The Other Time: Philosophical Approaches to the Past that has Never been Present 9783495994115, 9783495994108

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Walter Schweidler

The Other Time Philosophical Approaches to the Past that has Never been Present

https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495994115 .

https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495994115 .

https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495994115 .

Walter Schweidler

The Other Time Philosophical Approaches to the Past that has Never been Present

https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495994115 .

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schweidler, Walter The Other Time Philosophical Approaches to the Past that has Never been Present Walter Schweidler 262 pp. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN

978-3-495-99410-8 (Print) 978-3-495-99411-5 (ePDF)

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1st Edition 2023 © Verlag Karl Alber within Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, Germany 2023. Overall responsibility for manufacturing (printing and production) lies with Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG. This work is subject to copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Under § 54 of the German Copyright Law where copies are made for other than private use a fee is payable to “Verwertungs­gesellschaft Wort”, Munich. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Nomos or the author. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495994115 .

Table of Contents

Introduction

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Time’s turning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1. Aspects of time’s turning in traditional conceptions of temporality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2. Contemporary approaches to the past that never was a present . Emmanuel Lévinas: The »illeity« of human desire . . . . . . . . Jacques Derrida: »Illeity« deconstructed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Time personified . . . . . . . . . . . . Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: The Second Time . . . . . .

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21 22 30 35 43

3. Short survey of the following texts . . . . . . . . . Metaphysics, phenomenology, and the other time The anthropologized subject of time . . . . . . . . Religious horizons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some editorial notices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a. by the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . b. by the translator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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48 49 54 57 60 60 62

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1. Metaphysics, Phenomenology, and the Other Time . . . . . . . . .

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Overcoming Metaphysics: A Fundamental Feature of Twentieth Century Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Place of the Past Reflections on Ricoeur’s Ontology of Forgetting . . . . . . . . . . .

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Fulfilled Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1. »One sees and has already seen«: The present as place of the past.

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2. »He who has been, from then on cannot not have been«: Presence as a trace of what has been. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3. »From now on, you do know him and have seen him«: Presence as past, which has never been present . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Thinking is Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 1. From a topic to a principle: The phenomenological concept of time a) Time as the reality of consciousness . b) Time and the reality of the possible . c) The subject as the reality of time . .

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109 109 114 119

2. From a topic to a limit: The analytic notion of time . a) Time as physical limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . b) Moment in time, point in time and course of time c) Time-substance and time-relation . . . . . . . . . . d) Absolute and relative presence . . . . . . . . . . . .

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122 122 126 128 130

3. From the limit to the principle: thinking is time a) The singularity of time . . . . . . . . . . . . . b) The »incipientness« of time . . . . . . . . . . c) The finitude of the temporal . . . . . . . . . .

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133 133 136 138

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2. The Anthropologized Subject of Time

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On the Social Origin of Time in Language . . . . . . . . . . 143 1. The paradox of temporality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 2. The phenomenological reformulation of the paradox of temporality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 3. The sociocultural aspect of temporality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 4. The temporal character of truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

The Philosophical Relevance of »Images« . . . . . . . . . . 155 1. The philosophical importance of the »image-question« . . a) Philosophy and the »iconic turn« . . . . . . . . . . . . . b) The iconic aspect of epistemic being [erkennendes Sein] c) The iconic aspect as metaphysical aspect . . . . . . . . .

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155 155 158 161

2. The problem of perspective . . . . . . . . a) Reversing the gaze [Blickrichtung] . . b) The iconic perspective . . . . . . . . . . c) The iconic as metaphysical perspective

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164 164 171 175

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3. The question concerning the alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

The Mirror of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Time’s Redeeming Urgency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

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3. Religious Horizons

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The Self-Repeating Origin Ontological Aspects of Ricoeur’s Concept of Hermeneutics . . . . 209 1. Philosophy and the time of self-reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 2. Narration and the time of self-interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 3. Religion and the time of reorigination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

Inquiring after God in His Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 1. Thinking within the paradox: Irrevocability of the given and showing-itself of the invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 2. Thinking after the paradox: The openness of perfection and the manifestness of the secret . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 3. Thinking despite and because of the paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 List of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

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Introduction

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Real philosophers do not brag about their discoveries. Rather, like the superior from the inferior deities, they conceal their treasures.1 We should prick up our ears especially when they ›admit‹ the limits of their – and our – spirit. When Kant claims to have reached the limits of all practical philosophy with the ›fact of reason‹, when Wittgenstein swears the hopelessness of any attempt to exceed the limits of language, when Husserl confesses that we lack the names for the peculiarity of ›living present‹, they tell us that beyond the point marked there is nothing left for us to look for, that the work is done. Merleau-Ponty has indicated this aspect with the remark that the philosopher’s job may be finished when we have learnt to wonder with the things, not about them.2 The final explanation is not the one which explains everything but the one which releases us from any further search for explanation. In other words: the solution of the philosophical problems may consist in something that must not be found by us but happen with us, something that does not lie before us but is going on in us. It is worthwhile to approach some of the most difficult, sometimes seemingly ›obscure‹ philosophical positions of our time in the light of this assumption and to look what follows from it. The most general conclusion to be drawn would be that we had to learn what real philosophers have to say by listening to what they claim as being ›unsayable‹ for them – and us; and that our real task was to be content with that. If we came to this consequence, would that mean that we took an ›irrational‹ approach to philosophy? Or, if it should be apt to its subject, would this mean that philosophy itself were an ›irrational‹ or at least ›unscientific‹ enterprise? That can hardly be considered if one simply brings to mind Hume’s »skeptical solution« to the core question of all 1 Cf. Francois de Fénélon, Telemachus, son of Ulysses, ed. by Patrick Riley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3. 2 Cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 84.

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scientific method, the problem of induction. Science itself is, according to Hume, based on the practical solution of a theoretically unsolvable problem. We have become accustomed to inferring the future from the past, although we will never know why that is possible. According to Hume »all our knowledge must have been limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and senses«3, if we had not kept to what we now find within us as »the great guide of human life«4, custom and habit. There is no reason in the facts which legitimates our expectation that nature is following the rules which connect past and future; there is only and solely one principle which explains »the difficulty, why we draw, from a thousand instances, an inference, which we are not able to draw from one instance, that is, in no respect, different from them«5, namely that we have acquired that habit »so necessary to the subsistence of our species, and the regulation of our conduct, in every circumstance and occurrence of human life.«6 So, it is our habit and our expectation which can be explained in reference to the conditions of our life and its preservation; but this is of course no explanation for the regularity of nature itself. The skeptical »solution« however consists in the conclusion that with the explanation of our practice everything that science has to say about the regularity of nature has been said, there is no need and no space for any further explanation. Or, in the words of W.V.O. Quine: »That there are or have been regularities, for whatever reason, is an established fact of science; and we cannot ask better than that.«7 So, at least in this Humean and, cum grano salis, Quinean view, the transformation of a theoretical question into a practical solution is not specific to philosophy in contrast to science but, in the contrary, a common feature for both. Truth enters life by means of such transformation. In the following texts I want to trace this kind of transformation. My approach can be shortly characterized by two steps. First step: I want to follow one specific topic in the work of some current philosophical positions which is, as I think, typical or paradigmatic for what I called 3 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 40. 4 Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 32. 5 Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 32. 6 Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 40. 7 Willard Van Orman Quine, »Natural Kinds«, in Ontological Relativity and other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 126.

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above the discoveries that great philosophers rather hide than pride in their fundamental deliberations. I mean the topic of »a past that has never been a present« which we find in the thoughts of Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas and, more or less dependent on the latter, Derrida – a topic which can be traced back to the speculative metaphysical but also highly innovative anthropological thoughts in the works of F.W.J. Schelling. I am only marginally referring to the mentioned authors themselves. It seems to me an implication of that tricky topic that one can shed light on it not easier from the texts in which it is explicitly named than from contexts which are structurally related to it on a deeper, though apparently more or less separated level. Such contexts are the themes of the articles collected in this book. We will find such contexts in what can be called self-referential works of art (Proust, Velázquez), in specifically paradoxical conceptions of the activity named philosophizing (Wittgenstein, Heidegger), in phe­ nomenological analyses of the dependencies between remembering and forgetting (Ricoeur, St. Augustine), and in philosophical reflections upon religious revelation (Kierkegaard, Marion). In all these contexts traces of that peculiar background of our thinking, the past that has never been a present, can be found, and especially the term »trace« itself in its growing relevance for current philosophical thinking can be to a certain degree explicated. The second step which must be done through these different contexts continuously in intimate connection with the first shall lead to the thesis that inspires and guides this book. The figure of thinking which has been named as the »past that has never been a present« is not only, as the first step had to point out, one example for the specifically philosophical way to care for the discoveries which we cannot but hide when we deal with the limits of our conscious and rational ways of worldmaking; rather it is the one among them which stands pars pro toto for what is going on in all – or at least in many and in the most typical of – these manifestations of self-silencing. It discloses the essentially temporal aspect of what is going on when we transform claimed solution into gained absolution. I will characterize this aspect by the explicitly ambiguous expression »time’s turning«. With this term I refer indirectly to the apostrophe of time as »the

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affecting of self by self«8 which Merleau-Ponty took over from Kant and Heidegger and as »that astonishing divergence of the identical from itself«9 which we find in Lévinas. Time is the original act and process of turning itself against itself and into itself, arising out of itself and vanishing in itself. In the history of ontology this process has been reconstructed as the »nicht innerzeitige Wesen der Zeit«. Merleau-Ponty refers to it with the phrase: »What does not pass in time is the passing of time itself«10 and in his concept of »eternity« in which he as well as Lévinas find their perhaps most intimate connection to the metaphysical tradition. In order to give an explication of the expression »time’s turning« we will therefore have to start with a short view on the most elementary traditional conceptions of time in Western metaphysics.

1. Aspects of time’s turning in traditional conceptions of temporality As cultural history shows there has been a whole cluster of roots of that abstract concept of »time« which finally was shaped by the early Greek philosophers.11 For the ancient cultures, temporality was experienced primarily as the structuring of social life through repetitive rites; cultural anthropologists speak of the »social time«12 which connects human beings in cyclical and linear structures with their environment and with nature in general. But already in the earliest documents we find aspects of one metaphorical account of time which has never lost its actuality through all later periods, and which can be found until today in philosophical 8 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A. Landes (London & New York: Routlege, 2005), 494 with reference to Kant’s definition of the »Gemüt« and Heidegger’s concept of time in Kant und das Wesen der Metaphysik. 9 Emmanuel Lévinas, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Berlin: Kluwer, 1993), 28. 10 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 492. 11 In these short remarks I mainly support myself by the contributions of Jan Assmann, Michael Theunissen, H. Westermann and P. Porro to the article »Time«, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 12 (W-Z), ed. by J. Ritter, K. Gründer and G. Gabriel (Darmstadt: wbg Academic, 2019), 1186–1220. 12 Cf. Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication – The Logic by which Symbols are connected (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 46.

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characterizations of temporality. I mean the understanding of time by its comparison to the view of a human individual by which we transcend the present: the view upon the past and the future; this metaphor is an archaic, »spatialized« feature which, according to Merleau-Ponty13, is almost natural for »everyone«: time is what we look upon as lying before and behind us. Time is »seen« as the past which lies ahead of our eyes, and it is felt as the invisible but not unreal future that lies behind our back. We would, in order to get a glimpse on both sides, have to turn round: In many archaic cultures we find the practice of divination as the organized attempt to »look« to the future and predict what the divinator sees before it has happened. The human body and what is visible and invisible for it: this has been perhaps the most original paradigm of the experience of time from the beginning up to our present. What, however, is the decisive presupposition for the role which in this metaphorical view is played by the human body who is perceiving its surrounding? Certainly, it is its capacity of turning: to turn away, to turn towards, to turn aside and to turn round – and, not to forget, to turn off. Time is not something we watch as an object lying before or behind us, rather we live out of it and into it, and time’s turning is the congenial way to keep us remaining in the perspective on it. This could, as Merleau-Ponty says, never be the case if we were ›transcendental subjects‹ in the Kantian sense. Then we would not have any position in time at all. But the contrary is the case: in some way, we do not only have time, but we are time. »If, however, the subject is identified with temporality, then self-positing ceases to be a contradiction, because it exactly expresses the essence of living time.«14 And if and because time is what we are posited in, it is directed; in time it must and will turn out what belongs and what does not belong to a living being’s life. Time reveals where we come from and where we are going to in order to find ourselves. If we want to understand this directionality of time, we need more than the metaphorical, we need a conceptual understanding of temporality. The traditional metaphysical concepts of temporality have obviously arisen of the desire to develop a rational and, what at the first glance seems self-evident, a theoretical 13 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 489: »Everyone talks about time, not as a zoologist talks about the dog or the horse, using these as collective nouns, but using it as a proper noun. Sometimes it is even personified. Everyone thinks that there is here a single, concrete being, wholly present in each of his manifestations, as is a man in each of his spoken words.« 14 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 494.

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understanding of the directionality and the directions of time. Let us take a quick look upon some of these old metaphysical concepts. Chrónos: The concept of time which was developed in the Greek tragedy and early philosophy refers to a divine power which rules over human life and which can bring it to completion and fulfillment but can also destroy it. Time decides what belongs and what does not belong to our lives. But early as well appears the understanding that there is a counter direction in which human life is involved into self-inflicted culpability and decline. To a certain degree we decide what belongs and what does not belong to our time. Both directions have one feature in common: the presupposition that life is a chain of events that follow each other and from each other. So, chronology implies that there must be a measure by which the time of the whole world is structured and calculable. The Greek thinkers have seen the crucial connection between the measure and the origin of time. The Aristotelian concept of chrónos presupposes the unity and ubiquity of time, but it still refers to the timeless power of God as its ontological source. However, Aristotle did not take over the platonic model of chrónos as an image (eikón) of eternity formed by the divine maker of the world, the he; for Aristotle the chronological structure of temporal reality, the difference between ›earlier‹ and ›later‹, is constituted by motion and natural change. This is the substratum which corresponds to the mathematical signs by which the soul counts and measures time’s passage. The soul itself, however, is not simply a link in the chain of nature, but the necessary condition of the connection between these links. Motion and change presuppose an original transition which leads back to the ontological source of time and so indirectly to the eternal. Aiṓn: Originally the word for the ›life‹ of divine and human beings. For Plato the term signifies the eternal reality of which the chronologically ordered kósmos is a mere image. The eternal archetype does not contain any ›earlier‹ or ›later‹ stage, it is absolutely timeless; the cosmic image is also eternal (aiṓnios), but only in the sense that it has unlimited duration. This implies that it cannot have a beginning or an end ›in time‹, in other words: temporality owes itself to a transition which is not part of but which at the same time brings about the passage of time. Here we face a highly paradoxical constellation which we will find again in the whole process of 16

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philosophical reflection about the essence of temporality, and which is the core of what I want to mark by the ambiguity of the expression »time’s turning«. Thereby we are led back even behind Plato. Michael Theunissen has considered the »Wende der Zeit«15 [turn of time] to be the fundamental signification which has been given to the concept of aiṓn in the lyrical work of Pindar. Aiṓn for Pindar is the eternity which breaks into and which at the same time makes (and in some way creates) the world into which it breaks. Eternity is thereby understood and can since then only be thought as the turn into time which already presupposes what it turns into itself. There is a direction of time which leads at the same time from eternity to temporality and from temporality to time, in other words: there are two directions in one and the same act of transition between the eternal and the temporal. This paradoxical constellation has as one consequence that we might have to think the eternal at the same time as timeless and, given the existence of the temporal, as its past. And this is a really exciting constellation when it comes to the religious and metaphysical ideas of eschatology: it could demand from us no less than to ask the question if an »eternal life«, should it exist, might have to be thought as lying not ahead of us but behind us. Kairós: The word comes from contexts of handicraft and the art of war. It designates the ›decisive point‹, be it the moment in which the weaver must thread the thread or in which the warrior must detect and hit the gap in the enemy’s armor. In the statement »it is time to…« the word »time« signifies a moment which could and does not exist but only for the doer who is on the point of doing what he has to do. There is an exceptional moment which turns out to be what it is only if the doer becomes aware of and takes the initiative to grasp it. It is instructive to contrast this concept with another temporal characterization of the human life which is less important in philosophical contexts but marks the counterpoint to the exceptional aspect of the ›kairós‹: hēmās, the »day« which constantly dictates what a person is doing, the horizon of the ›daily work‹. For the archaic Greek poets this word marked the transient, transitory, perishable condition of a normal human life, so that we are ›ephḗmeroi‹, creatures of the day, as Euripides names us. One has called this the post-homerian signification of human nature. Opposite to this, the aiṓn, the break of the eternal power into our 15 Cf. Michael Theunissen, Pindar. Menschenlos und Wende der Zeit (München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2000).

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everyday life, is a radical counteraction against our normal condition, our nature, and the kairós is the instant in which one has to grasp the chance that this break offers us. Therefore, however, it is required that we recognize an opportunity which would not have existed without its recognition, that we turn into our will something which could have never affected us without or before that turn. The term kairós signifies, in the words of Lévinas, that a »trace can be taken as a sign«16, and this means also: it can be made a sign. Exaíphnēs: Plato uses the term in the »7th letter« to designate the climax of the philosophical process of knowledge, the point in which after long and intensive discourse the light of truth is illuminated and breaks through the community of its seekers. In his dialogue »Parmenides« the term marks the principle of time which does not itself have a place within the temporal reality, the point of change between rest and motion and the instant of transition which is the only possible explication for the relation between the eternal (the ›ideas‹) and the temporal beings. It is a border concept of philosophical thinking, »this strange nature... is in no time at all«17. The »instant«, as distinct from the word »moment«, marks the unforeseeable, unexpectable condition of the unique event that changes everything and is the only key to the understanding of that change. The German word for »instant«, which is »Augenblick«, unfolds the combination of a visual and a temporal meaning; this combination invokes the theological implications of the instant as the crossing point between the succession of temporal sequence and simultaneity of the divine view that overlooks everything from the beginning to the end: »deitas est quae omnia videt.«18 As such an instrument for the explication of the transition between succession and simultaneity however the concept equally acquires significance for something which is seemingly far away from the theological features: I mean the art theoretical and iconographic analysis, e.g. in the reconstruction of the self-referential relation between the content of a work of art and the processes of its making and its reception. 16 Emmanuel Lévinas, »The Trace of the Other«, in Deconstruction in Context. Literature and Philosophy, ed. by Mark C. Taylor (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 345–359, 357. 17 Plato, Parmenides, trans. by Reginald E. Allen. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 156 e. 18 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, (Grand Rapids: Christian Ethereal Library, 2009), Q. 13, A. 8.

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Animus: The Aristotelian reference to the activity of the soul as the condition of measuring time was radicalized in the conception of Plotinus in which time is thought totally independently of motion and natural change. For Plotinus, past, present and future are constituted by the emanation of the soul out of the noús, the timeless, self-consistent intellect. So, time presupposes no natural motion but only the soul as the condition of its temporalization, and if the soul returned to its ontological origin that would mean the end of time. The concept of soul here however is understood as a metaphysical, non-individual spirit which is the ontological ground of all mental processes in the human dimension. In contrast to this, Augustine in his »Confessiones« sees the distentio animi which is constitutive for the measurability and consequently for the reality of time as an operation of the human soul. Time does exist only in us, in our souls. This however raises the fundamental problem to explain the origin of time without presupposing a temporal act in which the transition from the divine aeternitas to the course of natural time must have taken place. In the 12th book of »De civitate Dei« Augustine confesses how difficult it is to deal with this philosophical problem. Because there cannot have been temporal change before the existence of finite creatures, time must have been created equiprimordially with the world. But if there is and has ever been a ›logos‹ who came into the world out of an eternal sphere, then the existence of the world must have included from the first moment a message which can neither be part of the eternal nor of the natural temporal sphere: »ante dico aeternitate, non tempore«19. So, there must be something like ›another time‹, turned out of natural temporality into eternity and vice versa. The solution of the problem requires the reference to creatures who would not exist without natural time but which are nevertheless not tied to it: the angels. They were the first creatures to be confronted with the logos, the word, and that means: with the temptation that is associated with this confrontation, i.e. the temptation of the sin. Aevum: The medieval concept for such an ›other time‹ has been worked out meticulously in Thomas Aquinas’ angelology in the »Summa Theolog­ ica«, a text which in the history of metaphysics has become significantly important because Leibniz followed it up when he developed his concept of 19 St. Augustine of Hippo, The city of God against the pagans, ed. by Robert W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), XII, 27.

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the ›monad‹.20 The Roman ›nimbus‹, the Christian ›halo‹, the ›aura‹: these are symbolizations of a sphere which the medieval metaphysics ascribed to the angel and which Leibniz finally associated with the monad: an unlimited duration which is not eternal in the sense of timelessness but which has no end in time. The angel’s time, so Thomas Aquinas, »whether it be contin­ uous or not, is not the same as the time which measures the movement of the heavens, and whereby all corporeal things are measured […] because the angel's movement does not depend upon the movement of the heav­ ens.«21 The figure of thought on which these ideas are based is not a mere historical relic, rather it is of high importance for our current thinking at least in one peculiar respect. What the angel in the Christian metaphysical worldview stood for was the topos of the anticipation of the end of time within the temporal order.22 This however is a topos with high actuality for the phenomenological conceptions which we find in Heidegger’s question about the »Ganzseinkönnen«23 or, again, in Lévinas’ emphasis of the ›trace‹: »A trace would seem the very indelibility of being, its omnipo­ tence before all negativity, its immensity incapable of being self-enclosed, somehow too great for discretion, inwardness, or a self. And it was indeed important for us to say that a trace does not effect a relationship with what would be less than being, but obliges with regard to the infinite, the abso­ lutely other.«24 It is the perspective of an accomplished time which might build the closest bridge between the metaphysical tradition of the under­ standing of temporality with our search of the ›lost‹, the ›other‹, the ›sec­ ond‹ time as a past that has never been a present.

20 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, trans. Gonzalo RodriguezPereyra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), § 11. 21 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. Q. 53, A. 3. 22 Cf. Leo Scheffczyk, Einführung in die Schöpfungslehre (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997), 162. 23 Cf. Heidegger, Martin Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York and Evanston, IL: Harper & Row, 1962), §§ 61–66. 24 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 357.

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2. Contemporary approaches to the past that never was a present Any demarcation between »contemporary thinking« and »history of phi­ losophy« can only have a methodological, not a systematic justification. Philosophical texts can be explored in order to show their historical conditions, sources, filiations, effects etc.; that is the philosophy-historical perspective. When we ask if a philosopher is right, i.e. when it comes to the question of truth, then the age of a text does not play any role. Having said this, one must however admit that there are (not philosophy-historical but real) philosophical epochs, and that they can and must be characterized by systematic categories. So we can legitimately speak of a post-Kantian epoch in a not primarily philosophy-historic but in a systematic perspective. There is one figure of thinking which is good as the definition of the point of departure of that post-Kantian epoch, namely the »transcendental subject«. It is the »I, that must be able to accompany all my ideas«, the abstract centre of all our rational operations, the subject of thought, calculus, deduction and of universal moral obligation which has been dismissed in the post-Kantian epoch. Who took its place? The answer to this question can be – not understood, but – read from Foucault: man.25 One could speak of the »anthropologization« of the Kantian »subject«.26 Language and signification, culture and history, the person and the living body: anthropological categories have been posted in the focus on which the Kantian gaze had been directed as the »transcendental subject«. Up to here, this has been a historical statement; the real philosophical question about that change of epoch is: why? What is it that can explain or at least illuminate the claim which has been conceded to »man«, i.e. to us by us, in this epochal turn? At this point, time comes in. Man, as Pascal has said, infinitely transcends man.27 Perhaps this is the paradoxical relation from which we can understand or at least retrace the shift from the transcendental to the anthropological constitution of our philosophical questioning. Here Cf. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: Archaeology of the Human Sciences, trans. Tavistock Publications (London: Routledge, 2002). 26 Cf. Vincent Descombes, Le même et l’autre. 45 ans de philosophie francaise (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979). 27 Blaise Pascal, Pascal’s Pensées, trans. William Finlayson Trotter (Michigan: E.P Dut­ ton.1958), § 72, 16–17. 25

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we may find the key to the paradoxical constellation in the core of all post-Kantian thinking which Lévinas formulated in his thesis: »Time is needed, the remission of the immobile eternity, of the immanence of the whole in the whole, in order that there be established the new tension, unique in its kind, through which intentionality or thought is awakened in being.«28 Let us have a look on the role of time’s turning in the wake-up call of our thought.

Emmanuel Lévinas: The »illeity« of human desire There is especially one fundamental differentiation in the work of Lévinas for the understanding of which we must refer to genuinely anthropological categories in order to avoid a premature view of it as a religious or even theological topos. It is the differentiation between need and desire from which he spoke as the key to the understanding of the »liturgical orientation« of a human work. Lévinas himself was quite aware of the peculiarity of the task that is imposed on us when we try to characterize the point which makes this differentiation between need and desire a key not of any religious foundation of morals but, in the contrary, demarcates »ethics itself«29 as the anthropological core of the religious as well as any other human form of life. The term »liturgy« plays a key role in accomplishing this task. This term here, in the purely ethical, not at all theological, context, stands for »the work of the same as a movement without return of the same to the other« and its understanding as »the exercise of an office that is not only completely gratuitous, but that requires, on the part of him that exercises it, a putting out of funds at a loss«30. »Desire is the need of him who has no more needs«; it »is born in a being that lacks nothing, or, more exactly, it comes to birth on the other side of all that can be lacking him or can satisfy him«31. For the religious believer it may be Buddha or Jesus Christ who appears before the inner eye with these words; but for Lévinas they describe the essence of the truly humane, the ethical existence in general. 28 29 30 31

Lévinas, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, 29. Cf. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 350. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 349. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 350.

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The religious connotations of the term »liturgy« are obvious, but the more necessary and the more enlightening it is to make precise what the term »religious« does mean in this context. When we take »religion« in the broad, genuinely anthropological meaning of the word, then it invokes, as Clifford Geertz said with the words of George Santayana, the »sense of the ›really real‹«32 which structures the symbolic expression of the experience of »social time«33 in the archaic human society. It is the other world, which the »savage mind«34 gets into contact with by the fundamental forms of life which require and thereby constitute the social coherence and identity, i.e. the sociality of the human being. These forms of life are the rituals. It is the ritual existence, the complex of »sacred action«, in and by which, so Clifford Geertz, »this conviction that religious conceptions are veridical, and that religious directives arc sound is somehow generated«35. This is the anthropological context from which we can understand »the desire for another« which, according to Lévinas, »is our very sociality«, as the original condition and presupposition of social coherence and obligation. As such an original condition desire must not be confused with any need that can only arise from already existing social relationships, from structures of social exchange which make the work one does for another always also indirectly work for one’s own social existence, i.e. a work by which »the other is converted into the same«36. So, the »religious« aspect of desire is in its essence the trace of the symbolic encoding of the fundamental anthropological datum that human beings live together for the sake of something which they consider to be prior to any need they may feel or fulfill in the relation to one another. In this sense »desire« sustains and per­ vades all stages of religious consciousness, from the mythical-magical and the totemistic up to the cultic stadium and also to the belief in the Redeemer and God incarnate in a human person. And the sociocultural manifestation of this »desire« consists essentially in the structures of »social time«, i.e. in the rituals.

Clifford Geertz, »Thick Description«, in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 112. 33 Cf. above fn 12. 34 Cf. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, trans. George Weidenfield (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 35 Geertz, »Thick Description,« 112. 36 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 350. 32

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It has been anthropologists like Claude Lévi-Strauss37 and Walter Burkert who particularly saw the nature of ritual as the key to under­ standing the whole mythical-magical consciousness within archaic human society. Magical rituals do not arise from the technical intention of »primi­ tive« men to ban and ask powers who only exist in their imagination. They are no pseudo-technical, but fully conscious symbolic actions, in Burkert’s terms: »expressive acts« [Ausdruckshandlungen]. »Rituals are demonstrative, not to say, theatrical in character. Thereby the well-known paradox in sacris simulata pro veris accipi [in sacrificies imitations are taken for real] becomes commonplace: Signs may be replaced by signs.«38 In rituals human beings express their dedication to something which is more important for them than their needs and, in the end, their lives; they transcend themselves and make their social existence a sign of what they live by. So, the desire beyond all need signifies the human consciousness of the free gift in the origin of all social exchange, of the uncatchable donation as the beginning of any mutual reward within all social relations. And, beginning with the mythical-magical stadium, the religious consciousness translates this dedication to something more important than himself into man’s belief in a world beyond the one he lives in. The »other world« is, to speak in philosophical categories, the ontological scheme by which the action which is purified of any egoistic and self-related interest of the agent can be translated into a corresponding view of reality. This is the anthropological core of Lévinas’ concept of desire. »In desire the ego is borne unto another in such a way to compromise the sovereign identification of the I with itself, an identification of which need is but the nostalgia, and which the consciousness of need anticipates.«39 What, however, is the anthropological explication of such a translation scheme? The answer to this question is old and it is still valid, namely: the other time. Time, so we learn from Ernst Cassirer in his »Philosophy of Symbolic Forms«, the locus classicus of the philosophical analysis of the »mythical thinking«, is the first and fundamental scheme by which the anthropological theory can give an explication of the human distinction Cf. Claude Lévi Strauss, »Die Struktur der Mythen«, in Strukturale Anthropologie, trans. Hans Naumann (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1971), 226–254. 38 Walter Burkert, »Glaube und Verhalten«, in Le Sacrifice dans l'Antiquité, ed. by J. Rud­ hardt and O. Reverdin (Geneva: Vandoeuvres, 1981), 95. [Translation: Thomas Schmidt]. 39 Burkert, »Glaube und Verhalten,« 95. 37

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and disjunction between the sacred and the profane. The symbolic form of the ontological code of the sacralization of human practices is essentially temporal. »Specifically human existence-usages, customs, social norms, and ties-are thus hallowed by being derived from institutions prevailing in the primordial mythical past; and existence itself, the ›nature‹ of things, becomes truly understandable to mythical feeling and thinking only when seen in this perspective.«40 And time in this context means past, or more precisely: absolute past. »The past itself has no ›why‹: it is the why of things. What distinguishes mythical time from historical time is that for mythical time there is an absolute past, which neither requires nor is susceptible of any further explanation.«41 Chrónos in this archaic meaning can be called the ontological principle of the mythical code of human ritual, and it is encoded in the mythical world-view as the other time, a past that determined whatever was, is and will be present for us. »In the particulars of his conscious behavior, the ›primitive,’ the archaic man, acknowledges no act which has not been previously posited and lived by someone else«, so we read from Mircea Eliade, who continues: »some other being who was not a man. What he does has been done before.«42 The other who has not been a man but in whom what I am going to do has been done, done already and forever: here we are on the threshold to Lévinas’ concept of the past that has never been a present. How can we cross this threshold? The answer which we find in Lévinas is at least twofold. On the one hand we are strictly required to reject the religious scheme of the other world: we have, according to Lévinas, to be radically atten­ tive »to the interdiction against seeking the beyond as a world behind our world«43. We have to turn not towards a higher or hidden kind of being but beyond being itself. »Within being, a transcendence revealed is reverted into immanence, the extra-ordinary is inserted into an order, the other is absorbed into the same.«44 Where can we find the way to the kind of turn which is thereby required from us? The answer is definite: in time, and

Ernst Cassirer, Philosophy of Social Forms Volume 2 – Mythical Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 105. 41 Cassirer, Mythical Thought, 106 f. 42 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (Princton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 4. 43 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 355. 44 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 355. 40

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this means, in the past. However, the only thing we will ever find of this past which we are turning towards on this way, is a trace; and it is the trace that has a face. »Such is the signifyingness of a trace. The beyond from which a face comes signifies as a trace. A face is in the trace of the utterly bygone, utterly passed absent, withdrawn into what Paul Valéry calls ›the deep yore, never long ago enough‹, which cannot be discovered in the self by an introspection.«45 The time of the other in this sense is the other time, which is in no way re-presentable for us: »No memory could follow the traces of this past.«46 No religious revelation could bring it to our mind. But this was only the first, one could say: the anti-ontotheological side of the argument; on the other hand, to characterize our relation to this immemorial past Lévinas again chooses an expression with enor­ mously religious, even ecclesiastical connotation: the term »diaconate«. This word has to signify complete responsibility, absolute solidarity »– as though the whole edifice of creation rested on my shoulders«47. Again, we need anthropological categories to give a philosophical explication of this metaphor. Responsibility for the turning of the earth: this is a feature which is characteristic for the religious consciousness, not in its mythical, but in its cultic state when the sacred action aims to repeat the origin of the world in its originality, i.e. to repeat the unrepeatable or to accomplish what must have been already accomplished in order to be accomplished again.48 Again, Lévinas thereby does not aim at a religious foundation of the »liturgic« action, but in the contrary at the philosophical – and for us this means essentially the anthropological – relevance of the past that has never been a present as the explication which we can give in our thinking for the different stages of human religious consciousness. Reading the trace of that past is not a kind of disclosure or revelation of it; it »does not simply lead to the past, but is the very passing towards a past more remote than any past and any future which still are set in my time – the past of the other, in which eternity takes form, an absolute past which unites all times«49. What we are seemingly speaking about when we think that past is what happens Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 355. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 355. 47 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 353. Lévinas explicitly refers to the book Isaiah chapter 53. 48 Cf. the article »On the Social Origin of Language« in this volume. 49 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 358. 45

46

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in and as exactly this thinking, and therefore it is what is in and by itself unthinkable for us; it is the paradox of the »entering into relationship with the ungraspable while certifying its status of being ungraspable«50. We will find this motif of the temporally »ungraspable« again in Merleau-Ponty’s presumption of »another true time«. The endpoint of Lévinas’ characterization of this ungraspable past bears the name »illeity«. Liturgy and diaconate are dedicated to it, that means: it is what prevents our liturgical and diaconal action from falling back into forms of converting the other into the same, of serving oneself through one’s service for others. Therefore the »ille« can and must not be interpreted as the »thou«, the other person, by »which Buber and Gabriel Marcel rightly prefer…to describe a human encounter«51. When Eliade interprets the mythical-magical mind’s consciousness that what the doer does has already been done as the testimony of a predecessor who has not been a man,52 then Lévinas might specify this as the consciousness that it is not what another one, one certain, concrete person has already done before me, but that this does not mean that I could not recognize this predecessor as and in the face of other persons, i.e. in my turning »toward the others who stand in the trace of illeity«53. It is again an essentially temporal explication by which Lévinas points out this constellation. »The illeity of this He is not the it of things which are at our disposal«54; but it is the »illeity of the third person«, »a transcendence in an absolute past«, it is in which myself and the others find the trace of that way on which we have passed being: »Beyond being is a third person, which is not definable by the oneself, by ipseity«55, not because he were not a person but because I were not the person I am without the relation to what has with him forever passed behind me. The paradox which Lévinas, as the endpoint of his expedition into the past that has never been a present, marks by the term »illeity« is: that he who I am is forever behind me. Let us finally touch on some of the specifically philosophical aspects which the term »illeity« illuminates. The first one is the essentially non50 51 52 53 54 55

Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 354. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 359. Cf. above fn 42. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 359. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 359. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 356.

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intentional relation which we can only establish with the past that has never been a present. The trace which we take as a sign of that past does not lead back to any conscious or volitional act by which a giver would have given us this sign: »when a trace is thus taken as a sign, it is exceptional with respect to other signs in that it signifies outside of every intention of signaling and outside of every project of which it would be the aim«56. We do not obey the order of any commander and we do not read the message of any messenger whom we could follow or serve by our tracing it back. Nor could we ourselves voluntarily pass on any command or leave any message behind us that could lead others on the trace to what, with us, lies behind them. We can leave this trace only as involuntarily as the criminal who leaves his fingerprints at the crime scene. The reason is again a temporal one: We cannot want to leave a sign into which our trace can be made not because our will were too weak to be fulfilled but, on the contrary, because we can become aware of this will only once it has been fulfilled – fulfilled so restless that no intention could further be directed towards it. »A trace is a presence of that which properly speaking has never been there, of what is always past.«57 In other words: We have here a case of »fulfilled presence«, like in the famous Aristotelian characterization of the act of recognition in which one »has seen and is seeing«58. The second aspect I want to mention is the relation between the time of the other, the past that has never been a present, and natural time. Again, Lévinas demarcates the difference between this relation and the metaphysical – and, as far as it is dependent on it – religious figure of »›another world‹ behind the world. The beyond is precisely beyond the ›world‹, that is, beyond every disclosure…«59 But what then is the relation between the other time and the time of our world. The abstractness of a face is not the mask of an eternal idea. »Nor is it an instantaneous cross-section of the world in which time would cross with eternity. It is an incision made in time that does not bleed. But the abstractness of a face is a visitation and a coming. It disturbs immanence without settling into the horizons of the world.«60 In order to make the step from the metaphorical 56 57 58 59 60

Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 357. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 358. Cf. the article »Fulfilled Presence« in this volume. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 354. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 354.

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form to the philosophical content of this passage we cannot but resort to the classical concepts of temporality. We are confronted here with no less than the immense difficulty of the Augustinian »ante dico aeternitate, non tempore«61. And we find characterizations which direct our attention back to the concepts of aiṓn and aevum. The trace is in the world, bound to the duration of its time; insofar, it is not the trace of eternity, it is the disturbing manifestation of that which is superior to natural time, i.e., to its course, but not outside of it. It »is a withdrawal of the other, and, consequently, nowise a degradation of duration, which, in memory, is still complete.«62 It is abstract, not in a logical but in a purely temporal sense. »Its abstractness is not obtained by a logical process starting from the substance of beings and going from the particular to the general. On the contrary, it goes toward those beings, but does not compromise itself with them, withdraws from them, ab-solves itself.«63 Like the angelology of Saint Thomas and the monadology of Leibniz, Lévinas conceives a reality which on the one hand does not participate in the sphere of divine eternity but which on the other hand is not subservient to the structures which constitute the order and the course of the events in natural time, neither to the causal chain of events nor to the relations between individuals and species. It is, similar to the angels and the monads for the divine creation, the trace of the accomplished and thereby transcended being in the objective world. »Illeity is the origin of the alterity of being in which the in itself of objectivity participates, while also betraying it.«64 With the term »alterity« we touch upon the version which Jacques Derrida has developed of the past that has never been present and to which the third aspect I wanted to mention here brings us even closer. The »illeity« builds the conceptual bridge to the structuralist principle that has been extremely important to cultural anthropology in 20th century, the principle which Ferdinand de Saussure called »the sign is arbitrary«65 and on which Merleau-Ponty commented saying that it had been Saussure’s

61 62 63 64 65

Cf. above fn 19. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 358. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 354. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 359. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (Bloomsbury, 2021), I § 2, 108.

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decisive insight that the signs are diacritical66. There is no original con­ nection between the sign and the object which it signifies; the signs get their meaning through the difference to all the other signs that belong to the same system and through the rules of exchange between them. That means that the relations between the signs and what they signify are prior to the speaker’s consciousness of all their significations. What Lévinas adds to this insight is not anything within the sociocultural process of exchange and signification. »The manifestation of the other is, to be sure, first produced in conformity with the way every signification is produced. The other is present in a cultural whole and is illuminated by this whole, like a text by its context.«67 However, the importance of the other for the whole system of signification completely concerns the pre-conscious sphere. »Consciousness is put into question by a face. The putting into question is not reducible to becoming aware of this being put into question. The absolutely other is not reflected in consciousness.«68 And philosophy – in Lévinas’ diction: »the ethical movement« – has not the aim to describe this occurrence, the »epiphany of the other«69, but to get us to delve into it. »It is a matter of the putting into question of consciousness, and not of a consciousness of a being put into question.«70 To become conscious of the past that has never been present means to go behind everything that could ever be present in that consciousness; »what is presented there is absolving itself from my life and visits me as already absolute. Someone has already passed.«71

Jacques Derrida: »Illeity« deconstructed Derrida approaches the past that has never been present when he relates »the concept of trace to what is in the center of the latest work Merleau Ponty, »Von Mauss zu Claude Lévi-Strauss«, in Leibhaftige Vernunft. Spu­ ren von Merleau-Pontys Denken, ed. by Alexandre Métraux and Bernhard Waldenfels (Munich: Fink, 1986), 16. Cf. also: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World (Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 29. 67 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 351. 68 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 352. 69 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 351. 70 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 353. 71 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 359. 66

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of Emmanuel Lévinas and his critique of ontology: relationship to the illeity as to the alterity of a past that never was and can never be lived in the originary or modified form of presence«72; and he intends to join Lévinas in what he understands as his conception of the »deconstruction of pres­ ence…through the deconstruction of consciousness, and therefore though the irreducible notion of the trace«73, though he uses for ›trace‹ the original German word ›Spur‹ and refers to Nietzsche and Freud. It is however questionable if he gives an adequate account of Lévinas’ idea of »illeity«. The crucial point is that the whole context which Lévinas denotes as the »ethical« and which he struggles to explicate with the quasi-religious categories of »liturgy« and »diaconate« is replaced in Derrida’s work by what could be characterized as the renewal of a »genealogy of morals«. Such that he explicitly postulates: »There is no ethics without the presence of the other but also, and consequently, without absence, dissimulation, detour, différance, writing. The arche-writing is the origin of morality as of immorality. The nonethical opening of ethics. A violent opening. As in the case of the vulgar concept of writing, the ethical instance of violence must be rigorously suspended in order to repeat the genealogy of morals.«74 It is quite obvious here that, whatever Derrida may understand exactly as »the other«, the programme of »deconstruction of presence« will inevitably encompass what Lévinas ascribes to his account of the »alterity of being« as the illeity »of the third person«75. Derrida’s »arche-writing« is in its essence not only pre-personal but impersonal; it does leave no place for »someone« who must have already gone before when we find ourselves liberated from the objectivity of the ipse which directs our conscious and present self-understanding. Nevertheless, Derrida directs our attention to an open question which Lévinas has left to us and which again leads us back to the Augus­ tinian »ante dico aeternitate, non tempore«76. The trace of what is present in our consciousness leads us back behind not only ourselves but behind subjectivity in general; if the trace remains a trace for all of us and never Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 70. 73 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 70. 74 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 140. 75 Cf. above fn 55. 76 Cf. above fn 19, fn 61. 72

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reveals a concrete, individual person, a thou, as the one who laid the trail, then the meaning of what we read must have been prior not only to our but to reading in general. »The exteriority of the signifier is the exteriority of writing in general«, and therefore, thus goes Derrida’s thesis, »there is no linguistic sign before writing. Without that exteriority, the very idea of the sign falls into decay.«77 So, »a purely phonetic writing is impossible and has never finished reducing the nonphonetic«78, and if the trace which we follow in our signs »belongs to the very movement of signification, then signification is a priori written…«79 But what can ›have been‹ written when there was no presence and no consciousness in which it ever could have been read? We are pushed towards the conclusion that it is writing itself whereby this question is raised, such that the temporal scheme by which we make the difference between what is written and when it has been written leads back to the equiprimordial origin of writing and time itself. This is not an exotic view. »Writing separates past from present«, says Walter J. Ong80; and, according to Goody and Watt, it is the literal society which must make the differentiation »between what was and what is«81. But even if we accept this, does it confirm Derrida’s idea of »the arche-writing that opens speech itself«82? Must writing have been prior to reading in order to provide the reader with the signs which allow him to read and thereby to make the difference between past and presence? Are we not then back at the Augustinian »logos«? We can hardly escape this consequence as long as we identify the past with the totality of events which preceded the present moment in the course of natural time. And so, the struggle to avoid it is one of the most important incentives for the philosophical search for the Past that has never been a present. The paradoxical constellation with which we are dealing here has been a basic motif in the time theory of the idealistic thinker Friedrich Wilhelm Derrida, Of Grammatology, 14. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 88. 79 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 70. 80 Walter J. Ong, »Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought«, in The Written Word. Literacy in Transition, ed. by Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 40. 81 Goody, Jack, and Ian Watt. »The Consequences of Literacy.« Comparative Studies in Society and History 5, no. 3 (Cambridge University Press, 1963), 304–45, 311. http://w ww.jstor.org/stable/177651. 82 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 128. 77

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Joseph Schelling. Language, according to Schelling, is always and necessar­ ily more than anything we can consciously be aware of. »Because not only no philosophical consciousness, but rather also no human consciousness at all, is thinkable without language, the ground of language could not be laid consciously; and yet, the deeper we inquire into language, the more definitely it becomes known that its depths exceed by far that of the most conscious product.«83 There is a knowledge embedded in language which anticipates what we ever could catch up with consciously. In 20th century structuralism has made this the topic of »unconscious thinking« one of the key elements of the reconstruction of our symbolic access to the world. In a reflection on Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist conception of social exchange, Merleau-Ponty remarks that it appears »on the basis of the social systems a formal infrastructure, one is tempted to say: an unconscious thought, an anticipation of human spirit [Geist], as if our science were already completely present in the things.«84 Lévi-Strauss himself has in an introduction to the works of Marcel Mauss formulated a very important statement about the relation between the content of our symbolic system and the moment of its entering into the world we live in and which it allows us to refer to: »Whatever may have been the moment and the circumstances of its appearance in the ascent of animal life, language can only have arisen all at once. Things cannot have begun to signify gradually. […] So there is a fundamental opposition, in the history of the human mind, between symbolism, which is characteristically discontinuous, and knowledge, characterized by continuity.«85 Knowledge makes it possible that we continuously deepen and extend what the objects, the events and the regularities of our world give us to read; but the symbolism that constitutes and structures the whole content of what we can come to know must, in the moment in which we have become the animal symbolicum, have entered in our life completely once and for all. Like in the case of the Rosetta stone, when a small passage of text that by chance had become translatable opened the access to the whole complex of hieroglyphic writing, a little piece of symbolism which we come to understand can allow 83 F.W.J. Schelling, Historical-critical Introduction into the Philosophy of Mythology, trans. Mason Richey and Markus Zisselsberger (New York: State University of New York, 2007), 34. 84 Merleau-Ponty, Von Mauss zu Lévi-Strauss, 19. [Translation: Thomas Schmidt]. 85 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1987), 59–60.

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us in one moment to decipher the whole system of meaning which it belongs to and depends on. Not the content of our »unconscious knowledge« but the access to it is opened by one original and definitive act of consciousness. But what does follow from this insight for Derrida’s postulate of the »arche-writing«? The crucial point is that, concerning the relation between symbolism and knowledge, we must differentiate both directions which are constitutive for it. It is true that no moment and no complex of gained knowledge will ever lead us back beyond the sphere in which and from which the symbolism and its elements derive their meaning; the logic of our symbolism will never be derivable from natural facts. But it is equally true that the moment of its entering into our life, the coincidence which has been necessary in order to open our access to that symbolism cannot be derived from that system and its logic. This coincidence remains the essentially contingent moment of facticity at the bottom of the system of our symbolic communication. Not the logic of our symbolism, but its existence depends on that facticity. The logic and the facticity of our symbolism are like the two sides of one page, inseparable and infusible. One can think of Wittgenstein’s mysterious statement in the »Tractatus«: »if there would be a logic even if there were no world, how then could be there a logic given that there is a world«86. And, again, this constellation is an essentially temporal one: it confronts us once more with the reality of »fulfilled presence«. There are facts which are at the same time constituted by a present act of consciousness and not reducible to it. When I am hungry I become aware of my hunger; but in order to make me aware of it my hunger must have been already there. However, if I had not become aware of it, I would not have been hungry. When I recognize my father in a photograph of a large group of people, I realize that I have seen him; I must have seen him in order to recognize him. But had I looked on the photograph without recognizing him I would not have seen him at all. What I have seen is decided by what I recognize now. We will discuss later Heidegger’s thesis that our concepts of truth and of reality are comprehensible only with respect to this essentially temporal constellation.87 Concerning Derrida’s thesis of the »arche-writing« however, we can already conclude that it would be 86 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, trans. by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London and New York: Routledge, 1974), 5.5521. 87 Cf. the article »On the Social Origin of Time in Language« in this volume.

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an act of confusion to claim that the transition from the unconscious to the conscious content of our thought presupposed the presence of any medium, be it written or not, within the course of time that preceded the moment in which that transition happens. The only temporal reality which it presupposes is the one which Merleau-Ponty referred to with his dictum that what does not pass in time is the passing of time itself.88 This is the reason why we can recognize and write down now what we have read in our world before it was written, neither by some predecessor nor by any alterity named the »arche-writing«.89

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Time personified When Lévinas points out the uniqueness of the experience of the other by contrasting his incomparable power of »signifying of its own« with his initially ordinary appearance »in conformity with the way every significa­ tion is produced«, he refers to »Merleau-Ponty’s remarkable analyses« con­ cerning »the totality to which he is immanent, and which […] our own cultural initiative, the corporeal, linguistic, or artistic gesture, expresses and discloses«90. This can be seen as a key passage for the understanding of the aspect which gets lost in Derrida’s speculation about an »arche-writing«, i.e., for the importance of the personal nature of him, the other, which Lévinas explicitly marks with the term »illeity«. The »third person« in the temporal background of our self-understanding is not an object of metaphysical speculation or poststructuralist deconstruction, rather the task of its comprehension has to be tackled as »a hermeneutics and an exegesis«91, i.e., as an interpretation of ourselves which the philosopher by means of his phenomenological analyses does not have to discover but only to translate into conceptual expressions. The result however to which Lévinas comes in his reflection on the »epiphany of the other« demarcates in some way the limit of such a hermeneutical exegesis: the cultural signification of the other »reveals the horizons of this world. But this mundane signification is found to be disturbed and shaken by another 88 89 90 91

Cf. above fn 10. Cf. Jürgen Kaube, Die Anfänge von allem (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2017), 239 f. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 351. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 351.

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presence, abstract, not integrated into the world […] This can be stated as: the phenomenon which is the apparition of the other is also a face.«92 Between this characterization and the reference to the topos of that »past more remote than any past and any future which still are set in my time – the past of the other…«93, there is a certain ambiguity. Where is the temporal band between my past and the other’s past, between his face and the trace which leads me back to him? The answer to this question remains open. One could say that Lévinas has shown the time of the other as the phenomenological alternative to any metaphysical explication of the »other world«, but that he has not made the step from the time of the other to the other time. In order to follow the trace in the direction of that step, it is necessary and worthwhile to look upon Merleau-Ponty’s own account of the past that has never been a present. The center of all our verbal expressions and intellectual significations is, according to Merleau-Ponty, to be found in our body. Whatever our symbols may signify, be it within the objective reality of our world or beyond it, they are embedded in corporeal activity. »It is my body which gives significance not only to the natural object, but also to cultural objects as words.«94 The term »gives« here is highly important.95 It stands for the strict rejection of any reduction of the act of perception to what is perceived. »We are not trying to derive the for itself from the in-itself, nor are we returning to some form of empiricism; the body to which we are entrusting the synthesis of the perceived world is not a pure datum, a thing passively received. For us the perceptual synthesis, is nothing but temporality, and this enables us to leave to the subject of perception its

Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 351. Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 358. 94 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 273. 95 »Das Symbol gibt zu denken« [The symbol makes us think]: the phrase of which Paul Ricoeur says, he found it compelling. Cf. the article »The Self-Repeating Origin« in this volume. The symbols have their own structuring power, a form of spiritual life. Ernst Cassirer thematized it in his fundamental concept of »symbolische Prägnanz«, in which »Prägnanz« can be read as »conciseness« or »pithiness« but also as »pregnancy«. Cassirer several times referred to Leibniz’ metonymic characterization of the presence which »geht schwanger« [lit. being pregnant] with the future (Cf. Gottfried W. Leibniz, Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand, trans. Ernst Cassirer (Hamburg: Meiner, 1996), 11). Cf. also Cassirer’s Mythical Thinking, 30 f. 92

93

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opacity and historicity.«96 Here we are on the trace that leads us back not in time but to time itself – no less, but also no more than a trace. »There is here indeed the summoning, but not the experience, of an eternal natura naturans. My body takes possession of time; it brings into existence a past and a future for a present; it is not a thing but creates time instead of submitting to it.«97 Thus, it is in the body where we find the »unconscious thinking« which in its temporal essence is a pre-conscious thinking with which we will never be able to catch up fully. »Rather than being a genuine history, perception ratifies and renews in us a ›prehistory‹.«98 In this view, subjectivity and temporality come as close together as in Augustine’s distentio animi: »The duality of naturata and naturans is therefore converted into the dialectic of constituted and constituting time«, so that we will understand our access to the world only »by thinking about time and showing how it exists only for a subjectivity, since without the latter, the past in itself being no longer and the future in itself being not yet, there would be no time – and how nevertheless this subject is time itself […]«99 But where then can our thinking turn to in order to find the content of that from which it is in the end inseparable, i.e. its object? The answer to this question can only lead back – »back« in a logical as well as a temporal sense – to the »background which is in fact the world« and the »all-embracing adherence to the world« from which »each act of perception appears itself to be picked out«.100 At this point, i.e. as the answer to the question about the connection between thinking and perception in their mutual relatedness to the world, Merleau-Ponty reaches the sphere in which Lévinas has situated the absolute past: »reflection does not itself grasp its full significance unless it refers to the unreflective fund of experience which it presupposes, upon which it draws, and which constitutes for it a kind of original past, a past which has never been a present.«101 Let us have a look at the contrast with Lévinas’ account of our topos. First of all, Merleau-Ponty brings in a third factor without which our dealing with the relation between consciousness and its pre-conscious Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 278. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 279. 98 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 279. 99 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 280. 100 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 281. 101 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 281. 96 97

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background could not be our theme at all: reflection, i.e. our thinking. It is not the banal stating of a matter of course when we refer to the fact that »the problem we have set to ourselves – that of sensoriality or finite subjectivity«102, is a problem within – and in some way a problem of – philosophical reflection. It is highly important to give account of the difference between what we want to find out and what we have to say about our conscious and pre-conscious knowledge on the one hand and the activity which we are involved in by our thinking reflection on it on the other hand – a difference which itself has an essentially temporal nature since in our thinking there is »the strange power which it possesses of being ahead of itself, of launching itself and being at home everywhere, in a word, in terms of its autonomy«103. Once we have started thinking, we are and we can be sure that there will be an answer to every question we were able to ask, because the answer must have been in some way already present in our mind, otherwise we would not have asked for it.104 But this certainty rests upon one simple moment of facticity: that we have started thinking. Whatever we say about the relation between our thinking and the world, we say it willy-nilly about the act of reflection which takes place when we say it. It is in such thinking reflection, where the correspondence between subjectivity and objectivity, which we take as the ground of our philosophical concepts of reality and of truth, is constituted. But this ground has a background which falls into oblivion when we confuse such reflection with thinking as such – an insight that nourishes the most radical, the Wittgensteinian, conception of»overcoming metaphysics« in the 20th century.105 But no thinker has more intensely emphasized the temporal nature of that confusion than Merleau-Ponty whose latest and unfinished work The Visible and the Invisible thematizes from its beginning the background of knowledge which does not consist in Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 280. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 432. 104 Merleau-Ponty refers here within a quotation of Pierre Lachièze-Rey to the »Socratic problem« which Heidegger has made the motto of »Being and Time«: »›How will you set about looking for that thing, the nature of which is totally unknown to you? Which, among the things you do not know, is the one which you propose to look for? Andi f by chance you should stumble upon it, how will you know that it is indeed that thing, since you are in ignorance of it?‹ (Meno 80 D)« (Cf. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 431). 105 Cf. the article »Overcoming Metaphysics: A Fundamental Feature of Twentieth Cen­ tury Philosophy« in this volume. 102

103

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any knowledge but in the »perceptual faith«. Already in the Phenomenology of Perception it is the »fact of birth« which, according to Merleau-Ponty, draws the limit to any attempt to integrate the temporal background of our thinking into the scope of its actually or potentially present content. »Space and perception generally represent, at the core of the subject, the fact of his birth, the perpetual contribution of his bodily being, a communication with the world more ancient than thought.«106 I am not the spirit who has the knowledge which is presented in the totality of the contents of the book of the world, I am the reader of that book, and therefore the only chance to go back behind all these contents is – not to search an act of arche-writing of that book but – to ask what is going on here and now in my act of reading. I am at the same time in the book and outside of it, like a painter who paints himself while painting his painting.107 This is the constellation because of which Merleau-Ponty’s has been called a philosopher of ambiguity.108 »This ambiguity is not some imperfection of consciousness or existence, but the definition of them. Time in the widest sense, that is, the order of co-existences as well as that of successions, is a setting to which one can gain access and which one can understand only by occupying a situation in it, and by grasping it in its entirety through the horizons of that situation. The world, which is the nucleus of time, subsists only by virtue of that unique action which both separates and brings together the actually presented and the present; and consciousness, which is taken to be the seat of clear thinking, is on the contrary the very abode of ambiguity.«109 I think that this is the paradoxical starting point of any philosophical attempt to get into the »nucleus of time«: the insight that in order to get out of us into the world as it is in itself and not just for us we must not avert our gaze from ourselves but, on the contrary, direct it towards what we are doing here and now, where and when we are philosophizing and thinking about it. In other words, Wittgenstein’s insight that if metaphysics consists in the philosopher’s talking towards – and thereby unconsciously about – the state in which he thinks to have

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 296. Cf. the article »The Trace of Time« in this volume. 108 Cf. Alphonse de Waelhens, Une philosophie de l’ ambiguïté: l’existentialisme de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, (Louvain: Publications universitaires de Louvain, 1951). 109 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 387. 106 107

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got beyond the limits of language, then overcoming metaphysics can only succeed in philosophy’s talking about itself.110 It may have to do with this third factor beyond the appearance of the other in the cultural context and his »signifying of its own« that for Lévinas the time of the other demands a certain break in my own self-relation while Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the gain, the support and reliability which my bodily existence owes to the other time. For Lévinas, the other’s trace signifies »the insertion of space in time, the point at which the world inclines toward a past and a time. This time is a withdrawal of the other…«111 For Merleau-Ponty, »my first perception and my first hold upon the world must appear to me as action in accordance with an earlier agreement reached between x and the world in general, my history must be the continuation of a prehistory and must utilize the latter’s acquired results. My personal existence must be the resumption of a prepersonal tradition. There is therefore, another subject beneath me, for whom a world exists before I am here, and who marks out my place in it. This captive or natural spirit is my body, not that momentary body which is the instrument of my personal choices, and which fastens upon this or that world, but the system of anonymous ›functions‹ which draw every particular focus into a general project.«112 The subject encounters the other time not as the trace of a withdrawal but as the reserve of possible and in the end »incontestable acquisition«113. Thereby the subject is metonymic for time itself, and thinking transcends time in no other sense than that of what we just have called the acquisition: »What is known as the non-temporal in thought is what, having thus carried forward the past and committed the future, is presumptively of all time and is therefore anything but transcendent in relation to time. The non-temporal is the acquired.«114 Objects which depend, other than the natural world, on our thinking do not connect us with a timeless sphere, but they show that temporal acquisition itself has different spheres. It is not timelessness into which we are put by cultural

110 Cf. my article »Wozu spricht die Metaphysik«, in Wozu Metaphysik?: Historisch-syste­ matische Perspektiven, ed. by Christopher Erhard, David Meißner and Jörg Noller (Munich: Karl Alber, 2017). 111 Lévinas, The Trace of the Other, 358. 112 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 296. 113 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 486. 114 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 456.

