Studies in Continental Thought

The Sense of the Elemental

John Sallis

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9780253028228
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

Force of Imagination
The Sense of the Elemental
John Sallis

A bold and original investigation into how imagination shapes thought and feeling.

"This is a bold new direction for the author, one that he takes in an arresting and convincing manner.... a powerful, original approach to what others call 'ecology' but what Sallis shows to be a question of the status of the earth in philosophical thinking at this historical moment." —Edward S. Casey

In this major original work, John Sallis probes the very nature of imagination and reveals how the force of imagination extends into all spheres of human life. While drawing critically on the entire history of philosophy, Sallis's work takes up a vantage point determined by the contemporary deconstruction of the classical opposition between sensible and intelligible. Thus, in reinterrogating the nature of imagination, Force of Imagination carries out a radical turn to the sensible and to the elemental in nature. Liberated from subjectivity, imagination is shown to play a decisive role both in drawing together the moments of our experience of sensible things and in opening experience to the encompassing light, atmosphere, earth, and sky. Set within this elemental expanse, the human sense of time, of self, and of the other proves to be inextricably linked to imagination and to nature. By showing how imagination is formative for the very opening upon things and elements, this work points to the revealing power of poetic imagination and casts a new light on the nature of art.

John Sallis is Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. His previous books include Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues; Shades—Of Painting at the Limit; Stone; Chorology: On Beginning in Plato's Timaeus (all published by Indiana University Press), Crossings: Nietzsche and the Space of Tragedy and Double Truth.

Studies in Continental Thought—John Sallis, editor

Contents
Prolusions
On (Not Simply) Beginning
Remembrance
Duplicity of the Image
Spacing the Image
Tractive Imagination
The Elemental
Temporalities
Proprieties
Poetic Imagination

1

ON (NOT SIMPLY) BEGINNING

A. SENSE

Beginning, then, with sense—

Marking, thus, a beginning—

Even though, in philosophy or at its limit, one will never simply have begun.

Never will it quite suffice to detour—to have detoured—through the question of beginning. As though the question and the way through it could be made simply to vanish in the moment of beginning, into the moment of beginning. Leaving not a trace.

None (therefore) will simply have begun.

Not even Hegel, who most rigorously of all undertakes to determine the point with which philosophy is to begin. The beginning is to be “the simplest of all,” requiring only the “simple exposition” entitled by the question: “With What Must the Science Begin?” It is intended, not to lead up to the beginning, but rather to eliminate everything preliminary, everything that would precede—and thereby displace—the beginning: “This insight [into the beginning] is itself so simple that this beginning as such requires no preparation or further introduction; and, indeed, these preliminary, external reflections about it were not so much intended to lead up to it as rather to remove [or: cross out, cancel—entfernen] all preliminaries.”¹ But what the simple exposition shows is that the preparation, the mediation that supplies the beginning, is self-superseding (Aufheben ihrer selbst), that is, that the mediation that leads to the beginning supersedes itself in the emergence of a beginning that is immediate. The presentation of philosophy’s coming upon the scene (its coming to its beginning as such) is thus shown to dissolve in the immediate answer that its very mediation supplies to the question of beginning. And yet, this presentation, the Phenomenology of Spirit, was written; even if it may be crossed out, erased, even burned, reduced to ashes, one cannot but wonder whether it will simply have been dissolved into the immediacy of the beginning, leaving not a trace.

In marking the beginning Hegel will not simply have begun. For, rather than simply moving on from the beginning, advancing from it and leaving it behind, the advance proves to be a retreat to its ground, a circling back to the beginning. Hegel sketches the course of this advancing retreat in one of the remarks that he adds to the simple exposition, despite this exposition’s being “complete in itself [für sich fertig]”: “The advance is a retreat [Rückgang] into the ground, to the originary and true, on which depends and, indeed, from which is brought forth, that with which the beginning is made.... This last, the ground, is then that from which the first proceeds, that which at first appeared as an immediacy.”² In the end what the beginning proves to require is the final result, with which the circle closes upon itself and returns to the beginning. This is what Hegel writes in a text designated as the Introduction (Einleitung) to the presentation of the entire system of Wissenschaft, that is, to the Encyclopaedia: “The standpoint which thus appears to be immediate must within the science be converted into result, the ultimate result in which science reaches again its beginning and returns into itself. In this manner philosophy shows itself to be a circle that returns upon itself, that has no beginning in the way that other sciences do.”³ In the end there proves to have been no beginning; that is, everything to which the beginning leads reflects back upon it, compounding it again and again until finally it becomes the result with which Wissenschaft—philosophy as such—turns back into itself.

