Modernity and Ocularcentrism. A Second Look at Descartes and Heidegger

Abstract

The critique of ocularcentrism, the dominant tendency in Western (and perhaps not only Western) thinking to favour sight at the expense of other sense modalities, has recently come under attack from post-structuralist and post-phenomenological thinkers. The critique of ocularcentrism (documented in Martin Jay’s work Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought) is intended to reinforce and supplement the critique of logocentrism and the metaphysics of presence, in other words, it forms part of the critique of Enlightenment rationality. I argue that the critique of Enlightenment rationality frequently overshoots its target. Heidegger’s critique of the »scopic« rationality of our culture has been invoked as a radical alternative to ocularcentric thinking. I attempt to show that Heidegger’s critique of Enlightenment rationality and of modernity is not radically anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist, as his followers maintain. I also try to show that Heidegger is at best a dubious ally in the fight against an oppressive »scopic« rationality because of the sinister political background of his critique of modernity.