4
Universality is the first extension of space-time. This extension can be comprehended mathematically. It is entirely un-eventful, absolutely empty. Universality as such is therefore the universal.
If there is a riddle to thinking, it is here. Although every universal riddle can be solved, there is an infinite chain of such riddles. Thinking can never return to the beginning, since there is always a beginning before the beginning.
The unprethinkable pre-originality of un-eventful space-time, however, belongs to the universal. This pre-originality harbours the originary word, the originary meaning that withdraws and always will withdraw from us.
We could perhaps gesture toward this originary word with the German expression, Es gibt.1 This would be somewhat misleading, however, since here there is neither a giver nor a gift. ‘Gift’ is too rich a word to designate the pure, universal extension of un-eventful space-time.
And yet: es gibt the four universals (U I – IV). The universals fill the un-eventful extension of space-time. They serve to present universality via the relation between the PT and the MTT. The universality of the universal = the universal topology, the bare Es gibt as the UT of the I-M-M.2
Technology is not something technological; capital is not something capitalistic; the medium is not something medium-like. Science is not something scientific. The human is not something human. Nature is not something natural.
The Es gibt is not something given. These negations advert to the originary sense that withdraws from us.3
U I presents itself as technology.capital.medium; U II as science; U III as the human being; U IV as nature.
Presence is not a product, nor is it something human or natural. The presence of U I – IV is the bare Es gibt of the UT.
Presence loses itself in the universals; it is dissembled by them. In the four universals there are [gibt es] either technological or natural products. Such technological and natural – indeed all universal – entities protrude beyond their own presence, so that what appears is never presence itself.
Presence can nonetheless be separated from that which presents itself. For presence itself is not something presented.
This is already indicated by the fact that, while all four universals present themselves, the presence in all of these presentations is the same. Furthermore, the difference between presence and presented can be experienced in intimacy.
Presence is liberated from the presented, which vanishes. Presence becomes pure presence.
Pure presence is that which first fills the un-eventful extension of space-time; the beginning of universal being.
The unprethinkable meaning of the originary word, the originary meaning, is – precisely because it is unprethinkable – necessarily not mathematical, but rather hyper-mathematical. Hyper-mathematics transcends space-time and pure presence. Its axioms are unknown and, as hyper-axioms, must remain so. For the originary meaning is not being, but rather hyper-being – an intensive schism in being, a pure outside (UT).
The bare Es gibt (UT) first gives pure presence (which means that the Es gibt is never pure presence, but neither is it pure absence). It gives (UT) rise to the MTT; it is identical to and different from the MTT as the topology of mathematical possibilities. The universals are formed within the MTT. The first and thus leading universal is the coplanar TCM universal.
The bare Es gibt (UT) is the origin of the I-M-M as the monochrome surrounding field of the MTT – the surrounding field since the I-M-M gives on to the MTT, i.e. constitutes the flesh of mathematics.
The UT contains the possibility of the PT and the MTT. Intelligence belongs to it. The realization of this possibility is necessarily an intelligent realization, and so takes the form of living beings (animal → human). Because living beings are intelligent, the inversion of the PT and the MTT ensues. It might even be claimed that the human being developed from less intelligent to more intelligent modes of presentation. This process was inevitable.
Through the inversion of the PT and the MTT, the I-M-M comes to form the field of thought, which is henceforth never to be departed from. The originary word – the bare Es gibt (UT) – is inconceivable. The origin of intelligence – inconceivable; its emergence is nonetheless illuminated by its determinations.
Universality as such – the bare Es gibt (UT) – is neither something given nor something that gives; it is neither pure presence nor pure absence, neither being nor nothing. Neither is it a universal in the manner of the four universals. It is impossibility.
Universals I – IV are not contingently given, yet neither are they necessarily given. The UT lies beyond the distinction between contingency and determinism. It is intensive difference, the rift, freedom, i.e. impossibility. There is one trace of the UT: philosophy.
The UT charts a path from the intensive schism in being, through the freedom of the impossible, to philosophy.
Notes
1 See n. 63 to Chapter 3 – TR.
2 Cf. Plotinus, ‘On the Good or the One’, in Enneads VI. 6–9, trans. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 9, 3: ‘gar hē tou henos phusis ousa tōn pantōn ouden estin autōn’, translated by Armstrong as: ‘For since the nature of the One is generative of all things it is not any one of them.’ The question here is whether this characterization of the One as nature or as generative of all things does not cancel out its first meaning. It is evident that that which produces all things cannot itself be one of these things. Yet if all is production, then this distinction collapses. Plotinus himself seems to offer a solution to this problem at the end of Ennead VI 9, when he says of erēmia – isolation or solitude – that it ‘takes place’ as pure stasis, as a complete standstill. Where such a standstill reigns, nothing is any longer produced. He nonetheless maintains that everything emanates from the One. In Ennead V 3, ‘On the Knowing Hypostases and That Which Is Beyond’, Plotinus addresses the question of how the One constitutes the ground of the intellect and the soul without generating the intellect and the soul. As that which gives, it does not itself enter into the process of production. It rather gives the intellect the capacity to constitute itself. The absolutely transcendental One nonetheless remains the origin of all things. Whether Plotinus’s solution to the problem is convincing is an open question. Plotinus is ultimately a metaphysical philosopher, i.e. a philosopher for whom the being of the physical has a metaphysical ground. Contemporary philosophy no longer thinks in this way. And yet just because the question of the absolute origin is no longer inquired into, this does not mean it has been solved.
3 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in Philosophical and Political Writings, ed. Manfred Stassen, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Continuum, 2003), 279: ‘Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological.’ The ‘essence’ of ‘being’ is never a ‘being’ [etwas ‘Seiendes’]. Here we are not dealing with a negation in the logical sense, but rather with a first and last difference between determinations and their first and last source. This source cannot be theologized, since it never provides a first and last sense. It rather withdraws, making any totality of sense impossible.