The Phenomenology of Particularity

Abstract

The interdependence and independence of modern philosophy and the political is mirrored in the internal structure of the methodology appropriate to each of them. The method is neither philosophy nor politics. This independence permits it to serve two masters without being tyrannised by either. A loss of independence can come only from internal weakness. The methodological account of the necessary conditions of receptivity loses its logical articulation if it is divorced from the philosophical premises it articulates. As method, however, its function is genetic. It provides the Zutat that avoids the unmediated passage to the political as the completion of the explanation of the necessary receptivity to the categories of philosophy. The foundation of this genetic intervention is the structure of the originary philosophy. The second moment of method is founded by the same originary structure. It is inversely isomorphic to the first. The structure of particularity that completes the system by demonstrating the place of the political loses its phenomenological character if it is treated apart from the political structure from which it is the mediation. The phenomenological moment of the method thus plays a normative role. The contemplative Zusehen in which it culminates indicates that the political is a particular structure that cannot be extended arbitrarily. The method appropriate to modern politics is particular and limited. These polarities indicate that the two moments of method stand in an originary relation to one another. This originary structure explains how method can remain the independent servant of the philosophy and of the political domain that it articulates and mediates.