Aesthesis vs.

Aesthetics: Cacciari on Nietzsche

For Nietzsche, the Political is the continuation of civil war by other [symbolic, metaphoric, false, conventional] means. This dissimulation is simply a ruse to enforce a certain polite life!style that serves to protect the persona of the individual in a society that needs to "eep at bay the state of nature. This convention is simply a means of self! preservation and self!protection # a device $cf. %eide&&er's Zustand and Gestell, or even Foucault's dispositif( that see"s to elevate mere conventions and symbols, such as lan&ua&e and science, to the status of truth . Truth therefore is not )ust a perspective but it is also a convention that humans elevate to the measure of all thin&s in an attempt to ma"e the world familiar , mana&eable and safe # to male it certain. This truth-ascertainty is an instance of that *hristian!bour&eois +uest for Sekuritat that ma"es liberal democratic re&imes constitutionally resistant to political change $cf. ,rendt's penetratin& insi&hts on this topic in On Revolution, discussed in Part - of our Weberbuch(. The +uestion of why human bein&s come to place their faith in science and pro&ress is one that Nietzsche will e.plore meticulously later with the concept of the self! dissolution of *hristian!bour&eois society as the culmination of the onto&eny of thou&ht. For the moment, in 1873, he can merely describe the difficulty in frustrated constructivist terms, thinking that iteration, sheer long use and nowunconscious custom, mere ersistence, can serve as an e! lanation of the mathesis" For the moment his analysis is confined to a mere henomenology and ers ectivism" Nietzsche ma"es his e.asperation at his own inability to isolate the relevant causes evident in a strin& of oft!+uoted passa&es/ #till we do not yet know whence the instinct of truth $%rieb der &ahrheit' comes0 $p123(
4ir wissen immer noch nicht, woher der %rieb (ur &ahrheit stammt/

0only by all this does he [man] live with some repose, safety and conse+uence [Ruhe, Sicherheit und Konsequenz:]. $p.12-( 5f he were able to &et out of the prison walls of this faith, even for an instant only, his 6self!consciousness6 would be destroyed at once. ,lready it costs him some trouble to admit to himself that the insect and the bird perceive a world different from his

own,0$p12-( 7urely every human bein& who is at home with such contemplations has felt a deep distrust a&ainst any idealism of that "ind, as often as he has distinctly convinced himself of the eternal rigidity, omni resence, and infallibility of nature's laws $)aturgeset(en'/ he has arrived at the conclusion that as far as we can penetrate the hei&hts of the telescopic and the depths of the microscopic world, everything is *uite secure$+', com lete, infinite, determined, and continuous" #cience will have to dig in these shafts eternally and successfully and all things found are sure to have to harmonise and not to contradict one another" , 18-. ,nd as the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts, in order to avoid being swept away and losing himself, so the see"er after truth builds his hut close to the towerin& edifice of science in order to collaborate with it and to find protection. And he needs protection. $8e&innin& of Part 9( *learly at this early sta&e, Nietzsche's thou&ht is still confined to the velleitary and arbitrary , metaphorical and anthropomorphic assessment of si&nification and ultimately of physical mathematics, of mathesis. %e fails to identify, e.cept for his insistence on persistence and crystallization and sclerosis , the problem of why science and lo&ic as specific practices have come about, of why they have triumphed . ,nd above all he fails to e.plain how they could have done so, ! a&ain, outside of sheer habit, repetition and therefore con!vention $persistency [Verharren] and crystallisation and sclerosis [Hart und Starr werden](: Nietzsche is mi.in& up the arbitrariness of si&nifiers $semeiotics( with the problem of scientific causation # which is in practice only re&ularity and predictability. %e still fails to see that it is not the predictability that is a convention , but rather the direction of scientific and technolo&ical practice that responds to anta&onistic values bein& presented as ob)ectivity or necessity or causality when in reality it occurs in conventional e.perimental circumstances which supply the problematic, all!important ne.us . ,ll that can be established then ! not proven or e.plained but merely described ! are the re&ularities that can be &iven numerical e.pression in space and time and be e.ploited instrumentally by humans.

