NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE

2019, VOL. 41, NO. 2, 345–359

https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2019.1596688

ARTICLE

An Ontology of Global Order? Heidegger, Laclau, and

Political Difference
Fränze Wilhelm
Research Group on International Political Sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences, Christian Albrechts
University, Kiel, Germany

ABSTRACT
The question of ontology in thinking about global order(s) remains
largely unexplored in International Relations (IR) theory. By review-
ing the Heideggerian ontological difference and Laclauian post-
foundational outlook, this article reconstructs how to conceive of
global order(s) from an ontological perspective. The logical con-
junction of the strictly philosophical and the political in
Heideggerian-Laclauian postfoundational thought leads to two
central claims:

(1) An ontology of order is impossible because order has not

per se a factual side or an essence. Rather, order is always
only a contingent manifestation of the historically specific
investment of its ordering function.
(2) There can be no ontologically prior universal order. Yet an
always already failing structuration is not necessarily a failure
in its negative connotation. Going beyond the confines of
ontological fixity, the failing global order(s) come(s) to terms
with challenges of politicization, decision, responsibility, and
the need for political contestation.

Introduction: On Global Order

The problem of global order unfolds within the context of unsettling experiences with
and within a strange and potentially dangerous realm beyond our control. Recent
developments such as threats of terrorism, the spread of nuclear weapons, climate
change, and cybersecurity violate national borders and lead to instability and conflict.1
In view of the complex realities and all-pervading disorder of the global sphere it only
seems natural that people attempt to bring order to it. Examples are discussions about
nation states’ capacity to steer global policies, the necessity for global governance, or
the challenges by new global and domestic threats for the liberal world order.2 However,

CONTACT Fränze Wilhelm wilhelm@ips.uni-kiel.de Research Group on International Political Sociology at the
Institute of Social Sciences, Christian Albrechts University, Kiel, Germany
1
Richard N. Haass, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order (New York, NY: Penguin,
2017); Richard N. Haass, “World Order 2.0: The Case For Sovereign Obligation,” Foreign Affairs 96:1 (2017), pp. 2–9.
2
Ulrich Beck, “The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity,” The British Journal of Sociology
51:1 (2000), pp. 79–105; Jeff D. Colgan and Robert O. Keohane, “The Liberal Order Is Rigged,” Foreign Affairs 96:1
(2017), pp. 36–44; Constance Duncombe and Tim Dunne, “After Liberal World Order,” International Affairs 94:1 (2018),
pp. 25–42, DOI 10.1093/ia/iix234
© 2019 Caucus for a New Political Science
346 F. WILHELM

as of today we have no common understanding of global order as such. Quite the

contrary, global order appears as an unachievable state of governance. How is it, then,
that we feel to be subjected to ordering principles beyond our reach and yet we seem to
be unable to account for this experience theoretically?
This article engages the question of global order. More specifically, it asks how we can
conceive of global order(s) from an ontological perspective by taking into account
questions relating to the becoming and being of global order.
It seems the traditionally competent discipline of International Relations (IR) stays
clear of engaging this question of the ontological category of order. Rather, IR theory
relies heavily on presupposed ontological categories of social formation in political
philosophy and sociology. Yet we should turn to ask why there is order, and not only
how or what that order is. Is global order possible at all with regard to ontological
certainty? Can we think of orders beyond the foundations of meaning, norm, authority,
patterns, or structures?
To overcome this theoretical impasse and to address the question of an ontological
condition of order, this article proposes a meta-theoretical view from the seminal work
of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and his notion of difference and the originary
nothing. So far, there has only been scarce reception of the Heideggerian thinking in
writings on social and political theory. It is only by the contributions of so-called
postfoundational approaches, particularly by Ernesto Laclau, that implications of the
ontological difference are elucidated. Laclau exceeds the strictly philosophical in the
Heideggerian theory of being by carving out how the paradox of a foundational
ontological abyss intervenes into the common concepts of political and social theory.
From a Laclauian perspective, the answer to questions concerning ontological certainty
is this: the conditions of the very possibility of things and their relations, and therefore
an ontological dimension of the order of things, can never be found in any regional
ontology. “Possibility has to be given at the level of an ontology dealing with being qua
being.”3 It is therefore important to retrace the links between Laclau’s political thinking
and the philosophy proper of the Heideggerian ontological difference. The investigation
aims at unveiling the importance and impact of such an ontological inquiry.
This article first outlines how the question of ontology with regard to thinking global
order remains largely unexplored in traditional theories of social order and IR. Second,
the article introduces the Heideggerian approach to difference for an ontological
perspective on the horizon of possible global order. Third, the article traces the post-
foundational advancement of the ontological approach by Ernesto Laclau in spelling out
the consequences and practical impact of an ontological inquiry for understanding the
becoming of factual order(s). Finally, the article concludes that a postfoundational
perspective renders universal claims to ontological identity null and void. However,
postfoundationalism turns out to generate more than mere particularistic pluralism or
arbitrariness of orders, because it imposes on human beings the need to constantly
deconstruct their orders.
Such an ontological inquiry into the possibility of global order should be of value not
only for IR theorists, but for social and political theorists in general. The problem of order

3
Ernesto Laclau, “An Ethics of Militant Engagement,” in The Rhetorical Foundations of Society (London, UK: Verso, 2014),
p. 203.
 NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE 347

as the most basic question of sociology relates directly to the problem of difference
understood to be the condition for this problematic quality of social order, so that
difference “arguably presents the most fundamental problem of political thought.”4

Unexplored Ontologies: Why is Rethinking Global Order Necessary?

