Schürmann (1982:309-313) – responsabilidade

O que seria um conceito não-metafísico e não-calculativo de responsabilidade? Deve ser um conceito que desconstrua a dívida de responsabilidade e a autoridade à qual ela é devida. A desconstrução da instância justificadora é a destituição dos princípios epocais. Heidegger delineia a desconstrução da essência calculadora com a ajuda de algumas etimologias. O verbo latino reor deu origem ao verbo alemão rechnen. Esta palavra, Heidegger não a entende no sentido vulgar de "contar", "calcular": "Ora, "orientar algo sobre outra coisa", é esse o sentido do nosso verbo rechnen." [Rechnen é richten, ausrichten, "orientar". Do cálculo, estas considerações permitem-nos passar à direcionalidade. Os atos responsáveis são então aqueles que se enquadram na direção, no quadro de uma determinada economia. A direcionalidade é sublinhada pela palavra "sentido": os atos responsáveis são aqueles que seguem a direção em que as coisas vão numa determinada época, que se alinham com a orientação das coisas à medida que entram no seu mundo.

O lugar da responsabilidade desconstruída já não é a liberdade moral, mas a economia da presença. Com este deslocamento, ser responsável já não significa responder pelas nossas ações perante uma autoridade, mas responder a: responder às constelações aleteiológicas em que os nossos atos se situam. Responsabilidade — responsividade talvez, ou respondância [répondance]? — para a qual o próprio pensamento já não pode responder; para a qual não se lhe pode pedir razões, porque então o deslocamento anti-humanista seria nulo e sem efeito. A responsabilidade, deslocada para as economias, significa resposta. Resposta a quê? Ao "apelo da diferença", que é "a diferença entre mundo e coisa" [GA12  ]. Uma resposta à modalidade sempre nova segundo a qual o mundo desdobra as coisas e segundo a qual as coisas dão configuração (gebärden) ao mundo. "Coisas: âmbito do mundo. O mundo: favor das coisas". Resposta à sua "intimidade", ao "entremeio onde mundo e coisa diferem", ao acontecimento da sua constelação mútua. Uma resposta ao Ereignis, portanto, cuja estrutura de apelo já vimos. A essência responsorial da responsabilidade retira-a do domínio moral para a implantar no da linguagem: uma resposta à "injunção em que a diferença chama o mundo e as coisas". Uma resposta ao acontecimento da apropriação que se articula no silêncio e que é "nada humano". "Tal apropriação ocorre na medida em que o desdobramento essencial da linguagem, a reunião do silêncio, faz uso da fala mortal." [GA12  ] Esta reimplantação topológica não faz, no entanto, da responsabilidade um fenómeno linguístico: apelo e resposta combinam-se num modo de ser. A "via para a palavra" designa um Unterwegs que não se limita nem à inteligência (não é um itinerarium mentis) nem ao indivíduo (não é uma conversio). O acontecimento de entrar na presença "usa" os homens, situando-os de tal modo que tudo o que empreenderem será uma resposta à economia que os encerra.

As complex as the problems connected with the phenomenon of responsibility may be (problems concerning its role in legal and moral philosophy, the concept of freedom that determines the word’s semantic scope, the frequent identification of responsibility with imputability, etc.), they rest, in one way or another, on the recognition of a reciprocal commitment between two parties. In Latin spondere (from the Greek sponde, ‘libation’ or Vow’) means ‘to promise’, ‘to pledge oneself to’, and respondere therefore means ‘to commit oneself in return’. To be responsible is to be ready to give an account of one’s acts and deeds to a tribunal before which – implicitly or explicitly, morally or legally, by nature or by contract – one finds oneself bound or has bound oneself. To be responsible is to be accountable. It implies a ‘for’ and a ‘to’: one is always responsible or accountable for actions to a competent authority. This may be a tribunal within man, like conscience, external to him, like institutionalized power or a communication community, or above him, like a deity. He is responsible if he is ready to render accounts and so to legitimate his conduct. Legitimation is the successful answering for one’s acts to such a normative and justificatory agency. As legitimated, our acts ‘come back’ (re-) to us. The legitimating ‘referent’ – from re-ferre, to carry back – measures them and therefore necessarily transcends them. We are responsible actors if we take upon ourselves and claim like measurement. This return structure is the ground for imputation. Through it, our acts weigh on our account. Rechenschaft oblegen, to give, make, or lay one’s account for something, to call or bring to account, rendre raison, rationem reddere: in the main Western languages responsibility is linked to the rendering of a reckoning. The reckoned return of the acts upon the actor and the normative tribunal or authority meting them back are the two dominant traits that characterize the phenomenon of responsibility.

