The Absence of the Author. Leibniz and pathic reason

St George and the Dragon, 1502 Tempera on canvas, 141 x 360 cm Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice

GIOVANNI SCARAFILE

The Absence of the Author: Leibniz and pathic reason

CINEFILAB ESSAYS

THE ABSENCE OF THE AUTHOR: LEIBNIZ AND PATHIC REASON

Giovanni Scarafile* | Tel Aviv University | January, 21 2009

An old habit of the common people during the Medieval period was to scratch out the eyes of certain images that were thought to represent evil. One figure in particular aroused this violent reaction: the image of the Dragon, seen as the symbol of evil par excellence. This behavior was based on the belief that mutilating these unpleasant images could weaken the negative influence that was thought to reside in them.

What I propose to do in these brief comments is to see whether the attitude underlying this repression has perhaps survived until now, though in much more sophisticated forms of inappropriate behavior towards evil.

How can one talk about inappropriate responses when faced with the problem of evil? Isn’t evil one of the issues on which philosophical thought has been most assiduously exercised? Hasn’t a specific sector of philosophy, theodicy, been devoted to the study of the aspects of evil? And wasn’t it Leibniz himself who coined the term? Talking about inappropriate responses therefore sounds like a provocation!

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University of Salento | Lecce | Italy

1. Introduction. the indian reservation And it is in fact true: the coining of the term theodicy dates back to Leibniz and, to put it briefly, it refers to the attempt to think systematically of God and evil. It is not without importance that in Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal, published in 1710, the word “theodicy” is found only in the title. It seems to me that in this choice by Leibniz there is the warning that theodicy proper cannot be summed up in a single paragraph or chapter. It is instead the interweaving of the numerous questions involved in the God-evil connection.

What happened with theodicy?

The fact that, as in a library, there is a specific sector of philosophy devoted to the problem of evil (which is basically what theodicy is), has led to a general lack of commitment, to philosophy feeling exonerated from such questions.

If we consider that on top of this there were the criticisms that poured down on Leibniz’s ideas, we can perhaps understand why today theodicy is referred to almost exclusively in a negative sense, in terms of what it did not succeed in achieving.

Terms like “failure of theodicy”, “exoneration of philosophy” actually suggest a definable phenomenon, assuming some categories formulated by Harold Bloom which I will refer to later in this talk, as the end of the influence of theodicy.

Theodicy, at least so it seems to me, has become like an Indian reservation, within which scholars are free to make their critiques and exercise the specialism needed to deal with delicate questions, but with absolutely no influence on real life, even though it is in fact the source of all those complicated theoretical problems.

This is a rather serious problem, seeing that there is no longer what we can call a principle of semantic relevance of the object of study, namely evil.

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2. Pathic reason 2.1 Allow me to briefly recall the specificity of the pathic reason that I am referring to, starting from the criticisms that were levelled at Leibniz.

According to some critics, the type of rationality operating in the theodicy would require the individual prerogative, the thing we could also call “real life�, to be sacrificed on the altar of universality and formality. This is a declaration of the inadequacy of the rational approach which, because it wants to be pure, risks being empty. It is a declaration of the inadequacy of the theoretical approach that forces itself to work in the absence of what it would like to justify.

The fact that I agree with these criticisms has led me to my idea of pathic reason.

Pathic reason is the aspect of rationality which, while on the one hand seeking a description of the essential structures of things, on the other knows very well that this can come about only by starting from the phenomenon.

When we use terms like affectio, Erlebnis we are actually referring to an area of experience, of lived life, which we become aware of through a particular faculty, that of feeling. We cannot give up feeling without at the same time giving up one of the conditions of possibility for thought.

At the same time, without the aspect of pathicity there can be no experientia, Erfahrung, in the sense of the constitution of an object, or the ideal of a representation.

The use of pathic reason transforms the theodicy, which then becomes a phenomenological, transcendental theodicy precisely due to the way it proceeds, starting from questioning the object before us, to then retrace its conditions of possibility.

Pathic reason undoubtedly seeks to capture the unde malum, but not without starting from the preliminary question, quomodo mala?

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3. The absence of the author: models of interpretation In Leibniz’s work we can look for the possible presence of a rationality which operates in a similar way to pathic reason.

This was done three years ago during the workshop, has been continued, and can be done much better.

In short, we can say that in the text there are signs of a rationality that can be called pathic reason.

Today however I would like to pose another kind of question related to the statute and to the conflict between interpretations.

What would happen if these signs did not exist? Could we continue to talk about pathic reason even if there were no evidence? To what extent can we do so? If, in theory, Leibniz had said the opposite of what for me is pathic reason, could we still talk about it?

When dealing with a text, we can try to be absolutely faithful to the author. But what is absolute faithfulness to the author of a text? Can we really be satisfied with the repetition of what is identical, of what has been said? Are we really willing to make philosophy become like philodoxy?

The normal departure point we have to start from is that we cannot abandon the work of interpretation. Even the presence of the author in the flesh would not let us off this task and the need for an interpretation. In a certain sense, therefore the author as such can never be reached.

