Lars-Olof Ahlberg 
Modernity and Ocularcentrism 
A Second Look at Descartes and Heidegger 
I 
A host of id ioms and me tapho r s - bo th dead and alive - in every-day 
language as well as in phi losophica l par lance bears witness to the impor tance 
of sight and vis ion as a source of knowledge and exper ience: we speak of 
seeing, in the sense of unders t and ing , we have views about this or that, poets 
and ph i losopher s have fo rmula ted visions of reality, we can be clear-sighted, 
far-sighted or short-sighted, we can gain insight into things or we can be blind to 
certain things, we visualize things we have no t seen, we sometimes overlook 
things, we somet imes see through the invalid reasoning of others, and we hope 
tha t our own reason ing is perceptive and perspicuous. 
Sight and vis ion as a source of knowledge or illusion is a cardinal theme 
in the ph i losophica l t rad i t ion f rom Plato to the present t ime. The hegemony 
of vision, »the nobles t of the senses«, is deeply ingrained in our Western ways 
of th inking, fee l ing and acting. The p recedence given to the eye, to vision 
and to the visual has recen t ly come u n d e r attack f rom various quarters; the 
cr i t ique of ocu la rcen t r i sm is in tended to supplement and reinforce the cri-
t ique of logocent r i sm and the metaphysics of presence. 
A l though the p reva l ence of ocularcentr ic th inking and of visual meta-
p h o r s is f r equen t ly associated with Descartes and the rise of m o d e r n scien-
tific th inking, ocu la rcen t r i sm does not seem to be a part icular ly m o d e r n phe-
n o m e n o n n o r spec i f ica l ly W e s t e r n . Visual and ocu la rcen t r i c m e t a p h o r s 
a b o u n d in var ious cul tural settings, pe rhaps because »[i]n their expressive 
power and subtle capaci ty to change, me taphors of light are incomparable«, 
as H a n s B l u m e n b e r g puts it.1 T h e fact that the Sanskrit word »veda« (which 
m e a n s knowledge and t ransmi t ted wisdom) has given the holy scriptures of 
Ind ian religion, The Vedas, their name , bears witness to the int imate connec-
tion be tween vision and knowledge assumed in most, if not all, cultures. The 
G r e e k w o r d » o t 8 a «, m e a n i n g »1 know«, is the perfect tense of »etSco« and 
1 Hans Blumenberg, »Light as a Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philo-
sophical Concept Formation«, in David Michael Levin (Ed.), Modernity and the He-
gemony of Vision, University of California Press, Berkeley 1993, p. 31. 
Filozofski vestnik, XVII (2/1996), pp. 9-23. 
Lars-Olof Áhlberg 
means literally »1 have seen« and the n o u n » ei8o<; » (means tha t which is 
seen, as well as form, shape, figure, class or k ind. 
Light as opposed to darkness and vis ion as o p p o s e d to b l indness p lay a 
fundamen ta l role in ancient religious th ink ing and expe r i ence : »[light] has 
certainly been one of the things in the phys ica l e n v i r o n m e n t of m a n which , 
f rom the earliest t imes we know of, has pecul ia r ly impressed h i m and b e e n 
most closely associated with his thoughts of the Divine«, says the theo log ian 
Edwyn Bevan in his work Symbolism and Belief? »In all great rel igions of an-
tiquity,« he notes, »the chief gods are charac te r i zed by their c o n n e x i o n with 
light«.3 In J u d a i s m , for example , »[l]ight in an e x t r e m e degree , sp lendour , is 
the normal characterist ic of Divine manifes ta t ions« , 4 and in The New Testa-
ment we read that »God dwelleth in light wh ich c a n n o t be a p p r o a c h e d « (1 
Tim. VI . 16). In the Nicene Creed (325) we f ind a fus ion of p la toniz ing themes 
with an ancient metaphor ics of light: Chr is t is ha i led as »Light f r o m Light, 
t rue God f r o m true God«. T h e associat ion of the g o d h e a d with light and 
sp lendour seems to be ubiqui tous; at any ra te , it is a c o m m o n I n d o - E u r o p e a n 
habit of though t as the Sanskrit word »deva« (der ived f r o m »to shine«) wh ich 
becomes »deus« in Latin seems to indicate . 5 
In the present paper I shall discuss some fea tures of ocu la rcen t r i sm and 
some aspects of the cri t ique of ocu la rcen t r i sm ana lyzed and d o c u m e n t e d in 
Mart in J ay ' s magisterial Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-
Century French Thought (1993) and in the essays in Dav id Michae l Levin ' s 
Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (1993). Ocu la r cen t r i sm is f r equen t ly re-
garded as a variety of logocentr ism and as a f o r m of essent ial ism: it can be 
regarded as an expression of the seemingly i n t e rminab l e search for secure 
founda t ions , a search that c a n n o t b u t resu l t in f a i lu re a c c o r d i n g to the 
poststructuralist and pos tmodern is t critics of E n l i g h t e n m e n t ra t ional i ty . 
Mar t in J a y ' s claim that » [d i s i l lus ionment with the p ro jec t of i l lumina-
tion [i.e. Enl ightenment] is now so w idesp read tha t it has b e c o m e the new 
convent ional wisdom« 6 seems to me to be correct , p r o v i d e d it is sui tably 
qualified. For a l though the dis i l lus ionment with the E n l i g h t e n m e n t and rea-
son and the repudia t ion of universal s t andards of ra t ional i ty is widespread , it 
is no t universa l . T h e an t i - en l igh tenment s tance d o m i n a t e s c o n t e m p o r a r y 
2 Edwyn Bevan, Symbolism and Belief, 1938, Fontana, London 1962, p. 111. 
3 Ibid., p. 115. 
4 Ibid., p. 126. 
5 M. Hiriyana, Outlines of Indian Philosophy, George Allen & Unwin, London 1932, pp. 
31-2. 
