My Daughter, Discourses and Human Nature

I am a father. I have been a father now for almost 16 months. The amount of joy and happiness my daughter Eliana has brought to my life is extremely hard to explain, because it is different than most other kind of joys I have felt before.
But my daughter has not only brought novel joy to my life - she has also become two eyes, from which I can look upon the world. I see the world anew in her. I see the world anew through her, because I am displaced by her. When she was born, a cry echoed throughout the room. A cry that I did not create, and an echo that I could not control. I was a bystander to the birth of my child. Not a creator, not a maker - a bystander. My daughter is of me, but not myself. This fact is still after all of these months incomprehensible for me. I and my wife made her, but I can take no credit for how she has developed. I have no idea how and why she grows, walks and lives. If I were to press a button to make airplane engines start and prepare everything for take-off, I would know that there were men who put much thought into the construction of the airplane and who designed everything minutely. If I were to stand at the top of the Cologne Cathedral, I would know that men have spent decades and even centuries creating this mother of all cathedrals. But when I feed my daughter and watch her walk around, there is no origin and source to be so easily found. There is a wonderful homeric line in the Odyssey: “Who, on his own, has ever really known who gave him life?” Neither the father nor the child can answer this question.

Let me turn now to a more academic framework. What I have found myself wondering more specifically is, how does my child match the structuralist/post-structuralist theories I have learned. Foucault believes that we are enveloped by discourses that structure our encounter with the world, society and even our own selves. Nothing is immediately experienced by us. Everything is mediated by structured discourses that are part of a larger "episteme." And in turn this episteme is a semantic system that endows everything with meaning. Foucault believes "that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality" (taken from the article "Orders of Discourse"). These procedures are laboriously outlined in his work Archaeology of Knowledge.
But watching my child grow up I have noticed some simply human traits that cut across much of Foucault's theoretical tenets. When my daughter is angry, she frowns and yells and cries. When she is scared she runs and jumps and quivers. She can be disappointed and start to cry. When she sneezes, she smiles because it feels good. When she wants a cookie, she drops her chin a little bit and asks in her most gentle tone. I could continue, but you get the idea. Now the platonic Ghost that always obtrudes philosophical thought would counter my monologue by asking:

Platonic Ghost: Banal! All of this is banal! This has nothing to do with Foucault and his theories. A baby pooping into her diapers and begging for a cookie won't make me change my mind about how our societies work!
To which I reply, with a calm and cheerful voice, imitating Socrates phony humility.
Timothy: Well my friend. You are right. My thoughts are very simple and - well, yes banal. But I do not know how else to express what I am getting at. I am sure you could help us in our search for the right terms. What I believe I want to express is how I see a mysteriously human trait in my daughter. Human, merely human - but beyond any discursive structures. She seems to have desires and wishes that cannot be mediated by a host of discourses. These human desires seem to have a mysterious deep source in and of itself.
Platonic Ghost: You are a fool, Timothy! You are trying to solve a paradox, but in fact are doing something that Spivak has termed the "epistemic violence." You forgot that nothing is outside discourses. Or, spoken with Derrida: "There is no outside-text." How then do you think you can look beyond discourses and see untouched and epistemologically unmediated? Everything you see is a discourse in itself. If you believe to see something purely, wonderfully, mysteriously human in your daughter, well, surprise: so do millions of other humans. It's its own discourse! Welcome to the "wow-I'm-a-parent-discourse" and get over it. Man is a "recent invention" as Foucault has said; he is "like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea" that might soon be erased by the next great wave.
Timothy: Compelling. But not satisfying. You yourself are creating your own paradox; your own vicious circle. If you believe that nothing is outside of discourses, than how can you claim that this truth is not itself a discourse? How can you get out of what one cannot get out of. You blame me of obliviously tapping into a "parent-discourse," but can I not just as easily blame you of tapping into a "discourse-discourse?" If there is no outside of discourses, how did you reach the point of knowledge of discourses? No - there must be something inherently human to humans. And my daughter is the example - pars pro toto. There is something inherently human that is paradoxically beyond the reach of humans. It is beyond the reach of discourses. Man is not the "face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." Man is the one who is looking onto the face drawn in sand; a face that he has drawn of himself.

Polyphemus and language

From of all the episodes in Homer's Odyssey, the story of Polyphemus is the most playful and engaging. I have always felt that in terms of cleverness and narrative tension this episode outdoes all of the others in the Odyssey. It invites us to think about the peculiar nature of language and the boundaries of imagination. It invites us to reflect on the power humans have within the world of language. It leads us to the event where reality converges with imagination and unveils the Janus-faced nature of language.

Let me remind us of the episode. On their voyage home to Ithica, Odyseus and his men find themselves caught in a cave with a giant Cyclops Polyphemus. Being upset about the uninvited guests who have trespassed on his homely cave, the Cyclops Polyphemus decides to slowly eat each of the men, one by one, as an act of revenge. A giant stone door is hoisted before Polyphemus' cave, which makes the outlook of a quick escape impossible for the young soldiers. Odyseus and his brave men, in a desperate effort to somehow get out of the cave and continue their journey home, devise a cunning plan. They will make the Cyclops drunk. And they will make him so drunk that he will fall into a deep sleep. Then, after having prepared and sharpened Polyphemus' giant club, they will stab the single eye of the giant, making him blind and unable to grab any more of Odyseus men. In pain, so the men hope, Polyphemus will remove the giant stone door, allowing their desired escape. The plan is carried out and works perfectly.
But there is one development the occurs which had not been a part of the plan. Dead drunk and shortly before the Cyclops falls into his deep sleep, Polyphemus asks Odyseus what his name is.

"So, you ask me the name I'm known by, Cyclops? I will tell you," says Odyseus. "'Noboby' - that's my name. 'Nobody' - so my mother and father call me, all my friends" (IX, 405ff).

Just as the reader knows that the Cyclops can now see, but will soon go blind. So also can the reader surmise that he might yet be blind to Odyseus' new sub-plan, but will soon see the reason for Odyseus' alias "Nobody." It is obvious that the great warrior must have devised some spectacular plan, hidden deep in the mind and heart, waiting to be played out for the reader to see. Why would Odyseus not tell him his real name? Why would he tell Polyphemus that he is called 'Nobody,' instead of simply revealing his true identity?
Meanwhile, the initial plan unfolds. Odyseus' men stab the giant eye and the Cyclops begins to wail and weep. With the unfolding of the first plan, Odyseus' own second plan moves into the foreground.

"He [Polyphemus] loosed a hideous roar, the rock walls echoed round and we scuttled back in terror. [...] Mad with pain he bellowed out for help from his neighbor Cyclops living round about in caves on windswept crags. Hearing his cries, they lumbered up from every side and hulking round his cavern, asked what ailed him:
'What, Polyphemus, what in the world's the trouble? Roaring out in the godsent night to rob us of our sleep. Surely no one's rustling your flocks against your will - surely on one's trying to kill you now by fraud or force!'
'Nobody, friends' - Polyphemus bellowed back from his cave - 'Nobody's killing me now by fraud and not by force!'
'If you're alone,' his friends boomed back at once, 'and nobody's trying to overpower you now - look, it must be a plague sent here by mighty Zeus and there's no escape from that. You'd better pray to your father, Lord Poseidon.'" (IX, 442ff).

In the end, both plans come to fruition and enable the men's freedom. While Odyseus grins "to think nobody's name - my great cunning stroke - had duped them one and all," the Cyclops heaves the great stone away from his cave, thereby eventually letting Odyseus and his men to freedom and on their journey home. Finally, Odyseus and his men can escape the cave of the blind Polyphemus and continue on their rough journey home. Home to Ithica.

Now cunning as this story might be in English, it does not capture the full depth of the ancient Greek text - the language in which it was originally told. When the Cyclops asks Odyseus what his name is, he replies: "My name is Nobody [Outis]." Now, from the start, we must note the difference between the words ou tis (which literally means "no thing") on the one hand and Odyseus' alias proper name Outis on the other, which is simply a composite of ou tis. The Greek words ou tis signify "no body" or "no thing," while here the proper name Outis signifies Odyseus' person. Because both Odyseus' alias Outis and the words ou tis are homophonous, Polyphemus' cry for help is misunderstood. When Polyphemus replies to his friends "Nobody's killing me," the friends misunderstand the proper name "Nobody" (Outis) for the word "nobody" (ou tis) and so instead of hearing: "This guy named Nobody is killing me!"; they hear: "Don't worry my friends, nobody is killing me."
The text goes yet deeper, though, by creating even more homophonous confusion. Polyphemus' friends reply the injured Cyclops, "if nobody's [mé tis] trying to overpower you - look, it must be a plague sent here by mighty Zeus." Note that the friends do not repeat the words they mistakenly believe to have heard (ou tis), but rather use a different form for "nobody": not ou tis but mé tis, which is the typical form to use in Greek after the word "if." Their reply therefore is not "if Outis [Nobody] is trying" nor is it "if ou tis [nobody] is trying;" but their reply is "if mé tis [no one] is trying to overpower you now - look, it must be a plague sent here by mighty Zeus [...]." The difference between ou tis and mé tis would be something like: "no thing" and "no one." But ironically, the words mé tis sound exactly like the word métis, which means "wisdom, counsel, cunning, craft." The irony lies in the fact that Odyseus is often characterized with the word métis (e.g. VIII.230). And so despite the many confusions, Polyphemus' friends speak the truth: indeed, métis is what overpowered Polyphemus. In the end, truth (at least in its conventional meaning) is spoken. Odyseus is signified - unknowingly but nonetheless truthfully.

