{"id":7429,"date":"2019-08-30T15:27:24","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T19:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/?p=7429"},"modified":"2019-08-30T15:27:24","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T19:27:24","slug":"thomas-nail-being-and-motion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/2019\/08\/30\/thomas-nail-being-and-motion","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Nail, Being and Motion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Nail, Being and Motion<\/em>. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; 544 pages. ISBN: 978-0190908911.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Michael J. Bennett, University of King\u2019s College.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thomas Nail\u2019s ambitious philosophical project starts with the diagnosis that today we live in the \u201cAge of Motion.\u201d Politics, aesthetics and science have entered a \u201cwhole new kinetic paradigm,\u201d (5) and this is true even of ontology, however reluctant ontologists are to accept it.<\/p>\n

Though its scope is staggering, this book is yet a part of a larger whole. Nail proposes to treat the other topics in separate books, some of which remain unpublished, even as Being and Motion<\/em> references them frequently. In Being and Motion<\/em>, Nail aims to accomplish two things. His first task is to produce a timely \u201cconceptual and ontological framework for describing the being of motion,\u201d upon which the companion volumes can draw, thus also providing a \u201cunique insight into a certain hidden or occluded dimension of Western ontology.\u201d (11) Philosophers have rarely endorsed the ontological \u201cprimacy of motion,\u201d Nail observes, and have usually subordinated it to a more fundamental principle. Three historical exceptions\u2014Lucretius, Marx, and Bergson\u2014who take motion as seriously as Nail does, receive brief treatment (32\u201335), and fuller analyses are promised elsewhere. But because Nail portrays Being and Motion<\/em> as providing insight into what has hitherto been obscured behind other \u201cnames of being,\u201d his book makes a critical intervention today. Contemporary philosophers who fail to appreciate the primacy of motion must be out of step with the times, actively participating in the suppression of this dimension of ontology, or oblivious to the real material-kinetic presuppositions of their practice (144). These are the errors that Nail scrupulously avoids.<\/p>\n

The second task of Being and Motion <\/em>is to \u201cturn this kinetic perspective back on the practice of ontology itself.\u201d Nail\u2019s theory of motion is not \u201cfundamental\u201d ontology, he says, but \u201chistorical.\u201d (19) It advances a \u201cminimal\u201d (but still \u201ctranscendental\u201d) claim about the history of past being, about what \u201cprevious reality\u201d must have been like in order to produce our present. Thus it makes no assertions about the future and even leaves open the possibility that other names of being will eclipse \u201cmotion.\u201d Moreover, in addition to examining historical descriptions<\/em> of being\u2014primarily, but not exclusively, texts from the history of Western philosophy\u2014with a view to redescribing them in kinetic terms, Nail also pays meticulous attention to the types of inscription<\/em> or graphism that materially condition the content of those descriptions: speech, writing, the codex, and the keyboard.<\/p>\n

Nail\u2019s thesis is that in four distinct periods of Western history, both ontological description and inscription followed the same \u201cregime of motion.\u201d That is, they described and inscribed a real \u201cpattern of being\u2019s motion,\u201d which existed at the time (24) and made it possible for being to appear as something other than what it is\u2014other than motion. This is not to say that historical ontologists were simply wrong to name being \u201cspace,\u201d \u201ceternity,\u201d \u201cforce,\u201d or \u201ctime.\u201d \u201cReality actually moved differently in each period\u201d (139), and this is what such descriptions referred to. In the Neolithic period (10000\u20135000 BCE), a centripetal pattern of motion dominated, while in the Ancient world (5000 BCE\u2013500 CE), it was a centrifugal pattern. The long Middle Ages, including the Early Modern period (500\u20131800 CE), were characterized by a \u201ctensional\u201d regime of motion, and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, motion became increasingly \u201celastic.\u201d These kinetic patterns organize Being and Motion<\/em> itself, particularly the second half, and demonstrating their existence and dominance in their respective historical eras lies at the heart of the project.<\/p>\n

One of the challenges inherent in Nail\u2019s project arises from his reasoned commitment to describing <\/em>the patterns without explaining <\/em>them. Nail rejects the pretense of causal explanation involved in both \u201cidealist\u201d reductionism, according to which inscriptions about being are completely explained by the thoughts <\/em>they contain, and its obverse, which makes ontological descriptions the simple products of \u201ctechnological, material, or media\u201d conditions. (20\u201321) Since talking about \u201ccauses\u201d is always a non-explanatory \u201cshort-cut\u201d for longer accounts of matter in motion (103), Nail prefers terms like \u201ccoordination, or synchronization\u201d (21), \u201chistorical coemergence and constant conjunction\u201d (23), and \u201ckinetic resonance\u201d (140) to capture the relation between description and inscription. And though he does not explain it, Nail increases the scope of this \u201cresonance\u201d with dominant patterns of motion: it also characterizes the relations between ontology, politics, aesthetics, and science. (140)<\/p>\n