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objects, »like the church, the street, the pencil or the Ninth Symphony«, but rather »a more occult time than natural time«115. As well as I must not think myself as the spirit who overlooks everything that is written in the book of the world but rather as the reader of that book, I must not confuse real time with a homogeneous »series of instances of ›now‹, which are presented to nobody, since nobody is involved to them«116 but I have to realize its ontological complexity. »There can be time only if it is not completely deployed, only provided that past, present and future do not all have their being in the same sense. It is of the essence of time to be in process of self-production, and not to be; never, that is, to be completely constituted. Constituted time, the series of possible relations in terms of before and after, is not time itself, but the ultimate recording of time, the result of its passage, which objective thinking always presupposes yet never manages to fasten on to.«117 Thus, real time, witnessed as what is, to use Lévinas’ expression, the »ungraspable« of it, remains the blind spot of all our thought and consequently also of any philosophical reflection on temporality. This is the reason why natural »time«, the time of being entities, cannot direct our thinking towards the experience of temporality. »If the objective world is incapable of sustaining time, it is not because it is in some way too narrow«; temporality cannot and has not to be added to it, rather »what being itself lacks in order to be of temporal order, is the not-being of elsewhere, formerly and tomorrow«118. Here we come to the final and essential paradox of our philosophical reflection of time: we have to think temporality as the flipside of our thinking which belongs to it by escaping it. Since »the objective world is too much of a plenum for there to be time«119, my experience of time can only be thought as the temporal flipside of what constitutes the plenitude of passed time, so that I come to the conclusion: »There must be another true time, in which I learn the flux and transience itself.«120 The philosophical problem of time is to catch up with time as what is »always ahead of itself«121, i.e. the uncatchable. »The

115 116 117 118 119 120 121

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 454. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 481. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 482. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 478. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 478. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 482. Cf. above fn 103.

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problem is how to make time explicit as it comes into being and makes itself evident, time at all times underlying the notion of time, not as an object of our knowledge, but as a dimension of our being.«122 Here we have reached in Merleau-Ponty’s conception of temporality the point of closest approximation to what the articles in this volume are directed towards. The other time which we will try to approach is not the time of another, it is my time, the time of a subject, which however has to be thought as the subject which does not exist in time, but who is time. »We are not saying that time is for someone, which would once more be a case of arraying it out, and immobilizing it. We are saying that time is someone, or that temporal dimensions, in so far as they perpetually overlap, bear each other out and ever confine themselves to making explicit what is implied in each, being collectively expressive of that one single explosion or thrust which is subjectivity itself. We must understand time as the subject and the subject as time.«123 Subjectivity itself is the »x«124 that has made the agreement with the world which I acquire during the time of my life, the time which I cannot think because thinking always presupposes life as being ahead of itself. »The passage of one present to the next is not a thing which I conceive, nor do I see it as an onlooker. I effect it; I am already at the impending present as my gesture is already at its goal […] This idea of a time which anticipates itself is perceived by common sense in its way. Everyone talks about Time, not as the zoologist talks about the dog or the horse, using these as collective nouns, but using it as a proper noun. Sometimes it is even personified. Everyone thinks that there is here a single, concrete being, wholly present in each of its manifestations, as is a man in each of his spoken words.«125 But since it is me to whom this personification of time refers, I must not idolize myself by thinking me as an observer of it. As soon as I introduce such an observer in my thinking, »temporal relationships are reversed«; if I describe the passing of time with the metaphor of the »flow« of time, then »the volume of water carried by is not moving towards the future, but sinking into the past; what is to come is on the side of the source, for time does not come from the past. It is not the past that pushes the present, nor the present that 122 123 124 125

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 482. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 490. Cf. above fn 112. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 489. Cf. above fn 13.

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pushes the future, into being…«126 In these passages we can, I think, find in Merleau-Ponty’s writing the indication of a philosophical strategy to deal with the paradox of human temporality: there is a moment of reversion which is constitutive for time, »constituting time«127, and this reversion can be made an object of thought. The project which we can take from Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the »illeity« in myself can be the project of thinking time as the reversion of itself, as the Other time.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: The Second Time As cryptic as it may appear, Merleau-Ponty’s dictum of the »more occult time than natural time« into which we are put by cultural objects is connected precisely to the fundamental idea that makes the so-called »Ger­ man idealist« Schelling an important pioneer of 20th century’s cultural anthropology. If there is an inner band between the thinkers of the past that has never been a present which we mentioned so far, we can find it in this idea which is the guiding principle of Schelling’s really original way of the critique of metaphysics. Here I can only try to indicate the crucial point; the history of Schelling’s way of thinking from metaphysics to anthropology has not yet been written. At any rate, Schelling is one of the most innovative thinkers whose account of the past that has never been a present can guide what I have to say about the Other time. It has taken more than 150 years to shake off the solidified scheme of the »triumvirate« Fichte-Schelling-Hegel as a complex of speculative metaphysicians isolated from the scientific spirit that shaped the post-Kantian epoch. In fact, Schelling is one of the key thinkers of what I above called the »anthropologization of the transcenden­ tal subject«; Schelling himself speaks of his »philosophical ethnology«128. In his lectures on the »Philosophy of Mythology« and the »Philosophy of Revelation« he made history and anthropology the decisive sources of a post-metaphysical understanding of truth and reality. And in the center of his innovative turn, we find the concept of a »second time« as the key to the topos of the »unconscious thinking« that is embedded in our symbolic forms. 126 127 128

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 478. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 491. Schelling, Historical-critical Introduction into the Philosophy of Mythology, 85.

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It is an almost literal match with the above cited remark of LéviStrauss129 when Schelling 100 years earlier characterizes the connection between our symbolism and the world by claiming that »language is not piecemeal or atomistic; in all its parts it is on par with the whole and, accordingly, has emerged into being organically. The aforementioned connection and interrelationship is one objectively inherent in the language itself and for precisely this reason is certainly not one contrived by the intent of men«130. The non-intentional aspect which Schelling emphasizes here is decisive when it comes to the turn which Lévi-Strauss has singled out as the one step that has constituted the human existence: the step from nature to culture.131 The constellation which has made that step possible must, according to Schelling, be reconstructed as a twofold relationship between »the principle that preserved humanity in its unity«, and another principle that »was able to follow and by which it was moved, transformed, ultimately even conquered«132. So, we find here a relation which is obvi­ ously a temporal one (»able to follow«) but which at the same time cannot be understood as a causal sequence in natural time. Man is the subject who has made the step from nature to culture; but when we want to give account of that step, we do not find »man«. We find cultures, societies, peoples, i.e. a structured plurality of historically constituted forms of life. The natural unity of mankind is coded culturally. E.g., language belongs to the essence of human nature and is constitutive for the unity of mankind; but there is no »natural language«, there are only »mother tongues«, i.e. culturally constituted symbolic systems which can be translated into one another. The plurality and variety of these symbolic forms however is not the product of successive causation; the translation of one language into the other is not the reconstruction of any causal relation. The language a human being learns is prior to his learning. And this is, in Schelling’s diction, characteristic for the culturally coded plurality of human forms of life in general: »as soon as this second principle begins to manifest its effect

Cf. above fn 84. Schelling, Historical-critical Introduction into the Philosophy of Mythology, 32. 131 The decisive threshold which demarcates that step is, according to Lévi-Strauss, the prohibition of incest, by which the universal human nature is turned into a complex of sociocultural rules. Cf. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 478 f. 132 Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 86. 129

130

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on humanity, all the differences — differences possible by virtue of that condition in humanity, differences of which no trace was previously present — will, as with one blow, to be sure, be posited«133. But at the same time we must conclude: The unity of mankind which is presented in this system of differences cannot be its causal effect either. It must have been there in the moment of its conscious presentation and yet would not have been there without that moment. This is Schelling’s reference to the topos of »fulfilled presence«. And from here he develops his theory of »two times« as a key element of his connection between anthropology and ontology. Schelling’s position can be summarized as follows: He rejects the metaphysical interpretation of the step from nature to culture, i.e. the dualism of the »two worlds«, in favor of the relation of inversion between two genuine forms of temporality, the natural and the historical time.134 The fundamental constellation between our conscious thinking and its preconscious content must be understood as the result of an act in which the dimensions of past, present and future themselves have been constituted. This act is the »Wende der Zeit«135 [turning of time] in the double sense of the genitive which we can trace back to earliest poetic forms in which aiṓn once has been understood. This is the guideline of Schelling’s differen­ tiation between natural and historical time which he himself summarizes in the »Philosophy of Mythology« as follows: »Through the preceding investigations, directed to an entirely different object, the time of the past has also in the meantime won for us another figure, or rather first a figure at all. It is no longer a boundless time into which the past loses itself; rather, it is the case that history settles and divides itself for us into times actually and internally different from each other.«136 This passage belongs to the context which is dedicated to the question: »How did peoples emerge into being?«137 For Schelling, a »people« is constituted in a historical age in which society leaves behind the stage of a »clan« defined by common ancestry and shared territory. For a »people« there must be more,

Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 86. Cf. Axel Hutter, »Metaphysik als Metachronik. Schellings Philosophie der Zeit«, in Zeit: Anfang und Ende. Time: Beginning and End, ed. by Walter Schweidler (Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2004), 257–267. 135 Cf. above fn 15. 136 Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 155. 137 Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 63. 133

134

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namely a certain consciousness shared by its members in their common worldview grounded on mythology,138 i.e. on legends and fables most of which »do transcend historical time, yet remain in the pre-historical«139. Thus, mythology expresses the consciousness of a time which is not the natural time and yet precedes the historical time in which we live here and now. Together with »the great and irrefutable fact of the inner affinity between the mythologies of the most varied and otherwise most dissimilar peoples«140, this brings us to the conclusion that it has been mythology which made possible the explication of the consciousness of what we call a people: »nothing else remains except that it emerges with it simultaneously, as its individual popular consciousness, with which the people steps forth from out of the general consciousness of mankind and by virtue of which it is just this people and separated from every other no less than it is through its language«141. From here, Schelling develops his conception of the polytheistic origin of cultural identity in the stage of the cultic consciousness. When we are confronted with the plurality of religiously venerated beings, we notice that »mythology is polytheism, and we will name this moment that initially offers itself for contemplation the polytheistic moment«142. The consequence of this is the highly important insight that there has never been a stage of historical time in which a people could identify the events that brought its members together. This insight prevents us from any ideological – including any nationalistic – attempt to regress to an alleged historical origin of our cultural identity. »For, first of all, what is a people, or what makes it into a people? Undoubtedly, not the mere spatial coexistence of a greater or lesser number of physically similar individuals, but rather the community of consciousness between them. This community has only its immediate expression in the common language. But in what are we supposed to find this community itself, or its ground, if not in a common world-view; and then this common world-view—in what can it have been originally contained and given to a people, if not in its mythology? For this reason it appears impossible that a mythology would be added to an already present people, whether it be through invention by individuals among it, or whether it be that it emerges by a collective, instinctual production. This state of affairs also appears impossible because it is unthinkable that a people—would be without mythology.« (Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 42) Cassirer has given further support to Schelling’s argument still in his »Mythical Thinking« (cf. above fn 40). 139 Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 3. 140 Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 40. 141 Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 43. 142 Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 3. 138

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And it is essentially the insight of philosophy! Here we have the political point of Schelling’s cultural anthropology: The answer to the question how peoples did emerge can be given not by any derivation of the contents of our historic consciousness but only by our philosophical reflection on it. »Mythology is known in its truth only, when it is known in the process. But the process that repeats itself in it, albeit in a particular way, is the universal, the absolute process, and thus the true science of mythology is accordingly the one that presents the absolute process in it. But to present this process is the task of philosophy. The true science of mythology is for this reason the Philosophy of Mythology.«143 In the center of this »philosophical ethnology« however Schelling posits the ontological model of the two times »actually and internally different from each other« which in its essence is not a philosophical model of history but rather a historicist model of philosophy. And it contains Schelling’s account of the past that has never been a present. Actually, we find already in the core of Schelling’s reconstruction of mythology the fundamental elements of the topos of the Other Time which emerge in rather remote places of the philosophical works which we have considered so far. It is, according to Schelling, time itself what we find in the origin of the relationship between historical and pre-historical time. As Cassirer stated it: Time does not have any reason, it is the reason. And, as we will learn from Merleau-Ponty, it is not history – history as the content of our narrative144 –, it is only our philosophical thinking which can lead us back to the truth which we find in time itself and not beyond any limits of it. We cannot step beyond the limits of time, not because we cannot put ourselves into anything beyond time but because without time there is no limitation at all. The »historical time does not continue into the pre-historical time but rather, on the contrary, is cut off and bounded by the latter as a fully other time. We name it a fully other time […] In this sense we have named it the relatively pre-historical time.« But if this is so, then we must conclude: »This time, however, by which the historical time is completed and limited, is itself also again a determinate time and thus also for its part limited by another. This other, or, rather, third time cannot Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 217. Schellings makes the difference between the German word »Geschichte« (the history of events) and »Historie« (the account we give of the events, the »res gestae«), cf. Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 158.

143 144

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again be one in some way historical, and thus can only be the absolutely pre-historical time, the time of the complete historical immutability.«145 With this »third time« we have reached the limits of what we can say and think about time. »This other, or, rather, third time cannot again be one in some way historical, and thus can only be the absolutely pre-historical time, the time of the complete historical immutability.«146 It is, according to Schelling and in agreement with Merleau-Ponty’s dictum on the passage of time, the »basically timeless time«147. It cannot have been constituted by anything that was ever present in it: »it is a time, but one that itself is already no longer a time but rather only a time in the relation to what follows. In itself it is no time, because in it there is no true before and after, because it is a type of eternity […]«148 With this paradoxical idea of an eternity that is followed by what makes it a time we have touched, in a certain parallel to Lévinas,149 the crossing point between ontology and anthropology in Schelling’s approach to the past that has never been a present. This point certainly reveals the highly speculative nature of the philosophical approach to that topos. But we must keep in mind that the philosophers of the 20th century who developed alternatives to the metaphysical conceptions of eternity as the opposite to temporality, from Wittgenstein and Heidegger up to the current phenomenological thinkers, did never try to escape the intricacies of speculative thought. Or, as Wittgenstein noted once in 1948: »Only by thinking much more crazily even than the philosophers, can you solve their problems.«150

3. Short survey of the following texts The following ten papers have been written during more than twenty years, leading to a book that wrote through me and finally, after 25 years,

145 146 147 148 149 150

Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 157. Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 157. Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 157, cf. above fn 10. Schelling, Philosophy of Mythology, 157. Cf. above fn 28 and fn 49. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (London: Wiley-Blackwell 1998), 86.

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appeared under the title »Wiedergeburt«.151 The articles can and must be read separately by themselves, although their inner band can only be found in the book. Whatever the reader’s judgment about their quality may be, at least they are written in a more or less conventional form, presenting a thesis and trying to argue in favor of it. »Wiedergeburt« is different. It is not presenting a thesis, it is following itself, true to Merleau-Ponty’s dictum of the thinking that is always ahead of itself. It is dedicated to the experiment to catch up in a book with what is going on in it – including the attempt to catch up with itself. To catch up with the attempt to catch up with itself, that is an aim which can only lead to its own reversion. The book is speaking about nothing but itself; but without the expectation of something which is going on in it besides what is going on in it, there would be no book, and nothing would be going on within it. So, the expectation that there is something going on within it besides itself, has to be revised. Perhaps he (or she) who wants to profit from the following articles should for now forget these remarks.

Metaphysics, phenomenology, and the other time Philosophy deals with what is going on within itself after it has started and as soon as we think that it must have preceded and caused that start. With this characterization we have, as I think, reached the core of the definition of metaphysics in which Wittgenstein and Heidegger – in the deepest possible sense of philosophical agreement – agree: Metaphysical speaking is speaking to the state of mind152 in which the speakers enter just because they believe to speak about what they imagine to be the content of that state of mind but what, however, becomes that content only in so far Walter Schweidler, Wiedergeburt, 2 vols, (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber 2020 and Baden-Baden: Karl Alber 2022). 152 Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Brown Book II.20 […] »don't really speak about what I see, but to it.« (The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the ’Philosophical Inves­ tigation’, (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991, 175) Cf. my article: »Wozu spricht die Meta­ physik?« cf. above fn 110. Cf. also my article: Wittgenstein, Goethe, and the Metonymic Principle, in: Carl Humphries/Walter Schweidler (Eds.): Wittgenstein, Philosopher of Cultures, Sankt Augustin 2017, p. 103–113. The connection between Wittgenstein and Heidegger is the theme of my book: Die Überwindung der Metaphysik. Zu einem Ende der neuzeitlichen Philosophie, Stuttgart 1987. 151

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as and as long as they do not know what they are doing.153 In the first of the following articles: »Overcoming Metaphysics: A Fundamental Feature of Twentieth Century Philosophy«, I argue that this view of »metaphysics«, as provocative the wording of the term may ever be, is not at all exotic or idiosyncratic; it is rooted and embedded profoundly in a self-understanding of philosophizing that is common to several important positions and to a broad current of thought in the post-Kantian epoch. The questions about what is going on in the process of philosophizing, in the persons who are involved in that process, in the expressions which are used in it, in the cultures that are shaped by it, in the recipients who want to know all this: these questions do not express marginal acts of reflection upon the philosophical work from outside, they have become fundamental features of that work itself, leading into its deepest core and opening the way for the solution of the task which it imposes on us. We can find here an intrinsic connection to the speculative idea which inspired the idealistic thinkers who were the ones to take Kant’s thinking beyond itself: the idea that thinking could catch up with itself, could watch itself in doing what it does – including watching itself. To make visible the blind spot which allows us to see: this paradoxical ground motif which in one or the other way drove the whole projects of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel and which Nietzsche then emphatically turned against its idealistic origin, is a structural key to the view of philosophizing as an activity which some of the most remarkable thinkers in the 20th century, including Wittgenstein, compared to the psycho-analytical method of solving problems by the self-reflection of the process in which they are created. Undeniably there is a deep break which divides the speculative thinkers of absolute identity from their post-metaphysical deconstructors; but there is also an inner band between both sides without which the break would not be understandable. The break is not a cut, it is a reversion, and the temporal essence of that turn is what makes the topos of »overcoming metaphysics« the starting point of our search for the past that has never been present. My reflections on »The Place of the Past« in Ricoeur’s late struggle with »Memory, History, Forgetting« approach this reversion and its tem­ Martin Heidegger, »Introduction to ›What is Metaphysics?‹«, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in Pathmarks, ed. by William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 374: »Metaphysics has no choice. As metaphysics, it is by its very essence excluded from the experience of Being«. 153

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poral essence from a prima facie quite different direction. I however argue that in Ricoeur’s phenomenology of forgetting and remembering we find structural relations which actually are very close and related to the temporal aspects in the context of »overcoming metaphysics«. Remembering is the paradigm of a past made present in ourselves, in our consciousness. But where does that which is made present in it come from? Where has it been before being remembered? In the end Ricoeur adheres to the Bergsonian answer: what has been absent from my mind is kept present in it as an image, an image of the past. But the whole train of thought in Ricoeur’s reflection shows that this answer only shifts the problem and raises new questions: where are these images, where do they come from when we remember what they present to us, and how can we recognize them as »images«? Willy-nilly Ricoeur is led to the view which we have found in Merleau-Ponty:154 what connects me with the past can only be the past itself. I myself, i.e. my body, must be the place which has acquired what allows me to recognize what is presented to me as the past. So, the place in which the past is re-presented has to be found in myself, and in order to represent the past I must locate myself in it, in that place. I think that this is the point in Ricoeur’s reflections which shows us the importance of the differentiation between »space« and »place«.155 The »spatialization« of time may be in many ways a source of metaphysical confusion, but if the topos of the past that has never been a present is a key to overcoming the metaphysical scheme of the »two worlds« then we must not shy away from stipulating the reality of a place in time, a »Zeitort« 156, as we paradigmatically ascribe it to our own personal existence when we locate it as the span of time which encompasses every one of the moments between our conception and our death. By the way, I think that this is the key to a non-metaphysical understanding of the uniqueness of the human being among all the entities in the universe: we are the only beings who do not only have one but who by their very nature know that everything in the world and even the world itself has a »Zeitort«, a definite span of time which lets it fit into the overall structure of reality. In the context of this little article however I can only follow Ricoeur’s reflections up to the point where he indicates the term »trace« as a possible alternative to the Cf. above fn 96. I owe a lot to the famous book of Edward Casey, The Fate of Place. A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 156 I invent the term in Wiedergeburt, Vol. I, 396, 406 and 426. 154 155

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Bergsonian figure of »images« that make the absent past present. Ricoeur’s original and inspiring way of following the trace of the past leads back to a not very well known Heideggerian remark about forgetting as the condition of remembering, from which Ricoeur develops his conception of forgetting as »chance«. If there is any sense to be made of the idea of the »image« as a trace of the past in ourselves, then we will have to find it in what must have been happening in ourselves in order to make remembering possible and necessary, namely: forgetting. The presupposition of the re-presentation of the past is simply that it must have been forgotten, and the place which encompasses forgetting and remembering is in myself, i.e. in the time of my life. At this point we have reached in some way a new level of the problem at which we are back again at the topos of the past that never has been present. Why? Because we are still occupied with the question: Where was the place of that which we remember before we came to remember it? As the endpoint of the article, I can only indicate the possible solution of the problem which is offered by the artistic way of approaching it: to explicate with the methods of artistic fiction the difference between memory and imagination. If there is any sense in the idea of »images« keeping the past present, it may have to be found in a concept of picture based on the art of depicting the work within the work. »Fulfilled Presence« is a continuation of this critical look on the »image« as the connecting item between presence and absence. I am going back to the classical passage about motion and realization in Aristotle’s »Metaphysics« in order to recall the ontological background of Ricoeur’s definition of the trace as »an effect that is a sign of its cause« and to argue for a non-psychological interpretation of what he calls the »survival of memories«. I also recall Kierkegaard’s concept of the »Augenblick« [the instant] and the paradoxical dictum of »the eternal, which was not before«. The article is closely connected to the previous one, and I was not able to eliminate all overlaps between them. But I hope that together with these two little articles the references to the phenomenon of »fulfilled pres­ ence« which I made in this introduction will at least help to demonstrate the importance of the assumption of the Other Time for the phenomenological account of mind and memory. »Thinking is Time«, the earliest of the texts collected in this volume, is an attempt to bring together the phenomenological and the analytic approach to the problem of the limits and especially the beginning of time. It was an article designed to shape the horizon of my first time-conference 52

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in 2002 where J.T. Fraser was my guest and which initiated my long connection with the »International Society for the Study of Time«. Husserl shows how the continuous integration of its steady new beginning into the totality of time is the real reason of the difference between our experience of the world on the one side and fiction and phantasy on the other side. While Husserl takes as the point of departure of this process of integration the »Urimpression«, the underivable and inexplicable act of temporal consciousness, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty understand Being as ahead of itself, as the temporal principle of the unity within and inbetween subjective experience. The origin of time seems to exclude any attempt of philosophical reconstruction. The same holds for the analytic approach based on the concept of time in physics. The famous »Hempel-Oppenheim scheme« of scientific explanation makes it even logically impossible to give a scientific explanation of the beginning of time, since this would demand to take the first moment of the universe as an event to be derived from natural laws in connection with preceding »antecedent-data«. So, the question about the origin of time seems to coincide with the question about the origin of anything, of the world. If time is nothing but the relation between physical events, then the transition from nothing into Being cannot have taken place in time. We cannot think, so already the Kantian argument, an »empty time« in which nothing has happened. The problem with a purely relational concept of time is however that with it we become unable to explicate the reality of the possible. When we say that something did not have to be the way it is, then we do not speak about another time, we refer to the time in which everything that happens was present, will be present or will have been present; that means, we speak about the presence which is also our and the presence of our thinking here and now. But, as long as we can be sure that not everything that happens could only be as it happens to be, we are, when speaking about the present, obviously speaking about more than it, i.e. about something that belongs to our time in another sense than whatever is or has been or will have been present. This is the argument for the assumption that there is what can be called the »substance« of time and for the claim that philosophy is able to think and speak about an origin of time which is not timeless and is yet not a moment of or within time. At this point I come to my own solution of the problem of the paradox of reorigination: it is in its essence the paradox of my thinking being what it is and at the same time being ahead of itself, i.e. my thinking’s being time and yet not being in time. 53

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The anthropologized subject of time After having followed some traces of time as it shapes our thinking, I want now to turn to the aspect under which we shape time. »On the Social Origin of Time in Language« is a somewhat programmatic sketch of the steps which can bring our philosophical thinking to take that perspective. First of all, the question is: what do I mean by »we«? Here I take up the basic maxim of post-Kantian philosophizing, i.e. the »anthropologization«157 of the former transcendental subject. Time is not »constituted« by the extratemporal subject in its turn towards the perceived sense-data, but time is »daseinsrelativ« to us, where »us« means human beings in their sociocultural existences. It is the animal symbolicum who, by measuring, naming and understanding the structures of its natural environment, becomes aware of time and by this awareness is taken back to its origin. So, it is the phenomenon of »fulfilled presence« which I think to deliver us the key to the understanding of the social origin of time. Time would not be time if there had not been temporal beings who became conscious of it; but that does not mean that it would have been nothing. Whatever time may have been before, it becomes time through our sociocultural existence – and »becomes« here does not mean a process leading from an earlier to a later stage. If there have been stages through which time became what it is, then they could not have been stages of time but stages of our sociocultural existence. Cultural anthropology in the 20th century has given a profound and detailed reconstruction of such stages, and I think it can be shown that they are not simply constituted, like historical epochs, as a causal sequence but rather, like colors, as a structural texture – Schelling’s »absolute process«158 which itself is »daseinsrelativ« to our philosophical thinking. Without attempting to give a full account of that texture,159 in the article I just refer to the stage which I call the »cultic« and for which it is characteristic that the sociocultural consciousness extends itself to the conviction of one’s society’s responsibility for the preservation of the world itself. There are reasons to assume that this is the stage in which Cf. above fn 26. Cf. above fn 143. 159 In »Wiedergeburt« I have tried to draw a conceptual picture which distinguishes six of them: the mythical-magical, the totemistic, the cultic, the true religious, the imperial and the national stage of the human consciousness of the origin of cultural existence.

157

158

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the transformation of nature into culture by means of language has led to the genuine human consciousness of time. In »The Philosophical Relevance of ›Images‹« I turn indirectly to the decisive step in the development of human consciousness of time which has been characterized as the one which »separates past from present«160: the step from language to writing. To give account of this step, philosophy must ask the question: What is a picture? Writing was, so one could say, the result of the desire which language and picture have for another. The first writing was probably pictorial writing, and the development of syllable and alphabet script was a consequence of transformations within the process of translation between word and picture. So, the philosophical question about the picture is inseparable from the question about language and, again,161 from philosophy’s question about itself. The »linguistic turn« was the most significant answer which philosophers have given in the 20th century to that self-referential question, and the contemporary movement called the »iconic turn« is perhaps of the same order of magnitude. We cannot give an account of these »turns« without reflecting on the kind of knowledge which philosophy can only and must claim when it comes to such sociocultural phenomena as language and image. We must here, as I think, keep in mind the »hermeneutical« nature of the philosophical claim of knowledge: the knowledge about these phenomena is not primarily the matter of philosophical concepts or arguments, but rather it is embodied and embedded in the objects of the philosophical reflection, i.e. in languages and in pictures themselves which philosophy can only interpret, not explain. And within the context of our whole sociocultural being this implies that not philosophers are the primary »experts« on these issues, rather we have to turn to the genuinely artistic expressions of knowledge about them, i.e. to painters and poets. This is the starting point for my reflections on the concept of the »iconic« in this article in which I refer to the »iconic difference« (Boehm), i.e. the difference between the visible picture and its invisible »excess« (Gadamer) which actually makes it an artistic painting. I am dealing with the metaphysical implications and the chances of a non-metaphysical understanding of this excess along the idea of not timeless but time-reverting categories of its interpretations. The article originally shaped the horizon for my picture-conference in 2005; it is 160 161

Cf. above fn 80. Cf. above fn 110.

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exploring some possible ways of thinking that lead from the topic of the past that has never been present to the topoi of icon, perspective and the reality of artistic imagination. In the last two presentations contained in this chapter I have thematized the works of art which have been decisive for the way on which I myself have found the idea and the reality of a past that has never been a present. »The Mirror of Time« can be read as a concretization of my reflections on the »iconic turn«. What is the excess of a painting that has itself, i.e. the process of its own being painted, as its object? I think that Velázquez in his famous Las Meninas has revealed with artistic means the insight which I quoted from Merleau-Ponty162: that it is time, i.e. it is exactly that past that never has been present, itself which operates in the origin of our human access to the whole of the world we live in. My interpretation is based on the well-known »mirror hypothesis«, i.e. that the painting has been painted in front of one huge or several mirrors which are invisible in it. For my thesis it is not crucial if the hypothesis is true or if it is fictional; what counts is that in the latter case it has been Velázquez’ own fiction and that he has painted according to it. If this is so, then we can read the painting as a witness of the »occult time« and its fulfilled presence in the here and now. Finally, I have a shy encounter with Proust’s brilliant philosophical idea of a life catching up with and even overtaking itself by means of poetic fiction. As simple as it is, the philosophical point of the Recherche du temps perdu has seldomly been explored in its real depth: the idea to make one’s life the content of a poetic narrative and to follow it up to the point at which one decides to make it the content of this narrative. Perhaps we find here the clearest document of the belief in an eternity which is not located outside of time but going on in its reversion. I do not say that the »Recherche« were a philosophical book, which it certainly is not. As a matter of fact, it is even decisive that the philosophical punchline is not based on the content of the book but on the role which it plays for the life of its writer. In »Wiedergeburt« I have tried to extend the interpretation which in this little article about »The Redeeming Urgency of Time« I can only indicate; but I think that we can on this basis draw at least a connecting line between Proust’s »lost« time and what I call the »Other« Time.

162

Cf. above fn 99.

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Religious horizons What can be the end, the aim of the process of reversion in which we find the Other Time? If we want to avoid the metaphysical topos of the timeless »other world«, then the answer to this question can only be in line with Proust: the reversion of time leads back into its beginning. So, the phenomenological topos to which we are led by our train of thinking certainly touches a metaphysical background rooted in religious ideas. It is the topos of the origin of time, and the philosophical question about it is inseparable from the question about the origin of the world. In the anthropological perspective we come back with these questions to the core of the self-interpretation of sociocultural units: the question about the origin of time leads us willy-nilly back to the archetypical distinction between the sacred and the profane which Durkheim once called »the hallmark of religious thought«163. One of the most original philosophical approaches to this topos can be found in the works of Paul Ricoeur who actually has developed a kind of »ontology of the sacred« which I try to reconstruct in the article »The Self-Repeating Origin«. Ricoeur has shown that the philosophical concept of »hermeneutics« is structurally related to the stage of the human account of the origin of sociocultural identity which I call the »cultic« consciousness. It is the stage which follows (in a primarily structural, not a causal sense) the mythical and the totemistic consciousness in which the human society considered itself to be related to its founding powers on a quasi-biological level. For the cultic consciousness the decisive connection to the origin is embodied in the logos, in the sacred words which have »come«164 to man from a supernatural source. It is the task of the cultic institutions to preserve and guard the original, the word from an other-than-human source, and to keep its meaning alive through the only medium which enables society to do that, i.e. through everyday language. Here Ricoeur sees the structural connection to the claim and task of »hermeneutics«, a connection rooted in the paradox of reorigination: that an extrahistorical and insofar unrepeatable origin of human self-under­ standing must have been and must be further handed down to us and our descendants by symbolic forms of its repetition. Language hereby 163 Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Belief, (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 2008), 36. 164 Cf. Jeremia chapter 1,2: »Yahweh’s word came to him…«.

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enters into the archetypical symbolic relation that we have already found in the »iconic« aspect of any work of art: it is the »excess« that makes the difference between an artistic picture and a pure copy of its object, which in itself makes the invisible visible. The repetition of the unrepeatable: that is the spiritual power which Nietzsche approved of Wagner’s prelude to the »Meistersinger«: to have heard it once again and once again for the first time… When Ricoeur hears the essential point of the enterprise of reorigination revealed in the phrase »The symbol gives rise to thought«, he is attuned to the line of thought that determines the whole structuralist paradigm of cultural anthropology which Saussure has summarized in the thesis that the role of language in relation to thinking is not to translate but to create its content: »Neither are thoughts given material form nor are sounds transformed into mental entities; the somewhat mysterious fact is rather that ›thought-sound‹ implies division, and that language works out its units while taking shape between two shapeless masses.«165 The original turn in Ricoeur’s position however consists in emphasizing the importance which for the concept and the task of hermeneutics is constituted by its religious horizon. Here we can see how intimately and inevitably Augus­ tine’s »ante dico aeternitate, non tempore«166 still drives the philosophical reflection about the relation between eternity and temporality and so about the Other Time. The last and latest of the articles collected here is the only one in which a thinker whom I consider to be one of the discoverers of the past that has never been a present, i.e. Jean-Luc Marion, crosses the thresh­ old between philosophy and theology. I do not think that the recipient necessarily has to join him in this crossing-over. In order to separate the clearly philosophical from the theological realm, I try to point out the correspondence and proximity of Marion’s phenomenological think­ ing to the decidedly non-theological conception of Heidegger’s »Seins­ geschichte« and »Ereignisdenken«. Here I consider »theology« not just as a speaking or thinking about God (there has always been at least since Plato a »philosophical theology« in that wide sense) but as the academic discipline which is dedicated to and defined by the hermeneutical interpre­ tation of the texts of revelation, i.e. in the Christian religion the texts 165 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, (New York: Columbia Univer­ sity Press 2011), 222. 166 Cf. above fn 19, fn 61 and fn 76.

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of the Holy Scripture and the ecclesiastical teaching. Revelation however is, as important as it may be for religious theology, also a theme for philosophical discourse. At least in one central concern Marion can be compared to Heidegger in respect to a purely philosophical conception of what »revelation« means. That issue is the »phenomenality« of revelation, i.e., the condition which allows us to reconstruct the difference between the sacred and the profane from the perspective of a religious believer or a non-believer. For Marion, revelation is a clearcut and even paradigmatic example of a phenomenon. And more than that: it is a phenomenon of special importance. It can be perceived and understood in its unique and unpredictable importance for us no less than an epochal historical event, an outstanding and revolutionary work of art or the iconic incomparability of a human face. It is, in Marion’s terminology, a »saturated phenomenon«, i.e. it is in itself – to take Heidegger’s term, in its facticity – the underivable con­ dition of any attempt to explain and to interpret it. And exactly this is what makes it a paradigmatic issue of philosophical questioning. If we want to follow any revealed truth, we do not need philosophy. Philosophy becomes important when we want to understand what makes revelation something that entices us to follow it, i.e., we want to understand its spiritual power. Here then Heidegger enters the scene. At the end of the train of thought which, as I hope, is continued in the texts collected in this volume, we come back to the beginning, to »overcoming metaphysics«. What connects Heidegger with Marion, is the underivable importance of the paradox which we face when we seek any chance to understand revelation. It is the paradox rooted in the essential non-intentionality and even anti-intentionality in our relationship to the final aim and issue of philosophy, i.e. to truth. In our relationship to the way (in Heidegger’s diction, the »Wesen«, the going-on) of truth through time (through the »history of Being«) we are confronted with the inevitability of a decision, and this decision is one which is imposed on us by ourselves, i.e. by a resistance against it which has the paradoxical constitution that in order to become aware of that resistance in ourselves we would have to have already taken the decision which alone can overcome the resistance. So, the philosophical paradox of the saturated phenomenon of revelation is that we can understand it in the moment – or, coinciding with it – which in order to arrive must have already arrived. In fact, we find in certain rather cryptical passages in the writings of Heidegger’s »darkest« period a concept of revelation which overlaps with Marion’s. When we point out this overlapping, we immediately notice 59

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the very different conclusions which both thinkers have drawn from the paradox. But this is no obstacle for our understanding of the paradox itself; on the contrary, this allows us to draw our own conclusions. It is obvious that the articles collected in this volume have quite differ­ ent conditions of their origin. Some were written and presented in English, others had to be translated from originally German texts. Especially the last one, connecting the thinking of Jean-Luc Marion and Martin Heidegger, has to grapple with the challenges that grow from the depths and shallows of the language which is used by these two highly original thinkers – or better: from their striving to serve the purposes which arise from a language that is not »used« but that is respected as the source of speaking the truth. In this article as in some others the translation could not avoid the reference to a lot of the originally German expressions in which I had written down my thoughts. This should help the reader who knows both languages to form his or her own understanding of the texts, but it may clarify also the limits which are drawn to any kind of translation in fundamentally philosophical contexts. But at least a reader who approvingly follows my line of thought will at any rate confirm that the topos of the past that has never been present enables us to cross over the differences of the languages in which some of the most precise and most original thinkers in the twentieth century have formulated their insights.

Some editorial notices a. by the author

Any claim of insight which is made through this collection of small and much divergent academic texts is unavoidably retrospective and guided by a given purpose, the purpose to help to understand the difficult and seemingly cryptic and contrived undertaking to which my »Wiedergeburt« is dedi­ cated. I am writing here as if I were trying to make an author understandable and that author is myself. I am writing like someone who thinks he has understood another’s thought which he now tries to clarify for the ones who want to read that other person’s writings. I am writing about my thought as if it were the thought of another. But it is my thought, the thought of my life, and that this is so, I know from the book »Wiedergeburt« which I did not write to present that thought but to find it. The paradox, that in 60

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order to find it the book in which it had to be found would have had to be already completed, turned out to be the paradox which this thought had placed in front of me to think through. That I found it in that book is what makes me sure that it is my thought. In order to find it, I could not begin with it, but the task was to go back through the process of finding it to the beginning which had been the condition for finding it. My beginning was my wondering about what I am doing here and now, in the moment of beginning, beginning the search for a philosophical thought. It took me five years to find the thought, the thought of the past that has never been a present. But it took me another twenty years to preserve it, to bring it back the whole way to the beginning of the search for it. Only after this had been successfully done, I could give an account of the fact that, thank God, my thought was not only mine but that it had been, as the word itself suggests, »thought« before. Now I can be sure that it has been the thought itself that brought me back to itself, and that means also that it has been the past that never was present that brought the thought back to me. So here and now, in this book, I can write about that thought as if I had to ensure that it is my though. My aim here and now is therefore that I get rid of such an aim by convincing my reader that it is not merely my thought. So, my summary of the train of thought which, as I think, can be found in the here cited philosophical approaches to the past that has never been present, is the following: What makes time »time«, cannot be expressed in the form of theoretical description or derivation. »Time« is a name,167 not a description or a part of it, and it is – in a sense which needs a lot of explication – inevitably (not only, but always also) my time.168 Rather than to say that time has a personal nature, we should say that it is always a person who gives time to whatever is there, has been and will be there during, before and after that person’s life but what would not be and would not have been »time« without that life. My thinking can take me and in fact has taken me back to that »substance« of time which is neither in time nor beyond it. To be taken back to it is a process of reversion of time into time, a process which we cannot describe but must experience, and that this experience is what has been going on in the book which has released me A »proper noun«, as Merleau-Ponty says, cf. fn 13 and fn 125. In »Wiedergeburt«, Vol. I, Chapter IV, I come to the thesis that this insight is what releases me from any search of the »rebirth« or »reincarnation« of my person; and in Vol. II, chapter VII, I argue for the view that this process of release is the trace of what has redeemed me from what is going on in the book »Wiedergeburt«. 167

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from itself and thereby (not only but also) from myself. I touch eternity by having got away from it into my time. These »Editorial Notices« will be completed by Thomas Bernd Schmidt who has translated all the texts of this volume which were originally written in German language and who has also worked for me and with me on the other texts which I had originally written in English. I thank him not only as a translator but as a congenial partner in our philosophical attempt to make understandable the thoughts that allowed me to write these texts. He has been the first reader of this book and the person whom I more than any other owe the confidence that there might be some »friends who are scattered throughout corners of the globe«, who will read this book with profit. One of these friends is Jeremiah L. Alberg who in fact has been the first reader of »Wiedergeburt«. And at the end of this long trail I will never forget Neil O’Donnell who over years was also a translator and the partner who enabled me to express the thoughts now collected in these texts which were written originally in English. After 25 years I cannot even do the small justice of naming all the companions to whom I am thinking back in gratitude for their support and engagement for our joint philosophical adventures and for the institutional and practical help which have made my work possible. I can only express my deep appreciation for some of them who may stand for all the others: Richard Schenk, Christoph Böhr, Ludger Kühnhardt, Kogaku Arifuku, Makoto Ono, Tobias Holischka, Katharina Zöpfl, Lina Schönach, Claudio Columba, Joachim Klose, Lukas Trabert, Christoph Liebscher, Raji Steineck, Annika Schlitte, Daniel Pascal Zorn, Katharina Bauer, Michael Rasche and the late Julius T. Fraser. b. by the translator

As Prof. Schweidler’s introduction has doubtless made clear the texts in this volume are far ranging and can but scratch the surface of a lifetime of thought. Translating texts written over such a range of years and for varying purposes has at times been a challenge, but a thoroughly inspiring and enjoyable one. I would also be remiss not to mention Neil O’Donnell, who originally prepared »The Self Repeating Origin«, »Time's Redeeming Urgency«, »Overcoming Metaphysics«, »On the Social Origin of Time in Language« and »The Mirror of Time«, which appear in this volume virtu­ ally unchanged including only minor corrections and editorial differences. However, the main purpose of this translator’s foreword is to elucidate some 62

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areas where I fear the translation is not as smooth as one would wish and where further commentary is required. In addition, I hope to be able to point out some links between these concepts, which I hope will allow the connections between the texts, though they may appear only in retrospect, to be more readily appreciated. Having had two people working on different texts has also led to a particular way of handling untranslated texts and you will find that wherever translations have been made particularly for this volume the translator will be named in the footnote in square brackets. ●

Daseinsrelativität [relativity of being]

The concept that some things depend for their way of existing in the world on subjects who experience them can, in its substantive form, be relative straightforwardly rendered as »relativity of being« and where the context allows for this it has been done. However, the word is also often used in adjective form, and it seemed overall desirable to maintain the conceptual clarity of a term so central to the whole of the enquiry. The roots of the concepts may be traced to Max Scheler and we should therefore be careful of reading Dasein here with a Heideggerian connotation, which is not implied in all cases. Within these essays it appears in three separate, though related, contexts: First, the relativity of time upon the present moment. Second, of the visible upon the invisible. And third, in contradistinction to a constitutive relationship. The latter is central to the meaning of Daseinsrelativität, it is not the case that the things which are daseinsrelativ would not have existed without the subject experiencing them. Take the example of food, a carrot is food, because there are beings who derive nourishment from it, and yet, without such beings, the carrot would continue to exist unchanged but cease to be food. ●

Erkennendes Sein [epistemic being]

»Erkenntnis« is usually translated simply as knowledge, yet this translation is often awkward and no simple replacement suggests itself. The notion of »Erkennendes Sein« describes a way of being (e.g., the existence of images) as »wanting to be recognized [erkannt]«, coming into their own only in being grasped or understood. In choosing to translate the notion as »epistemic being« I am relying on a pre-modern meaning of the word focused more strongly on the idea of grasping the meaning of things and delineating their outlines in order to recognize them for what they are. Since 63

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there is, to my knowledge, no canonical translation for the term I had to find my own solution and beg the readers indulgence if a more elegant translation should be found. ●

Menschentum [mankind]

William McNeill translates »Menschentum« as »a particular human kind«, however, I felt that »mankind« renders more closely and more concisely the Heideggerian term and have therefore opted to translate it thus. To understand this difficult concept of »Menschentum« it might be helpful to turn to concepts such as Kuhn’s »paradigm« and Foucault’s »episteme«: key words for the structure of the worldview which connects sociocultural enti­ ties across centuries. A mankind in the Heideggerian sense is characterized by a paradigm or an episteme (or a »Weltbild«), which is not subject to the conscious dispositions of the constituents of this mankind. ●

Wahrender Genitiv [preserving genitive]

I found no concise and intuitive way of translating this term, partly because the notion of grammatical cases in English is less common currency than it is in German and partly because the German usage is intuitive but hard to explain. The genitive case indicates a possessive relationship, and it is preserving [wahrend] in the sense that it posits a relationship of mutual possession. Take a simple example »the hero’s sacrifice« can mean both, a sacrifice the hero makes, or the sacrifice of the hero himself. While this may seem arbitrary in English, it is a more common grammatical structure in German, which lends itself to a certain range of rhetoric usages. ●

Augenblick [moment/instant]

It is important here to take into account the pathos which lies in the German term »Augenblick« as opposed to the ordinary »Moment«. It is the pathos which we find in the Greek kairós (see introduction), and which is not easily conveyed in the English translation. Macquarrie & Robinson use the term »moment of vision« (cf. Heidegger : Being and Time, p. 376 fn 2). However, in the relevant passages we have opted to translate »Augenblick« as »instant« and »Moment« as »moment«, which may not render the meaning as well, but given the high density of these terms it was unavoidable to preserve readability. 64

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●

Zeitort [place in time]

I have translated this notion consistently as »place in time«, however some remarks are still in order. »Zeitort« refers not to a timespan or a duration, but to the place in time something that has happened will forever have occupied. As opposed to a duration we might say that something has its place in time and thereby completes time in a way that a duration never can and an additional connotation is the irrevocability of the past which several of the articles allude to; what once has taken place will nevermore not have happened. ●

Das/die Ereignis [event/event of appropriation]

Martin Heidegger uses the somewhat idiosyncratic form of »die Ereig­ nis« to denote not something that takes place, but the double sense of what »comes before our eyes« and how human beings as Dasein are appropriated by unconcealed Being. To render the distinction palpable where appropriate »the event of appropriation« is used by Macquarrie & Robinson. ●

Sein/sein [Being/being]

Martin Heidegger’s terminology being notoriously difficult to translate it seems in order to say that apart from direct quotes I have opted to capitalize »Being« where a particularly Heideggerian notion of the term is indicated. ●

Das Uneinholbare [the uncatchable]

Lévinas describes time as »that astonishing divergence of the identical from itself.«169 The uncatchable captures just this sense of something elusive which we pursue and which we can nevertheless never catch up with. Ultimately, it is us who are always uncatchably ahead of ourselves in time. The term bears some resemblance to Heidegger’s »projection«, though it places an emphasis on some definite future being pursued rather than the openness suggested by projection.

Emmanuel Lévinas, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Berlin: Kluwer, 1993), 28.

