2012/4, стр. 295 - 303

PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTION TO ANTI-PROJECTIONAL FUTUROLOGY

Ivaylo Lazarov
ВСУ „Черноризец Храбър“

Abstract. This paper offers a critical and refl exive criterion of anti-projectivity with respect to most of futurological predictions and models for the future. This criterion is based on the author’s understanding that the modality of time, and especially in view of the agony of the big political projects, has long stepped over into the anti-projective epochè – this is the key thesis statement, I would like to open my issue with. It turns out that (according to more than once suggested in my other publications experience of phenomenological genealogy of time) the epochality is signifi cant of time only when transcendentally (i.e. in line with the exigent genealogy of every possible meaning-giving) assumed is the responsibility by a subject for sharing the significance and the social validity of a certain discursive content. But never prior to that is never for the benefit of history itself, in favour of the non-relative, objective Time. Namely in this sense should be understood the main message of the paper – that the field of history is not ontologically self-suffi cient in a certain absolutely-real sense – precisely because of the myriads of possible articulating interpretations, sneaking stealthily through the facts. In such a sense, we need a novel, critical methodology as to the interpretation of the history, resp. of the futurology (also called „history of the future“). History has to be viewed genealogically, so as to bring out its wide variativity namely as a narrative, made up by the evaluative ratiocinations of the narrator, and not as events, that have taken place in a kind of – independent of the narration – „objective time“... This is the only way to demystify all the queries about the historical failures and their repetitions, since then „the historical won’t-beingness“ would be related to its precise source, namely – the choice (the responsibility) of the narrator, and not out of a mere illusory objectivist metaphysics or mystics.

Keywords: phenomenology, epochè, epochality, history, futurology, narrativization, anti-projectivity

The modality of time, and especially in view of the agony of the big political projects, has long stepped over into the anti-projectional epochè – this is the key thesis statement, I would like to open my paper with.

But what is the meaning of epochè in the context of a critically-refl ective reconsideration of some problematic categories such as time, epoch and history? What we need to consider here is a genealogical procedure, through which, precisely because of the dissatisfaction with the decisions put forward within the frameworks of one or another epochal present-day project, we are making the theoretical attempt to bring the commonly accepted recipes, for coping with the usual events and circumstances, into problematicity1) again. The procedure in question is called epochè2) by the principal founder of the phenomenology Edmund Husserl, whose aim is explicitly antimetaphysical, which, viewed from a specific point of view, means also anti-projectional in the sense of the positive empyrea – transcendental „bracketing“ of the „indisputably objective“ status of the epochality and the time itself, co-subordinating it to the constitutive plays of consciousness and language.

Postmodern philosophy (through Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Habermas, etc.) has long perceived, that the world as a homogeneous and compact unity of significances can be nothing else but, an effect of an articulating (narrative) event. And this is so, as far as the postmodern philosophical critique, refl ecting the epoch, views the world in a fundamentally different way than the scientifi callycentred or the usual way of looking at things. The principal difference springs up from the dissimilarity between the event interpretations of the genesis of every single worldliness. The event to philosophy is the event of the very happening of the world as a whole out of nothingness. While the event in science is just a description of empirical dependencies (amidst the infi nite totality3)) via a proposition. The philosophical point of view takes into account the distinction between actual and possible experience. It is the latter that pertains to the statements of science and the daily round . The events in the possible experience are hypostases about the existing state of affairs, rather than being invariable observation of the immanent actual happening of the world via the boundary of the possible (subject). Actual in philosophy is the very act of articulating (primary designation) of possibilities. It is this particular onrushing act that we call an event and it follows from nothing – as I have already pointed out, it simply occurs in the way speaking itself does.

As I have observed in one paper of mine4): articulating the world is not immanent in the world; the affection for such an articulation is not initiated by the world, it is an expression of an intention for worldliness prior to the world. In general, the subject of the worldliness (of whatever it may be) encounters the world in a narrative; the world alone does not self-encounter itself on its own– in other words, the world cannot self-articulate (self-respond, resp. self-illuminate) itself without a factor of responsibility – the latter being precisely the subject as a borderline of the articulated possibility, but he is not present empirically in the articulation (of the world), being the one that articulates the world. Under such circumstances the epochality of the discourse is not predetermined by time (resp. in the projection of a certain objectivelygeneric history), but only accidentally and in the very actuality of the subject-object distance recognizes time as a constituent of every possible positioning in the content projection of the discourse. Thus, the category of „epochality“ needs re-defi ning: the epochality is significance of time only when transcendentally (i.e. in line with the exigent genealogy of every possible meaning-giving) assumed is the responsibility by a subject for sharing the significance and the social validity of a certain discursive content. But never prior to that... that is never for the benefit of history itself, in favour of the non-relative, objective Time.

