Jean-Luc Nancy the Discourse of the Syncope Logodaedalus Meridian Crossing Aesthetics 2007

7/30/2019 Jean-Luc Nancy the Discourse of the Syncope Logodaedalus Meridian Crossing Aesthetics 2007

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Logodelus

J-L


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IMw!i1

Stford Unversity PressStanford, Califoia

English translation 2008 by the Board of Trusteesofthe Lelnd Stanford Junior University.lrights reserved.

Assistance for the translation ws provided by the French Ministry of Cultue.

The Dcourse ofthe Syncope: Logoelswas originally published in Frenchin1976 under the title Le Dcoursd f ncope Logoes

1976, Fmarion.

No part of ths book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or byany meas, electronc or mechanical, includig photocopying and recording,

or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior writtenpermission of Stord Unversity Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, arcval-quality paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nan, ean-Luc.[Discours de la Syncope. English]

The Discourse of the Syncope: logo daedalus / ean-Luc Nancy ;translated by Saul Anton.

p. cm.(Meridan, crossing aesthetics)Includes biblographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8047-5353-1 (cloth: paper)ISBN 978-0-8047-5354-8 (pbk. : k. paper)

Philosophy. 2. Style (Philosophy) 3. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804. tle.

B53.N2513 2008193dc22

2007038048


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Contents

Ackowledes

Lis of Abbreviaios Xt

asor' roduco K i Sereo

Prce

1 Preambe: The Discourse of the Syncope

2 lthe Rest Is Literature 173 A Vunerabe Presentation and

a Desirabe Eegance

4 The Ambiguity of the Popuarand a Science Without Honey 46

5 Daeug and Dichug 68 6 The Subime System and the Sick Genius 91

7 Logodaedaus 130

Apped Some Furher aos

Regardig K 4Noes 4


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Acknowledgments

Kant is in some way the hero of ths book The reader wi ndhere a seection of documents pertaining to severa episodes reated

to his destiny that are generay not we known. Some of thesehave been coected here thanks to the contributions of the foowing peope

Bernard Baas

Christian Bernard

Eva Brckner-Pfaenberger

Rodolphe Gasch

Dominique Goette

Daniel Joubert

Sarah Kofman

Philippe LacoueLabarthe

Alan ReissJeanMichel Rey

Jean-Luc Schuster

Liliane Weissberg


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Ab breviations

The foowing bbrevitions hve been used in the text for frequenty cited works.

A Ahroolo om a Praal Poi o/View, tans. an e.Robet B Louen (Cambige: Cambige Univesity Pess,2006)

C Coeoe, e. nulfZweig (Cambige: CambigeUnivesity Pess 1999)

Cque o/Judme, tans Wee Plua (Inianapolis:Hackett Publishing 1987)

CPR Cque o/Pure Reo, tans. Wee Plua (Inianapolis:Hackett Publishing, 1996)

NF Noes ad Frae, e. Paul Guye, tans. Cutis Bowman,Paul Guye, an Feeick Hausche (Cambige: CambigeUnivesity Pess, 2005)

The foowing texts re cited o the coective voue Pcical Philosophy trns nd ed My J. Gregor (Cbridge Cbridge University Press, 996

CrR Crique o/Praial Reo

GW The Groudwork 0he Meahsis / Mo


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X Abbreviaios

The Meahsis o Mora

The following texts are cited om the collective volume Reoad ioal Theolo trs. d ed Allen Wood (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1996

CF The Coi o he Faulies

R Relio Wihi he Bouries o Mere Reo

The following texts are cited fro the coective volume Theoreical Philosophy Aer eds Henry lison d Peter Heath;trs. Gary Hateld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press2002):

PFM Proloomea o a Fuure Meahsis ha ll Be Able oCome Forward Siee


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Translator's Introduction

Kant in Stereo

"Methode ist Umweg

Wter Benjamin

It is a trism that every text presents a translator ith its onspecic set of technical problems. This is certainly the case for

Jean-Lc Nancy's 1976 stdy of t The Dcourse o/he SycopeLogoelus Hoever before considering some of its specic -clties it is perhaps necessary to state at the otset that these donot arise only from the sal and inevitable disjnctions beteento langages and to idioms. The reasons for this are both historical and theoreticl.

In the rst place Logodaedalus as ritten more than threedecades ago before mch of hat has since become knon as"French theorto hich the present ork both does and doesnot belong a very specic mannerhad either been ritten ortranslated into English. a reslt this translation may trnslatenot only Nancy's original text bt also on some level somethingof "French theory. his polemical Preamble sggests Logoe-lus qestions the recorse to many of the concepts and formlasthat came to represent deconstrctive thoght in the nglomerican reception of French post-strctlism in particlar its nderstanding of the problem of identity. Readers ill have to takethe measre of this challenge on their on bt I ill to sketchits basis here in terms of ho Nancy's reading of Kant opens otonto the problem of translation.

Hoever beyond the lag beteen its French pblication and

XZZ


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aor' roducio

s ranslaon no Englsh hr s lso a proprly criical rason why h spcc dcls of ranslang Logoelus do no

mrly sm from h mprc drncs bwn vocablarsand grammars Smply p sch dsjncons ar nvr mrlymprcal h fac ha hs s a book abo Kan mgh alrady sggs hr s a sysmacor a las a sysmc f noq ranscndnalrason ha mposs slf on ranslaon

Logoelus aks p h qson of h lars famosly dclpros as a problm ha h prsnaon and xposon of crcl

phlosophy posd rs oflo Kn hmsl Nancy shows hproblm of how owr phlosophy gos o h har of h amp o sablsh h aonomy of rason hrogh h dlnaonof s lms; and hs k s n som mannra maer n facha s h vry sbjc of hs booksynonymos wh sayng n

lngag wha hs lms arIn ohr words

Logoels concd wh a cran prob

lm of ranslaon ha nhabs crc phlosophy a s cor Dsp h fac ha Kan ks mahmacal dmonsraon as andal of prsnaon h ms ransla h Sysm no lgagor langag Walr Bnjamns concpon of ranslaon n

vsagd somhng q smlar whn h argd n "Th Task ofh Translaor ha rslaon was no so mch a rndrng of

spcc lngsc conxs b of an nnon oward langag asa oaly or o cho hs famos ssay "langag as sch "Thask of h ranslaor consss n ndng h parclar nnonoward h arg langag whch prodcs n ha langag hcho of h orgnal Ths s a far of ranslaon ha bascallydrnas from h po's work bcas h nnon of h

lar s nvr drcd oward h spcc lngsc conxal aspcs2 Th Sysm dmds a pros of hogh ha s no an ar, ba pros b ha s an "archconc a pr srcrlprsnaon of slf as h blprn of rason wha Bnjamncals reie Sprache or "r langag3 Ths dmand a dmandfor a syl of prsnaon ha s a syl who syl prodcswha Nancy calls hr h "syncop Th syncop mposs h

dsncon bwn phlosophcal prsnaon Darseug and


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Kt i Stereo x

Dichug wat one igt transate as Poesy, or even "invention,wat Piippe Lacoue-Labte as rendered in Frenc as "uvre

d'art. Te syncope of discourse, of a posopy obiged to writeitse produces te spit between "piosopy and "iteraturetat denes, in Nancy's view, ode tougt in Kant's wake. Butte notion of "iterature and everyting it ipies in te way ofstye, for, and surface is a by-product of te progra of criticapiosopy, ten transation, insofar as it conces te transfer ofte "content of one guage into te "for of anoter aguage,is for tis reason a rmal practice of anguage, of for atter, or content. Transation is tus ipicated in Kant's attept toarticuate and present te iits of tougt insofar as tese iitsdene te totaity of te syste.

For our purposes ere, wat is iportant to say about tis istat te Kanti deand for a piosopica styea propery in

nite task, as Nancy sowsaso sapes te stye and anner ofNancys Logoelus wic is by no eans erey an attept torender Kant's "bad writing into a ore ucid prose, and tus intoa "good writing tat woud cari and resove, ad tus soeowdecide, for once and for l, te sense of te atter's tougt. ater,Nancy sets out to repeat and tus transate te Kantian syncope"itsef. onsequeny, a rigorous transation of Logoel doesnot lits task if it rests content wit reproducing and expressing te eaning of te origina text and even soeting of itsstye (toug tis is not to say tat it does not attept to do tis,too). One ust recognize ad understd ow Nancy transateste ipossibe presentationtat is, Kant'sprose terefore,ow e reproduces te syncope. Suc a syncope, as Nan sows,

does not sipy end itsef to be read and tus transated; rater, itconstitutes, as any reader of Kt igt te you, and as te anycitations Nancy coects in tis text py testi, an experieceof reading, and tus of writing and transating, tat ust itsefbe soeow transferred and repeated. Beyond te pragatic concerns tat ake up te stu of brackets and footnotes, it is tisdiension of Nancy's text, is discursive practice, tat requires

soe accounting for ere, for it is aso not witout its ogic.


