Heidegger und Japan - Japan und Heidegger (Libri Nigri 25) (German Edition)

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Other books in this series. Asubjective Phenomenology Lubica Ucnik. Martinus Nijhoff, , p. Crowell concrete, datable instances of mental processes. Against the Kantians, Husserl argues that reflection must limit itself to what is given in experience; the intentional object must be constituted from structures that are reflectively evident within that experience. Against the psychologists, Husserl holds that reflection does not grasp mental processes as occurrent entities standing in causal relations, but as intentional structures governed by relations of meaning.

The case against phenomenology had already been made by Paul Natorp. II , p. Mohr, , pp. Thus they are psychological, not transcendental, concepts. In what sense, then, is phenomenology reflective at all? Such accessibility arises from the fundamentally practical character of our Being: An analysis of acts thus shows what I am as I engage in this specific task. Thus it cannot be captured in terms of discrete acts of planning, willing, desiring, and so on. It belongs instead to the process of life which, in just this way, carries a certain ideality normativity within itself.

How does this conception allow for a redefinition of reflection? To begin with, reflection is no longer seen merely as a distinct objectifying act. The pre-reflective self-awareness that characterizes human life — our implicit grasp of what we are about — is a reflection of a new sort. As Heidegger puts it: I know what I am about, who I am, not because such knowledge is pre-reflectively given in a series of Erlebnisse that can be objectified in reflection, but because the world shows this face to me rather than some other.

It does so, according to Heidegger, because I am trying to build something and am thus responding to the normative conditions of success and failure inherent in my commitment to that task, what I ought to be do. Indiana University Press, , p. It is not enough, then, to reflect on the perceptual horizon in which the eraser shows itself, for its being as a perceived eraser is not found there. In this, Husserl and Heidegger are one: But, as we also saw in the example of the eraser, this kind of manifestation involves a structure that does not appear in the same way: Before exploring this interval and its structure, we need to see how the autonomy of appearing as such can be established phenomenologically.

As we have seen, the concept of a noetic act derives from the psychological adjustment made by the subject to its causal involvement with what appears. If it has a normative character, can this really be understood without any reference to subjectivity? Appearing as such is not absolutely asubjective. There is, first, the concrete subject, an entity in the world. And, second, there is the transcendental subject, which is not in the world but part of the structure of appearing as such PLES Since both subject and world belong to the structure of appearing as such, there is no asymmetry between them as conditions for the appearance of entities.

If the subject is nothing but an empty position, it obviously cannot be the origin of such lawfulness. But then, what is? Were such laws similar to causal laws — discoverable from a thirdperson perspective as simply obtaining — their sui generis character might seem plausible. But when we consider that they are laws of meaning, it seems less plausible.

Rather, because meaning includes a normative moment, a reference to conditions of satisfaction that govern what the entity is supposed to be,18 the laws of appearing cannot be laws that simply obtain in a third-person way. They must include within themselves a certain ideality, a relation between what is what appears and what ought to be what it appears as. An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, But how are we to understand this sort of rule? Nor can it designate a purely logical necessity, since from the point of view of logic — that is, in the absence of all consideration of how the table is apprehended — there is no distinction between the front and back of a physical thing.

For this, we must, it seems, refer to a specific placement of the transcendental subject and to the act in which that placement is engaged. A perceived table, for instance, must show up as a specific play of presence and absence, but the same table as imagined or remembered will exhibit a very different play. In general, an individual thing can show up in many different ways — that is, exhibit a meaning governed by various laws and structures of appearing — and phenomenology must be able to clarify why this set of rules now governs its appearing and not some other.

The transcendental question, however, is why just this rule and not some other governs the object so as to demand our adjustment in the way specific to perception. No such 18 S. Crowell question arises about causal laws, which cannot fail to function; but it does arise for normative laws of meaning, which govern how things are supposed to show up: In each case, a particular law of appearing holds because the subject is normatively related to things beholden to them in a certain way,19 and in the absence of that relation one cannot even identify the law as a law.

Thus one cannot appeal to different modes of practical self-understanding to say why the same thing can show up in different ways. Such orientation is what allows the meaning-structure of entities — the laws of appearing as such — to come into play. Essays in Honor of Hubert L. MIT Press, , pp.

This would account for the kind of ideality in question: In conclusion, then, let us see whether this theory adequately addresses the problem of the lawfulness of the world. Our question is whether this transformation can be seen to have transcendental significance, or whether it falls victim to a subtle form of non-phenomenological naturalism, thereby leaving the normative lawfulness of the world unclarified. Here then, apparently, is a modality of meaning that is genuinely sui generis, a meaningful solicitation or address from appearing as such.

But if it originates in some other movement of life, then appeal to sensibility cannot provide us with the basis for an asubjective account of the normativity of meaning. It would thus appear that the meaningful character of world also emerges only with this second movement. In the second movement, life is driven by utility and is enslaved to its finite goals, a condition that, like sensibility, we share with some animals.

