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

Five: Absolute Beginning or Absolute Contingency

185 FIVE Absolute Beginning or Absolute Contingency “Advent ex nihilo this presents itself as the concept par excellence of a world without God, and for that very reason it allows us to produce an irreligious notion of the origin of pure novelty.” —Quentin Meillassoux, “Excerpts from L’inexistence divine” This chapter furthers the different trajectories developed in Hei­ degger’s and Badiou’s conception of the event, but it will do so in terms of the work of Claude Romano and Quentin Meillassoux. From a methodological point of view, Romano’s work provides us with a phenomenology of the event that remains very close to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Yet, he follows the model of birth much more than the model of advent, as his insistence on absolute beginning indicates. The work of Meillassoux, however, is concerned with pro­ viding an alternative to the principle of sufficient reason. Although he clearly follows Badiou’s speculative method, his systematic solu­ tion seems to be more close to Heidegger’s account of the event, especially when looking at it from the perspective of the advent pro­ posed in the motto to this chapter. Thus, in relation to the thought of Heidegger and Badiou, Romano and Meillassoux offer us a chiasmus of method and thematic: whereas Romano explores a hermeneutic model of an event that has always already taken place, Meillassoux is 186 Ontology after Ontotheology concerned first and foremost with a speculative version of an event that may take place as well as not take place. ABSOLUTE BEGINNING IN ROMANO’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE EVENT In his essay “L’événement ou le phénomène advenant,” after his char­ acteristic description of the event as unforeseeable and incalculable, which I cited in the introduction to part 2. Marion goes on to ask how an event can be a phenomenon. How is the event accessible for a phenomenology in the strict sense of the word, and how does it show itself? To illustrate the difficulty of this question, he refers to Heide­ gger’s analysis of the phenomenon of death in Sein und Zeit.1 For Heidegger, this phenomenon prefigures the structure of the event. Marion, however, suggests otherwise. As long as we conceive of the event as a passage, death cannot be the exemplary phenomenon of the event in phenomenology. He explains this in the following strik­ ing and convincing way: “If death passes in me (supposing, by the way, that a phenomenon were to appear in this passage), as I die with it, I can never see the event in it.... My death does not place me thus before any effectivity, any passage, but before a simple possibility.”2 Nancy’s comment that phenomenology ultimately privileges the sense of seeing (which I discussed in the previous chapter) applies perfectly to Marion’s work: only an event that somehow gives itself to be seen in a phenomenon can be an event for phenomenology. The problem with the phenomenon of death is that it does not truly hap­ pen to me. It merely passes me by and leaves me aside (passer sur moi). Therefore, it neither places me before nor after its passage; it only places me before its possibility.3 Marion’s distinction is not at odds with Heidegger, who claims that, although it is certain that my death will take place, this taking place does not give itself as taking place, but only as imminent possibility. Hence, the issue between them is whether or not death exemplifies the phenomenological structure of the event. For Marion, phenomenology requires that an event give itself as passage and as happening. Yet, Marion adds enigmatically that this does not mean that my death is not an event. In fact, he writes, “it is very likely a question of a Absolute Beginning or Absolute Contingency 187 pure event, but too pure to show itself and therefore also to give itself as a perfect event.”4 This strange distinction between a pure event and a complete or perfect (parfait) event gives rise to many ques­ tions. For now, let me interpret it in terms of the crucial difference between passage and possibility. A complete event requires that the one to whom it happens be present throughout its taking place (otherwise the event cannot give itself as event to him or her). Therefore, death cannot be a complete event. Yet, at the same time, death...