Impossible Time: Past and Future in the Philosophy of Religion 3161519566, 9783161519567

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Religion in Philosophy and Theology Editor Ingolf U. Dalferth (Zürich/Claremont) Advisory Board Hermann Deuser (Erfurt/Frankfurt a. M.) Jean-Luc Marion (Paris/Chicago) Thomas Rentsch (Dresden) Eleonore Stump (St. Louis)

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Impossible Time Past and Future in the Philosophy of Religion

Edited by

Marius Timmann Mjaaland, Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen and Philipp Stoellger

Mohr Siebeck

Marius Timmann Mjaaland, born 1971; Associate Professor at the University of Oslo and President of the Nordic Society for Philosophy of Religion. Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen, born 1977; Assistant Professor at Metropol College and affiliated with the University of Copenhagen. Philipp Stoellger, born 1967; Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Rostock.

ISBN 978-3-16-151956-7 / eISBN 978-3-16-163127-6 unchanged eBook edition 2024 ISSN 1616-346X (Religion in Philosophy and Theology) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2013 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Frank Hamburger in Rostock, printed by Laupp & Göbel in Nehren on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Nädele in Nehren. Printed in Germany.

Table of Contents

Marius Timmann Mjaaland, Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen and Philipp Stoellger Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

I. Past in the Future Marius Timmann Mjaaland Questioning Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Werner Stegmaier Vergangenheit in der Zukunft: Nietzsches Nachricht vom „Tod Gottes“ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Iben Damgaard Nietzsche and the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Jonna Bornemark Religion at the Center of Phenomenology: Husserl’s Analysis of Inner Time-Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Øystein Brekke On the Subject of Epigenesis: An Interpretive Figure in Paul Ricoeur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

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II. Impossible Time Philipp Stoellger Philosophy of Religion – and its Sense for “the Impossible” In the chiasm of memory and imagination (Between past’s future and future’s past) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Arne Grøn Time and Transcendence: Religion and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Rebecca Comay Tabula Rasa: David’s Death of Marat and the Trauma of Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Carsten Pallesen “Northern Prince Syndrome”: Self-Affection and Self-Description in Post-Kantian Philosophy of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

III. Future of the Past Claudia Welz The Future of the Past: Memory, Forgetting, and Personal Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Jan-Olav Henriksen I need time for my ‘self ’: The Importance of Time for the Development of Religious Selfhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Joseph Ballan Liturgy, Inoperativity, and Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

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Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen The Absolutism of Boredom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Introduction Marius Timmann Mjaaland, Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen and Philipp Stoellger What is time, then? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. The philosopher who notices these perplexities suddenly discovers that the experience of time, itself a condition of possibility for experience, is rife with contradictions.1 How can he actually be sure that the future exists? When he looks into the future, he expects that some things will happen and others will not, but they do not really exist, or do they? They exist, perhaps, in the mode of possibility. Perhaps. But what kind of existence is that? Can anyone be sure about the existence of future things? We have to answer in the negative. What about the past, then? Does the past actually exist? Most people would think that the past exists; indeed, everything that may be called a fact (factum) must have existed in the past. But how can we be sure that it exists, when it is no longer here? The past is past because it is gone, and nothing can prove its reality except, perhaps, for some traces of what has been: in nature, in history, in buildings, in narratives, in scars, and in art or writing. Still, if the past actually is, it must exist in terms of its non-being, i.e., its not existing any longer. Even when the past is preserved by means of memory, this memorial presence “is” not identical with the past but rather a kind of “presence of absence.” Hence, given this absence of the past, can the philosopher be sure that the past actually exists? Once more, we have to answer in the negative. A similar argument pertains even when it comes to time present: “If, then, time present – if it be time – only comes into existence because it passes into time past, how do we say that even this is, whose cause of being is that it shall not be – namely, so that we cannot truly say that time is, unless because it tends not to be?”2 The conclusion to this rather basic deliberation on the concept of time is that time is the condition of possibility for speaking about any phenomenon or fact to be observed in the world, yet time itself cannot be shown to exist. The possibility of time being past, future, or present is itself impossible. Impossible time. 1 Cf. Augustine, Confessions, ed. and tr. by William Watts, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), Book XI, c. 14 [XI.14], 238–39. 2 Ibid.

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Augustine’s analysis of the concept of time in Book XI of the Confessions is a paradigmatic example of phenomenological investigation, avant la lettre. He carefully observes the phenomenon we normally describe as time and temporality and reduces the scope of investigation from an immediate and common preconception of time to the formal premises of speaking of time in the first place. The result of this proto-phenomenological reduction is indeed astonishing: Time structures and conditions everything that is or happens within the world, but time as such, the very being and structure of time, seems to evade phenomenological analysis, as long as Augustine’s attention is directed towards the concept of time as well as temporal phenomena. His observations thus confirm and repeat the Aristotelian aporia of time, i.e., that time can be defined neither as being nor as non-being: it is not in terms of being qua being (ΩN H ΩN) and yet it must be – presupposed at least – in terms of its non-being, i.e., as a condition for change. This is not yet the final step of the Augustinian analysis, however. He seeks to understand the very process of perception, and hence, his attention is turned the other way around: He studies not only time as such, as a structuring and measuring aspect of the world, but he considers the mind which perceives the world and structures it according to temporality and change. This final change in perspective qualifies his analysis as phenomenological in the proper sense. He studies the observing mind and suggests that if there is time, then time must be there, within the mind which observes and structures the world – this mind which itself is temporal and is able to observe itself even while observing time, in terms of self-consciousness. Time is thus divided, once more, into external and internal time, and the latter structures the former as well as itself. If we were to speak in modern terms, Augustine thereby constitutes the temporal and intentional self, existence stretched out between the future and the past. He points at memory and expectation as the two modes of perception, indeed as the modes of being in the past and being in the future. This is more precisely the place where time is measured, if it may be measured at all: It is in you, my mind [anime meus], that I measure my times. Do not interrupt me now, that is, do not interrupt your own self with the tumults of your own impressions. In you, I say, it is that I measure my times.The impression, which things passing by cause in you, and remains even when things are gone, that is it while being still present, I do measure: not the things which have passed by that this impression might be made. This do I measure, whenever I measure times.3

The phenomenon of time is thus formally analyzed by its measurement and this measurement points back to the structuring of time within the mind. Time is indeed measured by mind extension (extentio), by this stretching out of the presence between the past and the future. Yet at any mo3

Augustine, Confessions XI.27, 272 f.

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ment this measuring of time is threatened by interruptions, i.e., by the selfinterruption of distractions and impressions. The mind itself, and thus the continuity and structure of time, is threatened by subconscious distractions and the fullness of impressions. Time as such is therefore as unstable as the human mind: it threatens to collapse and dissolve. For Augustine, time remains as fragile and perishable as human existence itself, until it flows into the fire of divine love.4 The concept of time is thus linked to the concept of God, as are perceptions of the future and perceptions of the past.Temporality as such is linked to God in the very moment of separation. This double scission of the temporal self, dissociated from God and dissociated from – and interrupted by – itself marks a point of departure for the following deliberations on time. They adopt a double perspective on time, towards the future and towards the past, reflecting on memory and expectation within the philosophy of time. Traditionally, a philosophy of time includes the question of causation and ultimately relies on the concept of God, either as First Cause, as Creator, or as the absolute Other, whether in terms of the eternal or the contingent, as the origin of temporality or as a disturbance and interruption of temporal continuity, whether as the kairos and fullness of time or as the total desert of boredom under the eternal sun, indeed an absolutism of boredom. Born out of prophecy, promise, and apocalyptic expectations, the philosophy of religion within Judaism and Christianity is eminently a philosophy of time. Nurtured by the memory of the past, religious traditions are themselves caught up in the power of memory. But what happens to these traditions when the structure of time is redefined, when its unity fractures and dissolves? Are we entering a new era of confusion and disruption? Would that be the legacy of the proclaimed “death of God”? Has the concept of God been caught up in metaphysical concepts that are unsustainable? Is the mystery of the divine presence connected to practices rather than abstract concepts such as being and causation, i.e., to forgiveness and promise, to forgetting the past and messianic expectations of the coming of the Other? Moreover, is forgiveness still a possibility, even a necessity, or does it already operate at the limit of the impossible? Is it still necessary to remember the dead with reverence or should the past be left to itself? Is it possible to exist under the pressure and shadows of the past? Is not forgetting, and thus letting go of the past, the condition of possibility for life? In the criss-crossing perspectives of future and past, some of the most crucial questions are raised within current philosophy of religion, predominantly from a phenomenological point of view. Hence, the current volume is questioning the concept of time from opposing and sometimes 4

Cf. Augustine, Confessions XI.30, 280

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even contradictory perspectives: The past conditioning the future, and the future redefining the past, in forgetfulness, remembrance, or repetition.The first section of Impossible Time focuses on the future of the past, i.e., former examples of how we may question and understand the structure of future events, whereas the last section discusses the past of the future, i.e., how the past seems to structure the future but thereby also conditions the understanding of self and the questioning of God. The section in-between, part II, draws the future and the past into a historical and systematic deliberation on the possibilities and impossibilities of time. In the following we will give a short presentation of the thirteen essays included in this volume, a selection of papers presented at The Third Nordic Conference for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Copenhagen in June 2011. Carsten Pallesen and Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen deserve a heartfelt word of thanks from all the participants for their effort in organizing the event, and further thanks go to the University of Copenhagen for making the event possible. Thanks to Jennifer Adams-Massmann for her work copyediting and proofreading the manuscripts and generating the index and to Frank Hamburger for the layout and setting of the text. Finally, our sincere gratitude goes to the Nordic Council and its research unit NordForsk for their generous funding of the conference and of the network for Philosophy of Religion in Northern Europe (PRINE), and of the present volume. The first section called Past in the Future includes five essays mainly focusing on studies in phenomenology, from Husserl to Heidegger, from Edith Stein to Ricoeur, as well as two essays on Nietzsche. The first essay, “Questioning Time,” raises the basic question of this volume through a study of a still unpublished text by Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s manuscript “Quid est tempus?” is generally unknown and, to our knowledge, has never before been subjected to serious academic analysis. According to Marius Timmann Mjaaland it forces us to raise the question of time in Heidegger’s philosophy from a radically different angle and trace it through the most basic periods of change and reversal in Heidegger’s thought, the so-called Kehre. “Quid est tempus?” shows the deep influence of Augustine on Heidegger’s conception of time and moves far beyond the celebrated analysis of temporality in his opus magnum, Being and Time. The manuscript is also riddled with the questions that keep on haunting Heidegger before and after the Kehre: the question of religion, of prayer, and of man’s relationship to God.While introducing these questions, Mjaaland also traces Heidegger’s question of time back to Aristotle and Augustine, two of the philosophers who have formed the Western conception of temporality and thus our perception of history, of consciousness, and of God. The two essays that follow are concerned with Nietzsche, specifically his controversial expectations for the future and his problematic relationship to the past. German philosopher Werner Stegmaier takes this occasion to revisit

Introduction

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The Gay Science and the famous passages on the Madman (§ 125) and the meaning of our cheerfulness (§ 343). These two texts were written with five years distance of of one another, and the latter comments upon the former as an almost prophetic anticipation of the times to come after this horrifying event. Stegmaier sees this great event as largely misunderstood by Nietz-sche’s contemporaries; thus, it is perceived as past in the future (vergangene Zukunft). The openness of this futuristic past allows for new interpretations of the event, and Stegmaier’s suggestion presented toward the end of his essay is indeed rather surprising. Iben Damgaard adopts a contrary perspective on Nietzsche in her article “Nietzsche and the Past,” based primarily on his early essay, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874). Although Nietzsche was fond of historical consciousness and carefully studied the written traces of the past, he was suspicious of history as mere spectatorship of the past and advocated a philology and philosophy that serve life, rather than simply revering the dead. Hence the past ought to be studied in the light of the future. Thus, coming from the opposite angle, her essay ends up with a view of the past which supplements Stegmaier’s vision of the future: it is perceived as the future of the past, a perspective that is also echoed in Claudia Welz’s essay in the third section of this volume. According to Damgaard, forgetfulness plays a significant role in order to reopen the past for creative anticipation of future possibilities. In her essay on “Religion at the Center of Phenomenology,” Jonna Bornemark turns to Husserl’s analysis of inner time-consciousness and points out that this is where we find the deepest foundation of his phenomenology. Focusing on the question of intentionality and its temporality, Husserl distinguishes horizontal intentionality (Längsintentionalität) from vertical intentionality (Querintentionalität), in which the latter focuses on objects, whereas the former is an awareness of the temporality and continuity of consciousness itself. However, since the act of observation can never coincide with the act of participation, the unity of time is suspended and the separation of two forms of temporality is repeated into an infinite regress. At this point Bornemark moves on to Edith Stein, who edited Husserl’s first volume on inner time-consciousness and developed her own philosophy of time which begins where Husserl leaves the question in an infinite regress. She believes that the only way to solve the problem is an appeal to divine presence, similar to that suggested by Augustine, a transcendence which is radically immanent, creating the “temporality of time and the light of truth.” Hence, Bornemark reveals the parallel structure of phenomenology and religion but emphasizes the basic difference, i.e., that religion may give an answer where phenomenology sticks to the question, and the methodological ignorance of epoché. Finally, she suggests an approach that may include both perspectives in a more generous phenomenology with-

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out leveling the difference, following a proposition by phenomenologist Michel Henry. The first section ends with an essay by Øystein Brekke, “On the Subject of Epigenesis.” Epigenesis is a figure that appears in the hermeneutic philosophy of Paul Ricoeur as well as in contemporary science. In genetics, epigenesis is applied as a concept describing “the interaction between heredity and environment in the organism as it moves in time,” as Brekke notes, hence a puzzling theory of changes in the DNA points towards the contingency of future biological development. For Ricoeur the concept enters into hermeneutics as a description of the temporal change of symbolic meaning – in philosophy, in narrative, and in religion. Moreover, with Ricoeur, Brekke sees epigenesis as a possibility of conceiving the temporality of the subject, but also of refiguring its plasticity in time. By reconsidering Malabou’s reinterpretation of Hegel as a philosopher of spatial time, Brekke’s theoretical analysis points ahead to the essays of Comay and Pallesen in the second part of this volume. He suggests that Ricoeur’s symbolism of evil may be read as a study not mainly of past religious symbols but of the future of religion and of epigenetic subjectivity, of forgiveness and of otherness within the self. With Philipp Stoellger’s essay on “Philosophy of Religion – and its Sense for the Impossible” we enter the second part and another core question of the present volume. Stoellger asks about the future of philosophy of religion in regard to its temporal modalities. Philosophy of religion needs a special sense for and license to deal with impossibilities, he argues. Historians, literary writers, and phenomenologists all work with different impossibilities and in various ways. “The impossible” as a gesture of exclusion may thereby appear as an undercutting of their very topic. The relevant impossibilities considered within these disciplines are, for instance, forgiving and forgetting, giving, trust and hope, and, in the stricter sense, faith. According to Stoellger, faith is not merely possible or simply real, not only necessary or merely contingent, but in a strong sense impossible but real. The decisive borderline is thereby the shift between possibility and impossibility, because faith is defined as the shifting of this borderline. Hence, he argues that philosophy of religion works with a sort of double paradox: It has to investigate both the reality of impossibilities and impossible realities. Stoellger finally displays this double dealing with the impossible in a number of (primarily) Christological images. Arne Grøn explores the temporal relationship between immanence and transcendence in his article, “Time and Transcendence: Religion and Ethics.” He argues that the idea of transcendence in terms of ‘going beyond’ the human is itself a deeply human enterprise. Thus, the very idea of transcendence is highly ambiguous. This ambiguity of transcendence is also reflected in the idea of time: In moving “beyond” time, he argues with

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Kierkegaard, we are already situated “in” time. We are already beyond “in that we face the question of time, that is, what it means to be situated in time.” The binary code “transcendence/immanence” shows itself as both ambiguous and problematic – and yet highly relevant to the problem of being human. Rebecca Comay turns her attention to “David’s Death of Marat and the Trauma of Modernity.” She explores the different, paradoxical layers of meaning in this famous and highly enigmatic painting from 1793. According to Comay, the painting “points to the link between the radically open future of the revolution and its traumatically unfinished past.” Hence, the French Revolution becomes a valuable interpretive key for understanding the transition to modernity. With their efforts at eradicating religious memory, the fathers of the revolution introduced new notions, new liturgies, and even intended to reestablish time “from the very beginning” with a new calendar starting at year 1. All these efforts are today perceivable in the pictures of Marat, thus making them particularly interesting for philosophical, art historical, and aesthetic analysis. Still, this artistic and artificial effort at reconfiguring time, in Comay’s reading, becomes an intriguing reminder of the impossibilities of breaking out of and completely reconfiguring time. As it turns out, religious memory, the tragedy of political action, and the problem of death have all left their visible or invisible traces on the canvas. In his essay entitled “Northern Prince Syndrome,” Carsten Pallesen draws on the definition of pure self-affection in Kant, which is defined as a temporal synthesis lingering between the passive and the active. He sees a similar ambivalence in the definition of self-consciousness in Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit. This is where the so-called northern principle in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right comes to play a peculiar and ambivalent role, political and mythical, temporally directed towards the future, and yet an eternal, atemporal ideal. Hegel appeals to the Lutheran idea of freedom as the point of departure for self-description within self-affection, overcoming the traumas of the past yet opening up the possibility of a plasticity of the self which includes the negativity within a new, politico-theologically defined subjectivity. Finally, Pallesen compares this plastic Hegelian identity with the theory of religious and cultural identity in Luhmann. Both imply a reduplication of actuality in religion, though not as essence or being, but rather in a figure of difference. Thus, he concludes that “self-description represents a doubling of reality not controlled by Cartesian or Platonic ideas,” but by the reinterpretation of scripture and texts as future possibilities. The third section of this volume opens with an essay called “The Future of the Past: Memory, Forgetting, and Personal Identity.” Here Claudia Welz discusses the ethical implications of forgetting and remembering related to personal identity. Welz thus asks and tries to answer three fundamental

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questions: What can we remember, i.e., what are the limits and scopes of human memory? What do we have to remember, i.e., what are we ethically obliged to remember? What may we forget, i.e., what are we not obliged to remember? Through a detailed examination of these three questions from an interdisciplinary approach including philosophy, theology, and literature, Welz relates her answers to the question of personal identity. Jan-Olav Henriksen’s essay is simply called “I need time for my ‘self ’: The Importance of Time for the Development of Religious Selfhood.” He explores the relevance of temporality in relation to religious identity, thereby avoiding the concepts of sin and guilt and emphasizing instead the positive possibilities connected to human desire. He thereby picks up the same thread as Øystein Brekke, Carsten Pallesen, and Claudia Welz in the current volume but reframes the question of identity within the framework of current psychoanalysis and narrative hermeneutics. Analyzing the impact of two quotations from Paul Ricoeur and Heinz Kohut respectively, Henriksen explores the symbolic and relational nature of religious selfhood. Joseph Ballan’s essay called “Liturgy, Inoperativity, and Time,” focuses on the relation between “liturgical” and “secular” time. Contrasting Giorgio Agamben and the Catholic phenomenologist Jean-Yves Lacoste’s understanding of “inoperativity,” Ballan unfolds a discussion of the “secularization of time” understood as a farewell to liturgical time. Hence, the main question raised by Ballan is:What precisely is the relation between “liturgical” and “secular” time? The key to understanding this difference, Ballan argues, is to be found in the temporal logic of inoperativity. In the final essay called “The Absolutism of Boredom,” Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen links the renowned discussion of “the death of God” to considerations related to the (alleged) omnipotent God’s boredom. “Did God,” Rasmussen wonders as he draws on speculations found both in Friedrich Nietzsche and Hans Blumenberg,“eventually die from his own, unbearable boredom?” Rasmussen thereby comes back to a topic already suggested by Stegmaier in the second essay of the first section but develops this idea in a different direction: By deconstructing God’s omnipotence, the possibility of another God becomes visible: a God who did not immediately know what God had done when he created the world, thereby extracting a “new,” possible God from the phenomenon of boredom. Read in its entirety, Impossible Time may be perceived as a recollection of time lost, a current challenge of thinking the impossible, and even as a prophecy of future insights still hidden from human eyes. The philosophy of religion thus operates at the boundary between the future and the past, and between the possible and the impossible. The current volume seeks to explore this limit, predominantly from the angle of the impossible. As the examples from the past show how philosophers kept wondering about the aporias of time, seeking to understand time and conceptualize its being, we

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expect the future of philosophy of religion to be a question of imagination and impossibility, of imagining the yet unseen. Therefore, it is about unacknowledged possibilities beyond what is currently perceived as within the limits of the possible. We see it primarily as a promise but it may indeed, after all, turn out to be a curse.

I. Past in the Future

Questioning Time Marius Timmann Mjaaland The question of time has its own history and temporal development. Each time the question is asked differently: “How to measure time?” Aristotle asks. How to explain its “being”? What “is” being after all, when being becomes temporal? Augustine, on the other hand, seeks to understand the experience of being temporal, wondering what kind of volatile existence and non-existence is characterized by the transition from future over presence into the past. Is there any presence at all or is time perpetually absent, as “not yet” or “already”? In a still-unpublished lecture, Heidegger draws attention to the common ground of the two philosophers and is forced to question his own theory, his existential ontology, even the place from which he is posing the question. Thus, time affects the questions and the queries, the prayers and the confessions for truth. That Heidegger gave a lecture on Augustine’s meditation on time in October 1930 is well-known but what he actually said seems to be a well-kept secret. The manuscript is still treasured in the old library at the monastery in Beuron and is occasionally mentioned in biographical works but has hardly been the topic of any serious philosophical or theological analysis.1 Hence, the lecture raises several questions concerning the development of Heidegger’s philosophy of time: Did he provide new insights into the historical roots of his theory from Being and Time? Did he already change or criticize that theory? Does the lecture indicate that a new turn, the so-called Kehre, is approaching in Heidegger’s philosophy of time2? And 1 The lecture “Quid est tempus?” [QET] has not yet been published in Heidegger’s collected works but is planned for volume 80 of the German edition. I received a copy of Heidegger’s original typescript from Prof. Johannes Brachtendorf, professor of philosophy and Catholic theology at the University of Tübingen. He had received this copy directly from the library at Beuron. It had been written on a typewriter with a number of handwritten corrections, Greek and Latin additions, deleted letters, and added pages. I will refer to Heidegger’s original pagination, which includes thirteen regular pages (numbered 1–13) and five added pages: three pages added to pages 3/4 (numbered 4a, 4b, 4c), one page added to pages 8/9 (numbered 8a), and one page added to page 12 (numbered 12a). Finally, on this occasion I would like to offer a word of thanks to Prof. Brachtendorf and the Augustinian friars of Beuron who gave me access to this very valuable manuscript. 2 Cf. Françoise Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time, tr. François Raffourd and Daniel Pettigrew (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), 56–62.

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would a new reading of Aristotle and Augustine contradict his interpretation of these classical approaches to the question? By accident I was given access to a copy of the typed manuscript with handwritten notes, inserted Greek letters, additions and corrections. Although largely overlooked I believe it is a key text not only for understanding the decisive changes going on in Heidegger’s theory of time around 1930, but also for his approach to the history of metaphysics, in this case the metaphysics of time. The Kehre in Heidegger’s philosophy is indeed an invention of his understanding of temporality, an Ereignis oscillating between being and non-being, between concealing and revealing. In the history of philosophy hardly anyone describes this ambiguity as precisely as Augustine. And Heidegger follows in his footsteps. His own title for these reflections is simply “Considerations concerning St. Augustine’s Meditation on Time in Confessions XI.” I will examine the basic questions raised in this lecture but also compare it to Being and Time and trace some of the main problems back to Aristotle and Augustine. Heidegger’s lecture will appear under another name in the Collected Works, but Augustine’s question and confession to God are still echoed in the title given to this lecture: “Quid est tempus?”

1. Heidegger’s Refugium In October 1930 Heidegger visited the famous monastery in Beuron, the Erzabtei St. Martin, three years after publishing Being and Time (1927) and three years before he delivered the fateful inaugural speech as rector in Freiburg (1933), in the same year in which On the Essence of Truth was published. This was one of his favorite retreats in this period, and the visit reflects his rather ambivalent relationship to religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. He occasionally visited the monastery together with some of his young female admirers or lovers like Elisabeth Blochmann and Hannah Arendt. Hence, during this period of fracturing and upheaval – politically, intellectually, religiously, and personally – Beuron became an ex-static place of refuge and reflection. On October 26, 1930 Martin Heidegger spoke to the monks, clerics, and novices as a sign of gratitude for his friendly reception in their old library. His topic chosen for the learned Augustinian friars was Augustine’s classical meditation on time in Confessions XI. The three texts he singled out as the most decisive analyses of time in Western philosophy are Aristotle’s Physics IV, c. 10–14; Augustine’s Confessions XI; and Kant’s deliberation on the concept of time in the Critique of Pure Reason, in the section concerning the transcendental deduction of

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the categories.3 Most surprising is indeed the reference to Augustine here, since he is hardly mentioned at all in Being and Time, except for brief references to the nunc stans and a single footnote in § 81.4 The three approaches are very different, he admits, when it comes to the areas of questioning – and even more so given the direction and content of the results and responses. But nevertheless, essentially they all come down to the same thing.5 Heidegger’s analysis focuses on Augustine and this limited scope makes the distinction between essential and inessential even more interesting: Would this conclusion about progress only in what is inessential also apply to Heidegger’s own analysis of time, presented in Being and Time three years earlier? Or was that the only exception? Is he essentially – that is, regarding questions of essence and ontology – just saying the same thing as Aristotle and Kant, or even more importantly, as Augustine? Does he thereby return to a “vulgar” conception of time, or conversely, has Augustine anticipated Heidegger’s philosophy of time in his Confessions and transcended that vulgar horizon? In Being and Time Heidegger claimed to have retrieved the original and ecstatic-futuristic question of time, in transcending the metaphysical constraints imposed on it by historical analyses from Aristotle to Hegel.6 In § 81, towards the very end of the work he never actually finished, he analyzes the reasons why everyday conceptions of time generally remain within the limits drawn up by metaphysics and thus fall into vulgarity: (1) It is due to the inner-temporality (Innerzeitlichkeit) or to put it less elegantly, the “container model,” for the perception of time. Hence, time is perceived, measured, and understood according to a certain preconception of time as linear and divided into future, present, and past. (2) The vulgar conception of time perceives any moment from the nowperspective, without profoundly reflecting on the constitution of this now and its relation to the self. Hence, it remains exoteric (äußerlich) even though it may indicate an extraordinary relationship to the soul, spirit, or subject.7 (3) It remains basically ignorant concerning the authentic origin of time. Moreover, it continuously conceals a more original understanding and fails

3

Cf. “Quid est tempus?” 1. Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), 479 (and footnote xiii, 499); Original: Sein und Zeit, 17th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993), 427, footnote 3. 5 “Und doch gehören die drei grundverschiedenen Besinnungen im Ersten 4

und Letzten zusammen; wie überall in der Philosophie, wenn Sie in der Nähe des Wesens der Dinge weilt. Im Wesentlichen keinen Fortschritt; Fortschritt nur im Unwesentlichen und zutiefst Belanglosen.” (“Quid est tempus?” 1). 6 7

Cf. Being and Time, 460, 480; Sein und Zeit, 408, 428. Cf. Being and Time, 479; Sein und Zeit, 427.

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to uphold the differentiation of time into authentic and inauthentic, the original and the vulgar conception of time. According to Heidegger, what is needed therefore is a clarifying analysis of the conditions of possibility for this inner-temporal world-time, in order to question its legitimization and validity in the first place. Heidegger admits that this vulgar conception of time has its natural right – in terms of a natural metaphysics and a measurable, calculable description of history, and of risk, of political, human, and technical improvement. But all that indicates improvement or progress with respect to the inessential. Essentially, he believes that there is no progress at all but rather a continuous fall into the vulgar conception of time which conceives of the individual and its conception of Dasein in improper, and thus inauthentic, terms. The very distinction between Being and beings, between original and vulgar, vanishes into oblivion. Hence, he sees the urgent need for a basic questioning of this vulgar temporality, which is otherwise taken for granted. Such questioning is exactly what Heidegger encountered when he reread book XI of Augustine’s Confessions, three years after the publication of Being and Time. As soon as we begin reading Heidegger’s lecture on Augustine’s concept of time, further questions immediately occur. These questions lead us back to two texts of major importance in the history of Western philosophy: Aristotle’s Physics and Augustine’s Confessions. We will therefore take the time needed to recall the problems addressed by Aristotle and Augustine concerning the question of time.

2. Aristotle on the Ambiguity of Existence in Time In Physics, Book IV, Aristotle elaborates his understanding of how movement (κίνησις) is possible in a world full of beings.8 Movement seems to be inherent to all beings in the world but this possibility for change also seems to undermine their ontological status, including the ontological status of this question: What is time? 9 Can time properly be said to be at all when it continually passes away? He writes:

8 Cf. Aristotle, Physics, tr. Philip H.Wicksteed and Francis M. Cornford, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 223 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), Book IV, 217b–228a. I refer to this translation and the critical edition of the Greek text unless otherwise indicated. 9 “The subject of inquiry next is time (χρόνος) … The following considerations might make one suspect either that there is really no such thing as time, or at least that it has only an equivocal and obscure existence.” (ibid., 217b)

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Some of it is past and no longer exists, and the rest is future and does not yet exist; and time, whether limitless or any given length of time we take, is entirely made up of the no-longer and not-yet; and how can we conceive of that which is composed of non-existents sharing in existence in any way?10

(1) Aristotle’s first major question thus concerns the being or non-being of time. Considering its major impact, time should be something rather than nothing. But how to identify, define and understand this something? If time is divisible and these parts exist, then time must, at least to some extent, exist. Aristotle confirms that time is divisible but the division as such lacks certain and ostensible criteria. Given that measurability is the condition for its existence, then the “now,” as indivisible, remains outside of time. More precisely, it is difficult to decide whether this “now” that appears to “divide the past and the future” (a) is always one and the same, i.e., remains identical to itself, or (b) is perpetually different.11 The Greek philosopher discusses both alternatives but concludes that none are viable, since in the first case the present time would be simultaneous with what happened ten thousand years ago, and in the second case it must have ceased to be itself at some particular moment in time. But “it cannot have ceased to be when it was itself the ‘now,’ for that is just when it existed” – and it is equally impossible that it should have perished in any other “now.”12 Hence, wherein does it perish – in itself or in the next “now”? Aristotle argues that there must then have been some intermediary moment between one now and the next, but that is impossible (ἀδύνατον). The problem thus remains unsolved and this first question is described as an aporia, and explicitly an exoteric one. Heidegger thus rephrases the first conclusion as follows: Time is there (vorhanden) in the moment it passes away and gets lost (abhanden).13 It is and it is not. (2) The second question concerns the measurability of time.14 Aristotle observes that it is possible to measure time and thereby to measure movement and change. Time cannot be identical with movement or change but neither can it be completely disconnected from them.15 More precisely, time remains the condition for movement and for measuring change. But with what can we measure time? Can time measure time or can it only 10

Ibid., 218a. Cf. Aristotle, Physics, 218a. 12 Ibid., 218a. 13 “Sie ist Zeit, als solche vorhanden gerade in dem sie vergeht, abhanden kommt.” (“Quid est Tempus?” 2) 14 “When we perceive of a distinct before and after, then we speak of time; for this is just what time is, the calculable measure of the dimension of motion with respect to before-and-afterness.” (Aristotle, Physics, 219b) 15 Cf. ibid., 219b. 11

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measure something else? According to Aristotle, the measurability of time depends on the relationship between time and movement: Time, then, is not movement, but that by which movement can be numerically estimated. To see this, reflect that we estimate any kind of more-and-lessness by number; so, since we estimate all more-or-lessness on some numerical scale and estimate the more-or-lessness of motion by time, time is a scale on which something (to whit, movement) can be numerically estimated. But now, since “numbers” has two meanings … we have to note that time is the countable thing that we are counting, not the numbers we count in – which two things are different.16

The second question thus moves beyond the first: its measurability belongs to the essence of time, at least in the physical sense. Without the numbers measuring time, from one point to another, we would not be able to register it. The distance from one point to another indicates a period of time, a line (γραμμή), but thereby “time” is translated into and explained in terms of space.17 Still, its “existence” has not been explained.Thus Aristotle confronts the question of measurability with the ambiguous being (and nonbeing) of time: in what sense is time there and in what sense is it not there? Time is there, he claims, insofar as there is someone to count it and measure time units. And this measuring is entirely dependent on the soul or mind, the ψυχή.Without an existing mind, there is no being of time. At this point, Aristotle returns to the ἀπορία of being and non-being without solving it. There is no positive qualification of time beyond this measurability; this soul that verges at the limit between being and non-being cannot settle within the one or the other. These two problems, concerning the being/non-being and measurability of time, are kept open throughout the entire discussion. Thus, the question of time is situated within the problem of movement and serves the purpose of explaining how movement is possible. After all, Aristotle concludes, time remains close to destruction: “Indeed, it is evident that the mere passage of time itself is destructive rather than generative … because change is primarily a “passing away.” So it is only incidentally that time is the cause of things coming into being and existing.”18 Concerning the location, the topos of the problem, Aristotle points out that the very idea of time is infinite and thus points in the direction of the limitless – the ἄπειρον. In its abstract 16

Ibid. See Jacques Derrida’s fascinating essay on this line (γραμμή) that divides and defers the being (οὐσία) of time: Jacques Derrida, “Ousia and Grammē: Note on a Note from Being and Time,” in Margins of Philosophy, tr. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 29–68. 18 Aristotle, Physics, 222b. 17

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form it is therefore situated close to similar problems: the undefined, the place, the void. According to Heidegger, this implies that Aristotle remains at a certain “stage” and cannot get beyond that stage, since it would transcend the horizon of his inquiry.19 At this point, however, Heidegger interrupts himself and inserts three extra pages into the manuscript where he discusses the relationship between Aristotle and Augustine. The point he needs to underscore is that Aristotle indeed worked on the experience of everyday time (“die alltägliche Erfahrung der Zeit”), and for the first time this experience conceptually permeates the phenomenon.20 He finds that the analysis is advanced and yet trivial, or vulgar, as he called it in Sein und Zeit. This strategy of negation makes Aristotle fit nicely into the phenomenological approach, as a preconception (Vorverständnis) of the existential analysis. But what follows at the point of transition to a more profound understanding? How does the history of Being develop further, which in this case is the ambiguous Seinsgeschichte of time itself? Heidegger proceeds seamlessly to Augustine and Book XI of the Confessions.

3. Augustine: Impossible Time The remarkable disproportion between the familiar perception of time and the paradoxes it raises for thought is the reason why Augustine starts questioning the concept on time: For what is time? Who is able so much as in thought to comprehend it, so much as to express himself concerning it? And yet what in our usual discourse do we more familiarly and knowingly make mention of than time? And surely, we understand it well enough, when we speak of it: we understand it also, when in speaking with another we hear it named. What is time then? If nobody asks me, I know: but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not. 21

Augustine proceeds phenomenologically by observing the everyday experience of time but also questioning this experience and asking for a more profound understanding of what it is. There is much knowledge available in experience and in language – for example, the division of verbal forms 19 “Aristoteles kommt über diese negative Kennzeichnung des Zusammenhangs von Seele und Zeit nicht hinaus. Das heißt aber: die Interpretation des Wesens der Zeit selbst bleibt auf einer bestimmten ‘Stufe’ stehen. (s. Beilage)” (“Quid est tempus?” 3). 20 “Das Bahnbrechende der aristotelischen Zeitabhandlung liegt aber darin, daß sie zum ersten Mal die in der alltäglichen Erfahrung begegnende Zeit, in der Art wie sie begegnet, auffängt und das so Aufgefangene erstmals begrifflich durchdringt.” (ibid., 3a). 21 Augustine, Confessions, ed. and tr. by William Watts, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), Book XI, c. 14 [XI.14], 238–39.

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into praeteritum, praesens, and futurum – and yet exactly the dynamic and origin of this most familiar experience remains hidden to us. We are using it and applying it all the time. But what is it that we measure when we measure time? Augustine points out that neither past nor future is in the sense that we experience it now and may point at it. Past and future are referred to as being absent, and still, this absence is in a certain sense present in our mind and we think of it as measurable, as one hundred years, one year, fourteen days, one day, etc. Augustine thus enters into the problem of measuring past or future times when he asks: Can one hundred years be present? Are we not able to be present only in the first, the second, the third year, and so on, whereas all the other years are either future or past? And what about one year? Could the whole year be present to us at once? Are we not only present in one day at a time? And what about this one day? Is not only one hour present to us, whereas the 23 others are absent?22 A phenomenological reduction is thus performed by Augustine until he reaches the point where the familiar concept of time becomes impossible, imperceptible: What is this time,of which we say it is long? The past is no longer, the future is not yet – and even the presence does not provide any opportunity for measuring the length of time. Hence, no interpretation of its meaning or impact is possible. Even when we move down to the micro level of time and try to study the shortest periods – a second, a moment – we are forced to conclude that not even this very short period is really present: “nulla minutissima pars momentorum praesens.”23 However, this presence as such occupies no space; it is not translatable into the spatial dimension of a “space of time,” a Zeitraum. A careful analysis of the concept of time will have to conclude that “praesens autem nullum habet spatium” – the present therefore has no space.24 We have learned to think of time as threefold, divided into future, past, and present. But perhaps only the present may count as being – in terms of being perceived? The future moves into darkness (occultum), the Church Father concludes, and the past recedes into a similar darkness (occultum). 25 And what if even the present is absent, since it “is” nothing but a point of transition at the threshold from the darkness of future towards the darkness of the past? Augustine raises Aristotle’s first question more forcefully than the latter did in the Physics, the question of being and non-being. Time is presupposed as being there and makes sense within a familiar context but when 22

Cf. Conf. XI.15, 240 f. The full sentence runs as follows: “si quid intellegitur temporis, quod in nullas iam vel minutissimas momentorum partes dividi possit, id solum est, quod praesens dicatur” (Conf. XI.15, 242); cf. Heidegger, QET, 6. 24 Conf. XI.15, 244. 25 Conf. XI.17, 246. 23

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basically questioned, it becomes an impossible concept. In the effort to understand time as presence, the concept as such evades definition and dissolves into past or future absence, that is, non-presence. As readers of Augustine we are thus left in suspense and confusion: Is there a meaningful way of defining the concept of time that avoids this trap? He proceeds with the same two questions as Aristotle, concerning the measurability and the being or non-being of time. However, this time both are connected to the perception of time, or inner time-consciousness, as Husserl would say, that is, they relate to the question of memory and expectation. Time is thus connected to movement and to measuring moving bodies but we may also measure time when it is not moving. Hence, time “is” not, and cannot be, identified with the motion of bodies.26 We may, however, measure syllables in our mind and thus we perceive a “stretching out (dis-tentio) in time” in a poem, a foot, or a syllable.27 Time is thus preliminarily defined as distension, i.e., distension in the mind or soul (anima): It is in you, my mind, that I measure my times. Do not interrupt me now, that is, do not interrupt your own self with the tumults of your own impressions. In you, I say, it is that I measure the times. The impression, which things passing by cause in you, and remains even when things are gone, that is it which being still present, I do measure: not the things which have passed by that this impression might be made. This do I measure, when as I measure times. Either therefore times do exist or I do not measure times.28

Let me draw attention to the double focus of this interruption: Augustine describes the perception of time within his mind but at the same time he speaks to his alter ego and asks his mind not to interrupt his inquiry. His mind is thus concentrated and stretched out at the same time, present and yet absent, measuring and yet immeasurable. At this point of the inquiry he concludes that we do measure time in our mind by way of memory and expectation. These are the two forms in which the mind “stretches out” or extends itself (“non distentus, sed extentus”) towards the future and towards the past.29 This, finally, is the clue to understanding the major difference between creature and Creator: whereas the ego falls into dissolution “amid the changing times,” the love of God is a fire everlasting.30 26

“Non ergo tempus corporis motus.” Conf. XI.24, 264. “It carmen, ita pes, ita syllaba. inde mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem.” Conf. XI.26, 268. 28 “In te, anima meus, tempora mea metior … ergo aut ipsa sunt tempora, aut non tempora metior.” Conf. XI.27, 272 f. 29 Cf. Conf. XI.29, 278. 30 “Nunc vero anni mei in gemitibus … at ego in tempora dissilui, quorum ordinem nescio, et tumultuosis varietatibus dilaniantur cogitations mea, intima viscera animae meae, donec in te confluam purgatus et liquidus igne amoris tui.” Conf. XI.30, 280. 27

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Augustine thus asks God to resolve this most intricate enigma and thus enlighten him about the truth of the disturbing question of time: “Give me what I love: for love I do, and this love hast thou given me.”31 This prayer for enlightenment and revelation is the fire burning in the soul of the author, driving him to delve deeper and deeper into the question. The ambiguity of this love of wisdom and this wisdom of love is palpable: on the one hand, his analysis of the foundation of time in his perception of it redefines his existence as ex-tension (stretching out) between past and future, focusing on that which is ahead of him. On the other hand, this temporal existence is marked by unavoidable dissolution, a burning fire of existence through which the self is annihilated. Yet this “emptying” of oneself is revealed as the true goal of human existence, since by this being-unto-death – while experiencing the power of death in the dissolution and exhaustion of life, which indeed becomes an ars moriendi – the lover of wisdom (philosopher) is liquified and purified by the fire of divine love. 32 Heidegger almost exclusively focuses on the enlightenment, the search for truth, whereas the dissolution and exhaustion of life is mentioned only in passing. Towards the end of the lecture this ambiguity is further elaborated, however, which has possibly contributed to one of the most decisive changes in Heidegger’s thought which took place in the early 1930s: the Kehre. A comparison of the conceptions of time in Being and Time and “Quid est tempus?” will presumably further clarify the issue.

4. Temporality in Being and Time From the very outset, temporality is the problem that justifies a new approach to ontology in Being and Time, in terms of a destruction of the history of metaphysics. Having studied being without time, or time in terms of being, philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel have, according to Heidegger, missed the radical question raised by the experience of time: that the conditions for thought are ultimately changing, and that the most decisive questions are those raised beyond the current horizon, thus shaking the conditions of thought in their foundations. The question of authentic existence, of facticity and decay, define the point of departure for Heidegger’s opus magnum. In the second half of the book, i.e., “Part One, Division Two” of the work that was never completed, he discusses the foundation of historicity in human temporality and then turns towards the analysis of temporality itself. Temporal existence is redefined by an ontological analysis of Dasein as being-towards-death. Hence, temporality 31 32

“Da quod amo: amo enim, et hoc tu dedisti.” Conf. XI.22, 256. Cf. Conf. XI.30, 280.

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is always and decisively directed towards the future – existing authentically means being-towards-the-end. Still, the destructive shock raised by the discovery of death as the limit of Dasein should not be underestimated. That shock, and the profound sentiment of anxiety, initiates the traumatic search for truth as revelation by Heidegger, in a permanent process of uncovering and unveiling the confusions and self-deceptions hindering an authentic perception and understanding of existence. However, it is not until § 65 of Being and Time that Heidegger actually defines the term “temporality” as gewesend-gegenwärtigende Zukunft, thus directing the authentic concept of time towards the future, although clearly founded in the present and past of a personal self through the decision and the determination which is bound to a particular situation. He concludes: “Temporality thus discloses itself as the sense of authentic care.”33 In temporality one may discover the sense of being (Sinn des Seins) as such, whereas an inauthentic perception of time precludes such a discovery. According to Heidegger the opposite of such authentic temporality is the vulgar concept of time, which is distinguished by “inner-temporality,” an exoteric privileging of the present moment, the now, and ignorance concerning the origin of time in Dasein’s being-towards-death. Authentic temporality, on the other hand, is described as the unity of existence, facticity, and decay (Verfallen). It is defined as ecstatic, an ἐκστατικόν: The original experience of being “beside oneself ” in and of itself. The ecstatic character of temporality is for Heidegger its authentic and original form – all other forms are derivations. Hence, the ecstatic experience of being beside oneself makes possible the temporalization of temporality. Many questions were immediately raised by the critics: Why should this be the most original and authentic experience of time? Does he give any convincing arguments why this conception of time is authentic and thus true, whereas all the others are false because inauthentic? Based on the lecture from 1930 we might well add: Are not the differences mainly concerned with the “inessential,” whereas the “essential” remains the same, as Heidegger would later claim about Aristotle, Augustine, and Kant in Beuron? More interesting than answering such true/false questions is the task of identifying the distinction between the two in order to clarify the difference between the one and the other. How may the transition from one to the other be possible? Is it perceivable as a certain repetition, and if so, as a repetition of what? Heidegger discusses Aristotle, Kant, and finally Hegel at length. He argues that Hegel, even in his definition of Spirit, never moves beyond Aristotle’s analysis of time in Physics IV. The absence of Augustine in these 33

Being and Time, 374. Original: “Zeitlichkeit enthüllt sich als der Sinn der eigentlichen Sorge.” Sein und Zeit, 326. English translation modified.

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deliberations is conspicuous. Two basic traits indicate their proximity to Augustine: first, the foundation of temporality in human existence rather than some external criterion like measurability or movement, and second, the directedness towards the future. Yet the references to Augustine are sparse, limited to a couple of footnotes and one reference to the nunc stans as privileging the presence (qua ousia or parousia) eternally. Moreover, these references are polemical and not exactly concerned with the essential parts of his theory – which makes the omissions all the more palpable.

5. Image and Repetition The lecture in Beuron thus seems like a concession, redemption and compensation, implicitly indicating how decisive Augustine has been for Heidegger’s own theory of time. His analysis of Augustine begins with a discussion of editions: A break is often presumed to have taken place within the Confessions, between the autobiographical books I-X and the more philosophical books XI-XII, resulting in a series of editions of the work only including the first ten books. The Confessions are thus often perceived as an autobiographical work with a short theoretical appendix. However, Heidegger kept the unity of the work and gave substantial arguments for doing so. He claimed that book XI is where all the other books are declared and explained; this is the passage where the Confessions arrive at their metaphysical foundation. Contrary to popular opinion Heidegger defended the following theses:34 (i) The reflection on time is required by the inner acquiescence of the Confessions. (ii) In book XI, the Confessions reach their original goal, i.e., they arrive at their metaphysical foundation. (iii) The treatise on time is not at all an appendix; rather, it is the decisive exposure of the entire work and it is completely misunderstood when read as an autobiography. Heidegger’s reading is merely one of many possible approaches to this complex work. It is neither necessary nor particularly convincing at first sight. Even Augustine himself declared that the three last books could be considered a postscript to the first ten. The narrative emphasis of the Confessions is centered on Augustine’s conversion and the death of his mother, all much earlier in the work. Thus, according to conventional readings, Heidegger’s approach seems almost impossible.

34

Cf. “Quid est tempus?” 3–4.

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However, by the same token it challenges the limits of the possible, within and beyond the Confessions. He claims that Augustine’s question “quid est tempus?” is situated as a question concerning the basis of the human/divine relationship. Hence, in the transition from (ii) to (iii) he argues that the question “quid est tempus?” in book XI equals the question “quid est homo?” in book I-X.35 Moreover, he argues that Augustine’s question moves beyond this limit and asks:“quid est homo as the question quid est deus. Cf. Hegel and differently Nietzsche: God is dead – what is man?”36 The question of time thus points to a common topos and a common interest between Augustine and Heidegger across the historical distance.This topos as perceived by Heidegger even questions the divine foundation of Augustine’s confessions but thereby his metaphysical foundation also appears as question-able (frag-würdig) within a new context, after Luther, Kant, and Nietzsche. He seeks to approach Augustine within this new philosophical context, beyond the metaphysical and confessional confirmation of his thought. Hence, Heidegger’s embrace of this topos in the Confessions is highly ambiguous. Yet, does it thereby possibly reflect the ambiguity of Heidegger’s confessions? For the overall analysis of the text Heidegger follows a double trajectory, understood as two subsequent responses to the same question: “Quid est tempus?” The first passage runs from XI.14–22, the second from XI.23– 31. The former raises the question of time within a familiar, everyday context, whereas the latter passage analyzes the conditions for time experience within human consciousness. Heidegger points out that the first passage discusses Aristotle’s aporia of the being and non-being of time within a very different context: the past is perceived through narration whereas the future is perceived in terms of predication and premeditation.37 What kind of being or non-being is this? Heidegger addresses a profound ambiguity within Augustine’s conception of time, which he perceives as the most original division within time consciousness: insofar as true stories are narrated or predicted, it is not the thing in itself (“non res ipsa”) which is recalled or repeated (“wieder geholt”) but the image thereof (“imaginem intuere”).38 The visible image (das erblickbare Bild) becomes a key term in Heidegger’s analysis and explains the ambiguity between the being and non-being of the past. It is not a “thing” as such but is constituted through looking at the image in retrospect. In note form, following this line of thought and image, Heidegger plays with the constitutive (bildend) function of the image 35 36 37 38

Cf. ibid., 11. Ibid. Cf. “Quid est tempus?” 7 and Conf. XI.17, 246. “Quid est tempus?” 7.

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(Bild) in rearranging time through memory: “The beheld ‘image’ constituted only in retrospect. The glance as such is constituting – giving image and producing. ‘There’-image (‘Da’-Bild).”39 The final neologism indicates that the very concept of Dasein, a key term in Being and Time, is constituted by way of imagination, that is, it is translated into Da-Bild. Imagination is thus defined as constitutive for human existence insofar as it is temporal.The passage recalls Heidegger’s definition of human temporality and being-unto-death as constitutive of history (Historie), which is founded in the experience of Dasein’s historicality, rather than vice versa.40 But this time the difference between words and images, between hearing and seeing, is emphasized. As Heidegger points out, the past “is” there only as memoriam, reproduced and re-constituted by a perceiving spirit or self. This Augustinian self is therefore profoundly phenomenological and the phenomenological repetition of the past “produces” the entire world in its re-conception of it. Exactly the same applies to the future, but then it is a question of expectation, for example, of anticipating the aurora before the sun actually rises. The image thus produced is not only an image, Heidegger points out, but a mode of Being: The self is past-directed or future-directed and thus itself formed by its focus on the past or on the future. Heidegger concludes that for Augustine, neither the past nor the future are (qua res), but yet they are both there, existing, for the perceiving mind. This gives them their sense and Dasein itself, human existence, is constituted as temporal being with continuity (contuitus) through this perception. The spirit itself is making present (gegenwärtigend). Moreover, the spirit thus re-constituted is basically directed towards the future by its focus on that which lies ahead (ante) of it.41 With this conclusion in mind (in memoriam) we have to return once more to Heidegger’s definition of temporality in § 65 of Being and Time. Temporality was defined there as gewesend-gegenwärtigende Zukunft. The authentic concept of time was thus directed towards the future, although clearly founded in the present and past of a personal self through the decision and the determination bound to a particular situation. In temporality one may thus discover Care as the authentic sense of being, whereas an inauthentic perception of time precludes such discovery. The question is whether Heidegger found his definition of time in Augustine and simply applied it in a different context without referring to the Confessions. Or is it merely Augustine as imagined in Heidegger’s produc39

“Das erblickbare ‘Bild’ nur im Rückblick gebildet. Der Blick als solcher ist bildend – Bild gebend und herstellend. ‘Da’-Bild.” (ibid.) 40 Cf. § 74 in Being and Time, 438; Sein und Zeit, 386. 41 Cf. “Quid est tempus?” 7, 11.

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tive imagination that looks so similar to the theory of time in Being and Time? I think the truth is somewhere in-between, in the tension between the two claims: His theory of time is indeed a repetition of the Augustinian meditation but a repetition within a context that is very different. Hence it is, in Heidegger’s own words, “essentially the same and different only in the inessential.” And although a series of references to the profound Augustinian legacy in Being and Time is missing, it followed a few years later in Heidegger’s lecture to the friars in Beuron. Still, the lecture definitely paints a different picture of Augustine than that found in chapter XI of the Confessions, for example, by reinterpreting Augustine as a modern philosopher avant la lettre. The image of the imagination as constitutive for temporal existence is interpreted as a phenomenological anticipation of Descartes, namely, with the gaze and the ex-tension of the self as the foundational act of being (“extensio ergo sum”) rather than doubt and thought (“cogito ergo sum”). Augustine’s theory becomes transcendental in the Kantian sense, as condition of possibility for temporal being and for the phenomenological foundation of time in self-affection.42 Heidegger further translates the Latin terms into his own philosophy by defining extension as the basis for intention. And finally, the term “ex-tentio” is understood as a form of “ex-sistere” and thus Heidegger may conclude: “Thus in the essence of time the essence of human existence,”43 and this essence is again perceived as the becoming-present of time.44

6. Time Lost The most striking aspect of Heidegger’s reconstruction of Augustine’s meditation on time is the involuntary but palpable activism and self-centeredness of the text. It is not concerned with the dissolution and destruction of the self in time but with its constitution, not with the suffering under the conditions of time but with the active extension (Sicherstrecken) of the self in keeping, expecting and in making present. It is the perception of time as activity, as “vita actionis et distenditur,” and as such human life in its totality is described in terms of activity and presence. This is according to Heidegger the original and authentic being, as conceived in the human constitution of temporality in past, future, and present. Under this tenor of the text there are also some passages in a minor key, however, describing the alterations (Abwandlungen) of time and of timeconsciousness. The keeping of past memories corresponds to forgetting 42

“Vgl. Kant: Wesen der Zeit als Selbstaffektion. Das was mich in meinem Wesen wesentlich ständig angeht und in Anspruch nimmt.” (ibid., 9) 43 “So im Wesen der Zeit das Wesen der Existenz des Menschen.” (ibid., 10) 44 “Er west als die Zeit.” (ibid., 11)

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(Vergessen), expecting the future corresponds to abandoning (Verzichten), and becoming present corresponds to letting pass (Vorbeigehen lassen).45 This alteration plays the most ambiguous role in Heidegger’s repetition of Augustine. He sees therein the authentic possibility of transformation but also the everyday mode of distraction and thus falling. There is little doubt about which option Heidegger favors but he cannot avoid the latter mode of distraction. Both modes are intrinsically bound to each other within Augustine’s text. At this point in the lecture, just as he seems to be caught up in his own meditations on time, he interrupts the presentation with the following comment: “This is ‘not nothing’ but a separate positive relationship to the past, the future, and the present.”46 The double negation gets a peculiar sense in Heidegger’s logic of time: The difference between memory and oblivion, between expectation and abandonment, is “not nothing” but in fact the decisive difference between vita activa and passiva. With reference to the terminology in Being and Time, we can say it is a repetition of the difference between authentic and inauthentic being. Heidegger underscores the possibility of transformation from passive to active, from everyday distractions – or dissemination (Zerstreuung) – to attentive concentration. But then he adds, not without some justification in the text, that the transformation of the self from dissemination to concentration implies a retraction, and also a stretching out, towards that which is ante, before. This ante he understands with a double meaning: (1) being absolutely present, face to face; (2) before all times – eternity – the most present, continuous presence, the nunc stans.47 Is there actually any crucial difference here, or are both alternatives more or less the same? Is not the second simply a variant of the first and the first a derivation of the second? The notes are too scarce to clarify the question but the change within the sense of time appears not in the former, which resembles the notion of time in Being and Time, nor in the latter, which reflects the onto-theological presupposition of Augustine’s Confessions, but in the tension between the two, and the meditative retraction, the Einkehr within the most present presence, while abandoning (Verzichten) the conceptual grasping of this eternity, this face, this concept of time. The “becoming present” is thus actually fulfilled in the alteration, the “letting pass” 45 “Diese distentio aber kann sich eigentümlich abwandeln. Behalten – Vergessen – Erwarten – Verzichten – Gegenwärtigen – Vorbeigehen lassen – Dieses nicht nichts, sondern ein eigenes positives Verhältnis zum Vergangenen, Zukünftigen und Anwesenden.” (ibid., 10) 46 Ibid. See the previous footnote. 47 “‘Vor’ in dem doppelten Sinn: 1) das schlechtin Anwesende, im Angesicht; 2) was vor aller Zeit – Ewigkeit – praesentissimum, ständige Anwesenheit, das nunc stans.” (ibid., 10)

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(Vorbeigehen lassen), which in line with the following note could be seen as an emptying of oneself into this alteration: “retracting oneself: transforming the ‘dis.’”48 Heidegger emphasizes the search for tempora metior in Augustine’s confessions. What is measured is the “not nothing” that distinguishes the temporality of human existence when compared to the stone or the animal. This stretching out in an alteration between the fullness of presence and the emptying of oneself in time passing characterizes the “ex-tentio as exsistere.”49 Hence, the distension not only confirms the ontology of time, it alters the conditions for temporal existence, and hence the “essence” of human beings. In Heidegger’s reading of Augustine, the transformation of the “dis” happens in retraction rather than in action, activity, and intention. The tempora metior is located between the static state of the nunc stans and the ex-static moment of ex-tentio; hence the following enigmatic deliberation on the Latin verbs: “solidabor et stabo – sistere – in the ex-tentio as ex-sistere.”50 This division within the Augustinian concept of time equals the original and ontological difference between Being and beings, but as temporal difference it does not belong to the ontological order. It interferes with this order and disturbs the logic of metaphysics. Hence, the following passage requires a second reading: “Thus in the essence (Wesen) of time, the essence (Wesen) of human existence. Human being – temporal being … time as distentio is the essence of human existence. He is present (er west) as time. To begin with, explicitly as tempora metior; but only understandable now, based on the essence of time, why we qua existing human beings have to take time into account.”51 The duplicity of the term wesen interrupts the unity of essence and produces difference within the identity of man, within existence, within ontology. The difference between the static and the ex-static becomes the condition of possibility for change, and thus for the discovery of truth as event (Ereignis), as un-concealment which radiates and shows itself within temporal existence, indeed as the truth of this temporal existence itself: “quid est homo as the question quid est deus.” So much for the essence, constituted and disrupted in the distension of human existence. But what about the decay of essence, the Verwesen and dissolution of essence in the abandonment of oneself, in being purified and 48

“Sich zurückholen: das ‘dis’ verwandeln.” (ibid.) “Solidabor et stabo – sistere – in den ex-tentio als ex-sistere.” (ibid.) 50 Ibid. 51 “So im Wesen der Zeit das Wesen der Existenz des Menschen. Der Mensch – zeitliches Wesen … die Zeit als Distentio ist das Wesen der Existenz des Menschen. Er west als die Zeit. Zunächst ausdrücklich als tempora metior; jetzt erst aus dem Wesen der Zeit verständlich, warum wir qua existierende Menschen mit der Zeit rechnen müssen.” (“Quid est tempus?” 10–11) 49

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putrefied by age, by sickness, by weakness, passion, and Care? The decay, the forgetfulness, the destructive power of death within life, the vanishing of the body and of clear thought: is there any place for all this in Heidegger’s deliberation on time? There is not. And yet it is “not nothing.” It must have been there, in the shadows of exteriority, in the dis of transformation, in the abandonment, the retraction, the forgetfulness, the letting pass, the abyss of ignorance. It must have been there in the exhaustion, in the need for a refugium, rather than in the balanced harmony of the garden. And it must have been there as a condition for change, for that which is to come. And it is still there, it keeps on returning, unavoidably, in time wasted, time forgotten, and time lost.

7. Asking for Time Finally, Heidegger approaches the third point of his lecture, namely, the argument that the meditation on time is not an appendix but rather the decisive exposure of the entire work. Hence, what is, according to Heidegger, Augustine’s Confessions? Not an autobiography, not self-analysis, and not a description of the soul or of religious experience. It is a confession of the author’s inability to measure time, the impossibility of understanding and explaining. It is a confession of the impossibility of time itself according to human categories. It is the confession not only of not knowing but of not even knowing what to ask for.52 This is the point where time gets lost, while you are asking and begging for time. The search for time, the quest to measure time, has reached the limits of possibility. Beyond this limit the conditions of possibility are called into question in the first place. The question opens up, and it questions the place and the very conditions for asking: This deep ignorance is that profound questionability (Fragwürdigkeit), where I first ask what is worth asking about (was des Fragens würdig ist), so that everything depends upon my ability to question, i.e. that I ask in the first place and am able to ask questions. Hence: quaero; sine me quaerere, amplius quaerere: quid est tempus; asking for time.53

At this point Heidegger’s questions are finally directed towards the query of the question itself:  What is the quaerere? What happens when we are asking? It means that we are searching, he concludes; that we are begging that 52

“Confiteor: immer wieder: tempora metior et quid metior nescio. Ja: nescio saltem quid nesciam – ich weiß nicht einmal was ich nicht weiß, wonach ich eigentlich fragen soll.” (ibid., 11) 53 Ibid.,12.

