This will be part I of a three part series wherein I try to work through my thinking on Hegel.
Perhaps the best thing about being surrounded by committed and engaged people is that their attitude becomes a cause for self-reflection. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to practise disengagement. Disengagement was the theme of a paper I gave in Amsterdam a few years back - much to the general horror of the audience who all delivered papers on various terrible-things-happening-elsewhere we must sort out after giving our papers (I waited but after tea we all went home).
What people think when they hear disengagement is quietism: opting out but not in proper Tim Leary style. I think nonetheless that disengagement can take on a different form. Žižek, despite his (in my opinion) worrying is-he-serious-or-not Leninism, makes a good point when he notes that the job of the intellectual today is to theorize more. I'd drop theorize since it's such a muddled world and replace it with think more. And to think is in phenomenology the grand theme from Husserl to Heidegger (the task of thinking/thanking) to Gadamer (dialogue is thinking) and up to Derrida (the aporia of thinking/thought).
Phenomenology is not only not-analytic philosophy but within the continental tradition it is not-critical. With critical theory one begins with the Frankfurt School poised at a moment of disgust for what has just occurred and pointing to a tradition of disconnection beginning in Hegel and finding expression in the return of Geist via Heidegger's tap dance for National Socialism.
The critical turn is always something different from phenomenology and I find increasingly in our Hegel reading group that for many people Hegel is something almost monstrous: a totalitarian thinker spewing forth the worst excesses of German (or more broadly European) nationalism and finding his logical endgame in the concentration camp - a place that when one follows through a la Hegel can be reduced to the 'slaughter bench of history' is a callous affirmation of the abstract.
How empty then does it sound to suggest that National Socialism is the concrete devoid of Spirit: all animal emptiness destined for negation and resulting in something decent like post-War Europe?
Returning to Hegel we find the first prominent use of the word phenomenology (Phänomenologie) which is tied to Spirit (des Geistes) - and Derrida makes good use of this connection in 'Of Spirit' where he traces the recurrence of Geist in Heidegger in the thirties. Husserl's pure phenomenology or reine Phänomenologie is perhaps closer to Hegel at the structural level. Hegel is engaged in reines Zusehen or looking at purely. This purity reoccurs consistently in Hegel (die reine Negativität, reine Idee) and Husserl (reine Wesen)).
A pure looking at is precisely where I would want to go. If philosophy is anything it is a following of the threads to the bitter end - no matter how empty that vision is. In this peculiarly phenomenological sense ethics is a descriptive act (in the Žižekian manner) of the pure formal structure of what is occurring and is not a critical mode primed beforehand with a solution that will necessarily follow proper critique and method.
In Part II I will try to show how Hegel ought to be read phenomenologically.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
They only come at night
I've been suffering terrible insomnia and so my productivity has disappeared. In fact I've read next to nothing this week and have not sat at my proper desk once except to prepare for a Hegel reading group. That reading group is the only philosophy I managed to get in this week. I still managed to send of the ms for Post-Continental Voices but I also need to hand in a chapter for my dissertation. So from Monday on I'll be back on form putting that into shape and hopefully sorting out a place to live/a haircut (really)/having my eyes tested. I decided that today I'll make a roadmap. Plot where I'm going. Mostly because last nite in the pub I found it impossible to explain what my thesis is about despite having come to the conclusion a week before that I finally had a grip on it. My lack of notes around the proper desk have clearly had an effect. Philosophy slips away so easily!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Post-Continental Voices
ms. should be sent in by week's end. Not sure how long things take from then but it'll be nice to have got the ball rolling. It also means I began work on my second project and hopefully I can reveal more on that soon suffice to say that its very speculatively realisty.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Levi on Habermasians
Levi makes a nice little comment on Habermas in this post:
''I mean, to looking all of the volumes of Habermas sitting on a bookstore shelf, all of the conference panels and articles devoted to his work, is enough to make you want to cry. Seriously people? Communicative rationality? Seriously? This is what you’re devoting your time to?''
I tutored a class on Habermas a couple of semesters ago and it was the most difficult class to teach ever. The number one query from students was not 'any good secondary sources', 'what does he mean by X' but the consistent query as to why someone dedicated to communication wrote in such difficult language? I'm not a Habermasian so I didn't have much of a response and I didn't find much in the German text to suggest that it was just bad translation.
''I mean, to looking all of the volumes of Habermas sitting on a bookstore shelf, all of the conference panels and articles devoted to his work, is enough to make you want to cry. Seriously people? Communicative rationality? Seriously? This is what you’re devoting your time to?''
