Premises: Essays on Philosophy from Kant to Celan

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Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Reprinted by Stanford University Press in 1999 by arrangement with Harvard University Press Library of Congress Card Number: 99-67024 Original printing 1999 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 0I 00 99

Contents

Premises Hermeneutic Ellipses: Writing the Hermeneutic Circle in Schleiermacher The Promise of Interpretation: Remarks on the Hermeneutic Imperative in Kant and Nietzsche

1

44

81

"Disgregation of the Will": Nietzsche on the Individual and Individuality

143

"1.ectio": de Man's Imperative

181

Position Exposed: Friedrich Schlegel's Poetological Transposition of Fichte's Absolute Proposition

222

The Quaking of Presentation: Kleist's "Earthquake in Chile"

261

The Gesture in the Name: On Benjamin and Kafka

294

The Second of Inversion: Movements of a Figure through Celan's Poetry

337

Sources

389

Index

391

PREMISES

The thoughts pursued here cannot be summarized in this proposition concerning w1derstanding without encountering resistance-not in this proposition nor in the three or four sentences into which it can be analyzed and expanded. That understanding is in want of understanding_:_a proposition to be read as the principle of understanding, as an announcement or summation, as a demand or complaint-will nor have said anything about understanding unless it itself is understood, and unless it is understood that this proposition speaks also of the impossibility qf understanding and thus the impossibility of this very proposition. "Yu,derstanding is in want of understanding" means first of all that derst · is not only cone· ne with understanding things but must itself erstoo whenever anvthin 1s to e u"n erstood. In w1 erstanding, something is doubtless made accessible, but 1t ecomes accessible only in the very act of understanding-under its conditions or presuppositions. The object t'o which understanding refers may exist in the absence of any understanding of this object; but as the subjectl matter of understanding, it is already a subject-matter affected by under"- I standing, and as such it remains uncomprehended as long as its under-/ standing is not understood as well. If the dctermtning moments _.£f nnderstanding remain in ark if it is no -v n under od that there are sue moments- both historical and structural-then the subject..matter to be unde7st~d also remains obscur~. Among the structural_

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conditions without which understanding can never take place is therefore this: in understanding not only something but also the understanding of this thing must be understood. That understanding is not only a matter of understanding things and that it, too, wants to be understood means, furthermore, that understanding_produces effects a n d ~ incompl~te wi~t the unde~1 standing of these _f_ffects. Whether one defines unaerstanding as an oc'"c"urrence, a proce~,~ act, it is never a relation between two already given, immobile entities that somehow remain untouched by this relation; rather,....it is ,a_relation in which each term constitutes itself in th~ first lac -the der ms into the reader of this sentence the sente mto the sentence of this reader. nderstanding is thus a procedure of reoproc ect1on and alteration Unless it is understood that understanding is this ~alteration and indes;d the ili:ecatian of al! sedimeo.tt::d.mnstitutions of the elements involved in its process, then ';;;t only does understanding itself remain pncomprehended but also everything that is all too easily called its subject and its object. If, by contrast, it is understood that understanding is change and alteration, then one must also concede that it cannot be arrested in a stable pattern of transfor~on. Even when understandin exercises co l over itself eflectio it oes not stop transformin its sformative ~and ioelgctably becoming ano er one. nderstanding is in want of understw.din~ thus also means that however much it may make itself into a theme, it still cannot be stabilized into an essence, a paradigm, or an Idea that would not then be exposed to another understanding, an understanding incommensurable with the first. Understanding wants to be understood by another understanding and wants to be understood otherwise: paradoxically, it is itself only as an understanding exposed to another one and, at the limit, exposed to something other than understanding. To understand means "to be able;' "to have the capacity;' "to take something upon oneself;'' "to be in charge of it:' The proposition concerning understanding thus means, in its third version, that understanding requires the ability to be performed. The dominant philosophical tradition since antiquity has interpreted this ability as techne, ars) art, and has furthermore taken it for a methodologically controllable procedure. This tradition proceeds in principle from an historically invariant analogy between the objects and subjects of understanding. The security

