ABSTRACT
What is the relation between meaning and power? How is one to characterize, for example, the meaning of power or the power of meaning? From what standpoints and in terms of what concepts are these questions to be developed and answered? Is the science or art of ‘hermeneutics’ the proper standpoint from which to study meaning, while the ‘political’ and ‘social’ sciences would be the proper standpoints from which to study power? And what is the proper role of the notion of being here? Is it not necessary to bring the notion of being —and thus presumably also the field of ‘ontology’—into play in order to clarify the relation between meaning and power? For example, does one not have to clarify the different modes of being of meaning and power (i.e. how they exist, come to exist, and pass away) in order to have understood their interrelationship? But further, and conversely: does one not have to clarify the meaning and power possessed by being in order to be able to ask about the being meaning and power might have? How is one to describe the being of meaning and the meaning of being, the being of power and the power of being? How is one to describe the interrelationships between ontology, hermeneutics, and politics? The following considerations give some definition to the space opened up by this series of questions by accomplishing two particular tasks. First (in parts I and II), they describe the systematic connections between modal ontology, on the one hand, and some of the most fundamental categories of modern politics and hermeneutics on the other. And second (in part III), they show how these systematic connections are interrupted and displaced in Jean-Luc Nancy’s work.
