Abstract
In contemporary Continental philosophy there has been a recent trend toward realism and a rejection of what Quentin Meillassoux names correlationism. However, one of the most significant responses to Meillassoux’s position has come from the contemporary Derridean Martin Hägglund and it brings us indirectly to what this author contends lies at the heart of the phenomenological conception of death. Meillassoux is critical of the correlationist position because it cannot think the time before being, especially as discussed in the natural sciences. To be concise Meillassoux is concerned with whether it is possible to think this time without rendering them through a correlationist, or in a lighter phrase, anti-realist, lens. In After Finitude one example provided of how powerful correlationism is, comes through the excision of mind-independent primary (or mathematical) qualities in the post-Kantian tradition as thinkable in-themselves – a position Meillassoux claims has come to be seen as naïve (realism). What then, for instance, to make of statements about the time before being, indexed by ‘arche-fossils’ referring to ‘the existence of an ancestral reality or event’? The answer Meillassoux notes is usually given as intersubjectivity. This may not, at first, seem contentious.
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Notes
- 1.
Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier (London: Continuum, 2008), 5.
- 2.
In Martin Hägglund, ‘The Challenge of Radical Atheism: A Response,’ CR: The New Centennial Review 9, no. 1 (2009): 242.
- 3.
Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency: 9–10. His italics.
- 4.
Ibid., 2.
- 5.
Ibid., 10.
- 6.
Ibid., 4. His italics.
- 7.
Ibid., 16. His italics.
- 8.
Quentin Meillassoux, Time without becoming, trans. Anna Longo (United Kingdom: Mimesis International, 2014), 19.
- 9.
Hägglund, ‘The Challenge of Radical Atheism: A Response,’ 242.
- 10.
Ibid. His italics.
- 11.
Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly, Conversations with Žižek (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 59.
- 12.
Peter Gratton, ‘After the Subject: Meillassoux’s Ontology of “What May Be”,’ Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 20 (2009): 60.
- 13.
Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 96.
- 14.
John D. Caputo, ‘The Return of Anti-Religion: From Radical Atheism to Radical Theology,’ Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 11, no. 2 (2011): 50.
- 15.
Meillassoux will later make his escape from correlationism using precisely death as a means of weakening it. See Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency: 59.
- 16.
Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 21–23.
- 17.
See, for instance, Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2005). Unfortunately for reasons of economy the stress in this article will be on Martin Heidegger at the expense of both Derrida and Levinas for reasons that will become clear soon.
- 18.
See Tom Sparrow, The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 69–82.
- 19.
A similar move is made, of course, by Husserl, but since our focus is death it will be here bracketed. See Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970).
- 20.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). See also Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). The significant background texts that influenced Heidegger’s emphasis on the ontological question are, beginning with the phenomenological perspective, the following: Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil: Prolegomena zur Reinen Logik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993).; Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993). From the traditional ontological perspective, also see: Franz Brentano, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (Freiburg: Herder, 1862).; Carl Braig, Vom Sein: Abriß der Ontologie (Freiburg: Herder, 1896). This emphasis retains intellectual primacy throughout Heidegger’s career.
- 21.
Heidegger, Being and Time: 7.
- 22.
Ibid., 7–8.
- 23.
Ibid., 9.
- 24.
Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 19.
- 25.
Ibid., 17.
- 26.
Ibid. His italics.
- 27.
Ibid., 28. Lilian Alweiss makes a similar claim: ‘Moreover, for Heidegger the legitimating ground does not lie in reason; it is not subjective, but inheres in the things themselves, which are not at our disposal. Nonetheless, Heidegger is advocating a transcendental philosophy, even if it is one that is prised from subjectivity and intelligibility. It is a transcendental philosophy that can be understood only negatively insofar as the transcendental conditions do not belong to the horizon of Dasein but manifest themselves only on the reverse side of its horizon.’ In Lilian Alweiss, ‘Leaving Metaphysics to Itself,’ International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15, no. 3 (2007): 358. Her italics.
- 28.
Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: 20. His italics.
- 29.
See Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1960), 21.
- 30.
Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: 21. His italics.
- 31.
Ibid., 23.; Heidegger, Being and Time: 21.
- 32.
This mirrors the Husserlian attack on presuppositions, preconceptions, and prejudices. Extending from his earliest work on arithmetic and number Husserl demonstrates, principally in his first Logische Untersuchungen, that there are three prejudices of psychologism that lead it to consider logic as a series of conditioned psychological operations. See Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil: Prolegomena zur Reinen Logik: §41–49 and §43–9. Alweiss remarks: ‘For Husserl…the threat of psychologism can only be overcome successfully if we are able to show “how we can grasp thoughts and recognise them to be true” without reducing them to mental processes, despite the fact that they are intended.’ In Lilian Alweiss, ‘Between Internalism and Externalism: Husserl’s Account of Intentionality,’ Inquiry 52, no. 1 (2009): 57. Husserl undermined psychologism using a comparison between pure and mathematical logic, and did so by distinguishing between the psychologised instances of arithmetical or logical operations from their idealized determinate basis. See Edmund Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik: Psychologische und Logische Untersuchungen, I (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970).
- 33.
Heidegger, Being and Time: 24. His italics.
- 34.
Trish Glazebrook, ‘Heidegger and Scientific Realism,’ Continental Philosophy Review 34 (2001): 362.
- 35.
