What Philosophers Are Doing Now

The Philosopher and Literature: Interpreting the Boundaries of Literary Experience

The aesthetic category of verisimilitude, central to classicism, continues to form the backbone of discussions regarding the structure of historical being: to what extent does language dictate the course of historical actions, and how far does existence within history extend through its recorded reflections? For the French Enlightenment thinkers, it was easy to ponder verisimilitude, for them equating its creation with invention: the invention of crafts simultaneously establishes history, lifting humanity from a primitive state devoid of meaning, while also serving as an indicator of the proper progression of history, a kind of system of sustenance. By relegating history to merely a portion of the "Memory" section in their Encyclopédie, they effectively distinguished history from the disputes of contemporary affairs, depicting it instead as a continual reduction of the foundations of present concerns to the mechanisms that repeatedly generate the fleeting diversity of historical events. In contrast to the verisimilitude of staged narratives, which pertains to plots deemed unique (despite their triteness) precisely because of the unexpected techniques and mechanisms employed, historical verisimilitude does not afford us the luxury of playing this game—mistaking current effects for the starting point of a critical judgment about both what transpires on stage and in reality.

Jacques Rancière, in his book Figures of History (2011), offers insights into the rhetoric of historical knowledge as a rhetoric of verisimilitude. The central essay of the book, "On the Four Meanings of History," returns us to a point beyond which the disciples of classicism dared not venture. For them, verisimilitude in history is a constant production of material symbols that anchor humanity in historical time, preventing history from plummeting into an abyss. Historical mistakes and crimes arise in places where this production falters, where laziness and superstition thwart its proper establishment.

Of course, such a point of perfection, where enthusiasm and faith naively coincide thanks to a self-generating verisimilitude, no longer exists. Thus, Rancière endeavors to comprehend how the content of "verisimilitude" shifts depending on the observer's position and the actions of the historical participant.

The picture he proposes of the four meanings, or states, of history strikingly resembles one of the episodes in Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen. In one of the prose poems, "Portraits of Mistresses" (XLII), one character confesses: "All men, he said, have experienced the age of Cherubino: that time when, in the absence of dryads, they embrace oak trunks, and even do so with a certain pleasure (sans dégoût). This is the first stage of love. At the second, they become more discerning. The ability to choose is already a sign of decline (more accurately—a decline: Pouvoir délibérer, c’est déjà une décadence). It is then that they ardently seek beauty. As for me, gentlemen, I have long reached the climactic (climatérique) phase leading to the third stage, when beauty itself is no longer sufficient (elle même ne suffit plus), unless it is framed by scents, luxurious garments, and other such embellishments. I must admit that I sometimes yearn, as if for the unknown (inconnu) happiness, for a final, fourth stage, which was supposed to bring (literally: mark, signify! — marquer) complete tranquility."

As we see, at the first stage, the passionate lover performs acts that may appear reckless and even absurd from the outside but coalesce into the most coherent—and thus most verisimilar!—portrait of the lover's behavior. Verisimilitude reigns here: it is precisely in this maddened, uncontrollable fervor, irrespective of the worthiness of the beloved, that the lover presents himself in his original state, prior to the methodological reflection. This mirrors the lover's entry into history: he "enters various histories" not as a calculating player, nor as a reckless adventurer—not as a person who has learned to use historical time in a calculated manner and to revel in it—but as one who possesses nothing beyond the stage of his own body, where the phenomenon of love must be enacted.

At the second stage, "discernment" emerges as a "ghost of decline." It is evident that the primary essence of discernment in classicist aesthetics (in its Enlightenment iteration) is not to compare a number of possibilities to construct a hierarchy for future reference but to create a taste institution that simultaneously serves as a conduit for final historical judgment. While for the Enlightenment thinkers taste always functioned as a critique of humanity's present condition, its "superstitions," and various obstructions preventing it from stepping onto the stage of historical action, from the perspective of a more "modern" viewpoint, it becomes clear that this nascent history also signals the beginning of decline, the onset of a longing for the ideal. The notion of merging with the ideal in each moment is no longer presupposed; rather, it becomes evident that the ideal chooses itself; that aside from the foundational choice legitimating the ideal, there exists the will of the ideal itself. This capricious behavior of the erotic ideal became a central theme in romantic literature and also served as a conduit for a new understanding of historical time.