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Overcoming Metaphysics: A Fundamental Feature of Twentieth Century Philosophy

»›Overcoming metaphysics‹: as if this were something new!« wrote Wittgenstein ironically in his diary referring to the discussions with the »Vienna Circle«, to which belonged such adepts as Carnap, Schlick, Neurath and others who had emphatically welcomed his early work and imagined themselves to be walking in his footsteps. »What the Vienna school has achieved, it ought to show not say. ... The master should be known by his work.«170 There are numerous examples of Wittgenstein’s distance towards any superficially polemical attitude against what he considered to have been the aim of the great metaphysical thinkers of the past. He even expressed sympathy and understanding for Heidegger in some notes of this time.171 There is no word of appreciation for an approach, for example, such as Carnap’s »Overcoming Metaphysics Through Logi­ cal Analysis of Language«— his famous attack published in the journal Erkenntnis against Heidegger’s 1929 lecture »What is Metaphysics?«172 On the contrary, this Heideggerian lecture may be a key to what both Wittgenstein and Heidegger saw as their common goal in a reformulation of the concept of metaphysics. If we turn more closely to this common goal, it becomes clear that these 20th century thinkers very well understood their attention towards metaphysics as a deep break with and as a split from the Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann, ed. by Brian McGuinness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 18. 171 »To be sure, I can understand what Heidegger means by Being and Angst«. Quoted in: Waismann, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, 68. 172 See Martin Heidegger, »What is Metaphysics?«, in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. by David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 89–110. See also Rudolf Carnap, Überwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse der Sprache, (Erkenntnis II, 1932). Published in English as: »The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language«, in Critical Theory since Plato, ed. by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle (Boston/Massachusetts: Thomson, 2005), 980–989. 170

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philosophical tradition; but what becomes then obvious is also that this split was already there when they developed their philosophical position, and though in one respect they fit into a development already ongoing; in another respect they turn against this relatively new development and claim to extend their philosophical revolution against it also. I will elaborate on both sides of the issue and try to demonstrate the deeply paradoxical conception of philosophy which connects them systematically. Concerning the first aspect, the significant change in the traditional concept of metaphysics which paved the way to its »overcoming«, we must at least go back to Kant. In the Metaphysics of Morals Kant speaks of an »obscurely thought metaphysics« which we find in ourselves, and which one has the duty to have in oneself.173 What appears here for the first time in such a significant place is what we today could call the »hermeneu­ tical« constitution of metaphysics: we must become interpreters of ourselves in order to find metaphysical knowledge. It is obvious that in this view we are not dealing with the traditional understanding of metaphysics as a philosophical discipline, as a theory of final causes or structures of the world or as a reconstruction of the principles of our worldview here. »Metaphysics« has become a designation of something personal, an object of philosophy rather than a discipline or theory. Kant’s great successor Fichte radicalized in various ways the idea that true philosophy cannot be found but in our innermost being. The philoso­ pher’s task, according to Fichte, is to »raise up into the light of language those hidden and characteristic depths of his soul that are unknown even to himself«174. And no one can choose arbitrarily the kind of philosophy that is hidden within everyone of us.175 The personal experience itself which is decisive for its understanding cannot be passed on; it is »private« in the Immanuel Kant, »Preface to the Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Virtue«, in The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1991), A VI, 182. Of course, this is not the whole of Kant’s characterization of »metaphysics«; in other contexts he uses the term in a much more conventional way. 174 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, ed. by Gregory Moore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 123. 175 »The kind of philosophy we choose [!] depends on the kind of men we are, for a philosophical system is not a piece of dead furniture which may be taken up or laid aside at pleasure. It is animated by the spirit of the man who makes it his own«. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, »Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre«, in Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. by Reinhard Lauth and Hans Jacob (Stuttgart/Bad 173

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most radical sense of the word.176 And yet, the content of philosophical truth can never be separated from its passing on into the mind which may receive it. This is a highly paradoxical conception which is rooted in the thesis with which Fichte anticipates the 20th century idea of »overcoming metaphysics«, namely that the one who undergoes that radical private philosophical experience comes to an understanding of the motive power of the whole tradition of philosophy. What anyone can learn from true philosophy is the key to the »task posed darkly« which all philosophy from its beginning up to now has always tried to solve.177 In this paradoxical turn we can see a typical connection between Fichte and the pathos of so many modern – I mean: postmedieval – philosophical systems: the claim to have reached a stage which allows us to give a reconstruction of the whole history of thinking, to understand all our predecessors better than they understood themselves. Hegel of course is the thinker who gave this thought its most radical and precise explication.178 But it is Fichte’s idealistic ally Schelling who turned this Cannstatt: Frommann, 1962), 195. Translation in Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant and Goethe (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970), 2. 176 »Only for the philosopher is it there beforehand, as a fact, since he himself has already run through the whole course of experience. He is obliged to express himself as he does, if only to be understood; and is able so to express himself, because he has already long since acquired all the concepts that are need for the purpose.« Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Gesamtausgabe, 1/4, 213, translated in: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, »Second Introduction to the Science of Knowledge. For readers who already have a philosophical system«, in: European Romanticism: A Reader, ed. by Stephen Prickett and Simon Haines (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 343. 177 The »Science of Knowledge« is therefore not the name of a system, neither one that exists nor one that is to emerge. In the Theory of the State of 1813 Fichte emphasized once again that it was not his writings or views, rather a task that was denoted with which his thinking might not be able to prove equal. To characterize is the task only in relation to the philosophy hitherto. It is identical with the »task that has been obscured for millennia«, of all quests for meaning in general, with which therefore »what from the very inception, up until to a certain point, of clear thinking was sought by all«. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Immanuel Hermann Fichte (Berlin: Veit, 1845), 374 [Translation by Neil O’Donnell]. 178 »[…] the history of philosophy presents only one philosophy at different stages of its unfolding throughout the various philosophies that make their appearance. In part, it also shows that the specific principles each one of which formed the basis of a given system are merely branches of one and the same whole. The latest philosophy, chronologically speak­ ing, is the result of all those that precede it and must therefore contain the principles of

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view into a genuine historical dimension. For Schelling, true philosophy is the stage which we have reached when we have passed the foregoing period in which philosophy was captured in self-alienation; the name for that self-alienating constitution of philosophy is »metaphysics«.179 And in this respect even the certainly anti-idealistic pathos of Nietzsche is not far from Schelling’s conception. Nietzsche’s word for what Schelling called self-alienation is quite simple: a lie. Whoever practiced metaphysics, desired power and preached truth. But what Nietzsche must claim as the consequence of this view is that the deepest result of all unmasking of metaphysical lies is – truth.180 In fact, he saw himself as the first decent man who had to cope with the mendacity of entire millennia. So, from Kant to Nietzsche, one can see a certain common feature of a highly personalized, paradoxically emphasized understanding of philosophy as dependent on metaphysics as an »obscure« sphere or stage of our mind which needs clarification but which also is the condition that makes it possible for us to become clear about the aim and object which philosophy has had during all its historical development. So far, we can indeed consider what was intended as the overcoming of metaphysics in the 20th century as a continuation of this 19th century approach to »metaphysics«. But let us now turn to the second aspect: the radical new attitude towards the aim and the nature of philosophy which is characteristic for thinkers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger. In a word, we can sum up the difference as follows: For the critique of metaphysics in the all of them. This is why, if it is philosophy at all, it is the most developed, richest and most concrete philosophy«. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, ed. and translated by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), I, § 13. 179 It was a matter of »returning reason from the self-alienation of the merely natural, that is, from unfree cognition to bring it back to itself«. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, ed. by Karl Friedrich August Schelling, 14 vols (Stuttgart/Augsburg: Cotta, 1856–1861), 282. Since a new age had come to philosophy—for Schelling meaning nothing other than the breakthrough of his own thought—it can be justly said that: »Philosophy is the first appropriate expression for the step after metaphysics, when the authorities, on which all this depends, begin to lose their unconditioned esteem« (Schelling, sämmtliche Werke, 267) [Translation by Neil O’Donnell]. 180 »My lot wills it that I must be the first decent human being, that I know I stand in opposition to the hypocrisy of millennia...« (Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How to become what you are, trans. Duncan Large (Oxford University Press, 2007), 88.

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19th century there was a certain substance of philosophy, a fundamentally important content, which the critics intended to discover within the old metaphysics by turning the supposed content of metaphysics against the self-conception of old metaphysics which they denied. The pathos of overcoming the old self-conception of philosophy was immediately connected to the typical modern attitude of coming to a final insight which allows us to achieve results which the metaphysical kind of questioning had made unattainable for our thinking. In this respect, 20th century thinkers are deeply anti-modern! Neither Heidegger nor Wittgenstein claim that they could or had to solve philosophical problems. »The clarity that we are aiming at«, according to Wittgenstein in one famous passage in the Philosophical Investigations, »is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear«.181 Heidegger in Being and Time rejects any debate about the »proof of an external world« in the sharpest manner: »The ›scandal of philosophy‹ is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again.« The whole »analytic of Dasein« claims to reveal to ourselves the constitution of our personal existence which makes any such proof obsolete. »If Dasein is understood correctly, it defies such proofs, because, in its Being, it already is what subsequent proofs deem necessary to demonstrate for it.«182 The task of philosophy does not consist in the solution of problems but in the transformation of our personal self-understanding in a way that liberates us from prejudices which are the real causes of what appears to us as philosophical problems: »the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself, and to keep the common understanding from levelling them off to that unintelligibility which functions in turn as a source of pseudo-problems.«183 The word »pseudo« here is of decisive importance: philosophy in its purest form does not solve problems but can only point to the elemental facts which remind us that what appeared to us as a »problem« is not really there. A key passage in Wittgenstein’s Blue 181 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen / Philosophical Investigations, trans. Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Hacker and Joachim Schulte, 4th. rev. ed. (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2009), § 133, 56. 182 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York, NY and Evanston, IL: Harper & Row, 1962), § 43 a, 249. 183 Heidegger, Being and Time, § 44 b, 262.

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Book reads: »The very word ›problem‹, one might say, is misapplied when used for our philosophical troubles. These difficulties, as long as they are seen as problems, are tantalizing, and appear insoluble«.184 Concerning the source of such pseudo-problematization, Wittgenstein does not talk about the »common understanding«,185 but his view is very close to Heidegger’s; and for us it is highly important to keep in mind the genuine temporal aspect of both thinkers’ views. Crucially: There are elemental facts which are prior to any reason we could give for them and to any problem that could be solved by such a reason. And this is why these facts consist in actions which are not the results but rather the presuppositions of all our theoretical reasoning. Therefore, whenever theoretical reasoning is applied to them, it only mirrors itself and thereby creates the »problems« which it is claiming to solve. »Resoluteness«, according to Heidegger describes what happens when we come to that point, »›exists‹ only as a resolution [Entschluss] which understandingly projects itself. But on what basis does Dasein disclose itself in resoluteness? On what is it to resolve? Only the resolution itself can give the answer.«186 For Heidegger, as for Wittgenstein, the philosophical confusion consists in the confusion between reflection and spontaneity. The question concerning the essence of metaphysics is why we do fall into that confusion. According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems, i.e. what we consider to be philosophical problems, arise from a confusion between conceptual unclarities and questions about facts. It is typical that »we express an unclarity about the grammar of words in the form of a scientific question«.187 What exactly is meant here by the term »grammar of words«? Of course, nothing that is presented in our »grammar books«, but some­ thing essentially different; Wittgenstein apostrophized it as the »depth grammar« (»Tiefengrammatik«).188 For example: The term »I know that x« is used in a parallel way to the term »I believe that x«; but if I believe something, the criterion for my belief is to be found in myself, i.e. in my Ludwig Wittgenstein, »The Blue Book«, in The Blue and Brown Books, 2nd ed., repr. (Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press, 1998), 45. 185 The real source of metaphysics is, as he said in The Blue Book, that »philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes […] and are irresistibility temped to ask and answer questions in the way science does«. Cf. Wittgenstein, The Blue Book, 18. 186 Heidegger, Being and Time, § 59, 345. 187 Wittgenstein, The Blue Book, 35. 188 Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen / Philosophical Investigations, § 664. 184

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behavior, my certainty, in the company I keep, etc., whereas the criterion for my knowledge consists in the facts. If x is not the case, then I do not know x; it does not matter how sure I may be, how decisively I may act, how much applause I will receive. The phenomenal difference is obvious, and whoever keeps to it has no reason to ask if there is something like a »process« or an »experience« which we describe by the word »to know«. Only if we turn the »surface grammar«, i.e. the superficial parallel between the verbs »to believe« and »to know«, into the prejudice that there »must be« some mental process named »knowledge« parallel to the phenomenon of »belief«, do we run into the apparent »problem« wherein such a process as »knowledge« could consist. And that is the starting point of a whole rainbow of philosophical confusion such as, for instance, if cognition takes place in the brain or elsewhere, if the cognitive process is restricted to human beings, if cognition is identical with thinking, etcetera. It is exactly the personal condition which we enter when we run into all of these con­ fused questions and into debates about the different »solutions« to them is the state of our personality which Wittgenstein calls the »metaphysi­ cal« one. In that sense, »metaphysics« is defined by a personal mindset, an expectation towards language, namely the expectation that there is a general, universal relation between words and their objects, a relation in general between language and the facts, which is laid down in the forms of our (surface) grammar. And the decisive thesis of Wittgenstein’s concept of philosophy as overcoming this metaphysical attitude is that this mindset is not a misleading way of postulating the solution of philosophical problems but that it is the cause by which we can understand and have to explain why they appear, why they are misunderstood, and why they are constructed as »problems« at all. »Why then do we in philosophizing constantly compare our use of words with one following exact rules? The answer is that the puzzles which we try to remove always spring from just this attitude towards language«.189 So the question arises as to where this attitude comes from, and this brings us to a deeper aspect of what is denoted in this whole context by the term »metaphysical«. To explain that aspect it is helpful to turn to Heidegger and especially to the »Kehre« which marked the break between Being and Time and his later way of thinking. »Metaphysics is inquiry beyond or over beings that aims to recover them as such and as a whole for our grasp«: this was Heidegger’s final 189

Wittgenstein, The Blue Book, 25.

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characterization of his subject matter in the famous 1929 lecture »What is Metaphysics?«190 There is a deep and hidden temporal aspect in this description which relates it back to the gigantic project of Being and Time: the project of the »destruction of the history of ontology« in terms of the guiding aspect of a prejudice concerning the essence of time, namely that time is essentially presence, that »to be« means to be part of a totality of present beings. In Being and Time, the concept of metaphysics did not play a particular role in the analysis of that ontological background. But there was already the idea that this ontological background and its historical development were decisive for the status of self-alienation from which the »analytic of Dasein« in Being and Time was designated to liberate us. In »What is Metaphysics?« this connection is radicalized in the most extreme way, but now under a new title: »Metaphysics«, according to Heidegger, »belongs to the ›nature of the human being‹. It is neither an academic discipline nor a field of arbitrary notions. It is the fundamental occurrence in our Dasein. It is that Dasein itself.«191 Here we find the term »metaphysics« intimately connected with anthropological categories which are in the sharpest contrast to Being and Time, where the concept of ›Dasein‹ was intended to avoid any reference to the essence or the nature of the human being. Here Heidegger has reached the point of Kant’s and Fichte’s characterization of metaphysics, being, however, separated from their philosophical aims by the other fundamental feature of the lecture, the object of Carnap’s fierce logical criticism: ›the nothing‹. There is no correspondent role in Being and Time to that one which the ›nothing‹ plays in »What is Metaphysics« and in the whole conception of the »history of Being« which shaped the path of thinking of the later Heidegger. The only common denominator which we can find between ›Dasein‹ and the ›nothing‹ is: self-alienation. For the later Heidegger as well as for the author of Being and Time, there is a tendency in ourselves that prevents us from reaching an aim which we only want to achieve because of that tendency, and the structure of our self-relation which involves us in the circle resulting from that paradoxical constellation is the genuine object of philosophical explication. In Being and Time, however, there was the ›exis­ tentialist‹ color in which Heidegger painted that object, and that color had, no matter whether we like it or not, a normative tone: ›Dasein‹ was 190 191

Heidegger, What is Metaphysics?, 93. Heidegger, What is Metaphysics?, 96.

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characterized as »fallen« and »deteriorated«. Heidegger was not able to explicate adequately the relation between that tendency of deterioration and the intended escape from it; he called the structural relation between fall and escape from it »equiprimordial«, but this has not been really enough to explicate the fundamentally temporal aspect of that structure. The later Heidegger saw the key to that explication in an aspect of temporality which in Being and Time he had tried to keep aside for the promised ›destruction of the history of ontology‹, namely the socio-cultural aspect under which time can form over centuries what he called a »Menschentum« (a »mankind«), i.e. a collectively and non-intentionally constituted historical body of human existence.192 No single human being can choose the ›mankind‹ he or she belongs to, nobody can decide to enter or to leave it. And this is why its horizon is wider than any fact which we could ever discover in relation to the world we belong to; that is to say, that horizon encompasses the distinction between ›true‹ and ›false‹, between truth and error. In everything we will ever find out about our world, about »the beings«, we will come back to and fit in the limits of our »Menschentum«. So, the ›circle‹ in the center of human being has finally wiped off its hermeneutic and its quasi-normative dimension; it is ontological in nature. But ›ontology‹ now has in its core no longer ›being‹ but ›nothingness‹: the deeper we get along in our struggle to find the truth about what is, the more we come to clarity about what for us and our whole world it means to ›be‹, the more we become blind for the genuine power behind all our thinking, which is nothingness, that is to say: which »is« no thing. The stage of our collective being in which we had found the last and most universal formula of what it means to ›be‹ – for example by a Cartesian, a Newtonian, an Einsteinian, a Darwinist or any other metaphysical paradigm – would be identical with the deepest and inescapable stage of »Seinsvergessenheit« (forgetfulness of being), i.e. of separation from what we really want to find in all our thinking and research.193 So, the relation of Being and nothingness would be tragic and almost absurd – if it was not for that one chance of liberation which is 192 Translated as »[a] particular human kind« in Martin Heidegger, »Postscript to ›What is Metaphysics‹« (1943), in Pathmarks, ed. and trans. by William McNeill, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998), 236. Cf. translator’s foreword. 193 This is the point in Heidegger’s very peculiar interpretation of the Leibniz-question in the »Postscript to ›What is Metaphysics‹«, 290: »How does it come about that beings take precedence everywhere and lay claim to every ›is‹, while that which is not a being – namely, the Nothing thus understood as Being itself – remains forgotten?«.

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incorporated in what we are doing here and now, when we become aware of it, i.e. when we are doing philosophy, and when we are doing it in a way which is grounded on the insight that the chance which is given to us by our philosophizing is fundamentally inseparable from the misunderstanding of it which is the presupposition of the only way to overcome it. And the object of such philosophical overcoming of philosophy’s self-misunderstanding is: metaphysics. At this point, I hope that it will not further complicate our reflection to the line of thinking which we find so originally initiated in Heideg­ ger’s »What is Metaphysics?« but that it clarifies it to some degree, when we return to Wittgenstein. I think this to be helpful because there is one key to the understanding of the relation between philosophy and ›meta­ physics‹ which for the later Heidegger became more and more decisive whereas for Wittgenstein it stood in the center of his view of philosophy from the earliest beginning, namely: language. Having said that Wittgen­ stein saw the origin of metaphysical confusion in a certain attitude towards language which creates the problems to which we consider it to be the solu­ tion, we can now see: For Wittgenstein it is exactly this attitude which marks the »anthropological« factor that we have found in the later Heidegger’s concept of metaphysics. In his famous »Lecture on Ethics« which he pre­ sented in Cambridge almost at the same time as Heidegger’s »What is Metaphysics?« Wittgenstein called that factor our tendency to »run against the limits of language«, a tendency which at the same time he considered to be »perfectly, absolutely hopeless«, as well as a crucial way of expression of our human existence which he never would ridicule and for which he had the greatest respect.194 I think that the point which we have reached now in our reflection on the concept of metaphysics is the point where we can exactly see that this ambivalent view has nothing to do with melancholy or resignation but that it is of the highest systematical importance for what we call here the overcoming of metaphysics. As a matter of fact, the decisive point is quite simple. We have reached it when we ask the question: »Why 194 Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Lecture on Ethics, (London: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 49: »Ethics, so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it. ».

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do we, when we are philosophizing, run against the limits of lan­ guage?« And we have understood it when we come to see that: There is no answer to this question! Every answer we try to give is a metaphysical one: this exactly is Wittgenstein’s (and, as I think, in the end also Heidegger’s) definition of metaphysics. It is of the utmost importance to see the gen­ uinely temporal aspect in this definition. Metaphysical questions are ques­ tions about the alleged cause of what is only and essentially happening after we pose them; in this sense »the real discovery« in philosophy is, as the famous § 133 of the Philosophical Investigations says, the »one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question.« Metaphysics is a hidden questioning of what happens when we get into it, and so it is a hidden questioning about nothing but itself. Or, as it is exercised especially in Wittgenstein’s Brown Book and in the Philosophical Grammar, it is an act of self-creating speaking to itself. »I don’t really speak about what I see, but to it«195: This is Wittgenstein’s con­ densed formula to the solution of the paradox of metaphysical contiguity. Whoever raises a metaphysical question has become aware of the consti­ tutive limits that govern the usage of a term, and it is precisely this attention that expresses itself in what one has to say about such a term. »The sentence was an utterance of a state of attention«.196 So, in our metaphysical ques­ tioning and reasoning we become aware of a state of attention which gets its content, i.e. the object which we have become aware of, through the process in which we are becoming aware of it: the state of attention precedes its own content, it precedes itself.197 It is precisely this ›state of attention‹ that is first experienced when the philosophical therapist takes to task. Prior to this, the object of attention is misconstrued as one whose meaning is still concealed, disguised by the everyday use of a term. For instance, whoever asks the question »quid est ergo tempus?« presumes that the concealed meaning of the word »time« may at some point be discovered. But the truth is, that whenever we ask such questions, we refer unwillingly and uncon­ sciously to the condition in which we so ask, and rather than asking after the signified supposedly in question, we actually name this condition, we speak to it. Whoever asks in a metaphysical way what »time is« will, when trying to answer in that metaphysical way, never speak about time but 195 196 197

Wittgenstein, The Brown Book, 175. Wittgenstein, The Brown Book, 177. Cf. introduction part 3.

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rather about what is going on right now, in the context of such questioning and answering. Whoever is involved in this context is speaking to a strictly personal metaphysical feeling. »But I don’t point to the feeling by attending to it. Rather, attending to the feeling means producing or modifying it«.198 To mention another important example, this is the point of Wittgen­ stein’s, compared to corresponding critical innovations by authors like LéviStrauss199 and later Kripke,200 highly ironic critique of the Russellian the­ ory of the ostentation of proper names in § 38 of the Philosophical Investigations: »This is connected with the conception of naming as, so to speak, an occult process. Naming appears as a queer connection of a word with an object. —And you really get such a queer connection when the philosopher tries to bring out the relation between name and thing by star­ ing at an object in front of him and repeating a name or even the word ›this‹ innumerable times. […] And here we may indeed fancy naming to be some remarkable act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object. And we can also say the word ›this‹ to the object, as it were address the object as ›this‹—a queer use of this word, which doubtless only occurs in doing philosophy«.201 Let us now finally go back to Heidegger. What he certainly approached more closely than Wittgenstein was the historical dimension of metaphys­ ical self-searching, the dimension which we had briefly mentioned in reference to Schelling. The ontological subject of the paradoxical constella­ tion in which we attempt to reach an aim that we only want to reach because of a tendency which essentially prevents us from reaching it for Heideg­ ger is, as we have seen above, our »Menschentum«, our mankind. For Heidegger, such a »mankind« has its origin in metaphysical thinking. Its existence »begins at that moment when the first thinker takes a questioning stand with regard to the unconcealment of beings by asking: what are beings? In this question unconcealment is experienced for the first time.«202 And with the issue of thinking we are back at the connecting link between Heidegger and Wittgenstein: language. What metaphysical thinkers have to uncover is, according to Heidegger, essentially what is concealed in what 198 199 200 201 202

Wittgenstein, The Brown Book, 174. Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, 215–216. Saul Aaron Kripke, Naming and Necessity, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 6 ff. Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen / Philosophical Investigations, § 38. Martin Heidegger, »On the essence of truth«, trans. John Sallis, in Pathmarks, 145.

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they are saying. »With any philosophical knowledge in general, what is said in uttered propositions must not be decisive. Instead, what must be decisive is what it sets before our eyes as still unsaid, in and through what has been said«203. And this, so Heidegger, holds equally for Nietzsche, namely that »every great thinker always thinks one jump more originally than he directly speaks. Our interpretation therefore must try to say what is unsaid by him«204. What, however, keeps what is said and what is unsaid together? Heidegger’s answer to this question is perhaps the most decisive insight for his influence on the philosophical, especially the phenomenological thinking of our time, namely: that thinking is essentially a response. It is no intentional, voluntary expression which stands behind the words that lead us to the origin of our »mankind«: »The thinker only responded to what addressed itself to him«, so Heidegger resumes in his Question Concerning Technology.205 And what addressed itself to him? This is the question concerning the power behind all our thinking, and the answer to it is, as we have already seen: nothing. In his idea of »Seinsgeschichte« Heidegger forms this answer into the concept of nihilism: »Metaphysics as metaphysics is nihilism proper. The essence of nihilism is historically as metaphysics, and the metaphysics of Plato is no less nihilistic than that of Nietzsche. In the former, the essence of nihilism is merely concealed; in the latter, it comes completely to appearance. Nonetheless, it never shows its true face, either on the basis of or within metaphysics«206. Metaphysical speaking and, if we follow Heidegger, the whole worldview and the whole form of life which we owe to our »mankind«, is a response to nothing but a response, which is the same as to say: to itself. Nietzsche, according to Heidegger, had been as close as possible to the insight that metaphysics is nothing, but he spoiled it by adding: nothing »but« or nothing »besides«, namely: the will to power. This »but« or »besides« made him at the same time fulfill Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), 140. 204 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche I, in Gesamtausgabe, I. Abteilung: Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976 (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996), 134 [Translation by Neil O’Don­ nell]. 205 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1977), 18. 206 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche II, in Gesamtausgabe, I, Abteilung: Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976 (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1997), 205 [Translation by Neil O’Don­ nell]. 203

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the course of metaphysical thinking and fall back into it. This ambivalence explains why his word »gives the destiny of two millennia of Western his­ tory«207. »Nihilism, thought in its essence, is…the fundamental movement of the history of the West…Nihilism is the world-historical movement of the peoples of the earth who have been drawn into modernity’s arena of power«208. But in order to overcome metaphysics we must leave him and take one step further, i.e. one step back: »What was said about nihilism proper in describing Nietzsche’s metaphysics as a fulfillment of nihilism must have already awakened thoughtful readers to another supposition: that the ground of proper nihilism is neither the metaphysics of will to power nor the metaphysics of will, but simply metaphysics itself.«209 This awakening of the thoughtful reader can be seen as the goal which unites Heidegger with Wittgenstein: to reach the aim of metaphysics by uncovering the constellation through which metaphysics itself prevents us from reaching it. »What if…what is unthought were the selfsame? Then the unthought unconcealment of the being would be the unthought Being itself. Then Being itself would unfold essentially as such unconcealment—as revealing.«210

Martin Heidegger, »Nietzsche’s Word ›God is dead‹«, in Off the Beaten Track, ed. Julian Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 160. 208 Heidegger, »Nietzsche’s Word ›God is dead‹«, 163. 209 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche II, 205 [Translation by Neil O’Donnell]. 210 Heidegger, Nietzsche II, 212. 207

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The Place of the Past Reflections on Ricoeur’s Ontology of Forgetting

»Over! a stupid word. Why over? What's over, and mere nothing, are the same«, - Mephistopheles, Faust II, l. 11595 – 11598211

thus, the devil summarizes his – unbeknownst to him – already lost bet with God. If, as I would argue, Faust is not merely a rhapsodic hodgepodge but Goethe’s philosophical lifework, then the difference between what is over and what has never been, is in the end, the deepest question which forms the main theme of the »play«. Should this characterization be correct, then it is of the deepest philosophical significance to determine the reason for the devil’s mistake, which ultimately justifies the happy ending in the »Bergschluchten«-scene. And it really seems that if one emphasizes the »word« in the first verse, one may find an indirect trace of the foundation which justifies the devil’s loss and Faust’s reprieve from annihilation despite the course of his life. »»All's over!«-what's the inference from that? That things might just as well have never been«212

It is the performative aspect of this exclamation, which contains the key to the riddle, that stands at the end of the earthly part of Goethe’s world-spanning drama. The outcry’s performative dimension stands in stark and immediate contrast to its content. There appears to be some meaning to that which is »over« and, for a moment, the devil is faced with the »cognitive« possibility of something to be understood, a sense to be discerned, or a trace to be read in that, which a moment ago he declared to be just as well as if it had never been. Yet, his exclamation is an act 211 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust I & II, Volume 2. Goethe’s Collected Works, trans. Stuart Atkins (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014), 292. 212 Goethe, Faust I & II, 11600 – 61, 292.

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of will: he wants to and wants us to forget. The performative and the constitutive aspect of that which happens here (and which, indirectly, spans the relationship between the reader and the play up to the present point) stand in fundamental opposition: the difference between the past and what never was does not exist, hence its trace has to be obliterated. The connection embodied here by the devil essentially corresponds to Ricoeur’s discussion of »forgetting as a threat« in the context of his Ontology of Recognition in the book The Course of Recognition: The Issue of Forgetting appears »entirely unexpectedly« in connection with Aristo­ tle’s »On Memory and Reminiscence«213. In his discussion Ricoeur focuses on Mneme-memoria, »the presence of an image of what is already past in the mind«, and its foundational paradox, namely, »the enigma of the presence in an image of an absent thing that this image represents.«214 It is clear, that the importance of this discussion for the age-old philosophical question concerning being and perceiving cannot be overestimated, and Ricoeur proceeds to relate it back to the topos of the »trace« which has gained pivotal importance beginning with the work of Peirce215, through Heidegger216, all the way to Derrida217. Through the trace we may think the presence of absence, such that there is a presence which stands in for something past of which it is a result. As Ricoeur also remarks, the »trace« is a figure of thought, which doubles the riddle it is supposed to allow us to solve: »Every trace, in effect, is in the present. And the trace will always depend on the thought that interprets it, that takes it as a trace of…« – which is to say, if the time that passes between the trace’s origin and its interpretation is to be real at all it cannot merely refer to it but has to lead us back into the past – »an effect that is a sign of its cause — this is the enigma of the trace«218. So, we are tracing the riddle of the trace, and we trace this trace of the trace into fleeting time. 213 Aristotle, On Memory and Reminiscence, trans. J. I. Beare, Accessed 2023–06–12, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/memory.html. 214 Paul Ricoeur, The course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2007), 111. 215 Charles S. Peirce, »Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism«, The Monist, Volume 16, Issue 4, (October 1906): 492–546, https://doi.org/10.5840/monist19061 6436. 216 Heidegger, Martin. »Art and space.« Man and world 6 (Spring 1973): 3–8. 217 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 84 ff. 218 Ricoeur, The course of recognition, 112.

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Precisely at this point, Ricoeur faces the »problem of forgetting«: »In short, it belongs to the idea of a trace that it can be wiped out. With this unsettling idea of the threat of effacement comes that of the threat of forgetting.«219 That this threat concerns nothing less than our very being becomes clear when we follow Ricoeur’s thought in the major work of his late philosophy »Memory, History, Forgetting«220. In this work Ricoeur strives to articulate the difference between the past and that which has never been, though this only becomes explicitly clear in Jankélévitch’s motto preceding the work: »He who has been, from then on cannot not have been«221. Hence, the question of forgetting, as Ricoeur poses it, concerns being or not-being and therefore ontology. As always with Ricoeur, it is not a question which requires us simply to understand its answer, but to understand its answer is to understand understanding itself. Ontology poses the question, to which hermeneutics is the answer. The path Ricoeur takes to reach the answer in »Memory, History and Forgetting« first leads to an explication of the Heideggerian concept of »beenness« [Gewesenheit], with which he wants to draw our attention to »a little-known paradox«, namely Heidegger’s notion of a forgetting, which is not a limitation of remembering, but its condition.222 As trivial as this paradox may seem at first glance and however little notice other writers have taken of it, it undeniably describes the peculiarity of remembering: In order to remember something, we first have to have forgotten it. Even if the memory is still more or less present and returns after a brief while, it remains an act by which we become aware of something anew and from which attention had strayed. Hence, what is remembered is remembered as something forgotten. Yet, there is an objective dimension to this relationship between remembering and forgetting: that, which was forgotten and is remembered. Turning to this aspect of the paradox we arrive at the counterpoint with which we finally enter the realm of hermeneutics: this counterpoint is fictional memory, imagination. What

Ricoeur, The course of recognition, 112. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 221 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 5. Cf. also, 180: »Past things are abolished, but no one can make it be that they should not have been.« 222 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York and Evanston, IL: Harper & Row, 1962), § 68a, 389. 219

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is the criterion for the distinction between remembering and imagining, between the forgotten and the made-up? Plainly, it is the beenness of the past in opposition to that which has never been. We can only remember that which is over. However, if we also accept that we can only remember what we have first forgotten, then the ability to distinguish between memory and imagination, the forgotten and the made-up must have its ground in the difference which separates the transient simultaneously from that which is present and from that which has never been. Which is to say, in forgetting the transient is present as that into which all present things are about to pass on and which therefore can itself never be present. The having-been (Heidegger’s »beenness«) retains something more than the mere difference between being past and being present; Ricoeur calls this »forgetting that preserves« in contrast to »every event that is dated, remembered, or forgotten,«223 which clearly means in opposition to the present itself. The riddle concerning the trace, which leads us out of the present into the origin of its distinction to the past thereby culminates in the quest for that which is given to us simultaneously with the present, and into which the present is about to enter. Where does this question lead us? As a phenomenologist Ricoeur can­ not find the answer in theoretical thought, but only in the interpretation of some phenomenon which is beyond all theory. His solution: It is the »small miracle of recognition«224 through which everyone simply experiences the answer to the paradox. We see someone and notice her as someone whom we do not know, and suddenly we recognize her as the same person we have known before. Here we directly experience forgetting as the condition of remembering without recourse to reflective thought; in re-cognizing [wieder-erkennen] what we cognized [erkennen] before we simultaneously become aware of its difference to our former cognition and the intermittent forgetting. Here, the relationship between forgetting and remembering on the one hand, and being-present and having-been, on the other, which was the focus of our question, becomes apparent. To wit, in recognizing we do not merely recognize a memory, but rather the remembered herself. It may well be, that she has undergone significant change, that she is very different from the image we still had of her in our mind, nevertheless we have the sudden realization that: it is her! This means: As with any 223 224

Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 442. Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, 124.

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noetic act of consciousness recognition involves an intentional content, which insofar the condition for recognition is forgetting, must be that which in order to reappear must first have disappeared. »[A] being was presented once; it went away; it came back. Appearing, disappearing, reappearing.«225 It is not only my memory which disappeared, but the remembered itself – whereto? The problem at hand cannot be resolved by any subjectivist account. Remembering cannot happen »in the head«. Just as it is not in my head, but in its relation to the facts that the truth or falsity of a sentence I utter is decided, so too whether or not I truly remember is decided in relation to that which had disappeared out of my memory and has now reappeared in it. Returned from where? To speak of the »unconscious« or »subconscious« in this context is only to reiterate the problem without resolving it; to relocate the space of consciousness into the brain means to impose a methodological limit as the necessary condition for its resolution. However, if this necessary condition is taken to be sufficient for the resolution226 of the problem of remembering, and we were thus to deny that it extends beyond the confines of our mind, we stand to lose its substance. Hence, the sufficient condition for remembering cannot lie within its subjective dimension but has to be sought in its objective extension and therefore, at least inasmuch as forgetting is parts of its extension, in forgetting itself and whereto the forgotten disappears and wherefrom it returns. In order to connect the theme of remembering to that of the trace discussed earlier we have to carefully note that remembering is not merely intrasubjective. Our collective »cultural memory«227 is similarly capable of remembering, such as when the discovery of the Rosetta Stone made Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 429. This context taken for itself is certainly of high theoretical and practical relevance. The »cortical trace« forms a constitutive aspect of the whole explication of recognition, and Ricoeur dedicates a substantial section (418 ff.) of Memory, History and Forgetting of how it has been treated in the neurosciences, which ends precisely with the demarcation of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions, 426: »The task of the neu­ rosciences is then to express […] what makes it possible for me to think, namely, the neural structure without which I could not think. This is not nothing, but neither is it everything.« 227 Cf. Jan Assmann, »Communicative and Cultural Memory«, Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, (Berlin, New York : De Gruyter, 2008), 109–118.

225

226

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Egyptian hieroglyphs intelligible once more after their meaning had disap­ peared from living memory for numerous generations. Remembering and the remembered may be separated by a lifetime, generations or even time immemorial. Thomas Mann has characterized mythical consciousness, which he attempts to poetically circumscribe in his »Joseph and his Broth­ ers«, as becoming part of a chain of events in the course of which the protagonists realize that they are part of something greater and much more real than they took even themselves to be. »›There it is again!‹ a man says, and feels it to be guarded by myth, established and abiding, something more than reality, to be, that is, the truth of what is happening«228. And when, apart from anything else, we are launching images of humans alongside our mars’ rovers into space, then we certainly do so in the hope that some extraterrestrial receiver once may recognize our descendants. On this basis we can now proceed and pose the question of recognition itself: How then may we recognize the phenomenon of recognition itself, either on the intra- or intersubjective level? In Ricoeur’s analysis of the conditions of remembering the decisive point is marked by the distinction between forgetting as a threat or as a chance. It is a distinction between two ways of comportment towards forgetting and the meaning it may assume in our life – in short: it concerns two sides of forgetting. The first and generally dreaded side is forgetting’s propensity to »efface traces«, hence the loss of memory, which looms over us as a sign of the end of our conscious existence and our lifetime and which we lament much like aging and death.229 We oppose this threat with all our might and the full gamut of our ars memoriae, ranging from the proverbial knot in the handkerchief to diaries, monuments, jubilees, commemorations, and public rituals [Vergegenwärtigungsrituale] which all form part of cultural consciousness. Whatever our finite life amounts to, it may purposefully be preserved to some extent in the memory of others. However, the measure of the extent to which our life may be preserved is finite life itself and with finite life it has to end. The looming threat consequently is not the threat of forgetting, but threat of the death and the destruction of all. Our response always remains a struggle to delay the inevitable disappearance of memory, never halting it entirely. Though we thereby react to the perceived threat 228 Thomas Mann, Joesph and his Brothers, trans. John E. Woods, (London: Penguin Random House, 2005), 920. 229 Thomas Mann, Joesph and his Brothers, 485.

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of forgetting, we never ask what it is that forgetting is actually threatening. And this does not change unless we stop looking at forgetting only as a threat and start perceiving it as the chance which lets us understand what is threatened by it. This chance itself is a phenomenon and with it we turn our attention to another foundational theme of philosophy, luck. We find chance, as that which makes forgetting the condition of remembering, and on the other hand; Ricoeur calls it the »reserve of forgetting [l'oubli de réserve]«230. In order to understand what he means we have to once again return to the phenomenon of involuntary recogni­ tion, which earlier we called the »small miracle« of recognition and which Ricoeur, in order to capture the flipside of forgetting, i.e., forgetting as chance, calls »that minor miracle of happy memory«231. What does he mean by that? It can hardly be the claim that any sudden and involuntary recognition be pleasant. Indeed, it may also be an overwhelming »not this again!« In such varied representations of recognition as Odysseus’ final return to Ithaka or the most shocking scenes in horror-films we see that recognition may play the role of the paradigmatic unpleasant surprise. The decisive moment for us is not whether the surprise be good or bad, but the surprise itself. According to Ricoeur surprise is at the heart of the »small happiness of perception«232. There is an essential connection between surprise and understanding, which we have to understand in its significance for forgetting in order to understand why these instances involve some »happy« coincidence. One may certainly regret having recognized something, but once something has been recognized we cannot but to prefer this recognition [Erkennen] over the failure to recognize [Verkennen] it, which it has replaced. Disillusionment may not be pleasant, yet we are lucky to be freed from illusion. As a German saying goes »a danger recognized, is a danger averted« [Gefahr erkannt, Gefahr gebannt]. Luck is not necessarily bound to knowledge, but knowledge is presupposed at least for happiness. We would not call someone happy who was totally unable to understand any reason for so being. Being happy [glücklich zu sein] means to notice, and at least intuitively understand the reason for one’s own happiness. However, there is an element of luck, which belongs to happiness. One must be 230 231 232

Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 428. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 429. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 429.

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able to let oneself be surprised by the disclosure of one’s own happiness [Glück]; to plan out one’s happiness and attempt to remove that constitutive element of the unexpected is the surest way to unhappiness. Happiness contains just this moment of luck, and this is what justifies us in speak­ ing of »happy memory«: the indispensable moment of becoming aware [Aufmerksamwerden] of that which without this awareness would not be what it is and which, nevertheless, forms the ground and content of which we become aware, and thus precedes our awareness and makes it an act of remembering. Happiness is our human way of experiencing the origin, the genesis, of the difference between that which has been and that which has never been, i.e. the difference between what is »over« and what has never been the case. In a moment of happiness, we find ourselves experiencing and preserving a level of remembering where the thing remembered is simultaneously that which precedes its memory and proceeds from this memory. This is that other, second level upon which alone one can find a sense in the struggle of »ordinary memory« to preserve what was from the threat of being forgotten. In my concluding remarks, I can only suggest that the concept of place could be somewhat relevant to the connection between hermeneutics and ontology. The answer to the »problem of forgetting«, namely that forgetting is a threat for just the same reason that it also is a chance, is one of Ricoeur’s great legacies. However, it also brings us to a boundary where we have to go beyond Ricoeur’s legacy in order to preserve it. To remind ourselves, we have followed Ricoeur’s cue pointing us towards the moment of recognition as the phenomenological answer to the question of what is given at the same time as the present and which, simultaneously, the present is about to pass into. We had to unearth a »reserve of forgetting« which ordinarily is obfuscated by our daily struggle with our dwindling power of memory, and which was to disclose a »forgetting that preserves«, which in turn commits what has been to the past and thereby opens us the difference between that which was and that which never was in addition to the difference between the past and the present. Ricoeur explicitly affirms this correlation: »forgetting has a positive meaning insofar as having-been prevails over being-no-longer in the meaning attached to the idea of the past. Having-been makes forgetting the immemorial resource offered to the work of remembering.«233 However, in its ambiguity Ricoeur’s 233

Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 443.

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answer defeats itself by consciously denying to answer the question: The having-been of what? All that Ricoeur has to say on this topic tends towards the purely subjective aspects of remembering and forgetting alike. Key here is the term with which he describes the most comprehensive horizon of our present problem in The Course of Recognition as »the enigma of the presence in an image of an absent thing that this image represents«234. At the core, this way of describing the problem is also the conclusion Ricoeur draws in Memory, History, Forgetting, due to his heavy reliance on Bergson’s Matter and Memory235: »If a memory returns, this is because I had lost it; but if, despite everything, I recover it and recognize it, this is because its image had survived.«236 Forgetting, Ricoeur repeats in con­ cluding, enables »survival of memory« in images possible and even comes to the same237. Consequently, the link between memory and forgetting is the »survival of images«238. But where do the »images« continue to abide? Ricoeur remains, as is inevitable due to his reception of Bergson, on the level of psychology and it is telling that ultimately, he even hints at Freud’s »unconscious« as the horizon for the solution to the problem.239 He himself is conscious of the fact that this is synonymous to evading the problem altogether, which in turn means, that he admits to a boundary, which Bergson is not willing to cross. Ricoeur tells us that the question as to »where« the images abide is a »trap«, since it hardly seems possible »not to designate the psychical place as a container ›whence‹, as one says, the memory returns«240. As a consequence, we have to forget the question: Bergson’s »entire effort consists in replacing the question ›where?‹ by the question ›how?‹«241 the memory returns. This approach is the Achille’s heel not only of Bergson’s, but also of Ricoeur’s account. This is so, because the image, if we wish to understand it as a »psychological« bridge between past and present, as well as between being and thinking, must have its place, no matter if we like it or not. No matter how we construe the psychological Ricoeur, The course of recognition, 112. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul & W. Scott Palmer (New York: Dover Publications, 2004). Ricoeur refers especially to chapter 3. 236 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 430. 237 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 440. 238 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 439. 239 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 445. 240 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 434. 241 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 434. 234 235

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account the place of the image has to be »inside« the remembering being, which leads to all kinds of aporias of which the trítos ánthrōpos is merely the oldest known: In order to, as is indispensable to distinguish between remembering and imagining, compare the »image« with that which it is an image off, we need a criterion which can only apply to the »image« via a criterion of comparison between image and thinking, the application of which in turn consist in another criterion and so on. Such aporias can only be avoided if we take our notion of an »image« not from psychology, but from art242 which, however, inexorably brings us back to the question of its place. Here we finally have to exceed Ricoeur’s legacy in order to preserve it, since the distinction between »destructive forgetting and the reserve of forgetting«243 can hardly be maintained, if the »images« in which every possible memory abide in the head – or in the unconscious – of a being destined to perish like everything else in this world. A possible way out for Ricoeur lies in the direction of metaphysics, namely, to posit a timeless and extensionless world beyond viewed from which all that is now present is already one with that into which it is about to pass, sublated into a total futurum exactum. Ricoeur has hinted at this solution in several places244, yet he had good reason not to pursue it, since the theme of forgetting and the threat posed by it loses most of its philosophical interest when a grounding which transcends time and space is assumed. It is however surprising, that he does not consider another option championed by an artist Ricoeur himself has extensively researched: Marcel Proust. In his »In Search of Lost Time«245, especially in the motif of the famous madeleine episode, the author treats recognition not merely as a theme, but as the principle of artwork itself. We can understand Proust’s aim in so doing as a radically paradoxical answer to our question concerning the distinction Cf. Gottfried Boehm, »Die Wiederkehr der Bilder«, in Was ist ein Bild, (Munich: Fink, 1994), 11–38. Katharina Bauer provides important information on this aspect in »Proust: Erzählte Spuren – Vom Vergessen und Vergessenwerden«, (Liga-Preisschrift Eichstätt, 2013): »Narration masters the art of measuring lived time. The moments of recognition which Prousts conveys in his search for lost time make visible what ordinarily remains invisible: ›time‹.« 243 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 443. 244 Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 488 f. 245 Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin and Andreas Mayor, (London : Penguin Randomhouse, 1981). 242

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between memory and imagination: It is literary fiction in the shape of poetic imagination, which renders the »unthinkable source« thinkable, such that the past and with it its difference to that which has never been, as well as to the »merely« fictitious in every moment proceeds from and precedes the present. What remembering is, can ultimately only be known in remembering, but what the past is into which the remembered recedes can only be known from the memory which emerges out of itself as the trace, which can only be placed in the tracing of itself. I mean, that Proust has taken it upon himself to make the riddle which we encounter at the end of Goethe’s Faust the central aim of poetic understanding itself. The decisive turn from lived time to narrated time which Ricoeur – incidentally in reference to Goethe – develops in »Time and Narrative« indeed harmonizes with this project of Proust. Proust’s brilliant explication of the difference between the past and the »merely« fic­ titious consisted in taking his real passing life and, through its repetition in literary fiction, bring it into the kind of congruency the sublation in forgetting of which, is the work of a kind of time which makes the unrepeatable that proceeds from every moment also precede its moment irretrievably [uneinholbar]. The aim of Proust as an artist was to recapture the irrevocable and at the same time unrepeatable time of the past in the artistic work of his life and to allow us to encounter it in his writings. And it is the madeleine episode which paradigmatically – one could also say metonymically – stands for the whole life of Proust’s »hero« in that it is an exemplary explication of that moment of retrieval, which stands in for the whole of the past just up to the present moment, as in our own life. It is just as the philosophical introduction to the madeleine episode says in its matter-of-fact reference to a »Celtic superstition« about the souls of the dead: »It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.«246 This marks the aim of the work to allow us to read the life which has gone into it – thereby also the life which is still about to go into it – wherein that life is able to anticipate its own death. It inescapably remains a work of understanding, not doing, of revelation, not redemption; 246

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, 72.

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this means, it cannot engender the »coincidence«, which alone may rival the power of death in our life, but only direct our attention so as to recognize the coincidence as such when and if it occurs. The explication of this task not its completion seems to me to be accomplished in the work of Proust through the category of place, more precisely a place in time [Zeitort], which an understanding of our own life allows us to find and retrieve. To understand the path to salvation, which following Ricoeur Bergson’s concept of the image is bound to distract us from, means for Proust to realize that if we are indeed saved it is our own life which has, as if by coincidence, led us to the place [Ort] where we found salvation.247 Whereto the past as the »preceding preserving« [vorgängig Bewahrendes] of the present passes as opposed to that which never was, that, in the poetic explicating philosophy of Proust, is the place, where we may find again in the present that which once belonged to it and has now returned to it.

However, with reference to Proust we must emphasize the importance of »places of memory« [Gedächtnisorte] and the relation of the past, which has »taken place« [stattge­ funden hat], with human habitation in Memory, History and Forgetting, 125, cf. 404 ff. How this relates to Ricoeur’s reception of Bergson does not become quite clear. 247

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1. »One sees and has already seen«: The present as place of the past. Colloquially, the word »present« is mainly used in one of two contexts. Either to distinguish the current timespan from the one preceding it and from the one that comes after. When Larochefoucauld says: »Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it«248, then his wise words indicate that philosophy does not necessar­ ily have a genuine contribution to make in this first context. However, the reverse is the case for the second context. In this context the meaning of the word »present« is defined as the opposite of absence. When I say that someone was »present« during an event I do not mean to indicate the duration of her being there but the fact of her presence as the negation of her absence. She was there – and not not-there, this also means: not anywhere else. Here we are speaking of time not as the duration of existing [Daseiendem], but as the principle of existence [Da-Sein], not the extension of something in time, but its taking place [Eintritt] in time, we might also say: not its expanse [Raum], but its place [Ort], or its emplacement [Verortung] in time. When we say an event has »taken place« we leave open how long it took; hence its taking place does not mark a point in the expanse of time, rather its taking place delimits a gestalt, which takes its proper place [Ort] in time: something has »taken place« [stattgefunden], has »occurred« [ist passiert], has »gone on« [ist vor sich gegangen], has »happened« [hat sich zugetragen]. In the spirit of Edward Casey we might say that place happens.249 In this context the question concerning the present is genuinely philosophical, which means: F. Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or, Sentences and moral maxims (Projekt Gutenberg, 2005), 14. 249 Cf. Edward Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley, The University of California Press, 2013). 248

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It is one of the central tasks of philosophy to reconstruct what happens when something takes its place in time – or at least: to point us towards a perspective from which we may gain an insight into something taking its place in time. Where must we begin to accomplish this task? First of all, we will have to explain the difference between what it means to occupy an expanse [Raum] of time or a place [Ort] in time. The distinction between continuity and discontinuity is essential to determine this difference. The amount of time that something occupies consists in its continuous duration, which we can determine by measuring it. The place in time however is a matter of discontinuity, i.e., of beginning and end. A living being does have its place in time as long as it lives and until it dies, and an artifact exists during the process between its production and its destruction. What belongs to the totality of existing beings has its own genuine place in time and not another one, it is »there« as long as it is present in the sense in which presence is not a function of duration but just the opposite of absence. Presence in the first sense of the word, is always fulfilled, it is the manifestation of the totality of time. It is what connects the whole past with the whole future, everything that is present now follows everything that was present before and precedes everything that will ever be present; presence and temporality coincide continuously. To be not present means to belong either to that which was or to that which will be present; what is absent from presence forever is not temporal, it is nothing or it belongs to timeless eternity. Presence in the second sense of the word however implies that presence itself has a temporal horizon which is not identical or coinciding with its totality. The discontinuity which constitutes this horizon eludes the difference between the temporal and the non-temporal or the timeless or the eternal. It is the discontinuity between presence and absence of time in itself which establishes the genuine topic of the philosophy of temporality. In difference to measurement as the genuine scientific way of access to presence in the first sense, the philosophical approach to the relation between the presence and the absence of time in itself must refer to the exemplary phenomena in which this relation is brought to our consciousness. Aristotle was the first to point out such phenomena in elaborating the concept of dýnamis, actuality, when in the »Metaphysics« he dealt with the position of the Megarian’s theory of modality which goes back to the Eleatic doctrine of the strict disjunction between being and nonbeing. In the Megarian view the possible ontologically coincides with the 96

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actual since if something is not actualized this shows that it has been impossible. Aristotle’s central argument against it was that such a notion of possibility would render motion impossible. If the possible entering into the continuous flow of the actual, which we perceive as movement in nature, is not to be synonymous with the dissolution of the totality of the possible into the actual, then the possible must possess its own original reality [Wirklichkeit], which will then be the ontological condition of the possibility of movement and can as such, as its condition, not itself be a part of its actual and measurable content. Our experience of motion is an experience of its continuous passage [kontinuierlichen Übergangs] out of that which was in motion and into that and only that which is thereby put into motion; but exactly because this passage leaves open a realm of possibilities, we as beings with a rational soul [vernünftige Seele] may take a stance towards it. This is what we do when we measure time. Time may, as Aristotle points out in the »Physics«, only be distinguished from motion if we »mark off an alteration«250. Our experience of time is the experience of motion, but, nevertheless, since it is measured relative to time, motion cannot be identical to it. Measuring presupposes a realm of possibilities including the possibility of measuring rightly or wrongly. If we want to understand the conditions which make measuring possible, we therefore have to turn to that genuine relation to time which is not our relation to its totality but to its completion and fulfillment out of what cannot itself belong to this totality. In this context Aristotle distinguishes between two types of activity: those limited with regards to their ends and as such by their nature are »incomplete« on the one hand, and activities which are »complete« in themselves such that their ends »belong« to the activity.251 Incomplete activity is called movement, complete activity is called »reality«, or rather realization. »For every movement is incomplete, for example, making thin, learning, walking, building. These are movements, which are certainly incomplete. For it is not the case that at the same time one is walking and has taken a walk […] By contrast, the same thing at the same time has

Aristotle, Physics, Book III and IV, trans. Edward Hussey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), IV 218b30. See my remarks on »chronos« in the Introduction to this volume. 251 Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), IX, 6, 1048b. 250

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seen and is seeing, is understanding and has understood.«252 One sees and has seen already: this is a classic example for phenomena which I would characterize as processes of complete or fulfilled presence. When e.g. I »see« my neighbor among other persons on a photograph in the newspaper, I become aware of her being visible in this picture. As soon as I identify her I have seen her; but this presupposes that a whole process of »seeing« her must have gone on already, from my look on the page in the newspaper up to the moment in which I recognized her in the scenery of the photo. But the question »When did I start seeing her?« does not make sense, at least not in the sense in which I could ask somebody: »When did you start cutting wood this morning?« Why? Because if I have seen her or not, is decided now, in the moment of seeing her. If I had not identified her now, I would not have seen her at all. Starting and finishing coincide here and now, in the present moment, the moment which completes a process that would not have been what it is and therefore would have been neither started nor finished without this moment. We can easily refer to comparable phenomena: Aristotle names the »understanding« – »now I have understood you« can I say after a long process which has made my understanding possible but which becomes real only now, when it is completed. Hunger would be another example: When I am hungry, I notice that there is hunger, so the hunger must have been there in order to become aware of it; but if I had not become aware of it, it would have been no hunger, since there is nothing like »unconscious hunger«. The transition of the possible into reality has a different temporal nature than the process of causation which is going on continuously from the earlier to the later stage. The reality of the possible constitutes a relation between presence and absence which eludes the difference between presence and past or between presence and future. In some sense, the natural order of movement, which we experience and measure as the continuous following of the latter from the former, is reversed in that relation between the possible and the real. It is not the case that what is currently present results from the goings-on that assign it a place in time, on the contrary: The present is that out of which these goings-on result. The present completes itself by including absence within being. In order to understand what it means that something gets its place in time, its »Zeitort«, it is worthwhile to follow the trace of these phenomena 252

Aristotle, Metaphysics, IX, 6, 1049a.

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which Aristotle indicated in his elucidation of the reality of the possible. We must however be prepared for a highly paradoxical field into which that trace may lead us. Paul Ricoeur called what we face hereby »the old aporia concerning the mode of presence of the absent«253, and he considered it to be the demarcation line between a phenomenological approach to the place of time and the metaphysical way to cope with it. For Ricoeur it is essential to the character of metaphysics that it would seek the solution to that aporia in the »other of time«, i.e. in the original process through which time itself has been created and which locates the origin of the present »in eternity [from which] nothing moves into the past: all is present [totum esse prae­ sens]. Time, on the other hand, is never all present at once«254. For our present purpose we need not discuss this classification of the present, we merely have to mark the point where a phenomenological approach has to depart from the metaphysical search for the origin of time in the »other of time«. We find this point where Aristotle ties his concept of ability and relatedly the activity which belongs to it back to an ultimately static human nature considered from the angle of eternity. In this view human nature is the »principle of motion«255, which ontologically depends on the »pri­ macy« [Frühersein: lit. ›being before‹] of reality as opposed to potentiality, whereby the all-important difference between continuity of movement and the discontinuous completion of the present through the absent, which the present itself brings into being, is relativized.256 At this point Ricoeur’s striving for the place of the past in human memory comes into play.

253 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 16. 254 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vols 3, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 1 :25. See also: Aurelius Augustinus, Confessiones, ed. M. Dubois, trans. J. H. Parker, J. G. u. F. Rivington, (London: Oxford University Press, 1838), XI, 13. 255 Aristotle, Metaphysics, IX, 6, 1049b9. 256 With regard to the preceding definition of »actuality« in distinction to motion the following assumption is particularly unclear : »›actuality,‹ with its implication of ›complete reality,‹ has been extended from motions, to which it properly belongs, to other things« (Aristotle, Metaphysics, ix.3, 1047a).