I tutored a class on Habermas a couple of semesters ago and it was the most difficult class to teach ever. The number one query from students was not 'any good secondary sources', 'what does he mean by X' but the consistent query as to why someone dedicated to communication wrote in such difficult language? I'm not a Habermasian so I didn't have much of a response and I didn't find much in the German text to suggest that it was just bad translation.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A response to 'Reading Heidegger'
The consistently interesting Working Notes ponders Reading Heidegger. I'm glad to see that Mike's blog is grabbing the attention of people like Graham Harman.
I suppose if there is one thing I can talk about or dispense advice about reading Heidegger is it. Not as good as being able to walk someone through financial issues or teaching someone to drive but then again I'm useless at finance and don't even know how to drive. But when it comes to navigating the tricky world of Heidegger scholarship why then I'm your man! (please form an orderly queue).
''What do we do with those moments that seem on the way, but only on the way--or rather really somewhat off the way, not even on a Holzwege? How do we see what is not on the way? Heidegger himself points out how certain phrases, say, like "die Sprache als die Sprache zur Sprache bringen," can look differently when seen on the way (to language, here) and not (where they become formulaic). But where do we draw the line?''
I suppose this is what Heidegger is all about. On the way, off the way, not quite yet. This is Heidegger's concrete triad: his inversion of Marxist Hegelianism - the paticular is seen in a 'fleeting illusion' - the grand mix of ideality and reality that criss-crosses Heidegger. This is the impossible to state in Heidegger. The bit where you talk about the promise in Heidegger, the yet-to-come, Ereignis, whatever. I have see the future baby but I have no idea how to articulate it.
When you come to Heidegger after three or four goes you start to read him in this 'event' mode (which is what I mean by on his own terms; for Hegel this would mean reading Hegel within his own triad of logic-idea-spirit). Heidegger is the thinker of the event - basic and broad (pre-Kehre basic e.g. tools, post-Kehre broad e.g Gestell). Yet it is always a discussion of a concrete event occurring in the co- (to remember the correlationism critique for a moment) but drawn to the abstract via metaphysics (the proper path) we miss the concrete in its eventfulness and to see this we need to be 'on the way' or in the moment and occasionally off the beaten track (anxiety or breakdown).
''Another way to think about this is that it troubles the notion of "reading Heidegger on his own terms." This, of course, doesn't mean reading only to agree with Heidegger--the confusion of the two is often the fate of dogmatic Heideggerians (sticking with the jargon, etc., in a way eerily similar to the way Derridians stick to the jargon, etc.). But it might at times mean something like stepping off the path or the way. That is, isn't there a difference between following the way, the path, and reading someone on their own terms?''
Readers may have noticed that my response has been written in Heidegger-speak. I'm not too big on Heidegger-speak but my thesis is full of it. I mean all kinds of disgusting German-English hybrids, brackets, Greek, allusions, and other necessary evils (I'm sorry but there is no way to write a PhD the way Graham writes books but I'd love the freedom to do so). So imagining that I did have that freedom I'd put it this way:
Heidegger wants his writings to read precisely the same way events do. Life, the pre-existential analytic theme in Heidegger, is always going somewhere and being pushed along and all this happens in the present (which is really no such thing as a 'present' here now not inflected forward or refracted backward). So the future, the past and the present are sort of the same. When we read Heidegger as the thinker of life/the event then we are supposed to think as the structure of worldliness worlds. OK! So I'm back in Heidegger-speak, but what can we do? After all at least one major tool in Heidegger's arsenal is etymology. Our language, in its they-self mode, does obscure being so remembrance of the ontological difference does require a new mode of language and by extension a new way of writing and on our part of reading. This would be, for me, reading Heidegger on his terms (and by no means do I mean one must read Heidegger this way).
If I was being cheeky (or lazy) I'd say
following the way (past)
the path (present)
and reading someone on their own terms (future...the reader to come always by necessity in the future).
I suppose if there is one thing I can talk about or dispense advice about reading Heidegger is it. Not as good as being able to walk someone through financial issues or teaching someone to drive but then again I'm useless at finance and don't even know how to drive. But when it comes to navigating the tricky world of Heidegger scholarship why then I'm your man! (please form an orderly queue).
''What do we do with those moments that seem on the way, but only on the way--or rather really somewhat off the way, not even on a Holzwege? How do we see what is not on the way? Heidegger himself points out how certain phrases, say, like "die Sprache als die Sprache zur Sprache bringen," can look differently when seen on the way (to language, here) and not (where they become formulaic). But where do we draw the line?''
I suppose this is what Heidegger is all about. On the way, off the way, not quite yet. This is Heidegger's concrete triad: his inversion of Marxist Hegelianism - the paticular is seen in a 'fleeting illusion' - the grand mix of ideality and reality that criss-crosses Heidegger. This is the impossible to state in Heidegger. The bit where you talk about the promise in Heidegger, the yet-to-come, Ereignis, whatever. I have see the future baby but I have no idea how to articulate it.
