Solve

et

than

an

Coagula:
Exercise

Something
in

Other

Dialectic

DENNIS J. SCHMIDT
Villanova University

Some two-thirds of the way through his treatment

of Meister Eckhart,
Reiner Schurmann
comments
that "Perhaps because he comes at a
moment when one thetic era is closing in upon itself, he seems to
know better than others in his tradition that all reasoning about prina point of departure
outside of principles.
For
ciples presupposes
was opinion and this reasoning was
Aristotle, this point of departure
dialectic. In Eckhart, the point of departure
is the double bind of a
and
an
determining
principles
indetermining
origin,"' and though he
does say so at this point, the Eckhartian
that Schurmann
reasoning
does not name as such might well be described by the alchemical recipe
"solve et coagula."
In what follows my interest will be to call attention to just how Reiner
Schurmann understands both this point of departure outside of a thinking
that is wedded to the logic of principles and this practice of a thinkof metals. Of this point of
ing that is likened to the transmutation
in
let
me
insofar as it presents itself
advance
that
departure
simply say
of
the
of
independently
economy
principles and concepts, that is, insofar as it operates independently
of the syntax and mother tongue of
this point of departure
that Meister Eckhart exposes for
metaphysics,
to
be understood
as a thinking
must,
Schurmann,
thinking,
according
liberated from the presuppositions,
the phantasms,
that define Western metaphysics,
and prop up its hegemonic
impulses. And of the
259

260
this
reasoning that is defined by its fidelity to this point of departure,
elsewhere describes as "something other than
thinking that Schurmann
an exercise in dialectic," (HB, 425) let me say in advance that it is, in
as a noetic act, but rather as a practice,
the end, not to be understood
as a way of life (in the end, it is, I believe, a moral practice). Schurmann
puts the point early on when he says that "one sole kind of knowing
counts, and it is practical: not knowing how to posit, but knowing how
to let be" (HB, 351). In other words, what is to be exposed here needs
to be understood
as essentially resistant to the very sort of operations
the work of philosophy
as it is traditionally
that characterize
understood. It is a matter, as Derrida puts it, of knowing "how not to speak."
Or Schurmann : "To enter into [this] knowing, readings are not enough.
A certain pathein is needed above all. Readings may [only] indicate its
conditions"
(HB, 355-56).
must be said of the need for a
Perhaps then, in advance, something
to be followed in these matters-perhaps
certain "performance"
(and
this is precisely what Schurmann
does not do) what is most needed
here is the effort to take seriously the question of the analogical style
of Eckhart's
texts; it would be akin to the effort to take to heart
Nietzsche's own self-critique issued in the form of the lament, "it should
have sung." Here then, on these matters, the challenge to philosophizing is radical, and as I hope to be able to at least indicate, this chalwith respect
to the legislative
claims of
lenge is most disruptive
the very same claims that Schurmann
will take up in
philosophizing,
the section following this treatment
of Meister Eckhart.
Because I find this set of claims about the stakes of this Eckhartian
to be decisive for the project of Broken Hegemonies,
point of departure
my intention is to gesture, albeit somewhat tentatively, in the direction
of this (literally) anarchic point of departure
and to the operations
that issue out of it. It is, Schurmann
argues, precisely in his exposure
of this paradoxical
for the experience
of thinking
point of departure
that Eckhart wins his place in the narrative told in this book. Here,
to Schurmann,
we find both the seeds of the auto-erasure
according
find
of an epochal stage, and-perhaps
even more importantly-we
the experience
of a peculiar impossibility, the very same impossibility
that draws experience
into an extreme movement, beyond the self and
its multiple determinations,
the
to the point of radical indeterminacy,
of that which is greater
point of pure receptivity for an experience
than that which the human defines.
The claim, of course, is dramatic and the stakes are high. But in
referring to such sweeping conclusions I move far beyond what is proper
to claim at this point. Let me begin my more detailed remarks far