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something will be given to us. We become beggars for a gift, and the name of the gift we are thus begging for is “the truth,” in the sense of an “unconcealment of being.” To a certain extent the question of time is paradigmatic for this query, since time highlights the volatility of human existence, of knowledge and confidence. It displaces and distorts truth; it erodes and dissolves the basis of thought in metaphysics, theology, and tradition. Still, the question of time turns out to be a question of becoming temporal and thus relocating oneself in the conditions of temporality, which for Heidegger are defined as follows: “collected stretching out for aeternitas.”54 Hence, it is the recognition of concealment and un-concealment, of forgetfulness and revelation, in order to finally achieve the ecstatic temporality where “the Unconcealed purely shines, shows itself, i.e., is not displaced and distorted.” In the end, the lecture shows the close proximity between Heidegger’s temporality and Augustine’s. And this proximity becomes more obvious, more unconcealed, when Heidegger approaches the Kehre, when the ontology of Dasein is left behind in favor of the analysis of the history of being, of how being shows itself but thereby also continuously contributes to its own concealment.55 Heidegger’s meditation on the question of time appears as a repetition of Augustine, essentially the same, differing only in the inessential. What Heidegger essentially learned from Augustine, however, was not only to analyze time phenomenologically, but to understand that the art of living (“ars vivendi”) is the art of asking questions (“ars quaerendi”): asking, searching, and praying for time – in order to let the Word speak, in silence. The question that remains, for each reader and for each listener, is how to define the place from which one is doing the asking. This is not only a philosophical question but a religious one: for Augustine, for Martin Heidegger, and for all readers of the Confessions, as Heidegger notes thoughtfully with a twinge of doubt in the final appendix: Standing somewhere – but where? How should he determine that when he does not even know whether he has already gotten himself completely lost in an impasse?56

54

Ibid. Cf. Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time, 64–66. 56 “Irgendwo stehen – wo? Wie soll er das bestimmen, wo er nicht einmal weiß, ob er sich schon völlig in einer Sackgasse verlaufen hat?” (“Quid est tempus?” 12 a) 55

Vergangenheit in der Zukunft: Nietzsches Nachricht vom „Tod Gottes“ Werner Stegmaier Nietzsche gehört ebenso sehr und ebenso wenig wie Kierkegaard zu den Religionsphilosophen. Er wollte keine Religionsphilosophie liefern, sondern das Abstractum, das er ähnlich wie Kierkegaard ‚das Christentum‘ nannte, überwinden; dabei entwickelte er auch eine Religionsphilosophie. Unter dem Abstractum ‚Christentum‘ verstand er ähnlich wie Kierkegaard metaphysische Dogmen, die sich im Lauf der Zeit über die frohe Botschaft Christi gelegt und sie dadurch verdeckt und verfälscht hatten. Gegen diese Dogmen, die er vor allem Paulus zuschrieb, trat er als ‚Antichrist‘ auf. Die ‚Entdeckung‘ des Christentums, die Freilegung der christlichen Liebe vom metaphysisch-dogmatischen Christentum, hat für Nietzsche ihre Zeit und in der Zeit eine komplexe Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Ich versuche dies der Kürze halber anhand einer kursorischen Interpretation des Aphorismus Nr. 343 der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft (FW) zu zeigen, des einleitenden Aphorismus des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft, das Nietzsche 1887, fünf Jahre nach den ersten IV Büchern der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft und nach Also sprach Zarathustra und Jenseits von Gut und Böse (JGB) ergänzt hat. Er gab dem Aphorismus den Titel „Was es mit unserer Heiterkeit auf sich hat.“ Ich präsentiere zunächst den Text im deutschen Original und in der englischen Übersetzung von Walter Kaufmann und entwickle dann die leitenden Gedanken der Interpretation in 10 Thesen, die ich, soweit nötig, kurz erläutere.1 1 Eine gründliche kontextuelle Interpretation des Aphorismus mit Hinweisen auch auf die Forschungsliteratur erscheint in Werner Stegmaier, Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie: Kontextuelle Interpretation des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft (Gruyter: Berlin/New York, 2012), Kap. 4. – Nietzsche wird zitiert nach: Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, hg. von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari (Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag: München, 1980) (= KSA). Die veröffentlichten oder zur Veröffentlichung vorgesehenen Werke werden mit Sigle und Kapitel- bzw. Aphorismen-Nummer, ggf. Untertiteln nachgewiesen, die nicht veröffentlichten Notate mit dem von Montinari vermuteten Entstehungsjahr, der Nummer des Notizhefts bzw. der Manuskriptmappe, der Nummer des Notats in eckigen Klammern und Band und Seite der KSA. – Die fröhliche Wissenschaft wird in Fußnoten abgekürzt durch die Sigle FW, Jenseits von Gut und Böse durch die Sigle JGB, Zur

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Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft,V. Buch, Aphorismus Nr. 343 Was es mit unserer Heiterkeit auf sich hat. – Das grösste neuere Ereigniss, – dass „Gott todt ist“, dass der Glaube an den christlichen Gott unglaubwürdig geworden ist – beginnt bereits seine ersten Schatten über Europa zu werfen. Für die Wenigen wenigstens, deren Augen, deren Argwohn in den Augen stark und fein genug für dies Schauspiel ist, scheint eben irgend eine Sonne untergegangen, irgend ein altes tiefes Vertrauen in Zweifel umgedreht: ihnen muss unsre alte Welt täglich abendlicher, misstrauischer, fremder, „älter“ scheinen. In der Hauptsache aber darf man sagen: das Ereignis selbst ist viel zu gross, zu fern, zu abseits vom Fassungsvermögen Vieler, als dass auch nur seine Kunde schon angelangt heissen dürfte; geschweige denn, dass Viele bereits wüssten, was eigentlich sich damit begeben hat – und was Alles, nachdem dieser Glaube untergraben ist, nunmehr einfallen muss, weil es auf ihm gebaut, an ihn gelehnt, in ihn hineingewachsen war: zum Beispiel unsre ganze europäische Moral. Diese lange Fülle und Folge von Abbruch, Zerstörung, Untergang, Umsturz, die nun bevorsteht: wer erriethe heute schon genug davon, um den Lehrer und Vorausverkünder dieser ungeheuren Logik von Schrecken abgeben zu müssen, den Propheten einer Verdüsterung und Sonnenfinsterniss, deren Gleichen es wahrscheinlich noch nicht auf Erden gegeben hat? […] Selbst wir geborenen Räthselrather, die wir gleichsam auf den Bergen warten, zwischen Heute und Morgen hingestellt und in den Widerspruch zwischen Heute und Morgen hineingespannt, wir Erstlinge und Frühgeburten des kommenden Jahrhunderts, denen eigentlich die Schatten, welche Europa alsbald einwickeln müssen, jetzt schon zu Gesicht gekommen sein sollten: woran liegt es doch, dass selbst wir ohne rechte Theilnahme für diese Verdüsterung, vor Allem ohne Sorge und Furcht für uns ihrem Heraufkommen entgegensehn? Stehen wir vielleicht zu sehr noch unter den nächsten Folgen dieses Ereignisses – und diese nächsten Folgen, seine Folgen für uns sind, umgekehrt als man vielleicht erwarten könnte, durchaus nicht traurig und verdüsternd, vielmehr wie eine neue schwer zu beschreibende Art von Licht, Glück, Erleichterung, Erheiterung, Ermuthigung, Morgenröthe … In der That, wir Philosophen und „freien Geister“ fühlen uns bei der Nachricht, dass der „alte Gott todt“ ist, wie von einer neuen Morgenröthe angestrahlt; unser Herz strömt dabei über von Dankbarkeit, Erstaunen, Ahnung, Erwartung, – endlich erscheint uns der Horizont wieder frei, gesetzt selbst, dass er nicht hell ist, endlich dürfen unsre Schiffe wieder auslaufen, auf jede Gefahr hin auslaufen, jedes Wagniss des Erkennenden ist wieder erlaubt, das Meer, unser Meer liegt wieder offen da, vielleicht gab es noch niemals ein so „offnes Meer.“ – The meaning of our cheerfulness. – The greatest recent event – that “God is dead,” that the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable –i s already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. For the few at least, whose eyes – the suspicion in whose eyes is strong and subtle enough for this spectacle, some sun seems to have set and some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt; to them our old world must appear daily more like evening, more mistrustful, stranger, Genealogie der Moral durch die Sigle GM (II = 2. Abhandlung), Der Antichrist durch die Sigle AC, Ecce homo durch die Sigle EH.

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“older.” But in the main one may say: The event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having arrived as yet. Much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means – and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it; for example, the whole of our European morality. This long plenitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysms that is now impending – who could guess enough of it today to be compelled to play the teacher and advance proclaimer of this monstrous logic of terror, the prophet of a gloom and an eclipse of the sun whose like has probably never yet occurred on earth? Even we born guessers of riddles who are, as it were, waiting on the mountains, posted between today and tomorrow, stretched in the contradiction between today and tomorrow, we firstlings and premature births of the coming century, to whom the shadows that must soon envelop Europe really should have appeared by now–why is it that even we look forward to the approaching gloom without any real sense of involvement and above all without any worry and fear for ourselves? Are we perhaps still too much under the impression of the initial consequences of this event – and these initial consequences, the consequences for ourselves, are quite the opposite of what one might perhaps expect:They are not at all sad and gloomy but rather like a new and scarcely describable kind of light, happiness, relief, exhilaration, encouragement, dawn. Indeed, we philosophers and “free spirits” feel, when we hear the news that “the old god is dead,” as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an “open sea.”2

1. Nach Friedrich Nietzsche wies zu seiner Zeit alles darauf hin, „dass ,Gott todt ist‘, dass der Glaube an den christlichen Gott unglaubwürdig geworden ist.“3 Doch in einer „Uebergangszeit“ kann man die Zeichen der Zukunft nur erraten. Nietzsche wollte den ‚Tod Gottes‘, das Unglaubwürdigwerden der metaphysisch-dogmatischen Interpretationen des Christentums, nicht herbeiführen, sondern darauf aufmerksam machen, dass er schon eingetreten sei. Er ließ das zunächst im III., 1882 erschienenen Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft den „tollen Menschen“ mit großer Sorge hinausschreien, vor Menschen, die sich mit dem Auslaufen des Christentums längst abgefunden 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, übers. v.  Walter Kaufmann (Vintage Books: New York, 1974), 279–280. 3 FW 343.

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hatten4. Dort sind sich beide Seiten ihrer Sache sicher. Jetzt, zu Beginn des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft, spricht Nietzsche von „geborenen Räthselrathern, die wir gleichsam auf den Bergen warten, zwischen Heute und Morgen hingestellt und in den Widerspruch zwischen Heute und Morgen hineingespannt“5. Das „Heute“, die Gegenwart, lebt in Hoffnung auf und Furcht vor dem „Morgen“, der Zukunft; die Zukunft bestimmt das Handeln und bleibt doch ungewiss. Sie kann den Erwartungen der Gegenwart mehr oder weniger stark widersprechen. Alle Zukunft bleibt ungewiss; man kann sie nur erraten, aber aus den Zeichen der Gegenwart mehr oder weniger gut erraten. Nietzsche erriet seine Zeit, wie er in späteren Aphorismen des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft schreibt, als eine „Uebergangszeit, wo so Vieles aufhört zu zwingen“6, als eine „zerbrechliche zerbrochne Uebergangszeit,“ in der „das Eis, das heute noch trägt, […] schon sehr dünn geworden“ sei. Es wehe „Thauwind“7. Der Tauwind seien „wir selbst, wir Heimatlosen“, Menschen, die den ‚Tod Gottes‘ wahrgenommen, damit eine geistige Heimat verloren haben und nun auch keine neue Heimat mehr suchen. Solche Heimatlosen, wie Nietzsche sie sich nach seinem Beispiel denkt, wollen keine Heimat mehr, sie haben das Bedürfnis danach überwunden und sind dadurch erst geistig frei oder doch freier geworden, freier zu neuen Orientierungen. Sie haben entdeckt, dass mit den metaphysisch-dogmatischen Interpretationen des Christentums Interessen verfolgt wurden, zuerst das Interesse des Religionsstifters, den Leiden der Menschen einen Sinn zu geben, dann das Interesse von Priestern, die Menschen im Bann von illusionären Dogmen zu halten und dadurch selbst Macht über sie zu gewinnen. Heimatlose wie Nietzsche versuchen gerade solche Illusionen, die man zum Leben und Überleben nötig hat, zu durchschauen, gehen nicht mehr davon aus, dass es irgendwo eine bergende geistige Heimat gibt, und setzen sich ganz der Ungewissheit der Zukunft aus. So brechen sie mit der Zeit „das Eis und andre allzudünne ‚Realitäten‘“ auf 8. 2. Auch im Denken derer, die sich nicht mehr zu Gott bekennen, sind die alten metaphysisch-dogmatischen Interpretationen, die die Philosophie, das Christentum und die alltägliche Orientierung in fast zweitausend Jahren tief durchdrungen haben, überall weiter wirksam. Das zerbrochene Christentum der Vergangenheit bestimmt weiter die Zukunft. 4 5 6 7 8

FW 125. FW 343. FW 356. FW 377. FW 377.

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Wenn das Eis bricht, auf dem man geht und steht, drohen alle zu ertrinken, auch die, die es zum Brechen gebracht haben. Ertrinkende klammern sich auch noch an Eisschollen. Wir treiben nach Nietzsche schon auf Eisschollen, die ihren alten Halt, ihre alten Zusammenhänge verloren haben. So bestimmt das zerbrochene Christentum der Vergangenheit weiter die Zukunft. Wir wissen nicht, wohin wir mit ihm treiben. 3. Die Verbreitung der Einsicht, „dass ‚der alte Gott tod‘ ist“, wird nach Nietzsche in naher oder ferner Zukunft eine Tragödie ungeahnten Ausmasses auslösen bei all denen, die den vergangenen Glauben an metaphysische Dogmen weiter zu ihrer Orientierung brauchen, eine „lange Fülle und Folge von Abbruch, Zerstörung, Untergang, Umsturz“9. Man kann die Weltkriege und Völkermorde des 20. Jahrhunderts mit Nietzsche als Tragödie des Nihilismus verstehen. Wenn eine über Jahrtausende gefestigte Orientierung zerfällt, sind schwerste Umbrüche zu erwarten. Mit dem ‚alten Gott‘, schreibt Nietzsche im Aphorismus Nr. 343 der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft weiter, „scheint eben irgend eine Sonne untergegangen, irgend ein altes tiefes Vertrauen in Zweifel umgedreht“; „unsre alte Welt“ müsse nun „täglich abendlicher, misstrauischer, fremder, ‚älter‘ scheinen.“ Untergegangen ist nicht die Sonne, sondern eine unter anderen philosophisch-theologisch erdachten Sonnen. Sie kehrt weiterhin täglich wieder, scheint nun aber täglich kürzer („täglich abendlicher“). Die gewohnte Welt tritt immer mehr in einen ungewohnten Schatten, in dem das alte Vertrauen in sie immer mehr verloren geht. So zeichnet sich das Schauspiel einer „Verdüsterung und Sonnenfinsternis“ ab, „deren Gleichen es wahrscheinlich noch nicht auf Erden gegeben hat.“ Nietzsche wird dieses Schauspiel bald darauf für sich in seinem Lenzer Heide-Notat zum „europäischen Nihilismus“ in die Begriffe eines „Willens zur Zerstörung“ und „Selbstzerstörung, eines Willens ins Nichts“ fassen, der zur „Crisis“ eines „blinden Wüthens“ führe. Der Nihilismus, die Entwertung der alten obersten Werte, könnte ein „Symptom davon“ sein, dass die orientierungslos Gewordenen „keinen Trost mehr haben: daß sie zerstören, um zerstört zu werden, daß sie, von der Moral abgelöst, keinen Grund mehr haben, ,sich zu ergeben‘ – daß sie sich auf den Boden des entgegengesetzten Princips stellen und auch ihrerseits Macht wollen, indem sie die Mächtigen zwingen, ihre Henker zu sein.“10 Wir lesen das heute unwillkürlich als beängstigend präzise Prophezeiungen der Schrecken des 20. Jahrhunderts. Nietzsche hat es so jedoch nicht veröffentlicht. Er gab sich nicht als Prophet. Mit dem alten Gott, der der Orientierung letzte metaphysische Gewissheiten gegeben 9 10

FW 343. Nachlass 1887, 5[71]11, 14, 12; KSA 12, 215–217.

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hat, sind alle solchen Gewissheiten untergegangen; auch sein Tod ist dann ungewiss und dessen künftige Wirkungen sind es noch mehr. 4. Die Einsicht, „dass ‚der alte Gott todt‘ ist“, ist ein zeitliches und kontingentes Ereignis, „das grösste neuere Ereignis“ in der Geschichte Europas. Nietzsche hielt seine Gegenwart für die Zeit dieses Ereignisses. Ein Ereignis ist ein auffälliger geschichtlicher Augenblick, der sich aus komplexen geschichtlichen Umständen ergeben hat und komplexe geschichtliche Wirkungen zeitigt. Im emphatischen Sinn ist es ein Ereignis dann, wenn der Augenblick große oder größte Wirkungen auslöst und darum große oder größte Bedeutung hat, wenn es vieles oder ‚alles‘ verändern kann. In einem Ereignis verdichtet sich die Zeit, in der immer alles anders werden kann, am stärksten, in ihm wird die Zeitlichkeit aller Dinge am auffälligsten. Die auffälligsten Ereignisse aber sind Tode; Tode erinnern Menschen am eindringlichsten an die Zeitlichkeit alles Seins. So hat Heidegger die Analysen der Zeitlichkeit des Daseins in Sein und Zeit vor allem am ‚Sein zum Tode‘ festgemacht. Nachdem er den Horizont dieser Analysen als zu eng gewählt erkannte, vollzog er seine ‚Kehre‘ und setzte noch einmal neu beim ‚Ereignis‘ an: für seine nun bescheiden Beiträge zur Philosophie genannten aphoristischen Analysen sah er als Oberoder Untertitel Vom Ereignis vor. Es sollte um das Ereignis einer neuen ‚Wahrheitsgründung‘ gehen, und Heidegger rechnete damit, dass sich diese neue Wahrheitsgründung selbst notwendig verbarg. Eben darum ging es, was Heidegger deutlich war, bereits Nietzsche und geht es beim „grössten neueren Ereignis“ nach FW 343. 5. Grosse Ereignisse bedürfen „grosser Beobachter.“ Sie werden in ihrer Gegenwart kaum wahrgenommen. Ihre Beobachtung setzt eine Grundhaltung des ‚Argwohns‘ voraus. Das Wort „Ereignis“ verstand man bis ins 18. Jahrhundert noch als „Eräugnis“, als Geschehen, das „vor Augen“ kommt, das Sichtbar-Werden eines Geschehens. Ein Ereignis ist nur so weit ein Ereignis, wie es als solches wahrgenommen wird. So versteht es auch Nietzsche noch („Für die Wenigen wenigstens, deren Augen, deren Argwohn in den Augen stark und fein genug für dies Schauspiel ist“11). Argwohn ist ein zur Grundhaltung gewordenes Misstrauen gegen allen Glauben, ein Anti-Glaube. Nietzsche gebraucht das Wort ‚Argwohn‘ häufig zusammen mit ‚Verdacht‘. Beim Argwohn hat man jedoch, anders als beim Verdacht, keine bestimmten An11

FW 343.

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haltspunkte für sein Misstrauen. Hier ist selbst der Verdacht noch ungewiss, und so verharrt man in Ungewissheit. So ist der Anti-Glaube seinerseits ein Glaube. ‚Argwohn in den Augen‘ macht misstrauisch selbst gegen die eigenen Beobachtungen, distanziert alles zu einem ‚Schauspiel‘, dem man ohne rechten Glauben folgt. In ihm oszillieren Glaube und Anti-Glaube. Das Große hat beim späten Nietzsche oft einen dialektischen Sinn: es schließt sein Gegenteil ein, macht es für sich fruchtbar und wird dadurch stärker. Groß ist eine Gesundheit, wenn sie schwerere Krankheiten verkraften kann, eine Vernunft, wenn sie sich auf ihre Abhängigkeiten von der Natur einlassen kann, ein Verdacht, wenn er nicht lähmt, sondern befreit, auch wenn er sich auf sich selbst richtet. Entsprechend ist ein Ereignis groß, wenn es so überwältigend ist, dass es eine Schreckstarre erzeugt und darum in seiner Bedeutung zunächst gar nicht wahrgenommen wird, also gar kein Ereignis zu sein scheint. So wird oft der Tod eines nahen Menschen erlebt, und umso mehr wird nach Nietzsche der Tod Gottes so erlebt werden. 6. Grosse Ereignisse werden zeitlich verzögert wahrgenommen. Sie ereignen sich in der Gegenwart als vergangene Zukünfte. Der „tolle Mensch“, heißt es schon im Aphorismus Nr. 125 des III. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft, kam mit seiner Einsicht zu früh, als dass sie jemand hätte verstehen können. Nietzsche gebraucht die Metapher vom Licht ferner Gestirne, das Zeit benötigt, um auf der Erde wahrgenommen zu werden: „Ich komme zu früh, sagte er dann, ich bin noch nicht an der Zeit. Diess ungeheure Ereigniss ist noch unterwegs und wandert, – es ist noch nicht bis zu den Ohren der Menschen gedrungen. Blitz und Donner brauchen Zeit, das Licht der Gestirne braucht Zeit, Thaten brauchen Zeit, auch nachdem sie gethan sind, um gesehen und gehört zu werden. Diese That [sc. dass wir Gott getötet haben] ist ihnen immer noch ferner, als die fernsten Gestirne, – und doch haben sie dieselbe gethan!“12

Ist ein Stern erloschen, so leuchtet er für uns noch Lichtjahre lang, und was längst Vergangenheit ist, kann für uns noch ferne Zukunft sein. Auch als Nietzsche die Botschaft nicht mehr einen tollen Menschen hinausschreien lässt, sondern sie leise im eigenen Namen verkündet, behält er die Metapher vom Licht ferner Gestirne bei. Es ist seine Metapher dafür, dass eine Einsicht erst über lange Zeit ins „Gefühl“ eingehen oder einverleibt werden muss, um sich auszuwirken: „NB. Die größten Ereignisse gelangen am schwersten den Menschen zum Gefühl: z.B. die Thatsache, daß der christliche Gott ‚todt ist‘, daß 12

FW 125.

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in unseren Erlebnissen nicht mehr eine himmlische Güte und Erziehung, nicht mehr eine göttliche Gerechtigkeit, nicht überhaupt eine immanente Moral, sich ausdrückt. Das ist eine furchtbare Neuigkeit, welche noch ein paar Jahrhunderte bedarf, um den Europäern zum Gefühl zu kommen: und dann wird es eine Zeit lang scheinen, als ob alles Schwergewicht aus den Dingen weg sei. –“13 Gedanken werden erst ‚begriffen‘, wenn sie auch ‚erlebt‘ werden, wenn auch die alltägliche Orientierung sich auf sie eingestellt hat: „Die grössten Ereignisse und Gedanken – aber die grössten Gedanken sind die grössten Ereignisse – werden am spätesten begriffen: die Geschlechter, welche mit ihnen gleichzeitig sind, erleben solche Ereignisse nicht, – sie leben daran vorbei.“14 7. Die Zwischenzeit, bis sich die Einsicht, „dass ‚der alte Gott todt‘ ist“, überall durchgesetzt hat, ist für kritische und selbstkritische Geister eine Zeit der Befreiung ihres Denkens von unbewusstem und ungewolltem Glauben. Es ist eine Zeit der „Heiterkeit“ für „fröhliche Wissenschaftler.“ Weil Wirkungen großer Ereignisse in der Gegenwart kaum wahrgenommen werden, erregen sie weniger Angst. So kann man sich vorerst leicht über sie beruhigen. Wie jedem Tod, solange er noch nicht eingetreten ist, können wir auch dem Tod des ‚alten Gottes‘ immer noch „ohne rechte Theilnahme für diese Verdüsterung, vor Allem ohne Sorge und Furcht für uns ihrem Heraufkommen entgegensehn“15. Das Ereignis gewährt eine Zwischenzeit der Heiterkeit. Es ist, so Nietzsche, die Zeit einer ‚fröhlichen Wissenschaft‘, die Zeit, furchtlos, unbefangen, frei die eigenen Bindungen an den alten Glauben zu ‚entdecken‘, sie Schritt für Schritt aufzudecken. Eben das versucht Nietzsche im V. Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft. An erster Stelle stehen hier der Glaube der Wissenschaftler an eine scheinbar vorgegebene Wahrheit („Inwiefern auch wir noch fromm sind,“ FW 344), der Glaube an die Selbstlosigkeit, die für die wissenschaftliche Arbeit ebenso als Voraussetzung gilt wie für die Moral („Moral als Problem“, FW 345), und der Glaube an die scheinbare Selbständigkeit und Ursprünglichkeit des Bewusstseins, aus der man die Freiheit des Willens begründet hat und das doch nur, so Nietzsche, eine Funktion der lebensnotwendigen Verständigung und Kommunikation in Nöten des Lebens ist (FW 354). Heiterkeit unterscheidet sich von der Fröhlichkeit dadurch, dass diese noch ausgelassen sein kann, jene dagegen gelassen geworden ist, sich selbst zur Besinnung gebracht hat. Sie weiß, dass nach ihrer Zwischenzeit, wie es am Ende 13 14 15

Nachlass 1885, 34[5]; KSA 11, 424–5. JGB 285. FW 343.

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des V. Buches heißt, „die Tragödie beginnt“16, die Tragödie, die die Fröhliche Wissenschaft durch ihre Aufdeckung des alten Glaubens selbst mit herbeiführt. Die ‚fröhlichen‘ Entdeckungen sind, so Nietzsche, nur die „nächsten Folgen“ des großen Ereignisses, denen spätere, beängstigende folgen werden. Die „nächsten Folgen“ aber sind für „ ‚freie Geister‘“, umgekehrt als man vielleicht erwarten könnte, durchaus nicht traurig und verdüsternd, vielmehr wie eine neue schwer zu beschreibende Art von Licht, Glück, Erleichterung, Erheiterung, Ermuthigung, Morgenröthe … In der That, wir Philosophen und ‚freien Geister‘ fühlen uns bei der Nachricht, dass der ‚alte Gott todt‘ ist, wie von einer neuen Morgenröthe angestrahlt; unser Herz strömt dabei über von Dankbarkeit, Erstaunen, Ahnung, Erwartung, – endlich erscheint uns der Horizont wieder frei, gesetzt selbst, dass er nicht hell ist, endlich dürfen unsre Schiffe wieder auslaufen, auf jede Gefahr hin auslaufen, jedes Wagniss des Erkennenden ist wieder erlaubt, das Meer, unser Meer liegt wieder offen da, vielleicht gab es noch niemals ein so ‚offnes Meer‘.17

8. Fröhliche Wissenschaftler führen mit „grossem Ernst“ „die grosse Entscheidung“ herbei. Mit ihr wird die alte, inzwischen schon vergangene Zukunft ihre Zeit gehabt haben und eine neue Zukunft möglich werden. Das Ende der Zwischenzeit, so Nietzsche am Ende des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft, wird sein, dass „vielleicht der grosse Ernst erst anhebt, das eigentliche Fragezeichen erst gesetzt wird, das Schicksal der Seele sich wendet, der Zeiger rückt, die Tragödie beginnt …“18 Wie das große Ereignis seinen Gegensatz, die Schreckstarre, einschließt, in der es vorerst gar nicht wahrgenommen werden kann, so der große Ernst die Fröhlichkeit. Ernst wird es, wenn es zur Entscheidung kommt. Fröhlichkeit lässt gewöhnlich keinen Ernst aufkommen und vereitelt darum Entscheidungen. Ein Ernst, der Fröhlichkeit einschließt, bzw. eine Fröhlichkeit, die Ernst einschließt, mit einem Wort: die Heiterkeit, ist dagegen zu Entscheidungen fähig und sogar zu weitergehenden, weniger gebundenen, freieren. Entscheidungen sind an Kriterien gebunden, denen sie folgen, und an Alternativen, die sich ihnen bieten. Freiere, fröhlichere Entscheidungen lösen sich von solchen vorgebenden Kriterien und Alternativen und entscheiden auch noch über diese. Sie sind dann ihrerseits ,grosse Entscheidungen‘, Entscheidungen über die Kriterien der Entscheidung. Die „grosse Entscheidung“19, so Nietzsche, macht „den Willen wieder frei“. Sie ermöglicht eine neue „Vertiefung in die Wirklichkeit“, schafft eine „Erlösung dieser Wirklichkeit“, 16 17 18 19

FW 382. FW 343. FW 382. GM II 24.

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„ihre Erlösung von dem Fluche, den das bisherige Ideal auf sie gelegt hat“. Die Kraft zur Entscheidung über die Kriterien der Entscheidung ist die denkbar freieste Geistigkeit, die Freiheit zur Umwertung aller Werte. Nietzsche traut sie vorerst niemanden zu, erwartet sie vom „Menschen der Zukunft“20. Denn der grosse Ernst der grossen Entscheidung ist eine „tragische Erkenntnis“: sie beendet die Ungewissheit nicht, sondern steigert sie noch. Auch für fröhliche Wissenschaftler, die die Zukunft besser erraten werden, bleibt sie ungewiss. Von der Zukunft zu reden, hat den Sinn, die Gegenwart zu strukturieren. Man setzt damit Zwecke und mobilisiert Mittel, um sie zu erreichen.Vom Zweck in der Zukunft aus gesehen sind die Mittel Vergangenheit. Sie sind eine vergangene Zukunft. Für fröhliche Wissenschaftler ist die Aufgabe, der Zweck für die Zukunft, nach dem Zerfall jahrtausendealter metaphysischer Dogmen die Menschen neu zu orientieren. Ihre Mittel sind eine möglichst vorbehaltlose Kritik der Dogmen und, soweit sie auch selbst noch an ihnen hängen, die Selbstkritik. Sofern die Zukunft ungewiss bleibt, ist die Zwischenzeit der fröhlichen Wissenschaft auch selbst eine ungewisse vergangene Zukunft. Die grammatische Form der vergangenen Zukunft ist das Futurum exactum, und Nietzsche spricht im Futurum exactum. Freie Geister, fröhliche Wissenschaftler, heißt es im mehrfach zitierten SchlussAphorismus des V. Buchs der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft, dürsten danach, „den ganzen Umfang der bisherigen Werthe und Wünschbarkeiten erlebt und alle Küsten dieses idealischen ,Mittelmeers‘ umschifft zu haben“ – des „idealischen ‚Mittelmeers‘,“ das ist, grob gesagt, der Idealismus des asketischen Ideals, das Europäer sich und dem Christentum in zwei Jahrtausenden dogmatischer Metaphysik einverleibt haben21. Aus dem Futur I, der die Gegenwart überschreitenden, von ihrer Ungewissheit erlösenden Zukunft, die das alte Ideal versprochen hat, wird ein Futur II, eine in der Gegenwart verbleibende, die Ungewissheit offen haltende Zukunft, die eines „andren Ideals“ bedarf, ein wunderliches, versucherisches, gefahrenreiches Ideal, zu dem wir Niemanden überreden möchten, weil wir Niemandem so leicht das Recht darauf zugestehn: das Ideal eines Geistes, der naiv, das heisst ungewollt und aus überströmender Fülle und Mächtigkeit mit Allem spielt, was bisher heilig, gut, unberührbar, göttlich hiess; für den das Höchste, woran das Volk billigerweise sein Werthmaass hat, bereits so viel wie Gefahr, Verfall, Erniedrigung oder, mindestens, wie Erholung, Blindheit, zeitweiliges Selbstvergessen bedeuten würde; das Ideal eines menschlich-übermenschlichen Wohlseins und Wohlwollens, das oft genug unmenschlich erscheinen wird, zum Beispiel, wenn es sich neben den ganzen bisherigen Erden-

20 21

Ibid. FW 382.

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Ernst, neben alle Art Feierlichkeit in Gebärde, Wort, Klang, Blick, Moral und Aufgabe wie deren leibhafteste unfreiwillige Parodie hinstellt22.

9. Nietzsche schien ein Gott nötig auch und gerade für sein eigenes Philosophieren, ein Gott, der die Zukunft offenhält gegen einen, der sie metaphysisch-dogmatisch schließt. Zuvor, in Jenseits von Gut und Böse Nr. 295, hat Nietzsche den „Gott Dionysos“ als „Philosophen“ proklamiert. Die Proklamation, fügt er hinzu, könnte ihrerseits „zu spät und nicht zur rechten Stunde komm[en]: denn ihr glaubt heute ungern, wie man mir verrathen hat, an Gott und Götter“23. Gerade die Zeit des Todes des „alten Gottes“ könnte nicht die rechte Zeit für die Proklamation eines neuen sein. Aber eben weil über die Ungewissheit aller Orientierung nun nicht mehr mit Hilfe tröstlicher Illusionen hinwegzusehen, sie aber doch unendlich schwer zu ertragen ist, wächst das Bedürfnis, die „Lust, dieses Ungeheure von unbekannter Welt nach alter Weise sofort wieder zu vergöttlichen“24, schreibt Nietzsche dann wieder im V. Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft. Dionysos ist für den späten Nietzsche vor allem der Gott, der nichts bestehen, nichts feststehen lässt, alles der Zerstörung und dem Verfall aussetzt, um es neu und anders wiedererstehen zu lassen, kurz ein Gott der Zeit, der alle Zukunft im Ungewissen hält. Er ist in der Gegenwart kein Gott mehr, an den man glauben kann, sondern eben ein Gott für Philosophen und freie Geister: Nietzsche brauchte ihn für seine fröhliche Wissenschaft, um im unstillbaren Bedürfnis nach Gewissheiten nicht selbst neuen Gewissheiten zu verfallen. Dem scheint zu widersprechen, dass Nietzsche sich in den Werken, die auf das V. Buch der Fröhlichen Wissenschaft folgten, den kämpferisch-ernst angelegten Schriften Zur Genealogie der Moral, der Götzen-Dämmerung, in Der Fall Wagner und vor allem in Der Antichrist, immer gewisser geäußert zu haben scheint. Aber auch sie sind noch kritische Schriften. Nietzsche führt dort lediglich dogmatische Behauptungen ins Feld, um auf die, die solche Behauptungen erwarten, durch Polemik stärker wirken zu können. Er verstand Begriffe wie den des Immoralismus „als starke Gegen-Begriffe“, deren „Leuchtkraft“ er „nöthig“ habe, „um in jenen Abgrund von Leichtfertigkeit und Lüge hinabzuleuchten, der bisher Moral hieß“25.

22 23 24 25

Ebd. JGB 295. FW 374. Nachlass 1888, 23[3], KSA 3, 603.

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10. Indem Nietzsche „Dionysos gegen den Gekreuzigten“ setzt, bekämpft er das dogmatische Christentum und führt die christliche Religion zu einer „evangelischen Praktik“ zurück. Diese Praktik setzt den Christen vollkommen dem Fluss der Zeit aus und wird eben dadurch zeitlos. Wenn Nietzsche am Ende von Ecce homo, der Autogenealogie seines Philosophierens, „Dionysos gegen den Gekreuzigten“ setzte26, so eben „gegen den Gekreuzigten“. Der gekreuzigte Christus war für ihn, wie er in Der Antichrist ausgeführt hat, ein Missverständnis. Eben weil die Kreuzigung damals das Schändlichste war, suchten die Apostel sie, so Nietzsche, zum Kern des Christentums umzuwerten und verdeckten dadurch das eigentliche Christentum des „Typus des Erlösers“, „die evangelische Praktik“, die ganz aus dem „Schrei Liebe, dem Schrei des sehnsüchtigsten Entzückens, der Erlösung in der Liebe“27, aus der „Unfähigkeit zum Widerstand“, die hier „Moral“ geworden sei28, und aus einem „ganz in Symbolen und Unfasslichkeiten schwimmenden Sein“ lebte, in das alle widerständige Realität sich wie im Tauwind auflöste29. Man kann daher seine späte Schrift Der Antichrist auch als eine neue Einübung im Christentum lesen. Nietzsche wird zuletzt zum Verteidiger Christi gegen das Christentum. Als evangelische Praktik schien ihm „das echte, das ursprüngliche Christenthum“ „zu allen Zeiten möglich“30. Im „ganz in Symbolen und Unfasslichkeiten schwimmenden Sein“ kann immer alles anders werden, wird alles Zeit und eben dadurch zeitlos, nicht mehr in „zwischen Heute und Morgen“31 und in den Widerspruch von Vergangenheit und Zukunft hineingestellt. Das „gegen“ in der Formel „Dionysos gegen den Gekreuzigten“ bedeutet wie in Nietzsches übrigen ‚starken Gegen-Begriffen‘ im Sinn des griechischen ‚anti‘ nicht nur Gegnerschaft, sondern auch Stellvertretung und Überbietung. So konnte Nietzsche in Ecce homo in fröhlichem Ernst schreiben „Ich bin ein froher Botschafter, wie es keinen gab ich kenne Aufgaben von einer Höhe, dass der Begriff dafür bisher gefehlt hat; erst von mir an giebt es wieder Hoffnungen“.32 Er wollte die Zukunft wieder öffnen, auch für ein neues Christentum der evangelischen Praktik der Liebe, ein in Nietzsches wie in Kierkegaards Sinn größeres Christentum. Aber er setzte auch hinzu: „Mit Alledem bin ich nothwendig auch der Mensch des Verhängnisses.“ Beide, Hoffnungen und Verhängnis, bereiten auf eine Zukunft vor, die offen bleibt. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

EH, Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 9. GM II 22. AC 29. AC 31. AC 39. FW 343. EH, Warum ich ein Schicksal bin 1.

Nietzsche and the Past Iben Damgaard Cheerfulness, the good conscience the joyful deed, confidence in the future – all of them depend, in the case of the individual as of a nation … on one’s being just as able to forget at the right time as to remember at the right time; on the possession of a powerful instinct for sensing when it is necessary to feel historically and when unhistorically. This, precisely, is the proposition the reader is invited to meditate upon: the unhistorical and the historical are necessary in equal measure for the health of an individual, of a people and of a culture.1

Nietzsche’s early essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” seeks to rediscover the value of forgetfulness for life. The essay, which appeared in 1874, was the second of Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations. It is untimely, says Nietzsche, “because I am here attempting to look afresh at something of which our time is rightly proud – its cultivation of history – as being injurious to it … because I believe, indeed, that we are all suffering from a consuming historical fever and ought at least to recognize that we are suffering from it.”2 Nietzsche sets out to find a cure for the historical sickness of his age by exploring how we can relate to the past in ways that creatively affirm life. Nietzsche is well-known for his critique of almost all philosophers before him for their lack of historical sensibility, as well as for his new genealogical way of thinking historically as developed primarily in On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), which traces historical transformations of moral concepts such as good and evil, guilt, and conscience.3 His early essay, “On the Uses 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for life,” Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 63. 2 Ibid., 60. 3 Nietzsche’s genealogical approach to history has been very influential in the twentieth century, primarily in Foucault’s development of genealogy. Cf. Foucault’s

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and Disadvantages of History for Life,” however, has also made Nietzsche known for his praise of the unhistorical and the forgetfulness that he claims has been excluded in the historicism of the nineteenth century. He criticizes the latter for having reduced modern people to passive spectators of the past deprived of the capacity for action in the present. During the last two decades, the issue of collective memory and its relation to individual memory has become immensely influential in studies of past history in all the disciplines of the humanities as well as in the social sciences. Maurice Halbwachs coined the term “collective memory,”4 which has been developed further in Jan Assmann’s concept of cultural memory.5 It has been continually elaborated in still new conceptualizations differentiating, for example, between collective, cultural, social, public, and national memory. In our present intellectual climate with such a strong focus on memory, it seems relevant to approach anew Nietzsche’s essay, which addresses many of the issues that are the object of intense debate today. Nietzsche seeks to reassert an important role for forgetfulness in assisting individuals and communities not to be entirely governed by the memory of the past but instead be capable of reacting to the needs of the present and future. In this article, I investigate Nietzsche’s argument that if history is to serve life, it must be interpreted from the perspective of the history that is yet to be made. The iconoclastic power of forgetfulness must be embraced to open up new ways that the remembrance of the past can be employed as nourishing food for action in the present and creative visions for the future.

1. Forgetfulness Nietzsche’s essay opens with the image of grazing cattle who “do not know what is meant by yesterday or today.”6 The reader is asked to imagine the life of the animals. They live unhistorically in the present and know neither melancholy nor boredom nor dissimulation. They are content and happily absorbed in nature and the present. This is hard for human beings to watch, Nietzsche says, because they dwell on and suffer from their past essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” in The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 76–100. 4 Cf. his posthumous work La mémoire collective from 1950. English edition: Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. L. A. Coser, (Chicago & London:  The University of Chicago Press, 1992). 5 Cf. Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich:  Verlag C.H. Beck, 1992). 6 Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 60.

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and secretly long for the happiness of the animals. Nietzsche goes on to imagine a dialogue between a human being and an animal: A human being may well ask an animal: ‘Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?’ The animal would like to answer, and say: ‘The reason is I always forget what I was going to say’ – but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so that the human being was left wondering.7

It affects man8 “like a vision of a lost paradise” to see the herd grazing, for it reminds him of his childhood’s play “in blissful blindness between the hedges of past and future.”9 But in contrast to the animal, the child’s play “must be disturbed,” since consciousness of time awakens in human beings, and hence distinguishes humans from animals. The problem for humans is that they gradually learn to remember all too well. Human beings are historical beings. This means we are troubled by our past. We carry our past as “a dark, invisible burden”10 on our mind. We worry about the future. We wonder about the meaning of life. It is at one and the same time the superiority and the great fragility of humankind. Nietzsche argues that humanity loses something crucial of what it is to be human if this capacity to remember is overdeveloped at the expense of the ability to forget, because “forgetting is essential to action of any kind.”11 We need to rediscover the value of the forgetful lightness of the cow or the child, because if the unhistorical is not integrated into human life, we become imprisoned in a kind of sleeplessness that stares backwards, transfixed, at the past, viewing it as fixed, finished, and unchangeable. Nietzsche thus invites the reader to see that the unhistorical and forgetfulness is fundamental for human life: we shall thus have to account the capacity to feel to a certain degree unhistorically as being more vital and more fundamental, inasmuch as it constitutes the foundation upon which alone anything sound, healthy and great, anything truly human, can grow. The unhistorical is like an atmosphere within which alone life can germinate and with the destruction of which it must vanish. It is true that only by imposing limits on this unhistorical element by thinking, reflecting, comparing, distinguishing, drawing conclusions … only through the power of employing the past for the purposes of life and of again introducing into history that which has been done and is gone – did man become man: but with an excess of history man again ceases to exist.12 7

Ibid., 60–61. The word “man” (Mensch) has been retained in discussions of and quotations from the English translation of Nietzsche but other references to humanity in general have been made gender-neutral wherever possible. 9 Ibid., 61. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 62. 12 Ibid., 63–4. 8

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That human beings have to learn anew to forget presupposes that they have learned to remember. In the second essay in On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche investigates the development of the ability to remember and its fundamental role in human sociality. The fact that humans learn to remember and suspend forgetfulness also makes possible the human responsibility and commitment to obligations towards others across time at stake in promise-making: “To breed an animal with the prerogative to promise – is that not precisely the paradoxical task which nature has set herself with regard to humankind? Is it not the real problem of humankind?”13 Neither memory nor forgetting is a capacity we control; we cannot simply determine when to remember and when to forget the past. The enigmatic nature of forgetfulness is indirectly described in his early essay: “a moment, now here and then gone, nothing before it came, again nothing after it has gone, nonetheless returns as a ghost and disturbs the peace of a later moment. A leaf flutters from the scroll of time, floats away – and suddenly floats back again and falls into the man’s lap.”14 In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche distinguishes between memory as something involuntary (“a passive inability to get rid of an impression once it has made its impact”) and the memory of the will, that is, the voluntary, active effort to recall and assume responsibility through time (“an active desire not to let go”). It is through the development of this memory of the will that man becomes “answerable for his own future!”15 Likewise, Nietzsche distinguishes between the forgetfulness that just happens and forgetfulness as “an active ability to suppress … To shut the doors and windows of consciousness for a while.”16 Why is this active ability to forget so important? Because it is a guardian or doorkeeper that gives, says Nietzsche, “a little peace, a little tabula rasa to make room for something new, above all for the nobler functions or functionaries, for ruling, predicting, predetermining … there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness.”17 Without forgetfulness a person “cannot cope with anything.” The ability to forget is thus essential for the plastic power not only of an individual but also of a people and a culture. This plasticity is described in 13

Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, trans. C. Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 35. 14 Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 61. 15 Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, 36. This distinction is formulated already in Aristotle’s De Memoria. Aristotle defines Mneme as the simple presence of memory to be distinguished from Anamnesis as the active effort to recall, the act of recollection. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 19–20. 16 Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, 35. 17 Ibid., 35.

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Nietzsche’s early essay as “the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost.”18 To a certain degree the past needs to be forgotten “if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present.”19 As Vanessa Lemm has written, Nietzsche “argues for a new form of memory that is not antithetical to forgetfulness,” since “an involvement with forgetfulness would allow for memory to be redirected away from the past towards the future.”20 She argues that forgetfulness is seen as a force that opens up the past for transformations and new beginnings and thus reorients humanity towards what is to come, the becoming of life, rather than the mere preservation of past life.

2. Strolling Spectators of the Past The nineteenth century was the height of historicism. The age was dominated both by the Hegelian philosophy of history and, in opposition to this speculative approach to history, the positivistic science of history. Nietzsche criticizes both approaches as fundamentally mistaken and harmful to life, because they generate a conflict between a merely passive contemplation of the past and an active formation of the present and future life. The Hegelian idea that history is the progress of Spirit towards a goal is criticized for having implanted “that admiration for the ‘power of history’ which in practice transforms every moment into a naked admiration for success and leads to an idolatry of the factual.”21 Against a passive accommodation to the facts by the “apologists of history,” Nietzsche praises the activity of the “great fighters against history, that is to say, against the blind power of the actual,” for they are “the real historical natures who bothered little with the ‘thus it is’ so as to follow ‘thus it shall be’ with a more cheerful pride.”22 Instead of presumptuous, abstract speculation about the goal of the process of world history, Nietzsche challenges each individual to wonder why 18

Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 62. In the first essay in On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche genealogically traces slave morality to the resentment rooted in the inability to forget in contrast to the plasticity of the master morality which, according to Nietzsche, is rooted in the “superabundance of a power which is flexible, formative, healing and can make one forget.” Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, 22. 19 Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 62. 20 Vanessa Lemm, “Animality, Creativity and Historicity: A Reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben,” Nietzsche-Studien (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 182. 21 Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 105. 22 Ibid., 106.

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he or she exists. This becoming aware of oneself is closely linked to the forgetting of oneself in pursuit of what one sees as great and impossible in life. Nietzsche praises this kind of self-forgetfulness: To what end the ‘world’ exists, to what end ‘mankind’ exists, ought not to concern us at all for the moment except as objects of humour: for the presumptuousness of the little human worm is the funniest thing at present on the world’s stage: on the other hand, do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer, try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal … an exalted and noble ‘to this end.’ Perish in pursuit of this and only this – I know of no better aim of life than that of perishing, animae magnae prodigus, in pursuit of the great and the impossible.23

According to Nietzsche, the main problem in the nineteenth century’s relation to the past is, however, the demand “that history should be a science.”24 In the beginning of the nineteenth century, history developed into a professional, academic discipline with the positivistic pretension formulated by Ranke to represent the past “as it actually was.” Based on primary sources, the historian should merely report facts. Nietzsche claims that because this scientific search for disinterested, objective knowledge of history has ruled without restraints, and the accumulation of knowledge has become an end in itself, there is no longer a real and living culture, but only “a kind of knowledge of culture,”25 a noisy “decorative culture.” Nietzsche sees the main symptom of this historical sickness in the development of a split in each human between internal and external, which was unknown in the ancient world. Modern man is described as unable to transform the overwhelming amount of knowledge inside into action in the outside world, remaining a passive spectator to life while accumulating knowledge that lies concealed within. Modern man is but “a strolling spectator”26 in the world historical exhibition. This failure to digest, appropriate and transform knowledge into action is metaphorically described with the image of a snake that has swallowed a rabbit whole and now lies in the sun, avoiding all unnecessary movement.27 The height of modern man’s capacity for knowledge is contrasted with the depth of his incapacity for action. He is a walking encyclopedia: “the whole of modern culture is essentially inward: on the outside the bookbinder has printed some such thing as ‘Handbook of inward culture for outward barbarians.’”28 Con23 24 25 26 27 28

Ibid., 112. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 78. Ibid., 83. Ibid., 78. Ibid., 79.

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fronted with his generation of historically-educated modern men, Nietzsche asks: “is a race of eunuchs needed to watch over the great historical world-harem? … it almost seems that the task is to stand guard over history to see that nothing comes out of it except more history, and certainly no real events!”29 To a “eunuch one woman is like another”30 - there is no sense of what is particular about each one. It is a matter of indifferent accumulation by those incapable of making history themselves. The modern ideal of historically-educated men produces, Nietzsche writes, only “inquisitive tourists … clambering about on the pyramids of the great eras of the past.”31 The tourist travels indifferently through all ages hungry for distraction, consuming everything without engaging with it and without the ability to distinguish between what is valuable and what is not valuable in the past. It is “a blind rage for collecting” that “rotates in egoistic self-satisfaction around its own axis.”32 In this restless race modern man is no longer affected by what he encounters: it does not mean anything to him “increasingly to lose this sense of strangeness, no longer to be very much surprised at anything, finally to be pleased with everything – that is then no doubt called the historical sense, historical culture.”33 This scientific tourist, the “cultural philistine,” is further described metaphorically as an “insatiable stomach which nonetheless does not know what honest hunger and thirst are.”34 Modernity’s “excess of history has attacked life’s plastic powers,” Nietzsche concludes, because “it no longer knows how to employ the past as nourishing food.”35 There are striking similarities between Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s attack on the nineteenth century’s historical culture. Both explore the collision between the needs of each individual, concrete existence, on the one hand, and the scientific as well as speculative explanation of human existence, on the other. The latter is criticized for reducing human existence to the shadow existence of paralyzed spectators unable to transform knowledge into action. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846), Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus diagnoses his age with the remark that “the misfortune with our age was just that it had come to know too much and had forgotten what it means to exist.”36 29

Ibid., 84. Ibid., 86. 31 Ibid., 68. 32 Ibid., 75. 33 Ibid., 98. 34 Ibid., 117. 35 Ibid., 120. 36 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments: Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. I. XII.1, trans. Howard Vincent Hong und Edna Hatlestad Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 259. 30

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Like Nietzsche, Climacus ridicules the scholar’s race through all ages and regions from China to Persia to accumulate still more indifferent knowledge, which Climacus compares with a man acting as if love was all about getting “married seven times to Danish girls, and then to go for the French, the Italian, etc.”37 According to Nietzsche, the age’s excess of history hurts life because of its perspective on the past as a “completed totality,” “a sort of conclusion of life”38 at the end of time which excludes an understanding of human existence as a continual process of becoming and beginning anew. This same critique is developed in Climacus’s argument against Hegel’s speculative mediation: scholarship more and more turns away from a primitive impression of existence; there is nothing to live through, nothing to experience, everything is finished, and the task of speculative thought is to rubricate, classify, and methodologically order the various categories of thought. One does not love, does not have faith, does not act; but one knows what erotic love is, what faith is, and the question is only about their place in the system.39

3. Architects of the Future: History as Art “We need history, certainly,” Nietzsche writes, “but we need it for reasons different from those for which the idler in the garden of knowledge needs it … We need it, that is to say, for the sake of life and action, not so as to turn comfortably away from life and action.”40 History is not to be in service of the past, but to serve life by opening up new perspectives on life to come. History pertains to the living human being in three respects: “as a being who acts and strives, as a being who preserves and reveres, as a being who suffers and seeks deliverance.” This corresponds to three kinds of history: “a monumental, an antiquarian and a critical.”41 Nietzsche seeks to show that it is crucial none of these modes grow too dominant and overpower the other modes of regarding the past. In monumental history, the present man of strength and action encounters the great individuals and the great moments in the history of humankind worthy of imitation and “learns from it that the greatness that once existed was in any event once possible and may thus be possible again.”42 37 38 39 40 41 42

Ibid., 259. Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 67. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, 344. Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 59. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 69.

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Monumental history is creative when it inspires strong and artistic spirits to transform what they learn from the past into life-affirming and life-enhancing new practices and achievements. But monumental history incurs the danger of destroying the essential difference between all great things. Furthermore, Nietzsche claims that the mediocre, inartistic natures of modernity, “the connoisseurs of art,” may use the authority of the monumental past to erect a canon of past greatness as an idol around which to dance in rejection of any contemporary attempt to create something new. The other mode of regarding the past is that of preserving and revering the past. Antiquarian history serves the needs of life when it affirms a sense of continuity with tradition for individuals, peoples and cultures. It is thus a way man “gives thanks for his existence”43 and looks beyond his own individual transitory existence both to those who came before and those yet to come into existence. Thus, antiquarian history conserves life. As an example of this, Nietzsche mentions the Italians of the Renaissance who “reawoke in their poets the genius of ancient Italy to a ‘wonderful new resounding of the primeval strings.’”44 Antiquarian history sustains life by endowing the human being with the sense “that one is not wholly accidental and arbitrary but grown out of a past as its heir, flower and fruit.”45 Nietzsche praises a community’s faithful memory of its own origin, and he contrasts this with the modern “restless, cosmopolitan hunting after new and ever newer things.” Yet the imminent danger of antiquarian history is its “extremely restricted field of vision,”46 which distorts an appropriate sense of proportion and fails to make value judgments. Instead, antiquarian history indiscriminately views everything that existed in the past as worthy of reverence, so that antiquarian history no longer affirms life, but mummifies it and then rejects and persecutes everything new. It is necessary to have critical history as a third mode of regarding the past, because in order to live humankind “must possess and from time to time employ the strength to break up and dissolve a part of the past.”47 Critical history condemns the past: “Sometimes, however, this same life that requires forgetting demands a temporary suspension of this forgetfulness; it wants to be clear as to how unjust the existence of anything – a privilege, a caste, a dynasty, for example – is, and how greatly this thing deserves to perish.”48 Critical history brings the past before the tribunal of life, scrupulously examining it and condemning it. History is, as Ste43 44 45 46 47 48

Ibid., 72. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 76.

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phen Dedalus declares in Ulysses: “a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”49 Since we are ourselves descendants of all this as “the outcome of earlier generations, we are also the outcome of their aberrations, passions and errors, and indeed of their crimes; it is not possible wholly to free oneself from this chain.”50 Critical history risks being destructive and dangerous to life because “it requires a great deal of strength to be able to live and to forget the extent to which to live and to be unjust is one and the same thing.”51 The best we can do therefore is “to combat our inborn heritage and implant in ourselves a new habit, a new instinct, a second nature, so that our first nature withers away.”52 Nietzsche argues that we need these different modes of regarding and employing history in the service of life both as individuals and as collectives. The aim of historiography, the writing of history, is to act, according to Nietzsche, “as an agent for transforming the outside world.”53 In order to obtain this, history needs to be written by those capable of making history themselves. The past must be interpreted from the perspective of history yet to be made:“if you are to venture to interpret the past you can do so only out of the fullest exertion of the vigour of the present … When the past speaks it always speaks as an oracle: only if you are an architect of the future and know the present will you understand it.”54 The past must be deciphered by being attentive not only to the actuality but also to the potentiality of the past. A fruitful encounter with the past affirms life by liberating possibilities, which opens up the past and releases still new and unforeseen perspectives on the present and the future. If the interpretation of the past is guided by hope for the future, history can be used to reach the maturity necessary to get beyond the “paralyzing upbringing”55 of modern culture. History serves life, when the historical drive is primarily a drive to create and construct something new. The value of history lies not in its general propositions, but consists in taking a familiar, perhaps commonplace theme, an everyday melody, and composing inspired variations on it, enhancing it, elevating it to a comprehensive symbol, and thus disclosing in the original theme a whole world of profundity, power and beauty. For this, however, there is required great artistic facility, creative vision, lov-

49 50 51 52 53 54 55

James Joyce, Ulysses (London: Paladin, 1992), 42. Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 76. Ibid., 76. Ibid., 76. Ibid., 78. Ibid., 94. Ibid., 94.

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ing absorption in the empirical data, the capacity to imagine the further development of a given type.56

In opposition to his contemporaries’ conception of history writing as a science capable of factual reconstruction of the past as it really was, Nietzsche develops a new understanding of history writing as art, the art of interpretation. As argued by Vanessa Lemm, the active force of forgetfulness plays a central role in Nietzsche’s new conception of historiography as an art of interpretation, which is a future-oriented involvement with the past.57 The historian interprets the many intricate layers of the palimpsests of the past. The historian thus engages in the conflict of interpretations that are the stuff of which history is made: “thus man spins his web over the past and subdues it, thus he gives expression to his artistic drive.”58 This conception of historiography as the art of interpretation points towards the genealogical approach to history that Nietzsche develops later in On the Genealogy of Morality: Anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose by a power superior to it; … and the whole history of a ‘thing’, an organ, a tradition can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually revealing new interpretations and adaptions, the causes of which need not be connected even amongst themselves, but rather sometimes just follow and replace one another at random. The ‘development’ of a thing, a tradition, an organ is therefore certainly not its progressus towards a goal … instead it is a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of subjugation exacted on the thing, added to this the resistances encountered every time, the attempted transformations for the purpose of defence and reaction, and the results, too, of successful countermeasures. The form is fluid, the ‘meaning’ (Sinn) even more so.59

The historian must enter into this process of continually new reinterpretations and readoptions of the past to new purposes for the life of the present and the future in order to overcome what Nietzsche sees as the crisis of modernity. A life-affirming approach to the past revolves around the ability to employ the past as nourishing food for the present and the future. The past is to be interpreted in order to perceive how it may nourish and sustain life in the present and future. The study of history is useful for life when it is used to gain an untimely perspective on one’s own age that opens up new visions for the future. Nietzsche uses his own untimely perspective on his age as an example of this: “It is only to the extent that I am a pupil of earlier times, especially the 56 57 58 59

Ibid., 93. Lemm, “Animality, Creativity and Historicity,” 171. Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 91. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, 51.

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Hellenic, that though a child of the present time, I was able to acquire such untimely experiences.”60 Nietzsche employs the classical past as a resource for untimely engagements with the present “that is to say, acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come.”61 Classical history, as well as classical historians, serves as inspiration for the present life: “Satiate your soul with Plutarch and when you believe in his heroes dare at the same time to believe in yourself.”62 Nietzsche points to ancient Greek culture as a “true culture” with a living healthy unity of the internal and the external as a contrasting figure to the modern antithesis of internal and external as well as content and form,63 and Nietzsche opposes the idea that form is merely vestment and disguise. Nietzsche announces a cultural renewal through an overcoming of this antithesis. In Nietzsche’s own writings, the content cannot be separated from the form of his philosophy. It is a thinking in and through symbols, metaphors, signs, and aphorisms that do not have an unambiguous and fixed meaning and thus challenges the reader to start wondering what it means to him. As pointed out by Werner Stegmaier, Nietzsche’s philosophy does not seek to reach universal and unambiguous truths but “to make individuals attentive to their individuality anew.”64 In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche warns his reader that his aphorisms require something that seems to have been forgotten in modern, historical culture: the individual’s art of interpretation: The aphoristic form causes difficulty: this is because this form is not taken seriously enough these days. An aphorism, properly stamped and moulded, has not been ‘deciphered’ just because it has been read out; on the contrary, this is just the beginning of its proper interpretation, and for this, an art of interpretation is needed … I admit that you need one thing above all in order to practise the requisite art of reading, a thing which today people have been so good at forgetting – and so it will be some time before my writings are ‘readable’ -, you almost need to be a cow for this one thing and certainly not a ‘modern man’: it is rumination.65

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Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” 60. Ibid., 60. 62 Ibid., 95. 63 Ibid., 82. 64 Werner Stegmaier, “Nietzsche’s Doctrines, Nietzsche’s Signs,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 31 (2006), 32. 65 Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morality, 9. 61

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4. Nietzsche’s Untimely Essay and our Time After the mass atrocities of the twentieth century, a guiding concern in philosophical reflections on the use of memory and forgetting has been the ethical obligation to remember the victims and “preserve the scandalous dimension of the event”66 against the escapist forgetfulness of the perpetrators.The complex relationship between forgiving and forgetting is crucial in this ethical perspective, which is developed, for instance, in Paul Ricoeur’s writings on memory and forgetting and in Avishai Margalit’s reflections on an ethics of memory.67 Nietzsche’s essay is written as a polemic against the nineteenth century’s cultural ideal of historical education, and it is thus guided by very different concerns. Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s reflections seem relevant not merely as a critique of nineteenth century historicism, but also for contemporary reflections on memory and forgetting and the historical condition of humanity. In Time and Narrative, Ricoeur points out that Kierkegaard’s and Nietzsche’s leaving behind the Hegelian attempt to decipher the supreme plot in world history is an important point of departure for his own hermeneutics of historical consciousness as an “open-ended, incomplete, imperfect mediation, namely, the network of interweaving perspectives of the expectation of the future, the reception of the past and the experience of the present.”68 Ricoeur argues that the enduring significance of Nietzsche’s early untimely essay concerns the status of the present in regard to history. On the one hand, the historical present is, in each era, the final term of a completed history, which itself completes and ends history. On the other hand, the present is, again in every era, or at least it may become, the inaugural force of a history that is yet to be made.69

Nietzsche shows that the task of interpreting the past is that “of reactualizing in ever new contexts.”70 Nietzsche proceeds, says Ricoeur, from the mere suspension of the historical through forgetfulness to the affirmation of “the strength of the present” that he inscribes in the “inspiring consolation of hope.”71 In this way Nietzsche affirms the advantage of history 66 Paul Ricoeur, “The Memory of Suffering,” Figuring the Sacred (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 290. 67 Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). 68 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3 (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), 207. 69 Ibid., 239–40. 70 Ibid., 239. 71 Ibid., 240.

