Cicek Yavuz

French Translation

The now of philosophical discourse and of fictional discourse. – Their justification – Their
functional form – The irreducibility of the speaking subject. – The principle of closure of works.
– the difference between philosophical discourse and literary discourse. – The philosophical
discourse as exegesis or interpretation.

At the differences between scientific statements, those of philosophy are not separable of the
“now” of their formulation: the here, the present, the subject that speaks can not be neutralized
by the discourse which is articulated by setting out from them. The presence of a now which
borders it is indispensable for philosophy. And however, this presence is not designated there as
it is in daily (day-to-day) [quotidien] discourse. Everyday language refers to a mute now – to a
point in space, to an instant [moment] of time, to an individual in the process of speaking [to an
individual speaking], – which stays obstinately exterior to discourse: these are the things, the
bodies, the gestures which come to fill their empty forms, Philosophy, on the contrary, does not
cease to resume in itself this now which it designates; it restores the interior of its own discourse
as the luminous point of disclosure in the evidence, as the movement of truth arriving at the
instant of its manifestation, such as self-consciousness seizing itself [is seized] in the purity of “I
think”. That is why western philosophy is deployed as the doctrine of evidence, thought of
history and theory of the subject.

Therefore, in constituting at the interior of its own discourse the triad of "me", of the "here", and
of the "at present" which are charged to hold and maintain it, philosophy appears to be another
type of discourse: we could designate it the name of "literature", but it would without doubt be
more exact to call it "fiction". Fiction actually does not eliminate the reference points of the now,
but it doesn't return to a silent disposition of people and things; it is it and it alone which, through
its own recitation, and by thousand intersecting indications, quietly traces this arrangement and
modifies it. The voice which speaks within it has no other time nor other place than those which
it is willing to give to itself. And if it is true that these signs of the now often remain imprecise
and as if open to the void (we do not know exactly what this strange voice that says “I” is, nor
where it comes from, since when it has been speaking, according to what calendar), it is not that
they refer to the wordless reality of a situation, but rather, it is a space without geography, a time
without beginning or end, an “I” with no other “identity” than those of grammar are constituted,
by the discourse of fiction, as the intentionally blurred markers of its speech. This is why literary
discourse is not without analogy with the mode of being of philosophical discourse. And on two
specific points, we can bring them together.
We have already seen how philosophy always supposes a justification of itself (strongly different
from scientific justification): a sort of authorization which philosophical discourse is given to
have access to the truth which manifests in it. Curiously, this same function is found in literature:
certainly not under the form of discursive explication, but as indication, sometimes direct,
sometimes diagonal, of the relationship between what is told and the voice which actually recites
it; there is no fiction that doesn't say, in one way or another, how it is opened to a discourse
which is yet not only the sole point of manifestation, but at the same time the place of birth. It
arrives that this function of justification be very apparent, to the same point of taking, by relation
to recitation, an autonomy and almost a power to command: it forms as a second recitation which
becomes alive, in the text's order of unveiling, a recitation that is primary in appearance; it is
charged of showing how the principal history, being buried far away in time, being too distant in
space, finally, being covered by whatever mystery -- could have come to the knowledge
[conaissance] of the reciter: thus Cervantes deciphers the history of Don Quixote on the old
papers that he found at a merchant, and could not relate the episodes which had been eaten by the
rats. But this visible tale isn't necessary because the discourse of fiction justifies its own work. It
arrives, in fact, that this justification [fasse corps] with the recitation itself, blending in it and
narrating a sole [tenant] an adventure forged by discourse and what allows for discourse to
narrate it: the voice that speaks belongs, therefore, to one of the persons of the fable and reciting
it [fait corps] with the recited (we have a novel in first person voice); or very well on the
contrary, now withdrawing from the fable, the voice recounts how she invented the recitation,
obeying which motif, why she [elle] introduced such and such episode, interrupted by another,
for what reason she chose such a person (we have then recitations where the voice of the author
comes to interfere, as in Tristram Shandy or Jacques le Fataliste); the novels that recount their
own genesis superpose exactly these two conducts. It could also be that the justification of
recitation be entirely unapparent: that appears to be retold by an anonymous voice and all-
powerful who interrupts [s'interroge] the right to travel all the times and all the places, to traverse
all consciences. At the start of Sentimental Education which nulls [part au] length of the text the
indication of the relationship between the fable and the speaking voice, [we] mention with the
manner of a historian the date of the primary event ([September 15 1840]), the place (the
riverwalk Saint-Bernand), the exteriority of the reciter in relation to its person (noticed as a
young man mingled with a group of voyagers); these notations, and all those of the same type
which mark the text, function as the justifications of recitation left in blank by the reciter. This
defines its access to the fable as perception of an invisible subject, seen as carried on the things
and visions of a supplementary presence and necessary unnoticing, as attention moving through
time and space.

