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142 pages

English

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In this original work of philosophy, Andrew Benjamin calls for a new understanding of relationality, one inaugurating a philosophical mode of thought that takes relations among people and events as primary, over and above conceptions of simple particularity or abstraction. Drawing on the work of Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Heidegger, Benjamin shows that a relational ontology has always been at work within the history of philosophy even though philosophy has been reluctant to affirm its presence. Arguing for what he calls anoriginal relationality, he demonstrates that the already present status of a relational ontology is philosophy's other possibility. Touching on a range of topics including community, human-animal relations, and intimacy, Benjamin's thoughtful and penetrating distillation of ancient, modern, and twentieth-century philosophical ideas, and his judicious attention to art and literature make this book a model for original philosophical thinking and writing.
1. Being-in-Relation

2. Recovering Relationality: Contra Heidegger’s Descartes

3. Relationality and the Affective Structure of Subjectivity: Kant’s “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”

4. Democracy, Relationality, and the University: Fichte’s “Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation”

5. Justice, Love, and Relationality: The Figure of Niobe in Hegel’s Lectures on Fine Art

6. Anonymity and Fear: The Refusal of Relationality in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

7. Animal Relations: Modes of Presence in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason

8. Obdurate Love: Intimate Relations: Toward a Metaphysics of Intimacy

Conclusion: Opening Relations

Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Philosophie

Épistémologie

Philosophie de l'esprit

Esthétique et philosophie de l'art

Philosophie de la psychologie

History of philosophy

Epistémologie

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	27 avril 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438456355
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Towards a Relational Ontology
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
Towards a Relational Ontology
Philosophy’s Other Possibility
ANDREW BENJAMIN
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Benjamin, Andrew E.
Towards a relational ontology : philosophy’s other possibility / Andrew Benjamin.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5633-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5635-5 (ebook)
1. Ontology. 2. Relation (Philosophy) I. Title. BD311.B456 2015 111—dc23 2014026034
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
1. Being-in-Relation
2. Recovering Relationality: Contra Heidegger’s Descartes
3. Relationality and the Affective Structure of Subjectivity: Kant’s “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”
4. Democracy, Relationality, and the University: Fichte’s “Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation”
5. Justice, Love, and Relationality: The Figure of Niobe in Hegel’s Lectures on Fine Art
6. Anonymity and Fear: The Refusal of Relationality in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
7. Animal Relations: Modes of Presence in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason
8. Obdurate Love: Intimate Relations: Toward a Metaphysics of Intimacy
Conclusion: Opening Relations
Bibliography
Index
1
Being-in-Relation
1.
W hat is a relation? What are relations? The project of developing an understanding of being-in-relation starts with the supposition that the limit of the first question is established by the inevitability of the second—an inevitability to be encountered and then recovered. In other words, the second question opens up an importantly different proposition. The difference is clear. What the second question holds open is the possibility that the truth of relationality brings a form of plurality into play, and therefore what is true of relationality, correspondingly, could not be given by any one form of singularity in which that singularity would have been taken as primary. Were singularity to precede relationality, then the truth of relationality would have already been provided. Its truth would be found in the coming into relation of two founding singularities. While the positing of a founding form of singularity exerts a pervasive hold on philosophy, it contains a dimension—what will emerge as an ineliminable dimension—that remains unthought within it. What is yet to be thought is the possibility that plural relations are original and therefore that both singularity and relations between singularities are always secondary. In other words, the opening question has been attributed an automatic viability. However, there were two opening questions. The force of the second is that it brings another project into play. What was initially unthought—unthought despite being present—comes to be thought in the move from the first to the second question.