In accordance with the presented in this way methodological context, I would like to bring into focus not the possible, that is, the factual-empirical parameters of history, which contents has long been the object of our primary concern. Here, I am more interested in the genesis of the historicity namely in the modality of actual happening of history, which is nothing else but its permanent projective articulation. „History is not the totality, transcended by the eschatology, metaphysics or speech“5), insofar as in our fore-ordination for anticipation of a somewhat „further“ and ultimately of a certain realization within the frameworks of a given intrinsic projective thinking, the three become one. History „is the very transcendence“6). To that effect, „if the speech is movement of metaphysical transcendence, it (italics mine – I.L.) is the history, not beyond history“7).

In view of the already explicated in various papers of mine on the subject of phenomenology attempt to a genealogy of time8) and Derrida’s statement just cited above, here follows the message of my idea, namely– that the field of history is not ontologically self-suffi cient in a certain absolutely-real sense – precisely because of the myriads of possible articulating interpretations, sneaking stealthily through the facts. From the point of view of the transcendental logic (e.g. Wittgenstein) all these articulating interpretations are of equal rights9). Every single reality, including even that of a historical occurrence (as far as it tells about clearly defined aims, which are always under a criterion, accidental and circumstantial), remains in the long run an illusion of consciousness, dependent upon the dissimilarity of some or other unwavering anticipations of ours with the unbindingness of their being signifi cant! In such a sense, we need a novel, critical methodology as to the interpretation of the history, resp. of the futurology (also called „history of the future“). History has to be viewed genealogically, so as to bring out its wide variativity namely as a narrative, made up by the evaluative ratiocinations of the narrator, and not as events, that have taken place in a kind of – independent of the narration – „objective time“... This is the only way to demystify all the queries about the historical failures and their repetitions, since then „the historical won’t-beingness“ would be related to its precise source, namely – the choice (the responsibility) of the narrator, and not out of a mere illusory objectivist metaphysics or mystics...

On these grounds I consider it absolutely essential to try out the opposite to the usual, and seemingly impossible procedure of a phenomenological epochè, formally disputing every concrete epochal contents in its capacity of an echo only, or a vocal effect10) of the ongoing discrete articulation of history. Here is the procedure: reduction and even discontinuing of the unnecessary self-multiplicatin (through „sinking into the self-purposeful semantics“) effects out of the possible experience, that is of the badlyinfi nite-history... and „bringing along“ the extending time: 1) to the existential time11), constituting itself through the „temporaneousness“ as an existentiale12) of the concrete narrator, who ontologically cannot be ignored; 2) to the point of total consciousnes – real-time non-extension, which is no longer going to be „burden-time-bound from the past“, but which is going to realise virtually the Idea-of-the past13), being left (until now) for the „indefinite future“ – namely in the fullness of the concrete personality-monadic existence, enfolding inwards within itself, here-and-now, irrespective of every estranging perspectives of un-duly ef-facing unfolding, which would continue suspending the decoding of those being for „further time yet to come“14).

„Gently“ said: the tempestuousness of history has not only to be given meaning, but to deduce Sense philosophically – so as to be brought to a halt, or at least under control in accordance with the concrete aims of the Person. Such bringing under control would be exactly a decisiveness set about against co-participation in articulation of history, which unenlightenedly would ignore or simply bury into oblivion the absolute untimeliness of the event/act of its own articulation because of the possibility for analytical sinking into its annals. And this is the other name of the awakeness, insofar as the awakeness is the real name of the time-yet-tocome, which stakes claims to historical realization, which in its turn, is the object of futurology. Outlined in this way, the real name of that-yet-to-come is awakeness to the conditionality of every epochal discourse under the circumstances of consciously conducted procedure of phenomenological epochè, which transcendentally „brackets out“ the epoch – with all its symbolic identity, metaphysical measurement and socio-cultural rituality.