Within classical IR literature the question of an ontology of global order has been
raised with regard to different key aspects. The most prominent conceptualization
has been of the mainstream realist tradition, in which rationalist states are the key
ontological units of social order. In other respects, social ontologies endorse
a more relational approach to understanding what and how order is maintained,
focusing on questions of structure and agency, classes, and gender, among others.
Examples are critical theory, constructivism, poststructuralism, and feminism.
Within the frame of reference of classical and structural realism,5 but also to
some degree the English School6 in IR theory, the prevailing concept is that of
international relations among power-seeking states. The concept of order in these
theories is defined in terms of hierarchy, as the state of people having a central
power, and anarchy, the state of absence of political authority. Hierarchical order is
reserved to the nation state, whereas the ordering principle of the international,
which lacks an ultimate sovereign, is anarchy. Being without government directly
relates to the state of nature, described by Hobbes’s7 social contract theory. While
the state of nature is characterized as the war of all against all before social order
was organized hierarchically, the order within the state is characterized by the
absence of war.8 In this respect, relations among states are characterized by the
endless struggle to survive.
However, according to realist interpretation, the state of nature as anarchy is not
equal to chaos or disorder in the sense of non-order, as one might assume at first.9 This
is somewhat confusing with regard to the concept of order. The logical opposition10
between the state of war and the state of the absence of war does not translate into the
symmetrical negation of disorder and order. Instead, realist theory presupposes a real
opposition between two determinate and independent forms of order, either hierarchy
or anarchy. How, then, is order conceptualized in the first place? What is the ontological
nature of order? Why is order?

4
Nathan Widder, “Difference,” in Michael T. Gibbons (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Political Thought (Chichester, UK: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2015), DOI 10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0273
5
Hans Joachim Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace [1948], ed. Kenneth W. Thompson
and W. David Clinton (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2006); Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International
Politics (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
6
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics [1977] (New York, NY: Columbia University Press,
2002); J. R. Vincent, “Hedley Bull and Order in International Politics,” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 17:2
(1988), pp. 195–213, DOI 10.1177/03058298880170020701
7
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan. Or, The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill [1651], ed. Lan
Shapiro (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).
8
Timothy Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith, International Relations Theories. Discipline and Diversity, 3rd ed. (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 356.
9
John J. Mearsheimer, “Structural Realism,” in Timothy Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith (eds), International Relations
Theories. Discipline and Diversity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 79.
10
On the difference between logical contradiction (A-not A) and real opposition (A-B) see Ernesto Laclau, “Antagonism,
Subjectivity and Politics,” in The Rhetorical Foundations of Society (London, UK: Verso, 2014), p. 103.
348 F. WILHELM

The unquestioned why? suggests that it is not (only) due to the nature of the global11 that
we seem to be unable to theorize global order, rather the notion of order as such appears
inadequate. Actually, it seems like IR theory is lacking an approach to order as order altogether
and instead relies heavily on the presupposed ontological categories of social formation in
political philosophy and sociology, without questioning them.
Traditionally, theories of social order address the problem of order by way of explaining
how individual and collective needs can be balanced by the integration of the individual
into a social order.12 Note that all of the proposed formations of order rely on a supposedly
ultimate foundation which has taken different forms over time, be it God, reason, economic
determinism, or genetics.13 Hechter and Horne summarize various seminal works of modern
social theory according to five foundational principles of social order.14 These are: (1)
a common understanding of the world in early Karl Marx15 or Émile Durkheim,16 (2)
a central authority in Thomas Hobbes,17 Friedrich Engels,18 and Max Weber,19 (3) free
markets in Friedrich A. Hayek,20 Adam Smith,21 and Robert Axelrod,22 (4) values and
norms for group cohesion in Sigmund Freud,23 Erving Goffman,24 Alexis de Tocqueville,25
or again in Durkheim,26 and (5) the coordination of groups in networks in Ibn Khaldûn27 and
Georg Simmel.28 All of the mentioned theories ground social order on a particular cause or
mechanism which appears to be the originary foundation of order.

