Alexandre Kojève: The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov

The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov Book Cover The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov
Alexandre Kojève
Palgrave Macmillan
2018
Hardback $69.99
VII, 81

Reviewed by: Thomas Nemeth (USA)

Kojève’s slim volume, a translation of a two-part article that originally appeared in 1934/35, while its author was conducting his famous seminars on Hegel in Paris, is itself an “adaptation,” as the translators’ put it, of a 1926 dissertation submitted as a dissertation in Heidelberg under the supervision of Karl Jaspers. This French-language article “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev” was not Kojève’s first presentation of Solovyov’s ideas. He had previously published in 1930 a short piece entitled “Die Geschichtsphilosophie Wladimir Solowjews,” presumably also culled from his dissertation. Kojève was also not the first Russian to submit a dissertation to a German university on Solovyov. Fedor Stepun had already in 1910 – only a decade after Solovyov’s death – submitted a dissertation also with the title Die Geschichtsphilosophie Wladimir Solowjews to Heidelberg University.

Alexandre Kojève’s name needs little introduction to Western audiences familiar with secondary literature on Hegel. The notes from Kojève’s Parisian lectures at the École Pratique des Hautes Études on the Phenomenology of Spirit have long been available to English-speaking philosophy students. Kojève, born Aleksandr Kozhevnikov in Russia in 1902, had by all accounts a unique personality. In the same year that he completed his dissertation, he moved to Paris, where another well-known Russian émigré scholar/philosopher Alexandre Koyré happened to have established himself as early as 1912 after Husserl had rejected his dissertation. (Despite this, Koyré remained on quite friendly terms with his former mentor, who attended Koyré’s dissertation defense in Paris.) Later in life after World War II, Kojève worked in the French Ministry of Economics and from there was instrumental in establishing the European Common Market. Although a Marxist, at least of sorts, he was invited to Berlin in 1967 by radical students to whom he allegedly advised that they should turn their attention instead to learning ancient Greek!

Kojève’s book can be read from two distinct viewpoints. We can, on the one hand, comb the text for Kojève’s own positions at the time of its writing. Bearing in mind his later emphasis on the Hegelian dialectic and in particular on the master-slave riposte Kojève made famous in his reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology, we can attempt to see its anticipation here. Indeed, there are good grounds for doing just that, and we find within the pages of this book a considerable discussion of the Absolute vis-à-vis the Other. Within the framework of Kojève’s concern, this is both understandable and cannot be held to be inappropriate or incorrect. Kojève’s familiarity with Schelling and Hegel as well as with the German mystical tradition is clearly evident throughout his text. Whether Kojève’s emphasis on Solovyov’s debt to those German writers is excessive or not is for the reader to determine. No one has seriously questioned, however, that Solovyov owed a great debt to Hegel and the later Schelling, even though specific references to the latter in Solovyov’s writings are virtually non-existent.

On the other hand, one can read Kojève’s book apart from its author’s later writings, taking it as what it purports to be, namely, a secondary text on Vladimir Solovyov, which is how we shall approach the book here. Solovyov is likely to be a name less familiar to an English-speaking philosophical audience. Although generally regarded as the greatest Russian philosopher of the nineteenth century, his works are almost invariably classified as belonging to religious philosophy. We find in them, especially his early writings, hardly a trace of the concerns that would rivet either the budding German neo-Kantian movement or the logic of such figures as Bolzano, Frege, or Husserl. Solovyov, instead, was deeply religious in that his beliefs were carried over into his philosophical investigations, something that cannot be said about the other figures mentioned. Solovyov did seek to express his religious faith in the form of a philosophy employing his knowledge of both the history of philosophy and philosophical terminology, suitably adapted of course. Thus, a reader coming with contemporary analytic sensibilities will look in askance at such claims as that ideal Humanity, the Soul of the World (note the capitalizations) is an individual, free, and independent being (58). Kojève, especially in his later pages, is particularly prone to such statements without comment, let alone critical assessment. Solovyov, certainly, writes in such a manner. However, should a twentieth-century philosopher let such a claim pass freely? There are countless additional statements that Kojève affirms as Solovyov’s position and that the former fails to question or to clarify. To be sure, he offers a masterful paraphrase, but it is just that and no more than that.

We see, then, that Kojève is correct in seeing the starting point and the center of gravity of Solovyov’s thought lies in metaphysics. What Kojève does not make sufficiently clear is that his characterization applies most poignantly to the early Solovyov, but, arguably to be sure, not to his later works. Indeed, Kojève focuses almost exclusively on the early Solovyov, though he does reference from time to time Solovyov’s 1889 Russia and the Universal Church, which appeared originally in French and in some proffered periodizations belongs to Solovyov’s middle period.

As with most Solovyov-scholars, Kojève sees Solovyov’s literary activity falling into three distinct periods. Doing so is in keeping with Solovyov’s own fixation on triadic schemes. Kojève in his earlier German-language essay on Solovyov’s philosophy of history from 1930 found that the first period featured a philosophy of history under the influence of the Slavophiles. During a second period a Catholic influence predominated, and the third period or standpoint, which was also the briefest, was represented by just one writing, the three conversations known in English translation as War, Progress and the End of History from 1900. This appeared just a short time before Solovyov’s death. We could object to Kojève’s particular delimitations, but we should keep in mind that his concern in this early essay was with Solovyov’s philosophy of history, not his metaphysical system. Unfortunately, Kojève was noticeably silent on just when this supposed “Catholic period” in Solovyov’s thought began, but presumably it extended until the writing of the 1900 piece.

In the book under review here, Kojève offered a different periodization for Solovyov’s philosophical works, presumably owing to the book’s different orientation – but, nevertheless still three and only three periods. Kojève finds that the first one serves as a historical and critical introduction to Solovyov’s metaphysical system, a system that he had already in his mental possession by this time. Kojève, unfortunately, fails to demarcate how long this period extended. But it surely includes Solovyov’s first major writing, viz., his magister’s thesis The Crisis of Western Philosophy, for he there declares, as Kojève notes, that a definitive metaphysical system would emerge on Russian soil in the near future. Kojève is somewhat misleading in stating that this system would, in Solovyov’s eyes, be his own. The metaphysical system Solovyov had in mind at the time of writing his Crisis text was that presented by the Eastern Church Fathers. Contrary to Kojève’s claim, Solovyov had neither a fully formed system at this early date nor would he ever if by that we mean Solovyov had already conceived all the details. For example, when he published his major systematic work the Critique of Abstract Principles he had not yet, nor would he ever, have a hammered out comprehensive philosophy of art. Kojève characterizes the second period of Solovyov’s activity to be the shortest, and during this time he presented an outline of his metaphysics. It is from the works of this period that Kojève will draw much of his discussion. The third period is the longest. However, since Solovyov apparently at this time lost much of his interest in theoretical questions and in metaphysics proper, it is of little concern to Kojève. Indeed, the latter has little to say about the works stemming from this last phase in Solovyov’s thinking. What is hard to countenance is Kojève’s dismissal of those works on the grounds that by 1890 – and thus just after the publication of Russia and the Universal Church – Solovyov had completed the elaboration of his metaphysics and would not make any changes to it important enough to mention. In light of the fact that Solovyov explicitly rewrote his ethics resulting in The Justification of the Moral Good and started a revision of his “theoretical philosophy” immediately after doing so, it is hard to assent to Kojève’s claim.

Kojève draws his discussion of Solovyov’s metaphysics from three early works in addition to the 1889 one. Although Kojève recognizes that there are obscurities, inaccuracies, contradictions, and shortcomings in Solovyov’s works, these are not often carefully indicated. Kojève also charges Solovyov’s thinking with being often abstract and superficial, more religious than philosophical. Yet, Kojève avoids philosophical, i.e., rational, and secular criticism of that thinking. As have many other commentators on these writings, Kojève sees a marked inspiration from Schelling in Solovyov’s constructions. Kojève goes so far as to say that Schelling served almost exclusively as Solovyov’s model and that the German Idealist’s philosophy lay at the root of nearly all of the Russian’s metaphysical ideas. What Kojève does not point out is the fundamental differences between Schelling and Solovyov. One of the most striking, of course, is that for the former the “positive” reconstruction of Christianity is merely the first step on the road to a philosophical metaphysics, whereas for Solovyov his elaborations are meant as an expression of the truth of Christianity. Solovyov had no intention of replacing Christianity with philosophy of any sort.

Notwithstanding the alleged influence of Schelling, we cannot be surprised that Kojève sees as well a dialectic of the “Other” in Solovyov’s metaphysics, although he finds that dialectic to be the most obscure and most abstract part of it. Those interested in Kojève’s thought for its own sake can surely find much of interest here. Most curious, though, is that instead of seeing Solovyov’s discussion as drawn from Hegel’s Phenomenology, Kojève sees it as a “simplified and impoverished paraphrase” of the relevant speculations found in Schelling, who, in turn, is largely indebted to Jakob Böhme (23). In a sense, we cannot truly be surprised. Others even more recently, such as Zdenek David, have recognized the influence of the German mystic Böhme on Solovyov and Russian religious philosophy in general. Solovyov may have first turned to Böhme through the former’s philosophy professor at Moscow University Pamfil Jurkevich and the spiritualist circle around Ivan Lapshin, a civil servant, orientalist, and father of the St. Petersburg philosophy professor Ivan Ivanovich Lapshin. Kojève, in turn, may have been alerted to this German source of Solovyov’s own metaphysics through the 1929 book on Böhme by his friend Koyré.

Kojève, of course, recognizes that there is a certain “kinship” between the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and Neoplatonic teachings, but he finds that kinship to be extremely vague. What kinship there is between the Christian doctrine and Neoplatonism can be easily explained through the influence of Neoplatonism on early Christianity, when the latter was still in its formative stages. Solovyov himself gave neither any direct indication nor any evidence of the source or sources of his own conception of the Christian Trinity. We have no basis to hold that Solovyov was directly influenced by Plotinus or any of his disciples here. For Kojève, Solovyov saw his own version of the Trinitarian doctrine arising from his idea of the Absolute independently of the Christian tradition to which he otherwise expressed such allegiance. Solovyov’s conviction in his originality in this matter is illusory and shows the extent to which Solovyov thought was permeated by dogmatism. He believed that thinking through his religious experience he could deduce all dogmatic truths including that of the Trinity. In Kojève’s eyes, the speculations of the German Idealists, rather than the Neoplatonists, served as Solovyov’s more immediate source (28).

What we have seen thus far forms a section of the book that Kojève calls “The Doctrine of God.” The next section, “The Doctrine of World” is frankly more metaphysical, if that is imaginable. Kojève provides a faithful recounting of Solovyov’s early metaphysical position, but without extended critical reflection on it from the standpoint of concrete, empirical substantiation. Solovyov’s conception of Divine Humanity is above all the “culmination and crown” of his religious metaphysics (31). Whereas we can affirm that it is the crown of that doctrine, it strains logic to hold that it, in the same breath, is also the starting point of Solovyov’s doctrine of the world. How it can be both the culmination and starting point is unclear unless we distinguish in some ill-defined manner Divine Humanity from the world. Solovyov, after all, has precious little to say about the world apart from humanity. Even more egregious, though, is Kojève’s assertion that Solovyov’s idea of Divine Humanity, being the “keystone” of his metaphysics, is, for that reason, the pivot of his entire philosophical system. Such an assertion may be true on the face of it for Solovyov’s early writings, but it needs demonstration when affirmed of the writings stemming from the last decade of Solovyov’s life.

Kojève is on firmer grounds in claiming that the presentation of Sophia in Solovyov’s metaphysics and that in his alleged mystical experience is enormous. Since the manuscript material related to Sophia has now been widely available for some years, the reader can easily confirm Kojève’s statement that many of the elements in the mysticism associated with Sophia have equivalents in Solovyov’s early metaphysics. Yet, Kojève correctly recognizes that the Sophia depicted in that metaphysical doctrine cannot be the image he supposedly saw as a vision while sitting in the British Museum’s library and which directed him to proceed forthwith to Egypt.

Kojève holds that whereas Solovyov purports to analyze the dialectical notion of the Absolute deductively to obtain his doctrine of God, the doctrine of World employs an empirical method. It is to Kojève’s credit to recognize that Solovyov does not adhere rigorously to these two respective methods in their respective domains. In fact, Kojève is, if anything, too polite. In both doctrines, the assumptions made are staggering in number. Solovyov sees the entire doctrine of God as merely a rational deduction from what is contained in a mystical intuition of divine love. He makes no allowance for those who are unable to intuit this Godly presence, and the premises for his a posteriori, inductive doctrine of the World are similarly not ones with which everyone would agree. The early Solovyov has God doing this and that spelled out in language just as questionably appropriate as the general idea being expressed. On what basis Solovyov determines that God imparts freedom to his creation and then separates Himself from that creation is anyone’s guess. Kojève, following in Solovyov’s footsteps, apparently feels no trepidation in using the word “freedom” in conjunction with the Soul of the world, but Kojève provides no non-circular definition of the term. Indeed, even an idea itself can be characterized as free! Again to Kojève’s credit, he recognizes that Solovyov is indebted to others, particularly to Schelling, which can come as a surprise to no one. Immersed as he was in the metaphysical aspects of German Idealism, Kojève finds Schelling behind Solovyov’s formulations, with the general ideas and structure being similar (71).

There is little here in Kojève’s work that we can easily characterize as phenomenological, focusing as it does on the early metaphysics of Solovyov. Kojève makes no attempt to provide a non-metaphysical reading. Certainly, Solovyov himself understood his position as definitely, even defiantly, religious. But what we, as readers, can ask is why this work at this time. The translators in their introduction admirably discuss the difficult writing style Kojève employed. To their credit, were it not for their comments the reader would likely not realize the points they make. The English is generally smooth and flows as gently as one could wish given the abstruse subject matter. Knowing something about Kojève’s writing style might tell us something about Kojève, but it does little for our knowledge of Kojève’s thoughts on Solovyov. It would have been helpful if the translators had situated this work within Kojève’s corpus and at least have compared the ideas presented with those found in his work on Solovyov in German. Perhaps that was not their intention. But if we look at this extended essay as an intended contribution to scholarship on Solovyov, we can ask what its relationship was at the time of its original appearance to other works on Solovyov in general but particularly to those in the French-speaking world.

Unfortunately, the translators also do not inform us why they singled out this work for their efforts. Is it outstanding in some special manner compared to others? Were it not for the fact that Kojève later became widely known for his Hegel-interpretation would they have translated it nonetheless? Most regrettably, the translators do not situate Kojève’s work within the body of Solovyov-scholarship in recent years. They take no account of the vast literature in either Russia or the West that has appeared particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Again, the question, then, arises: Why this work at this time? Is Kojève’s extended essay in some manner better than recent work on the same topic?

The translators’ references can be confusing or at least troublesome. Whereas the translators make the appropriate references to Solovyov’s works, these are to the now obsolete first edition of the collected works from the first decade of the 20th century instead of availing themselves of the far more accurate and detailed 21st century ongoing edition together with its detailed commentary. Additionally, the references given are always to the mentioned Russian edition even when an English-language translation exists. This poses an obstacle to anyone without knowledge of Russian but who wishes to pursue some idea further. It certainly would also have been helpful to mention the title of the individual work by Solovyov, rather than simply the volume and page number within the set of the collected works.

In conclusion, whereas the advanced student of Solovyov may find Kojève’s work unnecessary, those largely unacquainted with the ideas of the Russian religious philosopher will find this to be a splendid introduction as well as further evidence of the infiltration of German Idealism into Russia.

Hans Blumenberg: Rigorism of Truth: “Moses the Egyptian” and Other Writings on Freud and Arendt

"Moses the Egyptian" and Other Writings on Freud and Arendt Book Cover "Moses the Egyptian" and Other Writings on Freud and Arendt
signale|TRANSFER: German Theory in Translation
Hans Blumenberg. Edited by Ahlrich Meyer. Commentaries by Ahlrich Meyer. Afterword by Ahlrich Meyer. Translated by Joe Paul Kroll
Cornell University Press
2018
Paperback $29.95
108

Reviewed by: Sebastian Müngersdorff (University of Antwerp)

This translation of Hans Blumenberg’s posthumously published text “Moses the Egyptian” offers the Anglophone world insight into a political aspect of Blumenberg’s thought that remains obscured within his other translated works. Blumenberg’s discussion of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem evinces a skeptical stance towards any rigid belief in the power and persuasiveness of truth. Blumenberg proves highly critical of Arendt’s assessment of the Eichmann trial. He disagrees with her analysis, arguing that it fails to discern the symbolic and mythical aspects of the trial. According to Blumenberg, the political core of the event was in fact a mythical act of state-founding, which Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann as a family man or buffoon neglects. Thus, according to Blumenberg, Arendt lacks the political vigor necessary for understanding what was taking place at that symbolic moment in history. Blumenberg’s own view, however, leads to the difficult question of whether the political use of myth can ever be legitimized at certain critical moments. He does not answer this question nor does he offer any tools or strategies by which to distinguish a rightful use of political myth from a harmful one.

****

It is difficult to imagine contemporary German academic life without the name Hans Blumenberg. This is not to say that Blumenberg has shaped the academic context or its institutions; rather, it refers to Blumenberg’s presence in current discussions. In contrast to his contemporaries such as Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Derrida, Blumenberg’s presence is a posthumous one. Although he had a central role in the group Poetik und Hermeneutik, gave lectures, contributed to newspapers and other publications and corresponded with Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes, Siegfried Kracauer, Hans Robert Jauss and other prominent figures, he was never a public intellectual. He distanced himself from public debates and avoided making pronouncements of his opinions. This public reticence was likely an important factor in the delayed reception of his work, especially in the Anglophone world. Unlike with Jürgen Habermas, for example, Blumenberg’s work has had to speak for itself, solely on its own terms. Nonetheless, Blumenberg’s work offers reasons not only for why his thought was undervalued during his lifetime but also for why it has become so enthusiastically received and engaged today.

First, Blumenberg’s work is characterized by a certain inaccessibility. His main works are bulky, with chapters that are often so erudite as to overwhelm an interested reader; moreover, his texts generally do not immediately identify what exactly is at stake, what question is being addressed or what central claim is being made. Readers of Blumenberg will find that they receive descriptions rather than definitions. His style is idiosyncratic and the implicit references within his texts are manifold. This renders him a philosopher who resists any quick or easy usability. Nonetheless, his work is rich and meticulously elaborated, thereby offering many leads to different traditions. Indeed, Blumenberg contributed to the fields of phenomenology, history, philosophy of technology and philosophical anthropology. He published on literature and aesthetics and developed a theory of metaphor; he remains an important voice in the debate concerning secularization and, in recent years, the political aspects of his thought have gained increasing attention. During the last years of his career, Blumenberg appears to have focused exclusively on the elaboration of his archive rather than on publishing finished texts. The image of an archive as a sort of rich, untapped mine of undiscovered gems has certainly helped to foster his present-day popularity. As Ahlrich Meyer notes, since “his death in 1996, more books have appeared under his name than he published between 1960 and 1989” (71-2).

Against this background, the translation of Blumenberg’s Rigorism of Truth finds its place. First published in German in 2015, Rigorismus der Wahrheit is one of Suhrkamp’s many posthumous Blumenberg publications. These publications generally share a comparable strategy: a contemporary Blumenberg scholar brings together particular texts or discovers notable fragments or unfinished texts in the Blumenberg archive in Marbach; these discoveries resonate with important aspects of Blumenberg’s thought, and the subsequent publication will include an extensive and elucidating afterword by the editor. Nicola Zambon, for example, brought together Blumenberg’s writings on phenomenology from the 1980s, Anselm Haverkamp compiled a volume of Blumenbergs aesthetic and metaphorologic writings, Ulrich von Bülow and Dorit Krusche collected unpublished fragments concerning central water metaphors such as ‘source’ and ‘stream’, Angus Nicholls and Felix Heidenreich published a chapter that Blumenberg had originally withheld from his Work on Myth and Alexander Schmitz and Bernd Stiegler presented an edition of Blumeberg’s writings on technology and re-published Blumenberg’s contributions on literature as well as unpublished essays and lectures. Ahlrich Meyer, who worked with Blumenberg in Münster, has done the same for Rigorism of Truth, collecting from the archive Blumenberg’s text “Moses the Egyptian” along with his preliminary studies and other thematically related texts.

Along with Nicholls and Heidenreich’s discovery of Blumenberg’s chapter on ‘prefiguration’, Rigorism of Truth has been received as a critically important text revealing Blumenberg’s political interests. It gives insight into certain more articulated political views that remained hidden during his lifetime. When Blumenberg published Arbeit am Mythos in 1979, the absence of any discussion of myth in political terms immediately stood out. Moreover, he has been criticized for the rehabilitation of myth and for his mainly literary understanding of culture. It is striking indeed that Blumenberg discussed myth in the aftermath of the Second World War, referring to Goethe, Kafka, Freud and many others without mentioning Hitler or the political dangers of myth. In contrast to Cassirer, Arendt and Adorno, Blumenberg appears not to have aspired to an understanding of ‘the relapse into myth’ during National Socialism. His book reads mostly as a defense of myth against the overly rigid distinction between mythos and logos. This is even more surprising given that Blumenberg himself was targeted by the Nazi regime. The revelations from the Nachlass, however, spurred researchers to study the subtext of Blumenberg’s work and bring out its implicit political meaning. As it is a general characteristic of Blumenberg’s style to remain at a distance, displaying a “sense of irony” (93) and embarking on various intellectual detours rather than addressing a topic directly, this approach has been fruitful in articulating the more hidden political aspects of Blumenberg’s work. The English translation of Rigorism of Truth opens this ‘political Blumenberg’ to the Anglophone world. In “Moses the Egyptian”, Blumenberg not only draws attention to the importance of myth in the realm of politics, but also directly addresses Judaism and Zionism. Angus Nicholls thus calls this text “without doubt one of the most personal and revealing texts to have emerged from the Blumenberg Nachlass” (Nicholls 2016, 31).

Moreover, the publication offers interesting insights into Blumenberg’s style and his method of working. Ahlrich Meyer’s elucidating footnotes indicate the range of materials that Blumenberg incorporates into his texts. “Moses the Egyptian” itself counts only 12 pages, but Meyer adds 100 footnotes tracing the text’s many sources. The first paragraph, for example, contains 15 footnotes. To be sure, continually turning to these notes and references can interfere with the work’s readability; nonetheless, they are valuable, as they provide necessary background information that both explicates several implicit references and contributes to a fuller understanding of the text.

Moreover, the excerpts and preliminary studies following “Moses the Egyptian” underscore the extensive work Blumenberg conducted before he condensed his findings into a single text. This sheds a light on how Blumenberg used the card-index files that he filled with citations, excerpts, comments, and reflections. At the end of his life these files contained over 24,000 cards. From this ‘treasury’ he compiled lectures, chapters and books. As Meyer remarks, “[a]ny reader wondering why these books often seem to make so many leaps and are full of unexpected connections, why their author largely dispenses with the linear development of his thoughts […] will learn […] that Blumenberg’s oeuvre is the product not least of the ingenious architecture of his card files” (72). Likewise, the picture of the first pages of Blumenberg’s reading log for 1978 sheds additional light on his way of working, as well as revealing his zest for work. It would appear that, between January 6 and March 5 of that year, Blumenberg read, or at least engaged with, no less than 31 books. Rigorism of Truth thus not only offers a more personal and political Blumenberg; it also gives his readers a look into his method.