6 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, 
University of California Press, Berkeley 1993, p. 592. 
10 
Modernity and Ocularcentrism 
cul tura l s tudies a n d m u c h l i terary theory and can also be found in m u c h 
c o n t e m p o r a r y A n g l o - S a x o n and French sociology and phi losophy. In the 
na tu ra l sciences a n d in m a n y other areas of intel lectual activity and research, 
this s i tuat ion does n o t ob ta in . A major i ty of economis ts in the Uni ted States, 
for e x a m p l e , a n d I suspect also e lsewhere , suppor t so-called rat ional choice 
or pub l i c cho ice theor ies 7 wh ich have their roots in the util i tarian tradit ion, 
a n d are t he re fo re f i rmly a n c h o r e d within the rationalistic Enl ightenment tra-
di t ion. 
T h e n e w conven t iona l wisdom that J a y speaks of and which we encoun-
ter in cul tura l s tudies and in m u c h c o n t e m p o r a r y social and humanis t i c 
thought , is o p e n to serious object ions on several accounts . Critics of Enlight-
e n m e n t t hough t are p r o n e to embrace , implicitly or explicitly, relativistic 
doc t r ines wh ich are deep ly problemat ic , bo th theoretically and politically. I 
has ten to add tha t I am no t object ing to relativism as such; there are, to be 
sure, a bewi lder ing var ie ty of posit ions that are cons idered relativist, not all 
of which are self-refut ing or pernicious. The relativism of the so-called Edin-
b u r g h school is d i f fe ren t f r o m the relativism espoused by J o s e p h Margolis, 
Paul Feye rabend ' s relativistic phi losophy of science is different f rom the stand-
ard pos tmode rn i s t »constructivist« relativism, which again differs f rom the 
cul tura l re la t ivism of m a n y anthropologists . W h a t I ob jec t to is the ease and 
somet imes also the na ïve té with which cognitive relativism is accepted as a 
ma t t e r of course . 
T h e cr i t ique of ocularcent r i sm is graphically expressed by Levin who 
claims that vision is »the mos t reifying of all our perceptual modalities«. There 
is, he claims, a »power dr ive inheren t in vision«8 - an inheren t drive toward 
d o m i n a t i o n and cont ro l over objects and persons, and a desire for total vis-
ibility and a comple t e overv iew of reality. T h e re levant quest ion that needs 
to b e asked (but which is se ldom put) is: is this really true?, or, as Stephen 
Hou lga t e puts it in his cont r ibu t ion to Levin 's book, »Vision, Reflection, and 
Opennes s« : »Is vision (and the m o d e of th inking which is mode led on vision) 
inhe ren t ly o r i en ted toward surveying and domina t ing objects?«9 
I th ink tha t the an t i -en l ightenment critique, as it appears in Jay ' s work 
and in var ious essays in Levin ' s collection, overshoots the mark in certain 
f u n d a m e n t a l respects . In par t icular I shall argue that the anti-ocularcentrists ' 
7 See The Times Higher Education Supplement, February 17, 1995, p. 15. 
8 David Levin, The Opening of Vision, Routledge, New York 1988, p. 65. 
9 Stephen Houlgate, »Vision, Reflection, and Openness: The 'Hegemony of Vision' 
from a Hegelian Point of View«, in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, p. 98. 
11 
Lars-Olof Áhlberg 
appeal to He idegger , whose th ink ing is ha i l ed as a rad ica l a l t e rna t ive to 
ocularcentr ism and essentialism, is dub ious . 
To begin with I shall consider some aspects of Descar tes ' s ph i lo sophy 
that be token his modern i ty and his ocu la rcen t r i sm. In the second sect ion I 
shall discuss Heidegger ' s cri t ique of mode rn i ty . 
II 
Accord ing to the t radi t ional and s o m e w h a t se l f -congratula tory narra-
tive, as r ecoun ted and criticized by S tephen T o u l m i n in his pe rcep t ive work, 
Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (1990), the »twin f o u n d i n g pil lars 
of m o d e r n thought« are m o d e r n science, wi th its first h e r o Isaac N e w t o n and 
m o d e r n phi losophy, init iated by René Descar tes . M o d e r n science and mod-
ern ph i losophy are thus cons idered to be pa rad igma t i c e x a m p l e s of reason 
and rat ional i ty.1 0 
If we wish to play the game of who-came-f i r s t we could easily th ink of 
other candidates for the title of found ing fa ther of m o d e r n ph i losophy : Francis 
Bacon, Dav id H u m e and I m m a n u e l Kan t spr ing to m i n d , bu t Descar tes is as 
good a cand ida te as any. It is therefore n o t surpr is ing tha t Descar tes has be-
come the favouri te target of recent cr i t iques of the En l igh t enmen t , of ra t ion-
alism and of scientism. Descartes 's ph i lo sophy is also o n e of the ma in targets 
of Heidegger ' s deconst ruct ion (Abbau) of W e s t e r n metaphys ics , whi le Car te -
sian foundat ional i sm and dualism are similarly cent ra l to Ror ty ' s cr i t ique of 
p h i l o s o p h y as a quas i - sc ien t i f ic e n t e r p r i s e a i m i n g at m i r r o r i n g n a t u r e . 
Wit tgenstein 's later phi losophy is of course also dec ided ly ant i -Car tes ian and 
anti-foundationalist in intent. 