Language, we begin to realize in the episode, is not merely a medium or an instrument which humans can use to communicate. This episode upsets the idea that humans are in control of language. Language for Homer (or whoever the author of this episode might be) is the medium of the gods to bring about justice and righteousness. "That is the god's work," Homer comments, "spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, and all to make a song for those to come" (Odyssey, VII, 649ff). In the Polyphemus episode we get to see the gods perform a song, and are allowed to understand the language they use in their song.
The Polyphemus episode, I believe, is about language, truth and the gods. We do not speak language; language speaks us. And the truth that is spoken, is also beyond us. Truth is there to please the gods. In modern terminology, we might say: the transcendent signified is so infinitely removed that the difference between signifier and signified vanishes. Humans do not have the power of naming objects and giving concepts their meaning. This power is not in the hands of mortals. "There has to be a transcendental signified," Derrida says, "for the difference between signifier and signified to be somewhere absolute and irreducible." (Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 20). But as we have seen, the signifier (Outis; mé tis) and signified (Odyseus; outis; métis) achieve total and truant independence from each other - there is no force that is exerted from the Cyclopses to keep the signifiers and signifieds under control. Even if there might be a transcendental signified, the Cyclopses are not capable of comprehending it. So this episode, in short, gives us a glimpse of a world that we are otherwise blind to; a world in which signifiers and signieds dance to the music of the gods, instead of following the commands of mortal minds. Polyphemus' name, which literally means many (poly) sayings (phemus), stands for all of mankind.

Heidegger and Foucault. A Critical Encounter (6)

VI.

The argument I presented in this paper has been put forward in a somewhat dispersed manner. I will now briefly summarize the important points and tie the loose threads together. My goal was to use Foucault in such a way as to perceive Being and Time in a different light. As I noted, this interpretation of Foucault's work is not supposed to be the best interpretation of his work, nor the most faithful. The aim was to find a path which would lead us to a critical dialogue between Foucault and Heidegger.
After summarizing Heidegger's description of “Man,” I argued that Foucault's discourse theory is a systematization and radicalization of the “Man”-phenomenon. With this key, I traced Foucault's argument in Order of Things and argued that, despite some difficulties and differences, it also could be interpreted within the boundaries of Heidegger's thought. In Order of Things Foucault historicizes the way in which “Man” interprets Dasein and concludes that man is a recent invention. I then returned to Being and Time and made a problem of the way in which Heidegger privileges Dasein. If we interpret Foucault in a Heideggerian line, then difficulties arise in Dasein's privileging. Heidegger's search for the primordial of Dasein's being is based on his belief in an ahistoric core to Dasein's being and runs into the face of Foucault's conclusions in Order of Things. If Heidegger agrees that one cannot outstrip “Man,” (cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 130) and if Foucault is correct with his analysis, then how is Heidegger to justify his search for the primordial being that is opened in Dasein? If Heidegger admits that he can only perform his analysis with the help of existentiell projections, (cf. Ibid., p. 314) how could he make normative claims to being, given that these existentiell projections are based on the modern episteme?
An interesting question that would tease out some of the problems, would be: how did Heidegger stand to the theory of evolution? Did he believe that man emerged as a distinct species from apes and placental mammals? Being and Time invites us to think that humans have always been ontically distinct in that they are ontological (cf. Ibid., p. 12). Might we then jokingly assume that Being and Time was Heidegger's implicit reply to the Scopes Trial, which happened only one year before the publication of Being and Time? Are we perhaps to accept that Heidegger simply left his conception of Dasein in the arms of Christianity. Did he believe in Dasein as a part of God's creation? Is Dasein's core something that God weaves together in every mother's womb (Psalm 139,13)?
Perhaps Heidegger was himself aware of this tension. In the article mentioned above (“Die Zeit des Weltbildes”) Heidegger puzzles over how the modern subject is to be overcome. “[D]er Mensch kann vordenkend bedenken,” he notes, “daß das Subjektsein des Menschentums weder die einzige Möglichkeit des anfangenden Wesens des geschichtlichen Menschen je gewesen, noch je sein wird” (Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Weltbildes”, p. 109). He then suddenly changes his tone and mysteriously notes:

Ein flüchtiger Wolkenschatten über einem verborgenen Land, das ist die Verdüsterung, die jene von der Heilsgewißheit des Christentums vorbereitete Wahrheit als die Gewißheit der Subjektivität über ein Ereignis legt, das zu erfahren ihr verweigert bleibt. (Ibid.)

Although the tone is mysterious, it is not unidentifiable. Heidegger is adopting a prophetic tone. The land that had once been the promised land for Israel has now become a concealed land. The cloud that once led Israel by day, has now become the very darkening of that land to which the arrival is desired. Much like Moses, Heidegger stands on the mountaintop and looks down over the land he cannot enter himself. Heidegger believes that what impedes the development of the conceptions of the subject and being are the vestiges of Christianity. Is he aware that these vestiges can be found in his own treatment of Dasein?
In Being and Time Heidegger states that every question is a seeking (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 5). Importantly, Heidegger begins his text with discussing a question (1) and he closes with a question (2). That is, Being and Time is sent out on a journey – is sent into exile – but never reaches its goal. Being and Time is sent into exile, in search of the land that Heidegger later could only see from a mountaintop.


(1) “Haben wir heute eine Antwort auf die Frage nach dem, was wir mit dem Wort »seiend« eigentlich meinen? Keineswegs. Und so gilt es denn, die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein erneut zu stellen” Ibid., p. 2.
(2) “Offenbart sich die Zeit selbst als Horizont des Seins?” Ibid., p. 437.

Heidegger and Foucault. A Critical Encounter (5)

V.

A final point that must now be clarified is the role that Dasein plays in Being and Time. Heidegger grounds the question of the meaning of being on the analysis of Dasein. Why does the analysis of Dasein present a tool for the analysis of being? Why does Heidegger grant Dasein this priority?
Dasein must be granted priority, in Heidegger's assessment, because “[d]as Seiende vom Charakter des Daseins hat zur Seinsfrage selbst einen Bezug” (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 8). The question of the meaning of being therefore is ontically linked to Dasein, because being is a part of itself (cf. Ibid., §2). Only a being such as Dasein can ask a question pertaining to being. Thus, Dasein has an ontic priority. Moreover, Dasein is additionally privileged because it is the only entity that already has a relationship to being as a part of its own being. Somehow Dasein already understands being in general and has a relationship to it. This is what Heidegger means when he writes: “Die ontische Auszeichnung des Daseins liegt darin, dass es ontologisch ist” (Ibid., p. 12). This is Dasein's ontological priority. Finally, a third priority is Dasein's capability to understand the being of entities that does not belong to Dasein. It is therefore the “ontisch-ontologische Bedingung der Möglchkeiten aller Ontologien” (Ibid., p. 13). As a result Dasein has this triple ontico-ontological “Vorrang vor allem anderen Seienden” (Ibid.). Thus, Heidegger's entire project is grounded in the existential analysis of Dasein. The analysis of Dasein, Heidegger maintains, will eventually lead to the understanding of the meaning of being. Accordingly, this privileged entity becomes his venue to understand being. Dasein becomes the horse upon which Heidegger bets all his money.
Heidegger, however, is careful in §9 to argue that this entity, Dasein, is not be to understood outside of time and space. Dasein is not a soul or a free-floating subject-thing, but rather is to be analyzed as a being essentially bound by its factical existence. Dasein always understands its existence in terms of the possibilities that are open to it. This is where Heidegger introduces the notion of “Eigentlichkeit” and “Uneigentlichkeit,” which later in §27 leads him to describe the “Man”-phenomenon as a part of the “uneigentliche Selbst” (Ibid., §27). Heidegger's analysis of Dasein therefore struggles to understand its being in terms of its factical existence. If Heidegger were to take some timeless, fictional human being as the point of departure, his results would be tinted. Being would be misunderstood. Dasein does not have a relationship to being, outside of time, but rather within it. We do not need to trace the whole of Heidegger's argument here. For our discussion it will suffice to note that Heidegger's analysis requires him to take Dasein as his foundation; and that he is at pains to ground Dasein's being in its factical existence.
This leads us to an interesting problem that Heidegger addressed himself in Being and Time. This problem is called the “Zirkelargument” and is referred to three times throughout the book (cf. Ibid., pp. 7f, 152f, 314f.). Heidegger succinctly summarizes the “Zirkelargument” as follows: “die Idee der Existenz und des Seins überhaupt wird »vorausgesetzt« und »darnach« das Dasein interpretiert, um daraus die Idee des Seins zu gewinnen” (Ibid., p. 314). Thus, the “Zirkelargument” would maintain that Heidegger is performing an eisegesis of being instead of an exegesis of being. To counter this criticism Heidegger admits that he does indeed presuppose being. There is no way not to presuppose being, Heidegger argues. There is no way to get out of the “Zirkelargument,” nor is there a need. “In der existenzialen Analytik kann ein »Zirkel« im Beweis nicht einmal »vermieden« werden,” he states,

weil sie überhaupt nicht nach Regeln der »Konsequenzlogik« beweist. Was die Verständigkeit, vermeinend, der höchsten Strenge wissenschaftlicher Untersuchung zu genügen, mit der Vermeidung des »Zirkels« zu beseitigen wünscht, ist nichts Geringeres als die Grundstruktur der Sorge. Ursprünglich durch sie konstituiert, ist das Dasein je schon sich-selbst-vorweg. Seiend hat es sich je schon auf bestimmte Möglichkeiten seiner Existenz entworfen und in solchen existenziellen Entwürfen vorontologisch so etwas wie Existenz und Sein mitentworfen. Kann aber dann dieses dem Dasein wesenhafte Entwerfen der Forschung versagt werden, die, wie alle Forschung selbst eine Seinsart des erschließenden Daseins, das zur Existenz gehörige Seinsverständnis ausbilden und zu Begriff bringen will? (Ibid., p. 315)