When you come to Heidegger after three or four goes you start to read him in this 'event' mode (which is what I mean by on his own terms; for Hegel this would mean reading Hegel within his own triad of logic-idea-spirit). Heidegger is the thinker of the event - basic and broad (pre-Kehre basic e.g. tools, post-Kehre broad e.g Gestell). Yet it is always a discussion of a concrete event occurring in the co- (to remember the correlationism critique for a moment) but drawn to the abstract via metaphysics (the proper path) we miss the concrete in its eventfulness and to see this we need to be 'on the way' or in the moment and occasionally off the beaten track (anxiety or breakdown).
''Another way to think about this is that it troubles the notion of "reading Heidegger on his own terms." This, of course, doesn't mean reading only to agree with Heidegger--the confusion of the two is often the fate of dogmatic Heideggerians (sticking with the jargon, etc., in a way eerily similar to the way Derridians stick to the jargon, etc.). But it might at times mean something like stepping off the path or the way. That is, isn't there a difference between following the way, the path, and reading someone on their own terms?''
Readers may have noticed that my response has been written in Heidegger-speak. I'm not too big on Heidegger-speak but my thesis is full of it. I mean all kinds of disgusting German-English hybrids, brackets, Greek, allusions, and other necessary evils (I'm sorry but there is no way to write a PhD the way Graham writes books but I'd love the freedom to do so). So imagining that I did have that freedom I'd put it this way:
Heidegger wants his writings to read precisely the same way events do. Life, the pre-existential analytic theme in Heidegger, is always going somewhere and being pushed along and all this happens in the present (which is really no such thing as a 'present' here now not inflected forward or refracted backward). So the future, the past and the present are sort of the same. When we read Heidegger as the thinker of life/the event then we are supposed to think as the structure of worldliness worlds. OK! So I'm back in Heidegger-speak, but what can we do? After all at least one major tool in Heidegger's arsenal is etymology. Our language, in its they-self mode, does obscure being so remembrance of the ontological difference does require a new mode of language and by extension a new way of writing and on our part of reading. This would be, for me, reading Heidegger on his terms (and by no means do I mean one must read Heidegger this way).
If I was being cheeky (or lazy) I'd say
following the way (past)
the path (present)
and reading someone on their own terms (future...the reader to come always by necessity in the future).
Friday, October 16, 2009
Conference names
Why is it so difficult to come up with a name for a conference? They need to be clear, concise and straight to the point. Does one go with 'Heidegger Graduate Conference'? or do we need something flashy like 'Heidegger, Time, and Space'? Cool conference names in the comments box please.
After Finishing: A Post on the Neccessity of Continuing
I've finished the first half of my first chapter. It needs editing but I think I've put together something decent. It goes off to my supervisor in a week or so and I also intend to submit it as an article. I'm not sure where. This is the great problem of continental philosophy. Who do you submit to and where can you expect to be published?
The paper introduces a new way of reading ancestrality. It begins with the now obligatory overview of chapter 1 of Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude. I hope to explain why the ancestral is absent in Heidegger for Heidegger but present in Heidegger nonetheless by necessity (I also include Hegel but that idea is not yet fully developed). My reading locates a missing aspect of ancestrality overlooked by Meillassoux in his attempt to think things outside the correlation - an argument that imagines a different ending to AF but with the same opening chapter. It remains in the Heideggerian mix. I know that might seem a little bit of a cop-out from the speculative realist perspective but I've always held the opinion that we have not yet plumbed the depths of even the first half of Being and Time. I provide a solution to the problem of ancestrality through Heidegger but not on Heidegger's own terms (making this argument a violation of my own general principle to always take a thinker on their terms).
If anyone has an idea where such a paper belongs do let me know. I've no idea where it might find a home being a strange hybrid of speculative realism and Heideggerian scholarship.
The completion of this article comes at an interesting time. More and more I hear whispers that speculative realism, and object oriented ontology in particular, are fading out. The furor is dying down. Common sense will return. I certainly hope that this is not the case. I suspect this is the calm before the storm (the storm being The Speculative Turn). Even if the winds are dying down this means nothing more than that the hard work must now begin. What were the questions that kept popping up? Anti-humanism for sure. Ethical and political issues from time to time. From my own discussions a major problem for OOO is the absence of full blown critiques of the great thinkers following Kant (transcendentalism), Husserl/Heidegger (phenomenology) meaning of course people like Derrida and Delueze. I suppose we lack the critique of the French turn post-1950's. Yet this too is a problem: is OOO a critical philosophy or a positive one working to build up a...dare I day system?
I'd also add the status of metaphysics. The other day at a departmental lecture on the job market I couldn't help but notice that one of the speakers, an analytic philosopher, put metaphysics down as an AOS. So is SR/OOO a kind of speculative or continental metaphysics?
