between ontology and praxis
Reiner Schürmann and Cornelius Castoriadis Between Ontology and Praxis (2013) by John W.M. Krummel
reiner (via wikipedia): Reiner Schürmann (February 4, 1941 – August 20, 1993) was a Dutch-American philosopher and professor. From 1975 to his death, he was Professor of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York City. One of Schürmann’s best-known works is Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy.
john (via https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B014UK61AI/about): I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan in a bilingual, bicultural family, to an American father and a Japanese mother. I attended the American School in Japan from Kindergarten to 12th grade. I received my BA with a major in Philosophy from Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana in 1988. I received my MA in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty, NYC, NY in 1994 with a thesis on Heidegger and Foucault. I then received my Ph.D. in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research in 1999 with a dissertation on Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s notion of the imagination. I then received an additional Ph.D. in Religion from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA in 2008 with a dissertation on Nishida’s dialectical philosophy in relation to Buddhism and Hegel. I am currently Associate Professor and Chair in the Dept. of Religious Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY; and Assistant Editor of Journal of Japanese Philosophy, SUNY Press; Associate Editor of the International Journal of Social Imaginaries, Brill; and Editor of the Social Imaginaries Book Series, RLI.
more on john here [https://www.hws.edu/faculty/krummel-john.aspx]: Email: krummel@hws.edu
via 25 pg kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-w-m-krummel-reiner-schurmann-and-cornelius-castoriadis-between-ontology-and-praxis]
notes/quotes:
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ABSTRACT
Every metaphysic, according to Reiner Schürmann, involves the positing of a first principle for thinking and doing *whereby the world becomes intelligible and masterable. What happens when such rules or norms no longer have the power they previously had? According to Cornelius Castoriadis, the world makes sense through institutions of imaginary significations. What happens when we discover that these significations and institutions truly are imaginary, without ground? Both thinkers begin their ontologies by acknowledging a radical finitude that threatens to destroy meaning or order. For Schürmann it is the ontological anarchy revealed between epochs when principles governing modes of thinking and doing are foundering but new principles to take their place have not yet emerged. For Castoriadis it is chaos that names the indeterminationdetermination that governs the unfolding of the socio-historical with contingency and unpredictability. And yet for both thinkers their respective ontologies have political or ethical implications. **On the basis of the anarchy of being, Schürmann unfolds an anarchic praxis or ethos of “living without why.” And on the basis of his notion of being as chaos, Castoriadis develops his political praxis of autonomy. The challenge for both is this move from ontology to practical philosophy, how to bridge theory and practice. The key for both seems to be a certain ontologically derived sense of freedom. In this paper, I analyze and compare their respective thoughts, and pursue the question of how anarchy or chaos and the implied sense of an ontological freedom might be made viable and sensible for human praxis, how radical finitude in the face of ontological groundlessness might nevertheless serve to situate a viable political praxis.
**the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of that crazy/unpredictable/chaotic global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
aka: carhart-harris entropy law et al
otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. [again].. for (blank)’s sake..
One knowledge from which we can never escape, “even if the natural metaphysician in each of us closes his eyes to it,” as Reiner Schürmann puts it, is the knowledge of our natality and mortality, that we are born and we die (Schürmann, 2003: 345). *Pulled between these two ultimates, we seemingly have no choice but to live our lives by realizing—discovering?, constructing?, inventing?, imposing?—some sort of meaning or value in our existence. ..As a collective we set up institutions to deal with such marginals that occasionally invade with a-meaning our otherwise meaningful lives. Inserted and torn between the double bind of natality and mortality, we live our lives filled with contingencies, beginning with the ultimate contingency of birth and ending with that of death. Schürmann described such events of contingency as singulars in that they defy subsumption to some meaning-giving universal representation. One of the central points of his ontology is that being is a multiplicity and flux of singulars that defy the metaphysical attempt to unify and fix them steady. That is to say that singulars unfold their singularity both diachronically and synchronically, through their mutability and their manifold. If principles are what steadies and unifies that flux of multiplicity, preceding the emergence or positing of the principle or arché (ἀρχή), being is an-archic. Schürmann called this “ontological anarchy” (Schürmann, 1978a: 220; 1990: 10; 2010: 252). **And to see being as such would be “tragic sobriety” (Schürmann, 1989: 15ff). ..According to Castoriadis chaos is indeed what reigns supreme at the root of this ***apparently orderly world (Castoriads, 1991: 103; 1997b: 273) and from out of which man creates—imagines—a meaningful and orderly world.
