I—
Problematic
In question and at stake, here, will be the gaze, or the glance, perhaps just a glimpse, of justice: "of justice" in both the subjective and objective senses. In a preliminary and provisional way, we shall be reflecting on the temporality, historicity, and violence of this connection.
In particular, we will undertake an initial reading of Heidegger's portrait of Kalchas the seer in his essay on "The Anaximander Fragment," in the hope of educing the peculiar logic, the dialectical spirit, that is at work in the seer's gaze. Benjamin's allegorical and dialectical modes of looking at
the world will serve not only as a normative point of reference but also as a compelling conceptual force in the unfolding of the narrative, enabling us to think, beyond Heidegger, and otherwise than as being, as reification, the historical intervention, the justice and temporality, of the seer's gaze.
But a semblance of paradox surrounds this gaze. As we shall see, its futural, prophetic "intentionality" depends on a certain
We should not miss the significance of the fact that Heidegger introduces a discussion of the seer into his essay on Anaximander, suggesting, if not implying, that he sees a crucial connection between
According, as Heidegger says, to the generally accepted text, the fragment, in English translation, reads:
Whence things have their origin, there they must also pass away according to necessity; for they must pay penalty and be judged for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time.[6]
After examining the hermeneutical anxieties and difficulties involved in understanding and translating the fragment, questioning, above all, the equation of justice and the payment of penalty, expiation, or revenge, Heidegger turns to the question of our historical situation:
Are we latecomers [die Spätlinge ] in a history now racing towards its end, an end which in its increasingly sterile order of uniformity brings everything to an end? Or does there lie concealed in the historic and chronological remoteness of the fragment the historical proximity of something unsaid, something that will speak out in times to come? (AX 16, H 300)
The text continues:
Do we stand in the very twilight of the most monstrous transformation our planet has ever undergone, the twilight of that epoch in which earth itself hangs suspended? Do we confront the evening of a night which heralds another dawn? . . . Are we the latecomers we are? But
are we also at the same time precursors of the dawn of an altogether different age, which has already left our historiological representations of history behind? (AX 17, H 300)
And, since historiography manifests the way we have situated ourselves in time and history, he remarks, critically, arguing a point with which Benjamin and Adorno could certainly agree, that
all historiography predicts what is to come [errechnet das Kommende ] from images of the past determined by the present [durch die Gegenwart ]. It systematically destroys the future and our historic relation to the advent of destiny. (AX 17, H 301)
"Can we nevertheless," he asks, "portray and represent the dawn of an age in ways different from those of historiography?" It is in part, for Heidegger, a question of seeing, of envisioning otherwise—and of a way of seeing that would come from the recognition of a need to prepare itself for an appropriate relationship to the "eschatology," the fateful dispensations of being (AX 18, H 301–2). This requires forming our images of the past in such a way that we retrieve, for the sake of a future we are preparing in the present, possibilities for justice concealed in what the past gives the present.
Writing of the "destiny of man" and the epochal dispensations of being, which he understands in terms of an interplay between unconcealment and concealment, the visible and the invisible, Heidegger turns to the rhetoric of light and vision, observing, for example, that "Man's inability to see himself [das Sichversehen des Menschen ] corresponds to the self-concealing of the light of being" (AX 26, H 311). Contending that "little depends on what we represent and portray of the past [as such]," he stresses that "much depends on the way we are mindful [eingedenk : a word that Benjamin also uses] of what is destined" (AX 27, H 312). "Can we ever be mindful," he asks, "without thinking?" If thinking is to occur, however, then we will have to "abandon all claims of shortsighted opinion and open ourselves to the claim of destiny" (ibid.). It is crucial to keep in mind that Heidegger distinguishes between "fate" and "destiny," using "Schicksal" to refer to fate, a predetermined chain of events, and "Geschick" to refer to destiny, a future that can come to pass only if our appropriation of the past prepares for its arrival. So, then, does the "claim of destiny" speak in the early saying of Anaximander? In answering this question, Heidegger says:
We are not sure whether its claim speaks to our essential being. It remains to ask whether in our relation to the truth of being the glance of being [der Blick des Seins ], and this means lightning [der Blitz ] (Heraclitus, fr. 64), strikes; or whether in our knowledge of the past only the faintest glimmers of a storm long flown casts a pale semblance of light. (Ibid.)