261
more simply, more obliquely too, and simply try to lay out what I take
to be some of the decisive themes in this sections of Schurmann's
text.
I will not even pretend
to offer so much as an outline of these rich
and demanding
pages (I must admit that reading the book often left
me feeling that I had been trying to root about in an English garden,
and that this section at times felt like it was an area full of sweet peas).
is to speak about three interrelated
thematics
Rather, my intention
form
the
axis
which
so
much
in
else
this
section
that, together,
along
revolves. So I will take up the questions of theticism, of language, and of
nature. Though it might prove to be a distorting artifice, I will divide
my remarks into three distinct sections each addressing a single thematic.
Theticism
At the outset of this section of Broken Hegemonies Schurmann
identifies
Eckhart's philosophical achievement in terms of his critique of theticism:
"the conflict in theticism exposed by Eckhart derails the principial
that the hueconomy" (HB, 354). In his attack upon the presumption
man being is best understood
as an acting subject, a being most itself
in the affirmation of its determinacies,
Eckhart begins the work of re"an
ultimate
and
an ultimate singularity"
(HB,
habilitating
temporality
351). By doing this, by breaking through the empire of thetic activity,
and shattering the logic of representation
that rests upon such activity,
Eckhart opens thinking to the "extra-systemic
the 'nothingcondition,
that
lets
nature
be" (HB,
ness', 'desert',
'ground',
'godhead',
'origin'
This
of
the
the
indeterminate
352).
exposure
nothingness,
origin that
"lets nature be" is, according
to Schurmann,
the first moment in the
of "the natura which for a millennium
had been called
disintegration
to
all
laws
of
and
upon
legitimate
knowing
acting" (HB, 349).
In short, the Latin conception
of nature, which served as the authorizing ground of law under one hegemony, destitutes itself as a sort of
by-product of the shift in attitude that Eckhart urges upon his readers.
this shift is validated in Eckhart's critique of theticism;
Theoretically
in practice it is a matter of detachment
and of Gelassenheit. And, in the
this
becomes
the
for understanding
what is
end,
practice
precondition
to be exposed here. Not by accident does Schurmann
conclude
this
section with a citation from Eckhart that reads: "One who would understand all such matters must be very detached"
(HB, 426). One only
the double bind of the thetic act, and the mechanisms
comprehends
of such acts that conceal this double bind, from the attitude of detachment. From out of this attitude of detachment we understand
thatFichte notwithstanding-all
posits can only be thought as secondary.

262
With this understanding,
thinking opens itself to its deepest ambitions.
But not until this "noblest form of the soul"2 is achieved, not until
the "thetic scaffolding is liquified" (HB, 357), can "the double bind of
be
and of the principle
as determining"
the origin as indeterminate
be
Then-and
and
Eckhart's
grasped.
accomplishment
comprehended
double bind of
here one recognizes Schelling's debt to Eckhart-"the
to
and
foundation
thus
becomes
deny and hegemonic
impossible
ground
nature suffers its destitution"
384).
(HB,
in the move from the
of nature gets destituted
So, the phantasm
realm of the thetic order to the conditions of theticism as
determinate
this movesuch. In the end (and this cannot be emphasized
enough),
there are signals, epiphenment is a matter of a practice; nonetheless,
omenal indices, which permit us to trace the trajectory of this movement,
which trespasses the thetic order and returns to its very conditions.
Schurmann
describes it as follows: "this move retrocedes from borrowto
giving, from actuality to action, from natura to nasci, from the
ing
nouns and names) to the infinitive
nominative
(i.e., from subsumable
to
a
without
(HB, 388). It is the move
(i.e.,
subsumption)"
process
of natureacross an abyss: from the ordered and graded experience
the place of the
to be issued-to
a place from which law is understood
into a
of order-a
place before the law. It is a movement
inscription
which
a
order
of
(HB,
390)
new, singular,
'1arts monstrously"
experience
But
as
Schurmann
to
with experience
principles.
configured
according
allows one to cross this abyss" (HB,
reminds us "only non-attachment
389) into [the experience of] the necessity of a space before all allocations
... a non-saturated
whiteness, a space prior to proper places" (HB, 390).
that is
out of experience
This shift to another order of experience,
driven by the same impulse that founds metaphysics, is difficult to put
of the
into words. Indeed, a shift in language, a shift in the operations
But before
is demanded
and must be addressed.
word in experience,
taking up the question of language let me try to summarize some of
out of the thetic order of experithe key features of this movement
ence. It is a movement that follows what we might call counterpractices
to the thetic practices of a metaphysical
subject. Everything seems to
tumble out of the condition
of "non-attachment."
Only it lets us understand
how "natura as order is traced back to its nasci, its being
born or its arising which Eckhart prefers to put in the imperative: give
outside of
birth!" (HB, 390). This move to the point of generation,
the regularized order of the law and of principles, this move to a place
before all allocations, a place which gives place, seems, in another vocabulary, to mirror the move to the xdlpa. Like xwpa, the indeterminate origin to which Eckhart refers is not of the order of the d60g;