11
Throughout the rest of this article, I will refer to the term “global” in its ambiguity, as it can be interpreted in at least
two ways. First, “global” is used relating to something in the sense of a particular sphere pertaining to the earth.
Secondly, “global” is used relating to everything, in the sense of the whole, cosmos, universe, or totality. In this
respect, the term “global order” relates to the problem of ambivalence which is also found in interpretations of the
terms “world order,” or “international order” and “transnational order.” Yet it tries to avoid the excess of meaning of
the term “world” and also the implied restrictions of relations among nation states in the terms “international” or
“transnational.” For a thorough analysis challenging both particularistic and universal conceptualizations of “world,”
see Sergei Prozorov, Ontology and World Politics. Void Universalism I (London, UK: Routledge, 2014), Chap. 1.
12
Michael Hechter and Christine Horne (eds), Theories of Social Order: A Reader (Stanford, CA: Stanford Social Sciences,
2003), p. 27.
13
Oliver Marchart, Das Unmögliche Objekt. Eine Postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft (Berlin, DE: Suhrkamp,
2013), p. 34.
14
Hechter and Horne, Theories of Social Order; Michael Hechter and Christine Horne (eds), Theories of Social Order:
A Reader (Stanford, CA: Stanford Social Sciences, 2009).
15
Karl Marx, “From ‘The German Ideology’: Chapter One, ‘Feuerbach,’” in Joseph O’Malley (ed.), Early Political Writings
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 119–81; Terrell Carver and Daniel Blank, Marx and Engels’s
“German Ideology” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the “Feuerbach Chapter” (New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014).
16
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Trans. Karen E. Fields (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1995).
17
Hobbes, Leviathan.
18
Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Eleanor Burke Leacock (ed.), (New York, NY:
International Publishers, 1972).
19
Max Weber, Economy and Society, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds), (New York, NY: University of California Press,
1978).
20
Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty (London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982).
21
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: A Selected Edition, Kathryn Sutherland
(ed.), (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998).
22
Robert M. Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1984).
23
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, Trans. David McLintock (London, UK: Penguin Books, 2004); Sigmund
Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 Volumes), Trans. James Strachey
(London, UK: Hogarth Press, 1994).
24
Erving Goffman, “The Arrangement between the Sexes,” Theory and Society 4:3 (1977), pp. 301–31.
25
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2000).
26
Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952).
27
Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).
28
Georg Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations, Trans. Kurt H. Wolff and Reinhard Bendix (Glencoe, IL: The
Free Press, 1955).
 NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE 349

In fact, Friedmann, Hechter and Kanazawa assert that there are only two different
traditions which ground social order as such and have become popular among different
academic currents.29 Favored by rational choice advocates, the Hobbesian and Weberian
tradition grounds order on the transfer of individual liberties to a coercive, legitimate state
to secure existence in an otherwise hostile environment. Favored by sociologists, the
tradition in line with Aristotle, Rousseau, Durkheim, and Parsons grounds social order on
the existence of a system of values and norms within common institutions and practices.
Both accounts of order would restrict an understanding of global order to foundationalist
assumptions. They either suppose a particularistic, that is, actor-oriented, or universal, that
is, content and relation-oriented dimension of global order. Neither does inquire ontologi-
cally into how the foundations of actor or content came to be in the first place.
In summary, foundations of order are traditionally presupposed within the deductive
system of explaining order. These general propositions can themselves be explained
within other deductive systems assuming even more general propositions but finally
arriving at some ultimate foundation which cannot be explained any further.30 That
which needs to be explained, order, is deduced from general propositions about
structures and authority.

Overcoming Metaphysical Foundationalism: Thinking Order Differently

The famous statement Je pense, donc je suis31 by René Descartes represents the
beginning of the foundationalist world view in terms of a self-grounding subject
which commands its objective being and the objective world.32 This kind of think-
ing has come to dominate modern metaphysics and science in general. All things
can be defined and explained in terms of how and what they are as different to
other things that are already defined. The modern focus on the fundamental
subject-object-difference and on the differences between objects grounds all pos-
sible understanding and knowledge of the world within humans themselves.
Human beings are thus ultimately self-grounded and self-determined. While con-
sequently their being is founded on their thinking, the being of all other things
which are in the world is therefore also founded on human’s thinking of them.
But if this ontic understanding (how and what things are) was the foundation of
being, how could humans come to ontological certainty and understand that things
are in the first place? Or in other terms: How is it that factual presence becomes
present to humans at all? And for the problem of global order: is there not
a fundamental difference between the actual properties of an order and its existen-
tial horizon?

29
Debra Friedmann, Michael Hechter, and Satoshi Kanazawa, “The Attainment of Social Order in Heterogeneous
Societies,” in Christine Horne and Michael Hechter (eds), Theories of Social Order: A Reader (Stanford, CA: Stanford
Social Sciences, 2003), pp. 329–44.
30
Hechter and Horne, Theories of Social Order, p. 11.
31
René Descartes, Discours de la Méthode Pour Bien Conduire sa Raison et Chercher la Vérité dans les Sciences (Paris, FR:
Hachette, 1857), p. 23f.
32
Oliver Marchart, Die Politische Differenz. Zum Denken des Politischen bei Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, Laclau und Agamben
(Berlin, DE: Suhrkamp, 2010); see also Antonio Negri, The Political Descartes: Reason, Ideology and the Bourgeois Project
(London, UK: Verso, 2007).
350 F. WILHELM

Answering why things are how they appear to us and even why we are to begin
with needs more than simply relying on some presupposed entity as the final
foundation. These questions inquire into and challenge our fundamental ontology
of ontic subjects and objects, which is the question of ontological certainty as such.

Thinking Differently by Thinking the Difference: The Heideggerian Approach33

By raising the original question of being, Heidegger means to question the truth of
being and the being of truth of the distinct object.34 For Heidegger, a human does
neither found the world nor herself by thinking. Rather, the world descends upon
humans in the form of a thought that gives them something to think about.35 We
already have an understanding of being without having a definition for it.36 In what
Heidegger terms the ontological difference and later just difference,37 he emphasizes
the very difference between being, Sein, and ontic things-which-are, Seiendes.38 He
specifies that being is not itself something(-which-is)39 and yet being is always the
being of something.40 Within this context of being and understanding, a human’s
rough idea of being helps her to always already understand what-is as something-
that-is.41 However, this ontological understanding of that something is only relates to
an indefinable notion of being.
A human’s ability to render the world intelligible by means of making differ-
entiations and categorizations is closely connected to the original reflection on her
own existence. The notion of difference as difference is more fundamental than
actually existing differences (between objects or subject and object) because it
raises the question about the very nature of our ontological categories and their
foundations. Interestingly, the difference between being and what-is is then not
merely a condition of metaphysical thinking. Difference is rather a condition of all
human thinking and social activity.42 Anything human beings engage with is, has
been, and will be in view of its common being. Yet being has no identity to speak
of itself.43