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A good way to begin to gain a sense of this discursive dimensionofLogoelus is consider an obvious exampe Nn oers in

the rst pges of the Prembe as to aert the reader to what ieshead on his road: the word mode which takes both genders inFrench There is f mo fshion and e mode which can meanform manner mode and method the way of doing something(mehos) and which points to the phiosophica notion of modi. Nns pay on the dierence in gender and sense betweene d mode points to a duaity that characterizes both Kant'sand his own text to the superci accident and trasitory dimension of fashion in its ever-changing superciaityad to themanner method or fashion of doing something that constitutesthe very substance of phiosophy as a scientic enterprise (its ideafor Kant et us not forget is the method of proof in mathematics)Nancy thereby aerts his reader to an entire vocabary of fhion

that runs quiety yet persistenty through this textwords ike allure eue egace uuay found on the pages of e or Modeand not normly associated with the upright stod vues and edices of phiosophic discourseand which somehow trnsate thestu of these from stone into something ike clohig whatis eminenty Kantianinto veis In writng d inscribing Kant'stext into this doube register into both the discourse of method and

into the idiom of "popuar ordinry aguage Nancy ike Kantsuspends the dierence beteen "superci form and "deep content or substance beteen fhion nd method

The name Nancy gives to this suspension is the "syncopewhich I have chosen to transate with its Engish cognate whichhs the three main senses of the French though far ess cooqui

ay In French avoir ue sycope means rst of "to pass out"faint "ose consciousness or "back out; it may even men toexperience a momentary stoppage of the heart or to miss a hetbeat Second a cope is a rhetorica term indicating the suppression of a etter in the midde of a word Thrd it is a mic termindicating an interruption of the ow of a music ine that is asyncopation a form identied generay with jazz (which Adoo

found et us reca to be the avatar of a fase aesthetic reaiza-


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K i Sereo ll

tion of subjetive feedom, and thus the most insidious fom ofthe instumenta powe of the System) Moe ooquiay, how

eve, avoir ue sycope aso means in Fenh to have a heat attak, as when someone says, I amost had a heat attak whenI head ( )! This moe popua and guative usage points tothe doube egiste that onstitutes the spae of Nany's disouse

hee, whih demonstates that the ogia, gammatia, and thusnomative eve of anguage annot be dissoiated fom the eveof idiomati anguage and the dimension of

oe (Simmug)In

this manne, the synope points to the opoeaity (a heat attak!) of onsiousness in its inguisti expession, the dimensionand moment (tansendenta? empiia? empiio-tansendenta?) wheein onsiousness senses o fees itsef in the esh anddoes so peisey beause it is thee that it baks out, pehaps inthe fae of a sudden shok, a powe emotion, o an expeiene

of subime gandeuo just fom tying to ead Kant It namesthe waking unonsiousness we a inompehension that foesone to ead a text ove and ove, espeiay when it opeates, asdoes Nany's, in mutipe egistes It names, in othe wods, theimpossibiity of ahieving a mathematia Dasteung that takesthe fom of an equation stating an identity Tansation beomes,theefoe, the neessay attempt to podue a phiosophia disouse in the wake of the impossibiity of suh a mathematia

pesentationHoweve, Nany aso uses anothe tem fo this monstous di

mension of anguage that eminds us that the synope is, in itsvioene, aways eated to an aestheti moment: the bo mo thejoke, o the z whih fo Kant is the peogative of wit and

genius Nany expoes this notion at ength both in this wok andesewhee4 In some espets, the bon mot oganizes the text ofLogodaelus insofa as it names te anguage of te genius whseinventive powe is neessay fo the pesentation of the System,but whom Kant so pushes aside as being too dangeous and tooaesheic fo the stye of iti phiosophy By embaing Wi,Nany ovetuns Kant's fea of it by demoting it fom being a

peogative of genius and putting it to wok to do the manua


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asor' roducio

abor of phiosophic composiion. The bon mo in a sense isa form of he syncope. There are sever imporn words ha re

cur hroughou Logoelus and dispay and perform he workof he . These incude dci parager and adveir Each ofhese for is own specc reasons wen on o have a disinguishedcreer in Nncys aer wors. I have incaed where hey arisebu I wi resric my commens abou hem o noes. Howeverhe erms eos and osiio which re cosey bound o KansGerman Darseung boh deserve menion. hough Dse

unghas been receny ransaed as "ehibiion I have chosen remin wih he more radiion ransaion "presenaion ando ransae epos as "o presen In France sudens make anepos in css ha is hey me a presenaion. I waned o keepsomehing of his everyday pedagogic meaning for i is a moifha Nancy epiciy remarks in Kans own commens abou his

wriing (in his correspondence moreover wih his ransaors).In addiion he noions of "e-posiion and of "being e-posedincresingy ke cener sage in Nancys aer wriing and I fei woud be imporn o oer readers a chnce o see how heydeveop and emerge ou of his reading of Kan and he probemof wriing criica phiosophy. For he French exposiio I haveused is perfecy serviceabe Engsh cognae hough i is gener

ay ransaed in Engish as an "ehibiion. I impies a sensibemanifesaion and eposure. Bu I found i necessry o divergefrom hese in sever insances in he name of ucidiy d accuracy and I have indicaed where his is he cse.

Perhaps he mos imporan d embemaic dispay of Wi iesin Nans handing of he French idiom eir u dcours whichmeans "o spek or o "me a speech. So much so in fac haone ough o hear he ie Discours de sycope rs in he everyday sense of his epression: he Speech of he Sycope or even helk of he Sycope and ony aerwd in he more forma and

perhaps academic sense of he Engish word discourse Ye enirun discours may aso mean ha one "has or "hods a posiionpoin of view or idea phiosophica or ideoogic in he sense

ha one masers and conros i nd us uphods i s one mi


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K i Sereo x

in an academic, philosophical, or political context, or in the senseof control conveyed by the word dicae Nancy plays frequently

on and across the tension beteen these senses, and there is noEnglish equivalent able to consistently convey all of them. I havechosen to translate the tile literay as the The Dcourse of he Sycope largely because the complexity of the French here is actuallyavailable in the English, though it remains submerged, especiallyin academic usage. Furthermore, the verb eir is itself one of themost complex in the French language, and its use with dierentprepositions makes up one of te longest entries in the dictionary,as well as one of the most dicult to "hear for a nonnative ear. a result, I ave not adopted a standard English equivalent forthe many ways Nancy turns it; however, I have indcated its presence in brackets where appropriate and provided notes to give thereader a sense of the dierent nuances and polarities of meaning it

conveys in each instance.The tension beteen high and low language I have here triedto describe-and which organizes to a great extent the discursiveloc of Lcorresponds quite closely, in fact, to the dstinction Heidegger makes in Beig ad Time beteen "idle tlk(Gerede) the chaer and preunderstood language of Ma andthe resolute speech (Rede) of Dasein in its autoappropriation. The

verb eir and the expression "tenir un dscours rther alludeto the entire register of the "hand that Heidegger deploys in Beig ad Time and thus to the dierence he posits in the practical attitude for which things are "readytohand (Zuhadehei)and the theoretical atttude one adopts when something is merely"presenttohand (rhadehei) Nancy is dialoguing not only

with he "earl Heidegger but also with the late Heidegger ofOhe y o Laage (Uerwegs zur Sprache) where his conceptionof Sayig privileges the way of saying over what is being "sadand thus points to the idea of a poetic discourse hat cannot bereduced to predication and the positing of concepts By inscribingthe latter's famous "ways that lead nowhere (in French: chemisqui me ue par) back into Knts modes (Ie and la mode), by

activating the colloquial, ordinary dimensions of French, and by


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highlighting not adopting a vocaulary of fashionhat quintessentially French artifact of he mode uran metropoleNn

is questioning and sumitting Heideggers claim that language is"the house of eing to the exigency of translation. Yet he is doing it on the asis of the latters own conception of the way Inthis gesture Nancy pushes nt toward Heidegger and Heideggertoward Kant. The implication is that the discourse of the syncopeccurs precisely etween the "form of crique and the "contentof ndamental ontology.

I would like to close with a rief discussion of one lt issue oftrnslation. In the Preamle Nancy makes use of a prepositionphrasing with no real English equivalent: " ... a mme e textede Kant. Cline Surprenant the translator of The SpecuveRemark Oe of Hegel' Bo Mots has noted a mme is related toHegel's "in itself (a sich) which she chose to translate as "just at

the level.5 I have chosen a perhaps less elegant and simpler formulation: o ad i Kt' text itse [a mme e texte de Kant]in order to highlight the eective dimension of this inscription.With this term it seems Nancy indicates that the syncope shouldnot e misunderstood as positing any kind of dialectic relation;rather a mme points to a relation of smeness that doe not implyan asence of dierence. The syncope and its discourse articulate

a dierence of the same eteen a crtical analytic philosophy anda ndamental ontolo. If Nancy leads Heidegger ack to Kantscritical mehodos and if he does so y the formers own insistenceon Saying and on the y and yet against him in a most singularrepetition of the critical gesture the sutlety of this "method canonly e admired. The texul syncopation of the same on its waythe way upon which it attempts to constitute itself out of itselis a practice of repetition and translation that recasts and trans

lates oth Heideggers late poetizing and Kants critical philosophyone through the other. In other words critique translates critiqueand thus demands and implies an understanding and a practiceof translation. It is for this reason that to read Nancy one mustalways read him with a dual insight stereoscopiclly to orrow

a Benjaminian notion for that is how he conceives of Critique:it doules nd reproduces itsel or writes in stereo as it were re-


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K i Sereo

poducing itef a "iteatue and tuning Kant, a Nancy how,into a chaacte who haunt mode iteatue. To ead Nancy, we

mut not ony undetand him, we mut ao iten to him a we.The eade wi have to weigh to what extent an Engih tanation ofLogoelusucceed o fai to make thi poibe.

