the three basic stages of ontogeny

In Plato’s metaphysics, reality is sharply divided into changeless Being and beings that become. For his student Aristotle, Being is a “mover” that it- self is unmoved. Down through the centuries into the present time, this static view of Being has been profoundly influential. This is the view that was challenged in Merleau-Ponty’s later works. “Wild or brute [B]eing” (1968, 211) is no immutable spirit transforming the earth from on high. Because Being itself is of earth, because it is fleshly and embodied, it par- ticipates in transformational processes in such a way that it is affected by them. Earthly matter is in process, and living matter develops, pass- ing through stages of biogenesis. Being, in like manner, possesses the character of a living organism—though not a finite particular organism,

to be sure. Rather, Being is a generic organicity, a whole dimension of life; neither object nor subject alone, it is a sub-objective lifeworld. Nonethe- less, that world develops. To speak as we have of Being’s motherly self- Appropriation, of her “midwife-assisted self-giving,” is to intimate that Being indeed engages in a bodily self-transformation: She gives birth to herself. Before proceeding to consider this developmental process in a systematic way, let me add a word of clarification on the question of gender.

Though I have used feminine descriptors to characterize Being, hardly can “she” be regarded feminine as opposed to masculine, since to do so would be to define “her” one-sidedly, in the dualistic terms of patriarchy. To avoid gender splits and stereotypes, my portrayal of individuation as a “motherly” or “maternal” process is to be understood in a dialectical sense of maternity, not in the stereotypically “feminine” sense. This does not mean that Being is gender neutral. It is not androgynous but her- maphroditic—to adopt another metaphor often found in the alchemical literature. In fact, the specific sense in which Being is a “hermaphrodite” has already been adumbrated: rather than being “all woman,” she con- tains within her the seed of a masculinity or fatherly subjectivity whose development is inextricably entwined with her own.

1.1. Individuation as ontogeny

The word “ontogeny” (from the Greek, ontos, being, and genesis, genera- tion) is commonly defined as the development of an individual being, with “being” normally understood in the ontical sense. To be “in-dividual” is to be undivided, to possess a unitary core, a coherent and stable cen- ter of identity. From very early on, human growth and development is guided by the fundamental tendency toward individuation.

In Volatile Bodies (1994), Elizabeth Grosz examines the original con- dition for the emergence of individuality:

For the subject to take up a position as a subject, it must be able to be situated in the space occupied by its body. This anchoring of subjectivity in its body is the condition of coherent identity, and, moreover, the condition under which the subject has a per- spective on the world, and becomes a source for vision, a point from which vision emanates and to which light is focused. (47)

The emergent subject is “the focal point organizing space. The represen- tation of space is . . . a correlate of one’s ability to locate oneself as the point of reference of space: the space represented is a complement of the kind of subject who occupies it” (47). Fully developed, the space in ques- tion is “the perspectival space that has dominated perception at least since the Renaissance” (48); i.e., it is the continuum. In sum: “A stabi- lized body image, . . . a consistent and abiding sense of self and bodily boundaries, requires and entails understanding one’s position vis-à-vis others, one’s place at the apex or organizing point in the perception of space” (48). So our earliest, most basic sense of ourselves as stable and autonomous individuals is inseparably linked to our experience with space. (The idealized Cartesian subject might fancy itself a disembodied spirit that is freely transcendent of space, but the underlying reality is that—however high this subject may appear to fly—it remains “tethered to its ground.” The subject’s relation to space necessarily is maintained, as the old formula implies: object-in-space-before-subject.)

Grosz’s analysis builds on Freud and Lacan. Freud’s (1914/1957) con- cept of “primary narcissism” implies that there is a primary constancy grounding all others: the image of one’s body, which constitutes the ear- liest manifestation of the ego. Because one’s imagined body serves as the frame of reference from which all observations are made, an object seen to change with changes in perspective can be taken as the same object only insofar as the observer’s body is implicitly sensed as remaining the same. Object constancy thus depends on subject constancy, or, in Freudian terms, on the constancy of the ego.

In Lacan’s (1953) elaboration on Freud, the “mirror stage” is crucial to the initial appearance of an invariant body image. The child begins to develop a stable sense of its identity, to form an image of its own body as a whole, when the mother’s body can be mirrored back to it as its pri- mary object or alter ego. This possibility arises at around six months of age and depends, in turn, on the psychological separation of the infantile body from that of the mother. Grosz (1994), in drawing on Lacan, thus observes that it is in this mirror stage that “the division between subject and object (even the subject’s capacity to take itself as an object) becomes possible for the first time” (32). And, of course, this is the stage in which space first appears. It is through the medium of space that confirmation of one’s basal identity is mirrored back to one. In encountering expected

variations in the appearance of the mother’s face with changes in spatial perspective upon her, the emergent individual is reassured that he is in- deed one.

