Hardt and Negri make another point in their methodological reflections that wind up the subsection they entitle 'The Ontological Drama of the Res Gestae; within the Alternatives within Empire section.
They say:
"This is where the first methodological approach has to pass the baton to the second, the constructive and ethico-political approach. Here we must delve into the ontological substrate of the concrete alternatives continually pushed forward by the res gestae, the subjective forces acting in the historical context. What appears here is not a new rationality but a new scenario of different rational acts-a horizon of activities, resistances, wills, and desires that refuse the hegemonic order, propose lines of flight, and forge alternative constitutive itineraries. This real substrate, open to critique, revised by the ethico-political approach, represents the real ontological referent of philosophy, or really the field proper to a philosophy of liberation. This approach breaks methodologically with every philosophy of history insofar as it refuses any deterministic conception of historical development and any "rational" celebration of the result. It demonstrates, on the contrary, how the historical event resides in potentiality. .... Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event."
"Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva, takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering."
The shades of night are falling on modernity and philosophy reflects on the movement of the ideal and the real in this form to understand the world forming.That new world is what Hardt and Negri call Empire.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 27, 2004 11:56 PM | TrackBackI read the "ontological substrate of the concrete alternatives continually pushed forward by the subjective forces acting in the historical context" as a vision of the multitude as a latter-day version of the mystical body of Christ. Except, of course, that it is seen, not as the church militant, but as a substrate. In this sense, it is rather like the mind of God. Events are the thoghts that flicker across this subjective substrate whose extent is the subject universe of the multitude unfolding in an eternal present whose memory is History.
Posted by: Jeff Doyle on June 28, 2004 12:42 PMHmm.
I'm not sure how to respond to your theological reading of Empire.
I've been considering introducing Leo Strauss into the discussion, but I was not sure how to do so.
Maybe this is the time.Strauss saw modernity in terms of a deep conflict between reason and revelation.
Maybe that would provide you with some textual material to bounce off.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on June 30, 2004 10:05 AM