263
and
it is that "into which time has [never] penetrated
furthermore,
Like
into which no image has ever cast its reflection"
(2: 93-109).
xw pa, the indeterminate
origin disturbs the order of time and "it disturbs
origin, by virtue of its
being."s Finally, like xwpa, the indeterminate
resists being dialecticized
and thus recuperated
radical indeterminacy,
for the calculus of the thetic mind. That means that it is not defined
order whatsoever:
"the indetermiin opposition
to the determinate
nate here is not the ancient .1tlPOV, nor the modern das Unbestimmte.
it neither stands opposed to
In the taxonomy of proper allocations,
the determinate
nor mediates it" (HB, 369). In this manner "Eckhart
and thetic] sysrevokes the tragic denial upon which all [dialectical
tems feed" (HB, 352).
This native resistance of the indeterminate
origin to the principal
Schurmann
identifies as the double bind exposed by
economy-which
what most fascinates Schurmann in his treatment of Eckhart.
Eckhart-is
Here, in this moment, a site outside of the legislative order is exposed.
in his introduction
to Broken HegemoHere we find what Schurmann,
that "necessarily implies an
nies, refers to as that "extraterritoriality"
intrusion
into the ground of [the] normative
[and the
isomorphism
violence
of
the
In
other
what apwords,
law]"
(HB,
64).
integrative
That
is
Schurmann
at
this
is
a
event.
why
point
singularizing
pears
even as
argues that "The task now is to grasp how we are singularized
the legislative impulse universalizes natural ends and, by subsuming us
under them, particularizes
us. The to-be as singularizing
event summarizes the program that Eckhart claims he follows in everything he says"
(HB, 402).
Of course, speaking of the radically singular poses a problem: how
not to speak and thereby convert the singular into the particular which
owes its nature to a universality that posits it? Is any effort to speak of
the indeterminate
origin a betrayal of the very disclosure that marks it?
Language
as at
Such questions bring me to the second theme that I announced
the heart of Schurmann's
treatment
of Meister Eckhart, namely, language. In his remarks on language one finds what I take to be among
the most innovative comments
to be found in this section of Broken
Here
the
is
Hegemonies.
question
posed about the possibility not only
born of non-attachment,
but also of its
of a fidelity to the experience
and
communication.
repetition
possible
One of Schurmann's
further comstrategies for marking-without
ultimate
ment-the
of
the
relation
of
singularity to language
problematic

264
is to cite-with
(HB, 399)
great frequency and with only one exception
out of context-the
passage from Eckhart that reads as follows: "Brother
Eckhart, when did you leave the house?" What is brought forward by
this strategy is quite simply the enigma of the proper name that,
Schurmann
argues, "is the general correlate of theticism" (HB, 387),
and so in the question of the status of the name we find the task
posed for a language that seeks for itself a fidelity to the indeterminate origin.
Again what is outlined is a movement. This time it is a movement in
traces. More precisely, his concern is to inlanguage that Schurmann
a
dicate the move from a language that is full of static determinations,
language governed by the noun, to a language that repeats the radical
of the indeterminate
temporality
origin-a
language in other words
that is governed by the verb. The claim is clear. What is more difficult,
is to understand
how this movement happens.
Schurmann
begins by noting that "for Eckhart all nouns are proper
names. They denote eigenschaft, property, be it generic, specific or individual" (HB, 387). The name thus stands as the final residue, the
"To name is to stratify
irreducible
form of principial
determination.
of sites" (HB, 388), and that is
through the demarcation
subjections
first to
why we find in Eckhart "the obsession to erase the name....
put to work, then out of work, the violence of the name" (HB, 388).
What is outlined then is a strategy for thinking the singularity of the
indeterminate
origin otherwise than in the name. In the end, accordwe are confronted
with a word that cannot be spoing to Schurmann
ken, but must be "uttered within" (HB, 402). Such a word is language
that is proper to the indeterminate
origin that Eckhart describes "as
occurs" (HB, 393).
that from which emergence
Here then we find an assertion fundamental
to Schurmann's
claims:
is familiar to us above all in speech. Hence a new descrip"emergence
but also as locution:
tion of originary tVp'Yeu:x: not only as operation,
'The to-be is the Word"'
(HB, 393). In other words, the originary
that belongs to the indeterminate
emergence
origin disclosed in the
move out of thetic activity, in the turn to non-attachment-the
originary
that configures nature-needs
to be thought as utterance.
emergence
In the end, as verb. That, according
to Schurmann,
is why Eckhart
gives an ontologizing
reading of the book of John in which he takes
the "1tpo'tov
("and the word was turned toward God") literally.
But in turning toward God the word is turned back upon itself and
refers back to its own origin, which means that nouns refer back to
the verbum" (HB, 393).
However, coming to the word, being on the way to language, if it is