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of knowledge was based on the correspondence between the structure of the sentence and that o~ the_subject-matter; the "art of understanding" could never go wr~s long as its rule,s correse_onded to those of the "art of e · ' tructural analo between the possibilities of )l.nderstanding and the actuality of its objects un erwent its first convulsion when it became doubtful et wled e had command ov~r 1.ts own groun . he dissociation of the possible and the actual unleashed by this"6doubt-the dissociation between what can be thought and made, on the one hand, and what is given, on the other-did not '-weaken the faith in techni ues and technology, in abilities and powers; rather. i! culminated in a_philosophy an a. praxis of the wi l-to-eower and of the will-to-will that termined to convert the iven into somethin made and thereb restore the broken uni of e self Possibility and ability were define ntotec o o IC as self-enabling and self-empowerment, while un erstan ing was interpreted as self-understanding, the understanding of the already understood, and thus the understanding of understanding itself. An echo of this formula of self-formation - a formula of the will-to-will and the will to self-understanding-may still be heard in the proposition "understanding is in want of understanding?' But the dissociatmn that w..au1moosed to be healed in the 12ure selfr~erstanding once ~ai~rupts in this very relation~As ; ;elf- eneratin and self-realizin "fa.cul " understand.in was su osedto· have een its own uncon · · mise its absolut auto rotasis, and it was suQJ?osed to have drawn from this premise a cone 10 out itself But the proposition "understanding is in want of understandui"g''-a proposition in which this self-relation is reclaimed-remains valid only as long as understanding is not yet understood, the will to understanding has not yet been fulfilled, no ability has yet secured itself, and no capacity has been saturated in a conclusive experience of understanding. The proposition is valid only under the premise that understanding cannot be fulfilled.~ l o ~ u1!S1gstanding still only_ wants to be understood it cannot et be understood: it cannot yet be ena ed .l_!!,.d is not ye,t even possible. The proeosition o un e~ standin -a pro ositio atin that understandin rovides its ossi 1 i -thus touches upon somethin else, something that o not corr n an be ass1m1 ate to 1t. The proposition points toward something uncomprehended and in-

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comprehensible, toward an incapacity and an impossibility. Not only is the privilege of technique and technology shaken by this other- by the impossible-but so too is the possibility of regulating and methodologically controlling understanding. And so too is the very possibility of understanding in general, its capacity to find its premises in itself, to understand its own understanding, to stand before and thus take charge of this understanding: its ability, in sum, to be understanding at all. The proposition of understanding sidesteps understanding. Precisely what understanding means is supposed to be grasped and comprehended in this proposition; but since this understanding is tied to the unfulfilled and unfulfillable demand to grasp itself and to include itself in its comprehension, this proposition says that understanding must understand itself from its impossibility. That understanding is in want of understanding is, in short, an aporia: the proposition says that understanding-precisely because it is necessary-does not understand. And since the proposition must participate V1 this non-understanding of understanding, it says that it, the proposition, does not yet say anything. But with this aporetic result at least this much is said, however implicitly: understanding is not a formal-logical relation that must accommodate itself to the principle of non-contradiction; non-understanding is not opposed to understanding but is its inconceivable ground and ungraspable background; and understanding, like nonunderstanding, moves in an open arena that wants to be understood in terms other than those defined by the categories of the understanding and wants perhaps to be other than understood. For it is always another who understands and whose difference from what is understood remains irreducible. Something else is always understood-even when one understands "oneself''-and indeed understood in such a way that a relation to this other, however familiar or well-known it may be, is each time created for the first time or for the first time anew. Hence understanding is indeed a relation, but a relation to something new, however old it may be; it is a relation to another, even when this other would be the nearest and closest to hand; and it is a relation to sometl1ing that can offer itself only as something uncomprehended, even when it is already considered fanuliar. It is thus each time anotl1er, a new and non-anticipated relation to something uncomprehended and until now incomprehensible. But if it is indeed a relation to something incomprehensible until now) then it must also be a relation