Page 44-45

Fiction has [a] very well be given to itself and in a playful liberty a "truth" that in philosophy is
constrained to uncover and to prove, it doesnt stay there less that we find by one another a
function of discourse which is neither encountered in day to day language nor that of science:
this function, which is anterior to all parts between understanding and imagination, between
rationality and non-rationality, concerns the mode of being of discourse: it is actually requested
by a groups of statements that cannot suppress the now of its speech, but yet has to retake it,
without residue, at its interior. And [tout comme] just as philosophy assures this function of two
manners (by showing how the truth reveals itself at the subject's attention), literature exercises
the same by virtue of two forms of reciting: the theory of unveiling [devoilement] in philosophy
and fiction of a reciting in literature are two analogous functional forms which respond [se
répondent] in philosophical discourse and literary discourse. It should perhaps go further: we
have seen how the mode of being of its discourse would imply that philosophy, at least under its
western form and since the 17th century, was always tied to a theory of the subject. We could ask
if the discursive mode of literature -- understood with the same reference point of geography and
of history -- does not imply that it be tied to a fiction of the subject: not at all that western
literature supposes a "psychology" or some theory of the individual human; but that its discourse
is not detachable from the at the very least virtual presence of the perceiving, demanding,
remembering, listening, talking, dying subject. The naive prop which philosophy has often
sought in literary recitations when, for it, it is about defining or analyzing a subject, and the
support, rarely more reflected that the literature has sought in these theoretical conceptions of the
subject of the soul, the psyche, the unconscious, are only visible manifestations of this
relationship, more difficult to catch sight of between their respective discursive modes of being.

Page 45

But there exists a second analogy between philosophical discourse and that of literature. It is
easy to know it, when comparing one another to scientific discourse. This, because it has
eliminated all references to the now, is always susceptible to repetition: that is to say, no matter
what speaking subject could retake his own account without that its value of truth being altered;
even more, it could be pursued, we could adjoin it, by deduction or experience, the novel
statements, without them ceasing to be, in substance, identical to itself. Certainly, these iterations
and these developments often aren't made without violent discontinuities: could we say that the
mathematics of Bourbaki is that of Viète, or of Alembert, or even of Lagrange? Could we say
that the moleculary chemistry is that of Berzelius? But, on one hand, these discontinuities are
always introduced from such manner that they save [sauvent], at least in part and in one manner,
the truth of the preceding statements; and on the other hand, they consist in a modification being
of a statement or an under-group of statements, being of a formal structure of discourse. In fact,
if there have been change in the speaking subject, and that it was no longer the same now which
carries discourse, it is never pertinent to define a discontinuity in a recapturing/retaking and the
pursuit of a scientific system: all the more, in certain disciplines, the observing and speaking
subject could be introduced as a variable to the interior of its own discourse without the truth
thereof being affected.
Page 45-46

The position of philosophical and literary discourse is completely different. Without doubt a
philosophy is destined to be true, no matter who the subject of a statement may be; and a work of
fiction to say what it says, of the same manner, under whatever sky, that what we read or what
we recite. However, in these texts, the speaking subject, with his here and his present, is found
indissociably at the exterior of discourse (since it is it which pronounces it) and in it (since it is
the discourse that defines and justifies it in its right to speak). The sort that we cannot repeat and
continue a literary or philosophical work as we retake and pursue scientific statements. For
another speaking subject, elsewhere and in other times (even if it is placed at the complete edge
and immediately after), a philosophical or literary text only offers two possibilities. One consists
to identify the new now of the speaking subject at the triad of "I-here-at the present" which is
indicated and justified at the same interior of the primary text: but by the same thing [par ce fait
meme], the second subject ceases to be the same subject, it takes the position of subject such that
he has already spoken in the primary discourse; it can no longer be a locutor, but purely and
simply a reader. The other possibility consists, for the novel speaking subject, in approaching its
now closer to that which supports the preceding discourse; it is thus about imitating that which
had already been made, to say almost the same thing that that has already been said, to attenuate
as much as possible, but without masking it entirely, the ineffaceable difference between the
speaking subject, between the time and the place where its speech occurs [s'accomplir]; it is
therefore about an imitation. We see what, in any case, the irreducibility of the speaking subject
and their presence at the interior of discourse precenting philosophy and literature from having
the same historical profile as the sciences. To read a scientific text is actually to comprehend it,
that is to say, to remake, afterwards and for oneself, the same discourse, without it finding itself
by no means modified; and to make an imitation could not want [to say] that one thing: it is to
pursue it according to the same morphology and the same syntaxe. On the other hand, all the
novel speaking subjects who want to continue a philosophical work or a literary text is
condemned to imitate them; and if he wants [to retake] their commencement, he can only read
them.