Grosz cites Lacan’s observation that, in the mirror stage, “‘the total form of the body by which the subject anticipates in a mirage the matu- ration of his powers is given to him only as a Gestalt’” (1994, 42). Her conclusion is that the “mirror image provides an anticipatory ideal of unity to which the ego will always aspire” (42)—even though this “model of bodily integrity” is something “the subject’s experience can never con- firm” (43). However, while “the stability of the unified body image . . . is always precarious” (43), it is just this imagined unity of the ego or sub- ject that anchors human identity and permits the process of human de- velopment to go forward.

1.2. Individuation as Ontogeny

If the mirror stage is the period during which object-in-space-before- subject first emerges, it marks the beginning of ontogeny. But it is not the beginning of Ontogeny. In capitalizing the latter term, I mean to indicate that we are now speaking ontologically, dealing with dimensional devel- opment, with the individuation of Being itself.

To understand the developmental process in Ontogenetic terms, it will not suffice to go back to the young child’s first experiences with ob- jects in space. We must go still further backward into infancy. At the very outset of development, there is no “infantile observer,” no imma- ture Cartesian subject who may be epistemically fused with its objective environment in that it can perceive no differences between itself and oth- ers, but is nonetheless ontologically detached from that environment. Ontologically—Ontogenetically—what we are dealing with initially is the opening phase in the development of Being itself, a stage in which a subject has simply not yet been separated from an object, that wherein the projection of object-in-space-before-subject has not yet occurred. In the primal situation, then, it is not just a matter of the subject being un- able to know the object as distinct from itself; rather, subject and object are ontologically undifferentiated here; they do not yet constitute well- formed modalities of Being.

Let us say that, in infancy, embryonic subjectivity “rests in the womb” of a Being that itself is embryonic, having not yet given birth to itself.

Then three-dimensional Being responds to the encouragement it receives from the Appropriative urgings of the lower-dimensional midwives. The self-Appropriative labor of Being thus begins, and, when the period of gestation is completed, Being can give to itself what is its own by send- ing forth from its womb the ontical orientation of object-in-space-before- subject. Note again that, because the “child” is motherly Being’s gift to herself, the child’s development is not only, or even primarily, what is at stake here. Of foremost concern is the mother’s own development. By giving itself subject-object differentiation, Being clarifies itself.

It may be useful to distinguish ontical clarification from the self- clarification of Being. In the former case, what is clarified is a specific matter, a finite particular being assumed to be already projected before a reflecting subject. In contrast, the self-clarification of Being that con- stitutes its self-Appropriation is the prereflective self-orienting action that first makes possible clarification of the ontical kind. In the initial phase of Ontogeny, what is unclear is not some particular object, but the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity as such. We could say that, in this stage, Being is disoriented; it lacks direction. Then, in the en- suing stage, Being commences to clarify the relationship between subject and object, to differentiate them, by conferring a direction upon their in- teraction. With the projection of object-in-space-before-subject, aware- ness is now oriented to function in a single direction: from the subjective ground of reflection to the objects that are cast before the reflecting sub- ject. Of course, this unidirectional from-to gearing accords with the “for- ward” propensity of ontical thinking that was discussed in chapter 2. Obscured by the subject-to-object movement of reflection is the prere- flective self-Appropriation of Being that first opens up the field of objec- tification, and, in the same stroke, first gives a subject who detachedly reflects upon the objects in this field. Initially disoriented Being thus af- fords itself direction by transforming itself into intentional subjectivity, subjectivity-in-reflection-upon-its-field-of-objectification. In the process of clarifying itself in this manner, Being conceals itself. It facilitates its own development by moving away from itself. In this second stage of Ontogeny, Being gives itself reflective clarity by means of a prereflective process that is itself excluded from the giving.

