On the problems of temporalization - concepts of time and future in (classical) Ontology, Philosophy of History and Theory of Systems. Contextualizing Schellings philosophy of identity.

• Applicant: Dr. Thomas Kisser
• Subject Area: History of Philosophy
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 454194103

How to understand the way in which the temporal and processual character of life was translated into the philosophical systems of the 19th century? Fichte, Schelling and Hegel see their own time as transitional; they believe they are able to capture this transitional aspect with their thought, and also want to steer it. That is why a goal is drafted for the future; a goal that is determined descriptively or normatively, and that conceives time teleologically and eschatologically. Thus, although in all three authors we can find an orientation towards the future, it is not the case that the future is open. The historical process is always thought from the end – even if this is attained only as an ‘endless approximation’ (unendliche Annäherung). The question is: how can we understand today this teleological and eschatological dimension of the end of history? Niklas Luhmanns analysis of modern society and its dynamic of temporalization claims to be able to consider the openness of the future as a factual praxis of contemporary society. According to Luhmann the specific character of modern society is contingency. Beyond all teleological determination, contingency defines itself as an autopoietic and evolutive process, which does not know any end from within itself. But his system’s theory interprets the openness of the future as something that only emerges as a form of living (Lebenpraxis) in the so called ‘next society’, the one that comes with digitalization. In modern societies, according to this theory, this openness remains covert. The project starts by presenting three concepts of time. Firstly, the classic ontological conceptualization of time that contrasts time to eternity and devalues it as a result; secondly, the notion of time from the philosophy of history, were time is seen as a function of the goal of reason; thirdly the conceptualization of time that develops in the systematic approaches and understandings of modernity, according to which time becomes the space for contingency. The hypothesis is that a salient feature of each conceptual node is the concept of negation. And hence, that different forms and understandings of negation correspond to each understanding of time and process. Namely, negation as privation in the ontological conception of time, and secondly negation as real negation and as negation of negation as structure of processual thought. Finally, within system-theory, negation acquires the value of reflexivity: it is the second value against which the designated value is set up against in the binary codes. These binary codifications structure all societal subsystems: such as true/untrue in scientific systems, just/unjust in legal systems, adequate/inadequate in art systems etc. I this way, three models of asymmetry appear to us. In each of the conceptual nodes, the primacy is set up against negation, but this is formulated in each case with very different theoretical tools.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants