Apocalypse of Truth

Heideggerian Meditations

Jean Vioulac, Matthew J. Peterson, Matthew J. Peterson, Matthew John Peterson

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780226766737
• eBook ISBN: 9780226766874
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

We inhabit a time of crisis—totalitarianism, environmental collapse, and the unquestioned rule of neoliberal capitalism. Philosopher Jean Vioulac is invested in and worried by all of this, but his main concern lies with how these phenomena all represent a crisis within—and a threat to—thinking itself.         
In his first book to be translated into English, Vioulac radicalizes Heidegger's understanding of truth as disclosure through the notion of truth as apocalypse. This "apocalypse of truth" works as an unveiling that reveals both the finitude and mystery of truth, allowing a full confrontation with truth-as-absence. Engaging with Heidegger, Marx, and St. Paul, as well as contemporary figures including Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek, Vioulac's book presents a subtle, masterful exposition of his analysis before culminating in a powerful vision of "the abyss of the deity." Here, Vioulac articulates a portrait of Christianity as a religion of mourning, waiting for a god who has already passed by, a form of ever-present eschatology whose end has always already taken place. With a preface by Jean-Luc Marion, Apocalypse of Truth presents a major contemporary French thinker to English-speaking audiences for the first time.
 

CHAPTER 1

Clarifications

§1. CLAIRVOYANCE, EVIDENCE, LUCIDITY

“Living without philosophizing is exactly like having one’s eyes closed without ever trying to open them,”1 wrote Descartes to the translator of the Principles, and far from “the speculative philosophy taught in the schools,”2 he compared thinking to “the pleasure of seeing everything which our sight reveals.”3 Philosophy can then be defined by a very simple first demand, that of emerging from obscurity and confusion in order to gain clarity and distinction, to “see clearly”:4 the primordial demand is thus clairvoyance. Facing the radiance of the visible, however, there is the constant risk of fascination, and fascination is perhaps more deceptive than obscurity: it is the absorption of sight in the visible, the paradoxical blinding of vision by the very thing that it sees, when “my mental vision is blinded by the images of things perceived by the senses.”5 Fascination is thus the danger proper to knowledge, which gains clairvoyance only to then let itself be engulfed by the visible. Hence the imperative to take hold of oneself, in order not to lose oneself in the objectivity of knowledge, and that is the heart of the Cartesian meditation, to isolate vision from what it makes visible. Clear and distinct knowledge, which sees each time what is made visible to the gaze of the mind, actually proceeds entirely from a sight that founds it and makes it possible. Clairvoyance will then be guaranteed by the purity of vision, that is, by exposing the sight without which there is neither clairvoyance nor anything to see. This method consists in rejecting all “my former beliefs,” all that is of the order of pre-judice, that is, of the fore-seen. In doing so, it is a matter of getting rid of everything that blocked sight, to free it in its pure essence: by thus methodically eliminating the seen, doubt leads seeing to appearances, and evidence is this “seem[ing] to see” (videre videor).6 Descartes was then able to pose as a fundamental principle of clairvoyance that “we ought never to let ourselves be convinced except by the evidence of our reason”7 and that “if there is anything which is evident to my intellect, then it is wholly true,”8 and in doing so, he was able to base scientific clairvoyance on metaphysical evidence: if clairvoyance is the sight of the visible, evidence is the clarification of sight, where thought takes hold of itself in itself, in its proper element. The fascination for the visible is thus itself found to be naiveté, which allows itself to be absorbed by what is seen without ever stepping back toward the vision that makes it visible.