By the way, that, which remains after the event in the narration (since, philosophically viewed, the very actual articulation/narration is an event), is precisely the insignificance of the narrative, bound-with/involved-in the judgement of the ratiocination15), with the insignifi cance in question being namely attributed to its primordial questionability as to its happening in a single (in the long run) ratiocination, in a given linguistically constituted semantics, since once fallen into a certain language, the world, resp. the history (incl. even as a history of the future – futurology), will no longer be forced out16)... Which in its turn means, that the Day of Judgement over the History17) is present from the moment of the procurement of the phenomenological epochè in relation to the epoch with its entire taken-for-granted performance, and this, in a more radical plan means also – a Day of Judgement over the Time, incl. in its modus of „anticipated future“, insofar as such a future is nothing less than a „form of the past“ purely and simply „pushed forward“ in the projection of the narrative yet-to-be-completed, or, in the context of what has already been said – lack of criticism/awakeness as to the transcendental capability of ratiocination... and reproduction of unfulfilment and won’t-beingness, the so-called objectively-generic history of the world is clogged up with.

What prompts me up to an explicit awakened/yet-to-be anti-projectional challenging the limits of any historic epochality? First and foremost, my underlying motive is to be found in the inference about the innate impotence, resp. failure, at the gates of the Unknown/the Death, of the humane projects (of every possible project in general!), remaining referent to the perspective of life and developing from the absolute value of the „living being“ in the world. The transcendental use of the abilities (of imagination, of knowledge) with the modern panopticum, in which we are currently immersed in our capacity of „living entities“, has not been risen to the rank of a universality. The historical narrative, thus, because of oblivion or blatant ignorance, becomes objectively (in content) relentless as regards the forever open opportunity for discontinuing its own articulation, as long as the voice, which narrates the history, taking up the burden of the looking-forward-to-the-future and postponing the event-epochè, like a fallen angel becomes part of the epoch, of the history, of the non-relative time. Being a project as from the burdensome past, every project of the possible/empirical experience is ex-pectant with ad interim decisions, unsatisfactory with a view to eternity and in the face of the otherness and death. No projective expectations about the future, in reference to whatsoever projects conditioned by the epoch and tradition, are not capable of surviving and lasting forever, in spite of the political demagogy and propagating persistence, in which they are wrapped up and overexposed. And this is so, because in its paradoxical counterposition of „life-endowing“, the death makes-its-target, always coming towards, not responsible for the repercussion, rushing in out of a sudden, from a different order of the postulated (no-one-knows-exactly-why) supervalue of life – and alien to every possible projective order. In such a sense „the solution to the paradox“ with everlastingly failing, but living prospective human expectations, is to be found in the very dialecticity of the elimination of their own apparitions. All possible solutions as from the death, which in the future do not resolve death, are apparitions. All in all, with a view to the phenomenological singularity, everything, which secondarily fi nds-a-solution-„moving-about-restlessly“, is, in fact, non-action, but only a possible echo/apparition, constitutively postponed by the actual event of all-articulation. There is no such a necessity for dis-placement, ever placing me together with myself, with the image of me myself. Herein lies the freedom to make a responsible choice of the anti-projectional „eternal recurrence“ (Nietzsche) towards Yourself, but not as towards epochally predetermined identity [which since it has (had) a past, is also to experience future], or in the order of the historical time, but stopping it, drawing back into itself the centrifugal juggernaut of the multitudeof-designations (by Occam18)), being responsible primordially for itself as the fi rst encountered other. Who is the one that articulates the (his)story, with someone else being involved as an accomplice in the horizon of its events?

