Abstract:

In this paper present some points of Gumbrecht’s philosophical thinking about the presence, over the Heidegger’s Dasein senses, especially, regarding the possibilities and conditions of language in relation to this presentiment. From these logos, propose an introductory critique of the concepts of thing, of subject/object, of Cartesian worldview, showing, from the analyzed author, the possibilities of tangibility through language and what it represents in the face of existing of science paradigms.

Keywords:
Gumbrecht; Theory of Knowledge; Presence; Heidegger

Resumo:

O trabalho apresenta alguns pontos do pensamento filosófico de Gumbrecht sobre a presença, a partir do Dasein de Heidegger, especialmente, com relação às possibilidades e condições da linguagem relativamente a esta presentificação. Desse logos, propõe-se uma crítica introdutória aos conceitos de coisa, de sujeito e de objeto, de visão cartesiana do mundo, demonstrando, a partir da análise de parte da obra do autor, as possibilidades de tangibilidade por meio da linguagem e o que isso representa diante dos paradigmas vigentes das ciências.

Palavras-chave:
Gumbrecht; Teoria do Conhecimento; Presença; Heidegger

Résumé:

Ce travail a l’intention de présenter certains points de la pensée philosophique de Gumbrecht de la présence, du Dasein de Heidegger, en particulier en ce qui concerne les possibilités et les conditions de la langue sur cette présentification. Ce logos, nous proposons une critique d’introduction des concepts de chose, le sujet / objet de vue cartésien du monde, ce qui démontre, de l’auteur analysé, les chances de tangibilité à travers le langage et ce qu’il est avant paradigmes actuels de la science.

Mots-clés:
Gumbrecht; Théorie de la Connaissance; Présence; Heidegger

Introduction

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht was born in 1948 in Wuerzburg, Germany. He was an assistant professor in Konstanz, where he received his PhD. From 1983 to 1985 he was the vice-president of the German Association of Romanic Philology. He was a visiting professor in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Berkeley, Princeton, Montreal, Barcelona, Budapest, Lisbon, Cap Town and Paris (Ecole des Hautes Etudes). Currently, he is a literature professor in the University of Stanford, California. He advocates the riskful thinking, that sees in “consensus [...] the black hole of the Humanities”. According to Sanford (2000SANFORD, John. “Elementary pleasures” and “riskful thinking” matter to Gumbrecht. Stanford Report, November 17, 2000. Disponível em: <Disponível em: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2000/november29/gumbrecht-1129.html >. Acesso em: 03 jan. 2014.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2000/novem... , p. 1), in face of this thinking, Gumbrecht recognizes that the role of the academy is “to keep the sublime complexity alive”, by means of the heuristic movement, aiming at “[...] pursuing ideas [sic] and accomplishing research that [does not produce] only one or a few easy answers, but usually new questionings”. In this perspective, in a general way, his philosophy opens as a possibility to the epistemological diversity; to the inquiry of non-classic topics as Nature (oikos-logos) and ‒ in its characteristic polysemy ‒, to the inter-relations of the subjects.