Hence for Heidegger ‘Da-sein is its disclosedness.’ Heidegger, Being and Time: 125. His italics.
- 36.
The neo-Kantian school was divided into two sets. The Marburg school is notable for three thinkers: Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) and Paul Natorp (1854–1924). There was also the Baden or Southwest school known for Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936) and Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915). For an excellent overview of Heidegger’s relationship to neo-Kantianism see Charles R. Bambach, Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). In relation to Dilthey and neo-Kantianism, see Ilse Bulhof, Wilhelm Dilthey: A Hermeneutic Approach to the Study of History and Culture (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1980).
- 37.
This period of intellectual tension is covered extensively in the following articles: John E. Jalbert, ‘Husserl’s Position between Dilthey and the Windelband-Rickert School of Neo-Kantianism,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 26, no. 2 (1988): 279–96.; Rudolf A. Makkreel, ‘Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians: The Distinction of the Geisteswissenschaften and the Kulturwissenschaften,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 7, no. 4 (1969): 423–40.
- 38.
Heidegger, Being and Time: 17–19.
- 39.
Ibid., 20.
- 40.
Ibid., 37.
- 41.
Ibid., 127.
- 42.
Ibid., 15.
- 43.
In Martin Heidegger, The Concept of Time, trans. William McNeill (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1992), 20E.
- 44.
Heidegger, Being and Time: 52.
- 45.
Ibid., 167.
- 46.
Roth provides a useful account of the etymological connotations one finds in the word Ereignis as it is used by Heidegger: ‘Ereignis is related to eigen, meaning “own and “proper” with clear connotations of eigentum meaning “property” or “a possession.” Ereignis is also related to ereigen meaning “to prove” or “to show” in the sense of a demonstration…And lastly, it is related to eignen, meaning “suitable” or “appropriate” where appropriate may be understood both as “proper” and as “to acquire.” Along with all these connotations, Ereignis must also be thought as “event” and it is usually translated as “event of appropriation” so as to reflect some of these relationships. In the event of Ereignis, entities are brought forth into their own, becoming what they are.’ In Michael Roth, The Poetics of Resistance: Heidegger’s Line (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 38. See Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999). Heidegger is even content to say that: ‘Be-ing is the en-owning of truth.’ In Martin Heidegger, Mindfulness (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 82.
- 47.
Heidegger, Being and Time: 49; 215.
- 48.
Ibid., 41.
- 49.
Ibid., 172.
- 50.
Ibid., 223.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
See Paul J. Ennis, ‘The Transcendental Core of Correlationism,’ Cosmos and History 7, no. 1 (2011).
- 53.
Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency: 21. His italics.
- 54.
Ibid., 23. His italics.
- 55.
Ibid., 24. His italics.
- 56.
Ibid., 25.
- 57.
Heidegger, Being and Time: 208.
- 58.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology: 27.
- 59.
Edmund Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. William Alston and George Nakhnikian (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1980), 17.
- 60.
Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: 185.
- 61.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology: 89.
- 62.
Any number of post-turn texts could be cited, but all of these themes are evident in his rightly famous piece Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology,’ in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row 1977).
- 63.
Heidegger does explicitly engage the problem of the essence of human freedom, in relation to Schelling, since his 1930 Freiburg lecture Von Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. See Martin Heidegger, Von Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1982). Despite this Haar warns us that: ‘Ereignis, as much as being, even as Gestell, retains a “freedom” infinitely superior to that of man. Man can merely await Ereignis that, like the Turning, is already and is not yet, as Gestell is only the prelude. Ereignis is therefore the name given by way of anticipation to a possible “identification” between man and being, beyond metaphysics. In awaiting a new commencement, a new History, Ereignis in Heidegger’s last writings disposes over man to the same extent and with the same total sovereignty as does being…’ In Michel Haar, Heidegger and the Essence of Man, trans. William McNeill (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 67. His italics.
- 64.
See Martin Heidegger, ‘Only a God Can Save Us: Der Spiegel’s Interview (September 23, 1966),’ in Martin Heidegger: Philosophical and Political Writings, ed. Manfred Stassen (New York: Continuum, 2003), 24–48.
- 65.
In John D. Caputo, ‘In Praise of Ambiguity,’ in Ambiguity in the Western Mind, ed. Craig J. N. de Paulo, Patrick Messina, and Marc Stier (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 31.
- 66.
Sparrow, The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism: 11.
- 67.
Wilfred Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1991), 1.
- 68.
Ibid., 173.
- 69.
See Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency: 13.
- 70.
Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality: 18.
- 71.
Wilfred Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 76.
- 72.
Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 9.
- 73.
Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
- 74.
Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time: 11.
- 75.
See Quentin Meillassoux, ‘Spectral Dilemma,’ in Collapse IV: Concept Horror, ed. Robin Mackay (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2008), 261–75. See also Jacques Derrida, The Work of Mourning, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
- 76.
Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction: 223.
- 77.
Ibid., 224. His italics.
- 78.
Ibid., 227.
- 79.
Ibid., 228.
- 80.
Ibid., 229.
- 81.
Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time: 9.
- 82.
Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction: xi.
- 83.
Ibid., 229.
- 84.
Ibid., xi.
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Ennis, P.J. (2016). No Longer Being-There: Phenomenology and Death. In: Foran, L., Uljée, R. (eds) Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida: The Question of Difference. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 86. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39232-5_4
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