The diminishing space of philosophy

Philosophy is essentially abstraction. What is abstraction? Abstraction is a movement away... it is gaining distance; it is buying time and the right to breathe. (Isn't all of Hegel's phenomenology a strategy for buying time?). Moving away and gaining distance from what? From life, from existence, from the 'phenomenon', from reality. One moves away from life to breathe! But why? For many reasons; one of them is to look at life as it presents itself; for one cannot apprehend and hold the phenomenon of life in constant purview if one is deeply and passionately embroiled in the phenomenon, for one is then part of this very phenomenon. One is then too close to it to see it and appraise it. So one seeks distance, a relief. One becomes a subject who wants to apprehend its object. Hence Plato, the philosopher, criticizes the inspired artist who is too close to his art, who ends up being a mouthpiece for a force he does not comprehend. And for Plato, this force must be comprehend. Whence comes this demand?

But this flight of abstraction is not innocent. For in this flight, which makes all 'phenomenology' possible, the very object of apprehension is distorted. Phenomenology's possibility is also its impossibility. Such is its violence. Meaning: gaining this distance compromises the very purpose for which this distance is sought in the first place. How could this not be? The eye cannot see itself even if it squints! Abstraction is a kind of squinting. Just like for geometrical abstraction an apple is nothing but a sphere of so-and-so dimensions, for philosophy existence becomes a composition of some bare essentials or vital properties. Just like the physicist listens only to the wavelengths of a musical piece, a philosopher describes a body as the amalgam of bones, tissues, blood, fibres and neurons. All the oppositions of philosophy (mind/body, subject/object, et. al) arise from out of this abstraction. The final objective of this abstraction is an extreme polarity through which philosophy acheives its completion and death (Hegel).

But what after Hegel? After Hegel begins philosophy's inward journey, its moving towards under the banner of a self-criticism. Philosophy now wants get close to life, away from abstraction (what else was Kierkegaard saying?) and with each difficult step it takes towards existence, it is propelled two steps back, since to undertake criticism of philosophy one has to still philosophize. Hegel laughs in his grave. Kierkegaard longs for death and becomes ironic. He laughs back at Hegel, and so at himself. But with Nietzsche, Derrida, and Deleuze philosophy attempts the impossible: to breathe life into philosophy. To make philosophy itself concrete, artistic, creative, poetic. To take something away from life and give it to philosophy, but at the same time, to give back to life its core, its concreteness, in the form of a new philosophy: claiming that life itself gives birth to philosophy, life itself needs an abstraction, which nevertheless has to be concretized to fulfill life itself. This 'eternal return' of philosophy to life is not an abortion, but a lofty sacrifice. Still a kind of buying time and space, but nevertheless, just as surely returning this space back to where it belongs, but in a more aesthetically enriching way (what else is 'deconstruction'?). An eye which does not still see itself, but sees its own infinite persectives in the reflection it casts on its object. Such is the impossible space of this new philosophy which is diminished in its very inceptio. An impossibility, which, perhaps Hegel already anticipated.

Nietzsche's bad taste

There is an art of gliding on the surface: the art of living. This art requires a faith in life, an innocent faith in its forward movement, in its seductions and its 'metaphysical' delusions.
The impetus of Nietzsche's philosophy (the antennae of his 'cleanliness') lies in its ability to smoke this faith and these seductions out of their subterranean hideouts - bring them onto the surface, as if to show that a backward, almost atavistic movement belonged essentially to the forward thrust of life. As he says in his Ecce Homo, he gets hold of every secret: 'the abundant hidden dirt at the bottom of many a character'.
But perhaps the secret behind his secret is a mechanism which reveals his will to survival. Only by retracting life is he able to live, able to create. Only at this abysmal point of his philosophy his will to survive is revealed to be virtually indistinguishable from his will to create. At this point, where survival and creation coincide, and where need and abundance come together, we see the limits out of which Nietzsche's philosophy emerges: Nietzsche's very sterility. As a result, Nietzsche is obliged to appraise and pronounce judgments upon things about which a more naive and trustful faith chooses to remain silent. This shows Nietzsche's bad taste. (And is not Nietzsche's critique of all philosophy before him essentially directed against this philosophy's naivety and self-satisfaction, its 'good taste'?)