It is in the midst of a struggle to understand the archaic words, words that he translates into a discourse on "being," that Heidegger thinks of Homer's Iliad , and refers to the story of Kalchas the seer, whom Achilles asks to interpret the wrath of the god. Homer writes, there, of Kalchas, "who knew all that is, is to be, or once was." And Heidegger comments:
Before he lets Kalchas speak, Homer designates him as the seer [der Seher ]. Whoever belongs in the realm of seers is such a one
. . . "who knew . . . ";is the pluperfect of the perfect"he has seen." Only when a man has seen does he truly see. To see is to have seen. What is seen has arrived and remains for him in sight. A seer has always already [immer schon ] seen. Having seen in advance, he sees into the future. He sees the future tense out of the perfect. . . . What is it that the seer has seen in advance? Obviously, only what becomes present in the lighting that penetrates his sight. What is seen in such a seeing can only be what comes to presence in unconcealment. But what becomes present? (AX 33–34, H 318–19)
According to Heidegger,
what is past and what is to come also become present, namely as outside the expanse of unconcealment. What presents itself as non-present is what is absent. . . . Even what is absent is something present, for as absent from the expanse [of unconcealment], it presents itself in unconcealment. What is past and what is to come are also
[what is present]. (AX 35, H 320)
"The seer," he says,
stands in sight of what is present, in its unconcealment, which has at the same time cast light on the concealment of what is absent as being absent. The seer sees inasmuch as he has [always already] seen everything as present . (Ibid. Italics added.)
In other words: "The seer is the one who has already seen the whole of what is present in its presencing." (AX 36, H 321. Here, and in subsequent quotations from this text, I have substituted the open "whole" for the closed "totality" as the translation for "das Ganze.") Thus, according to Heidegger,
all things present and absent are gathered and preserved in one presencing for the seer. . . . The seer speaks from the preserve [Wahr ] of what is present. He is the sooth-sayer [Wahr-Sager ]. (AX 36, H 321)
Indeed, "the seer, as the one who has seen, is himself one who makes-present and belongs in an exceptional sense to the whole of what is present" (AX 38, H 323).
But what is involved in the seer's gathering and preserving? What does this mean? In particular, does it mean that the seer's vision is bound to the past, or to a metaphysical present, and that it cannot envision a radical break with the past? How does the seer belong to the whole? Does the gathering and preserving serve a metaphysics of presence? Should Heidegger be understood, here, as suggesting a metaphysics of history that would repress contingency, interruption, and difference? It is crucial to bear in mind, here, that, according to Heidegger, "seeing is determined, not by the eye, but by the lighting of being" (AX 36, H 322). Consequently Heidegger's commentary proceeds to a repudiation of "our usual way of representing things," since representation would "exclude from what is present all absence" (AX 37, H 323). This gives us an indication of the way we must answer our questions: Heidegger believes that the seer's vision gathers the absent, the invisible only if it is open to a future of radically new historical possibilities. Indeed, it gathers the absent not in order to reduce it to the order of the same, but precisely in order to see the present put in question by a temporality radically open to new historical possibilities.