Such at least is the result of Heidegger’s deconstructing the received concept of responsibility. He abolishes neither of the two traits: neither the rendering of the reckoning, nor the authority before which accounts are to be rendered. But as deconstructed, these two traits find themselves displaced. Once humanistic, once corollaries of the dispositions of ‘moral’ faculties, they turn economic, corollaries of the dispositions of ‘ontological’ presencing. This twofold incidence of the turning strikes a twofold blow at freedom. Firstly, the accounting for occurs in a place other than the subject. The discharge of conduct and the answering for it do not originarily emanate from freedom understood as the faculty of choice. Neither initially nor essentially does to render a reckoning mean to assume the consequences of one’s choices. With the turning, moral freedom, the capacity for practical spontaneity, appears as a derived freedom. Secondly, the measuring can no longer be construed as transcending our acts. Originarily, responsibility as an accounting to cannot mean to go before some authority that limits freedom understood as absence of constraint. As deconstructed, both the rendering of a reckoning and the reference to a mensurating tribunal are thus to be understood in terms of the economies.

Here again, putting to work the temporal difference, Heidegger shows the originary condition of responsibility by recourse to its original source. The guiding representation of counting and accounting then appears as born from the great reversal in Greek thinking that brought about the beginning of metaphysics. The very essence of that reversal consists in a steady reduction of legein to calculation. The reckoning of rights and duties, the computability of rights and wrongs, presupposes the obfuscation of presencing as an event, an obfuscation that manifests itself linguistically in the restriction of legein as gathering to the reasoning that is ‘straight” (orthos, orektos – in Latin, rectus – ‘right”, which Heidegger seems to link to reor, to reckon, count, calculate). The native sense of the Latin word ratio is calculative reason. That word stems in fact from the language of Roman merchants. The very essence of reason consists, then, for Heidegger in “stating, holding, justifying,” that is, in counting or calculating on something. Being as the ground one can count ‘on” is the ontological condition for any accounting ‘for” and ‘to”. The entire epochal history of presencing “goes together with that destinal mark known as fundament, ratio, calculation, the account rendered.’” The calculative stamp originally impressed on presencing gets reinforced along the way. In modern times, reason “demands that an account be rendered of the very possibility of universal calculability.”” Reason then has to produce a referent that accounts for reckoning as such – a ground to which an account of accountability in general can and must be rendered. At the heart of the metaphysical concept of responsibility lies a call for accountability. The climax, in moral philosophy, of this accountability is undoubtedly what is known as utilitarianism. Karl Marx   had already mocked Jeremy Bentham, that Great Accountant. If for Heidegger, ethics amounts essentially to an accounting enterprise, this is so on the same score that science is essentially technical and metaphysics, essentially rationalistic. These are but three shapes of one and the same epoche. The rendering of a reckoning as the condition of responsibility is one predominant mode of unconcealment. To propose for scholarly research a theme such as “ ‘physics and responsibility” … is but double-entry accounting.””

As for the other trait of the metaphysical concept of responsibility, the normative and justificatory tribunal, its deconstruction has been carried out above with the genealogy of the epochal principles.