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to something still incomprehensible in understanding, for otherwise precisely this-the thing uncomprehended until now-would not be understood. If understanding relates itself each time to something strange, then it must be an estranged relation. If it comports itself to another, then it must be a comportment altered by this other and opened to further alterations. Understanding is not therefore a simple relation but an insolubly aporetic one. At the limit, it is a relation to the nonrelational, hence a relation.less relation: a reference to retreat, hence a self-retreating reference. Understanding stands off from itself-not just occasionally, because of the constitution of something called its object, or because of the individual incapacities of those who seek to understand. Understanding stands at a distance from itself only because it refers to something uncomprehended. Otherwise it would not be understanding at all: it would be knowledge. Something is understood only in its incomprehensibility. And this incomprehensibility does not simply accompany understanding as an unavoidable evil or a regrettable remnant of finitude that could be cast off under ideal conditions of communication; rather, incomprehensibility is what first grants understanding, discloses its possibility, and preserves it as a possibility. If something is understood, it is only because it stands back from understanding. It is one of the remarkable features of the movement of understanding that the incomprehensible, the foreign, and the irreducibly other-each of which sets understanding into motion in the first place-can be brought to rest at the end of this movement (but it is precisely this end that is at issue here), can be stabilized into an object of representation, thematized by a subject, and thus made into a cognized, controlled, reduced other of this subject. Understanding does not start by referring to objects; rather, objects constitute themselves in the act of understanding. Once they are constituted (and this final constitution is, once again, in question) the movement of understanding comes to a halt and turns into a certification of the object and a self-securing of cognitive reason. Perhaps the best place to observe the leap from an understanding that is exposed to the incomprehensible into a self-consciousness that posits its objects is in Hegel's description of Greek "mantics.'' In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History Hegel explains that the mantic, like the philosopher, proceeds from thaumazeinJ from wonder or astonishment-indeed, from what Aristotle (in the same section of the Meta-

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physics to which Hegel refers) describes as an aporon: a place without any outlet, an impasse, something incomprehensible. 1 "For the Greeks only eavesdrop [lauschen] on natural objects;' Hegel writes, "and intimate these objects with an inward-directed question concerning their meaning. Just as, according to Aristotle, philosophy proceeds from wonder, so does the Greek intuition of nature proceed from this wonder." 2 Not only does an aporia precede philosophy and set it into motion; in every one of its steps philosophy remains bound to it. The relation of spirit (Geist) to this aporia consists in a pause, a breakdown of knowledge, a mere "eavesdropping" on something that communicates itself, and as Hegel then indicates, this relation expresses itself in a question about an unfamiliar meaning: None of this means that spirit encounters something extraordinary when compared with the usual .... On the contrary, Greek spirit, once excited, wonders about the natural of natun;. It does not relate to it in a dull manner as something given: Greek spirit relates to it as something that is at first foreign to spirit but something to which it nevertheless has the intimating confidence and the faith that the natural bears something within itself that would be friendly to spirit, something to which spirit could relate in a positive manner. (Hegel, 12: 288; Lectures, 234) According to Hegel, then, the "natural" of nature, its essence and its meaning, cannot be conceived in wonder as some sort of "given" but must be perceived as a non-given, something that holds itself back, something "foreign" to which spirit entertains no "positive" relation, and that means an absence of any determinate relation of positing: no 1. See Aristotle,Metapkysica, ed. W Jaeger (Oxford: Clarendon, 195~), 982612; Metaphysics, trans. W D. Ross, in The Works ofAristotle, ed. R. McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), 692. 2. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie der Geschichte in Werke in zwanzig Biinden, ed. E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970 ), 12: 288. Cf. Leaures on the Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956 ), 234; hereafter, Lectures. · All translations in this volume are new. Whenever possible, I have included references to readily available English translations; but in no case are these translations themselves quoted. -trans.

