Broken Hegemonies

CHAPTER 4: Henology Turned against Itself?

CHAPTER 4 Henology Turned against Itself? “‘It isʼ: along this path, signs abound.” —Parmenides (8.2) The “it is” joins contraries in a struggle; hence the precariousness of the world for Parmenides. To an ear divinely instructed, the undertow toward the absent makes itself heard with as much sonority as the tumult of the present. There is a double dictate whose pulls are opposed without a common genus and that ceaselessly vary their configurations. Taken up, heard, obeyed in isolation, neither of these two dictates— neither the unconcealed dictate of the unconcealed obsessive present that constrains us nor the concealed dictate of what is absent by exclusion, constraining us—tells us what is necessary. The apodicticity in the chiastic dictate of a double bind, this is the law of the one according to Parmenides. The conjunction of contraries without a genus is highlighted by every verb and every verbal form for speaking about being (esti, éon, pelein, pareinai-apeinai, as well as by legein). This conflictual union is produced wherever something manifests itself, wherever there is a phenomenon. It is phenomenality producing itself, and in this sense, an event. Yet do not the signs that mark out the path of inquiry deny, resoundingly, that being is to be understood as the event of a double bind? Without retracing here all the details of their abundance,86 it is easy to see that by way of these signs being bears witness to itself (sèmata: testimonies, attestations) with a new duplicity. This double path of speaking has nothing to do with contradictories, or with contraries, or with their union apart from any genus. It has nothing to do with the one polemically turned against itself. However, it has everything to do with subsequent history. The question is whether these signs turn henology against itself. Their equivocation is perhaps perceptible only to us, who have lately come on the scene. Yet it is indeed striking, and this in more than one way. It is flagrant, but also has long-term repercussions. In any case, it has affected all thinking about being since Parmenides. “Since this is, it was not engendered and is indestructible. It is one frame, unshakable , needing no end. This neither was nor will be, for it now is. Everything in it is the same size, and insofar as it is one it holds everything together” (8.3–6). “This,” namely, the givenness “it is,” bears witness to what it is. By itself it itself bears witness to its attributes—but is it a question of attributes? Such is the instruction given by Alétheia. Here the “it is” unconceals itself. Signs abound along the path of unconcealment. One may immediately wish to object: Does not the accumulation of Its Institution (Parmenides) 111 predicates militate against this unconcealment that they are supposed to articulate? This objection would hardly matter if it challenged the predicates of the one and only plurality. What gives rise to a problem is these predicates as predicates. The list of such signs seems to cast us adrift. We thought we understood what Parmenides meant by being, the singulare tantum that is the entry of contraries into a constellation of presence and absence. This is an event that demands concerted thinking, for what is best-known to us because it takes place around us at every moment —the phenomenalization that brings near what is present and sets afar what is absent—is also, for this very reason, what is most difficult to grasp in all this. Do not these signs fit better with a being? Indeed, what can we call unengendered, indestructible , of one piece, a whole block, etc., if not some “thing?” How can we state such predicates without emphasizing qualities, directly or indirectly attributable to a thing in this sense? Does not a quality require the support of that which it will be the property? Is not to hold forth in predicative propositions while at the same time denying that there is any referent subject to speak vacuously? Is it not to hang on to the present alone, and thus to turn thinking into a kind of representation? Worse, or even more simply, since no argument can make the “it is” play the role of a bearer of attributes, is it not simply to give oneself over to nonsense? Or into an aporia. If the signs that mark out the way of the “it is” amount to so many attributes, then this...