****

What is central in Blumenberg’s “Moses the Egyptian” is a critical stance towards both Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and Hannah Arendt’s famous discussion of the Eichmann trial in her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. As the title Rigorism of Truth immediately suggests, Blumenberg recognizes a certain shared rigorism at work in the publication of these two books. Moses and Monotheism was published in 1939, shortly after the pogroms of 1938 and “at the apex of Hitler’s power”, during a period when “the number of Jews expelled from Germany and Austria rose sharply” (12). Freud himself had just been forced to flee Vienna for London, and it was at this crucial moment that he issued his analysis of Moses, “depriving the Jews, in their most dreadful hour, when everything was being taken from them, of their best man” (2). According to Freud, “Moses had in fact been an Egyptian, who had transmitted to the Jewish people the monotheistic cult of Akhenaten” (12), after which, in an act of patricide, the prince was killed. This led to Freud’s famous hypothesis that Moses was not actually a Hebrew but rather the Egyptian slain father of Judaism. Moreover, the memories of the Jewish people were “devised to cover up the murder of the cultural hero” and “became the source of a ritualized self-punishment, whose forms and obligations […] were to anticipate the singular organization of the art of survival that bestowed upon the Jews the ability to withstand all future desert and captivities” (4). Freud recognized the controversial potential of this hypothesis, even noting that he did not “like offending” his “own people” (12), but published the book nonetheless. Blumenberg, rather than looking for some suppressed or secret hatred against Freud’s “fellow men” (12), recognizes in him “no other motive to justify this publication but the absolutism of truth” (3). Despite the historical situation, Freud clung to science and his “love of truth”, “even when it was uncomfortable and unpleasant” (12). Moreover, in the psychoanalytic scheme concerning resistance, the anticipated inconvenience following from his study may have encouraged Freud’s endeavor, as the “general premise for resistance as a criterion might be [this]: what people gladly accept cannot be the truth” (59). And in light of the many conflicts and trials in the history of science it is understandable to think that “the power of truth” grows “stronger even in the face of resistance” (59).

For Blumenberg, Hannah Arendt’s book was the result of comparable convictions, not least as she published her controversial analysis at a symbolic moment as well, risking much in the name of truth. According to Blumenberg, “She believes in the truth – that is her truth, she can neither change nor prevent” (5). A critique of this rigorous belief in the truth is a first important argument in Blumenberg’s text. As he writes, “(n)othing is less certain than that the truth wishes to be loved, can be loved, should be loved” (3). Or put more sharply: “There is no love of truth. Maybe because there can be none” (5).

Throughout his career, Blumenberg contended with the question of ‘truth’. Mostly anti-Platonic, he defended a skeptical position that would be sensitive to the rhetorical efforts necessary to afford truth its privileged position. Already in 1957, Blumenberg published a text concerning ‘light’ as the metaphor of truth in Western thought. As the title Rigorism of Truth indicates, his distanced stance towards “the absolutism of truth” (3) is also present in his discussion of Freud and Arendt. Amongst the many ‘absolutisms’ opposed by Blumenberg’s philosophical analyses – including ‘reality’, ‘rules’, ‘the master’, ‘dreams and wishes’, ‘reason’, ‘institutions’, and ‘being’ – is the absolutism of truth. He works against what he describes as one of the most “intimate convictions of European history”, namely, “that the truth will triumph” (57). This critique corresponds with Blumenberg’s attention to myth, metaphor, and rhetoric. In his work, Blumenberg draws attention to other aspects of human culture which can serve a legitimizing function, carry a certain rationality or have laws of their own. In setting a Platonic trust in truth, these aspects can be neglected and become dangerous.

In contrast to what Arendt seems to suggest in her Truth and Politics, Blumenberg answers the question “Must one always tell the truth?” with “Surely not” (51). And this immediately is Blumenberg’s main concern as regards Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann: “What Hannah Arendt does not understand about the whole Eichmann trial is the veiled tendency to provide the Israeli state with a founding myth” (47). In other words, her determination to reveal the truth and the ‘real’ character of Eichmann leads her to ignore other, perhaps more important dimensions of the Eichmann process. The pre-occupation with (scientific) truth thereby becomes the opposite of what it proclaims to be (clear-sightedness, proof, right) and becomes the irrationality which it avows to eradicate. In this respect, Blumenberg’s text on Freud and Arendt can be read along familiar lines of his other work.

However, as he develops his central argument concerning the rigorism of truth, Blumenberg also adds several other notable ideas. Unlike in his discussion of Freud’s Moses, Blumenberg engages critically with Arendt’s Eichmann. He disapproves of Freud’s ‘love for truth’, his rigidity and his timing, yet does not criticize Freud’s hypothesis that Moses was an Egyptian, a hypothesis that challenges the origins of Judaism. In stark contrast, however, Blumenberg fundamentally calls into question Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann as a buffoon (Hanswurst). In the years since publication of her book, many have argued against Arendt’s characterization of Eichmann. Bettina Stangneth, in her Eichmann Before Jerusalem (2014), gathers information which convincingly shows that Arendt was misled. As Felix Heidenreich writes, “Eichmann was all but stupid; in contrast to Arendt’s analysis we now have good reasons to consider him a vicious murderer and liar” (Heidenreich 2015, 532). Blumenberg’s critique, however, is not an effort to undermine Arendt’s claim of the ‘banality of evil’ by showing that Eichmann was actually a sort of Iago or Macbeth, someone permeated by diabolic or demonic evil. On the contrary, as concerns Arendt’s characterization of Eichmann, Blumenberg seems to agree. He has “all respect for the rightness of such considerations” (8) and calls them “[h]istorically justified” (48). However, whereas Arendt seeks to reveal Eichmann as “the petit bourgeois run wild” (50), Blumenberg brackets Eichmann’s real character and points to the symbolic function of Eichmann as a “scapegoat” (51), labeling him Israel’s “negative founding figure” (50). Nonetheless, it is questionable whether Arendt was indeed insensitive to this dynamic and more likely that she decided to oppose it. Yet Blumenberg’s reproach is that she did not offer any account of the symbolic aspect of the trial, this “mythical necessity of archaic violence” (46). What was at stake politically in the Eichmann trial was precisely Eichmann’s “entering the national myth as the vanquished necessary enemy” (9). For Blumenberg, this proves that Arendt was “completely unsensitive to the political” (47). Herewith Blumenberg’s rhetoric comes into play. For example, he recalls that in her famous interview with Günter Gaus, Arendt proudly characterized herself as a political thinker, not a philosopher (6-7, 9, 46-47). Blumenberg goes on to claim that she missed the political core of the trial: “Hannah Arendt had completely failed to recognize the cathartic significance of the official act getting the man guilty of genocide” (45-46).

Moreover, according to Blumenberg, Arendt not only neglected what was happening politically – a mythical act of state legitimization – but also worked against it. It may be perfectly correct that Eichmann was a clown and buffoon; however, regardless of his actual character, in his political function of being transfigured into the “negative founder of the state” (10) he cannot at the same time also be turned into “a figure of ridicule” (11). As Blumenberg states, “[O]ne cannot have both at once: the analysis and the myth” (9).

As in his Work on Myth, Blumenberg’s text highlights the importance of mythical dimensions for the understanding of human existence. In this specific case, he argues that one cannot understand politics without acknowledging the mythical aspects that shape and legitimize it. He even goes a step further, suggesting that scientific truth and the attempt of objective analysis is often powerless against “what is necessary […] in a mythical sense” (8). This analysis immediately raises several questions. Does this mean that political myth is necessary and legitimized? Does this convert all politics into a post-truth politics? Does this eradicate the possibility of distinguishing between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ political myth? Or does this mean that, in this specific case, at that specific moment of history, Blumenberg thought it was merely “a precarious nation-state” engaged “in the creation of its own political myth” (Nicholls 2016, 30)? Rigorism of Truth yields no answers here and it remains doubtful whether we can accurately deduce that Blumenberg thought it was right and just that Eichmann was used as a scapegoat. The text resists such direct interrogation. Blumenberg instead shows himself as a philosopher who prefers understanding over judging. He avers: “One may be fervently opposed to this ritual; but first one must have understood what it means to the others [i.e., the victims and witnesses] and to what insignificance this meaning condemns one’s criticism” (8). In this line, Blumenberg does not argue against Arendt in order to defend the Eichmann trial as a legitimate act of state-founding. Rather, he opposes Arendt because of his different analysis of the political situation. From this perspective, he does not particularly defend myth against the rigorism of truth via a position in the old tension between mythos and logos. Instead, he suggests that when we want to understand politics, we cannot let ourselves be blinded by rigid belief in the power of truth and science. We must take the symbolic and mythical side of things seriously.

Nonetheless, scholars have interpreted the text as being more personal than that. Although his politically charged chapter on Präfiguration clearly shows that Blumenberg cannot simply be read as an advocate for the political use of myth, Heidenreich, Nicholls and Meyer seem to suggest that, in this particular case, Blumenberg defends the political use of myth. As Heidenreich summarizes: “Exposed to imminent threat, questioned by many states in the region, desperately trying to integrate Jews coming from all the corners of the earth, the young nation of Israel needed a political myth, Blumenberg claims” (Heidenreich, 532). In this context, Ahlrich Meyer refers to Blumenberg’s being a Halbjude per “Nazi racial doctrine” and states that Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem “must have hurt him quite considerably” and that his text “Moses the Egyptian” reveals “that an interest in Judaism was a hidden constant in his life” (93). Nicholls calls the text “a life-expression in the deepest sense” (Nicholls 2016, 32). He writes that the themes “touched him personally as a German of Jewish ancestry” and that “Moses the Egyptian” raises the question of whether there are “exceptional circumstances – such as, for example, the need to create a Jewish homeland in the wake of the Shoah – under which the deployment of political myth is unavoidable and for that reason defensible” (Nicholls 2016, 10). Blumenberg indeed refers to ‘a state of exception’ from which legitimacy emerges, seemingly justifying the way in which the trial was addressed. Yet, when using that word, Blumenberg concludes that this ‘state of exception’ was called upon, instead of appealing to a state of exception himself (7). His assessment of “Moses the Egyptian” remains ambiguous. On the one hand, his argumentation need not be a defense or a theoretical legitimation. It can be read as an argument from within the mythical logic that was deployed in order to better understand the situation, without deciding in its favor. For this reason, one should be careful in equating the argumentation in “Moses the Egyptian” with Blumenberg’s own assessment of the situation. On the other hand, Blumenberg’s text draws attention to the mythical, which in this case is the perspective of ‘the young nation of Israel’. Thus, it is arguable that Blumenberg’s harshness and often pointedly ironical formulations show a concern which is in fact beyond philosophical analysis and understanding. Bajohr, for example, notes that Blumenberg’s judgement of Arendt “is so unfair that it can almost only be explained by a deep offence of his own identity” (Bajohr 2015, 55). He places Blumenberg next to other “mostly Jewish critics of Eichmann in Jerusalem”, arguing it is difficult to maintain Christian Vollers’s claim that Blumenberg “has probably never been a convinced Jew” (Bajohr 2015, 57). Yet biographical explanations – especially regarding an unpublished text of a thinker who is difficult to characterize – tend to remain suggestive and speculative. Moreover, beneath the central argument by which Blumenberg rejects Freud’s and Arendt’s rigorism is yet another argument complicating the issue.

In discussing Arendt and her findings that Eichmann’s knowledge of Judaism was derived from Theodor Herzl’s Judenstaat, Blumenberg states that “in Zionism”, Eichmann “found what he had sought to create by force” (5). He writes that the “extermination was, blasphemous though it may sound, only a variant forced by circumstance of the idea of relocation” (7). He mentions the Madagascar Plan (in which Germany would relocate the Jews of Europe to Madagascar) and Eichmann’s visit to Haifa in October 1937, implying an identity between Nazi and Zionist interests in which extermination became a more practical “remolding of the idea of expulsion” (52) – “a truth simply unbearable for the present generation” (53). The index card on which this paragraph is based is titled “Zionism Taken at Its Word”, suggesting that the Holocaust was a literal translation of the Zionist need “to firm ground under the feet of the Jews” (7). Only after reading Arendt’s name next to the exclamation “What odium!” (53) does it become clear that these sentences are a critical continuation of Arendt’s accusations of Zionism. However, whereas the previous alarming lines remain an elaboration of an Arendtian theme, at the end of his text Blumenberg makes a controversial move. That is to say, he brings Eichmann close to Moses. Nicholls mentions this only in passing, calling it “disorienting and shocking” (Nicholls 2016, 27). It now becomes clear why Blumenberg does not challenge Freud’s claim about Moses being an Egyptian. He needs Freud’s analysis in order to suggest that, “like Moses”, Eichmann had to “be killed” (5). This enfolding of Eichmann onto Moses forwards the claim that “[s]ome states are founded by their enemies” (5). Blumenberg draws this controversial similarity in “the irrealis mood” (11), imagining what Freud would have thought of the Eichmann trial. As Blumenberg writes, Freud “would have immediately recognized […] the mythical dimension of killing the negative hero of the state” (11). He continues: “Freud would, one hardly dares to think it, have projected onto Moses the Egyptian, who was barred from setting foot in the Promised Land, the monstrosity of Adolf Eichmann, whose ashes were more than that very country could bear” (12). Despite the veil of the subjunctive and an appeal to Freud’s logic, it is Blumenberg who makes the association. He even reads the scattering of Eichmann’s ashes over the Mediterranean Sea as “a last act of diaspora in the literal sense” (54). This demonstrates how seriously he understood Eichmann as the negative founder of Israel, an understanding completely in line with Freud’s analysis of an Egyptian Moses as the murdered “cultural hero” (4).

This highly provocative parallel and finishing note, which ‘one hardly dares to think’, blurs the understanding of Blumenberg’s “Moses the Egyptian”. In light of this conclusion, one wonders whether the text can be read as a defense of “the role played by the Eichmann trial in the formation of Israel’s national identity” (Nicholls 2016, 27). “As Freud took Moses the man from his people, so Hannah Arendt took Adolf Eichmann from the State of Israel” (5), Blumenberg writes as a critique; however, in the conclusion, he establishes an intrinsic and controversial connection between the two. Yet Blumenberg did not publish this text during his lifetime. Nicholls may be right when he concludes that “Blumenberg appears to have written ‘Moses der Ägypter’ primarily for himself” (33). Perhaps “this most personal of texts” is indeed “merely a case of private ‘working-through’ (durcharbeiten)” (Nicholls 2016, 32). However, I would suggest another conclusion, in which his choice not to publish the text is an important element of his central argument and becomes a symbolic stroke in which he moves away from the rigorism he criticized in Freud and Arendt. In the beginning of the text he writes: “In my turn prepared to court indignation, I am aghast at the deep-rooted similarities between Moses and Monotheism and Eichmann in Jerusalem” (5). At this point in the text it remains unclear how deep-rooted in the heart of Jewish history Blumenberg saw these similarities. Nonetheless, the first part of the sentence clearly indicates an outward intent on Blumenberg’s part to be willing to face possible outrage, as did Freud and Arendt. On February 10, 1988, however, Blumenberg wrote to Henning Ritter that for “many years”, he had “an essay, ‘Moses der Ägypter,’ under lock and key, which brings together the monstrous behind-the-back connivings [Hinterrücklichkeiten] of Freud and Arendt. Essentially, it was only my consideration for Hans Jonas that prevented me from allowing anybody to read it.”[1] Rather than being a document of personal working-through, it seems that Blumenberg re-enforces his argument against Freud and Arendt’s rigorism, by abandoning his own truth in favor of Hans Jonas – a mutual friend of Arendt and Blumenberg. Just like Freud and Arendt, Blumenberg made a controversial analysis and, like them, he recognized the potential for indignation. However, in contrast to Freud and Arendt, who, according to Blumenberg, could not keep their own truths for themselves by being mindful of an entire people in a precarious situation, for Blumenberg one friend sufficed to give up his own quest for truth. Thus, this posthumous publication shows that Blumenberg not only payed serious philosophical attention to symbolic dimensions of human existence, but also acted in accordance with it.

Cited Works: 

Angus Nicholls, “Hans Blumenberg on Political Myth: Recent Publications from the Nachlass,” Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 65, (January 2016): 3 – 33.

Felix Heidenreich, “Political Aspects in Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophy,” Revista de Filosofia Aurora 27, no. 41 (2015): 523 – 539.

Hannes Bajohr, “Der Preis der Wahrheit. Hans Blumenberg über Hannah Arendts »Eichmann in Jerusalem«,” Merkur 69, no. 792 (May 2015): 52 – 59.


[1] Hans Blumenberg to Henning Ritter, 10 February 1988, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, quoted in Hannes Bajohr, “Der Preis der Wahrheit: Hans Blumenberg über Hannah Arendts Eichmann in Jerusalem,“ Merkur 69 (2015) 5: 57. See aslo Nicholls, 32-3 and Heidenreich, 533.

Rafael Winkler: Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche

Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche Book Cover Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche
Rafael Winkler
Bloomsbury
2018
Hardback $102.60
208

Reviewed by: Denis C. Bosseau (University of Sussex)

With the publication of the Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche, Rafael Winkler embarks on a much needed contemporary re-evaluation of the human cogito beyond a traditional Cartesian and Kantian framework of analysis in which what is own-most to human experience, its uniqueness, must be understood beyond the limits of the ‘I think’ of the first person as the necessary condition and foundation of possible experience. On a walk of thought that is, at least for this reviewer, echoing a problem poetically explored by Paul Celan’s Gespräch im Gebirg[1], the present book is concerned with the existential movement from one’s being to one’s self; a passage seemingly accomplished on the horizon of a fundamental absence. This absence is that of the unified self and the sense of ownership one may often take for granted regarding one’s uniqueness as conveyed by the human cogito, the cardinal ‘I’ of the first person which is commonly thought to accompany all possible human experience.

Here, we could say that ‘thought’ is directed upon the ‘one’ that does not accompany our ‘self’ in its life experiences[2]; this part of what we are which is absent from the conscious mind of everyday deliberative thinking. Winkler’s analysis asks us about what happens when the seeming certainty of the Cartesian ‘I think’, as the ground of human existence, dissolves and one’s experience can no longer be thought of, or expressed as ‘mine’, my own, as if emerging from an unrecognisable other. Most importantly, one may ask how this phenomenon itself emerges. What may such an experience, if at all possible, tell us about what we are?

As the reader discovers early on in the pages of the first chapter, Winkler invites us to consider the figure of the schizophrenic as an example to shed light on this existential problem in concrete terms. By turning one’s attention to the issue of dissociation or dislocation of the self, what is posed as a problem here is not the discovery of the unique as a singular entity or what is own-most to Man as an essence or a ‘what’ which would lie behind the I of the unified self rather, the problem posed is that of the whole horizon of being as a passage which itself discloses the plenitude of what we are as human beings. It is not question of uncovering that secret chamber of the mind in which may lie the true nature of human uniqueness, who we truly are. The book generously approaches the ground of uniqueness as a passage and movement through which the anonymous language of the ‘other’ of Man, of this absolute stranger, gradually trans-forms into the language of the subject who identifies himself as an individual, a recognisable self. As such, what is at stake is then not only to see whether such an experience of the dissolution of the self is even possible, but how to talk about it. Winkler presents a philosophical attempt to bring intelligibility to the ambiguous and anonymous language of absolute difference and by this process, he also provides the reader with a highly interesting contribution to contemporary phenomenological thinking.

Exploring the legacies of Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche, Winkler invites us to confront the possibility that the genuine uniqueness of human experience is prior to its formalisation under the expression of the ‘I’, which at first glance, always seem to accompany conscious thought. The bold nature of this claim is best expressed when Winkler tells us that ‘the unique is not the individual’[3] but a ‘formal feature of existence’; one that is experienced as an original absence in the world and makes the emergence of the first person possible. And it is as such that a thinking of uniqueness may be approached as a thinking of absolute difference which, as he argues, calls for a thinking of finitude. But as the author carefully reminds us, the language of finitude must extend beyond the consideration of Man’s ultimate finiteness, the inescapable advent of its death. A thinking of finitude must press us to the very limits of thought, of the thinkable, as it is perhaps only when the unity of the self is dissolved and our habitual reliance on the concept, language and experience of identity is overcome, that we can really start to embrace the thought of uniqueness. Maybe it is here that lies the most enduring relevance and actuality of phenomenology; when it reminds us of the un-thought of thought as the inescapable and unremovable ‘other’ of Man where the unique really emerges. Here, it is with particular attention to the works of authors such as Derrida, Levinas, Ricœur and especially Heidegger that Winkler invites  his readership to consider the unique in terms of ‘the uniqueness of being, of the self, of the other human being, of death, and of the responsibility for the other’.[4]

***

If the general theme of the book allows for a wide variety of philosophical approaches, its overall tone and character would be best described as scholarly and aimed at a specialised audience interested in Heidegger studies more specifically. The methodology sustained in this volume is exegetical and the specialism of its author is made particularly evident by an ubiquitous focus on Heidegger’s works of the 1930s and 1940s, which at times appear to overshadow other philosophical discussions regarding the two other thinkers announced in the title of the book, namely Levinas and Nietzsche.  Although the chapters are often dominated by a sustained exercise in textual interpretation of this interesting period of Heidegger’s work, it cannot be said that it diminishes the impact and relevance of the general thesis presented in the volume. In fact, Winkler’s clear interpretative competence and lucidity regarding the author of Being and Time adds a certain degree of depth to a contemporary re-thinking of finitude. However, it must be said that the title of the book may appear somehow confusing to some readers expecting more of an interpretative balance between the three major figures which the title announces. One is at times surprised to read more about Derrida and Ricœur than about Levinas and Nietzsche, more particularly as the latter’s published works are unfortunately only mentioned and discussed with greater depth in section 7 of the 5th chapter of the book. Elsewhere in the same chapter, the reader will find out more about Winkler’s interpretation of Heidegger’s Nietzsche than about Nietzsche’s own significance and original contribution to a thinking of finitude. It is perhaps only when one comes to read the introduction to the volume that one may realise that an exegetical exercise focused on Heidegger’s literature of the 1930s and 1940s is the connecting rod which holds the book together. Taking this issue into consideration, this most interesting project may be better characterised as a significant contribution to Heidegger Studies. The symptoms of this analytical posture are visible in each chapter of the book through the unmissable reliance on a Heideggerian vocabulary which non-specialists may at times struggle with in the case of a first encounter.

The opening chapter of the book concentrates on the idea of the uniqueness of existence where the author argues that what we may call ‘existence’ in ontological terms does not emerge from the unity of the first person but from immanence of death or the responsibility for the other. From the onset, the Heideggerian focus sets the tone. This may give a hint to the reader that the use of the word ‘existence’ will from now on have to be understood in Heideggerian terms, in a way  closer to the Latin ‘Ex –sistere’ denoting the idea of that which stands out of itself or of that which is ‘made to stand out and beyond’[5]. Only with this prior understanding in mind will the reader feel comfortable with the term’s relation to the other notion of Dasein (being there), which is here recurrently used to explore the theme of uniqueness. Indeed, as Heidegger suggests in Being and Time, one would have to see the uniqueness of Dasein in its existence [6] and thus the study of fundamental ontology will have to be found in ‘the existential analytic of Dasein’[7].

As previously mentioned in this review, future readers for whom Heidegger’s philosophy remains an unfamiliar terrain may find it difficult to get to grips with this meticulous and rich vocabulary which is not often problematized or re-evaluated in this book.  That said, Winkler’s scholarly analysis does carry the message across with its clarity of phrasing and with a carefully executed argumentative development which is always impeccably introduced in all chapters; an aspect which most readers will greatly appreciate. This indeed may help the reader overcome the complexity of the Heideggerian terminology and the first chapter does succeed in bringing an interesting discussion of the dynamism or mouvance implied in the notion of  ‘the uniqueness of existence’, which, as Winkler reminds us, is not to be misunderstood as implying an essence or fixed entity.

To explore the notion of the uniqueness of existence in this important first chapter, the author argues that Heidegger and Derrida’s reflections on death may call for a radical rethinking of the sense of consciousness or experience one may usually find in previous contributions to the history of transcendental phenomenology. That is, both thinkers may be read as presenting the human relation to death as dissolving the unity of the self, and moreover, as making the argument that the relation to death and this phenomenon of estrangement is indeed a possible experience or encounter. This brings Winkler to boldly ask the reader: ‘Is Dying Possible?’[8] Or in other words, can one encounter one’s own death, this ultimate finitude, this absolute absence of presence where one is no longer ‘able to be able’[9]? A possible answer, according to Winkler, may lie in Heidegger’s analysis of the phenomenon of being-towards-death. Through a close reading of the latter, it is suggested that finitude should not be reduced to the thought of a morbid passivity of the human animal (das Man) destined to die but should rather be thought through as the very activity which in itself calls for emergence of one’s receptivity regarding what is. The idea seems to be that, in order for something (e.g. death, finitude) to possibly be encountered, the horizon of its appearing (i.e. the phenomena) must have already been deployed. Perhaps, one could then say that the relation of the human being towards death and dying, rather than being a relation of passivity and mere resignation to fate, is a relation that is itself constitutive of Man’s own being. Hence, our relation to death, this active mode of being-towards-death can be understood as a formal or constitutive feature of existence. As such, this uniquely Human mode of being towards death is here given sense to as prior to, and constitutive of, the emergence of the first person of the ‘I think’ which will subsequently accompanies conscious experiences.

