Margins of Phenomenology 9783959487801, 9783959481441

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libri nigri 55

Copyright © 2020. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Petr Kouba

Margins of Phenomenology

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH

Copyright © 2020. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Petr Kouba

Margins of Phenomenology

LIBRI NIGRI

55

Edited by

Hans Rainer Sepp

Copyright © 2020. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Editorial Board Suzi Adams ∙ Adelaide │ Babette Babich ∙ New York │ Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray ∙ Waterloo, Ontario │ Damir Barbarić ∙ Zagreb │ Marcus Brainard ∙ London │ Martin Cajthaml ∙ Olomouc │ Mauro Carbone ∙ Lyon │ Chan Fai Cheung ∙ Hong Kong │ Cristian Ciocan ∙ Bucureşti │ Ion Copoeru ∙ Cluj-Napoca │ Renato Cristin ∙ Trieste │ Eddo Evink ∙ Groningen │ Matthias Flatscher ∙ Wien │ Dimitri Ginev ∙ Sofia │ Jean-Christophe Goddard ∙ Toulouse │ Andrzej Gniazdowski ∙ Warszawa │ Ludger Hagedorn ∙ Wien │ Seongha Hong ∙ Jeollabukdo │ Edmundo Johnson ∙ Santiago de Chile │ René Kaufmann ∙ Dresden │ Vakhtang Kebuladze ∙ Kyjiw │ Dean Komel ∙ Ljubljana │ Pavlos Kontos ∙ Patras │ Kwok-ying Lau ∙ Hong Kong │ Mette Lebech ∙ Maynooth │ Nam-In Lee ∙ Seoul │ Monika Małek ∙ Wrocław │ Balázs Mezei ∙ Budapest │ Viktor Molchanov ∙ Moskwa │ Liangkang Ni ∙ Guanghzou │ Cathrin Nielsen ∙ Frankfurt am Main │ Ashraf Noor ∙ Jerusalem │ Karel Novotný ∙ Praha │ Markus Ophälders ∙ Verona | Luis Román Rabanaque ∙ Buenos Aires │ Rosemary RizoPatrón de Lerner ∙ Lima │ Kiyoshi Sakai ∙ Tokyo │ Javier San Martín ∙ Madrid │ Alexander Schnell ∙ Paris │ Marcia Schuback ∙ Stockholm │ Agustín Serrano de Haro ∙ Madrid │ Tatiana Shchyttsova ∙ Vilnius │ Olga Shparaga ∙ Minsk │ Michael Staudigl ∙ Wien │ Georg Stenger ∙ Wien │ Silvia Stoller ∙ Wien │ Ananta Sukla ∙ Cuttack │ Toru Tani ∙ Kyoto │ Detlef Thiel ∙ Wiesbaden │ Lubica Ucnik ∙ Perth │ Pol Vandevelde ∙ Milwaukee │ Chung-chi Yu ∙ Kaohsiung │ Antonio Zirion ∙ México City – Morelia.

The libri nigri series is edited at the Central-European Institute of Philosophy, Prague. www.sif-praha.cz

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Petr Kouba

Margins of Phenomenology

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie. Detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet abrufbar über http://dnb.ddb.de

Copyright © 2020. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

This publication is the outcome of the project “Philosophical Investigations of Body Experiences: Transdisciplinary Perspectives” (GAP401/10/1164) realised at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH D-99734 Nordhausen 2020 Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier Alle Rechte vorbehalten Printed in Germany

ISBN 978-3-95948-144-1

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Contents

Acknowledgements

6

Introduction

7

Corporality and Thought on the Boundary of Individual Being

10

Emotionality and Temporality

29

Worlds and Inter-Worlds

39

Life without Subjectivity: Deleuze, Guattari and Patočka’s Asubjective Phenomenology

54

Two Ways to the Outside

68

Critique of Resentment in Reich, Nietzshe, Deleuze and Guattari

91

On Nietzsche’s Conception of Health and Disease

110

Weak Subjectivity, Trans-Subjectivity and the Power of Event

123

Conceptualizing Health and Illness

142

Body-Ownness and Foreignness

163

Topology of Dialogue

178

Bibliography

192

References

197

Index

198

5

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Ivan Gutierrez for his translation of the essays included in this publication. I would also like to thank David Vichnar for his proofreading and copy-editing of the whole manuscript. I owe thanks to Continental Philosophy Review, Deleuze Studies, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, Archive of the History of Philosophy and Social Thought [Archiwum Historii Filozofii I Myśli Społecznej] and The Philosophical Journal [Filosofický časopis] for their permission to republish the articles that appeared in these journals.

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Prague, 2020

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Introduction

To begin with, it would be fitting to explain the perhaps overly ambitious title of this book. Exploring the margins of phenomenology is a task for an entire lifetime and one certainly cannot pretend to do so in a single book— this is all the more true in that as this is not a systematic work but a collection of studies that reflect, from various perspectives, upon a set of phenomenological issues and confront them with positions that go beyond the framework of phenomenology. A common thread running through the studies is the fact that they contemplate the differences between phenomenology and philosophy, which continues that phenomenological tradition by means of non-phenomenological approaches. Phenomenological themes like worldhood, life, individuality, temporality, corporality, emotionality, disease, suffering and our relationships with others are considered from both phenomenological and non-phenomenological stances. Thus, although it is proceessed in a phenomenologically transparent manner, the phenomenological field of investigation is regarded, as it were, from the outside. At the same time, however, it appears that phenomenological thought is compelled toward the outside by the force of its own rectitude, as is evident in the key moments of the works of the likes of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas, Patočka, Maldiney or Nancy. Take, for example, the phenomenon of suffering: Can suffering even be a phenomenon in the phenomenological sense? What is its intentional structure? Is suffering a matter of the structure of an individual existence, or does it rather show itself to be a moment in which the unity of an individual human existence falls apart? Does suffering bring an individual existence back toward itself when it tears it from its absorption in the world, or is it rather an excess that throws an individual existence beyond itself? How is an individual existence related to the suffering that overwhelms it and rends it asunder? However we might answer such questions, it is clear that conclusions regarding the particular character of suffering cast a specific light on the issues of health, disease and ultimately the very finitude of human existence.

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However, it is not only a question of human existence, for suffering is what connects humans with animals. From the standpoint of suffering, the difference between humans and animals is obscured—or rather it is no longer a matter of strict ontological distinction and becomes “only” a question of the extent to which this or that organism is capable of suffering. At any rate, the anthropocentric view on the reality of life ends here. And thus we find ourselves outside the framework of modern phenomenology, which has been so mindful of the experiential disclosure of its phenomena. By contrast, the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, which represents the outside of phenomenology most plentifully in this book, broaches and explores the possibilities of non-anthropocentric thought when describing the processes of individuation in which individuality is not presupposed as a fundamental structure of experience but on the contrary, is shown in its precarious nature as something that breaks apart and is reconstituted within the framework of vital upheavals. The finitude of individual existence conceived this way is immediately projected into an understanding of the fundamental structures of emotionality and corporality as well. In addition, it is true here that individuality never stands alone, but is fundamentally bound up in a network of “intersubjective“ relationships. Individuality and collectivity are interconnected to the degree that the desocialisation of experience necessarily leads to the breaking apart of the structure of individual experience. Individual and social pathology are always interconnected in Deleuze and Guattari. This brings us back to our thoughts on the experiential structure of suffering. Nonetheless, we must not forget that for Deleuze and Guattari the disintegrating influence of suffering is compensated for by ecstatic experiences of joy and a vital intensity that tear everyday existence out of its vital equilibrium. As regards the relationship between phenomenology and the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, however, we must set matters straight. If we consider the entirety of Deleuze’s work and his collaborations with Guattari, it is clear that phenomenology figures most often as a target for ironic comments. Although the influence of Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty is beyond doubt, phenomenological thought is here most often present only implicitly. That is perhaps why there is so little secondary literature on the relationship between Deleuze’s philosophy and phenomenology. Neither is this book meant to be an exhaustive treatise on the complicated and equivocal relationship between Deleuze and phenomenology. If we overlook its unsystematic nature, this is evident in the very fact that out of the entire

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corpus of Deleuze’s works, we consider here mainly texts written in collaboration with Guattari. Those interested in the relationship between Deleuze and phenomenology would be well advised to explore Alain Beaulieu’s Gilles Deleuze et la phénomenologie, which deals with this issue more clearly and thoroughly.1

1

Alain Beaulieu, Gilles Deleuze et la phénoménologie (Paris: Sils Maria éditions, 2004).

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Corporality and Thought on the Boundary of Individual Being

Corporality and thought in themselves represent two complicated philosophical problems. Even greater difficulties arise, however, if we investigate both of them at the same time in order to shed light on the relationship between them. What, then, is the relationship between corporality and thought? Are they two phenomenal fields bound by ties of mutual correlations, or is their bond between them even tighter than that? Could we imagine it being so tight that we would be forced to posit a factical fusion of the two spheres? And if so, what would we gain by abolishing or at least calling into doubt the boundary between the spheres of corporality and thought? In order to answer these questions, we would like to appeal to two philosophical schemes in which corporality plays a central role. The first is Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological-existential discussion of human existence as outlined in Phénoménologie de la perception. The second is Deleuze and Guattari’s “schizoanalysis”, in which one may see an attempt to overcome certain existential principles, foremost among them the supposed individual character of human existence, a supposition that finds its way into the phenomenological view of human corporality. For the post-existential analysis, corporality ceases to be a fundamental moment in the self-realisation of an individual existence and becomes a domain of pre-individual events. At the same time, such a descent to a pre-individual dimension of life breaks new ground for thinking anew the relationship between corporality and thought. Our task will be to examine how Deleuze and Guattari overcome MerleauPonty’s conception of corporality and attempt to show what consequences their revision of the phenomenological view of corporality entail for understanding the relationship between corporality and thought. A Historical Aside Before we come to the confrontation between the existential and the postexistential views on corporality and thought, however, it would be fitting to delve briefly into the history of philosophy in order to better understand the

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basic difficulties awaiting any philosophical considerations aiming to illuminate how they are related. Two thinkers may be taken as representing all the rest, for they determined the manner in which the Western philosophical tradition has conceived of the relationship between corporality and thought. The first thinker we shall discuss is Aristotle, who dealt with corporality and thought in De Anima. According to Aristotle, that corporality is related in some way to mental processes is evident in the fact that mental states such as emotions are always accompanied by physical changes: “It seems that all the affections of soul involve a body—passion, gentleness, fear, pity, courage, joy, loving, and hating; in all these there is a concurrent affection of the body”.1 Because the body somehow takes part in these states, it cannot be separated in any simple way from the soul. As Aristotle says, “there seems to be no case in which the soul can act or be acted upon without involving the body; e.g., anger, courage, appetite, and sensation generally”.2 It is mental states like anger, confidence or desire that make plain the essential interdependence between body and soul. However, one might ask whether anger, confidence or desire can be considered states at all. If we take into account the dynamic connection between body and soul as well as the driving role motives play in inducing human behaviour, then perhaps we should speak of “movements” instead of “states”. For example, according to Aristotle, anger “should be defined as a certain mode of movement of such and such a body (or part or faculty of a body) by this or that cause and for this or that end”.3 Anger is a bodily movement related with the stimuli that call it forth and the goals it aims to fulfil. The same is true of all other emotional movements; bodily movements reveal themselves in connection with their stimuli and motives. However, if we consider the dynamic coupling comprising stimuli, motives and their bodily correlates which, taken together, make up an emotional movement, it seems that the human soul loses its specificity, that it merges with the human body and its practical relationships with the stimuli that call on our attention and the goals we pursue. The extent to which the soul is separable from the body is the main problem Aristotle deals with in De Anima, where the soul is understood as the actualisation of a particular body. That does not mean that he soul itself 1

Aristotle, De Anima, in Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 4 (403a). 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.

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must have a bodily – that is, material – nature. Instead, the soul is the form of the body. In the context of his discussion of the relationship between the soul and the body, Aristotle uses the terms matter and form (HÝLÉ and MORPHÉ), combined with the terms potentiality and actuality (DYNAMIS and ENERGEIÁ). If matter is a principle of transformation and the potential to acquire new purposes, whereas form represents the principle of actuality and the definiteness of a given being, then a body must be matter that acquires form and definiteness by means of a soul. Soul is therefore form as well as “an actuality of the first kind of a natural body”.4 The soul is the general principle of life and the basic principle of motion in the living body. However, this only makes the question whether the soul is separable from the body even more pressing. For Aristotle, the answer is that although emotional movements of the soul and sense impressions may be inseparable from the body, in addition to them, the soul also has a purely rational capability. The most defining capability of the human soul—that which in the end constitutes it—is the ability to think abstractly—that is, the ability to think not only of individual things, but of generalities. And it is this rational part of the human soul that is—by contrast with the ability to perceive through the senses – in principle inseparable from the body. Although the rational part of the human soul depends on what the senses provide it with, it need not always be passive; it can become active as well. What is known as active reason, which is the actual basis of the reasoning soul, is not dependent on the senses or the sensorial capacity and therefore not dependent on the body. As Aristotle claims, “Thought in this sense of it is inseparable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity”.5 The second philosopher we shall discuss is Descartes. He too in his own way developed a conception of thought as something that in a certain mode is not passive, finding the basic source of the autonomy and sovereignty of reason in the certainty of the cogito, ergo sum. Although he splits human existence into mind, whose essence consists in pure thought, and body, which like all physical objects is characterised by extension, Descartes also wonders how we are to understand the psychosomatic whole of human existence. The methodical separation of human existence into res cogitans and res extensa does not prevent humans from realising that understanding the fun4 5

Ibid. p. 21 (412b). Ibid. p. 135 (430a).

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damental character of human existence is an issue involving first and foremost the connection between mind and body. Regarding this connection, Descartes notes in Discours de la Méthode that it is not enough that mind “be lodged in the human body like a helmsman in his ship, except perhaps to move its limbs, but that it must be more closely joined and united with the body in order to have, besides this power of movement, feelings and appetites like ours and so constitute a real man”.6 Thus, even though mind is radically different from body, which Descartes thinks of as a mechanical automaton, he does not neglect phenomena like feelings and desires, which cannot be reduced to the sphere of res cogitans or to that of res extensa, either. This is true particularly of emotions, which Descartes lists among the “passions” in Pasions de l’âme. However, since the term “passion” might appear to suggest a certain passivity, perhaps a better term might be “affect“. Affect involves a particular movement, one which does not require the active use of our reason. Because emotions influence our will—that is, they tell us what to do without requiring us to think explicitly and at the same time prepare our body for what we are to do—they are the type of movements which set human existence as a whole in motion. As Descartes puts it, “the principal effect of all the human passions is that they move and dispose the soul to want the things for which they prepare the body. Thus the feeling of fear moves the soul to want to flee, that of courage to want to fight, and similarly with the others”.7 The passions are part of the original union between mind and body (Descartes uses the term “connection” in his letters to Elizabeth of Bohemia) and as such may only be properly understood on the basis of the psychosomatic whole. For Descartes too the emotions are evidence of the factical inseparability of mind and body. Emotions show that it is the union of mind and body that leads to an understanding of human existence in its practical relationship to the world. Nevertheless, because the methodical splitting of human existence into res extensa and res cogitans prevents the full clarification of the linkages and interactions between body and mind, Descartes must himself acknowledge in the end that he is unable to shed light on the problem of the mind-body connection and must content

6

René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. I, eds. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 141. 7 Ibid. p. 343.

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himself with an intuitive understanding of it.8 Intuitively—that is, based on everyday experience and day-to-day conversations—we understand that we are a union of mind and body. In other words, “Everyone feels that he is a single person with both body and thought so related by nature that the thought can move the body and feel the things which happen to it.”9 The Phenomenological Conception of Corporality

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If we are not to content ourselves with this intuitive understanding and abandon a philosophical mode of thought, we must overcome Cartesian mind-body dualism. One way to avoid res cogitans – res extensa dualism with regard to human existence is offered by Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, in which human existence is not understood as a unity of two radically incommensurable spheres, but as an inseparable unity of individual being. Of course, this has consequences with regard to the issue of human corporality. In Phénoménologie de la perception, the body is not conceived as a physical object compelled to function in accordance with mechanical laws. Instead of resorting to a mechanical reductionism that interprets the body as a complicated machine, the body is understood on the basis of individual corporeal experience. “I cannot understand the function of the living body except by enacting it myself, and except in so far as I am a body which rises towards the world,” says Merleau-Ponty.10 The body is a moment in motion of being in the world; having a body means being involved in a definite environment, identifying with particular projects and continuously engaging with them.11 The body is the performer of communication with the world; it is the bearer of the cognitive process which is human existence. If human existence is not a machine that can be broken down into its parts but the locus of an individual’s relationship with the world, then this circumstance must be reflected in its spatial organisation. In this connection, 8

René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. III, eds. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 226-9. 9 Ibid. p. 228. 10 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénomenologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 90. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962; rev. 1981), p. 75. 11 Cf. ibid. p. 97. Ibid. p. 82.

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Merleau-Ponty speaks of a “body schema” (schéma corporel), which is more than simply a collection of separate organs. “[M]y whole body for me is not an assemblage of organs juxtaposed in space. I am in undivided possession of it and I know where each of my limbs is through a body image in which all are included,” writes Merleau-Ponty.12 The concept of the body schema must be properly understood, however: it is not only the result of bodily experience, or an image we construct of our own body. Neither is the sensory-motor unit of the body to be understood in the sense given to it by Gestaltpsychologie—that is, as an awareness of one’s posture, of how one holds one’s body. It is not enough to declare that our own body is a form and as such represents “a phenomenon in which the totality takes precedence over the parts.”13 Instead, the body should be understood as the expression of our situatedness in the world, which is never static, but essentially dynamic. Our own body is part of our dynamic scheme of the world – our practical intentions, tasks and projects. When Merleau-Ponty describes the dynamic scheme by which human existence relates itself to the world, he uses the metaphor of a wave. An individual existence is like a wave that rushes forth, coiling into itself, returning to itself in order to hurtle forth once again. In Phénoménologie de la perception, existence is conceived as an unfolding. Only in the context of this dynamic unfolding can we adequately understand the body schema, according to Merleau-Ponty. Once again, the human body is not a machine that can be broken down into its component parts; it is given in its totality in the body schema, which operates within the dynamic framework of an individual existence. This body schema is not identical with an objective movement or the representation of such a movement in thought, but has its own coherence consisting in a motoric intentionality that gives bodily movements their assurance and coordination. It is this intentionality which guarantees the functional unity of the senses, motility, sensibility and intelligence. If we were to be precise, we would have to say that an individual body schema is not given, but happens within the framework of an intentional relationship with the world. A body schema is, to be precise, a dynamic synthesis of all the bodily functions available to an individual. The movement in question is not simply a movement in the narrow sense, but smell, touch, sight or hearing as well. In the body schema all of these bodily functions are 12 13

Ibid. p. 114. Ibid. p. 98. Ibid. p. 116. Ibid. p. 100.

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coordinated and brought into mutual accord with the intentions and tasks arrayed before a concrete individual. The body schema synthesises the bodily functions and, along with them, an inexhaustible abundance of potential experience. Even though the body schema is a synthesis of bodily functions, it does not always finds itself in perfect equilibrium. On the contrary, the body schema is quite often subject to disequilibrium with which individuals must come to terms. This is the case, for example, when we learn something new, like a new skill, and thereby enrich our individual body schema. To see this process in the proper light, it is not enough to understand it as the manipulation of a physical object that is coordinated in accordance with the instructions of a subject; it must be seen as a disruption in the stable functioning of the body schema and a search for new, enriched syntheses charged with significance. Merleau-Ponty writes that the body

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is not an object for an “I think,” it is a grouping of lived-through meanings which moves towards its equilibrium. Sometimes a new cluster of meanings is formed; our former movements are integrated into a fresh motor entity, the first visual data into a fresh sensory entity, our natural powers suddenly come together in a richer meaning, which hitherto has been merely foreshadowed in our perceptual or practical field, and which ahs made itself felt in our experience by no more than a certain lack, and which by its coming suddenly reshuffles the elements of our equilibrium and fulfils our blind expectation.14

The body understood as a synthesis of bodily functions constituted within the framework of an intentional relationship with the world thus constantly oscillates between states of equilibrium and disequilibrium. Nonetheless, the body schema rarely attains a state of perfect equilibrium and when it does, it is generally only for a short time. Because bodily existence is subject to changes in the environment, unforeseeable upheavals and disruptive moments that must be dealt with, it most often entails a certain proportion of disequilibrium that brings with it uncertainty and unease. In addition to moments when we must adapt to changing conditions, we are exposed to bodily disequilibrium when we transcend our factical situation by seeking and discovering new possibilities for action. Abandoning a bodily equilibrium and transitioning to disequilibrium is an indispensible prerequisite for 14

Ibid. p. 179. Ibid. p. 153.

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being able to go beyond the horizon of a given situation and exposing ourselves to new possibilities. Generally, therefore, we may note that bodily disequilibrium make it possible for us not to cling to what is given, to transcend the boundaries of what is given and to discover ourselves in new contexts. In other words, the ability to transcend the conditioned decentralisation, transfiguration and reorganisation of the body schema is what permits us to escape from any particular situation toward new one. This possibility of escape (échappement) is a fundamental expression of the freedom that characterises human existence as such. “All that we are,” writes MerleauPonty, “we are on the basis of a de facto situation which we appropriate to ourselves and which we ceaselessly transform by a sort of escape which is never an unconditional freedom.”15 Although we constantly transcend what is given at any moment and escape in varying degrees from our de facto situations, we can never attain absolute freedom, for every escape brings us into a new situation in which we are limited in some way. Freedom does not mean absolute unrestraint and indeterminacy and is nonetheless not just an empty word. This is true not only in the domain of love and sexuality—which Merleau-Ponty speaks of in connection with escape from a de facto situation— but in a whole range of other activities, such as learning, playing, improvising or experimenting. None of these activities would be possible without the self-transcendence and self-realisation that becomes possible through the destabilisation and subsequent reconsolidation of the body schema. Nevertheless, bodily disequilibrium and the concomitant destabilisation of the body schema not only make possible a liberating escape from a de facto situation, but also entail the essential risk of absolute collapse. In addition to laying down the conditions for any liberation, bodily equilibria are the ultimate basis for the possibility of pathological disintegration. This is best seen in the schizophrenic disintegration of the comprehensive structure of experience. Because the body schema maintains not only the cohesion of particular organs, but also the coordination of bodily functions—among which the sensorial functions have a privileged position—schizophrenic hallucinations may be described as a disruption in the synergy of the bodily functions that provide an individual with an orderly, homogeneous experiential field in whose framework objects retain clearly delineated forms, stable proportions and persistent identities. If objects are displaced within experi15

Ibid. p. 199. Ibid. pp. 170-1.

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ence taken as a whole, if they stop being themselves and become filled with indistinct menaces, if perspectives suddenly break up and distances become inexplicably transformed, “this is because one’s own body has ceased to be a knowing body, and has ceased to draw together all objects in its one grip”.16 The disintegration of the body schema does not, however, represent the limit of phenomenological description. The breakdown of the sensory unity provided to experience by objects with coherent proportions and persistent identities is ultimately based on the collapse of the temporal synthesis in which the past and the future are combined.17 The collapse of the synthesis of bodily functions manifests itself on a temporal plane as a collapse of the transition-synthesis (synthèse de transition), which is the foundation of time and, along with it, human existence. The transition-synthesis is the foundation of human existence in that it launches itself from each situation into new ones and, in this transcending existence, maintains its intentional structure. Thus the breakdown of the temporal synthesis leads not only to the disintegration of the body schema, but also to the collapse of the intentional structure of experience. Although this collapse may manifest itself on the level of the intentionality of acts involving a thetic consciousness of a definite object, it takes place primarily on the level of operative intentionality, which constitutes the very basis of conscious existence. Merleau-Ponty writes that

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the life of consciousness—cognitive life, the life of desire or perceptual life —is subtended by an “intentional arc” which projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our physical, ideological and moral situation, or rather which results in our being situated in all these respects. It is this intentional arc which brings about the unity of the senses, of intelligence, of sensibility and motility. And it is this which “goes limp” in illness.18

This citation makes it clear how profound the effect of the schizophrenic disintegration of experience on a human existence can be. It also makes it clear that the possibility of collapse looming over the temporal synthesis, the body schema and the intentional structure of existence is brought home not only by schizophrenia, but by any illness—whether psychological or somatic—that threatens human existence. In addition to any clinically deter16

Ibid. p. 327. Ibid. pp. 282-3. Cf. ibid. 18 Ibid. p. 158. Ibid. p. 136. 17

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minable causes—or perhaps against the background of such causes—we will find that the ontological cause of pathological disorders consists in a temporally conditioned disruption of the intentional structure of consciousness and a parallel disturbance in the body schema. Although such generalised upheavals rarely occur in pure form and usually remain hidden underneath defensive reactions, auto-regulatory mechanisms and adaptive processes that are meant to establish, at least temporarily, a functional stability, one may recognise in them the source of the threat of illness, madness and death. Moreover, the vulnerability, instability and the finitude of human existence is highlighted by the fact that the disintegration of the body schema, the breakdown of the temporal synthesis and the collapse of the intentional structure of consciousness, are not compatible with an individual existence. The integrity of an individual existence is inseparably bound up with the operation of the temporal synthesis in which both the functional body schema and the intentional unity of consciousness are maintained. That is why the disruption of the transition-synthesis that is the foundation of the body schema and constitutes our intentional relationship with the world necessarily leads to the collapse of the individual structure of human existence, which is most clearly evident in schizophrenia. However, there are other extreme or terminal states of human existence—if we think of them as such—that show how the collapse of the transition-synthesis leads to the depersonalisation of human existence and the disintegration of its individual structure. We may assume that any instance of bodily disequilibrium and the concomitant undermining of the individual’s intentional relationship with the world always transcends to some extent all individual structures of human existence. The body schema may suffer a slightly destabilising disequilibrium or its operative intentionality might collapse irrevocably; in both cases we may discern a process of depersonalisation that an individual existence must resist. Despite his primary orientation toward the individual structure of human existence, Merleau-Ponty is aware that human existence also comprises a certain degree of depersonalisation. It is this tacitly occurring depersonalisation that makes us fragile and vulnerable. We become aware of the contingency and finitude of our own being not only when we fall ill or get wounded, but also during moments of malaise, vertigo and confusion, when we stand on the verge of a pre-personal abyss that opens up before us.19 The 19

Ibid. p. 294. Ibid. p. 254.

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pre-personal abyss discussed in Phénoménologie de la perception contains within it the anonymous sediments of experience that the individual does not constitute alone, but receives from others or draws from the bottomless resources of nature.20 Because human experience does not start from nothing but draws on the anonymous heritage handed down by nature or mediated by others, “there is always some degree of depersonalisation at the heart of consciousness”.21 We do not create words ourselves, but learn them first from others, only then imprinting a single meaning onto them, after the fact; we get our senses, which prepare us for sensory perception, in the same manner. This anticipatory preparedness persists as a certain anonymous remnant in our perception – a remnant which, like our birth or our death, is never completely ours. As Merleau-Ponty reminds us, neither the moment of birth nor the moment of death are the type of thing an individual can experience in an intentional manner (interestingly, the issue of prenatal life is not considered), because if we were able to experience them as present to us, that would mean we would exist before ourselves and would be outliving ourselves, too.22 Individuals can perceive themselves only in the sense that they have “already been born” and “are still alive”, whereas “their” birth and “their” death constitute pre-personal horizons of their being. Likewise, we plunge into anonymity and emerge from it when we perceive with our senses, without ever managing to gain complete control over the impersonal periphery of our individual being. However, acknowledging the pre-personal element of experience does not change the fact that sensory perception, through which individual existence comes into contact with spheres that transcend its own contexts, becomes unified and synthesised around the structure of the “I can”, which is true for the phenomenon of the human body as well. The body schema, despite the disequilibrium it is continuously exposed to, is in principle “always mine.” As a synergic system whose functions are coordinated in a single realised existence, the body, as we read in Phénoménologie de la perception, is “a natural self”.23 In connection with our analysis of human corporality, however, we might ask whether it is really necessary to understand bodily disequilibrium as simply the extreme limit of an individual’s intentional reach or whether it 20

Ibid. p. 159. Ibid. p. 137. Ibid. 22 Ibid. p. 249. Ibid. p. 215. 23 Ibid. p. 239. Ibid. p. 206. 21

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might not be interpreted more thoroughly and radically. If we agree with Merleau-Ponty’s claim that I cannot think my own death and “I […] live in an atmosphere of death in general, and there is a kind of essence of death always on the horizon of my thinking” which conceals within itself the constant threat of the body schema’s disintegration, might we not understand this mortal disintegration in and of itself, based on what takes place in its framework?24 However, that would require considering it not from the perspective of an individual existence, but from that of the depersonalisation that takes place in the context of bodily disequilibrium. The anonymity of pre-personal or post-personal life would then not appear only as an outside delimiting an individual existence without ceasing to coexist with it, but as something that reveals an individual existence in its own light by letting it through and engulfing it once again. If an individual existence rises like a wave from the impersonal element and then recedes back into it, one might say that it is the individual’s unfolding. But can we really think this way about the body and its situatedness between bodily equilibrium and disequilibrium? And if so, how then are we to understand the process of escape that removes us from our factical situation through the disintegration of the bodily synthesis, thereby opening up new possibilities?

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The Post-Existential Conception of Corporality The answers to these questions may be found in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. By contrast with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological analysis, which (despite all the references to the anonymous sphere of being) always adheres to the structure of the individual’s existence and therefore might be labelled “existential”, their analysis—which they term schizoanalysis—may be considered as post-existential. For Deleuze and Guattari begin where Merleau-Ponty leaves off: they deal not with individual experience and its structure, but the collapse of individual being and its intentional relationship to the world. Post-existential analysis begins at a place that for existential analysis constitutes a limit to what may be described. This shift makes itself particularly clear when Deleuze and Guattari deal with the problem of corporality. Their post-existential analysis (especially in L’Anti-Œdipe and Mille plateaux) makes use of the expression “a body without organs”, which is borrowed from Antonin Artaud. To begin with, the 24

Ibid. p. 418. Ibid. p. 364.

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body without organs is not a whole that is simply lacking certain parts. Although the term “machine” is often used in connection with the body, the body without organs cannot solely be considered as a mechanism that is missing particular functional components. Similarly, it cannot be apprehended as scattered fragments lacking a functional unity—it is not “organs without the body”, as we read in Mille plateaux.25 Neither are we dealing with a malfunction of the body image, for any mental representation would always arrive too late.26 We come far closer to the character of the body without organs if, recalling Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of corporality, we say that it is a body in a state of absolute disequilibrium; it is a body for which the synthesis of bodily functions is in a state of extreme disintegration. The body without organs indicates a moment when the totality of the body schema and the harmonically coordinated relationships among bodily functions collapses. This is how we should understand Deleuze and Guattari’s claim that the body without organs is a counterpart to a well-arranged organism safely moving along habitual lines and effectively carrying out the tasks required of it.27 The disorganised body without organs is set against the purposefully arranged organism. By contrast with an organism, this disorganised body does not serve any practical end; it is not productive, but simply transforms itself. Its importance lies in the restructuring and reorganisation of bodily functions. For the collapse of the body schema opens up a space for the creation of new connections among bodily functions, enabling sight, smell, touch, hearing, motoricity, intellect and sexuality to enter into new relationships. It is the body without organs that enables us to see sounds or hear colours, as allegedly happens under the influence of LSD or mescaline. This effect is described by Merleau-Ponty, who writes in Phénoménologie de la perception that under the influence of mescaline “[…] the sound of a flute gives a bluish-green colour, [and] the tick of a metronome, in darkness, is translated as grey patches […]”.28 25

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux: capitalisme et schizophrénie (Paris: Minuit, 1980), p. 203. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 164. 26 Ibid. 27 Cf. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, L’Anti-Œdipe (Paris: Minuit, 1972), pp. 38993. Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 326-9. Mille plateaux, p. 196. A Thousand Plateaus, p. 158. 28 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénomenologie de la perception, pp. 263-4. Phenomenol-

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However, a disorganised body without organs breaks free not only from common contexts, but also from socially constituted systems of signs that codify being with others. It is a de-socialised body, for it extricates itself from the framework of social conventions and discursively formed signs. Thus it is no wonder that Deleuze and Guattari perceive the body without organs as liberating medium. Even though nothing is further from their minds than a dream of absolute freedom, they realise that through the reorganisation and restructuring of our bodily functions that takes place in the body without organs, we rid ourselves of old habits and discover new possibilities – we experiment, and thereby liberate ourselves. Through the body without organs lines of flight (lignes de fuite) open up for us that do not lead toward absolute freedom, but out of our momentary situation.29 Nonetheless, by contrast with the escape (échappement), which Merleau-Ponty connects quite hesitantly and in a rather marginal manner with a degree of depersonalisation, these lines of flight do not only lead out of our factical situation, but beyond ourselves completely. As a state in which the body schema undergoes extreme disintegration, the body without organs is not simply a medium through which we rid ourselves of old habits, binding roles and ossified modes of action, but a medium through which we liberate ourselves from ourselves. The body without organs is a field in which we free ourselves of the burden of our individuality, in which we forget the weight of our own being. “[Th]e body without organs is never yours or mine. It is always a body.”30 The body without organs does not belong to me or to you; it is fundamentally anonymous, for in it the entirety of an individual’s being disintegrates along with its functional organisation so it may reorganise itself and become an other. Thus Deleuze and Guattari claim that the body without organs is a field of asubjective individuation. The basic condition for the process of individuation is that the body without organs must lie outside the framework of an individual’s being. Only when the body without organs takes us beyond ourselves, when it deprives us of power over ourselves, does it permit us to become an other.

ogy of Perception, p. 228. Deleuze and Guattari, Mille plateaux, p. 199. A Thousand Plateaus, p. 161. 30 Ibid. p. 203. Ibid. p. 164.

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That is why the process of becoming an other that takes place through the body without organs entails two basic risks from the very outset: a line of flight that is supposed to open up a way out of a given situation can lead either to an even worse imprisonment or to a suicidal fall. Whereas the former occurs if the process of flight falters and becomes mired in a hopeless situation, the latter comes about when the process of breaking through habitual structures of behaviour and thinking deteriorates into an absolute collapse. We may find examples of such grim fates in the bodies of drug addicts or alcoholics who do not flee out of their situations, but become the victims of addictions, or the bodies of autistic schizophrenics who fall into a void when the ground underneath them gives way, leaving them without a being of their own, for it collapses along with the functional totality of the body schema. Such grim, vacant bodies bear witness in their own ways to the basic danger concealed within the body without organs, which consists in the possibility of a field opening up within it where individual existence comes to its end, a field where all the structures of an individual’s being collapse. The end of an individual existence is not the ultimate frontier every individual must face sooner or later, but an immediate reality. That is why Deleuze and Guattari speak of the body without organs as a “model of death”: “The death model appears when the body without organs repels the organs and lays them aside—no mouth, no tongue, no teeth—to the point of self-mutilation, to the point of suicide.”31 This peculiar self-destruction must be properly understood, however: the body without organs does not reject individual organs as much as it rejects the organism that unifies them into a solid functional whole and the concomitant structure of personal identity. The body without organs can only bring the organs and their functions into new relationships and open up a space for new modes of life at the risk that the organism and its solid personal integrity might be destroyed. As a death model, the body without organs is not only the rejection and antithesis of the individual organism, but also the background against which all of the transformations and processes involved in becoming an other take place. That, however, is only possible on the assumption that the body without organs functions as an asubjective, apersonal field in which reflects all the transformations and twists of life. At any rate, this pointed discussion of death makes it possible to see that whereas Merleau-Ponty apprehends corporality and bodily disequilibrium from the perspective of the finitude of an 31

Deleuze and Guattari, L’Anti-Œdipe, p. 393. Anti-Oedipus, p. 329.

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individual existence, Deleuze and Guattari make a much more radical move: their analysis proceeds not from finitude, but from the very end of an individual’s being. It is this inconspicuous and yet fundamental move that indicates the real proportions and significance of post-existential thought. If, however, the functional structure of the organism in the body without organs collapses and along with it the individual structure of existence, then there is a breakdown of the intentional structure of relationships to the world. If we wanted, we could call this a loss of consciousness or a loss of a sense of reality, but we would thereby fail to capture what is essential here— in the body without organs, the intentional structure of relationships to the world cannot serve as a unifying principle of bodily functions. Not only does any “who” become meaningless here, so does any “what”—that is, any “objective” correlate of consciousness. We do not know “who” is experiencing here, or “what” is being experienced. The only thing left is the pure intensity of the sense perception. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the focal point of the body without organs is not the intentionality of an individual’s consciousness, but the sensed intensity—or, to put it more precisely, the intensity sensed by the body without organs. Along with the collapse of the intentional structures of embodied consciousness, a dimension opens up within the body without organs for the free play of intensities and differences. The body without organs is not any sort of non-entity or an expression of a type of deficiency; instead, it expresses the zero-point in intensity from which all other intensities derive their positive values. Thus the body without organs becomes a zone of roving intensities out of which hallucinatory perceptions and delirious thoughts may arise. Such hallucinations and delirious thoughts nonetheless presuppose a certain primary feeling that gives them their concrete contents. And it is this elementary feeling that something is going on, that something is changing, that constitutes the ultimate basis of hallucinatory perceptions and delirious thoughts: as Deleuze and Guattari contend: “Delirium and hallucination are secondary in relation to the really primary emotion, which in the beginning only experiences intensities, becomings, transitions”.32 That does not mean that the spheres of perception and thought should be separated from that of emotion. Perception and thought tend to get tossed and buffeted by intense emotions that fill them with their contents. And yet emotions, which manifest themselves as pure intensities, as proc32

Ibid. p. 25. Ibid. pp. 18-9.

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esses in which we are transformed, do not arise out of an individual consciousness or a transcendental ego. If emotions are what unsettle us and shake our integrity, they cannot arise from anywhere but the body without organs. This disintegrated body shows itself to be a source of emotions, a “place” where emotions reign; it is a field of alternating intensity and changing affect. Thus, post-existential analysis reveals in the body without organs an immediate connection between corporality and emotionality.33 The body without organs is a conglomeration of intense affects revealing an emotionality which is not bound up with intentionality—or rather an emotionality that unsettles and then re-establishes all intentional relationships. In this sense, the body without organs is not only a field in which corporality merges with emotionality, but also a field in which corporality discloses its intimate affinity with thought. The connection between thought and corporality is revealed here through an emotionality that rouses thought from among its certainties and prevents it from resting inert within itself. Thus emotionality – which is not simply an assemblage of all possible emotions, but rather the fundamental ability to succumb to emotions and be moved by them – can be understood as a primary driving force, a primary dynamic of life. After all, the very word “e-motion” indicates a type of movement. Nevertheless, according to Deleuze and Guattari this movement is not a moment in which we find ourselves, but on the contrary one in which we lose ourselves. The emotionality that manifests itself in the body without organs does not lead us toward ourselves; it wrenches us beyond ourselves. This emotionality tears us apart and carries us away, forcing us to forget ourselves and relinquish control over ourselves.

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Conclusion In order to get a better sense of the special character of the post-existential approach to corporality, let us revisit in closing Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach to the issue. In the Phenomenologie de la pérception, the tacit cogito plays a role analogous to that played in L´Anti-Œdipe by the body without organs. Despite his references to the pre-personal, anonymous element of being, it is the tacit cogito that constitutes the real line of escape (échappement) from the factical situation, the transcendence of its horizon, 33

Cf. ibid. pp. 25-7, 101. Ibid. pp. 18-20, 84-5.

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and the search for new possibilities of existence. Even though a certain degree of depersonalisation—a hidden risk—appears to accompany the process of escape and liberation from the bonds of the momentary situation, in the end this process is anchored in the tacit cogito, in which the “I” finds itself, in which the “I” is itself. The tacit cogito is, Merleau-Ponty says, “the presence of oneself to oneself” that reveals itself during moments of danger and the menace of death.34 In extreme moments such as the last breath of a drowning person or the first breath of a newborn baby, the tacit cogito is free of all external ballast and persists solely as a pure consciousness of itself. And although each resting in pure self-presence is at the same time a depresencing that “throws me outside myself”, this de-presencing is understood as simply an ongoing moment of transition-synthesis (synthèse de transition) that determines an individual’s existence in its intentional relationship to the world.35 As long as the transition-synthesis is functioning, the individual’s existence is related to the world—albeit only as a tacit selfconsciousness that finds itself in an indefinite, unarticulated world. “Silent consciousness grasps itself only as a generalised ‘I think’ in fact of a confused world ‘to be thought about’.”36 But are we not seeing a return through the back door of a conception of consciousness that finds within itself the source and ultimate foundation of autonomous thought? Is not the tacit cogito like the last bastion in which thought conserves its independence and freedom – the irreducible possibility of escape from every situation? Although the tacit cogito does not lie outside the world and is not constituted within itself but is situated in the world, which opens up to it as its own field of experience, it appears that MerleauPonty needs it as the ontological foundation of the possibility of escape through which thought breaks free from its dependence and passivity. True, this escape may lead not outside the world, but into it; nevertheless, this does not address all the theoretical problems that arise. For example, there is the question regarding the relationship between the tacit cogito and corporality. Is the tacit cogito incorporeal? If not, what is its bodily structure? Can we say that the silent, unarticulated consciousness of itself and its stance in the world persists like the eye of the hurricane of a bodily disequilibrium in 34

Merleau-Ponty, Phénomenologie de la perception, p. 462; Phenomenology of Perception, p. 404. 35 Ibid. p. 417. Ibid. p. 363. 36 Ibid. p. 463. Ibid. p. 404.

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which not only the synthesis of bodily functions, but the structured, coordinated perception of the world break down? Deleuze and Guattari need not deal with such problems, because instead of complicated and unclear relationships between the body and consciousness, they posit a strict immanence of thought within the body without organs, whose asubjective anonymity is traversed by lines of flight from established structures of life and “being oneself.” Regardless of the irreducible risk involved in fleeing from oneself and becoming an other, the body without organs does not open up a path toward the autonomy of thought. Instead, the essential heteronomy of thought, which far exceeds the existential emphasis placed on the finitude of individual being, is confirmed in it again and again. Whereas Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the tacit cogito still belongs within a philosophical tradition that, drawing upon Aristotle and Descartes, posits the autonomy—or at least the potential autonomy—of thought, Deleuze and Guattari develop a parallel branch of this tradition that proceeds in a thoroughgoing manner on the basis of a heteronomous thought delivered over to an elemental corporality and carried away on waves of emotion. Having said this, I do not mean to imply that schizoanalysis has no problems of its own, but simply that its problems are substantially different from those traditional philosophy must deal with.

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Translated by Ivan Gutierrez

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Emotionality and Temporality

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A Phenomenological Perspective on Emotions The aim of these reflections is to consider the relationship between emotionality and temporality or, in other words, about the temporal aspect of emotionality. If, however, we are to investigate emotionality from a temporal perspective, in no way does that mean that we intend to simply track the temporal progression of emotions or measure their duration in time. The question regarding the relationship between emotionality and time must be conceived in an entirely different way, for emotions do not represent observable facts that can be understood through temporal measurement. To be sure, the temporal progression of emotions may be described; nonetheless, their meaning within the framework of the whole of human existence will never be grasped in that manner. As Jean-Paul Sartre notes in Esquisse d’une théorie des emotions, emotions are not isolated facts, but complex states in which the entirety of human existence makes itself manifest: “an emotion signifies in its own manner the whole of the consciousness, or, if we take our stand on the existential plane, of the human reality. It is not an accident, because the human reality is not a sum of facts; it expresses under a definite aspect the synthetic human entirety in its integrity.”1 An emotion cannot be understood fully as such through psychological introspection or the external observation of corporeal changes. Such reductionist approaches will not get us far. Instead, an investigation of the emotions must penetrate to the dimension where emotionality is inseparably bound up with the realisation of human existence. In Sartre’s view, it is not clinical psychology that deserves credit for exploring and exposing this dimension, but phenomenological philosophy. The existential relationship between emotionality and human existence was clarified to considerably by the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, thanks to whom we can now apprehend that emotions are not 1

Jean-Paul Sartre, Esquisse d’une théorie des emotions (Paris: Hermann, 1995), p. 26. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, trans. Philip Mairet (London: Methuen, 1962), pp. 27-8. In Sartre’s use, the expression “human reality” (réalité-humaine) is equivalent to Heidegger’s Dasein.

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inner psychological states with corresponding external bodily correlates, but rather existential dispositions of an open Being-in-the-World by means of which Dasein is situated in the world. The emotions that agitate and transport us fulfil their dynamic character by throwing us into the world. Since emotions determine how each of us find ourselves in the world, they always have a necessarily individual character. What Heidegger says of human existence is true of each emotion—it is “always my own” [je meine]. However, this Jemeinigkeit of existence should just be acknowledged and postulated, but must shown and justified by means of an existential analysis of Dasein. For this reason, in Sein und Zeit, Heidegger analysed the structure of individual existence, which is linked to the totality of Dasein and its Being-inthe-World. The existential analysis of Dasein eventually arrives at a temporal dimension in which it becomes apparent that the existential integrity of the Self is based on the unity of an ecstatic temporality – as is the coherence of the ontological structure of Dasein as a whole. More precisely, the integrity of individual existence consists in an authentic temporalising of temporality (which is ontologically the most original expression of the temporal unity of Dasein), whereas all modes of self-forgetting and depersonalisation derive from an inauthentic temporalisation of temporality in which Dasein turns away from its most original form – without, however, actually being able to radically tear itself away from it. All forms of not-being-oneself thus take place against the background of the original temporal unity of Dasein; they are derived, privative modifications of that unity. Nevertheless, we might ask whether certain extreme moments do not disrupt the integrity of individual existence much more radically than does inauthentic existence and its temporality. Do not certain emotions radically upset the integrity and totality of Dasein? If they do, it would be necessary to carefully examine not only such charged emotions, but also the temporal foundation of the depersonalization that takes place in them. However, clarifying the temporal conditions of the disintegration of individual existence that occurs in certain emotional states requires, as we shall see, a redescription of Heidegger’s conception of emotionality. Similarly, a redescription of the temporally conditioned disintegration of individual existence will cast a new light on the phenomenological account of Dasein. With this in mind, we shall proceed with our investigation.

