META META META META META META META. Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy. Vol. VI, No. 1 / June 2014

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1 META META META META META META Center for Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy META Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy Vol. VI, No. 1 / June 2014 Processus de subjectivation et intervention intellectuelle. Psychanalyse et critique sociale Al. I. Cuza University Press

2 META Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy Vol. VI, No. 1 / June 2014 Topic: Processus de subjectivation et intervention intellectuelle. Psychanalyse et critique sociale

3 META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy Vol. VI, No. 1 / June 2014 Topic: Processus de subjectivation et intervention intellectuelle. Psychanalyse et critique sociale Guest Editors: Oleg Bernaz, Fabio Bruschi, Délia Popa, Gábor Tverdota (Université catholique de Louvain) Editors Stefan Afloroaei, Prof. Dr., Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Corneliu Bilba, Lecturer Dr., Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania George Bondor, Assoc. Prof. Dr., Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Publisher Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Press, Iasi, Romania Str. Pinului nr. 1A, cod , Iasi, Romania Tel.: (+) ; Fax: (+) editura@uaic.ro; Web: Contact person: Dana Lungu Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy is an online, open access journal. Edited by the Center for Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and Social and Political Sciences, Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania. Frequency 2 issues per year, published: June 15 (deadline for submissions: February 15) and December 15 (deadline for submissions: August 15) Contact Center for Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy Department of Philosophy Faculty of Philosophy and Social and Political Sciences Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi Bd. Carol I, no , Iasi, Romania Tel.: (+) ; Fax: (+) editors[at]metajournal.org Contact person: Dr. Cristian Moisuc ISSN (online):

4 META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy Editorial Board Arnaud François, Assoc. Prof. Dr., Univ. of Toulouse II - Le Mirail, France Valeriu Gherghel, Lect. Dr., Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Gim Grecu, Researcher, Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Lucian Ionel, PhD Candidate, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg Ciprian Jeler, Researcher Dr., Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Vladimir Milisavljevic, Researcher Dr., Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade, Serbia Emilian Margarit, Dr., Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Cristian Moisuc, Assist. Dr., Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Cristian Nae, Lect. Dr., George Enescu University of Arts, Iasi, Romania Radu Neculau, Assist. Prof. Dr., University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada Sergiu Sava, Researcher, Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc, Lect. Dr., Univ. of Toulouse II-Le Mirail, France Ondřej Švec, Assoc. Prof. Dr., University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic Ioan Alexandru Tofan, Lect. Dr., Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi, Romania Iulian Vamanu, Lecturer, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA Andrea Vestrucci, Assoc. Professor Dr., Federal University of Ceará (Brazil) Advisory Board Sorin Alexandrescu, Prof. Dr., University of Bucharest, Romania Jeffrey Andrew Barash, Prof. Dr., Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France Christian Berner, Prof. Dr., Université Charles de Gaulle - Lille 3, France Patrice Canivez, Prof. Dr., Université Charles de Gaulle - Lille 3, France Aurel Codoban, Prof. Dr., Babes-Bolyai Univ. of Cluj-Napoca, Romania Ion Copoeru, Assoc. Prof. Dr., Babes-Bolyai Univ. of Cluj-Napoca, Romania Vladimir Gradev, Prof. Dr., St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgary Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Prof. Dr., Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany Oscar Loureda Lamas, Prof. Dr., University of Heidelberg, Germany Ciprian Mihali, Assoc. Prof. Dr., Babes-Bolyai Univ. of Cluj-Napoca, Romania Jürgen Mittelstraß, Prof. Dr., University of Konstanz, Germany Alexander Schnell, Prof. Dr., Université Paris IV Sorbonne, France Dieter Teichert, Prof. Dr., University of Konstanz, Germany Stelios Virvidakis, Prof. Dr., National and Kapodistrian Univ. of Athens, Greece Héctor Wittwer, Lecturer Dr., University of Hannover, Germany Frederic Worms, Prof. Dr., Université Charles de Gaulle - Lille 3, France 3

5 Table of contents PROCESSUS DE SUBJECTIVATION ET INTERVENTION INTELLECTUELLE. PSYCHANALYSE ET CRITIQUE SOCIALE Introduction OLEG BERNAZ, FABIO BRUSCHI, DÉLIA POPA et GÁBOR TVERDOTA Pages: 7-17 Subjectivation et transformation sociale. Critique du renouveau en théorie de l action à partir de Karl Lévêque, Etienne Balibar et Louis Althusser MARC MAESSCHALCK Pages: Hegel avec Freud. Psychanalyse, subjectivité et critique sociale dans l École de Francfort LOUIS CARRÉ Pages: La psyché démodée. Psychanalyse et objectivité sociale chez Adorno GIOVANNI ZANOTTI Pages: La sociologie de la connaissance comme socio-pathologie. Une lecture psychanalytique d Idéologie et utopie GÁBOR TVERDOTA Pages: Subjectivation et mélancolie. La fonction des fantasmes dans les stratégies de la perte DÉLIA POPA Pages: De la subjectivité prise dans le langage : Agamben et Lacan AMAURY DELVAUX Pages: Ni Foucault ni Lacan. De la Loi, entre éthique et finitude THOMAS BOLMAIN Pages: Usages de Foucault entre la psychanalyse et le marxisme. Discours de la résistance et pratiques de l intervention intellectuelle en société OLEG BERNAZ Pages: Critique et clinique. La pratique analytique comme modèle opératoire pour l intervention philosophique chez Althusser JEAN MATTHYS Pages:

