The Other, the I, and the Enigma of Society –
From Durkheim through Levinas to Husserl and Heidegger
LUI Ping-keung
Department of Applied Social Sciences
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
The First Phenomenology for East-Asian Circle Conference
at
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
24-29 May 2004
Abstract: This paper sets out to propose a sociology, together with its accompanying
un-sociology, in which society is conceived as an impersonal other in eternal futurality, a
particular kind of enigma (Geheimnis). The sociological question is this: How can different
collectivities of subjects survive the attack of this enigma? The Levinasian collectivity (I’s in
the present, and at the same time as personal others to one another), the Durkheimian
collectivity (identical egos, without being alter egos to one another) and the Husserlian
collectivity (egos, and at the same time as alter egos to one another) are discussed. It is
surmised that each collectivity is able to survive by different means. The Levinasian
collectivity encroaches the enigma and survives its attack by surrounding themselves with an
ephemeral futurality. In contrast, the Durkheimian collectivity survives by ignoring the
enigma and keeping its collective consciousness structurally intact. In a similar fashion, the
Husserlian collectivity also survives by ignoring the enigma and keeping its intersubjectivity
structurally intact. In this way, Levinas’s ephemeral futurality, Durkheim’s collective
consciousness and Husserl’s intersubjectivity can be considered as social constructions of
reality that co-exist, thus constituting a sociology. On the other hand, the un-sociology that is
to accompany the sociology can be worked out as an enigmatic theory of society in a fashion
similar to Heidegger’s theory of truth and un-truth.
1
Introduction: Durkheim and Levinas, and Heidegger as well
Right at the beginning of his 1946/47 series of lectures in Paris at the College
Philosophique, Emmanuel Levinas announced his theoretical separation from
Durkheim and his l’annee sociologique group: “The aim of these lectures is to show
that time is not the achievement of an isolated and lone subject, but that it is the very
relationship of the subject with the Other. … This thesis is in no way sociological. It is
not a matter of saying how time is chopped up and parceled out thanks to the notions
we derive from society, how society allows us to make a representation of time.”
(Time and the Other, p.39) And toward the end of his last lecture, he did not forget to
announce once again his separation: “Beginning with Plato, the social ideal will be
sought for in an ideal of fusion. It will be thought that, in its relationship with the
other, the subject tends to be identified with the other, by being swallowed up in a
collective representation, a common ideal. It is the collectivity that says “we,” that
turned toward the intelligible sun, toward the truth, feels the other at its side and not in
front of itself. This collectivity necessarily establishes itself around a third term,
which serves as an intermediary.” (ibid., p.93)
Why was Levinas so keen to separate himself from the Durkheimians? There is
only one possible reason: By separating himself from the Durkheimians, he was able
to distinguish his own theoretical position. Durkheim must therefore rank high in his
theory as an opponent. In 1963, fifteen year after the publication of the lectures as
Time and the Other, in his first major book (“the great book” to Derrida) Totality and
Infinity, after criticizing Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations (the fifth meditation) and
Heidegger’s Being and Time, Levinas said, “Moreover, for Heidegger intersubjectivity
is a coexistence, a we prior to the I and the other, a neutral intersubjectivity. The face
to face both announces a society, and permits the maintenance of a separated I. …
Durkheim already in one respect went beyond this optical interpretation of the relation
with the other in characterizing society by religion. I relate to the Other only across
Society, which is not simply a multiplicity of individuals or objects; I relate to the
Other who is not simply a part of a Whole, nor a singular instance of a concept. To
reach the Other through the social is to reach him through the religious. Durkheim
thus gives an indication of a transcendence other than that of the objective. And yet
for him the religious is immediately reducible to collective representation: the
structure of representation, and consequently of the objectifying intentionality that
subtends it, serves as an ultimate interpretation of the religious itself.” (Totality and
Infinity, p.68) Immediately after this criticism of Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms
of Religious Life, Levinas went on to criticize Gabriel Marcel’s Metaphysical Journal
and Martin Buber’s I and Thou. On this roll of honour, Durkheim is the only
2
sociologist. That he was a worthy opponent in Levinas’s eyes is beyond doubt. As far
as I know, Levinas never mentioned Weber, and he mentioned Marx only in
association with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. We know that Levinas was not unfamiliar
with sociology; he read a good deal of it when he was a young student at Salzburg.