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Boredom First, however, let us return once again to the phenomenological conception of emotionality that discloses the temporal basis of emotional states. Although the temporal structure of temporality is not at first glance evident, we can apprehend it quickly by examining Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of boredom found in Die Grudbegriffe der Metaphysik. The German word for boredom, Langweile—“long while”—itself indicates that time has temporal connotations. Boredom seizes us in the way a long while—or a long time—does. However, the long while in which time becomes disproportionately lengthy is not only related to a measurable time that might seem “subjectively” longer than “in reality”. A long while has a particular temporal feeling (Zeitgefühl) that is bound up with time much more deeply and inwardly, since it derives from Dasein’s temporality. In order to reveal the connection between the long while and the temporalisation of temporality phenomenologically, Heidegger distinguishes between three forms or degrees of boredom: Gelangweiltwerden von etwas [becoming bored by something], Sichlangweilen bei etwas [being bored with something] and what he calls tiefe Langweile, profound boredom. If the first degree of boredom involves something particular boring us, the second arises when there is no concrete thing responsible for our being bored. In the second degree of boredom we are bored regardless of what we happen to be doing.2 At such moments, everything becomes boring. The moment we become bored, the boredom comes from us and therefore we ourselves are responsible for it. This influences the way we try to face the boredom: whereas when something concrete bores us we try to divert our awareness and compress time with some pastime activity, when we are bored at something, the passing the time reveals itself to be an immediate expression of the boredom. Every passing the time is thus synonymous with the boredom.3 No matter how we pass the time, we remain bored because time does not bear down on us from somewhere “outside” us, but comes directly from within. When boredom comes from Dasein itself, it is tied, according to 2

Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), p. 139. Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill, Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 92. 3 Ibid. p. 170. Ibid. p. 113.

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Heidegger, to a strange compliancy with which Dasein gives in to what is happening and loses itself in it. At issue is a mode of existence in which Dasein allows itself to be absorbed by a dimension of the present, taking in its past and future as mere shadows of that present.4 Nevertheless, past and future as temporal dimensions cannot be completely annulled; they continue to draw their sense from the dimension of the present to which Dasein has become captive – Dasein has become enclosed within the present dimension. The boredom takes possession of a hypertrophied, stiff Dasein, despite all its pastime activities, for it is a variation on the inauthentic mode of temporality that defines the second degree of boredom; however, according to Heidegger, this is also true of the first degree of boredom, in which Dasein is at the mercy of a boring entity. In both the first degree and the second, it is ultimately the inauthentic temporalising of temporality that is responsible for the boredom which comes over Dasein while, at the same time, leaving it in a strange, empty indifference. But what about the third degree of boredom? In Die Grundbregiffe der Metaphysik, profound boredom is expressed with an vague, rather barren utterance: “es ist einem langweilig”, roughly translated as “it is boring”. In it, there is no one involved personally; it refers rather to an impersonal attunement in which an individual consumed by profound boredom becomes “an indifferent nobody”.5 In profound boredom everything becomes indifferent, including Dasein itself. But does that mean that in profound boredom Dasein undergoes a radical depersonalisation? We cannot assume that is what is happening, because what becomes generally indifferent along with entities in profound boredom is merely an inauthentic existence characterised by everyday existence with all its tasks, functions and roles. The more indifferent this engaged Self-Being becomes, the more strongly Dasein is attracted to its unnamed “naked” Self-Being. Heidegger states quite clearly that Yet the self of Dasein that is becoming irrelevant in all this does not thereby lose its determinacy, but rather the reverse, for this particular impoverishment which sets in with respect to ourselves in this “it is boring for one” first brings the self in all its nakedness to itself as the self that is there and has taken over the being-there of its Da-sein.6 4

Ibid. pp. 187-8. Ibid. p. 124. Ibid. p. 203. Ibid. pp. 134-5. 6 Ibid. p. 215. Ibid. p. 143.

5

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Dasein does not get lost in the emptiness of indifference, but finds in this emptiness the only thing that always remains and which is always the most important – itself. Thus instead of depersonalisation, we must here speak of the individuation of Dasein. In this sense, profound boredom plays a similar role as the foundational mood of anxiety does in Sein und Zeit. Heidegger explicitly confirms this when he says that profound boredom is a foundational mood for Dasein.7 The third degree of boredom is deeper and more fundamental than the first two, for it discloses just who Dasein is, free from all public masks. Profound boredom gives Dasein to understand how it is doing in its essence. Although this is true of other moods as well, profound boredom enjoys a certain priority, for in it the temporal character of Dasein’s Being is shown in a particularly clear manner. In profound boredom—by contrast with the first two forms of the boredom, which involve various forms of passing the time—any shortening of time is made quite impossible.8 And since disposing of the time contained in each shortening of the long while is ruled out, Dasein is all the more susceptible to time as such, or the temporality of its own Being. For the temporal character of profound boredom consists in Dasein’s being bound by the horizon of its ecstatic temporality and at the same time being forced to break through the binding unity of the three temporal ecstasies (past, present and future) in a tense, exacerbated moment. 9 On the one hand, Dasein is bound by a temporal horizon that exposes it to the emptiness in which all entities show themselves to be indifferent; on the other, it is attracted by the perspective of the breakthrough moment in which it can find resolve and free itself toward itself. It is this tension between being bound by a unified and unifying temporal horizon and the urge to break through the unity of temporal ecstasies that characterises the temporal structure of profound boredom. Nevertheless, what happens with regard to the authenticity of individual existence at the moment Dasein breaks through the ecstatic unity of its temporality is unclear in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Heidegger simply observes that the binding temporal unity can only be broken through in time—that is, through authentic temporality, whose basic focal point consists of the moment. It seems therefore that the issue here is not a sundering of the ecstatic unity of temporality as 7

Ibid. p. 239. Ibid. pp. 203-4. Ibid. p. 135. 9 Ibid. p. 224. Ibid. p. 150. 8

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such, but rather a penetration of inauthentic temporality toward the moment Heidegger refers to as “the look of Dasein in the three perspectival directions […], namely present, future, and past” or “the look of resolute disclosedness for action in the specific situation in which Dasein finds itself disposed in each case”.10

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Existence without Existents To understand the temporally conditioned disintegration of individual existence better, let us turn now to Emmanuel Lévinas’ De l’existence à l’existant, in which he analyses phenomena similar to those analysed in Heidegger’s Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Despite the similar subject matter, Lévinas does not deal with the individual structure of human existence, but with individuality—or, the subjectivity of the subject, to use his own words— which he understands in the most general sense as “a power of unending withdrawal, an ability always to find oneself behind what happens to us”.11 Yet, he sees it as something uncertain and precarious. Whereas Heidegger always ascribes to Dasein the elementary ability to find itself within or beyond what is happening—which, in keeping with the Western philosophical tradition, guarantees its fundamental autonomy—Lévinas points to the ability we have of finding ourselves and not becoming entangled in what its happening as to something essentially heteronymous and contingent. When he describes the phenomena of fatigue or laziness, he does still refer to the individual structure of existence, but when he comes to the phenomena of insomnia and the quiet, indefinite dread arising out of the nocturnal darkness, he reveals the anonymity of existence without existents,12 an impersonal sphere, a nameless existence that is described as an indefinite “il y a” [there is]. “There is, in general, without it mattering what there is, without our being able to fix a substantive to this term. There is is an impersonal form, like in it rains or it is warm. Its anonymity is essential.”13 It is this 10

Ibid. p. 226. Ibid. p. 151. Emmanuel Lévinas, De l’existence à l’existant, 2nd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1998), p. 77-8. Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 49. De l’existence à l’existant, 2nd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1998), p. 77-8. 12 Ibid. pp. 58-60, 65-7. Ibid. pp. 96-8, 109-13. 13 Ibid. p. 58. Ibid. p. 95.

11

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essential anonymity of existence that stifles us during insomnia or when nocturnal dread strikes; we cannot find a footing, whether in the world or in ourselves. The il y a, which engulfs us at such moments, is existence in which existents have not yet been found or we can no longer find them. Insofar as the individuality of an existent depends on its ability to find itself, then il y a announces this ability’s end. However, along with the individuality of the existent, which vanishes in the elemental il y a, the intentional structure of understanding and the organised structure of the world disintegrates as well. The end of the world comes, during which all things irrevocably lose their forms and functions. The only thing that is conserved in this disintegrating world is anonymous existence, which cannot be demarcated or distinguished from an outside. All boundaries between inner and outer are effaced. Through this anonymous existence Lévinas arrives at the dimension of “the Inhuman”, which has nothing to do with objective reality and yet precisely because of this contains hidden within it the key to the confusion of delirium and the unrestraint of madness as well as the deepest origins of the emotions. For emotions, according to Lévinas, are not states in which existents find themselves and in which they always understand themselves in this or that manner. “An emotion is what overwhelms”,14 we read in De l’existence à l’existant. Emotions are understood here as moments that upset the integrity of the existent, as that which “prevents the subject from gathering itself up, reacting, being someone”.15 They are upheavals in which both existents and the world approach a breakdown. In a destructive manner, emotions open up a bottomless abyss in which existence is overcome by vertigo and persists as a merely impersonal il y a.16 The emotions we succumb to pull the ground from beneath our feet and expose us to vertigo before the abysmal emptiness of the impersonal il y a.17 Nonetheless, the question remains: how are we to understand the temporal structure of the vertigo that seizes us in emotions? Lévinas offers an answer when he highlights the role the present dimension plays in the constitution of our intentional relationship with the world. Because not only the intentionality of understanding, but also the individuality of the existent is founded in the present and through the present, the present opens up a tem14

Ibid. p. 70. Ibid. p. 121. Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. p. 71. Ibid. p. 121. 15

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poral dimension in which anonymous existence without existents changes into the personal existence of an existent. Lévinas writes that The present is the beginning of a being. […] An instant breaks the anonymity of being in general. It is the event in which, in the play of being which is enacted without players, there arise players in existence, existents having being as an attribute – an exceptional attribute, to be sure, but an attribute. In other words, the present is the very fact that there is an existent …18

The present is not only the hypostasis of the anonymous, murmuring il y a through which the individuality of an existent is established, but also what guarantees the integrity of the existent. By contrast, the ungraspable, receding present in which nothing determinate and graspable offers itself to the understanding necessarily provokes the disintegration of individual existence. Thus behind the disintegration of the individual structure of existence we must look for the self-rejection and self-concealment of the present’s temporal dimension.

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Conclusion Although Lévinas’ conception of the present and of time differs substantially from the fundamentally ontological scheme of ecstatic temporality, we cannot fail to notice that the interpretation that connects the integrity of individual existence with the guarantees provided by the present and the disintegration of individual existence with the falling of the present into non-presence resonates with the re-description of the phenomenological description of anxiety we presented in an essay on the relevance of Heidegger’s thought in the field of psychopathology.19 For despite the basic intention of Sein und Zeit, which is an analysis of the individual being of Dasein on the basis of an ecstatic temporal unity, a more profound analysis of the temporal structure of anxiety reveals a breakdown in the present temporal dimension along with the concomitant disintegration of the unity of the three temporal ecstases. Thus, in anxiety, which was originally supposed to 18

Ibid. p. 98. Ibid. p. 1. Petr Kouba, The Phenomenon of Mental Disorder: Perspectives in Heidegger’s Thought on the Field of Psychopathology, trans. David Vichnar and Petr Kouba (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), pp. 86-9.

19

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bring Dasein toward itself and its unique, irreplaceable Being, we see opening up the bottomless non-presence of the present in which the unified structure of individual existence disintegrates. In anxiety Dasein takes possession of the temporal vertigo caused by the bottomless abyss of Being. A full understanding of this vertigo in which the comprehensive structure of individual existence disintegrates corresponds to Lévinas’ analysis of the temporal conditions for the disintegration of individual being that takes place through the emotions. Every emotion, in its depths, is a vertigo before the bottomless emptiness of anonymous existence that stretches out under the feet of individual existence. However, if emotionality is to be truly understood, it must be seen not only as the sum of all possible emotions, but as the fundamental ability to be moved and unsettled by emotions. Emotionality as such would be impossible without the temporal caesura from which all the sensitivity, vulnerability and fragility of human existence derives. Human existence would not be buffeted by emotions if its individual structure and the concomitant intentional relationship with the world were not unsettled by the temporal vertigo caused by the impersonal sphere of being opening up underfoot. For this reason, it is important to understand not only the indefinite nocturnal dread Lévinas speaks of or the Heidegger’s foundational existential moods like anxiety and profound boredom, but all the emotions, in which we can see different degrees of upheaval in individual existence and its intentional relationship to the world. When emotions overcome us, when they take away our control over ourselves, they unsettle our existence to its very foundations. This is true in the first place of pathological emotional states such as depression, which is so increasingly common these days. Thus to understand depression we must not consider it simply in terms of an individual case history or stress factors conditioned by emotional “disorders”, but see it in terms of the deepest source of emotionality: the anonymous abyss of the il y a. It is this naked existence without existents that makes it possible to see depression in its ownmost, gloomy light. Venturing beyond the internal limits of phenomenology, which is the movement inscribed in the very structure of phenomenological thought, we may also find a surprising proximity between the impersonal, inhuman neutrality of the Lévinasian il y a and the post-existential view of emotionality presented by Deleuze and Guattari in L’Anti-Œdipe.20 Leaving aside every20

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, L’Anti-Œdipe (Paris: Minuit, 1972), pp. 22-29.

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day structure of experience with its rigid identities, neurotic modes of behaviour, and familial territories, we discover zones of pure intensities that shake and reshape our experience. This is the zone of impersonal emotions experienced as pulsating intensities. Where do these pure intensities come from? They come from the two preceding forces, repulsion and attraction, and from the opposition of these two forces. It must not be thought that the intensities themselves are in opposition to one another, arriving at a state of balance around a neutral state. On the contrary, they are all positive in relationship to the zero intensity that designates the full body without organs. 21

In other words, Deleuze and Guattari assert that if we are to understand the power of emotions, we need to see them in relation to the body without organs. In their conception, the body without organs is conceived as a prepersonal field populated by various intensities. It is a field which enables changes, becomings and transitions that make us realize who we are and what our role in society might be. All our suffering and all our enjoyment is embedded in the body without organs. Despite all conceptual differences, we may thus conclude that when it comes to the philosophical elucidation of emotionality Deleuze and Guattari encounter phenomena similar to Levinas who always already finds himself en route towards betraying phenomenology by pushing it to its limits.

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Translated by Ivan Gutierrez

Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 16-22. 21 Deleuze and Guattari, L’Anti-Œdipe, p. 25. Anti-Oedipus, pp. 18-19.

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Worlds and Inter-Worlds

The aim of these considerations is not overly ambitious: We would like to do no more than examine the way modern philosophical thought has come to terms with the biological ideas of Jakob von Uexküll. As regards the philosophical reception of these ideas, phenomenology as laid out in the work of Martin Heidegger stands on one side, with the collaborative work of Deleuze and Guattari on the other. The manner in which Heidegger and Deleuze and Guattari read von Uexküll is literally symptomatic, and therefore makes it possible to understand not only their own philosophical standpoints, but also what distinguishes them from each other. However, before coming to our philosophical reflections on von Uexküll’s work, let us recall his contribution to modern biology. Jakob von Uexküll was one of the first thinkers to overcome a purely mechanistic view of life by giving new meaning to a vitalist conception of living nature. Like his predecessor Hans Driesch, he too believes that a living organism is not a mechanism composed of distinct parts, because mechanical parts are arranged centripetally, whereas the organs of a living organism develop centrifugally and only in direct interaction with the environment, to boot. In his Umwelt und Innerwelt der Tiere, Theoretische Biologie, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Menschen und Tieren and Bedeutungslehre, a mechanistic conception of living organisms is replaced by a holistic view that foregrounds the entirety of functional spheres of a particular type of animal or individual —what he calls the Umwelt, a term denoting the entirety of the perceptual and behavioural world of an animal type or individual. Instead of the mechanistic view of living systems we know by way of Descartes and his successors, Uexküll’s conception of living nature describes the manners in which a particular living organism is integrated into its environment. It would be difficult to formulate a precise translation of the term Umwelt and we will not attempt to do so here. Nonetheless, we may say that Umwelt means a particular biological organism’s world, the environment in which its life transpires. Because every type of animal has a specific way of interacting with its environment in which certain perceptual and behavioural structures come into play, von Uexküll distinguishes specific worlds associ-

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ated with this or that particular animal. The fundamental idea is that such worlds cannot be understood thoroughly using nothing but mathematical tools. Because the world of a living organism contains significant factors— such as colours, tones or odours—that play such decisive roles, such a world cannot be apprehended using quantifiable research methods. As von Uexküll maintains, each Umwelt has its own special colouring, its own experiential tone (Erlebniston) which influences the way elements of the environment appear to the living organism. This is true not only of insects, birds, fish and mammals, but also of humankind itself. Rejecting the mechanistic view of the living organism also entails emphasising the immanent character of life: the structure of the organism is not, according to Uexküll, given in the overall scheme of living nature that classical science has endeavoured to reveal, but follows from the organism’s self-actualisation. The course of an organism’s life is based on its selfconstitution and self-regulation; it is like a melody that contains its own musical “rules” within itself. In this connection Uexküll speaks of the “melody of growth” (Wachstumsmelodie).1 Nonetheless, this does not imply a physiological or genetic predetermination, because physiological or genetic structure is simply the score, so to speak, that the living melody of the organism is based on. The melody only emerges in the constant interaction between the organism and its environment. The proper field in which this interaction takes place is the Umwelt, the specific world of a particular type of animal. In order to better understand the way von Uexküll approaches the biological world, let us consider his example: the sensory-motor behavioural constants of the tick.2 The natural behaviour of this parasite is more or less well known. Upon hatching, the tick does not yet have all of its four pairs of legs and its sexual organs are undeveloped. During this time, it zeroes in mainly on cold-blooded animals such as lizards. When its legs grow in and its sexual organs develop, the tick climbs onto the twig of a tree or a bush, where it waits until a mammal appears. Then, it hops onto its host, latches onto it, finds a warm spot and then bites into its skin in order to suck its 1

Jakob von Uexküll, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen. Bedeutungslehre (Hamburg: Rohwohl, 1956), p. 115. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning, trans. Joseph D. O’Neill (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), p. 152. 2 Ibid. pp. 23-30. Ibid. pp. 44-52.

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blood. When the tick is filled to bursting, it abandons the host, lays its eggs and dies. What is interesting in this process is the way the tick reacts to the stimuli proceeding from its environment. Out of a rich array of sounds, colours and odours we humans might discern in a forest, the tick reacts only to light (when it climbs onto the tree), the odour of butyric acid that indicates an approaching mammal and animal warmth. Ticks are not even able to recognise the taste of blood, which has been confirmed in laboratory experiments in which they are perfectly satisfied with a liquid of a different chemical composition as long as it is heated to the right temperature. In the world of the tick, only three elemental stimuli are relevant. The relative poverty of this world is, however, a necessary condition for the successful completion of the tick’s life cycle. According to von Uexküll, that is why it is important not to confuse Umwelt with Umgebung—that is, the surrounding area in which an organism may live its life without ever perceiving much of it. The Umwelt is always a sort of cross-section of an infinite number of stimuli offered up to an organism by its surroundings. Generally, it would be true to say that simple organisms have simple Umwelts, whereas complex organisms have highly articulated worlds. The functional spheres of complex organisms contain a large number of reflexes that, taken together, form a reflexive totality. This totality can either be coordinated from a single centre —as is the case in animals with developed central nervous systems—or can constitute a sort of “reflexive republic” in which independent “reflex persons” freely join forces, as do sea urchins.3 Because individual reflexes function independently in the reflexive republic, the sea urchin cannot unite its reflexive personae and through this unity perceive various aspects of identical objects. By contrast, an organism as simple as a tick can perceive an animal, smelling the odour it latches onto and apprehending its warmth, as a unified entity. Whether we are dealing with simple or complex organisms, however, all animals are integrated equally well in their own specific worlds—that is, they move about in them with the same certainty. When von Uexküll describes the Umwelt of a tick, he notes, among other things, that a tick is able to wait for a very long time before a fitting mammal appears: in laboratory conditions, it has allegedly been possible to maintain a tick alive for up to 18 years. This observation brings us to another aspect of the biological world: its temporal constitution. The fact that a tick can persist for so long in a state of inertness means that a tick’s life has quite 3

Ibid. pp. 51-2. Ibid. pp. 76-8.

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a different rhythm than that of a human. A moment during which a tick’s Umwelt remains unchanged may be much longer than a similar moment for a human being. We know that humans are able to recognise slices of time as small as 1/18th of a second. During this small fraction of time, a human would perceive the world as unchanged, whereas the corresponding period for a snail, for example, is much longer, for a snail cannot perceive more than three or four changes a second. Individual biological worlds therefore differ not only in their experiential tone and the way they are articulated, but also in their temporal character. We may thus conclude that there is no single universal time; on the contrary, we may suppose there are as many different dimensions of time as there are biological worlds. Of course, what we have said about time is equally true of space. In the biological world, space is not an objective geometrical space, but a lived space whose natural centre is a living organism. In our own spatial experience, we differentiate six basic directions: up and down, left and right, and front and back. Our bodily dispositions and perceptual abilities give us a wholly particular conception of spatial proximity and distance. There is no doubt that a tick, which has no eyes and perceives light with its entire bodily surface, has a completely different conception of space than we humans do – the same may be said of a dog, for example. Our erect frame creates the specific conditions for our spatial orientation, not to mention the range and capacity of our sight and hearing. If, in addition, we may thank the semicircular canal in the inner ear for our three-dimensional grasp of space, as von Uexküll notes, then we may assume that all organisms equipped with such an organ—like fish, for example4—also have a three-dimensional spatiality. It follows that there is no such thing as space in and of itself. Just as we cannot claim that we humans understand time as it is in itself, we cannot claim to understand space in itself either. Rather, we must say that each Umwelt has its own specific space-time in which a given organism operates. Thus we cannot postulate anything like a world in itself; the best we can do is describe a plethora of different space-times corresponding to concrete biological worlds. Nonetheless, worlds as von Uexküll understands them vary not only according to species, but also on the ages of individuals: the Umwelt of a child, which reflects within itself its entire stance toward its surroundings, is doubtless different than the Umwelt of an adult. Moreover, a little girl looks 4

Ibid. pp. 32-4. Ibid. pp. 56-7.

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differently upon a tree than a forester who takes care of a forest or a scientist would. In the worlds of the little girl, the forester and the scientist, the tree plays different roles. That is why von Uexküll distinguishes between the Umwelts corresponding to different domains such as the Umwelt of practical dealings, or the Umwelt of enchantment with the environment. The world of the astronomer, who measures distances in billions of light years, is quite different from that of a musicologist or a doctor—which does not mean, however, that their worlds do not overlap, interconnect and influence each other. In addition to the worlds of different natural species, which relate to trees in their own special ways, we may speak of the different versions of the human world that surround each individual like a soap bubble. It is within the framework of the soap-bubble world each concrete individual establishes that the significance of everything given to it is disclosed and addresses the individual in its own way. Because the Umwelt constitutes the environment with which concrete individuals are familiar, the space where they have their habitual routes and behaviours, it is also related to the phenomenon of a dwelling and a home. Homes are where concrete individuals are settled in, where they know their way around. Of course there are also organisms that do not create homes for themselves—and yet they have a particular Umwelt. Alongside them, however, are a great number of organisms that do create a particular territory within their worlds which is their home. Such is the case with spiders, for example, whose spiderwebs are their dwellings and their homes at the same time. The passages of a mole’s burrow have a structure similar to that of a spiderweb and basically serve the same purpose.5 The mole scampers up and down the passages of its burrow and collects everything it finds in its way. For the mole, the passages are well-known paths that it negotiates equally well forward and backward, even though it orients itself based solely on its sense of smell. If another individual of the same species encroaches upon its territory, the mole will defend its home for dear life and to the death.

5

Cf. the figure borrowed from Jakob von Uexküll, Streifzüge, p. 76. Forays, p. 104.

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Nevertheless, we may encounter the term Umwelt not only in modern biology, but in philosophy as well. Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit borrows this key concept in von Uexküll’s analysis of life and then puts to work in an analysis of human existence. In Heidegger’s description of human existence, the term Umwelt denotes the world of our everyday existence, the world in which we dwell and with which we are intimately familiar. This intimate familiarity with the world provides our everyday existence with the certainty it needs. To the extent that in the context of our everyday world we always are already oriented, we understand that things that surround us, other people and ourselves. For we do not understand things, others or ourselves in isolation, but rather always within a specific context—in the context of our world. Within this framework, individual things refer to one another and all of them depend in some way on what concerns us in each concrete situation. What Heidegger is concerned with when he deals with the world of average everydayness is precisely this referential structure of the world. Regardless of the momentary situation, the overall structure of our everyday world is based on a context of reference and significance that confers meaning to individual things and events. Because the global structure of reference and

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significance is preserved in our everday world—though its factical contents might change and we might find ourselves in new situations—Heidegger designates this structure as “ontological”. This means that the structure of the world is an existential dimension of the human mode of being. In other words, the world is not only a collection of present-at-hand entities that we are related to in some way; instead, the world is first and foremost an ontological dimension of human existence. Thus an understanding of the significance-laden and referential structure of the world of average everydayness is a precondition for understanding the ontological character of human existence. The phenomenon of worldhood plays a fundamental role in the ontological description of human existence. For with its help, Heidegger intended in Sein und Zeit to transcend the Cartesian distinction between a subject and object of understanding; instead of dividing human existence into res extensa and res cogitans, human existence is here taken as “Being-in-the-World”. Because worldhood is an ontological feature of human existence, human existence is Being-inthe-World. In order to better understand the ontological character of human existence, the conception of Being-in-the-World as outlined in Heidegger’s Zollikoner Seminare (see below) may be helpful.6 From this outline, it is clear that the ontological analysis of human existence is not founded on a principle like that of a soul or a subjective consciousness that is related somehow to external objects. As Being-in-the-World, human existence is existentially non-closed; thanks to its openness, it is always already related in some way to the surrounding world and to itself. The world is not merely a collection of present-at-hand entities, but a horizon of significance which gives meaning to everything we encounter within its framework. The world conceived in this manner is always already open, mediated by a mood that situates us within a totality of entities. In his understanding of the key role played by moods in our relationship to the world, Heidegger is basically in agreement with von Uexküll, who highlights the issues of atunement and experiential tone. The ontological description of human existence is based on the fact that entities as such are made accessible to us through a mood 6

Martin Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare. Protokole-Gespräche-Briefe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987), p. 3. Zollikon Seminars: Protocols–Conversations– Letters, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), p. 5.

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that throws us into the world in a particular way. It is only because human existence is thrown into the world through its moods that it can relate itself to the possibilities that are offered up to it. Human existence can relate itself to its possibilities only because it is always already thrown into the world, encountering them within it. Without the world, neither particular things nor other people can appeal to us as possibilities for our own existence. Without it, none of these entities would concern us. The semantic context of the world, however, does not yet capture Being-in-the-World in all its fullness. In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger writes that human existence entails not only an intimate familiarity with our everyday world, but also the possibility of transcending it and finding ourselves face to face with an uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit, or not-at-homeness) that is, in a sense, more original than our own settled familiarity with the everyday world. According to Heidegger, a key phenomenon testifying to the fact that we are not fully settled in the world—and that indeed our Being-in-theWorld has, to a much greater extent, an uncanny character—is anxiety. The moment we are overcome by anxiety, the overall significance-laden and referential structure of our world breaks down and we are exposed to absolute uncertainty. By contrast with fear, which binds us to entities that reveal themselves always as something concrete we are afraid of, anxiety makes us feel the extreme unanchoredness and uncertainty of our situation in the world. Anxiety brings us before the bare fact of our existence, leaving us radically without support. However, that does not mean that our existence loses its character as Being-in-the-World. On the contrary, it is when the general significance of the everyday world breaks down in anxiety that the otherwise open character of our existence is especially made manifest. In anxiety, nothing persists other than our openness to the world itself. Therefore, if we are to understand human existence in its fullness, we must supplement the structure of our Being-in-the-World by a pure openness of the world. It is evident that human existence is not closed within the horizon of the average everyday world; on the contrary, it transcends it in a fundamental way. However, this transcendence is not merely a transition from an intimate familiarity with the world to the world as revealed in a state of oppressive unfamiliarity, but also a transition from the ontical level to the ontological level. From the level of ontical entities we encounter in the course of our everyday existence, we come to a level at which it is only our own existence which is at issue. On this level, what we are, what we concern our-

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selves with in everyday life, is no longer fundamental and what remains is the naked fact that we are. The ontical-ontological difference—that is, the difference between what we are usually concerned with and the very fact of our existence—manifests itself in the transcending by which human existence is exposed to its own openness, where it individualises itself in its ownmost Being-in-the-World. The fundamental possibility of the individuation of human existence in its ownmost Being-in-the-World brings us to the possibility of authentic existence, which does not let itself become tied down to what is given in everyday existence and does not conform to the opinions and stances of others – it exists only for itself. Although authentic existence need not wallow in anxiety, it is characterised by resolve and the courage to be alone that anxiety makes it possible to experience. Opposed to the possibility of authentic existence is the possibility of an inauthentic mode of being in which we hold on to our everyday certainties and rely on the views of the anonymous public. The inauthentic mode of existence, which we gravitate toward when we close ourselves up within the intimate familiarity of the everyday world because we are worried about the extreme solitude of anxiety, is characterised by a whirling, falling motion in which we wander from one possibility to another without taking up any of them as our own. Even though inauthentic existence draws us away from our ownmost Being, it too is carried upon the motion of transcendence through which human existence relates itself with understanding to the openness of Being. Although inauthentic existence gives itself over so fully to the entities that disclose themselves within the framework of the everyday world that it forgets its original openness to its own Being, it cannot avoid having a special, though perhaps equivocal, relation to Being. For the movement of transcendence in which this relationship is fulfilled is the fundamental act of human existence. Here we arrive at a phenomenon that, according to Heidegger, distinguishes human existence from that of all other beings, animals not excluded. No animal—not to mention any non-living being—is capable of the transcendence thanks to which we humans acquire a relationship to our open Being-in-the-World. Only humans are able to transcend the horizon of our everyday lives and experience the openness of our Being as a bare fact of our existence. In other words, that which sets humans apart from animals is our ability to give up our Umwelt. Whereas animals are enclosed within the narrow framework of their functional spheres, humans are able to transcend their everyday worlds and relate themselves to their Being-in-the-World as

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such. Thus Heidegger declares in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik that elements of material nature, like rocks, are weltlos (worldless) and animals are weltarm (world-poor), whereas humans are weltbildend (worldcreating).7 If rocks have no relationship to their environment, animals do relate themselves to the entities that surround them; that, however, does not mean that they can transcend their environment and understand it in its Being. And it is this ability to transcend beings and relate to their Being which constitutes our world-creating capacity. In Vom Wesen des Grundes, written in the same period as Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, the human world-creating capacity means nothing more than that human existence is transcending. Humans create their worlds, for human existence always already apprehends itself as an immediate empirical given and relates itself to whatever makes possible any experience at all. By contrast, animals are world-poor for, although they may move about freely within the framework of their functional spheres, their movement simply expresses a lack of inhibition (Enthemmung) that does not involve the same criteria as our human freedom, which consists in nothing other than the ability to abandon a given context, exposing ourselves to losing it and experiencing the fundamental openness of our Being without which any functional domain would be impossible. To be more precise, the fundamental openness of human existence is its ownmost freedom. By contrast, the disinhibition proper to animals prevents them from transcending beings – this is evident in the context of an animal’s functional sphere – and apprehend them as such. Despite their disinhibition, according to Heidegger, animals are captives to their functional spheres as there are unable to free themselves from them due to their instinctual biases. Animals are necessarily enclosed within the spheres defined by their disinhibition. Compared with human freedom, therefore, the animals’ disinhibition reveals itself as a privation. In the light of human freedom, it becomes evident that animals lack a genuine relationship to the openness of the world. As a result, there is a uncrossable gaping abyss between humans and living nature. As a phenomenologist whose starting point is that which presents itself within experience, Heidegger maintains that living nature can only be understood from a human perspective, as some7

Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), p. 272. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 184.

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thing deficient in relation to us. Compared with the human mode of Being, nature appears as a privative phenomenon. Nonetheless, the deficiency of the animal mode of Being does not simply consist in a smaller degree of freedom in its relation to the world, but in a completely different mode of Being. Although it cannot be said that humans have a superior access to their surroundings than animals do—for human sight is decidedly not better than that of an eagle nor the human sense of smell more acute than that of a dog—we are free in our relationship to the world, whereas animals are bound within the sphere of their disinhibition. For this reason, Heidegger disagrees radically with von Uexküll, who conceives both the human and animal world in the same manner.8 For Heidegger only humans have worlds, properly speaking, whereas animals lack worlds and are therefore world-poor. The question arises whether such a rigid distinction between humans and animals is really tenable or whether it is not an expression of an anthropocentric tendency in modern thought rather than an incontrovertible fact. Some of the philosophical concepts elaborated jointly by Deleuze and Guattari may serve as an alternative to or perhaps more precisely as a critical supplementation to Heidegger’s views. Their joint philosophical work is interesting for us particularly because of the vitalist analysis of the territorialisation process presented in Mille plateaux and Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?. The term territorialisation itself, which is nothing other than a process by which a particular milieu becomes a settled, intimately familiar territory, is borrowed from the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, who defines a territory as the environment of trust and intimacy between mother and child. Deleuze and Guattari, however, expand the process of territorialisation to include human existence and nature in the wider sense of the word. Like von Uexküll, whose discussion of animal and human worlds they repeatedly refer to, Deleuze and Guattari speak of different types of milieu (Umwelt) that are transformed into settled territories in a variety of ways. In addition to the territories we humans create, there are many sorts of animal territories. Unlike Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari see the process of territorialisation taking place not only in living nature, but even at the level of crystals. However, what differentiates them even more radically from Heidegger is their concept of deterritorialisation—that is, a process within which a settled territory is destroyed or abandoned and there is an exposure 8

Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, pp. 383-4. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, pp. 176-8.

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to what reveals itself as unknown, unsettled and inhospitable. Whereas Heidegger understands the abandonment of the world of average everydayness as transcendence, Deleuze and Guattari view the process from an immanent perspective. According to them, deterritorialisation is not a matter of transcending from an ontic to an ontological level, but a process by which life is transformed immanently; likewise, deterritorialisation does not expose solitary individuals to the bare fact of their existence, but to an escape from routine functional spheres toward the opening of new, as yet unknown possibilities; this in turn conceals within it the inescapable threat of total collapse for the individual’s integrity. Reterritorialisation, comprising the creation of new territories, is then posited as a necessary contrast to the movement of deterritorialisation. In Sein und Zeit, the idea of the movement of reterritorialisation is not taken into account, as for Heidegger humans are in principle world-creating. For Heidegger, the question regarding the creation of new territories is not a problem that requires an explicit resolution, because humans create their own worlds the moment they exist—that is, the moment they transcend from beings to Being. Instead of thinking through in a detailed manner how the process of deterritorialisation is connected to the process of reterritorialisation or what risks may arise from the absence of such a connection, Heidegger clings to the movement of transcendence in which the ontic-ontological difference is revealed. The result of this primary orientation toward the difference between a human’s openness toward human existence and what is disclosed to a human thanks to this openness is thus an underestimation of the risks associated with abandoning the settled, familiar world of our everyday existence. By contrast, the threat represented by the collapse of all meaningful contexts and the resulting possibility of derangement, delirium and madness is at the centre of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical interests. In addition to positing that the radical possibility of madness is an essential aspect of human existence, Deleuze and Guattari clear new ground here for understanding the difference between humans and animals. For they ascribe the ability to abandon a territory not only to humans, but also to animals. Animals too can become derailed from their usual lifeways, so to speak. As examples of the movement of deterritorialisation in living nature, we may take the sudden and ethologically nonsensical flight manoeuvres of finches but also some of their basic activities, such as mating and nest building, in which the movement of deterritorialisation reveals itself in harmonic connection with the movement of reterritorialisation. The boundary be-

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tween humans and animals is no longer conceived in Heidegger’s rigid sense; there is no ontological imbalance here, but a much more subtle difference between two modes of territorialisation and deterritorialisation. Deleuze and Guattari would argue that if animals lag behind humans in any respect, it is in the complexity of the territorial structures and the degree of deterritorialisation they are capable of. Whether we are dealing with human or animal territories, they must always be understood as open, dynamic systems that are always on the verge of collapse. Territories may not be understood as static entities, for they shift incessantly between deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation. For that reason, territories need to to actively maintained and if they are broken up or abandoned, they must be recreated. Only the deterritorialisation that constantly threatens a territory can be the basis for an interaction between two different worlds. As an illustration of this interaction, Deleuze and Guattari recall von Uexküll’s description of the relationship between flies and spiders, whose functional spheres are mutually complementary.9 In this case, the relationship is not merely one between a subject and an object; a fly is not merely an object in a spider’s world. Without ever having seen a single fly, the spider’s life score has the fly’s life score composed into it; a spiderweb is so perfectly adapted to a fly’s dimensions, strength and flight speed, that it may be considered as comprising a sort of reflected image of a prototype fly. A spider is, as von Uexküll puts it, “fly-like” because its life score contains certain motifs from that of a fly. Two animal scores and two life melodies are mutually interwoven; this is also the case with moths that can only hear a single sound—the call of their principal enemies, bats—or with the ticks noted above, which bear within them the motif of the mammal. We could cite many more examples of the interconnection of two worlds which, together, produces a sort of interworld. A necessary prerequisite for the emergence of animal and human inter-worlds is the deterritorialisation in which one world encounters another and, at the same time, is transformed in the process. Thus, although we may not postulate anything like a world in itself, we can point to Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of territories to show that worlds can constitute common inter-worlds by forming connections and entering into mutual interactions. To put it more precisely, individual worlds are never hermetically sealed off from one another, but form inter-worlds in which they are interconnected. In the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, it 9

Von Uexküll, Streifzüge, pp. 120-2. Forays, pp. 157-9.

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also emerges that individual worlds are not connected in an “arborescent” manner—that is, neither hierarchically, nor extending outward from a single hub—but in a “rhizomatic” manner. Worlds can form large complexes, but not rigidly structured totalities progressing from large to small, from intricate to simple. As von Uexküll might have said, natural worlds produce large symphonies in which individual melodies are intertwined. If one Umwelt comprises the life of an individual as if it were a particular melody that is immanent within itself, then the profusion of interacting worlds constitute a symphony when taken together. A particular ecosystem is in reality no more than one great symphony. This brings von Uexküll to affirm that the aim of biology is to study the “compositional” rules of nature. Composition in both music and nature consists of the ordering of elements based on principles like those of counterpoint. Such principles can be seen not only in the relationships between spiders and flies or ticks and mammals, but also in the sexual differentiation of natural organisms. One way these compositional principles might be laid out is sketched in the fascinating Mille plateaux, particularly in the chapter titled “De la ritournelle”.10 Nonetheless, Deleuze and Guattari are only able to describe the process by which different worlds interact and interpenetrate because they renounce Heidegger’s ontic-ontological distinction. Mille plateaux deals not with the difference between the ontic and the ontological, but with that between the molar and the molecular. Put another way, they no longer speak of a difference between beings and Being that is reducible in the end to the difference between present-at-hand beings and a constantly vanishing—that is to say self-concealing—Being. All we can speak of is the difference between two ways in which the material of life is shaped. For the transformations in significance undergone by particular beings in different worlds show that beings themselves are not and cannot be constant. On the contrary, von Uexküll’s analysis of animal and human worlds show that meanings change for beings along with their forms and characteristics. No characteristic ascribable to a being remains unchanged throughout all possible worlds.11 Moreover, if simple organisms, like sea urchins, are not always related to the 10

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2 (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980), pp. 381-433. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 310-50. 11 Von Uexküll, Streifzüge, pp. 150-1. Forays, p. 197.

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same entities, for each one of their reflexive spheres function independently, then we cannot postulate a constant occurrence of entities to which every living organism would be related, each in its own way. Thus instead of beings as such as distinguished from Being, Deleuze and Guattari are impelled to speak of molar structures as distinguished in their macroscopic dimensions from the microscopic burgeoning of molecular structures. The difference between molar and molecular structures is then projected into their analysis of the process of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, thanks to which they are able to account for much subtler nuances than any ontological analysis of human existence is capable of. .

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Translated by Ivan Gutierrez

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Life without Subjectivity: Deleuze, Guattari and Patočka’s Asubjective Phenomenology

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Opening It may seem that Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology has nothing in common with Deleuze and Guattari’s view of life. A confrontation between those two conceptions may resemble “the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table”. But if we take a closer look, it turns out that there are some surprising similarities between both concepts of life. Despite the ahistoricity of their encounter, both concepts represent interesting attempts to overcome the anthropocentrism that reigned in the Western philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries. Both Patočka, and Deleuze with Guattari were trying to wake up from “an anthropological sleep” (to use a term coined by Michel Foucault) and grasp life in a way which would involve animals together with humans. No doubt Deleuze and Guattari were in this effort more radical than Patočka, who was still bound by the phenomenological principle of evidence. But even his elaboration of the fact that every phenomenon must be experienced by someone allowed Patočka to formulate his asubjective phenomenology, which does not rely on any subjectivity in the strict sense of the term. Rather than subjectivity, there is a mere singularity of experience which is always open and unfinished. Our experience is necessarily individual, but this is only because our existence is experienced as a process of individualization. While relating ourselves to the world, we individualize ourselves, which means that we embrace both the contingency and the finitude of our lives. But if our individuality remains only in our contingency and finitude, instead of having some solid ground, how do we not lose ourselves in the sheer openness of the world? What prevents us from experiencing total selfdisintegration? This brings us to the question of life consistency, which cannot be explained on a material basis. What we need, according to Patočka, is a notion of life in which it is conceived as a movement. More precisely, a life is seen as a composition of three movements. In his lectures published

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under the title Body, Community, Language, World, Patočka compares human existence to a polyphony that is composed of three movements influencing each other. Our existence is “a movement of movements”, which together expresses both the individuality and the complexity of our experience. “That again”, claims Patočka, “is reminiscent of the movement of a melody in which every component, tone, is a part of something that transcends it; in every component something is being prepared that will form the meaning and the nature of the composition, but it is not a movement of something that exists already at the start.”1 Renaud Barbaras is absolutely right when emphasizing the importance of sonority in Patočka’s conception of three existential movements, that metaphors of melody and polyphony represent keys to Patočka’s argumentation.2 Deleuze and Guattari, however, face the same problem as Patočka. It is a problem of life consistency that intrigues them; and they select similar means to cope with it. In A Thousand Plateaus we find a chapter with the title “Of the Refrain”, where they attempt to grasp life in terms of a musical refrain.3 They approach life as a refrain composed of various melodic motifs, rhythms, switches, and counterpoints. But despite all its variety, a refrain must also have consistency. “It is now a problem of consistency or consolidation: how to consolidate the material, make it consistent, so that it can harness unthinkable, invisible, nonsonorous forces.”4 As a matter of fact, it is all about bringing together various kinds of forces and synthesizing them so that they make life coherent. Where Patočka speaks about composition of movements, Deleuze and Guattari bring forth a synthesizer of forces. But their problem is the same: how to explain that life does not dissipate into heterogeneous fragments. The point is that such an explanation cannot be based on an affirmation of some pre-existing entity. As Patočka puts it:

1

Jan Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, trans. Erazim Kohák (Open Court: Chicago and La Salle, 1998), p. 147. Jan Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 1995), p. 104. 2 Renaud Barbaras, Le désir et la distance (Paris: Vrin, 1999), p. 163. 3 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Milles plateaux. Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2, Minuit, Paris, 1980, pp. 381-433. 4 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 343. Deleuze and Guattari, Milles plateaux, p. 423.

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[t]he possibilities that ground movement have no pre-existing bearer, no necessary referent standing statically at their foundation, but rather all synthesis, all inner interconnection of movement takes place within it alone. All inner unification is accomplished by the movement itself, not by some bearer, substrate, or corporeity, objectively understood.5

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Three movements If we want to understand the dynamic composition of our life, we should now take a closer look at Patočka’s description of three existential movements whose divided unity represents a core of asubjective phenomenology. It is well known that Patočka’s notion of movement issues from a radicalized interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of movement as ekstasis, i.e. moving out of a given state. In this context, Patočka also revises Heidegger’s notion of three temporal ekstases that together form the ecstatic unity of individual existence. Instead of those three ekstases, he suggests three movements that express the complex unity of our existence. The first movement he speaks of is the instinctive-affective movement, or—as he puts it—the movement of anchoring and thinking roots. It is through this movement that we are situated in the world, and primarily experience our body and our bodily position. This movement corresponds to the temporal dimension of having-been that in fundamental ontology makes possible our attunement, our openness and thrownness into the world. But Patočka does not content himself with the Heideggerian view of our emotions, because he extends the instinctive-affective movement beyond the experience of adult humans. He claims that the instinctive-affective movement applies also to children and animals. A child, or an animal are “wholly submerged in a relation of empathy, of fellow-feeling with the world”.6 Accordingly, the first movement of existence expresses moments where we have no distance to the world around us; it is a movement of life rhythms where we are moved by the world, rather than acting independently. In this moment, we do not control the situation, but we find ourselves in harmony with the world. We are accepted by the world, nourished by the Earth, and 5 Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, pp. 146-7. Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět, p. 103. 6 Ibid. p. 138. Ibid. p. 98.

