“The Irreparable”

Giorgio Agamben. Translation series #29

These fragments can be read as a commentary on section 9 of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time and proposition 6.44 of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In both texts, what’s in question is the attempt to define an old problem of metaphysics: the relationship between essence and existence, between quid est and quod est. Whether and to what extent these fragments, even with their obvious lacunæ, succeed in thinking further this relationship—which the meager propensity of our time for ontology (first philosophy) has cut short and left aside—will become clear only if the reader can situate them in this context.

i.

The Irreparable is that things are just as they are, in this or that mode, consigned without remedy to their way of being. Irreparable are the states of things, whatever they may be: sad or happy, atrocious or blessed. How you are, how the world is—this is the Irreparable.

Revelation doesn’t mean revealing a sacredness of the world, but only revealing its irreparably profane character. (The name always and only names things.) Revelation consigns the world to profanation and thinghood—and isn’t this precisely what’s happened? The possibility of salvation begins only at this point: it’s the salvation of the profanity of the world, of its being-thus [essere-cosí].

(This is why those who try to resacralize the world and life are just as impious as those who despair over its profanation. And this is why Protestant theology, which clearly separates the profane world from the divine, is both wrong and right: right, because the world has indeed been irrevocably consigned by revelation—by language—to the profane sphere; wrong, because precisely insofar as the world is profane, it will be saved.)

The world, insofar as it’s absolutely, irreparably profane, is (in) God.

The two forms of the irreparable according to Spinoza, security (securitas) and despair (desperatio), are, from this point of view, identical (Ethics, III, definitions XIV and XV). What’s essential is only that every cause of doubt has been removed, that things are certainly and definitively thus; it doesn’t matter whether this brings joy or sorrow. As state of things, paradise is perfectly equivalent to the inferno, even if it has the opposite sign. (But if we could feel confident in despair, or desperate in confidence, then we’d be able to perceive, in the states of things, a little margin, a limbo that can’t be contained by them.)

The root of every pure joy and every pure sorrow is that the world is just precisely as it is. A sorrow or a joy that we feel because the world isn’t how it seems to be or how we wish it were is impure and provisional. But in the supreme degree of their purity, in the so be it [cosí sta] that one says to the world when every legitimate cause of both doubt and hope has been removed, sorrow and joy refer not to negative or positive qualities, but to a pure being-thus without any attributes.

The proposition according to which God isn’t revealed in the world could also be expressed in the following way: what’s properly divine is precisely that the world doesn’t reveal God. (Hence this isn’t the “bitterest” proposition of the Tractatus.)

The world of the happy and that of the unhappy, the world of the good and that of the wicked, contain the same states of things; with respect to their being-thus, they’re perfectly identical. The just person doesn’t live in another world. The saved and the lost have the same arms and legs. The glorious body cannot but be the mortal body itself. What differs between worlds isn’t the things, but their limits. It’s as if there hovered over them something like a halo, a glory.

The Irreparable is neither an essence nor an existence, neither a substance nor a quality, neither a possibility nor a necessity. It isn’t a modality of being; it’s being always already given in some modality, being that is its modality. The Irreparable is not thus, but rather it is its thusness.

ii.

Thus. The meaning of this little word is the most difficult to grasp. “Hence things stand thus.” But would we say that, for an animal, the world is thus-and-thus? Even if we could describe the animal’s world, truly representing it as the animal sees it (like the color illustrations of Jakob von Uexküll’s books, which imagine the world of the bee, the hermit crab, and the fly), certainly that world still wouldn’t contain the thus, the world wouldn’t be thus for the animal: it wouldn’t be irreparable.

Being-thus isn’t a substance relative to which “thus” would express a determination or a qualification. Being isn’t a presupposition, something hidden before or behind its qualities. Being, which is thus, irreparably is its thus, is nothing but its mode-of-being. (The thus is not an essence that determines an existence, but finds its essence in its own being-thus, in its being finds its own determination.)

