The Movement of Showing

Johan E. De Jong

Description

This book explores the idea shared by Derrida, Hegel, and Heidegger that the value of their thought is not found in its results or conclusions, but in its "movement." All three describe the heart of their work in terms of a pathway, development, or movement that seems to deprive their thought of a solid ground. Johan de Jong argues that this is a structural vulnerability that is the source of its value, tracing Derrida's indirect method from his early to later works, and critically considering his engagements with Hegel and Heidegger. De Jong's analysis locates an affinity among Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida in a shared distrust of externality and, against the grain of some Levinasian commentaries, argues that Derrida's indirectness results in an ethics of complicity. The Movement of Showing answers a central question that many polemics about continental philosophy and postmodernism revolve around, namely: with which methods does one philosophize responsibly? It shows the difference between critique and polemics, and why simply taking up a position for or against is insufficient in order to think responsibly.

Sujets

• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438476100
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE MOVEMENT OF SHOWING
SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought

David Pettigrew and François Raffoul, editors
THE MOVEMENT OF SHOWING
Indirect Method, Critique, and Responsibility in Derrida, Hegel, and Heidegger
JOHAN DE JONG
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jong, Johan de, 1982– author.
Title: The movement of showing : indirect method, critique, and responsibility in Derrida, Hegel, and Heidegger / Johan de Jong.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in contemporary French thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018048804 | ISBN 9781438476094 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438476100 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Methodology. | Continental philosophy. | Thought and thinking. | Derrida, Jacques. | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. | Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976.
Classification: LCC BD241 .J66 2019 | DDC 101—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048804
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Foor mim