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for life by showing that “a certain iconoclasm directed against history, as sealed up in what is past and gone, is a necessary condition for its ability to refigure time.”72

72

Ibid., 240.

Religion at the Center of Phenomenology: Husserl’s Analysis of Inner Time-Consciousness Jonna Bornemark 1. Introduction When the history of the “turn to religion” within phenomenology is written, it often begins with Martin Heidegger. Dominique Janicaud, in his Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate, points toward the late Heidegger’s phenomenology of the unapparent as the critical place where phenomenology goes astray. He even claims that “without Heidegger’s Kehre, there would be no theological turn.”1 Similarly, both Hent de Vries and Jayne Svenungson find important antecedents for this turn in Heidegger, though they view this more positively.2 In this paper I will argue that we might find another necessary presupposition for the “turn to religion” present already in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and in his analysis of inner time-consciousness. As I have argued elsewhere,3 several characteristics of the French turn to religion and theology are also present in the early phase of German phenomenology, particularly in the writings of Edith Stein and Max Scheler. This also means that a special openness to religion has always been present at the center of phenomenology.The place in Husserl’s phenomenology to which I wish to draw attention – his analysis of inner time-consciousness – constitutes the very core of his fundamental ontology. I am not the first to recognize the centrality of inner time-consciousness and its paradox, of course. Jacques Derrida claims that time-consciousness is the place where everything is settled.4 It is also the key for Klaus Held’s Lebendige Gegenwart. Furthermore, James Hart has also taken it as the starting point for his Husserlian theology as have younger phenomenologists, such as Claudia Welz 1 Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 31. 2 Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Jayne Svenungsson, Guds återkomst: en studie av gudsbegreppet inom postmodern filosofi (Göteborg: Glänta produktion, 2002). 3 Jonna Bornemark and Hans Ruin, eds., Phenomenology and Religion: New Frontiers (Huddinge: Södertörn Philosophical Studies, 2010). 4 Jacques Derrida, La voix et le phénomène: Introduction au problème du signe dans la phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris: PUF, 1967), 70.

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in her analysis of theodicy in Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy.5 In my analysis, however, I wish not only to acknowledge the centrality of inner time-consciousness, but also to point toward some problems to which it has given rise within phenomenology. In the following I will provide a short summary of Husserl’s analysis of inner time-consciousness and its infinite regress as the place where phenomenology is opened up to religious experience. I will discuss how Edith Stein uses this paradox of time-consciousness and the role it plays in her turn to religion. In a similar way I will discuss the relationship between Husserl’s analysis of inner time-consciousness and Michel Henry’s concept of immanence. I will argue that a problem arises in both Stein’s and Henry’s turn to religion in which faith is separated from philosophy (Stein) and immanence is separated from transcendence (Henry).

2. Husserl’s Analysis of Inner Time-Consciousness and its Infinite Regress In one of his early texts, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (Book 2), Husserl points out that the deepest foundation of his phenomenology lies in his analysis of inner time-consciousness. Here the identity of all objects, including the Cogito, is constituted.6 It is in this analysis that the self-evident basis of immanent consciousness should be presented and he takes on this task, thinking it will provide a strong foundation for his phenomenology. This belief in the possibility of giving phenomenology a firm and stable foundation characterizes large parts of Husserl’s work. Only occasionally in his later works does he seem to hesitate. The question is whether he actually does provide such a foundation. Rudolf Bernet and others have argued that in this way Husserl is metaphysical in his belief in a firm foundation, but that he accomplishes something different. Husserl’s analysis of time instead point to a gap it is not possible to bridge,7 a gap that makes the “turn to the non-apparent” possible. 5 James G. Hart and Steven W. Laycock, eds., Essays in Phenomenological Theology (New York: State University of New York, 1986); Klaus Held, Lebendige Gegenwart – Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); Claudia Welz, Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). 6 Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Buch 2, Hua IV, ed. Marly Biemel (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969) § 22, 102–3. 7 Rudolf Bernet, “Is the Present Ever Present? Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence,” in Research in Phenomenology 12 (1982).

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Time is thus more central and foundational to Husserl than space. He was preoccupied with time throughout his life and published on this subject in three volumes: Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, which is a collection of lectures from 1905; Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/18); and Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934).8 In his analysis, experience reveals itself as a continually flowing stream and thus as time. But experience in time is not only that which continually disappears, but also that which stays, but in a different mode. His example, borrowed from Brentano, is melody. A melody is not just a succession of notes we hear one after the other. Rather, the notes are dependent upon each other. Each note only receives its meaning through the notes that come before and those that are expected to follow afterwards. That one note has passed does not mean that it is totally gone; it remains present in a new mode. In his technical vocabulary Husserl calls this new mode “retentions.” It is not an act of memory in the sense of an act that is conscious, as when I remember a particular event. Husserl instead employs the image of earlier experiences as sinking rocks, present in the experiences that follow as something we are not directed towards, but continually sinking more deeply into the layers of consciousness. He also uses the image of the tail of a comet, a tail which always accompanies our directed intentionality. In this way we carry the past with us in the present. In a similar (or opposite) way, the future is in the present as “protentions,” an open horizon of expectations. This means that a note exists in different modes: it is given as a primordial experience, what is experienced directly right now, and it is given in a non-original way as past and future. The now includes both a specific kind of presence and a specific kind of absence.The primordial givenness is thus not the same as the now, but only a part of the now – or rather, the now can be understood as the limit between coming and going. This does not mean that experience is fragmented in time, however. When we focus on an object such as a note, then the “same” content shows itself in different modes.The “sameness” means that there is an overlapping of the different modes, what Husserl calls Deckung. Through this process a stable world is constituted in which it is possible to live. In this way the analysis of inner time-consciousness explains the continuity of objects. Nevertheless, the experience of different kinds of objects in time is not the only kind of intentionality that appears in the analysis of inner time-consciousness. Two kinds of intentionality become apparent: 8 Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, Hua X, ed. Rudolf Boehm (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein, (1917/18), Hua XXXIII, ed. Rudolf Bernet and Dieter Lohmar (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001); Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-manuskripte, Hua, Materialien Band VII, ed. Dieter Lohmar (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006).

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one constitutes objects that go through protention, presence and retention (Querintentionalität), and the other is a non-thematized consciousness of the continuity of the movement itself (Längsintentionalität). The first kind of intentionality, Querintentionalität, known in English as transverse or vertical intentionality, describes when consciousness constitutes the object as other than itself. It is identified as one and the same as it moves through protention, primordial experience and retention. The object gains a positive character through the overlapping and acquires an essence of its own. It also gains a negative character because its movement can be prolonged in both directions and can be understood as existing “before” it came into protention and “after” it left, or had sunk deeply into, retention. The other kind of intentionality, Längsintentionalität, does not constitute objects. It is translated as longitudinal or horizontal intentionality and means the consciousness of the continuity of the movement. Through this intentionality consciousness is aware of its own unity. This unit is not thematized and thus objectified or alienated from itself; rather, it is an immediate consciousness that is always present in the background, and as such, it is pre-reflective and merely a horizontal consciousness. As the unit of time it cannot be one object among many within time and Husserl therefore formulates it as quasi-object.9 Phenomenology investigates the presuppositions and possibilities for life and consciousness. In recognizing the foundational character of time, consciousness or subjectivity is understood as a stream in constant movement. But in order to study subjectivity we have to turn it into the object of the study, and once we have done this, it is no longer the living stream but one object within the stream.We no longer examine subjectivity as “perceiving” but as something “perceived.” We have turned longitudinal intentionality into transverse intentionality. When we begin to reflect on the experiencing of subjectivity it becomes one experience among many within time, and it is thus no longer subjectivity as experiencing. In order to grasp experiencing, we move to another level, but having done this we find we have again turned the experience of the experience into another object, and we find ourselves in the same situation once more. Husserl describes this problem as an infinite regress: each transcendental analysis demands another analysis. The question is whether we really lose something in the transformation of subjectivity from the activity of perceiving into something perceived? Husserl sometimes argues that nothing is changed in the transformation from experiencing subjectivity into an experienced object. In Ideas II he 9

Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, § 39, 80, Appendix 8, 116ff and text 54, 379–80.

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argues that the pure Ego can conceive of itself as an object without changing it. He develops the argument thus: Everywhere the distinction must certainly be made between the objectified and the “originally” not objectified pure Ego, e.g., between the perceived and the perceiving pure Ego … yet it is evident, in virtue of further reflections at a higher level, that this and the other pure Ego are in truth one and the same. It is just that at one time it is given, at other times it is not given; or, in a higher reflection, in the one case it is straightforwardly given, in the other it is given through a further mediating stage.10

Husserl argues for the continuity and transparency of consciousness and the second kind of givenness provided by “a further mediating stage,” that is, through reason. But the question remains whether this is really a phenomenological argument. The problem with this argument is the impossibility of comparing subjectivity as experienced and thematized with experiencing and thematizing subjectivity, because we need to thematize it in order to make such a comparison. There is no place from which we can make a comparison, and any attempt would be outside of the phenomenological range. The limit of knowledge is thus reached in this central analysis. This does not mean that there is “something” that cannot be thematized, but rather that the core of life, the movement and temporality of life, cannot be fully thematized by an object-intentionality (Objektintentionalität). Here Husserl reaches the limit of his phenomenology and his explicit desire for thematized and unthematized subjectivity to coincide is one reason why Rudolph Bernet, as mentioned above, has called Husserl’s project metaphysical and his philosophy a philosophy of presence. Yet Bernet claims that Husserl’s project leads mostly to results that are non-metaphysical, although Husserl himself did not always acknowledge this. The whole analysis of time-consciousness reveals several intentionalities whose content is not exactly the same when it becomes objectified: memory is an objectification of the retention and hoping is one objectification of protention. In a similar way an objectification of longitudinal intentionality might be formulated as a transcendental reflection. These pre-reflective intentionalities and their reflective counterparts do cover each other but there always remains a gap and they never fully coincide. Such a pattern is also developed in his analysis of passive synthesis from 1918–1926, which focused on the level of pre-reflective constitution.11

10 Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, book 2, § 23, 108. He makes similar arguments in Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, § 39, 82f and in text 54, 382. 11 Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis: aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926, Hua XI (Haag: Nijhoff, 1966).

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The centrality of this argument on inner time-consciousness – at the core of phenomenology where it should have its foundation – affects how we understand the activity of phenomenology. The foundation of phenomenology can never be transparent to the phenomenologist. Each analysis will lead to a new level to be analyzed and so on and so forth, in a movement Anthony Steinbock has described as a generative phenomenology whereby each generation necessarily has to develop a slightly different phenomenology.12 In his early writings, in his lectures on inner time-consciousness from 1905 and in Ideas II written around 1914–16, Husserl clearly still insists on the coinciding of a pre-reflective and reflective level. Later, Husserl modifies his view on this matter.Yet instead of viewing the question solely as a problem to be solved, he develops a larger acceptance of, and interest in, the limitations of object-intentionality. This acceptance also becomes more and more explicit: it is more present in Die Bernauer Manuskripte from 1917–18 than in the lectures on inner time-consciousness from 1905, and even more explicit in the C-manuscripts from 1929–34 than in Die Bernauer Manuskripte. Nevertheless, Husserl mainly understands the infinite regress as a problem to be solved, whereas later phenomenologists have understood it as a possibility and an opening. Throughout the history of modern phenomenology, this limit of object-intentionality has opened up many areas including the necessity of relating to this limit and of taking into account intentionalities that do not relate to objects. Concepts such as radical alterity and the non-apparent have become increasingly important – concepts that have provided an opening to a philosophy of religion. They are developed when one accepts that it is not possible, and thus cannot be a goal, to find a place where subjectivity has itself as an object in its fullness. Related to this insight, it also becomes clear that no object can be perceived in its fullness. Because of the flowing character of experience, the horizon of meaning always exceeds perception. If this is where Husserl’s investigations lead, the question is how this is received and developed by his students. Husserl expressed surprise himself that his philosophy seemed to have strange effects on his students’ religious orientation and made “Protestants out of Catholics and Catholics out of Protestants.”13 Husserl himself was not a very religious man and thought of his philosophy as beyond different confessions. But by so clearly showing 12 Anthony Steinbock, Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995) and “Generativity and Generative Phenomenology,” in Husserl Studies 12 (1995), 55–79. 13 The quote comes from a letter from Husserl to Rudolf Otto from 1919 and published in Das Maß des Verborgenen: Heinrich Ochsener zum Gedächtnis, eds. Curt Ochwadt, Heinrich Ochsner and Erwin Tecklenborg (Hannover: Tecklenborg, 1981), 159.

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and discussing the limit of object-consciousness, he opened up for his students the possibility of relating this phenomenological discussion to different religious traditions and their thoughts on subjectivity, for example, the soul as something that does not belong to a worldly order but to a different order of a “beyond.” Edith Stein was one of these students.

3. Edith Stein and the Shortcomings of Phenomenology Stein edited Husserl’s first volume on time-consciousness (Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins) and was thus very familiar with these discussions. She wrote her dissertation on the theme of empathy under the guidance of Husserl. Later she became one of the first Husserl scholars to turn to the philosophy of religion and also became increasingly religious. Towards the end of her all too brief life she even became a Roman Catholic nun. In her dissertation published in 1917, she understands the self, or what I have called subjectivity, as indisputably given. She distinguishes between a reflection related to an inner perception and a reflection related to reflection itself. In the first case the act of reflection could be an act of memory or of a reflection upon oneself as an object. In such cases there is a clear difference between the object and the act of reflection, and thus knowledge can never be absolutely certain. In the second case, however, reflection is reflecting the present experience, that is, itself.14 In this early analysis she does not see any problem with such a coinciding between reflection and its object; rather, she presupposes that this kind of knowledge provides other types of knowledge with a firm ground, just as Husserl thought inner time-consciousness analyses should provide his phenomenology with a fixed starting point. In Stein’s essay “Was ist Philosophie?” (published posthumously in Erkenntnis und Glaube), she imagines Thomas Aquinas discussing the place of philosophy with Husserl. The text was probably written at the beginning of the 1930s and definitely during her religious period. In this text the coinciding of reflecting subjectivity with itself is discussed and thematized.15 In this text Husserl and Thomas discover many similarities between their philosophies.They both view philosophy as a quest in which sober inquiring reason gradually uncovers the structure of the world, but they differ on the limits of this reason. Thomas – clearly presenting Stein’s view in opposition to her former teacher – states that we have to acknowledge the 14 Edith Stein, Zum Problem der Einfühlung (Halle: Buchdruckerei des Waisenhauses, 1917), 3ff., 33. 15 Stein, Erkenntnis und Glaube (Freiburg, Basel, Wien: Herder, 1993).

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limitations of human rationality. Husserl’s problem is that he argues as if there were no such limitations. Stein claims that knowledge is an infinite process, but that it contains a regulative idea of full truth which guides the process and that Husserl is aiming at this full truth without acknowledging its status as a regulative idea.16 She also accuses him of not recognizing the whole problem and asks whether he would not need an Archimedean point outside of himself in order to see and relate to the limits of human knowledge.17 This blindness leads to problems. Using Cartesian doubt filtered through Kant’s critique of pure reason, Husserl reaches a sphere of transcendental and immanent consciousness. But this sphere never becomes as pure as Husserl wants it to be as he wants to find true immanence in the sense that knowledge is absolutely one with its object, thus ruling out any kind of doubt. But this sphere of immanence continues to reveal new forms of transcendence and never becomes as pure as Husserl wants it to be.18 Here the theme from Husserl’s analyses of inner timeconsciousness returns, that is, the question whether there is a pure sphere of immanence where perceiving perceives itself or, as Stein formulated it, where reflecting upon reflection makes the ground of consciousness fully transparent and visible. In contrast to her earlier text, Stein develops a very different approach to the problem here. With Thomas she objects to the idea that such oneness would be possible in human immanence. She claims that the gap between object and subjectivity, as it appears in the analysis of inner time-consciousness, is what characterizes human knowledge, but that God is knowledge, in exactly this sense of a coinciding of a knowledge apparatus with its object. God is both sides at the same time in God’s infinity, whereas human knowledge must be on one side or the other (i.e., the object-side or subject-side).19 Human knowledge must be reflexive, and reflection always means mediation. Only divine knowledge is immediate. Stein goes so far as to characterize human knowledge precisely as knowledge through a medium and divides these mediums into three groups: 1) the light of understanding, through which we can have knowledge, 2) categories through which we recognize things and phenomena, 3) objects through which we can experience other objects, such as mirrors. The first medium is always required, but the second and third are not necessary in terms of the knowledge of oneself. One does not know oneself through a reflection in the mirror or through categories. Nevertheless, self-knowledge is not immediate: in order to know oneself, one needs to go through 16 17 18 19

Ibid., 24. Ibid., 26. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 46.

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a reflexive act, so this knowledge is mediated through reflection. This light of knowledge, which has the capacity to reflect and make itself into an object to itself, is central to Stein, and it is here that she gives the concept of “God” its correct place. God is precisely this light, and human beings can borrow this light in their search for knowledge. Thus, knowledge and its object can be one in divine knowledge.20 Lacking such immediate knowledge, human knowledge has to rely on a different foundation and must begin with beliefs. Here faith is not something extraneous to the quest for truth but rather the starting point. In Stein’s dialogue when Husserl asks Thomas what provides the criteria for truth, Thomas answers only by referring to God and grace. At the end of rationality there is only blind faith.21 In a similar way it is not possible to have any knowledge about God. As we have seen, it is not possible to know God, as the light of reason itself, through mediated human knowledge. Stein thus argues there can be no positive knowledge of God, only a negative one. (In this way she establishes a connection to the tradition of negative theology).22 The impossibility of human knowledge achieving unmediated knowledge leads Stein to a concept of God that is an example of such coinciding, immediate knowledge. As the light of reason itself, it is a necessary presupposition. It is non-apparent but unavoidably there. In another text dating from the same period, Stein also claims that faith shows being as dependent and as pointing beyond itself. It is through faith that she can relate to the nongiven upon which we are dependent and which exists intimately within ourselves. This non-given divinity is not a radical alterity but, she claims, a beyond in which we move.23 The non-given or non-apparent here is not something far away but rather the life of life, the temporality of time, and the light of knowledge. In her later Christian phase Stein proposed that philosophy has strict limitations: it is characterized by proofs of God, sharp concepts, and the power of deduction. Philosophy’s clarity is therefore also its limitation. In Stein’s view, philosophy can never investigate the non-apparent since it needs to objectify and give full visibility to every concept.24 Phenomenology is not enough. On the one hand, one could argue that she retains her desire for complete knowledge, and when she does not find it in phenomenology, she turns to religion. Faith tends to be an argument of authority and she never relates to the question of conflicting faiths. On the other 20

Ibid., 44–6. Ibid., 44. 22 Ibid., 45. 23 Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein – Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins (Freiburg, Basel, Wien: Herder, 2006), 61. 24 Ibid., 60. 21

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hand, one could also argue that in religion she finds another sensitivity to questions about the limitations of human knowledge and the importance of the non-apparent. I believe both aspects can be found in her philosophy, just as both a metaphysical and a non-metaphysical side can be found in Husserl’s philosophy. But given Stein’s strict understanding of philosophy, the problems that arose in phenomenology forced her away from phenomenology altogether. Husserl’s need to provide his phenomenology with a firm foundation played a significant role for phenomenologists such as Stein, but it also forced her out of phenomenology. She realized that such a foundation could not be found within phenomenology and she thus turns to Christianity. But her Christianity is ambiguous: it denies a firm ground for the reason of the human being but grants it for a divine reason, thus still giving room for it and still retaining the goal of finding the place for a firm ground, just as in Husserl’s philosophy. Here the importance of Heidegger comes back. Heidegger and his criticism of onto-theology shows the problem of a religious turn such as Stein’s, and in a more fruitful way makes room for discussions of the non-apparent within phenomenology. But nevertheless the opening toward religious traditions and philosophy of religion is there in a fundamental way already within Husserl’s phenomenology. Neither is the importance of Husserl’s analysis of inner time-consciousness diminished by Heidegger’s philosophy. As we will see, in Michel Henry it plays a significant role, and he raises many questions similar to Stein’s.

4. Michel Henry and a More Generous Phenomenology Henry also begins with criticizing Husserl and claims that the problem with the phenomenological tradition is its ontological monism, meaning it only accepts object manifestation. In this kind of manifestation the manifested needs to be different from that which manifests: object and subject cannot be the same. In traditional phenomenology the self can only be manifested or given to itself as other than itself. As seen above, this is what Stein believes characterizes human knowledge. In Essence of Manifestation Henry aligns himself with the critique of the metaphysical Husserl and radicalizes the insight of the impossibility of reducing subjectivity to objectivity, to an extreme degree. He argues that the self cannot be objectified, but that it still is a given although in a totally different way. He criticizes all other phenomenologists for not accepting this totally different givenness, by which he means the non-objectified givenness of subjectivity or the movement of subjectivity. He thus claims that we should accept two types of givenness. This is the foundation for what he calls an ontological dualism, a dualism that separates transcendent

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and objectified manifestation from immanent and directly given manifestation.25 What Stein called a form of divine knowledge where object and subject coincide, Henry identifies as a totally different kind of givenness within the human being. This means that Henry claims that the self cannot be reduced to the representation of itself, since the representation or objectification of the self is a transcendent outer manifestation and not the self itself.This transcendent objectification does not come about by itself, since its possibility, and thus its essence, lies in the manifesting or objectifying power. We find this objectifying power in the seeing and not what is seen, in the feeling and not in what is felt, in experiencing and not in what is experienced, and so on. In other words, we find it in the capacity Husserl wanted to analyze, but which kept slipping away in the analysis of inner time-consciousness. This power or unfolding of the seeing, feeling and experiencing is what Henry calls immanence and he contrasts it with object-intentionality which he claims is the only kind of intentionality that phenomenology has acknowledged so far. In this way he is only arguing with earlier phenomenologists and does not see that his object-intentionality bears a clear resemblance to Husserl’s transverse intentionality (Querintentionalität), and that his concept of immanence also bears a clear resemblance to Husserl’s concept of longitudinal intentionality (Längsintentionalität). Nevertheless, it is clear that Henry radicalizes this distinction and claims that they constitute two different ontological realities, a radicalization that lies in making immanence independent of transcendence. This is a step with which Husserl would never have agreed. The independence of immanence in Henry’s phenomenology derives from the fact that the self receives itself without making itself into an object. Immanence is self-receptivity and a kind of manifestation that does not separate its manifestation from the manifesting power. Henry explains this by distinguishing between transcendent and immanent content. He claims that subjectivity is neither a dative that the world is for, that only exists in this being for and thus is dependent upon the world, nor is subjectivity as immanent content something “of the world.” Rather, it is that which enables the world, and thus it is transcendental in Husserl’s sense. Immanence receives itself directly without any mediating help from a transcendent world: it is immediate. Because of this lack of mediation, it is non-horizontal, non-ecstatic, a-temporal and a-cosmic, and therefore escapes reflexive thematization. Its appearance is invisible, but it is not non-appearance; on the contrary, it is the most fundamental kind of manifestation. It is not unknown, but known in a radically different way. This description clearly 25

Michel Henry, Essence of Manifestation (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). See, for example, 250–51.

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resembles Stein’s concept of God which can only be described negatively and who is most intimately known as the light of reason in her epistemological discussion. Consequently, the immanent self in Henry’s phenomenology is not merely an empty form of the transcendent world, but has its own content. This content cannot be separated from its form. There cannot be any gap within immanence, since such a gap is exactly that which characterizes transcendence. The form is the content. The form as well as the content of immanence is auto-affection, which constitutes the original essence of receptivity. It is the feeling of feeling oneself that is the form and content of immanence.26 One problem with Henry’s argument emerges when we look at its connection to Husserl’s analysis of inner time-consciousness. When Husserl starts to discuss this problem, he encounters an overflowing subjectivity beyond thematization. He shows a continuous motion whereas Henry turns this into a second (or actually a primary) ontological order, which is a very strong claim. Immanence in Henry thus becomes an order of its own. Husserl identifies this as a problem and as an infinite regress, but Henry develops it into the central theme for his phenomenology. To make it visible, he gives it the strongest possible emphasis and even states that it is truer than transcendence since it provides the presuppositions for all knowledge about an object.27 Although this immanence characterizes subjectivity, it also goes beyond subjectivity in Henry’s analysis. By defining immanence as that within the human which cannot be found within the world and as that which enables the world, he alludes to concepts of God.28 Where every knowledge of objects betrays immanence, faith would be the only possible way to relate to it. Religion rather than science is able to make room for immanence in the world as well. But, Henry argues, the concept of God has a tendency to develop into an essence of its own beyond the immanence of life.29 In this way Henry builds upon Heidegger’s critic of onto-theology. Belief should not be understood within the paradigm of the knowledge of objects as uncertain knowledge. Rather, belief is the immediate grasp of reality: “it is the original experience of the Being constitutive of Being itself and of its structure.”30 Here being is one way to discuss immanence. As in Stein, reason is always locked up in object-intentionality and is the only way to relate to a different kind of intentionality they both call faith. Religion is not an object to 26 27 28 29 30

Ibid., 254. Ibid., 263. Ibid., 309ff. Ibid., 406. Ibid., 406.

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investigate, but a rich tradition that philosophy can think together with at the edges of human capacity.

5. Conclusion Michel Henry, like Edith Stein, emphasizes that this concept of God does not involve a “beyond” or other world somewhere else. It is the reality we live in and through, and faith is the central means by which we do so. Stein identifies a stronger connection between the human being and God when she states that God is the place where the object and subject of knowledge no longer are separated, as they always are in human knowledge. Human knowledge is thus always directed by an object-intentionality. This is what Henry opposes when he points out that human knowledge at its center is immanent knowledge (or faith). The difference between the two becomes less evident if we emphasize Stein’s formulation that God is “the light of reason,” however, and see that divinity is active at the center of human capacity and the border between the human and the divine becomes less clear. According to Stein, the saints can borrow this light and the boundary between divine and human knowledge thus becomes less fixed and more fluid. Nevertheless, she would still emphasize that in human knowledge there is always a connection between this immanent knowledge and the knowledge of objects, a connection to which Henry objects. Although Husserl opens up phenomenology to these later developments, he would probably have been quite horrified by its consequences. He would not have seen the need to develop immanence or the light of reason into spheres of their own, thereby opening the gates to religion. As he writes in Ideas II:“The ego cannot be thought of as something separated from these lived experiences, from its ‘life,’ just as, conversely, lived experiences are not thinkable except as the medium of the life of the Ego.”31 In Husserl’s phenomenology the power of reason lies solely in developing forms of object-knowledge and can never be thought of without these consequences. The power of immanence lies solely in its opening up to transcendence and cannot be conceived of without this. Despite this difference, Stein, Henry and others exploited this opening within Husserlian phenomenology. They accused Husserl of not acknowledging it without giving him credit for taking us to the point where it became obvious. To conclude, the analysis of inner time-consciousness raises the question of the basis of phenomenology and the knowledge produced through it. The limit of self-transparent consciousness and object-knowledge is found at the core of transcendental phenomenology, which transforms the future 31

Husserl, Ideas 2, § 22, 105.

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of phenomenology and creates an opening for a philosophy of religion. This philosophy of religion cannot treat the religious phenomenon as an object, but rather finds the grounds of religion within the structure of consciousness. It even celebrates faith as more fundamental than reason. Instead of providing a firm foundation for all forms of science, as Husserl sought, it provides an opening toward religious traditions and debates. This is not unproblematic. Stein can be accused of onto-theology and of regressing to an authoritative Christianity. Henry, with his strict separation between immanence and transcendence, tends to add to the ancient religious division between the world and a “beyond.” Significantly, this tendency within phenomenology has made it possible to understand religion and to develop a dialogue with different religious traditions. This whole question was introduced by the analysis of time, but the subject of time tends to disappear when it becomes a subject for the philosophy of religion. Even so, it is significant that the theme of religion is introduced through an analysis of time. Religion could be understood as a phenomenon that relates to the temporality of life, birth and death, and the constant flux of life. As we have seen, Stein and Henry search for continuity within the flux, although this continuity easily gains an essence of its own and thus one could argue it belongs to an onto-theology. At the same time, religious traditions attempt to deal with the non-apparent in presence, the invisible that comes about through the flux of temporality.

On the Subject of Epigenesis: An Interpretive Figure in Paul Ricoeur Øystein Brekke All behavior is determined by reality. This adaptive point of view is found not only in psychology, with its basic schema of stimulus-response, but in biology, where reality plays the role of environment, and even epistemology, where reality is called objectivity. (Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 351)

The following text explores “epigenesis” as a philosophical figure of thought and a conceptual structure of transformation. Epigenesis has its own varied history as an interpretive concept both in the life sciences and in philosophy and psychology, and it has proved itself no less relevant to contemporary discussions of genetics and human development. For my part I wish to focus on the figure as it pertains to the work of Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) and the way epigenesis somewhat abruptly makes its appearance in Ricoeur’s work on Hegel and Freud in the 1960s.Taking my point of departure in epigenesis as it applies to Ricoeur’s dialectical theory of religion, I argue that this seemingly peripheral figure may productively be taken as a central interpretive edifice in Ricoeur’s philosophical oeuvre as a whole. Epigenesis, in both the sciences and the arts, confronts us with history, time, and change as the nonnegotiable terms of any interpretive endeavor. Within the wider framework of our joint venture in this collection, I seek to address the question of what the appearance of such a figure of thought means, what it offers to interpretation, and where such a notion finds itself between the future and past of a contemporary philosophy of religion.

1. Epigenesis in Contemporary Science The last fifteen to twenty years have seen a burgeoning interest in and focus on the notion of epigenesis in the field of genetics and embryology. It has its roots in Aristotle, who put forth epigenesis as a way of explaining

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how organic growth comes about.The Greek roots of the word (epi + genesis) point to a genesis, an origination, coming after or upon a primary genesis, similar to an epilogue attached to a primary instance of speech. The classical discussion of scientific epigenesis came to a climax in the eighteenth century, when the theoretical dispute over the origin of complex organisms revolved around the opposing schools of preformation and epigenesis. Preformationists held that an organism’s developmental history is already programmed and in place at the embryonic outset of life. Epigenesists on the other hand – of which Kant’s contemporary Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1733–1794) was a central proponent – saw form and differentiation as products of time and subsequent change.1 In contemporary genetics, epigenesis has arisen as a powerful notion for understanding the interaction between heritage and environment in the development of an organism. In epigenetics, an organism’s genetic makeup is seen as a kind of original switchboard, where external factors – chemical, physical, and social – influence the way switches on the board are set and changed. This provides clues, for example, as to why a pair of identical twins, with the same genetic makeup, nonetheless turn out two very different individuals, as the result of various extragenetic influences. Such a model of development uses epigenesis to describe the interaction between heredity and environment in the organism as it moves in time. A brief sample of the scientific field today thus confronts us with terminology such as “gene regulation,” “replication timing,” “activation and inactivation,” and “events” which have an impact on gene activity.2 By way of definition, the field of epigenetics “refers to changes in gene expression due to mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.”3 An epigenetics of the pea aphid – plant lice – would then seek to explain how the insect “can form different types – sexual and asexual, winged and wingless – based on environmental factors like temperature or day length, without altering its genes.”4 Interestingly, epigenesis also plays a role in geology, designating a change in the mineral character of a sediment due to external influences, a process akin to, but not identical with, metamorphosis. Epigenesis in the field of geology denotes the “phenom1

For a survey of the interesting and complex historical backdrop to this debate, see Jane Maienschein, “Epigenesis and Preformationism” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, online. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/epigenesis. Last modified September 21, 2008. 2 See, for example, Alan P. Wolffe’s introduction to Epigenetics: Novartis Foundation Symposium 214 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), 1–5. 3 Susan A. Lanham-New et al., eds., Nutrition and Metabolism, 2nd. ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). 4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/sci_nat_enl_1268231318/ html/1.stm [Called up on October 28, 2011].

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enon by which a mineral changes its chemical nature while retaining its crystalline form.”5 Epigenesis as it applies to the hard sciences – in embryology, genetics, and geology – must also here be taken as an interpretive figure. The figure represents a complex way of conceptualizing certain processes of change in nature. For our purposes, the basic figure I wish to retain is the notion of a change, a transformation, taking place as the result of external influences, but which may not be reduced solely to the workings of these influences. The figure of epigenesis thus far points broadly towards a change which is not random, but where everything is also not already set. With this basic figure in mind, we move on to Paul Ricoeur and his use of epigenesis.

2. Paul Ricoeur on the Subject of Epigenesis “How can a precipitate of identifications deposit itself in the ego and modify the ego, if the process is not a progression by means of regression? And what is the principle according to which this progression operates?” (Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 491)

For my own part, I first came across the notion not in the sciences, but on reading Ricoeur’s work on Freud and interpretation from 1965.6 The earliest use of the term I have found, however, appears in an essay on the philosophical significance of the unconscious in Freud, reprinted in Le conflit des interprétations from 1969, but based on a contribution that Ricoeur made already in 1960. The context was a conference gathering psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers at Bonneval, France under the auspices of Henri Ey. Among the participants were also Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplanche, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. As Ricoeur here emphasizes the dual displacement of immediate consciousness by Freud and Hegel respectively, he concludes that any Hegelian theory of the self after Freud may “speak of consciousness only in terms of epigenesis.”7 It is, however, 5

“Épigénie,” Le Petit Robert 1: Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française (Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1991). My translation. 6 Paul Ricoeur, De l’interprétation: Essai sur Freud (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1965). All textual references to the book are from the English translation by Denis Savage: Freud and Philosophy. An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1970). 7 Paul Ricoeur, “Le conscient et l’inconscient” in Le conflit des interprétations (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969), 101–121. Textual reference is made to the English translation by Willis Domingo in The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (London:The Athlone Press, 1989), 109.

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his more elaborate reflections on the notion in the later study Freud and Philosophy that I take as my point of departure here.8 8 It is not self-evident precisely where Ricoeur himself picks up the figure of epigenesis as a metaphor for reflection, but two possible sources – not mutually exclusive – immediately suggest themselves. 1) The Work of Kant. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) utilizes the term in trying to grasp the cogenerative and dynamic relationship between our intellect and experience in the a priori categories of understanding involved in our cognition of the world. In the second edition of the transcendental deduction of the categories (KrV, § 27, B 166–168), Kant likens his own conception of the constitution of reason to “ein System der Epigenesis der reinen Vernunft” [a system of the epigensis of pure Reason], pitting this against the alternative of “eine Art Präformationssystem der reinen Vernunft” [a kind of “preformation system” of pure Reason]. This latter alternative would imply, problematically, that our faculty of understanding was implanted directly in us, and that the universe from the Creator’s hand would be constructed in such a way that our faculties of reasoning corresponded exactly to the physical laws of nature. The model of epigenesis, on the other hand, attempts to capture that difficult constellation which Kant tries to think, namely, a faculty of reason grounded on our understanding’s own a priori categories that does not simultaneously make these purely subjective or without reference to anything objective and empirical. The figure of epigenesis in Kant seeks to describe the generative character of reason as something that is neither already planted in us from birth, nor simply the result of subsequent experience of the world. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 2nd. ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995 [1787]), B 166–168. Gunter Zöller impressively formulates this difficult but central aspect of Kant’s First Critique in the following way: “In the Transcendental Deduction the categories are shown to ‘contain … the grounds of possibility of all experience in general’ (B 167) [KrV] … Yet although experience does not constitute the origin of the categories, something about experience is nevertheless an essential factor in the transcendental deduction of the categories; for it is only with respect to possible experience that categories refer a priori to objects.” Gunter Zöller, “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge” in Kant: Analysen – Probleme – Kritik, ed. Hariolf Oberer et al. (Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 1988), 87. Zöller’s article presents a most helpful discussion of epigenesis in Kant, both in the cited paragraphs and in Kant’s encompassing work. 2) The work of Erik H. Erikson. The second likely background for the use of epigenesis by Ricoeur is the work of psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994). In Erikson’s continuation and modification of Freudian psychoanalysis, he centers in his ego analysis on an “epigenesis of the ego” in discussing the social context for the development of the individual. In his epigenetic theory of ego development, Erikson wishes to underline the reciprocal exchange between an individual and the individual’s surrounding psychosocial environment, and to underline the mutuality of this exchange. For our purposes, it is interesting to note that in the text where Ricoeur more extensively deploys the concept of epigenesis, his Freud-study, in a footnote he cites the psychoanalytical use of epigenesis with reference to Erikson. In David Rapaport’s systematic survey of psychoanalytical theory from 1958, which Ricoeur sees as an especially important aid to his own work, the genetic point of view (of Erikson and others) implies “neither that behavior arises from the ‘maturation’ of a preformed behavior repertory, nor that behaviors ‘develop’ from accumulating experience; rather it views behavior as the product of an epigenetic course which is regulated both by inherent laws of the

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The notion of epigenesis in this study appears in the dialectic that brings to an end Ricoeur’s extensive work. Once more, epigenesis crops up in a discussion of Freud, and once more it comes as a result of bringing a Freudian archaeology into confrontation with an Hegelian teleology of the subject. As the argument progresses in Ricoeur’s intimations towards a new philosophical dialectic, we find Ricoeur constantly on the lookout for some point where the two opposing directions of interpretation – Freud’s regressive archaeology and Hegel’s progressive teleology – may intersect. A Freudian archaeology of the subject gives us man as subject to ancient archaisms and destructive repetitions of the same. An Hegelian teleology of the subject moves in the other direction, laying bare the essential workings of the reconciled self by taking the ultimate end of the process as key to the subject’s progression. Ricoeur, for his part, wishes to bring the two directions of interpretation together in a true dialectic that is not eclecticism. In short, Ricoeur wishes to expose how the human subject is a product of both its own archaeology – through the primordial figures that constitute its being – and of its teleology – through the progressive figures that move the subject along the path towards freedom. The point of intersection between the two directions of meaning is where we, based on my analysis, should situate the Ricoeurian notion of epigenesis. However, it is not until his concluding considerations on the validity and the limits of a psychoanalysis of religion that the notion of epigenesis appears this time. For it is precisely in his theory of religion that the application of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory reveals its weakest point. Due to what Ricoeur considers to be Freud’s personal distaste for religion, Freud comes to analyze religious phenomena and sentiments in a manner paradoxically at odds with his own encompassing theory. The effect of what Ricoeur thus considers a misplacement of religion in Freud is that Freud thereby problematically fails to grasp the potential for new meaning that religious figures and sentiments also harbour. Furthermore, this failure to understand religion in its full complexity is tied to Freud’s lacking appreciation of the historicity appropriate to religion and religious language. For Freud, religion is an essentially atemporal phenomenon. This means that all historical development subsequent to the originary act of parricide is nothing but one and the same monotonous repetition of the primordial crime marking the birth of religion: “naïve religion is religion proper”9 organism and by cumulative experience.” Cf. David Rapaport, “The Structure of Psychoanalytic Theory: A Systematizing Attempt,” Psychological Issues, monograph 6, vol. 2, no. 2 (1960): 43. Reference to this set of problems in Rapaport is made by Ricoeur in Freud and Philosophy, cf. p. 350, n. 8. It should be noted, however, that Ricoeur’s own use of the term is neither identical to Kant’s use nor to Erikson’s. 9 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 545. It should be noted, however, that the role of Judaism in the life and thought of Sigmund Freud is not simple and straightforward. An

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(Ricoeur). Religious symbols are consequently not accorded the same potential for discovery that Freud is willing to allow for artistic creations as evidenced, for example, in Freud’s analysis of the smile of the Giaconda by Leonardo da Vinci. For Ricoeur, this is furthermore tied to Freud’s reductive view of language, where words primarily echo and function as imprints of what is perceived rather than being seen as carriers and producers of meaning in themselves. Freud thereby overlooks the need for exegesis and interpretation also in the case of religious symbols, and mistakenly opens the door to a direct psychology of the believer and the notions held.10 In contrast to weight otherwise given to interpretation as the exposition of latent meaning, Freud here misses the productive role of human imagination as itself a carrier of meaning and also underplays the speculative potential of religious illusion: For Freud an illusion is a representation to which no reality corresponds. His definition is positivist. Is there not, however, a function of the imagination which escapes the positivist alternative of the real and the illusory?11

Against such an interpretation, and by way of an Hegelian account of symbolic progression, Ricoeur sets forth epigenesis as a polemical counter figure to Freud’s reductionist account. On this view, the Freudian insistence on primal religion as the accomplished matrix for all religion represents a preformation at odds with change and the notion of a history of religion. Opposing Freud’s view, Ricoeur sets forth the possibility of an epigenesis of religious sentiment and religious symbols. By this, he means the possibility that what is truly and rightly identified as a repetition of the primordial and archaic may – as a product of the mythopoeic imagination – simultaneously be open to transformation and converted into an instrument of liberation and education. On this view, Freud is correct in seeing both fear and the desire for consolation as fundamental driving forces in the religious imagination, but he is wrong in seeing only this. For in the figures of fear and desire reside also – with epigenesis – the possibility of a transformation of man’s destructive desires and fears. And it is here that Ricoeur’s dialectical theory of religion, to my mind, reveals itself at its most incisive. In one of the most interestinteresting study of this complex relation may be found in Yosef H.Yerushalmi’s Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1991). 10 Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 544. 11 Paul Ricoeur, “Le psychanalyse et le mouvement de la culture contemporaine” in Le conflit des interprétations (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969), 122–159.Textual reference is made to the English The Conflict of Interpretations, 145. This reductive shortcoming in Freud is, incidentally, not restricted to religious phenomena in Ricoeur’s eyes, but affects Freud’ interpretation of culture as a whole.

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ing statements of the book, Ricoeur formulates his epigenetic point with extensive implications: The force of a religious symbol lies in the fact that it recaptures a primal scene fantasy and transforms it into an instrument of discovery and exploration of origins.12

The gist of Ricoeur’s argument runs as follows: To the banal question of whether religion is good for us or bad, a Ricoeurian response would have to be something like: it is good because it is bad. The truly dialectical point of this view is that it is precisely because religion is a repetition of the primal father and a striving for consolation that it also has contact with the subject at that deep level where transformation and healing may occur. Such is the figure of epigenesis employed in a dialectical theory of religion that takes seriously both the pitiless destruction of Freud and the progressive recapitulation of Hegel. The intersecting figure between the opposing interpretations of man’s repetitive and timeless archaeology and man’s progressive teleology, is epigenesis. Epigenesis thus comes to denote the character of something – a representation, a sentiment, an illusion – being something, but also harboring the possibility of becoming something else. Not by the ex nihilo arrival of something completely new, but by the laborsome internal rearrangement of an edifice under the guidance of original form and external variation. It is thus not by the sudden appearance of a new and liberating symbol in the religious imagination that the unhealthy redundancies of the archaic lose their grip. Rather, it is through the continual chain of interpretations and reinterpretations which religious symbols represent, that the internal meaning of a certain edifice is transformed and also opened up towards new meaning. The primal father is not simply abolished as the traumatic origo of the divine, but through the successive figures of divinity even this traumatic knot may be undone and reworked in a transformative way. The primal parricide attached to the Mosaic edifice is not unmoved by the successive refigurations of divine authority in Hosea, the Deuteronomist, and Johannine theology. By excluding the possibility of such symbolic progression, Freud also excludes the possibility of religious faith being something which concerns not so much the consoling of the child within us, as the maturing of our power to love – “in the face of the hatred within us and outside us – and in death.”13 This transformative and serial reworking of one symbolic figuration upon another is what Ricoeur captures in the figure of epigenesis. In a manner suggestive of its Hegelian frame of reference, Ricoeur closely links the possibility of such an epigenesis of the subject – such maturing and 12 13

Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 540. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, 536.

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“education” – to the possibilities of an epigenesis of the religious symbols themselves.14 The interconnectedness of the subject and the symbolic deposits of this subject in culture is central to Ricoeur’s analysis, but it is also key to the central dynamic of the figure of epigenesis in Ricoeur as a whole. Furthermore, although it is the religious symbol and sentiments that are most specifically discussed in relation to epigenesis in Freud and Philosophy, we should nonetheless see the notion of epigenesis as tied to the more general operations of the mythopoeic imagination and the birth and maturation of the subject in its dialectical progressions. Finally, it is time to say something about the temporal implications of the notion of epigenesis.

3. The Time of Epigenesis I wish to start here by giving an illustration which Harvard psychologist Erik H. Erikson takes up in his work on the epigenetic quality of identity formation. This presents us with a more tangible application of the theoretical considerations so far. Erikson gives the example of the newborn baby arriving at the family home. This crossing of thresholds represents an important change for this human individual. The baby by this moves from the uteral chemistry of the mother – from its embryological progression in another’s body – to the social chemistry of the family. Now this fragile, newborn being could easily be construed as the very symbol of radical passivity in life. Only it is not. From the very moment the child arrives with the family, the baby – in its fragility, with its mimicry, signs, and sounds – begins giving some very precise instructions to the family. On how to respond to this instruction, the parents have recourse to two things. On the one hand, they have tradition – the culturally embedded praxis on how to care for a child. On the other hand, natural instinct. So, far from the arrival of the baby solely being the start of a process of instruction and education by the parents, an intense education and raising of the family by the baby is similarly set in motion. Those who have raised a child will know that this education does not end at three months. I mention this example not only because it gives a fine illustration of the intertwined character of biology and culture relevant to the notion of epigenesis, but also because it comes to reveal the plastic quality of epigenesis. Plastic is that which both gives form and is able to receive form. The notion of plasticity has been intriguingly expounded by Catherine Malabou in her work on the future of Hegel,15 and it is not by chance that her 14

Ibid., 537. Catherine Malabou, L’avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (Paris: J.Vrin, 1996). Textual references are from the English translation by Lisbeth During, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,Temporality and Dialectic (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). 15

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name suggests itself in my reflections on epigenesis. For what Malabou has argued in her work on Hegelian temporality is that far from signalling the final closure of time, Absolute Knowledge in Hegel points towards “a new era of plasticity in which subjectivity gives itself the form which it at the same time receives.”16 It is thus “not stasis but metamorphosis that characterizes Absolute Knowledge,” a quality that “forms and transforms individuals, fashioning their ways of waiting for and expecting the future.”17 And it is precisely the epigenetic quality of time that I, for my part, identify in Malabou’s plastic notion of time. What we are confronted with here, in Hegel and Malabou, is the genealogical character of time itself. Genealogical in the sense that time comes from time. And genealogical in that other sense, in that the speculative recuperation of the moments of time is what opens time up to new time.18 With such an epigenetic temporality in mind, we can also see why time is of the essence for the human subject. Not that, in moving in time, anything can happen. But also not that, coming from time, everything has already happened: “Plasticity designates the future understood as future within closure, the possibility of a structural transformation: a transformation of structure within structure, a mutation ‘right at the level of form.’”19 What the plastic quality of epigenesis points to is an opening up towards the accidental and the contingent becoming an essential moment for the subject. And, conversely, epigenesis also comes to reveal the subject’s essential being in its accidentality. But epigenesis gives us not only a way of conceiving of the subject in its temporal formation. It is also reflected in the very act of trying to understand this subject as it forms in time. The epigenetics of time consequently puts us not to the task of quiet contemplation, but to acts of exegesis and interpretation. The historicity of the subject leaves us with the task of interpretation, with a reading of texts, symbols and events, in order to expound and understand this subject moving in time and constituted by time. This reading and interpretation will in turn take on the very quality of epigenesis itself. On reading I give the text or work form, but only at the price of myself receiving form. I do not start from nowhere and discover everything. I discover myself up on interacting with a text or a work that is already there and is other than me.20 16

Malabou, Future of Hegel, 133. Ibid., 134. 18 Cf. Michel Foucault, “Qu’est-ce que les Lumières?” in Michel Foucault: Dits et écrits IV. 1980–1988, ed. Daniel Defert et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 562–578. 19 Malabou, Future of Hegel, 192. 20 Cf. Malabou, Future of Hegel, 167ff., but also as the central starting point for the reflective philosophy of Ricoeur, in keeping with philosopher Jean Nabert (1881– 1960) that “understanding is inseparable from self-understanding and that the symbolic 17

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In my own reading of Ricoeur, I have stumbled across a term that in a lexical survey undoubtedly must be characterised as peripheral. Epigenesis is discussed in a handful of places in his entire work.The figure nonetheless comes to reveal itself, on my reading, as a central interpretive edifice for Ricoeur’s entire oeuvre. I have tried to show this in my own work on La Symbolique du Mal along the lines illustrated above,21 but I do not take this as important only to his theory of religion. The notion of epigenesis – as that fundamental imprint of history, finitude, and temporality on all acts of interpretation and figuration – has put its mark on more or less each and every one of the philosophical notions taken up and creatively rethought by Paul Ricoeur. We find its marks on Ricoeur’s textual hermeneutics – between explanation and understanding – and in his engagement with structuralism. It is also present in Ricoeur’s study of the self between idem and ipse, and in his later work on memory, forgiveness, and historical consciousness. Something accidental and peripheral becomes to me, the reader and interpreter, something central and essential. The attentive reader will no doubt in this last observation identify a mimicry of the way Catherine Malabou herself finds and reflects upon the notion of plasticity in Hegel. Her work is impressive and forceful. But we also recognize in her work a clever mimicry of Hegel himself. For is not Hegel eminently that philosopher who puts us in contact not only with thought, but also with the experience of thought; with how we receive our selves in the very reflection on how the self receives its self? That the notion of epigenesis in Ricoeur in fact leads us on such a path of interpretive mimicry should alert us to the fact that we are in the vicinity of an essentially Hegelian concept in Ricoeur. But it is not a Hegelianism without Freud. We find in Ricoeur not simply a repetition of Hegel, but a dialectical reading with and against Hegel, possibly making it all the more Hegelian in return. The notion of epigenesis is a powerful figure at play. It puts in motion symbols, culture, and time, and involves also a contemporary philosophy of religion in that interesting quest for the epigenesis of the subject.

universe is the milieu of self-explanation.” Paul Ricoeur, “A Philosophical Interpretation of Freud,” in The Conflict of Interpretations, 169. 21 Øystein Brekke, “Anamnese og eskjatologi: Religion, minne, genealogi med Paul Ricoeur.” [Anamnesis and Eschatology: Religion, Memory, Genealogy with Paul Ricoeur,] (PhD dissertation, University of Oslo, 2010).

II. Impossible Time

Philosophy of Religion – and its Sense for “the Impossible” In the chiasm of memory and imagination (Between past’s future and future’s past) Philipp Stoellger 1. God and Time? The traditional question of the relationship between God and time has always been an intriguing one, perhaps because at first glance it is a relation of ontological difference, like God and world. God is not “in” time, but rather “above” or “outside” of it. If God is eternal (a classical predication of God), then God is not temporal. This sharp distinction is mediated, usually by the relation of eternity and time. Eternity is not timeless: it is neither bound by time nor an infinite succession of time. Rather, eternity is a qualification, a relation, and a modalization of time: a qualification in the sense of “highest eminence,” a relation in the sense of “relevant for me,” and a modalization in the sense of “real” or even “more than real” (whatever that means). But the relation of eternity to time always remains somewhat unsatisfactory, as though there were two relata, for example, God and world, which are secondarily interrelated. A Christological perspective puts forward a less extrinsically- and more intrinsically-characterized relation, not only in how time is qualified by eternity but also how eternity is qualified by time. Indeed, the model of communicatio idiomatum can be applied to time and eternity as well, insofar as it shows how the latter might be qualified by the former. Eternity is qualified in, as and by time when we consider that Christ’s love, for example, as well as his suffering and death, are topics regarding which eternity is qualified in, as and by time. Christ’s “eternal love” (whatever it may be), only makes sense when viewed in and as time. The same may be said of his suffering: it is the dark consequence of critical love learning what it means to be expelled and driven to death. And his death is the paradox of eternity in and as time: God’s coming to an end. Thus, the question is whether time can be attributed to eternity, and what it would mean to speak in this way. The (neo-)Platonic chorismos of eternity and time, still alive and well in theology today (and not only

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in Rome), is challenged by a Christological revision: Whatever it means, eternity can only be understood in and as the time of Christ. Just as the Trinity may be reinterpreted economically (for example, the view of the Trinity as an interpretation of the Cross), eternity is the intrinsic qualification of time, revealed in Christ’s life, suffering, and death. In other words, the divine attribute called “eternity” takes part in time and is qualified by this special time-event. “Eternal” thus comes to refer to a temporal event (something “in time”) – but what does all this mean? I would suggest that eternity refers to a special sense of the meaning and significance of “time,” what one might call its “conciseness” or “succinctness” (or what German philosopher Ernst Cassirer called Prägnanz). Therefore, God becomes “concise,” insofar as God is “in becoming,” not in general (as with an ontological qualification), but by “becoming” present.When God becomes really present, then the event of “real presence” is the temporal eternity. This, however, would constitute a cataphatic concept of “temporal eternity” and God’s presence as “being given” in creation would be dominant. Yet the Christological conciseness is always different. His being-in-becoming is a being-in-passing, that is, in passing away (compare God on Mount Sinai). God’s being-in-passing-away is not so much an event of real presence as it is of real withdrawal, insofar as Christ has to “disappear” to make the disclosure possible. The consequence is more or less clear: the temporal eternity is being-in-becoming as well as being-in-passing-away. And that is not the condition of possibility for “real presence” but for “presence in withdrawal.” In this view, the Church is not the real presence of the body of Christ but rather a mode of his disappearance. (This is somewhat worrisome because it is ambiguous: is there still a disappearing presence or mostly a selfpreservation and self-presentation of the Church?) Images and icons are similarly not objects of real presence but of “real absence.”They are in their Christological sense not means of presentation and fabrication of evidence but of hiding, complication, and the interplay of presence and withdrawal. Similarly, religious speech is largely apophatic, but at the same time it always shows, hints at, and points to the becoming and passing. This is the diachronic distension of speech (its distentio linguae et litterarum et scripturae), which may also provide meaning to the dissemination and supplementation of eternity by Christ’s time. Further consequences can be identified rather easily. The idea of theology behind this view of eternity and time is not a foundation of techniques and institutions of “presentification,” of making present the absent, or of compensation. Rather, it is the indirect communication of the withdrawal with the hermeneutical bet that if there is an indirect presence, it may appear in disappearing, that is, it may come as it is in the process of passing

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away. Consider the story of the disciples on their way to Emmaus. In the presence of Christ there is a type of withdrawal. The narration shows his appearance in disappearing. But the narration is not a compensation or a technique of presentification. It is showing what was passing – and what may pass in presence as well. Philosophy of religion then represents a paradoxical mode of the description and interpretation of certain cultural modes of saying and showing. Perhaps philosophy of religion is thereby showing itself its own perspective, its “whence” and “what for,” because it cannot remain neutral or merely observe a higher order.

2. Response in Advance to Arne Grøn’s “Time and Transcendence” I wondered in advance about what ideas Arne Grøn would express in his essay in this collection. Would he suggest that time is the dissemination of transcendence, that it is a space of transcendence, or that there is a transcendence of time? The model to which we are accustomed is that of the transcendence of time (as with the event of transcendence in revelation, for example).The less Platonic and more Christological model would be something like “transcendence in time” (i.e., not a punctual transcendence). But the everyday experience, the so-called life-world model, would be “transcendence as time,” meaning a transcendence of transcendence, as time goes by. The opposition of transcendence and time (as in philosophy since Plato) and the close identification of both transcendence and time (as in lifeworld experience) are themselves opposed to each other.Yet they are intertwined and interwoven in the Christological idea of transcendence in time or by time – but not against or beyond time. In this way, a triple possibility of time-experience appears: −− sub specie aeternitatis, −− sub specie temporis, −− sub specie Christi. One may consider Luhmann’s (perhaps trivial) idea that religious communication is coded by the distinction between immanence and transcendence. Here, the transcendence of immanence is religious desire. The more Christian view, however, might be closer to the immanence of transcendence. But Christian communication is a little more subtle: it is coded – not by the difference, but by the non-indifference of immanence and transcendence. At first, by the indifference of immanence and transcendence

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in Christ – as coincidence of both in him. But that does not mean indifference toward the difference. It is a Christological transformation of this difference into the “non-in-difference.” The idea that transcendence and eternity are not merely different, they are also not indifferent to immanence and time. But neither are they identical. Their interwovenness and interrelation is “non-indifference.” In an ethical sense, they are both engaged in and challenged by time and immanence, while in a more passive or “pathetic” mode, they are affected by them, and what they are is their affection toward death and by love. Otherwise, we would not speak sub specie Christi. Of course, someone might object to putting forward a Christian perspective for philosophy of religion. And the objection is appropriate. Such a perspective as I have just sketched is not necessary, but it is possible, even if some may think differently. I would argue that philosophy of religion has the impossible freedom of switching between perspectives, between the inner and the outer and the in-between. Theology, on the other hand, is bound to its perspective of whence and where from. But philosophy of religion is strangely free to speak “as if.”  This is similar to literature, and it means that philosophy of religion may be so free as to speak even from a Christian perspective, but it does not have to do so. An important hermeneutical remark is warranted here. Usually, the point of view will appear or will become concrete through speech. Would it be better to exclude such points of view as reflecting an un- or pre-scientific commitment or as a violation of scientific neutrality? Think, for example, of a lawyer who is arguing from the position of German law or of human rights. Must one exclude his “local commitments” (and thereby his idea of human dignity) as unscientific? Like law and literature, philosophy of religion is “embedded” within a culture and therefore does not need to make claims to universality and neutrality, even if some areas of religious studies may pretend to do so (as with a strictly non-private “science of religion”). A proposition or proposal is not untrue merely because it is not necessarily true for everyone. Contingent truths are not untrue solely because they are dependent on contingent factors. This hermeneutical remark seems necessary to me, because the exclusion of certain “impossibilities” is grounded in the idea that only necessary truths are true, and only a discipline dealing with these truths can legitimately be called well-founded or reasonable. A scientific philosophy of religion would then be obliged to skip all contingent (e.g., cultural, local or idiomatic) positions and problems. That would be too restrictive in the name of the ideal of really pure reason, which deals with strictly universal propositions and eternal, timeless arguments. (An aside: there is a history behind this logic or analytical idea, which may perhaps be called “the con-

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tingent conditions of necessary truth,” although this may sound impossible for “Necessitarians” (the apostles of universal necessity).

3. What About Impossibilities? Logic (in the Aristotelian tradition), pure reason (in the Kantian tradition), or the analytical approach (of the 1970s and 1980s) are all strong positions whose methods and results are accepted in the academic community. Beyond their semantics, they reveal a structural and methodological commitment that one can and ought to challenge. The logical, epistemic or analytical conditions of the possibility of scientific cognition always imply conditions of impossibility. Thus, the foundations of possible cognition strictly exclude the so-called impossible ones. These exclusions are a problem because not only theology but also philosophy of religion are sometimes concerned with non-propositional communication, which is not approachable by propositional analysis; nonintentionality, which is not approachable by intentional analysis; externality and alterity, which are not approachable by pure reason in the sphere of transcendental analysis; passivities, which are not approachable by ethical or epistemic analyses; modes of experience which are not “made” but “happen” and are thus not approachable by the philosophy of action; and even with pictures and images, which are not approachable by text-analyses or text-oriented hermeneutics. So the field of problems and phenomena has been widened and the horizon is still open – as opposed to the strict and rather narrow sphere of the approaches above, which exclude such modes of speaking and ways of paying attention to diverse phenomena. License to deal with impossibilities But what would be the response if these impossibilities were excluded and one could not address them in philosophy of religion? The return of metaphysics, called “radical orthodoxy,” is generally given as the sole answer to this problem. If one rejects the critical conditions (pars pro toto here), one is free to read and speak and claim truths, as if nothing had happened in modernity. On the one hand, the metaphysical questions are still open. (As in Kant, these are the issues of hope, humanity, cognition, and what one should do.) On the other hand, work on them becomes neometaphysical. This sounds impossible (as well as anachronistic, uncritical, unscientific, etc.), but this philosophical “impossibility” is not only possible, it is also actual.

