Black Ontology

Some questions to be considered by black ontology include: What is (or are) the meaning(s) of being black and black being? In what ways is black being implicit or explicit, real or unreal, particular or universal? How might a phenomenological ontology of being black or blackness proceed?

      Some other questions to be considered by black ontology include: In what ways is black being defined by its possibilities for being or non-being? What distinguishes a first-person understanding of black being (by black beings themselves) from second- or third-person understandings? Is the peoplehood of black people erased by referring to them as "black beings" rather than "black people"? To the extent that black people can determine for themselves what it means to be defined by categories of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc., from where does this freedom for self-definition come and on what does it depend?

      What are the basic constituents (if any) of black being? Does black being have any ontological building blocks or foundational elements? To what extent is it a dependent kind of being (dependent on racial categories, and dependent on the black-white binary)? How is it manifested socially and culturally? To what extent is it characterized by collective agency and collective intentionality? 

      Do such questions arise from an essentialist notion of the being of black people?

      The meaning of being black may be determined by the given historical, social, and cultural situation. Being black in America today means something different from being black in China today. Being black in America in 1863 meant something different from what it meant to be black in America in 1963. Being black in black social spaces means something different from being black in white social spaces.

      Black ontology is a racial, social, and cultural ontology. David Miguel Gray (2017) explains that races are social kinds, rather than natural kinds, and that they are in part or in whole products of human actions or human decision-making processes. Investigations of racial categories are therefore social and historical investigations, quite unlike the investigations of the natural sciences.¹

      Black ontology recognizes that black people have often been objectified by white people, who have seen them as objects to be used, exploited, eradicated, or manipulated. Black ontology may therefore examine the meaning of the "black body" as transmogrified into a subhuman object by white consciousness.

      But isn't the personhood of black people erased when they are referred to as "black bodies"? Isn't it dehumanizing to refer to black people as "black bodies," as if they were things or objects (even if that's how they're seen by white supremacists)?

      Black ontologies may develop new concepts of black identity. They may form a chorus of voices against injustice and oppression, and they may express, articulate, or proclaim resistant subjectivities.

      Black ontology may also investigate the role of black social and cultural signifying practices, such as art, music, dance, fashion, religion, and language, in constituting black being.

      Perhaps what is needed at the present moment is neither an evasion (or rejection) of ontology nor an ontology of flight or escape, but rather an ontology of struggle and resistance.

     Ontology may involve not only a study of what is (or what there is) or what it is to be (the meaning of being), but also a study of the categorical structure of reality (the fundamental categories of being). Metaontology may involve a study of the methods of ontology, and of what we are doing when we ask such ontological questions as "What are we asking when we ask "What is or is not?"").

      Just as there may be logics as well as logic, epistemologies as well as epistemology, knowledges as well as knowledge, so there may be ontologies as well as ontology.

      Aren't we all ontologists insofar as we're concerned with defining who we are, and with defining our own being?

      Instead of affirming that philosophy (or even our own way of doing philosophy) has some privileged position over us and can subject us to ontological investigation (or that philosophy itself supposes that it can subject us to ontological investigation), why don't we engage in a philosophy that arises from our own being and that is radically constructed or deconstructed by our own being?

      Black feminist or afro-feminist ontology is an ontology centered on the experiences of black women or women of color. It may examine such questions as "What is the impact of repressive and hierarchical social structures on black women? What is the impact of gendered power relations? What is the impact of social conceptions of the female body, regarding such issues as reproduction, maternity, body image, and sexuality?

      Ismália De Sousa (2021) explains that while black feminist thought centers on the lived experiences of black women, it can be deployed to better understand the experiences of people and groups at the intersection of multiple axes of connection. The ontology of black feminist thought centers on the lived experiences of black women in order to better understand unbalanced social structures of power. It also examines lived experiences as sources of knowledge development, and it creates the space for subaltern voices to be heard in dialogical daily practices.²

      Emilie M. Townes (1993) describes womanist ontology as "a radical concern for is-ness in the context of African American life."³ She explains that "its primary concern is concrete existence (lived life) and the impetus for a coherent and unified relationship between body, soul, and creation. In this sense, it is consonant with African cosmology that understands all of life as sacred."⁴ Womanist ontology is also an ontology of wholeness that rejects dualisms such as self-other, mind-body, theory-practice, and individual-community. It's a relational ontology that calls us to moral responsibility and accountability.⁵

      Liz Stanley and Sue Wise (2008) explain that feminist ontology "rejects binary and oppositional notions of 'the self' and its relationships to 'the body' and 'mind' and 'emotions'; it also rejects a notion of 'self and Other' that the self supposedly defines itself against and in opposition to."⁶ They say that