» 'Car tes ian perspect ival ism'«, Mar t in J a y s says, »may nicely serve as a 
shor thand way to character ize the d o m i n a n t scopic r eg ime of the m o d e r n 
era«.1 1 But if Descartes is an ocularcentr ic th inker , he is no t ocularcent r ic in 
the way that the British empiricists are. Unl ike Locke Descar tes did no t es-
pouse a representa t ive theory of pe rcep t ion and knowledge : he did not be-
lieve that our percept ion of the qualities of objects resembles the quali t ies of 
the objects perceived, nor did he th ink tha t words and signs r e semble the 
things they signify (the view that the linguistic sign is a rb i t ra ry does not origi-
nate with de Saussure as is somet imes supposed) . Sense pe rcep t ion in itself is 
10 Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, The Free Press, New 
York 1990, p. ix. 
11 Jay, Downcast Eyes, pp. 69-70. 
12 
Modernity and Ocularcentrism 
ne i the r the source n o r the cr i ter ion of certainty and knowledge: »it is the 
m i n d which senses, n o t the body«, as Descartes puts it in his Optics.12 
Car tes ian dua l i sm b e t w e e n mind and mat te r b e c a m e influential, J a y ar-
gues, because of »its va lor iza t ion of the d i sembodied eye ... shared by mod-
ern science and Alber t i an art«.1 3 It justified and privileged the objective, and 
d i s e m b o d i e d gaze at the expense of the active and e m b o d i e d look. 
W h a t m a k e s D e s c a r t e s a m o d e r n t h i n k e r is n o t so m u c h h i s 
ocularcent r i sm as his concep t ion of thought and knowledge, or as Blumenberg 
po in t s out : »The d e m a n d for the presence of the object u n d e r study is the point 
of d e p a r t u r e for the m o d e r n idea of science, and in Bacon and Descartes, this 
d e m a n d is f o rmu la t ed in oppos i t ion to the validity of auctoritas«.li Instead it 
is the in ternal iza t ion of light and vision, the reliance on the eye of the mind 
and the stress on intel lectual percept ion and concept ion as well as the rejec-
t ion of t radi t ion that weds Descartes with ocularcentr ism. J a y distinguishes 
b e t w e e n two variet ies of ocularcent r i sm: the »traditions of speculationwith the 
eye of the m i n d and observation with the two eyes of the body«. 1 5 Descartes, 
b e i n g a rat ionalist , be longs to the first g roup whereas the British empiricists 
and the sensualists of the F rench Enl igh tenment be long to the second. 
In his Discourse on Method Descartes formulates the pr inciple which in-
fo rms his ph i losoph ica l projec t : »We ought never to allow ourselves to be 
p e r s u a d e d of the t ru th of any th ing unless on the evidence of our reason.« 1 6 
For Descar tes the au thor i ty of t radi t ion is the main source of error and folly: 
we should be sceptical of every th ing that is accepted on the authori ty of ex-
a m p l e and cus tom, he says. Descartes 's out look has been aptly summarized 
by Ernes t Gel lner : »it is individual reason versus collective culture. Tru th can 
be secured only by s t epp ing outside pre judice and accumula ted custom, and 
re fash ion ing one ' s wor ld« . 1 7 Descartes 's individualism, his anti-authoritari-
an i sm and his ant i - t radi t ional ism extend to all spheres of life, even to town-
p lann ing . In a C o r b u s i e r e s q u e passage in the Discourse on Method he says that 
»ancient cities ... a re usual ly but ill laid out compared with the regularly 
^ Quoted from Jay, p. 75. 
13 Ibid., p. 81. 
14 Blumenberg, »Light as a Metaphor for Truth«, p. 48. 
15 Jay, Downcast Eyes, p. 29. 
16 Descartes, Discourse on Method, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. J. 
Cottingham, R. Stoothoff & D. Murdock, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 
1985, part IV. 
17 Ernest Gellner, Reason and Culture: The Historic Role of Rationality and Rationalism, 
Blackwell, London 1992, p. 8. 
13 
Lars-Olof Áhlberg 
constructed towns which a profess ional a rchi tec t has f ree ly p l a n n e d on an 
open plain«.1 8 
Descar tes ' s p rob lem, which he passed on to H u m e and Kan t , was h o w 
the h u m a n m i n d could arr ive at just i f iable and secure knowledge of the wor ld 
f rom its own resources without relying on t rad i t ion and au thor i ty . 1 9 Desca r t e s 
is something of a phi losophical Faust, bu t he fa i led in his en te rpr i se since he 
did not succeed in throwing off his scholastic baggage comple te ly , bu t tha t is 
another story. 
Descartes 's starting poin t is universal d o u b t - theoret ica l doub t , if you 
like, since his doub t is hyperbol ic - an intel lectual and rhe tor ica l device , 
since n o b o d y in his or he r senses can consis tent ly live u p to the s tandards of 
Car tes ian doub t . 
Descar tes ' s ce lebra ted cogito ergo sum was i n t e n d e d to p rov ide a f i rm and 
indubi table g round for our knowledge of the wor ld , t he r eby mee t ing the scep-
tical challenge. Descartes is after absolute , or, as he calls it, me taphys ica l 
certainty. His methodica l doubt is expressed in the fo l lowing m a n n e r in the 
second Meditation (Mediationes de prima philosophiae): »1 shall p r o c e e d by set-
ting aside all that in which the least doub t could be supposed to exist, jus t as 
if I had discovered that it was absolutely false«.2 0 Descar tes cons iders some-
thing metaphysical ly certain if it is imposs ib le to conce ive of any g r o u n d for 
doubt and if it is impossible to be dece ived or mis t aken abou t the t ru th of 
what one is certain about . T h e only th ing that is metaphys ica l ly cer ta in is 
one 's own existence, for, according to Descar tes , the s t a t ement »1 doub t , b u t 
I do not exist«, is contradictory. O n e cannot , he claims, consis tent ly d e n y 
one 's own existence: it is metaphysical ly cer ta in that the conscious, th ink ing 
subject exists. InPrincipia Philosophiae Descar tes c laims tha t »we c a n n o t d o u b t 
our existence wi thout existing while we doub t ; and this is the first knowledge 
that we obta in when we phi losophize in an o rde r ly way«. 2 1 
It should be b o r n e in mind that Descar tes ' s cogito, »1 think« includes all 
conscious exper ience and not only wha t we n o r m a l l y would call th inking. It 
includes willing, unders t and ing , imagining, and perce iv ing . T h e r e f o r e we 
might just as well say »percipio, ergo sum« (I perce ive , the re fo re I am), or, if 
we regard intent ional actions as conscious in some sense, we migh t say »bibo, 
ergo sum« (I drink, therefore I am) to quote the s tuden t song. 
