Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality

by Catherine Malabou

  Notes

  1. According to Meillassoux, Kant did nothing but distort the meaning of the “Copernican revolution.” By introducing it to philosophy, he inverted its meaning: “Yet this is where we encounter a rather disconcerting paradox. This paradox is the following: when philosophers refer to the revolution in thought instituted by Kant as the ‘Copernican revolution,’ they refer to a revolution whose meaning is the exact opposite of the one we have just identified. For as everyone knows, in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents his own revolution in thought under the banner of the revolution wrought by Copernicus – instead of knowledge conforming to the object, the Critical revolution makes the object conform to our knowledge. Yet it has become abundantly clear that a more fitting comparison for the Kantian revolution in thought would be to a ‘Ptolemaic counter-revolution,’ given that what the former asserts is not that the observer whom we thought was motionless is in fact orbiting around the observed sun, but on the contrary, that the subject is central to the process of knowledge.” After Finitude, pp. 117–18.

  2. After Finitude, p. 126.

  3. The term was coined by Jacques Derrida, who defines the “quasi-transcendental” as a condition of possibility whose only content is the impossibility of our doing without it. On the different uses of this concept in Derrida’s work, see Geoffrey Bennington, “Derridabase,” in Jacques Derrida, Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 267–70.

  4. On this topic, see, for example, Alexander R. Galloway, Les Nouveaux Réalistes, trans. Clémentine Duzer and Thomas Duzer, Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2012.

  5. After Finitude, p. 9. Translation modified.

  6. After Finitude, p. 16.

  7. Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Off the Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 1–56, p. 37.

  8. “The Origin of the Work of Art,” p. 37.

  9. After Finitude, p. 9.

  10. Aristotle, Physics, trans. Robin Waterfield, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 106.

  11. Aristotle writes: “But ‘number’ is ambiguous: we describe not only that which is numbered and numerable as number, but also that by which we number. So time is number in the sense of that which is numbered, not in the sense of that by which we number. That by which we number is not the same as that which is numbered.” Physics, p. 106.

  12. Rémi Brague, Du Temps chez Platon et Aristote: Quatre Études, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982, pp. 134–5. My translation.

  13. Du Temps chez Platon et Aristote, pp. 134–5.

  14. Cf. Aristotle, Physics, Book IV, 223a 28, p. 115.

  15. After Finitude, p. 34.

  16. After Finitude, p. 108.

  17. Martin Heidegger, “Anaximander’s Saying,” in Off the Beaten Track, pp. 242–81, p. 276.

  18. Jacques Derrida, “Ousia and Grammè: Note on a Note from Being and Time,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 29–68. See in particular pp. 48ff., in which Derrida “compares the ‘Transcendental Exposition of the Concept of Time to Physics IV.”

  19. Heidegger, On Time and Being, p. 15.

  20. On Time and Being, p. 15.

  21. On Time and Being, p. 14.

  22. After Finitude, p. 13.

  23. On Time and Being, p. 14.

  24. On Time and Being, p. 14.

  25. Cf. After Finitude, pp. 10ff.

  26. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, revised and with a foreword by Dennis J. Schmidt, Albany: SUNY Press, 2010. Title of the first part of the book, see the table of contents, p. vii.

  27. Being and Time, §6, p. 23 [24].

  28. Cf., for example, Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012, no. 111 (“The ‘Apriori’ and φύσις”), no. 112 (“The ‘Apriori’”), p. 174.

  29. Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982, p. 322.

  30. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), no. 262, p. 355.

  31. Mentioned by Jean Grondin in L’Horizon herméneutique de la pensée contemporaine, Paris: Vrin, 1993, p. 65. My translation.

  32. A “finitude,” which, it should be noted, appears explicitly only four times in Being and Time. Cf. Grondin, L’Horizon herméneutique de la pensée contemporaine, p. 66.

  33. After Finitude, p. 8.

  34. Heidegger, On Time and Being, p. 54.

  35. “Es gibt” is translated as “there is,” but sometimes also as “it gives.” Cf. On Time and Being, p. 8.