"The feminist approach to the construction of self, in contrast, sees 'self' as relationally and interactionally composed, its construction being historically, culturally, and contextually specific and also subtly changing in different interactional circumstances. Thus, an alternative feminist way of understanding the dualisms of masculinist ontology--of self and other, individual and collectivity--is to treat these not as oppositions but cooperative endeavors for constructing selves--both selves--through collective relational systems of action and interaction."⁷

      Moreover,

"The ontologies of the oppressed rest on forbidden emotions and thoughts--such as loves which are supposed not to dare to speak their name but do, and white masks of apparent acquiescence on actually rebellious black faces. That is, fundamental here are actual or suspected subversions, as subversion is named and categorized within dominant ideological practices. But the ontologies of the oppressed are not merely negatively inscribed as Other, a counterpoint to dominant group ontologies and experiences. Central to the political projects of oppressed groups is the construction of an everyday life, a mundane reality often hidden from oppressors, and with it an ontological system for explaining and thus also defining and constructing the very being of members of such groups."⁸

      Pamela L. Caughie, Emily Datskou, and Rebecca Parker (2018) also argue that gender ontologies are relational and intersectional. They explain that one of the challenges for such ontologies is to find ways to leave gender variance and nonconformity dynamic but still findable.⁹

      Calvin Warren (2018) says that the question of black being is a proper metaphysical question, because "metaphysics can never provide freedom or humanity for blacks, since it is the objectification, domination, and extermination of blacks that keep the metaphysical world intact."¹⁰ Being is therefore written under erasure, since black being exists in concealment and blacks are treated as objects. "Black thinking," says Warren, "must then return to the question of Being and the relation between this question and the antiblack violence sustaining the world."¹¹

      Warren (2022) also says that the "Karen call" (a call typically made by a white middle-aged woman who weaponizes her white privilege by calling for police to come and engage in surveillance of black people who are going about their normal daily activities, thus subjecting them to possible harassment and unlawful arrest) is a persistent social phenomenon that "performs ontological labor--a guarding and surveillance of Being--requiring a vigilant policing of ontological boundaries and a marshaling of violence (state sanctioned) to prevent black encroachment."¹² The Karen call is a response to a supposed ontological emergency (actually a fraudulent, pseudo-, or non-emergency), in which black people are seen as not having the right to be in a certain place. Warren says that rather than dismissing the Karen call as an abuse of modern technology in which a cell phone is used to activate a system of surveillance, we should see it as the unfolding and appropriation of Being as a racial privilege. The preservation of such privilege, and the maintenance of its racial exclusivity, requires vigilance and surveillance.¹³

      Ron Scapp (2013), in an essay describing how the killing of Trayvon Martin might be considered an ontological problem, says that at the core of this tragic event is the fundamental issue of what it actually means for an African American male "to be" in the United States, and that "there is, in fact, no proper or legitimate place for a person of color to be."¹⁴

      George Yancy (2022) calls attention to the tragic deaths of George Floyd (2020), Ahmaud Arbery (2020), Philando Castile (2016), Eric Garner (2014) Tamir Rice (2014), Trayvon Martin (2012), Amadou Diallo (1999), Emmett Till (1955), and others who were deemed "ontologically criminal, subhuman, and ungrievable" by those who murdered them. They were perceived as "threats"and "criminals" within a distorted white imaginary and pervasive anti-black-male social ontology.¹⁵

      Fred Moten (2008) explains that one way of investigating the lived experience of African Americans is to consider what it means to be seen as dangerous, and what it means to be regarded as an inevitably disordering or deformational force, while at the same time being absolutely indispensable to normative order and form.¹⁶ He says that

"the problem of the inadequacy of any ontology to blackness, to that mode of being for which escape or apposition and not the objectifying encounter with otherness is the prime modality, must be understood in its relation to the inadequacy of calculation to being in general...blackness needs to be understood as operating at the nexus of the social and the ontological, the historical and the essential...What is inadequate to blackness is already given ontologies. The lived experience of blackness is, among other things, a constant demand for an ontology of disorder, an ontology of dehiscence, a para-ontology...That ontology will have had to have operated as a general critique of calculation."¹⁷

      Marquis Bey (2022) also rejects ontological blackness and ontological gender as inconsistent with the abolitionist gender radicality that underlies black trans feminism. Bey says these ontological categories tend toward a reification by which race and gender are treated as if they were fixed and existed objectively, independent of historical contingency and subjective intentions.¹⁸

