Download - Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

Transcript
  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    1/23

    Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 www.brill.nl/rp

    Re s ea r chi n

    Phenomeno logy

    Anarchistic Tendencies in Continental Philosophy:Reiner Schrmann and the Hubris of Philosophy

    Joeri SchrijversKatholieke Universiteit Leuven

    Abstract

    is article presents Reiner Schrmanns thought of anarchy through its relation to the thought

    of Martin Heidegger. e main aim of this article is to examine the relation between Schr-

    manns two major works, Heidegger on Being and Actingand Broken Hegemoniesthrough their

    respective relation towards other authors in the continental philosophical tradition such as Jean-

    Luc Marion, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. e article focuses furthermore on

    Schrmanns stress on the theme of the end of metaphysics and interrogates the ambiguities sur-

    rounding this theme not only in Schrmanns works but also in the larger bulk of contemporary

    continental philosophy.

    Keywords

    anarchy, phenomenology, existence, Heidegger, metaphysics

    Introduction

    What is to be done at the end of metaphysics? It is Reiner Schrmannsquestion, and it is one that deserves to be posed. For, if indeed we would agree

    with Schrmann and Heidegger that the collapse of metaphysics and its addic-tive after-worlds is of immediate historical concern to us,1the question of

    action, attitudes, and comportment towards such a collapse seems all the more

    urgent.It is to the latter question that Schrmann has contributed considerably.

    Reginald Lilly, the translator of Schrmanns Des Hgmonies brises, notes,for instance, that the connection between the existential analytic and the his-

    tory of being as onto-theology has never been made clear by Heidegger or his

    1) Reiner Schrmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting. From Principles to Anarchy, trans. C.-M.

    Gros (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 191.

    http://www.brill.nl/rphttp://www.brill.nl/rp
  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    2/23

    418 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    commentators. [I]t is precisely such a connection that Schrmann means to

    make in basing his topology on an analytic of ultimates. [is] analytic

    promises to give us those elements, structures, and dynamics that are funda-

    mental to human existence and are presumed by any history of philosophy.2It would be unfair, however, to see Schrmann as but one more Heidegge-rian or, as I will show below, deconstructionist. To be sure, his interpreta-

    tion of Heidegger is intriguing and often innovating: one need only think ofhis efforts to read Heidegger backwards without regard for the fashionable

    distinction between the early Heidegger and its mystical and mythical sequel,

    or of his interpretation of Heideggers work on Nietzsche, which, as Schr-

    mann convincingly shows, speakformallyof Nietzsche, but materiallyabouttechnology.3

    And yet, Schrmann pushes one to look beyond Heidegger, and perhaps

    indeed to consequences more extreme than Heidegger would wish.4 Itremains to be considered whether Schrmann actually succeeded in showing

    the fundamental unity of thinking, acting, and being, but with Schrmann,finally, the tragic condition of the human being is given a voice in contempo-

    rary philosophy. In effect, Schrmann might even have the strongest case to

    date to take the existential character of metaphysical questions into account.In its simplest form, we all know or at least have a pre-understanding of our

    tragic condition, for the point of departure of the analytic of ultimates isthe knowledge from which no one escapes and which escapes no one, even if

    the natural metaphysician in each of us closes his eyes to it . . .: the knowledge

    that we arrive by our birth and go to our death.5

    Besides the practical and existential character of the most intimate ques-

    tions of metaphysics, this article will address the import of Schrmanns notionof the natural metaphysician in each of us, for the question that seems to

    divide Derrida and Schrmann seems to hinge on precisely this issue of ametaphysics that comes natural to us. irdly, this article will, in relating

    Schrmann not only to Heidegger but also to Levinas and Derrida, pay atten-

    tion to the new understanding of philosophy that seems to emerge fromSchrmanns work, which is due precisely to its practical starting-point.

    2) Reginald Lilly, e Topology of Des Hgmonies brises, Research in Phenomenology 28

    (1998): 22642,231.3) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 182.4) Ibid., 38.5) Schrmann, Broken Hegemonies, trans. R. Lilly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

    2003), 345.

    http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0085-5553(1998)28L.226[aid=8032842]http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0085-5553(1998)28L.226[aid=8032842]http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0085-5553(1998)28L.226[aid=8032842]http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0085-5553(1998)28L.226[aid=8032842]http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0085-5553(1998)28L.226[aid=8032842]
  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    3/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 419

    Heideggerian Anarchy

    e title of this section, which may surprise the Heideggerians, is not minebut Schrmanns.6is section will address Schrmanns temporalizing of theontological difference, turning it into a temporal and therefore an-archicdifference, and convey the practical import of it.

    e Practical a Priori

    e existential character of metaphysical questions comes to the fore in Schr-manns beautiful contradictory notion of the practical a priori. If Lillys state-

    ment that only the analytic of ultimates of Broken Hegemonies shows theconnection between Heideggers history of being and some form of existential

    analytic, the practical a priori of Heidegger on Being and Actingcan serve as ahermeneutic key to bring the profound continuity between Schrmanns twomajor works to light. In this sense, my effort here is a sort of reading Schr-

    mann backwards. is will allow us to interpret Schrmanns nuanced stanceon the question of overcoming metaphysics and to correct some of the views

    on his uvre that have emerged in secondary literature, as, for instance, inVahabzadehs entirely metaphysical characterization of the 1987 work as bear-

    ing the stamp of a flourishing life, an effect of natality . . . while Broken Hege-moniescertainly comes from a life pulled toward death.7

    If one of the main theses of Broken Hegemoniesis that all of the major meta-physical systems (mainly Plotinus, Cicero, Augustine, and modern philoso-

    phy) have arisen from the ultimate analytic of natality and mortality, in thatall these systems are subjected to a sort of natural drive to maximize or overde-termine one phenomenal region over others (according to Schrmannn, meta-

    physics main mode of procedure is to focus on the phenomenon of fabrication,those thing that are man-made), then this native and natural tendency towards

    generalization, universalization, and de-phenomenologization inevitably

    gives birth to its other, namely, the pull and pressure of finitude, for the phe-

    nomenological and singular encounter with finite beings in and through ourfinite comprehension of those beings resists precisely such a fantasmic maxi-mization under the rule of one overarching and hegemonic phenomenon

    (whether it be the One, nature, or the modern cogito). It is death, as the oneand only singularization to come, that throws the hubris of these philosophies,

    6) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 155.7) Peyman Vahabzadeh, Review of Broken Hegemonies,Journal for Cultural and Religious eory

    5 (2004): 5156, 55.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    4/23

    420 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    rendering reason of all beings, back upon its humble condition,8the lives

    and deaths that you and I will have to experience.9e ontology of natality,

    that is, of the natural metaphysician in us, inevitably gives way to its parasitical

    other in the return of the denied,10namely, the contingency and historicity oftime as that which will lead us to our deaths.11

    It is true that Broken Hegemoniesoffers an elaborate discussion of the his-torical moments of such metaphysical madness, which was perhaps lacking atthe time of Schrmanns Heidegger book. Nevertheless, the main theses of the

    first-mentioned book are present in the latter book as wellwhich already

    makes it impossible to consider it solely as stamped by a flourishing life.