As Winkler interestingly points out across sections 3 and 4 of this first chapter, this particular instance of a Heideggerian ‘thinking of finitude’ would suggest that Man, in its unique existence, already has a relation or encounter with death prior to being able to consciously called it ‘his’ as one would talk of ‘my death’, ‘her death’, ‘theirs’ etc. as if it were possible to be in possession of it and individually declare ownership over it. As Winkler remarks concerning Heidegger’s confrontation of the idea of one’s sense of ownership over one’s own death: ‘death is in every case mine’ but only ‘in so far as it “is” at all’[10]. With diligence and clarity, Winkler at this stage understands that the discussion of this possible experience with uniqueness, in terms of the Human being’s relation to death, must be extended to the possibility of expressing this experience; of making it intelligible by giving it a voice. In that regard, he succeeds brilliantly by introducing the reader to Heidegger’s treatment of ‘anxiety’ as a mood (stimmung) which discloses this unique mode of being towards death. The uniqueness of this experience, if it indeed comes prior to the emergence of the first person, could hardly be thought as expressible conceptually through the habitual language of identity. As Winkler puts it:

‘The unique is, strictly speaking, the unclassifiable, the unidentifiable.(…) That is why an experience of it leaves us speechless, is traumatic, is, like an event that cannot be anticipated in advance, an absolute surprise, a shock.’[11]

Hence, the language of the experience of the unique can only be grasped as the anonymous language of the absolute ‘other’ of Man. The conscious I of the Cartesian cogito is here absent in such an experience. The experience is one that is felt or thought in the sense of the activity of the un-thought of thought. As Winkler suggests, it is in such terms that we could better understand what Rimbaud meant when he expressed in a poetic letter to an old mentor that in the process of one’s poetic encounter with oneself, ‘I is another’ (Je est un autre). It is through this subtle approach to the problem of the possibility of one’s experience of the unique that Winkler, is at the end of the chapter, able to meet previous scepticism, as that expressed by Derrida in that regard, by arguing that the unique relation to death is possibly one that could only be encountered as an anxious anticipation and ‘a mode of being beyond mere presence’[12].

In chapter 2 titled ‘Self and Other’, Winkler brings the discussion of the uniqueness of human experience, of this ‘other’ of Man (i.e. absolute difference) deeper by arguing that the experience of uniqueness does not grant access to the uniqueness of some other human being. Here the author refers to this problem as the ‘principle of singularisation’ which finds its expression in Heidegger through the notion of the ‘immanence of death’ and as the ‘responsibility for the other’ in Ricœur and Levinas. In Winkler’s own words, the core of the argument in this part of the book is that the fundamental alterity that is interior to oneself, the unique, is ‘neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to access the alterity of the other human being, that is, his or her uniqueness’[13]. Here the author chooses to approach this problem by focusing on comparative accounts of Heidegger’s position in the period of the 1930s and 1940s with selected elements Levinas’ thesis in Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity. The chapter thus attempts to offer a new reading of Heidegger’s position which would effectively undermine the Levinassian stance which proposes that the irreducibility of the ‘alterity of the other human being’ to ‘the alterity that inhabits the self’ is ‘a necessary and sufficient condition of ethics, and by extension, of sociality’[14]. With added support extracted from the more recent works of Ricœur (i.e. Oneself as Another), as well as Heideggerian scholars such as Françoise Dastur (The Call of Conscience: The Most Intimate Alterity) and François Raffoul (The Origins of Responsibility), the main concern of the author is to show that the Heideggerian perspective would bring a serious challenge to the idea that one’s uniqueness of being allows for the experience of another’s, thus destabilising all possibility of founding an ethics on such a basis.

Although the introduction to the chapter suggests an in depth analysis and discussion of Levinas’ legacy as a thinker of finitude, one gradually realises that Levinas’ corpus will not be the subject of the same depth of engagement that is reserved for Heidegger as the cement which connects each chapters of this book. In fact, rigorous discussion of Levinas’ material is mostly limited to the first three sections before a return, for the three remaining sections of the chapter, to the more familiar domain of Heideggerian scholarship. Perhaps, we could say that the genuine originality and strength of this chapter lies less in its analysis of Levinas’ work and more in hermeneutical efforts to dissect Heidegger’s perspective from Being and Time up to the finer tuning of his positions in the 1940s. In this chapter, the reader will find the themes of ‘alterity’, ‘the call’, ‘guilt’ and ‘responsibility’ as the points of articulation of Winkler’s exegetical work. Therein, most of the other sources called upon to approach the theme of ‘self and other’ seem to serve as a fulcrum enabling the author to test the ‘workability’ of the Heideggerian system, which will ultimately be presented as getting us ‘closer to the truth’ of the matter[15] while Levinas’ perspective is presented as doomed to fail as a phenomenological argument. What remains undeniable is that the originality of the argument in this chapter lies in the competency of the exegetical exercise prompted by each of the chapter’s subsections; and it may be best not to spoil the reader’s pleasure by pre-emptively dissecting each part of the chapter. That said, it would not be doing justice to the rigour and assertiveness of the voice of this book’s author if we were to abstain from providing an example of clarity with which the core of the argument is expressed in the concluding section of this chapter. There, after careful considerations of Ricœur’s thesis in Oneself as Another, Winkler asserts that:

‘There is no phenomenological or hermeneutic justification for transposing the vertical relation that structures the interiority of the self onto the social relation between the self and the other (something that Ricœur apparently thinks we can do with good reason). In the final analysis, I know who the source of the injunction is. It is my conscience that enjoins me in the second person that I am indebted to the other. I assign myself that responsibility towards the other in the hetero- affective experience of conscience. Since it is authored and conditioned by nothing other than myself, it issues from an act of freedom.’[16]

Having shown us how one’s relation to death (chapter 1) and sociality (chapter 2) can, in different ways, only be accomplished as a relation with a future that is discontinuous with the present; chapters 3 and 4 attempt to bring intelligibility to the phenomenon of being as a passage, a movement towards. To do so, the third chapter considers the idea that ‘being’ is perhaps unthinkable otherwise than as a ‘figuration of someone or something’, an image formed around a potentiality or possibilities rather than an actual entity which can be truthfully seized and represented. This figurative atmosphere with which the philosopher wraps the phenomenon of the uniqueness of being could indeed be argued to be more real, that is, closer to the phenomena than the mundane representation one could formulate through the language of identity.

In this chapter, Winkler attempts to make the phenomenon of being intelligible in these terms through two different figures of ‘hospitality’: the ‘feminine’ in Levinas and the ‘Absolute Arrivant’ in Derrida. Here once again, Heidegger comes into the picture as a key reference point to evaluate the fruitfulness of these two figurations of being proposed by Levinas and Derrida. These figures of the ‘feminine’ and the ‘absolute arrivant’ are discussed against the background of Heidegger’s notion of ‘dwelling’ which Winkler presents as inextricably linked to the notion of hospitality; especially in the latter’s literature of the 1940s[17]. This argumentative strategy on the author’s part will then prepare the reader for a deeper consideration of the theme of dwelling in Heidegger in chapter 4 which explores the possibility of ‘being at home in the world’ without relying on the traditional metaphysical assumption of being as presence and the language of identity. Here, Winkler considers some of the said ‘figurations of being’ that appear in Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin, with a particular accent on the 1934-5 lecture on Germania and the 1942 lecture on Der Ister. In these complementary chapters, Winkler sails to and fro between a variety of images of thought present in Levinas, Heidegger and Derrida in order to highlight the necessarily protean quality of the language of being. The language of figuration is an original and pertinent addition to Winkler’s analysis and one which convincingly shows that the phenomenon of being can only be rendered intelligible if it actively resists the ossification that the language of identity would bring. It is precisely because the phenomenon of ‘being’ existentially precedes the advent of the conscious ‘I’ that we cannot reduce it to a stable language, a singular point of reference, word, concept or even image. As Winkler seems to suggest in these two chapters, the uniqueness of being and its experience could best be expressed through a multiplicity of figures of passage and transition. Echoing the insights of the first chapter which posed the problem of the nature of the unique and the possibility of experiencing the uniqueness of being and absolute difference, it is here question of the possibility of talking about the experience of uniqueness and therefore the limits of its expressibility. Thus, what the philosophers of finitude tell us is that expressing the ground of the uniqueness of being might require us to think and talk about it in terms of a passage or movement between Man and its other. Never one with ourselves, it would seem that what we are, the uniqueness of our being, lies in the multiplicity of facets by which it emerges in time as an ever unique event that is always in the process of being determined.

With the fifth chapter of this volume, Winkler announces an analysis of Nietzsche’s contribution to the philosophy of finitude which he titles ‘Beyond Truth’. At first glance, one may justifiably think that the problem of truth, which hasn’t been discussed in the book so far, presents an awkward shift from the previous discussions about the possibilities of thinking and talking about the uniqueness of being as the ‘really real’[18]. In fact, the introduction to the volume only mentions Nietzsche in one brief sentence, thus leaving the reader somehow in the dark as to the possible importance of the author in Winkler’s project. From the onset, Winkler’s concern seem to lie more with how the author of Also Sprach Zarathustra has been painted in 20th century philosophy than with the latter’s enduring relevance in contemporary thought as a thinker of finitude. The aim of the chapter is thus announced: to offer ‘an alternative reading of Nietzsche to the one Heidegger and Derrida respectively provide and consider the non- metaphysical sense of being as light that is operative in Nietzsche’s text’[19]. These two authoritative readings of Nietzsche Winkler seeks to overcome are described as such: ‘Nietzsche, the metaphysician of the will to power and the eternal return’ whose main proponent is Heidegger, and ‘Nietzsche, the sceptic, the iconoclast and the destroyer of metaphysical systems and ideas’ which Winkler perceives in Derrida’s treatment. These two categorisations are, to say the least, rather broad and do little to tell the reader how they may come to be antithetical in the first place. However, as the chapter develops, one is able to see the main trajectory of the author unfold with greater clarity: to dress a portrait of Nietzsche and Heidegger as thinkers of the ‘limit’ of Metaphysics. What this ‘limit’ – in the singular – is, however, remains unclear and underdeveloped within the chapter as the analysis therein privileges a textual interpretation of Heidegger’s 1930s and 1940s reading of Nietzsche’s late notebooks and posthumously crafted Will to Power. That said, the chapter offers its strongest arguments in the last three sections where Winkler’s own reading of Nietzsche emerges and where selected parts of the latter’s late published works are analysed. Here, the strength of the chapter lies less in the analysis of Heidegger’s Nietzsche and the critique of the ‘will to truth’, than in Winkler’s exploration of the physiological dimension of Nietzsche’s thought of finitude through a discussion of the latter’s attempt at a philosophy of self-overcoming which would assert as its condition of possibility, the ‘forgottenness of being’[20].  This is perhaps the more pertinent element of the analysis in relation to the book as a comprehensive whole as it links Nietzsche’s late work to previous discussions of European thought’s attempt to overcome traditional metaphysics’ reliance on the language of identity and being as presence which had been dominant since Plato.

Finally, in its sixth and final chapter, the book offers what may be its most original contribution with an interesting philological approach to the language of substance and the peculiarity of its philosophical uses  in Roman literature (1st Century BC – 4th Century AD) – with a particular focus on Cicero and Seneca. This tactful exploration of the language of substance allows Winkler to bring back the discussion to the problem of the uniqueness of being as substantia without its traditional metaphysical amalgamation with the language of determinable identity and entity. This is a brilliant move on Winkler’s part and an original way to close the volume. Indeed, this brings to the author the possibility to present a strong argument regarding the need for philosophy to adopt a plastic, supple attitude towards the language of being via metaphorical language or what Nietzsche would call the importance of learning to ‘think in images’. The chapter thus comes to strengthen what was previously argued in Chapter 3 wherein ‘being’ is presented as ‘unthinkable except as a figuration of something or someone, that is, as a figure in which the force of the distinction between the who and the what is suspended’[21]. In the pages of this chapter, the reader is invited to re-think the relevance of previously discussed authors such as Derrida and Levinas whose figures of the ‘absolute Arrivant’ and the ‘Feminine’ could now be read anew as examples among a multitude of possible simulacra for the experience of the ‘really real’ or the uniqueness of being which Winkler has attempted to make intelligible in this interesting project.  With this return to the problem of possible figurations of being, the reader is now better equipped to consider the unique as the differential element grounding all discursive representations in Human experience and to ponder upon the significance of such claims. The last chapter of the book ultimately reminds us of the enduring relevance of phenomenological inquiry for contemporary philosophy. However, it is perhaps because of the highly relevant nature of the topic explored here that a more fastidious reader may wonder what could have been or could be if the author wondered away from Heidegger’s gravitational pull and turned his attention to more secondary, yet key, philosophical sources such as Deleuze’s influential analysis of ‘Différence’ as found in Différence et Répétition or indeed Michel Guerin’s ‘Figurologie’ as it appears in La Terreur et La Pitié, among others.

***

Overall, with the publication of Philosophy of Finitude, Rafael Winkler offers a highly relevant and insightful analysis of key figures who have effectively shaped the way contemporary philosophy explores the problem of the unique and the ‘other’ of Man. However, the very manner in which the philosophical investigation is here conducted could have benefited from a greater degree of reflexive engagement. One could here think that the predominantly exegetical nature of the exercise, if left unquestioned by the inquirer, could mask a non-negligible issue which today often seems to mark philosophical practice. Indeed, each time that we meticulously dig within the depth of such authors’ corpus and translate their work into our professional philosophical agenda, we do what is required, but as Ansell-Pearson and Hatab have pointed out, in doing so we perhaps also ‘bring to ruin something special and vital. … It seems we must “murder to dissect”’[22]. But what does it mean? And what is the nature of the risk? This problem extends far beyond the present book and is not specifically directed at it but to all of us who engage in philosophical research today.

William Wordsworth once tried to bring this issue to our attention in his beautiful poem the Tables Turned (1798) in which he suggested that all too often in our appreciation and at times scientific exploration of literature, ‘Our meddling intellect — Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things; – We murder to dissect’. And indeed, this warning was not left unheeding by two of the key figures considered in the present volume. Namely, Nietzsche and Heidegger for whom our search for knowledge should resist being turned into an autopsy by which the inquirer is compelled to cut and dig within the entrails of the author’s corpus in order to bring to the light of the microscope elements of clarity concerning the ‘workability’ and soundness of the thought presented therein.  Yet again, it will be argued that it often must be done in order to encounter the author, to find him or her and ‘understand’ the material. But can this only be achieved by means of analytical vivisection, by having blood on our hands? A difficult question to answer, without a doubt; but one that should not escape the contemporary philosopher’s scrutiny. As Heidegger himself noted, being no stranger to the complexity of this issue which Nietzsche’s works would have brought to his mind: ‘(…) in order to encounter [the author’s] thought, one must first find it[23]. And as both he and Nietzsche remarked[24], the task of the philosopher as well as that of the respectful and agile reader is not to re-cognise signs, ideas and fragments within the corpus of the author, but rather to encounter the thought of the author; and from this vivid encounter, to find the other’s thought only in order to lose it. Thus, opening ourselves to the possibility of thinking differently, of creating new images of thought and thereby even bring new life to a contemporary thought of finitude. But losing the thought of the author that inspires us does not mean discarding or leaving it behind as one would dispose of an inanimate object of inquiry. Rather,  it implies leaving the thought of the author alive, to rest in its own enigmatic place awaiting future encounters from which could spring new thought, new possibilities of life. Here, the tact and obvious respect Winkler demonstrates with regards to the authors analysed in this book only too clearly suggest that such a path of thought has a place within contemporary academic writing; but it may also show that it could be pursued with a greater degree of intensity if it is to become ever more fruitful in the future.


[1] Celan, P. Entretien dans la Montagne [Gespräch im Gebirg]. Verdier (bilingue), Der Doppelganger. Lagrasse. 2001.

[2] Cf. Blanchot, M. Celui Qui Ne m’Accompagnait Pas. L’Imaginaire, Editions Gallimard, Paris. 1953.

[3] Winkler, Rafael. Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas, Nietzsche. Bloomsbury Publishing, London. 2018, p. xiv.

[4] Ibid. p. xvii.

[5] Sheehan, T. Making Sense of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift. New Heidegger Research Series. Rowman & Littlefield Int. London. 2015, p. xvi.

[6] Winkler, R. Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas and Nietzsche. Bloomsbury Press. London. 2018, pp. 1-2.

[7] Heidegger, M. Being and Time. Translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962 (first published in 1927), 3: 33–4.

[8] Winkler, 2018, pp. 6-9.

[9] Levinas mentioned in Winkler, 2018, p. 28.

[10] Heidegger cited in Winkler, 2018, p. 7.

[11] Winkler, 2018, p. xv. See also, pp. 15-19.

[12] Ibid. pp. 19-24.

[13] Ibid. p. 25.

[14] Ibid. pp. 25-26.

[15] Ibid. p. 46.

[16] Ibid. p. 45.

[17] Ibid. p. 55.

[18] Ibid. xii.

[19] Ibid. xvii.

[20] Ibid. p. 88-110.

[21] Ibid. p. 126.

[22] Keith Ansell-Pearson. Nietzsche’s Search for Philosophy – On the Middle Writings. Bloomsbury Publishing, London. 2018, p. 6.

[23] Martin Heidegger. Was heißt Denken? [Qu’appelle –t- on penser?], Trans. By Gerard Grand, 1959. PUF, Paris. [1954], p. 50.

[24] Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche. UM, I, 6. pp. 36-7.

Martin Eldracher: Heteronome Subjektivität. Dekonstruktive und hermeneutische Anschlüsse an die Subjektkritik Heideggers

Heteronome Subjektivität. Dekonstruktive und hermeneutische Anschlüsse an die Subjektkritik Heideggers Book Cover Heteronome Subjektivität. Dekonstruktive und hermeneutische Anschlüsse an die Subjektkritik Heideggers
Martin Eldracher
Transcript Verlag
2018
Paperback 39,99 €
404

Reviewed by: Viktoria Huegel (University of Brighton)

Why we hesitate

Halfway through Heteronome Subjektivität, Eldracher explores Derrida’s idea of différance in order to engage it for a restoration of the subject in a heteronomous understanding. In a footnote in the same chapter the author indicates that this appropriation of Derrida’s work is not self-evident:

The late works (of Derrida) (after around 1985) are often marked by an indecisiveness (Unentschlossenheit) concerning the question whether the concept of the subject should play a significant role in deconstruction or whether it was so disrupted by Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein that there is no place for it anymore.[1] (52)

It is true. Not without reason, Heidegger had dismissed the term from his thinking and instead replaced it with the notion of Dasein. Certainly, as Heidegger himself writes, “Da-sein is a being which I myself am, its being is in each case mine.” (Heidegger, 1996: 108) It experiences its own self primarily by distinguishing itself from all other beings it comes across in the world. This determination however indicates an ontological constitution: the assumption of the substantiality of Dasein describing it as the ontological interpretation of a subject is nothing more than that, an assumption. Any notion of an “I” must consequently be understood as a noncommittal formal starting point for a hermeneutical examination of the Dasein’s being, always being aware that it might well not be me that is the who of the everyday Dasein. As Dasein is in-the-world there is no such thing as a subject behind it which is isolated from its surrounding world.

In order to justify his endeavor, Eldracher therefore appeals to Heidegger’s earlier work in which he still speaks of an exit out of a philosophy of subjectivity without having to give up the “subject” as a term.

There is world only in so far as Dasein exists. But then is world not something “subjective”? In fact it is! Only one may not at this point reintroduce a common, subjectivistic concept of “subject”. Instead, the task is to see that being-in-the-world, which as existent supplies extant things with entry to world, fundamentally transforms the concept of subjectivity and of the subjective. [2]  (108)

Eldracher demonstrates how the figure of Dasein opens up the metaphysical subject toward its temporal dimension. The subject is decentered and temporalized as it only understands itself in its throwness into a world which it shares with others. Subjects are therefore not understood as initially autonomous actors whose subjectivity is grounded in the subject itself; instead its constitution rests in the subject’s existence.

Still, Heidegger falls back into an individualized understanding of the subject by interpreting this existence from the perspective of the subject’s constitution. After his turn he shifts the perspective from Dasein to Being (Sein), which suggests that ontological phenomena are no longer thought as aspects of Dasein, but instead as moments of withdrawal. Being is now depicted in the figure of an abyss (Ab-grund). It is Being that brings beings and therefore Dasein into existence. Yet it cannot be grasped as a foundation (Grund) due to Being’s temporal character. In the moment of founding, Being is always already withdrawn. Being moves between presence and absence. With this deconstructive gesture Heidegger is able to capture how the impossibility of foundation is the condition for its possibility. The metaphysical moment of foundation becomes temporalized and with the gift of Being man too becomes temporalized: man ek-sists (ek-sistiert) (cf. 87).

Eldracher argues that Heidegger himself misses the decisive conclusion from his analysis: The subject owes its constitution as a subject to an experience which is profoundly foreign to it (49). With that the metaphysical opposition between the subject and the world collapses. Yet Heidegger himself does not realize the possibility of a re-interpretation of the subject, because the subject as a term and concept is liquidated.

Heidegger’s critique of the subject is therefore ambivalent: It provides us with all essential movements for evading the philosophical tradition of the subject and to re-think subjectivity as heteronomous; it however resists this venture as a project which focuses on ontology neglects freedom (to act, Handlungsfähigkeit), responsibility and self-understanding. (16)

Eldracher’s book commits to the subject as a philosophical category and therefore to the enterprise of an affirmative turn in Heidegger’s subject critique which is appropriated for a re-interpretation of the subject as heteronomous. This understanding aims to respond to an aporia which lies at the heart of the metaphysical idea of an autonomous subject: even though autonomy is assumed as being immanent to the subject, the subject constitutes itself through a liberation from all those dependencies that threaten the subject’s autonomy. This however implies an existential dependency on something other than the subject itself: “without the heteronomous there is no opponent, against which it needs to be fought” (10). Eldracher therefore attempts to comprehend those heteronomous aspects which are constitutive for the subject’s constitution in the concept itself. With this heteronomous subjectivity Eldracher hopes to write a counter-narrative against the dominant idea of autonomy.

Eldracher chooses Heidegger’s subject criticism as the bedrock for his venture because he was “the first philosopher who alludes to exposure of human beings to something other” (90). Although, for a heteronomous understanding of subjectivity, Heidegger’s figure of the abyss still needs to be radicalized. It needs an appropriation of it from an ontic, rather than ontological perspective in order to open up the subject towards alterity.

With this prospect in mind, Eldracher first adheres to the ethical turn in the work of Levinas which is meant to renounce Heidegger’s ontology. Levinas reproaches Heidegger for still attempting to incorporate alterity into an underlying structure of Being. The unity and symmetrical movement of the ontological structure ultimately rejects alterity and thereby makes it impossible for a philosophical analysis to take into focus the exposure of the subject towards the Other. According to Levinas, it is not Being but the Other that touches and thus forms the subject.

With that Levinas is able to break with the notion of totality by describing alterity with the experience of infinity over the “absolute Other” (119). It cannot be grasped by the subject; it evades our language. The Other obstructs the closing of totality, it disrupts the homogeneity of the order and does not integrate within its logic. Here, Levinas connects Heidegger’s explication of temporality with the idea of infinity. The face of the Other is the (non)place where infinity and temporality meet, and at the same time constitute subjectivity. Levinas translates the abyssal relationship found in Heidegger’s thought: the subject encounters the Other at the very border of the world which means that the encounter has already happened before the subject identifies itself, and is identified as a subject. The Other repeatedly divides and thus re-constitutes the subject which is therefore always disrupted in its autonomy and self-referentiality. Levinas is thereby able to avoid Heidegger’s individualizing notion of the conscience and instead interprets the possibility of responsibility as originating in the constitution of a heteronomous subject (137). According to Levinas the call to responsibility which Heidegger originated from within Dasein, reaches the subject from a constitutive externality, namely the Other. The subject cannot determine whether it is called or not –  the (non)relation to the Other is always already there. Yet it can still choose whether it responds to the calling and this is where the freedom of the subject can be located. Freedom arises in dependence and the subject’s limitations and is only experienced in the burden of an infinite responsibility for the Other. The responsibility which cannot be refused becomes the content of identity. The subject becomes singular not through its inner unique personality but the fact that it is not able to delegate its guilt to someone else.

