Interrupting/Disrupting Speculative Time

Abstract

Ontology, that has always determined time on the basis of Being, is the very possibility of the philosophy: it determined Being as synchrony of the self-same! In this way, the Other as Other has remained unthought in the history of Being, an unthought more profound than the unthought of ontological difference, the unthought that cannot be reduced to the meaning concerning Being. Synchrony here is determined either as the ground that constitutes onto-theo-logy, or is thought to be he phenomenological horizon for the question of the meaning of Being (as in early Heidegger. Later, however, Heidegger renounces this project of fundamental ontology in relation to the phenomenological horizon of time in which the question of Being would be asked): in either mode, synchrony is always the oblivion of the call of the Other, a call that comes from an immemorial past that has never been retained in the present, a call from future that can never be understood in the light of the present (in the light of Being present, in other words, the call that comes from the future that can never be anticipated in the name of presence). Retention and protention, anticipation and (re) presentation of ‘what has been’ and what is yet to pass and would pass, are modes of synchronization. This is what we have seen in the case of Hegel where this synchrony of various dimensions of time is understood as problematic of simultaneity and continuity in which Being presents itself even in non-being. Simultaneity and continuity are the modes of contraction of heterogeneity of various dimensions of time, which makes possible for unity of the manifold representations (this is the task of any philosophy of representation: how to unify manifold representations into the self-sameness of Being. Thus philosophy of representation is always the philosophy of the same, despite Hegelian pretensions to be a philosophy of difference). Inasmuch as one aspires to represent the manifold, difference and heterogeneity on the modality of time as synchrony, it only serves to reinstate the sovereignty of the same. This synchrony of ‘the manifold (in Hegel, it is heterogeneity reduced to immanent contradiction, and while in Kant, the heterogeneity is that of transcendental manifold) is, thus, the condition of the possibility of knowledge, the very condition of possibility of the identity of Being and thought that makes absolute possible. If the task of philosophy—as Hegel conceives and which he finds the beginning of philosophy in Parmenides’ doctrine of the identity of Being and thought, and of which his philosophy is only the final result of actualization—is the actualization of the identity of Being and thought, then the whole labour of philosophy would be thought on this synchronic modality of time that would synchronize itself, that would bring other to its self-same by representing the manifold, and in this way, recuperating the heterogeneity of the other into its unity. Thought is possible for ontology only as synchrony; it is true even in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology where for Being-towards-death—the finitude of Dasein—is still the possibility of impossibility. Because for Dasein, finitude is the anticipative (which is one of the modes of synchronic time) mode of time, Heidegger’s great meditation on the finitude is already always a synchronic modality. Therefore it is not surprising that for Heidegger, death is always Being’s own death, of what Heidegger says as the innermost ‘the possibility of impossibility’. Ontology, the effacement of transcendence that makes death itself a possible thought, remains only a thought of death. The death of the Other remains unthought and the unthinkable scandal in philosophy. To think time on the basis of death is to think death and time as possibility, even though it is a ‘possibility of impossibility’. Therefore Heidegger’s thought is incapable of thinking the death of the Other inasmuch his question is always that of asking the meaning of time. What remains unthought thereby is the thought of time in relation to Other which is neither the speculative negation of Being that would be recaptured (as in Hegel), nor the anticipation of Being-towards-death which Dasein’s own (as in Heidegger; in my death only I die. It constitutes at once my possibility and impossibility in that, in my death I am not there). Therefore, any ethical thought of responsibility towards the Other—the Other that cannot be reduced to the thought of negation, or, to that of inauthentic death—proceeds by putting into question the very synchronic modality of time that privileges presence on the basis of which thought of Being has been thought as possible and intelligible. Responsibility towards the Other is neither retention and protention of the past nor is the anticipation of the future. Both retention and protention of past and anticipation of the future is time thought on the basis of presence. To think time as responsibility towards the Other should be able to think time in radically other manner than either the Hegelian negativity, or, other than phenomenological time as form or meaning. Only when this synchronic time is put into question—this privilege given to presence—only then what is unthought in the history of ontology is thought, and only then, exceeding the thought of totality of the self-same Being, ethical responsibility as infinity towards the Other may be affirmed.