That is why any reading can only be a mis-reading.

How many kinds of mis-reading are made?

3.1 the clinamen The first level is the clinamen. This word comes from Lucretius, where it means a “swerve” of the atoms so as to make change possible in the universe. A philosopher swerves away from his precursor, by so reading his precursor’s philosophy as to execute a clinamen in relation to it.

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Precisely when it is trying to be faithful, each interpretation cannot but contain within itself a swerve, or at least a slight difference from the original text.

On this point, let us look at Bloom, You know every philosophy1. by its clinamen, and you “will know” this philosophy in such a way that the knowledge will not be at the expense of the power of philosophy.

3.2 the tessera There may also be a second level of mis-reading.

This is what HB calls the tessera: In the tessera, the later philosopher provides what his imagination tells him would complete the otherwise “truncated” precursor philosophy and philosopher, a “completion” that is as much misprision as a revisionary swerve is.

This passage by Bloom offers many interesting aspects, which I will just mention: 3.2.1. The idea that words (those of the precursor, in this case) are signs subject to wear and tear and are therefore forms of signification “for a certain time” and not valid forever.

3.2.2 the idea of a particular form of conformity with the text that is achieved with the risk of a discrepancy. A sort of completion (an idea which seems to me to show similarities with the structure of the Talmud, where also the minority or losing opinion is included and not excluded from the text).

3.3 the absence of the author The third level is what I call the absence of the author. This too springs from one of Bloom’s ideas: We deny that there is, was or ever can be a philosopher as philosopher – to a reader. Just as we can never embrace (sexually or otherwise) a single person, but embrace the whole of her or his family romance, so we can never read a 1

In this and in the other quotes from Bloom, I have replaced “poetry” with “philosophy”.

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philosopher without reading the whole of his or her family romance as philosopher.

3.3.1 The absence of the author also means that an author’s meaning cannot be found only in that author’s thought, that is, with no reference to dialectics. There may be different levels of meeting between authors, but what remains constant is the meeting itself.

3.3.2 the absence of an author also means, perhaps more importantly, that with his or her own philosophy every thinker outlines a meaning that surpasses all possible interpretations. Each later author can take what was said before him and further develop those ideas.

Conclusions Now let us draw some conclusions.

There is a poem by Yehuda Amichai, I Know a Man, which I think conveys very well what I have tried to say in this talk.

I know a man | who photographed the view he saw | from the window of the room where he made love | and not the face of the woman he loved there.

In far more prosaic terms, it seems to me that there are situations in which we take an incorrect position.

There are situations in which we don’t see the important things that are before our eyes.

This happened in the Medieval period when they tried to cancel out the dragon’s eyes, but can continue to happen every time philosophy becomes a theoretical exercise detached from life.

I don’t know whether the pathic reason that I am proposing can solve these problems. It is an attempt.

What I do know is that I would not have been able to hypothesise this solution without the constant encouragement over the years, of prof. Marcelo Dascal (and also of his wife, Varda). I can only thank them.

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In the last part I mentioned a threefold hermeneutic attitude to adopt towards the text. Is there one hermeneutic approach that is more correct than the others? How does one choose a hermeneutic approach? Can it perhaps be chosen regardless of the author being studied?

The very last question: for Leibniz, what is the best approach?

It would be good if we had a time machine so as to ask Leibniz these questions.

I don’t know whether the advanced technology of Tel Aviv University is able to find such a time machine. I can, however, give you what Leibniz wrote on this point in the letter to Placcius, dated 21 February 1696 : «Q u i m e n o n n i s i e d i t i s n o v i t , n o n n o v i t »2, whoever knows me from my writings alone, does not know me at all.

As prof. Dascal would probably say in this case, “The playacting is over!” Here is a passage by Leibniz, in flesh and blood, to give us the final, definitive proof of what Leibniz himself would see as right.

The words seem to be very clear and unambiguous.

However, if everything I have said about mis-reading is true, these words too can only be mis-read, and mis-interpreted.

When we seek the most appropriate position in dealing with a text, we inevitably find ourselves in the same position as the traveller faced with the path he had chosen to take.

Riding three days and nights he came upon the place, | but decided it could not be come upon. | He paused therefore to consider. | This must be the place. If I have come upon it, then | I am of no consequence. | Or this cannot be the place. There is then no conseguence, | but I am myself not diminished. | Or this may be the place. But I may not have come upon it. I may have been here always. | Or no one is here, and I am merely of and in the | place.

And no one can come upon it. | This may not be the place. Then I am purposeful, of | consequence, but have not come upon it. | But this must be 2

The statement is contained in a letter to Placcius of 21 Febbraio 1696 (cf. L. Dutens (Ed.), G.G. Leibnitii Opera Omnia, Geneva 1768, VI, I, p. 65).

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the place. And since I cannot come | upon it, I am not I, I am not here, here is not here. | After riding three days and nights he failed to come | to the place, and rode out again. | Was it that the place knew him not, or failed to find | him? Was he not capable? | In the story it only says one need come upon the place.| Riding three days and nights he came upon the place, | but decided it could not be come upon.

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