The third stage, which necessitates embellishing the ideal, adorning it in every possible way, and transforming it into a "figure," demands a different relationship to history. History is revealed not as private but as a collective narrative: one must introduce adornments that entangle the aesthetic experiences of diverse individuals. The historical event then becomes not merely a narrated occurrence but also a cognitive event: a collision of various historical visions converging in a single aesthetic choice, appropriated by history itself. As we have previously noted, in the classicist understanding, history asserted a monopoly over its own aesthetics, seducing itself with the phenomenon of its own eros; thus, any reconstruction of aesthetics by observers invariably leads to the acknowledgment of that history which is "pre-given."

Finally, the fourth stage emerges as both the apotheosis of sensitivity and the moment of complete tranquility. Sensitivity—various reactions to sorrowful and tragic events—becomes absorbed by the moment of eros that has already attained self-awareness. Language falters when attempting to narrate history, not because the history itself frightens or saddens (as would be the case in the third stage, where language is supplanted by a kaleidoscope of impressions) but because history has fully realized itself in our language; our language has become historical and shall not cease to be so.

Jacques Rancière, not at all intending to reference Baudelaire yet continually contemplating classicism with its rhetorical figures, constructs a similarly four-tiered scheme for writing history. He asserts that history can be understood in a multitude of "differently combinable meanings." "Firstly, it is a tale worthy of remembrance." The act of memorialization, of remembering, does not necessitate the engagement of additional resources, the utilization of complex mnemonic techniques, or cumbersome devices supplied by modern civilization. Quite the opposite: the very course of events involuntarily invites spectators to bear witness, to memorize simply out of desire, to imitate — likely according to Rancière's logic, boys playing at being Indians may emerge as the finest historians of indigenous participation in world history. Yet for Rancière, such involuntary remembrance of foreign tranquil grandeur evokes Homer, rather than Thucydides. The figure of Homer here is no accident: in the "dispute between the ancients and the moderns," the "modern" Charles Perrault reproached Homer for interrupting the action with lengthy descriptions—precisely that which the "ancients" valued most as the backdrop of history, transforming even nature into the stage of current historical experience, is perceived by the "moderns" as a fragmentation of that very primal experience of history they seek to restore. Their sense of history is alien to the rhetorical opulence of an already experienced exposition; they strive to relive history each time as one might an experience: striking yet not traumatic. Rancière entirely reimmerses us under the heavy drapes of classicist disputes: for him, this eventful history, the first tier of history—perceived through the pure and ardent soul—consists of examples from lyceum textbooks: the Oath of the Horatii and the valor of Mucius Scaevola, Brutus hiding beneath a shroud. The metaphor of "behind-the-scenes struggle" transforms into a pure image upon the canvas of history, where the hero timely steps forth from behind the curtain and declares his presence. In that moment, the clandestine struggle ceases, and the hero's courage returns to history its fervent eros, rekindling the interest of readers in reading history and feeling themselves a part of it. This understanding of history, according to Rancière, "implies a continuity of the scene for imitation and the act of imitation in a dual sense: the painter's work and the reading held by an engaged spectator. As soon as this chain is interrupted, the memorial function of history is nullified." It appears that history, envisioned by any of its participants solely as a domain of great achievements, grand and impressive narratives, has failed to engage all painters with the necessary work, while the "engaged spectator" was not fully prepared to remain upon the stage where something dreadful unfolds.