The theory of the three movements of life, then, supplies no independent reason, beyond the formal phenomenology of appearing as such, to think that the lawfulness of appearing as such can be understood apart from the differentiated noetic contexts to which its normativity is traced in the putatively subjectivistic phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger.

The text published under this title by K. Klett-Cotta, , pp. The complete first version has been published only in translation. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger according to M. University of Chicago Press, , pp. Millon, , pp. Schuback his political philosophy as well. But not only that: In other words, the question of technology concerns, not only ethical and political issues, but the very definition of phenomenology itself. In other words, sacrifice shows how appearing appears as such.

It appears in sacrificing itself. I cannot here give a full account of these issues. My aim is, rather, to suggest a few paths for future thought. The present article is divided into three parts: Aiming at universality, rationality deviates and displaces its meaning through a kind of hubris of quantification, formalization, formalism, automatism, habitualism, in short, through what Husserl called technicization Technisierung. As Bestand, Being is nothing. In this world, Being has solely this excessive meaning of being nothing but Bestand. As an accomplishment of the meaning of Bestand, Gestell shows a radical transformation of the meaning of Being and, of course, of the Being of meaning.

In this metamorphosis, life negates itself. In this, it shows the question of technology to be a matter, not only of the structure of meaning, but also of the source of knowledge. In this respect, Husserl asserted technology and, thereby, the question of modern science to be a moment in which intuition, defined as the original wellspring of knowledge, is substituted by intellectual formalism, a moment in which theory emerges as opposed to life. In its essence, technology is an Einblick in das, was ist, an insight into that which is, a mode of understanding of the way things and world appear to us.

Basore Loeb Classical Library No. Vittorio Klostermann, , p. However, this paradox of excess qua lack belongs to the nature of understanding as such, to its universalizing nature. That is why the understanding of Being is in its essence paradoxical, and not a resolution of paradoxical views, states, or statements. It means rather that Being appears as appearing. For Heidegger, Being does not precede appearing, Being is appearing: This tautology itself appears in the Ge-stell. According to Heidegger, appearing can never appear as such, but solely as dis-appearing in appearances.

In this dis-appearing in appearances, appearing as such reveals itself. Schuback of planetary technology, the essence of understanding, of Being, and of truth as disclosure makes itself evident, but in the most paroxysmal and dangerous mode of appearing as such in its own disappearing.

That is why, for Heidegger, the question of technology is not essentially a question of crisis, as Husserl assumed, but a question of danger. Because the essence of technology, as Gestell, reveals itself as a Geschick der Entbergung, a destiny of disclosure, it may be possible, in the utmost danger of totally losing any originary access to the essence of truth and the essence of man, in the utmost danger of total destruction through planetary and productive strategies of worldwide control over life and death, to realize a deeper understanding of Being. In order to appear itself, this conflict demands, however, a sacrifice.

It is through sacrifice that a front line of difference can appear within Being as such. For the whole argument, see pp. Schuback conflicts all over the globe. In the concrete experience of sacrifice, Being appears as the paradox of appearing and, thereby, as other than the omni-dimensionalized meaning of Bestand. In the concrete experience of sacrifice, a more originary form of truth breaks through, in which Being as appearing is not only understood, but concretely experienced as a historical force.

The gift of Being as appearing such as planetarily experienced in the era of global technology is given, however, in the utmost danger of its own withdrawal. The concrete experience of this historical endowment of the meaning of Being as appearing is the sacrifice of the human. The human is sacrificed in the sense that, in the planetary power of man over beings and life, man appears no longer to have power over his own power.

How are we to define sacrifice as a solving of conflict by conflict? Sacrifice is not understood in its mythical and religious meaning, as a sacred-violent practice where the hierarchical difference between divinity and humanity is experienced and ritualized. Taken as pushing negativity to the emergence of a positive new order at its extreme limits, sacrifice refers to a metamorphosis within Being, whereby the difference between Being and beings appears as a real transformative force. As Bataille asserted, the principle of sacrifice is destruction, but not extermination.

Gregory Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, Gallimard, , pp. Schuback out of the experience of self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is not simply a means for something else. Self-sacrifice is in itself a profound force of differentiation. He insists that self-sacrifice is one of the dominant experiences of the present day, while at the same time technical understanding tends to eliminate the possibilities for understanding the ontological meaning of sacrifice.

In a world where the difference between Being and beings is being eradicated, insofar as it acknowledges nothing but beings understood as resources, functions, and disposals, the ontic difference between the being of man and the being of things tends to disappear.

In self-sacrifice, however, both the ontic difference between the being of man and the being of things a substantial meaning of beings and the ontological difference between Being and beings breaks through as a concrete difference. Cambridge University Press, , p. In this sense, it is a sacrifice that does not take leave of beings. Authentic sacrifice, on the contrary, is sacrifice for the sake of the totality of life itself, a sacrifice on the way toward Being, which can, therefore, happen only, necessarily, through departing and distancing oneself from beings.