In keeping with this approach, Heidegger will not assume in advance that he understands the "fundamental words" of the Anaximander fragment; thus, he translates these words in a way that respects their historical originality and acknowledges our great distance, the extremity of our difficulty in trying to understand them. Working towards a preliminary interpretation, he translates Anaximander's word
The fragment clearly says that what is present is in
i.e., is out of joint [aus der Fuge ]. However, that cannot mean that things no longer come to presence. But neither does it say that what is present is only occasionally, or perhaps only with respect to some of its properties, out of joint. The fragment says: what is present as such, being what it is, is out of joint. . . . What is present is that which lingers awhile. The while occurs essentially as the transitional arrival in departure: the while comes to presence between approach and withdrawal. Between the twofold absence the presencing of all that lingers occurs. In this "between" whatever lingers awhile is joined, from its emergence here to its departure away from here. The presencing of whatever lingers obtrudes into the "here" of its coming, as into the "away" of its going. In both directions, presencing is conjointly disposed toward absence. (AX 41, H 327)
The commentary continues:
Whatever lingers awhile [Das Je-Weilige ] becomes present as it lingers in the jointure [in der Fuge ] which arranges presencing jointly between a twofold absence. Still, as what is present [als das Anwesende ], whatever lingers awhile—and only it—can stay the length of its while. What has arrived may even insist upon its while [auf seine Weile bestehen ] solely to remain more present, in the sense of perduring. That which lingers perseveres in its presencing [beharrt auf seinem Anwesen ]. In this way, it extricates itself from its transitory while. It strikes the willful pose of persistence [den Eigensinn des Beharrens ], no longer concerning itself with whatever else is present [or disposed to become present in some way]. It stiffens—as if this were the way to linger—and aims solely for continuance and subsistence. (AX 42, H 327–28)
So it is in the persistence of a being beyond the ordinance of time, beyond and in defiance of its assignment or allotment of time, that
The disjunction [die Un-Fuge ] consists in the fact that whatever lingers awhile seeks to win for itself a while based solely on the model of continuance. Lingering as persistence, considered with respect to the jointure of the while, is an insurrection [Aufstand ] on behalf of sheer endurance [blobe Andauern ]. . . . In this rebellious whiling [dieses Aufständische der Weile ] whatever lingers awhile insists upon sheer continuance. (AX 43, H 328)
It is, then, a question of domination—the violence and injustice of relations of domination and subordination within the realm of beings:
But in this way everything that lingers awhile strikes a haughty pose [spreizt sich ] toward every other of its kind. None heeds the lingering presence of the others. Whatever lingers awhile is inconsiderate [rücksichtslos ] toward others, each dominated by what is implied in its lingering presence, namely, the craving to persist. (AX 45–46, H 331)
But there is an ontological dimension to this domination in the realm of beings: obliteration of the "ontological difference" between beings and the being of beings, or between what is present and presencing as such (AX 50–51, H 335–36). "Perhaps," Heidegger therefore suggests,
only when we experience historically what has not been thought—the oblivion of being—as what is to be thought, and only when we have for the longest time pondered what we have long experienced in terms of the destiny of being, may the early word speak in our contemporary recollection. (AX 51, H 337)
At the end of the essay, Heidegger returns to reflect on our contemporary situation and makes very clear the connection he sees between this situation and the
Man has already begun to overwhelm the entire earth and its atmosphere, to arrogate to himself in forms of energy the concealed powers of nature, and to submit future history to the planning and ordering of a world government. This same defiant man is utterly at a loss simply to say what is , to say what this is —that a thing is . (AX 57, H 343)
"The totality of beings, "he says," is the singular object of a singular will to conquer" (ibid. Here it is crucial to retain the word "totality"). "What mortal," he wonders, "can fathom the abyss of this confusion [den Abgrund dieser Wirrnis ]?" (ibid.). His reply, reminiscent of Nietzsche, is unequivocal: "He may try to shut his eyes before this abyss. He may entertain one delusion after another. The abyss does not vanish" (ibid.). Thus, it becomes necessary, as a first gesture in recognition of the need for justice and the possibility of restitution and redemption, to think the abyss: necessary, in fact, to recollect the abyss, looking without blinking into the gaping abyss—to see it. Only such a vision could see the destruction of history and make it visible as a foreseeable end.
