Event: philosophy sub specie eventi

Abstract

The article argues that the philosophy of the twentieth century is characterized by a tran­sition from a view according to which the mind tends to contemplate things sub specie aeterni (Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel) to an understanding that things and the world should be taken sub specie eventi (Bakhtin, Heidegger, Deleuze). Event in its various manifesta­tions becomes the subject of philosophical comprehension. The authors point at two onto­logical characteristics of the phenomenon of an event – an event always happens, i.e. an event cannot be thought outside of time, and an event always appears as the unity of heterogeneous. Distinguishing the concepts of incident and that of event, the authors analyze the problem of the beginning of an event. Based on the ideas of synergetics, the authors argue that an event has no cause, but there are prerequisites – a state of uncertainty and an attractor that organizes the constitution of the event/incident. The authors focus their attention on the problem of the connection between meaning and event that characterizes the events of the world of human existence. It is shown that in the world of human existence a situation of uncertainty is a problematic situation. The solution to a problem situation is an event that is associated with this situation not by causal, but by casual relations, when the singularities of a given situation set the initial conditions for an action and provide real opportunities for its accomplishment. It is important here that the logic of action and the course of thought are governed not by general ideas, but by the premises given here and now. This is how a new version of the identity of “thought and being” declares itself: meaning as an intention and a productive force of the initial condition for constituting an event are identical to the event itself. Being/event is objecti­fied as res gestae, which acts as an organizing force and by this force the being acquires the ability to declare and affirm itself as integrity and organization. The authors sug­gest that the philosophical understanding of an event provides a new way to corelate the two main traditions in contemporary Western philosophy – the “continental” and the “analytic”.