1 âIf Theory Is Gray, Green Is the Golden Tree of Lifeâ
Philosophy and Non-philosophy since Hyppolite
Derridaâs claim that âthe problem of language will never [be] simply one problem among othersâ (DLG 15/6) could be used to define what we are calling âFrench philosophy of the Sixties.â1 In the Fifties, however, there were three signs heralding the approach of this philosophical movement. The first sign is Jean Hyppoliteâs Logic and Existence, which being a book on Hegelâs logic begins with philosophy of language; indeed, Hyppolite calls Hegelâs logic a âlogic of senseâ (LE 221/170, 228/175).2 The second sign is Maurice Merleau-Pontyâs âIndirect Language and the Voices of Silence,â which being one of the first discussions of Saussureâs linguistics ends up investigating silence; indeed, Merleau-Ponty claims that language expresses as much by what it does not say as by what it does say (S 56/45). Lastly, there is Martial Gueroultâs Descartesâs Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, which aiming to respect both the soul and style of Descartesâs Meditations ends up analyzing the structure of the work; indeed, Gueroult calls the work a âmonument.â3 Hyppoliteâs book, Merleau-Pontyâs essay, and Gueroultâs study, all three of which appeared in 1952, provided a spectrum of philosophical possibilities. In 1969 Michel Foucault places Hyppolite in the middle of it:
Hyppolite intentionally put his own project into confrontation with two of the great works which were contemporaneous with him ...: that of Merleau-Ponty, which was the investigation of the originary articulation of sense and existence and that of Gueroult, which was the axiomatic analysis of coherence and philosophical structures. Between these two benchmarks, Hyppoliteâs work has always been, from the beginning, the attempt to name and to bring to lightâin a discourse at once philosophical and historicalâthe point where the tragedy of life makes sense in a Logos, where the genesis of a thought becomes the structure of a system, where existence finds itself articulated in a Logic. Between a phenomenology of pre-discursive experienceâĂ la Merleau-Pontyâand an epistemology of philosophical systemsâas we find in GueroultâHyppoliteâs work can be read as a phenomenology of philosophical rigor as well as an epistemology of philosophically reflected existence. (EU 782â83)
Foucault is giving us here a spectrum, a diffraction, of philosophical options with Hyppolite in the middle. The âmiddleâ that Hyppoliteâs name represents is expressed by one comment from Logic and Existence: âimmanence is completeâ (LE 230/176). The announcement of the completion of immanence is why Foucault states (again in 1969) that Hyppoliteâs Logic and Existence formulates âall the problems which are oursâ (EU 785). The most basic problem is this: how to conceive, within immanence, the difference between logic and existence (the Logos and time), structure and genesis, thought and experience, the said and the unsaid, monument and soul, philosophy and non-philosophy. All of the great French philosophy from the Sixties amounts to a series of solutions to this most basic problem. Therefore, while in the Fifties Hyppolite occupied a middle between a phenomenology of pre-discursive experience and an epistemology of philosophical systems, in the the Sixties, the spectrum, so to speak, narrows to a point with the result that Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault themselves form a spectrum across the âmiddleâ called âHyppolite.â Thirty years later, our task is clear: in order to construct new philosophical conceptsâbeyond diffĂ©rance, the trace, and deconstruction; beyond difference, repetition, and construction; beyond the statement, force, and genealogyâwe must determine the philosophical options that expand across the âHyppoliteâ middle. We are going to begin with Foucault.