18 Descartes, Discourse on Method, part II. 
19 Cf. Gellner, Reason and Culture, ch. 1. 
20 The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. S. Haldane & G.R.T. Ross, Cambridge 
University Press, Cambridge 1972, vol. 1, p. 149. 
21 Ibid., p. 221. 
14 
Modernity and Ocularcentrism 
H a v i n g es tabl i shed a f i rm g round for h u m a n knowledge, Descartes then 
fo rmula tes his f a m o u s cr i ter ion of t ruth: the cri terion of clear and distinct 
ideas, which h o w e v e r a p p e a r s to be p resupposed in the cogito-ergo-sum proof. 
But the cr i ter ion of t ru th is reliable, it seems, only if it is guaranteed by the 
exis tence of a non-dece iv ing God and Descartes 's ontological proof of the 
existence of G o d relies on the criterion of clear and distinct ideas, so »Descartes 
is in t h e i m p o s s i b l e p r e d i c a m e n t of t ry ing to hois t himself by his own 
boots t raps« as N o r m a n Malco lm puts it .2 2 
A recu r r en t t h e m e in epis temology since Descartes is that the founda-
t ion of knowledge is to be sought in subjective self-certainty. Within this epis-
temologica l t radi t ion there is ag reement concern ing the principal task: to 
cons t ruc t h u m a n k n o w l e d g e out of the contents of consciousness. T h e disa-
g r e e m e n t conce rns the exact na ture of the e lements of consciousness. T h e 
last and m o s t consis tent (and pe rhaps mos t heroic) off-shoot of this tradit ion 
was the logical posi t ivism of the V i e n n a Circle, which a t tempted to construct 
the wor ld out of sense-data , the postula ted »atoms« of exper ience. 
T h e p resuppos i t i on or the grand premise of this epistemological tradi-
tion, viz. that the consciousness of the individual h u m a n subject is the natural 
po in t of depa r tu r e for epis temology, is re jected by Hegel ians, by Heidegger , 
b y the later Wi t tgens te in and by the pragmatis ts in favour of a communal , 
collective and prac t ica l concep t ion of the na ture of h u m a n knowledge. A 
corol lary of the re jec t ion of the grand epistemological premise is the rejec-
tion of Car tes ian and empir ic is t foundat ional ism, and by implication all vari-
eties of ocu la rcen t r i sm associated with rat ionalism and empiricism. 
Car tes ian ra t ional i sm can be in terpre ted as an existential response to a 
pe r sona l and cul tural crisis. As Tou lmin points out, Cartesian phi losophy 
m a t u r e d du r ing an ex t r eme ly tu rbulen t and violent pe r iod in European his-
tory: the Thi r ty Years ' W a r was ravaging the Cont inent , the major European 
powers , wi th the excep t ion of the Nether lands , were suffering a severe eco-
nomic depress ion and religious in to lerance and persecut ion was on the in-
crease . 2 3 T h e p resen t -day rift be tween the two cultures, the scientific and 
technological cul ture and the humanis t ic and social culture is pref igured in 
the fo rma t ion of m o d e r n i t y , Tou lmin argues. »Moderni ty«, he claims, »had 
two distinct s tar t ing points , a humanis t ic one g rounded in classical literature, 
and a scientific one roo ted in 17th-century natural phi losophy«. 2 4 Galileo, 
Descar tes and N e w t o n represen t the scientific t endency in modern i ty while 
2 2 Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein: Nothing is Hidden, Blackwell, Oxford 1986, p. 206. 
^ Cf. Toulmin, Cosmopolis, pp. 13 ff. 
24 Ibid., p. 43. 
15 
Lars-Olof Áhlberg 
Erasmus, Rabelais , Shakespeare and M o n t a i g n e pe r son i fy the o ther face of 
moderni ty . Needless to say, it was the scientif ic and rat ionalis t ic vers ion of 
modern i ty that prevailed at the expense of the humani s t i c and sceptical vari-
ety. As a consequence , logic was f avoured at the expense of rhe tor ic , the 
universal at the expense of the par t icular , the genera l at the expense of the 
local and the timeless at the expense of the t ransi tory. 2 5« T h e God-eye ' s v iew 
of reality« as opposed to the e m b o d i e d subject ' s his torical ly s i tuated vision of 
reality and the disinterested and theoret ical gaze as o p p o s e d to the in teres ted 
and practical look could also be added to T o u l m i n ' s list. 