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2. »He who has been, from then on cannot not have been«: Presence as a trace of what has been. This quote from Jankélévitch with which Ricoeur prefaces his late work Memory, History, Forgetting highlights an aspect of our question concerning the difference between something taking place in time compared to measur­ ing a span of time, which has remained absent from Aristotle’s treatment of »complete activity«. In order to grasp the question in its essence, we have to tie the relation between the present and the absent which exists and belongs to the present back to an essential but hitherto not discussed difference: the difference between what is over and what has never been. This difference is what, according to Ricoeur, ultimately justifies the key role memory plays in overcoming the aporia of the presence of absence. Memory constitutes the place in which we encounter this aporia, namely as »the enigma of the presence in an image of an absent thing that this image represents«257. Ricoeur’s paradigmatic example is the »small miracle of recognition«258 in which everyone experiences such an overcoming quite naturally. We see someone, take note of her as someone whom we do not know and suddenly we recognize in the same spot someone whom we know from the past. What suddenly presents itself in that moment in which a past event comes to our mind is nothing other than the difference between which is over and which has never been. In the person recognized we do not merely recognize our own memory, but the remembered person herself. It could, for example, be the case that she has changed and that she is quite different from the image one still had »in one’s head«, nevertheless, we suddenly know it to be her! And we know it, because we recognize her as someone who had been present to us before – and as such, as opposed to all that which we have never been in the presence of, had been forgotten. Yet, what more can we glean from this, beyond what we have already seen in the phenomenon of »seeing and having seen«? What does this phenomenon draw our attention to, so that a perspective beyond the metaphysical disjunction between the temporal and the timeless can be opened. 257 Paul Ricoeur, The course of recognition, trans. David Pellauer (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2007), 112. 258 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 39.

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Here again259 Ricoeur’s reference to the »little known paradox« of which Heidegger has first made us aware as the paradox of forgetting which is not an obstacle to, but the condition of remembering, gains its phenomenological importance. As little attention as this paradox may have received, it nevertheless undeniably describes the peculiarity of what we call memory: What we can remember first has to be forgotten, what is remembered is always remembered as something forgotten. The »small miracle« which is presented to us in this phenomenon may then make us aware of the step required to get away from metaphysics as the step from the other of time to the other of memory, namely forgetting. Hence, we have to explicate this step ontologically with a view to the difference between that which is over and this which has never been. The question which we had posed in a metaphysical sense as that con­ cerning »complete activity« now becomes the question of »real memory«, which is to say: Where lies the difference between real remembering and mere imagining? The paradoxical answer is: in forgetting! The certainty that I have forgotten something is at the same time the certainty that it has happened. The absent condition of the possibility of what becomes present in real memory lies in its disappearance from that memory. The place in time things that are present in this way take, is apparently also the place of their disappearance from memory. However, the problem which lured metaphysics into the other of time has here only been shifted to the intentional content of forgetting. It is not only my memory that has disappeared, but also the remembered out of it – whereto? The figure of thought which Ricoeur now turns to in his explication of the paradox concerning the presence of absence in memory has an extensive philosophical background. It is the figure of thought of the trace: »an effect that is a sign of its cause — this is the enigma of the trace.«260 The past is present in memory as the trace, as which we are capable of reading it. Hence, it appears to be the signs which render the remembered legible through which we can return to the source of our ability to distinguish between that which is over and that which has never been. But have we thereby really escaped the metaphysical appeal to our rational nature participating in the timeless structures of being, which permits and forces us to distinguish between truth and error? If we look to Ricoeur for an answer to this 259 260

Cf. the article »The Place of the Past« in this volume. Ricoeur, The course of recognition, 111.

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question we may only find it in the existential aspect which, especially in his later work, characterizes the whole enterprise of philosophy for him and consequently also our wrestling with the paradox of the presence of absence in memory. Considered in its existential aspect, philosophy essentially deals with our own passing in time. It is not timeless nature, it is personal existence which brings us to the attention to the other of time, and we find this »other of time« not in eternity but in the turning of time, the inversion which we experience when the past becomes present again in our memory. Only within the horizon of the task given to us by the place we ourselves are about to occupy in time does the notion of the »trace« assume its existential importance; which in Ricoeur’s thinking belongs to forgetting as simultaneously a threat, which we face in our own dealings with our passing away in time, and as a chance: The absent presupposes, if it is to be present as a trace, that the trace is recognized as a trace, i.e. as a sign of its cause, which also means: that it is read. Precisely therein lies the chance which we owe to forgetting: »forgetting has a positive meaning insofar as having-been prevails over being-no-longer in the meaning attached to the idea of the past. Having-been makes forgetting the immemorial resource offered to the work of remembering.«261 The work of memory gives us the possibility to lay the trace in which our life becomes legible to itself and others. In accomplishing this task which is posed by our own life as a sort of »complete activity« into which we must turn our life itself, the step away from metaphysics, which philosophy can make us come to understand and which it may yet never itself take, happens. At this point Ricoeur regards the paradox as resolved. »We comprehend the apparent paradox if, by forgetting, we understand an immemorial resource and not an inexorable destruction.«262

261 262

Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 443. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 442–443.

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3. »From now on, you do know him and have seen him«263: Presence as past, which has never been present However, our question concerning the intentional content of forgetting and concerning the place where the past can become the ontological condition for the possibility of recognition is indeed not yet answered. Rather, we are particularly called upon to forget the issue of the past and what has never been in working out the division between memory and imagination. Ricoeur refuses to truly engage with the question by psychologizing it in the notion of the image which he gleans from Bergson. Yet, Ricoeur abstracts from Bergson’s metaphysically circumscribed psychology264 which he understands in term of »psychical traces, the pre-representative dimen­ sion of living experience«265. »If a memory returns, this is because I had lost it; but if, despite everything, I recover it and recognize it, this is because its image had survived.«266 Forgetting, as Ricoeur ultimately summarizes, enables the »survival of memories«267 in images and is indeed the same. The connecting element between memory and forgetting thus is »survival of images«268. But where do the »images« survive? There is one trace along which we, in order to fully realize the existen­ tial aspect of the »miracle of recognition« of the past for our question, can still follow Ricoeur. We should take a closer look at the passage in Heidegger, where Ricoeur found the paradox of forgetting as the condition of remembering which became so important for his thinking. It is to be found in the situation of choice thematized at the end of »Being and Time«, in which Dasein has to decide between authentic and inauthentic presence.269 The reason, that »remembering is possible only on [the basis] of forgetting, and not the other way around« is found »in the mode of having-forgotten, one’s having been ›discloses‹ primarily the horizon into John 14.7 New International Version. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 437–438: »It remains that the psychology founded on the pair recognition/survival is not only perfectly well defined in the course of the work, but can be considered to be the key to the metaphysics that circumscribes it.« 265 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 438. 266 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 430. 267 Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 440. 268 Cf. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 431. 269 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York and Evanston, IL: Harper & Row, 1962), § 83, 486 ff. 263

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which a Dasein lost in the ›superficiality‹ of its object of concern, can bring itself by remembering. The awaiting which forgets and makes present is an ecstatical unity in its own right, in accordance with which inauthentic understanding temporalizes itself with regard to its temporality. The unity of these ecstasies closes off one’s authentic potentiality-for-Being, and is thus the existential condition for the possibility of irresoluteness.«270 In stark contrast to this stands resoluteness, as »the present that is held in authentic temporality, and is thus authentic«, which according to Heidegger we call the instant [Augenblick].271 Resoluteness corresponds to »Being-ashaving-been«, which when it is »authentic, we call it ›repetition‹«; and this is precisely what, in being forgotten, opens up the possibility for an inauthentic projection of Dasein to remember.272 As opposed to that authentic having-been, hence »repetition«, places me in the »Moment«, which concerns my life and not the life of some images. Only because authenticity and inauthenticity are, according to the notion Heidegger develops in Being and Time, »equiprimordial«273 and therefore reciprocally ontologically ground each other, is forgetting a chance for the very same reason that it is a threat. It is this reason, however, to which according to Heidegger metaphysics, which itself is an expression of the inauthentic or »vulgar« concept of time, cannot return. Though Heidegger admits that »the interpretation of Dasein as temporality does not lie beyond the horizon of the vulgar concept of time«274 and cites Aristotle275 and Augus­ tine276 as support. Metaphysical thinking finds itself unable to uncover the authentic as opposed to the inauthentic concept of time, because, as Heidegger says, »the traditional concept of eternity […] [is] defined with an orientation towards the idea of ›constant‹ presence-at-hand«.277

Heidegger, Being and Time, § 67a, 389. Heidegger, Being and Time, § 68a, 387. See Translator’s Foreword for distinction between instant [Augenblick] and moment. 272 Heidegger, Being and Time, § 68a, 388. 273 Heidegger, Being and Time, § 68b, 390. 274 Heidegger, Being and Time, § 81, 480. 275 Aristotle, Physics, IV.14, 223a25. 276 St. Augustine of Hippo, The city of God against the pagans, XI.26: »inde mihi visum est, nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem: sed cuius rei, nescio; et mirum si non ipsius animi«. See my remarks to »animus« in the Introduction. 277 Heidegger, Being and Time, 499. 270 271

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What however remains fundamentally dubious in this characterization of metaphysics is that Heidegger subsumes a thinker under it, whose works embody the importance of his central concepts of the »instant« and »rep­ etition« like none other. Kierkegaard, so Heidegger analyzes, notabene in a footnote, »saw the existential phenomenon of the Moment in the most penetrating way,« and nevertheless missed its existential interpre­ tation, because he could define the presupposed »primordial temporal­ ity« only »with the help of ›now‹ and ›eternity‹«278 The latter is true; but let us look closer. How exactly does Kierkegaard define this primordial tempo­ rality? In a central place in the Philosophical Fragments he the »instant«279 denotes the ultimately extraordinary, the unique event in which philosophy has to find the opposition to the »socratic« way of thinking, which is to say to the metaphysical axiom of the existential symmetry between the philosophical teacher and the learner. Here Kierkegaard formulates the alternative to the metaphysical concept of philosophy as follows: »If the situation is to be different, then the moment in time must have such decisive significance that for no moment will I be able to forget it, neither in time nor in eternity, because the eternal, previously nonexistent, came into existence in that moment.«280 The eternal, which was not before it came into existence: This is the first formulation, in which we find expressed the discontinuity, with which we can conceptualize that way of taking place in time which is an alternative to measuring continuous duration. The entering into time of the eternal is itself the condition under which it can be grasped by temporal beings like us and thereby complete its presence in time.281 In this instant, the past, which as the eternal past can never have been present in time, completes itself in its entering into time. The discontinuity, which makes possible the presence of absence in that very discontinuity, is not an interruption, nor an »other of time«, rather it is the reversal of time. This reversal forces us to revise our initial expectations Heidegger, Being and Time, 497. Cf. translator’s foreword. 280 Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 13. 281 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 14: »Now, if the learner is to obtain the truth, the teacher must bring it to him, but not only that. Along with it, he must provide him with the condition for understanding it, for if the learner were himself the condition for understanding it, for if the learner were himself the condition for understanding the truth, then he merely needs to recollect«. 278

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towards our process of thought: In asking for the way in which we may grasp the present not as duration in time, but as its reversal, we have been asking not about our way of grasping time but for the way in which the basis for our asking has entered our life. And we have, as the existential horizon which Ricoeur has opened these questions, asked for the basis upon which we may recognize our own life as the place which is about to take in time. The chance, which presupposes and averts the threat of forgetting at the same time, is, as Kierkegaard puts it,282 the unforgettable. Our own Dasein is born a second time in Christs entering into time.283 Can this be more than a metaphor? Not in relation to the changes which we undergo in the course of natural time. However else? The locus classicus of the answer to this question is the narrative in the gospel of John of a phenomenon central to the Christian faith. The climax and gist of this narrative has been described such that »in its final tremendous words… the grammatic perfect, present, future tenses fall into one«284. At the mount of olives Jesus calls the apostles »dear children«, when he tells them that they cannot follow to where he is going, and in answering their question as to how they may find the way to where he is going, says, that he himself is the way. This, however, is the instant, in which they find the realization which they had been asking for, and in which that, which they see in it, reveals itself as the look upon him, from whose perspective they are recognized as children. »If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.«285 The trace which allows us to let go of the psychological shift towards images in the head of the »presence of absence« and to develop an ontology of the unforgettable forgotten, leads into the past, which has never been present. Though it is a trace which we may not follow without the aspiration of the 282 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 17: »A teacher such as that, the learner will never be able to forget, because in that very moment he would sink down into himself again, just as the person did who once possessed the condition and then, by forgetting that God is«. 283 Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 19: »Inasmuch as he was in untruth and now along with the condition receives the truth, a change takes place in him like the change from ›not to be‹ to ›to be‹. But this transition from ›not to be‹ to ›to be‹ is indeed the transition of birth. But the person who already is cannot be born, and yet he is born. Let us call this transition rebirth, by which he enters the world a second time…«. 284 Albrecht Schöne, »Da ist Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott. Noch die Abfolge der Worte, Wortstellung und Satzbau der Heiligen Schrift bergen das Mysterium: Zum Johannes­ evangelium 13,33 – 14,7«, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 26, 2005 (Nr. 71), 41. 285 John 14.7.

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Revelation, the topos which determines its content and the direction of its thrust, is genuinely philosophical. At least, it can and shall be considered as genuinely philosophical if one does not, as Heidegger does, stubbornly refuse to take into account the source of knowledge which the figures of thinking of religious Revelation offer for the genuinely philosophical reconstruction (beyond any theological interpretation) of the paradox of a past that has never been present.

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1. From a topic to a principle: The phenomenological concept of time Since the writings of Bergson and Kierkegaard, time has been transformed in Western thinking from a topic of philosophy to a principle of philosophiz­ ing. This means: In turning to the question what time really is, we are at the same time dealing with the answer to the question what happens in philosophizing and what makes it distinct from all other, especially (natural-) scientific ways of rational reflection. At least, time plays this role for one of the mainstream movements of philosophy in the last century, namely for phenomenology. The other mainstream movement, analytic philosophy, has since Frege and Wittgenstein undergone a turn of comparable radicality, however with a different outcome: Just like time for phenomenology, language is transformed from a topic of analytic philoso­ phy to a principle from which a specific type of philosophical knowledge is to be gained. However, we cannot deal adequately with the principle of time in phenomenology, if we do not include the fundamental controversies which the topic of time has triggered in the analytical discourse. So the following remarks aim at a certain crossover between the two leading paradigms of 20th century philosophy.

a) Time as the reality of consciousness Time is more than a topic of philosophy already with Bergson, whose principle is still that of a philosophy of consciousness, which is to say whose fundamental question concerns the unity of subjectivity and who nevertheless thinks this unity as mediation between sensation and action

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and this mediation again as the essence of subjectively experienced time.286 What points the way for our further discussion is not Bergson’s opposition between the homogenous »spatialized« time, such as we symbolize with a clock-face, and the real time we have, which unites past and future precisely not as equal moments, but as the two essentially heterogenous sides of a unique self-becoming;287 in this opposition the Augustinian topos of the separation between objective movements as the natural basis and the principally subjective feat of combining past and future as the authentic ontological place [Ort] for the measurement and the course of time is taken up again. Wherein Bergson exceeds the philosophical tradition, is to trace this homogenization of a duration which is originally experienced heterogeneously to an expressive happening in and at the basis of our »I«, an occurrence of self-forgetting, which is equally constitutive for what it actually means to be I myself. Bergson speaks of the »Shadow of the I« with which we content ourselves in and by treating time as a sum of homogenous moments.288 And he interprets this reason for this occurrence, which becomes accessible to us predominantly as the common »public« time, with regard to the boundaries of language: Our real I removes itself from us, because it can encounter our speaking only

»The psychical state, then, that I call ›my present‹ must be both a perception of the immediate past and a determination of the immediate future. Now the immediate past, in so far as it is perceived, is, as we shall see, sensation […] and the immediate future, in so far as it is being determined, is action or movement. My present, then, is both sensation and movement; and, since my present forms an undivided whole, then the movement must be linked with the sensation, must prolong it in action. Whence I conclude that my present consists in a joint system of sensations and movements. My present is, in its essence, sensorimotor.« (Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy M. Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1911), 177. 287 »Pure duration is the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states.« (Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. F. L. Pogson (New York: Dover Publications, 1913), 100. 288 »Below homogenous duration, which is the extensive symbol of true duration, a close psychological analysis distinguishes a duration whose heterogenous moments permeate one another; below the numerical multiplicity of conscious states, a qualitative multiplicity; below the self with well-defined states, a self in which succeeding each other means melting into one another and forming an organic whole. But we are generally content with the first, i.e. with the shadow of the self projected into homogenous space.« (Bergson, Time and Free Will, 128). 286

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as something which resists being made into language.289 This, however, marks two aspects which have the potential to create a dynamic which may force, not only the outwardly utterly different »schools« (think only of the »metaphysical subject« in Wittgenstein’s »Tractatus«290, which is »the limit of the world—not a part of it« and thereby also forms the limit of language), but also the Western and Eastern Traditions of philosophizing to engage with one another. Despite otherwise strongly distancing himself from Bergson, Heidegger has emphasized the paradigmatic importance these steps mark in the overcoming of the philosophy of consciousness and in paving the way for the genuine »philosophy of time« [Zeitphilosophie] in the ontological sense.291 Merleau-Ponty attributes a comparable achievement to Husserl’s anal­ yses of time, namely, not to have solved the fundamental paradox of time which philosophy has to face as its principal task, but to have realized its landmark import. It is the task to explicate what it means, that our consciousness of time does not remember the past and divine the future, but that both are experiences as themselves, that it is really the past and the future that are realized as the consciousness of our temporal being.292 Decisive for how Husserl frames the problem is the fundamental continuity of the transition, which constitutes the reality of time: The »ur-impres­ sion« in which consciousness gains its relation to its object [Objekt] – und thereby to the locus of Bergson’s »duration« – modifies itself continually into the »retentive alteration« as which the past presence of the object [Gegenstand] still necessarily contributes to the present constitution of it in »In other words, our perceptions, sensations, emotions and ideas occur under two aspects: The one clear and precise, but impersonal; the other confused, ever changing, and inexpressible, because language cannot get hold of it without arresting its mobility or fit it into its common-place forms without making it into public property.« (Bergson, Time and Free Will, 129). 290 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, trans. D. Pears and B.F. McGuin­ ness (London/New York: Routledge, 2001), 5.641. 291 Cf. Martin Heidegger, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 26, ed. by Klaus Held (Frankfurt/a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978), 262f. 292 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 474, in relation to Husserl’s notion of »retention«; cf. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, 481: »In order to have a past or a future, we do not have to connect a series of Abschattungen [shadings] through an intellectual act, for they have something like a natural or primordial unity, and it is the past or the future itself that is announced through them.« (emphasis in original). 289

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consciousness. This transition of what was present first into that which in the later present is still present as something past is the true link between act of consciousness and object [Gegenstand]. The simple yet astounding observation Husserl makes here is, that it is the seamless and potentially infinitely continuable nesting of all past modifications of an ur-impression into the current modification of that ur-impression in which the conscious experience of an object is distinct from phantasies and fictions.293 We know that there has been such a continuum of real and possible time sensations [Zeitempfindungen], for example, on the evening of the 31st of August 1997 in the course of the time span from Princess Diana’s leaving of the »Ritz« up to her fatal accident, for any observer whether they survived the incident or not: The question of what happened during that time span may never be answered, but it makes sense, whereas the question of what happened between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara after their separation at the end of »Gone with the Wind« and until the ends of their lives, no matter how many sentimental hearts may have asked it, is utterly senseless. Between or after the »events« of a novel or a film discontinuity reigns, which allows us to differentiate them from events we have really experienced, even in the phenomenological sense. It is not the mere sequence of past, present and future, which equally exists in all invented stories, but the constant integration of all past unities of consciousness in the newly created one in form of a »retentive alteration« which makes up the paradigmatic reality of time consciousness: »There results, therefore, a stable continuum which is such that every subsequent point is a retention for every earlier one. And every retention is already a continuum.«294 With this analysis, however, Husserl already implies the actual prob­ lem of the phenomenological clarification of the coherence of time: the question concerning the beginning of a per definitionem boundless continuum, that is of a beginning that constantly renews itself out of itself, the beginning of the connection between earlier and later, in the now. For time means constant renewal, integration of everything that has gone before into what has not yet been, thus always also a new beginning. »This is the characteristic of continuous generation. Modifications continuously beget ever new modifications. The primal impression is the absolute beginning Cf. Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. James E. Churchill, (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2019), § 12, 45. 294 Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, § 11, 44.

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of this generation […]. In itself, however, it is not generated; […] but [comes into being] through spontaneous generation [Urzeugung]. It does not grow up […] it is primal creation.«295 This »absolute beginning«, which determines everything that follows and cannot itself be thought as a sequence, is the impetus and summit of the phenomenological treatment of the problem of time, and Husserl's approach itself, at least insofar as it is based on the basic model of consciousness as a »flow«296 or »stream«297 of primordial quantities which detach from one another and yet merge into one another, is basically exploded by the problem thus posed. In the metaphor of the flow of time as a sequence of individual points in time298, the »spatialized« symbol of the experience of time, that the phenomenologist seeks to overcome, is still in effect.299 This inevitably becomes clear when one applies the time-constitutive categories at play in the image of the »river« to themselves, that is, to the »time-constituting phenomena«; then, according to Husserl, »names are lacking«,300 which actually means, however, that the thought explicated in this image breaks down because of time itself.301 The time, in which the sequence of the mutually replacing primordial entities occurs, can then neither itself be thought of as that which changes,302 nor as constituting any kind of limit.303 It is precisely with a view to this complete desubstantialization of time that Merleau-Ponty distances himself from Husserl in spite of the general appreciation he holds for him and asks whether this view does not Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, Appendix I, 109. Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, § 11, 44. 297 Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, § 35, 83. 298 Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, § 32, 79. 299 Cf. Mathias Obert, Sinndeutung und Zeitlichkeit. Zur Hermeneutik des HuayanBuddhismus, (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2000), 171f., fn 5. 300 Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, 85. 301 Cf. Klaus Held‘s Einleitung zu: Edmund Husserl: Phänomenologie der Lebenswelt. Aus­ gewählte Texte II, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), 29 f. 302 In this change, says Husserl, »any Object which is altered is lacking here, and inasmuch as in every process ›something‹ proceeds, it is not a question here of a process.« (Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, § 35, 84). 303 »It is evident that every temporal point has its before and after, and that the points and intervals coming before cannot be compressed in the manner of an approximation to a mathematical limit, as, let us say, the limit of intensity. If there were such a boundarypoint, there would correspond to it a now which nothing preceded, and this is obviously impossible.« (Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, § 32, 79–80). 295

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collapse into Kantian intellectualism once more, i.e. the assumption that the synthesis of the moments of time and the criterion for their identity are to be located in a subject which transcends the world and has itself to be thought of as timeless.304 The question after a substance which must be thought temporally, and thus the question as to how or at least whether a beginning and an end of time can find their way into our thinking, thus becomes the constitutive question of demarcation of phenomenology con­ tra the philosophy of consciousness. Heidegger has shown the most radical way of overcoming this question by regarding the very attempt to think the substance of time as a consequence, as the reason for why thought misap­ prehends time.

b) Time and the reality of the possible The step towards time as the principle of philosophy, which Heidegger later reclaimed for himself, is the step from time as determination of being to temporality as the ground of being. »If no Dasein exists, no world is ›there‹ either«, Heidegger says in »Being and Time«305. This means: It belongs to the essence of the world that being is not only »now«, when we become aware of it, but will also exist »then«, when we are no longer, and that something has »already« existed »before« we came into being; but that we are now, results from what we mean with the expres­ sions »then«, »already«, »before« and even »now«, with the same neces­ sity with which a world exists at all. Without it, it would not be »there« as a world, to which something else belongs, which is not »there«, but was once or will once be; and thus it would never have been »there« as such and would never become a world, which will once be »there« as such – which also means: to which we and everything, which is now, will have belonged as certainly as we are here now.306 Whatever it is by means of which the Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 446 [485]. Though Merleau-Ponty keeps the metaphor of »flow« [Fluss, einströmen] of conscious experience [Bewusstsein­ serlebnis] into the whole of the subject. (cf. Merleau- Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 445 [484]; 450 [489]). 305 Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, § 69 c, 417; cf. ibid. § 43 c and my article »On the Social Origin of Time in Language« in this volume. 306 The elucidation of the significance that the consciousness of the futurum exactum has for the being of persons is one of the most original aspects of Robert Spaemann's theory 304

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world develops as a temporal whole which, whenever it is, has a past behind it and a future before it: it is at the same time that part of it which makes us, the specifically temporal beings, belong to it. The necessity with which we are temporal beings and with which we are ourselves as temporal beings is the same necessity with which the world now entered into what it is from what it was and with which from what it is now will become what it is about to become. Heidegger's criticism of Bergson can be summarized pointedly in the thesis that Bergson did not himself understand his own most valuable idea, namely the notion of the non-homogeneity of authentic time. According to Heidegger, one fails to grasp the relation between future, present, and past precisely if one thinks of authentic time as succession, as Bergson does.307 »Duration« in Bergson's sense is indeed conceived as a transi­ tion between qualitatively and not quantitatively distinguished entities called »past,« »present,« and »future«; but the transition itself is neverthe­ less based on real succession. For Heidegger, on the other hand, »present­ ness« and »beenness« are not entities which a temporal being experiences as transitioning into one another, rather they are dimensions of its being, which result from of this being, that is to say from its temporality and which if experienced in its original form we call »future«.308 The temporal being is future, past and present to itself not in the course of a real sequence encompassing it or passing through it, but in the grasping of that within it which is precisely not real, but essential possible. The temporal is future, past, and present to itself: this is a constellation constitutive for the temporal being, within which it is decided whether it grasps the possibilities actually constituting its Dasein or whether this Dasein fulfills itself in another, inauthentic way. Because he failed to grasp this ontologically crucial differ­ ence between temporality and temporal experience, Bergson, according to Heidegger, confuses the levels on which the basic connection between self­ hood and time exists. The homogeneous, quantitatively measured, passing time, delimited Dasein [gefristetes Dasein], is not a misunderstanding we have of what time actually is, namely real duration experienced by us. The of personhood (Persons: The Difference between ›Someone‹ and ›Something‹, trans. Oliver O´Donovan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 114 pp.). 307 Martin Heidegger, Logic. The Question of Truth, trans. Thomas Sheehan (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010), § 19, 207. 308 Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, §§ 65, 69.

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inauthentic, delimited Dasein, which suffers the passage of time like the depletion of a limited supply, can be mine just as the authentic Being can be mine: that existence, in which I, seizing my outermost possibilities, give meaning to everything that has gone before, a meaning it gains through that which could come into the world only through me and which never existed until now, thus it gains meaning through the particular future possibilities reserved for me alone. But both, authentic and inauthentic selfhood, are, as Heidegger most decisively emphasizes, equally constitutive for the struc­ ture of temporal Dasein.309 The passing time of limited Dasein – Heidegger calls it the »vulgar« – is not the derivative of a »purer«, more actual time called »duration«,310 but of the inauthentic Dasein chosen by me, aligning itself with possibilities other than those reserved for me and only me, which are incomparable with all that has gone before. And the breakthrough to fulfilling time does not originate from the reflection on how past, present and future relate to each other, but this time itself is synonymous with the breakthrough to my future, through which it is first decided what I have been and what I am at present. A relation of »filiation« or derivation does not exist between authentic and inauthentic time, but between each of the two equiprimordially constituted fundamental options of my possible selfhood (authenticity and inauthenticity) on the one hand, and the specific way of experiencing time that arises from each of them on the other hand. Not – therein consists the decisive antithesis for Heidegger to any, even Bergson's philosophy of consciousness – an »I«, however hidden or misapprehended, but a choice between possibilities and thus a relation to that which is essentially not real, sets that holistic context of being which we see as the »world« encompassing ourselves and into which we place something when we say that it »is«. As in many other significant places, one encounters here the Kierkegaardian background of Heidegger's concept of philosophy. For Heidegger, as for Kierkegaard, philosophy is not a neutral, not a theoretical

Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, § 38, 224. Heidegger is especially keen to reject the notion that »spatialization« is an attribute of inauthentic time: »It is not that time is tied to a location, but rather temporality is the condition of the possibility that dating may be bound up with the spatially-local in such a way that the latter is binding for everyone as a measure. Time is not first coupled with space, but the »space« that is supposedly to be coupled with it is encountered only on the basis of temporality taking care of time.« (Heidegger, Being and Time, § 80, 470). 309

310

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undertaking in the scientific sense, but it understands itself only at the moment in which it experiences itself as carried by a more primal happening which is at work in philosophy as in us in general and to which it opens our eyes. At the climax of the section »Dasein and Temporality« in »Being and Time«, Heidegger moves from the analysis of what potentiality-for-beingwhole [Ganzsein] could mean, that is, an investigation of the structure of »anticipatory resoluteness as an existentially possible authentic poten­ tiality-for-being-whole«311 of Dasein, to acting in relation to death and to the call of conscience312 and to self-reflection upon the investigation of what must already have been at work in it, which until then it had thought only to consider quite neutrally: The elaboration of the structures of the anticipatory resoluteness allows an »[i]nterpre[tation] whereby Dasein is liberated for its uttermost possibility of existence.«313 That means: The deci­ sion about what, if anything, is the basis of philosophical investigation at all is essentially made by that investigation, that is, by the understanding itself, which the person who carries it out attains about themselves through it. The reason, which has shown the path to itself, is set by that path precisely as that of which, as long as it had to understand itself as already set according to the nature of this path, we have spoken of as »anticipatory resoluteness«. The reality specific to such a reason, the resolution leading me to myself, necessarily presents itself as its own possibility realizing itself, as which it preceded itself in the form of the philosophical investigation. Thus, the philosophical investigation incorporates in its methodological foundation a moment of self-revision, the overcoming of a self-misunderstanding which in being overcome reveals itself as a necessary part of that investigation.314

Heidegger, Being and Time, § 61, 350. Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, especially §§ 53 (304 ff.) and §§ 60 (341 ff.) which refer us to the factual, that is to say ontic, dimension from which the answers to our ontological questions have ultimately be derived. 313 Heidegger, Being and Time, § 61, 350. 314 Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, § 62, 357: »The question of the potentiality-of-beingwhole of Dasein has now completely cast off the character which we initially pointed out when we treated it as if it were just a theoretical, methodological question of the analytic of Dasein, arising from the attempt to have the whole of Dasein completely ›given.‹ The question of the wholeness of Dasein, initially discussed only with regard to ontological method, has its justification, but only because the ground for that justification goes back to an ontic possibility of Dasein.« 311

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It is this relationship between the paradoxical basic structure of the human self and the equally paradoxical structure of the conscious pene­ tration into it, which also carries and shapes Kierkegaard's philosophical method. Because of our »self grounded by despair«,315 we miss ourselves as human beings precisely in that in which we want to meet ourselves, that is, in the attempt to relate to ourselves intentionally. We lose ourselves when we want to gain ourselves, but in realizing this the question of how we may ever come to ourselves becomes a paradox that can no longer be resolved on the paths of theoretical, or even ethical thinking. The only possible solution is to recognize that it is precisely the possibility of losing oneself in which one gains oneself, so that here possibility is the ground, as necessarily as it is unacceptable, of the reality that belongs to it. »Generally« says Kierkegaard in the Sickness unto Death, »this is not the case with the relation between possibility and actuality. If it is an excellence to be able to be this or that, then it is an even greater excellence to be that; in other words, to be is like an ascent when compared with being able to be. With respect to despair, however, to be is like a descent […]. Consequently, in relation to despair, not to be in despair is the ascending scale.«316 Just as Heidegger returns from the condition of the existential »fall«317 of Dasein to temporality, so too Kierkegaard returns from this analysis of spiritual selfhood to time as the link between possibility and reality that is specific to it. »For example, we say that someone catches a sickness, perhaps through carelessness. The sickness sets in and from then on is in force and is an actuality whose origin recedes more and more into the past. […] To despair, however, is a different matter. Every actual moment of despair is traceable to possibility; every moment he is in despair he is bringing it upon himself. It is always the present tense; in relation to the actuality there is no pastness of the past […].«318 The self is that epitome of everything that constantly becomes itself and which yet cannot be divided into a sequence of individual moments, just as Heidegger's conception of philosophy presupposes it also as the uncovering of Dasein's behavior toward the »uttermost possibility« of itself. Michael Theunissen, Das Selbst auf dem Grunde der Verzweiflung (Frankfurt a. M.: Hain, 1991) [Translation by Thomas Schmidt]. 316 Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin, 1989), XI 129, 15. 317 Heidegger, Being and Time, § 38, 220. 318 Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, XI 131, 17. 315

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The Kierkegaardian problem: To think the ambiguity of a self that can both miss and gain itself as the being that is ahead of itself, and thus as time, has through Heidegger become, however he may have seen the matter himself, the basic existential moment of the phenomenology of time. This dynamic results from the fact that the Kierkegaardian solution, the turn to the »eternal in man«319, that is to the other self through which one’s own self is set, remains closed to a phenomenology without any religious pre­ suppositions. That and how the transition from non-being into being is to be thought as ambiguity and not as consequence becomes the original phe­ nomenological matter of the thinking of time.

c) The subject as the reality of time Merleau-Ponty has sharpened the connection between selfhood and time. »The objective world is too full for there to be time«, he writes in the Phenomenology of Perception320; in fact, »what being itself lacks in order to be temporal is the non-being of the elsewhere, of the bygone, and of tomorrow. […] Past and future voluntarily withdraw from being and pass over to the side of subjectivity, to seek there not some real support, but rather a possibility of non-being that harmonizes with their nature.« What is decisive now, however, is the turn in which Merleau-Ponty conceives the relation between being and non-being, namely as a relation of ontologically constitutive relativity. The duality of non-being and being, in contrast to that of object-being and subject-being, makes it possible to think of subjectivity as that which withdraws itself from the world but is at the same time integrated into this very world itself. »To consider time as just another object, we would have to say of it what we have said of other objects: that it only has sense for us because we ›are it.‹ We can only place something under this rubric because we are in the past, in the present, and in the future. Time is literally the sense of our life, and like the world it is only accessible to the one who is situated in it and who joins with its direction.«321 That means, in the being of the essence, which precedes itself, it is not »the« non-being in an absolute sense which meets the objective being; 319 320 321

Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, XI 131, 17. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 434–435. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 454.

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but that, which the objective world cannot be without the being, which is in front of itself, enters into this world in its – and therefore also the world's – specific way. It is the world itself that prescribes to the temporal being to do what the world can in no way do without it from out of itself, namely to transcend itself towards that which can never enter into it. It is characteristic that Merleau-Ponty returns here to the concept of »nature«322 with which the pre-modern tradition of Western philosophy had characterized the paradoxical constitution of the human being who, in transcending the world, is integrated into it. »My decision,« we read in the freedom chapter of the Phenomenology of Perception, »takes up a spontaneous sense of my life that it can confirm or deny, but that it cannot annul.«323 And in this, in my temporal way, which makes me unique among beings in the world, that takes place which paradigmatically integrates me, like everything else, into this world. And the element in which this happens is a genuinely temporal one: »The present actualizes the mediation between the For-Itself and the For-Others, between individuality and generality.«324 The mediation of individuality and generality, which is actually that which our thinking tries and achieves in everything it treats as being [Seiendes] finds its reason in what is our specific way as thinking, temporal beings, to enter the world: in the present. Thus, in a certain way, the Kierkegaardian eternal self, through which the human self is placed [gesetzt ist], is replaced by the bodily connection between the being that always precedes itself with all others who, like it, belong to the world. It is a specific way of complementing [des Ergänzens] in which we stand to ourselves and thereby to all that is apart from us. »Sub­ jectivity« means to relate to oneself as a being that still has to complete itself towards itself, and in »thinking«, according to Merleau-Ponty, we just do not reach across the being that is temporally opposite to us into the eternal in us, in order to reproduce what is for us in its being-in-itself once again and only actually, but thinking as the specific way of the thinking being to be itself, that is: to be temporal, is what inserts time into the world and the world into our lives. »My thought must be defined by this strange power it For his reconstruction of the relationship between pre-modern and modern concepts of nature cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes From the Collège de France, trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003). 323 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 473. 324 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 478 [516]. 322

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has of anticipating itself and of throwing itself forward, of finding itself at home everywhere; in short, my thought must be defined by its autonomy. If thought had not itself put into things what it will later find there, it would have no hold on things, it would not think them […].«325 It is not a pure spirit that constitutes nature through the thus opened gate of time; it is myself, it is the thinking being who transcends itself towards the things. I take in my genuine way – and insofar autonomously – the things into that relationship in which they stand to me and to each other, the relationship of »being«. To transcend them towards the whole, towards the temporal aspect of their relation, towards their place in time [Zeitort], is the temporal being’s way to be one among them. In this way, however, the paradox, which was ultimately rooted in the Kierkegaardian concept of philosophizing, is transported by the interpre­ tation of the subject into the concept of time itself. The consequence of Merleau-Ponty's motto: »Time must be understood as a subject, and the subject must be understood as time«326 is that precisely where being comes to itself and is with itself, in transcending itself towards what it is not, time enters into itself and thus into the world. And this unique, concrete process of entering into oneself and thus into the world does not go past an observer when I myself become aware of time, but attends its own origin, which perpetually embraces the world without itself belonging to it.327 But with this, the ontological status of that in time which is not present becomes questionable. The idea that it is a being that is »ahead of itself«, that brings into the world the dimensions of the present, the past and the future, comes at the cost of the riddle of what it could still mean here that this being is »ahead« of itself. Would this not mean that this being in which and in which alone the present originally sets its past and its future, that this one being falls outside of the temporal world constituted by its very temporality? It is significant that Merleau-Ponty returns at this point to the Husserlian topos of the »last consciousness«, with which the innermost turning point is touched, at which time arises from timelessness: »We can say that ultimate consciousness is ›timeless‹ (zeitlos), in the sense that it is not intra-temporal. ›In‹ my present – given that I catch hold of it while Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 389 [429]. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 445 [484]. 327 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 483–484; cf. my Introduction to this volume.

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it is still living and with all that it implies – there is an ecstasy toward the future and toward the past that makes the dimensions of time appear, not as rivals, but as inseparable: to be in the present is to have always been and to be forever.«328 But what then is the relation between the inseparable unity of present, past, and future in the time-originating being and the sequence of earlier, current, and later events in the temporally constituted world? There are reasons to believe that, in order to be able to pursue the problem at all, we should break at this point with the inheritance that phenomenol­ ogy has taken up from Husserl as well as from Bergson, namely with the inheritance of the chōrismós between the philosophically relevant, the experienced time and the »bracketed« objective, the philosophically ignored »physical« time. Time as the order of physical events and the philosophical elaboration of the origin and the substance of time must find each other in our thinking of time.

2. From a topic to a limit: The analytic notion of time a) Time as physical limit Almost at the same time as Heidegger's »Being and Time«, the second milestone of the philosophy of time in the twentieth century appeared in 1928, which was admittedly based on completely different methodological premises: the philosophy of the space-time-doctrine by Hans Reichen­ bach.329 Especially through Reichenbach's students and colleagues Adolf Grünbaum330 and Wesley Salmon331 the strand of analytic philosophy of time that was opened with this work continues into the present, its basic premise being precisely the »physical« concept of time, from which phenomenology has almost constitutively set itself apart. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 446 [485]. Hans Reichenbach, The Philosophy of Space and Time, trans. Maria Reichenbach and John Freund (New York: Dover Publications, 1957). 330 Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing, 1973). 331 Wesley Salmon, Space, Time and Motion (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975). 328

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What does »physical« actually mean for the analytic school of thought? There are two aspects to the answer of this question. From the »objec­ tive« vantage, the physical concept of time is characterized by the fact that the philosophy of time considers the theories and results of physics, in particular Einstein's theory of relativity, but also the more recent cosmological hypotheses332 following it, as the basis of any philosophical concern with what time is. When Reichenbach wrote, however, in the context of logical positivism, from which at any rate analytic philosophy has historically emerged, a broader and essentially polemical view of the general meaning of physical concepts was prevalent. Namely that any attempt to speak about reality other than in terms of these physical concepts was either translatable into the conceptuality of physics (»reducible« to it) or fundamentally nonsensical, that is, »metaphysical«.333 In this polemical sense, the »physical« concept of time would be the only reasonable one and would exclude from itself in principle any phenomenological or other philosophical approach to supplement or relativize it. This polemical claim has been abandoned to a large extent today, and this not least just because of the limits which analytical philosophy and physics have reached in dealing with the subject of time. Primarily, this is due to the central role time plays in the context in which the positivist reductive approach to »metaphysics« was least successful from the start, namely in the area of cosmology.334 In this area the phenomenological as well as the physical concept of time lead to the limits of physics and drives us beyond them as soon as one faces the problem of the origin and thus also the beginning and possible end of time. In so far as time as a fundamental determinant of the whole of nature becomes the subject of physics, its conceptual interpretation as a linear sequence of homogeneous units necessarily results from the methods of its measurement. As a physical entity, time must be mathematically describable, its parts must be assignable to numbers. But how feasible is this 332 For a short survey see Quentin Smith and Nathan Oaklander, Time, Change and Freedom. An Introduction to Metaphysics, (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), 185. 333 Cf. Rudolf Carnap, The logical Structure of the World, trans. Rolf. A. George (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969). 334 Cf. Paul Burger, »Wittgensteinianismus oder Rationale Metaphysik? Zum Status von Aussagen über das Weltganze in der Kosmologie«, in Vom Ersten und Letzten. Positionen der Metaphysik in der Gegenwartsphilosophie, ed. by Uwe Justus Wenzel (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1999).

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correspondence between time and number? For Kant, the aporia into which this question leads us formed one of the main arguments for his thesis that there is no time independent of the subject at all and that the question of the beginning of the world is therefore meaningless. For, according to Kant, if the world is to have been without a beginning, then its past, if it is composed of moments of time corresponding to the series of numbers, must go back infinitely far; but an infinitely long sequence of stages cannot have been passed through, our present, therefore, could never have been reached through the infinitely far reaching span of moments preceding it.335 But if one now concludes that the world must have had a beginning in time, then one runs into the difficulty of having to think of a time that must have been before the beginning of everything and that, if it is to be distinguished precisely from »everything«, must actually have been nothing.336 From this vantage, the question of the beginning of the universe would be unanswerable and »metaphysical« in the sense of logical positivism (not in the Kantian sense of the term). Yet, analytic philosophy can hardly accept this for several serious reasons: On the one hand, if it were to no longer raise the accusation of utter meaninglessness against non-physical speech, it would have no way of arguing against the phenomenological or in general any »subjectivistic« explanation of the origin of time; on the other hand, however, and above all, it would thereby deprive its spiritus rector so absolutely claimed by it, namely physics, the competence to theoretically cope with the problem of the origin of the universe and thus state a rationality gap which would contradict the »methodological

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), B 454, 458: »For assume that the world has no beginning as regards time. In that case, up to every given point in time an eternity has elapsed and hence an infinite series of successive states of things in the world has gone by. However, the infinity of a series consists precisely in the fact that it can never be completed by successive synthesis. Therefore an infinite bygone world series is impossible, and hence a beginning of the world is a necessary condition of the world's existence-which was the first point to be proved […].« 336 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 455, 458: »For suppose that it has a beginning. In that case, since the beginning is an existence preceded by a time wherein the thing is not, a time must have preceded wherein the world was not, i.e., an empty time. In an empty time, however, no arising of anything is possible; for no part of such a time has, in preference to another part, any distinguishing condition of existence rather than non-existence […].« 335

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postulate which demands the explicability of every event in the world«337 – a postulate which belongs to the innermost core of the self-understanding of a theory of nature directed to a lawful reconstruction of the world as a whole.338 Thus, the philosophical defense of the physical concept of time is confronted with the eminent problem of thinking the origin of time as a natural event, hence as a connection of cause and effect, while it is by definition part of the physical concept of a cause that it precedes the effect in time. The decisive difficulty here is not at all on the conceptual, but on the methodological level. Conceptually, one can object against Kant's argument of the unacceptability of an actual infinite sequence of time units that an actual infinite set of time sections is quite conceivable.339 A finite process can be subdivided into an infinite number of partial sections whose reassembly results in this finite process again. And against the thought that an »empty time« cannot be something, one may refer to the relational conception of time, according to which the first event also gives rise to the time in which it took place. But the basic problem does not lie in the subdivision of the time into successive units, of which one must have been the first, but in the methodical border question, how this sequence shall be physically explainable, without having to presuppose itself always already. If according to the still fundamental model of scientific explanation for analytic philosophy, the so-called Hempel-Oppenheim model,340 the explanation of an event consists in its derivation from previ­ ous events, »antecedent data«, in connection with laws of nature, and if laws of nature are nothing other than the mathematically representable linkage of temporally successive kinds of events, then the physical explanation of the temporal sequence of events and thus of the origin of time itself – as far as it is equated with its physical concept – is logically excluded. Bernulf Kanitschneider, Kosmologie, Geschichte und Systematik in philosophischer Perspektive (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1991), 444. 338 Cf. Carnaps adage that »there is no question whose answer is in principle unattainable by science.« (Carnap, The logical Structure of the World, § 180, 290) and how Kanitschnei­ der takes it up again in his Kosmologie, 444: »The claim that there are unexplainable events inaccessible to science will, as far as possible, be avoided.« [Translation by Thomas Schmidt]. 339 Cf. Kanitschneider, Kosmologie, 440. 340 Carl Gustav Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York and London: The free Press, 1965). 337

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For the antecedent data, from which the emergence of the time sequence would have to be derived, would have to precede it in lawful connection; and the laws to be invoked for the explanation would have to consist in the connection of another kind of events temporally connected with the kind of event called »time«. Thus, the physical concept of time seems to exclude any physical explanation of time, as Hempel himself once admitted.341

b) Moment in time, point in time and course of time If the question about the beginning of the time is not to be excluded from the natural sciences, then one must accept the answer which arises on the condition of the empirically confirmed results. One of these empirically confirmed conclusions from the evaluation of the light arriving on earth from other galaxies is that the universe is expanding and that the whole matter existing in the cosmos must have been in a state of extreme compression at a particular moment about 10 to 15 billion years ago before which no empirically ascertainable physical processes have taken place. In this sense one of the results of physics is that the universe has an age, hence that it has begun to exist with the »big bang«. If everything has come into existence at this first moment in time, then time must also have begun then. The big bang did not only take place in the first moment, but in it the first moment itself took place. The beginning of the time cannot have taken place within time, »before« the first moment nothing temporal can have been but a first moment, in which the difference between non-existence and existence of the world occurred, there must have been, if the world has an age, and it must have also been the moment in which time itself originated. But what is a moment? If time, from the perspective of physics, consists of a sequence of homogeneous sections whose connection can be expressed mathematically, then the conceptual means of the mathematical description determine how we have to interpret these sections. Mathematically, how­ ever, the physically measured time is expressed in real numbers, which means that the whole physics of today, including quantum physics, is built on a continuous time structure. If this is so, then at least one thing follows for the nature of what we call »moments« of time, whatever these may be, namely that there cannot be a »smallest« moment discretely separated 341

Cf. Nicholas Rescher, Die Grenzen der Wissenschaft (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1985), 213.

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from all others of its kind. But if there cannot be a smallest moment, can there have been a »first«? If the density of time, as Grünbaum points out,342 is a kinematic postulate from which we cannot depart out of methodological necessity, then there cannot be a first moment that is or has been before all other moments of time; for to imagine the course of this supposedly first interval means, in principle, to have to think it composed of even smaller intervals to which earlier ones than it belong. A section of the course of time, which is supposed to precede all others, necessarily contains smaller sections, whose earlier ones precede the later ones. How is this difficulty in the thinking of time to be dealt with? The proposed solutions and the complications to which they lead are bound­ less.343 For the exchange with phenomenology, the following hypothesis might be the most explosive: Even those who take the physical concept of time as fundamental are forced to introduce a dichotomy by which time breaks down into a passing, finite dimension and an inexhaustible, infinite dimension. The results of physics compel us to think the course of the moments that have led up to the present state of the world as having a definite beginning. The relation which exists between all these moments has occurred once and extends up to the moment in which we live now. At the same time, however, we are compelled to think of the course of these moments as divided into parts which cannot themselves be moments, provided that by »moment« we understand a section of the course of time leading from the beginning of the world to the present. The number of these parts of the course of time is infinite and they have no duration. They are points in time, and every interval of time, be it a second or a year, is composed of the same number of these points, which is infinite.344 But how can an interval composed of an infinite number of points of length zero be thought of as one that has a length? This is because the number of points, when defined by correspondence to the real numbers, is uncountably infinite, and consequently the operation of addition cannot be applied to them.345 For this very reason, it is impossible to speak of a »first moment«. When we think of the course of time within which the beginning 342 Cf. Adolf Grünbaum, Modern Science and Zeno’s Paradoxes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968). 343 Cf. Smith and Oaklander, Time, Change and Freedom, chapter 1 and 2. 344 Cf. Smith and Oaklander, Time, Change and Freedom, chapter 1 and 2. 345 Cf. Smith and Oaklander, Time, Change and Freedom, 16 and Grünbaum, Modern Science and Zeno’s Paradoxes, 121.

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of the world took place, that is, from the first hour or the first second of the universe, we may take away any of its points in time without depriving this course of time of its existence. On the other hand, we cannot remove from the course of time which has led up to the present moment its beginning; there must have been a moment at the beginning of this course. How this moment stands to the present moment and to the whole of the moments in general, must remain open, for the moment.

c) Time-substance and time-relation However, it is questionable whether there are not at least some serious physical hypotheses which make the event of the »big bang« compatible with the assumption that the course of time (and thus not only the number of points in time) is infinite, i.e. extends boundlessly into the past and the future. If the process of expansion of the now existing universe should have been preceded by a process of contraction of »another« universe, as certain cosmological approaches assume it today,346 then the »big bang« would have been the first event of »our« universe, but this would have taken place within a time interval, which would have been preceded by another one. We can obviously give up the demand that there must have been a first moment, which was not preceded by another, if we assume that only the world but not time had a beginning in time. But what then about the Kantian argument that the present moment could not have been reached through an infinite sequence of moments preceding it? If the quantity of the past moments were really infinite, then it could not be built up by a successive addition of elements, since due to their infinity, the operation of addition would not be applicable to the moments. This would also mean that the moment, which we experience now, could not be added to the already always passed infinite time, that is: it could actually never become past!347 The answer is: I can absolutely imagine that I go back from now infinitely far into the past and that every moment which I pass, is nevertheless

346 See for example: Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 347 Cf. Smith and Oaklander, Time, Change and Freedom, 25.

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finitely far away from my present.348 Even if the physics can explain to me with certainty that the laws of nature which link my existence with the beginning of the universe relate only moments of a finite time span with each other, it remains nonetheless conceivable that these moments (and also all those which follow the present up to the physically foreseeable end of the universe) are preceded by other moments (or follow after the end of the universe) in which nothing physically describable has occurred. At this point, however, we again encounter open questions concerning the meaning of the concept of a »moment« especially in physics. The moment is supposed to be the unit of a physically describable course – but: of the course of what? The laws of physics describe the regular connections of kinds of events. Time is not itself an event, but events are related to each other in time. A moment is defined by the totality of the events taking place within it, that is by the events which stand in a relation of simultaneity to one another. Any physical explanation of what happens in a given moment is an explanation of the events taking place in it by virtue of other events; there is nothing the explanation would have to refer to than events and, given the structural continuity of the course of the world, types of events. But whoever assumes that »time« could have had a course also before and after all events of the universe, attributes to the moment a substantial dimension beyond the merely relational, for which there is no physical justification. Thus, we return to Kant's »empty time« which is a mere thought construct. A course of time which is not defined by a real change which corresponds to it does not explain anything and thus seems to be a superfluous hypothesis. However, there is a philosophical argument, which nevertheless sup­ ports the claim, that we must conclude from the physical concept of time the existence of a substantial aspect, which belongs to the essence of every moment beyond all events taking place in it. That Kant ignored it was the logical consequence within his theoretical system, which, based on Newton, assumes the complete determinism of empirical reality. For Kant, the physically ascertainable event within each moment of time determines all effects lawfully related with it in the next and, in general, in all subsequent moments of time. Those who do not hold this determinism can appeal to the line of thought that at the moment we are now experiencing, events 348 Cf. Quentin Smith, »The possible infinitude of the past«, in Philosophical Quarterly, no. 33 (June 1993): 109–115.

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other than those that actually occurred would have been possible.349 One can even assume, if one assumes the irreducibility of statistical to nomological regularities, that in another possible world the (statistically formulable) relations between the types of events of our world (the »laws of nature«) could have been one and the same and the relations between individual events within this world could nevertheless have been other than they have now actually occurred. And in that case, we would not and could not say that thereby the time had become »another« or the moment in which these other events had taken place had been another than just the present. Considered thus, time is nevertheless more than the mere events which stand to each other in a relationship of the simultaneity. One thing is presupposed in this argument: The existence of the one real world including its moment experienced by us now. On the basis of this thought we can say that time must be more than the sum of the events taking place in each of its moments, but not that there must be or could be a time which is not defined by the relation between such events. What we can say is that the relation between the events within a moment is obviously not itself an event, indeed that the »moment« itself consists essentially in this relation, and that in this respect it is something which itself is not in time, or at least that it is not in time. The »substance« of time beyond the relation between the events connected in it is precisely not something event-like, nor is it a »part« of time; rather, it is a transition apparently common to all moments of time and yet not contained in any of them, a final unity that belongs to time and in which everything that is in time is comprehended, with the exception of time itself. To time belongs essentially a transition extending through all of its moments from that which remains withdrawn from all events precisely in the form of this transition into these events: the transition from the non-being to the being of the temporal.

d) Absolute and relative presence The dichotomy of time-relation and time-substance thus passes over into the dichotomy of the relations between events (the epitome of facts linked by natural law) and the relation between the moments in which events take place. The open problems to which the physical concept of time leads us 349

Cf. Smith and Oaklander, Time, Change and Freedom, 38.

