The future’s anticipatory structure holds teleological necessity and surprise together
Evidence
To distinguish this structure from the future as it is ordinarily understood, we will name this structure ‘to see (what is) coming’ (le ‘voir venir’), obeying Hegel’s injunction to philosophize in one’s own idiom. ‘Voir venir’ in French means to wait, while, as is prudent, observing how events are developing. But it also suggests that other people’s intentions and plans must be probed and guessed at. It is an expression that can thus refer at one and the same time to the state of ‘being sure of what is coming’ (‘être sûr de ce qui vient’) and of ‘not knowing what is coming’ (‘ne pas savoir ce qui va venir’). It is on this account that the ‘voir venir’, ‘to see (what is) coming’, can represent that interplay, within Hegelian philosophy, of teleological necessity and surprise. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 250
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines ‘voir venir’ as the technical name for the anticipatory structure of subjectivity — a dual term that holds certainty and uncertainty together.
- DEEPTHINKING: The ‘voir venir’ concept — an anticipation that is simultaneously assured and ignorant, pairing teleology with surprise — is a genuinely synthetical crystallizing of a whole dialectical axis.
- XREF: connects to: The future is a prejudicative self-relation, not representation or actual potency; The future is what the For-itself has yet to become, its determining possible being.; An event requires both teleological necessity and aleatory accident to occur — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 54 (+11 more)
Broader Connections
- The speculative subject accepts rather than averts the future’s radical uncertainty
#expands(0.82) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 25 - Teleological explanations appeal to future purpose while mechanistic explanations trace earlier causes.
#expands(0.80) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 362 - The present is overdetermined yet fundamentally open to contingency
#expands(0.78) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1196