*onse+uently, these re&ularities are mere conventions , anthropomorphic metaphors or metonymies. The very relation of a nerve!stimulus to the produced percept is in itself no necessary one; but if the same percept has been reproduced millions of times and has been the inheritance of many successive &enerations of man, and in the end appears each time to all man"ind as the result of the same cause, then it attains finally for man the same importance as if it were the uni+ue, necessary percept and as if that relation between the ori&inal nerve!stimulus and the percept produced were a close relation of causality/ )ust as a dream eternally repeated, would be perceived and )ud&ed as thou&h real. 8ut the congelation and coagulation of a metaphor does not at all &uarantee the necessity and e.clusive )ustification of that metaphor. $p12<(
Selbst das Verhltnis eines Nervenreizes zu dem hervorgebrachten Bilde ist an sich ein not!endiges: !enn aber dasselbe Bild millionenmal hervorgebracht und durch viele "enschengeschlechter hindurch vererbt ist, #a zuletzt bei der gesamten "enschheit #edesmal in$olge desselben %nlasses erscheint, so be ommt es endlich $&r den "enschen dieselbe Bedeutung, als ob es das einzig not!endige Bild sei und als ob #enes Verhltnis des urs'r&nglichen Nervenreizes zu dem hergebrachten Bilde ein strenges Kausalittsverhltnis sei: !ie ein (raum, e!ig !iederholt, durchaus als )ir lich eit em'$unden und beurteilt !erden !&rde* %ber das Hart- und Starr-Werden einer Metapher verbrgt durchaus nichts fr die Notwendigkeit und ausschlieliche Berechtigung dieser Metaphe r*

Nietzsche is already searchin& for the genealogy of morals and understands early that the ,pollonian=>ionysian opposition between intellect and intuition, reason and ec!stasis, is a way for *hristian!bour&eois society to impose an artificial style of behaviour and life on its members by enforcin& the superiority of the intellect over the instincts. Nietzsche comes to see consciousness or intellect as a mas" , as a ruse, as the be&innin& of that onto&eny of thou&ht that will shape the transition from the neutral state of the state of nature to the conventional values of liberal *hristian!bour&eois society # the cemetery

of intuitions , the dis&re&ation of the instincts ! and its apparent , idealistic or utilitarian reconciliation of the system of needs. ?ltimately, it is this semiotic structure of ideas that permits the social synthesis, the reproduction of human society, but one that pretends to homolo&ate scientifically the or&anization of production with the liberal constitutional order # the Political with the @conomic sanctioned with the seal of scientific truth in the homonymous science of Political @conomy . The effectuality of this homolo&ation of disparate and hetero&eneous realities, the possibility of the reproduction of liberal *hristian!bour&eois civil society is what seems to confirm and validate the scientific calculation, regularity and redictability of the symbolic e.chan&e, of the Truth and the values of *hristian!bour&eois society # what Nietzsche calls !the eternal rigidity" omnipresence" and infallibility of nature#s laws $%aturgeset&en'(" where !everything is )uite secure" complete" infinite" determined" and continuous( # that is, the inter!sub)ectivity of its symbolic interaction ! all of which boils down to the Aalue of Political @conomy, the )uidditas or whatness , the +uantifiable and calculable hard reality that ma"es possible the social synthesis. $,s we shall soon see, this dual aspect of what ma"es society possible and of what is possible for society is what constitutes the central +uest of the &reat social theoreticians from %e&el to Bar. and 4eber. Nietzsche evades this +uestion alto&ether, first, because he sees human bein&s in purely onto&enetic instead of phylo&enetic terms, and second because the ne&ative thin"in& of which he is the hi&hest e.pression obliterates the entire meanin& of human potential or fulfillment which it consi&ns to the empyrean of teleolo&y . The problem with NietzscheCs 6true phenomenolo&y and perspectivism6 is precisely that the re&ularities and predictions of scientific mathesis are often so stron& that they &o beyond the mere notion of convention and 6habituation6; that they may be arbitrary in their desi&nation but necessary , not in a physical sense but in a socio!political one in that they lie outside the will of some humans, in their re&ularity and predictability . Nietzsche is simply not dealin& with the fact that it is not our desi&nation of each separate leaf with the symbol leaf that is the problem/ the problem is that this desi&nation is effectual in the prediction of what a leaf will do in different 6e.perimental6 situations created by human bein&s that belon& to an anta&onistic society. ,nd this is what constitutes a political practice : 7o Nietzsche simply does not confront yet this political practice as inter-subjectively valid science* ,lthou&h he clearly perceives the problem of what constitutes this validity, of this effectuality, whereby truth and science may be un!mas"ed and de!mystified, he simply is unable yet to &o beyond a rudimentary conventional e.planation of scientific practice as more than persistence or 6habituation6 and self!deception that have sun" to the level of necessity and instinct . The +uestion we need to answer ne.t is whether despite these early failures we can find already in +ber Wahrheit the seeds for a more thorou&h!&oin& criti+ue of social and scientific reality in Nietzsche that can lead us to lay new foundations for the criti+ue of the *hristian!bour&eois society of capital.

4e may thorou&hly appreciate now from our fore&oin& discussion the validity and correctness of *acciari's )ud&ement on the ine,istence of an aesthetics in %iet&sche separable from and subordinate to philosophical reasonin&.

