Progress; or, The Repetition of Differential Sameness

Chapter two considers the centrality of the concept of progress in the enactment of the ontological conditions of totality and repetition. This chapter moves between an ontic and ontological analysis of progress to disclose the limits of the political possibilities of metaphysical humanism. In particular, the ways in which rights arguments are made by anti-drug war agonists working in Russia are analysed, and the repetition of differential sameness enacted through their discursive practice is disclosed. What becomes clear is that ontically the enactment of progress ultimately works to limit political and ethical activity within a narrowly defined range of possibilities, thus revealing the essential conservatism of human rights discursive practice. Ontologically, progress is best understood as the temporal projection of the subjectivity of the subject onto all of existence. In this sense progress is shown to be the central temporal concept of metaphysical humanism.

Introduction

In addition to introducing the aim, argument, and approach of the book, the introduction also includes a lengthy discussion of what Heidegger calls “the modern form of ontology,” i.e., metaphysical humanism, which is linked to both contemporary academic analysis and political practices. In doing so, the link between ontology, politics, and ethics is made, which frames the rest of the book.

Disappointment

For many today politics is characterized above all else by disappointment. Inspired by years of ethnographic research with the global anti-drug war movement, Disappointment addresses this disappointment by offering a framework for a politics that rises to the demand of our radical finitude. A politics that rises to the demand of radical finitude is a politics that finds its problems, antagonists, motivations, strategies, tactics, in a word, its call to action, in a world grounded in nothing other than the situations and existents that constitute it. This book takes up the challenge of offering such a framework by showing how ontological starting points have real political implications. A central argument of World-Building is that what is normally called ontology, politics, and ethics are actually three aspects or modalities of the same tradition, and therefore a critical engagement with one necessitates a critical engagement with the other two; that is, with the ontological tradition as a whole. This realization allows us to see how an alternative ontological starting point may lead to alternative political and ethical possibilities. With this as its task, Disappointment offers a critical hermeneutics of the dominant ontological tradition of our time and does so by means of both deconstruction and conceptual creativity. The politics of world-building that results seeks to move beyond metaphysical humanism and its exhausted concepts such as rights, responsibility and dignity, and begin to enact an ontology of worlds by means of such concepts as situation, dwelling, and attunement.

The Effective History of Rights

Chapter one considers a particular genealogical and effective history of the concept of rights to reveal what is called the conceptual proclivity of this concept. Beginning with the inter-Church poverty debates of the late medieval period, this history traces the solidification of this proclivity through some of the key political moments of the ontological tradition of metaphysical humanism, up to its centrality in contemporary politics. By conceptual proclivity it is meant that despite changes and shifts in the meaning and social uses of the concept of rights over time, the actual conceptual manifestations of rights tend to support certain kinds of social and power relationships, institutions, and practices across time. As such, it is argued, there is an essential repetition at the heart of the concept that resists the particular intentions of those who put the concept to use.

Philosophy, Science and Myth in Marxism

‘Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.’It is a common belief, shared both by Marxists and by critics of Marxism, that differences in the interpretation of this statement have important implications for the assessment of Marx's system of ideas. How we read it will affect our view of the unity of Marx's thought and of the continuity of its development over his lifetime, and it will bear crucially on our appraisal of the epistemological status—metaphysical, scientific or mythopoeic—of the various elements of the Marxian system. Among Marxists, members of the Frankfurt School have emphasized the paternity of Marxian metaphysical humanism in Hegel's conception of man as a self-creating being, while Althusser and his disciples have seen in the extrusion from Marx's later work of any such ‘anthropomorphic’ notion a guarantee of the scientific character of his historical materialism. Among Marx's liberal critics, it is widely agreed that he espoused an essentialist view of man and, often enough, it is thought that this alone is sufficient to disqualify his system from scientific status. No consensus exists, however, as to the cognitive standing of the several components of Marx's thought. That agreement should be lacking as to the place in it of a conception of human nature is hardly surprising. Different construals of the role of a view of man will reflect divergent commitments, not only in the philosophy and methodology of social and historical inquiry, but in moral and political thought as well.

Philosophy, Science and Myth in Marxism

‘Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.’It is a common belief, shared both by Marxists and by critics of Marxism, that differences in the interpretation of this statement have important implications for the assessment of Marx's system of ideas. How we read it will affect our view of the unity of Marx's thought and of the continuity of its development over his lifetime, and it will bear crucially on our appraisal of the epistemological status—metaphysical, scientific or mythopoeic—of the various elements of the Marxian system. Among Marxists, members of the Frankfurt School have emphasized the paternity of Marxian metaphysical humanism in Hegel's conception of man as a self-creating being, while Althusser and his disciples have seen in the extrusion from Marx's later work of any such ‘anthropomorphic’ notion a guarantee of the scientific character of his historical materialism. Among Marx's liberal critics, it is widely agreed that he espoused an essentialist view of man and, often enough, it is thought that this alone is sufficient to disqualify his system from scientific status. No consensus exists, however, as to the cognitive standing of the several components of Marx's thought. That agreement should be lacking as to the place in it of a conception of human nature is hardly surprising. Different construals of the role of a view of man will reflect divergent commitments, not only in the philosophy and methodology of social and historical inquiry, but in moral and political thought as well.