And yet, though he will never simply have begun, Hegel declares a beginning: “The beginning is therefore pure being.”⁴ The italics, marking the beginning, could also occasion a question, a kind of repetition of the question “With what must the science begin?” One may ask whether the beginning thus marked is being or just the word being? What would be required in order, inscribing being, to begin with being? There would be required the very movement of signification, the advance from the word to its sense. But this advance would be a retreat in advance of the beginning: to begin with being would require acceding, in advance, to the sense of being. To begin with being would require already having begun with sense, even with the sense of sense. To begin with being, marking this beginning as such, is not simply to have begun.

None will ever simply have begun.

Least of all, Plato.

The beginning is marked by the word λύσις the release of the prisoners previously chained in the underground cave. Also by περιαγωγή: the turning-around by which the release is fulfilled. Yet the release will already have been prepared: the question is what such release would be like if something of this sort were by nature to happen to them (or: were to be suited to them—συμβαίνω). Nature will already have prepared their release and turning-around by giving them sight (τò ὁραν) .⁵ Before the beginning they will already have been endowed with sense, will already have begun with sense.

Indeed with a sense of the beginning. In beginning, at the moment of their release and turning-around, they will already have a sense of the beginning that would also be the end, the beginning toward which the philosophical advance is directed. They will already have returned from the beginning of all things (ή τoν παν τòς ἀρχή) ,⁶ doubling back in such a way that, gifted with sense, they can come, in their release, to redouble the beginning. To begin is always to begin again.

Can one wonder that the beginning is marked only at the center of the Republic, that at the beginning there is only the mythic allusion to it?

As the beginning—the release—is displaced by a precedent sense that it can only redouble, so too does the beginning that is sensed in advance progressively withdraw. The withdrawal is conspicuous in the very structure of the philosophical advance, in the reiteration of the passage from image to original: what seems an original proves to be only an image behind which the original has retreated. Moreover, at the center of the Republic one is—at the very least—left wondering whether the beginning that would be the final original will not always have withdrawn into its own veiled image-making, into fathering and sending images of itself without ever imparting itself as such.⁷

In the Timaeus the withdrawal is indisputable, though most directly it is a withdrawal of that other beginning called, among its many names, the third kind or the χώρα. This other beginning is one that would have preceded the beginning of all things; what, above all, is both said and enacted in the discourse on the χώρα—the chorology, this bastard discourse, as Timaeus calls it—is the elusiveness of this beginning. Yet the effects of this fugitive kind cannot simply be isolated and contained; on the contrary, they spread throughout the entire discourse of the Timaeus, which is accordingly marked by false starts, disorder, and interruptions followed by new—that is, redoubled—beginnings. It is thus most remarkable that the Timaeus issues the injunction that one begin at the beginning: “With regard to everything it is most important to begin at the natural beginning.”⁸ The explic-itness of the injunction only points up all the more conspicuously how utterly the Timaeus cannot but fail to begin at the beginning. Of necessity (ἀνάγκη).

None will ever simply have begun.

And yet, aside from the history of philosophy and its texts, one could venture to imagine simply beginning. Such a beginning would seem to be offered by sense, to sense. It would be the simplest of all beginnings: merely beholding, in silence, what presents itself to sense. One would begin by casting one’s glance as if for the first time, by turning one’s ear and extending one’s hand, so as to submit to the spell of sense, hardly yet distinguishing even between seeing and seen, hearing and heard, touching and touched.

One would, then, have imagined a beginning that, perhaps most radically, would carry out the appeal to experience on which philosophy has rarely ceased to insist. One would in deed—in the imagined deed—have affirmed what Hegel calls the principle of experience (das Prinzip der Erfahrung): “The principle of experience contains the infinitely important determination that, for a content to be accepted and held to be true, man must himself be there with it [der Mensch selbst dabei sein müsse] .”⁹ Even though in affirming a principle (even by imagining) one would already have posed a threat to the alleged simplicity of the beginning. Especially, remembering that principle is a not so remote translation of ἀρχή.

Yet, even if, keeping all such doubling reflection at bay, one persists in the mute beholding of sense—or rather, in imagining it—this very persistence will only make it all the more manifest that such beholding is drawn out of itself, that it is submitted to bonds that both exceed it and, as it were, make it exceed itself. For beholding is responsive. It follows upon the promptings of what is to be beheld, responds to these promptings; it is precisely such response. It will always have been solicited and will have followed upon a prior receptiveness to that solicitation. Seeing is always having seen. Yet this anterior seeing is not so much a seeing of something as rather an opening of vision to the visible. It is a kind of prospection that is not yet a beholding of anything but that will always have opened beholding to a beyond, drawn sense out into the distance, constituting a beginning before the beginning, redoubling the beginning. It is a protractive prospection binding apprehension to manifestness.

