Skip to main content

Presence and ingratitude: the (restrict) economy of Beyng

Today I started a course on Heidegger's History of Beyng (and on his Meditation). Reflecting on the precedence of Beying over being and beings (and the very ontological difference) while having in mind the contrast between presencing and Ereignis in Time and Being, I explored the idea of the metaphysics of presence in terms of the present, of the es gibt, of the gift. The economy of the gift is the circle of gratitude: in order to show that I'm thankful to the giver, I keep the gift, preserve it and make sure it is no annihilated. My endeavor (the metaphysical or onto-theological endeavor) is to make sure a durable form of the gift is always available, at my disposal. This economic status - a certain restricted economy of being and beings, of what presents itself through beings - presides over the era of persecution (or preservation), of representation, of thesis (as opposed to physis) and maybe of machination. This era is inagurated by a dispensation of being (of Beying), an economic order based on presents and gratitude that places whatever is in the reciprocity circle. In contrast, Heidegger talks about the event (Ereignis) as an appropriation. If appropriation is where being lies - and not the other way round - then there is a taking over of the inhabited world by the events of Beying. The economy that is foreseen then - or found in the past - is one of ingratitude. The ingratitude forged by appropriation, or expropriation. Beying is out of a reciprocal, symmetric relation because it is not grateful but acts with appropriation.

The event of appropriation is what constitutes the history of Beyng. The event of making sure gratitude is brought about is one of the moments in this history. It involves the debt that engages us in a quest for re-presentation (archiving, preserving, restoring) against a background of nothingness. Bataille would have that the avoidance of death (and degradation) is itself an economic gesture.

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

Necropolitics and Neocameralism

It is perhaps just wishful thinking that the alt-right seemingly innovative and intrepid ideas will disappear from the scene as Trump's reign comes to an end. They have their own dynamics, but certainly the experiences of the last years, including those in the pandemics, do help to wear off their bright and attractiveness. Neocameralism, what Mencius Moldbug and Nick Land with him ushered in as a model of post-democracy that relinquish important ingredients of the human security system, is one of these projects that is proving to be too grounded in the past to have any capacity to foretell anything bright beyond the democratic rusting institutions. It is little more than necropolitics - which is itself a current post-democratic alternative. Achile Mbembe finds necropolitics in the regimes were warlords take over the state-like institutions (or mimick them)  to rule on the grounds of local security having no troubles killing or letting die whoever is in their path. Neocameralism pos...
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