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when we try to understand it as a »moment« have to do with a specific perspectivity inherent in this concept, namely the perspective on the present moment. Thus, regardless of the focus on the »subjective« perspective of the experience of time and temporality, which is really or supposedly char­ acteristic of phenomenology, the physical analysis of time as a succession of intervals in which the process of change has taken place that has finally led to the moment we are now experiencing »already« confronts us with the necessity of allowing the transition to which this word »now« refers to be a sui generis relation that is constitutive of time and distinct from all other relations within the whole of nature. No advance in knowledge and no systematization within the area of the other nature-constitutive relations, the »laws of nature«, therefore also not their possible unification to a highest and most general »world formula« would allow us to deduce in which way the present transition differs from everything that otherwise belongs to reality. This has decidedly to do with the fact that we are forced to consider this present transition under two principally opposite aspects. For it is completely different from everything else that belongs to reality in one respect and not at all in another. On the one hand, it is, as philosophy since Augustine has repeatedly stated, the elusive transition-point disappearing between everything else, between all past moments which are no more and all future moments which are not yet. On the other hand, everything that has ever belonged to the world must have passed through it and everything that will ever belong to it will pass through it. But what do we mean when we say: through it? Of course, past moments were once present and future ones will sometime be present. But what does this mean other than that the past moments are succeeded by later ones and preceded by earlier ones and likewise that future moments are preceded by earlier ones, among others the present moment, and will be succeeded by later moments than themselves? Must we not say that the present moment, preceded by past moments and to be succeeded by future moments, is on a level with all others, such that there is no sense in saying that all other moments must »pass through it«? The counter objection is that here two aspects of what »present« means are inadmissibly mixed. For the moment once present in the past is a past one, just as the moment once present in the future remains a future one. They may otherwise exist in everything as the moment we now experience exists, but as past and as future moments they exist only relative to the moment now present; they are its past and its future. If past and future existence are to be interpreted 131

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essentially not as the existence of events but, as our reflection on time relation and time substance revealed, as the existence of a transition that passes between existing and non-existing events, then the concepts of past and future can be defined only relative to a present that is distinguished from them absolutely by the fact that it and only it exists. Everything else would question the difference between past and future and therefore question the existence of change itself. In a sense of the word which must remain obscure for the time being we must therefore say that what did exist and what will exist exists due to the now existing. Thus, in a way, we have arrived by the opposite route at the boundary where Husserl's »last consciousness« and Heidegger's »Dasein« located the instant [Augenblick] from which all moments spring, which encom­ passes them all and which, nevertheless, cannot be one of them. The dimension of time, in which it passes through the present moment, cannot be reduced to the one in which all its moments follow each other in the relation of earlier and later, but remains ontologically independent from it. If the whole, into which everything temporal integrates itself continuously, would not have passed through the moment, which I experience now, if »I« would not have been integrated into the original context, through which the sequence of all moments of the world is about to form, then the difference between the one real and all otherwise possible worlds would not exist; because beyond the one course of the world passing through me right now, there are infinitely many possible courses of the world but not a second real one. I can and must concede of course that the world could have taken its course also without me; my parents would not have had to meet each other, an explosion could have torn me apart before having thought the thought which I am thinking right now. But that would have been the course of one of the infinitely many other possible worlds and not that of the real world the temporal substance of which I perceive at this moment as this very moment. What always distinguishes the real from the possible worlds, lives in me as that which also makes this moment mine. In this respect one can and must admit to Heidegger that if I had not been there, the world would also not be there and that it is only because I am here, that I may say that something would have been, will be or could be without me. In my thinking the substance of time itself has entered me. But as far as I can and must say this precisely only because it could also have been different, because for that very reason the temporal substance of the world does not depend on my thinking, my thought forces me to let the other dimension of 132

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time, in which the present moment is also only one among all which precede each other, followed each other or existed simultaneously, likewise count as ontologically independent, and to thus think absolute and relative pres­ ence next to each other.

3. From the limit to the principle: thinking is time a) The singularity of time The inclusion of the physical concept of time in the phenomenologically inspired approach to think time as a philosophical principle does not lead to its antithesis, but rather in the direction of that ontological relativization of subjectivity in which alone its demarcation from the philosophy of consciousness can succeed. The clearer the incomparability of the moment, in which the reality of time becomes apparent to me as my own, is presented as an implication of the physically explicable course of time, the weaker becomes the temptation to transfer this incomparable singularity from the moment to the one who experiences it, that is, to me as the bearer of the experience of time, by seeking a »real I« in the sense of Bergson beyond the »shadow« of myself that is accessible to me, or by identifying myself with a Husserlian »last consciousness« as the transcendental condition of subjective experience of time in general. The more significant, one could say, echoing Kierkegaard, the instant becomes for me, the less significant I am for the moment. I am one of the beings whose specific way to participate in time consists in thinking, and when I emphasize that such thinking is »my« thinking I do not say much more than that it is not another’s thinking. Here, as in all radical contexts of philosophizing, one encounters the ultimate questions concerning the concept of philosophy: Is philosophy a conceptual toolkit for the penetration and substantiation of the ways of our thinking – or is it the subversive guardian of our conceptual tools who must remind us of the danger of thinking to distract the thinking being from the incomparable origin of its existence? The trace of just such a reminder runs through the history of Western philosophy in the »moment« probably more than in any other notion. The fact that exaíphnēs appears in Plato both at the end of the grandiose movement of self-suspension of the thinking 133

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of being in the »Parmenides«350 and at the summit of the self-reflection of philosophical thinking on the character of its truthfulness in the »Seventh Letter«351 indicates the direction in which the primordial linking of chrónos and kairós up to the metaphysical figure of thought of nunc stans has been sought in this tradition.352 But the matter at hand also points beyond this whole tradition. To the Latin nunc corresponds the Indian kṣaṇa in Sanskrit or khana in Pāli as the word that designates the indifferent as well as the unique, the moment in the sense of the abstract unit of measurement of the course of time and that decisive one which, as the Buddha says, »must not be missed« and through which one is able to pass meditatively from time into timelessness. 353 And according to this linguistic bridge, one can also look for bridges in the understanding of philosophy, through which Western and Eastern tradition meet each other and which both lead across the »river« of time. Let us remind ourselves once more what we have gained for our thinking by introducing the dichotomy of these two kinds of temporality [Augenblick und Moment], of absolute and relative presence of time respectively. That the existence of the world and of all its moments is relative to a transition which, considered as a moment, is only one among all the other moments, is an implication of temporality which appears to us when we think about it: this insight is not limited to some hitherto unspecified phenomenological way of looking at things, rather it is valid even if we remain strictly within the limits of the physical view of time. When this »relativity of being« [Daseinsrelativität] of the world becomes transparent to us in the present moment, our insight, rightly understood, does not amount to a distinction of the events taking place in it with respect to all previous or subsequent events, nor of the subjects experiencing it just now with respect to what was experienced earlier, will be experienced later, or even what will never be experienced and what cannot experience itself. On the contrary, to the extent that we relativize everything that has ever happened and will happen in the world in relation to what is now, Platon, Parmenides, 134 b/c, 156 d/e. Platon, The Seventh Letter, 342 b. 352 Cf. Hans-Jürgen Gawoll, »Über den Augenblick. Auch eine Philosophiegeschichte von Platon bis Heidegger«, in Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, XXXVII (1994): 152–179, esp. 160. 353 Mircea Eliade, »Time and Eternity in Indian Thought«, in Time in Indian Philosophy. A Collection of Essays, ed. by Hari Shankar Prasad (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1992), 97–124, esp. 116. 350

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we absolutize precisely not ourselves and our experience, but that part of ourselves which unites us with all that ever was and all which ever will be. In the temporality of the entire existence of the world becoming clear to us, we become one with this very temporality. It is this insight in which, according to Merleau-Ponty's passage cited above, time is conceived as subject and the subject as time. Far from relativizing the existence of the world to a hidden »I«, as Bergson still thought, we rather oppose in an extreme way the tendency to identify the temporal itself with that with which it never merges, namely a sequence of events passing from the future into the past. Rather: The moment in which time opens up in thought, opens the view onto me as a temporal being, that is, as a being that constantly forms itself anew as a whole of experience [Erlebnisganzes] by integrating itself from that in which it was before as this very whole, leaving it behind and at the same time integrating it into itself. In this moment it dawns on me, what Husserl meant by the »last consciousness«, the »living presence« and the »primordial creation« [Urschöpfung], what Merleau-Ponty meant by the time that is subject and the subject that is time and what Kierkegaard meant by – the »instant« [Augenblick]. In this moment, however, it also becomes quite clear to me what forces the physicist to think the world as a sequence of moments, as a temporal and nevertheless limited whole. In this moment, time appears to my thinking as relative to my existence as well as completely independent from it. When philosophy opens this up to me, it reminds of something which in that moment was unknowingly opened to my thinking as well: that my thinking is itself time. The moment: it is mine, but it is not me. In the moment the moment dissolves into being thought as my moment, but likewise I dissolve into it as one among many. Between »me« and my thinking of time, that is, between the connection of my life as a whole and the moment in which time arises in my thinking, there is no other, but therefore also no less relevant connection between me and the world surrounding me. The moment, in which time arises in my thinking, stands to my time like my time stands to the time of everything except myself; what this whole would not be without me, I would not be without it: time. Of course, I would not have had to think the thought which became clear to me in the moment in which time opened up to me, I could have lived without ever philosophizing and the world could have taken its course without anyone ever having philosophized within it; but then it would also never have been questionable whether my time could exist next to the time of everything. And then this world would have been 135

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just one of the infinitely many possible other worlds and not the real one, which being real shows itself as everything that is distinguished from the merely possible, in my thinking by the moment in which time opens up to my thought.

b) The »incipientness« of time Though remembering the incomparability of the instant [Augenblick] allows me to think of the transition in which time enters my thought as that singular step with which everything real steps from non-being into being, it nevertheless at the same time confronts me anew and in an intensified manner with the problem of its beginning. If this transition, in which its temporality arises for my thinking, is exemplary for the singularity with which everything real attains its time, then it must also be like that for that first moment, the meaning of which we had left open in the context of the analysis of the physical concept of time. Precisely because the relativity of being of time to the moment must not be confused by the constituting act of a subject beyond time, it must be possible to reconcile it with the aspect under which the moment represents one moment among all others in the physically describable course of the world. That means: The sequence, in which the moments of the course of the world have extended up to that moment, cannot completely disappear in it, but it belongs to the substance of what has come upon me in that moment as time. The transition from non-being to being of the temporal must itself be able to be thought as a sequence. This is the »price« for the liberation from the shadow of the philosophy of consciousness: if the moment is relative of being upon »me«, not as a subject beyond time, but as a natural being, if it is relative to my thinking not as a transcendental constitutional achievement, but as part of my specific way of being, then I must allow the course of the world, into which I am causally integrated with my nature, to be valid as, in a however weak sense, a necessary condition of the reality of the moment. And to this course belongs, according to everything that we know and can describe physically, having had a beginning. Here we once again arrive at the problem of the »first moment«. The physical concept of time permitted the interpretation that the first moment does not differ from all others which follow it in that what constitutes it as an interval. As an interval, every temporal process is 136

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composed of the same infinite set of points which themselves have no duration and among which there has been no »first«. Thus, what makes the first moment the one followed by all others cannot consist in a distance that lies or has lain between it and them. With the first moment, the sequence, which exists between all earlier and later moments of the course of the world, must have come about, but what makes it this sequence, does not itself stand in the relation of being earlier to the whole of its parts. At the same time, however, this sequence is what we called the »substance« of time, which is inherent to time beyond all events that take place in it. It must have originated immediately and completely with the first moment, that is to say, the substance of time must have been set as a sequence and yet, at the same time, it must have put the first moment into the relation with respect to all others which we still now perceive as that of the past, present and future. With this, however, our attempt to think the substance of time itself as something temporal and to reconcile the ontological independence of the sequence of moments of the universe demanded by the physical concept of time with the thought of the relativity of being of time to the incomparable moment seems doomed to failure. The thought of the first moment, hence of the beginning of time, seems to deprive the sequence of world events of their ontological independence which it ought to wrest from the moment in order to maintain its own substance. To escape this danger, we might finally turn to a non-metaphysical but somewhat speculative thought: the thought of an absolute past, a past that has never been present but comes into being with the presence of time. Can I think that the moment of time's entering into its all-encompass­ ing present, the moment in which the transition from non-being into being takes place, is also the moment when that comes into being in relation to which all other moments, including the first, are ordered in their proper sequence? It is possible, if I think the substance of time as a relation, which exists between the moment of all-embracing presence and a preceding part of this relation, as the consequence of which the moment does not emerge anew through every new moment of the course of the world, but is repeated in them. This part of the temporal relation preceding the entire course of world-time would then be one, which must have already been repeated in the transition from the first to the second just like from this to every other moment of the world course in its entirety. Only in virtue of this central connector could the first moment be set by the advent of the second, as the moment in which the transition from the preceding to 137

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the present dimension was set as that transition which came into the world with the first moment. Accordingly, a sequence of two dimensions must be thought within the moment itself, a sequence which does not appear as itself within the moment and which also does not add anything to it that it would not have already in itself also without it in its entirety. Thus, we are here dealing with a past dimension of the absolute present, which joins the same indistinguishably without anything being added that would enter the sequence of events in the world in its doing so. This dichotomy may only be found as the sequence of all moments, including the first, in the course of the world between the present and the past dimension in the substance of time. And that it can be and is to be »found« does mean nothing but that it is and has to be thought: this is the deepest sense of the insight that thinking is time. The absolute past is something that we could not become »conscious« of in any way except as an implication of our thinking of the world as a »limited whole«354. It is a past which is only accessible to reflection, not to observation [Anschauung], a past which nobody can remember, a lost time. Yet, the beginning of the world owes itself to this lost time.

c) The finitude of the temporal If the transition of the moment into the all-integrating present always also determines a dimension of being past, in which the first moment of the course of the world is repeated, as something that has passed over into this moment, then the reality of this transition into the present moment also still decides what has been going on in the first moment of the course of the world. This lost time, which nobody can remember, and which nevertheless exists just as certainly as the time we now experience, first gives relative presence its ontological independence and saves us from having to let it perish in the absoluteness of the nunc stans. The lost time is furthermore required so that the moments of the course of the world, whether they have once been present with respect to the present moment, are present or are yet to enter into their presence, form a coherent continuum which completely fits into a singular whole. Only under this presupposition I can understand 354 Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 6.45: »To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole – a limited whole.«

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the element of my own experience of time, which has always been regarded as decisive for the specific reality of a thinking living being, itself once again as exemplary for the temporality of everything: the experience of freedom. There is an irrevocable present for which I share responsibility, and this irrevocable present exists not only in terms of what is happening now, but just as much for those things over whose existence I will decide. What I will do is a consequence of the past, but never only a consequence of all that has been going on with me and apart from me from the beginning of this world, instead it will also be a consequence of what will never enter this world, because the world, as long as it will exist, is always ahead of itself; it is this openness which goes back to the first moment in which time was supplied with the reversion that turns it back behind itself what I perceive as that which always will only have happened because I decided to do it. This however means that in my free action I have found and will find authentically that what makes the difference between something being »over« and having »never been«. The transition from non-being into being is irrevocable even for a moment which should be the last in the course of time in our universe. If the temporal whole of the sequence of moments of the world is finite and if with the transition into the moment, which all other moments are still now about to follow, one moment has been set, which will be the last of this world, then in this last moment nevertheless the being of the transition, by which it also will have become present, cannot be extinguished. If through this transition, through which everything that belongs to the world finds its existence, this transition itself in the end and with it the relation between everything’s entrance into being and its preceding past were lost, then the concept of presence would cancel itself. There would be and could be then no moment, when one could say that »now« has been lost something that had been going on »before«. For the present, from the perspective of which thus had been spoken about, would then also no longer exist. Then there would never have been anything and nothing would have ever existed – therefore there would not have been an »everything«. »Over« and »never been« would in the last moment of time become one and the same. Hence, it is in actuality the lost time which in the moment in which it becomes the principle of my thinking reminds my presence of itself as its savior from non-being.

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2. The Anthropologized Subject of Time

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On the Social Origin of Time in Language

Let me begin with a quotation by Heidegger which to my mind is one of the deepest characterizations of the tricky relationship between time and our human existence, i.e. of the relation between time and what Heidegger in Being and Time calls »Dasein«: »Of course only as long as Dasein is (that is, only as long as understanding of Being is ontically possible), ›is there‹ Being. When Dasein does not exist, ›inde­ pendence‹ ›is‹ not either, nor ›is‹ the ›in-itself‹. In such a case this sort of thing can neither be understood nor not understood. In such a case even entities within-the-world can neither be discovered nor lie hidden. In such a case it cannot be said that entities are, nor can it be said that they are not. But now, as long as there is an understanding of Being and therefore an understanding of presence-at-hand, it can indeed be said that in this case entities will still continue to be«.355

1. The paradox of temporality What is the point of this passage? Firstly, it is an expression of our every-day conviction that things exist »in-themselves«, i.e. independently of any consciousness of that existence, that things will exist and events will go on after we have ceased to exist and that things have existed and events were going on before any living or conscious being came into existence. Secondly, it directs our attention to the fact that the expression of that conviction is bound to a form that contains and connects a propositional and a non-propositional part, and that the non-propositional part presupposes what is neglected in the propositional part: our existence as living and thinking beings. That second aspect, of course, is the decisive one for Heidegger. There is what we could call a paradoxical structure in our natural 355 Martin Heidegger: Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, New York and Evanston, Harper & Row 1962, § 43c, 255.

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view of our temporal relation to the world in which we live. In order to express our certainty that the world has existed before we did and will go on without us we must, consciously or not, refer to a condition of the meaning of the word »exist« which is given only as long as we are there. So, there is a kind of self-contradiction in our consciousness of temporal existence, and the nature of that contradiction is not a logical but a performative one: when we talk about what was going on before we have existed and will be going on without us we cannot avoid ascribing to that which has been before and will be after our existing its relation to what is going on only as long as we exist: And the concept which keeps and covers the contradictory aspect of this relation is the concept of time. The existence of things and events beyond our own existence was and will be their existence in time; and the existence of what is going on only as long as we exist is our existence in time. So, in some sense, our time is in fact inclusive of great swathes of time from which we are excluded in the passage. of time in our universe. We can and we do neglect that paradox in our ordinary ways of speaking, but it is present nevertheless in the hidden indexicality to our temporal experience, inherent in our speaking of what was before or will be ahead of us. Any phrase like »There was no life on earth five million years ago« or »There was no life on earth when it came into being« presupposes a frame of reference from which it makes sense for the person who utters or understands such a phrase to measure and to compare temporal relations. The ironic Wittgensteinian question »What is the time on the sun now?« may be seen as a brief cross-check of this genuine interdependency between lifetime and »world-time«, which is embedded in our linguistic behaviour. The philosophical problem which we face by hat paradoxical structure in our understanding of temporal existence is the question of the origin of time itself. The aspect under which our temporal existence is constitutive for the frame of reference to any temporal being in general cannot be included in the natural flow of time that contains the beginning and end of living and conscious beings in the world. So, the difference between lifetime and world-time tends to lead us to the assumption of an extratemporal origin of time. This tendency must not be misunderstood as »idealistic«. In fact, the Kantian solution to the problem of the origin of time in the Critique of

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Pure Reason is given under the title of »refutation of idealism«356. Idealism, according to Kant, is defined by the claim that the existence of things outside of my consciousness cannot be proven and indeed is impossible.357 Kant’s notion that the »mere consciousness of my own existence [»Dasein«] – a consciousness which, however, is empirical in character – proves the existence of objects in the space outside of me« (B 274) thus contradicts the idealist position.358 I become aware of myself as a multiplicity of representations given to my inner sense, and I can identify the unity of these representations in time-which is what I call myself – only in relation to something which exists permanently outside of myself. Identity in time presupposes an interdependence of change and permanence which cannot be situated totally within myself. However, in order to defend this refutation of idealism, Kant is forced to his genuinely metaphysical conclusion, i.e. the reduplication of the »I« as an empirical subject in time and the »transcendental subject« which is free of any temporal conditions. It is the dualistic essence of this dichotomy, the chōrismós between temporal and extratemporal sphere, which, according to Kant, makes it impossible to give any rational reconstruction of the beginning or the end of the world, including the world-time. Time is not an empirical concept derived from experience but an a priori form of intuition; it is a »formal condition of appearances«. That means that if there is any answer to the question of the origin of time, we will have to find it in the irreducible basis of our experience, the constellation between the extratemporal subjectivity and the world of objects, including the individual human being whom I call myself. Heidegger's elucidation of the problem is representative of the whole phenomenological rejection of the Kantian »transcendental subject« and the claim to reinterpret it in anthropological terms. The Kantian notion that objects are constituted by the conscious activity of an extratemporal pure subject makes it impossible to understand the origin of the conscious being itself as part of the temporal world. Kant’s so-called »modest« strategy Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996), B274, 326. 357 Explicitly Kant here refers to Berkeley’s position which he calls »dogmatic« – in contrast to Descartes ›problematic‹ – idealism. 358 Cf. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 274, 288 (translated following Heidegger using »Dasein« instead of »existence«). 356

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in dealing with this problem was the drawing of a line of demarcation between meaningful and nonsensical questions and thereby banishing the question of the origin of time from the scope of philosophical deliberation. But through the back-door of his dualism between the temporal and the extratemporal subject the problem emerges again at the heart of Kant’s system. The issue becomes obvious in his theory of the »schema­ tism« which mediates between pure concepts and temporal representa­ tions.359 Ultimately, it is time which enables the »constitution« of object by the absolutely timeless intellectual subject. Where, if not from a tem­ poral element within that transcendental power which, by definition, can­ not be thought of as included in nature, does that pre-natural time come from? So, the paradox which we found explicated in Heidegger’s remark, the paradox of our human time that includes in itself the borders of the whole process which excludes us from by far the most parts of what is going on in our universe, is back on the stage if we accept the Kantian dualism. But what is the alternative that the phenomenological approach has to offer?

2. The phenomenological reformulation of the paradox of temporality The phenomenological alternative to the Kantian topic of »constitution« is best characterized by Max Scheler’s term »Daseinsrelativität« (relativity of being). Time is not constituted by subjective consciousness but »daseinsrel­ ativ« to it, that is to say: it is ontologically dependent on its existence. That is to say, that time would not be »time« if there were no conscious beings, but it does not mean that there was no content or substance of time before the origin of such beings or that time would not go on after they cease to exist. The origin of time cannot be thought of as a totally creative starting point ex nihilo, it must be seen as a genuine performance of transformation, an act of the turning of a pre-temporal reality into what 359 »Now it is quite clear that there must be some third thing, which must stand in homogeneity with the category on the one hand and the appearance on the other, and makes possible the application of the former to the latter. this mediating representation must be pure (without anything empirical) and yet intellectual on the one hand and sensible on the other. Such a representation is the transcendental schema.« (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B177, 272).

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we then consciously experience as the flux of time that encompasses the preconscious, conscious and post-conscious stages of the development of our universe. In the context of this brief presentation I can only return to the example of phenomena that contain comparative mental and material aspects, e.g., hunger.360 When I am hungry, I become aware of the fact of my hunger; my consciousness of my hunger is the consciousness of something that has already been there, but I cannot say that it would have been there without my consciousness of it.361 Given the fact that there is the present experience of my hunger, I cannot use the word »hunger« correctly without referring by it to something that is essentially conscious but that neither has been »constituted« by my consciousness nor can be reduced to it. This example is more than a metaphor: it stands in a kind of metonymic relation to the whole of my experience of myself as a person. If I would really become aware of myself as pure subjectivity, as the experience of a present moment in which I, for whatever reason, came to identify a chain or cluster of mental states as the one which is »mine«, I could not avoid the dualism that leads to the absolute separation of the subjective sphere from the world of temporal objects. But as a matter of fact, I find myself not as a complex of mental experiences but as a person. That means: I have a body with a certain, i.e. human, nature. Becoming aware of myself means to identify myself as one human being among others and also as a living being who becomes conscious of what it has been when it becomes conscious of itself. And it is this personal self-experience by which my personal existence is in itself a kind of metonymic example for the whole of temporal reality. That is the point of the Aristotelian concept of the »essence« of anything as tó tí ēn eínai: as for a person to »be a being« is to be someone who has »has been«, so, analogically, for everything to be something and to have been what it is, is inseparable. That is, in a nutshell, the view of the origin of time which avoids the Kantian dualism but saves the aspect of »Daseinsrelativität«: when we use the word »to be,« when we talk about what things and events »are«, then we are referring to a temporal relation between all of them including ourselves which would have not existed without us and yet, given our existence, must have existed before our beginning and will exist after our end. And so, the origin of time including I repeat the example from my speech on »Ontological Aspects of Absolute Past« at the thirteenth conference of the ISST »Time : Limits and Constraints »in Asilomar, 2007. 361 Cf. my article »Fulfilled Presence« in this volume. 360

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the time in which living and conscious beings have come into existence – is indeed continuing as long as the constitutive activity of personal life, constituting a person by forming one’s life into a temporal unity, continues. Subjectivity is what all persons share and what therefore, as Kant has seen, cannot be identified by any concrete individual being who has a beginning and an end in time; but what persons do not share and what every single one of them possesses as just the temporally identifiable subject that he or she really is, is neither extratemporal subjectivity nor causally determined objectivity, but it is the form of life which in everyone of us originates as we pursue it.

3. The sociocultural aspect of temporality But who is designated by the word »we« in this context? Who is the being whose form of life opens the horizon of the origin of time, and why is it like that? Heidegger’s answer has, as far as I can see, remained at the core of all the phenomenological treatment of this issue. His answer is: what makes it possible and at the same time necessary that my existence becomes the paradigm of being in general, is my death – or precisely: my conscious relation to it. The connection between my consciousness of what I am and the whole of my existence is the consciousness of what I will never catch up with in my life, i.e. my death. For us, personal beings, through the consciousness of our death the word »life« acquires a specific meaning which it would not have without us but which, given our existence, is also inherent whenever we ascribe the quality of a »living« being to anything. It is the meaning of »life« as a temporal form (Zeitgestalt). Through their consciousness of the finitude of their lives, personal beings develop a relationship towards themselves, something which in the final part of this chapter I shall refer to as the »hermeneutical«. As a person, one is confronted with different possible versions of the story of one's life which can be told and between which one, to a certain extent, must choose. And the code through which these versions are to be interpreted and the choices that must be made between them are constituted by one's own culture. So, for us as persons, »life« is not only a biological but at the same time a cultural phenomenon; it is the designation of our individual biography, a vita that includes the reflection of its curriculum and will always be directed by such reflection – whether it is our own or the reflection of others who 148

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may guide or even dictate the ways of our lives. From this point of view, from the perspective of our own personal existence, we can ascribe the character of a temporal form to every living being, independently of the question if it has or could ever have any kind of consciousness of that kind of existence. Thus, it is a culturally constituted relation to ourselves which makes it possible and necessary for us to characterize natural beings – including ourselves and our ancestors and descendants – as temporal forms. And thereby we have arrived at the principle of what I would characterize as the phenomenological alternative to the Kantian view of the extratemporal subject – which, when we keep in mind that for Kant the Newtonian concept of space and time was the indubitable starting point of any philosophical reconstruction of scientific knowledge, in its deepest core is the view of the intellect of the omniscient God who is the owner of the absolute perspective that defines the temporal structure of the universe. The phenomenological alternative to that view is the assumption that when we extend our own experience of temporality to the whole nature which we are a part of and finally to the whole universe as the last horizon of nature in general, then we apply and somehow translate our experience of our personal existence as the subject of a temporal form to the world that encompasses us. Time is, to say it again, more than a mere metaphor, the code by which we make the universe legible and enumerable, readable and calculable. In time we find written down the metonymic relation, the structure of the pars pro toto: that relation that persists between the whole of our universe and the aspect under which we as a part of it represent it as a whole. In Leibniz’s words to be a mirror of the universe is not the privilege of the person; it is rather what we, the reasonable, share with all other beings; but what gives us our specific and unique relation to the whole that encompasses us is that we have become able to read it, to listen to what it has to tell us. This is what makes time the principle of translation – in linguistic and in mathematical terms. This is, as far as I can tell, the key to the phenomenological approach to the relation between time and human existence that we find indicated in the quoted passage from Heidegger. What are the criteria for its further explication and for its possible defense or refutation? In the last part of this paper I want to highlight two features of this debate. The first regarding the conditions of such a defense or possible refutation of the phenomenological approach, the second regarding what I would call – 149

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certainly not with the consent of many phenomenological philosophers – its metaphysical consequences.

4. The temporal character of truth Concerning the first point, I want to emphasize the methodological prin­ ciple of the phenomenological approach concerning the origin of time, i.e. its hermeneutical character. The relation between personal life and the temporal structure of the universe has not been and could not have been invented by the speculation of any philosopher. What we find expressed in Heidegger’s quotation and in the related thoughts which I tried to summarize here is the hermeneutical explication of an idea which is incorporated in the fundamental structures of human cultures and societies. It is their work, and all philosophical principles we could ever formulate in order to show the foundation of that work depends on it ontologically and could never replace it. On the one hand, this is the necessary limitation of any philosophical approach to knowledge about the nature of human life which we find embedded in sociocultural structures. On the other hand, the consequence of this hermeneutical understanding of human knowledge is that philosophy is equally limited concerning the task that results from the insight into such sociocultural constituted knowledge: we can philosophically explicate and formulate that task but we cannot fulfil it. It is the task that human cultures and societies have posed to themselves and thereby to us, not as philosophers but as human beings. It is the task to contribute to that fundamental sociocultural work which I have tried to characterize as the turning of a pre-temporal reality into the consciousness of time. The phenomenological alternative to the Kantian approach to the origin of time must interpret that act of turning not as a transcendental activity but as a social practice which is based on structures that are the subject of cultural anthropology. I think that the essence of these structures has been pointed out by Claude Lévi-Strauss362: they are I have always found the following rather short and unspectacular passage to be the key to »structuralism«: »The mistake of Mannhardt and the Naturalist School was to think that natural phenomena are what myths seek to explain, when they are rather the medium through which myths try to explain facts which are themselves not of a natural but a logical order« (Lévi- Strauss, The Savage Mind, 95). The concept of »medium« here used 362

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structures of translation, i.e. structures of the sociocultural work by which human beings transform the structural elements of the order of nature which surrounds them into the code of communication about the tasks which lie ahead of them in order to shape the form of their lives. The transformation of the names of things and events structured by the order of natural individuals and species into the names in which we find embedded the culturally ordered horizon of what we have to spend the time of our lives on must be understood as a process going on in that time which is itself constituted within this process; that is the essence of what Edmund Leach has defined as »social time«363, i.e. the time which emerges from the process of constantly but discontinuously »rebearing« our lives in the forms of ritualized and institutionalized representations of its renewed origin. It is the time in which society organizes the cultural work of exploiting the totality of natural structures in order to offer its members the chance to enter into the perspective of the »view from nowhere«, the time at which we become capable to »catch up with ourselves,« i.e. to identify ourselves with the process of translation of simultaneity into succession that is going on through us, while we perceive it as the time of our universe. So, the paradox that the time from which we see ourselves encompassed as living beings in the world has its origin within our lives can at least be traced back to the sociocultural origins of »social time,« i.e. the system of interruptions of our lifetime which initiates its symbolic transformation into the order of world-time. The metaphysical consequences to which I finally want to refer to are directly connected to this view of the origin of time in social practice. From our modern perspective, it seems strange that many ancient societies do not only claim but are even, in their self-understanding, based on the claim of being in a collective way responsible for the protection and the maintenance of the world. But the cultic consciousness sees collective existence as dependent on the constant renewal of the beginning of the »world« from which the present condition of the society and all its members have derived from. The reasons for that, as far as one can try to understand them from the perspective of cultural anthropology, are not intrinsically different from our own world views. These reasons are based on the deep by Lévi-Strauss marks exactly the alternative to the Kantian »schema« as the link between non-temporal (»logical«) forms of thinking and our temporal reality. 363 Cf. part 1 of my Introduction to this volume, fn 12.

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human consciousness of the fact that the capability which more than any other makes us human – that is to say, our thinking – is dependent on an essence of our »world« which can be understood and expressed by language. But if language is the ontological that is, in the sense of which I have been speaking about relativity of being [Daseinsrelativität]. as being the ontological alternative to transcendentalism – presupposition of the differentia specifica of our human existence which distinguishes us from all other beings, it then follows that language cannot be understood as a product of our natural condition. Hence, language cannot have had a purely human, social, or world-immanent origin. This, at least, I would call the essence of the cultic stage of the mind, which is still indirectly present in our consciousness of the responsibility for the preservation of the world's temporal existence. There must be an original content of language that cannot be translated but only protected and saved by means of sociocultural procedures – procedures which at the same time are dependent on our cultural identity and social stability. Again, Lévi-Strauss has pointed out that what I here call the cultic stage of our human mind is relevant for us not as a historical relic or a trace of »primitive« superstition but rather the expression of a universal human experience. It is an experience which we can even understand as the sociocultural version of that individual relation between the content and the object of consciousness for which I above took as an example the experience of being hungry. Using our language, we become aware of it as something that has always already been there when it comes to our con­ sciousness. »Language, an unreflecting totalization,« argues Lévi-Strauss in reference to Pascal's famous claim of the raisons du coeur, »is human reason which has its reasons and of which man knows nothing«, and any system that a human subject can ever find in it rests on the presupposition that »this subject is one who speaks: for the same light which reveals the nature of language to him also reveals to him that it was so when he did not know it, for he already made himself understood, and that it will remain so tomorrow without his being aware of it, since his discourse never was and never will be the result of a conscious totalization of linguistic laws«364. If this is a kind of sociocultural parallel to the experience of my hunger and to its metonymic relevance for the whole self-understanding of human beings, then we must expect here also some parallel to our certainty 364

Lévi-Strauss: The Savage Mind, 252.

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that hunger, although not being constituted by our consciousness of it, would yet not be hunger without this consciousness. And that is exactly the conviction which I mentioned as representative for the cultic consciousness, i.e. the conviction that as human beings we are responsible for keeping alive by our rituals and by our sacred discourse the message by which its creative principle remains embedded in the universe. Once there, language confronts us with its connection to a ground which remains beyond and yet encompasses our horizon as its own condition of existence. That is the universal dimension of cultic consciousness confronting us »with an unconscious teleology, which although historical, completely eludes human history«365. Therefore, I think it is not a matter of romanticism when we reflect on the connection between the message of cultic rituals in which human societies claim and attempt to solve the paradox of collective identity, i.e. to repeat the origin from which they are derived from and to repeat it as origin, as if it was present now and would be initiated for the first time, and our own self-understanding as civilized persons. When we try to give a scientific explanation of the world, to show the laws that are valid now as they have been from the beginning, and to turn these laws into the again and again renewed attempt to shape the course of our lives, then we are not absolutely remote from the fundamental condition of cultic consciousness. Repetition of the unrepeatable (the impossible) is the memory of a past that has never been present catching up with oneself. We are faced with precisely the problem that, in order to understand what is going on now, we have to go back, in some sense, to the origin of the universe. This problem is the problem of time, the paradox of the relation between our present and the past that is present in it, without having preceded it. And it is the problem which I tried here to characterize on the basis of Heidegger's analysis of existence and its connection to our view of the world. I would like to end with a final quotation that marks the problem on which we will have to work when we try to understand the origin of time in our scientific language: »Dasein ... is essentially in the truth ... ›There is‹ truth only in so far as Dasein is and so long as Dasein is. Entities are uncovered only when Dasein is; and only as long as Dasein is, are they disclosed. Newton's laws, the principle of contradiction, any truth whatever – these are true only as long as Dasein is. 365

Lévi-Strauss: The Savage Mind, 252.

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On the Social Origin of Time in Language Before there was any Dasein, there was no truth; nor will there be any after Dasein is no more. For in such a case truth as disclosedness, uncovering, and uncoveredness, cannot be. Before Newton's laws were discovered, they were not »true«; it does not follow that they were false, or even that they would become false if ontically no discoveredness were any longer possible [...] To say that before Newton his laws were neither true nor false, cannot signify that before him there were no such entities as have been uncovered and pointed out by those laws. Through Newton the laws became true; and with them, entities became accessible in themselves to Dasein. Once entities have been uncovered, they show themselves precisely as entities which beforehand already were. Such uncovering is the kind of Being which belongs to ›truth‹.«366

366

Heidegger: Being and Time, § 44c, 269.

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1. The philosophical importance of the »image-question« a) Philosophy and the »iconic turn« In our time the image is about to advance from a topic of philosophy to its principle. That means that we encounter the image essentially as an object which radically claims to open our eyes to what philosophy is and always has been about. We might also say: The image changes from a mere issue of philosophizing to the very element of philosophy. One might be tempted to see this as analogous to the claim made by language upon 20th century philosophy, hence that the »linguistic turn« promises to be succeeded by an »iconic turn« as the paradigm of philosophy. There is little to be said about the relationship between language and the image as far as this analogy is concerned,367 however, some remarks should be made about the importance which they have for our concept of philosophy itself. Before critically appraising the potential for analogy and equivocation inherent in any »fundamental« philosophical notion of the image, which is apparent from the multitude of its significations – »we talk about pictures, statues, optical illusions, maps, diagrams, dreams, hallucinations, spectacles, projections, poems, patterns, memories, and even ideas as images«368 –, even in striving for a possible differentiation we have to add limitation: Even if and maybe especially where philosophers use the concept of an image clearly and precisely and in the context of a fundamental self-representation of their efforts, this does not mean that the image In »Wiedergeburt«, Vol. I.23 I have followed the immense systematic importance which for the anthropological understanding of the cultic stage of our sociocultural development and for the transition from the preliteral to the literal society enjoys the relation between language and image. 368 William John Thomas Mitchell, »What is an Image?«, in New Literary History, Vol. 15, No. 3, (Spring 1984): 503–537, esp. 504. 367

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itself, in whichever form, has gained philosophical relevancy at all. We can see this in the philosophy of the early and the later Wittgenstein. The image could not occupy a place more central in any system of thought than it does in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Wittgenstein defines the proposition as a »picture of reality«369, reality as the sum-total of existing and non-existing states of affairs (2.06 – 2.063), and the picture in turn as that which reveals the range in which language can relate to the world (2.021 – 2.023). This range constitutes the scope within and because of which a proposition can clearly be determined to be true or false (4.023) – thereby it constitutes the basis for the whole activity of philosophy, which paradoxically consists only in delineating the boundary between significant propositions, which are either true or false, and senseless propositions (6.53). Nevertheless – the question as to what an image is and what makes an image an image is neither important in the philosophy of the Tractatus, nor in that of the late Wittgenstein; where we might expect it given Wittgenstein’s assertion in On Certainty, that there is inherent in language’s relation to the world a »picture of the world«, which I do not get »by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness.«370 The concept of the image may be appropriate to capture the deeply paradoxical relationship [Wirkzusammenhang] between language, speaker, and that »picture of the world« which as students we »swallow down«371 whenever we forget our questions and cleave to the secure way of life of our »community of ideas« (Denkgemeinde). However, even in the late Wittgenstein’s thought the pictorial aspect of this »picture of the world« is neither in principle nor thematically relevant. The same may be said about the use of the concept of a »world picture« [Weltbild]372 by another giant of 20th century philosophy: Heidegger is concerned with nothing less than the insight, that in modern, western mankind [Menschentum] Plato’s notion of the eîdos has come to fruition, such Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.01. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, § 94, 15e. 371 Wittgenstein, On Certainty, § 143, 21e. 372 A few remarks are in order: German does not distinguish between ›pic­ ture‹ and ›image‹ as English does, hence both Heidegger and Wittgenstein speak of ›Bild‹ in general and ›Weltbild‹ in particular. In other contexts that do not highlight the image-like qualities of the world the term ›worldview‹ is commonly used for ›Welt­ bild‹ in translation. In everyday language, the term »Weltbild« (in contrast to any ideo­ logical »Weltanschauung«) refers to the results of our scientific description of the world. 369

370

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that »the world becomes picture«373. Even in this momentous context Heidegger’s use of the concept of an image is the expression of a certain philosophical notion of history, rather than a tracing back of the historical relation to its particularly image-like qualities. As for Wittgenstein, so for Heidegger the »world picture«-concept plays a fundamental role in dazzling us with something that escaped notice by its very obviousness; however, both seem to be spellbound by the seeming composition of the concept of the »world picture« which directs our attention away from the real question concerning what an image is and what makes it an image. In some way philosophy seems to have been taught about itself by the insights which stem from the real »experts« in understanding the images, i.e. the artists. In this constellation we do not find a weakness or a retreat of »genuine« philosophizing; rather we can here find a radically hermeneutic notion of philosophy. We are confronted with a specifically post-modern idea of philosophical knowledge. Philosophy does not seek its insights where the modern paradigm principally aims to find them, namely, in the continued advances of an institution regarded as absolute: scientific research as constituted by the scientific method. Rather, to philosophy, insight is a work or a collection of works of human culture, which no individual no matter how vast their power of thought can in principle achieve. Insight [Erkenntnis] is not something still ahead of us, not a discovery that still has to be made by world-penetrating thinkers, rather it is already among us, in the works and wisdom collectively transmitted to us and incarnated in the cultural institutions of their time. Herein we feel the resonance of the fundamental pre-modern orientation, that the truth we seek is already in the world which merely has to be interpreted correctly; however works of insight [Erkenntniswerke] are no longer thought, as holy or other authoritative scriptures were, to bear a direct relation to their interpretation. The relationship between insight and interpretation has to be thought as essentially complementary. We have to become fully aware of the idiosyncrasies of this turn: The point is not to analyze a particular cultural fact philosophically so as to arrive at some insight, which may be found in that cultural object, rather the point is not to see it as an object at all, but as being itself a type of insight, namely as that type of insight upon which the object it illuminates Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, trans. William Lovitt, (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1977), 81.

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is daseinsrelativ. There is then a type of philosophical insight, which can – for example – only be gained from myth, not because myths are exemplars or vehicles of the things thus realized, but because they themselves are the insights. It is only in this sense that we may truly understand what is meant by the image gaining principal relevance to philosophy. If philosophy starts to consider languages and systems of writing, religions and myths, theories and practices as works of insight [Erkenntniswerke] to which philosophy itself stands in an irreversibly complementary relationship, hence the »message« of which philosophy aims to express but not to exhaust, then the »insight of images«374 becomes a genitive the precise meaning of which lies exactly in the ambiguity with which it contains the subjective and the objective aspect within itself.375 Here our inquiry concerning images gains philosophical relevance by asking what the images are saying to us, what would remain unsaid without them, not because they contain some sort of hidden code, rather because it would not exist without them. The »increase of being«376, which belongs to the essence of the image and prevents it from falling into a relation of identitas indiscernibilium with what they depict, is not a possible object of knowledge [Erkenntnis] but constitutes itself an increase in knowledge [Erkenntnis]; images are paradigms of epistemic [erkennend] being and as such principles and not only topics of philosophy.

b) The iconic aspect of epistemic being [erkennendes Sein] The question of the image offers us an immediate point of departure from the heretofore outlined sketch of a complementary, radically hermeneutical notion of philosophy in the topos of the iconic of which Max Imdahl has given a foundational account. Imdahl called the »highly complex structure of meaning«, in which the insight [Erkenntnis], which exists in and as the image and may not otherwise fully captured, and that part of it which may as knowledge [Erkenntnis] only be expressed in language, are coincidentally complementary, as the one »obvious to the iconic point of view«; with his Cf. Joscijka Gabriele Abels, Erkenntnis der Bilder. Die Perspektive in der Kunst der Renaissance (Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 1985). 375 For a definition of this »preserving genitive« refer to the Translator’s Foreword. 376 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 142. 374

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definition of the iconic Imdahl has decisively pointed us in the direction of a possible philosophical reconstruction of this structure, namely the structure of time as the crossing-over of successive and simultaneous being. »On the one hand we cannot doubt«, as he explains drawing on a 10th century miniature of the »Arrest of Jesus«377, »that the image draws on texts, which is to say that it relies on narration turning its necessary diachronicity in an evident scenic simultaneity. As an image depicting events of soteriological relevance, this Ottonic miniature cannot exist without the biblical text. However, what it presents in its highly complex scenic simultaneity, can, by the medium of language alone, neither be described as an empirical fact, nor be imagined. Nevertheless, postulating this claim remains an act of language – just like any interpretation of an image remains tied to successive descriptions of the image and even more so to successive argumentation. If – for example – in the miniature of the ›Arrest‹ Jesus appears as a figure of scenic configuration, then the individual scenes thus configured all relate to this central figure simultaneously and attributively. Equally, the language describing the image must describe all individual scenes one after the other. Language does not offer an equivalent to the figure of scenic configuration, which is equally central to the meaning of the image [Bildsinn].«378

The iconic aspect then, is that aspect through which the knowledge [Er­ kenntnis], which exists in an image and as which the image exists, leads us Author Unknown, created for Archbishop of Trier Egbert, »The Arrest of Jesus«, in Codex Egberti, 980–993 CE, ink on parchment, 21x27cm, City Library Trier, https://up load.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/CodexEgberti-Fol079v-ArrestOfJesus. jpg [Accessed : 2023–08–14]. 378 Max Imdahl, »lkonik«, in Was ist ein Bild? ed. by. G. Boehm (Munich: Fink, 2006), 300–324, esp. 310.[Translation by Thomas Schmidt]. 377

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to an insight which we could have not found without the image (here: the painting) but which at the same time could not be achieved by the image alone. The image presupposes language in order to make understandable for us the message which language alone could not have delivered to us. Which leads us to the conclusion: The image is what it is only in virtue of the relationship it has to us, i.e. to beings who perceive it in its being an image and who are able to express its message by means of language; it is daseinsrelativ upon us. The notion of »relativity of being« does not involve a commitment to transcendental philosophy or constructivism, it must be distinguished from any approach relying on a »theory of constitution«. However, the concept also avoids any commitment to a theory of consciousness which the notion of »intentionality« invokes. It just demarcates the ontological condition for the capacity to express and to find in pictures a kind of knowledge, which can only be expressed and found by beings who are able to read in the world in which they live more than only that what can be said by means of language. It is precisely the iconic aspect of the image according to which we may understand its relativity of being, that is its dependence on beings capable of perceiving it as an image and thus become conscious of it, as one of its constitutive factors. The iconic aspect then is, as a relation to con­ scious, epistemic being [erkennendes Sein], essential to the »recognition of images« [»Erkenntnis der Bilder«] in a certain ambivalent, ambiguous sense.379 First the iconic aspect means that we may only speak about an »image« where we are not dealing with a double of a double or a copy of its object. What distinguishes a natural reflection of light on water in which the sky is »mirrored« from an image, that is precisely what our notion of cognition [Begriff des Erkennens] implies, namely a three-place – as opposed to a two-place (x depicts y) – relation: y recognizes [erkennt] y as y. Only in a world in which images exist and are recognized as images may we talk, metaphorically, about the water’s surface or a photo as »depicting« [abbilden] what can be seen in it. The notion of an absolute mimesis, a »perfect« copy gets rid of the concept of an image and of itself. This is to say: The image becomes an image by an act of translation, which takes it up within the as-structure it constitutes. It allows a being to appear, and thereby singles it out of everything different so that this being becomes different from what it was before it was singled out. Therefore, it has 379

Cf. Translator’s Foreword for »preserving genitive«.

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to lay claim to our »ability to see something as ›there‹ and ›not there‹ at the same time«380 in order to be an image. Or, put in yet another way: Paintings in particular, but most certainly also images in general, possess a »logic of disappearance, which belongs to the unreality of all painting […] negation is the basis of all pictorial [bildlichen] appearances.«381 The »iconic con­ trast«382, i.e. the difference between what appears in an image and that as what it appears through the image, is thus at the core of the question con­ cerning the image as the paradigm of epistemic being [erkennendes Sein]. The iconic aspect is the aspect under which the real reason for the coinciding of symbolic representation and sign-like being [zeichenhaftes Sein] may be recognized neither as logical nor psychological, but as the sign-being of humanity [Zeichensein des Menschen] itself.

c) The iconic aspect as metaphysical aspect In entering the topos concerning the »sign-being of humanity itself« we are unavoidably drawn into a wider discourse which we may, however, not eschew if we are to rely on the notion of the iconic. The »iconic aspect« of the image cannot be grasped without grappling with that answer to the image-question [Bilderfrage], which is embodied by the icon and has its conceptional foundation in a specific religious ontology of the image. In the context of Christian metaphysics the possibility of Christian art itself is decided upon one central condition: There is indeed a perfect image [vollkommenes Bild383], meaning an image which coincides fully with what it depicts and which nevertheless is an image. This seemingly contradicts our premise that the iconic aspect of the image precludes its being a double of a real given; both notions may only be reconciled if the reality within which this perfect image constitutes itself is conceived of as strictly metaphysical, hence ontologically distinct from and other than the reality in which we and the perceptible image exist. It is obvious Mitchell, What is an image?, 510. Gottfried Boehm, »Die Bilderfrage,« Was ist ein Bild? (München, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1994), 340. [Translation by Thomas Schmidt]. 382 Gottfried Boehm, »Die Wiederkehr der Bilder,« Was ist ein Bild? (München, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1994), 11–38. 383 Cf. the original German expression in Christoph Schönborn, God’s Human Face. The Christ Icon, trans. Lothar Kraug (San Franciso: Ignatius Press, 1994). 380 381

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that the notion of the image has gained foundational importance in early development of trinitarian theology which is central to Christianity and which had to overcome this fundamentally paradoxical doctrine rationally, and in the delineation of opposing standpoints internal to and outside of Christianity. By entertaining the »paradox of a perfect image«, the Christian faith, according to Christoph Schönborn, posits »[the] paradox […] [of] an image that emanates from God himself and yet possesses everything found in God: God himself has a perfect image of himself.«384 Thereby the notion of the image itself is revolutionized: »Through the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity a new dimension of the meaning of image has opened up. […] The Church Fathers knew very well that the trinitarian concept of »image« lies beyond anything conceivable on the level of created beings.«385

The dimension thus opened is none other than that by which the Christian icon is defined: »We touch here on the ultimate root of all theology of the icon: God has a perfect icon of himself.«386

Out of the paradox thus at the center of this decision made in the history of faith and the history of art springs a corresponding tension in world history and its iconoclastic discharge. After all, the icon having found its theological justification in this way is nevertheless an image in this given world encompassing both the icon and us. Thereby, however, the paradox threatens to become a blatant contradiction and its presentation, namely the iconic image, to sublate itself thereby betraying the wholly other world it depicts. If we want to overcome even this further extension of the paradox of the iconic, we have to find a way to mediate between the topos of the perfect image which is coessential to the ur-image [Urbild] in its invisible infinity and the conditions for the depictions of visible things in the finite earthly world. What we have independently of its metaphysical dimension identified as essential for the iconic aspect of epistemic being [erkennenden Seins] now assumes a most distinct theological relevancy: The constitutive meaning of its boundary for the visible image and the relation of that boundary to a being perceiving the image as an image. This relationship also 384 385 386

Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 24. Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 24. Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 25.

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has constitutive meaning within the metaphysical dimension of the iconic aspect, albeit in a reversed order of ontological dependence: Hence, that the perfect image of the invisible ur-image may appear within the bounds of visibility has its reason not in the relativity of its being [Daseinsrelativität] upon beings able to perceive it, but the reverse, the relativity of those beings upon it. The icon is the way in which a being whose essence it is to reveal itself to itself from out of its original invisibility becomes visible to those beings of the visible world from whom it is ontologically distinct, but which share an essential aspect with the icon: The aspect that they themselves are self-aware beings [selbst erkennendes Sein]. It is precisely in the expression of the unification of the metaphysical and the iconic aspect that the theological justification of the earthly image consists, as can be seen beyond all metaphysics in the account given by Gregory of Nyssa: »The image is the same as the [ur-image], even though it differs from it«.387

Not »in itself«, seen from the perspective of eternity, yet »for us« under the in the highly contingent precondition of creation including epistemic beings [erkennender Seiender] it becomes ontologically possible and rationally intelligible, i.e. even apparent in its necessity that the image of the Son which is essential to the Father can be depicted in signs, to distinguish the Father from the Son. The foundational concept in trinitarian theology for this distinction in the nature of the divine which is neither essential, nor qualitative or hierarchical, but rather purely numeric, is the concept of the person. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed: three persons, one nature, erects one of the pillars upon which the bridge spanning the way for the translation of the eternal into the earthly icon rests. The substance of the other pillar is the very same and yet complementary: the double nature of the person Jesus Christ. While he is not, in his nature, distinct from the Father, his human nature brings with it that he is distinct from all humans as the person he is, just like all individuals are distinct from one another: »the incarnate Person of the Son does not wear his humanity like some outward, extraneous garment under which he would hide; but rather, all that makes it

387

Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 37.

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The Philosophical Relevance of »Images« possible to identify Christ as this very specific and unmistakable human being, is a ›constitutive element‹ of the incarnate Person of the Son.«388

This is, however, the decisive legitimation of the Christian icon and its artistic claim to truth. In depicting Christ as one unique human being and by doing so as artistic truth, which beyond all metaphysical dimensions belongs to the image, it makes the invisible God visible in His specifically earthly, iconic way. »the specific properties of Christ’s humanity, which distinguish him from all other men, denote the hypostasis of the Logos himself. Conversely, this also means that these same properties, which the visual arts try to represent, constitute the human properties of the Divine Person.«389

As before maintaining the difference between symbolism and metonymy is the formal condition and the notion of humanities sign-like Being [zeichenhaftes Sein] the substantive condition for the possibility of a rational justification of the metaphysical aspect of the icon: In worshipping holy images it is not the symbols that are praised, but that which truly deserves praise and which is represented by them; rather the icon condenses sign-like Being [zeichenhaftes Sein] in an act of perception of itself which takes the part for the whole and thereby comes to perceive the invisible in relation to which it is a sign outside of itself. »The« question concerning images [Bilderfrage] now itself confronts us with the problem whether the metaphysical aspect of the iconic as the making-visible of the invisible concerns the whole topos of the image, or if we are dealing merely with a particular and contingent derivation of the question which is only meaningful philosophically under certain religious and theological conditions.

2. The problem of perspective a) Reversing the gaze [Blickrichtung] There may be more subtle answers to this conundrum in 20th century philosophy of art, but none more resolute than that of Pavel Florensky: 388 389

Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 95. Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 96.