Being and existence must be presupposed because they belong to Dasein's existentiell projections, which in turn are rooted in care. These presuppositions thus do not get in the way of Heidegger's analysis; rather they are the absolute necessity of it. This leads us back to his claim that Dasein must be understood in time and space. That is to say that Dasein must be understood as factically existing and thus must be guided by the presuppositions of being and existence (projections which constitute existence and being in care) in order to develop a definition of being. Heidegger rejects the demand to take Dasein out of space and time and come up with a definition of being without any presuppositions. His answer to the “Zirkelargument” is therefore in line with his privileging Dasein and his emphasis on the factical existence of Dasein's being. We must note, therefore, that Heidegger is basing his analysis on the “actual” concreteness of Dasein's existence.
By creating this ground for his analysis, however, Heidegger is cutting off all possibilities for making normative claims. Heidegger's object of analysis (Dasein) can only be the Dasein of the 20th century Weimar Republic, or at least of the modern period. Why? Because if Dasein must be understood in its everydayness and if the analyzer (Heidegger) must necessarily presuppose being and existence as a part of his own existentiell projections (as a structure of care), then Heidegger's analysis is thoroughly rooted in “his time,” or what Foucault would call the “modern episteme.” It is here that we sense a deep tension throughout Being and Time.
On the one hand it seems plausible that Heidegger would go along with the objection that his analysis can make no normative claims in light of Foucault's analysis. He would agree that Being and Time presents an analysis along the lines of Dasein's existence and being of the modern period. Precisely this is what is indicated in the passage quoted above (Ibid., p. 315). This concession can also be traced in other parts of Being and Time. In one passage, to name an example, Heidegger suggests that his analysis of “Zuhandenheit” and “Zeug” perhaps carries no interpretative weight for “primitive Menschen,” because in their conception the “innerweltlich Zuhandene” does not have the kind of being that belongs to equipment (cf. Ibid., p. 82). Thus, it seems Heidegger would admit that most of his analysis only has weight for the time period he belonged to himself.
On the other hand, however, the metaphors he employs to describe his analysis of Dasein hint at his effort to find something like a core of Dasein's being. This core is to be purified of any historical properties. His use of “Ursprünglichkeit,” “vorontologisch,” “Fundamentalontologie” hint at his search for something foundational in Dasein's being, which survives and overcomes the ebb and flow of time. Consequently his metaphorical verbs “enthüllen,” (1) “freilegen,” (2) “vor etwas liegen,”(3) evince the picture Heidegger has of his job as the interpreter. It would be wrong to take Heidegger's effort – to uncover a primordial kind of being of Dasein – as a covert escape into a timeless and spaceless Dasein. Rather Heidegger seems to posit an ahistorical core that has always characterized all of humankind throughout history. Thus, on the one hand we have a Heidegger who admits that he can only offer a contemporary analysis of Dasein; and on the other hand we have a Heidegger who clearly privileges Dasein as a being with an ahistorical core, which can be uncovered and upon which his analysis can be grounded.
If we return to Foucault, the tension becomes all the more apparent. In Order of Things, Foucault worked out how Dasein has been interpreted by “Man” since the 19th century. This analysis is in effect a way of historicizing Heidegger's project. By revealing how man has become a recent invention, Foucault namely brings his analysis to a logical conclusion by stating that there is no deep seated core of Dasein, no ahistoricity to Dasein. All of man's nature is constructed for Foucault. “To all those who still wish to talk about man,” Foucault polemically states,

about his reign or his liberation, to all those who still ask themselves questions about what man is in his essence, to all those who wish to take him as their starting-point in their attempts to reach the truth, to all those who, on the other hand, refer all knowledge back to the truths of man himself, to all those who refuse to formalize without anthropologizing, who refuse to mythologize without demystifying, who refuse to think without immediately thinking that it is man who is thinking, to all these warped and twisted forms of reflection we can answer only with a philosophical laugh - which means, to a certain extent, a silent one. (Foucault, Order of Things, p. 342f.)

With this conclusion, Foucault is sweeping away all of Heidegger's notions of “Ursprünglichkeit” or “Eigentlichkeit” as parts of the recent invention. Foucault is basically stating here that he does not understand what Heidegger means when he says, “Dasein kann sich gewinnen, bzw. es kann sich verlieren” (4). “What does it mean to be 'eigentlich?'” “Why does this 'Eigentlichkeit' necessarily have to exclude 'Man?',” Foucault would insist on asking. He would welcome Heidegger's effort to understand Dasein and entities in the everydayness, instead of interpreting Dasein and entities in an history-of-ideas mode. But Foucault would argue that there is no such thing as finding a true or real kind of being that is purified from “Man's” concealing and obscuring nature. There is no outside of “Man's” dominion for Foucault. In fact, only inside of “Man's” dominion can anything like knowledge or truth be processed and constructed. If we think back to Heidegger's comment that Dasein can never outstrip “Man's” dominion, (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 130) then we see how part of Being and Time reverberates with Foucault's conclusion, while other parts would have to reject it.
If Foucault were to have commented on Heidegger's effort to clear away “Man,” it probably would have echoed his comment on anti-Hegelianism: “We have to determine,” he commented in the inaugural lecture quoted above, “the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us” (Foucault, “Orders of Discourse”, p. 28). Heidegger's search for the primordial, non-“Man” being of Dasein, Foucault would have noted, is just one more of “Man's” insidious tricks.


(1) e.g. “Die Sorge der Durchschnittlichkeit enthüllt wieder eine wesenhafte Tendenz des Daseins, die wir die Einebnung aller Seinsmöglichkeiten nennen.” Ibid., p. 127.
(2) e.g. “In der Einleitung wurde schon angedeutet, dass in der existenzialen Analytik des Daseins eine Aufgabe mitgefördert wird [...]: Die Freilegung des Apriori, das sichtbar sein muß, soll die Frage, »was der Mensch sei«, philosophisch erörtert werden können.” Ibid., p. 45.
(3) e.g. “Die existenziale Analytik des Daseins liegt vor jeder Psychologie, Anthropologie und erst recht Biologie.” Ibid.
(4) Paraphrased from Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 42.

Heidegger and Foucault. A Critical Encounter (4)

IV.

So far I have argued that Foucault's work can be understood as a continuation of Heidegger's thoughts on “Man.” By systematizing and structuring Heidegger's phenomenon, Foucault has turned Heidegger's ontological analysis of “Man” into a methodological tool for historical analysis. This historical analysis of “Man's” dominion, Foucault calls “archaeology” (cf. Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge. pp. 135-141). With this archaeological approach, Foucault seeks to trace the “verschiedene Möglichkeiten seiner [Man] daseinsmäßigen Konkretion” (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 129). He is at pains to illuminate the historical transformations of the “Eindringlichkeit und Ausdrücklichkeit seiner [Man] Herrschaft” (Ibid.). Now by turning to Foucault's The Order of Things, I will discuss how Foucault's historical analysis led him to conclude that Dasein is a recent invention. This conclusion will bring us to the tension in Being in Time that this paper is aimed at revealing.
The Order of Things charts two great ruptures in the “episteme of Western culture” (Foucault, Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1970, p. xxii). The first rupture brought the “Renaissance age” to an end and inaugurated what Foucault calls the “Classical age” (at the end of the 16th century). The second marked the “modern age” (at the close of the 18th century). Foucault therefore chronologically analyzes three epistemes (pre-Classical, Classical, and modern) by tracing three different discursive formations throughout each of the epistemes: (1) discourse on language, (2) discourse on natural history or biology, (3) and the discourse on labor or economics. As each rupture occurred, these discursive formations consequently shifted and changed their position.
In the pre-Classical period, the entire episteme was characterized by resemblance. To state it in Heidegger's terms, “Man” made sense of the totality of the world with the organizing principle of resemblance. Throughout this period “resemblance played a constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture” (Ibid., p. 17). During the 16th century, however, a shift occurred which shattered the pre-Classical episteme. The way “one” interpreted and made sense of the totality of the world changed. Representation now became the main constructive force. Everything became representable on a table or chart. By representing and ordering, knowledge could become possible. Finally, by the beginning of the 19th century, a third episteme appeared in which representation could no longer play the decisive role. It became inescapably apparent that language, for instance, was not bound to the representative function humans gave it. It was rather discovered that language had a past and a life of its own. Being and entities were found to fall outside of the table of representation. Thus, history now became the organizing principle. “From the nineteenth century,” Foucault argues, “History [sic] was to deploy, in a temporal series, the analogies that connect distinct organic structures to one another. This same History will also, progressively, impose its laws on the analysis of production, the linguistic groups” (Ibid., p. 219). History, in the form of analogy and succession, was now the glue that held the modern episteme together. This very brief summary of Foucault's historical analysis now leads us to the argument most important for our discussion. Foucault namely claims that man is the “recent invention” (Ibid., pp. xxiii, 308, 385f) of the modern episteme. With this statement, Foucault means that the rise of the modern episteme made man become aware of himself as an object of knowledge. The table of representation of the Classical episteme allowed man to be a subject which looked onto the world as its object, but that subject was never aware of itself as a being on that table of representation, Foucault argues. In this act of “looking onto the world,” the subject was not aware of its own position. When this table of representation was destroyed, however, man came to realize that his position as a subject was just as much a part of the object-world as all the other entities. Since the modern episteme, then, man has become at the same time the subject and the object of knowledge. “When natural history becomes biology,” Foucault summarizes,

when the analysis of wealth becomes economics, when, above all, reflection upon language becomes philology, and Classical discourse, in which being and representation found their common locus, is eclipsed, then, in the profound upheaval of such an archaeological mutation, man appears in his ambiguous position as an object of knowledge and as a subject that knows: enslaved sovereign, observed spectator [...] (Ibid., p. 311).

The discovery of this “recent invention” had four consequences for the way “one” could speak about man's nature, Foucault posits. First, man's finitude became dramatically manifest now that he was no longer outside of the representation in a more or less timeless realm (Ibid., pp. 312-318). The limitations of man's existence were found in the “spatiality of the body, in the yawning of desire, and the time of language” (Ibid., p. 315). Finitude and the limitation of man became a means of charting his existence. Secondly, the nature of man became the subject of empirical and transcendental studies (Ibid., pp. 318-322). That is, he began to become the object of psychology, physiology, biology, and philosophy alike. Man was understood as an organic, biological being. At the same time, however, he was also taken to be a transcendental being, which was somehow greater than the sum of its biological parts. Thirdly, now that the link between being and thought were shattered – which had been upheld by the principle of representation – phenomena such as the unconscious or the “Unbewusst” appeared (Ibid., pp. 322-328). It was understood that the totality of the world and of being in general outstretched the boundaries of man's representative possibilities. Suddenly therefore man began to realize how many “unthought” and unknown processes were determinable for his own being. Man became aware that he was not the master in his own house. Lastly, the relationship between man and the origin shifted (Ibid., pp. 328-335). The origin could no longer localize the nature of man in the way that the ideal genesis of the Classical age could. In the modern age, the origin as a point on a linear timetable could not provide the descriptive explication of man's being. To trace something back to the origin was not to circumvent the entirety of human's existence. Instead of the ideal origin, man himself became “the opening from which time in general can be reconstituted, duration can flow, and things, at the appropriate moment, can make their appearance” (Ibid., p. 332). Thus, time was understood either as a movement which slowly “curves itself over upon itself” (Ibid., p. 334) thereby completing a circle (Hegel, Marx, Spengler); or it could be understood as “neither a completion nor a curve, but rather that ceaseless rending open which frees the origin in exactly that degree to which it recedes,” as in the writings of Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger (Ibid.).

