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

Two: Hermeneutics and Beyond: Partage and Abandonment

69 TWO Hermeneutics and Beyond Partage and Abandonment “From now on, the ontology that summons us will be an ontology in which abandonment remains the sole predicament of being.” “This text does not disguise its ambition of redoing the whole of ‘first philosophy’ by giving the ‘singular plural’ of Being as its foundation.” —Jean-Luc Nancy Go beyond finitude toward infinity and absolute.1 The speculative school follows this imperative, and it inspires the speculative critique of the hermeneutic-phenomenological paradigm of philosophy and its passion for finitude. Yet, is this critique justified? If so, which of the different aspects I explored in Alain Badiou’s version of this critique in the previous chapter apply to which parts of the hermeneuticphenomenological school? In the previous chapter we saw that a number of issues Badiou raises relate first and foremost to what I call “classical hermeneutics,” of which Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur are the main representatives. The reader familiar with the critique of classical hermeneutics by, for instance, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, knows that some of the elements of Badiou’s critique coincide with theirs. Hence, they provide a similar critique of classical hermeneutics within the hermeneutic-phenomenological school. To determine the scope of the speculative critique of hermeneutics, 70 Ontology after Ontotheology it is important to see which elements of this critique can be found within the hermeneutic-phenomenological school itself. This chapter is devoted to the work of Nancy because he rethinks hermeneutics in light of an alternative ontology of plurality. In the introduction to part 1, I noted that the speculative shift from finitude to the absolute also implies a shift from discourse to being. In the previous chapter, I unfolded this shift by reconstructing Badiou’s critique of Ricoeur’s “conflict of interpretations”: although classical hermeneutics accounts for plurality on the level of discourse and interpretations , its ontology is ultimately regulated by a Kantian idea of unity. Indeed, as Ricoeur writes in the opening essay of Le conflit des interprétations, his hermeneutic ontology strives for a unitary figure of being. In this respect, he might be called an Aristotelian: although being is said in many ways, it points to one (pros hen) core meaning. In light of this concern with classical hermeneutics, Nancy’s work offers an intriguing alternative since he argues that plurality is not a feature of discourse or interpretation alone but belongs to being as such. Referring to the same passage of Aristotle, he writes, “But this plurality is no longer said in multiple ways that all begin from a presumed , single core of meaning. The multiplicity of the said (that is, of sayings) belongs to being as its constitution.”2 Nancy’s agreement with the members of the speculative school that plurality should not be thought on the level of discourse alone, does not yet imply that he follows them in their turn toward the absolute and the infinite. So where are we with respect to this question? Does the hermeneutic passion for finitude indeed imply that hermeneutic thought offers no access to any absolute, or might it be possible that this thought, when turning away from its classical origin, offers another configuration of the relation between finitude and absolute? Authors such as Martin Heidegger and Nancy are very well aware of the problems surrounding the concept of finitude. They know that finitude is usually thought of as a privatio, or a lack. As soon as one thinks of finitude in these terms, as G. W. F. Hegel criticized Immanuel Kant, the affirmation of finitude as well as endlessness —that is, false infinity — implies, often beyond the author’s express intention, the affirmation of the superiority of the true infinity Hermeneutics and Beyond 71 (in mathematical terms, ω0 ).3 According to Nancy, metaphysics always interprets being-finite as a privation in order to affirm the existence of a highest, supreme being. Hence, for Nancy, the conception of finitude as privation leads us immediately to the ontotheological constitution of metaphysics. To avoid this problem while according primacy to finitude, finitude itself should not be understood as privation but as the absolute of being itself, as Nancy suggests. This is why he calls his account of finitude an “infinite finitude.”4 As he notes, the real task Heidegger’s thought on finitude confronts us with is to think finitude as the absolute of being.5 Moreover, this finitude...