Is the Present Ever Present? Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence RUDOLF BERNET University of Leuven In Heidegger's appropriation, by way of a retrieval [Wiederholung], of the tradition of philosophical thought, the question as to what time is and how it is given occupies a key position. The question regarding the relationship between Being and time shows itself to be the concealed vanishing point of the works of Aristotle, Augustine, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Bergson and so forth. The traditional treatment of logical problems (e.g., the principle of contradiction, the copula in a predicative sentence), psychological problems (the relationship between the res cogitans and the res extensa), metaphysical problems (the distinction between essentia and existentia) and theological problems (the concept of creation), presupposes a particular conception of time. Heidegger's endeavor to come to terms with the tradition thus implies, on the one hand, a particular way of reading the texts of the philosophical tradition with respect to their (concealed, unthought) presuppositions and, on the other hand, an attempt to explore the encompassing ground of all these texts with reference to a determinate (restricted) understanding of time. Heidegger calls the method of this procedure a destruction of the philosophical tradition and designates the understanding of Being and 2 time, presupposed by this tradition, as a metaphysics of presence. The most general framework of the discussion before us will be determined by the question regarding the essence of the destruction as a particular way of appropriating traditional philosophical texts and by the question regarding a metaphysics of presence [Anwesenheit] understood as the now-existing present [jetzige Gegenwart]. In what follows, this 85 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 08:08:15PM via free access 86 general framework, this heuristic principle of thoughtful reading will be put to the test by means of an interpretation of the concept of the present presence Lgegenwdrtige Gegenwart] in Husserl's phenomenological analyses of time. The choice of this starting point for a destructive retrieval of the metaphysical presuppositions of Husserl's phenomenology can finally be justified only by the result of the endeavor before us. Nonetheless, we may fairly anticipate from the outset that the metaphysical concept of presence [Anwesenheit], in a philosophy which determines Being as the (possible) being-given for a subject of cognition, must have undergone an unusually pregnant crystallization. Furthermore, it is the stated aim of the phenomenological reduction to reconstruct the sense and validity of all Being with respect to the present presence of an object for an absolutely present and presencing transcendental spectator. To be sure, the carrying out of this destructive analysis of the Husserlian concept of the present presence would bear little fruit philosophically were it merely to serve the purpose of convicting Husserl of an error characteristic for the entire pre-Heideggerian philosophical tradition. If destructive philosophy is necessarily critical, then we may not become so absorbed in the critique of Husserl as to forget the critique of Heidegger. In what follows, I should like to show that a critical interpretation of Husserl's analyses of time, an interpretation inspired by Heidegger, will at the same time make problematical Heidegger's concept of a metaphysics of presence as well as his procedure of retrieving the traditional philosophical texts by giving thought to the unthought. Husserl's analysis of the present presence can be interpreted at once (and ultimately indeterminably), on the one hand, as the zenith of the metaphysics of presence and, on the other hand, as an attempt to derive the presence of the now-existing present from the absence of the not-now. Thus, for example, Husserl's determination of the relationship between primordial impression and retention is by no means unambiguous. On the one hand, retention may be interpreted in the sense of the metaphysics of presence as a derivative modification of the consciousness of the now. On the other hand, however, it may be interpreted as a differential repetition [Wiederholung] of the primordial impression, a repetition in which, for the first time and after the fact [nachtrdglich], the consciousness of the now becomes conscious of itself. The latter interpretation finds additional confirmation in the circular definition of the primordial-impressional consciousness of the now, that is, in the impossibility of defining the now by means of the now. Also, Husserl's vacillation as to whether retention should be conceived as a perceptive or a re-presenting [vergegenwdrtigendes] consciousness is an expression of Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 08:08:15PM via free access 87 the same ambilvalent attitude vis-a-vis the metaphysically inspired analysis of time. So, too, Husserl's description of the absolute, primordial- temporal consciousness and his determination of the relationship between the retentional and the reflexive self-consciousness of the absolute consciousness, may be interpreted at the same time as a confirmation and as an overcoming of a metaphysical concept of time. These ambiguities result from the fact that, while Husserl's reduction to the present presence begins with the exclusion and thus with the suppression of absence, yet this excluded element necessarily co- determines the sense of the reductive residue, that is, the repressed element returns. Conversely, these ambiguities are no less a sign of the fact that a thinking which wishes to overcome the metaphysics of presence destructively, at the same time necessarily presupposes this metaphysics. Accordingly, our question regarding the metaphysical presuppositions of Husserl's concept of the present presence will lead us to a result analogous to Derrida's critical retrieval of the Heideggerian interpretation of the analysis of time elaborated by Aristotle and Hegel. Derrida's careful and exemplary reinterpretation of the pertinent texts from Aristotle and Hegel shows that, in addition to the metaphysical conceptions emphasized one-sidely by Heidegger, these texts contain at the same time essential elements for an overcoming of the metaphysical concept of time. Heidegger's contrast of Hegel and Kant, as the respective representatives of the completion and the tentative overcoming of the understanding of time imprinted by the metaphysical tradition, is based upon a prejudgement, that is, upon a preliminary decision for which Heidegger gives no further account. This preliminary decision is no merely rhetorical and didactical matter. Rather, it is the expression of a prejudice which is itself still committed to metaphysics. Derrida himself avoids this prejudice, the character of which is yet to be more closely determined, by way of a double reading of the so-called metaphysical texts. On the one hand, such a reading confirms the limits of a metaphysics of presence; on the other hand, it presses on toward the displacement as well as toward the delimiting surpassing of these limits (de-limitation): ... a reading could be worked out which, in its own text, would repeat both this limitation and its contrary. And which should show that the de-limitation is still governed by the same concepts as the limitation. (Ousia ... , p. 70; trans., p. 86) Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 08:08:15PM via free access 88 1. Deconstruction vs. Destruction Derrida calls this reading procedure deconstruction.4 Such a de- construction distinguishes itself from Heidegger's destructive interpreta- tion of metaphysics in that it constitutes a novel reading (lecture) of metaphysical texts. Those texts are metaphysical whose written production (ectiture) is distinguished by a particular understanding of the relationship among thinking, speaking (voix) and writing, as well as by a corresponding use of lingual signs. Such texts are metaphysical because their characteristic understanding of language is determined by metaphysical concepts as well as by metaphysical processes of subordination, negation, cancellation, eradication, exclusion and like operations upon these concepts. The metaphysical concepts themselves generally crop up within the philosophical tradition in the form of pairs of concepts or conceptual oppositions such as presence and absence, essence and existence, substance and accident, real and imaginary, eternal and temporal, and so forth. Metaphysical thinking arranges these pairs of concepts in a hierarchically structured conceptual system and, within each of the individual pairs, subordinates one concept to the other. Thus, for example, Augustine subordinates the temporally existing to the eternally existing and the temporally absent (the past) to the temporally present (the present or the present memory of the past). Derrida continually emphasizes the ethical, valuational component of this hierarchical proceeding and, on the model of Heidegger's talk about the "onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics,"5 designates such thinking as "ethical-ontological" (£thico-ontologique).6 Just as did Heidegger before him, Derrida, too, characterizes metaphysical thinking as a leveling or a forgetting of the difference. Unlike (certain earlier texts of) Heidegger, however, Derrida denies the possibility of overtaking this forgottenness by way of a retrieval and, hence, he denies as well the possibility of an overcoming of metaphysics. His differing with Heidegger in this regard