265
to be true to the experience
of the indeterminate
origin that precedes
the enunciation
of names, is, according
to Schurmann,
"thinkable only
as the middle voice of a verb" (HB, 394). In the middle voice the thetic
in the active and passive voices is
action of language as it is articulated
of the grammar of subeluded. In it language operates independently
are dissolved and the immediacy of
jects and objects. Determinations
an indeterminate
identity is spoken. So one might argue that an ability to hear in the middle voice is required if we are to properly understand Eckhart's celebrated
claim that "to know God and to be known
by God, to see God and to be seen by God, are one according to the
reality of things....
just as the air which is illumined is nothing other
than illumination"4 What is said, what is enunciated
in the middle voice
is not the determinate
is the case in the namesubject or object-as
but enunciation,
saying, itself. It is, in the end, the language that God
two....
At its origin,
speaks: "God says one [word], but I understand
where God pronounces
the created, this speech is God himself; here
below, however, it appears as things created" (MP, 182).
Such remarks, which remind us of the double event that is expressed
in the middle voice of the verb, begin to call attention to the curious
temporality belonging to the middle voice, since in it a simultaneity, a
double event, which is not governed by the logic of reflection is enunciated. The linear order of time is violated. (Heidegger
tries to speak
of something like this simultaneity
of the middle voice when he writes
in Being and Time that "die Zeit zeitigt sich." Likewise, one could argue
that Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit needs to be read through the middle
voice in which we trace the self-enactment
of Geist in the form of conWhile Schurmann
does not take up the temporal possitradictions.)
bilities of the middle voice in Broken Hegemonies, he does this in his
earlier translation
and commentary
when he discusses Eckhart's
remark that "the day which will come a thousand years from now, or in
as many years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than
this very moment in which I stand presently." Time, Schurmann
points
out, "divides the human being into two zones" (MP, 60), and it is only
in learning to speak of experience
from out of the middle voice that
we speak out of our whole being.
But here, in Broken Hegemonies, the temporality of the indeterminate
is that for
origin is not taken up at length. Rather what is emphasized
Eckhart it is the self-performance
of language, the middle voice of the
and does not
verb, that speaks the true language of indeterminacy,
convert it to the merely undetermined
as happens in the active and'
passive voices. The middle voice is the language of fidelity to our own
ground and singularity.