6 Le sujet entre inconscient et idéologie. Althusser et la tentation du freudo-marxisme FABIO BRUSCHI Pages: VARIA Like an Image: Sensibility and Reflexivity in Descartes Metaphysics AUGUSTIN DUMONT Pages: Anthropology in the context that produced it TERENCE RAJIVAN EDWARD Pages: Poétique de l image. Structure diaphane et phénoménologie de l inapparent DORIN ŞTEFĂNESCU Pages: Fear as 'Disclosure of Truths': The Educational Significance of An Existential-Phenomenological Insight JANI KUKKOLA Pages: Aneignung und Interpretation der monadologischen Metaphysik von Leibniz durch die Metaphysik des Daseins HARDY NEUMANN Pages: BOOK REVIEWS The Sophistic Effect EDUARDO MENDIETA (Peter Carravetta, The Elusive Hermes: Method Discourse Interpreting, Aurora, Colorado: The Davies Group Publishers, 2012, 504 p.) Pages: The Life of Understanding TSUTOMU BEN YAGI (James Risser, The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012, 154 p.) Pages: How is Nazism still possible today? IONUȚ BÂRLIBA (G. V. Loewen, We Other Nazis: How you and I are still like them, Alcoa: Old Moon Academic Press, 2013, 268 p.) Pages:

7 BOOK REVIEWS META: RESEARCH IN HERMENEUTICS, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY VOL. VI, NO. 1 / JUNE 2014: , ISSN , The Life of Understanding Tsutomu Ben Yagi Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt James Risser, The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012, 154 p. Keywords: hermeneutics, understanding, Gadamer, memory, movement of convalescence In his latest volume The Life of Understanding: A Contemporary Hermeneutics, James Risser sets out to explore the various ways in which Gadamer s hermeneutics can be developed and further expanded upon by offering a fresh but attentive reading of his works. As stated in the introduction, Risser seeks to move beyond the hermeneutics put forward by Heidegger and Gadamer, and offer something like a hermeneutics after Gadamer (2). In this sense, the book contrasts from Risser s previous volume on Gadamer titled Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: Re-reading Gadamer s Philosophical Hermeneutics (1997), which, as an elaborate commentary to Gadamer s entire philosophy, served more of an expository function than an ostensive function. The volume under review here, on the other hand, serves the latter function insofar as Risser s reading of Gadamer is oriented toward anticipating and discovering what lies beyond and after his hermeneutics. Carrying on the spirit of philosophical hermeneutics, Risser undertakes this task by bringing Gadamer in dialogue with Plato, while Heidegger enters the scene at intervals as a supporting actor of the dialogue. As is impressed in the title of the volume, one of Risser s main theses is to demonstrate over the course of this dialogue that understanding and life are 425

8 META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy VI (1) / 2014 intimately intertwined. The use of the genitive contained within the expression the life of understanding must therefore be understood as carrying both a subjective and an objective meaning, whereby life marks the site in and out of which understanding always takes place, while understanding is always an enactment that is directed at bringing life in view (5). Thus this volume essentially concerns the manner of making one s way in life (1). Being short of 150 pages in length including the endnotes and index, this volume is very compact. The main body of the book is composed of seven chapters: the first three chapters take up the question of memory, while the remaining four take up the question of language. Despite such a composition, each chapter is self-standing for the most part, making the volume resemble more of a collection of essays than a series of successive and interrelated analyses. This makes it somewhat difficult to identify, aside from the most general thematic just laid out, the common thread that unites the book as a whole. This is true especially of the latter part of the book, which remains rather discrete and disparate. The key concepts Risser employs to delve into the issue of memory in the first part are convalescence, the foreign, and community, each comprising a chapter respectively. Here Risser presents a descriptive account of the hermeneutic movement that pertains to memory, where the dynamic of forgetting and recollection is constantly in play, as was already identified and expounded by Plato in his dialogues such as the Phaedo and Meno. According to Risser, what is distinctive about the manner in which our memory operates is the factical condition: the constant need to recover from our perpetual forgetting (9). Precisely as a way of coping with such a character of human condition, our memory functions as a recovery of that which has been lost, and, as such, it constitutes convalescence. Yet such a recovery never amounts to a full restoration where the loss is regained and the condition is thereby resolved. Rather, in the case of memory, the loss always remains outstanding as that from which we, as finite beings, can never fully recover (10, 14). It is our destiny always to repeat and re-enact such a recovery without ever recovering, 426