    What Schrmann will later, with Arendt, name as the ontological traits ofmortality and natality have both figured in his first book as well. Take, forinstance, the trait of mortality. Commenting upon the lineage from Ancient

    philosophy, the Nietzschean overturning thereof, and its connection with our(post)modern technological era, Schrmann writes that for the [technologi-

    cal] manipulable to inherit the prestige of the ancient Good, the representa-tion of an ideal hierarchy must have contained its fatal agent within itself eversince its conception.12

    Not only does metaphysics therefore write, so to say, its own testament, asif its birth certificate is at the same time its hour of death, but even in Schr-

    manns Heidegger, the dawn of metaphysics originates in the human beingsnaturalshould I say: compulsive?behavior. Indeed, even the Heidegger

    book intimates metaphysics natural origins, for metaphysics results from a

    need for an archaeo-teleocratic origin, the want of a hold on our epoch,and is, therefore, perhaps nothing more than a self-incurred illusion of per-

    fect presence.13It is this need and this want that, according to Schrmann,accounts for human beings tragic condition and that forces them, on the one

    hand, to posit in one way or another a grand narrative, while, on the other,being forced to hear the demand of that which such metaphysical narratives

    8) Broken Hegemonies, 629.9) See also Broken Hegemonies, 35, the order established by hegemonic fantasms is conquered

    each time. By what? By the nameless abyss where we are devoured by negative experience (the

    experience of the unjustifiable, of evil, . . . and of death). Fantasmic consolations and consolida-

    tions work against that experience.10) Broken Hegemonies, 624.11) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 106.12) Ibid., 197 (italics mine).13) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 204, 252, 226, respectively.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    5/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 421

    precisely deny, namely, finitude, mortality, that is, time. If one of Broken Hege-monies aims was to show how metaphysical positions are rooted in everydayexperience, one can find thus the appeal to experience in Schrmanns anarchy

    book as well.Such a priority of praxis and everyday experience crystallizes in what Schr-

    mann coins as the practical a priori. With this notion Schrmann espouses

    what seems to be an extraordinary everyday banality, namely, that to under-stand authentic temporality, it is necessary to exist authentically; to think

    being as letting phenomena be, one must oneself let all things be; to follow

    the play without why of presencing, it is necessary to live without why.14In

    short, a mode of thinking is made dependent on a mode of living.15Schr-mann shows that such a practical a priori is present in both the early and thelater Heidegger.16For reasons of space, I will limit Schrmanns argument to

    Heideggers Being and Time. Schrmann asks: What is it that conceals thetranscendence of Dasein? and answers thus: A certain way of behaving, a

    certain attitudinal way of being in the worldinauthenticity, adding that inBeing and Time, the classical ontologies . . . spring precisely from inauthenticexistence and concluding therefore that all this indicates first and foremost

    that the retrieval proper of the being question is bound to fail unless it is pre-ceded by what [Heidegger] then calls an existentiell modificationFirst

    comes an appropriation of existentiell possibilities, then existential ontol-ogy.17e later Heidegger, Schrmann argues, will move away from the indi-

    vidual implications that Being and Timestill could admit and will espouse the

    public and political dimension of the practical a priori: Eigentlichtkeit, orauthenticity, is substituted for Ereignis.One must note that the practical a priori is, for Schrmann, a method

    rather than an empirical stance: it is the path that may lead from a way of

    living to a way of thinking; it is to avoid the methodical errancy of meta-physics, which substitutes the contingency of time for the consolations of the

    eternal or the permanent presence of consciousness and forgets about its hum-

    ble and historical origins, and which therefore is accompanied by a methodi-cal retrenchment of life or of praxis to the point that one can, as angelssupposedly have once done, speak from mind to mind.18

    14) Ibid., 287.15) Ibid., 237.16) Ibid., 23645.17) Ibid., 237, 238.18) Ibid., 23839.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    6/23

    422 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    Such a priority of praxis is by no means absent from contemporary Conti-

    nental philosophy: it is for instance to be found in the phenomenology of the

    Other of Emmanuel Levinas and in the phenomenology of givenness of Jean-

    Luc Marion. For both authors, the response to the appeal (whether it be fromGod or givenness) lies phenomenologically prior to the appeal: it is only inand through mens and womens responses that the appeal appears. It matters

    little that for Marion the responsiveness of human being is broadened to entailmore than the (Levinasian) human face. It matters that in both cases a certain

    mode of comportment accompanies the act of thinking, whether it be, for

    Marion, the abandoning of oneself to whatever gives itself, or the ethical bear-

    ing witness to the Other in Levinas.19Levinas analysis of enjoyment in Total-ity and Infinitydefinitely shows that such a practical a priori is accompaniedby an attentiveness to life.20

    Note, finally, that whereas Marion at one point claims to have found sucha priority of praxis in Levinas thought,21he elsewhere shows that such a prior-

    ity stems from Heidegger.22ough all these thinkers would therefore agreethat such a practical a priori consists not in an ontic, determinate, and indi-

    vidual act,23but rather in an ontological and transcendental attunement

    19) See, for instance, Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given. Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans.

    J. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 282319, esp. 3067, where the primacy

    of praxis gives way to a priority of a supposedly extra-moral willing over thinking, which is a

    reversal of the Medieval adage stating that acting follows being. Consider also Marions conten-

    tion that it is no longer a matter of representational thinking but of aiming in the direction

    of . . . of relating to . . . of comporting oneself toward . . . of reckoning with . . . whatever gives

    itself in his In Excess. Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. R. Horner and V. Berraud (New

    York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 14445. For Emmanuel Levinas, see Otherwise than

    Being or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2002), 14453,

    esp. 149, the appeal is heard in the response (translation modified).20) See also Levinas, Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority, trans A. Lingis (Pittsburgh:

    Duquesne University Press, 2002), 154: How would a total reflection be allowed [to] a being

    that never becomes the bare factof existing, and whose existence is life, that is, life from some-

    thing? Life from something, that is, according to Levinas thesis of enjoyment as concrete as the

    drinks that we drink, the food we eat, and the men and women we entertain and encounter in

    our houses. Consider also the anti-metaphysical (yet theological) statement that life is not com-

    prehensible simply as a diminution, a fall. . . . e individual and the personal are necessary for

    Infinity to be able to be produced as infinite (ibid., 218).21) Being Given, 287.22) Marion, Reduction and Givenness. Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology,

    trans. T.A. Carlson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 18586.23) See for instance, Otherwise than Being, 144: [Sincerity] is not an act or a movement, or any

    sort of cultural gesture. In Heidegger, the call of conscience opens onto the condition (?) of

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    7/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 423

    from Heidegger Stimmungor moodthey diverge as to that which is capableof uttering such an appeal.

    e Event and the Phenomenology of Presencing

    For Schrmann, this appeal is obviously Heideggerian in nature: it is to the

    presencing of being that the human being is to cor-respond. Schrmannsphenomenology of presencing presents a temporalized version of Heideggers

    ontological difference. According to Schrmann, Heideggers entire effortconsists in recovering . . . that broader sense of being as coming into presence

    [Anwesung] or presencing [Anwesen].24

    At this point, it is necessary to con-sider Schrmanns interpretation of Heideggerian anti-humanism: for the his-tory of being to appear as ontotheology, it is necessary that all reference from

    being to human beings (as a privileged relation) disappear. In order to thinkbeing as time, it is no longer necessary to think human temporality, that is, the

    human being as time.25In this sense, for Schrmann Heideggers lesson wouldbe a sobering one, resisting all consolation and consolidation of an ultimate

    yet fantasmic referent that would guide and orient our actions. e (presenc-ing of the) world has become a contingent and goalless process.

    Schrmann will see the event of presencing as that which liberates us from

    the anthropocentrism that still accompanied modern philosophy, according towhich nothing can be said to come to pass if it does not appear to the tran-

    scendental subject. In order to temporalize the ontological difference betweenbeing and beings, Schrmann will distinguish between (originary) being as

    the event of presencing andthe different, original, and epochal economies ofpresence (the epoch of the cogito and of God are that which presences thus).

    If the phenomenologist wants to address presencing and its manifold ways of

    differing from the economies of presence,26the three terms of the ontologicaldifference will have to be temporalized accordingly: whereas, in the unfolding

    possibility of taking action precisely because this call fails to give any . . . practical injunc-

    tions or maxim (see Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrrie and E. Robinson [New

    York: Harper and Row, 1962], 340). ough Levinas would perhaps agree with the ontological

    nature of such a practical a priori, it remains to be considered whether he would concur with the

    extra-moral sense Marion tries to give to it (see Being Given, 314: If this willing can abandon

    the given to itself, [this] abandon does not belong to the moral . . . disposition).24) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 257.25) Ibid., 57.26) Ibid., 160.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    8/23

    424 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    of the ontological difference, beings (Seiendes) lie present in their being (Sei-endheit) from out of their difference with destinal being (Sein), the temporal-ized version of this difference states that the presence (Anwesenheit) of that

    which is present (Anwesendes) unfolds from out of the event of presencing(parousia).27

    is event is sobering because it unfolds without why, without any other

    goal than its simple presencing of beings. Ereignisgrants us its unfolding as, inthe later Heideggers terminology, world and thing (in its difference from

    objects). ese terms try to suggest that the world, or contextuality, announces

    itself in the asthe thing as thing. is deals a blow to transcendence, since

    the world is not elsewhere than the thing. . . . A phenomenon is taken as whatit is only when we understand it as gathering its context, as worlding. Andthe context is taken as such only when we understand it as gathering the phe-

    nomenon, as thinging.28e worlding of the world, according to Schr-mann, marginalizes human beings: they are only one of the elements of

    the . . . autonomous play of the world.29Schrmann concludes that only thisopenness towards the presencing of the world allows the thing to appear,

    divorced from metaphysical overdeterminations that cover up radical finitude,

    thus not in its unchangeable essence but rather in [its] singularity.30It isthis contingent and historical process that is the issue of thought: bereft of any

    one, single origin (be it God, nature, or the cogito), presencing shows itself inits very contingency as the ceaseless arrangements and rearrangements in

    phenomenal interconnectedness,31 as if thinking is thanking the goalless

    showing-forth of phenomena.32

    Ereignis, thenand here is the soberingpartis what establishes us in our precarious dwellings not as some thingbut rather as nothinga mere coming to pass.33e (Heideggerian) world-ing of the world thusand we will see that this is a major difference from

    27) Ibid., 257.28) Ibid., 211.29) Ibid., 211.30) Ibid., 213.31) Ibid., 270.32) Ibid., 258.33) Ibid., 57. is sobering up is best contrasted with the optimism of theology; see 159: Hei-

    deggerian philosophy would oppose, point for point, all that the theologizing readings praise in

    it: instead of Subject of history, the raw positivity and the irreducible contingency of facts;

    instead of a Doctrine, inventory.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    9/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 425

    Levinas thoughtconveys a non-human facticity,34as if being can do with-

    out beings or in any case without a subject to which it, since time immemo-

    rial, ought to appear.

    All this might be unbearable for a modern mind. Nevertheless, it is close towhat Heideggers course on Platos Sophistintimated already, namely, that tophilosophize is to make explicit the prereflexive and pregiven . . . unitary

    being from out of the the whole, present, givenness:35the unity of the thingappears out of the givenness of the world asa world. It is to this unity of ourcontingent world that Schrmann still refers in his 1987 book when saying

    that what is one is the process of coming to presence36the world as it

    worlds, now, in our times, as ourworld, as qualitatively different from pastworlds and modes of presencing: what is common to all epochs is the presenc-ing of the world, but the presencing of the world differs from epoch to

    epoch.37

    A final point then is Schrmanns separation between the event of presenc-

    ing, Ereignis, and the epochal economies of presence. e first is deemed,rather surprisingly, a-historical, albeit that our access to it is granted in and

    through its various historical and epochal expressions. e ahistorical . . .