      Victor Anderson (1995) also regards ontological blackness as a tendency toward racial reification. He uses the term "ontological blackness" to connote categorical and essentialist languages depicting black life and experience. He prefers to use bell hooks's term "postmodern blackness," which he says recognizes the importance of race as an effective category in identity formation, but also recognizes that black identities are continually being reconstituted, as African Americans inhabit diverse social spaces and communities of moral discourse.¹⁹

      Charles W. Mills (1998) explains that some characteristics of race as a politically constructed categorization are that (1) it's essentially relational rather than monadic, (2) it's dynamic rather than static, (3) it's only contingently tied to a person's physical appearance, (4) it's usually vertically defined, in terms of hierarchy and subordination, (5) it may vary both temporally in a given system and geographically through entry into a different system, (6) it's unreal in a biological sense, (7) it's real in a sociohistorical or political sense, (8) it has to be maintained through constant boundary policing, and (9) historically the most important global racial system has been that of white domination over nonwhite people.²⁰

      Mills therefore says that in response to the "dark ontologies" of white supremacy (and of slavery, colonialism, and racial segregation), which have reinforced white domination over nonwhite people, revisionist ontologies can be undertaken in one or both of two ways: (1) by recognizing the metaphysical infrastructure of dark ontologies, and (2) by eradicating the substantive conditions of black subordination.

      Axelle Karera (2022) explores the use in contemporary black studies of the concept of "paraontology," which was originated by the philosopher Nahum Chandler. She describes paraontology as "a radical disruption in the hegemonic and purist logic of ontology," saying that it's a method of reading that conceals, retreats, or shelters itself from classical ontology, and that therefore offers us "the possibility of considering blackness beyond (though always with and against) the violence of its constitution."²¹

      Farai Chipato and David Chandler (2022) describe the "Black Horizon" of social and political thought as a perspective that, rather than leading toward a plurality of ontologies, deconstructs or destabilizes the very notion of ontology. They say that "the fugitive inclinations of the Black Horizon suggest lines of flight away from concrete ontological positions towards being as a poetics...It is an aesthetic method rather than an ontologizing practice, a creative becoming that cannot provide a new foundation for thought, but remains suspended in a creative, opaque uncertainty."²²

      

FOOTNOTES

¹David Miguel Gray, "Racial Ontology: A Guide for the Perplexed. Part IIIB: Sociohistorical Theories of Race," video for WiPhi Open Access Philosophy, 2017, online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcuabrV0Cok

²Ismalia De Sousa, "Centering Black feminist thought in nursing praxis," in Nursing Inquiry, Volume 29, Issue 1, Nov. 24, 2021, online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nin.12473

³Emilie M. Townes, "To Be Called Beloved: Womanist Ontology in PostModern Refraction," in The Annual Society of Christian Ethics, Vol. 13 (1993), p. 94.

⁴Ibid., p. 94.

⁵Ibid., p. 114.

⁶Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, "Feminist Epistemology and Ontology: Recent Debates in Feminist Social Theory," 2008, p. 348 online at https://ijsw.tiss.edu/collect/ijsw/index/assoc/HASH67b2/08dbd2b6.dir/doc.pdf

⁷Ibid., p. 348.

⁸Ibid., p. 355.

⁹Pamela L. Caughie, Emily Datskou, and Rebecca Parker, "Storm Clouds on the Horizon: Feminist Ontologies and the Problem of Gender, in Feminist Modernist Studies (1,3: 230-242), 2018.

¹⁰Calvin Warren, Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), p. 6.

¹¹Ibid., p. 7.

¹²Calvin Warren, "The Karen Call: Emergency, Destiny, and Surveillance," in Critical Philosophy of Race, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2022, p. 141.

¹³Ibid., p. 148.

¹⁴Ron Scapp, "Postscript: Being in One's Place: Race, Ontology and the Killing of Trayvon Martin," in NAES (National Association for Ethic Studies) FORum Pamphlet Series, Volume 1, Article 1, 2013, p. 5.

¹⁵George Yancy, "Introduction: Speaking Behind and To the Veil," in Black Men from behind the Veil: Ontological Interrogations, edited by George Yancy (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2022), p. 2.

¹⁶Fred Moten, "The Case of Blackness," in Criticism, Spring 2008, Vol. 50, No. 2, p. 180.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 187.

¹⁸Marquis Bey, Black Trans Feminism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022), p. 13.

¹⁹Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness: An Essay on African American Religious and Cultural Criticism (London: Bloomsbury, 1995), p. 11.

²⁰Charles W. Mills, Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 76-77.