As soon as one turns to behold mutely what presents itself to sense, a double affirmation will already have come into play. One will have received the solicitation to behold, welcoming it, and will have opened oneself to what is there to behold, exposing oneself to it. One will have awakened to the light. One will have heard what resounds in all things. One will have said, if still mutely: yes, yes.

The simplicity of the beginning will be violated not only because something proves to be anterior to it but also, more decisively, because this anteriority is a matter of free arrival rather than mere insistence, because it is a gift coming as if from nowhere.

One could indeed not even imagine simply beginning. Not even on the assumption that philosophy could begin without speech coming to double sense and thus, from the beginning, to compound the beginning with another beginning, a δεύτερος πλους.

Giving way, then. Forgoing the pretense of simply beginning.

And yet, beginning with sense. Marking, thus, a beginning.

Already it is conspicuously double. For what the marking of the beginning inscribes is the word sense. And yet, one would not begin merely with the isolated word; in fact to the extent that the word is isolated from others and especially from its signification, it ceases even to be a word, becoming a mere shell, a visible mark that no longer marks anything and with which one could begin nothing. At the very least one would begin with the word as signifying, with sense as giving way to sense in the movement of signification—thus with sense and sense and the transition from one to the other. Yet this transition, the movement of signification as such, is precisely the movement from signifier to signified, from word to sense. Thus, in setting out to signify sense, one will already have broached sense as belonging, as it were, to the very sense of signification. From the moment one sets out to effect the transition from sense to sense, one will already be oriented to sense. Before signifying any specific sense, one will always have been open to sense as such. The very opening of speech is an openness to sense, a mute affirmation of sense anterior to every sense.

To begin with sense is thus not, as one might have supposed, to begin with what is over against speech (in one regard or another); it is to begin with the very opening of speech, at its threshold.

But it is to begin also with the word. Sense derives from the Latin sensus, sentire, which in turn translate the Greek αἴσθησις and αἰσθάνομαι. In Greek philosophy from Plato on, αἴσθησις signifies the apprehension of things (or of the condition of one’s own body) by sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch and by way of the particular bodily organs ordained for each of these senses. As such, αἴσθησις is set in opposition to another kind of apprehension, νοήσις, apprehension carried out not by any of the five senses but by what the Greeks call νοΰς. In the history of philosophy νοΰς and the constellation of words around it never cease being retranslated and redetermined in response to varying philosophical and nonphilosophical provocations. If through all these transformations anything remains, it is that what is thus apprehended, what is (called) noetic or intelligible (τὸ νοητόν), is something inaccessible to αἴσθησις , at least to αἴσθησις alone. It is such as cannot be seen, heard, or otherwise sensed. And yet, it can be such as in some manner to accompany things seen or heard: as when, reading or hearing a word, one apprehends its sense.

Thus, as soon as one draws out the opposition between τὸ νοητόν and τὸ αἴσθησις , one notices how sense erodes this opposition. Nothing could be more remarkable, considering that, from Plato on, this opposition remains the most fundamental of all, establishing the very sense of fundament and fundamental and holding within its orbit the other oppositions and determinations that philosophy sets up as fundamental, as constituting first principles. Throughout all the translations, mutations, appropriations, even through the philosophical revolutions that put it utterly in question in its classical form, the opposition remains both intact and determinative—to such an extent that even Kant, in a very late work, could write: “This ultimate end toward which all of metaphysics aims is easy to discover and can provide the basis for its definition: metaphysics is the science of advancing by reason from knowledge of the sensible to knowledge of the supersensible.”¹⁰

Sense erodes this opposition because its sense is, in a sense, unlimited.¹¹ It houses within itself the most gigantic ambivalence, the scene, as it were, of the original γιγαντομαχία περὶ της ουσίας. It indifferently couples what is called the sensible, the things of sense, and signification, signified sense, sense of a sort that can only be apprehended noetically. It will of course be said that these are two senses of sense, and yet in this very phrase one will have marked the abysmal character of the distinction: to distinguish between the two senses of sense presupposes the very distinction that it would draw. The ambivalence is further compounded by the indifference of sense with respect to the difference between apprehending and apprehended: to sense something or to have a sense of it is to apprehend its sense.

If one were to picture a vertical line cut by a horizontal into two unequal segments, and if the four quadrants thus formed were taken to represent the alternatives generated by combination of the two sets of opposed terms (intelligible/sensible, apprehension/apprehended), then the word sense could be used for each of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prolusions
• 1. On (Not Simply) Beginning
• 2. Remembrance
• 3. Duplicity of the Image
• 4. Spacing the Image
• 5. Tractive Imagination
• 6. The Elemental
• 7. Temporalities
• 8. Proprieties
• 9. Poetic Imagination
• Index