    showing-forth38is, however, to be understood correctly: the event itself hasneither history nor destiny. . . . Not that the event is atemporal: its temporality

    is the coming about of any constellation of thing and world.39e presencingof the event is that which makes possible a gathering of things present, an

    epoch. Such presencing pushes beyond modernitys one-sided emphasis on

    the human subject. An example will perhaps make this clear: whereas a mod-ern mind would have a hard time affirming the happening of the world out-

    side the solipsistic egos lived experiences, Heideggers thought of presencingwould take into account how the world persists beyond and outside the sub-

    ject. e world worlds outside the finite horizons set out by human beings

    34) Ibid., 57.35) Heidegger, Platos Sophist, trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-

    versity Press, 1997), 415; translation modified since the German has, respectively, der logos . . .

    hat zunchst vorgegeben eine unabgehobene Einheit eines Seienden, and die ganze vorlieg-

    ende . . . Gegebenheit. See Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes(Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann,

    1992), 599600.36) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 76.37) See also, Ibid., 153: the unity does not rest on any ground, endowed with permanence, be it

    substantive or subjective.38) Ibid., 76.39) Ibid., 273.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    10/23

    426 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    and regardless of whether or not it appears toa finite subject. e event ofpresencing is not man-made: it happensworldswithout any reference

    to the human being. e presencing of the event is irreducible to the given

    constellations of any epoch.With this last point, Schrmann, not unlike Foucault, introduces the

    thought that there is a radical break between the different epochs: past pres-

    encing is mute.40In each epoch newness arises, because the worlding of theworld presences in ever new and manifold ways. at which was present in a

    past age, however, stamped and markedHeideggers Prgungas it was byprinciples and ultimate referents that are no longer ours, lies beyond our under-

    standing. Schrmann insists that the existential analytic turns into an epochalanalytic41when Heidegger discovers that even everydayness has a history, thatthe being-in-the-world of the Ancients differs irreducibly from the presencing

    of the world that is the lot of our technological age. One is thrown, not into auniversal or ahistorical world, but into an epoch. e epochal analytic shows

    the different metaphysical options as ever so many illusory attempts at totalreflection, attempts to grasp the contingent world in eternal principles. e

    epochal analytic shows the return of what has thus been deniedbecause it

    could not be coped with: the simple presencing of world, of time and as time,of mere happeningas if being is a playful performance art without a per-

    former. After the turn, which for Schrmann is not an experience in Hei-deggers life or writings but is, rather, a turn we all could experiencethe turn

    from metaphysics to that which will surpass itthe reference to daily experi-

    ence becomes inoperative. . . . If presencingbeingis grasped only throughits difference from epochal presence, then our everyday experience of being is

    lost foreveras soon as a new fold unfurls presence in a new constellation.42isepochal discordance43should not be underestimated: it means that the archeof the Medieval age can tell us how medieval men and women lived, it does nottell ushow to live. And die.

    40) Ibid., 158.41) Ibid., 159.42) Ibid., 15758. See also Schrmanns reading of this into Heideggers Contributions to Philoso-

    phy, in Broken Hegemonies, 519.43) e expression is taken from Vronique-M. Fti, Epochal Discordance. Hlderlins Philosophy

    of Tragedy(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006).

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    11/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 427

    Technology, the Closure of Metaphysics and Anarchic Praxis

    Yet, according to Schrmann, our age, the technological one, stands out, andfor a particular reason. With Heidegger, Schrmann agrees that technology

    inaugurates the closure of metaphysics, and that our age might be the one thatwitnesses the happening of such a turning. An other beginning (Heidegger)

    permeates the end of metaphysics. Technology exposes the illusory character

    of past principles in that it shows that all archic principles are maximizationsof the regional fabrication and representation. With the appearance of tech-

    nology, the metaphysical lineage comes to an end.44Schrmanns anarchy

    consists in rejecting all past principles because technology shows the human,all-too-human character of all such principles: these epochal principles appearas ever so many ontically originated, totalizing and hegemonic representa-

    tions. Yet one might say that Schrmann is inspired by a sort of Heideggeriananarchy in that the (Heideggerian) phenomenology of presencing might

    indeed be taken to say the difference between presencingtranscendental and

    a prioriand that which in each case, that is, in every given epoch, lies present

    to the subjects of that given age. It is in the latter sense that both Schrmannand Heidegger would agree that technology inaugurates the annihilationand extinction of metaphysical principles and positions and opens onto the

    anarchic origin of being as simple presencingnothing more, nothing less.45An-archic, that is: without a whence and a whither,46existence without why,

    neither origin nor goal. Our technological metaphysics is, according to Schr-

    mann, Janus-headed: both the completion of metaphysics, in espousing all its

    inherent possibilities, andintimating, in and through the crisis and absence ofjustification of past principles, the anarchic presencing of the world andbeing.

    e ontological and anarchic presencing of the event singles out being asa contingent process across the various ages, delivering to each its epoch

    and setting the standards of that which is epochally possible and what isnot. If technology is the inauguration of the withering away of every meta-

    physical principle because it exposes these as illusory, then what kind of

    praxis would be appropriate to correspond to this contingent event? Accord-ing to Schrmann, this would be nothing less than an anarchic praxis, forto legitimate praxis can no longer mean to refer what is doable to a first

    44) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 25 and 59.45) Ibid., 47 and 59, respectively.46) Being and Time, 173.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    12/23

    428 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    ground or some supreme reason, to a final end or some ultimate goal.47If

    we must still learn to see things instead of objects, and if we still must

    learn to think instead of representing, then the Heideggerian candidate for

    accompanying action is releasement or Gelassenheit, since [a]n acting otherthan being effective and a thinking other than strategical rationality is

    what Heidegger puts forward under the name of releasement.48Only then

    are we able to see the relation between liberation and releasement.49Release-ment is freed from the hold that past principles exercised on thinking and

    is more properly attuned to the presencing of the network of phenomenal

    interconnectedness: it corresponds to that which the event does: letting be.

