AND IS IT YET ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO OVERCOME THE TRAUMA OF MODERNITY? ANDREW HAAS, UNITY AND ASPECT, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann GmbH, 2018. ISBN 9783826064500

Abstract

Haas’ Unity and Aspect reveals a philosophical impulse that leads to the creation of a new form of language for posing the questions that belong to first philosophy. This philosophical intuition should be appraised within the historical and philosophical development of metaphysical thought which demonstrates its self-destructive nature (as Heidegger argues with respect to “European Nihilism”) through a critique of traditional concepts and questions, which subsequently leads to the deconstruction of metaphysics as such. The experience of metaphysical thought—its critique as well as the deconstruction of its critical impulse— can be defined as traumatic; and in a certain sense, Haas’ work is an attempt to overcome the trauma underlying the entire project of contemporary philosophical searching. Unity and Aspect’s turn to metaphysics is a consequence of an opposition to the language of rational thought and its deconstruction. Haas introduces new concepts, therefore, such as implication and illumination, in order to problematize and “suspend” the idea of human consciousness and personality in its special stance towards the world. It is certain that the questions of first philosophy and metaphysics are extremely relevant for the contemporary thought, yet, the privileged stance of consciousness is radically rejected by some schools, as for instance, by speculative realism. Thus, we try to show that the language posed by Haas brings, in a certain sense, the problems of phenomenology closer to those of speculative realism by sublating the difference in their intentions.