Just thoughts. I'm also trying to sort out the OOO journal (depending on funding of course) but it looks like, if it goes ahead, that it could be a damn fine way to address these problems consisting of position papers rather than articles (an idea I stole from other disciplines). I've also two or three possible responses to OOO that should balance things out. Here's hoping!
Finally the Heidegger conference is looking to be scheduled for September 2010. Sounds far away but I am in the final year of my PhD and we have lots to sort out. It will likely be a 2 day weekend affair (Friday-Saturday maybe...would that suit Americans or anyone not from Europe/UK?) and I think probably a graduate conference. The reason for this is that the Heidegger Circle already caters for established academics to present papers on Heidegger and graduate students are doing such vastly different work on Heidegger that it just plain makes sense. I'm hoping to get some speculative thinkers onboard if they have anything to say on Heidegger. I can't reveal the plenary speakers but I think they'll be more than interesting to everyone (I hope so anyway). Also there will be no conference fees. On the plus side if you submit you will at least be heading to the conference with at least one name to ask for, namely me, and so it won't be one of those terrible trips where the first day is spent wandering around wondering if anyone else is into the same stuff. Plus Dublin is a good city to spend a weekend ;)
The paper introduces a new way of reading ancestrality. It begins with the now obligatory overview of chapter 1 of Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude. I hope to explain why the ancestral is absent in Heidegger for Heidegger but present in Heidegger nonetheless by necessity (I also include Hegel but that idea is not yet fully developed). My reading locates a missing aspect of ancestrality overlooked by Meillassoux in his attempt to think things outside the correlation - an argument that imagines a different ending to AF but with the same opening chapter. It remains in the Heideggerian mix. I know that might seem a little bit of a cop-out from the speculative realist perspective but I've always held the opinion that we have not yet plumbed the depths of even the first half of Being and Time. I provide a solution to the problem of ancestrality through Heidegger but not on Heidegger's own terms (making this argument a violation of my own general principle to always take a thinker on their terms).
If anyone has an idea where such a paper belongs do let me know. I've no idea where it might find a home being a strange hybrid of speculative realism and Heideggerian scholarship.
The completion of this article comes at an interesting time. More and more I hear whispers that speculative realism, and object oriented ontology in particular, are fading out. The furor is dying down. Common sense will return. I certainly hope that this is not the case. I suspect this is the calm before the storm (the storm being The Speculative Turn). Even if the winds are dying down this means nothing more than that the hard work must now begin. What were the questions that kept popping up? Anti-humanism for sure. Ethical and political issues from time to time. From my own discussions a major problem for OOO is the absence of full blown critiques of the great thinkers following Kant (transcendentalism), Husserl/Heidegger (phenomenology) meaning of course people like Derrida and Delueze. I suppose we lack the critique of the French turn post-1950's. Yet this too is a problem: is OOO a critical philosophy or a positive one working to build up a...dare I day system?
I'd also add the status of metaphysics. The other day at a departmental lecture on the job market I couldn't help but notice that one of the speakers, an analytic philosopher, put metaphysics down as an AOS. So is SR/OOO a kind of speculative or continental metaphysics?
Just thoughts. I'm also trying to sort out the OOO journal (depending on funding of course) but it looks like, if it goes ahead, that it could be a damn fine way to address these problems consisting of position papers rather than articles (an idea I stole from other disciplines). I've also two or three possible responses to OOO that should balance things out. Here's hoping!
Finally the Heidegger conference is looking to be scheduled for September 2010. Sounds far away but I am in the final year of my PhD and we have lots to sort out. It will likely be a 2 day weekend affair (Friday-Saturday maybe...would that suit Americans or anyone not from Europe/UK?) and I think probably a graduate conference. The reason for this is that the Heidegger Circle already caters for established academics to present papers on Heidegger and graduate students are doing such vastly different work on Heidegger that it just plain makes sense. I'm hoping to get some speculative thinkers onboard if they have anything to say on Heidegger. I can't reveal the plenary speakers but I think they'll be more than interesting to everyone (I hope so anyway). Also there will be no conference fees. On the plus side if you submit you will at least be heading to the conference with at least one name to ask for, namely me, and so it won't be one of those terrible trips where the first day is spent wandering around wondering if anyone else is into the same stuff. Plus Dublin is a good city to spend a weekend ;)
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Speculative Realism Reading Group
The Philosophy Teaching and Research Group, based in the School of Arts and Humanities [Nottingham Trent University] will be running a series of reading based seminars this year on the theme of Speculative Realism. Associated with the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Ray Brassier and Ian Hamilton Grant, Speculative Realism is quickly becoming a new thought-style in contemporary philosophy as well as being increasingly influential in a range of other disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.