Despite the centrality of kinetic forms or \u201cpatterns\u201d to his argument, Nail classifies the ontology of motion as a kind of materialism<\/em>. He defines his \u201cprocess materialism\u201d in contrast to what Marx called the \u201ccrude materialism\u201d of the empiricists and the \u201ccontemplative materialism\u201d of the idealists, which makes of matter a \u201cconcept or logical category.\u201d (47\u20138) To avoid that misstep, Nail aims to ensure that the term remains as undefined as possible: \u201cMatter is the historical name for what is in motion, but what matter is <\/em>is in process<\/em> and thus must remain ontologically indeterminate.\u201d (46) Again, instead of explaining, Nail prefers to describe: \u201cThe best way to describe what it is is by what it does, or how it moves.\u201d (49) To this end, he devotes the rest of Book I: The Ontology of Motion.<\/p>\n

This theory of motion constitutes the \u201ckinetic deduction\u201d Nail promised of historical being\u2019s minimal features and a kinetic redescription of inherited ontological concepts. For example, Nail calls the intersection of a continuous flow with itself a \u201cfold\u201d (83). The cycle or periodic motion that follows from folding makes it possible for motion to achieve a state of relative stability that Nail uses to conceptualize identity, unity, existence, necessity, sensation, quality, quantity, and thinghood. (85\u201399)<\/p>\n

The dominant \u201cpatterns of motion\u201d that characterize the history of ontology and give rise to being\u2019s main names are not folds but \u201cfields.\u201d The difference is that a field does not intersect with itself, yet \u201cbinds together and organizes a regional distribution of flows.\u201d (109) One question this raises is how a field does so, if indeed it doesn\u2019t move the way a fold does\u2014that is, if it has no period, cycle, and so on, and by extension no identity, qualities or thinghood of its own. Nail might deny that fields explain the folds they organize and resist answering such a \u201chow\u201d question, but even so, the concept of the kinetic field is less well-developed than that of the fold\u2014which is a shame, considering how important a role fields play in the historical analyses of Book II.<\/p>\n

Book II: The Motion of Ontology is by some margin the longer section of Being and Motion<\/em>. It is divided into four subsections, each devoted to a period of ontological history and that period\u2019s associated concept of being. Each of these parts is, in turn, subdivided into three \u201cresonating\u201d analyses\u2014of the dominant pattern of motion (kinos<\/em>), the content of ontological descriptions (logos<\/em>), and the ways in which ontology was inscribed (graphos<\/em>). Book II is the product of massive synthetic ambition, and Nail brings together an impressive amount of material under his conceptual framework. In this review, I cannot do justice to it all, so I neglect his intriguing discussions of inscription entirely, as well the prehistoric centripetal and ancient centrifugal periods, in order to focus on what he says about modern European philosophy.<\/p>\n

Probably the most unusual feature of Nail\u2019s history of Western ontology is the length of the period he calls \u201cmedieval,\u201d dominated by the \u201ctensional\u201d pattern of motion. It spans from about the traditional date of the fall of Rome to the publication of Kant\u2019s Critique of Pure Reason <\/em>in 1781. Although this regime remains dominant well into scientific modernity, it originates, Nail says, as a response to the kinetic problems introduced by the transcendence of God at the centre of the prior, centrifugal regime. (274\u201375) Such problems are particularly acute in the Christian traditions because of the necessity of accounting for the incarnation, as a result of which God is both an absolutely separate creator and a particular human being. (320\u201321) Thus Nail defines \u201ctensional\u201d motion as involving at least two fields, connected by a mediating flow or \u201crigid link [that] keeps them both together and apart.\u201d (274) Medieval theologians, philosophers and scientists theorize the link between God and created nature in various ways\u2014for example, in terms of the Trinity, aether, impetus, and conatus\u2014but Nail perceives an underlying continuity, because being tends to be defined predominantly as transferable force. In this context, Spinoza develops the regime\u2019s timeliest ontological description with his unapologetic ontology of power. (314)<\/p>\n

The transition from the tensional regime and the ontology of force to its successor, Nail continues, occurs \u201cin the face of a brutal empiricist critique\u201d (368)\u2014namely, the critique of metaphysics inaugurated by Berkeley and Hume. (318\u201319; 280\u201381) One recognizes the conventional story Kant himself tells of being awoken from dogmatic slumbers, which inaugurates a philosophical revolution. Nail identifies post-Kantian phenomenology as the dominant form of modern ontology and \u201celastic\u201d motion as the regime it kinetically presupposes. \u201cElasticity\u201d here describes a field in which between any two ordered folds, there is an indefinite number of subfolds. (370; 373) The field can thus expand and contract in a way that has been described predominantly in terms of temporality and subjectivity\u2014for example, the retention of the past, the anticipation of the future, and the expansiveness of the lived present. Nail interprets Kant\u2019s transcendental subject as an elastic circulation conditioning all appearances whose form of inner sense is time, and he makes Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida the regime\u2019s other descriptive touchstones, since they each elaborate on the association between temporality and subjectivity, consciousness, or being-there.<\/p>\n