Finy, a wod need to be aid egading the tanation of thecitation that punctuate and yncopate the text ofLogodaelusheneve avaiabe, I have tied to uppy the mot cuent exiting Engih tanation, epeciay of Kant' text. Evey eot habeen made to povide efeence fo even the biefet of citation;

howeve, in a few cae, I have been unabe to tack down ouce.I have o modied a numbe of exiting tanation in ode tobette convey omething egibe in the Fench and thu impottto the inteigibiity of Nancy' commenta but not conveyed bythe exiting tanation.

I have ought to poduce a tanation that i both "itea andfaith to the "piit of thi text. In thi epect, I have tiedwheneve poibe to maintain the integity of Nan' entencein the inteet of conveying omething of the hythm of hi poe,which i highy maked and contitute a dicuive eement thatthe Engih-peaking eade houd be awae of. Nancy' entencepaue, dige, comment, and etu upon themeve. O they

meey begin in media e, a out of nothing and nowhee. Thelogodaelus, accoding to Kant, i a "gammaian "who quibbeove wod, but a Nancy how u, he doe not quibbe onyove thei ene but o ove thei ode, thei peiod, and theihythm.

Saul Ao

Paris aua


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Preface

Sa Anton, who ha taen pon himef the ta of tranating thi oo-a ta rendered more thanke y the neceity of

tracking down the Engih tranation of the citation inertedin the text-ha ed me howLogoel appear to me, now,thirty year ater, a wor eonging in ome way to my "yothand ao to the yoth of a thining preoccpied y what one codthen ca the reation etween iteratre and phioophy, or, to ayit more rigoroy, the qetion of the phioophica text-or, toe more rigoro t, nd to pe German, the qetion of

phioophica Darteng. ow doe thinking exhiit ite preent ite? ow doe the cience of principe and end tae onform and emody itef in te order of angage?

f thi qetion preoccpied then, it i ecae it articatedin a manner that wa ti reativey retrained and actay timidthe more erio qetion of knowing jt how far nd how thethoght of principe and end, or rather, the thoght of Beingand eing a ch-in hort, metaphyic-can e toty conitent withot ao thining-and radicy-the impication ofit oject (et ay "eing to e rief) in it action, in thi actof thining that i nothing other than peaking. owever, the actof peing i trn nothing t the act of writing, -aterm th promoted to the tat of a regative idea-deignate

nothing t ctting a path to the nongivenne of "ene, to thi


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Prce

notyet-signied and to this not-yet-said which aone, in truth,opens anguage, which aone opens it ruh and which knows

itsef from the outset to forever be unabe to arrive at somethingike a goa, a concusion, a Sense

Knowing itsef to be so, this act aso knows itsef as the veryinscription of truth, truth insofar as it is its inscription the truththat is true ony as its own tracing [race and thus not merey asits own wa as it is for Pato, Descartes, and Hege, but more thanthe wa the race [trace], foreign to ideas of route and destination,and fated essentiay to eace itsef without essence The way, ineect, the track of methodos, but thought as a ost way, overgrownwith grass and brbes, soon to be indisceibe from the thicketMore adventurous, in short, than even Heidegger's "ways that eadnowhere [Holzwege] .

This question, or this program of questioning and concern, hs

ost nothing of its appea and its exigency for me On the contrary, everything has intensied phiosophy has not ceased, in lits iving and nonregressive forms, in lits courageous, impatientforms, to sharpen the point Nothing ess than the foowing weare earning to take care, certainy sti of "being or of "principesand "ends, but in order to do so, rst of voices, anguages, modesof address, and even of song (or of excamation, of prayer, of fer

vor, or anger) which i which or better sti, which can arrive things such as some "being, "principes, "truth, or "reasonin genera

In a word from one end to the other, phiosophy knows itsefbe caed out on [ieele] itspoec capacity, that is to say, on itsabiity concepts or words, tones or even voices, modu

ations or timbres In other words, this abiity is addressed justas much in its musicaity [ieele] and the question coud beformuated s foows How do we ierethat which phiosopyimparts ]?

We know that this questioning [ieelo] the seed of whichis aready there in Pato, but which knew aer him a very ongincubation, has been reactivated in a hundred ways aer Kant


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It is, in certain respects, the proper mark of thought in modernhistory

That is wh today, I understand even better how it is that Iwas so intrigued by and attracted to the very singuar reation thatt entertained with his own writing, his deprecation of his prosaic character and the hope that he nourished of seeing deveop inothers a poetic metamorphosis To which was added for me thefowing singuar moti which sets apart the gure of Kant as aiterary object no other phiosopher has found a pace in so many

texts of ction or poetyer the pubication of the book in 196, I received fom cer

tain readers other expes of this singuar desny I cite the foowing quote by Artaud

Mr ant was a little girl who wanted to be a poet s way andwhose jealousy of beings forced him to limit himself exclusively to

philosophy

One c aso nd attestations to the opposite, ike that of Waterenjamin, who wrote in a etter dated October 191: "Kants

proseper se represents a mes ofiteray prose2 ut the inversionof meaning here is ony apparent because he perceives in Kant a

yet-unheardof phiosophica stake, sti to come, enjamin wishes

to receive his proseusuay judged to be heayas if possessing artistic force, that is to say, the force of awakening, indeed ofenthusiasm Moreover, he immediatey adds, "If this were not thecase, woud the Criique of Pure Reaso have so shaken Keist tothe deepest parts of his being?

Yet that is precisey what we want, too that phiosophy shake

us to the most profound parts of ourseves, not by poetic atteries,but rather by the trembing that must aways produce anew theeruption of the possibiity of sense, the imminence of a truth in theprocess of owing forth at Kant experienced in his desire forpoetry was the tension in a joy without which truth is merey conformity, a ouissace and rapture [arwithout

which reason does not make any room for the unconditioned

The wod is probaby ess incined today to get excited about


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Pre x

the thought of a philosophical enthusiasm than it was thirty yearsago. But thirty years ago this world did not yet know itself to be

"globalized and our exuberances remained largely those of theold children of Europe They can today become those of matureyoung people who discover a new source for an everrenewableadmiration: no longer merely for the starry s above nor onlythe moral law in our hearts but a new world to be made in frontof us

eaLu NaChris 6


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Consiere om the roer oint of view hilosohy is notngbut human unerstaning lae in an amhigouri language.

Goethe osthumous maxim

For there are many to whom I yiel reeene knowlege ofhilosohy but if I lay laim to the orator's euliar ability to seakwith roriety learness elegane I think my laim is in a measurejustie for I have sent my lfe in the rofession . . . . I believe ofourse that if lato ha been willing to evote himself to forensioratory he oul have soken with the greatest eloquene an ower

an that if Demosthenes ha ontinue the stuies he ursue withlato an ha wishe to exoun his views he oul have one sowith elegane an brilliane. I feel the same way about istotle anIsorates eah of whom engosse in his own rofession unervalue that of the other.

Ciero On Dies (e ci)

The hilosoher sens his life observing men an uses his min

to tease out the vies an riiule. If he gives hs thoughts any gurative tu its less by authorial neessity than in orer to len it a vanity that he ly foun neessary in orer to serve his esign.

ean e a Bruyre Chacters

hilosohy is istinguishe from other ins of nowlege only byits form.

Immanuel Kant osthumous note

There is no book that one oesnt rea with leasure when it hasa beauti style. In hilosohy roer however austere it may besome manners are exete. This is not without its reasons sine asI believe Ive sai elsewhere eloquene is in the sienes what the sunis in the worl. Knowlege is only shaows ithose who eal it onot ow how to write.

re amy Rhetc Or theA /Speaking

et us not make either of the one who oes hilosohy as a ilosoher sine the former is only a workman (it woul be to mistakethe versier for the original genius)

Immanuel Kant Op psmm

I lae highest the art of the hilosoher in the hlosoher who

renounes being one who oesnt ress his winows neither as a


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rier nor s a man, in order o reveal he philosopher he is, ho ishappy o be one aording o is essene no is form.

Ludig Feuerbah, The see o/ChanI is enirely eviden ha erain brbari, un-Geran, nd iruious language ornmens phlosophy more hn i sgures i: Orales despise harm, Vox dei soloeismus: in oher ords, a Kanian isno o be read bu raher only suied.

ean Paul, The Vl ofKmpan

Kanin philosophy reveals is naue and is purpose in is ve negleed narraive.

G.W F Hegel, Fath and owdge

Beause ho as more of a philosopher han Kan?