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It shows that the conditions of possibility not only are questionable – rather than being necessary, everlasting, and eternal conditions – but it also shows that under postmodern conditions, premodern options can become revitalized. This new, self-made orthodoxy seems to bypass not only the Reformed traditions, but historical-critical ones as well, jumping into a kind of “happy presence of the past” without any scruples or historical complications. The reality of this possibility cannot be denied in principle. Postmodern revitalisations of premodern options are as possible as they are real. However, it is not what one says but rather how one says it that counts. And the claim is exaggerated that Christianity will be recovered by the essentialism of orthodoxy. I would prefer not to … That would mean losing all contact with the fundamental conditions of philosophical and theological communication in modern contexts as what Luhmann called Anschlussfähigkeit (connectivity) would be lost.

4. The Mask of the Historian These “neo-metaphysicians” would be cleverer were they to put on the mask of the historian, for with the “scientific” neutrality and academic distance of a historian they would be free to read, interpret and at least to speak however they wished. It is quite strange that the historian – the guardian of diachronicity, the ruler of chronology, and the keeper of historical difference – is free in a way to slip into the past, as though she knew Scotty could beam her to wherever she wanted. History is the paradoxical license to leap across great historical distances by holding fast to them. There is one further paradox which emerges. The longer a historian studies the past – say, a dead author from an earlier time – the more he comes to resemble it (or him). An example in point are researchers studying Paul or Aristotle: as time goes by the historian or exegete speaks in tongues, that is, in the tongue of the dead person he is interpreting. When the interpreter is interpreting Paul, for example, ambiguities arise and we are unsure who is speaking. This interference becomes even more visible in current debates in which the expert on Paul is engaged when she claims to represent the “voice of Paul” or the apostolic tradition in general. There is a strange shift that results from playing with masks and representing dead persons as still alive. The riddles and paradoxes of “historical speech” are manifold: Who is speaking here? Nevertheless, in the name of historical difference, there is a subtle move to in-difference, meaning a move towards identification with the dead author, when one claims to represent the latter’s voice or to say what he really

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meant. This shift to in-difference comes with a claim of non-indifference (i.e., the claim not to be indifferent toward the interpreted author or text). At this point historians may meet phenomenologists. In the name of nonin-difference against others, especially dead others, it can be said: the more you are engaged, involved, and entangled in another’s texts, the more you become responsible for her and her voice. (One may argue that we are responsible even before any engagement, but this intuition in the sense of Lévinas is a generalization ex post facto). What I want to show is that the historian’s game of masks becomes somehow serious and crosses the line of pure historical reason. In light of academic restrictions, it is impossible – but it is not only real, perhaps it is even the ground of reality, a basic movement to deal with others, dead or alive.

5. The Mask of Literature Let us not forget another license to read and speak beyond the limits of possibility: while wearing the mask of literature. Think of Kierkegaard or similarly Blumenberg, or in a different sense perhaps Borges or Eco, Derrida or Blanchot. Literature has the license to create a distance, to act and write “as if,” in the wide field of the imaginary. Here we might think of Lukian (or Valéry) and the dialogue between dead philosophers or even Dante’s The Divine Comedy.There we find a “great awakening” of the dead, speaking as if they were alive – and discussing the “big” (read: metaphysical) questions.This seems to be a heterotopos, another location, beyond both the real and symbolic orders, an extraordinary space where the strict conditions of possibility and the pureness of reason is suspended. It may be called the space of suspended exclusions, an imaginary space, impossible for academic science and a scientific philosophy of religion. Nevertheless, a mode of indirect communication takes place, which includes the reader in a hypothetical realm where he becomes concerned about the subject matter. There is a sort of “eerie” request by the dead living in the space of literature. They are awoken by the reader who is suddenly in communication with these strangers. Who is speaking here? Again we must ask: what has happened to the reader? Such modes of masked communication, of course, violate the limits of pure reason, and even more so the limits of theological realism or propositional analyses. Such modes of speaking might thus be excluded as nonsense or meaningless. But then most religious speech, literature, and textual traditions would be lost.

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6. Without Any Mask? – The Rationalist The alternative clearly seems to be purity (if not Puritan purity) of reason, along the lines of neo-rationalism (vs. neo-orthodoxy). Consider the words of our colleague, Nicholas Wolterstorff: And this passion for the impossible. I don’t know what to make of this either, though in this case it sounds to me not so much coy as cryptic. Is the passion in question a religious passion to say what one’s philosophical self cannot tell? If so, that sounds to me like a re-run of Immanuel Kant, with this interesting variation: what’s behind the passion this time round is nothing so “heady” as an Ideal of Reason fleshed out with a moral argument for a Summum Bonum, but the compulsion to say “Yes,Yes” and the compulsion to keep on beseeching Elijah to come.”1And further: religion now turns up in the academy without grounding. It writes its confession, acclaims the goodness deep down in things, calls for Elijah to come and undo all that must not be, and proceeds to discourse philosophically. This is something new,2

This really is something new: an analytical rationalist sounding almost poetic. But listen to how dark he sounds. “He is calling for Elijah” were the words of those who stood apart from the Crucified One, yet under the cross. To mock Christ by saying that he may be calling for Elijah reveals a habit of untouched distance, a jeering, a severe misunderstanding. To hear only “Elijah” whenever someone is naming (his) God (“Eli, Eli lamah …”) or whenever a philosopher dares to speak in a messianic idiom – this seems to me a bit too easy. It looks too much like pure reason – or rather “poor” reason, without any sense for the impossible. The world of the rationalist is a small world, without any “grounding” of possibility, recognizing its limits and when they have been exceeded.

7. Without any Foundation: Some Relevant Impossibilities If one is concerned about the hermeneutics of religion, some things from the special perspective of modalities are called into question: contingency, reality and possibility, and last but not least, the strange modality named “impossibility.” Superficially, “impossibility” is the negative mode of religion, i.e., religion in its critique: cognition of God is epistemically impossible, religious life is morally impossible, public religious life is politically or 1 N. Wolterstorff, “The religious turn in philosophy and art,” in L. Nagl (ed.), Religion nach der Religionskritik (Wien/Berlin: Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, 2003), 273–282, 278. 2 Wolterstorff, “The religious turn,” 280.

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legally impossible, and theology is scientifically impossible. “Impossibility” is the predicate of exclusion – of what cannot be, cannot exist, cannot be real. But this exclusion always depends on preconditions, the so-called conditions of possibility, be they epistemic, ethical, scientific or technical. These conditions exclude certain impossibilities (for example, the immediate knowledge of God, or the claim to be able to say anything about “the external” or to speak about “the other” other than via analogy to one’s own self). These exclusions are “symptoms” of the narrowness of the horizon of the relevant preconditions. Following these rules encourages a lack of sensitivity for the excluded impossibilities. What happens to the rationalist’s verdict of “impossible” if it is amicably taken over by those philosophers of religion who are not afraid of exceeding the limits of possibility? That is a messianic gesture, perhaps even an eschatological one. Here, one might remember the adoption of the title of Christ as Rex Iudaeorum, which initially represented the mocking titulus crucis. The challenge (to which one must respond) is how to speak about those things that cannot be spoken of from the perspective of “pure reason.” The challenge is “how not to avoid speaking.” The idiom of philosophy of religion is in question. Not only the topics of speech seem relevant, but also the voice, the sound, and the mode of speech. Some topics can already be called “classical,” such as forgiving and likewise forgetting. (Claudia Welz, another contributor in this volume, will remember this). As forgiving sins was seen to be the privilege of God alone, to forgive represented a straightforward instance of blasphemy by Christ. But if “we” forgive – well, this seems to be even more impossible. I have been looking for instructions on “how to forgive” for years and even now, I do not know how to do so. Could it be that forgiving is simply not “possible” for us? Is it more than we “can” do? Forgiveness’s “dark relative” is forgetting. It can happen but can never be “done”; it is impossible to do intentionally, but it is permanently real. This is similar to another pair of concepts: giving and its dark “match” stealing – actions we cannot do but yet which sometimes really do happen. Likewise, we can consider the notions of trust and suspicion. Even if psychologists call trust a duty or task to work on, it cannot be directly “constructed” or “worked out,’ so just like its dark twin, mistrust or suspicion, it cannot simply be prevented. It seems the problems and paradoxes are the same in a more religious semantics; for example, we might consider hope and despair, faith and sin, or love and hate. They all exceed the limits of possibility because they are not “at our immediate disposal.” The human is not a homo capax for humanity is non capax in these situations.

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The variations of impossibilities in theory, especially in theology, should also not be forgotten: subjects such as “incarnation” or “resurrection,” or the “two natures” or “Trinity,” are no less impossible, but they are impossible in another way.They are not “practical” impossibilities, but theoretical ones. One should expect that there are also pathical impossibilities like loving your neighbor. These concepts are relevant and significant, but beyond that they are symptoms of a “sense for excluded impossibilities.” (If they are not excluded, they may be rationalized in a one-dimensional way: they are made possible, either for an agent or a theory. But that would be a symptomatic loss.) Not the respective topic itself, but how to speak about it or “how not to avoid speaking” is the challenge. So which mask should philosophy of religion prefer? Which idiom for finding a fitting (or appropriate) voice for these topics?

8. Between Possibility and Impossibility: The Shifting Borderline It sounds good to view the philosophy of religion as focused on the reality of possibilities. But I imagine that this might sound a little “too” possible in Copenhagen, as a motto for an aesthetic existence: looking for freedom in the realm of possibilities and suggesting they are “compossible,” even if one was not aware of it. God thereby becomes not just the omnitudo realitatis, but the omnitudo possibilitatis. Because nothing is impossible for God, God is the ground, condition and origin of all possibilities – though not of the possibility of malum. Or could he be? This exploration of real possibilities (that is, compossible ones) has to operate with an expanded concept of “reality.” It is the first step Leibniz takes to discover the possibilities surrounding us, to distinguish bonum et malum, to choose the good things as real possibilities for us (given by God, discovered by theology?). It is not out of place to insist that the concept of real possibility operates strictly eschatologically: the possibilities are, insofar as they are “in becoming” or “in turning,” real. Therefore, one has to operate with a huge “possibility-maker” (like truth-makers in truth-theory): God’s “own self ” is making possible, really possible, what is in becoming. Because for God “nothing is impossible,” there are no impossibilities left. But, of course, even this concept of God as “possibility-maker,” and the expanded concept of reality that results, has its tacit dimension: the invisible limit of possibilities. For God, sin and malum remain impossible, not only theoretically, but practically as well. And the eschatologically brightly shin-

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ing possibilities contradict the dark hamartiological ones. There is a battle of bright and dark possibilities. The latent or hidden dimensions of possibilities are the impossibilities. This dimension is concealed when one focuses only on the possibilities and their reality. But if this boundary is a question of construal and construction, one would much too easily accept a supposedly self-evident truth by simply accepting a factual border between possibility and impossibility. Moreover, history represents the shifting and changing of this border.Time puts impossibilities in motion. What has been impossible (or unimaginable or unthinkable) at one time, becomes possible and real as time goes by. The border between both is the “hot spot,” not only technologically but also eschatologically. The shifting or moving of this borderline is effected by the changing world we live in (which changes both us and God as well). So I would suppose that the really real things are not the possibilities, but the impossibilities. Philosophy of religion should be a little more concerned about the reality of impossibilities and about impossible realities. Naturally, this sounds somewhat strange and highly paradoxical. But in Copenhagen (I imagine) no one is afraid of paradoxes.They are ways to not avoid speaking: they are a way out of the fly-bottle, like their relatives metaphors and narrations. We might consider, for example, the days when sailors did not have the possibility of navigating by longitudes because they did not know how to measure them. Only through the development of exact chronometers by John Harrison did they become able to ascertain the local time of the point of departure. Then they could compare the time of high noon at their ship with the time at the point of departure – and thereby calculate the longitude. What was impossible became possible. If this example from the history of time (measurement and calculation time) is plausible, then it is also clear that the expansion of possibilities by impossibilities becoming possible (or compossible) is an expansion of reality and a broadening of the horizon of perception. Could this be similar not only in relation to time but to God as well? If Christ’s kind of relation to God and his speech was impossible for his contemporaries, if he realized this impossibility and made it real and possible for us, then his life and death exceeded the limits of possibility and were thus groundbreaking and revolutionary in making the impossible real. That is the modal conception of realized eschatology. But two more aspects ought to be considered: what about the unrealized? And what about the impossible reality named “sin”? Regarding the latter we can say that sin is not only an impossible possibility, as Karl Barth thought. It is – whatever else it may be – a realized impossibility with consequences for impossible realities that are nevertheless real.

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Is Christ’s work a destruction of old impossibilities as well? Then sin has to become impossible in another sense: it remains real, but with a “reduplication” of impossibility. The real impossibility becomes an impossible impossibility. Perhaps that is the deep existential change that Paul or Luther had in mind when they puzzled over the remaining presence of sin. They racked their brains (and their speech) over the real presence of this impossibility. So the really confusing question is not just about unde malum, but also why this reduplicated impossibility remains real. If sin is the lack of communion (with God and one’s neighbor), how can it be said to remain if God is present? That would be a self-contradiction, but a real one. (Or does that prove that God is not really present?). The second aspect referred to the question of the unrealized: the “bright” impossibilities. Are they still not compossible? Would this mean that they are not real? I would suggest that they are still not possible although already real as the coming fulfillment. Even the future or unrealized eschatology is about impossibilities, but contrary to the still-present one, which may be called sin. And it is even more than the final passing away of sin, insofar as it is about “fulfillment.” But this ideal of a fulfillment of creation and not its annihilation is not quite enough, because it would only be the completion of expectation, which means that our imagination and hope would be determinate of the final outcome. That cannot be right if what we presently imagine is itself determined by our time and tradition. So the unrealized eschaton has to exceed our possible expectations. It is in this way “unimaginable” but not in a shallow sense. It is beyond the horizon, not the continuation of the landscape already present. This difference implies a rupture between imagination (or hope) and the unimaginable as really-impossible-now. But the paradox appears again: this outstanding impossibility, the final exceeding, is held to be real – really coming – and in this certainty it is already realized. These real impossibilities are indeed strange modalities. But this reality is, though real, still impossible. Augustine once noted: “si comprehendis, non est Deus.”  That may be a hint as to the impossibility in and by which we live and hope. As a hermeneutical remark, the meaning could also be that if one understands, then God is not. Or does understanding itself reject God’s existence? Then it would be an idea for a strictly negativistic, apophatic hermeneutics: comprehensio non capax Dei, or to go further: God becomes incomprehensible – or unimaginable. God’s strangeness exceeds any comprehension. That would be the theological complement of the critiques of hermeneutics by the phenomenology of strangeness, as we find in Lévinas’s or Waldenfels’s so-called xenology.

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9. One step back: some revisions If one asks about the past and the future of philosophy of religion, what might be the answer? One may ask about its past, the realities of that past and what they leave open and unrealized. Does one have to imagine what philosophy of religion could be? What is possible now? What is impossible now? What might or should become possible or even real? As far as I can imagine here and now, one of the most intriguing possibilities of philosophy of religion is its sense for the impossible – and how to make sense of this. To be sure, it sounds like nonsense to try to make sense out of impossibilities. However, if one puts it rhetorically, it does not sound quite as strange.Think of Gilbert Ryle’s nominal definition of metaphors as calculated category mistakes or, as Christian Strub understood it, as calculated absurdities. Metaphors are thus modes of impossibilities in semantics, as in the example: “The Pope is a fox.” Ryle’s and Strub’s definitions are only one half of the truth; the calculated trivialities are the second half. “The Pope is not a donkey.” This is trivial but also absurd or nonsense. My main concern is with the narrow boundary line between the impossible and the possible. Therefore, I would not support the idea of philosophy of religion as being about “real possibilities” but rather about possible impossibilities (and impossible ones as well), or even about “real impossibilities” (like sin and grace, or gift and theft). I would prefer not to speak of “tears and prayers,” but rather about impossibilities as objects of reflection and/or modes of speech – as meditation and speech in the philosophy of religion. Finally, I would prefer to speak about the question of the impossibility of philosophy of religion itself. The objects, questions, or topics of philosophy of religion are usually quite banal: texts, cultural phenomena as practice, and certain conflicts in interpretation. All these are de dicto problems of speaking about what has already been said. But sometimes philosophy of religion is more ambitious: when it urges one to speak about what has been spoken about, not only de dicto, but also de re about the topics and themes of the texts that we are normally interpreting. Already this shift from de dicto to de re is as strange as it is uncertain, and it is highly risky. Studies in literature, for example, may interpret Goethe’s Faust in various ways. A feminist reading may discover phallic metaphors in the scene in Faust called Walpurgis Night and may seek to draw conclusions about Goethe “himself.” In consequence, Faust becomes a document of patriarchal fantasies, and the reader is in danger of being sexually harassed. The quest, however, is about the history behind and after the piece of literature, about the author, his culture, and the cultural differences in the readers’ perspectives.

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I have nothing against this – but can one imagine a critical reader crossing over from merely reading Faust to engaging actively with the topics of the text, discussing the pros and cons of the devil’s existence? Or asking questions about “humanity” from an anthropological perspective? The study in literature would become anthropology or mephistology. Such a shift from the text to its topics and theses is impossible – usually. Within the limits of interpretation that are sometimes reached by ideologically burdened interpretations, the engagement extends far beyond the limits of criticism. Interpretations become “unscientific” by their grave ideological commitments and begin to criticize the very ideas and propositions of literary text. That is a shift from reading de dicto to de re. The shift from de dicto to de re (often held to be a metaphysical shift or an unscientific one) may well be an indirect communication de se, that is, showing one’s own perspective by saying something de re. It is a mode of risky exposition, where the idiomatic dimensions of speech become relevant. That is why I argued above that the whence, wherefore, and how of speech is decisive. To state it more generally: the future of philosophy of religion is not a repetition of what has already been said, so it is clearly not the orthodox or neometaphysical turn. Rather, it arises by daring to speak de re and de se.The unrealized impossibilities are a step in this direction. But you cannot avoid working at the exciting boundary between possibilities and impossibilities. That means that the future of philosophy of religion is also a question of imagination and impossibility.The longer one works on the impossibilities, the more you wonder how to imagine what was (or is and will be) unimaginable. That is what it means to work on the expansion of one’s horizon, an expansion of the world. Leibniz’s idea was that there are not only compossible possibilities, named “real possibilities,” but incompossible ones too, namely, the incompossible possibilities that are “impossibilities.” There, the compossibility is in question. And focusing a philosophy of religion only on the real possibilities, the compossible ones, makes factual reality the determination for the coming, the hoped-for future. But is it not theologically appropriate to make future impossibilities determine the reality we live in? It is quite simple: we distinguish the present in light of what is coming. That is what we do with law, with morality and with eschatology alike. Our orientation in the present is made via distinctions of the coming, for example, by the never quite realized “justice.” If one dares to hope for even more, for more than justice, to hope for the so-called gospel, one may worry about the question of compossibility. The gospel is not simply a “real possibility”: it is impossible and unrealized. It does not “fit” like an answer to a question. Rather, it is a challenge and a response – not simply possible, not compossible – to the grammar of our life-worlds. The responses to Jesus’s parables are quite

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clear in this regard. The sound and performance of the parables are held to be absurd impossibilities. That this absurdity is calculated and effective is nevertheless obvious.

10. More and Less – The Modal Paradoxes of Impossibilities The mode of speech – that is, speech about coming and passing away – is decisive, as I have argued. One remarkable mode even in theory, whether in theology or philosophy of religion, is exceeding logic and grammar in an impossible manner. As a nominal definition of this excess one might say: a) Impossibilities are more than real – but less than possible Consider the symptomatic and idiomatic formulation of Eberhard Jüngel: God is “more than necessary.” His idea was not to follow Hegel’s logic of necessity and perhaps to avoid the Necessitarians (like Leibniz against Spinoza), because God would thereby be conceptualized in the logic of immanent necessity.That is why the ens necessarium does not apply, but neither do the omnitudo realitatis or the omnitudo possibilitatis even of possibilitas realis. The absurd formulation of “more than necessary” is an oxymoron or hyperbolic speech exceeding the limits of logic and pure reason. It is similar to Lévinas’s idea of a “more passive passivity.” This “more” as well exceeds the grammatical correlation of active and passive. When Schleiermacher noticed that we always live in this correlation of relative activity and relative passivity in a dynamic polarity, then faith or feeling is different from this correlation.The “feeling of absolute dependence” crosses this relation – just as Luther’s “mere (passive) was an absurdity used to demarcate a different relationship, crossing the correlations of activity and passivity. Lévinas now does not seem to cross it but intensifies the passivity not by using the operator “mere (passive),” but by speaking of more passive. The rhetoric of philosophy would be another chapter, but it is a rhetorical gesture, pointing at a passivity of which we are not capable. It is neither in our capacity nor is it a “real possibility.” It sounds impossible and it is impossible – for the homo capax. Nevertheless, it does occur and challenges humanity beyond our capacities. I would add that the impossibilities by which we live (and die) are more than real. Reality may be what is, but the reality of that exercise of imagination by which we live is more than what is. At first glance, imagination and impossibilities, of course, should be considered unreal, even unrealizable. But at least in one’s imagination they are not unreal but quite effec-

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tive. For those who live by them (justice, gospel, gift, and grace) they are more than real. The excess of logic and grammar, exceeding the limits of possibility, is the marker of such speech. Similarly, grammatical mistakes can function as what Gilbert Ryle called “category mistakes,” as expression and exemplification of a view (perspective and horizon), and as a request not only to share attention but to share the same view. This game of communication is not without risks, because one might be considered an idiot or even worse (as Wolterstorff showed). That has already happened to the holy idiot (as Nietzsche wrote) named Jesus. More than real but less than possible is marking the space of impossibilities – unrealized but real, impossible but possible in becoming. Such tentative modes of showing and “pointing at” appear to be nonsense but they are not without sense, sense for the impossible. In a destructive disposition one remains skeptical; in a more constructive disposition, one dares to speak emphatically and hyperbolically, and in-between one sounds ambivalent in one’s ambiguities. b) Less than necessary – but more than contingent The “more” is the excellence, the true center of excellence, beyond all our centers of excellence. It is a mode of speaking which seems to speak nonsense on the semantic level. But the pragmatics are relevant, for it is a way of “pointing at” – in this case at the limits of immanence. “More” is the deictic indicator for excess. But there is a need for an antagonist: the “less than.”  That is why I added that impossibilities are less than possible and therefore less than necessary. That is what I would respond to Jüngel’s “more than necessary,” for this formulation remains in competition with Hegel, going beyond his immanent necessity. But I suspect that if you compete with Hegel, you will surely lose. Kierkegaard’s way is more subtle. God is neither necessary nor more than necessary. I suppose he is less than necessary, weaker and somewhat powerless, if not impotent. That is inspired by the potential passiva of the crucified: his impotence is not only evident, but crucial for him to see God. “Less than necessary” may mean simply contingent. Some clarifications would be necessary: the ordinary meaning of contingency would be insufficient, because it requests indifference as there is probably no God – or is there? A stronger sense of contingency is what seems to be contingent for an observer but if it “happened” and if “we lived by this happening,” it was contingent but it became crucial for us. German mystics spoke of the Zoufalen Gottes, of God’s falling to us. A fallen God … that is an understanding of contingency that might be appropriate for a speech sub specie Christi.

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11. What may follow: how to deal with dangerous things like impossibilities? At this point one could expect a methodology and “taxonomy” of impossibilities like logical, grammatical, semantic, practical, and moral impossibilities, good or bad ones, bright or dark. But what I would like to do now instead is give some examples, to show and “point at.” a) Hieronymus Bosch, Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things In the center of the “table” there is Christ, just being resurrected, showing his wounds. But the tondo – the center with Christ – is a pupil, the inner center of an eye. The iris with 128 rays surrounding the pupil forms God’s eye. So looking at this picture is looking directly into God’s eye, and the picture itself is God’s view.

Hieronymus Bosch Die sieben Todsünden und Die vier letzten Dinge, 1475–1480? (The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things) Museo del Prado, Madrid

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Ausschnitt (Zentrum): Hieronymus Bosch Die sieben Todsünden und Die vier letzten Dinge, 1475–1480?

“What we see is looking at us” was George Didi-Huberman’s concise title. One may admit that it is looking at us (perhaps even watching us) – but does it see us? The perspective of the image looking back at the viewer is embodied in this artifact, in this image. The first strange discovery is that you are looking at a table which is a picture of the deadly sins and the four last things, and in the center there is a remembrance of Christ. But suddenly you yourself are being watched and supervised or at last “seen” by God’s eye. The second strange thing is that, in the pupil of God’s eye, Christ is being resurrected. What in the world might that mean? The resurrection is mirrored in God’s eye. But the pupil is mirroring only what is actually seen by it. So God’s eye is seeing us, but the resurrecting Christ is the image being reflected. Could that mean that the eye seeing us is seeing us as resurrecting (or as resurrected)? That might be one challenge of the image: that we are seen by God, in God’s eyes, as resurrected, i.e., as being “resurrected in Christ” and as a “new creation,” as part of Christ himself. If that is the case, then we are seen as “justified in Christ.”We are new in God’s eyes, free from sin and death. The “imputative justification” is shown in this image (as an image). That “makes sense,” for when we are seen by God as a new creation then

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we are reminded of what we really are and the confrontation with sins is enacted. How is that still possible (and even real) if we are already sinless in Christ? The contradiction of being (in) Christ and being sinners is on display in an image and shown as an image confronting us with the double nature of our existence. There are impossibilities on every level: −− in the “semantics” of the image: between salvation in Christ and existence of sins; −− in the “pragmatics” of the image: showing “God’s view” or even becoming that which God is seeing, watching us while being watched, showing us where and who we are (in Christ), but remembering at the same time what we live and how; −− and not least in our very existence. “God’s eye,” God’s very pupil, the reflection of a resurrecting Christ, an image that watches the viewer, the contradiction of existence – the image seems overcrowded with impossibilities. Nevertheless, this example exists as an impossibility, for it is simply real, showing impossibilities while being one in itself. And this is only a painted table top. So philosophy’s sense for impossibilities is not only to be concerned with “prayers and tears” but also with a simple table top. To return now to the topic of time: the surface of the table says that one shall live in light of the four last things, that one shall be especially aware of the difference between heaven and hell. Avoid sin – look at Christ. But beneath the surface, God’s view becomes real presence through the presence of Christ in God’s eye and our sudden confrontation with God’s perspective. That is the transcendence of time through the presence of the transcendent and through transcending into our presence so that we transcend our presence in sin. It is an encapsulated time-event, showing what happens to the “observer” who is suddenly involved in the picture. b) Cranach, Pictures as communion sanctorum – as Holy Communion The second example is similar: it is from Cranach again but now in Weimar, in the so-called Herder-Church (because Herder was pastor there). At first glance, the image shows an impossibility: the co-presence of Moses, Christ, Luther and Cranach. That means that the event of salvation or justification is crossing chronological time, because salvation is co-present to every time. The claim is clear as well: Reformation is the real presence of Christ. What is possible in a systematic synchronicity (the lack of time and history), but which sounds impossible for history and perhaps for hermeneutics, is possible in the “all-at-once” of an image. It does not reflect ignorance of historicity but expresses an economy of salvation.

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Cranach the Elder, completed by Cranach the Younger Altar of the Peter- and Paul Church in Weimar, 1552–55 Middle Panel

But there is even more happening here: (1) Cranach the Elder is catching the blood from Christ’s wound. That is normally the role of “ecclesia,” the symbolic figure that represents the Church. Could this mean that the painter is receiving the gift of grace (or what Friedrich Ohly called the stream of grace)? (2) A serpent is originating from this stream above Cranach’s head. Does that mean that his signature (the winged serpent) emerges out of the blood by virtue of Christ’s grace? Then one might think that his painting is a medium of grace and this painting was a real communication of grace. (3) Finally, when Cranach is looking at the observer, is he communicating with him or her and passing on what he has received? Does that mean that this painting is nothing less than a communication and communion of grace given by showing and seeing? Then this would be an event of emancipation proclaiming the equality of sacramental Communion and images. Of course, that would be impossible for Reformation theology, but

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it is real – if one dares to express a sense for the impossible. And it is already real in the reality in which we live.(And it embodies what was usual in pre-Reformation times). c) Cranach, Erection in the Moment of Death – as Resurrection? Remember my remarks on the fallen God, the impotent Christ, powerless and weak. This view is challenged by Cranach the Elder. We have two versions of his Gnadenstuhl, the so-called “mercy seat,” his view of the Trinity. One may call these images the “phallic Trinity”3:

Cranach the Elder Die heilige Dreifaltigkeit, ca. 1515–18 Kunsthalle Bremen

What is (intentionally) shown here is rather obvious and yet still somehow incomprehensible. It is probably no coincidence that this version of the “mercy seat” is not well-known, but it remains a vexing piece4 whose meaning remains obscure. Despite the prolific scholarship on Cranach, most efforts to understand this particular piece of art leave one perplexed and baffled.

3

All images from Rainer Stamm, ed., Lucas Cranach der Schnellste: Kunstsammlungen Böttcherstraße (Bremen: Hachmann Edition, 2009). 4 Cf. Terence Koh, “Gone, Yet Still.” The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England exhibited objects of Koh that portrayed Mickey Mouse, ET, and Jesus Christ with an erection.

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Cranach the Elder Trinity, ca. 1516–18 Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

Leo Steinberg tried to display the painting as a sensation. He tried to use paintings like Cranach’s Trinity to establish his thesis that the sexuality of Christ has been continuously suppressed by theologians and art historians alike.5 Hans Belting6 responded that the point was rather “that the Bible 5 See Leo Steinberg, ed., The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1996). 6 Hans Belting, Das echte Bild: Bildfragen als Glaubensfragen, 2nd ed. (München: Beck, 2006), 109–113.

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ascribes to the Son of God all the properties of the male body, including the genitals, but without suggesting any sexual practices. Instead, one more time a contrast is formed between the corpus Christi and the body of man which is not even mentioned by Steinberg.”7 But this does not resolve our vexation and bewilderment. Whatever may be shown here, it remains strange and disconcerting, especially when we ask why it is shown and why it is shown that way. To understand it as a didactical illustration (Lehrbild) of Protestant theology is simply absurd. The painting exceeds its own limits: it shows much more than what is said. That is the reason for the lack of authoritative iconological sources. The relevant official exhibition catalog8 has nothing to say about this confusion; in fact, it does not even mention it. What shall we say, then, about these things, about such a painting? It certainly cannot be said that the doctrine is merely illustrated or that the letter of theology dominates the picture. Rather, by its “showing,” the painting has its own original place beyond any kind of theological discourse. The painting emancipates itself from the expectations of theologians and believers because the way the perichoresis and the in-itself-differentiated Trinitarian unity are depicted is deeply deranged. Should the human nature of Christ and its attributes be illustrated in just such a way? In search of sources that might deliver some helpful background information or at least some “crutches” for our understanding, we might first turn to Paul: “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want” (Gal 5:16, 17; New International Version). Could this be the background of Cranach’s “mercy seat”? To say what sin is – what it feels like and how life “under the law” is affected by it – Paul used the familiar metaphors of desire (epithymia/concupiscentia). The relation is one of concretum pro abstracto, of cause and effect, of a part and its whole. In any case, it is a form of figurative language used to speak about sin – whatever it may be (disbelief, distance from God or even hostility towards God). Whether this metaphor of desire or lust is (in a broader sense) an instance of synecdoche or metonymy (the substitution of species for the genus or a part for the whole), whether there is contiguity between (sexual) desire (or lust) and sin (metonymy) or a continuity (“metaphor” in the narrow sense of the word), is certainly a question of interpretation and 7 8

Belting, Das echte Bild, 111. Cf. Stamm, Lucas Cranach der Schnellste.

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is a hermeneutical matter that has implications for the way we understand the inner relations and differentiations among the tropes. Talking about a metaphor in the narrow sense of the word could point to the “unruliness” of desire, of its antagonism towards reason and the will, despite all dissimilarities between the relation to oneself, on the one hand, and the relation to God on the other. If one takes it to be a metonymy, we would only be talking about one relation, either the relation of cause and effect or (in the case of synecdoche) the relation of a part to the whole. But to draw a clear distinction between the realm of self-relation and the relation to God and to prevent confusion, it seems most appropriate and discrete to simply call it metaphor. When desire (epithymia/concupiscentia) becomes the central metaphor for sin (and the sexual connotations become clearer and clearer historically until we ultimately reach Augustine), we might understand Romans 7:8: “But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead.” When epithymia and concupiscentia are stimulated, sin makes itself noticeable in the provoking force of the law. Paul puts it even more clearly in Romans 7:5: “While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” So if the Christ in Cranach’s “mercy seat” illustrates sin by his erect phallus, is it meant to show the effects of sin as Paul understood it? Sin shows itself in a metonymic or metaphorical way by desire (epithymia/concupiscentia), and this is shown by the erect phallus. But how can that be if Christ was without any sin and therefore could not be acquainted with this desire that runs counter to the law?9 Is the figure of Christ with an erection then an illustration of a sinner? That he is illustrated here as a human being is only one aspect of the painting. Insofar as he is shown entering into the Trinitarian relationship, however, it implies that he is also being illustrated as the true God, which should have the consequence that he appears without any hint of sin or its manifestation in sinful desire. In short: the erect phallus runs counter to Protestant Christology and is deeply disconcerting, largely because Christ is the epitome of non-sinfulness. But perhaps we might consider a formulation of Paul’s that is somewhat more confusing and difficult to understand. It is the locus classicus of Pauline soteriology and Christology in 2 Cor 5:14–21 with the strange formulation in verse 21 that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” That God made him “to be sin (for us)” is the crux interpretandum and has provoked numerous attempts to arrive at an adequate understanding of the text. Otfried 9

Even if one rejects the thesis of Jesus’s sinlessness, the thesis is a theological and iconological prerequisite in this context.

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Hofius explains: “What we have here … is a metonymy in which the abstract expression ‘sin’ stands for the concreter expression ‘sinner’ … the metonymy ‘sin’ instead of ‘sinner’ articulates in the sharpest possible way what qualifies the very being of sinful man.”10 Christ-made-sinner then would represent the “dissolution” of this metonymy. This does not immediately simplify our interpretation, however. One must take a further Christological step: When Christ “sacrifices himself ” or “is sacrificed” and the metaphors of atonement constitute the background of our verses, then the point in being “made a sinner” is the identification of Christ with the “sin of the world” or, to be more exact, with the sin of all humanity. It is the lowest point of the Incarnation and its soteriological meaning: to become one with all humans in order to reconcile them by inclusive substitution. Although there still remains a need for clarification, we can now understand the erect Christ as a radical figuration of the one that is “made sin (for us)” as it is manifested in a final coveting.11 So the hermeneutical thesis regarding this strange Cranach painting sounds quite simple: it is the illustration of 2 Cor 5:21 in a picture whose semantic implications run much deeper and thicker than those of the text, insofar as it is not a mere “illustration” that only renders or portrays something which can already be found by interpreting the text.

10

Otfried Hofius, “Sühne und Versöhnung: Zum paulinischen Verständnis des Kreuzestodes Jesu,” in Hofius, Paulusstudien (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989), 33–49, 47. 11 At this point, medical background information might be helpful. Since the chest of a crucified person usually collapses, he suffocates the moment he cannot hold himself upright any longer. Therefore, breaking the legs was a common means to hasten death. As in other cases of death by suffocation (asphyxia), one must expect the usual phenomena of dyspnea, and erection is one of them. But it would probably be anachronistic to ascribe such medical knowledge to Cranach himself (despite the high medical standards of the Renaissance). And it would not be very promising in a hermeneutical respect either, because then it would only illustrate a medical aperçu. The Cyclops episodes in James Joyce’s Ulysses might provide a clue why public executions were so popular: the hanged man had a final erection, the so-called death erection. Crucifixion, then, involved a final display of the criminal’s sexuality, especially when the crucified person was naked. Cf. Hanskarl Kölsch, James Joyce: Ulysses (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2008), 237; James Joyce, Ulysses (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 2004), 999 among other passages. For more historical and exegetical background, cf. Martin Hengel, “Mors turpissima crucis: Die Kreuzigung in der antiken Welt und die ‘Torheit’ des ‘Wortes vom Kreuz,’” in Johannes Friedrich et al, eds., Rechtfertigung: Festschrift Ernst Käsemann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1976), 125–184. English translation available as Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, 5th ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989).

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A clue to this interpretation can be found in a concise phrase of Luther: “Christus … factus est peccatum metaphorice.”12 Here, the delegation of sin onto Christ becomes his most basic attribute; it is not only a delegation of sin in a merely “figurative” sense but sin qua sin. Luther continues: “Et vt ad institutum veniamus, Christus offerretur pro nobis, factus est peccatum metaphorice, cum peccator ita fuerit per omnia similis, damnatus, derelictus, confusus, vt nulla re differret a vero peccatore, quam quod reatum et peccatum, quod tulit, ipse non fecerat.”13 That sin which he did not commit himself, he suffered on the cross. That is, this manifestation of desire was not something “intended” by Christ but rather something he suffered in death. Of course, this can be understood altogether differently, as we will see in the case of Augustine. So what was formulated in an abstract, metonymical way in the text becomes concrete in the image.The indirect message becomes a direct picture and thus tends to conceal the Christological and soteriological meanings in a sensual cloak.To claim that the painting is only an otherwise-suppressed exposition of the “sexuality of Christ” (as Steinberg maintains) is a less-than-adequately complex interpretation (though not without some merits) that simply falls short. If that were all there were to this picture, it would merely serve to document the allegedly sensational discovery of the fact that Christ was human, with all its corporeal implications. The concrete image and rendering of metonymy in the metaphorical imagery of a picture always risks missing the sense of the sensuality. Its benefit in this case is that it becomes very obvious that Christ dies “as a sinner,” but the question remains whether he can do so without being a sinner. Rendered in this way, the painting becomes ambiguous again. Add to this the fact that the erect phallus as a concrete thing is a rather unfavorable metaphor for sin. Another ambiguity in Cranach’s painting lies in the question whether Christ in his death is meant to display the overcoming of sin, death and desire. Is the erect phallus a manifestation of the sin he took on, or is it a manifestation of the power of his life, a power over death at the moment of death? The erection can thus be understood in two opposing ways: either as the sin he suffered and took on himself or as the overcoming of that very sin. And this leads to a question that might sound merely speculative or overly scholastic: Is this erection to be understood as intentional or

12

Martin Luther, Rationis Latomianae pro incendiariis Lovaniensis scholae sophistis redditae Lutheriana confutatio (1521), vol. 2, Studienausgabe, ed. Hans-Ulrich Delius (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 467, 16–17. Cf. Stephan Schaede, Stellvertretung: Begriffsgeschichtliche Studien zur Soteriologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 329ff. 13 Ibid., 467, 16–19.

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unintentional? It might sound absurd, but this is exactly the point where Augustine saw the decisive hamartiological difference. Augustine claimed that to desire the world or even to desire oneself represented the perversion of (true) desire. After the Fall, Adam and Eve “sensed the new impulse of their disobedient flesh.”14 The Fall is the reason desire became sin (Contra Jul V, 815) that everyone is born with, such that all unbaptized children are “children of wrath” (I 29, 5716). This is why he could argue that sin was reproduced by the corrupted human semen,17 which spreads by substantial infection (Contra Jul V, 3, 8).18 The consequences are well-known: sexual desire19 became viewed as the epitome of sin, and in so-called “Puritanical” settings it still is.20 Viewed anthropologically, this is obviously nonsense, but it is also theologically problematic because it conceals rather than elucidates what sin actually is (that is, estrangement and separation from God). The identification of sin with (sexual) desire introduced a metaphysics of desire in which the desires of body and soul became a chaotic power opposing the regulative faculty of reason. The seven deadly sins are a catalog and index of human desires, a bestiary of human failure: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Sexuality becomes the hoard of evil and wrongful desire.21 Where metaphors are understood literally, we get bad metaphysics. By reading Augustine closely, it becomes clear that desire as concupiscence was originally a metaphor for sin no longer understood as metaphor. Desire is not in itself sin or guilt, but the latter emerge from the former. 14

De civ. XIII, 13; HDG 211 “Senserunt ergo novum motum inobedientis carnis suae, tamquam reciprocam poenam inobedientiae suae … secutumest … ex debit ajustapoena tale vitium.” 15 Then the desire itself is “the evil of sin” (De pecc. mer. et rem. I 39, 70). 16 “Idem ambitus peccati originalis et concupiscentiae carnalis. Bonum ergo coniugii non est fervor concupiscentiae, sed quidam licitus et honestus illo fervore utendi modus propagandae proli, non explendae libidini accommodatus. Voluntas ista, non voluptas illa nuptialis est. Quod igitur in membris corporis mortis huius inoboedienter movetur totumque animum in se deiectum conatur adtrahere et neque cum mens voluerit exsurgit neque cum mens voluerit conquiescit, hoc est malum peccati, cum quo nascitur omnis homo.” 17 Cf. Op. imp. II, 12 (“Natura bona sunt semina, sed vitiantur et semina eisque vitiatis propagantur et vitia”). 18 Of course, the virgin birth preserved Christ from being “infected,” and so he was also free from lust (cf. Contra Jul.V 15, 54). 19 ontrary: De nupt. et conc. I (“Concupiscentia carnis non est appetitus naturalis”). 20 When Augustine talked of sin “in a proper sense he meant the unreasonable and disorderly emotions of sensual desire, especially sexual desire.” Heinrich Köster, Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte II/3b (Freiburg:Verlag Herder, 1979), 141. 21 Cf. De civ. Dei XIV, 24–26; cf. M. Luther, “Readings on Genesis 1535/38,” WA 42, 89f.

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The presence of concupiscence was meant to clarify the loss of the relationship to God in a “sensible” way: the loss results in anarchistic and uncontrollable desires. The invisible is made visible, the inexpressible expressible and the loss sensible. At this point, much depends on accurately understanding the term “desire” itself. Augustine himself was still aware of its metaphorical character. Therefore, he states that Paul only called it sin in the sense that sin was its cause and its result.22 Did he then consider desire as a metonymy, in which the effect was mistaken for the cause?23 Or did he consider it a synecdoche (pars pro toto) and mistake it for the essence of sin? In all hermeneutical fairness, I should point out that Augustine considered concupiscence as a sign24 of sin because he denotes sin by its effects. The spiritual remoteness of God, for example, becomes apparent in the physical realm as in the disobedience of the body.25 (How easily the metaphorical “is and is not” is often reduced to a simple “is” can be seen in the case of Melanchthon. Here, the desire called “concupiscence” is a “bad” desire or inclination and becomes the reason why we, despite being granted the light of reason, struggle against God, as he writes in the Apologia of the Augsburg Confession.26 The archetype and essence of this “fleshly” disobedience is (not very surprisingly) the very non-intentionality of the erection: an unruliness of the flesh that first bothered Adam after the Fall.) Augustine reflects on the problem hamartiologically in The City of God with a rather strange theory of erection: “Sometimes this lust importunes them in spite of themselves, and sometimes fails them when they desire to feel it, so that though lust rages in the mind, it stirs not in the body.”27 But why is this the case? “Justly is shame very specially connected with this lust; justly, too, these members themselves, being moved and restrained not at our will, but by a certain independent autocracy, so to speak, are called shameful. Their condition was different before sin.”28 Thus the (secondary) paraphrasing title of chapter XIV 24 summarizes: “That If Men Had Remained Innocent and Obedient in Paradise, the Generative Organs Should 22

Cf. De nupt. et conc. I 23, 25. This is the view of L. Scheffczyk in Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte II/3a (Freiburg/ Basel/Wien: Verlag Herder, 1981), 219. 24 Cf. L. Scheffczyk, 221; Cf. William of Ockham, Qdl. III, 10: “Signum est, cum non sit in Christo et in beatis” (HDG II/3b, 142). 25 Then it is not the desire which is evil in itself but the evil desire. The former is wrong, the latter trivial. 26 Cf. BSELK 152: “Neque vero concupiscentia tantum corruptio qualitatum corporis est, sed etiam prava conversio ad carnalia in superioribus viribus”. 27 De civ. XIV 16. 28 De civ. XIV 17. Cf. De Genesi ad litteram IX, 10. 23

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Have Been in Subjection to the Will as the Other Members are.” In Augustine’s own words: The man, then, would have sown the seed, and the woman received it, as need required, the generative organs being moved by the will, not excited by lust. For we move at will not only those members which are furnished with joints of solid bone, as the hands, feet, and fingers, but we move also at will those which are composed of slack and soft nerves: we can put them in motion, or stretch them out, or bend and twist them, or contract and stiffen them, as we do with the muscles of the mouth and face. The lungs, which are the very tenderest of the viscera except the brain, and are therefore carefully sheltered in the cavity of the chest, yet for all purposes of inhaling and exhaling the breath, and of uttering and modulating the voice, are obedient to the will when we breathe, exhale, speak, shout, or sing, just as the bellows obey the smith or the organist … And therefore man himself also might very well have enjoyed absolute power over his members had he not forfeited it by his disobedience; for it was not difficult for God to form him so that what is now moved in his body only by lust should have been moved only at will. … Seeing, then, that even in this mortal and miserable life the body serves some men by many remarkable movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is there for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this weak and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the propagation of offspring without lust? Man has been given over to himself because he abandoned God, while he sought to be self-satisfying; and disobeying God, he could not obey even himself. Hence it is that he is involved in the obvious misery of being unable to live as he wishes. For if he lived as he wished, he would think himself blessed; but he could not be so if he lived wickedly.29

This strange reflection speculates about the difference between the intentional regulation of erection in the prelapsarian state and its non-intentionality in the postlapsarian state. With this in mind, for the person of Christ we have to assume a voluntary and intentional freedom of choice. The ambiguity we mentioned before becomes especially apparent here: is the erect phallus of the crucified Christ not only a manifestation of the sin he suffered but also (at the same time?) a demonstration of his divinity at the very moment of death? If so, it might represent the overcoming of sin by the sinless Christ in the act of suffering from sin. In this case, Cranach would be enacting a theological paradox: he shows the power that manifests its power in its powerlessness. One might also note a slight whiff of heresy here: does Cranach present Christ as someone who is alive and in control of his limbs even in his death? If so, it might seem as if Christ were not “really” dead. The strange ambiguity that arises from Augustine’s considerations can certainly not be presumed to be known by Cranach nor by most spectators. In this respect, the question does not have to be settled. As a response 29

Cf. De civ. Dei XIV, 24.

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to Hans Belting’s critique, it is sufficient to point out the inferences one can draw between 2 Cor 5:21 and Cranach’s “mercy seat” to illustrate merely that the relation between the power of images and the power of words, the power of the painter and the power of the theologian, was by no means as hierarchically structured as Belting supposes. The image was and still is much more powerful than most people think or say. The seen image (as well as the read text) is more powerful than either word or text is willing to concede. The iconic dynamic and energy disproves both the semantics of theological theories as well as their critiques on the part of image theory. But this does not yet resolve the question of how this dynamic and energy in the relationship of word and image ought to be understood in the case of the example above. d) “Mensch Käßmann:Vom Umgang mit der Schuld” (Der Spiegel, September 2010)30 Last year there was an interesting incident in Germany concerning the Protestant church. A drunk bishop ran a red light with an alcohol level significantly above the legal limit in Germany and subsequently revealed to the public that she was an alcoholic. She resigned from her positions in the church and – as time went by – became the newest saint of German Protestantism, “Saint Margot.” What she did (drinking and driving) is not exemplary, of course. But contrary to some convictions, it is not a “sin” in the theological sense. It is merely stupid and irresponsible, but not a violation of one’s relationship to God. Nevertheless, Käßmann was first crucified by the mass media and then she became their darling: the resurrection after crucifixion. “Can images kill?” was the question raised by the image-theorist MarieJose Mondzain.31 As we know, sometimes they can. But the next question is: are they able to transfigure and resurrect as well? Yes, they can! Consider, for example the burial scene painted by Raphael, when his most famous painting, the transfiguration of Christ, was presented above his coffin. The image not only displays the greatness of the painter and his real presence in his work, but also the transfiguration of Raphael himself. It is a strange exceeding of finitude. The image seems to become capax infiniti, the transfigured body of resurrection.

30 The title can be roughly translated as: “Käßmann, a (Fallible) Human Being?: Dealing with Guilt”. 31 Cf. Marie-Jose Mondzain, L’image peut-elle tuer? (Montrouge: Bayard Jeunesse, 2010).

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Raphael The Transfiguration of Christ ca. 1516–1520 Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

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Der Spiegel, September 2010

Another intriguing example of this was a photo of the aforementioned Bishop Käßmann, just after her resignation from her position, which appeared on the cover of the German magazine Der Spiegel. The iconic performance is clear at first glance: it is a death mask. It shows the bishop as dead. She has been symbolically killed. It is an old idea that someone is executed “in effigy” if he or she is not bodily present. But at second glance even more is happening here because the face is not only in the iconographic tradition of death masks but also reflects a kind of transfiguration. The face is already shining blissfully as if she is not totally dead, but already resurrecting a little.This iconic ambivalence is expressed with a particular conciseness as if one has an icon of a dead person in the moment of resurrection or transfiguration. It is impossible but real – and therefore really puzzling.

Time and Transcendence: Religion and Ethics Arne Grøn

1. Transcendence? Religions are deep – and deeply – human enterprises: “deep” in that they concern what it is to be human; “deeply” in that they bear witness to human ambiguities. Religious traditions themselves may contest that they are forms of human self-understanding, but seeking to be more than human is human, all too human. Seeing that religion is about what it means to be human may thus require a philosophical reflection on religion. Religions are deep and deeply human enterprises not least as ways of dealing with time.This may seem an odd claim to make. Although religions deal with time, what makes them into religions appears to be the countermove: the movement beyond time. So, one may object, religions only deal with time in order to offer humans a sort of retreat out of time, or a hold against time: they deal with time only to speak of the transcendence of time. Although (or maybe because) religions are human, if not all too human, they are also difficult to grasp. Does the use of the concept of transcendence help us to understand what religions are about? Bringing transcendence into play allows immanence to appear. This twofold gesture leaves us with the following question: if immanence means the world of time and change in which we live, how is it possible to speak of transcendence? Does this not amount to humans speaking as if they were not human, as if they could move between themselves and God or the divine? Again, acting as if we are more than human is something humans can also do without speaking of God, speaking instead, for example, about perfection and enhancement, opening up new ways of being human or even entertaining the idea of overcoming “the human.” The idea of transcendence in terms of going beyond the human condition is itself human, if not all too human. Moreover, does speaking of the transcendence of time not testify to the fundamental experience of time? Is it a way of dealing with time? These are the issues I would like to address here. More specifically, my question is what we do when we use the concepts of immanence and transcendence. To address this question we may seem to take a step back, placing ourselves in a metaposition, but on closer reflection the question concerns how we are situated in speaking of transcendence and time. If we

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use the concepts of immanence and transcendence and take a direct approach (asking whether there is transcendence or not), we risk overlooking how we are situating ourselves – as those who speak of immanence and transcendence. If we are to account for what we mean by immanence and transcendence, we must also account for how we are situated in situating ourselves: where are we when speaking of transcendence? Transcendence may be taken to mean that we are not just situated. Transcendence of time would thus imply that we are not simply in time. But this does not place us in a world beyond the world of time. Rather, transcendence of time is a way of being in the world.We are in the world relating to the world – and to our being in the world.1 Thus, using the concepts of immanence and transcendence is complicated, if not problematic.Yet perhaps the concepts are indispensable precisely by virtue of their problematic character. Can we do without a notion of transcendence when we face the difficulty of describing how we are situated as the beings we are? We are temporal beings who can ask what it means to be temporal. We are not simply temporal, yet transcending the temporal belongs to our being temporal. Thus, the problems we can identify when reflecting on what is implied in speaking of transcendence are “deep” in the sense that they concern what it is to be the creatures we are. This relates to religions as “deep” human enterprises: they are not projects humans have invented in order to solve problems, not even the problem of self-understanding. Rather, religions are already about what should count as problems for us. Self-understanding is a problem we face as humans before it becomes a possible project we wish to undertake. Therefore, instead of a direct approach to the issue of transcendence (“is there transcendence or not?”), my suggestion is to focus on the very difficulties in using the concept. In asking what time is, we appear to move beyond time, and yet this very movement – as transcendence of time – is “in time.”  The key issue is what it means to be situated in time. Human temporality does not consist only in being situated in time; humans are situated in such a way as to relate to time, having time as a problem. But this is how they are situated in time so that even in relating to time they are situated. This means that transcendence of time takes place as transcendence in time. Thus, projecting or setting out to change our history is a move beyond time as the time to which we are subjected, but this move itself takes time. In “taking” time, we become subjected to time. There is a further human possibility here: we may imagine not only changing our history, but also moving beyond historical time. For example, 1 Arne Grøn, “Subjectivity and Transcendence: Problems and Perspectives,” in Subjectivity and Transcendence, eds. Arne Grøn, Iben Damgaard, and Søren Overgaard (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 9–36.

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we may ask ourselves what it would be like to see history from its endpoint. On the one hand, such a move would be impossible because as a move we can take, it becomes part of our history. On the other hand, imagining this move – as transcendence of historical time – may not merely be an attempt to escape, but may help us realize we are subjected to time and to ourselves in time.There is a passivity implied in our activities which is difficult to recognize, let alone comprehend in its fullness. Maybe this is what we come to see when reflecting on the move beyond time in religions, understood as a move beyond the time of human projects. Thus, the indirect approach I suggest involves asking what we come to see when reflecting on religions moving beyond the world of humans. If transcendence allows immanence to appear, perhaps the movement beyond points back to the world of humans in its complexity. Or, put differently: how do humans show themselves as temporal beings as they move “beyond” time? The option of looking at the concept of transcendence from a distance is different from reflecting on ways of dealing with the question of transcendence. Therefore, I will discuss the issue of time and transcendence in the context of some key passages in Kierkegaard which both perform and reflect on movements implied in religion.The aim here is not – at least not primarily – an exegetical one, but rather to formulate an understanding of the intricate relation of time and transcendence which, at least to some degree, can find support in and be demonstrated by reading Kierkegaard. It addresses what transcendence means in light of the question of what it means to be situated in time. My approach will be phenomenological in the sense that it is about showing what is at issue in dealing with time and transcendence. The question of time concerns the time of different times: past, present, future. In Kierkegaard, the question of being situated between future and past is of critical importance. This is especially the case in his edifying discourses. Edification is only to be understood as a response to the problem which time presents to humans who are situated in time divided in itself as time to come (future), present time, and time past.

2. Time Itself is the Task “If there were no future, there would be no past, either, and if there were neither future nor past, then a human being would be in bondage like an animal, his head bowed to the earth, his soul captive to the service of the

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moment,” Kierkegaard notes in “The Expectancy of Faith,”2 the first of his edifying discourses from 1843. This passage already indicates that being human is a matter of dealing with time. The emphasis is placed first on the future as the time to come (Danish: det Tilkommende; German: das Zukünftige), but this requires a second question: how do we return to the present (det Nærværende)? The temporality of being human does not consist in being present and then, perhaps, relating to the future. Rather, future as the time coming to us makes it possible for us to relate to the present. But how do we orient ourselves towards the time to come? Although the future is the time to come, the question is whether we, in dealing with the future, only encounter ourselves, as Kierkegaard notes: “the future is indeed light and elusive and more pliable than any clay, and consequently everyone forms it entirely as he himself is formed.”3 Yet in relating to the future, we are also passive: the future is time coming to us, and we encounter ourselves, without having first chosen to do so. But this is the passivity of a self. We are to respond to the future coming to us. In responding, where can we find points of orientation? Kierkegaard’s edifying discourse on the expectancy of faith offers an answer which we would probably term religious without reservations: When the sailor is out on the ocean, when everything is changing all around him, when the waves are born and die, he does not stare down into the waves, because they are changing. He looks up at the stars. Why? Because they are faithful; they have the same location now that they had for our ancestors and will have for generations to come. By what means does he conquer the changeable? By the eternal. By the eternal, one can conquer the future, because the eternal is the ground of the future, and therefore through it the future can be fathomed.”4

What attracts attention here is the movement of the eye looking up at the stars. On reflection, however, it is the implication of the image which is crucial: the one looking up at the stars, seeking to orient himself, is out on the ocean. That means: situated in time. But how are we situated in time? We do not first have to transport ourselves into the future or into the past. Rather, we find ourselves being distended in time.The fact that we encounter ourselves in dealing with the future and the past is not of our making. Rather, being ourselves implies 2

Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, in Kierkegaard’s Writings vol. 5 [hereafter: KW 5], ed. and transl. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), 17. Original version: Opbyggelige Taler 1843, in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter vol. 5 [hereafter: SKS 5], eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. (Copenhagen: Gad, 1998), 26. 3 Kierkegaard, KW 5, 20; SKS 5, 29. 4 Kierkegaard, KW 5, 19; SKS 5, 28.

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passivity. Being distended in time, we are situated with the task of collecting ourselves and “making up our minds” on how to lead our lives. But we are thus situated as concerned beings. We are not first distended in time and then concerned. Rather, we are expecting and remembering because something matters to us. Again, the intertwinement of passivity and activity is crucial. We do not “make” ourselves concerned (if we do, concern turns into worry). Yet being concerned is how we relate to that which matters to us. Concern not only shows that a human being is a self, but also the problematic character of selfhood. In becoming a self, the next day comes into existence for us. “And basically this is where the battle is fought,”5 as Kierkegaard states in a discourse on “The Care of Self-Torment” (“Selvplagelsens Bekymring”) in Christian Discourses. A human being is not first a self and then relates to time, but becomes a self in relating to time. Humans can lose heart when under the burden of time they lose the courage to be themselves and to live their lives. Implied in this burden is the task of “carrying” oneself and this task “is enough for a lifetime.”6 In short, “time itself is the task”; therefore, “it is a defect to finish ahead of time.”7 Time itself is the task because we have to carry the weight of ourselves in time. What does that imply? Being out on the ocean, subjected to the vicissitudes of time, how do we preserve ourselves? Again, this is a matter of what one is concerned about. We tend to preserve what matters to us, that is, that with which we identify ourselves. What attracts our attention is the fact that there is “danger to life and land, to health, honor, to welfare and property,” as Kierkegaard notes in the edifying discourse “To Preserve One’s Soul in Patience.”8 But we may then ignore a danger which tends to hide in “earthly dangers”: the danger of losing one’s soul. How is this danger “eternal”? What is remarkable is that we are not moved beyond our human condition; rather, the eternal danger concerns precisely our human condition in terms of “the shortness of life and the certainty of death.”9 Why is it then called “eternal” and not “earthly”? Because what is in dan5 Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, in Kierkegaard’s Writings , vol. 17 [hereafter: KW 17], ed. and transl. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 71. Original version: Christelige Taler, in: Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 10 [hereafter: SKS 10], eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. (Copenhagen: Gad, 2004), 80. 6 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, in: Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 12[hereafter: KW 12], ed. and transl. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 165. Original version: Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift, in: Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 7 [hereafter: SKS 7], eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. (Copenhagen: Gad, 2002), 153. 7 Kierkegaard, KW 12, 164; SKS 7, 152. 8 Kierkegaard, KW 5, 183–184; SKS 5, 187. 9 Kierkegaard, KW 5, 184; SKS 5, 187.

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ger is our relation to our condition: how we ourselves relate to the life we are to live. We carry with us the danger of losing our soul. How then does one preserve one’s soul? As the title of the edifying discourse indicates, one can only preserve one’s soul in patience (Taalmodighed), which means having the courage (Modet) to endure or to bear (til at taale) oneself. Again, time itself is the task. The “eternal” danger implies the task of enduring time and bearing oneself in time. Speaking of preserving “one’s soul” indicates that one must also preserve oneself in time against oneself: as one who can lose courage and betray oneself. Where does this leave us with the concepts of immanence and transcendence? If immanence means being situated in time, it appears as our human condition. But as such it implies the question of how we are situated in time. We are situated in time “with ourselves.” We are not simply “in time”; rather, time comes to us, so that we come to face the task of preserving ourselves in how we take time. Do we not then come to ourselves in being transcended? Do we in relating to the future only encounter ourselves? In anticipating, expecting or fearing, what we relate to is yet to come. It may turn out to be only our own ideas, expectations, worries and fears. This again shows us what is implied in being what we are: we are not simply concerned, but may subject ourselves to worries. In the above-mentioned discourse on “The Care of Self-Torment” in Christian Discourses, Kierkegaard writes: “What is anxiety? It is the next Day.”10 What is reflected in anxiety is the fact that we already relate to ourselves in dealing with the time coming to us. Anxiety is self-disclosure in the eminent sense, disclosure of what it means to be a self. This is only disclosed as an experience of oneself in – relating to – time. A famous passage in The Concept of Anxiety reads: “Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom …”11 Looking down into its own possibility, freedom succumbs in anxiety: “In that very moment everything is changed, and freedom, when it again rises, sees that it is guilty. Between these two moments lies the leap, which no science has explained and

10

Kierkegaard, KW 17, 78; SKS 10, 87. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, in Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 8 [hereafter: KW 8], ed. and transl. Reidar Thomte and Albert B.Anderson (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980), 61. Original version: Begrebet Angest, in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 4 [hereafter: SKS 4], eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. (Copenhagen: Gad, 1997), 365. 11

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which no science can explain. He who becomes guilty in anxiety becomes as ambiguously guilty as it is possible to become.”12 Do the possibilities we see come from the future or from our own “eyes”? The interplay of passivity and activity is crucial. We both encounter ourselves and face something other: time coming towards us. But this implies that the passages quoted relate to what it means to be situated in time: relating to the future as the time to come, one encounters oneself, and only in this way one can be disclosed as a self to oneself. Thus, the “leap” is not a project or a decision to be taken, but happens to oneself through that which one does or has done.

