The Metaphysics of Existence Sandra Lehmann

Let me start by briefly explaining the background of the conception that I am going to present to you in this talk. I started to work on the conception about five years ago. Last year, I published a first draft of it in a small book with the title “Wirklichkeitsglaube und Überschreitung – Entwurf einer Metaphysik” (Vienna: Turia + Kant). The initial question of the conception was the following: Can we give a philosophical account of the reality of the being entities detached from the temporality of their appearing? This question was basically a reaction to the thinking of being of Martin Heidegger. As you know, for Heidegger, both in his early fundamental ontology as well as in his later thinking of “aletheia,” the appearing of beings is inextricably connected to the temporal form meaning that what beings are (or as what they appear – phainontai) is what they are becoming. Their reality is this ek-static becoming that is constituted by the three exstases/ékstases (lat./gr.) of time. Obviously, we can add a third term here whose etymology is closely connected to the concept of ékstasis, and this is the term “existence,” so we can get – through the cross fading of concepts so typical for Heidegger – a series of terms referring to each other: phenomenal becoming, ékstasis, existence; all of them indicating the irreducibly temporal character of being. According to Heidegger, for the human being, this temporal character of being takes place in language, so that what we can say about beings is never definitive by character, but bound to change, the itself fluid reference point of a constant hermeneutical effort. Together with the ontological primacy of temporality there comes a radical historicity of all what can be said of being and, eventually, of ontology itself which, accordingly, becomes destructed for the sake of “Seinsdenken,” the thinking of being of Heidegger himself. The consequences of Heidegger’s in my view epochal philosophical decision to turn the ontological logos of being into the finite logos of finite being become visible in its most radical development, in the discourse of deconstruction of Jacques Derrida. Rigorously, Derrida drives Heidegger’s fundamental thought figure into its aporetic abyss so that the execution of language is constantly confronted with its own impossibility, with the constant postponement of meaning, with the in-decidability of judgment which is constituted by the constant withdrawal of an always withdrawing being in language. In my view, the line of thought from Heidegger to Derrida not only lead to a paralysis of thinking that became more and more decomposed by its own limits; it also could not address a most simple fact, namely, 1    

the fact that while all accounts of the world that one gives may fail, nonetheless, they are drawing on something, and even if one cannot definitely say what it is one knows that it is not nothing, but rather that it is “some-thing.” So, there is a positivity in being that is as irreducible as the temporal character of its appearing. Thus, the initial question of “Can we give a philosophical account of the reality of the being entities detached from the temporality of their appearing?” in fact means: Can we give a philosophical account of the positivity of being or even wider, of the positivity of being which remains untouchable by the unfortunate aporetic self-entanglement of the hermeneutical logos? In a sense, in its core this question repeats the question Heidegger, in his earlier lecture “What is Metaphysics?” takes from Leibniz in order to introduce his own fundamental ontology: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” How can we understand this “that-there-is”, this existence? But instead of answering this question by drawing on the openness of being that is intrinsically connected to the temporal form, I intend to bring out that “that-there-is,” in a sense, is “before” time, that it remains irreducible to temporal appearing and, accordingly, to “indefinite definition,” even if it cannot be separated from it. So, if getting rid of metaphysics means to reduce the discussion of being to temporal appearing, I propose a metaphysical approach for I am looking for a supratemporal element, however, not beyond appearing, but – as we will see – “crossing” it. In what follows, I will introduce the three basic elements of my conception. First, I will present what I call “reality belief;” reality belief as the specifically human way to relate to that-there-is, thus serving as the entrance into the discussion of the dimension of worldly existence, or in other terms the dimension of that-it-is. Second, I will introduce the basic ontological figure, namely, I will develop what I regard as the two registers of being, the register of that-it-is and the register of what-it-is and, importantly, their intertwinedness. Third, I will talk about what I call the “quodditative content.” (“Quodditative” as derived from the Latin quod-sit = that-it-is.) With this term, I want to grasp the positivity of the phenomena apart from their appearing or being phenomena. This positivity is – as I will propose – both constitutive for the appearing of beings as well as directing them beyond themselves towards a non-phenomenal totality. One may also call the “quodditative content” “the content of that-there-is” or “the existential content.” However, this content is never to be separated from appearing and can be established only post factum. 1. Reality belief

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As far as I know, the first who noticed the philosophical relevance of reality belief was David Hume in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding where he stated that there is no reasonable necessity to “suppose an external universe,”1 but that it is a matter of belief or faith “almost before the use of reason”2 (in what follows we will also have to deal with this “almost before”). In his treatise David Hume on Faith, which appeared about 40 years after Hume’s Enquiry, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi adopted the concept of belief or faith turning it into a crucial figure in his attempt to refute the rationalist interpretation of the being world, starting from Spinoza and including Kantian criticism.3 However, for both Hume and Jacobi reality belief is situated in the epistemological discussion of their time. Therefore, according to them, reality belief has to do with the subjective capacities of knowledge, that is, it manifests itself as a certain subjective sensation or, in the case of Jacobi, it forms the core of perception (Empfindung in German; Jacobi himself translates “Empfindung” as “perception”). In contrast, I don’t regard reality belief as a subjective mode to relate to the world, but rather as something that occurs in being in the form of the notion “that-there-is.” To be sure, the notion “that-there-is” is formed by the human mind. Yet, its content cannot be produced by it for – and this already follows from Jacobi – that would be a contradiction in terms. If we need the concept of belief in order to understand our relation to the existence of the world “almost before” reason, or even, if it is a matter of passive perception as Jacobi emphasizes at one point,4 the content of belief, “that-there-is,” comes before both reason and perception. Thatthere-is constitutes the possibility that there might be the notion of “that-there-is”, i.e., that there might be an act of understanding in being in which that-there-is is captured. Thus, the question of that-there-is or of the existence of the world is an ontological and not an epistemological question. To answer it might imply an answer to the question of “what is understanding?” or “how are we able to understand?”. Yet, the answer to these questions will not draw on the capacities of the human mind to understand itself and the world. Primarily, it will have to deal with understanding as an entity in the being world which is there in a                                                                                                                         1

Quoted from: Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, David Hume über den Glauben oder Idealismus und Realismus, Löwe, Breslau, 1787, p. 34. 2 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, David Hume, p. 35. 3 I use the term “being world” here in order to mark the fact that the ontologies of this period start to identify the question of being with the question of the being of the world of experience. In this way, being in a sense becomes “ontified.” It becomes the sphere of objects that are encountered by human subjectivity and whose truth can be deciphered by the mathematics-based natural sciences. However, contrary to Heidegger, I don’t regard this turn as the beginning of the ultimate epoch of “Seinsvergessenheit” (forgetfulness of being) which calls for a radical thinking of being as such. Rather, I regard “being as such” as an empty concept. Yet, I propose to stick to the ontological difference Heidegger emphasized in establishing the two registers of “that-it-is” and “what-it-is.” In this context, the world of experience serves as a starting point; and the primarily descriptive term “being world” will then imply that the world of experience is more than the mere object that cannot be separated from the subjective forms of experience. 4 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, David Hume, p. 62 et seq.