In compliance with such an untimely and non-historical question, every further clutching fi rmly (through aimless repetition) onto „real“ occurrences and characters out of the projection of the historical narrative, is a prologue to future/prospective non-decisions and failures. The image is at the same time the very death-of-theimage, insofar as „the death-of-the-image“ is precisely the fl eeting/momentaneous fl ash of en-lightenment of the image in the very act of my calling-myself-off from the image. The invention of history from a certain post-modern point of view actually starts out as from the reducing epochè, called modernity (it is precisely this, conditionally said, epoch, that has brought about the totalization of image-ness and education (as the authentic image-form-taking or Bild-ung in Hegel’s philosophy), not vice versa as we think – that modernity is only an epoch in the history. It is precisely the metaphysical presumptions and methods, through which here-andnow we give projective explanations for our place and time, that are inventive and inventing history and futurology, and it is precisely this that the so called historians that research into the history for its own sake only, find it difficult to understand. The one that articulates the history, tradition, time and the world, in general, is not from the time, or from the epoch – that one, in their capacity as a refl ecting one as well, is sub specie aeternitatis, that one belongs to the eternity. And in the face of it and in its profundity all epochal projects with their relevant expanses and consistencies, physics of multitudes/quantities and their relevant democracies, are simulative and because of this – worthless. Being awakened to all this gives us the invaluable key to beingness with no future – that antiprojectional and dissimilar to time and towards all possible dimensions eternal recurrence19) to the origins of the all-around articulation, which out-of-eternity has the powers to immanentize time – past, future and history, instead of conceding them the initiative to turn us into something transcendent to their own decisions and actions, into destined to inhabit a world of fictions and utopias, that is – into entities.

REFERENCES

1. See Vatsov, 2003: 225

2. See Husserl, 1991: 138-9

3. The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas makes a clear-cut distinction between the totality of the possible experience, which in the lagging behind effects of the propositional description is only seemingly infinite, and the infi nity of the phenomenologically as-sured virtually-constitutive event of all-articulation. „The idea of the infinite – he declares, – which paradox Descartes studies, unparalleled thought, thinking more, than it is capable of taking in (italics mine – I.L.), which concrete wisdom we have tried to express in the obedience to ordinance, which in the face of the other preordains me to the other person –therein lies the true „phenomenology“ of „the aim of the future“ beyond the forth-coming (bold mine). Thought, thinking more, than it is capable of thinking, or thought, which thinking, does better, than think, since now it is the responsibility for the other, whose mortality – and hence whose life – has an influence on me.“ [Levinas, 1999: 57]

4. See Lazarov, 2010b: 10

5. Derrida, 1998: 176

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. See e.g. Lazarov, 2010a and Lazarov, 2011: 9–10
9. Cf. Wittgenstein, 1988: 121, 6.4
10. See Derrida, 1996: 106
11. Cf. Berdyaev, 1994: 77
12. See Heidegger, 2005: 252, §65

13. Cf. Deleuze, 1999: 113

14. Cf. Vatsov, 2003: 187

15. See Kant, 1980

16. Cf. Derrida, 1996: 56 and Gerdzhikov, 1999: І, 25

17. Or the well-known Doomsday – cf. my suggestions in: Lazarov, 2010a: 16

18. According to the ordinance of the so-called „Occam’s razor*“ (*William of Occam is a mediaeval nominalist, who lived at the close of ХІІІ and the beginning of ХІV c.) the metaphysical postulating and numerological swarming of entities in knowledge and practice are to be reduced to a minimum.

19. As stated by Meglena Nikolchina (see Nikolchina, 2011) in her participation at the seminar in Dubrovnik in 1990 (that seemed to be too far away) the Soviet philosopher Merab Mamardashvili presumably following Nietzsche, was the one to warn about the „critical, arising over and over again, task of the philosophical inquiry; about the need always to start from the very beginning“ and about „the danger of not accepting the responsibility to reason about the complex aspects of the present“.

20. The awakeness of reflexion is, in fact, such a satiation of individuation with time that gives us the possibility not to let time self-transcend itself. Hence, we immanentisize time responsibly and with a force, in inverse proportion to ‘its natural course’ not letting it immanentisize us. Let us recall Vassil Levski’s dilemma „Time is within us and we are within time; if we do not overturn it, it overturns us!“. This, however, is Bulgaria’s own contribution to phenomenology long before its ‘historical’ appearance as a philosophical science.

LITERATURE

1. Books:

Berdyaev, N. (1994) The Meaning of History (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. PH „Hristo Botev“.

Vatsov, D. (2003) Ontology of Affirmation. Nietzche as a Task (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. East-West.

Wittgenstein, L. (1988) A Collection of works (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. Nauka i Izkustvo.

Gerdzhikov, S. (2000) The Scientific Explanation of the World (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. Extreme.

Deleuze, G. (1999) Difference and Repetition (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. Critique and Humanism.

Derrida, J. (1996) The Voice and the Phenomenon (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. LIK.

Derrida, J. (1998) Writing and Difference (in Bulgarian). Sofia. Nauka i Izkustvo.

Kant, Imm. (1980) Critique of Judgement (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Publishing House.