    For Schrmann, releasement is to be taken both politically and philosoph-ically. Philosophically, it is that responsiveness that makes possible the set-ting free of the thing out of the representational clutches of our epoch in

    which any phenomenon always already appears like a present-at-handobject.50 It responds to the event of presencing without resorting to the

    objectivation of this presencing.51 Politically, releasement is the act of arebellious philosopherSchrmann mentions Socratesrenouncing his

    or her age-old role as covert civil servant: once it is clear that a radical

    fluidity is introduced into social institutions as well as into practice in gen-eral, the entry into the event . . . remains thinkable and doable only as the

    struggle against the injustice, the hubris, of enforced residence under prin-cipial surveillance.52

    Rather than focusing on the concrete technological aspects of the meta-

    physical closure, the remainder of this article will address Schrmanns rela-tion to other Continental philosophers precisely on this topic of a possible

    closure of metaphysics in order to confront the tragic thinker Schrmann with

    47) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 281.48) Ibid., 84.49) Ibid., 242.50) Ibid., 93.51) In this respect, the parallel Schrmann draws between the Heideggerian step back and the

    phenomenological reduction is noteworthy: Not only is releasement or letting-be the properly

    phenomenological attitude (ibid., 212), but the phenomenological reduction is also the method

    according to which the double step backwards from the situated or manifest entities toward

    their site [then] to the self-situating, the self-manifesting as such (ibid., 1920, also 7981) is

    possible. Since it is a form of the phenomenological reduction, Lillys statement that one finds

    no delineated method in Schrmanns work, is to be nuanced, see Lilly, e Topology of Des

    hgmonies brises, 230.52) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 281.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    13/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 429

    a remainder of an unjustified optimism and hope when it comes to over-

    coming metaphysics.

    Levinasian Anarchy

    e relation between Schrmann and Levinas is an odd one. Schrmanns Hei-

    degger book seemed to be sympathetic to Levinas anti-metaphysical and anar-chic attempt to think the approach of the Other. For Schrmann, Levinas seemed,

    unlike Deleuze (who turns to jubilation) and Derrida (who mourns its loss),

    sufficiently sober to cope with the loss of the One.53

    On the back of the book,Levinas in turn praises Schrmanns work for its speculative and pedagogical

    value [that] make[s] it a highly welcome publication. In this sense, it is all themore striking that Broken Hegemoniesdoes not even mention Levinas by name.

    Identities: Totality and Hegemony

    e similarities between Levinas and Schrmann may be obvious: just as

    Schrmann rejects at the end of metaphysics any hegemonic fantasm, so tooLevinas is wary of the idea of a closed totality. Both Levinas and Schrmann

    then display an attentiveness towards that which cannot be represented and

    thus forced into a system. Moreover, both thinkers would, in and throughtheir rejection of the monism and the quest for unity characteristic of meta-

    physics, endorse a fundamental plurality and multiplicity of being. Schr-

    manns radical multiplicity54

    might thus very well be for Levinas, as it is forSchrmann, accompanied by a certain anarchismtaken as the absence ofany common or unifying principle or foundation of our world once all archaihave shown themselves to be originated in an ontic projective mannerforthere is an anarchy essential to multiplicity.55Levinas and Schrmann fur-

    thermore share a similar attentiveness to the inner divide that haunts the

    human being once thrown upon its span between birth and death. A certain

    form of such tragedy might be discerned primarily in Levinas early worksand its effort to break with Parmenides through a pluralism that appears[in] the very existing of the existent itself.56By that token, the existence of the

    53) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 32122.54) Ibid., 148.55) Totality and Infinity, 294.56) Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. R. A. Cohen (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press,

    1987), 42 and 75, respectively.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    14/23

    430 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    human being is, according to Levinas, double: at once chained to itself andlonging for its other. Chained to itself: that is, to the impersonal nature of the

    il y a contaminating the human beings person, and which Levinas describes

    through the analysis of insomnia, in which it is not I that is awake but ratheran impersonal me that is waking.57 Chained to itself, because in this rift

    between the I of consciousness and the il y aof impersonal existence threaten-ing it from within, the human being inevitably has an awareness of its immi-

    nent death. Longing for the other, for existences duality might take anotherdirection and accomplish itself in fecundity.

    is latter route is taken by Levinas Totality and Infinity, which still affirms

    the necessary break with Parmenides in order to think transcendences anar-chic plurality. Totality and Infinity, moreover, conveys its philosophy of plural-ism in the same formula as Levinas earlier works. In this workand evenmore so in his later worksLevinas will identify the rupture with the system

    of being with the very existence of the human subject: the break-up of total-ity, the denunciation of the panoramic structure of being, concerns the very

    existing of being.58It is true that in Levinas works this interruption or dis-tance will be progressively connected with (divine or not) transcendence,

    since the distance [transcendence] expresses . . . enters into the way of existingof the exterior being.59For the debate between Levinas and Schrmann, it

    matters little whether Levinas associated the anarchic undertow accompany-

    ing all discourse on being with divine transcendence; it matters all the morethat Levinas consigned his anarchism to a principle nevertheless: the exterior

    being is to be equated with the face of the other and only the face in turn isto be equated with that which forever disrupts the system. Levinas essential

    anarchy thus concerns only the intersubjective encounter. erefore indeeda principle breaks through this essential anarchy when the face presents

    itself, and demands justice.60e essential anarchy is undone by the principle

    of the face.

    57) is duality appears, for instance, in Levinas description of solitude in his Existence and

    Existents, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001), 90: e solitude of a

    subject is more than the isolation of a being or the unity of an object. It is, as it were, a dual

    solitude; this other than me accompanies the ego like a shadow.58) Totality and Infinity, 294.59) Ibid., 35.60) Ibid., 294.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    15/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 431

    Differences: With/out Principle

    In this sense, the debate between Schrmann and Levinas might turn on the

    latters humanism and anthropocentrism; for even if it is a humanism of theother man, it is a humanism nonetheless. Let us turn to Schrmann again to

    consider what the difference between the presencing of being and the inter-ruption of the exterior being or the face might be. Commenting upon Hei-

    deggers pathway to presencing, Schrmann writes: in Being and Time, to bepresent still means to be present for man. . . . A new way of thinking is required

    to understand presencing independently of such a reference.61Now, if Schr-

    mann is considering the presencing of being(s) independently of every posi-tion we would have taken in its regard, then it is obvious that that which

    Levinas reserves for one region of phenomenality, namely, the human being,must be extended to the whole of phenomenality. It would thus be necessary

    to state that for Schrmann not only the human face but also the world andperhaps nature would be able to occur independently of any reference to

    man.62

    If Schrmann would deem this anthropocentrism in Levinas a residue ofmetaphysical thought, Derrida just as well has criticized the ontotheological

    character of the excessive importance Levinas attributed to the face: this intra-onticmovement of ethical transcendence props up thought by means of atranshistoricity.63is intra-ontic movement that, just like traditional onto-theology, thinks beings (the face) rather than being, seems to be in need of

    some theological legitimation. Indeed, since the Other resembles God,64it

    seems that it is ultimately God who, as a supreme being, bestows the face ofthe human other with the power to interrupt the subjects egoistic being.Hence Derridas critique, for, in his words, the question of Being is nothing

    less than a disputation of the metaphysical truth of this schema.65

    Again, it is not because Levinas resorts to God to justify the interruptionand the distance of the other that his endeavor is ontotheological. It is rather

    that through this recourse to God the human face is attributed the rank of a

    61) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 72.62) I am alluding here to Levinas statement that the manifestation of the face consists in a being

    telling itself to us independently of every position we would have taken in its regard (Totality

    and Infinity, 65).63) Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: e University of Chicago