(The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, p.xvi)
But a textual interpretation of the relationship between Durkheim and Levinas as
such bears no fruit. I am going to show that there can be a more interesting theoretical
possibility between the two, that is: instead of being worthy opponents, they could be
good companions if their respective theories were modified to accommodate each
other. What could they achieve together? The idea of society as an enigma. It is on the
basis of this idea that Heidegger’s theory of Geheimnis is implicated.
Geheimnis or enigma is definitely not a keyword in Heidegger’s work – it does
not appear in Being and Time, and within my very limited knowledge of Zeit und Sein
(an imaginary book title Jean Beaufret, a French admirer of Heidegger, used to refer
to the sum of his meditations since 1930 and his publications since 1946) I can only
find a discussion on it in On the Essence of Truth. What I discover there is an
un-sociology – if I am permitted to follow the well-known Heideggerian play of
words, like truth and untruth. This discovery does not surprise the sociologist; Pierre
Bourdieu has said very clearly: “Heidegger’s philosophy is political from beginning
to end.” (The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, p.96) What is more surprising
to the sociologist is that with mild restrictions this un-sociology or theory of
Geheimnis can be connected to the Durkheim-Levinasian idea of society as an enigma.
The end-product? A beautiful hopeful for sociological hermeneutics!
Did Levinas learn the idea of enigma from Heidegger? We can only guess.
Levinas might have already read Truth (which was first published in 1943) when he
gave the lectures in 1946/47, but probably he did not learn anything from it. A
Levinasian scholar comments, “Levinas’ Heidegger is essentially the author of Being
and Time … Although Levinas clearly knew Heidegger’s later work, much more than
he likes to admit, he expresses little sympathy for it.” (The Cambridge Companion to
Levinas, p.10)
Levinas’s theory of alterity
Why was Durkheim an opponent that Levinas could not ignore? We shall go
through Levinas’s theory of alterity very briefly, first. Alfonso Lingis the translator
gave a brief but accurate summary – from the perspective of the I – in his introduction
to Levinas’s Otherwise than Being: “The relationship with the other in his alterity
consists in being appealed to, and contested, by the other. The movement comes from
3
without; alterity is not posited by any act of my subjectivity, the imperative word that
comes to bind me does not originate in a synthesis effected by my subjectivity
according to its own a prioris. The approach of the other has to be conceived as an
empirical and contingent event, even as an experience in a stronger sense than the
experience of objects, which are objectified by their images being thematically
assembled about poles of ideal identity.” (Otherwise than Being, p.xvii)
But what is the other by itself? In the first place, there are at least two types of
the other, namely, the other person and the impersonal other. We shall see in due
course that this distinction is crucially important to sociology. However, it does not
appear as an important distinction in Levinas’s works; rather, it appears deceptively as
a natural progression of his analysis. Thus says Richard A. Cohen the translator in his
introduction to Time and the Other, “Levinas’ thought progresses through analyses of
the alterity of existence in Existence and Existents; of time in Time and the Other; of
ethics in Totality and Infinity; of language in Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence;
and of God in God Who Comes to the Idea … [I]n Levinas’ work as a whole one sees
a progressive radicalization of the sense of the otherness of the other person.” (Time
and the Other, pp.3-4) But is not God an impersonal other? Cohen does not seem to
know that radicalization can mean the distinction of the impersonal other from the
other person. In fact, right in Time and the Other, which he translated, another
impersonal other, namely, death, has already appeared. In the two lecture courses
taught by Levinas in 1975-76, the last of his regular teaching duties at the Sorbonne,
later published in 1993 as God, Death, and Time, he focused on these two impersonal
others. I shall take death as an example. Jacques Rolland, a student, friend and
companion to the elderly Levinas, gave a useable summary (it is also an interpretation,
I think) of Levinas’s discourse on death in Time and the Other in his Postscript in God,
Death, and Time. I shall quote it almost in entirety.