33
For a short introduction into the problem of the analysis of the ontological difference through the different
stages of Heideggerian thinking, see Loy M. Vail, Heidegger and Ontological Difference (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1972), pp. 1–5. For a list of the complete works of Martin Heidegger
(Gesamtausgabe) and their known English translations please consult http://www.beyng.com/hb/gesamt.html.
34
Martin Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Weltbildes (1938),” in Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (ed.), Holzwege [1935–46],
Gesamtausgabe 5 (Frankfurt am Main, DE: Klostermann, 1977), p. 100.
35
Reinhold Kühn, Hinweise auf die Ontologische Differenz bei Martin Heidegger (Tübingen, DE, 1974), pp. 15, 74.
36
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit [1927], Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Gesamtausgabe 2 (Frankfurt am Main, DE:
Klostermann, 1977), p. 5.
37
William Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague, NL: M. Nijhoff, 1963), p. 15; cited in
Vail, Heidegger and Ontological Difference, p. 4.
38
Throughout the rest of this article, I will refer to the Heideggerian notion of “Sein” as being, whereas I refer to the
notion of “Seiendes” as that-which-is/things-which-are/what-is and the like. Both terms have also been translated
differently, such as Being/beings or being/entity, yet these interpretations may produce more ambiguity than clarity.
For an English introduction into the terminology of the ontological difference, see Graeme Nicholson, “The
Ontological Difference,” American Philosophical Quarterly 33:4 (1996), pp. 357–74; Vail, Heidegger and Ontological
Difference, pp. 5–13.
39
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit [1927], p. 4.
40
Ibid., 8.
41
Ibid., 6.
42
Kühn, “Hinweise auf die Ontologische Differenz bei Martin Heidegger,” p. 92.
43
Vail, Heidegger and Ontological Difference, p. 22.
 NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE 351

The Originary Nothing

The aloof character of being as the foundation of what-is becomes more clear with regard to
the nothing. By asking about the nothing Heidegger dismisses any classical metaphysical and
scientific approach to objective things. In his view, it would be nonsensical to ask “What is the
nothing?” because neither is no(-)thing an object of logic nor can it become an objective is-not
due to logically negating what-is.44 Clearly, the nothing is also not a positive, determinate pole
in a real opposition between two ontic things which have different properties, because it is no-
ontic-thing.45 Heidegger then demonstrates how the originary nothing can only be addressed
by way of a basic experience of strangeness or dread.46 The Heideggerian approach does not
focus on what nothing is but instead why that-which-is is and is not no-thing. Curiously, if our
understanding of being views being as that-which-is-not because it is different to and
foundational of what-is, then being falls in one with nothing.47 This disclosure of the oneness
of being and nothing confuses human beings, who wonder that the very being of what-is
discloses no-thing at the ground of what-is. Heidegger thus concludes that

only on the basis of wonder – i.e., the revelation of the no-thing – does the question ‘Why?’
arise. Only because the ‘why’ as such is possible can we demand and give reasons for things
in a definite way. Only because we [are] able to demand and give reasons, can our existence
be possibly destined for scientific research.48

Precisely because being is beyond what-is, being is not some thing-which-is. It is no-thing
because it does not occur in fact and it is therefore not a matter of ontic understanding.49
And yet being is related to what-is, enabling its appearance and our understanding of what-
is in the first place. Hence, being must be something, which is the horizon. In short, being is
to be possibility.50
The traditional approach to ground things merely in relation to other ontic things
confuses what-grounds with what-is-grounded and both become one and the same.51
This becomes apparent in theories of social order in which solutions to the problem of
order often become confused with the problem itself. Grounding order on a universal
nomos makes the problem of order one of finding out, achieving, and maintaining the
rule of such a nomos, while grounding order on legitimate central authority makes the
problem one of securing legitimate power and control. Often enough, the ontological
foundation or solution to some-“thing” comes to represent the thing it seeks to explain,
still begging the question.52 For Heidegger, on the contrary, “Being ‘is’ in essence: ground.
44
Martin Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik? (1929),” in Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (ed.), Wegmarken [1919–58],
Gesamtausgabe 9 (Frankfurt am Main, DE: Klostermann, 1976), pp. 106–08.
45
Laclau, “Antagonism, Subjectivity and Politics,” pp. 102–11.
46
Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik? (1929),” p. 109f.
47
Alberto Rosales, Transzendenz und Differenz: ein Beitrag zum Problem der Ontologischen Differenz Beim Frühen
Heidegger (Den Haag, NL: Nijhoff, 1970), p. 273.
48
Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik? (1929),” p. 121; Translated in Thomas Sheehan, “Martin Heidegger. What is
Metaphysics? An Interpretive Translation,” (November 14, 2013), available online at: http://religiousstudies.stanford.
edu/wp-content/uploads/1929-WHAT-IS-METAPHYSICS-2013-NOV.pdf.
49
Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [1929], Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (ed.) (Frankfurt am
Main, DE: Klostermann, 2010), p. §5; cited in Rosales, Transzendenz und Differenz, p. 169.
50
Rosales, Transzendenz und Differenz, p. 183.
51
Vail, Heidegger and Ontological Difference, p. 126.
52
Begging the question is used here in the sense of petitio principii as presenting circular reasoning, for instance
assuming the conclusion of the problem of social order through the premise of authority or norms or other
foundations. Yet following Heidegger’s notion of a void ground of being, the ground of order must also be void.
352 F. WILHELM