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positing relation at all. The relation to the "natural" is thus at first the aporetic relation to the rdationless. By relating itself to the "natural;' spirit refers to something that is not given to it, something that it does not posit, and something that it therefore cannot make into an object of representation. "Nevertheless;' Hegel writes-and this "nevertheless" marks the turning point from the aporia to representation and spiritspirit has "the intimating confidence and faith that the natural bears something within itself, something that would be friendly to spirit, something to which it could relate in a positive manner:' The foreign, the non-given, is not recognized as friendly but is, instead, "intimated:' not known but believed. Whatever the natural is supposed to "bear in itself" must therefore already be presupposed in order for spirit to be able to enter into a "positive" relation to it. It is this supposition of faith that turns the foreign into something friendly, the non-given into a given, and makes that which withdraws from every determinate position into something positive. Hegel does not dissolve the aporia of understanding. On the contrary, for him, the aporia constitutes the resistance from which experience must rebow1d and turn back on itself By supposing that the incomprehensible has a meaning, spirit understands it as its object and understands itself as its positing. Hegel describes the leap from aporia to representation - or the contraction of difference into position -in the following terms: "Yet the Hellenes did not remain immobile before these feelings [wonder and intimation]; rather they brought out [herausstellten J the inwardness about which their intimation asked, making it into a determinate representation [Vorstellung], an object [Gt;genstand] of consciousness" (Hegel, 12: 288; Lectures, 234). To suppose that the foreign would be something friendly is essentially to suppose that an interiority inhabits that absolute exteriority which hitherto could be experienced only as an aporia, something impossible to experience. It is to presuppose an interiority that can be "brought out" and placed in the hands of knowledge as a "determinate representation" and thus as an "object of consciousness?' The positing of spirit brings itself out in this bringing forth of representation, and from the aporia something is brought to light that ought no longer be aporetic at all: positionality itself. The "natural" of nature, its essence and meaning, is only the positing and self-positing of spirit. And this positing consists in the

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movement from wonder to mantic supposition and semantic explication, a movement leading understanding to representation, concept, and philosophy. Positing, setting into place, position-these are always, for Hegel, placing together, co-positing, inaugurating a synthesis of spirit with itself in its other. Even in wonder, where spirit does not understand and does not understand itself, it can still consolidate its powers of cognition by presupposing an inwardness, a meaning, or a significance, and thereby achieve knowledge and self-knowledge. The path of spirit is in every case circular: it leads spirit from its presupposition of an absolute other to this other as the other of itsel.£ and in this way it returns spirit to itsel£ Hegel thinks the course of autoposition not only as the path of thinking but also as the way of song, poetry, and literature: Similarly, the Greeks listened to the murmurings of the springs and asked what was the meaning of this. . . . The Naiads, or springs, are the external inception of the muses. Yet the muses' immortal songs are not what one hears when one listens to the murmurings of springs; they are the productions of spirit in its capacity for sensible hearing, which produces [them] in its eavesdropping on itsel£ (Hegel, 12: 289; Lectures, 235) Spirit does not simply listen in astonishment, thus caught in an aporia; it hears "sensibly;' sinnig) in a reasonable manner. Spirit thus listens for the sense and meaning of a murmuring that, as "something foreign at first;' must have lacked sense. In this way, it can produce "in its eavesdropping" the song of meaning "in itself.' The work of spirit is the appropriation of the foreign, the semanticization of the asemic, the positivizing of the aporetic. The song of the muses is not the mere murmuring of the springs but only the "sensibly" heard murmuring, the murmuring heard with a sense for its sense. Spirit hears itself singing in the spring as its muse. Song-and thus art in general-is not incomprehensible nature but a representation of spirit that perceives and understands itself in nature. Every muse is already the muse of the mantic and thus the muse of speculative auto-semanticization: The interpretation and explanation of nature ... the demonstration of sense and significance in nature-this is the activity of subjective spirit