  36. Derrida, “Ousia and Grammè,” p. 63.

  37. Cf., for example, Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. Marion certainly refuses to equate givenness and transcendental. But this refusal leads to thinking givenness as a still more primitive principle, in this sense as a “super” or “hyper” transcendental that comes before all the befores. Both first and last. Ultimate. Marion writes, “The privilege of givenness [. . .] comes to it from its definition. Since givenness always beats a hasty retreat before its given, its very withdrawal confirms it; its absence – not being, object, I, or transcendental – attests its activity. It is indeed posited as principle, but on condition that it remain the last” (p. 61).

  38. CPR, p. 273, A141.

  39. After Finitude, p. 45.

  40. Cf. Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I, Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 19.

  41. CPJ, introduction, section II, “On the Domain of Philosophy in General,” pp. 61–2.

  42. After Finitude, p. 27.

  43. After Finitude, p. 10.

  44. Meillassoux writes: “The problem of the arche-fossil is not confined to ancestral statements. For it concerns every discourse whose meaning includes a temporal discrepancy between thinking and being – thus, not only statements about events occurring prior to the emergence of humans, but also statements about possible events that are ulterior to the extinction of the human species.” After Finitude, p. 112.

  45. After Finitude, p. 31.

  46. After Finitude, p. 28.

  47. After Finitude, p. 60.

  48. After Finitude, p. 65.

  49. After Finitude, p. 26.

  50. After Finitude, p. 62.

  51. After Finitude, p. 62.

  52. After Finitude, p. 15.

  53. After Finitude, p. 124.

  54. After Finitude, p. 108.

  55. After Finitude, p. 90.

  56. After Finitude, p. 94.

  57. See After Finitude, p. 98: “[T]he Humean-Kantian inference is an instance of probabilistic reasoning applied not to an event in our universe, but rather to our universe itself considered as merely one among a totality of possible universes. The nub of the argument consists in registering the immense numerical gap between those possibilities that are conceivable and those that are actually experienced, in such a way as to derive from this gap the following probabilistic aberration (which provides the source for the frequentalist implication): if physical laws could actually change for no reason, it would be extraordinarily improbable if they did not change frequently, not to say frenetically. Indeed, they would change so frequently that we would have to say – and here we move from Hume to Kant – not just that we would have noticed it already, but that we would never have been here to notice it in the first place [. . .].”

  58. After Finitude, p. 81.

  59. Cf. the argument presented in After Finitude, pp. 66–7.

  60. After Finitude, p. 66.

  61. After Finitude, p. 79.

  62. After Finitude, p. 66.

  63. After Finitude, p. 63.

  64. After Finitude, p. 53.

 
65. After Finitude, p. 76.

  66. Cf. After Finitude, p. 67.

  67. Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, trans. Reginald Lilly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 125.

  68. The Principle of Reason, p. 126.

  69. “The ‘because’ withers away in play. The play is without ‘why.’ It plays since it plays. It simply remains a play: the most elevated and the most profound.” The Principle of Reason, p. 113.

  70. After Finitude, p. 9.

  71. After Finitude, p. 110. Translation modified.

  72. Heidegger’s interest in biology is certainly genuine, as a number of key texts indicate, especially The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Nevertheless, in his work, the status of life is always derived as compared to higher instances of being or existence.

  73. After Finitude, p. 26.

  74. Émile Boutroux, The Contingency of the Laws of Nature, trans. Fred Rothwell, Chicago: Open Court, 1920, p. 26. Cited by Bouveresse in “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 359.

  75. The Contingency of the Laws of Nature, p. 156. Cited in Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 359.

  76. “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 359.

  77. Cf. Poincaré’s point of view, which is entirely opposed to any idea of the evolution of the laws of nature. See Bouveresse, “Le problème de l’a priori,” p. 360.