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specific manner, namely, in the manner of intellectually reflecting or, more basic (and more Heideggerian), of being open to its own being there. Accordingly, for my conception the concept of “reality belief” serves as an entrance. It has certain phenomenal evidence: Being in the world, we do not only experience things with specific qualities, but also that they are or that they exist. This “that-they-are” has two components, a lighter and a more radical. First, while experiencing beings, we can ask whether they are as they appear to be. However, this question presupposes that we already deal with the things as something that exists. In other words: The doubt in their qualities presupposes that something is given to us, that there is givenness – givenness in the mode of that-there-is. Second, we might experience that something we imagined to be is not there at all. “It does not exist,” as one says. Yet, also this non-existence can only relate to a certain sum of qualities that suggested a certain form to us. Non-existence then means that this form is empty. However, it does not and cannot mean that instead of the wrongly imagined something there is nothing at all. The existence of that what we made out to be something remains, even if the supposed something was a case of total deception. Through the primordial and prepredicative certainty of reality belief we are directed to the general positivity of the being world, a positivity which precedes the possible inexistence of a thing I regard as something or even to all things I regard as something. For reality belief has to do only with that-there-is, it has no conceptual capacity; otherwise it would have to be regarded as a capacity of the mind. Obviously, since we have always to do with something up to the point that it would be nonsense to talk about pure that-there-is, there has to be a connection between that-there-is and appearance resp. between reality belief and the hermeneutical form that makes us talk about a specific something, about specific things. This implies that the term “that-there-is,” in fact, is an artificial or constructive term. In the being world, we will always have to do with that-there-is of something, i.e., with “that-it-is.” I will elaborate on this most basic interrelation that forms the experience of something in a minute. But before that, let me just resume the function of reality belief in my conception. Reality belief forms the entrance to the problem of that-there-is and, eventually, that-it-is. As such it serves an epistemological purpose, namely, it offers an answer to the question of how we can talk about that-there-is, above all, how we can access it. Yet, the moment you use the entrance of reality belief that what it made accessible, the mere givenness or that-there-is of the world, turns into an ontological problem which also includes the thinking of reality belief itself. For thinking itself is an entity that, irreducible to its own intellectual capacities, is there; it exists. 4    

2. The two ontological registers: that-it-is and what-it-is Let us now turn to the inter-relation between that-there-is and appearance. As I said before, pure that-there-is can only be regarded as a constructive term. In so far as ontology uses the being world, i.e., the world of experience as its reference point – and in my view, a return to pre-modern philosophical approaches is impossible, they can only be placed in the context of modern philosophical discourse (i.e. the discourse starting with Descartes’ cogito–sum) and re-evaluated afterwards – the problem of that-there-is is always the problem of that-it-is; it is about the existence of a specific something, something we can interpret and define, but also something that has its specific appearance independently from our interpretation. Accordingly, the problem of that-it-is is inextricably connected to the classical metaphysical problem of “something” which, again, is connected to the problem of stating something about something or of predicating something of a subject (“kategorein ti kata tinos” as Aristotle would have it).5 Thus, the problem of that-it-is can be extended to the problem of thatsomething-is and, eventually, that-something-is-which-can-be-the-subject-of-predication. Already if we look at the formula of that-it-is we can notice an original intermingling of thatthere-is and something as the subject of predication. That-there-is wouldn’t mean anything if there wouldn’t be something but also, something couldn’t be something if it wouldn’t exist. For the being world, the world of all “it” or “something,” two aspects or registers are constitutive, the register of that-it-is on the one side, and the register of what-it-is on the other. Let’s start by elaborating on the second side, the side of what-it-is. The first remarkable observation we can make here is that something is always a specific something, in other words, something as a specific something. Something is always connected with what Aristotle called the “logos apophantikos.” As a matter of fact, the logos apophantikos does not only concern human understanding as an enterprise of constant interpretation. Rather, it already concerns both the inter-relation between inanimate things as well as the relation of an entity to itself. When a stone and a knife interrelate they relate to each other in a specific manner; in other words, they relate to each other “as something” respectively. But also, if there is just the stone as an isolated entity (if that would be possible), it will never be just plain being. Rather, it will always be a specific being, and this is so even before we will

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I’m referring here especially to Ernst Tugendhat’s early study Ti kata tinos. Eine Untersuchung zu Struktur und Ursprung aristotelischer Grundbegriffe, Alber Verlag, Freiburg, 1958 (5th edition in 2003).

