I recently read a new paper by Zizek on Heidegger's criticism of Hegel. The pdf can be downloaded here. Like much of Zizek's work, it is an impressive and exciting paper particularly in the way it clarifies and presents Lacan in relation to both Heidegger and Meillassoux. I suspect this paper is something of an opening volley in the battle to come with Zizek's publication of his magnum opus, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, in April of this year. Zizek has claimed that this century will come to be known as the Hegelian century and he no doubt hopes his book will be a major step in philosophy's recognition of this fact. It may be that one of the major things standing in the way of Zizek's Hegelian Return, at least on the Continental side of the issue, is the ongoing influence of Heidegger. Heidegger himself oriented his work, as he put it, on the front in opposition to Hegel and, I would claim, this opposition continued in one form or another throughout his career.
Showing posts with label Hegel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hegel. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Heidegger and the "Dialectic of the Enlightenment"
I have been rereading the Dialectic of the Enlightenment in Edmund Jephcott's fairly new translation. In the course of working through it I have been struck as never before by certain similarities between this work and Heidegger's concerns in the 1950s. This, in turn, will connect in the future to certain reflections on Vattimo and Zabala's Hermeneutic Communism. I would like to take the time to note some of these similarities and the even more striking differences, in connection with Hegel and Marx, these aspects make apparent.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Quotation for the Day
Hegel on philosophizing in natural language:
"But that which is in itself must just not have this foreignness for us, and we must not give it this foreign look by using a foreign terminology, but must count ourselves really convinced that the spirit itself is alive everywhere and that it expresses its forms in our own spontaneous natural language."
From Rosenkranz's Das Leben Hegels
"But that which is in itself must just not have this foreignness for us, and we must not give it this foreign look by using a foreign terminology, but must count ourselves really convinced that the spirit itself is alive everywhere and that it expresses its forms in our own spontaneous natural language."
From Rosenkranz's Das Leben Hegels
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Zizek Assessing the Post-Hegelian Break
Creston Davis has posted on his blog Object Petit a Zizek's introduction to Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic, edited by Zizek, Crockett, and Davis himself. The introduction is an interesting read mainly concerned with interpreting the way in which Hegelianism itself changed philosophy in such a way as to dismiss the idea that the very existence of post-Hegelianism is a counter argument to Hegel. It ends with the rallying call for us to attempt to read the difficult history of the twentieth century in a Hegelian manner and with the promise that the true time of Hegel will be the twenty-first century. This rather reminds me of Zizek's confession in a recent interview that he is working on a huge book about Hegel which he intends to be his magnum opus.
I think the part of the introduction that most struck me was this paragraph:
In what, then, resides Hegel’s uniqueness? Hegel’s thought stands for the moment of passage between philosophy as Master’s discourse, the philosophy of the One that totalizes the multiplicity, and anti-philosophy which asserts the Real that escapes the grasp of the One. On the one hand, he clearly breaks with the metaphysical logic of counting-for-One; on the other hand, he does not allow for any excess external to the field of notional representations. For Hegel, totalization-in-One always fails, the One is always-already in excess with regard to itself, it is itself the subversion of what it purports to achieve, and it is this tension internal to the One, this Two-ness which makes the One One and simultaneously dislocates it, it is this tension which is the movens of the “dialectical process.” In other words, Hegel effectively denies that there is no Real external to the network of notional representations (which is why he is regularly misread as “absolute idealist” in the sense of the self-enclosed circle of the totality of the Notion). However, the Real does not disappear here in the global self-relating play of symbolic representations; it returns with a vengeance as the immanent gap, obstacle, on account of which representations cannot ever totalize themselves, on account of which they are “non-all.”
Obviously, if you read my blog, you have seen that I have been reading and thinking a lot about Badiou recently. I am interested here in the way in which Zizek picks something out that may indeed be central to Hegel but presents it in a way which sounds far more like Badiou than Hegel.
