In this lecture series, we will explore the concept of limit(s) in the continental tradition. The aim of the course is to see that the question of the limit serves to inform a delimitation of the continental tradition as the practice which consists of a radical challenge to the limit(s) of philosophy itself. We’ll see how the continental tradition (as it is represented in the three figures Kant-Heidegger-Derrida) constellates, all at once, a demand to stay within the limit(s), a pushing up against the limit(s), and a—always-already—transgression of the limit(s).
We’ll push off from Kant’s layered and complicated discussion of the difference between “Grenzen” (boundaries) and “Schranken” (limits) in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. The border drawn between a boundary and a limit invites us to ask a question that will echo in the continental tradition in a variety of registers: is the border between a boundary and a limit itself a boundary or a limit? We’ll explore how, for Kant, the boundary is a line that we are on (auf der Grenze), that critical reason is “bounded” by straddling the two sides of Transcendental Logic (truth and error), while the limit is a negation indicative of (negative) noumena, a purely intelligible thought-world which we cannot venture into while simultaneously retaining our claim to knowledge. This in turn invites us to explore the thin line (boundary or limit?) between the phenomenal and the noumenal as it plays out in a deleted (crossed-out) note from Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View where an “unfathomable abyss” is said to lie at the core of the human being. We will ask what this abyss means and whether it relates to the sublime, understood as a moment in which the limit is somewhat impossibly transgressed in the Critique of the Power of Judgment.
This prompts us to investigate how these constellations are explicitly and implicitly received in the continental tradition, specifically in Heidegger and Derrida. We’ll see the limit cast in the role of Sein-zum-Tode, Being-to(wards)-death, in Heidegger’s Being and Time, where death is not just a horizonal, noumenal limit “over-there” (as it was for Kant) but the finite manner in which our being-here (Dasein) is oriented towards/within the world. In many ways, and this will serve as the thread of the third lecture, Heidegger picks up on and unpacks the abyss at the center of the human being in Kant’s deleted note, casting it as the real limit, a limit that we push up against and embody.
In the fourth lecture we shall pick up on Derrida’s reception of this and see how it plays out in his discourse on the aporia—which mainly focuses on Heidegger and death. The lecture will seek to unpack Derrida’s understanding of the aporia as “the impossible, the impossibility, as what cannot pass [passer] or come to pass [se passer]” (Derrida, Aporias,p.23) and the manner in which it terminates, or represents a terminal point of, the limit. The last part of this course will focus on Derrida’s metaphoric of the eardrum in his “Tympan” from Margins of Philosophy to explore its discussion of the thin skin limiting an “inside” from an “outside” and how there are transgressions of this limit. This in turn will inform some thoughts on how the marginal, marginalia, deletions, call into question the text itself: where should the limit be with respect to what we include or exclude in a corpus or a text? Is there a “beyond” where the corpus or text is concerned and if so does this tell us anything about our primary question (is the border between the limit and the boundary itself a limit or a boundary)? By reiterating this question we’ll see how the limit, for Derrida, is always-already transgressed from inside-out, so to speak, that the limit presupposes a constant margin that cannot be fully captured within that which is delimited and that this helps us to sketch out a broader relationship between philosophy and the continental tradition.
Week 1
In this first week, I’ll set out a few broad thoughts on limits in contemporary culture, focusing specifically on the meaning of the liminal in music and literature. I’ll briefly explore two examples: the electronic music duo Autechre and Mark Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves. I’ll suggest that the limit, understood in this sense, is the laying down of a challenge.
After this brief introduction we’ll explore Kant’s attempted distinction between Grenzen and Schranken, boundaries and limits. We’ll see how the border between them is not so stable, calling into question the very meaning of each term. We will then explore in depth how the boundary refers to reason as it splits off into a Transcendental Analytic (truth; land) and a Transcendental Dialectic (error; stormy ocean). On the other hand, we’ll try to unpack the phrase: limit denotes the noumenal and the noumenal denotes limit(s) of the phenomenal.
Main Reading:
- Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §§57-60
Supplementary Reading:
- Bennington, Kant on the Frontier, Appendix, pp.205-223
- Alenka Zupančič, “The Kantian Limits”
Week 2
We continue with Kant this week but from two distinct (and yet entirely interconnected, or so I will argue) angles—and so in two distinct hours. On the one hand, during the first hour, we shall explore a little read deleted footnote (this will allow us to discuss the “crossing (out)” element of the title of this course) in a section of Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View in which he encounters an apparent “unfathomable depth” or “abyss” at the core of the human being. We’ll explore how this points to the limit of critical philosophy. Moreover, we shall explore the meaning of Kant having deleted this footnote and that our reading it is, in some ways, beyond the limit Kant intended, the limit here understood as the lines crossing out the footnote.
On the other hand, during the second hour, we will concern ourselves with the sublime in the third Critique. With this section we shall explore what it looks like in the critical philosophy when a limit is crossed and yet somehow remaining present as limit.
We shall explore whether or not these two angles, these two hours, connect together or whether they represent two entirely distinct encounters with/descriptions of the limit (or perhaps they are bounds?).
Main Reading:
- Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, §6-§7 (pp.26-34)
- Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, §23-§29 (pp.128-158)
Supplementary Reading:
- Foucault, Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology, pp.87-103
- Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy, pp.42-44
Week 3
This week we dip our toes into Being and Time, and specifically the sections dealing with Sein-zum-Tode or Being-towards-death in which Heidegger lays out the essential component of Dasein’s differentiation from other beings. We’ll explore the meaning of finitude (Endlichkeit) in this context and the significance of the “individualization” of death. Moreover, we will investigate death in Heidegger as an unsurpassable limit or horizon looming upon us at all times as a horizonal, existential-ontological limit. That is, how the limit (=death) is put to use by Heidegger as the fundamental element of what it means to be a human being. Moreover, this will lead us to a brief discussion of transcendence in Heidegger as the crossing of the limit constitutive of Dasein’s temporality (ek-stasis). That is, we shall plot out a view in which Dasein’s reaching out beyond itself (for the sake of being what it is) implies a transgression of the limit but not understood as a move towards the absolute, the infinite or the “beyond”, but rather a move towards the world (the thing) itself.
Main Reading:
- Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II: §§46-53, pp. 274-312
- Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II: §65, pp.370-380
Supplementary Reading:
- Francoise Dastur, “Phenomenology of Mortal Being” in Death: An Essay on Finitude, pp.39-60
Week 4
This week we turn to Derrida and rather fittingly his lecture “Finis” in which he delicately carves out a series of channels between endings and limits, death and transgression. Perhaps an elaborate commentary on Heidegger’s Sein-zum-Tod we might even ask after the limit between Derrida and Heidegger in this connection. What is the limit between Derrida discussing the “syntagm” my death and Heidegger’s delineation of the verenden of beings and thesterben of Dasein? Do we, alongside Derrida, encounter a certain aporia here? And aporia becomes a centerpiece of Derrida’s discussion, where it represents a sort of edge of the limit, a point at which there is a total abyss. In this connection, we’ll explore Derrida’s “three types of border limits”: geographic-territorial; discursive disciplinary fields; conceptual-terminological. We shall ask where these border limits stand with respect to the “my death” Derrida receives from Heidegger and what type of border limit we might trace out between Heidegger’s “my death” and Derrida’s “my death” (if any).
Main Reading:
- Derrida, Aporias, “Finis”, pp. 1-42
Supplementary Reading:
- David Wood, Philosophy at the Limit, pp.37-40; pp.132-149
Week 5
In this last week we stick with Derrida and this time his short piece “Tympan”, which we shall discuss in terms of Derrida’s own multi-layered metaphorics: the eardrum as a thin border delimiting a very fuzzy difference between “inside” and “outside”. We’ll see how this metaphor helps to guide a discourse on the limit in two senses: a discourse about the limit and a discourse which is situated on the limit. This opens up the other metaphorical device used here: the printing of/in the margins, which serves to question us in the practice of philosophical reading. And this ports us into the fundamental question at stake here, namely, how do we read this (or for that matter any) text? Moreover, and here we can refer back to our original question at the start of the course, is the border between what is “inside” this text and “outside” it, itself a limit or a boundary, and how should we distinguish these in this context?
I’ll then conclude the course with some broader thoughts on the relationship between philosophy and continental philosophy and how the limit is vital for reading this difference.
Main Reading:
- Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, “Tympan”, pp. ix-xxix
Supplementary Reading:
- Saitya Brata Das, What is Thinking?, “Derrida’s Tympan: Mourning, Philosophy, Literature”, pp.71-88