Without discrete parody, without writing strategy, without difference or spreading of pens/feathers [ écart de plumes ], without style, therefore, the grand one, the reversal would amount to the same in the noisy declaration of the antithesis. Hence the heterogeneity of the text.
—Jacques Derrida ( Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles )
The sole interest of reason is to sublate such rigidified antitheses.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy )
The point is not to listen to a series of propositions, but rather to follow the movement of showing.
—Martin Heidegger (“Time and Being”)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I SOURCES OF DERRIDA’S INDIRECTNESS: LANGUAGE, METAPHYSICS, CRITIQUE
Chapter 1 Why There Can Be No Derridean Theory of Language
“This Incompetence of Science …” Of Grammatology ’s Opening Complication
Language: The “Effacement of All its Limits”
What a Derridean “Theory” Would “Oppose”: The “Traditional Determination” of Writing
What a Derridean “Theory” Would “Oppose” to the Traditional Determination: What Is “Generalized” Writing?
Why “Retain the Old Name”? Toward “Acts of Writing”
Conclusion
Chapter 2 The Inextricability of Metaphysics
The “Structural Figure”: Demarcation, Opposition, Hierarchy, Presence
The “Historical Totality”: Epoch, History, the Future, and Beyond
Overcoming Philosophy’s Self-Overcoming
Conclusion
Chapter 3 The Question of Justification and the Law of Resemblance: Empiricism—Skepticism—Critique
Empiricism: Deconstruction and Method
Skepticism: Deconstruction and Self-Contradiction
Critique: Deconstruction and Vulnerability
Conclusion
PART II MOVEMENT AND OPPOSITION: FROM HEGEL TO DERRIDA
Chapter 4 Hegel’s Movement of the Concept and the Limits of the Understanding
The Origins of Hegelian “Movement” and the Critique of the Understanding
What Exceeds Reflection Is Its Own Movement
The Affirmation of Limits in Hegel’s Response to Kant
The Difference Essay and the Need for/of Philosophy
Hegel’s Early Problem of Philosophical Exposition: Skepticism and the Necessity of Self-Contradiction
The Problem of Speculative Exposition in the Phenomenology of Spirit
The Speculative Proposition
Conclusion
Chapter 5 Derrida’s “Textual Maneuvers”: Exceeding the Opposition to Hegelianism Contributions
Situating Hegel in Derrida’s Development
“Tympan”: The Limits of Philosophy and the Need to Write Otherwise
“Hors Livre” and the Multitude of Derrida’s Hegels
Conclusion
PART III HEIDEGGER: THE PRESERVATION OF CONCEALMENT
Chapter 6 The Transition to Transitional Thinking: From Being and Time to the Contributions
The Movement of Showing of Itself by Itself: the Circularity of Being and Time
The Complication of “Being-in” and the Opening of Being and Time
Introduction to the “Transitional Thinking” of the Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)
The “Cessation of all Overcoming”
What Turns? From Being and Time to the Contributions
Conclusion
Chapter 7 Reticence and Exposition: Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)
Style and Systematicity: The Conjuncture of the Contributions
The Contributions ’ “Reflection” on its Own Language: Denkerisches Sagen and the Limits of Representation
Do the Contributions Preserve or Overcome the Failure to Say Beyng?
Bearing Silence, Withdrawal, and Λήθη in the Parmenides -Lectures
Reticence and Sheltering in “On the Essence of Truth”
The Philosophical Necessity to be Unassertive: Stimmung and its Distinction from Erlebnis
Conclusion
PART IV OF DERRIDA’S HEIDEGGERS: STYLE, AFFIRMATION, RESPONSIBILITY
Chapter 8 The Question of Style: Heidegger, Nietzsche and the Heterogeneity of the Text
Nietzsche’s “Feminine ‘Operation’ ”
Does Heidegger Reduce the Plurality of Nietzsche’s Styles?
Derrida’s Two Heideggers: Ereignis Outside the Hermeneutic Circle
Perhaps: “I Have Forgotten My Umbrella”
Conclusion
Chapter 9 Strategy and Responsibility: Derrida, Heidegger, and the Ethics of Complicity
Of Spirit and the Unavoidable
Irreducible Complicity and the Desire for Non-Contamination
Unprecedented Responsibilities and Affirmation “Before” the Question
The Undeconstructible and the Vulnerability of Justice
Conclusion
Afterword Philosophical Indirections
Indirectness and the Question of Critique
Necessity and Motivation: Performativity and Responsibility
The Philosophical Tradition
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T his book is a thoroughly rewritten version of a dissertation that I started working on in 2009. Thanks are due to everyone at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Amsterdam who helped make that project possible. I thank Ruth Sonderegger and Josef Früchtl, without whose efforts on my behalf, and faith in my abilities, this project would not have seen the light of day. I especially thank Kees Jan Brons for many conversations and profound insights. Without his availability and guidance, this text could not have been written. I am grateful to the members of my doctoral committee (Rudi te Velde, Victor Kal, and especially Gert-Jan van der Heiden and Aukje van Rooden) for their critical comments and stimulating conversations. I thank the ASCA for believing in my project and for providing me with the means to carry it out.
My stay in the United States in 2013 would have been impossible without the financial support of the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. I thank David Wood for the extraordinary generosity with which he welcomed me to Nashville and for providing such an intellectually stimulating environment. I am grateful to the participants in the Heidegger seminar at Vanderbilt for our discussions and their friendship, and want to mention in particular Peter Kline, Jessica Polish, Eric Ritter, and Garrett Bredeson for making my stay worthwhile. I have also benefited greatly from many discussions with participants and faculty at three editions of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Città di Castello.
The dissertation could not have been reworked into this book without the support of my colleagues at the Departments of Philosophy and of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Utrecht University. I especially wish to thank Paul Ziche and Iris van der Tuin. At SUNY Press, I thank Andrew Kenyon and Chelsea Miller for their patience and assistance, François Raffoul for his encouragement to submit the manuscript, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable advice that greatly helped improve the text.
Thank you to Herman Adèr, Harry Büller, Fred Thoolen, and Tineke van Roozendaal for so generously providing what were essentially lavish versions of the sine qua non that is the writer’s cabin (and I thank David for providing an actual one). I am grateful to many others for their assistance, critical comments, inspiring discussion, encouragement, or friendship, including Niels Büller, Wout Cornelissen, Robert Goené, Sara Murawski, Pieter Pekelharing, Jasper Renema, Maurits Romijn, Matthé Scholten, Johannes-Georg Schülein, Joris Spigt, Michal van Zelm, and, in remembrance, Olle Kruyt.
Finally, I thank Janna, for everything, and I thank my parents, Dirk and Hiltje, for their unconditional support. I am deeply saddened that my biggest fan was not given the time to witness the completion of this book. I cherish, as an enduring motivation, the memory of her unwavering love and pride.
ABBREVIATIONS
Only the most frequently cited works have been abbreviated and are listed here. A full overview is found in the bibliography. If in the text two page numbers are given, separated by a slash (e.g., 12/34), the first always refers