Skip to main content

Ontoscopies

I've decided I want to pursue the idea of a monadology of fragments sketched in BUG as one of the three ontoscopies of contingency presented in the book. In the book I'm finishing about monadologies (called "The diaspora of agency"), there will be a section on fragments that will show how a monadology could sort out some of the problems that Levinas sees in Husserl's version (his monadology in the last Cartesian Meditation) while retaining the central features of the monads. The idea will be that the monad will be conceived as a unity of response - or a unity of decision - and in that sense will gain agency only by being appealed by the other, by an other that is seen as its composer - and as such entirely different from itself. The idea began to be rehearsed here.

In order to do so, I'm examining again my notion of ontoscopy. As I wrote in a recent post, the ontology doubts can be seen as the flip side of a monadology of fragments. I wrote we can use the two sides of Sextus' epoché as an inspiration: having appearances and suspending judgments, the former would pair with fragments and the latter with doubts. Now I was wondering that there are (at least) three points of view (ontoscopies) that we can see contingency in world:

1) from the point of view of the agents,

2)from the point of view of the results of the agents's actions and

3)from a transversal point of view where agents are taken by actions and actions by other agents.

We can see these three points of view as what if behind respectively composers, compositions and fragments. Also, contingency is seen as transcendent if we favor 2 but not if we favor 1 and 3. However, my point is that if we take 1, we head towards a monadology of fragments, if we take 2, towards and ontology of doubts and if we take three towards a rhythm-oriented metaphysics. In other words, ontoscopies are genuine points of view on things - and these three points of view on contingency are such that one looks at agency, one looks at their outcome, and the other is transversal.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev...
1 comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The underground of concepts: my talk at the Marxism and the Pittsburgh School Conference

In few minutes I'll be presenting this talk in the Marxism and the Pittsburgh School conference in the UCL. I can still change the text but this is how it looks like now. The underground of concepts: McDowell on the productivity of Anschauungen Hilan Bensusan 1. Jean-François Lyotard diagnosed the idea that concepts do the productive work of thinking as a deception. It is not through a dynamics of concepts that conclusions are reached and it is not with the decisive intervention of them that conflicts between alternatives resolved. Lyotard compares the pretense that concepts think with the mystification that capital works. He argues that “what works is not the concept, […] the concept is [like] capital which pretends to work, but which [only] determines the conditions of labour, delimits the outsides and insides, the authorized and the prohibited” (Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, p. 13). This diagnosis, frequently lost in the middle of an ampler argumentation around t...
Post a Comment
Read more