Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction: The Figure of This World
- 1 The Question of Political Ontology
- 2 The Poetic Experience of the World
- 3 The Myth of the Earth
- 4 The Unbearable
- 5 The Creature before the Law
- 6 The Animal for which Animality is an Issue
- 7 Understanding the Happy
- 8 The Picture and its Captives
- 9 The Passing of the Figure of This World
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Understanding the Happy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction: The Figure of This World
- 1 The Question of Political Ontology
- 2 The Poetic Experience of the World
- 3 The Myth of the Earth
- 4 The Unbearable
- 5 The Creature before the Law
- 6 The Animal for which Animality is an Issue
- 7 Understanding the Happy
- 8 The Picture and its Captives
- 9 The Passing of the Figure of This World
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
All of existence is squeezed into the philosopher's tomato when he rolls it towards his overwhelming question.
All cognition of the Whole originates in death, in the fear of death.
What are the consequences of our taking the world as a picture, of viewing it as though it were a picture, of picturing the world? This question, which is arguably at the heart of the problem of representation, is complicated by the depth at which the picture-concept – the idea of the world as a representable totality of facts – is embedded in our ways of speaking and writing. In everyday language we find ‘points of view’ and ‘perspectives’ (not to mention Weltbilder and Weltanschauungen); we say ‘that's not how I see it’, ‘I see what you mean’, or ‘I get the picture’ (presumably operating under a version of the idea that communication, at least in its deliberative modes, is a way of sharing these objects, of opening our own views of the world to the views of others). Similarly in philosophical language we often refer to the positions of various writers as ‘pictures’, and of philosophical debate in terms of arguments over differing ‘views’ of whatever matter is at hand. In other words, this metaphorical register – the language of pictures, views, frames, perspectives and so on – is highly intuitive for us, and even appears as a natural way of presenting and comparing claims and arguments.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Figure of This WorldAgamben and the Question of Political Ontology, pp. 144 - 161Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2014