The first session, will discuss a classic paper that is often cited as one of the forerunners of this new philosophical dispensation; Wilfred Sellars’ 1963 paper ‘Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man’. In subsequent weeks we will go on to discuss Ray Brassier’s book Nihil Unbound and Quentin Meillassoux’s recent and highly acclaimed work After Finitude – a book where, according to Simon Critchley, ‘the rigour, clarity and passion of the argument can be breathtaking’.
These seminars should appeal to all those who want to keep abreast of conceptual innovations in contemporary philosophy.
The first seminar will take place on Wednesday Oct 28th, 1-2 pm, in ICAn 215. All are welcome.
For further information please contact Patrick O’Connor at patrick.oconnor@ntu.ac.uk.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Burial, Kode 9 and PhDs in Philosophy
I know Graham recently posted a video by Burial but I do wonder whether he knows that one of the founding dubstep producers kode9 has a PhD in Philosophy from Warwick. How cool is that?
I found dubstep a couple of years back. Probably the only time I found a scene before it became cool and by pure chance to boot. I can't remember precisely how I find out about Skream but once I heard midnight request line I was hooked. Burial came much later...in fact Burial is sort of different to dubstep at least the dubstep that gets played (or used to). I used to attend dubstep gigs when you'd be lucky to have 20 people in attendance. I don't mean that in a snotty way. It sucked. It is amazing how fast it went from that to completely packed. In Dublin the first dubstep nite was a once a month affair. I used to hear about the gigs by checking out the one goddamned dubstep forum in existence at the time (how many are there now). I've since stopped hitting clubs but for different reasons.
It is worth nothing that kode9 is responsible more or less for bringing dubstep to fruition commercially. Here is his webpage. Imagine your lecturer was kode fuckin' 9.
I found dubstep a couple of years back. Probably the only time I found a scene before it became cool and by pure chance to boot. I can't remember precisely how I find out about Skream but once I heard midnight request line I was hooked. Burial came much later...in fact Burial is sort of different to dubstep at least the dubstep that gets played (or used to). I used to attend dubstep gigs when you'd be lucky to have 20 people in attendance. I don't mean that in a snotty way. It sucked. It is amazing how fast it went from that to completely packed. In Dublin the first dubstep nite was a once a month affair. I used to hear about the gigs by checking out the one goddamned dubstep forum in existence at the time (how many are there now). I've since stopped hitting clubs but for different reasons.
It is worth nothing that kode9 is responsible more or less for bringing dubstep to fruition commercially. Here is his webpage. Imagine your lecturer was kode fuckin' 9.
Heidegger Advice
At least one of the reasons Heidegger is back on my mind is that I've been coming across MA students encountering Heidegger for the first time. Since I'm convinced that in order to understand continental philosophy today you must grasp what occurs in Heidegger (the overcoming of metaphysics) I figured I'd post the how-to-start with Heidegger list I sent to one of the MA guys:
Basic Questions of Philosophy Selected "Problems" of "Logic" (GA45). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Indiana University Press, 1994.
and in second place:
Martin Heidegger. John Macquarrie, Richmond, Virginia, John Knox Press, 1986.
A grounding in Being and Time is taken as a given. If you can grasp the message of Being and Time you have Heidegger more or less and from then on its a question of where he places the accent or emphasis.
Basic Questions of Philosophy Selected "Problems" of "Logic" (GA45). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Indiana University Press, 1994.
Basic Writings. Edited by David F. Krell, New York, Harper & Row, 1977, 1993, 2008.(Famous and easily available collection of essays by Heidegger spanning his entire career).
Philosophical and Political Writings. Edited by Manfred Stassen, New York, Continuum, 2003.Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter, New York, Harper & Row, 1971. (The later more fanciful Heidegger...worth checking just to get a sense of where it is all heading)
Basic introductions are sadly lacking or else woefully incoherent. The secondary lit. a level or two up is among the best in the business. Nonetheless:
and in second place:
Martin Heidegger. John Macquarrie, Richmond, Virginia, John Knox Press, 1986.
A grounding in Being and Time is taken as a given. If you can grasp the message of Being and Time you have Heidegger more or less and from then on its a question of where he places the accent or emphasis.
A post on Heidegger (for once)
I've been feeling a little off at the moment. My chapter, the one I thought was finally my way in, has gone from 20,000 words to 10,000. I'd even hoped it might produce two articles. I'd be lucky with one and even then I'm not sure who in God's name would want to publish it. This means, of course, that I need to speed things up. My main worry regarding my PhD is that I'd end up spending more than four years on it. I'm entering my fourth year next January so this is now a real issue. On a funny note I do wonder whether it will be the first PhD to argue a speculative realist position (graduate wise) and if not then at least it might be the first to go all object-oriented. I'm not sure how the OOO aspect will go down but I think I managed to do a pretty good job of explaining why it is important.