For that reason, Being can never itself have a ground which might give it foundation.”53
Because the ground for being thus is void, being is the void foundation of what-is. In this
way, being is not foundation, Grund, in the traditional sense, but it is profound abyss, Ab-
grund, in the sense of the groundless ground54 and thus possibility.
For our understanding of thinking differently it is crucial to never perceive the
horizon of possibility as becoming manifest in either a particular or universal foundation.
Human understanding and rendering meaningful the world of particular things is only
possible because being refers to the universal being of any particular thing-which-is. The
particular always already has existence in terms of being-there only in light of its
universal being. Being is thus simultaneously uniquely singular and ultimately
universal.55 It is radically common to everything-which-is as is, and yet this makes
being uniquely different from all-which-is.56 Corresponding to the notion of being as
the being of something, the universal is always the universal of a particular. Hence, there
is no oppositional difference between the universal and the particular, but rather
a constituting difference which makes things meaningful for human understanding in
the first place. Something always already is before we can even articulate its specific
factual properties, relations to other things, and so on. This difference enables human
understanding to make sense of the ontic particulars. Any particular only appears to
human understanding in light of its universal being.

A Tentative Approach to Global Order

The Heideggerian philosophy is not a mere puzzle game, for it has consequences and
a practical impact for how we understand understanding and how we approach the
particular phenomena of the factual world. The nothing is indirectly represented in
sentiments which Heidegger termed strangeness or wonderment, and which postfoun-
dationalists, in particular Ernesto Laclau, translate into antagonism, dislocation, and
contingency.57 The nothing is not pure negativity, but it originates the incentive for
thinking and rethinking, for politics and political action, for social formation and trans-
formation. In short, the ontological abyss is the horizon of possible thinking, politics, and
social order. Yet none of these have a fixed ontic content, because they are all human
activities trying to overcome the groundlessness of being by constantly laying new
grounds.

Political Difference and Political Ontology

The postfoundational condition entails the inherent possibility of alternative and of choice.
Difference in the long run may function as incentive for change or the overthrowing of
formerly accepted formations, such as explanations, orders, structures, categories, and
identities. The foundational nothing thus becomes represented as the always only
53
Martin Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund [1955–56], Petra Jaeger (ed.), Gesamtausgabe 10 (Frankfurt am Main, DE:
Klostermann, 1997), p. 76; Translated in Vail, Heidegger and Ontological Difference, p. 126.
54
Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund, p. 77.
55
Prozorov, Ontology and World Politics. Void Universalism I, p. xxix.
56
Vail, Heidegger and Ontological Difference, p. 23.
57
Ernesto Laclau, The Rhetorical Foundations Of Society (London, UK: Verso, 2014).
 NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE 353

contingent but necessary construction of any social formation. It discloses the horizon of
possibility for being (different), yet without predetermining any particular ontic properties
for a specific existence.
Ernesto Laclau pays explicit attention to the link between the strictly philosophical in
the Heideggerian difference and the political dimension of the notion of difference. As
he explains his work, he tries “to detect the multiplicity of discursive surfaces in which
this irreducible ‘ontological difference’ shows itself in modern and postmodern philoso-
phy and political theory.”58 In Laclau’s contributions we frequently encounter figures of
contingency which can be traced back to Heidegger’s difference, such as experiences of
dislocation, undecidability, or antagonism. All of these experiences pertain to the
absence of a final foundation, which Heidegger calls the nothing of being. Oliver
Marchart transfers the implications of this ontological abyss onto the notion of the
political as the horizon for contingent political formations.59 The experience of contin-
gency has political implications precisely in that it is the symptom of society’s absent
final ground and represents the very groundlessness of and yet incentive for political
and social order. Experiences of radical contingency within the ontological abyss are at
the same time destructive and constructive for social formation. As Laclau puts it, “[..]
‘radical contingency’ is an unacceptable notion if we understand by it some kind of
abyss which creates a total lack of structuration. What we are speaking of as the course
of contingency is, rather, a failed structuration.”60
The ontological difference of Heidegger thus translates directly into the difference
between the political and politics. Just as with the mutually constitutive relation between
being and that-which-is, between the universal and the particular, the political enables
politics in the first place. What is more, the postfoundational approach stresses the
importance of the moment of disclosure of the inherently political, that is, the historically
contingent and conflictual nature of the ultimately ungroundable social order.
This political ontology exemplifies the practical consequences of the Heideggerian
shift of thought from a Cartesian ontology based on the differentiation between subject
and object towards the ontological question of being as being. From the non-
oppositional and non-contradictory originary difference at the bottom of all meaningful
being, particular ontic differences in terms of conflict and struggle come to the fore.
Because the originary nothing constitutes a horizon of possibility, human sense making
and social constitution depend on a decision within these possibilities. Hence, they are
only contingent manifestations of specific historical choices. Difference, be it ontological,
political, or the difference between any two ontic things, leads to experiences of
dislocation due to the mutual contamination of any two sides of the difference. They
are not independent from each other, but rather they are only possible and meaningful
in terms of the differential relation between them. So they cannot posses an essential
identity or self-determinism. Any form of ontological certainty is only possible as far as
the differential relations to other things in the world are established and these relations
will never be fully disclosed. The content of particular struggles, antagonisms,

