The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts TIME AND CRITIQUE IN EARLY HEIDEGGER AND DELEUZE A Dissertation in Philosophy by Ayesha Abdullah © 2015 Ayesha Abdullah Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2015 ii The dissertation of Ayesha Abdullah was reviewed and approved* by the following: Leonard Lawlor Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Robert Bernasconi Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies Claire Colebrook Edwin Erle Spares Professor of English Sarah Clark Miller Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies Amy Allen Professor of Philosophy Head of the Department of Philosophy *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii Abstract My dissertation is on the influence of Immanuel Kant's notions of finitude and critique on Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze’s early works. Heidegger, Foucault and Deleuze, under Nietzsche's influence, determine that finitude and the concept of critique must be reoriented such that it no longer takes traditional ethical and anthropological assumptions as its starting point. Indeed, this necessary reorientation is both Foucault and Deleuze's interpretation of the well-known Nietzschean catch phrase “we must overcome man”. In this dissertation, I contend that Heidegger, Foucault, and Deleuze’s respective ontologies develop or harbor a concept of finitude purposed to furnish a path to a new type of critique, a type of thinking that leaves behind the anthropocentrism of our paradigm. For Heidegger, we must follow the central root of the faculties to their origin in the transcendental faculty of the imagination. It is here that we see the auto-affective emergence of the subject and its temporal horizons. For Foucault, we must maintain the separation between the transcendental and empirical realm and perform a critique of the subject such that it is no longer human, but a historically emerging a priori category. It is after we have let go of the traditional subject that we can finally say we have left the ‘Age of Anthropology’ thereby escaping the ‘Analytic of Finitude’. For Deleuze, whose ontology harbors rather than explicitly develops a concept of finitude, we must realign thought and being. It is after thought and being have been realigned that immanent critique can occur. Ideally such a critique, while occurring from within, is not a critique that reaffirms the self, but reaches what is deformed from the perspective of rational thought and brings what is without assumptions to the fore. Perhaps, then, Deleuze’s ontology – transcendental empiricism – iv holds potential to escape the ‘Analytic of Finitude’ described by Foucault and deeply related to Heidegger’s own philosophical fears. Importantly, various relevant socio-political consequences stem from such an interpretation. These philosophers are not merely concerned with taking up a vague Nietzschean project of overcoming man. What is at stake with moving past anthropology is all that accompanies the overcoming of anthropocentrism. Thus we can say that the overcoming of anthropocentrism is also about identifying the root of racism, sexism, homophobia and other abuses of power. To what kind of finitude has our paradigm been committed? Perhaps thinking finitude faithfully, such that we reach the origin and throw ethical, anthropological, social, and political assumptions aside, leads away from the abuse of power and toward genuinely new thought. While these social and political issues cannot be conflated - their differences obscured - the final merit of the project I will be working on will be to unify what Heidegger, Foucault, and Deleuze’s concept of critique may bring to discourses on these social political problems. In particular, this dissertation is meant to contribute to the newly developing area of Critical Philosophy of Race. It seems to me that the needs of Critical Philosophy of Race fundamentally stems from problems with traditional ethics and, therefore, call for ethical, anthropological, and socio-political reevaluations. My dissertation will tackle exactly how these philosophers mean to perform such reevaluations. Thus, while my dissertation is on the appropriation of the concept of critique in a “traditional” philosophical context, I intend to extend this research beyond the theoretical context to use my own work in building the methods of critique used to understand, discuss, and challenge race, racism and the effects of these concepts. v Table of Contents Introduction: The Relevance of Kantian Critique Today------------------------------1 Chapter 1: Hermeneutical Finitude: Time, Truth, and Critique----------------------23 Chapter 2: Eternal Return as Critical Element-----------------------------------------61 Chapter 3: The Order of Time--------------------------------------------------------------------94 Chapter 4: Disrupting the ‘Analytic of Finitude’ with Deleuzean Ideas-------------------127 Conclusion: Critique, Time, and Critical Philosophy of Race ----------------------------157 Bibliography------------------------------------------------------------------------------------166 1 Introduction: The Relevance of Kantian Critique Statement of the Problem and its Relevance This dissertation is on the influence of Immanuel Kant's developments regarding time and critique on Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze’s early works. The project was born out of Foucault’s explicit critiques of Kant in Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology as well as his The Order of Things. Heidegger, Foucault and Deleuze, under Nietzsche's influence, determine that time and the concept of critique must be reoriented such that it no longer takes traditional ethical and anthropological assumptions as its starting point. Indeed, this necessary reorientation is both Foucault and Deleuze's interpretation of the well-known Nietzschean catch phrase “we must overcome man”. Focusing more closely, the dissertation investigates the concept of temporality and what Heideggerian and Deleuzean temporality can offer the concept of critique today. Insofar as the notion of critique is the cornerstone of any philosophy of truth, a thoroughly developed notion of critique has been one of the most important aspects of every philosopher's corpus, most notably, since Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Today, however, one must wonder whether the concept and act of critique has, in fact, “run out of steam.”1 Indeed, it seems the act of critiquing is often misused and abused. When the United States declares war on terrorism, when Islamic fundamentalists criticize Western values, when Christian fundamentalists criticize marriage equality and abortion, these critics attack with a suspicious specificity. In such cases critique is aimed at whatever target one wants. Put simply, critique often falls into the trap of serving the interests of the critic. It is this concern that Deleuze has at the heart of his reformulation 1 Bruno Latour “Why has Critique Run Out of Steam: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern” in Critical Inquiry Vol 30 #2, 25. 2 of the concept of critique. The goal of this dissertation is to interrogate the legacy of Kantian critique in one specific manner. It seems to me that Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Martin Heidegger, as influential interpreters of Kant, all emphasize the importance of Kant's focus on temporality to understand access to truth. It is due to Kant's critiques that Heidegger, Foucault, and Deleuze take time as their starting point in their respective projects. Moreover, each takes extreme care in the conception of finitude or temporality to which they devote their projects: fundamental ontology, the archaeology of truth, and transcendental empiricism respectively. This investigation of temporality, of course, ultimately aims at formulating the relationship between time and truth according to each Heidegger and Deleuze. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant attempted to confront the problem of the infinite. That is, Kant attempted to secure and stabilize a foundation for truth without recourse to the concept of God. As is well known, Kant's intention was to piece together a path that led neither to dogmatism nor to skepticism – both of which were confounded precisely due to the lack of grounding in an infinite God. Human finitude was interpreted by pre-Kantians as a deficit, a problem for philosophical certainty which could either never be 'overcome' (skepticism) or only be 'overcome' by verifying our representations with the idea of the infinite (dogmatism). The essence of Kant's response to this dilemma is to give power to finitude. He gives the transcendental subject, transcendental finitude,2 the power to be the source of representations and, therefore, to no longer need divine verification to establish truth. Certainty need not come from what is external to 2For the remainder of this work, I will refer to the type of finitude that we find in Kant as transcendental finitude. While not all of them dub this concept thusly, each Heidegger, Foucault, and Deleuze recognize the value of Kant's movement of finitude into the transcendental realm. 3 transcendental finitude. Hence reason itself, armed in the right ways, has the power to verify itself. However, according to Heidegger, Foucault, and Deleuze, Kant secretly gives into the infinite once again. He fails at his own project. Each, however, points to this failure at