Self-Identity and Powerlessness [1 ed.] 9789004255005, 9789004254985

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Self-Identity and Powerlessness

Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology Editor

Chris Bremmers, Radboud University, Nijmegen Associate Editors

Arthur Cools, University of Antwerp Gert-Jan van der Heiden, Radboud University, Nijmegen Advisory Board

Jos de Mul, Erasmus University, Rotterdam John Sallis, Boston College Hans-Rainer Sepp, Charles University, Prague Laszlo Tengelyi, Bergische Universität, Wuppertal

VOLUME 8

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scp

Self-Identity and Powerlessness By

Alice Koubová

Leiden • boston 2013

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1875-2470 ISBN 978-90-04-25498-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-25500-5 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Acknowledgements .........................................................................................

vii

Introduction ......................................................................................................

1

1. The Principle of Identity in Heidegger’s Descartes ......................... Presumptions of the Universal Science of René Descartes ........... Archimedean Point ................................................................................... The Metaphysical Body as Res Extensa ............................................... Divided and Re-Unified Human Being ................................................ The Passions of the Soul and ‘Ontological Force’ ............................ Principle of Identity in Universal Science ..........................................

9 10 17 23 26 33 42

2. The Impossibility of a Powerless Da-sein and a Powerful World in Fundamental Ontology .................................................................. Basic Concepts of Fundamental Ontology ......................................... First Approximation of the Issues of our Research ......................... Da-sein and Non-Da-sein Beings ........................................................... Affairs ............................................................................................................. Authenticity and Inauthenticity ............................................................ The Transition from Inauthenticity to Authenticity: The Third Mode of Being ................................................................... Modal Transformation via Angst, Calling of Conscience and Being-Toward-Death: Powerlessness and the Force of an Indeterminate ‘It’ .................................................................................. Leaving the Third Mode of Being, Selfhood and Resoluteness ..... The Unifying Function of Time and the Constancy of Selfhood ................................................................................................... Conclusion to Heidegger’s Conception ...............................................

47 48 52 54 59 64 67 69 82 86 90

3. Paul Ricoeur: Third Mode through Narrativity ................................. 97 Conceptual Configuration: Between Analytical Philosophy and Phenomenology ............................................................................ 99 The Project of a Hermeneutics of the Human Self ......................... 103 Semantic Individualization ..................................................................... 108 Pragmatic Individualization ................................................................... 112

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From Individualization to Identification ............................................ Narrative Identification ............................................................................ Being is Action: Hierarchical Structuralization of Human Ontology .................................................................................................. Narrative Identity ....................................................................................... Ethical Action and Moral Institution .................................................. Summary and Critique of Ricoeur’s Concept ....................................

129 138 144 149

4. The Powerlessness of Self-Relating and the Power of the World: Exemplification ........................................................... Literary Examples ...................................................................................... I Am Me ........................................................................................................ The Double Traitor .................................................................................... Note to Literary Examples ...................................................................... Pathology of the Normal Human Being .............................................. The Fear of Being Oneself ....................................................................... Tiredness of Being Oneself ...................................................................... Conclusion ...................................................................................................

161 164 164 172 177 179 181 185 189

5. Happy Powerlessness, Relaxed Da-sein .............................................. The Point of Departure ............................................................................ Derrida’s Critique of the Good Will to Understand ........................ Merleau-Ponty’s Metaphor of the Blind Spot, the Other Side and Experience Which is Outside of Itself ................................... Powerlessness .............................................................................................. Alternation of Da-sein and Affairs, Existence as a Relaxed Game ........................................................................................ Power Field .................................................................................................. The Self-Relationship of Powerless Potentiality-of-Being ............. Relaxed Thinking and its Improbable Answer to the Question of Identity ................................................................................................

114 120

191 194 197 206 215 219 224 227 231

Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 235 Index of Subjects .............................................................................................. 241 Index of Modern Authors .............................................................................. 243

ACKNOWLEDGeMENTS This work has been written in the framework of the research project “Philosophical Investigations of Corporeity: Transdisciplinary Perspectives” of the Czech Science Foundation (GACR P401/10/1164), and in the framework of the project “Philosophy in Experiment” of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (M300091203). Language edits made by Blanka Maderová.

Introduction The initial aim of this work was to analyse the early and substantial efforts made by Martin Heidegger to deconstruct a type of philosophy that is based on the principle of identity. The final objective is to overcome Heidegger’s early phenomenology and to propose the so-called phenomenology of forces and philosophy of the powerless potentiality-of-being. Heidegger demonstrates in his early works that the principle of identity includes a crucial implicit assumption, which concerns the role of the human being in thinking and in the question of being. This assumption transforms each philosophy of identity into a (philosophical) anthropology which, according to Heidegger, represents a deadlock for philosophical thinking. For this reason, the question of identity always resonates with the question of personal identity, and the implacability of the latter highlights the key difficulty of philosophies of identity per se; that is why an alternative to this type of thought should be found. The principle of identity states that for each entity A that we have in mind ‘A=A’, or ‘A is A’.1 The meaning of this principle is defined by a field of thought that works with reality in the form of entities, which, on the one hand, are (have being), and, on the other hand, are always necessarily thinkable (graspable and denotable by thought). If, then, thought works with an ontological field (of thinkable and of graspable beings), it means that each entity is thought in its being and is, as such, one, singular, and in a sense, identical with itself. Moreover, and this is what Heidegger emphasizes, the essential feature that characterizes every philosophy of identity is the exclusive status of the human being in contrast to other thinkable beings. If we apply this assertion of the concept of identity to ourselves, i.e., those who think this concept (and who believe in it), then the following holds: if we think ourselves, we are ourselves. And as we, who think, designate ourselves in principle as human beings, it is possible to understand this conclusion in a general form: the human being exists as a thinking being; it exists by means of thinking. To be a human means to necessarily and sufficiently think (one’s own) being. It is obvious that the 1 Martin Heidegger, Identität und Differenz (Pfüllingen: Günter Neske Verlag, 1957), 9. English translation: Identity and Difference. Transl. Joan Stambaugh. Chicago University Press, 2002.

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introduction

human being is always already itself in such a way that it thinks itself as itself. This assertion does not hold necessarily for any other being, which must be thought by a human being. The obvious consequence of human exclusivity in all thought based on the principle of identity is the implicit and essential difference between the human and inhuman being and the anthropological character of that philosophy (the question of being is answered by the answer to the question of human being). Heidegger wished to rework this tendency. To do this, he chose René Descartes as his main opponent. Heidegger criticizes Descartes for interpreting the human being as a substance consisting of fixed hypokeimenon with secondary, nonessential changing attributes and calls this substance a subject. In the eyes of Heidegger, this was the first step of modern philosophy towards its anthropologisation and towards the reification of the human being.2 Although Heidegger still needs to begin his philosophical inquiry into the human being, he accepts it only with regard to its priority, but not in its primordial form. He calls the human being Da-sein—as the place where being appears. As Da-sein, human being has a reality that consists in the potentiality-of-being, that is, the possibilities to be, in contrast to other beings that exist only as things at hand (Vorhandenheit). Da-sein is characterized by intentionality in opposition to a psychology of consciousness or to a substantiality of an object. This thesis leads Heidegger out of the dominance of substantial reality over potentiality. It also represents a first step out of the realm of the principle of identity. By this, Heidegger implicitly initiates a deconstruction of identity thinking, while trying to find a thought based on the reality of possibilities without hypokeimenon. However, what we intend to demonstrate in our project is that earlystyle Heidegger did not succeed in the deconstruction of a line of thought based on the principle of identity. First of all, this can be ascribed to the fact that he reduces Descartes’ philosophy in a very specific way and does not see that Descartes himself acknowledges the necessity to avoid reification of the human being, and indeed of substantial thinking in general. Heidegger fails to mention that it would be possible to think beyond the principle of identity in Descartes’ line of thought. Instead, Heidegger takes on his imaginary opponent, founding a narrative that is critical of modern

2 Martin Heidegger, Überwindung der Metaphysik, Gesamtausgabe 67 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000), 7: 85, § XVIII. English translation: “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy. Transl. Joan Stambaugh. University of Chicago Press, 2003.



introduction

3

Cartesian philosophy.3 However, by developing his fundamental ontology in Being and Time, he finds himself surprisingly close to Descartes. Yet they both differ from Cartesianism, per se. We therefore intend to show that Heidegger develops a very important analysis that enables us to step beyond anthropological phenomenology. This analysis (that is, mainly the analysis of anxiety, of the category of affair and of the third mode of being) prefigures our own project in a decisive way. It enables us to think, phenomenologically, the moments of the essential powerlessness of Da-sein, of the existence of powerful nonhuman beings, and of the non-intentional aspect of human experience. Nevertheless, we intend to demonstrate thereafter that Heidegger himself pauses at these moments, leaving us with a highly vague analysis, which vacillates between different standpoints. It is well-known that one of the phenomenological attempts to correct Heidegger’s conception of human being and its identity, which concentrates on these moments, is Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity. Ricoeur’s work indeed solves a lot of issues arising in fundamental ontology regarding the character of Da-sein. In this respect, Ricoeur represents another important inspiration and background for our own project. However, we should add that Ricoeur fails to overcome the boundaries set by the principle of identity; nor does he develop the already mentioned moments of powerlessness of Da-sein, of powerful non-human beings and of the non-intentionality of experience in a sufficiently convincing way. All the same, Ricoeur still insists on the ‘human being as always capable of itself’. Initially, our main objective is to analyze these three authors—­ Heidegger’s Descartes, the early Heidegger and Ricoeur—in order to demonstrate that their line of thought is always focused on the human capacity to maintain itself and the world by means of the undeniable possibility to think itself, be itself as a potentiality-of-being, and to narrate itself. In addition, we shall identify where the potential ways out of the abovementioned conceptions towards another formulation of Da-sein may be found. The key issue in this inquiry will be identifying the meaning of human self-reference or self-relationship, which is often referred to as personal identity. The specific character of self-reference is always construed within the framework of these conceptions on the basis of an implicit or

3 See e.g., Alain de Libera, Naissance du sujet. Archeologie du sujet [The Birth of the Subject. Archeology of the Subject], vol. I (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 90–97.

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introduction

explicit presupposition that the human being is always in some way itself, but it is not sure how exactly this is so. Because of this presupposition, these philosophers are not able to account for the problems of self-loss, of self-doubling and of powerlessness. They also neglect the impact of these essential phenomena on thinking about the human being. Our reading of these authors is thus quite individual and specific. We certainly do not feign to offer the best and most generalised explanation. Rather, we intend to interpret them within the context of Heideggerian thinking, and to show their specific interpretation of self-relationship and powerlessness of the human being. Using this framework, we shall take Heidegger’s initiative to its ultimate consequences and overcome ­Heidegger’s own insistence on the presupposition mentioned above. These consequences consist, and this is our hypothesis, in the phenomenology of powers and of the powerless potentiality-of-being. To do this, we shall search for traces, implicit references and indices in the conceptions mentioned that would be useful for this project. We suppose that the most important moment for the development of this phenomenology comes through the acknowledgment and consistent application of the following idea: behind a power, there need not be any ‘thing’ (in the sense of a hypokeimenon) which would own this power (as an attribute), and which would use or choose not to employ this power. There is no need to try to define and identify first the powerful something and then to attribute to it its power. To quote Nietzsche: For, in just the same way as the people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter as an action, as the effect of a subject, which is called lightning, so popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of strength, as if behind the strong person there were an indifferent substrate, which is free to express strength or not. But there is no such substrate; there is no ‘being’ behind the doing, acting, becoming.4

This leads to the following motto for our project: it should be possible to think of the powers, instead of entities and of their capacities. This can be done by means of thinking of intense powers in their becoming. This form of thinking is neither anthropological nor is it based on the principle of identity.

4 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals. A Polemical Tract, translated by Ian Johnston (Arlington: Richer Resources Publications, 2009), 32. German original: Zur Genealogie der Moral. Akademie Verlag, 2004.



introduction

5

We shall begin our study by outlining René Descartes’ metaphysical theory, presented in his works, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, and his theory of experience presented in The Passions of the Soul. In The Passions of the Soul and Descartes’ correspondence, we shall identify indications and signs of some ontological force that essentially transgress the ontology deriving from a metaphysical framework. We will also demonstrate how the subject in Descartes’ thought still remains powerless. The second conception we are going to deal with is Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology as presented in his magnum opus Being and Time. Here, we try to find pointers to an ontology of nonhuman-beings as powers (so-called affairs) and deconstruct Heidegger’s typical dualism of authenticity and inauthenticity. The powerless Da-sein and the powerful world will also be addressed. Finally, we shall focus on the phenomenological hermeneutic of Paul Ricoeur, who deals with personal identity in his book Soi même comme un autre (Oneself as Another) and finds there limits to a discursive grasping of possibilities. Here, we shall state the existence of an unthinkable (in the sense of an ungraspable) reality that is still experienced and that even influences thinking that is not able to think this reality. The present systematic philosophical interpretation aims at constructing a sufficiently convincing basis for the further development of the consequences implicitly presented in our above-mentioned works. The overall evolving thesis that constitutes the work will culminate in an outline of a phenomenological conception that is supposed to draw on a re-thinking of the problematic and potential ways out of fundamental ontology and of corresponding philosophies. In this section, we shall confront the theories investigated up to that point with a concrete experience that may be called ‘a chronic crisis of identity’ or ‘the powerlessness of the potentiality-of-being’. We intend to study this experience first within the scope of an analysis of two literary examples from the fictional work of Milan Kundera, namely, the tales The Hitchhiking Game and the novel work L’identité (Identity). After studying these literary examples, we shall turn our attention to another area that articulates concrete given experience in a wider context. It concerns research conducted by the social psychologist Alain Ehrenberg, who studies the phenomenon of the chronic crisis within the context of the normative order of contemporary Western society. An inquiry into this phenomenal area will allow us to conclude that the philosophies we have studied so far do not rely on a suitable conceptual apparatus that might help us grasp the experience of powerlessness. And that is exactly the reason why we will subsequently

6

introduction

develop a phenomenological description of human ways of being in the world that includes (as will be seen) moments of powerlessness, of nonintentionality, or of the doubling of experience. This description is based on the reinterpretation of the structure of experience that should be the basis of a thinkable reality. We hope to reach a philosophy that ‘thinks’ (or rather, ‘has thought’) moments of powerlessness, which are not thinkable directly or intentionally. A more profound analysis of these moments and of those moments that Heidegger leaves indeterminate or internally contradictory in Being and Time, and the inspiration by Jacques Derrida and by late Maurice Merleau-Ponty, will lead us to the understanding of the human being and the world as participants in the dynamics of the power-field of the potentiality-of-being. Such a field of attention is neither human nor inhuman because its individual components do not show any (human) ontological exclusivity. On the basis of this description, we shall formulate a post-phenomenological conception of the so-called alternation of Da-sein and affairs. Questions concerning the structure of experience (folded and doubled experience), the unity of reality, the notion of self-relationship, and the validity of thought (which does not think intentionally but ‘roams wondering’, ‘concentrates the mystery of the scattered visibility’, whose ‘open lips never close’ and whose ‘blind spot never becomes visible’) will be the essential topics of this theory. By moving away from these philosophies to a thinking based on the alternation of powers, we do not want to resolve the issue of personal identity within the framework of the thinking of identity. The aim is rather to decentralize it, in order to change its meaning, and to unearth another perspective. We intend to develop our reflections concerning this issue, instead of trying to resolve it by means of the existing fundamental ontology. This strategy shall examine the given problem thoroughly and by extension cause a more superordinate change in our way of thinking. Even our own project will thus result in powerlessness. However, if we choose to succumb to this powerlessness, we may observe, surprisingly, that we did not actually lose. It is the abandonment of all linear effort that makes the emergence of an unintended sense or meaning possible. This sense shows that identity does not matter so much in human existence. Our solution of the question concerning being oneself will consist in the discovery that Da-sein, relaxed Da-sein, can exist while still experiencing profound peace. In such a state, it does not care about itself very much. Yet, there is no self-lashing, or self-sacrificing narcissism, an offended or resolute sense of despair, that no one cares about me, not even myself



introduction

7

(in logical opposition to Heidegger’s basic thesis). The rather untroubled finding that Da-sein does not really care about itself does not necessarily represent a negative stance. After a thorough inquiry, we shall find that the question itself has resolved itself and that it may even provide an answer concerning another issue. This issue consists in the experience that Da-sein lives a meaningful life without understanding and controlling this meaning necessarily, without it being its meaning, the meaning of itself. Sense (even a philosophical one) can be concentrated as a mystery, which is pointed out by the presence of the fold in the thought, in the blind spot. It can only be glimpsed briefly from behind the veil of intentional experience. Can the foregoing project still be called philosophical? If the mind reaches beyond the sphere based on the principle of identity, are we still dealing with thought that can prove, demonstrate or verify anything at all? Is such thinking capable of reaching any general conclusions or results? The aim of our inquiry is to answer these questions directly by making reference to experience. We shall see, however, that the experience, to which we refer, is of a double nature, for it is a dual force that never fully and actually exists. In the experience, which is characterized by the double structure and which always consists of experiences of various kinds, one cannot find a moment that would provide immediate evidence about the nature of thinking and being. Thinking that is generated in this way thinks the reality of powers, the reality of dynamic affairs and Da-sein, and not the being of entities. It is, in a sense, a happy and relaxed type of thinking.

Chapter One

The Principle of Identity in Heidegger’s Descartes It is in explicit contrast with the metaphysics of René Descartes that ­Martin Heidegger develops the argument of his fundamental ontology. In this chapter, we shall try to demonstrate which part of Descartes’ philosophy Heidegger criticizes and how he does so. We shall prepare the field for understanding why Heidegger selects different standpoints from Descartes, especially with regard to the principle of identity. We shall focus on four most important points. First, we shall describe the conceptual configuration of Descartes’ universal science. The objective will be to explore the relationship among the basic notions (thought, being, human being, other beings of the world, and time) and explain their specific meaning. We shall show in what sense this configuration is founded by a principle of identity. Second, we shall try to elucidate the role of human being within Heidegger’s interpretation of Descartes’ universal science. The focus will be on interpreting the meaning of the implicit statement: ‘human being is itself as a thinking being’ (a statement of the principle of identity) with special attention to the explanation of ‘being itself’ in this statement. The moment of being oneself is designated in our inquiry as personal identity. Yet that does not mean that Descartes himself uses this term. What we denote by this term is that human being in Descartes’ universal science has a specific self-relationship that is crucial for the structure of this philosophy as such. The third point concerns the limits of a Heideggerian interpretation of Descartes (especially the question of human being as a self-conscious reified subject-substance). We shall try to demonstrate that Descartes, as a thinker of substantial ontology, offers in his texts on emotions and in Correspondences various hints that provoke us to imagine another alternative ontology. Such ontology could be preliminarily represented by an ‘ontological force’. In this way, we shall prepare the field, while working out the consequences of several hidden moments of fundamental ontology (and corresponding philosophies of identity).

10

chapter one Presumptions of the Universal Science of René Descartes

What underlies René Descartes’ search for the foundations of an indubitable and universally valid thinking about being is the conflict between the necessity to believe and the will to know. That conflict follows from an ungrounded and therefore insecure form of human cognition. According to Descartes, the crisis of cognition comes from the fact that thinking lacks indubitable and solid principles and a clearly determined method that could secure the veracity of its results. Descartes states that human thinking constantly repeats the same mistakes and that it is therefore necessary to get rid of illusions about its apparent natural reliability. To disentangle thought from a cyclical falling into darkness and uncertainty about the truthfulness of its own performances, Descartes sets a clearly defined objective in his metaphysical works (Meditations on First Philosophy, Discourse on Method). He claims there that there is a need to develop a form of thinking whose validity will be general. The results of such thoughts will be certain and valid in any situation and for each human being. He calls this thinking a universal science (mathesis universalis). It shall lead humans not only to truthful knowledge, but also to a disclosing of ‘that which is’. This universal science will therefore be at the same time an ontology. To attain this goal, Descartes suggests a method of hyperbolic doubting (doubting escalated to the extreme). He begins by defining the method and generating the conception subsequently: “. . . the problem properly Cartesian, radically innovative, is to determine the method before the construction of a doctrine. . . . The value of a thought depends firstly on the way it was generated.1 Descartes wishes to apply this method systematically until all thought is rid of uncertainty. Let us mention, however, that the application of this method is preceded by an acceptance of probable cultural habits and by the huge scope of experience that Descartes personally had sought to gather before he started to determine this individual method of inquiry.2 I had first spent a great deal of time preparing myself for it . . . in accumulating many experiences, in order for them later to be the subject matter of my

1  Pierre Guenancia, Descartes. Bien conduire sa raison [Descartes. Conducting one’s Reason Well] (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 55. Translated by AK. 2 Vincent Carraud, “Morale par provision et probabilité,” in Descartes et le Moyen Âge [Descartes and the Middle Ages], ed. Joël Biard and Roshdi Rashed (Paris: Vrin, 1996), 259.



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reasoning . . . And among many opinions that are equally accepted, I would choose only the most moderate, because . . . they are . . . probably the best.3

For the action, which in some way frames (precedes and follows) the universal science, it is sufficient to do one’s best in using the soul.4 In other words—science (and the will to know) and probability (and the necessity to believe) are for Descartes incompatible. Yet, they are in contact from the very beginning. What Descartes wishes is to separate them by means of his method because he is convinced that certainty is the only valid epistemological modality, that is, not one among other modalities, but the only one.5 Descartes may follow subsequently the maxim: if something is indubitable then it exists and it exists in its own indubitable form. He therefore restricts ontology to the domain of entities that are graspable indubitably by thought. He does this mainly because he considers thought to be the only faculty that humans possess. “There is nothing that is utterly within our power, except for our thoughts.”6 Jean-Luc Marion shows in this context that Descartes reduces the probability regarding the form of thoughts about human reasoning—there are no probable things, only probable opinions. Hence it is possible to decide to exclude all probability from thinking, because it is within our power.7 Science should be a process of exclusion, especially the exclusion of the probable. Descartes offers, with this method of radical doubt, a verifiable and universal procedure, which anyone may follow step by step and think about the results. This method is valid not only because thoughts are principally subordinated to the human will, but also because the will is “the only or at least the main activity”8 of the human soul. As we shall see later, the soul is capable of self-limitation (which follows from the existing

3 René Descartes, Discourse on Method, in Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy (New York: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998), 13. French original: Discours de la Méthode, Meditations. Paris: Vrin, 1984. 4 René Descartes, “To Princess Elisabeth 4.8. 1645,” in The Correspondence, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by J. Cottingham et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 3: 265. French original: Correspondence avec Elisabeth. Flammarion, 1993. 5 Jean-Luc Marion, Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes [On Ambivalent Ontology], 2nd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1981), 35. 6 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 14. 7 Marion, Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes, 36–37. 8 Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. I, translated by J. Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 330. French original: Passions de l’Ame. Paris: Aime-Martin, 1844.

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chapter one

self-relationship of the will). Due to this self-limitation, the will is able to correct its own mistakes according to reason (the ability to distinguish the true from the false), which is universal for human nature. “. . . the power of judging rightly and of distinguishing the true from the false (which, properly speaking, is what people call good sense or reason) is naturally equal in all men.”9 Thought that can arrive at indubitable thoughts is therefore the universally shared feature of human reason. The results that Descartes obtains, when focusing only on rational thinking and on the sphere of being demarcated by reason, may be generalized. They will be universally valid. To reach the relevant sphere of being, it is necessary to concentrate on finding an element of thought, be it the tiniest one, the grasping of which will be “clear and distinct.”10 For, “all the things we very clearly and very distinctly conceive are true.”11 The given element of thinking, the clear, indubitable and true thought, will therefore be the basis of reality. Descartes’ procedure finally leads to the discovery of a solid and motionless Archimedean point, to a simple (non-composed), evident and certain piece of knowledge that presents a turning point from which thought can be started again. One can thereby gain new and true pieces of knowledge, and reach a true knowledge of all reality in this way. It shall be possible, from this piece of knowledge, whose veracity is unquestionable, to develop thinking in less certain domains, to structure them rationally and thus get evident, certain and a complex knowledge of all things composed of that which is. A rational structuring of the world (because the universal component of thought is, for ­Descartes, reason) shall offer once and for all an answer to the constantly returning doubts about our knowledge. Reason shall, by means of its solid foundation of indisputable thinking, prevent us from making the same mistakes again. Thanks to the repeated re-cognition (re-­connaissance) and systematic deduction from simple truths, it will be possible to establish the veracity of more complex pieces of knowledge, and arrive at a definitive knowledge of the truth in the end. Descartes reaches the Archimedean point of rational thinking, and in so doing is aided by his will that gradually does away with all thoughts that can be doubted, all prejudices, beliefs, and all that cannot be clearly and evidently shown. He is concerned with how the will can restrict itself

9 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 7. 10 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 93. 11  Descartes, Discourse on Method, 20.

 



the principle of identity in heidegger’s descartes

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and hold only to that which is really within its power: “For, our will tending naturally to desire only what our intellect represents to it as in some way possible.”12 Descartes willfully revokes all supports provided by all modes of thinking that cannot clearly distinguish the false from the true and that are not examples of reason. These non-rational modes are characterized by their dealing with objects whose origin is derived from the ‘outside’. The ‘outside’ is understood as that which, unlike our own thoughts, is not within our power. These things are ‘external to us’: “so that, after having done our best regarding things external to us, everything that fails to bring us success, from our point of view, is absolutely impossible.”13 It is more than clear, from the moment we began to describe this method that Descartes’s radical skepticism does not do away with all points of departure of his work. Instead, he a priori accepts some points of departure, because they lead to the discovery of truth. He does not doubt the three basic moments that have been mentioned implicitly above. First, it is reason itself that characterizes the chosen way of thinking, the method of Cartesian philosophy. Descartes does not doubt that reason leads thought to its own foundations. In other words, Descartes believes in radical skepticism and rational deduction. However, this belief begs a new question: In which reason does Descartes believe and why? What is reason? Concerning the ‘why’ question, the answer is circular. Descartes believes in reason because reason shall in the end affirm this belief of his; belief in reason affirms itself and reveals that it is the origin of true knowledge. Descartes believes in rationality. Emphasizing the self-limitation of the will, he restricts thinking to a specific rational performance. That helps him to found a universal structure of all thought. Thought shall then emerge as essentially rational. In this fashion, it confirms the original belief in reason. Reason as a form of thought, in which Descartes at this phase of his argument still only believes and to which the self-limiting will is directed, has to fulfill three basic methodological presuppositions. First, reason operates with truth that is to be understood as immediate evidence. The veracity of something means the grasping of that which the thing is, in its fullness, exposure and presence. This notion of truth as the actual

12 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 14. 13 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 14.

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e­ vidence of an idea that characterizes the being of that which is being thought manifests the way, apart from other things, in which Descartes interprets the principle of identity in the context of universal science. For it seems that in his scientific conception the ontological question is bound up with the epistemological one. To be clear: if something is thought as evidence, it is that which it is and at the same time it is nothing else. While it is just in this fullness of view of that which it is and in the discernibility from that which it is not, that the given thing is itself and true. The specific interpretation of the principle of identity is, however, implicitly present already in the intention to find a solid and evident thing that would serve as a basis for thinking about the being of all other entities. It enables the development of indubitable thinking about being as such. The second methodological presupposition that appears in the introductory meditations of the work Meditations on First Philosophy is the idea that all that can be doubted has to be primarily disqualified from the realm of true knowledge. That which may be doubted may not be at this point a basis of truth. A dubious thought is not evidence in the sense of its not being a clear idea, the indistinctness of the substance of that which is observed. As soon as reason observes something dubious, it is impossible to talk about any amount of truth that would be disclosed by it. Third, a thing is either dubious or indubitable. If a thing is dubious, it cannot be at the same time indubitable. There is no state between these two alternatives present in thought. The indubitable thing is at the same time true. Conversely, we cannot say whether a dubious thing is true or false. Reason is to be directed by the principle of decidability conceived in this way, and should focus only on guaranteed, true and indubitable things. This aforementioned line of thought has been predefined, in a precise manner, as universally shared reason. It cannot be applied to anything that is not thinkable in this way from the very start. Descartes cannot discover, by means of radical skepticism, anything other than his own ‘preliminary’ point of departure that is to be affirmed by this very course. This preliminary point then becomes a disclosed universality. The principle of identity is interpreted as a principle of this pre-established rational thought applied to a specifically defined realm of being (thoughts that are within our power). The radical path of skepticism therefore leads to selfjustification and self-affirmation of reason (self-limited will) by itself. The first presupposition of the Cartesian method is, as we have just shown, rationality as a concretely determined thought. The second implicit supposition that Descartes does not doubt is the thinker himself as a person, who reflects and develops the given method as the author, actor and viewer of the process of radical skepticism. This is due to how,



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as Pierre Guenancia writes, Descartes’ philosophical project is the author’s personal intellectual adventure. He does not wish to repeat and combine already accomplished reflections; he wishes to go through a philosophical experience: “The thought is a voyage and not a set of statements.”14 We should follow this as readers: “This . . . philosophy . . . requires that readers practice this voyage as well . . . The reader of such a work should be more an experimenter than a reader.”15 Thus, the thing that cannot be reduced in such a project is the actor of the project. When describing radical doubt, Descartes always mentions a certain existing I that perceives external things, which is the place of the will and that can therefore reject doubtful thoughts. It is an intimately close I that speaks, perceives, understands; an I that has its body and that has its spirit, using an indubitable instrument of reason, and getting lost in illusions. Such an I may, however, always distinguish the true from the doubtful in the end: . . . therefore I will suppose that all I see is false. I will believe that none of these things that my deceitful memory brings before my eyes ever existed. . . . body, shape, extension, movement, and place are all figments of my imagination.16 . . . it is within my power to suspend my judgment.17

Descartes understands this I, which is implicitly present in “I suppose”, “I see”, “I believe”, together with the self-relation manifested by the adjectives my and mine, as presuppositions of his method. Jean-Claude Pariente adds that the primitive proposition of I consists not only in “I which is a natural attitude” but also in “that the existence of I is very close to the production of thoughts”.18 Descartes himself confirms this in a Letter to Clerselier.19

14 Guenancia, Descartes. Bien conduire sa raison, 55. “La pensée est une démarche et non un ensemble des thèses.” Translated by AK. 15 Ibid., 61. “Cette . . . philosophie . . . exige des lecteurs qu’ils pratiquent la démarche de l’auteur . . . Le lecteur d’un tel ouvrage doit être davantage un expérimentateur qu’un lecteur.” Translated by AK. 16 René Descartes, Méditations Métaphysiques (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), 71, 73. Italicized by AK. English translation: Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 61. I mention some important terms, which were not preserved in the official translation, from the French original, in brackets. 17 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 69. 18 Jean-Claude Pariente, “La première personne et sa fonction dans le Cogito [The First Person and its function in Cogito],” in Descartes et la question du sujet [Descartes and the Question of the Subject], ed. Kim-Sang Ong-Van-Cung (Paris: PUF, 1999), 11–48, mainly 13–18 and 46–48. 19 Descartes, Lettre à Clerselier sur les instants [A Letter to Clerselier about Instants], AT, IX, 204 on proposition as that who thinks: “. . . on ne peut pas dire toutefois qu’elle soit

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The last presuppositions of Descartes’ inquiry, which the author draws on from the beginning, and which he does not doubt, are the concepts of the exterior (the world) and the interior (the spirit). For Descartes, the exterior signifies everything that the human being cannot fully control. First, it is all that the human being perceives through its senses. By means of the senses, however, the human being does not perceive primarily things, or entities, but something that constitutes itself as a thing in the interior. The exterior consists of that which can be seen, heard, touched and felt. To understand the exterior as the world, to work with external things by means of thought and to recognize them, the human being has to think this exterior (for example by means of sense perception). The human has to understand that the exterior can be transformed into the interior, into the realm of the spirit and its thoughts (perceptions, ideas). The exterior, in the form of internal things, is put under ‘our control’ (It gets more complex only in the case of affects, as we shall see in the part concerning Descartes’ inquiry, The Passions of the Soul. Let us say, for now, that affects are not entities, things of the exterior, but processes that can be provoked in the interior by the exterior). In this way, the exterior is put under the control of an I (Descartes’ natural attitude) that has a will. It is an I that doubts and that can unambiguously decide whether the given objects are or are not doubtful. Thought and ontology developed by means of this method therefore determine not only the possible character of the world that is accessible for further analysis (the world of observed ideas), but also the I which perceives the given world. It seems that the world loses, in this way, any independence from human thought. He who experiences the world is characterized only by a very specific capacity—by the reason that grasps exactly and certainly its objects, doubts, dispositions of the will, and that controls the exterior as well as of the interior (itself). That is exactly one of the aims of Meditations on First Philosophy. In this work, Descartes seeks to demonstrate that we cannot hold on to an a priori statement of the existence of the world from which the human being, through perception, selects various entities. Indeed, the human being is here in the first place, and the world reveals itself to the human according to the aforesaid capacity to think. Descartes wants the readers of his Meditations to see that the exterior can be inserted into the objects of the spirit (thoughts) and that performances of ­individual modes of thought can be converted (in the Meditations completely) under the control of rational knowledge. un prejugé lorsqu’on examine, à cause qu’elle paraît si évidente à l’entendement qu’il ne se saurait empêcher de la croire.” Translated by AK.



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By means of this, the realm of the thinking spirit is structured according to the capacity to think rationally, which can actually obscure or create other, originally groundless, and uncertain modes of thought. The performance of the perceiving I is transferred under the control of thinking. From the beginning, there is, in Descartes’ Method, a certain, indubitable, willing activity of an I that controls everything that happens in its spirit (interior) and that, at the same time, determines the character of the exterior. That is due to the I’s indubitable thinking and an indestructible will and its capacity to limit itself towards a conformity with reason. There are apportioned conditions of the possible way in which the exterior can be given in truth and evidence within this I. There is already everything that has value within this I, including the world as it is thought. A plane that is absolutely indubitable and that relates to both the exterior and the interior may thus be identified in thoughts. Archimedean Point Thinking, with its indisputable skepticism, finally reaches the immobile Archimedean point. It is not surprising that a statement of a simple act of willful rational thought emerges at this point of fulfillment. This statement can be formulated as: ‘that I think’. The process of doubting necessarily has to stop at the limit of its own power, that is, at its presuppositions, and reveal the limits of the field which is defined in advance, and in which rational thought can operate. This limit takes the form of logical contradiction. The statement ‘I doubt that I doubt’ is nonsensical because one cannot doubt doubting itself. It leads to the disclosure of the tautology ‘I don’t doubt that I doubt’, or ‘it is indubitable that I doubt’. In other words: I indubitably think that I think. The principle of identity is localized in this Archimedean point as well. For, it is here that we also hear the term sum, that is, the fact of existence. . . . but immediately afterward I noticed that during the time I wanted thus to think that everything was false, it was necessary that I, who thought thus, be something. And noticing that this truth—I think, therefore I am—was so firm and so certain that the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were unable to shake it, I judged that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.20

20 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 17.

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In this way, self-limiting will reach the point where it can no longer limit itself. Although the thinking ‘I’ wishes to think of everything as false, it cannot get rid of the will that can think everything as false. The will to know cannot do away with itself. It shall find its beginning instead. It is very important to observe, in this context, that the thought ‘that I think’ presents a contemplated static idea. This idea, however, shows up during the act of thought, that is, within a temporal event. This moment is a suspension of the continuous time of an existential way of thinking from which a non-dimensional moment, where a thought is discovered, is torn out. The idea ‘that’ I think, ‘that’ I exist is a relation of a becoming existential experience to a discrete non-becoming beginning. In this way, Descartes reveals the first true piece of knowledge of his thought: “the statement ‘I am, I exist’ is necessarily true every time it is uttered by me or conceived in my mind.”21 This knowledge is given as a primitive proposition. Given that only ‘things’ are conceivable and, with respect to their truth, decidable for ­Descartes, he has to derive from this proposition the existence of a certain entity that is marked by the given act of the proposition. Moreover, there must not be any difference between the proposition and the postulated entity, so that the entity becomes as true a foundation of thought as the proposition itself. The experience of the permanence of the thought act, which is reflected in the indubitable statement ‘that I think’, leads therefore to the search for being of that which is behind the act of thought as that which is and which can truly serve as the basis of universal knowledge. Descartes looks for a substantial unity that can be indubitably thought in its being, a thing that is evident, that is, given in its fullness, actuality and clear distinctness from that which it is not. Having stated ‘I am’, i.e., the fact of existence of an acting I, Descartes searches for an answer to what is that I: “but I do not yet understand well enough who I am—I who now necessarily exist.”22 This questioning leads to the discovery of such an I that is grasped as substance, because ‘that I think’ refers necessarily to something that thinks. The I thus becomes a substantial entity, a subject that fully inhabits the current presence. It becomes a subject that is separated from other entities. The being of this I of the subject is the being of the thing that thinks,

21  Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 61. 22 Ibid.



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or the being of res cogitans. The being and thinking of the ­conceiving thing overlap because the being of the conceiving thing means thinking (in the above defined sense of rational thinking). Principles of being therefore manifest themselves as principles of rational thinking. If something is, it is one and the same, and in this way it is thought as evident and postulated in the fullness of its being. Thought as being includes in itself a tautological identity of that which is. The primary act of thought, at the same time, transforms itself by means of this substantialization into a triple structure. First, the substantial I is revealed there. Secondly, this I thinks. Third, thinking essentially concerns something, namely, the thing thought. The tripartite synthesis of ‘the conceiving that conceives the conceived’ (res cogitans thinks ideas) presents an intentional structure composed of two terms and a relationship. This structure, however, should be absolutely immediate because it comes from a primary act of thought. It is clear that the transfer from the act of thought to the posing of a thing that thinks the thought is certainly not trivial. The statement of the act of thought that is original, is on the one hand indubitable and instantaneous (in the sense of a non-dimensionality of the temporal moment in which ‘that I think’ is postulated). Conversely, it concerns an act that takes place within temporal extension. The I that thinks in this act of thought is still an experiencing I in a continuous existential time, which cannot say anything else than ‘I think’. The process of substantializing this act of thinking presents a secondary operation. We cannot speak about any proper experience of continuous thinking, but it is necessary to speak about postulating some general one I, a universal thing, that ‘thinks’ and whose being is thought by means of this thinking. The operation is conducted, as we have suggested, via a transfer of temporal continuousness of the thought act to its own beginning in the form of a non-dimensional point of contemplation, and via a transformation of personal experience into a general substantial givenness. The original ‘I think’ that was characterized by duration and its proper experiencing is, after a limiting transferral in the temporal dimension, compressed into a temporally non-dimensional moment of a postulated general I. This process of transfer unfolds on the basis of the conviction of the universal science that the act of thought presupposes an actor. The actor is in truth his acts here (the essence of a thinking thing is thought). However, this conceptual distinction between act and actor may develop into a separation between these two moments. At this moment, the Nietzschean statement mentioned in the Introduction about the separation of strength from somebody who is strong should

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be recalled.23 Ostensibly Heidegger interprets Descartes exactly in this sense. He supposes that Descartes initially introduces subjectivism (ego as a primary moment of philosophy) and afterwards presents the ego as a subiectum (an object with attributes). What he omits is that the distinction is not done from the beginning of Descartes’ reflections but as a secondary operation for the benefit of the proper functioning of universal science. In universal science, each fact should be evident, including the act of thinking, while evidence means a givenness in fullness and in presence in an actual moment. At the same time, the experienced experience becomes on behalf of the scientific knowledge a general givenness. Descartes shifts from his own voyage to the proposition about a general structure of thought. In sum, validity and truth do not become, but they are posed in wholeness, in non-dimensional presence and in their generality. Being that is stated in this way has no duration. It is given in immediacy as a full actual reality. Being is that, which it is, and in such a way as it is in an immediate moment posed in thought. In any event, by making this distinction Descartes neglects one important point that will continue to haunt him throughout his argument. The being of the thinking entity, which has the character of an actual and wholly completed thought, does not include the power for its subsequent existence. In other words, the being of a thinking entity is not ability (dynamis) to be. It is not an action, it does not result from a previous act, and it does not project itself somewhere. Actual being simply is. It does not become. With the loss of temporal personal experience, scientific thought loses its source and its sense of becoming. Descartes suspects in this moment the dependence of science on the plane of experience. He makes it tenable to avoid this dependence by replacing the plane of experience by the divine plane. Following on from this, he hopes to maintain the indubitable character of the metaphysical field. He knows now, that the being of res cogitans means that it is the one and only, total and evident, clearly separated from other entities and numerically identical with itself. However, it does not have the power to exist in any other non-dimensional moment, apart from the actual one. The meaning of the 23 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 27–28. “And just exactly as the people separate the lighting from the flash, and interpret the latter as a thing done, as the working of a subject which is called lighting, so also does the popular morality separate strength from the expression of strength as though behind the strong man there existed some indifferent neutral substratum, which enjoyed a caprice and option as to whether or not it should express strength. But there is no substratum, there is no being behind doing, working, becoming.”



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d­ ifference between thought and being is zero in Descartes’ conception; time as a general difference between thought and being has the form of non-dimensional immediacy. The identity of the given entity is its concrete substantial and numerical determination. The temporality of being and thought has thus a form of a discrete repetition of one and the same thought being. That being has its selfidentity in various non-dimensional moments juxtaposed in a linear sequence, infinitely close, but always in absolute distinctiveness. This line of ­immediacies will always have the discrete point form, no matter how close the points may be to one another. The transfer from one point to another then has to be ensured by a force that is external to the posed being. Therefore, it is subsequently made possible to interpret the continuity of being in the sense of duration, at least secondarily. In order for a thing to ‘last’ in the sequence of non-dimensional moments, a source that will transfer it from one moment to another is necessary. As Descartes writes: because the entire period of one’s life can be divided into countless parts, each of which in no way depends on the others, it does not follow from the fact that I existed a short while ago that I now ought to exist, unless some cause creates me once again, as it were, at this moment—that is to say, preserves me. For it is obvious to one who is cognizant of the nature of time that the same force and action is needed to preserve anything at all during the individual moments that it lasts as is needed to create that same thing anew—if it should happen not yet to exist. . . . Therefore I ought now to ask myself whether I have some power through which I can bring it about that I myself, who now am, will also exist a little later . . . But I observe that there is no such power; from this fact I know most evidently that I depend upon a being other than myself.24

To stay unified and identical with itself, and to exist in the time of duration, requires, for a thing that thinks, an external source, that is, something else than itself which would serve as a source of dynamism and power for its temporal existence. The same is valid for everything that can be, according to Descartes, considered as existing: if there are bodies in the world, or intelligences, or other natures that were not entirely perfect, their being ought to depend on God’s power, inasmuch as they cannot subsist without God for a single moment.25

24 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 76. 25 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 19.

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An internally identical and closed unity, separated strictly from that which it is not, has to be related to an external cause that will provide it with the power for a dynamic existence. As the previous quotation has suggested, this cause, which preserves substance in all its immediate actualities and that permanently repeats it, is the divine power. Descartes finds this cause when analyzing rational thought in more detail. As we have seen, the basis of the structure of rational thought is a triad: conceiving I—conceives—the conceived, or a thinking thing—thinks—the thought thing. Reason therefore necessarily has an intentional structure. There are ideas, forms of substance, among conceived things, which are conceived by the conceiving thing. These ideas, cogitata, are objective poles of each activity of thought. They can be evident or vague and they have differing degrees of veracity. The most distinct ideas have the highest amount of objective reality and therefore truthfulness. A thinking thing as evident, which means that they give themselves in their fullness, thinks these types of ideas and they do not refer (themselves) to other thought entities (for example external objects). It is a sphere of clear and indubitable substances. By contrast, ideas that represent only ‘modes or accidences’ show the least objective reality. The structure of thought is, according to Descartes, such that in the moment when the I is thinking, it is already and immediately thinking two basic evident and clear ideas. It is the idea of God and the idea of I. These two ideas are born in the same instant when a thing that thinks is created. They are innate to the thing that thinks. Simultaneously, these ideas present two constitutive elements of thinking and being that are not demonstrable as ideas, because they can only be immediately given. The ontological guarantee of all that exists is presented in the form of the idea of God and the idea of I, thus constituting the basis of the tautological identity of the thinking substance. It follows from the character of the idea of God that only a divine substance could, at the moment of the birth of the human spirit, put both basic ideas into the thing that thinks. God therefore imbues to the human being ideas that disclose to the human being its essence, that is, the conditions of its possibility. Apart from that, God is the creative and preserving condition that gives the thing that thinks its being. The divine substance remains continuously the same being that creates a human being and other entities at first, and then it keeps repetitively re-creating them during their whole existence. The being of the thing that thinks is actualized again and again by the divine principle in the point-after-point sequence of individual moments. Thus, the being of this thing and the thought of



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this being depend on an ontological and epistemological guarantee in the form of divine power (concursus). However, this thing is in a paradoxical way maintained by this guarantee as a substance, that is, as an autonomous being that can be explained independently of other substances. In this point, we touch upon a very important ambiguity of all philosophies of identity—the crucial and seemingly autonomous position of the human being is in the end ensured by a given, posed and believed principle that differs from a human. The reality of the repeating self-relation, the identity of I and I, is founded by means of thinking of the immediately given I that is enabled by the divine principle. This identity is also demonstrated by a self-discovery and self-affirmation of a will that turned to itself and reached its origin—the will to will. Descartes sees such transferring from the statement ‘I think’ to a thing that thinks as immediate. That means that the statement ‘I think myself as res cogitans’ expresses an immediate posing as well. Put otherwise, it is true that there is no internal difference between the I that thinks and the I that is thought. The will, which is turned towards itself, has found itself (its origin) in the form of a self-identical posing. ‘I thinks I’ means just the being of the thinking I. The difference that is the source of the dynamism of this I, lies in its external relationship to the divine principle that enables the individual I to be autonomous, identical, unified and enclosed in his thinking. Thanks to this relationship, the I is being continuously renewed as self-identical and is paradoxically independent. The Metaphysical Body as Res Extensa From the perspective of universal rational thought, the body is an extended thing, res extensa, which does not think on its own. It can only be thought. As such, the bodily substance has nothing in common with the essence of a human being as res cogitans. It is neither the primary nor the perfect. The idea of the body, its being, can only be grasped by a substance of a different kind from the body itself. The body can only be thought by a thing that thinks—a thing that has access to thinking and therefore to being. For this reason the body is fundamentally separated from the thing that thinks and it has no impact on the determination of the essence of the human being. At the same time, it depends epistemologically on the thing that thinks in the sense that it can be viewed as a body only by res cogitans.

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chapter one on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself—insofar as I am a thing that thinks and not an extended thing—and because on the other hand I have a distinct idea of a body—insofar as it is merely an extended thing, and not a thing that thinks—it is therefore certain that I am truly distinct from my body, and that I can exist without it.26

The body is therefore a body insofar as it is thought by the mind. Although some modes of thought, for example sense perception or imagining, have their cause in the body, they become really sensory perception or imagining not on the basis of their relation with the body but on the basis of how their affect is manifested in the soul. However, not all aspects of thought that have a relation with the body (because they operate with thoughts that have their cause in the body) are the type of knowledge that, according to Descartes, defines ‘my essence’, that is, the being that thinks itself, that affects itself and that is the place of its operating and also the affecting of its own soul. The body is revealed in its fundamental essence only when reason conceives its idea. Other modes of thought that are related to the body are irrelevant to the being of the human being. Besides, I believe that this power of imagining that is in me, insofar as it differs from the power of understanding, is not a necessary element of my essence, that is, of the essence of my mind; for although I might lack this power, nonetheless I would undoubtedly remain the same person as I am now. Thus it seems to follow that the power of imagining depends upon something different from me.27

Only reason and free will have the exclusive ability to contemplate sense perceptions as thoughts, to think self-evident ideas and thus reveal the ontological truth. Rational thought, the essence of the human being, therefore founds the human being exclusively as a thing that thinks, and not as the body and the soul. For this reason, from the fact that I know that I exist, and that meanwhile I judge that nothing else clearly belongs to my nature of essence except that I am a thing that thinks, I rightly conclude that my essence consists in this alone: that I am only a thing that thinks.28

Another argument against the participation of the bodily substance in essentially determining the human being is the divisibility of the body. In view of the fact that the basis of rational thought, and its respective 26 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 93. 27 Ibid., 90. 28 Ibid., 93.



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o­ ntology, has to have the character of a simple non-compossible element, the body cannot participate in this foundation. Enter Descartes: Now, first, I realize at this point that there is a great difference between a mind and a body, because the body, by its very nature, is something divisible, whereas the mind is plainly indivisible. Obviously, when I consider the mind, that is, myself insofar as I am only a thing that thinks, I cannot distinguish any parts in me; rather, I take myself to be one complete thing. Although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, nevertheless, were a foot or an arm or any other bodily part amputated, I know that nothing would be taken away from the mind.29

The body can be divided, augmented, decreased, and it does not change the unity or the form of the soul. The essence of the human being does not lie in the body but in the thing that thinks. The body is only a part that is added to the soul. It is not essential for the being of humans as thinking things and humans as thinking things can, in extreme cases, still stay who they are in spite of the fact that they lose their bodies. Neither unity nor sameness of the thinking thing is based on the unity and sameness of the body. Instead, they are rooted in the unity of the soul, to which a concrete bodily matter secondarily relates.30 That the human body changes its shape and appearance during life and that its cellular construction is completely renewed during a few years leads Descartes to conclude that the human being as thinking thing is one and the same only if it has the same soul. This defining of the human being by means of an immaterial soul in the scope of the universal science is also the basis of human immortality. The soul is eternal from the moment it was created and the human being will therefore exist forever. The human being as a thinking thing is an identical self-relationship that immediately conceives (thinks) its being. It is only the relationship between the body and the soul that is destroyed in the moment of death. The human does not continue living in the body but it continues to be the thing that thinks. The body thus loses the source of its unification because it is no longer bound to the unifying soul.

29 Ibid., 97. 30 “To Regius, January 1642,” The Correspondence, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. III, translated by J. Cottingham et al. (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 241– 246, 547. “Quand nous parlons du corps d’un homme, nous n’entendons pas une partie déterminée de matière, ni qui ait une grandeur déterminée, mais seulement nous entendons toute la matière qui est ensemble unie avec l’esprit de cet homme.”

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The human being exists in its bodily form. However, as its body permanently undergoes various changes, it is never whole and it never presents itself self-evidently in any actual moment. “The ontological difference between body and soul . . . depends on the fact . . . that the substance of the soul is completely presented in each of its accidents, whereas the unity of body is the unity of composition: the body is constituted from the totality of its parts.”31 The body always has some unfulfilled possibilities, which means that it is in essence never completely real, because: “the objective being of an idea cannot be produced by a merely potential (which, properly speaking, is nothing), but only by an actual or formal being.”32 In universal science, truly real things are present by necessity, or they are nothing. This holds water for the being of humans as well: their reality in the scope of science is given by the amount of their actual presence, namely, their immediacy and evidence. Reality is not given by capacities, or possibilities, but by self-evidence and the actuality that is apprehended by the soul. The human being is essentially a thing that thinks, it is a soul, a substance totally distinguishable from the body. The body is, nevertheless, less real, it is ‘lesser’, and it is not ‘fundamental’ for the determination of the essence of the human being. Divided and Re-Unified Human Being Descartes neither in his metaphysical works nor in his works about the nature of emotions claims that the res cogitans, the thinking thing is another term for that which we usually call ‘the human being’. The thinking thing is a basic concept and also a midpoint of universal science. Yet, we have seen that the thinking I was born as part of a wide context of personal experience. In contrast to res cogitans, the human being that we usually talk about is not an exclusively impersonal, purely actual, observing I, that is, human being as a thinking I. The human being is the being that acts, experiences, and emotionally feels bodily experiences. It perceives and is perceived. As soon as Descartes articulates his notion of the human being in these respects, he admits that the human being can be moved by feelings, it can experience its body as its own body and it has, at the same time, an experience of thinking, perceiving, deciding and therefore the experience of its own soul. The body that the human 31  Pierre Guenancia, Lire Descartes [To Read Descartes] (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), 306. 32 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 75.



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being owns and to which it feels attached, is not any arbitrary body. In the same way, thoughts and feelings that the human being experiences are its own thoughts and feelings. Moreover, this lived body, these experienced emotions and thoughts, are not fully directed and controlled by the human being. Descartes states, in the sixth meditation of his Meditations on First Philosophy, that the human being is never only a thing that thinks, but also a corporal and perceiving being. According to Descartes, the experiencing and acting human being is a being that is composed of a soul and a body: . . . this body, which by a special right I called ‘mine’, belongs more to me than to any other thing, for I could never be separated from it in the same way as I could be from the rest.33 Although perhaps (or rather, as I shall soon say, to be sure) I have a body that is very closely joined to me.34 I am tightly joined and, so to speak, mingled together (with my body) so much so that I make up one single thing with it.35

This connection of the body and soul is in no sense trivial. It cannot be imagined as a hierarchical binding, or as a simple juxtaposition. It is this close connection of body and soul that determines, as Descartes writes, the character of “a true man”. . . . it is not enough for (the soul) to be lodged in the human body, like a pilot in his ship, unless perhaps to move its members, but it must be joined and united more closely to the body so as to have, in addition, feelings and appetites similar to our own, and thus to make up a true man.36

We can see here a completely opposite approach to the body from what we presented in the metaphysical argument above. In this case, Descartes refers to ‘our’ human experience; he comes back to personal life. This perspective becomes very topical when Descartes starts to reflect on human emotions and on (moral) action. In this realm he is forced to get back to the lived experience: To be able to understand the connection of the body and the soul, we have to experience it. Nothing can substitute life, nothing but life itself can teach us about life.37 33 Ibid., 91. 34 Ibid., 93. 35 Ibid., 94. 36 Descartes, Discourse on Method, 31. 37 Ferdinand Alquié, Descartes: Oeuvres Philosophiques [Philosophical Writings of Descartes], 3 vols., (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1963–1973), 3: 45, note 1. Translated into English by AK.

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Descartes calls the human being, to whom the lived body as well as the lived soul naturally belong, a person: “. . . the union which everyone invariably experiences in himself without philosophizing. Everyone feels that he is a single person with both body and thought.”38 Moreover, in this perspective, the body as well as soul can be denoted as two different subjects: “. . . two different subjects to which it may be related. . . . we are not aware of any subject which acts more directly upon our soul than the body to which it is joined.”39 Thus, Descartes in texts on emotions admits a substantiality to the lived body, of our human body. This sort of body is unlike other conceptions of bodies, essentially indivisible and identical to itself. “It is the body that is called by Descartes the human body which has an identity that is not functional but substantial, which means personal.”40 In a letter to father Mesland on 9 February 1645, Descartes mentions this explicitly: “Our body as a human body remains all the time the same numero as long as it is united with the same soul.”41 Descartes once describes the substance of the body as an independent subject existing necessarily in full actuality and reality, whose principle of movement and form is not the soul but the body itself.42 At other times, it is, however, evaluated as a ‘less real’, non-constitutive part of the human being whose principle of unity and movement is the soul (the soul is presented directly as the principle of the unity of the body). The problem is that the substance of the body cannot be essentially imagined as wholly independent. For, experience tells us that the body causes the emergence of thoughts that are related to affects. These thoughts are not fully under the control of reason. Concerning the body, Descartes once again is confronted with the dilemma between probability and certainty, between the necessity to believe and the will to know. He is forced to acknowledge that the probable cannot be fully transformed into the interior content and that ideas of the body are thus different from the lived body itself. Only the idea of the body can be thought clearly. The substance that ­Descartes 38 Descartes, “To Princess Elisabeth 28.6. 1643,” in The Correspondence, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3: 228. 39 Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, 328, Art. 1. 40 Pierre Guenacia, “Le corps peut-il être un sujet? [Can the Body be a Subject?]” in Descartes et la question du sujet [Descartes and the Question of the Subject], ed. Kim-Sang Ong-Van-Cung (Paris: PUF, 1999), 106. 41  Descartes, “Letter to father Mesland 9th February 1645,” in The Correspondence, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 4: 166–167. 42 Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, 328, Art. 5.