Rolland: “While death is not announced in the title, nor pronounced in the initial
sentences of Time and the Other …, death occupies a determinant [dominant? – mine]
place in that work … That is, if death is always and undeniably annihilation, it is still,
and more profoundly, characterized by its unknowable quality [son inconnu –
Rolland’s]. Now, “the unknown of death signifies that the human relationship with
death cannot take place in the light,”1 and, consequently, “the subject is in relation
with that which does not come from him.”2 This is a relation that cuts across all those
that come to pass in light, where “the illuminated3 object is something one encounters,
but from the very fact that it is illuminated one encounters it as if it came from us.”4”
1
Time and the Other, p.70.
Ibid., p.70.
3
“illumined” in Rolland’s quotation, corrected according the original English translation by Cohen.
4
Ibid., p.64.
2
4
(God, Death, and Time, pp.228-229)
No philosopher denies that death is fundamentally unknowable. Levinas pushes
this consensus one step forward into a specific claim: Death is unknowable to the
extent that the light of Reason – which will attempt to turn it into an ideal object –
will destroy the subject’s relationship to it. Failing to bring his relationship with death
into the light, the Levinasian subject is different from the one that appears in Western
philosophy from Plato to Heidegger. Collaterally, if the Levinasian subject insists to
bring death into the light, at the price of giving up his status as a Levinasian subject he
will surely obtain an ideal object, but it will not be what death originally is to him.
Death is dead, so to speak.
Rolland continues: “On the contrary, the encounter with death is a relation with
what in no way comes from us. Thus death betrays the “passivity of the subject” at the
same time as it “announces an event over which the subject is no longer a subject.”5
In that sense, death can be called a mystery (later on, Levinas will prefer to use the
term enigma), if by this term we mean “something” – in truth, it is the non-object par
excellence – which cannot be possessed, cannot be comprehended, cannot be grasped
even by anticipation alone. Thereby the relation with the mystery or the unknown
quality of death is a relation with the other: “This approach of6 death indicates that we
are in relation with something that is absolutely other, something bearing alterity, not
as a provisional determination … but as something whose very existence is made of
alterity.”7 This is why death, as an ungraspable event, “is never now” but shows itself
as an “eternal futurity [eternnel a venire – Rolland’s].”8 For “that which is in no sense
grasped” – in the sense of death, and in the sense of the other – “is the future.” In
other words, or inversely, “the future is what is not grasped, what befalls us and lays
hold of us. The future is the other. The relationship with the future is the very
relationship with the other.”9” (Ibid., p.229)
That death is a mystery, an enigma; that it does not come from the subject; that it
announces an event in relation to which the subject is no longer a subject; that it is the
non-object; and that it is an ungraspable event – all these attributes do not distinguish
death as an impersonal other because the other person also possesses them. The truly
distinguishing attribute of death as an impersonal other is “eternal futurity”. Doubtless,
the face of the other person is a futurity to the I who is facing it. But it can never be an
eternal futurity because at the moment the other person (he is a person) moves away
from the I (also a person) his face ceases to be a futurity to that particular I. The other
5
Ibid., p.70.
“to” in Rolland’s quotation, corrected according to the original English translation by Cohen.
7
Ibid., p.74.
8
Ibid., p.71.
9
Ibid., p.77 [translation modified for consistency with the text – Trans.].
6
5
person is then in the ephemeral future. The truth is: the other person – as a person –
approaches one I to another I, and there are many I’s for him to approach individually.
In contrast, death – as an impersonal other – approaches all I’s (they are persons) at
the same time and as such it is unable to move away from any I. In fact, death has
nowhere to go, and remains therefore in the most inseparable manner an eternal
futurity to every I. Death as an impersonal other is eternally hovering like a hawk in
the sky over all I’s like chickens on the ground as they – each of them is an other
person – approach each other. A question arises: How do the I’s as persons face this
eternally hovering impersonal other called death?
Levinas’s answer according to Rolland: “Thus the relation with the other as he is
concretized in the event, or in the mystery of death, allows us to think the future
concretely, that is, quite simply to think it.” (Ibid., p.229)
Translated into the daily language, his answer is simply this: Although the I
cannot witness death itself, he can witness the other person’s death. The other
person’s death is a concretization of death as an impersonal other. That is why
Rolland says in the sequel that “another substitutes for the other uberhaupt, for the
other pure and simple, for the other in general.” This “another” is the other person
dying in ephemeral futurity, and “the other uberhaupt, …” is death the impersonal
other in eternal futurity.
Rolland continues: “Yet this future, “the future that death gives, the future of the
event, is not yet time.”10 In order that it [could – mine] become time, it would at least
be necessary that this future allow[s – mine] a certain relationship between itself and
the present (as presence of the future in the present or the “encroachment” of the
present into the future). This is a relationship excluded precisely by death understood
in its mystery or its alterity. Death, which permits us to think the future, is insufficient
to thinking time. For this, there must be another relation, another situation – another
circumstance, as Levinas will say later on. A situation is necessary “where, at the
same time, the event happens and yet the subject, without welcoming it, as one
welcomes a thing or an object, faces up to the event.”11 A situation, then, wherein,
without any grasp of the unknown or any anticipation of the future, there would
nevertheless be a rapport between the present of the subject and the future of the event
that comes to him without his assuming it. This situation, Levinas writes, is “the
relationship with another [that is, the other person – mine], the face-to-face with
another, the encounter with a face that at once gives and conceals the other [that is,
the impersonal other – mine].”12 And this situation in which another is substituted
10
Ibid., p.79, Rolland’s italics.
Ibid., p.78 [translation modified – Trans.].
12
Ibid., pp.78-79 [translation modified – Trans.].
11
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[substitutes? – mine] for the other uberhaupt [above all – Rolland’s], for the other
pure and simple, for the other in general, allows us to pass from the future alone to
time itself, where present and future can and must maintain a relation. (We will have
observed that, in this description, the past is not yet taken into account.) “The relation
with the future, the presence of the future in the present, seems as yet to be
accomplished in the face-to-face with another. The situation of the face-to-face would
be the very accomplishment of time; the encroachment of the present on the future is
not the feat of a subject alone, but the intersubjective relation. The condition of time is
in the rapport between humans or in history.”13 (Ibid., pp.229-230)
For Levinas, the intersubjective relation is not one between egos, and the other
person is not an alter ego. The Levinasian subject is one for the other, not for oneself.
As such, the one-for-the-other is the basis of the Levinasian ethics, which is neither
egoistic nor altruistic. This ethics is the rapport between the Levinasian subjects who
are facing death. This rapport is achieved in the encroachment – which is never a
conquer – of the present on the future. How is the encroachment possible? First, in
face to death, the Levinasian subjects are the I’s, each of them being solipsistically in
the present. Second, among themselves the Levinasian subjects lead a double life –
they are the I’s, each of them being solipsistically in the present facing an other person;
they are the other persons, each of them being ethically in the ephemeral future
approaching another I. When death befalls any of the Levinasian subjects, it splits
asunder the ephemeral futurity (that is, the rapport, the ethics) brought about by the
subjects (as other persons to each other) and lays hold on that particular subject (as an
I facing the other persons and death the impersonal other at the same time) in the
present. After the strike of death, with that particular subject taken away by death, the
ephemeral futurity mends itself without him. The truth therefore is: In the
encroachment of the eternal future, the present surrounds itself with an ephemeral but
resilient future. This ephemeral future is assumed by the present because it is the face
or the exterior of the present. Now, it is the ephemeral futurity brought about by the
Levinasian subjects face-to-face (that is, the face of an other person to that of another
other person, not I-to-I) that “allows us to pass from the future alone to time itself,
where present and future can and must maintain a relation.”
As far as I know, the idea of ephemeral futurity does not appear in Levinas’s
texts. However, it can be seen from my interpretation that it grows out of a theoretical
necessity internal to Levinas’s theory of alterity. His theory does not seem to make
good sense without the distinction between the eternal futurity of the impersonal other
and the ephemeral futurity of the other person. It can be seen later that the Levinasian
ephemeral futurity is in fact a social construction of reality.
13
Ibid., p.79, Rolland’s italics [translation modified for consistency with the text – Trans.].
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Society as an impersonal other hidden in Durkheim’s theory
Now we can look at Levinas’s view on Durkheim’s last major work, Religious
Life. Levinas is happy with Durkheim’s steering away from Heidegger’s theory of
coexistence, that is, “the face-to-face [relationship between two I’s] both announces a
society [of the we], and permits the maintenance of a separated I.” According to
Levinas, Durkheim’s theory of alterity is as follows: (1) Society is not simply a
multiplicity of I’s. In other words, there is something impersonal called the social. (2)
The I reaches the other person through the social, which Levinas calls “the third term”.
(3) The social is the religious. (4) The religious is a collective representation.
Levinas rejects society as a collective representation – rightly so for a
phenomenologist. His fellow phenomenologist Alfred Schutz does not mention
Durkheim at all in The Phenomenology of the Social World, and dismisses him in the
entire Collected Papers with only one sentence: “There is, however, no such thing as
a collective soul or a collective consciousness in Durkheim’s sense; social relations
are always interindividual.” (Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality, p.144)
However, Levinas’s rejection of society as an other – to be exact, an impersonal
other – by calling it “the third term” is debatable.
My argument against Levinas is this: Human beings are unavoidably social. If
death is the original sin of human beings, then society is necessarily the original sin of
social beings. If death as an original sin becomes an enigma when its sacrosanct
connotations are stripped off, why can not society be an enigma to the social beings?
After all, an original sin is nothing but a sacrosanct enigma.
If we look back at the history of social thought, that society is an original sin is
all too obvious in Thomas Hobbes’s thesis of bellum omnium contra omnes or a war
of all against all; he considers human beings evil-natured. Only when Jean-Jacques
Rousseau proposed the idea of social contract, the idea of society as an original sin
was gradually forgotten; he considers human beings good-natured and hence
redeemable from the original sin. But when an original sin ceases to be sacrosanct, it
does not disappear altogether, it remains as an enigma. That is why when Durkheim
proposed the thesis of social order in The Division of Labour in Society, society does
not thereby cease to be an enigma. Towards the end of his life, he tasted the bitterness
of the enigma personally when his son was killed in World War I. And Durkheim was
spared from witnessing World War II by his timely death.
We do not know whether Durkheim had ever changed his optimism about social
order. With hindsight, we have reasons to suspect that the problem of social order can
be fundamentally unsolvable. I tend to believe that its insolvability originates from
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society as an enigma rather than from the subjects as the I’s and/or as the other
persons. The intelligible sun does not seem to have shone on the enigma of society.
Now, let us suppose that society is an enigma. The Levinasian scenario will be
like this: Like death, society hovers over the Levinasian subjects when they are
approaching each other. Society approaches each of them, and is therefore an other to
each of them. It is of course an impersonal other. It is therefore natural to expect that
society is an eternal futurity to the Levinasian subjects. In face to society the
impersonal other in eternal futurity, the Levinasian subjects as the I’s in the present
encroach it while at the same time surround themselves with the ephemeral futurality,
the rapport, or the ethics, formed by themselves as the other persons. Just like death,
society befalls on the I’s.
How does the Durkheimian scenario look like? The Durkheimian subjects do not
face the enigma of society; they ignore it. Of course, this attitude does not prevent
society strike at them. However, the collectivity withstands the enigma in a different
manner. According to Levinas, the Durkheimian collectivity “feels the other [persons]
at its side and not in front of itself.” In other words, the Durkheimian subjects are
identical egos – but not alter egos to each other – that can be counted. It enables
Durkheim, following Aldolpe Quetelet, to suggest the notion of l’homme moyen or
l’homme type, that is, the average man or the typical man. This notion guarantees the
following fact: Even when society as an impersonal other in eternal futurity strikes off
any one member of the collectivity, it can never alter the collectivity itself. The reason
is: The Durkheimian collectivity will survive structurally intact with its collective soul,
its collective consciousness or its collective representation, even when it loses some
of its members. That is why society – by which Durkheim means the collectivity with
its collective consciousness – is always possible. That is also why the Durkheimian
subject is able to ignore society as an enigma.