  78. Edelman, Brilliant Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 202.

  79. Changeux, Neuronal Man, p. 137.

  80. Changeux and Ricœur, What Makes Us Think?, p. 91.

  81. What Makes Us Think?, p. 239.

  82. What Makes Us Think?, p. 209.

  83. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, title of chapter 11, p. 111.

  84. Of course, there will be objections that draw attention to the famous remarks in the preface to Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View whereby: “He who ponders natural phenomena, for example, what the causes of the faculty of memory may rest on, can speculate back and forth (like Descartes) over the traces of impressions remaining in the brain, but in doing so he must admit that in this play of his representations he is a mere observer and must let nature run its course, for he does not know the cranial nerves and fibers, nor does he understand how to put them to use for his purposes. Therefore all theoretical speculation about this is a pure waste of time.” Anthropology, History, and Education, p. 231, AK (VII:119). Of course, this naïve realism is not the one I am arguing for here, and one might imagine that in the light of recent discoveries Kant would have accepted that contemporary neurobiology does indeed allow for the opening up of new theoretical speculation.

  13

  TOWARDS AN EPIGENETIC PARADIGM OF RATIONALITY

  It’s one or the other. Is it that the breach introduced by the motif of epigenesis, illuminated and enlarged by all the contradictory readings presented up to now, including the yawning gap ripped open by speculative realism, allows us to disrupt transcendental philosophy once and for all, in which case there is no point in trying to plug the gap? Kant will obviously retain his position, but for those ultra-contemporary philosophers who are willing to see it, a crack will have appeared. This crack is that of the transcendental, inasmuch as it reveals itself to be forever unstable, unbalanced, incapable of undergirding the structural solidity that it still purports to name. From then on, there would be no choice except between the reactive restoration position – the a priori is flawless – and the absolutizing post-critical position – rationality has had enough of finitude, and the question of the agreement of our thought to objects, epigenetic or not, can no longer remain rational.

  Or is it the second hypothesis, namely the difficulties that have appeared throughout the readings show only the failings of these readings themselves and demand that we develop a logic of epigenesis which, functioning both in and beyond Kantian philosophy, defines a new interpretative paradigm and opens a new perspective on rationality? Clearly, I have supported this second hypothesis all along, and it is this hypothesis that I shall ultimately develop by proposing, with Kant, the concept of an epigenetic paradigm of rationality.

  Why a New Paradigm?

  My own reading is not quite complete. Starting with an embryo – the few paragraphs in §27 – my inquiry gradually developed limbs and parts, becoming bigger and bigger, from the study of historical commentaries up to the positing of general questions that consider Kant’s place in contemporary thought. But so far this trajectory has led only to aporias.

  Before tomorrow, before the end of gestation, there’s one last step. Kant’s response. The retroactive move of his retort to posterity. No gestation without retroaction, such is the law of epigenesis. What can Kant tell us about his own tomorrows? What is his place in the generational ordering? How can he confirm the end of the dogma of the irreversibility of heritage as revealed by epigenetics?

  Changeux says it loud and clear: “Let’s not call Kant – a pre-evolutionist philosopher – to the rescue in a discussion of evolution [and the specific role of epigenesis, one might add].”1 Yet that is precisely what I intend to do, by showing that Kant alone can help us construct the paradigm that today opens one of the pathways of its future to thought.

  The phrase “epigenetic paradigm” echoes the “genetic paradigm” coined by Henri Atlan, who, as we saw in chapter 7, now criticizes it as being obsolete. The term “paradigm,” borrowed initially from Kuhn, was adopted freely by Atlan to designate, in a general manner, “a set of ideas, concepts that form a framework in which to [. . .] imagine, plan experiments, interpret results, develop theories.”2 Understood thus, a paradigm not only is the set of principles and methods shared by a scientific community, but also acts as a reading and interpreting tool that dominates various theoretical and disciplinary fields at any given moment. Today the genetic paradigm is under reconsideration. We have seen that some scientists would prefer to no longer use the notion of program. The increasing importance of epigenetics prompts us to propose that an epigenetic paradigm is in the process of constituting itself. There is reason to believe that in the future it will also become one of the structuring tracks of philosophical rationality. A new transcendental.