1. Es conocida la afirmacin de Nietzsche en El origen de la tragedia por la cual el arte aparece como la verdadera actividad metafsica del hombre. Aun en el Ensayo de una autocrtica de 1886 l recalca que aquella juvenile metafsica de artista contena ya lo esencial de su pensamiento sucesivo. Es lcito, por lo tanto, considerar en trminos sustancialmente unitarios la concepcin nietzsc eana del arte. Nietzsche no est interesado en la elaboracin de una esttica como un dominio filosfico especial; el arte es para l problema filosfico-metafsico: en la actividad artstica est en jue o una apertura al ser! una iluminacin metafsica sobre el sentido del ente. "roduccin artstica e interpretacin del producto artstico son ambos problemas filosficos. No e#iste autonoma del arte respecto a lo filosfico! as como no e#iste autonoma de lo filosfico respecto al arte. $rte % filosofa se presentan perennemente unidas en a&uella deconstruccin de la tradicin metafsica europea &ue constitu%e el objetivo de la total crtica nietzscheana. '(El $rte in N.)*
4e could not a&ree more with *acciari's position. ,s we have shown, for Nietsche art has to be the true metaphysical activity of human bein&s because for him art is prior to philosophy, )ust as intuition and perception $which are based on metaphors and unthin"able without them( are prior to reflection in terms of his onto!&eny of thou&ht in which, once more, memory or re!collection or re!flection plays a crucial role in the construction of concepts out of crystallised metaphors . Dnce a&ain, however, the metaphysical status of art in Nietzsche's early or inchoate conception of it as the construction of metaphors by an artistically creative sub)ect and as the &enius of falsity is open to ob)ection on the &rounds that $a( meta!phors re!fer $brin& bac"( invariably to a substratum beyond which they bring $meta pherein, to brin& beyond(, and $b( it is impossible to separate $as Nietzsche himself maintains, and here is another chorismos( meta!phors from the act of perception itself and indeed from concepts # and therefore it cannot be accurate to describe human perception and intuition as the construction of metaphors and appearances : $Dn this, cf. our discussion of Berleau!Ponty in E5mmanence Fe!visited' and EThe Philosophy of the Flesh'.( *acciari sharply points out Nietzsche's ambi&uity on the first count/ ! that if art is the &enius of falsehood , then it follows that Nietzsche still posits a Truth , a Fundamentum , in relation to which art is falsehood :

8 !ietzsc e afirma que el arte constituye el "#enio de la mentira". $e trata de un ejemplo evidente de "platonismo invertido", en que !ietzsc e se o%stina en separar de una manera demasiado a%stracta "razn cl&sica" y modernidad. '(acciari, )El Hacer del (anto*, fn.8.+
Guite ri&ht: 5f indeed art is the &enius of falsity , this can occur if and only if there is some thin& that art can properly falsify , some re!ality in relation to which art can actually lie. 8ut this is precisely the startin& point of Plato's vehement condemnation of art and its dissoi logoi $double tal" ( and do,a $opinion, chatter( as a&ainst philosophy's lo&ico!discursive dialectic reasonin& $ dianoia( leadin& to episteme $"nowled&e, science(: 5n complete contrast, what Nietzsche meant by this e.pression was