I think the part of the introduction that most struck me was this paragraph:
In what, then, resides Hegel’s uniqueness? Hegel’s thought stands for the moment of passage between philosophy as Master’s discourse, the philosophy of the One that totalizes the multiplicity, and anti-philosophy which asserts the Real that escapes the grasp of the One. On the one hand, he clearly breaks with the metaphysical logic of counting-for-One; on the other hand, he does not allow for any excess external to the field of notional representations. For Hegel, totalization-in-One always fails, the One is always-already in excess with regard to itself, it is itself the subversion of what it purports to achieve, and it is this tension internal to the One, this Two-ness which makes the One One and simultaneously dislocates it, it is this tension which is the movens of the “dialectical process.” In other words, Hegel effectively denies that there is no Real external to the network of notional representations (which is why he is regularly misread as “absolute idealist” in the sense of the self-enclosed circle of the totality of the Notion). However, the Real does not disappear here in the global self-relating play of symbolic representations; it returns with a vengeance as the immanent gap, obstacle, on account of which representations cannot ever totalize themselves, on account of which they are “non-all.”
Obviously, if you read my blog, you have seen that I have been reading and thinking a lot about Badiou recently. I am interested here in the way in which Zizek picks something out that may indeed be central to Hegel but presents it in a way which sounds far more like Badiou than Hegel.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
"Some Thoughts on Meillassoux" or "The Correlationist's Return"
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the central step in Meillassoux's After Finitude is the step through which he claims to have gotten beyond finitude. It is the move whereby he turns the recognition of the limits of human knowledge which is fairly widely accepted in today's philosophical environment into a discovery of an absolute ontological truth. Also perhaps unsurprisingly, one of my main worries about his work is whether he can make such a move.
How does he think he has done this? It is interesting that his move resembles a move made by Husserl. Husserl, following from Descartes and others, claims that there is a connection between what is imaginable and what is possible. The practice of imagination, or eidetic variation, provides us with an experience of the limits and laws of the transcendental ego's constituting activities. For example, we can't imagine color without it taking up space and this reveals a potential universal truth.
Interestingly, Meillassoux takes a different tone when discussing imagination (or rather, thought). He suggests, inspired by Hume's concern that our grasp of causality is based entirely on repeated observations of matters of fact, that there is a potential infinity of different ways in which we can imagine any specific event occurring (i.e. we can imagine any number of things occurring when one billiard ball rolls into another). Generally this has been taken to demonstrate that reason tells us nothing about what causal connections exist between things, and that thus all our causal reasoning is at best probabilistic. When you throw in the realization that reason also reveals that we don't know whether the future need conform to the past we are left with no sure foundation for future predictions. We have no reason not to think that tomorrow all the laws of the universe may be different.
This ability to think everything as different includes, of course, the ability to think ourselves as not existing. It is from this point that Meillassoux takes off: "... we are able to think - by dint of the absence of any reason for our being - a capacity-to-be-other capable of abolishing us, or of radically transforming us. But if so, then this capacity-to-be-other cannot be conceived as a correlate of our thinking, precisely because it harbours the possibility of our own non-being. In order to think myself as mortal, as the atheist does - and hence as capable of not being - I must think my capacity-not-to-be as an absolute possibility, for if I think this possibility as a correlate of my thinking, if I maintain that the possibility of my not-being only exists as a correlate of my act of thinking the possibility of my not-being, then I can no longer conceive the possibility of my not-being, which is precisely the thesis defended by the idealist." (p. 57).
The idea here is that the skeptic (correlationist) is trapped in a dilemma. Either we admit that we have access to some truth not relative to, and dependent upon, our thought, specifically we admit the truth that our thought could stop at any moment (i.e. we could cease to exist), or we must fall into idealism and admit that the dependence of the thought of our non-existence on thought itself makes the thought of non-existence an illusion. If we admit our access to a non-thought correlated possibility, however, we are admitting getting out of the correlationist box or, to put it differently, we are getting beyond the "finitude claim" that our knowledge and thought is always constrained within its own limits such that we can't "think beyond thought".