9 BOOK REVIEWS and it is precisely this unceasing movement of convalescence that defines hermeneutics as such. Now, given the choice of words, one might suspect that Risser s use of the term convalescence in this context is strikingly reminiscent of Heidegger s (and Vattimo s) use of the term Verwindung (getting over). Heidegger introduced this term to clarify and discriminate his often misunderstood term Überwindung (overcoming), which plays a pivotal role in his interpretation of the history of philosophy as metaphysics. Indeed, Risser does draw a connection between his own term and that of Heidegger s as a way of implying that his use of the term may be understood as following Heidegger in this regard (14-15). The movement of convalescence that characterises hermeneutics is then broadened to the discussion of the foreign and exile. As shown by the way in which recovery is identified as a way-making activity amidst the loss of orientation in our life situation, the hermeneutic movement is essentially concerned with what lies outside itself. This does not, however, suggest that strangeness only encroaches from the outside in the sense of what lies outside of the familiar. Following such thinkers as Derrida and Waldenfels, Risser identifies Socrates as an exemplary figure who lived very much like a foreigner within the borders of Athens, as illustrated by his plead at the beginning of the Apology (17d-18a), as a way of instantiating a case of strangeness within the familiar. By attending to some of Gadamer s later essays, Risser locates a rather neglected dimension of his hermeneutics, namely, the importance of foreignness for understanding. As Risser rightly suggests, understanding is called for precisely when our familiarity is stripped away, when we are confronted and taken over by strangeness (36-37). Should we concede that what we conceived to be familiar can also turn strange, we come to the recognition that the place we inhabit is profoundly insecure and foreign, much resembling someone who is in exile. As a way of coming to terms with such a distressing life situation in which we find ourselves, Risser then goes on to suggest that it is in community that the memory is experienced and shared. Memory is to be formed and preserved in shared 427

10 META: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy VI (1) / 2014 life. Risser calls this a community of memory (55), which is sustained and developed through formation (Bildung) and vigilance. Furthermore, since our life is shared historically, such a community also constitutes a tradition (Überlieferung). Yet tradition is not something of which we simply take possession or to which we belong, but it must be brought to life time and again through our participation in shared life. Tradition, as a community of memory, is thus a way of coping with the distress of life situation that is engendered by forgetfulness. In this sense, tradition is here not to be understood simply as a carrying over and passing on of the collective memory, as one might be inclined to understand it. Rather, it is the immemorial remnant that profoundly shapes us, and it is our basic task to form (bilden) a memory as a way of coming to terms with the distress of our life situation. In the latter part of the volume, Risser proceeds to analyse the question of language by way of such ideas as the art of weaving, incapacity of language, voice of the written, and beauty, devoting a chapter to each respectively. While each of these ideas is introduced and examined as a way to bring out different dimensions of language, they all essentially aim at highlighting those features of language that reflect the hermeneutic movement, such as interwovenness, motility, and multiplicity. Accordingly, I might paraphrase this part by suggesting that language is marked in different ways by its ability to exhibit a speculative force, the idea of which is decisive for Gadamer s hermeneutics. Risser s discussion includes Plato s dialogues such as the Seventh Letter, Phaedrus, and Philebus, which are considered in parallel with Gadamer s Truth and Method as well as a handful of selected essays. As a whole, this volume embarks on an exploration into the implications of Gadamer s hermeneutics by way of contemplating upon the themes that open up a path for further thinking. While I would be somewhat reluctant to assess Risser s contribution as having accomplished a hermeneutics after Gadamer, since it mostly makes a reflection on the implications and consequences of Gadamer s thought rather than establishing a whole new hermeneutics in itself, it certainly provides us with a sensitive and valuable account that 428

11 BOOK REVIEWS situates Gadamer beyond the dialectic of Hegel a charge that is often brought against Gadamer. Indeed, it is my conjecture that Risser aims in this work, in part, to articulate a critical response to those critics of Gadamer who accuse his hermeneutics of being too assimilative and conservative. In this respect, I believe this book provides a valuable insight into Gadamer s thought. One minor shortfall of this volume is that, despite its claim to offer a hermeneutics after Gadamer and its bearing the subtitle a contemporary hermeneutics, Risser hardly considers other contemporary thinkers of hermeneutics that have emerged since Gadamer. Just to name a few, Gianni Vattimo, Günter Figal, John Caputo, Santiago Zabala, and many others have already attempted to go beyond Gadamer by way of or way around Gadamer. While Risser does cite a limited number of works by Vattimo and Figal, he does not mention them in order to contrast their views with his own, but merely to make reference to a specific point in question. Even so, I will indicate in closing that there is no doubt that Risser s latest volume contributes in an important way to paving the way for opening up a hermeneutics that may come after Gadamer. Address: Tsutomu Ben Yagi Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt Reichenaustr Eichstätt, Germany atopon@phi.web-republic.de 429