precisely that art is the &enius of falsity in opposition to or trans&ression a&ainst the cemetery of intuitions constituted by that oppressive structure of concepts represented by lo&ic and science # by the two activities that, in opposition to art, pretend to represent the Truth and therefore the Platonic world of supra!sensible values leadin& up hierarchically to thesummum bonum $the Hood(, when in fact they are distancin& human bein&s from the &reatest truth of all # and that is that all human perception and reasonin& is based on the construction of artistic or aesthetic metaphors : Nietzsche's e.pression about art is ironic to some e.tent; and yet its literal inverted Platonism points once more to his early confusion with re&ard to a reality that art &enially falsifies by creatin& contra!dictory appearances . ,nd *acciari is ri&ht also on the second count because the construction of metaphors # that is, art # is inseparable from the construction of concepts, which is the proper activity of philosophy. 8ut, observes *acciari with &reat acumen, this affinity is revealed by a difference / Pero esta afinidad es revelable por diferencia. Ia consideraciJn del hecho artKstico es llevada a cabo filosJficamente, no por+ue el arte sea representaciJn o se limite a ima&inar las ideas filosJficas. /l arte es roblema filos0fico en tanto su estructura es roblema ara la filosof1a2 su presencia, la resencia de su alabra choca con la dimensiJn conceptual del traba)o filosJfico. ,rte y filosofKa se unen polarmente, por oposiciJn. >e una vez )iet(sche su era, or esta v1a, toda est3tica decadentista de la autonom1a ura del hecho art1stico, asK como todo contenido ideolJ&ico. 4rte y filosof1a est5n indisolublemente conectados en tanto roblema el uno con la otra" 46n m5s7 el arte es siem re resencia amena(antein*uietante ara la ura filosof1a" ,/l 4rte en )". 8ecause philosophy itself cannot be com!prehended $under!stood thorou&hly( by its own logos and must remain therefore an artistic activity, a poiesis, and because artistic activity is prior to philosophical re! flection or contemplation in that it is in!comprehensible to and by the philosophicallogos, it follows that artistic activity reaffirms the primacy of in!vention over re!flection # which poses an insuperable metaphysical problem for philosophy # a&ain, not in the sense that art is aproblem for philosophy to consider, one amon& many, but rather in the sense that art is the problem ofphilosophy, a problem that is ante!cedent to, that pre!cedes philosophical reflection, and therefore also challen&es its claim to theoretico! practical pre!eminence as "nowled&e: ,s *acciari a&ain &enially puts it, art is a philosophical problem in that its structure [its nature as activity] is problematic for philosophy . This cannot be said even of theolo&y, as 4erner Lae&er has shown with his concept of natural theolo&y $in -he -heology of the .arly Greek /hilosophers(, in that the divineis not prior to the problem of metaphysics $%eide&&er( but forms only one of its problems or aspects because it is )ust as plausible that reality is of divine ori&in as it is that it is entirely contin&ent. This is precisely why art poses a menacing and dis)uieting presence for pure philosophy # because of its precedence over philosophy as an activity" as initium. ,rt shows the activist reality of philosophy # its practical initium, the fact that even conceptually its doin& , its bein& a be&innin& , is prior to and cannot be com prehended $&rasped and e.plained totally( by pure thou&ht or reflection &iven that thou&ht is itself an activity, namely, thin"in& about thin"in& , where the second thin"in& stands for the meta! phorical activity of art upon which philosophy is both a re!flection and ultimately an artistic activity in itself* Df course, artistic activity is in!conceivable without thou&ht itself # as Nietzsche reminded us earlier, without the formation of meta!phors $8ildun& der 8e&riffe ! and therefore of words, of language, somethin& that *acciari points out above but for&ets in his later elaboration of this thesis( inseparable from the act of intuition and perception as appearance. Met, if it is not pre!conceptual, art is certainly pre reflective and $as *acciari would say( pre discursive activity in that both its doin& and its feelin& or sense is prior to philosophic reflection and its logos. 5t is the union of these opposed moments in art #

the doin& and the feelin& ! that poses a &reater problem for philosophy than it does for art # because the tas" of philosophy is precisely to com!prehend all activity, includin& the artistic, and this it cannot do if philosophy remains an artistic activity itself, an initium that is incomprehensible by and ine.plicable to philosophy. $This materiality or immanence of thou&ht, its bein& tied ine.tricably to perception and lan&ua&e, is what escapes ,rendt because of her formalistic!abstract, trans!scendental approach to it in -he 0ife of the 1ind. 7ee our E5mmanence Fevisited' and EPhilosophy of the Flesh'.(

,s we intimated earlier, in the course of the elaboration of his central thesis on E@l ,rte en Nietzsche', *acciari this time seems to a&ree with Nietzsche's thesis that art is the &enius of falsity because life and the world are perceptible and "nowable only as appear!ances, and there!fore as intrinsically contra! dictory . @l problema filosJfico del arte se centraliza en la relaciJn arte!mentira. @n el prefacio a la se&unda ediciJn de0a Gaya 2iencia, Nietzsche dice/ %os ha fastidiado este mal gusto $333' )uerer la verdad a toda costa $333' esta fascinaci4n de adolescentes por el amor a la verdad3 La artes son excogitadas como una especie de culto de lo no-verdadero. @stas indicaciones se articulan plenamente sJlo en los 5ragmentos /4stumos sucesivos al Zaratustra. @n el conte.to de 0a Gaya 2iencia puede aNn parecer +ue se trata simplemente de descubrir al )u&lar escondido en nuestra pasiJn por el conocimiento ! y a+uello +ue en el arte se limite a enfatizar la dimensiJn romOntica del e)ercicio interminable de la ironKa, solamente deconstructiva, sobre el mundo!verdadero. @n los 5ragmentos /4stumos, sobre todo en a+uellos +ue pertenecen al perKodo 2P!22, es evidente, en cambio, +ue Nietzsche no estO interesado en una estQtica especial !en el caso en cuestiJn, la irJnico!romOntica !, sino en la definiciJn de las estructuras fundamentales del hecho artKstico. /n el arte 3l a rehende una facultad general, un oder-8raft *ue tiene valide( universal" /n el arte est5 en 9uego una dimensi0n general del ser, una total facultad falsificante" /l arte es la facultad-8raft *ue niega la verdad - o, me9or dicho el arte es e! resi0n de esta facultad universal, y or lo tanto activa en cual*uier otro dominio. This is an unnecessary for&atura of Nietzsche's thou&ht caused in part by his own careless and mis&uided manner of articulatin& the problem in the early wor"s. ,s we can see from our +uotation below, for Nietzsche it is as senseless to say that the essence of thin&s , and therefore contra!diction, e.ists as it is to state the contrary: ,or our antithesis of individual and cate#ories is anthropomorphic too -i.e. is of purely uman ori#in. and does not come from t e essence of thin s, alt ou# on t e ot er and /e do not dare to say t at it does not correspond to it0 for t at /ould %e a do#matic assertion and as suc just as undemonstra%le as its contrary. 'UWL, p.181+ Nietzsche merely contends that the principle of non!contradiction is inapplicable as a metre of both artistic and of scientific doin& precisely to the de&ree that they are doin&s , initia, and not statements, what *acciari calls lo&ico!discursive reason and vestimenta escritura del pensamiento(: Iife and the world are not contradictory because they ec!sist only as appearance , ! but this term now no lon&er stands in opposition to a re!ality$:( , to a true world # the true world has disappeared with the apparent one ,