Could it be that it is precisely by virtue of an "abyssal" vision, a vision that recollects the abyss of being, that the seer is granted uncanny "foresight"? Could it be, paradoxical though it might seem, that it is only in and as a recollection of the being of beings, a recollection of the ordinance and assignment of time, that such "foresight" is first rendered possible? And could it be that it is precisely in and as this recollection that the seer's vision becomes a vision of justice, a vision that sees, with and through the ordinance and assignment of time, the ending of injustice, the ending of history as a history of unspeakable cruelty and suffering, perhaps the possibility of a new beginning? Could it be that, through a certain process of recollection, we might be granted a vision that not only sees this, but also serves what it sees, an organ and instrument of what we might perhaps call, with one eye on Benjamin, divine justice, divine judgment?
Heidegger leaves largely unthought the connection between the seer's peculiar "foresight" and the problematic of justice and restitution spoken of in the fragment. Likewise obscure in his essay is the connection between the seer's "foresight" and the need for a recollection of being, the lighting of the being of beings, an interplay between concealment and unconcealment within which beings come into being, into presence, stay a while, and then perish, even if driven by a disposition to persist. In order to work
through these questions, we shall leave Heidegger for the time being and turn to Benjamin, whose writings are the product of a certain visionary thinking at once very like and very unlike that of Heidegger's seer.
What are the affinities and the differences between Heidegger's "recollection" (a process of hermeneutical Erinnerung and Wiederholung which in late works he also described using the word Andenken )[7] and Benjamin's "remembrance" (Eingedenken ), and how do they figure in relation to the question of the continuation or ending of history? How are their respective textual practices of recollection and reminiscence related to their visions of justice? Reflecting, first, on the allegorical and dialectical modes of seeing that figure in Benjamin's work, we may be able, perhaps, to return to Heidegger and, thinking the two together, formulate some thoughts that carry forward into a very radical political perspective a difficult meditation concerning what I have called the seer's vision of justice.[8]
Benjamin left no doubt that he could see only irreconcilable differences between his thought and that of Heidegger. In a letter to Gershom Scholem, he wrote: "It is there that I shall find Heidegger on my path, and I expect some sparks to fly from the clash [l'entre-choc ] of our two very different ways of viewing history."[9] Nevertheless, I would argue that there are—or anyway seem to be—many similarities and affinities between them. But the correlations are quite intricate and treacherous. From a certain angle, this is what one might see: Both saw a world of suffering and were moved by what they saw to consecrate their thinking to what they regarded an appropriate response. Both saw the historical departure from the origin, the beginning of history, as in some sense a degeneration; and neither thought the continuation of this decline inevitable and irreversible. Both saw in the decline a loss of memory and saw redemptive hope in the overcoming of forgetfulness. Both turned their philosophical gaze in the direction of history and the writing of history as they struggled to think the possibility of a radical transformation, a new beginning. Both thought it necessary to think this possibility as beyond time and history as we have known them, unequivocally rejecting the causal chain of history, the continuum of historical progress, and the conventional experience of the "now," the time of the "present." Both conceived the interruption of historical time in terms of a sudden flash of lightning, the absolutely unexpected gift of illumination, bringing insight, a moment of vision. Both regarded this vision as in some crucial sense "involuntary." Both drew a sharp distinction between such revelation or unconcealment and the evidence or disclosure of truth in an adequation between subject and object.[10] Both
employed the figure of the seer, the visionary, to articulate the revolutionary substance of their thinking. Both believed that the vision and imagination of the seer must be grounded in a work of memory. Both thought of the interruption of historical time as manifesting the anarchy and violence of a world-transcending, or, say, divine dispensation of justice. And finally, therefore, both men turned to an allegorical mode of vision in order to think, in relation to time and history, what they could not avoid seeing as the decay and destructiveness in modern experience, and to wrest from the present a way of reading the signs of another beginning.