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welcomed by people close around us. This movement is not about selfcontrol, but about contingency and coincidence we find in our lives. The second movement of our existence is the movement of selfsustenance and self-projection. This movement allows us to cope with the world around us, to represent ourselves in the world and to achieve something. In this movement, as well as in the preceding movement, we are never isolated from others. We experience our co-existence with others in cooperation, in work, or in fight. All these activities are situated in the temporal dimension of the present, which reigns in the everyday way of life as described by Heidegger in his fundamental ontology. We accept the challenges of the present, we understand them as our possibilities and we act according to them in order to change our world. We learn to control our instincts and affects, we postpone immediate gratification, and we stay focused on more distant life goals. This gives us firm ground under our feet, and assures us that the earth beneath us is the solid and unshakable basis for our existence. The third movement of existence, which Patočka sometimes calls “the movement of truth”, is the movement that shakes the ground of our existence, breaks the spell of all the assurances provided by the Earth, and makes us experience our finitude. What we usually ignore in the first two movements of life appears here as the final truth without which our existence would never be complete. The third movement is neither about putting down roots in the world, nor about self-projection to the world, but about our existence as such. As “an attempt at shaking the dominance of the Earth in us”, the third movement makes it possible to truly find ourselves, it brings us to completeness because it allows us to integrate what we forget when we get stuck in the dimension of the having-been or present. The temporal dimension proper to the third movement of existence is the future. From this follows that our existence finds its own integrity only if we accept the finitude of our life. While in the first movement of existence our life is dissipated into pleasant or unpleasant moments, and in the second movement of existence it is dissipated into our everyday tasks and goals, the third movement of existence give us true self-integrity. Such is an answer to the question of life consistency in asubjective phenomenology. In contrast to Heidegger, the third movement of existence for Patočka is not necessarily connected with the experience of loneliness. Rather than underlining the solitary character of authentic existence, Patočka makes a great effort to demonstrate social and collective aspects of the acceptance of our finitude. In his Heretical Essays, he links the third movement of exis-

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tence to the solidarity of those who experience battle.7 He also refers to the third movement of existence in his reflections on the phenomenon of sacrifice.8 As an ultimate gesture, a sacrifice appeals to others, and is for others, and as such testifies to the openness of the world we share together. Thus, we can say that every movement of existence in Patočka is a movement in co-existence with others. We should not, however, forget that all existential movements, according to Patočka, bear some danger. The internal risk of the first two movements is articulated quite clearly and extensively. Above all, the first as well as the second movement of existence make us forget who we really are. They make us blind to ourselves, and if they become our ruling principles, they jeopardize our life integrity. If we sink into the first movement of existence, we live only for pleasurable moments and the immediate satisfaction of our instincts. If the second movement of existence is overemphasized, it suppresses even our instinctive-affective life; we become rigid, we succumb to social roles and conventions without ever being able to break them. Yet, when it comes to the third movement of existence, it seems that Patočka can hardly find any negatives. The only danger he mentions in this respect is that: “[t]he corresponding inauthenticity here is one of being blinded by finitude.”9 He leaves it to us to imagine what exactly this means, and what specific forms being blinded by finitude can take.

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The world as a territory Before we examine Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of life forces, we need to recollect their view of the life-world. Speaking from a phenomenological perspective, one may say that Deleuze and Guattari approach the life-world as a territory. In his fine study “Art and Territory”, Ronald Bogue argues that the concept of “territoriality” in Deleuze and Guattari can be understood as an attempt to extend Lacan’s psychological description of “territo7

Jan Patočka, Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin (Prague: Academia, 1990). Jan Patočka, “Nebezpečí technizace ve vědě u E. Husserla a bytostné jádro techniky jako nebezpečí u M. Heideggera,” in Péče o duši III (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2002). Jan Patočka, “Co je existence?” in Fenomenologické spisy II. Co je existence, Publikované texty z let 1965-1977 (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2009). 9 Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, p. 151. Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět, p. 107. 8

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rialization” to a broader social domain.10 While Lacan uses the concept of territorialization to grasp the influence of parental caregiving on an infant’s bodily functions, Deleuze and Guattari employ this concept to show that spheres of intimacy, familiarity, and protection appear practically in all social groups. Whether it is in subjugated social groups led by a charismatic, fatherlike figure, in masses identified with their leaders, or among indigenous people, familial structures are always related to territoriality. In Anti-Oedipus, we find a thorough study of various territorial assemblages that shape and codify social coexistence. But territorial structures we inhabit are never static. No territory is simply given. It is always a result of the process of territorialisation, which can at any time be interrupted or fragmented by a process of deterritorialization, by which we leave established territories to explore life and set new territories. A territory always oscillates between processes of deterritorialization, and reterritorialization. Together with Deleuze and Guattari, we can track processes of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization in human history: from primitive territorial assemblages that are destroyed and deterretorialized by imperial states, to modern capitalism that further deterritorializes imperial states to open them to global flows of capital.11 Capitalism itself is then nothing but a specific combination of deterritorialized social flows and their relative reterritorialization in state structures that are still to some extent indispensable. In any case, it is all about movements we experience in coexistence with others. Sometimes we build up territory that we paranoically defend against any external danger that might jeopardize our life routine; sometimes we leave our territory in schizophrenic escapes that break our habits and social roles. To put it more precisely, sometimes our paranoid tendencies prevail and we invest our energy into rigid maintenance of our territory, rather than risking schizophrenic breakdown of the semantic structure of our world; sometimes we let loose our schizophrenic tendencies at the expense of safety and caution. Yet it is obvious that in Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari are siding with deterritorialization, rather than reterritorialization. Since the answer to conflicts of global capitalism does not lie in a return to past forms of social 10

Ronald Bogue, “Art and Territory”, in A Deleuzian Century?, ed. Ian Buchanan (Duke University Press, 1999), p. 86. 11 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, L‘Anti-Œdipe: Capitalisme et schizophrénie 1 (Paris: Minuit, 1972).

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life, the only way to cope with our problems is further deterritorialization of social codes and structures. Deleuze and Guattari argue that:

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[w]e will never go too far with the deterritorialization, the decoding of flows. For the new earth […] is not to be found in the neurotic or perverse reterritorializations that arrest the process or assign it goals…12

This view, however, changes with a further development of Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualization of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization. In A Thousand Plateaus, all processes related to territoriality become even more significant, when being extended from the domain of human coexistence to practically all life forms. This involves a broad variety of phenomena, ranging from crystal structures, to DNA strands, codes of animal behaviour, and interspecies relations. All processes concerning territoriality find their special place in the philosophical reflection on biosemiotics and the semiotic study of ecosystems. In this respect, Deleuze and Guattari return to the work of Jakob von Uexküll, whose concept of lifeworld (Umwelt) provides a vital supplement to their own conceptualization of territoriality. This is evident especially in the chapter “Of the Refrain”, where all descriptions of life processes revolve around von Uexküll’s notion of human and animal life-worlds. Territorializations, deterritorializations, and reterritorializations that appear in nature are here described in terms of tonality, which complies with the leading role of rhythms and melodies in human and animal life-worlds. According to von Uexküll, the main principle of nature is Kontrapunkt, and every organism has its unique Lebensmelodie. It is perhaps such an awareness of life tonality which makes Deleuze and Guattari more cautious about deterritorialization: “[s]obriety, sobriety: that is the common prerequisite for the deterritorialization of matters, the molecularization of material, and the cosmicization of forces”.13 Instead of a fundamental prioritizing of deterritorialization, we see here a profound insight into the precariousness and fragility of life whose consistency can be easily broken and lost forever. It is precisely this reflection on internal finitude and essential insecurity 12

Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 382. Deleuze and Guattari, L‘Anti-Œdipe, p. 458. 13 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 344. Deleuze and Guattari, Milles plateaux, p. 425.

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of life that differentiates Deleuze and Guattari’s position in A Thousand Plateaus from asubjective phenomenology. While Patočka remains very vague when it comes to dangers of the third movement of existence in which we embrace our finitude, Deleuze and Guattari cannot be more explicit about the dangers of limiting the experiences and excesses of life. What we need is to have some balance in our operations of consistency. Life experienced as a combination of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization is always in danger of losing its consistency and falling into chaos. Our life composition is not only unfinished, but permanently open to sudden shifts, ruptures, and disruptions. With this ascertainment in mind, we may conclude that territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization are essential movements of life whose social organization changes according to those movements.

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Three forces In the context of tonal explication of the territoriality of life, we then find Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of life forces. These are the forces of chaos, forces of earth, and cosmic forces.14 They are relative to movements of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization, which can be explained in the following way: while forces of earth reign in territory, forces of chaos are lurking outside territory; cosmic forces, on the other hand, allow us to take a line of flight from a closed territory without falling into a threatening chaos. If we fall into chaos, we must become oriented, and find some stabilizing points so that we can lay the foundations of a new territory. When in territory, we find ourselves in a familiar environment which has a complex semantic structure. But if we stay within territory for too long, our territorialized, habitual way of life becomes stereotypical, and we might feel the urge to leave territory, which can be successfully done thanks to cosmic forces that allow us to establish new connections and discover a broader context of life. Altogether, forces of chaos, forces of earth and cosmic forces create the composition of our lives. This composition, which Deleuze and Guattari prefer to call “refrain”, is essentially territorial. The territorial refrain does not express only the sonority of a closed territory, but also movements of deterritorialization, and reterritorialization. We 14

Ibid. p. 311. Ibid. p. 382.

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could say that territory is nothing but an intersection point of movements of deterritorialization, and reterritorialization which are driven by forces of chaos, forces of earth and cosmic forces. When it comes to forces of chaos, they destroy not only territorial assemblages with their semantic structures, but also the life consistency of organisms that are exposed to them. They do away with every possible individuation of living organisms. They throw us into a black hole which prevents any subjectivization and communication. What remains in chaos are only partial objects, disjointed remnants of meaning, and non-personal impulses. We face “nonlocalisable, nondimensional chaos, the force of chaos, a tangled bundle of aberrant lines.”15 Deleuze and Guattari thus point to a strange, hostile domain, which requires analysis in terms of an experience without an experiencing subject. Before we can experience ourselves as a subject of experience, we must find here an uncertain centre around which we can become oriented. Here our instinctive-affective life is shattered, as forces of chaos turn our instincts and affects into chaos. But those uncontrolled, decentralized instincts and affects can be refracted, pacified and organized, as soon as terrestrial forces join the game. Thanks to forces of earth, we can create a safe territory with a homogeneous space-time, where everything acquires clear contours. Thanks to forces of earth we can have a home, where we understand others as well as ourselves. We find our place and keep our distance from others.

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The territory is first of all the critical distance between two beings of the same species: Mark your distance. What is mine is first of all my distance; I possess only distances. Don’t anybody touch me, I growl if anyone enters my territory… 16

What we experience in territory is reorganization of instincts and regrouping of affects. Old life functions get a new role in territory, and some new functions are emerging here: building a dwelling, competing with others, territorial aggression. In human territories, we find also a place for work, trade and exchange of goods. The same applies to sexuality, which has very strong territorial effects: finding partners, having children, etc. But already territorial functions such as sexuality require not only territory, but also some sort of deterritorialization. There is a need to create new 15 16

Ibid. p. 312. Ibid. p. 383. Ibid. p. 320. Ibid. p. 393.

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territorial assemblages, which is impossible without cosmic forces. These forces are not forces of a closed, organized and complex cosmos whose totality was examined by ancient cosmologies. Rather, cosmic forces as understood by Deleuze and Guattari are forces that carry us out of the familiar home. They open new lines of flight from well-established conditions of life in territory. We employ these forces when we improvise or explore new possibilities. They are “the forces of the future”, as we read in A Thousand Plateaus.17 They are the forces of the unknown, as they bring us to unknown regions of life, beyond all familiar horizons. While forces of earth that rule territory are concentrated into a life effort, which makes possible practical self-realization, cosmic forces are effortless. They go without effort when they deterritorialize our lives. In fact, every territory is to some extent always already being deterritorialized, as it is traversed by relative movements of deterritorialization that can get out of control. Every territory is therefore opened to the deterritorialized Cosmos. Territories are constantly on the verge of spontaneous deterritorializations, which, however, make way for subsequent, or parallel reterritorializations. An interplay of territorializations, deterritorializations, and reterritorializations is expressed in territorial refrain. The main issue of such a conceptualization of life refrain is, as we already know, the problem of life consistency. The problem of consistency concerns the manner in which the components of a territorial assemblage hold together. But it also concerns the manner in which different assemblages hold together, with components of passage and relay. It may even be the case that consistency finds the totality of its conditions only on a properly cosmic plane, where all the disparate and heterogeneous elements are convoked. However, from the moment heterogeneities hold together in an assemblage or interassemblages a problem of consistency is posed, in terms of coexistence or succession, and both simultaneously. Even in a territorial assemblage, it may be the most deterritorialized component, the deterritorializing vector, in other words, the refrain, that assures the consistency of the territory.18

17 18

Ibid. p. 311. Ibid. p. 383. Ibid. p. 327. Ibid. p. 403.

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Movements and forces If we now proceed to an explicit comparison of A Thousand Plateaus and asubjective phenomenology, we may start with a statement that Deleuze and Guattari’s view on life consistency remarkably resembles Patočka’s own explanation of existential integrity. In both cases it appears that life holds together not thanks to some hidden centre, but because of the most decentralized and decentralizing moment. Both in Deleuze and Guattari, and in Patočka, life consistency is assured by an exposure to an extreme, where one risks death, or dissipation of individual life. In asubjective phenomenology, the true integrity of existence is provided by the third movement of existence in which we accept our own finitude. What is at stake here is not only a completeness in the sense of totality, as some critics argue; it is about an existential integrity which warrants an elementary consistency of our existence. In A Thousand Plateaus, a consistency of life is achieved in the most extreme point of deterritorialization, which deprives life of its autonomy and permanent identity, while exposing it to a radical transformation: In effect, what holds an assemblage together is not the play of framing forms or linear causalities but, actually or potentially, its most deterritorialized component, a cutting edge of deterritorialization.19

This shift from centre to periphery, from an inside to an outside, is reflected in Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of consolidation. For if there is any consistency in our lives, it is because consistency operates through consolidation.

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Consistency is the same as consolidation, it is the act that produces consolidated aggregates, of succession as well as of coexistence, […] Is not consolidation the terrestrial name for consistency? The territorial assemblage is a milieu consolidation, a space-time consolidation, of coexistence and succession. And the refrain operates with these three factors.20

In A Thousand Plateaus, as well as in asubjective phenomenology, we also see that extreme moments of life are capable of opening new social spaces and new forms of social organization. Neither the third movement of existence, nor deterritorialization driven by cosmic forces leads us automatically to some isolated, autistic form of subsistence; rather, they make possible constitution of new social relations, which is obvious both in Patočka’s depic19 20

Ibid. p. 338. Ibid. p. 415. Ibid. p. 329. Ibid. p. 405.

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tion of sacrifice or solidarity of the shaken, and in Deleuze and Guattari’s description of new territories and social connections that emerge due to the movement of deterritorialization. If there is any significant divergence between both conceptions, it remains surely in Patočka’s underestimation of all dangers related to the third movement of existence. It is not enough to say that one might be “blinded by finitude”. It is necessary to be constantly aware that our existence is permeated by finitude to a much larger degree than Patočka suspects. Deleuze and Guattari, on the contrary, repeatedly remind us that process of deterritorialization may not always end well. Instead of reaching the Cosmos, it may bring us into the black hole. Instead of making possible new social connections and opening new possibilities, deterritorialization may end in the void. “This is what happens under conditions of precocious or extremely sudden deterritorialization, and when specific, interspecific, and cosmic paths are blocked”.21 When comparing Patočka’s notion of three existential movements with Deleuze and Guattari’s view of life forces, one may also notice that the picture of the first movement of existence in asubjective phenomenology is too idyllic. Patočka mainly emphasizes our acceptance in the world; he focuses on our “instinctive-affective harmony with the world”, ignoring all traumatizing aspects of our situatedness in the world.22 To see that this is not always the case, we can recollect Goldstein’s notion of emotionality based on his examination of catastrophic situations which disintegrate our habitual life-world, or bodily functions as well as our individuality.23 This concept is all the more important inasmuch as Goldstein presents an accurate criticism of von Uexküll’s conception of human and animal life-worlds, objecting to its mainly static view of the life-world’s semantic structure. He argues that animal and human life-worlds are constantly affected by contingencies and irregularities of our environment, which is why they must be viewed as constantly shaking and moving structures that involve processes of adaptation to disturbing situations. No doubt Deleuze and Guattari were familiar with Goldstein’s revision 21

Ibid. p. 334. Ibid. p. 411. Patočka, Body, Community, Language, World, p. 148. Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět, p. 104. 23 Kurt Goldstein, The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man (New York: American Book Company, 1939). 22

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of von Uexküll’s concept of life-worlds. Their view of territoriality is essentially dynamic, and their approach to emotionality reflects not only calm and well-balanced emotions of territorial life, but also, and above all, disturbed and disturbing aspects of our instinctive-affective life. Contrary to Patočka, they start their description of our instincts and affects in conditions of extreme discomfort provoked by forces of chaos. While Patočka’s description of our instinctive-affective life accentuates everything what might be impacted by forces of earth, Deleuze and Guattari take into consideration the way forces of chaos disrupt our emotions and perceptions. This brings us to the conclusion that A Thousand Plateaus provides not only a radicalized view of our finitude, but also a radical concept of contingency, which may serve as a corrective to the notion of existential contingency we find in asubjective phenomenology. Closing

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Last but not least, we can take into account the political consequences of Deleuze and Guattari’s reflection on life movements and forces. As opposed to Patočka, who believed that the power of sacrifice and the solidarity of the shaken, which are closely related to the third movement of existence, can make us attentive and resistant to the dangers of globalized technology, Deleuze and Guattari are not so sure about the positive effects of deterritorialization of our social life. At least, in A Thousand Plateaus they admit that deterritorialized society can be totally atomized, and therefore easily controlled by mass media, monitoring procedures, market surveys, and statistical calculations. They are aware that deterritorialization of our world often leads to the depopulation of the people, rather than to the liberation of the people: The established powers have occupied the earth, they have built people’s organizations. The mass media, the great people’s organizations of the party or union type, are machines of reproduction, fuzzification machines that effectively scramble all the terrestrial forces of the people.24

24

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 345. Deleuze and Guattari, Milles plateaux, p. 426.

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This global situation is to be seen as a massive deterritorialization which brings human society to “an ever wider and deeper black hole”.25 To avoid the utter destruction of our society, we need to consider the radical fragility and precariousness of life in all its forms. Then we can try to find other ways of deterritorialization that would open space for new social and environmental connections. It is a task for political activists and artists who improvise and experiment with various lines of deterritorialization, while being attentive to their own lives, to their communities, and to other living beings.

25

Ibid.

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Two Ways to the Outside

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The Thought of the Outside The title of this text is meant as an allusion to Foucault’s essay “La pensée du dehors”, where a strange form of thinking comes into focus.1 The thought of the outside is a way of thinking that leaves behind the interiority of the thinking subject and situates itself in an inherent relation to the outside. This relation to the outside, however, does not mean a relation to an objective reality that is reflected from the subjective perspective. The thought of the outside does not simply pull subjectivity out of its interiority into the exteriority of objective reality. Rather than confronting subjectivity with an external reality that is to be interiorised in the consciousness of the thinking subject, the thought of the outside makes thought leave the realm of subjectivity in a much more radical way: it pulls thought beyond the very limits of subjectivity, it shows these limits from the outside, where the identity of self-awareness is dispersed. The thought of the outside exposes thinking to emptiness, from which the thinking subject cannot return back to his interiority, for it is there that he irrevocably disappears. But the dispersion of the thinking subject does not imply that thought as such becomes impossible. In relation to the outside, thought is still possible, but only on the condition that it resigns from its autonomy and accepts fundamental heteronomy as its basic disposition. Contrary to the interiority of the traditional philosophical reflection, the thought of the outside is not autonomous, but heteronomous. Nevertheless, the thought of the outside would be a mere proclamation unless it were based on some experience. If there were such an experience, it would be the experience of the outside. The experience of the outside would prove that the nature of thought is not necessarily autonomous and that there is such a thing as an outside that places thought into a necessarily heteronomous position. But even if the experience of the outside were no illusion, the question remains: how to grasp it? Can we express this form of 1

Michel Foucault, “The Thought of the Outside,” in Essential Works, vol. II, Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, ed. J. Faubion. (London: Allen Lane, 1998).

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experience in a way that is adequate to it? How can we preserve the experience of the outside in its purity? Foucault is fully aware of the fact that the experience of the outside eludes reflection because reflection has the regrettable tendency of transcribing the relation to the outside in terms of interiority. Reflection tends to grasp experience as a consciousness of something. For this reason, the experience of the outside can be easily misunderstood as an experience of some external entity, outer space or other will that turns itself against our own will. To prevent such a misunderstanding, it is necessary to concretise the thought of the outside with some examples. In “La pensée du dehors”, the thought of the outside is examined with respect to the experience articulated in Blanchot’s notion of attraction, in the emptiness of Sade’s desire, in the absence of Hölderlin’s missing god, or in Bataille’s transgression that goes beyond limits while breaking through the structure of subjectivity. All these experiences are experiences of the outside. The aim of this text, however, is not to summarise Foucault’s remarks on the various forms of the thought of the outside. Instead of repeating his comments on Blanchot, Sade, Hölderlin or Bataille, we should introduce other representatives of the thought of the outside and on the basis of their work try to articulate basic difficulties and pitfalls of the philosophical discourse that focuses on the experience of the outside. The thinkers we intend to deal with are Lévinas and Deleuze with Guattari.

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Beyond the Autonomy and Unity of Thought At first sight, it is difficult to imagine two more incompatible styles of philosophical thought than those of Lévinas and of Deleuze and Guattari. Despite their seeming incompatibility, however, it is still possible to confront both styles of thinking with each other provided that we manage to uncover a common ground which would allow us to put them side by side. Such a common ground can be found precisely in the relation to the outside, which deprives thought of its autonomy and throws it into the state of heteronomy. Thought can preserve its own autonomy as long as it shields its interiority, out of which it expands and to which it returns with the prey of knowledge. But as soon as it is based on the relation to the outside, it becomes necessarily heteronomous. The affinity between the styles of thinking

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represented by Lévinas and Deleuze with Guattari consists in the fact that, contrary to the main tendency of the Western philosophical tradition, they are not attached to the old philosophical dream in which thought appears to itself as an autonomous process, or a process capable of becoming autonomous. Instead of searching for the ground of philosophical thought that would be inherent to it, they situate thought in the position of the principal, irrevocable heteronomy. While traditional philosophical discourse has the tendency to enclose thought in the dimension of interiority, both Lévinas and Deleuze and Guattari attempt to liberate thought from this captivity and to open it to the outside. The answer they give to the question “What is thought?” is the following: “A relation to the outside.” Be it a metaphysical exteriority that announces itself as the exteriority of the Other, or the outside of all social systems, territorial structures and regimes of signification, thought is articulated as a relation to the outside that is beyond the reach and capacity of our comprehension. Within the framework of the relation to the outside, we also find the topic of desire that plays a crucial role in Lévinas’ philosophy as well as in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical joint venture. Desire was always understood as an act of thinking that deprives humans of their autonomy, reminding them of the fact that they are not self-dependent, but reliant on something else. In this sense, desire corresponds to the elusive and unfathomable nature of the outside that attracts thought all the more it is elusive and unfathomable. But the act of thinking that brings us into a relation to the outside can be called “desire” only if we do not under-stand it as a desire for an object. Only if desire exceeds all objects, if it affects us as pure passion, can it express the basic relation of the outside. Only desire so conceived proves to be synonymous with the relation to the outside. Only then can desire appear as the primordial experience of the outside. As for Lévinas, the original relation to exteriority is expressed as the metaphysical desire for the infinite. The relation to the exteriority of the Other appears here as the desire for the infinite. The metaphysical desire for the infinite differs from the common need that always presupposes some deficit or incompleteness. As opposed to the common need, which can always be satiated in some way, nothing can satisfy metaphysical desire, for it does not lack anything. Metaphysical desire does not mean any lack. The paradox of this desire consists in the fact that it can never be fulfilled, since the closer it comes to its infinitely distant aim, the more it grows. “Desire”,

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as we read in Totalité et Infini, “is desire for the absolutely other”.2 It is “a desire without satisfaction which, precisely, understands the remoteness, the alterity, and the exteriority of the other”.3 The metaphysically oriented desire longs for the absolutely other that surpasses all familiar and reachable horizons; its strange positivity consists in the unsurpassable distance from the longed-for aim, which never comes out of its exteriority and never becomes our property. In a similar way, Deleuze and Guattari do not confuse desire with need when opposing the classical conception of desire, which is based on the idea of the lack. Desire, according to them, does not arise from an insufficiency or a lack of something. Neither a material, nor a symbolic object is lacking in desire. “Desire does not lack anything; it does not lack its object”, claim Deleuze and Guattari.4 Instead of being an expression of a deficit, desire is characterised by a surplus and excess. In L‘Anti-Œdipe, we encounter an effort to release desire from the logic of lack and to bestow on it an excessive character, which marks the relation to the outside.5 A positive character, appearing in the excessive nature of desire, is given by the relation to the outside that is constitutive for desire as such. “For desire does not survive cut off from the outside.”6 Another important aspect of the excessive relation to the outside is the principle of multiplicity. Advocating the inherent heteronomy of thought, Deleuze and Guattari subvert not only the autonomy, but also the very identity of the thinking subject, which is reflected in the notion of the asubjective multiplicity. What is important in this respect is the fact that the asubjective multiplicity is not a mere privation of unity; it does not refer to any lost unity. Yet, to avoid the misunderstanding Manfred Frank commits in Was ist Neostrukturalismus?, it is necessary to realise that the notion of multiplicity

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2

Emmanuel Lévinas, Totalité et infini. Essai sur l’extériorité (Paris: Kluwer Academic, Le Livre de Poche), p. 23.Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic publisher, 1991), p. 34. 3 Ibid. p. 23. Ibid. p. 34. 4 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, L‘Anti-Œdipe: Capitalisme et schizophrénie (Paris: Minuit), p. 34. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 26. 5 Ibid. pp. 32-6. Ibid. pp. 25-8. 6 Ibid. p. 428. Ibid. p. 357.

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Deleuze and Guattari work with not only replaces the principle of unity by the principle of multiplicity, but overcomes the very opposition between unity and multiplicity.7 What they are aiming at is not a dualism of unity and multiplicity, but the process of individuation that does not mean any a priori unifying synthesis, but a consolidation and a conglomeration of disparate elements. Since such a process of consolidation and conglomeration has its place in the disintegrating leverage of the excessive relation to the outside which no rigid identity can resist, it can never be completed, but must restart again and again. Another mode of excess that puts in question the abstract dualism of the “one” and the “many” comes to the surface when Lévinas attempts to describe the phenomena of fecundity and paternity. He argues that fecundity and fatherhood cannot be understood on the basis of the logic that associates Being with unity; they can be made comprehensible only through plurality that, as the basic ontological schema of interpersonal relations, is not to be reduced to a decay or deficiency of unity. The phenomena of fecundity and paternity cannot be comprehended as long as multiplicity is subordinated to unity, or simply opposed to it. It follows from the analysis presented in Totalité et Infini that if we are to see fecundity and paternity in their proper light, we must replace the supposition of personal identity by the notion of a self that transgresses its own particularity in order to find itself in its descendants.8 “The I breaks free from itself in paternity without thereby ceasing to be an I, for the I is its son.”9 Although parents cannot fully identify themselves with their descendants, as descendants remain always external in relation to them, thanks to fecundity, they disengage themselves from their own particular identity and find their place in the historical line, where discontinuity and multiplicity rule. This is why we can say with Lévinas that “fecundity evinces a unity that is not opposed to multiplicity, but, in the precise sense of the term, engenders it”.10

7

Manfred Frank, Was ist Neostrukturalismus? (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984). Lévinas, Totalité et infini, pp. 310-1. Totality and Infinity, pp. 277-8. 9 Ibid. p. 310. Ibid. p. 277. 10 Ibid. p. 306. Ibid. p. 273.

8

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Metaphysical Desire versus Productive Desire All the abovementioned structural analogies, however, should not overshadow the fundamental difference between the way Lévinas conceives of the thought of the outside and the way Deleuze and Guattari expose thought to the outside. In both cases, the outside is experienced through desire, but this desire is not always viewed in the same way. Keeping in mind the fact that in both conceptions, desire mediates the relation to the outside (in fact, it is a basic medium of this relation), we can grasp the difference between them as a distinction between metaphysical desire and productive desire. Although the Lévinasian explication of fecundity seems close to the notion of “desiring-production,” in which Deleuze and Guattari connect desire with the process of production, its difference is too obvious to be ignored. Forasmuch as, in Totalité et Infini, fecundity is described as a relation, in which the self transcends its own limits without merging with the exteriority of descendants, it is not surprising that the notion of transcendence functions here as a key to the relation to exteriority as such. “The fecundity of the I is its very transcendence,” affirms Lévinas.11 Transcendence, however, is not limited to the relation to descendants, for it alludes not only to the exteriority of descendants, but to exteriority in the strong sense of the term, that is to the absolute otherness of infinity. As the metaphysical exteriority of infinity cannot be made accessible to our cognition, the movement of transcendence does not diminish the radical otherness of the Transcendent, but rather preserves and cherishes it. On the other hand, transcendence does not break the personal integrity of the human existence; the otherness of the Other does not negate my own Self. The individual does not dissolve in the relation to metaphysical exteriority, but keeps the identity of Self that is guaranteed by the sphere of interiority. Thanks to the sphere of interiority that secures the separation and isolation of existence in all its needs and in the work through which one acquires one’s possessions, the self can keep its identity in all changes and alterations it undergoes. Without interiority there would be no relation to exteriority at all, and without the sameness of the self there would be no experience of otherness. As Lévinas puts it:

11

Ibid. p. 310. Ibid. p. 277.

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The alterity, the radical heterogeneity of the other, is possible only if the other is other with respect to a term whose essence is to remain at the point of departure, to serve as entry into the relation, to be the same not relatively but absolutely. A term can remain absolutely at the point of departure of relationship only as I.12

Yet, this is not to say that the self experiencing the exteriority of the Other can simply return to its interiority with the prey of the knowledge. The self can never possess and control the otherness of the Other. Rather, its relation to otherness is like a journey of no return, like a journey that never ends. Lévinas expresses the relation to otherness in a metaphorical way, comparing the self to Abraham leaving Egypt. Unlike another classical figure of the European thinking—Ulysses—Abraham sets out for a journey, from which he can never return. But the fact is that his identity cannot disappear on his way out of Egypt; Abraham cannot get lost in the desert, he cannot forget his mission and lose his identity, but must remain in principal the same, as he was on the beginning of his journey. The relation to exteriority is thus possible only as a constant leaving of interiority, which does not go so far as to make sameness of the self—the basic structure of interiority—disappear. Nevertheless, it is this proclaimed relation of the Same and the Other, in which the permanent identity of the self is guaranteed, as well as the relation between interiority and metaphysical exteriority, that is extremely dubious for Deleuze and Guattari. What they call into question is the very sameness of the self that exposes itself to the outside. For if the relation to the outside places thought into the heteronomous position, the identity of the self cannot be exempt from this heteronomy, but must be shown in its radical contingency and fragility. What is even more suspect according to Deleuze and Guattari is the notion of the transcendence that is related to metaphysical exteriority. In Mille plateaux, transcendence is denounced as a typically European disease.13 It is a disease of the European thought, and the only way how to cure thought infected by transcendence is, allegedly, to introduce it to the plane of immanence. One could thus say that Deleuze and Guattari are Spinozist thinkers, 12

Ibid. p. 25. Ibid. p. 36. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2 (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980), p. 28. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 18.

13

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while Lévinas is the least Spinozist thinker of all. But the transition from transcendence to immanence as conceived in Mille plateaux does not mean that thought must be closed in its interiority as in a solipsistic reclusion. The rejection of metaphysical transcendence does not imply the abolition of the basic relation that binds thought to the outside; rather, it elicits its radicalisation and culmination. The relation to the outside remains a fundamental characteristic of thought, even if it has nothing to do with the metaphysical exteriority of infinity. But what is the outside that is released from the metaphysical idea of the infinity and together with it shifted from the transcendent plane to the immanent plane? And how does it affect the nature of thought that relates to the outside through the basic act of desire? Tentatively, we may indeed say that the relation to the outside that remains on the plane of the immanence is essentially productive, but such a characterisation remains too vague if we cannot elucidate it by means of concrete phenomena.

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Sexual Difference In order to comprehend the nature of the difference between the relation to exteriority that is situated on the transcendent plane and the relation to the outside that is located on the immanent plane, let us first focus on the way this difference is projected in the philosophical interpretation of phenomena such as sexual difference or the expressivity of the human face. It turns out that the explanations of sexual difference and the significance of the human face that we find in Deleuze and Guattari can be understood as polemics with Lévinas’s views about these phenomena. As to sexual difference, Lévinas views femininity, which inspired his meditations on the Other from the very beginning, as a question of an irreducible difference. As he puts it in Le temps et l’autre, femininity appeared to him “as a difference contrasting strongly with other differences, not merely a quality different from all others, but as the very quality of difference.”14 The primary encounter with the other sex is for him a model situation, in which transcendent otherness reveals itself. Femininity is the mystery of otherness par excellence. In femininity, the exteriority of the Other appears in a nudity 14

Emmanuel Lévinas, Le temps et l’autre (Paris: PUF, 1983), p. 14. Time and the Other, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), p. 36.

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that has nothing to do with a mere exteriority of an object, for it is chastity and self-concealment. The otherness of femininity consists in the fact that femininity conceals itself from the light of the understanding. It is, however, questionable to what extent this femininity that hides in “the very dimension of the otherness” allows us to comprehend states where the difference between femininity and masculinity vanishes and where sexual difference ceases to be visible, as in the cases of homosexuality, transsexuality or transvestism. If sexual difference is a matter of an absolute difference, it is possible to grasp these sexual phenomena only as the cases of incomprehensible perversity and monstrosity. It is therefore interesting to see how Deleuze and Guattari attempt to make sexual difference relative when critiquing the psychoanalytical differentiation of the masculine and feminine sexual identity. Considering the fact that nobody is perfect man or pure woman, since everybody has both masculine and feminine qualities, they refuse the disjunctive logic, according to which one can be either man, or woman, but nothing else. In this respect, they make a distinction between molecular bisexuality and molar sexual identity, in which the masculine or feminine pole statistically prevails.15 Together with it, Deleuze and Guattari avoid the traditional interpretation of the difference between the masculine and feminine sexual identity, which is based on the contrast between activity and passivity, light and darkness. Even though Lévinas criticises Plato for understanding femininity in terms of passivity, he still comprehends it on the basis of the metaphors of darkness, or absence (as opposed to presence); this is all the more evident when he explains femininity as “the welcoming one par excellence, welcome in itself”.16 As he affirms in Totalité et infini, “the other whose presence is discreetly an absence, with which is accomplished the primary hospitable welcome which describes the field of intimacy, is the Woman.”17 The woman, however, is not only receiving, but also, and above all, giving, which is attested by the act of birth. Since Lévinas, in the period of Totalité et infini, understands fecundity primarily in terms of paternity, he seems to forget that birth is an excess of giving whose positive character is the expression of the relation to the outside. The excess of birth is the basic experience of the outside. The inherent quality of this experience is suffering, through 15

Deleuze and Guattari, L‘Anti-Œdipe, p. 82. Anti-Oedipus, p. 70. Lévinas, Totalité et infini, p. 169. Totality and Infinity, p. 157. 17 Ibid. p. 166. Ibid. p. 155. 16

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which excess proves its excessiveness. By suffering birth, a woman not only becomes woman, but also animal when listening to the natural impulses of her body. Both becoming-woman and becoming-animal appear in the excess of birth. The excessive quality of birth thus indicates that woman, as opposed to man, must be understood not in terms of lack or absence, but in terms of the excessive relation to the outside. Deleuze and Guattari seem to be aware of it when arguing that femininity does not mean any absence or lack; and has a positive character of desire that relates to the outside.18 The uniqueness of birth, however, still speaks in favour of the disjunctive logic according to which one is either man or woman, but nothing else, only attributing a negative value to man. This would scarcely please Deleuze and Guattari who attempt to thematise sexual desire as the excessive relation to the outside, no matter whether it concerns masculine or feminine forms of desire. While the idea of absence and lack, according to them, belongs to the molar representation of sexuality, that is, a representation determined by abstract or statistical categories, there is no place for an absence or lack in the molecular process of desire. Both in the masculine and in the feminine elements, the molecular processes of desire “know” only the surplus and abundance that are discharged in the relation to the outside. On the molecular level, desire is nothing but the excessive relation to the outside. In moments of excessive pleasure as well as in moments of the unbearable suffering that overwhelms us we lose control over ourselves to the point that we cannot integrate them into the order of our experience; in these excessive moments the unity of our consciousness collapses and we are beside ourselves. And even if we pull ourselves together again we realise that we are not same as we used to be. In the relation to the outside, we do not remain same, but we change and become other. We can expose ourselves to the outside only by becoming other than we were before. Such a transformation does not leave the masculine and feminine elements in us intact; it releases and reshuffles them despite the rigidity of our molar sexual identity. The excessive nature of desire that connects us with the outside thus indicates that not only can a woman become woman, but a man also can enter the process of becoming-woman. In view of this process it is then possible to make sense of homosexuality or transsexuality without degrading them to an incomprehensible monstrosity. Instead of discommending homosexuality or transsexuality as something unnatural, Deleuze and Guattari come to the conclu18

Deleuze and Guattari, L‘Anti-Œdipe, pp. 350-1. Anti-Oedipus, pp. 294-5.

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sion that we are all transsexual beings on the molecular level of desire.19 Becoming other, however, does not open space only for such processes as becoming-woman, but also for becoming-child or becoming-animal, through which we go beyond the anthropomorphic representation of our existence. All these processes prove that our existence is not limited to only two sexes, but has a potentially unlimited number of sexes that express the excessive nature of desire. And it is precisely in these processes that our relation to the non-metaphysical outside is accomplished to the maximum degree.20

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The Function of the Human Face Apart from the question of the feminine otherness, another important topic of Lévinas’ philosophy is the phenomenon of the human face. Irreducible otherness, which originally revealed itself in the mystery of femininity, finally found its purest form in the face of the Other. According to Lévinas, the face attests to the fact that the Other is not the same as me; that he or she preserves his/her inalienable otherness in relation to me. The Other standing face to face with me is a stranger left at my mercy, and therefore raising the highest ethical demand—thou shall not kill! The authority of the face makes me absolutely responsible for the Other. The face-to-face position, however, places me not only into the relation to the exteriority of the Other, but—because of its ethical demand—also into the relation to the absolute otherness of the metaphysical exteriority. It is therefore possible to say that for the finite being the face is an epiphany of infinity. As Lévinas puts it: “The idea of infinity, the infinitely more contained in the less, is concretely produced in the form of a relation with the face. And the idea of infinity alone maintains the exteriority of the other with respect to the same, despite this relation.”21 However, the conception connecting the phenomenon of the face with the absolute otherness of metaphysical exteriority collides with the critique of the face, or more precisely, of “faciality” (la visagéité), made by Deleuze and Guattari, who attempt to locate the social and cultural conditions of its emergence.22 Even if they do not mention Lévinas in this respect, it is obvi19

Deleuze and Guattari, L‘Anti-Œdipe, p. 352. Anti-Oedipus, p. 296. Ibid. 21 Lévinas, Totalité et infini, p. 213. Totality and Infinity, p. 196. 22 Deleuze and Guattari, Mille plateaux, pp. 144-5, 154, 205-34. A Thousand Plateaus, 20

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ous that the critique pursued in Mille plateaux applies—among others—also to him. What follows from this critique is that the face, when it serves as a means of identification (thanks to which we are identified and can identify others), is a condition for the transformation of the human body into the individual subject. Nevertheless, there exist societies in which the face plays a very limited role. As an example, it is possible to bring up the so-called primitive cultures that ensure the asubjective facelessness of their members with the help of masks, body-paintings and tattoos.23 Thanks to all these measures the human head does not become a face; instead, it becomes an integral part of the body that opens itself to animal impulses and structures of behaviour. Primitive shaman, hunter, or warrior can set out for a journey of becoming-animal without eliminating his own spirituality. For his spirituality does not consist in transcendence towards metaphysical exteriority; rather, it remains in an immanent relation to the outside, which can be concretised in the form of an animal, or a demon. This spirituality is all the more powerful, the more it is based on corporeality, on the integral connection of the head with the body. “‘Primitives’ may have the most human of heads, the most beautiful and most spiritual,” claim Deleuze and Guattari, “but they have no face and need none.”24 It is therefore obvious that the face is not a universal phenomenon; in Mille plateaux it is linked only to the signifying and post-signifying regime of signs that characterise the Judeo-Christian civilisation.25 The face belongs to the signifying and post-signifying regime of signs, where it becomes an obsession that calls for an infinite interpretation of its hidden meaning. Besides the call for the interpretation, the face is also connected with the processes of signification and subjectification that characterise the signifying and post-signifying semiotics. It is no coincidence that something similar can be said about the Lévinasian notion of the face that provokes the obsession with the otherness of the Other. The face as a trace of infinity haunts thought related to the metaphysical exteriority. In Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, the obsession disturbing all serenity and equilibrium is the expression of the relation pp. 115-6, 123, 167-91. 23 Ibid. p. 216. Ibid. p. 176. 24 Ibid. 25 Besides the signifying and post-signifying regime of signs Deleuze and Guattari distinguish the pre-signifying semiotic of primitive cultures and the countersignifying semiotic of nomads.

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to metaphysical exteriority, which announces and conceals itself in the face of the Other. Thought obsessed with the face of the Other is a passionate thought, if passion means the act of thinking which cannot grasp what attracts it. But this passionate thought is never free from subjectification and signification, for the face of the Other serves as a point of subjectification (the subjectiveness of thought remains in the subjection to the Other, for whom is one absolutely responsible) and its signification calls for an interpretation, even if it is “signification without a context”.26 In any case, the genealogical investigation of faciality, as performed in Mille plateaux, makes it evident that Lévinas’ assertion that the face exists “by itself, and not by reference to a system,” is problematic, at least to the extent that it does not question its own rootedness in the semiotics of the modern White Man, which is the combination of the signifying and post-signifying regime of signs.27

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Racism and Eurocentrism Speaking about White Man’s semiotics, how could we forget the problem of racism? As we read in Mille plateaux, European racism is unthinkable without the normative ideal represented by the face of the average ordinary European.28 Depending on the degree of deviation from the given norm, population is then divided into people of the first, second or third category. “Of course,” writes Franz Kafka in one of his Letters to Milena, “there’s no doubt that for your father there’s no difference whatever between your husband and me; for the European we both have the same Negro face.” In spite of all appearance, modern racism does not operate through techniques of exclusion or marginalisation of those who are perceived as different; rather, it draws the circles of sameness which determine the degree of tolerance to the actual divergence from the normative ideal given by the face of the typical European man. “Racism never detects the particles of the other; it propagates waves of sameness,” Deleuze and Guattari claim.29 One can say that 26

Emmanuel Lévinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (Paris: Kluwer Academic, Le Livre de Poche, 2004), p. 146; cf. also pp. 29, 159-62. 27 In Totalité et infini, Lévinas claims: “The face has turned to me—and this is its very nudity. It is by itself and not by reference to a system.” Totality and Infinity, p. 75. 28 Deleuze and Guattari, Mille plateaux, p. 218. A Thousand Plateaus, p. 178. 29 Ibid.

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modern racism systematically denies otherness from appearing in the social field by excluding those who do not conform to its norms. And since there is no sense for otherness in society, there can be no place for exteriority, either. “From the viewpoint of racism, there is no exterior, there are no people of the outside.”30 Modern racism does not draw the line between the inside and the outside, as it reduces everything to the interiority of one normative system. There is no doubt that Lévinas would agree with such a condemnation of the cruelty and stupidity of racism. He could have certainly argued that racism ignores or suppresses the exteriority that announces itself in the face of the Other. Yet, whatever means he has for effectively reproaching the racist view of the Other, it is questionable how far his critique can go if he does not demur to the genealogical roots of racism, which grow out of the despotic and authoritative features of the semiotic characteristic of European thought. Lévinas himself affirms in one interview that the real thought is the one of the Greeks and the Bible; everything else is nothing but “dancing”.31 Such a philosophical Eurocentrism might be legitimate if we take into consideration the fact that philosophy was born in ancient Greece and that it was brought up in the Judaic-Christian tradition of thought. But if we are considering the notion of the relation to the outside, the question is how far this particular relation reaches and how radical it can be. Should the relation to the outside be limited to the semiotics of the White Man, or should it go beyond the limits of the signifying and post-signifying regimes of signs that determine European thought? It is obvious that Lévinas has decided to remain within the limits given by the Greek and Jewish (rather than Christian) thought and to articulate the relation to the outside as an obsession with the metaphysical exteriority gleaming through the face of the Other. Deleuze and Guattari, on the contrary, intend to extricate the relation to the outside from European representation of man and to push it to the extreme, where thought escapes from the signifying and post-signifying regimes of signs.

30

Ibid. Cf. Lévinas’ interview with Christoph von Wolzogen published in an appendix to the German edition of his book Humanisme de l’autre homme. 31

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Escaping from the White Man’s Semiotics But how can thought escape from the semiotics of the modern White Man, whose structure harbours the permanent danger of racism and cultural imperialism? According to Deleuze and Guattari, it is certain that this semiotics is hostile to all pluralist, polyvocal, a-signifying and a-subjective semiotics (like the pre-signifying sémiotice of “primitive” societies, or the contrasignifying semiotics of nomads), for it views them as domains of barbarism, savagery and irrationality.32 From the perspective of the White Man’s semiotics all the polyvocal, a-signifying and a-subjective elements represent a threat coming from the outside, a threat that must be neutralised by the procedures of signification and subjectification. Contrary to the presignifying semiotics of the “primitive” societies or the contra-signifying semiotics of nomads, the semiotics of the modern White Man is distinctive by its tendency to control the relation to the outside through procedures of signification and subjectification. These two procedures function as the basic means of power in the signifying and post-signifying regimes of signs. And it is due to these two procedures that Lévinas’ view of the relation to the outside is possible only as the relation between the Same and the Other, that is, as a relation which has its firmly given starting point and a desired—though unattainable—goal. Even if in his late work changes the accent of his elucidations of the relation to the metaphysical exteriority, laying more and more emphasis on the otherness of the Other instead of the sameness of the self, he still preserves the unity and subjectivity of the self. Even though the subjectivity of the subject does not mean anything but the fact of its being fully subjected to the Other, its unity issues from the responsibility for the Other and from the irreplaceability of the self in its relation to the Other. The responsibility for the Other is the principle of absolute unification and subjectification, since the non-indifference to the Other would not be possible without the difference between me and the Other. The exteriority of the Other is thus what constitutes the unity and subjectivity of the self. On the other hand, the responsibility for the Other would be impossible without the unity and subjectivity of the self. For this reason Lévinas can never do without the principal unity and subjectivity of the self, much as he wants to show the contingency of the self in its relation to metaphysical exteriority. This corresponds to the basic arrangement of the signi32

Deleuze and Guattari, Mille plateaux, pp. 220-3. A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 180-2.

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fying and post-signifying regimes of signs. All other features of the relation to metaphysical exteriority, including its proclivity for negative theology, issue no less from the fact that the relation to the outside is understood in the context of the signifying and post-signifying regimes of signs. Therefore, if Lévinas claims that the face separates the Other from its given context and turns him or her into a stranger, Deleuze and Guattari would probably object that such a de-contextualisation of the Other does not proceed far enough, as it is only negative. The escape from the semiotics of the White Man can succeed only if de-contextualisation is absolute and positive at the same time. Absolute de-contextualisation in the positive sense of the term, then, does not mean a return to the primitive forms of thought and social life (nothing would be more naive than to seek lost innocence in forms of exoticism), but rather a creative line of flight from the signifying and post-signifying regimes of signs, which put the face into the central place in their system of power. In other words, absolute de-contextualisation of the Other is positive when we manage to escape the authoritative power of the face, when we lose our own face as well as the sense of the face of the other. This happens, for instance, in the process of becoming-animal, which liberates us from the anthropomorphic representation of life and brings us closer to the non-metaphysical outside:

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[W]hen the face is effaced, when the faciality traits disappear, we can be sure that we have entered another regime, other zones infinitely muter and more imperceptible where subterranean becomings-animal occur, becomings-molecular, nocturnal deterritorialisations overspilling the limits of the signifying system.33

Such a de-contextualisation, however, would not be possible without the breach of the structures of signification, subjectification and unification that belong to the signifying and post-signifying regimes of signs. To put it simply, we can escape the semiotics of the modern White Man only when we manage to escape the power of signification, subjectification and unification. Only then is the de-contextualisation of the Other both absolute and positive. Yet, we already know that without the unity and subjectivity of the subject there would be no responsibility. Does this not mean, then, that the total responsibility for the Other is replaced by a total irresponsibility? 33

Ibid. p. 145. Ibid. p. 115.

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Deleuze himself seems to confirm this impression, when he claims in Pourparlers that the very concept of responsibility—which is so important for Lévinas—belongs rather to forensic psychiatry than to philosophy. But we shall not take this statement too literally. It is true that Deleuze and Guattari sometimes seem to underestimate threats inherent in the movement of de-contextualisation. In L’Anti-Œdipe, where they understand de-contextualisation as the driving principle of the desiring-production, they claim that the movement of de-contextualisation can never go too far: “It should therefore be said that one can never go far enough in the direction of deterritorialization.”34 The process of decontextualisation can be, allegedly, dangerous only if it is interrupted or irritated by the process of re-contextualisation, that is by the process of creating and preserving signification and the structures of subjectivity. While re-contextualisation represses desire by confining it to signification and subjectivity, de-contextualisation liberates desire by making the signification and the structures of subjectivity explode. Whereas the structures of signification and subjectification are forms of interiority, de-contextualisation brings desire into the relation to the outside that has nothing to do with the objectivity of objects, nor with a transcendental world. Thus, what is potentially dangerous is the sphere of interiority rather than the relation to exteriority established by the process of de-contextualisation. But already in Mille plateaux, Deleuze and Guattari realise that the very process of de-contextualisation is potentially dangerous. If the movement of de-contextualisation is too abrupt or violent, the destruction of the system of signification and subjectification can easily change from a liberating escape into pure self-destruction. In a similar way to the escape from the system of signification and subjectification, the flight from the system of faciality in which the face is dismantled is not without danger: Dismantling the face is no mean affair. Madness is a definite danger: Is it by chance that schizos lose their sense of the face, their own and others’, their sense of the landscape, and the sense of language and its dominant significations all at the same time?35

Dismantling the face should not therefore just deface all faces and destroy their meaning; instead, the breaking through the system of faciality should 34 35

Deleuze and Guattari, L‘Anti-Œdipe, p. 384. Anti-Oedipus, p. 321. Deleuze and Guattari, Mille plateaux, p. 230. A Thousand Plateaus, p. 188.

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free something like the “probe-heads” that will serve as guidance devices in the search for new forms of being-with-others.36 This is the true meaning of the de-contextualisation of the Other. But the acknowledged dangerousness of de-contextualisation makes Deleuze and Guattari seek criteria allowing them to distinguish the creative line of flight, which opens up a space for new possibilities of existence, from a pathological collapse, in which the very relation to the outside collapses and de-contextualisation ends in the void instead of preparing a space for unexpected possibilities. If we want to escape from the constraints of the White Man’s semiotics, we cannot bank on any pre-formed regime of signs, but we must realise our relation to the outside by means of experimentation, which, nevertheless, requires much caution and sobriety. If experimentation should not turn into a catastrophic collapse, it is necessary to preserve small, provisory doses of signification and subjectification that are to serve as operators of the relation to the outside. This provisory supply of signification and subjectification, however, must not govern the relation to the outside; instead of subjugating the process of de-contextualisation, it must be used by it and make possible the full realisation of the relation to the outside. If this is the case, signification and subjectification as the forms of interiority are then not simply opposed to exteriority, but function as components of de-contextualisation, in which the relation to the outside is realised. One could thus say that in Deleuze and Guattari’s depiction of the relation to the outside, the contrast between the sameness of the self and the otherness of the Other is relativised just as the sexual difference grasped by Lévinas as the absolute difference between masculinity and femininity is relativised. The sameness of the self is not a necessary counterpart of the otherness of the Other; rather, it is a relative factor in a becoming-other that inseparably belongs to the relation to the outside. It is not possible to relate to the outside without becoming-other, which does not mean to become same as the Other. Instead of an identification with the Other, becomingother means a fundamental metamorphosis in the relation to the outside. Considering that in Mille plateaux the relation to the outside is fundamentally connected with the excess in which the established structures of subjectivity and significance as well as the system of faciality disintegrate, it is always the intensity of the excess that makes the difference between the various types of de-contextualisation. When the excess is subjected to the 36

Ibid. pp. 232-3. Ibid. pp. 190-1.

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mechanisms of subjectification, significance, to which faciality also belongs, de-contextualisation can only be negative or relative. But if the intensity of the excess reaches its climax, the excess must either destroy itself or break through all structures of significance and subjectification that hinder a full exposure to the outside. If that is the case, it is precisely the liberating excess that grips and drifts the disorganised remains of subjectivity and signification that is marked as absolute de-contextualisation in the positive sense of the term.

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Summary We can finally summarise the basic difference between Lévinas’ conception of the relation to exteriority and Deleuze and Guattari’s view of the relation to the outside. Even though the relation to the outside is in both cases connected with the moment of excess, the nature of this excess is understood in different ways. Since both Lévinas and Deleuze with Guattari are fully aware that the moment of excess is inseparable from the relation to the outside, they do not simply reduce it to a quantitative surplus, but endeavour to reveal its special phenomenal quality. Different understandings of the fundamental relation to the outside, however, result in two different views of the excess that we find in Le temps et l’autre, Totalité et infini, or Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence and in L’Anti-Œdipe or Mille plateaux. In his analysis of fecundity and fatherhood, Lévinas conceives the excessive relation to exteriority as transcendence, while Deleuze and Guattari understand it in terms of immanence. This is why, for them, the basic quality of the excessive relation to the outside is not extension, but intensity. In order to distinguish the relative or negative de-contextualisation from the absolute de-contextualisation in the positive sense of the term, they use a simple criterion: whereas in the first case the excessive relation to the outside still has some extension, in the second it becomes pure intensity. If we apply this criterion to Lévinas’ conception, it is evident that the relation to exteriority conceived of as transcendence is still far from absolute and positive decontextualisation, for it is limited only to extension. Despite the repeatedly declared effort to understand metaphysical exteriority not as spatial exteriority, but as the exteriority of the future, or of the unattainable past, Lévinas cannot do without spatial metaphors. In order to keep the distance between interiority and exteriority, which makes it possible to maintain also the dif-

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ference between the sameness of the self and the otherness of the Other, he must repeatedly return to spatial images, time and again. Then, it is practically impossible to avoid the idea of metaphysical exteriority understood as a mysterious sphere beyond our world.

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Postscript This conclusion would not be very satisfactory if it did not help us to find a way out of the impasse in which Lévinas gets stuck on his way to the outside. For Lévinas’ conception of the relation to the outside has the potential to escape from the impasse of transcendence. Such a potential might be hidden in the “phenomenological” exploration of suffering that overwhelms human existence in sadness, sorrow, physical pain, disease, aging and dying. In the essay “La souffrance inutile”, or in Lévinas’ comment on Philippe Nemo’s book Job et l’excès du mal, suffering is described not as the expression of some deficiency or imperfection of the human existence, but as an overwhelming excess.37 Instead of being determined by the negativity of the lack, the experience of suffering is determined by the surplus of excess. Through suffering we are exposed to an excess that is stronger than us. But the nature of this excess does not consist simply in the fact that suffering surpasses all measure, that there is too much of it; rather, it consists in the fact that suffering as such cannot be integrated. Suffering has an excessive character because it is non-integratable to the integral structure of experience. Suffering is the experience of the outside, which cannot be integrated into the classical structure of experience. The non-integratable character of suffering means that the excess of suffering cannot be integrated into the unity of consciousness. More precisely, suffering is not just a datum in consciousness; it is not even a datum refractory to the synthesis of the Kantian “I think”, for it is opposed to the very synthetic unity of consciousness that unites and embraces the disparate data into a meaningful whole. Since the excess of suffering disturbs and destroys the very unity of consciousness, Lévinas claims that it is non-synthesisable. What characterises the excess is, 37

Emmanuel Lévinas, “La souffrance inutile”, Entre nous: essais sur le penser-à-l´autre (paris: Grasset, 1991). Entre nous: on Thinking-of-the-other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). “Transcendence et mal”, De Dieu qui vient à l’idée (Paris: Vrin, 1982). Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

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according to him, its non-synthesisable character. As excess, suffering cannot be taken to consciousness through the receptivity of our senses, for it makes impossible the very act of “taking” that constitutes apprehension. Suffering bereaves thought of all its autonomy, which is granted by the synthesis of “I think”, and throws it into radical heteronomy, where it becomes pure undergoing. In suffering, thought is so heteronomous that it can not unite the multiplicity of sensations ansmore. Moreover, since the excessive character of suffering deranges the unity and autonomy of thought, it withholds all meaning and destroys the order of experience. The excess of suffering as an irreducible derangement thus throws thought into chaos, concerning which Lévinas says that “it is the not-finding-a-place, the refusal of any accommodation with [...] a counter-nature, a monstrosity, the disturbing and foreign in itself”.38 Nevertheless, what is most important in this respect is the fact that the excess of suffering does not point to any pre-existing exteriority. The exteriority of the excess is not a counterpart of an interiority that maintains the synthetic unity of consciousness and the integrity of the self. Instead of being a promise of a world behind the world, the excess bears exteriority in its own exceeding.39 The excess exceeds all normative systems, all social frameworks, all forms of interiority. And it is precisely this exceeding of the excess what Lévinas calls “transcendence”. When using such a term, however, he comes so close to the immanence of excess as conceived by Deleuze and Guattari that it is practically impossible to distinguish transcendence from immanence. It is as if the very terminological distinction between transcendence and immanence lost its meaning in the exceeding of the excess. What sense has the difference between transcendence and immanence if the exteriority of the excess remains in its exceeding? Hence, although it is clear that Lévinas’ elucidation of the excessive nature of the excess neither solves all the problems of his conception of the relation to metaphysical exteriority nor releases his thought from its Eurocentric orientation, it can at least serve as the starting point of its reconsideration. If we accept the challenge of such reconsideration, we do not have to deny the importance of the Other in the processes of signification and subjectification. On the contrary, we can affirm that the integral unity of the 38 39

Lévinas, De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, p. 198. Of God Who Comes to Mind, p. 128. Ibid.

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self is based on the relation to the Other, as Lévinas does when claiming that the phenomenal content of suffering is not exhausted by the exceeding of the excess, for suffering is situated in the inter-human perspective, which gives it a sense of the “bad intention”, persecution or humiliation. Besides the excessive level of suffering there is also an “intentional” level of suffering. On the first level of suffering, there is neither a pre-established interiority, nor a pre-existing exteriority, but on the second level, suffering strikes us from outside, from the exteriority from which the face of the Other talks to us. What the Other brings to the non-integratable excess of suffering is a perspective, thanks to which suffering can become concrete and determinate as my own suffering. The suffering coming from the perspective of the Other (which is far from saying that it is simply caused by the Other) constitutes me as an exceptional, unique being that finds itself face to face to the Other. Without the Other I would not be able to awake to myself. This is, by the way, confirmed by psychologists such as R. D. Laing, who stresses the importance of the Other, that is the mother, for the constitution of child’s selfawareness and personal integrity. As he puts it in his The Divided Self:

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It seems that loss of the mother, at a certain stage, threatens the individual with loss of his self. The mother, however, is not simply a thing which the child can see, but a person who sees the child. Therefore, we suggest that a necessary component in the development of self is the experience of oneself as a person under the loving eye of the mother.40

But if we assume the radical contingency of the self and its dependency on the face of the Other, we can hardly declare that the responsibility for the Other has no beginning, that we are always already responsible for the Other, as Lévinas does in Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, suggesting that the very exposure to the Other is synonymous with responsibility.41 For, how could be a small child responsible for the Other, if its own self has not yet developed? If not, the responsibility for the Other cannot be absolute, but is rather relative and conditioned. Such a notion of the relative responsibility might be acceptable even for Deleuze and Guattari, who do not want to take any oath of allegiance to any 40

Roald David Laing, The Divided Self (New York: Penguin Books 1964), p. 116. “This responsibility appears as a plot without a beginning, anarchic.” Lévinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence, p. 212. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), p. 135. 41

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absolute authority, even if it were the authority of the face. In such a case, the discovery that the difference between transcendence and immanence in the notion of excess is not insurmountable might also be useful for the understanding of Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of the relation to the outside.

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Critique of Resentment in Reich, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari

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Why do we long for fascism? Is there something that fascism and Stalinism have in common? When posing this question, we do not intend to repeat well-known reflections on the nature of totalitarianism. We are interested in a much more subtle phenomenon which may help us comprehend not only the strange affinity of fascism and Stalinism, but also, for example, an obscure attractiveness that the Islamic Djihad has nowadays in certain parts of the world. This phenomenon is resentment and our ambition is to demonstrate that resentment and is not only a psychological quality, but that it may also serve as a useful conceptual tool in political analysis. In fact, we want to present resentment as a general phenomenon that in its basic forms connects the field of psychology (or psychopathology) with the field of politics. This is why it can elucidate the immanent logic of various political ideologies as well as the reasons why people fall prey to these ideologies, even though they clearly contradict their real interests. All the more important is then the question how we can avoid the dead end of resentment. To begin our paper on the nature of resentment, we should return the question formulated already in 1933 when Wilhelm Reich—in his Mass Psychology of Fascism—tried to understand why the German masses voted for the NSDAP, although this political party promised something that clearly contradicted their interests—an authoritative system, suppression of civil rights, racial discrimination and finally—war. Reich dismissed the simple explanation that the masses were mystified and fooled by Hitler’s political strategy. Instead, he suggested that they desired what was promised to them. They craved for a strong leader, for an authoritative system that would eliminate their freedom and desired a new war. But how could that be? How is it possible to desire one’s own oppression and—very probably—annihilation? Why do actually people long for fascism?

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Reich’s question is even more disturbing if we realize that fascism does not concern only the Germany of the 1930s, but all political regimes, all countries and their citizens. As Reich puts it, “fascism is an international phenomenon, which pervades all bodies of human society of all nations”1. Not only Germans, but all people—we all have a tendency to admire strong leaders, to relinquish our personal freedom and to sacrifice our lives for a higher cause (Nation, Race, State, etc.). This is reflected in the definition of fascism presented in The Mass Psychology of Fascism: fascism is neither a political program, nor a political system, but a specific concept of life, a specific attitude towards life. Fascism is a general problem because it represents a basic emotional attitude that influences our feelings, forms our thinking, and determines our behavior. According to Reich, “there is not a single individual who does not bear the elements of fascist feeling and thinking in his structure”2. Every one of us has a certain inclination toward fascism. It is therefore necessary to discover the fascist in ourselves and to learn how to watch over him. The biggest mistake is to look for the fascist in others and to forget that we must start with ourselves. But if we are to detect the fascist in ourselves, we must first know how to recognize him. In The Mass Psychology of Fascism, fascism is closely related to mass mentality because it is understood as “the expression of the irrational structure of mass man”3. Masses themselves are simultaneously determined as politically passive, irrationally influenced segments of population4. Insofar as we belong to masses, we are highly susceptible to the emotional plague of fascism, as masses—under the given circumstances—are incapable of freedom. This incapacity for freedom, however, does not correspond to the natural order of things, inasmuch as it has developed in the conditions of the patriarchal, religious and mechanized society. When Reich claims that masses are grievously irrational, he refers to their desire for social authority as well as to their ignorance of their vital interests. It is this distinction between desire and interest that makes possible his analysis of fascism: while desire is essentially irrational, interest is supposed to be rational because it reflects the vital needs of human beings—food, work, sexual grati1

Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, trans. V.R. Carfagno (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970), p. XIII. 2 Ibid. p. XIII-IV. 3 Ibid. p. XX. 4 Ibid. p. 216.

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fication, communication and knowledge. It is obvious that the rationality of interest should not be understood in a purely logical sense of the term, for interest is rational and meaningful only from the immanent perspective of life. In the conceptual scheme given by the distinction between irrational desire and rational interest, only the fascist orientation of desire can explain why and how masses ignore their natural interests and fall prey to the ideological traps that preserve their submission to authorities. Only irrational subjection to a higher authority can explain the self-negation of people that voluntarily relinquish their own rationality. If we use Reich’s terminology, we could say that desire is irrational and reactionary, while interest is rational and revolutionary. If people dared to listen to their vital interests, they would become revolutionary because they would necessarily try to change their situation, but if they follow their desires, they will be driven by their reactionary tendencies and they will rebel without really changing anything. Rebellion thus infected by reactionary tendencies would, then, bring nothing but a new enslavement. Saying this, however, we are still far from understanding the reactionary character of desire that entraps masses into fascism; for the reactionary attitude towards life would not be possible without a mysticism that allows them to ignore their vital interests, to forget their daily misery, or at least to find some sense in this misery. Such mysticism is, as Reich puts it, “the primary source of all political reaction”5. The inseparable part of organized mysticism is the subordination to something “higher”, to something that stands above the individual; and this “higher” instance demands self-denial, sacrifice, purity and imbues human life with endless feeling of guilt. Hence, the reactionary attitude towards life is connected with a strange asceticism. To give an example of such asceticism, Reich mentions Rosenberg’s Der Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts: as a leading fascist ideologist, Rosenberg based his repulsion to the “inferior races” on the argument that the ancient Greeks were not only the representatives of the Aryan racial purity, but also representatives of the Apollonian mentalit6. According to this interpretation, Dionysus as a god of ecstasy and sensual pleasure was of foreign origin and the greatness of ancient Greeks consisted in the fact that they were able to avoid all the Dionysian elements. The decline of Greek culture, then, started in the moment when the Greeks were not able to prevent the intrusion of 5 6

Ibid. p. 129. Ibid. pp. 83-97.

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the Dionysian elements into the domain of Apollonian purity and modesty. Thus, the “superiority” of the Aryan race, which the Germans are to incarnate, lies in its ability to do justice to the Apollonian purity and chastity, while the voluptuous and untamed sexuality is attributed to the “inferior” races that supposedly have the Dionysian character. All the Dionysian elements are thus extracted from the social and individual life, and projected to the outside from which they return in the phantasmagoric figure of the Jew or Negro. What remains inside the sphere ruled by the Apollonian principles of measured behavior and formal rationality is nothing but a disciplined man who fulfills all his duties to the authorities and a woman who serves as a breeding machine. Surprising as it may be, Reich does not mention Nietzsche in this respect, but it is obvious that Rosenberg’s interpretation directly contradicts the way the Apollonian and Dionysian elements are understood in The Birth of Tragedy, where Nietzsche neither simply rejects nor praises one or the other. Rather, he claims that the greatness of the ancient Greeks consisted in their ability to combine both these elements, while their decline started at the point when they separated the two elements and concentrated only on the Apollonian formalism and rationality. What is wrong is thus neither the Apollonian nor the Dionysian principle, but their isolation that absolutizes either of them. In any case, the Nietzschean interpretation of the relation between the Apollonian and Dionysian principles leaves no doubt that the asceticism which obsessively attempts to evade every single vestige of the Dionysian element is the true opposite of the great art of life.

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Nietzsche’s critique of resentment Yet, if we want to get to the core of the asceticism and mysticism that determine the reactionary mentality, we should pay attention not only to The Birth of Tragedy, but also to other Nietzsche’s works. For instance, in his treatise On the Genealogy of Morals, he gives an explanation of ascetic morals and the ascetic ideal that perfectly matches Reich’s elucidation of the reactive mentality and even surpasses it. Ascetic morality and ascetic ideal, as depicted in On the Genealogy of Morals, oppose life in such a way that they relate life, world and nature—simply the whole sphere of suffering, impermanency and transitoriness—to a totally different mode of being that is free

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from suffering, impermanency and transitoriness. Life is then understood as a bridge leading to this different way of being; it is supposed to be unconditionally devoted to this “other world” or “other place”. The ascetic ideal incarnates the wish to be otherwise and elsewhere. But let us not be mystified by this dark wish. Its aim is not simply a negation of life; it is not a desire for non-existence. On the contrary, the ascetic ideal represents an attempt to preserve life, to save it from suffering and death. By means of the ascetic ideal, life struggles with death, as the ascetic ideal follows from the necessity to protect the weakened, exhausted and degenerated life. The essence of the ascetic ideal is to give a sense to suffering, to justify it and make it acceptable. This is why Nietzsche claims that the ascetic ideal is still an expression of the will to life—in his terminology—of the will to power. This will to power, however, is full of resentment. In the fight with suffering and death, the ascetic ideal is filled with resentment that attempts to dominate all life. How shall we, then, understand the nature of resentment? As we said, the ascetic man is one who suffers; he suffers by himself and he desires to be somebody else. For this reason, he relates to an absolute “elsewhere” and “otherwise”, where he will escape himself and his suffering. Yet, a part of the effort to avoid suffering and disgust with oneself is the hidden hatred of all those who do not suffer. The ascetic man is full of hatred, full of pique, and vengefulness with which he looks at all “happy and lucky” people. His dream is to make somebody pay for his own suffering. It is precisely this concealed malice and vindictiveness that is the essence of resentment, as it is described in On the Genealogy of Morals. Resentment is filled with hate, envy and hostility with which the suffering man observes those who do not suffer as he does. The man of resentment can stand looking at those who do not suffer only if he considers himself morally superior, elected, if he believes that he will be remunerated for his suffering one day. He calls this future compensation “a justice”. However, to him, justice means nothing but the promise of vengeance. For the ascetic man, justice is just another name for revenge at those who do not suffer the way he does. Morality based on resentment is thus reactive in principle; its action is always only a reaction, as it needs somebody who is considered as bad and who is supposed to be punished when the time has come. For its formation and functioning, the morality of resentment needs something external, some outer impulse against which it could act. Resentment turns its regard primar-

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ily not to itself, but to some external entity—in this sense it is essentially reactive. The reaction that essentially determines the character of resentment, however, is not performed as a voluntary act; it is only felt and experienced, as Deleuze remarks in his Nietzsche and Philosophy.7 As for the problem of morals, Nietzsche does not ask about the essence of good and evil. Rather, he wants to know where those who consider themselves to be good stand. This is the principal question of his genealogy of morals. With respect to this question, he realizes that there are two possible relations to good and evil. The first one has been already adumbrated—it is the reactive disposition that is based on resentment. As such, the reactive disposition issues from refusal, from the negative opposition to something or someone else. In the framework of the reactionary disposition, one can consider oneself to be good only if he first determines the other as evil. Without this denigration of the other, the reactionary character cannot call itself good. Such a disposition, according to Nietzsche, characterizes the slave or the gregarious morality which—in concordance with Reich—can be also called “the mass morality”. It is the morality of the weak and humiliated that can consider themselves good only if they had marked others as bad. The other possible relation to good and evil is in contradiction with the first one. It is the aristocratic, noble disposition that is characterized by selfaffirmation and self-actualization. The noble mentality can be recognized by the fact that it affirms its own existence, in which it finds the supreme good, while the bad is given simply as that what differs from the good. Rather than evil, the bad means here the base, the mean, the poor and the regretful. The noble character does not need its counterpart, its enemy, in order to call itself good. What characterizes it is the surplus of forces that urge it to be active, to exceed the given limits and in this transgression find its selfactualization. The affirmation that characterizes the noble mentality is thus not only the affirmation of one’s own self; rather it is the affirmation of life in general. The noble mentality affirms not only joy and happiness, but also suffering that belongs to life; it says “yes” to life in all its pain and suffering; it says “yes” to all the Dionysian elements of life. As Deleuze suggests in his Nietzsche and Philosophy, the affirmation of life can be even seen as a basic Dionysian quality8. Its opposite is, then, not simply the Apollonian orienta7 8

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: PUF, 1962), pp. 127, 130-1. Ibid. p. 14, 19.

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tion of life, but rather the inability to accept the Dionysian side of life, i.e. the inability to accept life as such. In such a case, the affirmation of life is replaced by the refined negation of life, which is, however, still concerned with life. Instead of the affirmative and active attitude to life, here comes the negative and reactive relation to life which is masked as the negative and reactive relation to that which is different. This reactive disposition becomes evident in Nietzsche’s observation that “slave morality from the outset says No to what is ‘outside’, what is ‘different’, what is ‘not itself’”9. In relation to the “other”, to which it opposes itself, the slave morality cultivates its own revengefulness, which perfectly corresponds to its reactive nature. As regards the slave, reactive mentality, it is worth mentioning what Nietzsche has on mind when speaking about resentment: to the psychologists, presuming that they would like to study resentment close up for once, he whispers that “this plant blooms best today among anarchists and antiSemites – where it has always bloomed, in hidden places, like the violet, though with a different odor”10. “Anarchists”, or to use a more appropriate term—Stalinists need their class enemies as much as anti-Semites need the Jews. Both anti-Semites and Stalinists tend to confuse justice with revenge. In both cases, revengefulness and hatred play the crucial role as two basic components of resentment. And Nietzsche teaches us that resentment characterizes not the noble, aristocratic mentality, but the slave, gregarious mentality. This finding is in a way confirmed in Reich’s analysis of fascism, which applies not only to Nazi Germany, but also to Stalinist Soviet Union. According to Reich, the authoritarian dictators take advantage of the gregarious instinct of masses claiming that people are in principle slaves who need a strong master. Hitler used to say that the masses can be moved not by arguments, proofs and facts, but by feelings, opinions and impressions, and we can add that all these feelings, opinions and impressions are filled with resentment. As Reich claims: [t]he fascist dictator declares that the masses of people are biologically inferior and crave authority, that, basically, they are slaves by nature. Hence, a totalitarian authoritarian regime is the only possible form of government for such people. It is significant that all dictators who today plunge the 9 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Ecce homo, trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), p. 36. 10 Ibid. p. 73.

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world into misery stem from the suppressed masses of people. They are intimately familiar with this sickness on the part of masses of people.11

Thus authoritarian dictators are not representatives of some higher race; they incorporate not the noble, aristocratic mentality, but the slave mentality that allows them to speak to the masses pointing at those who are supposed to be responsible for all life’s misery and who must be punished for this. However, looking for a scapegoat, i.e. for somebody at whose expense the masses could—at least in an imaginary manner—satiate their hatred and vengefulness, is not the only way how to deal with the resentment. Another way of manipulating resentment is described in the figure of the ascetic priest. According to Nietzsche, the ascetic priest is the administrator and organizer of mass resentment. But unlike the totalitarian leader, as depicted by Reich, the ascetic priest changes the direction of resentment—instead of the outside, he turns it back toward the suffering man. When the suffering man realizes that he suffers, while looking for someone who could be responsible for his suffering, the ascetic priest tells him that nobody else but he himself is responsible for this suffering. “Only you are responsible for your own suffering”, so speaks the ascetic priest to the suffering individual. This is an especially refined way of giving a meaning and reasons to the suffering. The suffering man who has undergone such a treatment, is not so dangerous to others any longer, for he understands that it is he himself who has caused his own suffering, but this does not mean that he has been cured. The cause of his suffering has not disappeared and he is still confined to resentment. It is then no coincidence that together with the ascetic priest, who turns direction of resentment from the outside to the inside, the phenomena of guilt and guilty conscience appear on the scene. Contrary to, for example, Heidegger’s ontological analysis of guilt and conscience, for Nietzsche, the feeling of guilt and bad conscience are not natural phenomena that determine human existence; rather, they result from the taming of the wild, “wandering” man whose instincts have been directed against him. In a way, bad conscience is a sickness, the sickness of an animal that has been caught and started to lacerate itself in the capture. The ascetic priest functions here as the administrator of bad conscience and his task is to deepen the feeling 11

Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, pp. 324-5.

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of guilt in man. The ascetic priest does not want to relieve man from his guiltiness. Quite to the contrary, his fundamental interest is to confirm the feeling of guilt and bad conscience. This is precisely what he does when he makes man look for the cause of his suffering in himself, in his most own guiltiness. The ascetic priest persuades the suffering man to understand his miserable state as a punishment for his own sinfulness. His aim is to increase the bondage of man, which is realized by means of narcotizing and hibernation, i.e. numbness, or indirect release of affect in excess of sentiment. In this way, the ascetic priest “cures” the sickness of resentment. Against the cure that preserves the original sickness, Nietzsche places an ideal of real, so called great health that is free not only from hatred and vengefulness, but also from any interiorization of resentment. As great health is free from any form of resentment including guilt or bad conscience, it can be also understood as “a second innocence”12. No wonder such a second innocence can hardly be attained, for it requires becoming free not only from the feeling of guilt and bad conscience, but also from the burden of responsibility and memory by means of which the wild, wandering man was tamed. Rather than being truly innocent, we can thus decide to set out on a journey of becoming innocent which is a journey that situates us in between two different spheres: the sphere of guilt, bad conscience, personal responsibility and memory, and the sphere of innocence, irresponsibility and forgetting. Being unable to reach innocence for good, we can only learn how to live in the tragic tension between the two opposites.

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Critique of resentment in Deleuze and Guattari To see better what becoming innocent can mean, we now turn our attention to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, for it is precisely the idea of great health understood as a state of second innocence that determines their intellectual efforts. Like Nietzsche, they want to break the spell of resentment. They do not content themselves with a mere change of its direction; they do not want to turn resentment from the “outside” to the “inside”, uncovering the infinite source of guilt and bad conscience in human soul. Unlike the new ascetic priests—psychoanalysts—Deleuze and Guattari do not believe in insuffisance d’être or manque à être that fundamentally de12

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, p. 91.

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termine the human existence because they know that the negativity and insufficiency are nothing but the symptoms of resentment. Yet, what does escaping from resentment mean if one presumes that we are not able to break free from it? Exposing the power of resentment and mapping the lines of escape from it, Deleuze and Guattari follow the guidelines given by Reich’s analysis of reactionary and revolutionary tendencies in modern society, which is evident especially in Anti-Oedipus, where they refer to The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Their libidinal economy resonates with sex-economy in which Reich combines Freud and Marx in order to show the interconnection of sexual suppression and social repression. But this is not to say that they simply adopt some ready-made ideas. Their attitude to Reich is, despite their respect for the work of their precursor, critical, and one could say that they use Nietzsche against Reich, or that they criticize Reich in the name of Nietzsche. As an instrument of their critique, they utilize not only the Nietzschean concept of resentment, but also the Nietzschean insight into the relation between the Apollonian and Dionysian principles, which allows them to overcome the limits of Reich’s vitalism by even a more radical vitalism. Reich’s vitalism is determined by his antipathy toward the mechanized functioning of the modern industrial society that alienates the human beings from their true nature. Reich opposes the mechanized functioning of the modern industry that dehumanizes the human beings with the natural state of human existence in which human beings find the meaning of their lives in the realization of their vital needs. The essential needs such as work, love, knowledge and communication, thus determine the Rousseauean vision of homo natura, whose sane character is led astray by the pathogenic influence of desire. The reactionary structure of desire makes us forget the vital interests of homo natura and alienates us from the true basis of our lives. Modern political regimes, be it totalitarian regimes or formal democracies, take advantage of the reactionary structure of our desires and use them against our natural interests, but as soon as the vital interests of homo natura are released, they will lead to the establishment of the so-called workingdemocracy in which there will be no place for authoritative leaders and political manipulation. The paradox, however, is that working-democracy is not only a future project. According to Reich, working-democracy that corresponds to the nature of homo natura already exists, for all political regimes, even the most totalitarian ones, need it as a basis on which they can install

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themselves. Without working-democracy that reflects the natural human interests of work, love, communication and knowledge, no political regime can exist. Therefore, modern totalitarian regimes and formal democracies appear as perversions of working-democracy, which they deform and abuse. The only way out of this situation is, then, a progressive abolition of the modern state and the simultaneous release of working-democracy, which can happen, only when the masses free themselves from the pressure of their reactionary desires and learn how to listen to their vital interests. Contrary to the Rousseauean vision, Deleuze a Guattari do not put nature against technology. Instead, their vitalist conception that takes into consideration the very process of production goes beyond the distinction between nature and technology. Both nature and technology are based on the process of production. Indeed, in Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari also talk about homo natura, but their image of homo natura is not Rousseauean. Rather, their homo natura has the Dionysian nature in the Nietzschean sense. When Deleuze and Guattari declare that the true homo natura is of a schizophrenic nature, we should not forget that the schizophrenic pole of experience has all the features attributed to the Dionysian element in the Birth of the Tragedy13. The Dionysian element is characterized as a sphere of ecstasy, a sphere of enormous joy and enormous suffering in which individuality disintegrates, clear forms fall apart and nothing can be recognized any more. It is the element in which the very difference between man and nature disappears. As opposed to this orgiastic principle in which all individuality collapses and man becomes indiscernible from the animal, the Apollonian element functions as principium individuationis. It is an element of distinct proportions, clear forms and contours, an element in which not only individual existence, but also political and state organizations become possible. Since individual existence as well as political organization require certain framing, i.e. the creation of a horizon that would differentiate the inside from the outside, we can connect the Apollonian element with the process of reterritorialization as described by Deleuze and Guattari, while the process of deterritorialization seems to correspond to the Dionysian element. Considering the affinity of the Dionysian element and the process of deterritorialization on the one hand, as well as the proximity of the Apol13

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 5.

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lonian element and process of reterritorialization on the other, we can thus see that the two sides must not be separated, for the process of production can exist only in a permanent tension of their competing tendencies. In the process of production, the two tendencies must always oppose each other, but as soon as one totally eliminates the other, it leads to a dead end, which could take either the form of a permanent stagnation in the fixed situation, or the form of a devastating collapse. Both the Apollonian reterritorialization, and the Dionysian deterritorialization needs its counterpart that vitalizes and renews it. And both of them have a destructive potential that shows itself once the one or the other becomes isolated and absolutized. Even though the Apollonian reterritorialization and the Dionysian deterritorialization must not be separated, one of them always prevails over the other: once it is the formative influence of the Apollonian element, then it is the Dionysian formlessness. Either reterritorialization subjugates the deterritorialization, or deterritorialization dominates over reterritorialization. It is in the unstable oscillation between these elementary possibilities that the process of production comes about. Production, however, also determines the basic character of desire. Desire, as Deleuze and Guattari conceive of it, has primarily a productive nature; it is the desiring-production which is characteristic by excess and abundance, and not by a constitutive lack or deficiency. But even if desire does not have a negative character, it can become negative, which happens, when it is bound and directed to some transcendental goal or ideal. Then, desire loses its immanent character of production and becomes essentially reactive. This is possible when the Apollonian reterritorialization dominates over the Dionysian deterritorialization and shifts it to the background. In such a case, desire is primarily related to the experiencing individual who finds themself among other individuals and together with them constitutes the political body known as the state; it suppresses all the states in which the individual, the whole net of intersubjective relations as well as the formal structure of the state fall apart. Simply, desire is then invested in the Apollonian way, rather than in the Dionysian way. While the Apollonian reterritorialization is a synonym for the reactionary investment of desire, for it binds us to the given state of affairs, the Dionysian deterritorialization corresponds to the revolutionary investment of desire, for it liberates us not only from the given situation, but also from our own personal identity, allowing us to become something else than what we used to be. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari cannot agree with Reich who believes that desire can be only reactionary;

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rather, they show that desire can be invested either in a reactionary, or in a revolutionary way. In fact, following the topology of The Birth of Tragedy, where the Dionysian element seems to be more primordial than the Apollonian, they even suggest that the revolutionary investment of desire coincides with the true nature of desire and in this sense is more primordial than the reactionary investment of desire, but this does not mean that they overlook the dangers of reactionary mentality, the first one of which is the danger of resentment. Quite to the contrary, they focus on the various ways in which desire, which is originally revolutionary, becomes reactive so that they can expose all the traps that alienate desire from its immanent nature and turn it into the infinite longing for a transcendental ideal. Yet, things become even more complicated when we realize, as Deleuze and Guattari do, that Reich’s distinction between irrational desire and rational interest is not tenable any more: it is a mistake to believe that desire represents the irrational side of human mind that is abused by the authoritarian social regimes, whereas the interest expresses the rational character of social relations, for such a differentiation makes an impression that desire can be and must be rooted out of the social field. Accordingly, desire would be in principle separable from the social sphere, which is something Deleuze and Guattari who demonstrate the coexistence of the desiring-production and social production cannot accept14. In Anti-Oedipus, desiring-production is coextensive with the sphere of social production where various interests clash. Desire may be unconscious and interest may be conscious, but this does not mean that they can be separated from each other. Rather, it is desire what opens a field in which interests can be articulated. Interests can appear only in a field predetermined by desire. Therefore, one can neither presume, as Reich does, that desire in itself is reactionary, while the interest in itself is revolutionary. Rather than putting the reactionary and irrational desire against the revolutionary and rational interest, one should allow that desire can be either revolutionary or reactionary, and the same applies to interest. One must therefore learn how to distinguish the revolutionary investment of desire from the reactionary investment of desire, and the revolutionary interest from the reactionary interest, which is, however, complicated by the fact that the revolutionary interest can go with the reactionary investment of desire and the reactionary interest can be driven by the revolutionary investment of desire. The true revolutionary movement, then, re14

Ibid. pp. 28-30.

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quires not only revolutionary intentions, but also such an investment of desire that has the Dionysian character, i.e. that smashes all the firm structures and formal hierarchies that determine the role of the individuals and segregate some individuals from others. It is, as Deleuze and Guattari put is, schizophrenic, nomadic, pluralist and polyvocal15. Reactionary movement, on the other hand, can be recognized not only by reactionary declarations, but especially by the Apollonian investment of desire, i.e. such an investment that formally determines the role of the individual in the hierarchical social structure, which necessarily excludes those who are classified as “different”. The reactionary investment of desire is thus paranoiac, segregative, unified and univocal16. We could also say that the reactionary investment of desire requires unity, unanimity, discipline, obedience and segregation of those who do not comply with such requirements, whereas the revolutionary investment of desire opens a space for plurality of voices and opinions, for their shifts and changes and has quite a big tolerance for those who are not same as we are. This juxtaposition corresponds to the difference between two sorts of groups: subjugated groups (les groupes assujettis) and group-subjects (les groupes-sujets) that are differentiated on the basis of their ability or inability to accept the finitude and temporariness of the group as such. While in the subjugated groups the individuals can give some meaning to their lives only if they believe in the immortality of the social group that will survive them (the State, the Army, the Party, the Church), and the group itself is very rigid, the group-subjects are capable of institutional improvisation, for they see the social group as something provisionary and temporary17. The difference between subjugated groups and group-subjects may remind us of Reich’s distinction between authoritarian and non-authoritarian society: the first kind of society is based on the powerlessness of masses, on their desire for a higher authority that would redeem and release them from all the responsibility for their lives, whereas the other kind of society refuses any higher authority or rigid social structure and puts all responsibility in the hands of people18. While the authoritarian social order tends to eternalize its own structure, the non-authoritarian social order is changeable and self15

Ibid. p. 105. Ibid. 17 Ibid. pp. 62-4. 18 Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, pp. 234-6. 16

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regulatory, as it makes its members responsible for the direction and drift of social processes. In the non-authoritarian society, people are thus not relieved of their social responsibility; they are burdened with it. This is, nevertheless, the point on which Deleuze and Guattari would differ, for the concept of responsibility is for them still tied to the reactive structure of resentment. The truly revolutionary process is, according to them, driven by the Dionysian deterritorialization, which dissolves not only all the rigid social structures, but also the individuals shaped by the power of social schemes, i.e. those individuals that are supposed to be responsible and feel guilty. Revolutionary processes shake precisely this tendency to be responsible and feel guilty, whereas the reactionary processes strengthen the feeling of responsibility and guilt. We should not, however, forget that neither revolutionary, nor reactionary processes as such separate the Dionysian element from the Apollonian element. In the revolutionary processes, as well as in the reactionary processes, the Dionysian deteritorrialization and the Apollonian reterritorialization go hand in hand, and all depends only on which one of them prevails. When the Apollonian reterritorialization dominates, we see the raising power of the State apparatus (l’appareil d’État) with its molar structures of bureaucratic hierarchies, social classes and individual roles. When it is, to the contrary, the Dionysian deterritorialization that prevails, the subversive war machines (les machines de guerre) performing molecular transformations dissolve the molar structures of the State and open lines of escape from the captivity of the State apparatus appear on the scene. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari describe the antagonistic relations between the State apparatus that operates on the molar level by means of reterritorialization and the war machines that operate on the molecular level by means deterritorialization. The State apparatus and the war machines coexist in an agonistical way, when the State apparatus attempts to capture and take control of the war machines using them for the purpose of reterritorialization, while the war machines shake the power of the State apparatus making its molar structures transform along the line of deterritorialization. All this is not without its dangers, and it would be a great mistake to presume that the dangers are only on the part of the State apparatus. Deleuze and Guattari are fully aware that the dangers are both on the part of the State apparatus, and on the part of war machines. These threats become imminent when the reactionary processes come to the point where the Apollonian reterritorialization gets isolated and absolutized, or when the revolu-

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tionary processes go so far that the Dionysian deterritorializtion becomes the only and absolute goal. While in the first case we have to face the totalitarianism in which the State apparatus eliminates all the lines of escape and possibilities of deterritorialization by the violent reterritorialization, in the second case we are confronted with fascism in which the State apparatus collapses under the influence of a war machine that drives it to the absolute deterritorialization19. Therefore, totalitarianism is characteristic by an endless stagnation in which, despite all the slogans about progress, nothing new happens, whereas fascism can be characterized as an effort to destroy the State and everything that belongs to it in the cataclysm of the absolute war. Fascism does not just produce a hegemonic situation in which the State apparatus reterritorializes all social and individual process in its centralized structure. The real aim of fascism is not to keep the social and individual reality unchanged, but to destroy everything. What determines the nature of fascism is not hypertrophied reterritorialization, but deterritorialization that ends in the void of ecstatic annihilation. As we read in A Thousand Plateaus:

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[…] in fascism, the State is far less totalitarian than it is suicidal. There is in fascism a realized nihilism. Unlike the totalitarian State, which does its utmost to seal all possible lines of flight, fascism is constructed on an intense line of flight, which it transforms into a line of pure destruction and abolition20.

For this reason, Deleuze and Guattari make a distinction between Stalinism, which is for them an example of the totalitarian regime, and Hitlerism which demonstrates all the suicidal tendencies of fascism21. They do not subsume Stalinism and Hitlerism under the same category of totalitarian-authoritarian rule, as Reich does, for they understand that the essential difference between totalitarianism and fascism issues from two basic ways in which the Apollonian reterritorialization and Dionysian deterritorialization can be isolated. When the Apollonian reterritorialization becomes hypertrophied, or when the Dionysian deterritorialization becomes absolutized, we enter into the

19

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1987, pp. 214-5, 229-31. 20 Ibid. p. 230. 21 Ibid. pp. 214-215.