Meillassoux also formulates this point, see pages 58-59, by pointing out that the very tool the skeptic uses to get out of idealism and argue against the certainty of the theist or naive realist, the distinction between reality as thought and reality as it is in-itself, is accessible only insofar as we have gotten beyond it and thought SOMETHING absolute independent of human thought: "Your general instrument of de-absolutization only works by conceding that what the speculative philosopher considers to be absolute is actually thinkable as an absolute; or better still, is actually thought - by you - as absolute, since were this not the case, it would never have occurred to you not to be a subjective (or speculative) idealist." (p. 59)
The conclusion, then, is that the mind has access to one absolute truth, namely universal contingency. All things could be otherwise. Thus we are not caught in the skeptical position of stating that the idealist, theist and realist positions are all equally possible, rather we can firmly state that each of these positions is false to the extent that they assert any "reason" or grounding cause for things being the way they are and not otherwise.
Let me say that the inversion, here, of the Hegelian response to Kant is brilliant. Rather than assert that the thinkability of the distinction between phenomena and thing-in-itself demonstrates our surpassing of the distinction towards the realization of the necessary correlation of thought and being, he asserts that it demonstrates our realization of the non-correlation of thought and being and the absolute truth of universal contingency. I adore this conclusion, but I don't think the argument gets us there.
As my mention of Hegel should make clear, Meillassoux also rejects the Kantian claim that thought can recognize its own limits without surpassing them. The post-Kantian correlationist spin on this is the claim that thought can recognize the possibility, and perhaps even current formation, of its own limits without knowing, as Kant seems to think he can, their absolute necessity and stability.
It seems to me that, despite Meillassoux's use of the reflexive paradox here to demonstrate that the skeptic must assume the thinkability of the non-thought-correlated in order to craft his correlationist arguments, the inconsistency of the correlationist's argument, if indeed this has been demonstrated, does not constitute ontological knowledge.
What we need is a reason to think that the fact that we can think things as being different constitutes ontological knowledge of their contingency. This would require a rather extensive investigation of the nature of thought. What is thought such that it can provide knowledge of absolute truth, rather than simply taking (fallibly) various possibilities to be absolute?
Phenomenologically we do indeed experience various things as universal, particulars can show up in the mode of universality. But this appearance-as-universal does nothing to establish actual knowledge of universal truth. In the same way, the fact that my reasoning depends upon a certain assumption tells me nothing about the truth or falsity of that assumption. Even were it possible to demonstrate that all reasoning rests on a certain assumption it would not justify the claim that this assumption is universally true. A similar point can be made in relation to the supposed connection between imagination and possibility. Let me make this fairly basic point in a schematic way: in order to justify a claim to universal ontological knowledge we would first need indubitable ontological knowledge concerning the relation of human thought and reality.
There is obviously much more I want to say, and this is admittedly a fairly gut level response to Meillassoux's very impressive book. It also strikes me, for example, that the focus on understanding correlationism in terms of "thought" smuggles in quite a lot and is not necessarily an accurate depiction of a large class of supposed correlationists (including, I would claim, Heidegger).
How does he think he has done this? It is interesting that his move resembles a move made by Husserl. Husserl, following from Descartes and others, claims that there is a connection between what is imaginable and what is possible. The practice of imagination, or eidetic variation, provides us with an experience of the limits and laws of the transcendental ego's constituting activities. For example, we can't imagine color without it taking up space and this reveals a potential universal truth.
Interestingly, Meillassoux takes a different tone when discussing imagination (or rather, thought). He suggests, inspired by Hume's concern that our grasp of causality is based entirely on repeated observations of matters of fact, that there is a potential infinity of different ways in which we can imagine any specific event occurring (i.e. we can imagine any number of things occurring when one billiard ball rolls into another). Generally this has been taken to demonstrate that reason tells us nothing about what causal connections exist between things, and that thus all our causal reasoning is at best probabilistic. When you throw in the realization that reason also reveals that we don't know whether the future need conform to the past we are left with no sure foundation for future predictions. We have no reason not to think that tomorrow all the laws of the universe may be different.