Page 46 - 47

[...] Without doubt there exists a third possibility: that which [consiste à] consists to instate an
absolutely novel discourse, having its own reference points and its own present, but is being
given / giving itself for the task of taking for objects an already existant philosophical or literary
text. It is then about what we could call, in waiting for a better elucidation, a commentary. We
immediately see that the primary rule of this activity of commentary ought to be of admitting the
closure of works of philosophy and also too that of the works of fiction: each of them are
irreducible to all the others and it is impossible [leur] to them all (or even to whatever ones
between them) to form as a grand series of unique statements, in the extent where the discourse
of each is maintained, of the interior, by the presence of a speaking subject, with his now and at
his present. That does not want to say, certainly, that it is not possible to define a certain network
between them, but that the continuity so established will never be able to be the same time of that
which is instated by a scientific discourse and those of literary or philosophical discourses, which
have awakened since well a long time all the metaphors of continuity: influence, tradition,
descendance, community of style [communauté de style], identity of problems, resemblances of
the points of departure. All concepts (if this word isn't yet too heavy for designating the notions
so light, confusing, and imprecise) which have allowed until the present to history of literature
and to that of philosophy of ignoring resolutely the type of discourse to which they would have
an affair. (?)

Page 47-48

The principle of the closure of works has several consequences. First, it is that if a philosophical
text could or should be analyzed in its singularity, if we should research the play of relations
which tie their diverse elemets to one another, whether we should treat one word from it as a
system, the reason for it is not that it is forcibly revealed by its architecture, its principles and its
deductible forms to an ensemble of scientific statements; it holds, on the contrary to this [fait]
that its discourse is inseparable to the presence, in the text itself, of a speaking subject. The unity
of a work and its irreducibility are guaranteed for it by this now where its discourse is lodged and
which is justified in itself; therefore, by that same thing which takes it most radically removed
from scientific language. It could well be that a philosophical discourse pretend that there is
[prétend à] non- contradiction and that there is a rigour in the sequence of its propositions. But
there does not lie the essential criterion and the first of its unity: it is at most one of the possible
manners for philosophy to manifest a unity which never comes to its formal structure, but rather
to the mode of being of its discourse. Yet, this closing of works on themselves and the obligation
of producing an internal analysis of it not at all signifies the commentary is a discourse having,
for vocation, to be placed at the interior of another discourse. It could not be, on the contrary, due
to the relation the work which it comments on, that a decidedly exterior language, of which the
now can never come to be superposed to that which it studies. It will very well be one day that
the critique, analysis and history of texts renounce a good instance of the old myth of intimacy.
The good gospel of comprehension, of the internal retrial, of the penetration until the secret of
the work and its genesis actually reposes on the confusion between commentary, lecture and
pastiche -- three activities which are perfectly distinct, well that [bien qu'elles] they are rendered
simultaneously possible by a type of discourse such as that of philosophy or literature.