I. Only If Theory Is Gray, Then the Golden Tree of Life Is Green
It is possible to determine with some confidence the philosophical connection between Foucault and Hyppolite since Foucault has written, at least briefly, about Hyppolite explicitly: his 1969 eulogy âJean Hyppolite. 1907â1968â (from which I quoted above) and the end of his 1970 inaugural address at the CollĂšge de France, LâOrdre du discourse. These two works reinforce one another in their attempt to define Hyppoliteâs âphilosophical and historical discourse.â Hyppoliteâs enterprise, according to Foucault, is not that of a historian of philosophy (EU 780) and not that of a historian of Hegelâs philosophy (OD 76/236). Instead, Hyppolite is a historian of âphilosophic thoughtâ (EU 780); as such, he brings about âdisplacementsâ in Hegelâs philosophy (OD 77/236). The displacements come about as responses to the one question that guides this history of philosophic thought: âwhat is philosophical finitude?â (EU 781). For Foucault, philosophical finitude refers to the limits that particular philosophies fix and always trangress, the limits of their beginnings and of their ends (EU 781). Hegelâs philosophy, in particular, marks for Hyppolite the moment when philosophy âbecame entitled to the problem of its beginning and its completionâ (achĂšvement) (EU 784). Particular philosophies always transgress the limits of beginning and end because of the type of relation that philosophy has with non-philosophy. Foucault claims that philosophy maintains a relation with what it is notâscience or everyday life, religion or justice, desire or death (EU 783)âthat is at once interior, already there silently inhabiting non-philosophy, and exterior, never necessarily implicated by any science or practice (EU 783). This very specific sort of relation means that philosophy itself never actualizes itself in any discourse or system (EU 780). Either a philosophic discourse is interior to non-philosophy and therefore is not yet itself but still death; or it is exterior to non-philosophy, and therefore it is itself, but as philosophy it loses contact with what gave it life (EU 784). Since philosophy itself never actualizes itself in any particular discourse or work, philosophy for Hyppolite becomes a âtask without endpoint [sans terme]â (OD 77/236). Never complete, philosophic thought is devoted to the âparadox of repetition,â4 and the paradox, according to Foucault, takes the form of a âquestion that is constantly taken up again in life, death, and memoryâ (OD 77/236).5 According to Foucault, therefore, Hyppolite transforms âthe Hegelian theme of the completion of self-consciousness into a theme of repetitive interrogationâ (OD 77/236).
When Foucault states that Hyppolite transforms Hegelâs conception of philosophy into a âtask without endpoint,â Foucault interprets this task as âa task always rebegun [recommencĂ©e]â (OD 77/236). Moreover, he says that philosophy in Hyppolite âre-establishes contact with non-philosophy,â approaches âas close as possible not to what completes it but to what precedesâ (OD 78/236; cf. EU 782). What is at issue, therefore, in Foucaultâs own philosophy is the re-beginning of philosophy (and not its end or ends); hence the importance of the word âarcheologyâ in Foucault (and not eschatology). The archeological concern is why he asks, âWhat is the beginning of philosophy?â (OD 78/236). In the eulogy, Foucault answers this question by saying that philosophic thought in Hyppolite is the âmoment when philosophic discourse makes up its mind, uproots itself from its refusal to speak [mutism], and distances itself from what henceforth is going to appear as non-philosophyâ (EU 780, cf. 783). What the historian of philosophic thought must do is enter into this moment. When that happens, one enters into the space of philosophy itself, which systematically erases oneâs own subjectivity (EU 781). The historian of philosophic thought remembers in the Bergsonian sense; âone has to form the sharp point, actual and free, of a past which has lost nothing of its being; one regrasps oneâs shadow by a sort of self-torsionâ (EU 782). This memorial moment, in which one loses oneâs subjectivity and thus turns this memorial moment into a moment of counter-memory, is when discourse becomes the voice of no one (personne) (EU 779; OD 7/215, 81/237; LE 6/5); it becomes gray, and then it is possible âto open [a philosophic work up and] ... deploy itâ so that it lives (EU 781). Foucault therefore concludes his eulogy by saying that, with Hyppolite, it is always necessary to recall that âif theory is gray, green is the golden tree of lifeâ (EU 785).