This ability to think everything as different includes, of course, the ability to think ourselves as not existing. It is from this point that Meillassoux takes off: "... we are able to think - by dint of the absence of any reason for our being - a capacity-to-be-other capable of abolishing us, or of radically transforming us. But if so, then this capacity-to-be-other cannot be conceived as a correlate of our thinking, precisely because it harbours the possibility of our own non-being. In order to think myself as mortal, as the atheist does - and hence as capable of not being - I must think my capacity-not-to-be as an absolute possibility, for if I think this possibility as a correlate of my thinking, if I maintain that the possibility of my not-being only exists as a correlate of my act of thinking the possibility of my not-being, then I can no longer conceive the possibility of my not-being, which is precisely the thesis defended by the idealist." (p. 57).
The idea here is that the skeptic (correlationist) is trapped in a dilemma. Either we admit that we have access to some truth not relative to, and dependent upon, our thought, specifically we admit the truth that our thought could stop at any moment (i.e. we could cease to exist), or we must fall into idealism and admit that the dependence of the thought of our non-existence on thought itself makes the thought of non-existence an illusion. If we admit our access to a non-thought correlated possibility, however, we are admitting getting out of the correlationist box or, to put it differently, we are getting beyond the "finitude claim" that our knowledge and thought is always constrained within its own limits such that we can't "think beyond thought".
Meillassoux also formulates this point, see pages 58-59, by pointing out that the very tool the skeptic uses to get out of idealism and argue against the certainty of the theist or naive realist, the distinction between reality as thought and reality as it is in-itself, is accessible only insofar as we have gotten beyond it and thought SOMETHING absolute independent of human thought: "Your general instrument of de-absolutization only works by conceding that what the speculative philosopher considers to be absolute is actually thinkable as an absolute; or better still, is actually thought - by you - as absolute, since were this not the case, it would never have occurred to you not to be a subjective (or speculative) idealist." (p. 59)
The conclusion, then, is that the mind has access to one absolute truth, namely universal contingency. All things could be otherwise. Thus we are not caught in the skeptical position of stating that the idealist, theist and realist positions are all equally possible, rather we can firmly state that each of these positions is false to the extent that they assert any "reason" or grounding cause for things being the way they are and not otherwise.
Let me say that the inversion, here, of the Hegelian response to Kant is brilliant. Rather than assert that the thinkability of the distinction between phenomena and thing-in-itself demonstrates our surpassing of the distinction towards the realization of the necessary correlation of thought and being, he asserts that it demonstrates our realization of the non-correlation of thought and being and the absolute truth of universal contingency. I adore this conclusion, but I don't think the argument gets us there.
As my mention of Hegel should make clear, Meillassoux also rejects the Kantian claim that thought can recognize its own limits without surpassing them. The post-Kantian correlationist spin on this is the claim that thought can recognize the possibility, and perhaps even current formation, of its own limits without knowing, as Kant seems to think he can, their absolute necessity and stability.
It seems to me that, despite Meillassoux's use of the reflexive paradox here to demonstrate that the skeptic must assume the thinkability of the non-thought-correlated in order to craft his correlationist arguments, the inconsistency of the correlationist's argument, if indeed this has been demonstrated, does not constitute ontological knowledge.
What we need is a reason to think that the fact that we can think things as being different constitutes ontological knowledge of their contingency. This would require a rather extensive investigation of the nature of thought. What is thought such that it can provide knowledge of absolute truth, rather than simply taking (fallibly) various possibilities to be absolute?
Phenomenologically we do indeed experience various things as universal, particulars can show up in the mode of universality. But this appearance-as-universal does nothing to establish actual knowledge of universal truth. In the same way, the fact that my reasoning depends upon a certain assumption tells me nothing about the truth or falsity of that assumption. Even were it possible to demonstrate that all reasoning rests on a certain assumption it would not justify the claim that this assumption is universally true. A similar point can be made in relation to the supposed connection between imagination and possibility. Let me make this fairly basic point in a schematic way: in order to justify a claim to universal ontological knowledge we would first need indubitable ontological knowledge concerning the relation of human thought and reality.
