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shadings in the Science of Logic are quick to betray this. Space and time are, as the third
note to Becoming expounds in reference to Jacobi, expressly determined as
indeterminate, which in order to return to its simplest form is being. Precisely this
indeterminacy is however what makes out its determination; for indeterminacy is
opposed to determinacy; it is therewith as what is opposed itself the determinate, or the
negative, and indeed the pure, completely abstract negative. This indeterminacy or
abstract negation, which being thus has in itself, is what external as well as inner
reflection expresses, in that it equates it with nothingness, declares it as an empty
thought-figure [Gedankending], as nothingness. Or one may express it, that because
being is that which is devoid of determination, it is not the (affirmative) determinacy,
which it is, not being, but nothingness. 13 Indeterminacy is tacitly used as a synonym for
the indeterminate. That which it is a concept of disappears in its concept; it becomes
equated to the indeterminate as its determination, and this permits the identification of the
indeterminate with nothing. Therein in truth the absolute idealism is already presupposed,
which logic would have to prove. Something similar is true of Hegel s refusal to begin
with the something instead of with being. Trivial, that the non-identical is no immediacy,
that it is mediated. But Hegel fails to do justice to his own insight at central points. It
says, the non-identical would indeed be identical as itself something mediated but
nevertheless non-identical, the Other in regard to all its identifications. He does not carry
out the dialectic of the non-identical, while he however has the intention elsewhere of
defending the pre-critical term of speech against that of reflection-philosophy. His own
concept of the non-identical, to him the vehicle for turning it into the identical, into self-
sameness, has its inalienable content in its opposite; that is why he hurriedly brushes this
away. What he expressly established in the text on difference, in order to immediately
integrate it into his own philosophy, turns into the weightiest objection against this.
Hegel s absolute system, which relies on the perennial resistance of the non-identical,
negates itself, against its own self-understanding. Truly no identity is without the non-
identical, while this former, as something total, ascribes to itself ontological preeminence
in his work. The elevation of the mediatedness [Vermitteltheit] of the non-identical into
its absolute conceptual being assists it therein. Instead of theory bringing the indissoluble
to what is its own in concepts, it swallows it by subsumption under its general concept,
that of indissolubility. The necessary condition of being related [Verwiesensein] of
identity to the non-identical, as Hegel nearly achieved it, is the objection against all
identity-philosophy. The Aristotelean category of steresis becomes its trump card and its
doom. What necessarily diverges from the abstract concept: that it is not capable of being
the non-conceptual itself, he accounts for as a merit, as something higher, as Spirit, in
contrast to what it is forcibly abstracted from. What is lesser is supposed to be truer, as
later on in the self-justifying Heideggerian ideology of the magnificence of simplicity.
The apology for scantiness is however not merely one for a thinking which has once
more shrunk to a point, but has its precise ideological function. The affectation of noble
simplicity, which warms to the dignity of poverty and of the frugal life, suits the
continuing absurdity of real scarcity in a society, whose state of production no longer
permits the appeal that there are simply not enough goods to go around. By flirting with
the Rhenish Home Companion, philosophy, barred by its own concept from unnaivete,
helps it around this: in its history of being, scarcity gleams as that which is higher pure
and simple, or at the very least ad kalendas Graecus [Latin: the first of the month, by the
Greek calendar]. Already in Hegel, what resulted through abstraction counted as the more
substantial. He treats the material according to the same topos, even in the transition to
existence.14 Because its concept would be indeterminate, lacking as concept precisely
what is meant by it, all light is shed on its form. Hegel fits this into Western metaphysics,
at its outermost limits. Engels saw this, but drew the reversed, equally undialectical
conclusion, that the material would be the first being.15 The concept of first being itself
deserves dialectical critique. Heidegger repeats the Hegelian sleight-of-hand maneuver.
Only the latter practiced it openly, while Heidegger, who wishes to be no idealist,
nebulously conceals the ontologization of the ontic. The mainspring, however, which
garbs what is less in the concept as its more, is in each case the old Platonic denial, that
the non-sensible would be the higher. Logic sublimates that ascetic ideal to the extreme
and at the same time fetishizes it, devoid of the tension with the sensible, in which the
ascetic ideal has its truth against the deception of its franchised [konzessionierter:
licensed] fulfillment. The concept, which becomes pure by elbowing aside its content,
secretly functions as the model of an arrangement of life wherein, in spite of all progress
of the apparatus to which the concept corresponds at no price may poverty be
eliminated. If ontology were at all somehow possible, then ironically, as the epitome of
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