Page 48-49

Despite these essential analogies, philosophical discourse cannot be purely and simply
assimilated to literary discourse. Between them there exists a major difference. Literature is a
discourse which instates to it all by itself, as a pure invention, the here, the present, the subject
from what it says: of the whatever type [que ce qui se forme] is formed in him, it never ceases to
awaken its own movement, it is the image -- or, if we want, the shadow -- of this muted now --
non verbal, never entirely formulated in words, on which ordinary language articulates itself.
Instead of eliminating or trying to consume this indispensable support of daily discourse, it
should be placed in its interior and reconstitute it, but to its fantasy, according to only its
sovereignty. This is why the now is never entirely made explicit: plot too, who exist in a novel as
a description, a chronology or an analysis itself of the subject that speaks, they always linger in
suspense- being not so different, by the degree of this pure empty indication, what fiction also
authorizes and what are stated solely by adverbs without geography, verbal times without
history, personal pronouns without identity and without name. The literary work itself instates its
own speaking voice, but as an analog of the real individual. It functions -- that is to say, it speaks
-- as the shadow of an invisible observer, or the phantom of a person circulating in the middle of
others, or as an idol of a conscience letting flow its language at the heart of its proper
transparency. The seed of literature is imitation. This word surely is the renowned [facheuse]: all
that which enterprised to think well, in the order of critique since the 19th century, knows and
repeats, until terrorism, that literature didnt make to imitate (as had long been thought as the
naivete of the classics, and before and problematically, that of all antiquity), but to manifest,
sing, signify, and to be signified itself, signify its own absence. In fact, if at this or that moment
of its history, the function of literature has been to express or to signify itself, these functions and
all the others of exercise that it equally arrived at have not been possible [what] by the play of
this essential imitation which makes of literature a quasi-discourse: a discourse that erases its
own now, but to facilitate its rebirth on a different mode on itself, and to be consistited/
constitute itself as discourse. This is at the ground of this pretense which makes apparent all the
innovativ techniques of which he has a good play to show that it does not consume the essential
of literature: to render in an image the scintillation of all the things, to glide in the real language
of men or in their internal monologue, try to bring back the verbose dwelling/rehashing of their
conscience. All these imitations, from which literature removed itself, but ceaselessly revenant of
it, are not like visible effects the imitation if the essential imitation that defines it. In its essence,
literature is a simulacra: not a reproduction of reality, not a redoubling of language on itself, but
an imitation of discourse.

Page 49-50
Philosophy is not at all a manner of imitation. If it is true that it takes, at its interior, the now of
its own discourse, it is not to make from that a quasi-subject and to be deployed from it, as a
[analogon] of discourse. It is rather to talk of this now, to transform itself into words,
propositions, discourse, in short, to make from it its object. It [philosophy] does not have to
speak based on this now that is sovereignly taken from its discourse. It has to speak of this now
that its discourse re-takes [reprend] in it to justify it and to make theory from it. That's why
philosophy isn't, like literature, an other to daily discourse, but a reflection on the now based on
which (well that it be different in each case) all man ought to speak, even the philosopher: it
[philosophy] is therefore interrogation for what could be for a subject speaking in a here, in a
present and on what is precisely that to speak(?). Of there the necessary proximity, at least since
Descartes, between theories of philosophy and of space, time and language. To all philosophy
that appeared in the western world since the 17th century, it is possible and it is atthe sufficient
limit to demand an account of what is for it size and perception, the awareness of time and
history, the forms and rules of thought articulated to discourse. [Au discours]

Page 50-51
But the inevitable proximity does not want to say that a philosophical discourse can let itself be
entirely determined by, or to a stronger reason to identify, a geometry or a mechanism, a physics
of time or an analysis of history, a grammar, a philology or a linguistics. Philosophy is not itself
a science of space, a theory of time, a study of language, but when it interrogates the extent/size
[l'étendu] it is neither so much [tellement] nor primarily to know [savoir] what is, but to know
what should be the exteneld for the singular now where it is found placed the truth of space in
general; at the same time, when philosophy interrogates time, it is neither to know which events
are populated, nor even what it [event] is in itself, but how to part from this "at present" where it
speaks to us [oú l'on parle]. We may [puisse] accede to a discourse that is true on time; finally, if
philosophy interrogates language, it is not to know what its strange system consists in, but which
forms in it are such that they allow to articulate the universal truths recognized as such.
Philosophical discourse does not search for being, -- which would be scientific discourse -- an
ensemble of statements that are true [vrais] in regard to language, to time and to space; but a
discourse which shows how the truth of space, of time, of discursive reason could reach us and to
prove to be through here, to the present and the singular language of discourse.

