein. An account whose promise is not yet present, and whose unfolding is on its way towards the possibility of something like a fundamental ontology. The existential analytic has thus far uncovered the Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world. Furthermore, this Being-in-the-world has thus far been encountered in terms of a “circumspective absorption in references and assignments constitutive for the readiness-to-hand of a totality of equipment.” In other words Dasein’s Being-in-the-world, as concern, takes place in an environment wherein Dasein finds itself always already located in a meaningful way. As such, Dasein’s way of Being is always already located in meaningful contexts within which it unfolds its possibilities. In this particular passage, Heidegger points toward a kind of intentionality far more basic than the intentionality previously articulated by the tradition. It is an intentionality that is, quite simply, operant in the sense that Dasein is always already meaningfully engaged with the world.
Circumspection, if we attend to Heidegger’s formulation, is a non-theoretical way of ‘seeing’ which discloses entities in the world in a certain way. In other words, when Dasein is at its best it engages or is involved in a context, or environment, which it already understands circumspectively. Even further, ready-to-hand entities are always encountered circumspectively in terms of their ‘in-order-to’ functions. Or, in other words, the ready-to-hand entities, which Heidegger calls ‘equipment,’ are always already rendered determinate in terms of their ‘references’ and ‘ assignments.’ These ‘references’ and ‘assignments’ are already determined in light of the totality of equipment, or the world wherein and within which they appear. As such the ready-to-hand, as opposed to the present-at-hand, is not a thing which we might examine in terms of its properties, nor something we might subject to some kind of theoretical account of its nature. Rather, it is something we would encounter in the flow of our unfolding, such that it would afford itself to something we are already engaged in. For example, we would not need to think of the hammer in order to nail two boards together, rather the hammer would simply offer itself, as if assigned to our intention, to hammer in a kind of effortless movement a seemingly thoughtless way of skillfully engaging with the world. Furthermore, hammers would make no sense circumspectively in a world without nails and boards and things that require hammering. As such hammers make no sense outside a context of reference to the equipmental totality.
Being-in-the-world, has thus far presented itself as a meaningful way of being situated. It is, as Heidegger articulates it, a way of coping with the world pre-reflexively in light of the activity we are already engaged in, namely the activity of Being-in-the-world. As such, we encounter equipment, which offers itself to our understanding gaze, in terms of the possibilities it affords and the totality of equipment from which it comes. Any attempt to speak, or say what it is we are doing, or any failure in the performance of the task will draw us out of the state wherein we find ourselves already meaningfully engaged and place us before present-at-hand items and contexts which we seem to no longer understand.
Circumspection, if we attend to Heidegger’s formulation, is a non-theoretical way of ‘seeing’ which discloses entities in the world in a certain way. In other words, when Dasein is at its best it engages or is involved in a context, or environment, which it already understands circumspectively. Even further, ready-to-hand entities are always encountered circumspectively in terms of their ‘in-order-to’ functions. Or, in other words, the ready-to-hand entities, which Heidegger calls ‘equipment,’ are always already rendered determinate in terms of their ‘references’ and ‘ assignments.’ These ‘references’ and ‘assignments’ are already determined in light of the totality of equipment, or the world wherein and within which they appear. As such the ready-to-hand, as opposed to the present-at-hand, is not a thing which we might examine in terms of its properties, nor something we might subject to some kind of theoretical account of its nature. Rather, it is something we would encounter in the flow of our unfolding, such that it would afford itself to something we are already engaged in. For example, we would not need to think of the hammer in order to nail two boards together, rather the hammer would simply offer itself, as if assigned to our intention, to hammer in a kind of effortless movement a seemingly thoughtless way of skillfully engaging with the world. Furthermore, hammers would make no sense circumspectively in a world without nails and boards and things that require hammering. As such hammers make no sense outside a context of reference to the equipmental totality.
Being-in-the-world, has thus far presented itself as a meaningful way of being situated. It is, as Heidegger articulates it, a way of coping with the world pre-reflexively in light of the activity we are already engaged in, namely the activity of Being-in-the-world. As such, we encounter equipment, which offers itself to our understanding gaze, in terms of the possibilities it affords and the totality of equipment from which it comes. Any attempt to speak, or say what it is we are doing, or any failure in the performance of the task will draw us out of the state wherein we find ourselves already meaningfully engaged and place us before present-at-hand items and contexts which we seem to no longer understand.
Heidegger- "Being and Time" I
Heidegger begins with the question “What is meant by “Being-in”?” Taking this question as his point of departure, Heidegger proceeds to demonstrate how this question has been answered incorrectly by the Cartesian tradition. In the first place, this way of proceeding intends to demonstrate that for the most part, Dasein’s Being-in has been taken ontically in the sense of being something merely present-at-hand alongside other present-at-hand entities in the world. As such, the Cartesian tradition has passed over a much more basic phenomenon of Being-in-the-world as an a priori state of the Being of Dasein. Due to the absence of the ontological question, Being-in has for the most part been taken to be “knowing the world” grounded in a subjectivity which encounters a world of objects. Heidegger treats Being-in equiprimordially, or in such a way that its essence may not be given in any single modality of its Being. Furthermore, because Dasein’s Being-in-the-World, a particular modality of Being-in, is for the most part presupposed ontically it is most often veiled ontologically or understood negatively in terms of entities which it itself is not. By proceeding, as it were, apophatically, Heidegger will attempt to uncover a positive characterization of Being-in-the-world, not as something present at hand but as state of Dasein’s Being.
If we take Being-in, as Heidegger suggests, to have a dual meaning–both the sense of a location, or a dwelling alongside, and a kind of absorption, or concern for that dwelling–then the world would be the space wherein Dasein finds itself concernfully located. Dasein is principally absorption in the world, or in other words Dasein always already has a world. We are, as it were, faced with a departure from the Cartesian tradition, which has taken Dasein’s relation to the world to be one of a knower to the objects of knowledge. In Heidegger’s account Dasein’s Being-in is inseparable from World in that Dasein always already understands itself in terms of its environment, which constitutes a kind of field of familiarity to which Dasein has recourse. Notice that this Being-in-the-World is not a theoretical standing before, nor an epistemological relation between a subject and a world of objects but an existential modality of Dasein’s Being-in.
Dasein, therefore, is always already concernfully situated in the world and always already understands itself environmentally in terms of a totality of possible involvements. Dasein’s Being-in-the-World, is not conceived nor perceived in a manner present-at-hand, but rather, Dasein is always already Being-in-the-World. Dasein’s facticity is such that it comports itself in terms of the entities it finds within the world, and expresses itself in terms of its Being-in-the-World as its primary mode of Being.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Merleau-Ponty and The New Sense of Sense
“We must therefore recognize as an ultimate fact this open and indefinite power of giving significance—that is, both of apprehending and conveying a meaning—by which man transcends himself towards an new form of behavior, or towards other people, or towards his own thought, through his body and his speech”(RKP 226).
How might we recognize that which may, or may not be cognizable? Does re-cognition demand, or require an original cognition? Or, can our recognition fulfill itself in a deferral to the possibility of a future cognition? In the quote above, Merleau-Ponty suggests that we attend to the factuality, rather the ultimate factuality, of this “open and indefinite power” which is donative in that it bestows a sense[i] that can be both apprehended and communicated in turn. Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion, however, is suggestive in a different sense, in that we obviously don’t need to recognize this power in order for it to remain operant. That is, this power we have is ultimately not founded upon its cognizability, and while Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion points to the possibility that it be subjected to a kind of viewing, it does not require it in order to function. This power, which it is our task to recognize, is simultaneously that by which man outstrips himself into novel modes of habitus, new ways of being towards others and himself, and that which constitutes a sense into a community of speaking subjects. This power is a corporeal power, which can be lived, and/or we can try to understand it through recourse to the auxiliary verbs of ‘being’ and ‘having.’[ii] The examination that follows will engage with this power, insofar as it is manifest in the movement of expression and in the case of acts of speech (parole). It will furthermore deal with the most important gestures Merleau-Ponty makes in the chapter “The Body As Expression and Speech.” In the first place he maintains, in opposition to the tradition, that “the word has a meaning”[iii], that is that the word has both a gestural meaning (sens) and a cognitive one. In the second place, he argues that there is not a series of words, which we might view from above from some third person standpoint, but rather, a speaking subject who is always a particular way, or ‘style’[iv] of speaking the words. Merleau-Ponty argues, that it is not thought which subtends, or immediately precedes the speaking subject’s act of speech but, rather a silence, a motility, which he comes to refer to as the ‘tacit cogito.’ Furthermore, that speech[v] is exemplary in that it is an act, which constitutes and sediments a new sense into a fabric of constituted language, which in turn rearranges the linguistic field. In other words, speech acts are both constituted, in the form of a new sense, and at the same time constitutive of all subsequent attempts to say, think, express something further. It is therefore the case that the new sense of sense, as constituted, takes its place within, and unfolds as the movement of a tradition. As such the paper that follows will maintain that this relation between the body’s motility and the body’s intelligence which Merleau-Ponty calls fundierung[vi] is this strange power and ‘irrational’ power of the body to be simultaneously apprehending and conveying, appropriative and bestowing, creative and traditional. The new sense of sense that emerges from the movement of expression, is simultaneously a response, or a reaction, to an existing tradition and the creating of a new sediment within a tradition. Speech acts, therefore are traditionalized/traditionalizing movements.
Motor Intentionality and the Paradox of Existence
It seems to be the case that one the most important developments of The Phenomenology of Perception is, in the first place, that we rid ourselves of the primacy of the conceptual order and come to see that there is something already at work in advance of our attempts to conceptualize the content of experience. Merleau-Ponty presents us with a clear statement a kind of manifesto of the project at hand, when he says:
“The task for us is to conceive, between the linguistic, perceptual and motor contents and the form given to them or the symbolic function which breathes life into them, a relationship which shall be neither a reduction of form to content, nor the subsuming of content under an autonomous form” (RKP 145).
If, as Merleau-Ponty says, “The task for us is to conceive, between the linguistic, perceptual and motor contents and the form given to them…a relationship…”[vii] and come to the realization that whatever this “relationship” might be, it is not solely conceptual, and neither is it purely motor and neither should the conceptual be our privileged mode of engagement with it.[viii] We must recognize that the conceptual order—or the symbolizing power of abstraction and generalization—is founded upon a perception, or the pure apprehending of motor phenomena. The Phenomenology of Perception makes a departure from the tradition of phenomenology, in that it no longer seeks the “explanatory invariant” in the form of the transcendental ego.[ix] Rather, Merleau-Ponty locates a motor intentionality, [x] a motor power, or a movement, which is simultaneously an active apprehending and a passive appropriation. Herein we find the important notion of fundierung, which names the relation between content and form[xi]. In this relation it becomes possible to say that the visual contents of perception are appropriated and sublimated by a symbolic function, which is simultaneously founded upon these contents and beyond them. What we have, therefore, is a kind of dialectical movement between content and form, which is constitutive of sense. Merleau-Ponty proposes firstly, that this movement is a contradiction, and secondly, that it can make sense only as a lived relation. It is important to note that we live the world before we come to see it as something questionable, and that this motor, or operant, intentionality gives us a motor significance upon which our capacity for generalization and the conceptual order are based. This intentionality is non-ideational, yet meaningful in that it deploys a certain field of experienceablity. Although pre-conceptual, our affective life as embodied beings, is no less rich than the conceptual, or secondary, way of existing. Furthermore, the fact that our existence is as embodied, makes us simultaneously “an object for others and a subject for myself”[xii]. This conceptual paradox disappears at the level of lived experience. Existence, therefore, is but another name for the dialectic between content and form, or the[xiii] fundierung, the “ambiguous setting”[xiv]wherein they intersect and overlap. As such, fundierung, perhaps deployed in order to gesture toward a certain space, cannot possibly name the space towards which it gestures, rather it is the apprehension of a movement, between the body’s motility and intelligence, a movement which is either everything, or nothing, or perhaps is already everything and nothing.
The Sense of the Word
Merleau-Ponty’s account of expression refutes the tradition “by simply saying that the word has a meaning”[xv]. This statement is definitive in its radicality, that is, it allows for a genuine departure from the empiricist and the intellectualist who are united in that they both maintain that the word is without meaning. For the Empiricist, the word is solely an appendage to the objective world; it stands for an association made in the objective world. For the intellectualist, the word is simply the external container of some internal thought, which was already accomplished in advance. Words, for Merleau-Ponty, are not “passive shells”, but active gestures in that they point, just as a bodily movement would point out something to oneself, or to another. There is not a thought before the movement of speech, but rather, this gestural sense is immanent in the movement of speech itself, and is that from which the conceptual sense of the word is derived.[xvi] There is beneath, or subtending “the conceptual meaning of words, an existential meaning” which inhabits the words themselves.[xvii] The body has these words as so many possibilities of itself, as orientational devices, which it can draw from and deploy in the achievement of some intention to express, or to mean something or other. These words, for Merleau-Ponty are centers of an incredible power that brings with it the entirety of the past forward in the movement of speech: “words into which the history of a whole language is compressed, and which effect communication with no absolute guarantee, dogged as they are by incredible linguistic hazards.[xviii] As such, these words are both natural and cultural, in that they are capable of gesturing toward the novelties of the perceptual world, but retain within themselves the cultural backgrounds from which they have emerged as former acts of expression. Each word is the result of a speech act, an accomplished intention to signify, to speak, to say, to articulate, a point of view, a perspective of the world, into the world of previously constituted speech and gestures. Language cannot be made to behave like any particular object; rather, it becomes meaningful when a speaking subject is engaged in it with others.
Apprehension and Appropriation
I am, at first, struck by the ‘style’ of that which unfolds before me. In the movement of coming to understand it conceptually, I am moved by its rhythm, its tempo, the harmonious flow of its melody. Provided I have ears, which can hear it, I can attend to the suggestion of its harmonics, to the reverberations of sound, which envelop me such that I cannot attend to anything else. I can attend to these rhythms because I share them; they are my rhythms, the sounds of the world that I live alongside others. My body is my capacity to attend in this manner, my capacity to be moved and to move, to partake in the movement of something that transcends me. This gestural significance of the word presents us with a ‘style’ of signification, which constitutes a first draft of meaning. As part of our movement, we are faced with the task of taking up this ‘style’ of expressivity in a paradoxical process of appropriation. This movement of appropriation is paradoxical in the sense that my intention, seeking realization, must come to expression through a sedimented linguistic tradition of already meaningful speech, that is, through a speech, through words, that already have a given sense. The apprehension of a gestural sense, “is not given, but understood, that is, recaptured by an act on the spectators part.”[xix] The gesture arises as a question upon my horizon, as an indeterminate something that solicits my attention, and my bodily capacity to move and to bring myself into accordance with it and the other whose gesture inhabits me. The body is that which converts “a certain motor essence” into phonation by deploying the articulatory style of a word, taking up its past, and projecting it in an effective intentional gesture.[xx] A comprehension of the object has been appropriated when, through the movement of concordance between my intention and that of the other, “the powers of my body adjust themselves to it and overlap it.”[xxi] The word therefore, “has a meaning ” perhaps even meanings, which points once again to the relation between these senses:
“…there are different layers of significance, from the visual to the conceptual by way of the verbal concept. These two ideas will never be simultaneously understood unless we cease to vacillate between the notions of ‘motility’ and ‘intelligence,’ unless we discover a third notion which enables us to integrate them…”(RKP 227).
Silence and the Illusion of Thought Before Speech
There is not a thought before speech, but rather a “silence… alive with words.”[xxii] Even further the silence is alive with feelings. The chapter on “The Body in its Sexual Being” points to this ambiguous life which subtends the conceptual order, it is a field of sexuality which is an original intentionality. Merleau-Ponty declares that “the body expresses existence at every moment, that is, in the sense in which the word expresses thought.”[xxiii] This silence, which precedes speech, is our opening onto the world, our feeling our way about in the world and with others, it is the excess, the overflow of our being, which always allows us to go further, to transcend the here and the now that we are as embodied beings. It is not a thought that precedes speech but rather, what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the tacit cogito, the body’s motility, which is our silent presence in a world, which is always constituted in advance.[xxiv] The illusion of thought before speech resides in the fields of sedimented language wherein the tacit cogito resides. Secondary speech, or the sedimentations of spoken speech (parole parlé) comprises the totality of exchanges having taken place in a language, which have determined the language in precisely the way it is encountered. The language itself, however, encountered in the realm of meaningful silence, opens up as a field of possibility for the tacit cogito which seeks to realize itself as a cogito through the movement of the speaking cogito. Pure thought, therefore, as Merleau-Ponty says “reduces itself to a certain void of consciousness, to a momentary desire.”[xxv] This “signicative intention,”[xxvi] which precedes expression, is the “lack,” or a kind of “blind expectation” which reshuffles the given sense in a movement of appropriation towards a sense of its own which it will be able to express in a subsequent speech act. It is precisely for this reason that Merleau-Ponty points toward the writer who begins his work in ignorance of what he will “put into it,” or the thinking subject who is ignorant of his thought until his has expressed it in writing, or in speech.[xxvii] The word is not in the first place a word offered to a consciousness composed of words, but rather a motor word soliciting a silent desire to express. We are, as it were, presented with a meaningful silence in speech, a silence interwoven in the fabric of words. We must attend to, or engage with this overflow of significance, this silence, which is present in a kind of absence. When a ‘gesture’ is made, it forces us to reckon with “a certain structural co-ordination of experience, a certain modulation of existence, exactly as a pattern of my bodily behavior endows objects around me with a certain significance both for me and for others.”[xxviii] Our motility, therefore, appears to be a kind of living history, such that the past is present in my being towards the world, informed as it is by the acquisition of successful practices and habits. It seems to be the case, therefore, that the world is mediated by these habits[xxix], which are cultivated, that is incorporated, or perhaps, even appropriated pre-reflectively. Our motility, therefore, seems to be an informed historical movement and my reflective access to it is necessarily marked by ambiguity. It is furthermore the case that we are never truly an object for ourselves, but rather an opening, we are never what we have been, rather we are an excess over what we have already come to understand, such that we remain, so long as we are alive, in a constant movement beyond ourselves.
Speech and the Movement of Expression
In the case of speech, Merleau-Ponty maintains: “it cannot be said of speech either that it is an ‘operation of intelligence,’ or that it is a ‘motor phenomenon’: it is wholly motility and wholly intelligence.”[xxx] That this is the case can be demonstrated through recourse to pathologies of speech, such as aphasia[xxxi] and alexia,[xxxii] or specifically in the case of Schneider[xxxiii] who seems to be incapable of projecting himself into a situation of any kind. His experience never seems questionable, thus it never tends toward speech. His language is no longer an instrument, but rather presents him with a kind of self-evidence such that he never seeks to go beyond himself.[xxxiv] In short language is a living relation with the world and other which manifests as an open situation, which can seemingly close, if only for a moment, before re-opens of its own accord. For Schneider, the situation is already closed, his language is fixed, no questions come to mind because nothing is questionable. In the non-pathological case, however there is a linguistic field from which we all borrow in order to combine an intentional desire with a speech act in the constitution of an object for ourselves and for others, thereby accomplishing thought by conveying a certain ‘style’ into a community of speakers. The movement of expression sediments its acts and constitutes a world of shared contextualities and experiences and becomes the shared background from which all sense is made. The movement of expression, which attempts to express the previously unexpressed, brings about a new sense, through “an organism of words, establishing it in the writer, or the reader as a new sense organ, opening an new field or a new dimension to our experience.”[xxxv] This new sense is apprehended in the world it opens up, in the possibilities it makes manifest, in the ways it reorganizes the past in terms of itself and a future it seems to make possible. It is not literally there contained in the words it uses, but rather is contained in the space between the speaker and the listener, between the gestural and conceptual meanings, between words and the world. It is precisely in this sense that Merleau-Ponty declares that “The spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world.”[xxxvi] Authentic expression takes aim at the unsayable, the previously unexpressed, otherwise it remains in the sedimentations of already spoken speech. However, all the same this authentic expression requires the sediment in order to go further, in order to forget the contingency involved in its own achievement. An authentic speech act brings something new before us, something above and beyond what we already had at our disposal, we must reckon with its novelty in order to go further. In order to understand what was said, we must come to appropriate it into a fresh movement of our bodily motility. This movement between motility and intelligence is our movement, the movement of the body, such that it is the body, which, in order to express, “must in the last analysis become the thought or intention that it signifies for us.”[xxxvii]
Language and the New Sense of Sense
Language, like sexuality, is an originating realm, that this realization comes late, is due in no small part to the sense of language itself. Language is peculiar in what it affords, and the movement it makes possible. Language is a traditionalized/ traditionalizing structure, in that it alone “is able to settle into sediment and constitute an acquisition for use in human relationships.”[xxxviii] In short, speech acts re-organize the fabric of the linguistic totality, such that speech becomes the basis upon which further acts of speech are made possible. Speech serves to ground itself upon itself, such that we may have speech about speech in ways that “it is impossible to paint about painting.”[xxxix] In each case the contingencies involved in particular acts of speech get covered over in a functioning that conceals itself in its acts. It therefore, becomes true to say that we treat linguistic virtualities, contingent developments of speech, as necessary abstractions in the development of our linguistic edifices. In our attempts to express our perception, say who and what we are, or to engage in a cultural space, we are, as it were, faced with these linguistic virtualities which we come to treat as idealities.
“Speech is the surplus of our existence over natural being. But the act of expression constitutes a linguistic world and a cultural world, and allows that to fall back into being which was striving to outstrip it. Hence the spoken word enjoys available significance as one might enjoy an aquired fortune. From these gains the other acts of authentic expression—the writer’s, artist’s or philosopher’s—are made possible.”[xl]
Ultimately, we find ourselves in the midst of traditionalized structures, which further their agendas through our acts, or whose agendas we thwart through our acts. There are traditions we are aware of other than we are not, in any case, our explicit awareness is not necessary in order for them to function, as it were, behind our back and in our wakes. We might be amidst a revolution, or part of a reformation, or a rectification, whose environs we are scarcely aware of, and whose results have yet to be written, as if they could ever be settled permanently. We live in fields of fields and upon histories, which we do not choose, but reckon with in each and every movement of our bodily existence.
Conclusion
If we return to the quote provided at the start of the current examination, having gone through the movement of expression, we might have something further to say about it. This awesome power we have to “give significance” and to appropriate and convey this significance into a community of speaking subjects is nothing more than the power of our existence itself. The attempts to say what it is, presupposes that this power is a thing that we might arrest and cognize. It seems that our language allows us to grasp things whose truth does not truly reside in the order of things, but in the movement of living. This is simply part of the awesome power of language and the significance of sense bestowal. We live in and contribute to a world of shared meaning, which emerge out of and shape our speech acts. Our lived body draws together this ‘motility and ‘intelligence,’ these diverse fields of experience. The motility of our being is such that it acts out its acquisitions, in patterns of behavior and speech. Our own body gives us others, a world, a particular ‘style’ of being; it expresses an attitude; bridges distances, and reduces gaps, between itself, others and the world. Gaps remain, allowing us to go further, to transcend ourselves and our apprehensions, allowing us the capacity to go beyond the previously said, or the already acquired. We live in the wake of thoughts given to us by our contemporaries and our predecessors, our movement is to appropriate them. We give meaning to ourselves, borrowing from and giving to others, and live in accordance with these meanings. The body is that lived unity which cannot be understood reflectively, rather requires that it be lived.
Endnotes
[i] I would like to maintain the ambiguity of the French word <> which imparts with a sense of direction and also with the English words ‘meaning’ and ‘significance.’
[ii] If we are attentive to the quote at the onset the chapter on “The Body as Expression and Speech” we are therein provided with the clearest account of what these verbs are intended to show. “…being, the weak sense of existence as a thing, or that of predication…’having’ for the relation which the subject bears to the term into which it projects itself…” Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2002. P. 202.
[iii] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 206.
[iv] ‘Style,’ for Merleau-Ponty, denotes the immanent affective impact of gestures. In other words, style would be the originary pre-conceptual encounter with meaning. His best accounts of style appear on Ibid., p. 208, 212.
[v] We must be careful to note Merleau-Ponty’s footnote which makes an important distinction between an ‘authentic speech’ and a secondary speech. Ibid., p. 207.
[vi] Fundierung, already part of the phenomenological tradition pre-dating Merleau-Ponty, appears to be a first draft of the important idea of reversibility that occupies him in his later works. See M.C. Dillon. Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology. Evanstown: Northwestern University Press, 1988. p 206.
[vii] Ibid., p 145. My italics
[viii] If there are certain tensions involved in the argument of The Phenomenology of Perception, perhaps an implicit privileging of the conceptual over the pre-conceptual, this is only in light of the trajectory we can see at work in the general movement of Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole. That is the contingent developments of the work undertaken in The Phenomenology of Perception can appear as mistaken, or essential, only when we reflect upon them in the light of his later work. If he appears too Cartesian in this work it is only in relation to how effectively he resolves his Cartesian tensions in the later works.
[ix] Merleau-Ponty seems to be searching for a kind of invariant in flux an invariant simultaneously capable of variation. Ibid., 139
[x] Merleau-Ponty attributes this discovery to Edmund Husserl and equates ‘motor intentionality’ with the movement of existence. Husserl’s treatment of it appears only in his posthumous works. Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 140.
[xi] Ibid., p. 146
[xii] Ibid., p. 194
[xiii]
[xiv] Ibid., p. 193
[xv] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 206
[xvi] Ibid., p. 208.
[xvii] Ibid., p. 212.
[xviii] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 218.
[xix]Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 215.
[xx] Ibid., p. 211.
[xxi] Ibid., p. 215.
[xxii] Ibid., p. 213.
[xxiii] Ibid., p. 192.
[xxiv] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 470.
[xxv] Ibid., p. 213.
[xxvi] In the later works Merleau-Ponty expresses a similar thought by using the terms <>
[xxvii] Ibid., p. 206.
[xxviii] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 225.
[xxix] These habits lurk behind and contribute to the things we simply take for granted. They determine in advance our sense of ontics.
[xxx] Ibid., p. 226.
[xxxi] Aphasia is a loss in the general ability to comprehend and produce language, it is a motor phenomenon in that it does not manifest as an intellectual deficit.
[xxxii] Alexia is word blindness resulting in a loss in the ability to read and recognize printed words in general.
[xxxiii] A patient of Gelb and Goldstein whose pathology, stems from an injury to the occipital region of his brain, has impaired what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the ‘intentional arc’
[xxxiv] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 228.
[xxxv] Ibid., p. 212.
[xxxvi] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 214.
[xxxvii] Ibid., p. 230.
[xxxviii] Ibid., p. 221.
[xxxix] Ibid., p. 221.
[xl] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 229.
How might we recognize that which may, or may not be cognizable? Does re-cognition demand, or require an original cognition? Or, can our recognition fulfill itself in a deferral to the possibility of a future cognition? In the quote above, Merleau-Ponty suggests that we attend to the factuality, rather the ultimate factuality, of this “open and indefinite power” which is donative in that it bestows a sense[i] that can be both apprehended and communicated in turn. Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion, however, is suggestive in a different sense, in that we obviously don’t need to recognize this power in order for it to remain operant. That is, this power we have is ultimately not founded upon its cognizability, and while Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion points to the possibility that it be subjected to a kind of viewing, it does not require it in order to function. This power, which it is our task to recognize, is simultaneously that by which man outstrips himself into novel modes of habitus, new ways of being towards others and himself, and that which constitutes a sense into a community of speaking subjects. This power is a corporeal power, which can be lived, and/or we can try to understand it through recourse to the auxiliary verbs of ‘being’ and ‘having.’[ii] The examination that follows will engage with this power, insofar as it is manifest in the movement of expression and in the case of acts of speech (parole). It will furthermore deal with the most important gestures Merleau-Ponty makes in the chapter “The Body As Expression and Speech.” In the first place he maintains, in opposition to the tradition, that “the word has a meaning”[iii], that is that the word has both a gestural meaning (sens) and a cognitive one. In the second place, he argues that there is not a series of words, which we might view from above from some third person standpoint, but rather, a speaking subject who is always a particular way, or ‘style’[iv] of speaking the words. Merleau-Ponty argues, that it is not thought which subtends, or immediately precedes the speaking subject’s act of speech but, rather a silence, a motility, which he comes to refer to as the ‘tacit cogito.’ Furthermore, that speech[v] is exemplary in that it is an act, which constitutes and sediments a new sense into a fabric of constituted language, which in turn rearranges the linguistic field. In other words, speech acts are both constituted, in the form of a new sense, and at the same time constitutive of all subsequent attempts to say, think, express something further. It is therefore the case that the new sense of sense, as constituted, takes its place within, and unfolds as the movement of a tradition. As such the paper that follows will maintain that this relation between the body’s motility and the body’s intelligence which Merleau-Ponty calls fundierung[vi] is this strange power and ‘irrational’ power of the body to be simultaneously apprehending and conveying, appropriative and bestowing, creative and traditional. The new sense of sense that emerges from the movement of expression, is simultaneously a response, or a reaction, to an existing tradition and the creating of a new sediment within a tradition. Speech acts, therefore are traditionalized/traditionalizing movements.
Motor Intentionality and the Paradox of Existence
It seems to be the case that one the most important developments of The Phenomenology of Perception is, in the first place, that we rid ourselves of the primacy of the conceptual order and come to see that there is something already at work in advance of our attempts to conceptualize the content of experience. Merleau-Ponty presents us with a clear statement a kind of manifesto of the project at hand, when he says:
“The task for us is to conceive, between the linguistic, perceptual and motor contents and the form given to them or the symbolic function which breathes life into them, a relationship which shall be neither a reduction of form to content, nor the subsuming of content under an autonomous form” (RKP 145).
If, as Merleau-Ponty says, “The task for us is to conceive, between the linguistic, perceptual and motor contents and the form given to them…a relationship…”[vii] and come to the realization that whatever this “relationship” might be, it is not solely conceptual, and neither is it purely motor and neither should the conceptual be our privileged mode of engagement with it.[viii] We must recognize that the conceptual order—or the symbolizing power of abstraction and generalization—is founded upon a perception, or the pure apprehending of motor phenomena. The Phenomenology of Perception makes a departure from the tradition of phenomenology, in that it no longer seeks the “explanatory invariant” in the form of the transcendental ego.[ix] Rather, Merleau-Ponty locates a motor intentionality, [x] a motor power, or a movement, which is simultaneously an active apprehending and a passive appropriation. Herein we find the important notion of fundierung, which names the relation between content and form[xi]. In this relation it becomes possible to say that the visual contents of perception are appropriated and sublimated by a symbolic function, which is simultaneously founded upon these contents and beyond them. What we have, therefore, is a kind of dialectical movement between content and form, which is constitutive of sense. Merleau-Ponty proposes firstly, that this movement is a contradiction, and secondly, that it can make sense only as a lived relation. It is important to note that we live the world before we come to see it as something questionable, and that this motor, or operant, intentionality gives us a motor significance upon which our capacity for generalization and the conceptual order are based. This intentionality is non-ideational, yet meaningful in that it deploys a certain field of experienceablity. Although pre-conceptual, our affective life as embodied beings, is no less rich than the conceptual, or secondary, way of existing. Furthermore, the fact that our existence is as embodied, makes us simultaneously “an object for others and a subject for myself”[xii]. This conceptual paradox disappears at the level of lived experience. Existence, therefore, is but another name for the dialectic between content and form, or the[xiii] fundierung, the “ambiguous setting”[xiv]wherein they intersect and overlap. As such, fundierung, perhaps deployed in order to gesture toward a certain space, cannot possibly name the space towards which it gestures, rather it is the apprehension of a movement, between the body’s motility and intelligence, a movement which is either everything, or nothing, or perhaps is already everything and nothing.
The Sense of the Word
Merleau-Ponty’s account of expression refutes the tradition “by simply saying that the word has a meaning”[xv]. This statement is definitive in its radicality, that is, it allows for a genuine departure from the empiricist and the intellectualist who are united in that they both maintain that the word is without meaning. For the Empiricist, the word is solely an appendage to the objective world; it stands for an association made in the objective world. For the intellectualist, the word is simply the external container of some internal thought, which was already accomplished in advance. Words, for Merleau-Ponty, are not “passive shells”, but active gestures in that they point, just as a bodily movement would point out something to oneself, or to another. There is not a thought before the movement of speech, but rather, this gestural sense is immanent in the movement of speech itself, and is that from which the conceptual sense of the word is derived.[xvi] There is beneath, or subtending “the conceptual meaning of words, an existential meaning” which inhabits the words themselves.[xvii] The body has these words as so many possibilities of itself, as orientational devices, which it can draw from and deploy in the achievement of some intention to express, or to mean something or other. These words, for Merleau-Ponty are centers of an incredible power that brings with it the entirety of the past forward in the movement of speech: “words into which the history of a whole language is compressed, and which effect communication with no absolute guarantee, dogged as they are by incredible linguistic hazards.[xviii] As such, these words are both natural and cultural, in that they are capable of gesturing toward the novelties of the perceptual world, but retain within themselves the cultural backgrounds from which they have emerged as former acts of expression. Each word is the result of a speech act, an accomplished intention to signify, to speak, to say, to articulate, a point of view, a perspective of the world, into the world of previously constituted speech and gestures. Language cannot be made to behave like any particular object; rather, it becomes meaningful when a speaking subject is engaged in it with others.
Apprehension and Appropriation
I am, at first, struck by the ‘style’ of that which unfolds before me. In the movement of coming to understand it conceptually, I am moved by its rhythm, its tempo, the harmonious flow of its melody. Provided I have ears, which can hear it, I can attend to the suggestion of its harmonics, to the reverberations of sound, which envelop me such that I cannot attend to anything else. I can attend to these rhythms because I share them; they are my rhythms, the sounds of the world that I live alongside others. My body is my capacity to attend in this manner, my capacity to be moved and to move, to partake in the movement of something that transcends me. This gestural significance of the word presents us with a ‘style’ of signification, which constitutes a first draft of meaning. As part of our movement, we are faced with the task of taking up this ‘style’ of expressivity in a paradoxical process of appropriation. This movement of appropriation is paradoxical in the sense that my intention, seeking realization, must come to expression through a sedimented linguistic tradition of already meaningful speech, that is, through a speech, through words, that already have a given sense. The apprehension of a gestural sense, “is not given, but understood, that is, recaptured by an act on the spectators part.”[xix] The gesture arises as a question upon my horizon, as an indeterminate something that solicits my attention, and my bodily capacity to move and to bring myself into accordance with it and the other whose gesture inhabits me. The body is that which converts “a certain motor essence” into phonation by deploying the articulatory style of a word, taking up its past, and projecting it in an effective intentional gesture.[xx] A comprehension of the object has been appropriated when, through the movement of concordance between my intention and that of the other, “the powers of my body adjust themselves to it and overlap it.”[xxi] The word therefore, “has a meaning ” perhaps even meanings, which points once again to the relation between these senses:
“…there are different layers of significance, from the visual to the conceptual by way of the verbal concept. These two ideas will never be simultaneously understood unless we cease to vacillate between the notions of ‘motility’ and ‘intelligence,’ unless we discover a third notion which enables us to integrate them…”(RKP 227).
Silence and the Illusion of Thought Before Speech
There is not a thought before speech, but rather a “silence… alive with words.”[xxii] Even further the silence is alive with feelings. The chapter on “The Body in its Sexual Being” points to this ambiguous life which subtends the conceptual order, it is a field of sexuality which is an original intentionality. Merleau-Ponty declares that “the body expresses existence at every moment, that is, in the sense in which the word expresses thought.”[xxiii] This silence, which precedes speech, is our opening onto the world, our feeling our way about in the world and with others, it is the excess, the overflow of our being, which always allows us to go further, to transcend the here and the now that we are as embodied beings. It is not a thought that precedes speech but rather, what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the tacit cogito, the body’s motility, which is our silent presence in a world, which is always constituted in advance.[xxiv] The illusion of thought before speech resides in the fields of sedimented language wherein the tacit cogito resides. Secondary speech, or the sedimentations of spoken speech (parole parlé) comprises the totality of exchanges having taken place in a language, which have determined the language in precisely the way it is encountered. The language itself, however, encountered in the realm of meaningful silence, opens up as a field of possibility for the tacit cogito which seeks to realize itself as a cogito through the movement of the speaking cogito. Pure thought, therefore, as Merleau-Ponty says “reduces itself to a certain void of consciousness, to a momentary desire.”[xxv] This “signicative intention,”[xxvi] which precedes expression, is the “lack,” or a kind of “blind expectation” which reshuffles the given sense in a movement of appropriation towards a sense of its own which it will be able to express in a subsequent speech act. It is precisely for this reason that Merleau-Ponty points toward the writer who begins his work in ignorance of what he will “put into it,” or the thinking subject who is ignorant of his thought until his has expressed it in writing, or in speech.[xxvii] The word is not in the first place a word offered to a consciousness composed of words, but rather a motor word soliciting a silent desire to express. We are, as it were, presented with a meaningful silence in speech, a silence interwoven in the fabric of words. We must attend to, or engage with this overflow of significance, this silence, which is present in a kind of absence. When a ‘gesture’ is made, it forces us to reckon with “a certain structural co-ordination of experience, a certain modulation of existence, exactly as a pattern of my bodily behavior endows objects around me with a certain significance both for me and for others.”[xxviii] Our motility, therefore, appears to be a kind of living history, such that the past is present in my being towards the world, informed as it is by the acquisition of successful practices and habits. It seems to be the case, therefore, that the world is mediated by these habits[xxix], which are cultivated, that is incorporated, or perhaps, even appropriated pre-reflectively. Our motility, therefore, seems to be an informed historical movement and my reflective access to it is necessarily marked by ambiguity. It is furthermore the case that we are never truly an object for ourselves, but rather an opening, we are never what we have been, rather we are an excess over what we have already come to understand, such that we remain, so long as we are alive, in a constant movement beyond ourselves.
Speech and the Movement of Expression
In the case of speech, Merleau-Ponty maintains: “it cannot be said of speech either that it is an ‘operation of intelligence,’ or that it is a ‘motor phenomenon’: it is wholly motility and wholly intelligence.”[xxx] That this is the case can be demonstrated through recourse to pathologies of speech, such as aphasia[xxxi] and alexia,[xxxii] or specifically in the case of Schneider[xxxiii] who seems to be incapable of projecting himself into a situation of any kind. His experience never seems questionable, thus it never tends toward speech. His language is no longer an instrument, but rather presents him with a kind of self-evidence such that he never seeks to go beyond himself.[xxxiv] In short language is a living relation with the world and other which manifests as an open situation, which can seemingly close, if only for a moment, before re-opens of its own accord. For Schneider, the situation is already closed, his language is fixed, no questions come to mind because nothing is questionable. In the non-pathological case, however there is a linguistic field from which we all borrow in order to combine an intentional desire with a speech act in the constitution of an object for ourselves and for others, thereby accomplishing thought by conveying a certain ‘style’ into a community of speakers. The movement of expression sediments its acts and constitutes a world of shared contextualities and experiences and becomes the shared background from which all sense is made. The movement of expression, which attempts to express the previously unexpressed, brings about a new sense, through “an organism of words, establishing it in the writer, or the reader as a new sense organ, opening an new field or a new dimension to our experience.”[xxxv] This new sense is apprehended in the world it opens up, in the possibilities it makes manifest, in the ways it reorganizes the past in terms of itself and a future it seems to make possible. It is not literally there contained in the words it uses, but rather is contained in the space between the speaker and the listener, between the gestural and conceptual meanings, between words and the world. It is precisely in this sense that Merleau-Ponty declares that “The spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world.”[xxxvi] Authentic expression takes aim at the unsayable, the previously unexpressed, otherwise it remains in the sedimentations of already spoken speech. However, all the same this authentic expression requires the sediment in order to go further, in order to forget the contingency involved in its own achievement. An authentic speech act brings something new before us, something above and beyond what we already had at our disposal, we must reckon with its novelty in order to go further. In order to understand what was said, we must come to appropriate it into a fresh movement of our bodily motility. This movement between motility and intelligence is our movement, the movement of the body, such that it is the body, which, in order to express, “must in the last analysis become the thought or intention that it signifies for us.”[xxxvii]
Language and the New Sense of Sense
Language, like sexuality, is an originating realm, that this realization comes late, is due in no small part to the sense of language itself. Language is peculiar in what it affords, and the movement it makes possible. Language is a traditionalized/ traditionalizing structure, in that it alone “is able to settle into sediment and constitute an acquisition for use in human relationships.”[xxxviii] In short, speech acts re-organize the fabric of the linguistic totality, such that speech becomes the basis upon which further acts of speech are made possible. Speech serves to ground itself upon itself, such that we may have speech about speech in ways that “it is impossible to paint about painting.”[xxxix] In each case the contingencies involved in particular acts of speech get covered over in a functioning that conceals itself in its acts. It therefore, becomes true to say that we treat linguistic virtualities, contingent developments of speech, as necessary abstractions in the development of our linguistic edifices. In our attempts to express our perception, say who and what we are, or to engage in a cultural space, we are, as it were, faced with these linguistic virtualities which we come to treat as idealities.
“Speech is the surplus of our existence over natural being. But the act of expression constitutes a linguistic world and a cultural world, and allows that to fall back into being which was striving to outstrip it. Hence the spoken word enjoys available significance as one might enjoy an aquired fortune. From these gains the other acts of authentic expression—the writer’s, artist’s or philosopher’s—are made possible.”[xl]
Ultimately, we find ourselves in the midst of traditionalized structures, which further their agendas through our acts, or whose agendas we thwart through our acts. There are traditions we are aware of other than we are not, in any case, our explicit awareness is not necessary in order for them to function, as it were, behind our back and in our wakes. We might be amidst a revolution, or part of a reformation, or a rectification, whose environs we are scarcely aware of, and whose results have yet to be written, as if they could ever be settled permanently. We live in fields of fields and upon histories, which we do not choose, but reckon with in each and every movement of our bodily existence.
Conclusion
If we return to the quote provided at the start of the current examination, having gone through the movement of expression, we might have something further to say about it. This awesome power we have to “give significance” and to appropriate and convey this significance into a community of speaking subjects is nothing more than the power of our existence itself. The attempts to say what it is, presupposes that this power is a thing that we might arrest and cognize. It seems that our language allows us to grasp things whose truth does not truly reside in the order of things, but in the movement of living. This is simply part of the awesome power of language and the significance of sense bestowal. We live in and contribute to a world of shared meaning, which emerge out of and shape our speech acts. Our lived body draws together this ‘motility and ‘intelligence,’ these diverse fields of experience. The motility of our being is such that it acts out its acquisitions, in patterns of behavior and speech. Our own body gives us others, a world, a particular ‘style’ of being; it expresses an attitude; bridges distances, and reduces gaps, between itself, others and the world. Gaps remain, allowing us to go further, to transcend ourselves and our apprehensions, allowing us the capacity to go beyond the previously said, or the already acquired. We live in the wake of thoughts given to us by our contemporaries and our predecessors, our movement is to appropriate them. We give meaning to ourselves, borrowing from and giving to others, and live in accordance with these meanings. The body is that lived unity which cannot be understood reflectively, rather requires that it be lived.
Endnotes
[i] I would like to maintain the ambiguity of the French word <
[ii] If we are attentive to the quote at the onset the chapter on “The Body as Expression and Speech” we are therein provided with the clearest account of what these verbs are intended to show. “…being, the weak sense of existence as a thing, or that of predication…’having’ for the relation which the subject bears to the term into which it projects itself…” Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2002. P. 202.
[iii] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 206.
[iv] ‘Style,’ for Merleau-Ponty, denotes the immanent affective impact of gestures. In other words, style would be the originary pre-conceptual encounter with meaning. His best accounts of style appear on Ibid., p. 208, 212.
[v] We must be careful to note Merleau-Ponty’s footnote which makes an important distinction between an ‘authentic speech’ and a secondary speech. Ibid., p. 207.
[vi] Fundierung, already part of the phenomenological tradition pre-dating Merleau-Ponty, appears to be a first draft of the important idea of reversibility that occupies him in his later works. See M.C. Dillon. Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology. Evanstown: Northwestern University Press, 1988. p 206.
[vii] Ibid., p 145. My italics
[viii] If there are certain tensions involved in the argument of The Phenomenology of Perception, perhaps an implicit privileging of the conceptual over the pre-conceptual, this is only in light of the trajectory we can see at work in the general movement of Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole. That is the contingent developments of the work undertaken in The Phenomenology of Perception can appear as mistaken, or essential, only when we reflect upon them in the light of his later work. If he appears too Cartesian in this work it is only in relation to how effectively he resolves his Cartesian tensions in the later works.
[ix] Merleau-Ponty seems to be searching for a kind of invariant in flux an invariant simultaneously capable of variation. Ibid., 139
[x] Merleau-Ponty attributes this discovery to Edmund Husserl and equates ‘motor intentionality’ with the movement of existence. Husserl’s treatment of it appears only in his posthumous works. Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 140.
[xi] Ibid., p. 146
[xii] Ibid., p. 194
[xiii]
[xiv] Ibid., p. 193
[xv] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 206
[xvi] Ibid., p. 208.
[xvii] Ibid., p. 212.
[xviii] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 218.
[xix]Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 215.
[xx] Ibid., p. 211.
[xxi] Ibid., p. 215.
[xxii] Ibid., p. 213.
[xxiii] Ibid., p. 192.
[xxiv] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 470.
[xxv] Ibid., p. 213.
[xxvi] In the later works Merleau-Ponty expresses a similar thought by using the terms <
[xxvii] Ibid., p. 206.
[xxviii] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 225.
[xxix] These habits lurk behind and contribute to the things we simply take for granted. They determine in advance our sense of ontics.
[xxx] Ibid., p. 226.
[xxxi] Aphasia is a loss in the general ability to comprehend and produce language, it is a motor phenomenon in that it does not manifest as an intellectual deficit.
[xxxii] Alexia is word blindness resulting in a loss in the ability to read and recognize printed words in general.
[xxxiii] A patient of Gelb and Goldstein whose pathology, stems from an injury to the occipital region of his brain, has impaired what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the ‘intentional arc’
[xxxiv] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 228.
[xxxv] Ibid., p. 212.
[xxxvi] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 214.
[xxxvii] Ibid., p. 230.
[xxxviii] Ibid., p. 221.
[xxxix] Ibid., p. 221.
[xl] Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. p. 229.
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Will of Saint Augustine
Consequently, no nature—except a non-existent one—can be contrary to the nature which is supreme and which created whatever other natures have being. In other words, nonentity stands in opposition to that which is. Therefore, there is no being opposed to God who is Supreme Being and Source of all beings without exception. (Augustine 247)
“No one can doubt that God is almighty,” Philosophy began.
“Certainly not, unless he is mad,” I answered.
“But nothing is impossible for one who is almighty.”
“Nothing.”
“Then can God do evil?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then evil is nothing, since God, who can do all things, cannot do evil.”
(Boethius 64)
My reading of Saint Augustine has been guided by a kind of tension, which seems prevalent in his work. As with many great works of philosophy, the work of Augustine can be read as a kind of reaction; a work, taking place in view of some antagonism toward an already existing position. It shall be maintained in the examination that follows that Augustine is engaged in an attack against the heresy of the Manichaeans, as such, he is careful not to posit evil as a being in itself but rather a kind of defect, or rather an absence of good. It is the case that evil occurs in an act of will, in the turning away from the good, from God, toward the ‘affairs of man.’ The quotes provided at the beginning of this examination, seem to offer themselves as a kind of trajectory, a path, which might lead us toward a greater understanding of the nature, or perhaps non-nature, of Augustinian evil. How can evil be nothing? And yet, at the same time, have being, or be said to exist? In the works of Saint Augustine we are, as it were, presented with a life dedicated to working within the space opened up by this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs. Augustine can be counted amongst the great synthesizers of the western tradition; his struggle, is of no small consequence, rather, we might take him to be announcing a kind of marriage between Platonism and Christianity. As with all marriages there is a great deal of unresolved tension, as Augustine himself readily admits: “In some places, Plato is on the side of the true religion which our faith accepts and defends. At other times he seems opposed.”(Augustine 149) If God is equated with the Platonic notion of the good, explicitly so in the work of Boethius,[1] then how can we account for the presence of evil in the world?
Augustine’ s treatment of evil can be understood as a reaction against the position of the Manichaeans; a position Augustine himself had previously shared. The Manichaeans posit a kind of dualism, which they maintain has been since the beginning, the light of the soul against darkness of the body; a principle of good opposed to a principle of evil; each possessing the property of being in itself. While Augustine accepts the soul/body distinction, his dualism is of a different type. For Augustine, the mind body dualism is not a relation between equals as demonstrated in his affirmation that “bodies are subject to wills,” or, even further, “all bodies are subject to the will of God.” (Augustine 108) It is, therefore, the case that the body is subject to the will, our will, although, we are, as it were, carnal beings. However, the body, as well as our own will, is subject to the will of God. Augustine’s dualism resides in the distinction between the Will and our will, which seem to rule over our bodies as such. For Augustine, the body is not an evil in itself, but rather a good created out of nothing by the Creator God. This distinction is paramount in Augustine’s treatment of evil and the key to his criticism of the Manichaeans. If evil is not a being, than only I can be responsible for the sins I commit, they are not the result of some principle of evil existing in the world. There is no battle between opposed Supreme Beings, but rather a single omnipotent Being who is wholly good.
"All things which He has made are good because made by Him, but they are subject to change because they were made, not out of Him, but out of nothing" (Augustine 245).
God is, therefore, the only unchangeable good with all lesser goods subject to the movements of change.
We might ask then, as Augustine does, how is it that evil can result from good? It seems necessary first to uncover the notion of Augustinian evil, and examine how it comes about. As the quote at the onset of the examination points out evil is, properly understood, nothing. How then are we to understand evil except in relation to the good, to God Himself? It is necessarily the case, if we follow Augustine’s argument, that by knowing, or recognizing evil we demonstrate that we are good, that we know the good as the good is all there is. Evil is nothing more than an absence of goodness, a certain lack, or defect in the pursuit of the good, of God. If God is the cause of everything, and everything is good, evil is a defection from Gods perfection. Evil, therefore, is not part of a causal chain, as Augustine puts it, rather it results from the turning, from the falling away from God, from perfection toward something else. However, as Augustine states it:
"No one is punished for natural defects, but only for deliberate faults. And even for a vice to develop, by force of habit and overindulgence, into a strong natural defect, the vice must have begun in the will" (Augustine 248).
The will, therefore, is the faculty, which turns away from God. How is it that our will can turn from the eternal, from the absolute toward something else?
How is this falling away accomplished? If we have been attentive, we will have noticed the duality inherent in the embodied Augustinian will. The will seems to be caught between the eternal Will of God, and the body, which is without will altogether. Augustine maintains that evil is nothing in itself, rather, it can only be understood relative to the good, the good in the body and the good in the will. For if evil is harmful, or hurtful it can only be so for something that is good in itself prior to the evil transgression.
"How, I ask, can good be the cause of evil? For when the will, abandoning what is above it, turns itself to something lower, it becomes evil because the very turning itself and not the thing to which it turns is evil" (Augustine 253).
The turning therefore is the evil, the turning, which turns towards “something which has no will.” Evil, resides in this turning away from the eternal, the infinite unchanging Will of God, toward the finite, the mutable the fleshy existence of man. The turning turns away from god and towards the self, the embodied self in the world. The will, wills it to be so; because the will, wills the lesser being; because “there is an act of willing; there is none if we do not want one.” A choice is necessarily our choice, a choice to will, or not to will. Turning away from the absolute Will of God toward the finite “affairs of man” is not a necessary choice but a voluntary one. What makes the will evil, therefore, is not a cause in a causal chain, rather, it is the turning of the will toward a lesser being. “The will does not fall into sin; it falls sinfully.”
The turn, turns toward that which emerged from nothing, therefore, in turning it turns away from Being and toward being and approaches the nothingness from which God created man. Only god can be satisfied in himself as the perfect good Creator he can never be apart from himself. Man, in turning toward himself, turns away from God, and makes manifest the defect, or ignorance, which enabled him to turn. All this enables Augustine to refute the Manichaean notion of good vs evil as beings in counter distinction. Rather than posit an antagonistic dualism Augustine rather posits the good as the only true being, making evil a mere relative absence of good. This move necessitates a split in the will itself, a will, which must choose to will or to fall away from the Will which it knows to be true and good. “ To possess Him is to be happy; to lose Him is to be in misery.” (Augustine 245)
[1] Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy, New York: Dover, 2002. p 58.
“No one can doubt that God is almighty,” Philosophy began.
“Certainly not, unless he is mad,” I answered.
“But nothing is impossible for one who is almighty.”
“Nothing.”
“Then can God do evil?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then evil is nothing, since God, who can do all things, cannot do evil.”
(Boethius 64)
My reading of Saint Augustine has been guided by a kind of tension, which seems prevalent in his work. As with many great works of philosophy, the work of Augustine can be read as a kind of reaction; a work, taking place in view of some antagonism toward an already existing position. It shall be maintained in the examination that follows that Augustine is engaged in an attack against the heresy of the Manichaeans, as such, he is careful not to posit evil as a being in itself but rather a kind of defect, or rather an absence of good. It is the case that evil occurs in an act of will, in the turning away from the good, from God, toward the ‘affairs of man.’ The quotes provided at the beginning of this examination, seem to offer themselves as a kind of trajectory, a path, which might lead us toward a greater understanding of the nature, or perhaps non-nature, of Augustinian evil. How can evil be nothing? And yet, at the same time, have being, or be said to exist? In the works of Saint Augustine we are, as it were, presented with a life dedicated to working within the space opened up by this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs. Augustine can be counted amongst the great synthesizers of the western tradition; his struggle, is of no small consequence, rather, we might take him to be announcing a kind of marriage between Platonism and Christianity. As with all marriages there is a great deal of unresolved tension, as Augustine himself readily admits: “In some places, Plato is on the side of the true religion which our faith accepts and defends. At other times he seems opposed.”(Augustine 149) If God is equated with the Platonic notion of the good, explicitly so in the work of Boethius,[1] then how can we account for the presence of evil in the world?
Augustine’ s treatment of evil can be understood as a reaction against the position of the Manichaeans; a position Augustine himself had previously shared. The Manichaeans posit a kind of dualism, which they maintain has been since the beginning, the light of the soul against darkness of the body; a principle of good opposed to a principle of evil; each possessing the property of being in itself. While Augustine accepts the soul/body distinction, his dualism is of a different type. For Augustine, the mind body dualism is not a relation between equals as demonstrated in his affirmation that “bodies are subject to wills,” or, even further, “all bodies are subject to the will of God.” (Augustine 108) It is, therefore, the case that the body is subject to the will, our will, although, we are, as it were, carnal beings. However, the body, as well as our own will, is subject to the will of God. Augustine’s dualism resides in the distinction between the Will and our will, which seem to rule over our bodies as such. For Augustine, the body is not an evil in itself, but rather a good created out of nothing by the Creator God. This distinction is paramount in Augustine’s treatment of evil and the key to his criticism of the Manichaeans. If evil is not a being, than only I can be responsible for the sins I commit, they are not the result of some principle of evil existing in the world. There is no battle between opposed Supreme Beings, but rather a single omnipotent Being who is wholly good.
"All things which He has made are good because made by Him, but they are subject to change because they were made, not out of Him, but out of nothing" (Augustine 245).
God is, therefore, the only unchangeable good with all lesser goods subject to the movements of change.
We might ask then, as Augustine does, how is it that evil can result from good? It seems necessary first to uncover the notion of Augustinian evil, and examine how it comes about. As the quote at the onset of the examination points out evil is, properly understood, nothing. How then are we to understand evil except in relation to the good, to God Himself? It is necessarily the case, if we follow Augustine’s argument, that by knowing, or recognizing evil we demonstrate that we are good, that we know the good as the good is all there is. Evil is nothing more than an absence of goodness, a certain lack, or defect in the pursuit of the good, of God. If God is the cause of everything, and everything is good, evil is a defection from Gods perfection. Evil, therefore, is not part of a causal chain, as Augustine puts it, rather it results from the turning, from the falling away from God, from perfection toward something else. However, as Augustine states it:
"No one is punished for natural defects, but only for deliberate faults. And even for a vice to develop, by force of habit and overindulgence, into a strong natural defect, the vice must have begun in the will" (Augustine 248).
The will, therefore, is the faculty, which turns away from God. How is it that our will can turn from the eternal, from the absolute toward something else?
How is this falling away accomplished? If we have been attentive, we will have noticed the duality inherent in the embodied Augustinian will. The will seems to be caught between the eternal Will of God, and the body, which is without will altogether. Augustine maintains that evil is nothing in itself, rather, it can only be understood relative to the good, the good in the body and the good in the will. For if evil is harmful, or hurtful it can only be so for something that is good in itself prior to the evil transgression.
"How, I ask, can good be the cause of evil? For when the will, abandoning what is above it, turns itself to something lower, it becomes evil because the very turning itself and not the thing to which it turns is evil" (Augustine 253).
The turning therefore is the evil, the turning, which turns towards “something which has no will.” Evil, resides in this turning away from the eternal, the infinite unchanging Will of God, toward the finite, the mutable the fleshy existence of man. The turning turns away from god and towards the self, the embodied self in the world. The will, wills it to be so; because the will, wills the lesser being; because “there is an act of willing; there is none if we do not want one.” A choice is necessarily our choice, a choice to will, or not to will. Turning away from the absolute Will of God toward the finite “affairs of man” is not a necessary choice but a voluntary one. What makes the will evil, therefore, is not a cause in a causal chain, rather, it is the turning of the will toward a lesser being. “The will does not fall into sin; it falls sinfully.”
The turn, turns toward that which emerged from nothing, therefore, in turning it turns away from Being and toward being and approaches the nothingness from which God created man. Only god can be satisfied in himself as the perfect good Creator he can never be apart from himself. Man, in turning toward himself, turns away from God, and makes manifest the defect, or ignorance, which enabled him to turn. All this enables Augustine to refute the Manichaean notion of good vs evil as beings in counter distinction. Rather than posit an antagonistic dualism Augustine rather posits the good as the only true being, making evil a mere relative absence of good. This move necessitates a split in the will itself, a will, which must choose to will or to fall away from the Will which it knows to be true and good. “ To possess Him is to be happy; to lose Him is to be in misery.” (Augustine 245)
[1] Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy, New York: Dover, 2002. p 58.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Other
Introduction:
Despite nominal differences, that is, differences of name, repetition is at play within the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Deleuze. The notion of the Other, be it ‘the crowd,’ ‘the herd,’ or ‘das man,’ converges in the divergent works. The subject exists in the collectivity, it is singular, yet at the same time resides in the world alongside others. We find ourselves ‘there,’ already in the world, dealing with the herd of man. Perhaps, we come to see ourselves as part of the crowd; the powerful gatekeepers of objective truth. We remain, at all times, that singularity, or the possibility of being singular for being a self authentically. The question, therefore, becomes, ‘how’ can I exist my specificity, authentically, yet at the same time be located in the world with the crowd? The enigmatic statements, “to become what I already am[1]” and “to become those we are,”[2]or, “proximally and for the most part, Dasein is not itself,”[3] take on a supreme relevance if what I am concerned with is becoming the individual, which is always a possibility of my being. It would seem that this possibility remains hidden from me so long as I adhere to the whims of the crowd. It is, therefore, the case that what is reflexively referred to as “I,” namely a singular relation to one’s self, is not itself properly, but rather is the Heideggerian “They self” of everydayness. The examination that follows will illuminate the role of others in the works discussed. Furthermore, it will examine the movement from the universal to the particular, the differentiation, or process of individuation, which the authors see as the necessary movement in the task of becoming a self. This movement necessitates that we pose the question of ‘how,’ as a manner of existing oneself as a singular individual and not simply running with the herd; the herd, or crowd, must, therefore, be overcome by the existing subject. While the authors propose divergent programs, there is a large degree of convergence, which will be our topic of discussion. Repetition is this point of convergence; it is the ‘how’ of maintaining oneself within the process of becoming what we already are.
“The Crowd,” “The Herd,” “Das Man” and The Everyday:
“For a ‘crowd’ is untruth.”[4] Truth, in the Kierkegaardian sense, is found in subjectivity; the task therefore, of every existing subject, is to become subjective. The existing subject is always the self’s relation to itself.[5] However, the self’s self-relation is caught in a dialectical paradox between the eternal (God) and the temporal. The crowd is, therefore, a manifestation of the seductive temporal, its ways being that of objectivity; the crowd takes the self’s relation away from the eternal; alienating it from the subjective truth. For Kierkegaard, the crowd is but a mere abstraction, the crowd is nothing more than a congregation of individuals each one possessing the means of becoming one such individual self in passionate inwardness. Becoming an individual is the highest task placed before the existing subject; the crowd is always concerned with the general, with world historical significance. The crowd exerts anonymous control; it is every individual, but no single individual, because every individual is a something general with no special significance for the crowd. The crowd gives the impression of power, but it is merely a terrestrial power; one which alleviates the burden of responsibility from the self, however, “Only one attains the goal.”[6] The crowd, in fact, hides the truth in a false temporal truth; a truth which can only end in despair; the real truth, the truth of the eternal, is only for the single individual. As we shall see for Kierkegaard the process of individuation resides in the ‘how’ of repetition, such that the existing subjects self relation can maintain itself as freedom.
Nietzsche is similarly concerned with the task of becoming an individual and the affirmation of life. For Nietzsche, therefore, the task is to undermine, to remove the ground from that which denies life; that which denies the creative force which resides in the individual as such. The herd, is one such denial of life, the will to power of the herd, undermines the will to power of the individual in favour of all that is average and unspectacular. It posits truth, where there are only errors and illusion. This truth is the will to power; within the herd will to power is the will to preservation of the species, such that, “ The species is everything, and one is always none.”[7] Morality, as a major informant of action, is nothing more than the manifestation of the herd’s will to preservation in the existing individual. Morality, as a creation of the herd’s will to power, makes the individual a mere function of the herd, as a means to the ends of the herd. [8] Morality, as the law of the herd, pronounces its “thou shalt,” as a great equalizer of that which is not equal; posits sameness where there is difference, and values the individual only in terms of the whole.[9] The herd instinct is ingrained within every existing subject, such that consciousness, that which sees itself as a unity in the I am I proposition, is nothing more than the herd manifesting itself in the individual. For Nietzsche, consciousness is but an emergent faculty, which satisfies the need for communication.[10] The individual who trusts the valuations of consciousness, therefore, trusts the valuations of the herd. Nietzsche, however, is not so trusting; the task he gives us is “to become those we are,” as such, we must overcome the will to power of the herd and strive through our own will to power to make our own truths and create our own values. Repetition, is once again the how this can be accomplished; through Eternal recurrence we can overcome the crowd, with a newly informed sense of time, and project our “retroactive force” into the future.
Heidegger, is concerned with uncovering Being through an ontological ‘existential analytic’ of Dasein. Dasein find itself, as throwness, already in the world amongst other Dasein and entities not of the character of Dasein. As such, Dasein, which is my specificity, is forced to deal with its world and the others located therein. Although the “I” is given, and seems to impart with a notion of specificity, it is nonetheless the case that “proximally and for the most part, Dasein is not itself in everydayness.” Pre-ontologically, Dasein find itself in a world already interpreted by the Dasein of others, and thus find in itself not the “I” of Dasein specificity, but rather the they-self (Das Man) of everyone and no one. Therefore, Dasein, as a requisite of its existence, has the presuppositions of the they-self as given.[11] In everydayness, or pre-ontologically, Dasein understands itself and the world in terms of the Das Man. So long as Dasein remains in this state, it remains in authentic and falling away from itself. The clock is a creation of Das man:
“Then time is already interpreted as present, past is interpreted as no longer present, future as indeterminate not yet present: pas is irretrievable, future indeterminate.”[12]
Time, lived in this fashion, is marked by its irreversibility and the primacy of the present as the space of homogenization. Time, lived in this manner, is in-authentic and Dasein living time in this manner concerns itself with questions of ‘when’ and ‘what.’ The task, for the authentic, singular, Dasein concerned with individuating itself, concerned with maintaining itself as possibility, involves a reconception of time grounded in the most extreme possibility of its being. The most extreme possibility of Dasein is its death and in death the specificity of Dasein is manifest; this possibility necessarily involves the question of ‘how’ time is to be existed.
Repetition As the ‘How’ of individuation:
Deleuze’s account in “Difference and Repetition,” seems to be an ideal starting point in order to explain the notion of repetition as it is employed by the various authors. Firstly, Deleuze posits various levels of repetition, a general, external, bare repetition, and an internal ideational repetition.[13] Repetition is the ‘how’ which all the authors’ employ, once individuated, it allows the subject to maintain itself as freedom as a singular difference which defies representation.
“Repetition must be understood in the pronominal; we must first find the self of repetition, the singularity within that which repeats. For there is no repetition without a repeater, nothing repeated without a repetitious soul.”[14]
The singularity, which avoids identity, which defies representation, is the true repetition for which Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger seek to repeat. It is a creative act which creates a new space and time, it is an affirmation of life it is the difference which animates action.
Kierkegaard’s task, that of becoming subjective, is theological in nature. Kierkegaard is primarily informed by his relationship to God. Becoming subject is, therefore, the cultivation of this relation to God.[15] Kierkegaard’s subject is individuated by faith in God and the ability to think death in every moment. The crowd offers security, anonymity, and irresponsibility; cowardess would have us choose to remain part of the crowd. Courage and passion allow the existing individual think its own death and “attend to this thought at every moment.”[16] The uncertainty of death requires an inward movement toward the truth in subjectivity. Becoming subjecting allows us to become the self which we already are. Repetition is the ‘how’ this can be done; without the possibility of repetition the subject would lose its self in the crowd as actualized by it. Freedom, which is always the self’s self-relation, must seek to actualize itself as freedom. Repetition[17] is the task of freedom, for maintaining oneself as possibility in the moment as the intersection between the eternal and the temporal. Repetition of this sort is the second type of repetition of which Deleuze mentioned, namely, it is internal repetition; it allows the subject to exist the eternal temporal paradox, while at the same time taking the past up into itself and existing it forward as freedom; as freedom’s possibility.
Nietzsche finds in the eternal recurrence the means of undermining the valuations of the herd, and of “becoming those we are.” For both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, courage lies on the side of becoming the self; further for Nietzsche, courage lies in willing the eternal recurrence. “Courage, however, is the best slayer--courage which attacks: which slays even death itself, for it says, ‘was that life? Well then! Once more!”[18] Eternal recurrence, as a repetition of all that is in every moment, undermines the notions of the herd. Eternal recurrence undermines the Christian notions of origins, of judgement, of another world beyond our own. In the recurrence there is only the moment, which repeats eternally, a moment, which has never begun, nor will it cease, to repeat. Eternal becoming is the result, as a sort of (non) being, not as a negation of being but as the affirmation of being as becoming. There is repetition of sameness, which affirms the moment as an eternally important one:
“This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything utterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself.”[19]
The eternal recurrence is an internal repetition, regardless of whether it is so in actuality; it is a manner of living, which affirms life and affirms the creative force of becoming a self. The eternal recurrence brings with it a new conception of time, allowing every existing individual to assert its retroactive force, making the past a possibility. It allows the individual to take up the whole of history, as a creative force, and repeat it in the eternally repeating moment.[20] The whole of history, in the single individual, lived as possibility in the moment;[21] the moment, which has never begun and shall never cease to become. Nietzsche makes the ultimate affirmation of life; the life of the singular existing individual thus takes on the “greatest weight,” the greatest significance, and shall be the source of all our joy.
In everydayness, Dasein is not itself, but rather the they-self of everyone and no one. Dasein individuates itself only through the notion of its own death. As throwness, into the pre-interpreted world, Dasein comes to live itself in everydayness as the they-self, as the One. However, death, as specifically my death, cannot be interpreted by the they-self, for my death is mine specifically and I cannot come to know it through the death of other Dasein. Dasein, therefore, must interpret for itself the most extreme possibility of its being its own death.[22] The ability to see this futural uncertainty undermines the they-self, that Dasein is pre-ontologically and in everydayness; this undermines Dasein conception of itself, allowing Dasein seek to create itself based upon the indeterminate certainty of its own death. Being-towards-death frees Dasein from its everyday conception of time as the present, a conception informed by the they-self, such that Dasein becomes futural; the future being the most fundamental phenomenon of time. The specificity of Dasein’s own death, grounds Dasein as the fundamental possibility of its being, or ceasing to be. In running ahead to this most extreme possibility Dasein is thrust back upon itself in everydayness, but with something more, as a ‘how.’ Being-futural, Dasein is running ahead to its past, a past which it now has; a past which it uses to cultivate the present; the past, is now possibility, which is repeated in ‘how’ it is lived.[23]
“In so doing, it becomes manifest that the original way of dealing with time is not a measuring. Coming back in running ahead is itself the ‘how’ of that concern in which I am precisely tarrying.”[24]
Authentically Dasein is time; running ahead to the past, allows for a repetition of the past yet a repetition which is concerned with ‘how’ this past is existed.
Conclusion:
While a conclusion seems out of place, it is nonetheless expedient as a summation of what has been illuminated thus far. The individual must become that which it already is; that which remains hidden from it by the crowd. The movement, which individuates the subject, is an existential one, one which must allow itself to be subject to repetition. Although it would seem, reflexively, that we are a particular within the universal, the truth of the matter is that we must become this particular. This task, which is specifically our own, should take up the whole of our lifetime. Courage, creativity, passion and repetition are the prerequisites in the task of becoming and maintaining oneself as a singularity. The ‘how’ of repetition is the manner of existing as a particular individual. The repetition which allows us to remain possible at all times in moment, must be the object of the will, such that repetition is not a something outside of us, but rather, a manner of existing a task we gives ourselves which informs all of our actions
Bibliography
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Colombia University Press, (1993.)
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, (1962.)
Heidegger, Martin. The Concept of Time. Trans. William McNeil. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, (1992.)
Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Trans. Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, (1983.)
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Trans. Reidar Thomte. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, (1980.)
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Point of View For My Work As An Author: A Report To History and Related Writings. Trans. Walter Lowrie. New York: Harper & Row, (1959.)
Nietzsche, Frederich. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, (1974.)
Nietzsche, Frederich. Thus spoke Zarathustra: a Book For None and For All. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, (1978.)
Nietzsche, Frederich. The Will To Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann & R.J. Hollindale. New York: Vintage Books, (1967.)
Swenson, David F.. Trans. Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Princeton: Princeton University Press, (1944.)
[1] David F. Swenson. Trans. Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944. p. 116.
[2] Frederich Nietzsche. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. p. 266.
[3] Dasein is utilized by Heidegger so as not to import the presuppositions of the philosophical tradition; literally translated as “being there,” what is signified is the threefold structure of the being of an existing subject. Being-in-the-world, as its spatial location; Being-with, as its intersubjectivity, signifying that the space, wherein Dasein finds itself, is shared with others. Finally, Dasein is specificity, as a relation of the self to the self. Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. p 151.
[4] Soren Kierkegaard. The Point of View For My Work As An Author: A Report To History and Related Writings. Trans. Walter Lowrie. New York: Harper & Row, 1959. p 110.
[5] The self is a synthesis of psyche and body, achieved when spirit is posited as the third term. The self is also a synthesis of the eternal and the temporal, which can only be synthesized in the moment where time reflects eternity. Soren Kierkegaard. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Trans. Reidar Thomte. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1980. p. 85-86.
[6] Kierkegaard. The Point of View For My Work As An Author. p 111.
[7] Nietzsche. The Gay Science. p 74.
[8] Ibid., p. 174-175.
[9] It must be held firmly in mind that the notion of morality is based on the notion of the divine laws of God. Morality, furthermore, functions in consciousness in terms of what seems to be a unified self. However, Nietzsche proclaimed the Death of God and denies the existence of a unity in consciousness. Frederich Nietzsche. The Will To Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann & R.J. Hollindale. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. p 156-157.
[10] Nietzsche. The Gay Science. p 299.
[11] This is what is meant by throwness into the world; it a sort of abandonment into a world already interpreted by the-they to which we are thrown.
[12] Martin Heidegger. The Concept of Time. Trans. William McNeil. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. p. 17E.
[13] The external repetition is one of difference between objects represented by the same concept. The internal repetition is the pure unmediated movement of an idea, as a creative accentuation, or moreness. The internal repetition is always masked by the external repetition, such that they are intimately interlinked. Gilles Deleuze. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Colombia University Press, 1993. p 24.
[14] Deleuze. Difference and Repetition. p. 23.
[15] “The truth can neither be communicated nor be received except as it were under God’s eyes, not without God’s help, not without God’s being involved as the middle term, He himself being the Truth. It can therefore only be communicated by and received by the ‘individual’ which as a matter of fact can be every living man.” Kierkegaard. The Point of View For My Work As An Author. p. 117.
[16] Swenson. Trans. Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. p. 151.
[17] Kierkegaard lists three stages in the history of repetition in the sphere of individual freedom. The first is freedom as desire, which leads to despair; freedom as sagacity, which in turn leads to despair; freedom as freedom, which is the highest repetition and leads to atonement. Soren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Trans. Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983. p. 288.
[18] Frederich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra: a Book For None and For All. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. p. 157.
[19] Nietzsche. The Gay Science. p. 273.
[20] Ibid., p. 104.
[21] Ibid., p 268.
[22] Heidegger. Being and Time. p. 296.
[23] Heidegger. The Concept of Time. p. 14E.
[24] Ibid., p. 14E
Despite nominal differences, that is, differences of name, repetition is at play within the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Deleuze. The notion of the Other, be it ‘the crowd,’ ‘the herd,’ or ‘das man,’ converges in the divergent works. The subject exists in the collectivity, it is singular, yet at the same time resides in the world alongside others. We find ourselves ‘there,’ already in the world, dealing with the herd of man. Perhaps, we come to see ourselves as part of the crowd; the powerful gatekeepers of objective truth. We remain, at all times, that singularity, or the possibility of being singular for being a self authentically. The question, therefore, becomes, ‘how’ can I exist my specificity, authentically, yet at the same time be located in the world with the crowd? The enigmatic statements, “to become what I already am[1]” and “to become those we are,”[2]or, “proximally and for the most part, Dasein is not itself,”[3] take on a supreme relevance if what I am concerned with is becoming the individual, which is always a possibility of my being. It would seem that this possibility remains hidden from me so long as I adhere to the whims of the crowd. It is, therefore, the case that what is reflexively referred to as “I,” namely a singular relation to one’s self, is not itself properly, but rather is the Heideggerian “They self” of everydayness. The examination that follows will illuminate the role of others in the works discussed. Furthermore, it will examine the movement from the universal to the particular, the differentiation, or process of individuation, which the authors see as the necessary movement in the task of becoming a self. This movement necessitates that we pose the question of ‘how,’ as a manner of existing oneself as a singular individual and not simply running with the herd; the herd, or crowd, must, therefore, be overcome by the existing subject. While the authors propose divergent programs, there is a large degree of convergence, which will be our topic of discussion. Repetition is this point of convergence; it is the ‘how’ of maintaining oneself within the process of becoming what we already are.
“The Crowd,” “The Herd,” “Das Man” and The Everyday:
“For a ‘crowd’ is untruth.”[4] Truth, in the Kierkegaardian sense, is found in subjectivity; the task therefore, of every existing subject, is to become subjective. The existing subject is always the self’s relation to itself.[5] However, the self’s self-relation is caught in a dialectical paradox between the eternal (God) and the temporal. The crowd is, therefore, a manifestation of the seductive temporal, its ways being that of objectivity; the crowd takes the self’s relation away from the eternal; alienating it from the subjective truth. For Kierkegaard, the crowd is but a mere abstraction, the crowd is nothing more than a congregation of individuals each one possessing the means of becoming one such individual self in passionate inwardness. Becoming an individual is the highest task placed before the existing subject; the crowd is always concerned with the general, with world historical significance. The crowd exerts anonymous control; it is every individual, but no single individual, because every individual is a something general with no special significance for the crowd. The crowd gives the impression of power, but it is merely a terrestrial power; one which alleviates the burden of responsibility from the self, however, “Only one attains the goal.”[6] The crowd, in fact, hides the truth in a false temporal truth; a truth which can only end in despair; the real truth, the truth of the eternal, is only for the single individual. As we shall see for Kierkegaard the process of individuation resides in the ‘how’ of repetition, such that the existing subjects self relation can maintain itself as freedom.
Nietzsche is similarly concerned with the task of becoming an individual and the affirmation of life. For Nietzsche, therefore, the task is to undermine, to remove the ground from that which denies life; that which denies the creative force which resides in the individual as such. The herd, is one such denial of life, the will to power of the herd, undermines the will to power of the individual in favour of all that is average and unspectacular. It posits truth, where there are only errors and illusion. This truth is the will to power; within the herd will to power is the will to preservation of the species, such that, “ The species is everything, and one is always none.”[7] Morality, as a major informant of action, is nothing more than the manifestation of the herd’s will to preservation in the existing individual. Morality, as a creation of the herd’s will to power, makes the individual a mere function of the herd, as a means to the ends of the herd. [8] Morality, as the law of the herd, pronounces its “thou shalt,” as a great equalizer of that which is not equal; posits sameness where there is difference, and values the individual only in terms of the whole.[9] The herd instinct is ingrained within every existing subject, such that consciousness, that which sees itself as a unity in the I am I proposition, is nothing more than the herd manifesting itself in the individual. For Nietzsche, consciousness is but an emergent faculty, which satisfies the need for communication.[10] The individual who trusts the valuations of consciousness, therefore, trusts the valuations of the herd. Nietzsche, however, is not so trusting; the task he gives us is “to become those we are,” as such, we must overcome the will to power of the herd and strive through our own will to power to make our own truths and create our own values. Repetition, is once again the how this can be accomplished; through Eternal recurrence we can overcome the crowd, with a newly informed sense of time, and project our “retroactive force” into the future.
Heidegger, is concerned with uncovering Being through an ontological ‘existential analytic’ of Dasein. Dasein find itself, as throwness, already in the world amongst other Dasein and entities not of the character of Dasein. As such, Dasein, which is my specificity, is forced to deal with its world and the others located therein. Although the “I” is given, and seems to impart with a notion of specificity, it is nonetheless the case that “proximally and for the most part, Dasein is not itself in everydayness.” Pre-ontologically, Dasein find itself in a world already interpreted by the Dasein of others, and thus find in itself not the “I” of Dasein specificity, but rather the they-self (Das Man) of everyone and no one. Therefore, Dasein, as a requisite of its existence, has the presuppositions of the they-self as given.[11] In everydayness, or pre-ontologically, Dasein understands itself and the world in terms of the Das Man. So long as Dasein remains in this state, it remains in authentic and falling away from itself. The clock is a creation of Das man:
“Then time is already interpreted as present, past is interpreted as no longer present, future as indeterminate not yet present: pas is irretrievable, future indeterminate.”[12]
Time, lived in this fashion, is marked by its irreversibility and the primacy of the present as the space of homogenization. Time, lived in this manner, is in-authentic and Dasein living time in this manner concerns itself with questions of ‘when’ and ‘what.’ The task, for the authentic, singular, Dasein concerned with individuating itself, concerned with maintaining itself as possibility, involves a reconception of time grounded in the most extreme possibility of its being. The most extreme possibility of Dasein is its death and in death the specificity of Dasein is manifest; this possibility necessarily involves the question of ‘how’ time is to be existed.
Repetition As the ‘How’ of individuation:
Deleuze’s account in “Difference and Repetition,” seems to be an ideal starting point in order to explain the notion of repetition as it is employed by the various authors. Firstly, Deleuze posits various levels of repetition, a general, external, bare repetition, and an internal ideational repetition.[13] Repetition is the ‘how’ which all the authors’ employ, once individuated, it allows the subject to maintain itself as freedom as a singular difference which defies representation.
“Repetition must be understood in the pronominal; we must first find the self of repetition, the singularity within that which repeats. For there is no repetition without a repeater, nothing repeated without a repetitious soul.”[14]
The singularity, which avoids identity, which defies representation, is the true repetition for which Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger seek to repeat. It is a creative act which creates a new space and time, it is an affirmation of life it is the difference which animates action.
Kierkegaard’s task, that of becoming subjective, is theological in nature. Kierkegaard is primarily informed by his relationship to God. Becoming subject is, therefore, the cultivation of this relation to God.[15] Kierkegaard’s subject is individuated by faith in God and the ability to think death in every moment. The crowd offers security, anonymity, and irresponsibility; cowardess would have us choose to remain part of the crowd. Courage and passion allow the existing individual think its own death and “attend to this thought at every moment.”[16] The uncertainty of death requires an inward movement toward the truth in subjectivity. Becoming subjecting allows us to become the self which we already are. Repetition is the ‘how’ this can be done; without the possibility of repetition the subject would lose its self in the crowd as actualized by it. Freedom, which is always the self’s self-relation, must seek to actualize itself as freedom. Repetition[17] is the task of freedom, for maintaining oneself as possibility in the moment as the intersection between the eternal and the temporal. Repetition of this sort is the second type of repetition of which Deleuze mentioned, namely, it is internal repetition; it allows the subject to exist the eternal temporal paradox, while at the same time taking the past up into itself and existing it forward as freedom; as freedom’s possibility.
Nietzsche finds in the eternal recurrence the means of undermining the valuations of the herd, and of “becoming those we are.” For both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, courage lies on the side of becoming the self; further for Nietzsche, courage lies in willing the eternal recurrence. “Courage, however, is the best slayer--courage which attacks: which slays even death itself, for it says, ‘was that life? Well then! Once more!”[18] Eternal recurrence, as a repetition of all that is in every moment, undermines the notions of the herd. Eternal recurrence undermines the Christian notions of origins, of judgement, of another world beyond our own. In the recurrence there is only the moment, which repeats eternally, a moment, which has never begun, nor will it cease, to repeat. Eternal becoming is the result, as a sort of (non) being, not as a negation of being but as the affirmation of being as becoming. There is repetition of sameness, which affirms the moment as an eternally important one:
“This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything utterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself.”[19]
The eternal recurrence is an internal repetition, regardless of whether it is so in actuality; it is a manner of living, which affirms life and affirms the creative force of becoming a self. The eternal recurrence brings with it a new conception of time, allowing every existing individual to assert its retroactive force, making the past a possibility. It allows the individual to take up the whole of history, as a creative force, and repeat it in the eternally repeating moment.[20] The whole of history, in the single individual, lived as possibility in the moment;[21] the moment, which has never begun and shall never cease to become. Nietzsche makes the ultimate affirmation of life; the life of the singular existing individual thus takes on the “greatest weight,” the greatest significance, and shall be the source of all our joy.
In everydayness, Dasein is not itself, but rather the they-self of everyone and no one. Dasein individuates itself only through the notion of its own death. As throwness, into the pre-interpreted world, Dasein comes to live itself in everydayness as the they-self, as the One. However, death, as specifically my death, cannot be interpreted by the they-self, for my death is mine specifically and I cannot come to know it through the death of other Dasein. Dasein, therefore, must interpret for itself the most extreme possibility of its being its own death.[22] The ability to see this futural uncertainty undermines the they-self, that Dasein is pre-ontologically and in everydayness; this undermines Dasein conception of itself, allowing Dasein seek to create itself based upon the indeterminate certainty of its own death. Being-towards-death frees Dasein from its everyday conception of time as the present, a conception informed by the they-self, such that Dasein becomes futural; the future being the most fundamental phenomenon of time. The specificity of Dasein’s own death, grounds Dasein as the fundamental possibility of its being, or ceasing to be. In running ahead to this most extreme possibility Dasein is thrust back upon itself in everydayness, but with something more, as a ‘how.’ Being-futural, Dasein is running ahead to its past, a past which it now has; a past which it uses to cultivate the present; the past, is now possibility, which is repeated in ‘how’ it is lived.[23]
“In so doing, it becomes manifest that the original way of dealing with time is not a measuring. Coming back in running ahead is itself the ‘how’ of that concern in which I am precisely tarrying.”[24]
Authentically Dasein is time; running ahead to the past, allows for a repetition of the past yet a repetition which is concerned with ‘how’ this past is existed.
Conclusion:
While a conclusion seems out of place, it is nonetheless expedient as a summation of what has been illuminated thus far. The individual must become that which it already is; that which remains hidden from it by the crowd. The movement, which individuates the subject, is an existential one, one which must allow itself to be subject to repetition. Although it would seem, reflexively, that we are a particular within the universal, the truth of the matter is that we must become this particular. This task, which is specifically our own, should take up the whole of our lifetime. Courage, creativity, passion and repetition are the prerequisites in the task of becoming and maintaining oneself as a singularity. The ‘how’ of repetition is the manner of existing as a particular individual. The repetition which allows us to remain possible at all times in moment, must be the object of the will, such that repetition is not a something outside of us, but rather, a manner of existing a task we gives ourselves which informs all of our actions
Bibliography
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Colombia University Press, (1993.)
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, (1962.)
Heidegger, Martin. The Concept of Time. Trans. William McNeil. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, (1992.)
Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Trans. Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, (1983.)
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Trans. Reidar Thomte. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, (1980.)
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Point of View For My Work As An Author: A Report To History and Related Writings. Trans. Walter Lowrie. New York: Harper & Row, (1959.)
Nietzsche, Frederich. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, (1974.)
Nietzsche, Frederich. Thus spoke Zarathustra: a Book For None and For All. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, (1978.)
Nietzsche, Frederich. The Will To Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann & R.J. Hollindale. New York: Vintage Books, (1967.)
Swenson, David F.. Trans. Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Princeton: Princeton University Press, (1944.)
[1] David F. Swenson. Trans. Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944. p. 116.
[2] Frederich Nietzsche. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. p. 266.
[3] Dasein is utilized by Heidegger so as not to import the presuppositions of the philosophical tradition; literally translated as “being there,” what is signified is the threefold structure of the being of an existing subject. Being-in-the-world, as its spatial location; Being-with, as its intersubjectivity, signifying that the space, wherein Dasein finds itself, is shared with others. Finally, Dasein is specificity, as a relation of the self to the self. Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. p 151.
[4] Soren Kierkegaard. The Point of View For My Work As An Author: A Report To History and Related Writings. Trans. Walter Lowrie. New York: Harper & Row, 1959. p 110.
[5] The self is a synthesis of psyche and body, achieved when spirit is posited as the third term. The self is also a synthesis of the eternal and the temporal, which can only be synthesized in the moment where time reflects eternity. Soren Kierkegaard. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Trans. Reidar Thomte. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1980. p. 85-86.
[6] Kierkegaard. The Point of View For My Work As An Author. p 111.
[7] Nietzsche. The Gay Science. p 74.
[8] Ibid., p. 174-175.
[9] It must be held firmly in mind that the notion of morality is based on the notion of the divine laws of God. Morality, furthermore, functions in consciousness in terms of what seems to be a unified self. However, Nietzsche proclaimed the Death of God and denies the existence of a unity in consciousness. Frederich Nietzsche. The Will To Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann & R.J. Hollindale. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. p 156-157.
[10] Nietzsche. The Gay Science. p 299.
[11] This is what is meant by throwness into the world; it a sort of abandonment into a world already interpreted by the-they to which we are thrown.
[12] Martin Heidegger. The Concept of Time. Trans. William McNeil. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. p. 17E.
[13] The external repetition is one of difference between objects represented by the same concept. The internal repetition is the pure unmediated movement of an idea, as a creative accentuation, or moreness. The internal repetition is always masked by the external repetition, such that they are intimately interlinked. Gilles Deleuze. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Colombia University Press, 1993. p 24.
[14] Deleuze. Difference and Repetition. p. 23.
[15] “The truth can neither be communicated nor be received except as it were under God’s eyes, not without God’s help, not without God’s being involved as the middle term, He himself being the Truth. It can therefore only be communicated by and received by the ‘individual’ which as a matter of fact can be every living man.” Kierkegaard. The Point of View For My Work As An Author. p. 117.
[16] Swenson. Trans. Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. p. 151.
[17] Kierkegaard lists three stages in the history of repetition in the sphere of individual freedom. The first is freedom as desire, which leads to despair; freedom as sagacity, which in turn leads to despair; freedom as freedom, which is the highest repetition and leads to atonement. Soren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Trans. Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983. p. 288.
[18] Frederich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra: a Book For None and For All. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. p. 157.
[19] Nietzsche. The Gay Science. p. 273.
[20] Ibid., p. 104.
[21] Ibid., p 268.
[22] Heidegger. Being and Time. p. 296.
[23] Heidegger. The Concept of Time. p. 14E.
[24] Ibid., p. 14E
The Understanding
Beginning as a completely separate endeavour, the paper that follows has taken shape in terms of the task I originally gave myself. In the process of dealing with the critique of the enlightenment and modernity, it became apparent to me that the notion of subjectivity, itself, had been radically altered in the process of the critique. The critique of modernity seems to have altered the landscape of how we think of our selves and the world we live in. Once the “I’ proclamation is undermined, it seems that man comes to occupy a new space. No longer are we simply given over to ourselves as was previously held to be the case. Is objectivity possible, without the presence of a subject? Was objectivity possible in modernity, when we thought of ourselves as something like a subject? The narrative of the self seems to have undergone some radical retooling. When “man” is no longer the centre, or origin, of meaning, where does meaning dwell? How does understanding function in this world without determinate Being. In the examination that follows I hope to provide some of these questions.
Beginning with the deconstruction of the subject, and the removal of Being as a something determinate in the “I,” a new space opens up in the work of Heidegger. While simply a new narrative of existence it nonetheless seems to unfold a new paradigm of possible examination. In the examination that follows I will deal with the concept of understanding as it unfolds within this novel space. Furthermore I will deal with the concept of understanding as it appears in the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer.
The analytic of Dasein should be understood as a critique of what Heidegger believed to be the problem of the ethos, or weltanschauung of the Enlightenment project. As such the narrative of Dasein is offered as a possible way out of the totalitarian effects of man left to the power of subjective reason. If the Enlightenment could be characterized as a loss of self- the task of the existing Dasein can be interpreted as a manner of engaging with, and finding, itself as it is constituted in a ‘world.’ Finally, through this examination I hope to demonstrate ‘how’ the analytic of Dasein can be seen as opening the space, or making possible, some of the principle themes in the philosophy of the social sciences. I will engage with concepts like the importance of meaning, the interaction between understanding and interpretation, the concept of moods in psychology, language, and finally the role of metaphor in understanding.
I. Uncovering the Metaphysical.
Being and Time posits that the fundamental error of the entire western tradition has been the posing of the question such that an entity ‘is’ has been sought as an answer. What is Being? What is being asked, therefore, is that Being take on the character of definability which is, in fact, an impossibility. However, at the same time, by the sheer fact of existing one is already acquainted with Being, therefore, one always already lives in an understanding of Being.[1] It cannot be the case, therefore, that the subiectum, or the Hypokeimenon, “the word names that-which-lies-before, which, as ground gathers everything unto itself,” can be found within the “I” proclamation of man.[2] Rather, what has been sought by the western tradition has been the being of beings. The question of Being, of uncovering Being in-itself, is more fundamental.
“With the ‘cogito sum’ Descartes had claimed to be putting philosophy on a new and firm footing… has revealed itself as the implementation of a baleful prejudice, which has kept later generations from making any thematic ontological analytic of the ‘mind’…”[3]
In order to investigate Being, Heidegger imports the concept of Dasein as that entity for which Being is an issue. Dasein, as ‘being there,’ is encountered in its ‘there; the ‘there’ imparts with a notion of spatiality as a location wherein Dasein comes to encounter itself. Dasein, as such, has a three-fold structure, an ‘is’ as existence, or being, and a ‘there’ as a location in a “world,” and a relation of self to itself. It is impossible, therefore, to have Dasein without also having a “world.” Therefore, hidden within the “I” proclamation of Dasein, there necessarily lurks “world.” Thus, while Dasein is necessarily my specificity; it is also my being-in-the-world; as being-in-the-world, my Dasein is necessarily being-with the Dasein of others. As such it becomes apparent that the subject object distinction breaks down; “man,” as subject, is made manifest as a metaphysical presupposition.
II. ‘Where’ and ‘How’ We Are.
Dasein finds itself always already given over to the “there” as throwness, in its Being-there as such.[4] In this space Dasein has two constitutive ways of being, firstly, it finds itself in a mood, or state of mind. Secondly, it finds itself always already in understanding. Understanding is derived from a totality of involvements; Dasein is such that it is always being-with in a ‘world’ as the totality of possible involvements. Dasein, as being-in-the-world, as dwelling spatially, is that entity which, in concernful situatedness, circumspectively de-severs.[5] Therefore, although Dasein proclaims the ‘I’ as a reflexive representation of itself, existentially the ‘I’ remains furthest from Dasein in everydayness. Rather, what becomes most proximate is the phenomenon of ‘world,’ as the totality of involvements; as the wherein of Dasein’s understanding; as that in-terms-of-which the fore-structure of understanding is derived and the into-which the understanding is projected. [6] Dasein encounters itself proximally as already existing, as being there amongst entities, as already involved with the world of ‘significance[7], in doing what Dasein does. Hence, Dasein encounters itself in those entities with which it is concerned environmentally. Others are not encountered as something ready-to-hand, or as a present-at-hand[8] for contemplation; rather others are encountered environmentally, in terms of the world of Dasein’s concern. The environment, however, is encountered in everydayness as ready-to-hand; as such, in concern Dasein encounters the products of others circumspectively. Thus it becomes apparent that being alongside the Dasein of others has the character of togetherness, as being one Dasein amongst many, in concernful situatedness, within an environment.
The hermeneutic circle is decisive in placing hermeneutics itself on ontological grounding, an endeavour which Hans-Georg Gadamer made his own. At this point in the examination it seems necessary to illuminate this circle. It seems clear that understanding is a structure, a totality of involvements, which, Dasein as “throwness,” projects into the world. Interpretation, grounded in the fore-conception of understanding, makes understanding manifest in the ‘as’ structure. In essence, interpretation, interprets what the understanding has already understood in an assertion. As Heidegger states it:
“Whenever something is interpreted as something, the interpretation will be founded essentially upon fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. An interpretation is never presuppositionless apprehending of something presented to us.”[9]
Meaning is that upon-which of the projected fore-structure and in ‘terms of which’ something becomes intelligible. Meaning is ontological in that it is an essential property of Dasein itself. I have, thus far, been merely delineating and illuminating the territory in an attempt to demonstrate ‘where’ we are and ‘how’ we exist there.
III. The Historical, Metaphorical and Linguistic Horizon.
Gadamer, in Truth and Method, engages with hermeneutics upon its ontological grounding and proceeds to critique the epistemological presuppositions of the tradition, whereby, it was assumed that the subject had some privileged access to the historical. Rather, as Gadamer states:
“In fact history does not belong to us; we belong to it. Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, in society, and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his judgements, constitute the historical reality of his being.”[10]
These prejudices, to which Gadamer makes allusions, can only be those present in the fore-structure of understanding. Thus, it is no doubt true that these prejudices predetermine if anything can have meaning for Dasein in the interaction with texts. Gadamer insists that the prejudices of the understanding are necessarily historical effects, of which we may or may not be aware. No methodological statement, or presupposition, can truly eliminate the affect of history upon understanding. It is, therefore, never the case that one can begin from a clean slate, even via the Cartesian method of doubt.[11] Wherever Dasein finds itself it necessary carries along with it the effects of history, or its historicity, and must therefore see itself as necessarily incomplete, or within an unfinished process.
It is necessary to bring into our purview the important concept of ‘horizon,’ as it is explicatedby Gadamer. In order to do so we must return to the constitution of Dasein itself, more specifically in terms of its temporal structure. Every particular moment has its limitations, in the sense of what can possibly be viewed from within the moment. For Gadamer, the term ‘horizon’ is the boundary, or the limit, of what can possibly be viewed in the moment. The ‘horizon,’ is not a static or fixed condition of the being of Dasein, but rather, is a limit within which Dasein moves and, is in turn moved by Dasein.
“To acquire a horizon means that one learns to look beyond what is close at hand-not in order to look away from it but to see it better, within a larger whole and in truer proportions.” [12]
The ‘horizon,’ therefore is required by the understanding in order to contextualize, or gain the proper perspective from which meaning can be grasped. It is therefore the case that the ‘horizon’ is shaped by the prejudices of understanding. However, as a process, or historically constituted, Dasein’s understanding is not simply rooted in the present, but is formed of its past, present, and projected into the future. Thus, it can be said that the ‘horizon’ of Dasein, which is historically constituted, can be transposed, and thus becomes fused within a horizon with others, in a kind of trans-temporal alienation from itself, returns to itself, having put its prejudices to the test.[13] The ‘horizon’ can therefore be seen as a process of dialogic mediation, which is not stuck in the present but rather trans-temporal. In the process understanding has, therefore, altered having discarded, or taken on new prejudices.
For Gadamer, along with world and historicity, our mode of being is fundamentally linguistic. Gadamer, furthermore, alludes to “the fundamental metaphoricity of language.”[14] As such, “language is the universal medium in which understanding occurs.”[15] It is therefore the case that “understanding occurs in interpretation,” which necessarily requires a kind of translation into the language within which Dasein finds itself. For Gadamer language is the medium where “I” and “world” meet.[16] Language is, therefore, both where Dasein finds itself and how Dasein lives itself. All experience of world, therefore, is essentially linguistic. Language, therefore, as Dasein’s mode of being-in-the-world is both a manner of existing and a space wherein common meanings can emerge. Language expresses both the infinite and finite
“Every word causes the whole of the language to which it belongs to resonate and the whole world view that underlies it to appear. Thus every word, as the event of a moment, carries with it the unsaid, to which it is related by responding and summoning.”[17]
Finally, for Gadamer, “Being that can be understood is language.”[18]
IV. Understanding, Metaphor and Meaning.
Dasein is understandingly situated in a ‘world’ and a language; both carry with them certain predilections and prejudices. In what sense therefore is objectivity to be thought of an ideal to be sought after? Rather, it would seem that the task of science itself requires a subject-object relation. In the narrative of Dasein, the subject-object distinction is lost, there is in fact only Dasein and the world of involvements which understanding always already understands pre-reflexively. If understanding takes place in a linguistic medium, which is fundamentally metaphorical, then interpretation is forced to interpret what is already understood and express something as something. The ‘as’ structure of interpretation, seems to leave open the possibility for metaphoricity of the understanding itself. Finally, it would seem that we are indeed prisoners of meaning, as meaning itself becomes a property of Dasein which can be said to exist in a meaningful way. Everything starts with meaning in terms of which the understanding is able to grasp anything at all.
What began as an attempt to engage with the critique of enlightenment; has somehow transformed, mutated, if you will into an altogether different enterprise. Yet, somehow, what is offered here is intimately related to the initial failure. Firstly, I attempted to deal with the presupposition of man as subject, as source, or logos of meaning. Understanding the enlightenment, as did Kant, in terms of a process, or a movement toward Enlightenment[19]; I sought to demonstrate ‘how’ the critique, or undermining, of the ‘cogito’ in effect served to uncover and deconstruct the fundamental grounding of the enlightenment project as such. Secondly, I turned to Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology; in the process of engaging with the text it seemed apparent that what was being alluded to was a kind of mediation of human understanding. If the subject, as the sole determinant of what is an object, can give itself over to technology, and in effect mediate its understanding technologically, how does understanding function such that it can be given over to, unconsciously I might add, something other than the subject itself? I decided to set aside my question and continued onward into an engagement with another Heidegger text The Age of the World Picture. This engagement left me with a further question which finally compelled me to set aside my initial project altogether; how does understanding function such that it might come to understand the world in terms of a picture? It became apparent to me, in both cases, that the understanding was functioning in terms of something else. If such is true than is this not further evidence that understanding is essentially metaphorical? In the process of asking these questions the current examination underwent a drastic transformation into the form that exists presently.
