Thinking the Event. François Raffoul
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analogies of experience concern only a fringe of phenomenality—phenomena of the type of objects constituted by the sciences, poor in intuition, foreseeable, exhaustively knowable, reproducible—while other levels (and first of all historical phenomena) would make an exception” (BG, 207). The events of the analogies of experience are not properly events but intraworldly facts that are subject to causality. “Eventful” events, as will be covered in the following, are not subject to causal determinations; rather, in their original happening, they indeed do not follow but constitute new causal networks and thereby reconfigure if not create a new world. Kant, however, thinks in the perspective of the demands of the principle of reason. This is why he reduces events to the law of causality and then attempts to establish a perfect symmetry, or reversibility, between event and causality: “If, therefore, we experience that something happens, then we always presuppose that something else precedes it, which it follows in accordance with a rule” (CPR, A 195/B 240, 308). Conversely, as soon as I perceive in a sequence “a relation to the preceding state, from which the representation follows in accordance with a rule, I represent something as an occurrence, or as something that happens” (CPR, A 198/B 243, 309–310).
Kant explains in the second analogy that it is a formal condition of our sensibility that all phenomena must happen successively (“The apprehension of the manifold of appearance is always successive,” CPR, A 189/B 234, 305) and that “every apprehension of an occurrence is therefore a perception that follows another one” (CPR, A 192/B 237, 306). The possibility of experience also requires that this succession be ordered causally, that it happens “according to a rule”: “Now if it is a necessary law of our sensibility, thus a formal condition of all perceptions, that the preceding time necessarily determines the following time (in that I cannot arrive at the following time except by passing through the preceding one), then it is also an indispensable law of the empirical representation of the temporal series that the appearances of the past time determine every existence in the following time, and that these, as occurrences, do not take place except insofar as the former determines their existence in time, i.e., establish it in accordance with a rule” (CPR, A 199/B 244, 310, emphasis in the original). Such a rule is, of course, the causal rule, itself expressive of the principle of sufficient reason: “This rule for determining something with respect to its temporal sequence, however, is that in what precedes, the condition is to be encountered under which the occurrence always (i.e., necessarily) follows. Thus the principle of sufficient reason is the ground of possible experience” (CPR, A 201/B 246, 311). The law of causality, or law of nature, which states that all events and occurrences are determined, itself falls under the authority of the principle of sufficient reason, which states that everything must have a reason that accounts for it thoroughly and completely—that is, “sufficiently.” This is why the law of causality, or law of nature, “consists just in this, that nothing happens without a cause sufficiently determined a priori” (CPR, A 446/B 474, 484).
There lies the aporia of natural causality as presented in the third antinomy: if one assumes there is only the causality of nature, then the consequence is that “everything that happens presupposes a previous state, upon which it follows without exception according to a rule” (CPR, A 444/B 472, 484). Now the same necessity applies to that previous state as well, which has also arisen from a previous state that caused it (“But now the previous state itself must be something that has happened”). In other words, the prior cause for the event must also be caused by a prior or antecedent cause. There is no way to interrupt or escape the ineluctability of this infinite regress, which makes it impossible to reach the beginning of the series, the “first” beginning and cause that would secure the exhaustive accounting of nature according to the requirement of the principle of sufficient reason. Kant continues by stating, “If, therefore, everything happens according to mere laws of nature, then at every time there is only a subordinate but never a first beginning” (CPR, A 444/B 472, 484). For the impossibility of finding a first cause would signify that no completeness of causes can be reached, which would contradict the principle of sufficient reason, which precisely demands such a completeness. “But now the law of nature consists just in this, that nothing happens without a cause sufficiently determined a priori” (CPR, A 446/B 474, 484), and therefore a first absolute beginning provided by a first cause. The notion of a “cause sufficiently determined a priori” is the equivalent of the Leibnizian principle of sufficient reason. This principle of sufficient reason states that no event can take place without a cause, a reason, or a ground. Such is “the principle of sufficient reason, namely, that nothing happens without a reason why it should be so rather than otherwise.”7 The principle of sufficient reason, which is the foundation for “contingent truths,” Leibniz explains further, “is the principle for the need for a sufficient reason for anything to exist, for any event to happen, for any truth to take place.”8 Every event occurs following a causal rule, and “everything that happens (begins to be) presupposes something which it follows in accordance with a rule” (CPR, A 189/B 232, 304).
This structuring effectively accomplishes what Leibniz had posited, namely that events must conform to the principle of sufficient reason and that no event can occur without a reason or a ground: in fact, every event must be as it were prepared beforehand to be the event that it is, conditioned by a determinant reason: “For the nature of things requires that every event should have beforehand its proper conditions, requirements and dispositions, the existence of which makes the sufficient reason of such an event.”9 This principle of sufficient reason merges with a principle of causality, which states that every event is caused to be the event that it is, giving the event its grounding. As Heidegger puts it, the principle of reason, which affirms that every being has a reason, also posits the cause. Indeed, Leibniz had conflated the principle of reason with a principle of causality: “Nothing is without reason, or no effect is without a cause.”10 The statement that “no effect is without a cause” can be called the principle of causality. Thus, “Leibniz obviously posits the principle of reason and the Principle of causality as being equivalent.” Although not every reason is a cause, nonetheless, “the Principle of causality belongs within the orbit of the principle of reason” (GA 10, 33/PR, 21). We see here how the principle of reason is caught in a quest for foundation, which ultimately, as Heidegger would show in The Principle of Reason, proves self-destructive or self-deconstructive. The principle, which states that “nothing happens without a cause sufficiently determined a priori,” proves impossible to fulfill, and it self-destructs. For, on the one hand, the principle of natural causality contradicts itself since no first cause is attained: the more it seeks to fulfill itself, the more it engages in the infinite regress that will prove its deconstruction; on the other hand, if one posits the first foundation that is causa sui, then one also reveals an abyss beneath it. The ground, in order to be the first ground, cannot itself have a ground and is therefore groundless. The principle of sufficient reason self-deconstructs, which I will return to in chapter 2.
The Event Outside of Thought
In addition to this enframing of events within causality, a further reduction of events to thought occurs by referring them to a constituting subjectivity. Arendt claims that Husserl attempted to reestablish the ancient identity between being and thought through his notion of an intentional consciousness: insofar as the intentionality of consciousness ensures that the transcendental ego always has its object before it, the happening phenomenon has been reduced to what can be apprehended of it. Intentionality ensures the reduction of the event to consciousness, thereby maintaining the identity of being and thought. Arendt writes: “As a conscious being I can conceive of all beings, and as consciousness I am, in my human mode, the Being of the world. (The seen tree, the tree as object of my consciousness, does not have to be the ‘real’ tree; it is in any case the real object of my consciousness.)” (WEP, 164–165). In addition to the rational enframing of the event, there is thus also a reduction of the event to a transcendental consciousness or subject, which keeps mastery of events through its constitutive power. Insofar as the transcendental subject objectifies phenomena under its gaze, events will be reduced to objects for my subjectivity. Thus, for Sartre, everything that happens, happens to me, and what happens to me happens through me. Sartre reduces the alterity and surprise of the