Heidegger and the object

Levinas refutes the Heideggerian notion that the existents in our lives, whether they be bread, hammers, pens, etc. are simply tools, or “means of life.”

Levinas claims that, though we might need such tools, they are actually enjoyed.

This is the beginning of the concept he calls “living from…” Levinas claims, in opposition to the Heideggerian school of thought, that “existence is not exhausted by utilitarian schematism that delineates (existents) as having the existence of hammers, needles, or machines. They are always in a certain measure– and even the hammers, needles, and machines are objects of enjoyment…” says Levinas.

But according to Clark, this is simply wrong. Heidegger doesn’t think in the least that utility exhausts existence. Rather looking at how objects are encountered in one kind of relationship allows an existential analysis. There are other sorts of analysis – some hinted at – beyond what the focus is in Being and Time. And indeed the latter Heidegger often delves into those. (IMO) Now it is true that Heidegger argues that one way (perhaps the most important way) we encounter entities is through a break down of utility. The ready-at-hand allowing the present-at-hand to be presented to us.

However to suggest the only way to be with other occurrent entities is via utility is just plain wrong.

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Jean-Philippe Pastor

Event from the side of the object

I think one difference from Heidegger in Derrida is that Derrida thinks the Event more from the side of the “object” than the side of Dasein the way Heidegger does.

Phenomena is not seen as a kind of correlation (as in Husserl) of an inside and outside (or even a place where they overlap). Rather “objects” (put in quotes to distinguish it from the Cartesian tradition’s sense) are in the phenomena itself. While in Being and Time on up to his discussion of Ereignis Heidegger focuses in on the clearing where we encounter beings – a kind of “hole” of “nothingness” that characterizes Dasein – Derrida focuses in on the Event within the “objects” themselves. This is a kind of escape from the phenomenal given to Dasein which is simultaneously productive.

One way to characterize this is that Derrida and Heidegger primarily differ in a difference of focus such that Heidegger is concerned with Being as Truth wherein things reveal themselves while Derrida is concerned with the ground of the objects in themselves without leaving the phenomenological tradition. (The way I think say Badiou does and I suspect the Object Oriented Philosophy folks like Harmon does).

Harmon mentions Derrida and postmodernism and suggests that what characterizes postmodernism is its anti-realist stances. Yet I’d note Derrida himself never adopts the label – even if some like Rorty try to marshal him to the cause. I’d also say that while Derrida focuses in on texts and how they undermine themselves pointing at something more, it is by the very notion of an external “reality” that imposes itself against our will to our anti-realism. As Derrida often puts it, things are complicated.

http://www.libertypages.com/cgw/2010/01/18/brief-thoughts-on-derrida/

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Jean-Philippe Pastor

Process of self-production

The dialectic is the process of self-production of subjectivity, of the absolute subject, and as such is its "necessary action".

According to the structure of subjectivity, the production process has three layers. First of all as consciousness, subjectivity is drawn immediately to its object. This immediate, therefore indeterminate, representation, Hegel names 'being', the universal, the abstract.

But the relation of the object to the subject is thereby overlooked. Only through this relating back of objects to the subject, will the object as object for the subject, and the subject for itself, that is, as relation to the object, be represented Nevertheless, as long as we only distinguish between object and subject, refection and being, and remain tied to these distinctions , the movement from object to subject has not yet produced subjectivity as this totality for itself. The object, being, is doubtless already with the subject as mediated by reflection, but this mediation itself is not yet itself the presentation of this innermost movement of the subject for itself. Only when the thesis of object and the antithesis of subject becomes discernible in its necessary synthesis , is the movement of the subjectivity of the object-subject-relation established in its trajectory.

This trajectory is departure from the thesis, progression through antithesis, transition as synthesis, and, as this totality , the return of this posited establishment to itself. This trajectory gather the totality of subjectivity in its developed unity. So assembled it grows, 'con-crescit', becomes concrete. Accordingly, dialectic is speculative. 'Speculari' means to discern, to set before, conceive, com-prehend [be-greifen]. Hegel states in the introduction of the 'Science of Logic' (ed. Lasson, Bd. I, S. 38) : Speculation consists "in conceiving the opposed in its unity".

Hegel's characterization of speculation becomes clearer when we take note that with speculation the synthesis results not only from conceptual unity, but , in the first place and always, from the conception of 'the opposed', as such. To this belongs the conception of opposites as appearing against and within one another, which as the reign of antithesis is in this manner presented in the "Logic of Essence" ( that is , the logic of reflection). From this self reflecting appearance, this mirroring, the 'speculari' ('speculum': the mirror) receives its sufficient determination.

So considered, speculation is the positive totality of what dialectic must signify here: not transcendental delimitation critically or polemically thought, but the mirroring and reuniting of opposites as the spirit's process of self production.

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Alternative representations

Access to a film on a PC or a video screen is not the same thing as viewing it in the cinema anymore than a print of a painting is the same thing as the painting itself, but in all these cases these alternative representations serve at worst as acceptable memory objects within scholarly argument. They are, in short, very much different than original.s

At first glance this may not seem to be all that important until we remind ourselves that these new textual objects, call it what you will, are not really the same than originals .

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Remarkable objects

Hephaestus made a scepter for Zeus, which the god gave to Hermes, Hermes to Pelops 1, Pelops 1 to Atreus, Atreus to Thyestes 1, and Thyestes 1 to Agamemnon [these are the Pelopides].

This scepter is the only work considered to be authentic by Hephaestus. But others have shown bowls, and chests, falsified necklaces, and even temples, saying that Hephaestus had done them.
But Hephaestus gave a golden breastplate to Heracles 1, and he also made Achilles' new armour, when he laid aside his wrath and decided to return to the fight at Troy.

And when Achilles killed Asteropaeus, grandson of the river Axius, the river god rushed at him, but Hephaestus dried up his streams with a powerful flame.

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How knowledge is produced

The general assumptions of post-structuralism derive from critique of structuralist premises.

Specifically, post-structuralism holds that the study of underlying structures is itself culturally conditioned and therefore subject to myriad biases and misinterpretations. To understand an object (e.g. one of the many meanings of a text), it is necessary to study both the object itself, and the systems of knowledge which were coordinated to produce the object.

In this way, post-structuralism positions itself as a study of how knowledge is produced.

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Connotative and denotative relation

Two aspects of meaning that may be given approximate analyses are the connotative relation and the denotative relation.

The connotative relation is the relation between signs and their interpretant signs. The denotative relation is the relation between signs and objects. An arbitrary association exists between the signified and the signifier.

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