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to which the Greeks gave the name manteia. ... Both the material and the explicator who brings out what is significant belong to manteia . ... Nature answered the questions of the Greek: this is the sense in which the statement that man obtained answers to the questions of nature from his spirit is true. (Hegel, 12: 28~0; Lectures, 235) 3 Wherever this speculative inversion of question and answer takes place there must be a circular path between spirit and nature. Its logical form is the self-presupposition of spirit in its other-and "spirit'' is nothing but this self-presupposition. Interpretation, as the "bringing out'' or understanding "of sense and significance:' is for Hegelian spiritwhether in its subjective, objective, or absolute state-always only a "bringing forth" of something previously put into place, a laying out of something earlier laid down, an understanding of a previous positing. The hermeneutics of the mantis is autohermeneutics. It is self-understanding and, more exactly, the understanding of understanding itself as position. But the aporia remains uncomprehended. In the aporia-and in the astonishment that responds to it-the Greeks, according to Hegel, do not simply stand still. On the contrary, "Greek spirit, once excited:' spirit that has "the natural only as incitement'' (Hegel, 12: 288-89; Lectures, 234), takes the only path that the blockage of the aporia leaves open: a path back to itself. Something is then understood, to be sure, but it is understood only by turning away from that which, as incom3. Other passages from the same context point in a similar direction: "Thus the Delphic priestesses, without consciousness and without reflection, in the rapture of enthusiasm (mania) uttered unintelligible sounds from themselves, and only then did the mantis lay down a specific meaning for these noises" (12: 290; Lectures, 236). And: "manteia in general is poetry-not arbitrary fantasizing but a fantasy that puts spirit into the natural and is meaningful knowledge" (12: 291; Lectures, 236-37). Interpretation (Auslegen) is, one could say, a putting inside (Hineinlegen). It obeys the mechanism of projection that Goethe ironically recommended in the "Tame Xenien 11": "Im Auslegen seid frisch und munter,/ Legt ihr's nicht aus, so legt was unter'' (In interpretation be fresh and cheerful; if you don't lay it out, lay something down) (Goethe, Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, ed. Erich Trunz [Hamburg: Wegner, 1964], r: 329). How little the Hegelian presentation grasps the peculiarity of Greek mantics becomes clear in Jean-Luc Nancy's commentary on its first philosophical discussion in Plato's Ion; see J.-L. Nancy, Le partage des voix (Paris: Galilee, 1982); c£ "Sharing Voices;' trans. Gayle L. Ormiston, in Tramforming the Hermeneutic Context, ed. G. L. Ormiston and A. D. Schrift (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1990 ), 2u-59.

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prehensible, first demands comprehension, whether it "excites" or "incites?' It is thus understood at the cost of not understanding the very excitation to which the further course of understanding owes its impetus. The significance is grasped but not the mania: the Sinn (meaning) is understood but not the Wahnsinn (de-mentia) 4 that undoes the production of meaning. For de-mentia is not supposed by spirit nor posited in its representations and concepts but is, rather, whatever lies in advance of all positings and presuppositions and thus precedes every possible understanding. It is an other that is not the other of spirit and not the other of understanding but is other than any other still susceptible to semanticization and ontologization - an other that offers no point of support for the hermeneutic reduction to sense and enters into the horizon of self-positing only as its disruption. The aporia incites understanding, but it remains incomprehensibleand with this abyss of understanding, so too does understanding itself Understanding cannot, therefore, as Hegel proposes, obey the matrix of a thoroughgoing dialectization; rather, it obeys a double law-one could call it the law of dia-lecture, 5 double reading: the law of hermeneutic reduction whereby a stable semantic position is attained, on the one hand, and on the other, the dismaying law of de-posing under which no position, no understanding, and no mantic, semantic, or hermeneutic reduction are possible. If understanding understands itself, it has already forgotten the devastation, the astonishment, the wonder, and the eavesdropping from which it took its point of departure. Since, however, it does not understand its provenance, it does not understand. If, by contrast, it remains in astonishment, it does not understand yet again. Something is "understood" in everv. case onlv. because it is not "understood:' Understanding is possible only between these two impossibilities of understanding-the hermeneutic parousia of spirit in its autoposition and de-posing sans phrase-only between them, hence only insofar as the movement of self-positing must always be exposed and once again discharged by another understanding, and thus only insofar 4. See Hegel, 12: 290; Lectures, 236. 5. See my snidy, pL:roma-zu Gmcsis tmd Stmktur einer dialektischen Hermeneutik bei Hegel, in G. W. F. Hegel, Der Geist rks Christentums: Schriften 1796-1800, ed. W. Hamacher (Berlin: UUstein, 1978), 7-n3. My work does not discuss premises but rather the strucnire of the dialectical "pre" and the speculative mass. I also make the suggestion that one should speak of diaporia rather than aporia-of an impasse in the passage itsel(