  I see a profound connection between Kantian thought and the contemporary rise of epigenetics. This idea has guided my research since the beginning. Consequently, to conclude, I suggest that we read the development of critique itself, from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, as an epigenetic development. This involves viewing it both as epigenesis in the classical sense of organic growth and as the economy of a relation between code, interpretation, and transformation. A meaning that Kant anticipated, even if he did not know it.

  Genesis, Epigenesis, Hermeneutics: Ricœur’s Contribution

  Bringing together epigenesis and epigenetics, past and present, enables us to return to the distinction between genesis and epigenesis so as to refine it. A genesis measures the journey between a past and a present state of affairs. Complex or differentiated, linear or tortuous, discontinuous or unified, genesis always measures evolution starting from an origin – whether it is itself full or, as Foucault puts it, a field of various forces. By contrast, epigenesis takes place at the moving contact point between origin and the present state of affairs, until their difference disappears right into their contact – tensed origin, retrospective present, future in the making.

  As I explained in chapter 3, the epicenter of an earthquake is the projection point of its focus or hypocenter. The epicenter marks the exact spot of the eruption, the place where the surface of the earth opens, cracks, bursts. Between ground and underground, the epicenter is thus in some ways the contact point of the earth with itself. Moreover, the damage of the quake is always measured from that exact spot. In this instance, the notion of an in-between base and surface is thus a decisive factor.

  The logic of this in-between is also
at work in epigenesis. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant situates transcendental epigenesis as the development that occurs upon contact between categories and experience. To wish to go back to the source of this contact, as far too many commentators do, is thus not coherent within the Kantian process, which takes place precisely at the meeting point. Again, the transcendental ground hides no treasure, and this allows me to view the transcendental as a “surface structure.” The problem with the readings analyzed up to now is that one way or another they all dig for an improbable base. They look for the possibility of an always more originary instance that would somehow enable them to anchor the a priori in an archè. And if it turns out that this anchoring is impossible, they conclude that the transcendental deserves to be relinquished, that the originary and the a priori are simply factual and therefore unjustifiable, non-deductible. In a sense, it’s true: the transcendental is not based on anything. On this point there’s no change between the different editions of the first Critique. The productive imagination is no more founding than is the understanding.

  However, clearly, this lack of a foundation is not a lack of reason. Kant warns us against this view: the originary validity of the transcendental is to be sought not in its genesis, but rather in its epigenesis. The time has come to say it: transcendental epigenesis is epigenesis of the transcendental itself. The transcendental is subject to epigenesis – not to foundation. The debate over whether the transcendental is innate or fabricated, and in any event factitious, is therefore pointless.

  But how then can we move forward in defining a transcendental epigenesis? We don’t have much to go on. The only thinker to make thematic use of the difference between genesis and epigenesis is Paul Ricœur. His temporary collaboration is very valuable in allowing us to specify the notion of meaning, which has been so omnipresent in previous discussions. Let us briefly consider this hermeneutic approach to epigenesis. Ricœur views epigenesis as both an exegetical tool and structure that allow us to question meaning in a very specific way. In The Conflict of Interpretations, he asks: “[I]s meaning in genesis or in epigenesis?” Where should we look for it? Does it lie “in the return [. . .] or in the rectification of the old by the new?”3 It is precisely this distinction between “return” and “rectification of the old by the new” that helps explain the difference between genesis and epigenesis. Genesis always brings the new back to the old, while epigenesis marks the current valency of the meeting point between the old and the new, the space where they reciprocally interfere and transform one another – the embryo of a specific temporality. Once again, epigenesis situates itself in the middle, at the contact point, and is in the process of bringing the fusion of times to fruition. This median point where birth is prepared is also defined by Ricœur as the intersection of the archaic and the teleological.4 Meaning therefore lies in the way in which a principle becomes its result. Teleology is a prospecting tension towards the future which rectifies after the fact the primitive or “archaic” dispositions that made it possible.