One consequence is that if we accept the assumption of society as an enigma
then Durkheim’s famous anomie will no longer come from an ineffective collective
consciousness alone, but also from society the impersonal other. It will be seen shortly
that the first source is at the most contributory while the second one is fundamental.
Society as an enigma, a Durkheim-Levinasian synthesis
It is important to note that the Durkheimian subject exists under the assumption
of society as an enigma. I claim that the same holds for the Husserlian subject and its
variations such as the Heideggerian subject, the Schutzian subject and the
Merleau-Pontian subject.
The proof is straightforward. Schutz summaries the idea of the Merleau-Pontian
9
subject as follows: “Merleau-Ponty … [states] that, from the phenomenological point
of view, the social is not merely an object but, first of all, my situation lived through
in a vivid present …; the social appears to me always as a variation of a single life in
which I partake and in terms of which my fellow-man is to me always another I, an
alter ego.” (Collected Papers I, p.142) This summary I believe is also valid for the
variations of the Husserlian subject. Basically, the Husserlian subjects – each of them
is always an ego – are supposed to live in each other’s situation as an alter ego, and
the situations of all the egos are interwoven in the social. Clearly, the intersubjective
world is society to Husserl. And like the Durkheimian subject, the Husserlian subject
ignores society as an enigma, although it can be his intentional object. Ignorance is
power, of course. When society the impersonal other strikes off any member of the
Husserlian collectivity, the remaining collectivity can easily accounts for the event in
terms of its intersubjective structure. Although it is not an unattractive explanation, I
shall say that it falls short of a sociological explanation. I shall also say that the same
holds for the Durkheimian collectivity and even the Levinasian collectivity.
From the Levinasian point of view, both Durkheim and Husserl can be said to
have constructed a false ephemeral futurity and mistaken it for the eternal futurity.
Durkheim’s collective representation and Husserl’s intersubjective world are false in
Levinas’s view because in both of them neither the I is a one-for-the-other nor the
other person is a mystery approaching the I. Durkheim and Husserl never thought of
society as the impersonal other in eternal futurity; each of them mistook his own
construction as the fundamental (and the only) source of social sufferings. In this
sense, each of them mistook his construction as the eternal futurity, the true source of
social sufferings.
But the sociologist will raise this question: Why should the I take side with
Levinas? Who can prevent the I to be a Durkheimian subject at one moment, a
Husserlian subject at the next moment, a Levinasian subject at yet a later moment?
Besides, the Durkheimian subject and the Husserlian subject withstand the enigma of
society equally well as the Levinasian subject. Clearly, neither Durkheim nor Husserl
nor Levinas can offer a satisfactory answer. The freedom of the I defeats them all.
Expectedly, this freedom is not Heidegger’s noble freedom discussed in Truth, but is
exactly “what common sense is content to let pass under this name: the caprice,
turning up occasionally in our choosing, of inclining in this or that direction.”
(Pathmarks, p.145)
To the non-Durkheimian sociologist, the free I is by definition an enigma. And
yet he may not realize that even the freest I is unable to eliminate the enigma of
society. This is exactly where Weber falls short of hermeneutical imagination. For
Weber, “Sociology … is a science concerning itself with the interpretive
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understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and
consequences.” (Economy and Society, p.4) The enigma of society is eradicated from
his definition completely. And most phenomenologists are not different from Weber.
Perhaps we can suggest a sociological hermeneutics in which the subject as an
enigma in the present is facing society as an enigma in the eternal future. It goes like
this: The Levinasian ephemeral futurity, the Husserlian intersubjective world, the
Durkheimian collective representation and any other social constructions of reality –
with their respective claims for truth – are supposed to compete for the subject’s
precious moments of attention. At any single moment, there are subjects accepting at
least momentarily any one of the constructions. In other words, there are also subjects
hopping anxiously from one construction to another. But why are they anxious?