For Eldracher, this suggests that Levinas proceeds Heidegger because with the ethical turn to the Other he is able to address the question of how subjects can develop an idea of the self. The quasi-normative conclusion the author draws is that subjects can understand themselves best in their experience of alterity (148). He locates the corresponding decisive shift from the deconstructive towards the affirmative aspects of Heidegger’s subject criticism in the work of Michel Foucault.

While genealogy describes Foucault’s rather deconstructive project, his later works explore the possibilities of resistance and freedom by including the constitutive aspects of power. Close to Levinas’ account, freedom here needs to be understood as relational and not an inherent capacity of the subject. It happens in the very resistance against, thus dependence on, those powers to which the subject is already subjugated. Foucault’s understanding of freedom further allows us to consider the participation of the subject in the process of its constitution. In fact, it constitutes a decisive step to understand how subjects can form self-referentiality which allows them to understand themselves as agents in a historical and cultural context (249).

Foucault draws upon the Ancient concept of self-care to describe how the subject forms itself in taking on a stance to the given moral codes and thus a certain way of life. Instead of the sole subjugation to moral laws and norms, social practices such as relation of power and truth are understood as a framework within which the self cultivates itself. In this context, the idea of parrhesia indicates the subject being open to the world, which does not stand opposed to him as its object, but instead always already asserts itself in the subject. With this, Foucault is the first to introduce an affirmative notion of subjectivity into his thought which enables him to address the role of self-relationality in the subject’s constitution (260).

The chapter on Foucault’s work heralds a decisive hinge for Eldracher project: A deconstructive tradition which breaks down the concept of subject by laying bare moments of alterity meets a hermeneutical approach which is used to incorporate these moments of alterity in the constitution of self-understandings.  According to Eldracher, it needs both traditions for an affirmative turn of Heidegger’s critique of the subject. Deconstruction aims to destruct erroneous self-understandings by demonstrating the impossibility of a fixation and naturalization of subjectivity and point out how the self of subjects always relies on alterity.  It thereby intervenes when the hermeneutical approach risks to close the openness of the subject. Similarly, hermeneutics aims to reveal all those obstructions due to which the subject is not able to understand itself as being open to the world and others, but instead understands itself (erroneously) as a substance. It steps in where deconstruction risks to losing sight of the constitution of self-understandings of the subject, or in fact the subject itself.  For Eldracher hermeneutics and deconstruction hence describe two sides of the same coin. The proximity of both approaches is already illustrated by Heidegger himself: “Hermeneutics is destruction!” (62).

For this reason, the project leads towards Taylor’s work to which Eldracher turns in order to develop the participatory aspect of subjectivation which Foucault already touches on in his analysis of self-care. Eldracher uses Taylor’s concept of moral ontology in order to demonstrate how being human is always a being. Moral ontology in this context is understood as fundamental and ontological condition of potentiality. Every subject is always somehow thrown into the world, which the subject cannot determine and which stipulates its existence. Taylor emphasizes that world always appears in historical concrete relations; there are thus always worlds. At the same time, moral ontology is bound to the ontic: it depends on its reproduction and interpretation through subjects. With that, the self-understanding of the subject is thus always captured between past and future. The self-understanding has always already formed but simultaneously needs to be actualized through future interpretations. Eldracher claims that with this ontologically re-interpreted humanism Taylor is able to address freedom and self-understanding without understanding them as belonging to the substance of a subject (315f).

Taylor and Foucault take on different perspectives on the genesis of modern subjectivity which is why they can complement each other. While Foucault reveals illegitimacy of subordinating processes of subjectivation, Taylor’s affirmative genealogy draws out how self-understandings are stabilized and how they overcome previously dominant self-understandings. Like Foucault, Taylor draws on the contingency of certain self-understandings; however, he does not follow Foucault’s move to simply delegitimize them. Instead, a genealogy needs to affirm positive historical narratives in order to keep identity in the sense of a reference point for subjectivity (333).

Similar to deconstructive authors before him, Taylor reveals which narratives have laid the discursive ground for the idea of autonomous subjects. He overlooks problematizing how those narratives and in particular the narrative of nature as the source for morality not simply ground autonomy, but further suppress any notion of heteronomy. Nevertheless, Eldracher argues that Taylor’s anthropology of being human is able to avoid falling back into a metaphysical humanism as it is bound to a moral ontology. It is not transcendental but instead always refers to a certain historical praxis.

Eldracher insists on the contribution Taylor’s approach made by including the inner perspective of the subject and the role of self-interpretation. He argues that without an affirmative re-interpretation of the subject the criticisms raised by deconstructive works remain politically insignificant. This is why the author is rather dismissive of Derrida’s work as being limited to a structural analysis (197).

Derrida follows Levinas’ criticism in his venture to open up metaphysical thought towards alterity. He resumes Heidegger’s explication of temporality on the structural level asking how language subjugates the three-dimensionality of time under presence and thus affirms the closure of metaphysics into totality. Derrida attempts to demonstrate this supremacy of presence in language though the notion of différance. Like Heidegger’s figure of the abyss and Levinas’ call of the Other, différance describes a play of withdrawal and reference. It puts metaphysical logic into question as it exposes the supplement or the doubling in any transcendental signified. In every meaning of a signified there is subsequently a surplus of meaning; this surplus is contained in the meaning of the signified itself at the same time breaks with its unity. The identity of any phenomenon including the subject therefore always already relies on something which is foreign to it; the phenomenon is never identical to itself (175).

Derrida’s critique focuses on how the criticism of the metaphysical subject is consequently interwoven with a deconstruction of our understanding of meaning. According to Eldracher, it therefore appears to be more precise than Heidegger’s critique of the subject because not only does it reject the category of the subject as a metaphysical construction, but it further problematizes a specific, historically contingent understanding of subjectivity (160). He concludes that it needs a heteronomous understanding of the subject which is able to acknowledge those traces of alterity and non-identity which can be discovered by différance.

As stated above there is an indecisiveness to be found within Derrida when it comes to the subject, similar to the hesitation we can also detect in Heidegger’s work. For Eldracher, this moment of indecisiveness constitutes an important juncture in the deconstructive project. It needs a decision as to whether the concept of the subject should play a significant role. Eldracher’s response is yes. He commits Derrida’s thought to a re-constitution of the subject in a heteronomous understanding and thereby attempts to comprehend Derrida’s notion of différance to utilize it for his own endeavor. It seems however that by that Eldracher misses the depth of Derrida’s venture and the extent to which he radicalizes Heidegger’s subject criticism.

Let us take a moment at this juncture to take Derrida’s indecisiveness more seriously. Taking the named conversation with Jean-Luc Nancy as a whole, Derrida’s indecisiveness is not simply a transitory moment. He is not temporarily torn between an acceptance or rejection of the term because, according to Derrida, there no such thing that could be accepted or rejected. In fact, what has been shown by deconstructive work is that there is no agreement of those thinkers who speak of the subject on what the term actually means. Instead it seems that once certain predicates have been deconstructed, we cannot be sure anymore what we are even designating with the term; the unity and the name have been radically affected. As it turns out, “the subject is a fable” (Derrida 1991, 102).

For Derrida something happened when Heidegger introduced the idea of Dasein, a gap opened. For the first time, thinking was decentered, it moved away from the subject. But it did not go far enough. Ultimately, his endeavor was still restricted and came with new problems as Dasein ultimately repeats the metaphysical logic of subjectivity. Derrida reminds us that “We know less than ever where to cut – either at birth or at death. And thus means that we never know, and never have known, how to cut up a subject” (Derrida 1991, 117), or Dasein in fact.

He hence follows Heidegger’s late shift of perspective away from human beings as those carrying language, to language itself. Certainly, there is a possibility that there is a who as the power to ask questions (which is how Heidegger defines Dasein). But Derrida is interested in how the question of the who? itself is overwhelmed if language is no longer defined as being reserved for what we call man. He speaks of an “originary alliance”, an affirmation, a “yes, yes” of language (Derrida 1991, 100). Before any question can be raised, language is already there. This original alliance is why, according to Heidegger, language cannot be anymore an attribute which characterizes the human. Instead language withdraws itself from us: “In its essence, language is neither expression nor a confirmation of man. Language speaks.” (Heidegger 1950 cited in Eldracher, 105) Derrida continues this by asking: “What if one reinscribes language in a network of possibilities that do not merely encompasses it but mark irreducibly from inside, everything changes.” (Derrida 1991, 116).

Derrida does not go beyond a structural critique as there might be nothing behind the subject. It remains a metaphysical construction. This however does not support the argument that such a structural critique remains ethically and political neutral thus insignificant, as Eldracher states. Derrida puts into doubt Eldracher’s assertion that the traditional position of the subject is the self-evident center for any inquiries on political and ethical dimensions of freedom (Handlungsfreiheit) and responsibility (345).

Derrida warns us to not rush into those words because they risk to over-hastily reconstituting the program of metaphysics together with the suffering that comes from its “surreptitious constrains” (Derrida 1991, 101). Instead he intends to start with responsibility itself, a responsibility which cannot first come after a subject has been established, but is an axiom that must be assumed (108). The reason for this is that there simply is no understanding of the subject, in fact no concept at all, which could be adequate for the responsibility Derrida emphasizes; a responsibility which is “always more and to come” (108). Any endeavor to reconstitute the subject, even in a heteronomous understanding would still assert a calculation and therefore a limitation of responsibility.

For that reason, Derrida demands to eschew the term to some extent. Certainly, he agrees with Eldracher that it is impossible to forget it; yet one might be able to re-arrange it in a way that it no longer dominates the center of ethical or political enterprises.

Against Eldracher’s perception, Derrida’s work does not simply languish indecisiveness, instead it declares an undecidability when it comes to the subject which is demanded by responsibility itself: “there is no responsibility, no ethico-political decision, that must not pass through the proofs of the incalculable or the undecidable. Responsibility demands an “unconditional commitment to deconstruction” (107). It appears that Eldracher’s project seems to struggle with its own indecisiveness: Accepting the aporias of subjectivity which have been laid bare by deconstructive ventures, he still holds tight to the term of the subject. Let us therefore turn the question on its head for a moment: Eldracher seems to acknowledge the extent to which certain predicates of the subject have been deconstructed, in Heidegger’s critique as well as in the works of Levinas, Derrida and Foucault. What is the benefit, and to what right then does he still speak of the subject? Throughout the book, Eldracher only mentions the “traditional connection” of the term to discussions of political and ethical dimensions of freedom and responsibility to defend the subject, as well as the idea that the metaphysical discourse of subjectivity could never be eliminated and corrected (349). But is this enough? In light of Derrida’s work these arguments appear rather rash. Disregarding potential flaws for a moment, both Heidegger’s and Derrida’s ventures remind us to slow down, to take a moment before throwing oneself into the enterprise of re-interpreting the subject. They demand to first ask oneself to what questions such a project even intends to answer. And at times, it might even be the rightly posed question, and not the answer that can prompt political consequences.

Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. ‘“Eating Well”, or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida’. In Who Comes after the Subject?, edited by Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy, 96–119. London: Routledge, 1991.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Heidegger, Martin, and Michael Heim. The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.

[1] All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.

[2] Translation found in Heidegger, Martin, and Michael Heim. The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, 195.

Susan Bredlau: The Other in Perception: A Phenomenological Account of Our Experience of Other Persons

The Other in Perception: A Phenomenological Account of Our Experience of Other Persons Book Cover The Other in Perception: A Phenomenological Account of Our Experience of Other Persons
Susan Bredlau
SUNY Press
2018
Hardback $80.00
138

Reviewed by: Peter Antich (Marquette University, Department of Philosophy, Milwaukee, WI, USA)

As conventionally posed, the problem of other minds concerns how, given that we can only observe the outward behavior of others, we can identify them as persons, as possessing minds. In phenomenology, this question more often takes the form, “How can we perceive others?” In other words, how can others figure as contents of our perception. Susan Bredlau’s new book, The Other in Perception, takes up not only this challenging question, but moves beyond it to ask how others become part of the very form of perception. The result is a helpful, insightful, and comprehensive treatment of our perceptual engagement with others.

Bredlau takes a phenomenological approach to the perception of others, i.e., she is concerned with describing the experience of others, both as contents of experience and as constituents of the very act of experiencing. Specifically, she aims to describe the role of others in perceptual experience, or more generally, in our embodied and pre-intellectual engagement with the world. Bredlau undertakes the project of describing this experience using the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and John Russon as her principal resources. Besides these three, Bredlau draws on a variety of other sources, including developmental psychology, Hegel, and de Beauvoir, to present a distinctive and insightful account of intersubjectivity.

Bredlau examines the role of the other in perception over the course of four chapters. The first explains the phenomenological framework Bredlau uses to analyze intersubjectivity. The second presents Bredlau’s phenomenology of interpersonal life, rooted in Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Russon. The third considers the formation of interpersonal life in childhood. The fourth analyzes the phenomenon of sexuality in order to provide insight into the nature and norms of interpersonal life generally. This leads Bredlau, in conclusion, to a reflection on the ethical dimension of the perception of others.

Bredlau’s first chapter provides the phenomenological account of perception she will use to analyze interpersonal life. This explanation involves three main parts. First, Bredlau introduces Husserl’s notion of intentionality, and explains some essential features of perceptual intentionality: its foreground-background and horizon structures. In doing so, Bredlau aims to establish the phenomenological account of the perception of things not as mental representations, but – to use Merleau-Ponty’s terms – in terms of there being for-us an in-itself. Second, Bredlau explains the embodied dimension of perception as described by Merleau-Ponty, arguing the embodied nature of perceptual experience is constitutive of its meaning and form. Drawing on Heidegger, she makes this point by noting that the meaning the world takes on for us is fundamentally rooted in practical rather than theoretical activity. Our practical engagement with the world, though, is shaped by the lived sense of one’s body as a capacity for such engagement, what Merleau-Ponty calls the “body schema.” Bredlau then turns to Russon’s concept of polytempoprality to show that every perceptual meaning is informed by a larger contextual meaning. The idea is that just as the distinct layers of a piece of music – its rhythm, harmony, and melody – fit together in a complex temporality which informs the meaning of each particular sound, so each of our isolated experiences is informed by the complex temporality of our lives. Each of our experiences, then, is embedded in a set of background meanings often not readily apparent to us.

Chapter 2 turns to the phenomenology of experiencing others. First, Bredlau confronts the problem of other minds – the problem of how we can perceive others as minds, given that mind is not outwardly observable. Bredlau argues that widespread psychological answers to this question – such as the “simulation theory” and “theory theory” – are phenomenologically inadequate. A careful description of experience reveals that we can in fact experience others as subjects, albeit as subjects engaged in a shared natural and cultural world, rather than as detached minds. Here too, Bredlau draws on Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Russon. From Husserl, Bredlau draws the notion of a “pairing” relation, as an account of how I experience the other not just as a body distinct from mine, but as a perceiver. In Bredlau’s terms, this entails not just perceiving the other as within a world oriented around me, but perceiving the world as oriented around the other. With Merleau-Ponty, Bredlau emphasizes that the perception of others is not primarily a cognitive theoretical activity, but practical and embodied: there is a bodily pairing between two perceivers that Bredlau describes as a “shared body schema.” Thus, when I perceive an object, I perceive it as perceivable not just for me, but for any perceiver, such that we experience the world as jointly – and not just individually – significant. In this sense, even though my experience of an object is not identical with the experience had by another, neither are they wholly cut off from each other, since they both participate in a shared world. With Russon, Bredlau moves beyond the problem of other minds to argue that others are not just part of the content of perception, but part of its very form. If each of our particular experiences is shaped by a meaningful context, surely one of the most significant such contexts is our relations with others. A child’s relation to their parents, for example, informs the way they approach their future relationships. Following Russon, Bredlau demonstrates this point through an analysis of neurosis. Bredlau argues that neuroses are best understood as cases in which habitual modes of taking up relationships (i.e., the meaningful context) conflict with the demands of one’s personal life. Much like Merleau-Ponty’s phantom limb example, neuroses show how our relationships are sustained by habitual modes of relating to others that can nourish or sap one’s present projects.

Having presented this phenomenological framework, in Chapter 3 Bredlau confirms it through the example of the child’s relations with others. For Bredlau, the child’s interpersonal life is a matter of the institution or Stiftung, in Husserl’s terms, of “the form of a meaningful world” (45), and as presenting a fundamental form of our relations with others, childhood offers special insight into our relations with others. Bredlau’s central claim in this chapter is that even very young children perceive others not just as things within the world, but as perceivers, sources of meaning. Bredlau introduces this claim by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s example of playfully pretending to bite a fifteen-month old’s finger, to which the child responds by opening its mouth, as if imitating Merleau-Ponty. This example illustrates that infants recognize and are able to adopt others’ modes of behavior – not through some sort of reasoning by analogy (an infant would be unable to recognize the similarity between her outward appearance and the outward appearance of the other, given that very young children cannot recognize themselves in a mirror), but by directly perceiving the other’s behavior as intentional. Bredlau draws our attention to an overlooked feature of this passage: that the child mirrors not only Merleau-Ponty’s action, but seemingly the very moodedness of his behavior, as playful. This indicates that the child is able to perceive the world as it has become meaningful to Merleau-Ponty through this mood, i.e., as a place for play. Thus, the child already perceives Merleau-Ponty, then, not just as an object, but as “expressing a meaningful perspective” (48).

In the rest of Chapter 3, Bredlau supports this account through an analysis of childhood intersubjectivity. Here, Bredlau largely draws on child psychology, demonstrating how such phenomena as “joint attention” and “mutual gaze” confirm that a pairing relation exists between very young children and their caretakers. Bredlau relies on two main phenomena to make this point. First, she focuses on infants’ capacity to interact playfully with their caretakers. Drawing on the research of Daniel Stern (1977), she argues that this capacity for playfulness, for coordinating behavior with a caretaker, indicates that children perceive their caretakers as perceptive, for if they merely perceived their caretakers as things, they could not play with their caretakers. Second, Bredlau turns to examples of social referencing in slightly older children. For example, she draws on Suzanne Carr’s finding (1975) that children prefer to stay within the gaze of their mother – a behavior which requires that they not merely see their mothers, but see them as perceivers. Bredlau then notes that one of the distinctive features of the child’s pairing relation is that it is one of trust, i.e., one of being initiated into a meaningful world. She draws on Russon’s work to show how a child gains her sense of validity or agency from her relationship with her parents.

Chapter 4 provides a study of sexuality, a facet of interpersonal life of special interest since sexuality offers a uniquely bodily mode of engagement with others; in sexual attraction, we intend the other as a body. But as Bredlau shows, sexuality does not intend the other as a mere body, but rather as an intentional body, i.e., as a bodily subject; sexual desire for the other is, ultimately, desire for the other’s desire. This allows Bredlau, drawing on Hegel’s account of recognition, to argue that what we are ultimately concerned with, in the sexual sphere, is “embodied recognition.” Bredlau makes this point by engaging with de Beauvoir’s distinction between the sexual body as expressive and as passive. The latter points out that while men’s bodies are habituated to expressivity, women’s bodies are not. Ultimately, this disparity undermines erotic desire for both parties, indicating that sexual desire is oriented toward the mutual expressivity and passivity of both bodies. According to Bredlau, sexuality is characterized by what Merleau-Ponty calls reversibility, in which each party is simultaneously touching and touched, expressive and passive. Sexuality is fulfilled when this reversibility is affirmed in mutual recognition, in which the expressivity of one body is not lived as opposed to the expressivity of the other. Sexuality, Bredlau claims, is a case in which “our autonomy is most fully realized only to the extent that the others’ autonomy is also most fully realized” (86). Following Russon, Bredlau illustrates this idea by exploring how the vulnerability entailed by this reversibility can be “betrayed” in numerous ways, e.g., by attempting unilaterally to take control of a sexual situation or denying the shared character of the relation. Ultimately, Bredlau’s claim is that sexuality is characterized then by a sort of normativity – it is normatively oriented toward recognition – which is not the same as normalcy: when authentic, sexuality is a site for free mutual creation, rather than beholden to received notions of normal sexual life.

This claim leads Bredlau to conclude with a reflection on the ethical dimension of this project. In her view, the experience of the other is never value-neutral, but reveals ethical demands.

Bredlau’s work leaves open some questions the reader might want to find addressed in a work concerning these topics. For example, Bredlau does not consider the complications that erotic desire can pose to recognition suggested by phenomenologists like Sartre or, for that matter, Merleau-Ponty (2010, 28-40). Or, in terms of childhood intersubjectivity, it might have been interesting to consider Merleau-Ponty’s claim of a primitive “indistinction” between self and other (1964, 120). Though not exhaustive, Bredlau’s work makes a substantial contribution to the existing literature.

Specifically, in my view, this work achieves three main goods. First, it succeeds in integrating and offering a concise and lucid exposition of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Russon on interpersonal life. There is some room for Bredlau to clarify the relation between these thinkers – for example, it is a question whether Merleau-Ponty would accept Husserl’s description of “pairing” (see, e.g., Carman 2008, 137-140) which for Husserl involves an association between the interior and exterior of myself and the other (see Husserl 1999, §§50-2) that Merleau-Ponty criticizes (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 367-8). Still, Bredlau has succeeded in drawing together these distinct lines of thinking into a single and compelling account.

The second good lies in having provided such a cohesive and convincing exposition of the phenomenology of interpersonal life. Bredlau makes these often difficult concepts more readily available, and contributes an insightful account of interpersonal life that should be valuable to anyone interested in this topic.

Finally, Bredlau’s most original contributions come in her rich and compelling analyses of childhood interpersonal life in Chapter 3 and sexuality in Chapter 4. Her argument in Chapter 3 draws on contemporary psychological findings to substantiate her points about interpersonal life, not only updating the psychology used in Merleau-Ponty’s work, but creatively augmenting the phenomenology of childhood intersubjectivity. Further, her discussion of immanent norms of embodied recognition in sexuality offers an insightful avenue for thinking about the normative dimension of the perceptual experience of others. These analyses are both creative and contribute a great deal of phenomenological weight to the framework Bredlau provides in Chapters 1 and 2.

In sum, Bredlau’s work makes a substantial and engaging contribution to the phenomenology of interpersonal life at the perceptual level.

Works Cited

Carman, Taylor. 2008. Merleau-Ponty. New York, NY: Routledge.

Carr, Suzanne J. 1975. “Mother-Infant Attachment: The Importance of the Mother’s Visual Field.” Child Development, 46, 331-38.

Husserl. 1999. Cartesian Meditations. Translated by Dorion Cairns. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Merleau-Ponty. 2010. Institution and Passivity. Translated by Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald Landes. New York, NY: Routledge.

Merleau-Ponty. 1964. The Primacy of Perception. Edited by James M. Edie. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Stern, Daniel. 1977. The First Relationship. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Masakatsu Fujita (Ed.): The Philosophy of the Kyoto School

The Philosophy of the Kyoto School Book Cover The Philosophy of the Kyoto School
Masakatsu Fujita (Ed.). Translated by J.W.M. Krummel, R. Chapeskie
Springer
2018
Hardback 114,39 €
XV, 273

Reviewed by: Philip Højme (Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Graduate School for Social Research)

The Philosophy of the Kyoto School (2018) is translated into English by Robert Chapeskie and revised by John W. M. Krummel. It introduces the reader to the works of (some of) the members of the Kyoto School. The general structure of the book means that each member is represented by a primary text, which is supplemented by an introductory essay. The general purpose of the latter is to outline the research, life and works of each scholar and to provide the background knowledge necessary to understand how each member relates to the conception of the Kyoto School. In the preface, Fujita Masakatsu, the editor of this book, suggests that readers “read the [introductory] essay first before turning to the original text it discusses” (The Philosophy of the Kyoto School, Ed. Fujita Masakatsu, 2018, vii). In addition to this suggestion, which I strongly recommend that any reader with no prior knowledge of the Kyoto School adhere to, I would recommend reading the two supplementary essays (The Kyoto School and the Issue of “Overcoming Modernity”, and The Identity of the Kyoto School: A Critical Analysis) before tackling any of the chapters, since they answer some of the questions readers with little previous knowledge of the Kyoto School might overlook while reading this book; these questions, nonetheless, do seem important to bear in mind while reading this book. They can be summarised as: Which thinkers do we include in the Kyoto School? and How do we define the Kyoto School?