To tense up these questionings, from the elaboration of “communication materialities”, in the beginning of the 1980s (Gumbrecht, 2010GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Produção de Presença - o que o sentido não consegue transmitir. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC- Rio, 2010. , p. 28) to his inquiries on the “[...] non-metaphysical alternatives to the hermeneutic culture prevailing in human sciences” (Jasmin, 2010JASMIN, Marcelo. Efeitos de uma intensa presença. In: GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Produção de Presença - o que o sentido não consegue transmitir . Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC- Rio , 2010. P. 7-12., p. 7), Gumbrecht has been developing research on what he calls “presence production” (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 38), as the first non-hermeneutic contact or assignment²¹ 1 Concerning the assignment of senses to “objects unable of reciprocity”, from quite a different point of view from Gumbrecht (sharing of senses of objects that are reciprocal for the simple fact of being available and possible to be experienced), see Tamen (2003, p. 12-14). For Tamen (based on Aristotle), the passivity of the object is absolute: this absence of reciprocity of the objects happens because they do not communicate nor interact/dialogue with the subject by means of a proper, logic, familiar and specifically cognitively apprehended language. In the object, it only reverberates what the subject thinks and says, as a projection that returns from the object (2003, p. 13); in this, the concept of object and thing at the same time is “shuffled”. of senses, of the subject in relation with objects of the world, in the condition of “desire to participate of its presence” (Gumbrecht, 1992, p. 7). Thus, it is possible to foresee the conceptualizations of culture of senses and culture of presence when reconstituting modernity history in Modernization of Senses (1998), in which he demonstrates the discontinuities between the subjective and the hermeneutic universe of the subjects in face of presence of world. Nonetheless, I intend here to present a brief introduction to the historical, sociocultural and political context of Modernity in which prevails the Cartesian hermeneutic form of culture of senses. On the other hand, I also intend to consider the multiple characters of the culture of presence, in the context of the epistemological diversity of the world in which they manifest²² 2 From anthropology, passing through religion to literature, the author advocates a great diversity of traditional or not, established or not, knowledge and practice, in which presence production (2010) is quite noticeable. Thus, because of the valuation of the epistemological diversity of the world (Santos, 2010) and the transdisciplinary connection of this subject and this research, the author presents to us non-excluding scientific discourses and that aim to favor other forms of conscience and production of knowledge engaged to the human culture - a condition of which the present modern epistemology discarded. , and, thus, to discuss the possibilities of presence production in the distinct human languages, presented by Gumbrecht as transdisciplinary possibilities. Thus, to understand the manifesto in favor of the transdisciplinary possibilities, it is necessary to know which concepts of discipline concern the subsumption to knowledge and to knowledge practices within a volume, a cosmos-abstractive, that arranges and conventionalizes them, aiming at a way of thinking and acting formed by the discourses and the practices of these discourses, in the condition of specific and disciplinary scientific behavior; such subsumption of knowledge and knowledge practices within a volume are convincing, for a certain time, according to its capacity of maintenance and hermeneutic unicity of the logicized world. Thus, I propose the questioning of “[...] how can it be explained that the accelerated proliferation of disciplines makes all knowledge units increasingly misleading [...]” (Nicolescu, 2005NICOLESCU, Basarab. O Manifesto da Transdisciplinaridade. São Paulo: Triom, 2005., p. 1). One of the recurring hypotheses in this article is that, due to the metaphysical configuration inherent to the language and its own analiticity, that is, to represent the constituent elements of the cosmos on which they are kept, loose and removed, the accelerated proliferation of disciplines, increasingly higher and varied, results in the removal of these objects of research in the scope of the disciplines, whose specialized language characterizes it by conceptual representation. This essential removal both deepens the belief in the impossibility of the thing-in-itself and clarifies the impossibility of knowledge unicity, in the very scope of the available conditions of world apprehension under the metaphysical configuration above mentioned.

The possibilities of language, in Gumbrecht’s related studies, provide an important subsidy for the transdisciplinary reflection, in the sense of renewing the proposals of epistemological diversification in the scope of philosophy, over all in Theory of Knowledge and Epistemology. It also contributes to a conceptual deepening of Nietzsche’s Dionysian worldview (2005NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. A Visão Dionisíaca do Mundo. São Paulo: Martins Fontes , 2005.) and offers reflections to Humanist Geography concerning the senses of place in the sensitive and existential aspect, considered by Yi-Fu Tuan (2012TUAN, Yi-Fu. Topofilia: um estudo da percepção, atitude e valores do meio ambiente. Londrina: Eduel, 2012. ; 2013). As well, it relates with the Heidegger’s concepts of openness, work, praxis, language, Dasein, Being-in-the-world (2006HEIDEGGER, Martin. Ser e Tempo. Tradução revisada de Márcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback. Petrópolis; Bragança Paulista: Vozes ; Universidade São Francisco, 2006.) ‒ an author who certainly exerted a major influence; also, Gumbrecht’s studies propose to consider the aspects of the culture of presence implicit in the Moran’s adaptability concept (2010MORAN, Emílio. Adaptabilidade Humana. São Paulo: Edusp, 2010.). There is a strong correlation with Maturana’s autopoiesis and biological phenomenology (2001MATURANA, Humberto. Cognição, Ciência e Vida Cotidiana. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2001.), an author to whom he dedicated an article (Gumbrecht, 2006a). To justify the above-mentioned claims, some works of the author in which the concept of culture of presence, or even presence, is developed were visited, over all related with Heidegger’s thinking, namely: Produção de Presença - o que o sentido não consegue transmitir (2010) [Production of presence: what meaning cannot convey]; Graciosidade e estagnação (2012); Making sense in life and literature (1992); Modernização dos sentidos (1998); A presença realizada nan linguagem: com atenção especial para a presença do passado (2009) [Presence achieved in language (with special attention given to the presence of the past)].