3. The Moment, or Beginning Having Begun Until now the emphasis has been on the future as the time to come. What about the present? The present is already present in expecting and remembering. Furthermore, it can “stand out” as the moment when the relation to the future and the relation to the past are decided. In both senses it has been implied in what I have written. The present as the critical moment when history is about to change still appears as a moment of history: being critical implies that a caesura in time occurs so that we come to see history in terms of before and after. This applies to both individual and collective history (for example, before and after “9/11”). However, the critical moment of history is also a matter of history as it turns out to be critical for the history yet to come. We may witness something happening with an acute sense of this being a critical moment, but that is a sense of time changing: the moment involves the future to come. Humans can also be victims of history when their history falls outside of “history”. What appears to be common history then is no longer shared; the critical moments when history changed for the victims or the witnesses of this history, especially if it is a history of mass atrocities, no longer appear as moments of “history.” This raises the question of what immanence in terms of human history is supposed to mean. It is a critical question which cannot be directly addressed here, but which informs the background of my discussion. What is described in the passages quoted from The Concept of Anxiety is the decisive moment in which one’s history changes in the sense that one comes to have a history of one’s own. That must be kept in mind in what follows. In the reception of Kierkegaard, the moment (Øieblikket) is often without further ado taken as the moment of resolve. But is the decisive moment in the passages quoted a moment of decision? It is not the moment of a direct self-choice; rather, it is what happens between two 12

Kierkegaard, KW 8, 6; SKS 4, 365–366.

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moments: the moment of succumbing and the moment of rising. One fails in anxiety, succumbing to the dizziness of freedom which emerges when looking down into freedom as one’s own possibility. Thus, he who becomes guilty through anxiety is indeed innocent, for it was not he himself but anxiety, a foreign power, that laid hold of him, a power that he did not love but about which he was anxious. And yet he is guilty, for he sank in anxiety, which he nevertheless loved even as he feared it. There is nothing in the world more ambiguous13

Again, this is about what it means to be situated in time.That comes to the fore in the ways time is reflected in seeing: the one who becomes guilty through anxiety succumbs in looking down into the abyss of her possibility (future) and rises, seeing that she is guilty. What comes in-between the two moments is the leap which “stands outside of all ambiguity.”14 A person stands out as having failed. Whether others have also failed is in that moment not the person’s concern. But there is a moment of decision to follow, namely, the decision of “appropriating oneself ” (at overtage sig selv) as having become guilty. The moment described in the passages quoted opens up a history – one’s own – in which the decision is to be carried through from moment to moment. This is implied in the notion of self-preservation as a matter of patience or the courage to endure time. Relating to the future as the time to come then becomes a matter of repetition. Seeking to realize one’s own possibilities, one is to appropriate oneself as the one who one already is. Repetition takes place in the moment, but in repetition there is also a “take” on “the whole” of one’s history. What is decided in the moment of decision, then, is the character of one’s history as a history of becoming oneself. However, this does not go deep enough to account for what it is to be situated in time. The decisive moment described in the passages quoted above is not one moment in a person’s history; rather, it implies a history, from moment to moment. Yet there is more to it. It is the moment when one’s history changes; or, to be more precise, the moment of anxiety is decisive in that it is about gaining one’s own history. The Concept of Anxiety is a book on sin which is to be read as an account of difficult freedom (to use Lévinas’s phrase). The difficulty of freedom is intrinsically linked to the history of freedom. Vigilius Haufniensis, the pseudonymous author, insists that sin only enters the world through the individual who fails, and each time this happens it is something new.This is not to deny that humans have failed before. On the contrary, ethical faults committed by humans accumulate in the history humans share, but this is 13 14

Kierkegaard, KW 8, 43; SKS 4, 349. Kierkegaard, KW 8, 43; SKS 4, 349.

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the history of sinfulness, not sin.To explain oneself from the shared presupposition of sinfulness is “a misunderstood appropriation of the historical de te fabula narratur [the story told is about you].”15 Beginning one’s own history, one is to account for oneself. Thus, the distinction between sin and sinfulness has deep implications in terms of history. “Each individual begins in an historical nexus,”  Vigilius Haufniensis states. But the historical character of being human implies more than the fact that we grow up having “an historical environment.”16 Rather, the fact that “each individual begins in a historical nexus” opens up precisely the question of beginning. Each individual is born into a historical context, but is also to begin on her own or “primitively.”17 When she begins herself, she gains her own history, but she begins in a history already begun, a history which she shares with others. We are born into a history, not just thrown, and in this history, we are to begin ourselves (as Hannah Arendt could have said). To begin ourselves is to gain our own history. But gaining our own history is not a matter of having a project or plan. Rather, the decisive moment in which my history begins is when I discover myself as guilty, as we have seen. Again, this has to do with being situated in time. There is passivity involved in gaining my own history, a passivity that concerns my being the one acting. The beginning is ethical in that it is about coming to see myself as guilty, that is, as this single individual who is not able to escape myself. Situated in time, then, implies being situated as the one who I am. We are situated as those who begin on our own, coming to have a history of our own in a history that has already begun. Having a history of one’s own implies that there are decisive moments which are, in fact, moments of decision. How are we situated in making choices in leading our life? This is what the ethicist in Kierkegaard’s Either/ Or seeks to take into his account of choice. In choosing I situate myself. In the final analysis, therefore, choosing is choosing oneself: The moment of choice is for me very serious, less on account of the rigorous pondering of the alternatives, and of the multitude of thought that attach to each separate link, than because there is a danger afoot that at the next moment it may not be in my power to make the same choice, that something has already been lived that must be lived over again … Then when at last the choice is made … 15

Kierkegaard, KW 8, 73; SKS 4, 377. Kierkegaard, KW 8, 73; SKS 4, 377. 17 Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, in: Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 6 [hereafter: KW 6] ed. and transl. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 121. Original version: Frygt og Bæven, in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 4 [hereafter: SKS 4], eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al (Copenhagen: Gad. 1997), 208. 16

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one discovers that there is something that must be done over again, that must be retracted, and that is often very difficult.18

Decisive in the moment then is how we are situated in the next moment. Anticipating, we can look back retrospectively on what we are about to do now. In the next moment something may have already been lived that must be lived over again. Moreover, the moment of decision now is itself “the next moment” for a previous moment of decision. Choosing, we situate ourselves but only as already situated. The accounts given both in Either/Or and in The Concept of Anxiety suggest that being situated in time must be understood in ethical terms. It concerns us in our actions. Before beginning in the moment of decision one has already begun. This must be accentuated ethically (to quote Kierkegaard’s Postscript): In existence, the individual is a concretion, time is concrete, and even while the individual deliberates he is ethically responsible for the use of time. Existence is not an abstract rush job but a striving and an unremitting “in the meantime.” Even at the moment the task is assigned, something is already wasted, because there is an “in the meantime” and the beginning is not promptly made.This is how it goes backward … And just as the beginning is about to be made here, it is discovered that, since meanwhile time has been passing, a bad beginning has been made and that the beginning must be made by becoming guilty, and from that moment the total guilt which is decisive, practices usury with new guilt.19

Beginning in a history which has already begun implies that we have already begun ourselves before making what we would consider to be the beginning.We begin having begun.When we are to begin, we have already let time pass. Time has already been wasted. It is remarkable how, in the ethicist’s account, the past too becomes a matter of ethics. It is not simply a past to be left behind. Choosing oneself implies facing one’s history. Therefore, it is only possible, the ethicist argues, to choose oneself by “repenting oneself back” into one’s history, thereby “repenting oneself ”: “but one can only choose oneself ethically by repenting oneself, and it is only by repenting oneself that one becomes concrete, and it is only as a concrete individual that one is a free individual.”20 If the ethical has its weight in choosing oneself as the one to respond for what one is doing, history easily seems to fall outside of ethics. But the ethical is about being situated as the one acting. In the ethicist’s account, choosing oneself is not only to assume responsibility for each individual 18 Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, transl. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin, 1997), 483. Original version: Enten – Eller, in: Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 3 [hereafter: SKS 3], eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. (Copenhagen: Gad), 161. 19 Kierkegaard, KW 12, 526; SKS 7, 478. 20 Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 540; SKS 3, 236.

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act, but also to assume oneself as being situated in time. Therefore, the ethicist’s move is radical: to “repent oneself ” back into one’s history. The one choosing can find an answer to history as a challenge to ethics: in repenting. This means, however, that repentance is turned into a sort of instrument for gaining continuity with oneself. Upon closer reflection the very temporality of repentance presents a problem. Apparently, if repentance means “taking the past upon oneself ” in order to open the future, it is a way of dealing with time which can let the past be past; in repenting, one seeks to “redeem” oneself. Yet repentance cannot make one free. This has to do with the radical significance of ethics in terms of time. The ethical has already begun when we begin ethically. First, repentance is “always a moment too late”21; second, repentance itself takes time, and “taking time” is already a matter of ethics: while repenting, time is passing, and a wrong beginning has been made. Furthermore, in repenting, one is in danger of being absorbed into a self-encircling movement which is a diversion from the ethical task. All this means that “repentance is the highest ethical contradiction,” as stated in The Concept of Anxiety.22 Where does this leave us? The key issue in what I have argued so far is what it means to be situated. What is difficult to apprehend is that we are situated in situating ourselves. Since Heidegger at least (who was following Kierkegaard), it has become mainstream in twentieth century philosophy to emphasize that human subjectivity is situated, but we tend to understand situated subjectivity either in terms of being situated or in terms of relating to our being situated. Transcendence then appears as either transcendence of being situated (Sartre) or as transcendence of humans projecting themselves (Heidegger). Is it not possible to understand being situated differently in terms of time and transcendence? Does the ethical accentuation of time provide a lead? What is accentuated is both how we use time, and the fact of having already begun.We are already situated ethically when we are to assume responsibility for ourselves.

4. Situated in Time Until now I have left out what most obviously would count as a notion of situated subjectivity: the concept of existence.The term is coined in Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript and reflects a double emphasis. First, “to exist is to become.”23 That means that, existing, one is situated in time.

21 22 23

Kierkegaard, KW 8, 115; SKS 4, 417. Kierkegaard, KW 8, 117; SKS 4, 419. Kierkegaard, KW 12, 199; SKS 7, 183.

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Human existence is being in becoming. Second, the question is whether we, in becoming, become ourselves. Existence implies self-relation. The concept of existence thus holds together two aspects that appear at first to be in tension with one another: to be in becoming and to be a self (which implies relating to oneself in becoming). This means that humans are what they are in being situated “in-between” – in two senses. First, a human being exists between the finite and the infinite. This is so strange that it marks the one existing: she is “wondrously constituted.”24 Second, to exist is to be “on one’s way” in life between birth and death. How deep being situated in time goes is indicated by this double sense of “in-between.” Let us examine how. Kierkegaard’s Postscript itself points to the remarkable implication of the first sense of “in-between,” thereby indicating the second: an existing human being is composed of the infinite and the finite “situated in time (bestedt i Tiden).”25 What does it mean to accentuate time in terms of being situated? The implication concerns how we are situated, as humans, in relation to the truth. How do we orient ourselves? This question requires that we take into account how we are ourselves situated in seeking to orient ourselves; orientation therefore means re-orientation: we can only situate ourselves as already being situated. Thus, “in time” does not imply that time is taken in spatial terms; rather, it means being “already” situated in a world of time. Situated in a world of change, like a sailor out at sea, we look for points of orientation. Asking the question of truth leads to a second question: how are we situated in relation to the truth we are searching as we seek to orient ourselves? What would count as points of orientation must relate to the problems facing us as we are subjected to change. In the passage quoted from the edifying discourse “The Expectancy of Faith,” the claim is made that “by the eternal,” one can conquer the future (as time coming). What does “eternal” imply here? It may be taken as being simply beyond time. But even if we take it in this direction, speaking about the “eternal truth” implies the question of whether there is a truth to time and history. And that implies the further question: what is it to be situated in time – seeking the truth? This reverse direction is made explicit in the twist given a few years later in Kierkegaard’s Postscript to the question of the eternal truth: Of what help is it to explain how the eternal truth is to be understood eternally when the one to use the explanation is prevented from understanding it in this way because he is existing and is merely a fantast if he fancies himself to be sub specie aeterni, consequently when he must avail himself precisely of the explanation 24 25

Kierkegaard, KW 12, 176; SKS 7, 163. Kierkegaard, KW 12, 221; SKS 7, 202. Emphasis mine.

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of how the eternal truth is to be understood in the category of time by someone who by existing is himself in time, something the honored professor himself admits, if not always, then every three months when he draws his salary.”26

Although the marker “in time” is easily overlooked, it carries the whole weight in the picture. Thus, the suggestion challenging the reader of the Postscript is that the paradox of Christianity is placing the existing human being “more decisively than any judge can place the accused, between time and eternity in time, between heaven and hell in the time of salvation.”27 When it is noted, en passant, that “in existence, that is, in temporality,”28 this affects the condition for understanding the question of the eternal truth: “whether it will be manifest when everything is settled in eternity that the most insignificant circumstance was absolutely important – I do not decide. I can truthfully say that time does not allow me to do that – simply because I am in time,”29 as Johannes Climacus, the pseudonymous author of the Postscript, avows and proclaims. This leads to the second “in-between.” Existing, we are “in the middle” of life in the sense that we cannot view our life from a point outside our existence. We are not able to place ourselves at the point of the beginning (birth) or at the point of the end (death). As those on the way, we can anticipate and remember, but only while living: anticipating and remembering take time. Again, this shows the ethical significance of time: being ourselves in becoming means that each of us has our own way to go. We may travel together for some time, maybe for most of our lives as life companions, but this is only possible because we cannot “stand in” for each other. Each of us has our own time (as Lévinas could have said). It may seem so obvious that we exist “in time” that we do not have to ask ourselves what that means. But accentuating that we are situated “in time” has a critical point. It concerns what it means to be a human being, as a reminder of the fact that it is possible for humans to ignore that they are “in time.” This is hinted at in numerous passages in the Postscript, for example: “Since a human being is a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal, the speculative happiness that a speculator can enjoy will be an illusion, because he wants to be exclusively eternal within time.”30 A human being can fancy “himself to be sub specie aeterni.”31 Against this forgetting, Johannes Climacus insists on human finitude. To be situated in time means that a concluding panoramic view on human existence is excluded as a 26 27 28 29 30 31

Kierkegaard, KW 12, 192; SKS 7, 176. Kierkegaard, KW 12, 215; SKS 7, 197. Emphasis mine. Kierkegaard, KW 12, 397; SKS 7, 361. Kierkegaard, KW 12, 411; SKS 7, 374. Kierkegaard, KW 12, 56; SKS 7, 60. Kierkegaard, KW 12, 192; SKS 7, 176.

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human possibility. We cannot place ourselves so as to enjoy God’s “point of view,” but can only imagine what such a point of view would mean for our existence. This has a striking, if not surprising, implication in terms of time and transcendence.To be situated “in time” is to be “lodged in existence in such a way that the back door of recollection is forever closed”32: it is impossible to take oneself back into eternity “by Socratically recollecting.”33 This means that transcendence as a human movement beyond time is cut off. Transcendence then is both a critical and a paradoxical notion: genuine transcendence breaks human transcendence off. But this turns immanence into a problematic or questionable notion. If we are looking for orientation in the eternal like a sailor looking at the stars, we are still lodged in existence; we are still “out on the ocean,” situated in time.34 Eternity offers no retreat out of time – retreating would still take place “in time.” But this does not mean that human existence is an immanence enclosed upon itself; rather, it is existence precisely “in becoming.” The task implied in existing – to become who one is – is not concluded from within. Being in becoming has to do with the character of the end: death comes to the one existing. If there is no point outside human existence from which humans can view their existence, there is an “event” which cannot be integrated into it, but rather breaks existence itself open: 32

Kierkegaard, KW 12, 208; SKS 7, 191. Kierkegaard, KW 12, 207-208; SKS 7, 190. 34 It would be fruitful to take Nietzsche into account here as well when discuss- ing time and transcendence. (Cf. Arne Grøn, “Im Horizont des Unendlichen: Reli- gionskritik nach Nietzsche,” in Kritik der Religion: Zur Aktualität einer unerledigten philosophischen und theologischen Aufgabe, ed. Ingolf U. Dalferth and Hans-Peter Grosshans (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 145–162; Arne Grøn, “Subjectivity and Transcendence: Problems and Perspectives,” 9–36). See, in particular, Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft: Kritische Studienausgabe vol. 3, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1988. English translation:The Gay Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, § 125 (“the madman asking: How did we kill God? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?”), § 343 (“finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an ‘open sea’”), and § 124 (“In the horizon of the infinite. – We have forsaken the land and gone to sea! We have destroyed the bridge behind us – more so, we have demolished the land behind us! Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean; it is true, it does not always roar, and at times it lies there like silk and gold and dreams of goodness. But there will be hours when you realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity.”) For thinking in terms of the picture of being out on the ocean, cf. also Hegel: “Dieses reine Beisichsein gehört zum freien Denken, dem ins Freie Ausschiffen, wo nichts unter uns und über uns ist und wir in der Einsamkeit mit uns allein dastehen.” (Enzyklopädie, § 31 Zusatz). What is being thought here through the picture is “thinking” or the “freedom of thought.” 33

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death, as enigmatic and inexplicable. In Lévinas’s words, death is an event that is not one event among others in a chain of events.

5. Death, or Time Coming How is it possible to deal with death as both part of and the end to human existence? The thought of death is also transcendence of thought. If thinking here means integrating the thought of death into one’s existence, this is only possible if we, in thinking, acknowledge that we arrive at a limit. It is about thinking in earnestness. “That death can make a finish is indeed certain, but the challenge of earnestness is to think it, to think that all is over, that there comes a time when all is over. This is the difficult thing, because even in the moment of death the dying person thinks that he still might have some time to live,”35 Kierkegaard writes in “At a Graveside,” the last of his Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. It is difficult to think what death means for one’s life. The challenge is to think that there comes a time when there is no more time. Why is this difficult? The difficulty lies with us: thinking that there comes a time when there is no more time runs counter to the fact that we live thinking that there is still time. We take time, and we give ourselves time, first and foremost in delaying. But there is also passivity at play in thinking: we carry ourselves, or the weight of our existence (this is what the earnestness in thinking is about). If we can endure thinking that there comes a time when there is no more time, then “death in earnest gives life force as nothing else does; it makes one alert as nothing else does … the thought of death gives the earnest the right momentum in life and the right goal toward which he directs his momentum.”36 Earlier, we had a first return or inversion of transcendence: from eternity to time (in realizing that eternity offers no retreat out of time). Now we encounter a second reversal of movement: from death to life (in thinking that there comes a time when there is no more time). Refraining from any explanation, we can let the thought of death have “retroactive power” and let it be “impelling in life.”37 The challenge of thinking in earnest is to have 35 Kierkegaard, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, in: Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 10 [hereafter: KW 10], ed. and transl. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 79; original version: Tre Taler ved tænkte Leiligheder, in: Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, vol. 5 [hereafter: SKS 5], eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. (Copenhagen: Gad, 1998), 449. 36 Kierkegaard, KW 10, 83; SKS 5, 453. 37 Kierkegaard, KW 10, 100; SKS 5, 468. For the “edifying dialectic” of the discourse, see Michael Theunissen, “Das Erbauliche im Gedanken an den Tod:Traditionale Elemente, inno- vative Ideen und unausgeschöpfte Potentiale in Kierkegaards Rede

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the courage to bear the thought that all is over. What is to be seen in this converse movement? The turning point of the discourse is that we – in thinking that all is over – can be struck by the thought that all is not yet over. That is, we can come to receive time as a gift. “Indeed, time is also a good,” the discourse states.38 The thought of death changes the relation to time. It reminds us about the time we have taken for granted and questions what we use time for: “with the thought of death the earnest person is able to create a scarcity (at gjøre Dyrtid) so that the year and the day receive infinite worth.”39 Thinking the thought of death, then, is a countermove against forgetting existence: “My main thought was that, because of the copiousness of knowledge, people in our day have forgotten what it means to exist,” Climacus declares.40 This is implied in forgetting to ask what it means to die.41 We forget because of our ways of knowing, and we forget in and through our ways of talking: the orator “forgets to think the uncertainty into what he is saying about uncertainty when he, moved, speaks harrowingly about the uncertainty of death and ends by urging a purpose for the whole of life.”42 Thinking ourselves into world history is to forget the temporal character of our human existence, thereby forgetting the ethical. In dealing with the time to come we encounter ourselves, anticipating the future. Do we then encounter something other than ourselves? This question implies a second: do we, in becoming, become ourselves? Put differently, do we preserve our soul? This question is about what it is to be situated in time.

6. Immanence? What does it mean to move “beyond” time? This question implied in dealing with religion was our point of departure. On reflection, we can come to see that in the movement “beyond,” we are situated in time. But this also indicates that we are not simply situated; we are already beyond in that we face the question of time, that is, what it means to be situated in time.What sense then does it make to speak of immanence and transcendence? As indicated, we need a notion of transcendence in order to capture what it means to be situated: we are not just situated, but have our being be An einem Grabe,” in Kierkegaard Studies:Yearbook 2000, eds. Niels Jørgen Cappelørn et al. (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter), 64ff. 38 Kierkegaard, KW 10, 83; SKS 5, 453. 39 Kierkegaard, KW 10, 84; SKS 5, 453. 40 Kierkegaard, KW 12, 249; SKS 7, 226. 41 Kierkegaard, KW 12, 165 ff.; SKS 7, 153ff. 42 Kierkegaard, KW 12, 166; SKS 7, 154.

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situated as a question. What it means to be situated in time we can realize in and through an inversion of transcendence.43 I have argued that there is a double inversion: first, from eternity to existence (realizing that speaking of eternity is still a way of existing); second, from death to life (thinking the thought of death in earnestness, that is, thinking that there comes a time when there is no more time, we can receive time as a gift). Where does that leave us with the notion of immanence? Inversion of transcendence is not simply a return to immanence; rather, it opens up the question of immanence. Does being situated “in time” mean immanence? As noted in the beginning, the notion of transcendence is problematic not least in that it invites us to think that we can move between ourselves and what is beyond us (while in the movement “beyond,” we are still situated as ourselves, taking ourselves along). Correspondingly, speaking of immanence requires a subject for whom there is immanence, but how do we account for this subject? More specifically, how do we account for this subject being situated? If immanence means what we can experience, think and understand or imagine, how is it immanence of the subject itself? Immanence easily turns into what we can manage or control, but do we then manage (and, in managing, preserve) ourselves? What would immanence mean in terms of time? If time is primarily time coming to us, is it not an experience of being transcended? Although we plan and anticipate, the future turns out to be other than we thought. Although death is certain, and we even can seek it, the moment of death comes to us in an ultimate sense which breaks immanence off. The ultimate response, therefore, is not to appropriate oneself in facing the other, but to give oneself over to death. I can absolutely not apprehend the moment of death; it is “out of reach,” as Montaigne would say … it [death] approaches without being able to be assumed, such that the time that separates me from my death dwindles and dwindles without end, involves a sort of last interval which my consciousness cannot traverse, and where a leap will somehow be produced from death to me.The last part of the route will be crossed without me.44

Our “variations on the moment” thus end in reflecting on the moment of death that does not open to the next moment. 43

On the “inversion of transcendence,” see Michael Theunissen, Pindar: Menschenlos und Wende der Zeit (München: C.H. Beck, 2000), 922, 969–70; and Arne Grøn, “Zeit und Transzendenz,” in Der Sinn der Zeit, eds. Emil Angehrn et al (Weilerswist:  Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2002), 46–7. 44 Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, transl. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 234–5. Original version: Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’exteriorité (Paris: Kluwer Livre de Poche, 1992), 261.

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The moment of death breaks immanence off, but does this not imply that the immanence of being situated in time is already “broken” in the sense that it is opened towards the time to come? To be situated in time implies that transcendence of time is transcendence in time which turns immanence into a question for the one situated. Thinking the thought of death – the moment of death coming as the time when there is no more time – also questions how we are “in” history. Situated “in” our history we have, each of us, our own time, or interiority, which interrupts historical time. “Memory as an inversion of historical time is the essence of interiority,”45 as Lévinas writes. But is this not the way we have history, situated in time? Thus, the question implied in speaking of both transcendence and immanence is: what does it mean to be situated in time? Where are we when we speak of immanence and transcendence? What do we do in speaking of “beyond” and “in” time – that is, what do we presuppose? Where do we place ourselves? We cannot be “in” the beyond (the movement beyond is a way of existing). But neither are we simply “in” immanence. When we consider different options or ways of understanding transcendence, the critical but easily ignored question is how we account for ourselves in thus operating with “transcendence.” Speaking of transcendence is a way of existing. (It takes time in itself, and in taking time we are situated.) The fact of existing concerns the human condition on which we can operate with the concept of transcendence – and immanence. I have argued that this should be reflected in our speaking of transcendence – and immanence. Accounting for our human condition is to account for what transcendence and immanence can mean. How then should we understand what it is to be situated in time? We are situated in time as ourselves. I have argued that this is what “in time” indicates. “In time” is the way we are situated. “Situated in time” means that time comes to us and that we are called forth to respond, but also that we begin having already begun. Thus, if we understand “in time” radically, as a matter of beginning, it concerns what it is to be what we are. Situated in time is to be situated as subject. This also means that “in time” is not to be taken as, nor contrasted to, “in space.” Rather, we are in space “in time.” Situated in time implies a passivity of the self: we are situated in acting. Although this is our own passivity, it is difficult to perceive, even when taking an ethical stance towards ourselves. When we reflect on how to take ourselves, answering for ourselves, we easily overlook the fact that the ethical already concerns us before we consider how to begin: we begin having already begun, having already let some time go. We are in the accu45

Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, 56. Original version: Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’exteriorité, 49.

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sative, called to respond, before taking ourselves as responsible agents.46 By reflecting on religion as a deep human enterprise, we may begin to grasp this passivity of the self.

46

Cf. Emmanuel Lévinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, transl. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 110–11. Original version: Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (Paris: Kluwer (Livre de Poche), 1990), 174–5. Compare the suggestion in Kierkegaard’s Postscript that the paradox of Christianity is placing the existing human being “more decisively than any judge can place the accused, between time and eternity in time, between heaven and hell in the time of salvation.” Kierkegaard, KW 12, 166; SKS 7, 154.

Tabula Rasa: David’s Death of Marat and the Trauma of Modernity Rebecca Comay Painted at breathtaking speed in the accelerating days of the Reign of Terror, Jacques-Louis David’s Marat à son dernier soupir captures the Jacobin journalist at the moment of his death. Close to waxwork in its stillness and rendered with the precision of a death mask, the figure has the uncanny aura of a cadaver somehow caught still alive (fig. 1). We know some of the lengths to which David went to orchestrate both his friend’s funeral and the painting which was to commemorate him. Numerous tensions had to be negotiated. There were the political measures required to contain the explosive tensions between the militant factions of the sans-culottes, for whom Marat represented the revolution’s most vigilant protector and those for whom he had come to epitomize its most dangerous excesses. Robespierre was to spend his last year in power trying to manage such conflicts. There were also the symbolic measures necessary to mediate between the radical dechristianization program of Year II and the austere spirituality of Robespierre. Soon enough David himself would be called upon to choreograph the Festival of the Supreme Being as an answer to the perceived “fanaticism” of revolutionary atheism. There were the physical measures required to display a body whose livid skin had to be smeared with thick white greasepaint, whose stench no amount of perfume quite managed to mask, whose engorged tongue had to be surgically removed for his mouth to be closed, and whose decomposing writing arm needed (according to some accounts) to be replaced by a prosthetic arm from the anatomy school, fingers attached by thread to the pen in hand.1 Whatever the truth of the report, the story shows that at least in fantasy the body had already been reduced to a simulacrum, a disarticulated assemblage of part-objects subject to all the vagaries of perverse desire. There was also the curatorial effort invested in the public display of the painting. David designed it to be hung, together with his earlier portrait of the assassinated regicide Le Peletier, on permanent display behind the speaker’s podium in the Salle des Séances of the Convention hall. His instructions for the official unveiling of Marat on Oct 16, 1793 included 1

See Michael Greenhalgh, “David’s ‘Marat Assassiné’ and Its Sources,” Yearbook of English Studies 19 (1989), 162–180.

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a meticulously orchestrated procession in which the paintings of both martyrs were to be carried aloft like religious icons. In the Rousseauian spirit of the revolutionary festivals, the event effectively defined the viewing public as theatrical participants rather than contemplative observers. In this sense, the Marat not only can be seen as the first instance of modernist painterly abstraction (as T.J. Clark has forcefully argued2) but equally prefigures the postminimalist turn to installation and performance art. The procession ended up in the courtyard of the Louvre, where the paintings were installed on twin sarcophagi for a month of public viewing before being hung in the Convention hall. Marat’s funeral had been held three months earlier in the Club (former Couvent) des Cordeliers. David’s original plan had been to stage a kind of tableau vivant using the martyr’s embalmed body propped upright in the posture in which David had found him the day before his murder: sitting up as if still alive, nude in tub, pen in hand, but not yet quite relinquished, like the Dying Gaul’s sword. The corpse had to become a frozen effigy of itself before gaining immortality through the painted image: the display of the embalmed body would provide a seamless mediation between corpse and canvas. Lying in the bath, like a tomb sculpture in its sarcophagus, the human body was to become a copy of its own copy, an imitation of the work for which it would supply the model. Painting would be vindicated as a work of mourning. Intervening between corpse and canvas, the tableau vivant would provide a stable transitional object, a doll-like proxy through which to take leave of the dead. David’s instructions from the delegates at the Convention had been to resuscitate Marat: to “bring him back whole.”The resurrection would have required turning back the clock to the last possible instant, transforming a death mask into a life cast so as to catch the last, fleeting moment of life itself. These Pompeiian ambitions had been immediately thwarted by the “leprous” condition of Marat’s ravaged skin as well as by the rapid putrefaction of the corpse. The disgusting flesh would need to be concealed and a supine pose assumed, a posture which would suspend the body in the ambiguous interval between life and death, between tableau vivant and nature morte, between living theatre and death mask. The need to conceal the body transformed the painting into an effigy of an effigy, a substitute for the obscene – literally unviewable – naked corpse. The painted image thus deputized for Marat’s missing body – neither fully dead nor fully alive, not yet a corpse but no longer living, pen in hand but no longer writing – an ambiguity registered in the horrified public reactions to the painting (the first review commented that “it is difficult to look at for very long, so 2

T.J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1999).

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terrible is its effect”3). This ambiguity is also reflected grammatically in the conflicting titles it would acquire over the years with their proliferation of tenses and aspects: sometimes Marat assassiné, at times Marat à son dernier soupir, sometimes, Marat mourant sometimes La Mort de Marat. Is the martyr dead or dying? Is death still pending, is it ongoing, or is it in the past? Can we tell?

1. Erasures The most cursory glance at other contemporary renderings of the event – one of the most symbolically charged and documented moments of the French Revolution – reveal how much had to be forcibly excised from the canvas. A series of erasures were needed to blank out, for example, the physical presence of the killer, to uncouple victim from assassin, thus quelling any investment in a body whose murderous beauty would continue to fascinate. In a eulogy to Marat delivered before the painting’s unveiling, the Marquis de Sade announced that a “dark veil should shroud her memory forever; those who have dared to present her as an enchanted symbol of beauty should be stopped.”4 Misogyny aside, Sade’s warning shows a certain insight. It points to a paradox inherent in the revolutionary demand for transparency. The enlightenment project of unveiling, the relentless exposure of calumny and treason, is sustained by an irreducible opacity.Vision requires for its clarity the production of veils and secrets; to see is to blind oneself to the seductions of the image. Truth needs masks. In blocking the desire to behold the killer, David also abruptly voids any thought that Marat’s martyrdom might be eclipsed by Charlotte Corday’s own, which is precisely what happened by the Thermidor period when Corday began to occupy the role of expiatory victim (a role borrowed from royalist depictions of the death of Louis XVI and ultimately, of course, of Christ). In effacing Charlotte Corday, David is also erasing the classical symmetries governing his earlier history paintings. Compare his Brutus of 1789 3

René Verbraeken, Jacques-Louis David jugé par ses contemporains et par la posterité (Paris: Léonce Laget, 1973), 71, quoted by William Vaughan and Helen West, eds., introduction to David’s The Death of Marat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 17. Deputy Guiraud (or Guirault), spokesman for the Social Contract section, describes a similar horror, accompanied by a strange desire to prolong the sight: “Our eyes seek him among you still. He is – dreadful to behold – on his death bed. Where are you, David? … Here is another painting for you to do …” See Antoine Schnapper, David, témoin de son temps (Fribourg: Office du livre, 1980). 4 De Sade, “Discours aux manes de Marat et le Pelletier,” 29 Sept 1793, quoted in Helen Weston, “The Corday-Marat Affair: No Place for a woman,” in Jacques Louis David’s Marat, ed. by William Vaughan and Helen Weston, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 129.

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depicting the paroxysm of the grieving mother confronting the corpses of her sons, recently executed by their own father’s implacable decree (fig. 2). That earlier painting had formally crystallized the antagonisms governing an imaginary republican existence according to the ideological binaries of the day; the visual symmetries of the painting (left versus right, shadow versus light, male versus female) seemed to capture the conceptual tension between public and private, state and family, universal and particular, and thus to formalize the predicament of a subject caught between the unexceptionable demands of citizenship and the incontrovertible bonds of love. Whereas his Brutus seeks to clarify and contain an antinomy threatening to topple the uneasy equilibrium of political existence, Marat short-circuits this dialectic by simply erasing any marks of stubborn particularity which might compromise the civic universality of the corpse. Other contemporary images of the event had domesticated the murder scene with an intimate documentary precision: a clutter of furniture, curtains, wallpaper, a hat, the throbbing panic of a household. Here an abyssal blankness engulfs the corpse. No murderous woman, no distraught wife, no thronging servants, no banal decorative details to locate or particularize the crime. Just the fatal details of the event itself: bath and crate, quill and knife, blood and ink. They become stage props, emblems, the allegorical insignia of public history. The presence of the murderer is registered only in the forensic clues or traces left behind – a note, a knife, a plea, a promise. Some have argued that the excluded marks of femininity have been abjected but not entirely effaced. Excised from the surroundings, they have perhaps been absorbed within the figure of Marat himself: in the softness of his face and body, in the vaguely vaginal quality of his chest wound, even in the line of the upper silhouette of his torso as it emerges from the tub, as vulnerable as a baigneuse. Thomas Crow has pointed out a startling resemblance between the outline of Marat’s torso and the upper contour of the Virgin cradling her dying son in Girodet’s Dead Christ (1790)5 (fig. 3). The figures of Christ and Virgin, corpse and mother, momentarily coalesce. In the inky shadows of the tomb Marat embraces himself, completes the circuit of his own Pietà, becomes his own progenitor and survivor, at once son and mother to himself. Self-mourning, self-engendering, both preceding and succeeding himself, perpetually giving birth to himself, like a phoenix, Marat incorporates every residue of alterity. He embodies what Crow describes as the “electrical virility” of the revolutionary fraternity. Within the timeless present of his self-encounter, Marat’s masculinity encounters no antithesis, no exteriority or obstacle, and knows no bounds.

5

Thomas Crow, Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 166.

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I will come back to the reflexive sufficiency of this pitiless, self-pitying Pietà, after pausing first to wonder whether the agency ejected from the scene has been internalized without residue in Marat’s dying body, or whether a remnant has been pushed out beyond the picture plane into the space of the beholder. For the viewer stands just where Charlotte Corday should logically stand: in the thickly vacant space behind the body permitting the assassin no penetration or escape. The position of the wound likewise suggests an uneasy complicity between witness and perpetrator. Corday flees, but not far or for long. Evacuated from the picture space, she crowds the place of the spectator whose voyeuristic collusion with the crime is matched only by a sense of unbearable redundancy. The viewer is squeezed out by the crime which implicates him, just as the Virgin is both evoked and obliterated by the corpse which mimes her. Equally crucial is the effacement of the more unsettling attributes attached to Marat’s body, whose ugliness was legendary and whose rotting skin had already become for many a physiognomic marker of the morbidity of the revolution itself. Long before the murder Marat had been marked as dead-alive, his frothing intensity a source of both horror and charisma, the ink flowing from his pen as toxic as the blood oozing from the wound. By Thermidor, the scatological disgust once directed at the “cannibalistic” “pig-king” Louis would be transferred to the revolutionary buveurs de sang, among whom no one featured more prominently than Marat himself. The tension here goes beyond the contrast between naturalistic reportage – evidenced in the virtuosic “Dutch” detail of the still life – and neo-classicizing and Christianizing idealization. It goes beyond the contrast between the greenish flesh and bloodbath and the resplendent beauty of the martyr’s face and body – a beauty which would provoke Baudelaire’s wonder (and Stendhal’s unease) and lead to endless comparisons to the dying heroes of classical antiquity, well-known from David’s earlier Roman sojourn. Many have also discerned echoes of the dying Christs painted by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, or David’s own pupil Girodet, whom I have already mentioned. In the months following the murder, the aura generated by Marat’s body reached cultic proportions: an altar erected to his embalmed heart, shrines throughout the country, streets baptized everywhere in his name. No matter how many times he died, the funerals would not stop happening: within the first four months, more than fifty commemorative events were organized in Paris alone. Marat’s broken body kept rising from the grave to threaten the living unity of the body politic. Factions swarmed over his legacy. Editors vied over the rights to his masthead. Robespierre, uneasy, would commission David one last time to choreograph his own Cult of the Supreme Being in a final, futile effort to staunch the tide of

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dechristianization of which the Marat cult represented the last and most stubborn swell. The tension in the painting also goes beyond the formal conflict between abstraction and representation – the contrast between the illusionistic clarity of the figure and the scumbled blankness of the ground. There is also a temporal and modal disjunction.The arresting stillness of the foreground, almost etched in its clarity, jars with the unfinished restlessness of the backdrop, its insistent accumulation of brushstrokes and anxiously pulsating paint. It suggests a clash between the redemptive standstill of the revolutionary now-time and the unfinished order of history, between singularity and repetition, between standstill and flux. This “unfinish” would have disturbing implications in 1793, even though it would soon enough be pacified as radiant effulgence, as in the martyr portrait of the young Joseph Bara (fig. 4) in which ground and figure are seemingly reconciled – brushstrokes distributed homogeneously over corpse and background within the “glassy atmospheric unity” of resplendent golden space6 – or eventually recuperated as a stylistic signature and genre marker, as in the portraits painted around 1800. “Unfinishedness” (or more accurately: “under-determination”) can have a variety of determinations, of course. The debate over the significance of Michelangelo’s non-finito, for example – statues emerging from a halfhewn block of marble, surfaces disfigured or not yet figured – suffices to show how many ways there are to decide, fail, or happen not to finish off a work. How to take the measure of Michelangelo’s incompletion? Was it his “idealism” that held him back, a sense of the unbearable gap between conception and execution, between idea and example, between eye and hand? A stubborn materialism based on a sense of the irreducible remainder of stone and chisel, muscle and dust? Impatience with or homage to the medium? Is it about the persistence of the future or of the past? A monument to an endless awakening from the stone, or a memorial of spirit’s chronic relapse into the trammels of inanimate existence? Unworking or perpetual reworking? In David’s case, the drafts and sketches proliferate: projects are outdated before being realized, regimes change before being symbolically inaugurated, works lag behind the press of historical events. The detailed studies for the unrealized “Oath of the Tennis Court” illustrate the anachronism that afflicts the experience of revolutionary time, which is both paralyzing and exhilarating at the same time. (fig. 5) Started in 1789 to commemorate the self-creation of the nation – a unified mass of bodies converging in a single surge of affirmation – the huge painting would be abandoned within three years as the liberal fantasy of a transparent collective was fractured by the 6

Crow, Emulation, 180.

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rhetoric of betrayal and disorder.7 Languishing in David’s studio, the painting was slashed by bayonets during the bloody night of August 10, 1792. Repeatedly restarted and abandoned, the damaged canvas was cut into pieces and eventually bought by the French state a decade after David’s death. The remaining fragment hangs at Versailles. Draft and ruin converge. In the Marat, incompletion is signed, dated, and internalized within the finished work. But the tension between finish and unfinish is not restricted to the opposition between representation and abstraction. It also invades the most seemingly illusionistic moment of the canvas, as we shall see in a moment. Of particular interest is the tension between the exaggerated verticality of the picture and the horizontality of the dying figure, a discrepancy which opens up almost two-thirds of the painting to a gaping void, only underlining the body’s slumping flatness and the gravitas of its dangling arm and twisted neck. Such heaviness undermines any promise of resurrection and threatens the bodily integrity of the erect spectator who loses all orientation in time and space. Our own necks twist uncomfortably as we come face to face with the dying Marat, and twist again as we try to read the letter splayed out in the opposite direction. Whatever his compositional method, Marat’s body has the fragmentary construction of so many of David’s figures – detachable heads, disjointed necks, and bodies visibly decomposing before being assembled. His dismantled flesh exerts on the viewer’s own an uncomfortable traction. Haunting the beautiful deaths of Christ in Michelangelo or Caravaggio is the nightmarish vision of Fuseli, or the lurid death scenes of Mantegna, Grünewald, or, perhaps above all, Holbein, whose The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb fills the claustrophobically shallow coffin-frame with neither space nor energy for transcendence. Kristeva remarks, regarding the loneliness of a death reduced to its most uninspiring condition, that Holbein will redeem this by radicalizing the Christian wager as he sharpens the antithesis between finite and infinite to the point of seemingly unbridgeable, undialectical disjunction. The dereliction of the corpse puts symbolization to its supreme test, and in the extremity of its resistance supplies the measure of sublime recuperation: beauty wrested from the horror of irreparable decay.8 7 Michel Thévoz has suggested that such a fracture is tacitly acknowledged in David’s “analytic” or aggregative method – preparatory sketches show the serial composition of one isolated figure after another, each drawn without regard for the totality – an atomization which he sees linked to the liberal presuppositions of the social contract, that is, the abstract individualism at once underpinning and undermining the corporate ideals of the body politics. See Le Théâtre du crime (Paris: Minuit, 1989), 18f. 8 Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)

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2. Dead letters David extends Holbein’s wager. If transcendence is denied to the sagging body of the martyr, it is perhaps reinstated in the block of dead matter which abuts against the picture plane both as painting’s own homage to painting and as living memorial to the corpse. The wooden surface of the tombstone-like packing crate, whose grain and knots meticulously have been painted and repainted (infrared analysis show that David was fastidious9), glows with a life denied to the body of the martyr, as if the wood has absorbed the lustre of the martyr’s dulled, greenish skin. There is a hint of resurrection in the apostrophe to the dead Marat; the inscription also serves an unmistakably apotropaic function. Coinciding with the picture plane, the box functions as a kind of “fourth wall” that blocks the spectator from entering the space of the painting, protecting the corpse from further ocular assault. And it exculpates us, as viewers, by deflecting our gaze from wounds to words, from incision in skin to inscription in wood, from image to text. Note how the shape of the box mirrors the proportions of the canvas and is mirrored by the various rectangles of paper splayed out on the top of the box. A chain of visual analogies leads from canvas to box to page as the space of painterly depiction is suddenly drawn into the space of writerly inscription. The gesture is as iconoclastic as the whitewashing of the altarpiece in a Calvinist church. It is not only Marat but painting itself which is mourned and spiritually transfigured. The same apostrophe animates both voiceless corpse and silent image. The grammar of the dedication converts a lapidary funerary inscription into a message to and from the beyond, just as it converts the date of death into the date of an encounter within the living circuit of address. The tombstone becomes in effect a letter. Perhaps the only letter in the painting to reach its destination. David’s unadorned message to the dead Marat is frontally presented to the viewer.We neither have to squint nor twist our necks. Its directness underscores the murderous obliqueness of the letter by which Corday gained access to Marat’s confidence. It opposes to the letter that kills the letter that animates. The austere block lettering of the inscription contrasts with the elegant inky cursive of the assassin’s bloodstained letter, just as its simple patronyms contrast with the proliferating Christian names of “Marie Anne Charlotte Corday,” just as its unadorned vocative contrasts with her patrician “vous” and flowery subjunctive, and just as its republican date contrasts with the Christian calendar still in place on “13 juillet 1793” when the

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See Libby Sheldon, “Methods and Materials of David’s Marat,” in Vaughan and Weston, eds., David’s The Death of Marat, p. 108.

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event took place. (fig. 6) (The new dating system was to begin – retroactively – in October of that year, the month the painting was first displayed). Seeping through the overpaint at the two bottom corners of the packing crate are the vestiges of an earlier date, “1793,” reflecting the calendar in force when the assassination occurred and when most of the painting would have been completed. Between the numbers of this date, David has painted the monumental majuscules of AN DEUX. (fig. 7) The earlier date is only partially obliterated by the casual brushstrokes on the wooden box. It is not clear whether the older date has seeped through with time or whether the painter never bothered to properly efface it. But the palimpsest puts the viewer – the reader – into an impossible temporal predicament: suspended in the transition between two time zones, two irreconcilable symbolic orders, just as Marat is caught at the unthinkable interstice between life and death, and the painting between meaning and non-meaning, between paint and word. The palimpsest reveals the abiding threat of the return of the repressed – in this case, the symbolic apparatus of the ancien régime, still legible in the Christian iconography of Marat as the Man of Sorrows – and points to the fragility of the newly wrought order. It suggests that every number can be renumbered, every effacement is subject to defacement, and every figure is vulnerable to regressive disfiguration. The finitude of revolutionary rupture enables, and even at times entails, its eventual overwriting by the anachronism which sustains it. Protruding into the viewer’s space with the insistence of a trompe l’oeil is yet another letter: Marat’s own unfinished note written in evident response to his assassin’s plea. His last testament appears to be a pledge of support for the widow of the revolution on whose behalf Corday had supposedly come visiting. (fig. 8) This last sentimental detail seems to have been invented wholesale by David, but the sentiment came with the territory:“He gave us his last crust of bread, he died without even the means to pay for his own funeral …”10 David will provide the funeral. Marat’s fictionalized last words impinge upon the viewer with an almost illegible proximity. Despite or because of the paper’s extreme closeness to the viewer, Marat’s words shrink, slant, and eventually fade into an indecipherable blur. The note, fragmented at both edges, appears to read as follows: “… Vous Donner[ez] cet assignat à cette mère de 5 enfants et dont le mari est [parti?] pour la deffence …” (… You will give this assignat to this mother of five children whose husband is off defending …) And here the sentence awkwardly trails off, leaving the reader to complete it (“… de la patrie”?). Countless descriptions of the painting have supplied these last three words as if literally reading them off the page, as have the otherwise impeccable copies of the painting supervised by David himself, now in the 10

Cf. David’s speech to the Convention on Oct 15.

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Louvre and Versailles, where they are invariably taken for the real thing. (fig. 9–10).

3. Non-finito T.J. Clark reads this blur of script as marking the crisis point where the boundary between the visual and the discursive begins to falter so that we witness the conversion of writing into painting and of meaning into a smear of oily matter.11 He argues that this collapse of text into image, of reading into sheer, unmediated seeing reveals the ultimate contingency, the material opacity, of history as such. This opacity will dislodge the opposition between truth and semblance – in this case, the superficial contrast between Corday’s dissembling letter and the disarming sincerity of Marat’s note – by revealing a kernel of non-signification at the heart of the symbolic order. It imposes a limit on the revolutionary demand for transparency, for legibility, for the unveiling of shadow and deception. No one formulated this demand for enlightenment more strenuously than Marat himself – well-known as “eye of the people.” Such a mute or rebus-like condition returns script to the gravity of the dead letter. Several critics have noted the resemblance between Marat’s dangling writing arm – pen in hand but no longer or not yet writing – with the detached arm that had served to illustrate the “art of writing” in a well-known plate of the Encyclopédie. This latter image had shown the vaguely subversive swirls and flourishes of a text untethered from authorial control and certainty following the expropriation of God, the ultimate author, from the symbolic order. It had in turn played on a motif in earlier emblem books showing the minimal gesture of a solitary hand setting out to write (“no day without a line”) but producing not a particle of significance, nothing but a line, a vector of pure initiation or intention, pure productivity without a product. And it finds an echo in a famous revolutionary print in which a detached hand breaks through a crumbling writing surface to exert its vengeful force. Clark connects the dissolution of script in the painting’s extreme foreground to the dissolution of form in the painting’s background.This would blur the otherwise striking distinction between ground and figure and complicate the symbolic triumph of light over darkness implicit in David’s emphatic chiaroscuro. It introduces disfiguration at the kernel of the figural regime. Both blurrings relate to the various practices of iconoclasm 11 T.J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea, 40–42. I will argue in a moment that there is also a reverse movement whereby we see the transformation of painting itself into a kind of writing.

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elaborated throughout the revolutionary period: from the decapitation of kings to the decapitation of statues; from the renaming of streets and cities to the recalibration of map, clock and calendar; from the plunder of artworks to their relocation within the newly-founded public museum. (The Louvre officially opened on Aug 10, 1793, one month after Marat’s death. Museification is a provisional solution to the dilemma posed by revolutionary vandalism as it simultaneously destroys and preserves. It permits the continuation of symbolic objects within a neutral, disenchanted space where disinterested aesthetic judgment replaces religious veneration. The ambivalence about the museum’s own latent monumentality would in turn be registered by Hubert Robert’s fantasies of the Louvre in ruins so that the paradox of a revolutionary museum – and thus the creation of a heritage of modernity – did not go unmarked.) In a further twist, revolutionary iconoclasm would turn against iconoclasm itself once this started to congeal and Robespierre himself would eventually condemn atheism too as a new “fanaticism.” David’s program for the Festival of the Supreme Being included a ritual burning of a statue of Atheism as the newest idol to now be deconsecrated. According to one report, the festival included a ritual burning of an effigy of Nothing, constructed as yet another positivity that had to be erected in order to be torn down.12 The circle was unending. Destruction itself would need to be frozen, commemorated, and set in motion. How to transmit the radical negativity of the revolutionary event? How to commemorate the amnesiac rupture within history? To initiate a tradition of the very impossibility of tradition? Our contemporary obsession with anti-monuments – by now a slightly weary topic in the memory industry – begins right here. It was not only royalist insignia that had to be demolished. Revolutionary artefacts quickly became obsolete, smashed, and preserved in their smashed condition. The National Archives in Paris hold a mutilated bronze tablet, inscribed with the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. It had originally been deposited in a foundation monument at the site of the Bastille in 1792, was exhumed in 1793, and defaced by order of the Convention. Also on view is a copper-bound volume of the 1791 Constitution (the first constitution), similarly exhumed and mutilated in 1793 to mark the introduction of the new constitution, one of several, whose remnants are embalmed in perpetuity in the darkness of the archive. A decree of the Convention stipulated

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The statue of le Néant is alluded to in Michelet’s account of the Fête de l’Être Supreme; see Histoire de la Révolution française, ed. by Jules Michelet and Walter Gérard (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), vol. 2, 803. (My thanks to Marie-Hélène Huet for drawing this to my attention.)

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that the object was to be “broken at the site and the fragments deposited in the national archives as a historical monument.”13 In its multiple erasures, the Death of Marat crystallizes the uneasy iconoclasm of the revolution. The congealed void of the painting’s upper half hints at the abyssal foundation of the political event and its unfinished legacy. Only up to a certain point does David’s darkly textured background recall the luminous blackness of a Spanish still life, where the fruits emerge as resplendent as on the day of Creation. And only up to a point does it recall the blackness of a Caravaggio, where the body of the dying Christ can be seen already uplifted in mortal fall. Rather than absolutizing nothingness as the scenic backdrop of creation, re-creation, and resurrection, David’s brushwork defaces and distorts the transparency of the inaugural ground. Some critics have seen in David’s scumbled brushwork an homage to Renaissance non-finito: the brush becomes a chisel and the flecks of paint become gouges hacked off a block of marble.14 In attending to the stuff of paint, the artist drifts towards the heavy materiality of sculpture with its accumulation of dabs and dashes suggesting scrapes and gashes, as painterly accretion comes to resemble sculptural deletion. As the work wrestles with its desire for marmoreal permanence, it already gestures to its own unworking. Even if such a reading risks underestimating David’s well-documented casualness about the more menial aspects of his métier, this is an attractive interpretation. It reveals a peculiar instability in the very notion of a medium: the more painting is about painting, the more it begins to be like sculpture. The more painterly, the less painterly. It also points to a startling convergence of modernism and historicism: the moment of the work’s most intense self-reflexivity, the moment of its inaugural self-encounter, is the moment of its return to antecedents in its anxious citation of a previous age. But it is also possible to see the brush strokes as a kind of writing – illegible, to be sure, but the unmistakeable gesture of a paintbrush trying to be a stylus and canvas listing towards the page. There is more at stake in this graphism than the nervousness of painting in the face of an increasingly spectacular print culture. (David experimented freely with the new medium and had a canny sense of its potential as evidenced in his instructions to have the Marat immediately engraved and reproduced in bulk to be distributed to the “representatives of the people.”) The first (sculptural) interpretation of the brushwork suggested the dissolution of figure into formless – and self-forming – matter.The work wil13 See Jonathan P. Ribner, Broken tablets: the cult of the law in French art from David to Delacroix (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). 14 James Rubin, “The People’s Hand: Jacques-Louis David’s ‘Unfinished’ Backgrounds and Paradigms of Revolutionary Representation,” in Actes du XXVIIe Congrès international d’histoire de l’art, 1992.

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fully unworked itself to clear space for a project still to come. The second (graphic) interpretation shows matter lurching towards a legibility to which it can only gesture. It is not meaning as such, as all available meanings have been exhausted, but the barest possibility of meaning: the paint coagulates at the point of writing like the quill trembling in the dying man’s hand. The blank page remarks on its own readiness for marking. History strains to mark itself, or even to date itself, as significant event. The strokes collect like hieroglyphs to which the key has been lost or not yet been invented. Paint thus imperceptibly tilts towards writing in the background, just as, in the foreground, writing dissolves into paint. Not yet or no longer legible, the mark becomes a kind of enigmatic signifier. Hovering between sign and trace, between legibility and visibility, it points to a meaningfulness outstripping every sanctioned meaning. It speaks at once of the necessity and the impossibility of translation. This is the work’s most strictly traumatic but also most utopian or initiatory moment. It points to the link between the radically open future of the revolution and its traumatically unfinished past, between the blankness of what remains undetermined and the blanking out of what cannot or must not be recalled.

4. Absent Fatherlands But why does Marat not finish his letter and where is the missing last word? The breakdown of signification has a specific charge, related to difficulties in articulating the new terms of sovereignty around 1793. Describing the revolutionary pageantry of the early 1790s, Mona Ozouf remarks that, while the tutelary figures of Liberty, Reason, or Victory all eventually acquired allegorical stone or plaster bodies, the “fatherland” – as the ultimate horizon of collective unity – consistently eluded visual display.15 Withdrawn from representation as the transcendental condition of the political, the invisible commonwealth could reveal itself only through substitutes which ostentatiously marked themselves as such: the female surrogate- figures of Liberty, Reason, Nature, or Marianne herself, who appeared dressed in antique garb, impersonated by a living actress in the newly consecrated Temple of Reason (formerly known as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame). Only thus could the temptation of fetishism be kept at bay. Painting must prevent the elision of the traumatic transition from king to people and the reinstatement of sacral authority at the very origin of the new regime. Only by keeping the image of the fatherland blank, by desisting from graven images of the reborn people, could the unbridgeable caesura 15

Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 280–1.

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of the revolutionary interregnum be sustained: “Le roi est mort, vive la patrie.” In this caesura is expressed the genealogical paradox that was to obsess the Revolution and inflect its strange sense of patrimony; the event that stripped the “last king of France” of his paternity is precisely what created the possibility of a revolutionary heritage. Although “patrie” was not among the words such as “vous” or “monsieur” proscribed during the language reforms of 1793, no one could be oblivious to its patriarchal associations.16 The transition to modernity is thus suspended in the uncanny zone between dead and living, a suspension which keeps open the space of democracy as a rigorously “empty place” (Lefort), evacuated of an authority that has not yet reproduced itself, and which remains open to possibilities unforeseen in its fidelity to its losses. It marks the opening to democracy as essentially traumatic. It is trauma too that provides the link between political modernity and aesthetic modernism: a crisis of representation, a crisis of meaning, a crisis of paint. This crisis will redefine the terms of visibility in the aftermath of the ancien régime.The challenge is no longer how to represent the existent through a spectacular display of power, but rather how to stage the repetitive dismantling of the political imaginary. This repetition, however, acknowledges its uncanny potency and versatility – its ability to prolong itself past the point of its own disarticulation. Something in this painting resists the sublimation to which it beckons. In the clotted darkness of the background we can discern at once an evocation of the absolute and its renunciation. With this gesture David renounces the religious promise of regeneration. The brushwork shows the tabula rasa is already stained, as the power vacuum fills up with marks as illegible as they are insistent.

16

Least of all, perhaps, Jean-Paul Marat, the “friend of the people.” If by 1793 the opposition between friend and enemy had become unstable, this is not simply because the enemy was everywhere, but because the very idea of friendship had become burdened by an unbearable paternalistic association. A recent statistical analysis of the – 2113 – occurrences of the word “ennemi” in Marat’s journal, L’Ami du people, shows that in the last year of Marat’s life the ubiquitous phrase “l’ennemi de la patrie” is more or less eclipsed by the phrase “l’ennemi de la république” and eventually – since even that is too substantial – “l’ennemi de la Revolution.” See Agnès Steuckardt, “Les ennemis selon L’Ami du people, ou la categorization identitaire par contraste,” in Mots: les langages du politique 69 (2002), 7–21.

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Figure 1: David, Jacques Louis, “The Death of Marat,” Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Photo Credit: RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

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Figure 2: David, Jacques Louis, “The lictors bring Brutus the bodies of his sons,” Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York.

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Figure 3: Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, “Pietà” Church of Montesquieu-Volvestre, Haute Garonne, France.

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Figure 4: David, Jacques Louis, “The Death of Joseph Bara,” Musee Calvet, Avignon, France. Photo Credit: RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

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Figure 5: Jacques-Louis David, Jacques Louis, “The Signing of the Tennis Court Oath,” Musée national du Château de Versailles, Versailles, France. Photo Credit: Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, New York.

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Figure 6: David, Jacques Louis, “The Death of Marat,” (detail) Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Photo Credit: RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

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Figure 7: David, Jacques Louis, “The Death of Marat,” (detail) Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Photo Credit: RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

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Figure 8: David, Jacques Louis, “The Death of Marat” (détail) Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Photo Credit: RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

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Figure 9: Studio of Jacques Louis David, “The Death of Marat” (detail) Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

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Figure 10: Langlois, Jérome-Martin, “The Death of Marat (after David)” (detail) Musée national du Château du Versailles,Versailles, France. Photo Credit: RMN-Grand Palais /Art Resource, New York.

“Northern Prince Syndrome”: Self-Affection and Self-Description in Post-Kantian Philosophy of Religion Carsten Pallesen Self-affection, inner sense and simultaneity are pivotal terms in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of time. The main focus of the following reflections is Kant’s third “analogy of experience,” simultaneity, as distinct from the two other analogies of permanence (substance) and succession (causality). According to Kant, simultaneity oscillates between “syndrome” (signs or symptoms “running together”) and “mutuality” as an anticipation of “mutual recognition.” Pure self-affection in Kant is a temporal synthesis lingering between the passive and the active. A similar hesitation is constitutive of self-consciousness in the Hegelian philosophy of Spirit. In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, the so-called northern principle is a notion in political theology that intertwines a Lutheran freedom of faith and conscience with a Kantian Enlightenment philosophy. The turning point (Wendepunkt) of this principle is the unity of the divine and human in Christ.1 Hence, the Christ event, according to Søren Kierkegaard, is the absolute beginning in time of time.2 Martin Heidegger rejects this notion of the kairos in Hegel and Kierkegaard as instances of “vulgar” temporality.3 Along the trajectories of another rather vulgar sociological theory of simultaneity as synchronicity,4 Niklas Luhmann offers an interpretation of religion, which is helpful to get a grasp on the paradoxes of time, transcendence, and immanence in the post-Kantian debate. Here, transcendence in the biblical revelation of God’s name (Exodus 3:14–15) is redescribed as an “imaginary duplication of reality.”5 Time, by implication, is 1 See Paragraph 358 in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, transl.T. M. Knox (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967), 222. 2 This is what the concept of the Absolute Fact entails in Søren Kierkegaaard’s Philosophical Fragments, transl. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton UP, New Jersey, 1985), 99–100. 3 See the criticism of Kierkegaard and Hegel in Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Max Niemeyer Verlag: Tübingen, 1986), 338 [note 1]; 432 [note 1]. 4 See Niklas Luhmann, “Gleichzeitigkeit und Synchronisation,” in Soziologische Aufklärung, vol. 5, Konstruktivistische Perspektiven (Opladen Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990), 95–130. 5 Luhmann, Die Religion der Gesellschaft (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 63.