²¹Axelle Karera, "Paraontology: Interruption, Inheritance, or a Debt One Often Regrets," in Critical Philosophy of Race, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2022, pp. 159-161.

²²Farai Chipato and David Chandler, "The Black Horizon: Alterity and Ontology in the Anthropocene," in Global Society (Routledge, August 10, 2022), p. 13, online at https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/download/0d3820337d2853d67931f13d88da3f5d71525602c55afa774c98cb40e9b3f81d/1997762/The%20Black%20Horizon%20Alterity%20and%20Ontology%20in%20the%20Anthropocene.pdf

      

Jean-Luc Marion's Phenomenology of Givenness

Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and theologian who was born in 1946 in Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine. He has taught at the University of Poitiers, the University Paris X - Nanterre, the Institut Catholique de Paris, the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne), and the University of Chicago. 

      His books include Dieu sans l'être (1982, God Without Being, 1991), Réduction et donation: recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (1989, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology (1998), Étant donné: Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation (1997, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, 2002), The Reason of the Gift (2011), Certitudes négatives (2009, Negative Certainties, 2015), and Givenness and Revelation (Gifford Lectures, 2016). 

      Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness looks at the question of whether givenness is available to us and how a phenomenology of givenness can be formulated. It also looks at the question of what are the consequences--after the reduction of the phenomenon to the object by the I in Husserl, and after the reduction of the phenomenon to being by Dasein in Heidegger--of a third phenomenological reduction, the reduction of the phenomenon to the given in it or to givenness.

      Wilfrid Sellars, in his influential essay "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1956), argues that many things, such as sensory data, material objects, universals, and even givenness itself, have been said to be "given," but that the sensing of sense data doesn't imply the existence of non-inferential knowledge upon which inferential knowledge can be based, because it involves the sensing of particulars rather than the non-inferential knowledge of matters of fact. He therefore calls the theory that there are matters of fact that are "given," in the sense that they can not only be known non-inferentially, but also presuppose no other knowledge of particular facts or general truths, the Myth of the Given. He explains that sensing isn't knowing, and that the existence of sensory data doesn't logically imply the existence of non-inferential knowledge. He therefore argues against a foundationalist theory of knowledge, which holds that there are basic facts that are "given" and that can serve as a foundation for empirical knowledge.

      John McDowell, in his essay "Avoiding the Myth of the Given" (2008), explains that there may be knowledgable perceptual judgments that have rational intelligibility in light of the subject's experience (such as when I can identify a bird's species from the way it looks), and that these kinds of judgments may provide non-inferential knowledge (of the kind of bird I'm looking at). We should reject the idea that the conceptual contents we put together in discursive activity are self-standing building-blocks, but we should be aware that the unity of intuitional contents may be given, and it may not be a result of our putting them together. Intuitional contents may then be able to be analyzed into significances or discursive capacities. Thus, there may be at least two ways in which intuitions can enable knowledgeable judgments: (1) by enabling judgments that have content going beyond the content of those intuitions, and (2) by representing a potential for discursive activity that's already present in the content of those intuitions.

      Willard Van Ormond Quine, in his well-known essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1953), argues that modern empiricism has been conditioned by two dogmas: (1) the dogma that there's a distinction between analytic and synthetic truths, and (2) the dogma that every meaningful statement is reducible to some logical construct upon terms that refer to immediate experience (reductionism). He says that both dogmas are ill-founded, because it may be difficult to separate analytic statements from synthetic ones, which can also make it difficult to determine whether meaningful statements are reducible to constructs based on immediate experience. He therefore rejects both kinds of foundationalism.

      How then does Jean-Luc Marion respond to Sellars and other critics of the given who've equated the given with the non-conceptual or non-discursive contents of intuition that are (mistakenly) assumed to provide the foundation for empirical knowledge? Does givenness have the same meaning for Marion as it has for Sellars? Does it mean the same thing in phenomenology as it does in epistemology?

      Gail Soffer (2003) explains that Husserl's concept of givenness as immanence doesn't at all correspond to Sellars's concept of givenness as immediacy. She says that "For Sellars, the point is to found empirical knowledge, to identify the non-inferential bases for inferences. By contrast, for Husserl the category of the given serves to thematize the subjective elements of experience (the immanent) and show how what is taken by us to be knowledge presupposes and emerges out of these subjective elements."¹

      Jeffrey L. Kosky (2012) also explains that "Marion has always contended that givenness is not a matter of some thing, being, or object given, nor does it appear in some form of empiricism; givenness is rather a mode of phenomenality, a question of the how or manner of phenomena."²

      Husserl, in his Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913) describes phenomenological reduction as a process of defining the pure essence of a phenomenon by bracketing empirical data away from consideration. This process includes the suspension of empirical subjectivity, so that pure consciousness may be defined in its essential and absolute being. Bracketing leaves pure consciousness, pure phenomena, and the pure ego as the residue of phenomenological reduction.

