Heidegger, French postphenomenology, ontology of shining, and speculative realism: on the way to the unseen

Philosophy

Abstract

The article deals with the consideration of the invisible (or lacuna) in three ways: through the approaches of French non-intentional phenomenologists (M. Merleau-Ponty, J.-L. Marion); through the philosophical reasoning of C. Meillassoux and his speculative realism; through the concept of evidens («to shine brightly, showing oneself out of oneself» — the problem of obviousness). The paper dwells on the ontological turn of the 20th century and M. Heidegger’s treatment of the lacuna as Nothing, J.-L. Marion’s treatment of the lacuna as a saturated phenomenon, and M. Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of anonymity; the author also discusses E. Levinas’s position and describes the lacuna as open and redundant staggeringly obvious being, as well as presents her own concept of the «snapshot» in connection with the theme of the lacuna. The author follows C. Meillassoux in criticizing phenomenology for correlationism and the problem of the infinity of modifications (infinite retentions) and offers her own solution to these problems. A «snapshot» is a redundant form that does not treat the lacuna as an object and does not dissolve it in modifications, allowing one to decompose it into constituent semantic parts and to unfold its absolute meaning. A «snapshot» is an intermediary between consciousness and the lacuna: it «clicks» absolute consciousness, captures it, and then decomposes it into constituent levels (sensual, synthesizing and comprehending, the layer of schematic cognition of a phenomenon as a certain semantic scheme and of the act of its cognition — as experience in general, the level of the flow of internal time). But a «snapshot» is not a part or property of consciousness; it exists independently. A «snapshot» is impersonal and anonymous, endowed with «anti-subjectivity». Thus, a «snapshot» is theoretically a universal concept of a possibility as such, and practically — of the possibility to see absolute meaning in every lacuna. The meaning of the lacuna is broader than mere affect, and the expansion in a «snapshot», the division into layers of meaning show this. A «snapshot» itself exists virtually, but the universal reality of the lacuna’s meaning is incorporated into it.