Thus means: not otherwise. (This leaf is green, so it’s neither red nor yellow.) But can one conceive of a being-thus that negates all possibilities, every predicate—that is, only the thus, such as it is, and no other way? This would be the only right way to understand negative theology: neither this nor that, neither thus nor thus—but thus as is, with all of its predicates (all predicates is not a predicate). Not otherwise negates each predicate as a property (on the plane of essence), but reprises them all as improprieties (on the plane of existence).

(Such a being would be a pure, singular, and yet perfectly whatever existence.)

As anaphora, the term “thus” refers back to a preceding term, and only through this preceding term does it (which, alone, has no meaning) identify its proper referent.

Here, however, we have to conceive of an anaphora that no longer refers back to any meaning or any referent, an absolute thus that does not presuppose anything, that is completely exposed.

The two characteristics that, according to grammarians, define the meaning of the pronoun, ostension and relation, deixis and anaphora, here have to be completely rethought. The mode in which these characteristics have been understood has determined the theory of being—that is, first philosophy—since its origins.

Pure being (the substantia sine qualitate), which is in question in the pronoun, has constantly been understood according to the schema of presupposition. In ostension, through the capacity of language to refer to the instance of discourse taking place, what is presupposed is the immediate being-there of a non-linguistic element, which language cannot say but only demonstrate (hence demonstration has provided the model for existence and denotation, the Aristotelian τόδε τι). In anaphora, through reference to a term already mentioned in discourse, this presupposition is posited in relation to language as the subject (ὑποκείμενον) that bears what is said (hence anaphora has provided the model for essence and meaning, the Aristotelian τι ἕν εἶναι). The pronoun, through deixis, presupposes relationless being and, through anaphora, makes that being “the subject” of discourse. Thus anaphora presupposes ostension, and ostension refers back to anaphora (insofar as deixis presupposes an instance of discourse). They imply each other. (This is the origin of the double meaning of the term οὐσία: the single ineffable individual and the substance underlying its predicates.)

In the double meaning of the pronoun is thus expressed the originary fracture of being in essence and existence, meaning and denotation, without the relationship between these terms ever coming to light as such. What must be conceived here is precisely this relation that is neither denotation nor meaning, neither ostension nor anaphora, but rather their reciprocal implication. It is not the non-linguistic, the relationless object of a pure ostension, nor is it this object’s being-in-language as that which is said in the proposition; rather, it is the being-in-language-of-the-non-linguistic, the thing itself. In other words, it is not the presupposition of a being, but its exposure [esposizione].

The expositive relationship between existence and essence, between denotation and meaning, is not a relationship of identity (the same thing, idem), but of ipseity (the thing itself, ipsum). Many misunderstandings in philosophy have arisen from the confusion of the one with the other. The thing of thought is not the identity, but the thing itself. The latter is not another thing towards which the thing tends, transcending itself, but neither is it simply the same thing. The thing here transcends towards itself, towards its own being such as it is.

As such. Here the anaphora “as” does not refer to a preceding referential term (to a pre-linguistic substance), and “such” does not serve to indicate a referent that gives “as” its meaning. “Such” has no other existence than “as,” and “as” has no other essence than “such.” They stipulate each other, they expose one another, and what exists is being-such, an absolute such-quality that does not refer back to any presupposition. Ἀρχῇ ἀνυπόθετος.

(The anaphoric relation plays between the thing named and its being-named, between the name and its reference to the thing: between, that is, the name “rose” insofar as it signifies the rose and the rose insofar as it is signified by the name “rose.” The space of the anaphoric relation is solely contained in this interworld.)

Assuming my being-such, my manner of being, is not to assume this or that quality, this or that character, virtue or vice, richness or misery. My qualities and my being-thus are not qualifications of a substance (of a subject) that would remain behind them and that I would truly be. I am never this or that, but always such, thus. Eccum sic: absolutely. Not possession, but limit; not presupposition, but exposure.

Exposure, in other words being such-as, is not any of the real predicates (being red, hot, small, smooth…), but nor is it other than these (for then it would be something else added to the concept of a thing, and therefore still a real predicate). That you are exposed is not one of your qualities, but nor is it other than them (we could say, in fact, that it is nothing-other than them). Whereas real predicates express relationships within language, exposure is pure relationship with language itself, with its taking-place. Exposure is what happens to something (more precisely: to the taking-place of something) in virtue of the very fact of being in relation to language, the fact of being-called. A thing is (called) red and, in virtue of this, insofar as it is called such and refers to itself as such (not simply as red, but called red), it is exposed. Existence as exposure is the being-as of a such. (The category of suchness is, in this sense, the fundamental category, that which remains unthought in every quality.)