58
Ernesto Laclau, “Appendix I: The Uses of Equality. Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau,” in Simon Critchley and Oliver
Marchart (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader (London, UK: Routledge, 2004), p. 337.
59
Oliver Marchart, Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau (Edinburgh,
UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), chap. 7.
60
Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart (eds), Laclau: A Critical Reader (London, UK: Routledge, 2004), p. 335.
354 F. WILHELM

oppositions, and the like, is therefore never pre-given. Rather, conflict in postfounda-
tional terms as exemplified by Laclau refers to a more profound antagonism in all social
relations and understanding. The possibility of choice constitutes a political necessity for
social formation and yet also always comprises the possibility for social transformation.
Hence, the instituting moment of the political can be described as the instituting
moment of politics (that is, particular political action). Through the factual experience
of contingency “society is confronted with its own absent ground and with the necessity
to institute contingent grounds.”61

Laclau and the Empty Universal: Global Order beyond the Particular
The void of the universal, as derived from the nothing of being, offers a chance to open
up research on order in IR and beyond. However, recent literature on the meaning and
naming of this very void differs with regard to their conclusions on the ontological
dimension of order. While Prozorov, in Ontology and World Politics, takes his cue from
a perspective of set theory and Alain Badiou’s theoretical construction of the empty
universal, Laclau presents a way to overcome this strict and exclusive notion of the
universal.
We established that any particular order is without a final foundation and without any
ontological reason, which means the content of positive order is constructed by humans
and any order is an intra-worldly phenomenon.62 However, for Prozorov, it is not
possible to conceptualize order along the ontological difference between being and
that-which-is, because any positive order as an ordering structure is not grounded by
the nothing per se, it is merely constructed by the human beings which are ultimately
without foundation, just like all other things-which-are. Orders are thus the effects of the
historically specific interplay between being and humans-who-are, while order has no
being in itself. Note how this approach differs from the postfoundational notion of
political difference which clearly asserts the political to the ontological side and politics
to the ontic side of the ontological difference. Politics is different from mere order in the
sense of its interplay with the political.63 Order, according to Prozorov, has no such
ontico-ontological articulation, because it is merely the effect of the phenomenological
appearance of the things-which-are. However, this presumed difference between politics
and order, and therefore the reason why order supposedly does not belong to the
political ontology, is not just self-evident.
Against Prozorov, it is plausible to understand political practice itself as an ordering
practice which both reproduces and changes the particular social order. The term
politics is both, an ontic content always already within and reproducing the ordered
structure – which is itself only an effect of the ontological difference – and also one side
of the political difference, as the ontic dimension of the radical contingency of any order
and its groundless ground. Given this close conceptualization of factual politics and
order on the ontic side, there seems to be no reason why we should not be able to
theorize order along the lines of the ontological difference as well, except, as Laclau

61
Marchart, Post-Foundational Political Thought, p. 174.
62
Prozorov, Ontology and World Politics. Void Universalism I, p. 37.
63
Ibid., 69.
 NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE 355

points out, by presupposing a drastic distinction between the parts and the whole, the
particular and the universal, as is presented by set theory on the foundations of
mathematics transposed to social analysis.

Badiou thinks that the void, having no members of its own (in the situation presented by set
theory it figures as the empty set) does not belong to any particular situation – which
means that it belongs to them – but that, as far as human situations are concerned, the
subjects of a truth that affirms the event addresses pure and simple universality.64

In the postfoundational condition, to borrow the words of Laclau from a slightly differ-
ent context, “universality, conceived as uncontaminated universality, is a sham.”65 As has
been outlined above, there is no specific content to something called the particular
universal, but only the interplay within the constituting difference of the universal and
the particular. As Laclau goes on elsewhere, “the whole vision of a positivity of being
that would operate as a ground [. . .] is, in this way, brought into question, at least in
relation to the social world.”66
With regard to the constitution of social order, Laclau echoes the Heideggerian
difference when he asserts a difference between (ontic) society and the (ontological)
social, whereby the social is characterized by its unrepresentability and failed
objectivity.67 He concludes that “society does not succeed in constituting itself as an
entirely objective order as a result of the presence, within itself, of antagonistic
relations.”68 Once again, this shows how the originary difference is not a positive,
ontic difference itself. Rather, the social comes to symbolize the being of society only
by simultaneously symbolizing the possibility of its not being, which creates
a constituting antagonism. Thus, an identity of what-is with the horizon of the being
as such is impossible. There is no positive identity of the ontic and the ontological.69 The
apparent failure of the ontological to absorb all ontic content also shows the constitu-
tive dimension of the ontological difference. According to Laclau this difference is what
makes power, politics, hegemony, and democracy possible in the first place.70
Finally, Laclau terms the gap between the ontic and the ontological the interruption
of identity, which discloses the constitution of the subject in between its ontic proper-
ties and ontological being.71 From a Heideggerian view, this very interruption of the
subject at the same time discloses the possibility and impossibility of all other objects.
Because there can be no final foundation in being, there can be no fixed meaning of
what-is. Yet, for Laclau, this does not foreclose the possibility to represent the non-
ground of being within what-is.72 Rather, the absence of ground is inherently present as
the contingency of the discursive construction of ontic content. Laclau calls this the
ontological investment in an ontic object. Insofar as this investment is acknowledged
and active in the form of contingency, it echoes the Heideggerian notion of an experi-
ence of uncertainty by which being as abyss comes into view. As Laclau summarizes,
64
Laclau, “An Ethics of Militant Engagement,” p. 189.
65
Ernesto Laclau, “Constructing a ‘People,’” in The Rhetorical Foundations of Society (London, UK: Verso, 2014), p. 159.
66
Laclau, “Antagonism, Subjectivity and Politics,” p. 113.
67
Ibid., 111–15.
68
Ibid., 111.
69
Ibid., 113.
70
Laclau, “Appendix I: The Uses of Equality. Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau,” p. 337.
71
Laclau, “Antagonism, Subjectivity and Politics,” pp. 115–17.
72
Ibid., 118.
356 F. WILHELM