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domain of political and social pathology.22 To become aware of the political and social dangers represented by totalitarianism and fascism is important especially for those who are engaged in some kind of resistance against the existing social order. The problem is not only the one of political motivation. Of course, those who are involved in a movement of resistance should make sure that their activity is directed by affirmation of something, and not by reaction and resentment which would hide the desire for vengeance behind the declared call for justice and liberation. But this is only a small part of a complex scheme in which the reactionary and revolutionary tendencies oscillate between the Apollonian and Dionysian pole, and the biggest dangers appear when the unstable oscillation is replaced by the absolute domination of the Apollonian or Dionysian pole. Unfortunately, big ideological slogans do not seem to be very useful tools in this respect. As Deleuze and Guattari remind us, “it is too easy to be antifascist on the molar level, and not even see the fascist inside you, the fascist you yourself sustain and nourish and cherish with molecules both personal and collective,”23 In any case, the situation Deleuze and Guattari describe is much more complex than the one pictured by Reich. This is evident, among other things, from the way the process of revolutionary activity is understood in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus (though the term “revolution” is not always used explicitly). Contrary to the Mass Psychology of Fascism, where being revolutionary means “the rational rebellion against intolerable conditions in human society, the rational will ‘to get to the root of all things’ […] and to improve them”24, becoming-revolutionary is there delineated as an active escape from the given situation, which does not mean its abandonment, but its creative transformation. Rather than a rational activity that brings people from irrational illusions to their real interests and needs, be22 This is nothing but an elementary exposition of the problem. Things become more complex, if we look at the description of the body without organs in A Thousand Plateaus, where both the totalitarian and fascist formations are considered as cancerous structures that parasitize on the social field (see Ibid. pp. 163-5). They are thus dependent on the social strata that they prevent from free development or annihilate. From totalitarian and fascist bodies are then differentiated so called empty bodies without organs that leave social strata in a suicidal deterritorialization without destroying society as such (drug addicts, insane, etc.). We would like to express our gratitude to Ronald Bogue for drawing our attention to this observation. 23 Ibid. p. 215. 24 Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, p. XIV.

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coming-revolutionary is a process of deterritorialization that employs the mechanisms of the war machine against the State in order to change the social situation. But if the movement of deterritorialization is not to end up in the trap of fascism, it must not only destroy old codes and structures, but also make possible new connections; it must not simply dissolve all molar structures that are related to the State apparatus, but rather transform them in the molecular flows that reshape the role of the individual as well as its place in the net of social relations. The relation between molecular and molar level, between the war machine and the State apparatus must be always preserved, even though the transformed structures undergo radical disintegration and following or concurrent reintegration. The deterritorialization and reterritorialization must always operate together. As to the process of deterritorialization, it primarily involves masses, but masses in A Thousand Plateaus are not grasped as “the nonpolitical, irrationally influenced working segment of the population”25. As opposed to The Mass Psychology of Facism, masses are viewed not as a politically passive, irrational part of the population that tends to the reactionary attitudes, but as the deterritorialized population. The masses correspond to the population in the Dionysian state, while the social classes represent the Apollonian state of the reterritorialized population26. Masses are molecular, while the classes are molar27. Masses and classes belong together as two perspectives of sight, but Deleuze and Guattari leave no doubt that the masses play a primary role in the revolutionary deterritorialization. It is thus not enough to analyze the revolutionary transformations in terms of classes that struggle for their interests, for becoming-revolutionary shows its true character only when it is analyzed primarily in terms of deterritorialized masses that follow their desires. We know already that the masses can be driven not only by the desire for liberation, but also by the desire for total annihilation. Yet, we should also understand what liberation means for Deleuze and Guattari: liberation as such has nothing to do with the achievement of autonomy, be it collective or individual autonomy, for autonomy always requires some molar structures of social or individual integrity. Political or individual autonomy necessarily implies a domination—the domination of one social group over the 25

Ibid. p. 216. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 221. 27 Ibid. p. 213.

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others, or the domination of adults over the children. The achievement of autonomy is thus, from the revolutionary point of view, a mere compromise with the power of the State apparatus and a stoppage in the becomingrevolutionary. Even though such a compromise with power is necessary, it does not belong to revolutionary deterritorialization as such; it belongs rather to the reterritorialization organized by the State apparatus. Although the process of deterritorialization must not be separated from the process of reterritorialization, revolutionary becoming as such sustains molecular heteronomy and contingency, rather than molar autonomy. This is why Deleuze and Guattari suggest that becoming-revolutionary is in principle becoming-minoritarian28. Rather than turning a specific social minority into a majority, becoming-revolutionary makes possible escaping from the very logic of majority that determines the dominating model of life and pushes all those who do not fit to this model at the social periphery. Becomingrevolutionary is becoming-minoritarian because it opens a line of escape from the given model of majority, without creating a new molar model of majority. Therefore, becoming-revolutionary knows no final victory, but only permanent continuation moderated by the fact that the molecular flows of change cannot do without molar points of stability.

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Conclusion From the description of resentment we came to the question of how we can find a way out from the trap of resentment, which is a fundamental question for all those who are involved in some kind of resistance against the given social order and against the majority way of life (minorities, feminists, ecologists, etc). In agreement with Nietzsche’s conviction that resentment is a sort of illness that is hard to be cured Deleuze and Guattari suggest that one is never done with resentment: all we can do is to keep escaping from the structures of the State apparatus and from the majority model of life that need resentment (either in its internalized, or externalized form) for their functioning.

28

Ibid. pp. 356-8.

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On Nietzsche’s Conception of Health and Disease

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At first glance it might seem that philosophy has nothing to do with health and sickness. Even though the problematic of health and sickness falls primarily within the domain of medical thought, it nevertheless extends into the philosophical sphere of competence, particularly when medicine asks itself what grounds the very possibility of our judgments on health and sickness. Is the deciding criterion a general norm based on intellectual, behavioural or physiological principles, or can we make decisions regarding health and sickness based on individualised criteria corresponding to a particular individual’s quality of life? The urgency of these questions brings us to the reason why we should recall Nietzsche’s philosophy in connection with the question of health and sickness, for it is among the fundamental themes Nietzsche returns to time and again in his works. Whether this was due to the frail, inconstant health that forced him to give up his professorship at Basel or a foreboding of his tragic end, it is significant that the question of health and sickness does not play a merely secondary role in his thought, but is rather a basic touchstone. For example, the considerations we find in Gay Science are so original that they can open up an entirely specific perspective on health and sickness – one in which sickness is seen not as a mere deviation from some super-individual norm, but as a special form of individual existence. Whereas the prevailing medical view of sickness posits an ideal health based on the average, model human being—a statistical population sample—Nietzsche exalts all that is unrepeatable and singular in a concrete individual’s health. For, as he himself claims, there is no health as such, and all attempts to define such a thing have failed miserably. Deciding what is health even for your body depends on your goal, your horizon, your powers, your impulses, your mistakes and above all on the ideals and phantasms of your soul. Thus there are innumerable healths of the body; and the more one allows the particular and incomparable to rear its head again, the more one unlearns the dogma of the “equality of men”, the more the concept of a normal health, along with those of a normal diet and normal course of an illness, must be abandoned by our medical men.1 1

Friedrich Nietzsche, Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff

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In other words, one individual’s health is not the same as another’s; nor is one illness experienced the same way on all occasions—indeed, one person’s sickness might even be an expression of the greatest health in another. Neither can it be said that sickness is simply a deficiency depriving an individual of some of the possibilities of existence; sickness can open up new possibilities as well—it all depends on the stance we take towards it. One and the same physiological state can limit the potential for action, but can also open up new possibilities for action and sensation. It is this latter conception of sickness, in which despite the loss of certain possibilities new perspectives on the world are opened up, that Nietzsche himself experienced in the highest degree: as he writes in Ecce Homo, it was during the time of his illness and his lowered vitality that he “stopped being a pessimist” and discovered both life and himself again.2 His illness was not a state of deficient life for him, but rather an incentive to live even more. Thus the significance of an illness is not purely negative, but derives from the stance one takes on it. Likewise, health is not only something positive through and through that must be cultivated and protected at all costs. The value and significance of health consists not in the absence of pain, in a serene and harmonious life, but rather in the ability to come to terms with pain, disquiet and disharmony, which are inescapable aspects of life. Accordingly, real health does not reveal itself as a precisely defined state, but as a changing disposition which must be established again and again. A health “that one doesn’t only have, but also acquires continually and must acquire because one gives it up again and again, and must give it up!” is both a precondition for and a means for seeking and discovering new possibilities, for experimenting with and exploring the unknown.3 An appreciation for this healthy which is continually lost and re-acquired leads him to ask whether a person could even get by without sickness: “And as for illness: are we not almost tempted to ask whether we can do without it at all?”4 If the ability to give up and reacquire

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 116-7, §120. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Why I Am So Wise”, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, eds. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 77. 3 Nietzsche, Gay Science, p. 246, §382. 4 Ibid. p. 6, §3.

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health is a precondition for the discovery of new possibilities, is sickness a necessary risk that those who will not settle with what they already know and have attained must expose themselves to? The threat of sickness is the toll we pay on the road toward that which is new, untested and unknown. Without it, the discovery of new, untested and unknown possibilities would be impossible. Health that is not confronted with the threat of sickness is but endless stagnation and decadent life. An absolute health which would eliminate not only pain, but the very possibility of sickness would, if attained, lead to the deadening of our ability to leave behind attainments and open ourselves to new ones. That is why Nietzsche asks, “whether the will to health alone is not a prejudice, a cowardice and a piece of the most refined barbarism and backwardness”.5 To Nietzsche’s suspicion we may also add the observation that the issue of health and sickness raises a question mark above the duality of soul and body posited by the traditional view of human existence. The more we concern ourselves with the phenomena of health and sickness, the clearer it becomes that the separation of existence into soul and body is unjustified. For this reason, Nietzsche asserts, “We philosophers are not free to separate soul from body as the common people do”.6 If philosophy insists on the distinction, he believes, it does so because it misunderstands the problem of corporality. Traditional metaphysics has not understood the phenomenon of the body because it rejects it, much as in its desire for what is ideal and spiritual it rejects the world. But we must affirm both our corporeality and the world with all their physiological states and demands. A true “philosophical physician” who has been freed from metaphysical belief in a transcendent realm and has thus discovered the phenomenon of the body must therefore see that sickness and health of the soul cannot be separated from sickness and health of the body; instead, we must understand that the foundation of all psychological phenomena lies within in the body, whose nature is far removed from that of a mechanical apparatus. Zarathustra’s dictum applies here: “The body is a great reason, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, one herd and one shepherd.”7 5

Ibid. p. 117, §120. Ibid. p. 6, §3. 7 Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Despisers of the Body”, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, eds. Adrian del Caro and Robert B. Pippin, trans. Adrian del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 22. 6

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Although the belief in the separation of body and soul is deeply rooted in Western thought, Nietzsche’s views on health and sickness found echoes in philosophy as well as in medicine. In both areas we find numerous authors who to a greater or lesser degree, consciously or unconsciously, draw upon his thought. Because Nietzsche’s conception of health and sickness, as we have outlined above, calls for clarification, the aim of the following considerations is to develop it alongside the ideas of thinkers who were either inspired by him or at least adopted certain aspects of this thought. With their help, we may understand the tension between health and sickness that has its basis in the phenomenon of human corporality, whose “psychosomatic” character cannot be reduced to the functioning of corporeal mechanisms driven by an incorporeal soul. At the same time, we shall have to explain the sense in which the possibility of sickness is constitutive of human existence and why we cannot escape it. Even though contemporary medicine, flying high on its diagnostic and therapeutic successes, falls easy prey to the illusion that one day it will be able to rid people of all the weaknesses, pains and hardships arising from the oppressive reality of pathological disorders, we should understand that ridding ourselves of the very possibility of sickness is neither possible nor desirable. One of the main factors tempting medicine to entertain its exaggerated expectations is a positivistic view of sickness according to which pathological disorders are perceived as a quantitative change with regard to a normal state. As a rule, today’s medicine understands sickness in terms of dysfunction or hyperfunction, from which it is a short step to the idea that curing a disease requires no more than re-establishing the proper working of some vital function. Neurologist and psychiatrist Kurt Goldstein argues forcefully against this conception in Der Aufbau des Organismus, where he presents a conception of health and sickness that distils the findings he gathered over many years treating disabled war veterans with damage to the cerebral cortex. A fundamental question posed in the book asks what is meant by the “proper” functioning of the organism. The norms that guide physicians in determining a healthy or pathological state are based most often on their knowledge of human physiology or on their awareness of statistically preponderant behaviours at a given time in a given social environment. Whereas norms defined in this way do not consider concrete individuals as a matter of principle, Goldstein, like Nietzsche, brings individuals and their relationships to the surrounding world to the fore. According to Goldstein, health and sickness are not determined by physiological models or statistical averages, but

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by individual norms derived from the individual’s life situation as a whole. Thus sickness does not simply entail isolated symptoms along with the deficiency or excess of particular functions lurking behind them, but an overall change in the behaviour of the organism. Because only a particular individual may be sick, Goldstein speaks of a Kranksein that qualitatively transforms the overall relationship of the individual to her surroundings. In this view, sickness cannot be reduced to a quantitative change that is in essence homogenous with health, but must be seen as a heterogeneous state in which the life of the individual is changed from the ground up. On the level of the organic whole—and in the case of the human being on the level of a conscious individual totality—sickness represents a menace that forces the organism to interact with its environment in a very specific manner. In order to clarify the special character of pathologically transformed behaviour, Goldstein breaks down his conception of the difference between health and sickness into several basic theses. To begin, health is characterised primarily by the stable, balanced behaviour of an individual who is in a harmonic relationship with her surroundings. The human organism is fit—as is the animal organism—if it manages to respond adequately to the demands of the environment and deal successfully with any irregularity and unexpected changes. By contrast, pathological disorders bring on a disruption of the organism’s stable functioning and its unproblematic relationship with its environment. The organism becomes sick when a disorder prevents it from dealing successfully with demands from its environment that it was once able to meet. At the same time, pathological disorders induce a physical and mental shock that Goldstein calls a catastrophic reaction. Sick individuals experience the catastrophic situation as an extreme form of imbalance and uncertainty that can lead to total disintegration in its final phase. This is true for both bodily and psychological disorders: in extreme cases such as those involving cortical lesions or certain forms of psychosis, catastrophic situations lead to the collapse of the patient’s relatedness with her environment and the disintegration of her personality. However, even much less severe pathological disorders must be understood in the light of catastrophic situations, which always represent an extreme burden for a sick organism. If we want to properly understand pathological disorders, we cannot reduce them to the lack of certain behavioural contents; we must think of them as a general disruption of an organism’s behaviour. Symptomatology cannot limit itself to an enumeration of lost functions, as in aphasia, alexia or amnesia; rather, individual symptoms should be understood as an organism’s

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response to the demands the environment places on it. It is an unconscionable mistake, claims Goldstein, for medicine to unreflectively uproot the organism from its natural environment, as occurs under laboratory conditions, for pathological symptoms vary along with the demands a concrete organism must face. For example, whereas a sick or injured animal might not survive for more than a few hours in its natural environment, it might stay alive much longer in the framework of a laboratory experiment and thereby give distorted impression of its real state. That a sick individual manages to overcome the catastrophic situation related to a pathological disorder means that she has attained a state in which she is once again capable of stable functioning and balanced behaviour in her environment. This does not entail a mere return to an original state, but rather a new existential constant in which both retained and pathologically transformed functions are combined. A sickness that does not lead to immediate death is always a positive, innovatory experience, says Goldstein. However, since one function cannot be fully substituted by another, the attainment of every stability enabling the individual to come to terms with her sickness—without eliminating its cause—entails a limitation of her freedom. The sick individual tries, at all costs, to re-establish the proper, balanced functioning of her organism and would rather limit her performance capacity and circumscribe the borders of her environment than face the catastrophic situation once again. More than evidence of a deficiency, this circumscription is a manifestation of the sick individual’s adaptive capacities; Goldstein supports this view by pointing to the behaviour of patients with cortical lesions who close up when confronted with stimuli they cannot adequately respond to. Another aspect of their radically circumscribed world is exemplified by a persistent effort to avoid anything that introduces chaos or emptiness into their lives; efforts of this kind result in an exaggerated longing for order or a need to be constantly engaged in an activity. All these examples are meant to show that sickness, seen from the perspective of the sick individual, entails a new mode of life characterised by a change in physiological constants as well as the establishment of new relationships with the environment and new ways of dealing with its demands. In order to further develop the conception of sickness we have been outlining and the adaptation it entails, let us now turn to some basic moments of corporeal existence described by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Phénoménologie de la perception. We are drawn to this work by the number of explicit references to Goldstein’s clinical studies that the phenomenological

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description of corporeal experience relies on. Like Der Aufbau des Organismus, Phénoménologie de la perception rejects the standard view of sickness based on the loss of particular functions. Instead, it approaches sickness as a specific mode of human existence. Sickness is understood not as a deficient mode of health, but as a fundamental change in human existence whose pathological character involves a disturbance of stable, existing behaviour and an effort to cope. In the case of Goldstein’s patient Schneider, whose case history Merleau-Ponty explores in detail, we see clearly that sickness (in this case a serious brain injury) entails a disruption of the patient’s relationship to the world, which he comes to terms with at the cost of a limitation to his freedom. In response to his injury, Schneider closes himself off to a spectrum of possibilities that had been open to him while he was healthy and the scope of his existence is greatly reduced. This existential reduction is necessary, according to Merleau-Ponty, because in sickness there is a weakening of the intentional arc (l’arc intentionel), which contains within it one’s past, present and future and one’s standing in the world, including one’s corporeal, ideological and moral situations. It is this intentional arc—to which we owe the unity of our senses, our intellect and our locomotive capacity—that is subject to the possibility of a disintegration which the sick individual attempts at all costs to avoid. That this view of sickness is tied up not only with psychopathological disorders, but also with corporeal disorders is best illustrated by the example of the blind man Merleau-Ponty returns to repeatedly. He comes to the fundamental insight that even a man who has lost his sight has an experience of space. The blind man, who orients himself by means of touch and hearing, is also situated in the world in his own way. The only difference between a seeing person and the blind man is that the blind man’s world is structured differently. We cannot say of the blind man that his experience is simply deficient compared to that of the seeing person, because as compensation for the sight he has lost, he has acquired much more differentiated sense of hearing and touch. In this case, sickness does not merely mean a loss of possibilities; it also induces the creation of new ones. Since sickness forces us to search for new possibilities, we can agree with Merleau-Ponty’s claim that as long as one is alive, one always maintains a certain degree of freedom – which is, in the end, also a prerequisite for any medical procedure. Nonetheless, a question remains: how is this adaptive capacity of the human organism to be understood? If we consider the blind man, who must learn a new way of orienting himself toward the world, we may observe that

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his relationship to his white cane undergoes a transformation. For him, the cane ceases to be a mere object and becomes a tactile organ. Getting used to the cane means making it a part of his body. In the process, his corporeal existence is reorganised in such a way that the sphere of tactile experiences extends outward from the ends of his fingers to the end of the cane. In order to be able to discern this transformation, however, we must stop thinking of the human body as an object within the domain of res extensa and see in it a synthesising function that changes in conformity with given forms of Beingin-the-World. As Merleau-Ponty writes, “our body is not an object for an ‘I think’, it is a grouping of lived-through meanings which moves towards its equilibrium”.8 The basic characteristic of the body conceived in this way is the ability to give up equilibria, create new groupings of meanings—thus revealing previously indiscernible possibilities—and thereby reach new equilibria. Nevertheless, the darker side of the process involving the disintegration and reorganisation of corporeal functions during which new meanings are created and new possibilities revealed is the danger that the corporeal synthesis might descend into a total disequilibrium. Although Merleau-Ponty does not say so explicitly, the transition from one state of equilibrium to another is always mingled with a measure of disequilibrium that can easily get out of control. A bodily disequilibrium that disrupts the balanced functioning of the bodily synthesis can therefore be interpreted as the catastrophic reaction that Goldstein posits at the root of all pathological disorders. A person who goes blind due to injury or an illness finds herself in a catastrophic situation and if she is not to succumb to it, she must learn to orient herself in the world in a new manner, bringing forth new meanings and possibilities. And even if she is not able to regain her sight, the new corporeal equilibrium may enable her to go on and lead a meaningful, full existence. If we conceive pathological disorders as bodily disequilibria, we may not only disregard objective norms and disclose the individuality in each case, but also forge a path toward an understanding of the psychosomatic dimension of pathological disorders. Merleau-Ponty’s conception of human corporeality thus overcomes the Cartesian distinction between res extensa and res cogitans, underscoring instead the complexity of corporeal Being-in-the-World. 8

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénomenologie de la pérception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 179. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 153.

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At the same time, however, it appears that the effort to eradicate sickness from human life would, if successful, necessarily lead to permanent stagnation and a dull resignation to every change. Without the risk of bodily disequilibrium, even the possibility of giving up an existing equilibrium for something new would disappear. If one did not have a tendency toward pathological disorders, one would never be able to break free from existing habits and transform one’s existence by appropriating new behaviours. In the virtual presence of bodily disequilibrium we see reflected the transience of human existence, which entails not only its finitude, but its transitivity as well. The elimination or limitation of this transience would therefore necessarily inhibit the original transitivity of human existence that expresses itself in the ability to transcend existing horizons and discover unforeseen possibilities. For this reason, it highly significant that those who attempt to overcome behavioural, cognitive or aesthetic limits during periods of creative searching and uncertainty take on the risk, whether they want to or not, of absolute self-destruction, as evinced by the fates of Van Gogh, Hölderlin and Nietzsche. Whatever the particularities of such tragic collapses may have been, we may point out that the collapse of all certainties is evident in its purest form in schizophrenia. The schizophrenic is exposed to continual catastrophic situations that bring about the overall disintegration of her corporeal synthesis. The unity of the body schema and thereby the unity of experience breaks down in schizophrenia. Here the bodily disequilibrium is so radical that it leads to a general disintegration of the world, whose horizon loses its solid contours, rendering it freely accessible to hallucinations. “[I]f the world is atomized or dislocated, this is because one’s own body has ceased to be a knowing body, and has ceased to draw together all objects in its one grip,” writes Merleau-Ponty.9 Later, when he cites a schizophrenic for whom time has stopped, he arrives at the very essence of schizophrenia, which consists in the collapse of a temporal synthesis.10 Thus if Goldstein observes that a catastrophic reaction represents an immense burden for an organism, we can give at least a rough estimate of the kind of energies a schizophrenic will have to expend in order to continually renew a transitive synthesis (une synthèse de transition) in which her present is joined to her past and future. This unending struggle over one’s own integrity takes place not on the level of 9

Ibid. p. 327. Ibid. pp. 282-3. Ibid.

10

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the intentional act, but on that of operational intentionality; in other words, what is important is not how time is perceived, but rather the very possibility of temporal synthesis borne within human existence. Thus we may see in schizophrenia not only one category among many others in a nosological system, but also a manifestation par excellence of the finitude of a human’s being. Nonetheless, whenever we speak of health and sickness, it is not only the transience of human existence, but also human freedom that is at stake. To be more precise, the transience of human existence is closely related to its freedom. In which sense, then, are we to understand Goldstein’s observation that each overcoming of a catastrophic reaction that does not result in the elimination of a given defect means a limitation on our freedom, since we have seen in the case of the blind man how much that is new is involved when a corporeal equilibrium is achieved? Surely if the schizophrenic is able at least temporarily to overcome a bodily disequilibrium, he/she does so only at the price of a considerable simplification and narrowing of her world (whether through psychoactive drugs or in a protected environment). The same is also true for Goldstein’s patients, who have been condemned by brain injury to a substantially reduced mode of existence. We might find the answer to our question in Merleau-Ponty’s explication of the phenomenon of human freedom. It clearly follows from the scheme of human corporeality as a synthesis of existential functions which is laid out in Phénoménologie de la perception that an integral part of this functional whole is the possibility of transformation. Among the basic dispositions of corporeal existence is the possibility of an escape (échappement) from its factical situation while bodily abilities undergo disintegration and reorganisation.11 The process of escape in which we acquire new skills and habits is an act of transcendence that expands our possibilities and our horizons. The act of transcendence in which bodily existence opens itself up to new ways of thinking and acting can thus be seen as a kind of liberation. However, on no account can this escape from our factical situation lead to absolute freedom. This escape is not a path toward unfettered unrestraint and arbitrariness. Because the new mode of behaviour is, in a sense, continuously motivated—that is, integrated into an overall 11

Ibid. p. 199. Ibid. pp. 170-1: “All that we are, we are on the basis of a de facto situation which we appropriate to ourselves and which we ceaselessly transform by a sort of escape which is never an unconditiones freedom.”

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context that gives it a concrete meaning—human existence clearly continues to be determined to an extent. Motives, says Merleau-Ponty, introduce neither absolute indeterminacy nor absolute determinacy into human action, but a situated freedom—that is, freedom in its facticity. A good example of situated freedom might be the way a painter develops a theme: although she might paint freely, she is bound by a particular theme and particular artistic rules. And even though she can break these rules at any time, she cannot do so without at the same time creating a new style. The only case when both theme and style break down is, of course, madness, which signifies the definitive end of artistic creativity. Similar to painting in this respect are other spheres of individual and social existence in which it is always possible to change existing approaches to oneself and the world. Situated freedom does not mean that human existence is fully determined by its motives and its style, but that it can transcend and transform them by creating a new style. In its very essence, human existence is style-creating and it is here that the possibility of overcoming pathological disorders lies. The ability to cope with pathological disorders derives from the human ability to create a certain existential style for oneself, which allows one to extricate oneself from catastrophic situations. Though in most cases this cannot be done without medical assistance, Phénoménologie de la perception leaves no doubt that even the best medical care will never lead to the attainment of absolute freedom. Nevertheless, the concept of situated freedom shows where to look for an answer to the question regarding the relationship between health and freedom: if sickness limits the freedom of existence, it is not because it rules out certain possible ways of Being-in-the-World without compensating for them, but because it bears upon the human ability to transform an existential style. Sickness limits a patient’s existence by diminishing her ability to escape from her factical situation. To fully elucidate the limitation of the style-creating character of human existence that occurs in sickness, let us turn in closing to the thought of Georges Canguilhem.12 His book Le normal et le pathologique, where he puts forward his interpretation of Western medical thought from Comte to Goldstein, is interesting for us because it introduces into the discussion of health and sickness a special type of normativity which is not a demarcation of universally applicable norms and the subsequent monitoring of individual deviations, but rather a normativity that is immanent in every living organ12

Georges Canguilhem, Le normal et le pathologique (2nd edition, Paris: PUF, 1972).

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ism. Since life is never indifferent to its own conditions, but involves a constant polarity and a positing of values, Canguilhem can claim that being alive means putting in place one’s own individual norms. This view of life as a normative activity concurs interestingly with both Goldstein’s analysis of the phenomena of health and sickness and Merleau-Ponty’s conception of existential style. From this perspective sickness appears not as a mere deviation from a general norm, but as a norm itself. Not only health, but sickness as well is an existential style, for it also has its constants serving to avert a catastrophic reaction. For a sick individual, sickness is an original experience that brings with it new possibilities and induces new habits. Compared with health, however, the style of sickness is much more rigid and conservative because it opposes all changes and variations in lifestyle associated with it. Whereas a healthy individual is able to change her existential style, the sick individual loses the ability to establish other norms of action. Sickness binds the living individual to her factical situation and thereby prevents her from developing her norm-creating character. By contrast, health may be defined as the ability to transcend existing norms and replace them with new ones. Limitations on this normative ability manifest themselves in the sick individual primarily in a tolerance for uncertainties and irregularities in the environment. If health enables the organism to come to terms with unexpected events and dangers in one’s surroundings, sickness makes one avoid all situations that might induce a catastrophic reaction, as is evident in Goldstein’s patients. It is no wonder, then, that a lowered resistance to unforeseeable changes in the environment have a negative influence on the ability to cope with further sickness as well. By contrast, an individual who is highly resilient can afford to take on the risk of becoming sick, face the perils involved in catastrophic situations and overcome unexpected crises in order to eventually come out of them with new life norms. So, along with Canguilhem, we arrive at a view of human health that corresponds to the transience and style-creating nature of human existence. Instead of trying to understand health by applying purely functional criteria, human health can be understood as a preparedness to face unexpected changes in the surrounding world and create new life norms. Thus health means nothing but the ability to assume the transience of human existence and develop it fully, which necessarily entails the ability to face bodily disequilibria and endure catastrophic situations. In the relationship humans have with their surrounding world, there is always a lasting disequilibrium arising from the contingent character of our existence. When a person comes

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to terms with the everyday demands the environment, minor catastrophic situations are practically unavoidable. So, if sickness lowers resistance to bodily disequilibrium, it also thereby limits the original transitivity of human existence. Sickness hampers the development of what is most characteristic in human existence: the ability to go beyond existing givens. Unlike health, which, according to Goldstein, drives the need for self-realisation, sickness forces us to limit ourselves to mere self-preservation. Although this conception of the difference between health and sickness puts an end to any dreams of eliminating once and for all of the very possibility of pathological disorders, it offers a much more subtle means for distinguishing between health and sickness than a purely functional perspective. Based on this conception, sickness is no longer simply the dysfunction or hyperfunction of a particular organ, but rather a type of resentment that hampers a person’s efforts toward self-realisation and puts in their place a need for self-preservation. As Nietzsche states in Ecce Homo, “Sickness is itself a kind of ressentiment.”13 Nevertheless, this resentment—with the possible exception of the last stages of an illness—is never absolute. For without a modicum of health enabling one to give up one mode of existence to acquire new behavioural constants, adaptation to a pathologically transformed situation would not even be possible. Neither can health understood as the capacity for self-realisation be absolute, since without a minimal sense of self-preservation life would be nothing but an endless series of catastrophic situations. For the question of health and sickness always involves a momentary relationship between the tendency toward self-preservation and the tendency toward self-realisation. And it is the task of the “philosophical physician” that Nietzsche calls for to decide whether in a particular instance it is self-preservation that prevails over self-realisation or vice versa.

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Translated by Ivan Gutierrez

13

Nietzsche, Ecce homo, pp. 80-1.

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Weak Subjectivity, Trans-Subjectivity and the Power of Event

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A philosophical experiment In one of the essays collected in The Adventure of Difference, Gianni Vattimo invites us to an interesting Gedankenexperiment. This experiment consists in the attempt to conceive Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and the notion of subjectivity that is inherent to it in terms borrowed from Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy.1 Even though such an attempt obviously goes against the common understanding of Being and Time and even against Heidegger’s own self-understanding in the given period, Vattimo wonders whether we can find at least two Nietzschean motifs in the structures of fundamental ontology: the first one consists in the character of the Dionysian ecstasy that combines joy with suffering, and the other one, closely linked to the first one, remains in “the ungrounding of the principium individuationis, taken equally to mean the ungrounding of the subject.”2 Both motifs are to be related to the structure of the authentic existence and through it—for the authentic existence in Sein und Zeit is ontologically more primordial than the inauthentic existence—to the ontological structure of Dasein as such. What Vattimo proposes is apparently no interpretation, but rather an essential re-interpretation of the fundamental ontology which stands or falls with the affirmation that “the transcendence of Dasein’s Being is distinctive in that it implies the possibility and the necessity of the most radical individuation.”3 Since the movement of transcendence is most fully realized by the authentic existence, whereas the inauthentic existence falls behind it, the authentic existence is characterized by achieving the most radical individuation, while the inauthentic existence loses itself in various forms of self1

Gianni Vattimo, The Adventure of Diference. Philosophy after Nietzsche and Heidegger, p. 130. 2 Ibid. 3 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (17th Edition, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), p. 38. Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco: Harper, 1962), p. 62.

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alienation and self-forgetting. Yet, the philosophical experiment outlined in The Adventure of Difference brings us to the opposite view: instead of consisting in the individuation of Dasein, the authentic existence viewed in the light of the Dionysian element exposes Dasein to the radical disintegration of its individuality. Unfortunately, the above-mentioned Gedankenexperiment is only roughly sketched in The Adventure of Difference and most of its consequences remain hidden from our sight. Let us therefore take this experiment as a challenge and let us try to discover what remains implicitly present in the logic of this philosophical enterprise. We can assume that by interpreting Heidegger through Nietzsche we will reach the area of a weak ontology, or, as Vattimo puts it, of “an ontology organized in ‘weak’ categories.”4 Contrary to the traditional philosophical thought which, due to its predilection for unity, sameness and autonomy, appears as “violent” thought, weak ontology is opened for difference that not only cannot be subsumed under any unity, but even disintegrates every unity and sameness including the unity of individual existence. Thinking difference in its pure state, weak ontology goes so far that it accepts the disintegration of individual existence. According to Vattimo, pure difference can only be thought if we accept the disintegration of the existing subject that experiences difference.5 In order to experience difference as difference, the existing subject must be deprived of its unity and autonomy. Only when unity and autonomy of thought are replaced by multiplicity and heteronomy, one can talk about the “weak” or “weakened” subject in the sense of weak ontology.6 In this ontology, the subject loses its solid ontological ground not only because its existence is essentially eccentric, but also because it is fundamentally devoid of presence in which it could find itself. The way the weak subject experiences difference is specific in that difference emerges here “as the denial and de-stitution of presence”, or at least “as an ‘ungrounding’ of any claim of presence to definitiveness.”7 Considering that difference shows itself in the moment of ungrounding, that it emerges in the absence of presence, it is necessary to reconsider the basic features of subjectivity that is exposed to ungrounding and to the absence of presence when 4

Vattimo, The Adventure of Diference, p. 5. Ibid. p. 4. 6 Ibid. p. 6. 7 Ibid. p. 4. 5

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experiencing a difference. Provided we can talk about weak subjectivity in case of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, we must review the basic existential features of Dasein, in the first place. Among those ontological features that determine Dasein we shall now focus on its finitude, its relation to itself and its relation to others.

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Nietzsche’s view of fundamental ontology To jump right into the middle of the whole problem, we can start with the basic distinction that determines the whole character of fundamental ontology – the distinction between the authentic and inauthentic existence. We have already outlined some features of the authentic existence that is to be viewed on the background of the Dionysian element. However, we shall not forget that, in The Birth of Tragedy, there is, besides the Dionysian element, also the Apollonian element. If the authentic existence must be perceived in connection with the Dionysian ecstasy and with the inherent disintegration of the individual existence, the Apollonian element will thus logically play a crucial part in the description of the inauthentic existence. While the authentic existence proves its eccentric and ecstatical character by exposing itself to the Dionysian ecstasy which undermines any individuation and individualization, the inauthentic existence remains in the safe zone of the Apollonian element, where the individual existence is kept and protected from the disturbing influence of the Dionysian forces. Since, for Nietzsche, Apollo is a synonym of the principium individuationis, whereas the Dionysian element breaks the rule of individuality and subjectivity, we must overturn the common understanding of the inauthentic existence: rather than self-alienation and depersonalization, it is the preservation of one’s own individuality that characterizes the inaunthentic existence. Contrary to the authentic existence that exposes itself to the disintegrating influence of the Dionysian element, the inauthentic existence closes itself in the sphere which allows it to preserve the basic integrity of its own being. In the sphere of the Dionysian madness, an individual cannot relate to its own being, for it forgets itself to such an extent that it does not recognize itself anymore, but the Apollonian reasonability allows an existing individual to relate to its own being with understanding. The opposition between the Dionysian madness and the Apollonian reasonability is also strengthened by the fact that the Apollonian element is the element of order, measure and proportion—the element in

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which the world has clear contours and offers intelligible meanings—while the Dionysian element opens a formless and bottomless abyss that gapes under the ordered forms and codified meanings of the Apollonian world. Under the intelligible structure of the Apollonian world where one feels at home and at ease there lurks the uncanny dimension of Dionysus in which an individual disappears while experiencing enormous joy and enormous suffering. This joy and suffering in which an existing individual disappears comes from the experience of the difference that is perceptible rather than intelligible. The difference that becomes perceptible in the uncanny dimension of Dionysus penetrates “us” as a dissonance which suddenly disturbs the feeling of a total, all-inclusive unity. In this sense one could say that the uncanny sphere of Dionysus is the sphere of the primordial difference that precedes all Apollonian differentiation. A close reading of The Birth of Tragedy, however, makes it clear that the true problem of this work is not a simple contradiction between the Apollonian and Dionysian element. Rather than contenting himself with a juxtaposition of both elements, Nietzsche deals with the problem of their connection and disconnection. Despite the radical contradiction between both elements, the relation between them does not have to be disjunctive, but it can be conjunctive as well. In fact, it is precisely the conjunctive relation between the Apollonian and Dionysian element that is considered to be the most valuable and productive, whereas the disjunctive relation between them always bears signs of a pathological decay or stagnation. What is bad is neither Dionysus, nor Apollo, but the separation and absolutization of both elements. It is therefore with this in mind that we must approach our revision of the distinction between the authentic and inauthentic existence. It would be a great mistake to identify the authentic existence with the Dionysian element and the inauthentic existence with the Apollonian element. That such identification is impossible follows already from a basic insight into the nature of the Dionysian element: if the authentic existence were identical with the Dionysian element, it would immediately perish in the gaping abyss of the Dionysian sphere. In order to preserve itself, the authentic existence must exist between both two spheres, and so it is indeed: the authentic existence spreads itself between the Apollonian and Dionysian spheres. It transgresses the realm of the Apollonian world, but instead of leaving it definitively, it remains at the border between the Apollonian and Dionysian spheres. The authenticity of the authentic existence consists in that it connects in itself and by itself two mutually contradictory dimen-

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sions, whereas inauthenticity of the inauthentic existence is due to its selfconfinement in one of the two dimensions. When the inauthentic existence closes itself in the Apollonian world, where it feels at home and at ease, it fails to exist fully and sentences itself to an infinite stagnation which allows nothing but endless variations of old forms of thinking, perceiving and acting. The authentic existence, quite to the contrary, transgresses the realm of the codified meanings and well-established forms in order to confront itself with the meaninglessness and formlessness of the uncanny dimension in which the primordial difference can be experienced only as a dissonance. Such a transgression, nevertheless, is not possible without a danger of the total self-destruction which inseparably belongs to the nature of the Dionysian element. The danger inherent to the uncanny sphere of the Dionysian element, where the individual experiences the primordial difference at the cost of its own disintegration, demonstrates how naive would be any glorification of the Dionysian ecstasy. Instead of praising the Dionysian madness and condemning the Apollonian reasonableness, we should realize that either element has its own dangers that come to the fore when either of the two is absolutized: while the Dionysian element threatens the individual existence with total disintegration, the Apollonian element confines the existing individual to the habitual forms of thinking, perceiving and acting. On the other hand, each element has its specific function that makes it indispensable: the Dionysian element opens the existence for new ways of thinking, perceiving and acting, whereas the Apollonian element allows the existence to preserve its individual integrity. Rather than rating one element higher than the other, we shall therefore ask to what extent we can expose ourselves to the uncanniness of the Dionysian element and to what extent we must stay in the safe and ordered area of the Apollonian world. The question of a balance between the Apollonian and Dionysian element is all the more important in that we move above the gaping abyss in which we can recognize the abyss of our finitude. As for the conceptualization of finitude, Nietzsche demonstrates that life includes death, for the Dionysian death of the individual is an immanent part of life. Heidegger seemingly suggest something very similar when subordinating the ontology of life to the ontology of Dasein, but a closer examination of his fundamental ontology shows an important difference from the Nietzschean view: death and dying belong to the existence only as its individual qualities. “In dying,” claims Heidegger, “it is shown that mineness and existence are onto-

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logically constitutive for death.”8 This is why existential analysis of death and dying is based on the ontological structure of existence which has an essentially individual character.9 Even though the possibility of death—as the ownmost and most extreme possibility—is an essential part of existence, death as such then means the end of existence which—in the moment of death—changes from being-there to no-longer-being-there. Death is the outside of existence and this outside can be interiorized only in the form of possibility. A Nietzschean revision of Heidegger thus requires revising the existential notion of death in such a sense that death is taken not only as a possibility of individual existence, but also as an actual collapse of the individual structure of existence. This concept of death exposes death not only as the possibility that gives itself in the mode of futurity—possibility that is the most future of all possibilities—but also, and above all, as the actuality of the disintegration of the individual existence. If Heidegger subordinates death as the ownmost and most extreme possibility to the ontological structure of care that guarantees the existential unity of the individual existence, Nietzschean revision of the existential analysis presupposes that the unified structure of care is again and again disrupted by the subversive power of the Dionysian death. That the unified structure of care is not destroyed completely is then possible only by virtue of the Apollonian principle which—as a counterbalance of the Dionysian principle—functions simultaneously as a principle of individuation. Considering that the Dionysian sphere is more primordial than the Apollonian world, however, it is evident how radically we now understand the topic of finitude: the individual existence is observed not from the perspective of its own Jemeinigkeit, but from the perspective of its end. This strange perspective from which the individual existence appears as an ephemeral epiphenomenon makes it possible to talk about a post-existential analysis, instead of the existential analysis. While the existential analysis emphasizes the individual existence that preserves its individuality throughout the whole existence, the post-existential analysis takes the end of the individual existence as its point of departure. The end of the individual existence is a point of departure as well as a point of final return. In the postexistential analysis, finitude is constitutive of the individual existence, not since death would serve as a principium individuationis, but because the indi8 9

Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 240. Being and Time, p. 284. See ibid. pp. 290-1.

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vidual existence persists only as long as it remains at a distance from the infinite ungrounding by which it is compellingly attracted. To the extent that the individual existence engages in its own being-towards-end, it abandons and loses itself in the a-personal dimension of the infinite ungrounding. As being-towards-end the individual existence does not relate itself to the death as to its ownmost and most extreme possibility; rather, it exposes itself to the sphere in which it dissolves and perishes. Such radicalization of the existential being-towards-end necessarily changes not only the relation of the individual existence to its own being—in the sense that the individual existence relates to its own end by giving up its individuality—but also the relation of the individual to the others. The point is that the individual existence cannot leave the realm of its co-existence with others, i.e. the realm of being-with-others, while keeping its own individuality. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche leaves no doubt that the Apollonian world is not only the guarantor of individuality, but also the guarantor of social co-existence in all its forms including family and state organization. The individual existence and social co-existence are thus inseparably tied together. One is not possible without the other. When leaving the safe and familiar environment of the Apollonian world and exposing itself to the uncanny abyss of the Dionysian element, the existence thus abandons both its individuality and its well-ordered co-existence with others. This relinquishing of one’s own individuality and escaping from the bounds of social co-existence happens as a rapture in which the feeling of an infinite unity is permeated by a difference experienced as a strange dissonance. The Dionysian difference can be experienced only under the conditions of depersonalization and desocialization. In any case, the way the post-existential notion of inter-subjectivity differs from the existential image of the relation between the individual and the others is obvious: contrary to the existential analysis which takes for granted that the individual existence can stand alone in its own openness and experience its uniqueness and separateness from the others, as it happens, for instance, in the uncanny disposition of anxiety, the post-existential analysis shows the essential interconnectedness of the individual and social existence. Instead of opposing the inauthenticity as a mode of existence in which Dasein forgets its individuality in its co-existence with the others to the authenticity which allows Dasein to find its unique individuality and assume a personal responsibility for its own being in an escape from the world of social co-existence (an escape that is never finished, but must be

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repeated again and again), the post-existential analysis brings us to the conclusion that the radical desocialization is necessarily accompanied by the disintegration of the individual existence. If there is a difference between the inauthentic and authentic existence in the post-existential analysis, it is the difference between the existence that preserves its own individuality in the world of social co-existence and the existence that experiences its own end in the escape from the well-ordered structures of co-existence with others. Such view of co-existence with others may remind us of the notion of inter-subjectivity formulated by British psychologist R.D. Laing in his works The Divided Self and The Politics of the Family. According to Laing, the personal integrity of an individual depends on the set of his/her relations with others. Yet, the others with whom the individual is involved are not abstract people, but concrete individuals that are somehow familiar to the individual and to each other. These individuals are connected by the shared feeling of familiarity; they create and preserve a close environment of familiarity, which is why Laing calls every set of inter-subjective relations “a family”. Even though he talks primarily about real families, he uses the notion of “family” in a much broader sense: “family” is for him not only a set of relations between relatives, but also any other set of well-established intersubjective relations. In a similar way as our real family, church or political party allow us to define who we are and to keep our personal integrity inside the established structure of co-existence with others: “[w]e feel ourselves to be One in so far as each of us has inside himself a presence common to all brothers and sisters in Christ, in the Party, or in the family.”10 As long as the structure of the “family” is internalized by our own self and projected onto others who internalize it as well, we feel at home and at ease regardless of all the problems we might have with them. The “family” then serves as a defense or bulwark against the disintegration of our self and the total collapse of our experience; but once the inter-subjective structure of the “family” is disturbed by a radical change, such as the death or desertion of one of the members of the “family”, our own self becomes insecure and our experience puzzled. As Laing puts it “the preservation of the “family” is equated with the preservation of self and world and the dissolution of the “family” inside another is equated with death of self and world-collapse.”11 No matter how radically it sounds, most of us have experienced some10 11

Roald David Laing, The Politics of the Family and Other Essay, p. 5. Ibid. p. 14.