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as its standing suspends itself in this unposited, groundless "between;' There is understanding, including self-understanding, only from the aporia-and the aporia is what asemantically, alogically, and adialectically grants understanding, including dialectical understanding, by refusing it. When understanding fails, so too do philosophy and art. With his interpretation of understanding as dialectical self-presupposition, Hegel does not simply react to the Platonic-Aristotelian aporia; he also links up with Kant's thesis on Being as absolute position. Kant first set down this formula for the fundamental thought of modern metaphysics in his treatise of 1763, The One Possible Basis of Proof for a Demonstration of the Existence ofGod: "Existence [Dasein] is the absolute position of a thing;' 6 He then comments: "The concept of position or positing [Position oder Setzung] is completely simple and is the same as the concept of Being.... If a thing is considered posited in and for itself, then Being [Sein] is as much as existence [Dasein]?' This position is absolute in the Kantian sense because it refers purely to the existence of "a thing in and for itself" regardless of all relations to possible predicates. Just as the positing of Being cannot be the copula in the predicative judgment, this positing cannot be a predicate, since every predication must already presuppose the existence of its logical subject. 7 And this absolute, pre-predicative presupposition, as the unconditioned fiat of Being, does not become any less absolute because it must still entertain one relation: that of the subject to this positing. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant explicitly defines the modalities of Being-being actual, being possible, being necessary-in such a way that they are said to "express the relation to the faculty of knowledge" (A 219; 6. Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Konigliche Preussische [later, Deutsche] Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin and Leipzig: Georg Reimer [later, Walter de Gruyter ], 1900-) 2: 73. There is a reprint of the Akademie edition of this treatise alongside an English translation entitled The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God, trans. Gordon Treash (New York: Abaris, 1979 ). All subsequent citations of Kant refer to the Akademie edition, hereafter "Ak:' except citations of the Critique of Pure Reason. In accordance with scholarly tradition, all citations of this work refer to its original editions (A, B). 7. Kant explicitly writes: ''The relations of all predicates to their subject never indicate something existing, for the subject must have already have been presupposed as existing?' And "if the subject is not already presupposed as existing, it remains in every predicate undecided whether it belongs to something existing or merely to a possible subject. Therefore, existence cannot itself be a predicate" (Ak, 2: 74; emphasis added).

