Martin is right (hello Martin) that Derrida doesn't see the end of
metaphysics as a way of dismissing metaphysics, but as an impossible
task to be endlessly conspired at within metaphysics. Heidegger did
seem to mount a much more concerted attack in equating all metaphysics
with onto- theology, which has led to a turn within theology
(Milbank) trying to show that both Platonic and medieval notions of
transcendence were not onto-theological. He suggests that this opens
the way to seeing theology as the only pure non-metaphysics (through
the polysemy of the Word), or to an alternative metaphysics which
does not begin from normative notions of Being.
I'm no expert on all this, but I have found some of this useful to
my work. It's helpful, say, when reflecting on Randolph's interesting
remark: if there's only meaninglessness, then any pattern can emerge".
This seems the limit-case of basic ontological openness, but I still
feel that it's too ontic (knowing the way of things) and the ontic
drifts back to an ontological norm. Given that
meaninglessness necessarily involves declining randomness as one of
its currents, is that the sheer opportunity of the new? Yes, but for
me it will a new in which a certain scarcity will inhere, and it's
the scarcity which gets to interest me more than the moment of
innovation itself, if scarcity is also one of the moments of
transcendence.
Why bother with transcendence? There is a sort of intuition (which
I respect) that transcendence involves an infidelity to the material
thisness of the world. That depends on a notion of what the finite
might be. If it is the in-finitely finite, it is open only to the
temporal sequences of its own inexhaustibility. If it might be a non-
autonomous finite world, then there is a possibility, not of random
openness (ie ontological stability) but a more radical openness-to,
an infinitude (not the mathematical one!)finitely apprehensible.
And isn't the non-autonomous a good thing, an openness not of the
order of techne? Isn't this non-autonomy the origin, not of the new,
but of the antiquity of desire, and isn't desire more nearly temporal
flow, a difference which offers-to?
Peter
Peter Larkin
Philosophy & Literature Librarian
University of Warwick Library
Coventry CV4 7AL UK
Tel: 01203 528151 Fax: 01203 524211
Email: [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|