*i’m thinking that is a cancerous distraction as well.. thinking our only choice is to make meaning/value of things.. i think if we were all legit free.. those would be irrelevant s
**like warning ness et al.. and hari present in society law et al..
***again.. carhart-harris entropy law et al
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Both Schürmann and Castoriadis thus begin their ontologies by acknowledging a radical finitude that threatens to destroy meaning or order. And to make their case they look to history: Ontological anarchy for Schürmann becomes most apparent between epochs when principles that governed human modes of thinking and doing for a certain period are foundering, no longer tenable, but new principles to take their place have not yet emerged. For Castoriadis chaos is a name for the coupling of indetermination-determination that governs the unfolding of what he calls “the socio-historical” with irreducible contingency and unpredictability.
history ness et al.. oi
graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al.. history ness kills that
*What are we to make of this—anarchy and chaos? Their ontologies have political implications. Both thinkers are interested in deriving some sort of an ethos or praxis from out of their respective ontologies. On the basis of the anarchy of being, **Schürmann unfolds an ethos of “living without why” that he calls anarchic praxis. Castoriadis, on the other hand, uses the term praxis to designate his explicitly political project of autonomy, which he bases upon his understanding of being as chaos. ***The challenge for both thinkers is precisely how to make that move from ontology to practical philosophy, from thinking about being to a prescription for acting. One common though implicit link that bridges theory and practice, ontology and politics, for both, I think, is some sense of freedom with its ontological significance. ****How can ontological freedom, with the recognition of no stable ground—anarchy or chaos—be made viable and sensible for human praxis? This is the question I want to pursue in this paper. I intend, ultimately, to develop an understanding of that freedom in a spatial direction, as opening, that perhaps may hold relevance for us in today’s shrinking globe that paradoxically expands the world.
*nothing.. we have nothing to prove or make .. of anything.. let go
**aka: intellectness as cancerous distraction et al
***again.. the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness.. sans prescription/thinking.. et al..
****we need to try the thing we’ve not yet tried.. via a sabbatical ish transition
Ontological Anarchy: The Principle of No Principle
Reiner Schürmann’s ontological starting point is the singular, ..ireducible and cannot be thought in terms of concepts or universals. .*And yet we cannot so simply disintoxicate ourselves from that metaphysical temptation in utmost sobriety to think nothing but the singular (Schürmann, 1989: 15). We are caught in a conflict—Schürmann calls this a différend, borrowing the term from Lyotard—that can reach no settlement (Schürmann, 1989: 2–3). And this, according to Schürmann, is the “tragic condition” of humanity: to be driven to posit a grand narrative and yet to inevitably hear the demand of finitude.
*perhaps until now.. now we have the means for a global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake
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Taking this finitude as his phenomenological starting point, Schürmann understands being at its most originary root to be irreducibly finite, multiple, and in flux, escaping the rule of any principle or arché. Instead being—or the origin symbolized by being—is anarchic (Schürmann, 1978a: 212). It is the very multifarious emergence of phenomena around us—whereby finite constellations of truth assemble and disassemble themselves. Uprooting rational certainty diachronically and synchronically, perpetually slipping from a oneness that would claim universality or eternity, being emerges ever anew, always other. *Being in its “radical multiplicity” (Schürmann, 1990: 148) is without destiny or reason.
*the dance
..It simply grants beings without “why.” ..the very giving to presence, or presencing, of beings and their beingness.
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..The question thus looms: when practical philosophy, including political thought, can no longer refer to a First as its norm or standard and instead faces an abyss in the lack of legitimating ground, what are we to do, how ought we act? But the suggestion is that precisely this—when anarchy is laid bare—is when one truly is.
egit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
Chaos: The Ontology of Magma
Cornelius Castoriadis’ ontology of chaos in some ways runs parallel to Schürmann’s ontology of anarchy in its recognition of a primal indeterminacy and fluidity. ..History for Castoriadis is the creation of “total forms of human life,” the self-creation of society in its selfalteration ..The creator is the instituting society, and in instituting itself it creates the human world ..Every society involves history in this sense as its temporal alteration. But history as such can neither be explained nor predicted, whether on the basis of mechanical causality or identifiable patterns, because—even as it determines—Castoriadis contends, it is not determined by natural or historical laws (Castoriadis, 1991: 84; 1997b: 269). The socio-historical as this complex of history and society in a perpetual flux of self-alteration (Castoriadis, 1998: 204) is thus irreducible, whether in terms of mechanical causality or in terms of function or purpose.