I also dived back into Heidegger secondary sources for the first time in a while. I've let Heidegger lapse. I've even been denying that I'm a Heideggerian but the more I review Heidegger the more it becomes clear to me that he is, by a long shot, the most important thinker we've had since Hegel (he is also the thinker I most like to talk about...when I talk about Heidegger I mean it).
So I've been trying to pinpoint in a general sense why I think that is the case...I mean in the explain it to your granny Harmanesque way. I've come to the conclusion that Heidegger displays three important traits that separate him from most other thinkers: immersion in the tradition, wide reading in contemporary debates, and a commitment to lived-experience (meaning Dilthey is the thinker who makes Heidegger Heidegger and not just Husserl's man dealing with theology).
It is also worth noting that Heidegger is as much Rickert's student as he is Husserl's. Certainly Heidegger owes a tonne to Husserl. I mean the only comparable student-mentor relationship that equals it is Plato-Aristotle. Other than that I cannot think of another student-teacher buzz that tops Husserl-Heidegger. Only Aristotle was much nicer to his mentor than Heidegger.
Yet Rickert solidified Heidegger's position in two ways. The first is that he honed Heidegger's philosophical skills forcing him to address value-philosophy and just where epistemology really lies in the 'life of the mind'. Secondly Rickert allowed Heidegger to expand into temporality when, from the mundane prospective, he ought to have advised Heidegger to stick to firmer ground...Heidegger does not yet have a proper treatment of temporality at that time and Rickert must have seen something in Heidegger to allow him to veer off a little.
I also dived back into Heidegger secondary sources for the first time in a while. I've let Heidegger lapse. I've even been denying that I'm a Heideggerian but the more I review Heidegger the more it becomes clear to me that he is, by a long shot, the most important thinker we've had since Hegel (he is also the thinker I most like to talk about...when I talk about Heidegger I mean it).
So I've been trying to pinpoint in a general sense why I think that is the case...I mean in the explain it to your granny Harmanesque way. I've come to the conclusion that Heidegger displays three important traits that separate him from most other thinkers: immersion in the tradition, wide reading in contemporary debates, and a commitment to lived-experience (meaning Dilthey is the thinker who makes Heidegger Heidegger and not just Husserl's man dealing with theology).
It is also worth noting that Heidegger is as much Rickert's student as he is Husserl's. Certainly Heidegger owes a tonne to Husserl. I mean the only comparable student-mentor relationship that equals it is Plato-Aristotle. Other than that I cannot think of another student-teacher buzz that tops Husserl-Heidegger. Only Aristotle was much nicer to his mentor than Heidegger.
Yet Rickert solidified Heidegger's position in two ways. The first is that he honed Heidegger's philosophical skills forcing him to address value-philosophy and just where epistemology really lies in the 'life of the mind'. Secondly Rickert allowed Heidegger to expand into temporality when, from the mundane prospective, he ought to have advised Heidegger to stick to firmer ground...Heidegger does not yet have a proper treatment of temporality at that time and Rickert must have seen something in Heidegger to allow him to veer off a little.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Apolitical Spaces
The semester is really starting to kick in here and I've found myself being torn in a couple of directions. Good directions but winding ones.
The big question floating about these days in my department is Hegel. Yes, Hegel. And not even 'Hegel for the reading of Zizek Hegel' or even 'Hegel for Marxists' but Hegel on his own terms. Coming to terms with Hegel is teaching me that there are paths different philosophers must take. My question these days is what precisely is the task of the continental thinker and further what does one do with the knowledge they extract from Hegel?
Hegel is clearly a broad thinker. In this way Hegel is alluring to philosophers because Hegel allows one to place speculation alongside the concrete. Since the speculation must have its relata it must point to something. Zizek is the master Hegelian today leaving the speculation to float in the background while he smashes a concrete example in your face asking you is this not something bigger than what it seems...must we not we follow up with a reflection that restores its meaning. For Zizek the subject is world-producing projecting the cinematic reel of regular flow on an empty space (idea-outside-itself). Zizek once remarked in an interview that he had a feeling the world was created so we could theorize about it. This is exactly the lesson of Hegelianism.
This sounds terribly abstract and at least 90% of post-reading group discussion focuses on whether the Hegelian system is coherent, meaningful, useful, practical, horrific, madness, depressing, convoluted, etc. Playing something of devil's advocate I've been trying to read Hegel as if he were correct. My reading is in suspense.