To exist means to take on qualities, to submit to the torment of being such (inqualieren). Hence the quality, the being-such of each thing, is its supplicancy [supplizio] and its source [sorgente]—its limit. How you are—your face—is your supplicancy and your source. And each being is and must be its mode of being, its emergent manner [maniera sorgiva]: being such as it is.

The such does not presuppose the as; it exposes it, it is its taking-place. (Only in this sense can we say that essence lies—liegt—in existence.) The as does not suppose the such; it is its exposure, its being pure exteriority. (Only in this sense can we say that essence envelops—involvit—existence.)

Language says something as something: the tree as “tree,” the house as “house.” Thought has concentrated itself on the first something (existence, that something is) or on the second (essence, what something is), on their identity or their difference. But what really has to be thought—the word “as,” the relation of exposure—has remained unthought. This originary “as” is the theme of philosophy, the thing of thought.

Heidegger brought to light the structure of the word als, “as,” “insofar as,” that characterizes apophantic judgment. Apophantic judgment is founded on “insofar as” as the circular structure of comprehension. Comprehension comprehends and discovers something always already on the basis of something and insofar as it is something—retreating, so to speak, toward that in which it was already found. In judgment, this structure of “something insofar as it is something” assumes the familiar form of the subject-predicate relation. The judgment “the chalk is white” says the chalk insofar as it is white and, in this way, hides the around-and-about-which within the insofar-as-it-is-something through which the former is understood.

But the structure and the meaning of the als, the “as,” are still not clear. By saying something as “something,” what is hidden is not only the around-and-about-which (the first thing) but primarily the as itself. The thinking that tries to grasp being as being retreats towards the entity without adding to it any further determination, but also without presupposing it in an ostension as the ineffable subject of the predication; comprehending it in its being-such, in the midst of its as, it grasps its pure non-latency, its pure exteriority, It no longer says something as “something,” but brings to speech the as itself.

Sense and denotation do not account for all of linguistic signification. We have to introduce a third term: the thing itself, the being-such, which is neither what is denoted nor what is meant. (This is the meaning of the Platonic theory of ideas.)

Neither the being that is absolutely not posited and relationless (ἀθέσις), nor the being that is posited, related, and factitious, but an eternal exposure and facticity: αἴσθησις, an eternal sensation.

A being that is never itself, but is only the existent. It is never existent, but it is The Existent, integrally and without repair [riparo]. It neither founds, nor directs, nor nullifies the existent; it is only its being-exposed, its halo, its limit. The Existent no longer refers back to being; it is in the midst of being, and being is entirely abandoned in The Existent. Without repair and, nevertheless, saved—saved in its being irreparable.

Being, which is The Existent, is forever saved from the risk of itself existing as a thing or of being nothing. The Existent, abandoned in the midst of being, is perfectly exposed.

Atticus defines the idea as παραιτία του εἶναι τοιαῦτα ἕκασθ᾽οἷαπερ ἔστι, for each thing, not cause but para-cause, and not simply of being, but of being-such-as-it-is.

The being-such of each thing is the idea. It is as if the form, the knowability, the features of every entity were detached from it, not as another thing, but as an intentio, an angel, an image. The mode of being of this intentio is neither a simple existence nor a transcendence; it is a para-existence or a para-transcendence, which dwells alongside the thing (in every sense of the prefix παρά-), so close that it almost merges with it, giving it a halo. It is not the identity of the thing, and yet, it is nothing other than the thing (it is none-other). The existence of the idea is, in other words, a paradigmatic existence: the manifesting-beside-itself of each thing (παρά-δειγμα). But this showing-beside-itself is a limit—or rather, it is the unraveling, the indetermination of a limit: a halo.

(This is a Gnostic reading of the Platonic idea. It also applies to the angels—intelligences in Avicenna and the love poets, and to the εἶδος of Origen and the radiant cloak of the Song of the Pearl. Salvation takes place in this irreparable image.)

An eternal as-suchness: This is the idea.

iii.

Redemption is not an event in which what was profane becomes sacred and what was lost is found again. Redemption is, on the contrary, the irreparable losing of the lost, the definitive profanity of the profane. But precisely for this reason, they now touch their end—the advent of a limit.

We can have hope only in what is without remedy. That things are thus and thus—this is still inside the world. But that this is irreparable, that this thus is without remedy, that we can contemplate it as such—this is the only passage outside the world. (The inmost character of salvation is that we are saved only in the moment when we no longer will to be. Hence, in this point, there is salvation—but not for us.)

Being-thus, being one’s own mode of being—we cannot grasp this as a thing. It is precisely the evacuation of any thinghood. (This is why Indian logicians said that sicceitas, the being-thus of things, was nothing but their being deprived of a proper nature, their vacuity, and that between the world and Nirvana there is not the slightest difference.)

Man is the being who, bumping into things and only in this encounter, opens up to the non-thinglike. And inversely: man is the one who, in being open to the non-thinglike, is, for this reason alone, irreparably consigned to things.

Non-thinghood (spirituality¹) means: losing oneself in things, losing oneself to the point of not being able to conceive of anything but things; then and only then, in the experience of the irremediable thinghood of the world, bumping into a limit, touching it. (This is the meaning of the word “exposure.”)

The taking-place of things does not take place in the world. Utopia is the very topia of things.

So be it. In every thing affirm simply the thus, sic, beyond good and evil. But thus does not simply mean: in this or that mode, with these certain properties. “So be it” means: “let the thus be.” In other words, it means “yes.”

(This is the meaning of Nietzsche’s yes. The yes is said not simply to a state of things, but to its being-thus. Only for this reason can it eternally return. The thus is eternal.)

The being-thus of each thing is, in this sense, incorruptible. (This is precisely the meaning of Origen’s doctrine that what returns is not corporeal substance but εἶδος.)

Dante classifies human languages by their way of saying yes: oc, oïl, sì. Yes, thus, is the name of language, it expresses the meaning: the being-in-language-of-the-non-linguistic. But the existence of language is the yes said to the world so that it hovers over the nothingness of language.

In the principle of reason (“There is a reason why there is something rather than nothing”), what is essential is neither that something is (being) nor that something is not (nothingness), but that something is rather than nothingness. For this reason, it cannot be read simply as an opposition between two terms—is/is not. It also contains a third term: the rather (which is related to the Old English “rathe,” meaning quick or eager, and which in Latin is potius, from potis, what is able), the power to not not-be.

(What is astonishing is not that something was able to be, but that it was able to not not-be.)

The principle of reason can be expressed in this way: Language (reason) is that whereby something exists rather (potius, more potently) than nothing. Language opens the possibility of not-being, but at the same time it also opens a stronger possibility: existence, that something could be. What the principle properly says, however, is that existence is not an inert fact, that there inheres in it a potius, a potentiality. But this is not a potentiality to be that is opposed to a potentiality to not-be (who would decide between these two?); it is a potentiality to not not-be. The contingent is not simply the non-necessary, that which can not-be, but that which, being the thus, being only its mode of being, is capable of the rather, can not not-be. (Being-thus is not contingent, it is necessarily contingent. Nor is it necessary; it is contingently necessary.)

An affect towards a thing we imagine to be free is greater than that towards a thing we imagine to be necessary, and consequently is still greater than that towards a thing we imagine as possible or contingent. But imagining a thing as free can be nothing but simply imagining it while we are ignorant of the causes by which it has been determined to act. Therefore, an affect towards a thing we imagine simply is, other things equal, greater than that towards a thing we imagine as necessary, possible, or contingent. Hence, it is the greatest of all. (Spinoza, Ethics, Part V, Proposition 5, Demonstration)

To see something simply in its being-thus—irreparable, but not for that reason necessary; thus, but not for that reason contingent—is love.

In the point where you perceive the irreparability of the world, in that point it is transcendent.

How the world is—this is outside the world.

1. Cf. Sergius Bukgakov: hypostaseity, personality.