i) Introduction The AHO principle has been one of the central tenets in the conti-nental tradition; not shared by all, but shared by some central think-ers. Of course, the alleged deeply ontological status of mankind’s historical adventures has been variously interpreted by various key thinkers. On one reading, faithful to Hegel, these matters constitute what is, in the literal, objective sense the World Spirit (Geist); we can speak of idealist AHO. It is the dominant form of the thinking in terms of AHO in the early 19th century. The academic philosoph-ical establishment in the second part of the 19th century turns away from it, with the stress on Neo-Kantian project on the one hand, and on Brentano and schools deriving from him on the other.
Still, within Kantian tradition one can speak of a constructivist minimalist AHO: our capacities, individual or intersubjective-social construct our, human reality, which is then proclaimed to be the only one worthy of philosophical study. This line of thought will play a crucial role at the intersection of philosophy with social sci-ences and humanities, producing in more recent time the idea of
29 John McDowell, “The Apperceptive I And The Empirical Self Towards A Heterodox Reading Of ‘Lordship And Bondage’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” in Hegel: New Directions, ed. Katerina Deligiorgi (Acumen: 2006), 43.
the “social construction of reality”, crucial for the whole post-mod-ernist thinking.
A philosophically deeper and more interesting continental devel-opment had come from phenomenology. Initially, phenomenology was realistic and not congenial to the AHO family of views. With the turn to reduction and epoché a new door is cracked open. The classi-cal mature phenomenologiclassi-cal works of Husserl (and his immediate followers), from Ideas to Cartesian meditations, leave no place for AHO, since the issue of the fundamental reality of the outside world is not addressed at all; what counts is the (inter-)subjective space of our experience. However, this approach leaves open an enticing possibility: consider this space of experience as the only humanly relevant kind of world, and treat it as fundamental or equi-funda-mental with human subject. This was the road to the Lebenswelt. If this life-world is a world, and if it is co-constituted with the subject the AHO is back in play, indeed a phenomenological minimalist AHO. The line is close to Heidegger’s moderate AHO views from Being and time, and there is no wonder that a dialogue took place in the next generation between the proponents of minimal phenom-enological AHO and of realistic full AHO. Philosophers like Mer-leau-Ponty move towards realism about the life-world, and such a life-world is indeed the world of human capacities, interests and projects. In contrast to the Heideggerian project that places Being in the center of interest, the phenomenological minimalist AHO, as exemplified, for instance, in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of perception, points to no item beyond human being(s) and human life-world. (In later work Merleau-Ponty tried to integrate elements from Heidegger into his work).
We thus have three varieties of AHO so far:
1. the Hegelian, idealist one.
Next, non-idealist options:
2. constructionist, with social construction as the central process bringing mind and reality together.
3. phenomenological minimalist option.
We stay with non-idealist options and pass to the one that has played the crucial role in 20th century continental philosophy, namely the one due to Heidegger.
ii) The realist- positive AHO - Heidegger On the realist reading, famously proposed by Heidegger, human history just is the history of Being (Seinsgeschichte), and at the very least it reveals Being in a particularly intimate, non-objectivist way. Heidegger speaks about the happening of truth as essential for the history of Being: truth sets itself into a work of art, or it occurs through “the act that founds a political state”, then in the act of sac-rifice, and finally in the thinker’s questioning.30 So the painting of a picture, say of Mona Lisa, or founding of a state, belong to essential events in the history of Being and truth. Here is the claim about dependence of the anthropological (Dasein) and the fundamental ontological (Sein):
Of course only as long as Dasein is (that is, only as long as an under-standing of being is ontically possible), “is there” being. When Dasein does not exist, “independence” “is” not either, nor “is” the
“in-itself.” In such a case this sort of thing can be neither under-stood nor not underunder-stood. In such a case even entities within-the-world can neither be discovered nor lie hidden. In such a case it cannot be said that entities are, nor can it be said that they are not.