    Press, 1978), 142 and 148, respectively.64) Totality and Infinity, 293.65) Writing and Difference, 143.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    16/23

    432 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    principlean ultimate referentwhich attests to Levinas metaphysics. Inthis way, Derridas and Schrmanns critiques of Levinasian humanism would

    coincide: the critique of ontotheology does not point to one or the other

    theological residue in Levinas; it is rather that the human face still functionsas an ultimate signifier that orients all other significations that accounts for

    Levinas ontotheology. In Schrmanns words: the face turns out to be yetanother hegemonic fantasm in that it inappropriately singles out one phe-

    nomenal region (intersubjectivity) at the expense of all the other regions(nature, for example).

    In this respect, it might be good to turn to Levinas later work, especially

    Otherwise than Beingand God, Death and Time, in which Levinas proceeds toa separation of anarchy and principle.66 Indeed, in these later works divine

    transcendence is utterly separated from any principle, even that of the humanface: this glory is without principle: there is in this infinity an anarchicalele-ment.67If the face at the time of Totality and Infinitywas elevated to the pointof a principlea being that would be singled out as the highest of beings

    and if it therefore would be subject to that which Broken Hegemonieswoulddeem a maximization of one phenomenal region over others, then it must be

    noted that the face in Otherwise than Beingis de-phenomenalized to a greatextent: it is not so much the concrete encounter with a human face that is at

    issue but rather our pre-original trauma or susceptiveness towards the others

    otherness that is judged to be anarchic, that is, without principle.68is sus-ceptibility, always and already turned towards otherness, is called by Levinas

    a bottomless passivity; it is without ground.69

    e primacy of otherness thusmakes up a susceptibility of all for all that Levinas interprets as fraternity. One

    might formulate the difference between the early and later Levinasian anarchyin this way: whereas Totality and Infinity, although it agreed upon the essentialanarchism of intersubjective pluralism, assumed and perhaps had to assume

    the commonness of a father that, according to Levinas, is the great contribu-tion to thought of monotheism,70in Otherwise than Beingfraternity is given

    66) See, for this, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, 194, and also Miguel Abensour, Savage

    Democracy and Principle of Anarchy, Philosophy and Social Criticism 28 (2002): 70326,

    723.67) Levinas, God, Death, and Time, trans. B. Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000),

    193. Echoed in Otherwise than Being, 147, the anarchic infinite.68) Otherwise than Being, 12223.69) Ibid., 151.70) Totality and Infinity, 214.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    17/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 433

    a strictly philosophical explanation,71and the face is, so to say, replaced by thetrace. e trace is not a unifying principle, it is an outside of thinking that

    somehow operates from within my being and orients (my) existence towards

    otherness. It is an Dieu, which implies a goodbye to a (certain) God as well.It might be with such a tracewhich is just as much without why and with-

    out ground as Schrmanns and Heideggers presencing of beingthatSchrmann agreed when confirming, with Levinas, that being is exterior-

    ity.72 Considering the later Levinas assertion concerning the impossibleindifference with regard to the human,73one can safely conclude that on the

    topic of humanism the differences between Schrmann and Levinas would

    still stand.If the difference between the early and the later Levinas thus implies a

    difference in the status of anarchy, in that an anarchic appearance of exterior-ity gathers concrete human beings as fraternal beings, then it is worth noting

    the confusion this thinking with/out principle has caused among commenta-tors: Abensour celebrates Levinas distinction between anarchy and principle

    because it refuses a political conception of anarchy that would impose yetanother principle on anarchy,74while Rolland suggests that the unprincipled

    anarchism includes such a political conceptionI will come back to thisbelow.75

    Schrmann might have experienced a similar confusion, considering that

    Broken Hegemoniesmakes little mention of a principle of anarchyif at all.is confusion comes to the fore in both the brief but harsh discussion between

    Derrida and Schrmann and an article on Schrmanns work by RudolpheGasch, who inspired the thesis of the last section.

    Derridean Anarchy

    e thesis of this section is that the definition of hegemony of Broken Hege-moniesmight be applied to the thematic of Schrmanns book on Heideggeras well. Schrmanns debate with Derrida will then help us to underscore the

    71) Otherwise than Being, 122 and 152.72) Totality and Infinity, 290, and Heidegger on Being and Acting, 346.73) Otherwise than Being, 59.74) Abensour, Savage Democracy and Principle of Anarchy, 723.75) Jacques Rolland edited and annotated the French edition of God, Death, and Time. ese

    notes are translated in the English edition as well, see Levinas, God, Death, and Time, 277 n. 1

    and 283 n. 7.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    18/23

    434 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    shifts in Schrmanns conception of the closure of metaphysics and in theconception of its humble everyday origins.

    e whole debate centers upon one phrase of Derridasto which Schr-

    mann tirelessly returnsfrom hisMargins of Philosophy: at the end of meta-physics, for Derrida it is a matter to decide to change terrain, in a

    discontinuous and irruptive fashion, by brutally placing oneself outside, andby affirming an absolute break and difference.76Schrmann has most force-

    fully responded to Derridas deconstructive naivet and its desire to switchterrains, to go to an anti-metaphysical site, when Schrmann states that the

    philosophers task [is] more modest, for from what lofty position would we

    be able to draw the geographic map of discontinuous planes? What field out-side the terrain must one occupy in order to affirm rupture? I know of no

    other place than the one whereupon the waning twentieth century has plantedus, commenting further in a note: Derrida seems to speak here as a chroni-

    cler of what was going on in France at the time he signed the textMay 12,1968,77implying, importantly, that Derrida mistakenly took an ontic event

    to have (anti)metaphysical significance. Schrmanns desire, then, was not tochange terrain but to change to another thinking, beyond deconstruction.78

    Janicaud confirms: [Schrmann] neither accepted the idea of an end of meta-physics nor the possibility of placing oneself outside, even if by a kind of

    play.79Yet the latter point stands in need of some proof, for it might be the

    case that at the time of his Heidegger book Schrmann was himself riveted toa nave deconstructive site. Indeed, several passages show that Schrmann

    envisaged an outside of ontotheology, or at least that an other than meta-physical thinking was a possibility.80