Ill 
Heidegger is often regarded , rightly or wrongly , as the mos t radical and 
consistent critic of Western metaphysics and En l igh t enmen t rat ionali ty, whose 
most spectacular manifes ta t ion is m o d e r n sc ience and technology . T h e cri-
tique of ocularcentr ism is an integral pa r t of He idegge r ' s cr i t ique of W e s t e r n 
metaphysics, but, as J a y notes, He idegger »was neve r s imply hosti le to vision 
per se, but only to the var iant that had d o m i n a t e d W e s t e r n metaphys ics for 
m i l l e n n i a « . 2 6 D a v i d L e v i n a r g u e s i n h i s e s s a y , » D e c l i n e a n d F a l l : 
Ocularcen t r i sm in Heidegger ' s Read ing of the His to ry of Metaphys ics« tha t 
He idegge r ' s t h ink ing is the a n t i d o t e to an o p p r e s s i v e a n d d o m i n e e r i n g 
ocularcentr ism. Heidegger ' s th inking p rov ides us with »a h e r m e n e u t i c a l gaze 
that recollects the unconcea lmen t of being«, he claims: 
the »truthful« gaze is thus a gaze that would hold itself open to the interplay of 
the visible and the invisible, the present and the absent - an interplay that is 
also made visible as the gift of the ontological difference, opening up a field of 
illumination for the enactment of human vision.27 
Levin believes that Heidegger ' s th ink ing encourages »resistance to all 
forms of reification, totalization, and reduc t ion i sm« and p r o m o t e s »epis temo-
logical humili ty, a r igorously exper imen ta l a t t i tude, always provis ional , al-
ways ques t ioning«. 2 8 In Levin ' s v iew H e i d e g g e r s tands for »a cons i s t en t 
perspect ivism, truth without certainty, the end of essential ism, an u n c o m p r o -
25 Ibid., pp. 30-35. 
2 0 Jay, Downcast Eyes, p. 275. 
2 7 David Michael Levin, »Decline and Fall: Ocularcentrism in Heidegger's Reading of 
the History of Metaphysics«, in Levin, Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, p. 212. 
28 Ibid., p. 190. 
16 
Modernity and Ocularcentrism 
raising b reak with founda t iona l i sm, and a renuncia t ion of the metaphysics of 
p re sence« . 2 9 
I wish to ques t ion Levin ' s assessment of Heidegger as a critic of moder-
ni ty; I d isagree in par t icu lar with his view that Heidegger ' s thinking is radi-
cal ly an t i -essen t ia l i s t a n d an t i - founda t iona l i s t . It is, of course, t rue that 
He idegge r is a f e rven t critic of moderni ty , but his crit ique, as I shall try to 
show, bears the s t amp of the sinister background - bo th philosophical and 
poli t ical - against wh ich it unfolds . 
Firstly, I shall c o m m e n t on Heidegger ' s alleged anti-essentialism. O n e 
th ing is b e y o n d doub t : He idegger ' s texts, bo th the early and the late works, 
bristle with essentialist language. In his essay f rom 1938, »The Age of the 
W o r l d Picture« [»Die Zeit des Weltbildes«], an essay to which I shall return 
in a m o m e n t , H e i d e g g e r considers a m o n g other things the essence of mod-
ern science (das W e s e n der neuzei t l ichen Wissenschaft) , which is an aspect of 
the essence of m o d e r n i t y (das Wesen der Neuzeit). Heidegger fur ther de-
clares that the essence of science is research and goes on to ask what the 
essence of r esea rch and wha t the essence of mathemat ics is (das Wesen der 
Forschung , das W e s e n des Mathemat i schen) . In his Introduction to Metaphysics 
[Einführung in die Metaphysik] f r o m 1935 b u t not p u b l i s h e d unt i l 1953), 
H e i d e g g e r even speaks of the essence of Being (Das Wesen des Seins) and 
charac ter izes the essence of spirit (das Wesen des Geistes) as »the originary 
and k n o w i n g a t t u n e m e n t to and the de te rmina t ion for the essence of be-
ing«. 3 0 M a n y m o r e e x a m p l e s could be given. Some of Heidegger ' s writings 
even have the word »essence« in their titles: On the Essence of Truth, On the 
Essence of the Ground [Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, Vom Wesen des Grundes], 
T h e f r e q u e n t use of the word »essence«, however , is perhaps not con-
clusive, a l though it is significant. W e must therefore consider how »essence« 
is actually used in He idegge r ' s work and scrutinize wha t he says about es-
sences, a H e r c u l e a n task that for obvious reasons canno t be under taken here, 
so I shall h a v e to conf ine myself to a few suggestions. It seems to me that 
He idegger ' s whole way of phi losophizing, both in the early and the late works, 
is i n f o r m e d by a quasi-pla tonic style of thinking. In the Introduction to Meta-
physics, for example , H e i d e g g e r in t roduces the quest ion of Being by citing a 
few examples of things tha t exist, of things he would call beings with a small 
b: a bu i ld ing (exists) is, there is a thunders to rm in the mountains , there is a 
29 ibid. 
My transl. of the German original: »Geist ist ursprünglich gestimmte, wissende 
Entschlossenheit zum Wesen des Seins«, Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, 
1935, 2nd ed., Niemeyer, Tübingen 1958, pp. 37-8. 
17 
Lars-Olof Áhlberg 
gateway at the f ront of the R o m a n e s q u e chu rch , the state is s o m e t h i n g real , 
there is s o m e t h i n g in van G o g h ' s p a i n t i n g of a pa i r of p e a s a n t shoes . 3 1 
Heidegger then proceeds to ask what the Being of these be ings is, a s suming 
that there is someth ing uni tary h id ing b e h i n d p h e n o m e n a tha t »exist«, phe-
n o m e n a that »are«, namely the Being of be ings or Being itself. It seems to m e 
that Ernst Tugendha t , the r enegade H e i d e g g e r i a n , is r igh t in say ing tha t 
Heidegger assumes that the different m e a n i n g s and uses of the word »to be« 
are uni tary, or, that they can be r educed to a uni ta ry concep t . 3 2 Th i s m o d e of 
reasoning, the postulat ion of »hidden« p h e n o m e n a and processes f r o m which 
the visible and tangible p h e n o m e n a e m a n a t e as it were , is o m n i p r e s e n t in 
Heidegger ' s thinking. A spectacular e x a m p l e is He idegge r ' s in t roduc t ion of 
»nothing« as a noun in the lecture What is Metaphysics? [ Was ist Metaphysik] 
(1929). Science, he says, investigates wha t is, in o the r w o r d s be ings (Seiendes) 
and nothing else. H e then immedia te ly p r o c e e d s to ask the ques t ion w h a t this 
nothing with a capital N is, and claims tha t the N o t h i n g (das Nichts) is m o r e 
f u n d a m e n t a l t han nega t ion and our use of the w o r d s »no« a n d »not« . 3 3 
Heidegger bel ieves that the everyday use as well as the logical use of nega-
tion is possible only because of the No th ing . In o ther words , we can nega te 
statements and say no only because of the No th ing . If this is n o t essential ism 
and Platonism, then no th ing is! 
As for Heidegger ' s al leged ant i - foundat ional i sm, I will conf ine myself to 
a short and arrest ing passage f rom What is Metaphysics, in wh ich H e i d e g g e r 
claims that a l though science does no t wish to have any th ing to do with the 
Nothing, science is in fact only possible because it is g r o u n d e d in the Noth-
ing. »Only because the Noth ing is mani fes t is it possible for science to inves-
tigate beings«, Heidegger declares . 3 4 For He idegge r scientific inqui ry is al-
ways founded on metaphysical p resuppos i t ions . T h e r e f o r e I cons ider tha t is 
incorrect to regard h im as a radical ant i - foundat ional is t . 
I now turn to Heidegger ' s crit ique of m o d e r n i t y as it is expressed in his 
essay »The Age of the Wor ld Picture« and in the Introduction to Metaphysics. 
Metaphysics, Heidegger says, provides the founda t i ons for an age and con-
fers upon it its essential gestalt, because metaphys ics fu rn i shes a par t icu lar 
31 Ibid., pp. 26-7. 
3 2 Ernst Tugendhat, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie, 
Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main 1976, p. 91. 
3 3 Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?, 1929, 9th ed., Klostermann, Frankfurt/Main 
1965, pp. 26-8. 
3 4 My translation of the German original: »Nur weil das Nichts offenbar ist, kann die 
Wissenschaft das Seiende selbst zum Gegenstand der Untersuchung machen«, Mar-
tin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?, p. 40. 
18 
Modernity and Ocularcentrism 
in t e rp re ta t ion of b e i n g and a specific concept ion of t ruth. Every phenom-
e n o n tha t is character is t ic of an age is pe rmea ted by the metaphysical foun-
da t ion of the age, H e i d e g g e r claims. Accord ing to Heidegger the following 
p h e n o m e n a const i tu te the essential characteristics of the m o d e r n age: the 
d o m i n a n c e of na tu ra l science and technology, the aesthetization of art, that 
is, the fact tha t the work of ar t becomes an object of aesthetic exper ience and 
is v iewed as an express ion of h u m a n life; the fact that h u m a n action is inter-
p r e t e d in t e rms of cul ture a n d value and the »de-deification« (Entgötterung) 
of the wor ld . All these p h e n o m e n a contr ibute to the domina t ion of the world 
as p ic ture , by which he m e a n s that the world has b e c o m e a picture, a repre-
sentat ion, some th ing reif ied which m a n can dispose of at will. The fact that 
the wor ld has b e c o m e a pic ture , a representa t ion is an essential characteristic 
of m o d e r n i t y (Neuzeit) . For Heidegger modern i ty is the latest stage in the 
his tory of the forge t fu lness of Being that set in after the Pre-Socratic per iod in 
ph i lo sophy . 
Basically, the s ame analysis is found in the Introduction to Metaphysics, but 
with s t ronger poli t ical and historicist overtones. E u r o p e a n culture is decay-
ing, E u r o p e »lies in the giant pincers be tween Russia and America«, which 
f r o m the me taphys ica l po in t of view are identical: the same »dismal rage of 
u n c h a i n e d technology« and the same »appal l ing organiz ing of the average 
m a n « (die b o d e n l o s e Organ i sa t ion des Norma lmenschen ) . Heidegger dreads 
the t ime w h e n the who le wor ld has been conquered technically and eco-
nomica l ly and w h e n »every event is accessible at all t imes everywhere«. 3 5 
T h e d a r k e n i n g of the wor ld (Weltverdiisterung) is in progress: the gods have 
f led, the ear th is be ing exploi ted , the collectivization of m a n (Vermassung 
des Menschen) is p r o c e e d i n g and mediocr i ty is rife.3 6 T h e Ge rmans are a 
me taphys ica l peop le , He idegge r says, and al though G e r m a n y is su r rounded 
by ne ighbour s on all sides a n d is therefore in a vulnerable position, she can, 
H e i d e g g e r claims, b e c a m e the source of the renewal of Europe , br inging 
E u r o p e back into contac t with the powers of Being.3 7 Levin no doub t has 
similar passages in m i n d to the ones I have pa raphrased when he writes: 
Heidegger might seem to be telling the very same story that so many reac-
tionary thinkers in Europe had been telling and repeating since the closing 
years of the nineteenth century: a story which, let us say, begins in nostalgia 
and concludes with a condemnation of modernity.38 
3 5 Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, pp. 28-9. 
36 Ibid., p. 34. 
37 Ibid., 29. 
3 8 Levin, »Decline and Fall«, p. 187. 