The answer to the first question is far too complex for a thorough examination in this review, but the Kyoto School is generally considered to have been founded by Kitarō Nishida (1870-1945), a professor at Kyoto University, together with Hajime Tanabe (1885-1965). In relation to this, it seems relevant to answer questions regarding the nature of the Kyoto School. First, it is important to know that it was not a school in the sense of the Frankfurt School. Instead, and as an answer to the second question raised earlier, the Kyoto School is a loose term used to describe philosophers with a direct, or indirect, relationship to Nishida and Tanabe. In practice, this invariably also means to have a relationship with Kyoto University, its Faculty of Letters and/or the Chair of Philosophy at this faculty. The chair which Tanabe held after Nishida. Due to this strong connection with these two philosophers, a thorough outline of their philosophies and disputes seems to be in order, even if the book is structured so that each individual philosopher is given an equal amount of attention.

Nishida graduated from Tokyo Imperial University and later became first an assistant professor (in 1910) and shortly after a full professor (in 1913), both positions held at the Kyoto University Faculty of Letters, where Nishida held the Chair of Philosophy. While Nishida’s philosophical style is described as unsystematic by Masakatsu in the introductory essay, the concept of place is suggested as an important fixture in Nishidian Philosophy. The text included in this volume by Nishida is called Place. Place for Nishida is a concept which is developed in order to describe that which must “[envelope the] opposition between the ‘I’ and the ‘non-I’ and that establishes the so-called phenomena of consciousness” (Ibid. 3). This might be paraphrased as meaning that for Nishida place is a mediator of the I and the non-I, or put differently, of the subject and the object, as we know the discussion from the Western philosophical tradition (see i.e. Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger). However, place is not platonic, a point which Nishida spells out, writing: “what I refer to as ‘place’ is not the same as what Plato refers to as ‘space’ or ‘receptacle’ [vώqa]” (Ibid. 3). Opposed to Plato’s understanding of space/receptacle, Nishida’s place is “that which permits the relationship between physical space and physical space cannot itself be physical space. What is required is a place wherein physical space is situated” (Ibid. 5, my italics). This means that for Nishida place comes to be the solution to the question of how to understand the relation between I and non-I, subject and object. Critiquing the Kantian notion of the transcendental subject, Nishida posits that consciousness includes meaning and that because of this “we can speak of consciousness as the self-determination of something universal” (Ibid. 6). This led Nishida to the realisation that this cannot be in the case of form and matter; instead, these – to establish knowledge – must be mediated by a different sort of place, concerning which Nishida writes:

“The place that establishes the opposition between form and matter must be different from the place that establishes the opposition between truth and falsity. At the place that establishes knowledge, not only must form and content be distinguishable, but their separation and combination must be free” (Ibid. 6).

This leads to the conclusion that there must be a “place of experience” (Ibid. 6-7). Thus, knowledge and experience are established in the same place, because both knowledge and experience are “phenomena of consciousness” (Ibid. 7). This outline of Western metaphysics, of the subject/object distinction, led Nishida to consider “the idea of self-awareness that reflects the self within itself” (Ibid. 8). Following this revelation, Nishida comes to posit knowing as an act which envelops the opposition between form and matter, or between subject and object. Answering the question of where a self-awareness, which reflects itself within itself, is situated (i.e. placed), Nishida posits the category of true nothing as this place. True nothing is a nothing which has transcended the opposition between being and nothing, between the I and non-I. It has transcended these in such a way that it envelops both – “To speak of subject-object unity, or the disappearance of subject and object, is simply to say that place becomes truly nothing” (Ibid. 9).

This is what Nishida calls the logic of nothing, a logic which takes on a new form in the work of Nishida’s successor, Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962). After graduating from the Faculty of Letters at Tokyo Imperial University, he eventually gained a position at Kyoto University in 1919, and later took over the Chair of Philosophy after Nishida’s retirement. The text included in this volume by Tanabe is called Clarifying the Meaning of the Logic of Species. Heavily inspired by historical materialism, Hajime “brought the practical dynamism he had learned from it to the logic of nothing” (Ibid. 43), founding the philosophical notion of the logic of species, a term which is as much a critique of the logic of nothing as it is a development of it. Regarding the internal critique between the members of the Kyoto School, Masakatsu writes:

“We may take this kind of relationship that permits mutual criticism, or of taking critique as a springboard or the criticism received as energy for developing one’s own thought, to be one characteristic feature of the Kyoto School” (Ibid. vii).

This can be assumed to be a direct reference to the fact that Nishida not only accepted Tanabe’s critique, but also used it to further develop the logic of nothing. Leaving this development aside, the following is an outline of Tanabe’s conception of the logic of species. Tanabe states that there are two reasons for writing this essay: “the practical and the logical” (ibid. 25). The practical reason for Tanabe seems to be a wish to understand the rise of ethno-homogenous state ideology in South-East Asia. Tanabe refutes the idea that states are made up of individuals who enter into a contract, as exemplified in the theories of Hobbes’ Leviathan, or Rousseau’s Social Contract. Opposed to such theories as describing at least the Japanese state, Tanabe instead argues that:

“society is not a relationship that simply proceeds from individuals … Rather, unless it possessed a substratum [基体] unbounded by the generational replacement of individuals and to this extent exist as something preceding them, it would be unable to coercively unify them. And since the social substratum is something species-tribal [種族的], wherein individuals are born and included, I thought it should be called a [species]” (ibid. 25)

Tanabe calls this kind of society “communal” (Ibid. 27), which stands in opposition to the “contractual society” (Ibid. 27). Following on from this, Tanabe devotes the remainder of the essay to explaining how an individual comes to accept state coercion, and it is here that the logic of nothing is redeveloped by Tanabe, who argues that: “The true individual becomes individual within the whole only through the mediation of the universal … the affirmation of the subject in absolute negation, is the mutual unification [相即] of the state and the individual as a subjective whole” (Ibid. 27-28). Hence, the mediation between individuality and state is, for Tanabe, that which brings about the true individual (in the same way as the mediation of universal and particular in Nishidian philosophy came to bring about true nothingness). Thus, Tanabe breaks with Nishida in claiming that state coercion is necessary to mediate and, in this way, achieve a subjective whole. With regard to this, in the introductory essay, Nakaoka writes that “To negate the self as an individual is to establish its communal character. Tanabe thus came to believe that ‘the true self is restored by losing itself’ ” (Ibid. 47). The true self for Tanabe is something which envelops both the individual and the species (the universal), but where Nishida claimed an absolutely nothing, Tanabe postulated a true self which needs to lose itself to be found. Thus, Tanabe’s conceptual development of the logic of nothing into the logic of species makes Tanabe’s contribution a much more social/material logic than Nishida’s. Nishida and Tanabe constitute two of the grounding pillars on which the Kyoto School stands, and in their works, we see concepts and topics which are to be taken up, expanded upon or criticised by their direct or indirect heirs.

Kiyoshi Miki (1897-1945) was a direct heir, who entered Kyoto University in 1917 and subsequently studied philosophy under both Nishida and Tanabe. In 1922, Miki went to Germany to attend lectures given by Rickert and Heidegger and in 1924 Miki moved to Paris, “where he spent one year devoting himself to reading [Pascal] while studying French” (Ibid. 66). Miki’s text included here is called The Logic of Imagination, and it represents Miki’s attempt to unify pathos and logos, which eventually led Miki to the logic of imagination conceived of as a “philosophy of action” (Ibid. 59). While paying tribute to Nishidian philosophy, Miki would state clearly that the logic of imagination was to be “considered separately” (Ibid. 59). Miki conceived of action different from the philosophical tradition which conceives it as having an origin in the will, meaning in subjectivism. Opposed to such an understanding, Miki posited that the term should be understood as

“the event of creating things … All acts in the broad sense … have the meaning of production … To act is to make new forms by working upon things and altering their forms (transforming them). Forms, as things that are made, are historical and change through history” (Ibid. 59).

Here one clearly sees the influence which historical materialism had on the philosophy of Miki, and this is a definite break with Nishidian philosophy. The acts of creation which Miki attributes to the logic of imagination links this philosophy closely with technology and the arts, both of which Miki conceives of as creative, in the sense that they both create something new. Another figure closely linked to Miki is Jun Tosaka (1900-1945). The connection with Miki is not only in the forming of what has been termed the left-wing of the Kyoto School, but also in the tragic fate they shared, both dying in prison (in Japan) in 1945. Tosaka, another graduate from Kyoto University, was concerned with the notion of the technological spirit, and the text included is What Is the Technological Spirit? Tosaka describes this as “the fundamental spirit of modern culture” (Ibid. 81). Tosaka then goes on to locate this spirit not only in the modern world but also traces it back to ancient philosophy, in effect tracing it back to Plato and Aristotle. Tosaka also postulates a scientific spirit, which is then examined in relation to the technological spirit, concluding that these spirits are like opposite sides of the same coin. The scientific spirit, Tosaka claims, has three characteristics. It is “firstly a positivist spirit … secondly … a rational spirit … [And] I also consider the scientific spirit to the historical spirit … The scientific spirit … must be a spirit of our everyday life and action” (Ibid. 85). Tosaka does not dwell on the question concerning whether the scientific spirit is the technological spirit or the other way around. Instead, the technological spirit is conceived as “another face of the scientific spirit” (Ibid.). This leads Tosaka to argue that even at the level of the laboratory (positivist science) there is a social aspect, thus it is not a “true [absolute] historical understanding” (Ibid. 86). This is a direct critique of Tanabe and the idea that the progress of science will be rolled out deterministically based on the logic of species. Opposed to such an understanding, Tosaka came to claim that even positive science is historically situated and not an absolute.

Differing from Miki and Tosaka’s materialistic concerns, Motomori Kimura’s (1895-1946) philosophy engages with the question of body and spirit and the essay included here is Body and Spirit [Mind]. Kimura graduated from Kyoto University in 1923 and returned in 1933 as an assistant professor. What is of interest regarding Kimura is that from 1939 onwards Kimura oversaw teaching, not in philosophy but in pedagogy and teaching methods. Thus, Ōnishi, in the introductory essay, examines Kimura as “as a scholar (philosopher) of education … Kimura philosophized from the principial depths of praxis = poiesis underlying both the undertaking of the practice called ‘education’ and the act of creating a work of art” (Ibid. 124). For Kimura the body is not the opposite of the spirit. Instead, the body is described as “a principle of expression [表現]. Expression, however, is the manifestation of the inside on the outside” (Ibid. 110). This means for Kimura that the inside is “at the same time outside and vice versa” (Ibid). In this sense, the body becomes a mediator which manifests the inside, or the spirit on the outside (what Kimura calls nature). Hence, in Kimura there is no dualism between body and spirit. Instead, there is a mediation between the spirit and nature through the body. The body comes to act as a point which allows mind and matter to interact with one another. Leaving this point aside, what is important for Kimura in this regard is the concept of expression. Expression, outlined succinctly, is the inside expressed on the outside, as an act of creation, situated on the outside. It is not conceived of as in opposition to the outside (nature) but, instead, as being situated outside of the inside. The conclusion of this line of thought is that:

“[The body]is the self-negation of spirit, and at the same time it is the self-negation of matter. Because the body is thus the self-identity of contradictories [矛盾の自己同] it possesses the capacity of formation, and expressive life is able to express itself in self-awareness through the mediation of the body” (Ibid. 120).

Another thinker who continues this line of examination into the spirit is Shinichi Hisamatsu (1889-1980), who became a professor at Kyoto University in 1946. The text included is called The Metaphysical Element of the East. In this text Hisamatsu elaborates pivotal concept in Hamamatsu’s philosophy of the Eastern nothing. Hamamatsu’s life and works are perhaps those which dwell mostly on the topic of religion, and Nishida once had to write a letter reprimanding Hisamatsu for “[trying] to drop out of university just before graduation in order to practice Zen” (Ibid. 150). Hence, the practice of Zen is an important factor in the development of Hisamatsu’s thoughts, a practice which can be said to have been inspired by a direct suggestion from Nishida, who was also a Zen practitioner. The Eastern nothing is an integral part of Hisamatsu’s religion of awakening. The latter is a metaphysical thought or system which Hisamatsu claims cannot be found in the West, while the former is described as a concept different to, but not in opposition to, Western thought. Hisamatsu stipulates that Western thought, since the Greeks, has revolved around the concept of Being, positing that in the East a different line of thought concerning this developed. Hisamatsu explains that:

“This ‘Eastern nothing’ is something that cannot be fit into the category of what exists in actuality. Without being something metaphysical from the standpoint of all beings or “being”, it is something metaphysical that negates and transcends being itself” (Ibid. 143).

This is thus a concept which draws heavily on the concept of absolute nothingness in Nishidian philosophy, and for this reason Hisamatsu’s philosophy falls within the frame of the Kyoto School, as it directly deals with one of the pivotal concepts of the Kyoto School.

Toratarō Shimomura (1902-1995) is described by Takeda in the introductory essay as the man who brought the Kyoto School to a close, and while the book does, in fact, contain an additional philosopher, this is not an overestimation on Takeda’s part, considering that Shimomura was the last of the philosophers included in this book to pass away. Shimomura’s work included in this volume is The Position of Mathematics in Intellectual History. In this text Shimomura tries to discern the difference between Eastern and Western culture, specifically regarding scientific/academic inquiry (science, for Shimomura, becomes academic inquiry as natural sciences stem from the mathematics of the ancient Greek philosophers). Shimomura asserts that academic inquiry is a Western term which originates from the West and points out that:

“ ‘academic inquiry’ [gakumon 学問] in our mother tongue, if we follow its classical usage, meant something close to that which takes ‘statecraft’ [治国平天下] or ‘moral conduct for living’ [修身処生]—ultimately things of a religious or political-moral, generally practical nature—or ‘practical inquiry’ [実学] as its subject matter” (Ibid. 164).

This means that the subject matter of these inquiries differs in one very important sense; namely, one is theoretical, and the other is practical. Following this insight, Shimomura argues that each culture, or what Shimomura and the Kyoto School call ethnic spirit, has its own kind of “Religion, academic inquiry, and art, too …[which] thereby form a system of culture, and, through the mediation of the ethnic spirit, express the world; the world thus realizes itself in them” (Ibid. 165). Therefore, it is through an inquiry into European academic inquiry (understood as a moment) that Shimomura comes to regard history, and academic inquiry itself, as being mediated through the spirit and experienced by that spirit in its historical moment.

Closing this volume, but not the Kyoto School, is Keiji Nishitani (1900-1990), whose included work is Nihility and Emptiness. This was the only work known to me prior to reading this book, though my knowledge is superficial. In this work by Nishitani, we again see the notions of nothingness (nihility) and emptiness coming into play as pivotal concepts for the Kyoto School. Keta, in the introductory essay on Nishitani, writes that Nishitani’s relationship to Zen is important if one is to understand the philosophy of Nishitani. Like Hisamatsu, Zen Buddhism became a practice for Nishitani which would resolve the crisis of not feeling that any of the philosophers studied up until that point (primarily Western philosophers, as this was Nishitani’s speciality) had been able to fill a growing internal void. Keta writes that: “at the age of thirty-three he began practicing Zen at the Meditation Hall of Shōkoku Temple in Kyoto. He would later state that through this practice he somehow managed to extricate himself from this crisis” (Ibid. 219-220). The basic premise of Nishitani’s philosophy is that science (the scientific method) overlooks both religious and philosophical questions, by mechanizing or rationalising humans, society and nature. This, Nishitani argues, leads to the fact that “contemporary nihilism arises … from an awakening to the meaninglessness at the root of this world and of human beings” (Ibid. 207). This meaninglessness, nihility, is for Nishitani overcome by the concept of Buddhist emptiness [空], which Nishitani equates with Eckhart’s notion of detachment: “What Eckhart called ‘detachment’ [離脱], … a transcendence that is a freeing not only from the self and the world but even from God …This point emerges with greater clarity in the standpoint of what is referred to in Buddhism as ‘emptiness’ [空]” (Ibid. 209). The concept of emptiness is described as “the completion of an orientation toward negation. As a standpoint that has negated nihility as the negation of being” (Ibid. 2014). Such a standpoint seems in alignment with the development of Nishidian philosophy as outlined in this book, and while Nishitani’s concept of emptiness differs from Nishida’s absolute nothingness, it still follows in a line of critiques, redevelopments and new articulations that seem to be the hallmark of the Kyoto School.

Succeeding in drawing a red line through the main topics, interests and fields which comprise the works of the members of the Kyoto School, this book is an important contribution to scholars in the West with an interest in the appropriation of Western metaphysics in the East (Japan/Zen Buddhism), to scholars of the Kyoto School in particular, or to those interested in the specific topics dealt with by individual members of the Kyoto School. The primary texts, with their introductory essays, elicit a development of the thought(s) of the Kyoto School which would be hard to elicit for an individual scholar with limited knowledge of Japanese philosophical tradition, Zen Buddhism, or the history of the Japan (ca. 1850-2000), and without access to the translated works. For such scholars, this book is of vital importance as an introduction to this school of philosophy, and the introductory texts and supplementary essays help the reader obtain an outline of each member’s philosophy, their project and the historically important events surrounding their lives, even if it is accomplished from a bird’s eye view. Therefore, I recommend readers with no knowledge of the history of either the Kyoto School or Japan to read the supplementary essays at the end of the book before engaging with the primary texts or their introductory essays. In particular, I found The Kyoto School and the Issue of “Overcoming Modernity” by Kunitsugu Kosaka to be an essay which is very informative for the novice scholar. In this essay Kosaka elaborates not only on the development of the general project of the Kyoto School as an attempt to overcome modernity, but also on the claim that some of the members of the Kyoto School “beginning with Nishida Kitarō, have been stamped with the label of having been collaborators in Japan’s activities during World War II” (Ibid. 233). This is not unlike similar claims levelled against the philosophy of Heidegger or even Nietzsche, both of whom are philosophers who can be said to have had an influence, directly or indirectly, on the members of the Kyoto School. While the book is an introduction to the Kyoto School, it does, however, assume knowledge of philosophical concepts, particularly of metaphysical and ontological concepts. This is not a criticism of the book but a note for any potential reader. Moreover, while it might seem daunting for some readers to immerse themselves in the depths of philosophical inquiry, the task of reading these texts is not insurmountable for anyone willing to spend some time brushing up on key concepts.

A key aspect, or method, of the Kyoto School seems to be that of mutual criticism, and while this does not make the general project of the Kyoto School compatible with the Frankfurt School (e.g. with Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of modernity/enlightenment), I would point out that this is an aspect where that these two schools converge. In addition to this, both schools also seem to have been engaged with the question of the relationship between Being and Nothing, subject and object, though they differ enormously in their conclusions. Leaving this point aside, as the book does not dwell too much on this question, it seems important to mention finally that while the book introduces the Kyoto School as endeavouring to present an Eastern philosophy which differs from Western philosophy, these two terms are ambiguous for several reasons. Firstly, because the Kyoto School is firmly anchored in Japanese Zen Buddhism or a critique of it, as opposed to an Eastern philosophy that spans other Buddhist ways of thinking, or even other countries. Secondly, because of their engagement with a certain kind of Western philosophy, mainly Heidegger and Nietzsche. In addition to these two points, some members also engage with historical materialism (i.e. Miki and Tosaka). All in all, this is a serious book worth attention from any scholar interested in metaphysical or ontological questions answered from a position different from the normative Western perspective. Though different from the western perspective, Nishida’s general claim is that Japanese culture is well-versed in both the Eastern and Western perspectives, and thus exceptionally suited to provide a bridge between them.

“The original characters of Eastern culture and Western culture are such that they ought to be mutually complementary, not such that one is superior to the other or one must be integrated into the other. What is important is instead to uncover the broader and deeper roots that run through both Eastern culture and Western culture, and from there to shine a new light on both cultures. Nishida argued that this is precisely the world-historical role Japan (being well versed in both cultures) bears today” (Ibid. 240).

In paraphrasing this rather lengthy quote, one might say that the goal of Nishidian philosophy was to bridge the gap between two cultures, or metaphysical systems and that the subsequent members of the Kyoto School should be thought of as engaging with this project either affirmatively, critically or descriptively. Thus, what makes up the Kyoto School, and what merits its name, is a sense of dealing with common themes centred around the idea of shining a light on these two cultures by uncovering their common roots.

Julian Young: German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: From Weber to Heidegger

German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Weber to Heidegger Book Cover German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Weber to Heidegger
Julian Young
Routledge
2018
Paperback £29.99
264

Reviewed by: Francesco Pisano (University of Florence)

Modern philosophical historiography has to constantly face some well-known problems. Julian Young’s book on the history of twentieth-century German philosophy is not only a precise, instructive and critical exposition of the work of Adorno, Husserl and Heidegger (among others). It is also a prime example of applied historiographical methodology with respect to some of these problems. Young’s original approach to philosophical historiography resonates throughout the text. His remarkable sensitivity for political and theoretical issues expresses itself through a brilliant and clear prose. This review will try to present a concise but complete exposition of the contents of the book. However, coherently with the author’s intent, it will attempt to do so while highlighting the critical choices that defined his work.

Roughly speaking, over the last two centuries the academization of philosophy resulted in two broad challenges for the historian of philosophy. The first issue concerns the technicalization of philosophy. The specialization of philosophers, along with the growth of productive interaction between philosophy and other sciences or disciplines, is responsible for the progressive blurring of the borders of philosophy as a specific praxis and as a distinct form of knowledge. With respect to philosophical historiography, this process culminated either in an inflation of the metaphilosophical question, or in various debates about the “end” of philosophy. The second general issue concerns the need for a canon of philosophy. It is true that this demand dates back at least to Aristotle’s Metaphysics. But the modern search for a canon had to deal specifically with an extensive increase of the material available to the historian. Today, a plurality of cultures is involved in the history of thought – a plurality so vast and articulated that the very possibility of a rigorous and neutral canon of philosophy is called into question.

In this broad context, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century stands out immediately by virtue of the author’s attentive and radical approach to the apparent opposition between “objective-historiographical” and “theoretical-philosophical” history of philosophy. Even without an explicit thematization of his own historiographical method, Young manages to deal with this antinomy both in its relation to the metaphilosophical problem and in its link to the idea of a philosophical canon. He does not attempt at neutralizing the ambiguity between historiographical exposition and theoretical framework. Rather, he elaborates it by presenting an accurate historical exposition, while at the same time defining this exposition by means of an original critical premise. This premise could sound, in the words of the author, like this:

“Crisis […] lies at the heart of modern German philosophy. And in spite of the personal, philosophical, and above all political animosities that marred relations between Frankfurt and Freiburg, that the modern world is in crisis is a point on which they agree. The thinker who […] provided the most significant articulation of the nature of the crisis was the sociologist Max Weber” (2).

The reference to Weber gives a unitary frame to Young’s analysis, both internally and within the context of German philosophy as a whole. The proposed canon is defined by the concept of crisis: namely, German philosophy is a philosophy of crisis. But “in German thought, the conception of Western modernity as a ‘crisis of humanity’ reaches back”, in fact, “to the end of the eighteenth century, to the critique of the Industrial Revolution initiated by Goethe and the German Romantics” (2). Thus, “Weber’s primary significance for philosophy is that he transmits this critique to the twentieth century” (2). According to Young, the twentieth century sees a separation of this heredity along two branches: the “Frankfurt” one (Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas, Marcuse) and the “Freiburg” one (Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt, Gadamer). These two branches delineate the two parts of the book, while each chapter concerns an author. Interestingly, Young devotes two chapters to Heidegger: the early Heidegger (between Husserl and Gadamer) is markedly distinguished from the later Heidegger, protagonist of the book’s last chapter.

Even if the book is a complete and exhaustive reading in itself, it constitutes only the first part of a broader project about the history of German philosophy. A future instalment should deal with other relevant German thinkers such as Benjamin, Bloch, Lukács, Scheler and Schmitt. It is left unclear if these philosophers will, in the end, all fit within the “Frankfurt-Freiburg” frame. If that will be the case, it seems that two main obstacles should be overcome. First, philosophers like Benjamin or Schmitt can hardly be defined as belonging to any school of thought. Second, the explanation of Bloch’s and Scheler’s work would require an extensive mention of German traditions that do not seem to be part of Young’s canon: psychologism (e. g., Külpe) and Lebensphilosophie (e. g., Simmel). On the other hand, it should be noted that, within Young’s narration, “Frankfurt” and “Freiburg” are not properly names of cities, schools or traditions. They are names for two different critical approaches to Weber’s idea of a link between crisis and rationalization. Or rather, they are names for different theoretical positions within the long-lasting German debate about rationalization and loss of freedom.

“While the Frankfurt thinkers recognize loss of meaning as indeed a pathology, in practice, their attention is directed almost exclusively towards loss of freedom. […] The Freiburg thinkers, by contrast, while recognizing loss of freedom as an issue, attend far more closely to loss of meaning” (253).

“Frankfurt” and “Freiburg” are indeed names of constellations within the same cosmos, rather than rigid titles. Thus, it should be possible to define intermediate and “heretical” positions, thanks to the fluid nature of these distinctions.

The main theoretical and political point that Young wants to prove is that “with respect to the task of understanding the communitarian need, liberal thinkers have […] a great deal to learn from the German phenomenological tradition” (254). This theoretical thesis is motivated by a political reason.

“What, since 2016, had become unmistakeable is the existence of a widespread revolt against the liberal hegemony, the appearance throughout the West of political movements that in every case represent, at least in part, the demand for fraternity: for the community that comes from sharing with one’s neighbours what, borrowing the term from the Roman Stoics, Gadamer calls a sensus communis […], an intuitive understanding of the good life. Often, the manifestations of this demand are cynically manipulated, distorted and ugly—white nationalism, Islamophobia, homophobia, misogyny, illiberal democracy—but sometimes they evoke a greater or lesser degree of sympathy – the independence movements of Catalonia, the Basque region, Flanders, Corsica and Quebec, for example” (254).

Nowadays, this urge for a new Gemeinschaft is resurfacing despite a fifty-year-long association with conservative and right-wing values.

“The notions of ‘tradition’, ‘homeland’, ‘people’, and ‘community’ were hijacked by the Nazis. It is unsurprising, therefore, that in mainstream post-war political thought, in Germany and elsewhere, such notions have been anathematized. Liberal, cosmopolitan, Habermasian, anti-traditional, modernity-embracing thought has been in the ascendant” (253).

The theorist that blindly follows this anathema ends up neglecting the urge for a new Gemeinschaft. However, this urge exists, and the current forms of its expression are often violent and populistic. In fact, the danger for a liberal critical theory is to ignore these pulsations that run across society, rather than attempt at comprehending and redirecting them.

The political motivation sets the tone and the main intention of the book. It is the tone of a liberal historian of philosophy speaking to liberal philosophers and liberal humanities students. Coherently, the demonstration of the aforementioned thesis aims to help the liberal thinker in “the challenge […] of understanding the character of this need [for community] and of assimilating it into liberal thought” (254). This aim is perhaps the key to understand some of Young’s methodological choices, such as the stark distinction between a “early Heidegger” and a “later Heidegger”. The author means to remark an implicit influence of Weber’s work on Heidegger’s conception of “technology” (Technik).  Thus, he needs to draw a dividing line between a more generic Weber – “early Heidegger” relation (mainly through Sein und Zeit and its position within the Zeitgeist) and the specific role that Weber allegedly has in relation to the “later Heidegger”.

In short, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century presents, more or less explicitly, each thinker’s work in its relation to Weber’s announcement of a crisis in modern European thought. Thus, Young’s exposition of Weber’s work is of pivotal importance for the internal economy of the book. Even so, it mainly concentrates on one short (and famous) lecture delivered by the old Weber to the students of Munich University in 1917: Wissenschaft als Beruf.

“The lecture is far from a celebration of science as a ‘vocation’. One reason for this, one can hypothesize, is the fact that the First World War, still in progress, had deployed the fruits of modern science to kill people on a hitherto unimaginable scale (38 million in total). […] Whatever the original intention that led to the delivery of the lecture, in the event, its central force is to place a serious question mark against the value of science, against, indeed the entire post-Enlightenment development of the West” (7).

The central equivalence of Weber’s lecture identifies modernity and rationalization. Modern science is, first and foremost, a vehicle of rationalization – i. e., of “control trough calculation”. Namely, control on nature and man is obtained trough the calculated manipulation of causes, in order to obtain certain consequences. The transformation of non-human nature in a series of causal relations generates a pathological “loss of meaning” (14). The transformation of human relationships in a series of causal relations, for its part, implies a “loss of freedom” (10). Disenchanted nature and organized work are, according to Weber, the main products of modern science. “We face, Weber tells us, a future denuded of both freedom and meaning. We stand in a moment of world-historical crisis, a crisis that can only be resolved by […] a ‘turning’ to a new, genuinely post-modern age” (15).

Young underlines how Weber’s solution to this crisis has already embraced a certain irrationalism. The only possibility for this revolutionary turning lies in the appearance of charismatics prophets: leaders that are capable form a new meaningful Gemeinschaft, defined by shared values. The nature of these values remains unspecified. But “Weber explicitly warns against ‘chiliastic prophets’ who believe that a noble end justifies any means […]. Weber’s call is a call for charismatic leadership within the limits of liberal democracy—the charisma of a Churchill or a Martin Luther King Jr.—rather than for charismatic leadership instead of democracy” (16). Thus, Wissenschaft als Beruf can also be read as the mature self-critique of a social scientist. Weber recognizes that the European man lost more than it gained from modern science. “Weber’s belief that rationalization has been a disaster places him in the tradition not only of Wagner and the youthful Nietzsche’s neo-Romantic critique of the Enlightenment, but also of the critique of the Enlightenment conducted, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, by the German Romantics themselves. […] It is through the early Nietzsche’s neo-Romanticism that the Romantic critique of Enlightenment rationalization passes to Weber, and primarily through Weber that it passes into twentieth-century German philosophy” (17).

The idea of a nearly irrecoverable loss pervades most of the following philosophical debate, in Germany. Young presents Horkheimer and Adorno’s common work as the first attempt at dealing with this loss. They both “reject the ‘bourgeois’ conception of the task of thought in general, and social thought in particular, as that of providing a neutral analysis of the way things are. To be worth anything, thought must be an attempt to alleviate suffering, an act of ‘solidarity’ with a suffering humanity” (21). This therapeutic, political and praxis-oriented character is what makes critical theory stand out from traditional theory. It is the Marxist trait that, along with a dialectical conception of history, makes Horkeimer and Adorno’s theory “critical” of the status quo. “Critical theory, writes Horkheimer, thinks in the ‘service’ of an ‘oppressed humanity’ and seeks to eliminate ‘social injustice’. […] Whereas […] traditional theory thinks of itself as simply trying to understand the world, the critical theorist wants to change it, change it so as to bring about ‘a future society (Gesellschaft) as a community (Gemeinschaft) of free men’. The aim, then, is liberty, liberation, but also – a point often overlooked – that other battle cry of the French Revolution, fraternity, community” (25). The struggle of critical thinking addresses, at least in principle, both the loss of freedom and the loss of meaning. However, Young argues, while contributing to a better articulation of our loss of freedom, Horkheimer and Adorno fail to provide a positive indication for action – a pars construens that is especially important with regards to the problem of meaning. Sure enough, the liberation that could amend our loss of freedom would consist in the negation of a condition we already know, inasmuch as we already are in it. On the other hand, the loss of meaning could be resolved only through the affirmation of new shared values: that is, by placing and constructing something that, at the moment, remains unknown. Horkheimer and Adorno “rouse us out of false consciousness to an explicit awareness of the suffering it causes, but that, it seems, is all they do. Yet is ‘negation’ enough, given that the aim is, with Marx, not merely to understand the world, but to change it; to engage in the ‘intellectual, and eventually practical, effort’ to change the order of things for the better?” (40). Young implicitly argues that this inadequacy is a flaw of “Frankfurt” philosophy as a whole, and that, consequently, an actual and up-to-date critical theory would need the constructive help of “Freiburg” phenomenology.

An emblematic instance of the weakness of the “Frankfurt” approach with regards to the loss meaning can be found in Habermas’ idea that social solidarity can be supplied by communicative rationality. In this case, the appeal to feeling that characterizes charisma – both in religion and in politics – would be replaced by the binding force of rationally valid claims. These claims would be defined by rational deliberation and criticised within public debate. This would be the frame of a “deliberative” liberal democracy. But such a liberal democracy would be the very antithesis of an actual Gemeinschaft.

“For while a community is defined by a sense of ‘belonging together’, a liberal democracy is defined – ever increasingly, in multicultural modernity – by a sense of belonging apart. […] Political liberalism is the solution to a problem: the problem of how we can live together without harming each other, given that we no longer have a shared conception of the good life, a shared ethical substance. While community is based on both respect for and ‘fraternity’ with the other, liberal democratic society is based on respect alone” (56).

This discrepancy within classical liberalism and a radical, genuine idea of Gemeinschaft excludes the simple solution, so to speak: a true Gemeinschaft cannot, as such, be re-imposed by the same Enlightenment culture that dissolved it in the first place. In order to appropriate the very idea of Gemeinschaft, the contemporary liberal philosopher must rethink Enlightenment in its defining terms, rather than extrinsically “apply” it on the current social situation.

While still being an important contribution to the German “philosophy of crisis”, critical theory remains wanting in its constructive aspect. An important exception, within the “Frankfurt” context, is represented by the work of Marcuse. His research constitutes not only a diagnosis of present-day social pathologies, but also of an audacious indication of possible remedies. It could be argued that it is actually Marcuse’s phenomenological education that mostly contributed in shaping the rich and lively idea of man that animates the future society he wishes for. Marcuse’s deep acquaintance with American society contributed to this vision too. One could say that Marcuse’s main distinctive trait, among “Frankfurt” theorists, consists in the importance he assigns to a positive description of man’s free desires: namely, the desires one harbours beyond the extrinsic conditioning imposed by advanced industrial society. “A true desire is a desire one would retain even after having become fully aware (through exposure to critical theory) of the degree to which advanced industrial society attempts to manipulate one in its own interests” (63). The very admission of the possibility of free desires opens a utopian space within Marcuse’s philosophy. And this space is positively characterized by means of a psychoanalytical (and partly phenomenological) anthropology.

“As a Marxist, Marcuse believes the point of all worthwhile theoretical activity is to change the world for the better, and so one might imagine that his engagement with Freud is generated by the need to refute his pessimism. […] The reason for the engagement is Marcuse’s belief that Freud got almost everything right. He believes, in particular, that Freud got the nature of happiness right. Freud’s belief that happiness within civilization is impossible is, however, a mistake. Perhaps it was once true, concedes Marcuse, but it is no longer so. Therefore, purged of this error, Freud’s theory can be developed in a way that provides the key to a happy civilization” (67).

Marcuse accepts Freud’s hedonism: he deems all human action motivated by the search for immediate libidinal pleasure. Thus, the inner pathology of civilization consists in the fact that it demands the sacrifice of this erotic impulse. But not all instances of rational civilizations are equal in their repressive aspect. There is a possible social organization within which repression would be reduced to its basic, “natural” contrast against the pleasure principle: socialism.

“If some repression is surplus, man-made rather than imposed by nature, then it is ‘artificial’, which means, contra Freud, that there is a […] [possibility of its] elimination by revolutionary action aimed at installing socialism as society’s reality principle. Given the current state of technology, a degree of repression will continue to be essential to any society’s survival. But, with the installation of the socialist reality principle, it will weigh on the individual in a greatly reduced, ‘basic’ form” (70).

Marcuse sees science as an historical process, rather than as a static aspect of civilization. This allows him to believe that modern science can, in fact, define a different distribution of work without altering its productivity; and his optimism regarding human nature prompts him to find the contents of a future, utopic Gemeinschaft in the creativity of human fantasy and in the free exercise of a polymorphous and sublimated sexuality.

Young makes a conscious effort in explicating the elements of phenomenological thought that could resonate with Marcuse’s attempt at a therapy for the crisis of meaning. Vice versa, he presents Husserl’s work under a specific perspective: the perspective that deems phenomenology essentially as a philosophy of crisis. After a concise summary of transcendental phenomenology’s main ideas, the author focuses on the late Husserl, and especially on Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. The early Heidegger is presented under the same light. Young’s discussion of Sein und Zeit is markedly characterized by a specific interest in the link between meaning and culture. However, this apparent one-sidedness is, in fact, an attempt at rethinking the relevance of classical phenomenology as a “political” philosophy – that is, as a philosophy that, even if not directly concerned with political issues, produces the idea of a possible human community.

The author finds this relevance in the common space sketched by Husserl’s idea of lifeworld and Heidegger’s idea of being-in-the-world.

“As Husserl puts it, the question that modern humanity finds ‘most pressing’ is that of ‘the meaning or meaninglessness of the whole of human existence’ […]. What, however, is missing, according to both Nietzsche and Husserl, are ‘norms of absolute validation’, that is […] moral norms that are universally valid” (104).

The result of modern science is “the epistemological view that our only access to knowledge is through the natural-scientific method, together with its ontological consequence that nothing can be said to exist save the entities recognized as existing by natural science. An important fact about the natural sciences – and the social sciences, too, which ape the natural sciences in this regard – is that they are ‘value free’: among the entities recognized as existing by science, values (as distinct from valuings) are not to be found. Husserl’s claim […] is that it is the exclusion of values from the realm of the objectively real that results in the onset of nihilism, of ethical polytheism” (104). There is little doubt that both the late Husserl and the early Heidegger acknowledge the relation between modern rationalization and the pervasive sense of meaninglessness that characterizes present-day human life. To put it briefly, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century sees the phenomenological movement as the part of the rationalist enterprise that is capable of a rigorous self-critique – that is, of a critique of Enlightenment that is neither (critical) refusal nor (critical) acceptation, but radical reformulation instead.

The idea of lifeworld gives Husserl the critical margin that such a self-critique presupposes. Lifeworld claims are, roughly said, the claims of everyday knowledge. They are the basis for the construction of every scientific knowledge. Sure enough, insofar as they define every self-evidence, they constitute the last ground of each complex scientific experience.

“What naturalism forgets is that the lifeworld is the ‘meaning-fundament’ of science, that what science is really talking about – ‘the only real world’ that is available to be talked about – is the lifeworld. […] Husserl uses ‘lifeworld’ sometimes to refer to culturally and historically specific lifeworlds and sometimes to refer to a structure that is common to them all, a structure that is partially definitive of what it is to be a human being. In Husserl’s language, ‘the’ lifeworld belongs to the ‘essence’ of human being. […] Transcending all culturally specific lifeworlds is the lifeworld together with the norms embedded in it, norms which are common to all cultures” (111-112).

Young presents Sein und Zeit’s project of a fundamental ontology as a deeper investigation in the ontological structure of this proper, more comprehensive lifeworld.

Heidegger’s approach to the question of being definitely refutes the idea of a phenomenology that deals exclusively with abstractions. His ontological analysis is, at the same time, a phenomenological description of the most primordial features of human existence.

“What explains the excitement surrounding Being and Time is not the fact that it chooses to interrogate Dasein but rather the manner of interrogation. […] We can only answer the question of the meaning of being by providing a ‘primordial’ account of Dasein, of us ourselves. […] Being and Time’s account of who we are portrays us as particularly fascinating, not to say troubling, beings. […] Suddenly, the seemingly dry investigation of what we mean when we say that something is has transmogrified itself into ultimate Nietzschean and Kierkegaardian questions about the meaning of life. Ontology has become existentialism, phenomenology has become existential phenomenology” (119).

Young’s presentation of the young Heidegger remains within this frame. Heidegger’s existential determination are critically discussed as aspects of his (provisional) solution to the problem of the meaning of human life. The key to this problem would be, according to Young’s interpretation of Heidegger, in the concept of praxis. Praxis should be defined as the original source of meaning. But, if praxis is in fact the structural source of every meaning, present-day meaninglessness must be a result of some change within the context of human praxis. Thus, an ethical problem arises: what is the proper, most authentic praxis? How can we act in a way that makes our lives meaningful?

The author describes Gadamer’s and Arendt’s philosophical projects as attempts at answering these questions. They both write against the dehumanizing effects of rationalization. Gadamer adopts an approach that is both ontological and epistemological. His task consists in rehabilitating artistic expression as a form of knowledge in its own right and as a moment of a complete human Bildung, in opposition to the privilege that positivism accords to an education based on natural science. On the other hand, Arendt deals with the problem of the loss of meaning from a political point of view. She emphasizes the role of educators in transmitting and enriching a shared ethical tradition.

In Young’s eyes, Gadamer and Arendt partake in the history of German philosophy inasmuch as they take part in a debate started by Goethe, transmitted by Weber and concluded by the last great philosophy of the crisis: the philosophy of the later Heidegger. Considering that this moment of Heidegger’s thought paved the way for the so-called postmodern philosophy in Germany (Sloterdijk), France (Derrida), Italy (Vattimo) and America (Rorty), one could probably say that the course of the German “river” described by Young flows again into the European “sea” from which it gushed out in the first place, with the French revolution and the end of the age of Enlightenment.

Young summarizes later Heidegger’s thought as a new appeal to the charismatic and unifying power of common “gods”. But this is not a repetition of Weber’s Wissenschaft als Beruf. The long phenomenological detour has shown that these “gods” are not specifically conservative forces. They represent the idea that every past meaning preserves a possibility for the future, but only inasmuch as the realization of any future simultaneously creates a new past – i. e., a new concealed possibility for yet another possible future.

“When we take into account the possibility that future generations will experience the world in ways that are unimaginable by us, not to mention the possibility of non-human knowers, we realize that there is no limit to the number of potential horizons of disclosure that are concealed by the horizon – the ‘being of beings’, as Being and Time calls it – that constitutes our life-world. This ‘unexperienced domain of being’ is the ‘non-essence of truth’ and is as inseparable from the essence of truth as is […] the dark side of the moon from its illuminated side. Heidegger calls this unexperienced domain simply ‘the mystery’. And since it is unlimited in extent it is, as with all things we cannot fathom, profoundly awesome” (233).

In this awesomeness appears the possibility of a rational, immanent salvation from the crisis. The search for this possibility – the search for a new rationalism – is, in the end, the story that German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century passionately narrates.

Theodor Lipps: Schriften zur Einfühlung: Mit einer Einleitung und Anmerkungen

Schriften zur Einfühlung: Mit einer Einleitung und Anmerkungen Book Cover Schriften zur Einfühlung: Mit einer Einleitung und Anmerkungen
Studien zur Phänomenologie und Praktischen Philosophie
Theodor Lipps. Faustino Fabbianelli (Hg.)
Ergon Verlag
2018
Paperback 78.00 €
792

Reviewed by: Mariano Crespo (Universidad de Navarra)

Any moderately attentive observer of contemporary philosophy is bound to notice the significant number of publications dedicated to what has come to be called “empathy.” The relevance of this topic has also found its place in non-philosophical forums, for example Barack Obama’s much-cited statement during his first presidential campaign that “the empathy deficit is a more pressing political problem for America than the federal deficit” or one of the central claims in Jeremy Rifkin’s acclaimed book, The Empathic Civilization. In general and as has been pointed out recently, there are two reasons for this renewed interest in empathy—on the one hand, moral philosophers have presented research on whether empathy plays an important role in motivating pro-social or altruistic behavior and, on the other hand, social knowledge researchers have hypothesized that empathy could be the key to understanding important issues regarding interpersonal understanding, particularly with respect to understanding other people’s emotions. In addition, a diversity of perspectives has addressed this topic, including phenomenology, cognitive sciences, social sciences, psychiatry, etc. This mix has led to the unexaggerated estimate that there are as many definitions of empathy as there are authors who have attempted to define it. In any case, and in spite of the great diversity of theories on empathy, most authors usually cite Theodor Lipps (1851-1914) as one of the “fathers” of empathy. In turn, the British psychologist Edward Titchener (1867-1927) translated the term Einfühlung (which Lipps used) into English as empathy, a translation that is not without its problems, as I will later demonstrate.

One of the many merits of the volume that brings together Lipps’ texts on the problem of Einfühlung, which Faustino Fabbianelli edited and introduced, is its success in showing the need to dually expand the perspective of analysis when it comes to this German thinker. Certainly, Lipps used the term Einfühlung to refer to knowledge of other selves versus the knowledge of the self (internal perception) and the knowledge of external objects (sensible perception). However, to expand this analysis, we must not forget that Einfühlung is one way, among others, of explaining the other’s experience (Fremderfahrung). In other words, in light of current comparisons between what is usually called empathy and the experience of the other tout court, we must show that this version is a peculiar way of interpreting the other’s experience.

The question of the other’s experience (Fremderfahrung), that is, of the experience we have of other selves and their lived experiences, was the object of special attention at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two groups of theories emerged in this respect: on the one hand, one group maintains that that which is given to us in the proper sense is our own self and, therefore, access to the other’s conscience is always mediated and, on the other hand, those who reject that our access to the other’s conscience is always mediated. The first group of theories argues that the experience of the other is always experience of him in his corporeal appearance. I experience my own lived experiences in a unique, immediate, and original way, while I do not experience the lived experiences of others in this way. What is given to me from another human being in the proper sense, originaliter, corresponds exclusively to the phenomenon of the physical body. Based solely on this form of giving oneself, the other is considered somehow animated; an other self exists. One of the ways to access this other self corresponds to so-called “reasoning by analogy theories” (Analogieschlusstheorien), which maintain that I “judge” the expressions of others in analogy with my own expressions, that is, I know that these expressions (Lebensäusserungen) (for example, certain face gestures) contain certain experiences that imitate my own experience when I so gesture.

These theories received significant criticism, especially from Theodor Lipps, who worked in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As one of the texts in Fabbianelli’s volume (Eine Vorfrage: Die Vielheit der Iche und die Einfühlung, p. 351) argues, Lipps considers these theories inadequate for two fundamental reasons. On the one hand, I am aware of, for example, certain eye or mouth gestures not because I observe my own expressions, but because I am able to observe others’ expressions; this observation occurs in the exact opposite order with regard to the Analogieschlusstheorien. In fact, Lipps believes that certain processes in other people’s bodies express lived experiences, which are then accompanied by gestures that express these lived experiences. On the other hand, he considers reasoning by analogy a fiction. Such reasoning, Lipps argues, takes place when, for example, I see smoke and conclude that there is fire. At some point, I saw smoke and fire together and now I add to the perceived smoke that which I have repeatedly perceived as associated with it. But such reasoning does not apply here. Rather, I have to deduce from myself an object that, although it is the same type, is completely different from me. In addition, theories of reasoning by analogy assume that I know that the meaning of my own facial gestures denote certain experiences. If this were the case, I would need to constantly observe my face in a mirror. According to Lipps, the following is what really occurs: I see another’s features change, which I interpret as the body of another human individual. An internal tendency to tune in arises in me and suggests that I should act and feel in sync with the other. I feel his sadness not as conditioned by my own thoughts, but as brought on by a perceived gesture. I feel my own sadness by perceiving the other’s gesture (Egoismus und Altruismus, p. 211).

As mentioned, Fabbianelli’s selected texts from Lipps—which do not include the important article entitled, “Das Wissen von fremden Ichen” (which was already published by the same editor in the fourth volume of Schriften zur Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie and recently translated into English[i]), but which does include the previously unpublished article Der Begriff der Einfühlung–show the need to broaden the usual analysis of Lipps’ Einfühlung notion. That is, it is unjustifiably reductionist to consider Einfühlung the only way of explaining the Fremderfahrung (although, certainly, it is the right way, according to Lipps), as well as to think that Einfühlung’s scope is limited to knowledge of other selves. In this sense, Fabbianelli’s introduction highlights the importance of Einfühlung in Lipps’s thought insofar as it constitutes the ultimate explanatory foundation of the relationship between individual subject and individual object—not necessarily another I—before understanding grasps both moments. In this sense, we can speak of an “alogical” relationship (prior to actual knowledge) between the subject and the object. This alogical or irrational character of Einfühlung is due to the object’s uniqueness to which, and thanks to it, the self unites. Insofar as the conception of reality underlined here is radically different from a logical-rational explanation of reality, Fabbianelli believes that the “irrationality” of Einfühlung comes into play.

Yet, by putting his concept of Einfühlung at the center of Lipps’s philosophical reflection, Fabbianelli’s introduction insists on the need to consider it in a broader context, namely, with a new Kantian conception of the problem related to the conditions of possibility for knowing the world. Faced with other more or less established interpretations that reproach Lipps for having offered a psychological interpretation of this problem, Fabbianelli joins authors such as Glockner, who maintain that Lipps must be considered a thinker who follows in the classical German philosophical tradition insofar as he discovers the condition of possibility for the synthesis of subject and object in the alogical relation of empathy.[ii] In this sense, Lipps endeavored to clarify the relationship between psychology and transcendental philosophy, showing how psychological reflection goes hand in hand with a transcendental philosophical approach. However, according to Fabbianelli, the primacy of psychology in Lipps is not the same as psychologism. In fact, he sees in Lipps a separation between psychology and psychologism insofar as he insists on keeping the subject and object separate, that is, the self and the world. Fabbianelli also references the fact that Lipps himself repeatedly rejected accusations of psychologism such as the vigorous criticism contained in the first volume of Husserl’s Logical Investigations. He based his rejection of this psychologism reproach on a clear separation between what constitutes the laws of thoughtful reason and what pertains to the mere empeiria self. According to Fabbianelli, Lipps always establishes a connection with transcendental philosophy through Fichte, insofar as there is a parallel between projecting oneself on the other (sich hineinversetzen, sich hineinverlegen), which according to Lipps happens with Einfühlung, and the constitution of the world that, according to Fichte, the self carries out. Without entering into detailed discussion here, Fabbianelli’s argument defending the plausibility of considering the relationship between man and reality as transcendental does not seem to me entirely convincing. The transcendental nature of this relationship is such in so far as it does not deal with objects, “but [with] the form and way in which objects can be known.”

In any case, to the extent that Lipps gives Einfühlung a transcendental meaning as the productive emergence of the other (human and nonhuman), Einfühlung cannot be understood as an accurate synonym of empathy. The English concept that Titchener introduced belongs to a different semantic realm since it characterizes feeling the other’s psychic state as a foreign state in oneself, while Einfühlen, for Lipps, is, rather, a fühlen by which I feel myself in the other (human or not). When I experience Einfühlung a kind of sich hineinverlegen or sich hineinversetzen occurs such that I project part of myself in the external other. Thus, when I consider that a landscape is melancholic or that a friend’s voice is cheerful, it is not that the landscape itself denotes melancholy or that my friend’s voice is actually happy. Melancholy and happiness are, rather, subjective moments, properties of my self—Ichbestimmtheiten in Lipps’ terms— that, in some way, are felt in that landscape and in that voice. I feel, therefore, melancholy in the landscape object and happiness in my friend’s voice object. It is not that I feel melancholic or happy and then “put” (hineinverlege) melancholy or joy into the landscape or into my friend’s voice, but rather that I live or feel these things in the landscape and in my friend’s voice. This does not merely involve representation. When I hear my friend’s voice, I do not represent the happiness that it contains, but rather I experience it (Cf. Einfühlung, Mensch und Naturdinge, p.60). It is precisely this co-rejoicing (sich Mitfreuen) that Lipps calls Einfühlung. Thus, for Einfühlung, what we could call “subjective” is perceived as residing in the object that is before me, that is, not in the object as it is in itself, but in the object as it is presented to me (Cf. Zur Einfühlung, page 375). As Zahavi pointed out to Lipps, ” To feel empathy is to experience a part of one’s own psychological life as belonging to or in an external object; it is to penetrate and suffuse that object with one’s own life.”[iii] In this way, Einfühlung, insofar as I live in it in the object, is, as Fabbianelli points out, Einsfühlung or the fusion of the self with the object (Cf. Zur Einfühlung, page 419).

The aesthetic origin of Einfühlung reveals that it is not limited to knowledge of other selves alone. For the aesthetic object, the sensible realm “symbolizes” that is has content at the level of the soul (selfish). This object is thus “animated” and, as a result, it becomes an aesthetic object and a carrier of aesthetic value (Cf. Einfühlung, Mensch und Naturdinge, p 53). The important thing here is that the sensible appearance of a beautiful object is not the foundation of aesthetic taste, which rather corresponds to the self feeling happy, moved, etc. before the object (Cf. Einfühlung, innere Nachahmung und Organempfindungen, p.35). In short, when considering the beautiful object the self feels free, active, vigorous, etc. in the object.

Now, how, according to Lipps, does this living in another object take place, be it in a physical object or another self? Lipps believes it happens in a way that, ultimately, is not explicable and that he calls instinct or impulse (see, for example, Einfühlung, Mensch und Naturdinge, p. 67ff, and Einfühlung als Erkenntnisquelle, p. 362). By virtue of this instinct, my apprehension of certain sensibly perceived processes instinctively inspires a feeling in me, a desire that, with the act of apprehension, constitutes a single experience of consciousness. In relation to this point, Fabbianelli endeavors to show in his introduction that the instinctive element that Einfühlung contains in Lipps’ thought has to be understood in the broader context of his conception of the knowledge of reality as ultimately based on instinct (Cf. Egoismus und Altruismus, p. 213) In this way, Lipps’ concept of instinct could be related to that of Fichte (Trieb). For his part, Lipps refers to what he calls “instinct of empathy,” arguing that they involve two components: an impulse directed toward imitation and another aimed at expression. In the past, I have been happy and then experience an instinctive tendency toward expressing happiness. This expression is not experienced as supplementary to happiness, but rather as an integral part of that feeling. When I see the same expression in another place, I have an instinctive tendency to imitate or reproduce it, and this tendency evokes the same feeling that, in the past, was intimately connected with it. When I experience this feeling again, it will be linked to the expression I perceive and projected onto it. In short, when I see a happy face, I reproduce an expression of happiness, which will then evoke a feeling of happiness in me and I will attribute this felt happiness, which is co-given with perceived facial expressions, to the other.

Lipps research on empathy concludes with a series of interesting analyses that deserve more space and time than the present contribution permits. I refer, for example, to the relationships between Einfühlung and the feeling of value, its so-called “sociological” repercussions, etc. Here I will only refer to two of them, namely, the different types of Einfühlung and the distinction between positive Einfühlung and negative Einfühlung.

Lipps distinguishes five different types of Einfühlung. First, he refers to what he calls general apperceptive Einfühlung (allgemeine apperzeptive Einfühlung), which occurs when, for example, I think I perceive that a straight line widens, narrows, etc. when, in reality, it ultimately involves activities carried out personally and that, in a way, we apprehend in the line in question. Secondly, as analyzed in an example above, we sometimes talk about the peace a landscape projects, the passion of a given work of art, etc. Certainly, peace, passion, etc. are not visible in the same way that qualities of a color, its hue, its degree of saturation, etc. are. In reality, I feel peaceful or impassioned. However, I “see,” in a certain sense, peace and passion as residing in the landscape or work of art, which communicate peace and passion to me. This is called Stimmungseinfühlung. A third type of Einfühlung is the so-called “empirical” or “empirically conditioned apperceptive” type. This happens when, for me, a force or a motor activity “resides” in a natural event, as when I observe a stone’s gravitational tendency towards the earth or its resistance to the action another body inflicts on it, etc. Fourth, it is possible to identify Einfühlung in human beings’ sensible appearance (Einfühlung in die sinnliche Erscheinung des Menschen). This is also known as Selbstojektivation because, in it, Eingefühlte is the “I” with feelings, along with all its modes of activity. In fifth and last place, Lipps identifies a type of Einfühlung in certain data related to sensible perception, which, after Einfühlung itself, we can identify as expressions of a conscious individual. An example of this is when a gesture that I see and that I later identify as a human face contains an affect such as, for example, worry or joy.

As reflected in the various texts included in this volume, among which the unpublished article mentioned above is especially relevant, the term Einfühlung expresses a curious fact, namely, a way of experiencing myself, of experiencing a property of my self in a sensibly perceived or perceivable object as residing in such an object. This involves the fact that the subject or a property of his is “objectified” by my conscience or “projected” into an object. Now, as Lipps believes, it would be a mistake to understand this objectification or projection in the sense of a process that takes place in consciousness as if I had an idea of ​​one of its properties objectified or projected onto an object and then, so to speak, this idea passes from me to the object or becomes a property of the object in question. In Einfühlung, rather, what I in principle know as a property of the self appears to me in a given case as residing in an object that is nothing like the self. This is precisely why Lipps speaks of a property of the self “projecting” onto an object.

A second particularly noteworthy aspect to take up here is the distinction between positive Einfühlung (also called sympathetic Einfühlung) and negative Einfühlung (Cf. Einfühlung, Mensch und Naturdinge, pp. 83ff, and In Sachen der Einfühlung, p. 260ff). Starting with the latter, let us consider the case of offensive behavior on the part of another subject. A sort of Einfühlung would emerge even in this case. We tend to experience said behavior in ourselves, although we may be, at the same time, inwardly opposed to that tendency. This for Lipps is negative Einfühlung. The same thing happens when someone asserts a judgment that contradicts my knowledge. Upon hearing it, my knowledge activates and directs itself against said judgment. I deny it. This supposes that judgment co-exists with other judgment, i.e., that I have a tendency to judge in the same way. My rejection of judgment then forces me to accept judgment. It is a negative intellectual shared experience, a negative intellectual Einfühlung. On the contrary, for positive Einfühlung, the life of consciousness that seems to come from outside coincides with my activation tendencies. Thus, my consciousness accepts the life of another’s consciousness. I experience this with harmony rather than contradiction, as a confirmation of myself. These distinctions deserve better explanation regarding the difficult problem of the influence of non-intellectual, affective conditions in Einfühlung.

As mentioned, there are many aspects that this 700-page collection of Lipps’s writings on Einfühlung highlights. The richness of Lipps’ analysis deserves special attention and involves analyses oriented toward a faithful description of the different phenomena that give rise in consciousness. Brief summaries do not suffice in this case; rather, it requires a clear effort to be faithful to what is given and as it is given. This is what, as Lipps notes, philosophy should be made of. Thus, it would make sense to defend a positivist philosophy in the sense of a philosophy built on experience, a philosophy whose main task is, on the one hand, to separate what is proper to consciousness from what corresponds to the object of sensible perception and, on the other hand, to inquire into the extent to which certain data in my conscience are apprehended as residing in objects.

In short, with the publication of these texts, Faustino Fabbianelli not only made an important contribution to research on the phenomenological conception of Einfühlung, but also to a systematic and ordered study of a genuine philosophical problem. Lipps’ texts on Einfühlung gathered in this volume show, therefore, the unfairness of Husserl’s qualification of some of them as a “refuge of phenomenological ignorance.”


[i] “The Knowledge of other egos,” transl. by M. Cavallaro. Edited and with an introduction by Timothy Burns, in The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, XVI, Phenomenology of Emotions, Systematical and Historical Perspectives. Edited by R. Parker and I. Quepons, Routledge, Oxon, 2018 p. 261-282.

[ii] Cf. Glockner, H., “Robert Vischer und die Krisis der Geisteswissenschaften im letzten Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Irrationalitätsproblems,” Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur, XIV, 1925, p. 297-342.

[iii] Zahavi, D., Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, p. 104.

Brian A. Butcher: Liturgical Theology after Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur

Liturgical Theology after Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur Book Cover Liturgical Theology after Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur
Brian A. Butcher. Foreword by Andrew Louth, FBA
Fordham University Press
2018
Paperback $45.00
360

Reviewed by: Octavian Gabor (Methodist College)

A theologian once told me that philosophy and theology are two approaches that have the same object of knowledge, truth, but they come toward it from different directions due to their respective natures. According to him, philosophers stretch their hands toward heaven, playing with their fingers in the sky. On the contrary, theologians stretch their hands from heaven toward the earth. Coming from two different places, the fingers of philosophers and theologians become intertwined. Brian A. Butcher’s volume, Liturgical Theology after Schmemann. An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur, takes place on the stage of this encounter, bringing into dialogue Orthodox theology and contemporary philosophical problems.

Such an endeavor, while truly needed, always proves to be difficult, primarily because one needs to explain the benefits of this encounter between philosophy and theology. Does liturgical theology benefit from philosophical work? Do we understand a philosopher’s ideas better if we apply them to the study of the liturgy? The answers to these questions bring to surface both the virtue and the inherent problems of Butcher’s volume. On the one hand, his work is a remarkable excursion into Paul Ricoeur’s work, which emphasizes themes that remain at the core of theology: personhood, memory, symbol, and interpretation. On the other hand, it is difficult to establish whether we are dealing with a work in liturgical theology or one of philosophical exegesis. The double nature of the work is suggested by the two parts of the title: first, the impression is that we are dealing with a book that discusses the future of liturgical theology after Alexander Schmemann’s work; second, we are told that the author focuses mainly on an Orthodox interpretation of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy.

Be that as it may, the connection between Ricoeur’s philosophy and theology is an appropriate one. Even if Ricoeur ‘s work referred to the liturgy only tangentially, as Butcher’s acknowledges, his analyses of memory, symbol, metaphor, or personal and communal identities “offer liturgical theology a plethora of resources” (2). I take it, though, that this work of bringing together Ricoeur and liturgical theology generates a question: whether the use of these philosophical resources improves theology, or whether it shows that philosophical methods and theological methods may arrive at similar conclusions. Butcher’s book does not engage this question directly, and this leads to some lack of clarity as to how it should be read. It takes as its starting point liturgical theology as developed by Alexander Schmemann. One should not expect, however, that Butcher writes in the vein of Schmemann. In fact, Butcher criticizes him and his alleged claim that, throughout history, it is not the liturgy that has changed, but its interpretation. Butcher is in accord with various critiques of Schmemann which accuse him of rejecting prior interpretations of the liturgy because they are interpretations instead of revelations of meaning, while he, Schmemann, does not acknowledge that his work is an interpretation as well. I think, however, that Schmemann’s claim that we have departed from the liturgy is interpreted too radically by them, which has led to a misunderstanding of his work. I take it that Schmemann starts from the idea that we can find the meaning of the liturgy in the experience of the service itself. His critique was directed toward those who, in his perspective, considered the liturgy a symbol removed from that which it symbolizes. For him, however, liturgy is similar to an icon: it does not represent reality, but rather it makes reality present. If I am correct in assessing his approach, we can say that Schmemann advocated for a partaking of truth in the analysis of the liturgy and criticized what he perceived a discussion of the liturgy as a mere symbol.

Butcher departs from Schmemann and is more interested in finding a philosophical methodology that is applicable to theology. After the initial critique of Schmemann’s thought, he engages it only in passing, focusing rather on Ricoeur’s hermeneutical approach found in his philosophy, and thus analyzing how his methods of studying a text can be applied in liturgical theology.

The first obvious concern is the appropriateness of using Western philosophical tools for Eastern theological discourses, and Butcher engages this problem in his first chapter, arguing successfully for his approach. He emphasizes that Ricoeur’s work has already borne fruit in some Western theologians’ analyses of the liturgy. He believes that Ricoeur’s work can enrich the field of theology because the French philosopher shows that the nature of symbolism, “liturgical or otherwise, [is] to engender nolens-volens a multiplicity of meanings” (15). Butcher continues, “this is so because symbols, particularly as represented verbally through the work of metaphor, do not merely adorn a meaning equally accessible in a nonsymbolic, or nonmetaphorical manner. Instead, they give rise ex opera operato, so to speak, to original thinking, to a creative redescription of the world” (15). This attribute of Ricoeur’s approach can lead us, Butcher believes, to a liturgical theology that goes beyond that of Schmemann. The author’s perspective is well described by the quote I just mentioned and it shows the difference between his and Schmemann’s views. Butcher follows Ricoeurian thought, and so he begins from the perspective that symbols are meant to produce a creative redescription of the world. Schmemann is not interested in descriptions, but rather in how symbols bring in people’s presence the reality of the Kingdom. He should not be read as claiming that symbols have only one valid interpretation, but that any interpretation is irrelevant in the absence of communion between man and the deeper reality that the symbol brings forward. For Schmemann, I would argue, symbols do not interpret reality, but rather allow us to commune with it.

The two approaches are not contradictory, and we would be mistaken in placing them in opposition. Instead, they approach the same thing from different directions, as in the image with philosophers and theologians stretching their hands towards the sky. Nevertheless, I think that clarifying the difference between the two of them would be helpful. This is particularly so in the second part of Butcher’s volume (chapters 3 and 4). Here, the author analyzes the role of the metaphor in religious language. First, Butcher offers a convincing description of Ricoeur’s application of metaphor to the biblical text, emphasizing the polyphonic naming of God. God, for Ricoeur, becomes a limit-expression, “i.e., an expression that cannot be fully thought specifically because it dwells at the frontier of thinking” (73). Butcher dwells on this idea and develops elegantly the directions in which it can go, pointing to the perennial question of what kind of truth can be expressed in a metaphorical utterance. In the fourth, the author continues this approach, providing a rich discussion on metaphor.

When analyzing Biblical texts, one must always clarify how one understands the connection between that which is expressed and the expression itself. Butcher points out that Ricoeur’s analysis of metaphor is useful because the Bible speaks of events that are ineffable. The question is whether language can foster a connection between these events and the one who reads about them. Butcher gives the example of the Incarnation (92). If it is completely ineffable (92), then there are no accounts of it. “But if ineffability does not altogether preclude description (and, in turn, inscription) then the resultant texts—whether treating of the Incarnation or the Shoah—ought to be duly subject to analyses in keeping with their genre” (92-93). But one may allow for the possibility that we can look at these “descriptions” not as representations of some events, but rather as openings toward them. If we apply this to the liturgy or to sacred texts, then we could claim that the liturgy or these texts can be understood as places that make present the Kingdom of God on earth. Butcher does not travel on this path, though. It is true, however, that the effort of these pages is concentrated on clarifying Ricoeur’s thought and defending it against accusations that his view on metaphor (1) ignores “the uniqueness of the events attested in Scripture,” (2) subverts “the due authority of the Bible by making this authority a function of the believing community,” and (3) subscribes “to a perilously subjectivist notion of biblical ‘truth’” (91).

Butcher rejects this criticism (proposed by Graham Ward and others), emphasizing primarily that Ricoeur is not a subjectivist. Consider, for example, the claim that Ricoeur’s philosophy entails that the authority of the Bible is subordinated to the believing community. As a consequence, the community takes precedence over the sacred text. Still, even in a Ricoeurian analysis, one may say that the Bible has precedence even if, at the same time, the Bible must be read within a community, and this is because the community is the one that receives the revelation, and not because the community, as an entity different than an individual member of the community, tells him or her how to read the Bible.

Butcher, however, says that, “because Ricoeur appreciates the historical process by which the Bible was produced and canonized, he is reluctant to speak of its authority apart from the community integral to this process” (93). The possible implication of this is still that the community establishes what is true and not true in the Bible.  The solution arrives in Ricoeur’s claim that “metaphor by its very nature points to the unsayable” (101). If this is the case, then even if the sacred text points to the unsayable, it does so within a specific community, and thus it depends on the community while it is connected with a truth beyond it.

The discussion on whether it is possible to meaningfully say something on Divine Being is not new. The question has often been raised, in theological as well as philosophical discourses. In philosophy, it becomes this: is it possible to have logos about the Logos? Is it possible to ever understand the deep structure of reality? Is it possible to ever reach an understanding of God?[i] Butcher moves immediately to the difference between the kataphatic and the apophatic ways. It may prove helpful to also consider a distinction between studying as observers and studying as participants. The observers contemplate their object of study and give more or less complete definitions of it. The participants cannot distinguish themselves from the object of study because there is no such object to begin with, but rather only relation in communion. Consider this example: if we were to claim that our role is to understand the divine being in Trinity and thus offer definitions of what nature and personhood are and how these definitions can be applicable to the three divine persons, then we place ourselves in the positions of researchers who study an event (again, using the notion loosely) from the outside. Similarly, those who study the song of birds describe the various sounds they make, the sequence of the sounds, the movements, the relations between them, but are never able to sing with them. The birds themselves do not “understand” the Song—they are in the middle of it; they are living it. They have it in their hearts. The birds’ song is not their Song, but it is the Song that is sung in them on different voices. The Song takes place in their midst only when they are coming together with their own voices. But one can see here that the Song is both the beginning, the source of their singing, and also the end. The Song is that which nourishes them and that which is expressed in their communion. The Song is that which lives each one of them—the Lord in their hearts. At that moment, the personal logos is nothing else than the glorification of the Logos, its joyful expression. In the tradition of someone like Vladimir Lossky (to whom Butcher will refer in the third part of his work), Orthodox theology has this precise aim: to glorify the Trinity in the union between the “knower” and Divine Being.

If Orthodox theology contemplates the divine being, this contemplation cannot be done from the outside, but from the inside. This means that the contemplation of the Trinity is not analysis of it, but its glorification: the birds sing not their song, but rather the Logos of the universe. Vladimir Lossky says that Christian apophaticism transforms rational speculation into “a contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity” (50). The negative way of apophatic knowledge cannot be, though, only this, a negative way. If it is understood as a method, apophaticism inscribes itself in a list of methods from which one may choose in one’s attempt to achieve knowledge. In some respect, apophatic knowledge stems precisely from a preference for a way of approaching knowledge. However, if it is to be Christian, apophaticism begins in love. Contemplation of the divine stems from the thirst for being, if I may use Mircea Eliade’s phrase (64). If we consider the example with the birds, contemplation of their Song stems from the thirst for this Song which awaits its birth in them.

In fact, any time we approach metaphor and truth, we are also called to give an account of knowledge, and Butcher does exactly that in various parts of the book. In Chapter 6, he shows that the notion of truth at work in the liturgy “constitutes just that kind of truth eligible for the designation ‘attestation’” (138) that we have in Ricoeur. Attestation is not knowledge in the sense of episteme, but neither is it belief in the sense of doxa, in the sense of opinion that has no given justification. Attestation goes beyond these categories—it does not lack justification in the sense that justification is not applicable to it. As Ricoeur proposes, “attestation belongs to the grammar of ‘I believe in’” (see Butcher 138), and so it corresponds to testimony—I would even say to glorification. Butcher reminds us of Ricoeur’s important discussion about the one who engages in attestation, the witness. In “The Hermeneutics of Testimony,” the French philosopher shows that the agent of attestation is the figure of the martyr. Butcher cites Ricoeur saying, “Testimony is also the engagement of a pure heart and an engagement to the death” (Ricoeur, Essays in Biblical Interpretation, see Butcher 141). Ricoeur’s observation is remarkable and it engenders a discussion about the recognition that takes place in the liturgy, which, according to Butcher, is best seen in the exchange of gifts, the moment of the kiss of peace. There are various aspects that Butcher mentions here, and I think they can be furthered developed. First, the exchange of peace takes place between persons who recognize each other as witnesses by the very fact of participating in the liturgy. At the same time, the exchange is personal: it is performed with someone who maintains his ipse-identity, different than mine, and different than any other person’s, and thus making the exchange unrepeatable. This idea correctly leads the author to mentioning Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of face, which, as he says, reveals the otherness of the other (147). But Butcher rejects too hastily that it is possible to behold this “Levinasian” face because, “all that is unveiled, as with Moses on Mt. Sinai, is the shekinah or glory of the Lord—and this from behind” (147). I think, however, that in a liturgical context, the one who is revealed—and the one to whom people also give testimony—is the ultimate Other, Christ. One can also find scriptural textual support in Jesus’ own words, in John 14:7: “If you had known me, you would know my Father as well. From now on you know Him and have seen Him.” Since Jesus proclaims that he himself is the truth, as Butcher reminds us, perhaps one could find here even more reasons to point to attestation. The one who testifies to Christ in the liturgy, the ultimate Other revealed in the face of any other, testifies also implicitly to the Father, the one whose shadow was seen from behind on Mount Sinai.

The third part of the book is the strongest and most germinal. It focuses primarily on self-identity and how Ricoeur’s notions of self apply to the interpretation of the liturgy. There are two reasons for its germinal nature. On the one hand, the text abounds in information, and the author has some powerful intuitions. He proposes that Ricoeur’s analysis of memory can “chasten the hubris of a facile historicism” (151), such as the one proposed by Michael Aune, who believes that liturgical theologians would have to focus more on historical research. Calling on Vladimir Lossky’s discussion of the Church’s tradition as holy memory to support his thesis, the author reminds us of Lossky’s view of Mary’s life “as the paradigm of anamnesis” (160). However, while Butcher agrees that a historical approach may “yield a wealth of insights” (160), he also shows that this cannot “replace the qualitatively different, existential engagement with the past that is memory; the past as lived from within” (160). In doing so, he places himself in the tradition of a Lossky or a Schmemann, and he does so by summoning Ricoeur to his defense: “According to Ricoeur, the former [the “objective” historical approach] depends in great measure upon the latter [subjective memory]” (160).

On the other hand, the text abounds in questions that need further elucidation. The author has a habit of proposing interesting avenues by asking questions that suggest an answer already formed in the author’s mind.  But the connections the readers should make between what is stated and what is implied are not always that evident, and are in need of  a deeper analysis. For example, on page 163, at the end of the section, “The Crisis of Testimony: Experiences ‘At the Limits,’” the author asks two questions. He begins, “Do not ‘incredulity and the will to forget’ threaten the memory of the magnolia Dei that Christian worship attempts to preserve through a manifold deployment of poetic and aesthetic resources?” Then, after just a few lines, another question ends the section: “Does not this dichotomy impel the very mutation and multiplication of forms of worship to which liturgical history bears witness, while also occasioning the atavism within this same history of iconoclastic (and fundamentalist) movements—as well as the perennial presence of mystical currents eschewing corporate prayer altogether in favor of silence and solitude?” (163). Both questions purport to be rhetorical, and asking such questions seems to belong to the author’s style. Nevertheless, their frequency throughout the book can be frustrating.

The final section focuses on the Great Blessing of the Waters, the liturgical service that is best suited to a Ricoeurian analysis. Indeed, while one may say that a liturgy is the revelation of the body of Christ, the Church, that is formed in the coming together of worshippers, the Great Blessing of the Waters has a revelation at another level as well: it is the moment when, according to Tradition, the Trinity is revealed. Both God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove attest and witness to Jesus’ divinity. To my mind, this service can provide  the occasion for an analysis of human work of attestation in the likeness of the divine self-attestation, but Butcher does not go in this direction.

Butcher’s volume is a tour de force, in which the author exhibits a wide awareness of the scholarly work in liturgical theology and Ricoeurian studies. While I believe that it leaves certain aspects not fully developed, focusing, perhaps, too much on a description of various responses to Ricoeur’s work instead of deepening the analysis of the ideas that the author proposes, it certainly emphasizes the need for an increase in dialogue between contemporary philosophical work and theological studies.

Works Cited:

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Orlando: Harcourt, 1987.

Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997.


[i] I acknowledge that, taken separately, each of these questions can be understood differently in its own right. At the same time, the use of Logos is quite liberal; I do not imply here Christ, but rather the Logos used in ancient philosophy, the one of Heraclitus, which one may not utter, but may hear behind the various particular utterings of people.

Josh Robinson: Adorno’s Poetics of Form

Adorno’s Poetics of Form Book Cover Adorno’s Poetics of Form
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Josh Robinson
SUNY Press
2018
Hardback $90.00
288

Reviewed by: Michael D’Este (School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester)

In this addition to the venerable SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Josh Robinson seeks to problematize and subsequently re-construct the concept of ‘form’ as it relates to literature – and the sphere of the arts taken in general – through recourse to both Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic theory at large, and to the precise and manifold studies of practitioners which Robinson gathers from a thoroughly close reading of Adorno’s Gesammelte Schriften, including the Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949), Noten zur Literatur (1958-1961) and his posthumous projects Ästhetische Theorie (1970) and Beethoven. Philosophie der Musik. Fragmente und Texte (1993).

Robinson provides many of his own translations throughout the book, seeking to preserve and amplify the nuance of Adorno’s distinct German idiom whilst maintaining readability and eloquence. Despite his – unfair – self-criticism in the introduction (22), Robinson has done an admirable job of rendering some of Adorno’s more abstruse terminology, such as erfüllen – which Robinson translates as ‘imbue’ rather than ‘fulfil’ – in ways which retain their literal meaning, whilst allowing him to comment on the tensions or ambiguities inherent in these lexical choices (69). As such, Robinson’s translations do not appear incongruous alongside his selections from Edmund Jephcott and Robert Hullot-Kentor’s work, and in some cases surpass these canonical translations in lucidity. These translations of his own are noted, helpfully, in the list of abbreviated works which precedes the introduction.

The introduction lays out the overall aims of the publication in clear detail, which is characterised by a three-fold objective. Firstly, it seeks to support the development of the ‘New Formalism’ in poetics, outlined by means of tracing the history of this emerging field as it responds to dominant trends in literary theory – the New Criticism of I. A. Richards, Harold Bloom et al., and the New Historicist studies inspired by the work of Stephen Greenblatt and others – which is perhaps best characterised through its approach to the close reading of the internal elements of the text qua historically contingent features and functions, the study of which enables a more textually-grounded literary and cultural historicism. Robinson’s support for this New Formalism comes by way of a rigorous reflection on its underlying principle of artistic form. Rather than accepting the pre-supposition that one knows what is being dealt with when we speak of certain elements of the text as instantiations of the concept of form, Robinson seeks to elaborate on precisely what the ‘formal’ elements of a literature are, and how the consideration of form is itself able to shape the analysis of literary art and artworks.

Secondly, Robinson proposes to support his more practical-critical goal outlined in the paragraph above by way of critical philology of Adorno’s writings. As an aesthetician, Adorno had a “somewhat uneasy influence […] on the New Formalism,” in Robinson’s characterisation (8). In his analyses of music, the visual arts and literature, we see a diversity of uses to which Adorno puts form—as an explication of the activity of a practitioner as they shape the lexical, physical or phonic materials out of which their art is made, as the manifestation of that shaping activity – the artwork itself – and, as the tradition or convention within which that objective manifestation is placed alongside others, the genre which draws different works together. By focusing on Adorno’s claim that form is ‘sedimented content’ in the artwork, and that artworks are “products of social labour[…],” Robinson seeks to provide a basis from which we can think of forms, and consequently what those forms might tell us about the form of life specific to capitalist social and property relations (25-26).

Robinson’s third and final aim is to lay the groundwork for a future study of specific works of art and their attendant form, what this poetics of form may illuminate in the texts and other artworks to which it is applied, and the implications of this approach for the theorising of art’s possible intervention into, and relationship with, society and the political economy.

His first chapter, titled ‘Form and Content,’ goes ahead to critically assess Adorno’s thinking of form through an analysis of the polemical rift between Adorno and Martin Heidegger, noting that although Adorno is guilty of mischaracterising Heidegger’s argument, his issue with Heidegger’s attempt to engage with the question of art is in fact a pointed critique of his method. In Heidegger we see that the question of what an artwork is cannot be answered by starting from the question ‘what kind of thing is an artwork?’ (30), whereas Adorno insists that the artwork’s thing-hood is that which enables it to be more than a mere thing—that their tangible qualities, accessible through sensory observation, simultaneously reveal elements which cannot be fully understood through that sensory observation or ‘anschauung.’ Much like Heidegger, Adorno focused a considerable portion of his writing on the lyric poetry of Johann Friedrich Hölderlin; Robinson notes, however, that Adorno’s criticisms recognise the tendency in Heidegger’s discussion of this work towards a metaphysical separation of form and content, which is then followed by the philosophical investigation of content to the detriment of any inquiry into the form of the work. This philosophical investigation into the content of the work is necessary, posits Robinson, but must begin with what is left behind after the philological analysis of form has been undertaken, in response to the “aspects that are philologically most challenging” (36).

Adorno’s rejection of Heidegger’s theorisation starts here: any separation of form and content in Adorno’s work is first and foremost a conceptual separation which is only ever temporary, and the philosophy which attempts to uncover the truth-content of the work of art thus ought to be carried out in relation to the poem as it is experienced (36) in philological analysis, a philosophy commensurate with and sensitive to the requirements of the work. Such a philosophy would side-step Adorno’s criticism of Heidegger’s method, that it would not ‘infiltrate’ the poetry with philosophy from the outside, risking the possibility that the analysis would tell us more about the philosopher’s presuppositions than the “object of enquiry[…]” (29).

Robinson carries on to clarify Adorno’s notion of form as sedimented content, whereby form is characterised as coming into being as the particular way the artist deposits content in the work:

“Form is thus the result or mark of the process by which the work of art is made, but never appears as merely subjective or arbitrary. […] What is significant for understanding the relationship between form and content is that the separation is arbitrary. […] Sedimentation refers here to a process whereby the content of what come to be artworks […] ceases to be relevant (or even exist), while the objects continue to be made with the same or similar features.” [Emphasis added] (44-45).

As such, if the critic minimises the role of form in the artwork to the emphasis of content, they disregard what the whole aesthetic content of the work is, and simultaneously miss the way in which truth-content in the work is characteristically shaped by the intentions of the artist. Form has its origins in the content of the work of art, insofar as propositional content is only one half of the picture, the other half fulfilled by the formal content in the work. Discussing Adorno’s essay on punctuation marks in the Noten zur Literatur, Robinson suggests we see a clear example of the way in which form functions and takes on meaning, as distinct from the functioning of propositional content in the work. The punctuation in a work does not signify, Adorno insists, but rather fulfils a performative function in that they direct the subjective experience of reading, in that they encourage the reader to slow down, speed up, halt, and so on—and thus the language in the work is “itself[…]” able to enter “into communication with the reader” (52).

Chapter two, ‘Form and Expression,’ continues this thread of argument, investigating the relationship between artist and expression. Form and expression, Robinson contends, are fundamentally observable phenomena in the work of art (67). If form is something which is refined by the work of the artist, as set out above, then it is also that which mediates the expression of the artist in the manifestation of the work, by way of its being imposed on the expressive impulse (69). However, if this is the case, then the observable form of the work is itself a presentation of the expressive impulse within the work; in Robinson’s words, “the form that subjugates expression itself becomes expression […]” an “immediate subjectivity that masquerades as object” in even the most stringently realist work (78-80). There is something of a reciprocity in the work of art, that is, there is a palpable subjectivity inherent in the work, even if the expression which is presented in the work is necessarily seen as an objective content. This formal mediation of expression in the work of art means that the expressive impulse outlined here is distinguishable from that of the individual artist themselves, characterised by Robinson as the ‘subject of art,’ which in Adorno’s words “speaks out of art[…]” and is not merely “presented by it” (78).

This is perhaps best portrayed by recourse to Robinson’s discussion of Adorno’s critique of Expressionism. In attempting to bypass aspects of tradition or convention – and, by extension, form writ large – by way of the ‘intensification’ of the principle of expression, aiming at an immediately “subjective expression as its content,” by means of an “unstylised recording of psychic or emotional content,” the Expressionist work appears as merely a contingent, arbitrary ‘experiential impression,’ as it is through the process of forming that “the subjective presence of the artist exists within the work,” as the subjective power to form which is distinguished from the expression of the subject of art (73-78). In Robinson’s words, through the “elimination of the objective content of expression, expression can no longer be subjective, and at once ceases to express and is transformed into objective content. […] a subject free of all mediation through the object—is no subject at all” (74-78).

Robinson’s concern in this chapter is primarily given over to the notion of mimesis in Adorno’s aesthetics; that the artworks whose realism comes closest to the world are not necessarily works of Expressionism or Realism, considered as attempts to describe the – subjective or objective – world, but rather in the works of artists such as Samuel Beckett, and particularly in the short stories and novels of Franz Kafka, as artists whose works imitate the world and as such draw attention to the process of reification, which “makes the web of delusion knowable” in Adorno’s interpretation (85). In a masterful reading of Kafka’s Das Schloss (1926) and Der Process (1925) we see our own estrangement or alienation “come to expression” in light of the author’s “rejection of the techniques of literary expressionism[…]” in the form of Kafka’s works “their realistic element crystallizes;” that is, in the ‘sober’ depiction of brutal oppression and bureaucratic absurdity alongside the ‘interior’ sensations, thoughts and feelings of his characters we see imitated our own condition of social repression, the ‘scattered shards’ of reality which compose an enigmatic, thoroughly expressive image (82-84). Mimesis, as such, is tied to the composition of artworks and how works make meaning: a specific bearing towards the work, and towards the world. Through the mediation of their particular expression by way of the formal aspects of the work, the examples of Kafka’s work briefly stated here achieve, to paraphrase Robinson, mimetic, “objective form.”

In chapter three, ‘Form and Genre,’ Robinson turns from his focus on the notion of form as it is manifest in particular works to how form is able to offer a way of thinking through the individual work to the shared character of different works. Each artwork that is worthy of the name, Robinson notes, ought necessarily to challenge and redefine the limits of its genre—and as such genre is shown to be historically contingent, characterised by its shifting frontiers. As each artist employs diverse techniques of composition in the process of creation they reconfigure the material available for future artists to shape, with consequent significance for the general category to which the work belongs. Pace Marx, Adorno suggests that artistic production is not a mere epiphenomenon of changes in industrial production, rather asserting that the means of artistic production are mediated through the relations of production, in much the same way that the means of industrial production are mediated through the relations of production. If “labour constitutes the principle means of relating to nature, at once enabling and restricting human life,” then the relations of production constitute the logic by which that labour is organised (100), and artistic labour is just as receptive to this mediation as industrial labour.

Individual developments in the particular form of art have an effect on the ‘universal’ tradition or genre within which it is placed, but this is more than a simple contribution. It is in the aspect of the individual, particular work of art which is hostile to the very notion of genre – the ‘abstractness’ and ‘limitedness’ of the concept –that this “tendency to strive against and break down the generality of the subordinating concept starts[…]”  (108-109). Robinson considers here Adorno and Horkheimer’s treatment of the products of the culture industry as illustrated in Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947), suggesting that the significance of the consideration of these products – instantiations of the ‘commodity form’ (116) – for Adorno’s wider aesthetic theory is in their instrumentalisation of art. In short, the commodity form is a means by which the work uncritically assimilates and as such supports the state of things as they are; products of the culture industry are best depicted in opposition to the ‘worthy’ artworks outlined above in that there is an absence of the tension between particular and universal which characterises the individual work of art. By way of their “fidelity to this [uncritically accepted] reality they abandon that which distinguishes them from it, renounce their claim to be different from the world,” to restate Robinson’s explanation (117). Thus it is not the products of the culture industry which are the cause of the taking-up of the commodity form; rather, it is the development of the culture industry and automated production under late capitalism which has caused the shift in socio-economic conditions and thus enabled the commodity form to function.

Of course, it is not simply the products of the culture industry which have been denigrated under this mode of production. In a case which appears as the opposite of the mimetic expression of Kafka’s work, the novel under capitalism has typically served not to draw attention to the reification of oppressive social-property relations, but to be in alliance with reification by means of a ‘realistic’ demystification of the world, an “uncritical absorption of and hence support for things as they are” [emphasis added] (118-119). The universal, generic artistic form, Robinson asserts, develops and evolves in response to the given social conditions of the historical ‘moment,’ conditions which demand a certain expression and ‘mode of address’ of the particular work, manifest in the ‘capitulation’ to a reality which cannot be transfigured under late capitalism (124-126). Those ‘worthy’ works draw attention to this state of alienation, to the “hollowing out of subject and reality,” even if they reject realism outright (125).

Chapter four, ‘Form and Material,’ sees Robinson turn to questions of the relationship between works and the materials out of which they are formed, engaging more closely with questions of technique and process. If “content, broadly speaking, is an aspect of existing artworks[…]” [emphasis added], then the material of which those artworks are created – the colours from which the painting is fashioned, the sounds from which compositions are hewn, the words from which the poem is constructed – can be understood as “in some way pre-artistic, that out of which not-yet-existing artworks are made” [emphasis added] (136). This distinction between form and material and content and material is, much like the distinction between form and content, not a metaphysical separation, but an abstract and conceptual one which again serves to temporarily allow for investigation of the aspects of art which are present in the experience of the work. In Robinson’s words:

“Material can no more be thought of as contentless than content as free from the material in which it is expressed; the meaning of a poem cannot be divorced from the words and sounds and traces of which it is made.” (136)

The physical properties of a given material do not merely lend themselves to the production of a given artwork, but, as a pre-artistic and pre-productive condition from which those particular works are fashioned, must also and to a significant degree determine the way that the particular work – and, by extension, the universal, generic form in which that particular work is placed and modifies – develops. Though these materials pre-exist the work of art, the range of material which appears available to the artist is and must be, as Adorno suggests in the Ästhetische Theorie, “historical through and through” (ÄT, 223). For how could it be any other way? To take an Adornian tack, the material available to the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, such as the stochastic or random process which he applied in his musical arrangements, pre-existed his use of them – indeed, they pre-existed our uncovering of them, considering that ‘stochastic processes’ merely delineates and enables the description of various physical and biological phenomena such as the motion of particles through space – but they were not apparent and available as an artistic material until they were theorised as being applicable in the work of composition, and they did not become part of compositional tradition until the 1957 premiere of his piece Pithoprakta. In Robinson’s terms, “each new composition not only opens up new possibilities but also[…] sets new restrictions for future musical development;” and, by extension, future artistic development in general (140).

Artistic technique and material, for Robinson as for Adorno, are mutually interdependent; technique is attentive to the constraints and “demands of the material, but also by the content of the work that is to be created” whilst the material available for use is determined by the results of prior artistic technique (144-145). Even the most oppositional technique which seeks to fight against “form’s tendency to settle and stagnate” is complicit in the creation of a new form, which will consequently be opposed by even newer forms (147). Technique is not merely an addition to working the available materials of artistic production, but is also present to the future artist as a constraint, inhering in a form which becomes material to be opposed in this future productive activity. Contingency enters into the picture here in the shape of “influences or interruptions from external factors” which destroy or modify the material available to the artist—here one could think of the potential artistic materials lost when the artist’s studio burns down, for instance (160).

In chapter five, ‘Artistic Form and the Commodity Form,’ Robinson highlights “the antagonisms that permeate bourgeois society[…]” insofar as they are reflected within the concept of form (163). In doing so, Robinson is able to bring his discussion to a close through a return to Adorno’s discussion of artworks as products of social labour, characterised not by their relationship to exchange-value through ‘commodity-producing labour,’ but rather as it refers to an activity which deliberately sets out with the “purpose of improving human existence,” the form of human labour prior to its transformation into a type of mutually-reinforcing abstract, alienated labour through the reification of social domination, hierarchy and the logic of the capitalist mode of production (168-170).

Even under the conditions of this society – our society – there exist forms of labour which are able to realise a different kind of sociality (170). The making works of art is such a process, although it is one in which the product is never wholly disassociated from the commodity form—whether that is through the techniques of mechanical reproduction which are deployed in industry before being co-opted by artists, or by the use of tools such as the internet, developed within a military context. It is in the experience of the artwork, however, in our experience of the particular work, that we see the potential of art manifested:

“Artworks[…] exemplify the actuality of a social labour that is liberated from compulsory abstraction […] in doing so they not only serve as a reminder that it is possible to resist the totalising claims of abstract value and its logic of exchangeability, but also present a kind of social labour that does not efface the particularity of the activities that constitute it. […] The artwork as we encounter, experience, and conceive it, that is, is a consequence and a phenomenon[…] of capitalist society. Absent this coercive, violent sociality, the artwork ceases to be thinkable as we think it, as both a mode of resistance and a promise of something better […] Artworks are thus a kind of clearing within a world dominated by instrumental reason, opening the way for emancipation from it.”[Emphasis added] (176-177)

Artworks, in Robinson’s final analysis, come to be defined in opposition to the logic of the capitalist mode of production, yet this is always already a definition which sustains a connection between the work of art and the society in which they were a part; in even the most radical rejection of the principles which govern that society and its mode of production one cannot wholly separate the work from its negation of the society out of which it was created—capitalist social-property relations remain in the work as a trace, or mark, or echo. Robinson’s utilisation of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) is a notably clear example of this quality of artworks: freed of the functional rationale of instrumentality in which it would have otherwise been found – in this case, the ‘mens room’ – our experience of the work nevertheless calls to mind the location and instrumental reason from which it has been freed by means of the subjective activity of the artist (179). This recursive and referential relationship to reality is reflected in the form of the work, a reality it simultaneously maintains and abandons, a reality which “form thus helps render[…] thinkable” (179). Referring back to Adorno’s demand “that life imitate art,” we see that the poetics of form which Robinson draws out of Adorno’s aesthetic theory is one which enables the reading of artworks as a means by which the possibility of a different mode of production, and thus a different kind of sociality, is not realised or actualised, but is postulated as possible. This illuminates Robinson’s claim that Adorno’s aesthetic theory is an poetics of “the wrong state of things;” that is, that his reconfiguration of the work of art “opens up the possibility of the emergence of a transformation out of the existing order[…]” and as such, the work of art effects a “formulation of the complexity of the relationship between commodity society and a successor[…] that is worth wishing for” (186-187).

In his conclusion, ‘Lyric, Form, Society,’ Robinson considers the implications of the arguments outlined here, and the elaboration of Adorno’s ‘poetics of the wrong state of things’ for the study of literature. In this study, forms are grounded as “a token or[…] a deposit for a wide range of connections between us and the worlds to which the work connects us: it lies at the nexus of these connections,” the sensitivity to which means that, through our experiential engagement with the work of art, we keep in sight the prospect of a different world, or the realisation of a different set of social-property relations in our present one (209). Robinson’s analyses indeed fulfil his goal of gesturing towards a conception of the work of art, as outlined above, in which particular works are able to intervene into the social and economic form of a given society, whilst not restricting this functional possibility to ‘political’ works of art, or the ‘revolutionary art’ which Trotsky sets out in his Literature and Revolution (1924).

Adorno’s poetics of form appears to present a means by which we can theorise the relationship between artworks and shifts in the fabric of society by imbuing those works with a kind of agency: by means of the function outlined in the discussion of chapter two, these works are able to embody “emancipatory social practice,” clearing away the reification which attends the capitalist mode of production, a means of thinking beyond oppressive social structures towards a “non-hierarchical life in the world” (218-222).

In Adorno’s Poetics of Form, Josh Robinson carries out a necessary and fruitful investigation into the way we think about art, and the potential embedded in particular works. His reconstruction of Adorno’s wider aesthetic theory – considered beyond the remit of his Ästhetische Theorie – is masterful, and establishes a strong foundation on which the thinking of literary form, and artistic form in general, can take place. It is able to stand alongside projects such as Fredric Jameson’s The Ancients and the Postmoderns: On the Historicity of Forms as setting the stage for a contemporary Marxist aesthetics, whilst being of practical value for literary critics and art theorists alike. The immediate criticism which could be made of Robinson’s publication, a choice which was no doubt necessitated by the requirements of brevity and the focus of the project, is that it perhaps gives Walter Benjamin’s arguments in support of Surrealism, outlined in a short paragraph in chapter two, rather short shrift; similarly, his discussion of labour and the creative process in chapter five would have benefitted from a discussion of Benjamin’s Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1936). For a reader well-versed in the internal debates – both voiced and unvoiced – between the thinkers within and on the periphery of the Frankfurt School, this work was likely in mind, however, for the reader just setting out on their investigation of Adorno’s aesthetics, to understand what he was responding to in his collaborator’s work may provide additional insight into what sets Adorno’s project apart.

These minor criticisms notwithstanding, Robinson has produced a highly readable and accomplished contribution to the scholarship on Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic project as it pertains to the question of form, and a thought-provoking reformation of the Marxist theory of art.