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calls res extensa, and which he also terms the body, is therefore a substance to which only the idea of the body refers. It is not the experienced body. The experienced body manifests itself as an independent substance from the position of not being graspable by reason; the idea of the body refers to the substance that may figure in metaphysical conceptions of thought objects. The independence of the experienced body-subject is therefore evidently different from the substantiality of the body-object grasped by reason in its fullness. We deal with two substances, with two bodies, while the lived body and its independence are not thinkable in the rational philosophical grasping. In this way, it is possible to trace distinctly in Descartes’ work the presence of two notions of the body. These can be grasped with the help of the German terms Leib (alive, lived body) and Körper (solid body, inanimate object).43 What Descartes clearly demonstrates, is how only the body-Körper may be known according to the criteria of metaphysical truth. The body-Leib, on the other hand, may only be experienced. Another piece of knowledge that follows from Descartes’ project concerns how these ‘bodies’ are not only two aspects of one and the same substance, but that they are two substances, two different realities grasped by two kinds of thinking. This is what P. Guenancia emphasizes when saying, “To think clearly means to distinguish the working planes. For Descartes, the plane of action requires other criteria and rules than the plane of theoretical knowledge.”44 This means, however, that there are not only the two bodies grasped by two different thoughts but also two types of soul. We cannot conceive in the same way the soul, the pure thing that thinks, and the soul that acts and suffers with the body and forms the ‘whole’ called human being. Each notion should be understood only from itself. We should not confuse the ideas formed by the soul in itself with the ideas which the soul would never have if it wasn’t joined to the body.45

43 See again Descartes, “Letter to father Mesland 9th February 1645,” in The Correspondence, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 4: 166–167. 44 Guenancia, Descartes. Bien conduire sa raison, 58. “Penser clairement revient à distinguer les plans. Pour Descartes, le plan de l’action humaine requiert d’autres critères et règles que celui de la connaissance théorique.” 45 Ibid., 85. “Nous ne pouvons pas concevoir de la même façon l’âme, pure chose qui pense, et l’âme qui agit et pâtit avec le corps, formant ce ‘tout’ qu’on l’homme. Chacune de ces notions ne peut être comprise que par elle-même. Ne confondons pas les pensées que l’âme forme en elle-même avec celles qu’elle n’aurait pas si elle n’était pas jointe à un corps.” Translated by AK.

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We can conclude that even in metaphysical works of Descartes there are three perspectives of human being. First, it is a human being as an acting I that includes physical and psychical aspects which cannot be distinguished. In this perspective there is actually no need to speak about body and soul as separated substances. It corresponds to the singular experimental voyage of the acting I. This perspective is prevailing up to the point where some res are uncovered, or rather defined. The second angle of vision is the human being as a thing that thinks clearly and truly and that excludes all probable experiences through the capacity of the will. Res cogitans can and need not accept what the true man thinks. This perspective fulfills the requirements of universal science. It was born out of the distinction of the thinking and the res who has this thinking under his control. Here, the exact and probable, real and potential are beginning to diverge. The res cogitans seems an autonomous substance that remains itself even if it loses contact with all probable thoughts. The body, as a substance of inexact perception, falls into the category of probable. Human being as a res cogitans can thus independently exist without the body. This interpretation of human being functions as an operator notion in universal science. The third perspective arises when Descartes desires to return from this standpoint to the reality of true man by maintaining the requirements of metaphysics. Descartes introduces the notion of person, as ‘one single thing’. At this stage he must, however, consider his previous results of metaphysical research and re-compose soul and body into one single thing. As for composed substance, it will not be given through a clear idea anymore, because one of its components was previously rejected as merely probable. This is why Descartes only rarely mentions the necessity to create a “real substantial unity” of body and soul.46 He rather requires defining a “notion of their union”47 and shifts the meaning of both of the terms. This notion does not designate a thing that could be conceived clearly and undoubtedly, but it designates a lived condition of another body and another soul. Descartes, however, risks finding himself back at the first perspective of human being and beyond the region of the clear and exact science. It seems that science cannot avoid the region of probability and that it is irreducibly framed by it. 46 Descartes, “To Regius, January 1642,” in The Correspondence, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3: 205–209. 47 Descartes, “To Princess Elisabeth, 21.5. 1643,” in The Correspondence, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes 3: 665.



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For Heidegger, however, Descartes denotes human being as res cogitans in the sense of modern subject (as stream of consciousnesses) and yet also in the sense of subiectum, substance with separated attributes. Ego is a subjectity (Subjectität) and subjectivity (Subjektivität) at the same time.48 Heidegger interprets the res cogitans as the truest substance in Cartesian philosophy. Neither the body nor the union of both of them may be designated as subjects of this sort. In this fashion, Heidegger proclaims that Descartes transforms the human being into a substantial thing. However, this interpretation seems problematic. Alain de Libera demonstrates that the problem of Heideggerian interpretation consists in taking for synonyms the notions hypokeimenon, subject, substance, consciousness, hypostasis and person.49 Descartes himself, however, distinguishes the notion of person from subject, and implicitly also hypokeimenon from hypostasis. Descartes works with many different subjects, with two sorts of soul, body, thought, and I. Moreover, he never mentions the notion of consciousness for describing res cogitans. His position must thus be understood from this inevitable heterogeneity of thoughts. This heterogeneity manifests the necessary perspectivism of each philosophizing, the impossibility to choose a unified philosophy. Libera assumes that Descartes represents an attributivism*, which “explicitly assimilates the psychic, noetical and mental states and acts with attributes or predicates of a subject defined as ego.”50 Yet he also represents a substantialism where body and soul are two independent substances. Let us add that Descartes presents human being, when he first begins to develop his philosophical method, as a hypostasis that is neither bodily nor purely intellectual. He calls this hypostasis the true man, a person who is the unique subject of the subsequent attribution of the predicates of soul and body.51 It was Heidegger himself who, according to Libera, contributed to the reification of hypostasis in modern philosophy through his narrative on Descartes. “Much more than the reduction of the Being on beings the reduction that I call reduction of hypostasis is decisive for the history of

48 Martin Heidegger, Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins [Metaphysics as History of Being], (Pfullingen: Günter Neske Verlag, 1961), 2: 399–458, namely 410–411. 49 Alain de Libera, Naissance du sujet. Archologie du sujet, vol. 1, (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 90–97. 50 Alain de Libera, Naissance du sujet, 126. 51  Alain de Libera, La quête de l’identité. Archeologie du sujet [Search for Identity. Archeology of the Subject], vol. 2 (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 89.

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subject.”52 According to Libera, the only problem of Descartes is that he did not insist on the primordial character of hypostasis, of the person.53 He tried to reconstruct his primordially lived certainty with the aid of the composition of two substances: “. . . Descartes’ subject was finally only a substance composed of two simple substances (subjects), soul and body and . . . his theory of human being (or ego, or person), a dualism of two subjects or two sorts of subject.”54 Heidegger partly recognizes this problem: “When, however, we come to the question of man’s Being, this is not something we can simply compute by adding together those kinds of Being which body, soul, and spirit respectively possess—kinds of Being whose nature has not as yet been determined.”55 However, he does not see that all the problems of Descartes are preceded by an understanding of lived humanity as hypostasis, and that the dualisms manifest in the best or only possible way the ungraspable moments in all philosophy. To understand Descartes means to see that the two regions of thinking are not independent. Science is not about true man, but it needs his context. True man is not self-sufficient either. He needs to be grasped. If we want to speak about human being we should accept probability and make an effort to attain certainty. All perspectives we develop will always refer, however, beyond themselves, to a blind spot, an invisible point of contact between these regions. Such a blind spot is, as a tacit moment, decisive for the activity of thinking as such. This fact should never be forgotten, because science has no origins within itself and lived experience is not self-sufficient. A restriction of all thinking to scientific reasoning leads us to misinterpret Descartes. When the conception of universal science is read out of the context of lived experience we move from Descartes to Cartesianism. We can paraphrase Libera when stating that the true problem of Descartes was that he forgot his primordial lived experience. Instead, he separated two perspectives of thinking and tried to merge them, a posteriori, into a 52 Alain de Libera, Naissance du sujet, 95. “Plus décisive que la réduction de l’être à l’étant est, pour l’histoire du sujet, ce que j’appellerai la réification (chosification) de l’hypostase.” 53 Alain de Libera, La quête de l’identité, 251. 54 Ibid., 251. “. . . le sujet de Descartes n’était pour finir qu’une substance composée de deux substances (sujets) simples, l’ésprit et le corps et . . . sa théorie de l’homme (ou de l’ego ou de la personne), un dualisme à deux sujets ou à deux types de sujets.” 55 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 48. All subsequent quotations are stated according to the pagination of the German original (Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit, Max Niemeyer, Tübingen, 1953), which is written on the margins of the English translation.



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unity. However, it would be more precise to let them alternate without any further ambition to unify them. The Passions of the Soul and ‘Ontological Force’ We have concluded that the duality presented in Descartes represents a duality of thinking. The two approaches work with two different souls, two different bodies. This duality reveals itself very clearly when ­Descartes confronts the issues beyond the metaphysical themes. These issues concern the theory of human action, of emotionality and of ambiguities touching the relationship between soul and body. These reflections are mostly present in later Descartes’ works The Passions of the Soul and Correspondence (mainly To Princess Elisabeth). There are numerous commentaries of The Passions of the Soul in contemporary studies of Descartes that demonstrate very clearly the abovementioned idea, namely that Descartes was not a simple reductionist of human being.56 The famous study of Denis Kambouchner shows, for instance, that there exists a clear moral subjectivity in Descartes’ texts on emotions, which cannot be reduced to rational subjectivity. Kambouchner also demonstrates, that the body in The Passions of the Soul is accepted as a real substance which is indivisible and which can think to a certain extent. The moral subjectivity is based on a “positive power (puissance) of generosity” based on the liberty, the essence of the will that should always re-identify itself, redefine, reconstruct.57 If a human being maintains his moral subjectivity, he can choose how to respond to most experiences.58 It seems a quite metaphysical conception, but it is necessary to add, that this power remains all the time a power because it will never accomplish itself. It expresses itself in a resolution whose identity consists in permanent projecting and verifying of itself: “The resolution does not consist in being accepted once for ever (what does not mean actually so much) but 56 See for instance Kim-Sang Ong-Van-Cung, ed., Descartes et la question du sujet (Paris: PUF, 1999. Pierre Guenancia, Lire Descartes (Paris: Gallimard, 2000). Justin Skirry, Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005). Annie Bitbol-Hespéries, Le principe de vie chez Descartes [The Principle of Life in Descartes] (Paris: Vrin, 1990). 57 Denis Kambouchner, L’homme des passions [The Man of Passions], 2 vols. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), II: 18. 58 Kambouchner, “La subjectivité morale [Moral Subjectivity]”, in Descartes et la question du sujet, ed. Kim-Sang Ong-Van-Cung (Paris: PUF, 1999), 116.

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in the possibility to be reiterated, or re-adapted ad libitum.”59 The origin of this power consists in the human desire to acquire it: “It is possible to excite in oneself the passion and acquire consequently the virtue of generosity.”60 Kambouchner attests in this way that there is a dualism in Descartes’ work, which, however, does not consist strictly in there being a difference between metaphysical being and moral being but “More precisely it is the passage from physical to moral aspect that is not effectuated as perfectly as one could hope, i.e. through the demonstration of an organic link.”61 Kambouchner reminds us once again that Descartes’ dualism reveals itself in a very clear way through the articulation of the human body (a physical object versus my own lived body). The body in metaphysical texts has in fact no substantiality. It is dependent on the soul and its unity is functional. In texts on emotions, however, the body becomes a real subject in the sense of being an initiative of its proper actions. “If there is some useful and necessary passion it is the body that ‘knows’ better than the soul itself what should the soul want or think.”62 Although the foregoing commentaries are very convincing and important for understanding Descartes’ philosophy, our intention when interpreting The Passions of the Soul is different. It is necessary to add more singular readings. On the whole, the interpreters find the confirmation of a thesis where Descartes speaks about two independent subjects, body and soul, neither of which is subordinate to the other. Yet, they do influence each other essentially. Their mutual unity is sought in their interdependence. Our objective when reading The Passions of the soul lies somewhere else. We hope to find various indications that will enable us to define the unity of the human being as a unity, which is based neither on the form of a composed substance nor on a secondary notion. Instead, it shall come from a primordial experience that is not thinkable in the metaphysical realm, but that represents its ‘missing beginning’, a principle that is always absent. This moment shall be found “behind” the link between the body and the soul. The link proposed by Descartes takes the form of a functional 59 Ibid., 123. “Le propre de la résolution, c’est moins d’avoir été une fois prise (ce qui ne signifie encore pas grand-chose) que de pouvoir être réitérée ou reprise ad libitum.” 60 Descartes, AT, XI, 453, 10. “On peut exciter en soi la passion en ensuite acquérir la vertu de générosité.” 61  Kambouchner, L’homme des passions, II: 13. “C’est alors plus précisement, de la physique à la morale que le passage manque à s’efectuer aussi parfaitement qu’on pouvait l’espérer, c’est-à-dire moyennant la démonstration d’un lien organique.” Translated by AK. 62 Ibid., II: 342.



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primordial bond and a reciprocal influencing of two distinctly differentiated substances. The question that presents itself within the framework of these works refers to the (ontological) status of the above-mentioned contact of a body and a soul, while preserving another idea that arises later, that is, the idea of the difference of these two substances. Bearing in mind this point of departure, let us now shortly sum up the main line of argument in The Passions of the Soul and the Correspondence. First, it is useful to repeat that Descartes bases the claim for the unity of the body and the soul primarily on the validity and weight of experience: “. . . the union which everyone invariably experiences in himself without philosophizing. Everyone feels that he is a single person with both body and thought.”63 Or elsewhere: “To be able to understand the connection of the body and the soul, we have to experience it. Nothing can substitute life, nothing but life itself can teach us about life.”64 As we shall see further on, experience is a mode of thought that is irrevocably connected to the body. For, the objects of experience (experienced thoughts) have their cause not in the soul, but in the body. Descartes distinguishes two kinds of thoughts—actions of the soul and passions.65 Experience is not, however, concerned with the actions of the soul, in other words, volitions, because experienced thoughts do not have their origin and recipient in the soul itself. Experience is thinking that deals also with thoughts—affects that are present in the soul but “it is often not our soul which makes them such as they are.”66 Their origin is the body; the soul is only a recipient. That is why the bodily substance is essential for thinking that comes from experience. He who experiences something cannot be a simple subject (a self-affecting rational I, whose essence is given as the self-given rationality). The one, who experiences something, is the true man, person or ‘we’. Again a question arises, who is this ‘we’, a person or ‘the true man’. Until now, the only clear thing has been the necessity to think this being from the connection of the body and soul. As Descartes tries to understand this unity, i.e., getting to know it, or to grasp it, he approaches the question of the true man’s nature not from the perspective of immediate experience of this connection. Instead, he treats it again from the metaphysical supposition, that is, the dualism of the body 63 Descartes, “To Princess Elisabeth 28.6. 1643,” in The Correspondence, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3: 228. 64 Alquié, Descartes: Oeuvres Philosophiques, 3: 45, note 1. Translated into English by AK. 65 Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, 334, Art. 17. 66 Ibid., 335, Art. 17.

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and soul unity, using the instruments of the soul: “I supposed that Your Highness still had in mind the arguments proving the distinction between the soul and the body.”67 The question now is: How can a thinking subject conceive the connection of two separate substances—the soul and the body that a true man experiences as merged? Experience becomes the authority for the performance of reasoning here. It is an origin which, however, stands apart from philosophizing. That “which only has to be experienced” is now to be understood by reason. It is, nevertheless, important for the point of departure of Descartes’ meditation in The Passions of the Soul, i.e., for the idea of the dualism of the body and the soul indeterminately merged in experience, that the body and the soul are not considered as only separate substances but also as independent substances. One substance is not the origin of the other; they exist in their mutual activity. Descartes writes: “. . . that is why people who never philosophize, . . . have no doubt that the soul moves the body and that the body acts on the soul.”68 According to the works of Descartes we have examined, the substance is something that is given as an actual reality, i.e., something that gives itself as an immediate givenness and fullness, energeia. In this sense, there appears a possibility to understand also the body as a subject (see the quote below) in the first parts of the work The Passions of the Soul. The new feature that Descartes, thanks to experience, records between the substance of the body and the substance of the soul, is their reciprocal incidence. It seems that what experience discloses, and what is still not revealed by philosophizing, is how there can be a force, a motion, dynamis between two subjects in the state of full energeia. This dynamis emerges in two respects—as the force of actuating (action), seen from the perspective of the subject that acts, and as the force of an affect (passion), seen from the perspective of the subject that receives the force. The unity that arises from the reciprocal action of given subjects lies in the way in which the two forces (the action and affect as seen by a common observer) are in ‘reality’ (ontologically) only one force, one motion. . . . whatever takes place or occurs is generally called by philosophers a ‘passion’ with regard to the subject to which it happens and an ‘action’ with regard to that which makes it happen. Thus, although an agent and patient are often quite different, an action and passion must always be a single

67 Descartes, “To Princess Elizabeth 28.6. 1643”, in The Correspondence, 228. 68 Ibid., 227.



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thing which has these two names on account of the two different subjects to which it may be related. . . . we are not aware of any subject which acts more directly upon our soul than the body to which it is joined. Consequently we should recognize that what is a passion in the soul is usually an action in the body.69

It is clear from this quotation that the body and the soul can be considered as two different subjects and still be joined on the basis of a contacting (not unifying) force. The force appears never as such, but always in two different aspects—in action and in affect. This idea of Descartes may be found in another form in Aristotle who demonstrated in his Metaphysics that the force to act (dynamis tou poiein) and the force to suffer (dynamis tou paschein), which are ontically mutually discernible and which can be considered two forces bound to two objects, represent only one force on the ontological plane.70 Disclosing of this connection through the ontological force, which appears as two forces on the ontic plane is, for ­Descartes, an essential point of departure. It is from here that he explains the functional unity and reciprocal dynamical bond between the body and the soul. The body and the soul therefore shall not be presented as a single substance. Instead, some way for their mutual functional connection shall be reached. In this way, however, Descartes reveals an essential point that also takes the conception of The Passions of the Soul beyond the framework of metaphysical thought. This disclosure deals with the possibility to talk about reality, or about the being of some force that does not refer to a given substance. It is the force itself that exists, not a substance that holds this force. The only force that Descartes discussed in his metaphysical works was the divine power (concursus), its performance as an absolutely actual and most real reality (energeia). Ostensibly, there emerges in The Passions of the Soul a possibility of thematizing another type of force that would not be restricted to things in the form of an actual, self-given substance only. It is a possibility that would concern acting potencies as well. We should add at this point that Descartes does not explicitly express this idea. He does not speak directly about a reality of some force without a hypokeimenon, but he implicitly works with it. That is why the notion ‘force’ does not represent a translation of any notion Descartes explicitly uses. We use the term as being nearest to the French notion ‘force’, because it does not lead us to imagine a ‘strength’ 69 Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, 328, Art. 1. 70 Aristotle, Metaphysics, translated by Hippocrates G. Apostle (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1966), O 1, 1046 a.

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(‘puissance’ or ‘pouvoir’) which is mastered and used according to will and liberty (see Kambouchner’s explication). Descartes uses the notion of strength in order to describe the strength of resolution and generosity. A force, on the other hand, refers to a force beyond the separation of both subjects and their mutual independence. Demonstration of the joint force acting behind the body and the soul is not direct. The force does not manifest itself in a subject. It acts as two different forces for two different subjects. These demonstrations are for both subjects (the body and the soul) principally different. While on the level of the body, this force is manifested in the form of a mechanical transfer of miniature material particles of blood (which Descartes calls animal spirits). On the level of the soul, the power is manifested in the form of the motion of thoughts (affects). While there are exclusively thoughts in the soul, the body essentially does not think: “Because we have no conception of the body as thinking in any way at all, we have reason to believe that every kind of thought present in us belongs to the soul.”71 The place where the body and the soul do not intermingle is the pineal gland. Here the mechanical flow of material particles is transformed into a motion of thoughts and the other way round is. The pineal gland, according to Descartes, is a place where the body and the soul influence each other ‘touchlessly’. It is not the substance composed of body and soul then; it is not the visible and thinkable origin of all visible (perceptible or thinkable) forces. The pineal gland is a manifestation of a blind spot. It covers an emptiness which hides the reality of the ontological force. On the one hand, impulses of material particles of blood and the motion of spirits penetrate and traverse the pineal gland. On the other hand, these material movements provoke motions of thoughts. This process functions the other way round as well—thoughts (volitions) that influence the generation of material impulses finally causing movements of muscles, or other bodily changes, come from the soul. The relationship between action and affect can, however, occur only in the sphere of the soul (where we deal with volitions, products of free will that is the main activity of the soul), or in the sphere of the body (where we deal with movements of the type of animal reflexes of the human body-the engine that connects a human being with an animal; they are activities without will, without the participation of the soul):

71 Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, 329, Art. 4.



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Those I call its actions are all our volitions, for we experience them as proceeding directly from our soul and as seeming to depend on it alone.72 Thus every movement we make without any contribution from our will—. . . when we perform any action which is common to us and the beasts—depends solely on the arrangement of our limbs and on the route which the spirits, produced by the heat of the heart, follow naturally in the brain, nerves and muscles. This occurs in the same way as the movement of a watch is produced merely by the strength of its spring and the configuration of its wheels.73

It can be said, generally, that Descartes discovers a kind of interconnectedness between actual reality (energeia) and force (potency), or rather a field of forces that connects the individual components of the real. This force is explained by means of the causal pattern of cause and effect (action and affect). The most important way in which these forces operate is the one that causes thoughts that have no origin in the soul to enter the soul. Descartes calls these thoughts, as we have already mentioned, affects, or passions. Affects of the soul are provoked by sensory perception and, more generally, by all bodily impulses. These affects can never be fully controlled by the soul, because the soul never possesses their causes. Affects may, to some extent, influence even the will. They can confuse our thinking by giving rise to false conceptions. At the same time, affects are sources of important motions of the mind, for example of experience, and that is why it is necessary to learn to work with them. Here we encounter again the necessity to deal with body ‘knowledge’ that is always probable but sometimes better than the reasoning of the soul. Although Descartes tried to reduce probability to the interior epistemological moment, it seems that he acknowledges its capacity to transgress reason. What concerns our project is how Descartes implicitly admits the existence of the ontological force (our term) that is neither purely psychological nor purely organic. Rather, it is primordial to the lived human body and the lived soul, being beyond their mutual distinction. Thanks to this force, which is neither perceptible nor graspable by reason as such, the body may be perceived as my lived human body, just as my soul may be grasped as my lived human soul. However, in accordance to metaphysical texts Descartes tries to minimize the influence of exterior forces at the nearly autonomous soul. The only instrument that the soul has is the rational apprehension of these affects and their causes. Due to this ability 72 Ibid., 335, Art. 17. 73 Ibid., 335, Art. 16.

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it is possible, to the maximum possible extent (not fully), to dominate the passions that can never be totally overpowered. The spiritual strength of the human being can be recognized according to the capacity to resist the influences of affects: “the strongest souls belong to those in whom the will by nature can most easily conquer the passions and stop the bodily movements which accompany them.”74 The soul is therefore endowed predominantly with the power (even “absolute power”—pouvoir absolu)75 of free will that is, as mentioned above, the “only, or at least the principal, activity of the soul.”76 The will has itself in its own hands because it concerns “the things that depend wholly on us.”77 It can, when it restricts itself, order these things according to the rules of reason. Next to that, the will also encounters thoughts produced under the influence of affects that have their origin in the sphere of the body. However, these thoughts may also be dominated by the will if the will restricts itself, if it seeks to be in accordance with reason and substitutes its falsities with truth. The ability to dominate the affects, and substitute falsities coming from them, is based on knowledge, concretely on knowledge of good and evil. That knowledge is, nevertheless, not defined by Descartes in any clear way. “What I call its ‘proper’ weapons are firm and determinate judgments bearing upon the knowledge of good and evil, which the soul has resolved to follow in guiding its conduct.”78 However, an important consequence of this theory emerges in ­Descartes’ note at the end of his work. The author mentions there that the body cannot be considered as valuable a substance for the constitution of the human being as the substance of the soul. By this, Descartes pushes his argument towards the requirements of universal science: “[the body] is only the lesser part.”79 Although the soul can never take possession of the body, it can gain significant superiority over it in three ways: 1) through rational thinking of that which depends “wholly on us,” 2) by means of its rational acquisition of that which comes into our soul from the body, and 3) by means of the acceptance of divine providence that predetermines the rest of the events

74 Ibid., 347, Art. 48. 75 Ibid., 348, Art. 50. 76 Ibid., 333, Art. 13. 77 Ibid., 379, Art. 144. 78 Ibid., 347, Art. 48. 79 Ibid., 377, Art. 139.



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in our life. Using rational knowledge of good and evil, the human being maximizes its own wisdom and wholesomeness. It is more and more obvious, from the above-mentioned, that in his work The Passions of the Soul Descartes does not offer an explicit answer to his philosophical (metaphysical) question about the unified, non-­composed substance of true man. Neither does he describe in more detail the significance of the notion person or true man as a notion of the union of body and soul. Experience that tells us about the unity of the body and soul presents a mode of thinking that cannot be fully grasped by reason. At the most, experience can only be dominated by reason. A human’s actions in life will therefore always escape the first metaphysical maxim, which is a distinct, indubitable and stable knowledge of fully actual substances. Action, a lived body, and experience, draw on forces (dynameis) and not on reality (energeia) and that is why they will always stand beyond the sphere of the knowledge of truth. Experience itself is as such a mode of thinking by means of which it is impossible to think being as evident, full and actual. It can therefore never become an inner foundation of the philosophical knowledge of truth. Yet, it remains its exterior and not explicitly acknowledged framework. The conflict between the necessity to believe and the will to know is therefore resolved only to the degree to which Descartes limits himself to the belief in the will. He seems to leave aside the necessity to believe in the authority of experience. What we captured and realized in The Passions of the Soul, was the possibility to understand the ‘contact’ between experience and science through an ontological force. The force essentially transgresses the ontology coming from the metaphysical framework of true and evident knowledge. However, this possibility is merely a hint and Descartes himself does not intend to transgress his main philosophical position. This hint leads us to the idea that the implicit conception of forces presented in The Passions of the Soul could move beyond metaphysics if it were further developed. It seems to us that this text gives us an inspiration of how to interpret the notion of person, hypostasis or true man—not in the form of a substantial entity but in the processional reality of a unified operating potentiality. The connection of the body and soul could be understood as a primordial process and its reality would be the reality of a force that actualizes itself. In this way, however we would not revise Descartes’ metaphysics but only step beyond its framework. The thinking of ontology of forces cannot rely on knowing the truth in the form of distinct and actual evidence about a unified substantial thing, as the metaphysical project requires. This is what Heidegger does not emphasize in his interpretation of Descartes.

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chapter one Principle of Identity in Universal Science

As was mentioned above, Heidegger interprets Descartes as a thinker of universal science, who develops his ontology and thought from a specifically interpreted principle of identity. The identity that is not defined by Descartes himself, but is implicitly present as an existent self-relationship of res cogitans to itself, expresses vividly the way in which rational thought is bound to the ontology of substances. The character of subsistence or existence and the character of identity cannot be separated. . . . the soul is itself complete in its every act or in its every operation. Its unity has no equivalent in the region of corporal extended things.80

The meaning of this relationship is expressed in the conception of time that significantly corresponds to the concrete way in which the identity is conceived. Conceptual configuration of these four elements (thought, being, time, and identity) could be expressed in the following way: the being of that which is, is viewed and recognized by rational thought self-evidently and in its immediacy as a unity and numerical identity, in each non-­dimensional moment of the time sequence. There are only two categories, in the universal science, that correspond to two modalities of thought. A certain entity either is, or is posed as existing in its immutability and contemplated as an idea by indubitable thinking. Or the given entity is probable (questionable) and does not exist in this case. It can be grasped only as an uncertain thing that depends on another thing that is the source of its unity, form and meaning. The ideal scientific realm is therefore filled only with entities that are clearly defined substances. It concerns substances whose being and identity consist in their full actuality. At the same time, these substances are clearly differentiated from that which they are not. Their way of being immediately secures their numerical identity. In other words, such identity means that the thing which is, is ipso facto identical with itself. Numerical identity therefore designates a sameness (mêmeté, die Dieselbigkeit) of an entity, of idem numero. It logically excludes the possibility that different entities could share one identity, that one entity could show more identities of this type, or that the given identity could be indeterminate. Numerical identity signifies the posing of something given in itself. It is a trivial tautology of 80 Guenancia, “Le corps peut-il être un sujet?” 97. Translated by AK.



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the unity and identity of an entity that is located outside temporal duration. The time in which these entities exist takes the form of a sequence of non-dimensional moments that are infinitely close to one another. In this temporality, thought may grasp an entity ‘anytime’, which creates an image of continuity. This continuity, however, is only a non-differentiated closeness of neighboring discrete moments. The identity of an entity is founded on a comparison of its static occurrences in individual points of the time sequence. The relationship to that which it is not is given numerically, i.e., as non-sameness, numerical difference. Reality is then a sum of all real entities of this type. Identity is determined even for the human being, who is a significant entity because in him thought relates to itself, as a formal and negative (necessary) condition of the being of the thinkable. The identity of a human being as res cogitans does not concern that which determines the specific individuality of the given person. Rather, it expresses its impersonal character. An exclusive privilege of res cogitans, in contrast to other (‘non-human’) entities, is the possibility to contemplate its being and identity. The human being can contemplate the idea of itself by its own means, i.e., by reason. Res cogitans understands that the idea of its being is inserted into its soul by the divine source. One may contemplate divine ideas, even though God’s objective reality transcends one’s objective reality. The thinking thing therefore grasps that which endows it with existence, that which is different from it, objectively more real and having the power that throws it into the dynamism of life. Res cogitans itself, nevertheless, does not have this power at its disposal; it does not have the dynamis to become itself or something else. Although it cannot change that which it is, it has the ability to know itself, to think itself. It has the will to self-relation, or a self-related will. A thing that thinks, exists in such a way, that it knows itself and its being. By this act of contemplation it becomes its own basis, the one who immediately contemplates everything that is essential. The thing that thinks thus manifests itself as the central point of rational thought. It is a point that cannot be exceeded, an inner limit that explicitly shows when reason is related to itself. As the inner origin of reason is the reason that is defined impersonally and generally, this scheme is valid for any human being. The science deduced from reason is therefore universally valid. The Archimedean point of this science, an immediate and unconditional certainty, is located in a trivial self-relation of a general thing. A whole architecture of undoubted thinking then develops from this principle. Res cogitans as a point of intersection between thought and being is characterized by a tautological, immediate and numerical identity as well.

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Apart from these conclusions, Descartes claims that the human being is a compound of two substances, the soul and the body. Is then the human being a unique thinking substance, or is it a compound of the corporeal and the spiritual substance? Descartes’ answer is not unambiguous. He does not claim that the human being is just a thing that thinks; he merely argues that the human being as res cogitans founds universal science. The human being as a living and acting being is, however, composed of two subjects: the body and the soul. The great contribution of Descartes’ texts thus lies: 1) in the discovery of the ambiguity in the concept of the I, or rather of self-relation, 2) in the notion of human corporeity (the body-Leib as a self-subsistent substance that is not graspable by reason in contrast to the body-Körper as an idea of other substance, which is graspable by reason), and 3) in the ways in which the human being may be grasped. As we have seen above, Descartes distinguishes the I of a true man from the I of the res cogitans. The human being, as the I of universal science, is not corporeal and has nothing in common with the self-relating being. For, the self-relating being exists in its own perceiving body (which this being calls its own), and is overwhelmed with doubts about the truthfulness of its feeling, perceiving and thinking. The I of the subject is the point of intersection of rational thinking and substantial ontology. However, it is, person-wise, nothing. The self-relating being that acts in various processes and acts of thought, is a lived I, an experiencing person, who cannot, nevertheless, serve as an indubitable basis of universal science. The I of the subject is immediately given. A lived self-relation, in contrast, develops in the duration of its existence. Distinct from an immediately situated reality (energeia) and self-identity of the thing that thinks, a lived self-relation takes place via the never accomplished power of the soul and in action. It has the power to limit itself as well as the power to be subdued by affects. A lived self-relation develops in the dynamics and changeability of the thinking will (the soul). The thinking will is influenced by affects that have no cause in the will itself—that is why it can never fully overpower them. In contrast to philosophical self-evidence that founds true knowledge and posed reality, the lived self-relation of an acting being is something that can only approximate wisdom and blessedness without being able to disentangle itself from risking, doubting and indeterminacy. It remains all the time an unaccomplished power. This perspective on human being is closer to Heidegger’s views than the one concerning universal science. When interpreting Descartes, Heidegger nevertheless abandons the author’s vacillation between the two mentioned perspectives and presents him as a coherent thinker of the metaphysical position.



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He does not thematise the possible issue which lurks beyond or behind these two perspectives, and which manifests itself only indirectly through manifoldness of non-unified thoughts. As we are interested in whether and how Heidegger transgressed the principle of identity in his early work, we shall now work with ‘­Heidegger’s Descartes. At the same time, we wish to keep in mind that science and action serve as a mutual framework. We shall also focus on the revelation of a possible existence of the rationally unthinkable ontological force, which reaches beyond the realm of universal science and lived experience that acts from the background of the two thoughts. This force that we touched upon in The Passions of the Soul manifests itself in the ambiguity of human self-relatedness as an ambiguity in the notion of human substance, soul, body, being itself, and an ambiguity in the conception of the human being. These ambiguities (or dualisms) should thus be explicitly admitted as manifestations of a source of sense that denies itself. A sense that is ungraspable and imperceptible, but that acts on the manifoldness of planes of description.

Chapter Two

The Impossibility of a Powerless Da-sein and a Powerful World in Fundamental Ontology What we focused on in the first part of this work was Heidegger’s attempt to deconstruct a philosophy, which is based on the principle of identity. We have already mentioned in the Introduction that the greatest difficulty with this principle (that for each entity A wherein we think, A is A) lies in its anthropological tendency. One consequence of the principle says that if a human being thinks itself, it is itself and it essentially exists as this thinking being. What follows from this is, that if human being exists, it always already is itself, and its position is exclusive—other inhuman beings can merely be thought by the human being. Martin Heidegger criticizes this tendency in Descartes’ metaphysical project. His intuition tells him that it is necessary to found thought on potentiality (possibility without a substantial hypokeimenon) and not on substantiality. He interprets Descartes as a thinker of fixed substances and a reified human subject, while seeking to define human being as a being in the world and a potentiality-of-being. We have seen that Descartes’ thinking cannot be reduced in such a way. His late work can be interpreted in terms of an ontology of potencies (forces). However, when Descartes allows for such a part of his reflection to be present in his work, he simultaneously loses contact with the principle of identity as it was mentioned above. He can no longer claim—in his works on emotions—that human being is itself a thinking being, while acknowledging the existence of the body-subject that influences the soulsubject and that does not think itself. In this manner the thinking being has a source of its thoughts outside itself. It can never control itself fully. It cannot be thought clearly and immediately as itself. Heidegger develops, in his chief work Being and Time,1 a fundamental ontology based on the concept of human being as a potentiality to be. The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate in which sense Heidegger manages to deconstruct his own interpretation of Descartes and Descartes’ philosophy based on the principle of identity. 1 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time.

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Eventually we shall reach the conclusion that Heidegger’s promising project remains surprisingly within the realm of the principle criticized by the author. The background that he creates is, nevertheless, very fruitful. It can be reinterpreted and used for another attempt to leave this realm. We shall map this background and identify its three major components: 1. Heidegger mentions—when distinguishing human and inhuman beings—existence of the so-called affairs as powerful inhuman things, 2. in his description of the transition from inauthentic to the authentic mode, he mentions the so-called third mode of existence as a mode where human being does not understand (has control over) itself and the world, 3. in his description of Angst, a calling of conscience and beingtoward-death, Heidegger implicitly acknowledges that there is a moment of powerlessness in human being, which passes through its continuous potentiality-of-being. These issues shall take us to an inner boundary of fundamental ontology, leading, it is hoped, to a creative transgression of this philosophy. Basic Concepts of Fundamental Ontology What Descartes and Heidegger’s philosophical inquiries have in common is their primordial interest in the relationship between thinking and being. The question of human being becomes manifest in both philosophies. It is not posed primordially and for itself, being therefore rather secondary. Yet, it reveals itself as preferred. Its priority is connected with the theme of the disclosure of access to being. To reach being, it is necessary to make clear in what way the human being is able to reach being and to imitate this method in its purest form. It is necessary to ask what the human being is and what capacity enables it to reveal the conditions of possibility of being. Heidegger, like Descartes, develops a way of thinking that tries to achieve the best apprehension of the being of all beings including the being of itself. Humans are unique beings that make being itself accessible. The instrument of access to being, which the human being has, is a truly essential feature of the human being. It expresses, to a certain degree, the structure and conceptual configuration, which is led by the principle of identity. The phenomenological method used in the project of fundamental ontology of Being and Time is not based on the principles of rational thought. By contrast, it considers thinking a fundamental hermeneutic



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understanding that is, according to Heidegger, more primordial than ­rationality. It concerns thinking whose structure is to some extent cyclical. For this thinking thematically grasps that which it has always already, but to some extent non-thematically, understood. Such thinking should lead through a description of beings to a disclosure of that which enables them to exist, that is, their being. Regarding the access to being, fundamental ontology does not concern any contemplation of a given substance, but a liberation of being from its concealedness so that being can manifest itself out of itself. Heidegger’s thinking does not progress cumulatively as a linear sequence of deductive steps, but moves in a self-related circling. Heidegger claims that hermeneutical understanding can adequately ask the question about being, in contrast to the Cartesian method which reaches only the idea of being, its artificial construction.2 How does it occur, that primordially concealed being finally reveals itself ? The ‘place’ where both the appearance of phenomena and the uncovering of their conditions of possibility are enabled is called Da-sein, Beingthere (the ‘there’ of the being). Da-sein is a human being which makes it possible for phenomena to reveal themselves and which is, at the same time, letting being be. This capacity makes Da-sein unique among all beings. Da-sein exists in an understanding disclosedness toward being. Da-sein has always somehow understood being, existing in such a way so as to understand this being. Da-sein is to disclose what it has always somehow already disclosed. Da-sein, unlike things characterized by means of substances and categorical statements, does not have any static, unchangeable basis or solid substrate that would serve as its ontological foundation. Its possibilities are directly this Da-sein: Da-sein is the basis of its own possibilities in such a way that it is just these possibilities. To exist means to be capable of this and that. It refers to a potentiality-of-being, which means to be close to what concerns existence and how it concerns it. We can also say that Da-sein is always before itself, or rather beyond itself, or outside itself (über sich hinaus), with what concerns it as its own possibility. Da-sein is always already ‘beyond itself,’ not as a way of behaving toward beings which it is not, but as being toward the potentiality-for-being which it itself is.3

2 Ibid., 4 and 96. 3 Ibid., 192.

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For Da-sein, possibilities found reality ontologically. The reality of existence is the reality of asserted or non-asserted possibilities: “Possibility as an existential is the most primordial and the ultimate positive ontological determination of Da-sein.”4 Da-sein exists in an essentially temporal structure, being always already beyond itself as a determined ecstatic ‘there’ of being. Da-sein ek-sists in an essentially temporal project of possibilities, in the reality of dynameis. It is disclosedness toward the world and its own emanation. As such it is also its condition of possibility, its own foundation. This structure of becoming of the foundation characterizes temporality in a decisive way. Temporality defines Da-sein as potentiality-of-being without forcing on it a solid and closed substantiality. Due to the fact that existence is not evidence—in the sense of beings that are present immediately in their wholeness—it is impossible to grasp the reality of existence by means of rational reflection. As Da-sein relates itself to its own foundation, and to itself, it is able to apprehend the reality of its own existence in its own way. Da-sein understands its existence as a project of possibilities. This relationship to the becoming of itself then expresses the way of being of Da-sein; understanding belongs to the ontological structure of existence. Da-sein is in such a way that it understands itself always as its own foundation. It is not endowed with any primordial origin of itself, with any point of departure, from which it gradually develops. Da-sein is becoming. It becomes itself. That is why it makes no sense to ask whether it is, what it is. It is necessary to find out how it occurs. In a word, in order to understand Da-sein, it is not sufficient to know what Da-sein is but we need to trace its ways of being, namely where, who and how Da-sein is. The being of Da-sein is always expressed in some mode. In his conception, Heidegger cannot talk about unity, or identity of reality in the sense of pure and fully actual energeia. He must look for a way to unify being, which is a being of abilities, possibilities, or powers (dynameis). At the same time, however, Heidegger non-problematically departs from the fact that Da-sein is a unified being. (This is also a crucial fact corresponding to the impact of the principle of identity.) What is important is to find out what type of unity belongs to the potentiality-of-being. Although individual modes (ways of being) concern the being of the same Da-sein, this Da-sein does not happen in any other way than always in a certain mode and never as a neutral sameness. Da-sein is not simply what it is in itself; it always exists in this or that way. 4 Ibid., 143.



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Consequently, it is never the same, but only ‘ipse’, i.e., a factual, concrete temporal self-relationship. This specific character of the identity of Da-sein, which determines it as selfhood, is then reflected in the phenomenon of the self, Selbst. It is evident that neither the totality of Da-sein nor its substance or unity is concentrated in the self (Selbst, soi). ‘Me, myself’ is only a response to the question ‘who’ Da-sein is. This question differs from the ontological question. It is just this difference between identity and the being of Da-sein that makes it possible for Da-sein to be itself in various ways. However, the fact that Da-sein always already is in some way, and that it is in this way always already itself, is never cancelled in this structure of various modalities of being and different ways of being one’s self: “Da-sein is the being which I myself always am. Mineness belongs to existing Da-sein . . .”5 The fact that Da-sein exists in selfhood, or ‘mineness’ ( Jemeinigkeit), as ‘always mine’, according to Heidegger, is secured by time. Due to this kind of temporality, existence is always its own. A quasi-paradoxical statement can express this fact: Da-sein is always already beyond itself and as such it is always its own Da-sein. This specific structure of selfhood relates to the possibility of Da-sein to forget being, not to open the access to its appearance, without preventing Da-sein from existing. Heidegger responds to the question of where, who and how Da-sein is, by describing the structure, which he calls being-in-the-world. Three structural aspects co-exist, among others, in this fundamental structure. First, it is the phenomenon of the world that expresses ‘where’ Da-sein is as disclosedness. The second aspect is the ‘who’ of Da-sein (‘I myself’). The third aspect presents, according to Heidegger, being-there as such that touches the existential constitution of ‘there’ of each Da-sein and whose concrete character is called care. Care, as the being of Da-sein is not compounded from static categories, but from dynamic existentials, from characteristics that express an existing Da-sein on the level of time, potentiality and meaning. These structural moments of care are attunement, understanding and being-together-with (falling prey). Care is a specific unity which is, nevertheless, essentially different from the unity of a substantial being objectively present. Care is neither a categorical nor a hierarchical unity but a synthetic and temporal totality. All the moments of temporality are connected through the structure of care, including the ‘where’ and the

5 Ibid., 53. In the German original: “Dasein ist ferner Seiendes, das je ich selbst bin. Zum existierenden Dasein gehört die Jemeinigkeit . . .”

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‘who’ of the being-in-the world, without any moment being deduced from another moment and without all moments being simply positioned one next to another. This totality of care’s existential moments manifests a ‘universal’ character across all factual and concrete Da-seins. That means that it is not at all important for the totality of the structural whole of care, what exactly Da-sein becomes, what possibilities are actualized and projected, but how these moments are unified. In this context, Heidegger explicitly determines time as a unifying phenomenon, which adds a common totality to all moments of the given structure on the ontological level. Thanks to time, the ontological structure manifests a dynamic form of stability, (Ständigkeit). Construed from the ontological level of time, from temporality that temporalizes itself, it becomes a primary guarantee for unity and totality of care. First Approximation of the Issues of our Research We would like to emphasize and elaborate, from this short interpretation of Da-sein, two points that are important for our further investigations. First, we have seen that the field, from which the essential structure of Da-sein is exposed, is framed by a temporal horizon. This field of the thinkable, in the scope of which care is interpreted, is internally coherent. In fact, it is structured by an ecstatic unity of the three ecstasies that cannot be disconnected. Furthermore, according to the original statement about a unified phenomenon of time, this field does not have its own outside because its boundaries are created by the horizon of ontological time that temporalizes itself and affirms itself as a horizon that cannot be transcended. Ontological time founds and affirms the ontic time of the interior. It is impossible to leave the field of temporal ecstatic existence from its interior; its boundary cannot be transcended, because it is impossible for temporal existence, according to Heidegger’s project, to bump into any boundary of the temporal continuum. Da-sein is in Heidegger’s interpretation a disclosedness whose self-return and self-maintenance is guaranteed by the proper structure of the being of Da-sein. Da-sein is not disclosed by the way in which it reaches the boundaries of its ontological framework. It does not risk its essential self-loss. Although Da-sein, as will be seen later, disperses itself in the world and in a way loses itself in the world, it never loses the relationship to its being. It never ceases to understand itself and understand (though only implicitly) that which secures its existence. It remains true, however, that Da-sein differs ontologically



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from being as such. Da-sein can never definitely reach this being. The existence of Da-sein takes place between two boundaries which cannot be transcended, but which are, however, the boundaries of its ontological certainty: Da-sein is always already its own and ‘there’ without being identical with itself: Da-sein exists in a difference which emerges between that which Da-sein is in the ontological sense and that which it is in the ontic sense. The meaning of this difference is time. Owing to time, Da-sein can be one and the same difference whose totality and stability have the character of selfhood. The being of Da-sein is a continuous becoming of a unity that is, incomprehensible in its actual fullness but always already existing in a concrete form of incomplete being toward totality. The second moment we would like to mention concerns how Dasein exists only in such a way that it understands itself from its possibilities, which it embodies. It is the pure potentiality-of-being which is moreover always somehow itself and which always somehow understands itself. ­Da-sein is capable of that which concerns it as its own; it is capable even of the way in which it concerns itself. What follows from this, is that things that emerge in understanding as its real correlates are its own possibilities, which are always understood by Da-sein and to which Da-sein can assume an attitude. The reality that is articulated in the analysis of the ontological structure of Da-sein, is a reality of this being’s possibilities. For this reason beings that figure in the analysis of the structure of Da-sein are only those beings that Da-sein is when it exists, that is, when it relates ecstatically beyond itself, when it is stretched between its possibilities. The world as it is experienced by Da-sein initially cannot emerge as merely a constitutive component of mineness ( Jemeinigkeit). In other words, the world is in the ontic aspect a component of the structure of Da-sein. How does it manifest itself, however, in the ontological aspect? The worldliness of the world is presented by Heidegger as the disclosedness of being. World in its being is not deduced from Da-sein. It is not a reality that depends on Da-sein, but it is a being of the world that emerges together with the being of Da-sein. Nonetheless the being of the world is only accessible by means of Da-sein. States Heidegger: The fact that reality is ontologically grounded in the being of Da-sein cannot mean that something real can only be what it is in itself when and as long as Da-sein exists. However, only as long as Da-sein is, that is, as long as there is the ontic possibility of an understanding of being, ‘is there’ being.6

6 Ibid., 212.

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Through this formulation Heidegger intends to expose the error of both realism and idealism (the world as reality exists independently of any subject, or the world exists only as a construction of the subject). Da-sein emerges in the conception of fundamental ontology together with the world in the structure of being-in-the-world. Da-sein is neither a guarantee of the world, nor is it separated from the world as an independent substance. Still it is true that everything that appears as ‘something’ in the world of Da-sein, that is, inner-worldly beings, manifests itself exclusively in the perspective of the possibilities of Da-sein. We believe that these questions concerning non-Da-sein beings—possibilities which are always already understandable from the everyday way of being of Da-sein, as well as the question of time unified in itself and founding a unity of all existing beings—touch on the problematic points of ­Heidegger’s conception. That is why we wish to concentrate on the ­Heideggerian conception of non-Da-sein beings as well as on the impossibility of Da-sein to leave itself (its temporal structure of potentiality-of-being). Da-sein and Non-Da-sein Beings We have already mentioned that Da-sein is characterized in how it exists for its own being. Heidegger claims that there is only one other type of beings, the so-called inner-worldly beings, whose way of being differs essentially from the way of being of Da-sein. This quite strict duality is very often criticized by the interpreters of Heidegger for its reductive character. We do not intend to enter into this very extensive dispute. Our main goal is to analyse this reductive distinction in order to point out another mode of being that is mentioned even by Heidegger and that cannot be ranked into these two aspects of being. This fact should attract our attention because we shall touch on some interior incoherence of ­Heideggerian ontology. It should also play an important role in the question of whether Heidegger succeeded to surpass the principle of identity, which could help in our further research. According to Heidegger, the world is initially and for the most part the world of taking care. Heidegger designates beings that Da-sein encounters inside this world of praxis as inner-worldly beings. Da-sein in its everydayness lives using various useful things to attain its intended aims and to create various works. Useful things and works are not manifested as objects objectively present lying in front of Da-sein’s eyes—so that Da-sein could reflect on them from a distance—but they are ‘at hand’.



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When Da-sein attends to something, it does not, for instance, see a chair as res. It does not intuit the chair-ness of the chair, its extension and then form, its material and composition, but it understands the fact that it can sit on this object and it can express its understanding by actually sitting on the chair. Understanding is performed in action, which is an actualization of Da-sein’s projected possibilities. These emerge in the form of the readiness to hand of the world which is taken care of. How Da-sein understands handy things can be characterized by the structure ‘understand something as something’. Da-sein understands a wooden movable board placed in the entrance of a room as doors when it needs to enter or to leave the room. Similarly, a tired tourist can understand a stump in the middle of a forest as a place of rest. A runner will understand the very same stump as an obstacle, and for the admirer of natural objects the stump will be an artistic artefact. Useful things and works are mutually joined by links of total referential connections and finally point to some primary ‘what-for’, which is the fact that Da-sein ‘cares about its being’. The total relevance itself, however, ultimately leads back to a what-for which no longer has relevance, which itself is not a being of the kind of being of things at hand within a world, but is a being whose being is defined as beingin-the-world, to whose constitution of being worldliness itself belongs.7

The being of useful things and works can be designated as readiness to hand (Zuhandenheit). It is defined by the network of concrete ‘what-for’ references, which are characterized by an essential feature of Da-sein, the ontological characteristic of handy things is evidently based on the ontology of Da-sein. Handy things are for Da-sein. Da-sein exists through these beings for its own being. Let us note that this everyday world, inside of which Da-sein achieves various goals and performs various works, is a world more or less managed and manageable. Da-sein, in its understanding taking care, does not resolve any open problems but it performs wellknown activities that do not have to be articulated. It is from this perspective that Heidegger thinks of the status of the thematic statement, which is the basis of theoretical apprehension. The thematic statement can only be one of many possible approaches to inner-worldly beings, which is deduced from a primordial practical taking care. Heidegger writes: “As a deficient mode of taking care of things, the

7 Ibid., 84.

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helpless way in which we stand before it discovers the mere objective presence of what is at hand.”8 Being at hand can appear from a different perspective only in the sense, that it is grasped by a deficient mode deduced from a primary practical taking care. A change of view, however, does not change the being of the being that Da-sein is concerned about. It is still the same being that is comprehensible as an object objectively present (something as res). Heidegger tries to demonstrate the incorrectness of the Cartesian intention to think the being of a being objectively present as an autonomous, primordial and separated substance. He claims that reality, which is grasped in this type of interpretation, is the only true reality. Phenomenological analysis, in contrast, proves according to Heidegger that the substance of a being objectively present is not in fact the being of that being but only an idea of being. For Heidegger, Descartes does not determine a real ontology of the world, but rather veils what should be disclosed: Thus the being of the “world” is, so to speak, dictated to it in terms of a definite idea of being which is embedded in the concept of substantiality and in terms of an idea of knowledge which cognizes beings in this way. Descartes does not allow the kind of being of inner-worldly beings to present itself, but rather prescribes to the world, so to speak, its ‘true’ being on the basis of an idea of being (being=constant objective presence) the source of which has not been revealed and the justification of which has not been demonstrated.9

Descartes moreover acknowledges that instruments supporting his method do not make it possible to arrive at an explicit and clear apprehension of substances of beings. Rather, it is necessary to accept substances as given.10 We have tried to show in the first chapter how the unattainability of the essential characteristics of existing things is confirmed by a constant but always futile attempt to prove the substance of the human being by means of rational thought, and to prove the independence of res extensa from its simultaneous epistemological deduction from res cogitans. However, we can voice an essential objection against the way in which Heidegger questions being of the world. This issue follows, in our view, from a crucial and strict differentiation of two types of beings, which 8 Ibid., 73. 9 Ibid., 96. 10 Heidegger cites in this context Descartes from his Principia, pr. 52, 25: “Yet substance cannot be first discovered merely from the fact that it is a thing that exists, for that fact alone is not observed by us.”    



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f­ undamental ontology introduces into its analyses. First, it is the category of non-Da-sein beings, useful things at hand that can appear in deficient states as beings objectively present; second, it is Da-sein that exists as being-in-the-world. We believe that Heidegger’s distinction of these ontological categories can be captured on the basis of a criterion, which is the objectification of beings. Beings at hand are evidently beings that are transposable with Descartes’ res while an existing Da-sein is not transposable with res in any sense of this word. However, it is just this exclusive and at the same time complementary distinction of beings into objectifiable and non-objectifiable that is, in our view, the source of insoluble problems that come up in Heidegger’s analyses. We already know that the thematic apprehension—by which the being at hand is objectified and by means of which its objective aspect (thingness in the sense of res) is present—is, according to Heidegger, a mere modification of the understanding taking care. In this change of approach to being, understanding of being has changed but being itself has not. It remains unchanged. What is in our view important and what Heidegger does not show explicitly is the opposite perspective: that each being at hand can be potentially modified to a being objectively present. There is no being at hand in the everyday world that could not be transposed into an object of thematic (theoretical) contemplation. The objective world is a kind of projection into the dimension of representation of the world that is taken care of. No being gets ‘lost’ in this projection. However, it means that the structure of understanding the world in the form ‘something as something’ is essentially objectively anchored. The structure ‘something as something’ refers to a certain solid pole, to an idea of a real or nominal substance. Da-sein can transpose its lived world with an idea of substantiality. This occurs due to a change of perspective in its own attitude toward the world that does not eliminate the extent of this world. Returning to the example with the stump, Heidegger would say that this seat, this obstacle, or this artistic artefact could be understood as the same stump if we contemplate all these beings at hand from the perspective of a thematic theoretical statement. This kind of theoretical contemplation is, according to Heidegger, always possible, even though it is secondary to the ontology of the given being. It seems evident from what we have just shown that Heidegger introduces in his conception of inner-worldly objectifiable beings a quite reductive ontology of inner-worldly beings. One of the poles of the structure ‘something as something’, which characterizes understanding of this kind of being, depends on Da-sein and on its ability to understand the world as its possibilities. .

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In contrast to the beings at hand, what is characteristic of Da-sein is the structure of ‘something as something’ that is not anchored in any solid foundation. Both poles of the given relation are open and non­objectifiable. The only possible grounding consists in Da-sein’s permanent preservation of this structure as unified and total by its own existence in the already mentioned selfhood: Da-sein is itself as the one who is, beyond itself, always already its own. Heidegger attempts to articulate Da-sein as such a being whose essential character makes it impossible to describe the being by a method that understands reality as objective presence. Any objectification of Da-sein is already, according to Heidegger, a description of no-longer-being-there. This is depicted in the example of a corpse: In the dying of others that remarkable phenomenon of being can be experienced that can be defined as the transition of a being from the kind of being of Da-sein (or of life) to no-longer-being-there. The end of the being qua Dasein is the beginning of this being qua something objectively present.11

If we were to trace the consequences of the primordial statement, saying that Da-sein is its own world, we would have to deduce that Da-sein as a being-in-the world is also potentially grounded in the idea of objectivity. Still, such a conclusion essentially opposes the character of the existential structure of Da-sein. It seems that it is necessary to insist on the fact that the world in its worldliness is a disclosedness of being and that the world, as it is experienced by Da-sein, is the world of its readiness to hand. Heidegger voices two contrary statements. He claims, on the one hand, that apart from Da-sein, there are also non-Da-sein-like beings that differ ontologically from Da-sein (the worldliness of the world is not deduced from the being of Da-sein). These beings are characterized by the fact that they are in principle a ‘non-potentiality-of being’ contrary to the ­potentiality-of-being of Da-sein. Heidegger, nevertheless, says that these beings are understood as possibilities of Da-sein and that they are ontologically related to an existence that projects them. They are understood as always already the proper possibilities of Da-sein, without being able to be their own possibilities. We believe that this duality, which involves a contradiction (the world gives itself only in the form of beings different from Da-sein while also emerging together with Da-sein), cannot be the basis of a sustainable ontology of the world. In our view, Heidegger fails to articulate the

11 Ibid., 238.



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aspect of reality that concerns things that cannot be understood ontologically as mere and pure possibilities of Da-sein and which are not easily objectifiable. This kind of thing-ness may compromise the strict caesura between the way of being of Da-sein and the way of being of non-­ Da-sein beings. For the being of these things could show for instance a structure of potentiality-of-being connected with the potentiality-of-being of Da-sein. Da-sein can be conceived as such a being whose possibilities are not fully understandable, of its own. Its possibilities cannot be transposed into objective ideas. We believe that this thing-ness can be in fact phenomenally shown. The conception of the world, which includes the aspect of potentiality-of-being, is not only possible but even necessary for the description of the significant phenomena of being-in-the-world. We would like to demonstrate first that this aspect of reality is present right in the analyses of Being and Time. The main issue of Heidegger’s interpretation is that even though he is aware of the given thing-ness of things, he does not take it into consideration explicitly in his philosophical project. Affairs The most obvious example of beings that cannot be classified by the simplified distinction of Da-sein and non-Da-sein beings, without falling into important ontological difficulties, are the inhuman living beings. ­Heidegger omits this kind of being in Sein und Zeit.12 However, we would like to highlight yet another type of beings: the so-called affairs. Affairs can be understood as a general case of alternative beings to the mentioned ontological distinction (inhuman living beings can be involved). Let us first sum up that 1) non-Da-sein beings in Heidegger’s interpretation are manageable, 2) they exist for the sake of Da-sein and not for their own being, 3) they are material (in Heidegger’s sense of the word) and objectifiable. This description of inner-worldly beings is phenomenally reductive. If we trace the phenomenological structure of common everydayness, we cannot say that humans live primarily in a managed, non-thematized, and material world. The primary experience of life is to the same extent a being-at-home and a shattering of this certainty—an ability to understand one’s possibilities as well as a confrontation with the 12 Ibid., 346.