This sentenceââIf theory is gray, green is the golden tree of lifeââalludes to lines 2038â39 from Goetheâs Faust (Part I, âStudyâ). Hegel quotes these lines in the chapter on Reason in The Phenomenology of Spirit (in particular, paragraph 360), and Hyppolite emphasizes them in his analysis of Hegelâs so-called âphilosophy of languageâ in Logic and Existence, Part 1. But, what is most important is that Foucault changes the structure of the sentence. In the Goethe original and in Hegel and in Hyppolite, the sentence is a conjunction: âtheory is gray and green is the golden tree of lifeâ; in Foucaultâs reformulation, it is a conditional: âif theory is gray, green is the golden tree of life.â For Hyppolite, interpreting Hegel, this sentence, uttered by Faust, represents a decision to attempt âa turn backâ (un retour en arriĂšre) from knowledge, mediation, and language to experience, immediacy, and silence (LE 19â21/16â18). Gretchen and Faust, in other words, represent the type of consciousness that despises âthe understanding and science, the supreme gifts of manâ (lines 1850â51). For Hyppolite, by âturning backâ to the immediacy of pleasure, as Mephisto recommends, this type of consciousness thinks that it is plunging headfirst from dead theory into life itself, but, as Hegel shows, actually it is rushing straight into mute experience, into the ineffable, into indeterminateness. In short, this consciousness goes into the ground: zu Grunde gehen. Instead of plunging into concrete particularity, this consciousness ends up in abstract universality; instead of ending up in life, it ends up in death. For Foucault, however, changing the structure from a conjunction to a conditional, this sentence represents a necessity to attempt to re-begin, to return (cf. PD 534/34). For Foucault, it is necessary that theory be gray; if theory is gray, then the golden tree of life is green. In other words, in this formulation, lifeâs enhancement depends necessarily on theory being gray; theory must become gray. In order for theory to become gray, for Foucault, one must enter into the ineffable experience that Foucault in Histoire de la folie Ă lâĂąge classique called madness. The truth of Hegelâs discussion, as presented by Hyppolite, is that the subject goes into the ground in such a moment of pleasure. In his 1966 essay on Blanchot, âThe Thought from the Outside,â Foucault, speaking of Ulysses, describes the moment in the following way:
In order for the narrative that will never die to be born, one must listen but remain at the mast, wrists and ankles tied; one must vanquish all desire by a ruse that does violence to itself; one must experience all suffering by remaining at the threshold of the alluring abyss; one must finally find oneself beyond song, as if one had crossed death while still alive only to restore it in a second language. (PD 538/42)
Madness alone occurs if one only rushes to the sirens and does not remain tied to the mast; not to remain tied is stupidity and even suicide (cf. DR 197â98/152). What Ulysses experiences instead, as he remains tied to the mast and listening, is madness bent into thought. He experiences philosophic thought or the thought from the outside. The silence into which Ulysses enters is not subjective and interior; it is a âmutism,â a refusal to speak, which allows one to listen. This âruseâ or experiment which problematizes desire places one âthis sideâ (not beyond) the limit of discourse, in âthe placeless placeâ (PD 537/52), in âthe intersticesâ (OD 7/215), in forces (PD 525/27), in what must be called the âinformalâ (informel) (F 120/112â13, 129/121). In the placeless place, death is partial and continuous with life; here, one dies, on meurt (F 102/95). Only by crossing death in this sense, only by living as the set of functions which resist death (RR 71/54; F 102/95),6 can one hear the voice of âno one,â personne (which is not the voice of the subject called âUlyssesâ). Only then will the narrative that will never die be born. Only then, subjectless, does discourse become a monument of this singular moment; only then do forces get folded, pleasure used, ethics invented.7 Only if theory is gray, then the golden tree of life is green.