ironises Nietzsche in -wilight of the 6dols. Father it indicates the primacy of perception and its participation $methe,is( in the perceived, as well as the impossibility of truth as certainty and of truth as totality, of Truth as Laspers's all!encompassin& $das +mgreifende(. The principle of non! contradiction is applicable only to the concept of truth!as!certainty and totality, of reality as the essence of thin&s , and not to that of appearance which challen&es the ob)ective e.istence of such bein&!as! presence $as %eide&&er described it( as a&ainst Nietzsche's bein&!as!becomin& and that therefore renders superfluous the notion of truth!as!certainty and totality to&ether with that of contra!diction. $4e have shown in our Weberbuch and will discuss a&ain soon how 4eber misconceived this essential point in his criti+ue of ob)ectivity in science # to wit, that as philosophers as disparate as Nicholas of *usa and 7chopenhauer pointed out, there is and there can be no appro.imation to the Truth , because the concept of truth!as!certainty and totality is toto genere" toto caelo [7chopenhauer] cate&orically different from that of partial truths or verities [,rendt] # which can ec!sist only as an ideo!lo&ical entity if one falsely believes in the Truth :( 5f we understand appearances correctly $as Nietzsche indicates but fails to do consistently(, then they can never be contra!dictory because as such they do not re!fer to any under!lyin& [sub!stantive] reality or essence of thin&s or thin&s!in!themselves against which they can be )ud&ed to be false. This is what allows Nietzsche to spea" of truth and falsehood in an e,tra!moral sense $ausser!moralisch(, that is to say, outside the morality , or better the suprasensible world of values , upon which this false opposition of real events is absolutely dependent: The polarity here is between the mani!fold and multi!versality of e.perience [appearances] which is re!presented and embodied by the human instinct to the creation of metaphors, art and myth, a&ainst the truth as certainty and uni!versality of rational science for which reality is definable in terms of ultimately self!referential natural laws sub)ect to the principle of non! contradiction which they themselves must infrin&e.

5t is precisely for these reasons that we simply cannot &o alon& with *acciari and persist with the terminolo&y he adopts from Nietzsche with re&ard to art as the &enius of falsity and to the contradictoriness of the world. 5ndeed *acciari at a certain sta&e seems to su&&est that art as the &enius of falsity is that will to power that allows us to bend the cruel reality, contradictory and without meanin&, of the world, to our necessity to live / 4e hold on to art so as not to perish before truth / Pero en el arte el genio de la mentira resur&e en su pureza ! el poder de la mentira se muestra en toda su luz y belleza. ,+uella voluntad de poder +ue nos permite reducir la cruel realidad, contradictoria y sin sentido del mundo a nuestra necesidad de vivir ! a+uella voluntad de poder +ue es la &ran creadora de la posibilidad de vivir ! pone sus nervios al desnudo en el arte.%enemos el arte ara no erecer frente a la verdad" 8ut understood in this sense, *acciari can no lon&er intend truth as truth!as!certainty and totality ; rather, he can only intend the opposite # that is, truth!as contin&ency and truth!as!becoming . Met in this case truth and art would simply be identical/ far from bein& contradictory , this truth and cruel reality would simply be contin&ent , they would be 7a sein $%eide&&er(, to which the concept of contra!diction is entirely inapplicable. 5nstead, and inconsistently, it is evident that in nearly every other conte.t *acciari, followin& Nietzsche, clearly understands truth as truth!as!certainty . ,t any rate, however tra&ic may be the attempt at mimesis, whether artistic or philosophico!scientific, it does not evince the contradictoriness of life and the world: *roce's ob)ection in the 0ogica a&ainst the Nietzschean thesis was precisely that if there is no truth understood as totality , as Truth , then it is impossible to prove the truth of this thesis: This is an ob)ection of which *acciari does not seem to be mindful because,