      Husserl explains that the opposition between immanence and transcendence is accompanied by a fundamental difference in the mode of being given.³ The difference between immanent and transcendent perception reflects a difference in the way phenomena are given or presented to consciousness. Some phenomena are perceived immanently, while others are perceived transcendently. Immanently perceived phenomena appear from within the ego's own stream of consciousness, but transcendently perceived phenomena appear from outside the ego's own stream of consciousness. 

      The difference between immanent and transcendent perception also reflects the difference between being as experience and being as thing.⁴ Things as they exist in themselves cannot be perceived immanently; they can only be perceived transcendently. Immanently perceived objects have an absolute being, insofar as their being is logically necessary and is proved by the being of consciousness itself, but transcendently perceived objects have a merely phenomenal being, insofar as their being is not logically necessary and is not proved by the being of consciousness itself. Only through phenomenological reduction can we find the absolute givenness that owes nothing to transcendence.

      Marion begins by explaining that the meaning of the phrase "being given" may depend on whether the emphasis is placed on the word "being" or the word "given," and on whether the word "being" is used as a noun or as an (auxiliary) adverb. Since the phrase may be somewhat tautological if "being" is used as a noun, Marion chooses to use it as an adverb, in which case, "being" posits the fact of the "given."

      What does it mean phenomenologically for phenomena to give themselves? Marion says that the principle set up by givenness is precisely that nothing precedes the phenomenon.⁵ Givenness is the phenomenality of the phenomenon. The phenomenon finds in givenness not merely an entry into phenomenality, but the entire mode of its phenomenality.⁶ 

      If the objection is raised that givenness must presuppose both a giver of the given and a givee to whom it's given (who comes after the subject, and whom Marion calls "the gifted"⁷), then we find, to the contrary, that not only does the bracketing of the giver and givee not invalidate the givenness of the gift, but it also characterizes it intrinsically.⁸ In the reduction of the gift to givenness, there can actually be a threefold bracketing: of the giver, the givee, and the gift. The reduced gift is purely immanent and is intrinsically, rather than extrinsically, characterized by givenness.⁹ 

      Phenomena not only manifest themselves, but also give themselves to perceiving subjects or givees. They manifest themselves insofar as they give themselves, and inasmuch as they give themselves.¹⁰ But they become absolutely given only to the degree they have been phenomenologically reduced. The more reduction, the more givenness.¹¹ Reducing givenness therefore means freeing givenness from the limits from any other authority, including that of intuition.¹²

      The given gives itself, and whatever gives itself, also shows itself.¹³ Indeed, the phenomenon shows itself only insofar as it gives itself.¹⁴ Thus, there are degrees of givenness, and degrees of phenomenality.

      The fold of the given is the gift given insofar as it gives itself in the progress of its own event. Givenness opens as the fold of the given, unfolding itself as it articulates the gift in terms of its givenness.¹⁵

      To the question of whether there could be some phenomena or quasi-phenomena that are irreducible to any givenness, Marion answers that since nothing arises in consciousness that isn't given, a non-givenness or negative givenness couldn't be given to us to perceive or apprehend.

      Husserl's "principle of all principles" is that "every primordial intuition is a source of authority for knowledge, and whatever presents itself in intuition in primordial form is to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though only within the limits in which it presents itself."¹⁶ 

      Marion notes that three characteristics of this principle are (1) that it guarantees intuition its brute actuality without yet grounding it in reason, (2) that it suggests there are limits or boundaries to intuition, and (3) that it claims that intuition presents whatever appears to it by giving it to us. Givenness presents itself to us within a certain horizon of consciousness, but in order for every phenomenon to be inscribed therein, that horizon must be delimited. Thus, "the two finitudes of the horizon and the I come together in the finitude of intuition itself. Phenomena are characterized by the finitude of givenness in them."¹⁷

      Inversely to the phenomenon that is limited in its givenness, however, a "saturated phenomenon" may be saturated with intuition and givenness. It may therefore be paradoxical, insofar as it not only suspends the phenomenon's subjection to the I, but also inverts it, so that instead of the I being able to constitute it, the I experiences itself as constituted by it.¹⁸ The saturated phenomenon is exceeded by, or has a surplus of, the intuition and givenness that saturate it, and thus it may evoke astonishment or amazement. Marion denies, however, that this is in any way to be understood as a "theological" case of phenomenality.¹⁹

