Thinking the Event. François Raffoul

(CPR, A 182/B 224, 299). This substance can also be the ego, the “subject,” as cause of its effects, the agent as cause of its actions, or the doer as cause of its deed. All these are for Nietzsche grammatical-metaphysical fictions, prejudices, along with the “fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in it” (GM, 45). Just as the “popular mind” distinguishes the lightning from its flash, just as it reifies the “it” in the “it rains,” just as it conceives of the event as an action requiring a subject (as if behind the manifestation of strength, there was an indifferent substratum that would have the freedom to be manifest strength or not), just as it “doubles the deed” (“it posits the same event first as cause and then a second time as its effect,” GM, 45), the metaphysician distinguishes a subject from its effects. “If I say: ‘Lightning flashes,’ I have posited the flashing once as activity and once as subject, and have thus added on to the event [Geschehen] a being that is not identical with the event but that remains, is, and does not ‘become’ [nicht wird]. __ To posit the event as effecting [Wirken], and effect [Wirkung] as being: that is the twofold error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.”¹³ In fact, Nietzsche proclaims forcefully: “there is no such substratum; there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; the doer is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything” (GM, 45). “The deed is everything,” this expression would require and call for another conception of the event in which such event would no longer be anchored in a cause-substrate, but happening from itself and yet happening to someone.

      The subject, the substantial I, are only habits, and Nietzsche writes that “perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, including the logicians, to get along without the little ‘it’ (which is all that is left of the honest little old ego)” (BGE, 24). The “I,” the “it,” are interpretations added to the event. What this critique reveals is the radical absence of substrate and authorship in an event. After his deconstruction of the imaginary causes and subjects, Nietzsche is able to question the very notion of authorship, whether divine or human, and declares that there is no author for what happens. The event displays a radical absence of ground. This groundlessness thus exposed will lead to a deconstruction of the principle of reason, which claims to establish a rational foundation for events.

      The Event without Reason

      This critique of the subject, that is to say, of the subjectum or substrate underlying events, reveals the abyss beneath any event: an event is always groundless. This is what Heidegger shows in his lecture course from 1955–1956, The Principle of Reason (Der Satz vom Grund), a title that immediately reveals the proximity between reason and ground, as Grund names both reason and ground. Heidegger states in the Address, “In all founding and getting to the bottom we are already on the path to a reason,”¹⁴ as he points to the translation of ratio in German as Grund. “But Vernunft [Reason], just as much as Grund [grounds] speak as translations of the one word, ratio.” Therefore, “ratio speaks in the word Grund and indeed does so with the dual sense of Reason and grounds” (GA 10, 145/PR, 98. Also GA 10, 171–173/PR, 102–104). For Heidegger, the principle of reason is ultimately about foundation, as our existence is ruled by this demand for reasons and grounds: “We have an eye out for grounds in all that surrounds, concerns, and meets us. We require a specification of reasons for our statements. We insist upon a foundation for every attitude” (GA 10, 171/PR, 117). The principle of reason is ultimately concerned with foundation, and the principle of sufficient reason with a sufficient grounding. Derrida evokes “the proximity between many of the figures of reason and those of the bottom or the ground, the foundation, the groundwork, the principle of sufficient reason, the principium rationis, the nihil est sine ratione as Satz vom Grund, the Satz vom zureichenden Grunde of the Leibnizian theodicy and its reinterpretative repetition by Heidegger.”¹⁵

      Now, what is most striking in that course is how Heidegger reveals the groundlessness of the event of being by following the very principle that is meant to provide a foundation for events: the principle of reason. More precisely, it is the very claim of the principle of reason, that is, that all events must founded in reason, that will turn out to be itself groundless. I recall that principle, as enunciated by Leibniz: “Hanovre le 14 juillet 1686: il faut tousjours qu’il y ait quelque fondement de la connexion des termes d’une proposition, qui se doit trouver dans leur notions. C’est là mon grande principe, dont je croy que tous les philosophes doivent demeurer d’accord, et dont un des corollaires est cet axiome vulgaire que rien n’arrive sans raison, qu’ont peut tousjours rendre pourquoy la chose est plustost allé ainsi qu’autrement.” In translation: “it is always necessary that there be a foundation for the connecting of the parts of a judgment, in whose concepts these connections must be found. Precisely this is my grand Principle about which, I believe, all philosophers must concur—and this common axiom remains one of its corollaries-that nothing happens without a reason that one can always render as to why the matter has run its course this way rather than that” (cited in GA 10, 175–176/PR, 119). The foundation turns out to be itself without foundation, perhaps even requires its own self-deconstruction. Heidegger enters the very heart of the principle of reason to show how it self-deconstructs, as it were, from within. For, he asks, if the principle of reason states that everything that happens must have a reason, what then is the reason for the principle of reason? Indeed, if everything must have a reason, then the principle of reason (which is something) must also have a reason. “Indeed the principle of reason is, as a principle, not nothing. The principle is itself something. Therefore, according to what the principle itself tells us, it is the sort of thing that must have a reason. What is the reason for the principle of reason?” (GA 10, 17/PR, 11). Does the principle of reason have a reason? Nothing could be less certain: “Nihil est sine ratione. Nothing is without reason, says the principle of reason. Nothing—which means not even this principle of reason, certainly it least of all. It may then be that the principle of reason, that whereof it speaks, and this speaking itself do not belong within the jurisdiction of the principle of reason. To think this remains a grave burden. In short it means that the principle of reason is without reason. Said still more clearly: ‘Nothing without reason’—this, which is something, is without reason” (GA 10, 27/PR, 17, emphasis mine). Further, through this question, “Does the principle of reason have a reason?” it becomes apparent that reason itself does not rest upon a rational basis.

      One recalls here how Kant speaks of a drive to reason, a Trieb, or also an “interest” of reason (Interesse der Vernunft; for instance: CPR, 496–502, 576, 593, 603–604, 614, 645), which reveals a certain nonrational basis of reason, leading Derrida to ask the following questions about the value and even honor of reason, all revealing the nonrational origin of reason: “The honor of reason—is that reason? Is honor reasonable or rational through and through? The very form of this question can be applied analogically to everything that evaluates, affirms, or prescribes reason: to prefer reason, is that rational or, and this is something else, reasonable? The value of reason, the desire for reason, the dignity of reason—are these rational? Do these have to do wholly with reason?” (R, 120). Is reason rational? Is the principle of reason rational? Does reason have a reason? One already sees here how the principle of reason is situated in a circle (What is the reason of the principle of reason? What is the foundation of a foundation?) that will throw it into a self-deconstruction, that is, into the abyss of its own impossible foundation. Or should one say, instead, that any foundation, as a foundation, must itself be without foundation? This led Deleuze to speak of the paradoxical nature of the logic of grounding, of the “comical ungrounding” of the principle of reason: “But who still speaks of a foundation, when the logic of grounding or the principle of reason leads precisely to its own ‘ungrounding,’ comical and disappointing.”¹⁶ The principle of reason will collapse (“run aground”) at the very place of its impossible foundation, “there where,” as Derrida puts it in Rogues, “the Grund opens up onto the Abgrund, where giving reasons [rendre-raison] and giving an account [rendre-compte]—logon didonai or principium reddendae rationis—are threatened by or drawn into the abyss” (R, 122). Heidegger reveals this self-deconstruction of the principle of reason by following