li"e *roce, he remains captive to the primacy of Truth and thus e+uivocates about the truth of non! Truth : @l arte de lo profundo es del todo solidario con lo Aerdadero de la metafKsica. Para ambos la apariencia es mentira, y el si&no no otra cosa +ue vestimenta!escritura del pensamiento. @ste arte miente demasiado; en realidad, miente dos veces/ la primera haciendo propia la mentira del Fundamentum metafKsico; la se&unda reduciendo las propias confi&uraciones sK&nicas a seductores velos del lo&os. @l poeta transformado opone a este e.ceso de mentira la perfecta medida de su arte/ e.isten mNltiples modos de abrirse al mundo ! el si&no es una apertura al mundo; Ql afirma la verdad de la apariencia, el carOcter abismal $ab gr8ndlich/ sin fundamento, continuamente desfondante( de la apariencia, la verdad de a+uello +ue para la metafKsica es no!verdad, por lo tanto, mentira, y por otra parte, el carOcter de velo, de ocultamiento de esta verdad de la apariencia +ue reviste la Aerdad metafKsica. *omo >errida ha e.plicado/ la Aerdad falsificada , deviene apariencia, o, me)or dicho, asume el rol +ue la apariencia tenKa a sus o)os, y la apariencia deviene Nnica verdad, no por+ue sustituya al anti&uo Fundamento, sino por+ue indica la verdad de la ausencia de Fundamento, verdad de la no-:erdad" ,/l 4rte en )".

5ndeed we certainly a&ree that for Nietzsche and for us appearance ta"es the place of the old ob)ective Truth , but this does not mean at all that appearance is now the truth of non!Truth , for the simple reason that if there is no Truth then there cannot be any non!Truth either; and it is indeed absurd to refer to such a concept. The absence of Foundation is a meanin&less phrase # unless there truly is a Foundation , unless one e.isted ob)ectively either as presence or else as possibility, as opposed to ec! sistin& ideolo&ically: To e.emplify further, it would be e+ually meanin&less for us to tal" of the truth of the non!7ub)ect because, havin& denied the e.istence as well as the possibility of a 7ub)ect, both the e.istence and the non!e.istence of a non!7ub)ect must also be denied as meanin&less statements # because it is absurd to assert the e.istence of the opposite of somethin& that does not and cannot e.ist: The only way in which appearance can be described as the truth of non!Truth is if we intend by appearance the ab!sence, the non!bein& or non!e.istence, of truth!as!certainty and totality , that is, of truth!as!presence . 8ut in that case it is incorrect to assi&n to appearance the meanin& that *acciari intends # and that is, appearance as not only the ab!sence of truth!as!presence , as ob!)ective truth , but also of appearance as life as contra!diction , as falsity : $There is a little shadow!bo.in& or &host! fi&htin& here, similar to fallin& into the +ui.otic trap of the old refrain about Neville *hamberlain and %itler/ ,s 5 descended down the stair, 5 met a man who wasn't there. %e wasn't there a&ain today. 5 wish, 5 wish he'd &o away: *acciari's man who wasn't there is the notion of truth as the contra!dictoriness of reality :( $5ncidentally, the Popperian test of falsifiability of scientific truth runs a&ainst this insurmountable ob)ection/ ! that it invalidates the very notion of scientificity because only false statements are falsifiable : 5n other words, Popper's test of scientificity mis!conceives the entire notion of scientificity and is +uite simply an ideological attempt to rescue bour&eois science from the Nietzschean criti+ue of it as the will to truth and truth!as!certainty that underlie and sustain it/ ! it is no test at all &iven that even, and especially, blatant lies are falsifiable by definition and that, as we shall ar&ue below