Here, a more fruitful perspective appears than contrastive distinctions and oppositions, namely, the in-betweenness and meanwhileness at stake in authentic sacrifice, in the freedom of sacrifice. In both positions, what becomes decisive is the sense of difference that breaks through in the freedom of sacrifice. They agree that difference is tension between appearing and appearances, and, therefore, that another sense of difference must be conceived in order to grasp the phenomenological feature of this tension.

Is it phenomenological or ontological? As far as I can see, this question presupposes a logical difference, since it is contrastive, dual, and dialectical. My claim here will be that if we acknowledge rather a tautology of Being and appearing, and, thereby, the sacrificial constitution of appearing as such — insofar as appearing as such can only appear dis-appearing in appearances — a Ibid. L, , p. That being the case, it becomes urgent to develop a tensional sense of difference, where Being and non-Being meet in their conflictive belonging together as non-otherness.

This would constitute the phenomenological sacrifice, the sacrifice of appearing. The amplitude of these questions would of course exceed our present proposal. The freedom of sacrifice means, as we have already seen, taking the negative to the limit where positivity breaks through. Reflection on the essence of sacrifice brings into play the tensional distinction between resignation and self-destruction. For him, the essence of technology grasped as Gestell, as the world of planetary technology, is also the world of the sacrifice of the singular.

It is a world where self-alienation becomes more natural than being oneself. In this sacrifice of the singular, the essence of technology as Ge-stell means destruction of the dividing line between singularity and totality, particularity and universality, interiority and exteriority.

Heidegger und Japan - Japan und Heidegger : Hartmut Buchner :

The world of planetary technology has no place for anything other than itself. In it, man becomes a slave to his own freedom, controlled by his will to control, submitted and subjected to his role as subject of history; in the world of planetary technology insensitivity becomes contemporary human sensitivity.

The world of the virtual is a world of indifference to both causality and determinations, since all is realized as networks and fields of forces. Conflicts, however, do not disappear; they grow exponentially. Conflicts grow, as a matter of fact, atomically, that is, on minimal levels. Danger of total destruction is confined in virtual and regional conflicts with Iran, with the Arab world.

The total appears on the level of individual-atoms — unceasing small and private conflicts between people, groups, gangs, small and invisible relations between functioning and non-functioning forces. However, the essence of technology carries the necessity of salvation represented by technology to such an extreme that life reaches a stage where there seems to be no salvation from technical salvations.

Schuback The sacrifice of singularity does not mean extermination of singularity, but rather confusion, entanglement, non-difference of singularity and plurality. It is no longer possible to proceed in alternative terms, fighting either against outer or against inner misery. There is only one fight — because the essence of technology, Ge-stell, is the sacrifice of the singular.

Technology as sacrifice of singularity shows that the frontier or dividing line between totality and singularity is obliterated, that there are no longer any differences between interiority and exteriority, between individuality and universality. The sacrifice of singularity is the sacrifice of borders and frontiers. It is the universal reality of ambiguity, where differences are indistinguishable, evil can be good, good can be evil, all concepts and instances seem everydayly entangled, overlapping.

It is the rise of ambiguity as a realm of indifference and indifferentiation. Forwarding this insight into the strange ambiguity present on all levels of our lives, enframed by an omni-dimensionalized understanding of Being as resource and disposal, may, however, lead to the breakthrough of another sense of difference, more radical than any metaphysical, ethical, ontological differences.

Transformation is usually understood as overcoming a limit, a frontier. But how can we understand transformation in a world without limits, borders, frontiers? The Second World War eliminated this material sense of the front or limit. Open Court, , pp. It was a war against frontiers, aiming at the omni-dimensionalization of only one side. After the two world wars, there emerged a strange situation of neither peace nor war — the cold war, Star Wars, marketing wars, religious wars, where it is no longer possible to draw a line between war and peace, where clear contraries disappear, and all that is left us is a realm of ambiguity, moments of indifferentiation, where politics of indifference grow and flourish.

At the same time, however, the individual body — the individual skin in suicide-bombing — becomes the front line. In a world which has sacrificed the singular, the individual becomes the concrete front of differentiation. The growth of indifferentiation and indifference, e. In the sacrifice of all differences — called for by the world of planetary technology — a more radical sense of difference may break through and be realized. I would like to suggest an understanding of this radical or absolute meaning of difference as non-otherness.

From out of an understanding of difference as non-otherness possibility can no longer be framed in terms of a transition from non-Being to Being, from a no-longer to a not-yet, and even less so as the integration of potency and impotency. It should rather be realized as nonotherness in the sacrifice of appearing, in phenomenological sacrifice. The possibility of freedom shows itself here as freedom of and for the experience of the possible.

Heidegger und Japan - Japan und Heidegger : Vorläufiges zum west-östlichen Gespräch

Felix Meiner Verlag, ], p. Northwestern University Press, ], p. Sophistes [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, ], p. Indiana University Press, ], p. Wills Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, , p. See also Edward F. State University of New York Press, , p. The supposition is that thought, thinking itself, is capable of appearing, of directly showing itself to us, and that, therefore, its being is a phenomenon.

