From Structure to Rhizome: Transdisciplinarity in French Thought. Subject Re-/Decentred

Abstract

The article is an interdisciplinary attempt to theologize the foundations of the concept of the subject in order to discover the “historical a priori” of the modern subject. Descartes did not postulate a Cartesian subject, but only had a persistent desire to avoid likening the thinking Self to a subject of thought. If Descartes at times used the word “subject,” it was only because his two opponents, first Hobbes and then Regius, forced him to adapt the subject to his dualistic idea of man. The Greek concept of hypokeimenon travelled a long road through hypostasis to reach the subject by way of the Christological problems that served as models for new philosophical problems and vice versa during a lengthy period in the history of philosophy. The union of two natures, the human and divine, in the hypostasis or “personality” of Christ is a model for the union of spirit and body as it was conceived from Leibniz to Peter Strawson. The subject arises from a combination of two conflicting models of subjectivity (Subiectität), which were gradually proposed, opposed and finally united in late Scholasticism: a combination of the Aristotelian (Peripatetic) philosophical concept of subjectivity (subjecthood) based on the relationships between hypokeimenon and accidents; and the Augustinian theological concept based on the relationship between ousia and hypostases, the cohabitation of the three hypostases, their mutual immanence, and the hypostatic alliance of the dual nature of Christ. Heidegger’s Subiectität will have historical value only if we believe that it includes two competing components inherited from late ancient philosophy and theology — hypokeimenon and hypostasis — that will then allow us to understand the modern version of subject as a “connecting bridge,” a transdisciplinary entity. This concept is a compromise for connecting two conceptual schemes: inherence and attribution. It defines what is required to be a subject in terms of subjecthood; however, it formulates what is proper to an I or ego, or to being an agent of thought and will, in terms of personality as a “combined center of choice and action” characterized by intentionality and spontaneity. Descartes never subscribed to an all-encompassing concept that places personality, identity, ego and causality under the single rubric of “subjecthood.” Before becoming decentralized, the subject had to become “centered.” It was to become the “center” of perception, the “center” of acting and enduring. The outlines of this concept were set in the Middle Ages.