What then would a non-metaphysical, non-calculative understanding of responsibility be? It must be one in which the debt of accounts and the referent to which it is discharged, are proved to be systematically operative only in those economies in which time has been ‘forgotten’. The withering of the epochal principles would then entail the impossibility of accounting for actions to a referent since no a-temporal ground would be available to count on. Heidegger shows this impossibility by recourse to the same etymologies. If the Latin verb reor has furnished the English ‘reckoning” and the German rechnen, then all has not been said about ratio once the connection with counting and calculating has been established. The English Tightening” and the German richten or ausrichten signify an act of orienting: “ ‘To take one’s bearings from something’ is what our verb rechnen means.’” To reckon is to righten. This allows Heidegger to step back from the phenomenon of calculation to that of directionality. Responsible acts, then, are those that follow the direction or grain of a given economy; that adopt the bearings of things in a given era; that ‘thank’ presencing in aligning themselves by the way things enter their world. “But such thanking is no paying-off.”

In the step back from accounting and calculating to complying with temporal directionality, something quite different is at issue than making “being-up-to-date the measure for the ‘inner truth’ of human action.” At issue are the modalities of presencing or freedom in the aletheiological sense, as the originary condition for action or freedom in the moral sense. With that step from the conditioned to the condition, to be responsible no longer means to ‘answer for’ one’s actions before a tribunal but to ‘respond to’ – namely, to the aletheiological constellations, the modifiers of presencing, in which our acts are embedded. Such responsiveness or respondence is not something the phenomenology of being as time can in turn account for. If it were, the temporal difference would again be rendered null and void as the sole measure for thinking and acting. Displaced into the economies, responsibility means response. Response to what? To “the call of the difference” which is “the difference between world and thing.” A response to the ever new modality in which the world unfolds things and in which things give configuration to or “bear” (gebärden) the world. “Things bear world. World grants things.” A response to their “intimacy,” to “the between where world and thing differ,” to the event of their mutual constellation. A response to the Ereignis, then, which, as appropriation’, calls upon thinking and acting. The responsorial essence of responsibility removes it from the moral domain and turns it into a phenomenon akin to language. It is a response to “the injunction in which the difference calls world and things,” a response to the event of appropriation which, as articulating itself silently, is “nothing human.” “Such an appropriating occurs inasmuch as the essential unfolding of language, the pure call of silence, uses the speech of mortals.” This topological reimplantation entails that speech is always a response to the historical modifications of the event, but it does not entail that responsibility is reduced to a linguistic phenomenon in the narrow sense: appeal and response can only be conjoined in a way of being. The ‘way to language’ designates an on-the-way which is neither the mind’s (it is not an itinerarium mentis) nor the individual’s (it is not a conversio) alone. The event of presencing ‘uses’ men, it situates them in such a way that everything they undertake is but a response to the economy that calls upon them.

Does this displacement of responsibility from the moral to the economic leave any room for a non-response, for irresponsibility? It should be clear that the displacement does not absorb project into thrownness. If the economic order ‘calls’ for our response, that order is a network of potentials rather than a frame of the actual. In that sense it calls as if from ahead of us, which should dispel any impression that the response is somehow automatic. If this were the case, then indeed no room would be left for irresponsibility. For Heidegger, irresponsibility consists in what Anaximander   called adikia, injustice. So long as responsibility is construed as the meting out of charges and discharges, irresponsibility amounts to an infraction against one of the various principles of order: law, conscience, custom, power, father, other, God, people, reason, progress, classless society, etc. The entities so represented summon another entity, the actor, to render an account of his actions; not to answer that summons is to be irresponsible. It is to depart from the given principial constellation of concealment and unconcealment. Irresponsibility is always a breach of the mode in which presencing occurs and calls upon us. But that mode can be epochal or non-epochal. At the hypothetical end of metaphysics, irresponsibility therefore does not consist in the same kind of breach as it does under the sway of epochal principles.

