Ontology after Ontotheology: Plurality, Event, and Contingency in Contemporary Philosophy

Part 1: Conflicting Pluralities: Between Hermeneutics and Mathematics

23 PART 1 CONFLICTING PLURALITIES: BETWEEN HERMENEUTICS AND MATHEMATICS One way to overcome the ontotheological emphasis on the one is by accounting for being in terms of plurality. Contemporary continental thought displays a number of such accounts of plurality. Yet, these conceptions of plurality are conflictual. In fact, the present-day debate is marked by two different approaches to the question of plurality that nevertheless share the effort to overcome ontotheology and are, in this particular sense, both heirs to Heidegger’s legacy—despite their strong critique of Heidegger in other senses. For the sake of simplicity, I will identify these two approaches by the schools to which they belong and which I will name throughout this book the “speculative school” and the “hermeneutic-phenomenological school,” respectively. Clearly, this naming does not mean that the different representatives of these schools are always in accord with each other, as will become especially clear in part 2. Nevertheless, these names do indicate a certain self-expressed affinity of those philosophers with other members of this school. Badiou and Meillassoux (and a certain Deleuze) belong to the speculative school, whereas Nancy, Heidegger, Derrida, and others belong to the hermeneuticphenomenological school. Throughout this book, I will be highlighting only some of the representatives of these schools. Although the choices I made in this respect are open for discussion, I would like to suggest that they 24 Ontology after Ontotheology offer a privileged entrance to the systematic interest of this book as a whole, namely, to locate the importance of concepts such as plurality, event, and contingency in contemporary ontology. To this end, the work of Badiou—for plurality and event—and of Meillassoux—for contingency—are of crucial importance for the speculative school, whereas Nancy and a certain Heidegger—namely, a Heidegger reread and reinterpreted in light of the questions and concerns of contemporary ontology rather than of classical hermeneutic thought—are of crucial importance to the hermeneutic-phenomenological school. The appearance of Romano in chapter 5 might come as a surprise to some readers, but it is nevertheless fair to say that he offers one of the most intriguing hermeneutic-phenomenological accounts of the event in present-day thought. Obviously, by making these choices, I do not claim that another selection of authors—such as Deleuze, Derrida, or Slavoj Žižek—would not change the story, but I do think that my choices paint an intriguing picture that helps us to understand the contemporary debate in some significant ways. Finally, the work of Agamben plays a special role, as will become visible in chapter 3, to mediate between the hermeneutic and speculative school in significant ways and to further and deepen our ontological understanding of the problems of plurality and the absolute (chapter 3) and of potentiality and contingency (chapters 6 and 7). By bringing diverse names together in only two schools, one will confront the difficulty—if not impossibility—of defining these schools. Nevertheless, it is not impossible to highlight certain characteristics shared by different representatives of these schools. In each of the next two chapters, I will discuss the work of one representative of thespeculativeschool(Badiou)andthehermeneutic-phenomenological school (Nancy) who are both exemplary representatives of these schools when it comes to the issue of plurality; in particular, in the case of Nancy, it is important to note that his work has been characterized as a “post-deconstructive realism” by Derrida and taken up in the recent literature on Nancy.1 In Badiou’s work, the speculative dimension can be found most clearly in his equation of ontology with mathematics and of phenomenology with logic. Yet, Badiou does not constitute a school on his Part 1: Conflicting Pluralities 25 own. Around him—and at times against him—a “speculative turn” is taking place.2 The clearest example of this speculative turn is provided by the “speculative materialism” that Badiou’s student, the up-and-coming Quentin Meillassoux, develops in Après la finitude. To grasp what “speculative” means here, it is important to note that Badiou, Meillassoux, and Deleuze share a rejection of Kant’s critique of metaphysics. In particular, they reject Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena and, in line with this distinction, all forms of thought that claim that our knowledge of reality is conditioned by our subjectivity or by structures that condition this subjectivity such as history, language, or culture. Meillassoux calls these latter forms...