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B 266). 8 Being thus consists in a positing with respect to the subject of knowledge, and this positing-whether it be a pure synthesis of transcendental apperception or, as in Fichte, a primordial "enactment''is the original act of the cognitive subject. In this act the Being of the thing is posited along with the Being of its knowledge in the subject. The absolute positing of Being is a positing of knowledge. Because this positing, as a transcendental act, is absolutely foundational and because it conditions both conceptuality and intuition, the "supreme principle" of experiential synthesis resides in it: "The conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience" (A 158; B 198). The essence of knowledge, like the essence of the object known, is conceived as an original act of positing, as a dictate of subjective consciousness in which it dictates itself and affects itself. 9 Kant's ontology and that of his speculative followers can thus be characterized as autotheseology and ontotheseology. ' Existence must be based on the transcendental positing of the self if knowledge is to have "objective reality;' that is, if knowledge is supposed to refer to existence in such a way that, according to the Critique of Pure Reason, it can find in existence "meaning and sense" (A 155; B 194). If the criterion of existence-of its objectivity and reality-is "meaning and sense~' if positing always posits an existing entity by simultaneously positing meaning, then ontotheseology is possible only within a logic of Being as meaning: only as semontology. But ontotheseology is at the same time only possible if the agent that posits Being 8. Kant's thesis on Being should be compared to an essay of Martin Heidegger from Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1967), 273-307; cf. "Kant's Thesis on Being;' trans. Ted Klein, Jr., and William Pohl, The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 4 ( 1973): 7-33. For Kant's later theory of positing, see Eckart Forster, "Kant's Selbstsetzungslehre" in Kant's Transcendental Deduaions, ed. E. Forster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 217-38. 9. These positio-ontological premises are universally valid and are thus even valid for things in themselves, hence for things with no relation to our modes of thinking and sensing-albeit with an important distinction. These premises have, for Kant, transcategorial validity. In a very important section of the Critique ~fJudgment, § 76, Kant says: "But our entire distinction between the merely possible and the actual rests on this: the merely possible means the position of representation of a thing with respect to our concept and the ability to think in general, whereas the actual means the positing of a thing in itself (apart from that concept)" (Ale, 5: 402).

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and meaning posits itself in what it has posited, if it posits and knows itself as meaning. The fact that the existential position of the subject posits itselfas positing immediately makes this position into a reflection. After Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, this is most clearly expressed in Hegel's Science ofLogic: "Existence [Dasein] is only being-posited [Gesetztsein]; this proposition expresses the essence of existence;' 10 Since, however, being-posited originates from the "absolute presupposition" in which positing bends back on itself and reflects itself, Hegel can conclude: "Being-posited is thus a determination of reflection:' And furthermore: "Being-posited is a relation to other, but to reflectedness-in-itself" (Hegel, 6: 33; Science, 407). As being-posited, Being is, for Hegel, other; but the absolute premise of this other-precisely the premise that it is posited unconditionally and thus posited as something unconditioned- refers the other back to its positing and turns its existence into reflectedness. Reflection takes being-other back into itself and is the very unity of itself and the other; more exactly, it is the other as self The circle of position is thereby closed: the experience of the other has shown itself as an experience of the same, reflection as expanded position - or reposition -and the premises of theseology are once again secured, this time under the sign of speculative dialectics. In every relation to the other the original positing returns to itself, understands itself in this other as a form of its understanding, and is in this process of self-comprehension the unity of subject and substance, knowledge and meaning, thesis and semiosis. It is ontotautology-but therefore aporetic. And yet the fundamental aporia -the aporia of positing, of founding itself-remains uncomprehended once again. A positing that is supposed to be unconditioned must be a positing without presupposition and thus a subjectless positing. It must purely posit itself; but by positing itself, it already posits itself, and so the positing that it is first supposed to perform must already allow itself to be presupposed. But such an allowance, admission, or concession of a presupposition can no longer be thought according to the logic of positing. It must be other than a presup-position and other than a positing of a prior support; on the contrary, in the very act of positing it must be precisely the opening that remains independent of the positing, an opening onto another that itself 10. Hegel, 6: 32; cf The Science of Logic, trans. A. V Miller (New York: Humanities Press, 1969 ), 406; hereafter, "Logic?' (Miller translates Dasein as "determinate being.")