But evidence is not enough. Through evidence, I gain the sight by which only the visible is made visible to me. For there to be vision and the visible, however, there must first be light. The reduction of the seen to vision therefore cannot constitute a limit; the reduction must be continued toward the light in and by which vision and the visible can be put into relation, or toward the field of brightness in which the visible appears to sight. Since its Greek founding, philosophy has based scientific clairvoyance on metaphysical evidence, but Heidegger’s decisive contribution was to take this “step back” (Schritt zurück) even outside the realm of metaphysics, and he noted thus: “In order for something to be evident, and that means luminant, there must of course be a light that shines. The shining of this light is a decisive condition for evidence.”9 The evidence in and by which I gain the power of clairvoyance—namely, to see clearly what is—is itself conditioned by a light. The demand for phenomenological radicality then requires bringing to light this conditioning of my thought, and there is thus a naiveté—a transcendental and no longer empirical naiveté; an ontological naiveté—in being based on its evidence without questioning what conditions it. Heidegger’s itinerary consisted in radicalizing the transcendental reduction to the extreme, by receding not only from the object to the subjective conditions of possibility of its constitution, but from subjectivity itself to possibility as such, and to the horizon it unfolds and thus assigns to the subject—who most of the time takes hold of himself from this horizon. The Heideggerian meditation thus continuously deepened phenomenology, first in order to expand phenomenality from objectivity to beingness, and in so doing opening the subject to the scope of its existance, and then in order to place this existance in the domain of phenomenality into which it must always already be thrown so that phenomena appear to it. It is this domain of phenomenality in and through which beings can appear that Heidegger thought as “Being,” specifying however that “‘Being’ remains only the provisional word,”10 and then he more precisely named this primordial domain “Open,” “Clearing,” or “Free Expanse”; he thus emphasized that “originary intuition and its evidence remain dependent upon openness that already holds sway, the clearing.”11 These words state the fundamental site in which, as exi-stants, we stand (in Latin stare) exposed, and in which alone evidence can arise: because the nature of thought is to situate this place in its limits, it is made the “topology of Beyng” (Topologie des Seyns).12

If clairvoyance thus proceeds entirely from the evidence of sight, this evidence is itself based on the clearing that alone provides light. This clearing is then the Urphänomen, the “primordial phenomenon,” which phenomenology must bring to light—that is, the domain of phenomenality in which we are immersed. It is thus a matter of thinking this clearing, which brings all metaphysics, and all science, in its wake. The highest demand of thought is then lucidity, understood as the vision of light, and no longer only as the “vision of the visible” (in Greek θεαν οραν, which gave θεωρία) or “semblance of seeing” (videre videor): in this way “it exceeds all contemplation because it cares for the light in which a seeing, as theoria, can first live and move.”13 Lucidity demands calling evidence into question, “not accept[ing] and tak[ing] this ‘clear as day’ too lightly,”14 in order to reduce it to the regime of phenomenality of which it is only an epiphenomenon and thus to recede to the condition of possibility of every appearance, to try to specify the nature of its light. And because it is a topology, thought’s first requisite is the elucidation of this primordial Place in which it stands.

§2. SUFFICIENCY AND FAULTINESS

But evidence does not only concern knowledge, it is the clarity of the act by which I take hold of myself, it is the very taking hold of my being. This was the most radical point reached by Descartes, to show that in evidence, that is to say, thought in all its clarity, the ego gains its being and its existance. In this way, evidence is simultaneously the clarification of thought and the discovery that this sphere of clarity circumscribes my very being. Henceforth, the calling into question of evidence required by the exigency of lucidity is quite simply the calling into question of what I am. An uncritical confinement among evidence in fact always runs the risk of circumscribing an identity upon which I would make a base and with which I would be satisfied.15 With Emmanuel Levinas, we can call this self-satisfaction of thought by which the I is based on itself sufficiency: “This conception of the ‘I’ [moi] as self-sufficient is one of the essential marks of the bourgeois spirit and its philosophy. As sufficiency for the petit bourgeois, this conception of the ‘I’ nonetheless nourishes the audacious dreams of a restless and enterprising capitalism. [ . . . ] The bourgeois admits no inner division [déchirement intérieur] and would be ashamed to lack confidence in himself.”16 Sufficiency is self-satisfaction, which defines ipseity (αύτο) by satisfaction, satiety, in other words by completeness, and a completeness granted by things. This sufficiency finds its expression and systematization in humanism.17 Humanism believes it has a sufficient definition of the human being, attributes diverse qualities to it, all excellent, and can thus enjoy the satisfaction that there is to be such a being. But lucidity demands recognizing more humbly that we do not know who we are, that no definition of man, however benevolent it may be, is commensurate to his essance. The question “what is man?” is certainly not a settled affair, no answer could constitute an achievement: lucidity demands admitting that “we can only wait for the essance of man.”18 It is thus a matter of overcoming, not only naiveté and fascination, but also sufficiency, of no longer relying on an illusory self-confidence in order to, on the contrary, hollow out the inner fault [faille] by which the I receives what it is given to think. If evidence is not sufficient but must be led back to the light from which it proceeds, then the reduction to the ego must be radicalized by a reduction from the ego, since the ego itself has, at first glance, neither the power nor the freedom to set to work, but must endure—precisely because I cannot renounce my evidence without totally calling myself into question.

