I said that the key to Heidegger is to realize that while the ontological veils itself, that does not mean it is indeterminate. The ontic veils the ontological, but this does not mean that the ontological is as indeterminate as the Kantian noumenal, the a priori. I also said Zizek knows this. But he is unwilling to stridently suggest that this determinacy of the ontological is the positive possibility of perceiving and grasping the ontological. Instead, he is completely willing to make this determinacy into something that only serves to provoke a futile search within the ontic for a way to get past it to the ontological. He thereby makes the ontic/ontological distinction seem Kantian. It is as if the determinacy of the ontological and its resistance to being something Kantian only further chastizes those who cannot get beyond the ontic--and thus makes it seem all the more Kantian. Thus he roundly declares the following as if it were not just true of the Heideggerians in Yugoslavia in the later parts of of the twentieth century but also of all Heideggerians to come: "Heideggerians are ... eternally in search for a positive ontic political system that would come closest to the epochal ontological truth, a strategy that inevitably ends in error" (The Ticklish Subject, 13). The determinacy for Zizek only works one way. Zizek forgets his own finding, that point where the perversity of Heideggerian philosophy might lie.
Now, the first thing to note is that this is not a new view of Heidegger, nor is it a wrong one. Heidegger does have a tendency to use the determinacy of the ontological as a way to chastize those who continue to interpret phenomena only ontically. But it should be obvious that this is only because he sees the power of grasping the ontological: what is Being and Time itself, like the Phenomenology of Spirit with regard to the power of thinking with regard to the Begriff, but a demonstration of that power? In terms of this not being a new view, one can cite an immensely critical article of Hannah Arendt from 1946 that says the following:
Heidegger's ontological appoach hides a rigid functionalism in which Man appears only as a conglomerate of modes of Being, which is in principle arbitrary, since no concept of Man determines the modes of his Being.
-"Existenz Philosophy," from the Partisan Review, included in The Phenomenology Reader, p. 355.
In essence this says the same thing as the quote from Being and Time that we cited earlier: the ontological approach risks a rigid functionalism in having to go "behind" the ontic without any ontical conception of the ontological to guide it. Arendt, like Zizek, thinks this cannot easily occur, and, unlike Zizek, implies that it is not the business of philosophy to move beyond the ontic without a prior ontic conception that could handily characterize the ontological. What by now should be obvious is that this too overlooks the determinacy that is just as constitutive for the ontological as well as the ontic, and thus that determining Man ontologically does not mean that one has to have any ontic conception of him to start with--in fact, if conceived rightly, any ontic conception will seem wrong once the ontological is grasped. The whole problem, however is how this grasping is to take place. But it is only a problem insofar as we conceed that it proceeds from the determinacy of the ontological and not any supposed indeterminacy: this is what Zizek stops short of investigating, though he knows it well enough as a Heideggerian, and this is why his rigorous analysis ends up seeming like the genuine distortion of Heidegger that Arendt actively engages in throughout her article (the article, it should be mentioned, is a horrible and, it seems to me, deliberate misreading of Heidegger to make him seem inferior to Jaspers).
Why does this all occur? And where does the "real perversity" lie? Essentially because, like all but the most rigorous of Heideggerians--Derrida, Badiou, Foucault, Gadamer, Dreyfus, to name a few of this exceptional group--Zizek believes Heidegger first and foremost devoted his philosophy to the concept of Being. What rigorous Heideggerians realize--and Gadamer and Derrida were the first to really point this out--was that Heidegger essentially is a philosopher of truth, and that the question of Being remains an equally important phenomenon only because it is connected with the essence of truth (in fact, is this essence). This is not to say that Heidegger's later thought past the "turn" it took after Being and Time was more reflective of the essential nature of his thinking than Being and Time itself, but rather, and more profoundly, that from the beginning Hedegger focused solely on the issue of truth and focused on Being because of this focus. Indeed, this seems odd, but one has to understand the profundity of the assertion Heidegger made even before Being and Time and of course even throughout it, that truth is unconcealment and not the mimetic correspondence of an object with its conception. Alain Badiou continually says that this assertion alone is the condition for all of modern philosophy (and thus penetrates deeper than Lacoue-Labarthe whom he cites, and who is merely developing theses of Derrida's):
Our epoch is most certainly that of a rupture with all that Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe has shown to depend on the motif of mimesis. One of the forms of this motif, which explicitly attaches truth to imitation, is the conception of truth as a relation; a relation of appropriateness between the intellect and the thing intellected; a relation of adequation, which always supposes, as Heidegger very well perceived, that truth be localizable in the form of a proposition. Modern philosophy is a criticism of truth as adequation.