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thing like this in the period of puberty, when we tried to liberate ourselves from old family ties and define who we really are. No wonder that it is precisely the period of puberty, when we separate ourselves from old forms of familial life and discover who we are, that elicits so many cases of schizophrenia. However, these unsuccessful attempts to set and keep one’s own independent existence clearly demonstrate that one cannot constitute one’s own self beyond an intimate and familiar sphere of co-existence with others. All we can do is to discover our own self in a new form of co-existence with others, be it a new way of co-existence with the original members of our “family”, or a completely new type of the collectivity. We can also understand now what it means to encounter somebody who does not fit into the personal structures of our “family”, or something that does not fit into the semantic structures of our world. Provided we do not try to suppress such an encounter by subsuming it under the established structures of our experience, the encounter with otherness exposes us to the uncanny dimension of the infinite ungrounding in which we lose our possession of ourselves as well as a clear view of the world. In the encounter with a stranger or with something strange, we are puzzled and our experience is blurred. We may say that such an unexpected encounter with otherness decontextualizes our experience and shatters the whole semantic structure of our world. In the true encounter with otherness we do not appropriate this otherness; rather, we enter into otherness as into the sphere in which we experience a radical difference. This difference is not something we understand, but shows us the limits of our understanding. In the encounter with otherness, our pre-understanding of the given situation fails and we are exposed to the difference which marks the limits of our understanding, attesting thereby to finitude of our existence. What we encounter in the encounter with otherness is the finitude of our own existence. As for the problem of finitude which is experienced in and through radical difference, Vattimo is convinced that it is this difference that—as ungrounding—brings an irrevocable discontinuity to our existence. In The Adventure of Difference, he shows that the hermeneutical circle of understanding, and thus the hermeneutical continuum of the individual existence, allowing Dasein to go from one possibility to another without being definitively bound to any one of them and without making any leaps, is in fact based on the fundamental discontinuity.12 This discontinuity which estab12

Vattimo, The Adventure of Diference, pp. 126-7, 151-2, 154.

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lishes the very possibility of understanding is in itself given by our relation to that which is beyond the understanding of the individual existence. The hermeneutical continuity of the individual existence is suspended in relation to the fundamental discontinuity that opens itself as the gaping abyss in which the individual existence and its whole intentional structure finds its end. It is nothing but this being-towards-end which undermines the continuity of the individual existence as well as the continuity of co-existence with others by the discontinuity. Since the hermeneutic continuity of Dasein constitutes the integral continuum of its historicity, we can also say together with Vattimo that the historical continuity of existence is ultimately marked by the discontinuity that is in itself a-historical, even though it opens a dimension in which historicity becomes possible. The continuity of the historical course of Dasein and the historical stretching along of Dasein from its birth to its death are always already opened by the discontinuity of the ungrounding in which being-towards-end is realized. Yet, from the phenomenon of historicity there is only one step to the problem of temporality. How can we conceive of temporality which constitutes the ungrounding of individual existence and its being-towards-end? This question takes us necessarily beyond the standard view of temporality derived from Sein und Zeit; i.e. it takes us beyond the image of the ecstatical unity of temporality which constitutes the ontological structure of Dasein and guarantees the individual integrity of its existence. The ecstatical unity of the present, the having-been and the future may well explain the existential integrity of the individual existence as well as its hermeneutic and historical continuity, but can it elucidate the temporal conditions of ungrounding in which a radical discontinuity of the individual existence appears? How can we describe the temporal constitution of existence that leaves the established structures of social co-existence while losing its individual integrity? What can we say about the temporal conditions of rapture in which the individual existence finds its end? A response may be found in Vattimo’s claim that ungrounding means nothing but the denial and de-stitution of presence.13 Insofar as ungrounding in which the radical discontinuity of the individual existence supervenes amounts to the refusal of presence, it is possible to describe temporality of ungrounding as temporality without the present. The temporality of ungrounding marked by the absence of the present can be characterized as the 13

See ibid. p. 4.

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temporal disunity in which only ecstasies of the having-been and the future remain. The temporality of ungrounding is a weak, broken temporality which brings forth the interruption of all historical and hermeneutical continuity in relation to the end of the individual existence. The interruption of the historical and hermeneutical continuity, nevertheless, can be grasped only as an event. As an event, the disruption of the historical and hermeneutical continuity does not belong to the historical and hermeneutical course of existence, even though the continuous course of existence is constituted by it. The temporal disunity of an event that is never present, but announces itself only from the dimensions of the having-been and the future precedes the temporal unity of all three temporal ecstasies. The weak, broken temporality of the event hides itself behind the strong, unified temporality of the continuous course of the individual and the collective existence as its subversive and divisive foundation. Moreover, it is the event’s temporal disunity that brings the difference in its pure otherness. The difference does not appear as something present, but only in the refusal of the present which characterizes the weak, broken temporality of event. The difference announces itself in an event and as an event. Any encounter with the otherness of difference has the temporal structure of the event whose actuality lacks present, for it gives itself only in the dimensions of the having-been and the future.

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The event according to Maldiney This notion of event can be further elaborated and extended with the help of Maldiney’s conceptualization of event-advent which matches with it neatly. When Henri Maldiney speaks about event-advent, he does not situate the event only into the temporal dimension of future as something that comes to us from the future. Rather, he understands the event as the advent of “something” that has already been. The event is for him given in the temporal dimensions of the having-been and the future. The event is related to the most extreme having-been as well as to the most extreme future.14 Provided there is some having-been in the event, it is not the having-been of the individual existence and its facticity; and if there is some future, it is not the future of the individual existence and its understanding. It is the having-been 14

Henri Maldiney, Penser l’homme et la folie (Grenoble: Jérôme Milion, 1991), pp. 415-7.

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and the future of ungrounding itself. The temporality of ungrounding brings together the absolute having-been and the absolute future which creates an explosive mixture in which the whole semantic structure of the world falls apart. Hence, the event functions as a temporal explosion that destroys the old world to which we are used and opens a new one. In the event, the old world with which we are familiar explodes and a new semantic context of our existence is being opened. With respect to Maldiney’s conceptualization of the event, one thing must be stated clearly: event-advent does not take place in the world, but opens the world; it opens a whole new world, rather than just bringing some new content into the old semantic totality of the world.15 One must therefore carefully distinguish event-advent which creates a totally new context of our existence from a pseudo-event which conserves the old context of our existence while drawing our attention to some particular occurrence. Instead of opening a new world, pseudo-event in fact prevents the advent of the event, as it happens, for instance, in the case of paranoid delusions, where the same threat appears again and again in new forms, without changing anything in the semantic structure of the paranoid world, or in the modern mass media that bombard us with series of pseudo-events in order to avoid the true event-advent that would change our current way of life. Both the world of paranoid delusions and the world of modern mass media are closed to the advent of the event and make impossible the opening of a new semantic context of the world. The reason why paranoid individuals and paranoid mass media fail to accept event-advent is their pre-understanding which grasps all events as its own possibilities. Pseudo-events are then expected and accepted as possibilities projected by the act of understanding. Event-advent, however, does not have the character of possibility; it is beyond the area of the possible, beyond the Heideggerian possibilities that are projected by the act of understanding. Event-advent surpasses the scope of hermeneutical understanding, which is why it appears as something incomprehensible. It seems that event-advent comes from the area of the impossible, but its real dimension is, according to Maldiney, dimension of trans-possibility.16 Beyond all possibility, beyond all anticipation and comprehension, event-advent shows itself as transpossibility. While all the surprises we experience in the context of our habit15 16

Ibid. p. 317. Ibid. p. 313.

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ual world are only relative, as they are always understood in the context of our possibilities to which they more or less fit, trans-possibility of the event comes as an absolute sur-prise that is not mediated by the hermeneutical machinery of our understanding. The trans-possibility of the event has a character of donation which precedes all anticipation and appropriation of our understanding. The facticity of this donation is not the facticity which confronts individual existence with the simple fact “that it is and has to be”, but the facticity of otherness which comes totally unexpected. The donation of otherness cannot be anticipated by the project of our understanding; otherness can be announced only in an unexpected encounter. The encounter with otherness must be essentially unexpected, otherwise it would not be an encounter with otherness. However, one may then ask after the kind of relation we have to an event which comes as a surprising encounter with otherness, if it does not belong to the realm of our own possibilities and if it is not involved in the hermeneutical process of our understanding. Does such an event even concern us? Are we not necessarily indifferent to “something” that is beyond our understanding and beyond its anticipating power? How do we take over the gift of otherness, if we cannot appropriate it? Maldiney resolves these problems by the inversion of perspectives: instead of approaching the event from the perspective of the individual existence which appropriates it by the power of its understanding, he views the individual existence from the perspective of the event. From this perspective, he can demonstrate that the individual existence in its encounter with otherness does not necessarily appropriate the event, but that it is, quite to the contrary, overwhelmed and expropriated by the event’s power. Rather than appropriating the event, the individual existence is expropriated by it. To do justice to the event, the individual existence must give up its own autonomy and accept the radical heteronomy to which it is exposed in its encounter with the unexpected arrival of otherness. In its relation to event-advent which confronts it with otherness, the individual existence must go beyond itself and become other.17 The true relation to otherness which is announced in the event is not possible without becoming-other in which the individual existence experiences the disintegration and re-integration of its own self. By this radical transformation, existence proves its ecstatical character which goes far beyond its own autonomy and integrity. 17

Ibid. p. 320.

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To find a concrete example of an event which initiates the transformation of our existence by forcing us to become other, we do not have to go very far. We can think of something as “simple” and “common” as the birth of a child which is a perfect example of an event that confronts us with an unexpected otherness. No matter how well prospective parents prepare for their new roles, they finally realize that they are not prepared enough and that their child surprises them by its unique otherness. The new-born baby that is not connected with other people by the common milieu of language is much more of a stranger than any adult; it presents itself with an irreducible otherness which often throws its parents to a deepest despair. When they do not understand why their child cries, what it wants and what they are supposed to do, they look right into the abyss of ungrounding which sets them out of their former way of existence. The birth of a new child fundamentally changes the existence of its parents – they must transform themselves according to the demands of their new situation, or, better said, they must allow their new situation to change them. They can also refuse such a transformation, but then they would fail to do justice to the event of the birth of a new life. This event itself is, as student Shatov in Dostoevsky’s Demons attests, a great mystery that cannot be fully explained by natural sciences. The appearance of a new life, “a new thought and new love”, is an event par excellence. It is something which surpasses our own possibilities as well as the projective structure of our understanding—it is a pure trans-possibility. As such a trans-possibility, the birth of a child is an event that destroys the semantic context of the world in which baby’s parents and their relatives used to live. For the parents and their relatives, the birth of a new child is not a pseudo-event that takes place in their world, but an event that opens a new world for them. In this sense, it is event-advent which makes the old semantic structure of the world explode and opens a new set of meanings that give a meaning to our existence. One could give many other examples of moments in which we encounter otherness in the others or in ourselves, but what is remarkable with respect to Maldiney’s notion of event-advent is the complete absence of ethical terms in his description of the encounter with otherness due to which we become other. Instead of describing the exposure to otherness that transforms our existence in terms of personal responsibility, Maldiney prefers terms that go with his orientation on psychopathology. It is, of course, not psychopathology in the normative, psychiatric sense, but psychopathology in its original sense, i.e. in the sense of PATHEIN. Insofar as suffering essen-

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tially belongs to the encounter with otherness due to which we go beyond ourselves and become other, it is easy to see why somebody avoids such an encounter and prefers the conservation of the current way of existence. When Medard Boss, in his Grundriss der Medizin und der Psychologie, mentions a young mother who suffered a psychotic breakdown and recovered once she got a chance to live alone without her children, it is obvious that for her the conservation of the former way of existence was the only way to save the individual integrity of her existence. The event of becoming-mother exposed her to the infinite ungrounding in which the integrity of her existence was disturbed to such an extent that she could not accept it any more. The same incapacity to accept the event by going trough a deep transformation of one’s own existence applies to all psychotics. According to Maldiney, psychosis in general may be described as an incapacity to go through an event: a psychotic either projects the paranoid structure of the world in which nothing new can happen, or falls into the abyss of ungrounding, in which both the individual and its world disintegrate.18 When the event turns out to be “too big” for psychotic, it must be constantly evaded by a series of pseudo-events. After the first terrible disruption of one’s own integrity, there is no place for a new event, no place for a new encounter with otherness. The suffering evoked by the event of the encounter with otherness is here so enormous that it is impossible to withstand it. The suffering which overwhelms us in event-advent, however, has also another—a deeper meaning: due to its specific character event can be only suffered. As trans-possibility, event-advent is beyond the power of our understanding which projects its possibilities. The event does not belong to the sphere of the individual Seinkönnen. It concerns us not to the extent to that we project our own possibilities, but to the extent to that we are passible. What the event as an encounter with otherness requires is not our potential to project possibilities, but our “passibility”.19 Trans-possibility of eventadvent gives itself only to our passibility which expresses both essential passivity and fundamental heteronomy. It is thanks to our passibility that we can accept the donation of otherness which is given to us in an event. If we realize that the event initiates and requires a deep transformation of our individual existence which must die and be born again in event, and that there is not just one event, but many events in which we encounter 18 19

Ibid. pp. 316-8, 320. Ibid. p. 321.

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otherness, we can talk, together with Maldiney, about trans-passibility.20 Due to the trans-passibility of our existence we go through numerous crises in which our individual existence disintegrates and reintegrates, while the semantic structure of our world collapses and is shaped again. Every event is a crisis in which we go beyond ourselves in order to discover new forms of our existence. Trans-passibility may be therefore seen as trans-subjectivity that reflects the character of an existence which goes beyond its own subjectivity and becomes other in every encounter with otherness. Even though the relation to otherness is not limited only to inter-subjectivity, but involves many other encounters with otherness, we may see trans-subjectivity also as an extreme mode of inter-subjectivity, provided we understand that trans-subjectivity corresponds not to the habitual structure of co-existence with the others which conserves subject’s own self-identity, but to the encounter with the other who’s otherness makes subject transgress its own limits and discover itself anew. Falling in love or becoming-parent would be nice examples of such an encounter. In any case, the existence to which we attribute the essential character of trans-subjectivity is open to events and unexpected encounters. It is the existence that allows events to draw it out of its habitual world and expose it to the abyss of infinite ungrounding.

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Conclusion When we look at the way Maldiney approaches the abyss of ungrounding in which otherness itself appears, we can notice how many Dionysian features it has. The space in which the event as such takes place, i.e. the space of ungrounding that is between two worlds (the one that does not exist any more and the other that does not yet exist) is, strictly speaking, a non-space. This non-space of ungrounding is far from the spatial organization of the Apollonian world; instead of the well-ordered spatial coordinates environed by the horizon, it shows all signs of the spatial disorganization that is proper to the Dionysian element. Such a view is in correspondence with Vattimo’s attempt at Nietzschean re-interpretation of the fundamental ontology which links the problem of difference with the topology of ungrounding. We are thus probably not mistaken if we believe that both Vattimo and Maldiney reach the area of trans-subjective thought that gives up its own autonomy, 20

Ibid. p. 419.

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coherence and integrity in favour of event. They both enter into the area beyond the space of the fundamental ontology which binds thought in the unified structure of care; it is the area of care-less thought which leaves all its power to the authority of event, encounter and surprise. Yet, isn’t the encounter of Vattimo and Maldiney in the area of care-less thought still rather accidental and arbitrary? As for Vattimo, his Nietzschean re-description of the fundamental ontology is evident – but what about Maldiney? What kind of relation does he have to Nietzsche? To answer this question, we can look at his essay “Destins de Nietzsche et Hölderlin” where he analyses the thought of both thinkers-poets in a symptomatic way: Nietzsche is here depicted as a thinker that reflects the conditions of his own disaster and by giving report about the conditions enabling the breakdown of his thought he elucidates the very nature of thought.21 This nature which is hidden behind all semantic structures has primarily a Dionysian character. It is the Dionysian sphere of disintegrated Self from which thought arises and into which it falls again. The Dionysian sphere of pure PATHOS—PATHOS that cannot be reduced to any form of Befindlichkeit in which the individual existence finds itself—announces itself from the absolute having-been and the absolute future as an event.22 The power of Dionysos is the power of an ahistoric event which precedes and constitutes all historicity of thought. If there is any outside in human history and human thought, it is the outside of event that is beyond the realm of possible because it belongs to the realm of trans-possible.23 From the perspective of the individual existence and its self-awareness an event appears always as impossible, for it is in fact trans-possible. But when the measure of receptivity required by the trans-possibility of the event is exceeded, the individual existence—no matter how hypertrophied its ego—is replaced by “the self disintegrated or absent, the self without the self of Dionysos”.24 Considering the above-mentioned insight into the conditions enabling the radical breakdown of thought, it is not surprising that the whole Maldiney’s conception of mental disorder bears some Nietzschean traits. Since the event doesn’t take place in the semantic context of the world, but instead destroys the old world while creating a new one, the irruption of an event 21

Henri Maldiney, Art et existence (Paris: Klincksieck, 1985), pp. 129-169. Ibid. pp. 132-3. 23 Ibid. p. 136. 24 Ibid. p. 149. Translated by author. 22

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appears as a critical state in which our old identity is shattered and we are forced to become others according to the demands of the concrete event. What characterizes the psychopathological situation, however, is not the event as such; rather, it is the agony in which the ungrounding power of the event becomes unbearable, and thus it must be avoided at all costs. Psychotics, claims Maldiney, have no choice – they are so overwhelmed by the disruptive intrusion of the event, that they must evade it in order to survive and they spend all their life energy to do so. Psychotics cannot stand the event.25 When the trans-possibility of an event becomes impossible, it provokes a disjunction of the Dionysian sphere of the disordered PATHOS and the ordered regime of the Apollonian world. Such disjunction associated with the evading of the Dionysian dimension of formless ungrounding then corresponds with Nietzsche’s own insight into the heart of the existential decline. In opposition to it stands the Nietzchean image of “the great health” which is not just health in the sense of a perfect life equilibrium, but rather the health “that one doesn’t only have, but also acquires continually and must acquire because one gives it up again and again and must give it up”, i.e. the health that goes through critical moments when the old world collapses and the new one appears, when the old self disintegrates and the new one is born out of the event in which the radical difference is encountered.26 This Nietzschean motive of the great health is also projected on Maldiney’s own reception of Heidegger’s philosophy. Even though Maldiney often uses terminology of existential analysis, he does so only in order to show its inner limits and to go beyond them. Instead of indulging in merciless criticism (others satisfied the demand of such criticism more than enough), he deconstructs the ontological structures grasped by the existential analysis from the perspective of the event, as the concepts of trans-possibility and trans-passibility clearly document it. On the other hand, this unorthodox usage of the existential analytic and its terminology takes its power also from Heidegger’s elucidations of Hölderlin’s poetry where we discover motifs of the event and suffering which destroy the individual structure of existence.27 25

Henri Maldiney, Existence. Crise et creation, (Fougères: Encre Marine, 2001), p. 75. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 246. 27 Martin Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (1936-19), ed. FriedrichWilhelm v. Herrmann (3rd Edition, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2012). Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry, trans. Keith Hoeller (New York: Humanity Books, 2000). 26

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It is perhaps the work and tragic destiny of Hölderlin and Nietzsche that allows Maldiney to break the limits of the existential analytics and enter the domain of the post-existential analytics where he finds sym-pathy for those who cannot endure the confusion and disorder to which they are exposed by the power of the event.

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Conceptualizing Health and Illness

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Troubles with Health and Illness Modern medicine, including psychiatry, finds itself in a state of total anarchy. This state can be best expressed by the famous slogan of Sex Pistols: “We do not know what we want, but we know how to get it.” In the area of medical treatment, this means that modern medicine disposes of innumerable means by which it can manipulate the human being, but once it tries to explain what goal this manipulation shall achieve it ends in an impasse. To avoid any misunderstanding and possible disappointment, it is good to point out that the aim of this text is not to stop the anarchy and put medicine finally in order by formulating a perfect, universally valid definition of health; its only aim is to reflect on the basic terminological problems that cause the anarchy in medicine and to question some seemingly promising ways out of the impasse. This seems to be the only way we can at least point in the direction of a path hitherto undiscovered. Somebody may, however, object that anarchy in medicine is not so bad, as there is the well-known definition of health provided by the World Health Organization. According to this definition, “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.1 Health is thereby differentiated from a mere absence of objectively diagnosed disease or subjectively experienced infirmity and is identified with a total well-being that comprises not only physical and mental, but also social well being. To put this simply, health is here identified with the absence of suffering. Whether the suffering in question is caused by physical and mental dis-comfort, or by a small salary, it is implicitly understood as the opposite of health. The one who suffers cannot be healthy, and vice versa. But if we take such a definition literally, would it not mean that we all, or at least the vast majority of us, are sick? Do not we all, to some 1

World Health Organization, Preamble to the constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19 June–22 July 1946. Signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 states. Official Records of the World Health Organization (No. 2, 1948): p. 100.

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extent, fall behind the ideal of absolute well-being? Not because of our imperfection, but because of the finitude and contingency that is constitutive for human existence as such. Even though the finitude and contingency of the human existence may be understood as signs of imperfection, in the post-metaphysical thought, they cannot be opposed to any state of perfection that would serve as an ideal of health. Even though they express the negativity of the human existence, they do not have any positive counterpart. It is, of course, possible to imagine such counterpart as a state without suffering, a state of redemption where human being would not suffer any more, but what is the meaning and purpose of a definition of health according to which we are all sick? To make us wait for a redeemer? To put medicine into the position of redeemer? On the other hand, provided we refuse the messianic ideal of health, do we not have to give up any attempt to cure and relieve the other from suffering? Let us therefore consider the question of health and illness once again. Even if we concede that health means not only the absence of disease or infirmity, as the definition of WHO suggests, the question remains what the relation is between health and illness. How shall we explicate the rela-tion between health and illness? Can one grasp the meaning of health without any reference to illness, and can one comprehend the notion of illness without taking into consideration the notion of health? There is no doubt that these questions surpass the horizon of purely medical thought, leading us to the sphere of philosophical reflection. The question, “What is health and what is illness?”, is already a philosophical question, as it aims at the very essence of these phenomena. That is not to say that we must ignore medical experience; rather, we are to stay at the border between medicine and philosophy.

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Heidegger’s Exposition of Health and Illness To begin with, we can recollect what Heidegger says about the relation between health and illness in his Zollikoner Seminare. When explaining the basic principles of the phenomenological approach to human health and illness, he departs from a simple observation that every illness deprives the existing individual of some possibilities. With every illness, be it of primarily psychic or somatic nature, we lose some of our existential possibilities. While the agoraphobic is incapable of entering an open space, a closed room

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is unbearable for the claustrophobic. Other neurotics are largely lim-ited in their relations to possibilities offered by their co-existence with others. But even a common influenza that confines us to bed prevents us from, for instance, going to the cinema. Accordingly, illness means a restriction of a free realization of possibilities provided by our open being-in-the-world. Illness condemns us to a bigger or smaller loss of our freedom and openness to the possibilities of being-in-the-world. “Each illness,” claims Heidegger, “is a loss of freedom”.2 The question is, however, how the deprivation specific to pathological states should be understood. The deprivation of freedom which characterizes all pathological states brings Heidegger to the view that both somatic and psychic disorders can be subsumed under one common denominator, the phenomenon of privation.3 Every pathological disorder is viewed in Zollikoner Seminare as a specific lack, as a specific privation of health. To be ill basically means not to be healthy. Insofar as health is understood as the ability to freely dispose with all possibilities that announce themselves in the open realm of the world, illness represents a certain negation of this ability. The phenomenological interpretation of illness is thus grounded upon the definition of health which is, in one way or another, negated by a specific illness. This negation, however, is no utter denial and exclusion of the healthy state, but rather a privative form of health which is, in this view, attributed an entirely positive sense. Since every privation encompasses the essential relatedness to the positive that is lacking, Heidegger claims that everyone dealing with an illness is “actually dealing with health in the sense that health is lacking and has to be restored”.4 To meditate on illness is thus to meditate on health, and it is understandable that the way we understand health implicitly determines our understanding of illness. When elucidating the peculiar relation between health and illness, Heidegger refers also to Plato’s dialogue Sophist, where the phenomenon of privation is revealed in the connection with the question of the relative nonbeing (TO ME ON). Apart from the absolute non-being that simply does not 2

Martin Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare. Protokolle-Zwiegespräche-Briefe, ed. Medard Boss (3rd Edition, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2006), p. 202. Zollikon Seminars: Protocols—Conversations—Letters, ed. Medard Boss, trans. F. Mayr and R. Askay (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001), p. 157. 3 Ibid. pp. 58-9. Ibid. pp. 45-6. 4 Ibid. p. 59. Ibid. p. 46.

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exist, the mentioned dialogue addresses, for the first time in the history of Western philosophy, the possibility of the relative non-being that still, in one way or another, is. In other words, the non-being is grasped here not only as the mere opposite to the being, but also as having its own reality. The essence of the relative non-being is found in difference, that is to say, in that by means of which specific beings differ from each other. Every being manifests itself as the non-being once viewed in relation to other beings, that is, to what it is not. Yet, in comparison with Plato’s concept of the relative non-being, Heidegger’s exposition of the privative negation is much narrower, as it accents lack and shortage instead of difference. At least, it is that to which all the examples adduced in connection with privation attest: Rest is the privation of motion, shade is the lack of light, shard is the privation of tumbler. The same supposition is also corroborated by the following statement: “If we negate something in the sense that we don’t simply deny it, but rather affirm it in the sense that something is lacking, such negation is called a privation”.5 This clearly posits that privation means not just a difference but above all a deprivation. Using the notion of privation thus determined, Heidegger’s exposition evinces its debt not so much to Plato’s concept of the relative non-being, but rather to Aristotle’s notion of privation (STERESIS), placed in Metaphysics into the focal point of the hyle-morfic doctrine.6 In the frame of this conception, privation is expounded as lack in which the specific being is short of what it could or should have. For example,

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blindness is a privation, but one is not blind at any and every age, but only if one has not sight at the age at which one would naturally have it. Similarly, a thing suffers privation when it has not an attribute in those circumstances, or in that respect and in that relation and in that sense, in which it would naturally have it.7

Although illness is not the only case of privation, one cannot fail to notice that in Metaphysics it receives mention as a typical example thereof: “The 5

Ibid. With respect to the problem of disease, Helmuth Vetter has pointed at the relation between Heidegger’s usage of the term “privation” and Aristotle’s notion of STERESIS in his article “Es gibt keine unmittelbare Gesundheit des Geistes,” Daseinsanalyse (Vol. 10, 1993): pp. 65-79. 7 Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. J. Barnes (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 1615. 6

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substance of a privation is the opposite substance, e.g. health is the substance of disease; for it is by its absence that disease exists.”8 This is precisely how the essential character of illness is interpreted in Zollikoner Seminare: Illness is explicated as privation that directly refers to the healthy mode of existence. That this reference is not fully reciprocal is confirmed by the fact that what Heidegger says of illness he does not admit in the case of health; in other words, whereas illness, according to him, is the privation of health, health can hardly be the privation of illness. Even though it might be said that healthy is he who is not ill, this changes nothing about the fact that in comparison with health, illness is a deficient mode of being. The privative conception of illness does not, though, relate only to symptoms of pathological disorders, but defines the ontological status of illness as such. Illness conceived of as a privative mode of existence is understood as an “ontological phenomenon” of open being-in-the-world. As a lack of health, illness presents a certain possibility of being-in-the-world, i.e. a certain modus of being-in-the-world.9 In this manner, Heidegger demarcates the ontological status of illness without having to produce a taxonomical table of all diseases and their symptoms.10 Nevertheless, one still cannot keep from being under the impression that such an approach to illness is possible only at the cost of a certain simplification. Is it really certain that illness always brings only a decrease in possibilities that are otherwise normally accessible to us? Could illness perhaps actually open up certain possibilities that would remain forever inacces-

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8

Ibid. p. 1630. Obviously, Aristotle does not make the distinction between disease and illness that is common nowadays. 9 Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, pp. 58-9. Zollikon Seminars, pp. 46-7. 10 The notion of illness presented in Zollikoner Seminare was fully adopted by Swiss psychiatrist Medard Boss who applied it to the whole spectre of psychic, somatic and psychosomatic diseases. In his Grundriss der Medizin und der Psychologie, he professed this notion quite unambiguously: “If all illness is in fact the lack of the condition of health, then illness is necessarily always related to, and understandable only in terms of, the state of health. The reverse is never true, for health cannot be constructed from what is its own deficient state.” Medard Boss, Grundriss der Medizin und der Psychologie. Ansätze zu einer phänomenologischen Physiologie, Psychologie, Pathologie, Therapie und zu einer daseinsgemässen Präventiv-Medizin in der modernen Industrie-Gesellschaft (2nd Editon, Bern: Hans Huber, 1975), p. 441. Existential foundations of medicine and psychology, trans. S. Conway & A. Cleaves (New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc.), p. 198.

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sible without it? To take the example of a blind man Aristotle speaks of: It is obvious that a blind man loses the possibilities opened by means of sight, but besides that, as a certain compensation, he gains by way of adaptation to this disorder a capacity for hearing or tactile orientation that is much more acute and differentiated than in those who can see. As far as the possibilities connected with the senses of hearing and touch are concerned, a blind man is much better off than a person with good eyesight, in whom these possibilities are dimmed and pushed into the background. In the case of a blind man, one can thus say that just as illness is deficient as compared to health, health is also deficient in relation to illness. But Heidegger is on no account willing to concede this. For him, illness is nothing but a deficient mode of being and, as such, cannot bring any new possibilities. How a deficient mode of being-in-the-world is to be understood Heidegger demonstrates on the example of the phenomenon of the immaterial and insubstantial openness constitutive of being-in-the-world. The human existence, unlike things occurring in the world, exists in that it always stands open in relation to present beings. This standing-open (die Offenständigkeit), thanks to which all beings can become evident and understandable, is the basic ontological peculiarity of human existence. As long as human existence stands amidst the dislosedness of being so that it is open for the encounter with beings, it can, nevertheless, close itself off from the impulses and claims of the present, which is particularly evident in the case of psychopathological disorders, where certain possibilities of being-in-theworld are factually blurred. In this respect, perhaps the severest disorder of being-open to present beings is represented by schizophrenic autism. But even though autistic schizophrenics may close themselves off from the impulses and claims of the surrounding things so much as to cease to be affected by anything, they still cannot conclude that their existence has no longer the character of being-open. “In schizophrenia the loss of [this] contact is a privation of being-open, which was just mentioned. Yet this privation does not mean that being-open disappears, only that it is modified to a ‘lack of contact’,” observes Heidegger.11 Even when they entirely lose contact with their surroundings, schizophrenics do not cease to exist openly, but rather fulfil this openness in a deficient way. As long as human existence is characterized by its being-open to beings encountered in the frame of the significative context of the surrounding world, autistic schizophrenics are 11

Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, pp. 94-5. Zollikon Seminars, p. 73.

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capable thereof only to a very restricted extent. Their existence is deficient because they are incapable of retaining their openness for what appears within the frame of referential and significative context of the surrounding world. Unlike healthy individuals who are so intimately bound with surrounding things and their close ones that they immediately address them and motivate their behavior, schizophrenics are not able to come to terms with their surroundings and adequately respond to them in their behavior. The deficient mode of their existence is marked by the impossibility of relating to the beings they encounter without helplessly falling prey to them. Schizophrenics in the acute stage of their disease are left at the mercy of all they encounter to the extent of being totally absorbed and overwhelmed by it. Thus, every contact with the surrounding things or others presents for them a direct jeopardy of themselves and their own self-being. In order to save themselves, to preserve integrity of their self-being, schizophrenics close themselves off from everything that could subjugate them by its requirements. This explains the autistic traits shown by the schizophrenic being-in-the-world. Yet, since self-being cannot be realized unless existing individuals relate to those who coexist with them as well as to surrounding things, the autistic closing-off offers no real recourse from the illness, but merely deepens the ongoing self-alienation and depersonalization. Despite the far-reaching depersonalization occurring in schizophrenic individuals, however, the radical loss of one’s own self is barely thinkable within the framework of the phenomenological project of the human existence. Instead of allowing for such a possibility, Heidegger insists that some rudimental self-being is still preserved even in the severest cases of schizophrenia. Just as autism is a privative mode of openness to present beings, the schizophrenic disintegration of personality is a privation of the original selfbeing. In the case of schizophrenics, one can thus speak only of their incapacity for integrating their being-in-the-world to a self-collected and selfsubsistent existing, but not of the end of their self-being. When schizophrenics experience the depersonalization, they do not cease to be themselves, but rather perform their self-being in a way so alienated, so absorbed by the encountered beings that they can mistake themselves for what they encounter. Even this deficient mode of self-being is a certain modification of the individual existence that is maintained and carried by the ecstatic temporality that temporalizes itself as the inseparable unity of the three temporal ecstasies. It is precisely the ecstatic unity of the future, the having-been and the present that ultimately forestalls the total disintegration of self-being. As

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long as the individual existence is carried by the ecstatic unity of temporality, the absolute disintegration of its self-being is utterly impossible. If, however, the ecstatic unity of temporality falls apart, human existence will draw to its definitive end. Being-there (das Da-sein), which characterizes the human way of being, would then turn into no-longer-being-there (das Nichtmehr-Da-sein). With being-there changing into no-longer-being-there, human existence would reach its ultimate frontiers where its ecstatic standing amidst the disclosedness of being ends. The openness of existence would then turn into impenetrable closedness whose ungraspable otherness opposes all that is familiar and commonly accessible. Since schizophrenia itself must necessarily perish together with the ecstatic standing in openness, Heidegger cannot comprehend it against the background of the absolute closedness brought forth by death. Therefore, schizophrenia can be nothing other than a deficient mode of open standing in the disclosedness of being. If what Heidegger says about schizophrenia is valid, it is only logical that the same must apply to mental disorders that pose a far less serious threat to the integrity and openness of individual existence. As long as the open being-in-the-world and integral self-being do not perish even in the uttermost form of mental disorder, it is clear that other psychopathological states cannot be explicated other than on the basis of a primary openness and individual constancy of the human existence, either. Be they disorders of the psychotic or the neurotic character, it is necessary to view them as privative forms of integral self-being and as deficient modes of open being-in-theworld. And the same, of course, goes for the primarily somatic disorders, provided they are not so fatal as to turn the individual existence into nonexistence. The defining difference between the various pathological disorders, thus, lies only in the extent to which the individual existence lacks the independence of self-being and in the degree of deficiency displayed by the essentially open and free being-in-the-world. Considering that it is precisely the individual character of existence and the openness of being-in-the-world that determines the ontological condition of the human way of being, we can see how close Heidegger stays to Aristotle when dealing with the problems of health and illness. In Metaphysics, privation generally means a state of matter (HÝLÉ) that is deprived of its original form (MORFÉ), as it is, for instance, when bronze is deprived of its shape, thus losing the character of bowel. However, Aristotle is well aware that the healthy man deprived of his physical and mental balance does not cease to be man, but that he just ceases to be healthy and becomes ill. As

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long as the illness does not terminate human life, it cannot deprive the ill of the character of human being, for the essential condition of human being represents a substratum on the basis of which one can fall ill and recover again. This can be documented by the following passage:

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But though what becomes healthy is a man, a man is not what the healthy product is said to come from. The reason is that though a thing comes both from its privation and from its substratum, which we call its matter (e.g. what becomes healthy is both a man and an invalid), it is said to come rather from its privation (e.g. it is from an invalid rather than from a man that a healthy subject is produced). And so the healthy subject is not said to be an invalid, but to be a man, and a healthy man.12

This passage makes it evident that privation represented by an illness remains on the substratum given by the ontological character of the human being. And even though recovery is to be viewed primarily as an overcoming of privation represented by an illness, it would be unthinkable without the substratum on which both health and illness gain their specific meaning. But does not Heidegger’s reasoning follow the same logic, although his understanding of the human substratum is different from the one presented in Metaphysics? In Aristotle as well as in Heidegger, the concept of privation is based on a fundament that makes possible both health and illness. While in Aristotle this fundament is man understood as body endowed with soul, in Heidegger, it is the disclosedness of being in which the individual existence remains on the basis of the ecstatic unity of temporality that establishes and maintains its integral structure. Health is then comprehended as a state which maximally corresponds to the openness, individual integrity and autonomy of ecstatic standing in the openness of being, whereas illness can appear only as privation and deficient modality of health. The phenomenological account of illness is thus based not on illness itself, but on health that allows us to see illness only as a relative absence of something positive. However, doesn’t this approach to illness contradict the basic phenomenological maxim, according to which all the phenomena are to be elucidated in their own light? Wasn’t it Heidegger himself who taught us “to let what shows itself be seen from itself, just as it shows itself from itself”?13 12

Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 1033. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (17th Edition, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), p. 30. Being and time, trans. J. Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 13

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Unfortunately, the phenomenological maxim is easier to pronounce than to fulfill. For how can we expose illness if not on the basis of the substratum given by the individuality and openness of the ecstatic standing in the disclosedness of being? Well, it seems that the only chance to grasp the phenomenon of illness in its original, non-reduced meaning is to refuse any presupposed substratum on the basis of which illness would appear as privation of health. That is to say, illness cannot show itself as an original phenomenon as long as we continue to thematize it on the basis of the individual structure and openness of the existence that stands in the disclosedness of being. We should rather take into consideration the imminent peril that illness represents for the individual integrity and openness of the existence. This requires understanding illness with respect to finitude and contingency of the individual existence as well as to the impenetrable closedness in which the individual existence disappears. There is no need to say that such a closedness is nothing more than a mere privation of the disclosedness of being in which the individual existence dwells. Rather, it is closedness that essentially resists the illuminative character of disclosedness in the light of which the individual existence encounters with understanding all beings including itself. It is the closedness which is even more primordial than the disclosure of being as such.

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Notion of Evil in Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift The enigmatic closedness that principally defies understanding, however, is not our primal concern here. As we are to consider the phenomenon of illness and its relation to health, we should rather skip to another philosophical conception of finitude and contingency which seems quite appropriate to our purposes. The conception that might allow us to see the pathological and, above all, psychopathological disorders in their own light is the concept of Evil which we find in Schelling’s Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände. The importance of Schelling’s late philosophy for the area of psychopathology was stressed already by the founder of Swiss phenomenological psychiatry, Ludwig Binswanger, who briefly referred to it in his Schizo-

1996), p. 53.

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phrenie.14 Among modern readers of Schelling we could also mention Slavoj Žižek who interpreted his late philosophy in terms of psychopatology.15 To appreciate fully Schelling’s philosophical approach to madness and mental disorder, we should first of all remember that the main purpose of his notion of Evil is to provide an alternative to the traditional interpretation which conceives Evil as privation of Good. Contrary to St. Augustine or Leibniz who understood Evil in negative terms, i.e. as something that does not have its own essence in itself and that exists only as a negative reflection of its positive counterpart, Schelling does not think that Evil is a mere privation or lack of Good. Instead of understanding Evil in terms of lack and deficiency, he emphasizes its positive character. To ascribe Evil a positive quality, of course, does not mean that Evil is in principle something good. Quite to the contrary, the positive view on Evil is supposed to unveil it as a horrible destructive power that cannot be relativized as a mere lack of Good. When opposing the traditional conceptions that reduce Evil to the so called malum metaphysicum, i.e. to the negative notion of imperfection, Schelling also argues that from all known creatures it is only the most perfect one that is capable of Evil. So, how could be Evil a sign of imperfection, if it is only the human who can be evil? No animal driven by its instinct is capable of Evil; the capacity for the radical evil is given only to the human.16 This brings us to the very core of Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, which lies in the question of human freedom. With respect to the question of freedom, Schelling does not content himself with a formal notion of autonomy proper to all rational beings that we find in Kant’s philosophy, but strives to expose human freedom in its real specificity and aliveness. Instead of a general and formal notion of freedom, he intends to show a “specific difference,” i.e., that which determines human freedom in its unmistakable uniqueness. This specific difference, according to him, rests precisely in the fact that, contrary to all natural beings, the human is capable of both Good and Evil. Human freedom is thus determind as the capacity for Good and Evil. It is here, however, where a basic difficulty appears, for it is unclear how 14

Ludwig Binswanger, Schizophrenie (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), pp. 54, 326. Slavoj Žižek, The Indivisible Remainder. An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters (London, New York: Verso, 1996). 16 F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände, ed. S. Dietzsch, Schriften 1804-1812 (Berlin: Union Verlag, 1982), pp. 373-4. 15

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one can combine human freedom, and thus the capacity for Evil, with the idea of the immanence of all beings in God, which is fundamental for Schelling. As long as the world of individual beings arises out of God in the process of God’s self-manifestation, it is necessary to explain how Evil, and especially the radical Evil, is possible in the world created by God. Provided that the world arises out of God who is supposed to be the absolute Good, how can there, then, occur Evil, especially if the only creature capable of Evil stays, not somewhere on the periphery, but in the very centre of creation? Schelling solves this problem by distinguishing, in God, the actual existence and the ground (der Grund) of the existence. Because one cannot presume that there is something outside of God, God must have the ground of “his” existence in “himself”. This ground, however, is not identicalwith God. The ground of God’s existence is something non-divine in God; it is, as Schelling puts it, the “nature in God” that is inseparable, though different from God. The ground of God’s existence can be also described as a dark, unconscious desire, as an unreflective desire to give birth to God who would exist as an absolute unity. The ground is the pure, unreasonable will—utter irrationality. As a nonsensical, incomprehensible and impenetrable fundament of God’s existence and of all the reality that arises from God, the ground represents the chaotic turbulence of the will, the fundamental disorder that can never be fully subjected to reason and its order. There is always some reminder of the disorder in the order established by God who has awoken from the chaotic turbulence of unresonable will, and recognized “himself”. The actual existence of God is, then, the other principle which, as opposed to the dark reality of chaotic turbulence, appears as ideal. While the real remains in the darkness of the chaotic movement, the ideal is the principle of light and reason. The ideal is the factor that guarantees all the meaning and harmonic order. As far as the created world is concerned, individual beings, insofar as they differ from God, do not arise directly from God, but from God’s dark, irrational ground. All creatures are endowed with dark will, in which the nature preceding creation is involved, but their form and meaningfulness refer to God’s proper existence. In every single creature it is thus necessary to distinguish the blind particular will and the universal will. Reason, as the universal will, dominates and uses the blind will of every creature as its own instrument, which is a necessary condition of a development from lower to higher forms of life. At the top of the creation then stays the human, whose particular will is no more subjected to the universal will, but is permeated by

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the light of reason that allows it to turn away from the universal principle and take its own direction. Because of the Human’s spiritual capacity, the particular and universal principles in the human are not in any predetermined equilibrium, but in a state of disequilibrium. Human mind, contrary to the animal instinct, does not unite the particular and universal will as two inseparable principles. The human can thus subvert the unity of both principles, and precisely this possibility is what constitutes the human’s capacity for Evil. The human can raise his or her particular will, which—in itself—would not be possible without the light of reason provided by the ideal principle of God’s existence, above the universal will. To overturn the hierarchy of both principles and to install one’s own selfishness to the position of the universal will is something that even God cannot do, as God is essentially good. God is incapable of Evil, as the dark principle in God is necessarily subjected to the light principle. Only the human can thus elevate his or her own selfishness to the position of the ruling principle and degrade the universal will thanks to which the human is endowed with its spiritual capacity to a mere tool. What follows from this is that Evil cannot be simply identified with the dark, irrational principle in the human. Evil as such would not be possible unless the human were endowed with the light of reason that boosts his or her particular will to the extent that it can turn away from the universal will. And this perversion of both these principles is what gives rise to Evil. What is most important for us, however, is the fact that Schelling compares Evil to an illness.17 According to him, an analogy with illness is what allows us to see the real meaning and consequence of the process that perverts the original hierarchy of the two principles, while releasing the destructive powers of the dark ground. The analogy between Evil and illness makes it evident that once the universal principle is replaced by the particular will, it gives way not only to the individual’s selfishness, but also to the chaotic multiplicity of drives and desires. Evil must be therefore understood as a sort of disorder. Any other notion of Evil, claims Schelling, reduces it to the negative pole of its positive counterpart. Evil, however, is not a mere imperfection; it is no deficiency or privation of Good. Even Heidegger who also dealt with Freiheitsschrift, in his interpretation of Schelling’s conception of Evil, that illness means not just an imperfection and deficiency, but an-

17

Ibid. p. 366.

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nounces itself as something uttermost real.18 The one who is ill does not just lose some possibilities, but feels bad and suffers. Illness is something from which we suffer. When claiming that illness is not something essential, that it is a mere semblance of life, something that flounders between existence and non-existence, Schelling thus does not want to subsume Evil under the category of privation, but rather refers to the improper relation between the part and the whole.19 Health, and by analogy—Good, appears to him as a harmonic organization of the organic whole, against which stand disharmony, dissolution and ataxia of life’s forces. Since the elements in the disorganized whole are the same as those in the organized and unified whole, its material character remains unchanged. The only factor that distinguishes illness from health is bad formal organization. Disharmony is here nothing but a false unity of forces that can be called “disintegration” only in relation to true unity. For, as soon as unity is totally abolished, disequilibrium and dissonance must, according to Schelling, perish as well.20 Illness is then ended by death that definitely excludes any disharmony. One cannot fail to notice that the inherent paradox of the analogy between illness and Evil consists in the fact that the one who elevates his or her own will to the position of the only arbiter jeopardizes not only the harmonic organization of the whole, but also himself or herself. The hypertrophied individuation causes disorder and disintegration not only outside the individual, but above all inside the individual. Even though it is one’s own particular will powered by the dark desire for self-actualization and selfaffirmation that the human his or her individual character, its abuse turns necessarily into the self-destruction. For if the dark principle is elevated above the light principle by which it was bound and dominated in the process of creation, its original disorder breaks through and chaos breaks out. It is therefore fully appropriate to mention, in relation to Evil, the danger of derangement and madness. The individual who puts his or her own will to the position of the universal principle necessarily risks madness. Inversion and perversion of the order established by the universal will and the ensuing release of the dark element from its subservience sets one out of balance and throws one’s mind into confusion. In the dark, impenetrable ground of existence we can thus find the enabling possibility of madness as well as the 18

Ibid. pp. 172-3. Ibid. p. 366. 20 Ibid. p. 371. 19

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source of all suffering, though it is not the dark principle itself what causes madness. Rather, it is the elevation of the dark principle to leading position and the unwary approaching of its destructive potential that sets human mind out of balance and throws it to disorder. As opposed to mental health, mental disorder consists in the disruption of the harmonic relation between various cognitive capacities. The individual who falls prey to madness falls victim to the disorganization he or she in a way provoked, while being unable to manage it on his or her own. Seen through the prism of the mental disorder, we must thus agree with Heidegger’s opinion that Schelling’s notion of Evil surpasses the purely ethical frame, or, to put it in another way, that, in Freiheitsschrift, everything becomes involved in the ethical dimension.21 It is, nevertheless, surprising that Heidegger did not recollect his own treatise on Schelling when dealing with the problem of health and illness. In the notion of Evil elaborated in Freiheitsschrift he would find at least an interesting alternative to the privative notion of illness which he advocates in Zollikoner Seminare. Yet, however promising such an alternative might be, it still requires a careful scrutiny. What raises our doubts is especially the fact that Schelling works with the concept of a system that has its unity and centre which is distinguished from the periphery. It is well known that his main concern was to reconcile the reality of human freedom, to which the possibility of Evil inseparably belongs, with the concept of the system, but it is not clear whether every deflection from the centre to the periphery and every disturbance of the unity of the creation and the Creator does not still mean a privation. However much he tries to avoid the idea of privation, Schelling seems to fall into it once he opposes disunity, disharmony and ataxia of forces to unity of the whole.22 Is not disunity a privation of unity, though only in a formal sense? Schelling is, in a way, aware of this problem and tries to solve it by his remark that the disharmony of forces is not their disunity, but only their false unity, for some unity must be preserved, as long as the individual exists.23 Once the individual dies, all unity disappears and so does disunity which is always relative to true unity. But isn’t precisely this a crystal-clear example of privation? 21

Martin Heidegger, Schellings Abhandlung über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1971), pp. 141, 150, 176. 22 Schelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen, p. 370. 23 Ibid. p. 371.