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understood in terms of the simultaneity of the code values of immanence and transcendence. Time is emancipated from narrative configurations of future, present, and past as well as from cosmological schemes. Moreover, according to Luhmann, the formal description of religion as a social system also applies to the temporality of modern society in terms of a worldwide simultaneity. From this perspective the traditional investment of the terms transcendence and immanence with semantic representations such as heaven and earth, God and man, eternal and temporal, holy and sinful are to be radically reshuffled or de-mythologized. In Hegel a similar reevaluation of transcendence follows from the Christ event constituting one self-affecting and self-describing essence or homoousia. The “northern prince syndrome” thus discloses deadlocks and traumas experienced as the backdrop for possible self-descriptions. In this perspective of duplication, negativity, and self-overcoming a number of recent Hegel interpreters such as Paul Ricoeur, Catherine Malabou, Robert Pippin, and Rebecca Comay have offered fresh approaches to the resources of Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit.

1. Poetic Formulas and Formal Indications of Self-Affection “The time is out of joint” (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5): Gilles Deleuze applies this formula to Kant’s first critique, writing “the Critique of Pure Reason is the book of Hamlet, the prince of the north.”6 Before Kant, time – like a revolving door on its hinges – was subordinated to cardinal points. Time was thought to be the “measure of movement,” its interval or number. In Kant the great reversal is that “time is unhinged.”7 Now movement and substance is subordinated to time, and time itself is an empty rectilinear order. Time is no longer the cosmic time of an original celestial movement, nor is it the rural time of derived meteorological movements. It has become the time of the city and nothing other, the pure order of time.8

The three analogies of the experience: permanence, succession, and simultaneity are modes or relations of time, but time as such can no longer be defined either by succession, movement, or change. Everything that moves and changes is in time, “but time itself does not change or move, any more than it is eternal.”9 Time needs a completely new determination. Hamlet 6 Gilles Deleuze, “On Four Poetic Formulas That Might Summarize the Kantian Philosophy,” Essays Clinical and Critical (Verso Books: London, 1998), 27–35, 27. 7 Ibid., 27. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid.

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continues: “Oh cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!” (Act 1, scene 5) indicating the task Kant set himself to accomplish.10 However, it also strikes the existential note of conscience and the Freudian “complex of castration.” It articulates a demand to act and its opposite: impotence and hesitation, for “conscience does make cowards of us all” (Act 3, scene 1). Hence, the poetic formula announces the “existentialization of Kant” in Friedrich Hölderlin, Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Nietzsche. In Hamlet, according to Deleuze, the Kantian emancipation of time is completed:“Hamlet is the first hero who truly needs time in order to act.”11 However, the temporalization of the tragic hero is anticipated in Hölderlin and Nietzsche’s interpretations of Oedipus: “Hölderlin portrayed Oedipus as having already entered into this strict march of slow death, following an order of time that had ceased to “rhyme.” Nietzsche, in a similar sense, considered it to be the most Semitic of the Greek Tragedies.”12 In Kant’s first critique, the consequences of this reversal of time are explored. The section on the Transcendental Aesthetic explains time in terms of the pure form of inner sense and self-affection, which presuppose syntheses of conceptual understanding and self-consciousness to be deducted in the subsequent sections.13 The Transcendental Analytic accounts for the mathematical number as schema and schematism of time and in the following Analytic of Principles, the section on the three analogies of experience (A. Permanence, B. Succession), the third analogy “C. Zugleichsein” accounts for simultaneity in space with emphasis on reciprocity in action between the agent and the patient.14 The point of Kant’s account is to overcome a merely subjective apprehension of “at the same time” in, for example, David Hume’s notion of causality. Here Kant, according to Ricoeur, opens for a more promising notion of communion, which, however, he leaves unexplored.15 The analogy of simultaneity corresponds to the third synthesis “recognition in the concept” in the previous Transcendental Analytic, where the two other syntheses are the “synthesis of apprehension in intuition,” and the “synthesis of reproduction in imagination.”16 All of these deductions are ruled by judgment, i.e., modes of  “joining together” sensibility and un10

See also Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx (Galilee: Paris, 1993). Deleuze, “On Four Poetic Formulas,” 28. 12 Ibid. 13 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, eds. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1998), 180, 257–9. 14 Kant, “C.Third Analogy: Principle of Simultaneity, according to the law of interaction or community,” B257–262, Critique of Pure Reason, 316–321. 15 Paul Ricoeur,“Recognition as Identification,” The Course of Recognition (Harvard: Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 40, 54. 16 Kant, “On the synthesis of recognition in the concept,” A 103-A110, 230–234. 11

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derstanding, receptivity, and spontaneity.17 Within this complex architecture the three analogies of experience explain the use of the category of relation as distinct from the categories of quantity, quality, and modality corresponding to the application of concepts to appearances explained in the theory of schematism.18 Under the category of relation, appearances are either relations of permanence or the effects of causal necessity (succession) or instances of simultaneity, for example, of the moon and the earth in the Newtonian system.19 Thus, time is explained in terms of an a priori synthetic order under the rule of judgment and of the unity of self-consciousness. Kant, as Ricoeur points out, is obsessed by the theme of unity of the representation and of the manifold in the concept. His system is a bulwark against the merely psychological account of “inner sense” in predecessors such as John Locke and Hume as well as against charges of subjective idealism raised against the A-edition of the Critique.20 For Kant, Ricoeur states, “we could say, time, expecting order, hates the event.”21 In the first part of his Course of Recognition, Ricoeur undertakes a reading of these passages in Kant in order to establish a notion of mutuality and recognition. Kant is the first to introduce a philosophical concept of recognition which Ricoeur takes to be significant for its subsequent ethicopolitical and theological development in Fichte and Hegel.22 The relation between self-affection, imagination, simultaneity, and mutuality in Kant is a reminder of the challenge that a philosophical theory of recognition should meet in order to avoid banalization.23 This recognition implies a new dynamic notion of self-consciousness and concept, i.e., a self-recognition in the concept that holds together the manifold, and a unity of selfconsciousness that produces itself in the concept “in order to recognize itself in it.”24 According to Hegel himself, this temporalization of the concept is 17

Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, 43. Ibid., 50–52. 19 “Thus I can direct my perception first to the moon and subsequently to the earth, or, conversely, first to the earth and subsequently to the moon, and on this account, since the perceptions of these objects can follow each other reciprocally, I say that they exist simultaneously.” Kant, B257, 317. 20 Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, 47. 21 Ibid., 53. 22 Ibid., 23–68. 23 Ibid., 187, 212. 24 Ibid., 46, 182. Hegel comments in Science of Logic: “It is one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity which constitutes the unity of the Begriff is recognized as the original synthetic unity of apperception, as the unity of the I think, or self-consciousness.” Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (Amherst: Humanity Books, 1969), 584. Cf. also Robert B. Pippin (2011) Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit (Princeton Univer18

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one of the “profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason.”25 To summarize: syndrome implies a duplication of self (oneself as another) under the perspective of simultaneity as distinct from causality (the relation of succession) or permanence (the relation of substance). However, the recognition of self as an “other” under the condition of time does not imply self-position.26 Rather, in Robert Pippin’s interpretation, “consciousness must be inherently reflective or apperceptive.”27 Pure self-affection is a passivity endured, and at the same time it is disclosed as mental acts of reflection. Time lived and recognized as one’s own is held together in rudimentary apprehension (anticipation of intuition) and reproduction (imagination) in phenomena such as memory and promise as instances of self-attestation. Another aspect of this temporal self-relation understands syndrome in a clinical sense: different signs occurring simultaneously and indicating a specific defect or disease, for instance, suffered and inflicted post-traumatic syndrome. Thus, the Hamlet character is diagnosed as suffering from a “death drive” on “the strict march of the slow death” (Deleuze)28 – or rather as one who simulates this to “bide his time.” a) The Ruin of Representation The temporal self in Kant and in Heidegger’s epochal interpretation of Kant29 stresses the aspect of “syndrome” as a mode of alterity and simultaneity and its existential reverberations. Ricoeur’s reading of Kant (and Heidegger) prepares his own Hegelian redressing of the Kantian “recognition in the concept.” This interpretation takes the detour of a second Copernican Revolution that works out the epistemological and ethical dissymmetries of the “ego” and the “other” in Edmund Husserl, and the “other” and the “ego” in Emmanuel Lévinas in order to meet the challenges posed by the concept of mutuality in a Hegelian theory of “mutual recognition.”30 The latter exceeds the concept and opens up philosophy for theological paradoxes of the gift in terms of truce rather than in terms of either etersity Press: Princeton, 2010), 10. Hence, in line with Ricoeur, Pippin emphasizes the Kantian “synthetic” dimension in Hegel’s concept of the concept. 25 Cf. Hegel, Science of Logic, 584. 26 Ricoeur, Course of Recognition, 171. 27 Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness, 8. 28 For a similar diagnosis of Hamlet as a “suicidal comedian,” see Dietrich Schwanitz, Shakespeares Hamlet und alles was ihn für uns zum kulturelles Gedächtnis macht (Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2006). 29 Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, ed. Richard Polt, trans. Richard Taft (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IN, 1990). 30 See Ricoeur, “Mutual Recognition,” in Course of Recognition, 150–263.

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nal peace (Kant) or an eternal struggle for recognition (Hegel). However, the difficulty – if not impossibility – of mutuality is already articulated in Hegel’s speculative account of recognition, which articulates a necessary degree of suspicion towards simulacres of reciprocity in, for example, gifts/ gift-giving or forgiving.31 Kant’s great reversal draws attention to the synthetic, dynamic, and active aspect implied in his doctrine, that, in Ricoeur’s voice, “the unity of consciousness produces itself in the concept in order to recognize itself in it,”32 nevertheless, in Kant, “time, expecting order, hates the event.”33 This is fundamentally not the case in Hegel or later in Husserl, Heidegger or even in Ricoeur’s own hermeneutics of selfhood and otherness. Here, concept and self-consciousness are no longer the master of the manifold. In 1959 Lévinas describes the second Copernican Revolution as the “ruin of representation” and the “giving up” of the presupposition that the subject is “master of meaning.”34 Lévinas summarizes the second Copernican Revolution in the paradox of the “exceeding of the intention in the intention itself.”35 It announces a philosophy of all the implicit non-represented horizons (situation and life-world) where feeling, will, body and temporality exceed intentionality. In sum, a philosophy of the lived body opens up a new dimension of time in terms of phenomenologist of self-affection and mutual recognition: the horizons of incarnate existence. All of this is anticipated in the late Husserl’s philosophy of time as “passive synthesis.” Hence, the “ruin of representation” signifies the beginning of a new era of thinking.Yet the decisive groundwork was established in Kant: to “join together under the condition of time” describes the problem of the manifold which must be united in a concept. The northern prince metaphor stresses the existentialization of this challenge to unite or synthesize – in short, to act. In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929), Heidegger launches a frontal attack on the idea of representation. Here Kant is taken to be the philosophical predecessor of Heidegger’s own thesis that being is time. However, recent debates over the apostle Paul and philosophy have drawn attention to an earlier source of Heidegger’s philosophy of time. Heidegger’s 1920–21 lectures Phenomenology of Religious Life on Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians is seen as the unique non-philosophical inspiration for his formal analysis of Dasein and temporality in Being and Time (1927). In Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, Heidegger points to the tension between the Christ event and the Parousia, the second coming of Christ. This structure of repetition and eschatology is taken to be the earliest and most authentic 31 32 33 34 35

Ricoeur, Course of Recognition, 259–60. Ibid., 46 Ibid., 53. Ibid., 55–61. Ibid., 60.

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testimony of Christian faith. It constitutes a unique experience of time which Heidegger seeks to describe using the strange formula: to live time itself: “Die christliche Erfahrung lebt die Zeit selbst” (Christian experience lives/is to live time itself).36 A strange, “agrammatical”37 formula: you can live life or die death, but to “live time itself ” indicates an out-of-joint-ness – an ekstasis, which echoes the notion of the Kierkegaardian “Moment” (Øjeblik). According to the popular apocalyptic narrative, the coming of Antichrist is the first sign of the second coming of the Messiah. Heidegger translates this Pauline and Christian eschatology in the concept of “formal indication” (formale Anzeige). In related Jewish messianism there is no such sign but rather an indeterminate otherness yet to be revealed. The time of Grace, the in-between until the end of time, is the unique paradigm of historicity. The “time that remains” is a lived eschatology spelled out in Giorgio Agamben’s commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans.38 b) Pure Auto-Affection and the Divine Homoousia Kant’s account of time is enigmatic and sometimes seen as confused, even ‘mad.’ However, in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger contests this, arguing that Kant’s analysis of time is “incomparably lucid” (unvergleichlich durchsichtig).39 But what are we to understand by ‘inner sense’ and ‘pure self-affection,’ and how can time be accounted for in terms of recognition of identity and simultaneity?40 The latter is fraught with the vast field of phenomenology of self and passivity.41 In On Touching – JeanLuc Nancy, Derrida explores pure self-affection in terms of a phenomenology of what he calls “self-touching,” for example, the analysis of the hand in Kant’s anthropology and the notion of body and mind in Sigmund Freud.42 The Kantian concept of time, Derrida states, is not only the form of an inner sense, but in Kant’s voice the “a priori formal condition of all 36 Martin Heidegger, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Frisch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Studies in Continental Thought (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IN, 2004), 55. For an interpretation, see Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1999), 177. 37 For the term ‘agrammatical’ see Deleuze, “Bartleby the Scrivener, or, the Formula,” Essays Clinical and Critical (Verso Books: London, 1998), 68–90. 38 Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Stanford University Press: Stanford, Cal., 2005). 39 Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 80. 40 Cf. ibid., 132–136. 41 See the discussion in Philipp Stoellger, Passivität aus Passion: Zur Problemgeschichte einer categoria non grata [Habilitation] (Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 2010). 42 Jacques Derrida, On Touching – Jean-Luc Nancy, trans.Christine Irizarry (Stanford University Press: Stanford, Cal., 2005), 39–46.

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appearances whatsoever.”43 Derrida explains that in “– all phenomena, be they internal or external, and there, following in the footsteps of Heidegger, among others, we would find again the great question of pure auto-affection, pure ‘self-touching’ in the movement of temporalization.”44 Time in Kant points to the question of transcendental imagination as a common root of intuition and understanding, and the whole Kantian deduction of categories accounts for the possibility of overcoming the manifold under the condition of time in the unity of the concept. In Heidegger’s interpretation Kant is rethinking the foundation of metaphysics: being is time (or nothingness). From this metaphysical perspective transcendence takes on a new meaning as finite transcendence with dramatic implications for philosophy of religion. These implications would be explored by some of Kant’s followers, especially Hegel, who, even more than Schleiermacher and Schelling, addressed religion through biblical and theological figures such as the Trinity and Christology. Hence, Hegel’s concept of the spirit refers back to the theological term homoousia (consubstantiality). In the Greek Fathers homoousia is a neologism coined to describe the intra-divine relation between the persons in the Trinity. The unity between divine and human is not analogical, but intimately of the same essence (ousia). Not substance as such but “twice the substance” (homo-ousia) in the poetic Nicene formula: “light of light,” “God of God.” In short: the relationship is defined by self-affection and mutual interaction, rather than causality or substance. The Nicene homoousia corrects a narrative schematism in the historical or “economic” account of the Trinity. Hence, “self-encounter” is the theological principle for Hegelian philosophy of the Spirit. Divine self-affection happens when God sees Godself coming to/in the world and being rejected. In Catherine Malabou’s Future of Hegel, the relation between plasticity and temporality in Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit has been caught in the wordplay between the verbs to see and to come (voir/venir), meaning “let us see what happens or who comes,”45 The Hegelian voir/ venir should be read in the eschatological sense of the exclamation closing the New Testament: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20) as well as in the sense of a Freudian affirmation, “self-touching” and jouissance which closes James Joyce’s Ulysses. Because seeing God means death for finite humanity (Exodus 33:20), God in Christ sees Godself and “explodes.”46 To mention yet another recent interpretation, Robert Pippin takes Hegel’s analysis of self-consciousness as “desire of desire” to be the key to Hegel’s concept of 43

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 77. Derrida, On Touching, 46. 45 Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic, trans. Lisabeth During (Routledge, New York, 2005), 192–193. French original: L’Avenir de Hegel: Plasticité,Temporalité, Dialectique (Vrin: Paris, 1996). 46 Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 92–93. 44

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the concept.47 The implicit model of these interpretations of Spirit is the Christological and Trinitarian doctrine of homoousia, pointed to explicitly in Malabou’s account of the Hegelian notion of Spirit and in Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity.48 From the latter, Derrida renders the following quotation: The heart of Christology is the doctrine of incarnation, and the heart of the doctrine of the incarnation is the doctrine of homoousia, of consubstantiality, of the identity or the community of being and substance between the Father and the Son. This is what is completely new [inédit] with Christianity.49

Hence, the homoousia (repetition and doubling) is the Christological syndrome to be apprehended in thought, i.e., the concept in which the divine subject recognizes itself and sublates a merely figurative, narrative, or analogical thinking – be it a Thomistic analogia entis or a Barthian analogia fidei. The Hegelian concept of the incarnation not only means the end of representative thinking in religion, but it also anticipates the “ruin of representation” in Heidegger and Lévinas. Hence, homoousia epitomizes the logic of doubling, sameness, “minimal difference,” and self-relating negativity to be explored in German Idealism. In Nietzsche, for example, this applies to his definition of the sovereign individual: “something which resembles only itself.”50 From the history of art, Kazimir Malevich’s White Square on White Background has become a locus classicus in current neo-Lacanian debates over “minimal difference” in Nietzsche and Hegel.51 Malevich’s monochromes indicate the semantic indifference of the codes in, for example, contemporary linguistics and in the psychoanalytic doctrine of the timelessness of the unconscious. In Luther’s theology of the Cross, Günter Bader points to a similar figure of minimal difference.52 God is not only hidden – beyond recognition – 47

Pippin, “Desire itself,” Hegel on Self-Consciousness, 6–53. Malabou’s account is discussed in Derrida, “Preface by Jacques Derrida,” in Malabou, The Future of Hegel, vii–xlvii. 49 Nancy is quoted in Derrida, On Touching, 244; Jean-Luc Nancy, La Déclosion, vol. 1, Déconstruction du christianisme (Galilée: Paris, 2005), 219. Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, 3rd ed., transl. Bettina Bergo, Gabriel Malenfant and Michael B. Smith (Fordham University Press: New York, 2008). 50 See § 2 of the second treatise in Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality. 51 On the subject of “minimal difference,” see “Nothingness as Minimal Difference,” in Alenka Zupančič,, The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two (MIT: Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 151–163. Slavoj Žižek, “Hegel 3: The Minimal Difference,” Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (Routledge, London/New York, 2004), 60–74. 52 See Günter Bader, “Was heisst: Theologus crucis dicit id quod res est?,” in Klaus Grünwaldt and Udo Hahn (eds.) Kreuzestheologie – kontrovers und erhellend (Hannover: Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands, 2007), 167–181. 48

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under God’s opposite on the Cross (absconditus sub contrario), but Luther’s point is much more subtle and radical, namely that God also hides under the same (absconditus sub eodem), e.g., the cross is hidden under the “cross.”53 Here, the intention to say or think “the cross” exceeds – in the intention – “the intention in the intention itself.”54

2. The “Principle of the North” – Hegel’s Political Theology Kant takes epistemological doubt to the threshold of the abysses of freedom, epitomized in the hesitating “mad” prince and the terrors of the French Revolution.These are addressed on a large scale in Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit. Time in Kant is characterized neither by the future nor by the past, neither by succession nor by permanence, but rather by layers of synchronicities, delays, and anticipations. Simultaneity blocks decision and action and calls for strategies to “hide one’s capacity” – as with Hamlet’s madness – in order to “bide one’s time.”55 A similar hesitation is articulated in Hegel’s account of the French Revolution and Kantian morality as two sides of the same coin: “absolute-freedom-and-terror.”56 With this title Hegel is reading Kant’s morality as the trauma rather than the cure. According to Rebecca Comay, this paragraph from the chapter on the Spirit in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1806) is the only instance where Hegel breaks the synchronicity between phenomenology and chronology, when he “barely pauses” at the regicide:“This wrinkle of latency at the very heart of the present is precisely where the traumatic structure of history as a whole becomes for the first time fully visible.” 57 Hence, she reads Hegel’s concept of Absolute Spirit from the perspective of a time “that has ceased to rhyme.”58 Hegel’s philosophy of Spirit is conceived of as a work of mourning, of apprehending the traumatic structure of history in some sort of a cathartic repetition. However, this temporal out-of-jointness is surpassed by Hegel’s radical and highly counterintuitive 53

Bader, “Was heisst: Theologus crucis dicit id quod res est?,” 177–181. Ricoeur, Course of Recognition, 60. 55 Cf. the Chinese Taoist saying: “to hide one’s capacities and bide one’s time.” Yang Huiling, “Theological Interpretation on the Sacred Books of China and Its Political Implication: A Case Study on James Legge’s Translation,” Sino-Christian Studies 11 (2011), 27–44 56 This refers to the section on “Absolute freedom and terror,” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Terry Pinkard, 2008 (see the draft translation online at http:// web.mac.com/titpaul/Site/Phenomenology_of_Spirit_page.html), 531–544. 57 Rebecca Comay, “Dead Right: Hegel and the Terror,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 103: 2/3 (2004), note 24. 58 Deleuze, “On four poetic Formulas,” 28. 54

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statement that “the wounds of Spirit heal and leave no scars behind.”59 Comay offers an intriguing messianic interpretation of forgiving and reconciliation in Hegel.60 In line with Malabou’s account of Hegel’s concept of temporality and plasticity, Comay undertakes a similar reevaluation of the current Marxist and liberal judgment that Hegel’s hesitation is an instance of so-called German ideology or Burkean conservatism.61 Rather, Hegel’s identification of terror as the “inauguration of political modernity” does not prevent him from “attempting to absorb it” as inevitable and productive. Moreover, Hegel’s reluctance indicates that he is aware that a “politics of fusion” appealing to the will of the people, as in Rousseau, is prone to repeat the political theological terror of absolutism.62 In the concluding paragraphs 359–360 of the Philosophy of Right (PR), one of Hegel’s later texts (from 1821), the expression “northern principle” is given a Christological and political meaning. The following will be an exploration of this principle from the perspective of Comay’s psychotheological interpretation of the notion of Absolute Spirit. Hegel’s account of the northern principle refers to the Lutheran principle of freedom of conscience and faith, but it also entails the modern political and institutional aspect of equality, rationality, and secularity in Kant and the French Revolution.63 It is rarely noted that these final paragraphs reformulate the relation between the worldly realm and the transcendent spiritual realm in Luther’s On Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), that is, reframing it in Hegelian terms between the objective and the Absolute Spirit.64 In Luther, Hegel argues that the latter (Absolute Spirit) is only accessed in feeling and imaginary representations of faith, love, and hope. Consequently, the inward spiritual realm has been opposed to the worldly or objective realm in a painful polemical contradiction which Hegel de59 Comay, Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford University Press: Stanford, Cal., 2010), 129. 60 Comay, “Terrors of the Tabula Rasa,” in Mourning Sickness, 129–136. 61 In Mourning Sickness, Comay offers a painstaking account of how Hegel is “at once orthodox and unpredictable” (55) and how he “explodes it from within” (82). She writes,“Hegel comes close to dismantling the German ideology even as he embellishes it”(86). 62 See Comay, Mourning Sickness, 67–69. “Hegel’s visible hesitation between an unqualified and lyrical ‘enthusiasm’ (his Kantian-word) for the ‘glorious mental dawn’ risen in France and his unequivocal condemnation of this same event as the ‘most fearful tyranny’ is expressed in the same text and in the same breath, and moreover we find this hesitation expressed consistently from 1794 to 1830.” Comay, “Dead Right,,” in Mourning Sickness, 388. 63 Carsten Pallesen, “The Northern Principle and its Afterlives: Political and Pastoral Government in Luther, Nietzsche, and Hegel,” Sino-Christian Studies 11 (2011), 73–107. 64 Comay, “Missed Revolutions,” in Mourning Sickness, 8–25.

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picts as an instance of “unhappy consciousness.”65 However, Hegel takes it to be the task and norm of his own philosophy that this contradiction should be overcome in friendship, trust, and freedom between individuals. This demand for the actualization of the Spirit is implied in the work of (i.e., the recognition of oneself in) the concept. The concept is an account of the rationality – or lack of such – in the contemporary social, political, and ethical world. Moreover, in PR paragraph 358 this “concept of the concept” is identified with the doctrine of the unity of the divine and human (homoousia), which also is the theological turning point in Luther. Hegel takes this “Nordic principle” to be the logical consequence not only of the Lutheran Reformation, but of the Christ event as such, and hence the task for his Philosophy of Right is a continued translatio evangelii.66 Thus, Hegel’s account of world history in the final section of PR also entails a new understanding of the medieval ideology of the translatio imperii, anticipated in Luther. In the second edition of his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), Luther amended a longer section (paragraph 26) with a historical and systematic refutation of the medieval theory of the superiority of the pope and of the two swords to clarify that the worldly sword was not merely to be loaned out to the worldly authorities. In addition to this critique, Luther claims that his own understanding of the worldly prince as head of the church as well as of the political realm is the genuinely Pauline and Augustine position. In reviewing this theory in the PR § 360, Hegel declares that the former militant opposition between spiritual and secular, the inward and the outward, has lost its substance.The distinction between transcendence and immanence has dissolved into a state of indifference (what he calls the “marklose Gestalt”). Rather than a loss to be mourned, this description of the present is an adequate philosophical way of seeing things “gray on gray,” as he states in the Preface.67 Hegel’s conceptualization of the Christ event is often deplored by theologians as “a Lutheranism gone too far,”68 with both Catholic (Hans Urs von Balthasar) and Reformed (Karl Barth) commentators wondering where the colorful representations, narratives, pictures, smells, and “musical thinking” have gone?69 Both Malabou and Comay go against the grain by disagreeing with 65

See Hegel Phenomenology of Spirit, 178–205 Comay, Mourning Sickness, 8–25. 67 See the text in English translation in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, transl.T. M. Knox (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967), 11. 68 See Malabou, Future of Hegel, 91–102. 69 See Hegel’s account of “devotion” (Andacht) and the “unhappy consciousness”: “As such, its thought remains that of the shapeless roar of the pealing of bells, or that of a warm vapor filling a space, or that of a musical thought which does not amount to concepts, which themselves would be the sole, immanent, objective mode of thought.” Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 194. 66

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this opinion. Not to mention Günther Bader’s strong theological argument for this reading of Hegel.70 While Hegel’s northern principle is usually taken to be his most embarrassing and outdated, Comay claims that the Lutheran translatio evangelii – in all of its senses – is the theological-political perspective for Hegel’s account of the German-Roman ideology of translatio imperii to be ridiculed successively in Luther (1520) and in Hegelian philosophy of Spirit (1821).71 Within the economy of the Spirit translatio evangelii and translatio imperii belong to two different calendars neither related as cause and effect (succession), nor as permanence of the same order (substance), but rather in terms of simultaneity. In Luther, Comay states, “Grace … is a traveling object. Its sojourn is provisional, and its departure irreversible and abrupt.”72 Hence time “ceases to rhyme” due to the failed eschatology. Comay’s interpretation of absolute knowing is crucial to avoid a current misunderstanding of the northern principle in the Philosophy of Right as a successful translatio evangelii. The northern principle concludes Hegel’s infamous account of “reason in history” in the final section “C.World History” paragraphs 341–360, which is Hegel’s sketch of the Spirit’s geographical and historical wandering from East to West, from ancient Oriental, Greek and Roman empires to the German Ottonian empire, and from Lutheran Reformation to French Revolution and Prussian restoration after the Napoleonic wars. Here, Hegel renders the current German ideology, which he explodes from within: “He points to the traumatic kernel at the heart of this well-rehearsed teleology. The deferral that drives the movement of imperial expansion will also void any possibility of eschatological fulfillment.”73 The traumatic kernel is identified in Hegel’s conjunction of absolute-freedom-and-terror: French Revolution and Kantian morality constitute the self-destroying reality that the Spirit has to overcome, yet without “any possibility of eschatological fulfillment.”74 Comay interprets the extreme tension between finite and the infinite and the indifference or flatness of the “marklose Gestalt” as a radicalized Christian wager, “he sharpens the antithesis between finite and infinite to the point of seemingly unbridgeable disjunction.The flat death on the scaffold puts symbolization to its most radical test, and in the extremity of its resistance, supplies 70

Bader, “Was heisst: Theologus crucis dicit id quod res est?,” 178. Comay, Mourning Sickness, 8–25. 72 Comay quotes Luther (1524): “Oh my beloved Germans … gather the harvest while there is sunshine and fair weather: make use of God’s grace while it is there! For you should know that God’s word and grace is like a passing shower of rain (ein fahrender Platzregen) which does not return where it has once been.” Quoted in Comay, Mourning Sickness, 17. 73 Comay, 86. 74 Ibid., 81. 71

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the measure of the Spirit’s most prodigious power of recuperation.”75 In this figure, she comments, Hegel’s critics only see a sophisticated version of German ideology. Comay discloses, however, how Hegel ends up “exploding it from within.”76 If Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is expected to account for the progress of freedom and reason in history amounting to an end-of-history doctrine, it is rather disappointing to learn that the translatio imperii in Comay’s reading is rather a transmission of trauma or a “sickness of tradition” (Walter Benjamin).77 In Hegel, world history results in a harsh conflict between the spiritual and the secular not far from a Hobbesian state of nature. In PR § 358 the Holy Roman Empire is depicted against the backdrop of the atrocities ascribed to the decline of the ancient Roman Empire and its outcome: atomistic individualism. Spirit’s loss of self and of the world which is reflected in stoicism and skepticism is an “infinite grief ” for which the Jewish people were held in readiness.78 Hence, the turning point in Hegel’s political theology is the doctrine of the unity between divine and human. However, this internal principle exists only as an abstract reconciliation in religious feeling and representation (“faith, hope, and love”). In this unilateral form the spiritually transcendent realm is a “terrible and unfree” intellectual power turned against the worldly. In the concluding § 360 the hard struggle between the two kingdoms, spiritual and worldly, the transcendent and the immanent, seems to have been sublated in absolute knowing. Reason is objectified in the state, “the rational is the actual and vice versa”79 and in the state, self-consciousness finds its own truth. The transcendent spiritual has emptied itself into secular worldly immanence.80 According to the final paragraph, philosophy finds mutually complementary manifestations of one and the same truth in the state, nature, religion, and science. Apart from this reconciliation in the concept, the spiritual realm belongs to a different temporality. It is constituted in an imaginary doubling of reality, an ideal that cannot be included in the worldly secular realm and which, 75

Ibid., 81. Ibid., 82. 77 Ibid., 80. 78 “This is the absolute turning point. Mind [Spirit] rises out of this situation and grasps the infinite positivity of this its inward character, i.e., it grasps the principle of the unity of the divine and the human, the reconciliation of objective truth and freedom appearing within the self-consciousness and subjectivity, a reconciliation with the fulfilment of which the principle of the north, the principle of the Germanic people, has been entrusted.” Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 222. 79 Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 11. 80 “The realm of fact has discarded its barbarity and unrighteous caprice, while the realm of truth has abandoned the world of beyond and its arbitrary force, so that the true reconciliation which discloses the state as the image of and actuality of reason has become objective,” Hegel’s Philosophy of Right § 360, 223. 76

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therefore, has come to an end in science and philosophy.Yet the contradiction, infinite grief and suffering are repeated in the Spirit’s knowing of this infinite pain, that is, in acknowledging that “God is dead,” however, what Spirit knows is that this death resulted from God’s “self-encounter,” which, according to the Christian wager, would be the “missed” encounter, the enigma of the suffering God, in Luther’s theology of the Cross. Hence, in Comay’s reading, Hegel’s absolute knowing depicts a contemporary German situation as a result of a missed opportunity: Revolution and Reformation have gone wrong. Along with the standard German ideology, Hegel regrets the false principle of France that “there can be a Revolution without a Reformation.”81 He also seems to support the standard view that since the French Revolution had failed, it has been handed over to the German people “to set it right.”Yet the account of absolute knowing in the Phenomenology does provide guidelines for a deconstruction of the standard German ideology.82 Taking seriously that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce” (Marx), Hegel not only refuses to inherit the medieval topos of translatio imperii, but his hesitation also discredits the modern version of this topos in terms of postrevolutionary German ideology though in a rather peculiar way. Comay’s sensitive reading of the Phenomenology shows how Hegel neither indulges in the fantasy of the translatio imperii, nor demystifies or “enlightens” it, but makes it explode from within.83 Hegel’s polemical portrayal of the “beautiful soul” in the chapter on “absolute-freedom-and-terror” addresses those who think that a return to a Kantian morality is the answer. Hence, absolute knowing, in the subsequent chapters of the Phenomenology, faces the present negativity in a work of memory and mourning, but within the radical and distorted eschatological perspective of translatio evangelii of wounds of spirit that heal without scars. Or, rather, this is the wager of Comay’s reading of German ideology: “Kant’s ethics of postponement will, for Hegel, present a perverse and masochistic version of this lingering. Can Hegelian lingering – the famous ‘tarrying with the negative’ – be differentiated from slave-deferral?”84 Here, Comay offers a concise version of the northern prince syndrome, that is, the minimal difference between self-affection and self-description entailed in Hegel’s Absolute Spirit, rather as a wager (“let’s see what happens …”). 81

Comay, Mourning Sickness, 55. One indication is that Hegel in the same year he finished his Jena Phenomenology (1806) welcomes Napoleon as “Worldsoul on Horseback.” Meanwhile, his only worry was whether the manuscript would survive its transport to the printer. Comay, Mourning Sickness, 136–139. 83 Comay, Mourning Sickness, 82. 84 Ibid., 91. 82

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Comay’s interpretation of negativity (mourning as well as morning sickness) makes sense of Hegel’s idea of the Spirit knowing itself in the state. The state is a remedy for a fallen world burdened with a past that will not disappear.The state, however, is not the messianic kingdom of God, but it is a plastic and changeable form of truth not to be positivized in one particular historical formation of nations or associations of nations under some republican or monarchial commonwealth. Accordingly, from this perspective, the Prussian and other northern Protestant states around the Baltic Sea were built on the grief of the “slaughter bench of history.” “Hegel’s wager is of course to discharge by consolidating that debt: to make this worklessness work in such a way that the slaughter bench of history might present itself as the Golgotha of Spirit and melancholia and therefore supersede itself in mourning.”85 This is the absolute knowing or truth to be grasped by the concept, and the strength of this work of negativity is that it stands up to chaos and flood. Thus, in Comay’s title “morning” sickness, the syndrome of nausea caused by early pregnancy is combined with mourning and leave-taking. Here the notion of “natality” and new beginning intersects with the transformative strength of mourning, i.e., the time of philosophy in Hegel when a shape of life has grown old, and the flight of the owl of Minerva takes place. Both are taken to be inaugurative of a messianic newness, between the two twilights of dawn and dusk. While the twilight-metaphor is usually taken as proof of a “right wing” interpretation of Hegel in Berlin, Comay argues that the Hegelian “gray on gray” should be seen as his countermove against the colors of immediacy of green or gold painted by Mephisto in Goethe’s Faust. The colors represent the temptation of a ‘forced reconciliation,’ meaning reconciliation without freedom and adequate ethical institutions, whereas in Hegel, “it is from the ashes of lost opportunities that spirit quickens.”86 Hegel’s “concept of the concept” (God) is the formula of recognition of oneself under the condition of time. However, as Comay points out, the moment of mutuality is missing, because Spirit internalizes the finite in the infinite and thus God’s own self suffers the infinite grief of a missed encounter.The Spirit “keeps sprinting towards a deadline that it has already missed,”87 and the narrative of its experiences dissolves into fleeting snapshots depicting highlights, without any narrative meaning.88 From this interpretation of absolute knowing, Comay draws radical theological consequences for the possibility of forgiving: “it is the one who has nothing to give who is forcibly in the position of offering forgiveness … and it 85 86 87 88

Ibid., 81 Ibid., 143. Ibid., 127. Ibid., 86–87; 127.

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occurs only once it is too late to be enjoyed.”89 The Messiah is delayed; he arrives when he is no longer necessary or has become insufficient.90 Hence, the metaphor “gray on gray” marks a minimal difference between dusk and dawn, mourning and morning sickness. In this temporal space between the two twilights, absolute knowing “reorients” the occidental movement of translatio imperii. Accordingly, the principle of the north implies a reorientation of time: Turning evening into morning it disturbs the westward course of empire – the “great day’s work of Spirit” – by challenging the logic of inheritance that has until now underwritten the history of the victors. It arrests the solar trajectory of a history that has been naturalized in terms of an inexorable planetary rotation, politicized as the geographical migration of sovereign power, legitimized as the transmission of a cultural heritage. Philosophy positions itself in the lingering twilight that marks the aftermath of the ancien régime. It repeats the Revolution precisely in its refusal to inherit. To paint gray on gray is to mark the exhaustion of the present – a faded landscape in which there is nothing to take over and nothing to pass on: translatio stultitiae. This is what it means to mark modernity as an “unfinished project.”91

When read in the perspective of his Lutheran translatio evangelii, Hegel’s philosophy of world history denaturalizes its course, like Luther before him and Marx or Benjamin after him. Spirit moves in the opposite direction of what is normally expected, and Hegel is, as Comay puts it, “on the verge of pronouncing” Marx’s witticism that “Germany is the only country to suffer a restoration without having endured its own proper revolution; it tastes freedom only vicariously and only once, on the day of its own funeral.”92 In Deleuze, Kant is the name of the northern prince syndrome anticipated in Hamlet and rethought in different perspectives in Hegel and Heidegger. But here “north” as a spatial, geographical indication is not delimited to the German, Baltic, or North Atlantic spheres. It means “modern” in an “unfinished,” universal and normative sense: freedom of faith, thought, conscience, and self-consciousness in the constellation of Lutheran Reformation, French Revolution, and German Restoration. To be “modern” is to know where we are now in the present moment, to become simultaneous with oneself, with one’s own time and its collective and individual burden of missed opportunities and distorted memories. Under the condition of time, recognition in Kant and Hegel is the epistemic mode of selfconsciousness, and it is established in the “cross” of one’s own time, linger-

89 90 91 92

Ibid., 126. Ibid., 126. Ibid., 143. Ibid., 145.

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ing with the negative.93 Minerva’s flight between dusk and dawn indicates patience, non-action, but not a flight from its own time. Comay’s central question remains as to whether “Hegelian lingering can be differentiated from Kant’s “perverse and masochistic version of this lingering.”94

3. Mirrors and Windows of Self-Description – N. Luhmann The remainder of this article addresses the Luhmannian concept of selfdescription as the other side of the syndrome of self-affection. As stated above, in Comay’s interpretation, Hegelian Absolute Spirit represents a remedy against the melancholia inherent in the Kantian complex of “absolute-freedom-and-terror.” In Hegel, self-description denotes the moment of being-for-itself, i.e., how a social or personal system (the self) understands itself in what it knows and believes, does and endures. Hence, mourning is the activity of the Spirit knowing itself in its other, that is, in its remembrance of loss and trauma which it traverses. Mourning is reflected in “fleeting snapshots,” but at the same time, mourning refuses to inherit these. In Comay’s psycho-theological reading, absolute knowing is not a self-transparent philosophical reconciliation of the historical consciousness and the eternal timeless being. Quite to the contrary, in the Hegelian recapitulation of the past, time ceases to rhyme, not only because of the traumatic events of history, but rather because of the – albeit miscarried – eschatological future of the Spirit. In Luhmann’s theory of social systems, self-description is a technical term, however apt it may be to translate the infrastructure of the Hegelian Spirit in terms of a theory of communication and subjectivity. Self-description is the flag under which a ship (system) sails, and this rarely has much to do with the actual identity of the ship, its machine or staff.95 Self-descriptions are simple, while systems are highly complex, inaccessible even for themselves. Yet these “flags” matter.96 In the present context, Luhmannian selfdescription is used in a wider hermeneutical or expressivist sense including a “mediated” self-description of counting-as-an-act. In his theory of religion as “imaginary doubling of reality,” Luhmann distinguishes between two different models of cultural memory: while a Greek Platonic memory of ideas is immediate, the Jewish religious memory is mediated by the mir93

Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit 28. Comay, Mourning Sickness, 91. 95 Luhmann, Niklas, Soziale Systeme (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 129, 226–7. 96 This logic of infrastructure and simplification in Luhmann’s systems theory could be compared to Nietzsche’s analysis of the cogito in § 17 and § 19 in Beyond Good and Evil and in § 13 of the first treatise in Genealogy of Morality. 94

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ror of an infallible text. The latter is the model for theology and hermeneutics, the former for mathematics. In a Luhmannian reading of Hamlet, Dietrich Schwanitz points to the philosophical resources of a scriptural mediation of the syndrome.97 In this context, self-description should not be mistaken for a (painted) false window but counts as a genuine action in terms of an imagined possibility or a reality of the possible projected into the world of the text. Luhmann describes modernity by its endless tautological observations of observations. Self-relating social and personal systems produce and transform the real. However, a fundamental Hegelian characteristic is the idea that self-description counts as an action. This means that the experience of knowledge and consciousness is given its own voice in terms of interpretive mediations of self-consciousness. In Luther, a similar speculative and constructive moment is stressed in his oft-repeated formula, “glaubst du, so hast du.”98 Here “so” means if as well as how. Hence, the code transcendence/immanence is a purely formal distinction (indicative) and at the same time an indication (imperative) to make a distinction, to decide for one or the other side. Both the code and the formula of faith in Luther function as mirrors as well as windows. These doublings (of faith and knowledge, imperative and indicative) are entailed in the axiom of second order observation that any indicative is at the same time an indication. Thus, in this Luhmannian perspective the injunction of the First Commandment not to worship other gods is implied in the (purely descriptive) statement: “You have no other God, but me,Yahweh.” as well as the indicative observation, “we have no (other) God,” is implied in the imperative: “You shall have no other God before me,Yahweh!”99 In religion and art, time seems to generate poetic formulas and sensible schematisms; in philosophy, theology, and science, concepts of time are instead “formal indications” and tautological duplications. Examples of recursive formulas are well-known in the philosophy of subjectivity from Kant and Fichte. “Duplication,” Ricoeur states, “is the principle (A=A) constitutive of Hegel’s rejoinder to Hobbes’ and any other naturalism.”100 In religious semantics, time is reflected informally in narrative poetic figures, names and practices, but imaginative and emotional semantics at the 97 Schwanitz, Dietrich, “Hamlet oder die Systemtheorie,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie (1988), 152–153. See also Dietrich Schwanitz, Shakespeares Hamlet und alles was ihn für uns zum kulturelles Gedächtnis macht (Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2006). 98 Cf. Martin Luther: Luthers Werke (Weimar:Verlag Herman Böhlaus, 2003). 2; 354, 35 f; 7; 53,6f. 99 See, Luhmann: “Die Weisung Gottes als Form der Freiheit”. Soziologische Aufklärung, Band 5, Konstruktivistische Perspektiven. Opladen Westdeutscher Verlag 1990, 75–88. 100 Ricoeur, Course of Recognition, 171.

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same time reflect – or are traversed by – an underlying formal system of codes (transcendence and immanence). Hegel’s account of homoousia as the indifferent figure (the marklose Gestalt) is an instance of this doubling. Codes entail directions of “second-order observations,” at least in the case of biblical monotheism (“You have no other God”). Time (future and past) in philosophy (of religion) addresses the question of the conceptual – and by implication – atemporal character of such codes or formulas, whereas it can almost dispose with first-order semantics, narratives and phenomenological respecification of the code. In post-Kantian philosophy, the temporality of the code is the simultaneity of immanence and transcendence in the sense that both values are equally necessary. According to Luhmann, religious communication is defined by the use of the code transcendence/immanence. A code can be seen as an injunction (Anweisung) to unfold its paradox: In a minimal interpretation that might be internally as well as externally acceptable, the code transcendence/immanence then would be: to every positive and every negative experience juxtapose a positive meaning! When and if you are able to communicate this, you are communicating within the system of religion.101

a) An Old Code with a New Semantic Varnish In pre-Kantian metaphysics, religion was supposed to provide conclusions about/answers to questions of endless regress and self-reference (i.e., the world-reference of concepts), and provide the groundwork for our norms and actions.102 When descriptions of modernity no longer ask for or allow metaphysical answers, then religion can take on a different and more necessary function, according to Luhmann: Then we would be concerned with understanding what we do not understand, and with trying out semantics that can cope with this situation.Tradition has called this religion. But if this concept is to be continued, then expectations have to be replaced. What would be important then would be not a potential for security

101

Translated from “stelle jeder positiven und jeder negativen Erfahrung einen positiven Sinn gegenüber! Wenn und soweit du das kommunizieren kannst, kommunizierst du im System der Religion,” Niklas Luhmann, “Ausdifferenzierung der Religion,” in Gesellschaftstruktur und Semantik, vol. 3 (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 351. All quotations from Luhmann have been translated by the author, excepting the reference in footnote 102. 102 Niklas Luhmann, “European Rationality,” Observations on Modernity (Stanford University Press: Stanford, Cal., 1998), 42. For more on this, see Carsten Pallesen, “Die Weltbezug der Religion,” in Günther Thomas and Andreas Schüle (ed.), Luhmann und die Theologie (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: Darmstadt, 2006), 51–69.

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but rather a potential for insecurity. And not dependence but rather freedom:  The place of capriciousness that cannot find a home: imagination.103

For the topic “impossible time” it is of special interest that Luhmann suggests filling in the empty place of transcendence: God should no longer be the name for transcendence, but rather the position of the unity of transcendence and immanence. Unity would then mean “the undifferentiatedness of the differentiated,”104 and this would be equivalent to the Hegelian marklose Gestalt or northern principle.105 This would make it possible to leave behind a problematic mythological understanding of time in religion. As long as the present is understood as the in-between of future and past, one may lose the foundation in simultaneity (Gleichzeitigkeit). Luhmann finds it dissatisfying to solve the problem of time by a narrative emplotment of sequences of future and past, before and after. Narratives use and bind time to solve the problem of simultaneity (Zugleichsein or Gleichzeitigkeit) in a succession of one thing after another. This, however, is incompatible with the “flat” temporality of our world: Our time knows of no transcendent time, nor of a time beyond the time-horizons of past and future. It knows of no in all bygone implicit intransience that is contemporary with all transience. Anyway, time is not the ever-present transition and duration in all presence. It is chronometrically equaled world-time, which knows no beginning and no end, but lets out in principle un-interesting remote pasts and remote futures.106

This entails at the very least a critical approach to theological emplotments of Creation, Fall, Revelation and (future) Redemption and to the distinction in Heidegger between the existential Moment [Augenblick] and the vulgar Now [das Jetzt].107 Popular mythological and narrative solutions tend to overshadow more relevant candidates for the vacant place of transcendence without rejection of vulgar temporality. In the present society, there is only one candidate: the individual who is already defined by exclusion [Das ohnehin durch Exklusion definierte Individuum]: Sociologically as well as psychologically the acceptance of this exclusion without loss of openness to the world [ohne Verlust an Weltzuwendung] may seem high ly

103

Luhman, Observations on Modernity, 43. “Die Position der Einheit von Immanenz und Transzendenz mit ‘Gott’: Einheit hiesse hier Ununterschiedenheit des Unterschiedenen.” Luhmann, “Ausdifferenzierung der Religion,” in Gesellschaftstruktur und Semantik, 340. 105 Philosophy of Right § 360. 106 Niklas Luhmann, “Brauchen wir einen neuen Mythos?” Soziologische Aufklärung, vol. 4 (Westdeutscher Verlag: Opladen, 1987), 269. 107 See Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 338; 432. 104

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implausible. But then the reference to the case of Jesus of Nazareth may indicate that at least in one paradigmatic instance, this has been possible.108

The history of religions provide semantic forms such as tautology (homoousia) and paradox, which includes the impossible that cannot find a home, be it imagination or “exclusion individuality.”What we need is not a new mythology, but rather a new world logic. Luhmann identifies the paradigm for this in the combination of myth and logic in Genesis 1, which he takes to be reflected in the doctrine of the Trinity.109 b) A worldwide Zugleich – The imaginary Duplication of Reality Simultaneity (Gleichzeitigkeit) is the decisive temporal mode of Luhmann’s theory of social systems: “The point of departure is quite simple: what happens happens: Reality reproduces itself in a worldwide Zugleich (Atthe-same-time).”110 This is the “vulgar” (trivial), yet controversial point of departure for Luhmann’s claim that “everything that happens happens at the same time” (dass alles was geschieht, gleichzeitig geschieht).111 Andreas Kött takes Luhmann’s theory of religion to be the most Hegelian of contemporary sociology, despite considerable differences between them.112 Humanity experiences the world as dissatisfying, and this is the motor for the movement from the finite to the infinite. Religion is the expression of humanity searching for the ground of his dependence, and it only finds its rest in the infinite.113 Kött takes this definition to be compatible with Luhmann’s functionalistic understanding of religion: “Everything that humanity observes relies on an other, the other side of differentiation. In this respect everything observed is dependent, which also applies when the observer is being observed.”114 Religion is of particular interest to Luhmann as a means of handling this structurally-determined dependency. Religious 108

Luhmann, “Die Ausdifferenzierung der Religion,” in Gesellschaftstruktur und Semantik, 340. 109 Luhmann, “Brauchen wir einen neuen Mythos?” in Soziologische Aufklärung, 263–4. 110 “Die Realität reproduziert sich in einem weltweitem Zugleich.” Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1992), 681. 111 For a thorough historical and systematic account, see Luhmann,“Gleichzeitigkeit und Synchronisation,” 98. 112 Andreas Kött, Systemtheorie und Religion: Mit einer Religionstypologie im Anschluss an Niklas Luhmann (Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg, 2003), 412–413. 113 Kött, Systemtheorie und Religion, 380. 114 My translation of “Alles was der Mensch beobachtet, beruht auf einem Anderen, der anderen Seite der Unterscheidung. Insofern ist alles Beobachtete unselbständig, was auch gilt, wenn der Beobachter das Beobachtete ist.” See Kött, Systemtheorie und Religion, 380.

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semantics specialize in the articulation of conditions of in/dependence. Due to the early emergence of a formal code, testified to in the theology of the Name (Exodus 3:14), biblical traditions have developed forms of self-description that transcend empirical control as well as mythological emplotments.115 In fact, Luhmann considers the emergence of religion as a social system specified only by its communicative code (transcendence/ immanence) as setting the pace for the process of functional differentiation, which has become the constitutive principle of modern society.116 The emergence of the level of codes from a mythological level of narratives and metaphysical cosmologies makes it clear that self-reflection is not only a finite condition on the side of immanence, but also pertains to the side of transcendence. Both sides are dependent on communication and selfreferentiality: how (not) to speak about God or name or represent God in the finite (Exodus 3:14). In the structural change, which corresponds to the transition from the spoken to the written word, God (or the communication about God) changes and God becomes another to Godself. This transformation is testified in the abysses of missed encounters and misunderstanding which could be “the plot” of the Biblical faith and especially as this is articulated in the Book of Psalms. As a universal social system, religion has emerged from earlier undifferentiated models, and it consists of communication, that is, “observations of observations” performed by using the distinction transcendence/immanence. From an evolutionary perspective the invention of scripture transforms conditions of communication (observation) and self-description. Before the invention and spread of scriptures, revelations of divine will were concrete, situational crossings of the border between transcendence and immanence in the form of inspiration. Only in so-called high religions (Hochreligionen) does one refer to “holy scriptures,” viewed as the canonization of revelation of God’s self-manifestation (Selbstdarstellung). Looking at the particular riches of the European tradition, Luhmann notes that the Jewish tradition “has held on to a purely religious duplication of reality and, by implication, it has partially influenced the Christian doctrine, while the Greek tradition has taken the completely opposite approach of linguistic conceptual abstraction.”117 The theology of the rabbis holds on to a “communicatively-binding relation to God” with the result that the text is unable to deceive (i.e., it is infallible), but effort must be made to interpret it constantly, no matter how controversial the result turns out to be. In Plato, by contrast, “indications (names) are prone to constant deception and therefore require constant re115

Luhmann, “Die Ausdifferenzierung der Religion,” 271. Ibid., 262–3. 117 Luhmann, Religion der Gesellschaft, 63. 116

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insurance (Rückversicherung) in reality in the form of archetypical ideas.”118 However, in both cases it is about remembrance.119 In the biblical case remembrance serves to maintain and update the text which had served as the plan of creation, and in the Greek Platonic model remembrance gives access to “the no longer purely empirical forms that constitute the essence of things.”120 Both the metaphysical and the biblical doubling of reality are imaginary although they have quite important and different implications. Both versions articulate a distance between imaginary and “real” reality and provide the agenda for a different semantic fill. In both cases, the other side of memory, forgetting, is forgotten. The dark side of producing and preserving the religious forms remains the included-excluded other in religious forms.121

Kant’s transcendental philosophy indicates the degree of abstraction necessary to account for the question of time. In Hegel the undifferentiated tautological figure “gray on gray” indicates a transcendence exhausted in immanence. In his Protestant context, transcendence is conceived of as a temporal, finite event in the dimension of ordinary life. Hence, the Christological turning point blocks a re-entry of transcendence by way of anamnesis in terms of a Platonic metaphysical dualism (heaven/earth, this world/the true world material/spiritual) as well as a mythological unfolding of the tautology in a narrative economy of original perfection, corruption, and future redemption as a schematism of past, present, and future. With a comparably radical gesture, Luhmann redescribes what he takes to be the structural change that constitutes modernity. In a society that invents and accepts “subjective” individualism, a fundamental revolution of the code of religion is necessary, which on a semantic level will be registered as an upheaval (nihilism, etc.). Not that the code-values immanence/ transcendence are dismissed, resulting in a loss of discernibility of religion. But the values are reshuffled and their relation to the world is turned upside down.122

According to Luhmann, the plot of the history of religion revolves around the emergence of a formal distinction where both values (transcendence and immanence) are equally necessary for the system to function. The history of this general structural change does not run parallel to the semantic investments of the code in, for example, hierarchical cosmologies and 118

Ibid., 63. My analysis of Luhmann is indebted to Susan A. Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (State Univ. of New York: Albany, 1982), and, by implication, to Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of memory and scripture in Plato’s Phaedrus. See Derrida “La pharmacie de Platon,” La dissemination, (Seuil: Paris, 1972), 71–198. 120 Luhmann, Religion der Gesellschaft, 63. 121 Ibid., 63–64. 122 Ibid., 11. 119

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moral respecifications of immanence as sin and transcendence as salvation. Rather, the emergence of the code will affect the semantic level. Structural integration will cause social and semantic disintegration. On the level of religious semantics, this is registered in Luhmann as the emergence of impossible or implausible freedom, imagination, capriciousness, or in sum: “exclusion individualism” (“das ohnehin durch Exklusion definierte Individuum”123), which is no less implausible than the Christian experience “to live time itself ” in Heidegger.

4. Conclusion: Self-Description-Counting-as-Action Dieter Schwanitz dedicated a short remix of Hamlet entitled “Hamlet oder die Systemtheorie” (Hamlet or Systems Theory) to Luhmann on his sixtieth birthday.124 Hamlet enters the scene reading a book: “What do you read my lord?” Polonius asks. “Words, words, words,” Hamlet, the reader, responds. But the queen comments: “But look how sadly the poor wretch comes reading.” Shakespeare does not mention the title of the book Hamlet is reading but there have been plenty of suggestions: Montaigne’s Essais; Hobbes’ Leviathan; Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population; Darwin’s Origin of Species; Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents; Ibsen’s A Doll’s House; Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Schwanitz, of course, suggests Hamlet is reading Luhmann’s Soziale Systeme and Horatio is returning from Biele-feld, the Wittenberg of Luhmannian systems theory. We are in the book, and the question is not “to be or not to be,” but rather “System oder Umwelt?”: “to know to dare – to dare to know,” that is the question. Polonius asks, “But what are the words about?” to which Hamlet responds, “All Lies.” Here the satirical rogue writes that history has no meaning or telos, that the future cannot be planned, that humanity will never be able to know itself totally, that there is no final reconciliation in consensus, that society does not consist of human beings, that no herb has ever grown against the succession of time and that old men grow gray beards.

Although Hamlet agrees that all this evidence is stating the obvious, he finds it inappropriate to write them down on paper. Because, “You yourself, Polonius would be as old as I am, if you could walk backwards like a cancer. That is the dimension of meaning in temporality.” Hamlet reads. He wants to erase all previous constructions, reasons, arguments and thoughts from the slate of his memory, so that only systems theory should prevail in the book of his brain. So, the play states, Hamlet asks for a slate and writes down what he reads. 123 124

Luhmann, “Ausdifferenzierung der Religion,” 340. Schwanitz, “Hamlet oder die Systemtheorie,” 152–153.

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This decisive move is the self-description of the system as Horatio, the Luhmann expert, explains: “Self-description is a result of what we call an action.” Hamlet replies, “But tell me, self-description would that – for the system – count as an action? – Then, in fact, my problem would be solved!” Horatio corrects this: “No, not your problem, but the problem of the social system!” Hamlet: “Does the theory say so, Horatio? Then I will at once read it to the end!”

Parenthetically, Schwanitz adds:The piece ends by Hamlet’s reading Soziale Systeme to the end.The reading of the book prevents him from engaging in the “terrors of the tabula rasa,” that is, it allows him to avoid all the mistakes he commits in Shakespeare because of his “acting out” of absolute freedom and melancholia instead of enduring the negativity of mourning/morning sickness. Bad conscience, Nietzsche famously states, is only a disease in the same sense as pregnancy.125So it could be worse not to have it.126 Philosophically, the tabula rasa metaphor is used for the Lockean psychological theory of consciousness as opposed to “innate ideas” in Cartesian and Platonian idealism. Luhmann’s Hamlet combines Descartes’ refusal to inherit old opinions, tales and traditions with the biblical principle of a “communicatively-binding relation to God.” Thus, he articulates the Hegelian notion of religion: that the system seeks the reason for its dependence.127 “There is lots of light in the Hegelian room,” Judith Butler writes, “and the mirrors have the happy coincidence of often being windows as well.”128 This also holds true for the mirror of scripture in Luhmann. Here the northern prince appears to be a melancolic-hysterical person.129 In a way quite similar to how Kant’s masochistic perversity is depicted in “agrammatical” formulas like absolute-freedom-and-terror in the mirror of absolute knowing.130 Comay takes this “apposition” to be indicative of the syndrome of Kantian morality and melancholia epitomized in the “terror of tabula rasa.”131 Hence, the wager is that absolute knowing in Hegel constitutes the mirrors and windows of self-description which offer 125

Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality, second treatise, § 19. In Pippin’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s account of “the crazy man” in § 125 of The Gay Science, the northern prince syndrome is identified in two kinds of pathological reactions or misdiagnoses, “a melancholic and ultimately narcissistic theatrical guilt and a self-satisfied pose of supposedly enlightened free-thinking.” Robert Pippin, Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2010), 54. 127 “Der Grund seiner Unselbständigkeit,” see Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, vol. 1 (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 308. Quoted in Kött, Systemtheorie und Religion, 380. 128 Judith Butler, “Giving an Account of Oneself,” Diacritics 31 (4), Winter 2001, 27. 129 See Schwanitz, Shakespeares Hamlet. 130 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 531–544. 131 Comay, Mourning Sickness, 129–136. 126

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remedies to the pathologies of absolute freedom, precisely when the Spirit refuses to inherit itself, that is, where German ideology is turned against itself in the mirror. Hence, the Hegelian cure is the Spirit’s work of mourning i.e., God’s (missed) self-encounter in the mirror of memory. In Schwanitz’s version, Hamlet’s reading of Luhmann’s Soziale Systeme – or of any text (“words, words, words”) – offers possibilities for similar “second opinions” and self-descriptions. Here semantic forms and formulas such as apposition, hyperbole, paradox, and tautology make the visible visible.These figures prevail in philosophy, religion and art, and they evoke an awareness of the level of codes in the already written text. In this context self-description represents a doubling of reality not controlled by Cartesian or Platonic ideas, but rather by scripture and texts, which are interpreted anew.  This logic of sola scriptura is erased by the metaphysical model known from the Greek tradition. Hence, self-description is fraught with a theological “bootstrapping,” self-relating negativity and minimal difference for example, when faith (sola fide) is taken to be a passively performed, yet constructive response to instructions such as “glaubst du, so hast du.” Exit Hamlet.