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identify it and call it “a stone.” The stone in itself is a specific something or again, it is something as something; its being-in-the-world is constituted by the logos apophantikos. As must be quite obvious to every well-informed reader of Heidegger’s Being and Time, my interpretation of the logos apophantikos comes close to what Heidegger calls the logos hermeneutikos, that is, a logos that lets beings appear as something on the basis of a specific

context

in

which

they

relate

to

each

other

(Heidegger

calls

this

“Bewandtnisganzheit,” i.e., “totality of involvements”). In contrast to the logos hermeneutikos, Heidegger understands the logos apophantikos as the logos of (classical metaphysical) predication that hides the contextuality of things and, therefore, produces mere abstractions of the being world. The reason why I stick to the term logos apophantikos has to do with the fact that it captures, indeed, what I regard as the basic function of the logos. Logos lets beings appear or, more precisely, it lets something appear as something. While Heidegger tries to get rid of this something that appears as … in order to establish the totality of involvements as the one and only sphere in which something might appear (something exists only in the totality of involvements, it is nothing beyond it), I attempt to maintain the something or, more precisely, that on which the logos apophantikos has to draw in order to let something appear as something and which, always retrospectively, can be called “something.” The apophansis, the appearing has to have taken place in order to call that what necessarily precedes its constitution “something.” However, I agree with Heidegger that the logos of the being world – one might also call it “the logos of appearing” or “the phenomenal logos” – is not static, but rather fluid. The appearing of something as something takes place in constant change. In other words, it is the manifestation of finite temporality. There will never be a final state in which beings and, eventually, the whole of being would come to itself. Rather, one constellation of beings follows the other and in each constellation they present themselves in limited perspectives. The mode of their being present is exactly this fluidity and lack of total presence. Yet, I don’t agree with Heidegger on that this is all, that the being world is merely the sphere of ongoing limitation, and that there can be wholeness only when an always relative end is reached which leaves the respective entity fractured in itself, a sum of fractured phases that, finally, dissolves into a new constellation between beings (most prominently, this is the case of death). This disagreement has to do with the existential register of the being world, with thatit-is. For Heidegger, that-it-is is givenness that immediately hands itself over to the form of temporality. In my view, this is so because Heidegger seeks to connect the problem of that-itis with the human experience of finitude. From this follows Heidegger’s first and basic 6    

decision, namely, that that-it-is is always already a matter of human understanding. From this, again, a number of implications result. That-it-is is always already a matter of understanding in that it opens up understanding but then understanding implies to understand that I am and, again, understanding that I am means to understand that I am finite and that I relate to the world on the basis of my own finitude. However, is there really this irrefutable connection between finitude and that-it-is Heidegger asserts? – As far as I can see, finitude has merely to do with the appearing of something, it is the mode in which beings appear. Accordingly, it concerns as what something appears, in other words, it is a predicate of all that appears as something. However, being a predicate finitude cannot concern the dimension of that-it-is or existence, because existence forms a register for itself that is characterized by the very absence of all predication. Existence has no predicative meaning whatsoever. How then can it refer to finitude or temporality? Obviously, Heidegger produces this impression by immediately connecting the predicative content of human self-understanding, namely, that I am finite, with that-it-is. But what follows from this is a distorted picture of existence. That-itis, existence is bound to finitude, and that means it becomes totally invested in the finite logos of appearing. 3. The quodditative content I now come to speak of the most difficult part of my conception, namely, of what I call the “quodditative content” or the “content of that-there-is.” As I said before, that-it-is is a register of the being world. It refers to the fact that something is. Otherwise it would be empty. Yet, from the perspective of that-it-is, “something” cannot be identical with the appearing something of the logos apophantikos, that is, with “something as something.” For if something in so far as it exists would be identical with something in so far as it is something existence would lose its distinctiveness with respect to the logos apophantikos. It would follow that either something would thoroughly be a matter of the logos apophantikos so that existence in its own right would be existence of nothing, or that existence itself becomes totally invested in the logos apophantikos and, thus, turns into a mode of appearing. However, both options are not the case. If I say: “This thing exists,” I cannot reduce its existence to any quality of its appearing to me. I talk about the existence of this thing, apart from its qualities. However, this existing “thing without qualities” does not turn into nothing. Rather, it is this thing precisely in so far as it exists. Accordingly, in so far as it exists is does not have a