19 
Lars-Olof Áhlberg 
Although Levin admits that there are , »some d e e p and p r o f o u n d l y dis-
turbing affinities be tween Heidegger ' s accoun t and the nar ra t ives in circula-
tion among the forces of the G e r m a n right«, he never the less be l ieves that we 
can find hints of a new beg inn ing which is ve ry d i f fe ren t f r o m the ideals of 
Heidegger ' s conservat ive con tempora r i e s or f r o m the n e w b e g i n n i n g pro-
claimed by Nat ional Socialism.3 9 I do n o t wish to en la rge on the so-called 
Heidegger affaire, which concerns the n a t u r e and ex ten t of He idegge r ' s in-
vo lvement wi th Nat ional Socialism, b u t a few c o m m e n t s m a y be in p lace 
since Heidegger ' s crit ique of modern i ty inevi tab ly raises poli t ical and histori-
cal issues. T h e real quest ion is not w h e t h e r H e i d e g g e r h a d Na t iona l Socialist 
sympathies (that quest ion has been settled long ago); the real issue conce rns 
the relat ionship be tween Heidegger ' s ph i l o sophy and the polit ics of Na t iona l 
Socialism.4 0 It seems to me that in s o m e of his wri t ings f r o m the thir t ies 
Heidegger comes peri lously near to iden t i fy ing the »fate of be ing« and »the 
powers of Being« with the G e r m a n revolu t ion . Karl Lowi th , He idegge r ' s one-
time s tudent and a phi losopher and his tor ian of ideas in his own right, recalls 
that after hear ing Heidegger ' s no tor ious »Rektora t s rede« in 1933 he d idn ' t 
know whe the r Heidegger m e a n t that o n e should go h o m e and r ead the pre-
Socratics or that one should join the s torm t roops . 4 1 Lowi th also recalls that 
Heidegger concur red in Lowith 's op in ion tha t He idegge r ' s poli t ical commi t -
men t was f o u n d e d on his ph i losophy a n d that H e i d e g g e r told h i m tha t his 
political in tervent ion was based on his concep t of his tor ici ty . 4 2 
In Heidegger ' s writings after the war his invoca t ions of Being are con-
siderably m o r e quietist. His p r o n o u n c e m e n t s on Being assume an increas-
ingly mystical, or should I say quasi-mystical , quali ty. T h e th ink ing of Being 
transcends bo th theoretical and pract ical th inking. It is pure ly a r e m e m b r a n c e 
of Being and noth ing else, it lets Being be , He idegge r says in his Letter on 
Humanism (1946) [Brief iiber den Humanismus]. This or ig inary th ink ing is »an 
39 Ibid. 
4 0 Heidegger's refusal after the war to disassociate himself unequivocally from the poli-
tics of the Nazi period and his persistent silence about the holocaust are surely rel-
evant in this context. In the exchange of letters with Herbert Marcuse in 1947 
Heidegger compares the fate of the Jews with the expulsion of Germans from the 
eastern territories awarded to Poland after the war. The philosopher of ontological 
difference was blind to some very real ontic differences. (See Bernd Martin, Martin 
Heidegger und das »Dritte Reich«: Ein Kompendium, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 
Darmstadt 1989, p. 157.) 
4 1 Rüdiger Safranski, Ein Meister aus Deutschland: Heidegger und seine Zeit, Hanser, München 
1994, p. 292. 
42 Ibid., p. 371. 
20 
Modernity and Ocularcentrism 
echo of the f avour of Being«, 4 3 as Heidegger puts it and p resumably can only 
be prac t i sed by the elect. Those of us who have no t hea rd the call of the 
p a t h w a y in the Black Forest m a y be forgiven for th inking that Heidegger has 
a b a n d o n e d ra t ional t h o u g h t and communica t ive rat ionali ty. The impress ion 
that H e i d e g g e r is a t t empt ing to express the unsayable in his works after Time 
and Being (Sein und Zeit) is s t rengthened by the fact that there has not been 
(and, as far as I can see, there cannot) be any real deve lopment of Heideggerian 
ph i losophy . He idegge r i ans are in the habi t of p roduc ing more or less read-
able pa raph ra se s of the mas ter . In the final analysis Heidegger ' s thinking is 
religious. He idegge r ' s in f luence seems to be steadily decreasing in France 
and G e r m a n y , whe rea s he has a considerable fol lowing in America , arguably 
the mos t secular ized coun t ry in the world. T h e non-confessional religious 
qual i ty of his th ink ing m a y paradoxica l ly he lp to expla in his appeal in a 
wor ld f r o m which the gods have fled and where technosc ience reigns su-
p r e m e . 
For the r e a s o n s i n d i c a t e d I c a n n o t agree with Levin ' s appra i sa l of 
He idegge r as a critic of mode rn i ty and of ocularcentr ism. I do not believe 
that He idegge r is a radical anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist thinker, 
a l though his essent ial ism and foundat ional i sm is admit tedly somewhat out-
landish . 
T h e concep t of theory , inher i ted f rom Greek phi losophy, and the theo-
retical a t t i tude is o f ten m a d e responsible for the prevalence of ocularcentr ism 
in our cul ture . T h e o r y impl ies general i ty in ph i losophy as well as in science. 
He idegge r is critical of the claims of bo th phi losophical and scientific theory. 
Science does no t th ink, science is not the revelat ion of t ruth, it can only attain 
»rightness« H e i d e g g e r says in his essay »What is thinking?« [»Was heiß t 
Denken?«] . To say that He idegger is r ight in saying that science does not 
think, since only scientists think, is pe rhaps a petty response. Nevertheless 
such a response points to an impor t an t aspect of Heidegger ' s att i tude toward 
science: his total d is regard for differences and for specific cases. 