The reading group has exposed to me how different philosophers see philosophy. I mean in that very basic sense of why do we do philosophy at all? Some are oriented toward aesthetics, some to politics, and some to ethics. I find myself increasingly arguing for what Arendt calls the 'life of the mind'. What is Hegel doing? Plumbing the depths of the life of the mind - when you read Hegel in the way Arendt reads someone like Heidegger you read them on their terms and suspend or mediate or transmit the message. This is why Arendt can separate Heidegger the philosopher from Heidegger the politic idiot. The great warning of Heidegger is that philosophers should never mess with politics. Zizek is entirely wrong when he argues that Heidegger was right to make some kind of stand in 1933. No! And a double no to the Leninist madness that Zizek feels content to push to an increasingly amused audience.
This is the difference between speculative and critical philosophy. If one is a critical philosopher then Hegel and Heidegger are compromised thinkers - contaminated even [Zizek is then not a critical philosopher but a speculative one a la Hegel...if you are suspicious of Hegelian politics then you ought to extend the same suspicion to Zizek in my book]. For how can the critical philosopher overlook creeping fascist tendencies or conservative impulses and might they not reduce the slaughter bench of history to a nice rhetorical flush? We find the same edge in the criticisms of object oriented ontology. Are not these speculations a simple surrender to neo-liberalism or worse?
So is there an apolitical space?
The big question floating about these days in my department is Hegel. Yes, Hegel. And not even 'Hegel for the reading of Zizek Hegel' or even 'Hegel for Marxists' but Hegel on his own terms. Coming to terms with Hegel is teaching me that there are paths different philosophers must take. My question these days is what precisely is the task of the continental thinker and further what does one do with the knowledge they extract from Hegel?
Hegel is clearly a broad thinker. In this way Hegel is alluring to philosophers because Hegel allows one to place speculation alongside the concrete. Since the speculation must have its relata it must point to something. Zizek is the master Hegelian today leaving the speculation to float in the background while he smashes a concrete example in your face asking you is this not something bigger than what it seems...must we not we follow up with a reflection that restores its meaning. For Zizek the subject is world-producing projecting the cinematic reel of regular flow on an empty space (idea-outside-itself). Zizek once remarked in an interview that he had a feeling the world was created so we could theorize about it. This is exactly the lesson of Hegelianism.
This sounds terribly abstract and at least 90% of post-reading group discussion focuses on whether the Hegelian system is coherent, meaningful, useful, practical, horrific, madness, depressing, convoluted, etc. Playing something of devil's advocate I've been trying to read Hegel as if he were correct. My reading is in suspense.
The reading group has exposed to me how different philosophers see philosophy. I mean in that very basic sense of why do we do philosophy at all? Some are oriented toward aesthetics, some to politics, and some to ethics. I find myself increasingly arguing for what Arendt calls the 'life of the mind'. What is Hegel doing? Plumbing the depths of the life of the mind - when you read Hegel in the way Arendt reads someone like Heidegger you read them on their terms and suspend or mediate or transmit the message. This is why Arendt can separate Heidegger the philosopher from Heidegger the politic idiot. The great warning of Heidegger is that philosophers should never mess with politics. Zizek is entirely wrong when he argues that Heidegger was right to make some kind of stand in 1933. No! And a double no to the Leninist madness that Zizek feels content to push to an increasingly amused audience.
This is the difference between speculative and critical philosophy. If one is a critical philosopher then Hegel and Heidegger are compromised thinkers - contaminated even [Zizek is then not a critical philosopher but a speculative one a la Hegel...if you are suspicious of Hegelian politics then you ought to extend the same suspicion to Zizek in my book]. For how can the critical philosopher overlook creeping fascist tendencies or conservative impulses and might they not reduce the slaughter bench of history to a nice rhetorical flush? We find the same edge in the criticisms of object oriented ontology. Are not these speculations a simple surrender to neo-liberalism or worse?
So is there an apolitical space?
Post-Continental Voices
Just editing the ms at the moment and looking at the interviews with fresh eyes. I'm pretty happy with how things are going and I should have the ms with zero books in a week or so. This means that it should come out a lot quicker than most books since I don't have to write most of it bar a short introduction giving an overview of the trends.
Regarding style I think I've picked up a lot from Graham Harman's books: a clean minimalist style. I should note that I'm actually finding it fun. Does this mean there is something wrong with me? Answers in the comment box!
Regarding style I think I've picked up a lot from Graham Harman's books: a clean minimalist style. I should note that I'm actually finding it fun. Does this mean there is something wrong with me? Answers in the comment box!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Sunday Thoughts or Why I Quite Like Hegel
Some people have asked about the OOO journal/yearbook type thing. I suppose it fits into a broader range of things I want to get done asap. I don't intend to send out a CFP since not enough people are into OOO at this stage. I had in mind a couple of position papers from top OOO thinkers and hopefully some graduate work or even responses from the other strands in SR. At the moment I'm just looking at cost and from there I'll start the ground work. However I will be contacting a number of people in the SR for contributions so if you feel you have something to offer then send me a mail. I'm not talking 8,000 word peer-reviewed articles a la Continental Philosophy Review but decent sized chunks of object oriented musings to get us started. There will be quality control but at this stage barriers seem somewhat presumptuous.