in a&reement with Nietzsche, the notion of scientific truth cannot stand on contin&ency # what ,rendt called verities ! but rather on the physical!mathematical necessity of the laws of nature :( [5n our ne.t piece we will attempt to draw closer to a novel approach to the social synthesis throu&h the criti+ue of *acciari and Aattimo.] 4e ar&ued above that e.cept for the fact that philosophic reflection cannot com!prehend artistic e.pression and is in!deed only one of its manifestations as artistic activity, philosophic reflection remains )ust as artistic as any other form of human e.!pression or pro!duction. *onse+uently, themimetic gap ec-sists only for hiloso hy and its transcendental logos2 it does not exist in reality for art, whose only reality is that of so-called a earances and meta- hors+ $4e shall ar&ue later that the terms appearances and metaphors and even art are inappropriate and can only add confusion to our analysis of perception.( 4e can state therefore that there is no independent or autonomous sphere of artistic e.pression and production # and that indeed all human action is essentially artistic. The fact that under certain historical conditions this essential aspect of human action is overcome and repressed throu&h the social synthesis and the mode of social reproduction that sustains it does not detract from this fundamental fact; it is instead the reality of what is widely "nown as alienation $cf. %e&el, Bar.(, and what Nietzsche describes instead as internalization $Verinnerlichung( of morality and of all Aalues [aller Werthe] occasioned by the onto&enetic dis&re&ation of the instincts # which is what constitutes for him the onto&eny of thou&ht . 4e will e.amine this aspect of Nietzsche's criti+ue shortly in connection with the social synthesis. For the moment, we wish to turn to *acciari's analysis of artistic production to hi&hli&ht the salient features of our own analysis/

+n instante hace irrupcin! donde una voz &ue constitu%e siempre el a priori de toda idea del artesano! se abate sobre el hombre! transformndolo en su propio instrumento. $ travs de l! &ue no es! por lo tanto! el sujeto de la creacin '% cu%o ,hacer, no tiene su ori en en el no-ser*! esa voz se manifiesta visiblemente! se e#presa audiblemente! resuena! se transforma en ese canto. 'El -acer del .anto*
8ut what can it possibly mean to say an instant irrupts [brea"s in], whereby a voice that always constitutes the a priori of all the ideas of the artisan, stri"es the human bein& # what can we possibly achieve and how is it even feasible to separate the human bein& or artisan from its inspiration , from the voice that constitutes the a priori of every one of the artisan's ideas R ,nd how is it even conceivable to ar&ue that this in spiration, this voice $surely, a divine afflatus9( or de lirium , somehow transforms the artisan into its own proper instrument R For it is entirely evident to us instead # as immanentists # that the artisan and the voice or inspiration are in reality, in deed, in the act of pro!duction of the art form, one and the same entity # because perception and creation are one and the same activity, not two separate entities as all transcendental philosophy would have us believe: 4e a&ree with *acciari's sharp realization that [the artisan] is not the sub:ect of creation / but this is only because no in dividual human bein& can be treated as the sub)ect or creator of the act of perception and production $which is inevitably artistic( because this belon&s to the species and not to the 6n dividuum # because it is the creative activity of being human and not the individual action of a sin&le human being: To consider poiesis onto&enetically as a reality that pertains to in!dividual human beings and not phylo&enetically to being human is to relapse in the philosophical hypostatization of art as an

autonomous sphere of human activity and not as the very essence of bein& human/ it is to relapse into the notion of art as transcendence, as divine inspiration that *acciari himself had earlier eschewed. ,nd it is *acciari himself who &ives the &ame away when he $perhaps unwittin&ly, but inevitably, &iven his entire approach to the problem( relapses into the lan&ua&e of the old philosophical logos he ostensibly detests/

Ese canto es mmesis! en el sentido en &ue est de acuerdo! en armona! solo con esa voz! % por lo tanto realmente con nada! %a &ue esa voz! en tanto tal! no se da nunca verdaderamente. Ese canto! en suma! no es la mmesis sino de su propio presupuesto! &uetrasciende /001 toda medida! toda utilidad % toda techne normal. Ese ,hacer, &ue constitu%e el canto es! pues! verdaderamente un delirio en relacin con el habitusde la poesa! de las technai &ue teje el arte de la realeza. $@l %acer del *anto(
*acciari's mysticism here becomes truly mystifyin&: 5t is a fact that the audible and visible or perceptible manifestations, or e.!pressions, of artistic activity cannot be confused with the in!spiration of art, with its creative moment. Met it is palpably absurd to deny that the two are in reality fused and that instead this creation , the artistic e.pression, is pro!duced seemin&ly out of nothin& , out of sheer de!lirium . Dn the contrary, this pro!duction , as *acciari himself asseverates, distin&uishes all human activity # indeed, this id!entification $this same!ness( of artistic inspiration with its pro!duction, this ob)ectification of artistic inspiration , is precisely what allows that symbolic e.chan&e between human beings that ma"es possible the social synthesis . 5t is utter nonsense, then, for *acciari to describe artistic inspiration and pro!duction as he does above by separatin& onto!logically $yet another chorismos:( human inspiration $poiesis( and human production $techne( # because the two are ine.tricably bound and fused: There is no techne , on one side, and poiesis on the other, )ust as there is no 7ub)ect and Db)ect in opposition to each other/ both poiesis and techne are inseparable aspects of the one metaphor!producin& creative activity # rememberin& that creativity , the initium, is not sub)ect!ity . [,rtistic Form as thou&ht ] *acciari's mysticism is a&ain on show/ /l arte en cuanto 9uego de configuraciones s1gnicas es entonces el ensamiento de la verdad de la a ariencia, de la verdad de la no-verdad; pero la Forma [artistica] no tiene nada de formalKstico/ ella es universal facultad falsificante, pone la verdad como no!verdad " <a Forma art1stica abre al mundo, es a ertura al ser, en cuanto divina tirada de dados, abismo del 4(ar y de sus combinaciones, teor1a tr5gica del eterno crear-destruir" ,/l 4rte en )".

