Substrate and Subject (Hegel in the Aftermath of Aristotle)

Chapter I Substrate and Subject (Hegel in the Aftermath of Aristotle) 1. Aristotle: A Certain Underlying Nature and the Individual “Thing” One does not need be a militant Heideggerian to recognize that “metaphysics,” from its very beginning, has posed a problem that is by no means easy to resolve, and, what is more, that metaphysics has thereby posed itself as a problem too. Metaphysics is precisely this problem: that of providing an investigation (skepsis) into the relation between permanence and change, between being and becoming. Naturally we cannot resolve this question by eliminating one of the two contrasted terms, at least not without falling either into a hyper-Parmenidean position like that defended by Zeno of Elea or into the kind of corrosive relativism espoused by Gorgias or Cratylus. That the relation would have to bestow preeminence on that which is (to on) over against “things which come to be” (ta gignomena) has been inscribed in the very terminology of the philosophical tradition ever since the verb keimai (“to lie”) was specifically chosen to express the primacy of constant presence, of that which continues to be the same as itself, that which endures and thereby merits confidence in its reliability. And this is the source of the two compound expressions, the hypokeimenon and the antikeimenon—namely “that which lies beneath as ground or foundation,” on the one hand, and “that which lies before or over against us,” on the other (in the masculine 1 © 2018 State University of New York Press, Albany 2 Remnants of Hegel gender ho antikeimenos means the “adversary” or “opponent,” and thus in the religious context also the Devil). And the task that falls to metaphysics is to transform this opposition of something considered in terms of stability (as hypos- tasis) and something else that resists or hinders it (as antistasis) into a relation of subordination on the part of the latter (that which is “opposed”) with regard to the former (that which “underlies”), or to put this in another way: into the dominion of the former over the latter. Moreover, and quite independently of the vexata quaestio of whether the ancient Greeks did or did not accord a certain primacy to the reality of “things” with respect to the one who contemplates or beholds this reality (namely to the human being), the various uses of the expression hypokeimenos make it possible for us (namely we ourselves as human beings of late modernity) to understand very clearly what or rather who it is that truly stands at the ground or foundation, who it is that acts from “below,” transform- ing obstacles and hindrances into so many stimuli and opportunities for its own activity. Thus ho hypokeimenos chronos, for example, is “the actual present time, the time that lies within our hands.” And ta hypokeimena are “the things which lie within our power.” And, finally, to hypokeimenon also signifies, according to a classic French lexicon of the Greek language, “le sujet proposé, le texte.”1 It is of course well known that in various European languages the words le sujet, the subject, il soggetto, (a film script, for example), still possess the meaning of the “thing” or “matter” in question (in the sense of the Latin causa or the German Sache: the theme or subject matter at issue). But it is particularly instructive, as I see it, to recognize above all that this sujet, this soggetto, is effectually something that is proposé: proposed or nominated—namely something “put forward” or “placed before.” We are talking therefore of a proposition, a veritable pro-posal for what is properly to be regarded as “being,” namely that which enjoys stability, as if we would thereby assert and propose our own permanence—and assert and propose ourselves in terms of this permanence—as if we took time “into our hands” precisely because we would then be laboriously reducing ta antikeimena (the circumstances that oppose and resist us) to hypokeimena, namely to “things which lie within our power.” © 2018 State University of New York Press, Albany Substrate and Subject 3 This is, of course, a modern reading (where we should point out that we have expressly linked the notions of “hands” and “power,” and thus of submitting things to the acting subject). It is a somewhat “violent” reading that accentuates a certain understanding of the sujet or theme in question here (which is to explore the nature of “the subject” in Hegel), by exploiting those subjective hints or traces that are already manifest in the everyday use of certain notable Greek terms and expressions. Nonetheless, it is worth recognizing that Aristotle, from the beginning, already realized the difficulty of a substrate that could propose something for itself, let alone stand as a ground or foundation