There is obviously much more I want to say, and this is admittedly a fairly gut level response to Meillassoux's very impressive book. It also strikes me, for example, that the focus on understanding correlationism in terms of "thought" smuggles in quite a lot and is not necessarily an accurate depiction of a large class of supposed correlationists (including, I would claim, Heidegger).
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
SPEP 2010, Montreal
I just found out that I will be presenting at the 2010 annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. I am both excited and honored, as this will be the second year in a row that I will be presenting a paper at SPEP.
My paper this year is entitled "Pushing the Hegelian Front: On Heidegger’s Renovation of Dilthey". Here is the abstract:
This paper seeks to trace the influence of Wilhelm Dilthey upon Martin Heidegger’s “stand on the front against Hegel” and to make clear the extent to which Heidegger goes beyond Dilthey’s own Hegelianism. In the course of this discussion we will focus upon Heidegger’s adoption of Dilthey’s Hegelian holistic understanding of “life” as a totality irreducible to constitutive parts, Dilthey’s expressivist commitment to the principle of immanence, and the role concrete objectivations play in articulating the structures that constitute life. Finally, we will see to what extent Heidegger’s conception of art goes beyond Dilthey’s limited Hegelianism.
The paper I presented at SPEP in 2009 was entitled "Phenomenology and the Problem of Universals" and has also now been presented as a symposium paper at the central meeting of the American Philosophical Association and at Koc University in Turkey. Here is the current abstract for that paper as well:
This paper is an attempt to argue that Martin Heidegger's Being and Time should not be read as a traditional transcendental project. Rather, what phenomenology is for Heidegger, and what Being and Time attempts to provide us with, is a realist historicism of practices. In order to make this argument I briefly discuss Edmund Husserl's relation to the transcendental tradition and why he believed he could arrive at a-historical knowledge and then express some concerns we, and Heidegger, may be expected to have in relation to Husserl's project. Next I show how several of Heidegger's earliest commitments and methodological insights force him, even before the writing of Being and Time, to reject a transcendental project of either the Kantian or Husserlian type. Finally I suggest several key elements of an anti-transcendental, or at least historicist, reading of Being and Time.
My paper this year is entitled "Pushing the Hegelian Front: On Heidegger’s Renovation of Dilthey". Here is the abstract:
This paper seeks to trace the influence of Wilhelm Dilthey upon Martin Heidegger’s “stand on the front against Hegel” and to make clear the extent to which Heidegger goes beyond Dilthey’s own Hegelianism. In the course of this discussion we will focus upon Heidegger’s adoption of Dilthey’s Hegelian holistic understanding of “life” as a totality irreducible to constitutive parts, Dilthey’s expressivist commitment to the principle of immanence, and the role concrete objectivations play in articulating the structures that constitute life. Finally, we will see to what extent Heidegger’s conception of art goes beyond Dilthey’s limited Hegelianism.
The paper I presented at SPEP in 2009 was entitled "Phenomenology and the Problem of Universals" and has also now been presented as a symposium paper at the central meeting of the American Philosophical Association and at Koc University in Turkey. Here is the current abstract for that paper as well:
This paper is an attempt to argue that Martin Heidegger's Being and Time should not be read as a traditional transcendental project. Rather, what phenomenology is for Heidegger, and what Being and Time attempts to provide us with, is a realist historicism of practices. In order to make this argument I briefly discuss Edmund Husserl's relation to the transcendental tradition and why he believed he could arrive at a-historical knowledge and then express some concerns we, and Heidegger, may be expected to have in relation to Husserl's project. Next I show how several of Heidegger's earliest commitments and methodological insights force him, even before the writing of Being and Time, to reject a transcendental project of either the Kantian or Husserlian type. Finally I suggest several key elements of an anti-transcendental, or at least historicist, reading of Being and Time.
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