What would Heidegger have commented on this analysis? Kevin Hill summarizes the general opinion, when he points out that Order of Things can be understood as “Foucault's critique of Heidegger” (Hill, Kevin: “Foucault's Critique of Heidegger.” Philosophy Today, Vol. 34.4 [Winter 1990], p. 336). I believe, however, that Heidegger would have agreed with much more of Foucault's analysis than Hill assumes. For one, I believe both would agree that Foucault's work can be labeled “archaeological.” In describing his methodological approach, Foucault noted that his “enterprise is not so much a history, in the traditional meaning of that word, as an 'archaeology'” (Foucault, Order of Things, p. xxii). Likewise, Heidegger notes in a distinctive passage that a world can transform or even slowly vanish over time. Archaeology reveals this fact to us over and over, Heidegger notes (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 380). Thus, in light of this striking metaphorical similarity, I believe Heidegger would agree with Foucault that Order of Things is an “archaeological work.” Foucault dug up different worlds in which different concepts and entities changed positions. Furthermore, it is important to note that Heidegger's article “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” written 12 years after Being and Time, bears an interesting resemblance to Order of Things (1). By using “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” to argue that Order of Things is in line with Heidegger's thinking is not to say that there are no differences between Heidegger's “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” and Foucault's Order of Things. The biggest difference that immediately emerges is that Heidegger traces the modern subject directly back to Descartes, while Foucault views the invention of man as the construction of the early 19th century (2). However, despite this difference, there are important parallels that can be established between both texts. For one, Heidegger agrees with Foucault that man is a recent invention. For Heidegger the essence of man changed when it became the Cartesian subject. “Nicht dass der Mensch sich von den bisherigen Bindungen zu sich selbst befreit, ist das Entscheidende,” Heidegger notes,

sondern dass das Wesen des Menschen überhaupt sich wandelt, indem der Mensch zum Subjekt wird. [...] Wenn aber der Mensch zu dem ersten und eigentlichen Subjectum wird, dann heißt das: Der Mensch wird zu jenem Seienden, auf das sich alles Seiende in der Art seines Seins und seiner Wahrheit gründet. Der Mensch wird zur Bezugsmitte des Seienden als solchen. Das ist aber nur möglich, wenn die Auffassung des Seienden im Ganzen sich wandelt. (3)

Obviously Heidegger is not saying that individuals had no knowledge of themselves prior to Descartes, but rather that the individual became aware of itself in a new way within this system of thought.
Moreover, Heidegger notes that this shift, which established the “erste und eigentliche Subjectum,” was related to a paradigmatic shift of thought. That is to say it was structurally related to the entire way being and entities were interpreted. Heidegger is making a connection between the “erste und eigentliche Subjectum” and the way in which “die Auffassung des Seienden im Ganzen sich wandelt.” This in effect is not different from what Foucault means when he argues that man was created with a rupture of the episteme, which rearranged the space of knowledge. Thus, to conclude: both Heidegger and Foucault are illuminating the way “one” has come to understand Dasein's nature and Dasein's relation to being and entities. Both argue that the way “one” now interprets Dasein is a fairly recent interpretation. Furthermore, both point out that this interpretation of man's nature is structurally related to the interpretation of being in general.
Thus, I believe it is fair to conclude that Order of Things must not be rejected off-handedly as non-Heideggerian. As has now become apparent, there are in fact many links between Order of Things and Heidegger's own thought. Therefore, if we are to interpret Order of Things in this fashion, then it sheds light on Heidegger's project in Being and Time, to which I now turn.


(1) It is beyond the scope of this paper to argue that “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” yet represents the general project Heidegger pursued in Being and Time. Although it has often been pointed out that the “Kehre” shifted Heidegger's focus away from Dasein, I believe that this article is still in the realm of Being and Time. I can refer here to Paul Ricoeur, who has made a strong case for viewing “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” and Being and Time as part of the same project. (Ricoeur, Paul. “Heidegger and the Question of the Subject.” The Conflict of Interpretation. Essays in Hermeneutics. ed. by Don Ihde, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974, pp. 223-235).
(2) Heidegger's and Foucault's interpretations are at odds as to whether or not Descartes' philosophy provided any room for the cogito to understand himself as an object. In similar metaphorical language, Foucault argues that Descartes' cogito drew the world “in the form of a picture or table,” but that this cogito was “never to be found in that table himself. Before the end of the eighteenth century, man did not exist any more than the potency of life, the fecundity of labour, or the historical density of language. [...] The Classical episteme is articulated along lines that do not isolate, in any way, a specific domain proper to man.” (Foucault, Order of Things, p. 308f) Conversely, Heidegger argues that Descartes' cogito became an object among the many objects it mapped out. “Das Subjectum, die Grundgewißheit, ist das jederzeit gesicherte Mitvorgestelltsein des vorstllenden Menschn mit dem vorgestellten menschlichen oder nichtmenschlichen Seienden, d.h. Gegenständlichen. [...] Erst deshalb, weil der Mensch in dieser Weise in der Grundgewißheit (im fundamentum absolutum inconsussum des me cogiare = me esse) notwendig mitvorgestellt ist, nur weil der sich zu sich selbst befreiende Mensch notwendig in das Subjectum dieser Freiheit gehört, einzig deshalb kann der Mensch und muss dieser Mensch selbst zum ausgezeichneten Seienden werden, zu einem Subjectum, das im Hinblick auf das erste wahrhaft (d.h. gewiß) Seiende unter allen Subjecta den Vorrang hat.” (Heidegger, “Die Zeit als Weltbild.” p. 106f).
(3) Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Weltbildes”, p. 86 (my italics). In footnote 8, Heidegger additionally explicates at greater length why ancient Greek philosophy had no Subjectum. “Jeder Subjektivismus ist in der griechischen Sophistik unmöglich, weil hier der Mensch nie Subjectum sein kann; er kann dies nicht werden, weil das Sein hier Anwesen und die Wahrheit Unverborgenheit ist.” (Ibid., p. 104).

Heidegger and Foucault. A Critical Encounter (3)

III.

Foucault explicitly mentioned Heidegger only in interviews, but never at any length in his written work. It certainly would be false to think of Foucault as a Heideggerian disciple or even as one of his admirers. However, I suggest that it will benefit our discussion to treat Foucault's work as a continuation of Heidegger's “Man.” By treating Foucault in this manner, I do not mean to argue that this is the only way to read Foucault, or necessarily even the best way. I am using Foucault in order to gain a deeper understanding of Heidegger's “Man”. That is, I believe we can understand Foucault's work – especially his early work – as describing the same phenomena as Heidegger, albeit with different emphases and finally with different results.
In his inaugural lecture (1970) for his chair at Collège de France, Foucault famously began by confessing his anxiety about the lecture he was to deliver. “I would really like to have slipped imperceptibly into this lecture,” he began,

as into all the others I shall be delivering, perhaps over the years ahead. [...] At the moment of speaking, I would like to have perceived a nameless voice, long preceding me, leaving me merely to enmesh myself in it, taking up its cadence, and to lodge myself, when no one was looking, in its interstices as if it had paused an instant, in suspense, to beckon to me. (Foucault, “Orders of Discourse.” Social Science Information 10 (1971), p. 7)

After expressing this uneasiness, Foucault soon notes that his anxiety is indeed met with a reply. The individual, in this case the lecturer, does not need to speak with his own voice and enter into “this risky world of discourse” (Ibid.) all by himself. Rather he can follow the established guidelines of how “one” is to give a lecture. To the anxiety, therefore,

institutions reply: But you have nothing to fear from launching out; we’re here to show you discourse is within the established order of things. [...] To this all too common feeling [anxiety], institutions have an ironic reply, for they solemnise beginnings, surrounding them with a circle of silent attention; in order that they can be distinguished from far off, they impose ritual forms upon them. (Ibid., p. 7f)

In Heidegger's terms, we might say that the lecturer, by giving the appropriate lecture “one” would give for the occasion, can securely find himself as “Man-selbst.” The “Man” guides Dasein to the discourse the lecturer is to give, “within the established order of things.” It is clear, for instance, that “one” need not lecture longer than two hours; the lecture should contain information about what the lecturer's work has concentrated on so far; it might address what the lecturer is planning to focus on, now that he has the chair – and so on. The discourse is the nameless voice of “Man.”
The point to stress is that Foucault, similarly to Heidegger, notes a force that structures Dasein's life. Foucault is not content, however, with identifying a force or institution in the general fashion of Heidegger. Rather he is at pains to scrutinize and make sense of the “nameless voice,” which reveals the established order of things. Using the example of the lecture as his point of departure, Foucault thus advances his hypothesis, which can be understood as a summary of his philosophical work and historical research. “I am supposing,” he writes,

that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality. (Ibid., p. 8)

This statement is at once attuned to Heidegger's “Man,” but at the same time a far more in-depth inquiry into its nature, than Heidegger ever presented. In a sense Foucault's society, in many ways is like Heidegger's “Öffentlichkeit" (1). In Heidegger, “Man” exercises its control in the “Öffentlichkeit” through “Aufgaben, Regeln, Maßstäbe.” In Foucault, a society controls, selects, organizes and redistributes the production of discourse through “procedures.” There is an obvious similarity between both approaches. Foucault departs from Heidegger, however, in his demand to understand and interpret these procedures that are left unidentified in Heidegger. The “Man” is only a pseudonym for Foucault, which pines for further identification.
How, then, did Foucault understand the nature of “Man?” The first point to note is that Foucault took the “Man”-phenomenon and placed upon it a structure of interweaving different “Mans.” In his early career, Foucault was interested in working out the structures that grounded knowledge. Every era, or what he called “episteme,” has its own system that structures the conditions of knowledge, so that polarities such as true-false or reason-madness can become possible and can enable the positivity of knowledge. Utterances, actions and meaningful propositions are grounded on the structures of the episteme. Foucault's key terms, therefore, are “conditions of possibility” or “structures of knowledge.” He is never concerned with retracing historical events as such, or describing the philosophy of a thinker of a particular time in history, but rather he is interested in explaining the conditions that made events or thoughts become meaningful and accessible to the contemporaries of its age.
His methodology therefore dramatically runs in the face of the “history of ideas” approach, which posits individuals as the source and expression of knowledge. Foucault's methodology does not view the individual but rather the episteme as the platform on which knowledge, truth, and meaning could be expressed. Thus, such unities as author, opus, or book carry no value for the historian other than as dots on the platform of a greater framework. “The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut,” Foucault argues.

Beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a framework. (Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge. And the Discourse on Language, 1972, p. 23)

Consequently Foucault's work seeks to describe the system of references that make up the episteme. This episteme is defined as the “total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and the possibly formalized systems" (Ibid., p. 191). It is important to remind ourselves here that the episteme is not the same notion as Heidegger's “Man.” Episteme is the totality of many diverse “Mans.” The “Man” that defines how “one” talks about and deals with madness is different from the “Man” that defines how “one” talks about and deals with sexuality, for instance. Thus, the episteme is not the full embodiment of “Man,” but rather is the platform on which the many different “Mans” can arrange themselves. Foucault's work is therefore a more a totalizing, systematic, and structural approach to “Man.” The episteme arranges and gives voice to the “Niemand, dem alles Dasein im Untereinandersein sich je schon ausgeliefert hat;” (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 128) it structures the “Verweisungszusammenhang der Bedeutsamkeit" (Ibid., p. 129).
What comes closest to Heidegger's “Man” in Foucault is therefore not the episteme, but what he calls “discursive formations.” These discursive formations are clusters of diverse statements, which map the locus of their subject matter within the episteme (2). With a shift in the episteme, the discursive formations shift their position, causing the rearrangement of the clusters of statements. The discursive formation on madness, for example, experienced a rupture in the 18th century, which turned the concept of reason into the binary opposite of madness – a binary opposition that had not existed until the 18th century, Foucault argues. This mutation of the discursive formation on madness now tied together different dispersed statements and thus took up a new place in the episteme. Thus, madness would now be encountered as the opposite of reason, thereby reconfiguring the pre-18th century discursive interpretation of madness.
Foucault's “discursive formation,” I suggest, might best be related to the structure of “Man” that Heidegger calls “Gerede.” In his paragraph on “Gerede” (§35), Heidegger argues “Gerede [...] [ist] die Seinsart des Verstehens und Auslegens des alltäglichen Daseins” (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 167). “Gerede” is the mode in which “one” makes sense of and talks about everyday phenomena. “Gerede” is the language in which “Man” interprets Dasein's encounter with the world. The interpretation of “Man,” Heidegger argues, “regelt und verteilt die Möglichkeiten des durchschnittlichen Verstehens und der zugehörigen Befindlichkeit” (Ibid., p. 167f). Heidegger suggests that nearly everything we deal with is only comprehensible in the realm of “Man's” interpretation.

Vieles lernen wir zunächst in dieser Weise kennen [i.e. Ausgelegtheit des Geredes], nicht weniges kommt über ein solches durchschnittliches Verständnis nie hinaus. [...] Die Herrschaft der öffentlichen Ausgelegtheit hat sogar schon über die Möglichkeiten des Gestimmtseins entschieden, das heißt über die Grundart, in der sich das Dasein von der Welt angehen lässt. Das Man zeichnet die Befindlichkeit vor, es bestimmt, was man und wie man 'sieht' (Ibid., p. 169f).

Thus “Gerede” constitutes for Heidegger the dominion of “Man's” interpretation, which “controls and distributes” the way in which the “Öffentlichkeit” understands and talks about everyday reality. It is in this sense that I believe Foucault's “discursive formations” are related to Heidegger's “Man.” Yet, I think it is fair to say that Foucault's discursive formations shed more light on the “Man”-phenomenon by understanding the wider context (episteme) in which statements are set. The discursive formations explain namely why “one's” understanding of madness in the 17th century, for instance, was different from “one's” understanding of madness in the 18th century. Heidegger would have difficulties, on the basis of “Man” and “Gerede,” to explain why “one's talk” of the same subject matter produced completely different interpretations over time. Heidegger is able to destruct a single philosopher, or to explain why “Man's” ordinary interpretation of time can successfully and coherently deliver the interpretation that it does. But he would have difficulties in explaining how “one's” talk and treatment of madness changed in the 18th century, thereby defining a new “Grundart, in der sich das Dasein von der Welt angehen lässt.” That is to say that Being and Time provides only limited capacities to tease out the “Man”-phenomenon historically and existentielly.

If this Heideggerian interpretation of Foucault's discourse theory proves anything, it is that Heidegger's description of “Man” in Being and Time seems to be somewhat undeveloped. In my opinion, Heidegger raises more questions than he answers with his interpretation of “Man.” In a word, in contrast to Foucault, Heidegger seems to overlook synchronic and diachronic differences and categories in “Man.” With synchronic differences I mean that Heidegger takes no notice of categories such as nationality, gender, age, religion, or class. If Heidegger can equate “Man” with “Öffentlichkeit,” how is it that he makes no differences between, for instance, a German “Man” and an American “Man.” It is easy enough to imagine how the German “Man” would quarrel with the American “Man” about whether “one” should wear black or white socks. Similar examples could easily be given within other categories. Is there no difference between the “Man” of a 7-year-old and the “Man” of a 70-year-old, or between the male and female “Man?”
With diachronic differences I mean that Heidegger leaves the historical nature of “Man” undiscussed. Although he is not unaware of the phenomenon in Being and Time he never paid any attention to it (3). But if we were to read 16th century texts from the Holy Roman Empire, for instance, it would become immediately apparent that a different “Man” ruled in those days. Not only does the “Man” of 16th Germany speak a different language, but its interpretations of the world, Dasein or discourse are utterly different from our interpretations of it. Its interpretation of what “one” does in society and how “one” fits into the the social hierarchy is strangely at odds with the interpretation of the 20th century “Man.”
The point to stress here is that Foucault illumines the phenomenon of “Man,” which for the most part remains in the dark in Being and Time. Despite the significant and far reaching consequences for the rest of Being and Time, Heidegger never devotes much attention to the history or multiplicity of “Man.” He registers the presence of this phenomenon and gives it a name: “Jeder ist der Andere and Keiner ist er selbst. Das Man, [...] ist das Niemand, dem alles Dasein [...] sich je schon ausgeliefert hat” (Ibid., p. 128). Heidegger's “Man” thus stands much like the altar that Paul famously mentioned in his speech on the Areopagus. Registering the presence of a God and without being able to identify its name, the altar carried the inscription: “To an unknown God” (Acts, 17,23). Heidegger's description of “Man” is like this altar. Foucault, conversely, makes an effort to describe this “unknown God.” He argues that there are many different “Mans” that are all organized by a larger framework. Thus, Foucault looks at the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of “Man.” While in Heidegger, “Man” seems to have many faces but no identity, Foucault adjusts this interpretation by pointing out that there are many different little “Mans,” which all belong to the same family.
But these are merely ontic manifestations we have discussed, one might object. Is Heidegger not merely concerned with an ontological and existential analysis of “Man” and disinterested in the multiple ontic possibilities? The synchronic and diachronic differences just mentioned could appear as mere ontico-existentiell caprices of the ontologico-existential “Man”-phenomenon. This indeed is probably the reason why Heidegger did not further develop his analysis of “Man.” However, as we will see in the following chapters, the existentiell interpretations of “Man” are intimately linked to Heidegger's analysis of Dasein and the meaning of being. If Heidegger is searching for the meaning of being; and if this search can only be grounded on the existentiell projections of being and existence; and if the “Man” cannot ever be outstripped, then the ontico-existentiell intrepretations of “Man” permeate all of Heidegger's project. In this light, it seems that the ontico-existentiell concreteness of “Man” would be the more important aspect to bring into view.


(1) “Abständigkeit, Durchschnittlichkeit, Einebnung konstituieren als Seinsweisen des Man das, was wir als »die Öffentlichkeit« kennen.” Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 127.
(2) “Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions, and functionings, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation.” Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 38.
(3) “Es [Man] hat selbst wieder verschiedene Möglichkeiten seiner daseinsmäßigen Konkretion. Eindringlichkeit und Ausdrücklichkeit seiner Herrschaft können geschichtlich wechseln.” Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 129.

Heidegger and Foucault. A Critical Encounter (2)

II.

To begin, we must first clarify how Heidegger characterizes “das Man.” The discussion of “Man” occurs explicitly for the first time in the first division of Being and Time. After having argued that being-in-the-world is the basic state of Dasein (Chapter 2) and after having discussed the meaning of the worldhood of world (Chapter 3), Heidegger can continue his analysis by turning to being-in-the-world as being-with and being-one's-self (Chapter 4). Heidegger bases his analysis in the fourth chapter on the important assertion: “Die Welt des Daseins ist Mitwelt" (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 126). For Heidegger this means that while Dasein can certainly be “left alone” by others ontically and find itself in solitude existentielly, it is nevertheless constantly surrounded by other humans in an existential sense. No one is an isolated island of self. Dasein cannot “shake off” the others that surround it, because being with others is a part of Dasein's own being (1). Much like Melville's monkey-rope, Dasein is existentially “merged in a joint stock,” bound together with the ones that surround it by invisible ropes (Melville, Moby-Dick, p. 303, [chapter 72]).
This existential aspect of Dasein is not unimportant for Heidegger's analysis. It is namely in this context that “das Man” makes its appearance (Sein und Zeit, § 27). “Man,” in its German usage, signifies what “one” does or what “one” is. Thus, “Man” has the character of the others that are a part of Dasein's being. In Heidegger's assessment, “Man” is an important phenomenon that deserves attention in order to answer the question of the meaning of being. By announcing the average standards of behavior and by leveling the possibilities of Dasein, “Man” carries Dasein's everyday responsibilities and accommodates it in every situation (cf. Ibid., pp. 126-128). This phenomenon that Heidegger calls to attention is not difficult to understand. We can easily enough imagine, for instance, a mother telling her child that “one” does not lick a knife at the dinner table; or that “one” does not point a finger at strangers. These postulations are found everywhere in average – mostly unwritten – rules that limit Dasein's acceptable behavior. “Mit der Verlorenheit in das Man,” Heidegger writes in a later recapitulation, “ist über das nächste faktische Seinkönnen des Daseins – die Aufgaben, Regeln, Maßstäbe, die Dringlichkeit und Reichweite des besorgend-fürsorgenden In-der-Welt-seins – je schon entschieden” (Ibid., p. 268). These “tasks and rules” can be found in the public environment, where “Man” establishes itself. Heidegger specifically uses political and drastic terms when describing the manner in which “Man” establishes itself in the public. He speaks of “Man” in terms of creating a “Herrschaft,” “Macht,” and “Diktatur” (Ibid., p. 126). Thus, “Man” is a phenomenon that arouses Heidegger's attention because it interferes with the way Dasein behaves and interacts in its world, which in turn is related to the way Dasein relates to being. “
Das Man,” however, does not only determine what we might call “social behavior.” Heidegger goes further to claim that “Man” determines the manner in which Dasein encounters and deals with the entities within-the-world. In a very real sense this is more radical than simply claiming that “Man” establishes tasks and rules for social interaction. Heidegger makes the claim that there is no way whatsoever to transcend the dictatorship of the “Man.” Not even when Dasein sits alone at home – far away from the tasks and rules “one” does in public – can Dasein escape “das Man.”