Rather, the mathematics 42 B. Hopkins and mathematical structure in question concern heterogeneous magnitudes, the discrete magnitudes dealt with by arithmetic and the continuous magnitude that is the object of geometry. The soul, moreover, introduces itself into this hierarchy of Being by thinking. In this progression of dimensions, the beginning signifies the highest, in the sense that, as the source of the dimensions of mathematical beings generated from it, these beings rely upon it for their Being. And, as the highest, it is also more comprehensible than the lines it generates, just as the lines are more comprehensible than surfaces, and so on.

The responsibility of this indeterminate dyad for multiplicity renders it indeterminate and, therefore, the opposite of the One, which is responsible for determinacy. The One, as the principle of determinacy, is therefore the principle of unity, limit, whereas the indeterminate dyad is the principle of unlimitedness, of continual growth.

Numbers as Ideas, however, do not mean that something like the idea of number exists. This means 44 B. Not being what appears, the soul is rather responsible for all appearing, for the phenomenon, in the precise sense that that towards which its thinking self-movement aims, the mathematical, is what supplies the analogical measure for the showing, the appearance, of what shows itself. These mathematical relations are, therefore, at the same time, the soul. The mathematical structures in question are paradigms of composition made up of units, that is, dimensionless arithmetical numbers, together with the dimensionless points, one-dimensional lines, two-dimensional surfaces, and three-dimensional solids of geometry and stereometry.

The mathematical relations in question concern 1 the graded hierarchy of mathematical beings and 2 the mixing of mathematical dimensions. The concern of the former are the mathematical beings involved in the generation of solids, wherein the simpler structures are more comprehensive, comprehensible, and, therefore, higher on the scale of mathematical Being than the more complex.

The concern of the latter is the crossover to higher mathematical dimensions, wherein relations between magnitudes that are incommensurable in one dimension become commensurable in another. The arithmetical structures are analogous to the first principles of ontocosmic generation, the One and the indeterminate dyad, which generate proto-dimensional Ideas-numbers responsible for the dimensional generation of bodies. The mathematical relations are analogous to mixing of the two opposite first principles, which generates the Ideas-numbers in a manner that permits their unity to encompass the irrational relations of their Ideas-units and the unique unities of each number to mutually interact.

Ontocosmic care of the soul therefore represents the discovery of the appearing of being — the phenomenon — as the standard of the truth, insofar as it, and it alone, functions as the measure for distinguishing that which appears of itself from that which merely seems to do so, but, in subsequent appearances, turns out not to.

Rather, the thought of the appearing of being in Plato becomes metaphysical, in the precise sense that his philosophy calibrates the appearing, that is, the truth of being, in accordance with a scale of existent beings whose degrees of Being are determined by their participation in the traditional thought of that which is most present and lasting. And, therefore, the truth of Being is ultimately not sought in the appearing of what shows itself, but by what, independent of this, putatively remains present in a manner not verified by this criterion.

From the Husserlian perspective, phenomenon and subject must necessarily be recognized as inseparable, for the simple reason of the eidetic impossibility of there being something like appearing that does not appear to someone. On the contrary, the bearer is the structure. This something other is the domain of the Ideas-numbers, which are the presuppositions of mathematical numbers, the dimensionality of visible bodies, and the care of the soul as the locus of manifesting itself.

Metaphor : The Weavers of Chinese Medicine

Academia, , pp. It was he who sent me to Freiburg. Thanks to him I got to know everything that was going on at that time in the world of ideas. He is the one who made me doubt about my initial orientation. Jacob Klein was then his closest friend, and he remained in contact with him also after the war they met again in in Freiburg. He addressed this topic late in his career, in his book on Aristotle, published in , where he devoted a whole chapter to the interpretation of Platonic unwritten philosophy. Julius Springer, , pp. English translation of both parts: Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, transl.

Press, ; 2nd ed. Klein agrees with O. Becker Die diairetische Erzeugung der platonischen Idealzahlen, Quellen u. Studien I, ff. However, on the basis of this knowledge, Klein is the first to dare to offer a solution to the question of methexis: While the interpretation is not complete, nevertheless in the main points it does so well in clarifying the issues that it is possible to say that any further research must seriously take this interpretation into account. The symbolic nature of the modern concept of number, in contrast, is identical with the representation of the general concept of being an amount, without any determinate reference to that of which it is the amount.

In a word, for Klein, Greek numbers are determinate, while our modern numbers are indeterminate. Oxford University Press, , p. Discussion in detail of possible reasons for this cannot be pursued here, although the two most obvious ones can be briefly indicated. See also below for a discussion of this last point. A detailed examination of why this is the case is not possible at this point, but a very abbreviated — and concluding — consideration is possible within the context of our discussion.

Book 7 buttresses this status of the mathematical, by saying that the mathematicians, in contrast to the dialecticians, dream about Being b. One of those is the awareness that the metaphysical phase of philosophy has come to an end and that we are living at the end of a grand era, or perhaps even after its end.

Evink other for being metaphysical, but each can, at the same time, be said to be metaphysical itself. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida all try to take a step further in their denouncement of metaphysical thought, claiming that all the preceding criticisms of metaphysics are in themselves still too metaphysical. The unification of reality in one principle or center is taken here as the heart of the metaphysical way of thinking.

Each in its own way, these critiques are all looking for a difference not to be mastered or reconciled by any unifying thought. Nietzsche discerns several forces behind the metaphysical project of understanding the whole of reality. One of them is the force of language, which creates unity and order out of a chaos of perceptions and impressions. Language suggests a world of general truths or ideas behind everyday perceptions.

All these illusions can be explained as a result of the fixating characteristics of language. Montinari Berlin and New York: The will to truth, another power that is inextricably bound up with metaphysics, will inevitably counter the truth claims of religion and of metaphysics itself. From Plato on, metaphysics rules supreme, in search of the principles that present reality: This history of metaphysics reaches its final stages at once in technology, which makes everything calculable and controllable, and in Nietzsche.

In his much-discussed interpretation of Nietzsche as the last metaphysician, Heidegger views the will to power and the eternal return of the same as metaphysical principles. Evink unthought-of, to step back to the ground upon which metaphysics became possible. He opposes, like Heidegger, the mainstream history of Western philosophy — now including Heidegger. Instead, Levinas proposes to develop a philosophy that relates to otherness, or, better said, to the other who withdraws from any thought or grasp, but nevertheless must be taken into account.

In doing so, he gives a new and aporetic twist to this history of the various ends of metaphysics, bringing it to a close by showing that there can be no end to it. Vittorio Klostermann, , pp. Vrin, , pp. Paradoxically, Levinas turns the usual terminology of the history of philosophy the other way round. Apparently because of his opposition to Heidegger, he puts the entire metaphysical tradition, including Heidegger, under the heading of ontology, while calling his own alternative way of thinking metaphysics.

Ontology here stands for the autonomy of rational thought that reduces alterity to the Self or the Same; metaphysics is the heteronomy that relates to the singular other. In Levinas, the metaphysical desire is no longer a desire to know, as it was in Aristotle; it is the desire that leads beyond knowledge to the other, a desire that will never be fulfilled and can but increase as a desire.

The many figures and shapes that metaphysicians have built through the ages are all, according to Derrida, linguistic and historical constructions. They must be dismantled in order to lay bare their preconditions and shortcomings, as well as the epistemological, ethical, political, and other implications inherent in them. On the one hand, Derrida problematizes the metaphysical way of thinking as a violent interpretation of reality that always reduces singularities and differences to unity and, thereby, excludes other possible interpretations.

On the other hand, since this is the case with every interpretation, Derrida emphasizes that there is no alternative; we cannot but understand the world we live in through a metaphysical manner of thinking. Metaphysics can never be ended. However, we should be aware of its violent character. Moreover, every effort to leave metaphysics behind is, according to Derrida, in itself a metaphysical movement because it attempts to make a clear distinction between the metaphysical tradition, on the one hand, and a new mode of thought beyond metaphysics, on the other.

The history of philosophy consists of a large number of metaphysical constructions that must be criticized and replaced again and again. Metaphysics, therefore, is an infinite and immortal striving for absolute knowledge that can only result in finite constructions.

Minuit, , pp. Presses universitaires de France, , pp. Seuil, , pp.

Les styles de Nietzsche Paris: Flammarion, , p. They do not regard metaphysics as a manner of thinking that is inherent in philosophy, but as a historical period that has been left behind quite a while ago. For them, metaphysics means the search for an ultimate grounding and understanding of reality as a whole — an approach that is outdated by the investigation of historical and linguistic structures in which philosophical thought is always already embedded.

In his relation to the metaphysical tradition, Gadamer takes a different stand from his master, Heidegger. A partir du travail de Jacques Derrida Paris: Obviously, another concept of metaphysics is at stake here. It is not the necessarily violent objectification that makes thought metaphysical, but the effort to reach absolute knowledge of an all-encompassing principle — an effort that, according to Gadamer, has been left behind since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Michelfelder and Richard E. The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter Albany: Suhrkamp, , p. Evink places itself above common sense and praxis. The task of philosophy has changed from founding scientific knowledge to that of mediating between the sciences and the life-world. Absolute reason has been traded here for communicative reason, the rationality of language and dialogue, the presuppositions of which Habermas has reconstructed in his theory of communicative action.

Since then, many critiques of metaphysics, such as those of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Adorno, have gotten bogged down in this same tradition, showing what metaphysics had always tried, and failed, to achieve. Although Habermas and Gadamer claim that their historical, hermeneutical thought has done away with absolute metaphysical pretensions, the contextually situated and historical suppositions they adhere to can always be stretched to their absolute limits.

But here we reach, on the other hand, a point of critique that is put forward by Gadamer and Habermas against Derrida. By changing every issue into a metaphysical problem, Derrida, according to his opponents, loses the ability to positively acknowledge the possibility of understanding, agreement, and practical employability of thought.

It must be admitted here that Derrida does not deny the possibility of new ethical, political, and scientific initiatives. On the contrary, he encourages them. But his own work is more focused on the transcendental conditions of possibility and impossibility that also undermine and problematize any new initiative. Therefore, his philosophy remains at least suspect of being an unusable and negative metaphysics. This is the point where I think Gadamer and Habermas are right. They are still relevant with regard to the basic ontological assumptions that are inherent in contextually situated and historical suppositions, even if they have abandoned their absolute pretensions.

On the other hand, against Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida, one can have reservations with regard to the metaphysical desire that still haunts their work in, respectively, the question of Being, the subjection to the other and the invention of the other. In short, all critiques of metaphysics emphasize one feature of the metaphysical tradition which they abandon while at the same time engaging in another. He goes all the way to the birth of philosophy itself.

But there is also another side to the Platonic Idea: Rather, it separates objectivity from that which can no longer be articulated in terms of objects. Human existence also relates to the world as a whole. It seems that metaphysics as a set of positively formulated claims has died, but that it lives on in a negative way, as a truth without objectivity, yet which has nonetheless positive traits, as a struggle against relativism.

This last quotation clearly shows the tension of negative Platonism at work: The same struggle against both absolutism and relativism then calls for an existential stability that is able to question itself as well. These seem to be signs of a work in progress that is still looking for a more positive way to articulate itself.

On the one hand, he seems to agree with Gadamer and Habermas that metaphysics has come to an end long ago. Yet, at the same time, he claims, with Heidegger, that no one really See French translation: Stanford University Press, , pp. Both Heidegger and Levinas give too much of an answer to metaphysical questions, whether in the thinking of Being or in the recognition of the retreating and commanding face of the other.

From the perspective of negative Platonism, all these philosophers, each in his own way, change the tension of post-metaphysical thought into a dilemma, and would have it positing itself one-sidedly on one of the poles. Either metaphysics is viewed as an outdated search for absolutes, while philosophy is supposed to positively formulate finite answers to finite questions.

Or metaphysics is seen as an inescapable unifying way of thinking that can only be engaged in a negative form. Let us start with what they have in common. Despite differing terminology, both agree that metaphysical questions, with regard to the totality of reality and to absolute values and presuppositions, keep on haunting us and will never be satisfactorily answered. Both approaches underline the necessary possibility in terms of both description and prescription of new and unexpected views and ideas.

Moreover, this does not mean that any answer would be right, that receptivity for the event would mean receptivity for everything. In other words, it does not lead to relativism. Mohr, [] , pp. Acumen, , pp. Yale University Press, , pp. Derrida admits that we cannot do without answers, but he emphasizes the need for a critical approach to all answers given by the metaphysical tradition and, in particular, the totalizing tendency inherent in all hierarchical oppositions, i.

In his later work, the openness for the other is slightly changed, becoming openness for the absolute other. This strategy can be recognized, for example, in his work on justice, the messianic, and negative theology. The emphasis on absolute alterity and the excavation of metaphysical positions reveals an urge for purity that can be interpreted as a trace of the metaphysical desire for the absolute.

Absolute purity still functions here as a norm that can never be fulfilled. Without himself further pursuing definitive metaphysical answers, Derrida seems nonetheless to believe that philosophy as such is characterized by this metaphysical urge. In other words, we cannot but think something absolute, which Derrida will then be more than willing to deconstruct. He is not in search of an excavation of all metaphysical projects. Nor is there, in his texts, an orientation towards the absolute other or the singular as such. Evink accept to be brought into question.

It also means the concern, having been thus shaken, to find a new equilibrium, a new harmony, in human life as well as in the polis: The question is whether our existence in this alternative, in this indecisiveness … does not have an essential significance that is not negative, but rather positive. The notions of negative Platonism and the care for the soul have moreover a potential for being further elaborated affirmatively, e. They can also be helpful in delivering strong arguments for the conceptualization and development of modern democracy.

In short, the negatively formulated message that basic questions can never receive a definitive answer, always has another, positive, side that can be articulated in presuppositions and convictions, and developed in the direction of ethical and political stances and positions. These positive capacities, inherent in negative Platonism, show that it has lost nothing of its relevance today. I shall begin my essay with a brief outline of its main phenomenological ideas, then go on to try to show the relation between negative Platonism and the appearance-problem on the basis of the texts published in the volume Vom Erscheinen als solchem.

It would seem difficult to reconcile the goal of asubjective phenomenology and the supposition of free responsibility in one coherent theory. The author sees a crucial change at the Greek beginnings of philosophy: Negative Platonism tries to find the real sense of metaphysics cleansed of all higher objective entities or absolute rules. Turning away from the dream of a perfect higher ideal reality implies that there are no metaphysical facts. He makes a list of metaphysical fictions: It is interesting to note that his argumentation is not only similar to the Nietzschean critique of metaphysics, but relies on the same central argument: Metaphysical fictions emerge because we submit to our language schemes.

The negativity of metaphysics has two sides: How can we find our way back to metaphysics in a positive sense? First of all, on the fact that we can withdraw from our everyday occupation, from particular things. Phenomenology and philosophy are nothing else but this act of distancing from particular entities and interests. His second intention is to interpret freedom in a new way. Neither one of these interpretations can elucidate the real phenomenon of freedom. Both because freedom in a positive sense has nothing to do with the conceptual framework of causality and because causality has turned out to be one of the major metaphysical fictions.

Both conceptions are linked to a false metaphysics. We are free as sensuous beings, and we are free in the sensible, natural world. But, unlike sense experience, it is not related to any fact, or object, or state of things: The experience of freedom, linked to a concrete situation, happens once and only once.

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It never repeats itself in the same form. The experience of freedom is an experience of risk and struggle, and of losing stability and comfort in habitual life. The negativity of the experience of freedom consists in the troubling insight that irreality and fantasy can, under certain circumstances, be more important than socalled reality, the supposed object of our perceptual experience. The human being seems to be flexible and pliant to such an extent that his hopes, fantasies, desires overcome the harshness of reality. This is certainly the climax of his essay on negative Platonism.

He tries to find a middle way between the two extremities that have determined philosophy since Plato: The second extremity supposes that there is nothing stable in Being: The first and fascinatingly perfect expression of this dream took shape undoubtedly in Platonic idealism. Unfortunately — as we shall see — Husserl and even Heidegger continued to pay tribute to this tendency, mainly because of their hidden subjectivism. But the other extremity cannot be accepted either: Experience risks losing all concrete determination, content, and form, if it is based on sheer sensuality or on the arbitrariness of imagination.

At first sight, his solution seems to be a strange reversal of the Platonic conception of Idea. It means that the Idea, though neither a higher, supratemporal entity, nor a general objectivity, nonetheless transcends the particular. How are we, however, to grasp something that would thus function between ideal entity and particular thing? Traditional philosophy has no word for such a thing or structure.

It is clear from the text that the Idea in the sense of negative Platonism is not what we see, but that which makes it possible to see things in general. Idea expresses our ability to step back from the present and the given, it frees us from the bondage of reality, it makes possible to see what is more and what is new as compared with the perceptually given.

That is why the Idea in negative Platonism falls within the province of temporality and history, rather than eternity. There is a concept appearing in the last part of the essay, the importance of which has not — in my opinion — been duly stressed: In Plato, it refers primarily to the separation between the sensible, natural world and the suprasensible sphere of Ideas, but, in a more general approach, it has to do also with the separation between sensuous givenness and ideal meaning, and with the separation between causal-temporal determination and supratemporal freedom.

Giving up this central metaphysical conviction of a clear-cut separation of the spheres is the clue to negative Platonism.

Negative Platonism and the Appearance-Problem 75 To put it more concisely: Let us see now how he returns to these themes in the late s, when — thanks to his renewed teaching activity — he can once more concentrate on the fundamental problems of phenomenology. His second period — in the late s — can be characterized by a strong renewal of his interest in basic phenomenological questions. I prefer, however, to consider here his manuscripts from the s, published in the volume Vom Erscheinen als solchem, which seem to represent an even deeper immersion in phenomenological problems.

How can human life be conceived as life in the natural world? How is freedom to be defined in an ethical and in an existential context? What is the historical destiny of metaphysics? The meaning of technology? The essence of politics? The role of art in life? His interest focuses on a predominant question: All the others seem to be reducible to this fundamental problem.

And, as we shall see later, the phenomenological philosophy of appearing outlined in his later manuscripts is one of his major attempts to elaborate the program put forward in the essay on negative Platonism. It is a free act, a kind of stepping back from concrete things and from the ontic belief, which is meant to open the phenomenological field. At first, phenomenality was subjective solely in the narrow sense that all phenomena appear to me, in this given perspective, in this given aspect.

An appearing being is reduced to another being and we miss the appearing itself, since reduction to transcendental subjectivity is not reduction to the real source of appearance, but to a special component of appearing itself. Appearing as such is more original than subjectivity, which — even in its non-psychological, transcendental form — is part of the phenomenal field. His critique on Heidegger is nonetheless sharp and appropriate.

The project of possibilities, which makes it possible to open the world and all that appears in the world, originates from my own Dasein. And there is another crucial problem: The starting-point of his reasoning could be summarized as follows: In the connection ego-cogito-cogitatum, Husserl focused on the ego, on the sense-bestowing activity, neglecting the sum, the mode of existence of this ego. When we examine the sum, existence, we find that it cannot be traced back to a constitutive ego which would be responsible for all manners of appearance. On the contrary, it becomes clear that even the ego itself, consciousness, which Husserl supposes to be adequately given in reflection, is a conceptual construction, a projection, an illusion: To be sure, the phenomenal field has a central perspective, a certain pole of appearing, which is what we normally call ego or consciousness.

But consciousness appears to itself in the same temporal stream as the other phenomena, so it is part of appearing and by no means its source or foundation. The phenomenal field determines this pole of appearing, just as consciousness determines what appears and how it appears.

The sum thus proves to be more fundamental than the ego. In itself, this idea is not particularly original. Yet these thinkers all believed that existence, even preceding consciousness, must have an invariant structure. Ullmann conceivable characteristic whatsoever, but that in no way means that consciousness is nothing or that it is sheer indetermination; its determination comes from its situation and its acts: The basic aspects of this a-subjective phenomenal pole are: Nevertheless, two questions arise: The result is, apparently, that there remains in his description nothing to hold on to.

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We no longer find any constant structure in the appearing world, nor — parallelly — any invariant moment in human consciousness or being. Does this conception not lead to extreme skepticism? Freedom has nothing to do with arbitrariness, it coincides essentially with responsibility. And if we speak of responsibility in whatever sense we take it: My responsibility is my most essential possibility, it is what constitutes me as a person, and the meaning of my existence is inevitably linked to this personal responsibility.

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We have here, apparently, an aporetic problem, ensuing from a hidden contradiction, inasmuch as asubjective phenomenology seems to go beyond all subjective, ego-like, personal characteristics, even beyond the authentic conception of Being-in-the-world. How can we practice asubjective phenomenology and still speak of personal responsibility? However, it is not the appearing of this or that object, or of any particular kind of objectivity, but appearing as such, Erscheinen als solches. What does this mean, and how can we approach appearing as such? Nevertheless, it has a positive aspect as well: Appearing as such relates to the whole.

The task of asubjective phenomenology is simply to uncover appearing as a whole. Of course, this whole does not coincide with the whole of our sense experience, nor does it refer to a sphere beyond sensuous experience, a sphere of imagination, of speculative thinking. The suspension of the validity of particular beings and ontic convictions does not reduce everything to nothing, but rather turns our attention to the whole.

However, the whole is not a higher level of Being or a more intense, fuller manner of Being in a theological or mystical sense. If we consider appearing as the central problem of phenomenology, phenomenology becomes a phenomenology of the world. Alongside the forgetting of Being, Fink speaks of the forgetting of the World. Metaphysics, which confined itself to particular beings as a latent Dingontologie , is nothing but the history of this fundamental oblivion of the World. Fink criticizes Heidegger, who succeeded in overcoming objective ontology, but failed to overcome the metaphysics of light.

However positive his turn towards the life-world, Husserl still fails to take into account the historicity of the world, which is neither the external temporal framework of an atemporal, unchanging basic structure, nor a transcendental historicity, but rather the constant changing of the very basic structure of the world itself.

We can first reach a few negative determinations: The concept of horizon does not help either, since horizon is always the horizon of a certain object. Even conceived as an infinite background, horizon remains relative to a finite object. Object presupposes horizon, and vice versa, hence the concept of horizon remains in the framework of an objectivistic conception. Animation of hyletic data by objectifying intentions is no adequate way of describing appearance. This means that we can grasp them only retroactively, by making a detour through separation and abstraction. The concept of temporality implies that all parts and components of temporality are temporal as well.

There are no unchanging, supratemporal spheres of reality. Husserl recognizes something similar when he speaks of a manner of temporality even in the case of ideal objects, but he fails to reach a deeper level of temporalization. See note 6 above. For him, there can be no exception to appearing or, consequently, to temporality — neither consciousness, nor Being, nor world.

He seriously endeavors to think through the consequences of such a radical phenomenological attitude. That is how his philosophy becomes thoroughly and completely historical. Klett-Cotta, , p. Es ist die Einheit der Zeit. The first would be a kind of aesthetic-artistic approach to reality. We can find traces of such a conception in several essays. Letting things appear as they are is an aesthetic aspect of responsibility for Being. Another possible mediation can be erected on the concept of the Other.

My being in the world, my life as movement in the world, cannot attain its supreme possibility, the breakthrough to freedom, without Others. Being in truth cannot be realized without responsibility for others. Asubjective phenomenology of appearing necessitates the investigation of the sum in the world, and this sum, this movement in the world, inevitably implies a relation to the others, which is responsibility.

On the other hand, it is a Nietzscheanism without determinant factors of Nietzschean thinking: One should be very careful in approaching the connection between the two thinkers. I wish merely to show that the radicalization of phenomenology made it well nigh impossible for him to express his new vision Cf. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, , p. I shall try to describe, from this point of view, the mediation between asubjective phenomenology and subjective responsibility. The world is not the universe of things: World in this sense means a comprehensive unity of organic structural moments.