Levinas, Em. (1999) Alterity and Transcendence (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. SONM.

Heidegger, M. (2005) Being and Time (in Bulgarian). Sofi a. Academic Publishing House „Marin Drinov“.

Husserl, E. (1991) The Idea of Phenomenology (in Bulgarian). Sofi a-Pleven. Eurasia-Abagar.

2. Papers:

Lazarov, I. (2010) On the existential and phenomenological Idea of Time. – (paper in English in) E-journal of VFU „Chernorizets Hrabar“, 2010, №2, ISSN 1313 – 7514, p. 18, http://ejournal.vfu.bg/bg/pdfs/Ivaylo_LazarovOn_the_Existential_And_Phenomenological_Idea_of_Time.pdf

Lazarov, I. (2010) The Virtual – Idea and Apperception. – Philosophical Research on the Virtual Culture (editor S. Mineva). Sofi a. University Press „St. Kliment Ohridski“.

Lazarov, I. (2011) The Virtual as Idea and Apperception. – (paper in English in) Applied Psychology and Social Practice, vol. 2; X-th International Jubilee Scientific Conference, VFU „Chernorizets Hrabar“, June 2011, Proceedings. Ed. G. Gercheva-Nestorova. Varna, 2011, Chernorizets Hrabar Publishing House, pp. 101–116.

Nikolchina, M. (2011) The West as Intellectual Utopia. – http://www. svobodata.com/page.php?pid=5567&rid=132

ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕН ПРИНОС КЪМ АНТИПРОЕКТНАТА ФУТУРОЛОГИЯ

Резюме. Статията предлага критико-рефлективен критерий за антипроектност с оглед на футурологичните прогнози и модели за бъдещето. Този критерий изхожда от авторовото разбиране, че модалността на времето, и особено предвид агонията на големите политически проекти, отдавна прекрачи в антипроектното епохè – такава е ключовата теза, която се прокарва в изложението. С оглед на прецизиране на методологията на заниманията ни с футурология, статията предлага предефиниране на категорията „епохалност“: епохалността е значимост на времето едва когато трансцендентално (т.е. съобразно належащата генеалогия на всяко възможно смислодаряване) е поета отговорността от субект да се споделя значимостта и обществената валидност на едно дискурсивно съдържание. Но никога не и преди това... Сиреч никога не самоцелно исторично, в полза на безотносителното, обективно Време. Оказва се (съобразно неведнъж предлагания в други мои публикации феноменологичен опит за генеалогия на времето), че полето на историята не е онтологично самодостатъчно в един абсолютно-реален смисъл – тъкмо заради множеството възможни изговарящи интерпретации, прокрадващи се през фактите. Именно в такъв смисъл звучи и основното статийно послание – че ни е нужна нова, критична методология спрямо обяснението на историята, респ. на футурологията (чието друго име е „история на бъдещето“). На историята следва да се погледне генеалогично, да се забележи нейната вариативност именно като разказ, изваян от оценъчните съждения на разказващия, а не като на събития, станали в някакво си – независимо от разказването – „обективно време“... Едва така могат да бъдат демистифицирани въпросите за историческите провали и техните повторения, понеже тогава „историческата небъдница“ би била свързвана с точния си източник, а именно – избора (отговорността) на разказващия, а не от някаква си илюзорна обективистична метафизика или мистика... Все в такъв план, стихията на историята трябва не само да се осмисля, а философски да се направи Смисъл – с оглед да се спре или най-малкото овладее за конкретните цели на Лицето. Едно такова овладяване/спиране би представлявало именно предприета решимост да не се съучаства в изговарянето на история, която невежествено би игнорирала или просто забравяла абсолютната несвоевременност на събитието/акта на собственото си изговаряне заради възможността за аналитично потъване в аналите є. А това е другото име на будността, доколкото пък будността е истинското име на бъдността, чиито претенции СА историческото сбъдване, което, от своя страна, е обект на футурологията. В такъв план действителното име на бъдността е будност спрямо условността на всеки епохален дискурс в условията на съзнателно провеждана процедура на феноменологично епохè, което трансцендентално „заскобява“ епохата – с цялата є символна идентичност, метафизична мерност и социокултурна ритуалност.

Assoc. Prof. Ivaylo Lazarov , PhD
 Varna Free University „Chernorizets Hrabar“
Varna, Bulgaria