Historical Ontology

In light of the recent spate of posts concerning the role of history in philosophy on this blog (especially Mark's post here and Catarina's here), and especially given Eric’s recent posts on coining concepts (here) and his own concept philosophic prophecy (here), I thought I’d add my concept of historical ontology to the mix. I can’t take credit for coining the phrase ‘historical ontology’. Ian Hacking wrote a book titled Historical Ontology, and Hacking himself got it from an offhand comment Foucault made and yet never fully developed in his “What is Enlightenment?” essay. In the context of my use of the concept in my analysis of Deleuze’s reading of Hume in my book Deleuze’s Hume, and drawing from the work of Bruno Latour as well, historical ontology acquires a broader scope than it has in Hacking’s work. Put briefly, I follow up on claims of Don Garrett, David Owen, and Norman Kemp Smith regarding the inseparability of the belief in external, autonomous objects from the actively engaged propensities of human nature – more precisely, this is the propensity towards easy transitions from one idea to another. Kemp Smith, in particular, argues that the belief in external existence is one of the two forms ‘natural belief’ takes, natural belief being for Kemp Smith a belief to which the mind is committed by Nature [and which]…operates in and through the imagination, and so by way of “fictions”.’ (Kemp Smith 1941, 485-6). On my reading of Hume here, we do not begin with the distinction between a natural world and a subject who reacts to and engages with this world, but rather we begin with a propensity, a process, and the distinction between subject and object, self and the world, are themselves effects that are inseparable from these ongoing propensities and processes. This inseparability of what is from the processes that actualize what is is what I call historical ontology.

In the case of Hume there are some interesting consequences of this idea. Since our beliefs in the reality of objects, for example, are inseparable, on the historical ontology reading of Hume, from the ‘fictions’ (à la Kemp Smith) that facilitate the propensities to transition more easily from one idea to another, a consequence is that these beliefs are fairly easily susceptible to being undermined. This can occur, for Hume, either by way of an overly vivid imagination or by force of reason. In the case of the imagination, it may fail to distinguish between that which is constant and regular and that which is changeable and irregular. Such ‘a lively imagination,’ Hume claims, ‘very often degenerates into madness or folly,’ meaning for Hume that one’s ideas have become strong and lively even without ‘a present impression and a customary transition’. (T 123). In the case of reason, a belief can be undermined as one acquiares greater discernment in relation to matters of fact and to the differences between them. For example, in the case of prejudice, one may presume, to cite Hume’s example, that “An Irishman cannot have wit, and a Frenchman cannot have solidity’ (T 146). ‘Human nature,’ Hume adds, ‘is very subject to errors of this kind’ (T 147). Such prejudicial beliefs are, however, and as I argue in more detail in the book, inseparable from the actualization of a multiplicity (multiplicity being in Humean terminology that which is neither number or unity, or they are the impressions without a theatre or stage) – that is, we have historical ontology. As a result, the very multiplicity of the imagination that comes to be actualized through the fictions of the imagination as a belief regarding Frenchmen or Irishmen can in turn be undermined when the multiplicity inseparable from this belief comes to be further actualized and results in a greater discernment of matters of fact. 

As for the relationship between history and philosophy, the concept of historical ontology lays the basis for what I call a problematizing history, which I allude to in my comments to Eric’s philosophic prophecy post. Put briefly, a problematizing history is an effort of ‘counter-actualization’, to use Deleuze’s term, by which is meant that rather than attempt to discern and map how identifiable events became actual as a result of other identifiable events, a counter-actualizing history attempts to problematize a given state of affairs and beliefs by drawing attention to the historical ontology inseparable from what is, from what is actual, and in doing this one unlocks the creative potential that is in turn inseparable from what is. In the end, I suppose you could say that by drawing on Hume, Deleuze, and Latour I am with my development of the concept historical ontology attempting to extend Foucault’s historical-philosophical project, which he describes in one of his final Berkeley lectures of 1983 (published as Fearless Speech), as follows:

The history of thought [which is what Foucault claims to be doing in contrast to the history of ideas] is the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience, or set of practices, which were accepted without question, which were familiar and ‘silent,’ out of discussion, becomes a problem, raises discussion and debate, incites new reactions, and induces a crisis in the previously silent behavior, habits, practices, and institutions. (2001, 49).