Levinas did not give an answer, and Heidegger’s theory of Geheimnis comes to our
aid.
Geheimnis, and Heidegger’s un-sociology
If society is an enigma, it is of a kind different from death. First, society would
not approach you if you were the last human being on the earth. Death is different: it
would approach you all the same. Second, that death is fundamentally unknowable is
admitted by philosophers and laymen alike. In contrast, very few sociologists and
even fewer laymen will admit that society is fundamentally unknowable. At least we
know that Marx, Weber and Durkheim did not. We shall see very shortly that society
is exactly Geheimnis, the kind of mystery or enigma discussed in Truth. In fact,
Heidegger’s theory of Geheimnis is an un-sociology.
Towards the conclusion of Truth, Heidegger summarizes his line of thinking
about truth as follows: “[The] decisive steps [of our thinking] … lead from truth as
correctness to ek-sistent freedom, and from the latter to truth as concealing and as
errancy” (Pathmarks, p.154) The second truth is in fact untruth. Heidegger is simply
playing with the inseparable connection between truth and untruth: “Considered with
respect to truth as disclosedness, concealment is then un-disclosedness and
accordingly the un-truth that is most proper to the essence of truth.” (Pathmarks,
p.148) Therefore, untruth is also truth. And the cunning Heidegger does not mention a
further step which is actually there in Truth if one reads it carefully enough, namely,
from untruth as concealing to untruth as errancy (contrary to Heidegger’s usage, I
think it is more appropriate to say “errancy as untruth”). The relationship of errancy to
untruth (as concealing) paraphrases that of freedom to truth (as correctness). In Truth,
truth is a tune played twice: from truth to freedom, and then from untruth to errancy.
We shall see that freedom and errancy “belong to the internal constitution of the
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Da-sein,” and hence the tune ends twice in Dasein. But Dasein is not our focus of
study, nor is truth (as correctness). We shall discuss mainly untruth (as concealing),
and in connection with it, errancy as well.
Geheimnis refers to untruth as concealing. Heidegger in Truth introduces
Geheimnis for the first time as follows: “Concealment deprives aletheia [Note: I
replace the original Greek word with Anglicized spelling to save myself the trouble in
typing – mine] of disclosure yet does not render it … privation [Note: I skip the
original Greek word – mine] …; rather, concealment preserves what is most proper to
aletheia as it own. The concealment of beings as a whole does not first show up
subsequently as a consequence of the fact that knowledge of beings is always
fragmentary. The concealment of beings as a whole, un-truth proper, is older than
every openedness of this or that being. It is older even than letting-be itself, which in
disclosing already holds concealed and comports itself toward concealing. What
conserves letting-be in this relatedness to concealing? Nothing less than the
concealing of what is concealed as a whole, of beings as such, i.e., the mystery
[Geheimnis - mine]; not a particular mystery regarding this or that, but rather the one
mystery – that, in general, mystery (the concealing of what is concealed) as such
holds sway throughout the Da-sein of human beings. … In letting beings as a whole
be, which discloses and at the same time conceals, it happens that concealing appears
as what is first of all concealed. Insofar as it ek-sists, Da-sein conserves the first and
broadest un-disclosedness, un-truth proper. The proper non-essence of truth is the
mystery. … Non-essence is here what in such a sense would be a pre-essential
essence.” (Pathmarks, p.148)
Despite the complicated (or even clumsy if one recalls the extremely terse and
neat prose of Laotze?) language, one message gets across unmistakenly: The
concealment of beings as a whole = untruth = the first and broadest un-disclosedness
= pre-essential essence = Geheimnis. (Of course, concealment = un-disclosedness, and
disclosedness = unconcealment. And “the first and broadest” is almost equal to “the
primordial,” had Heidegger not reserved the latter for Dasein.) For the sociologist
who is only concerned with human (or to be more accurate, social) beings, beings as a
whole is nothing but society. To him, Geheimnis, as defined by Heidegger, is nothing
but the first and broadest un-disclosedness – which is a pre-essential essence – of
society itself. Simply put, Heidegger is saying nothing more than “society is
fundamentally unknowable!”