    In this way, Derridas History of the Lie, which appeared in a volumededicated to the memory of Schrmann but which cites him merely two

    76) Jacques Derrida,Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: e University of Chicago

    Press, 1982), 135, as cited by Schrmann in Heidegger on Being and Acting, 362, and in Broken

    Hegemonies, 14. Schrmann cites another passage in which Derrida presumes to go beyond

    metaphysics, see Heidegger on Being and Acting, 311, where Schrmann quotes Derrida, Of

    Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976), 4: the

    world that is ineluctably to come and which proclaims itself at present, beyond the closure.77) Broken Hegemonies, 14 and 634 n. 24, respectively.78) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 371.79) Dominique Janicaud, Riveted to a Monstrous Site. Reiner Schrmanns Reading of Hei-

    deggers Beitrge, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal19 (1997): 28797, 293.80) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 241 and 270, respectively.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    19/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 435

    times, might be read as turning Schrmanns critique against himself. Derri-das text, though it deals mainly with Arendt, can indeed be read as a critique

    of the grand Heideggerian rhetoric, recounting ahistory of being and of meta-

    physics, for is not such a rhetoric compromised by an indestructible opti-mism in that it seems to presuppose already how the lie or the error ofmetaphysics might be overcome?81 is optimism is concerned not with apersonal attitude but with claiming to be in the know, whether it concerns

    the end of metaphysics or truth in general.But let us not agree with Derrida too easily, and turn to Schrmanns cri-

    tique of Derrida in the 1987 book in order to understand what the difference

    between this book and the later Broken Hegemonies might be. Schrmanncriticizes Derrida, for the large part, in the notes of the first mentioned book.

    Schrmann mentions the game Heidegger played with Nietzsche and pro-poses that Derrida is playing a similar game with Heidegger: just as much as

    Heidegger could turn Nietzsche into the last metaphysician, so too can Der-rida, by ruse, turn Heidegger into the last metaphysician.82 Schrmann

    argues that Derrida can only turn Heidegger into the last metaphysician ofpresence by forgetting the temporalizing of the ontological difference, the

    difference between presencing and that which is present in each given epoch.Derrida can claim that Heideggers question of being remained an intra-

    metaphysical effect only by obliterating presencing and by reducing Hei-

    deggers dwelling to a homecoming that interpreted being as maintainingand belonging and thus as presence. In this way, Derrida can play with Hei-

    degger as Heidegger played with Nietzsche: just as Nietzsche remained meta-physical for Heidegger and therefore attempted an exit and a deconstruction

    from metaphysics without changing terrains, so too, for Derrida, Heideggeris still metaphysical without switching terrains. Deconstruction then would be

    anti-metaphysical insofar it knows how to change terrains.83Now, for Schr-

    mann the difference between presencing and presence means precisely thatbeing cannot be understood in an optimistic sense as the place where we dwell

    and belong, since, due to the epochal discordance, the presencing of our worldradically differs from the presencing of any other epoch. For Schrmann,

    81) Derrida, History of the Lie. Prolegomena, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal19 (1997):

    12961, 15657.82) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 360.83) See, for this, Heidegger on Being and Acting, 35253 and 36162. Schrmann cites Derrida,

    Margins of Philosophy, 22, 132, 135, and 281.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    20/23

    436 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    we indeed dwell on the world, but this world now worlds in ways it hasntworlded beforeif I may play with Heideggers vocabularyand resists there-

    fore any sense of belonging.84

    us, just as Derrida criticizes Schrmann for being optimistic concerningthe matter of overcoming metaphysics, so Schrmann criticizes Derrida for

    being too optimistic when depicting Heidegger as the last metaphysician.Might it be that the confusion comes from the fact that both adversaries are

    playing a game, even more grave than that which prevails in Derridas stepoutside the destruction game and which watch[es] the destroyers destroy

    each other reciprocally?85is game, then, would concern the natural meta-

    physician in us, and I risk a bold hypothesis in favor of this natural metaphys-ics in the conclusion to this article.

    Conclusion

    If then Derrida utters a similar objection to Schrmann as Schrmann towards

    Derrida, it might be the case that Schrmanns accusation of a deconstructivenaivet can be turned against himself. I will turn to Rodolphe Gaschs article

    and to the remarkable conclusion of Broken Hegemoniesto make this point. Inthis conclusion, Schrmann seems to address this game, which throws the

    accusation of metaphysics around and around. is is a game, so it seems, ofendless reversals in and of metaphysics in which, in the end, no one escapes

    the accusation of being the last metaphysicianSchrmann calls it the

    inversion thesis. For instance, to report that sometime after 1830 values gotinverted . . .such storytelling is not exactly free of interest. It allows one to

    classify ones neighbor, if he locates his referents up high, as still a metaphysi-

    84) In this sense, Schrmanns insights might nowadays most forcefully be perpetuated by Jean-

    Luc Nancy who, on several occasions, has shown himself to be sympathetic towards Schrmanns

    anarchistic project. It is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this text to speak of Nancys anarchy;

    I will therefore point the reader to a few passages in Nancys work: Jean-Luc Nancy, e Experi-

    ence of Freedom, trans. B. Mcdonald (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 13, 30 (on the

    anarchy of existence) and 187 (on his community with Schrmann); Etre Singulier Pluriel

    (Paris: Galile, 1996), 69 (again: anarchy). See also Lorenzo Fabbri, Philosophy as Chance. An

    Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy, Critical Inquiry33 (2007): 42740, 435, one must reinterro-

    gate from top to bottom the theme of the arche in generalthe an-archy of the arche, in the

    sense that Reiner Schrmann spoke of a principle of anarchy.85) See Heidegger on Being and Acting, 362, and Writing and Difference, 281.

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    21/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 437

    cian, for two centuries now, a professional insult.86It is, however, such insultsthat accompanied the debate between Derrida and Schrmann and through

    which the destroyers of metaphysics are destroying themselves. It seems, there-

    fore, that the concept of counter-philosophers that Gasch has drawn fromBroken Hegemonies is applicable to both Schrmann and Derrida as well.Counter-philosophers are those who, in a given epoch, emphasize the nega-tive, the pull to singularity, and mortality and thereby tend to maximize these

    negative experiences as if they merely reverse the maximization of metaphys-icss ultimate referents.87e danger, then, is that both positions would miss

    the originary double bind and diffrendof natality and mortality, which posits

    that metaphysics is natural or ontic, since it originates in the natural ten-dency to look away from that which one cannot not look away from, namely,

    death and finitude. us, while metaphysicians stress the aspect of natality,the counter-philosophers seem to stress the aspect of negativity and mortal-

    ity. It is at this point, however, that the conclusion of Broken Hegemoniesgetsenigmatic, for if Gasch is right when saying that a hegemonic fantasm is

    accomplished when the phenomenality of the phenomenon is constituted byturning this phenomenality into parts of an interconnected world,88 then

    this is, as we have seen, exactly what Schrmanns Heidegger book sought outto do when insisting on the oneness and the unity of the presencing of a

    world.