I think at some stage, maybe starting next year, I'll have to write a chapter for my dissertation on SR. I've promised to write a paper on SR for some time now - an introductory paper for people not yet into it. I've found people in the real world do seem to read this blog but generally find SR somewhat baffling...and they tend to be continental more so than analytic. In fact analytic philosophers seem to read SR in an 'about time' kind of way [I take this to be a good thing. I'm not as down on analytic philosophy as Levi and Graham tend to be from time to time].
Now before my continental friends think I've gone soft do no worry because I've been reading Hegel for a reading group, a proper one with actual attendees and discussion!, and I'm fascinated. I discussed it last night with a friend and we came to the conclusion that Hegel is one of those thinkers assumed to be many things in a rather lazy, haphazard manner (Derrida gets this too). Turns out Hegel is nothing like I thought.
We are reading 'The Philosophy of History'. What is immediately impressive about Hegel is the range of his thinking. It is all-encompassing. There are no gaps or excesses or even things that cannot be explained in some way. Everything is in there. Albeit all in there in the universal rather than the particular sense. Hegel is the absentee particular object philosopher par excellance unless we include slaughter-benches and empty pages in history books.
The reason Hegel is interesting for SR is that Hegel represents not a straight line from Kant but a strange bump in the continental road. In phenomenology it is Kant who looms large - whether explicitly in the transcendental project of Husserl, the transcendental intrusion into the early chapters of Being and Time or the neo-Kantian lineage at work in the historical sense. Phenomenology is the weird offspring of the Kantian critical turn. We can trace the anxiety of influence beautifully in the handing over of chairs in the Southwest German universities from neo-Kantians to phenomenologists to hermeneuticists.
Yet where is Hegel in all this? Well obviously the entire Marxist trend is deeply Hegelian right up until our own Lacanian-Hegelian hybrid in Zizek. When you think about Adorno & co. as Hegelians it becomes clear just how different phenomenology is to the Frankfurt school and just how much this difference is, on some superficial level at least, a Kantian v Hegelian distinction.
I'll try to keep up on my impressions of Hegel but I'm really only discovering basic Hegel at the moment. As it stands I've never finished a complete book by Hegel (has anyone?) but I am seriously considering my next broad stroke move to be somewhere in Hegel land since if my schema holds water it'd balance me out a bit.
I think at some stage, maybe starting next year, I'll have to write a chapter for my dissertation on SR. I've promised to write a paper on SR for some time now - an introductory paper for people not yet into it. I've found people in the real world do seem to read this blog but generally find SR somewhat baffling...and they tend to be continental more so than analytic. In fact analytic philosophers seem to read SR in an 'about time' kind of way [I take this to be a good thing. I'm not as down on analytic philosophy as Levi and Graham tend to be from time to time].
Now before my continental friends think I've gone soft do no worry because I've been reading Hegel for a reading group, a proper one with actual attendees and discussion!, and I'm fascinated. I discussed it last night with a friend and we came to the conclusion that Hegel is one of those thinkers assumed to be many things in a rather lazy, haphazard manner (Derrida gets this too). Turns out Hegel is nothing like I thought.
We are reading 'The Philosophy of History'. What is immediately impressive about Hegel is the range of his thinking. It is all-encompassing. There are no gaps or excesses or even things that cannot be explained in some way. Everything is in there. Albeit all in there in the universal rather than the particular sense. Hegel is the absentee particular object philosopher par excellance unless we include slaughter-benches and empty pages in history books.
The reason Hegel is interesting for SR is that Hegel represents not a straight line from Kant but a strange bump in the continental road. In phenomenology it is Kant who looms large - whether explicitly in the transcendental project of Husserl, the transcendental intrusion into the early chapters of Being and Time or the neo-Kantian lineage at work in the historical sense. Phenomenology is the weird offspring of the Kantian critical turn. We can trace the anxiety of influence beautifully in the handing over of chairs in the Southwest German universities from neo-Kantians to phenomenologists to hermeneuticists.
Yet where is Hegel in all this? Well obviously the entire Marxist trend is deeply Hegelian right up until our own Lacanian-Hegelian hybrid in Zizek. When you think about Adorno & co. as Hegelians it becomes clear just how different phenomenology is to the Frankfurt school and just how much this difference is, on some superficial level at least, a Kantian v Hegelian distinction.
I'll try to keep up on my impressions of Hegel but I'm really only discovering basic Hegel at the moment. As it stands I've never finished a complete book by Hegel (has anyone?) but I am seriously considering my next broad stroke move to be somewhere in Hegel land since if my schema holds water it'd balance me out a bit.
Friday, October 2, 2009
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