II. Foucaultâs Three Great Concepts: Metaphysics, the Actual, and Genealogy
Any attempt to determine the Foucaultian option of the âHyppoliteâ middle must include a discussion of Foucaultâs famous 1971 essay âNietzsche, Genealogy, History,â which was first published in a volume entitled Hommage Ă Jean Hyppolite. In fact, the color gray can be used to define the three great concepts that Foucault presents in this essay. The first great concept is that of metaphysics. Metaphysics is not gray; it is blue. To say that the color of metaphysics is blue for Foucault means that its gaze is skyward, âlofty and profoundâ (NGH 146/140), toward âdistances and heightsâ (NGH 162/155). In regard to history, metaphysics adopts a supra-historical perspective (NGH 159/152, 167/160). Foucault provides two names for the supra-historical perspective: Platonism (NGH 167/160) and Egyptianism (NGH 159/152, 163/156). What joins these two together, for Foucault (following Nietzsche), is Socrates. Egyptianism is the belief in the immortality of the soul, the proclamation of the existence of a âbeyondâ as a promise of a reward (NGH 162/156), a âmillennial endâ (NGH 160/154). Socrates accepts this Egyptian religious belief. What then defines Platonism, according to Foucault, is its success in âfoundingâ the religious belief (dâĂȘtre parvenu Ă la [la croyance Ă lâimmortalitĂ©] fonder) (NGH 167/160). Platonism founds the belief in the immortality of the soul by means of universals (NGH 165/158), objectivity (NGH 165/158), and the certainty of absolutes (NGH 159/153). Relying on universals, objectivity, and the certainty of absolutes, metaphysics conceives history in a number of ways: âthe meta-historical deployment of ideal meaning and indefinite teleologiesâ (NGH 146/140); âmonotonous purposivenessâ (NHG 145/139); âto bring to light slowly a meaning buried within the origin (NGH 158/151); âa teleological movement or natural structurationâ (NGH 161/154); âthe obscure work of a destination ... the anticipatory power of senseâ (NGH 155/148). Foucault specifies these formulations by examining the historianâs concept of origin (exact essence or identity of things, greatest perfection, purest possibility, site where truth corresponded to discourse) (NGH 148â49/142â43), the historianâs concepts of event (recognition, reconciliation, successive forms of a primordial intention, and ideal continuity) (NGH 159/152, 161/154), and the historianâs conception of end (result, totality fully closed in on itself) (NGH 161/154, 159/152). These conceptions of origin, event, and end imply what Foucault calls an âinversion of the relationship of will and knowledgeâ (NGH 165/158). This inversion is âhypocriticalâ because it hides a perspective behind a fiction or lie of eternal truth. The inversion takes place by âbridling,â âby fighting relentlessly againstâ oneâs individual will (silencing preferences, surmounting distaste, miming death) in order to show to others the inevitable law of a superior will (NGH 165/158). This inevitable law of a superior willââProvidence,... final causesâ (NGH 165/158)âis that toward which metaphysics gazes. Metaphysics therefore for Foucault supports history with an âapocalyptic objectivityâ; in other words, it gives support to history from âoutside of timeâ (NGH 159/152).
Foucaultâs second great concept is what Nietzsche calls the âhistorical senseâ or âactual historyâ (lâhistoire effective, wirkliche Historie). Actual history takes no support from the outside of time; it is, as the phrase suggests, actual, not ideal or possible or universal history. Insofar as actual, this history without support from the outside of time âcan escape from metaphysicsâ (NGH 159/152â53; cf. also NGH 167/160). In other words, actual history is history without a foundation and in this regard is anti-Platonistic; actual history, Foucault says, âhollows out that upon which we like to make history restâ (NGH 160/154). It inserts all of what we believed immortal in man back into mortality and in this regard is anti-Egyptianistic (NGH 159/160). Lacking a foundation and the immortality of the soul, actual history, for Foucault, allows for no consoling play of self-recognitions (reconnaissances, nous retrouver) (NGH 160/153). Rather than understanding (Verstehen), actual history is concerned with âslicing,â that is, with making discontinuities. The traditional relation between necessary continuity and the irruption of an event then is inverted in actual history; an event is always a reversal of the relations of forces, the usurpation of power, the appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who used it: events are chance, accidental, or aleatory conflicts and not modifications of an ideal meaning (NGH 161/154). The result of the inversion in favor of chance events is that actual history consists, instead of origin, in descentâunentangleable systems of racial traits and inscribed bodiesâand, instead of end, it consists in emergenceâthe current episode in a series of subjugations or in diverse systems of subjugation. Actual history also inverts the relation of distance and proximity. Actual history consists in the closeâthe body, the nervous system, nutrition, digestion, and energies. Like a doctor, it has no fear of looking down, instead of gazing upward like the metaphysician (NGH 162/155â56). Being unafraid of looking down, actual history is also unafraid of being perspectival knowledge (NGH 163/156â57). Unlike the historian influenced by metaphysics, the historical sense in Nietzsche, according to Foucault, does n...