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

Six: What Can No More Be Than Not Be

225 SIX What Can No More Be Than Not Be “To be capable, in pure potentiality, to bear the ‘no more than’ beyond Being and Nothing, fully experiencing the impotent possibility that exceeds both—this is the trial that Bartleby announces.” —Giorgio Agamben, Potentialities In light of the previous two chapters and their conclusions about the different concepts of the event in contemporary thought, it seems natural to turn to the work of Giorgio Agamben—and not so much to his work on the event itself but, rather, to his work on potentiality and contingency. These concepts in Agamben’s work form an important hinge between Heidegger’s event and Meillassoux’s contingency. REMAINDER OF PLURALITY, REMAINDER OF THE EVENT In chapter 3, I argued that Agamben criticizes the role of the presupposition and its empty form in contemporary thought. He does so in light of the Platonic anupotheton, what is without presupposition and hypothesis. For him, Plato invites us to think the absolute, but this need not be an absolute being; rather, as Agamben suggests, philosophy thinks the absolute by way of absolving thought from all presuppositions. This “‘absolution’ of all presuppositions” is the true task of philosophy according to Agamben.1 226 Ontology after Ontotheology Looking back on our discussion of the methodological difference between hermeneutic-phenomenological and speculative thought, Agamben’s work offers a unique position in this debate. He shares with Meillassoux the conviction that, despite the contemporary rejection of dogmatic metaphysics, it remains the task of philosophy to think the absolute, that is, to think beyond all presuppositions. Yet, Agamben’s work offers a much more subtle and nuanced account of Heidegger’s heritage than Meillassoux’s too rough account of this heritage. Thanks to Agamben’s approach, the ambiguities of Heidegger’s heritage with respect to the theme of absolution become clearly visible, as I will show later in this chapter.2 In addition, this approach promises a solution to some of the issues that haunted Meillassoux’s appraisal of contingency, without losing the latter’s focus on the absolute. This focus on the absolute (and, as far as I am concerned, not the sometimes curious flirtation with mathematics in the form of set theory and probability theory) constitutes the indispensable contribution of speculative thought to contemporary ontology. In chapter 3, I already analyzed what the effort to absolve from all presuppositions means for the concepts of plurality developed in contemporary thought, such as Jean-Luc Nancy’s conception of plurality and Alain Badiou’s conception of multiplicity. Such an exposure discloses what remains unthought in a thought that departs from a particular presupposition or hypothesis. Therefore, this exposure discloses what is other than the presupposed (since it suspends the presupposition ). This implies that this suspension is itself a pluralizing—it opens something other than what is already taken into account by the hypothesis. Moreover, this pluralizing cannot be subsumed under a concept of plurality that depends on the given hypothesis. Hence, this suspension gives rise to an other pluralizing. Combining this with the results of the previous two chapters, in which I argued that the realm disclosed by the suspension of the principle of presupposition is the realm of the event, one might suggest that this other pluralizing is what contemporary philosophy terms “event.” To a certain extent, this latter suggestion is affirmed by Badiou’s work since it offers a dualistic version of this order between multiplicity What Can No More Be Than Not Be 227 and event: the event reorganizes (the consistent multiplicities in) the situation. Nancy, however, would be less willing to allow for such an order between plurality and event since plurality as partage concerns the very taking place of this sharing. In this sense, the plurality of being as “being singular plural” is nothing but the event of this taking place. Therefore, he would not recognize an event outside of the concept of plurality or pluralizing that he develops. Our analysis of Nancy’s conception of dialogue in chapter 2 forms the main reference for this: for him, the movement of dialogue is the event of pluralizing itself. Nevertheless, as Agamben points out, this conception of both event and plurality is attached to a certain understanding of abandonment : the pluralizing of being—including our own being and thinking —is abandoned to this movement of sharing. We will need to take a new look at this analysis...