Alexander Kojve, Knt

Carried along by his hrong of houghs, delivered over o he ese of

ombinng hem, and fored o produe, [he philosophial genius]nds a hosand speious proo and is unable o ssure himself ofany of hem. He builds surdy buldings ha reson ould no dareo live in and ha plese him by heir proporions raher han byheir soliy. He admires his sysems like he admres he layou of apoem, and he adops hem as beau, in believing he loves hems if hey ere rue. The rue nd he false are hrdly he disiniveharaerisis of he genius.

Denis Didero, Enlopeda


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THE ISOURSE OF THE

SYNOPE


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Preble The Discourse of

the Syncope

It is not enough to say that there is undecidability in a discourse.It is not enough to say it in order to have decided the outcome,

the structure, or the potency of the discourse in question. Today,just about everyhere, one nds "undecidability as a solution,one that some would gladly substitute for the well-worn answersof such-and-such "truth, or for Truth as such My conce in thisbookthus be to not llow the crisis that has been inauguratedby what is cled "undecidability somewhere in scourse, in everydiscourse to be redirected or collapsed back into a soluo

But perhaps this is to go too quickly to the "theme of my essa of which this book is only the rst part. I It's possible that it isbetter to take a more indirect approach, one that starts by circumscribing the program of the work to be done here To do so, it isnecessary to invoke or point to a kind ofdisequilibrium

A Digression on Fashion

This necessity does not stem from todays widespread and perhaps trite predilection for the motives and values of rupture, collapse, and lack in all their forms, which are opposed to continuiplenitude, solidi and so on Nowadays, a certain theoretic apparatus organizes its discourse, whatever it might be, in the name

of the prees de i d ordys not to mention the a and


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Preamble he Discourse ofthe Syncope

the para, as governed by an unassailable obligation. The mosttrivial, the most self-satised, and shortsighted criticism does not

shy away from ointing out these features in order to ridiculethem. There is no question here of collaborating with d arming his ind of criticism (nor even of taling about them, for theydo not merit discussion). though that which can give rise toa fashion [ mode] is never withou its necessi, this one is notecessarily the substantial and univocal necessity of an Absolute ora History. d yet, to have contemt for fashion, it is necessaryto have inherited some self-condence, even some owerl andintransigent metahysics: namely, one must be a Hegelian of strictobseance A text by Hegel will rove this, d not by chance isthis text directed against the Cynics, the guerrilas of hilosohythat the System and its Science cannot roerly ut u with:

Socates hence declaes the clothing o theCnics to be vanit. . . . Clothing is not athing o atonal impot but is egulatedthough needs that aise o themselves. Theclothing in the Noth must be dieent omthe clothing won in Cental ica and in

winte we do not wea cotton gaments. Athing beond this is meaningless ad is le

to chance and opinion; in moden times oinstace oldshioned clothing had a meaning in elation to patiotism. The cut o mcoat is decided b ashion and the tailo sees this; it is not m business to invent it omecill othes have done so o me. Thisdependence on custom and opinion is ce

tainl bette than wee it to be a dependenceon natue. But it is not essential that menshould diect thei undestanding to this; indeence is the point o view that must eignin egas to clothing since the thing itsel isundoubtedl peectl indieent.

What can set o a trend [des ts de mode] is thus not without


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Preamble he Discourse of the Syncope 3

its necessi but this necessity does not belong to fashion [ mo]s such By contrast, fashion as such, or, to be more precise, think

ing of something as fashion [Ia mode], should not be separatedom the thought of mode [du mode], to wch it is tied by a bondthat is as much metaphysical as it is etymological and semantic.n other words, the thought of substance. Fashion [ mode] andmode [ mode] are tin gures of the idea of variation on the basisof an underlying truth, nature, or substnce. There is probably no

mo as de mode] properly speaking-with everything that thisword connotes about aesthetics, socie and economicsexcept ina society structured by Western metaphysics. And fashion trendsconsist precisely in that they hark back to the system of substancen short, let us say that today the trend consists in an entirely newkind of transubstantiation of everything that-by means of another necessity-consumes and undoes the system of substance.

The signs pointing to the decomposition, deconstruction, displacement, or the overow of this system-in other words, ofthe whole architectonic and history of the West-that are clled,for example (but in whittling down the meaning of these nouns"text, "signer, "lack, "dri, "trace, and so on are convertedinto vues and thereby erected into truths and hypostasized intosubstances.-n a certain way, this transubstantiation is inevitable(and also what makes this digression necessary . this conversion is prescribed by the economy itself of the very rst discoursesto advance these signs and not merely in what has been repeatedor pillaged by epigones t is due to [tient ] the economy of discourse, which can neither nction without the value (of truth,nor without fetishizing generl equivalence as the basis on which

vlues can be distinguished and exchanged And discourse insistson this, and will insist upon it for a long time to come, as far asthe eye can see (as long as the system ofsight, oftheo). At lestone dimension of what goes by the name of "theory today mustlie, with an everrekindled urgency, in undoing the economy thatreconstitutes itsel in doing so s much in the discourse of fshionas much as in that of its adversary-(and thus also in the discourse

of the syncope


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4 Preamble he Discourse of the Syncope

A ask for Penelope, one mih sa houh perhaps no desinedo reconsiue a domesic economy e know ha Odysseuss

homecominhe reu of he same Odysseus o he same place,his nal home precisely wha for a lon ime has placed inoquesion he whole of our fanasmaic of reurn, of oyae, andof.

Three Diseqibris

I is a quesion here, herefore, of work ha is unbalanced, or, obe more precise, ha is iself workedeaenaway, underminedby a riple disequilibrium:

he obje This e designated the Kantian theoy of schematism howeve, i this "theo is indeed an essential piece, indeedthe conestone of Kantian theoy in geneal (on this point, the Hei

deggeian "epetition of Kant as well as Roge Daval's attempt toeoganize the whole of Kantianism ound the notion of the schemaae indisputale), a st disequiliium immediately takes shape: itis impossile to sepaate out fom it an oject called a "schema itings along with it the whole of Kants discouse We cannot disguisethis necessi, which does not implyfa om itthat we ae oligated to hee undetake a gloal intepetation of Kantianism Rathe,

it imples something less amitious ut moe esictive: nely, thatwe must manage to touch at the ve stuctue, foundation, and locus of a discouse In tun, this demand only comes lly into viewecause of a second sequilium we know aleady, the "theoof the schema also happens to constitute the lind spot of Kantiantheoy The moment one ceases to engage oneself in its intepetation, thee is no longe any chance of shedding light on it In al these

ways, the teatment of the oject, hee, emains at a slight emove osupeimposed upon this oject

disourse This follows fom what we have just said The existence of a lind spot that is constitutive of all theoyjust as it isconstitutive of the eye and of visionis wel estalished a esult,the desie poduce a theoy of schematism is like setting up, if nota dialogue of the de then a face-toface encounte of the nd d

yet, my discouse hee, as discouse, cannot petend to e anything


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other than theoretical.-In fact this is precisely why the theoreticalmust itself be in play here. It is by looking at itself that it unbalnces

itsel The true stake is in no longer entirely a discourse, neither as one holds a tool, nor as one holds to-that is, keeps-one'sword Such is the real-and, so to speak, -enterprise of thiswork all its generali This doesn't mean that Kant is purely a pretext here hat is at stake and what has been in play since 1789,3 isprecisely the exibition of theory's facetoface encounter wit itseand the exhausting, unbalancing question of the renement [ ]

of its discourse-O The question of schematism will not arise right awayn the contry, in this rst volume, it will begin to crop ou onlytoward the end4 entire rst pass-deprived in some sense of its"nal theoreticl justications-is needed to consider the position,program, and ofKanti discourse. L cononts schematism only om the perspective of the problem that the elegnce of

hs style posedKant We shall discover, moreover, that this problemwould never arise for a thought that does not require a theory of schematism. However, we shall also discover tat this theory would havehad no place a discourse that ws untroubled by the question of itspresentation There is thus a circular economy here, s tere shouldbe; however, is not really able to achieve closure Somehow, thequestion of "lterature remains extrinsic to, scattered, and without

any real eect on the question of schematism-no more so than doesKant's will to systematicity succeed in imposing itself over his ownwriting certain shatering of purposes, a certain inability of takingcommad of one by the other compels the dvision beteen L

and , s a syncope within this work itsel

The Enigma of the Se

Of he synce i is hus ime nw seakinsfa hemain ile f he wk ins a single and genel hing. Smehing ha is n bvius

Le us sa ve fm he fllwing i is n enugh sayha "hee is undecidabiliy in a discuse f examle in hediscuse f Kan. I is even less sucien in ha i is eciselyhis discuseand we shall see ha i is his "ineesha iself


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marks this undecidability. To the two questions that summarizethe two stages of this work (questions posed by Kt d not to

Kant)how to present philosophy and what holds up [questcequi it tenir] the system?we shall answer taking a hasty shortcut that Kant responds with undecidability. We shall rtheradd that these answers are not injected into Kants discourse byour interpretation but rather e themselves marked by it. (Againi is necessary here to dspel any equivocation: we e not claimingto do without interpretation but these are henceforth inscribed

right on and in Kants text itself [icrites a mme le texte de Knt]and above all in Heideggers to which we shall get to. At thesme time the history of interpretations of Kant is dierent fromthat of all others. If one excludes doctrinaire neo-Kantian paraphrasings to speak quicly it is a history of a series of questionsopened reopened gaping or hanging cononted with which one

stumbles evades sublimates or loses oneself. It is the repetitionof this Kantian aporia that it is a question of . . . repeating.) Inevery place that it systematically ties itself together Kants discourse mars its undecidability. We cannot rest content thereforein discovering this undecidability. The problems to set out arerather the following: What comes of a discourse that marks itsown undecidability?And perhaps above all: Is the mark of un

decidability a general discursive nction? Indeed in the nal instance (yet how do we ths nal instance?) isnt the nctionof discourse to execute this mark by means of an operation that isneither merely a rupture nor merely a suture?

we can see these problems are nothng new today. Indeed.It is only a question of repeating them with a certain insistence inorder to bring them to bear on

discourse.The transubstantiation

of fashion consists too oen in making discourses undecidabili appear before itsel in presenting it (and hence in makingone believe that one has mastered it) as an instancea force agure a thing what have youthat comes to it from outside.(For exmple when one attributes it to a writing conceived asbeing simply and radically heterogeneous to discourse a gesture

that arises from a transubstantiation of the conceptthat is not


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Preamble he Discourse of the Sycope 7

a concept-o "archiwriting that Derrida has succeeded in producing and developing analogous operation can be perormed

on "laughter in Bataille, or on "jouissance in acan, and so on)However, by doing so, and against the very intentions that onebelieves one is remaining aith to, one preseres-or, worse still,reconstitutes or reinorces-this outside by means o which discourse has always assured its selpreseration through designating and xing it et us say, with Niesche, that one is thereby

working, without always having wanted it (?) [sic], to broaden andextend the shadow o God, and o metaphysics Yet Niesche, soar as he was concerned, conspired to operate more implacably,more inexorably, at the heart itseo metaphysics n the Gay Sci-ece, the construction o the Cartesian subject, the death o God,and the adventurous travels o the "ree spirit are all played out inthe same place, on the same innite oce This enigma o the same

still remains-i not to be thought, then in every instance to beunremittingly expended in the discourse that bears it and which itsustains Without which, rebalanced and reinorced, rearmed oneby the other, dscourse and its other perpetuate their mutual institution-that is, their philosophical, social, moral, political, andeconomic institution (With whatelse do we have to do here?)

Ts task, less production than expenditure, or simultaneously

expenditure and production, requires that one take a ew precautions with the undecidable One must carelly distinguish it, orexample, rom the saturating and reassuring nction o the ible, which every discourse carries One must so distinguish itrom the position ositio] o an equivocation or a ndamentalambiguity that would oen in discourse a prosion and multi

plicity o meanings that thrive rom their intrinsic set o interconnections These are roles played by metaphysical truth-andconvert a lack or an absence, circumscribed by discourse, itothe plenitude o a true outside, hanging out beyond dscourse butsurreptitiously controlled by it and by the discursive conditions othe production o the outside itsel On the contrary, one cannotsucieny ponder (and even so, isnt this the same thing?), one

cnnot ruminate enough, or wear out the ollowing remrk by Ba


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taille: "Only language reveal at the limit the overeign momentwhen it no longer ha any currency But in the end the one who

peak own up to hi impotence5 In eect it' almost the amething; however doe the same take place by way of the almos?Therein lie the whole quetion In peakig thee entenceBataille i making a peech [ient un discours] What ele would hedo? In peaking thee entence dicoure mut deny them; yet in denying them it would have to repudiate itelf; it i obligatedto hold them [tenir], and they are untenable [intenable].

It' neither in vain nor by chance that we hall recall the origin of the word "undecidable It come from meta-mathematicfrom a quetion that arie at the heart of the model of mathesis,out of Platonic-Carteian knowledge (even if it coordiate are nolonger "Carteian) If one import thi concept into philoophy(that i perhap if one reimport the very mark of the co-belong

ing of mathematic and metaphyic) one ought not water downthe tructure o that it become a baggy and die ambiguityThe undecidable i not louche however one undertand the term:what i dubiou what i of l repute and what i not without acertain cham By contrat the undecidable i made from the exact uperimpoitionin geometry they ay homographyf theblind pot and the center of viion undecidable propoition

i one that cnot be the object of any demontration neither bydeducing it nor by excluding it from the ytem our len exclure];it can neither be derived nor reted; it doe not ubmit to thelogic of a ytem though neither doe it oppoe it (ince it belongto it) e know that G6del demontrated that it i alway poibleto contruct undecidable propoiion in a formal ytemandthu the general impoibility of deciding a ytem of etablihingnoncontradiction ad completion on the bai of itelf alone Butwhat count here i not the failure of mathematical autodemontration and the metaphyical notalgia that it evoke Rther whatcount o to peak i the auto demontration of the failure7 Theundecidable propoition i produced marked d claied by theytem d within it


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Synthesis Syncope (-ates)

The enigma of the same is ikey bound to the position and thearmation of the undecidabe: it's the same that produces and inscribes the undecidabe, and that consequenty contros it as oneof its propositions or nctions, and it is from the same that theinscription of the undecidabe denies the possibii of assuring itsidentity without a remainder. The undecidabe is the very power of

the same-tat which, by means of discourse, withdraws discoursefrom its own Absoute Knowedge. In this manner, the undecidabe's emergence (as such) in the ed of "metamathematics-or,if you wi, the probem of the "foundation of mathematics-isikey precisey what started the denitive withdrawa of mathematics from questions about the metaphysics of SefKnowedge[Savoirdeso and foundation. But it is discursivity as a whoe that

tis operation is conceed with. The reation between discourseand mathematics dating "from time immemoria repeats itsed, in repeating itse this same reation is dispaced. Here, matematics does not aight into its autonomy, abandoning te vainoversight of a boodess phiosophy (this is a scene that is sti performed ony in certain academic discourses . . . ) ; rather, it bringsaong with it the genera program that ways jointy determinedmathesis d metaphysics, knowedge and science.8 (We sha seeshorty how these rues begin to tist under the pressure of theKantian question of presentation.) Because the undecidabe is notthe Oter of the Same, the Other coming to poke hoes into theSame in order to turn it into a specuar abyme or an epiphany.

That which founds, that wich supports, must it not "itsef

be insupportable? This necessity beongs to metaphysica ontoogi, and, at the same [mme] time, it is aso its radica deterioration-or rather, it is the deterioration of the root itse [mm] .Here, at east, one can forego negative or distorting prees: thesame itsedoes insidious vioence to the discourse of the same; iteats away at it and devastates it. The undecidabe is the samenessof the same produced by the same as its ateration. This aterationdoes not possess the ferte negativity of the diaectica Other in


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Preamble he Dcourse of the Syncope

th Sam: it is th impossibiity "itsf of th sam Or, youwant, it is th diactic of th Sam, nd thrfor th diactic it

s s its own impossibiity9 In th nd, it's bttr to not say thatth undcidab is tis or that, and vn that it is insupportabPrhaps th ast untnab statmnt is somthing aong th insof the same undecides itse Th sam undcids itsf: it undositsf as it constituts its ssurs itsf in th vry gstur d

instnt which it ovrcoms, xs, and acs its ssurs At thesame time: w sh s !tr that thrin is th who structur of

Kantin schmatism W sha avoid writing: it ssurs (itsf),or "thr is no Sf to which this action can b attributd Thisis bcaus it is prcisy in this caim that th sf of th sam-itasity-is

Thus, what is cad consciousnss probaby nvr aows itsfto b graspd s an idntity xcpt whn it bacs out: it is syn

cop Th syncop dcids sfidntity It mars it s irrtabin th gstur by which nd th instant in which it is subtractdfrom a dmonstration-and, abov a, from autodmonstrations, autoprsntations or prsncings It shoud b undrstoodthat whn w say "th syncop dtrmins, it is by antiphrasisTh syncop is not nything nd has no powr It is not a ngativmovmnt from on momnt to th nxt, nor is it a who that

srvs s a bridg Th syncop has, to b vry xact, th instantanous, punctu, and discrt (in th mathmatica sns) naturof th cogito, and it is undrstood, rthrmor, that it's not thcogito, nithr is tr a cogito without on Th syncop simul-taneo attachs and dtachs (in Gr, for xamp, th supprssion of a ttr in a word; in music, a strong bat ovr sinc) Of cours, ths to oprations do not add up to anng, butnithr do thy canc ach otr out Thr rmains th syncopits th sm syncopatd, that is to sa cut to pics (its rstmaning) and somhow rjoind through amputation he sameis erected here through its resection: th undcidab gur cad"castratio drivs from this

