This is nothing more than some reading notes - primarily for the students of my Heidegger class at Greenwich University, though they may be of interest to others. They’re not intended to be a thorough interpretation, nor to engage with secondary literature, but were the basis of my lecture given on December 12th. The class had been requested to do a section analysis of this passage and these notes constitute, in effect, the basis of my own. Discussion is of course welcome provided these caveats are understood.

Notes from pages 190-199, Heidegger; Introduction to metaphysics, trans. Fried and Polt, Yale Nota Bene 2000

1) The first move (or, better, position) - that there is a disjunction between phusis and logos, a disjunction that is stated here but the grounds of which would be found elsewhere in the text - for example, pp186-7 and the connection that is drawn there between logos and the Being of the human being/Being (that is, both the way in which we are as well as the individual beings that we are). The claim locates the beginning of a ‘movement’ in the history of Being. At the beginning of the disjunction between logos and phusis, logos is not set against Being, it does not "step up" as a court of justice. Logos initially has no power of determination or judgement when it comes to understanding Being, it cannot - or does not - judge what Being is. We cannot - at the inception of the understanding of Being - simply judge what has Being through using language (that is, we cannot decide what exists, what is real or what is true simply within and through language - although these terms such as ‘real’, ‘exists’ and true’, whilst more easily appealing to a ‘common sense’, hide within themselves a lot of presuppositions). However, one aspect of language - reason, logic, the ‘logy, the ’science of…’ - begins to assert itself, begins to assert its’ right to judge Being and eventually reinterprets phusis, a reinterpretation we now live within - for example, the opposition between the physical and the psychical arises as a result of the reinterpretation of Being and is not a universal but a specific historical moment in the history of Being. The process of reinterpretation is, in effect, the history of Being and is the movement that is being examined within ITM.

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I was reading through Miguel de Beistegui’s ‘Truth and Genesis’ today and noticed this argument, at the beginning of the third section on Deleuze;

Metaphysics is characterised by its emphasis on substance. Modern science, essentially from the development of Quantum theory, has implicitly dumped this Aristotelian ontology in favour of one that is an ‘energetics’. Mathematics is the access route to this ontology. Implicitly, therefore, the ‘new ontology’, of which Deleuze is an instance according to de Beistegui, derives from mathematical insight.

As those who were at the Badiou / Clamour of being reading group will no doubt recognise, this is quite close to the thesis in ‘Being and Event’ that mathematics is ontology.

Now, first of all this is a reconstruction of an argument, not a reading of a text and so I’m not putting this forward as an account of de Beistegui, merely locating the line of argument. I wanted to do so because it struck me today that this emphasis on substance and embrace of mathematics is still highly susceptible to the Heideggerian critique of metaphysics.

For Heidegger, it is not substance ontology istelf that is the problem. Rather, the distortion in substance ontology derives from the emphasis placed on presence (ousia) and this in turn derives from the rise to dominance of a certain attitude of logos, in effect the ’scientific’ attitude, whereby logos becomes the archetypal ‘…logy’ of Being. Originarily, Heidegger argues (in ITM), logos and phusis are entwined intimately as an unconcealment of Being. Language and the physical are both ways in which we come across Being and are, as it were, co-dependent, neither having any priority. With the end of the originary moment of thought it is logos that rises to the surface and through the concept of ‘idea’ begins to establish itself as the court of determination, claiming the capacity to know Being and determine what has and what hasn’t got a claim to Being.

If, then, the argument is that mathematics is the route of access to Being, in effect this claim would need to respond to Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics since it appears initially that it falls inside that which Heidegger critiqued (whether it be Badiou or de Beistegui’s Deleuze). A ’scientific’ or mathematical Deleuze (or Badiou) will still be susceptible to a straight-forward Heideggerian rebuttal. In fact, any philosophy still claiming to be doing onto-logy would be susceptible to this Heideggerian critique on the basis of the fact that this critque aims precisely at the …logy aspect of the argument, its sense of possessing ‘right knowledge’ or being a ’science of Being’.

Anyway, just a thought…

(If you want to comment, please do so over at the Volcanic Lines discussion blog where this was posted)

I’ve been off ill for a couple of weeks, bad enough to have to cancel last weeks set of lectures (apologies to students but unavoidable I’m afraid), though during that time there was of course the usual ongoing work which I’m now catching up on. Amongst the things that need doing is passing on news of the new Kierkegaard Philosophy Carnival which should be of interest for my ‘existentialism and phenomenology’ (EP) students. I have a post in the carnival, one where I discuss ‘the work of faith’ - something I focussed on in one of my lectures and which I find quite a fascinating theme within Kierkegaards’ existential.

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