Anxiety is a privileged example of such moments of faultiness, when the ego falters and discovers the fault that is (in) it. While fear is always fear before a being that threatens us, anxiety is fear before nothing in particular; on the contrary, no being can bring me either bearings or support any longer; thus “in anxiety beings as a whole become superfluous.”19 Anxiety is the collapse of the world, that is, of beings as a whole, and this collapse is the reduction of beings in full, which is thereby the manifestation of what is radically other than all beings: the nothing, which as non-being is Being itself. “Anxiety makes manifest the nothing,”20 and that is just what I grow anxious in the face of: in the face of nothing; and that is how I take hold of myself after anxiety: it was nothing. But this nothing is what pulls me out of the submersion in the density and indifferentiation of beings to set me at a distance from them and thus to make them visible to me, allowing me to be the existant that I am. Anxiety is thus the trial of the nothing, as what defines both existance and the ipseity of the ego: “Holding itself out into the nothing, the existant is in each case already beyond beings as a whole. Such being beyond beings we call transcendence. [ . . . ] Without the original manifestness of the nothing, no selfhood and no freedom.”21 Anxiety is therefore revelation of the self, that is, of this transcendence in relation to the I itself. “The clear night of the nothing of anxiety”22 is then always the moment of pure lucidity, it is more essantial than all evidence; in it I grasp the essance of ipseity as the gaping fault where the nothing is hollowed out within myself, and this fault lets the abyss be glimpsed for the first time: anxiety is “the silent voice that attunes us toward the horror of the abyss” (Schrecken des Abgrundes).23 In anxiety, I testify to the nothing (that I am) such that anxiety is the most radical reduction of sufficiency, and in its arche-evidence the very essance of ipseity is revealed to me: what I am, is that I am nothing.

Unlike evidence, which is methodically conquered by doubt, anxiety is enforced: by the relation to death. Death is not demise, a simple factual event that would happen at a given moment and would thus be outside of my being, or would simply constitute its limit. Dying is proper to man, if however one understands that to die is neither to perish, nor to demise, but “to be capable of death as death.” Heidegger repeated it tirelessly: “Only man dies. The animal perishes. It has death neither ahead of itself nor behind it.”24 Death is a possibility located at the very heart of existance, but this possibility offers nothing to be actualized: “Death, as possibility, gives the existant nothing to be ‘actualized,’ nothing which it, as actual, could itself be. It is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself towards anything, of every way of existing.”25 This means that its only possible actualization is the nothing. Dying, as the assumption of death, is then the conquest of its being: “Only in dying can I to some extent say absolutely, ‘I am.’”26 The tension of existance toward its death is thus the very content of the ego: “This certainty, that ‘I myself am in that I will die,’ is the basic certainty of the existant itself. It is a genuine statement of the existant, while cogito sum is only the semblance of such a statement.” In the clear lucidity of anxiety I a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Jean-Luc Marion
• Translator’s Note by Matthew J. Peterson
• Chapter 1 | Clarifications
• Chapter 2 | From the Equal to the Same
• Chapter 3 | Truth and Its Destiny
• Chapter 4 | Apocalypse and Truth
• Chapter 5 | On the Edge of the Abyss
• Chapter 6 | Abyss of the Deity
• Epilogue
• Notes
• List of Primary Sources
• Index