What then is “letting beings as a whole be”? Heidegger: “To let be is to engage
oneself with beings.” (Pathmarks, p.144) If beings as a whole are society, then letting
beings as a whole be is simply engaging oneself with society. Since society is
fundamentally unknowable, engaging oneself with society must be disclosing and
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concealing at the same time. The reason is: The price of disclosing or trying to
disclose a mystery is always further concealment. It explains why untruth “is older
even than letting-be itself.” That is also why Heidegger said that untruth appears as a
“paradoxa” (Pathmarks, pp.148-149).
With his phenomenological apparatus ready, Heidegger draws out the full
sociological significance of Geheimnis and turns it into an un-sociology: “By
disavowing itself in and for forgottenness, the mystery [read: society as an enigma –
mine] leaves historical human beings in the sphere of what is readily available to them,
leaves them to their own resources [read: the social constructions of reality made by
themselves – mine]. Thus left, humanity replenishes its “world” on the basis of the
latest needs and aims, and fills out that world by means of proposing and planning
[read: meaningful action – mine]. From these human beings then take their standards
[read: meanings, implications and uses of social constructions – mine], forgetting
beings as a whole [read: society as an enigma – mine]. … The inordinate forgetfulness
of humanity persists in securing itself by means of what is readily available and
always accessible. … However, in taking its standard, humanity is turned away from
the mystery. The insistent turning towards what is readily available and the ek-sistent
turning away from the mystery belong together. They are one and the same. [Note:
Heidegger leaves un-sociology and turns toward Dasein at this point. – mine] … The
human being’s flight from the mystery toward what is readily available, onward from
one current thing to the next, passing the mystery by – this is erring. [Note: Does it
sound familiar to you? Did not Heidegger say something quite similar when he was
discussing death, the other enigma? - mine] … Human beings … are always astray in
errancy. … [E]rrancy belongs to the inner constitution of the Da-sein …” (Pathmarks,
149-150)
Heidegger’s account is an un-sociology with respect to sociology in exactly the
same sense of untruth with respect to truth: “[T]ruth and untruth are, in essence, not
irrelevant to one another, but rather belong together.” (Pathmarks, p.146) Heidegger
clearly knows that sociology as correctness and un-sociology as concealing are in
tension: “The openedness of beings as a whole [read: society – mine] does not
coincide with the sum of all immediately familiar beings [read: what sociology as
correctness already knows – mine]. On the contrary: where beings are not very
familiar to humans and are scarcely and only roughly known by science [read: what
sociology as correctness still does not know – mine], the openedness of beings as a
whole [read: the enigma of society – mine] can prevail more essentially than it can
where the familiar and well known has become boundless, and nothing is any longer
able to withstand the business of knowing, since technical mastery over things bears
itself without limit. [Note: Heidegger displays a dismal but amazing confidence or
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un-confidence in science. – mine] Precisely in the leveling and planing of this
omniscience [read: un-sociology as concealing – mine], this mere knowing [read:
sociology as correctness – mine], the openedness of beings [read: society as an
enigma – mine] gets flattened out into the apparent nothingness of what is no longer
even a matter of indifference, but rather is simply forgotten.” (Pathmarks, p.147)
Now we can return to the question that is left unanswered by Levinas: Why are
subjects (the Durkheimian, the Husserlian or the Levinasian ones) hopping anxiously
from one social construction (the collective representation, the intersubjective world
or the ephemeral futurity) to another? Heidegger’s answer: They forget about
un-sociology. But in their forgetfulness, un-sociology in its tension with sociology,
never stops signaling to them dutifully the message that none of these constructions
are the complete truth. Heidegger takes great pride in his own speculation: “These
[words] are … the ably conserved articulation of the truth of beings as a whole. How
many have ears for these words matters not. Who those are that can hear them
determines the human being’s standpoint in history.” (Pathmarks, p.152) As such,
society is surely an enigma of its own kind!
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