      He describes four types of saturated phenomena: (1) the event (which may be saturated insofar as it may not be limited to a particular moment, place, or individual, but may overflow those singularities), (2) the idol (which may be saturated insofar as its beauty or splendor may overflow intuition and invite our gaze again and again), (3) the flesh (which may be saturated insofar as it may be the identity of whatever touches and what is touched, whatever feels and what is felt, and whatever sees and what is seen), and (4) the icon (which may be saturated insofar as it may be free from all reference to the I and may exert its own gaze rather than be gazed upon). The icon may gather within it all four modes of saturation.

      Marion also says that "the phenomenon of revelation not only falls into the category of saturation (paradox in general), but [also] concentrates the four types of saturated phenomena and is given at once as historic event, idol, flesh, and icon (face)."²⁰ He does then embark on a mode of theology by arguing that the manifestation of Jesus Christ, as described in the New Testament, is an example of the phenomenon of revelation. He says that the phenomenon of Christ gives itself intuitively as an event that submits to its eventfulness, in the same sense that Christ submits to the Father. As an absolute phenomenon, it saturates every possible horizon into which relation would introduce it.²¹

     

   

FOOTNOTES

¹Gail Soffer, "Revisiting the Myth: Husserl and Sellars on the Given," in The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Dec 2003), p. 310.

²Jeffrey L. Kosky, "The Reason of the Gift," in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, April 15, 2012, online at https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/e-reason-of-the-gift/

³Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1931), p. 134.

⁴Ibid., p. 133.

⁵Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 18.

⁶Ibid., p. 120.

⁷Ibid., p. 5.

⁸Ibid., p. 85.

⁹Ibid. p. 115.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 248.

¹¹Ibid., p. 16.

¹²Ibid., p. 17.

¹³Ibid., p. 69.

¹⁴Ibid., p. 173.

¹⁵Ibid., p. 65.

¹⁶ Husserl, Ideas, p. 92.

¹⁷Marion, Being Given, p. 197.

¹⁸Ibid., p. 216.

¹⁹Ibid., p. 218.

²⁰Ibid., p. 235.

²¹Ibid. pp. 236-238.

OTHER REFERENCES

John McDowell, "Avoiding the Myth of the Given," in John McDowell: Experience, Norm, and Nature, edited by Jakob Lindgard (Wiley Blackwell, 2008), online at https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/f/106/files/2010/09/mcdowell-Avoiding-the-Myth-of-the-Given1.pdf

Willard V.O. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in Philosophical Review 60 (1):20-43 (1951), online at http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/Quine/TwoDogmasofEmpiricism.htm

Wilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume I: The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956) pp. 253-329. online at http://www.ditext.com/sellars/epm.html

Jean-Luc Nancy's Being Singular Plural

Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) was a French philosopher who was born in Caudéran (Gironde) and died in Strasbourg. As a boy, he attended the Lycée Charles de Gaulle in Baden-Baden, Germany, where his father, who was a military engineer, served as a member of the French occupying forces in post-war Germany. In 1951, the family returned to France, and Jean-Luc attended school in Bergerac and then in Toulouse and Paris. In 1973, he completed his doctoral dissertation on Kant under the supervision of Paul Ricoeur, and he earned a doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Paris (Sorbonne). In 1987, he earned a docteur d'état (doctor of state) degree from the University of Toulouse. His doctoral thesis was on the concept of freedom in the work of Kant, Schelling, and Heidegger, and it was published as L'expérience de la liberté (The Experience of Freedom) in 1988. 

      Nancy taught at the Lycée Bartholdi in Colmar from 1964 to 1968, and he then became an assistant at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. From 1973 to 2002, he taught as professor of philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. He was also the Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Chair and professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School. He underwent a heart transplant in 1991 and later developed lymphoma as a result of immunosuppressive therapy. His essay L’intrus (2000, The Intruder, 2002) was a reflection on his experience as a heart transplant survivor, and it inspired a film of the same name, directed by Claire Denis in 2004.  

     Nancy had a very close longtime friendship with the philosopher and literary critic Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940-2007), whom he met in 1967, and with whom he co-authored several books and essays. 