I th ink there are some fundamen ta l similarities be tween Heidegger ' s 
and Der r ida ' s a t t i tude toward science in spite of the fact that Der r ida is no 
uncri t ical a d m i r e r of He idegger ' s . Derr ida ' s p r o n o u n c e m e n t s on science and 
scientific th ink ing seem to m e to be essentialist in some peculiar way. It may 
be naive, or pe rve r se (or both) to accuse Der r ida of essentialism. T h e fact that 
there are m a n y passages in his writings where he uses »essentialist« language 
is not in itself proof of essentialist thinking. Conversely, the absence of essen-
4 3 »das anfängliche Denken ist der Widerhall der Gunst des Seins«, Was ist Metaphysik?, 
p. 49. 
21 
Lars-Olof Áhlberg 
tialist language is not conclusive ev idence of the absence of essential ism. But 
what are we to make of the fol lowing str iking passage f r o m Der r ida ' s work 
Mémoires d'aveugle, quoted and c o m m e n t e d on in J a y ' s work: 
If the eyes of all animals are destined for sight, and perhaps from there to the 
scopic knowledge of the animale rationale, only man knows how to go be-
yond seeing and knowing because he knows how to cry ... Only he knows 
that tears are the essence of the eye - and not sight... Revelatory blindness, 
apocalyptic blindness, that which reveals the very truth of the eyes, this would 
be the gaze veiled by tears.44 
T h e quoted passage m a y strike us as po ignan t or pa the t ic as the case 
may be, but o n e thing at least seems to m e to be clear: De r r i da is m a k i n g the 
valid poin t that eyes are no t only for seeing and looking, they have an expres-
sive potent ia l that other sense-organs lack. It is surely significant tha t we cry 
with our eyes, and not, say with our noses or our ears. Never the less , the view 
that tears are the essence of the eye and tha t the gaze vei led by tears reveals 
the very t ru th of the eyes is puzzling. I th ink we should be gra teful that our 
mathemat ic ians and engineers are not s t ruck by apoca lyp t ic b l indness while 
doing sums or when designing a i rplanes and compute r s , even if they t he r eby 
prove that they are using their eyes in a »scopic« and non-essent ia l way. 
A final point about Der r ida and essent ial ism: in an in terview in 1984 
Derr ida del ineated the task of ph i losophy as fol lows: 
Philosophy, as logocentrism, is present in every scientific discipline and the 
only justification for transforming philosophy into a specialized discipline is 
the necessity to render explicit and thematic the philosophical subtext in every 
discourse.45 
To r e n d e r explicit the »phi losophical subtext« in the sense of uncover -
ing the h i d d e n logical and non-logical p resuppos i t ions in var ious theor ies 
and discourses is in my view an impor t an t ph i losophica l task, albeit no t the 
only one. But Der r ida actually says tha t the exposu re of logocent r i sm is the 
only justif ication for phi losophy. His view that logocent r i sm is p resen t in every 
scientific discipline is a surprisingly genera l and unspeci f ic claim. In wha t 
manner , we may ask, is logocentr ism and the me taphys ics of p resence act ive 
in mathemat ics or palaeontology, in geology or q u a n t u m chemist ry , in com-
puter science or theoret ical cosmology? Is it p re sen t in all the sciences in the 
^ Quoted from Jay, Downcast Eyes, p. 523. 
4 5 »Dialogue with Jacques Derrida« in R. Kearney, (Ed.), Dialogues with Contemporary 
Continental Thinkers, Manchester University Press, Manchester 1984, p. 110. 
22 
Modernity and Ocularcentrism 
same way, and if so, does it affect the validity and fruitfulness of the theories 
and the results ach ieved in those fields of scientific inquiry? Derr ida ' s atti-
tude seems to m e s o m e w h a t h igh-handed , because I do no t believe that these 
i m p o r t a n t ques t ions can be answered without a systematic analysis of the 
m e t h o d s and concep tua l f r ameworks of specific sciences. Is there not more 
than a t race of essent ial ism in his th inking about science and does not the 
ph i lo sophe r of differance display a r emarkab le disregard for the multifarious 
d i f fe rences be tween the aims, me thods and theories of different scientific dis-
ciplines? T o ask wha t the pu rpose or the funct ion of science is is like asking 
wha t the p u r p o s e and the func t ion of art is. In both cases the answer is the 
same: they have m a n y d i f fe ren t purposes and funct ions and no general theory 
can do just ice to the mult ipl ici ty of the sciences or the arts. 
Wit tgens te in , a ve ry di f ferent ph i losopher of difference, who once told 
his seminar : »I'll t each you differences«, writes in the Blue Book that 
Our craving for generality has another main source: our preoccupation with 
the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of 
natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; 
and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using 
generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their 
eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way 
science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the 
philosopher into complete darkness ... Instead of »craving for generality« I 
could also have said »the contemptuous attitude towards the particular case«.46 
It would of course be r idiculous to suggest that He idegger or Derr ida 
were in f luenced by the m e t h o d s of science, or that they »constantly see the 
m e t h o d of science be fo re their eyes«. But there is »a craving for generality« 
and a »con temptuous a t t i tude toward the part icular case« in their thinking, 
no t because they ado re scientific rationality, bu t because they are enamoured 
with a cer ta in concep t i on of ph i losophy as a theoretical enterprise, theoretical 
in the sense of p rov id ing a p r o f o u n d vision and an extensive interpretat ion of 
the wor ld wh ich is m o r e f u n d a m e n t a l and general t han anything envisaged 
in eve ryday life or in science. 
T h e cr i t ique of ocu la rcen t r i sm aims at exposing the totalizing and gen-
eral izing na tu re of the m o d e r n , scientific, scopic regime. But if the critique 
itself is total izing and if it relies on unwar ran ted general izat ions it quite liter-
ally loses sight of its target. 
4 6 Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, 1958, Blackwell, Oxford 1964, p. 18. 
23