Uljana Akca

In contemporary discussions on identity, difference and subjectivity, the thinking of Judith Butler has played a significant role, viewing identity as a problematic question of how the subject is constituted by historical structures of power that deprives it of original ownness and substantiality. As this situation for Butler stems neither from a historical occurrence, nor is clearly ontological, the question of the origin of this problem of identity and power remains. Through the thinking of Martin Heidegger, the present study develops the argument that this problem indicates the completion of subject metaphysics, not its overcoming. When identity is thought and lived in terms of subjectivity, power will be its condition. This argument is first developed through a comparison of Butler’s and Heidegger’s respective appropriations of He-gel’s philosophy, together with an independent account of Hegel’s thinking. For Hegel, identi-ty involves a strive for being as a mediation of subjectivity and objectivity, where conscious-ness incorporates both beyond their split. According to Butler, this is impossible, as subjectivi-ty and objectivity are multiple, temporal and shared. For Heidegger however, the problem lies in the very thought of being as a connection of subjectivity and objectivity, and the under-standing of the human as the ground of this reconciliation. I will thereafter examine Heidegger’s “The Principle of Identity” (1957) as a response to this metaphysical comprehen-sion of identity. Here, Heidegger develops his notion of a belonging-together of man and be-ing, as a Sameness grounded in an enduring of the ontological difference between being and beings. In holding out this difference, man discovers that his primary belonging is that to the very being of his existence as such, rather than beings of subjective or objective kind. The no-tion of belonging-together is closely connected to the notion of the event (Ereignis), signify-ing Sameness as occurrence. The study covers Butler’s central writings up to 2006, Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, Science of Logic and Phenomenology of Spirit, as well as the whole of Heidegger’s late thought on this topic from the 30’s and onward together with a selection of his earlier works, among them Being and Time.

It has often been argued that Jung failed to explain and ground his theory of the archetypes sufficiently, as he remained caught between a psychological, a biological, and a transcendent model of explanation. Inspired by Martin Heidegger’s methodology in Being and Time, this paper will combine an ontological inquiry with a phenomenological analysis of the archetype, to re-interpret it beyond the Jungian psychology and its inherent paradoxes. I will outline a distinction between a psychological appropriation of the archetype, and one that approaches its numinosity as such. According to my argument, this twofold phenomenology of the archetype reveals it to be a form through which we become aware of an ontological difference within our being. The argument will mainly be unfolded through an interpretation of the nymph-maiden in Lucas Cranach’s 16th century painting series Nymph of the Spring, followed by an assessment of our contemporary relation to the same archetype.

From where does the frequently explored connection between identity, difference and power stem? One thinker influencing contemporary discussions on this theme is Judith Butler. To her, the primary difference constituting identity is the difference between the subject and the historical power constructing it. Although they belong together, power can still be said to subjugate the subject. However, within this system, the origin of power cannot be accounted for. I will therefore attempt to examine this origin on the basis of Martin Heidegger's The History of Being, written 1938-1940). According to him, power is something intrinsically dependent on subject metaphysics. The latter stems from what he calls the oblivion of being, which can also be expressed as the forgetting of the difference between beings and being. The abiding in this difference opens the way into that which Heidegger calls enowning, in which the human being can reach identity in a qualified respect, as a nearness to his own being. Only on this way can the regime of power, permeating identity construction, be overcome.