In Search of Presence

The paradox of the analytical removal in relation to the object as condition of its “apprehension” by the language and, consequently, of the interpretation of its deep sense (Gumbrecht, 2012GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Graciosidade e Estagnação: ensaios escolhidos. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC- Rio , 2012. , p. 71) is seen in Metaphysics as one of the classic philosophical foundations and, so to speak, a view of world that in its etymology intends to go over and above the physical, the tangible, raising, this way, a representation, a rationalized a-figuration of the object of knowledge. For instance, the written language already is an analytical, “metaphysical” and descriptive procedure; in face of objects, it evokes the thing²³ 3 Before the object, here it is the thing-in-itself, that loses, in some extent, its essence by representation. Representation is here a process of objectivation and linguistic-cognitive rationalization of the constituent elements of world, perceived under the condition of referral of senses and apprehension by similitudes, that is, by correlation with other known elements, objectified in the scope of the representations. by representation, objectifying it, through its ontological removal²⁴ 4 According to Chomsky (1997, p. 184), “[...] science begins when you understand that, to find reality, you need to move away from the phenomena”. (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 61-66). According to Heidegger (2001HEIDEGGER, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Achtzehnte Auflage. Unveränderter Nachdruck der fünfzehnten, an Hand der Gesamtausgabe duchgesehenen Auflage. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001. ), “[...] the ‘interpretive’ look to the things, that is, the ‘theoretical’ way of the look, would excuse the understanding [of objects as instruments] in its practicality”²⁵ 5 Der nur ‘theoretisch’ hinsehende Blick auf Dinge entbehrt des Verstehens von Zuhandenheit (Heidegger, 2001, § 15, p. 69). ; the modus of the culture of senses would result from this. In face of these contradictions between experience of presence and representation of the experience, Gumbrecht aims to introduce the modus of the culture of presence in the horizon of possibilities and conditions of the traditional understanding of language²⁶ 6 Couto (2007, p. 151-155) offers an overview of the conceptual evolution of language from the tradition of Metaphysics and new reflections to which he calls, among others, ecolinguistics. , reminding us of the hegemony of assignment of senses by the “hermeneutic culture” (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 7), specifically as a reflex of a tradition, namely, of a scientificist ideology (Nicolescu, 2005NICOLESCU, Basarab. O Manifesto da Transdisciplinaridade. São Paulo: Triom, 2005., p. 2), that specialized in the core of a “metaphysics of representation”. Based on these epistemological dimensions, Gumbrecht (2010, p. 10) defines that:

From the perspectives presented until here, it is questioned: is presence production possible for the language? Wouldn’t the suspension of the assignments of sense (Gumbrecht, 2004GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Production of Presence: what meaning cannot convey. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.) to objects nullify the language? To find some answers, it is necessary first to contextualize its manifesto, which is part of a de-constructivist discourse that is quite present in the contemporaneity. Having some conceptual theoretical bases from Heidegger, Lyotard²⁷ 7 The conceptualization hyper mediation versus corporeity in literature of, nostalgia for the lost body. , Derrida, Foucault and Nancy, among others, Gumbrecht acknowledges “[...] the paradigm crisis of the Great Social Theories of Modernity” (Evangelista, 2002EVANGELISTA, João. Crise do Marxismo e Irracionalismo Pós-moderno. São Paulo: Cortez: 2002., p. 11) which raised several criticisms to the models established by sciences and Philosophy, over all of “saturation of the Cartesian worldview” (Gumbrecht, 2004, p. 110) and the insistence in the maintenance of this saturation by means of the simulacrum of borders between scientific disciplines, or by the respect to these terms in the interdisciplinarity discourse, a “work of border” where intersections of knowledge never occur. In opposition to the Cartesian worldview in the disciplinary structures, that is, the division of the existing paradigm in non-communicable blocks between the disciplines, “transdisciplinarity is ‘between’, ‘through’ and ‘beyond’ the disciplines” (Nicolescu, 2005NICOLESCU, Basarab. O Manifesto da Transdisciplinaridade. São Paulo: Triom, 2005., p. 46), thus making it possible what Gumbrecht advocates: not the nullifying of the “culture of sense” by the prevailing of the “culture of presence”, but the interrelation between them (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 10) - certainly in the culture of presence there is a paradigmatic interrelation with the sensitive reason. According to Gumbrecht, the Western (in its inheritance of platonic tradition) and modern culture (over all in Kant and Hegel), is a “prevailingly culture of meaning” - which he argues when using, in a dichotomy perspective, two historical ways of the Western thinking: culture of presence/culture of sense (Gumbrecht, 2012, p. 61), in which truth is negotiable, but language is incapable²⁸ 8 The author refers to the discussion initiated by Saussure and next by Derrida, among others, questioning the metaphysical thinking, the post-linguistic turn, the linguistic existentialism. of relating to objects of the world (especially when we consider the problem of the thing-in-itself); the human self-reference is the thinking itself, in the same Cartesian tradition that uses the term res cogitans [...] (Gumbrecht, 2012, p. 63-64) as “hermeneutic field”²⁹ 9 For Gumbrecht, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer are the refounders of the modern hermeneutics. , an instance of removal of presence from the constituent world elements and that attains its interpretation. The author recognizes that there is an essential problem of ad infinitum attempts of compensation of the meanings of the things by means of the interpretation:

However, previously it is necessary to differentiate two other paradigms that, according to the author, provide, each one, distinct ways of approximation to objects of the world, namely: “the concept of object and of thing”³⁰ 10 In his book, Production of presence, Gumbrecht (2010) seems not to articulate well these terms. (Gumbrecht, 1998GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Modernização dos Sentidos. São Paulo: Editora 34, 1998., p. 65). Previous to the object, we have the concept of thing, that, so to speak, is lost, in some extent, of its incognito essence, by the referred representation in object, in the scope of the similitudes, i.e., comparison/association of the thing perceived in representation, in the scope of a conjunction of names (objectivation) in synonymy among objects. From the metaphysical condition of the language we have the process of bringing the thing to the linguistic reality and the understanding, by the name assigned (objectivation) in synonymy with other objects-named. The referred representation consists of this: in bringing to the linguistic reality by the assignment of a name, that evokes not the undifferentiated thing in the language (element out of the cosmos) anymore, however the object - as what is objectified to our sensitive universe, by means of a denomination that is always a comparison, even when tacit, with other objects-of-apprehension of the subject. From the tradition of removal, that is, intrinsic to the “Cartesian image of the world” (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 14), it was accomplished the Cartesian cognitive anthropocentrism of the cogito ergo sum. Nonetheless, the phenomena (or things in the process of the perceived) are set in removal: the cognoscive subject abstracts the thing in his conscience as condition of symbolic and analytic apprehension ‒ when usually we speak of an assignment of sense. Therefore, it is in this context of metaphysics that, according to Couto (2007COUTO, Hildo. Ecolinguística: estudo das relações entre língua e meio ambiente. Brasília: Thesaurus, 2007., p. 151), “the language autonomy will be affirmed in relation with the actual presence of the world of objects”, prioritizing, over all, its hermeneutic aspect (and it is obvious that objects are susceptible elements of the language). With certain theoretical approaches, Merleau-Ponty (2011, p. 496) claimed on this belief that “[...] if the thinking itself did not place in the things what it would next find in them, it would not have power over the things, it would not think of them” - a conditioned look is when the observer already recognizes the object of his observation, even intuitively. Thus, for the phenomenologists of the 20th century were the problems³¹ 11 Concerning the dilemmas of the conceptualization of the subject object relation of the Descartes, Spinoza, Wolff, Leibniz’s dogmatic rationalism; Bacon, Locke and Hume’s Skeptical Empirism, and Kant’s Criticism. or aporias presented by the Theory of the Knowledge, from Descartes to Kant, resolved? Gumbrecht would claim that there is a primacy (of interpretation) of the subject over the object; in view of this, concerning the concept of thing as a phenomenon, Gumbrecht calls it res extensa, that is, what is presented only in the condition of spatial and extensive removal in face of the sensitive apparatus of the subject ³² 12 Tuan (2013) differentiates space and place, articulating these two opposing concepts with removal and approximation. The space concept is a representation of place, an abstraction, in the quality of place is the landmark of being-in-the-world, where its senses are conditioned to, and constructed in the experiences of presence of the subject situated and implied there. . For the subject, objects have their condition of being from the language and things are, so to speak, elements of the Nature susceptible to perception, rationalization (denomination). This way, a thing is a metaphysical element of transition, between the incognito and open nature and the denomination/rationalization in object of knowledge. On the other hand, “the interrelation with the world established on the presence” (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 15), on the work with the objects of the daily world, would lead the subjects to understand that the “perception does not happen in the emptiness, but in a being-with-the-perceived” (Macedo, 2010MACEDO, Roberto. Etnopesquisa Crítica, Etnopesquisa-Formação. 2. ed. Brasília: Liber Livro, 2010., p. 16), in an encounter that corroborates for the improvement (in the sense of shaping, assigning an aspect, a form), as, “[...] from the world the being will, then, reveal himself in the touch and, thus, become accessible [...]” (Heidegger, 2006HEIDEGGER, Martin. Ser e Tempo. Tradução revisada de Márcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback. Petrópolis; Bragança Paulista: Vozes ; Universidade São Francisco, 2006., § 12, p. 93) and, in this manner, it will be understood the importance of the openness of the world to the subject, received in the acts of respect, valuation and shelter to everything that is found as presence in face of the body. Bergson (2011BERGSON, Henri. Memória e Vida. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2011., p. 82) also warned us with his “philosophy of presence” that “[...] the objects that surround my body reflect the possible action of my body on them”, thus demonstrating the mutual influence of these interactions, over all of responsibility.

In contrast with the Cartesian concept of thing, Gumbrecht presents the concept of object as what is present (prae-esse), that is, “in front of us” (2012, p. 64). For Heidegger (2001HEIDEGGER, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Achtzehnte Auflage. Unveränderter Nachdruck der fünfzehnten, an Hand der Gesamtausgabe duchgesehenen Auflage. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001. ), the tangibility of the objects of the world requires the instrumentalization of another object aiming at a mediation³³ 13 Die Seinsart von Zeug, in der es sich von ihm selbst her offenbart, nennen wir die Zuhandenheit (Heidegger, 2001, § 15, p. 69). with the presence of the world of life, thus acquiring its usability, its handiness (Zuhandenheit); the accomplishment of this mediation is the exclusive historical condition of the subject - of this consist some of the Heideggerian senses of technique. Regarding these experiences, it is first in the work with the world and later in its interpretation that the subjects “cognitively share in common” (Schutz, 2012SCHUTZ, Alfred. Sobre Fenomenologia e Relações Sociais. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2012., p. 346). This way, a dear concept to Gumbrecht (2012, p. 65) is that “the being-in-the-world is, undoubtedly, a necessary and a priori constitution of presence [...]” (Heidegger, 2006, § 12), emphasizing his rediscovery ‒ of the body as an instance of contact with the world, but still reconsidering it as empirical instances of the perception. On this In-der-Welt-sein, Heidegger himself says that “[...] being-in-the-world is a necessary and a priori condition of presence, however, it is not enough to, in its totality, determine its being” (Heidegger, 2006, §12, p. 99), as the being present in the world is constituted, according to the metaphysical tradition, in being³⁴ 14 “Das In-der-Welt-sein ist zwar eine a priori notwendige Verfassung des Daseins, aber längst nicht ausreichend, um dessen Sein voll zu bestimmen” (Heidegger, 2001, § 12, p. 437). . In turn, Gumbrecht (2010, p. 92) identifies that:

In his criticisms of the Western metaphysics, Gumbrecht (2012GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Graciosidade e Estagnação: ensaios escolhidos. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC- Rio , 2012. , p. 63) tries to demonstrate some problems in this expression³⁵ 15 Metaphysics, Μετά τα φυσικά, means beyond the physical things. Title given by Andronicus of Rhodes to fourteen books of Aristotle who, in turn, did not use this expression. , referring to the “tense oscillations” - and not resolved - between language and presence in its aspects of polysemy, paradoxes, dissonances and collapses (Gumbrecht, 2010, p. 33) that are present in the language itself. Specifically, when claiming that:

For this, he elaborates what he calls the “two metaphysical levels” of relation with the presence of the world, namely, “actual surface” related to culture of presence and “semantic depth” (Gumbrecht, 2010GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Produção de Presença - o que o sentido não consegue transmitir. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC- Rio, 2010. , p. 71), based on the culture of sense. Thus, regarding these oscillations, what the representation would like to assign in language (in its foundation, in its origin) “presence there obliterates” (Nancy, 1993NANCY, Jean-Luc. The Birth to Presence. California: Stanford University Press, 1993. , p. 4-5), allowing the far away object to escape and strengthening what Kant would call the impossibility of Ding an sich (thing-in-itself). Because of this, the author, when criticizing the paradigms of hermeneutics and interpretation of culture of senses, takes on the commitment of:

In another occasion, the author would claim another aspect of the culture of presence, that “[...] human beings consider themselves as part of the objects of the world and are not ontologically separate from it” (Gumbrecht, 2010GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Produção de Presença - o que o sentido não consegue transmitir. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC- Rio, 2010. , p. 65). Because of this co-belonging, the “human capacity of imbuing meaning in the world” (Moran, 2010MORAN, Emílio. Adaptabilidade Humana. São Paulo: Edusp, 2010., p. 87) would be proved, since the presence culture reemerges in a movement of epistemological saturation and aims at an organic, experiential approximation and an affective interaction, by means of an understanding that is not only of sense; for that, it is necessary to rethink the concept of thing and recognize that this already is tangential to the subject as presence. According to Gumbrecht (1992, p. 72),

This way, if the object is a means and a way, between the cosmos where subsumes to the representation of the subject, the thing is the means to the object, that is, from the nature previously undifferentiated to the arranged dimension of the cosmos where the objects are referred, rationalized, represented. From the convergence of the concepts of “Dasein and presence” (Gumbrecht, 2004GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Production of Presence: what meaning cannot convey. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004., p. 72), the author claims that, for being strictly correlated with the substance, they are linked to “the spatial dimension and are associated with the movement” (Gumbrecht, 2004, p. 77). According to Blanc (2011BLANC, Mafalda de Faria. Introdução à Ontologia. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget, 2011., p. 39), Heidegger “[...] emphasized in Sein und Zeit, (following what was already said by Marx), the primacy of the praxis over the theoretical or contemplative attitude” of the representation, the interpretation and the signification of objects of the daily world, as practices of senses production ‒ “[...] what we used to see as occupying both the places of subject and of object” (Gumbrecht, 1992, p. 4); indeed, I think that before taking on the role of “signifier”, from a given context of meanings, it is condition of the modern subject to subject himself to the conditions of sense production, and to the constituent concept of the object in question, in the scope of a knowledge previously established³⁶ 16 However, this is not a general rule. Within the possibilities of the subject’s being, transit possibilities of conceptual emancipation in face of the objects already given, that is, meanings. There is always a range of possible senses in the polysemy proper of the objects, when in this context of emancipation of the subject. Regarding the object, an oscillation of meanings in crisis is always the crisis between paradigms. The subjects are and exert their functions in the scope of the constant paradigmatic crisis. The insufficiency of senses and the conceptual incompleteness of the objects, in a knowledge field, evidence that the founding paradigm does not duly provide a conceptual and representational approximation of the object to the truth of the thing (Nature’s constituent element). . The author also presents the problem of praxis (Gumbrecht, 1992, p. 27-28), not like Marx, but from Heidegger, in the sense of work, in the sense of a term that bases his argument on “culture of presence” (Gumbrecht, 1992, p. 64), in connection with the notion of Dionysian (Nietzsche), being-in-the-world, situated existence (Heidegger), multireferenciality (Ardoino), transdisciplinarity (Nicolescu), ecolinguistics (Couto), Ethnoecology (Toledo), complexity (Morin, 2000MORIN, Edgar. Ciência com Consciência. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand, 2000.), over all the concept of ecology of knowledge (Santos) ‒ characteristic of culture of presence ‒, which has as a proposal an openness to other forms of knowledge (ethnic, popular, common sense) in face of the mainstream knowledge of interpretative sciences (culture of sense).