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otherness of the world and its unclear events. It is the feeling of a primary inner-worldly security as well as exposure to the problematic world of urgent open questions. The human being lives first and for the most part in problems. It is concerned with things which are still open, which have a certain urgency, and which need to be solved. We believe for this reason that our further investigation is to be conducted toward the discovery of the moment of the world of everydayness, which would supply the analysis developed thus far with a problematizing moment of foreignness and not-yet-finished urgency of beings. ­Heidegger himself however, in an implicit sense, mentions this moment also. It occurs when a new constitutive moment of being-in-the-world is disclosed, namely the close coexistence with other beings of Da-sein’s kind. Being-there is manifested in this perspective as essentially interwoven into the structure of being-with. Being-with does not include beings at hand of the private world of everydayness only, but also other beings of Da-sein’s type: “The Mitda-sein of others is disclosed only within the world for a Da-sein and thus also for those who are Mitda-sein, because Da-sein in itself is essentially being-with.”13 The whole essential structure of the world is changed by the disclosure of this constitutive moment of Da-sein. Although it does not lose its primary grounding in the founding ‘what-for’ of Da-sein, it is enriched with another constitutive moment. In being-with as the existential for-the-sake-of-others, these others are already disclosed in their Da-sein. This previously constituted disclosedness of others together with being-with thus helps to constitute significance, that is, worldliness. As this worldliness, disclosedness is anchored in the existential for-the-sake-of-which.14

It seems then that Da-sein encounters inside its world, apart from useful things and works, also other beings. These are beings of Da-sein’s type, with which it is in fact in the performance of being-with. This encounter with Da-sein beings, nevertheless, is not of the same kind as the handling of beings at hand. Da-sein recognizes in other humans their character of Da-sein. Yet, what is crucial is that another kind of thing is disclosed to Da-sein, together with these recognized co-Da-sein beings. These things are their mutual affairs, about which Da-seins are concerned and which bind them together because: “in what is taken care of in the surrounding 13 Ibid., 120. 14 Ibid., 123.



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world, the others are encountered as what they are; they are what they do.”15 Heidegger expresses this idea shortly and in a generalizing way in the following statement: “ ‘One’ ‘is’ what one does.”16 Da-sein appears to another Da-sein or to itself in the world of everydayness as what it does. Yet, if Da-sein is what it does, this ‘thing’ (‘what’) cannot be imagined only as a being at hand. If it were so, Da-sein would be understood in its essential structure as a thing at hand and, as shown above, as an objectifiable being. Moreover, if the being of Da-sein is to be related to the being of what this Da-sein does, its activities must demonstrate such a structure of thing-ness where the link ‘something as something’ is not necessarily objectifiable in one of its poles. Da-sein is in the world as its own activity, and this activity cannot be transposed to an objective idea or to an object that is present objectively. There appear such phenomena in the world that characterize things, via which Da-sein is linked to other Da-seins, or to itself. This new kind of thing-ness characterizes beings that matter, that is, matters, in other words affairs (from the French expression à faire—to be done). An affair (matter) is what concerns Da-sein, what Da-sein cares about, what is now necessary, what now urges it on. It is obvious that a thing of this kind does not necessarily have an objective aspect, but on the other hand we cannot say, that it is a being of Da-sein’s type. It can be neither objectifiable with certainty, nor can it be fully identified with the Da-sein that cares about it because this thing does not fit exclusively into the structure of the potentiality-ofbeing of one concrete Da-sein. Affairs exist only as shared things (which suddenly have more meanings). An affair exists and carries some meaning when there is a configuration of actors and other affairs which this thing concerns, and for which it carries always a different meaning. If we acknowledge that Da-sein is for another Da-sein what it does, we will disclose soon after a new kind of thing that has not been yet present in the structure of references of everyday taking care in Heidegger’s project of beings at hand. Heidegger is aware of this moment of the thing-ness of things, yet he does not pay close attention to it. Let us quote now a passage in the book Being and Time where Heidegger mentions this new moment of Da-sein.

15 Ibid., 126. In the German original: “. . . als das, was sie sind; sie sind das, was sie ­betreiben.” 16 Ibid., 239.

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chapter two Understanding signifies self-protection upon the actual possibility of beingin-the-world, that is, existing as its possibility. . . . What everyday taking care of things encounters in public being-with-one-another is not just useful things and works, but at the same time what ‘is going on’ with them: ‘affairs’, undertakings, incidents, and mishaps.17

Heidegger speaks here explicitly about things (affairs, in Greek pragmata) that can be ontologically described neither as beings at hand nor even as beings objectively present, let alone as beings of Da-sein’s type. Affairs are things that simply “occur” in the world, things to be done. They are characterized by the way in which they are related to a handy thing and with Da-sein. It is quite difficult to imagine that an issue, a thing to be done, can represent a ‘thing’, a being. However, we do not intend to say that the reality of an affair can enter finally into the realm of Heideggerian ontology. Affairs certainly have no place in this ontology, because they are not necessarily material, manageable, and handy. Things to be done are real powers, intensities acting upon Da-sein. As such they cannot be reduced to the structure of potentiality-of-being of Da-sein. They transgress Da-sein; Da-sein can find itself as their possibility. Heidegger does mention them, despite the fact that this passage is exceptional in the whole work. By this gesture he opens the door leading outside his own ontological scheme. He closes the door immediately, however, to avoid the risk of a huge problematization of his conception. He prefers to keep coherence with what he has already said about the caesura between beings of Da-sein’s type and non-Da-sein beings. Thus, he assigns to affairs the status of beings at hand again. The shared and public world is interpreted by Heidegger as a world that is qualitatively extended with other beings of Da-sein’s type, but not as a world qualitatively enriched with a new kind of thing-ness. Being-with refers to Da-sein’s failure to take care of its world individually. Yet, it works collectively: “Being-with-one-another is based initially and often exclusively on what is taken care of together in such being.”18 The constitutive feature of the world of collective taking care shared by being-with is substitutability. . . . the fact that one Da-sein can be represented by another belongs to the possibilities-of-being of being-with-one-another in the world. . . . But the very meaning of such representation is such that it is always a representation ‘in’

17 Ibid., 387. 18 Ibid., 122.



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and ‘together with’ something, that is, in taking care of something. . . . representability is not only possible in general, but is even constitutive.19

It follows from Heidegger’s analysis that Da-sein is situated with others initially and for the most part only with beings at hand. However, again this is a moment that is highly disputable. For it is quite clear phenomenally that the relationship between Da-sein and others comes to being neither only nor initially and for the most part within the scope of collective taking care. In being with others, Da-sein is not, in most cases, engaged with beings at hand, with repeated work performances and with substitutable activities. Da-sein is bound to other Da-seins by means of open matters, issues and questions that offer not yet actualized and indeterminate possibilities. Da-sein is initially, primarily and for the most part concerned with ‘things’ that have not yet been resolved. It is concerned with unfinished affairs, on-going activities, open situations and intense relationships. If, as we have seen, Heidegger mentioned in his text affairs, undertakings, incidents and mishaps, it is necessary to ask whether an incident can be described as something that Da-sein has at hand, whether a mishap is something that can be delegated to another person, and whether every undertaking can always be accomplished by an already known method and by anyone who uses commonly accessible useful things. May a new and indeterminate situation be comprehensible always as something recognizable and not rather as some ‘I don’t know what’? Can Da-sein delegate its possibilities to other beings when even well-known activities, such as sleep, bodily activity, or emotional relationship are at stake? We would like to demonstrate that an affair is an indeterminate temporal event, some ‘I don’t know what’ that is understood always as ‘something’ else, while this ‘something’ exists again only as something different. An affair is born, developing itself non-linearly and vanishing subsequently. Da-sein shows a similar interpretational structure. The ‘who’ of Da-sein constitutes ‘itself’ always as someone else. The palette of possibilities, activities and roles, on the basis of which Da-sein is comprehensible to itself and to others, is open and it has no anchoring. We believe that Heidegger makes it impossible, by leaving out the thing-ness of affairs from the description of the structure of the world, for the phenomenon of the world to emerge fully in his analysis. Heidegger created a needless caesura between an ontic manifestation of itself and the ontological character of the world. It was done, on the one hand, by 19 Ibid., 239.

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determining inner-worldly beings as relatively clear and determined possibilities of Da-sein and the worldliness of the world, and on the other hand as a totally open structure of the disclosedness of being. This caesura could be bridged by the articulation of the thing-ness of affairs. We wish to concentrate on this point in the fourth chapter and show particular examples of the powerful word that takes Da-sein for its possibility. We shall subsequently describe the existence in the world as a dynamism of affairs and figures in order to conclude finally, that we need to speak in terms of forces and not of beings. By this we show that not only is there in Heidegger’s description a phenomenal description of the everyday world, but also that the ontology of Da-sein is reduced. Indeed, affairs essentially transcend the way of being of beings at hand joined in the totality of sufficiency. Yet, they constitute the reality of the world from which, according to Heidegger, Da-sein understands itself and projects its being-in-the-world. We believe that to understand the world primarily as the world of affairs leads to a discovery of significant and irreducible features of the ontological constitution of Da-sein as well as reality as such. We shall reinterpret also the concept of understanding. The world cannot be understood any more as always mine. Yet, it will be possible to think about it all the same. Authenticity and Inauthenticity We have mentioned two important moments of Heidegger’s conception in the part of ‘First approximation of the issues of our research’. Besides the duality of inner-worldly beings and Da-sein, we pointed out the synthetic unity of the structure of Da-sein and the fact that it cannot leave itself, due to the unifying function of time. Heidegger explains this feature through another important duality, that is, through the authenticity and inauthenticity of Da-sein. The objective of our further investigation is to analyze these two modes of being of Da-sein and to refer to a (third) mode. This third mode reaches beyond this duality (in analogy with the existence of affairs beyond the duality of inner-worldly beings and Da-sein). Da-sein is not, as we already know, a static and trivially self-identical substance. It never simply exists “as such” but it always exists in some mode. Heidegger distinguishes two basic ways, which are different mainly as to their covering or uncovering function of the approach to being. He designates them with the terms authentic (proper) and inauthentic (improper) mode. This modal distinction follows from the primary ­characteristics of



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Da-sein, which is its mineness, or the fact that Da-sein is always already mine: “Mineness belongs to existing Da-sein as the condition of the possibility of authenticity and inauthenticity.”20 Da-sein exists in everyday averageness in an improper (inauthentic) mode of falling prey. In inauthenticity Da-sein does not understand itself as its own foundation about which it is always already concerned. It exists in the world of taking care, which is formed by general, everyday and public opinion. Everyday Da-sein is everybody and nobody, “me-myself” rid of itself, living under the “dominion of others”. Da-sein is in most cases “thrown” into this ascertaining and secondary environment. To be thrown means to exist in the way in which Da-sein has already accepted it without the necessity to articulate this acceptance or to decide on it explicitly. Da-sein lives in the being-with of the ‘they’ without an “explicitly grasped itself.”21 Heidegger calls the second mode in which Da-sein can develop itself authenticity. The authentic mode enables one to discover the conditions of possibility of Da-sein’s being, and to exist on the basis of this discovery. Unlike the inauthentic mode of Da-sein where Da-sein falls prey to innerworldly beings as the ‘they’ orders it, authentic being develops from “the self, which has explicitly grasped itself.”22 Da-sein understands itself from what is still to come from the open future. It is aware of the horizon of its possible being in the authentic mode, which discloses itself to it explicitly in the form of the possibility to have no possibilities, that is, in death. Heidegger emphasizes that Da-sein finds itself initially and for the most part in the mode of inauthenticity. As always already its own, Da-sein is usually not one’s self. As always already open, it is primarily locked. As free in principle, it most often resigns its freedom. Da-sein initially and for the most part moves within a homely environment where things and other beings of Da-sein’s type have their fixed determinations, where one can experience the cosy atmosphere of familiarity in which Da-sein feels good because it feels the certainty of the project of its possibilities and itself. Nevertheless, Da-sein has the possibility to transform itself from the mode of inauthenticity into the mode of authenticity. An inauthentic mode implies reference to an authentic being of Da-sein. It follows from this that both modes, authenticity and inauthenticity, exclude one another. Heidegger claims that Da-sein can be either ­authentic,

20 Ibid., 53. 21  Ibid., 129. 22 Ibid.

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or inauthentic. Da-sein is disclosed to explicit disclosure, or implicit closedness while being open to freedom, or deprivation of freedom. It is itself so that it could be its explicitly grasped ownmost self, or the inauthentic the ‘they’. This distinction of two different ways of being is also linked to a common existential feature, which is the unity of being of Da-sein because both modes are ways of being of one Da-sein. Closedness of being and also the presence of a reference to its disclosure are characteristic for the inauthentic mode. This implicit reference is disclosed explicitly in authenticity that enables being to emerge as it is. Inauthenticity presents a clear deficiency of authenticity: what is not developed explicitly in inauthenticity is directly actualized and completed in authenticity. What follows on from this is that these modes not only exclude one another, but they are also complementary in relation to the unity of being of Da-sein. As for the goals of the ontological analysis of Da-sein, the modal distinction mentioned enables one to grasp philosophically the essential structure of Da-sein. This understanding of being can be attained thanks to a transformation of inauthenticity into the authentic mode of existence. Thinking (in the form of understanding, or rather understanding Da-sein) by pursuing (accompanying) the metamorphosis of inauthenticity into authenticity enters, or rather returns explicitly to the hermeneutic circle of an understanding of being. In an inauthentic way of being, understanding (understanding Da-sein) ‘functions’, that is, hermeneutically circles but does not enter this circle explicitly. Inauthentic understanding proceeds as a hermeneutical circling that is not explicitly followed by itself. The possibility of transformation of the inauthentic mode into an authentic one refers to how one of the integral components of the essential structure of Da-sein is a self-relationship. It is not a trivial self-relationship (self-sameness), but a dynamic understanding that bridges an inner onticontological difference. What is the character of this self-relationship that enables an explicit return of Da-sein to itself? And what is explicitly revealed about the character of the relationship of Da-sein to itself during its return to itself? This relationship implies inner distinction, potential, which makes that this self-relationship is not trivial. Only this inner difference corresponds with the fact that Da-sein exists in possibilities, not in a static statement. Da-sein is its possibility. Substantial beings also have possibilities. Yet these are, unlike Da-sein’s possibilities, not their possibilities. For Da-sein, the already mentioned self (Selbst) changes essentially during the modal transformation from the inauthentic mode of being into authenticity. The primordial inauthentic self of average everydayness,



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which has the form of the ‘they’, changes together with modal transformation into being-one’s-self (Selbstsein). Each self can be either one’s self or only a self-determined by the public. Due to the explicit (authentic) return of the understanding Da-sein into the hermeneutical circle of (self-) understanding, this self becomes an explicitly grasped form of one’s self. It also becomes apparent that this self (the ontological meaning of a self-relationship, Selbstheit) is a constitutive element of the being of Da-sein. Being-one’s self and self-relationship characterize explicitly the being of Da-sein as difference. The indeterminacy of Da-sein, which is present in its existence, becomes by this articulation of itself as one’s self an explicit question. Moreover, this question stays open continually as permanently questioning itself. Indeterminacy, which is in the inauthentic mode rather a sign of danger, uncertainty and threat, changes into the certainty of a question that is directed to that which is to come. Da-sein is thus manifested as a being that is always already beyond itself, in the essential sense of a permanent circular dynamism of the founding question. Da-sein can for this reason also get lost in the ‘they’ without ceasing to exist as its own, and again attain itself without immediately identifying with itself. Da-sein can neither get rid of itself definitely, nor can it reach a total and tautological merging with itself. The Transition from Inauthenticity to Authenticity: The Third Mode of Being Heidegger has to find directly in the way of being of Da-sein some attestation (not proof) for the distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity in order to speak of this or that modal way of being of Da-sein, The path to the disclosedness of being has to trace its own existential structure of Da-sein. It cannot proceed by an artificial formulation of philosophical schemes. If the possibility to be oneself shows itself as an ontological possibility, it is necessary to ask Da-sein about the conditions of exactly this possibility. This possibility must not be formulated and forced ‘from the outside’ by someone as an ideal ‘content’ of existence.23 Heidegger believes that the preliminary attestation of the moment of authenticity lies in the significant attunement, which he calls Angst. He arrives at a definite attestation in the analysis of the phenomenon of 23 Ibid., 266.

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c­ onscience (Gewissen), and he concludes this thematic part by inquiring into the structure of being-toward-death (Sein zum Tode). These three phenomena have a decisive meaning for Heidegger as well as for our own project. An important feature that all these phenomena have in common is their direct connection with the transformation of the inauthentic mode into authenticity. We believe that it is precisely the moment of this modal transformation that requires further attention and a more detailed study. For, Heidegger’s own commentaries dealing with this point are unclear and ambiguous. The most important obscurity that can be found in Heidegger’s explanation of the modal way of being of Da-sein concerns the so-called modal indifference. Apart from many assertions from which it follows that both modes of being of Da-sein are complementary and mutually exclusive, Heidegger also acknowledges at one place in Being and Time the existence of a third mode of being. It is there that authenticity and inauthenticity are not differentiated. Da-sein exists always in one of these modes, or else in the modal indifference to them.24

This assertion is more significant to us than it might appear at first view. As this mode of modal indifference is mentioned in the whole work Being and Time only once, it makes us believe that it plays a similar role in Heidegger’s project of the uncovering of being as affairs in the world of everydayness. Heidegger acknowledges this modality, mentioning it explicitly as something that belongs to the modal description of the being of Da-sein. In other analyses, however, he does not take it into account. The reason Heidegger neglects modal indifference is, in our view, the fact that this moment would complicate a very useful and strict duality of inauthenticity and authenticity. By opening a space between two primordially complementary modes (when articulating a modal indifference), the original idea of the ontological unity of the essential structure of Da-sein could be disrupted. Modal indifference plays the role of an inconsistent alternative to both standard modes of being because it is impossible to apprehend within it explicitly and clearly ‘in what way’, ‘who’ and ‘where’ Da-sein is. For this reason we suggest designating this modality as the ‘third mode’ of being of Da-sein. We believe that the analysis of the third mode of existence opens a way to a discovery of a character of reality 24 Ibid., 53.



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in the frame of which Da-sein exists in the dynamism of affairs and figures. As the analysis of the third mode of existence is as significant for the understanding of its being as for the understanding of the world of affairs, we wish to dedicate enough attention to this moment, and find out to which structure of experience it is linked, what place it occupies in the existential structure of Da-sein, and in what way this moment is temporalized. Although Heidegger mentions the existence of modal indifference, he simultaneously insists that the mutual relationship between the authentic and inauthentic mode is exclusive and complementary. By means of this distinction he explains that the being of Da-sein is initially and for the most part covered so that it could be subsequently uncovered in authentic understanding. The question is, however, how the boundary between these two modes can be articulated, and in what way the transformation from one mode to another occurs. Heidegger will implicitly require that this transformation be immediate and momentous because it is the only way in which the complementarity and exclusivity of both modalities can be maintained. However, if time does not have the character of a sequence of immediate moments in the essential structure of Da-sein, how can the author resolve the question of the temporality of modal transformation? The answer to this question can best be traced to the phenomena of Angst, conscience, and being-toward-death. It is in this trio that the necessity of transition from inauthenticity to authenticity is explicit. These moments are to serve, according to Heidegger, as attestations of authenticity. It can be assumed that in them the question of the character and meaning of this modal transition will open clearly. Thus we believe that it is in these phenomena where we find the largest number of references to the possible themes of modal indifference and of the thing-ness of affairs. Modal Transformation via Angst, Calling of Conscience and Being-Toward-Death: Powerlessness and the Force of an Indeterminate ‘It’ The preliminary attestation of authenticity—where Da-sein takes over its disclosedness—is shown, for Heidegger, in the phenomenon of Angst (anxiety). Angst presents an extreme existential moment where the factical being of Da-sein with inner-worldly beings falls apart. In Angst Da-sein experiences that the world means nothing to it, and that it does not care about anything. A net of references of sufficiency is denied to it.

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Da-sein loses the common possibilities of taking care of beings at hand: “The world has the character of complete insignificance.”25 Da-sein finds itself in a constellation of sinister uncanniness in which it faces a strange indeterminacy. It is characteristic for this indeterminacy that it is not concrete and is located ‘nowhere’. The fact that what is threatening is nowhere characterizes what Angst is about. Angst ‘does not know’ what it is about which it is anxious. . . . In what Angst is about, the ‘it is nothing and nowhere’ becomes manifest.26

Da-sein faces an indeterminate activity that Heidegger designates as ‘nothing’. This indeterminacy, which is ‘nowhere’, uncovers the possibility to be next to something concrete, to be situated in a clear field of significance. However, by losing the possibility of concrete ties to inner-worldly beings in the world of taking care, Da-sein also loses the possibility to understand itself from this concrete world. Anxiety carries with it the fact that Da-sein becomes ‘nobody’. As nobody, Da-sein is individuated, expelled from its familiar everydayness. It does not experience this experience indifferently in any case; its attunement of sinister uncanniness has an evident intensity: “We said earlier that attunement reveals ‘how one is’. In Angst one has an ‘uncanny’ feeling.”27 Heidegger’s own formulation ‘(es) ist einem unheimlich’ refers to how in anxiety Da-sein feels intensely ‘somehow’ (it feels always ‘somehow’ because it is always attuned somehow) but also to how Da-sein ‘somehow’ is in this attunement. How Da-sein is, and not how it feels, designates a way of its being, which is very indeterminate. The way of being of Da-sein does not coincide in this moment with the way in which Da-sein is and in which it is itself. The copula ‘is’ thus does not relate Da-sein to itself but it ­designates other workings. Something happens to Da-sein, something which it does not understand and which it cannot consider its own. The attunement of Angst accompanies experience when something all of a sudden gets hold of Da-sein, when something intense urges it, something about which nothing definite can be said, what cannot be experienced as an intentional object. We think that in this moment when it is not clear ‘who’ understands and projects possibilities, ‘where’ and ‘at what’ it is, acts out the intensity of empty experiencing, non-identifiable and meaningless power. We could 25 Ibid., 186. 26 Ibid., 186–187. 27 Ibid., 188. In German original: “Befindlichkeit macht offenbar, ‘wie einem ist’. In der Angst ist einem ‘unheimlich’.”



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even say that this moment characterises the non-intentional experience, a moment where Da-sein is not a potentiality-of-being itself, where it does not have in its power the way of its experiencing. Da-sein is in a crucial sense powerless. In this moment Da-sein exposes itself to a power beyond its own possibilities, beyond its control. Da-sein exists as an empty space where an intensity acts that can neither be described nor grasped in any way. Da-sein touches a power. Heidegger, nevertheless, offers a different and quite clear answer to what Da-sein encounters in Angst. In the situation where the world becomes nothing and in where Da-sein is nobody, the worldliness of the world itself, for Heidegger, is uncovered. It is just because ‘nothing’ “. . . does not mean nothing; rather, region in general lies therein, and disclosedness of the world.”28 That which Da-sein encounters in Angst and which makes it anxious is the ontological phenomenon of the world: “The recalcitrance of the inner-worldly nothing and nowhere . . . means phenomenally that what Angst is about is the world as such.”29 When Heidegger refuses the mode of the powerlessness of Da-sein he describes this moment as Angst. An acceptance of its powerlessness could reveal this moment as a release, as a powerless being in peace. The suppression of powerlessness implies the emergence of anxiety. Anxious Dasein tries to maintain itself in the frame of its being-in-the-world even in the moment without the world. At this moment Da-sein states the world in its essentiality. For Da-sein here reveals its own foundation: “That about which one has Angst is being-in-the-world as such.”30 According to Heidegger, Da-sein is disclosed, a being-in-the-world, while the world is not a summary of inner-worldly beings. What is revealed to it in Angst is a simple disclosedness of being. Da-sein abandons the world of comprehensible inner-worldly beings, moving into the world of the openness of being. It gains access to its significant possibility, that is, to the possibility of its ownmost potentiality-of-being. It takes over its essential structure and actualizes itself as being-in-the-world. Angst individuates Da-sein to its ownmost being-in-the-world which, as understanding, projects itself essentially upon possibilities. Thus along with that for which it is anxious, Angst discloses Da-sein as being-possible, and indeed as what can be individualized in individuation of its own accord.31 28 Ibid., 186. 29 Ibid., 186–187. 30 Ibid., 186. 31  Ibid., 187–188.

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That Da-sein appears individualized in this significant moment means mainly that inner-worldly beings and their essence are significant neither for the determination of worldliness of the world nor for the being of Da-sein. The worldliness of the world and ontology of non-Da-sein beings are two incompatible determinations. ‘World’ of practice gets lost and in its place appears the world in its essence. This world as disclosedness is a source of a new constitutive possibility of Da-sein which does not concern the possibilities of inner-worldly beings. The individuated Da-sein discloses in Angst the possibility to explicitly take over its being of possibilities and become itself (ipse): “. . . Angst individualizes and thus discloses Da-sein as ‘solus ipse’.”32 In this way, Angst enables and even ‘actively causes’ (takes, throws, is concerned about something, reveals and brings) a transformation of Da-sein’s way of being. The given transformation is possible according to Heidegger due to the fact that Da-sein’ is, in its thrownness toward inner-worldly beings and in its isolation from these beings, always already bound to its founding ‘what-for’, which leads it to be its own potentialityof-being. This founding ‘what-for’ is disclosed to Da-sein by Angst itself. Angst reveals in Da-sein its being toward its ownmost potentiality of being. . . . Angst brings Da-sein before its being free for . . . (propensio in), the authenticity of its being as possibility which it always already is.33

The philosophical importance of this moment—when Da-sein faces ‘nothing’ and ‘nowhere’—consists according to Heidegger in the fact that it is revealed to Da-sein ‘that’ it exists as a thrown understanding project of its possibilities. When rid of all concrete ‘how’, Da-sein can disclose ‘that’ it is always already some ‘how-to-be’, a modal being. How does, however, Da-sein exist directly in Angst itself? If we have arrived at the fact that Da-sein exists somehow in Angst, we would have to search for a third way of being of Da-sein beyond authenticity and inauthenticity. On the one hand, it is not-at-home, is not identified with one of its non-problematic roles; on the other hand it has not yet taken over its possibilities explicitly in order to become its ownmost potentiality-of-being-a-self. Another important feature of the way of being in Angst is that Da-sein can neither decide for it in any way nor choose it on the basis of the will—be it the inauthentic will of the ‘they’ or its 32 Ibid., 188. 33 Ibid.



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ownmost authentic will. By losing concrete determination of moments ‘at what’ and ‘who’, Da-sein is left with its only determination via attunement, which is not chosen intentionally and by the will. Da-sein simply somehow finds itself in Angst. Heidegger, however, does not describe how Da-sein exists in Angst, that is, he determines clearly neither the way of being in this attunement, which is to attest the ownmost potentiality-ofbeing of Da-sein and the legitimacy of distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity, nor the way in which Da-sein ‘gets’ into this mode. It just implicitly seems that Da-sein arrives at Angst by a gradual loss of the significance of the world, a continuous detachment from inner-worldly beings and from its own self-determination toward isolation. But is the transition from ‘something’ to ‘nothing’ continuous? Is isolation really the final point of a continuous leaving of the relationships toward the everyday world? That is not clear from Heidegger’s sketch. Heidegger only in a certain phase of his explication turns to the description of the moment of Angst itself. Yet, this description contains also a questionable point, which concerns the way in which Da-sein is in Angst and the temporality of Angst. Angst evidently means something, the most important phenomenon is disclosed in it, according to Heidegger, and that is why it is necessary to admit that it is ‘somehow’ temporalized. In Angst Da-sein is isolated from the world and encounters something indefinite (according to Heidegger quite definite). It is impossible to say about this experience, that it does not temporarily proceed. However, it seems from Heidegger’s analyses, that in Angst Da-sein is not ‘somehow’ because this experience is ‘immediate’. Instead of determining the way of being of Da-sein, which finds itself in Angst, Heidegger describes in detail various attitudes with which Da-sein relates back to Angst. Let us repeat once again our question: What is the way of being of Da-sein in Angst? We believe that experiencing is, in the moment of Angst, significantly different from ‘inauthentic’ everyday experience in which Da-sein is unquestionably certain of itself and its world. The reason is, that it always identifies with a concrete attitude in a concrete situation. Da-sein is in its everydayness always comprehensible from one of its re-cognizable roles that fit into the references of activities projected within the ‘they’. It lives in the structure of ‘someone as a recognizable role in a recognizable situation’ and in this way it is one and itself. He maintains a clear and stable attitude thanks to which it can disperse itself and fall prey to the world. The way of being in Angst is not a continuous extension of this way of being.

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The modality of anxious existence differs also from an authentic attitude of existence. The authentic attitude is, due to its resoluteness, also completely sure of itself and of its world. Authentic Da-sein is comprehensible as one and stable (selbständig), even though it does not know exactly who it will be in the sense of roles assigned by the public ‘they’. Even in the authentic mode Da-sein maintains a stable attitude to reality. Thanks to this attitude it can understand the world, navigate itself in it, and organize its meaning. However, in Angst Da-sein does not have at its disposal a stable attitude to the world and to itself. That is why this moment is not a simple extension of an authentic way of being. It is not clear at all ‘who’ Da-sein is in the attunement of Angst and ‘how’ it is. The only thing that is clear is how it feels. Angst presents, in our view, an extreme form of an indefinite situation, which makes it impossible to determine in any way the one who is engaged in it. Any intelligible interpretation of that which is being experienced is denied to the experiencing being as well. By losing attitude Da-sein loses the possibility to be sure of itself. It is taken by something and it becomes ‘I don’t know who’, experiencing powerful and non-objectifiable action. It is unable to focus on ‘that’ which is happening. Da-sein in the end cannot claim that this way of being is ‘its’ way of being. We call this way of being a third mode. In Angst Da-sein is not its possibilities. Instead, it is a possibility of “something else” that has taken possession of it and toward which no attitude can be immediately taken because it is nothing. Da-sein is capable neither of Angst itself nor of what occurs in Angst. It experiences the experience of transgression. Its potentiality-of-being is in a sense powerless (im-potent). It is indefinite to itself and neither falling prey nor resolved. Da-sein is nobody when powerlessness occurs. It can experience its own unity and meaning again only by means of a backward reconstruction of itself, that is, when it re-acquires its own will and revives its self-relationship. If Da-sein did not insist on being always mine, the phenomenon of powerlessness would not represent any danger or source of ‘uncanny’ feeling. Anxious feeling correlates with the indication of the disintegration of the structure ‘I always can’, ‘I always understand’ which Heidegger (as well as Da-sein according to Heidegger’s explication) asserts. By cutting adrift from this structure Angst could be transformed into a released form of powerlessness. This powerlessness means mainly making space for an indefinite power that is crucial even though it does not reveal the verity of Being. Heidegger does not articulate the way of being of Da-sein that is not Da-sein’s ‘own’ (Da-sein does not have this in its power) even though it is intense and powerful. When describing the phenomenon of Angst, he



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stresses only its unifying function for the essential structure of Da-sein. The isolation of Da-sein in Angst brings, in Heidegger’s view, only a disclosure of its essential structure, contemplating how ‘that’ Da-sein is always already bound to possibilities and to the world in a temporal project (that is, non-isolated) and in this way it is always already its own. According to Heidegger this attests to the possibility of one’s ownmost potentialityof-being-a-self. In the experience of complete disorientation, of a loss of the world and of one’s own isolation, what is revealed to Da-sein is “being free for the freedom of choosing and grasping itself.”34 (“Angst reveals in Da-sein its being toward its ownmost potentiality of being.”)35 What is revealed, and the importance of this word will be discussed later, in the experience of Angst, is the possibility to actualize its potentiality-of-being-in-the-world. This revelation of freedom to take over of one’s own being is not a guarantee, however, that Da-sein will make use of this possibility. Da-sein is not forced to decide for authentic being, and it does not have to take over this way of being. Having experienced Angst, Da-sein can return again to its inauthentic way of being and re-establish the stability of its life in taking care and co-taking care. In such a case it can say, “it was nothing really”,36 where one hears the experience of something indefinite about which Da-sein acknowledges that ‘it’ happened. Still, ‘it’ did not force Da-sein to change its attitude. This strange way of being—in which Da-sein feels a pressing uncanniness— can be according to Heidegger’s project either denied in the inauthentic mode, or surpassed and integrated by the resoluteness of authentic existence into the experience of Da-sein. There is no place in Heidegger’s conception created either for an articulation of the way of being in Angst, or for the determination of meaning and temporality of Angst. From implicit moments of Heidegger’s explanation, the temporality of Angst can be interpreted as a ‘point’, momentous and immediate line between two possible ways of existence. It is not only Angst that plays the role of attesting phenomena of the ownmost potentiality-of-being-a-self. A final attestation can be provided by an analysis of the phenomena of conscience. Such an analysis in our view does not concern primarily the moment ‘where’ of Da-sein but the moment ‘who’. Because conscience is a phenomenon, it is

34 Ibid., 188. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 187.

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revealed to Da-sein as a possibility—as a possibility to become the ownmost ­potentiality-of-being-a-self. Heidegger wants to demonstrate that the essential structure of care asks Da-sein, in conscience, to become not only care, but its own care. Just as in the case of Angst (and any attunement), conscience is not revealed and does not call according to Da-sein’s decision and wish. Da-sein cannot tell conscience to call it, just as it is not within its power to become isolated in Angst. In these moments Da-sein faces something that urges and affects without articulating anything concrete by its affecting and intensity. This affecting is not objective. It does not carry any predictable meaning. ‘It’ only affects the Da-sein. Heidegger explicitly acknowledges all these aspects of the calling of conscience. The call is precisely something that we ourselves have neither planned nor prepared for nor wilfully brought about. ‘It’ calls, against our expectations and even against our will.37

In this moment, Da-sein is extracted from its ordinary thrown project, from its hermeneutic self-relationship. Something indefinite urges it, something which Da-sein experiences as a source of a jolt that breaks through its permanent self-relating and self-certainty in the world of taking care: “This listening [into the they] must be stopped. . . . In the tendency toward disclosure of the call lies the factor of a jolt, of an abrupt arousal.”38 This call of conscience presents the experience of some rupture, a breakage of Da-sein’s own certainty. All this occurs on the basis of an indefinite power which urges it as something indefinitely strange and transgressive. This moment explicitly shows a disruption of the continuity of Da-sein’s experiencing. An experience, in which Da-sein is totally indefinite, powerless (im-potent) and where an unknown and strange power (which means some potentiality-of-being) works, is again becoming very intense. However, Heidegger resolves this threat of a possible rupture of the mineness of Da-sein and its ontological unity. He stresses the unifying and identifying character of the moment of the call of conscience. His argumentation is founded on two important moments. On the one hand, he again ignores how the experience of the call of conscience has some meaning and temporality. Instead of considering the temporal structure and meaning of the call of conscience, Heidegger works with this ­experience

37 Ibid., 275. 38 Ibid., 271.



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implicitly as with an event of breakage. The breakage is a point and in the sense of ontological temporality a ‘non-temporal’ event of immediate self-relating: “The possibility of such a breach lies in being summoned immediately.”39 The second moment concerns the attribution of the given voice of conscience directly to the proper structure of care. Due to that structure, the mineness of Da-sein is preserved as well as its dynamic unity and ­selfhood. Da-sein calls itself in conscience. . . . Da-sein is the caller and the one summoned at the same time. . . . The call comes from me, and yet over me.40

Heidegger does not reduce, of course, this doubleness of itself, or of the identity of the caller and of the summoned to sameness. Yet he considers it a doubleness unified on the basis of some primordial essential permanence and stability of the given being. For, conscience discloses the possibility to understand the aspect of the ‘who’ of Da-sein in its internal difference, which is, nevertheless, maintained as a form of identity as well. Da-sein encounters itself, the caller, “who is ‘no one’ viewed from the perspective of the world.”41 The one who is the caller in the appeal of conscience is Da-sein in essential (ontic-ontological) difference toward itself. In its who, the caller is definable by nothing ‘worldly’. It is Da-sein in its uncanniness, primordially thrown being-in-the-world, as not-at-home, the naked ‘that’ in the nothingness of the world.42

Thus, our primordially thrown being is according to Heidegger a being that claims ‘that’. Da-sein is a stating and stated being. Da-sein finds himself in an atemporal assumption ‘that’. Again, Heidegger rejects the interpretation via powerlessness and openness to an indeterminate power. Da-sein finds itself, as it was in the moment of Angst, in the attunement of oppressive uncanniness, and in the way of its being as indefinite. What works in it is the intensity of an indefinite caller whom Heidegger, nevertheless, soon interprets as the proper ontological structure of Da-sein. From which position can this statement be pronounced? Who knows what Da-sein encountered in the call of conscience when Da-sein itself does not know that? That Da-sein does not encounter itself in the call of conscience does not

39 Ibid., 271. 40 Ibid., 275. 41  Ibid., 278. 42 Ibid., 276.

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follow from anything, and it is not phenomenally ‘proven’ either. What is phenomenally obvious is only that Da-sein becomes in this experience no one that is nowhere and in nothing. It finds itself neither in the inauthentic nor in the authentic ‘how’ but in some totally indefinite ‘somehow’ (the third mode of existence), which expresses a naked powerlessness in the potentiality-of-being-a-self. In this experience there appears an urgent, transgressing and indefinite power about which nothing can be said. Yet, it works. Da-sein is not intentionally related to anything here, its experience cannot be described by ‘someone experiencing something’. Heidegger holds on to his conviction, maintaining the idea that the experience of conscience marks a limit point of homogeneous and continuous experience that includes in itself the possibility of an immediate transfer between inauthenticity and authenticity. In Angst and in conscience Da-sein discloses philosophical knowledge, ‘that’ he or she is, as Da-sein, a potentiality-of-being, that it is always already someone at something and somewhere. This statement seems to us, however, phenomenologically unsubstantiated. How does Heidegger’s explanation of modal transformation of Da-sein in conscience continue? Having experienced an involuntary experience of the call of conscience, Da-sein can approach what has been revealed to it in this experience in two ways: it either accepts the appeal of conscience, or it will hide itself from it. Not to hide itself from conscience means to accept it on the basis of its own will, to want to have conscience: “Understanding the summons reveals itself as wanting to have a conscience. But in this phenomenon lies that existentiell choosing of the choice of being-a-self.”43 If Da-sein decides to accept this possibility and lets the nature of its disclosedness be shown to it, it chooses its authentic being-one’s-self, or the so-called resoluteness. After the phase of unintentional experiencing and powerlessness-to-be, Da-sein again takes over its own being on the basis of the will (of effort, of an intentional decision). It becomes oneself anew according to its own intentions and choices. As Françoise Dastur demonstrates, Da-sein is transferred from the state of disclosedness to the state of taking over of this disclosedness into its own hands.44 Taking over into one’s own hands is the basis of the ownmost character of Da-sein’s self, a solid attitude to the world as its own possibilities. Da-sein takes 43 Ibid., 269–270. 44 Françoise Dastur, Heidegger et la question du temps [Heidegger and the Question of Time], collection Philosophies , n° 26 (Paris: PUF, 1990).



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over its reality including that which it cannot change, that is, its factical thrownness. Resoluteness is a kind of state (and thus permanency), as Dastur writes, because resoluteness is a clear attitude toward oneself and the world. Resolute Da-sein of course does not decide about itself and about the reality of its world. Yet, it can assume the fact that it cannot but decide about itself and the world. That means that Da-sein chooses a choice, decides for its will and thus accepts its indefinite condition that it is to be, without being able to accomplish in its action always that which it currently wants. When Da-sein thus brings itself back from the they, the they-self is modified in an existentiell manner so that it becomes authentic being-one’s-self. It must be accomplished by making up for not choosing. But making up for not choosing signifies choosing to make this choice.45

Resolute Da-sein knows that it has to decide, without being absolutely certain about the impact and the way of performing its decisions. This stand includes in itself also the possibility that Da-sein will be forced to rescind, or to change its decisions and choices. Having analyzed the phenomenon of Angst and conscience, Heidegger finally gets to the last moment in which an extremity and horizon of the field of experience and existence are manifested, and which is related to the theme of the ‘there’ of the disclosedness of Da-sein. This moment is being-toward-death. Being-toward-death is a being toward the outermost possibility (so it is still a possibility!) of Da-sein which is the possibility ‘not to be ‘there’ anymore’. This possibility discloses to Da-sein the horizon of its existing which consists in the loss of any form of its own disclosedness. Da-sein loses in death not only its concrete possibilities, but the whole structure of its potentiality-of-being gets lost and Da-sein ceases to exist. According to Heidegger, death is thus a possibility of the impossibility of existence (i.e. it is not an impossibility of possibilities), the ­possibility not to be ‘beyond itself always already one’s self’. This possibility is revealed to Da-sein in the same way as the case of conscience and anxiety, that is, against its will. Da-sein faces the fact of its thrownness into death while disclosing within it its own finitude. In doing so, it finds itself again isolated from the world of taking care and the shared they. Due to this loneliness, it allows for this ownmost possibility to be revealed in the end: “With death, Da-sein stands before itself in its ownmost

45 Heidegger, Being and Time, 268.

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potentiality-of-being. . . . Thus imminent to itself, all relations to other Da-sein are dissolved in it.”46 This possibility not to have any possibilities is disclosed to Da-sein in a significant way through the attunement of Angst: “Thrownness into death reveals itself to it more primordially and penetratingly in the attunement of Angst.”47 The uncovering of thrownness into death is again accompanied by some disruption of Da-sein from the hermeneutical circle of understanding. This uncovering, however, according to Heidegger also enables Da-sein explicitly to ‘return’ to its hermeneutical circling in no time and take over its essential situation. It remains in the realm of possibilities, in which Da-sein can always say ‘I can’. It is the possibility of impossibility, not powerlessness, that is, an impossibility of possibilities. In the lived experience Da-sein is always capable. Da-sein is even capable of dying (ready to die, aware of this moment of existence). Heidegger works with this experience again as with an immediate and point like transformation, which is attested also in his repeated emphasis on the fact that death is a non-relational possibility: “Thus death reveals itself as the ownmost nonrelational possibility.”48 Having experienced an urgent appeal of a non-relational possibility of death, Da-sein offers two alternatives of how to understand that which against its will was revealed to it in this experience. It will either understand death authentically, and begin to project itself from its unavoidable finitude, or it will run away from this possibility into a tranquilizing falling prey to taking care of inner-worldly beings. Heidegger is convinced that these three phenomena demonstrate the extreme forms of the fundamental moments of ‘where’, ‘who’, ‘being-there’, which in its extremeness enable us to disclose the approach to the being of Da-sein. Da-sein encounters itself as nobody, at nothing and nowhere in these moments. This experience reveals to it, according to Heidegger, its true ontological structure. This ontological structure determines Dasein as a permanent potentiality-of-being, as being always already itself and being always already someone at something and somewhere. As the one to whom the ontological structure of itself was revealed, Da-sein can

46 Ibid., 250. 47 Ibid., 251. 48 Ibid., 250–251.



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eventually become authentic. It then explicitly takes over its essential structure and becomes its ownmost self. It is our hypothesis, however, that this extreme experience enables the action of the specific reality which has the form of a potentiality-ofbeing. In all three cases we could establish that something transgressing takes possession of Da-sein, against its will or in accordance with it, but in any case in a way that this urging and actuating cannot be initiated or controlled by Da-sein alone. It is not something of which Da-sein is capable of and which Da-sein understands. Da-sein is carried away by an experience in which it faces such an indefiniteness toward which it cannot assume any stable attitude. Together with this Da-sein loses even its own self-determination, be it a determination coming from the everyday world of taking care, or a determination following from a stable attitude of its own resoluteness. Da-sein becomes in this experience a powerless potentiality-of-being. Yet powerlessness can be understood neither as a continuous extension of the authentic way of being nor as an extreme expression of inauthenticity. Da-sein appears in its powerlessness all of a sudden. What is characteristic of this experience is both the indefiniteness of the one who urges and the indefiniteness of the one at whom the urging is aimed; in other words, a distinct intentional structure ‘someone experiences something’ gets lost here. The concrete meaning of this experience, as we could repeatedly see, can be determined only afterwards, from experience in which Da-sein can assume toward the given experience a clearer and stable attitude. Another big issue is thus temporality of this non-intentional experience of powerlessness. It seems that temporal ecstasy, which dominates in the moment of powerlessness, is neither presenting of the present nor forgetting of the having-been, nor a resolute coming of the future. This experience is characterized apparently by some time of transformation, which does not connect in a simple and linear way the limit points of ‘from where’ and ‘where’ of the given transformation. It concerns a process without fixed boundaries and above all without any direction. We shall try to show in the following chapters that it does not concern even linear time, though wound up in a circle, but that there is a need to understand this time as bifurcated. Let us add finally that the power (‘it’) which works in the experience of powerlessness is in our view the expression of the event of experiencing that does not have an intentional character. This working is a sign of a strong, powerful or intense reality that is the reality of an experience without self/comprehensible Da-sein and without the manageable world. Da-sein is in this experience in the modality of modal indifference, which

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is expressed as the impotence of a potentiality-of-being (a powerlessness). It is impossible to predict anything about Da-sein in this modality as about ‘always-already-its-own’, kept in a temporal unity and abiding at its own possibilities. Its ontological structure is significantly philosophically (or even essentially) shaken in this modality. We believe that this moment has a crucial importance for our research. It indicates the inner boundary of fundamental ontology and a potential way out of its a priori presupposed wholeness determined by the principle of identity. For this reason, we wish to develop this moment in the following chapters when studying the possibilities of an essentially released, powerless Da-sein and its dynamism in the powerful world. Leaving the Third Mode of Being, Selfhood and Resoluteness Although Heidegger does not think in detail about what way of being characterizes Da-sein in moments of Angst, conscience and being-towarddeath, he develops a detailed analysis of attitudes that Da-sein can assume towards these phenomena after having experienced them. As we have mentioned many times before, these attitudes are essentially two: either Da-sein understands what these phenomena reveal and chooses a choice, that is, it becomes authentic, or it returns to the inauthentic mode of existence. There are more ways of falling prey to inauthenticity: flight, stray skipping, and disparagement. All these ways are related to the lack of the will to decide for authenticity. In contrast to these various ways of falling prey, the choice of resoluteness is an unambiguous, individualized and simple attitude to which the fallen forms are deficient possibilities. Resoluteness is an explicit take-over of the worldliness of the world, disclosedness of Da-sein and possibilities of the ownmost potentiality-ofbeing. This attitude is based on the knowledge (revelation of ‘that’), that it is necessary to be and to decide without being absolutely certain about the sense and consequences of the deeds. Resolute Da-sein discloses that its existence is essentially indefinite, having a form of an internal difference, a residuum, which is uncontainable and at the same time unified and complete. On the basis of this disclosure Da-sein takes over its being, which is the choosing of a choice in the sense that to choose means letting be, to let emerge that which is, including itself. This existence—in its indefiniteness—is existence in explicit freedom. In being free, Da-sein chooses its freedom explicitly. What is connected with explicit freedom is also the fact that resoluteness is temporalized preferentially from the future. Resolute Da-sein



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does not disclose its possibilities coming from the everyday and already anchored sphere of ‘common’ possibilities. Instead, it opens itself to that which comes while letting its possibilities be. The answer to the question ‘who?’ is, in the authentic mode, Da-sein as an unfinished, indefinite project of its ownmost resolute self-thrown into the future. Its being therefore comes from the future as a question. The ‘who’ of Da-sein has in resoluteness the character of a permanent question ‘who?’ Da-sein is not itself in the manner of permanence and invariance but in the manner of keeping itself in the form of the question ‘who?’ Permanence is substituted with self-subsistence, Selbständigkeit. This form of selfhood is sustainable only as temporal. We believe, however, that this step toward an explicit disclosedness, take-over of self-subsistence and the maintenance of selfhood can be performed only as a result of a point and immediate experience, which is the source of knowledge, contemplation or recognition. Thinking with regard to this type of experience, in the context of fundamental ­ontology—regarding Heidegger’s criticism of Cartesian metaphysics—is very surprising. Reference to this experience appears in Heidegger’s interpretation of resoluteness within which he speaks about knowledge. He does so in the positive sense of the word this time: “[Resoluteness] knows about the indefiniteness that prevails in a being that exists.”49 This knowledge does not have the structure of understanding something as something, but it presents itself as contemplation of truth about the conditions of possibility of Da-sein (revelation of ‘that’). The character of this knowledge is essentially the opposite of the lack of knowledge, which is obvious when taking care of being at hand, which knows nothing about the essential character of presence-at-hand of the given thing. Association geared to useful things . . . neither grasps these beings thematically as occurring things nor does it even know of using or the structure of useful things as such. Hammering . . . does not just have a knowledge of the useful character of the hammer.50

The distinction between ignorance of being and knowledge about being, in our view, constitutes another important moment that guides the ­transition from inauthenticity to authenticity. As Heidegger considers these two modes of being exclusive and complementary, he also tends, as we have seen already, to understand the transformation from one mode to another as an immediate, momentous cut which will not affect the 49 Ibid., 308. 50 Ibid., 69.

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basic modal duality, but which will assert it instead. This temporally nondimensional moment can be metaphorically localized with Heidegger in the turning point and self-confirmation of understanding that will, due to this, never step outside the boundaries of a continuous and homogeneous field of the potentiality-of-being. We could say that understanding is projected in Heidegger’s conception in such a way that its heading towards its own limits always stops at a certain moment without transcending the horizon of the continuous sphere of intentional experience. Understanding turns round at this point and comes back again to inner-worldly beings. In the extreme point when understanding is emptied of meanings concerning content and when only the structure itself is left, Da-sein is ‘revealed’ as a form of knowledge. Da-sein contemplates, in this immediate experience, the evidence and the indubitableness of the fact of its being, which eventually ensures the dynamical stability of its existence in its indefiniteness. This contemplation is enabled, according to Heidegger’s analyses, particularly in the experience of Angst, the call of conscience and being-toward-death. Due to the already mentioned self-confirming character of understanding (experience), inauthenticity (as deficiency of authenticity) can be accomplished and become authenticity. This accomplishment will take place immediately and without any difficulty. From a philosophical point of view, the three mentioned phenomena make it possible to state the ontological structure of Da-sein and let being manifest itself. Da-sein in some sense leaves the hermeneutical circle to return to it as authentic. A way of liberating oneself from the temporal structure of ecstatic unity, to which belongs a change of the way of being and a specific form of temporality, is philosophically rejected by ­Heidegger and substituted with the moment of a thematic contemplation of a givenness. Angst, conscience and being-toward-death can be designated as a non-hermeneutical origin of hermeneutical circling. This kind of origin, as a point of return, is not located at a beginning of existence of Da-sein. The origin takes place in the moment when Da-sein enters in the right way the hermeneutical circling after it was extricated from this circling by the phenomena of Angst, conscience or beingtoward-death. (“What is decisive is not to get out of the circle, but to get in the right way.”)51 The origin of the thrown, understanding projecting of Da-sein has a very specific form of contemplation of the concrete truth about the being of Da-sein. It is obvious then that not all moments of the 51 Ibid., 153.



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ontological structure of Da-sein participate in the revelation of the origin to the same extent. The concrete experienced world of our everydayness as well as of other beings of Da-sein’s type belong among the moments that are completely suppressed in this event of revelation. These moments are thus manifested only as that which Da-sein leaves and via which it comes toward the disclosure of being. In the extreme turning point and self-confirmation of understanding, Da-sein is isolated and alone, it is rid of others and the world. As such, it contemplates that the world is its own world; others are its own others. The modal transfer is only a transfer from existing into explicitly grasped existing. Heidegger again affirms by this that there is no place in his conception for an articulation of the autonomy of the world of affairs as well as the sphere of others. These moments get lost in their concreteness during the disclosure of the being of Da-sein. Their formal ontological derivativeness from the structure of Da-sein is revealed. Da-sein fills them again with meaning on its way back to the hermeneutical circle. The world of beings at hand and the shared world is temporal only due to the basic structure of the temporality of Da-sein. Heidegger remarks, We must first understand that temporality, as ecstatic and horizontal, first temporalizes something like world time that constitutes a within-timeness of things at hand and objectively present. But then these beings can never be called “temporal” in the strict sense.52

Time is considered the meaning of being. For this reason it represents the temporal derivativeness of the mentioned moments as an essential derivativeness. Non-Da-sein beings and other beings of Da-sein’s type will stay the same—in any mode of being of Da-sein—in the sense of the identity of beings which are not temporal by themselves, but which are temporalized by Da-sein. Reality that concerns Da-sein does not change; what changes is only the attitude that Da-sein assumes toward reality. However, if the disclosure of being takes place, as was demonstrated above, as emerging from the immediate givenness of knowledge, it is necessary to ask whether Heidegger in the end does not fall back upon similar thought instruments as Descartes. If Heidegger designated knowledge as a deficient mode of understanding because knowledge grasps only an idea of being and not being itself, doesn’t he find in the moment of disclosure of the path to being again only the idea of what he has been searching for?