With the claim that modern phenomenology and the ontology of time become \u201cdominant\u201d in the recent past, Nail must face up to a structural or methodological challenge. He admits that fields of motion not only change over the course of history but become increasingly hybrid<\/em> or mixed as they approach the present. (26; 453 n.14) The attempt to isolate the dominant patterns or to consider patterns separately must therefore become progressively less adequate to the reality of the fields themselves.<\/p>\n

Nail\u2019s core argument climaxes with the suggestion that the phenomenology of time has brought ontology to a tipping-point. He concedes that it closely resembles the view he advocates, as \u201cthe whole of being seems to be caught up in a more primary flux or flow of time,\u201d but in another sense ontological elasticity \u201ccould not be more different from the real flux and continuum of motion.\u201d (369) That\u2019s because \u201cthe structure of time presupposes that being is primordially divided, intervalic [sic<\/em>], fragmentary, and thus static.\u201d (420) It is divided into three tenses: past, present, and future (367), and, finally, into the differences or \u201cintervals\u201d that Derrida shows to be the condition for the givenness of time. (416\u201317) In other words, the flow (of time) is not a continuous flow at all. Since the most contemporary ontologies are so close yet so far from a truly kinetic one, Nail aims to seize the moment, come down on one side of the issue, and tip the balance away from the legacy of phenomenology one finds in Heidegger, Derrida, and their acolytes (420)\u2014but also in Deleuze.<\/p>\n

Deleuze and the Deleuzians appear prominently in Being and Motion <\/em>as \u201crelated contenders\u201d to Nail\u2019s process materialism and ontology of motion (32) and as the clearest targets of his criticism, the thrust of which is that their descriptions of being are ontological throwbacks, out of step with the times. According to Nail, Deleuze not only (like Derrida), \u201cmodels his theory of difference [in Difference and Repetition<\/em>] on time, following the phenomenological tradition\u201d (419), but he is also a neo-Spinozist ontologist of force. (43; 37\u201338; 48\u201349) In other words, Deleuze\u2019s descriptions of being presuppose either the elastic regime of motion, which Nail encourages us to move beyond, or the tensional regime that has not been dominant for centuries. Deleuze\u2019s claims are \u201chistorically limited <\/em>in certain ways [he] could not see beyond.\u201d (41)<\/p>\n

Nail also attributes to Deleuze\u2014in contrast to his own kinetic materialist monism\u2014an \u201cinclusive and pluralistic ontology in which all the great names for being are said equally and univocally of the same being,\u201d identified with becoming or differential process. (36) From this perspective, Nail\u2019s complaint is that Deleuze failed to live up to his promise of pluralism and inclusiveness by treating some of the supposedly equal names of being (like \u201cforce\u201d) as more equal than others. (37\u201338) Still, if the present-day fields of motion, by Nail\u2019s own admission, are the most complex and hybrid, then perhaps a consistent pluralism that undertakes to be equally so would also be a candidate for the ontology of the present.<\/p>\n

Being and Motion <\/em>is a singular achievement, but it ends by recognizing its limitations. The need to isolate dominant patterns in hybrid flows, for example, represents the \u201cmixological\u201d limitation of the work. Nail also acknowledges its \u201cgeographical narrowness\u201d as the price to be paid for \u201chistorical breadth\u201d (445), and he looks forward to future research expanding the kinetic analysis to non-Western and colonized contexts, where motion may be differently periodized and resonate in other patterns. (446\u201347) Nail\u2019s compelling book might indeed move others to build on its groundwork or, equally, provoke vigorous debate. It is a substantial contribution to contemporary philosophy, which I expect to make a wide-ranging impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Nail, Being and Motion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; 544 pages. ISBN: 978-0190908911. Reviewed by Michael J. Bennett, University of King\u2019s College. Thomas Nail\u2019s ambitious philosophical project starts with the diagnosis that today we live in the \u201cAge of Motion.\u201d Politics, aesthetics and science have entered a \u201cwhole new kinetic paradigm,\u201d (5) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[269,35,120],"class_list":["post-7429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-motion","tag-ontology","tag-philosophy-of-history","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 11:45:58","action":"Draft","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7429"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7432,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7429\/revisions\/7432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}