This dos not mn that w hav just divrd oursvs ovr

to an xistnti phnomnoogy of th syncop If vr such a


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Preamble he Discourse of the Syncope

thing counted as a psychoogic consciousness or even a metapsychoogica one it coud ony ever do so if it aready derived

from something equivaent to a ranscendenta "consciousnessOr rather to the transcendent same. The syncope is the equivaent of transcendent synthesis which is why Kantian theory thetheory of synthesis as such the theory of the production of identit is here unavoidabe The syncope is not the reverse or the opposite of synthesis Just as one has to say that the sme undecidesitse one has to say that synthesis syncopates itse its own thesisand its own discourse Or that it's the syncope that "speaks [ente discours] the iscourse of synthesis which is thus simutaneousyspoken [tenu] and not uphed [non tenu] . Or even and very simpy if one dares say it in this way one shoud say that synthesissyncopates

Kantian phiosophy stems from [ent ] this undecidabiity and

keeps to this syncope It announces and notes it and in doingso it identies itsef in what is most proper to it and dooms itstranscendenta identity its own system to impossibiity Here iswhat it ought be a question of in the pages that foow To say it another wa ndamenty it shoud be a question of the systematic permanent and "synthetic coapse of the very foundationof scourse

d consequenty it must be a quesion of the mode of inscription or the mode of production of the undecidabe But ony insuch a way that it is accepted from the beginning that there is no that prepares or pans the syncope nor any organization orproductive naity hat gives itsef the undecidabe And yet itis the same that syncopates the same that undecides itse One

coud say id syncopates But ony on the condition that onedoes not think of the id as the vague d indistinct force of a primordia origin an utimate instance that comes to determine eveg The id coud be chaosne runs across chaos more thanonce Kant But once more on the condition of insisting on thefoowing-which doest et itsef be thought and which exhauststhought chaos is not chaotic (supposing that "the chaotic can

even be made to nction as a quaity or a predicate) erected


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Preamble he Discourse of the Sycope

a the primoria Other, it reove iove the quetion ofthe ame. Chao i chaotic inofar a it is the ame (the ame a

the me) . It not on in mthoog that chao ha it own namean poee the active power of generation a the whie beingetea to a regime of orer n a generative procee. Chaosi perhap the proper name ite the name of the Same that incribe it ncope-an, a a reut, the "mthoogica name that"gic faie to iminih. The ncope happen to the proper, theproper, the ame, come abou []-unecie itef-in

ncopation.

Something Repsive to Look At

The quetion of the prouction of uneciabiit, which i aothe quetion of an uneciabe prouction, that i, the quetion of

the "agent of phioophica incription a a copate agent-or,more precie, the quetion of phiooph a the quetion of thephilosopher, of the phioopher who ha pae out (if one trieto hear "the phioopher neither a a ubjective entit nor a anempirica iniviua) or, to ak thi another wa: Who or whatphoophize? Who ecie or unecie?-Thi quetion, whichipace, tranform, an reinitiate all the theoretic an prac

tica quetion that can be inke to phioophica icoure; or,rather, if one o eire, b wa of a oae wor that ver harto put into pa (we ha retu to thi, too), thi quetion of theesh of phiooph, of the eh bone of phiooph, in eect,of phioophica incarnation-thi quetion of the phioopher,therefore, it bear repeating, beong to Kt.

Kant i not make it a "priviege object of hi work. Rather,one might a that it a he i. In Kantian icoure, it i theicoure of metaphic that unecie ite an it the phioopher who back out [sycope] . n we hou not ruh to a thatthi ha wa happene in the coure of phiooph. Not that itit true. But it i jut a true-it i truth itse-that the ncopehappen, that there are phioophica event an hitorie that s


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copate History It happened to Kant Hege was not mistaen onthe matter:

Identity of this formal kind nds itself immedately confronted by or next to an innite nonidentity, with which it must coalescein some incomprehensible way. On one sidethere is the Ego, with its productive imagination or rather with its synthetic unity which,taen thus in isolation, is formal unity of themnifold. But next to it there is n innity ofsensations and, if you like, of things in themselves. Once it is abandoned by the categories,this realm cannot be anything but a formlesslump, even though, accorng to the Cqueude, it is a relm of beauteous natureand contains determinations with respect towhich judgment cannot be subsumptve butonly reecting. Objectivity and stability derive solely from the categories; the realm ofthings in themselves is without categories;yet it is something for itself and for reection. The only idea wec form of this relmis lke that of the iron king in the fry tale

whom a human selfconsciousness permeateswith the veins of objectivity so that he canstand erect. But then formal trascendentalidealism sucs these veins out of the king sothat the upright shape collapses nd becomessomething in between form and lump, repulsive to look at. For the cognition of na

ture, without the veins injected into natureby selfconsciousness there remains nothingbut sensation. G W F Hegel, Faih adKowlede

hat metaphysica discourse cannot stand, what disgusts it, isthe syncope Specuon requires the ive subject ready and stand

ing erect in its mirror; it so recognies itsef in the simpe re


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vers o the mirror, in the smooth and absoute back o its tain.It reses and rejects (which is to say, it aso aways comprehen,

assumes and subimates, subates or attempts to subate, one mustnot orget) the sackening, the oss o bood, the oss o sense, thebetween-ieanddeath that is aways too cose. This episode isnot ony payed out beteen Kant and Hege; it is constanty repayed the pay o discourse consists in repaying it. That's whyte "Kant who appes in this book is not an object o the pastin the name o erudition, o the history o phiosophy, or o who

knows which priceess "reu to Kant. Kant, one has theurge to writehis proper name, most a noun, ust ike the nameo Chaos (and, as we sh see, having spread a the way to iterature), has not ceased to punctuate, since Kant, and to syncopate,the history o discourse. It is in the name o this that he pays apart herein the guise o the kant [e kant] that undecides itse

in every discourse. Moreoverwe have aready said so and thesecond voume w retu to thisit is impossibe to take on kantwithout ting on its repetitions, above a Heidegger's. However,wha needs to be examined in Heidegger and in hi kant [e kant]is precisey the repetition o the undecidabe, o the syncope. Nevertheess, it shoud not be orgottenand we wi have occasion torecthat Heidegger's repeition o Kant is nothing but the rep

etition o the repetition o Kant in Niesche, in Husser, andnomatter how surprising or, by contrast, academic it appearsprobaby in Marx and in Freud.

Utimate a ventures on the kan [e kant] sip. They can buton undecide themseves in turn. It has been said that this impiesto questions: It's "knownthough what kind o knowedge is

this?that neither one nor the other has an answer, that thesequestions themseves are progrmmed by the undecidabe. Whowoud be naive enough to want to hod the discourse o undecidabiity? Insisting on it is exhausting and hopeess in principe, yetin a way that can hard be said to be tragic (it is raher the matter o a certain aughter). d yet, who woud want to renounceit? Or rather: Who woud have the naivet to beieve in the pure

and simpe disappeance o phiosophyand o the phiosopher?


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That is to say, o history? A great outburst o aughter can answertis question aughter is sti a syncope. What prescription, what

imperative is in command here? Coud there be a du here? Aduty to discourse that woud no onger owe anything to the discourse (which undecides itse) o vues and knowedge? In whatunprecedented sense, in what sense irreducibe to the mode o decoud tere be a moraity o unhope [dsespoir]?

In SummPhiosophica discourse is pronounced over a syncope or by a

syncope. It is hed up [tenu] by an undecidabe moment o syncope. This moment, this mode o production, and this regime oinscription are nt's, which means they are ant's sll toy Theantian nction in phiosophy is what exhibitsor shoud one

say incises? syncope, in spite o everything, in spite o thewi in discourse. Phiosophy has ways comprised this nction,even i it is constitutionay incapabe o understanding it (andwhy, at the critica moment, the syncope happens to it). Phiosophy has ways known that it possessed what is untenabe. That'swhy it denies it and pretends to know or to tink. It even pretends to thin what is untenabe. And, thereore, that is why itexasperates itse and makes discourse trembe over this antiannction (the one who doest trembe is not the phiosopher, butrather the phiosophica ideoogue, whomever and whatever he orshe may be or caim to beonservative, reormist, or destroyer ophiosophy). There is no point in doing phiosophy it ist to to accompany this exhaustion o discourse to its imit. Because it is

ony at the imit that one can try phiosophs uck its stake is nottat o an interest but rather o an injunction, a prescription, astrangeyou must dcourse that hs nourished it and is now wearigout the history o an entire civiization. Intervention into this history passes by way o this imit.

In nt, this ou mus takes te orm o the necessity, howeverunresoved, o schematism, which is the condition or the produc

tion o sense. This necessity gives rise to to questions First, how


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16 Preamble he Dcourse of the Syncope

to present philosophy (This is the question o stye o iterature inphiosophy) Second what speaks ho up the system [qu'estce

qui ait tenir ] ? (This is the question o the schema o its gureand its ethos) Logoelus ass the rst as an ange o attack onthe second to which we wi return in osmotheoros.

I not caiming here to speak or to dloy the discourse o thesyncope Neither is anyone pretending to dance on the ruins o a

phiosophica Carthage However there is someone here asingthemseves what is oered by and what must sti be articuated

by the dead phiosopher Certain questions are so od that theycannot grow any oder; they are susceptibe onyand very concreteyto another histo.