That change in the nature of irresponsibility follows from the very hypothesis that there remains no referential order of presence to transgress. In the age of closure, to be irresponsible is to contravene the network of systemic presencing. And what is it that so contravenes by definition the multiple event of phuesthai, of showing-forth? It is any entity and any act that “becomes set on fixing itself in its stay,” that seeks “pure persistence in duration,” that “holds fast to the assertion of its stay.”44 That description fits anything that closely or remotely resembles an epochal principle. The hubris of staying, of permanent presence, arises only under and through the rule of those principles. They are what is irresponsible essentially. With Heidegger’s step back to another time, a time other than duration, what is irresponsible for man is any practical a priori that calls for persistence against flux and thereby contributes to the survival of the principial economy.

The break that appears with the (possible) end of metaphysics destabilizes both that for which and that to which one can be held accountable. It dissolves the former because it subverts the latter. With the turn, responsibility therefore undergoes a displacement not only toward the economies but also toward anarchy. This radical shift lifts the phenomenon of responsibility out of the regency of ultimate representations and situates it in another space, the in-between of presence and presencing. By the same stroke, it situates existence within its originary locus where it lives by the sole event of mutual appropriation among the things that make up a historical world. The shift of responsibility toward economic anarchy is the practical condition for thinking the difference between world and thing as temporal. In an economy deprived of any epochal principle, responsorial existence – responsible action – will be a response to the ever new modes in which things unite in a world and differ from it. One answers the ‘call of the difference’ by inscribing one’s acts within the play of identity and difference between world and thing. Whatever the difficulties raised by Heidegger’s deconstruction of responsibility, one will always be able to respond only through praxis to the question, What do you make of the difference?

Aussi complexes que soient les problèmes liés au concept de responsabilité (son rôle en philosophie légale et morale, le concept de liberté qui en commande la portée, l’identification fréquente entre responsabilité et imputabilité, etc.), ces problèmes reposent, d’une façon ou d’une autre, sur la reconnaissance d’un engagement réciproque entre deux parties. En latin, spondere (du grec spondé, «libation» ou «vœu») veut dire .«promettre», «s’engager», et respondere, «s’engager en retour». Être responsable, c’est être prêt à [309] rendre compte de ses faits et gestes devant une instance à l’égard de laquelle — implicitement ou explicitement, moralement ou légalement, par « nature » ou par « contrat » — on se trouve ou on s’est lié. On est toujours responsable devant une autorité, qu’elle soit intérieure, telle la conscience, ou extérieure, tel le pouvoir. Une personne responsable, est prête à rendre des comptes et à légitimer par là sa conduite. Être responsable, c’est répondre de ses actes devant une instance normative et justificatrice. D’une telle instance, nos actes nous reviennent. Elle les mesure, c’est pourquoi elle les transcende nécessairement. Nous faisons preuve de responsabilité si nous assumons et revendiquons pareille mesure. Cet effet de retour est le fondement de l’imputation. Par celle-ci, nos actes sont portés à notre compte. Rechenschaft ablegen, «demander, faire, rendre raison de quelque chose», rationem reddere — dans les principales langues occidentales, la responsabilité est liée au fait de rendre des comptes [1]. Le retour compté des actes sur l’agent, ainsi que l’instance normative, sont les deux traits principaux qui caractérisent le phénomène de responsabilité.

Sur ces deux points repose tout au moins la reprise heideggérienne du concept traditionnel de responsabilité. Reprise qui n’y abolit ni les comptes à rendre, ni l’instance normative devant laquelle ils sont rendus. Mais Heidegger déplace ces deux traits. D’humaniste, corollaire des dispositions de la liberté «morale», la responsabilité tourne à l’économique, corollaire des dispositifs de la présence «ontologique». Le double déplacement opéré porte une double atteinte à la liberté. D’une part, le lieu du compte cesse d’être la liberté entendue comme faculté des choix ; rendre compte ne veut plus dire revendiquer les conséquences de ses choix. D’autre part, le lieu de l’instance normative cesse d’être transcendant par rapport aux actes ; la responsabilité ne conduit plus devant quelque autorité qui limite la liberté entendue comme absence de contrainte.

