ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we looked at what, according to Levinas, metaphysics had ‘forgotten’ to represent. Merleau-Ponty has made similar points: ‘Idealism overlooks the interrogative, the subjunctive, the aspiration, the expectation, the positive indeterminacy of these modes of consciousness, for it is acquainted only with the consciousness in the present or future indicative, which is why it fails to account for class’.3 So let us begin with the ‘indeterminacy’ that Merleau-Ponty ascribes to the subjunctive and interrogative modes. Teachers explaining the use of the subjunctive may do so by giving an account of a situation whose description calls for it. This account may be philosophical, even if it is accidentally so. The epistemological notions latent in grammatical rules fascinate Johannes Climacus:
The Greek Teacher presented grammar in a more philosophical way. When it was explained to Johannes that the accusative case, for example, is an extension in time and space, that the preposition does not govern the case but that the relation does, everything expanded before him. The preposition vanished; the extension in time and space became like an enormous empty picture for intuition. (PH/JC 121; Pap. IV, B #1, p. 107)
But a teacher may reassure a class that good usage will in time be grasped intuitively and spontaneously. The mood of the subjunctive, this teacher might add, will arise when the moment is right; learners may acquire the habit of feeling the way towards a usage in an almost musical way. Grammar is firmly set but it
is eventually ‘followed’ unconsciously.4 ‘In the end’, says Kierkegaard, ‘it’s all a question of ear.’ He continues: ‘The rules of grammar end with ear – the edicts of law end with ear – the figured bass ends with ear – the philosophical system ends with ear – which is why the next life is also represented as pure music […]’ (PJS 91; JP V, H-#5161, p. 74; Pap. I, A #235, p. 112). On the subjunctive in particular, he writes: ‘A remarkable transition occurs when one begins to study the grammar of the indicative and the subjunctive, because here for the first time one becomes conscious that everything depends on how it is thought, accordingly how thinking in its absoluteness follows upon a seeming reality’ (PJS 90; JP III, H-#2309, p. 4; Pap. II, A #155, p. 83). The subjunctive can be learnt; it can even be understood, but it will be used when the mood is right. Uncertainty, incomplete knowledge and the imperative are not the only precipitators. French sometimes places the subjunctive at the service of an indicative statement. Take this sentence from Baudelaire: ‘Un de mes amis, le plus indolent rêveur qui ait existé […]’ (‘One of my friends, the most indolent dreamer who ever existed […]’).5 Here the auxiliary verb (infinitive: avoir) is in the subjunctive (giving us ‘ait’) and is used to bolster a superlative (‘le plus indolent rêveur’). The poet does not doubt that his friend is most indolent of all dreamers. No, the friend in question definitely qualifies, in this world, for what Kripke would call the ‘accidental’ or ‘non-rigid’ designator6 of ‘le plus indolent rêveur’. But the subjunctive in ‘qui ait existé’ anticipates objections from those who think they know of more indolent dreamers; despite all such protest, the claim of this friend would still win out. The subjunctive here ‘imagines’ the competition for the title ‘most indolent dreamer’. Moreover, the imagined competition, that is, each one of the other indolent dreamers, implicitly becomes part of the subject whose predicate includes this third person subjunctive conjugation of ‘avoir’ (the auxiliary verb preceding the past participle ‘existé’).