The second tier, according to Rancière, is history understood no longer as a scene but as a pathetic moment. "The movements of the characters converge towards the center, where they reflect upon the action, and at the very edges of the stage. Gazes freeze, hands stretch in fervor, faces reproduce emotion, and dialogues mimic the profound significance of the unfolding event. In brief, the very picture is history: the production of actions, a significant plot, conveyed through appropriate expressive means." Here, in this vivid tableau of history, there is no room for Homer; it is time to speak of Polybius and Titus Livius with their refined analysis of the political situation. For Rancière, such a living image conveys the most crucial moment, the moment of the collective impacting the individual, the moment of transition from "exemplum" to "fabula" (fable), governed by the laws of poetics. In other words, the law is established by a certain moment. History is no longer divided into moments, nor is it constructed from moments simply because that moment has seized us. History unfolds as a plausible picture, generating memory precisely through its timeless plausibility, an eros that transcends time, and within it, the extraction of the "moment" signifies the establishment of law, the emergence of a plot that develops according to its own laws. It is this emergence of plot that constitutes the "selectivity" in which Baudelaire's character perceived a sign of decline: if history relies on plausibility, narcissistically enamored with itself, then any pause, any catastrophic moment becomes an alienation (dissociation, according to Rancière) from the "picture of history." Just as the ideal selects itself in Baudelaire's vision, so too does history compose itself as a plot according to the laws of poetics, which can no longer be reduced to a simple opposition between the truth of the moment and the plausibility of the plot: it becomes its own law, an understandable scene for itself, into which one cannot enter if one has chosen to live one's plot. "History as an exemplary combination of expressive means and history as a narrative of great examples become disjoined twenty years later [i.e., in Diderot's 'Salon of 1769,' the most notable critic among Enlightenment figures] before the revolutionaries resolved to renew the glorious examples of Roman chronicle." It turns out that the picturesque nature of history does not permit the brush to be brought forth anew, while the efforts of monumental historical painters (from the second classicism to socialist realism) animate only their own fate, not the historical action. Imitation becomes the truth of the individual or the plausibility of an already existing concept of history; however, it is no longer possible to create the plausibility of an individual who would once again step onto the historical stage and fervently enact historical action.

At the third tier occurs precisely what Baudelaire's hero warned against. Just as beauty proved insufficient, so too does history as narrative reveal its inadequacy when confronted with the power that has already presented itself, which has not only laid traps for attention but also erected monuments to itself. History emerges "as an ontological power, in which every 'history'—every represented example and every enacted action—becomes included. This is History as a specific mode of time, a manner in which time makes itself the principle of events and their meanings. History as movement is oriented towards fulfillment, defining the conditions and tasks of the present hour, the promises of the future, but also the threats..." Such history "destroys the ordered games of exemplary figures and expressive compositions," "no action or figure can correspond to the direction (sens) of its movement." As we see, conditions of the task, methods, and outcomes of the task's resolution collide at every turn—if earlier participants in history arrived at a single goal through various paths, now they pursue different aims. In other words, Rancière clarifies what Baudelaire's hero merely hints at: the seduction that has already realized itself and even adorned itself with the signs of present and future victories can no longer lead to a goal. Elaborate constructions, architectures of universal inclusion that set the direction of movement, are needed to seize that very seduction. The question no longer concerns how alluring historical examples are, but rather how to seduce history itself, so that the examples of our actions do not become overly simplistic "realizations," solutions to textbook problems devoid of further implications. It is precisely such "disposition," the rhetorical arrangement of material, without its actualization, that Rancière critiques. In rhetorical theory, following "disposition" comes "elocution," the proper delivery of speech. And just as Baudelaire's hero yearns for the "unexplored happiness" of the fourth tier of rearticulated eros, leaving the throat mute, yet also rendering the eros itself silent, evoking the authenticity of experiences, Rancière too strives for the "unexplored happiness" of the historical canvas, which freezes in the immediate experience of joy and allows us to recall the authenticity of action, that historical action that will not be seduced by particulars or burdened by evil.

