|
|
In immediacy there is no mediation! There are no objects, no things. The ordinary reference: "Subject thinks Object", doesn't apply. There is no duration, no forwards or backwards. Immediacy is silent in the face of all timed-entities, but not passively so since one might even imagine it to be a potential which infinitely harbours the creation and destruction of all reality! In the zone of immediacy, where there is no time, negation is total and absolute. There is an indefinable "there", an "impossible" locative, which is both more and less than nothing, more and less than things. Since there is no duration, no forwards or back, none of the normal suppositions can be presumed which ordinary conciousness ordinarily makes when it sensibly orders "things" in the world. This zone of immediacy is an ontological construction which cannot be simply stuffed with ontic contents. Immediacy is presence. It is the vanishing "now". The present presents itself (again and again) in its own way of opening that cannot ever separate from its own anihilation. As non-durable it acquires infinite durability and accordingly contrasts itself with all and every timed entity. The upshot of all of this is that to try and "object-think" this infinite present, maybe irresistable to imagination and curiousity, is to go precisely in the opposite way of its authentic ontological structure. This is the principle towards which Heidegger attempts the most rigorous adherence throughout his "Being and Time". In fact it is tempting to suggest (though it would not be at all rigorous) that the distance traversed between Kant and Heidegger (via Hegel) may be compared with the distance between Newton and Einstein: in the conjecture, for example, that Heidegger moved beyond ordinary time (philosophically) whilst Einstein moved beyond the ordinary time of Newtonian mechanics. (Bataille in his "Theory of Religion" (Zone, 1992) makes the ontological concept of immediacy into a dramatic play of "intimacy", which for him marks the site of a disturbing and sovereign violence. The "intimacy" of matter itself in the domain of sub-atomic physics, we know, is equally disturbing) If this “violence” to which we have alluded (in our "Philosophy and Non-violence") is bound-up with mortification more generally, and is therewith an inextricable mode of the “earthling”, then truth as non-violence is already posited ethically. It would exemplify how an ethical law, as remarked, just is . It has the quality of “always-thereness”, to express it somewhat clumsily. Yet this emphasises again that we are not dealing here with some sort of choice or option, because the ethical could not possibly present itself in this manner if volition were all it amounted to. But what if this (or any) presumption of universality (often made in a very matter-of-fact way) were misleading? Why have the philosophers discussed the ethical in that particular way, namely, in a discourse which demands universality? Or, to put it another way, what would be the point of making ontological points and statements about time and being? (We all know – don’t we? – that time is also “mysterious”.) The position taken here is that it might be important-in-itself to get clarity and bearing upon what it means, precisely and specifically, to say that something just is– not least because ethical laws present themselves in just such a way. Time and being are instantly involved in the selfsame breath as saying that something is there, whilst veiled and receding notions of universality just as instantly spring to life and fade. In another way of speaking, we are “in it” whether we like it or not. More Immediacy There is a further question here too. If Physics discloses a priori projections of the world of matter, how much more might Metaphysics achieve in making non-matter its theme? How then is one supposed to think the big Time, the one which times all timed entities? Kant names a transcendental apperception here, Hegel names infinite negation/infinite self-relation here, Heidegger names the ecstatico-horizonal here, and in this same modality the French philosophers (Bataille, Bachelard, Bergson, Levinas, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard) have named desire, intimacy, poetics, rhythm, metaphor.... In short, there is no shortage of discursive ingenuity in this "space" where there is no time and therefore no objects. Immediacy, as an ontological "now", as present, is also a collapse of two further formalities: past and future. In other words a past/present/future is already set-up, which is to say: a differentiation where there is none! Immediacy has to conceive a radical past and future where there is no extension or duration. The concept would otherwise be meaningless, and so it is when object-man, who seeks only things with purposes in mind, projects his insensibility upon it. Immediacy is present and imperceptible. It invites the futile chase within metaphysical circles that literally have no "point". Those who ask, "What is the point?" have not understood that a circle goes around and around and does not have a point. And this uselessness is a subversion of the ordinary. The rule of law, so far as it is an order of things and persons-as-things, cannot have any claim or remit within this modality. In fact it is difficult to imply any kind of order here. Certainly then immediacy will be literally use-less in that it has no objects, but this wouldn't prevent it from having its own purposes. Such would be the meaning of an immanent teleology. Immediacy's purpose might even be precisely to radiate an "always", an "eternal", a "now and forever". Whatever the case, the calculative instinct of the utilitarian, who wants objects and purposes, disqualifies entry into the philosophical field here. The philosophers have designated in this space of immediacy: transcendent apperceptions, fecund negativity, ecstatic horizons. These are fastidiously refined and articulated didactic signifiers.
[ ] [ ] [ Contact Us ] [ Home ] |