Language Amalgamations

In his paper Presence in language or presence achieved against language?, Gumbrecht (2006bGUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Presence in Language or Presence Achieved against Language?. Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada, Niterói, Universidade Federal Fluminense, v. 8, n. 8, p. 129-138, 2006b.) introduces some historical evidences on the culture of presence, which he defines as “the six types of amalgamations between language and presence” (2004, p. 65): the spoken language as physical reality; the essential practices of philology; any type of language able to cause an aesthetic experience to the mystic experience in the scope of the language of the mystic, in its symbology³⁷ 17 According to Durand, (1993, p. 10), also “[...] the symbol is, as allegory, redirection of the sensitive, from the figured to the meaning, but it is also, by the very nature of the meaning inaccessible, epiphany, that is, emergence, through and in the signifier, of the unspeakable [...]”. ; the openness of the language to the world of objects; literature as a site of epiphany. All of them attain much more by a return to the things themselves than by the sense of these things in the condition of objects; they are less cognitive and more “moments of intensity” (Gumbrecht, 2004, p. 98). In the first amalgamation, Gumbrecht reminds us Gadamer’s concept of volume of the language (differentiating of its propositional and apophantic character), to the percussive aspect of the sonority of the language next to the human body as physical reality. In his text The Power of Philology, he offers an example of this culture of presence, mentioning the second amalgamation.

The third one, a language able to provide “lived experiences” (äesthetisches Erleben), in the scope of a phenomenology of the aesthetics, and not as an interpretive experience or representation, but as purely physical perception³⁸ 18 It is valid to consider such experience in the first person, the artist, in the work of techné. (Gumbrecht, 2010GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Produção de Presença - o que o sentido não consegue transmitir. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC- Rio, 2010. , p. 129), as “things that literally affect our body” (Heidegger, 2010HEIDEGGER, Martin. A Origem da Obra de Arte. São Paulo: Edições 70, 2010., p. 59) in their action of presence. For instance, for Luhmann, communication in the art system is a form of communication within which the (purely sensorial) perception is not only an assumption but also “a conveyed content, together with the meaning of the word” (Gumbrecht, 2012, p. 68). The mystic experience³⁹ 19 In his book, Egocentrism and Mystics, Tugendhat (2013, p. 127) puts it in the first person. Differently from religion, the mystics is accessible to all people, also called multiplicity of the phenomenic world. and the language of the mystic “[...] produce the paradoxical effect of stimulating imaginations that seem to make this presence actual” (2012, p. 69); in the openness of the language to the world of objects, words are used “to point to objects instead of representing them” (2012, p. 69); “literature as a site of epiphany” (2012, p. 70), whose better examples are in James Joyce’s works, overall when claiming “[...] a sudden manifestation, either in the vulgarity of the discourse or the gesture, or in a memorable phase of the mind itself” (Joyce, 1993, p. 113); “epiphany is the universal identity of all men” (White, 2003WHITE, Edmund. Genet: uma biografia. São Paulo: Editora Record, 2003. , p. 490), when the individual is “set at the level of things” (Sant’anna, 1973SANT’ANNA, Affonso Romano de. A Análise Estrutural de Romances Brasileiros. Vozes: Petrópolis, 1973., p. 197) and, in the work, interacts with them. Or, in the moment when a thing is not perceived anymore as a phenomenon, in the forecasted of his essence, previous to its discovery in denomination and in word, in the horizon of the language; in aesthetics ‒ just like in the mystics ‒, the presence effect is the epiphany as an unexpected event; so to speak, epiphany is always a happening previous to the “logos”. On “presence culture and culture of senses”, Gumbrecht (2010, p. 15) advocates a relation that oscillates between effect of presence and effect of senses, because he recognizes the amalgamation, the tie between presence and sense, since “[...] man is an animal secured to the webs of signification that he weaved himself” (Geertz, 2011GEERTZ, C. A Interpretação da Cultura. Reimpressão da 1. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Editora LTC, 2011., p. 4). Even in this relation, it can be perceived a differentiation: “the body as a place” of presence and immanence, and “the mind as space” of senses and transcendence (Tuan, 2014TUAN, Yi-Fu. Space and place - 2013 / Espaço e lugar - 2013. Geograficidade, Niterói, v. 4, n. 1, p. 4-13 2014., p. 8). As presence, the objects “[...] return to my body, just like a mirror would do, their occasional influence; they are arranged according to increasing or decreasing capacities of my body” (Bergson, 2011BERGSON, Henri. Memória e Vida. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2011., p. 82).

