No Borders Metaphysics

Alexandre Costa-Leite and I have been postulating a universal metaphysics that go hand in hand in the path open by universal logic. Such metaphysics doesn't stop anywhere short of the logically impossible for it is not tied to a logical system in particular. Rather, it considers all the different logics in order to take modal (and post-modal) notions such as necessity, causation and ground as indexed to a particular galaxy (a set of possible world corresponding to a logic). To be clear, universal metaphysics can take several forms; let's consider four: a ) It can take the form of a refusal of the great picture, and so there are no metaphysical conclusions that could encompass all galaxies at once. One could have metaphysical claims about each galaxy, but only in a contrastive manner and so the each-all inference would not hold - having metaphysical claims about each galaxy entails nothing concerning all the galaxies. b ) It can take the form of assuming one specific logic -...

Discussing Heidegger's Einblick in das was ist I considered monadologies - are they symptoms of the age of danger thinking through co-existence? I had in mind the kind of thinging thing that the Other is. Ge-Stell requires the conscription of the Other, the neutralization of the Other into a Gegen-stand , ie. a transformation of the Other in an exteriority exposed in principle, part of a world that can be in view as unveiled, as unguarded, as incapable of concealment. Now, there is a sense in which monadologies are attempts to bring in co-existence, the Other, into the picture challenging the idea of a world that can be in view. Having Being Up For Grabs in mind, I would say that also an ontology of doubts that addresses insufficient reason and a rhythm-oriented ontology that stresses the transduction lines between those seen and those that behold attempt to build metaphysics of the non-conscripted, away from the predicaments of the age of danger as they introduce what is up fo...

Today I presented here at the LSU my reading of the Einblick, guided by my attempt to build a (non-ontologist) metaphysics of the other and by my interest in perception - in the ethics of perception and in perceiving as a concern with what nears and shows. Below is the handout I distributed. I organized the presentation around several key oppositions in the text that interest me, most involving Ge-Stell and the idea of objects ready to be conscripted. Handout Nähe/Ge-Stell: The setting apart of all distances brings no nearness: nearness is not short distance. Nähe is not about distance, it's about a presence that is not forced, it's about not placing something in a map, but approach it where it makes itself present. In contrast, Ge-Stell is a self-gathered collection of positionings that works like a device that produces objects exposed, mapped, available, in standing reserve. The issue is about placing, presentating and presencing. Nearing is the essence of nearness – appr...

Reading Heidegger's Bremen lectures with an eye on the possible blind spots of the compelling contrast between nearness and positionality (Nähe and Ge-Stell). It occurs to me a grand hypothesis concerning the metaphysics of the other: the epoch of Ge-Stell, the epoch where being is pursued and therefore is in danger started with forgetting the specific strand of parricide that Plato's Strangers promotes and favors in the Sophist. His picture is one where five categories ground at the same plane and are intertwined: rest, change, being, same and other. Not-being comes from the friction between being and other. It is not nihilism in the Severino sense itself, but a branch of nihilism that forgot the role of the Stranger in the parricide – the Stranger creates a new kind of opposition, different from that of Parmenides, the opposition that is not an object standing against but a thing that, while approaching concernfully, interrupts. Interruption is not a negation in the sense of ...

The metaphysics of what is up for grabs  Hand Out Is there a metaphysical picture of the accident, the casual, the contingent? Metaphysics is often constructed as about necessities – necessary connections, necessary principles, necessary properties. *Does a metaphysics of contingency make it necessary? Metaphysics and contingency – the friction: 1. (Aristotle) Metaphysics aims at finding necessities (necessary relations) in what is concrete. Metaphysical knowledge is knowledge of the necessary (and the permanent). 2. (Heraclitus/Plato/Hume) There are (or could be) no necessary connections (and maybe no necessary properties) in what is concrete. If it is so, metaphysics cannot focus on the concrete. A conclusion: (Kant) Metaphysics should look for necessary connections (and necessary properties) somewhere else (for example in transcendental norms, or in semantical rules). Another conclusion: Metaphysics should carry on looking at the concrete and abandon the focus on necessar...

Today I was talking to Jon Cogburn about perception and the metaphysics of what is perceived and it became a bit clearer what is at stake in an agent-based metaphysics (of perception) in contrast to an Other-oriented metaphysics. In perception, an agent-oriented approach will attempt to understand what is perceived as an agent and as such as an alter-ego , filled with the agency and the autonomy I allegedly entertain. As such, the perceived can resist my attempts to understand it and it is viewed only to the amount it shows (or to the amount a negotiation between agents can achieve). In contrast, an Other-oriented approach has no assumption about the perceived other that it offers something and that it demands justice. The perceived tears totality apart. Here there is no model of the perceived: the Other is not an agent, not saddled with autonomy, not capable to resist. The Other is something other that demands justice for whatever is in offer. An impossible justice, as there are many ...

Reading an interview answer of Levinas about Buber where he talks about asymmetry as the main feature that distinguishes him from Buber. He comments on a text by Buber about Samuel, Agag, Saul and the Amalekites. Buber stresses that he always thought Samuel must have understood God's message wrongly - the order could not have been to wipe out the Amalekites in punishment and what God was asking from Saul was something else than murdering every one in a town as punishment. The bible ( Samuel 15 ) has that Saul went down to the town and destroyed the weak and useless but kept what was good and also took the king Agag as a prize. Buber prefers to believe God would never ask anyone to do that - to complete their deliverance from evil by doing further evil. Levinas claims that Buber was clearly not thinking of Auschwitz. In fact, he seems right as far as the biblical text is concerned - Saul regrets his sin of disobedience and Samuel states to Agag, before killing him, that he deserves ...

In Kant the other is only considered in terms of her autonomy, as sharing something with me. Kant's ethics is perhaps the origin of the idea of an alter-ego - the other me who is the subject of his ethics. Further, perhaps it is the very starting point of a general idea of ego, an ego that can be generalized like in the categorical imperative: don't do to other what I don't want done to me – and not don't do to others what they don't want to be done to them . Hence, it is moral to tell the truth to the murderer and enable him to kill because enabling someone to so something is an empirical consideration alien to moral issues. In other words, it is up to the murderer to be a moral agent. I should threat all the others in the same manner – the other is universal, they are universal mes. They are never other – I don't deal with the murderer as an other, not even as a murderer for that matter, but only as an autonomous moral agent like me.