Das Man-selbst, worum-willen das Dasein alltäglich ist, artikuliert den Verweisungszusammenhang der Bedeutsamkeit. Die Welt des Daseins gibt das begegnende Seiende auf eine Bewandtnisganzheit frei, die dem Man vertraut ist, und in den Grenzen, die mit der Durchschnittlichkeit des Man festgelegt sind (Ibid., p. 129)

Thus, when Dasein encounters entities, “Man” in its averageness determines what they can be used for and how they are to be understood. For instance, when Dasein picks up a hammer, it automatically knows what “one” does with it and what “one” does not do with it. “Man” has left its traces all over the hammer, so to speak. “Man” has left its traces over every single entity, Heidegger claims. Even if one were to pick up a small thumbtack and look at it hard enough – one could find the traces of “Man's” large footsteps. It must be stressed that Heidegger leaves no possibility for a “Man”-free zone of Dasein's life. Dasein cannot transcend “Man's” dominion in Heidegger's assessment. Dasein cannot move beyond the boundaries of “Man's” dictatorship. The only possibility for Dasein to be “eigentlich,” is to perform an “existentielle Modifikation des Man" (Ibid., p. 130). What the nature of this modification might look like, however, is left open by Heidegger.
This understanding of “Man's” position has great significance for Heidegger's further analysis. He notes that Dasein in its average everydayness is proximally and the for the most part “fallen” to the world of “Man" (2). In Heidegger's terms this means that Dasein is proximally and for the most part “uneigentlich.” Being, in its most primordial nature, remains concealed and obscured in the confines of “Man.” The inauthentic Dasein lives in a world of “Man's” translation. Throughout Time and Being, Heidegger is therefore at pains to reach an interpretation of the meaning of being purified of any “uneigentliche” mistranslations of being. We must therefore note at this juncture that “Man” plays a central role for Heidegger's entire project. Before turning to Heidegger's analytical treatment of Dasein, I will now introduce Foucault's discourse theory and make the claim that it can be understood as a contribution to the analysis of the “Man”-phenomenon.


(1) “Das Mitsein ist ein existenziales Konstituens des In-der-Welt-seins.” Ibid., p. 125.
(2) cf. Ibid., §38. Heidegger connects the fallenness of Dasein with the everyday manner in which Dasein understands its own 'there'. The phenomena he works out are idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. These phenomena constitute the characteristics of falleness: “Die Verfallenheit an die »Welt« meint das Aufgehen im Miteinandersein, sofern dieses durch Gerede, Neugier und Zweideutigkeit geführt wird. [...] ” Ibid., p. 175.

Heidegger and Foucault. A Critical Encounter (1)

This is a paper I wrote for Karsten Harries' course "Heidegger's Being and Time" in the Spring Semester 2009, at Yale University. It is an examination of Being and Time from a Foucaultian vantage point. There are six parts to the essay. Each part will be posted as a single post successively.

I.

Ever since Michel Foucault boldly claimed in his last interview that Heidegger had “always been the essential philosopher”(1) for his philosophy, various aspects of the relationship between Heidegger and Foucault have been discussed. These discussions have concentrated on the possible Heideggerian influence in Foucault's works; on the similarities between the works of both philosophers; or on Foucault's covert critique of Heidegger. Overall the scholarly opinion is that Foucault's earlier work has only minor traces of Heidegger's thought and that Foucault, contrary to his own late claims, was no closet-Heideggerian. In a sense, Foucault's last interview has been treated much like Franz Rosenzweig's last essay “Vertauschte Fronten,” in which he also aligned himself to Heidegger shortly before his death (2). Until recently Rosenzweig's comments have been viewed by critics as highly questionable (3). Similarly, most scholars have also treated Foucault's comments as questionable. Thus, Martin Saar representatively summarizes the general assessment of the Foucault-Heidegger relationship when he writes: “Foucault ist kein heimlicher, den Einfluss verbergender Heideggerianer. [...] Wo immer Foucault auch begonnen hat, er spricht in den entscheidenden Phasen seines Werks mit seiner eigenen Stimme, zwar mit oftmals geborgten Worten, aber in einem unüberhörbar eigenen Tonfall” (4).
Despite the lack of many obvious similarities between Foucault's and Heidegger's works, I would nonetheless like to suggest in this paper a possible path which could bring both philosophers into critical dialogue. Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg have suggested to approach the Foucault-Heidegger relationship in terms of a “critical encounter” – instead of narrowly investigating Heidegger's influence on Foucault (5). In this paper I will follow Milchman's and Rosenberg's lead and imagine a possible encounter between Foucault's earlier work and Heidegger's Being and Time. One way of imagining such a fruitful encounter, I suggest, is to view Foucault's discourse theory as taking its depature from Heidegger's interpretation of “Man.” Foucault's work (particularly Madness and Civilization, Order of Things, Archeology of Knowledge and Discourse on Language) advances and radicalizes what Heidegger has to say about “das Man.” I will focus on aspects that are most helpful to engage in a discussion of Being and Time, instead of concentrating primarily on Foucault's work. Thus, Being and Time will be at the heart of this paper.
The overarching argument I will present is that Foucault's radicalization of “das Man” exposes and magnifies a key tension in Being and Time. In a word, the tension in Being and Time lies in Heidegger's analytical treatment of Dasein. A tension is created between an apparently ahistoric Dasein on the one hand and a Dasein that is historically constituted by “das Man” on the other. Heidegger (in the name of “Man”) would follow Foucault's assessment that discourses structure and order Dasein's everyday encounter with its world. However, Heidegger's constant search for the primordial and originary of Dasein's being would inevitably force him to reject Foucault's historical analysis. This tension between an ahistorical Dasein and a historicizing “Man” will be illumined in our discussion by looking at Foucault's work and especially his analysis offered in Order of Things.

(1) Foucault, Michel. Politics, Philosophy, Culture. Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984. transl. by Alan Sheridan, ed. by Lawrence D. Kritzman, New York: Routledge, 1988, p. 250.
(2) Rosenzweig, Franz. “Vertauschte Fronten.” Der Morgen 6,6 (April 1930), pp. 85-87.
(3) Peter Gordon has made an impressive case to reevaluate this reading of “Vertauschte Fronten.” (Gordon, Peter Eli. Rosenzweig and Heidegger. Between Judaism and German Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)
(4) Saar, Martin: “Heidegger und Michel Foucault. Prägung ohne Zentrum.” Heidegger Handbuch. Leben–Werk–Wirkung. ed. by Dieter Thomä, Stuttgart 2003, S. 439.
(5) Milchman, Alan and Alan Rosenberg. “Toward a Foucault/Heidegger Auseinandersetzung.” Foucault and Heidegger. Critical Encounters. ed. by Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003, p. 6.

The Unknown Father

I first met my true father when I was roughly 25 years old. Or, I first set out my journey to find him when I was roughly 25. Until then, I hadn't known much of my him. He was basically a stranger to me. I knew much about him - that is etymologically speaking, I was very much outside of him -, but not much of him and even less from him. My step-parents who had raised me since I had been a very little child, always spoke of him in harsh and unfriendly but awkwardly reserved tones, as if they were speaking of long-passed dictator that had killed one of their grandparents and might come back to haunt them. Or as if my father might in fact come back and claim me, or kidnap me. They would speak in cold and slowly pronounced words. Cold, as they slowly slithered out of their mouths and into my ears.
"He is a very evil misogynist, you must understand," they told me, almost in a whispering voice, but never losing eye-contact, in order to study my reaction with greatest possible precision. "What is a misogynist?" I asked with a innocently bold voice, and raising my chin after I had asked the question, staring back into their eyes, like their mirror image. "It is someone who hates women. Just out of principle." I had to chuckle, because I thought: what a funny thing that they have a word for something just like that. I began wondering if they might even have a word for someone calling someone else a misogynist. A misogynizer? Not knowing exactly at what I was chuckling and not understanding the absence that was glittering in my eyes, they described him further for me. Just to press home the message. At this point my mother moved from her chair, which had been adjacent to the couch I was sitting on. She sat next to me. All the while during her relocation she had been staring at me, saying, "Honey, now listen. He is also an anti-Semite." Studying my face and gestures. This time I knew what that word meant, and began wondering if you might be able to say someone is anti-Semituous which would match misogynistic, but soon forgot the idea when they continued their train of thought. "He basically hates anyone who is not like himself," they tried to neatly conclude.
This conversation went on for quite a while and I remember not feeling much at the time. It was like hearing the summary of a gruesome and captivating movie someone had watched the day before. Or hear someone tell you about how their favorite football team lost some game the day before. I understood the information, but the emotions they were supposed be accompanied by, were missing. The first time we had "the conversation," I remember, I was very young and had enough difficulties imagining that I actually had a physical father who was a different person than my step-father. "Who, on his own, has ever really known who gave him life?" Homer once wisely asked (Odysseus, I, 250). And he was right. I sure didn't.
There have been many other "conversations" since the first one. Routinely my step-parents would sit down after dinner with me and go over every little detail of my father again. Sometimes they would think of a new item they missed in the former "conversation." "And did you know that your father simply hates Black people? Just because he doesn't like the way they look. And because they are different from him," they would say with wide, staring eyes. And I would nod. Nod because I really did believe what they were saying was true. And nod because I really did believe it was bad. And because I believed it was better for me to stay with them, instead of him. "He hates the East," once my step-father shot out like a peal of thunder, after a sip of his ice-cold beer. Startled and shaken up, I replied just as loudly, in an off-set yelp, "East? Like in the direction East?" He looked at me. There was a moment of silence. And then he laughed out loud. "No!" he said with a bubbling laugh. "No, no, no. Like in the meaning of Eastern culture or thought and stuff. You know. Like he hates Asians, Orientals, and everything they do and stand for." "Oh!" I replied still with a nervous and still stiff tone, while I slouched back into the couch. "Yeah, he kinda mystifies them whenever he talks about them, but in a way that undermines their authority and sincerity. You know? He does it in a very sly, sneaky kind of way, you know what I mean?"