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For him, the iconic aspect is the constitutive aspect of the painted image, even of the work of art as such. Put differently: The icon is the exemplary image. The icon may stake a specifically religious claim, a claim supported by theological aims; however, that this claim expresses itself in the icon, i.e. in the artwork, has nothing to do with religion, but with the specific claim art makes open its own universal truth. »For the task of painting is not to duplicate reality, but to give the most profound penetration of its architectonics, of its material, of its meaning. And the penetration of this meaning, of this stuff of reality, its architectonics, is offered to the artist's contemplative eye in living contact with reality, by growing accustomed to and empathising with reality, whereas theatre decoration wants as much as possible to replace reality with its outward appearance.«390

The psycho-intuitionist inflection of this approach has its weak points much like the »vitalist« variant proffered elsewhere: »A living organism is integral, and everything in it is constituted by the energy of aliveness […] Just so, a work of art is an organism: if something in it is accidental, then that accident bears witness to the fact that the art work is not wholly incarnated […] The concrete revelation of metaphysical essence, in the icon, be an entirely visual revelation, and the icon’s appearance (for an icon is nothing but its appearing) must – because all its details constitute a unified whole – be visual; for if something in an icon were either purely abstract or merely decoratie, then it would unmake the icon’s appearance as an integrated unity; and then the icon would not be an icon.«391

Yet, however we may feel about how Florensky’s thesis is presented in its substance it is eminently meaningful for our question concerning the relation between the iconic and the metaphysical aspect of the image; since it develops an implication which is in fact closely linked to our notion of the iconic. The thesis is, that the image enters a metaphysical dimension principally – and thereby independently of any religious or theological pre­ conditions – through the »logic of contrast«, which determines the iconic aspect as such. In other words this means, that which makes the image an image, i.e. whereby it can be distinguished from other being, consists in a Pavel Florensky, Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art, trans. Wendy Salmond (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), 209. 391 Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev (New York: St Vladimir´s Seminary Press, 1994), 115. 390

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structure, which by necessity links the visible to the invisible, or put more broadly, the graspable [Fassbares] to the ungraspable [Unfassbarem], and does so, so completely, that any interruption of this connection would not only mean that the image was no longer an image, but would immediately reverse it into a work of deception and falsehood. If we conceive of this negation as the »foundation for all pictoral appearance«392, which guards the image against being a mere double and falling into the relationship of a identitas indiscernibilium to what is depicted, then we have to conclude that this negation does not constitute the boundary, but the whole of the image, that it is not the material border of the picture [Bild], but the boundary of imagehood [Bildlichkeit], this side of which the whole of the image and its production [Verfertigung] have to remain in order to avoid falsehood and deception. Considered in this light the image becomes a metaphysical entity sine qua non [Metaphysicum schlechthin] – at least if our notion of metaphysics has at its center something ungraspable, unfathomable [Unfassbares], which can only appear to us anti-intentionally along the boundary between deception and graspability [Fassbarkeit]: As the foun­ dation of the most active not-desiring but being-desired and the clearest not-seeing but being-seen. According to Florensky perspective in the whole modern art was developed as an antithesis to this metaphysical aspect, which distinguishes the image from the mirror and truly makes it an image. It is not merely in the »discovery« of perspective, but the boundless emphasis upon perspec­ tive and the one-sided limitation of the possibilities in which the iconic contrast may be depicted to the central perspective according to the laws of Euclidean geometry, that the path which began with Giotto, the »father of modern landscape«393, and which Alberti developed into a science and which finally found its artistic completion in Michelangelo consists in. This same development has instilled in us a »faith in, and reverence for, perspective«394 which ultimately has put our way of seeing itself through an epoch-making re-education.395 However, this principle of perspective is none other than using the means of the image towards the end of creating a Florensky, Iconostasis, 115. Florensky, Beyond Vision, 221. 394 Florensky, Beyond Vision, 228. 395 Cf. Florensky, Beyond Vision, 250: »It has taken more than five hundred years of social training to accustom the eye and the hand to perspective. But without deliberate schooling 392

393

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deception as to its essence. Perspective is used to achieve what in reality any image has to achieve in order to be an image, namely the iconic contrast, meaning »a correspondence between the points on the surfaces of things and the points on the canvas«396; yet the real feat, which has been demanded of perspective in the absolute sense given to it by modern, western art, is the feat of using perspective to disguise the fact that perspective is nothing other than »one of the countless methods possible for establishing the aforesaid correspon­ dence, but it is a method that is extremely narrow, extremely limited, hampered by a host of supplementary conditions that define its potential for application and the limits to which it can be applied.«397

And why all that? To close of the metaphysical dimension of the iconic aspect by limiting its ability to open our eyes to the invisible which appears in the visible to the one invisible which is required next to the visible within the visible world in order for the image to be an image at all, namely the gaze of a viewer. There is no other principle according to which a believer in perspective may organize an image and to which the viewer who is converted or strengthened in their faith has to acquiesce, than the feat of mirroring the gaze, which no longer aims to penetrate the visible, but to merely be its mirror. It is as a consequence of the chosen gaze, that every individual element in such an image enters into a context of references. This means: The artfulness of an image evincing and creating this faith in perspective consists in the promise to only reveal the invisible gaze of the viewer in the visible image, while the condition that allows it to keep this promise in turn consists in the viewers artful gaze which allows them to regard the visible as a mirror. Both: the artfulness of the image and the artfulness of the viewer stand in a relationship of »mutual engendering«, and the ontological peculiarity of this connection has again an essentially temporal aspect. The gaze, which according to Florensky organizes an image evincing faith in perspective is the unmoved gaze of an anatomical moment in which the eye »looks motionlessly and dispassionately, the equivalent

neither the eye nor the hand of a child, or of an adult for that matter, will submit to this training and reckon with the laws of perspectival unity.« (my emphasis) 396 Florensky, Beyond Vision, 261. 397 Florensky, Beyond Vision, 261.

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of an optical lens«398 adjusted to a world which relative to this moment is totally motionless: »In a world subject to a perspectival depiction there can be neither history, nor growth, nor dimensions, nor movements, nor biography, nor development of dramatic actions, nor the play of emotions – nor should there be. Otherwise the perspectival oneness of the picture disintegrates yet again. It is a world that is dead, or gripped in eternal sleep, invariably one and the same, a picture frozen in its ice-bound immobility.«399

And the scenery thus beheld, which relates to its point of origin as if it were the eye of a two-dimensional solipsist cyclops, is again the reflexive gaze of a machine and vice versa: »in this conception the viewing eye is not the organ of a living creature, who lives and labours in the world, but the glass lens of the camera obscura.«400

With modern painting’s faith in perspective and under the mental power [geistige Macht] it exerts over us the image becomes, according to Floran­ sky, a perversion of itself, an inversion of the icon’s essential power to open our view for the invisible that merely allows us to see our own gaze mirrored. In this way, the faith in perspective obscures the condition we ourselves have to meet in relation to ourselves for the sake of this conversion, through the seeming identity between the image and what it depicts. In light of such a general critique of this »faith in perspective« we have to ask ourselves if the thesis that the iconic aspect is exemplary of the picture as such does not lead us to the conceptual identification of icon and image. Viewed as such there could then be no mediation between a »double of reality«, whatever that is, and an image, but only an all or nothing, a deceptive fullness or a true nothingness. In making and understanding images we would only have the same two alternatives the antithesis seems to leave us and which Jean-Luc Marion has called icon and idol and which is very similar to the complete disjunction between the true appearance of the invisible and the deceptive appearance of the visible which Florensky posits. Marion says as much in a marvelous clear and circumspect fragment: What is said in icon-theology of Christ and of God 398 399 400

Florensky, Beyond Vision, 263. Florensky, Beyond Vision, 263. Florensky, Beyond Vision, 263.

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2. The problem of perspective »must be understood for every icon (unless this should be the inverse, as we will see) – icon not of the visible, but indeed of the invisible. Hence this implies that, even presented by the icon, the invisible always remains invisible; it is not invisible because it is omitted by the aim (invisible, but because it is a matter of rendering visible this invisible as such-the unenvisageable. That the invisible should remain invisible or that it should become visible amounts to the same thing, namely, to the idol, whose precise function consists in dividing the invisible into one part that is reduced to the visible and one part that is obfuscated as invisible. The icon, on the contrary, attempts to render visible the invisible as such, hence to allow that the visible not cease to refer to an other than itself, without, however, that other ever being reproduced in the visible. Thus the icon shows, strictly speaking, nothing, not even in the mode of the productive Einbildung.«401

Even in the broader context, which is decisive to justify such a general identification between icon and image, we do find an overlap between Marion’s and Florensky’s analysis. If the idol is an image-like deception, and yet the image is constituted by showing nothing, then idolatry may not be traced back to the image, nor to its maker or its process of production. Rather, idolatry consists in the negation of the truth of the image, namely that it negates the visible, and this negation of negation, if the image is otherwise preserved as image, if it aims at deception and not at the image’s disappearance, must really take place outside of the image. It has to have its roots in that part of the epistemic being to whom an image of the invisible owes the possibility of appearing as something visible, namely the gaze. »That which characterizes the idol stems from the gaze. It dazzles with visibility only inasmuch as the gaze looks on it with consideration. It draws the gaze only inasmuch as the gaze has drawn it whole into the gazeable and there exposes and exhausts it. The gaze alone makes the idol, as the ultimate function of the gazeable.«402

The idol remains an image insofar and as long as it closes off the meta­ physical dimension of the iconic aspect by replacing the gazeable proper to epistemic being [erkennendem Sein], namely the reality which directs its gaze beyond itself – the depiction of which would make it either a double [Double] or a true image – with the gaze of epistemic being itself. Jean-Luc Marion, »The Idol and the Icon«, in God without Being trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 17–18. 402 Marion, The Idol and the Icon, 10.

401

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The idol can only remain an image for so long as it utilizes the »logic of disappearance« proper to all – even deceptive – images. This is to say: In the glow of the visible appears now not the invisible, as the gazeable, rather within the gazeable appears the gaze itself mirrored: »As an obstacle to a transmitter sends back waves and indicates the transmitter's location in relation to that obstacle, the idol returns the gaze to itself, indicating to it how many beings, before the idol, it has transpierced, thus also at what level is situated that which for its aim stands as first visible above all. The idol thus acts as a mirror, not as a portrait: a mirror that reflects the gazes image, or more exactly, the image of its aim and of the scope of that aim.«403

Marion certainly does not identify idolatry with faith in perspective. Floren­ sky on the other hand develops a more radical version of the same thought, which comes close to a dialectical bifurcation that accepts as the true – unmirrored – gaze only that which emanates from the divine countenance in the image. The paradigmatic icon, which is the only icon in the fullest sense, that according to Florensky evokes in the mind of the viewer a spiritual [geistig] vision, in which »not even the smallest space is opened by the icon for subjectivity«404 remains, stands for what is common to all icons as artworks, not an ideal example, but as metonymic condensation of their innermost reality such that »they fundamentally maintain the iconographic form of icons of the highest order«405, though »all icons contain in themselves this possibility for spiritual revelation, even if in a more or less permeable shell«406. The only alternative to the invisible, deceptive mirror from which the image can receive its meaning may then not be found in its directing the viewers gaze at what it depicts, but in bringing reality to the gaze of the depicted upon the viewer. Metaphorically speaking: in order not to be a mirror the image must not even be a window, but has to become a door: »In their prime […] the icons often were not only windows, through which the persons depicted in them could be seen, but doors, through which these

403 404 405 406

Marion, The Idol and the Icon, 12. Florensky, Iconostasis, 58. Florensky, Iconostasis, 58. Florensky, Iconostasis, 58.

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2. The problem of perspective personages could enter sensible reality. It is out of icons that the saints would descend most often when appearing to the faithful.«407

It is clear, that at this point Florensky’s interpretation may no longer claim any purely philosophical necessity separable from its religious precondi­ tions; however the question still relevant to us must be where the threshold is to be found at which Florensky’s account has lost its purely philosophical dimension. This question concerns at its core what is in danger of, again metaphorically speaking, being lost between »mirror« and »door« in Flo­ rensky’s account: the »window«, through which the image aims at raising our gaze from the visible to the invisible.

b) The iconic perspective »The inevitable point of departure«408 of an uncountable number of philo­ sophical approaches to the image-question consist in reflecting upon the paradigmatic significance of the image’s window-like nature, namely its propensity to serve as an »imaginary surface for projection, which remains itself invisible, grasping reality in being seen-through«409, in modern painting and also for the mathematical, rational paradigm of science which has decisively influenced it. The art of perspective is undoubtedly at the heart of this conception of the image, however the issue as to how the visible, the gaze, and the invisible are related can hardly be exhausted by this observation alone, it is rather the case that everything begins with this observation. At first the organization of pictorial space in accordance with the window as an epistemic schema, such that the vanishing point is connected to the eye of the viewer as the origin of the gaze via a linear perspective, does not at all have to be interpreted as a secret or deceptive projection of »our« gaze into what is seen, but rather as the oppo­ site. The distinction between the metric, homogenous, »scientific« space of Euclidean Geometry and the heterogenous, directed, and qualitative organization of our visual and tactile space [Gesichts- und Tastraumes] is commonplace in every phenomenological treatment of the issue, the same is true for any art theoretical analysis of linear perspective pictorial 407 408 409

Florensky, Iconostasis, 58. Cf. Boehm, Die Wiederkehr der Bilder. [Translation: Thomas Schmidt]. Boehm, Die Wiederkehr der Bilder.

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spaces: It is from the »structure of psychophysiological space«, according to Panofsky in his treatise on »Perspective as Symbolic Form«, »[f]or it is not only the effect of perspectival construction, but indeed its intended purpose, to realize in the representation of space precisely that homogeneity and boundlessness foreign to the directed experience of that space. In a sense, perspective transforms psychophysiological space into mathematical space.«410

The emphasis upon this difference has nothing to do with phenomenolog­ ical prejudice in the analysis of artworks; we find it equally in the »ana­ lytic« tradition in an appeal to pure empiricism, for example in Goodman’s fundamental rejection of Ernst Gombrich’s identification of perspective and illusion: »Experiment has shown that the eye cannot see normally without moving relative to what it sees; apparently, scanning is necessary for normal vision. The fixed eye is almost as blind as the innocent one.«411

The specific achievement especially of images, which attempts to direct the gaze through the window of our access to the world upon a real scene which presents itself, is misjudged, if it is taken »as an idiosyncratic physical process like mirroring, and is recognized as a symbolic relationship that is relative and variable.«412

It is precisely therefore, that the »incalculable plentitude of possibili­ ties«413, which are represented in the history of images, happens through the spectrum, within which the translation of our gaze into the depth of the world onto the picture plain, by means of perspective. If the »life« of images is anywhere to be found it has to be within the range of movement covered by this spectrum, such that the schematism of perspective constructed by mathematical science is not a regulative ideal, but a negative transparency before which the actual art of representation in the image manifests. Historically we also find a peculiar tension between a subjective obsession with the »sweet perspective« and the objective cultural imprint, which is 410 Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher S. Wood, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), 30–31. 411 Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1972), 12–13. 412 Goodman, Languages of Art, 43. 413 Boehm, Die Bilderfrage. [Translation byThomas Schmidt].

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expressed in the admittance of prospettiva as one of the »artes liberales« in the quadrivium on the one hand, and the almost universal stream of artistic and art-theoretic breaking through and overcoming of the ideal framework it provides. When we find that Masaccio’s »Trinity Fresco« in Santa Maria Novella as the first image understanding itself as a plane intersecting the pyramid of the gaze, only organizes visual space according to perspective, such that the Divine Person, God the Father and Christ on the Cross, in contrast may appear unforeshortened as if emerging from the image gain an epoch-making presence, which can only exist in contrast to central perspective, then we can no longer construe a prior lack of perspective, but rather the epitome of a perspectival dialectic and what we owe to it, namely, the iconic contrast which appears in overcoming perspective and is therefore at the heart of its further development. The history of perspective is necessarily, and not merely contingently, »neither a via trumphalis nor a one-way street«414, but a complex occurrence where perspective is intersected by constructs overcoming it, and this occurrence is not only within the images themselves. It is rather the case that what dialectically happens within the images denotes the metonymic condensation of whole socio-historical processes in which a cultural Zeitgestalt – Heidegger would say: a mankind [Menschentum] – has been transported into the collectively constituted way of seeing. In contrast to the collective way of seeing, those working on its transfiguration have attempted and succeeded in directing the gaze at something which can only exist antithetically to a once constituted psycho-epistemological schema as that which escapes it – and specifically escapes this schema and is thus relative to it – and may only appear as such. The »cognition [Erkenntnis] of images« has found a way of translating the invisible within the visible -which according to Marion marks the truly iconic moment of the image and which Florensky attempted at least in principle to reduce to the gaze from the divine countenance – through the play between perspectival rules and the »systematic alien­ ation«415 of proportions, the programmatic elevation of non-perspectival elements and conscious violation of the continuity demanded by theory. The one-sidedness of Florensky’s approach lies, simply put, in its ahistoricity: The dialectic between the gaze through the visible upon the invisible and the invisible presence of the gaze within the visible does 414 415

Emil Maurer, ›Süße Perspektive‹, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 4, 2002. Boehm, Die Bilderfrage. [Translation by Thomas Schmidt].

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not force us into a disjunctive bifurcation between life-giving creation and the technological, instantaneous suffocation of the transition between the visible and the invisible, it is rather expression of the historico-social aspect of temporality, in which the gaze that sees the invisible through the image always also reflects our habits of seeing as the background which we necessarily bring to the image so that the »in itself« invisible may appear in the way specific to it, namely as a specific »for us«, this is to say that which is absent from our access to the world may appear in the image. In the words of Merleau-Ponty it is not the contradiction between, but the crossing over of transcendence and immanence, through which perspective opens the transition between both to us as perspectivally cognizant [erkennend], embodied, temporal Beings [Sein]: For if we reflect on this notion of perspective, […] we see that the kind of evidence proper to the perceived, the appearance of »something,« requires both this presence and this absence.416

The question which thus poses itself when we pursue the philosophical inquiry concerning the image, and the meaning of the iconic aspect for what it means to be an image at all, can be restated as the question concerning what one might call the »iconic perspective«. If the image depends for its being [daseinsrelativ] not upon the being perceiving it per se, but upon the bodily and historically constituted Zeitgestalt imprinted upon its perception, then »faith in perspective« and »reverence for perspective« can be thought concurrently both in their absolute claim to truth, as well as in their perspectivity and limitedness which must remain hidden from themselves. The truth which we seek to make visible in the image is dialectically connected with the deception which makes invisible for us the limits of our place in time [»Zeitort«] which directs our perspective on it, the truth. There is no essential contradiction between the iconic aspect of an image and the conception of the ideally complete mathematico-perspectival organization of visual space, but a paradox connection: the iconic aspect makes perspective into a schema, which is ultimately geared towards overcoming the iconic aspect. We may refer to this connection as the »iconic perspective«, which – no matter its inventors intentions or whether its adherents see it as a source of inspiration or conflict – may be called 416 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Primacy of Perception, trans. James E. Edie (Evanston: North­ western University Press, 1964), 16.

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the »cognition [Erkenntnis] of images«, but can never be fully explicated. This logic of translation allows the expression of the inexplicable; it is the paradoxical logic of a set of rules, which is constituted such that the works that spring from it depend on the breaking of its rules. The »highly complex sensestructure« by which Imdahl defined the iconic aspect therefore has found its very own essentially indirect »symbolic form« in modern perspective, an instruction for its own overcoming in which the sense of the images constitutes itself as an exception to the rule. The ruleset’s claim to abso­ luteness itself could then be understood as a necessary moment in sensemaking, which consists in its overcoming, thereby we arrive at a philo­ sophically highly relevant parallel between the being of images and the being of language – at least if we follow Wittgenstein’s fundamental idea, that that which makes language a language cannot be said in language, but to which we may only linguistically comport ourselves in overcoming the attempt to express it in language.

c) The iconic as metaphysical perspective With the dialectic which allows us now to hear the »art of deception« as a genitive with two readings417 we unexpectedly enter into the perhaps innermost region opened up by the iconic perspective, namely theatre. It will again prove instructive to consider Florenksy’s radical criticism of perspective. Florensky argues that from a historical standpoint it is misleading to label perspective as the great »discovery« of the modern age, since it had been well known for a long time and in many cultures, especially in Ancient Greece. It even »originated« there in an artistic sense, yet not in the »pure« arts, but in the art of theatrical scenery. Apart from the theatre, and as long as art was meant to show truth, it was ignored. Only much later in the Hellenic period was perspective employed in order to »deceive the viewer, who as a consequence was assumed to be more or less immobile«418, as for example in the murals of Pompeii. Scenery, then, which aims to deceive, and not the image, which aims at truth, lies at the historical and ontological origin of perspective. Yet, it is not theatre itself, but a certain significance which it has for the place of humans in the world, justifies the power perspective historically has had over us: 417 418

Cf. Translator’s Foreword. Florensky, Beyond Vision, 211.

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The Philosophical Relevance of »Images« »Perspective is rooted in the theatre not simply because historically and techni­ cally perspective was first used in the theatre, but also by virtue of a deeper motivation: the theatricality of a perspectival depiction of the world. For in this consists that facile experience of the world, devoid of a feeling for reality and a sense of responsibility, that sees life as just a spectacle, and in no sense a challenge.«419

As correct as Florensky’s historical observation may be, the conclusion which he draws here is certainly refuted by the universal radiance which the topos of »Theatrum mundi«, the image of world theatre, has won within as well as outside of the ways of our western culture.420 If there is any philosophy, the very foundation of which may be characterized as a meta­ physics of perspective and as a theory of the coincidence of the conditions of semblance and being, it must be that of Leibniz.421 A »Theatrum naturae et artis, to receive living impressions and knowledge of all things«422 is part of the program Leibniz developed at the court in Mainz when he was 22 years old for the German Academy of the Sciences and the conceptual foundation of which he continued to change and refine over some forty-five years. This conceptual foundation is not some minor didactical point or a piece of »media pedagogy«, but leads right into the center of Leibniz’s metaphysics of perspectivity as it is illustrated in the »Monadology« by the classic image of the infinitely mirrored town: »And as the same town, looked at from various sides, appears quite different and becomes as it were numerous in aspects [perspectivement]; even so, as a result of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were so many different universes, which, nevertheless are nothing but aspects [perspectives] of a single universe, according to the special point of view of each Monad.«423

Florensky, Beyond Vision, 211–212. Cf. Florensky, Beyond Vision, 212. Cf. also: Vgl. dazu Martin Euringer: Zuschauer des Welttheaters. Lebensrolle, Theatermetapher und gelingendes Selbst in der frühen Neuzeit, Darmstadt 2000. 421 Cf. Horst Bredekamp, »Leibniz´s Theater of Nature and Art and the Idea of an Universal Picture Atlas«, in The Artificial and the Natural: An Evolving Polarity, ed. by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and William R. Newman (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2007). 422 Samuel Quiccheberg (1565), Theatrum amplissimum. Cited in: Bredekamp, Leibniz´s Theater of Nature, 214. 423 G. W. Leibniz, The monadology and other philosophical writings, (trans. Robert Latta, 1898), § 57. 419

420

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In the same place Leibniz refers us to § 147 of the »Theodicy« and there we see that what is here meant by the specific, monadic »point of view« is in essence nothing else than the iconic aspect in its metaphysical form, since »It is that God, in giving him intelligence, has presented him with an image of the Divinity […] He enters there only in a secret way, for he supplies being, force, life, reason, without showing himself.«424

Relative to the primordial condition of the existence of a created world, the relationship between the divine image [Urbild] and its created likenesses [Abbild] thus constitutes connection, where the conditions of being and semblance coincide. If there is to be a universe composed of a finite number of factors, then every one of these factors must find the reason for its existence, which is to say the reason for its belonging to all co-existing factors, in the organization, in which other factors come to appear to it as indispensable for their harmonious interplay, which means that it is to it a necessarily integrated center. To any factor the universe must appear as that which contains this factor »in itself« only as one among all, equally necessary factors »for it«, thereby, as a perspectival being, through its perspective it perceives exactly wherein this perspective coincides with all other perspectives of its created factors and thereby also with the reason of why they would join together as a real, created world. When we talk about »necessity« here it is neither causal, since the decision to create under the conditions Leibniz’s concept of metaphysics presupposes can, in principle, not be derived from the divine intellect, nor can it be logical necessity, rather it is creative [schöpferische] necessity, the kind of necessity created alongside an artwork with which it brings the reason for the existence of the factors necessary for its existence to coincide with the reason for its being as a whole. Thus, the view of the whole, with which the created being puts itself at the center of the surrounding universe, remains a perspectival illusion, which nevertheless being a perspectival illusion has its justification, insofar as it puts in front of the finite perspectival being, though in an unclear fashion requiring reflection, what cannot be replaced by any reflection, namely the God’s perspective which transcends all finite perspectives and justifies it in its connections. There is then a shared viewpoint liable to explication by way of reflection, and yet not reducible to it, of illusion and 424

G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), § 147d.

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vision: the intuition which places the finite being in the infinite gaze. Leibniz has elaborated upon this viewpoint [Kreuzungsgesichtspunkt] in which the divine and the finite perspective cross-over and metonymically interlace each other, as a specifically temporal one in the preface of the Nouveaux Essais, which is of particular importance to his whole system, namely when he characterizes those petites perceptions, which connect us to the rest of the universe, »those images of sensible qualities, vivid in the aggregate but confused as to the parts; those impressions which are made on us by the bodies around us and which involve the infinite; that connection that each being has with all the rest of the universe. It can even be said that by virtue of these minute perceptions the present is big with the future and burdened with the past, that all things harmonize […] and that eyes as piercing as God's could read in the lowliest substance the universe's whole sequence of events […]«425

The final connection, however, which allows the space of the theatre to present the condensing of the coming closer of the finite and infinite perspectives, is temporal: The present which is pregnant with the future426 constitutes the reality, in accordance with which all the connected existence of the created world appears to the gaze of the creator as eternal, hence non-temporal, and static and at the same time to His created image [Abbild] in diachronically-symbolic conformity. In this perspective, the Leibnizian conception of a theatrum naturae et artis might be seen as a program of the possible ontological reconciliation between the eternal and the temporal image of the world we live in.

3. The question concerning the alternative Finally, we can only try to indicate the direction in which a non-metaphys­ ical alternative to the lesson which philosophy has taken from the artistic answer to the »image-question« could be found.427 We take as our only example here the painter to whose work has been ascribed the bringing G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 1996), 55. 426 Cf. Leibniz, New Essays, 11. 427 Now the whole chapter III of my »Wiedergeburt«, Vol. I, is dedicated to the achieve­ ment of this endeavor. 425

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about of »the end of the scientific perspective«428: Paul Cézanne. Where do we find in his work the factor which neither the iconic nor any perspective at all can catch up with? Merleau-Ponty has pointed us towards this factor which is the real connecting link between the painter’s and our lives. »The important thing is«, so he puts it in »The Prose of the World«, »that, even when it is there, perspective should be present only the way the rules of grammar are present in a style […] that, in the one case as in the other, the universality of the painting is never the result of the numerical relationships which may obtain in it. The communication between the painter and us is not founded upon a prosaic objectivity, and the constellation of signs always guides us toward a signification that was nowhere prior to itself.«429

The factor which is at stake here is of an essentially temporal nature, and it is strong enough to transcend and exceed any sociocultural paradigm, be it Heidegger’s »mankind« or whatever. »If a work is successful, it has the strange power of being self-teaching. The reader or spectator, by following the clues of the book or painting, by establishing the concurring points of internal evidence and being brought up short when straying too far to the left or right, guided by the confused clarity of style, will in the end find what was intended to be communicated. The painter can do no more than construct an image; he must wait for this image to come to life for other people. When it does, the work of art will have united these separate lives; it will no longer exist in only one of them like a stubborn dream or a persistent delirium, nor will it exist only in space as a colored piece of canvas. It will dwell undivided in several minds, with a claim on every possible mind like a perennial acquisition.«430

If the »window-like« quality of an image, which the iconic perspective brings to perfection, consists in the translation from succession to simul­ taneity which Leibniz already understood as the rule and principle of its scientific foundation, then a non-metaphysical alternative to what the iconic perspective can teach us will also be an alternative to this bifurcation and its absolutization; an alternative to the boundary between succession Cf. Fritz Novotny, Cézanne und das Ende der wissenschaftlichen Perspektive, (Wien: Schroll, 1938). 429 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Prose of the World, trans. John O´Neill (Evanston: North­ western University Press, 1973), 152. 430 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non Sense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1992), 11. 428

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and simultaneity which in virtue of this act of translation seems inviolable. We will therefore see the »end of scientific perspective« made visible not least, where on the one hand it does play its role in translating flowing [ablaufend] time into observable [überblickbar] time, and where on the other hand this act of translation is itself integrated into the image as an essential factor, so that this act itself becomes the metonymic condensation of a succession into which our gaze, conditioned for simultaneity, is drawn. From this vantage we can see how Cézanne manages in his works to »maintain the framework of linear perspective«, which »to him was an elementary condition for the appearance of natural space itself«, and at the same time involved in »pushing back the subjective«, »in a way and to a degree unprecedented in the history of occidental painting.«431 Given this analysis we might construe Cézanne’s works as the attempt to systematically deconstruct the opposition between visible and invisible and thus sublate the bifurcation into the visible and the invisible in order to show the transition between both und by doing so to situate it in the center of reality. This transition and this center would then be found in time, in which passing [ablaufende] and observable [überblickbare] time transit one into the other and which is prior to any opposition between »objec­ tive« and »subjective« reality. The countermovement to »scientific« per­ spective would then be in virtue of which the iconic perspective allows us to oversee the translation of passing time into observable time, namely as the time which is constitutive for its history to be condensed in the work of the image: the time of its production [Verfertigtwerdens]. With the concealment of the time of production disappears the relation in which the time of production itself, and not its result and endpoint, stands to epistemic being [erkennendem Sein] as such. The time of production of the image is not identical to the duration of some happening in passing time, rather it is itself the occurrence of a condensation of a life that stands behind it and mirrors the occurrence in an act of self-completion. What constitutes the unassailable reverse side of the image which is conditioned towards the total simultaneity of the successive, is the time not of the artist’s life as an outstanding individual, but precisely that in this life which is exemplary for epistemic being [erkennendes Sein] and that wherein this epistemic being is in turn exemplary for reality itself. Novotny, Cézanne und das Ende der wissenschaftlichen Perspektive, 99. [Translation by Thomas Schmidt].

431

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What makes the artistic picture, the painting, a possible form of philo­ sophical insight? What allows a work of art to seek and to claim to have reached what we in our philosophical language call truth? There have been many attempts to answer this question. At least in the occidental tradition, the most important and most systematic approach to it consisted in the reconstruction of painting as a form of science. The epoch in which this epistemological project was developed in its widest sense was certainly the Renaissance, when the prospettiva, the mathematically based technique of using the central perspective as the key to the picture’s presentation of its object, was given the status as one of the artes liberales. Leonardo da Vinci summarized the whole project somewhat by his famous slogan that the mirror should become and be »the master of the painters.«432 Hereby the common denominator of truth and picture is characterized as representation. The idea is clear, but is it true? How can it be proved? I think that this is exactly the question that gives Diego Velázquez’s famous painting Las Meninas its so obvious and yet so mysterious philosophical importance. In this picture,433 Velázquez claimed that it is not philosophical deliberation but the art of painting: in fact, it is a picture itself that can and must answer that question. Las Meninas is the artistic answer to the question of whether the truth of painting is constituted by representation. This is the thesis in which I would agree with Michel Foucault’s famous interpretation of Las Meninas in the first chapter of Les mots et les choses.434 I think, however, that Foucault is wrong concerning not the question but the answer that we find given to it in the picture. And the decisive aspect that marks the error of Foucault’s idea is a temporal one; it is what we can call exactly the trace of time in this picture. Let me make this point a little bit more concrete before we enter into the interpretation itself. Foucault does not, of course, want to defend the idea of the mirror as the painters’ master as such; he wants to historicize it, that

Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings by Leonardo da Vinci with a Selection of Documents Relatings to His Career, ed. and trans. Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker (Yale: Yale University Press, 2001), 202. 433 »Las Meninas« by Diego Velázquez, 1656, oil/canvas, 320x280 cm, Madrid, Museo del Prado. 434 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 1–18. 432

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is, to show that it was typical and characteristic for the self-understanding of art and science in a certain historical epoch, in the »classical age« that was dominated by what he calls the »episteme« of total representation. In light of that »episteme« or, as I think we could call it also, of that paradigm, the subject, the observer of the world’s objects, understands himself or herself as essentially outside the observed scenery, as a somewhat invisible, eternal instance that cannot and must not be reflected in the observed object and that therefore can claim to make it completely transparent and to represent it totally as what it is. Thus, the observer claims a kind of divine perspective and does not reflect himself or herself as a being that is always also part of the observed world. This is the background of Foucault’s notorious conclusion that before the end of the eighteenth century »man« did not exist, that is, the human being was not reflected as the perspectival presupposition of all what we try and claim to observe in the world.435 And for Foucault, the going on in Las Meninas is not characteristic of the discovery of that presupposition but of the ignorance against it; it is the deepest and clearest example of the »episteme« of total representation. But of course it is much more, and that is the reason why Foucault considers it, correctly as I think, as such a great and deeply philosophical painting: It is both an example for the classical »episteme« and an attempt to prove its truth. Velázquez is not simply obeying the rules of the classical »episteme«; rather he is defending them against the challenges to it, which he sees very well. What are these challenges? I think they can be characterized in the simplest way by the two decisive features that constitute the insurmount­ able difference between any artistic picture and a mirror: a visual one and a temporal one. The first is what Gottfried Boehm has called the »iconic difference«: a painting can never be the complete representation of its object, because otherwise it would have to be its repetition—that is, it would not be a picture of its object but a second object.436 Therefore, there is always an invisible reminder that is contained in and given by the visible content of »In Classical thought, the personage for whom the representation exists, and who represents himself within it, recognizing himself therein as an image or reflection, he who ties together all the interlacing threads of the ›representation in the form of a picture or table‹ [and that is the overall message of the painting Las Meninas according to Foucault] […] is never to be found […] Before the end of the eighteenth century, man did not exist.« (Foucault, The Order of Things, 336). 436 Cf. Boehm, Die Wiederkehr der Bilder, 11–38. 435

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an artistic picture. The second feature is a temporal one: Unlike the mirror, a painting has always and necessarily a background of succession that is transformed in it into simultaneity. Even if the picture attempts to represent a completely static, perhaps abstract object or piece of scenery, there is at least the time of its production, the time of painting it, which leaves its trace in the picture. Thus, we have to see how, according to Foucault, Velázquez is handling these two boundaries of his alleged project of showing the truth of total representation. For Foucault, Las Meninas is the »picture of a picture.«437 But it is more: It is the picture of what makes the picture a picture. In it, the representation presents itself as pure and unmediated, which it cannot be; the art of the work, the »artistic trick« of the painter, consists in making the invisibility visible, which is the reason for the claim of the representation to reproduce the visible by necessarily disappearing in it.438 The painter of the picture has depicted himself at the very moment in which he has to step away from the canvas to look at his model and thereby has to avert his gaze from the picture that is presented in the picture; the model he looks at by doing so and that is also represented in the picture—that is, the Spanish royal couple—becomes visible only by the artistic trick by which it appears in the mirror that is presented at the back of the displayed room. This model must not appear directly in the picture because it would have to take over the »the real center of the scene.«439 What is that real center? It is the core of the technique of central perspective, the crossing point between the events that are actually depicted in this picture, including the depicted painter’s look and our own, the observer’s, look. The painter »is staring at a point to which, even though it is invisible, we, the spectators, can easily assign an object, since it is we, ourselves, who are that point: our bodies, our faces, our eyes. The spectacle he is observing is thus doubly invisible: first, because it is not represented within the space of the painting, and, second, because it is situated precisely in that blind point, in that essential hiding-place into which our gaze disappears from ourselves at the moment of our actual looking.«440

437 438 439 440

Foucault, The Order of Things, 5. Foucault, The Order of Things, 16. Foucault, The Order of Things, 16. Foucault, The Order of Things, 4.

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Thus the subject of the painting Las Meninas is us ourselves in that we are located »in the center, in the very heart of the representation«441 and indeed are identical with it. It is just in this »ceaseless exchange«442 that is achieved by the artistically depicted mirror in the painting—the exchange between the painted model depicted by the painter, us ourselves and any other spectator of the painting—in which this painting itself presents once again the identification of ourselves with the power of representation. This power of representation is inherent in the savoir classique, in which, it has been said, the subject of representation characteristically appears only as a disposable, nameless crossing point of a process whereby this subject is excluded from the scene and vanishes into infinity.443 The problematic point of the whole interpretation is hanging on the wall in the center of the painting. How can the function and, in fact, the necessity of that visible mirror in which we can identify the royal couple be explained? It must be explained, according to Foucault, by a sort of violence. The depicted painter’s gaze reaches a subject outside the scene, which by this view is forced to enter it at the same time. It is our own view, and we ourselves can, as Foucault says, only enter the scene of the picture Las Meninas »as though by usurpation,«444 that is, by replacing the model that is depicted in the picture, and therefore can only be represented in it indirectly. This is the reason for the mirror that presents the decisive object by means of which Velàzquez succeeds in crossing three levels of »observing« and uniting each of their three fundamental invisibilities in this painting. The depicted painter’s gaze at the model he paints—the gaze that he had to avert from the canvas of the painting depicted in this painting to be able to look at us—is contained in this painting. The same holds for the gaze of the model at itself and the gaze that has not been mentioned yet, namely, Velázquez’s gaze at this scene, which is organized to be able to paint the painting Las Meninas. It is this last aspect that refutes Foucault’s whole explanation. To some degree he does, however, admit that this is like that when, although at the very end and only marginally, he comes to talk about the organizing look of »the artist,« that is, Velázquez himself. The mirror, which Foucault 441 442 443 444

Foucault, The Order of Things, 335. Foucault, The Order of Things, 5. Foucault, The Order of Things, 10. Foucault, The Order of Things, 16.

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relied on all the time as the objective guarantor of the artistic trick that was meant to ensure a »metathesis of the visibility« of the represented invisibilities, the mirror image whose lack of inhibition to restore »quite simply, and in a shadow […] as if by magic what is lacking in every gaze« he just acknowledged, they all at once seem to be liars and deceivers, and they guarantee exactly the unreachability of that which is attributed to this »painting of the painting« by the whole analysis445: »But perhaps«, this is the abrupt turn, »this generosity on the part of the mirror is feigned; perhaps it is hiding as much and even more than it reveals. That space where the king and his wife hold sway belongs equally well to the artist and to the spectator: In the depths of the mirror there could also appear—there ought to appear—the anonymous face of the passer-by and that of Velázquez. For the function of that reflection is to draw into the interior of the picture what is intimately foreign to it: the gaze which has organized it and the gaze for which it is displayed. But because they are present within the picture, to the right and to the left, the artist and the visitor cannot be given a place in the mirror […].«446

This is the demarcation of the very simple critical point: According to Foucault’s interpretation, Las Meninas is a »picture of a picture,« but it does not contain the picture’s painter! If the mirror that makes possible the crossing of the painter’s and the observer’s view is the mirror that is depicted in this painting as hanging on the wall behind the painter, then the painter whom we see in the picture cannot really be Velázquez himself. It must be a model, and then the painting Las Meninas is a picture that shows nothing more than a painting painter who stops painting for a moment and looks at us. What is the consequence of this? Why should this be so exciting? Of course, Velázquez could have positioned a stand-in in the scene. But if he had not wanted more than to show a painter who is looking upon us while painting his painting, he would not have needed the mirror at all in the picture. Our conclusion thus would have to be as simple as decisive: this picture would show a painter who is not painting it, this picture. Las Meninas would then show the painting of another picture than Las Meninas. It would really be not more than one of infinite examples of the painter’s obedience to the mirror as his master. And therefore we would have completely lost the philosophical point of it that is the real explanation 445 446

Foucault, The Order of Things, 17. Foucault, The Order of Things, 17.

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for the necessity of the mirror in it. If we really want to understand why Las Meninas is a »picture of a picture,« then we must interpret it in the most radical sense, namely, as a picture of what makes a picture a picture: that is, as a painting of its painting, of its being painted. The mirror that is depicted in it is a trace, not of the objects that are mirrored by this picture, but of the mirror itself, which is the condition of possibility of any picture. In order to characterize the alternative to it, one could call Foucault’s interpretation »impressionistic«: it refers to one instantaneous moment in which a painter looks at his painting’s observer. It is this »impression­ ism« that makes us forget the fundamental aspect of succession that in this painting, as in every picture ever painted, had to be turned into simultaneity. The real alternative, however, is an interpretation that makes us notice that in this painting we are in a quite unique way confronted with exactly the time that has been passing while it became what we now see in front of us when we look at it. If we see the painting in that way, then the painter who looks out of it at us is of course Velázquez himself. He paints himself, and he paints himself indeed not as painting any unknown picture but as painting the painting Las Meninas. And »painting« is not an event of momentariness but a complex process to which the organization of the whole setting belongs indirectly, a process that serves the painting as a model but that adequately enters the painting when it develops on the canvas. The entering of the setting into the painting, however, is of decisive meaning for the constellation between the eventually manufactured paint­ ing and its spectators, a constellation that is made subject in Las Meninas in a highly singular way. If Velázquez, according to our assumption, wanted to grasp which makes the painting a work of art, he had to paint his act of painting in it. How could he do that, if to paint himself into the setting he had to paint himself as one who is looking out? This is only possible on the condition that the whole setting had been arranged so that Velázquez had to look up to find himself in it. The only solution to the problem is the one we see in the picture: Vélazquez paints himself as the painter who is looking out of it. And he can do that with the same truth claim with which he included all other parts of the setting in it from a reality that today, when all life that emerged at that time has become extinct, is as real as it was then. So, how was Velázquez able to show a scene in this painting to which he himself belonged to and which additionally made it a condition that he necessarily had to depict himself in it as someone who looks out of it? The 187

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answer is easy: exactly when the scene Las Meninas appears in the painting as its own mirror image. To be able to paint the painting, he had to step out of the scene towards a canvas that is hidden from us by the back of the easel that covers the scenery of the painting itself in the process of being painted. The chain of the maids of honor pushes itself to the end, that is, to the very edge of the figure that holds the infanta’s hand, between the painter and the easel whose back we see. So everything that is between him and any observer of the final painting is indeed completely represented in it. But does that mean that we are confronted here with a monument of total representation ignoring the being for whom it is represented? It means the contrary if one decisive condition is met, namely, that we become aware of the now invisible mirror that then made the whole painting possible. If we become aware of it, then we find ourselves in a position from which, in fact, normally and necessarily any observer is excluded by a picture. We virtually see through the painter’s eye; we are not shown what he sees, we see it, and we see it in at least two different moments—the one which is represented in it and the one in which we here stand and look at the final painting. Nothing could represent more adequately and more precisely what makes the ontological difference between a mirror and a work of art and what makes the epistemological difference between truth and representation: a mirror can represent an object, but it cannot achieve what a picture wants to tell us, the truth about its object. One cannot see what a mirror »sees« because the mirror does not see; but one can see what a person who is painting a picture sees, although one can see this in only an extremely exceptional case such as this one because it actually belongs to the logic of a picture to extinguish the trace of time that leads from the observer’s view back into the painter’s. It is more than forty years ago now that the »mirror hypothesis« gained new and very serious support by the research of the art historian Hermann Ulrich Asemissen.447 The hypothesis itself was of course not new; it had been discussed for a long time. The formal analysis of the painting shows quite easily that the visible mirror has no »realistic« connection to the scene. A structural analysis shows that the royal couple, if the mirror at the back would show it, had to be sited at a place within the visible scene. But then the mirror would have to show, as Foucault has admitted, 447 Hermann Ulrich Asemissen, »Las Meninas von Diego Velázquez« in Kasseler Hefte für Kunstwissenschaft und Kunstpädagogik II (Kassel: Gesamthochschule Kassel, 1981).

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more than what it shows. What is seen in the visible mirror is fiction. Within Velázquez’s oeuvre, there is no such portrait of the royal couple seemingly being painted as we see it in the visible mirror. There is, in fact, in Velázquez’s oeuvre no personal portrait of anybody as large as the one that the easel in the picture implies. But several observations imply the invisible mirror that makes the scene of Las Meninas a reflection of itself. If one compares the presentation of the princess with two portraits of her that are now in Vienna, one that had been painted shortly before Las Meninas and one three years afterwards, one sees that the parting of her hair is on the other side and also that her jewellery is a reflected image of the jewellery she wears in our painting. All this was well known when Asemissen had the decisive and very simple idea to visit the room where the painting was painted. In the Bibliotheca Vaticana, he found the ground plan of the palace in which this took place, the famous Alcázar, as it had been drawn by the royal architect Gomez de Mora in the year 1626. The »pieza de la galleria«, which has the number 25 in the plan, is the room where Las Meninas448 was painted. And the comparison of the real room, which is still accessible (at least in its ground plan) and the room depicted in Las Meninas has a very clear result: the one is the other but the wrong way round. Moreover, a plan of the Alcázar from 1700/05, which had already been published in Justi’s famous book on Velázquez from 1888, shows the door to the »Torre dorada« through which the light falls into the scene, from the opposite side than is represented in the painting.449 There are documents confirming that seven mirrors, which could have been combined to make a mirror wall the size of the wall of the painting’s room, are listed in the inventory of the »despacho del verano,« a working room of the King that was renovated under Velázquez’ direction in 1658. It is hard to believe that all this leaves much room for anything other than the »mirror hypothesis«: Las Meninas is a painting that shows itself as being painted and as being mirrored through the eyes of the painter. I will now very briefly indicate some conclusions that, however, remain as hypothetical as the »mirror hypothesis.« I must admit at first that there is a fundamental element of fiction in the painting that Velázquez accepted and that, I think, contains his deepest message. To some degree that element 448 For a reproduction of said plan, see Asemissen, Las Meninas von Diego Velázquez, 21. A drawing of the Alcázar itself can be found on page 23 of the same work. 449 Asemissen, Las Meninas von Diego Velázquez, 22.

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is easily explained, for example, that the depicted Velázquez has the brush in the right hand, which is a correction to the mirror scene that was typical for self-portraits of the time, that the royal couple is represented in the visible mirror the wrong way round in comparison to all other portraits of the King and the Queen, as I will explain below. It is, of course, an element of fiction that belongs to the painting and that has to do with the whole complexity of time that has left its trace in it. But the deepest as well as the most illuminating problem is posed by the visible mirror. That mirror is fiction, and the problem is not why Velázquez did not avoid that fiction but, on the contrary, why he needed it. This question has to be posed as the question: What is covered by the visible mirror? What does it hide? And why is it, and why must it necessarily be, hidden? The answer has again to refer to the fundamental error of Fou­ cault’s »impressionism.« If the painting Las Meninas is a painting of its own painting, then it must be a painting not of any moment during its production, but of the whole process of that production, that is, a picture of all the moments during which the painter cast his gaze on it. If so, then the point of the whole picture can and has to be explained in reference to the two fundamental features that I originally indicated as the conditions of possibility of its philosophical significance, which are at the same time the two undeniable features of its difference from any representation that could have been provided by any mirror. How could it be possible to represent in this picture not only a moment like the one in which we are looking at it now, but the whole sum and complexity of all moments of its production? The answer is: by the painter’s representing in the picture the place where it has been just at it is now, visible during all the moments of its production; the place that is at the same time the place which every single moment of its production had to give way to make place for the next one. This place that makes visible one act of painting that stands for all the others which must remain invisible can obviously not be represented within the finished painting; it cannot be discovered in the painting but, on the contrary, only be concealed in it. In fact, this place is concealed exactly by the picture in the visible mirror. That means that, by the painter showing that place within the picture as always present, but at the same time unrepresentable, it is hidden for our eyes, but disclosed for our thoughts—that is, for the philosophical insight that is then itself a part of the painting’s content and explains its philosophical validity. What is concealed by the visible mirror is the sum and the embodiment of all the views that Velázquez had to throw into the 190

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unfinished picture again and again throughout the process of making it. So we see through the eyes of the painter the whole sequence of the moments that for us now, when we have it in front of us as the finished work, are contained in it in simultaneity, but that for him were given as a successive series. We see presented in this picture the genuine and unique time of any artistic painting that is an entity with a double character, an entity that is constituted for us as something simultaneous and at the same time for the artist as something successive. If this should be the right interpretation, what does this mean for Foucault’s thesis? I think it does not only follow that the idea of Velázquez as an unconscious exponent of an »episteme« of total representation is wrong; it follows also that Velázquez can be considered a thinker who with artistic means succeeded in achieving exactly what Foucault claimed for his own project. Art history has shown what Foucault calls the »episteme« of the classical age was actually and very specifically present in the metaphysical and mystic tradition that was obviously the philosophical background of Velázquez’s work. In the Golden Age of the Spanish Counter Reformation, the topos of Deus pictor or of the pictor divinus shaped a very specific pictorial project, namely the project to represent within the picture the process of its fabrication.450 It was the project of making visible by the artistic picture the trace that leads back from the world as a picture to its divine origin, to the creator. So it was in a certain way the project of turning time back into eternity. This is what we could call the attempt to turn our view into a divine perspective. But does that mean that Velázquez has adapted that project? Again, I think, the answer to this question is given by the visible mirror and the invisibility shown by it. The visible mirror on the wall behind him is exactly what Velázquez would not have needed if he had seen himself as just one of the proponents of the metaphysical project of the pictor divinus. If my interpretation is right, then this mirror has to indicate the temporal reality that in Velázquez’s intention replaced the indirect representation of the eternal origin of temporality. The indirect representation of the unrepresentable process of its painting in the painting does not lead to an origin outside of time, but rather to time itself as its own origin, as it is always and again and again in every moment repeated, its self-repeating origin, an origin that leads the temporal being back through Cf. Victor I. Stoichita, Das mystische Auge. Vision und Malerei im Spanien des Goldenen Zeitalters, trans. Andreas Knop (München: Fink, 1977), 105 ff.

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time into its own origin that is not extra temporal, but wherein time itself is its own trace. If that should be right, then Velázquez has been a thinker of the constant re-beginning of time in itself, which I think characterizes also what Foucault desired his own theme to be. One last question remains: If the scene in the visible mirror, the appearance of the Spanish royal couple replacing the painting painter and observing the completed picture, is fiction, if this scene has been painted into the whole scene of the picture as the only needed element that had to be added to the mirrored arrangement—why then did he choose exactly the Royal couple? If the scene in the visible mirror is the only one that did not represent one of the moments of the perfection of the painting—was there any logic to choose exactly this one? The answer is given by the historic context: Velázquez could rely on the fact that the royal couple would be the first observers of the painting after its completion. With their appearance he integrated into the chain of moments that is covered by the scene in the visible mirror the first moment following it and continuing it, the moment in which the first observer would overtake the painter’s place and enter into the arrangement. Thus, the King’s and Queen’s place in the picture is the place that every further observer, up until the minute in which we here and now are looking upon it, would and will have to make place for the next one in the chain of life into which the painter of this painting entered by his work. The visible mirror shows the place within the picture where we can see happen what Velázquez’ teacher Pacheco once demanded: »The image should stand out from the frame!«451 Addendum: Meanwhile I have learned that the »mirror hypothesis« as I discuss and defend it in this article is indeed untenable as the description of a historical fact. New researches have shown that the painting Las Meninas as we see it in front of us nowadays in the Prado is the result of the overpainting of an original work from the year 1656 called »La familia de Felipe IV«; and only in the act of overpainting has Velázquez given form to the thought which I have pointed out in this article. What justifies, as I am convinced, Foucault, The Order of Things, 9. The author would like to thank Neil O’Donnell for his assistance in the translation of his contribution to this volume.

451

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the explication of this thought which I have given here is precisely that it must have been Velázquez’ own thought. He »saw« in the earlier painting the scene which would have to be the final result, a result that he was (from personal and political reasons) not able to complete before the year 1659, shortly before his death. So, the »mirror hypothesis« is wrong as the analysis of historic fact, but it is correct as the reconstruction of the content of the picture which the painter Velázquez wanted to present to us in the painting Las Meninas. I have explicated this further in Wiedergeburt vol I Ch. I.18.

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At first glance, time’s urgency seems to intensify the existential challenge with which we as human beings are confronted by the knowledge of our finitude. Given the limited amount of time we have, it seems to us that the speeding up of its course means that we lose it faster than we otherwise do when tempus fugit. In the philosophical perspective, however, this defeatist view turns out to merely be the consequence of a wrong understanding of finitude based on what Hegel called the »bad« or »spurious infinite«, i.e. the illusion that the flight of time could be overcome by the extension of its course. The opposite insight, i.e. that we can cope with time’s flow by never extending or stopping but only by turning it against itself, is incorporated in a way hitherto unsurpassed into Proust’s Recherche du temps perdu. It is first and foremost this insight which makes Proust’s work a principal legacy for the philosophy of time. Many times in this unique kind of novel the author emphasizes its philosophical claim and dimension. The recherche incorporated into this book is not a search for memory but for truth; it is called a search for time only, as Gilles Deleuze has formulated very tersely, in as far as time bears an essential relation to truth.452 That relation, however, is a unique one: If we want to understand it we must see that truth is not simply the topic or the theme of this novel but that it is incorporated into it as it is incorporated virtually into the book which is given into our hands. And we must recognize that truth is a matter not of theory but of redemption. For Proust, the beginning and the completion of the work that is incorporated into this book witnesses the release from the deepest existential threat of which we can think of. They are the evidence of a race with death and of its happy end. The decisive aspect of time which was at stake in this race and which is the real issue of this book is the turning of its direction against its 452 Gilles Deleuze, Proust und die Zeichen, trans. Henriette Beese (Frankfurt a. M, Berlin and Vienna: Ullstein, 1978), 16.

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natural course or, as we shall learn, our time’s transition into a life whose end becomes the cause of its beginning. »Maintenant je peux mourir«, now I can die: these were Proust’s words, spoken with a smile and with glowing eyes, in the morning after he had set the word »Fin« under the Recherche du temps perdu.453 Spoken in the context of that moment, these words meant something categorically differ­ ent from a worker’s release after having finished his job. They expressed not relief but redemption, they witnessed the final and irreversible escape from the deepest existential threat. It was a threat that has nothing to do with the problem of bringing a literary work to its end and preparing it for publication. Céleste Albaret, Proust’s housekeeper to whom he has been talking to with these words has reported that with the same breath he conceded that there was still much to do;454 from her we know also that months later he complained that many passages of the novel were yet to be completed. His last notes before his death were written into the typescript of the »Prisoner«. And it is well known that his publishers constantly were in despair about his never-ending efforts of reworking his manuscripts. So, the point of Proust’s final experience of redemption is of a very different and somewhat unique kind. An author’s task and striving to finish his job is something that is made necessary by the moment everybody has to cope with in his or her life, the moment when one has to die. But the moment which was at stake on that spring morning was not the moment when Proust would have to die; it was, exactly as he said, the moment when he could die, i.e. the moment in which not his work but he himself had reached his end – and lived to see it. Therefore, at least at our present point de départ, from where we try to understand the kind of threat the escape of which is incorporated in the Recherche, we must distinguish clearly the sense in which Proust said that he »could« die now from any kind of final reckoning of one’s life. Such an expression of reckoning may take place, for instance, when a father sees his children attain a good standard of living and expresses his content by the statement that his work is done and he can go. This is something very honorable, but it is philosophically irrelevant. The difference is that in such a life-reckoning statement a person’s insight that he or she can »go« now Jean-Yves Tadié, Marcel Proust. Biografie, trans. Henriette Beese (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1987), 430. 454 Tadié, Marcel Proust, 430.

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is tantamount to the following: that he or she can »disappear« or, to put it brutally, that soon they can be ignored. That means, it is an essentially passive sense which is expressed here by means of the word »can«, whereas Proust uses the word in an absolutely different meaning, which is actually a highly active one. It is the sense in which one says, for example, that one »can« read German or that one can play chess now. This aspect of potentiality brings to the fore the horizon of disposition. Therefore, the philosophically decisive question is exactly that which in Proust’s dictum is meant by and contained in the dispositional aspect of the expression »I can die«. To answer this question, we will have to go through at least three dimensions of death which are constitutive for what the meaning of »can« is in the context of the expression »I can die«. Let me briefly point out or at least indicate these three dimensions by reference to some passages mainly in the first and the last volume of the Recherche, »Swann’s Way« and »Finding Time Again«. Firstly, death’s revelation: It belongs to the deepest constitution of personal existence that only the end of one’s life can reveal what it has been in its whole and final course. That insight contains much more than the prudent but somewhat superficial warning that we should not praise the day before the evening. It also contains more than the ethical wisdom which Aristotle referred to when he said that eudaimonia, felicity, should not be ascribed to anyone’s life before it has ended. Again, in order to understand the existentially revealing dimension of death, we have to keep away from any aspect of a reckoning of life. The decisive point is, at first glance, much simpler; death actually is the principle of truth not in respect to life’s reckoning but only to life’s end. But simplex sigillum veri: It is the point at which we face a fundamental paradox. I mean the following: On the one hand, death, and that means the very concrete moment of death, belongs to one’s life. Is it not perhaps the most comforting insight one can reach that if one did not have to die one would not exist? Since as a person one has one’s identity essentially through one’s relation to all other persons, if I was not the person I am then I would not be there. If I did not have to die, if I had before me an infinite future expanse in which I would eventually realize all the possibilities of any other person, then I would not be the being which I am, and that is to say: I would not exist. But on the other hand, we all know what Wittgenstein laconically stated in the Tractatus: »Den Tod erlebt man nicht.« It is death, the core of one’s personal existence, of which one has absolutely no experience in one’s 197

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life. Indeed, it is even ontologically impossible that one could have such an experience: Since, as Aristotle said, vivere viventibus est esse, for a being whose existence is constituted by its life it is per definitionem impossible that it, this very being, could ever experience its death after having died. So, what are we to make of this paradox, the paradox that death belongs to my life more than anything and at the same time death is necessarily beyond everything my life will ever encompass? In our limited context I can only present it as my thesis that with this question we have formulated the existential and, which for him meant the same, the philosophical problem to which Proust dedicated his Recherche du temps perdu and, which for him meant the same, his life. The answer to this question is what, according to Proust, every human being’s life demands to be given, that means: it is the really and essentially universal problem of personal existence. And it is the answer which the Recherche du temps perdu demands the work’s author to give – and to give in a unique, incomparable way. These two aspects, the universalistic and the individualistic, stand in a relation to one another which, as I would like to argue, is the decisive principle of the philosophical project in Proust’s book of his life. I would characterize this relation as a metonymic one. What I mean by that can be explicated only by turning our attention to the place in the novel where its author presents the definite clarity he has reached about these two aspects and about their connection – and, thereby, about his task. That place is nothing but the very end of the novel where the author notes: »…the fact that we occupy an ever larger place in Time is something that everybody feels, and this universality could only delight me, since this was the truth, the truth suspected by everybody, that it was my task to try to elucidate« (6, 355)455.

In the last lines of the novel, immediately before the »Fin«, he repeats that task of describing the persons in it as beings with an »almost infinitely extended« place in Time (6, 358), adding however one condition, namely »if enough time was left to me to complete my work« (ibid.).

Seemingly, there is a contradictory aspect between the »Time« in which we can attain our almost infinitely extended place and the »time« the 455 Proust is quoted by volume and page from: Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, 6 vols (London: Penguin Books, 2003 f).

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end of which threatens our attaining this place. Thinking about the time left to him to fulfill his task the author faces that aspect of uncertainty which for us marks the first indication of time’s urgency. In one of the great existential metaphors in the book this aspect is characterized by an essentially artistic scenery: »My life had been like a painter who climbs up a road overhanging a lake that is hidden from view by a screen of rocks and trees. Through a gap he glimpses it, he has it all there in front of him, he takes up his brushes. But the night is already falling when there is no more painting, and after which no day will break.« (6, 345)

Here we come to notice that the revealing and the threatening dimension of death are as inseparable as the two sides of a page from a book. However, and what we are given to understand here is decisive for us at this point, just as two sides of a page are inseparable, they are also infusible. Here we come to the decisive aspect which radically distinguishes what Proust teaches us and what saves us from any kind of existentialistic pathos in reclaiming or uncovering the »absurdity« or the »foundering« constitution of personal life. The task we have to solve is revealed by death, but it is this only because death itself, in its true meaning, has been revealed by the fulfillment of this task. In other words: The task which is ontologically constituted by the fact and by the concrete moment of one’s death can be at the same time revealed and fulfilled. This is what happens in the very instant in which we discover the content of what Proust means by the term »lost time« and by which the truth he found in the search for it is defined. What is at stake here is the time in which the moment of death’s revelation can be turned into the instant of life’s fulfillment. That is what brings us to our next step. Secondly, death’s contingency: The problem which we face by the paradox of death’s revelation is, as we have seen, that the only moment which can reveal the whole course of one’s life cannot at the same time be experienced as a part of that life. The task, though, which we now have indicated as a possible way to deal with that problem, is the following: to turn our attention to a certain kind of moment which we know, which we have experienced and will experience further, but in which we nevertheless find fulfilled what the moment of death restricts us from. The poetic presentation, the literary reformulation of that kind of moment is what Proust’s Recherche du temps perdu is famous for more than for any other of its treasures and through which it even has 199

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gained a certain amount of popularity. The essence of it, developed most paradigmatically in the immortal madeleine episode in »Swann’s Way«, is quite obvious: involuntary memory, déjà vu in the most philosophical role it has ever played in the theatre of human ideas. The revelation of the whole past of »Combray«, emanating from the scent of a small cake, half-dissolved in a cup of tea, is certainly the key scene in »Swann’s Way«. In the course of the whole Recherche, however, the late – and explicit456 – counterpart to it in »Finding Time Again«, the scene when the kaleidoscope of the crucial experiences and memories of his whole life emerges from a foot step on two unevenly laid paving-stones, is even more important for what the author has to tell us about the crucial relation between the moment of death and the instant of the fulfillment of life. The decisive point is what we could call the objective side of involuntary memory, i.e. the contingency of finding again what otherwise would be lost forever: »But sometimes it is just when everything seems to be lost that we experience a presentiment that may save us; one has knocked on all the doors which lead nowhere, and then, unwittingly, one pushes against the only one through which one may enter and for which one would have searched in vain for a hundred years, and it opens.« (6, 174)

Here, the metaphor of the painter getting his glimpse of the face of death is obviously anticipated; but more than this: its meaning is here already explicated, namely by the immediate connection between the described instant of involuntary memory and »a second intimation« which, as the author says, »occurred to reinforce the one which the two uneven paving-stones just had given me and to extort me in the perseverance of my task« (6, 176).

This is exactly the point where the deepest passivity is turned into its dialectical counterpoint, the highest activity that constitutes the artist’s task. Exactly here we find the solution to the paradox of death’s revelation and life’s fulfillment, and the philosophical principle of this solution is explicated as the representative, substitutive relation in which the artist who turns involuntary memory into his task stands for time itself. »Time, the artist«, he says, had ›rendered‹ all the models of his work Cf. Proust, 6, 175: »Just as at the moment when I tasted the madeleine, all uneasiness about the future and all intellectual doubt were gone«.

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Time’s Redeeming Urgency »in such a way that they were still recognizable, but they were not likenesses, not because he had flattered them, but because he had aged them. He is also an artist who works very slow.« (6, 243)

With this we have reached the point where the deepest core of what Proust means by »lost time« can be pointed out. The schema which explicates the contiguity between death’s revelation and life’s fulfillment is the turning of involuntary memory into the truth of the most voluntary work we can conceive, the work of art. So, the relation between lost time and time found again, the explication of time turned back out of its end into the beginning of its whole course, has to be grounded on the difference between involuntary and voluntary memory. The author characterizes this difference in »Swann’s Way« as the difference between the life and death of past itself: »The fact is, I could have answered anyone who asked me that Combray also included other things and existed at other hours. But since what I recalled would have supplied to me only by my voluntary memory, the memory of the intelligence, and since the information it gives about the past preserves nothing of it, I would never had any desire to think about the rest of Combray. It was all really quite dead for me.« (1, 46)

At this point, marking the essence of the difference between dead and living past, he invents the key category in the relation between death and truth: the essentially contingent chance they open for us: »Dead for ever? Possibly. There is a great deal of chance in all this, and a second sort of chance, that of our death, often does not let us wait very long for the favours of the first.« (1, 46 p.)

Now the contradictory aspect, the tension between death and truth, has been transformed into the temporal difference between two moments of chance, thereby opening a gap which can allow us to fill it with what constitutes the fulfillment of our life. Immediately following, augured only by the wondrous reference to an old »Celtic belief«, we find the anticipation of what 3000 pages later is described as the revealing experience of the uneven paving-stones which finally will allow him to persevere in his task: »It is the same with our past. It is a waste of effort for us to try to summon it, all the exertions of our intelligence are useless. The past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond its reach, in some material object (in the sensation that this material object would give us) which we do not suspect. It 201

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Time’s Redeeming Urgency depends on chance whether we encounter this object before we die, or do not encounter it.« (1, 47)

Here now we have reached the threshold to the third and crucial step. Thirdly, death’s urgency: Following the experience of the kaleidoscope of all the moments standing for his whole life the author describes the decisive, redeeming insight into the chance he has found now, the chance which is given to him by the small amount of time between it, this insight, and his death. What he can do in order to fulfill his life, i.e. to include in it everything that belongs to it, is to transform it into a book, the book of his life: »Finally, this idea of Time was valuable to me for one other reason, it was a spur, it told me that it was time to start, if I wanted to achieve what I had sometimes sensed during the course of my life, in brief flashes […] which had made me feel that life was worth living. How much better life seemed to me now that it seemed susceptible of being illuminated, taken out of the shadows, restored from our ceaseless falsification of it to the truth of what it was, in short, realized in a book!« (6, 342)

That is Proust’s philosophical solution of the paradox of death’s revelation and life’s fulfillment: to transform life into the book of life allows its writer to turn its end into its beginning – given that he has enough time to complete the plot, i.e. to reach the point where the described life has led him to the insight that it can be transformed into the book in which this point is reached now. If he manages to reach this point, then his life lies in front of him as its own book, containing its end. And that he had reached this point was what Proust expressed by the words »I can die now«. We will not grasp the real meaning of these words as long as we hear them as an expression of relief from a poetic task which has been finished by the artist instead of understanding them as the opposite, i.e. as a message of redemption which is told us by time itself which has got rid of anything seemingly outside of or beyond it. It is the message which reaches us from the incomparable, unique place where one lives to look at one’s end. In this horizon, the words »I can die now« are related to the old philosophical tradition of the ars moriendi, the idea of turning life from its natural temptation to flee from death into the opposite, i.e. into a self-fulfilling way of getting acquainted with death and thereby integrate it, illuminate it as its part instead of excluding it as its despised shadow.

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To underline and concretize this we have to dive once more into the depths of the meaning of the word »I can«. In one of the most important passages of his »Metaphysics«, in which Aristotle analyzes the relation between dýnamis and enérgeia, he refers to two different kinds of ›goingons‹ in the world, movement and actuality. For the latter it is characteristic that the end to which it leads is already present in everything belonging to it; only actuality is what we call in its full sense »action«. What is only movement, however, does not bear its end in itself but is merely »relative to the end, e.g. the removing of fat, or fat-removal, and the bodily parts themselves when one is making them thin are in movement in this way (i.e. without being already that at which the movement aims) […]; but that movement in which the end is present is an action. E.g. at the same time we are seeing and have seen, are understanding and have understood, are thinking and have thought (while it is not true that at the same time we are learning and have learnt, or are being cured and have been cured). At the same time we are living well and have lived well, and are happy and have been happy.«457

This is of the highest importance for the philosophical dimension in which Proust’s contribution to the tradition of the ars moriendi must be seen: it is not simply a psychological or perhaps an ethical dimension, but the ontological dimension in its deepest sense. Here we have to go one step beyond what we said in the beginning: We must hear the words »I can die now« not only in the horizon of expressions like »I can speak German now« or »I can play chess now« but also in the sense of what we say when we recognize »I can see him now« or »I can understand you now«. These expressions show how we in our ordinary life and speech are fully aware of that deep paradox at the core of personal existence: As a rational being I am identical with myself in the most eminent sense when I am in action, and to act means to make the experience of a reality which has its end in itself, i.e. of a past which is integrated in what is going on presently. To see somebody means to become aware of having seen him, to understand means to become aware of having understood, and as far as we can turn life into action to live means to become aware of having already lived. There is no moment of one’s life, including its beginning and its end, which we could experience, and which would not reveal to us that it has already been lived. That means: There is the sound of reincarnation in the voice which tells us that we can turn life into action, and I think that the fact that this 457

Aristotle, Metaphysics, IX, 6, 1048b. Cf. My article »Fulfilled Presence« in this volume.

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sound is obviously present in Proust’s Recherche supports my thesis that turning life into action, into the literary work of a novel describing the process that in the end leads to its beginning, is exactly Proust’s program in that book of life. In the »Prisoner«, immediately following the description of the narrator (!) Bergotte’s death, the author initiates a beautiful piece of reflection on the possibility of reincarnation with the same words we have read in »Swann’s Way« when he asked the question if the past dies with the present: »He was dead. Dead for ever? Who can say? Certainly spiritualist experiments provide no more proof than religious dogma of the soul’s survival. What we can say is that everything in our life happens as if we entered in bearing a burden of obligations contracted in an earlier life […] All these obligations which do not derive their force from the here-and-now seem to belong to a different world founded on goodness, conscientiousness, sacrifice, a world quite different from this one which we leave to be born onto this earth, and to which we perhaps shall return…« (5, 170).

I do not want to say that any kind of belief in reincarnation is what Proust is going to support in the Recherche, although the reflection at the quoted passage leads to the conclusion »that the idea that Bergotte was not dead for ever is not all implausible« (ibid.).

But to go much further in that direction would be misleading because Proust’s solution to the paradox does not consist in any belief but in action. Turning life into action means to live it once again in the writing of its book, the plot of which leads to and ends with the decision to write it. This kind of action, not any belief underlying it, constitutes what Proust calls and reclaims as the truth of his work and of his life. In as much as the author of his life’s book manages to turn his life’s time into the narration of the way to the end where he decides to become what he is, the author and the subject he writes about will coincide. I cannot go further into this fascinating philosophical project, but let me just conclude with the remark that by this Proust has also made a meaningful contribution to the theme of »time’s urgency«. It is based on Proust’s decisive insight that the ars moriendi, that our only chance to »learn to die« does not consist in any strategy to extend the time we have before our death but, on the contrary, to lead life to an end which anticipates and thereby integrates death into its course. In light of this insight, time’s urgency becomes the closest ally in our enterprise to forestall life’s end by 204

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the symbolic repetition of its beginning in itself, i.e. in time. The decision to integrate this renewal of its beginning into life’s course is tantamount to the exclusion of any possible extension beyond the moment of that decision. It is this moment which, in order to anticipate death, we then have to re-reach as fast as possible, i.e. as urgent as the way back to this moment is made by the length of the detour which we have to retake in the form of its narration. Thus, the urgency of life’s time and the chance to reach its goal essentially converge. Given that life coincides with the process of writing it down, we can have the constant experience of a life being lived already. After having begun to turn life into the plot of its book, any slowdown of our action would be tantamount to the most dangerous delay we can face in our race run against unforestalled death. It is the most urgent goal for us to reach the point where we can say: »I can die now.« So, time’s urgency becomes the scheme for release from the threat of death. As a human being, it belongs to my nature that I cannot want to die. But as an animal symbolicum, as an apprentice of the artist Time, I want to become somebody who can die.

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The Self-Repeating Origin Ontological Aspects of Ricoeur’s Concept of Hermeneutics

The point of using the predicate »ontological« in the context of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics is not related to controversies about its metaphysical impli­ cations or presuppositions but delimiting its methodological dimension. It is an essential starting point for Ricoeur’s way of philosophizing—or at least for the way which I think is crucial to understand it—that »hermeneu­ tical« is not only and not even primarily a characterization of the method of the humanities but of the constitution of their objects, i.e. of the kind of reality they deal with. The objects of hermeneutical interpretation are themselves interpretations. So, hermeneutics is inherent in these objects and gives them their essence. Whether it is a church, a novel, a political constitution, or even a form of enterprise, a bureaucratic guideline, a method of psychiatric therapy or a burial rite: all these are, more or less explicitly, answers of a culture to the questions of who we are and where we come from. The objects of hermeneutical interpretation are themselves interpretations of human existence, of our being. This is, I think, the substantial background of the ontological aspect of Ricoeur’s concept of hermeneutics and of its relevance for the philosophy of religion. In my attempt to explicate its relevance, the general idea is that the philosopher’s task in dealing with religion is not to discover any principles hidden in or behind the religious interpretation of our being but to turn our attention to the constitutive act in which interpretation discloses itself as the core of this being and to the role religion plays among the conditions of such disclosure—which are at the same time the conditions of the turning of our attention to it, i.e. of philosophy. So, to put it in a slightly Wittgensteinian way, it is the self-discovering dimension of hermeneutics which is the key to its relevance for the philosophy of religion: As always in philosophy, the real discovery in our field is not the discovery of a philosophical reason necessary to understand the existence of religion, but the discovery of religious existence as a reason necessary to understand what we are doing in philosophy and why we have to do it. 209

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1. Philosophy and the time of self-reflection The first context in which the ontological aspects of his concept of hermeneutics may be elucidated is Ricoeur’s reflection on philosophy itself. One of its key passages can be found in »The Conflict of Interpretations«,458 where the philosopher’s task is explicitly characterized as answering the question how philosophical reflection relates to the »hermeneutics of the symbols«. It is clear from the context that »hermeneutics of the symbols« here is a genitivus subiectivus: Ricoeur speaks of the »revealing power« of the symbols, a potential which is for philosophy not an object of foundation or fulfillment but of »meditation«. And he makes this the crucial point for the characterization of his genuine way of thinking in opposition to any idea of a »presuppositionless philosophy« searching for its self-positing, unprecedented point de départ in the Cartesian or Husserlian sense.459 The meditation on symbols starts from a meaning which does not have to be constituted by reflection but has already taken place from the »midst of speech« and which, by means of reflection, can only be recollected. This does of course not mean that philosophical reflection has to under­ stand itself as an act of obedience to an authoritative source; philosophizing, as thinking in general, must not be understood as obedience to an order, but essentially as an answer to what Ricoeur at one place demarcates by the German word »Anspruch«.460 It is this difference between obedience and answer that makes the »pluralism« of the symbols so important: they essentially constitute bodies of interpretation which are in conflict with one another so that they cannot be understood without the reference to the process in which they were developed and the dynamics which led to them and which in the end surpasses them. Paradigmatic complexes of that kind are myths; it is the struggle between them that gives philosophical reflection a status different from the simple repetition of their message.461 458 Paul Ricoeur, ›The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection: I‹, trans. Denis Savage, in The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. by Don Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 287. 459 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols, 288. 460 Paul Ricoeur, ›Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation‹, in The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 70, no.1 – 2 (Jan.-Apr. 1977): 1–37 (19). 461 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols, 296.

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Exactly because the myth is in itself an interpretation, the task of philosophy cannot be to replace it by another interpretation. This insight has a negative and a positive consequence: On the one hand, philosophy cannot claim to reduce the mythical interpretation of our being to any message hidden by or behind it, but on the other hand, philosophy is able and required to make the transition to a way of thinking which does not simply repeat the myths but can be called a »philosophy through symbols«.462 But again, it must be emphasized that philosophizing »through« symbols also cannot mean to replace their meaning, if not directly, then on a second level, i.e. by means of the discovery of a principle that directs their struggle or the dynamics of their development: As far as the historical period in which we accomplish that step toward a philosophy »through symbols« is characterized by the aim to understand the whole development that led to it, as far as our age implies, as it does to some degree by describing itself as »the« modernity, a kind of end of history,463 philosophy can never provide the foundation of such a claim but, again, is at best an answer to it. Philosophy has to face questions arising from the problems and paradoxes which are implied in our self-description as »modern«.464 So, the original hermeneutical constitution as a work of interpretation remains irreplaceable for everything that will ever be the object of our reflection, including our thinking about the symbols itself. Our task is to explicate an interpretation that is always already given before and beyond the attention which philosophical reflection can direct towards it. The question, however, then is why such explication is legitimate at all or why it should be, as Ricoeur emphasizes, necessary. The answer to that question is given by a phrase which Ricoeur uses several times and always underlines as extremely important for him: »the symbol gives rise to thought.«465 When we reject the attempt to replace the Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols, 296. Cf. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 305: »The main task of critical philosophy applied to history is, as we have said, to reflect upon the limits that a self-knowledge of history, taking itself to be absolute, would tempt to transgress«. 464 Cf. Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols, 288: »If we raise the problem of symbol now, at this period of history, we do so in connection with certain traits of our ›modernity‹ and as a rejoinder to this modernity.« 465 Cf. Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols, 298: Here the italicization emphasizes a temporal sense which we will come back to at once; cf. also p. 288, where he adds: »This maxim that I find so appealing«. 462

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interpretation that constitutes the object of our hermeneutical thinking, we nevertheless contribute something to it that in its essence does belong to it no less than what it was and would have been without us. The original message of symbols is given to us as a message that contains, that encom­ passes the attention we turn to it when we reflect upon it philosophically. Here we face a fundamental paradox decisive for the self-understanding of Ricoeur’s hermeneutical thinking and for its ontological dimension which now turns out to be essentially a temporal one. Philosophy has to explicate a message that is independent from and yet—»at the same time«, we could say—requires this explication. So, philosophical interpretation repeats an interpretation which turns out to have contained such repetition from its very inception. In other words: To be repeated belongs to the essence of what we repeat when we interpret hermeneutical objects. We face the paradox of an origin that is at the same time independent of and dependent on its repetition. Expressed in ontological categories, the constellation of hermeneutical object and hermeneutical reflection is a combination of an origin that, in order to be what it has been, has to happen once again. To explicate Ricoeur’s concept of hermeneutics we have to face the ontological problem of reorigination. In one of the fundamental methodological passages of »The Conflict of Interpretations«, Ricoeur delimits the philosophical task that is constituted by this constellation from Heidegger’s »ontology of understanding«.466 What makes the difference to Heidegger’s »short route« is exactly the ontological attention to the genuine character of the hermeneutical thinking or the »hermeneutical method«.467 Now, after having emphasized the difference between the methodological and the ontological aspect of the concept, we can and must of course admit that hermeneutics is essentially a method, a specific way of understanding. The difference to Heidegger’s ontology lies exactly in his lacking attention for the crossing between the hermeneutical method and its ontological implications. The »ontology of understanding« leads to a dichotomy of the ontological interpretation of human existence on the one hand and the epistemological question what interpretation is on the other hand. What is implied by such a strategy and what Ricoeur thinks to be the problematic point in Heidegger’s concep­ 466 Paul Ricoeur, ›Existence and Hermeneutics‹, trans. Kathleen Mclaughlin, in The Conflict of Interpretations, 6. 467 Ricoeur, Existence and Hermeneutics, 6.

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tion is the expectation that the ontological reflection itself could escape the »circle of interpretation whose theory this ontology formulates«.468 This is the problem which in Ricoeur’s view requires a philosophical analysis of interpretation, which is explicitly defined not as epistemological, but ontological,469 and which yet at the same time does not ignore the questions raised by the peculiarity of the objects that constitute the hermeneutical reflection about human existence; objects which are primarily situated on the level of language and of history. The philosophical concept of hermeneutics is therefore constituted in an essentially self-referential way, namely by the »hermeneutical relation between philosophical discourse and the symbols that nourish it«.470 Hermeneutics as »the science of interpre­ tation« is defined by the »hermeneutic problem« which, in its widest and most general content can be formulated as the question: »What is the func­ tion of the interpretation of symbols in the economy of philosophical reflection?«471 Before we turn to the role of religion in dealing with this problem, we have to clarify the characteristics of the temporal factor which is the key to Ricoeur’s approach to the solution of the »hermeneutic prob­ lem«.

2. Narration and the time of self-interpretation Language and history are the fields in which, according to Ricoeur, hermeneutics has to find the genuinely temporal point of coincidence between the methodological and the ontological substance of interpreta­ tion. What is at stake in this hermeneutical enterprise is the aspect of reorigination, the self-repeating origin which lies before any system of language accessible to structural analysis and also to structuralist recon­ struction.472 The structural point of view excludes the aspect of enérgeia in the Humboldtian sense, i.e., the living origin of the work of language that Ricoeur, Existence and Hermeneutics, 6. »The long route which I propose also aspires to carry reflection to the level of an ontology«. (Cf. Ricoeur, Existence and Hermeneutics, 6). 470 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols, 299. 471 Paul Ricoeur, »The Hermeneutics of Symbols II«, trans. Charles Freilich, in The Conflict of Interpretations, 315. 472 Cf. Paul Ricoeur, »Structure, Word, Event«, trans. Robert Sweeney, in The Conflict of Interpretations, 79–96. 468

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is present and renewed in every creative act of speech. »What Humboldt called production and what he opposed to the finished work is not solely diachrony, that is, the change and passage from one state of system to another, but rather the generation, in its profound chim, of the work of speech in each and every case.«473 This is just the indirect way to express the core of the task the symbols »give rise« to: »to think language should be to think the unity of that very reality which Saussure has disjoined, the unity of language and speech«.474 But how is this task to be fulfilled? The starting point leads us back to the paradoxical constitution of selfreflection in the philosophical claim that hermeneutical thinking means to repeat the origin of its object and to present again what has been going on in and as that origin. If there is a temporal category that can lead us to that starting point, then it must have to do something with return. But if that return has to be the return to an origin that is already present in our turning then the means by which we exercise that return must at the same time be an act of constitution of that to which we are returning. This is the constellation of the hermeneutical problem that demarcates the specific role and claim that we have to ascribe to narration. In »Time and Narrative« Ricoeur locates this demarcation in the con­ cept of the »voice«:475 »A notion borrowed from grammarians and one that characterizes the implication of the narration itself in the narrative, that is, of the narrative instance […] with its two protagonists: the narrator and the real or virtual receiver«. The »narrative voice«476 is defined by a temporal category: the »Erzählzeit«477, i.e., the time which takes the author to tell the story and the reader to read it. During that time the author is present in the narrated text as the narrator’s voice, which tells us what is going on in the story and during the whole range of time in which it is going on. So, the narrated time, the time of everything that is going on in the story, is not only

Ricoeur, Structure, Word, Event, 84. Ricoeur, Structure, Word, Event, 85. 475 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vols 3, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 2:85–86. 476 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 2 :86. 477 Cf. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vols 3, 2:77. Ricoeur refers to Günther Müller, ›Erzählzeit und erzählte Zeit‹, in Günther Müller Morphologische Poetik. Gesammelte Aufsätze (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974), 269–286. 473

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different from the »time of narration«;478 it virtually leaves no place for it. This paradoxical constellation, what we read excludes what we hear as the voice which does give it to us to read and which is present during, but not in, the time of what is going on in the story we read, characterizes the genuine peculiarity of the text’s narration. In order to explicate this constellation, we have to, if we do not want to consider the narrator’s voice as emanating from a timeless sphere, understand the kind of narrative presence that is constitutive of the narrative act connecting author and reader. How can we comprehend a presence that is relative to the past that is described in the narration—to tell a story is to tell what has happened—and which at the same time encompasses the whole course of time in which that narration comes into existence? We are confronted here with an act of presentation which itself consti­ tutes the difference between its presence and the past that is presented in it. What do we have to refer to in order to understand this temporal relation? Ricoeur’s answer is that we have to go back to another past, a past that is itself represented in the past, which is presented in the narration, but which is at the same time turned to that past only through, by, and within this narration. He characterizes this other past, in reference to Günther Müller, as the »time of life« [Lebenszeit] or the »life process«: this entity is what the narration has to refer to as that which its subject must have been before it was narrated and independently of any narration.479 The point is that it belongs to the essence of narration that it is the narration of something which is not itself narration, but narrated. It is this substance of narration which the term »Lebenszeit« here has to mark; whether the story is based on facts that have really happened or not, as a story it is per definitionem relative to such a substance, i.e., to something that is narrated in it as preceding its narration. So, the paradoxical constellation of the narrator’s voice excluded by and at the same time constituted in the narration can be explicated as the genuine act of interpretation by which the relation between the narration and its non-narrative substance is turned into the relation between the time of narration and the narrated time. E.g. Goethe needs 24 hours to tell us what was going on in the eight years that encompass the plot of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; cf. Müller, Erzählzeit und erzählte Zeit, 274. 479 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vols 3, 2:77–78: »every narrating is narrating something that is not a narrative but a life process«, which is a quotation from Müller, ›Die Bedeutung der Zeit in der Erzählkunst‹, in Morphologische Poetik, 247–268 (261). 478

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What do we mean here exactly by the word »turned«? We mean, as per Ricoeur’s answer, and as illustrated by a famous Goethean principle,480 a turning of the meaningless into meaning: »Here Goethe’s meditation comes to the fore: Life in itself does not represent a whole. Nature can produce living things, but these are indifferent (gleichgültig). Art can produce only dead things, but they are meaningful. Yes, this is the horizon of thinking: drawing narrated time out of indifference by means of the narrative […] the narrator brings what is foreign to meaning (sinnfremd) into meaning.«481 So, the difference between the past which separates the time of narration from the narrated time and the past which separates the narration from what is narrated in it, is itself at the same time represented in and constituted by this process of turning the presented meaning into the presentation of what gives it its meaning or, in other words: of that mean­ ing’s origin. The essence of the narrative voice is that it leads us back through the narration to the point where the narrated substance, in its originally pre-narrative existence, the »process of life« coincides with the initiation of its narrative representation—including the narrative representation of the pre-narrative origin or, in other words: its reorigination. Here we are in the deepest core of Ricoeur’s concept of hermeneutics and already at the threshold to its relevance for the understanding of religious existence. If hermeneutical interpretation by its nature is directed towards objects that are in themselves instances of interpretation, then human life and the personal existence in so far as it can be made the object of hermeneutical interpretation must by it turn out to be constituted as an interpretation of itself, i.e., as a being whose self-relation originally belongs to its being already interpreted by itself. But—and by this Ricoeur resumes his delimitation from the »short route« of Heidegger’s ontology of understanding—this originally interpretative relation to ourselves is required by and requires the genuine ontological function of significance, i.e. of the symbols: »the subject that interprets himself while interpreting signs […] is a being who discovers, by the exegesis of his own life, that he is placed in being before he places and possesses himself. In this way, hermeneutics would discover a manner of existing that would remain from start to finish a being-interpreted. Reflection alone, by suppressing itself 480 Cf. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 2 :78 with the reference to the Iliad and Müller, Die Bedeutung der Zeit in der Erzählkunst, 261. 481 Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 2 :80.

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as reflection, can reach the ontological roots of understanding. Yet this is what always happens in language, and it occurs through the movement of reflection.«482 Therefore, the ontological basis of interpretation is to be found in the aspect of reconnaissance483 which is rooted not primarily in our social or cultural constitution, but in the heart of our self-relation—includ­ ing the historical factor of this self-relation, i.e., the specific »modern«, critical understanding of religious belief. »I believe that being can still speak to me, no longer indeed in the precritical form of immediate belief but as the second immediacy that hermeneutics aims at.«484 This means nothing less than that hermeneutical thinking and philosophizing is not something like a theoretical paradigm of the description of linguistic and historical object but the genuinely »modern«, and therefore the—for us historically necessary way—to be human, i.e. »the appropriation of our effort to exist and our desire to be by means of works which testify to this effort and this desire«.485 So, in defense of speech as the voice of Being486, of »saying […] as the openness, or better, the opening-out of language« with its essential aspect which »begins beyond the closure of signs«,487 and reminding us of »the fullness of the symbol as opposed to the emptiness of the sign«488 are for hermeneutics much more than methodological or epistemological demands; what is at stake here is the protection of the power of our thinking to situate itself and us in »the heart of language« at which we »are born«,489 i.e. in life by which »the word survives the sentence«490 and in which we can turn ourselves back towards the origin that is re-presented in our language as the unique and absent source491 beyond all the signs in which it can be manifested. Ricoeur, Existence and Hermeneutics, 11. Not being able to discuss in our context the implications of this central concept in Ricoeur’s The Course of Recognition, I would like to refer to the book of Katharina Bauer, Einander zu erkennen geben. Das Selbst zwischen Erkenntnis und Gabe (Freiburg and Munich: Alber, 2012), 89 ff. 484 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 298. 485 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols II, 329. 486 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols II, 319. 487 Ricoeur, Structure, Word, Event, 96. 488 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols II, 319. 489 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols II, 319. 490 Ricoeur, Structure, Word, Event, 92. 491 Cf. the chapter ›Structure and Event‹, in Structure, Word, Event, 88 ff. 482

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3. Religion and the time of reorigination The key to the role that religion plays for this constitution of our hermeneu­ tical thinking can be seen in a structural proportionality in Ricoeur’s onto­ logical conception of interpretation, namely the correspondence between the function of hermeneutics for the whole of our human existence and the function of religion for the origination of hermeneutics. In his retractatio of the »symbolism of evil« in »The Conflict of Interpretations« we find this connection which is crucial for the »ontology of the sacred«492 characterized in a tentatively but very explicitly formulated assumption, namely »that the hermeneutics of evil is not an indifferent domain but the most significant domain, perhaps the very source of the hermeneutic problem itself«.493 This implies that in order to comprehend the function which symbolism in general has for our philosophical thinking we would have to go back to an essentially religious origin of that function or, to put it the other way round, to the account which our religious consciousness gives of the origin of its symbolic explication. This is indeed the direction in which Ricoeur goes in order to solve a decisive conceptual problem, i.e. to point out that the »circle of hermeneu­ tics« is not a circulus vitiosus.494 If we want to solve this problem we have to give a philosophical interpretation to the one genuinely religious principle that contains the essence of that hermeneutic circle: »›You must understand in order to believe, but you must believe in order to understand.‹«495 Taking this principle seriously means to state an ontological correlation between hermeneutics and religion, a correlation that can only be understood in the horizon of its historical development. »Such is the circle: Hermeneutics proceeds from the preunderstanding of the very matter which through interpretation it is trying to understand. But thanks to this hermeneutic circle, I can today still communicate with the sacred by explicating the preunderstanding which animates the interpretation. Hermeneutics, child of ›modernity‹, is one of the ways in which this ›modernity‹ overcomes its own forgetfulness of the Sacred.«496 So, the circle that originates from the 492 493 494 495 496

Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols II, 320. Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols II, 317. Cf. fn 14. Cf. Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 298. Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 298. Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 298.

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relation between belief and understanding in the core of our symbolism is not vicious because it expresses a dynamism that is inherent in the logic of symbolism itself—a logic that is essentially a historical and therefore temporal logic. Only by the reference to a preunderstanding preceding and underlying all moments and movements of our symbolic understanding we can cope with the dynamics which are inherent in the core of all symbolism, i.e. the »dynamics, by which symbolism is subject to being itself surpassed«.497 It is this dynamics of self-surpassing for which our religious consciousness provides a genuine explication, an explication that coincides with the religious explanation of the origin of our human existence itself. To grasp the genuinely religious idea of the origin of self-interpretation we must again emphasize the paradoxical character of our task. This is what Ricoeur does when he gives his answer to the question what he meant when he insisted so strongly on the power of the symbols to »give« rise to thinking. He makes the difference between a primary, »everyday« meaning of a symbol and a second meaning that is »given« to us in a radical sense, i.e., as a meaning that we cannot have constituted by ourselves. The »sense in which [the] symbol ›gives‹« is the following: »it gives because it is a primary intentionality that gives the second meaning«.498 Like a painting which can only be a picture of its object because it is not simply a copy, but makes visible what would remain invisible without it,499 »in distinction to technical signs, which are perfectly transparent […], symbolic signs are opaque: The first, literal, patent meaning analogically intends a second meaning which is not given otherwise than in the first«.500 If this is the generally valid reconstruction of the symbolic structure of hermeneutical interpretation, then the question of the origin of this structure—and thereby of the »life of symbols«501—can only be explicated as the highly paradoxical problem: How can the »second«, the sacred meaning of a symbol be given Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 293. Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 290. Cf. fn 203 in the article »Overcoming Metaphysics« in this volume. 499 For this cf. my article »The philosophical relevance of ›images‹« in this volume. (Slightly extended version in: ›Das Bild der Wahrheit und die Perspektive der Freiheit‹, in Weltbild – Bildwelt. Ergebnisse und Beiträge des Int. Symposiums der Straniak-Stiftung, ed. by Walter Schweidler [Weingarten: Academia, 2007], 21–58.) 500 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 290. 501 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 290. 497

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to us through a primary meaning which yet at the same time is our only available medium by which we can protect the sacred symbol from the loss of the opaqueness that connects it with its transcendent origin and keeps alive and necessary the process of its hermeneutic interpretation? At this point it is decisive to see that by this characterization of our problem we have not primarily formulated an abstract philosophical question; rather we have by means of this question characterized indirectly a stage of human self-interpretation. In a more detailed analysis we would have to specify this aspect, and, to my opinion, we would come back to that bottom of religious belief that can be characterized in the categories of cultural anthropology as our »cultic« consciousness.502 Just to illustrate this, I would mention an interesting passage where Ricoeur, in order to support his thesis that philosophy »is a new beginning«, but at the same time the »recovery of the enigmas which precede, envelop, and nourish this […] inquiry into the beginning«, refers to an institution which is eminently significant for the cultic consciousness, namely the oracle: »For such is the situation: on the one hand, all has been said before philosophy, by sign and by enigma. That is one of the meanings of the phrase of Heraclitus: ›The master whose oracle is at Delphi does not speak, does not dissimulate: he signifies…‹ On the other hand, we have the task of speaking clearly, by taking perhaps also the risk of dissimulating, by interpreting the oracle.«503 In this characterization we find one of the essential features of cultic consciousness, i.e. its constitutive paradoxical self-understanding as the institutional protector of an original word spoken to us, which is a word different from all the other words we have in everyday life but which we can only protect by institutions based on these everyday words. The task of our cultic forms of life is essentially constituted by the handling of the risk to dissimulate the original word and alienate its meaning through the unavoidable forms of its verbal conservation.504 But the peculiarity of the cultic aspect of religious consciousness may be left aside in our context. What is counting for us is that the paradoxical problem of the conservation of the sacred through the everyday meaning of our symbols brings us back to the fundamental paradox which we found in Ricoeur’s concepts of philosophy and of narration, i.e., the paradox of For this cf. my article ›On the Social Origin of Time in Language‹, in this volume. The concept of »cultic consciousness« is explicated in Wiedergeburt, Vol. II, ch. V C. 503 Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 296. 504 Cf. my article, On the Social Origin of Time in Language. 502

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reorigination: that an extrahistorical and insofar unrepeatable origin of human self-understanding must have been and must be further handed down to us and our descendents by symbolic forms of its repetition. As essential as this paradox is for his concept of hermeneutics, as far reaching is Ricoeur’s approach to it by the means of his »ontology of the sacred« and his claim that the solution to the problem of the hermeneutic circle is essentially a religious one. What we have to point out finally is the aspect of »religion« which is decisive for this claim. I think the result is this: The specifically religious solution that Ricoeur sees for our problem must be drawn from the revelation of human existence as in itself symbolic, i.e., as the origin of a being who is constituted in itself already as a symbol so that its origin is still going on as long as it remains in the process of self-interpretation, i.e., of hermeneutics. In one of his contributions to the Colloquio Castelli with the title »L’enchevêtrement de la voix et de l’écrit dans le discours biblique«,505 Ricoeur has presented his interpretation of the Exodus as a »primor­ dial« narration dedicated to the presentation of the incomparable event that in its essence escapes from the order of historical events, an order which however makes any narration possible. What the primordial narration pronounces as the »origin of the origins«506 is the coincidence of the original word and the origin of all things in the creation of the world. So, what it pronounces is that in the words in which it is pronounced the origin of our world is still going on. This means that it claims to incorporate this origin by ascribing to itself the power which constitutes the difference between the words in which it is pronounced and all our own words, namely the power to »set the words before the things«.507 So, by being pronounced to us, it opens to us the chance to be led back by it to the symbolic constellation in which we not only find ourselves but from Paul Ricoeur, »L’enchevêtrement de la voix et de l’écrit dans le discours biblique«, in Archivio di Filosofia, 60, ed. by Marco Olivetti (Milan/Padua: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 1992): 233–247. German translation: »Die Verflechtung von Stimme und Schrift im biblischen Diskurs«, in Paul Ricoeur, An den Grenzen der Hermeneutik. Philosophische Reflexionen über die Religion (Freiburg and Munich: Alber, 2008), 95–115. 506 Cf. Ricoeur, An den Grenzen der Hermeneutik, 103. 507 Cf. Ricoeur, An den Grenzen der Hermeneutik, 103: »die Worte vor die Dinge zu setzen«; Ricoeur here quotes Paul Beauchamp, L’un et l’autre Testament. Essai de lecture (Paris: Seuil, 1976). 505

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which we have originated; it leads us back to that from where and out of which we come into being. So, this pronouncement reveals an ontological presupposition which enables us to comprehend philosophically why it is possible and even—at the same time—508 necessary; but it pronounces it to us as an insight which has and could be given to us by revelation only. Once it is revealed we can repeat it independently of its pronouncement; but the repetition loses the connection to its origin once we forget that it had to be revealed in order to become repeatable, and hermeneutics is the philosophical way to prevent us from forgetting this. The consequence of this is that when we search the ontological reason why the reorigination, i.e., the repetition of the unrepeatable origin in its unrepeatability is possible and even necessary, we have to turn to the self-understanding of the speech in which this reason has been and is pro­ nounced to us. What are the decisive features of that self-understanding? Basically,509 Ricoeur’s answer is: that it is the Word of God and that it is given to us as a written word; that means: it is the Word of the Holy Scripture. These two elements constitute two kinds of relations between what is considered to be the original and the derived meaning of the sacred Word. Firstly, there is the »vertical distance« which opens up between the human word bound to a voice and the other word which is carried by no voice, no face, no body…510 This distance is already decisive for the idea of a Holy Scripture, a sacred text: like in the poetic work, there is narration and a narrator’s voice in the text which hands down to us the divine Word, A very significant aspect of his correlation between religious and philosophical inter­ pretation of the world is Ricoeur’s reference to the topos of what I would call an »aposte­ rioric necessity«, the ground of which is to be found, in Ricoeur’s words, in the »move from the contingency of evil to a certain ›necessity‹ of evil« and the understanding of which »is the greatest task but also the most perilous one for a philosophy nourished by the sym­ bols«. This topos is the root of the eminent importance which for our philosophical think­ ing is constituted by the religious figure of a felix culpa which »for the movement which in symbolic thought goes from the beginning of evil to its end seems indeed to suppose the idea that all this finally has a meaning, that a meaningful figure imperiously takes form through the contingency of evil […] The schemata of necessity that we can test have to satisfy a very strange demand; the necessity appears only afterwards, viewed from the end, and ›in spite of‹ the contingency of evil.« (Ricoeur, The Hermeneutics of Symbols I, 310 f.). 509 In our context I cannot refer to the parts of his argumentation which refer to the Prophets and the Book of Wisdom. 510 Cf. Ricoeur, An den Grenzen der Hermeneutik, 99. 508

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but the narrator refers to a kind of events without witnesses.511 He does not claim to have been present when the Word has been spoken which justifies his pronouncement. He is talking about God by the power of God’s Word, but he does not claim that God speaks through him. The consequence is that, explicitly or not, he refers to another source of legitimization than the author of a poetic text, and that other source of legitimization is the authority that opens the space for the Holy Scripture. The narrator of the divine Word has to write, and as a writer he cannot deny the role and the claim of other writings or at least of a process of translation between the original divine Word and its written repetition. This is an intermediate sphere to which he owes the power in the name of which he pronounces the divine Word, and this means: His pronouncement is not his alone but the pronouncement of a tradition and of the institutions which constitute that tradition. This brings us to the second relation, the »horizontal dis­ tance« between the original and the derived meaning of the divine Word in the self-understanding of its pronouncers. The distance Ricoeur hereby refers to is a »mysterious relation«512 between the divine Word and the Holy Scriptures; but to explicate this we must first consider the role of a second authoritative source for the translation of the divine Word besides its narration, namely the divine law. The dialectic between word and writing provides a connection which Ricoeur—at least in the context of the Tora which is his explicit theme in these remarks—sees as constitutive for the religious origin of hermeneutics: the connection between narration and law. The law is the paradigmatic scripture by which the divine Word of the extrahistorical origin is transformed to the source of legitimation for historical institutions. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Moses is seen as the figure who incorporates the relation between the divine Word and the written law based on it, and as that figure he is paradigmatic for the high complexity of this relation. At Mount Sinai Moses receives the Word of God as the original codex of law given by God to his people; but in his anger about the people’s superstition, he destroys the tablets on which is written and writes it down again, but now as the law of the covenant that constitutes the political identity of the people. Thus, the genuine condition of the political identity of the people that sees itself as subject to God’s 511 512

Ricoeur, An den Grenzen der Hermeneutik, 103. Ricoeur, An den Grenzen der Hermeneutik, 99.

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law is the absence of the original legislator and the intermediate role of his representative. This now is the constellation that opens the decisive relation between the divine Word and the Holy Scripture that is essentially circular. The original Word is considered the source of the Scripture; but the institutional framework which the tradition is based on and by which the original power and meaning of the Word is protected with at the same time depends on the Scripture which again is based on the background of its revelation. At this point the historical and the political dimension of the »horizon­ tal distance« can no longer be ignored. The circle which is so constitutive for the reorigination of the sacred meaning of our symbols turns out to be the circle between the canonized scriptures and the community or rather the representatives of the community which is based on the power to canonize them.513 And this circle, as Ricoeur emphasizes strongly in the conclusion of his reflection,514 can never be surpassed. But not being able to be eliminated is not a challenge to the reflected concept of hermeneutics; it is, on the contrary, the final justification of its philosophical validity. The reason for this is that it implies that the time in which the critical reflection of the pronouncement of the »primordial narration« is possible and still necessary, the time in which its unrepeatable origin can be and has to be repeated as a religious origin but in a way being independent of the institutional framework of its religious pronouncement, i.e. the time of the philosophical reorigination of the religious origin of our human existence in a critical and »modern« way, is now.

Ricoeur, An den Grenzen der Hermeneutik, 100; Ricoeur here explicitly mentions the Catholic Church and the authority which the magisterium derives from the scriptures which it has canonized. 514 Ricoeur, An den Grenzen der Hermeneutik, 113. 513

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Some of the most peculiar developments in 20th century thought must show the incomparable inspiration which the philosophy of the late Heideg­ ger has been and the effect it has had on utterly different, in part radically opposed thinkers.515 The more cryptic and idiosyncratic especially the short artful [kabinettstückartig] meditations on Being, truth, event, clearing, and presence, the more they »leave for the reader to supply« (Goethe), the more adaptable [anschlussfähig] they have proved, both in terms of their content, as well as in terms of their method. What is the secret of the congenial magic that emanates from these texts? They cannot be reduced to some formula; we may only follow some of the ways they have opened for us. In doing so we are – with increasing thoughtworthiness [nachdenkenswert] – not following filial relations between the texts, i.e. relations of dependency between the inspirer and those inspired, instead we are moving – and here the central theme of my thinking is already addressed – in the opposite temporal direction, to that in which the trace which we may find in the texts is still about to be laid; hence, where the disclosure [Mitteilung], which the reader takes out of what is disclosed [das Mitgeteilte], is still in the process of being completed. One follows the paradox of catching up with oneself. The relation of dependency is not primarily that of the receiver upon the sender of the message, but the reverse, as in Proust’s famous metaphor of the »Celtic belief«516, it is the sender who depends upon the receiver, just like the soul banished to the tree waits for a rider, who as the real protagonist of the story follows the trace back to the soul in order for that soul to overwhelm the rider horse and all. Therefore, I want to deal here with the congenial magic of the late Heidegger and the liberators it has summoned for itself from a particular By »late« I mean Heidegger after the »turn« [Kehre], which is to say mainly the train of thoughts which leads him from the lecture »What is Metaphysics?« in 1929 to his speech »Zeit und Sein« in 1962. 516 Cf. my article »Time’s Redeeming Urgency« in this volume. 515

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viewpoint, which to me seems to illuminate – not only prima facie but in a literal epistemological sense – a surprising turn of thought. Heidegger, exposer of »onto-theology« at the heart of metaphysics which forces itself into human Dasein in its very falling short of what it promised, the disen­ chanter of the »god of philosophers« to whom one cannot pray and before whom one cannot dance, the second in that final battle which had to be fought in the name of Nietzsche’s adage that »God is dead«: Heidegger of all people has been caught up with, maybe even been overtaken by the thinker who like no other embodies the coexistence and inner connection between philosophy and theology, in such a way that it is worth critically investigating, and whom I can only hope to promote with my comments here.

1. Thinking within the paradox: Irrevocability of the given and showing-itself of the invisible First, it is enlightening to direct our attention at those motifs of Heidegger’s thinking, which did not awaken Marion’s sense of a harmony between philosophy and theology but sparked harsh critique from his side. To these belongs the early essay rooted in Heidegger’s dialogue with Bultmann which sketches a complementary relationship between »phenomenology and theology« in which theology is to be understood as the »interpreta­ tion of faithful existence«517, which as a positive science aims at »the justified uncovering of a given and somehow already uncovered being [Seienden]« in order to »make[…] faith and that which is believed its object, […] because it itself arises out of faith. It is the science that faith of itself motivates and justifies«518; where the »being« which is »the given [das Vorliegende] and somehow already uncovered« is defined as »Chris­ tianity«. Nothing could be further from Marions notion of revelation and its phenomenality. Equally, any connection to the train of thought which winds itself through the dark years and the dark manuscripts in which Heidegger, Martin Heidegger, »Phenomenology and Theology«, trans. James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo, in Pathmarks, 50. In the Pathmarks edition first published in German in 1964 Heidegger adds a letter in which he retracts his earlier characterization of theology as a science. 518 Heidegger, Phenomenology and Theology, 46. 517

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cut-off from real philosophical discourse, finds in Hölderlin the ideal of that totally different and fresh way of speaking, and which includes his speaking of »the God« is denied by Marion. The »divine God« in front of whom one may kneel and pray is for Heidegger a name which first can be grasped in the »truth of being« and »the light of the essence of divinity«519 and the meaning of which is thus subsumed under the phenomenality, which is particular to being and the relation it has to humans intentionally directed towards it. That too is almost the opposite of what Marion conceives of as the decisive constellation for the phenomenality of revelation according to which objects are given to thought, such that »intuition exceeds inten­ tion«520 and thus constitute what Marion calls »saturated phenomena«; speaking from a philosophy of science perspective it is an explanans, which is the hitherto unsurpassed key to any explanandum assigned to it. Satu­ rated phenomena explain by showing and giving themselves, and nothing can relativize or augment their explanatory power. If there is a connection here to the phenomenality of revelation, then, for Marion, it consists in what within the horizon of the expectations, experiences, convictions, hopes and all other intentional operations of human self-transcendence that arise out of what precedes revelation cannot principally be captured and which, if forced back into this horizon turns human thinking into an idol of itself. None of that which revelation reveals was before it or would without it be »somehow already uncovered«, as if the »call of being« would equally originate from the human being to God as the other way around. That they may not be captured by pursuing [nach-denkend] reason is precisely what defines saturated phenomena as paradoxes, which are resolved by that which does not merely lie outside of the epistemic horizon of human beings, but which is even intentionally opposed to it. »The visibility of the appearance thus arises against the flow of the intention – whence the paradox, the counter-appearance, the visibility running counter to the

Heidegger, Basic Writings, (San Francisco, Harper, 1993), 230. Jean-Luc Marion, »Aspekte der Religionsphänomenologie: Grund, Horizont und Offenbarung«, in: Michael Gabel, Hans Joas (Hg.): Von der Ursprünglichkeit der Gabe. Jean-Luc Marions Phänomenologie in der Diskussion, (Freiburg/München: Alber, 2017), 7–36. 519

520

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aim.«521 For Marion this is the starting point from which our asking for God can become a topic of and in some sense even the central topic of philosophy. More than any other religious and thus theological content of revelation, this saturated phenomenon is one of and in a certain way the ur-image [Urbild] of phenomenality itself. »[E]very phenomenon shows itself in the measure (or the lack of measure) to which it gives itself. To be sure, not all phenomena get classified as saturated phenomena, but all saturated phenomena accomplish the one and only paradigm of phenomenality.«522 The revelation then does not have to be thought alongside phenom­ enality or supplied to it as a justification, the revelation itself is that phenomenon which among all saturated phenomena stands for them as a whole and thus for all phenomena; it stands among them, and we might say, metonymically for them and for the occurrence of truth within them. »The phenomenon of revelation not only falls into the category of saturation (paradox in general), but it concentrates the four types of saturated phenomena and is given at once as historic event, idol, flesh, and icon (face)«, hence as, »saturation of saturation«523. There is, to mark a final point of divergence, no path from this fundamental understanding of the relationship between phenomenality and revelation, to the kind of theology of which the very late Heidegger said, that he was sometimes tempted to write about, and in which, as he says, the word »Being« should not have occurred, being rather based upon the strict disjunction between thought and faith, which in turn would have excluded the paradox as the decisive mediating factor for Marion. However, the paradox is the door to that room in which, if anywhere, we may find Heidegger and Marion together. If we want to find the path from Heidegger to Marion, we have to look in the direction in which the paradox as an essential element [Wesenselement] of his thinking is at work, and which yet Heidegger has never truly caught up with himself. In order to do so, I think, we have to direct our attention towards the turn which occurs in the innermost part of the late Heidegger’s way of think­ ing [Denkweges], namely in the path from »What is Metaphysics?« in 1929 up until »Time and Being« in 1962. This turn is not a break, which could Jean-Luc, Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of the Given, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (California: Standford University Press, 2002), 225. 522 Marion, Being Given, 227. 523 Marion, Being Given, 235. 521

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be fixed chronologically, rather it is a non-unidirectional flow between the two poles of »being« [Sein] and »event« [Ereignis]. The tension connecting both poles arises out of the dynamic of displacement, which the whole way of thinking [Denkweg] it supports is directed towards, and by which »meta­ physics«, »the fundamental event [Grundgeschehen] of our being there«524 is condemned to miss the essence of its being by the very way of inquiry with which it is trying to trace it. The concept of the »event« is ultimately intended to uncover and thereby sublate [aufzuheben] that dynamic of dis­ placement. In 1929 Heidegger characterizes metaphysics as the »inquiry beyond or over beings that aims to recover them as such and as a whole for our grasp..«525 The program of writing a »history of Being« [Seinsgeschichte], which Heidegger pursues in the coming decades, is the »step back« behind the path and along the path which metaphysics has followed in accor­ dance with its intention to »regain« being in its entirety. The »ontological difference« between »Being« [Sein] and »beings« [Seiendes], which was the starting point of Heidegger’s early thinking is in 1929 still the guiding principle for the »history of Being«. »The difference between beings and Being is the area within which metaphysics, Western thinking in its entire nature, can be what it is. The step back thus moves out of metaphysics into the essential nature of metaphysics.«526 This Heidegger declares at the height of his late philosophy, in the superb lecture »Identity and Difference«527 (1957), which insofar continues the program intended by the »history of Being« to get behind metaphysics by following in its path. In 1949 in his introduction to »What is Metaphysics« Heidegger had already made clear that this path is none other than the path of metaphysics itself, hence that the difference between metaphysics and thought according to the »history of Being« consists merely in metaphysical thought’s not knowing and not being able to know and therefore not being able to grasp what determined this way, namely: the experience of Being. »It is excluded by its own nature as metaphysics from the experience of be[ing], for be-ing (ón), as formulated by metaphysics, always formulates nothing but what Heidegger, What is Metaphysics?, 42. Heidegger, What is Metaphysics?, 93. 526 Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 51. 527 Cf. fn 526. 524

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has already been indicated as be-ing (hḗ ón). But metaphysics never even pays attention to what has been hidden in this ὄν, insofar as it has been allowed to come out [unverborgen].«528 That was already the basic thesis of the 1929 lecture; it is however of great importance to emphasize the genuinely temporal sense in which Hei­ degger spoke of »getting back« [Zurückzuerhalten] as the guiding intuition of metaphysics already in 1929 but which he made explicit only now, in 1949: »Thus time is referred back to emergence [Unverborgenheit], that is, [to] the truth of be[ing]. But the time to be thought of now is not experienced in some sort of outcome of [a kind of] be-ing. Time is obviously of a wholly different nature [Wesen], which is not merely unthought of so far in the metaphysical concept of time, but will never be thought in it. Thus time becomes the first name of what still has to be considered about the truth of be[ing] and experienced for the first time.«529 This marks, avant la lettre, the space which in Heidegger’s 1957 lecture »Identity and Difference« is taken by the concept of the »event« [Ereignis], the meaning of which differs notably from that of the »history of Being« of 1929. This new meaning does not relativize the ontological difference, but it is temporalized in a certain way. »Being is present and abides only as it concerns man through the claim it makes on him. For it is man, open toward Being, who alone lets Being arrive as presence.«530 What is this »letting arrive« [Ankommenlassen]? Heidegger preemp­ tively rejects the charge that this would place Being in a transcendental dependence to human thinking. Rather: »Man and Being are appropriated to each other. They belong to each other. From this belonging to each other, which has not been thought out more closely, man and Being have first received those determinations of essence by which man and Being are grasped metaphysically in philosophy.«531 Yet, this seems to merely shift the question which directs us back to Marion’s critical jumping off point. For, does not Heidegger here postulate precisely the logical primacy of human intentionality before the intentional objects corresponding to it, which contradicts the notion that the »saturated phenomenon« may be the key for the possibility of a philosophical understanding of revelation? If not, we will have to turn to the attribute »open toward Being«, which Heidegger 528 529 530 531

Heidegger, What is Metaphysics?, 28. Heidegger, What is Metaphysics?, 23–24. Heidegger, Identity and Difference, 31. Heidegger, Identity and Difference, 31.