266
of a situaWhat is said then in the middle voice is the happening
tion that is not the result of the activity of a thetic subject. And this,
the origin that it is
for Eckhart, is requisite if we are to comprehend
our deepest desire to know. To speak of this origin, of the godhead, in
the active or the passive voice is to violate it. In a like manner, in the
middle voice we come to know ourselves beyond the reaches of the
proper name and at the point of radical singularity. This, in part, is
means when he says that "the last word on our conwhat Schurmann
dition...
enunciates
itself in the middle voice" (HB, 418). Learning
non-attachment
can thus be described as learning to speak of oneself
in the middle voice. Thus, "non-attachment
leads to an event...
that
in
of
the
verb
which
can
be
described
birth
within),
(the
only
happens
indetermines
us even as it singularizes
the middle voice, and which ...
us" (HB, 403). The middle voice indicates a way of thinking otherwise
than according to the logic of eidetic order and the theticism proper
to it: "the slippages of theticism injure the sovereignty of the noun by
a verb in the middle voice" (HB, 403). So in the turn to the middle
and the detachto theticism is reenforced,
voice, the counter-strategy
ment from the regime of principal orders and the world configured
to such orders is continued.
according
Speaking in the middle voice
we are, Schurmann
from nature" (HB, 403) even
suggests, "subtracted
as we emerge into it. In this way, "Eckhart places us both under the
law and outside of it" (HB, 402) insofar as nature is a "legislative phantasm
in Eckhart" (HB, 401).
What now becomes clear will soon bring me to my third and final
theme, namely, nature. In learning to speak the middle voice of the
verb we come to experience
not only ourselves, but all things differently : nouns return to their verbal origins and become the self-enactment
we detach ourselves
of different situations. "Natura returns to nasci...
itself" (HB, 422). In this
from the enunciated
to hear the enunciation
way the order of natural ends, the telic principles which provided the
thesis for the hegemonic
of the middle ages, is disturbed.
phantasms
of the law is
The thesis that served as the "anchor" of the deduction
dissolved by the liberation of "a denied knowledge," namely, that "the
with the name; the origin no longer
infinitive esse is not in accordance
of nature
accords with the principle"
(HB, 422). A new conception
begins to emerge in learning how to speak, and with this new sense of
nature the grounds of legislation
defining one era begin to erode.
But, before taking up the question of nature, a few more remarks about
language need to be made.
here is that in speaking in the
What most needs to be emphasized
middle voice we begin to appreciate
that Eckhart's thought needs to

267
as a practice and a performance,
be understood
not as a position. In
the end, because it escapes the empire of conceptual
reason, what is
to be known must be suffered if it is to be comprehended.
Starting
from this understanding
we can, perhaps, learn to hear his sermons,
and the analogical operations
that define them, in a different register,
one in which "the middle voice quiets the others: the imperative,
the
transitive and the reflected voices" (HB, 419). Once this is done one
quickly learns that the workings of the language enact what is to be
said; that how something is expressed belongs to what is to be expressed.
Eckhart puts the point bluntly in a passage cited by Schurmann
in his
translation
and
on
Eckhart:
"The
relation
of
the
early
commentary
to
is
(MP, 172).
just
justice
analogical"
In the end, though, neither the possibilities
of the middle voice,
nor those opened up by analogy, enable us to speak with a final fidelthat stands most in need of enunciation:
"When
ity of the experience
we speak of divine things, we have to stammer, because we have to
express them in words" (MP, 50). The word, like the image that defines another effort to communicate
ourselves, is ultimately marked by
the poverty of what it communicates.
As such, it can only-despite
effort-remain
The
word
becomes the bearer of a
every
unspoken.
secret that cannot be told.
Much more might be said about both the word and the image, about
not only the unspeakability,
but also the unimaginability,
of the world.
More needs to be said about how it is that experience
must deprive
itself of both word and image in order to appear as what it is. Here
the possibilities of representation,
and the relation of representation
to the indeterminate
that
must
be exposed for the double bind
origin
Fito be liberated,
here such matters reach their extreme moment.
what
also
needs
is
of
the
relation
of
to
be
taken
the
nally,
up
question
word and image (and here, were I to do that, I would propose discussto the catalogue of the works of his friend,
contribution
ing Schurmann's
Louis Comtois, where Schurmann
speaks of the "the idiom of light,
which is better than language."5 Such a discussion would be especially
because Eckhart frequently
refered to light as the sort of
interesting,
of
I
will
defer such matters in favor
all
But
impossible image
images).
of turning to the final theme in Schurmann's
treatment
of Eckhart
that I would like to comment upon.
Nature
Whatever else it has been about, it should be made clear that
stakes of Schurmann's
treatment of Eckhart have always concerned