      His many books included Le titre de la lettre: Une lecture de Lacan (co-authored with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan, 1972), L’absolu littéraire: Théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand (co-authored with Lacoue-Labarthe, 1978, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, 1978), La communauté désoeuvrée (1983, The Inoperative Community, 1991), Le sens du monde (1993, The Sense of the World, 1998), Être singulier pluriel (1996, Being Singular Plural, 2000), Déclosion: Déconstruction du christianisme, Volume 1 (2005, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, 2008), L’Adoration: Déconstruction du christianisme, volume 2 (2010, Adoration: The Deconstruction of Christianity, 2012), La Communauté désavouée (2014, The Disavowed Community, 2016), and Sexistence (2017, Sexistence, 2021).

      Être singulier pluriel (Being Singular Plural) considers the question, "What is the meaning of Being?" by starting from Heidegger's claim that Being is constituted by being-with. Nancy looks at how being-with constitutes Being, and how the original singularity of Being is not "one," but rather a plurality of modes of being-with.

      Heidegger, in Sein und Zeit (1927, Being and Time, 1962), says that Being is always the being of a being, and that Dasein (being-there) is the kind of being that belongs to human beings. Dasein is essentially constituted by Mitsein (being-with). Mit-anderen-sein (being with others) and Mit-einander-sein (being-with-one-another) also belong to the being of Dasein. Alleinsein (being alone) is a deficient mode of Mitsein (being-with) and wouldn't be possible unless there were being-with.¹ Being-with is an essential constituent of being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein), and only through understanding our own being-with can we come to understand our own being-in-the-world.

      Nancy thus considers how the meaning of Being is put into play as being-with. All being is determined in its Being as being-with-one-another, he says.² If Being is being-with, then it is the "with" that constitutes Being.³ Being as being-with is Being whose essence is "with."⁴ The "with" of Being, of the singular and plural, is the essence (and also co-essence) of Being. 

      Nancy's project is therefore to extend the existential analytic of Mitsein (being-with) begun by Heidegger, by introducing a co-existential analytic, in order to show that the co-essentiality of being-with is also the co-originarity of meaning, which can only take place through a sharing of being-with.

      Some key concepts in his analytic include

      Meaning (Le sens), which, according to Nancy, isn't something we can lose, because we ourselves are meaning--not in the sense that we're the content of meaning, but in the sense that we're the element in which meaning is produced and circulates.⁵ "Meaning is its own communication or its own circulation," he says.⁶ If we ask then, as Heidegger did, "What is the meaning of Being?", we must keep in mind that if Being is being-with, then the meaning of Being is to found in this "with," and our understanding of ourselves is to be found though our relations with others. Meaning is the sharing of Being with others.⁷ We can find "the meaning of Being not only as the meaning of "with,"" but also as "the "with" of meaning."⁸ 

      The creation of the world (La création du monde) is not the creation of something from nothing. It's the space where meaning begins, and where presence explodes in the original multiplicity of its division.⁹ It's the origin of each presence as originally shared. Thus, it signifies the death of God insofar as God is seen as the creator, first cause, or prime mover.¹⁰ The world comes into being wherever presence is shared in its multiplicity. Since presence can only exist as co-presence, creation also means existence and co-existence. Whatever exists co-exists, and "the co-implication of existing is the sharing of the world."¹¹ 

      The origin (L'origine) is not that from which the world comes, but rather the coming of each presence into the world, each time singular.¹² If the world is its own origin, then it occurs at each moment, each time we share the meaning of being-with. It forestalls direct access to itself by concealing itself in its multiplicity, but we have access to its truth as often as we are in one another's presence.¹³ It's also irreducibly plural, and it's "the indefinitely unfolding and variously multiplied intimacy of the world."¹⁴ Indeed, the world has no other origin than this singular multiplicity of origins.

      Intimacy (Intimité) is a relation in which Being coincides with Being. It's a relation to ourselves, rather than a relation to others. It's also a co-existence of origins in which our own being-with (étre-avec) is a being-many (être-à-plusieurs). It's a relation in which we see in our own existence the originary coexistence of others. 

      Being singular plural (Être singulier pluriel) is Being as being-with or being-with-one-another. It's therefore plurally singular and singularly plural.¹⁵ The terms "Being," "singular," and "plural" can be rearranged in any order, and none of them precedes or grounds the other. Each of them designates the co-essence of the others.¹⁶

      Community (Communauté) is constituted by the "with" of our being-with. It's our being-with (étre-avec) or being-together (être-ensemble). It's also our co-appearing (comparution) with one another. It's also our having-in-common something or being-in-common in some way. But it's not a matter of being "one," because our being-with is both singular and plural.