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phenomenal content or content of appearing, but an existential or quodditative content that precedes its appearing as the thing that it is in the being world. To be sure, the phenomenal content and the quodditative content cannot be separated from each other. Rather, they refer to each other. On the one hand, in appearing as something beings or phenomena always refer to the fact that they exist and this existence is not nothing, but something. In a sense, it is the phenomena themselves if we regard them as detached from their appearing; it is the “thatthere-is” of the phenomena that is irreducible to their appearing. It may seem that there is a contradiction here because how can we talk about phenomena when they don’t appear? The point is that we can talk about the quodditative content only post factum or subsequently although, in a constitutive sense, it precedes appearing. The phenomena are phenomena in that they appear. Yet, in appearing they exist, and this existence is irreducible to their appearing. Retroactively, the irreducibility of the phenomena in that they exist leads to the quodditative content of the phenomena which captures their non-appearing, their nonphenomenality. It is something, yet something preceding appearing through which, apophantically, it will appear as something. One may also call this something which is formed by the quodditative content “phenomenon-on-the-threshold.” On the other hand, because we can retroactively say that the appearing of beings refers to the quodditative content it also follows that it is not arbitrary but specific. It is the quodditative content of that what appears in the being world to be something. Again, without this specific link it would be empty or even, it would not make sense to even talk about it. From this also follows, that the quodditative dimension of the being world is not an isolated dimension or a metaphysical background world that we could reach by any vision, be it mystical or of philosophical speculation. Rather, it is the dimension of the existence of appearing that is not reducible to appearing itself. But precisely because it is not reducible to appearing it cannot be the object of neither vision nor speculation. What we can say about it we can only say on the basis of the appearing world as the starting point. So, while the problem of existence is a highly speculative problem, if not the speculative core problem, it can only take the form of a speculation about the being world and not about some presumably other dimension of being. What are the main consequences of the intertwinedness of that-it-is and what-it-is respectively the connection between quodditative content and phenomenal content? As I said, that-it-is is irreducible to what-it-is, or appearing cannot capture the quodditative content. This irreducibility is absolute by character. Thus, we have to be careful when we talk about 8    

“the before” or “the precedence” of the quodditative content. “Before” cannot have a temporal meaning here, for that would imply that the quodditative content would have been captured by finite appearing. It can only refer to a constitutive relationship, that is, to the fact that the quodditative content – as the reference point of appearing “as something” – is the formative element in the constitution of the being world. But if we presume this formative role what then is the relation of the quodditative content to temporality? Obviously, the existence of something is involved in its appearing and, therefore, in its temporality. Yet, it cannot be temporal itself. In contrast, it forms a presence in appearing that cannot be made present, the presence of mere existence. From that follows that the quodditative content, in capturing the existence of something, also captures its detachment from temporality, and that means the total presence of something that is not yet appearing as something. The absolute irreducibility of that-it-is to temporal appearing implies the absolute and, as a matter of fact, absolutely positive status of all beings in so far as they exist. It applies even to the narrowest time period of the appearing of beings and cannot be invested by it. On the contrary, something in so far as it exists always exceeds that as what it appears. Through existence beings are always more than they appear to be. Thus, while the appearing of a specific something refers to the existence of this specific something it also refers to that which is beyond. It refers to its own totality; however, it will never reach it. Rather, the totality that is implied by the fact that something is, transcends this very something from within. As I said at the beginning, in a sense it is “crossed” by it. We can add now: It owes itself to this being crossed that is implied by the fact that it exists. It is formed by the inner transcendence which is the effect of that-itis. This is a new paradigm according to which the being world is not the sphere for which withdrawal, incompleteness, and lack are constitutive, but the impetus of non-appearing, infinite positivity.

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