“the emptiness with which we are dealing is not simply the absence of content, but is
itself a content – it is a fullness that shows itself through its very absence.”73
What is more, this ontological investment in an ontic content translates into the
investment of the universal into the particular, the political into politics, and the
social into specific social formations, because

there is no ontic content that, by itself, has a precise ontological signification. But, con-
versely, there is no ontological signification constructed other than through an investment
of an ontic content. Everything turns, as a result, around the precise theoretical status of this
notion of ‘investment’. [If the transition from the ontic to the ontological] would be entirely
objective – there would be no interruption of identity. But if, on the contrary, there is such
interruption, the investment would become foundational and constitutive and, for that very
reason, it would become ontologically unrepresentable. If this were the case, as I think it is,
the interruption could not be inscribed in anything different from itself. I can name that
interrupting gap, but I cannot conceptually apprehend the content of that name. This gap,
nameable but not conceptually apprehensible, is, exactly, the place of the subject.74

Accordingly, order only is as the effects of ordering the things-which-are. This way, order
can never be simply absent in the sense of pure chaos or disorder and the factual
appearance of things implies an ordering structure without implying the specific content
of that structure. As Laclau writes,

The initial situation, to which ‘order’ is opposed, is the experience of deprivation, finitude
and facticity. [. . .] So fullness as the positive reverse of this situation of constitutive lack is
that which would bring about the completion of the community. [. . .] ‘Order’ cannot have
a particular content, given that it is the simple reverse of all situations lived as disordered.75

To that effect, no particular content of order can be prescribed by some universal

ordering principle, because the universal represents mere possibility for the parti-
cular on the foundation of nothing. Just as the bottom of the being of things is
ultimately nothing, the fullness of the whole is ultimately empty and the ground
of the foundation is ultimately abyssal. Given this nothing, emptiness, and lack of
foundation for a specific content of order, the investment of the ontological into
the ontic does not consist of a confluence of both sides, such as a particular order
simply naming itself and assuming the universal. Rather, an ontological investment
means to establish a way of representing the universal possibility of meaning in
any particular. Referring to this balance between universality and particularity,
Laclau asserts that

to fill a void is not simply to assign to it a particular content, but to make of that content the
nodal point of an equivalential universality transcending it. [. . .] [A universality not con-
taminated by particularity] is impossible. Its place is always going to be occupied/embodied
by something that is less than itself.76

Finally, the ontological dimension of factual order – and this includes its universal, political, and
social dimension within the postfoundational context of their respective investments into
73
Ernesto Laclau, “Ethics, Normativity and the Heteronomy of the Law,” in The Rhetorical Foundations of Society (London,
UK: Verso, 2014), p. 130.
74
Laclau, “Antagonism, Subjectivity and Politics,” p. 115.
75
Laclau “On the Names of God,” p. 48f
76
Laclau, “An Ethics of Militant Engagement,” p. 191.
 NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE 357

ontic content77 – is precisely its notion of ordering. In this regard, the difference between
ordering and order is an analogy of the ontological difference, the political difference, and so
on. The being of things, the universal of the particular, the political of politics, and finally the
ordering of order all pertain to the same postfoundational logic – the absence of a final ground.
The subject’s position is within the distance between the impossibility of ultimately determin-
ing social formation and the possibility of temporarily filling this void of meaning.78 Regarding
the ordering of order, this means

because the ordering function fills a lack that is not associated with any actual content, this
duality between order and ordering, between the ontic and the ontological, can only
reproduce itself sine die. Why is it that one order rather than another fulfils the ordering
function? A first answer is availability. It is the order that presents itself as fulfilling the
ordering function that will be the object of [. . .] investment. This is possible because the gap
between order and ordering can never be ultimately filled. In a situation of generalized
disorder, people need some order, and the concrete order that fulfils this ordering function
is only a secondary consideration.79

With regard to global order, this means that neither hierarchical order nor anarchical
order have any ontological status as such. Both represent a contingent form that
positive order might take without any necessity for their specific content.80 This is
because any such sedimented order81 represents a social practice as a particular yet
contingent formation trying to overcome the lack of certainty and the experiences of
dislocation. Besides, there has never been any moment in human existence before the
ordering of order, because “we are always already within a certain normative order” and
we “live in a world of sedimented social practices that limit the range of what is
thinkable and decidable. This sedimentation of social practices is an existential in the
Heideggerian sense: it is constitutive of all possible experiences.”82 The specific proper-
ties and meanings of global order(s) are prone to discussion and change, because they
can be essentially contested. The content of a particular ontic order occupies the place
of the content of universal ordering, both getting contaminated in the process. This
means that – because the ontological gap is permanent83 – order will never succeed in
ultimately fulfilling its ordering function.

