Viva Hermeneutics!

I've long suspected that dialectical materialism, as an incontrovertible condition of existence, is already implicit in Heideggerian phenomenology as Geworfenheit. It is the "thrown-ness" of Dasein (a term which I believe Heidegger coined to preserve some element of the cogito while avoiding the epistemological aporia plaguing Cartesian dualism) that is the sine qua non of her existence. Any understanding that Dasein can have of herself is determined by her being-in-the-world. Since being-in-the-world is therefore always already a condition of Dasein when she attempts self-scrutiny, it does not require a huge leap in logic to claim that Dasein's essence, insofar as it's discoverable, is materially determined. As an inevitable consequence, moreover, any condition of existence that is independent of, or that precedes, dialectical materialism will always remain precognitive. In other words, the gate to the kingdom of noumena is forever shut to Dasein because to gain entry would involve extracting herself from being-in-the-world (to which she is inescapably bound) and, if she were able to do so, she would cease being Dasein, qualitatively speaking.

This is not to say, however, that although Dasein cannot access the realm "behind" her material reality--because it is precognitive--she cannot cognize it at all. But, if we credit Dasein with having an imagination, then it is possible for her to cognize the noumenal realm via this imagination. Dasein can imagine what the noumenal realm might be like. This is where Baudrillard comes in handy. If Dasein can imagine (as opposed to being able to access readily) the noumenal realm, then the contents of her imagination is a simulacrum of said realm. But, instead of having as its referent the noumenal realm qua noumenal realm, it has as its referent the noumenal realm as Dasein imagines it. The simulacrum thus refers only to itself, so, strictly speaking, it is a reference without a referent. Or, better stated, it is a reference that has only itself as a referent.

I nevertheless maintain that imagination is an indispensible tool for understanding existence, especially if one should use a Hegelian approach. Central to Hegel's notion of the process of subjectivation is the subject's encounter with an Other. It is only through the subject's encounter with this Other that the subject is able to reëmerge into herself, i.e., carry back to herself, as it were, fundamental notions of her limits, her isolated and isolable being. In other words, the need for an Other is ineluctable, because it is the necessary standard of comparison by which the subject differentiates herself (both qualitatively and quantitatively) and thus gains therewith a sense of her own subjecthood: she is this, not that; therefore she must be what she takes herself to be. This is the irreducible a priori operation upon which Hegelian hermeneutics triumphs or fails, depending on how much veracity one finds in it.

The subject is moreover able to posit an Other, if no immediate material Other is sensibly present to her, through the power of imagination. That is, the subject is a phenomenal entity because she is Dasein ("There-being--"there" meaning being-in-the-world). The subject qua phenomenal entity, however, also has intimations of a realm beyond, or that precedes, the realm of phenomenon. And what is the repository of these intimations? It is none other than the subject's transcendental imagination. Consequently, the subject's imagination performs the necessary task of generating an Other, so that the subject may reëmerge into herself as a subject. For can a subject truly be a subject if she has no awareness of herself as such?

The salient feature of this process of subjectivation is the subject's imagination, the ability to erect simulacra--an indispensable feature which must be taken into account before assessing existentially what it means to be a subject. I believe Althusser was saying much the same thing when he claimed that ideology interpellates the subject as a subject. Originally born of the imagination, ideology acheives some distance from its origin because it must function as a superstructural or superegoïc Other.

The subject therefore bifurcates precognitive or precognized reality with her imagination into self and Other (or, noumenal and phenomenal) with the intention of reëmerging as a self-cognizant subject. How much does it matter, then, if that Other is real or simulated, if the results are the same? Also, is it really all that scandalous that the truths propounded in any narrative ascribe only to some metanarrative purporting to contain universal truths, and not to absolute truths themselves? Can't we perform the Leibnizian mental gymnastics of claiming that, because we can imagine absolutes, they must exist in some form or another?

To me, the Cartesian revolution in epistemology was a mere coup d'etat, an attempt to supplant Thomist-Catholic convictions with something nominally different but otherwise equally indeterminable.