Au regard de la déconstruction des économies, l’idée de comptes à présenter naît du premier grand virage des temps, qui inaugure la métaphysique, c’est-à-dire de la réduction progressive du legein au calcul. Le compte des droits et des devoirs, la comptabilité du bien et des torts constituent la conséquence la plus flagrante de la mutation du λόγος en ratio, ou de l’auto-deploiement en raison calculante. Ce mot latin provient d’ailleurs de la langue des commerçants romains [SvG   210 / PR 269]. Pour Heidegger, l’essence de la raison consiste à «énoncer, tenir pour…, justifier» [2]. Toute l’histoire époquale de la [310] présence « s’accompagne de cette marque destinale qu’est le fondement, la ratio, le calcul, le compte rendu ». La marque calculatrice imposée originellement à la présence, va s’accentuant. Aux temps modernes, la raison «exige que compte soit rendu de la possibilité même d’un compte général» [SvG   169 / PR 219s, cf. N II   319 / N ii   255], autrement dit, qu’une instance soit produite envers laquelle soit rendu compte de la comptabilité en tant que telle et de ses conditions. Au cœur du concept métaphysique de responsabilité, on trouve la comptabilité. L’apogée et le comble de cette comptabilité, en philosophie morale, est sans doute ce qu’on appelle !’utilitarisme. Karl Marx   déjà s’était moqué de Jérémie Bentham, ce Grand Comptable [3]. Si pour Heidegger, la morale est essentiellement une entreprise de comptabilité, les raisons sont celles-là mêmes pour lesquelles la science est essentiellement technique et la métaphysique, rationaliste. Ce ne sont là que trois figures d’une seule et même epoché. Proposer à la recherche des savants un thème tel que «“physique et responsabilité”, … c’est tenir une double comptabilité» [4].

Quant à l’autre trait du concept métaphysique de responsabilité, l’instance normative et justificatrice, je l’ai exposé plus haut en établissant la généalogie des principes epoquaux.

Que serait maintenant un concept non-métaphysique, non-calculateur de la responsabilité? Ce doit être un concept où soient déconstruites la dette des comptes et l’instance envers laquelle s’en acquitter. La déconstruction de l’instance justificatrice est la destitution des principes époquaux. La déconstruction de l’essence calculatrice, Heidegger l’esquisse à l’aide de quelques étymologies. Le verbe latin reor a donné le verbe allemand rechnen. Ce mot, Heidegger ne le comprend pas au sens ordinaire de «compter», «calculer» : «Or, “orienter quelque chose sur quelque chose d’autre”, voilà le sens de notre verbe rechnen.» [SvG   167 / PR 218] Rechnen, c’est richten, ausrichten, «diriger». Du calcul, ces considérations permettent de passer à la directionnalité. Les actes responsables sont alors ceux qui s’inscrivent dans la direction, dans la trame d’une économie donnée. Directionnalité que souligne le mot «sens» : les actes responsables sont ceux qui épousent le sens où vont les choses en une ère donnée, qui s’alignent sur l’orientation des choses telles qu’elles entrent dans leur monde.

Le lieu de la responsabilité déconstruite n’est plus la liberté morale mais l’économie de la présence. Avec ce déplacement, être responsable ne signifie plus répondre de ses actions devant une instance, [311] mais répondre à : répondre aux constellations alétheiologiques où sont situés nos actes. Responsabilité — responsivité peut-être?, ou répondance? — dont la pensée elle-même ne peut plus répondre; dont elle ne peut être sommée de fournir les raisons, car alors le déplacement anti-humaniste serait nul et non avenu. La responsabilité, déplacée vers les économies, signifie réponse. Réponse à quoi ? A «l’appel de la différence» qui est «la différence entre monde et chose» [US 30/AP 33s]. Réponse à la modalité toujours neuve selon laquelle le monde déploie les choses et selon laquelle les choses donnent configuration (gebärden) au monde. « Les choses : portée du monde. Le monde : faveur des choses.» Réponse à leur «intimité», à «l’entre-deux où monde et chose diffèrent», à l’événement de leur constellation mutuelle. Réponse à l’Ereignis, donc, dont on a vu la structure d’appel. L’essence responsorielle de la responsabilité ôte celle-ci du domaine moral pour l’implanter dans celui du langage : réponse à « l’injonction en laquelle la différence appelle monde et choses». Réponse à l’événement d’appropriation qui s’articule en silence et qui n’est «rien d’humain». «Une telle appropriation se produit dans la mesure où le déploiement essentiel du langage, recueil du silence, use du parler des mortels.» [US 24s et 30 / AP 27 et 34] Cette réimplantation topologique ne fait pas pour autant de la responsabilité un phénomène linguistique : appel et réponse se conjuguent en une manière d’être. L’« acheminement vers la parole» désigné un Unterwegs qui ne se limite ni à l’intelligence (ce n’est pas un itinerarium mentis), ni à l’individu (ce n’est pas une conversio). L’événement qu’est l’entrée en présence «use» des hommes, il les situe de telle sorte que tout ce qu’ils entreprennent ne sera que réponse à l’économie qui les enserre.