But now, as long as there is an understanding of being and therefore an understanding of presence-at-hand, it can indeed be said that in this case entities will still continue to be.31
Another example from Heidegger: Being gives itself to us; the trace of it is recorded in German idiom “Es gibt”, meaning word-by-word
“It gives”, for “There is”. The giving is essential to the history of Being itself. What is given is a further question; we shall later encoun-ter a reading that stresses time as the element given by Being. “The forgetfulness of Being belongs to the essence of Being which by its nature veils itself.”32 And “Being itself withdraws itself in its truth.
30 Martin Heidegger, “The origin of the work of art,” in Twentieth century theories of art, ed. J.M. Thompson (Carleton University Press: 1999), 401.
31 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1967), 212. My translation.
32 In German: “Die Vergessenheit des Seins gehört in das durch sie selbst verhüllte Wesen des Seins.” Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), 336. Cf. also Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (Bern:
Francke, 1953), 111–114. My translation with help of various English ones.
It conceals itself in its truth and hides itself in its concealing.”
The same holds then for human forgetting of the authentic Being:
“Hence the forgetfulness of Being is not due to a mistake, or simple negligence on the part of metaphysics or metaphysicians, but con-stitutes an event (Ereignis) […].”34
With the acceptance of this principle history is seen as permeat-ing ontology; in some version the former replaces the later. There is no wonder that continental tradition is very interested in the issues of meaning of life, since meaning of human life is, by AHO, directly ontological. It is important to note how dramatic the move of accept-ing the AHO principle and takaccept-ing it as fundamental in one’s phi-losophy. The move is unthinkable for early modern philosophers;
but even the Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment authors, from Condorcet and Voltaire to Rousseau and Burke, who were obsessed by history, both political and cultural, didn’t dream of it. Equally importantly, once the move is made, these earlier authors can be integrated into the new picture. The most naïve version would be to integrate the story of linear progress, the Whig history, into the deep ontology of Spirit and world; nobody to my knowledge did this. A more exciting move has been to harness Rousseau-style ideas about history as alienation from the original, natural state, and his dreams about the quasi-return to it, the rebuilding of the natural within the culture, properly at its very end and fulfilment.35
Let me now turn to the anthropological phenomenon that has been crucial in the later history of AHO, from late Heidegger to post-structuralism, the phenomenon of language. For Heideg-ger language is “the house of Being”, the medium through which Being speaks to us, in philosophy, and above all in poetry. Linguistic understanding (Verstehen) is different from scientific (even logic based) thinking (as suggested by Schleiermacher and Dilthey).
The paradigm of Verstehen is understanding of works of art. We grasp Sein by Verstehen, indeed by its highest mode, Seinsverste-hen, claims Heidegger. The consequences for philosophical
meth-33 “Das Sein selbst entzieht sich in seine Wahrheit. Es birgt sich in diese und verbirgt sich selbst in solchem Bergen.” Heidegger, Holzwege, 244.
34 Thomas A. Fay, Heidegger: The Critique of Logic (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 19.
35 Mulhall, Philosophical Myths...
odology are significant. First, anthropomorphism in metaphysics:
you understand Being as you understand me. Second, the non-ar-gumentative style of understanding to be enhanced with the para-digm from art. Finally, the central place of history of philosophy:
understanding history of philosophy you understand being through its (his?) history. An interesting and original counterpart to Hegel, indeed! So here is then the last version of non-idealist AHO to be briefly discussed.
iii) The post-structuralist negative AHO - Derrida The origin of Derrida’s version of AHO is interesting. His early work concerns Husserl, including the stage in which the life-world joins the human subject in the phenomenological minimalist version of AHO. Heidegger’s thought is always in the background. However, the specifically French context is the one of structuralism, first lin-guistic, and then structuralism in human sciences. Linguistic struc-ture is already a model for thinking about reality for the older gen-eration thinkers like Levi-Strauss and Althusser, and almost-peers like Foucault. Language is a system of differences, these being more important than any positive qualities a linguistic item might have.
The focus is upon the signifier and the meaning-sense; the referent is put into brackets.