But then, suddenly in my early 20s I began to wonder about my father. Truly wondering. Truly wandering. I wanted to see him. I knew that he was what my step-mother would call a "bad guy." I knew all of the stories by heart. But - he was my father. Yes, he is my father. He is the one to whom I belong, and who belongs to me. I could not leave him behind. I cannot just replace him, because he has done wrong. I am tied to him in a joint-stock, just like Melville tells us in that awkwardly fascinating chapter of the monkey-rope. To believe I could just replant myself - my tree. Just rip out its roots - no! that's all wrong. He is my father. I cannot replace him. No one can replace him. I carry his blood.

So, here is what I did. Listen now. I went back to the university, and behind my step-parent's back, I asked Harold Bloom to help me find my father. And he did. Or at least, somewhat. He was very unkind in his remarks about my step-parents. I did not like that. But, he still was a great help to me in my search. I started reading Friedrich Nietzsche, William Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, Emerson, Steinbeck, T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Hobbes. I have begun to see him. Make out his face. My father. It is a shame for a young man my age to have to search so diligently for my father. The unknown father of a searching son. My step-parents had turned around the Odyssey. It is now me, Telemachus, who is on his journey back to his father Odysseus- ah Odysseus! ah humanity!

Note this quote - Emmanuel Levinas (18)

Emmanuel Levinas is a Jewish philosopher who studied under Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Levinas' magnus opus Totality and Infinity (French 1961, English 1969) is a post-existentialist effort to re-establish the subject as a locus of philosophical inquiry, make philosophy an ethical problem, and finally - of greatest interest to me - also to engage a kind of religion, or deism in an earnest philosophical manner. His thinking can be viewed as a Heideggerian reflection of Karl Barth's theology, albeit he remained highly critical of both. He was probably the thinker that had the greatest impact on Jacques Derrida, perhaps next to Husserl - and is still read today. If you can get your fingers on any of his stuff, read it. He is quite amazing, even if he is not always easy to understand at first glance. Here is a little taste of his book Totality and Infinity.

"For the philosophical tradition the conflicts between the same and the other are resolved by theory whereby the other is reduced to the same - or, concretely, by the community of the State, where beneath anonymous power, though it be intelligible, the I rediscovers war in the tyrannic oppression it undergoes from the totality. Ethics, where the same takes the irreducible Other into account, would belong to opinion. The effort of this book is directed toward apperceiving in discourse a non-allergic relation with alterity, toward apperceiving Desire - where power, by essence murderous of the other, becomes, faced with the other and 'against all good sense,' the impossibility of murder, the consideration of the other, or justice. Concretely our effort consists in maintaining, within anonymous community, the society of the I with the Other - language and goodness. This relation is not prephilosophical, for it does not do violence to the I, is not imposed upon it brutally from the outside, despite itself, or unbeknown to it, as an opinion; more exactly, it is imposed upon the I beyond all violence by a violence that calls it entirely into question. [...]
Between a philosophy of transcendence that situates the true life to which man, escaping from here, would gain access in the privileged moments of liturgical, mystical elevation, or in dying - and a philosophy of immanence in which we would truly come into possession of being when every 'other' (cause of war), encompassed by the same, would vanish at the end of history - we propose to describe, within the unfolding of terrestrial existence, of economic existence (as we shall call it), a relationship with the other that does not result in a divine or human totality, that is not a totalization of history but the idea of infinity. Such a relationship is metaphysics itself." (Levinas, Emmanuel: Totality and Infinity. trans. by A. Lingis, Pittsburgh, 1969, p. 44.52)

The tinted glass: Anselm and Emerson

The great medieval philosopher Anselm of Canterbury (1033 – 1109), in his writing De Veritate, dialogically makes an effort to advance in understanding the nature of truth. Anselm puts forth many different kinds of truths: truth of signification, truth of thought, truth of the will, etc. One kind of truth especially caught my eye: the truth of the senses (part 6).
The student in the conversation wonders about the truth of bodily sense because he realizes that "sometimes they deceive us." He continues: "For sometimes when I am looking at an object through a glass, my sight deceives me, because sometimes it reports to me that the object I see beyond the glass is the same color as the glass; yet, it really is a different color." Anselm counters this by making a distinction between the outer sense (the five senses) and the inner sense (judgment). Therefore, he asserts, "the outer sense does not lie to the inner sense, but the latter deceives itself." The inner self can cause mistakes if it judges the outer senses falsely. "Let it suffice to say," he concludes, "only that whatever the senses are seen to report, whether they do so as a result of their nature or of some other cause [for example, because of a tinted glass], they do what they ought [i.e. the eyes see what is before them and thus do what they ought to do]. Therefore, they do what is right and true, and their truth falls within the classification of truth in actions." This conclusion is one that Descartes will later radicalize and bring to its full conclusion. To secure that our being is in touch with reality, we must use the inner sense, which is reason, to judge what our outer senses tell us of the world. Our outer senses will tell us that the world is red, if we look through a red tinted glass, but our inner sense must judge this information with reason. The outer senses might be tinted, but the inner sense is pure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), the great American author, interestingly uses the same example as a metaphor to argue the exact opposite point. Foreshadowing what later others would tease out more fully, he argues that "life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate" (my emphasis,"Experience" in: Essays: Second Series, Boston, 1909, p. 53f). Later he argues that "we do not see directly, but mediately. [...] We have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors” (my emphasis, Ibid. p. 77). For Emerson we do not have a tinted glass before us that reason is able to overcome by an internal judgment. Rather, we are that tinted glass, Emerson claims. Somewhere else he similarly notes that "there is no outside, no enclosing wall, no circumference to us" ("Circles" in: Essays: First Series, Boston 1841, p. 252). We cannot break out from tinted glass that mediates our world. There is no "outside."
Anselm believes to be able to come into contact with the really real of reality. He believes that one can shatter the tinted glass with reason and therefore come into contact with what is real. Emerson believes that we are the tinted glass. If we shatter that, we have nothing left.
In my eyes Emerson's world is much more relieving than Anselm's. To say that I find Emerson's world more comfortable than Anselm's is obviously no proof for it. It is often stressed, however, that Anselm's world is more reassuring than Emerson's, because the latter has no grip on reality. To live in Emerson's world is to live in flux and doubt, they say. But it is quite the opposite, I believe. How wretched to think that we constantly are being deceived by our outer senses and therefore live in a never-ending battle to reach reality. To live in an Anselmian or Cartesian world is to live in a world of doubt. "If Being and Appearance part company forever," Hannah Arendt insightfully noted, "and this is indeed the basic assumption of all modern science, then there is nothing left to be taken upon faith; everything must be doubted" (Arendt, Hannah: Human Condition, Chicago 1958, p. 275). She concludes: "The famous cogito ergo sum did not spring for Descartes from any self-certainty of thought as such but was a mere generalization of a dubito ergo sum" (Ibid., p. 279). That is, the Anselmian is the narcotic doubter who shakes with paranoia; the Emersonian is the one who can meet the world as it presents itself to him, head on without the drug of reason.

Loneliness - Some Thoughts from a Beginner

My wife and our little daughter have been in Germany for the past two weeks, leaving me alone to myself in New Haven. I have felt lonely before - this is not the first time. But this time has been especially lonely to me. I have wondered in the past weeks: What is this "loneliness" I feel? How is it to be described? How to be named? I must wrestle with it to understand it even if I might not be able to conquer it.
But now you might say: who are you to think you might know anything about loneliness, son? And you are right to think that. I married very young and basically went from living with my parents, to living with my wife. I have never spent time alone before. However, for those who have never been married before or have never lived with a person before, I may ask: how do you know how it feels to be alone as a married man? A dog can naturally survive without living in water, but the fish will notice the dry air instantaneously and die immediately. To understand how air "feels," must one not rather turn to the fish instead of the dog? And if this does not suffice, then let the doubter and inquirer simply take this post to be thoughts from a beginner.

Enough. Let us now turn to our task. What is loneliness? What processes are involved? What structures?

First, I would like to suggest that my self becomes unstable. I am no longer stabilized by another being reflecting an establishing self. I can be many more selves than I usually am. There is no force by which I am any longer contained. I can become the self I do not want to be, without fearing retaliation or responsibility. In an empty theater, I can play all the roles I want. My self is not stabilized by the other who balances and reflects. The other determines and focuses the possibilities I have to chose. This focusing other, my "second better half," can be harmful, if you are with the wrong person. But it can be immensely liberating in its deliberation and encouraging in its purging if you are with the right person. Being lonely for me is being existentially destabilized. With all of the selves I wake up with in the morning, it is hard to find the self I generally enjoy being. I can get confused and disoriented. When I am lonely, the person staring back at me, while I shave, contains multitudes. Being lonely makes me oscillate.
Secondly, I believe it is false to think of loneliness in terms of less company. Conversely, I live with more voices and more people in my head when I am alone, than when I am with someone else. Being alone makes my brothers stay over night with me; it takes me to my mother in the kitchen; and it takes me back to broken hearts of the past, I wish I could heal and take back. Loneliness makes my mind wander to old friends and old foes. Paradoxically, I find, loneliness forces me to encounter and interact with more than less. To return home alone, is to return to a party of welcome and unwelcome guests. Like Penelope, who waited for Odysseus to return, I have many unwelcome guests at home. This point is not merely a romantic one, or a metaphorical one. Heidegger stressed convincingly the power of the being-with-others. That is, the encounter one has "mentally" and "emotionally" with others. One is constantly in conversation with the ghosts of one's past. Loneliness, I find, is a great excuse for some old ghosts to come back. Loneliness is paradoxically not the state of solitude but rather a kind of emotional multitude.
Finally, I have realized that loneliness thrusts myself upon myself. I feel the weight of myself. I alone am the one to comprehend the ugliness of these New Haven streets. I alone am the one who must carry the full weight of movies watched and poetry read. Sharing something with someone relieves me of its full content. The more people carry a stone, the less it weighs for the individual. The more people carry the semantic weight of the world, the less it weighs for the individual. If I have no contact with someone with whom I can share the semantic weight, it all falls on myself. I alone am the one who must cash in the checks of the experiences I make, without any stipend or financial help. This all also means that I feel myself too much. I become aware of myself. I cannot dive under or disappear in the crowd. I am the only who can laugh when I watch a movie, and every chuckle that echoes in the emptiness of the surrounding walls makes me aware of my body in the room. I cannot flee from myself.

