The Movement of Showing: Indirect Method, Critique, and Responsibility in Derrida, Hegel, and Heidegger

by Johan E. de Jong

Overview

Explores why Derrida, Hegel, and Heidegger conceive their thought as a "movement" rather than as a presentation of results or conclusions, and of the consequences of such an indirect method for critique and responsibility.

This book explores the idea shared by Derrida, Hegel, and Heidegger that the value of their thought is not found in its results or conclusions, but in its "movement." All three describe the heart of their work in terms of a pathway, development, or movement that seems to deprive their thought of a solid ground. Johan de Jong argues that this is a structural vulnerability that is the source of its value, tracing Derrida's indirect method from his early to later works, and critically considering his engagements with Hegel and Heidegger. De Jong's analysis locates an affinity among Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida in a shared distrust of externality and, against the grain of some Levinasian commentaries, argues that Derrida's indirectness results in an ethics of complicity. The Movement of Showing answers a central question that many polemics about continental philosophy and postmodernism revolve around, namely: with which methods does one philosophize responsibly? It shows the difference between critique and polemics, and why simply taking up a position for or against is insufficient in order to think responsibly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438476087
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	07/02/2020
Series:	SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought
Pages:	386
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Johan de Jong is Assistant Professor of Continental Philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction

Part I. Sources of Derrida’s Indirectness: Language, Metaphysics, Critique

1. Why There Can Be No Derridean Theory of Language

“This Incompetence of Science . . .” Of Grammatology’s Opening Complication
Language: The “Effacement of All its Limits”
What a Derridean “Theory” Would “Oppose”: The “Traditional Determination” of Writing
What a Derridean “Theory” Would “Oppose” to the Traditional Determination: What Is “Generalized” Writing?
Why “Retain the Old Name”? Toward “Acts of Writing”
Conclusion

2. The Inextricability of Metaphysics

The “Structural Figure”: Demarcation, Opposition, Hierarchy, Presence
The “Historical Totality”: Epoch, History, the Future, and Beyond
Overcoming Philosophy’s Self-Overcoming
Conclusion

3. The Question of Justification and the Law of Resemblance: Empiricism—Skepticism—Critique

Empiricism: Deconstruction and Method
Skepticism: Deconstruction and Self-Contradiction
Critique: Deconstruction and Vulnerability
Conclusion

Part II. Movement and Opposition: From Hegel to Derrida

4. Hegel’s Movement of the Concept and the Limits of the Understanding

The Origins of Hegelian “Movement” and the Critique of the Understanding
What Exceeds Reflection Is Its Own Movement
The Affirmation of Limits in Hegel’s Response to Kant
The Difference Essay and the Need for/of Philosophy
Hegel’s Early Problem of Philosophical Exposition: Skepticism and the Necessity of Self-Contradiction
The Problem of Speculative Exposition in the Phenomenology of Spirit
The Speculative Proposition
Conclusion

5. Derrida’s “Textual Maneuvers”: Exceeding the Opposition to Hegelianism Contributions Situating Hegel in Derrida’s Development

“Tympan”: The Limits of Philosophy and the Need to Write Otherwise
“Hors Livre” and the Multitude of Derrida’s Hegels
Conclusion

Part III. Heidegger: The Preservation of Concealment

6. The Transition to Transitional Thinking: From Being and Time to the Contributions

The Movement of Showing of Itself by Itself: the Circularity of Being and Time
The Complication of “Being-in” and the Opening of Being and Time
Introduction to the “Transitional Thinking” of the Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)
The “Cessation of all Overcoming”
What Turns? From Being and Time to the Contributions
Conclusion

7. Reticence and Exposition: Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)

Style and Systematicity: The Conjuncture of the Contributions
The Contributions’ “Reflection” on its Own Language: Denkerisches Sagen and the Limits of Representation
Do the Contributions Preserve or Overcome the Failure to Say Beyng?
Bearing Silence, Withdrawal, and Λήθη in the Parmenides-Lectures
Reticence and Sheltering in “On the Essence of Truth”
The Philosophical Necessity to be Unassertive: Stimmung and its Distinction from Erlebnis
Conclusion

Part IV. Of Derrida’s Heideggers: Style, Affirmation, Responsibility

8. The Question of Style: Heidegger, Nietzsche and the Heterogeneity of the Text

Nietzsche’s “Feminine ‘Operation’ ”
Does Heidegger Reduce the Plurality of Nietzsche’s Styles?
Derrida’s Two Heideggers: Ereignis Outside the Hermeneutic Circle
Perhaps: “I Have Forgotten My Umbrella”
Conclusion

9. Strategy and Responsibility: Derrida, Heidegger, and the Ethics of Complicity

Of Spirit and the Unavoidable
Irreducible Complicity and the Desire for Non-Contamination
Unprecedented Responsibilities and Affirmation “Before” the Question
The Undeconstructible and the Vulnerability of Justice
Conclusion

Afterword

Philosophical Indirections
Indirectness and the Question of Critique
Necessity and Motivation: Performativity and Responsibility
The Philosophical Tradition

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"The scope and focus of this book is unusual and requires a lot of mastery of various periods and ideas in philosophy. It stands in a category of its own. For those familiar with the ambitious trajectory in Western ontology and modern philosophy that connects and runs through Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida, this book will be a thrill to read." - Emilia Angelova, Concordia University

From the Publisher