Derrida builds his negative ontology first by focusing on writing in contrast to spoken language. Written text has a plurality of mean-ings that cannot be controlled by the presence of the writer; Derrida will suggest that the plurality is virtually inexhaustible. The system of signifiers responsible for these meanings is nothing ontologically positive, but the pure network of differences. And this is the model in accordance to which we should think of reality, both of the life-world, and of what is going to be the negative, un-expressible coun-terpart of Being: the reading/writing addresses the question of being, claims Derrida (Margins, chapter Three, “Ousia and Gramme”), and it does it “en creux”, in the absence and in the negative way. Read-ing/writing is specific, it is of course language-based, but it is the deepest linguistic phenomenon there is. Writing (écriture) covers all that is philosophically important – call it issues of being or what-ever. The ultimate difference, un-namable in our language, the ulti-mate “trace” and the “writing without presence and absence” play,
in a negative way, the role that Being plays in Heidegger. And, like in Heidegger, the poetic reading/writing is paradigmatic.
In his later work, Derrida multiplies models from human reality for the understanding of the (negative) fundamental reality. Let me mention such a more recent source, originally, from 1991, his meditation on gift from his Given Time I: the Counterfeit Money.36 In the chapter on Heidegger he draws direct analogies between clearly human matters of gift, present and exchange and matters of the activities of the Being itself, using as the connecting thread the resources of language, including ambiguities, play with literal versus idiomatic meanings, all this on the spur of Heidegger and his idea of Being giving something (perhaps even itself) to us humans, that we mentioned at the beginning. Here is the first step to an interesting paradox of the gift:
For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergiftt, or debt. If the other gives me back or owes me or has to give me back: what I give him or her there will not have been a gift, whether this restitution is immediate or whether it is programmed by a complex calculation of a long-term deferral or difference. This is all too obvious if the other, the one, gives me back immediately the same thing.37
The underlying argument probably has something like the follow-ing form (Derrida would not be happy with the division into prem-ises and conclusions):
Assume that A is giving G to B at some time t. Condition of pos-sibility CP, for this is
CP1: If G is to be a gift, then there must not be reciprocity, exchange, countergift at any future time.
When we take context into account a stronger demand appears:
CP2: If G is to be a gift, there must not be expectations of reciprocity, exchange, countergift at any future time.
i.e.
If A expects countergift from B, then G is not a gift.
36 Jacques Derrida, Given Time I: the Counterfeit Money (University of Chicago Press: 1992).
37 Derrida, Given…, 12.
If the one gives the gift back, it is annulled. p. 12
(E) It is impossible not to expect a countergift. Therefore (C1) It is impossible that G is a gift.
Here is the conclusion:
For this is the impossible that seems to give itself to be thought here:
These conditions of possibility of the gift (that some “one” gives some
“thing” to some “one other”) designate simultaneously the conditions of the impossibility of the gift. And already we could translate this into other terms: these conditions of possibility define or produce the annulment, the annihilation, the destruction of the gift…38
Derrida then extends the paradox to a wider area, appealing to the famous and classical anthropological study by Marcel Mauss on the gift.... Many crucially important social practices rest on (social demands of) gifts. Therefore, many crucially important social prac-tices are almost impossible (and philosophically deeply problem-atic). We now pass to AHO: some central philosophical topics and doctrines are articulated in terms of gift and giving.39 Therefore, Derrida thinks, these topics are deeply problematic.40
38 Ibid.
39 Here are a few meta-philosophical remarks, to be found in the same book:
Theory, i.e. the distanced, non-mad reflection about gift is powerless. Thinking about the gift means entering the “destructive circle” of the transcendental illusion. It involves giving “gages”, not just tokens of faith, but guarantees, acts of taking “personal risks”. Derrida, Given…, 30ff.
40 An analytically inclined reader would be tempted to offer the following defense of the notion of the gift: first, countergift has a strong and a weak reading, strongly, as blocking any reciprocity (e.g. B being better disposed to A after receiving G), and weakly as blocking the immediate counter-gift. -The use of the term “gift” with relatively literal meaning entails that there is no immediate and clear expectations on A’s side of a well delimited countergift (but in this case B being better disposed to A after receiving G does not count as countergift).