Premises 14

withdraws from the power, the faculty, and the possibility of positing. But if a positing can be a positing only by allowing something other than itself-other than its thetic Being-then an original positing cannot be performed. It is in need of a difference with respect to itself that can under no condition be reduced to a thetic act. Only by allowing something other than itself can it then grant admission to itself-and grant admission to itself, in turn, merely as that which it is not yet and never will have been, as the mere promise of a position, never as this position itself But this is to say that any position is essentially defined from a distance from itself, and since this distance remains, for it, unmeasurable, it means that positing is an ineluctably aporetic act, the act of a non-action, an act of omission. And it means that positing, affected by something other than Being understood as position, never is-never "is" according to its own sense of "isi' according to the sense of thetic Being. Philosophical negligence cannot then be held accountable for the fact that the aporia of positing is not understood, never analyzed, and has not been made into a theme. The aporia, as a displacement of every positing, is not-and therefore cannot be a theme for understanding. Making possible every theme and making every one impossible, it must be an anathema to understanding in every possible sense. If positing must give leave to a non-positing; if positing, exposed, must break down in order for it to be a positing in the first place, then the structure of positing must be determined by a twofold leaving: by a leaving out (an ellipsis) and a letting in (the disclosure of a possibility). It must not be able to be what it must be able to become. It can claim to be only in the form of a demand for Being, not as a thetic Being but only as an imperative "Be!" And yet, since it is an aporetic claim, it must place this dictate of its fiat under this reservation: it cannot be pronounced and cannot be performed. Finite reason cannot ground itself; it can posit itself only by letting this positing be given out as an apodictic but unfulfillable imperative. And this not only applies to the transcendental act of theoretical reason -an act that posits the thing in itself in pure self-affection as an appearance of an appearance 11 -it also applies, 11. In one of his last notes Kant wrote about the thing in itself as ens per se: "It is an ens rationis = x of the position of itself according to the principle of identity wherein the subject, as self-affecting, hence according to the form, is thought only as appearance" (Opus postumum, Ale, 22: 27).

Premises 15

a fortiori, to the law of practical reason, a law that can demand selfconsistent, autonomous action and Being only because it, under the conditions of finitude, never offers this action and this Being as actual. It was Schelling who, in his Philosophical Letters on Dogmaticism and Criticism, gave the structure of the Kantian aporia of positing its most pregnant formula: "Be! That is the supreme demand of criticism:' 12 The ontological imperative that Schelling deciphers in Kant's work transforms the principle of Being as position into the unfounded demand for a Being-unfounded because it first demands a foundation for any position. Demanded in this way, Being cannot persist as a result, a fact, or even only as a being. The imperative testifies to this: from its inception positing is exposed to something else, something that is neither realized nor even conceivable in this positing. Indeed, the imperative indicates that positing is exposed positing; abandoned by itself, it is thus ex-position. Since ontotheseology understands Being and language in such a manner that it can find an autonomous foundation only in the command that there be a foundation and only in the promise of a grounding, it itself must be constituted in an ex-thetic manner. It cannot be concerned with Being and the meaning of this Being as givens but only as tasks given out, as assignments demanded and omitted. And for its part, it can only be an ontotheseology that gives up. The principle of ontotheseology is a leap; its form-if it can still be called a form-is the aporia. To the ontological imperative Schelling discovers in Kant's theory of position there corresponds the "hermeneutic imperative;' whose existence Friedrich Schlegel asserts in one of his fragments: "There is a hermeneutic imperative:' 13 The imperative "Understand!" does not simply mean "You must understand" but also "You do not yet understandand you do not yet understand that you must understand?' The hermeneutic imperative explicitly states that understanding is necessary, and it implies that understanding cannot be actual as long as it still must be demanded; indeed, it states that understanding is impossible as long as its possibility must be first disclosed in the imperative demand. Only in 12. F. W J. Schelling, Siimmtliche Werke (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1856), 1.1: 335; cf. Phiwsophical Letters on Dogmaticism and Criticism, in The Unconditional in Human I y bran-

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as11CUrer mon object. -Montaigne, Essa.is III 2

Am,mg the: fundamental ther,etic and crit1ca.l mode:'> of reading literary text'> is the claim that these text'> prer,ent a '>pecific reality in language. It is not important for this e under'> to ito, '>td at a very high price, for it implies a dim1rbing hermeneutical c maker, literary texts into empirical objects that are then '>upp thri'>, all rer,earch into literature must conceive k a\ "Y'>tematic re'>titution: the re'>titution, more exactly, of those realit1etlves are said to correspond; the re'>tituti, m of the