Page 51-52

We see that this function of discourse is the symmetrical inverse of that which would have been
[avait été] defined above as justification and what allows to distinguish philosophical statements
from scientific statements. The justification would consists [consistait] in this, for the discourse,
to reintegrate its own now in itself and to thus ground the relation that it could have to truth.
What it is about now, it is contrary to pushing away the now to the edges of the most exterior of
discourse, of showing of what manner the different movements are articulated on time, space and
reason in general, how through here, this present, this language, it is the place of all these
"here"'s, the time of all these presents, the universal form of all possible language, which
delienates [s'esquissd]and manifests itself all by enveloping them. The now of discourse finds it
necessary to state the truth which all of a sudden hides itself and states itself in it; it wants,
through him, make a discourse, which is below and above it arrive [au jour], the first discourse
which didn't have the now, which didn't have a present, the singular language, this discourse
without a now, which supports, by its truth, all the discourses and finally takes account of their
truth to all. Philosophical discourse will search beyond its own now, the true discourse which, by
fragments, through the bars and coverings, speaks souvereignly in it. In this function,
philosophical discourse is exegesis or interpretation: [it] is, by the relay of the manifested speech,
listens to an essential discourse. This exegesis could be made in two different directions. One
searching to rediscover it through the here, the now, the speech as space, time, reason could have
given place to their singularity. It is then about restituting a genesis, parting from what is given
in a representation: to know [savoir] the infinity of space, the unlimitidness of time and universal
reason. The other type, of exegesis, consists [consister] to show of which manner the general
structure, the plenitude and the dispersion of time, the universal forms of discourse secretly come
to haunt a perception of space situated in a "here", a conscience [une conscience] of time
attached to an always mobile present, the speech always taken in the determinate contraints of a
language: it concerns in that moment the actualization [la mise au jour] of sense/meaning [sens] ,
to part from the finite forms of experience. All as the justification of its now would compel
philosophical discourse to be given, as an uncovering or a manifestation, the interpretation of the
same now constrains it to be or a research of the origin or of meaning.

Page 52-53.

We understand that the idea of a discovery of primary/initial significations could haunt western
philosophy: the equivocation between primitive and originary, between what is first in the order
of genesis and first in the order of meaning, and also constitutive of our thought, which could be,
as we saw it, the inevitable recourse to the subject. At the same time the analyses of subject, the
fundamental research is inherent to our philosophy, at least since Descartes. But the reason is not
some obscure tradition of philosophy or in exterior determinations; it resides simply in the type
of discourse which has been [fut] since the classical age of philosophy. It is considerably the type
of discourse which we reach in order to deduce, exactly the concepts and themes principal to
philosophy, such that they have appeared in the history of our culture. Philosophical discourse
implies, solely by its mode of being that it is the quest of the fundamental or the origin and
theory of the subject. That is why, without doubt, western philosophy has not conceived the
project for itself more decisively than the uncovering of originary significations of the subject,
the actualization of its fundamental being, the reconciliation with its forgotten meaning; briefly,
the adequacy of the subject to this same thing which founds/establishes it as subject. We dont
deceive there. The symmeyrical [tentatives] to uncover what it could have there of the
ineffaceably subjective beyond the fundamental (what we call, it appears, transcendence), or to
render visible [rendre à la lumière] that there are more fundamental things than the subject
(without doubt the same opening of being) has left again, only with the play of supplementary
offsetting/distancing [décalage] of the same project. What wasn't tolerated it until "now", it os a
philosophical discourse, where it would be a question neither of a subject nor a fundamental
origin.

We still add a word in regard tothe difference between literature and philosophy. We have seen
that the theory of the subject signals a parting between philosophy and science, it [science?] is
not the real reason of it; and that is why, without doubt, we have [se remis] so many times, since
the 17th century, at the task of constituting a scientific theory of the subject. At the same time, it
is not the topic of an originary meaning that separates literature and philosophy, but the mode of
being of their discours, where [qui fait que] one is imitation while the other is interpretation. And
it is because of an illusion that makes, facing the primary, that we often conceive the project of
defining fiction and philosophy as the assemblages/groups [des ensembles] expressive of culture.
We suppose that literature is also interpretation, actualizing hidden meanings, manifestation of
what speaks, quietly, in the world. We suppose at the same time that philosophy is image, a sort
of [analogon] of all discourses ehich hold/consider themselves at one moment in a civilization.
And we thus arrive from that to the topic of the expressive functions which are common to
philosophical works and literary works; [alors qu'en fait], literature doesn't express anything
(and especially not the world), but belongs to a type of discourse where it interprets the now of
which it speaks.