On this fourth level, "history is not merely a Saturnine power that devours all individuality. History is also a new fabric upon which the perceptions and feelings of each individual are inscribed. The time of history is not solely the time of great collective destinies. It is such that it does not matter who is making history or how one testifies to it." It turns out that history may not be a seduction that creates the individual; rather, every individual can simply notice history, observing its signs—and thereby, pausing before the landscape and genre of history, come to life within the contexts of this canvas. "Hegel already welcomed the Dutch genre painting for its manner in which a scene in an inn or a representation of a bourgeois interior carries the trace of history. But during the time of History, such genre painting departs from interiors, shops, and inns. It invades (envahit) prairies and forests, shores and ponds, assigned to mythological heroes." Hegel was accustomed to transitioning from "marginal notes" of manuscripts to "traces of history" and back again. Yet Hegel understood that history is "unseen / unknown happiness," as expressed by the hero of Baudelaire. The contemporary reader must recognize that this unknown happiness is unknown precisely because it is unclear which of the paintings executed according to autonomous rules (and the cause of their autonomy is already known to us!) will reveal it, behind which canvas history will await us. The author of the painting is no longer seduced or seducing: he has made an incursion into new realms, the realms of that very "epoch" ("sometimes strived," where one should also consider V.V. Bibikhin's Russian thematization of "epoch"). It is precisely here that any tranquil depiction, any representation of coherent experience becomes that ultimate ecstatic calm.
It is clear why Rancière, willingly or unwillingly, reiterated Baudelaire's scheme. He needed to explain how it is possible to think of history after tragic and catastrophic experience. It was essential to distinguish tragedy, with its strict poetics, from the experience of catastrophe, which must not remain merely an experience if we wish to jointly participate in history rather than plunge into an endless abyss of catastrophicness, into the pond of Narcissus, bottomless in its meaninglessness. For this, the immediate examination of seduction was required. Whereas for Baudelaire, seduction acts as a destruction of poetics, followed by the unveiling of ever new poetics, Rancière remains within the same poetics of representation, merely transitioning continuously to new levels of rhetorical reflection and rhetorical labor. Rancière reproduces a scheme that is almost natural for French literary culture—a scheme of movement, to speak in school terms, "from classicism through romanticism to realism." Yet he replaces the mechanics of seduction, which dominates Baudelaire, with a mirror of fulfilled seduction, a canvas fully filled, depicting seduction. And if seduction is depicted, then historical evil will no longer seduce anew those who have traversed all four stages of work on themselves and on their logos.
The foremost contemporary Italian thinker, Giorgio Agamben, demands a rigorous calibration of his path in thought. His 2002 book, "The Open," translated into Russian with a decade's delay, reads as a significant testament of the "epoch without classics," an epoch that strained itself after the Cold War, where merely enumerating the most crucial topics of conversation became as important as deliberating on any particular theme. Among numerous vital themes, Agamben speaks of a new one: the loosened secret, the publication of the non-public. Magazine gloss, erotic tapes, the buzzing VHS recorder sought to present the erotic in all its immediate visibility. Instead of former "triumphs of Eros," the cavalcade of European painting revealed that the secret could be extracted each time, like a dress from a wardrobe.
And for this reason, it will remain a secret, something intimate, because it can be hidden, forgotten, it can make an appearance and will only be reminded of by the next inventory. In essence, the epoch the Western world entered at the beginning of the 2000s is an epoch of deferred inventory, an epoch in which new gadgets, new experiments, and new experiences proliferate to such an extent that it is better to recount them later. The main goal is to master new social technologies, compelling capital to serve specific purposes. This is not an investment economy, but an economy of expenditure in the sense introduced by Georges Bataille, which does not necessarily imply waste.
However, Agamben, anticipating the new times of which we are now witnesses, dismantles all doors, removes all drawers, extracts canvases from the storerooms, and photographs miniatures. He poses the question of the "end of human exceptionality": if we perceive the world through new tentacles, sensors, and feelers, in the form of cameras, dictaphones, or mobile phones, are we not akin to beasts, insects, strange creations? As Susan Sontag (1933—2004) sees in her book "On Photography": a Japanese person laden with cameras and film devices is a divine insect, moving along its route. Yet for Sontag, this is a narrative: the European travels along tourist routes, reading signs, like a billiard ball, whereas the Japanese individual is an insect that has survived a nuclear war, imbued with an irresistible desire to live.
Sontag was clearly captivated by the sight of the Japanese marvel, Japanese industrial growth, and she needed to demonstrate that it is not metaphorical "rational ants," but entirely real beings with photographic feelers, possessing incredible optical mechanisms, who create this. The ant we can understand as the hero of a fable, yet the trajectory of a snail remains a great mystery to us. Meanwhile, Agamben, contemplating the world system and attempting to weigh the vitality of Europe, states that every human is a beast. There is not one who does not revel in a drive. This drive has been attempted to be tamed by teachings on affects, but, as shown by V.V. Bibikhin's book "The Diaries of Leo Tolstoy" (a university course taught during the same years Agamben wrote his book), an affect can never become a form because it creates any form itself, any authentic experience of life.
This should be discussed in detail, but it is important to note what new contributions Agamben brings to this topic. First and foremost, being an animal for him is being a beast, and this is of great significance. A beast is always a species designation; moreover, a beast always risks remaining alone, from fabled monsters to Leviathan and Behemoth. Therefore, if the animal displays its multiplicity, the beast reveals its vanity. By referencing myths from the Judeo-Christian tradition—specifically to the "archons" with animal heads as unique beings of human celestial souls—Agamben equates the state of the beast with that of the angel, which is a novelty, for in traditional theology, angels are numerous; they are the very animals that comfort humanity with their manifold care for the very structure of the cosmos.
Only an ancient artist, Giotto or Michelangelo, could meticulously inscribe every detail for the angels to see, not just for human eyes, keeping in mind not only the perspective of an ordinary person but also that of the righteous, the angel, and the heavens. Yet modern painting—painting that recognizes only the human point of view—notes the whole, acknowledges the rhetorical composition, but fails to notice the intricate detailing that, according to Sontag, was restored only by photography, the insect eye of the photographic lens.

