Heidegger, Sallis, Badiou

At Archive Fire, Michael cites the following passage on Heidegger by John Sallis:

“What does, however, need to be stressed is the rigorous order that the phenomenological analyses of Being and Time (I ,3) establishes with respect to these two modes: Presence-at-hand is founded on readiness-to-hand, and things come to show themselves as present-at-hand only when certain structures of readiness-to-hand get covered over or repressed. One could say, then, that in the strict sense everything is ready-to-hand; or, alternatively, that there is nothing purely present-at-hand. In what one might take as present-at-hand. eg., the hammer merely stared at-there is always something else operative yet repressed, a concealed operation of readiness-to-hand, a disregarded instrumentality. What is decisive is the displacement of presence that this analysis produces. There are no simply, sheerly present things; for everything is openly or concealedly ready-to- hand, and what is ready-to-hand-the hammer when one takes hold of it and uses it-is not sheerly present as a self-contained positivity. Rather, it is extended beyond itself into the referential totality by which it is determined, its presence limited and yet rendered possible by its insertion in that totality. But the totality is one of signifying references; it is Bedeutsamkeit, the operation of signification.’ There is no pure presence; for in whatever presents itself there is already in play the operation of signification. Presence is delimited-limited and yet rendered possible-by the operation of signification.”

This is a solid orthodox reading, and I don’t say that dismissively: it’s probably how Heidegger interpreted the passage himself (which isn’t a bad definition of an orthodox reading, by the way: understanding authors as they understood themselves).

Nonetheless, philosophers are not necessarily their own best interpreters, just as experimental physicists are not
always the best interpreters of their own experiments (just think of Michelson/Morley and Einstein).

And there is a problem with the Sallis interpretation (which, I repeat is not Sallis’s fault: it’s Heidegger’s own self-interepretation as well). It takes the basic opposition to be that between presence and signification. Stated differently, it holds that present-at-hand things are sheer presence, but that readiness-to-hand is relational. Under this reading, relationality is what allows the ready-to-hand to exceed any presence.

The problem here is twofold:

1. The present-at-hand cannot possibly be non-relational in Heidegger. (Sallis doesn’t openly say here that it is, but it’s implicit in what he says, and elsewhere Heidegger makes the claim openly.) After all, the present-at-hand is present for me, and is therefore obviously in relation with me. The clearest example of this is Heidegger’s own showcase example: Husserlian phenomena, which are merely present-at-hand in consciousness. Their “being” is never asked about, complains Heidegger (History of the Concept of Time, first 100 or so pages).

2. Conversely, the ready-to-hand cannot possibly be relational. This is a more shocking claim, and of course it is also the major claim underlying all of my philosophical work. Stated in the simplest possible terms: equipment could never break if equipment were nothing more than its embeddedness in a referential contexture. If its being were exhausted by its sum total of current referential assignments, there would be nothing more to an entity than that, and no reason why it should ever change. In short, what is “operative yet repressed” (Sallis’s phrase) in reality is not networks of signification that lie beneath images in consciousness. Instead, it must be non-relational units (i.e., objects) lying beneath both images in consciousness and networks of signification. From my vantage point, the difference between images in consciousness and signifying networks, which is roughly equivalent to that between theory and praxis, is a false opposition. Both are relational, and hence both fail to exhaust the objects with which they deal. At best, both praxis and theory are translations of the world, neither of them providing us with a representational copy of how things are or some other mode of direct, intimate commerce with the world.

Stated otherwise, the ontological difference must be read as a difference between entities in their autonomous reality and entities in their relations with other entities (relationality includes both Vor– and Zuhandenheit, not just the latter, since Vorhandenheit is present-at-hand for someone).

Now, I’ve taken some heat for this from mainstream Heideggerians. But I do have one quasi-ally on this point: Alain Badiou, in Theory of the Subject. Just as I do, Badiou interprets the ontological difference in Heidegger as one between the non-relational and the relational. I simply don’t think his non-relationality is non-relational enough, just as I don’t think Meillassoux’s in-itself is in-itself enough, and for much the same reason.

I’m currently working on a (short) article on Badiou’s reception of Heidegger, and until that article is done I won’t be sure exactly what I think (I like to write about questions where I don’t know the answer when I start writing, and try to figure out the answer by building from what I do know). But my sense has always been that Badiou’s Heidegger is still a bit too Hegelized. Objects are never given quite enough autonomy by Badiou, no matter how many times he’s called a non-relational thinker. He’s simply too committed to mathematization and absolute knowledge to be a Heideggerian in any real sense.

And that’s fine, and it brings us to point I’ve reflected upon often in the past year or so. One interesting feature shared by Badiou and Meillassoux, and also by Žižek (and these three have plenty in common) is their attitude towards Heidegger. All of them openly proclaim Heidegger to be one of the greatest philosophers. Yet none of them owe him a serious philosophical debt. Their references to him are perfectly competent, but usually brief and minimalistic. He doesn’t really influence their positions in any significant way; they compare themselves with him now and then, say flattering (or derogatory) things about him once in awhile, and then move on. Compare that with the relation that all three of these authors have with Hegel, for whom their genuine passion is evident.

I see Badiou’s relation to Heidegger as being somewhat like that of a jazz drummer to a jazz saxophonist. One can admire the other and like playing gigs with him, but any direct influence between the two musician would be fairly difficult to trace.

There’s an 18-page limit on the Badiou article, but with the extra notes I’ll weave together something larger on Badiou’s concept of objects, within the next year or so, once the two summer books are finished.