Note that this play of si&n [semiotic] confi&urations or the artistic Form can be understood only in relation to the reality of social formations, only in terms of the social synthesis , without which our entire speculative efforts relapse into sheer mysticism, which is what *acciari slips into in the +uotation above. True, as *acciari himself shows in E@l %acer del *anto', the mimetic &ap does remit the telos of philosophy and its logos bac" to the mystical world of divine inspiration and contin&ency $divina tirada de dados (, of delirium # a thesis advanced lon& a&o by 4erner Lae&er in-he -heology of the .arlyGreek /hilosophers $see our EPostcard from 5stanbul'(. The painful realization of this common artistic!metaphorical matri. is what pro!vo"ed the wrath of Plato's condemnation of art and mytholo&y because these e.pose the tra&ic inability of philosophy and science to brid&e this mimetic &ap. =ut as we em hasi(ed earlier, the mimetic gap between the act of erce tion and its ob-9ect ec-sists only for hiloso hy and its transcendental logos2 it does not e!ist in reality because like all human

ob9ectification the only reality for art is that of so-called a earances and meta- hors, and therefore the unity of erce tion, thought and language+ %he error here for >acciari as for )iet(sche consists in seeking to separate thought from its ob-9ect ,a se aration im licit in the notion of metahor., thought from language, - and then in reducing all language and concepts to logic" %hen, having established this last false e*uation, they correctly deny that all knowledge is logico-discursive but incorrectly conclude from the e*uation of knowledge with logic that it is ossible to descry a new union between knowledge and falsity, a new relation that is no longer one of mutual e!clusion" Por lo tanto/ la filosofKa Nltima, lle&ando al reconocimiento de la necesidad del arte, lle&a al reconocimiento de esta facultad falsificante como una formula universal del conocer, como estructura del conocer. D, viceversa, el arte en cuanto actividad metafKsica en &ran estilo torna visible una nueva uniJn entre conocimiento y mentira, una nueva relaciJn ya no mOs de recKproca e.clusiJn. %he idea that knowledge and falsity are not mutually e!clusive, that reality is contra-dictory, arises from the mistaken e*uation of knowledge with logico-discursive thought and the latter?s doomed attem t to ob-literate all contradiction" /l roblema *ue a*u1 sale a la lu( tiene relaci0n con un resu uesto vital de la tradici0n filos0fica euro ea" /n base a tal resu uesto, el mundo se nos abrir1a e!clusivamente mediante pensamientos pro-ducidos lingsticamente, o sea mediante un logos redicativo-discursivo" /l mundo nos es dado e!clusivamente a trav3s de las formas de la discursividad ling@1stica, de las cuales siem re es osible afirmar verdad o falsedad",hora para tal tradiciJn no tendrKa sentido interro&arse sobre la verdad o falsedad del arte. Por lo tanto, en el caso de un hecho artKstico, no tendremos nunca nada +ue ver con pensamientos, con conocimiento sino con fantasKas, del todo irrelevantes para el autQntico lo&os !o, como mO.imo, e.presantes de los limites o de los necesarios dKas de descanso, o aNn, de los lapsus de la actividad discursiva. 4e "now very well, from em!pathy for instance, that "nowled&e cannot be reduced to lo&ic. There is therefore no sense in affirmin& the co!e.istence of "nowled&e and falsity as if "nowled&e referred to truth! as!certainty and totality # because we "now that "nowled&e is not formal!lo&ical or lo&ico!discursive whereas falsity can only e.ist for lo&ic. Aet knowledge can ec-sist only symbolically, through language7 and we should remember that language is not logic B and that indeed logic itself is not logical+ %herefore the hrase logico-discursive covers only one as ect of language" Cndeed, we demonstrated earlier that the logico-discursive form , hiloso hy. too is artistic+ %he meta hysical dimension of art and the artistic dimension of meta hysics entail recisely that human erce tion, thought, and knowledge cannot be reduced to logic" =ut can they be divorced from languageD %he answer we gave earlier ,in ECmmanence Fe-visited? and EGhiloso hy of the Flesh?. is that they can-not+