"Ony anguage reveas at the imit the sovereign momentwhen it no onger has any currency But in the end the one whospeaks owns up to his impotence13


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l the Rest Is Literature

The misortune o a dread stye in writing has beaen morethan one phiosopherperhaps l o them I Its a weknown

act so we known that when the opportunity presents itse itis truer to deem that it is not an accident but rather an inrmitythat is cosubstantia with and congenita to the exercise o phiosophy However this can be understood in two ways: rst that thisexercise condemns one to this inrmity or second that this inrmity dooms one to this exercise (However one chooses to ook atit in the end it is certainy about inrmity that one has to speak

here just as t did) There is no ack incidentay o expanations and even excuses or this inrmity within and outside thebody o the proession The depth the eevation the compexityor the gravity o phiosophica thought toerates not demandssome amount o dense writing Indeed it is not a itte strangethat this is the case up to a point where such a density not ony

spois the charms o discourse but aso perturbs its pure and simpeegibiity The phiosopher writes bady and sometimes he or shedoes nothing but scribbe

At east thats the okore o phiosophic cacography But it isevident that in order to animate this ore one must ready possess in advance the aesthetic and iterary categories that enabe oneto assess a stye or a ack or absence o it other words one has

to be in possession oliteture. Literature can in eect either we


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18 the Rest s Literature

subordinte phiosophy to itse s genre nd bring to ber on itthe ony kind o udgment tht does not rise rom posophic

decision, or it cn together excude phiosophy rom its domin,rom stye2 But in order to mke use o this notion o iterture,nd in order to deinete either o these prtitions artages], oneneeds phiosophy ht is to sy, the question o stye, o the genreo phiosophythe question o ho to present nd expose phisophy, or, to sy this in n bsoute y, o phiosophic expositionmust hve been posed ithn phiosophy itse Since its

most ly deveoped historic rticution s ritten the Germn nguge, it is necess to pose the question o DsteungDrsteung, exposing osition], in ront o exhibition, exposition, monstrtion [monstion] presenttion, genre, or sye3d, insor s no question cn remin extrinsic, instrument,or uxiiry to phiosophy, it s necessry tht this question be

posed in posophy s phosophic question It s necessytht this question be posed in such s y tht it be phiosophy, orperhps be ke phosoph or the question itseo phiosophy

Ho to present phiosophy? his question punctutes the history o phiosophy ith its repetitions It punctutesor syncoptes?it s series o nsers or rmtions his is becusephosoph such nd such phosoph is ys certin howto

o presenttion nd o its on exposition, n orthogrphy dthey oud erse one touch or stroke nd pint it nother unti inthe mesure o the possibe they hd mde the chrcters o menpeasing nd der to God s my be ht t ny rte oud be theirest pinting h)" But there is moment hen this question takes pce as question, underkes itse s question, ndbegins to estbish nd rticute itse thereby producing its onterms his is the moment in hich phiosophy expicity designtes its on exposition s literature ht is to sy, no onger asthe trce o the very hnd o the phiosopher, his utogrph, butrther s his other, tht is s the rest

here thus occurs moment herein the phiosophic utogrph cn no onger in some sense certi, uthorize, or uthenti

cte itse but herein phiosophy designtes, impictes, exhib


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All the Rest s Literature

its, and disavows itself under the genre of what will become veryquicly he mode notion-and hence exteal to philosophy

of "literature. This is the moment of Kant. And our task hereconsists simply in trying to establish the following proposition: itis beginning with Kant that it became possible and necessary toexpressly distinguish beteen philosophy and literature (hence hecutting o and coupling of concepts and terms, and the positingof he question).

Thse peple wh have made a pressi explaiig Kat t us were either thesrt wh lacked the capacity t gai a uderstdig the subjects abut which Kathas writte r themselves; r else such pepleas ly had the slight misrtue uderstadig e except themselves r such

s expressed themselves eve mre csedlytha he did -Friedrich Schlegel, AhaaeuFrae

Yet, in a certain sense, it is only a question of posing the fact ofthis proposition, and on account of it, of interesting ourselves inthe diculties Kant experienced as a writer. If Kant is the worst

writer in the history of philosophy-or if he is so considered tobe-it is not by accident. His misfortune is not an accident noris it an empiric inrmity. Rather, it belongs systemacal theensemble of gestures nd heses that constitute critical philosophys such. By way of a programmatic formula that he rest of thisbook will have to veri we shll propose the following: the ncopeof the autoaph is cotitutive of the whole of critical philosophy such In other words, he whole wherein is decided and undecided,the last moment of metaphysics, our moment-insofr s we sillhave a "moment to live or to occupy.

However, it will be a question here of Kant the writer. We arenot about to embark on an exmination of critic philosophy.ather, we will set out to encounter it by way of a certain literary

"crisis in Kant and to establish such a "crisis s a pilosophicalfact, or, as he philologists say, to establish the text.


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A the Rest s Literare

The heavy buckram sle of t's chief workhas been the source of much mischie for

brainless imitators aped him in hs externalform and hence arose amongst us the superstion that no one can be a philosopher whowrites well -eine Reliio ad Philosophi Gea

The sle of his metaphysical analysis is complicated laborious redundant and oen the

harder the author worked to write clearly themore obscure was the result The work ofKant is a thought in search of its form If itwere more nished would it have been as exciting? -Boutroux La Gde Elopie

The strange blindness of l those who have bound Kant to the

pilloy of literature lies in the fact that they have never taken intoaccount the statements of Kant himsel who never ceased to complain of lackng literary talent. And it goes without saying thatphilosophers, for their part, have considered his declarations evenless. It is these that one must rst attempt to read e will read therepetition of this motif in the text of critic philosophy. "Why doI write such bad boos and "why do I wish to write good books.7This motif will reve another one, which is lso double "In truth,says philosophy, there is only mell the rest is literature, and"y truth, says the philosopher, can it do without the rest?

(At the same time, in addition to certain marks that Kant's writing has le in philosoph we shall reproduce long the way someof the traces that the same Kant has been found to have le, by

means of a destiny unique amongst philosophers, in literature. Noother philosopher, in fact, has taken on or le such an imprintbeyond philosophy, whereas philosophers or critics riously goat and exhaust themselves over his style. Immanuel Kant, onepopar hero, regularly haunts high and low literature ike. Whathaunts novels, poetry, and theater alike, of course, is an eponymous gure of philosophy, of a superhuman virtue, for example,

and of a science that the average mort can barely understand.


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All the Rest s Literare

iiterature coud not do without it But it is aso the no-esseponymous gure o a certain ridicuousness o the phiosopher as i

iterature or even phiosophy coud do without aughing Everything occurs in any case as i it were inevitabe that the aiure oKant the writer marked the singuar commencement o a singuaritery ortune and misortune Or rather as i Kant's iteratuein producing and competing the phiosophica imparting art-age] o phiosophy and iterature had at the same time imprintedon iterature the indeibe mark o its provenance)

t the same time we wi reproduce aong the way Which "at the same time is it a question o here? Ad o which"way ? i these texts together with mine come together toorm a unied text? O wi they be attached or gued to the sideo the road aong the way? d on the way to where since in acertain manner we are ony on our way to these very texts to

the nonautograph texts o Kant? The road and its edge are poorydistinguished one rom the other There's somethingor someonehere that is undecidabe a Knt avestied," just as therehave been Homers ad Virgis ravesis in iterature; but woudn'tthe parody itse here be aways very decidabe )

men, frm the mst austere t the mst

frivlus, frm the richest t the prest, pursue, cnsciusly r nt, the same galEven Kant? Prbably even nt at bttmEven Lenin? I swear, in ting sme time tdiscver it, ne wuld shw that it is the caseeven fr c Frutter and F Lucentini,Su a

His style f cnversatin w ppular in thehighest degree, and unschlastic s much s,that any stranger wh shuld have studied hiswrs, and been unacquainted with his persn, wuld have fund it dicult t believe,that this delighl cmpanin he saw theprfund authr f the Transcendental Philsphy -Thmas De Quincey, "The LastDays f Immanuel Kant


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3 A Vulnerable Presentation

and a Desirable Elegance

Ka or cant as intelligible characterNietzsche, The Twight o the o{at

originally mplies the jargo of those whoput on the airs of the highest moral character-Kant's father, in order to bear witnessto his Scottish origins, spelled his name Cant.Immanuel chose the K in order to avoid thepronunciation Zant Zant means nothing;neither does Kant Is it possible that Im

manuel applied the following rule from Duclos Gmmaire, which was intended for theFrench: "The K is the letter we use the leastbut which we should use the most, given thatit has no incorrect use? r did he rememberthat kat was an old form of the past participle ofkee to now?)

The presenaion of philosophy is fragie always in danger ofno being up o he as of he necessary exposiion The scopeand urgency of philosophic s needing o be carried ou hasaggravaed his fragiliy The auhor himsel moreover lacs hegis needed for he urn of phrase ha would give i he necessry nish And age which coninues o deplee his powers leaves

him even less free ime o chisel his forms: such is in more han


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A Vulnerable Presentation and a Desirable Elegance 23

one form the motf that can be found scattered throughout Kant'stexts prefaces notes or announcements.