Bibliography
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Heidegger, Martin . Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
Heidegger, Martin. The Age of the World Picture. in The Question Concerning Technology: and Other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977.
Kant, Immanuel, Was ist Aufklarung? in The Enlightenment. Ed Frank E. Manuel, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965.
[1] Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. p. 23.
[2] Martin Heidegger. The Age of the World Picture. in The Question Concerning Technology: and Other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977. p 128.
[3] Heidegger. Being and Time, 46.
[4] Heidegger. Being and Time. p 172.
[5] De-severing; as a binging close of that which is at a distance, or as eliminating distance, such that that which is most proximate distantially might be furthest away from Dasein circumspectively.
[6] Heidegger. Being and Time. 190-194.
[7] Significance is the structural totality of world, as that which can be signified.
[8] A clarification of what is meant by the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand would seem to be necessary at this point. The-Ready-to-hand withdraws in circumspection in Dasein’s concernful absorption with it. The Ready-to-hand is not something for contemplation; rather, it becomes transparent in its use. The Present-at-hand, is that which is open to contemplation. The Ready-to-hand is possible, as that which was once Present-at-hand. Dasein encounters these entities, not of the character of Dasein, in its concern with them.
[9] Heidegger. Being and Time. 191.
[10] Hans-Georg Gadamer. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 2004. p 276-277.
[11] Gadamer. Truth and Method. 301.
[12] Ibid., 302
[13] Gadamer. Truth and Method. 307.
[14] Gadamer. Truth and Method. 431.
[15] Ibid., 389.
[16] Ibid., 474.
[17] Ibid., 458.
[18] Ibid., 474.
[19] Immanuel Kant, Was ist Aufklarung? in The Enlightenment. Ed Frank E. Manuel, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965. p 34.
Beginning with the deconstruction of the subject, and the removal of Being as a something determinate in the “I,” a new space opens up in the work of Heidegger. While simply a new narrative of existence it nonetheless seems to unfold a new paradigm of possible examination. In the examination that follows I will deal with the concept of understanding as it unfolds within this novel space. Furthermore I will deal with the concept of understanding as it appears in the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer.
The analytic of Dasein should be understood as a critique of what Heidegger believed to be the problem of the ethos, or weltanschauung of the Enlightenment project. As such the narrative of Dasein is offered as a possible way out of the totalitarian effects of man left to the power of subjective reason. If the Enlightenment could be characterized as a loss of self- the task of the existing Dasein can be interpreted as a manner of engaging with, and finding, itself as it is constituted in a ‘world.’ Finally, through this examination I hope to demonstrate ‘how’ the analytic of Dasein can be seen as opening the space, or making possible, some of the principle themes in the philosophy of the social sciences. I will engage with concepts like the importance of meaning, the interaction between understanding and interpretation, the concept of moods in psychology, language, and finally the role of metaphor in understanding.
I. Uncovering the Metaphysical.
Being and Time posits that the fundamental error of the entire western tradition has been the posing of the question such that an entity ‘is’ has been sought as an answer. What is Being? What is being asked, therefore, is that Being take on the character of definability which is, in fact, an impossibility. However, at the same time, by the sheer fact of existing one is already acquainted with Being, therefore, one always already lives in an understanding of Being.[1] It cannot be the case, therefore, that the subiectum, or the Hypokeimenon, “the word names that-which-lies-before, which, as ground gathers everything unto itself,” can be found within the “I” proclamation of man.[2] Rather, what has been sought by the western tradition has been the being of beings. The question of Being, of uncovering Being in-itself, is more fundamental.
“With the ‘cogito sum’ Descartes had claimed to be putting philosophy on a new and firm footing… has revealed itself as the implementation of a baleful prejudice, which has kept later generations from making any thematic ontological analytic of the ‘mind’…”[3]
In order to investigate Being, Heidegger imports the concept of Dasein as that entity for which Being is an issue. Dasein, as ‘being there,’ is encountered in its ‘there; the ‘there’ imparts with a notion of spatiality as a location wherein Dasein comes to encounter itself. Dasein, as such, has a three-fold structure, an ‘is’ as existence, or being, and a ‘there’ as a location in a “world,” and a relation of self to itself. It is impossible, therefore, to have Dasein without also having a “world.” Therefore, hidden within the “I” proclamation of Dasein, there necessarily lurks “world.” Thus, while Dasein is necessarily my specificity; it is also my being-in-the-world; as being-in-the-world, my Dasein is necessarily being-with the Dasein of others. As such it becomes apparent that the subject object distinction breaks down; “man,” as subject, is made manifest as a metaphysical presupposition.
II. ‘Where’ and ‘How’ We Are.
Dasein finds itself always already given over to the “there” as throwness, in its Being-there as such.[4] In this space Dasein has two constitutive ways of being, firstly, it finds itself in a mood, or state of mind. Secondly, it finds itself always already in understanding. Understanding is derived from a totality of involvements; Dasein is such that it is always being-with in a ‘world’ as the totality of possible involvements. Dasein, as being-in-the-world, as dwelling spatially, is that entity which, in concernful situatedness, circumspectively de-severs.[5] Therefore, although Dasein proclaims the ‘I’ as a reflexive representation of itself, existentially the ‘I’ remains furthest from Dasein in everydayness. Rather, what becomes most proximate is the phenomenon of ‘world,’ as the totality of involvements; as the wherein of Dasein’s understanding; as that in-terms-of-which the fore-structure of understanding is derived and the into-which the understanding is projected. [6] Dasein encounters itself proximally as already existing, as being there amongst entities, as already involved with the world of ‘significance[7], in doing what Dasein does. Hence, Dasein encounters itself in those entities with which it is concerned environmentally. Others are not encountered as something ready-to-hand, or as a present-at-hand[8] for contemplation; rather others are encountered environmentally, in terms of the world of Dasein’s concern. The environment, however, is encountered in everydayness as ready-to-hand; as such, in concern Dasein encounters the products of others circumspectively. Thus it becomes apparent that being alongside the Dasein of others has the character of togetherness, as being one Dasein amongst many, in concernful situatedness, within an environment.
The hermeneutic circle is decisive in placing hermeneutics itself on ontological grounding, an endeavour which Hans-Georg Gadamer made his own. At this point in the examination it seems necessary to illuminate this circle. It seems clear that understanding is a structure, a totality of involvements, which, Dasein as “throwness,” projects into the world. Interpretation, grounded in the fore-conception of understanding, makes understanding manifest in the ‘as’ structure. In essence, interpretation, interprets what the understanding has already understood in an assertion. As Heidegger states it:
“Whenever something is interpreted as something, the interpretation will be founded essentially upon fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. An interpretation is never presuppositionless apprehending of something presented to us.”[9]
Meaning is that upon-which of the projected fore-structure and in ‘terms of which’ something becomes intelligible. Meaning is ontological in that it is an essential property of Dasein itself. I have, thus far, been merely delineating and illuminating the territory in an attempt to demonstrate ‘where’ we are and ‘how’ we exist there.
III. The Historical, Metaphorical and Linguistic Horizon.
Gadamer, in Truth and Method, engages with hermeneutics upon its ontological grounding and proceeds to critique the epistemological presuppositions of the tradition, whereby, it was assumed that the subject had some privileged access to the historical. Rather, as Gadamer states:
“In fact history does not belong to us; we belong to it. Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, in society, and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his judgements, constitute the historical reality of his being.”[10]
These prejudices, to which Gadamer makes allusions, can only be those present in the fore-structure of understanding. Thus, it is no doubt true that these prejudices predetermine if anything can have meaning for Dasein in the interaction with texts. Gadamer insists that the prejudices of the understanding are necessarily historical effects, of which we may or may not be aware. No methodological statement, or presupposition, can truly eliminate the affect of history upon understanding. It is, therefore, never the case that one can begin from a clean slate, even via the Cartesian method of doubt.[11] Wherever Dasein finds itself it necessary carries along with it the effects of history, or its historicity, and must therefore see itself as necessarily incomplete, or within an unfinished process.
It is necessary to bring into our purview the important concept of ‘horizon,’ as it is explicatedby Gadamer. In order to do so we must return to the constitution of Dasein itself, more specifically in terms of its temporal structure. Every particular moment has its limitations, in the sense of what can possibly be viewed from within the moment. For Gadamer, the term ‘horizon’ is the boundary, or the limit, of what can possibly be viewed in the moment. The ‘horizon,’ is not a static or fixed condition of the being of Dasein, but rather, is a limit within which Dasein moves and, is in turn moved by Dasein.
“To acquire a horizon means that one learns to look beyond what is close at hand-not in order to look away from it but to see it better, within a larger whole and in truer proportions.” [12]
The ‘horizon,’ therefore is required by the understanding in order to contextualize, or gain the proper perspective from which meaning can be grasped. It is therefore the case that the ‘horizon’ is shaped by the prejudices of understanding. However, as a process, or historically constituted, Dasein’s understanding is not simply rooted in the present, but is formed of its past, present, and projected into the future. Thus, it can be said that the ‘horizon’ of Dasein, which is historically constituted, can be transposed, and thus becomes fused within a horizon with others, in a kind of trans-temporal alienation from itself, returns to itself, having put its prejudices to the test.[13] The ‘horizon’ can therefore be seen as a process of dialogic mediation, which is not stuck in the present but rather trans-temporal. In the process understanding has, therefore, altered having discarded, or taken on new prejudices.
For Gadamer, along with world and historicity, our mode of being is fundamentally linguistic. Gadamer, furthermore, alludes to “the fundamental metaphoricity of language.”[14] As such, “language is the universal medium in which understanding occurs.”[15] It is therefore the case that “understanding occurs in interpretation,” which necessarily requires a kind of translation into the language within which Dasein finds itself. For Gadamer language is the medium where “I” and “world” meet.[16] Language is, therefore, both where Dasein finds itself and how Dasein lives itself. All experience of world, therefore, is essentially linguistic. Language, therefore, as Dasein’s mode of being-in-the-world is both a manner of existing and a space wherein common meanings can emerge. Language expresses both the infinite and finite
“Every word causes the whole of the language to which it belongs to resonate and the whole world view that underlies it to appear. Thus every word, as the event of a moment, carries with it the unsaid, to which it is related by responding and summoning.”[17]
Finally, for Gadamer, “Being that can be understood is language.”[18]
IV. Understanding, Metaphor and Meaning.
Dasein is understandingly situated in a ‘world’ and a language; both carry with them certain predilections and prejudices. In what sense therefore is objectivity to be thought of an ideal to be sought after? Rather, it would seem that the task of science itself requires a subject-object relation. In the narrative of Dasein, the subject-object distinction is lost, there is in fact only Dasein and the world of involvements which understanding always already understands pre-reflexively. If understanding takes place in a linguistic medium, which is fundamentally metaphorical, then interpretation is forced to interpret what is already understood and express something as something. The ‘as’ structure of interpretation, seems to leave open the possibility for metaphoricity of the understanding itself. Finally, it would seem that we are indeed prisoners of meaning, as meaning itself becomes a property of Dasein which can be said to exist in a meaningful way. Everything starts with meaning in terms of which the understanding is able to grasp anything at all.
What began as an attempt to engage with the critique of enlightenment; has somehow transformed, mutated, if you will into an altogether different enterprise. Yet, somehow, what is offered here is intimately related to the initial failure. Firstly, I attempted to deal with the presupposition of man as subject, as source, or logos of meaning. Understanding the enlightenment, as did Kant, in terms of a process, or a movement toward Enlightenment[19]; I sought to demonstrate ‘how’ the critique, or undermining, of the ‘cogito’ in effect served to uncover and deconstruct the fundamental grounding of the enlightenment project as such. Secondly, I turned to Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology; in the process of engaging with the text it seemed apparent that what was being alluded to was a kind of mediation of human understanding. If the subject, as the sole determinant of what is an object, can give itself over to technology, and in effect mediate its understanding technologically, how does understanding function such that it can be given over to, unconsciously I might add, something other than the subject itself? I decided to set aside my question and continued onward into an engagement with another Heidegger text The Age of the World Picture. This engagement left me with a further question which finally compelled me to set aside my initial project altogether; how does understanding function such that it might come to understand the world in terms of a picture? It became apparent to me, in both cases, that the understanding was functioning in terms of something else. If such is true than is this not further evidence that understanding is essentially metaphorical? In the process of asking these questions the current examination underwent a drastic transformation into the form that exists presently.
Bibliography
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Heidegger, Martin . Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
Heidegger, Martin. The Age of the World Picture. in The Question Concerning Technology: and Other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977.
Kant, Immanuel, Was ist Aufklarung? in The Enlightenment. Ed Frank E. Manuel, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965.
[1] Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. p. 23.
[2] Martin Heidegger. The Age of the World Picture. in The Question Concerning Technology: and Other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977. p 128.
[3] Heidegger. Being and Time, 46.
[4] Heidegger. Being and Time. p 172.
[5] De-severing; as a binging close of that which is at a distance, or as eliminating distance, such that that which is most proximate distantially might be furthest away from Dasein circumspectively.
[6] Heidegger. Being and Time. 190-194.
[7] Significance is the structural totality of world, as that which can be signified.
[8] A clarification of what is meant by the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand would seem to be necessary at this point. The-Ready-to-hand withdraws in circumspection in Dasein’s concernful absorption with it. The Ready-to-hand is not something for contemplation; rather, it becomes transparent in its use. The Present-at-hand, is that which is open to contemplation. The Ready-to-hand is possible, as that which was once Present-at-hand. Dasein encounters these entities, not of the character of Dasein, in its concern with them.
[9] Heidegger. Being and Time. 191.
[10] Hans-Georg Gadamer. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 2004. p 276-277.
[11] Gadamer. Truth and Method. 301.
[12] Ibid., 302
[13] Gadamer. Truth and Method. 307.
[14] Gadamer. Truth and Method. 431.
[15] Ibid., 389.
[16] Ibid., 474.
[17] Ibid., 458.
[18] Ibid., 474.
[19] Immanuel Kant, Was ist Aufklarung? in The Enlightenment. Ed Frank E. Manuel, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965. p 34.
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