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New Perspectives Realizing the limits of the notion of Evil, as it is adumbrated in Freiheitsschrift, we may try to go beyond Schelling’s system of freedom and approach a more decentralized way of thought, in which the difference between centre and periphery would lose its firm contours. Such an attempt would require elucidating the non-privative essence of Evil in a fluid space of decentralized centre and unstable periphery, in a space where centre is always at the periphery. It would require us to situate thought between formal existence and the ground of existence, between rational forms and irrational formlessness, without taking for granted the unity which subjugates the ground of existence to formal existence. To put it simply, it would be necessary to grasp the propensity of thought to Evil without presupposing a good nature of thought that is guaranteed by the superior Good which is God. To see how radical the decentralization of Schelling’s system could be, we may look at Différence et répétition where Gilles Deleuze questions the traditional, “dogmatic” image of thought. As opposed to the generally accepted image of thought which is based on the belief in the good will of the thinker and the natural affinity of thought to the truth, he proposes a conception which re fuses the moral sentiment in philosophy and, instead of the good nature of thought, emphasizes the original contingency and finitude of thinking. While the moral image of thought pictures thought with the help of the model of recognition and representation in the frame whose supposedly identical object is grasped by the harmonic usage of the cognitive faculties, together with Deleuze, we can consider thinking deranged and disturbed by a traumatic experience which defies common sense, recognition and representation. The state of disequilibrium, in which the cognitive faculties are no more capable of subsuming the perceived to the law of identity, is a moment of an encounter with intensity that is experienced by thought as a pure difference. The standpoint of har-mony or disharmony of cognitive faculties also affects the image of cognitive “lapse”: In the traditional image of thought, cognitive failure is interpreted as an error, which is nothing but a false recognition, whereas Deleuze focuses on as elementary a form of cognitive malfunction as madness. Tought that believes in its good nature and reassures itself by considering an “innocent” error as the only form of its own negativity cannot cope with the abyssal dimension of madness that issues from the very heart of thinking. If the traditional image of thought

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does not reduce madness to the figure of error, it takes it as a mere fact caused by external forces that have nothing to do with the honest character of thought. Deleuze, on the contrary, stresses that, for instance, schizophrenia is not only “a human fact but also a possibility for thought”.24 Schizophrenia, so to say, does not strike thought from outside, but appears inside thought as its innermost possibility. To expose this inherent possibility of thought, Deleuze refers to Schelling’s Freiheitschrift, which allows him to find the enabling possibility of madness in the link between thought and its ground. More precisely, thought is stretched between rational forms and irrational formlessness of ground. As the ground is closely connected with the process of individuation, one can also say that madness is “possible by virtue of the link between thought and individuation”.25 As Deleuze puts it:

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Individuation as such, as it operates beneath all forms, is inseparable from a pure ground that it brings to the surface and trails with it. It is difficult to describe this ground, or the terror and attraction it excites. Turning over the ground is the most dangerous occupation, but also the most tempting in the stupefied moments of an obtuse will. For this ground, along with the individual, rises to the surface yet assumes neither form nor figure. It is there, staring at us, but without eyes. The individual distinguishes itself from it, but it does not distinguish itself, continuing rather to cohabit with that which divorces itself from it. It is the indeterminate, but the indeterminate in so far as it continues to embrace determination, as the ground does the shoe.26

This profoundly Schellingian way of understanding the relation between the ground and the process of individuation certainly does not tie indi-viduation to a subject of some “I think.” Individuation, according to Deleuze, has nothing to do with the formal synthetic unity of cogito. It occurs beneath all forms, including those of the I and the Self. It is the asubjective and impersonal individuation that calls forth the individual, and thus necessarily precedes it. This individuation takes place in the pre-individual domain, in the domain of pre-individual singularities that may, but do not have to, be integrated into the individual form. Considering that individuation situates the 24

Gilles Deleuze, Diference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 148. 25 Ibid. p. 151. 26 Ibid. p. 152.

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individual directly into the epicenter of the clash between the forces of integration and disintegration it is obvious how seriously Deleuze conceives of it. Because individuation, as exposed in Différence et répétition, confronts the individual with the imminent possibility of total disintegration, it is much more risky than the one we find, for instance, in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit where the movement of transcendence is connected with the possibility and necessity of “the most radical individuation”.27 When Heidegger connects individuation with transcendence from the discoveredness of beings to the disclosedness of being, i.e., with advancing from the familiarity with beings to the primordial disclosedness of being, he understands it merely as a step from self-oblivion to self-discovery of the individual existence. Existence, according to him, has always already individual character, the character of Jemeinigkeit, which is ultimately based on the ecstatic unity of temporality that carries and sustains the integrity of self-being. In Sein und Zeit, individuation thus means nothing but arriving at the original individuality of existence that can be forgotten and ignored, but cannot fall apart, as long as the existence exists. Deleuze, quite to the contrary, understands individualization not as a return to the original individuality of existence, but as a rising of the formless ground hidden in the bottomless abyss from which issues an irreducible peril for thought. The imminent possibility of madness is hidden in the very process of individuation that raises the ground to the surface without endowing it a meaningful form. This is what differentiates humans from animals: contrary to animals that are protected against the powers of the ground by their living forms, human individuals acquire their individuality in the direct confrontation with the unrestrained, formless ground the release of which can easily throw them to disorder, madness and monstrosity. Since “madness arises at the point at which the individual contemplates itself in this free ground”,28 the possibility of going insane is the sad privilege of human beings. It is not rationality or LOGOS what separates human beings from animals, but the possibility of going mad. This speculation alone clearly illustrates how close Deleuze comes to the sense of Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift. Nevertheless, all the thematic resemblances cannot cover a deep gap 27 28

Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 38. Being and Time, p. 62. Deleuze, Diference and Repetition, p. 152

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that separates Deleuze’s philosophy from Schelling’s metaphysical system, in which the absolute identity of God’s existence finally guarantees the harmony of human mind. It is this absolute identity that allows Schelling to conclude that madness cannot forever win over reason. Since the process of natural and historical development leads, through all convulsions and disorders, to Good, health must eventually overcome illness. Although the realization and final victory of Good presupposes the existence of Evil as that which must be overcome, God “himself” does not want Evil, but only “his” own self-manifestation as a meaningful and morally necessary process in which Good and reason overcome the absolute irrationality hidden in the formless ground. Because Evil as such comes into the world first and only through the human who raises the dark principle over the light one, though the human alone is not able to govern the untamed forces of the dark ground, the definitive establishment of order and harmony requires the advent of the Redeemer. Nobody but Christ can redeem the human from the original sin, by which the divine unity of both principles was subverted, and put the human’s fallen existence in order and harmony with the ideal principle. That the original inclination to Evil cannot be eliminated by the human is, according to Schelling, evident from the very fact that the human is not able to forget his or her individuality and particularity. Even the anxiety which reminds individuals of themselves by making them suffer expels the human existence from the centre of creation to the periphery where individual existences care primarily for themselves.29 As longs as human existence cares primarily for itself, it must, to some extent, remain distant from God. The possibility of redemption or, as Schelling puts it, the possibility of “cure”,30 consists, then, in the correction of relation between the dark ground of human existence and God. The human history that begins with original sin has thus the only aim which is a definitive cure of the human and restoration of the human’s relation to God. Contrary to such an ending of human history, Deleuze can promise us no happy end. Considering that his philosophy is situated in the dimension determined by Nietzsche’s affirmation of God’s death, the relation between individuation and its ungraspable, formless ground looses there its regulative principle. There is no universal normative principle allowing us to discern Good from Evil. Any differentiation of centre of creation and periphery to 29 30

Schelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen, p. 381. Ibid. p. 380.

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which the human resorts when releasing selfhood and willfulness is essentially impossible. Without the absolute unity of God’s existence nobody can be sufficiently protected against the threat of madness that issues from untamed, formless ground of our individuality. Clearly determined forms and precisely defined meaning can anytime collapse in the upsurge of the released ground. The only criterion of reasonability and meaningfulness is then the weak stability of thought that balances over the bottomless gap of its ground. It is nothing but the weak equilibrium of cognitive faculties that guarantees and confirms the conformity of thought with the common sense. Yet, the topic of thought that is, after God’s death, forced to balance by itself the pull of its dark ground is not the last stratum uncovered by Deleuze’s analysis. His exposition reaches its true dimension only in the idea of the principal “ungrounding”. Even though the concept of ungrounding, in which the ground is replaced by groundlessness, seems to be of Schellingian provenience, it would be a mistake to identify Deleuze’s effondrement with Ungrund that in Freiheitsschrift precedes both God’s existence and its ground. While Ungrund is absolute indifference, in which the very difference between the real and ideal principle fades away, effondrement is an infinite movement that, under every ground, uncovers another ground. Rather than the indifference of bottomless Ungrund that alone makes possible the duality, and thus the connection of ground and existing God, Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return must be sought in the principal ungrounding. It is this doctrine that gives to Deleuze a basic guideline for thought that is to do without the idea of God as well as without the supposition of permanent identity of thinking subject, no matter what form this identity may take.

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Conclusion In conclusion, we can once again explain in what way Deleuze radicalizes Schelling’s philosophical position. Conceiving the whole system of human freedom without the supporting unity of Creator and creation, he leaves us no hope for the future redemption of the human and humankind, the redemption from all suffering, sorrow and pain. In doing so, he does, in fact, strengthen what Schelling himself observes when claiming that man cannot exist without the dark ground of his existence, without the dark principle in which there remains not only the particularity of the individual, but also the source of all suffering and vain yearning. This dark principle can never be

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fully eradicated, for without it the human being would be capable of neither Evil, nor Good. The human would lack not only the potential for Evil, but also the potential for Good. For, to do Good, the human actually needs the dark ground of existence which bestows on the human his or her own individuality while shaking all established forms of existence. Without the dark ground, it would be utterly impossible to exist as an individual and the human would be fully imprisoned in the formal structure of the world. The human would thus lose both his or her individuality and his or her freedom understood as freedom for Evil and Good. This view stands in a direct opposition to the logic on which the WHO definition of health is based, i.e. the logic implying that the human being can be relieved from suffering and unsatisfied yearning and can achieve absolute well-being. Such a hypothetical state may correspond to Schelling’s view on redemption, but even that may be doubted as redemption is not supposed to eradicate the dark principle, but only to subject it to the light principle of the universal reason. Instead, with reference to the factual human existence, Schelling, and especially Deleuze, who renounces the idea of definitive redemption altogether, emphasize the contingency and finitude of individual existence that make it impossible to free the human from suffering and yielding. Deleuze not only removes the whole system of human freedom from the theological context in which it is situated by Schelling, but also radicalizes the contingency and finitude of individual existence by analyzing the asubjective and impersonal process of individuation that goes on beneath the established forms of personal integrity. From such contingency and finitude, as well as from the danger of madness and dementia that is essentially related to it, no messiah can redeem us. On the other hand, it is precisely such notions of contingency and finitude that can open a way to the non-privative view on mental disorder, i.e., the view that will show mental disorder not from the perspective of the normative ideal of mental health, but from the perspective of suffering that forms its phenomenal essence.

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Body-Ownness and Foreignness

As long as modern—and particularly French—philosophy is characterised by a deep-seated interest in the problem of corporality, then one of the most remarkable texts documenting this interest is L’Intrus by Jean-Luc Nancy. Though the relatively short text originally appeared as a journal article, its seriousness warranted subsequent publication as a standalone book. What distinguishes L’Intrus from other philosophical essays on the topic of corporality is the fact that the problem of the body is not examined here in an abstract, impersonal way, but described through a unique personal experience. By contrast with such writers as Merleau-Ponty and Henry—and also Lévinas and Deleuze and Guattari—Nancy approaches the question of corporeal existence through reflections on his own experiences with heart transplantation as well as the post-operative difficulties he suffered, which included cancer. Thus, a subject that is usually dealt with in literature—recall for example Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg—found a place within the spectrum of philosophical reflection. And if it does appear within the context of philosophical writing, then it is only marginally so—for instance, in Nietzsche’s reflections on his health issues. From a purely genre-based perspective, Nancy’s essay may be set alongside Améry’s account of the corporeal expressions of aging and his existential report on the corporeal trauma from which torture victims suffer until the end of their days. At the same time, we cannot overlook the fact that particularly the philosophical reflection on the torture to which Améry was subjected under interrogation by the Gestapo— a reflection made all the more pressing by the interrogation methods of the American secret services and efforts to legitimise or delegitimise such methods at the start of the 21st century—evinces to a certain extent traits similar to Nancy’s attempt to grasp philosophically the experience of his heart transplant and cancer treatment. Both in the case of the torture victim and in the case of the person who has undergone the calamitous loss and substitution of their own body part, the result is the feeling that a person has lost their natural position in the world, that they have been expelled and has become an intruder who does not belong in the world. Although in the first case the suffering was caused intentionally, whereas in the second the objective was to eliminate as much suffering as possible, the person undergoing

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the experience has become, in the end, alienated from the world in which they may only live on as an intruder. This is indicated by the very title of the philosophical report on life with a transplanted heart and cancer in the back, L’Intrus.

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The Intruder Nancy develops the figure of the intruder in a comprehensive way that deserves close attention and examination. For the intruder whose presence announces itself by means of a disquieting alienness turns out to be in the first instance his own heart, which gradually stops working. The serenity of a life given its rhythm by regular heartbeats, a rhythm whose very reliable regularity renders it so matter of course—and thus inconspicuous and inaudible—becomes increasingly permeated by an irregularity whose dark and painful silence pervades his life like something alien. It is as if that alienness had come out of the anonymous substrate of life and through its irruption imprinted that life with a hallmark of individuality—his life becomes his own only in contrast with the urgent alienness exuding from it. When betrayed by his own heart, it becomes something that turns against Nancy, something that hampers his life, something incompatible with life. In the empty moment of its failure, his heart manifests itself as an intruder bearing death—an intruder that must be disposed with before it is too late. So, the time for the transplant has come. But that ‘before it is too late’ entails a reference to the time that encompasses not only the ailing individual, but the time he lives in. Just a few years back it would have always been too late for a heart transplant (because it was simply not possible), and in a few more years it will be quite a different affair thanks to technological progress. Just as treating tuberculosis by giving people pneumothoraxes— described horrifically in Mann’s Magic Mountain by Anton Karlovich Ferg— has become a thing of the past, many other of the hardships Nancy had to suffer as a consequence of his heart transplant will also become a thing of the past one day. It is even possible that in a few decades stem cell implants will transform transplants into something quite different from what they are today. Therefore, the question of transplantation should not be understood as inspiration for abstract philosophical speculation; instead, it should remain on a plane where conceptual thought is confronted with the concrete historical situation in which it transpires.

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From today’s perspective, transplanting a heart or any other vital organ seems inseparably linked to the issue of donation and donors. The donation here is one that precludes reciprocity; however, despite this fact—or precisely because of it—it is at the same time a donation based on social solidarity. It is as if this social solidarity were based on the solidarity of the dead with the living. In this connection it is interesting to reflect upon the different ways of understanding this non-reciprocal solidarity: if we remain within the framework of Euro-American civilisation, we can trace a certain difference between ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ countries, for in ‘Catholic’ countries donation following death can take place without the explicit consent of the donor—which testifies to a tacitly presupposed solidarity of the dead with the living—whereas in ‘Protestant’ cultures this solidarity is not presupposed and thus the transplantation of vital organs is not possible without the explicit consent of the deceased. Of course the whole issue of donation is complicated further by the views of the relatives of the deceased, not to mention the possibility of financial compensation and the concomitant degeneration of donation into a commodity market. However, these considerations have already led us far afield from our subject, which is the issue of the body and corporality. Let us therefore return to the sphere of corporeal being and in so doing try to keep the issue of donation in sight. As a fundamental component of the facticity of life, the body is basically something that is given to us. The body is the givenness of our life and as such is already from the very beginning bound up with the issue of donation. The body, which points beyond us in its facticity and contingence, is given to us along with the donation of life, or as Nancy says, ‘… just as my heart, my body, which come to me from elsewhere, are an “outside” in me.’1 However, Nancy was given a heart that kept on working for only 50 years and then had to be replaced. The givenness of his own bodily organ thus had to be replaced by a donation from another person, a donation that, just like his worn-out and tired heart, came from the outside. Nevertheless, the donor heart did not just come from the outside; It also was an outside – one much more alien than the foreignness of his own body. The heart donated to Nancy brought with it an incursion from an alien out1

Jean-Luc Nancy, “L’Intrus,” The New Centennial Review 2 (1-14 January 2002): p. 4. See also Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Intruder”, Corpus, trans. Richard A. Rand (Fordham University Press, 2008), pp. 161-170.

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side that in its foreignness can probably only be compared to the foreignness of the heart which stopped working within him. Just as the heart that stopped working, the donor’s heart is a foreign intruder that penetrates into his sphere of ownness. Despite the functionality of the donated heart, despite the compatible blood type and the compatibility of all other physiological factors the donor and recipient share, a foreignness whose intrusion is deadly appears. The radical character of the foreignness is evinced in the reaction of the immune system that rejects the donor organ. Thus under the surface of interpersonal mutuality and solidarity the immune reaction reveals the depth of the foreignness, which rejects this mutuality and solidarity. The reaction of the immune system is an expression of the fact that the other is not the same, but different—it is the difference of their immune system that makes it foreign and irreplaceable.

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Immune Identity However, before we come to immunosuppressants, which are supposed to erase the difference between ownness and otherness, we may, along with Nancy, consider the meaning of immunity as such. For if the immune system is the expression and guarantor of the unsubstitutable character of each individual, that means that immunity is bound up with our living identity.2 As the ability to distinguish foreignness from ownness and, concurrently, to eliminate what is foreign, immunity is what makes it possible for us to be ourselves. Whether that foreignness has an exogenous or an endogenous origin, our living identity is inscribed in its resistance towards it. Immunity is something like a ‘physiological signature’, says Nancy.3 Taken generally, immunity is evidence that the basis of our identity is not this or that organ; immunity teaches us that living identity concerns a system, a certain network of interactions and ways of reacting. Immunity expresses a living identity that preserves itself thanks to its resistance to everything that has for2

Similar reflections on this topic are put forward by Paul Ricoeur in ‘Fragile Identity’, a lecture in which he contemplates the relationship between immunity and personal identity. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, ‘Fragile Identity: Respect for the Other and Cultural Identity’, Philosophy and the Return of Violence: Studies from this Widening Gyre, ed. Nathan Eckstrand and Christopher S. Yates (New York: Continuum, 2011), pp. 81-8. 3 Nancy, “L’Intrus,” p. 9.

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eign origins, whether internally or externally. Immunity is a pole of homogeneity that rejects everything that has heterogeneous origins and thereby maintains its identity. As a field of homogeneity, immunity shows us that protection against foreign elements is something important for life, for the penetration of foreignness into the sphere of ownness always represents a threat, whether small or large. From the perspective of one’s own life, there is no penetrating into foreignness that is wholly risk-free. Nevertheless, it would be naïve to think that one can achieve a completely homogenous life; instead, life is more likely to take place within a permanent confrontation between what is homogenous and what is heterogeneous—between ownness and foreignness. A life fully enclosed within itself and a life entirely expropriated by a foreign outside would entail a denial of the self. The inevitability of the confrontation between ownness and foreignness is also manifest in the action of immunosuppressants, which, no matter how effective, cannot simply erase the distinction between ownness and foreignness. Although the enfeebling of immunity that is supposed to ensure the acceptance of the foreign organ weakens the power of homogeneity, this weakening clears the way for a new outbreak of foreignness at the same time. The suppressed recognition of ownness and foreignness does not lead to the reconciliation of the two, but to more and more incursions of foreignness. As a result of immunosuppression, heterogeneous elements surface that otherwise remain subdued and pacified in the thrall of homogeneity—so, Nancy must repeatedly face attacks of viruses that under normal circumstances would not present any danger to their host. Such intrusions do not come from the outside, but wait for an entire lifetime in the shadow of immunity for their opportunity, which comes once immunity is weakened. And eventually—as a direct result of immunosuppression—cancer makes its appearance. Another consequence of weakened immunity is an even more radical intrusion of a foreignness that eventually subjugates life’s sphere of ownness. In order to prevent the complete subjugation of ownness to foreignness, however, new heterogeneous means must be appealed to in the forms of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which destroy not only the foreignness of cancer cells, but also the field of homogeneity that is preserved by means of immunity. In the end the issue is simply whether the field of homogeneity will withstand the onslaught of heterogeneity and thereby make possible a delicate equilibrium on the edge between ownness and foreignness or the field of homogeneity will be completely usurped by the intrusion of foreignness.

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Even if the field of homogeneity guaranteed by immunity is not completely destroyed, it cannot remain unchanged through all the intrusions of foreignness and heterogeneity. If immunity is tied to one’s own identity, then the artificial lowering of immunity necessarily leads to an alienation from the self. The extent to which the interdependence of immunity and personal identity is essential or, by contrast, simply a contingent matter dependent on the present state of medical technology, may be unclear. Nevertheless, since his starting point is the interdependence of biological identity and the identity of consciousness itself, Nancy can show that the price to be paid for a reduced immunity is the reduction of personal identity. It is a state in which the very identity of the pole of homogeneity becomes something heterogeneous. In this state, homogeneity appears solely as a particular function of heterogeneity. And similarly, the autonomy of life, which consists in its own self, is replaced with heteronomy. If under normal circumstances the homogeneity of immunity is bound up with a certain degree of autonomy, then the field of homogeneity now loses its autonomy and maintains itself merely as something heteronomous, as something that no longer has its centre in itself, but is, on the contrary, fundamentally decentred. On the one hand, Nancy discovers that he has lost his place, his anchoring in the body that is given to him. The very possibility of a heart transplant indicates that his own life does not reside in a particular objectivised organ—even if it were the brain, whose transplantation is at present no more than a speculative possibility (at the very least one might imagine substituting a part of it by means of stem cells). The possibility in fact of transplanting vital organs entails the theoretical consequence which is the displacement of the ownness of life from its corporeal substrate. On the other hand, a person no longer recognises themself in such a life. Human life goes astray and becomes alienated from itself. In the sequence of exteriorisations precipitated when a person receives a heart from someone else—including a procession of followups, interventions and medications with all their attendant side effects—the self is estranged from itself, carried further and further away by the uninterrupted flow of foreignness. Here, the immediate experience of the self undergoes a progressive dissociation. As a result of a series of alienating manipulations and intrusions of foreignness, Nancy is torn from himself and driven from that natural place in the world heretofore guaranteed by the facticity of his body. The displacement of his existence eventually goes so far that the intruder now is no longer just the heart that has stopped working or the donor’s heart. It is not even the cancer that has penetrated into the in-

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nermost sphere of his own life. The intruder has become Nancy himself—he is an intruder in a world in which he no longer belongs. Thus a conversion takes place in whose framework that which at the outset appeared to be his own being threatened by an intrusion of foreignness, gradually appears as an element of foreignness in the intimacy of the world. The relationship between ownness and foreignness is turned inside out in the process of philosophical reflection.

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Philosophical Enquiry and Its Conditions of Possibility However effective the above description of the shifting balance between ownness and foreignness may be, the question remains: what legitimises it as a philosophical enquiry? From what standpoint is it at all possible to describe Nancy’s account? Is it a standpoint characterised by thinking that relates to itself and reflects its own contents while at the same time remaining in principle distinct from the body that persists in its sphere of unfolding? Is it the standpoint of the Cartesian cogito? Surely not. This is made clear in the radical dispossession to which consciousness itself succumbs as a result of processes located at the level of corporeal experience. In this connection, it is clear from the very start that the consciousness of the ‘I am’ is related to the foreignness whose incursion wrenches corporeal existence out of its anonymous lethargy and confers upon it a personal character. Because ownness can only show itself when confronted with foreignness, Nancy is able to declare, ‘“I” am, because I am ill.’4 And it is the standpoint of a sick cogito, a cogito run through by incursions of foreignness and alienated from itself, which also maintains L’Intrus at a safe distance from the all-too enticing possibility of seeing the body as a mechanical object that modern medicine fixes and keeps in working order. For even contemporary medicine would like to see heart transplantation as a technical matter (preoperative care, opening of the chest, extra-corporeal blood circulation, dysfunctional organ removal and implantation, suturing of blood vessels, post-operative care), whose dangers and risks it can calculate and deal with. It is as if either way Descartes’ programme for harnessing and taking possession of nature—and not only the nature outside us, but particularly the nature within us—were endorsed. It is as if modern medicine 4

Nancy, “L’Intrus,”p. 4.

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were constantly revived by the dream that ‘it would be possible to be free of innumerable illnesses of both body and mind, and perhaps even the decline of old age,’5 if we could manage to reveal the objective laws of nature inside us and take advantage of them in appropriate ways. The possibility of the transplantation of vital organs provides ample support for such a dream and the concomitant view of the body, whose faulty organs can be repaired or replaced. And what could be more attractive to a person subjected to a series of medical procedures during which the heart is transplanted, the immunity suppressed and chemotherapy and radiotherapy are applied than the ability to make a disinterested observer out of their own mind so they may watch from a distance what happens to their body? Only Nancy is only too well aware that his mind is permeated by foreignness just as painfully and immediately as his body. The dividing line here doesn’t extend between mind and body, for the incursion of the foreign intruder into the body is the same as ‘the intrusion on thought of a body foreign to thought.’6 Instead of a difference between mind and body, there is only a difference between I and not-I here, a dividing line between ownness and foreignness that crosses the heteronomous body much as the heteronomous cogito. Mind and body are both divided by the difference between ownness and foreignness and plunged into a transversal movement in which the relationship between ownness and foreignness is gradually reversed. Within the framework of the confrontation between foreignness and ownness in which foreignness and ownness change places, however, we may sense the inspiration of the late Merleau-Ponty and his chiasmatic conception of corporeal experience.7 It is as if the variation on the theme of ownness and foreignness that we find in L’Intrus corresponded to the conception of chiasmatic intertwining in which the inside and outside of experience arise together out of the element of anonymous corporality. Much as in Le visible et l’invisible, where experience is divided into inner and outer, I and not-I, which are confronted against the background of the impersonal element of 5 René Descartes, A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, trans. Ian Maclean (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006), p. 52. 6 Nancy, “L’Intrus,” p. 4. 7 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L´visible et l´invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968).

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corporality, in L’Intrus too experience is itself inherently connected with the incursion of foreignness that breaks through the serene indifference of corporeal being and divides it into spheres of ownness and foreignness. As long as Nancy’s heart does not give out, he in no way identifies with it; he will not concede that he is his heart, but relegates it to the anonymous background of his life. Nevertheless, the moment his heart betrays him, it rises up from that anonymous background like a dangerous intruder breaking into his life and, at the same time, drawing a sharp boundary between what is his own and what is foreign. His ‘own’ heart does not become thematised until it manifests itself as a foreign intruder that threatens and thereby highlights Nancy’s own life. In the series of medical procedures that ensue occurs the movement of intertwining and enfolding in which the relationship between ownness and foreignness takes place; it is as if a glove were turned inside out. What was once inside is now exposed, on the outside; that which was once his own now show itself to be foreign. It is a reversal similar to that which occurs when a hand accustomed to touching becomes itself touched; however, within the framework of the expropriated and alienated experience of one who has undergone a heart transplant and been through post-transplant care, the ambiguity and reversibility of experience is diverted in such a way that a return to the original state seems practically impossible. Following a heart transplant, life can never be what it was before. Nonetheless, a diacritical conception of experience indicates at the very least how a reversal of the relationship between ownness and foreignness is possible to begin with. Experience torn from itself, experience that is—as Merleau-Ponty says— ‘absolutely outside of [it]’ is made possible by the fact that corporality as a fundamental element of existence is split by the distinction between perceiving and being perceived and we can only experience our own body (or anything else) in the context of this distinction and through it. Corporality is the impersonal sphere of our existence even before this existence is recognised within the framework of the distinction between perceiving and being perceived as one’s own and distinct from what is foreign. However, L’Intrus is definitely not merely an application or paraphrase of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of experience. It clearly testifies to the fact that the difference between ownness and foreignness (or inner and outer) is for Nancy much more radical than the difference between perceiving and being perceived. For if the foreignness of what is outside is represented by a failing heart or a donor heart rejected by the receiver’s immune system as something alien, then it is evident that the difference between ownness and

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foreignness points in the end to the difference between life and death. Whether the intruder is a dysfunctional heart or a heart extracted from a foreign immune system, the exteriority of the intruder is, in the last instance, the exteriority of death. The foreign intruder makes life a life imbued with ownness only by confronting it with death: ‘… the multiple stranger who intrudes upon my life (my feeble, winded life, which at times slides into a malaise that verges on a simply astonished abandonment) is none other than death – or rather, life/death: a suspension of the continuum of being, a scansion wherein “I” has/have little to do.’8 And it is in the difference between life and death that we arrive at the last instance that legitimates a philosophical account of heart transplantation. The perspective from which this extreme experience is described is that of a life that defies death, a life that experiences itself through the immediate threat of death. And even though after undergoing a successful operation and overcoming the attendant postoperative difficulties he could very well have been swept away by scientific optimism and at least for a moment have believed in the possibility of an endless prolongation of life which science might one day make a reality, Nancy repeats with imperative certainty: ‘To isolate death from life—not leaving each one intimately woven into the other, with each one intruding upon the other’s core [coeur]—this is what one must never do.’9 For the difference between life and death is not simply the condition for the possibility of his philosophical account; it lays the foundation for the possibility of any philosophical account whatsoever. The elimination of the boundary zone where life meets death and therefore meets itself, would also mean the disappearance of the dimension in which philosophy, and the whole civilisation associated with it, grounds its thought. Without the distinction between life and death, we would not be able to think at all, or we would have to start thinking like machines, which the distinction does not apply to. For Nancy, the situatedness of our thought within the distinction between life and death is all the more important since death for him is not simply the obverse of life. The distinction between life and death appears in L’Intrus in the form of the empty foreignness of an intruder whose intrusion into the intimacy of his own life is further empowered by the alienating influence of medical technologies, so in the end he can only experience himself as a fold in that foreignness or as its obverse. Here his own life loses its self8 9

Nancy, “L’Intrus,” p. 7. Ibid. p. 6.

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identity and shows itself only as the opposite of death, as that which is nondead. Is this not precisely what survival means by definition? However, this surviving is not simply an empty abiding; it has a purely eccentric character. If Nancy, who survived his death twice, ends up feeling like an intruder ‘intruding upon the world and upon itself’, it is because the exteriority of death pulls him out of both the world and himself and leaves him to go on living in an eccentric state in which he is not even alive, but rather non-dead.10 In this self-alienated state, what was formerly foreign manifests itself as his own and what is left of his own life here is simply the continuation of an alien exterior: ‘… I am the illness and the medical intervention, I am the cancerous cell and the grafted organ, I am the immuno-depressive agents and their palliatives, I am the bits of wire that hold together my sternum, and I am this injection site permanently stitched in below my clavicle, just as I was already these screws in my hip and this plate in my groin. I am becoming like a science-fiction android, or the living-dead…’11 This state, however, is far from the scientific optimism that, from the perspective of ceaseless progress, prophesies the death of death. On the contrary, the power of death is empowered by the fact that the death in question is not the death of a concrete individual, but that of human beings as such, human beings who relate to themselves by means of philosophical thought when they take themselves as the fundamental theme of philosophical reflection as well as the source of all truth and truthfulness. What is at issue is the subtle and yet essential shift from the theme of finitude to the end of humanity that Foucault, with reference to Nietzsche, calls attention to in Les mots et les choses. The Nietzschean thought of the end of man thus resonates in the realization that in the end the intruder is no other than human beings themselves. Human beings become intruders when the only way they can find themselves is by abandoning and infinitely transcending themselves. And the very awareness of this inevitability is the source of the peculiar melancholy of Nancy’s essay. Moreover, the feeling of melancholy is deepened by the realisation that the end in the framework of modern medicine concerns not only those who live with a transplanted heart or any other organ, but all of us. To be sure, an operation can be turned down and an adult cannot be forced to receive a blood transfusion against their will. And there are also millions upon mil10 11

Ibid. p. 13. Ibid.

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lions of people who die in the Third World of dysentery and other diseases that have long been curable. The theme of transplantation concerns them as well in a way—even if they do not have a chance to receive treatment themselves, they can always, in the context of global capitalism, sell their kidneys to feed their children. In addition, their organs can be donated to foreign recipients posthumously. In this way, they too are involved in the global transplant network. Whether they realise it or not, their humanity is impacted (as is ours—that of the privileged inhabitants of the wealthier portion of the world) if only because the transplantation of vital organs is technologically possible today. We are all drawn into the spiral of motion in which human beings are torn from themselves and transcended in unfathomable ways. It might be objected that there is still pain as a basic possibility through which human beings return to themselves and find themselves once again in their unmistakable individuality; pain as the ultimate principium individuationis; pain, which in its sharpness individualises not only human beings, but animals as well. Nevertheless, pain is systematically subdued and relieved in modern medicine, so what replaces it is anaesthesia or a morphine-induced torpor in whose emptiness patients cannot recognise themselves. And if any pain persists, it only appears at the margins of fatigue, incapacity, fever and overall befuddlement. In the context of procedures before, during and after operations, Nancy’s observation that ‘Very quickly, one is no more than a slackening, floating strangeness, suspended between poorly identified states, between sufferings, incapacities, lapses. Relating to such a self has become a problem, a difficulty or opacity: one does so through pain or fear, no longer is anything immediate—and mediations are tiring.’12 The emptied identity of a life that quivers in the wake of alternating waves of foreignness is therefore a work area for a medicine that invests boundless efforts in the fight against pain and suffering. What Remains after a Person’s Death? Despite all predictions concerning the end of a person and despite all practical proof of such an end, contemporary medicine—and contemporary thought along with it—is constantly beleaguered by the distinction between 12

Ibid. p. 11.

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life and death. As Agamben shows in his philosophical analyses, this distinction, notwithstanding its apparent sharpness, is much harder to capture than might appear to be the case.13 And it is no accident that the blurring of the distinction between life and death is produced both in connection with the development of technological means enabling the artificial maintenance of life (artificial breathing, artificial alimentation, etc.) and in the context of the advancement of transplantation technology. All such technological approaches demand a redefinition of death and the gradual introduction of criteria of brain death; nonetheless, the criteria offered are far from resolving all the philosophical, ethical and medicinal issues dealing with the boundary between life and death. If we consider that heart stoppage cannot serve as a criterion for death in a situation in which life can be maintained by means of machines and when heart transplants are possible, it is evident that the criterion of brain death would lose its force with the first successful brain transplant. Under such circumstances, we may observe, along with Agamben, that death becomes an ‘epiphenomenon of transplant technology’ without, however, losing any of its urgency.14 Rather than death ceasing to be death, it is becoming increasingly unclear where exactly the boundary between life and death lies. It is not easy to decide where life ends and death begins when the decision depends on the moment when the vital organs can be removed from a body that had been alive up until that moment. Similarly, we cannot agree when exactly life begins, when it is no longer a simply meaningless clump of cells to be disposed of without hesitation, because they lack a de iure individual character. At both the end and the beginning of life we have nothing but bare life—that is, as Agamben says, it could be ended without, from a legal standpoint, committing murder. At the beginning and end, homo sacer’s life may be terminated because it falls under the category of either not-yetlife or no-longer-life. Strictly speaking, homo sacer finds itself between life and death; it is an expression of the difference between them, which both materialises and acquires extension in them and becomes their intertwining. Is not, however, precisely this intertwining of not-yet-life and nolonger-life evidence that there exists an undifferentiated sphere in which the difference between life and death is blurred? Is the opposition between life and death simply a rippling of the substrate that, like the anonymous ele13

Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 160-5. 14 Ibid.

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ment of corporality, but at a much more elementary level, makes fluctuations and reversals in the relationship between inner/outer and own/foreign possible? Is it not an anonymous element of Being that is ploughed through by the caesura of life and death, which lends our lives their individual character by exposing them to the threat of death? If this is really the case, then that impersonal Being is split by the difference between life and death not only to provide us with our individual identity, but also at the same time to connect us with other living beings through the mirror game of ownness and foreignness. The difference between ownness and foreignness as seen through the difference between life and death (for example as the difference between one’s own immune system and a foreign one) is adapted in such a way that in the experience of the difference between ownness and foreignness the mirror experience is always implied. In a particularly striking manner, the intertwining of own/foreign and inner/outer plays itself out at the very beginning of our life. For a woman, conception and pregnancy are nothing but the arrival of foreignness at the core of her own life, which is doubled by this foreignness. The coordination of her own life and a foreign one in the course of pregnancy gradually escalates, culminating in childbirth, during which the woman is drawn outside herself in order to recognise the reflection of her own being in her exterior. The intertwining of ownness and foreignness is just as all-embracing from the perspective of the foetus, which gradually matures into its own life by separating itself from foreignness. From the perspective of both mother and child an intimate connection is experienced here, an intertwining and a duplication, finally resulting in the separation that enables the child to enter into further differentiated relationships. However, if circumstances demand that the intimate coordination of own/foreign and inner/outer take place with the participation of and under the auspices of modern medicine – which may avail itself of techniques of artificial insemination; prenatal diagnostics and the selection associated with it; and ultimately artificially induced and regulated childbirth—it acquires such an alienating character that it draws level with Nancy’s description of his heart transplant and post-transplant care. This alienating activity does not mean a denial of the good graces of Being, which lets us through into the difference between life and death; on the contrary, that difference is deepened by the shifting of the boundary between life and death. Nevertheless, the greatest technological advances of modern medicine cannot protect us from doubting whether, with regard to that indivisible intertwining of not-

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yet-life and life and life and no-longer-life, we have the right to take life and death decisions into our own hands.

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Translated by Ivan Gutierrez

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Topology of Dialogue

Dialogue as the most genuine form of communication

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As long as we exist, we communicate. Communication with others, however, is no accidental quality that may, or may not belong to the human existence. Since we share one common world with others, we find ourselves in communication every moment we see, hear or act. We cannot avoid coexistence with others, even when we try to take refuge in solitude. Even monologue is thus a kind of communication. As Merleau-Ponty who gives us this lesson notes in Phénoménologie de la perception, “[t]he refusal to communicate is still […] a form of communication.”1 No doubt that communication in dialogue is much more intensive than communication in monologue, but this does not mean that monologue totally separates us from others. Rather, monologue is a mere suspension of dialogue in which the true nature of communication appears. Let us therefore take a look at the dynamic structure of dialogue, as it is described in Phénoménologie de la perception. In the chapter “Autrui et le monde humain”, Merleau-Ponty views dialogue as a dynamic exchange in which un terrain commun - a terrain shared by two partners - is created.2 The common terrain in which both partners in dialogue are involved is created neither by one, nor by the other. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, in the dialogue with the other, my thought and his are interwoven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator. We have here a dual being, where the other is for me no longer a mere bit of behavior in my transcendental field, nor I in his; we are collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity. Our perspectives merge into each other, and we co-exist through a common world.3 1

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 414. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Collin Smith (London, New York: Routledge 1962), p. 361. 2 Ibid. p. 407. Ibid. p. 354. 3 Ibid. p. 407. Ibid. p. 354.

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What characterizes the common terrain of dialogue in which I co-exist with the other is apparently the perfect reciprocity of our involvement. A dialogue could not work, if I and the other did not participate at it in the same way and with the same passion. My involvement in dialogue, however, makes me forget myself, as well. In the dialogue with the other, I am not concentrated on myself, but rather “freed from myself”.4 When being immersed in dialogue with the other, I grasp or even anticipate thought that are not of my own. Objections that the other raises against my arguments make me—and at the same time allow me—discover thoughts I never had before. In the same way as the other compels me to think and transgress myself, I force the other to think and transgress his/her own limits. One can say that the true dialogue can leave none of us unchanged, for such a dialogue makes both me and the other change and go beyond our limits in the mutual interaction. Yet, this is not to say that, in the dialogue, I simply identify with the other, and the other identifies with me so that no difference between us remains. The dialogue is not about a fusion of different cognitive horizons, but rather about an intensive exchange in which both partners put their identities at stake, as they change, i.e. become other, along the line determined by the otherness of the other. Without this reciprocal becoming-other the dialogue would be impossible—there would be nothing but two monologues —but more intensive the dialogue is, more radical is the reciprocal becoming-other that takes place in the open field of communication. This, of course, does not mean that we perceive the becoming-other to which we are exposed right in the course of the dialogue. Usually, we become aware of it only retrospectively, when the dialogue has ended, and we think of what has actually happened. But until this comes about and both partners part, they share one commune inter-world (l’intermonde) in which they enrich, shift and transform each other. If we want to visualize what happens in the interworld where the dialogue takes place, we should imagine the dialogue not as a simple clash of two opposite intentions (the first picture), but as an interlocking of two relative perspectives (the second picture) that more or less changes both of them.

4

Ibid. p. 407. Ibid. p. 354.

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Dialogue as reciprocal becoming-other To understand better what happens in dialogue, we can take a look at the essay “La perception d’autrui et le dialogue” from La prose du monde where the process of becoming-other that essentially belongs to dialogue is spelled out more clearly than in Phénoménologie de la perception. In this essay, transformation of the self and its becoming-other are analyzed along with the role speech (la parole) plays in dialogue. At first sight it is evident that dialogue in which I encroach upon the other and the other encroaches upon me would not be possible, if we did not share the same language, if we did not use the same words and did not understand what we say. When reflecting on the nature of dialogue, Merleau-Ponty recognizes that dialogue usually concerns two people that have the same cultural horizon and same language. Common language and common cultural milieu then serve as anonymous fundaments of dialogue in which two particular selves overlap and decentralize themselves. These cultural and linguistic fundaments, however, are sufficient neither for the explanation of the dynamic exchange of dialogue, nor for the comprehension of my relation to the other. The ordinary usage of language in which we use conventional expressions and content ourselves with ready-made significations that correspond to these expressions does not make possible the true communication that changes and enriches our thoughts. The ordinary way of speaking not only makes our thoughts sterile, but it also prevents the other from appearing in his/her original singularity, as it turns the other into a mere representative of the humankind. According to Merleau-Ponty, the other in his/her concrete presence as well as the real dialogue appears, only when the speech becomes expressive, when it is cap-

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tured in the act of its birth.5 The real dialogue takes place not in the ordinary speech of codified meanings, but issues from the origin of speech in which speech breaks the meaningless silence. In the moment, when ordinary speech turns into expressive speech in which new expressions and new significations are born from the primordial silence, communication cannot be explained by a mere fact that both partners in dialogue share one language and one cultural context. Common language and common culture are rather challenged and deconstructed in genuine communication.6 Established speech that preserves codified expressions with firmly given significations is here disrupted and pushed back by innovative speech that discovers new expressions and new significations. In this respect, Merleau-Ponty stresses that conquering speech (parole conquérante) makes possible institutionalized speech (la parole instituée), and not vice versa.7 Without innovativeness of conquering speech no institutionalized speech could function, even though conquering speech can show its effects only when it opens lines of escape from codified significations of institutionalized speech. Conquering speech operates beyond all codified significations, for it reaches the primordial silence hidden behind the murmuring of words in order to find there new expressions and significations. As such, innovative speech represents the outside of all codified languages; but it is this outside that animates all codified languages and fills them with new content.8 Contrary to ordinary speech that is confined to already existing means of expression, innovative speech, which allows us to apprehend and convey hitherto unformulated meanings, opens for us new fields of experience. Thanks to innovative speech we are able to think in new ways. Hence, supposing genuine dialogue requires innovative speech, we must take the dynamic exchange of dialogue into consideration, if we want to understand how things get new meanings for us and we start to think in new ways. In other words, if we want to comprehend how we can think and express something new, we must also clarify the reciprocal encroachment and transgression that take place in dialogue. Dialogue as the genuine communication in which established speech is 5

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La prose du monde (Paris: Gallimard 19), p. 195. MerleauPonty, Maurice: The Prose of the World, trans. John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1973), p. 140. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.

