Abstract
The paper focuses on the character of the literary and contends that if, instead of accepting the legitimacy of the question “what is literature?” and trying to answer it, one were to subject the question itself to a critical scrutiny—i.e. in order to lay bare what the question presupposes about the literary—it becomes obvious that any attempt to answer the question by uncritically accepting the legitimacy of the puzzle it puts forward can only give rise to contradictions. For the question requires and presupposes for an answer an ontologically independent foundation, and the latter, given its immutability, requires the positing of a reality/representation disjunction—where the latter of the pair permits of and accommodates the experience of change—thereby ensuring that representation, too, requires a foundation, which, due to the impossibility of a foundation being the foundation of its other, that is, mutability, ends up undermining the very possibility of a disjunction, and, hence, the coherence of the foundationalist enterprise. Given that the problem of incoherence is bound to recur in all attempts to explain the literary in a foundationalist framework and given that the logic of foundationalism is one with the logic of nihilism—for the incoherence necessitates the denial of the possibility of literature—a release from the contradictions and a reinstatement of the reality of literature can come about only if one is awakened to the incoherence of the foundationalist undertaking. The resulting turn away from foundationalist thinking to differential thinking—where the incoherence of the demand for coherence is grasped and the reality of time reinstated—sheds light on the twining of the destinies of the literary and the philosophical: if philosophy as differential thinking awakens us to the displacement of being in the flow of time, literature sets into work the displacement of meaning in the functioning of language. This confirms that not only are the attempts to unearth a ground for the literary a mistake, but denying the reality of the literary event—i.e. upon failing to find a ground—is equally a mistake.
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Notes
Logically, there is no need to demonstrate the incoherence of the idea of instantiation once the idea of the property has been dealt with. However, given that the problems associated with the idea of instantiation need to be redeployed later in the article, it makes practical sense to demonstrate the incoherence of the idea at the beginning and refer to it afterwards.
Ontological foundationalism is the idea that reality needs to be explained in terms of an ontologically independent ground of existence. The said ground is self-established and self-sufficient, not dependent on any cause or condition, not subject to any change in its state of being, and not subject to a beginning or end in time. Differential thinking differs from foundationalist thinking in that it recognizes the incoherence of the notion of ontological independence. Also, it accommodates the reality of time.
On the temporizing of time, it is useful to consult Heidegger’s (1972) discussion of unconcealment and sending in “Time and Being.” Heidegger notes that every unconcealing is a concealing, and every sending, a withdrawal. He does concede, though, that his earlier “attempt in Being and Time, section 70, to derive human spatiality from temporality” was a mistake (Heidegger 1972, 23; see also Heidegger 1962, §70; Arisaka 1996; Blattner 1999; Malpas 2000; Vallega 2003; Krummel 2006; Sloterdijk 2012).
On the identity of absence and interdependence, it is useful to see the Indian Madhyamaka philosopher Nāgārjuna’s discussion of emptiness and dependent co-arising in (the chapter 24 of) his master work the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK). In the latter work, Nāgārjuna states that “Whatever is dependently co-arisen/That is explained to be emptiness” (MMK 24:18; Garfield [1995] translation). On Nāgārjuna’s association of the notion of ontological independence with the elimination of the possibility of change, see the following verse: “If there is essence, the whole world/Will be unarising, unceasing,/And static. The entire phenomenal world/Would be immutable” (MMK 24:38; Garfield [1995] translation). For a recent translation of the MMK from its Sanskrit source text, see Siderits and Katsura (2013). For an influential, earlier translation of the MMK from the Tibetan version of the text, see Garfield (1995).
Braver (2012a) offers a new form of realism, Transgressive Realism, which he presents as the middle way between realism and anti-realism and as addressing Quentin Meillassoux’s (2008, 2012a, b; see also Malabou 2014; Harman 2011, 2012, 2013; Gall 2013, 2014) criticism that the entire post-Kantian philosophy is a form of “correlationism,” incapable of acknowledging a world that pre-exists and is indifferent to the human openness to the world. Braver traces the genesis of Transgressive Realism to Kierkegaard and presents Heidegger and Levinas as two of its exponents. However, whether Braver’s position—which concedes the possibility of a reality that eludes the grasp of rational comprehension and categories—steers clear of the problem of correlationism is doubtful. For when the logic of the in-itself and the logic of self-presence are one, only the supplanting of the in-itself with a field of ongoing differentiation—where life and minded beings emerge as particular configurations with evolving internal differentiation within a differential continuum stretching infinitely backward with no human beings for most of its history—can address the problem of correlationism.
The absent should not be mistaken for God. The logic of God—i.e. the logic of the first cause—and the logic of a world that is self-present—i.e. a world bereft of its theistic foundation—are the same, because, though mutually antagonistic—i.e. as theism and atheism—it is the principle of self-presence that undergirds both. Further, given that differential thinking has no place for an absolute and independent foundation—which God is (see Mills 2017, viii, 32–34)—any attempt to accommodate God within differential thinking by making Him one with the futural is bound to be a sleight of hand in the service of theo-foundationalist thinking.
Since the present paper’s focus is on ontological issues, development of the consequences of differentiation for epistemology—especially for questions on the nature of truth, the relationship and difference between knowledge and understanding, the commitment of the modern university to the ideal of knowledge, and the danger the said commitment poses to the practice of differential thinking—must wait for a follow-up article.
This is precipitative of a shift in the character of logic from being identitarian to being differential, and, of truth, from being propositional to being paradoxical. Further, it means that differential thinking has no thesis—which takes the form: it is the case or it is not the case—to offer. On the no-thesis view, see also Nāgārjuna (2010, § 29 Westerhoff). On contradictions and Nāgārjuna, see Garfield and Priest (2003).
Since errancy belongs to the structure of presencing as its condition—and is not a human imposition (cf. Sheehan 2002, 327)—compassion and forbearance—and not contempt and indifference—behove the differential thinker. The connection between ontology and ethics needs to be dealt with separately in a follow-up article.
It is not proper for a differential thinker to spare others the hardship of thinking. Inasmuch as thinking is a precondition for mindfulness—i.e. for being awakened to the absencing at the heart of presencing—and mindfulness, the preserve and object of differential thinking, the thinker’s responsibility is to force others to think.
A description of the techniques that writers employ to set the strife into work—in other words, how they coax the literary to come alive as literary—is not the task of a differential thinker.
The suggestion here is not that a work cannot delight, distract, inform, or mislead—it can, and it does. However, the handiness of linguistic disclosure does not—and cannot—exhaust its work-being.
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Jayesh, A.K. Time, Philosophy, and Literature. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 36, 183–196 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-018-0163-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-018-0163-9