    It is thus a possible escape of metaphysics that is at stake in the conclusionto Broken Hegemonies. On the one hand, one finds still statements in line with

    the Heidegger book. Gasch, for instance, scrutinizes Schrmanns treatmentof Eckhart, for whom it would have been a matter of leaving [the principles]

    behind, of no longer having recourse to them, and then asks poignantly: onemay question this possibility by recalling everything that Schrmann has

    established in this work [Broken Hegemonies].89One may question Gaschsstatement in turn, though, since Schrmanns point was that the naturalmetaphysician in us inevitablyhas recourse to principles and ultimate refer-

    ents. But, on the other hand, it is the latter thesis that the conclusion to Bro-ken Hegemoniesseeks to overturn in sticking to the ultimate double bind as

    86) Broken Hegemonies, 626.87) Rodolphe Gasch, Hegemonic Fantasms, Research in Phenomenology35 (2005): 31126,

    320 and 323.88) Ibid., 315.89) Ibid., 325.

    http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0085-5553(2005)35L.311[aid=8032848]http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0085-5553(2005)35L.311[aid=8032848]http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/external-references?article=0085-5553(2005)35L.311[aid=8032848]
  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    22/23

    438 J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439

    much as possible by stating that the natality impulse that unifies life cannotbe equated with the good just as the singularization to come of death cannot

    be equated with evil pure and simple.90In this sense, Schrmann realizes

    that unifying principles and hegemonies are not, in advance, to be consideredas bad, evil, and insulting, as the Heidegger book would have it. In this

    way, it opens the terrain from which an escape might be possible, rather thanleaping into an other terrain.

    e escape of metaphysics then, it seems, has to do with the question ofjust how far we can heed Nietzsches extra-moral view on metaphysics. For, if

    the unitary presencing and the oneness of phenomenal interconnectedness

    (Schrmann), or the one fraternal humanity for that matter (Levinas), showsitself to be yet another metaphysical convulsion, than the most sober question

    to ask is to where the epochal discordance extends. e question of the rela-tion between the one and the pluralistic manifold would then need to address

    a possible discordance not only between epochs (as in the grand Heideggerianrhetoric) but also between cultures and perhaps individuals. Another warning

    of Derrida to Schrmann might thus be incorporated into the debate over theend of metaphysics, namely, that if one wants to philosophize in a manner free

    of interest, then the history of metaphysics must be recounted free of moraldenunciation.91

    To conclude: to understand the fact that the end of metaphysics might be

    related to the question as to whether we can still attain to the level of transcen-dental, ontological, and therefore extra-moral thinking, it is useful to turn to

    the debate between Schrmann and Levinas. For if Schrmann, at the end ofBroken Hegemonies, realized that the natural metaphysician in all of us cannotdo without ultimate referents, that, thus, from time immemorial anarchy isindebted to a principle, it is not sure whether Schrmann would have

    applauded the later Levinas contention that anarchy is separated from any

    principle (be it a political one). It is furthermore worth noting that Rollandsappreciation of the political anarchism depends on an onticargument. It can

    also be shown that Levinas distinction between anarchism and politics isindeed dependent upon the turmoil of 1968.92 It is only then that we can

    90) Broken Hegemonies, 62425.91) History of the Lie, 154.92) For Rollands argument concerning the Levinasian without principle, see Levinas, God,

    Death, and Time, 283: Levinas confirms the anarchists sense of anarchy. We should not forget,

    in effect, that they are without principle was Stalins fundamental charge against those situated

    to his left. I take the second point from Mitchel Verters online paper e Anarchism of the

  • 8/12/2019 Joeri Schrijvers - Anarchist Tendencies

    23/23

    J. Schrijvers / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 417439 439

    understand Schrmanns ultimate reluctance towards any such ontic point ofreference for the question of the end of metaphysics, for such a point would

    make the issue of metaphysics an issue for a report in a chronicle (whether it

    is 1830, 1933, or 1968). Schrmann indeed never considered May 1968 asone of the rare moments of freedom that Arendt noticed in history.93On the

    contrary, he seems to have recoiled before any such ontic point of reference, asis obvious from his recounting of the events of 1933 surrounding Hei-

    degger.94

    It is surprising indeed that a thinker who takes great pains to show the ontic

    origin of epochal presence, who singles out the exceptional nature of our age

    of technology, and moreover advances the public character of philosophy,ignores the ontic events of our current epoch. It is strange, finally, that a

    thinker concerned to such an extent with freedom and everydayness (to thepoint that an intellectual always and already is a public intellectual) remained

    silent on the cultural and everyday implications of ourmetaphysics.e reason for this? e reason is perhaps that even Schrmann had too

    much reverence for the hubris of the hegemonies he contested. Indeed, if theHeidegger book hesitates to criticize Heidegger for the inability of this

    thinking to emerge effectively from the philosophical tradition,95then thismight be the case precisely because, even in Schrmann and even though he

    has pointed to it, the relation between the ontic and the ontological realm,

    between everydayness and epochal presence, between the public realm andphilosophy is left hanging. Even more grave, precisely because it remains

    unclear how one can change terrain from everydayness to the terrain of ontol-ogy, Schrmann may repeat one of the most traditional hierarchies since

    metaphysics inception: the hierarchy (and the hubris) that separates ontol-ogy from all things ontic, philosophy from culture, authenticity from every-

    dayness.96

    Other Person, which shows Levinas meditation on the revolution of 1968 in Paris, see http://

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas (accessed online 1 November 2006).93) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 91, and Broken Hegemonies, 679.94) Broken Hegemonies, 52328.95) Heidegger on Being and Acting, 182. is passage echoes Schrmanns noting, while pointing

    to the public dimension of the principle of an epoch, that not all cultural facts have an equally

    revelatory value. For Heidegger, the most revealing traces of past historical fields are preserved in

    philosophical works (ibid., 35).96) h i P d l F ll f h R h F d i Fl d (FWO V)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas