The book addresses two fundamental issues:
1) It seeks to provide a proper understanding of the human condition
This very issue is expressed by the notion of the 'erratic being'. The central thesis is that a human being is a 'discordant unity' of two dimensions, or two heterogeneous, yet inseparable, events that remain in tension with one another. The first dimension is belonging to the world (in a sense close to the Heideggerian idea). The second dimension starts from the premise that, on the other hand, a human being cannot 'dwell in the world' without experiencing 'estrangement', a bewilderment in response to one’s very belonging to the world of meaning. This inexorable experience generates a pre-reflective distance between the human being and any form of concrete existence. With these two ways of being brought together as cooriginary of the human condition and understood as a relationship in tension; 'erratic being' points therefore to the idea that a human being belongs to a world only inasmuch as, at the same time, he experiences himself ejected and estranged from it. He dwells in the world, while experiencing himself as foreign in relation to it. He is 'rooted' and, in unison, 'expelled', incurred and ex-curred, en-stranged and ex-stranged, engaged and disengaged. Therefore, human beings exist as a 'go-between' or an 'interstice' between a world to which they belong and from which they escape and subtract themselves, on the one hand, and another world at which they aim and that does not yet exist, on the other. A human being is, so to say, an interstice between two figures of productive nihil. In the Latin tradition, the 'erratic being' has both pejorative and positive connotations. In the first case, the meaning is 'to wander aimlessly' or 'to drift'. In the second, and according to my research, it means that the 'erratic being' forges himself in a process we could call 'chaosmos'—a process without a foundation or telos, a process that generates its own rule of order in the very act of becoming in statu nascendi. The interrelationship of the community, produces chaotic encounters that give rise to a network or rhizome. A spontaneous order, perpetually renewing itself, emerges from the chaos. The latter, non-pejorative meaning is used to describe the essence of being human. The former is employed to discredit the contemporary human being, submerged in a deep crisis, ontological in nature, but with manifold sociocultural manifestations.
2) It provides the theoretical grounding for an ontological critique of contemporary society
The thesis is developed as follows:
a) We are immersed in a 'society of emptiness' that came into being after different waves of nihilism.
b) This society is traversed by a vertiginous movement, which only changes its conditions quantitatively, but which never truly transforms its ontological assumptions qualitatively. Any movement is merely apparent, which is why it is called ‘the organisation of emptiness'. This is therefore called ‘stationary society'; there, the time of the event has collapsed and so has the free becoming of the 'erratic being'.
c) In the aforementioned society (and its comprehension of the world), the genuine erratic being of humanity has been abrogated in favour of its improper errantry, disorientated and unproductive when it comes to 'world creation'. As a consequence, the being has been substituted by its representation. I call this event a 'world fictionalisation'. 'World fictionalisation' is a generic category that describes the fundamental 'civilisation disease' so representative of our times. In the second part of
Erratic being (
El ocaso de occidente, [
The Twilight of the Occident] Barcelona, Herder, 2015), I further developed this notion, including it within the category of «autophagy». Throughout the book, I analyse different manifestations of this 'ontological' disease, which requires a new definition of the concept of 'disease' and its application to a supra-individual, collective, or civilisation-level context.The aforementioned horizons are justified in Part I (Chapters 1 and 2) of the book. However, the kind of justification I bear in mind leads to a debate with Heidegger, who conceives errantry exclusively in terms of decadence.
In the second part of the book I perform a critique ‘with and beyond Heidegger’. To put it simply, it is the fundamental thesis( although this part is indeed abstruse from the philosophical standpoint): Heidegger understands the becoming of being as a relentless change of 'dwellings'. Nevertheless, human becoming (beyond Heidegger) consists of being 'between' dwellings, and because of that, of being an existence in exposure and in transit. At this point, I strive to propose an alternative, Hispanic model to the Heideggerian one. Namely, one based on the figure of Don Quixote from La Mancha. This model ultimately leads us beyond Heideggerian as well as Gadamerian hermeneutics, and points to a tragic conception of the human being. This line of thinking is defended throughout the book in terms of mutual belonging between the 'propriety' and 'impropriety' of being (against Heidegger) and of urgency for an ex-centric hermeneutics (with and against Gadamer).
In part III, after moving through a confrontation with Heidegger, the book seeks to characterise human being in terms of the erratic being, detailing the aspects of ‘being’ or ‘becoming’.
Part IV is an analysis of the relationship between the pre-reflective dimension of human existence and its reflective counterpart, as well as an effort to address issues related to normativity. These are the fundamental steps:
Go beyond Habermas and Apel (Chapter 9.2.)
Appeal to Kant and transform his philosophy by ontologising it. In that enterprise, the new categorical imperative emerges and is called 'the zenithal principle' (the first sketch of which appears in Chapter 8, but is substantially developed in 9.3 – 9.5).
Understand thought as a bond between the pre-reflective and the reflective, between comprehension and an augmenting (augere) reflexive action. In order to do so, I draw on the Spanish Baroque tradition and, in a personal fashion, I identify thought and ingenium. This requires a detailed analysis of basic human intelligence as ingenium and its relation to the Hispanic-Latin-American tradition.
Offer basic criteria for a critique of the 'stationary society' and world fictionalisation. These criteria are negative (Chapter 10).
Furter Information about the Book and the Author
The book was discussed in several courses, workshops, and conferences both in Spain and in Latin American countries, where the author was expressly invited to discuss its content. It was also well received in multiple Spanish-language reviews.
The monograph was also recognised by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC, Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) as one of the four most relevant philosophical works in 2009, a circumstance that was extensively treated. V.
Continental Philosophy Review, 46 (1): 149-151 (2013).
The book has originated a Doctoral Thesis in which his ideas are applied to ethics (Miguel Villamil Pineda,
Experiencias personales erráticas. Para una fenomenología de las experiencias humanas y sus compromisos éticos (
Repositorio Institucional, Universidad Javeriana, Colombia, 2016). The author is a Professor at the University of Granada, Philosophy II Department. He has authored four monographs and edited six. He is the author of numerous papers published in English and German journals. For further information about his research, please
consult his webpage.
Erratic being: Chapter 4.2 and 5.pd