III. Future of the Past

The Future of the Past: Memory, Forgetting, and Personal Identity Claudia Welz The world is filled with remembering and forgetting like sea and dry land. Sometimes memory is the solid ground we stand on, sometimes memory is the sea that covers all things like the Flood. And forgetting is the dry land that saves, like Ararat […] And every person is a dam between past and future. When he dies the dam bursts, the past breaks into the future, And there is no before or after. All times become one time like our God: our time is one. Blessed be the memory of the dam.1

Introduction This article is an invitation on a journey through time.2 The guiding question is: how are we to relate to the past – especially to those events in the past which are hard to bear in the present? It is tempting to consider whether we really must drag them along with us throughout our lives or whether we can somehow get rid of them to prevent the past from persisting and leaving an imprint on our future as well. Can we free ourselves from the past by concentrating on the challenges we are faced with here 1

Yehuda Amichai, “In My Life, on My Life” in Open Closed Open (New York: Harcourt, 2000), 111. I wish to thank Jennifer Adams-Massmann for calling my attention to this poem. 2 This article is a revised version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Copenhagen (March 4, 2011), originally published in Danish as “Fortidens fremtid: erindring, glemsel og personlig identitet” in Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 74 (2011), 136–153.

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and now? It is questionable whether we can indeed focus on the here and now as long as the past intrudes into the present without having been worked through. Because we want to work through the past so that it is truly over and keep it at a certain distance from our lives now, we are faced with the question of how we are to orient ourselves in relation to the past. This is an ethical question that concerns our actions and interactions with others as well as the conditions and limits of these (inter)actions. The question can be spelled out by clarifying: (1.) what it is that we can remember about the limits and capacities of human memory; (2.) what it is that we have to remember at all costs, committing ourselves to keep this in mind; and (3.) what it is that we may forget, and to which situations each of these modalities apply. In the following essay, memory will be investigated via negativa, i.e., by investigating that which seems to negate memory; namely, forgetting. Investigating the legitimacy and questionability of forgetting will show that remembering and forgetting are not just opposed, but are dialectically related to each other. Their dialectical interrelation is decisive for the formation and preservation of personal identity.This hypothesis will be unfolded in three steps, focusing on (1.) oblivion, (2.) the dialectical interrelation between remembering and forgetting, and (3.) personal identity.

1. Oblivion I will begin by sketching four situations and arguments in favor of the intuition that it can be helpful to forget the past when we are trying to cope with it. Later, I will present four counterarguments. a) “Tabula rasa” – an unusual strategy of conflict management in the Middle East An argument for the legitimacy of forgetting lies in the story that Michaela Wirz recounts in an article from 2007 when she was a guest researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem: Once I took a taxi together with some colleagues, departing from the checkpoint close to Bethlehem. The Arab taxi driver asked what our jobs were. Most of us answered that we were historians. “History,” he said contemptuously, “history is bad. History is the root of all evil.” When we asked why he thought like this, he replied that he often imagined how life would be in Israel if everyone woke up one morning and could not remember anything. We would look at each other with wonder and try to find out why there are so many walls and barbed wires running through the country. We would know nothing about 60 years of combat

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and bloodshed on both sides. […] We would get to know each other in entirely new ways. Tabula rasa. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?3

For the Arab taxi driver, forgetting is an alternative to mutual recriminations. If everyone forgot, no one would need to keep track of the crimes on both sides. A new beginning would be foreseeable. The metaphor used for the new beginning, tabula rasa, recalls the wax tablet that was the most common writing utensil in antiquity. One could easily polish the tablet and thereby wipe out what was written on it. Can one do the same by forgetting? Can one forget deliberately? Answering this question leads us to a thinker who became famous for his praise of forgetfulness. b) Friedrich Nietzsche on the oblivious people’s happiness, action competence, and the mental capacity to cope with the past In the second part of his book Untimely Meditations (1874), in a section entitled “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” Friedrich Nietzsche argues that oblivion is vital because, without it, human beings would be forced to abstain from sleep and spend all their lives ruminating on the past, and would therefore be unable to cope with the past.4 According to Nietzsche, oblivion belongs to all action. Those who act are unscrupulous insofar as they forget most things in order to do one thing, and insofar as they are unjust towards that which lies behind them in the past.The person who must act knows only one form of justice, namely, the consideration of that which is to arise now.5 Nietzsche’s meditations were untimely because they were opposed to the historicist approach to history that was mainstream at the end of the nineteenth century. Nietzsche’s critique was directed against an investigation of the past that benefits only the past. Nietzsche was concerned about the advantages or disadvantages of history for human life in the present. In this life, oblivion can be a relief to the extent that it frees us from that which we are unable to integrate into our respective personal histories. In the second treatise of The Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche distinguishes between two forms of oblivion. On the one hand, he understands forgetfulness as an active power, a positive capacity of inhibition; on the other hand, he understands forgetfulness as something that happens to us against our will when we cannot remember what we would like to re3

Michaela Wirz, “Tabula rasa, oder: Ein ungewöhnlicher Ansatz der Verständigung” in Cardo 5 (2007), 29–31, here 29 (in my translation). 4 See Friedrich Nietzsche, “Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen: Zweites Stück: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben” in Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 1, ed. Karl Schlechta (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1997), 209–285, here 213. 5 Ibid., 216.

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member. Nietzsche’s argument for oblivion is twofold. First, he holds that we need some tabula rasa in consciousness to make room for something new.6 Active forgetfulness preserves the mental order. Second, without oblivion, there cannot be happiness, vivacity, hope, pride, and presence. Someone whose ability to forget, whose mental device of suppression is damaged, will not be able to be done with anything. In Beyond Good and Evil (1886), Nietzsche praises the oblivious because they will also be done with their stupidness.7 However, what happens if one cannot free oneself from that which one is unable to integrate into one’s biography? c) Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus and Walter Benjamin’s Ninth Thesis “On the Concept of History” Paul Klee’s watercolor painting Angelus Novus (1920) depicts the confrontation with the tragedies of history. Walter Benjamin owned the picture, which now resides in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, for many years. In the ninth thesis of his essay “On the Concept of History,” he describes it as follows: It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet.The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them.This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky.What we call progress is this storm.8

In Benjamin’s description, the journey through time is illustrated with the help of spatial metaphors. The angel of history looks back onto the past. Yet instead of being allowed to dwell on the past, the angel is blown backwards into the future. Although there is talk of “progress,” the angel 6 Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral in Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 2, ed. Karl Schlechta (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1997), 761–900, here 799–800. 7 Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse in Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 2, ed. Karl Schlechta (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1997), 563–759, here 682 nr. 217. 8 See Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” in Illuminationen: Ausgewählte Schriften 1 (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1977), 251–261, here 255. The translation is taken from Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4: 1938–1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press 2003), 392–3.

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does not masterfully step into the future and progress with a deliberately chosen tempo. Rather, the angel is carried away by a violent process he cannot control.The angel would like to be present in the events of the past and change them. “Time flies,” so to speak – but not the angel. The only thing the angel can control is the direction in which he is looking. He can do no more than pay attention to what is transient. According to Gershom Scholem’s poem on the Klee painting, which was written for Benjamin’s 29th birthday (July 15, 1921) and which was placed before the ninth thesis as its motto, the angel affirms that he would like to fly back: My wing is poised to beat but I would gladly return home were I to stay to the end of days I would still be this forlorn.9

The formulation in the subjunctive mood (ich kehrte gern zurück) shows, however, that a return to the past is impossible. Nonetheless, the concern for the irretrievable past will cost the angel’s life. Even if the angel remained “living time” (lebendige Zeit), he would still have no luck, according to the poet. He is affected by history’s catastrophe. So-called “progress” is a retreat imposed on the angel whose journey through time takes place only in the imagination, for he can no longer move about freely. Of course, it is not only those who, like the angel, fixate on the past who lose their maneuvering room. Those who look optimistically towards the future are also subject to the conditions of finitude. We cannot prevent the ticking of the clock, the passing of time. Yet the way we relate to the past has a decisive influence on the future. If we ignore the past, we lose any chance of learning from history – if this is even possible at all. The angel of history turns to the past in anamnesis, in solidarity with those who have become victims. In the fifth thesis, Benjamin claims that the image of the past disappears together with a present that does not recognize itself in the past. Benjamin’s text was written in 1940, shortly before his flight from the Nazis – a flight that ended tragically at the border between France and Spain. For Benjamin, time stopped without any escape. He apparently committed suicide by overdosing on morphine tablets. The next day, however, the escape route opened again. Maybe the dread of history had taken away his courage and the hope that the future could develop in a different way than the past. 9

This is Richard Sieburth’s translation from Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time: Poems (Jerusalem: Ibis Editions, 2003). The German original runs as follows: “Gruß vom Angelus”: “Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit / ich kehrte gern zurück / denn blieb’ ich auch lebendige Zeit / ich hätte wenig Glück.”

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Such hope and courage contain memory and oblivion. And this oblivion can help one survive, as evidenced in the life of Ana Novac. d) “Merciful forgetfulness” – Ana Novac’s way of surviving Ana Novac was born in 1929 in Transylvania and deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. After a short time there, she was transferred to the concentration camp Plaszow near Krakow where she had to do forced labor. After a few months, she was sent away again, and moved from camp to camp, before being rescued from captivity by Russian soldiers in 1945. She worked as a playwright and author until her death in 2010. Her notes from the camps were first published in Hungarian in 1966. Her journal from that time, written when she was only a girl of fourteen, was published with the ironic title The Beautiful Days of My Youth.10 In the preface to her journal, Novak writes that she wished she could say that she had taken upon herself the burden of writing the journal in order to supply humanity’s memory with the details of everyday life, the little concrete trivialities which neither the historical sources nor her own recollection could preserve. This would have been noble, but she concedes that, in fact, she wrote her diary in order to escape obsessive thoughts about soup; in order not to drown in the masses and wallow in misfortune and anxiety; in order to have her own domain, something like a private life; and in order not to surrender to her fate. Under all circumstances, writing was necessary for her so as not to fall apart or disintegrate.11 Ana is convinced that the journal allowed her to survive – and to survive that survival, to survive the fact that she had the toughness to live and function and keep her health and sanity, after and despite the loss of her family and friends. She speaks of “the weight of a solitary crime: having lived” – a crime that “has never been erased” from her conscience, and “never pardoned by it.”12 The journal itself is introduced by the following words, which she added retrospectively: What could I have written on this page? I don’t know. And on the one before? It’s all obliterated. The paper is a faded scrap, devoured by time. From what tomb of memory have they escaped, these drunken letters? Memory? No, the thread that leads there has been cut for a long time. The memory of something that long ago I must surely have remembered, something real and vivid that happened to me but that merciful forgetfulness has pushed farther and farther away, and that continues 10 Ana Novac, The Beautiful Days of My Youth: My Six Months in Auschwitz and Plaszow, trans. George L. Newman (New York: Henry Holt, 1997). 11 This passage is not printed in the above-mentioned English translation. I have relied here on the new Danish translation from the French. Cf. Ana Novac, Min ungdoms smukke dage: En jødisk piges kz-dagbog (Copenhagen: People’s Press 2011), 19. 12 Novac, The Beautiful Days of My Youth, 9.

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to grow more and more faint, like those stories that we sometimes tell out of habit but that no longer concern us. It’s a stranger who deciphers these ancient pages. Her uneasiness and her astonishment are ancient. I’m only recopying.13

This quote demonstrates that oblivion helped Ana to distance herself from the past and made it possible for her to go on. Several times she was struck by “a benign amnesia”14 which rescued her in unbearable situations. Repatriated and released from the hospital after the war, continued amnesia allowed her to live out her youth and complete her education – until sixteen years later when she was moving and came across the bundle of her own handwritten pages.15 At one place in her journal, she affirms in hindsight that the one moment she thinks she will never forget was the moment after her last attempt to escape from the ghetto, when she stopped wanting to get away, wanting anything at all, which was a moment of great solace and peace. At this place in her journal, she also asks herself whether it is because of that great fatigue that she does not remember the railroad cars or anything else before the camp’s lavatory (Waschraum), as if she had been on holiday from herself, anesthetized.16 It is remarkable that the moment of self-forgetfulness is the turning point in her history. The exhausted and traumatized girl could then let go of the depressing experiences she had carried as mental baggage. She could regenerate in oblivion. I will return to this point later. For now, let us focus on the problematic nature of oblivion. e) Jean Améry’s “ressentiment”: Nailed onto the cross of his ruined past Someone who could not forget and was therefore forced to re-experience torture again and again in tantalizing ressentiment is Jean Améry. Born in Vienna in 1912, he studied literature and philosophy, emigrated to Belgium in 1938 and eventually joined the resistance movement. In 1943 he was arrested and deported to various concentration camps, including Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, and Auschwitz. After 1945, he worked as an author in Brussels, and in 1978 he committed suicide. In the preface to the reissue of his book Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten (1966), Améry confesses that he rebels against his past and against a present “that places the incomprehensible in the cold storage of history and thus falsifies it in a revolting way.”17 Améry 13

Ibid., 15. Ibid., 7. 15 Ibid., 10. 16 Ibid., 169. 17 Cf. Jean Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten, 6th ed. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2008), 14. English translation: At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplation by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities, trans. Sidney Rosenfeld 14

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underlines that a forgiving and forgetting induced by social pressure is immoral.18 He demands that perpetrators be “fastened” to their deeds and thus be held accountable for them, and also that the crimes of the past not just be taken as obsolete. The world that simply forgets and forgives has condemned the victims, who become burdened with collective guilt – instead of those who have murdered or allowed murder to occur.19 In such a situation, it is impossible to apply the formula from Shakespeare’s King Richard II for ending a vendetta: “Forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed.”20 Améry retains his resentment. He calls it an “unnatural” and “logically inconsistent condition” that nails the victim onto the cross of his ruined past.21 Absurdly, resentment demands that the irreversible be reversed, that the event be undone as if it had not happened. In this way, resentment blocks the exit to the future. The victim cannot reconcile with the past. The time-sense of the person trapped in resentment is “twisted around, dis-ordered […], for it wishes two impossible things: regression into the past and nullification of what happened.”22 Améry’s original contribution to the current debate on reconciliation is, as Thomas Brudholm writes in his book Resentment’s Virtue, “the idea that a kind of reconciliation between peoples can build on a common refusal of reconciliation with the past.”23 To remain irreconcilable in relation to the unforgettable past can in a paradoxical way promote reconciliation with others, if these others also remember the past and do not simply seek to wipe it out. f) “Genozid,” “Mnemozid” and the German “Schluss-Strich Debate” Unfortunately, in postwar Germany many people felt the need to forget and remain silent. In the German Parliament, the attempt was made repeatedly to draw a line (Schluss-Strich) under the past and thereby to put an end to it. As Aleida Assmann argues in her book Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (2006), it was the mission of subsequent generations to point out that continuing to remain silent about the past would amount to the delayed fulfillment of Hitler’s wish that Mnemozid (mnemocide: war against memory) would follow on Genozid and Stella P. Rosenfeld (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1980), xi. 18 Améry, At the Mind’s Limits, 72. 19 Ibid., 72. 20 William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Richard II., I, 1, 156. 21 Améry, At the Mind’s Limits, 68. 22 Ibid. 23 Thomas Brudholm, Resentment’s Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 116.

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(genocide: the Holocaust). Protesting Hitler’s wish entails the obligation to prevent the victims’ second “death” – their death in oblivion.24 Assmann observes also that there is an asymmetrical relation of power between victims and perpetrators. The principle which is valid in a civil war where both sides are guilty and where the respective enemies need to be reintegrated into a society that both parties have in common, namely, the principle that oblivion can operate as a remedy – this principle cannot be applied to the asymmetrical relation between victims and perpetrators. Amnesty, a form of oblivion that involves mercy and sparing, must not be mixed up with amnesia, a ruthless form of oblivion (damnatio memoriae), which was used as a punishment since Roman times. Thus oblivion is not a medicine against any disease. Oblivion itself is ambivalent. Assmann concludes that the asymmetry between victims and perpetrators can only be diminished with the help of common recollection, that is, through the preservation of the past (Vergangenheitsbewahrung), not by coming to terms with the past by burying the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung).25 If the past is not preserved, we abandon and betray the victims by forgetting them. g) Escapist forgetfulness This is easier said than done, however. The culprits are not interested in preserving the burden of their past. The easiest thing to do would be to amputate one’s bad conscience so as not to be accosted by accusing, uncontrollable memories.Yet this is more complicated than expected because that which is repressed returns and manifests itself indirectly, for example, in the form of restlessness or sleeplessness connected to the inability to forget. Primo Levi’s book The Drowned and the Saved [Italian original: I sommersi e i salvati, 1986] contains a chapter entitled “The Memory of the Offense” in which Levi reflects on various disturbances or defects of memory. Both the victim’s trauma and the perpetrator’s repression can distort what each remembers.26 Levi shows that the perpetrator’s escapist forgetfulness involves activity and passivity.Typically, escapist oblivion begins actively, with lies and deliberately made-up scenarios.When these lies and inventions are repeated frequently, one may eventually believe in them and become unable to distinguish between truth and untruth any longer. Self-deception

24 Cf. Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (München: C.H. Beck, 2006), 101–2. 25 Ibid., 107. 26 Cf. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York:Vintage International, 1989), 23.

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facilitates the transition from bad faith to good faith. In the end, one can lie without being aware of the fact any longer.27 Moreover, Levi explains that the best way of defending oneself against the invasion of unwelcome memories is to prevent their entry into consciousness in the first place. For this reason, those who had to shoot the prisoners in the Nazi camps were provided with all the liquor they wanted. This way the Nazi commanders could shield the murderers’ conscience. Those about to commit the massacres were allowed (or encouraged) to drown their memories in alcohol.28 h) Preventing forgetfulness – out of respect for the living and the dead The victims, by contrast, were left alone with their horrifying memories. In his retrospective book La nuit about his experience in Buchenwald and Auschwitz, first published in Yiddish in 1955 (Un di Velt Hot Geshvign) and then in French three years later in a much shorter version, Elie Wiesel repeats the formulation jamais je n’oublierai29: Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.30

This poem expresses how victims are haunted by their past, specifically by what they have suffered and what they have lost. To forget is impossible – wrong even. The children and adults burned in the ovens are beyond retrieval. Only remembrance remains. Precisely those aspects of a person which are most ephemeral – his words, her gestures, their facial expressions – these need to be seen, named, remembered. Hannah Arendt also underscores this last point, stating that precisely that aspect of a person which 27

Ibid., 27. Ibid., 31. 29 Cf. Elie Wiesel, La Nuit (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2007), 78–9. 30 English translation: Elie Wiesel, Night, trans. Marion Wiesel (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 34. 28

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dies when a person dies is that which needs us, the living, to call it to mind. It must be remembered – out of respect for the living and the dead.31

2. The Dialectical Interrelation between Remembering and Forgetting In this next section, which deals with the dialectical interrelation between remembering and forgetting, I wish to show why we cannot account for oblivion in abstraction from memory. a) Filing or forgetting – or forgetting by filing? Let us indulge in a little thought experiment. Imagine that we could not only choose to save or file a document on the computer, but also to “forget” a document. What would that mean? One possibility is that to forget means “not to file” the document. We cannot restore what we have not saved. In this case, the document disappears without a trace and no one can find it again. The other possibility is that to forget means “not to be able to find what one has filed.” The document could have been saved automatically. In this case, it would be stored somewhere and would be at our disposal as soon as we found the right path. The document would not be lost but latent. It would lie in a hidden reserve. But how is it possible to forget something so completely that it never resurfaces because one no longer has it in mind? An example: Immanuel Kant had a faithful butler named Martin Lampe. This butler ensured that Kant woke punctually at five o’clock each morning, and he sharpened Kant’s quill pen in the evening. In 1802 Kant fired his faithful butler. However, it seems this servant was so closely tied to Kant’s habits that Kant was unable to forget him. Kant’s followers found the following note among his papers: “Der Name Lampe muß nun völlig vergessen werden”32 (“The name Lampe must now be completely forgotten”). They wondered whether it is not a contradiction in terms to write a note about something that is to be forgotten. Apparently, Kant wrote this note into a kind of book for which there is no term in either German or English, but which in Danish is called glemmebogen, which can be translated literally as “the book of forgetting.” After observing a patient with an infallible memory over the course of 30 years, 31 Cf. Hannah Arendt, Denken ohne Geländer:Texte und Briefe, ed. Heidi Bohnet and Klaus Stadler, 4th ed. (München/Zürich: Piper, 2010), 72. 32 Cf. Felix Gross, Immanuel Kant: Sein Leben in Darstellungen von Zeitgenossen. Die Biographien von E.L. Borowski, R.B. Jachmann und E.A.Ch. Wasianski (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993), 234.

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the Russian doctor and neuropsychiatrist Alexander Romanovich Luria edited a thin book in 1968 in which he describes the strategies his patient used to outsmart his memory. For instance, the patient tried to write down what he wanted to forget. He even tried to burn the notes. Yet, the most successful part of the patient’s “letho-technics” (i.e. his technique of forgetting) consisted in not wanting to see again the images that were nonetheless preserved in his mind. Paradoxically, it was necessary that the “mnemonist,” the master in mnemonics, also became a master in the art of forgetting.33 Hence the alternative of “filing or forgetting” is overcome by a cunning trick: “forgetting by filing.” b) Forgetting as a form of remembering, and remembering as a form of forgetting Just as oblivion involves memory, memory involves oblivion. Oblivion becomes possible with the help of memory, and we can remember some things only because we can forget other things. Katharina Hagena’s novel Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen (2008) illustrates the intuition that forgetting is also a form of remembering and remembering a form of forgetting. The novel is about an elderly woman who becomes distrait, disturbed, and increasingly forgetful after falling from an apple tree. In the end, she cannot recognize anyone or anything, not even her own daughters. The novel is written from the perspective of the grandchild who inherits her grandmother’s house and tries to unravel the mysteries of the past. The granddaughter tries to understand her grandmother’s extreme forgetfulness and comes to the result that forgetting, too, can be a worthy way of safekeeping.34 Maybe the forgetfulness of the elderly is not just incapacity but rather the refusal to engrave in one’s mind what should not leave any traces there?35 In addition, Hagena wonders whether it is possible that the oblivion one shares with another is a bond that can be just as strong as shared memories, or maybe even stronger.36 The novel’s protagonist discovers that the Greek word for truth, alétheia, contains the name of the river of the underworld, Lethe. Those who drink Lethe’s water forget everything that preceded, thereby preparing themselves for the afterlife in the realm of shadows. Thus, alétheia means non33

Cf. Alexander Romanovich Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist, trans. Lynn Solotaroff (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), 66–73. I refer here to the chapter “The Art of Forgetting.” 34 Cf. Katharina Hagena, Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen, 12th ed. (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2010), 37 and 171. 35 Ibid., 97. 36 Ibid., 152.

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oblivion, the unforgotten and unforgettable.37 Hagena wonders, however, if it makes sense to seek the truth where oblivion is not. Does the truth not conceal itself precisely in memory’s holes and fissures?38 This question leads us to another consideration: in what sense can we speak of an “art of forgetting”? c) The present’s ambiguous role as a mediator – the past between presence and absence In his bestseller Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting (1997),39 Harald Weinrich refers to a paper by Umberto Eco from 1966 with the funny title “Ars oblivionalis? Forget it.”40 Eco argues that, for semiotic reasons, an art of forgetting is impossible because signs produce presence, not absence. But is this correct? I think Eco overlooks the interplay between presence and absence in symbolic, iconic, and indexical signs. The past is not given to us other than across a temporal distance, which can be overcome when attention is directed towards that which is far away or absent and which thereby becomes present.The past is given and can be forgotten only in the present. However, the present has an ambiguous role as a mediator because it influences memory, the mode in which the past is given. Memory is characterized by plasticity. It adjusts itself in conformity with the affordances and requirements of the present – which are changing all the time. As memory is influenced by current feelings and thoughts, it is unreliable and can be manipulated.41 The present also influences what we forget. Forgetting is just as selective as remembering. It is an exaggeration to state that someone remembers or forgets everything. Total recollection would be identical to total forgetting because if one could reach complete presence by recollecting everything, this complete presence would cancel out the past as past – that is, as something which by definition cannot be completely present any more. Conversely, total oblivion is just as unthinkable as total recollection, 37 Regarding the passive form of the Greek verb lanthánein, Heidegger is right to translate alethés with Unverborgenes (the unconcealed). Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 17th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993), 33. 38 Cf. Hagena, Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen, 195. 39 Cf. Harald Weinrich, Lethe. Kunst und Kritik des Vergessens, 3rd ed. (München: C.H. Beck, 2000), 25. 40 Cf. Umberto Eco, “‘Ars oblivionalis’? Forget it” in Publications of the Modern Language Association 103 (1988), 254–261. 41 Cf. Chris Westbury and Daniel C. Dennett, “Mining the Past to Construct the Future: Memory and Belief as Forms of Knowledge” in Daniel L. Schacter and Elaine Scarry, eds., Memory, Brain, and Belief (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 2001), 11–32; Michael Ross and Anne E. Wilson, “Constructing and Appraising Past Selves” in Memory, Brain, and Belief, 231–258.

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at least as long as recollection is related to events in the past and cannot be reduced to perception or attention or the lack of it.

3. Personal Identity Having investigated the legitimacy and questionable nature of oblivion as well as the dialectical interrelation between remembering and forgetting, what remains to be explored is the significance of memory and forgetting for the formation and preservation of personal identity.42 Do memory and forgetting have the same implications and consequences for human selfunderstanding? a) Memory that grounds consciousness and responsibility: Augustine and John Locke In book X of his Confessions (397–401), Augustine writes that in the immense room of his memory, he encounters himself and experiences again what he did and what he felt and understood when he did it.43 Memory makes co-present one’s actions in the past and one’s plans about the future. While Augustine considers the power of memory to be the power of his own mind (vis est haec animi mei), he cannot comprehend completely what or who he himself is because the human mind is too narrow even to comprehend itself.44 That which ruptures the self is its temporality, which leads to the distentio animi, the distraction and distension of the soul. Time affects the human’s ecstatic being – stretched and “tensed” between the past and the future.That which keeps the self together is memory. According to Augustine, memory has a synthesizing power because it makes present what is absent. He can even identify himself with his memory, since as spirit he is both the one who remembers and the one remembered (ego sum, qui memini, ego animus).45 In De trinitate (399–419), Augustine claims that memory is the hidden ground or abyss of the spirit or the mind (profunditas memoriae).46 This 42

For a discussion of the notion of personal identity, see my article “Identity as Self-Transformation: Emotional Conflicts and their Metamorphosis in Memory” in Continental Philosophy Review 43:2 (2010), 267–285. 43 Aurelius Augustinus, Bekenntnisse: Zweisprachige Ausgabe, trans. Joseph Bernhart (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1987), 506–7 (section 8, 14). 44 Cf. ibid., 508–9 (section 8, 15). 45 Ibid., 524–5 (section 16, 25). 46 Aurelius Augustinus, De trinitate (Bücher VIII-XI, XIV-XV, Anhang: Buch V). Lateinisch-Deutsch, ed. and trans. Johann Kreuzer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 2001), 336–7 (section XV, 21, 40–1).

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means that memory is irreducible. It cannot be traced back to anything else. Memory enables the mind to be present to itself. Augustine also views memory as the foundation of thought (in memoria est cogitandi modus)47 which shapes the vision of the one who thinks and recollects (ex memoria recordantis acies informetur).48 Thus, self-knowledge presupposes memory as a reflexive capacity that makes reflection on oneself possible. Without memory, the self could not recognize itself. At first glance this argument might remind us of John Locke, but the way of presenting the problem of memory is different. Augustine’s problem is how he can find God. His answer is that God lives in his memory, and God can be found there whenever Augustine thinks of God.49 Yet Augustine also discovers that God has already been in Augustine’s innermost self at a point of time when Augustine was still “beside himself ” or “outside of himself ” – after all, it was late in his life that he began to love his God, “this eternally old and eternally new beauty,” as he tenderly calls the divine.50 God is to be found in memory and the self in relation to God. By contrast, the problem which John Locke addresses in the chapter “Of Identity and Diversity” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is the question of how the identity and continuity of the person can be sustained despite the interruptions of consciousness due to forgetfulness51 – and sustained in such a way that the person can also be identified from a third-person perspective.This is important in forensic or juridical contexts, for instance, when one must ascertain whether it is precisely this specific person who has committed a crime and to what extent this person can be held accountable for the crime. For Locke memory is the criterion of personal identity. Memory entails retrospective and prospective consciousness. For this reason, it can function as a power of integration: “as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and ‘tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.”52 Memory guarantees a person’s contemporaneity or synchronicity with him- or herself. In turn, the simultaneous experi47

Ibid., 166–7 (section XI, 8, 14). Ibid., 200–1 (section XIV, 7, 10). 49 Cf. ibid., 544–5 (section 24, 35). 50 Ibid., 546–7 to 548–9 (section 27, 28). 51 Cf. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XXVII, §10: “That which seems to make the difficulty is this: that this consciousness being interrupted always by forgetfulness, there being no moment of our lives wherein we have the whole train of all our past actions before our eyes in one view […] I say, in all these cases, our consciousness being interrupted, and we losing sight of our past selves, doubts are raised whether we are the same thinking thing, i.e. the same substance, or no.” 52 Ibid., II, XXVII, §9. 48

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ence of past and present is the basis of each person’s accountability and responsibility. If, as Augustine argues, memory grounds consciousness, then it is the presupposition of any possible formation of personal identity. If a person’s accountability and responsibility are rooted in memory, as Locke claims, then memory is also the factual condition that preserves the identity which a person develops in the course of time, because memory determines a person’s self-image and, in turn, the impressions others can have of this person’s self-understanding as it takes shape in attitudes, words and deeds. b) The social framework: Maurice Halbwachs on individual and collective memory As the work of the philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs suggests, personal identity is not only influenced by an individual’s own episodic or autobiographical memories, that is, memories of events experienced personally in the past. Rather, the individual’s ability to remember specific life events depends on others’ memories as well. Halbwachs has coined the concept of collective memory and argued convincingly that collective memory is not a given but rather a socially constructed notion.53 His discovery is decisive in the present context of discussion as it shows that memory is formative of identity also in the sense that personal identity cannot develop at all without other humans sharing the individual’s memories. It is individuals as members of groups, institutions, and societies who remember. For example, we would know nothing about our early childhood if our parents, siblings or other persons had not told us about it. Moreover, our own autobiographical memory tends to fade with time unless it is periodically reinforced through contact with persons with whom we shared the experiences in question. Through participation in commemorative meetings we can recreate and reenact a past that would otherwise slowly disappear in the haze of time. This implies, however, that the memories of the past are at least partly shaped by the concerns, beliefs, interests and aspirations of the present. Furthermore, verbal conventions constitute the framework of collective memory.54 Thus, the formation of personal identity is dependent on the social milieu in which it thrives. It is mediated by language, rituals, and repetitive reproductions of memories in dialogue with our contemporaries. According to Halbwachs, what makes recent memories hang together is not that they are continuous in time, but rather that they are part of a 53

Cf. Maurice Halbwachs’s posthumously published work On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 22–24. 54 Cf. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 25 and 45.

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totality of thoughts common to a group. Memories occur in the form of systems: To be sure, everyone has a capacity for memory [mémoire] that is unlike that of anyone else, given the variety of temperaments and life circumstances. But individual memory is nevertheless a part or an aspect of group memory, since each impression and each fact, even if it apparently concerns a particular person exclusively, leaves a lasting memory only to the extent that one has thought it over – to the extent that it is connected with the thoughts that come to us from the social milieu.55

It follows that personal identity cannot remain unaffected by the social framework within which one experiences and remembers certain events. This has the uncanny side effect that group pressure can lead to the manipulation and misrepresentation of certain individual memories if the respective group is interested in concealing incidents and interactions that could threaten collective identity. One example is the distortion or disposal of the victims’ memories in totalitarian systems. Another example is mobbing, which in its most subtle and perfidious forms can lead to false narratives about the mobbed person who is publicly exposed and brought under suspicion. In such cases, in order to preserve personal identity, victims need to disentangle their own traumatic memories from the way they are misrepresented by others, be it by “inward emigration” or by leaving the respective social context. Ana Novac’s example suggests that benign amnesia helps the victim survive in situations of utter exposedness. However, as Aleida Assmann’s political and ethical reflections demonstrate, a democratic society under the rule of law cannot uphold itself if it does not protect the rights of individuals and cultivate truthful commemoration of its history. The rehabilitation of the victims involves the restitution of the memories obliterated and discredited by the perpetrators. While it is uncontroversial to say personal identity and integrity are to a high degree and (for better or for worse) defined by how one relates to what one remembers – be it by working through the past or by deceiving oneself about what one has done56 – the significance that forgetting has for personal identity is far from clear. Are all forms of oblivion as innocent as the merciful forgetfulness described by Novac? Notice that Novac could not forgive herself for having survived by temporarily forgetting what killed her family and friends. Her conscience remained burdened, and she counted her survival as a crime. Even if one concedes that the 55

Ibid., 53. For a discussion of self-deception also related to the manipulation of memories cf. Claudia Welz, “Puzzles of Self-Deception and Problems of Orientation: Kierkegaard and the Current Debate in the Philosophy of Psychology” in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2011, 157–180. 56

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ambivalent phenomenon of the guilt and shame of Holocaust survivors57 cannot be uncritically transferred to everyday situations, let alone be taken as a moral imperative for all, the role of oblivion is not unequivocal. Does not oblivion tear apart a person’s continuity with him- or herself in time? Let us examine this question by taking for our point of departure Améry’s description of self-alienation. c) Self-alienation due to the loss of one’s home, one’s mother tongue, and one’s past In his aforementioned book At the Mind’s Limits, Améry speaks about the homesickness he felt in his Belgian exile. He experienced it as self-alienation (Selbstentfremdung).58 Améry describes how his past was suddenly concealed so that he no longer knew who he was. His identity was bound to a German name and the dialect of his Austrian place of origin, yet he had lost his home and his mother tongue. His friends had been killed. He was a person who could no longer say “we” and therefore said “I” merely out of habit, but no longer with the sense of full self-possession. He had no passport, no past, no money, and no history. His homesickness was connected with his self-contempt and hate towards the “I” that had been lost. The pain was unbearable when that which he was supposed to hate out of social obligation (his home) was something he also desired, when, “during the strenuous task of self-destruction, now and then traditional homesickness also welled up and claimed its place.”59 As a displaced person he looked back on his past – but he could not find himself there.60 The Nazis saw him as a Jew, and therefore he was forced to see himself as a Jew. Yet it was impossible for Améry to understand himself as a Jew because he neither shared a language nor a cultural tradition or childhood memories with other Jews.Therefore, his search for his “Jewish self ” was in vain, although he declared his solidarity with all threatened and persecuted Jews in the world.61 Some asserted that he had the freedom to choose to be a Jew. But he could not believe this. “Would Yochanan, the proud bearer of a new self-acquired identity, be made immune on the 24th of December by his supposedly thorough knowledge of Chassidism against thoughts of a 57 As to the guilt and shame of Holocaust survivors, see my article “Shame and the Hiding Self ” in the online journal Passions in Context: International Journal for the History and Theory of Emotions, no. 2: Atrocities – Emotion – Self (August 2011), http://www. passionsincontext.de/index.php?id=774. 58 Améry, At the Mind’s Limits, 43. 59 Ibid., 51. 60 Ibid., 58–9. 61 Ibid., 97.

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Christmas tree with gilded nuts?”62 Améry argues that one can reestablish the link with a tradition one has lost, but one cannot freely invent it for oneself.63 The dialectical process of self-realization – of being who one is by becoming the person one should be and wants to be – was obstructed for Améry. That which he was already and which he had experienced had priority over the new. No one can acquire an identity that is not somehow rooted in one’s memories.64 For this reason, one cannot just bestow on oneself a new identity which builds on the oblivion of one’s past. At the very least, oblivion was not a viable solution of the problematic double bind in which Améry was caught. d) Legitimate and happy forgetting: Self-forgetfulness Is there, then, a happy form of forgetting that is legitimate and at the same time formative of identity? In the epilogue to his book La mémoire, l’histoire et l’oubli (2000), Paul Ricoeur outlines this possibility. According to his definition, forgetting is not a strategy or way of coping with the unbearable. Rather, it is insouciance, freedom from distress, carefreeness.65 As liberation from care, this form of forgetting entails self-forgetfulness in the sense that one is completely engaged in something on which one concentrates and for which one has opened oneself effortlessly, something to which one is dedicated. One forgets oneself and cares for something or someone else. It must be underscored that this form of carefree, unworried forgetting is tied to the memory of what or who one cares for. The self-forgetfulness described by Ricoeur does not imply that one forgets oneself in ways that have an adverse effect on others, whether causing neglect of others or negative attention to them. On the contrary, self-forgetfulness in this sense is based on the condition that one is attentive to one’s environment and other people in a considerate, thoughtful manner. Thus, this form of selfforgetfulness can neither be counted as an alternative to memory, nor can it be identified with the self-forgetful fatigue described by Novac. As a consequence, memory and oblivion do not have the same significance for personal identity, and they are not located on the same level. Rather, memory is the precondition of oblivion, while oblivion is surely not the fundament of memory. Unlike remembering, forgetting is not constitutive of personal identity in an unambiguous sense. 62

Ibid., 83. Ibid., 84. 64 Ibid. 65 Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 505. 63

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Self-forgetfulness is not the same as forgetting who one is. Quite the reverse: in and through self-forgetfulness, one comes to experience and know who one is, but one does so in one’s commitment to a task or a person one loves. (Interestingly, this cannot be said about a task or person one hates, for hate lacks precisely this kind of self-forgetfulness; those who commit themselves to poisoning or destroying another’s life will in the end be unable to recognize themselves.) Experiencing who one is by committing oneself to other persons or occupations is an indirect process of acquiring self-experience and -knowledge. Thereby one does not revolve around oneself. Rather, one is formed by that which matters to oneself and determines how one spends one’s days. It cannot be denied that one slowly becomes characterized by what one thinks, does, and that to which one dedicates oneself; yet personal identity cannot be reduced solely to those things or persons to whom one is directing one’s attention. Otherwise personhood would be dissolved in relations instead of shaping them, while at the same time being shaped by them.

Conclusion To conclude, I would like to sketch an answer to the three questions I raised in the beginning. First, what is it that we can remember or forget? In brief:We can remember or forget only that which we have experienced and witnessed personally or learned by proxy, for instance, through history lessons or media transmissions. In order to be remembered or forgotten, an event must have left some impression on us, be it that we have it in mind in a more or less accessible form, or that it is at least latently present in memory traces imprinted in the body. Second, what is it that we must remember under all circumstances? Generally speaking, it is that which concerns our relations to others. This can be specified as the obligation to enshrine in one’s heart those persons who would otherwise disappear into oblivion as well as those events that have a lasting significance for individual and collective identity. This concerns not only what is dear to us, those we have loved and lost, but also that which is unpleasant to remember, but nonetheless needs to be recalled if the perpetrators are not to succeed in effacing from human memory what they wish to hide. Furthermore, we have an obligation not to forget ourselves – yet in a different sense than the one described in line with Ricoeur. We have to remember those interactions in which we have become guilty of an injustice against another because this enables us to orient ourselves in relation to past mistakes and prevent possible future transgressions. Additionally, not forgetting oneself involves the obligation to preserve oneself in the face and in spite of adversities – without compromising one’s standards. To put

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it in a Kierkegaardian way: not forgetting oneself means lovingly preserving one’s soul in patience.66 Third, what is it that we may forget, and to which situations does this license to forget apply? We may forget what we basically and principally cannot remember and, for this reason, cannot forget, nor change. This thought needs to be explained. That which can neither be remembered nor forgotten is that which the French phenomenologist and theologian Jean-Louis Chrétien has chosen as the title of one of his books: L’inoubliable et l’inespéré (1991).67 Both parts – the unforgettable and the unhoped-for – are joined when an unexpected future, which could in no way be anticipated, sheds new light on a past which precedes the time we have experienced consciously, for example, the time before our birth. According to Chrétien, the unforgettable is not an object of memory, but rather the gift whose favor makes memory possible.68 Since the source of the unforgettable is the unhoped-for, the unforgettable is present as call and appeal in its coming. As it precedes us, it can neither be totally lost nor abandoned. It exceeds our memory in not ceasing to grasp us, while we cannot grasp it.69 Yet when the unforeseeable enters the horizon of our experience, it may also shed new light on the past that we can remember. Since it is impossible for us to remember concretely what we cannot foresee, we may forget it in the sense of not being disturbed by fruitless speculations about it. However, we should not discard the unforgettable and the unhoped-for as limit concepts of thought because we cannot exclude the possibility that they may acquire a surprising meaning, although this meaning may be discoverable only in retrospect. The reference to Chrétien is of interest when considering the overall guiding question of this examination: how are we to relate to the past and especially to those events in the past that are hard to bear in the present? In other words, how can the past be renewed if we cannot forget it and our memories are like a painful repetition of something to which we would like to say goodbye? Or, to return to the title of this article, one could also ask: where can we find the future of the past? Paul Valéry has coined the phrase l’avenir du passé. The French word for future expresses clearly that the future is the time which comes, a time which comes with a newness we cannot give to ourselves.When we expe66

Cf. Søren Kierkegaard,“To Preserve One’s Soul in Patience” in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 5), ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 181–203. 67 Cf. Jean-Louis Chrétien, The Unforgettable and the Unhoped-for, trans. Jeffrey Bloechl (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002). 68 Cf. ibid., 84. 69 Cf. ibid., 89–90.

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rience such a renewal of the past, we experience it as not due to our own powers – neither our powers of memory nor our powers of oblivion. It is a basic theological thought that the God-relationship is the relation which bears, grounds and transcends all other relations. This thought raises the question of whether we can simply forget God and yet be ourselves. Augustine doubted this, which is why he embarked on a lifelong search for God. It is part and parcel of both the Jewish and the Christian faith to trust that the One who has created us without being known by us does not forget us, although we do not always think of God. In the lines that follow, the psalmist turns to God in prayer exclaiming: When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, The moon and the stars that you have established; What are human beings that you are mindful of them, Mortals that you care for them?70

It is neither the glory of human oblivion nor the glory of human memory that is being praised here (in Psalm 8: 4–5). The wonderment concerns something which evades, something which is not at our disposal. The one who prays is amazed by the discovery that we are in another’s memory. This implies that personal identity is not only our own construction, but is also constituted ab extra, from outside and beyond our own ideas, out of a relation for which we cannot fully account. L’inoubliable et l’inespéré – this refers to that which can renew human life – against all expectations and in a way that remains beyond reason. That which exceeds, surpasses and outweighs even our hope is that which gives a future to our past.

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Translation from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

I need time for my ‘self ’: The Importance of  Time for the Development of Religious Selfhood Jan-Olav Henriksen 1. Time, the Self, and Religion Speaking of time sometimes comes close to stating the obvious. But even stating the obvious may be important. In the following, I will present reflections on how the temporal aspect may be even more important for understanding religious experience than is often recognized. I will take as my point of departure some theories about the self in recent scholarship and read them as contributions to a phenomenology of the (religious) self. My question is: what tacit or explicit insights do such theories contribute when we try to understand the temporal dimension of the self? Thus I am concerned not only with the development of religious selfhood as such but with the importance of time as a dimension of the self. A self is, metaphorically speaking, the space that emerges when impressions, sensations, acts of the imagination, symbols, and perceptions are experienced in a way that makes the self capable of being or becoming aware of its selfhood as distinct from others. Given the content and order of this space, it is a place where past, present, and future may come together and determine each other (and thereby the self) in different ways by means of imagination, memory, and symbolization. One cannot understand self and selfhood unless the temporal dimension is taken into account. Time is one of the presubjective conditions for religious subjectivity and selfhood. The content of the self is not atemporal, but is conditioned by past experience, is present for the self as self, and conditions the way the self relates to and is open to the future. The problematic nature of the self has become a central concern for the contemporary mind.1 It is my conviction that philosophy of religion cannot grasp this problem unless, in discussing this issue, it reflects on material emerging out of neighboring disciplines, such as philosophy, theology and psychology. One of the reasons for the concern for the self is that the 1

Cf. Jerome D. Levin, Theories of the Self (Washington/Philadelphia/London: Hemisphere Publishing, 1992), 1.

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postmodern turn made identity a central issue in many scholarly disciplines – and still does. But genealogically speaking, prior to any establishment of identity, there is already a sense of self and selfhood, and such a sense seems to be a condition for the development of identity. Of course, identity and selfhood are closely related. But whereas identity is the result of processes related to thought and consciousness, subjectivity, and agency, the self is emerging out of processes that are prior to expressions of and capacities for reflexivity, thought, and agency. The sense of self, prior to thought, is presubjective, while nevertheless coloring all later experiences, thoughts, and actions. In the following, I focus on self and sense of self, not so much on identity.2 Self and selfhood may be interpreted from the point of view of philosophy of religion. The two quotes that follow have not emerged out of that particular discipline, but they may help us summarize the point of departure for this endeavor: “The self emerges out of feeling.” (Heinz Kohut) “The symbol gives rise to thought – and thought returns to the symbol.” (Paul Ricoeur)

The first claim, by psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut, suggests that the self is emerging out of our primary emotional bonds and relations to others.The self is relational. The self is constituted by its relations and in such a way that we can assert: the self that emerges is not a result of the self, but of how others contribute to the development of the self. Hence, we do not talk about self-constitution in terms of the self constituting itself. That would be a version of petitio principii. The contributions of others take place not only in terms of emotional interplay, but also – as is important for religion and religious selfhood – by offering experiences and symbols that contribute to the content of the religious self. These bonds in turn are crucial not only for how we experience and understand ourselves, but also for how we experience and understand others – including what we call “God.” Accordingly, these bonds may be very much intertwined with the role which the conception or image of God plays in our lives. This image emerges out of our past and out of past relations, as well as being confirmed and developed in how we live in the present.3 Here, the relevance of the quote by Ricoeur comes to the fore: if we see God as a symbol (image), this symbol may help us think more clearly about ourselves as well as how to experience the world. The symbol God 2

For the relation selfhood–identity, see the important study by Léon Turner, Theology, Psychology and the Plural Self (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2008). 3 Cf., for example, Ana-Maria Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979).

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should be understood not only in terms of its potential for cognition, but its emotional dimension as well. As such, the symbol “God” may prove to be important for the development of specific experiences of selfhood - for good or bad.

2. Religion and the Self – For Good or Bad The different functions of the symbol “God” may prove important for a philosophy of religion that seeks to relate both constructively and critically to contemporary religious expressions in a way that moves beyond the predominant cognitive approach to religion as “what one believes in.” Rather, I would like to suggest that religion has to do with “being in the world” by means of emotional and cognitive capacities that are developed and facilitated by specific symbolic and cultural expressions, developed in processes closely related to the development of the self. Before proceeding, I would like to emphasize how both statements – by Kohut and Ricoeur – presuppose temporal processes. Both the self emerging out of feeling and the symbol exhibiting its role in relation to the self ’s reflection are temporal in character: without time, none of these processes can take place. Let me develop this even further by making three different claims that are related, although at first glance they may not seem to be connected: (1) Religion is – metaphorically speaking - about how we develop our mental space, what I have called the space of self above. It is not about physical space, but the mental, cognitive, and/or psychological space that allows us to be and live well, in the physical, social, and psychological worlds we inhabit. Religion may contribute to, constrict, or expand this space and the capabilities that it conditions. But in a very basic way, this inner world of ours is the main condition for how we experience and engage with the world, our own selves, and what we call God. Hence, it is of utmost importance to see how the image of God may be related to, inhibit, expand, or contribute to the constitution of this space. (2) Religion is thus – from a more detached, philosophical point of view – a mode of being in the world and of engaging with the world, others, and the self in specific ways. The main symbol for engaging religiously with the world and the self in a religious manner is, at least within a Christian context, the symbol “God.” Of course, the symbol “God” is closely linked to other symbols, so to live and have faith is a way of relating that is very much dependent upon how this symbol is engaged and engaging us with ourselves and the world. The symbol may be engaged in ways that are unhealthy, that make life and the resources for a good life deteriorate, or it

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may open up sources that may sustain and enrich life in ways that are not accessible in the same manner in everyday, secular life. (3) Thus, religion and faith are not primarily about another world (an opinion often found in popular descriptions of religion), but about being in this world in specific ways, occasionally also in ways that intensify experiences of and in this world. Only the most superficial critics of religion claim that religion is basically or primarily about a different world, an “afterlife,” or something similar. Instead, I would argue that religion is about engaging in this world. Religion does so in ways that provide meaning and opportunities for growth and personal development, and also for engaging in relationships with the self and others, which allow the self to access resources for living more fully. Given these basic considerations about religion and the self, we are now in a position to explore some of the implications in more detail. I will begin by suggesting how the position suggested here relates to some other positions in the history of philosophy. Postmodern approaches to interpreting the self follow Hegel and Kierkegaard in underscoring how the self ’s reality is historically-conditioned and relational. Hence, time enters the picture immediately in how these ways of theorizing open us up to thinking about the self. However, other recent approaches also emphasize the loss of confidence in the capacity of the self to control its own destiny due to various contextual and historical circumstances, which express themselves at the very least in the psychohistorical conditions of the self. As Ricoeur emphasizes, if we are to understand the self, we have to see that the self is a subject as both activity and passivity.4 Hence, the self is what it is, or becomes what it becomes, due to the social, cultural, and physical world of which it is part, as well as its inherent capacities. Moreover, as indicated by the quote from Kohut above, the self emerges out of feeling, that is, it is emerging out of deep emotional connectivity with the world and what it faces in the relations therein. This image of the situated self is in opposition to ideas of the self-sufficient self like the one developed in the philosophy of Descartes. In actuality, by placing the main character of the self outside the realm of bodily and emotional experience, one could argue his position impedes the broad potential for the development of a concrete human self engaged with its embodied, emotional, cultural, and social world. From the point of view of religion, the self may mirror, and in time itself also engender, different types of religious imagery, while also contributing to the development of imagery in the present or fossilizing specific types of such imagery from the past. What happens when one of these options 4

Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

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is chosen? It not only depends on the religious imagery in question, but is also conditioned by the self ’s own personal, intra- and interrelational dispositions. Thus, a hermeneutics of the religious self has to underscore the interplay between self and religious imagery and cannot focus only on one side of this relationship. Such a hermeneutics implies that a temporal process is necessary in order to clarify, articulate, and develop the potential inherent in the interplay between the symbol “God” and the self – on different levels, both cognitive and emotional. “God” may contribute positively to the creation of the self when this symbol is engaged within a sound context for personal psychological development. A sound context is one in which the self is given the chance to engage with the world, to display its creative powers, to receive adequate affirmation and recognition, and when it is given and realizes opportunities to thrive. Then God may be part of the symbolic world which the self develops in order to connect to and release its own creative energies, be it in terms of affirmation, or in terms of representing a viable symbolic idealization of the self ’s own integrated values and ideals. In this way, the symbol God may open the future. As it participates in a cultural and social world, the self can then experience how the symbol God contributes to the enriching of, and the expansion of, its world and of the self ’s personal experience. Religious symbolism may in such a context also contribute to forming attachments that provide the self with the safety and security it needs, and provided it is rich and varied enough, it will contribute to an understanding of the world in which contingencies and dark sides may have their place. Moreover, religious self-descriptions like “image of God,” child of God, sinner, saved, Christian, etc. may all contribute to the development of a self-image that allows the self to integrate and relate to all its aspects in ways that provide positive conditions for future personal development. It is important that these self-descriptions are not only affirming, but also function within a framework that allows the self to develop, mature, and integrate the different types of tensions these symbols mirror, which reflect parts of its own experiential world (including the social world) in different ways. In a psychological context, this occurs when the self experiences what psychologists call optimal frustration.5 In this way, the self becomes able to form a type of narrative about itself that is open and dynamic, characterized by both activity and passivity. This narrative may in turn also condition the ways in which the self experi5 Optimal frustration is the amount of frustration that allows the individual to relate to the world in a manner that sufficiently takes into account both a realistic approach to it and a sufficiently open approach to the potential this world may contain in terms of what the self can make out of it. It is, accordingly, not identical with maximal frustration, which may be more than the self can handle and cope with.

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ences its world.6 The narrative allows the self to emerge or develop in a process of time, where the different self-descriptions, due to their dynamic character, also indicate the dynamics of the self. The narrative does not tie the self to some indissoluble or static descriptions, but allows the self – in autonomous interaction with others – to employ these in order to develop further.7 This, in turn, means that the positive function of religion for the self is not to be seen in its provision of reassurance – for example, of the self ’s narcissistic grandiosity – but in its capacity for presenting the self with a realistic notion of itself that also allows the self to employ a rich world of transitional objects, which may include elements experienced as challenging or negative to the self. However, the extent to which such a symbolic world will function in ways that promote further personal and spiritual growth in the self is largely dependent on the conditions for the self ’s self-relation, as this is developed in how others relate to the self and how the self relates to others. The self can be different and Other, depending on which Other it is related to and what types of self-imagery these relations make it possible to employ. Turning then to the negative ways in which the self is interpreted by means of religious imagery, we see first and foremost how specific notions of God may engender and increase experiences of shame, guilt, and negative self-worth. This is especially so in circumstances where the self has not been provided with optimal conditions for development and lacks the basic trust in self and basic self-esteem that come with sufficient and adequate mirroring.8 The self will then experience itself as related to a God that mirrors the parents’ own inadequate nurturing. The result may also imply that the self, when engaging with religious symbols based on this framework, will be stalled or impeded in her future personal development – even to the extent that she may be unable to develop (any sound) religious belief at all. Hence, the past restricts the future and determines it, instead of opening it up in (and for) freedom and for faith. Such selves will reinforce harsh religious imagery and will be reinforced in their own self-perception by such imagery. Thus, in theological terms, the sins caused by others’ neglect and 6

Cf. Mark Johnson: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 9. 7 “The deepening of interpersonal relationships may lead us to the experience of the sacred. And to the extent that religious practices facilitate the enrichment of conscious experience, they can contribute positively to health and growth.” JW Jones, Religion and Psychology in Transition: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Theology (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1996), 68. 8 See, for example, James William Jones, Blood That Cries out from the Earth:The Psychology of Religious Terrorism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and Stephen Pattison, Shame:Theory,Therapy,Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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lack of nurture may in turn also contribute to a lack of the faith and trust that are prerequisites for a religious faith that can experience the world of religious symbols as enriching and liberating.

3. Conclusion: Religion as a Hermeneutics of the Temporal Self The processes that operate in the above suggested religious configurations of the self are not necessarily transparent to the self in question. But there are two points we need to have in mind and articulate clearly based on the understandings of self developed so far: First, a religious self must be understood as a subject of agency and thought. Accordingly, I suggest emphasizing the necessity of distinguishing between a pre-subjective and a subjective level of the self, also because our understanding of the self is often related to the conscious self as subject of agency and thought. This distinction is necessary to thematize properly the temporal conditions for the development of the self in ways that allow us to see the self as a process in interplay with others, even before it becomes fully aware of itself as a subject of agency or as fully distinguished from others. Second, and furthermore, an understanding of the self from the point of view of religion which ignores this distinction between presubjective and subjective and only operates with an understanding of the self as an agent or a subject fully in charge of its own development and conduct will easily end up by ignoring the potential ways in which religious resources, such as teaching and proclamation, may have an impact on the self. Moreover, it will also operate with an understanding of the self that is inadequate for making sense of all the self ’s temporally-conditioned experiences from a religious or theological point of view. Thus, a religious hermeneutics of the self necessarily will have to consider the temporal and developmental process in which the self is, or has been, involved. The effect of the above understanding of the religious self means that in order to understand the self within a religious context, one cannot simply see how it is described from the point of view of some doctrinal orthodoxy and then leave it at that. Such an approach implies a radical restriction, and philosophy of religion should contribute to understanding it as such a restriction. Accordingly, it is necessary to see how the self is engaged in temporally-conditioned religious symbols and discourse, and in turn, how the self also engages such symbols and discourses. The way this happens will be conditioned by the story of the self in time and expressible in selfnarrative. It is necessary to pay attention to individual self-narratives in order to understand the meaning of religion, because it is in such narratives that we can detect which religious symbols are engaged, as well as which symbols are not as important for the self. And, as is well-known, narrative

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presupposes time.9 By looking at how symbols work in the narrative context, we may be able to detect a more profound and nuanced articulation of the temporal dimension of the self. At its best, religious imagery of the self may help the self to experience herself in new ways, and thus be liberated from manipulative, restricting, delimiting or outright oppressive modes of being in the world by providing rich and nuanced symbols of both God and self. In this way, religion contributes to a way of being in the world as a dynamic, free, and developing self. Thereby, religious symbolic resources may also contribute to the interpretation of self-experience and open up new and enriching future experiences that promote the growth of the self. But this can only happen if the self engages with the religious tradition in ways that contribute to and affirm the self ’s relative independence and autonomy. If not, the self can easily fall prey to restricted approaches to itself, approaches and symbols that do not function as part of a dialogical hermeneutics of self in which self and religious tradition are in interplay.10 Moreover, this approach means that religious traditions are probably most helpful when they symbolize – thereby help – the self to imagine its world in its ambiguity, thereby also encouraging the self ’s openness to what the future will bring: a reassuring and comforting religion may, if sufficiently one-sided, create a fantasizing self that is not able to overcome narcissistic fantasies and face reality properly. A too-idealizing religion, or a religion that paints reality in black, may deprive the self of a realistic view of, and hope for, the world in which it has to be engaged. A mature self can relate to a rich and varied reservoir of religious symbols, while a self arrested in its development may cling to a simplified religion marked by splitting and fantasy which is not helpful for her coming to terms with challenges that may arise.11 In this way, we may also see how Ricoeur’s dictum may appear meaningful in our context: symbols may give rise to thought, including selfsymbols, and these thoughts may return again to the symbolic sphere of religion, which in the present dialectic appears as an unceasing source of new interpretative resources for the self. A problem arises when this dialectical oscillation between thought and symbol – or self and symbol – is stalled. Then the positive output of engaging with the symbolic order during temporal processes is not sufficiently secured. A basic conclusion with regard to a religious hermeneutics of the self is then that such a hermeneutics will have to strengthen the self ’s capacities 9 Cf. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vols. 1–3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984–1988). 10 I have developed the conditions for such interplay more extensively in the closing chapter of my book God and the Self:The Interplay (forthcoming). 11 Cf. Jones, Blood That Cries, passim.

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for engaging with the world and coping with the experiences given in its relation to the world. This cannot be done unless one pays attention to the temporal aspect of the self ’s hermeneutic conditions and how they influence the perception of, and engagement with, religious imagery. Religion that basically works on, and reinforces, a sense of self that debases the self or ignores temporal and bodily experience or contributes to the development of a self that is adaptive, compliant, and undifferentiated from others, will promote the persistent manipulation of the self in a way that allows the past intentions of others to determine the future of the self only negatively and in terms of control. Then we are not talking about engaging religious resources in ways that are salvific for the self by opening up its future. Instead, we are talking about demonic religion.12

12 The choice of descriptive metaphor here is not arbitrary: the demonic is, in biblical terms, that which possesses the self, causes it to lose control of itself, and which emerges from Satan, who is the one that creates doubt, both in God and self.

Liturgy, Inoperativity, and Time Joseph Ballan The English word “secular” derives from the Latin saeculum, which originally referred to a measure of time, a chronological unit roughly equivalent to a century. So it is perhaps unsurprising that narratives of secularization often account for the advent of the secular as a transformation in a certain collective experience of temporality. When Marcel Mauss reviewed his friend and colleague Henri Hubert’s 1906 essay on representations of time in religion and magic, he suggested that the contemporary European problem that solicits Hubert’s transhistorical and transcultural study of the ways in which religious symbols and practices construct social time is the problem of the secular. Hubert’s essay ends with the startling claim that the original function of calendars is essentially religious. Despite the apparent rigidity with which calendars organize time, despite the homogeneity they seem to impose, their real purpose is actually the marking of those days that are heterogeneous in relation to quotidian time. In his review, Mauss takes the step that Hubert does not: he considers the impact of the advent of secular modernity on this immemorial function of the calendar. “Today,” Mauss writes, “religious chronology remains caught in … limbo, for a significant part of our mental activity continues to depend on old ways [that is, theological or ecclesiastical ways] of counting and classifying,”1 old ways, that is, of marking time, of endowing the inexorable flow of the irreversible with rhythms that are experienced and learned, and which become the basis of expectations and desires. One way of explaining the advent of secular modernity, then, is to say that old forms of discontinuity have been transformed – if not replaced – by weaker, confused versions of the same. Others since Mauss have reflected on this same phenomenon. In explaining the significance of the Jewish Sabbath, in which liturgy and festival are tightly interwoven, Abraham Joshua Heschel contrasts the secular order in which time has become qualitatively “homogeneous,” to the sabbatical sphere: keeping the Sabbath is an “art” whose goal is the “sanctification of

1 “Review of Hubert’s essay on time,” Essay on Time: A Brief Study of the Representation of Time in Religion and Magic, trans. Robert Parkin (Oxford: Durkheim Press, 1999), 94.

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time.”2 We have lost a collective and communal capacity, Heschel suggests, to sanctify time. Historian Jacques Le Goff shows how the “secularization of time” occurs as the gradual replacement of concrete liturgical time by a “labor time” established by the new commercial networks arising in the fourteenth century. With the emergence of these markets came the necessity of measuring time more precisely than the labor time of the past, measured by days not hours, required.3 Le Goff ’s thesis is that time becomes measurable in a new way in the fourteenth century, and this new measurability of time is a result of new labor conditions. Before this period, time received its rhythms from the church and from community festivals and other local ways of marking time. A time structured by liturgical and communal events was replaced with a “regular, normal time” whose normality was operated by the time of the merchants.4 This shift would give rise to a whole spirituality of work that encouraged the scrutiny of the use of time, best summarized by the humanist Alberti’s maxim: “never waste a single hour.”5 More recently, Charles Taylor’s monumental work on the advent of a secular age, that is, on a specific temporal experience of the secular, locates the emergence of the secular in an episode about time in a story that he picks up in medieval Europe. His general approach in the book is to investigate the “lived experience” of secularity and religiosity, which, for him, will necessarily include an investigation into the lived experience of time6 that gives historical detail to Walter Benjamin’s claim that time in modernity is both “homogeneous” and “empty”7 or indifferent to content. In the Middle Ages, Taylor suggests, a notion of secular time did indeed exist, namely, as the profane time of everyday life and work (that is, the life and work of the Christian laity). This secular, ordinary time is not opposed to liturgical or ecclesiastical time in a simple, straightforward fashion, but rather, in the Middle Ages higher times furnished an “organizing field” for secular time.8 Ordinary time could not be disassociated from Ordinary Time (that is, a liturgical season, namely, tempus per annum), among other seasons. The regular occurrence of “higher times” both supported a strict social hierarchy and helped fashion the “equilibrium” characteristic of the Middle Ages be2

Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 8. 3 Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 35, 44. 4 Ibid., 48. 5 Ibid., 52. 6 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 5. 7 See “On the Concept of History,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 1938– 1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003) 395–96, 401–2. 8 Ibid., 54.

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tween the demands of Christian faith for total dedication to God and the economic requirements of everyday life.9 This equilibrium is more than the product of a coordination between liturgical time and profane time: “higher times” include regular festive occasions like Carnival, in addition to the feast days of the church. Whether it is a matter of festivities or feast days, however, secular time could not be taken in itself as an autonomous, separable temporality, but only made sense as it related to “higher times.” Taylor expresses this sense of coordination between heterogeneous temporalities, this medieval synthesis, as a “multiplex vertical context,” a situation in which “everything relates to more than one kind of time.”10 The “vertical” provided a reference point for the “horizontal” without reducing the latter to the former. Our secular modern notion of time has substituted for this dialectic between ordinary and higher times the idea that what in medieval times was seen as “secular time … to us is just time, period.”11 The secular modern is accomplished as a kind of leveling of time. Enough of these kinds of stories have circulated that the claim underlying them is by now far from controversial. It is even banal: secular time is homogeneous, while the time of religious communities is heterogeneous. Yet the mere fact of a change in the old temporal systems of continuity and discontinuity is not really enough to tell us what many of these accounts want to tell us: what precisely is qualitatively different in liturgical, festive, and ritual time compared with secular time, beyond generalizations about how rituals and liturgies establish synchrony with events in the distant, perhaps mythic, past. A synonym for “heterogeneous time” is “qualitative time.” Yet the hardest thing of all is to say just what constitutes the “qualitative” in this sense. The issue with “heterogeneous time” is roughly analogous to the one concerning the “idea of the Holy” as famously expounded by Rudolf Otto and as diagnosed by Karl Kerényi, a historian of ancient religions. Kerényi complains that Otto’s concept of “Das Heilige” reifies the sacred and is powerless to account for the specific “work of religion,”12 that is, of establishing temporal continuity and discontinuity.13 In both cases, 9

Ibid., 44. Ibid., 57. 11 Ibid., 55. 12 “Vom Wesen des Festes,” in Antike Religion (München: Langen und Müller Verlag, 1971), 47 (emphasis mine). 13 In developing his “philosophy of ancient religion,” Kerényi often makes an analogy between works of art and works of religion, but he wishes to guard against allowing this analogy to become an equivalence, so he specifies that the history and philosophy of religions do not take the beautiful as their object of study, but that instead they must interpret what he calls the “workly” (das Werkhafte), which is to say, those modes of activity in which religions take on flesh and produce definite, spatio-temporal forms. 10

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the theoretical challenge is to say how a certain human activity constructs another sense of temporality out of the material of irreversible time.14 Now, it is indisputable that the “work of religion” in affectively investing specific segments of time will be different for each historically and culturally determined form of liturgy and festival. Yet as Jan Assmann has suggested in his essay “Der zweidimensionale Mensch,” we can make certain modest, limited “metahistorical” and “metacultural”15 claims about liturgy and festival because human beings are made to live in two kinds of time, which Assmann calls “everyday time” (Alltagszeit) and “festive time” (Festzeit). “One-dimensional man” – to borrow the title of Herbert Marcuse’s famous book which Assmann’s essay implicitly engages – is a relatively recent product. Assmann’s essay implies that it is not only a product of “new forms of control,” “the closing of the political universe,” and “repressive desublimation,” as it was for Marcuse,16 but it is also a result of a weakening, if not a disappearance, of what Taylor calls “gathered time,” examples of which include communal liturgies, festivals, and rites.Which is to say that Assmann invites us to give a theological or religious – but also a temporal – sense to Marcuse’s idea of “one-dimensional society.” One cannot understand the creation of the latter without accounting for a process whereby time is leveled or homogenized. In this essay, I wish to suggest that an underthematized quality of Festzeit is a temporal logic of “inoperativity.” In doing so, I am following the lead of two very different contemporary philosophers: the Benjaminian leftist Giorgio Agamben and the Catholic phenomenologist Jean-Yves Lacoste. I do not hope to reconcile their accounts, neither of which is completely satisfactory. However, both allow us to start thinking about the political and ethical stakes of these communal ways of marking time. Theories of festival and liturgy tend to entail claims about how some form of common life represents and organizes time; they articulate a relationship between the ordinary and that which exceeds, interrupts, or transcends everyday life, reconfiguring it in the process. And it is this (re)configuration of the “two-dimensionality” described by Assmann that interests me in this paper. “Umgang mit Göttlichem,” in Wege und Weggenossen (München: Langen und Müller Verlag, 1985), 19. 14 Note that Kerényi insists that the time of the religions is not a timelessness or a leave-taking of time, but is instead a transformation of temporality. See Antike Religion, 51. 15 “Der zweidimensionale Mensch: das Fest als Medium des kollektiven Gedächtnisses,”Das Fest und das Heilige: Religiöse Kontrapunkte zur Alltagswelt, ed. Jan Assmann with Theo Sundermeier (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1991), 14. Translation of quotes in English are mine. 16 These are chapter titles, as well as key concepts, in One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

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What, then, is “inoperative time?” The first observation is that it is obviously not a property of time itself, but a particular way of using time, of seizing time and giving meaning to it. In this sense, it is a work of religion on time. Agamben writes that “kairos is nothing more than seized chronos.”17 More specifically, inoperative time is a seizing or usage of time that cannot be reduced to utility. Theologies and philosophies of liturgy commonly account for worship as a sphere from which considerations of utility are by definition excluded. In his 1948 Muße und Kult, Josef Pieper gives an exemplary formulation of this principle: “sacrifice is the very center of worship. And sacrifice means a free offering freely given and never anything useful.”18 Although this particular passage is not overtly concerned with temporality, it is clear that what Pieper means by sacrifice is not primarily a spending of material resources but a free expenditure of time. In this way, Pieper sees liturgy as a site of resistance against contemporary trends toward “proletarianization,” furnishing liturgy with a political significance. Capitalism sets up the equivalence articulated succinctly by Benjamin Franklin that “time is money,” an equivalence reflected in the way we speak of time in the English language: time is a resource, it is something that one spends, budgets, manages, saves, invests, allocates, or wastes. Forms of valuation and expenditure of money depend on ideas about the valuation and expenditure of time. Philip Goodchild’s recent work has shown some of the consequences of this intricate interdependence, this “energetic coupling,” between time and capital: “a quantum of time is valued when it is given a price, and a price is valued when it saves time … Capital enframes modern life, but the force of this encompassment is only given by its alliance with time as the deepest form of interiority, time that insinuates itself within modern life.”19 Against the backdrop of this system, worship is a gratuitous expenditure or wasting of time, a loss of a precious resource. The gratuitousness with which human worshipers give of their time can be understood as a response to the time they have been graciously given by God. “Inoperativity” is Lacoste’s way of making a point similar to Pieper’s, but without making any claims about the work of God (because, in writing about liturgy, he is purportedly speaking as a phenomenologist, not as a theologian, although the boundary admittedly becomes quite blurry). The word “inoperativity” is a translation of the French désouevrement and the Italian inoperosità (in the case of Agamben), both of which can be translated 17

Giorgi Agamben, The Time that Remains, trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 69. 18 Josef Pieper, Muße und Kult (München: Kösel Verlag, 1948), 81. 19 Philip Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety (London: Routledge, 2003), 134.

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as idleness. Lacoste marks out liturgy as the suspension of everything that Hannah Arendt identified and described in The Human Condition as constituting the vita activa: labor, work, and action. Now Arendt herself remarks that Christianity has had the historical effect of devaluing the vita activa. Her historical narrative attributes this devaluation to a Christian doctrine of the afterlife that makes everything worldly – that is, everything which conditions human life on earth – seem pale in comparison to the glories of a promised heaven.20 Lacoste, however, attributes the de-realizing, if not the devaluing, of labor, work, and action to the demands of a specifically liturgical existence, rather than to a more conceptual or doctrinal sense of eschatological promise. “Action” means something different in liturgy than in the world of politics, so that opus dei as the “work” of the people of God has nothing to do with Arendt’s understanding of “work” as the construction of a human world of artifacts that would serve human needs.21 On the contrary, the demands of such a world are suspended in the liturgical lifeworld, according to Lacoste.22 As Lacoste defines it, inoperativity is “the refusal to enter into any logic of production” – whether that of labor, work, or action – “in the name of a logic bound up with more urgent stakes.”23 Operating at a phenomenological “distance” from the regimes of world and earth, liturgical conduct is a form of action that produces absolutely nothing, strictly speaking. Of course, following what Arendt says about the effect of the history of Christian eschatology on the valuation of the vita activa in the West, one could build a skeptical critique of this claim on the observation that worshipers might simply be paying with the coin of one economy – an economy of time – in the hopes of getting a return in the coin of another, more glorious and eternal one. In this case, there is most definitely an analogy to be drawn between action in liturgy and action in the world of work; it is for precisely this reason that Feuerbach identifies as the practical purpose of religion – that is, the essential truth of religious practices – the effort to win some favor or assistance from the divine. But for Lacoste and Pieper at least such an economic approach to liturgy does not deserve the name worship. Phenomenologically, considerations of duty never enter into the logic of liturgy, properly understood. As soon as liturgical practice becomes 20

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 16. 21 For a brief summary of the three constituent elements of the vita activa, see The Human Condition, 7–17. 22 Lacoste defines the time and the space of liturgy, somewhat hyperbolically, as “non-place” and “non-time.” Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man, trans. Mark Raftery-Skehan (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 83. 23 Ibid., 78.

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an investment for which one expects a return, be it in this life or the one to come, one has left the sphere of liturgy, strictly speaking. One has perhaps entered the realm of theurgy,24 where the intent of one’s ritual conduct is the calling down of divine power for some end. Here we see quite clearly the intertwining of the descriptive and the prescriptive that characterizes nearly every theoretical account of liturgy. Liturgical time is time that could be used otherwise, but is diverted toward worship and prayer. To observers existing outside of the liturgical life-world, worship appears to be a diversion of time away from activities that bear on real problems. And indeed, many people today prefer a vague “spirituality” to institutional religion precisely because of the apparent uselessness of ritual gatherings. One might justifiably ask whether it would not be a better use of one’s time to be working actively for justice on the streets and in the slums rather than singing the praises of a deity who rather conveniently eludes the sensible order. But human beings cannot spend all of their waking hours engaged in productive work. It is significant that Lacoste’s reflections on inoperativity come in a book whose subtitle is “disputed questions on the humanity of the human.” He takes the question of the practices of worship as an anthropological one and concludes that human beings are, in part, defined by their need for the inoperative. All people have at least some measure of what Lacoste designates as “vigil:” vigil is having time to do something other than work, even if it means stealing time from sleep. Vigil here is to be taken understood metaphorically, encompassing all those activities that one engages in after work is complete and responsibilities fulfilled. It is the sphere in which hours are not used, either for providing for the basic needs of the body, nor for earning money, nor for doing what is ethically required, but for engaging that which exceeds the necessary. It is the sphere of leisure, aesthetic pursuits, and liturgy. How one spends one’s vigil, Lacoste claims, determines the meaning one gives to one’s life. It is the time of prayer, but it is also the time of revelry.25 For Lacoste, both the worshiper and the reveler steal time from the demands of work and duty in order to become involved with a form of existence that goes beyond the merely necessary. Both liturgy and revelry stand in contrast to other forms of action; as such, the way they choose to spend time amounts to a “critique” of the contemporary privileging of “doing” over “being,” and especially of that form of “doing” called “work.”26 Lacoste does not consider the phenomenon of revelry in much detail. He places the reveler and the worshiper in the same class of those who keep

24 25 26

Ibid., 91. Ibid., 79–80. Ibid., 80.

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vigil only to separate them ultimately, distinguishing between these two forms of inoperative time. Let us pursue this comparison more closely. The reveler operates according to a temporal logic of divertissement in the Pascalian sense. Pascal defines diversion or divertissement as rooted in the restless need for activities that keep one from giving thought to matters of essential and eternal importance. It is both a sign of deep unhappiness and evidence of a search for that which would stave off that unhappiness.What is more, Pascal also gives a clearly temporal sense to diversion and recognizes, I think, a logic of inoperativity. “A man who has enough [money] to live on,” he writes, “would not go to sea or lay a siege, if he knew how to enjoy staying at home … [he] would not seek conversation and the entertainment of games” (activities he views as diversions).27 An inability to practice one kind of inoperativity – the idleness of contemplation, meditation or thought – brings about another practice of inoperativity – divertissement – which we can now see names both a kind of activity, such as playing mindless games and gossiping and engaging in revelry, but also a specific usage of time: a diversion of the time that one has left over if one’s duties have been completed.Worship, on the other hand, is also a diversion in this sense of a seizure or diverting of time away from other possible activities, but it diverts time in precisely the opposite direction from Pascalian divertissement: toward what is essentially and eternally significant. Two forms of idleness: one mindless, the other mindful. There are, however, no affective similarities for Lacoste between revelry and worship. Liturgy produces an “unhappy consciousness” in relationship to the given order of things.28 One of liturgy’s eschatological functions is to reveal that the world is not as it should be; consequently, joy and celebration, do not seem to be essential to liturgical existence. Lacoste wants to keep strictly separate what Plato’s Laws, for example, runs together. In that long, late dialog, the nameless Athenian praises leisure as the telos of human existence, but only insofar as leisure is associated with both liturgical and celebratory practices. Plato writes that man, as “plaything of the gods … should spend his whole life at ‘play’ – sacrificing, singing, dancing – so that he can win the favor of the gods.”29 Behind these recommendations for the expenditure of time, one hears the aphorism of Heraclitus, that “we are most nearly ourselves [i.e., most nearly human] when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.” Plato adds specificity to this aphorism: ar27

Blaise Pascal, Pensées S168/L136. Lacoste, Experience and the Absolute, 66–70. 29 803c–e. Plato also gives an account of the origins of something similar to what we have been calling inoperativity: “the gods took pity on the human race, born to suffer as it was, and gave it relief in the form of religious festivals to serve as periods of rest from its labors” (653d). 28

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ranging one’s life such that ample time is reserved for idleness, liturgy, and celebration befits the specific nature of humanity in relationship to the world of the divine. It seems that the absence of joy, celebration, or festivity from Lacoste’s account of the liturgical life-world matters, not so much because liturgy is necessarily joyful, as Plato seems to assume in including it under the rubric of “play,” but because the liturgical unhappiness of consciousness can only have ethical, not political, significance, according to Lacoste. Despite the fact that liturgy is not a sphere in which action is governed by the logic of duty, there remains a positive relationship between liturgical life and ethical life. Indeed, the manner in which liturgy informs a specifically ethical sense of what is (eschatologically) essential and what is merely provisional is said to be “the fundamental rhythm of existence” for the one who exists coram deo. He carefully details how liturgical practice forms ethical sensibilities,30 yet he assumes – that is to say, takes for granted and consequently does not attempt to demonstrate – that liturgy “resolves, in a symbolic manner … the contradictions of political and social experience,”31 including, it would appear, the contradictions proper to the public world of work. So while the inoperativity proper to liturgy has real ethical significance, it only has symbolic political significance, and therefore ultimately has an attenuated relationship to the concrete level of everyday life, the concrete spheres of human toil. Lacoste cannot imagine how liturgy, as a form of life governed by the logic of inoperativity, might undo the energetic coupling of time and money that enframes modern life, if only for a short duration, or how liturgy might call into question the equivalence of a human being with the kind of labor with which she spends her days and/or nights. Yet in these ways, I would suggest, liturgies stage a different common world,32 a different way of partitioning the sensible order than what one attains/has in the world of work, in which one’s identity is bound up with one’s occupation. On his own terms, there does not seem to be any reason for Lacoste’s position that liturgy informs ethics but not politics. He certainly does not consider the following striking claim made by Arendt: that Christianity made a certain form of inoperativity – one that has a great deal in common with 30

See Lacoste, Experience and the Absolute, 75–6. Ibid., 78. 32 Of course, this way of putting things is also a symbolic operation. In thinking about how liturgies relate to other forms of communal life – like ethics and politics – it is impossible to avoid this symbolic level. What is perhaps more problematic is that Lacoste thinks his symbolization operates as a resolution. But does not inoperativity – as an active undoing of a relationship between human beings and a certain regime of time – offer the possibility of a potentially polemical relationship with other such regimes (say, a capitalist regime of time as explicated by Philip Goodchild), the possibility, that is, of dissent from the dominant spatio-temporal order of things? 31

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the idleness of the ancient philosopher and was thus a privilege reserved for the few – into “a right of all.”33 Agamben, by contrast, has a richer account of the ways in which liturgy and festival have the potential to reconfigure everyday life. The differences between these two accounts of inoperative time are, at least in part, a consequence of their different eschatologies. Both Agamben and Lacoste identify the eschatological stakes of liturgy: such practices do not give access to the Parousia, to the sensible presence of God, but make possible an experience of the disjointedness of time in a world from which that presence is absent. Lacoste’s telling statement about a merely symbolic reconciliation on the social and political levels is a consequence of the eschatological underpinnings of his understanding of liturgy, as we shall see. A mode of inoperativity discussed at some length in Agamben’s book on Saint Paul is the Pauline “as if:” in the first letter to the Corinthians (7:29–32), Paul unfolds, as a consequence of the messianic contraction of time, a work of inoperativity with respect to existing social relations: “the time is shortened,” Paul writes, so therefore “let even those who have wives be as though they had none … those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it.” It seems that for Lacoste this “as if ” corresponds to a liturgical “as if:” in the space of liturgy, one acts “as if ” the presence experienced in that space really were the Parousia, thereby “consign[ing] to irrelevance everything that separates man from the Parousia,”34 rendering inoperative such things as marital and economic relations, as Paul writes. For Agamben, however, eschatological existence is not a matter of waiting for a future fulfillment or recapitulation of all things, but a way of dwelling within profane life, which is constitutively “out of sync” with other representations of time, including, I would suggest, monetary representations of time. In Judaism as in early Christianity, Agamben notes, “Saturday … constituted a kind of small-scale model for messianic time,” as well as an anticipation of eschatological rest, I would add. In the Jewish tradition, inoperativity is an attribute of God. The injunction to keep the Sabbath, to sanctify it, is grounded in the theological principle articulated by Philo of Alexandria: “only God is truly an inoperative being.” The rest (or “idleness” or “inoperativity”) that qualifies the holy time of the Sabbath is a human response to, and an imitation of, an essential characteristic of the Eternal One. Noting that the capacity to sanctify time has been weakened in secular modern 33

Arendt, The Human Condition, 15. Lacoste would no doubt take this observation in a very different direction than Arendt.Yet, especially in light of his explicit strategy of defining inoperativity as the suspension of Arendt’s vita activa, it would be interesting to hear him respond to this point. 34 Experience and the Absolute, 58.

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cultures, Agamben would seem to concur with Charles Taylor, who, as noted earlier, claims that the communal capacity for festival has migrated into the sphere of private life in a secular age. In Lacoste’s terminology, revelry not only competes with worship, but it has replaced worship, on a cultural scale. Agamben writes, “We insist on dancing, making up for the loss of music with the noise of discos and loudspeakers … but we are no longer able to reach menuchah, the simple, but for us impracticable, inoperativity that could alone restore meaning to the feast.”35 While Lacoste’s idea of liturgy seems clearly restricted to Christian forms of worship (although this decision, in his book on the phenomenology of liturgy, is left implicit), Agamben takes the Sabbath as paradigmatic for the form of inoperativity he thinks is in short supply today. The Sabbath is a way of realizing – in both senses of the word: of coming to know, but also of enacting – what Agamben calls the disjointedness within chronological time itself. But this is not an operation whereby the sphere of the sacred merely relativizes or renders irrelevant the sphere of the profane. Instead, Agamben conceives of inoperativity as a transformation of everyday activities, of freeing them from the context of quotidian economies of action. He often cites the rabbinic saying that Walter Benjamin reports having heard from Ernst Bloch, to the effect that “the messianic world is not another world, but the secular world itself, with a slight adjustment,” a small difference.36 As he writes in an essay on festivity and Sabbath, “what is essential [about festive inoperativity] is a dimension of praxis in which simple, everyday human activities are neither negated nor abolished but suspended and rendered inoperative in order to be exhibited, as such, in a festive manner.”37 To return to the issue with which we began – that of the secularization of time – it is important to note that Agamben is not mourning that process, as one could say Charles Taylor implicitly is. He wonders provocatively whether, in their festal forms of using time to exhibit the quotidian in a new way, religions have not seized upon and modified something originally and essentially profane. In that case, Agamben’s theoretical task is coupled with the political and aesthetic challenge of imagining the sanctification of time without the sacred. This stands as a reminder once again of the normative implications of even those theories of liturgy that present themselves as purely descriptive. Even though we have given a great deal more attention to Lacoste’s than Agamben’s account, it should be evident by now not only that they mean quite different things by “inoperativity,” but that their uses of this 35 Giorgio Agamben, Nudities, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 106. 36 See, for example, Agamben, The Time that Remains, 69. 37 Agamben, Nudities, 112.

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word are intended to designate and explain rather different phenomena. Even though both are examples of what Charles Taylor calls “gathered time” and are therefore relevant to the problem with which we began (the secularization of time as the disappearance of such temporal forms), more work would be required for each historically and culturally specific form to account for that form of life as a unique partition of the sensible. My goal in this paper has simply been to sketch some of the generic outlines of what Kerényi calls the “work of religion” on time. Marxists and theologians alike can speak of heterogeneous and homogeneous time (in the case of the Marxist, the reduction of the time of life to the time of work;38 in the case of the theologian, the flattening of the rich “gathered time” of liturgies and sacred calendars) without realizing that the forms of time they describe share certain properties in common. The concept of “inoperativity” as developed beginning from Lacoste and Agamben among others, allows us to better understand the relationship between the spheres of religion and work, a relationship marked as much by a political theology as by a politics of time. A brief reading of these two very different philosophers suggests that one of the salient features of the discontinuity proper to religious temporality is a unique quality of idleness or inactivity, a quality upon which many historical and cultural variations are possible, with vastly different ethical and political consequences.

38 Here I have in mind the work of heterodox Marxist thinker Henri Lefebvre. Cf., for example, his book Rhythmanalysis: Space,Time, and Everyday Life, trans. and ed. Stuart Elden (New York: Continuum, 2004), 43–4, 48.

The Absolutism of Boredom Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen Ein Vorwurf für einen grossen Dichter wäre die Langeweile Gottes am siebenten Tage der Schöpfung.1

1. Monotono-theism In his book The Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche speaks about the “pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism”: a God characterised by stationary invariability and paralyzing unchangeability. “Two thousand years have come and gone,” Nietzsche regretfully laments “ – and not a single new god!”2 Nietzsche thereby seems to express his disappointment at the sterility and poverty of human imagination. Nietzsche’s notorious (and often banalized) statement that “God is dead” is here, it seems, brought in relation to God’s timeless eternity.To formulate the matter somewhat more pointedly: God dies from God’s dreary perfection and boring eternity. The death of God becomes the end result of Nietzsche’s self-conceived myth. In the present text I wish to engage in a small piece of “undisguised speculative theology.”3 I will focus on boredom, eternity, and time and take Nietzsche’s aforementioned polemical observations in relation to the concept of God as my explicit point of departure. First, however, a short methodological remark: Even though it has perhaps become futile to make theoretical statements about matters which lie beyond the realm of human experience, this Kantian restriction does not mean that we are not allowed to investigate the potential meaning and significance of such topics, including the idea of God. In other words: Even though we can no longer aspire to any proof of God, we can still work on the concept of God, as Hans Jonas has pointed out.4 Even Plato regarded 1

Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Zweiter Band (1879), Werke I, (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1954) p. 903. Translation: “A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom on the seventh day of creation.” 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist (1895), Werke II (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1954) 1178–9. 3 Hans Jonas, Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987), 7. 4 Ibid., 9.

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myths as both legitimate and indeed unavoidable figurative means of mapping out matters that lie beyond the sphere of the “rationally” knowable. In Timaeus, where he introduces his treatment of the cosmos, Plato remarks that, with regard to matters where we are unable to render a purely rational account, we must be content to “receive a likely story (ton eikoton mython) and look for nothing further”5 (Tim 29 D). It may simply be rational “not to be rational to the utmost extent.”6

2. Back to the Future The past is that which is no longer, but affects us nonetheless. Trivial as it may sound, every past (or future) is always the past (or future) of a given present. This does not, however, imply that the past should be simply subjected to the requirements or needs of a given present. One must avoid what Hans Blumenberg refers to as the “absolutism of whatever happens to be present” (Absolutismus der jeweiligen Gegenwart),7 because it overlooks the contingency of the present and neglects the human efforts invested in that which is no longer present. The past should therefore never be regarded merely as a means for “the current needs of actualisation” (Aktualitätsbedürfnisse einer Gegenwart).”8 At the same time it should always be considered an end in itself. Besides this Kantian-inspired ethical appeal – understood as a “historical respect for the equal rank of the aids that man avails himself in comprehending the world”9 – there is another reason for not simply handing over the past to the needs of the present. One could characterize this reason with an expression from Reinhart Koselleck’s book Vergangene Zukunft, that is, “former futures of the past” (Keith Tribe’s English translation of this book is Futures Past which is somewhat misguiding because it seems to entail the kind of definitiveness which is intentionally avoided – or at least left open – in the German original).10 Just as Heidegger in Being and Time (1927) considered Dasein with respect to Dasein’s future possibilities, the subject matter of history does not become simple frozen facticity, but rather past possibilities and prospects – that is, past conceptions of the 5

Plato, Timaeus, 29 D, Vol. 7, (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), 37. 6 Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, tr. Robert Wallace (Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), 163. 7 Hans Blumenberg, The Genesis of the Copernican World, tr. Robert Wallace (Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 124. 8 Hans Blumenberg, Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 168. 9 Blumenberg, The Genesis of the Copernican World, 171–172. 10 Cf. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, tr. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

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future or simply: former futures of the past. “Back to the future,” therefore, is not simply the title of an American science fiction comedy from 1985, but in fact constitutes a philosophical line of reflection which can be summarized as follows: The past is not merely what it has been, but also resides in the plasticity of what could have been. Back to the future can thus be seen as a philosophical claim about the unfinished openness of the past. But the plasticity of what could have been not only applies to history but also to myths. Myths, too, can be re-opened and their inherent plasticity can be explored. Here, a distinction introduced by Blumenberg seems relevant. Blumenberg distinguishes between “the work of myth” (which consists in the de-intensification of “the absolutism of reality”) and “the work on myth” (which seems to be the title of Blumenberg’s own philosophical undertaking) and he claims that one must “already have the work of myth behind one in order to be able to apply oneself to the work on myth.”11 This immediately seems to suggest that an exclusive disjunction subsists between the “work of myth” and the “work on myth.” That would seem to presuppose that myth (as such) could be brought to an end – a claim Blumenberg explicitly rejects.12 Rather, his idea is that myths have always-already undergone reception; myths are only available to us in the form of continuous acts of reception, which seems to be the essential claim behind one of the chapter headings: “The reception of the sources produces the sources of the reception.”13 Thus, work on myth is a historical continuation of the work already undertaken by myth, by means of philosophical reflection – namely the humanization of the world. My claim is that Blumenberg’s work on myth may also be interpreted as a way in which he undertakes a remythicization of theology using an idea about imaginative variations. Admittedly, this claim seems to contradict Blumenberg’s own words when he states that almost all attempts at “remythicization originate in a longing for the compelling quality of those supposedly early discoveries of meaning, but they were frustrated and will continue to be frustrated by the unrepeatability of the conditions of their genesis.”14 My claim therefore has to be clarified: Blumenberg does not aim at uncovering a repressed or forgotten “original meaning” of a given myth, but he does use an idea (inspired by Nietzsche) of a remythicization of God as the underlying axis of argumentation and as a “model” for his imaginative variations of the myth of paradise which form the point of departure for the following considerations. My claim is that Blumenberg attempts to examine the question of God using what he (in relation to the history of science) refers to as an expansion 11 12 13 14

Blumenberg, Work on Myth, 266. Cf. ibid., 633. Ibid., 299ff. Ibid., 161.

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of the “latitudes for possible changes” or an extension of “the breadth of variation.”15 That is why we – following Blumenberg – can ask once again: What happened in Paradise?16

3. Once Again: What happened in Paradise? In Either/Or (1843), Søren Kierkegaard remarks that “idleness (Lediggang) is the root of all evil.”17 Can this observation be applied to God, too? Was evil perhaps nothing but an instance of God’s own boredom? In Nietzsche, we find the idea that God sneaked into the Garden of Eden going to the tree of wisdom, masked as a snake, in order to regain strength. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes: Speaking theologically – one should listen closely, since I rarely speak as a theologian – it was God himself who at the end of his day’s work laid himself under the tree of knowledge as a serpent: thus he recuperated from being God. He18 had made everything too beautiful. – The devil is merely the leisure of God on every seventh day.19

Werner Thiede has argued that in this very passage, Nietzsche reveals himself as a theologian who speaks about God “beyond the opposition of good and evil.”20 In brief, he claims that Nietzsche the anti-metaphysician attempts to think God beyond the dualistic opposition between “good” and “evil” by letting these two opposite dimensions coincide in a kind of mythical (and maybe quasi-Cusan, one is tempted to ask?) idea of coincidentia oppositorum. God thereby becomes a purely immanent, anti-dualistic circulus vitiosus: God as “faulty circuit … as a ‘God-devil-circuit’ but nonetheless as 15

Blumenberg, The Genesis of the Copernican World, 131. Cf. Hans Blumenberg, Matthäuspassion, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988), p. 95. 17 Søren Kierkegaard, Enten-Eller, Samlede Værker, vols. 2 & 3 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal), 266 (my translation). 18 References to God as “he” and humanity as “man” have been retained in original quotations where unavoidable. 19 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1954), Werke II, p. 1142 (my translation). Ecce Homo was published posthumously in 1908. It belongs to a group of Nietzsche’s works that were subject to significant manipulation by his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. In a footnote Blumenberg wonders whether the editor really produced an accurate reading in the 1908 edition, in which the texts reads “on every seventh day” (an jedem siebenten Tage) instead of the philosophically less demanding “on that seventh day” (an jenem siebten Tag). “After all, is it not only the latter which is in question here?” asks Blumenberg, dryly (Work on Myth, 649). 20 Werner Thiede, “Wer aber kennt meinen Gott? Friedrich Nietzsches ‘Theologie’ als Geheimnis seiner Philosophie” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 98 (2001), 464–500, here 475. 16

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a God. Nietzsche’s thinking thereby opens up the way for a consequent, but inscrutable snake-theology.”21 Nietzsche’s attempt is not, Thiede argues, to simply negate God as such but rather to make room for a new God beyond the traditional opposition between good and evil, being and appearance.22 Here God metamorphizes into the snake, as if in protest against the dogmatization of Christian theology. The dogmatic God of Christianity is, in Nietzsche’s speculative variation, subjected to a “remythicisation.”23 Blumenberg thus makes the following note about the almighty and eternal God of Christianity: God is omnipotent, omniscient, and completely without need of all external objects. Now, does the fact that he is omniscient mean that he wants to know anything at all? Must not his state of needlessness be understood so that he has no interest in anything that he himself is not? Gott ist allmächtig, allwissend und völlig unbedürftig aller ihm äußeren Gegenstände. Bedeutet nun, dass er allwissend ist, dass er überhaupt etwas wissen will? Muss nicht sein Zustand der Unbedürftigkeit so aufgefasst werden, dass er keinerlei Interesse an irgend etwas hat, was er nicht selbst ist?24

Why should a God without interests and needs want anything whatsoever? Is not God’s alleged “unmoved state” (Unbewegtheit) the very epitome “of his lack of interest in the world”25? God as the Christian version of Aristotle’s “unmoved mover” appears in this light to be a God who is congealed in dogmatic sterility and unalterable apathy. “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14) a well-known formulation goes, which in Nietzsche’s eyes becomes the formula for the disastrous disease of wanting to establish oneself in eternal self-identity.26 Blumenberg seems to interpret Nietzsche’s words as a sort of remythicization of theological doctrines.27 Nietzsche had proclaimed music to be an effective antidote to boredom. In Blumenberg’s thought, a similar sympathy for the musical variation and its suggestive power can be found. Moreover, Blumenberg seems to affiliate himself with the (Nietzschean) idea that music – in particular the tones of Bach – forms the basis of an alternative intonation of the theological material of reflection. This becomes particularly evident in Johann Sebastian Bach’s celebrated composition from 1729, which constitutes the explicit background for Blu21 22 23 24

247. 25

Ibid., 481 (my translation). Ibid., 488 (my translation). Work on Myth, 29. Hans Blumenberg, Zu den Sachen und zurück, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2002),

Blumenberg, Work on Myth, 29. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, tr. Robert Wallace (Mass.: MIT Press, 1983), 105. 27 Blumenberg, Work on Myth, 29. 26

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menberg’s variations on “the death of God” hypothesis.28 It might seem as though Blumenberg is locating the tenor of his own “theology” in Bach’s musical composition. Again, the question of sin may be seen as the point of departure. In Blumenberg’s reading of this passage, Nietzsche’s daring variant of the myth of paradise likewise constitutes the point of departure to advance the hypothesis that evil is inherently present in Creation itself, namely, as God’s “satiety with the good that he has made, because he sees that it cannot have any future, any history.”29 Paradise thus holds an unbearable “stationary finality and completeness,” denoting the “negation of history, the epitome of a god’s boredom.”30 The temptation in Paradise was, Blumenberg argues with Nietzsche, God’s trick (Kunstgriff), God’s device to give God’s own work a quality of history thereby avoiding the issue “that the good bores him, even the good that he himself is.”31 God, in the metamorphosis of the snake, adopts the role of the devil. The expulsion from Paradise thus constitutes none other than God’s “own secret wish” which results from “boredom with the mode of domestication called Paradise”32: This God did not regret having created, but he did regret the extent of a perfection that as “Paradise” already had to be the end, the epitome of every satisfaction [das Maß einer Volkommenheit, die als “Paradies” schon das Ende, der Inbegriff aller Zufriedenheiten sein musste]. Sin was a trick, and the old antithesis of good and evil was only a deception from the very beginning, in Paradise – the trap [die Falle] in which man was to be caught because he believed that this was the secret that God was withholding from him.33 28 In Matthäuspassion. one of the chapter headings reads: “Nietzsche als Hörer der Matthäuspassion gedacht” (Matthäuspassion, 68ff). This title’s “hypothetical” character need not remain hypothetical. Werner Stegmaier has pointed out that the young Nietzsche – in a letter from April 30, 1870 – makes the following observation: “In dieser Woche habe ich dreimal die Matthäuspassion des göttlichen Bachs gehört, jedesmal mit demselben Gefühl der unermesslichen Verwunderung. Wer das Christenthum völlig verlernt hat, der hört hier wirklich das Evangelium; es ist dies die Verneinung des Willens, ohne die Erinnerung an die Askesis” (Werner Stegmaier, Philosophie der Fluktuanz: Nietzsche und Dilthey, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 356f (see note 170)). That Nietzsche’s glorification of Bach‘s music represents the implicit background of inspiration behind Blumenberg’s own variations is not primarily an observation about intellectual biography; Blumenberg’s already mentioned sympathy for myth (as opposed to dogma) is based on myth’s proximity to a free musical variation which moves on the very limit of the recognizable. By transposing the theological material of reflection into the conjunctive of the possible (Matthäuspassion, 128), new horizons of meaning are opened up. 29 Blumenberg, Work on Myth, 178. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 177. 32 Ibid., 178. 33 Ibid., 177.

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The expulsion from Paradise did not take place as a result of human disobedience or what later would be referred to as “sin” but was the result of divine cynicism: God “takes on the role of the diabolos, the mischief-maker … He is one in all.”34 Werner Thiede’s idea about Nietzsche’s God beyond good and evil thus seems to mean: God as immanent disintegration of selfidentity by means of changeability or metamorphosis. Blumenberg ascribes his idea of “re-occupation” to Nietzsche as an expression of remythicization, i.e., as a daring variant of a sanctioned myth. Again, “re-occupation” does not signify the pure, uncontrolled imagination of anything but must be understood as a controlled variation of certain fundamental patterns of thought already at hand in the theological material.

4. Deconstructing Omnipotence It is this idea of a changeable God which Blumenberg takes up for reconsideration in Matthäuspassion. The idea that the God of the Old Testament could have combined his “superior power” with an “unconditional sympathy with man” and thereby also shown “an absolute interest in “human interest” [ein absolutes Interesse am “human interest”]”35 is also voiced in Work on Myth. Here, Blumenberg’s reading of Cusa as an exponent of a possible alternative administration of the theological material of reflection is dealt with by way of suggestion.The importance ascribed to Incarnation by Cusa then functions (at least in Blumenberg’s reading36) as the point of departure for the fundamental idea that God became human not in order to restore humanity’s endless sin but as a manifestation of and in corroboration with God’s absolute interest in humanity. Christianity’s adoption of ancient metaphysics was, however, obstructive for thinking through this fundamental Christian idea. According to Blumenberg, the obstructiveness of this central idea of Christianity thus “breaks through all the seams of the dogmatic system”37 simply because the idea of a “suffering Omnipotence, an Omnipotence that was ignorant of the date set for the Last Judgment, an Omnipresence that was drawn into history at a specific time and place”38 is very difficult to combine with the imposed rules of pagan metaphysics. In other words, the idea central to the Incarnation, namely, that of an “absolute realism of the commitment of divine favour to men”39 is left “unvoiced” by medieval theology because it had to preserve the untoucha34 35 36 37 38 39

Ibid., 178. Ibid., 24. Cf. Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Part IV. Ibid. Ibid. 24–25. Ibid. 23 (my italics).

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bleness of divine autarky. Against this unchangeable God who is bricked firmly into the solidified concrete of pagan metaphysics, Blumenberg argues for the possibility of another God: a God who “is not unconditionally in the right and, still more importantly, cannot do everything.”40 Moreover, Blumenberg here sees the emergence of a possible God who is not always right and who did not know what he did when he created the world.41 We are here confronted with Blaise Pascal’s famous distinction between a biblical and a philosophical God. The philosophical idea of omnipotence is not, as Blumenberg explains, derived from the Bible: “The Bible knows nothing about a ‘Supreme Being’ or a ‘pure Spirit.’”42 Blumenberg’s metaphorological enterprise – to dismantle the self-evident and question what has become “obvious” – is also applied to the idea of God: The distinction between the “God of metaphysical theology” and the “God of the Gospels” provides the resources for another God. Perhaps “a disguised God capable of many metamorphoses,”43 as Blumenberg writes in a different context. The idea that God created the world as a reaction to God’s potentially eternal boredom may also be expressed by means of phenomenology. Boredom may be described as “empty intentionality” or more precisely as “Being-outside-oneself without reality” (Ausser-sich-sein ohne Realität)44 In Blumenberg’s ingenious interpretation of Husserl’s concept of “life-world,” this concept does not aim at describing the concrete worlds in which we actually live. Rather, the theory of a life-world is the “answer” to the very absence of a life-world. The life-world is “the counter pole of reality (Wirklichkeit) in which phenomenology has become possible.”45 The lifeworld is thus never the world in which we live. Rather, it is a hypothetical limit concept that – ex negativo – displays what is no longer the case within human reality. It is, in other words, a concept whose function is to conceive a world which is no longer a life-world.The life-world therefore also constitutes the very epitome of a world in which intentionality is rendered superfluous, since the complete convergence between “consciousnesses” and “world” makes intentionality thoroughly dispensable. If boredom can be understood as the shrinkage (Schwund) of possibilities of intentionality46 – as a reduction of possibilities to be directed towards objects – then ab40

Ibid., 614. Cf. Blumenberg, Matthäuspassion, 124. 42 Ibid., 17. 43 Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 594. 44 Hans Blumenberg, Beschreibung des Menschen (Frankfurt am Main Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006), 703. 45 Hans Blumenberg, “The Life-World and the Concept of Reality,” in Life-World and Consciousness: Essays for Aron Gurwitsch (Evanton: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 430. 46 Ibid., 724. 41

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solute boredom seems to find its limit value in the very idea of the lifeworld. Or to be more precise: Boredom is the negative function of the life-world.47 Boredom is, from a phenomenological point of view, a lack of intentions (Intentionsarmut), a situation in which nothing appears on the horizon which may catch or distract my attention. It is the complete lack of anything surprising to constitute my intentional horizon.48 We are not really bored by something. That would presuppose intentional directedness at something “outside” of us. Boredom is rather self-related. We bore ourselves: “In der Langeweile wird das Selbstbewusstsein unbehaglich.”49 In Matthäuspassion Blumenberg observes that: Omnipotence, provided one possessed it, would come as close to boredom as the fantastic. If everything is possible, only the shortest paths are plausible, any lengthiness redundant, every difficulty exaggerated … 50

Seen in this light it is tempting to ask whether God’s alleged omniscience and omnipotence would imply a kind of absolutistic boredom? Nothing could be a surprise to a God who would always know everything everywhere without even the slightest moment of hesitation. But would not this God be thrown unendurably upon Godself and thus be exposed to what Kant describes as the negative pain of boredom? In his Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798), Kant refers to “the oppressive, even frightening arduousness of boredom“ (die drückende, ja ängstliche Beschwerlichkeit der langen Weile).51 Blumenberg sees in Kant a connection between boredom and death,52 which may be considered as part of the background to Blumenberg’s rethinking of God. In the quoted work, Kant further remarks that “the void of sensations we perceive in ourselves arouses a horror (horror vacui) and, as it were, a presentiment of a slow death wich is regarded as more painful than when fate suddenly cuts the thread of life.”53 The question Blumenberg seems to pose, albeit indirectly, is: Did God die because of boredom? Was God’s boredom, God’s apathy, God’s constitutive “lack of affective preparedness” (Mangel an Affektionsbereitschaft)54 the 47

Ibid., 704. Ibid., 707–708. 49 Ibid., 705. 50 Blumenberg, Matthäuspassion, 11. “Die Allmacht, sofern man sie besäße, müsste der Langeweile so nahe kommen wie das Phantastische. Wenn alles möglich ist, sind nur die kürzesten Wege plausibel, jede Umständlichkeit überflüssig, jede Schwierigkeit übertrieben.” 51 Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), 554 (my translation). 52 Blumenberg, Beschreibung des Menschen, 720. 53 Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, 554–55 (my translation). 54 Beschreibung des Menschen, 721. 48

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real reason for God’s death? Or, as I would formulate the question: is not a God who dies a more living God after all than one who can have everything but is in need of nothing, and whose eternity means that everything can be postponed indefinitely? Again, the idea of omnipotence displays itself as a destructive feature of theology: Where everything is possible, the personality of God loses its meaning, becomes an absurdity itself … Not all can be equally possible if statements about God are to mean more to humans than the submission to a startling majesty … Thus, the existence of theology and its religious function is entirely dependent on the fact that the attribute of omnipotence does not mean that everything is possible.55

The relevance of this observation does not lie in a pious attempt to save theology from secular critique. Rather, its relevance reaches beyond the confined space of theology and points to decisive anthropological insights: If everything were possible, nothing would be of importance. Or formulated inversely: If nothing were impossible, everything would be the same. The limit value of omnipotence is indifference. So the old crown jewels of Western metaphysics – namely, God’s immutability, trans-temporality and impassability – display their self-dissolving nature, a fact that manifests itself most clearly in the boredom of the absolute – as the unbearable absolutism of boredom.

5. Epilogue Back to the future means that the past is yet to (be-)come. It implies that the past is in fact, rightly considered, a question about the future. Nietzsche’s “dead God” therefore is not straightaway identical with a forgotten one. Nietzsche’s remythicization of God offers a remarkable way of changing what has been into possibility once again. By allowing, for instance, God to die from God’s own boredom. And with these words let me stop before I bore you to death.

55

Hans Blumenberg, Vor allem Fontaine (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1998), 130. “Wo alles möglich ist, verliert die Personalität des Gottes ihren Sinn, wird zum Widersinn selbst … Es muss nicht alles gleichermaßen möglich sein, wenn Aussagen über Gott für den Menschen mehr und anderes bedeuten sollen als die Aufforderung zur Unterwerfung unter eine verblüffende Majestät … Also hängt die Existenz der Theologie und ihre religiöse Funktion ganz davon ab, dass das Attribut der Allmacht nicht bedeutet, es sei alles möglich.”

List of Contributors Joseph Ballan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Jonna Bornemark teaches philosophy at the University of Södertörn where she is also Director of the Center for Practical Knowledge. Øystein Brekke is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education and International Studies, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. Rebecca Comay teaches in the Dept of Philosophy and the Center for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto where she is also co-director of the Literary Studies Program, with affiliations in German, Jewish Studies, and Architecture. Iben Damgaard is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. Arne Grøn is Professor for Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. Jan-Olav Henriksen is Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion at The Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo. Marius Timmann Mjaaland is Humboldt Senior Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg and President of the Nordic Society for Philosophy of Religion. Carsten Pallesen is Associate Professor for Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen is Associate Professor at Metropol University College and external lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. Werner Stegmaier is retired Professor of practical philosophy at the University of Greifswald. Philipp Stoellger is Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Rostock and Director of the Institute for Iconicity (IfI).

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Claudia Welz is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, and Research Fellow at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Subjectivity Research.

Name Index Agamben, Giorgio 8, 167, 226f, 232–4 Améry, Jean 197f, 208f Arendt, Hannah 14, 125, 200f, 228, 231f Aristotle 4, 13–25, 48, 73, 90, 239 Assmann, Aleida 198f, 207 Assmann, Jan 46, 226 Augustine of Hippo 2–5, 13–16, 19–31, 96, 108, 110–13, 172, 204–6, 212 Bach, Johann Sebastian 239–41 Belting, Hans 106f, 114 Benjamin, Walter 174, 177, 194f, 224, 226, 233 Bernet, Rudolf 60f, 63 Blumenberg, Hans 8, 91, 236–44 Bosch, Hieronymus 101f Chrétien, Jean-Louis 211 Comay, Rebecca 6f, 137, 162, 170–8, 186 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder 103–110, 113f David, Jacques-Louis 137–60 Deleuze, Gilles 162f, 165, 167, 170, 177 Derrida, Jacques 18, 59, 91, 163, 167–9, 184 Descartes, René 27, 186, 216 Eco, Umberto 203 Erikson, Erik H. 76f, 80

Foucault, Michel 45f, 81 Freud, Sigmund 73–82, 163, 167f, 185 Goodchild, Philip 227, 231 Halbwachs, Maurice 46, 206 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 6f, 15, 22f, 25, 49, 52, 57, 73, 75, 77–82, 99f, 130, 161f, 164–6, 168–187, 216 Heidegger, Martin 4, 13–7, 19–31, 38, 59, 68, 70, 127, 161, 165–9, 186, 177, 181, 185, 203, 236 Henry, Michel 6, 60, 68–72 Heraclitus 230 Heschel, Abraham Joshua 227 Hofius, Otfried 109 Holbein, Hans 143f Hölderlin, Friedrich 163 Hubert, Henri 223 Husserl, Edmund 4f, 21, 59–72, 165f, 242 Jesus of Nazareth, see also Christ 98, 100, 182 Jonas, Hans 235 Kant, Immanuel 7, 14f, 23, 25, 27, 66, 74, 76f, 89, 92, 161–71, 173, 175, 177–80, 184, 186, 201, 235f, 243 Käßmann, Margot 114, 116 Kerényi, Karl 225f, 234 Kierkegaard, Søren 7, 33, 44, 51f, 57, 91, 100, 119–32, 135, 161, 163, 167, 207, 211, 216, 238

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Name Index

Klee, Paul 194, 195 Kohut, Heinz 8, 214–6 Koselleck, Reinhart 236 Kött, Andreas 182, 186 Kristeva, Julia 143 Lacoste, Jean-Yves 8, 226–34 Le Goff, Jacques 224 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 94, 98f Lemm,Vanessa 49, 55 Levi, Primo 199f Lévinas, Emmanuel 91, 96, 99, 124, 129, 131–5, 165, 167, 171 Locke, John 164, 186, 204–6 Luhmann, Niklas 7, 87, 90, 161f, 182f, 185–93, 195 Luther, Martin 7, 25, 96, 99, 103, 110f, 169, 171–3, 175, 177, 179 Malabou, Catherine 6, 80–3, 162, 168–72 Marat, Jean-Paul 7, 137–60 Marcuse, Herbert 226 Mauss, Marcel 223 Nancy, Jean-Luc 167 169 Nicholas of Cusa 238, 241 Nietzsche, Friedrich 4f, 8, 25, 33–57, 100, 130, 163, 169, 171, 178, 186, 193f, 235, 237–41, 244 Novac, Ana 196, 207 Otto, Rudolf 64, 225

Pascal, Blaise 230, 242 Paul of Tarsus 33, 90, 96, 107–9, 112, 166f, 172, 232 Pieper, Josef 227f Pippin, Robert B. 162, 164f, 168f, 186 Plato 7, 85, 87, 178, 183f, 186f, 195, 230f, 235f Ranke, Leopold von 50 Raphael Santi da Urbino 114f Ricoeur, Paul 4, 6, 8, 48, 57, 73–82, 162–6, 170, 179, 209f, 214–6, 220 Robespierre, Maximilien de 137, 141, 147 Scheler, Max 59 Scholem, Gerschom 195 Schwanitz, Dietrich 165, 179, 185–7 Shakespeare, William 165, 179, 185f, 198 Stein, Edith 4, 5, 59f, 65–72 Taylor, Charles 224–6, 233f Thomas Aquinas 65–7 Valéry, Paul 211 Wiesel, Elie 200 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 92, 100

Subject Index Absence 203 Action 126, 167, 183, 193, 216 Aesthetics 7, 94, 147, 150, 229 Agency 214, 219 Alterity 140, 165 Ambiguity 16, 118, 124, 220 Amnesia 197 Amnesty 199 Angelus Novus 194 Anxiety 23, 122, 124 Apocalypticism 3 Aporia 2, 9, 17f, 25 Ars Moriendi 22 Atheism, see also God, Death of God 137, 147 Atrocities 37, 57, 123, 174, 208 Auschwitz 196f, 200 Authenticity 16, 22f, 27f Autonomy 218, 220 Being-unto-death 22, 26, 38 Bible 106–8, 161, 167f, 183, 186, 232, 239, 242 Binary 7, 140 Birth 125, 128, 180 Body 137f, 141 Boredom 8 Calendar 7, 173, 223, 234 Calvinism 144 Care 23, 26, 30, 121, 209 Cartesianism 7, 66, 186f Change 120, 128 Choice 125 Christ, see also Jesus of Nazareth 34, 44, 102, 140f, 161, 167

– Christology 86, 170, 173, 178 – Cross 92 – Christ’s Sexuality 107f, 110, 113 Christianity 3, 34, 70, 215 – Dechristianization 137, 142 Chronos 227 Church 86 Classics 56 Coincidentia Oppositorum 238 Commerce 224 Communicatio Idiomatum 85 Concern 121 Conscience 45, 161, 163, 181 Consciousness 47, 74, 178, 205, 214 – Unity of Consciousness 164, 167 Copernican Revolution 165, 167 Courage 124 Creation 211, 240 Cross 86, 100, 179 Cult 141 Culture 216 Curiosity 53 Dasein 16, 22f, 26, 31, 38, 166, 236 Death 3, 38f, 122, 128, 131, 139, 243 Decision 126 Deconstruction 8, 169, 175 Democracy 150 Demythologization 162 Desire 107f, 110–12 Destruction 147 Determinism 218 Devil 98, 238, 240 Difference, 7, 171, 187 Discovery 80, 82 Divertissement 230

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Subject Index

Dogma 34, 42, 228, 239 Ego 165 Egoism 51 Embryology 74 Emotion, 214f Enlightenment 139, 161 Environment 74 Epigenesis 6 Ereignis 14 Escapism 199f, 216 Eschatology 95f, 98, 167, 170, 177, 228, 232, 241 Essence 15, 23, 30 Eternity 86, 118, 128, 130, 132, 235 Ethics 6, 57, 117, 126f, 175, 192, 231 Event 30, 38, 164 Existence 128, 131f Expectation 21, 122 Experience 61, 71, 161f, 167, 179f, 182,185, 213f, 217 – Experience of Subjectivity 62 Fact 1, 22f, 49f Faith 6, 39f, 69, 73, 161, 181 Fatherland 149 Femininity 140 Fetishism 149 Finitude 120, 130, 143, 187, 195 Forgetfulness 45, 57, 202, 209 Forgiveness 93, 173, 180, 198 Freedom 7, 77, 113, 122, 161, 172f, 175, 180f, 186, 192f, 218, 220 French Revolution 137–60, 172f, 177, 179 Friendship 172 Genealogy 45, 82 Genetics 6, 75 Genocide 199 Gift 31, 97, 100, 104, 132f, 165f, 211 God 3–5, 8, 26, 43, 68, 72f, 86, 118, 137, 146f, 161, 179, 183, 211, 214f,

217, 235, 238f, 241f – Creator 21 – Death of God 3, 8, 26, 33–44, 235, 240, 243f – Ground of Possibility 94 – Omnipotence 8 – Presence 86 Guilt 8, 210, 218 – Collective Guilt 198 Hamlet 162, 165, 192 Hermeneutics 6, 8, 57, 82, 86, 88f, 92, 96, 103, 108f, 166, 178f, 217, 219, 220 Historicism 46, 49, 148, 193 Historiography 7, 49, 90, 192 History 1, 5f, 13f, 15f, 22, 25f, 45–58, 119, 125, 129, 133, 177 – History as Art 52–56 Hope 54, 194 Humanity 47, 118 – Spectator 50f Humanization 237 Humor 50 Icon 86 Iconoclasm 144, 146–148 Idealism 142 Identity 8, 80, 192, 204–7, 214, 216f Ideology 140 Idolatry of the Factual 49, 53 Illusion 79 Imagination 9, 25, 79, 213 Immanence 72, 161, 175, 185f Impossibility 31, 89, 92 Incarnation 241 Individual 125 Infinity 128, 131, 143, 187 Inoperativity 223–34 Insecurity 186 Intentionality 5, 61–63, 71, 73 – Longitudinal/horizontal intentionality 62f

Subject Index

– Protention 61–63 – Retention 62 – Transverse/vertical intentionality 62f Interiority 134 Interpretation 75, 97f, 183 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 192 Judaism 3 Knowledge 68–69 Laws of Nature 76 Life-World 242 Limit 131 Literature 91, 97 Loss 49 Love 3, 21f, 52, 79, 85, 88, 93, 124, 140, 171, 205, 210 Martyr 144 Materialism 142 Meaning 47, 149 Memory 1–3, 7f, 21, 26, 28, 46, 48f, 53, 57, 63, 85–116, 123, 134, 139, 144, 147, 165, 175, 177f, 184–87, 190–213 – Collective Memory 206 – Ethics 57, 191–212 Messianism 3, 92, 168, 173, 180f, 233 Metaphor 97, 110, 112 Metaphysics 15, 22, 25, 30, 32, 34f, 70, 72–74, 89, 170, 185, 190, 238f, 241f Middle Ages 224 Mirroring 218 Mnemocide 198 Modality 6, 85–116 – Compossibility 95, 98 Modernity 7, 53, 55, 89, 148, 150, 162, 173, 181, 224 Moment 124–26 Morality 34, 40, 43, 45

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Murder 141 Museification 147 Mutuality 164f Myth 237 Narcissism 218, 220 Narrative 218f Nation State 180 Neutrality, 88 147 Nihilism 37 Non-Indifference 87, 91 Omnipotence 239, 241–43 Ontology 15 Opacity 139, 146 Oppression 220 Optimism 195 Other, the 3, 165, 218 Palimpsest 145 Paradox 6, 87, 90 Parricide 77, 80 Participation 5 Passivity 81, 121, 123, 125, 165, 168, 216 Patience 124, 182 Peace 48, 166 Perception 2 Perpetrator 199, 210 Person 8 – Personal Development 216–18 Phenomenology 2, 5, 19f, 27, 32, 59f, 64, 69, 73, 91, 168, 242 – Ego 63, 73 Physics 216 Pietà 140 Plasticity 203, 237 Politics 231 Positivism 79 Postmodernity 214, 216 Preformation 74 Presence 203 Production 228

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Subject Index

Progress 15f, 194 Promise 3, 165 Psyche 18 Psychoanalysis 75 Psychology 213 Pure Reason 76, 89, 91, 163 Rationality 66f, 92, 171–74, 236 Recognition 164 – Struggle for Recognition 166 Reconciliation 173, 180, 192, 198 Reformation 104, 179 Relationality 8, 214, 216f Religion 7f, 14, 32, 59, 64, 72, 118, 133, 161, 171, 185, 187, 193, 222 – Cognitivism 215 – Demonic Religion 221 – Dialectical Theory of Religion 78f – Escapism 216 – Freud 77 – Religion as Repetition 77, 80 – Temporality 79 Remnant 141 Remythicization 237, 239 Renaissance 53 Repentance 127 Repetition 124, 167 Representation 149 Resentment 198 Responsibility 48, 127 Resurrection 102, 114, 116, 138, 143, 148 Retention 61 Revolution 147 Sabbath 224, 232f Sacred the, 225 Scar 173, 179 Science 72f Secularization 8, 224, 233 Security 185, 217 Self 165, 168, 182, 222 Self-Knowledge 210 (205)

Self-Esteem 218 Self-Reflexivity 148 Self-Sufficiency 216, 242 Semiotics 203 Shame 218 Simultaneity 162, 165, 187 Sin 8, 94, 96, 107, 109–11, 114, 125, 240 Snake 239 Sociality 48, 216 Soul 122, 133, 211 Space 61 Spirit 49 – Absolute Spirit 172f, 178, 182, 193 Spirituality 229 Subjectivity 66, 70, 77, 121, 213f, 219 – Freud 77 Suicide 197 Suppression 194 Symbol 81, 213f, 217, 220 – Reinterpretation of Symbols 80 – Religious Symbol 80 Teleology 77, 79, 173 Temporality 4, 13–15, 23, 27, 38, 82, 118, 120, 127, 129, 213, 224 – Atemporality of Religion 77 – Vulgar Temporality 16 Terror 35, 137, 170–3, 186 Theology 8, 31, 59, 67–72, 79, 85f, 88f, 93f, 213, 224, 235, 237, 238 Time – Aristotle 16 – as Resource 227 – Augustine 19 – Kairos 161, 227 – Distentio 21, 29, 120f, 204 – Experience of Time 4, 22, 87 – Extentio 28, 30 – Kairos 3 – Liturgical 224 – Modes 3–5, 11, 17, 20, 29, 42, 54, 86, 119, 123, 193, 199, 211, 213, 236

Subject Index

– Movement 16 – Movement and Time 162 – Nunc Stans 24, 29 – Past Future 39, 42, 236 – Reinterpretation of Time 55 – Sanctification of Time 223 – Secular Time 224 – Temporality 2, 3 – Time-Consciousness 66, 71, 72, 198 Transcendence 72, 87, 117–35, 144, 161, 170, 174, 185f, 189 Transfiguration 114–16 Transformation 75, 81 Transience 53, 86, 181 Translatio Imperii 175, 177–79 Transparency 146

Trinity 86, 170, 175 Trust 219 Truth 203 Unfinishedness 142 Unveiling 139 Utility 227 Value 51 Victim 195, 198–200 Vita Activa 27f, 52, 228 Vita Contemplativa 52 Void 143 World War 37 Worship 227

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