Desire, Beyng, event

principles of a minimal Heideggerianism

Authors

Keywords:

Heidegger, Nietzsche, psychoanalysis, desire, capitalism

Abstract

Heidegger’s philosophy no longer provokes us today as it once did. In this essay, I outline three principles of a minimal Heideggerianism – psychoanalytically inflected and stripped of all dubious mysteriological imagery – that brings Heidegger’s thought up to date and allows it to speak to the exigencies of the present. These principles are as follows. First, the historical ‘destiny’ of humanity has unfolded along a single trajectory culminating in modern techno-capitalism qua total world-picture that corresponds most perfectly and completely to the internally self-defeating structure of desire. Second, what Heidegger calls Beyng is the master name for the general loss or lack that drives this destiny inexorably onward; Beyng thus has no positive content other than its irrecoverable absence. Third, the event cannot be understood as the promise of an ultimately fulfilling reunification with Beyng à venir, but only as a traversing of the fundamental fantasy of such unification.

Author Biography

Andrew Jorn, Tsukuba Gakuin University

Andrew Tyler Jorn earned his PhD in philosophy from Warwick University in 2013. He has taught at the University of North Dakota, Warwick University, and George Washington University. He is currently an assistant professor in the International Liberal Arts department at Tsukuba Gakuin University in Japan, where he teaches courses in the humanities and social sciences.

References

Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Vol. 1: Consumption. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Zone Books, 1988.

Beistegui, Miguel de. Thinking with Heidegger: Displacements. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.

Heidegger, Martin. The Event. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Heidegger, Martin. Introduction to Philosophy: Thinking and Poetizing. Translated by Phillip Jacques Braunstein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.

Johnston, Adrian. Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005.

McGowan, Todd. Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

Tomši?, Samo. The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan. London: Verso, 2015.

Žižek, Slavoj. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso, 2013.

Published

2022-01-15

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2022): Being and event

Section

Academic Articles

Copyright (c) 2022 Andrew Jorn

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