It is important to recognize that Being’s self-giving is not deliberate or even conscious in this stage of its development. If it seems strange that

Being could clarify itself and conceal itself without being consciously aware of doing so, then we must be clearer about the difference between prereflective maternal action and the father’s way of acting. It is the lat- ter that entails conscious acts of deliberation carried out by a reflective subject. Intentional subjectivity is what Being gives, but the giver itself is no such subject. Perhaps we can characterize the prereflective action of Being as “instinctive”: “impelled by an inner or animating agency; hence, imbued; filled; charged; as, a poem instinct with passion.”1_{The modus}

operandi here is “natural, voluntary, spontaneous . . . impulsive.”2_The

point to keep in mind is that wild Being is no coolly deliberative cogito. What of the third stage of Ontogeny? The possibility of entering it be- gins when the cogito has gone as far as it can on its own. In historico- cultural terms, this coincides with the “end of philosophy” (Heidegger 1964/1977, 373–92), that momentous occurrence we considered in the preface. “The end of philosophy proves to be the triumph of the manipu- lable arrangement of a scientific-technological world” (377). Here Hei- degger is alluding to the nineteenth-century culmination of philosophy in which it is transformed into the modern sciences. In thus achieving its climax in the lofty abstractions of positivistic science, philosophy takes the objectification of the world to its “most extreme possibility” (375). And it is precisely in arriving at this “last possibility” for thinking that now, after centuries of being relegated to shadow, the “first possibility for thinking” (377) can finally be considered. For only by reaching the very pinnacle of abstract reflection that completes philosophy do we reach philosophy’s interior boundary, the place where the supremacy of reflec- tion can genuinely be surpassed and prereflective Being—the original source of reflection (that “from which the thinking of philosophy would have to start,” 377)—can be brought to light. The realization of Being is the third and final stage of Ontogeny.

It is worth noting that the reversal of beginning and end featured in Heidegger’s 1964 essay is also found in his 1946 lecture on the oldest fragment of Western thought:

The antiquity pervading the Anaximander fragment belongs to the dawn of early times in the land of evening [Abend-Land, i.e. the West]. But what if that which is early outdistanced everything late; if the very earliest far surpassed the very latest? What once

occurred in the dawn of our destiny would then come, as what once occurred, at the last . . . that is, at the departure [or end] of the long-hidden destiny of Being. The Being of beings is gath- ered . . . in the ultimacy of its destiny. . . . If we think within the eschatology of Being, then we must someday anticipate the for- mer dawn in the dawn to come; today we must learn to ponder this former dawn through what is imminent. (1946/1984, 18) What is today imminent is the end of philosophy. This “departure” thus calls us back to the beginning. That is, it calls us back to Being. So the “task of thinking” at “the end of philosophy” (Heidegger 1964/1977, 373ff.) is to think Being.

If, in the second stage of Ontogeny, Being gives itself reflective clarity in such a way that its prereflective giving is eclipsed, what the third stage basically calls for is a conscious acknowledgment of the giving. This re- quires the “switching of gears” that reverses the prevailing orientation of thinking. Instead of moving out of and away from Being, we must now move backward into it, thereby drawing back in the reflective light that prereflectively had been emitted, withdrawing its projection. In our present day—having spent more than a century avoiding the task of think- ing via the excursion into modernism that has now reached its postmod- ern dead end—the task remains.

To put it a little differently, the task of thinking in the third stage of Ontogeny is to think proprioceptively. We already know the etymology of the word “Appropriation”: it means “to one’s own,” from the Latin ad, to, and proprius, one’s own. Whereas stage two of Ontogeny involves an act of self-Appropriation in which Being gives to itself what is its own in the posture of moving away from itself, in stage three Being is called back to itself so as to receive the gift. Being must therefore engage in Proprio-ception, the taking or accepting of its own (I now capitalize “Proprioception” so as to emphasize its ontological status). With this realization of the “first possibility for thinking,” the circle would be closed, the cycle of giving completed in earnest.

Regarding Proprioception as an acknowledgment of the Appropriation that has taken place, a reciprocation of the gift that has been given by “saying thanks” for it, we are led back to Heidegger’s 1954 meditation on the sort of thinking called for in the call to Being. As mentioned in

the preface, Heidegger noted the etymological consanguinity of “think- ing” and “thanking”:

What gives us food for thought ever and again is the most thought-provoking. We take the gift it gives by giving thought to what is most thought-provoking. In doing so, we keep thinking what is most thought-provoking. We recall it in thought. Thus we recall in thought that to which we owe thanks for the endow- ment of our nature—thinking. As we give thought to what is most thought-provoking, we give thanks. (1954/1968, 145–46) What is it that is “most thought-provoking”? To what do “we owe thanks for the endowment of our nature”? It is clear that, for Heidegger, it is Being. Therefore, in thinking Being, we think Proprioceptively; we thank- fully receive what has been Appropriated, what has been given over to what is our own.