Introduction
from the intelligible to the genetic
pp. 1-16
in: , The theatre of production, Berlin, Springer, 2006Abstract
The starting point of this investigation into the contemporary stakes of a philosophy of individuation could be expressed in the seemingly banal, even innocuous, question that Heidegger regarded as the refrain of "Western" metaphysics: "What are beings?" For those not prone to the pious wonder (or simulation thereof) that has adorned the return of ontology to the forefront of philosophical interrogation, such a question, when not answered in a Quinean spirit with a hearty and democratic "Everything", seems to announce nothing less than the paralysis of thought, faced with a speculative demand as crushingly vague as it is all-encompassing. Invoking the sanctity of tradition or the responsibilities of thought in the face of an inscrutable donation, a gift of being, bodes no better. And yet, behind what initially appears as a woefully under-determined question, lies the vital matter of philosophical confrontations, of shifts and redefinitions whose intensity and impurity bear witness to the polemical character, at once contingent and determinate, of philosophical practice. It is with one such polemical shift that this book is concerned.