De ce déplacement, hors de la morale et vers l’économie, on se gardera de conclure à une simple absorption de tout projet dans la Geworfenheit, l’être-jeté. On se gardera aussi d’en conclure à un automatisme sans faille de la réponse économique, à l’impossibilité, donc, de l’irresponsabilité. Pour Heidegger, irresponsabilité signifie désormais la même chose qu’adikia. Le concept de responsabilité se trouve ainsi délogé de son contexte de charges et de décharges. Le regard phénoménologique perçoit que l’étant premier qui, sous les noms divers de loi, conscience, coutume, pouvoir, père, autrui, Dieu, peuple, raison, progrès, société sans classes, etc., somme un autre étant, l’acteur, de rendre compte de ses actions — que cet étant premier, donc, fonctionne comme principe d’ordre dans un système de comptes et de décomptes. Dans un tel dispositif, l’irresponsabilité est l’infraction au principe d’ordre. L’irresponsabilité est la dérogation à une constellation de voilement et de dévoilement. L’irresponsabilité est toujours la contravention à la venue qu’est la présence. Mais cette venue peut être époquale ou non. [312]

Or, avec la fin de l’histoire époquale, être irresponsable ne signifie plus, ne peut plus signifier : contrevenir à un ordonnancement de la présence. A l’âge de la clôture, être irresponsable, c’est contrevenir a la venue multiple qu’est la présence déconstruite. Et qu’est-ce donc qui contrevient à une telle venue multiple, au phyein, à l’Ereignis ? C’est tout étant et tout acte qui «cherche à persister», qui «cherche à se raidir sur le séjour», qui «ne veut pas démordre de son jour1 ». C’est tout ce qui ressemble de près ou de loin à la hybris d’un principe époqual. En effet, le temps est durée, sous et par le règne de ces principes seulement. Avec la découverte d’un temps autre, serait irresponsable tout a priori pratique qui s’obstinerait contre le flux et qui prêterait survie à l’économie principielle.

La rupture qu’est la fin (possible) de la métaphysique, dissout dans l’instable ce pour quoi, ce dont on peut être tenu comptable. Ainsi le tournant permet-il de penser un déplacement non seulement économique de la responsabilité, mais encore anarchique. Cet ultime déplacement enlève la responsabilité à la régence d’une instance première, et la situe en un autre lieu, qui est celui de la venue à la présence. Du même coup, il situe l’existence en son lieu originaire, où elle s’accomplit au gré de l’événement d’appropriation mutuelle et de ses modalités. Le déplacement anarchique de la responsabilité est la condition pratique pour penser la différence entre monde et chose. Dans une économie dépourvue de principe époqual, l’existence responsorielle — l’agir responsable — ce sera de répondre aux modes toujours neufs dont les choses s’unissent en un monde et en diffèrent ; ce sera inscrire ses actes dans le jeu d’identité et de différence entre chose et monde. Quelles que soient donc les difficultés que pose la déconstruction de la responsabilité chez Heidegger, ce ne sera toujours que d’une manière pratique qu’on pourra répondre à la question : «Pour vous, qu’en est-il de la différence ? »