52 Ibid., 420.

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As Heidegger does not explain the moments of indefiniteness of itself—in the extreme aspect of the experience of powerlessness, workings of an indefinite power (‘it’) and the way of being of Da-sein that is neither authentic nor inauthentic—it is necessary to ask whether he really found an attestation of the ownmost potentiality-of-being of Da-sein and whether he managed to justify his strict distinction between the authentic and inauthentic ways of being. We believe that Heidegger did not confirm that access to being through the distinction of two modalities of being of Da-sein and through the distinction of two sorts of being was adequate. We wish to propose a different approach towards understanding the significant phenomena of Angst, of the call of conscience and of being-toward-death. We believe that they could be understood as extreme expressions of a much wider realm of phenomena, taking into account that the world can be understood as the world of affairs. In such a world of open issues, unresolved matters, urgent events, accidents, powerlessness, Angst and occurrences, Da-sein can only be understood in such a way that it passes from one affair to another while pursuing regularly experience, along which it is being transformed and which cannot be described fully by means of any intentional structure. The experience of affairs does not provide Da-sein with a source of selfconfirmation and a possibility of return to the continuous field of potentiality-of-being. In the world of intense (powerful, strong) affairs Da-sein goes through transformations of power and powerlessness. At the same time it is regularly ‘somehow’ caught in the mode of modal indifference where it feels uncanny and where it is powerless. The indefinite ‘how’ of Da-sein in the third mode of existence is an irreducible modality which is constitutive for a phenomenal description of the potentiality-of-being of Da-sein and of the world. We find Da-sein in this modality neither in its obvious self-relationship nor in the unified structure of care. We disclose in it the inner limit of a continuous thrown projecting of being-in-the-world. The Unifying Function of Time and the Constancy of Selfhood In his exegesis, Heidegger insists on the strict distinction between inauthentic and authentic modes of existence while neglecting the theme of modal transformation. All we can deduce from his analysis is that the deficient inauthentic mode is accomplished and completed by the modal transformation into authenticity. This completing occurs so immediately and point-wise, that it does not have the form of discontinuous change, let



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alone some other form of temporality. Because in such cases the temporal unity of the structure could be threatened, Heidegger cannot acknowledge the said cases. He interprets this moment in such a way that enables one to approach the final description of the unifying function of time for the essential structure of Da-sein and the way in which Da-sein maintains its selfhood. If Da-sein decides for authentic resoluteness, it discloses the existential character of the so-called situation, in other words of the concrete ‘there,’ where Da-sein develops its ownmost potentiality-of-being-one’s-self. To be in a situation does not mean to determine by one’s own will the character of emerging phenomena on the basis of already attained knowledge, but to be prepared (again on the basis of the will) for the understanding of these phenomena from themselves. Da-sein is furnished, in a situation, with some resistance (Widerstand) against an unavoidable falling prey to the everyday world of taking care. In contrast to the falling prey and dispersing of oneself, it maintains a character of constancy (Ständigkeit). This constancy is not a guarantee of any unchangeability of Da-sein, but it enables this being to open itself permanently to its possibilities. The constancy consists exactly in this ‘itself’, which keeps opening in the circle of its own self-relating and in unity and selfhood. The selfhood of Da-sein is expressed—in contrast to the sameness of non-Da-sein beings—as a dynamical self-potentiality, a mineness of a solid attitude to the world and itself as an explicit and deficient holding-of-one’s-self in one’s hands. Selfhood means preserving oneself, or ‘to be able to always have oneself at one’s disposal’. Da-sein is primarily powerful. Due to this, it experiences certain ‘weak’ forms of powerlessness in the sense of ‘self-loss’. This ‘selfloss’ is ‘weak’ (it is not intense enough) because it is a mere deficiency of the primordial and strong self-maintenance. Da-sein always somehow understands who it is, what it is about here and what to do in this or that situation. The open question who? refers to an ontological phenomenon, to a link that unifies both of the modes in which Da-sein can express itself. Resolute Da-sein thus discloses itself in authentic transparency; it contemplates that it is always already disclosed, even when it falls prey, when it loses itself and when it closes for itself the access to being. Dasein finds itself either in the mode led by the will to itself, or in the mode led by the will to falling prey. Yet, it never finds itself without the will. Da-sein is a potentiality-of-being and not an im-potentiality-of-being. All deficiency of the will and power will never become a basis of experience beyond the power and the will. We wish to present in the next chapter Paul Ricoeur’s conception of personal identity that profits in large measure

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from a Heideggerian concept of selfhood. Ricoeur’s notion of ‘constance à soi’ (ipseity) corresponds to Selbständigkeit and Ricoeur distinguishes this type of identity from Descartes’ fixed permanence (mêmeté, idem). Ipse is based on a capacity to be (Vermögen, I always can). Da-sein is also aware, in the authentic transparency of the structure of wholeness, of its ecstatic temporal existence. That is why the temporality of a situation, which is related to Da-sein as to the ownmost potentialityof-being-one’s-self differs essentially from the temporality of taking care, which is linked to Da-sein as to the public the ‘they’. The temporality of a situation expresses the wholeness and unity of the existential structure of Da-sein. That is why it manifests itself as the Moment. Thus tangled up in itself, the dispersed not-staying turns into the inability to stay at all. This mode of the present is the most extreme opposite phenomenon to the Moment. . . . The Moment brings existence to the situation and discloses the authentic ‘There’.53

A situation is characterized by the Moment in the sense of a horizon of ecstatic temporality. Time emerges, in a situation, as a conglomerate of temporal ecstasies which founds a unity of an essential determination of Da-sein as a being that is concerned about its being. Da-sein maintains itself in this unity during its whole existence: “The resoluteness of the self against the inconstancy of dispersion is in itself a steadiness that has been stretched along—the steadiness in which Da-sein as fate ‘incorporates’ into its existence birth and death.”54 Resolute Da-sein discloses in a situation the last unifying aspect of its essential structure, which is the Moment, and it understands itself as ecstatically stretched self-constancy. This structure shows that selfhood is an essential feature of Da-sein and that its preservation and permanence are based on its temporality which is impassable in the structure of Da-sein. The limit point of temporality is the all-encompassing Moment, which is also the turning point of all understanding experiencing. Each single experience is in the Moment thrown back to the ontical temporal structure of common experiencing. Experience cannot transgress the Moment. Selfhood can never be beyond time. Thanks to this fact Da-sein can be always already beyond itself and still be itself. Selfhood is a unity of the existent, which is always already beyond itself because it is never

53 Ibid., 347. 54 Ibid., 390.



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beyond time. All phenomena that are revealed to Da-sein are its own ­possibilities. They maintain experience as ‘always already’ its own experience. The falling-prey dispersion of Da-sein in the world of taking care is possible exclusively because Da-sein temporalizes itself from an impassable and unified time. This character of one’s own experience and existence discloses a resolute Da-sein in the Moment, in the ecstatic horizon of all becoming. The essential structure of Da-sein encloses itself inside itself in the Moment, it tightens the noose of its own self-relating, disclosing the fact that this self-relationship is the basis of its own becoming. Being thus manifests itself as the becoming of a self-steady difference between being and a being that unifies itself in an ecstatic horizon into the authentic temporality of the Moment. Thinking recognizes (erkennt) that Da-sein is an ecstatic temporal stretchedness which does not unwind because it is unified into a primordial Moment. Being is not being that should unwind and last, but it is actually a Moment, or one open expansion of itself. Being happens as an expansion (dilation) of the temporal horizon which is simultaneously constricted in an ontological moment. Being is the temporal development of a question, which does not refer totally beyond itself, to some exterior goal, but which also is not simply a question for the sake of the question (of being for being) that has its aim in its own existence. To decide for resoluteness means to face this foregoing being as time. Selfhood is born as the dynamic identity of internal difference between the primordial time of resoluteness and the vulgar time of falling prey. The temporal horizon of being and the being of Da-sein is impassable. Our objective here was to demonstrate that one can find in the conception of Being and Time references to the idea according to which the being of Da-sein heads toward something beyond Da-sein itself and its temporal structure (as it is manifested in the workings of an indefinite power ‘it’, which happens to Da-sein in ‘liminal’ moments of existence). This selftransgressing aims at neither its own integration in the unity of ontological difference nor at the finding of a metaphysical substrate principle. The problem consists in how Heidegger interprets the utmost limit of existence as an attestation of “always already its own” existing. He brings together the uncanniness of an encounter with an intense transgressing power by claiming that what is in fact at stake is the encounter with the proper essential structure of Da-sein. In this way, Da-sein in Heidegger’s interpretation takes possession even of the internal limit of its own continuous field of understanding. This limit can be understood, however, also in a different way—as an internal horizon of a potentiality-of-being

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that disturbs the coherence and continuity of ‘one’s own’ form of experience of understanding Da-sein. Conclusion to Heidegger’s Conception The main objective of our investigation was to identify the way in which the notions of selfhood, Da-sein and identity are construed in fundamental ontology. Heidegger attained this goal, as we have seen, by a partially reductive description of the being of Da-sein and of the world. Let us sum up the three main conclusions that we have arrived at during this inquiry. First, Da-sein is a being that is essentially determined as existence. Owing to the fact that Da-sein is existence, its ontological structure cannot be objectively cognized but only understood. This fact substantially differentiates Da-sein from non-Da-sein beings. Non-Da-sein beings are in principle objectifiable, while Da-sein is in no sense objectifiable. The world of beings at hand does not show the same reality as Da-sein because beings at hand are interpreted by a hermeneutical understanding on the basis of a distinct structural form of ‘something as something’. Beings at hand constitute possibilities of Da-sein which always have at their disposal an anchorage in the form of their convertibility to objectively present being. As soon as a thing does not have this anchorage and it still appears as real, it is necessary to consider it, according to Heidegger, as one of the moments of the structure of Da-sein, as a component of its potentiality-of-being, or eventually not to talk about such a kind of thingness at all. In Heidegger’s conception Da-sein understands everything that is revealed to it as its own possibility, that is, as a moment of its own thrown project. It thus stays permanently, though in various modes, fully enclosed in the circularity of the self-relation. Things such as undertakings, incidents, mishaps, events, affairs, problems and questions are therefore an obstacle to the clear ontological distinction between non-Da-sein beings and Da-sein. That is also why this sort of thing-ness is not explicitly developed in Heidegger’s conception, even though the author mentions it and designates it as the sort of thing that ‘simply happens’. An affair is ontologically different both from the being at hand and from Da-sein. It cannot be easily subsumed in the ontological schemes of Heidegger’s conception. The reality of an affair is not objectifiable. It consists in the possibility to be this or something else without any substantial anchoring, but it cannot be characterized



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even as existence. The neglect of the ontology of affairs is fundamental in ­Heidegger’s conception not only because a description of the world would be incomplete without affairs, but because an analysis of this type of thing-ness significantly influences the analysis of the ontological structure of Da-sein. Another important conclusion following from the analysis of the ontological structure of Da-sein is the concrete character of the modal way of being of this being. Da-sein always exists in a concrete way. Heidegger distinguishes two modes of existence: the inauthentic mode that conceals the access to being, and the authentic mode that discloses the possibility of a revelation of ontological phenomena. Apart from these modes, however, Heidegger mentions in his analyses a third alternative, which is the modal indifference in which Da-sein is neither authentic nor inauthentic. As it is quite difficult to imagine the way of being in modal indifference— if Da-sein were to persist in a structured world as it is described in Being and Time—the analysis of this mode is left aside and the two above-mentioned modes are considered mutually exclusive and complementary in the relationship to the ecstatic unity of Da-sein. However, it arises from the conclusions of our inquiry that the neglect of the third mode of being of Da-sein is closely connected with the neglect of the thing-ness of affairs. The way in which Da-sein resides in affairs probably refers to the third modality of being, which is neither authentic nor inauthentic. It is impossible to be at affairs in the falling-prey way, or in the resolute way because Da-sein holds a steady attitude to reality in both cases. Dealing with affairs, Da-sein, nevertheless, cannot preserve itself as steady. It is closed to them in an indefinite way in which power and powerlessness are inseparably intertwined. Da-sein initially and for the most part experiences the world, which is not only the world of taking care bound to materiality and previously known methods of work. The reality to which Da-sein commonly turns is expressed also as an openness of meanings, urgent indeterminate affairs, intense questions, and problems that transgress Da-sein. Da-sein experiences reality as an indefinite potentiality-of-being. Such a reality, however, cannot be ontologically deduced from the essential structure of Da-sein. The third conclusion of our analysis of Being and Time concerns the verification of whether authentic Da-sein really discloses a way to being. This possibility is attested according to Heidegger by the phenomena of Angst, the call of conscience, and being-toward-death. What they share is their internal reference to the transformation of Da-sein from an inauthentic modality into authenticity. This transformation is enabled

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by immediate contemplation of the ontological structure of Da-sein on the basis of which Da-sein can subsequently decide to make a choice, to grasp explicitly its own understanding of the world, and to be its ownmost potentiality-of-being. To grasp explicitly or to understand means to become explicitly one’s own foundation, to be articulately that which Da-sein always already is and thus perform oneself. Mineness manifests itself in this moment as always already “mine.” Da-sein thus enfolds itself into itself in its articulate self-relationship. In doing so Da-sein isolates and individuates itself while this form of individuation does not found the numerical identity of Da-sein but a temporal selfhood of self-preservation. Angst, the call of conscience and being-toward-death are phenomena in which this unity of the dynamical structure of the self-relationship unambiguously emerges and is guaranteed by a temporality that temporalizes itself. Heidegger’s interpretations of the phenomena of Angst, of the call of conscience, and of being-toward-death are noteworthy for their implicit presence of another moment that we described as the working of an intense indefinite power (‘it’). We believe that this operation, which urges against the will and the interests of Da-sein, is an expression of the event of non-intentional experience. Da-sein finds itself in a way of being that can be designated as powerlessness. We believe that these extreme experiences, which are according to Heidegger the points of the turn of experience to itself and of the origin of Da-sein’s return to the hermeneutical circle of its own existence, can, on the contrary, uncover an event. Da-sein finds itself there—outside the circle of its unifying temporal ­understanding—without having instruments enabling it to return as its own to the same world that it previously left. Thinking in the form of hermeneutical understanding together with the workings of intense indefinite power (‘it’) emerges beyond its own boundary of cyclic circling that blends with the boundary of being-in-the-world. The indefinite workings hinder Da-sein from appropriating and grasping itself in its ownmost way. For it is not clear ‘who’ is now experiencing, who is to be understood and who decides. This moment thus presents a potential place of disruption of the circular structure of understanding which seeks to understand itself. In this interpretation, the idea of a temporal unity of the self-­relating Da-sein is endangered because the conception of experience that does not confirm itself, disrupts the idea of the permanent self-relationship of a human being. Although we find in Heidegger’s analysis some evident strains of the uncovering of the liminal point of the experiential field as a point of transgression of self-relating understanding, the author in the



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end prefers such an explanation in which this moment is interpreted as the turning point and non-hermeneutical origin of an iterative return of Da-sein to itself, that is, a return to the hermeneutical circling of ‘always already its own’ existence. These three conclusions that we arrived at in the course of our inquiry are connected by an internal link. In short, the workings of the intense power of the indefinite ‘that’ in extreme moments of existence can be understood, on the one hand, as the manifestation of Da-sein in modal indifference. On the other hand, they are an expression of being in the sphere of affairs. The workings of the indefiniteness of ‘that’ is an expression of a non-intentional structure, i.e., a case of experiencing in which Da-sein is neither authentically nor inauthentically, and in which the world reveals itself already neither by means of beings at hand nor by objectively present beings. That is also why the analysis of Angst, the call of conscience, and being-toward-death point to the standard analysis of affairs and to the third mode of existence. The objective is to disclose a possibility of a non-intentional character of experience. Angst, conscience and being-toward-death have to some extent the ability to take possession of Da-sein without Da-sein previously choosing it intentionally and willingly. An affair more or less destabilizes the certainty of Da-sein about its own domesticated world and itself. An indetermination of Da-sein is disclosed within the scope of being in affairs because Da-sein is being extricated from its self-relationship. It is forced to deal with something that it is not and transform itself according to this power. There is always present, in the urging of an event, the power of an actualization of that which Da-sein is not yet; at the same time, however, it is the event itself that is born from the being of Da-sein as reality. An affair forces Da-sein to act ‘differently’, not ‘according to itself’ but alongside itself so that Da-sein performs the affair as different. Yet Heidegger prefers definite answers to the question, Who is Da-sein? And, What is the world? This answer is acquired via the immediate and non-relational point in which understanding stops, contemplates evidence about its own essential structure, and returns authentically to where it came from in an improper way. An authentic return to the same world and to the same reality is enabled by the power of one’s ‘own’ will, the self-control of the one who got to know his own conditions of possibility and took the situation into his own hands. The phenomenal attestation of immediate knowledge with which Da-sein is endowed in the extreme moment of its experiencing is not very convincing. It is necessary to ask: ‘who’ is endowed with knowledge here? ‘Who’ and ‘how’ is Da-sein in Angst, in the call of conscience and in

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b­ eing-toward-death? Is it then the same Da-sein that decided to take one of the possible attitudes toward revealed being about which it already knows? Authenticity is an attitude that comes from the knowledge acquired via revelation and this revelation can never be appropriated by Da-sein. It is, however, communicated to it in this event that it is a being, which lives in the appropriated world. The one on whom the revelation is bestowed appears here as someone different from the one who entered this extreme experience, and also from the one who got out of it. Is not an extreme experience rather a flash of discontinuous experiencing instead of a unifying point? Indeed, a liminal experience can be understood as an event of immediate revelation of evidence only at the expense of Da-sein which shall be ‘for a moment’ a completely isolated being. It shall divest itself (or has already divested itself) of the world and others as derived aspects of existence and contemplate immediately its own essential structure. But is not this image too violent, artificial and groundless? Is not hermeneutical understanding here, in the decisive place, replaced with a statement about the contemplation of an idea? Is it possible to pick up again, after this “turn-around” of experience, on the old schemes and change only the attitude to one’s own and the same world and the same fellow beings of Da-sein’s type? Otherwise put, is it possible to reduce, for the purposes of disclosure of an approach to being, the world of readiness to hand and the world of fellow beings of Da-sein’s type to a categorically describable sphere of beings? We believe that the strategy adopted by Heidegger makes it impossible to articulate the fundamental character of reality that expresses itself as power. This conception cannot contain an experience that points beyond the sphere of the self-relationship of Da-sein. That is why it is impossible to think within this philosophy the experience of powerlessness as a non-intentional experience, as a moment without itself, and without the world. Experience necessarily has a linear structure of intentional connections of one experiencing being and one experienced being. This structure is based on time that encloses itself into itself and surrounds the whole realm of the thinkable in an ecstatic unity. It is also for this reason that we cannot describe in Heidegger’s conception the experience of Angst, of the call of conscience and of being-towarddeath as temporal experience, because the non-linear character of time, as we will try to demonstrate, is disclosed in this moment. Our intention is to show that reality has the character of potentiality-of-being, and that this character can be phenomenally shown (see mainly chapter four and five).



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Our investigation of the ontological structure of Da-sein has also brought us to understand the way in which the notion of personal identity is construed in the given conception. In contrast to the world which does not exist modally and which is determined by the category of sameness (Descartes’ substantial permanence, idem), Da-sein features a selfhood that actualizes itself as dynamic self-founding. The world is identical in the order of idem; Da-sein is, conversely, itself in the sense of ipse. NonDa-sein beings are essentially objectifiable and non-self-powerful. Human beings (and there are no others) are primarily certain potentialities-ofbeing that are in no sense objectifiable. It is evident that the differences in interpretation of the concepts of being and thought (being as becoming, as a difference between an ontic level and an ontological level, and of thought as understanding that understands always somehow what it has already understood) distinguish Heidegger from Descartes. What follows from this is that they both offer a different conception of identity. Heidegger proposes the Selbsständigkeit as a dynamic capacity to be always somehow oneself; Descartes works implicitly with the idea of sameness as a fixed certainty of oneself. Their conceptual configurations, however, both fulfil the conditions established by the principle of identity. Just as with Descartes we have noticed in Heidegger the indication of some ontology of force that transcends his metaphysical project. We have also drawn attention to various important moments in Heidegger’s ontology that refer beyond his conception and beyond the thinking based on the principle of identity. These moments— found in fundamental ontology—represent for our project inspiring and fruitful sources of further investigation. Before attempting to reinterpret these moments, we wish to pay attention to an already existing revision of these problematic points of ­Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. This is the ‘hermeneutics of the self’ (soi, Selbst) which was developed by Paul Ricoeur in his work Soi-même comme un autre (Oneself as an Other). Ricoeur’s revision stems from his explicit rejection of the idea of unambiguousness in the concept of Dasein’s identity. It concentrates on the investigation of various meanings of this notion claiming that their possible unification has the form of the unity of analogy. Various forms of the self of Da-sein are essentially constituted in interaction with other human beings. This moment already implies the necessity to think the selfhood of Da-sein from its involvement in incomplete indeterminate situations in which Da-sein acts. Moreover, Ricoeur works very intensively with the tension between Descartes’

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sameness and Heidegger’s selfhood by naming them idem and ipse. He tries to find a third way between these perspectives. It is obvious that together with the theme of action, interaction and also the theme of narrativity as an essential means of constructing the selfhood of Da-sein, Ricoeur needs to explicitly address the question of affairs—the theme of modality that is neither authentic nor inauthentic— and the issue of the encounter with indefinite and foreign power. It could also open in a convenient way the theme of the ontology of affairs and of existence in this type of reality. Thus, in order not to do what already has been done, we wish to study Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical project to find out to what extent it could serve as a suitable way to revise Heidegger’s conception. How is then the narrative selfhood of the human being in the hermeneutics of the self that Paul Ricoeur projects to be construed? Will Ricoeur be able to involve in his project the moment of powerlessness as a constitutive moment of existence? Or will he be another representative of the idea that human being is always capable of and controls itself?

Chapter Three

Paul Ricoeur: Third Mode through Narrativity Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenological hermeneutics, developed in his work Oneself as Another,1 is important for our project for two reasons. First, it explicitly distinguishes itself from Cartesian metaphysics, while being a re-interpretation of fundamental ontology. It helps us to elucidate Heidegger’s attempt to overcome the principle of identity that we have just examined. Second, the central theme of the book Oneself as Another is a newly conceived narrative identity which is an effort that promises original solutions to Heidegger’s issues. We believe that Ricoeur’s revision of fundamental ontology and the subsequent development of the project of the hermeneutics of oneself draw, to a large extent, on the criticism of Heidegger’s construction of the concept of selfhood. The central statement that Ricoeur decides to interpret in a different way from Heidegger is: “One is what one does.”2 Heidegger voices this statement in connection with the everyday Dasein and the ontic analysis of being-in-the-world. Yet, he does not sufficiently value this statement to develop it into a complete analysis of the nature of the world’s reality. If he had done so, he would have had to admit, as we have demonstrated above, that the conception of the world included in itself an aspect of thing-ness whose structure ‘something as something’ was not objectifiable. It seems that Ricoeur, by contrast, wishes to take this ontic description seriously, developing from it his own analysis of being-in-the-world. What follows from this, is primarily the fact, that the basic characteristic of Da-sein becomes action. Moreover it is action in such a world that does not consist of only beings at hand, transformed eventually into beings objectively present, but from activities that are never objectifiable. Ricoeur therefore understands Da-sein primarily as an actor (someone as someone who is not objectively present) who is understandable from affairs, matters (‘something as something’ which is not objectively present) that concern him. It is obvious that Ricoeur, 1 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, translated by Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 239.

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by choosing this starting point, turns necessarily to the analysis of the world in the form of quite an indeterminate field of affairs, open questions, non-objectifiable issues (without using these concepts himself ). It is necessary for Ricoeur to articulate Da-sein in a modality that is neither a pure authenticity nor a pure inauthenticity (third mode of existence). This approach to the analysis of being-in-the-world is clearly focused on the themes that Heidegger eschews for the sake of an analysis based on the idea of two exclusive and complementary ways of Da-sein’s being. These are linked to the same world of beings at hand. We could thus say that Ricoeur is a thinker of the third mode of existence, of affairs, and of reformulated Da-sein. By articulating the aspect of the world that corresponds with human action in open interaction with others, Ricoeur opens a new space of meaning between the two modes of existence discussed by Heidegger. The transition from inauthenticity to authenticity can no longer be immediate, and we should not understand the transition as a completion of inauthenticity to authenticity. Ricoeur implicitly shows, by revealing the sphere of open and indefinite activities, that the internal boundary between the two modes is of a different kind than both these modes. Ricoeur would find himself in an essential disagreement with Heidegger if he developed this moment further. Yet he wishes to use his criticism for another purpose—not to reject fundamental ontology, but to revise it internally. Ricoeur interprets the outstretched space between authentic resoluteness and inauthentic falling prey to the world as a sphere in which both modes are intertwined and merge, due to the mode which functions as their mediator. Neither the idea of continual transition between both modes nor the image of a continuous way of Da-sein’s being is disrupted by this interpretation. The transitional mode of being, however, is to have not only the function of a mediator between authenticity and inauthenticity. It should become manifest, when we analyze it thoroughly, that it is simultaneously a suitable basis for the development of thought which will enable one to unify various philosophical notions of the human being, namely the notion of fundamental ontology and analytical philosophy. Ricoeur’s intention is to expand synthetic thinking that will act as a mediator between the analytical conception of the human being derived from the assumptions of Cartesian metaphysics and Heidegger’s fundamental ontology of Da-sein.



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Conceptual Configuration: Between Analytical Philosophy and Phenomenology Let us first ask a basic question that concerns the conceptual configuration and interpretation of the principle of identity in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur’s objective in his work Oneself as Another is not primarily to disclose an accessible path to being. It is not his intention to respond to the question, which is posed by Descartes and Heidegger in the works studied by us, about the conditions of what is. Ricoeur’s main goal is to develop a philosophical anthropology from the perspective of phenomenological hermeneutics, and to ask with all “ontological vehemence”3 the question about the character of personal identity. This strategy is to arrive mainly at such an attestation (not a proof ), which shall “. . . predicate the truth about the character of the self (le soi)”4 [italics added]. Ricoeur first provides a detailed analysis of the essential structure of human existence, without trying to extend his investigation further to the question of being as such. In contrast to Descartes’ and Heidegger’s conception, where the question of the human being is secondary but methodologically paramount, in Ricoeur’s case, it is primary and paramount. Ricoeur creates ample space when articulating his primary philosophical interest for the study of the human being in the richness of its expressions. The given investigation is aimed at developing a detailed description of the structure of human action and the apprehension of the being of existence, without neglecting those aspects that would not be immediately used for the purposes of general ontological questioning. Ricoeur does not conceive any primordial conceptual configuration of thinking and being: he tries to revise the already existing configuration of fundamental ontology instead. This correction deals mainly with the notion of identity and the human being. Ricoeur interprets the notion of thinking as hermeneutical understanding and the notion of being in the sense of the temporal occurrence of ontological difference (as these terms are introduced in Being and Time). He understands the human being essentially as existence, being-in-the-world, which is not endowed with any substantial substrate. In contrast to Heidegger, Ricoeur refuses to understand rational thinking, which grasps beings objectively present, as derived and deficient aspects of understanding, from the point of view of

3 Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 300. 4 Ibid.

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existential analysis. In the same way substantial being is not, according to him, only an idea of being that has nothing to do with the ontological phenomenon. Ricoeur, by contrast, tries to rehabilitate rational objectifying thinking and he assigns to it the role of a pole that balances hermeneutic understanding. By stressing the value of rational thinking in this way and by attributing an independence towards understanding, Ricoeur intends to find, as he himself says, a level of third thinking where this mutual balancing of the two conceptions can occur. The author talks about a ‘realistic turn’ in this context which consists in the fact that it is necessary: “to do justice to analytical philosophy for the support I shall constantly draw from it in executing my ontological sketch.”5 This intermediary thinking, which Ricoeur intends to develop in his work, shall not consist in the contemplating reflection performed by the subject, which eventually allows us to contemplate all beings. But neither is it be an understanding for which Da-sein is a place where an access to being as such is revealed. This thinking will rather make it possible to address a very concrete issue, namely the variety of determinations of the human being found in both mentioned conceptions. Ricoeur wants to reach exactly such a way of thinking that shall uncover the way in which the same human being can be manifested once as a subject, and simultaneously as an object, and as Da-sein. The motive of this philosophical effort is Ricoeur’s intuition that . . . in a certain way—how I am not at all sure—it is the same body that is experienced and known; it is the same mind that is experienced and known; it is the same person who is ‘mental’ and ‘corporeal’. From this ontological identity arises a third discourse that goes beyond both phenomenological philosophy and science.6

How can these two different statements about the human being be interlinked? How can we attest that we deal with different perspectives of the same entity? In what sense can we understand Da-sein as a human being among other humans, as an entity among other entities? Ricoeur subsequently asks himself the question concerning personal identity. It is necessary to find such a definition of personal identity, which will include in itself the selfhood of the human being as Da-sein and the identity of the human being as a representative of the human kind. The sense of selfhood 5 Ibid., 300. 6 Changeux Jean-Pierre, Ricoeur Paul, What makes us think?, (USA: Princeton University Press, 2000) 28. Originally: Ce qui nous fait penser, Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 1998.



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of human existence is, according to Ricoeur, significantly reduced, if this concept is not related to an objective sameness that characterizes entities so that they can be objectively recognized. That is why Ricoeur exposes Martin Heidegger’s fundamental ontology to a confrontation with analytical philosophy, and why he looks for, in this confrontation, the starting point of his own intermediate thinking. Ricoeur rejects in principle neither the perspective of objective description nor the aspect of lived human experience, but he refuses to deduce one of these moments from the other or to think them independently and separately. The concrete line along which Ricoeur tries to build an overarching and mediatory thinking of hermeneutical anthropology, consists in the ambiguous theme of the notion of self (soi). Being oneself is given, according to Ricoeur, as an analogical unity of two different ways of predicating this self. The notion of the self thus does not designate only an I of a ‘thinking object’ (in the sense of Strawson’s definition of the person)7 where I equals I; he does not articulate exclusively the I, Selbst, of Da-sein which always already understands being. The self that Ricoeur wants to apprehend is an I, oneself of an actor who always already understands himself thanks to his relation to another entity, or to oneself as another. The human being can, in this context, be comprehensible as Da-sein whose self-hood is expressed in preserving oneself. It can be recognized as an entity whose identity is embedded in self-givenness and which is defined by an objective description. What is crucial in Ricoeur’s mediatory thinking is the presupposition of a founding self-relationship of every human being. For every human being has to be studied, according to Ricoeur, from the relationship that links it to itself. In contrast to analytical philosophy, Ricoeur does not believe that this self-relationship is characterized exclusively by the immediate self-evidence of an entity, nor by a pure comparison of one state of the given entity with another state in a later moment. It must, according to the author, apprehend the dynamic nature of human existence. In contrast to the approach of fundamental ontology, this self-relationship is not, for Ricoeur, primarily a relationship of an entity to its being, which is completed in the ontological time of the moment, but it is simply an ontic relationship of itself to another and to 7 P.F. Strawson, Individuals, An essay in descriptive Metaphysic (London: Methuen and Co, 1959) 101–102. Strawson defines a person as: “the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics, a physical situation etc. are equally applicable to a single individual of that single type.”

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itself as another on the level of human action. The actor has the fundamental experience that it can, as a self-experiencing person, contemplate himself as another, that is, as another amongst others. The relationship to oneself is therefore according to Ricoeur always performed via a mediator, or via another element which is a ‘different self  ’, oneself as another, or simply another human being who contemplates ‘me’ (myself as another) as another. In this way, it is effected that the two poles of oneself are differentiated in existence, while the pole ‘myself as another’ is the pole of sharing and communicating ‘third persons’, and the pole of the experiencing self is the internal pole of ‘the first person’. This internal difference is, however, necessarily unified on the basis of the above-mentioned intuition. It expresses itself for instance in personal identity which is given as a connection of objective sameness with existential selfhood. This selfrelationship of every human being via a mediator in ‘another’ takes place in action. The question about the nature of oneself therefore correlates to some extent with the question about the nature of human action. Just as we talk about the polysemy of the notion of oneself, we have to talk about the polysemy of human action and seek an analogical unity of oneself in the analogical unity of individual aspects of human action. Ricoeur’s entire ontology of the self is to be founded on this unity of analogy. We have mentioned earlier that Ricoeur does not pose the question about being explicitly. In the same way, he does not ask about the nature of thinking in general. Yet, as he tries to create an intermediary apparatus between two philosophical conceptions that differ fundamentally in the way in which they interpret the principle of identity, there has to emerge in Ricoeur’s project not only the notion of intermediary thinking and being but also the explanation of the approach to the human entity and its identity. He must necessarily introduce into it some notion of temporality as well. The way in which time is understood in each conception corresponds significantly to the way in which personal identity is grasped in the given thinking. Ricoeur has to introduce such a notion of time which shall mediate between the conception of a sequence of discrete non-dimensional moments and the ecstatic unity of time dimensions. That seems to be quite a difficult task at first sight. Ricoeur suggests employing again mediatory temporality for this purpose. The aim of this temporality is to interconnect the sequence of static moments, in which individual states of objective entities can be described, with a temporal dynamic, in which existence exists. The mediatory time that meets these conditions is, according to Ricoeur, the time of narration. Narration is structured in such a way that it strengthens and conserves human experience



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in objective givens, narrating the currently happening life without reducing its singular and unexpected moments. In correspondence with this notion of temporality, Ricoeur projects even the mediatory identity as narrative identity that links within itself sameness, selfhood and otherness and which develops primarily in narrative time. On the basis of these starting points Ricoeur intends to conceive his ontology of the self, which will preserve the essential polysemy by responding to the question ‘Who?’ in the sense of ‘who is the actor of action’. The answer to this question is polysemantic. Yet, it is linked in some sense always to the same (one, identical) self (soi). This self-same self, however, is predicated only in individual respects whose only mutual interconnection has the form of analogical unity. Oneself has to stay multiple and its individual respects are unified on the level of analogy. How then does the philosophical argument unfold that Ricoeur offers in his work with the aim to accomplish intermediary thinking and a new definition of the notion of personal identity? How is this project concretely related to the above-studied conceptions? What are its contributions, and its possible disadvantages? The Project of a Hermeneutics of the Human Self In the first part of the project of the phenomenological hermeneutics of the self Ricoeur presents an enumeration of flawed philosophical points of departure for the articulation of the human self-relationship. The first erroneous approach is Cartesian, which draws on the immediate givenness of the ‘I, ego’. The second flawed starting point is the absolute cancellation of the self-givenness of the conscious self, which culminates in Nietzsche’s philosophy.8 The middle position that Ricoeur wants to adopt draws on the assumption, that the basis of every individual is his mediatory relationship between himself and his self. The second assumption of this middle course is the conviction that it can be built in its entirety on the study of individual layers of language and forms of speech. Ricoeur sums up these assumptions into a point of departure that founds his ontology of the self.

8 Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 11–23.

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chapter three . . . language expresses being, even if this ontological aim is as though postponed, deferred . . . Attestation is the assurance . . . of existing in the mode of selfhood.9

The primary form of a self-relationship can be found, according to Ricoeur, already in the basic language level in the grammatical figure of the reflexive pronoun ‘oneself  ’ (in French ‘se’). This pronoun expresses, strictly speaking, neither the first grammatical person, which is expressed by the pro­ noun ‘I’, nor the third grammatical person, which is expressed by the pronoun ‘he’. The pronoun ‘oneself  ’ can be used, with respect to the grammatical person, in a completely neutral way as we can see in the example of verbs such as ‘to introduce oneself  ’ (se présenter), ‘to designate oneself  ’ (se désigner). This pronoun expresses explicitly that every human being relates ‘itself  ’ to itself without having necessarily to posit an I. The main question in this context becomes the question in what way the human being relates itself to itself and how it designates itself. That is why it is necessary, according to Ricoeur, to begin the whole analysis with a thorough language analysis of the differing ways of self-designation. Only then we can turn to an analysis of the narrativity of oneself and approach the question of the ethical construction of oneself. The theme of self-relationship always emerges in a different way on each of these three levels and the phenomenon of oneself thus appears in various aspects. It is important to note, however, that the self-relationship is not carried out as an immediate positing in any of the three levels of predication. The designation of oneself, narration about oneself and the ethical self-relationship are not trivial relations because they are always actualized in a detour via an ontic difference. This difference relates the human self-relationship to various sorts of otherness. It concerns primarily a numerical otherness of a different individual, then an otherness of another person in interpersonal interaction, and finally the otherness of conscience which is related to the actor as a foreign voice of an ethical call, requiring that the given person be considered moral in the sense of being ‘accusable’. The human being is itself in such a way that it is always engaged in relationships, which remove it from its private stability, sameness, and unchangeability. Due to these ek-stasies, which remove it from itself, the human being contemplates itself as another among others, founding in this way a non-trivial meaning of a personal self-relationship. The human being exists and is itself in the temporal sense of the word only when, facing discord arising 9 Ibid., 301.



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from its permanently being pushed out of its sameness by a sphere of otherness, it seeks to build again and again concord with itself. The meaning of the expression ‘to be oneself  ’ therefore cannot be deduced from a permanent non-temporal core of a person. The expression ‘to be oneself  ’ gains its meaning in action which is a perpetual struggle between necessary and imminent discord, and between the will to understand concord and a proper coherence of meaning. Being oneself emerges in a dialectic way between instability, stable sameness and preserved ipse-identity. This dialectic proceeds only on the basis of the relationship of the human individual to various forms of (its own) otherness. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics thus develops in three lines that mutually support each other. There are three concrete ways, in which the question ‘who?’ is posed and to which the response is always the same ‘I myself  ’, that are articulated in these lines. Ricoeur asks: ‘Who speaks and acts?’, ‘Who narrates about himself ?’, ‘Who is the subject of accusation?’ These questions are always explicitly bound to a form of otherness and a form of language or speech. The description of the person who speaks and acts reveals the meaning of individualization. Narration about ‘oneself,’ in contrast, founds the meaning of identification and prescription. The one who is a moral subject determines the meaning of the notion of impeachableness. The description of individualization, narrativity of identification and prescription for impeachableness thus express three different ways in which being predicates ‘itself  ’. In this way, Ricoeur substantiates the necessity to study this phenomenon fragmentarily, with no ambition of accomplishing some final basis of oneself, which could have, for instance, the form of a further irreducible posited element. A danger of absolute dissociation from oneself in a number of individual perspectives is averted in advance—due to the assumption of a thematic unity (action) and the unity of the analogy of being oneself.10 Ricoeur’s hermeneutical conception of the human self, which enables him to articulate the phenomenon of the self in polysemy and to keep it in a thematic unity, is therefore primarily an anthropology that does not follow any other aims than the analysis of the ways of being of human existence from all sorts of perspectives. This conception is methodologically based mainly on the investigation of language structures, results of linguistic pragmatics, and rules of textual hermeneutics whose validity it

10 Ibid., 18.

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extends even to the interpretation of human action. Let us now sum up several important starting points of Ricoeur’s conception. Ricoeur tries to find, on the level of semantic and pragmatic analysis which is to permit a description of the process of individualization, “certain universals related to the functioning of language.”11 By disclosing these universals Ricoeur wishes to grasp more or less generally the way in which people linguistically describe their lived experience. He therefore commits himself to identifying a wide variety of linguistic expressions of experience, in order to discover in these manifestations a general structure of expression of the self. When an identification takes place on the level of narrativity, Ricoeur implicitly or explicitly turns to the method of hermeneutic theory. He draws on the following assumptions concerning the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted (the role of the interpreted does not have to be played necessarily by a text, but it can be, for instance, another human being). First, one assumes that the object of interpretation is meaningful. The interpreter enters the relationship with the interpreted with the anticipation that the interpreted carries some meaning, that it conveys something, that something can be understood out of it. Second, the interpreter has some sort of primary expectations of what the interpreted communicates concretely. This creates the positive starting point of the whole process of understanding: the interpreter presupposes that and what it will approximately understand. Third, the final objective of interpretation lies in an accord or agreement between the interpreted and the interpreter, which arises from the dialectics of asking and responding. This agreement is a sedimented meaning of a situation, not a meaning of some substantial objectivity. Fourth, this agreement, which is neither fixed nor definite and yet quite stable, can be attained. If an interpreter follows Ricoeur’s maxim “to know more so that we understand better”, that is, if he deepens his understanding, extending it on the basis of objective knowledge and enriching it with various perspectives, he can overcome, at least for some time, all misunderstanding which is present in the process of communication. Although the process of communication is infinite and even though there still emerge new questions and new discords within it, it is possible to reach relatively permanent new answers and new

11 Paul Ricoeur, Individu et identité personnelle [The Individual and Personal Identity], in: Sur l’individu [On the Individual] (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1987), 55. This article is an extract from his book Oneself as Another.



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agreements. Fifth, in the process of interpretation not only does one interpret the interpreted but one interprets the interpreter. The interpreter has to be open to its object of interpretation and prepare his own re-figuration so that the process of understanding reaches its goal. The possibility of re-figuration, however, is limited by a presupposition that the interpreter does not lose himself during the process of understanding. The encounter with the interpreted is not in principle destructive because it is led by a common intention to understand one another, to reach an agreement. Sixth, the hermeneutical process of understanding always concerns a whole that is composed of parts. The interpreter will find always already some unity, a whole—one complete text, one complete person, one life story that has a beginning and an end. An important characteristic of the interpreted object is therefore its wholeness and internal differentiation into elements that relate to each other and individually to the whole. The understanding of this object then proceeds in the hermeneutical circle when the meaning of a whole follows from the meaning of individual parts and the other way round. Seventh, the interpreted object includes in itself two levels—one presents quite a solid and for the purposes of understanding stable part, and the other level develops this fixed side in a singular way. The fixed level is a support for understanding. These are, in human life: objective biographical data, bodily existence, or social roles that define a person from a long-term perspective. The hermeneutical circling, within which a gradual negotiating of the meaning of the interpreted can take place, occurs again between a relatively fixed and a relatively singular part of the object of understanding. A necessary condition of the sedimentation of any sense and its positivity (meaning is not rejected; it does not express what the text does not say, but what it says) is essentially the presence of a solid level of the interpreted object. As for the possibility of moral accusation and the definition of a moral subject on the ethical level of predication, Ricoeur draws on the assumption that the human being first always already wishes to live rather than not to live; second, it wants to live in a consensus with other people within its own society. The starting point becomes the intention to live one’s own life, to exist in a social relationship that has the form of mutual brotherhood and to preserve personal relationships in the form of friendship. By means of the method that draws on these starting points, Ricoeur explains the unity of the human self, which is actualized as a numerical entity, as an actor and as a moral subject. Let us keep in mind that Ricoeur expresses his philosophical aim in terms of improving and developing an understanding towards agreement. Let us turn to the first aspect of

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predication about the human being, which is the designation of oneself and the process of individualization. Semantic Individualization In the first part of his investigation, Ricoeur deals with the theme of the human individual in the context of language analysis. He initially conducts a detailed study of the ways in which a person can be linguistically designated as an entity among other entities. Specifically, he wants to study the semantics of identifying reference and the practice of the way in which the subject designates itself in an enunciation. The designation of a person is not necessarily conditioned by the lived self-relationship of an individual. Ricoeur begins his analysis with the study of semantic ways in which any individual can voice an identifying reference, that is, to identify something or someone by means of language designation. Identifying reference is carried out by the operators of individualization that can be basically differentiated into three kinds. These are the defined determinations (for instance ‘the first man to walk on the Moon’), then the proper names (for instance ‘Socrates’), and finally the indicators (for instance ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘I’, ‘you’). These operators always designate a singular entity. In doing so, they nominally and numerically individualize the entity. By virtue of the identifying reference each entity is differentiated and separated distinctly from other entities. It is obvious that the individualization of some entity by means of an identifying reference can be made only on one important condition, namely, adherence to the primary and primordial conceptual classifiability of reality. By classifiability we mean that character of reality due to which everything that is real can be decomposed into a system of discreet entities that are strictly separate and that can therefore be unambiguously pointed at. The identity of such elements is given on the basis of positing their self-sameness and on the basis of the discernment of their difference from all other entities. The condition of individualization is thus a clear idea about what reality composed of entities means, or, in other words, what notions such as ‘one’, the ‘same’, ‘a something’, ‘entity’ express so that we are able later to point at this or that. General conceptual categories can gradually be created from the set of concrete entities. This categorization is performed by linking singular individual entities into conceptual classes according to some common



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characteristic feature. The second condition of the linguistic apprehension of reality is that it can be generalized into conceptual classes and broken up into a tree structure oriented from concrete entities to the highest merging point, which is reality as such. Ricoeur believes that all existing languages are related to a reality that has the above-described character (classifiability), and that all languages create a universal tree structure of ascending conceptual classification that ends with the most general determination.12 It is obvious that the idea of individualizing reference comes from assumptions similar to the objectivist approach that we identified in the first chapter of this book. For, operators of individualization are directed to concrete real or nominal substances that are strictly differentiated from each other. This fundamental starting point is preserved even though semantic analysis presupposes the existence of various possibilities of classifying reality and therefore various forms of the tree structure. Reality is not what it is but what is designated as existing. In other words, what is designated exists and it exists exactly in the way in which it is designated. Ricoeur talks about different levels of depth or niceties of distinction. Some language can, for instance, identify accurately all the different varieties of one plant while another language has only one expression for the given set of plants. Reality can therefore be individualized by concepts and concepts designate nominal substances. The concrete form of the tree structure is not universal; the only thing universal is that all languages grasp reality by means of the tree classification whose foundation is created by designating individual entities and whose top is represented by the totality of the real. The logical supplement and counterbalance to the semantic classification of reality is the substantial approach according to which entities are simply given. Their substance can be contemplated in reflecting consciousness. Only secondarily can these entities be designated by the concepts and language instruments of individualization. In this case, reality is that which is. In other words, that which exists can be designated and it is designated exactly as it exists. This complementary relationship between objective and nominal substance, between beings present-athand and conceptually construed reality expresses a basic difference, a mutual proximity of realism and nominalism. The proposition ‘what is designated exists’ by necessity presupposes the presence of something 12 Ricoeur Paul, Oneself as Another, 25.

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designable and therefore existing. Although one language is able, on the one hand, to distinguish several sorts of a plant that in another language is designated by only one concept, there is no doubt that both languages classify the same reality, only to different levels of depth or from different perspectives. Conversely, the proposition ‘that which exists is designated’ claims that all reality is conceptually designable, i.e., that it always already preserves in itself some aspect of designation. That means, in other words, that the way in which languages designate reality corresponds to the character of reality. Both approaches thus inseparably belong to each other, which can be instanced in how they share a common point of departure. This point of departure is firstly the assumption of the existence of one primordial reality. This reality maintains its identity and language signs refer to it. Secondly, it is the assumption of the same method (of thinking) which apprehends this reality. We presented the nature of reality and the character of the respective thinking of given approaches in more detail in the first chapter. We should bear in mind that the given reality consists of designable (thinkable) entities of a substantial character. These entities are identified and re-identified in their totality and in the immediate temporal moment by a contemplating and signifying thinking. This thinking, among others, strictly distinguishes that which is signified from the one who signifies. In his semantic analysis, Strawson demonstrates the counterbalance and supplement of semantics as substantial notions. Ultimately he arrives at the conclusion that there is need to define some basic aspects of language that would be universal and indivisible. He calls these basic elements basic particulars, naming only two kinds of these entities: these are bodies and persons. The basic particulars can be understood as conceptual atoms which are present in every language of the world. These atoms do not have any language explanation. They are simply posited and in this way they present universal concepts and the universal entity of reality in the strict sense of the word. As we have mentioned above, Strawson defines a person as: “the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics, a physical situation etc. are equally applicable to a single individual of that single type.”13 The author presents a required initial definition for the development of semantic analyses. However, the necessity of working with the concept of 13 P.F. Strawson, Individuals, An essay in descriptive Metaphysics, 101–102.



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entity, which simply gives itself without any further clarification, is obvious in this definition. The concept of person is on this condition universal and designates a posited entity. Here, on the level of basic definition, semantic analysis encounters the substantial notion. Ricoeur reveals this, focusing his criticism on the consequences that follow from this approach. One of them is that entities which are basic particulars have numerical identity exclusively. An individual designated semantically by means of individualizing reference is grasped as an entity that is one and not two or three, which is simply this entity and not any other. Otherness is performed here as a delimitation of one unit against other conceptual classes. Whether it is a real or nominal entity, it always keeps its character of a static substance distinguishable by rational thinking and designable by objective description. The being of this entity, as well as the way in which it is thought, cannot be proven, as Descartes already showed, but it can only be accepted as such. What is left then is only the assumption that the way in which entities are designated and named grasps them essentially. Ricoeur subsequently transfers his criticism to the question of the human being when he demonstrates that semantics, even though it defines bodies and persons separately, does not capture the fundamental difference between the human being and other entities. This difference lies, according to Ricoeur, in the way in which persons deal with the ability of self-relationship. On the level of semantics, a person differs from other bodies only because other predicates than bodily predicates are ascribed to it, namely psychological predicates. Semantics, however, in Ricoeur’s view, neglects the fact that a person is such an entity which itself ascribes predicates as well. It is exactly this activity of ascription by means of which a person designates itself. It would remain a body indiscernible from other bodies and that is, for Ricoeur, the biggest problem of semantics. Ricoeur offers the following proof: the definition of personal identity does not differ structurally from the definition of the identity of other entities: it always has the form of spatio-temporal permanence, which expresses the sameness and unity of the given entity. As we have seen, identity defined in this way depends on the ability of rational thinking to compare states of a certain entity and understand them as limit transitions of static moments of its unified and continual existence. There is thus concealed in the given definition the assumption of an existence of a thinking that is strictly separated from that which it designates.

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chapter three Pragmatic Individualization

Having offered a critique of semantics, Ricoeur turns to pragmatics and the theory of speech acts to obtain a more adequate answer to the question: ‘How does a person designate herself ?’ The author draws on the assumption that a person expresses herself as itself primarily in the situation of speech interaction (or interlocution) where she explicitly acts as the one who gives an utterance. The speech act thus refers to the one who performs this act and the way of human self-signification is reflected in this fact. A person in the interlocution is not only the one who speaks, but it is certain that it is I who speaks to ‘you’. Ricoeur refers to Austin’s claim according to which each pragmatic communication consists of statements that present two different kinds of acts. Statements have on the one hand a locutionary meaning of what is said and on the other an illocutionary meaning, which expresses that which is performed by the statement. The locutionary meaning of the utterance ‘I am ill’ is the content of the statement ‘I am ill’; the illocutionary meaning of this utterance consists in the act of the utterance itself ‘(I) am giving notice that I am ill’. There is explicitly expressed, in the illocutionary aspect of the statement, an I which gives notice. There is simultaneously present an I which is spoken about. Next to this self-manifestation of the speaking subject and designation of oneself as another, there emerges a ‘you’ to whom the statement is addressed: ‘(I) am giving notice to (you) that I (I as another) am ill’. “In short, utterance equals interlocution.”14 Ricoeur emphasizes that interlocution constitutes an elementary situation of the encounter of the acting and speaking I with otherness (alterité) which, in this case, takes the form of the human being with which an I communicates. On the one hand, a primary self-relationship is performed in the illocution, on the other hand, a duality between I and the other who has the character of ‘you’ emerges. This description of the basic interlocutionary situation, however, draws from another assumption, which is not voiced by Ricoeur explicitly. It is the assumption that participants of interlocution want to speak with each other, they have something to say to each other, and that the situation in which they find themselves makes some sense that is to be negotiated only via speech acts. The starting point from which we can, according to Ricoeur, begin to describe an I, which is not objectively self-same but 14 Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 44.



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which is characterized by the preservation of its selfhood, is primarily the situation of an encounter with the other who is characterized by an a priori will to communication and an assumption of a shared meaning of the situation (consensus). Ricoeur therefore does not choose for his exposition any neutral situation, but he draws on an experience, selected by himself, which he considers an immediate source of meaning and a foundation of all interlocutionary acts. This starting point corresponds obviously with hermeneutical presuppositions. Let us now turn to another question that Ricoeur poses himself in the context of interlocution—the question concerning the dual character of the subject of utterance. We have mentioned before that the subject of an utterance is present twice within illocution, that is, on the one hand as an object of an utterance and on the other as an utterer. The uttering I is present in the introductory sentence ‘I am giving notice that . . .’, ‘I promise that . . .’ and as such it cannot be subsumed under any category or classificatory kind. The indicator I is heterogeneous to the defined determinations in the same way as proper names are heterogeneous to other operators of identification. The I is not an object identifiable by some reference, because it designates always somebody else (a self in the first person). The characteristic of every utterance is therefore the fact that the I, and thus a person, appears in it in two separate forms: the person as a speaking subject and the person spoken about. For instance in the sentence ‘I am giving notice that I am tired’ the first I is the speaking subject and the second I is a person spoken about. These two determinations cannot be considered immediately as the same. C.S. Peirce names this distinction that is hard to overcome: he makes a distinction between the I as a token ( fr. échantillon), which is transferred according to the current situation of interlocution, and the I as a type ( fr. type) which designates a basic particular and therefore a concrete fixed entity.15 Wittgenstein describes in this context an analogical duality, when distinguishing the I as the privileged point of perspective on the world that is located on the ‘limit’ of the world, and in contrast to this, the I which is spoken about and which is a part of the world.16 This aporia brings us again to the substantial approach, which arrives at the same type of duality in the moment when thinking wants to grasp the human being as an entity. In 15 Compare C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, 5 vol., 1931–1935, vol. IV (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) 537. Quoted according to P. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 49. 16 Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969). Ricoeur quotes the French edition Le Cahier bleu et le Cahier brun (Paris: Gallimard, 1965) 66–67.

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the case of Cartesian rationality, the paradox takes place between the human being as a subject and a true man. His followers speak about the paradox of the perspective of the first and the third person, which concerns humans exclusively. This correspondence between a language analysis and a substantial notion, which is expressed by the emergence of the same kinds of aporias to which the given conceptions reach, confirms the idea that both work with a similar interpretation of the concept of being (reality) and thinking. From Individualization to Identification In an attempt to develop an integral conception of the human ‘self  ’, Ricoeur tries to resolve the already mentioned aporia, and bridge it by means of intermediary thinking. He believes that the gap between the speaking or acting subject and a person which is spoken about, or which can be described as a participant of action, can be linked by means of the idea of a conjunction (conjonction) of two aspects of language. Ricoeur calls this conjunction naming (appellation), taking this term over directly from Wittgenstein. Naming has for instance the form ‘I, John Smith’ (moi, John Smith). What is joined in this structure is the self-designation of the speaking person (I, moi) which is being spoken about (John Smith) by virtue of the symbol of conjunction in the form of a comma. This structure can also be found, according to Ricoeur, in the naming of time where the time of the lived experience merges with cosmological time: ‘now, the 7th of July 1904’; as well as the naming of space where the place of actual existence and the geometrical occurrence are joined: ‘here, in Prague’. In this way, the perspective of the first and the third person is merged in the utterance of an individual who is placed in a lived and, simultaneously, cosmological time and space. Regarding the fact that each individual, as a described objective entity, is characterized by sameness and therefore by the continual process of its existence in objective time and space, it has, according to Ricoeur, a unique origin of its own development. In this way, a complete structure of naming comes to being in the form of a triple juncture: ‘I, John Smith, currently existing here and now, born in Prague on the 30th of April 1876’. Naming therefore joins a situational determination that changes with time, with determinations of objective description that remain fixed and unique during the whole lifetime of an individual. Ricoeur holds that the aporia of the double I is in part already resolved by means of naming. It is only necessary to investigate the conditions



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of the possibility of this merging. Indeed, Ricoeur is convinced that “the assimilation of the person of identifying reference to the reflexive, token ‘I’ [is founded on] a more fundamental reality.”17 That is why it is necessary, according to Ricoeur, to find first of all this more primordial foundation from which the possible doubling of I can proceed. His investigation bears fruit in the end, but unfortunately at the expense of leaving the framework of thinking about language analysis and analytical philosophy. Ricoeur believes that the founding level, from which it is possible to understand one and the same person from two different perspectives, and its space and time in essential duality, can only be found by the phenomenological method. The anchoring phenomenon is, for Ricoeur, the absolute ineliminability of the lived body, which can seem as a body among bodies. The same double allegiance of the lived body founds the mixed structure of ‘I so and so’; as one body among others, it constitutes a fragment of the experience of the world; as mine, it shares the status of the I understood as the limiting reference point of the world. In other words, the body is at once a fact belonging to the world and the organ of a subject that does not belong to the objects of which it speaks. This strange constitution of the lived body extends from the subject of utterance to the very act of utterance.18

This ‘solution’ to the investigated aporia, however, appears quite problematic. What is it that Ricoeur really suggests? Having stated the divergence between two phenomena, that is, the speaking subject who watches the world from its limit point, and a person who is spoken about as an object of that world, Ricoeur wishes to resolve the given aporia of one I by means of a certain integral structure. The solution is realized in two steps: the first step is already made within the analytical thinking of language, the second takes place beyond this conception. Let us examine it now step by step. The first phase concerns the naming of the type ‘I, John Smith’. Ricoeur believes that it offers a juncture of two parallel lines of language designation. The naming of this type, nevertheless, does not unify the two Is, as Ricoeur would wish. For, naming has the hidden, more developed structure where it is apparent what is joined. It concerns the utterance: ‘I am telling (you) that I am John Smith’. What necessarily belongs to the

17 Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 54. 18 Ibid., 54–55.

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naming ‘I, John Smith’ is therefore the introductory statement of interlocution where another I of the utterance and another ‘you’ to which the utterance applies are manifested. When we voice the utterance in its full version, it is obvious that the naming fails to provide a unified positing of I which is speaking and which is at the same time spoken about. By adding an illocutionary sentence to the naming, the simple positing of I will fall apart. There are again two Is, which are not in any immediate mutual relation. Moreover, it is apparent that the sentence ‘I am telling you that I am John Smith’ is not an utterance that designates a particular in a unique, clear and unambiguous way. It is rather a statement that provokes soon afterwards questions of the kind: ‘What do you want to say by this? Why are you saying this? And who are you, John Smith, to me?’ Naming requires a context of interlocution without which it is not at all clear what the given statement about being ‘oneself  ’, John Smith, is to communicate. The referential designation ‘John Smith’, which designates a basic particular by means of a proper name is therefore neither a neutral identification nor an unambiguous one. Analogically, it is true about place and time as well: if an individual is designated by a determination of place and date of birth, he is designated neither in a neutral nor in an unambiguous and unique way. We believe, as opposed to Paul Ricoeur, that it is much more advantageous not to try to overcome the given aporia, but to accept its aporetic nature and find out what the given phenomenon conveys about human experience. We voice this belief based on the conclusions that we made when studying Descartes’ philosophy. It followed from the discrepancy between Descartes’ metaphysical works and the work The Passions of the Soul that a true man and the subject present two different substances that can be converted into each other or joined mutually if we want to keep the immediacy of experience and the criteria of objective rational thinking. Ricoeur, as we have seen, draws on the conviction that these ‘substances’ are two aspects of the same subject, because we always deal with the same I which is once lived, and once cognized. It seems, however, that Ricoeur neither proves this conviction nor attests it, but that he simply insists on it. This assertion can thus be considered only a phenomenological statement of evidence of a founding immediate experience from which it is necessary to develop another type of thinking, without questioning the experience. If, instead of asserting the sameness of the two Is, we retain the notion of the paradoxical divergence between experience and objective description, an interesting fact will emerge. This fact can be expressed by the



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claim that nobody is able to speak about oneself as about the same subject and designate oneself as an identical being. The speaking person never designates simply ‘itself  ’. It predicates ‘itself  ’, but it simultaneously moves ‘itself  ’ away from any ‘oneself  ’ by this predication. By predicating itself, the person denies itself to oneself. Speaking about one’s self, the speaker experiences that he is in some sense split and doubled. The intimate closeness to oneself, on which the human being often falls back as on an immediate givenness, is expressed in the predication always as a new shift of meaning, a new concept. The experience of predication is thus an alienation of the purported intimate closeness to oneself. The predicating person can ascribe to itself various figures which emerge in communication with the other, but it will never unambiguously designate itself by these figures. It is as if the figures and roles were not only some heterogeneous aspects of one and the same, various perspective determinations of the same being, but forms that are ‘always already’ moved away from its absent (past) source. The second step concerns Ricoeur’s conviction that the aporia will be definitely resolved if we step out of the system in which the given paradox was born. This philosophical step can express two different meanings. Either the stepping out of the conception presents a fundamental quitting of the primordial discursive field. ‘To step out of . . .’ then means to stop thinking in one way and start thinking differently. In this way, however, a scene of a differently structured thinking, which would have nothing to do with the one in which the primordial paradox emerged, would open and it would not be surprising that within the new thinking the aporia will not have to appear as an aporia at all. Yet, Ricoeur does not want to proceed in this way, because his intention is not to abandon analytical philosophy altogether. What would be another way to step out of the conception that contains the paradox mentioned? It seems, unfortunately, that the only possibility is to include this conception in a wider framework of thinking, and to understand it as part of a more complex philosophical system. Ricoeur accepts this solution, considering phenomenological thinking to be the ‘covering’ philosophy. He claims that the double phenomenon that emerges in the language structure is actually the one and only phenomenon of one’s own body, which displays two modes if we view it from the phenomenological perspective. The body is declared to be a basic support of selfhood, which includes in itself mainly its ‘own’ otherness.19 Ricoeur 19 Ibid., 326.