      In his essay, Eulogy for the Mêlée (2000), Nancy asks "What is a community?", and he answers, "What we have in common is also what distinguishes and differentiates us. What I have in common with another Frenchman is the fact of not being the same Frenchman as him, and the fact that our "Frenchness" is never, nowhere, in no essence, in no figure, brought to completion.".¹⁷ 

      In his book The Inoperative Community (2001), Nancy also says that when we think we have lost our sense of community, our community may not actually have taken place. We ourselves may be lost, rather than our community. "Community is always what takes place through others and for others."¹⁸

      Critique (La Critique) may be social, political, aesthetic, or philosophical. It may also be revolutionary or reformist, but it presupposes the possibility of unveiling the intelligibility of the real.¹⁹ It's an activity whose theory and practice, according to Nancy, must be supported not by an ontology of the Other and the Same, but by an ontology of being-with-one-another.²⁰ "The subject of ontology first of all entails the critical examination of the conditions of critique."²¹ 

Thus, the study of those conditions is what constitutes "first philosophy."

      First Philosophy (Philosophie Première) is a way of thinking about the meaning of Being without presupposing anything. "The most formal and fundamental requirement [of ontology]," says Nancy, "is that "Being" cannot be assumed to be the simple singular that the name seems to indicate. Its being singular is plural."²² Thus, the singular plural essence of Being is the foundation of first philosophy.

      Language (Le langage)  is the exposing of plural singularity. It's not inside the world, but is the outside of the world in the world.²³ In it, being is exposed as meaning, that is, as the originary sharing according to which beings relate to one another.²⁴

      Touch (Le Toucher) is the contact that human beings have with one another. But contact is beyond connection or separation. Contiguity or proximity may occur between a singular being and another, but not continuity, in the sense that contiguity or proximity reveal the separation that opens up. "All of being is in touch with all of being," says Nancy, "but the law of touching is separation.²⁵ A touch of meaning brings singularity into play, but it also brings into play the plurality of other touches of meaning. Touching is both singular and plural, and thus it takes place as being-with.

      In his book Noli me tangere: On the raising of the Body (2008), Nancy refers to what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene after he had risen from the dead, "Touch me not." But Nancy says that in a certain sense, nothing and no one is untouchable in Christianity. Even the body and blood of Christ are given to be eaten and drunk. In a certain sense, then, Christianity is a "religion of touch, of the sensible, of presence that is immediate to the body and heart."²⁶

      The deconstruction of Christianity (La déconstruction du Christianisme) reveals that the commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" privileges love for oneself as a model for loving others. We're told to love others by imitating the love we have for ourselves. But this kind of love is not some possible kind of relation, says Nancy, because it designates the relation of one to another as the infinite relation of the same to the same as originarily other than itself.

      Nancy also says that the "Self" is not a relation of a "me" to itself (""Soi" n'est pas in rapport d'un "moi" à soi-meme"²⁷). The Self is more originary than "me" and "you."²⁸ It's primarily the "as such" of Being in general. "Prior to "me" and "you," "the "Self" is like a "we" that is neither a collective subject nor "intersubjectivity," but rather...the plural fold of the origin."²⁹

      He also explains that "we" always expresses a plurality. But even if it's not articulated as such, "we" is the condition for the possibility of every "I." Thus, "From the very start, the structure of the "Self," even considered as a kind of unique and solitary "self," is the structure of the "with.""³⁰  

FOOTNOTES

¹Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 113.

²Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, translated by Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O'Byrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 32.

³Ibid., p. 30.

⁴Ibid., p. 33.

⁵Ibid., pp. 1-2.

⁶Ibid., p. 2.

⁷Ibid., p. 2.

⁸Ibid., p. 37

⁹Ibid., p. 3.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 15.

¹¹Ibid., p. 29.

¹²Ibid., p. 12.

¹³Ibid., p. 13

¹⁴Ibid., p. 12.

¹⁵Ibid., p. 28.

¹⁶Ibid., p. 37.

¹⁷Jean-Luc Nancy, "Eulogy for the Mêlée," in Being Singular Plural, p. 154.

¹⁸Nancy, The Inoperative Community, translated by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 15.

¹⁹Being Singular Plural, p. 54.

²⁰Ibid., p. 53

²¹Ibid., p. 57.

²²Ibid., p. 56.

²³Ibid., p. 108.

²⁴Ibid., p. 84.

²⁵Ibid., p. 5.

²⁶Jean-Luc Nancy, Noli me tangere: On the raising of the Body, translated by Sarah Clift, Pascale-Anne Brault, and Michael Naas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 14.

²⁷Nancy, Être singulier pluriel (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1996), p. 118.

²⁸Nancy, Being SIngular Plural, p. 94.

²⁹Ibid., p. 94

³⁰Ibid, p. 96.