Seeing what comes means seeing without seeing, a future neither visible nor hidden

Evidence

The Hegelian idea of plastic reading confers on the notion of ‘to see (what is) coming’ its real meaning. ‘To see (what is) coming’ denotes at once the visibility and the invisibility of whatever comes. The future is not the absolutely invisible, a subject of pure transcendence objecting to any anticipation at all, to any knowledge, to any speech. Nor is the future the absolutely visible, an object clearly and absolutely foreseen. It frustrates any anticipation by its precipitation, its power to surprise. ‘To see (what is) coming’ thus means to see without seeing – a wait without awaiting – a future which is neither present to the gaze nor hidden from it. Now isn’t this situation of ‘in-between’ par excellence the situation of reading? — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 89

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Pinpoints what the idiom ‘to see (what is) coming’ actually names: the doubled visibility/invisibility of what arrives.

Related

• Reading is the in-between experience of seeing and not seeing what comes (similarity 0.92)
• The future is neither fully visible nor invisible but frustrates anticipation by surprise (similarity 0.88)
• The Hegelian future is neither foreseeable nor hidden but an in-between (similarity 0.88)
• The future is neither wholly invisible nor foreseeable but surprises by precipitation (similarity 0.84)
• One expression can hold certainty and ignorance of the future together. (similarity 0.83)
• Anticipation of the future always operates through some form of blindness. (similarity 0.82)
• Voir venir means anticipating while not knowing what comes (similarity 0.82)
• The future is what the For-itself has yet to become, its determining possible being. (similarity 0.81)
• The coming of the absolute other sees the subject without ever being seeable (similarity 0.81)
• The French idiom ‘voir venir’ fuses certainty and ignorance of what comes (similarity 0.81)
• Reading Hegel requires a beginning that both foresees and does not foresee what follows (similarity 0.79)