In order to account for it at least in general let us begin withsome points of reference. It is rst of , in 1755 a deliberate gesture in the preliminary argument of Kant's Nova dilucidatio: "Ihave thus carely avoided extensive digressions and only laid barethe muscles and joints of my argument having put aside charmand grace of language like a dscarded garment.2 One discoversthis gesture lso in 1763 in the foreword of he On Possible Argument in Support of a Demonsation of the Existence of God: "Because a variety of commitments have prevented me from devotingthe necessary time to it the manner in which these observationsare presented shows the characteristic mark of something incompletely worked out. . . . In my case the incomplete form of thework is to be attributed less to negligence than to deliberate omis

sion. My sole intention has been to sketch the rough outlines of aman dra.3 (Notce that the to reasons given here are inconsistent.) "It is my belief that an edice of mean excellence could beerected on the basis of that dra provided that hands more practiced than my own were to give it greater accua in the parts andperfected regularity of the whole.4 (Another inconsistency. Thistime the statement suggests not a voluntary gesture on Kant's

part but rather a failure of his own had.) In 176 the nal noteto the nqui Conceing the Disncness of the Princles of Naural heolo and Morali attributes the lack of "renement in thetext to a need to meet the deadlines of the Academy but it addsthat it will be easy to remedy this aw aerard. The same yearin the Observao on the Feeng of the Beaul and the Subme

Kant excuses the weakess of his presentation of human falings:"For he to whom Hogarth's engraving stylus is wanting must compensate by descripton for what the drawing lacks in expression.5

(The rst presentation in history of criticalphilosophy is not the Ctique o/Pure Reobu rather a novel by Hippel, Risig Careerswhich appeared between and , andthe hero of which taes a philosophy exami


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A Vulnerable Presentation and a Desirable Elegance

natin at the University fKnigsberg Whatis mre,Kant ws suspected f being the true

authr f the nvel, r, at the very lest, fcertain pssages He had t publicly deny itThe episde f the examinatin permits thereader t recgnize big mtifs f the then in preparatin Frple: Metaphysics has n relatin t the senses In it, everyting is rdered n the bsis f the mind It isa lexicn f pure resn, a attempt t bringt light the prpsitins f pure thughthat udgments are t lgic, cncepts e tntlgy, the cncepts under which we placethings, rt f understading, ntnin reasn Metaphysics must be critical Itsuse is negative i

We were n the verge f setting frmmetaphysics with ur eyes brimming withts but f a sudden, !We nticed the nightcap f her spectacular dignity,the grandmther, wh was bstructing thedray

In 183, the Prologomena to the Metaphysics of Mora will con

tain a series of rems on the dculties proper to philosophiclexposition We will have opportunities to examine these later Thepreface to the 186 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Scienceends on the aw of another genre that is supposedly so perfect"In this treatise, although I have not foowed the mathematicmethod with thoroughgoing rigor (which would have requiredmore time than I had to spend theeon), I have nonetheless imitated that method-not in order to obtain a better reception ofthe treatise, through an ostentatious display of exactitude, butrather because I believe that such a system is certainly capable ofthis rigor, and also that such perfection certainly be reached intime by a more adept hand " (Another accumulation ofheterogeneous arguments time and ability, but beyond that, we shl

soon see, that the mathematic perfection of philosophy is by no


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A Vulneble Presentaon and a Desirable Elegance

means a matter of time and taent in execution.) he preface tothe 188 Critique of Practical Reason contains a defense against the

accusation of having introduced a new and obscure anguage intophiosophy We sha have to return to it. for the preface of theCritique of judent (190), it asks for the reader's indugence ofthe work, insofar as he expects to nd therein a doctrine of tste,since that is not its intent he preface continues: "iven howdicut it is to sove a probem that nature h made so invoved,I hope to be excused my soution contains a certain amount ofobscurity, not atogether avoidabe, as ong as I have estabishedceary enough that the principe has been stated correcty (Cj,) low us to add that in 188, in the text entited On the e ofleocal Princs in Philosophy, Kant expresses his gratitude forReinhod's Letters on the Kntan Philosophy in the foowing manner "he taent of a uminous, even grace presentation of dry,

abstract doctrines without the oss of their thoroughness is so rare(at east in this age) and nevertheess so use-I do not want tosay merey for recommendation, but instead for the carity of insight, of comprehensibiity, and thereby of persuasion-that I feeobiged to pubicy give thnks to the man who so compementedmy work with this crcaon, something I coud not provide7(One can thus see a continuous series of comments here ink thevery inteigibiity f ideas to the ucidity of the text that presentsthem, and even-though how does this "even nction-to thecharms of this text. In the face of this concatenation, or inside it,how does one situate Kant's "inrmit )

he references can be mutipied without much dicuty8 Butthe preceding ist of exampes shoud suce to evoke-it's the

east that one can say-the insistence of this moti as we as thediversity of the facets of Kant's work that it covers, oen in contradictory ways his diversity is gathered and organized-up oa certain point-by a text that may be considered as the matrix,or the accompishment of the others his decisive text, whichwe have yet to cite, gures in the second prefae to the Critique ofPure Reason; in other words, the distribution of this motif is not at

a random We have to stop to consider this text


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2 A Vulnerab Presentaon and a Desirable Elegance

Kn rrel composes n never chrcerizesnhing. Bu he lws wats o o boh.

The Iel of Consion.-A choir of chosin Kn.-Bu les wih him consionnees composing. I's he s risic chos inphilosoph. -Frierich Schlegel PosthumousFmets

Kn us speculion ino use n evenpoeic ool. -Novlis gmen

Before tan on this text, however, we stil need to rst establish several points of reference. This is because the second prefacemes explicit d radicalizes a problem that was aready posed inthe rst preface of the Critique of Pure Reon, published in 18On Auust 183 however, t writes to Mendelssohn:

For lhough he book is he prouc ofnerl welve ers of reecion I compleei hsil in perhps four or ve monhs wihhe grees eniveness o is conen buless cre bou is sle n ese of comprehension. Even now I hink m ecision wscorrec for oherwise ifI h ele rher

in orer o mke he book more populr iwoul probbl hve remine unnishe i is he weknesses cn be remeie lile blile once he work is here in rough form.For I now oo ol o evoe uninerrupeeor boh o compleing work n lso ohe rouning smoohing n lubricing of

ech of is prs . . . . For n uhor who hsprojece himself ino ssem n becomecomforble wih is conceps cnno lwsguess wh migh be obscure or inenie orinequel emonsre o he reer. Fewre he men so forune s o be ble o hinkfor hemselves n he sme ime be ble

o pu hemselves ino someone elses posiion


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A Vulnerable Presentation and a Desirable Egance 27

and adust ther style exactly to hs requrements. There s only one Mendelssohn.

"Think or onese and, at the same time, rom the point oview o others this ormuawhich combines the same and theother, which thinks or demands the simuteity o the same andothercharacterizes, since eighteenth-century German aestheticsand especiay since Baumgarten, the judgment o taste, as weas the capacities that beong to the artist Kant wi transorm its

empirica vaue into a transcendenta determination by way o thejudgment o tastes "pretension to universaity in the Critique ofudgment. What the rst Critique is acking is being simutaneousy the same and the other, is being a work o artor at eastike a work o art, so that it may be abe to caim the atters universa communicabiity. But this ack, at the same time, is amostnothing it fectsbeside Immanue Kant himse disappointedby the readers tat the rst edition o the Crique of Pure Rea-son put oony the surace or the "movement o the work Andone can remedy the situation without much dicutyathoughKant, here as esewhere, gives precious ew detais on possibe remedies, puts o the exercise to an unspecied ture date, and endson a barey conceaed appea to the goodwi o the tented Men

dessohn . The second edition coud have been an opportunity to appythese remedies, or to compete with Mendessohn. In act ( thisregard) it wi be the occasion o the second preace, wherein, instead o amending it, Kant wi go on to repeat, speci and, i onemay be permitted to say in the oowing way, aggregate the awthat ony our years beore he had characterized as accidenta adprovision to the very content o the work

This repetition is itse preceded by the justication o a certainobscurity or dicuty in expression necessary to te enterprise o"specuative phiosophy. This justicationwhich swears to a certain ack o popuarity that we sha come back tis itse takenover om the rst preace o 1781 The atter distinguished, in e

ect, "the discursive (ogica) disncness ISING THROUGH


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28 A Vulnerable Presentation and a Desirable Egance

CONCEPTS [sic] and inuitve (aesthetic) distincness ISINGTHROUGH INTUITIONS [si in order to expain that the

author o the work having considered the size o his work hadrenounced the atter. That is to sa he had renounced exampesand iustratons that are necessar on rom a popuar point oview (CPR, 2 e sh on remark in passing the act thatths distinction between to carities impies a separation beteenhe point o view o the concept nd the point o view o intuitionthis separation the terms o which Kant underines is somewhatsurprising given that on the combnation o the concept and theintution permits the production o a signication. Doubessthe intuitive carit that Kant seems to excude seems to deriverom the domain o empirical intuition wheres the intuition inthe schema is a priori. But in this cse one c grt on one othe oowing to propositions either the Crique presents itse

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