This, in a nutshell, is how I experience loneliness. I become a destabilized, oscillated self. I find myself visiting old ghosts in the valleys of old, without any real restriction. And finally, I become aware of myself as myself. Loneliness, while it casts its shadow over me, at the same time brings myself to light. Loneliness is a mirror in a world where I am constantly at pains to become invisible.

The apparition and the black bough: Into the Wild (1996) and Manhatten (1979) (2)

In my last post, we took a look at Woody Allen's movie Manhattan (1979). A black and white movie about Isaac Davis' Manhattan life that celebrates the earth-boundness of humans; the incapability of breaking out into a different kind of realm of reality. It remains in the city and in the sphere of all too human activity.
Not so Into the Wild. This movie, directed by Sean Penn, is based on a true story of an adventurer named Christopher McCandless (1968-1992) - the exact opposite of Isaac. He is a young man determined to leave the city and his family behind him in order to find true life in the wild, far away from so-called civilization. It chronicles Christopher's effort to escape the petty and superficial futility of modern, urban life and instead pluck the fruit of the beautiful Untouched. While Isaac remains in colorless Manhattan, Christopher willfully journeys into the hues of nature.
Christopher, in a sense, is a modern Thoreau - and Into the Wild is, in a sense, a modern Walden. It was namely the American author Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) who at the outset of full-blown industrialization wanted to retreat from the ills of modern life and decided to seclude himself from it, in order to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." His cause was a noble one, but one far greater than Christopher McCandless', I would like to suggest. For, Thoreau was not simply trying to desert modern ills, but wanted to find and experience the cosmos of the entire world in his small cabin near Walden pond. He had a specific positive goal he strove for. He went to Walden for a short period of time to find life; Christopher hiked into the Alaskan wilderness in order to escape life.
Christopher's desire to break free from modernity is too familiar to us that the metaphysics behind his agenda can easily be overlooked. He believed in something beyond the here and now. He pined for something transcending the utter physicality. He wanted to go back to the roots of nature, where, so Christopher believed, he would find the contact to himself once again. He sought unmediated contact to the metaphysical Otherness; redemption from the stifling weight of bodily-ness, pain, hunger, dependency, sorrow. In short: he sought meaning. I believe (and the movie indirectly suggests this reading) he failed.
Why? Because I believe meaning cannot be found outside of life. Meaning and redemption is temporal, not timeless. It is infinite, not eternal. It can only "come about," but can never be exhaustively fulfilled or found and tapped into. Christopher's decision to leave and seek the truly real world turned out not to be a form of deliverance, but a form of mere escapism. While Isaac's morals are a shaky and not worth imitation, his metaphysics are right on. What am I then suggesting: that there is no merit in searching for meaning or perhaps that there is no meaning to life? No. What I am suggesting is that the meaning of life is life itself lived. Instead of frantically trying to find the meaning of life, we must live it. Thereby I want to pronounce the death of metaphysical idealism. The meaning of your life is found when you are sitting on the toilet, when you fart, and when you are picking your nose. You have found the meaning of life when you break your arm and when you are bored and sitting in front of the television. Redemption can thus only forcefully thrust you back upon life instead of delivering you out from it.

Let me be more clear: Isaac is Ishmael, Christopher is Ahaab; Isaac is Nietzsche, Christopher is Calvin; Isaac is Heidegger, Christopher is Cassirer; Isaac is in the Hebraic tradition, Christopher is in the Hellenistic tradition. I will always pull for Isaac.

The apparition and the black bough: Into the Wild (1996) and Manhatten (1979) (1)

These two movies I recently watched could not be more different. They are a radical binary opposition in the virtual movie world. In the one, Manhattan, Woody Allen seeks to depict Manhattan life of the late 1970s. Never leaving the city and remaining throughout in black and white, the movie is an autobiographically told incident in Isaac Davis' life - a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer. The movie starts with Isaac's voice in what seems to be the effort to write the first chapter of a book.

"Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion..Uh...No, make that he romanticized it all out of proportion. To him no matter what the season was, this was still a town that exited in black and white and pulsated to the tunes of George Gershwin...Uh...No, let me start this over...Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Beneath his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat...I love this. New York was his town, and it always would be..."

As the movie progresses, a chaotic relationship concatenation develops between different sets of people. Isaac's married friend Yale falls in love with a woman, Mary, but initially is not willing to leave his wife for her. Isaac, who is in a relationship with Tracy, a 17-year old high school girl, eventually ends up falling in love with Mary himself, but does not want to interfere in the affair between Yale and Mary. Once Yale decides to stop the affair with Mary, in order to keep his marriage, Isaac makes his move by breaking up with his 17-year old girl friend and starting a relationship with Mary. After a short time, though, Isaac realizes that Mary and Yale had been secretly meeting after their feelings had once again rekindled. Yale eventually decides to leave his wife and seriously pursue the relationship with Mary. The movie ends with Isaac deciding to pick up the relationship with Tracy, his ex-girl friend, once again.
In short, then: the movie depicts a Babylonian confusion of relationships amidst the Tower of Manhattan, where the indecisive and "back-and-forth" behavior relativizes the sincerity and meaning of life. You walk away from the movie grinning and shaking your head at the amusing folly of these people.

In it all, Isaac decides to drop his job and become a fiction author on his own. He no longer will write comedy for a television company, but decides to pursue some of his own writing. Only towards the end of the movie, does it become apparent that the story Isaac decides to write, is in fact the movie being watched. The movie then, turns out to be the story of how Isaac decides to write the fiction he is presenting. Towards the end of the movie, Isaac, working on a short story, lies down on the couch and says:

"Here's an idea for a short story. About...uh...people in Manhattan, who are constantly creating these real unnecessary, neurotic problems for themselves...because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolved and terrifying problems about the universe."

That is what the movie is about. This is the movie. With all of the absurd relationship problems, it is about how people elude the real problems of life, by creating for themselves smaller problems. After having recorded this idea on a tape recorder, Isaac pauses and, still thinking about the short story, asks himself:

"Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. Uh... Like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Wilie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face..."

Here is the point: In his effort to locate the "real" meaning of life, Isaac can only name individual objects that surround him. He cannot and does not go beyond those things that are in front of him. So also is the entire event of the movie. Manhattan, which is in fact Isaac's short story, is at the same time his effort to name the artificial life by its name, in order to then to turn to the "real" meaning of life. That is, Isaac wants to write this short story in order to make apparent the superficiality of life. But by trying to name the superficial life, he traces himself back to his own moment of writing. His writing, then, his whole life, is enveloped in inescapable superficiality.
In short, the movie suggests in an important sense that we cannot go beyond the mere everydayness of life. There is no "beyond mere senseless life." There is no "outside superficiality." There is no hidden secret outside the city gates, we need to rush to. Supposedly "real" life is not a treasure waiting to be found. The reality of life is found in its everydayness. It its absurdities. There is nothing beyond that which meets the eye that can make life worth living. Everything we need, we have before our eyes.

In a second post, I will contrast this outlook on life with that of Into the Wild. I would like to close this post with an absolutely amazing song that might drive home the point. Here is Bright Eyes, "At the Bottom of Everything."

Note this quote - Hannah Arendt (17)

It is wonderful when you read a book that shadows something you have already thought about yourself, albeit in different terms. Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition (1958) is such a book. My posts on "The Hidden κτισις" (post 1, and post 2) trace only one of the many problems Arendt is concerned about in her book, but it is one of the most important ones in the book, I find. It is the problem of how we are to live in a world that is removed from its natural, original state and has been transposed into a man-made use-ful world. Hannah Arendt has some deepness of thought to offer concerning this problem.
She is an impressive thinker. Strongly influenced by Augustine and Heidegger, she appears to have mastered Greek and Roman philosophy and can use her insights of these foregone thinkers to create a contrast to our modern society. Although her line argument is often times "loose," she can have a very enticing way of reasoning - one that has a soft but ultimately convincing force. This part I will quote is taken from her chapter on "Labor."

"The world, the man-made home erected on earth and made of the material which earthly nature delivers into human hands, consists not of things that are consumed but of things that are used. If nature and the earth generally constitute the condition of human life, then the world and the things of the world constitute the condition under which this specifically human life can be at home on earth. Nature seen through the eyes of the animal laborans is the great provider of all 'good things,' which belong equally to all her children, who 'take (them) our of (her) hands' and 'mix with' them in labor and consumption' (Locke). The same nature seen through the eyes of homo faber, the builder of the world, 'furnishes only the almost worthless materials as in themselves,' (ibid) whose whole value lies in the work performed upon them. Without taking things out of nature's hands and consuming them, and without defending himself against the natural processes of growth and decay, the animal laborans could never survive. But without being at home in the midst of things whose durability makes them fit for use and for erecting a world whose very permanence stands in direct contrast to life, this life would never be human.
The easier that life has become in a consumers' or laborers' society, the more difficult it will be to remain aware of the urges of necessity by which it is driven, even when pain and effort, the outward manifestations of necessity, are hardly noticeable at all. The danger is that such a society, dazzled by the abundance of its growing fertility and caught in the smooth functioning of a never-ending process, would no longer be able to recognize its own futility - the futility of a life which 'does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject which endures after (its) labour is past' (Adam Smith)."
(Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition (1958), University of Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 134f.)