the it is me ness et al
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On the basis of this notion of the socio-historical Castoriadis develops an ontology of human creation that refuses to reduce being to determinacy. History instead resides in “the emergence of radical otherness, immanent creation, non-trivial novelty” (Castoriadis, 1998: 184). .. In The Imaginary Institution of Society he characterizes such time as the bursting, emerging, explosion or rupture of what is, “the surging forth of ontological genesis,” of which the socio-historical provides a prime exemplar (Castoriadis, 1998: 201). Broadening his view of history, by the late 1990s, he more explicitly ontologizes the claim to state that being itself is creation and destruction, and that by creation he means discontinuity or the emergence of the radically new (Castoriadis, 2007: 190). Castoriadis thus attempts to construct an ontology that would acknowledge novelty as intrinsic to being itself.
..Rather than being a well-defined unity of plurality, the social is then a magma of magmas (Castoriadis, 1997b 211; 1998: 182).
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Despite his characterization of magma as neither a set of definite and distinct elements nor pure and simple chaos (Castoriadis, 1998: 321), Castoriadis will go on to use the characterization of chaos, especially in his later works, to underscore the indeterminacy of our creative nature. He defines this chaos as the irreducible inexhaustibility of being. Chaos designates being in its bottomless depth, the abyss behind everything that exists (Castoriadis, 2007: 240). As such, “being is chaos” (Castoriadis, 1991: 117; 1997b: 284). And the entire cosmos is a part of that chaos and begot out of it while continuing to be rooted in its abysmal depths. At the roots of the world, beyond the familiar, chaos always reigns supreme with its blind necessity of genesis and corruption, birth and death (Castoriadis, 1991: 103; 1997b: 273).
In elucidating his notion of chaos Castoriadis refers to its ancient Greek meaning as a sort of fecund void or nothingness— nihil—from out of which the world emerges ex nihilo minus the theological connotations. .. But Castoriadis contends that chaos in addition to being the empty chasm also had the sense of disorder from which order, cosmos, emerges (Castoriadis, 1991: 103; 1997b: 273). For him this signifies an a priori ontological indeterminacy (Castoriadis, 2007: 240) that would account for novelty. Nihilo or chaos, one may then say, is an indeterminable complex that exceeds rational comprehension. Being at bottom is chaos in that sense as the absence of order for man, or an order that in itself is “meaningless” (Castoriadis, 1991: 117; 1997b: 284). .. In the same sense that an-archy for Schürmann accounts for the singularity of events in history, chaos for Castoriadis thus accounts for the unpredictability and novelty of events in history.
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Now if the creation of the world, the institution of the network of imaginary significations, as self-creation or creation ex nihilo, can claim no “extrasocial standard of society, a norm of norms, law of laws”—whether it be God, Nature, or Reason—that would ground or legitimate political truths, we arrive at the same aporia Schürmann noticed. According to Castoriadis, the recognition that no such ground exists opens up the questions of just law, justice, or the proper institution of society as genuinely interminable questions (Castoriadis, 1991: 114; 1997b: 282). The question looms if nature both outside and within us—chaos—is always something other and something more than the constructions of consciousness (Castoriadis, 1998: 56): To what extent can we intentionally or consciously realize our autonomy? How does the alterity and alteration of being (chaos, magma, indetermination) affect Castoriadis’s project of autonomy? How do we realize our freedom with the knowledge that being is chaos?
to me.. realizing autonomy.. et al.. would be irrelevant to legit free people.. and the way to get there is to try/trust the thing we’ve not yet tried/trusted/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
Anarchic Praxis: Being Without Why
How are we to assess the political implications of these ontologies of anarchy and chaos?
we’re not to assess them.. if we assess them.. no longer organism as fractal.. aka: the death of us ness
There is no ground or reason (Grund) to which we can refer action for legitimacy. Instead— Schürmann tells us—being as *“groundless ground” calls upon existence, a subversive reversal or “overthrow … from the foundations” (Schürmann, 1978a: 201). The consequence Schürmann surmises is that human action, notably political practice, becomes thinkable differently in this absence of ground (Schürmann, 2010: 249).
*unjustifiable strategy strategy ness et al
**or perhaps even un thinking .. just being.. dance ing
left off mid 10
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be you. 