Ethics in the differend of discourses

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 242-256

  Waldenfels, Bernhard ^a  

^a RUHR UNIVERSITY BOCHUM   (Germany)

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EID: 84994303962     PISSN: 00071773     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2001.11007344     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. Lyotard, J-F., : The Differend, trans. G. Van Den Abbeele, (Manchester University Press) Manchester 1988, p. 130. Originally published as Le Différend, (Minuit) Paris 1983. Translators note: The Differend consists of a series of numbered paragraphs interrupted on occasion by what Lyotard calls ‘Reading Notices’. In the following all references to The Differend are given either by paragraph number where appropriate, or if the reference is to one of the Reading Notices by page number. Roman numerals indicate citations from the preface.
2. The following thoughts go back to a seminar on Lyotard that took place at the University of Bochum in Summer 1987. For a further elaboration of its context I refer to the study of Petra Gehring, Innen des Auβen—Auβen des Innen: Foucault—Derrida—Lyotard, Munich 1994, chapter 3: “Innenanordnungen, Spielzüge.J.-F., Lyotard ”.
3. This motive of bearing witness and of testifying already claims a central place in Levinas’ Otherwise than Being.— Insofar as the “differend” is concerned, this concept has a long history, which not only goes back to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (cf. B 320f), but as far as Locke's “repugnancy” of ideas, (lat. “repugnantia”). Bolzano translates Locke's concept by “differend” [Widerstreit] (cf. Wissenschaftslehre, 1, §23), while Husserl, more than once, had recourse to this in his doctrine of intentionality and fulfilment and in the analyses of passive synthesis (cf. the references given in the following volume edited by Waldenfels: Edmund Husserl, Arbeit an den Phänomenen, Frankfurt 1993, p. 225). In addition to this we should mention Merleau-Ponty's idea of an “incompossibility” of experience (cf. Bernhard Waldenfels, Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge, (Suhrkamp) Frankfurt 1995, chapter 9) and the “incommensurability” of paradigms in the work of Th. S. Kuhn. That Lyotard was quite familiar with the phenomenological tradition, right from the beginning of his career, can be seen in his early work Phenomenology, (SUNY Press) Albany 1991). I refer to the excellent epilogue that Christoph von Wolzogen has written for the German translation of this work.
4. TN: both italics in English in the original.
5. Cf. in Husserl: ‘act’ and ‘attitude’, respectively ‘noema’ and ‘thema’, in Austin: ‘illocutionary power’ and ‘perlocutionary effect’, in Morris: ‘modes of signification’ and ‘types of discourse’ (cf. Waldenfels, Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge, chap. 14). The elucidation of Foucault's conception of discourse could be continued in this vein: here one would have to bear in mind that Lyotard, following Wittgenstein, replaces the historical formations that lie at the foundation of Foucault's discourses with the systematisation of types whose historical genesis comes into play only indirectly.
6. Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, trans. R. Lilly, (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991) p. 53.
7. Cf. The Differend, p. xi, no's. 78–79. At the level of the construction of sentences this means nothing more than that a command or an oath is not a disguised assertion and vice versa, but rather that here we are concerned with irreducible “qualities of sentences” which are equivalent to Husserl's “qualities of acts” in the Logical Investigations.
8. Cf. Waldenfels, Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge, chap. 7, pp. 116f.
9. One could thus speak here of a “principle of insufficient reason”. Cf. Waldenfels, Ordnung im Zwielicht, Frankfurt 1987, p. 112, and also Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1978, p. 35, where he speaks of a constant “feeling of insufficient reasons”.
10. Cf. the critique of Lyotard's objectivist linguistics by Wolfgang Welsch, in: Unsere postmoderne Moderne, Weinheim 1987, chap. VIII, 7–9; Manfred Frank, corroborates this argument by saying that language events that are unconditionally de-subjectivized fall—as objects left over—prey to a new subjectivism (Was ist Neostrukturalismus? Frankfurt 1983, p. 18). This does not stop us in assuming a self-happening and hence a self-saying, in which there is engrained a self-and other-relation, yet in such a way the kind and degree of such attribution remains undecided (cf. Waldenfels, Antwortregister, Frankfurt 1994, chap. II, 2–3).
11. Manfred Frank, Die Grenzen der Verständigung. Ein Geistergespräch zwischen Lyotard und Habermas, Frankfurt 1988; the next two sections will refer to this book by simple page reference.
12. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi, (Manchester University Press) Manchester 1984, p. 10.
13. Wolfgang Welsch has a part in this interpretation, when, following the final passage of the German translation of the Postmodern Condition, he proclaims: “…the telos of postmodern knowledge is not consensus but dissensus” (1987, 288). However, Lyotard says in the place cited (Postmodern Condition, pp. 65–66) that the aim of dialogue and discussion is “paralogy”, or more precisely: the divergence from the logos and not simply a disagreement.
14. TN, both words English in the original.
15. Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne, pp. 270ff.
16. A major work by Welsch, advertised under the title Transversal Reason, was not yet available when this piece was written. (TN: this work has by now been published under the title Vernunft: die zeitgenössische Vernunftkritik und das Konzept der transversalen Vernunft, (Suhrkamp) Frankfurt 1996)—The figure of the “transversal” plays a central role in Gilles Deleuze's interpretation of Proust. See Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs, (Athlone) London 2000, esp. the chapter on “Boxes and Receptacles”, and also his intimation of its use in psychoanalysis by Felix Guattari. With regard to the embedding of this motive in the phenomenological tradition, cf. Calvin O. Schrag, “Rationality between Modernity and Postmodernity” (in: St. White, Life-world and Politics between Modernity and Postmodernity, Notre Dame 1989, pp. 81ff). Schrag relates what he calls a “transversal universal” to Merleau-Ponty's “lateral universal”. Cf. Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne, p. 314.
17. Cf. the relevant passages in Waldenfels, Antwortregister, especially in relation to Lyotard: chap., 14.4.
18. Cf. F., Rötzer, ed., Französische Philosophen im Gespräch, München 1987, p. 115.