The Petit Robert defines the adjective âlucidâ as that which is âclairâ, âlumineuxâ, âconscientâ. A lucid person is therefore someone who perceives or understands things with clarity, and a lucid mind or intelligence sees clearly, has a keenness or acuteness of vision. âLucidityâ as a noun is similarly defined in terms of clarity and clairvoyance but also as a capacity of penetration or perspicacity. The lucid person is therefore not just someone who possesses clearness of vision but also someone who is able to penetrate beneath the surface of what is immediately visible and, with a certain discernment of mental perception, bring into the light of day that which was previously hidden or obscure.
Reviewing these familiar definitions of the lucid and of lucidity reminds us of the extent to which our everyday language of perception and cognition, of intelligence and knowing, is shot through with the metaphorical language of light and vision, and therefore also doubled with that of obscurity and blindness. Within the Western philosophical tradition, of course, the intimate connection between truth and light or clarity is as old as the tradition itself, as is the association of ignorance and falsity with darkness or shadow.1 One need only cite Platoâs famous allegory of the cave to pinpoint one of the key inaugural moments of such a connection and association. According to the model of cognition described by Platoâs allegory, âthe upward journey of the soul in the region of the intelligibleâ (Republic, VII. 517) is figured in terms of a passage from imprisonment in the obscure and shadowy ignorance of the sensible world towards the light and sun of the intelligible world, where the ultimate knowledge of the essential Form of Goodness is the guarantee of all intelligence and truth.2 Here the being of truth and the truth of being are inseparable from the language of luminosity and light. Similar decisive moments can easily be discerned within philosophical modernity from the early modern period onwards. Descartesâs assertion in the fifth of his Meditations on First Philosophy that âeverything which I clearly and distinctly perceive is of necessity trueâ continues and renews the association of light, clarity, and vision with certain knowledge of being, as do his references, mostly in the third and sixth Meditations, to the âlumen naturaleâ of reason.3 Likewise Leibnizâs distinction in the essay âMeditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideasâ between clear or vivid knowledge (cognitio clarus) and dim knowledge (cognitio obscurus) further renews this association and greatly influences later thinkers of the German Enlightenment such as Christian Wolff.4 Later in the modern period the goal of conceptual clarity comes to play a central and ongoing role in the development of analytic philosophy, as is borne out by Wittgensteinâs comment in the Tractatus that: âEverything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearlyâ (4.116).5
Yet it is arguably in the modern tradition of phenomenology that the association of light and clarity with truth, knowledge, and Being finds its apotheosis. Yet it also comes, finally, to be eclipsed.6 Phenomenology as the study of that which appears or becomes visible to consciousness is fundamentally oriented towards the visual. This is confirmed in Husserlian philosophy by the central place it gives to the first person point of view in the method of phenomenological description and the notion of âphenomenological seeingâ. Likewise in Heideggerâs phenomenological ontology notions of âlightingâ or âclearingâ occupy a central place in his understanding of Dasein and Being. He speaks, for instance, of Daseinâs âluminous relation to beingsâ as the âlucidity through which we constantly seeâ.7 Yet, decisively, for Heidegger, Being itself is of course never a being or a thing. It is a temporal event of the revealing, unconcealing, or illumination of things which, as an event, is nevertheless withdrawn from their visible presence such that things are never entirely manifest or fully present as such. In Heidegger, the illumination of beings or entities is always doubled with an obscurity, a concealment of that which escapes from visibility, that is to say, the temporal event of Being itself. So light and clarity in this context, rather than being figured as an emanation of the intelligible world of Ideas and Forms (Plato), is a quality of the world of sensible appearance itself, but only to the extent that it is intimately and irreducibly bound up with obscurity. Arguably the Heideggerian account of Being as revealing (illumination) and concealing (obscurity) sets the stage, within the phenomenological tradition and its French legacy, for the eclipse of the figure of light as the dominant metaphor that organizes our understanding of cognition, knowledge, and truth.
What follows will trace a particular trajectory of this eclipse of Western philosophical âlumino-centrismâ from Nietzsche, via Blanchot and Merleau-Ponty, through to the present day speculative philosophies ofJean-Luc Nancy and Graham Harman. It will do so in order to highlight specific ways in which touch rather than seeing or vision have taken on a fundamental ontological and epistemological role within two examples of contemporary âpost-continentalâ philosophy.8 This displacement of vision by touch has implications for our understanding of everyday knowing and perceiving. Within the contemporary philosophical contexts of post-deconstructive thought (Nancy) and speculative realism (Harman) it also has implications for our knowledge of the world of objects and things in general.
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The world is deep and deeper than the day has ever comprehended. Not everything may be spoken in the presence of day.