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replaced by innovative speech is produced neither by me, not by the other, but occurs between us. It is something that we both produce together. Thanks to dialogue, both I and the other go beyond our particular egos, transgress our intellectual horizons and discover new thoughts, even though one could not say that we just exchange our thoughts, i.e. that I adopt thoughts of the other, and the other borrows my own thoughts. New thoughts that appear in dialogue with the other do not arise from a mere exchange, but rather from the resonance between my speech and speech of the other. The centrifugal force of dialogue throws both me and the other to meanings that none of us possessed. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, “…when I speak to another person and listen to him, what I understand begins to insert itself in the intervals between my saying things, my speech is inserted laterally by the other’s speech, and I hear myself in him, while he speaks in me. Here it is the same thing to speak to and to be spoken to.”9 The process of dialogue, however, is far from being idyllic or harmonious. Rather, it exposes us to the violence we experience when innovative speech carries us beyond the limits of what we know and when we loose control over the whole process. The terrain of dialogue is no firm ground, but unclear and confusing area in which we encounter the other not as somebody we know, but as somebody we do not know. At the beginning of dialogue, we are familiar with the speech and behaviour of the other, but then we are gradually or suddenly confronted with something unforeseen that we do not understand, something that turns the other into a stranger. “If the other person is really another,” claims Merleau-Ponty, “at a certain stage I must be surprised, disoriented. If we are to meet not just through what we have in common but in what is different between us—which presupposes a transformation of myself and of the other as well—then our differences can no longer be opaque qualities. They must become meaning.”10 In other words, it is necessary to encounter the other in the difference that makes us different and along this difference become-other so that our difference will not simply disappear, but—instead of being filled with the incomprehensible nonsense—will finally make some sense. If we are to comprehend the incomprehensible difference and get oriented in the unfamiliar terrain of dialogue, both sides of dialogue must change themselves and become-other without becoming identical. 9

Ibid. p. 142. Ibid. p. 197. Ibid. Ibid. p. 198.

10

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When both sides of dialogue join the process of becoming-other, the confrontation of two different ways of speaking, thinking and behaving results in the intercommunication, decentralization and mutual transformation of two existential perspectives. To acknowledge the role innovative speech plays in this process, we can say together with Merleau-Ponty that [i]n speech we realize the impossible agreement between two rival totalities not because speech forces us back upon ourselves to discover some unique spirit in which we participate but because speech concerns us, catches us indirectly, seduces us, trails us along, transforms us into the other and him into us, abolishes the limit between mine and not-mine, and ends the alternative between what has sense for me and what is non-sense for me, between me as subject and the other as object. 11

Even though the absolute identification with the other is impossible, the subversive power of dialogue in which we lose self-assuredness and selfpossession explains why so many of us try to avoid an open dialogue in order to preserve the firm identity of their existence and unchangeable shape of their thought. Their attitude is nothing but a defence against the power of spontaneity and violence of innovative speech that extricates us from habitual way of thinking and opens us for new meanings. The excessiveness of innovative speech which breaks through the fetter of ready-made meanings and reaches the primordial silence to gain from it new significations can be so unbearable that somebody prefers the easiness of well-established speech rather than improvisation, stammering and wild gesticulation that accompany speech in the state of its birth.

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Established speech versus authentic speech Needless to say, two disparate modes of speech that are delineated in La prose du monde are differentiated already in Phénoménologie de la perception. Even though Merleau-Ponty does not use the same terminology, it is evident that established speech is in Phénoménologie de la perception grasped as empirically given speech or parol parlée, whereas expressive speech that confronts the primordial silence corresponds to authentic speech or parol par-

11

Ibid. p. 145. Ibid. p. 202.

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lant.12 Yet, if dialogue as a genuine communication is enabled by authentic speech, rather than by established speech, limits of Merleau-Ponty’s approach to communication become apparent: insofar as speech and thought are inseparably related, the distinction between established and authentic speech is reflected in the distinction between spoken cogito and tacit cogito. While spoken cogito is determined by some well-established discourse, tacit cogito is situated beyond any articulated discourse, in the realm of primordial silence that is penetrated by authentic speech. What is particularly problematic in this respect is the status of tacit cogito which lies beneath the discursive thought of spoken cogito: silent consciousness is defined as “presence of oneself to oneself”; it is a state in which I experience myself, a pure prediscursive feeling of the self.13 The pre-discursive consciousness that conditions empirical language and allows us to go beyond any established discourse is, of course, situated in the world, though the world experienced by tacit cogito is blurred and confused. In any case, if silent consciousness corresponds to primordial silence from which authentic speech is born, it makes possible genuine communication, as well. Dialogue must be thus seen as a process in which two partners descend from the level of spoken cogito to the level of tacit cogito; dialogue is the communication of two tacit cogitos that attempt to break the unbearable silence by speech which creates new meanings. Both partners can certainly refrain from communication and withdraw into the silent nature of their consciousnesses, but then they would just stay against each other as absolute strangers that have nothing in common. This shows that the difference which supposedly conditioned the dynamic exchange of dialogue is in fact based on the identity—on the identity of silent consciousness that faces another silent consciousness; the difference is here nothing but the divergence of two silent consciousnesses that have their own self-identities. Even the becoming-other that essentially belongs to dialogue is related to the sameness of one’s own tacit cogito which makes dialogue possible. The whole critique of solipsism we find in Phénoménologie de la perception thus seems to end at the level of silent consciousness where the self is determined not by its relation to the others, but by its relation to itself.

12

Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, pp. 226-9. Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 194-7. 13 Ibid. pp. 462-3. Ibid. pp. 403-4.

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Revised view on dialogue

Yet, this is not Merleau-Ponty’s last word. In his last, unfinished work - Le visible et l’invisible, he articulates the difficulties he runs into when defining the tacit cogito as a pre-discursive and pre-reflexive possession of the self.

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What I call the tacit cogito is impossible. To have the idea of “thinking” (in the sense of the “thought of seeing and of feeling”), to make the “reduction,” to return to immanence and to the consciousness of […] it is necessary to have words. It is by the combination of words (with their charge of sedimented significations, which are in principle capable of entering into other relations than the relations that have served to form them) that I form the transcendental attitude, that I constitute the constitutive consciousness. The words do not refer to positive significations and finally to the flux of he Erlebnisse as Selbstgegeben. Mythology of a selfconsciousness to which the word “consciousness” would refer - There are only differences between significations.14

What is rejected here is the existence of the original pre-discursive consciousness that serves as a ground of all significations. Significations do not allegedly have any other ground than the diacritic relations between signs, and new meaning can be created only by the combination of these relations. At the same time, however, Merleau-Ponty refuses to cast aside the idea of the pre-predicative silence, for in this silence one encounters the sphere of experience that surpasses the differential relations of the already established significations.15 Since such an indeterminate experience does not have a positive meaning, it is given to us only negatively – as something for which we do not yet have words. Face to face with the unarticulated experience, speech then breaks the silence, in order to realize what thinking was referring to without being able to grasp it positively. The empirical language is thus still environed by silence, but this time it is not the silence of the tacit cogito that brings the self to its own being. Instead of allowing the self to find itself in its silent solitude, the silence opens a space in which the identity 14

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), pp. 2245.The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 171. 15 Ibid. pp. 229-30. Ibid. p. 225.

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of the self appears only as the function of the otherness of the other; if the self exists here, it is not absolute, but only relative to the other that intrigues it. At the elementary level of the pre-discursive experience, the self is nothing but the divergence or separation with respect to the other. In the encounter with the other that is not positively determined, the self is also determined only negatively. It is not somebody, but rather nobody who is anonymously confronted with the other and who finds his/her role in this confrontation. Such is the primordial inter-subjectivity in which the self is constituted through its encounter with the other. In Le visible et l’invisible, the encounter with the otherness of the other is thus no longer based on the sameness of the individual consciousness. The self that emerges in the primordial silence is not prior to the otherness of the other, but rather, depends on it: “[…] I do not have to constitute the other in face of the Ego: he is already here, and the Ego is conquered from him”, says Merleau-Ponty.16 This step from the pre-individual level to the individual level is confirmed by psychologists like R.D. Laing who stress the importance of intersubjective relations for the constitution of the self. In The Divided Self, Laing shows how important role parents and especially mother play in the development of child’s self: it is thanks to the loving bonds with the mother that child establishes its being-for-itself and finds its own self. As he puts it, “a necessary component in the development of the self is the experience of oneself as a person under the loving eye of the mother.”17 The dependence of the small child on the mother is so big that if the mother for any reason disappears, the child is threatened by the loss of the self. The dependence, however, is in a way complementary, for a woman could not be a mother without her child. She needs a child in order to get the identity of a mother. In a similar way, she needs a husband in order to be a wife, while her husband needs her to be a husband. The general observation that every selfidentity requires some other who makes it possible is grasped by Laing’s notion of “complementary identity” which is elaborated in his work Self and Others.18 The complementary identity means that “every relationship implies a definition of self by other and other by self”.19 Even though this comple16

Ibid. p. 274. Ibid. p. 221. Roald David Laing, The Divided Self (New York: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 116. 18 Roald David Laing, Self and Others (London: Tavistock Publications, 1961), pp. 6580. 19 Ibid.

17

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mentarity involves also social roles that are articulated by language, it reaches at the most elementary level where the relation between the self and the other remains plunged into the pre-discursive silence. It is therefore not quite precise to say that the other is prior to the self; rather, they are both constituted by their difference. One is not possible without the other. Anyway, Merleau-Ponty seems to be well aware of the complementarity in the relation of the self and the other, when he says: “The I-other relation to be conceived […] as complementary roles one of which cannot be occupied without the other being also.”20 When we think of the complementary, or - one may say – diacritic identity that characterizes the interrelatedness of the self and the other, we can recollect the notion of the chiasm (le chiasme) that, in Le visible et l’invisible, describes not only the relation between the self and the other, but also the relation between the self and the world. The image of the chiasm suggests that the self and the other are not related as two tacit cogitos that have their positive identities; instead, they are determined merely by the difference that relates them together. The self and the other are nothing but two parts of the difference Merleau-Ponty calls the “chiasm.” If the relation between the self and the other is conceived as the chiasm, however, it does not mean that a static difference persists between them. The chiasm is rather a dynamic differentiation that brings the self and the other together so that their intertwining becomes possible. Only such a dynamic differentiation shows the complex relations between the self and the other in the proper light. In view of the inter-subjectivity understood as the chiasm we can then comprehend the nature of communication the most genuine form of which is dialogue. Dialogue that takes place in the medium of speech oscillates between the empirical language of well-established significations and the primordial silence where the words are missing, while bringing together the self and the other as two parts of the constitutive difference. When talking and listening to the other, the self more or less becomes other and vice versa, but the idea of the chiasm makes it clear that the exchange between the self and the other cannot lead to their fusion or unification. The constitutive difference between the self and the other must not disappear, for without this difference they would lose their complementary identities and collapse which would make any dialogue impossible. The constitutive difference between the self and the other must be thus preserved, even though they 20

Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, p. 274.The Visible and the Invisible, p. 221.

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transform themselves when attempting to understand each other. Yet, becoming-other that belongs to the understanding of the other involves microscopic processes of disintegration and re-integration of the self; and insofar the understanding is mutual, both partners in the dialogue simultaneously go through the same process - they disintegrate and reintegrate in the reciprocal exchange. The interlacement of perspectives that shakes and transforms the complementary identities of both partners is not without dangers. In dialogue, both partners put their complementary identities at risk, for behind the constitutive difference between the self and the other there is only anonymous void above which dialogue hovers. The “worst” thing, however, is that one cannot simply avoid communication and take refuge in one’s own solitude; escaping from one intersubjective relation one can only enter into other inter-subjective relations that shape it’s self in different ways. What we learn in Le visible et l’invisible is that there is no primordial solitude to which we can withdraw. There is only communication with the world and with the others, even if they are only imaginary. We are the communication, and besides it we are nothing. For the self cannot exist in monologue with itself; in monologue it falls apart into the cluster of pre-individual impressions and associations, from which it can be called out only by the voice of the other. The self appears only in communication; and as long as communication goes on, it does not cease to transform itself in the permanent interaction with the other. This contingency and transitivity situate the self in the inter-world where it coexists with the others. As the diacritic concept of personal identity suggests, the inter-subjective field is not limited only to the relation of one self to other self; rather, there is always the third, fourth and many other selves. Diacritic identity makes it possible to understand functioning of the whole setting of interpersonal relations by which our selves are formed and transformed. Personal identity of one “individual” is usually determined by several interpersonal relations that shape it in different ways (son, husband, father, friend, employee, etc.). The complementary identities following from relations to various people can be in accord that leaves one in harmony, or in discord that creates a great tension. The existing individual then permanently oscillates between harmony and tension, and as long as it exists it cannot find an absolute inner peace, for there are always new people that come across. In this sense, the inter-world must be understood as a terrain the self shares with the others. As a space of encounter the terrain has essentially chiasmatic structure. Understood in this way, the terrain belongs to the area

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of “transcendental geology” Merleau-Ponty projects in Le visible et l’invisible.21

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Rhizomatic perspective Since Le visible et l’invisible has remained unfinished and its most interesting parts are preserved only in notes and fragments, one is tempted to imagine to which consequences it could have been developed. A possible way of extending Merleau-Ponty’s unfinished work could be found in the very structure of the inter-subjective terrain. For, the diacritic system of relations that constitute the identities of the particular selves must be understood in a right way: it is neither a closed system with some centre and periphery, nor a hierarchic structure that grows from some original unit. Seen from the perspective of the system, and not from the perspective of the individual, the system of inter-subjective relations is essentially open, a-centric and nonhierarchical. To use the terms coined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, we could say that the field of inter-subjective relations has the rhizomatic character, rather then the arborescent character.22 Yet, this is not to say that one should simply avoid the use of arborescent models, when describing the field of inter-subjective relations. The arborescent structures are not mere illusions, for they express rigid, ready-made discursive and semantic systems to which we are trapped and by which our thought is formed. In the realm of these discursive and semantic systems, we are situated among others in a segmented and hierarchic way, i.e. we are, or at least we feel, separated from those who do not belong to us, while to those who are close to us we are related in a hierarchic way. Our inter-subjective relations thus form closed and hierarchic systems which define who we are and what we think. The perfect illustration of such a closed and hierarchic system is the phenomenon of “family”, as described by R.D. Laing in The Politics of the Family: “family” is limited not only to the set of relations between father, mother and children, but represents an internal structure of every social group (political party, church, or army) that separates itself from the outside 21

Cf. ibid. p. 312. On the diference between arborescent and rhizomatic structures, cf. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2 (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980). Chapter “Introduction: rhizome”. A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia 2. Chapter “Introduction: Rhizome.” 22

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and forms a hierarchic system in which every member is defined by his/ her relation to the others.23 Communication among the members of a “family” is more or less restricted to preestablished paths and habitual codes, but besides this restrictive function of the “family” Laing emphasizes also its preservative function, for the “family” functions as defensive system that protects the personal integrity and habitual world of its members. “[T]he preservation of the “family” is equated with the preservation of self and world and the dissolution of the “family” inside another is equated with death of self and world-collapse.”24 This means, on the one hand, that the disruption of the family structure by one of its members jeopardizes the personal integrity of all remaining members and the world of the whole community, but, on the other hand, it implies that no one can leave the “family” as an isolated individual, for any escape from the closed and hierarchic structure of the “family” immediately destroys one’s own personal integrity. The only way of leaving the “family” without a psychotic breakdown is thus to get in touch with somebody who can help us to re-define who we are. Such a communication with the other, however, is not limited by the discursive and semantic structure of the old “family”; rather, it is an open and non-hierarchic communication which may later fall into new semantic schemes and hierarchic relationships, i.e. it may constitute a new “family”, but as long as it preserves its original freshness and intensity, it has necessarily a rhizomatic character. The open communication with the other, in which we become-other along the difference that constitutes both me and the other, is not arborescent, but rhizomatic. It is even possible that the truly open communication takes place within the inter-subjective field of the “family”, but as soon as it starts, it subverts the constituted arborescent structures with their semantic contexts and opens a field of non-hierarchic, non-codified exchange in which new meanings appear and all the involved members become-other. In fact, there are always some rhizomatic elements in the arborescent structures of the inter-subjective field. They open the arborescent structures of the intersubjective relations to the outside and prevent them from being totally closed, rigid and sterile. They make possible communication between members of different “families”, as well as involvement of one “family” member in several arborescent social systems. As such, the rhizomatic social and 23

Cf. Roald David Laing, The Politics of the Family (New York: Vintage Books 1972), pp. 3-19. 24 Ibid. p. 14.

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semantic elements open the field of encounter we would like to call, together with Merleau-Ponty, the terrain. The terrain has for us an essentially rhizomatic nature. One may object that by declaring the rhizomatic character of the social terrain in which we communicate with the others we have significantly exceed the limits of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical project, as we have betrayed the principle of reciprocity that is crucial in his understanding of genuine communication. The evidence of such betrayal can be seemingly found in the notion of the “aparallel evolution” that Deleuze and Guattari use to describe the relation between different parts of a rhizomatic structure.25 Yet, the “aparallel evolution” of two parts of a rhizome does not mean that their changing is not reciprocal. It just suggests that one part of a rhizome is not a copy or imitation of the other. As Deleuze and Guattari put it, “[t]here is neither imitation nor resemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line of line of flight composed by a common rhizome that can no longer be attributed to or subjugated by anything signifying.” 26 Hence, when two parts of a rhizomatic structure that come from heterogeneous arborescent systems become-other in their mutual relationship and along their constitutive difference that appears as an asignifying rupture, there is an obvious reciprocity in their becoming-other. Every part of a rhizome is more or less changed by the mutual process of becomingother. This allows us to put the Deleuzoguattarian concept of rhizomatic structures side by side with Merleau-Ponty’s chiasmatic notion of intersubjective relations, even though we are fully aware of a distance that separates both philosophical conceptions.

25

Cf. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux, pp. 17-8. A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, pp. 10-1. 26 Deleuze and Guattari, Mille plateaux, p. 17. A Thousand Plateaus, p. 10.

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Bogue, Ronald. “Art and Territory”. A Deleuzian Century? Ed. Ian Buchanan. Duke University Press, 1999. pp. 85-102. Boss, Medard. Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology. Trans. S. Conway and A. Cleaves. New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1994. (Original work published 1971) Boss, Medard. Grundriss der Medizin und der Psychologie. Ansätze zu einer phänomenologischen Physiologie, Psychologie, Pathologie, Therapie und zu einer daseinsgemässen Präventiv-Medizin in der modernen Industrie-Gesellschaft (2nd Edition). Bern: Hans Huber, 1975. Bowie, Andrew. Schelling and modern European philosophy. London, New York: Routledge, 1993. Canguilhem, Georges. Le normal et le pathologique, 2nd ed. Paris: PUF, 1972. Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche et la philosophie. Paris: PUF, 1962. Deleuze, Gilles. Pourparlers. Paris: Minuit, 1990. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. P. Patton. New York: Columbia, 1994.

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Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. L‘Anti-Œdipe: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. Paris: Minuit, 1972. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. Kafka: pour une littérature mineure. Paris: Minuit, 1975. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. Qu’est-ce que la philosophie ? Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1991. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. What Is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol I. Eds. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol III. Eds. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Descartes, René. A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Trans. Ian Maclean. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006.

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Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovitch. Demons. Trans. Robert A. Maguirre. London: Penguin Books, 2008. Foucault, Michel. Les mots et les choses—une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Foucault, Michel. “La pensée du dehors”. Dits et écrits, 1954–1984. Eds. Daniel Defert and François Ewald. Paris: Gallimard, 1994. Foucault, Michel. “The Thought of the Outside”. Essential Works, vol. II, Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology. Ed. J. Faubion. London: Allen Lane, 1998. Frank, Manfred. Was ist Neostrukturalismus? Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984. Goldstein, Kurt. Der Aufbau des Organismus. Haag: Nijhoff, 1934. Goldstein, Kurt. The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man. New York: American Book Company, 1939. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. San Francisco: Harper, 1962. (Original work published 1927).

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Heidegger, Martin. Schellings Abhandlung über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1971. Heidegger, Martin. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983. Heidegger, Martin. Zollikoner Seminare. Protokole-Gespräche-Briefe, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987. Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit, (17th Edition). Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993. Heidegger, Martin. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Heidegger, Martin. Vom Wesen des Grundes, (8th Edition). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995. Heidegger, Martin. Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry. Trans. Keith Hoeller. New York: Humanity Books, 2000. Heidegger, Martin. Zollikon Seminars: Protocols—Conversations—Letters. Ed. M. Boss. Trans. F. Mayr & R. Askay. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001. (Original work published 1987). Heidegger, Martin. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (1936-19). (3rd Edition) Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm v. Herrmann (Frankfurt am Mein: Vittorio Klostermann 2012). Kouba, Petr. The Phenomenon of Mental Disorder: Perspectives in Heidegger’s Thought on the Field of Psychopathology. Trans. David Vichnar and Petr Kouba. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014.

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Laing, Roald David. Self and Others. London: Tavistock Publications, 1961. Laing, Roald David. The Politics of the Family and Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books, 1972. Laing, Roald David. The Divided Self. An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. London: Penguin Books, 1990. Lévinas, Emmanuel. De Dieu qui vient à l’idée. Paris: Vrin, 1982. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Le temps et l’autre. Paris: PUF, 1983. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Time and the Other. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Existence and Existents. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Entre nous: essais sur le penser-à-l’autre. Paris: Grasset, 1991. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991. Lévinas, Emmanuel. De l’existence à l’existant (2nd Edition). Paris: Vrin, 1998. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Entre nous: on Thinking-of-the-other. Trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

194

Lévinas, Emmanuel. Of God Who Comes to Mind. Trans. Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Totalité et infini. Essai sur l’extériorité. Paris: Kluwer Academic, Le Livre de Poche, 2003. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence. Paris: Kluwer Academic, Le Livre de Poche, 2004. Maldiney, Henri. Art et existence. Paris: Klincksieck, 1985. Maldiney, Henri. Penser l’homme et la folie. Grenoble: Jérôme Milion, 1991. Maldiney, Henri. Existence. Crise et création. Fougères: Encre Marine, 2001. Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain. Trans. John E. Woods. New York: Knopf 1995. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénomenologie de la Perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1945. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962; rev. 1981. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Le visible et l’invisible. Paris: Gallimard 1964. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Trans. Alphonso Lingis, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1968. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. La prose du monde. Paris: Gallimard 1969. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Prose of the World. Trans. John O’Neill, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1973.

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Nancy, Jean-Luc. L’Intrus. Paris: Galilée 2000. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals, Ecce homo. Trans. Walter Kaufmann, R. J. Hollingdale. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1969. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Douglas Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Trans. Josefine Nauckhoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Eds. Adrian del Caro and Robert B. Pippin. Trans. Adrian del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings. Eds. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Trans. Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Gay Science. Ed. Bernard Williams. Trans. Josefine Nauckhoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Opilik, Klaus, Transzendenz und Vereinzelung. Zur Fragwürdigkeit des transzendentalen Ansatzes im Umkreis von Heideggers “Sein und Zeit.” Freiburg/Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1993.

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Patočka, Jan. Kacířské eseje o filosofii dějin. Prague: Academia, 1990. Patočka, Jan. Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět. Prague: OIKOYMENH, 1995. Patočka, Jan. Body, Community, Language, World. Trans. Erazim Kohák. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1998. Patočka, Jan. Péče o duši III. Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2002. Patočka, Jan. Fenomenologické spisy II. Co je existence, Publikované texty z let 19651977. Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2009. Reich, Wilhelm. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Trans. Carfagno R. Vincent. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970. Ricoeur, Paul. “Fragile Identity: Respect for the Other and Cultural Identity.” Philosophy and the Return of Violence: Studies from this Widening Gyre. Eds. Nathan Eckstrand and Christopher S. Yates. New York: Continuum 2011. pp. 81-88. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions. Trans. Philip Mairet. London: Methuen, 1962. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Esquisse d’une théorie des emotions. Paris: Hermann, 1995. Schelling, F. W. J. Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände, in. S. Dietzsch (Ed.), Schriften 1804-1812. Berlin: Union Verlag, 1982. Tauber, Alfred. The Immune Self: Theory, or Metaphor? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996. Vattimo, Gianni. The End of Modernity. Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture. Trans. Jon R. Snyder. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991. Vattimo, Gianni. The Adventure of Diference. Philosophy after Nietzsche and Heidegger. Trans. Cyprian Blamires. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993.

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Vetter, Helmuth. “Es gibt keine unmittelbare Gesundheit des Geistes.” Daseinsanalyse (Vol. 10, 1993): 65-79. Von Uexküll, Jakob. Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen. Bedeutungslehre. Hamburg: Rohwohlt, 1956. Von Uexküll, Jakob. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning. Trans. Joseph D. O’Neill. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. World Health Organization (1948). Preamble to the constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19 June-22 July 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 states. Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2. Žižek, Slavoj. The Indivisible Remainder. An essay on Schelling and related matters, London, New York: Verso, 1996.

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References

Essays and studies published in this volume have originally appeared in the following journals and/or collective monographs: Kouba, Petr. “K Nietzschovu pojetí zdraví a nemoci“. Nietzsche a člověk—Kořeny filosofické antropologie v myšlení Friedricha Nietzscheho. Eds. Josef Kružík and Jaroslav Novotný. Prague: Agora, 2005, pp. 153-63. Kouba, Petr. “Světy a mezisvěty”. Umwelt. K Uexküllově pojetí žitých světů. Eds. Alice Kliková and Jan Kleisner. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2006, pp. 107-22. Kouba, Petr. “Two Ways to the Outside”. Deleuze Studies. University of Edinburgh Press (Vol. 2: 2008): pp. 74-96. Kouba, Petr. “Conceptualizing Health and Illness”. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology. Brill (Vol. 39: 2008): pp. 59-80. Kouba, Petr. “Myšlení a tělesnost na pomezí individuálního bytí”. Filosofický časopis (Vol. 56: 2008/5): pp. 651-668. Kouba, Petr. “Emocionalita a časovost”. Výzkumy subjektivity. Eds. Karel Novotný and Milena Friedmanová. Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart, 2008, pp. 181-92. Kouba, Petr. “Weak Subjectivity, Trans-subjectivity and the Power of Event”. Continental Philosophy Review (Springer: 2010): pp. 391-406.

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Kouba, Petr. “Topology of Dialogue”. Thinking in Dialogue with Humanities. Paths into the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Eds. Karel Novotný, Taylor S. Hammer, Anne Gléonec, and Petr Špecián. ZETA Books, 2010, pp. 177-92. Kouba, Petr. “Critique of Resentment in Reich, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari”. Archiwum Historii Filozofii i Myśli Społecznej (Vol. 57/2012 Supplement): pp. 31-52. Kouba, Petr. “Life without Subjectivity. Deleuze, Guattari and Patočka’s Asubjective Phenomenology”. Demos vs. Polis? Essays on Civic Responsibility and Participation. Eds. James Griffith, Dagmar Kusá. Kritika & Kontext, No. 56 (1/2019): pp. 16-25.

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Index

desire, 11-13, 69-78, 84, 91-5, 100-4, 107-8, 153-5 dialogue, 144-5, 178-88 disease, 7, 74, 87, 110-3, 142-8, Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich, 136 emotion, 7, 11-3, 25-8, 29-31, 35-8, 56, 66 emotionality, 7-8, 26, 29-31, 37-8, 65-6 equilibrium, 8, 16-24, 27, 79, 117-21, 140, 154, 161, 167 event, 10, 44, 121, 123, 133-41 evil, 96, 151-7, 160-2 excess, 7, 71-2, 76-7, 85-90, 99, 102, 114 experience, 8, 14-21, 25, 27, 38, 42, 478, 54-9, 61-2, 68-70, 73, 76-7, 87-9, 96, 101, 115-8, 121, 127-35, 142-3, 148, 157, 163-4, 168-72, 176, 181-6 exteriority, 68-89, 172-3 face, 75, 78-84, 89-90 faciality, 78, 80, 83-6 Foucault, Michel, 54, 68, 173 Frank, Manfred, 71-2 freedom, 17, 23, 27, 48-9, 91-2, 115-6, 119-20, 140, 144, 152-3, 156-7, 1612 fundamental ontology, 56-7, 123-7, 138-9 God, 153-7, 160-1 Goldstein, Kurt, 65, 113-22, Good, 96-9, 152-62 health, 7, 99, 110-6, 119-22, 140, 14251, 155-6, 160-3 Heidegger, Martin, 7-8, 29-37, 39, 4452, 56-8, 98, 123-8, 134, 140, 14350, 154-6, 159

arborescent, 52, 189-91 Aristotle, 11-2, 28, 56, 145-50 authentic existence, 30, 47, 57, 123-7 autonomy, 12, 28, 34, 64, 68-71, 88, 108-9, 124, 135, 138, 150-2, 168 Barbaras, Renaud, 55 Bataille, Georges, 69 Beaulieu, Alain, 9 becoming-other, 85, 135, 179-80, 1834, 188, 191 Binswanger, Ludwig, 151-2 birth, 20, 76-7, 103, 132, 136, 153, 176, 183 Blanchot, Maurice, 69 bodily disequilibrium, 16-21, 24, 27, 117-9, 122 body schema, 15-24, 118 body without organs, 21-8, 38, 107 boredom, 31-3, 37 Boss, Medard, 137, 144-6 Canguilhem, Georges, 120-1 communication, 14, 62, 93, 100-1, 178-91 complementary identity, 186 corporality, 7-8, 10-1, 14, 20-4, 26-8, 112-3, 163-5, 170-1, 176 Dasein, 29-37, 123-32 death, 19-24, 27, 43, 64, 95, 115, 12732, 149, 155, 160-1, 164-5, 172-7 Deleuze, Gilles, 96, 157-9, 162 Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix, 810, 21-8, 37-9, 49-53, 54-5, 58-66, 69-86, 90-1, 99-109, 163, 189-91 depersonalization, 30, 125, 129, 148 depression, 37 Descartes, René, 12-3, 39, 169-70

198

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Plato, 76, 144-5 post-existential analysis, 10, 21, 26, 128-30 privation, 48, 71, 144-56 racism, 80-2 relationships with others, 7 Sade, Donatien Alphonse François, 69 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 8, 29 self-preservation, 122 self-realisation, 10, 17, 122 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Josef, 151-62 schizoanalysis, 10, 21, 28 schizophrenia, 18-22, 118-9, 131, 1479, 158 soul, 11-3, 45, 99, 110-3, 150 suffering, 7-8, 38, 76-7, 87-9, 94-101, 123-6, 136-7, 140-3, 156, 161-3 tacit cogito, 26-8, 184-7 temporality, 7, 29-36, 132-4, 148-50, 159 the Other, 70-89, 96, 102, 129-30, 1368 the outside, 7-8, 68-87, 90, 94, 98-101, 128, 139, 165-7, 171, 181, 189-90 transcendence, 17, 26, 46-7, 50, 73-5, 79, 86-8, 90, 119, 123, 159 transition-synthesis, 18-9, 27 ungrounding, 123-4, 129-40, 161 Vattimo, Gianni, 123-4, 131-2, 138-9 Vetter, Helmuth, 145 Von Uexküll, Jakob, 39-45, 49-52, 60 weak ontology, 124 world, 7, 13-9, 21, 25-28, 30-1, 35-7, 39-52, 54-60, 65-6, 84-8, 91-5, 98, 111-21, 126-31, 134-49, 153, 160-4, 168-9, 173-4, 178-9, 181, 184, 18790 worldhood, 7, 45 Žižek, Slavoj, 152

heteronomy, 28, 68-71, 74, 88, 109, 124, 135-7, 168 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 69, 118, 139-41 il y a, 34-7 inauthentic existence, 30-2, 47, 123-7 individual existence, 7-10, 15, 19-21, 24-5, 30, 33-7, 56, 101, 110, 124-38 individuality, 7-8, 23, 34-6, 54-5, 65, 101, 117, 124-5, 128-30, 151, 15964, 174 individuation, 8, 23, 33, 47, 62, 72, 101, 123-8, 155, 158-62, 174 intentionality, 15, 18-9, 25-6, 35, 119 Kafka, Franz, 80 Kouba, Petr, 36 Laing, Roald David, 89, 130, 186, 18990 Lévinas, Emmanuel, 7, 34-8, 69-89, 163 life, 7-8, 10, 18-21, 24-8, 39-47, 50-2, 54-67, 83, 92-8, 109-115, 118, 1212, 127, 131, 134-6, 140, 150, 153-5, 164-77 madness, 19, 35, 50, 84, 120, 125-7, 155-62 Maldiney, Henri, 7, 133-41 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 7-8, 10, 1428, 115-21, 163, 170-1, 178-91 molar, 52-3, 76-7, 105-9 molecular, 52-3, 76-7, 105-9 multiplicity, 71-2, 88, 112, 124 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 91, 94-101, 10913, 118, 122-9, 138-41, 160-3, 173 organism, 8, 22-5, 39-43, 52-3, 60-5, 113-8, 121 phenomenology, 7-9, 14, 29, 37-8, 39, 54-66 phenomenon, 7, 15, 20, 36, 43-9, 54, 78, 91-2, 112-3, 119, 128, 132, 1447, 151, 175

199

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LIBRI NIGRI THINKING ACROSS BOUNDARIES

Edited by Hans Rainer Sepp

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The libri nigri meet preferentially at sites where the boundaries of realities, standpoints, disciplines as well as cultural traditions and traditions of knowledge come into view and where their assumptions are negotiable. To trace their intentions of reasoning is more important than the search for the reasons themselves; the daring experiment means more than the effectual model; disturbing action more than the drive towards safeguarding. Since the sites for decisive action are found mostly on the fringes and not at the centers and since boundaries not only function as limits but also simultaneously cover up the potential for difference and otherness, this series will also not refrain from entering the terrain of the Utopian.

1

Hans Rainer Sepp Über die Grenze Prolegomena zu einer Philosophie des Transkulturellen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-792-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-793-0

2

Yoshiko Oshima Zen – anders denken? Zugleich ein Versuch über Zen und Heidegger 2. Aufl. broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-846-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-847-0

3

Max Lorenzen Philosophie der Nachmoderne Die Transformation der Kultur – Virtualität und Globalisierung Herausgegeben von Cathrin Nielsen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-668-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-668-1

4

Hisaki Hashi und Friedrich G. Wallner (Hg.) Globalisierung des Denkens in Ost und West Resultate des Österreichisch-Japanischen Dialogs broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-555-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-560-8

5

Aleš Novák Heideggers Bestimmung des Bösen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-650-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-651-3

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6

André Julien S. E. Faict Philosophische Voraussetzungen des interkulturellen Dialogs Die vergleichende Philosophie von Hajime Nakamura im Dialog mit Anthropologie und Hermeneutik broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-683-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-684-1

7

Peter Schwankl Diplomatisches Verhalten Ein phänomenologischer Versuch über das Wesen des Diplomatischen Herausgegeben von Georg Lechner broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-517-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-516-5

8

Paul Janssen Vom zersprungenen Weltwerden broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-685-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-686-5

9

Constantin Noica De dignitate Europae Übersetzt von Georg Scherg Herausgegeben von Mădălina Diaconu broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-708-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-709-1

10

Constantin Noica Briefe zur Logik des Hermes Übersetzt von Christian Ferencz-Flatz und Stefan Moosdorf broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-434-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-435-9

11

Ananta Charan Sukla (ed.) Art and Expression Contemporary Perspectives in the Occidental and Oriental Traditions broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-710-7 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-711-4

12

Dean Komel Den Nihilismus verwinden Ein slowenisches Postscript zum 20. Jahrhundert broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-712-1 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-713-8

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13

Tatiana Shchyttsova (Hg.) In statu nascendi Geborensein und intergenerative Dimension des menschlichen Miteinanderseins broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-716-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-688-9

14

Chung-Chi Yu and Kwok-ying Lau (eds.) Phenomenology and Human Experience broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-722-0 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-723-7

15

Daniel Aebli Wie modern ist die Antike? Studien und Skizzen zur Altertumswissenschaft broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-729-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-730-5

16

Hiroo Nakamura Für den Frieden broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-731-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-732-9

17

Günter Fröhlich Anthropologische Wege Ulmer Stadthausvorträge broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-733-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-734-3

18

Hans-Dieter Bahr Die Anwesenheit des Gastes Entwurf einer Xenosophie broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-761-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-762-6

19

Massimo Mezzanzanica Von Dilthey zu Levinas Wege im Zwischenbereich von Lebensphilosophie, Neukantianismus und Phänomenologie broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-750-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-751-0

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20

Klaus Kanzog Mit Auge und Ohr Studien zur komplementären Wahrnehmung broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-784-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-785-5

21

Silvia Stoller und Gerhard Unterthurner (Hg.) Entgrenzungen der Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik Festschrift für Helmuth Vetter zum 70. Geburtstag broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-771-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-772-5

22

Claus C. Schnorrenberger Chinesische Medizin – Placebo, Wissenschaft oder Wirklichkeit? broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-776-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-777-0

23

Detlef Thiel Maßnahmen des Erscheinens Friedlaender/Mynona im Gespräch mit Schelling, Husserl, Benjamin und Derrida broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-782-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-783-1

24

Leonidas Donskis Fifty Letters from the Troubled Modern World A Philosophical-Political Diary 2009–2012 broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-799-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-800-5

25

Hartmut Buchner Heidegger und Japan – Japan und Heidegger Vorläufiges zum west-östlichen Gespräch broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-836-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-837-1

26

Kateřina Šolcová Comenius im Blick Der Briefwechsel zwischen Milada Blekastad und Dmitrij Tschižewskij Deutsch-Tschechische Ausgabe broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-843-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-844-9

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27

Karin Knobel Poetik des Staubes bei Goethe und Hafis broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-838-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-839-5

28

Ryôsuke Ohashi Schnittpunkte Essays zum ost-westlichen-Gespräch Erster Band: Dimensionen des Ästhetischen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-859-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-860-9

29

Ryôsuke Ohashi Schnittpunkte Essays zum ost-westlichen-Gespräch Zweiter Band: Deutsch-Japanische Denkwege broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-885-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-886-9

30

Aleš Novák (Hg.) Grenzen der Transzendenz Aus dem Tschechischen übersetzt von Jana Krötzsch broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-854-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-855-5

31

Boško Tomašević Hervorgang des Seins Das ontologische Geschehen des Dichtens broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-952-1 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-953-8

32

Gerard Visser Nichts ist geschenkt Ein philosophischer Essay über die Seele Aus dem Niederländischen übersetzt von Anna Sikora broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-871-5 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-872-2

33

Marcin Rebes Der Streit um die transzendentale Wahrheit Heidegger und Levinas broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-942-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-943-9

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34

Jürgen Trinks Überleben des Phänomens im Symbolischen Studien zur sprachphänomenologischen Kulturwissenschaft broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-875-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-876-0

35

Martin Cajthaml Europe and the Care of the Soul Jan Patočka’s Conception of the Spiritual Foundations of Europe With a Preface by Peter McCormick broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-887-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-888-3

36

Leonidas Donskis Das Ende von Ideologie und Utopie? Moralität und Kulturkritik im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Cathrin Nielsen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-883-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-884-5

37

Dean Komel Kontemplationen Entwürfe zur phänomenologischen Hermeneutik broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-903-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-904-0

38

Armin Wildermuth Findlinge Gefundenes und Erfundenes broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-944-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-945-3

39

Hisaki Hashi (Hg.) Denkdisziplinen von Ost und West Interdisziplinäre Philosophie in einer globalen Welt broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-047-5 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-048-2

40

Markus Ophälders Konstruktion von Erfahrung Versuch über Walter Benjamin broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-083-3 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-084-0

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41

Ivan Chvatík and Lubica Ucník (eds.) Asubjective Phenomenology Jan Patočka’s Project in the Broader Context of his Work broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-993-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-994-1

42

Terri Jane Hennings Writing Against Aesthetic Ideology Tom Sharpe’s The Great Pursuit and Paul Auster’s City of Glass broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-180-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-181-6

43

Irina Hron (Hg.) Einheitsdenken Figuren von Ganzheit, Präsenz und Transzendenz nach der Postmoderne broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-995-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-996-5

44

Nicole Thiemer Zwischen Hermes und Hestia Hermeneutische Lektüren zu Heidegger und Derrida broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-946-0 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-947-7

45

Sumalee Mahanarongchai Health and Disease in Buddhist Minds broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-950-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-951-4

46

Fengli Lan and Friedrich G. Wallner (eds.) The Concepts of Health and Disease From the Viewpoint of four Cultures broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-948-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-949-1

47

Fengli Lan Metaphor The Weaver of Chinese Medicine With an Introduction by Friedrich Wallner broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-020-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-039-0

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48

Kurt Greiner und Martin J. Jandl (Hg.) Bizzarosophie Radikalkreatives Forschen im Dienste der akademischen Psychotherapie broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-014-7 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-032-1

49

Martin Nitsche (ed.) Image in Space Contributions to a Topology of Images broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-985-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-986-6

50

Friedrich G. Wallner and Gerhard Klünger (eds.) Buddhism – Science and Medicine Interpretations, Applications, and Misuse broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-052-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-053-6

51

Severin Müller Verwandelte Ferne Phänomenologische Analysen zu realen und imaginären Mobilitäten broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-089-5 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-090-1

52

Severin Müller Transformationen Studien zu Zeit, Bewegung und Imagination broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-237-0 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-238-7

53

Friedrich G. Wallner and Gerhard Klünger (eds.) Constructive Realism Philosophy, Science, and Medicine broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-102-1 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-829-6

54

Anna Maria Martini Phänomenologie der Zweigeschlechtlichkeit Kenotische und transzendente Momente und ihre anthropologische Bedeutung broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-125-0 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-126-7

55

Petr Kouba Margins of Phenomenology broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-144-1

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56

Klaus Kanzog Militärische Leitbilder in Spielfilmen der Bundesrepublik der 50er Jahre Faktizität, Kunstfreiheit, Rhetorik broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-173-1 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-174-8

57

Dragan Jakovljević Erkenntnisgestalten und Handlungsanweisungen Abhandlungen zur Erkenntnislehre und praktischen Philosophie Mit einem Nachwort von Dariusz Aleksandrowicz broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-202-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-203-5

58

Fengli Lan, Friedrich G. Wallner, Gerhard Klünger (eds.) Lifestyle and Health broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-235-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-236-3

59

Hans-Christian Günther Nachgehakt (Un)zeitgemäße Betrachtungen zu Religion, Ethik und Politik broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-287-5 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-288-2

60

Ľubica Učník and Anita Williams (eds.) Phenomenology and the Problem of Meaning in Human Life and History broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-297-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-298-1

61

James McGuirk Eros, Otherness, Tyranny The Indictment and Defence of the Philosophical Life in Plato, Nietzsche, and Lévinas broschiert ISBN 978-3-95948-295-0 gebunden ISBN 978-3-95948-296-7

62.1

Daniel Aebli Entwicklungslogik des Schönen. Erster Band: Studien zur Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaft ISBN 978-3-95948-309-4

62.2

Daniel Aebli Entwicklungslogik des Schönen. Zweiter Band: Studien zur Theorie der Kunst- und allgemeinen Geschichte ISBN 978-3-95948-310-0

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63

Peter McCormick Blindly Seeing Essays in Ethics: Discourses, Sayings, Sufferings ISBN 978-3- 95948-305-6

64

Peter McCormick In Times Like These Essays in Ethics: Situations, Resources, Issues ISBN 978-3- 95948-306-3

65

Madeleine Kasten, Rico Sneller, Gerard Visser (eds.) Benjamin’s Figures: Dialogues on the Vocation of the Humanities ISBN 978-3-95948-344-5

66

Chris Bremmers, Andrew Smith, Jean-Pierre Wils (eds.) Beyond Nihilism? ISBN 978-3-95948-342-1

67

Ellen Wilmes Nicht-Dualität. Dōgen Zenji trifft Michel Henry Das absolute Idem des Zen – eine Über-setzung unter dem Blickwinkel der radikalen Lebensphänomenologie ISBN 978-3-95948-352-0

68

Gerhard Burda Mediale Identität/en Politik, Psychoanalyse und die Phantasmen von Verbindung und Trennung ISBN 978-3-95948-368-1

69

Veronika Teryngerová and Hans Rainer Sepp (eds.) Ethics in Politics? ISBN 978-3-95948-369-8

70

Giovanni Jan Giubilato (Hg. / ed.) Lebendigkeit der Phänomenologie / Vividness of Phenomenology ISBN 978-3-95948-419-0

71

Vít Pokorný Psychonauticon A Transdisciplinary Interpretation of Psychedelic Experiences ISBN 978-3-95948-375-9

72

Eddo Evink Transcendence and Inscription Jacques Derrida on Ethics, Religion and Metaphysics ISBN 978-3-95948-418-3

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73

Friedrich Hausen Philosophie der Psychobiologie Hans Lungwitz im Kontext einschlägiger Positionen und Diskurse ISBN 978-3-95948-478-7

74

Alfred Barth Publish or Perish! Ein Schwarzbuch der Wissenschaft ISBN 978-3-95948-333-9

75

Peter McCormick Modernities Histories, Beliefs, and Values ISBN 978-3-95948-441-1

76

Peter McCormick Solicitations Poverties, Discourses, and Limits ISBN 978-3-95948-442-8

77

Benjamin Kaiser und Hilmar Schmiedl-Neuburg (Hg.) Philosophie und Literatur ISBN 978-3-95948-454-1

78

Cathrin Nielsen und Karel Novotný (Hg. | eds. | éd.) Die Welt und das Reale | The World and the Real | Le monde et le réel ISBN 978-3-95948-489-3

79

Saman Pushpakumara The Tremendous Power of the Negative Hegelian Heritage in German, French, British and American Philosophical Traditions ISBN 978-3-95948-455-8

80

Eder Soares Santos Paths of Science of Man in Heidegger ISBN 978-3-95948-459-6

81

Friedrich G. Wallner, Fengli Lan, Jan Brousek (eds.) Constructive Realism in Chinese Medicine ISBN 978-3-95948-484-8

82

Markus E. Hodec und Hilmar Schmiedl-Neuburg (Hg.) Literatur und Leib Philosophische Perspektiven ISBN 978-3-95948-490-9