(Although a sorites is in waiting here: If there is a return in t+10 seconds, G is not a gift. If there is an expectation of a return in t+10 seconds, G is not a gift. But it can be handeled in the usual ways.) So, Derrida’s conclusion rest on too strong a reading, as if the notion of gift as blocking any reciprocity, and this is clearly a misinterpretations of ordinary judgments. The everyday use of the term “gift” is vague, and has to be artificially sharpened when we do philosophy (or economics, or psychology). The sharpened versions do not produce contradiction. Also, the everyday use of the term “gift” has persisted for millennia, without big
Derrida then uses the established paradoxical nature of the gift in order to claim that forgetting is the condition of there being gift(s);
it would block expectation of reciprocity. To reiterate, he claims that there is a paradox in the very idea of giving and gift, that makes gift, in a sense impossible. He has given examples of ordinary human giving in our culture, then of “gift as a form of exchange”, de-con-structing the ideas of Marcel Mauss about primitive societies, but then he turns to Heidegger and give to the paradox a straightfor-wardly ontological reading.
This reading turns around the German expression “Es gibt”
(normally translated as “there is”), to which Heidegger has given a deep ontological meaning. As we mentioned “Es” means “It”, and
“gibt” means “give”, so the Google translation of “Es gibt” would be
“It gives”. Heidegger sees in the expression the trace of a deep truth:
It, i.e. the Being gives, and above all it gives itself. But there is more.
“There is time” is in German “Es gibt Zeit”, literally, “It gives time”.
Heidegger will read it in his fundamental ontological fashion as claiming that Being gives (to us and to the world) the time.
Derrida will now apply the paradox of giving to these funda-mental ontological claims. He will suggest that the nature of time is paradoxical, since time is something that is “given” and giving is paradoxical. Equally, we shall learn that forgetting Being belongs to its very “nature”, since Being gives itself, and giving is possible only if it is immediately forgotten, otherwise it degenerates into reciproc-ity, exchange and economic reason. The paradox or alleged paradox tied to the narrowly human practice of giving present is projected into the structure of the Being itself. (Another application will be to show the implausibility of the myth of the given.) This is how the strong AHO encourages somewhat strange analogizing between anthropology and fundamental ontology. So much about Derrida.
There are other examples of AHO in recent continental philos-ophy. Some Western Marxists have also been very much in favor of AHO, building it into their view of alienation and revolution. We
disadvantages. So, there is no point in criticizing it for its inability to deliver deep philosophical conclusions.
have mentioned the most recent avatar of the AHO theorizing is Alan Badiou’s ontology of events: the ontologically central events are, of course, political revolutions.41
Indeed, the principle has dominated continental tradition for two centuries. It shows its teeth even when implied only implicitly.
For instance, Foucault’s early works make reference to some sort of objective, Sein-like factor of history that shapes history and forms of our discourse and episteme. When he later turns to issues of power, he claims that subject is produced and fashioned by power.
Here, suddenly, the link with his earlier interest appears: “subject” is a deep ontological category, and of course, deep ontology is histor-ical and sensitive to power-struggle, i.e. politicized. The history of being is transformed into history of power, without thereby being betrayed.
Of course, in the actual history of continental philosophy AHO occurs in combination with other trails and characteristics. Here we have to skip the long story of interaction with the preference for the a-rational; just think of Schopenhauer as an idealistic exam-ple, and Nietzsche as, very probably, a not so idealistic one. To pass to another characteristics, let me just mention that the preference for the literary and non-argumentative interacts in a very intense manner with the strong AHO. The key to interaction is the fact that
Of course, in the actual history of continental philosophy AHO occurs in combination with other trails and characteristics. Here we have to skip the long story of interaction with the preference for the a-rational; just think of Schopenhauer as an idealistic exam-ple, and Nietzsche as, very probably, a not so idealistic one. To pass to another characteristics, let me just mention that the preference for the literary and non-argumentative interacts in a very intense manner with the strong AHO. The key to interaction is the fact that