Moving beyond the first question, therefore, or seeing that question merely as a step toward the second, is to allow the second question to open up the position that both informs and structures this entire project, namely, the proposition that the truth of relationality inheres in what is always at work within relations, namely, the effective presence of a founding and irreducible plurality. Within the structure of this general argument, singular relations, which can be more accurately described as pragmatic occurrences within relationality, can only ever be secondary (and this is the case despite the possibility of attributing a form of originality to them). Such occurrences always depend upon the presence of an original form of multiplicity or plurality (even if the presence of the latter is not affirmed). While an assertion of this nature may seem to be an imposition on the philosophical, the contention structuring this project is that this is not the case. Indeed, the overriding position advanced throughout the varying engagements with texts and figures from the history of philosophy that form the basis of this book is that relationality is always primary and that it continues to appear in this way. Moreover, what is fundamental to the argument developed in the course of this project is that relationality has always been there as a possibility. Relationality is not a lost possibility to be viewed nostalgically. It can be recovered. And yet the argument goes further. Not only can relationality be recovered from within the context of this overall argument, but relationality also is there as philosophy’s other possibility.
The contention at work here is that relationality has an original presence. At times it has what might be described as an almost archaic presence. Nonetheless, the presence of relationality, no matter how the presence of a founding form of relationality is understood, is often excised or effaced in the name of a posited founding singularity (to which it should be added that it is a singularity that can only ever be posited as founding.) The feint of original singularity, or more accurately the latter’s emergence as a feint, is part of this process. That such a singularity is posited and thus only ever there, and therefore only ever present as an after-effect, is a central aspect of the general argument. It should be added here that the presence of this conception of the after-effect when recognized as such, that is, when recognized as coming after rather than as actually original—needs to be taken as attesting to the primacy of relationality. It is important therefore to deploy the word “after-effect” as part of a rethinking of relationality.
The founding singularity, given that it emerges as a putative possibility, will only ever have occurred after the event. The event in question is what is called henceforth a constituting “plural event.” As a result, the “plural event” then becomes one of the names for the quality of this founding form of relationality. 1 The plural event is that which allows for singularities. As is argued throughout the course of this book, the term “plural event” has a double ontological register. In the first instance, that register identifies the presence of a founding ontological irreducibility. Secondly and consequently, that register marks the place of a founding set-up that needs to be explicated in terms of a relational ontology precisely because it is the site of already present and irreducible relations. 2 Irreducibility is a term that is fundamental to this project. Irreducibility is an essential part of relationality (in the way that the term is deployed here). If a relation is original, then there cannot be any element of the relation that precedes it. Irreducibility is central therefore to any thinking of the plural when the latter occurs with a relational ontology. The reference here to ontology is also of fundamental importance. The plural event refers to modes of existence (and thus to what is). The claim made in connection to a relational ontology pertains therefore to “being”—the domain of the ontological—and consequently the plurality in question refers neither to the hermeneutic nor to the interpretative, except to the extent that they are both effects of the ontological. Taken more broadly, what the reciprocity between the plural event and an occurrence entails—where the occurrence is understood as that which is what it is only after the event—is that singularity is an after-effect. However, one consequence of its presence as an after-effect in which that presence is not recognized, but which takes the apparently singular as both original and founding, is the excision of a founding event of plurality. Within such a context, namely, the context in which singularity is asserted as an end in itself, the plural event, while it remains the condition for singularity, can always be excised. To the extent that this excision takes place, the plural event remains unthought. To reiterate one of the positions with which this project began, it needs to be emphasized that the recognition of the failure to think both plurality and thus the primacy of relationality is equally, it can be argued, the recognition of that plurality as having a constituting and therefore founding presence. This position, the effacing of relationality, where effacing has a form of actuality, has continually and importantly different formulations in the texts to be considered in the course of this study. Fundamental to the position to be developed both here and in the chapters to come is that neither the means of excision nor the presence of relationality has a generalized and generalizable presence.
At this stage, what needs to be developed is the doubling within relationality insofar as the plural event as a site of original relationality is that which allows for the singular. A beginning can be made with the recognition of this doubling. While the position to be worked out will become increasingly more complex, and complexity here pertains to the detail of specific philosophical projects rather than the position itself, it is important to begin with this doubling. In the first place, there are forms of relationality that have an original quality. These forms are described henceforth as having “anoriginal” presence. The term “anorig