Now we can assert that art programs the solitude of animals: in the relentless perspective of the human gaze, each animal appears abandoned. Thus, the animal that has come to recognize itself becomes a beast. We encounter an animal with some flaw, one in which the biological program is disrupted, or at least what traditional biology regards as a program.

Such a flaw is the subject of the vibrant chapters of Agamben, which delve into Heideggerian philosophy, Yuksel's biology, and the (micro)history of taxonomies, as well as the (post)romantic notion of boredom. These excursions may remind one of the "incriminating paradigm" of Agamben's distinguished compatriot, art historian Carlo Ginzburg, but their aim is not to unveil the peculiarities of consciousness in this epoch; rather, they seek to expose the limitations of “merely human” consciousness. Time and again, humanity emerges as a mutated animal that cannot come to terms with its own openness, that feels shame for its mutation and its indecent state of transparency.

Agamben reveals the possibility of reading the history of the Fall anew (similar "demythologizing" interpretations are currently being undertaken by many theologians, including the Orthodox Christos Yannaras, with his book on evil, which we discussed earlier) not as the audacity of Adam and Eve understood in a moralistic sense, but as the pornography of the world, a transformation of the world into total openness. If the beast is open to the world, then the fallen human has determined that the entire world must open itself to him—again, not in a metaphorical sense of “opening up” as in “to disclose something” or “to communicate something,” but in a real sense, to become a boudoir for his desires.

And so it becomes evident that the focus of the beast is the same as that of the angel; it is precisely in that state where, if something is revealed and communicated, it is merely a feeling of the decrepitude of time. A human can say that he is tired of his surroundings, but to claim that he is weary of time itself—Heideggerian time—can only be uttered by an angel. While Sontag restored to humanity its former statuses—the status of observer, voyeur, the animal spy—through the lens of photography, Agamben speaks not of statuses or states but of something else altogether.

Indeed, Agamben discusses those situations in which it is pointless to cling to status, where there is no reason to define oneself as static or dynamic, whether one is poised for a leap or has already crossed the abyss, whether one has captured the prey or if the prey has revealed itself, disclosing information as information does.

The world of old moralistic metaphors recedes in the face of a new art of being—an art of "stupor," such that nothing is lost. Bibikhin referred to this as "amechania," the inability to perform a movement or manipulation, while in the "Diaries of Leo Tolstoy," he also recalls service: the organism serves humanity, but to what does humanity, the beast, serve? It does not serve meanings, nor the latest partitioning of the world into the significant and insignificant, nor a revision of its statuses, nor a dismissal of culture, nor even a lifting of its eyes to what is. It is capable of lowering its gaze and feeling shame, Agamben argues, precisely at those moments when the primal impulses of its brain (the impulses of proof) transform it into a celestial inhabitant.