Conclusion
In a first conclusion, order is not as such, because it has no ontological status of being
beyond the nothing. The foundational nothing grounds the things-which-are as things-
which-are and order is the possible structuring of these things. But order as ordering
takes on the content of a specific human activity of structuring the ontic world. Because
order has no ontological status and being out of itself, its principles are always only
77
As well as it includes the ethical investment into the normative. See Laclau, “Ethics, Normativity and the Heteronomy
of the Law.”
78
Ibid., 133f.
79
Ibid., 135–36.
80
Prozorov, Ontology and World Politics. Void Universalism I, p. 38.
81
Ernesto Laclau, “Articulation and the Limits of Metaphor,” in The Rhetorical Foundations of Society (London, UK: Verso,
2014), p. 68.
82
Laclau, “Ethics, Normativity and the Heteronomy of the Law,” pp. 133–34.
83
Ibid., 136.
358 F. WILHELM

contingent manifestations of the historically specific interplay and investment of its

ordering function to bring about order. The ordering of order thus mirrors the difference
between the ontological and the ontic, the being and that-which-is, the political and
politics. The former always plays the role of the latter, so that the universal dimension of
order is its ordering function.
Secondly, with regard to the question of global order, there can be no such thing as
a universal, all-encompassing order which has ontological primacy over all other orders.
However, the implications of the originary nothing do not end with postulating
a particularistic pluralism of contingent orders next to or opposed to each other.
Global order denotes an order of a group of particular things which humans structure
through their specific political actions. Hence, to ground being on the foundational
nothing helps to arrive at the ontological principle of ordering. The ordering of order –
or the ordering function of order – denotes a gap that can never be rationally closed, for
if both sides of the difference were to overlap exactly, the very need for what Laclau has
called investment – and what we might also call the incentive for action and even
thinking in the first place – would dissolve.
This last aspect also brings about the scope of implications which a postfoundational
approach presents for both further research in the field of international political theory
as well as global politics. The understanding of particular ontic orders as representations
of a contingent ontological investment into a necessary universal ordering function is
simply nothing else than to presuppose an always already failing structuration. And yet,
this does not need to mean failure in its negative connotation. Rather, the impossibility
of political and social closure, in spite of a human desire for ontological certainty, is the
positive impetus for generating both a theoretical and applied practice of global order.
Regarding epistemological and methodological aspects of interpretation and analysis,
postfoundational thinking in the Heideggerian-Laclauian orientation presents a critique
of positivist logics of explanation. The social sciences in general and therefore classic
theories of social and political order presuppose a particular ontology which structures
their explanations by way of deduction and causation. Postfoundationalism, instead,
stresses the ontological aspect of explanation based on the ontological difference. The
logic of investigation changes from deduction to retroduction, that is, to inferring the
conclusion for a phenomenon indeed in a definite logical form – but only ever proble-
matically as one of many possible explanations. This is exemplified in research and
discourse analyses of the so-called Essex School. The critical-explanatory concepts
developed and applied by its members “are explicitly linked to the radical contingency
at the heart of Being, or more particularly the ‘lack’ or ‘void’ in any given symbolic
order.”84 It becomes clear in this context, that a postfoundational political ontology is
not a positive ontology in the sense of basic concepts in any normative or empirical
investigation. Rather, the ontological premise of the dislocation and contingency of all
and any ontological foundation stems from the nature of being itself – from the
ontological difference which discloses being as both no-thing and possibility. An ontol-
ogy of global order needs to be a political ontology in this postfoundational sense. As
such, it will be able to come to terms with challenges of politicization, possible politics

84
Jason Glynos and David R. Howarth, Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory (London, UK: Routledge,
2007), p. 82.
 NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE 359

and decisions, responsibility and the need for political contestation which go beyond
the confines of ontological fixity in traditional explanations of social order. Ultimately,
the postfoundational condition both explains and increases our experiences of paradox
and wonderment, dislocation and conflict in the global order(s).
There is no ontological certainty but the certainty of the nothing. The synopsis of
contemporary writings on postfoundational thought and particularly the political theory
of Ernesto Laclau points to the continuing influence of the Heideggerian ontological
difference for rethinking the question of order with regard to the global. As shown, the
essence of being as nothing is not simply a pure negativity which necessarily leaves
postfoundational understanding with empty politics and orders. Rather, the postfounda-
tional condition of global order calls upon people to take order not as a given, but to
take active part in politicizing and contesting orders with regard to the nature of being,
which is within and towards the political, the social, as well as possible ordering. This
includes global order.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Fränze Wilhelm is a doctoral candidate at the Kiel University Research Group on International
Political Sociology (KUIPS). She is writing her dissertation on “Political Difference and Global
Normative Order(s).” Fränze’s research interests include postfoundational democracy, critical
explanation and ontological inquiry, the political & the ethical, poststructuralism, postcolonial
and feminist theory.

ORCID
Fränze Wilhelm http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4416-0095
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