the
the

268
of nature. It is in inaugurating
the destitution
of the epexperience
of nature that he inherits that we find Eckhart's
ochal determination
most significant achievement in the narrative of Broken Hegemonies. What
makes this achievement
so significant for the question of law and the
critique of legislative phantasms is quite simple: the epoch which Eckhart
authorized
its conception
of law with reference
brings to a completion
to some sense of nature. The conflict between the double bind that
he exposes and the framework of natural law that he inherits is the
site of a tension in Eckhart's
"to posit nature the way he
thought:
posits it, Eckhart has, from the outset, to have stepped out of the very
same telic concatenation
that he argues for as a theoretician
of natural
law" (HB, 397). What must be seen then is how, in Eckhart, "the description of the legislative system, nature," is pushed "to the point where
its very coherence
that system"
depends upon an origin transgressing
and to what
(HB, 398). The knowing that belongs to non-attachment
is enunciated in the middle voice of the verb exposes a "natural differend"
that undermines
the work of a nature laying down the law.
The chief task now is to understand
how it is the same gesture that
both founds and destitutes nature in Eckhart: "it is a matter of seeing
how an ontology relies on nature through and through, and for that
[it is a matter of
very reason, disrupts nature through and through....
that instituted referential
nature tilts by its
seeing] how the argument
own logic into an argument
which, at the same time and with the
same vehemence,
destitutes that referent"
(HB, 351). I will not trace
the details of how Schurmann
defends the claim that nature is indeed
a phantasm, a totality of representations,
for Eckhart. Schurmann himself
concedes that "Eckhart conceives of the continuous
telic order in many
to outline some of
ways" (HB, 356), and Schurmann
only proposes
the salient features of some of those conceptions.
But among these
features
that he does acknowledge,
one in particular
stands out,
namely, the view of "nature as the subject of the 'great work' of alchemy"
(HB, 356).
what makes the alchemic recipe of nature
According to Schurmann,
so worth noting is that it "demonstrates,
at the very heart of the Latin
era, how far away one is from the phantasm of nature as it is derived
from the political realm; that is, how far the late Latins are from Rome.
Nature has refigured itself. It still displays a continuous
fabric, organized by ends that are posited as given. But now this great concatenation deploys nature from a point of departure
far removed from the
the
(HB, 356). Furthermore,
public and the republican"
emphasizing
alchemical work "demonstrates
how far natura, which is the principle
of that work, remains removed from any notion of nature familiar to

269
us today....
The strangeness
of medieval 'nature' indicates the extent
to which the normative referent under which we late modems are situated
remains incommensurate
with the one that preceded it until the 14thit rapidly becomes obvious that one is wasting one's
15th centuries....
time seeking to argue about 'natural law' as one matter from Parmenides
down to Pufendorf"
wants to insist
(HB, 357). In short, Schurmann
the
essential
of
the
of
nature
that serves
upon
foreignness
experience
as the unquestioned
of
for
Eckhart's
own
efforts to
point
departure
think nature from out of the attitude of non-attachment
and in the
language of the middle voice of the verb.
The sameness of the project of the work of alchemy and the requisite work on the soul that would find non-attachment
is most notewor"The
end
of
alchemic
distillations
is
to
reduce
to indistinction
thy :
primary
all that can be molten; their final end is a 'this' which is distinct....
Likewise for non-attachment.
Its primary end is to break through the
of
nature"
(HB, 366). Or again: "minerals are considered
scaffolding
soul
and
the
spiritually
materially. Which is to say that the distinction
is
erased....
To work on minerals is to work on oneself"
matter-spirit
In
(HB, 359-60).
learning the process whereby we are able to educe
the best of metals we learn as well how to find the best of the soul:
like the elements,
which "undergo
transformations
that are ...
conto
the
soul
must
learn
to
renounce
its
own
trary
physis" (HB, 358),
nature to arrive at the indeterminate
maxim
origin. The alchemical
for this process is "solve et coagula," "dissolve and coagulate."
Schurmann
does not elaborate upon the specifics of the alchemical
to
which he refers us, though he does want to insist upon
operations
in nature and in the soul (the only stage
the kinship of its operations
of the alchemic process he mentions
of
specifically is the moment
the
moment
of
the
darkest
"nigredo,"
night in the temporal cycle deHis emphasis
is most clearly placed upon the process of
scribed).
the
loss of all impurity and all particularity
is
liquification
whereby
achieved. But what might also need to be said is that the alchemical
recipe was always conceived as a cycle in which death and putrefaction
with stages of birth and ablution. The end of this cycle was
alternated
a
makes its most
always
being born, and this is where the alchemical
in Eckhart. Nature, in the end, returns to its
pronounced
appearance
reimperative:
"give birth!" In his earlier Eckhart work, Schurmann
minds us of the importance
of this when he writes that "the last sentence of this sermon ["See what love"] quite admirably summarizes
the doctrine of being ...
which Eckhart has presented:
'Exert yourself
so that the child be not only in the process of being born, but that it
be already born"'
(MP, 170). Or in this text, the point is made to a

270
vehemence
is directed to the
into
being, which, as an
being-born-enunciating-itself-being
placed
but
the
natural
law,
which,
event,
engages
by virtue of its
originary
such
destabilizes
with
natural
that
order which
order,
incongruity
any
it establishes"
(HB, 422).
now names the very life of that
Nature as the event of being-born
the cycle of stabilizing exchanges. Nature is no longer
which interrupts
the ordered
realm of a posited and stabilizing causal domain. It is
of the new, of the
rather the horizon of the continued
appearance
force that opens the open.
somewhat

different

end: "all of Eckhart's

Conclusion
Let me make some brief remarks by way of a tentative conclusion
(and
me
to
the
word
"tentative"
and
to
somehere)
try
permit
say
emphasize
of these pages.
achievements
thing about the larger philosophical
that "perhaps beBy way of an opening, I cited Reiner's comment
cause he comes at a moment when one thetic era is closing in upon
itself, Meister Eckhart seems to know better than others in his tradia point of departion that all reasoning about principles presupposes
ture outside of principles"
(HB, 398). By now it should be evident that
himself. And if his readthis remark applies quite well to Schurmann
ings of Plotinus and Meister Eckhart smack excessively of Heidegger it
whom Reiner clearly exhibits a
is because these three figures-with
to
the
moment-better:
the
kinship-belong
they accelerate
special
moment-of
the closure of a thetic era.
But now, with Heidegger,
what is in the process of closure at this
historical juncture is the innocence that would permit the reinscription
of a new thetic order. The principal economy as such (this is the deciReiner makes) has been comprehended
as lodged in
sive contribution
a double bind, as "riveted to a monstrous
site" and thus no longer
available, no longer serviceable for the legislative ambitions of thinkof Meister Eckhart to have set free the
ing. If it is the accomplishment
effort to appropriate
the experience
double bind in the metaphysical
as legitimizing
of nature and thus enlist that experience
legislative
to have
of Reiner Schurmann
phantasms, then it is the accomplishment
set free the double bind in the experience
of history.
Broken Hegemonies tells the story (and the question of narrative-a
be posed) of
topic that opens the door to the specter of Hegel-must
the repeated rapture of the hegemonic
that define epochal
phantasms
history. But the point of this telling, this story, is not to invent another
This story of broken hegemonies
is not such
grand- or meta-narrative.

271
Reiner could say, like Hegel, that, in the end, "the wounds of
spirit heal and leave no scars behind." What gets exposed here-and
the countervalent
and
of nature-namely,
not just in the experience
of
events
and
not
lend
itself
radically singular
natality
mortality-does
to the logic of mediation;
rather, what gets exposed here belongs alof denial. In this we are reminded
that
ways already to the operations
we live in a world greater than that which we either define or control,
and equally, that no world can even fully grasp or enclose within itself
the singularity I am. What we learn then, is that now the practice of
telling a history is itself the very same process by which hegemonies
are broken in advance of their inscription.
Once we understand
this,
we begin to understand
the truly subversive element at work in Broken
Hegemonies.
that

NOTES
1. Reiner Schurmann, DesHegemonies
B7isies(Mauvezin:Trans-Europ-Repress,1996), 398.
Hereafter HB, followed by page number. The translations here are based upon a
manuscript provided by Reginald Lilly.
ed. and trans. Niklaus Largier, 2 vols. (Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher
2. Meister Eckhart, Werke,
Klassiker Verlag, 1993), 1:155. Hereafter W, followed by volume and page number.
3. Jacques Derrida, On the Name (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 94.
4. MeuterEckhart:Mysticand Philosopher,
translations with commentary by Reiner Schurmann
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 131. Hereafter MP, followed by page
number.
5. Catalogue of the Works of Louis Comtois, private publication, Montreal, Canada.