for mastering whatever opposes it, thus conquering the adversary, so to speak. But in any case it seems that the Stagirite makes this critique of the substrate rather too easy for himself—thus initiating a long philosophical tradition in opposition to materialism—when he identifies hypokeimenon and hyle¯, “substrate” and “matter,” thereby demoting “that which underlies” to mere materia bruta or “material for further development” (and thus, implicitly, fomenting the tendency to convert ta antikeimena into ta hypokeimena, that is, into things lying at hand or within our reach, things that are vorhanden or “present at hand,” as Heidegger would say). In this way Aristotle can criticize “the earliest philosophers” who believed that “the principles which underlie all things are only to be found in the realm of matter” (Metaphysics I.2, 983b, 6–8), without recognizing something that is indeed obvious to Aristotle (obvious, that is, once the meaning of hypokeimenon has been submitted, or “subjected,” to that of hyle¯), namely that “is surely not the substrate itself which causes itself to change” (Metaphysics 984a, 21–22). Changes transpire in and derive from the substrate, but the latter cannot change in and of itself, for to do so would require the activity of reflection—to put this in a specifically modern fashion—or would require us to recognize that the substrate is destined to be that which it always already was; would require us to recognize that it does not go out of itself in the process of change. On the contrary, it is there where it knows or recognizes itself, where it uncovers or discloses things in and of itself.2 In step with this transformation of to hypokeimenon into something inert, something without any life or movement of its own, © 2018 State University of New York Press, Albany 4 Remnants of Hegel Aristotle separates—first in theoretical terms, and then in terms of the “thing itself”—this second principle (the “material cause”) from the first and fundamental principle: the ideal agent, the promoter of change (the “formal cause” as it was later called). What he goes on to claim is this: “we call one cause the substance [te¯n ousian] or the ‘what it is to be,’ or strictly the ‘what it was to be’ [to ti e¯n einai], of the thing (since the ‘reason why’ of a thing is ultimately reducible to its formula [ton logon] and the ultimate ‘reason why’ is a cause and principle)” (Metaphysics I.2, 983a, 27–29). We should note the reflexive circularity that is expressed here: to say what something in the last instance really is, its ultimate logos, amounts to affirming all the affections, properties, and determinations of that thing. In other words: everything that constitutes its being, what it was in its origin, or what was inscribed in it, so to speak, as the “name” that belongs to it in an absolute sense. For what is ultimate, the “ultimate thing” that it is possible to say of something would be its “name”: the name that is proper to it (“what it was to be,” or its essence). Thus, in truth, this name would say nothing other, nothing “more,” than what is mentioned or intended by it (that would be to take it once again as substrate or matter), so that the thing itself would be uttered or expressed, or would utter or express itself (in German we could say Es sagt rather than Man sagt: “It speaks,” rather than “one speaks about it”—and this specific qualification is important), would mention or refer to itself, would itself name what it was in the beginning and in principle, namely ousia, or in accordance with the traditional rendering: substance. The Greek word ousia is a participle of the verb eimi and is thus equivalent to ti e¯n einai (“the what it was to be”). It is by no means unusual therefore for Aristotle to identify logos and thing, that which is ultimate and that which is primary with regard to something. And this is certainly not so strange. Yet it remains too easy, for to justify this identification or equivalence we should have to admit, in the first place, the presence of “something” as a tertium quid, as a basis common to the name properly speaking and the thing properly speaking, that is, to the logos or essence and the ousia or substance; namely something in which the beginning (the thing) and the end (its name) could recognize one another. And in the © 2018 State University of New York Press, Albany Substrate and Subject 5 second place we should have to demonstrate in this entire trajec- tory—which moves from the beginning to the end: what it will be and what will be said of it, namely its specific determinations—that the thing is thereby effectively realizing its initial pro-gramme¯ (in the literal sense of a “prior inscription”), accomplishing that which it already was beforehand.

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