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156 Ontotheological Turnings? an ontotheological God whose permanent presence ends all privacy of the ones who pray to and praise God: Dasein has neither arche nor telos. This is not to say that there is no transcendence, but rather, following Derrida, it envisions the possibility that “there is more than one appeal,”57 because the involuntary aspect of the other-in-the-same allows for other others than the ones mentioned by Levinas and Marion. In a remarkable essay, JeanLuc Nancy indeed seems to develop the idea of the other-in-the-same in a more Heideggerian fashion.58 Nancy is pondering the heart transplant he had to undergo. The other-in-the-same, therefore, is no longer a personal other, but rather the intrusion of a stranger’s heart by means of all sorts of technological devices. Nancy points to a strange shift in the history of these transplantations’ representations: whereas at first one pointed to the symbolism of the “gift of another, and of a secret, shadowy complicity and intimacy between the other and I,” Nancy points to the limits of such an intimacy, for “very soon the other-as-stranger makes its presence felt: no longer as a woman [. . .] man [. . .] but as another immune system, that replaced nevertheless the irreplaceable other. Such a manifestation is called ‘repulsion’: my immune system repelled that of the other.”59 One should note the strange complicity between technology and the identity of the subject here, for it seems to entail that the notion of an other-in-the-same extends way beyond the interior intimo meo that Levinas and Marion advocate. In this sense, one perhaps should not applaud Levinas’ and Marion’s accounts of being held hostage by another instance too much. For the intrusion of technology at the heart of the subject’s identity and the different account of the other-in-the same that seems to emerge from Nancy’s “self-portrait” might simply point to an infrequently reflected consequence of Levinas’ and Marion’s philosophies. Indeed, is the lack of privacy before the permanent presence of God not simply mirroring the invasion of all privacy that, in our societies, is assumed by the internet, by cellular phones, by surveillance cameras? Is their respective ‘objectification of the subject’ not simply a confirmation of Heidegger’s view on technology, as the ever persistent ontotheology of our time? It is this similarity that ought to initiate a defense of the subject’s privacy, a privacy, to be sure, that is a burden but that also maintains the uniqueness and individuality of the individual precisely because its facticity cannot and may not receive a complete signification by whatever instance one wishes here to invoke. The fact of being thrown into a culture would therefore initiate a careful consideration of Heidegger’s account of facticity. Indeed, for Heidegger, thrownness reveals, as we already noted, that being-with others is always 157 Intermediary Conclusions limited to being-with a determinate circle of others.60 It is in this sense, I want to suggest that Nancy develops Heidegger’s understanding of beingwith -others. Nancy, calling the prophet Levinas back to the community, as it were, insists that one needs to understand being-with-others as the proper problem of being.61 Such a return to Heidegger’s account would also throw a new light upon Christian particularity or upon belonging to a Christian community. If there is any sense to the saying that one can be thrown into a Christian culture, then a certain understanding of ontotheology could affect the Christian self-understanding just as well. One will recall that for Heidegger it is a matter of taking up one’s Dasein in an authentic manner. ‘Eigentlichkeit,’ however, is not opposed to the inauthentic manner of being one’s Dasein in the everydayness of ‘Das Man’ (‘the They’). Rather, it is “in it, out of it, and against it [that] all genuine understanding [. . .] and appropriating anew, is performed,” without the possibility of a complete “extrication.”62 It is further of importance to note that the everyday understanding of ‘the They’ is not without philosophical presuppositions. Rather, Heidegger is concerned with retrieving those residues of metaphysical conceptions from this everyday understanding in order to bring them back to a genuine ontological understanding. But the everyday understanding precisely speaks the language of the subject-object distinction!63 In Heidegger’s words, it encounters beings, not from out of the thing itself, but out of its being...

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