Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality

by Catherine Malabou

  19. “What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 49.

  20. Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 35. Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 17. The translation says: “Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of Enlightenment.”

  21. Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 17.

  22. “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 17.

  23. Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 38.

  24. “What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 38.

  25. “What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 42.

  26. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, pp. 76–100, p. 78.

  27. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 80.

  28. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 81.

  29. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 83.

  30. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 82.

  31. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 83.

  32. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 82.

  33. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 46.

  34. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 46.

  35. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” pp. 45–6.

  36. Michel Foucault, “On the Archeology of the Sciences: Response to the Epistemology Circle,” in Essential Works, Volume Two: Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, eds James Faubion and Paul Rabinow, New York: New Press, 1998, pp. 297–335, pp. 331–2.

  37. “On the Archeology of the Sciences,” p. 332.

  38. “An Historian of Culture,” debate with Giulio Preti (1972) in Michel Foucault, Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961–1984), ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Jared Becker and James Cascaito, New York: Semiotext(e), 1989, pp. 95–104, p. 98.

  39. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” p. 87.

  40. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith, New York: Pantheon Books, 1972, p. 127.

  41. The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 127.

  42. The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 128.

  43. The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 128.

  44. The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 128.

  45. “What Is Enlightenment?,” p. 46.

  46. Foucault, “An Historian of Culture,” pp. 98–9.

  10

  TIME IN QUESTION

  Stem and Root

  At this point, where the aporia appears in its most extreme form, we might ask why we have waited so long before allowing Heidegger to speak, why he has been left hanging since the introduction to this book. Wouldn’t Heidegger have helped us immediately settle the question of the instability of the transcendental and thereby escape all these dead ends?

  Heidegger completely adjourns all hesitation in regard to the nature and role of the transcendental. First in Being and Time and then in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, he shows that what Kant called “transcendental” cannot be anything but the form of time. Not present time, nor a simple historical now, but an original time that depends on no particular age, not even the age of Enlightenment. I might have saved myself considerable effort by establishing from the start that if there is a possible mobility or transformability of the transcendental, revealed by the figure of epigenesis, then this is originally equated with what Heidegger calls the “temporalization of time.” Only this understanding of the transcendental as primordial temporality makes it possible to describe it simultaneously, without any contradiction or dissociation, as both structure and movement. As antecedence and deployment. As before and after. In a word, as a priori epigenesis. This understanding of the transcendental also modifies its definition as an “irreducible” dimension that, paradoxically, detemporalizes it. And if, for Heidegger, time itself may be called irreducible, this irreducibility is engaged in the ecstatic process to which it refers, a moving and fluid process that rips it out of all fixity.

  It is important at this point not to confuse the temporal mobility of the transcendental with ordinary instability. If Heidegger does indeed claim that there is a lack of a bedrock for the transcendental, this lack is certainly not the result of its temporal nature, but instead results from the fact that Kant denies this temporal aspect in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. This instability is not therefore an essential instability but rather the instability of a disavowal. It is linked not to time, but rather to the negation of time – a negation that Foucault failed to notice. Kant “shrank back” from the view, developed in 1781, of a transcendental that – because it is temporal, because it is linked to time itself – is without rigidity and has no essence except outside of itself. Instability derives only from questioning this view, which leads to a reduction in the role of the transcendental imagination and explains the now shaky character of synthesis.

  Had I followed the arguments of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics from the start, I would therefore have been able to demonstrate swiftly that behind the debate between preformation and epigenesis hides a more fundamental question, namely the question of the temporal meaning of the a priori, which indicates an antecedence, a “before” of a very particular sort, and which, far from lacking in stability, is none other than the true meaning of the Kantian laying of the ground for the origin.

  Readings of Kant that are not attentive to this meaning are marked by the stamp of the disequilibrium that they either condemn or attempt to ward off. If no attention is paid to the ontological-temporal sense – in other words, for Heidegger, the “metaphysical” sense of the transcendental – then in every case the question of the origin is reduced to the “vulgarity” of a beginning, whether it be that of a preformation, a historical “now,” or even a biological determination, as so many versions of the same ambiguity.

  Taking Stock

  From the start, it is indeed the question of time that, explicitly or not, orients all the readings of Kant analyzed up to this point. As a whole, they express a symptomatic indecision between “before” and “after.” The interpretations by Zöller and Zammito are the most representative examples of the “before” approach. We recall that, according to them, despite what he says, Kant does not advocate epigenesis and was never able to “come to terms with the implications for his analogy between epigenesis and transcendental philosophy.”1 According to both Zöller and Zammito, if one does not know how to read the analogy in §27, it can only give rise to “a fundamental erosion of Kant’s boundary between the constitutive and the regulative, between the transcendental and the empirical.”2 We must therefore conclude that when he appears to be a supporter of epigenesis, Kant does not really think what he says or say what he thinks. The agreement between categories and objects is certainly not innate, but the epigenetic analogy, to contradict innatism, introduces no less to it than the idea of an embryonic development and formation that do not match the definition of the transcendental. The only way to escape the paradox thus occurs via recourse to preformationism: everything must be decided before. The “after” is nothing but the unfolding of this antecedence – the “germ” or the “original predisposition” of the a priori.

  By contrast, taking their cue from the “evolutionary” skeptical argument, those who support the “after” declare that there is no a priori: time and development follow the same line. The epigenesis of reason – in reality the epigenesis of the brain – has no identity other than that which results from evolution, visible after the fact, and that is, moreover, both modifiable and unpredictable. Time is the time of adaptation, and its product is the agreement of the categories with objects. The transcendental then dissolves in the movement of its adjustment to the real. Everything is postponed until tomorrow.

  As we have seen, between this “before” and “after,” Foucault attempts to bring to light a historical “present” that actualizes the form of the transcendental and situates it exactly between the preliminary structure and the subsequent transformation. Despite it all, this “between two”
is not one, since Foucault does not manage to articulate the terms and in fact emphasizes their discontinuity. The transcendental is assimilated to the paradoxically atemporal form of the “irreducible.”

  The figure of epigenesis thus seems to be fated to provoke this oscillation between the a priori and the a posteriori, before and after, in Kant’s text – an oscillation between structural fixity and historicaladaptive transformation that is the flagrant marker of the instability of the transcendental. And so this figure fails to find its place. It causes a series of apparently uncontrollable logical-temporal collisions. The result is a fundamental indecision in regard to the definition of reason: is it the development of the brain or the ultimately atemporal irreducibility of critique?

  By emphasizing this oscillation, this fragmentation, we can ask Heidegger, now, what he thinks of these approaches. For him, none of them would have been sufficient to resolve the question. Epigenesis is often related to time without time being rigorously thought and without illuminating the supposed disequilibrium – the irreducible disequilibrium, to play on the phrase – of the transcendental structure.

  Schematism and Objectivity

  Heidegger shows that the true problem presented by a priori agreement of our categories to the objects of experience, of their synthetic connection to their objective validity, is authentic time.3 Without mentioning epigenesis, Heidegger nevertheless speaks about the a priori “formation” of the categories, stating that: “In the question concerning the possible use of the categories, their particular essence itself first becomes a problem. These concepts present us with the question of their ‘formation’ in general (Diese Begriffe stellen vor die Frage nach die Möglichkeit ihrer ‘Bildung’ überhaupt).”4

  Yet the question of this formation cannot be understood from the Deduction alone. The mistake of many previous readings is that of limiting themselves to this sole framework. The production or epigenesis of the categories, as well as their agreement with objects, occurs not as a present, now, or historical moment, but rather in the operation of the schematism. “In the Transcendental Schematism the categories are formed first of all as categories,”5 writes Heidegger. The question of epigenesis cannot therefore be understood and resolved except by taking into account the essential role of the schematism. In the Deduction, the synthesis, and the fundamental role that the productive imagination plays in it, must first be exposed in order for the idea of a pure development of a priori forms to subsequently find its concreteness.

  In the Deduction of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant demonstrates that the imagination plays the role of a middle term between the understanding and intuition. Indeed, it produces the first “scene,” the “pure look (reiner Anblick),” that makes any objective encounter possible a priori. Thinking and objectivity agree with each other from the start in this scene. “This unique possibility of having a certain look shows itself in itself to be nothing other than always just time and the temporal.”6 Imagination opens the “horizon” prior to the encounter, time itself, a “pure look” on “what is offered.” But we must go further, reading beyond the Deduction.

  Indeed, further on, Kant asserts the necessity, for this look, of concretely elaborating, of being “formable (bildbar) in a variety of ways.”7 As we have seen, the look is not innate, nor is it “established.” The opening that it is has yet to occur, to order the modes of grasping and the rules of connection of objects determined by the categorial agreement according to a “now,” a “before,” and an “after”. Epigenesis thus truly takes off in the passage from the initial pure look to the multiple images that are the schemata, specific determinations that render categories homogeneous with objects. “The pure look of time must exhibit four possibilities of formability as ‘time-series, time-content, time-order, and time-inclusiveness.’”8 The schemata objectivize agreement, bringing it to maturity in a sense without ever threatening to introduce experience into the a priori, and conversely without ever fixing it in an antecedence without development or future. Thanks to a sort of a posteriori of and in the a priori itself, “[the schemata] articulate the unique pure possibility of having a certain look into a variety of pure images.”9 In this way, they form a contact surface between the first horizon and objectification that founds the validity of the agreement. A series of images spring up at the epicenter, orienting the transcendental to the object.

  The agreement, “preliminary letting-stand-again which turns-ourattention-towards,”10 is indeed the structure’s coming out of itself towards the form of the world. When Kant states that this agreement is not innate, but rather is produced a priori, he is doing far more than adopting a position against innatism or Hume. He is also doing more than refuting the idea of a possible contingency of the laws of nature or the founding principles of science. He is, in fact, developing the philosophical question of the origin in an entirely new manner. Heidegger maintains that the initial project of the Critique of Pure Reason is the “attempt to point out an origin for pure thinking in the transcendental power of the imagination, and therewith for theoretical reason in general.”11 All questions of origin – what is innate? what is originarily acquired? – are derived from the perspective of that which precedes them all ontologically: how does the time of the origin come to the mind, and does it coincide with it? Heidegger writes that in Kant: “Time and the ‘I think’ no longer stand incompatibly and incomparably at odds; they are the same.”12

  It is a priori that at the origin, the origin can be nothing but an image. Not the image of something, nor even the image of itself, but a pure image, the first image of all – which opens its horizon to thinking and, thereby, through a series of schemata, to the world. Rationality thus draws its source from the iconic form – neither categorial nor sensible – of such a scene. Time is the inaugural poïetic of reason.

  The pure image (of) time thus appears as the absolute antecedence that the schemata serve to differentiate, pluralize, and regulate. In this pure image, the three ecstasies (past, present, future) are equiprimordial. “Before” and “after” are contemporaries there. Thus, there is no contradiction in envisaging their coexistence and reversibility at this level. Taken into account from this perspective, the idea of a priori epigenesis loses its contradictory character. It is inscribed in this first moment where the past is always at the same time to come, or tomorrow, reciprocally, always comes before today.

  Thus, and once again, for Kant, “the laying of the ground for metaphysics grows upon the ground of time.”13 Absolutely no instability of the transcendental structure ensues from this, there is no lack of solidity whatsoever, and there is no skeptical wandering secretly inscribed in the heart of the a priori. Instead, what appears is “the essential unity of ontological knowledge.”14 In Kant, the meaning of the pure image coincides with the question of being.

  The Second Edition

  Or at least this is what would happen unless a counterforce appears to threaten to unsettle this foundation and unity, despite it all! According to Heidegger, this is precisely what happens in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. In it, the Kantian breakthrough in the direction of primordial temporality is covered over. This dual move of concealment and unconcealment explains the ambiguity of the status of the transcendental, which closes almost immediately to its own dimension of opening.

  In the second edition, the assimilation of the transcendental and primordial temporality disappears as a result of the relegation of the productive imagination to a subaltern role. The understanding becomes the nourishing ground of objectivity and truth through its spontaneity alone. Heidegger writes:

  However, because the transcendental power of imagination, on the grounds of its indissoluble, original structure, opens up the possibility of the laying of a ground for ontological knowledge, and thereby for metaphysics, then for this reason the first edition remains closer to the innermost thrust of the problematic of a laying of the ground for metaphysics. With reference to this most
central question of the whole work, therefore, it [the first edition] deserves a fundamental priority over the second. All reinterpretation (Umdeutung) of the pure power of the imagination as a function of pure thinking [. . .] misunderstands its specific essence.15

  The henceforth definitive lack of an intermediary between the understanding and intuition causes the instability and precarious nature of the foundation. One essential term is lacking: the image. All that is left are logical acts that do not give time and that are no longer inscribed on a horizon. There is no longer any first ground. What remains is the spontaneity of the understanding, which is unjustifiable when it is not accompanied by the spontaneity of the productive imagination.

  The figure of epigenesis – which appears only in the second edition – would then be viewed by Heidegger simultaneously as witness and erasure of the temporalization of the transcendental. As generative production, epigenesis reveals the inscription of time in thinking. But it can also be read as resistance to this very inscription. Indeed, for Heidegger, the time of epigenesis, borrowed from biology, would then be the very expression of vulgar time, derived from nature and life, which only shows once again a bit more of the loss of the status of the pure image. The way in which the formation of categorial agreement is presented in the second edition suffers the consequences of the amputation of the synthesis: without imagination, time is no longer anything but objective time. As an image, epigenesis does remain a product of the imagination, but of an impoverished imagination and, there again, entirely detemporalized. Embryonic development is henceforth its only horizon.

  What We Might Have Understood

  Heidegger would thus have enabled us to understand why most interpretations of Kant go round in circles because they do not consider epigenesis as an ontological symptom: sometimes it is a sign of time, at others a sign of the concealment of time, or a hybrid mix of primordial temporality and leveled-down temporality. Deprived of this searching look, these interpretations themselves also suffer from the same ambiguity and remain undecided regarding the ontological status of the transcendental. Whether they subsequently decide to situate the transcendental, to actualize it, or to relinquish it – ultimately, all amounts to the same.