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bestows upon the human being. What can it mean for the human being to be »open toward Being«, other than that Being is prefigured, anticipated [vorgebahnt], or in some other way constituted by human thinking? I think at this point we have to turn towards the genuinely phe­ nomenological alternative to the constitutive relationship, namely the notion of »Daseinsrelativität« [relativity of being], which was developed by Max Scheler and taken up by Robert Spaemann. Food, for example, is only food if, and as long as, there are beings which consume it for nourishment; that does however not mean, that the object which nourishes them is »constituted« by the beings which consume it. Whatever the object is, it exists, irrespective of whether it is food or not. Generalized to our question this means: Being [Sein] is relative to Dasein in general and our human Dasein in particular. This does not mean: That what is, is only »for us«. Rather it means: What is, can for us only be represented [vorstellbar] as »being« [Seiendes] in relation to our powers of representation; more precisely: We may only think it in its relation to our representational thought. Our representational thought can only think what there is as »being there«. Thereby, »Being« [Sein] (and with it the »ontological difference«) is indeed relativized, but not in favor of what our representa­ tional thought constitutes, but in favor of what there is, beyond not only its being thought [Gedachtwerdens], but equally beyond its Being. In this context »beyond« has a decidedly temporal dimension; not to put too fine a point on it we might even say: The »thing itself« forever eludes us not as that which proceeds the appearance of phenomena, but as that which follows it and distracts us from what is given in the phenomena, hence as what obscures the phenomena in their appearance, in their givenness itself. Heidegger first explicitly formulated this connection 1962 in »Time and Being«: »In the beginning of Western thinking, Being is thought, but not the ›It gives‹ as such. The latter withdraws in favor of the gift which It gives. That gift is thought and conceptualized from then on exclusively as Being with regard to beings.«532 I think here we may mark the point at which Marion – like the Proustian rider – productively follows the trace Heidegger has laid with his concept of the event. This is the trace which leads out of and back behind metaphysics, and the code which renders it legible is in an important sense temporal. From Marion’s perspective the answer to the question what it 532

Heidegger, On Time and Being, 5.

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can mean to »let being arrive« must be: What exists arrives in our Being [Dasein] by becoming invisible in the visible, and thus makes itself – in an absolutely temporal sense – disappear. This is Marion’s central thesis in »Étant donné« and his phenomenological antithesis to metaphysics: Phenomena, in appearing as the given, give themselves. That also means, they do not re-present anything, not even the conditions of the possibility of their own appearing. »The phenomenon can appear as such, and not as the appearance of something else more essential to it than itself, in short it can appear […] – and this is indeed the primary goal of phenomenology – only if it pierces through the mirror of representation. Appearing must thus remove itself from (if not always contradict) the imperial rule of the a priori conditions of knowledge by requiring that what appears force its entry onto the scene of the world, advancing in person without a stuntman, double, or any other representative standing in for it. This advance is named, from the point of view of the one who knows, intentionality; from the point of view of the thing-itself, it is called givenness.«533 Givenness here in the precise double sense of the word which Marion takes over from Husserl.534 That which gives itself [was sich gibt] shows itself to us as given [Gegebenes] and thereby becomes invisible within the given, it perishes in and with our experience and can only be preserved by us in the form of a sign of itself, especially a name. It is present to us within the visible as such a thing of the past [Vergangenes], thereby what gives itself belongs to us, without ever belonging to the given or – and this is crucial – potentially ever having belonged to it. The uncatchable [das Uneinholbare]535 shows itself, »remembers« itself in us, as the invisible, which is insofar dependent for its being [daseinsrelativ] upon our seeing, and is yet in no way a priori, that is beyond all temporality determined by us, but determined for us by it like a past, which has never been present itself. This constellation, as speculative as it prima facie may seem, is predicated upon a particular »saturated« phenomenon. That with which phenomenology has pierced »the mirror of represen­ tation« is, as has been explicated, of relative being [daseinsrelativ] upon the essence of the image, not in the mathematical, technical or metaphorical, Marion, Being Given, 69. Cf. Marion, Being Given, 69, with reference to: Edmund Husserl, The Idea of Phe­ nomenology, (Heidelberg: Springer, 1999), 21–26 and 321. 535 Lit. »that which cannot be caught up with«. 533

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but in its genuinely artistic sense, in the sense of the painting. In going from Heidegger to Marion and back the ontological difference is replaced by an iconic difference, as it has been defined by thinkers such as Gottfried Boehm and Max Imdahl: the »Excess« (Gadamer) that the artistic image has to guard within itself in order not to become a double [Double] of what it depicts and thereby to remain an image and not to become another, a second thing.536 By the iconic difference the artistic image makes visible, what is uncatchably/irretrievably [uneinholbar] removed from the metaphysi­ cal »image« that our representational thinking [vorstellendes Denken] forms of beings [vom Seienden] and what remains hidden in the beings in virtue of the metaphysical image. The genuinely artistic »simultanization of the successive« reenacts, and thereby in a sense retrieves, what must have been forever lost in the visible in order for it to have given itself to us as being [Seiendes]. The author Marion enlists as support for the important insight into the image, that »it is the visibility itself that involves a nonvisibility«537, is Merleau-Ponty of whom he says: »It could not be said any better: the painting makes the invisible effect as such visible,« and which, with its relation to that, »›[…] to the visible, could nevertheless not be seen as a thing‹ […] that is to say, literally what I mean by the arising, the effect, the ›what it gives‹, which cannot appear like the things they are not, but which nevertheless makes possible the real visible to which they are essen­ tially related.«538 In the image we may see one more aspect phenomeno­ logical thinking has to glean from the paradox out of which it is still in a process of arising: »The given is exposed because it explodes. To give itself therefore is equivalent to showing itself.«539

2. Thinking after the paradox: The openness of perfection and the manifestness of the secret What exactly has the epithet »open toward being« to do with the birthlike process in which the phenomenon piercing the »mirror of representa­ 536 537 538 539

Cf. Boehm, Was ist ein Bild? Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 247. Marion, Being Given, 337. Marion, Being Given, 69.

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tion«, »force[s] its entry onto the scene of the world[?]«540 The starting point for answering this question must surely be the complex of openness, standing-in-the-open [Offenständigkeit], and manifestness in Heidegger’s 1930 lecture »The Essence of Truth«, which may serve as a beacon for the way of thinking we here pursue.541 In light of our focus on time we may readily appreciate that with the »open« [das Offene] Heidegger points to the »thing« [Gegenstand] as an occurrence [Geschehen] (as in German we might say that we have a difficult »stand« in office, or that an option »stood« open to one542), which in realizing itself with­ draws itself from itself and thereby retreats into within which it depicts itself: »The opposing [das Entgegenstehende543] as something thus put [das so Gestellte] has to traverse an open opposition [ein Entgegen] und yet stand still in itself and show itself as an enduring thing [Ding]. This appearance of the thing in the traversal of an opposition takes place in an opening the openness of which is not first created by presentation [vom Vorstellen], but is taken up only as an area of reference.«544 Taken from where? From everything that there is and that is what it is only therein (in everything in which) it has given itself as being. Wherein? In the past, which has never been present in this incident of giving. It is towards that past, that we are »open« in the repetition [Wiederholen545] of this appearance as an object [Gegenstand]. »Standing-in-theopen« [Offenständigkeit] on the other hand describes the human attitude towards that, which obstructs [verstellt] this coded gaze into and upon the Marion, Being Given, 69. I remember very vividly how Dieter Henrich belabored this complex for hours upon hours in the only Heidegger seminar of his I attended. 542 Translator’s note: The German expressions here meaning that one is in a difficult position in office or that an option is available, respectively. More natural examples in English would be »to take a firm stand« on an issue. The point here relates to the word »Gegenstand«, which is composed of »gegen« (against) and »Stand« (standing) and is taken by Heidegger to emphasize that the object has to realize itself in the opening by »standing against« its openness. This segue from nouns into verbs is arguably more common in the English language, given that many of its nouns can also act as verbs. 543 Lit. »that which stands against«, sort of a gerund of »Gegenstand«. 544 Martin Heidegger, »The Essence of Truth«, in Pathmarks, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 141. 545 Translator’s note: »Wiederholen« literally means to repeat, yet is composed of »wieder« (again) and »holen« (to get), such that a repeat can be read as the »re-get­ ting« of something. 540

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past: In Marion’s words the »mirror of representation«. »As thus placed, what stands opposed must traverse an open field of opposedness [Entge­ gen] and nevertheless must maintain its stand as a thing and show itself as something withstanding [ein Ständiges]. This appearing of the thing in traversing a field of opposedness takes place within an open region, the openness of which [So] is not first created by the presenting but rather is only entered into and taken over as a domain of relatedness.«546 The temporal aspect, hidden in what is »offenbar«547 can be explicated as a transition when we take into account the illocutionary ambiguity of the adjective when we say that something is »offenbar« a certain way [uncertain, seemingly], and when we say that it is known to be »offen­ bar« (or »offenkundig«) such and such a way. In this transition from the assumption to what has obviously occurred we are following time in a direction which is opposite to that in which the appearance as the given retreats from us and which distracts us from this other flow of time and from the given. Thereby, we imagine that past which escapes us throughout the whole of being as something which already was and as causally connected to our own past, as, speaking with Goodman, a »continuing« presence.548 Human beings are, as Goethe has said, »so overburdened by the unending conditions of the world of appearances that they cannot be aware of the one primal necessitating factor«549, and this confusion of conditions is coded by the direction, in which time, rather than following the trace back to the phenomenon removes us from it: »The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect: they both together make up the indivisible phenomenon. [Whoever recognizes this has taken the first step towards action].«550

Heidegger, »The Essence of Truth«, 141. Translator’s note: »offenbar« in Heidegger is customarily translated as »manifest«, yet the point the author (W.S.) makes here does not equally apply to »manifest« and no more suitable translation suggests itself. In short: in German one might say that something is »offenbar« meaning »that it seems a certain way«, or »appears to be one way rather than another«; however, the term can also be used to say that something is certain or obvious. 548 Cf. Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), chapters 3, 5 and 4. 549 J.W. von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister, (London: Alma Classics 2013), 1031. 550 J. W. Goethe, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, (London: Macmillan and Co. 1908), 146. 546 547

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What conceals itself in the »manifest« [im Offenbaren] and in the tran­ sition into being as a whole which it represents, is manifestly [offenbar] the act [die Tat] by which alone we may invert the direction by which time dis­ tracts us from the origin of all which is given in time. It is my thesis, that we may only gain the insight, which was finally enabled by talk of the »event«, which Heidegger’s »path towards phenomenology«551 ultimately led to. Here a connection discloses itself to that, beyond all that is open [alles Offene] and everything that is manifest [alles Offenbare], which may by rights be called »revelation«. This undertaking, however, requires a glance into the labyrinth of notes taken during that darkest time of Heidegger’s way of thinking [Denkweg], which one may and should only highlight insofar as the intersubjectively and argumentatively comprehensible part of this great philosopher’s works shines a light upon them. In light of masterpieces such as »On the Essence of Truth« and »Identity and Difference« we may attempt a glance into the cryptic darkness. Having made the point, that the human being is »open toward being«, such a glance especially into the Contributions to Philosophy, which herald »the event«, appears worthwhile to me to mark the decisive point at which the event and revelation seem to have crossed over. Where exactly is that point to be found? It is to be found in section VIII of Heidegger’s »Contributions« where he takes up the »ontological difference« as that, »which bears the entire history of philosophy and as such could never be for philosophy (in the form of metaphysics) something that had to be questioned and thus named. It is something transitional in the transition from the end of metaphysics to the other beginning.«552 Yet, how has this »differentiation« between being [Sein] and beings [Seiendem] become the central supporting principle of all of metaphysics? The word »differentiation« already hints at the decisive temporal aspect of the answer to that question: »This differentiation bears the guiding question of metaphysics: What are beings? But this differentiation is not expressly raised to the level of knowledge in the course of asking the guiding question and is even less held fast as question-worthy [Fragwürdiges]. Does the differentiation bear the guiding question, or does the guiding question Mein Weg in die Phänomenologie is published in Heidegger’s last systematic collection of texts »Zur Sache des Denkens«, 1969. 552 Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012), 369. 551

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first carry out, although not explicitly, the differentiation? Obviously the latter. For the differentiation appears in the horizon of the guiding question, and also in a first clarifying meditation on the guiding question, as something ultimate.«553 The question triggers the search for an answer, which without that search would have nothing to answer to and thus remaining hidden from itself asks for precisely that search which precedes it and remains uncatchable [uneinholbar] for it. »Openness« in the sense of the epithet in »Difference and Identity« means, which is my thesis, precisely this: That what is asked for in metaphysical questions, may not be caught up with by so questioning, since without ever knowing it, metaphysical questioning itself is – in a temporal sense – the hidden asked for of itself. In expressions reminiscent of »Being and Time« Heidegger expresses the matter thus: »Inasmuch as the projector projects and opens up the openness, this opening up reveals that the projector himself is thrown […]«554 It can, however, only reveal itself within history, for throughout history metaphysics hides within itself the determination that opens up history and the decisive disclosure of that history, as what is totally hidden before (in the temporal sense) it in that history. »In which history does the human being have to stand in order to belong to the appropriation? To that end, must humans not be thrust ahead into the ›there‹, an occurrence which becomes manifest to them as thrownness?«555 The guiding question hidden from us speaking of the event is the question as to what happens in thus questioning: We think we are asking for an answer, yet we are asking for what has happened already and only in thus questioning. The questions pursue the uncatchable, which, going back to Marion, »reminds« us as the invisible upon which our questioning is daseinsrelativ, and which can yet neither be predetermined by us, nor by our questioning. What is our questioning (in the double sense of that word) after? Heidegger’s answer is essentially the following: It is the question of »Being« [Da-sein] »where« the human being’s (according to »What is Metaphysics?«) questioning exceeds being [das Seiende] to regain it in full and as such. This question of »where«, which Heidegger worked out in »The Essence of Truth«, is answered in the »Contributions« thus: In 553 554 555

Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, 366. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, 240. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, 251.

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alḗtheia, the unhiddenness of being as a whole; speaking with Kuhn and Wittgenstein we may say, in our world-view [Weltbild]. Wherever we believe to have in front of us the whole of being, which through our thinking (and especially through the scientific mode reigning it, today roughly »Darwin«) has become wholly accessible to us, is the place [Ort] of potentially total forgetfulness of being [Seinsvergessenheit]. We are open to being, we might say, so long as our world-view [Weltbild] is not closed, hence so long as the transition to the manifest [offenkundig] is not closed off in the name of some »world formula« or some other sort of fulfillment of our metaphysical superstition that »all« must be transparent [Durchschaubarkeit] to us. What the early Heidegger called falling prey to the world, he now calls making accessible [Zugänglichmachen] of the world. »If [aletheia] is viewed solely from the ›side‹ of beings as such, then this accessibility can also be called manifestness and perceiving can be called making manifest.«556 The where of the question concerning our Da-sein557, is the one »side« to which there must be another. Where is that side? The genuinely temporal answer to this question is: This other side must be the decision, which we are up to this point still in the process of returning to. It is this return by which we may relate to that being thrust ahead [Vorausgestoßensein] resulting from the paradox of a decision, which is at the same time already taken and still open with regard to the choice in which it consists. Thereby we reach the fundamental sense of the epithet »open toward being«, and our question poses itself in the following way: »What thereby gets lost back into the first beginning, so that concealedness and concealing, as such, are never questioned?«558 The answer to this question in turn constitutes the closure of this cryptic train of thought, in which Heidegger asks for what has revealed itself in the beginning of metaphysics, specifically in the question what being is [was das Seiende sei]: »This is a step on a historical path leading to the nearness of that thinking which understands the projection no longer as a condition of representation but as Da-sein and as the thrownness of a clearing which has found a stand whose first accomplishment is the bestowal of concealment and thereby the manifestation of the refusal.«559 556 557 558 559

Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, 263. Translator’s note: Da-sein here in the sense of »being there«. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, 263. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, 353.

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As little clear as this passage may seem, Heidegger has yet manifestly arrived at the conclusion, that it is the guiding question of metaphysics by which we as human beings have been »thrust-forward« into the »there« [das »Da«], i.e. into the place of our being, and that this guiding question has preceded the »ontological difference« and all the consequences which since then have followed from it. The place of our being however determines our world-view, and Heidegger calls that which remains concealed from us in this world-view and thus remains uncatchably removed, a revelation [ein Offenbaren]. This is no play on words, but the heeding of another ambiguity in the concept of the »revealed«560, namely the ambiguity between its adjectival and its verbal usage. What is revealed [offenbar] must have revealed itself or must have been revealed. The latter, in connection with the idea of a personal subject or a quasi-personal bestower of revelation is plainly not what Heidegger had in mind and could hardly be attributed to him. The event, if it is to fully unfold itself and to disappear in its own revelation, hence when, as »Time and Being« summarizes in 1962, the sending [Geschick]561 of being should be none other than »[a] giving which gives only its gift, but in the giving holds itself back and withdraws«562 can only have revealed itself. That is precisely the point Heidegger makes with the concept of the »event« at the end of his deliberations: It is not truly a concept, but a name. »What the name ›event of Appropriation‹ [das Ereignis]563 names can no longer be represented by means of the current meaning of the word; for in that meaning ›event of Appropriation‹ is understood in the sense of occurrence and happening – not in terms of Appropriating as the extending and sending which opens and preserves.«564 Five years earlier, in »Identity and Difference« the relevant passage goes as follows: »The term event of appropriation here no longer means what we would otherwise call a happening, an occurrence. It now is used as Translator’s note: »Offenbar« in the Heideggerian context is habitually translated as »manifest«, yet term may also be translated as »revealed« and indeed »revelation« in the Christian context is »die Offenbarung« in German. 561 »Geschick« literally means »something send«, yet it more conventionally designates a matter of »fate«, the quote plays on this double-meaning. 562 Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2022), 8. 563 Heidegger uses »Ereignis« in the double sense of an event [das Ereignis] that takes place and of appropriation [die Ereignis; Aneignung]. Cf. also the translator’s introduction. 564 Heidegger, On Time and Being, 20. 560

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a singulare tantum. What it indicates happens only in the singular, no, not in any number, but uniquely.«565 Obviously, from the perspective of »Being and Time«, this would already be saying too much. The requisite action with which we have to turn from conceptual thought [vorstellendem Denken], makes it impossible, to say more of the event than: That it happens [sich ereignet]: »This is why we can never place Appropriation [the event] in front of us, neither as something opposite us nor as something alI-encompass­ ing.«566 Thereby we return to the notion of an explanans, which is a key, uncatchable by anything preceding it, for any explanandum assigned to it. The paradox which we pursue [nach-denken] in philosophizing, is apparently [offenbar] that of something apparent [eines Offenbaren], which, foregoing any attempt at description, we may only witness as such. Something apparent, which is still in the process of becoming complete [vollenden] and which, in our having become conscious of it, must have already become complete [vollendet] in a past, which through everything in our Being [Dasein] which has led towards it, can never have been present. It seems to me, that this statement represents the greatest possi­ ble nearness, which can be achieved between Heidegger’s and Marion’s notion of revelation. In the paradigmatic »saturated phenomenon« of the revelation, that stands in metonymically for all other phenomena, the invisible and uncatchable reveals itself as that which is definitely and completely excluded in their connecting relation [verknüpfender Zusam­ menhang]. Marion, in contradistinction to Kant, has thus framed the issue roughly: »The conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience are not always equivalent to the conditions of the possibility of experience«567 Since: While the phenomenon »usually demands (according to Kant) to stand in a relation to at least one other phenomenon in order to become intelligible, the phenomenon of revelation imposes itself upon us by its very isolation, by refusing any relation to any other phenomenon – it always appears without a genealogy, as a break with the origin, as opening itself out Heidegger, Identity and Difference, 36. Heidegger, On Time and Being, 23. 567 Jean-Luc Marion, Das Erscheinen des Unsichtbaren: Fragen zur Phänomenalität der Offenbarung, trans. Alwin Letzkus (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2018), 29. [Translation by Thomas Schmidt] Cf. Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 56. 565

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of itself, a new beginning which was not announced by anything and which will never close or repeat itself.«568 Put differently: The revelation is always at the same time the revela­ tion of the impossibility of understanding the revelation to explain the revelation in terms of anything but itself. In this sense the revelation is essentially »secret revelation«. In contradistinction to Heidegger’s history of Being Marion conceives of revelation not as alḗtheia (»disclosure«) but as apokálypsis (»uncovering«). How the revelation is linked to the »event«, is a matter of the temporal interpretation of this relationship we are pursuing here.

3. Thinking despite and because of the paradox Marion in his determination of the relationship between the paradox and reason also distinguishes himself from Kant, specifically from his thesis that »transcendental illusions«569 lead us to pose unanswerable questions, in a distinctly temporal manner. »The paradox is far from formulating a rea­ sonably constructed question, to which no detectable object corresponds, rather it expresses an utmost intelligible, completely reasonable and in a manifold sense saturated answer to a question, which has, so far, not been formulated nor ever explicitly asked and the reasonableness of which has not yet been grasped. Put more precisely: The paradox leads thought onto the trace of an answer which proceeds its question, an eschatological answer, which preceeds the time of its question and has so far not been perceived. In a paradox it is not the answer, which is lacking, but the sense/direction of the question.«570 The religious connotation introduced here by the term »eschatologi­ cal« notwithstanding, the topos of the answer, which precedes its question uncatchably is a genuinely philosophical one and a central pillar in the works of the most outstanding thinkers of the 20th century. And it is the figure of thought, which allows us to bridge the gap between Marion and Heidegger’s notion of the event. However, we cannot omit discussing Marion, Das Erscheinen des Unsichtbaren, 27. [Translation by Thomas Schmidt] Cf. Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, 56. 569 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B354 f., B737. 570 Marion, Das Erscheinen des Unsichtbaren, 42. [Translation by Thomas Schmidt]. 568

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the one factor which may not be included in this relationship and which is fundamental to the religious aspect in Marion’s determination of the relation between philosophy and theology. To conclude we therefore return to the two aspects in which Heidegger in the Contributions sees the other thinking, the presence of which he suspects, flashing up like »a clearing which has found a stand whose first accomplishment is the bestowal of concealment and thereby the manifestation [offenbaren] of the refusal.«571 Concealment and refusal: In the former, which we may term the epistemic aspect, we may perceive a connection to Marion; not so for the latter, the aspect of will and decision. Let us briefly focus on the epistemic aspect. According to Marion the revelation »breaks into our experience as an event, as the event sine qua non. Since, if whatever shows itself is in no way surprising it does not deserve any attention, conversely, only that which surprises us and contradicts our expectations, predictions and the ordinary order of our reason, is worthy of attention«572. Heidegger agrees, that under this aspect we may regard the event as a kind of play, which only by virtue of the delaying, distracting dramatic composition may guide us towards its climax, from the vantage point of which the whole action leading to that climax first truly becomes clear to us. Despite the pathos with which Marion summons the shadow, that is cast over the whole action by the light of the ultimate revelation, without the play of shadows [Vexierspiel] the light of revelation could never have been attained. And vice versa: No matter the gravitas with which Heidegger makes us feel the tragedy that is our inexorable entanglement in the continuous net of metaphysical revelation and concealment [Ent- und Ver­ bergung], without the romantic glimmer of an inspiration from elsewhere shining fourth from the midst of this continuous happening [Geschehen] we would sink into the obsolescence of an infinite regress. »Called by the voice of be[ing], only man in the midst of all be-ing experiences the wonder of all wonders: that being is.«573 Thus writes Heidegger 1943. Where the human being, out of the darkness of the »Contributions« finds herself »thrust ahead« into being by the central question of metaphysics, there appears to be a light after 571 572 573

Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, § 262, 353. Marion, Das Erscheinen des Unsichtbaren, 52. [Translation by Thomas Schmidt]. Heidegger, »Postscript to ›What is Metaphysics‹«, 65.

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all shining from another place altogether. And in his great Nietzsche treatise »The History of Being of Nihilism«574, in which the identification of the object of metaphysics and the quest of metaphysics for its object leads to the fulfillment by non-fulfillment of the promise of the arrival of Being, here the notion of the mystery, otherwise not very prominent in Heidegger’s works, appears as a counterpoint to the »planetary« calamity into which metaphysics has led us. »What, according to its essence, preservingly conceals itself and thereby remains hidden from itself and in itself and nevertheless somehow appears is in itself what we call the secret«575, says Heidegger and continues: »In the inauthentic essence of nihilism occurs the secret of promising, in which being is itself by withholding itself as such.« The decisive passage follows at the end of the treatise, such that »metaphysics in concealing preserves the unconcealedness of being and thus becomes the secret of the history of Being«576. This ultimately means: The only secret we are in search of in metaphysics is that search itself, which in turn means: The mystery is, that there is no mystery. Is, whoever realizes this, not liberated [erlöst] from that search and their own entanglement in that search? »By mystery«, Marion cites Karl Barth, »Paul means what we call ›paradox‹.«577 With that we turn towards the other aspect, that of will and decision at the basis of all revelation. Heidegger touches upon it when he says that we have to attribute to the clearing, which grants concealment, »the refusal to reveal [offenbaren]«. If I am not profoundly mistaken, Heidegger has in the whole of his later philosophy marked by the »history of Being« and the »event«– in parallel to his idiosyncratic concept of guilt in »Being and Time« – pushed back the personal sense, concerning the responsibility for an individual act, of what he here calls »refusal«; and he has pushed it back in favor of the abstract connotation with categories taken not from the area of personal action, but from theoretical world-explication [Wel­ terschließung]. The »nihilating« nothing in »What is Metaphysics?«, the Cf. Martin Heidegger, »Die seinsgeschichtliche Bestimmung des Nihilismus«, in Nietzsche II. [Translation: Thomas Schmidt]. 575 Heidegger, Die seinsgeschichtliche Bestimmung des Nihilismus, 369 f. [Translation: Thomas Schmidt]. 576 Heidegger, Die seinsgeschichtliche Bestimmung des Nihilismus, 397. [Translation: Thomas Schmidt]. 577 Karl Barth, The Epistle of the Romans, trans. Edwyn Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 1968), 412. 574

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errant tumble »from one mystery to another«578 in »The Essence of Truth«, the fateful nihilism in his treatises on Nietzsche, the »withdrawal« [Entzug] which only when no more can be said about the event remains to be thought about at the end of »Time and Being«: All of these are conceptual negations, which are in the widest sense ontological or epistemological and, in any case, have no genuinely practical sense in relation to personal responsibility. The revelation is, for Heidegger, not only a giving and a withdrawal of itself, it obviously also contains the reason for its acceptance or refusal, with which we approach it; ultimately this means that the given [die Gabe] and withdrawal collapse into acceptance and refusal respectively. Such turning of a blind eye upon the element of willing and personal responsibility at the source of the event that is the revelation cannot be attributed to Marion. Precisely in the same place in which he empha­ sizes the contradiction to the »ordinary order of reason« into which the surprising event of the revelation as such plunges us, he continues: »The conclusion from this is, that no revelation may be received without a paradox, which must be accepted as such. No revelation can circumvent the resistance it evokes in its witnesses, who in virtue of it may reject in one or the other way. […] A true revelation forces such a novelty upon us – and this novelty is connected to it intrinsically and never merely accidentally – that we may reject it.«579 The revelation must, according to Marion, allow to explain this possibility of its rejection, the real rejection, however, the refusal, is declared by the person, who refuses the revelation. Here we reach the boundary, which I may not cross and not even consider within the confines of the thoughts presented here. All we have said in relation to Marion’s notion of revelation concerns the meaning it carries in virtue of being a saturated phenomenon – even if in this function it stands metonymically for all phenomenality. Though this meaning partially overlaps the meaning of what Marion – using italics and the majuscule – calls Revelation, which the religious believer regards as the »self-revelation of God by Himself« and which the theologian (Marion references Karl Barth) describes thus: It »hits human experience like a sudden rockfall and shatters everything with its impact«580. Apparently, the overlap between the general and the specifically religious meaning of 578 579 580

Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, 196. Marion, Das Erscheinen des Unsichtbaren, 44. Marion, Das Erscheinen des Unsichtbaren, 113.

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3. Thinking despite and because of the paradox

the phenomenon of revelation lies again in its epistemic aspect; hence, in its »surprising«, totally unanticipated and underivable newness. At what point, however, does the »Revelation« attested by the believer gain that part of its meaning, which no longer overlaps with that of the »revelation«? The answer to this question powerfully brings the aspects of will and decision into play. »If this revelation is to warrant being called a Revelation of God by Himself, this cannot be so because the conditions of such a Revelation are fulfilled or could ever be fulfilled, but because and especially because they may not be fulfilled […]«581 Why not? Because, as Marion points out in his Gifford Lectures 2014,582 without the resistance with which we oppose it and the conflict into which it plunges us, revelation would not even be possible, hence both resistance and conflict intrinsically belong to it. To revelation belongs the instant of decision of a person accepting or rejecting it, and only in this moment – that is to say, in this very instant right here and right now – and not in some sort of transcendental structures, which blasphemously turn the question for the revelation of God into a question of the human being »for« themselves, the gap is bridged between our intentionality and its fulfillment, which remains for us uncatchable. The constitutive conflict, without which there could be no revelation for the believer is not a conflict between themselves and adherents of other faiths, but the conflict within themselves: the conflict, which rages within their person as the conflict between faith and doubt and which burns in their communities as the hatred, the ridicule and the contempt that confront them from those who reject faith. If and because the believer reads the genitive »Revelation of God« absolutely and without reservation as a double genitive, if consequently, everything which God has and may have revealed of Himself, is within his gift, and if at the same time the refusal to accept the revelation is the condition upon the possibility of the revelation, then the refusal and the struggle with this refusal manifestly is the origin from which, if from anywhere, we have

Marion, Das Erscheinen des Unsichtbaren, 114; Marion again cites Barth in reference to the divine act, of which he says: that »[i]t is the condition which conditions all things without itself being conditioned. This is what we are saying when we call it revelation.« (Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, trans. G. W. Bromiley, (Norfolk: T and T Clark International, 2004), 116 [118–119]). 582 Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2 ff. 581

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been and are about to be »thrust forth« in the direction, which threatens to distract us and move us away from the entry, which was meant only for us. Hence, we may find revealed in revelation the reason for the refusal of its acceptance, the refusal of its arrival that is, in ourselves, as persons and as community, alone: By ourselves and by ourselves alone are we thrust forth into an estrangement [Abkehr] from the time from which the word rings out: »before Abraham was, I AM«583, the past which has never been pre­ sent. By ourselves and ourselves alone are we consequently also entangled in betrayal of revelation, which reverses and empties out the revelation of its innermost sense, in order to adjust its supposed content to the economy of intentionality of its average recipient and to turn our backs upon its source for the benefit of a secular authority, which in a temporal sense is probably most fittingly denoted by the term »aggiornamento«. Marion manifestly found the deepest entanglement of the question concerning God with metaphysics therein, which led to his reckoning with Heidegger which may be found in his theological contemplations: »The method of correlation, which vainly attempts to think the revelation as an answer to the questions of humanity has only confirmed the greatest absurdity ever perpetrated against the revelation of God – namely that of Heidegger, who, remaining beholden to the enlightenment and more Hegelian than it may seem, subordinates the uncovering (apokálypsis) of God to the revelation of gods and subordinates this in turn to the space of being of divinity [Wesensraum der Gottheit], which is itself subordinate to the rise [Aufgang] of holiness, which ultimately falls under the uncovered openness of being [unverstellten Offenen des Seins].«584 The crucial alternative, with which we are faced in our philosophical and faith-based engagement with the revelation is, therefore, whether we ask for God in the time of His revelation, or if we are willing to let such questioning arrive in the time we declaim as ours, as if we had given it to ourselves.

583 584

John 8:58. Marion, Das Erscheinen des Unsichtbaren, 113 f.

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1) »Overcoming Metaphysics. A Fundamental Feature of Twentieth Cen­ tury Philosophy« was originally published as: »›Overcoming Meta­ physics‹: A Fundamental Feature of Twentieth Century Philoso­ phy«, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 49, no. 1 (2022): 65-73. It was presented in 2019 at Sichuan University Chengdu, at Wuhan Univer­ sity, Tsinghua University Beijing, and in 2020 at Manoa University, Honolulu, and at the Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. 2) »The Place of the Past« was originally published as: »Der Ort des Gewesenen: Zu Ricoeurs Ontologie des Vergessens« In Philosophie des Ortes: Reflexionen zum Spatial Turn in den Sozial- und Kultur­ wissenschaften, edited by Annika Schlitte, Thomas Hünefeldt, Daniel Romic and Joost van Loon, 217–230. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2014. English translation by Thomas Bernd Schmidt. 3) »Fulfilled Presence« was originally published as: »Vollendete Präsenz«, Archivio di Filosofia, 86, no. 2 (2018): 61–70. Revised version of a presentation at the Colloquio Castelli »La presenza«, Rome 2018. 4) »Thinking is time« was originally published as: »Denken ist Zeit«. In Zeit: Anfang und Ende: Ergebnisse und Beiträge des Internationalen Symposiums der Hermann-und-Marianne-Straniak-Stiftung Wein­ garten 2002, edited by Walter Schweidler, 269–304. Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2004. English translation of a revised and shortened ver­ sion by Thomas Bernd Schmidt. 5) »On the Social Origin of Time in Language« was originally published as: »On the Social Origin of Time in Language«. In Origins and Futures: Time Inflected and Reflected, edited by Raji Steineck and Claudia Clausius, 37–48. Leiden: Brill, 2013. It was presented at the Triennial International Conference »Time: Origins and Futures« of the International Society for the Study of Time, Costa Rica 2010.

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6) »The Philosophical Relevance of ›Images‹« is a revised and shortened version of »Das Bild der Wahrheit und die Perspektive der Freiheit«, in: Weltbild-Bildwelt: Ergebnisse und Beiträge des Internationalen Symposiums der Hermann und Marianne Straniak-Stiftung Weingar­ ten 2005, edited by Walter Schweidler, 21–58, Sankt Augustin 2007. English translation by Thomas Bernd Schmidt. 7) »The Mirror of Time« was originally published as: »Time and Trace: The Mirror of Time«, KronoScope 14, no. 2 (2014): 150–162. It was presented at the Triennial International Conference »Time and Trace« of the International Society for the Study of Time, Crete 2013. 8) »Time’s Redeeming Urgency« was originally published as: »Time’s Redeeming Urgency«. In Time’s Urgency, edited by Carlos Mon­ temayor and Robert Daniel, 291-301. Leiden: Brill, 2019. It was pre­ sented at the Triennial International Conference »Time’s Urgency« of the International Society for the Study of Time, Edinburgh 2016. 9) »The Self-Repeating Origin« was originally published as: »The SelfRepeating Origin. Ontological Aspects of Ricoeur’s Concept of Hermeneutics«. In Hermeneutics and The Philosophy of Religion. The Legacy of Paul Ricoeur, edited by Ingolf U. Dalferth and Marlene Block, 81–95. Heidelberg: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. 10) »Inquiring after God in His Time« was originally published as: »Das Fragen nach Gott in seiner Zeit. Überlegungen zur Phänomenalität der Offenbarung im Anschluss an Heidegger und Marion«, Salzburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie, 66 (2021): 151–174. English translation by Thomas Bernd Schmidt.

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List of Names

Alberti, Leon Battista 166 Aquinas, Thomas 18ff. Aristotle 16, 52, 84, 96ff., 100, 104, 197f., 203 Asemissen, Hermann Ulrich 188f. Assmann, Jan 14, 87 Augustine 13, 19, 104, 131 Barth, Karl 243ff. Bergson, Henri 52, 91, 94, 103, 109ff., 115f., 122, 133, 135 Boehm, Gottfried 55, 92, 159, 161, 171ff., 183, 233 Buber, Martin 27 Buddha 22, 134 Bultmann, Rudolf 226 Burkert, Walter 24 Carnap, Rudolf 69, 76, 123, 125 Casey, Edward 51, 95 Cassirer, Ernst 24f., 36, 46f., 71 Cézanne, Paul 179f. Darwin, Charles 77, 238 Da Vinci, Leonardo 182 Deleuze, Gilles 195 De Mora, Gomez 189 Derrida, Jacques 13, 29ff., 84 De Saussure, Ferdinand 29, 58, 214, Descartes, René 145 Durkheim, Émile 57 Einstein, Albert 77, 123 Eliade, Mircea 25, 27, 134 Euripides 17 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 43, 50, 70ff., 76 Florensky, Pavel 164ff., 173, 175f.

Foucault, Michel 21, 64, 182ff. Frege, Gottlob 109 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 55, 158, 233 Geertz, Clifford 23 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 49, 71, 83, 93, 215f., 225, 235 Gombrich Ernst 172 Goody, Jack 32 Grünbaum, Adolf 122, 127 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 43, 50, 71f., 195, 246 Heidegger, Martin 13f., 20, 34, 38, 48ff., 52f., 58ff., 63ff. 69, 72ff., 80ff., 84ff., 101, 103ff., 107, 111, 114ff., 122, 132, 134, 143, 145f., 148ff., 153f., 156f., 173, 179, 212, 216, 225ff., 233ff., 246 Hempel, Carl Gustav 53, 125f. Hölderlin, Friedrich 227 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 213f. Hume, David 11f. Husserl, Edmund 11, 53, 111ff., 121f., 132f., 135, 210, 232 Imdahl, Max 158f., 175, 233 Jankélévitch, Vladimir 85, 100 Kant, Immanuel 11, 14f., 21f., 43, 50, 53f., 70ff., 81, 114, 124f., 128f., 144ff., 240f. Kierkegaard, Søren 13, 52, 105f., 109, 116, 118ff., 133, 135 Kripke, Saul 80 Larochefoucauld, François de 95 Leach, Edmund 14, 151 257

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List of Names Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 19f., 29, 36, 77, 111, 149, 176ff. Lévinas, Emmanuel 13f., 18, 20, 22ff., 35ff., 40f., 48, 65 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 23f., 30, 33, 44, 80, 150ff., Mann, Thomas 88 Marcel, Gabriel 27 Marion, Jean-Luc 13, 58ff., 168ff., 173, 227f., 231ff., 237, 240ff. Masaccio 173 Mauss, Marcel 30, 33 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 11, 13ff., 29f., 33, 35ff., 47ff., 51, 53, 56, 61, 111, 113f., 119ff., 122, 135, 174,179, 233 Michelangelo 166 Neurath, Otto 69 Newton, Isaac 77, 129, 149, 153f. Nietzsche, Friedrich 31, 50, 58, 72, 81f., 226, 243f. Ong, Walter J. 32 Pacheco, Francisco 192 Panofsky, Erwin 172 Pascal, Blaise 21, 152 Pindar 17

Plato 16ff., 58, 69, 81, 133f., 156 Plotinus 19 Proust, Marcel 13, 56f., 92ff., 195ff., 225, 231 Quine, W.V.O 12 Reichenbach, Hans 122f. Ricoeur, Paul 13, 36, 50ff., 57f., 84ff., 99ff., 106, 209ff. Salmon, Wesley 122 Santayana, George 23 Scheler, Max 63, 146, 231 Schelling, F.W.J 13, 33, 43ff., 50, 54, 71f., 80 Schlick, Moritz 69 Schönborn, Christoph 161ff. Spaemann, Robert 114, 231 Theunissen, Michael 14, 17, 118 Valéry, Paul 26 Velázquez, Diego 13, 56, 182ff. Wagner, Richard 58 Watt, Ian 32 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 11, 13, 34, 38f., 48ff., 69, 72ff., 78ff., 82, 109, 111, 138, 144, 156f., 197, 209, 238

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Index

A Animal symbolicum 33, 54, 205 Angels 19, 29 Anthropological 13, 21ff., 26, 57, 76, 78, 145, 155 Anthropology 29, 43, 45, 47f., 54, 58, 150f., 220 Ars memoriae 88 Art 13, 17f., 52, 56, 58f., 92, 161f., 164ff., 171ff., 175, 179, 182ff., 187f., 201 Artistic 35, 52, 55f., 58, 93, 164, 166, 173, 175, 178, 182ff., 191, 199, 233 Augenblick 18, 52, 64, 104, 132, 134ff. B Being 38, 50, 53, 59, 64f., 69, 73ff., 82, 85, 89, 103ff., 114ff., 122, 143, 154, 164, 169, 225, 228ff., 237, 239ff., 243f. Being, relativity of 63, 134, 136f., 146, 152, 160, 231 Beings, living 96, 139, 147, 149 C Cultures 14f., 23, 44, 49f., 150, 175 Contingency 199f., 222 Consciousness 23f., 26f., 30ff., 37, 39, 46f., 51, 53ff., 57, 87f., 96, 109, 111ff., 116, 121, 132f., 135f., 143ff., 218ff. Consciousness, cultic 46, 57, 151, 153, 220 Consciously 33, 91, 144, 147

D Dialectical 170, 173f., 200 Dasein 63, 65, 73f., 76, 103f., 106, 114ff., 132, 143, 145, 153f., 226, 231f., 240 Daseinsrelativ 54, 63, 134, 146f., 152, 158, 160, 163, 174, 231f., 237 Dualism 45, 146f. E Eternity 14, 16f., 19, 22, 26, 28f., 48, 56, 58, 62, 96, 99, 102, 104f., 124, 134, 163, 191 Event 18, 53, 59, 65, 86, 95, 100, 105, 125f., 128ff., 187, 213f., 217, 221, 225, 228ff., 236f., 239ff. Events 16, 29, 32f., 46, 53, 88, 112, 122, 125f., 129f., 132, 134f., 137f., 143f., 147, 151, 159, 178, 184, 221, 223 Explanation 11f., 25, 53, 124ff., 129, 153, 185f., 219 Explain 11f., 19, 21, 55, 59, 64, 75, 82, 96, 129, 150, 190, 227, 241, 244 Explication 14, 18, 24, 26f., 36, 46, 61, 71, 76f., 85, 87, 93f., 101, 149f., 177, 193, 201, 211f., 218f., 243 Exist 17, 19, 24, 42, 63, 84, 114, 116, 126, 131f., 135, 139, 143f., 146f., 158ff., 173

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Index F Future 12, 15, 19, 26, 36f., 40ff., 45, 65, 95f., 98, 106, 110ff., 115f., 119, 121f., 128, 131f., 135, 137, 178, 197, 200 H Hermeneutical 35, 55, 58, 70, 148, 150, 158, 209, 211ff., 216ff., Hempel-Oppenheim model 53, 125 I Icon 56, 161ff., 168ff., 228 Iconic 55, 58f., 155, 158ff., 171, 173ff., 177, 179f., 183, 233 Iconic turn 55f., 155 Idealism 145 Identity 23, 46f., 50, 57, 114, 145, 152f., 168, 197, 223f., 229f., 236f., 239 Idol 168ff., 227f. Image 16, 51f., 55, 84, 86, 91f., 94, 100, 103, 113, 155ff., 183, 186, 188f., 192, 228, 233 Images 51f. 55, 63, 88, 91f., 103f., 106, 155ff., 160ff., 164, 168, 170, 172f., 175, 178, 219 Instant 18, 52, 64, 104ff., 132f., 135f., 199f., 245 Intuition 145, 178, 227, 230 Inversion 45, 102, 168 L Life, time of 215 Life, form of 22, 81, 148 Linguistic Turn 55, 155 M Manifest 44, 235ff., Mankind 44ff., 64, 77, 80f., 156, 173, 179

Mathematical 16, 113, 126, 149, 171f., 233 Measure 16, 88, 97f., 116, 144, 228 Measurement 96, 110, 123, 134 Metaphorical 14f., 28, 233 Metaphysics 14, 19f., 38ff., 43, 49ff., 59, 62, 69ff., 92, 96ff., 99, 101ff., 123, 161, 163, 166, 176f., 203, 219, 225f., 228ff., 236ff., 242f., 246 Metaphysical 13ff., 19f., 28, 35f., 43, 45, 48ff., 55, 57, 69f., 72f., 75, 77ff., 99ff., 104f., 111, 123f., 134, 137, 145, 150f., 161ff., 169, 175, 177ff., 191, 209, 229f., 233, 237f., 242 Metonymic 36, 40, 49, 147, 149, 152, 170, 173, 180, 198 Moment 17ff., 32ff., 38, 43, 45f., 53, 59, 61, 63f., 80, 83, 89f., 93, 98, 100, 104ff., 117ff., 126ff., 147, 167f., 173, 175, 184, 186f., 190ff., 196f., 199f., 203, 245 Mystery 162, 243f. Myth 88, 150, 158, 210f. N Name 27, 46f., 61, 71f., 79f., 223, 226f., 230, 232, 238f. Narration 92, 159, 204, 205, 213ff., 221ff. Nature 12, 14, 16ff., 24f., 35, 38, 44f., 48, 51, 55, 61, 72, 76f., 97ff., 101f., 117, 119ff., 123, 125f., 129ff., 136, 144, 146f., 149ff., 163, 171, 176, 179, 205, 216, 229f. Natural time 19, 28f., 32, 41, 43f., 46, 106, 146 Natura naturans 37 Nihilism 81f., 243f.

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Index O Object 15, 30, 35ff., 42f., 45, 56, 58, 70, 72, 76, 78ff., 93, 104, 111ff., 119, 125, 146, 152, 155, 157f., 160, 182ff., 188, 201f., 210ff., 214, 216f., 219, 226, 231, 234, 241, 243 Ontology 14, 31, 45, 48, 57, 76f., 83ff., 90, 106, 161, 212f., 216, 218, 221 Ontological 16, 19, 24f., 41, 47, 52, 76f., 80, 97, 103, 110f., 117, 121, 133, 137f., 152, 160, 163, 167, 175, 178, 188, 203, 209f., 212f., 216ff., 222, 229ff., 233, 236, 239, 244 Origin 16, 19, 24, 26, 29, 31f., 46f., 50, 53f., 56f., 60, 62, 78, 80f., 84, 86, 90, 99, 118, 121ff., 133, 144ff., 150ff., 168, 171, 175, 191f., 209, 212ff., 216ff., 236, 240, 245 P Paradox 24, 27, 41, 43, 53, 57, 59ff., 79, 84ff., 101ff., 107, 111, 118, 121, 143f., 145ff., 151, 153, 162, 174, 197ff., 202ff., 212, 220f., 225ff., 238, 240f., 243f. Paradoxes 127, 211, 227 Paradoxical 13, 16f., 21f., 32, 39, 48, 50, 52, 59, 70f., 76, 80, 92, 99, 101, 118, 120, 143f., 156, 162, 175, 214f., 219f. Past 12f., 15, 17, 19ff., 23, 25ff., 40ff., 45, 47f., 50ff., 55f., 58, 60f. 65, 69, 83ff., 115f., 118f., 121f., 124, 128f. 131f., 135, 137ff., 147, 153, 178, 200f., 203f., 215f., 232, 234f., 240, 246 Past, absolute 25ff., 37, 137f., 147 Past, original 37 Person 17, 21, 23, 27, 31f., 35, 61f., 86, 100, 106, 117, 144, 147ff., 163f., 173, 188, 197, 232, 244f. Performative 83f., 144

Perspective 15, 20f., 25, 54, 56f., 59, 96, 100, 106, 126, 131, 139, 149, 151, 163ff., 182ff., 191, 195, 227, 232, 240 Phenomenologist 86, 113 Phenomenology 39, 49, 51, 109, 114, 119f., 122, 127, 131, 226, 232, 236 Phenomenological 13, 20, 35f., 48, 52, 57f., 81, 90, 99, 101, 109, 111f., 115, 119, 123f., 134, 145f., 148ff., 171f., 231ff. Phenomenon 36, 52, 54, 59, 75, 86, 88f., 100f., 105f., 148, 228, 230, 232f., 235, 240, 244f. Place 125f., 128ff., 134, 137, 156, 160, 169, 174f., 177, 184, 186, 188ff., 192, 196, 198f., 202, 210, 215, 230, 234f., 238ff., 243f. Positivism, logical 123f. Present 11, 13, 15, 19ff., 23, 25ff., 41ff., 45ff., 50ff., 55ff., 58, 60f., 63., 76, 84ff., 90ff., 110ff., 115f., 118ff., 124, 127ff., 137ff., 144, 147, 151ff., 178f., 186, 190f., 193, 196, 198, 203f., 214f., 223, 230, 232, 234, 240, 246 R Reason 11f., 28, 35, 41, 44, 46f., 53, 72, 74f., 83, 89f., 92, 103f., 110, 114, 117, 120, 124, 127, 132, 145ff., 152, 161, 163, 177, 183ff., 202, 209, 222, 224, 227, 241f., 244, 246 Redemption 93, 195f., 202 Recognition 18, 28, 84ff., 100f., 103, 160, 217 Religion 23, 58, 158, 165, 209, 213, 218f., 221 Religious 13, 17, 22ff., 28, 31, 54, 57ff., 107, 119, 161, 164f., 171, 204, 209, 216ff., 228, 241f., 244 Revelation 13, 26, 43, 58f., 93, 107, 162, 165, 170, 197, 199ff., 210, 221f., 224, 226ff., 230, 236, 239ff. 261

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Index Rituals 23f., 88, 153 S Science 12, 33, 47, 71, 74, 78, 125, 127, 166, 171f., 182f., 213, 226f. Scientific 12, 43, 53, 74, 96, 109, 117, 125, 149, 153, 156f., 171, 179f., 238 Sign 18, 24, 28ff., 32, 52, 84, 88, 101f., 161, 164, 217, 220, 232 Soul 16, 19, 70, 93, 97, 204, 225 Souls 19, 93 Species 12, 29, 151 Spiritual Power 58f. Subjectivity 31, 37f., 42, 109, 119f., 133, 145, 147f., 170 Substance 29, 53, 61, 73, 87, 114, 122, 128, 130, 132, 136ff., 146, 163, 165, 178, 213, 215f. Symbol 36, 58, 110, 113, 211, 217, 219ff. Symbolic 23ff., 33f., 43f., 57f., 151, 161, 172, 175, 178, 205, 218f., 221f. Symbolism 33f., 44, 164, 218f. T Temporal 13, 16ff., 25, 27ff., 32, 34ff., 44, 50f., 53f., 74, 76f., 79, 96, 98, 100, 195, 111, 113, 115f., 119ff., 125f., 130, 132, 135ff., 144ff., 167, 174, 178f., 182ff., 191f., 201, 211ff., 219, 225, 230ff., 235ff., 241, 246 Temporality 104f., 114ff., 118, 121, 131, 135f., 139, 143, 145ff., 174, 191, 232

Time, living 15 Time, other 19, 24ff., 28, 36, 40, 42f. 47, 49, 52f., 57f. Time, place of 99 Time, place in (Zeitort) 51, 53, 65, 94, 96, 98, 100f, 105, 121, 174, 198 Time, third 47f. Time, social 14, 23, 151 Time, world 137, 144f., 151 Trace 13, 18, 20ff., 25ff., 45, 51f., 54, 61, 63, 83ff., 93, 98ff., 106, 110, 118, 133, 151f., 169, 182, 184, 187f., 190ff., 225, 231, 235, 241 Transcendence 25, 27, 174, 227 Transcendental subjects 15, 21, 43, 54, 145 Transition 16ff., 32, 35, 53, 98, 106, 111f., 115, 119, 130ff., 134, 136ff., 155, 174, 180, 196, 211, 235f., 238 True 27, 34, 41, 47f., 56, 70ff., 77, 81, 105, 112, 153f., 156, 168ff., 182, 199, 203f. Truth 12, 18, 21, 34, 38, 43, 47, 59f., 71f., 77, 79, 87f., 101, 105f., 134, 153f., 157, 164f., 169, 174f., 182ff., 187f., 195, 197ff., 201f., 204, 225, 227f., 230, 234, 236f., 244 U Ur-Image (Urbild) 162f. 177, 228

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