HEIDEGGER BEYOND DECONSTRUCTION: ON NATURE
,
MichaelLewis, London and New York: Continuum, 2007, viii+ pp. 184, Hbk., £65.00. ISBN-13 - 978-0826497796.Michael Lewis’
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction: On Nature
is an originalinvestigation into the question of nature in Heidegger’s philosophy. The main thesisof the book may be stated in this way: nature’s imminent apocalyptic demise, due toits subjugation under humanity’s technology, uniquely discloses nature for the firsttime and Heidegger’s philosophy exceptionally allows an awareness of that revealingin his thinking of the ‘near’ (important, readers of
Being and Time
will remember, for Heidegger’s understanding of the relationship between Dasein and tools). In order toargue that Heidegger’s philosophy is an invaluable resource to thinking through theenvironmental crisis Lewis must show how Heidegger moves beyond theanthropocentrism of his early work
Being and Time
. Overcoming thisanthropocentrism will also show that Heidegger allows nature to reveal itself ascondition of, and not creation of, humanity. Lewis’ antagonist for this investigation isthe deconstructive criticisms of Heidegger’s conception of the near and the figurewhich allows Lewis to parry such deconstructive thrusts is found in Slavoj Žižek.While Derrida’s reading of Heidegger, and thus the Heidegger presented indeconstruction, is rejected and argued against in the book, Lewis does not writeextensively on Derrida’s critique. Rather, and refreshingly, Lewis presents hisalternative reading of Heidegger casually without appearing desperate to protectHeidegger from Derrida. Derrida is merely taken as a foil with which Lewis mustengage in order to present a Heidegger on nature and beyond deconstruction, rather than an opponent that must be destroyed.Lewis first evades the criticism of the ‘near’ by agreeing that there is a problem in theearly Heidegger but that Heidegger himself realized this and responded to it. The problem may be located in the
Urfaktum
of temporarity that has been taken by manyto bea philosophical anthropology which is necessarilyanthropocentric. Lewis arguesthat Heidegger’s concept of temporarity is not anthropocentric, since finitude does not belong solely to humanity, but rather the mistake of the early Heidegger is takingtemporarity as a grounding fact that admits of no further explanation. For there wasstill something that continues to intrude and is not intelligible via temporarity and thusgrounds it. This thing is nature. It is the thing, which is another name for nature as it is being revealed in its destruction, that Heidegger comes to in his realization that worldinvolves earth and that divinity involves man (and vice versa) – all of which is namedthe fourfold that determines the individuation of being.In order to explain how this thing always exceeds the world, by which is meant thetotality of signification, Lewis turns to a heuristic dual reading of Heidegger alongsideLacan. For Lacan the Thing (which he capitalizes) is the perfect thing and does notexist; it is instead the very void and condition upon which desire builds itself. TheThing cannot be circumscribed within the symbolic, since it precedes the symbolic ascondition, as evidenced by attempts in “sublime art” which show that the signifier elides something. Thus both Heidegger and Lacan think the thing in order to think aninhuman entity outside of the opposition of subject and object, and thus outside anyappropriative use of the thing, i.e. nature. Lewis is thus presenting the reader with akind of realist Heidegger that is looking for the thing in itself, as the thing properly is,
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