NIETZSCHE, Thus Spoke Zarathustra9
In LâEntretien infini [The Infinite Conversation] (1969) Maurice Blanchot interrogates the role played by the figure of light in the very foundations of epistemological thought within the European philosophical tradition. He questions Nietzscheâs remark in Also sprach Zarathustra [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] that âNot everything may be spoken in the presence of the dayâ:10
Pourquoi, dit [Nietzsche], ce rapport du jour, de la pensĂ©e et du monde? Pourquoi ce que nous disons du jour, le disons-nous avec confiance de la pensĂ©e lucide et, ainsi, croyons nous tenir le pouvoir de penser le monde? Pourquoi la lumiĂšre et le voir nous fournirait-ils tous les modes dâapproche dont nous voudrions que la pensĂ©e â pour penser le monde â fĂ»t pourvue?11
[Why, asks [Nietzsche], this relationship between the day, thought, and the world? Why is what we say of the day also said with confidence of lucid thought in such a way that we believe that we hold the power to think the world? Why should light and seeing offer us all the modes of approach that we would want thought to be provided with in order to think the world?]
Blanchot suggests that the metaphor of light has become primordial in our theories of knowledge and our approaches to the truth or being of the world to the extent that all knowledge has been subordinated to âlâexercice dâune premiĂšre mĂ©taphoreâ [the exercise of a primary metaphor] resulting in our collective subjection to an âimpĂ©rialisme de la lumiĂšreâ [imperialism of light].12 Yet he also goes on to suggest that light is fundamentally duplicitous in its structure. For just as much as it makes things visible, Blanchot argues, light is itself invisible: it conceals itself in the very act of revealing things. Phenomenologically speaking, what we see, whether it be the luminescence or incandescence of light sources or the surfaces of things which reflect light, is varying intensities of brightness within the field of visibility as such. Light itself, however, is the invisible element which illuminates this field of visibility without itself appearing as a thing. This reasoning allows Blanchot to argue as follows:
La lumiĂšre efface ses traces; invisible, elle rend visible; elle garantit la connaissance directe et assure la prĂ©sence pleine, tandis quâelle se retient elle-mĂȘme dans lâindirecte et se supprime comme prĂ©sence. Sa tromperie serait donc de se dĂ©rober en une absence rayonnante, infiniment plus obscure quâaucune obscuritĂ©, puisque celle qui lui est propre est lâacte mĂȘme de clartĂ©, puisque lâĆuvre de lumiĂšre ne sâaccomplit que lĂ oĂč la lumiĂšre nous fait oublier que quelque chose comme la lumiĂšre est Ă lâĆuvre.13
[Light effaces its own trace; itself invisible, it makes visible; it guarantees direct knowledge and gives assurance of full presence, whilst withholding itself in indirectness and suppressing itself as presence. Its deception lies in the way it hides itself in a radiant absence, infinitely more obscure than any obscurity, since the work of light is only accomplished in the moment that light makes us forget that something like light is at work.]
Blanchotâs language slips between a phenomenological understanding of light as the medium in which the world of appearance shows itself to us as presence, and a metaphorical language of light understood as the clarity and distinctness of certain knowledge of the world of appearances. So light, here, illuminates the world of appearances and gives immediate knowledge but does so only insofar as it conceals itself as light. This means that although the world of appearance may present itself as simple presence, directly accessible to knowledge within the light of day and through lucid perception, its truth is never to be located within the immediate visibility of that simple presence. Phenomenologically speaking, appearances are a realm of light, but the truth of their being is irreducibly bound up with a withdrawal from light into a realm of obscurity. Blanchot continues with the metaphor of the day:
Le jour est un faux jour, non pas parce quâil y aurait un jour plus vrai, mais parce que la vĂ©ritĂ© du jour, la vĂ©ritĂ© sur le jour, est dissimulĂ©e par le jour; câest Ă cette condition seulement que nous voyons clair: Ă condition de ne pas voir la clartĂ© mĂȘme.14
[The day is a false day not because there would somewhere be a more true day, but because the truth of the day, the truth about the day, is dissimulated within the day; it is only on this condition that we can see clearly: on the condition of not being able to see clarity itself.]
So, for Blanchot, the metaphorical language of light that permeates the philosophical tradition is both imperialistic and duplicitous at the very same time. From Plato onwards, the argument might be phrased, we have relied on the figure of light as the vehicle by which truth, certitude, and knowledge will be achieved. Yet the fact that light effaces or conceals itself in the very act of illuminating a world means that the truth of light is not itself at any point illuminated but remains concealed.
There may be echoes of Heideggerâs account of Being as revealing-concealing here. Yet where, for Heidegger, the event of Being as revealing-...