Final Remarks

When demonstrating the contrasting aspects of the culture of sense and culture of presence, Gumbrecht explains that the presence dimension is a matter for analysis, as one of the basic paradigms of Metaphysics; this happens by the very act of its analytical configuration, that is, of placing itself spatially distant from the object, of an empathy without tangency, much more interpretive and hermeneutic, by means, over all, of the taking over of senses, as it prioritizes less the empirical dimension. The Culture of Sense can be understood as removal from the other, from life and from the nature without losing the approval of analytical assignment of senses to things, through the language. On the other hand, the culture of presence concerns to an ontological materiality - it transits through and ecoexperiential ontological dimension where the presence is a foundation of the experience of the things, since the materiality of the language is the bond of the subject with the world, in a deep empathy that does not nullify their alterities. The Gumbrechtian Culture of Presence has a strong relation with the ecolinguistics because it indicates the possibilities of the close bond of language with the environment, that is, with the experience of the polysemic materiality of the life. Thus, reconsidering the Humanities, over all Philosophy and the qualitative sciences, the culture of presence urges us to develop reflexive, tangible and affective inter-relations implied to the Other, the site (oikos) where we inhabit.

The problem of presence in metaphysics is conditioned to the linguistic and conceptual questions of historical constitution, which are proper of the reflection and methodology of assignment of senses to objects over and above - what does not apprehend its physical configuration, only the interpretive, representational one. And this tendency of removal is constant in sciences established in the Modernity, consequently a removal from social, ecologic and ethnic questions. Examining the daily aspects of presence production culture, it can be assessed from it that the relation of the subject with the object is motivated by aspects that are also affective⁴⁰ 20 Zizek (2008, p. 30) tells us that “[...] the basic way of the object’s passivity, of its passive presence, is the one that moves and bothers” – his perception motivates us to come closer to the objects, having as a result a presence relation. Differently, Aristotle, when urging on the “love to the wine”, claimed that “there cannot be reciprocity with an inanimate object”; therefore, the object would not urge the subject to an approximation. Thus, this classic philosopher assigned to the subject the total initiative to go to objects. , from the assignment of senses in the work, from the needs that motivate his praxis. In a phenomenological radicalization, would the language be more than a mediation tool (Zuhandenheit), in which the two wills (mediating conscience and immediate phenomenon) meet in provisory possibilities of signification? In any way, the Gumbrechtian presence would be closely related to the Heideggerian term being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein), previously understood in the condition of transcendental set of meanings and senses, which is first lived in the work, the ontic contacts of Dasein with the presence of this world and, next, understood by its characteristic hermeneutics: the possible ontology of its language.

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