-Infinite Thought, "Philosophy and Truth," 45.
Heidegger crystallizes and formalizes how this truth that is not adequation should be conceived, and it is this that not only makes all modern philosphy a criticism of truth as adequation, but also makes it an elaboration of the concept of Being. It is this fundamental insight, that truth, if it is not to be adequation, must be related to the unveiling of Being, that makes the perception of the ontological and not the ontic of such importance. In other words, it is this fact, and not merely the fact that Heidegger is obsessed with the question of Being, that makes him from the beginning (that is, even before his "turn" to the question of truth and being and away from "Dasein" after Being and Time) introduce the distinction between the ontological and the ontic that Zizek criticizes.
Furthermore, it is this that makes the ontological so very determinate. The ontological is the revealing of truth as Being and not as adequation. That is, as soon as we understand Heidegger as the philosopher of truth and not of Being, like all the best Heideggerians, we suddenly understand that the ontological could never be something that is indeterminate. That is, we understand both its opposition to the ontic as that which is merely that sphere of truth that is still determined by adequation while the ontological remains that which possesses a relationship to truth as alethia or the unveiling or unconcelment of Being, and we understand that this opposition is only a function of the nature of the ontological being absolutely determinate within the sphere of truth that it inhabits. In short, we understand both the opposition and its necessity in the inescapable determinacy of the ontological.
It is this point that we will elaborate in hopefully one more post, to be completed later. But for now it is enough to merely indicate it as the fundamental thing that Zizek, as a Heideggerian, should have remembered.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Zizek on Heidegger, continued
Last time I suggested that Slavoj Zizek, in his profound and exhilirating work The Ticklish Subject does not run into problems in his interpretation of Heidegger because he oversimplifies Heidegger's position, but because he does not go deep enough into the problem he uncovers. That is, often Zizek is characterized as careless in his writing, and because of this one might have expected him to critique only a slimmed-down Heidegger. I find this assertion extremely stupid, however, and I hoped to bring out why last time with some remarks on Zizek's penetrating mode of thought, as well as his correctness in interpreting Heidegger. I suggested Zizek is a dialectical thinker in that, like Hegel, in his criticism he not only unveils the presuppositions of whatever his subject is, but shows these presuppositions to be perverse. By bringing this perversity to language, Zizek (and Hegel likewise--"contradiction" for Hegel is nothing other than a sort of perversity) seems like he "overlooks" particular elements within an author's discourse. Really, though, he is merely penetrating through what Hegel aptly calls "instinctive thinking:" that is, thinking that does not submit its perversities to thought but rather lets them constitute it wholly, lets them "enmesh" it within its "bonds." Thinking as determined by perversity is essentially a language of desire that constantly bars itself from accessing its drive, its perverse "knots or nodes" that only make it reconsitute its perversity as an unthought presupposition. Essentially, Zizek agrees with Hegel in the necessity of bringing these knots and nodes to light:
The broad distinction between the instinctive act and the intelligent and free act is tha the latter is performed with an awareness of what is being done; when the content of the interest in which one is absorbed is drawn out of its immediate unity with oneself and becomes an independent object of one's thinking, then it is that spirit begins to be free, whereas when thinking is an instinctive activity, spirit is enmeshed in the bonds of its categories and is broken up into an infinitely varied material. Here and there in this mesh there are firm knots which give stability and direction to the life and consciousness of spirit; these knots or nodes owe their fixity and power to the simple fact that having been brought before consciousness, they are independent, self-existent Notions of its essential nature.
-Hegel's Science of Logic Preface to the Second Edition, 37.
What Hegel is getting at here is that bringing these knots or nodes before a particular discourse makes them show this discourse's essential nature to be stable only because of the knot: this knot is not merely a presupposition, but is perverse. Thus, the particular statement of a discourse is shown to only be a function of this universal perversity particularizing itself, and thus, to any discourse trapped within the bonds of the particular, this universal discourse of Zizek will appear like an oversimplification, a reduction of the particularity to a single particular--an appearance that is grossly mistaken as to the truth of the matter, and essentially constitutes a repression of the perversity that has been brought to light.
Anyway, I thus asserted that Zizek emphasizes the perversity of the axis within Heidegger's thought that moves between "ontic" and "ontological," showing that Heidegger inevitably gets into trouble on the basis of this binary itself because it always priveliges the latter term. The ontic is always subordinate to the ontological: as Heidegger himself puts it, using a term from Husserl, the ontic is "founded" on the ontological--if the ontological were to disappear or be removed, the ontic would not remain, but not vice versa. But I showed that Zizek, despite his own knowledge of what Heidegger is getting at with the ontological, essentially makes this "priveliging" into a straightforward preference for one over the other, such that the ontological seems, for Zizek, something like the "noumenal" of Kant, that indeterminate basis of any phenomenal--or, in the case of Heidegger, ontic--circumstance. The ontic "veils" the ontological, Heidegger agrees, but it does not veil it in the sense of Kant, in the sense that the ontological remains indeterminately a priori, beyond all of our ontic experience. This is how Zizek makes it sound.
But this is not oversimplification: it is merely an attempt to get at the perversity of the distinction between the ontic and the ontological. Essentially, Zizek is not "reducing" Heidegger's ontic and ontological distinction into something Kantian, but this is merely an unfortunate side effect of his primary aim, to show that the ontic/ontological distinction in itself is perverse. That is, he shows that the ontological difference (a Heideggerian term for the ontic/ontological distinction) allows thinking about particular phenomena, like politics, to be plagued by an inadequate framework that forces false choices on these Heideggerian thinkers.
In doing so, where he goes wrong is in specifying the general locus of the perversity to be merely at this level of the distinction, and not anywhere deeper. In essence, Zizek is right, but not as right as he could be! It is this that makes something like an "oversimplification" of Heidegger's ontological difference into a Kantian distinction appear. This "ovrsimplification," in other words, does not attest to the untruth of what Zizek is getting at, but rather attests to its essential correctness. Can we still call it an "oversimplification" then? I think not. It is merely a marker that something truly perverse is being hit at by Zizek here: he just didn't pursue it far enough.
With all that said, we can get down to what Zizek forgets such that he stops short of the real perverseness his discourse accesses. I'll specify this in the next post, which I'll begin right now.
The broad distinction between the instinctive act and the intelligent and free act is tha the latter is performed with an awareness of what is being done; when the content of the interest in which one is absorbed is drawn out of its immediate unity with oneself and becomes an independent object of one's thinking, then it is that spirit begins to be free, whereas when thinking is an instinctive activity, spirit is enmeshed in the bonds of its categories and is broken up into an infinitely varied material. Here and there in this mesh there are firm knots which give stability and direction to the life and consciousness of spirit; these knots or nodes owe their fixity and power to the simple fact that having been brought before consciousness, they are independent, self-existent Notions of its essential nature.
-Hegel's Science of Logic Preface to the Second Edition, 37.
What Hegel is getting at here is that bringing these knots or nodes before a particular discourse makes them show this discourse's essential nature to be stable only because of the knot: this knot is not merely a presupposition, but is perverse. Thus, the particular statement of a discourse is shown to only be a function of this universal perversity particularizing itself, and thus, to any discourse trapped within the bonds of the particular, this universal discourse of Zizek will appear like an oversimplification, a reduction of the particularity to a single particular--an appearance that is grossly mistaken as to the truth of the matter, and essentially constitutes a repression of the perversity that has been brought to light.
Anyway, I thus asserted that Zizek emphasizes the perversity of the axis within Heidegger's thought that moves between "ontic" and "ontological," showing that Heidegger inevitably gets into trouble on the basis of this binary itself because it always priveliges the latter term. The ontic is always subordinate to the ontological: as Heidegger himself puts it, using a term from Husserl, the ontic is "founded" on the ontological--if the ontological were to disappear or be removed, the ontic would not remain, but not vice versa. But I showed that Zizek, despite his own knowledge of what Heidegger is getting at with the ontological, essentially makes this "priveliging" into a straightforward preference for one over the other, such that the ontological seems, for Zizek, something like the "noumenal" of Kant, that indeterminate basis of any phenomenal--or, in the case of Heidegger, ontic--circumstance. The ontic "veils" the ontological, Heidegger agrees, but it does not veil it in the sense of Kant, in the sense that the ontological remains indeterminately a priori, beyond all of our ontic experience. This is how Zizek makes it sound.
But this is not oversimplification: it is merely an attempt to get at the perversity of the distinction between the ontic and the ontological. Essentially, Zizek is not "reducing" Heidegger's ontic and ontological distinction into something Kantian, but this is merely an unfortunate side effect of his primary aim, to show that the ontic/ontological distinction in itself is perverse. That is, he shows that the ontological difference (a Heideggerian term for the ontic/ontological distinction) allows thinking about particular phenomena, like politics, to be plagued by an inadequate framework that forces false choices on these Heideggerian thinkers.
In doing so, where he goes wrong is in specifying the general locus of the perversity to be merely at this level of the distinction, and not anywhere deeper. In essence, Zizek is right, but not as right as he could be! It is this that makes something like an "oversimplification" of Heidegger's ontological difference into a Kantian distinction appear. This "ovrsimplification," in other words, does not attest to the untruth of what Zizek is getting at, but rather attests to its essential correctness. Can we still call it an "oversimplification" then? I think not. It is merely a marker that something truly perverse is being hit at by Zizek here: he just didn't pursue it far enough.
With all that said, we can get down to what Zizek forgets such that he stops short of the real perverseness his discourse accesses. I'll specify this in the next post, which I'll begin right now.
Heideggerian vs. Hegelian vs. Nietzschian vs. Kantian temporality
Let's just bring forth (to analyze later sometime) four ways of conceiving time, in four definitive statements by four authors:
Heidegger says:
Primordal and authentic temporality temporalizes itself in terms of the authentic future and in such a way that in having been futurally, it first of all awakens the present [as making-present or presence].
-Being and Time, II.3.¶65, p.378
And Hegel says:
Now, in actuality, the substance that knows exists earlier than its form or its Notion-determined "shape"... In the Notion that knows itself as Notion, the moments thus appear earlier than the fulfilled whole whose coming-to-be is the movement of those moments. In consciousness, on the other hand, the whole, though uncomprehended, is prior to the moments. Time is the Notion itself that is there and which presents itself to consciousness as empty intuition.
-Phenomenology of Spirit, §801, p. 486-487.
These are the two most important for any explication we might later attempt. But there are two more we should note and perhaps also use.
Nietzsche says:
A certain emperor always bore in mind the transitoriness of all things so as not to take them too seriously and to live at peace among them. To me, on the contrary, everything seems far too valuable to be so fleeting: I seek an eternity for everything: ought one to pour the most precious salves and wines into the sea?--My consolation is that everything that has been is eternal: the sea will cast it up again.
-The Will to Power, #1065 (Nov. 1887-March 1888), p. 547-8
And, finally, Kant says:
The concept of change, and with it the concept of motion, as change of place, is possible only though and in the representation of time; ...if this representation were not an intuition (internal) a priori, no concept, of whatever kind, could render comprehensible the possibility of change, in other words, of a conjunction of contradictorily opposed predicates in one and the same object, for example, the presence of a thing in a place and the non-presence of the same thing thing in the same place. It is only in time that it is possible to meet with two contradictorily opposed determinations in one thing, that is, after each other... [Thus] time is nothing else than the form of the internal sense, that is, of the intuitions of ourselves and of our internal state... Time, therefore, is not to be regarded as an object, but as the mode of representation of myself as an object.
-Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, II.§6-8, p.55-58
Heidegger says:
Primordal and authentic temporality temporalizes itself in terms of the authentic future and in such a way that in having been futurally, it first of all awakens the present [as making-present or presence].
-Being and Time, II.3.¶65, p.378
And Hegel says:
Now, in actuality, the substance that knows exists earlier than its form or its Notion-determined "shape"... In the Notion that knows itself as Notion, the moments thus appear earlier than the fulfilled whole whose coming-to-be is the movement of those moments. In consciousness, on the other hand, the whole, though uncomprehended, is prior to the moments. Time is the Notion itself that is there and which presents itself to consciousness as empty intuition.
-Phenomenology of Spirit, §801, p. 486-487.
These are the two most important for any explication we might later attempt. But there are two more we should note and perhaps also use.
Nietzsche says:
A certain emperor always bore in mind the transitoriness of all things so as not to take them too seriously and to live at peace among them. To me, on the contrary, everything seems far too valuable to be so fleeting: I seek an eternity for everything: ought one to pour the most precious salves and wines into the sea?--My consolation is that everything that has been is eternal: the sea will cast it up again.
-The Will to Power, #1065 (Nov. 1887-March 1888), p. 547-8
And, finally, Kant says:
The concept of change, and with it the concept of motion, as change of place, is possible only though and in the representation of time; ...if this representation were not an intuition (internal) a priori, no concept, of whatever kind, could render comprehensible the possibility of change, in other words, of a conjunction of contradictorily opposed predicates in one and the same object, for example, the presence of a thing in a place and the non-presence of the same thing thing in the same place. It is only in time that it is possible to meet with two contradictorily opposed determinations in one thing, that is, after each other... [Thus] time is nothing else than the form of the internal sense, that is, of the intuitions of ourselves and of our internal state... Time, therefore, is not to be regarded as an object, but as the mode of representation of myself as an object.
-Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, II.§6-8, p.55-58
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