But there is, in spite of these apparent points of convergence, at least one striking difference—a difference that cuts very deeply, separating them beyond all possibility of reconciliation. Heidegger's vision of justice is first and foremost ontological: it is the
Even when Heidegger interprets the "persistence of being" about which the fragment speaks, calling it
The formulation of such a standpoint might begin by insisting that no juridical and moral institutions established here on earth can ever claim to represent the perfection of justice. But Heidegger's text also seems to allow the possibility of a very strong critical position with regard, in particular, to one historically powerful conception of justice, when he not only emphasizes (AX 41, H 327) that we must resist interpreting Anaximander's words,
The standpoint that this reading of Heidegger is suggesting, with regard to a different worldly institution of justice, is defined with great lucidity in a text by Adorno. In writing "On the Classicism of Goethe's Iphigenie ," he comments that:
Humanness requires that the law of an eye for an eye, a quid pro quo, be brought to an end; that the infamous exchange of equivalents, in which age-old myth is recapitulated in rational economics, cease. The process, however, has its dialectical crux in the requirement that what
rises above exchange not fall back behind it; that the suspension of exchange not once again cost human beings, as the objects of order, the full fruits of their labor. The abolition of the exchange of equivalents would be its fulfillment; as long as equality reigns as law, the individual is cheated of equality.[12]
Levinas wants to see an ethical relation no longer determined by symmetry, by equivalence, conceding the appropriateness of such measures only in the sphere of justice; Adorno wants to see economies of equivalence abolished even in the sphere of justice. How might we work toward the realization of a justice that, after Levinas, we might describe as always for the other, always giving beyond compare, beyond measure? Our imperative question. But it must be said, here, that the question of justice never was of great urgency for Heidegger: one would search his writings in vain for any satisfying philosophical response to the injustices of his time and any unequivocal recognition of a justice giving beyond what is due—a justice wholly for the other. But he does oppose relations of domination.
As for Benjamin, I would say that in every one of his writings matters of justice are at stake. This is the case even in the early (1924–25) essay on the Trauerspiel , the German mourning-play, where, because these matters are registered in a discourse on German baroque theater and rendered in allegorical forms, represented, as in the Anaximander fragment, in terms of the destructiveness of time and the corruptions of natural history, the bearing of the text on questions of justice has become highly mediated. But, in a text that conjures up images of a stage strewn with corpses and skulls, questions of justice can hardly be kept deeply buried.
That the stage was indeed already set, in that work, for sustained reflection on a certain narrative regarding justice is something that one can readily deduce from the "Epistemo-Critical Prologue" that introduces his Trauerspiel study: we can retrieve it not only from his discussion, there, of "natural history," but also from his treatment of "representation," "truth," and "knowledge." Moreover, the intention to engage in a relentless, unremitting questioning of modern liberal and conservative conceptions of right, duty, and justice is already implicitly manifest in the dialogue that Benjamin chose to abstract from the first act of the baroque drama "Ernelinde Oder Die Viermahl Braut," and placed at the very beginning of his first chapter.
Although the nostalgic, melancholy mood of this remark could not be more different from the mood of Heidegger's essay, its sense of "natural history," of a cosmological or ontological justice—the justice that metes out
the destiny of transience to all finite beings—would seem to bring him into the proximity of the thought that Heidegger wants to read into the Anaximander fragment. But the immediacy of Benjamin's concern for political justice is manifestly at the very heart of the "Critique of Violence" (1921), and it is paramount in all his later writings—for example, Konvolut N, reflecting on "The Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress" (begun in 1927) and the "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940).
As we shall see, this difference between Heidegger and Benjamin with regard to the question of justice ultimately alters in some quite intricate ways even the similarities and affinities alluded to earlier. And yet, it must be said that, if Heidegger's critique of modern political institutions seems to offer only an abstract negation, a negation dangerously close, sometimes, to the mythical, and to be severely weakened by its inability to think outside the political alternatives of national socialism, on the one side, and, on the other side, the equally undesirable politics of Russian communism and American capitalism, Benjamin's Critique of Violence likewise seems to be unable to offer more than an abstract mythic negation of the present and to be hopelessly bound to a representation of the alternatives in which we must ultimately choose between fascism and communism. Of course, as we know, Heidegger chose the hope in Hitler's national socialism and Benjamin chose the hope in communism. And both these systems came to an end, exchanging the hope invested in them for the violence of totalitarian rule.