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thus understands the body as a carrier of otherness in the sense of ‘oneself as another’, which is at the same time intimately close and literally ‘own-ed’ by the experiencing I. However, what gets lost from his thinking, by this unification of all otherness via the idea of the body as ‘its own otherness’, is the possibility to think some other otherness than primarily the one that is its ‘own’ and therefore the same. The ontology of oneself, which Ricoeur develops later on the basis of these starting points, concerns only being in the sense of sameness in which the same and the other are joined. However, the human self, from such starting points, will not be faced with any ‘radical otherness’ because every otherness is ‘always already’ its own otherness. If Ricoeur claims that the same thing can be contemplated from two perspectives, it means that these two perspectives are related to one self-same ontological plane. It follows from this, according to Ricoeur, that hermeneutic-phenomenological philosophy founds both language analysis and analytical philosophy. Ricoeur thus reaches the integrity of the phenomenon of I at the cost of the dialectical inclusion of analytical thinking in phenomenology. This conclusion would be very convenient to Heidegger’s conception, but it clearly contradicts the intention that Ricoeur formulated at the beginning of his work. Another problematic point of this solution is that Ricoeur does not explain in any way the notion of one’s own body. He says: one’s own body (la chair) is a body to which I belong, which I own and yet which can be simultaneously viewed as a body among other bodies. What does this sentence claim? Who is the one who says ‘I’? Who owns the body? How is it possible that I understand that it is exactly this body, viewed among other bodies, which is mine? In what sense is one’s own body a body among bodies? Which thinking apprehends this evidence? The answer can only be phenomenological: this proposition expresses immediate evidence of certain human experience; the body as an object is a deficient aspect of my own body. The body as an object among objects is an idea of being present-at-hand, an idea that is grasped by theoretical rational thinking deduced, nevertheless, from the primordial understanding of my own body. It is therefore only Da-sein which understands the identity of its own body in two aspects: as its own possibility and as an objectifiable entity. The body is thus a secondary moment of the ontological structure of Da-sein. This answer is in some sense a ‘Heideggerian’ answer, but it is again in contradiction with Ricoeur’s original intention to bridge two independent conceptions without one being included in the other.



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We believe that it is more appropriate to think about what the given aporia says about the character of the human being and about thinking, than to seek its cancellation. This aporia, which ceases to be an aporia as soon as the basic scheme of the analytical conception of thinking is abandoned, demonstrates that the duality of the subject and object, or the body and soul or, respectively, the lived body and the body-idea, is symptomatic and even constitutive of analytical thinking. It is impossible to resolve this duality within the framework of the given thinking. That means that this duality characterizes a starting point that cannot be abandoned if thinking wants to preserve itself. What is important, however, is the moment when thinking exits the frame of analytical presuppositions, it will not be able to define any distinct psychosomatic unity that would be an expression of some unique entity. There is neither a soul nor a body—in separateness or unity—outside the Cartesian framework of thinking. That is why no psychosomatic entities will exist there. Beyond this framework other types of thinking develop, which articulate other entities and other aporetic dualities or pluralities. The notion of psychosomatic unity therefore cannot be thought, either because of the impossibility to unify in the given thinking that which cannot be unified, or because there is no such entity in the respective thinking. The attempt to include analytical thinking in phenomenology and prove the possibility of thinking a psychosomatic unity in phenomenology means to preserve the subject-object split in at least one of its multiple variations. We believe that the given aporia shows that the so-called various aspects, or determinations, of the same body, the same time, the same space or oneself are not aspects of the same but parts of the nonobjectifiable structure ‘something as something’. This structure is open, it does not unify the poles under one class of predication, and it does not express any phenomenon ‘in its completeness’. On the basis of this structure something appears as something else without necessarily being referred to some kind of invariant. One’s own body for instance manifests itself as a body-idea, body-idea as I, I as actor, actor as a lived body, actor as a person, body-idea as one’s own body, person as I and place, body-idea as another. Ricoeur, nevertheless, chooses another solution, which is the inclusion of the philosophy of language in phenomenology which, among other things, is at variance with his original stated intention to develop a dialectic between phenomenology and analytical philosophy. He turns fully

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to a phenomenological conception, finding there the immediate experience of one’s own body which can appear as a body among bodies. This experience, according to Ricoeur, explains other dualities of a similar kind (I, space, and time). By stating this conclusion Ricoeur leaves his analysis of language individualization with its provisional results, moving to another plane of articulation of the human self. It is the plane of the narrative identification of existence. Narrative Identification The question of narrative identification undoubtedly constitutes the core of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the human self. The author opens this theme at the moment he steps out of the sphere of the analytical philosophy of language, turning to phenomenological thinking. This change of the level of predication (and therefore the change of the conceptual configuration, which contains the concepts of thinking, being, time, human and inhuman entity) should allow Ricoeur access to a more adequate notion of the human being and of its self-relationship. Ricoeur believes that the main problem of the analytical conception of a person, which he needs to overcome, lies in the neglect of the temporal dimension in the description of the human being. Looking back, the greatest lacuna in our earlier studies most obviously concerns the temporal dimension of the self as well as of action as such.20

The analytical approach does not take into account, according to Ricoeur, the fact that a person exists in historical time within which the past, present and future are unified and during which the person changes. By neglecting the temporal dimension of the human being in predication, Ricoeur reduces not only one dimension of existence but the whole sphere of meaning, which is related to, among others, the question of personal identity. In order to retrieve this obvious error, he turns to narrative theory. Let us look at this argument more closely now. Ricoeur formulates his intention in such a way that it might seem that the previous analysis of self-designation completely excluded the theme of time from its description. Ricoeur believes that a person has to be ‘introduced into time’, so that 20 Ibid., 113.



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its description does not consist only of predications about static states. We should recall, however, that the theory of numerical identity cannot do without time, of course. Time, however, is constituted in a different way than as the continuous time of existence. By introducing continuous time Ricoeur does not add anything to the language analysis that could be missing there so far, but he substitutes one time for another. As soon as he takes this step, the primordial conceptual configuration of analytical philosophy is cancelled. It is not clear how he could make use of his previous results for further investigation at the level of phenomenology. The only solution lies in the idea that time—in the form of a sequence of non-dimensional moments—is a derivative mode of the time of existence, of its theoretical idea and peculiar form. In this way, Ricoeur again affirms his strategy, including all his previous analyses into the framework of phenomenology. That soon makes it impossible for him to aspire to the creation of the proclaimed third intermediary philosophy. This fact is confirmed implicitly by Ricoeur in the following statements: the practical field covered by narrative theory is greater than that covered by the semantics and pragmatics of action sentences and, on the other hand, that the actions organized into a narrative present features that can be developed thematically only within the framework of ethics. . . . the broadening of the practical field and the anticipation of ethical considerations are implied in the very structure of the act of narrating.21

This delimitation of the working field clearly illustrates that Ricoeur builds not a conception of fragmentary and analogical predicative heterogeneous aspects of the phenomenon of the self but a coherent, synthetic and integral theory. Oneself therefore represents an internally unified phenomenon that gradually reveals itself in various aspects, while these aspects—compounded together—form a consistent ‘unity in plurality’. The intermediary role of narrative theory appears, within the context of this idea, in a new way. For, within this conception emerges the notion of narrative identity of an individual which unifies two different conceptions of personal identity as two aspects of the same. Identity in the sense of numerical sameness (idem) and identity in the sense of selfhood (ipse) are inseparably joined in narrative identity through a dialectical relationship. As we have mentioned before, identity in the sense of sameness characterizes the human being as an individual representative of the human species. This identity is based on the idea of an invariant permanent 21 Ibid., 115.

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substrate which is recognizable in every instant of a human life as the same. Selfhood, on the other hand, does not refer to any such substrate. That is why it is necessary, according to Ricoeur, to introduce for the description of selfhood another “form of permanence in time that answers the question ‘Who am I’?”22 Let us note again that what is necessary for the description of selfhood is ‘permanence’ in another time than the one in which sameness is constituted. The notion of ‘permanence’ cannot be understood in these two times in the same way. It seems that we cannot even speak about a simple and general permanence (with its concrete forms) which can be thought in general time. This fact is, however, constantly overlooked by Ricoeur. The identity of the human being, Ricoeur believes, is based on the productive dialectic between sameness and selfhood. These two kinds of identity can be in some moments very close to each other, while in other cases radically distanced from each other. A typical example when sameness literally overlaps with selfhood, according to Ricoeur, is the human character. From the viewpoint of character, the permanence of the human being has in time the form of a continuous occurrence of a changeable ‘core’ of personality. An example of the reverse case, with selfhood distanced from sameness the most and its influence in the determination of personal identity significantly prevailing over the influence of sameness, is the phenomenon of a promise. Let us now turn to these two emblematic examples. Personal character is according to Ricoeur defined as “the set of distinctive marks which permit the re-identification of a human individual as being the same.”23 What character one has, is, according to Ricoeur, an unchangeable and involuntary thing; character thus functions as an objective expression of subjective existence. In other words, “character is truly the ‘what’ of the ‘who’.”24 Individuals do not have the ability to change this level of their own personality; their only possibility is to agree to their character and to consent to it (consentir). Character takes the form of fate. It influences human life regardless of whether one wants that. Identity that is founded by character is close to the definition of sameness: “character secures numerical

22 Ibid., 119. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 122.



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identity and qualitative identity, uninterrupted continuity and permanence in times which designate the sameness (mêmeté) of the person.”25 Ricoeur holds this view even though he ascribes to character a historical nature. For character is an accumulated customariness in the form of a disposition, which has already become in some sense permanent. At the beginning of the process of sedimentation, at whose end we find certain characteristic features of the person, which seem almost unchangeable, there was certainly a completely unexpected and new human expression. The second pole of personal identity is selfhood, which does not practically make use of the support of sameness. This pole is distinctly manifested in the phenomenon of a promise. According to Ricoeur, “keeping one’s word expresses a self-constancy.”26 Self-constancy (maintien, holding oneself in one’s hands, taking-over and self-keeping) is related, in Ricoeur’s terminology, to the concept of self-subsistence (Selbständigkeit), which Heidegger uses in Being and Time. However, Ricoeur does not hold that this self-subsistence has to be related necessarily in anticipatory resoluteness to the limit phenomenon that is death. Ricoeur holds that it is quite sufficient for selfhood to be upheld if the actor is ‘always ready’ to keep his promise, maintaining himself through a resolute attitude, in the ethical sense of the word. This self-subsistence is thus expressed in the following form of resoluteness: “. . . even if my desire were to change, even if I were to change my opinion or my inclination, ‘I will hold firm’ (‘je maintiendrai’).”27 Ricoeur claims that in the case of a promise, sameness ceases to coincide with ipseity (self-constancy, selfhood). The human ‘who’ remains without support of any ‘what’. Permanence in time has in this case the form of holding oneself in the continuous time of existence. Having explained the two limit aspects of personal identity, Ricoeur develops his argument further, claiming that “this new manner of opposing the sameness of character to the constancy of the self in promising opens an interval of sense which remains to be filled in.”28 There occurs in this interval a gradual prevalence of one aspect of identity over another, while it is necessary to demonstrate in what sense the continuity of this gradual prevalence can be preserved. Ricoeur’s intention is to interpret this interval between the sameness of character and the selfhood of

 

25 Ibid., 119. 26 Ibid., 123. 27 Ibid., 124. 28 Ibid.

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keeping a promise as a space of narrative identity. In this way, the author delimits his own field of investigation within which he shall search for an answer to the question of personal identity from the perspective of his phenomenological hermeneutics. Several objections could be raised against this exposition of individual components of personal identity and the suggested structuring of the working field. We would like to formulate them in the form of questions. First of all, it is necessary to ask how Ricoeur understands the concept of the person, before he examines personal identity. Secondly, we ought to consider to what extent Ricoeur’s notion of the sameness of a character corresponds with the meaning of the notion of sameness (idem, mêmeté) generally used in philosophical discourse. Finally, it is necessary to ask in more detail about the meaning of the term ‘self-constancy’ (maintien de soi), about its temporality and the way in which the selfhood (the selfconstancy) can be joined with sameness by means of thought. The first question concerns the concept of a person. Ricoeur understands this concept as a concept whose various aspects are answers to the question ‘Who am I?’ He responds to this question by revising the concept of the person as it is defined within a linguistic analysis. He does so from the perspective of a temporal dimension, and by means of a correction of the notion of selfhood, which is projected in Heidegger’s conception. It would almost follow from this, that Ricoeur really believes, that thinking shall come—by placing the basic particulars such as the ‘person’ into continuous time—close to the notion of Da-sein whose self is, as we already know, a response to the question ‘Who?’ Finding the connection between a basic particular and Da-sein is not a question of changing one parameter because these concepts draw on completely different conceptual configurations. Ricoeur, however, does not explicitly offer in his text any other answer to the question of who or what the person is. It is therefore necessary to have a look at the way in which he works with this concept implicitly, and to deduce from it his own notion of the given concept. We believe that Ricoeur, when discussing the concept of the person, actually refers to human existence in the sense of Da-sein. He diverges from the notion of existence developed in fundamental ontology only in his strong emphasis on the aspect of action in interpersonal situations. That determines Da-sein primarily as an actor. The definition of the notion of the person comes from a partial revision of the notion of the human being within fundamental ontology. This fact is, in our view, obvious from Ricoeur’s choice of emblematic examples of the limit forms of personal identity even though Ricoeur claims something else. He seeks to



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favour the equality of the objective approach to determining the notions of self and personal identity. Although Ricoeur speaks about the character as an objective pole of personality, which determines its sameness, we cannot to all intents and purposes speak about any sameness in this case. The notion of sameness (mêmeté) is introduced within the framework of rational thinking. If the character were to found human sameness, it would have to have the form of a substance that can be re-identified by contemplating thinking in repeated non-dimensional moments. The substance of character would have to be distinguishable from temporary qualities and from other representatives of the same class (one character and not two, a character with a defined origin, character as an independent entity). However, character does not illustrate such a nature. Character comes to existence by a stabilization and sedimentation of experience. It is the stabilized and specific attitudes of the human being to situations. Its temporality has the form of historicity and not a metaphysical sequence of moments. It is a moment of the structure of care that incessantly changes even if this change is quite slow after a certain phase of stabilization. Character is actualized only in connection to the world and in acts of a given actor in concrete situations. This moment co-participates in the self-constancy of existence, being an expression of ipse-identity. Ricoeur does not grasp real sameness by means of character but a mere imitation of personal ‘sameness’, something that seemingly reminds one of sameness from the perspective of human experience. The phenomenon of a promise should be, according to Ricoeur, in contrast to character, a manifestation of almost ‘pure’ selfhood in which the objective component of sameness is present only to a minimum extent. Ricoeur reinterprets the notion of selfhood itself that he takes over from Heidegger’s conception. He claims that the actor can preserve his selfhood without any necessary reference to his own mortality (finitude). This statement, however, reflects Ricoeur’s determination against an essential moment of Heidegger’s notion of self-subsistence (Selbständigkeit). Self-subsistence according to Heidegger is necessarily bound to the limit experience of anxiety, the call of conscience and the realization of one’s finitude. Only in a liminal situation—when Da-sein experiences that it cannot experience (it understands that it can absolutely misunderstand, that is, it has the possibility not to have any possibilities)— Da-sein receives the possibilities of the ownmost possible self-relationship in the sense of a take-over of the ontic-ontological difference. The essential moment is, for Heidegger, the adoption of an authentic attitude toward

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its own conditions of possibility. It makes no difference then how Da-sein acts in life concretely and how it exists on the ontic level. Ricoeur, on the contrary, refers to a purely ontic experience, when emphasizing the phenomenon of a promise from which he then founds the conception of selfhood. He believes that the limit experience of the possibility not to have any possibilities is not necessary for the constitution of selfhood, and that it suffices, for being oneself, only to keep one’s word. He therefore deduces resoluteness and the ownmost potentiality-of-being from a concrete human action. In contrast to Heidegger, who would admit that we do not have to keep our promise if the promise is not in the current situation an expression of personal resoluteness, for Ricoeur, the kept promise is the only guarantee of self-constancy and therefore of personal identity. For Heidegger, selfhood results from the attitude ready to decide even if the situation is totally indeterminate and even if it is not clear what concretely the individual is to do. For Ricoeur, the prescription is clear. The appeal of care, which calls Da-sein to reveal the ontological difference, is replaced with the ethical appeal to be responsible face to face with the other. A wholly concrete moral requirement follows from this appeal. For selfhood . . . the properly ethical justification of the promise suffices of itself, a justification which can be derived from the obligation to safeguard the institution of language and to respond to the trust that the other places in my faithfulness.29

If Ricoeur claims that an ethical relationship to the other and to oneself is a sufficient foundation for selfhood, he voices at least as strong requirement as Heidegger’s requirement of resoluteness. It should be noted that Ricoeur, thanks to his transfer from ontology to ethics, tries to reinterpret Heidegger from a position that is strongly influenced by the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas. In contrast to Levinas’ post-phenomenological conception, Ricoeur, however, develops his phenomenological-hermeneutic project from the notion of an ethical relationship, which is based primarily on the idea of the reciprocity and comparability of two actors which are on the same ontological level. These actors interact together in lived situations, caring about the accomplishment of harmony and mutual sense via communication. They are simultaneously comparable as ‘third persons’ within the framework of objectifying descriptions of their action. Levinas,

29 Ibid., 124.



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on the contrary, projects ethics from the experience of an epiphany of the face of the absolutely Other, which is inappropriable and irreducible to the level of the egoism of the actor (the Same). This asymmetric relationship does not lead to the attainment of shared sense and mutual unity, but to the pulling of the author out of his ‘own’ world (including everything which is his ‘own’ other). The essential characteristic of the relationship between the Same and the Other is, for Levinas, their mutual incommensurability. Although Ricoeur is to some extent inspired by Levinas, he nevertheless places the main focus of his conception on a reinterpretation of fundamental ontology. Returning to Ricoeur’s idea of a promise as a manifestation of selfhood, and raise one more objection, we feel that a promise during a person’s lifetime may develop into one of the classic features of human character. Keeping one’s word often is part of the cultural norm, which we have to get used to and understand as a social precept. In the scope of takingover of social morality and learning of its rules, people regularly get accustomed to the idea that promises ought to be fulfilled. It is not completely clear anymore, however, whether keeping one’s word presents a subsistent basis of selfhood, which does not rely on sameness. Does the actor really hold himself in his hands in the social promise? Is it not as well possible that the actor, by keeping the promise, maintains a sort of ‘proper’ role, perhaps even as a caricature or image that was foisted on him by the public ‘they’? A promise can be fulfilled to the same extent by one’s resoluteness, as well as by the fear of eternal vengeance, or simply by a custom that has the function of a rigid support of an unchangeable life order. For the same reason, it is impossible within the scope of Ricoeur’s conception for a human being who betrayed someone in a concrete situation to have any sort of selfhood. The way in which Ricoeur interprets a promise is therefore the first concrete proof of the fact that this author substitutes Heidegger’s ontological question with questions of ethical philosophy. Moreover, it is again confirmed in this sketch that Ricoeur does not look for a way in which to mediate between various ways of predicating the self. Instead, he focuses himself directly on the realm that completes human existence—and that is the realm of personal ethics. This is attested for instance by the following statement: “But is not a moment of self-dispossession essential to authentic selfhood?”30

30 Ibid., 138.

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Ricoeur speaks here explicitly about authentic selfhood, which he finds in the moment of extreme ethical giving of oneself to another human being. What follows from this is that his intention is to transform the structure of fundamental ontology into the structure of fundamental ethics, while presenting selfhood as an expression of authentic being oneself that completes the inauthentic way of being. We have to search for this inauthenticity again in the pole that is lost during the authentic completion of being oneself. This pole is Ricoeur’s originally advocated human sameness. Although Ricoeur insists on the inseparability of sameness and selfhood, he speaks in this sentence about authentic sameness only. He deals in detail neither with authentic identity, nor with authentic sameness and selfhood at the same time. Here he contradicts his own primordial intention to prove the fragmentariness of individual aspects of ‘the self  ’ that are combined only on the level of analogical unity. It follows from these objections that the interval, which Ricoeur wants to fulfil by means of narrative identity, is the interval between reinterpreted modes of inauthenticity and authenticity from Being and Time. In this case, these modes take the form of sedimented customary action and ethical situational action. What is at stake are not the poles—in which one of two essentially different sorts of identity predominate, always occurring in one of two essentially different sorts of temporality—but two ways of being of the same entity which is the acting Da-sein. Ricoeur pursues, without voicing this intention himself, a reinterpretation of selfhood in the sense, that he substitutes subsistence (Ständigkeit), which completes itself in self-subsistence (Selbständigkeit), with pseudo-sameness (of character). The pseudo-sameness is completed in a pseudo-individual ethical identity (promise). What Ricoeur, contrary to Heidegger, discloses by his project, is an interval located between inauthenticity and authenticity. This interval creates, according to Ricoeur, a gap that has to be filled in. The sphere of the possible third mode of existence is then interpreted by Ricoeur as a gap between authenticity and inauthenticity in which the two extreme poles continually interconnect. Ricoeur thus realizes that the transition between two modal ways of being is not immediate and that we have to speak about some internal boundary, which separates them. He perceives this internal limit sphere as a place of potentially threatening disintegration of the overall unity of modal ways of being, trying to avert this danger philosophically. That is why he seeks a way in which he can explain this limit in the sense of a continual transition of one pole to another. He finds the instrument that ensures this unifying character



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finally in narration. Narration is according to Ricoeur always able to transform the incoherent into the coherent. It can show each discordance as one that is bridged by a higher degree of agreement. As the intention is, from the beginning, to reconcile two modalities of one being and not to discover a connection of two heterogeneous spheres, it is a priori certain that narrativity will be able to prevail essentially in this task of a joiningup medium. The interval of sense that is to be filled in by narrative identity then probably expresses the form of the whole and essential ‘what for’ of a person. This ‘what for’ is no longer the concern of Da-sein about being, but an ability of narrative dialectically to interconnect sameness and selfhood, which takes place essentially in the relationship to another. The person thus has to be understood as a being that incessantly joins by narrative means two modalities of being (towards another). The essential composition of the person is such, however, that its modes of being are ‘always already’ unifiable, which is in accordance with Heidegger’s idea. The only difference lies in the interpretation of the moment designated in the second chapter as the turning point of experience from which Da-sein returns into the hermeneutical circle of (self ) understanding. This moment is always an experience of founding and of immediate evidence in which the character of experiencing as such is revealed. Heidegger’s conception of the contemplation of the ontic-ontological difference in the moment of anxiety is, for Ricoeur, substituted by the ethical relationship to another that presents a potential disturbance of the unity of private sameness and selfhood. As the realm of ethics is an ontic matter, as opposed to an ontological phenomenon, which is an a priori guarantee of the unity and totality of the essential structure of Da-sein, Ricoeur needs to address the question of totality in a different way. The danger of self-loss is even more apparent here than in Heidegger’s case because there is a need to negotiate the private totality and unity continually in interaction with others and to construe it dialectically by means of narrated stories. Being is Action: Hierarchical Structuralization of Human Ontology Ricoeur ends his introductory analysis of the question of personal identity with the preliminary delimitation of his field of work. It is exigent, as he says, to leave the defensive strategy of explanation and turn to the construction of a positive sense of narrative identity. The main objective now

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becomes “to carry to a higher level the dialectic of sameness and selfhood implicitly contained in the notion of narrative identity.”31 It should be borne in mind that Ricoeur builds his conception in principle on the starting points of fundamental ontology, focusing mainly on its internal reinterpretation. The result of his efforts therefore cannot be a mediation between analytical philosophy and fundamental ontology, but a revision of several thought-structures of Heidegger’s philosophy in the light of other philosophical impulses. What Ricoeur reinterprets first is the notion of the human being whose essential characteristic is explained on the basis of action (active functioning) and endurance (suffering, passive action). To be a person means to act (actively or passively). Ricoeur refers at this point to Hannah Arendt who approaches in a new way the question asked in Being and Time, that is, the question ‘Who is Da-sein?’. Ricoeur responds to this question, in accordance with Arendt, by the terms ‘acting who’ or ‘the who of action.’32 The interpretation of human being as action leads Ricoeur to a dynamic conception of the person in the sense of acting-and-suffering-in-the-world. The individual exists in the world only in the event of action, that is, in concert with 1) that which is concerned, 2) who acts, 3) with whom one acts, and 4) with action itself. To understand Ricoeur’s conception of being as action, however, we need to deal in more detail with Ricoeur’s interpretation of the notion of action. We shall try to reconstruct the way this notion is interpreted from Ricoeur’s implicit and explicit statements both from the work Oneself as Another and from the article Individu et identité personnelle33 where Ricoeur sums up his conception of narrative identity. The first characteristic feature of the concept of action is its inner differentiation. Ricoeur refers to Hannah Arendt at this point who distinguishes three aspects in which the concept of action is used. It is, in the first place, action in its common meaning, that is, as work, whose task is to ‘remake and dominate nature’. In the second place, it concerns action in the sense of a labour that ‘leaves behind cultural sights’. Finally, we can speak about action in the true sense of the word—action that “maintains and preserves itself.”34 In the first two cases action produces such results, which can be differentiated from action itself. We can therefore say what the human being 31  Ibid., 140. 32 Ricoeur, Individu et identité personnelle, 65. 33 Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 57–72. 34 Ibid., 69.



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creates by the given action. In contrast to this, the third meaning of this concept concerns such action that does not produce anything outside its own framework. According to Arendt and Ricoeur, this action is pure actuality, which consumes itself by actualizing itself. As we deal here with action ‘in the true sense of the word’, both authors are concerned with the question in what way this kind of action can be ‘saved’ from a merciless falling prey into the inactive past. The only possible way to secure that ‘action in the true sense of the word’ is not, when it is actualized, lost for the human being, is to remember it and to preserve it in the form of a ‘narrative which is created about it’. Only in this way can “that which is memorable be disentangled as much as possible from the inexorable oblivion.”35 How is this project related to the ontology of the human being and to the way in which the being of the human being can be disclosed? Let us first point out that Ricoeur in his notion of being as action reinterprets Heidegger’s crucial statement about the fact that Da-sein always already understands (its own) being. Ricoeur claims in an implicit paraphrase that the human being is always already able to narrate a story about its action. Ricoeur therefore posits the understanding of being in the place of the ability to narrate a story about action. Regarding how narration is one of the forms of actions—by which any other form of action can be captured—narration becomes a priority type of action. Narration can talk about any sort of action including itself. Due to this, narration presents a hermeneutical tool that is applied to itself and simultaneously to every­ thing that essentially determines the human being. By means of narration, a person comes back to itself, thus founding its essential character. Narration can be understood, for this reason, as such thinking which apprehends the being of the human existence, which has the character of action. The actor understands himself in narration and thus becomes an actor. It is also true, however, that the actor not only is his narration, but also reveals and performs in narration truly himself, that is, his identity. It is because the actor narrates that he creates from action his own action, identifying himself in this way. “It therefore appertains to narration to predicate the identity of the who.”36 The second distinguishing feature of action is the concrete way of its structuring within the practical life of an individual. Owing to how narration as a significant action apprehends any form of action, the structuring

35 Ricoeur, Individu et identité personnelle, 69. 36 Ibid.

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of action is similar to the structuring of narration about this action. Aristotle mentions this correspondence between the structure of action and the structure of narration, according to Ricoeur. Aristotle defines action, in the Poetics, as a totality of such contingent events and facts, which conform to a narrative configuration, saying that . . . the most important of them [parts of tragedy] is the combination of the incidents of the story; because tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of actions and life, of happiness and misery; all human happiness and misery takes the form of action.37

Ricoeur, referring to this idea, demonstrates in the first step how exactly the elementary and compound units of action are configured into an overall coherent structure. He projects such a structure, which is composed of three basic horizontal levels which are vertically interconnected on the basis of one referential principle. In this way, a tree structure emerges on whose bottom level elementary units of action are located. On the upper level, the units become composite and more general. When construing this structure, it is necessary to begin with a definition of the elementary items of action, that is, atoms that are placed in the lowest part of the tree structure. Here, Ricoeur refers to Arthur Danto who defines such units and who calls them basic actions:38 [It concerns] actions that we know how to perform and that we do indeed perform without first having to do something else in order to be able to do what we do; these are, broadly speaking, gestures, postures, elementary corporeal actions that, to be sure, we learn to coordinate and master, but basics of which we do not really learn.39

The lowest and most basic level of action is according to Ricoeur composed of these basic actions. An important quality of these actions is their discrete positing. Every basic action is defined without reference to other basic actions; it is completely non-intentional because it does not feature any reference of the kind ‘what for’. The actor performs basic actions without performing them for a purpose. In contrast to basic actions, all other elements of action are necessarily intentional, that is, the structure ‘what for’ belongs to them. The second 37 Aristotle, Poetics, translated by Stephen Halliwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010) VI, 1450a 7, 15–19. Following the French translation La Poétique. Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1980. 38 Arthur Danto, Basic Actions (American Philosophical Quarterly, No. 2, 1965), 141–143. 39 Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 153.



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level that is located beyond the basic actions consists of practices (les pratiques). Practical actions are chains of basic actions that are compiled in such a way so as to create a unit of a higher order. These are for instance various skills (digging, slicing, talking), games (chess, tennis, dance) and crafts (iron forging, embroidery, carving). Apart from the fact that every practical activity has the structure of a chain of elementary actions, individual practices are organized together into second-order units: “The work of a farmer, for instance, includes subordinate actions, such as plowing, planting, harvesting, and so on in descending order, until one reaches basic actions such as pulling and pushing.”40 Each segment of action always has a meaning in the context of relationships to other activities of the same level. Moreover, practical activities are related, on the basis of the reference ‘what for’, to a superior and generalizing activity. The meaning of individual activities is given on the basis of the so-called constitutive rule that determines what is to be considered as what. In other words, this rule interprets something (an individual action) as something (a meaning). the unit of configuration constitutive of a practice is based upon . . . a constitutive rule . . . that is, those precepts whose sole function is to rule that, for instance, a given gesture of shifting the position of a pawn on the chessboard ‘counts as’ a move in a game of chess.41

The constitutive rule thus defines the meaning of such an activity that could be interpreted in various ways. This rule is important regarding the social context in which the given action is performed (raising one’s arm can have, depending on the situation, the meaning of voting, reporting, waving ‘hello’, asking someone to stop, etc.). Another level that is located beyond the level of practices is the level of the so-called life plans or projects: “We shall term ‘life plans’ those vast practical units that make up professional life, family life, leisure time, and so forth.”42 The concrete enumeration of the levels of human action ends with the description of life plans. Particular elements of the structure are compiled on the basis of the logic of a linear chain of actions that are necessary for the accomplishment of the intended goal. These elements carry their meaning according to constitutive rules, being interconnected by the reference ‘what for’. The meanings of lower activities and the meanings of 40 Ibid., 154. 41    Ibid. 42 Ibid., 157.

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superior activities illuminate one another according to the hermeneutical rule of a part and a whole (for instance, to write a letter means to take a paper, grab a pencil, record one’s thoughts on the paper, and simultaneously to take a paper, grab a pencil, and record one’s thoughts on the paper, means to write a letter). A coherent tree structure of human activities thus comes into being. This structure of human action, organized by virtue of a constitutive rule ‘something as something’ and the reference ‘what for’, shows a clear similarity with the structure of total relevance of beings-at-hand as projected by Heidegger in Being and Time. Heidegger for instance says that beings-at-hand are understood by virtue of the structure ‘something as something’ and that their structuring into the total relevance proceeds on account of the reference ‘what for’. The whole structure finally refers to a primary ‘what for’ which is that Da-sein ‘cares about its being’. Ricoeur reinterprets Heidegger’s structure of beings-at-hand, replacing the entities of this structure with elements of the same type as human actions. This shift is, in our view, highly beneficial. By understanding being-in-the-world as the being of activities and incidents of actions, Ricoeur creates a space for the notion of the world that does not consist only of beings-at-hand, or beings objectively present. The world ceases to appear in Ricoeur’s interpretation as a realm split into two realms that consist, on the one hand, of the possibilities of Da-sein which are, on the other hand, beings that are fundamentally different from Da-sein itself. If Ricoeur speaks about the world from the perspective of acting in the world, what belongs to it inseparably are affairs (matters) that emerge during the action of an actor in interaction with others. These ‘things’ are characterized by how they urge the actor; they are real by virtue of the intensity of their actuation without having any substantial foundation. It suffices, for actualization of a matter, that certain conditions in the form of potencies are created which will then create in mutual concert a sufficiently intense field for the development of a given ‘thing’. Regarding the fact that speech, for instance, is one of the forms of action, the utterance itself has an essential ability to actuate; it makes use of a power, a potency, which together with other potencies can bring forth an affair. To take over Ricoeur’s example, to promise means to create an affair that does not have any material and ‘at-hand’ nature. A promise cannot be transformed, by means of a change of perspective, to any being present at hand. Yet, a promise is ‘something’ that we are concerned about and which has to be understood as real.



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Ricoeur significantly extends the sphere of ‘affairs’ of the world by not speaking about beings-at-hand but about activities. A person, in Ricoeur’s interpretation, is not situated only at things of the sort of beings-at-hand, which belong to the realm of works and labour, that is, to the first two aspects of action according to the explanation of Hannah Arendt. The human being can abide in matters that are matters of action in the true sense of the word, that is, such action that maintains and consumes itself. Affairs therefore are not only objects, artefacts, instruments, but also everything that ‘is at stake’, be it in the sphere of inter-human communication, in imagination, or in emotional experiencing. An affair (matter) is anything that has a value or intensity for a person, and which is real in the sense that it can ‘move’ the person into action. Although Ricoeur does not develop this idea himself, we believe that he offers in his conception the possibility to understand the world as a world of affairs that have the structure ‘something as something’ without any objective pole. What is made possible in his conception is to understand the human being as an actor whose structure ‘someone as someone’ does not have an objective pole either. Matters and actors coexist within a kind of potentiality-of-being in which neither a singular actor nor an interpreter of meaning can be determined, but where every movement (change of meaning) changes the whole structure of the respective potentialityof-being. Neither the actor nor the matter can exist separately. Their conditions of possibility consist in other matters and roles (figures) of action. That is the reason why these conditions and their actualized possibilities have to be in an intense mutual relationship. Returning to the example of promise, we can say that the actor who pronounced the promise and the person to whom the promise was addressed present the conditions of possibility of the origination of an affair—the promise. Combined with the person who accepted the promise, the respective promise determines the conditions for the existence of an actor as the promising one, who is expected to fulfil the promise. The promise, together with this person who gave the promise, creates the conditions of possibility of existence of another person as the person who relies on the promise. The disadvantage of Ricoeur’s project of the world of affairs (activities) and human figures (roles) lies in the fact, that the author does not make use of it for a more profound study of the thing-ness of human activities. For, Ricoeur pursues another aim—he wants to project such a structure of action that would correspond with the coherent and unified structure of narrative statements about life. Ricoeur’s objective is to merge, by means

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of narrative theory and dialectics of a higher order, all ambiguity of the human self. That is why he is focused on the disclosure of the primary and highest ‘what for’ of the hierarchical tree structure of action, which founds the primary ‘why’ of the being of human existence, instead of focusing on the investigation of structures of potentiality-of-being. This primary ‘why’ is to play the role of a direct idea of all action, basic actions, practical acts and life plans, that is, the entire manifestation of a human being. Ricoeur defined this leading idea as “aiming at the ‘good life’ with and for others, in just institutions.”43 The proof that this first and determining intention appears in all human action and directs individual acts in all circumstances is supplied by the fact that no action is ethically neutral. Each single action can be evaluated as more or less beneficial, which means that each action has some ethical value. In order to act ethically, there is no need to purposefully choose an option, because the human being always already makes a choice (always already evaluates action). Every individual, as Ricoeur says, wants to live a good life with the other and for the other; every human being has some experience with moral institutions shared with other people. In other words, the hierarchical tree structure of human action is at the same time a hierarchy of values that are articulated in the motives of the sort ‘what for’. The ‘what for’ a person does something, is always some form of the good. A person creates its life plans in order to live a good life. Ricoeur’s conception, with this emphasis on the permanent presence of an ethical aspect in human action that defines the ‘authenticity’ of human existence, significantly differs from Heidegger’s notion. In Heidegger’s case we find, at the top of the referential ‘what for’ structure, the ontological determination of Da-sein that ’cares about (its) being’. A relationship to this first ‘why’ can be, according to Heidegger, performed in two modes. If the human being does not explicitly take over this first determination, it exists inauthentically in the referential structure. Such Da-sein lives according to what people say and do. However, as soon as it is revealed to Da-sein in an extreme experience that it is here to exist, and as soon as Da-sein explicitly accepts this fact of its own openness, its existence changes into authentic existence. The structure of references concerning meaning and reasons do not change during a modal transformation. What is changed is only the attitude to this structure. Authentic Da-sein

43 Ibid., 172.



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understands the structure of total relevance as open and indeterminate. It approaches it primarily from the point of view of its future possibilities. There is no such possibility of a dual attitude to the same reality in Ricoeur’s conception. Ricoeur does not introduce the difference between the forgetting of being, and the take-over of the essential structure, for two reasons. First, the duality between authenticity and inauthenticity is not in Ricoeur’s case transferred into a duality of attitudes (forgetting, takingover) towards the first ‘what for’. Instead, it is understood as a duality of poles in which both aspects are always present simultaneously. The difference between these two poles is given only by a prevalence of one aspect over the other. Authenticity, in the sense of authentic selfhood, is understood as a liminal ethical surrendering of oneself to another, which is simultaneously a self-affirmation (via reciprocity, as will be seen later). This way of being draws on the ability of keeping one’s word; for, it does not find support in sameness even though the sameness of the human being is necessarily present in it to a minimum extent. Inauthenticity, in the sense of inauthentic identity, is a moment when sameness almost coincides with an ethical selfhood and when the human being acts according to customary roles and patterns. However, a pure sameness only is not present in this case either. The first ‘what for’ that is in principle ethical thus accompanies all human action, including the way of being. In contrast to Heidegger who claims that the human being has to choose a choice in order to become authentically resolute and itself in the ownmost sense of the word, Ricoeur claims that the actor always already made this choice by always already ‘making a promise’. In other words, the actor is in his action always already ethical and therefore to some extent authentic. For this reason he is always already aware of his own essential structure that he fulfils in action. A transition from the inauthenticity of sameness (character) to the authenticity of ethical selfhood (promise) is a question of a mere measure. We cannot talk, for this reason, about a duality of two attitudes, but about an interval with defined limit points whose continuity, that is, a continual transition from the prevalence of sameness to the prevalence of selfhood, is secured by narration. The second reason for the different understanding of the referential structure of total relevance between Heidegger and Ricoeur is their different interpretation of the human self-relationship. Heidegger’s conception of self-relationship is based on an internal ontological difference of Da-sein. Da-sein relates to itself via understanding being, which it—as a being—

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never is, but which it at the same time recognizes as its ‘own’, in relating to its ontological situation. Maintaining oneself as an impassable difference is permitted by the essential mineness ( Jemeinigkeit) of Da-sein. Ricoeur, on the contrary, situates the self-relationship at the ontic and practical level. An individual, in his view, returns to itself by way of an encounter with another human being. The relationship of ontological difference is replaced here with a relationship of ontic difference between oneself and another (here one may see the influence on Ricoeur of Emmanuel Levinas). An existential of understanding that preserves the ontic-ontological difference in its unity is substituted, in Ricoeur’s conception, by communication and a possibility to narrate about communication and action. The analogy of making a choice, that is the giving of a promise, is an element that is present in any inter-human relationship because this relationship is always already ethical to begin with. This means that the relationship to another human being oscillates on a scale between an ethical relation covered almost perfectly by functional relations of customary action and a completely singular ethical encounter with another human being. The otherness of being is replaced here with the otherness of another. However, the otherness of another is always revealed in the sphere of ethics, which is based in the assumption of an essential and irrevocable proximity to those who deal and communicate with one another. Let us repeat that despite their thematic similarity, Ricoeur’s position significantly differs from Levinas’ position here. Narrative Identity Ricoeur poses, in the next part of his investigation, a question concerning the mutual relationship between the structure of action and the structure of narration. We already know that the structure of action is linked in such a way that the meaning of global activities elucidates the meaning of partial actions and vice versa. The meaning of human actions is therefore determined within a hermeneutical circle between the whole and the parts. We know that the final justification of the whole structure lies in the intention to live a good life with another and for another in proper institutions. This leading idea unifies the given structure, giving it the coherence of a unified whole of one human life. The above-mentioned qualities significantly co-relate, as Ricoeur shows, with the universal structure of every narration. Action therefore, according to the author, is naturally composed into just such a structure, which



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creates a suitable foundation for the construction of the narrative unity of life: The practical field then appears to be subjected to a twofold principle of determination by which it resembles the hermeneutical comprehension of a text through the exchange between the whole and the part. Nothing is more propitious for narrative configuration than this play of double determination.44

Other similarities between human life and a text can be summed up in the following way: the life of the actor as well as of a text is a certain unity, a whole. Furthermore, this life consists, analogically to a text, of clearly defined parts that create unities of a lower order. We can reasonably assume that a life as well as a text has one global meaning which emerges from partial meanings of his individual components and which has to be interpreted and not grasped by cognition. Ricoeur, of course, mentions several possible objections against the creation of an analogy between a literary text and life. These are primarily: 1) the fact that if a life is lived, it is not completed; the nature of its narrative unity can therefore be questioned, 2) the issue of the authorship of a life is in contrast to an authorship of the text, in being always necessarily a co-authorship. Ricoeur accepts these objections and deals with them in brief.45 The narrative unity of life is not, according to Ricoeur, obviously unambiguous and fixed, but it is undoubtedly always relatively stable. The human being always needs to make its life fixed, organizing it by means of narration, even though it knows that every such narration is provisional. There are, however, always-present partial beginnings in this dynamism, because life stages begin and get completed. Literature helps the actor to apprehend these provisional beginnings and ends. Concerning the second objection, the authorship of life is certainly always necessarily a co-authorship. A text, however, comes into being in a similar way, within the context of influences from many persons. Narration itself is a section cut out from a branched scheme of stories of various heroes. For these reasons, action that is embedded in human life is an object of hermeneutical interpretation, and can be approached analogously as a text. If there is an unintelligible moment in action, it has to be resolved by means of comprehending a higher order that can be acquired from the context in which the action is performed. Only in this way can we gradually 44 Ibid., 158. 45 Ibid., 158 ff. Debate with MacIntyre.

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reach a disclosure of the global meaning of the totality of human life. That is why Ricoeur believes that all sorts of senselessness, discordance or discontinuity of meaning within the framework of action can be considered a mere incident (plot) of a story. Within the narration about human life, the incident has the function of joining one section of the story of life of a given person with another, even though their logical interconnectedness is not obvious. For this reason, the incident plays in a story an absolutely essential role; it is an instrument that enables one to create a continuity of narration and therefore a human life under unexpectedly complex circumstances. The decisive feature that connects a human life with a text is that both are in a sense materially fixed, having a solid basis. The fact that the meaning is anchored in a certain form of material substrate is essential for the interpretation of a text and a life. For, the anchoring makes it possible for action and text to have fixed boundaries and therefore to be delimited in the crudest sense of the word as unities or totalities. Next to this function, the solid component of a life and a text prevents the meaning from being arbitrarily manipulated. In this way, it again averts the crudest misinterpretation. This solid component of the text is its material storing, a record, to which the grammatical structure of language is added. A prerequisite for a text to qualify as a text is that it is written down somewhere, and that it fulfils grammatical rules of an actual world language. The grammatical meaning of the text is then a basic negative determination of an interpretative field, which is impassable if the interpreter is to avoid misinterpretation. It holds, on the other hand, that one can provide, within this delimited interpretative field, a psychological interpretation that apprehends meaning that is singular and ungraspable by simple language analysis. In the case of human action, Ricoeur searches for a similar fixed component that would be a necessary condition for a possible narration about the action. Finally, it comes down to the phenomenon of one’s own body as the anchorage of human being as action. We know that Ricoeur mentioned this phenomenon in his works earlier, but in quite a different context—that of the language analysis of the ways in which a person designates itself. In what sense does he return to this phenomenon now? According to Ricoeur, one’s own body represents a place where sameness and selfhood dynamically interconnect. For this reason it can be considered a seat of personal identity. One’s own body is “invariant, our corporeal condition experienced as the existential mediation between the



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self and the world.”46 Because one’s own body is an invariant mediator between the human being and the world, it is not only a basis of human being and action, but it determines the way in which the world can reveal itself and give itself to the human being. The question is, however, what exactly one’s own body (chair) is and by means of what we disclose its nature. Ricoeur says about the body that it is a substrate of selfhood that includes one’s ‘own’ otherness.47 The relationship between the human being and the world is therefore projected in the idea of the invariant body as a relationship between sameness and one’s own otherness, in other words as a same sameness and otherness. The world is essentially given as a properly corporeally inhabited world and the human being encounters in its experience exclusively its own otherness. Ricoeur, however, does not explain how it follows that the body has the form of a basis of one’s own otherness. The idea of one’s own body is an unquestioned starting point par excellence that is supplemented with another condition of the fixation of human action: “. . . this feature defines the terrestrial condition as such and gives to the Earth the existential signification.”48 On the condition that the actor has his own body, using it to relate to the Earth and everything connected with it, we can say that it exists, that is, that it actuates and receives actuation in the world inhabited by individuals of the same kind. As existing, the actor is the one who actualized his being and the meaning of his being. As soon as the terrestrial condition and the condition of one’s own body is cancelled, it is not possible to articulate in any sense of the word a personal human life, let alone, Ricoeur says, the personal identity of the actor. All thought experiments that are performed by analytical philosophers and that deal with the issues of exchanging human bodies (brains), the doubling of persons, and their existence on other planets, do not concern human life and personal identity. What is at stake is a mere survival of the human organism. Ricoeur insists in his conception that only terrestrial beings with a proper body can be asked about personal identity. Ricoeur therefore anchors the indivisible unity of two aspects of personal identity, that is, sameness and selfhood, for the second time. He has already explained how there is on the top of the tree structure an ethical intention of every action

46 Ibid., 150. 47 Ibid., 337. 48 Ibid., 150.

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that secures that every human action is always already ethical and that sameness never emerges without selfhood. The second condition holds that every human action is corporeal and terrestrial and that selfhood will never do without the sameness of a proper corporeal substrate. We can talk—within these boundaries—about a scale of various types of actions and about different degrees of selfhood and sameness in human action. The formulation of these anchoring conditions, nevertheless, proves again that Ricoeur only states the fragmentary nature of human existence and its self, but that he does not actually deal with it. Thus, what occurs between the corporeality and ethics, that is, between universal stability and universal singularity, is a type of action whose structure is narratable. The actor is apprehended in narration as a character of a story. By telling the story about his own action, the actor transforms himself, assigning himself the role of a character in the story. If action can be configured into a story, the actor has to be configurable into a character about whom the story talks. The character of the story has a specific identity, which is a narrative identity. It follows from this, that personal identity, which oscillates between the limit points of prevailing sameness (character) and prevailing selfhood (promise), is configurable into a narrative identity that expresses this personal identity. Ricoeur documents this oscillation between the prevailing sameness and the prevailing selfhood by discussing various sorts of characters from literary stories. He moves his analogy between the literary story and the story of human life to another theme. He begins to speak of an analogy between literary characters of which literary stories are narrated, and living actors who live coherent lives. Literary characters show various degrees of ‘stability and foreseeability’ just as living actors do. According to Ricoeur, in some works we may encounter almost exclusively characters in whose determination the element of sameness prevails. These are in short ‘characters’: story-tale archetypal beings, romantic heroes, model actors, characters as paradigms and idols. Description of these characters is distinct, as it is repeated across various stories. It is based on an enumeration of significant and unchangeable features whose nature does not change during the story. The action of ‘characters’ in the stories is predictable. In contrast to these works, there are characters, according to Ricoeur, in other (mainly modern) literary works whose identity is very close to simple selfhood. Modern literature is, for Ricoeur, a source of examples of such texts in which there are characters with no stable support, no permanent character and unchangeable characteristics (an example is Man without Qualities). These characters manifest the human self in “the



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nakedness of the question ‘who am I’?”,49 and they even experience the “dramatic disintegration of identity”.50 Ricoeur is convinced that even though a person of this sort is a true non-subject, it is “a figure of a subject”.51 Ricoeur says: The self refigured here by the narrative is in reality confronted with the hypothesis of its own nothingness. . . . The sentence ‘I am nothing’ must keep its paradoxical form: ‘nothing’ would mean nothing at all if ‘nothing’ were not in fact attributed to an I.52

Even in narrativity about human action, Ricoeur identifies more irrefutable proof of the continuity and permanence of the human self. Even if someone designates himself in narration as nothing, it is important that he designates by this nothing continuously and exactly himself. Narration makes a ‘re-figuration’ of the self, transforming a person into a character. It construes personal identity as narrative identity, without changing essentially the basic character of human existence. Ricoeur implicitly assumes that even though narration changes the person, it reflects and leaves unchanged its essential feature of the self. Narration is therefore not an instrument of a construction of the self, or of personal identity, but of a way of their articulation. Similarly, narration reflects all the mentioned necessary conditions of existence of the human being, which are earthliness, corporeality, and the ethical aspect of human action. Ricoeur is convinced that literary texts deal with human beings, if and only if they meet these conditions. Such texts concern “utterers in flesh and blood”53 who have “their own experience of the world, their irreplaceable perspective on the world.”54 Such are “characters in plays and novels [which are] humans like us.”55 The literary genre of science fiction is, on the contrary, an example of such a sort of text in which the basic conditions of narrativization of the human life are often violated. Due to this, characters of these stories are fatally dehumanized. Ricoeur ends his inquiry about narrative identity with this rather strict explanation of the possibilities and boundaries of the literary apprehension of human essence and of identity. It seems that this theory draws on 49 Ibid., 166. 50 Ibid. 51   Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 48. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 150.

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assumptions (the body as an invariant, ethical character of action), which do not have any further justification. Ricoeur claims that the diversity and fragmentariness of the human self can be thematized only within a delimited realm in which unity, coherence, anchorage and a clear guiding idea of the human life is preserved. The question of identity is therefore posed after already being answered. We shall now move to the final part of Ricoeur’s interpretation where it is demonstrated that the maintenance of the self, and of personal identity, is in “the true sense of the word ethical.”56 Ethical Action and Moral Institution The final level on which the dialectics between selfhood and sameness, identity and otherness, take place is the level of ethical action (action dictated by values and value preferences) and the level of moral normativity. For explanatory purposes, Ricoeur first of all sets out to demonstrate in more detail that human action has to be generally understood as ethical. He attests this assertion by a digression via a language system in which he searches for the presence of ethical universals. As speaking means acting, we can claim, according to Ricoeur, that the ethical universals present in language reflect the ethical character of human action and of being in general. The ethical dimension of language manifests itself in the fact that every utterance is necessarily an evaluation of reality. Items of speech that the human being uses in utterance to describe its action and facts in general always have the character of ‘objects-values’. The human being expresses its preferences in its utterances: it gives priority to something over something else or it completely neglects something. Humans speak about their values, practical activities and life plans as about values that are related to the highest guiding idea of the good life. It is, however, necessary to point out that basic actions—atoms of the lowest level of the tree structure of human action—are not distinguished by any ethical character. These actions—that the human being commands without learning them—cannot be evaluated in any way, and one cannot be preferred over another. It is apparent that we can hardly predicate anything about these acts. The lowest narratable level of human 56 Ibid., 165.



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action is rather the level of practical activities and not basic actions. The language universal that is to reflect the ethical dimension of every human action is therefore made essentially problematic. This issue is compounded by another fact, which is the obvious connectedness of basic actions with corporeality. Gestures, postures and simple corporeal movements are clearly expressions of the human body. In this case, however, we deal with such a body about which we cannot simply say that ‘it belongs to me’ and that it is ‘my own’, because on this level of expression it does ‘what it wants’. Basic actions are involuntary, the human being often has no direct experience with them, and they cannot be smoothly declared as expressions of one’s own body. Metaphorically speaking, ‘the body of basic actions’ appears as a different body from ‘my own body’ (chair). It is apparent that the author does not devote himself to addressing the question of the connection between basic actions and one’s own body exactly for this reason; he seeks to avoid a potential questioning of his idea according to which all aspects of the human self are connected by a ‘substrate of one’s own body’ and present an expression of ethical selfhood that can always be narrated. Ricoeur does not ask whether our own body is always already ethical in its basic expression and whether it is possible to narrate about the expressions of one’s own body. He just insists that human action and narration about action have in principle an ethical dimension in the sense of directing action according to values and preferences. He subsequently deduces from this statement another assertion, which concerns human self-relationship. Ricoeur claims that a person, while permanently evaluating reality, cannot but evaluate herself: “Evaluation of oneself which accompanies all evaluating comes from a basic feeling, self-esteem, that makes me say, in spite of all, that: it is better for me to be than not to be.”57 The evaluation of individual acts includes self-evaluation, while the primary self-evaluation is self-assertion and the feeling of one’s own worth. Again, we find a reference to some founding experience, immediate evidence, from which we have to proceed phenomenologically, because all further human experience develops from it. This immediate evidence is the experience of the indubitable value of one’s own life. All experiences that can possibly be in contradiction with this primary experience have to be considered as its confirmation (similarly in the case of a non-subject which confirms the existence of a subject in narration), because it cannot be anything else 57 Ricoeur, Individu et identité personnelle, 71.

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than some sort of privation of a primordial givenness. Ricoeur considers this immediate evidence of self-esteem a fundamental element of interpretation at the level of ethics, picking up on his previous hermeneutic explanation of the person: This can be likened to a text in which the part and the whole are to be understood each in terms of the other . . . for the agent, interpreting the text of an action is interpreting himself or herself . . . on the ethical plane, selfinterpretation becomes self-esteem.58

Self-esteem is therefore a completing form of human self-relationship. Since any self-relationship, in Ricoeur’s view, constitutes a relationship of the self to oneself as another occurring analogically as a relationship to the other, the same will apply in this case. In principle, self-esteem is related to showing the respect to another person. Immediate and evident experience of self-esteem is thus expressed on the level of interpersonal relationships, which are again in an essential sense relationships of mutual respect. Ricoeur calls this phenomenon, which reveals the primordial character of interpersonal relationships, friendship. Any type of care as an essential characteristic of human existence has always already an interpersonal and dialogical character, while this dialogical character is supported by a primary continuity of friendship, that is, by a mutual relationship where one loves the other as being the person he is. The presupposition of all interpersonal relationships is the will to friendship, will to consensus, shared meaning and reciprocity. Immediate evidence is therefore according to Ricoeur not only that the human being wishes to be rather than not to be, but that the human being desires to have a friend, that is, a fellow man, who will assert the personal self of the given person as oneself. Even if the person notes in the relationship to oneself or in relationship to its fellow man a certain leak which it feels on the level of emotions, communication or action, it concerns, according to Ricoeur, always “a break . . . that creates the conditions for a second-order continuity.”59 The assumption of a primordial agreement in all relationships in which the human being exists leads to the fact that every experience of a break of such continuity is merely a challenge to create a continuity of a higher order. We can therefore say that there is no oneself without an other and no other without a self in Ricoeur’s theory. The other human being is, however, so close, that he can be understood as another self, another

58 Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 179. 59 Ibid., 180.



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structurally same self-relationship, because there is no other who would not be simultaneously himself. Analogically, the human being recognizes itself as another and therefore as another self (it can look at itself as on such a self which is another self in contrast to another self of a fellowman, because there is no oneself without the other. A primary closeness, intimate familiarity of two individuals and one individual towards himself is emphasized in this description of the basic understanding of oneself and another human being. This presupposition corresponds clearly to the optimistic presupposition of a textual hermeneutic from which follows that an encounter with an object of interpretation is essentially meaningful. It is possible to potentially overcome, by the work of interpretation, all conflicts and reach a relatively stable meaning. Similarly, there is in principle the possibility to reach a consensus in mutual communication of two people who have primarily the will to come to an agreement. Ricoeur, by disregarding the specific moments that are brought about by phenomena such as indifference, hostility, the radical otherness of the Face, autism or disinheritance, can claim that the human being is itself only if it is itself with another. The interpretation of this essential human feature that consists in the primacy of friendship and self-esteem culminates in the interpretation of the phenomenon of promise. The human being, according to Ricoeur, is characterized by its ability to give promises and to express itself as someone who is constantly engaged in mutual relationships with other people. The human being can never promise something to itself; it gives its word always to another human being, as Ricoeur says. To keep one’s promise is proof of selfhood which arises for Ricoeur from a ‘strong’ or ‘authentic’ force: “Authentic selfhood . . . is created by a maintaining of oneself in spite of an alternation of moods and even in spite of changes of intentions. Whatever it takes, I will do it!”60 The human being can attain authentic selfhood only as a being, which exists unto the other. The other is a guarantee ‘for me’, that I will never lose myself. That means that the other human being will save me if a dissociation were to threaten me in an extreme case, via an ethical requirement of ‘my’ action. Once again, this moment of a limit danger of losing oneself is structurally analogical to Heidegger’s interpretation of the moment of anxiety and the call of consciousness. In Ricoeur’s reading, however, the human being does not feel pressed by its own care. It does not disclose the conditions of the possibility ‘that’ it is its own potentiality-of-being. What presses it, is the 60 Ricoeur, Individu et identité personnelle, 71.

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appeal of the other human being. Even in this case, however, the liminal experience is interpreted as a moment of its own self-affirmation. Every threatening discontinuity of one’s own experience, action and narration about action is manifested here as a moment that can be bridged by a continuity of the higher order which takes place within the framework of ethical action and narrativity. The human being is, in this liminal turning point of experience, exposed to the question Who are you? It receives, according to Ricoeur, an ‘apophantic understanding’, that is, an understanding caused by a revelation of indubitable evidence: “Everything is possible but not everything is beneficial (understanding here, to others and to myself).”61 This apophantic understanding leads to the fact that the human being suddenly ‘knows’ how to answer the question, ‘Who are you?’ This crucial answer—whose voicing Ricoeur takes over from the ethical conception of Emmanuel Levinas—has the form “Here I am”62 (in the French original ‘Ici, je me tiens’ which is the paraphrase of Levinas’ ‘Me voici.’ In this way, there is voiced in the answer the reference to maintien—self-maintaining, selfhood). This answer is the final guarantee of the selfhood of an ethical individual. Maintaining oneself in action (selfhood), which is beneficial to ‘myself  ’ and to the other, saves the human being, according to Ricoeur, from an aimless search, liberating it from the danger of its self-loss. It becomes apparent then that narrativity is not a mere mediator between two impartial domains of a prevailing sameness and prevailing selfhood, but that ethics is an everywhere-present, completing and essential dimension of human existence and identity. Individualization and identification are possible thanks to ethics. Every human life is conducted by the same ethical intention; ethics is, in this sense, human ontology. Finally, it should be noted that the question of living a good life not only relates to the way in which the individual relates to himself and to another, but also concerns the realm of “the ideologization of the individual”.63 The realm of individualization, identification and ethical selfhood is therefore extended with a cosmopolitan realm of the life of institutions, as Ricoeur says: “Duties and bonds occur in fact always in some social environment; . . . there will not arise any mutual bond other than on the basis of certain quasi-contract between individuals.”64 61   Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 167. 62 Ibid. 63 Ricoeur, Individu et identité personnelle, 71. 64 Ibid., 72.



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The requirement concerning the keeping of one’s word is not required from the individual only by the other person to whom the promise was addressed. This requirement follows from the institution, which is a part of social ideology and which Ricoeur calls, by his already-known term, ‘the promise of a promise’. The promise of a promise concerns neither the individual existence, nor the dual relationship, but it has a triadic character that is expressed by the following elements: “I have to keep my promise; you can require that from me; it is necessary to keep one’s promise and increase the belief of all participants in the process of cooperation within a shared community.”65 Institutions maintain the life structure of the historical community and all its participants agree that each for his part “rightly contributes to the well-functioning [of institutions].”66 Individual and dual ethical intentions are therefore enriched with another interest of the human being, which is, according to Ricoeur, proper functioning of social institutions. Human deeds are evaluated not only from the perspective of benignity for a fellowman or for the individual himself, but also from the perspective of their concordance with the norms of generally shared institutions of justice. Moral norms thus draw on individual experience of the human being, while presenting some sort of settled framework of individual experience ‘in its generality’. Selfhood, the self-maintaining of the individual in its own hands, is conditioned not only by another human being who relies on the person, but by a third person represented by public institutions of justice. In narration about one’s own action which is to express the narrative identity of an individual, there are motives, ideas, variations and possibilities of an individual, requirements and expectations of his fellowmen, and finally even norms, human models and criteria of behaviour of a society in which the given person lives. The human being expresses, by constant renovation of this coherent story, its own identity and the continuity of its existence. Summary and Critique of Ricoeur’s Concept We have just claimed that the concept of selfhood—projected in the work Being and Time—goes back to the distinction between the authentic and inauthentic modes of Da-sein’s being. That is problematic because Heidegger considers the mentioned modes as mutually excluding one 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid.

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another and complementary. He does not take into account the existence of the way of being in modal indifference, even though he explicitly mentions this possibility. We have noticed, however, that this modality is not an empty possibility, but that it becomes vocal in critical and significant moments of Da-sein, that is, in anxiety, in the call of conscience and in the moment of realizing one’s own finitude. The way of being in these moments is, however, asserted in a certain way in a wide scale of other ‘things’ that have the character of incomplete, open, and urgent affairs. We formulated a hypothesis according to which a thorough analysis of the third mode of being should open up a new possibility to understand Da-sein and reality in general. That is why we have turned our attention to the conception of Paul Ricoeur who articulates his main task in close correspondence to our own intention. Ricoeur interprets the problem of a caesura between inauthenticity and authenticity as a problem of the relation between the sameness and selfhood of the human individual, claiming from the beginning of his considerations that these two poles cannot be separated from each other, and that it is necessary to describe their dialectic relationship in detail. In contrast to Heidegger, who ascribes sameness strictly to non-Da-sein beings and selfhood exclusively to Dasein itself, Ricoeur demonstrates that these characteristics are intertwined in the structure of human existence. We have seen that Ricoeur, in his project, draws on the comprehension of Da-sein as an acting being. He then shows in the second step that action has such a character in which it is impossible to distinguish strictly the mode of falling prey to everyday things and authentic resoluteness. Instead of falling prey and resoluteness, Ricoeur introduces another modal polarity symbolized by the phenomena of character and promise. Yet he claims that there is a continual crossing, between these two moments, in which one way of being gradually prevails over another. The actor would therefore be rather inauthentic if a way of being that is derived from his stable characteristics, settled habits and shared norms prevail inside him. A rather authentic actor is, on the contrary, such an actor who orients himself in the world predominantly on the basis of ethical requirements. He divests himself of these, albeit only to the extent to which he is able to maintain himself in his own hands as the one who fulfils the ethical requirements of another human being. The difficulty of this conception consists, in our view, in the way in which Ricoeur interprets the concept of action that is to express the essential characteristic of a person. We believe that four different objections can be raised that deal with the following statements of Ricoeur.



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First, it is obvious that Ricoeur describes human action in such a way that it is neither authentic nor inauthentic, but this he does only to show that action is simultaneously authentic and inauthentic. Second, action is presented as a necessarily intentional ethical event that is always directed by an evaluating reference ‘what for’. Third, Ricoeur claims that narration presents a significant form of action that is capable of grasping truly all forms of action, and it is therefore constitutive for the being of the human being as such. Fourth, the primordial heterogeneity of human action and predication of the human being about its self is in the end synthetically unified by only one guiding idea on the ethical level. Let us now turn to individual points in more detail. The first point deals with Ricoeur’s initial assertion that two different ways of being are bound together in an inseparable unity even though these modes can be expressed by means of two different types of human identity. The actor is, according to Ricoeur, neither purely a Da-sein nor can he be purely himself in the sense of Heidegger’s Selbst. For, the actor is simultaneously Da-sein and an entity among other entities and his identity consists in the connection of that which the actor maintains as his own (ipse) with that which is the same in him (même). The ontology of the self then has to be predicated by virtue of the structure ‘both . . . and . . .’, which indicates a concordance of two distinguishable but inseparable essential characteristics. Heidegger’s tension between Da-sein and nonDa-sein beings is, within Ricoeur’s conception, replaced by a mediation or a middle way ‘between’ (entre-deux) Da-sein and a non-Da-sein being. The actor on the one hand is a substantial entity, and on the other is a being in the world. He is numerically distinguishable from other beings, he can be described within the framework of cosmological time and of a determination of place and assigns it a distinct sameness, but he is a singular being which maintains its ipseity in a lived time and space thanks to the performance of its own existence, which is essentially ethical. These two types of description of the human existence are so strongly interconnected that the actor is always only more or less the same (même) and more or less proper to himself (ipse); there always prevails in him one type of time, space, self-relationship and therefore self-understanding. As a mediatory being, as the ‘entre-deux’, the human being should be a ‘place’ of connection and mediation of two types of thought and being, which should be preserved in this mediation and at the same time joined by a third way of thought and being. This project of merging of a non-Da-sein being and Da-sein, cosmological and lived time, cosmological and lived place and two kinds of identity,

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is, however, not realized by Ricoeur, because such an intention is in fact unrealizable. He hovers fully on the side of the phenomenological conception, performing the merging of objective and phenomenological description only seemingly. When Ricoeur speaks about the sameness of an individual, he means always a quasi-sameness that is founded on experience in which something is experienced as the same. When the author talks about an objective time and space, it is always a quasi-objective time and space which the human experiences as objective. The authority of lived experience stands behind all of Ricoeur’s statements about objectivity. Despite his assertions, Ricoeur merely develops a corrected concept of Da-sein and its selfhood without actually abandoning the realm of fundamental ontology. Ricoeur’s reinterpretation of the notion of human existence is performed—as a critique of Heidegger’s derivation of selfhood—from resoluteness that is conditioned by Da-sein’s knowledge about its own essential characteristics (care, mortality, ontological difference, the choice of a choice, and acceptance of one’s own essential disclosedness). Personal identity, according to Ricoeur, is not necessarily bound to selfhood in Heidegger’s sense of the word. It is not necessary, for him, to experience a liminal experience of anxiety, of one’s own finitude and of the appeal of consciousness in order to reveal the ownmost potentiality-of being. Authenticity in which Da-sein, according to Heidegger, explicitly takes itself over, completing the constitution of selfhood is, according to Ricoeur, a permanent part of everydayness. Authenticity is never separated from inauthenticity; the human being is always already inauthentically authentic or authentically inauthentic. This mutual permeation of both modes takes place in human action. The realm between authenticity and inauthenticity is continuous, according to Ricoeur. Ricoeur does not develop the possibility to think a third mode of existence that could appear as an inner boundary between the two modes mentioned. It is not possible within his conception to articulate the workings of the indefinite power ‘it’ about which we spoke in the second chapter. In the same way, Ricoeur tries to obliterate space, in which a new sort of thing-ness—of the same type as open affairs— emerges, questions, and issues. He essays to organize it into a continuous and hierarchical structure. Any incoherence in human action has to be bridgeable on the basis of this structure by the coherence of a higher order. Secondly, Ricoeur assumes, when considering the character of human action and therefore about being, that every action is necessarily intentional. Thanks to this reference ‘what for’ it is possible to merge all human



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actions into a coherent and unified tree structure (a hierarchy of three horizontal levels vertically connected by intentions culminating in the intention to live a good life), which Ricoeur considers an essential structure of the human being. This structure of action, however, has a specific basis that consists of the so-called ‘basic actions’, which represent spontaneous acts of one’s body. They do not have an intentional character. It is only from this basis that individual actions can be further merged according to the reference ‘what for’. What follows on from this is that Ricoeur derives his whole scheme from elements to which, according to his project, the status of action should not be ascribed at all. The level of basic actions is not, however, the only set of acts that can be regarded as unintentional. Ricoeur structures, beyond the level of these acts, only activities such as various practical skills, games, crafts or life projects, whose intentional character is quite obvious. Regarding such events of human action as for instance dreaming, experience of anxiety in Heidegger’s sense of the word, illness, insanity, the emergence of involuntary fantasies, trance, or meditation, we can no longer claim with certainty that the given action is intentional, and we cannot claim that this whole sphere is a sphere of inaction and that it does not participate with human being. Although Ricoeur creates with his project a possibility to think action in its unintentionality, the world in its insubstantial character and human identity in its heterogeneity, he does not make use of this possibility himself. He, on the contrary, explicitly designates this possibility as a source of danger that has to be overarched by a continual narration. The will to narration finally leads to an understanding of action as voluntary and intentional. The second point, which is linked to the theme of intentionality, concerns the fact that the intentionality of action corresponds to its ethical nature. The ethical nature of intentional acts consists in how to act, how to evaluate and choose every time, according to a reference that concerns the benefit of the given deed. Ricoeur conceives the total realm of action not only as an intentional structure, but also as an ethical structure. The tree structure is in its highest point fixed by a stable unifying vision to a good life with another and for another in just institutions. Another universal characteristic of human being, next to one’s own body, is the ‘promise of a promise’, that is, the presupposition of an ethical dimension of one’s own action and its connectedness with the social context of other people. The third critical point of Ricoeur’s conception lies in his conviction that the structure of action can essentially be grasped discursively because it is in its constitution completely analogical to the structure of a literary

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text. Every action is thus describable by means of narration. Narration binds the designation of a person, its basic tasks, practical deeds, life plans and the vision of a good life into one coherent story. Due to the fact that narration is one of the forms of action, narrativity functions as a way of application of action to itself. For narration is able to articulate all action, that is, the being of the human being, and it is an expression of human identity par excellence. This narrative identity articulates in an immediate way the inner duality that is present in action, that is, the duality ‘both inauthentic and authentic’. Narrative identity is an instrument of a dialectical relationship between forms of ethical ipseity in which one observes the moment of a singular self-maintenance of an individual existence, and between objective sameness in which one finds the moment of sedimented forms of action. Through this step, Ricoeur’s concept affirms the already mentioned discarding of unintentional acts from the concept of action. Yet, he simultaneously introduces another step towards the fulfilment of the desired aim, which was, in fact, present in this conception already as a starting point, that is, to attain thinking of human existence’s continuity. Ricoeur does not ask whether the human being is itself, whether it is identical with itself, but his question is how the human being is itself concretely. He finds an answer to this question by constructing narrative identity. Creation of this continuity via all breaking moments of existence is enabled by the capacity to compose a unified story of one’s own life under all circumstances, whereas this capacity is always ‘up to’ all other moments of the structure of human existence. We can, for instance, mention the experience of sinister uncanniness (es ist mir unheimlich), which can become the experience of the human being only if the given person is able to narrate the story of the type ‘I will tell you how uncannily I felt the other day, how it went away and how I gained my strength again’. In this conception, every strangeness and incoherence of human life can only have the form of incident. Ricoeur’s interpreting of strangeness as incidence is given undoubtedly by his intention to construe a unified and unambiguous concept of personal identity that comes from a unified structure of the human life. As incident, every discordance or breach plays an important role for the proceeding of the story. They are constitutive of totality and of the unity of its structure. However, it is important to ask, in our view, whether that which is revealed in the experience of a breach or of strangeness, is really exclusively an incident. What reality does absurdity, breach, or incoherence have? Wherein lays the reality of these moments? We do not yet have any answer to this question. What is certain is only



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that these moments can be real in Ricoeur’s conception as incidents. If these moments are not grasped as components of a coherent story of an actor—and they cannot be any other component but an incident—they would not have any other possibility to exist and, at the same time, to participate in the determination of who the actor is. Personal identity is therefore created on the basis of the only type of experiential reference ‘as’, that is, the reference ‘as a component of a story’. Other aspects of experience cannot participate in the construction of personal identity in any way. That is why we can say that Ricoeur’s conception builds personal identity as a story and the world as a context of this narration. This decision implicitly draws on the assumption that the referential structure ‘something as something’ can ultimately be terminable, by reference of the type ‘something as a component of a story’, ‘someone as a story’. In other words, there is no fundamental difference between discursive apprehension and action. Narration is an immediate experience of action. It follows on from this, that the realm of narration is a mirroring field of all experience. We cannot, for instance, claim that narration functions as something due to which the human being distances itself from action and chips away the new reality from the prior, originating reality. We cannot create a new reality by means of narration because constant generating of reality in stories would evidently disturb or at least render problematic the possibility to settle experience on the level of a story. Narration is capable of apprehension of all action and therefore of anchoring of action. A story is an instrument of possessing and saving an action from ‘merciless oblivion’. Such a manner of self-relationship can never be snatched from the hands of the human being. Every snatch and disruption of the story can be healed again by a newly construed story. However, this is, in our view, a purposeful and unconfirmed assertion. For narration appears as a significant form of action by virtue of which action grasps itself only for the sake of a very violent structuration of a human life according to a model from a literary text and, in addition, a very specific literary text. It is necessary during such structuration to use concepts such as invariant, universals, and to find support in the idea of a solid material basis that delimits a field of a subsequent singular interpretation. There is a danger when this interpretational strategy is used that the human being will be split into a corporeal inauthentic componentbasis and authentic component-completion. Ricoeur significantly overestimates, next to the problematic conception of the human life, the possibilities of narration itself. According to

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him, there is, analogically to the intention ‘to live a good life with another and for another in just institutions’, a final goal of narration that has the form ‘to reach a good meaning’, ‘to unify action and provide it with intelligibility’. This vision, however, certainly is not the only reason why the human being narrates about its action. Narrative can be motivated by a pursuit to influence the action of someone else, to disguise one’s own deeds, to tell stories, to improvise and to play, to entertain oneself, to create, to drive away unpleasant emotions, to dispel urgent ideas, or, on the contrary, to construe some new ideas, to get rid of boredom, or to try to meet one’s engagements. Narration can be to the same extent an instrument of self-riddance, an attempt at the reconstruction of oneself as well as the creation of a new reality. It sometimes works as a palliative that persuades the human being that it really exists and that it is itself (but which itself ?). Sometimes it is a means that violates irreversibly an absurd experience. Narration is to the same extent an instrument of forgetfulness and a medium of memory. It is only because ‘something’ is extracted from the ‘merciless oblivion,’ that something else is thrown into an even more profound level of unreality. It is only because of the suppression of something that a form arises that can be grasped by means of speech. To remember something and to articulate it in the form of narration means to forget and to throw into oblivion something that does not fit into the current construction. All these purposes and qualities of narration certainly cannot be subsumed under the idea of ‘good meaning and intelligibility of action.’ If we let go of the idea that narration presents a significant way of action that mirrors the whole sphere of action in an adequate way and enables a functional dialectic between sameness and selfhood, this human capacity would appear as only one possible figure among others. As we can speak about a lived body, think an objective body, we can, for instance, embody narration, be bodily moved by a story, externalize thinking, think a story, embody one’s own body etc. Each manner of this application of one capacity on another does not mean that we grasp, or fully depict something else, but that we create something else. Action is not essentially a narratable action. Yet, it is possible to create narrated action. Narrated action is, however, a different form of human existence than action itself. It is different even from narration itself. Narrated action is not narration about such action that was, prior to narration, potentially apprehensible by narration. We would like to, in the following chapters, make use of the already-mentioned conclusions of our analysis of Ricoeur’s work and suggest on their basis in what sense we can claim that it is possible to



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narrate about that which is not narratable, that it is possible to embody the non-embodiable, or to think the unthinkable. We shall demonstrate that the human being does not return, by means of these activities, via self-apprehension to itself, and that it does not maintain one of the forms of permanent identity. New ways of being emerge in these processes, new figures that time and again ramify what we designate optimistically with one term ‘the human being’, or ‘oneself  ’. Via narration in Ricoeur’s sense there emerges only one figure from the figures of the referential structure ‘as’; this figure is oneself as a story. The fourth and last point of our criticism concerns Ricoeur’s tendency to present ethics as the realm of a culmination and an assertion of ‘humanity’. The author intends to prove that ethics attributes an authentically human character to action and that the ethical identity should be understood as authentic selfhood, selfhood in the true sense of the word. Ricoeur reaches this assertion from the primordial starting point according to which action can be thematized from three different perspectives. We can describe (décrire) action, we can narrate (raconter) about it, and finally we can prescribe (prescrire) it. Ricoeur initially claims that each of these respects carries with it a different manner of thematization of the human self, of personal identity and of a different notion of another human being. Within the framework of description, analysis concerns the human being as a representative of the human species, which is numerically different from other human beings, and whose identity has the character of sameness. A prescription predicates about the human being as about an actor who pursues what is beneficial for his personal life, which is primarily a life with another and for another realized within the institution of justice and of social moral norms. Personal identity, in this case, takes the form of a purely ethical selfhood of keeping one’s promise. Finally, narration predicates about the human being as about a participant of interpersonal communication, and as about the narrator of his own life story. Although these three respects are supposed to represent primordially three independent aspects of human action and identity joined together on the basis of an analogical unity, narrativity becomes not only an intermediary of the two remaining respects, but rather an expression of unity within which the respect of description is shown as a subset of ethical predication about action. Narration attests that the human being that can be grasped by means of description is the same being as the one that directs its life according to the teleological intention to live a good life. Thinking, which grasps simultaneously all these aspects, is only one form of thinking. It is not thinking that cognizes, but which is primarily ethics.

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That is why the self-relationship of the human being essentially goes through the relationship to another human being and founds itself in this relationship. The human being is always itself only through a relationship to another; the human being is defined by action in the sense of interaction. For this reason, the human being returns to itself always as another. It undergoes a process of re-figuration, and all this occurs in many possible forms. The presupposition of this binary relation and re-figuration of the human self is that every fellowman is always already my fellowman, his strangeness is of a kind peculiar to me, interaction in which the human being is engaged becomes its own action. There is a primary relationship between an individual and another human being, an identity that enables their secondary difference and, simultaneously, encounter. In the course of his project, Ricoeur rejects the primordial intention to create an intermediary philosophy that would enable one to contemplate various incompatible aspects of the human being. Instead, he develops hermeneutic thought that is to become the instrument of completion and of composing all-mentioned theories under one synthesizing conception, which is ethics. Narrative identity, in parallel fashion, fulfils not the function of the intermediary of various respects, but a unifying function referring to an ethical completing of “selfhood in the strong sense of the word”. The crucial moment of this turn is Ricoeur’s decision to declare a certain teleological idea of a hermeneutics of the human self, presenting it within this thought: gradually the stages in which the concept [of an individual] comes from one pole (‘a further indivisible representative of the human species, of whom we can encounter in all societies’) to another (‘self-sufficient, independent and not social being whom we encounter in our modern ideology of the human being and society’) . . . The definition of this concept proceeds from logic to ideology across stages in which the individual gradually reveals and becomes . . . more and more human.67

As soon as Ricoeur explicitly talks about the stages of change, degrees of development, and about a being that begins to appear in these stages as more and more human, we cannot doubt that his effort is to create a comprehensive and global conception of an individual, which completes itself on the ethical level.

67 Ricoeur, Individu et identité personnelle, 54. Ricoeur quotes in the brackets‚ ‘le petit lexique’, which Luis Dumont included in the appendix of his Essais sur l’individualisme. Dumont’s quotations are on the same side as Ricoeur’s statement.



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Ricoeur’s thought is again based on the assumption that the human being is characterized by an explicit capacity of self-relationship that distinguishes it from inhuman entities, founding a specifically human situation. Moreover, the human being realizes this capacity due to an immediate experience of being itself. That this experience is immediate is not problematized by how in the case of Ricoeur’s conception we deal with an experience of difference. Indeed, it concerns an encounter with another human being, which enables the individual to relate to itself as to its own other. Another human being is, however, primarily allied to the actor; it is a pole of dialectical circularity, which is connected with his companion by a bond of potential friendship and will, to a shared consensus. Ricoeur’s philosophical starting point lies in the irreducible possibility to bridge all experiences of divergence, discontinuity, breach and powerlessness that take place in the world of human existence on the basis of a primordial unity. It is a belief in the will to maintain oneself in one’s hands and to do this mutually with others. It is simultaneously a will to this belief. Ricoeur’s philosophy offers in this sense neither a satisfying solution of the issue of the third mode of existence, nor a description of the phenomenon of powerlessness and being at open affairs even though its original project seemed very promising for this purpose. We shall now focus, in the following part of our project, on the possibility to develop thinking that is capable of working with the alreadymentioned moments that Ricoeur did not develop in his revision of Heidegger. We will leave concrete analyses of identity for now, and search for ways in which we can think the third mode of existence, the powerless potentiality-of-being and things that are characterized by non-objectification and openness. It is necessary to study the structure of experience in detail, and to verify primarily the basic idea of the phenomenological understandings discussed so far. These conceptions, among other things, consider the field of experience as a continuous and internally homogeneous realm that provides certain immediate evidence about the nature of human being as a specific self-relationship of thought. Our aim, however, will be to analyze such experiences that unsettle the basic certainty of the possible return of human existence to itself. We will draw philosophical consequences from the analysis of this sort of experience.

Chapter Four

The Powerlessness of Self-Relating and the Power of the World: Exemplification Heidegger’s attempt to overcome the principle of identity, as it can be found in Being and Time, limits itself explicitly to the philosophy of René Descartes. What it leads to is, among other things, the weakening of Descartes’ assumption concerning the immediate identity of the thinking human being. Heidegger presents Dasein as disclosedness toward being, being ‘beyond itself’, in possibilities and being-in-the-world. In his explication he also mentions the moments where the potentiality-ofbeing withdraws from the world, loses its possibilities, existing as being beyond itself as such (without any particular relationship to the world). Fundamental ontology discovers in the human self-relationship an interior complication, which we call powerlessness (im-potentiality-of-being) and about which we do not know anything definite so far. We showed that this theme resonates with Heidegger’s concepts of affairs (matters), of the third mode of existence (modal indifference) and of the indefinite power of ‘it’ which acts, leads to meaning without being grasped and demonstrated. Heidegger uncovered these moments in his conception, but did not develop them philosophically, leaving them in a too implicit form. We—in contrast to Heidegger—take these points as very inspiring and wish to work with them thoroughly. First we tried to elaborate a deeper analysis of these moment with Paul Ricoeur who seemed at the beginning of his book Oneself as Another as a thinker of the third mode of existence, presenting Dasein as a being in affairs, essentially shared with others. Ricoeur opens potentiality-of-being more than Heidegger toward transgression of Dasein by Another, by Another in Oneself, by the power of the world. He acknowledges more than Heidegger the moment of ­powerlessness—in the form of the loss of oneself in a disintegrating situation, in the self-dispossession toward another. Yet he believes in the possibility to overcome each form of powerlessness by the continuity of a higher order of the Self. He supports this hope by a conviction that the human being is solidly rooted in the certainty of the body and Earth, that it follows an ultimate purpose of its life (the Good), and that

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the ­hierarchically structured human action correlates with the hierarchical structure of narrativity. Ricoeur omits the non-intentional moments of human experience (for instance at the corporal level), or he interprets them as an incident (plot) of a comprehensible and united story. It follows from these studies that even though Heidegger and Ricoeur clearly prefer a looser interpretation of the self-relationship, they still do not doubt that the human being remains itself during its existence. They study how Dasein is itself or how it becomes itself, not doubting if it is itself at all. If there is a moment when the self-relationship is lost—and the im-potentiality-of-being, instead of potentiality-of-being, is revealed— the authors understand this moment as a problem to be solved, as a danger that should be averted. We saw that Descartes does not acknowledge human powerlessness at all in his metaphysical texts, emphasizing the necessity to take maximum control of uncontrolled passions and body movements, in his texts on emotions. He does not speak in a positive way about the uncontrollable part of forces lived by human being. He does not profit from them, but tries to suppress them maximally. Hei­ degger develops the concept of resolute Dasein as a being that cannot determine the meaning of the world and control itself and its possibilities purely with the aid of its capacities. However, he interprets implicitly the powerlessness as a moment when Dasein reveals the conditions of possibilities of its self-relationship. In this way, it becomes capable of its finiteness of thinking, and stable toward the world and its open possibilities. Ricoeur, who loosens the definition of self-relationship the most, is convinced that human being is always able to integrate powerlessness in a larger unity of narration. He is undoubtedly aware of the fragility of the Cogito, suspecting repeatedly its capacities. Yet, he overcomes this by his belief in the maintenance of oneself, in being able to take care of oneself. We wish to propose a shift of interpretative focus with respect to the problem of powerlessness. We believe that powerlessness does not need to be understood uniquely as a problem that has to be solved or overcome. It can represent in the topology map of experience a moment where experiencing becomes very particular and significant for human being. This feature concerns the irreducibly dual structure of experience. Powerlessness can be metaphorically imagined as a blind spot which is not attainable intentionally, but which participates in the way of human experiencing. Powerlessness is a moment of non-intentional experience that remains irreducibly the other side of the intentional ­experience.



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It cannot be recursively transformed in the order of the intentional experience. As such, powerlessness can act as a creative, happy, and non-threatening blind force of existence. It can be viewed as a moment that relaxes the human insistence on self-understanding: there is no need any more to struggle to be oneself. It is not a dramatic moment where it is no longer possible to maintain itself. There is simply no need anymore. In this chapter, we shall quote a number of literary examples and psychosocial studies in order to illustrate those situations in which a human being understands powerlessness as a danger and a problem to be averted. We shall not demonstrate explicitly the moment of powerlessness because it is not literarily or discursively possible. We cannot testify to powerlessness directly. Each grasping of powerlessness is always done from the position of a powerful potentiality-of-being. This would lead us to a solution similar to the one proposed by Ricoeur. Instead, we shall exemplify different cases of the fear of powerlessness. These examples will enable us to circumnavigate the experience where we cannot exist intentionally, describe it, and define ourselves from it. We wish to demonstrate that the effort to understand oneself does not always reach the relatively stable approach of Selbständigkeit or of the maintenance of oneself, but that it can actually precipitate suffering. Our question is thus the following: how to profit from the implicit moments in which Heidegger analyzes the thought of unmanageable power­lessness? How to profit from Ricoeur’s discovery of the interval between idem and ipse, and me and the other, which are essential characteristics of human existence? We believe that these phenomenological findings can be developed in a specific direction. Following this direction, the self-relationship is loosened even more. Powerlessness is understood as a hidden place from which another meaning than the meaning of intentional experience is offered or thought. This thought, which does not intend to grasp powerlessness directly, but which lets it act as its irreducibly other side, will lead to a reinterpretation of Dasein as a potentialityof-being and of the world as a world belonging to this Dasein. We believe that we will be able to abandon, in this way, the presupposition as well as the hope of any form of the permanent becoming oneself. It will be perhaps possible to substitute this presupposition or hope by a lived contact with powerlessness as a happy relief.

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By means of examples from the story The Hitchhiking Game1 and the novel Identity (L’identité)2 by Milan Kundera, we will document phenomenally, that a self-relationship is not a self-sufficient human capacity that is inexhaustible during the whole of human existence. We would like to demonstrate in what sense the self-relationship is disrupted by breaches that cannot be considered as temporary shocks, that is, as shocks that can be linked up by a subsequent synthesis or a more profound form of integration. In addition, we will show that inhuman beings should be understood as an expression of a potentiality-of-being that is intense, urgent and selfstanding enough to shatter the self-relationship of the human being whatever form it may have. The phenomenon of powerlessness itself, however, cannot be grasped intentionally and directly in these examples. It is present in these examples only indirectly. I Am Me The Hitchhiking Game tells the story of a young couple that goes on their first holiday together after having dated for a year. It is the story of a young disciplined man who is always reliable at work, punctual, who fulfills his duties according to plan, who is faithful to his girlfriend and who provides her continuously with his tender care. Although he is generally satisfied with his way of life, he is sometimes struck with the feeling that something important is missing. He would like to enjoy life more. He secretly dreams of a life free from social requirements, order and rules. At first glance, his girlfriend seems a very quiet, serious and shy sort of person. She fills her everyday life with a monotonous job and with care of her mother, who is seriously ill. Even after a year-long love relationship, the girl is still very shy. She would like to live only for her boyfriend, having him for herself completely. Although she is anxiously jealous of him, her character vexes her and she regularly reproaches herself for not being able to relax in her life and experience moments of lightness and independence. 1  Milan Kundera, The Hitchhiking Game, in: Laughable Loves, translated by Suzanne Rappaport (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999). 2 Milan Kundera, Identity, translated by Linda Asher (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999).



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The young couple is unexpectedly offered a possibility during their car journey to get rid of the inhibitions they both feel. They begin to play a hitchhiking game. Each of them selects a role in the game that he or she considers his or her counterpart. That enables both actors to try to act, at least temporarily, in a way that they previously only dreamt about. Their game is to serve to free them from the weight of reality, to cast aside the requirements that are forced on them by ‘harsh reality’. The young man who at first just wanted to make a joke and play the role of a gallant driver who picks up an unknown hitch-hiker at a petrol station, after the girl’s negative reaction, assumes the role of a sarcastic, distant, ruthless and rough male who does not care about social imperatives or rules. He embodies a man who is absolutely sure of himself, who does what he wants to do and if he, for instance, all of a sudden decides to change the direction of his journey, he will surely do so. The girl takes on the role of an occasional and carefree hitchhiker who can, as a cunning seducer, make perfect use of her looks. She enjoys playing word games with the driver without caring about what he may think of her. Both actors embody characters who are completely dissimilar to their real selves. They play the foreigner, which enables them to behave as they like because their behavior has no relationship to the real past and it will not influence their real future. They are both sure that they play a game that sets them outside reality, removing themselves from it. This game is, especially for the girl, at first a very relaxing and amusing one. She gets rid of her feelings of permanent anxiety, freeing herself from the pressure she normally experiences. That makes her feel good and at ease. For she herself was, above all, the epitome of jealousy. . . . [in the game, however,] the girl could forget herself and give herself up to her role. . . . The girl slipped into this silly, romantic part with an ease that astonished her and held her spellbound.3 The game captivated her. It allowed her what she had not felt until now: a feeling of happy-go-lucky irresponsibility. . . . The girl, as a hitchhiker could do anything: Everything was permitted her; she could say, do, and feel whatever she liked.4

The young man also identifies with his role even though he experiences within it internal anger and aggression. Yet, he accepts with satisfaction

3 Kundera, The Hitchhiking Game, 88. 4 Ibid., 96.

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his transformation during which he rids himself of his burdening tendency to acquiesce, which hitherto kept him from experiencing his life, replacing it with a feeling of freedom and adventure. The young man takes the metaphor of straying from a predefined project of life literally, deciding to change the direction of the journey all of a sudden: “I am going, miss, wherever I feel like going. I’m a free man, and I do whatever I want or it pleases me to do.”5 The car leaves the planned route, heading nowhere. The game goes on but its purpose gradually changes. As if its rules became stronger than the wills of both actors. The well-opened hitchhiking game suddenly becomes so powerful that it can develop itself on its own and force its version of reality on the two participants. It performs itself through them, forcing them to become actualized in a way that is not at all proper. They both perceive this change as a form of their own doubling where it is no longer clear what is the original (the true reality) and what is mere dissimulation (a game placed outside reality). They suddenly become strangers to each other to some extent, their roles take hold of them, and they become more real than what they both ‘really’ are. That leads to their gradual loss of certainty about what can be considered as reality, unintentionally finding themselves in a dual reality. The reality of the game is imaginary but not unreal; this example shows us the non-simple topology of reality: the reality of our experience has always two sides that cannot be reduced one to another. There is no way in which they could escape this development. The conversation was proceeding to still greater enormities; it shocked the girl slightly, but she couldn’t protest. Even in a game there is a chance of a lack of freedom; even a game is a trap for the players. If this had not been a game and they had really been two strangers, the hitchhiker could long ago have taken offense and left; but there’s no escape from a game.6

The game ends with a sexual act between two mutually strange bodies— a raging man and a prostitute. Both actors are totally disrupted by the power of reality that was born out of the game, which took them beyond the boundary of themselves and far beyond the limits of their relationship. They are themselves, but they are no longer what they were because they are doubled.

5 Ibid., 90. 6 Ibid., 99.



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It had always seemed that the girl had reality only within the bounds of fidelity and purity, and that beyond these bounds it simply did not exist; beyond these bounds she would cease to be herself.7 She knew that she had crossed the forbidden boundary, but she proceeded across it without objections and as a full participant.8 Now sitting face-to-face with her, he realized that it wasn’t just the words that were turning her into a stranger, but that she had completely changed.9

The game is over and both actors feel what a profound impact it had on their relationship. The young man now seriously doubts that he could find in the woman—with which he is to continue his journey—‘his girlfriend’. He realizes that their relationship had its meaning only within the fixed boundaries that could not be trespassed because there was nothing beyond them that would be part of the relationship. The hitchhiking game, which started from a momentous impulse, however, led them beyond these critical limits, giving birth to a new reality. The girl, frightened by what happened, wishes to restore all the old things, to reassure herself about the ‘true’ identity of herself and her boyfriend. In doing so, she refers to the last argument that is left for her: “I am me, I am me, I am me . . .”.10 This “sad emptiness of the girl’s assertions, in which the unknown was defined by the same unknown,”11 reassures the young man that their relationship is probably lost forever. The way in which they crossed the limits of their relationship, and therefore also the limits of their self-definition, makes it impossible for them to return to the old tracks of their common life. Leaving themselves turns out to be an irreversible step. The actors of this story go through a process in which a new reality, next to their ‘own’ world, is created. Their so-far real possibilities are doubled with other possibilities and they are therefore also doubled. Due to the influence of a game they chose, they appear beyond the sphere of their previous determination and definiteness. The imaginary becomes real enough to stand beside the hitherto uncomplicated single real. In the process, they completely lose, all certainty about who they ‘really’ ‘in fact’ are. In the end, they are left with only one general conviction: ‘I am me.’ That, however, ceases to have any content after the experienced change of 7 Ibid., 98. 8 Ibid., 105.   9 Ibid., 93. 10 Ibid., 106. 11  Ibid.    

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context. What is confusing in the whole event is that the actors not only go through a complete change, but that they also in some sense preserve their previous attitudes and ideas about the world. They experience not only a change of reality, but its doubling. What is significant for us in this experience is the problematic character of any self-assuredness of the actors about their own identity. The young couple is evidently convinced at the beginning of their hitchhiking game that every human being has some unambiguously true character and a quite unchangeable or continuous way of self-relating (they rely on idem). It is exactly due to this, that a human being can with impunity afford to accept various roles and play various games, for instance ‘the hitchhiking game.’ For, no such action can destroy its true self-­determination, its essential character or personal identity. As a stable I, the human being is able to control its actions, to ‘play at being someone else’ if it likes to do so, to dream when it decides to dream, to act ‘as if’ without losing its ‘true’ real foundation. This notion of self-relating can be grasped in the structure ‘I as somebody’ where the I presents a fixed givenness and a stable substance and where ‘somebody’ means a chosen attribute and a concrete possibility to do something. The subject (I am I) does not change; it is an immediate principle, a fixed substance to which various capacities are assigned, but not as essential or primary capacities. The structure ‘I as somebody’, however, clearly began to fall apart during the hitchhiking game, with the actors losing their fixed pole of I which ‘is’ I. After these possibilities of being and acting went through a fundamental doubling, their actors could no longer exhibit a stable identity to which they could turn to and they, on the contrary, split themselves. This doubling is so intense that it is irrevocable. For, the actors cross the boundary of their ‘own’ world that they used to have under control. ‘Nothing’ changes for them because of this crossing, apart from the possibility of returning in the same way. It is just this impossibility to come back that makes this game something more than a ‘play at something’. This game has gradually turned into a ‘harsh’ reality; it ceased to be a mere instrument when the postponement of everydayness, which is temporary and from which one can return to the primordial ‘true’ reality, is no longer temporary. This limit possibility of the game shows how every ‘own ­matter/affair’ can become a powerful reality, manifesting the non­objectivable structure ‘something as something’. The game is an affair. The structure of existence suddenly manifests itself in a new form: ‘somebody as somebody’ as ‘something as something’ while none of the points of the



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referential structure ‘as’ is anchored in any substantial basis. This structure disturbs any form of fixed identity of the human being as well as the world of ‘inhuman’ beings. In this concrete case we can trace the splitting of reality in which the ‘figure in love’ appears as ‘actor of a stranger’, ‘actor of a stranger’ as a ‘stranger’ and finally a ‘stranger’ as ‘I don’t know who’. Any reality, be it the reality of the human or of the inhuman being, will depend on other realities that endow it with conditions of its possibility. The realization of each reality also implies that the full form of itself will not be attained, cannot be completed. In fact, it will exhaust itself and generate its own counterpoint. The two lovers engender two strangers who are indifferent to each another following a doubling that is performed along or on the basis of a hitherto unified and intense matter of the game. A new reality is born from the game performed along or on the basis of unambiguous and sufficiently distinct actors that relate to each other. It is due to the game that the couple lost to some extent its unambiguous reality that a new reality in which two strangers are born ‘split off’ from the ‘common game’. As the game exhausted itself after some time, the new reality could be engendered from it. Initially, performing the game was a mere possibility for the two lovers. The couple actualizes its possibility in the hitchhiking game; it gives reality to its own matter. By actualizing this possibility, the couple, however, also exhausts it. The game becomes more and more real and the couple has less and less control over it, up to the point where the game becomes so ‘powerful’ that it can exist as an independent reality (power or force). Due to the sufficiently high intensity that the ‘common’ game gained from both concentrating actors, it turns into an independent reality. As the game presents a real matter, that is, something that does not have a substantial pole, its reality consists in the potentiality-of-being, in the possibilities that the game opens. That the game-matter is a potentialityof-being means, that it exists as a potency, that its possibilities are possibilities to actualize something, that is, to make something happen. The possibilities of the hitchhiking game are precisely the actors of this game. As soon as the game is sufficiently intense, it is capable of actualizing its actors. It grants them reality according to its own possibilities, that is, a reality that the actors do not have in their own hands, that transcends them and that is alien to them. In this sense, this intense game has an emblematic function of any matter, and it therefore predicates the character of the human way of being in the world in general. The Hitchhiking Game offers an illustration of a perhaps marginal moment of human being in the world (one in most cases succeeds in

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maintaining the game within the framework of given rules). This moment, however, reveals a new and absolutely essential element of the structure of existential dynamics: the human being exists in such a way that it has possibilities that compose a dynamic world of matters (affairs) about which it is concerned. By actualizing its possibilities, the human being exhausts these concrete possibilities and condenses their reality ‘beyond itself’. This reality doubles the human being by relating to it as to its own possibility. The potentiality-of-being of the human being is actualized or performed as another. As another, this potentiality-of-being takes hold of its new matters that present its possibilities and it actualizes them according to its own (other) powers. In this way, matters are doubled and become other. Put briefly: existence is split into another on the basis of a matter; a matter is split into another on the basis of existence. The basis therefore presents a moment of separation and doubleness that after some time exhausts itself. It is not a basis in the sense of a solid ontological structure. The issue foreshadowed in Kundera’s tale is that the actors of the story refuse to accept the game as a moment that changes their possible reality. They refuse to accept what happened, and they want to reconstruct their lost world. Their pathology consists in their clinging to the idea of the inviolability of their own identity and their own world from which all acceptable ways of living proceed. The process of splitting reality, nevertheless, appears through the optics of this marginal but essential moment as being essentially irreversible. The world appears here in its untameableness, as a world of intense and powerful forces (matters) that develop themselves without having any previous clear and determined meaning. The world of matters, affairs, and games is a powerful reality that has its own intensity. The world of ‘inhuman beings’ is not passively ‘actualized’ by actors as ‘their world’, but it is able to do the very opposite: to actualize the actors, in a completely different way from what they might imagine, want or be able to conceive. In the moment when the world is sufficiently intense and powerful, it reveals actors as issues. It decomposes them, forces them to act otherwise, to forget old customs and to let them be in the form of an indefinite ‘who?’ of unknown figures. The world surprises the actors; it takes possession of their sense and time. It is the time of the matter that determines the time of the actors because it constitutes the intensity of that which concerns the actors. They cannot stop or start acting according to their own decisions and develop what they wish. The world shows them that they are strangers to each other. To be a stranger means to exist as an indefinite



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and incomprehensible ‘who?’ The actors develop in the powerful world as open questions; they are here and there, known and strange. The conditions that determine what the actors primordially are and from what they are derived cease to be clear. Are those who are surprised the ones who govern themselves, or are they rather strangers? The actors exist as indefinite multiplied figures among which one can find neither the original nor the derived character, but only possible realities that function in a counterpoint. The problem of the hitchhiking game’s actors then does not consist in the surprising experience as such but in their attitude to it. This attitude combines two moments that are mutually in conflict: revolt against oppression and against their own will to discipline and an anxiety to enact such a revolt connected with the fear of the indefinite. The painfulness of their loss follows from the will to own oneself and the other as someone distinct, and from the will not to let the world develop itself into an intense form. Actors want to be free beings in the sense of having control over themselves and the world. They desire freedom, which in their understanding means to have in their hands the handling of their own action. They determine their identity on the basis of a self-relationship of the will as a stable, primordial and essential moment of their selves that is to be the only winner over the plurality of mutually contradictory performable figures. This example serves to illustrate a conflict that comes into being during the encounter with a powerful world. The fatal consequences follow from the rejection of the actors to become real in a ‘different way’ from what they had expected up to that point. The intertwining of the game (the imaginary) and reality is unthinkable within the thinking of identity: the game is, according to such thinking, unambiguously a postponement of reality and reality is a ‘hard’ givenness. The actors refuse the possibility that the game can turn into reality, and take control of them. That is why this moment upsets both actors in such a profound way. However, is this clinging to the rigid identity of one’s self the only possible reaction to the intensity of the unknown power? A rigid and solid figure that is resistant to all the changes of circumstance presents only one of the extreme ways in which to interpret the self-determination of human existence. That is why we intend to show an alternative approach in the second literary example. Instead of a rigid and definite self that defends itself against intense indefinite actuation, we shall study an example of a desire to take hold of the intensity of reality by means of one’s own direction and actualization of all possibilities that occur. It will concern an event that Alain

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Ehrenberg expresses by the apt words: “instead of a conflict that founds the unity of the subject, the person is offered a possibility to exist in a double identity.”12 To analyze this attitude in a concrete literary text, we will turn again to the work of Milan Kundera. The Double Traitor Kundera depicts in his novel Identity, which was published thirty years after The Hitchhiking Game, the experience of a loss of an enduring and unambiguous self-relationship. Chantal, the main character of the novel, is presented at the beginning of the story as a woman who, as opposed to the previous case, does not wish to free herself from herself, but who wants to free herself from the world and become herself. The possibility to get rid of a disciplined pretense and obedience toward the world is opened suddenly to the main heroine, after the tragic death of her only child whose presence had hitherto obliged her to live differently than she would have wished. It’s precisely because I loved you that I couldn’t have become what I am today if you were still here. It’s impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is because that’s the world we’ve put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about its future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously.13

Chantal accomplishes her revolt after the death of her little son: she gets a divorce, finds herself a prestigious and well-paid job, which enables her to gain autonomy and she encounters Jean-Marc. From this time on, norms, orders and prohibitions lose their meaning in her life. She herself (and her plans and wishes) become her only norm. Disregarding the imposed opinion that she should express herself as a coherent and wellbehaved personality, she chooses a new form of self-definition. Her main values become independence, performing the maximum number of possibilities and freedom, in the form of breaking away from everything on which she could depend. Chantal builds a careful detachment from the world, projecting her world from this standpoint according to her own

12 Alain Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d’Être Soi [The Tiredness of Being Oneself ] (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 1998) 230. All translations of the following citations from this author made by AK. 13 Milan Kundera, Identity, 55.



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will. She wishes to have a great career even though she is not personally concerned about her work (in advertising); she wants to experience a strong and open love with Jean-Marc (“Next to him I am absolute”), even though this relationship must not influence her freedom and professional performance. She wishes to actualize herself in all her potential possibilities. Her roles differ from one another and sometimes they even contradict one another. Chantal exists in the richness of multiple figures and she feels herself in this way; for she is not forced by the external rules to do something that she does not want to do. She can show various faces in her work, on the street, at home and still preserve in her interior another face—full of disregard for everything that surrounds her. She feels happier and richer than ever before. Still, she experiences moments when she feels tired. An indefinite impression strikes her in such moments that something does not work. Don’t forget, I’ve got two faces. I’ve learned to draw some pleasure from the fact, but still, having two faces isn’t easy. It takes effort, it takes discipline! You have to understand that whatever I do, like it or not, I do with the intention to do well. If only so as not to lose my job. And it’s very hard to be a perfectionist in your work and at the same time despise the work. . . . Yes, I can have two faces, but I can’t have them at the same time. With you, I wear the scoffing face. When I’m at the office, I wear the serious face. . . . I behave half as traitor to my company, half as traitor to myself. I’m a double traitor. And that state of double treason I consider not a defeat but a triumph. Because who knows how long I’ll still be able to hold on to my two faces? It’s exhausting.14

It is evident that Chantal can cross the fixed frameworks of her own selfdefinition and become regularly another. She switches her roles several times a day and she is convinced that these changes are necessary for practical life. Life is dynamic. One has to take care of many things and that is why it is necessary to change oneself, and to alternate between various figures. Chantal believes that such switching gives her the desired freedom and feeling of independence. She, however, also knows that there is a need to pay attention to the way in which one changes oneself. One always has to be able to free oneself from each of one’s figures. One functions as a director who conducts the whole dynamical process of changes, so that her figures change ‘as they ought to’. In contrast to the previous story this conduct of oneself consists in a permanent self-change.

14 Ibid., 26–27.

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Chantal is convinced for a long time that she is capable of maintaining her distance from the world and that she can permanently direct and play individual games. She believes that she can control her internal detachment from her job and other events. She perceives herself as someone who is also to alternate between her own masks, attaining in this way various goals. Her identity is merely an emptiness that serves as a scene for the realization of the projects of an internal director. Chantal is ready to embody any roles, crossing freely from one play to another. Her I, however, stays detached from these games; it stands far away beyond them as the empty place of their realization. Chantal does not have an identity in the sense of a solid positive self-definition. Her identity is not to have a substantial identity. The heroine is not capable, however, of maintaining this attitude permanently. Following an unexpected turn of events, Chantal begins to fall prey to a gradual process of disintegration. Although she is still sure that she plays one Chantal at her work and another in the city, the masks themselves begin to play the game, completely disrupting Chantal’s selfdefinition. Her boyfriend Jean-Marc notices this change first. He remarks . . . that Chantal is not the woman he loves; that Chantal is a simulacrum. And because she was not sure of herself, there was no solid point in the chaos of values, which is the world. Face to face with Chantal who has changed her essence (or lost her essence), he was overcome by a strange melancholy indifference.15 That facility she has for adapting to things she hates, is that really so admirable? Is having two faces such a triumph? He used to relish the idea that among the advertising people she was like an interloper, a spy, a masked enemy, a potential terrorist. But she isn’t a terrorist, she’s more of a—if he has to resort to such political terminology—a collaborator.16

The relationship between Chantal and Jean-Marc falls apart and this event essentially stigmatizes the heroine. She suddenly finds herself separated from the last relationship that concerned her in the world up to this time, even though she did not want to admit it to herself. She is left with a pure distance from all reality, a disdain for the world, a sense of lethargic indifference. In spite of all her efforts she cannot continue living in the form of freedom and independence that she primordially chose as her ‘own’. She feels, on the contrary, that “some unknown and uncontrollable power manipulates her”; she experiences a gradual loss of the world that already 15 Ibid., 104. 16 Ibid., 105–106.



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proceeds independently of her. She loses the capability to influence this process in which she can no longer direct her roles. Her empty scene begins to fall apart internally. In the course of half-real and half-imaginary events, Chantal gradually disintegrates. She is lost in the confusion of all possible faces, in alternative figures that exist isolated from one another. The ‘control center’ of the multiplicity of roles falls apart. The loss of the world, the change of meanings of oneself that mutually contradict each other as well as a disengagement from relationships with others leads step by step to an anticipated insanity. We can identify in this story, in contrast to the previous example, the need to accept possible changes to herself. Chantal does not refuse to cross the potential limits of her possibilities. On the contrary, she finds her own self-definition in the possibility to become another and to exist in multiplicity. If we followed the interpretative scheme presented in the last example, we could claim that Chantal willfully experiences the opening of the becoming of the world, and that she lets herself be determined by it. We believe, however, that this is not the case. Chantal’s problem is that she assumes an attitude of desire to take possession of the process of the transformation and multiplication of oneself. Chantal wants to function as a director of an empty scene who will control the sequence of masks and affairs; she wants to put plurality into the previously chosen integrity. In this way, however, she only simulates a heteromorphic becoming in a powerful world. Chantal isolates herself, by means of her distance from the world, from affairs that can serve as possibilities of her existence. On the other hand, she imposes order on the world that she herself creates; she wants to ignore the intensity of situations and define affairs and their functioning according to her own will. When Chantal distances herself from everything that concerned her, in order to control her life from her own perspective, she experiences herself as free. She is no longer drawn into anything, she does not engage in anything and nothing concerns her; nothing can therefore manipulate her. This breaking away from everything, however, leads to a fatal disintegration of Chantal’s self-definition, her meaning of the world and a real loss of her possibilities to act. ­Chantal’s various figures exhaust themselves because they do not have a sufficiently intense time in which to assert themselves. The questions regarding ‘who?’ do not develop in any dynamic, falling into incomprehensibility. The roles that Chantal plays are not only strange, but also heterogeneous in respect of one another; they are mutually indifferent. Chantal does not let affairs be and she does not even let herself be. By actualizing affairs that she defines for herself, she exhausts her possibilities. Yet, she does not gain

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any reality of her own from the actualized things because she is distanced from them. She gradually exhausts herself, creating a system of things that depend fully on her, her will, and her power. There comes a moment, toward the end of the novel, when Chantal claims that “she can’t go on like this”. At that moment an unknown power begins to press upon her and Chantal realizes that she is no longer the center of her own world. A powerful intensity of strange influences and workings enters into the game now. The world of affairs resists the imposed determination, entering the game instead. Chantal gets into a state of complete weariness, indifference and exhaustion because she did not manage, in spite of her will, to gain a definite control over her surroundings. This moment is the turning point when the powerful world takes hold of the main heroine, actualizing her in such a way that she would never want and choose. Chantal has to stop at this point and accept her potential powerlessness. In the example of Chantal, we demonstrated that the human being cannot have fully control the dynamic process of a transformation of real possibilities and possible realities. The human being cannot distance itself from the world completely and maintain its fixed identity, even if it were to be merely an identity of emptiness ready to embody any suitable figure. The person who does not to some extent surrender to the becoming of the world and who only pretends his changes reaches disintegration in the end. The person who, on the contrary, surrenders has to be prepared for the doublings and splits that do not determine in advance who the person will become. The powerful world of affairs therefore chooses the actor to the same extent that the actor chooses his world. It is true, on the one hand, that the actor has his own world, the world of his possibilities. On the other hand, the world that emerges in everyday situations and in each affair has its actors. The one who has his own world, however, is not the same as the one who belongs to the given world. We can trace the consequences of Chantal’s effort to control heterogeneous affairs in which various heterogeneous figures of ‘who’ are included without the possibility to interfere reciprocally and to develop themselves according to their own rules. Each single affair that Chantal actualizes can exist separately from other affairs. Chantal repeatedly actualizes possibilities that do not present mutual situational counterpoints but separate games. The heroine, in this context, becomes many separate figures that are not mutual counterpoints. She tries to control life in the structure of incoherent values, stories and discourses, that is, in many structures of sense that do not concern one another, that are not born one from the



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other, do not make obvious one another, do not serve as a framework for one another. Chantal does not alternate her own self-realization and becoming another. She lives in lines that are parallel and that meet each other only as a result of the contentless, empty scene from which they are developed. Chantal wants to control by means of her will various forms of ‘herself’—just as the young couple in The Hitchhiking Game—but it is a control of a different kind in this case. In The Hitchhiking Game the actors want to appear in real life as unambiguous entities and to solve their conflicts in their interior. In the case of the novel Identity, Chantal wishes to exert her multiplicity explicitly, and control by her will the division and alteration of the games in their external expression. Note to Literary Examples We would now like to express, in the context of the already adduced literary examples, our opinion regarding an idea voiced by Paul Ricoeur. There is no doubt that the stories mentioned could easily be integrated into Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity. Ricoeur would for instance interpret the identity of heroes of The Hitchhiking Game in the tension between the identity of idem and ipse. He would probably demonstrate that the original idem account of identity that is expressed in terms of habits, character, and stable structure of behaving is in this story exposed to such a strong situation that causes the heroes to change and to accept the non-substantialist ipse account of identity. The otherness of their world, their bodies and their self-understanding forces them to admit that their identity changes in situations and that in truth this is the real account of their identity. Ricoeur would emphasize that although their self-understanding changes significantly, they are one person all this time and their understanding is an understanding of one self. Even in the case of the disintegration of the identity of the literary heroes, the moment of non-subject has to be considered as a reference to a more profound character of the subject that persists in the story. This feature of human self-relationship is sufficiently grasped in the form of narrativity. The sudden and seemingly discontinuous changes of the self are graspable as plots in which the reversal takes place in the self-conception of the heroes of the story. The problem of heroes of The Hitchhiking Game would partially consist, according to Ricoeur, in their insistence on the identity of the type idem. Yet they do not lose their identity, which should only be interpreted in terms of ipse and narrativity.

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This interpretation of the story is fully consistent but we feel it touches upon an important point that we wish to emphasize and make more manifest. This point concerns the irreducible dual character of the real that is not resolved by a continuity of a third mode (narrativity) but remains dual, uncovering the powerlessness that characterizes the impossibility of the continuous unity of these two poles of the real. The hitchhiking game started as a standard game where people know, that they play some roles and remain themselves—they can stop the game when they want and return to their previous self-understanding. This game created, however, a world of the game that was imaginary, but not unreal. This world of meaning became slowly so strong that it uncovered how reality was double. That reality had two sides that corresponded together without being two parts of one unity, or one deduced from another. What is lost in existence of this double reality is the unique position from where the game is played and the story told. There is no continuous path from idem to ipse. Two figures exist in juxtaposition without being one and one as another. The narrative identity represents an attempt to overcome this correspondence without relation, to avert the non-intentional moment of powerlessness that sticks out inside the double reality. One is irreducibly and primarily double. This dual character of the (human) reality and identity is manifested by the moment of powerlessness that should remain powerlessness and not to be ‘solved’ or ‘saved’ by a ‘being always able of’, by a continuity of a second order that is applied retrospectively. Of course we can create this secondary construction but it does not change anything. There was something that happened without our intentional will, powers, and that could not be grasped by us in the moment. Human being is always (at least in its potentiality) another beside oneself but not oneself as another. Why not to accept this situation instead of creating interpretations? Within this context, we should mention Gilles Deleuze’s proposition to experiment instead of ­interpreting17 and finding that the difference precedes the identity (only different things can touch each other and become the same, no identical thing can become different).18 We believe that both narrations describe different forms of experience that lead the experiencing individual to its own overcoming, uncovering

17 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1987) 151. 18 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) 50 ff.



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it as double. There is, in the plot, a split of experience as it unfolds. The r­ eality of the actor also has to be doubled for such an event to occur. The way in which the given experience proceeds, leads to the loss of an actor as an identical person. A new reality comes into being that doubles the previous one. This doubled actor is here as a whole and parallel as a reality of heterogeneous relationships. It develops itself as a non-linear duality. These stories demonstrate first of all that the human being experiences things that are stronger than itself. The liminal situation cancels the actor’s ability to come back from it to itself. Sometimes we cannot do anything else than succumb to the circumstances and be engendered from them in a new way, experiment and improvise along with events. Identity does not have the strength of a definition that constantly accompanies the potentiality-of-being of human or of inhuman being. Pathology of the Normal Human Being We believe that the experience of an involuntary encounter with the powerful world and of the untenability of an unambiguous self-relationship, which we have tried to illustrate through the literary examples, are also thematized by contemporary psycho-social sciences. In contrast to the literary examples that documented the consequences of individuals clinging to various forms of self-relationship, the psychosocial sciences deal with the theme of a socially determined self-relationship and its consequences for the creation of certain psychosocial pathologies. They dedicate themselves to the issue that Jacques Le Rider calls the chronic crisis of personal identity.19 This phenomenon is closely connected with the issue of social normative systems and also with the theme of normality and abnormality. We wish to present them in our study as another type of example (a broader one) of the consequences of the fear of powerlessness. For this purpose we choose the work The Tiredness of Being Oneself (La fatigue d’être soi)20 of the social psychologist Alain Ehrenberg. We believe that this study can help us demonstrate that the insistence on the capacity to maintain oneself according to a permanent self-understanding (the conviction that I always can) can cause a suffering rather than a stable

19  Jacques Le Rider, Modernité Viennoise et Crises de l’Identité [Viennese Modernity and the Crises of Identity] (Paris: PUF, 1990) 51. 20 Alain Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d’Être Soi.

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approach to oneself and to the world. Fear of powerlessness will lead humans into more trouble than their possible acceptance of this moment of human existence. In his works, Ehrenberg shows very clearly that in individual types of modern social normativity a specific form of self-relationship is determinant. It is what is called normal and healthy. To be normal and healthy then means to be or become oneself through the ‘right’ way of thinking (oneself ). Social normativity not only delimits normality positively (how the human being is to relate to oneself), but manifests also its negative delimitation. All ways of being in which the human being gets to itself in ‘the wrong way’ or outside itself, distancing itself from the currently postulated determination of its own identity are designated as abnormal and diseased. In this way there emerges in modern social systems a dualistic divide between a positive sphere of normality (of health and of normative selfrelationship), and of a negative sphere of abnormality (of disease and of non-normative behavior). What is designated as pathological is what has to be pushed to the margins and depreciated. This structure creates pressure on the individual that forces him to maintain himself within the norms if he wants to be considered normal and healthy, and if he wants to be part of the social system. In society, this will lead to expressions of mass clinging to some form of self-relating. As is regularly proven, however, the human being is never able to meet the requirements of a permanent normative structure. That is why the phenomena of such ‘pathologies’— from the perspective of the normative notion of identity—that are present within the frameworks of a respective society become evident on an increasingly larger scale. One of them is the above-mentioned phenomenon of the chronic crisis of identity that can be considered a symptom of disruption of the self-relationship that is currently promoted by the social normative system. Alain Ehrenberg studies this phenomenon within the “pathology of the normal human being.”21 Through his designation, Ehrenberg wishes to highlight the fact that the chronic crisis of personal identity is an expression of a phenomenon emerging at the limit of normality that cannot yet be identified as a state that is clearly abnormal. It therefore seems that transgressing the limits of normality of a concrete normative system does not necessarily make the human being abnormal, nor irreversibly 21 Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d’Être Soi, 61.



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‘diseased’ or ‘insane’. However, there is a ‘pathological’ element involved. We believe that this state is related to the pursuit of this individual to simulate for the longest possible time normality and health, in order to survive in a positively evaluated social sphere. His relentless effort to pretend to be normal is, however, regularly accompanied by an undeniable suffering that comes from the knowledge of the impossibility of maintaining the required form of identity (self-relationship) permanently on the basis of one’s own power. This suffering that accompanies the given phenomenon does not have, according to Ehrenberg, any object. “The contemporary individual can say: ‘I suffer’ and not only ‘I suffer from this or that’.”22 Suffering is therefore a particular type of affair; it has no objectifiable anchorage. This affair “does not have to be related to some somatic disorganization so that it can be considered real.”23 The actor does not suffer from something that would have a substantial character. He is not diagnosed as ‘ill’ but he simply suffers. This suffering without an object is an expression of an exalted desire for normality and the impossibility to maintain oneself on the basis of one’s own will. The chronic crisis of identity is shown as a counterpoint to a clearly delimited duality of normality (health) and abnormality (disease). Ehrenberg describes and exposes in his book two concrete manifestations of the chronic crisis of personal identity that are generated within the framework of two concrete normative systems of modern European society. Let us now deal with these two phenomena in more detail. The Fear of Being Oneself The first type of chronic identity crisis is the so-called fear of being oneself. This phenomenon is connected with a social normativity that is based on the idea of human self-relationship in the sense of rational self-positing (stress on the idem account of identity). The given notion corresponds to a conception of the human being that can make use of the substantial basis of an I that characterizes the person during its whole existence in the essential sense of the word. This definitive I has various attributes and abilities that it organizes rationally and performs as its own possibilities. The individual therefore functions as an origin of all its action; it can

22 Ibid., 33. 23 Ibid., 34.

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control its mind and body and grasp the world whose own intensity and power is eclipsed. Ehrenberg argues that this attitude towards the world is typical of the social environment of the first half of the twentieth century, up to the 1960s. The given social framework is characterized by a normative system whose central values are prohibition, command and discipline. It is necessary, however, to stress that the given way of self-relationship is not restricted to a single type of social framework and its respective normativities. Ehrenberg just tries to show the connection between the social conditions and the significant spread of the given phenomenon. Let us also point out that it is possible to find in the description of this sort of normativity certain corresponding moments with the story of the young couple from the tale The Hitchhiking Game. Regarding the so-called normal individual—about whom Ehrenberg speaks in connection with the normativity of ‘prohibition, command, ­discipline’—it is obedience towards the authority of institutions that assigns to him the unambiguous functional roles that characterize him. The system demands loyalty, rationality and the will to submit to universal patterns of action from its members. The individuality of the individual is clearly determined on the basis of rules that state what is commanded and what forbidden within the framework of social behavior. Notes Ehrenberg: Individuality is consistent only in such a way that it is built from the outside. Nobody asks the individual to adapt himself continuously or to change personally . . . his aim is only to fulfill the social role depending on the aims of the institution to which it is to belong.24

In this system of forbidden and commanded acts and ways of thinking one simple rule holds: ‘not everything is allowed’. The human being that identifies itself more or less with this system creates a certain internal system of control and self-discipline. The system resolves all conflicts outside the sphere of interpersonal communication. The individual builds in himself a universal system of representations that enable him to externalize himself only by means of rational, disciplined and predictable behavior. His objective is to control all his possibilities and abilities including those that are not yet explicit. If he can do this, he is normal and healthy. If he would unambiguously transgress these determinations, he could soon

24 Ibid., 71.



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find himself on the margins of society, being considered abnormal and mentally ill. This way of self-relating, however, regularly leads to conflicts with the social system. The self-relationship of the human being is torn out of its hands, provoking an accompanying feeling that can already be considered a symptom of psychosocial pathology (to reiterate: from the perspective of a majority normativity). It is the fear of oneself, the state of anxiety and guilt. “Anxiety that warns me that I have transgressed a ban, and in this way doubled myself, is a pathology of guilt.”25 Guilt and the fear of being oneself emerge in the moment when the human being is addressed by possibilities that are beyond the framework delimited by normative commands and prohibitions. The more these possibilities urge and open themselves up to the individual, the more he rejects them out of fear of crossing the bounds of social norms. He finds himself in a state of chronic tension about his own self-determination. The public system forces him to be obedient and control himself, to be ‘himself’ even though the given person also experiences the desire to become another, to revolt against everything that is prescribed. He stands against himself; the rational selfrelationship encounters evil possibilities; revolt is in conflict with fear. If the individual decides to unify this doubling and to consolidate himself in accordance with social normativity, he will be able to do that only at the expense of choosing one of the given possibilities accompanied by the permanent suppression of other possibilities and at the expense of selfcontrol accompanied by the feeling of guilt. His own possibilities beyond the boundaries of the norm are often experienced and interpreted by the given individual as threatening ‘forces’ that could take hold of ‘himself’, that is, his universal Self with which he fully identifies. Sigmund Freud offers the following comments to this state: “We are moved by forces that transcend us, that have to be tamed, that are unknown to us, in which we can recognize ourselves.”26 And Nicole Berry adds: “The uncanny strangeness of these processes provokes a need to control them, a stubborn effort to examine them continuously. A loss of this ability to control is experienced as a danger and the defensive mechanisms that immediately emerge have the form ‘I am the master of myself’.”27 This pathology of 25 Ibid., 61. 26 Sigmund Freud, L’Inquiétante Étrangeté (Paris: Gallimard, 1985). English translation: The Uncanny. Translated by David McLintock. Penguin Books, 2004. 27 Nicole Berry, Le Sentiment d’Identité [The Feeling of Idenitity] (Begedis: Editions universitaire, 1987) 81. Translated by AK.

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guilt ­characterizes a liminal state of normality in which the given individual is doubled and perceives this doubling as threatening and ‘abnormal’. On the one hand, he tries to strengthen his self-relationship and preserve it on the basis of conscious and rationally accepted loyalty towards the normative system of his society; on the other hand, he is tempted by the possibilities of its transcending social norms. In the sphere of normality he therefore maintains himself on the basis of simulating ‘himself’ accompanied by a chronic feeling of fear of disturbing this pretended rational and disciplined self-relationship. His permanent effort is to take care not to choose from his own possibilities one that lies outside his own control. He reveals a possibility to develop another reality that is generated primordially from his own possibilities, but which transcends him. If he, however, made use of this possibility, he would be in danger of the given possibility, taking hold over himself and actualizing him as another, regarding his rational self-relationship. In this case the individual does not meet the requirements of the normative system. He does not maintain even himself, in the state of the chronic crisis of identity, still building his self-conception on this system. He might lapse into an even more profound state of suffering. His self-relationship is in this phase already clearly disrupted, which is shown by two liminal ways. The first possible expression of a loss of self-control is an ‘explosion’. As soon as a person is unable to keep his rigid attitude to the world and to itself, his suppressed revolt will lead him against the commands of his surroundings to an explosion of internally accumulated tension: “If the human being does not hide, he will cause a scandal.”28 The second possibility is ‘petrification’. In that case the human being is haunted by its own self-control and the fixation of ideas about himself. He gradually petrifies into a completely rigid figure which excludes any plasticity or adaptation and which is resistant against all change of circumstances in his life. In these moments the human being is already considered within his society as an evidently abnormal and mentally diseased being. The chronic crisis of personal identity that emerges within the framework of a normative system based on the values of prohibition, command and discipline takes the form of fear of being oneself. The human being experiences in it the power of reality that it does not control with its own abilities and that is why this moment can also be called the state 28 Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d’Être Soi, 70.



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of ­reference to powerlessness (im-potence). This phenomenon is also a ­symptom of the impossibility of the permanent maintenance of self­relating that has the form of rational, disciplined self-control. The ‘pathology’ of the normal human being—diagnosed from the perspective of majority ­normativity—is shown as a constitutive feature of human existence. It reveals the pathology of the underlying thinking of identity. Tiredness of Being Oneself Another form of the chronic crisis of personal identity can be designated as ‘tiredness of being oneself’. This phenomenon is characterized by social norms that come from the notion of self-relating as a dynamic self-understanding, singular and responsible take-over of one’s own dispositions, and the development of one’s own possibilities towards an individual singular form. This self-relationship characterizes the human being understood as existence. Existence does not have any substantial solid basis, but occurs as a dynamic process of its own founding and selfdevelopment. The human being understood in this way changes in the occurrence of its own possibilities that come up from its lived world. It continually becomes itself via its performance. A social system drawing on the already mentioned concept of human self-relating is, according to Ehrenberg, typical of contemporary European society. We do not mean by this that a concrete form of self-conception is exclusively present within the framework of one social system. We merely want to identify a potential correspondence between certain ways of thinking of the human being, its self-relationship and the notion of social normativity. It should also be noted that we can find moments, in Ehrenberg’s interpretation, which are closely related to the literary story of the novel text Identity. The normative scheme that characterizes this social system is based on the values of innovation, initiative and adaptation. The norm ‘not everything is allowed’ of the above-described scheme is in this case replaced with the norm ‘everything is possible, overcome your boundaries’. Members of this social system are led to actualizing various possibilities that are offered to them. Their aim is to expand, to develop themselves out of themselves, to actualize themselves in authentic performances, and to respond to challenges. All this is done mainly for their life to be authentic, original and free.

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chapter four The subject understands itself as a subject of action . . . The right to choose the life that we want to live begins to become a norm . . . Instead of discipline and obedience, independence of limitations and self-reliance appears; instead of finitude and fate that is to be accepted, an idea that everything is possible is generated . . . from this moment on, what is at stake is to be oneself.29

This way of self-actualization is aimed at inventing oneself, becoming oneself and revealing one’s own potential. The individual is to become richer, more developed and actualized in his own identity by way of constantly integrating new experiences into a whole personality with many aspects and sides. The new normativity concerns identity rather than identification . . . The question of identity is the question about action: individual initiative is merged with psychical liberation.30

What also belongs to psychical liberation is the possibility to create an image of identity according to one’s own choice and to create an integrated unity from a multiplicity of actualized possibilities. We can reach this integrated identity with maximum effectiveness. That is why the human being’s objective is, among others, to invent the ways in which to create ‘itself’ and not lose time in the process. In this way, we can minimize the phases of ‘straying’, feelings of split, and the experience of absurdity. All these temporarily ‘infertile’ and disrupting moments are acceptable only as moments of a development that can later be used for building a unified, richer and integral personality. Only in this way does the person become more and more flexible and developed while maintaining its normality and health. The requirement of always-actualizing new ‘challenges’, overcoming new obstacles, and the appeal to the human being to become itself via crossing its boundaries is corrected by other determinations. The actor is asked to control the process of becoming oneself, maintaining it within a previously defined set of possibilities that are valued by the society. The normative imperative is therefore complemented, taking the form of advertising challenges.31 They can for instance have the following form: 29 Ibid., 136. 30 Ibid., 210. 31  Paul Watzlawick, Helmick Beavin, Don Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Comunication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes. USA: Faber and Faber, 1967. French translation: Logique de la communication, translated by J. Morche (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1972). Compare also Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1970).



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‘become yourself and have a Sprite’, ‘discover your fragrance Prêt-à-­porter’, ‘reveal your identity in the challenges of our financial group’, or even very shortly put ‘be yourself, be spontaneous’. From these supplemental imperatives it becomes obvious that what is required within the respective normative framework is that the human being shall become itself. Yet, it must not leave the framework of valued styles of action. The norm ‘become yourself’ in fact does not mean the actor is expected to perform such an act. The given system rejects improvisation in the sense of openness to what is to come. The system requires that the actor proves himself as an initiating, innovative, motivated person with optimal performance, and that he defends himself from unexpected events by means of an extremely plastic adaptation to the world. This normativity exercises a pressure on the individual under which he relates to himself in such a way that his identity has the form of universal individuality and impersonal singularity: “Singularity becomes normative capability; it is, as well as all norms, completely impersonal.”32 These paradoxical requirements (become yourself according to the prescriptions that are not your own, be authentic even if it is not you), together with the requirement of continuously actualizing new possibilities and increasing performance, necessarily disable the actor to personally identify himself with everything that he performs. To be successful in his role, he has to become a mere organizer of the whole process of actualizing possibilities. Psychical liberation takes the form of an impersonal and non-engaged organizing of one’s life. It is perfectly obvious from this description that the pathology of this type of normativity significantly differs from the pathology of the normative system of prohibition, command, and discipline. As soon as the selfrelationship of an active and expanding existence reaches the end of its powers, there begins to emerge a phenomenon that we might describe as utter fatigue, as a complete emptying of oneself and of the world, and a state of extreme exhaustion: “The feeling that the human being is not as strong as it would wish is similar to the feeling of a lack of motivation and stimuli often expressed in terms of ‘tiredness’.”33 The human being—through its constant effort to overcome itself with its own powers, to make use of all available opportunities, to actualize

32 Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d’Être Soi, 157. 33 André Haynal, Le Sens du Désespoir [The Sense of Despair] (Revue française de psychanalyse, N. 1–2, 1977) 102.

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itself in many possibilities without being personally engaged in any of them—gradually reaches a profound exhaustion. In this moment, the individual feels alien to everything that surrounds him; he is empty and separate. Ehrenberg demonstrates that this feeling results from how the given individual . . . does not want to admit his insufficiency (inability to do justice to all that is offered); he is not able to stand the feeling that reality limits him. The feeling of insufficiency is characteristic of deprived individuals who underestimate the value of their own experience.34

This state of unadmitted insufficiency and the inability to engage in anything personally is accompanied by a depressive and melancholic ­attunement. Depression affects movement, it is an absence of the mental aspect of movement . . . a general slow-down that is manifested as inhibition, asthenia . . . Action gets lost in inhibition . . . it is a stage of melancholy.35

Chronic fatigue and personal inhibition are symptoms of the crisis of active, initiating and adaptive self-relating. This phenomenon is again characteristic of an in-between-state—when the human being can still defend itself from falling into the sphere of abnormality and disease, when it tries to pretend that it is completely healthy, active and motivated, but when it is also obvious to him that such behavior is not permanently maintainable. At stake here is not a definitive exhaustion, a disruption of personality, a diagnosed disease, or a spontaneous ‘normality’. Not all social and active life is denied to the chronically tired individual who is no longer motivated toward a continuous effort to become ‘oneself’. He can still pretend to be normal, but only at the cost of great suffering that follows from the permanent feeling of a threat that his self-relationship shall definitely fall apart. This state of permanent tension and suffering can be described again as a state of a chronic crisis of identity: “As soon as the conflict is out of sight, life is transformed into a chronic disease of identity.”36 The reason for a chronic crisis of identity is the clinging to the idea of maintaining one type of self-relationship. The illusion that an individual can direct his life, maximize his possibilities, create himself in accordance with social values and control even his own sorrow leads in the

34 Ehrenberg, La Fatigue d’Être Soi, 166. 35 Ibid., 213 and 233. 36 Ibid., 241.



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end to a state of clear suffering. A chronic crisis of identity is not a chosen state. It appears as a symptom of the desire to control one’s life that is accompanied by the indication of powerlessness and by the experience of the impossibility to attain this goal. . . . to be the owner of oneself does not mean that everything is possible— something increases in us and something else decreases, something is being tightened and something else is loosed. Depression, by stopping us, wants to remind us that we cannot leave the human situation. . . . we can move our boundaries in many ways, but this action is not for free. Human limitations and liberties change their character, but certain irreducible components always stay the same.37

The human being who actualizes itself as a unifying multiplicity of various roles sooner or later reaches an experience of the powerlessness (im-potence) to maintain this unity. The individual experiences the power of a reality that he cannot control. A more and more intensive reference to a potential disruption of his self-relationship is present in his chronic fatigue. Conclusion Literary examples and studies of social science confirmed that the experience of the power of affairs, the indication of an irreducible powerlessness of the potentiality-of-being, and the experience of being another beside oneself are not irrelevant to the analysis of the human being in the world. We wished to exemplify what we theoretically discovered with Heidegger and Ricoeur as implicitly inspiring moments of their phenomenology. The examples document that the ability of the human being to relate to itself, to act intentionally, and to determine the character of its world is not inexhaustible. The individual regularly experiences the indefiniteness of himself, the indefiniteness of his ‘own’ way of being, and of reality in general. The basic structure of intentional experience that has the form of ‘the experiencer experiences the experienced’ is loosened and is an indication (in the sense of Derrida’s concept of indication in contrast to ­reference)38 beyond itself, to its internal limit. We believe that what appears at this 37 Ibid., 292. 38 Jacques Derrida, La Voix et la Phenomene (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967). English translation: Speech and Phenomena. And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, translated by D.B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973) 4.

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internal limit is an experience of a completely different kind. This type of experience is expressed as the powerlessness of the potentiality-of-being. It has a non-intentional character. What is characteristic of non-­intentional experience is that it cannot be reached in any continuous intentional way. It cannot be experienced in presence, and it cannot be directly articulated. Yet it is always in the game, co-operating in all manners of forms of self-potentiality and of intentional experiencing. We even believe that experience regularly appears at its internal limit, which it cannot arrive at in any continuous way. Such a notion of the structure of experience, however, includes in itself an idea of a necessary transgression and disturbing of the field of intentional experience and even the idea of the doubling of experience itself. The above-mentioned literary examples and psycho-sociological studies make us consider whether the effort to gain self-confirmation, which is related to clinging to a human self-relationship and to the fear from powerlessness, is the only possible approach to the phenomenology of powerlessness. What does it mean to problematize the generally shared certainty that every individual is always somehow himself? What does it mean to admit, even if only hypothetically that the human being can be defined neither by means of an unambiguous determination of the selfrelationship of thinking, nor by means of a sum of self-relationships that would present various aspects of the same being? We believe that we can develop a line of thought which does not affirm itself, but which is open to its own possible change along with that, which is being currently thought. Literary examples and Ehrenberg’s studies evoked the experience along which the experiencer gets ‘beyond’ the experience itself and experiences a reality that is not thinkable in the existing context. It concerns a doubled reality, which is always in this sense internally incoherent. How to think this reality in a creative way? How to think ‘from’ the powerlessness without reducing this moment into the object of power (e.g., the ability to understand or the ability to narrate)? We shall try to deal with this theme in the next chapter. We shall make use of the already attained knowledge on fundamental ontology, on narrative identity, and the indications beyond these schemas.

Chapter Five

Happy Powerlessness, Relaxed Da-sein In the previous chapter we found that the effort to reach and keep any fixed form of self-relationship causes a state of crisis: either an acute crisis (that is, the explosion or disintegration of Self ), or a chronic crisis (the chronic fatigue of being oneself, rigidity of attitude, petrified Self ), invariably followed by the crisis of attunement or suffering. It would appear that the human desire for fulfillment and for a clear determination of selfrelationship is fundamentally unattainable, for whatever reason, and is therefore chronically unsatisfiable. Yet, it constantly urges one to make fresh attempts at finding oneself fully, with the hope that this time the objective will be reached. This desire is driven by the conviction that human being is necessarily itself, one just needs to find out how. However, we have reached the conclusion, in the course of our previous analyses, that there are strange moments in human experience, which we call instances of powerlessness. The human being sometimes finds out that it becomes, regarding its own creations, powerless all of a sudden. The reality that one builds for a certain time gains a specific autonomy. It becomes a reality (of play or of an event) posed next to one’s own reality, creating another reality. These two realities are in contact, they touch one another, but one is not derived from the other, nor are they both parts of one big reality. One can find oneself in a situation when one is captured and carried away by the reality one has created. The world of this reality has so much power that it generates a new form of Da-sein. The Self of Da-sein is therefore all of a sudden double. There is no viewpoint from which these two Selves could be seen as two poles of one Da-sein. Da-sein experiences double self-determination without there being any continuous transfer, or a subordination of one to the other, between these moments. We saw the birth of double reality and double self-determination in the example of The Hitchhiking Game. The young couple had been generating an imaginary reality for such a long time that this reality became as real as that which they had hitherto considered their own reality. They stood one next to another doubled, unable to reach, or posit, one or the other aspect of a Self as the leading one. We have witnessed with

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the example of Chantal that even if one acknowledges one’s multiplicity, he or she is not capable to hold this multiplicity of the Self. Chantal wanted to control various realities and change her Selves according to the reality in which she currently found herself. She tried to switch characters while not ‘really’ being any of them. This made her decide to create a different reality—the reality of an empty world in which she was no one and just kept changing roles. It was this world that she built that at one point took hold of her, even though she thought that it had been a world held under control and controlling all other ways of being. Instead, it was just another game, another ‘affair’ of Chantal, which could in a certain moment become autonomous towards her. We wanted to demonstrate that there will be moments of powerlessness in human existence. There also emerges something that the actor did not plan or seek intentionally. It is a meaning of reality (which is not a meaning of a positive content because this meaning does not communicate any sort of something) to which no line of will to understand can lead. As double and living in double reality, the human being is not fully capable of itself. There is a topological place somewhere between the first and the second Self, and the first and the second reality, in which the continuous line leading from one form of Self to another gets complicated and lost. The third mode of existence leads to this place in which Da-sein is not fully present, experiencing it as immediate. It is a strange mode of existence when the human being experiences that there is an undetectable separation within itself, which cannot be bridged by any selfmaintaining capacity. That is why the human being exists all of a sudden as doubled and, from the point of view of an identity, as ‘lost’. Our interpretation of the third mode of existence therefore differs greatly from Heidegger’s interpretation. Indeed, Heidegger introduces the binary character of the modal way of being of Da-sein, which is based on the idea of deficiency and completion. Nor does our interpretation agree with Ricoeur’s interpretation of the third mode in the sense of an intermediary between authenticity and inauthenticity that has the form ‘both inauthentic and authentic’, ‘both idem and ipse.’ Our intention is to show the third mode as an internal boundary of a primordial modal duality in which the complementarity of this duality is not affirmed, but is eliminated. The third mode is not the continuous interval between one Self and another Self, but an indication of a gap that maintains the duality of the experience principally un-unified. In the third mode of being, the human being experiences that there is, ‘somewhere’ within ‘itself,’ powerlessness. The human being is such a



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potentiality-of-being which is irreducibly powerless, and that is why it will suddenly appear next to something that cannot be articulated. It is in its own world and at the same time in another, nonshared world. What holds here is not: I as another, but I (distant) and yet powerful next to myself. We perceive, from this experience of powerlessness as a place of the invisible and yet effective, the actuating of a strange power ‘it’ that eliminates any form of our intentionality. We say ‘it’—it was terrible, impressive, unexpected. What was happening to me? What was going on? What is important is how we manage to work with this topological place in experience. We believe that it cannot be interpreted in a convincing manner. However, it is possible to experiment with and from it (see Deleuze and Guattari, the appeal to experiment instead of interpreting). The place cannot be captured by interpretation. It cannot be shaken off when one is afraid that by succumbing to it, one will lose his or her own selfunderstanding as ‘being always capable of  ’. We shall try to demonstrate in the following parts that powerlessness and the third mode of existence can be perceived by means of an indication, a trace (in Derrida’s sense) of the other side of experience—non-intentional experience. If we accept the possibility that there is non-intentional experience, then it will be possible to play with powerlessness, to push it into the game, to live with it even though it can be neither managed nor controlled. We discovered this topological place in the structure of human experience exclusively due to the fact that we presented the world as one of affairs. Such a world is a powerful world, a world that is the potentiality-of-being without being necessarily the potentiality-of-being-itself or of an understanding of itself, without being a subject or Da-sein. The world is simply powerful. Our objective, however, is not primarily to find a new definition of the difference between the human being and the world, to draw a clear dividing line between things and Da-sein, or to make them identical and claim that Da-sein is not different in any essential way from nonhuman beings. We do this whole excursion with the aim to disclose new possibilities of how to think Da-sein. The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate how to take powerlessness into account, play with it, accept it and perhaps even understand it as a moment which we are not only forced to accept, but thanks to which our thinking can rid itself of a particular type of chronic suffering (a permanent desire for something which we lack, and which we, never­ theless, cannot attain). First of all, however, it would be appropriate to mention the sources of inspiration from which our notion of powerlessness developed. The first source is Derrida’s criticism of the good will to

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power (or good will to understand) and his interpretation of a disseminative reading shown on a poem by Paul Celan. Another inspiration was the late philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, especially his metaphor of the blind spot, an experience outside of oneself, on the other side of intentional consciousness. We shall, in both cases, touch upon such moments of experience when the human being experiences something that it did not anticipate. We approach a text, as Derrida shows, in a way that is different from the one in which a text wants to say ‘something’. Thinking, in Merleau-Ponty’s work, is unable to take hold of experience, to understand it, but it can touch it because this experience manifests itself without the aim to say anything concrete. Its gestures are non-representative. An encounter with experience (with the body), or with a text, is not, in this sense, an example of how to interpret or reinterpret the original understanding. It concerns action without the primary will to understand and to preserve the understanding. It is rather the thinking in which all of a sudden something begins to actuate and the human being is doubled. We would like to demonstrate that strange moments of powerlessness can also be found in perfectly common experiences, and that the flash of powerlessness is to be found in everyday human conduct. What is at stake, is primarily that in every actualization of an affair, including intentional action, Da-sein reaches the point when it grants the thing its ‘potentiality-of-being’, and when it exhausts itself in the thing. At this very moment the thing gets the power to actualize Da-sein in a different way than it could ever manage. The thing therefore actualizes, by means of its own power, someone else who emerges next to the Self of Da-sein as someone else. We believe that this type of relationship between Da-sein and things can be described as the so-called alternation. Alternation is a swapping of the potentiality of Da-sein and the worlds it created, that is, the worlds of affairs. In this alternation, Da-sein appears without power at every turning point—in the moment of actualization that is the moment of exhaustion. This description of the alternation of Da-sein and of an affair will lead us to more general ideas about the rules of this dynamism. We shall also reflect on the nature of thinking that comes from the given notion of Da-sein. The Point of Departure We should perhaps bear in mind that we posit our philosophical starting point in the context of fundamental ontology. However, we shall not



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draw on Heidegger’s analyses of how Da-sein exists at first only to fall prey ‘to they’ in everyday life. We do not want to follow studies of a resolute sort of Da-sein’s being that consists in an explicit take-over of the essential structure of Da-sein. The starting point of our own project will be, rather, the moments at which Heidegger stopped developing his conception. Although the author articulated these moments, he failed to resolve or otherwise address the implicit contradictions or unclarities in his formulations. We tried to highlight one of these moments—the powerlessness of self-relationship—by means of literary examples from the work of Milan Kundera and from studies by Alain Ehrenberg. The reasons that lead us to the decision to develop our analysis from this moment are based on several characteristics of Heidegger’s project, which we intend now to sum up. The first characteristic of Heidegger’s project is that there is not a space created within it for a description of an uncertain, double or even absent attitude to the world. For, both the authentic and the inauthentic mode demonstrate quite a high level of certainty and firmness with which Da-sein approaches the world. The certainty of a firm attitude of the inauthentic mode lies in the fact that the Da-sein that falls prey gives itself into the hands of the public ‘they’. The inauthentic Da-sein can always find support in the public opinion and act in accordance with clear commands and customs of the majority that surrounds it. The certainty of the authentic mode of existence also consists in the firm attitude of Da-sein to its world of possibilities. This firm attitude, however, in this case takes the form of an explicit take-over of oneself into one’s own hands. That does not mean, of course, that Da-sein has under control everything that occurs. Yet, it always takes a firm and authentic stance toward itself and the world. These modes present stable and certain ways of relating of Da-sein and to its possibilities. They clearly determine what it means for Da-sein to be oneself (either to be oneself in an inauthentic way within the anonymous ‘they’, or to be oneself in the ownmost way) and also what the character of reality of non-Da-sein beings is (be it our ordinary world, or the world of the ownmost possibilities of Da-sein). The second characteristic feature of Heidegger’s project is the impossibility to articulate the non-intentional action of Da-sein. All human action has an intentional character according to Heidegger. This intentional character of action is obvious because Da-sein ‘always already’ somehow understands itself and the fact that it is always related to a form of structure of sufficiency. Such form is construed on the basis of references ‘what for’. Although it is carried away by certain non-intentional moods (Stimmungen), these moods are always definite ways of Da-sein’s finding

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of itself (Befindlichkeit). Da-sein is therefore never attuned indefinitely. It is clearly bound with its moods to concrete meanings of the world as concrete Da-sein. We can therefore say that Da-sein has always some concrete possibilities in which it exists either in order to be what it ‘shall normally be,’ or it does what it decides to do in order to perform itself in its authenticity. The third feature of Heidegger’s conception is the impossibility to ascribe a modal way of being to non-Da-sein beings. Da-sein is the only being which relates to itself (it is interested in itself ). Its ontological structure is revealed to Da-sein, and it can take various stands toward it. Beings objectively present, on the other hand, do not have a relationship towards themselves (they are not interested in themselves). They are therefore not qualified to take a modal stance toward their own reality or general reality (to interpret that which is). Thus, they are not possibilities-of-being. We can speak about the modal character of being of non-Da-sein beings only metaphorically, in the sense of their derivation from Da-sein’s modal way of being: non-Da-sein beings appear to Da-sein either as occurrences in a substantial respect or in respect to handiness as its possibilities. The problem of a phenomenological-hermeneutical approach consists clearly in the assumption, that experience can be understood as a linear connection between the experiencer and the experienced in which meaning is permanently being constituted in the dynamics of actual intentionality. Experience is, for phenomenological conceptions that we analyzed in the preceding chapters, a dynamic manifestation of the human relationship to the world. It is a continuous space that connects the experiencer and the experienced. Experience is also a medium of a cyclical maintenance of internally differentiated self-relationships. Experience conceived in this way presents a foundation for phenomenology, to which thinking shall refer if it is to be credible; i.e., if it is to be true knowledge. The whole phenomenological notion of thinking and truth therefore depends on what character phenomenological philosophy assigns to experience and in what way it determines the structure of the experiential field. That is also why every phenomenology searches for some kind of pure experience, a source of immediate evidence that will constitute a reliable and solid foundation for philosophical thinking itself. Next to these ‘impossibilities’ that occur in Heidegger’s conception, he alludes to the existence of a certain possibility that we wish to use for our own project. We named this possibility ‘the third mode of being’ and Heidegger himself designates it as a modality of modal indifference. It holds true for this mode that the distinction between authenticity and



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inauthenticity has no real justification. In moments of anxiety, of the call of conscience and of being-toward-death, which are in our view moments close to the third mode of being, Da-sein is neither falling prey nor is it resolute. Its way of being, however, cannot be expressed by means of a synthesis of these two modalities or by their mutual intertwining. In the moment when unanswerable questions such as ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is at stake here?’ emerge in front of Da-sein, Da-sein gets closer to the experience about which one can predicate only afterwards and in which Da-sein ‘was’ without any power to act, without any attitude to the world. Da-sein has therefore a backward experience about the third mode; it is the experience of powerlessness. For this reason we wish to start our analysis with a study of the powerless potentiality-of-being in which Da-sein does not have any fixed attitude toward itself and the world. This analysis does not radically oppose the modal analysis of fundamental ontology. It just seeks to stress that there is an essential breach between the two modes privileged by Heidegger, which can be thought neither as a space of synthesis nor as a sphere of merging of these two modes (as Paul Ricoeur proposes). What we try to reveal by the analysis of experience of powerlessness is such a structure of the experiential field that is not continuous and that cannot serve as a source of immediate evidence. Powerlessness, which was designated by Heidegger as a place of immediate experiencing of an ontological phenomenon, is on the contrary an internal boundary of an experiential field that cancels its continuity and possibility of selfconfirmation. This boundary is not reachable by a continual extension of intentional experiencing, and is located outside this field itself. How can we, however, contact this domain it if it is not intentionally attainable? Is this goal not paradoxical in itself ? Perhaps we should turn to contemporary French philosophers who, through their inspiring reflections, can help us to map the topological structure around powerlessness. Let us also mention that we read these authors already with the purpose to explain our phenomenon of powerlessness. Thus, we try to find in their thought supporting moments that could help us to clarify what we mean by powerlessness. Derrida’s Critique of the Good Will to Understand In this context we first would like to mention Derrida’s critique of the phenomenological-hermeneutical idea of the intentional character of

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experience. Derrida formulates an alternative conception of a specific experience—called encounter with a text—that is not based on intentional experiencing. We would like to demonstrate, with this example, that to understand does not mean to ‘always already understand’ but to understand and also not to understand on principle. This notion, however, stands according to us beyond the exclusive duality—either always already understand, or not understand at all. In other words, potentiality-of-being does not mean to always already be able to be, and to be able to face what one encounters, but it also means on principle a non-potentialityof-being. In his discussion with phenomenological hermeneutics Derrida wishes to demonstrate that ‘reading a text’ does not mean that an ‘interpreting human being interprets an interpreted thing, the thing of a text’. Derrida’s concept of the disseminal reading-writing (lecture-écriture disséminale)1 is opposed mainly to a hermeneutical project based on the phenomenological idea of intentionality. Differences between these two approaches can be studied for instance in the volume Text and interpretation2 and in the essay “Rams”.3 In his critique, Derrida de-construed the main hermeneutical presupposition that the essential moment of each text consists in what the text wants to say, i.e., in the so-called vouloir dire (‘expression’). Derrida claims that this presupposition characterizes hermeneutical phenomenology as a philosophy based on a metaphysical good will to power (good will to understand), that directs principally the whole process of interpretation and that determines also its final meaning.4 We believe that this good will to always already understand is in fact constituted in a self-related Dasein. Da-sein can never lose itself, its self-understanding and the meaning of that which it encounters (the world, the text) due to its will to have its own will, and the intention to have its own intention. Derrida talks in this connection about a ‘powerful evidence of the given axiom’ (die machtvolle Evidenz dieses Axioms), which cannot be opposed seemingly, and whose universal validity needs to be questioned. The common aspect of all of Derrida’s critical reproofs concerning this attitude is exactly the 1  Jacques Derrida, “Rams”, in Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan, edited by Tomas Dutoit, Outi Pasanen (New York, 2005) 149. French original: Beliers: Le Dialogue Ininterrompu. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2003. 2 Phillipe Forget, ed., Text und Interpretation (Munich, 1984). 3 Jacques Derrida, “Rams”, in Sovereigntiesin Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan. 4 Jacques Derrida, “Guter Wille zur Macht” [Good Will to Power], in Text und Interpretation, 56.



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questioning of the ‘simple self-givenness’ (Selbstdarstellung) of the good will to understand. Hermeneutical phenomenology refers to this will, considering it an ‘experience which we all know’ (Erfahrung, die wir alle kennen). It also presupposes that there is always ‘something’ intentionally said. Although this meaning is not necessarily explicitly and fully expressed (this meaning can represent for instance that about what the text is permanently silent5 or that what can be actualized always only ‘as something else’),6 it is always a ‘unified and self-contained thing.’7 This thing directs the process of understanding, while maintaining its (even infinite) cyclic dynamics. According to Derrida, however, there is a need to present understanding in a completely different way. Understanding is a process that comes from an irreducible breakage, heterogeneity and the absence of mutuality between the human being and that which is being understood. All understanding is also irreducible non-understanding. If we paraphrase these ideas, it is necessary to put into question the simple self-givenness of experience which we, as it is thought, all know, and which consists in that we always can do something (in extreme cases we can die), and we are therefore always already somehow a potentialityof-being. It is necessary to see that our experience of possibilities is disturbed by an experience without possibilities. In this realm we seek neither to found experience on powerlessness, nor to advocate a conception of nonpower. Instead, a non-unifiable touch of powerlessness with power in human existence is manifested. Critics from the hermeneutical phenomenological camp push Derrida into the position of a sophist, thus creating a very incomplete and artificial alternative: either I want to understand and then I focus necessarily on the respective thing of understanding and its unifying meaning, connecting me with the object of interpretation, or I am a sophist, that is a human being who intentionally strives not to be understood and who wants the thing concerned to be concealed. He, who, however, says that the will to understand, the shared meaning of the same world is perhaps not at stake in understanding, necessarily refutes himself. For, he strives 5 Günter Figal, For a Philosophy of Freedom and Strife: Politics, Aesthetics and Metaphysics, translated by Wayne Klein (New York, 1998) 2. German original: Für eine Philosophie von Freiheit und Streit: Politik, Ästhetik, Metaphysik. Germany: Metzler, 1994. 6 H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, Ges. Werke, J.C.B. Mohr, (Tübingen, 1990, Bd. 2) 337. English translation: Truth and Method, translated by J. Weisheimer, D.G. Marshall (London: Continuum, 2004). 7 H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen, 1990, Bd. 1) 109.

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by means of his interpretation to explain something; he therefore clearly has the will to be intelligible and to talk about something. Yet he at the same time claims that speech is primarily non-intelligible, and that it does not talk about anything. In his criticism of Derrida, Günter Figal points out another side of the project of deconstruction. He claims that as soon as Derrida eliminates the idea of a unified meaning of the thing of the text, that is, the presupposition of existence of that about which the textual works are in full dignity silent, he is bound to fall into a completely chaotic space in which every reading enters into new linguistic contexts and consequently brings with it uncontrollable displacements of meaning.8 Then it also holds that . . . every linguistic utterance is merely a displacement within the open system of language9 . . . whoever is moved to produce his or her own articulation of a text merely produces a new text within the infinite play of linguistic signs.10

According to the advocates of the principle of understanding, understanding and non-understanding are different expressions of a primary understanding that creates a basis for any possible encounter with speech. Both hermeneutic thinkers then enforce upon Derrida’s thinking a type of principle of non-understanding as the basis of his thought, trying to show subsequently that this conception is either a derived part of the conception of understanding, or that it does not make sense. However, Derrida’s intention is not to deny the existence of a will to understand. He does not proclaim that it is inevitable to renounce the existence of any meaning and to content oneself with a perpetual and arbitrary referring of signs to other signs. Derrida merely demonstrates that the meaning (of a text) is not identical with its ‘expression’ (vouloir dire). He argues that a meaning that is not intended by anybody and that is not targeted by any will, can arise from the text—this is what non-intentional experience concerns. There can arise something completely improbable, from what did not belong to the text (to the anticipation of intentional experience) and what was never intended by any will to understand. Thus, Derrida denies only the existence of the thing of a text that could function as a guarantee of the intentional meaning. Each expression (vouloir dire) is, according to Derrida, interweaved with indeterminate indications that differentiate the intentionality and that 8 Figal, For a Philosophy of Freedom and Strife: Politics, Aesthetics and Metaphysics, 2. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.



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withdraw the good will to the meaning (and thus to the self-potency and power over everything we encounter in the world) from itself. These indications (traces) cannot be intended directly, though they unwittingly act in the process of understanding. Understanding is therefore interwoven with indications which come from an indefinite realm and which carry with themselves an unknown force. This force puts into question in an essential way the power of good will to understand, and also the power to understand oneself, and to be oneself in this way. Experience continuously unfolds itself as a certain sort of interruption: “Far from signifying the failure of the dialogue, such an interruption could become the condition of comprehension and understanding.”11 In other words, the primary condition of experience is characterized by strangeness and difference, by the Unheimlichkeit. According to Derrida, the experiencer and the experienced thing (reader and text) do not share a common world. The world in disseminal interpretation is completely out (“die Welt ist fort”).12 It is necessary to hold the interpreted text as a strange exteriority in the interiority of the interpreter (“Ich muss Dich tragen”).13 Let us again apply these sentences to our case: our possibilityof-being is constantly interwoven with indications of powerlessness. Powerlessness is a source of an uncontrollable force that in an essential way questions the good will to a potentiality-of-being. Things we encounter in the world are foreign for us. There is an ‘unheimlich’ difference between them and ourselves. The thing is not a part of our world, our own possibility, the object of our understanding; it is a thing from a different world. Derrida talks even about otherworldliness. The thing that Da-sein understands becomes in this way a specific condition of the possibility that a strange exteriority arises in Da-sein and that Da-sein becomes different from itself. The experience of this encounter with an affair or with a text proceeds in heterogeneous time. For this reason it is always absolutely absent. The meaning arising from this experience is principally improbable because it arises only ‘perhaps’ (peut-être). Derrida describes the method of how to touch this ‘perhaps’ in his late work Rams. There he reads in his own specific way Celan’s poem Grosse, Glühende Wölbung. A nonprofessional translation of the interpreted poem goes as follows:

11  Derrida, “Rams”, 139. 12 Ibid., 144. 13 Ibid.

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chapter five PATHS IN THE SHADOW-ROCK of your hand Out of the four-finger-furrow I grub for myself the petrified blessing.14

The poem announces, according to Derrida, happiness coming from a blessing which one can reach on the basis of movement designated by the verb wühlen. This verb designates a restless, groping roaming, subversive and aimless luring which carries within itself also curiosity, urgency, and a desire for discovery. Blessing (in other words the possibility of experiencing any meaning) is not given but it cannot even be intentionally found. That is why Derrida claims that “the blessing is not given, it is sought for; it seems to be extracted by hand.”15 He, who roams wondering (wühlt), can expect to be endowed with meaning from a closed fist, a meaning that does not belong to him and yet it causes happiness. A closed hand gives and at the same time hides the meaning of the message. Conjecturable meaning acquired in advance, on which one can count in advance, is no longer meaning. Meaning stays improbable. As soon as one manages to lure meaning out of the closed hand, it has always only a rigid, petrified form.

Fig. 1. Interior of the fold.

Fig. 2. Interior which dissolves itself and its sense petrifies after the hand is opened.

14 H.-G. Gadamer, Wer bin ich und wer bist du? Komentar zu Celans “Atemkristal” (Frankfurt am Main, 1973) 58. Original text in German: Wege im Schatten-Gebräch; deiner Hand.; Aus der Vier-Finger-Furche; wühl ich mir den; versteinerten Segen. English translation: Gadamer on Celan: Who Am I and Who Are You? and Other Essays (SUNY: SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy) 97. 15 Derrida, “Rams”, 143.



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In this way, a new topology is opened up in the process of interpretation. It is a topology of a closed hand from which an ‘improbable’ meaning ‘perhaps’ arrives. We may call the closed hand, together with Derrida, a fold (le pli).16 The text has a structure that contains folds. When interpreting a text, it is necessary to pass through several interruptions and folds, while watching the discontinuous and creased lines of palms. These lines are to be found in the text itself. The text is at the same time open and folded. There is a specific space of the fold created in the text due to inner folding. It is a space within the closed hand, where a sphere is hidden that does not belong to the pure ‘interior’ of the text, not being an extension of ‘the exterior.’ It is the side of the reader-interpreter. The fold has no clear boundaries. It is not clear where the exterior merges with the exterior of the interior and where the exterior already belongs to the interior as a fold to the interior. The fold is at the same time an unreachable space. As soon as the reader-interpreter believes that he reached—in a certain intentional way—to the basis of will and of an intentional interpretation of the fold, he only managed to open the hand and cancel the fold. The line dividing the exterior and interior is straightened and the fold disappears. To reach the fold therefore means to open the fold and to lose it; a potential meaning which could come from the fold gets lost together with it. Every meaning which is seemingly gained from the fold is already a petrified or past meaning. If we develop this idea, we could say that one can only roam around the sphere of powerlessness but one cannot get any meaning out of it, nor enter it directly. To take possession of powerlessness means to eliminate it. The meaning comes from powerlessness always only perhaps; it will always be improbable and it definitely will not be intentionally graspable. It will be a meaning actuating from the side, a meaning which—when seen directly—petrifies. It no longer has the character of a blessed force which influences us, and which awakens happiness within us, for which we can find no reason. It is also clear from this topology, however, that just as meaning coming from the fold cannot be possessed by the reader-interpreter, it also does not have an obvious author. We are not the authors of the blessed meaning of non-intentional experience and neither are we its direct recipients. What is not clear from the poem is the ‘You.’ Who is the You whose hand is closed? It is not any transcendental principle. We cannot claim 16 See Figure 3 in the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty.

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anything definite about the ‘You’. What is talked about is only a permanent desperation of the one who seeks a blessing in ‘your’ hand because he always finds only petrified remnants (rigid convictions, pieces of knowledge, institutions, concepts). Yet, is the petrified meaning a meaning at all? What meaning is determined in the poem? Derrida comments on this question at large:  If the poem retains an apparently sovereign, unpredictable, untranslatable, almost unreadable initiative, that is also because it remains an abandoned trace, suddenly independent of the intentional and conscious meaning of the signatory. It wanders, but in a secretly regulated fashion, from one referent to another—destined to outlive in an “infinite process”, the decipherments of any reader to come. If, like any trace, the poem is thus ‘destinally’ abandoned, cut off from its origin and its end, this double interruption makes of the poem not just the unfortunate orphan Plato speaks of in the Phaedrus when he discusses writing. This abandonment which appears to deprive the poem from a father, to separate and emancipate it from a father . . . it is also the resource that permits the poem to bless (perhaps, only perhaps), to give, to give to think, . . . to give rise to reading, to speaking (perhaps, only perhaps).17

The source which enables one to think, bless and talk is therefore an abandoned trace. The trace is an indication of the rupture Unheimlichkeit of any experience. It is a strange reference independent of intentional and conscious will to say something and to understand something. This reference indicated a meaning that is not present; its place in time is not even bound to any beginning and end. What is also significantly changed, apart from the cancellation of the intentional character of experience, is the interpretation of the temporality of this event. There is no temporal immediacy in a disseminal reading, which would connect the dimensions of the preterite and of the future. What occurs is merely a time shift, doubleness, or heterogeneity. This shift can be approached metaphorically by means of the image of the glare of a shining star: The moment when the light signal comes from the star (when meaning leaves the fold) is, in contrast to the moment when this signal is received by someone on Earth (when the interpreter is provided with meaning), shifted in time in such a way that the time in which experience is generated no longer exists and the time in which experience is given does not yet exist. The relationship between the viewer and the viewed is neither continuous nor intentional because the viewed, and its time, does not have to exist at all in the time when it is 17 Derrida, “Rams”, 146–147.



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being viewed. What ‘is given’ from the fold is always an already radically past meaning to which a currently existing object, an infinitely actuating ‘thing’ cannot be found. It does not help that the actuating ‘thing’ can be cyclically and permanently actualized in its various aspects and forms, and that its potentialities can be actualized. A disseminal interpretation therefore takes place between the exterior and the fold, which are not simultaneous. The interpreter-the exterior is perhaps given meaning which ‘once upon a time’, in time without time, in space without space (in the world without world) emerged from the fold, from the exterior of the interior. Yet, the source of the meaning, which is given to the exterior, does not exist anymore in the moment when it is given to the exterior. In contrast to the hermeneutical interpretation, the intentional effort to grasp the meaning is rejected in the case of a disseminal interpretation, because it is exactly this effort that eliminates the folds, the sources of potential, improbable meaning. Disseminal reading works as a ‘roaming’ and careless, peripheral concentration on that which may come from the blind spots of the world without world. Interpretation therefore functions not as a correction of an original anticipation, as a continuous development of dialectics of question and answer, but as a necessarily past experience whose meaning cannot be ‘preserved’ by any will or held in our ‘hands’. Our experience therefore functions as follows: we can, of course, still try to follow the purely hermeneutical intention and we can always attempt to do justice to the requirement (Anspruch) of our understanding, developing an infinite internal dialogue with that which we experience on the basis of an idea of our irrevocable mutual connection. We can pass from one meaning to another one, from one truth to another truth. However, as Derrida says, . . . the experience that I call disseminal undergoes and takes on, in and through the hermeneutic moment itself, the test of an interruption, of a caesura, or of an ellipsis. . . .18 Such a gaping belongs neither to the meaning, nor to the phenomenon, nor to the truth, but, by making these possible in their remaining, it marks in the poem the hiatus of a wound whose lips will never close, will never draw together.19

18 Ibid., 152. 19 Ibid.

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In other words, the trace, which enables sense and nonsense, is not itself of the order of sense and nonsense. The thinking of sense and nonsense, or of understanding, is constituted only in this difference of concepts. This difference cannot be understood. It is an internal limit, a discrete rupture in the middle of a conceptual structure. If it were to speak, the lips of experience must stay open and must not be joined or connected. Experience must stay double. Merleau-Ponty’s Metaphor of the Blind Spot, the Other Side and Experience Which is Outside of Itself The thoughts that resonate with Derrida’s conception, adding even more specific impulses for our conception of powerlessness, can be found in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work The Visible and the Invisible.20 An important element in Merleau-Ponty’s conception is his emphasis on the heterogeneity of experience and of the thinking of this experience. It is exactly this admittance of heterogeneity, which at the same time keeps the emphasis on the touch between experience and thinking. It enables one to hold even the moment of an unthinkable powerlessness in thinking. Any continuous self-relationship is, however, unacceptable in this conception because it is always cut by the heterogeneity of the double plane of human existence. The point of departure of Merleau-Ponty’s book is represented by the claim that the founding experience of phenomenology is not the experience, which is distinctly given, in our self-experiencing consciousness. By making this claim, Merleau-Ponty opposes the idea of classical phenomenology according to which experience holds a founding plane of immediate experiential acts from which all other experience is later derived. Merleau-Ponty calls into doubt the self-confirming function of the founding experience. What is more, he even wishes to question the idea that the basis of our experiencing and thinking can be contemplated in its purity by realizing thinking. In other words, he feels that there is a need to acknowledge that the beginning of thinking is not necessarily of the same order as this thinking itself, and that experience is heterogeneous from thinking. He says in the same breath, however, that it is impossible

20 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, translated by Alphonso Lingis (Boston, 1969).



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to separate experience radically from thinking. By following the phenomenological maxim and searching for the basis of thinking in experience, he finds the founding experience. The founding experience is of a very strange nature, concerning an “experience which is . . . wholly outside of itself.”21 It is clear from the following sentence that another name for the experience outside of itself is the body: “it is thus [as this experience . . .] and not as the bearer of a knowing subject, that our body commands the visible for us.”22 The beginning of thinking is therefore the body in the sense of experience, which is wholly outside itself. This body—that is the body which has to be markedly reinterpreted against tradition—is not a mere container for the knowing subject that thinks independently of the body but a sort of texture, commanding our thinking in a specific way. The journey to one’s own beginning, however, changes not only the understanding of beginning, experience in the line of Merleau-Ponty’s argument, but also thinking itself. It becomes obvious that as soon as we free ourselves from the idea of existence of a homogeneous beginning of our thinking in the sense of the first point of a line segment, what is loosened is also the functioning of thinking itself. Thinking emerging from the founding experience beyond oneself which is the body, as Merleau-Ponty writes, is not the thinking of explanation and illumination. This thinking does not substantiate but “it only concentrates the mystery of its scattered visibility.”23 The thinking which we loosen when we free ourselves philosophically from the fixed need to found securely that which we think and how we think, has a new and fascinating capacity—it can concentrate the mystery, concentrate ‘itself  ’ specifically, but not on something, on thought objects, but to concentrate in such a way that the mystery gets condensed in this concentration which we always sense in our experiencing. At other places Merleau-Ponty talks about ideas that have the irrevocable character of mystery and can exist only in this way. The aim of his philosophy is to take care of the illuminating-through of the mystery of these thoughts: It is as though the secrecy wherein they lie . . . were their proper mode of existence. . . . Here, on the contrary, there is no vision without the screen: the ideas we are speaking of would not be better known to us if we had no body and no sensibility; . . . [they] are not exhausted by their manifestations, any more than is an “idea of the intelligence”; they could not be given to us 21   Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 136. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid.

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chapter five as ideas except in a carnal experience. . . . It is that they owe their authority, their fascinating, indestructible power precisely to the fact that they are in transparency behind the sensible.24

If we let Merleau-Ponty inspire us, a method of concentration will be added to the method of non-intentional roaming around powerlessness. This concentration, however, is not focused on anything concrete. It concerns a specific ‘defocused attentiveness’, which gathers together, condenses the mystery which we constantly sense in our intentional experience. Powerlessness and its semantic will never reveal themselves to us, but will emerge always by focusing on something else rather than on the thing itself. Indeed, powerlessness shines through and behind intentional experience. There is no seeing of powerlessness without a veil. Shining out only through a potentiality-of-being, it reveals itself through our seemingly clear feeling that we always already understand ourselves. How to imagine concretely an experience that is outside of itself? How is it possible that such an experience is a body? What kind of thinking is founded by such experience if it can be called neither interpretation nor clarification? How can powerlessness be an expression of the fact that experience is outside of itself ? Merleau-Ponty does not respond to these questions coherently. Yet, at various junctures in his work we can find either explicit statements, hints and implicit ideas, or images and metaphors, which combine to create a specific vision of experience, body and thinking. Next to other things he also outlines a geometrical idea, a spatial metaphor, which enables us to imagine in a new way how experience occurs and how it structures itself. To be outside of oneself means primarily to occur in such a way that the experiencer never reaches the point from which he departed in the first place. The very nature of experience precludes itself from taking a static form. Experience irrevocably exceeds itself by means of experiencing. It is therefore double—here and there; it is that which is elsewhere. According to Merleau-Ponty, the main characteristic of human experience is the urge to encroach upon the realm of the already experienced. Experiencing is, in a metaphorical idea, a process of an unstoppable outflow, stepping into the space, which is not inhabited by intelligible experience. To experience means to discover a new land space, to get somewhere where it is foreign, to occur in such a way that this process does not affirm any previous process or object. Experience understood in this way never stops on the one hand, and on the 24 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 150.



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other keeps emerging. This experience (which is, for Merleau-Ponty, the body) is a flowing transgression, exceeding toward ‘elsewhere’ (Überstieg or Überschreiten).25 What is this ‘elsewhere’? Is it something beyond the borders of a compact closed realm of experiencing? Is it a negativity in the sense of nothere, a realm that is divided? Is it a non-intelligibility in the sense of transcendence? It seems that it is not the case with Merleau-Ponty. He repeatedly rejects the dualistic idea of ‘either inside, or outside’, ‘either in lived concreteness of here, or in the transcendental elsewhere’. His topological metaphor evades the idea of the interior and the exterior as two realms separated from one another by a simple and continuous line. Merleau-Ponty rejects the idea of a definition of the exterior as that which is not interior, as the placement of one realm against the other. However, he also rejects their backdoor merging through some sort of relationship, which is in philosophy often resolved by means of a hyphen or a compound word (i.e., psycho-somatic unity, identity idem-ipse, entredeux). Merleau-Ponty needs to demonstrate that self-transgression is a movement that founds a new dimension, a profundity, or a turnaround in the plane. Both the exterior and the interior are adequately defined only by this deepening, this folding of the plane. These spheres are not simply placed one next to another, separated and then compared—only the movement of experience constitutes something as the exterior and the interior (the elsewhere and the here). The potential, the tension of every productive experiencing, refers to two sides at the same time. These are sides, however, which never existed independently and by themselves before this movement. The difference between these two sides must be understood in a new way. Merleau-Ponty’s searching for his own spatial metaphor of the experiential field is probably connected with the need to articulate the difference between the exterior and the interior within a finite realm, with the need to find a sphere of infinity in the middle of a finite world, to reveal the existence of an internal horizon, a differentiating movement within oneness. What does this alternative topology look like? In one of his essays, Merleau-Ponty suggests a definition of the exterior as the other side (l’autre côté) of the interior.26 When we look at a plane, it suddenly occurs to us that this plane can also have another side, which is invisible to us, and

25 Ibid., 259. 26 Ibid., 259.

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yet present. What if this transgression meant that the one side acknowledges its other side, and that it overflows into it and needs it? What if we finally imagined that the plane is a cutting through space which founds tension in the space—a tension of two sides which are indeterminately far away from one another and yet they divide the space? A plane can be understood as a dimensionless space of tension between one side and its reverse. The body which is a basic experience outside of itself, according to Merleau-Ponty, always has the other side as well. This other side cannot be transformed into a body, and yet it is only with this exceeding other side that the body is a body, and this other side is the other side. Experience is doubled. At the same time both of these sides are ‘somehow’ experience but not in the sense of identification. “The other side means that the body, inasmuch as it has this other side, is not describable in objective terms, in terms of the in itself—it means that this other side is really the other side of the body, overflows into it (Überschreiten), encroaches upon it, is hidden in it—and at the same time needs it, terminates in it, is anchored in it.”27 Experience begins to exist only then when it realizes that it has its other side with which it is in tension. Experience therefore does not concern any being in itself. Never referring to itself, it transgresses itself to the other side. The other side is something that enables the first side to be defined as the first and as a side. It is only due to the fact that there is a reverse side, that the original plane becomes the right side, that is, the part of a flat shape which has two parts. The reverse side belongs inseparably to the right side which cannot be transformed to the reverse side. Every experience has two sides that cannot be seen (thought) at once. There is an invisible reverse side to every immediately lived side. Every visibility overflows into this invisibility. Hidden in invisibility from our gaze, it is anchored inside it. Invisibility will therefore stay invisible even though it is located right in front of our eyes—on the other side of what we look at. Even an infinite journey would not suffice for our look to reach the reverse side of what we are now watching. The invisible is located in the infinite prolongation of the line of the visible. It is situated ‘here’ (in the reinterpreted sense of the word). Powerlessness is then something which is quite close but which cannot be reached directly. And yet we can do something: what suffices is perhaps a mere folding of the plane and a change of concentration. We do not need to pursue systematically 27 Ibid.



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a prepared marked-out direction toward powerlessness but to re-focus ‘here and now’, to see two (and more) things simultaneously and let their mystery (that tension between the right and the reverse side, the empty space) shine through intentional experience. This concentration which lets powerlessness shine out behind the veil of intentional experience is an experience of a distant empty space. It is this empty space into which our hitherto intelligible interpretation of the world flows and from which a meaning that has no beginning in our world emerges. Such emptiness in the middle of intelligibility (not behind its borders or pushed back beyond the horizons) founds a new internal dimension. This new dimension of depth is not a third spatial dimension but a concentration of an event in the place where the visible reveals itself. The other side is not another perspective of the face side; it is not a look watching the same, but it is a transgression of one side outside of itself. “The other side [is] to be understood not, as in objective thought, in the sense of another projection of the same flat projection system, but in the sense of Überstieg of the body toward a depth, a dimensionality that is not that of extension, in the sense of a transcendence of the negative towards the sensible.”28 The exterior is not delimited negatively and the path to the interior is not one of transcendence. In the same way, the exceeding of experience beyond itself does not occur by means of the movement of transcendence into the realm of non-experience, into the realm of an absolutely other, demarcated region. Instead, it involves a search for one’s own depth in the folded plane geometry. This depth communicates to us: every visibility has its other side and the experience of this visibility occurs as a concentration of tension between these two sides. What is expressed by the concept of depth is that ‘something’ occurs between the right and the reverse side. To transgress oneself elsewhere therefore means to double oneself or to split oneself. To be outside of oneself does not mean to eliminate oneself, to disconnect oneself from oneself, or to move beyond one’s boundaries into a region of transcendental otherness. Rather, it signifies to double oneself and to begin to exist in this dual way. If experience shall be experience, its being means always being in two places at once, to be of two sides that will never be placed side by side. To experience refers to letting reality reveal itself as double. Experience is experience when it consists of two sides, when it has the immeasurable depth of touch of two different 28 Ibid., 259.

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bodies. To be signifies for experience to be on one and on the other side: “Our body is a being of two leaves”,29 “. . . the two leaves of my body . . . It is between these intercalated leaves that there is visibility.”30 Merleau-Ponty suggests to designate this other part of the body by means of the concept of the mind.31 Thinking is in our understanding the other side of experience. Experience outside of itself is therefore always experience and thinking but not a ‘thought-experience’. “We have no idea of a mind that would not be doubled with a body, that would not be established on this ground.”32 For thinking, experience is therefore neither something completely invisible, different, nor something that is identical, merged with thinking. Merleau-Ponty shows this in the character of thoughts: “The idea is not a de facto invisible, like an object hidden behind another, and not an absolute invisible, that would have nothing to do with the visible. Rather it is the invisible of this world, that which inhabits this world, sustains it, and renders it visible, its own and interior possibility . . .”33 How does the other side begin to exist for the right side of a plane formation? The answer is again geometrical. First of all, a level plane is constituted in the texture of space—this plane is a cut that all of a sudden founds tension in space and secondarily also the sides of this tension— the right side and the reverse side, or the space leaning to the reverse side and the space leaning to the face side. If a plane formation begins to fold, it draws into its internal pockets the part of the region which simply belonged to the reverse side originally, but which is now a special environment, the interior of an exterior. It forms first something like the finger of a rubber glove that can subsequently be pushed inside (see the figure below). The surface of the rubber glove then explores itself from a newly emerged interior that did not exist before. There are innumerable interiors and exteriors, generating themselves together with the complication of lived experience. The folding of a geometrical formation begins to grow thick, create layers, two different points of the plane are suddenly placed one on top of the other—a self-relationship is generated—the touch of oneself that clearly divides the one who touches and the touched even though there is no sharp distinction between them. 29 Ibid., 137. 30 Ibid., 131. 31  Ibid., 233. 32 Ibid., 259. 33 Ibid., 151.



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Fig. 3. Gradual folding of the plane in space.

Experience and thinking are therefore rather dimensions of depth which, within the folding of the plane, emerge as its two sides (two sides of one tension). Thinking touches experience from the inside and determines its ‘felt side’. It came into being in the doubling of experience itself. Having doubled this sentient experience essentially and ‘always’—it is its other side. Thinking is always the thinking of experience and it ‘has’ or ‘makes’, constitutes another experience. Who is then the subject of this experience outside of itself ? Whose experience is it? The answer to this question might be: this experience does not belong to anybody who is distinct and certain when contemplated, to anybody who is interpretable and fully illuminable. According to Merleau-Ponty, what is at stake in experience, even though we are unable to designate the one to whom the experience of transgression belongs, is a certain coming to oneself. This Self, Selbst, is expressed dynamically, as a process when ‘I almost, almost have myself  ’, when thinking almost touches itself as thinking but it becomes clear in the last moment that it is experience and that the one who began to touch has already changed. The whole movement of Selbst (that is, not toward Selbst) ends again

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with the moment of mere emanation of a certain place, which indicates depth, but does not show any of its meanings or of its contents. We can again use Derrida’s metaphor of the open lips that never close and that enable the meaning of the powerless potentiality-of-being to emerge in thinking. This attitude is to be understood as a specific thinking. This thinking is a coming to oneself—to one’s senses—while speech, the concept, almost touches that which it thinks. It is only then that pure meaning, which has no object, flashes through. The last step of the journey of the Self is not an enclosing return to oneself; “there are only radiations of (verbal) essences . . .”,34 a sort of “spatio-temporal this”, which is essentially “unselbstständig”35—the thinking human being is therefore not itself, selfstable, it is doubled. From it emanates, in the tension of these sides, a meaning without a source. How does thinking doubled with experience and doubling experience work? As we already know, Merleau-Ponty claims that this corporeal thinking does not explain, illuminate the visible but merely concentrates the mystery of its dissipated visibility. We have already mentioned that, as a result of a transformation of focusing, this thinking functions as a process in which more sides hold each other at once in a force bond. The mystery upheld by the given structure of forces grows dense within this concentration. It is clear that we cannot focus directly on the mystery, the source of meaning, which emanates from an empty space in the middle of our visible region. Merleau-Ponty does not understand this as an irreducible negativity, as something which escapes and which transcendentally exceeds us, or as something we would like to describe by means of words but we cannot. He works productively with this moment. Using a metaphor of a blind spot of vision, he shows that the blind spot is essential for all seeing (thinking). It is functional and therefore present on the level of everyday experience even though it is also unlocatable. “What it does not see it does not see for reasons of principle, it is because it is consciousness that it does not see. . . . What it does not see is what in it prepares the vision of the rest (as the retina is blind at the point where the fibres that will permit

34 Ibid., 260. 35 This is a reference to Heidegger’s notion of selfhood as Selbstständigkeit (‘selfstanding’) in Being and Time §64. Heidegger tried to overcome the concept of numerical identity of classical phenomenology, but Merleau-Ponty shows that even Heidegger’s conception does not do justice to the phenomenological analysis of experiencing and experience of oneself.



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the vision spread).”36 There is a place in the middle of thinking, as well as in the middle of experiencing, from which meaning emanates. Meaning is essential for thinking but it is, however, not attainable by means of thinking. Indeed, meaning comes from the other side, through dimensionless depth in which both sides mysteriously touch one another. “What consciousness does not see is what makes it see, is its tie to Being, is its corporeity.”37 It concerns the other side of consciousness, namely that side in which thinking anchors itself, hides itself, and is born as thinking. If consciousness wants to stay consciousness, then “it is necessary for it. . . . to be mystified, inverted, indirect, in principle it sees the things through the other end, in principle it disregards Being and prefers the object to it.”38 If we want to see reality from one end, from one perspective, then at the same time we accept mystification and indirectness. Powerlessness We tried to point out by these interpretations of contemporary French authors the existence and nature of the realm, which forms part of the structure of human experience and which we call powerlessness. This realm cannot be thought intentionally, it cannot be fully included in understanding, it cannot be interpreted and yet it has a strong influence on thinking. This influence is manifested for instance in how thinking is unable to reach any satisfying grasp of the Self or to reach a definition of human self-relationship. Thinking is always interrupted by the experience of powerlessness that maintains the inner conflict between human experiencing of the Self and the world. The influence of powerlessness is also constructive. With Derrida and Merleau-Ponty we found that powerlessness in thinking brings a special sense or gift, which enables thinking to be thinking, even though thinking itself does not generate this sense. This sphere therefore cannot be subdued by thinking because it is not a sphere of the same sort as thinking. It can, however, be recorded in a certain way in thinking and used subsequently. Derrida demonstrates that what thinking gains by means of aimless roaming is perhaps a meaning which comes from powerlessness. Merleau-Ponty suggests that thinking 36 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 248. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid.

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should refocus its look by means of a strange kind of non-point concentration in which the mystery of dispersed visibility is condensed. Even when thinking intentionally searches for itself, sooner or later it is bound to clash with experience, which is not of the order of thinking. It is only up to thinking to deal with experience (whether it will experiment with it, suppress it, or if thinking will fall into an internal crisis). Let us now present a generalization of the phenomenon of powerlessness and a summing up of its main characteristics. We have seen that the experience of powerlessness is not a part of the continuous sphere of intentional experience. For, we cannot reach it by means of a linear and continual proceeding of standard intentional experiencing in the time of existence. We cannot say that Da-sein simply changes continually from a powerful to a powerless potentiality-of-being. The powerlessness cannot be experienced directly and immediately. It is always experienced through a mist, through a trace, or as a concentrated mystery. The moment where powerlessness is touched is characterized by how experience itself is doubled. Powerlessness reveals itself in this way as an internal boundary of intentional experiencing, as a rupture between two parts of the experience, as a blind spot. It is disclosed that experience has always two sides that will never meet and that are not even the two sides of the same ‘coin’ (we refer to here with Merleau-Ponty’s explanation). There is the side of intentional experience (thought experience) and the side of non-intentional experience. In the experience of powerlessness one of its sides therefore refers to an intentional experience of the type in which the experiencer experiences the experienced (intentional and thinkable experience). As we know, the structure of intentional experience founds the possibility to constitute a self-relationship, the capability to experience its capability to experience in the unity of ontological time. Da-sein experiences itself in intentional experience, understanding itself (it thinks itself, it narrates itself ). The nature of the inner disruption of this side will cause the second side of the experience to become manifest. From the perspective of intentional experiencing, powerlessness appears as an indistinct gap between two experiences, as an immediacy, or timelessness that can never be experienced in the sense of an intentional present experience. Intentional experience can predicate about powerlessness always only retrospectively. It is easier to say, in this backward glance: ‘It was nothing really’, ‘What happened?’ Powerlessness can be accepted when understood as our ‘own’. It can be overcome by narration as an incident, or we can eliminate it from



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our ‘self-determination’ completely. In this way, however, we only open our hand and the meaning turns into a petrified stone instead of into a blessing. Powerlessness melts and it no longer exists. For this reason, powerlessness is not convertible to intentional experience or deduced from it. This experience is lived by Da-sein always as an experience that it already lived through. The meaning, which came from a closed hand, is the meaning of an exhausted star, which does not shine. It is the meaning of the absent. Da-sein experiences that it experienced something that it can never simply, actually live. Powerlessness is, for intentionally experiencing Da-sein, exclusively a past experience that was never present, and which we can recall in the present time only through the trace of a past experience. Jacques Derrida revealed this feature: the experience refers to a time-space domain that is beyond the line of intentional experiencing. In this reference Da-sein never identifies itself as oneself. That is why powerlessness disturbs the continuous structure of self-understanding. Da-sein experienced something here without the possibility to experience itself in this experience. The double character of experience refers to a domain where there is no Self at all. Da-sein not only experiences that it experienced something but it also simply experiences. Da-sein experiences that it is and that it is not. For, it experiences that there was some ‘it’ and that Da-sein is itself at the same time. The fact that there was some ‘it’ cannot be related in any continuous way to the fact that Da-sein is. That is why this moment expresses that Da-sein is not itself to some extent. There was ‘it’ in a way in which it can never be in actuality transferred into a Self. This experience is an experience of a third mode of existence when Da-sein cannot take any unequivocal stand towards reality. Da-sein experiences that ‘it’ was next to him. Da-sein in this experience falls apart within itself, being at the same time ‘here’. It experiences its previous derivativeness from experience that was not and is not his. We can say about Da-sein that it is the one who always experiences itself but who also experiences next to itself the one who fell away from its own hands. Da-sein experiences that it had not a potentiality of being in powerlessness. It could not actualize—according to its will—possibilities that it normally understands in intentional experience. Da-sein was not sufficiently strong in powerlessness to act intentionally in any way because nothing concerned it, nothing was at stake, not even Da-sein itself. What was functioning next to Da-sein was an ‘it’. The experience of powerlessness is an experience in which Da-sein does not know how it found itself

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and how it felt. Da-sein did not have ‘itself   ’ in any way. It did not experience ‘itself  ’; it crossed the limit of experience that was for it always an experience of somebody about something. Together with the sensitive fact that the experiencer lost himself in powerlessness, that ‘it’ was not his ‘own’ possibilities, the experienced ceased to ‘exist’ as well. What emerged ‘beside’ the exhausted structure of the ‘experiencer experiences the experienced’ was a powerless potentiality-of-being. The powerless potentiality-of-being is spatial in the sense of the closed palm, the world out of a world, of the fold. It is temporal in a different sense than how the intentional potentiality-of-being is structured. Potentiality-of-being in intentional experience is temporal within the unity of three temporal ecstasies. The time of ecstatic unity, however, belongs to pure powerlessness only in such a way that it did not temporalize itself ‘at that time’. In powerlessness, it made no sense to speak about ‘before’, ‘now’, and ‘after’. The time of ecstatic unity ‘was’ next to timelessness while timelessness was an infinite extension without an arrow, an intense power. Da-sein experiences in the powerlessness the fact that it lived through the chasm of time. This urging of an intense ‘it’ proceeded beyond the continuous time of existence: timelessness, from the perspective of experienced time, is a set of size zero. It is an elusive fragment, and in a temporal sense a ‘nothing’. Timelessness grew stronger during this non-graspable fragment, without flowing and without anything happening within it. The ‘it’ of non-intentional experience grew as the intensity of an infinite extended emptiness, of timelessness. As such, however, an indefinite ‘it’ was not the source of revelation ‘that’ Da-sein is a structure of care, which is always already concerned about being (and neither ‘that’ subject is a thinking thing, nor ‘that’ existence is an interactive ethical actor, nor ‘that’ the human being is a different sort of a self-relationship of thinking). This power that grew stronger is not characterized by a permanent sameness; this power is already exhausted at the moment when Da-sein proceeds in intentional experience (remember the metaphor with the shining star). On the basis of its former influence, however, Da-sein is different now. Da-sein and world change during powerlessness. Da-sein could not pass through this internal boundary of intentional experience and return as the same into its own world. The power of the indefinite ‘it’ is a power of non-intentional experience. Da-sein experiences that it proceeds from a different beginning. Without returning to itself, Dasein regenerates as another (remember the specific self-relationship mentioned by Merleau-Ponty—one is only momentarily touching oneself. Finally the touch touches the experience



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per se). Its self-relationship was dissolved in the gap between two different realities. Da-sein experiences that it experienced its dissolution as the extinction of self-relational independent thinking. In this sense, Da-sein is and is not. Being dissolved and alive, it is a doubled reality. This possibility of an indefinite ‘it’ which generates Da-sein, was born in powerlessness when Da-sein did not have at its disposal a sufficiently strong ability to manage itself and its own world. The given beginning, which transcends Da-sein as its condition of possibility, however, is neither permanent nor neutral regarding content. ‘It’ is never ‘the same’ power. It does not concern any transcendental source, nor any ontological beginning of sameness or of selfhood of a certain sort of entity. This power is not a guarantee of a self-relationship of any defined entity; it does not even offer a new perspective on the same entity—it does not reveal the same from a different perspective. This power enabled the generating of a self-relationship as a counterpoint to that which became powerless before (to the gap between two realities and two Selves). That is why this power is always of a different sort. The sense of powerlessness consists in the birth of the counterpoint of the potentiality-of-being from the internal boundary of experience. If the irreducible duality of two realities generates a third reality, the specific counterpoint to them reflects their previous powerlessness. It is exactly this topology of the experience that touches upon the third mode of existence. Alternation of Da-sein and Affairs, Existence as a Relaxed Game We would like to show now that powerlessness, which has hitherto seemed as an irreducible but quite abstract (or extraordinary) phenomenon in human existence, is characteristic of all ways of being in the world of Da-sein. Indeed, in our view it is part of the structure ‘something as something’, which characterizes, according to Heidegger, the way in which Da-sein understands the things of its world. As demonstrated above, these things have the nature of affairs that can lead and transform Da-sein. Powerlessness is therefore also a part of the structure ‘someone as someone’ of Da-sein. We shall offer, in this connection, a phenomenological analysis of what it means for Da-sein to actualize an affair, or to actualize itself in a certain affair. We shall reach a description of the socalled dynamism of Da-sein and affairs that includes in itself moments of powerlessness. Our principal objective is to demonstrate that Da-sein is

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regularly in affairs in the third mode of existence and that the doubling of experience and its reality (and therefore also self-relationship) is a part of this mode of being. In the second chapter, we discovered the specific thingness of the type of affairs. These are the things that concern Da-sein and that are not primarily transformable into a ready-to-hand state. Their reality lies in the necessity to deal with them. Da-sein is led to actualize them. An example of this can be found in the Hitchhiking game or in Chantal’s effort to be the director of her own various roles. Da-sein therefore grasps an affair; it is capable of this affair as a potentiality-of-being. It takes the affair as its own matter, to which it relates intentionally, and forms the affair. Da-sein takes the affair as its own possibility, actualizing it according to its own intention and concrete form of power. The couple in the Hitchhiking game overtake their roles in order to play with them and to actualize the game. Chantal guides their different figures in order to actualize her game of a double traitor. We can add other short examples: The dancer dances to express his feelings, an artist creates in order to give a form to a work, a thinker thinks to grasp an experience explicitly and conceptually, an eater eats to appease hunger. Da-sein functions as an intentional actor who acts in order to do something; it is directed by the ‘what for’ reference. The Da-sein also actualizes itself in its affair. Da-sein actualizes an affair that concerns it and in this way it actualizes itself. To actualize an affair/matter means on the one hand to understand oneself from the affair/matter and, on the other hand, to understand one’s affair/matter, to interpret it. A sufficiently powerful Da-sein interprets an affair in the sense that it takes ‘something’ as ‘something’. Da-sein therefore forms its affair along its power and intention into another form, actualizing it as something. As the reality of an affair follows from the power of Da-sein, and not from the thing itself at this moment, it is clear that the affair actualizes itself as another than itself, and as anything it would be capable of by means of its own power. Da-sein transgresses the affair as its own concrete condition of possibility; it grants the affair with a reality, which the affair could not give to itself. By actualizing itself in the affair, it actualizes the affair as another. The affair is performed in such a way, that it is presented as something that it was not before. An affair goes through an experiment. This, however, does not put an end to the structure of intentional experience. In fact, it is only a question of transcending a certain threshold of a mutual relationship’s intensity when Da-sein exhausts itself in its linear and intentional actualization of the affair. If we hold on to concrete examples, we can say that the players in the hitchhiking affair exhaust



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themselves in the game and the game is all of sudden more powerful than the players. Furthermore, Chantal is exhausted by trying to control her game and she is divided. The dancer cannot follow the same shape of his movement, the artist loses his influence on the work, the thinker reaches a dead end in his thinking, and the eater is unable to eat another piece of food. This fact of a necessary exhaustion of an unambiguous Da-sein, which actualizes a concrete affair, is given by his generating of its affair only at the cost of its own degeneration. Da-sein realizes itself in affairs by exhausting itself in affairs and by becoming their new possibility. This generated affair in a certain moment gains power over the Da-sein that actualized it. Here we mention some resonances between our foregoing explanation and the description of the becoming of artistic ‘things’, percepts and affects, as proposed by Deleuze and Guattari in What is philosophy?39 Herein the authors argue: The thing became independent of its ‘model’ from the start, but it is also independent of other possible personae who are themselves artists-things, personae of painting . . . And it is no less independent of the viewer or hearer, who only experience it after, if they have the strength for it. . . . It is independent of the creator. . . . Percepts . . . are independent of a state of those who experience them. . . . they go beyond the strength of those who undergo them.40

The independence of a thing created by the human being is a result of a gradual creation in which the thing gains such power that it becomes a monument. To be a monument does not mean to be a substance; a monument is a compound of sensual data, which can stand on its own: If art preserves it does not do so like industry, by adding a substance to make the thing last . . . the law of creation is that the compound must stand on its own . . . Standing up alone means . . . an act by which the compound of created sensations is preserved in itself.41

The fact that a thing gains so much potency that it is able to stand on its own feet is followed by the gradual loss of the human being (as an author, participant, guarantee, the one who could in any way experience

39 Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? translated by G. Burchell, H. Tomlinson (London: Verso, 1994). French original: Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? Paris: Les Editions de Minui, 2005. 40 Deleuze, Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 163–164. 41  Ibid.

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things). The human being exhausts itself by its creation into its own work: “Man absent from but entirely within the landspace”42 Deleuze and Guattari even talk about the strange sort of passage, the transfer between the human and the inhuman: “affects are precisely these nonhuman becomings of man”.43 The art thing becomes a monument, according to Deleuze, which permanently conserves the art thing. In our explanation, that is, in the general case of affairs, as we intend to demonstrate, the transfer of forces between Da-sein, which loses itself in the thing and the thing created by Da-sein, goes on. Once again, Dasein actualizes its affair as another thing. Thus, the affair exists as a double reality—the powerful reality and the reality primarily derived from Da-sein. In this phase, the new thing takes exhausted Da-sein in its own hands and forces it, from the power of its intensity, to act in a certain way. The exhausted Da-sein is provoked into the actuation of the affair, for the affair takes hold of Da-sein as its own possibility. Our concrete examples proceed further: the hitchhiking game directs the players, emptiness takes hold of Chantal, expressed feelings grow into such a shape that they force the dancer to dance in a different way, the work of an artist becomes so strong that the author should follow its own logic, the dead end becomes so overwhelming that the thinker accepts a counterpoint conception and is forced to draw from it new consequences, the hunger has been satisfied to the point where the sated person is overcome with sleep. Da-sein becomes, under the pressure of affairs, another and so much another that it could never reach such a form with its own strength. He is being experimented upon. The affair transgresses Da-sein, it creates a framework of its conditions of possibility, it gives new reality to it in a discrete form ‘someone as someone’ and it itself becomes a real affair. By actualizing an intense and powerful affair, Da-sein actualizes itself in such a way that it is finally split itself and becomes someone else. This double condition of the real, including the double state of the Self, includes in itself always a moment of powerlessness. Da-seins and affairs oscillate in mutually intense relationships in this dynamism of the potentiality-of-being. Every turnover of an affair or Da-sein into another form takes place by means of a split of the respective exhausted version. This split (or doubling) is based on a discontinuous and a discrete transition of the type ‘as’. Da-sein performs itself in such a way that it exhausts itself

42 Ibid., 169. 43 Ibid.



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in another by which it is actualized according to the structure someone as someone. An affair actualizes itself in such a way that it exhausts itself in another by which it is actualized in the structure something as something. What is concerned in experience is always the event of actualization or of the split. Whether it is an affair that actualizes and splits Da-sein in the sense of someone as someone, or it is Da-sein that splits and actualizes something as something in this way, the structure of a discrete change of the real is always maintained here. This discrete split refers to the powerlessness of the potentiality-of-being. Every turnover of Da-sein and an affair is a reference to the internal boundary of the experiential field of intentional experiencing. There is no continuous line between someone and another someone in the structure of someone as someone. There is a gap, a difference, an Unheimlichkeit between them. (Just as we showed there is a gap between idem and ipse mentioned by Ricoeur, between experiencer and experienced thing according to Derrida, and between thinking and experience following Merleau-Ponty.) To experience an affair means to actualize it, and therefore to split it, and to exhaust itself in this way, being split on the basis of a powerful performable affair. Experience has a double structure that does not express two sides of the same event. It is a double process. These two aspects irrevocably transgress one another in experience. The power of a thing transgresses the former exhausted experiencer to the same extent in which the current powerful experiencer transgresses this affair in its former exhaustion of abilities to actualize itself. This mutual transgressing, however, does not proceed on the level of transcendence, but it concerns only the immanent frameworks of concrete and exhaustible conditions of possibilities. Someone becomes real, that is, someone else, only on the basis of something (within the scope of something) that is currently more powerful and intense. What belongs to every Da-sein and affair is its former exhaustion from which it came out as another. Its reality manifests itself as an alternation in the form ‘an exhausted something that became something as something else’, ‘an exhausted someone who is someone as someone else.’ It is in the phrase ‘as’ where we can sense the presence of a dead point, the exhaustion of power, of powerlessness, of the presence of ‘it’. There emerges a dead point in which the other side of experience is revealed and where the sphere of reality of the powerful potentiality-of-being resonates with the reality of the exhausted potentiality-of-being. It becomes manifest from the perspective of existence only as a ‘momentous state of change’ that ‘in fact’ was not anything. The timelessness of exhausted reality cannot be considered as a liminally infinitely small fragment of

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existential time, but as another time of another reality. A liminal experience that did not have any duration thus presents, on the one side, an internal limit to existential experience, and on the other side, an external limit of experience without a subject and object. The two sides of experience are not, however, two sides of the same experience. What occurs in the exhaustion of Da-sein or of an affair is, instead of a revelation of the ontological ‘that’, a discontinuous ‘as’ of alternation that demonstrates experience as doubled. The alternation of Da-sein and affairs could be understood in the sense of a game. We exist in such a way that we play with the world which plays with us. Due to experimenting, we become regularly the objects of experiment. If we accept this game and choose not to fight it permanently, we can make use of this reality even in thinking. We can then understand something important about the human condition. In truth of fact, it follows from the above-mentioned description that our thinking is essentially powerless, exhaustible. However, it can be powerless in either a negative or in an affirmative way. It can fall into anxiety and search for rescue in the support of its own autonomy face to face threatening exhaustion. It can lean on a transcendental source, or it can find a source of movement, playfulness, sense and even joy in its own powerlessness. Powerlessness can be the sign of burden and human condemnation, or the sign of gift, play and bliss. Power Field If we understand powerlessness as a sign of a gift, of play and of bliss, we can still be stopped by another doubt. For, it may appear from the abovementioned that the main result of our analysis is the complete cancellation of the difference between Da-sein and affairs, that is, between human and inhuman beings. Are we approaching here the structuralist idea that the human being is only a result of an unknown play of forces involved in the net of mutual relationships? Are we giving ourselves over to a play of infinite references of one sign to another, a play that is aimless and in the end also quite arbitrary and boring? Do we rid thinking of responsibility and of ambition? No, that is not, in our view, the primary result of our inquiry. Such a conclusion would only confirm our closeness in duality, which differentiates only between two extreme possibilities: selfunderstanding and self-managing human being that thinks the world and itself, not being able to admit that things are of the same kind as the



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human being. And in contrast to that, the human being as a contingent resultant of the play of forces, which is indiscernible from any other thing in the world. This duality is typical of phenomenological-hermeneutical criticism of Derrida’s philosophy. We have tried to show in our analysis something that stands outside of these two contrary delimitations. The objective is not, according to us, to define in the right way or to erase the difference between the human being and the thing. Instead, we seek to disclose, by the detailed inquiry into the being of Da-sein and affairs, something about the nature of human existence. It gives us the possibility to affirm powerlessness and to acknowledge it as a part of human existence in the strong sense of the word, as a gift. Thereby, we can understand in a different way what it means that Da-sein is a power. We still understand Da-sein as a potentiality-of-being, as a power, but we want to show the new aspects that we came to understand about the nature of power— when force is at the same time powerless in its profound dimension. First, it follows from what we already said about the mutual relationship between affairs and Da-seins that the reality of power never gives itself in an isolated way. The reality of power can be neither closed and stated, nor encapsulated into itself. Power is never self-standing in the sense of its own sufficiency. Power always needs other powers, such powers which are its conditions of possibility, and such in which it actualizes itself. The reality of power consists in the common reality of various powers, which act upon one another and together. Thus, Da-sein’s conditions of possibility lie in other Da-seins and affairs, not in Being itself. Da-sein can never exist as solus ipse. In the moment of the dead point, of the indication of powerlessness, Da-sein is not isolated as a self-understanding being, not being at all simply itself. Another feature of every reality of a power follows from this. It constitutes its essential incompleteability. A power that actualizes itself does not actualize itself by completing and accomplishing its reality, gaining thus its selfhood in the strong sense of the word. The actualizing power does not fulfill any deficit of itself; it does not attain wholeness. To actualize itself means in the first place to exhaust itself. The actualization of the power proceeds in such a way that the power actualizes itself in another power, exhausting itself in this power. To become real and get connected into the becoming means to lose its power in another and become powerless. In other words, power comes to a split by maximizing its intensity, by a maximum self-effort. The reality of power is not given by a numerical statement: the power is either real or it is not real. Its reality does not have a binary nature in the sense of ‘exists—does not exist’. Power is

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and is not; power works, carrying simultaneously with itself its (former) death (powerlessness, exhaustion). Thus, Da-sein is never veritably itself because it never veritably understands itself. It touches itself through its possibilities, but finally it exhausts itself, and becomes double. The realization of oneself means for Da-sein an exhausting of oneself in the world. However, it is not only Da-sein’s own power that should be always used to realize itself. Da-sein is realized by the world, if it enters in the game with this world. In this way, we reveal another characteristic feature of the reality of each power. Because to be real means also to actualize itself, while the given process has neither a beginning nor and end point on the same line of a continuous development, we can talk about the actualizing power only in terms of a different intensity. Power exists as more or less intense. It is in principle without a beginning and a completion. It exists only as a movement that is not rounded and is not led by any idea of totality. It therefore makes no sense to inquire into the principle of Da-sein, into what makes Da-sein a Da-sein. Neither does it make sense to ask how the human being reaches wholeness. Human existence moves on open segments that lack their extreme points. Da-sein is intense. To be more intense power (Da-sein) then does not mean to have more being or reality, or to be more itself. Power as intensity does not move along the scale between deficiency and its fulfillment. Intensity determines the reality of power only to the extent that it influences the possibilities of the power to actualize itself in various Da-seins and affairs. Differently intense power is actualized in other Da-seins, exhausting itself in them and becoming another along them eventually. The condition of possibility of power consists neither in itself nor in a universal ontological source, but in another power that is actualized in the first mentioned one. Power exists only in a dynamic field in which it coincides with other powers. These other powers are guarantees of its reality, both for it and for themselves. The conditions of possibility of every power are other more or less intense powers. It follows on from this, that no power ever regenerates as absolutely the same because the power distribution of a dynamical field permanently changes, accumulating in itself the exhausted counterpoints. In a sense, this field retains these exhausted processes. Its composition can never return to the same state in which it was once before. Is this dynamic field of alternating intense Da-sein in any sense restricted? If we deny the possibility that Da-sein has a structure of wholeness, does it mean that Da-sein falls apart in all directions? Is the power field of Da-sein completely unlimited? We do not think so.



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The power field of Da-sein is not delimited by an external framework or substantial determination, but by the limits of its functioning. These boundaries are expressed by very simple sentences such as: ‘It cannot go on like that’, ‘It’s no go’, ‘It does not fit’ (note the pronoun ‘it’). The boundary of potentiality-of-being is dynamic; it is generated and it dies together with its own process of alternation, while moving and changing. Its generating can be noted when it could not go on like this and when its end is obvious as soon as it works again. This limit is a certain potential horizon, a limit of powers that are engaged in the field. We cannot imagine it as a contour that borders and encloses the power field, and to which we can get by means of continuous approximation. This horizon is ‘nowhere’ because it only functions, or ‘functioned’. Da-sein is therefore finite in the sense that its borders are born from powerlessness. We do not mean by that the same thing that Heidegger said about the finite, that is, that Dasein can choose always only one possibility and others must logically be abandoned. What we really want to say is that Da-sein is limited in such a way that in the actual power field ‘it cannot go on like that anymore’. Da-sein is shown its limit by going through powerlessness. The Self-Relationship of Powerless Potentiality-of-Being It seems impossible to find, in the power field of Da-sein as it has been presented so far, any universal and independent power that would found a kind of closed self-relationship or identity of the human being. The conception of alternation does not refer to the Archimedean point, which is Da-sein as relating to itself by means of a permanent and stable attitude of resoluteness or of falling prey. This central point, however, is neither a subject that relates itself by contemplative thinking in every moment of the temporal series, nor an actor whose self-relationship is given by the permanent narration about his life. Because all powers creating the field of the potentiality-of-being are presented in this conception as exhaustible, it is impossible, in this project, to think about the permanent character of self-relationship, which would be an explicitly human quality. As power never exists independently and its conditions of possibility are constituted by other powers of the actual potentiality-of-being, there cannot be any permanent capability of self-founding and self-preserving here. This fact is proven by an important feature of the field of potentialityof-being. What characterizes the way in which every Da-sein and every affair perform, is the structure of a discrete reference ‘as’. Powers are real

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according to the scheme ‘something as something’, ‘someone as someone’. The ontological ‘that’ of the human being is replaced here with the alternation’s reference ‘as’. The reality of someone is given neither on the basis of a statement of the essence nor does it follow from a preservation of a universal ontological structure. Instead, it has the form of reality of power that is and is not because it is and was, and the way in which it was cannot easily be reconciled with how it is. The reason of this ‘proper’ incompatibility is the dependence of the reality of every power on the reality of other powers that necessarily transgress this one and exhaust themselves in it. Conditions that enable a power to be real actualize themselves as well. At the moment when the power is, these conditions are not. This result, however, does not mean that we cannot speak at all about the self-relationship in this conception. We believe that self-relationship can be reinterpreted and understood as a process of coming to oneself that will itself cause the falling-apart of Self and the birth of another meaning. That still does not disqualify the fact of coming close; it is just manifested that this coming close causes other affairs, which could be overlooked by thinking concentrated on the need to finish the movement to itself. What we want to say is this: the question of how the human being is itself, is not unreasonable. Yet, our response to this question neither fulfills, satisfies, nor closes this questioning—it is not a closed answer that would saturate the fixed question. Our answer would be, that the question itself affirmatively exhausts itself. To exhaust itself affirmatively means: not to arrive negatively at a state of an unconscious desperation, but to arrive at a different meaning than the meaning of what we were asking about. If we keep asking about identity for a sufficiently long time, we will find out something else. We get a response to something we did not ask about and even probably could not ask about either. What we believe we found out from the description of the alternation of Da-sein and affairs is that the theme of the capability of self-relationship is substituted (answered) with the discovery that the human being has, along with its own power, the ability to create—not to create from itself but to allow something to be created. Da-sein is, through the desire for self-relationship, a basis of the birth of forces because it has the ability to connect moments that were hitherto not connected, letting meaning and happiness emanate from their center. It is therefore a place of birth of things, which, however, will not be its things. Da-sein is essentially creative and submits to its creativity. It founds things as a ‘touch of double reality’ and loses itself in them. Let us now explain these claims in more detail.



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Let us begin again in a concrete way. If Da-sein is, for instance, sufficiently intense, it seeks to actualize itself. Da-sein realizes itself by interpreting and actualizing ‘something as something’. Da-sein, by this splitting, does not experience an immediate reality in the sense of givenness, but it doubles the reality. This doubling, however, is preserved as a double reality by the actual power of Da-sein, as a difference or as a transformation. In other words, instead of being oneself, Da-sein shows something as something, which means that it binds together two moments of the real and shows them as power. To experience reality means to invent along oneself (along one’s power) a vector of new power, to found a potential of transformation of something into something, to found something. This potential is given as a difference of split reality on the basis of Da-sein’s own intensity. It is exactly this step that founds a certain kind of touch (not identity) of the double real. A touch of double reality is a manifestation of the invention of power, of a creative moment. It is given by a joining of two discrete moments of the real through the link ‘as’ whose guarantee is an intense basis along which this power is being founded. A touch of the real is therefore actualized, invented as a discrete split of reality that is determined by a certain powerful basis. The touch of a double real is always given by a basis, which is foreign to the double real, which transgresses the thing, and along which the thing can be actualized as a split. Together with the generation of discrete polarities, new powers are invented, which are external to the founding powers. Creativity does not actually hold created affairs in its arms. A touch is a manifestation of two incompatible potentialities that are not sides (aspects) of the same being. For touch includes in itself two powers which transcend each other, and which have no continuous relationship among themselves because they are external boundaries and frameworks for one another. Touch is a concept that is situated in the middle of the power dynamism. It does not refer to any one and unique being. Since every basis exhausts itself by its actualization in another power, touch is nothing permanent. Now, we cannot describe Da-sein in the same way in which it was defined within the previously studied philosophies. Previously Da-sein was the same, in spite of all transformations, because it would always be differentiable from other beings. What we can say about Da-sein now is, that it is—in spite of all searching for itself—always a basis of the touch of the double real and a place where new things are created. At this point, we would like to present two concrete examples of this feature of newly redefined Da-sein.

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The first example concerns the finding of a possibility how to think the ‘true man’ from the perspective of ideas that Descartes developed in his work The Passions of the Soul. If we work with the idea of the basis along which something appears as something else—and these two moments are, when joined, a manifestation of a power—then we believe that we can voice the following statement: the real human being can be understood as a power basis along which a power is being generated, which defines two moments as two co-respective manifestations of power. These moments are the body and the soul. The body and the soul are preserved by a real human being as a double, split reality. To show the body as the soul means to construe a viewpoint of a real human being, from which the body and the soul manifest themselves as power. As Descartes has demonstrated, this newborn power is the power of actuation and affect, which is one real power, if we look at it from the perspective of the ‘true man’. The body as the soul and the soul as the body are expressions of the split of reality that functions as a difference, a potential, a tension, and all this only on the basis of the power of the ‘true man’. As the true man, however, in this interpretation is neither a substance nor an entity, its reality is such that it exhausts itself just by this performance of the splitting of reality into the body and the soul and by the determination of this doubling in the sense of a potential power. The true human being does not exist, but it existed and actualized itself in such a way that it exhausted itself into an actualization of the power that determines the mind and the body. In a similar way, we could interpret also another relationship in which the thinking subject actuates as a basis: the subject functions as a foundation for the generating of a different power, which joins the body-idea with the lived body. The human being cannot be simultaneously a subject and a real human being. These forms of humanity are not aspects of one and the same being that permanently exists. These figures of humanity are powers that create frameworks for the generation of different powers (of differences); they are conditions of possibility of the split reality, invariably actualizing themselves as something else. Descartes’ failure to merge the experiential aspect of the real man with the metaphysical dualism of the soul and the body therefore seems from this perspective as a result corresponding to the reality of individual participating powers. This example can, moreover, be supplemented with another example of the already projected conception of touch of a double real. It concerns the way of articulation of the human being and of the conceptual determination of its self-relationship. Thinking that determines these concepts participates in the dynamism of alternation, being understood essentially



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as a power. The process of designation (articulation) appears in this context in the following way: thinking never knows what it designates with the concept of the human being or the concept of self-relationship. Although thinking invents a potential by every invention of a concept, this potential is a potential of a concept, and not of actual power and self-relationship to which thinking is related. At the moment of designation, the designated, and also its self-relationship, are already exhausted. To designate something means to recall what is not because it already was. Thinking comes always ‘late’ with the philosophical determination of self-relationship. Yet, it can activate something else that was not its issue. To think something then means to invent a concept for something that no longer exists and to obtain an answer to another question. The creative component of thinking is the invention of concepts in the form of powers. As thinking is also a certain power, its invention of the concept carries with itself its own exhaustion. For a concept is never a backward reconstruction, but a new power, which becomes a new condition of possibility of the already exhausted conceptual thinking. As something powerless, thinking relies retrospectively on concepts that it construed when it was still powerful. In doing so, it gains a retrospective view on its history. Moreover, it can lead to the discovery of answers to questions that have never been part of a game before. Relaxed Thinking and its Improbable Answer to the Question of Identity Concerning the question of self-relationship, our own thinking has reached the point of exhaustion. We failed to come up with clear answer to the question of how the human being is itself, either in accordance with or in contrast to Heidegger’s or Ricoeur’s philosophy. There is a trace of powerlessness at work also in our thinking. However, if we succumb to this powerlessness, we do not need to fall into one of the two categories of unacceptable duality immediately: neither into the category of selfpreserving Da-sein that understands itself and thinks the world and itself in this way, nor into the category of a passive and an irresponsible wheel in the machinery that does not think, but simply moves across the infinite web of sign references. A surprising point of departure emerges in our exhaustive inquiry into the nature of human identity: identity does not matter so much in human existence. Our solution of the question concerning ‘being oneself  ’ lies in the relieving discovery that this question can exhaust itself in pursuing its completion too fervently. Da-sein, relaxed

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Da-sein can exist with the feeling of profound peace regarding how little it cares about itself. Yet, there is no self-lashing, or self-sacrificing narcissism, an offended or resolute sense of despair that no one cares about me not even myself. Relaxed assessment that Da-sein does not really care about itself does not represent a negative stance. It is not about resignation regarding the unanswerable question followed by the sorrow that the thing was not solved. Neither is it about the hope that someone manages to answer the question one day. We believe that what takes place in the space of a former negative keeping of the unsaturated question is simply a paroxysm of laughter. It is a laughter coming from a gift. It concerns the gift of meaning, which was not likely to arrive, but which did anyway. This meaning consists in the experience that Da-sein lives a meaningful life without understanding and controlling this meaning necessarily, without it being its meaning, the meaning of itself. Meaning can be concentrated as a mystery which is pointed out by the presence of the closed hand, of the blind spot, and which can only be glimpsed from behind the veil of intentional experience. It can work in such a way that the human being experiences its life as a gift of meaning that will arrive, but always only perhaps. At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize that we do not believe that this meaning is hidden in the closed hand itself, nor in the blind spot. There is nothing inside these spaces. Meaning is given only by the presence of difference between the real and real, the presence of two internal boundaries of reality. The touch of this double reality and the founding of a direction, or of a meaning, occurs on the internal ruptures of the real. It does not concern a contentual meaning, ‘why to be.’ Neither does it concern the revealing of the goal of life. What is at stake is happiness that follows from a relaxation, a freeing of oneself from oneself, and an agreement with the difference that, always as a gap, causes the movement of reality and of meaning as a difference of two forms of Da-sein, or of reality in general. In other words, our responses to how no power in the human world, nor any capacity or possibility can dominate the whole system of potentialityof-being could be manifold. We could be filled with despair because of the absurdity of any human endeavor to hold one’s life, and therefore also its meaning. We might violently assert one power as the leading power, and insist on the existence of a self-relationship, or we could find laughter on the edges of this theoretical field. We were overpowered by laughter and by happiness coming from life, which has no philosophically graspable ‘what for’ and yet it always knows where to go next. It is an experience of a reason-less happiness that is not philosophically argued. This lack of a



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philosophically graspable ‘what for’ does not mean that there is no ‘what for’ in human life. It seems as if ‘what for’ began to work once we stopped paying attention to it, once it can be left in the shadow, as if behind a corner, and with no requirement as to its permanency. Thus, there is no doubt that the process of alternation will not develop linearly. It does not pursue a teleological objective either because it is not directed by any more or less clear and permanent ‘what for’. Alternation does not lead to a creation of a product or to a finding of explicit answers to concrete burning questions. It has a different effect: it develops open problems as powers, letting problems exist as problems. The power field of the potentiality-of-being includes in itself exclusively the reality of problematic and urgent events and Da-seins. Urgent problems are not solved by alternation but they develop themselves in their problematic nature up to their own exhaustion. Thinking may reach an end point where its main problem does not exist anymore. This ending, however, inevitably brings a change of thinking itself. The thinking, which is looking for the answer of human self-understanding, exhausts itself. Its counterpoint thinking begins to laugh about this question and ignore it. Such processes of thinking do not show any progress, nor does thinking accumulate any piece of knowledge (about how the human being is itself ). Instead, it changes with its problems (the topic does not affect the thinking anymore). It seeks neither a reconstruction of the model of being nor a grasping of that which is, instead producing a reality of the potentiality-of-being, inventing powers. It is therefore obvious that we did not get to this laughter and change of thinking on purpose. Laughter came from a realm that was unthinkable. The allusion of this realm definitely does not reach thinking in such a way that the thinking and experiencing being decides on the basis of will to follow a concrete intention, due to which it will find itself in realms beyond will and intention, that is, in powerlessness. We cannot get rid of will, intention and reason by means of will and intention. For, the human being is still in that case within the sphere of will and intention. It even seems that one cannot get rid of these capabilities in any definitive, final way, especially in philosophy. It is also clear that one can never articulate this type of experience by means of these capabilities. The strategy which enables powerlessness to manifest itself, has to lie in the acceptation of will and intention as aspects of the chosen method while it must be clear from the very start that what will be at stake in the encounter will never emerge in the visual field of these faculties. It is necessary that a thinking human being ‘employ’ itself as a volitional and intentional being, that it

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dissembles in displaying complete devotion to the thinking led in this way and that it at the same time develops a parallel focus on the margins of its thought (visual) field. It was exactly in this way that we have dealt in this book with the question of human self-relationship. What ‘perhaps’ emerged by itself from the margins and internal limits of this field (blind spots) was something which cannot be reached in any other way, on which one cannot focus one’s conscious and intentional attention and which does not determine the one who asks as ‘himself  ’. It is necessary to strive for meaning so that another meaning perhaps can arrive from elsewhere. It requires defocused concentration. This attention, which we may call non-intentional attention, will lead to a possible development of thinking that does not have a clearly intentional character. This thinking develops itself outside of the duality in which we can differentiate the active will to think from the passive acceptance of certain ‘revelations’ from the ‘outside’. The sphere in which the non-intentional sphere is generated is the always already past sphere. This sphere is a world outside of the world. It is also a sphere that can be reached neither by means of an immediate act of will nor by resigning volition, or by immediate activity or passive indifference. This sphere and the thinking that comes from it can do without the dualistic attributes. This says two things. On the one hand, we can claim that activity, will and intention are not the only and necessary characteristics of all philosophical work. On the other, we can claim that these characteristics, if emphasized too much, may cause a situation in which the relevant overloaded form of philosophical thinking will lead to complete disintegration of the field of understanding, to a darkening of meaning, and to a certain interpretational spasm. The sphere of powerlessness, which is beyond will and intention, constitutes the possibility to make a start with differentiating between sense and nonsense. Those who think from the non-intentional experience of powerlessness are not those who experience this experience, which does not mean, however, that this experience has no influence or impact on the mind. As we have shown above, it is possible to think from powerlessness and it seems, moreover, that the human being thinks only from experience, which it cannot appropriate in any way. Experience is thought according to the way in which it touches the interpreter in a mysterious way, how it affects him time-wise and world-wise. Thinking will develop from it only when it engages itself in itself so much, creating space for the development of another thinking, allowing laughter to explode, creating new powers.

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Index of Subjects action basic action in Ricoeur 132, 153 structure of 130–134 affair alternation of 220 and experiment 220 and figure 69, 135, 170–173, 194 as pragma 62 context of 59–60 definition of 61–62 generation of 220 in Heidegger 59 in Ricoeur 135 alternation of Da-sein and things 228 Archimedean point 17

the other side of 210, 212 topology of 151, 197, 203, 209 expression of existence in Ricoeur 99 of a meaning 200

blind spot 32 body metaphysical body 23 lived body in Descartes 27 body knowledge 39 body as a subject 36 Body-Leib and Body-Körper 29, 44 lived body in Ricoeur 115, 140–141

idem 42, 95, 151 and ipse 95 exemplification 168 identity and interlocution 112 ipseity as mineness 51 in Heidegger 50–51, 52, 83, 88 in Ricoeur 122–123

critique of psycho-somatic unity 209

knowledge in resoluteness 83

designation and identification 108 and thinking 231 self-designation 104

laughter and philosophy 231–233 linguistic identification 106–107

exhausted Da-sein 226 experience and flesh 143 and immediate evidence 159, 196 and knowledge 39 and self-relationship 196 and the story 155 disseminal interpretation of 205 double structure of 190, 196 objective description of 116 of break 146 of transgression 75

fold 203, 212–213 freedom in action 166–172 in happiness 232 in Heidegger 65–66, 75, 82 in social context 185 of the will 38 good life 136

matter, see affair modal indifference 68–69, 86, 196 Heidegger’s suppression of 91 Ricoeur’s suppression of 150 modal transformation in Angst 76 in being-toward-death 79 in conscience 78 of inauthenticity 66–69 narrative identity 97, 103, 138–143, 154 and self-evaluation 145 as a story 155 as ethical selfhood 145, 148

242

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as unification of idem and ipse 120–121 character in 122 numerical identity 42 Archimedean point and numerical identity 43 ontological force 9, 33, 36–37 otherness and selfhood 117, 147, 153 personal identity and anxiety 183 and discipline 182 and happiness 232 and strength 187 as selfhood 102, 122–123 challenging of 186 chronic crisis of 180, 184 definition 9 in Ricoeur 99–100, 123 pathology of guilt in 183 problems in 141 suffering in 181 tiredness in 185 person as activity 130 as Da-sein 124 as hypostasis 41 as linguistic entity 108, 111 ethical person 129–132, 145–146 in crisis 178–180, 185–187 in Deleuze and Guattari 221 in Descartes 24–32 in exemples 176–178 in Poetics 132 in Ricouer 99 perspective of the first and the third  114 self-designation of 112 Strawson’s definition of 101, 110 the first person 102–104 the same person 123 power absolute 40 transgression of 228 powerful world 193 good will to power 193 “it” as indefinite power 86, 193 powerlessness Angst and 74 and concentration 211, 214 and expression 208 and intentionality 208 as non-intentional experience 162 conscience 76–77

in Descartes 13 in the power-field 224–226 non-intentional moment of 178 powerless Da-sein 226 suppression of 78–79 the constitution of philosophy on the basis of 234 principle of identity definition 1 implicit statement of 9 in Descartes 14–15, 17 in Heidegger 48–50, 82, 95 in Ricoeur 99–102 in universal science 42–43 in works on emotions 47 proximity of Heidegger’ and Descartes’ views on 95 principle of non-understanding 199–200 promise and disruption 127 identity and promise 113 selfhood and promise 123 relaxed thinking 231 sameness 42, 100 sameness and selfhood 142 self-affirmation of reason 14 self-limited will 14 self-relationship determination of self-relationship 231 ethical self-relationship 104 social normativity 180 third mode of being and powerlessness 192 definition 68 disintegration of identity in 143, 128 in Ricoeur 143, 152 modal indifference in 69–71, 81–82 transgression experience of 74, 209 of Da-sein 222 of fundamental ontology 48, 82 of self-relating understanding 92, 190, 209–213 of power 228 through Another 161 “true man” in Descartes 27, 30 reinterpretation 230 turning point of self-confirmation 84 uncanny 70, 74, 86, 154, 183

Index of Modern Authors Arendt, Hannah 130 Austin, John Langshaw 112

Kambouchner, Denis 33–34 Kundera, Milan 164, 172

Berry, Nicole 183

Le Rider, Jacques 179 de Libera, Alain 31–32

Celan, Paul 202 Dastur, Françoise 78 Deleuze, Gilles 178, 221–222 Derrida, Jacques 189, 197–201, 223 Descartes, René 9nn Ehrenberg, Alain 179nn Figal, Gunter 200 Freud, Sigmund 183 Guattari, Félix 178, 221–222 Guenancia, Pierre 15 Heidegger, Martin 47–90

Marion, Jean-Luc 11 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 206, 223 Nietzsche, Friedrich 4, 20 Ong-Van-Cung, Kim-Sang 33 Pariente, Jean-Claude 15 Peirce, Charles Sanders 113 Ricoeur, Paul 97nn Wittgenstein, Ludwig 113