Nearness and remoteness in the philosophical language of W. Benjamin and M. Heidegger

Abstract

The article compares the concepts of closeness (Nähe) and distance (Ferne) in the works of W. Benjamin and M. Heidegger. Both Benjamin and Heidegger used this opposition to describe the changes in politics, art and everyday life in the 20th century. Consideration of these concepts in the original texts makes it possible to identify their correlation, which is not always obvious when translated into Russian, and also identify the potential for their use as philosophical categories both in the modern context and in relation to classical problems of continental philosophy. In particular, the author uses the ‘closeness — distance’ dichotomy to analyze Lessing’s classical definition of a work of art as the appearance (presens) of what is absent could be considered through the prism of the ‘closeness — distance’ dichotomy. Another obvious analogy is the description of the game fort/da (there/here) in Beyond the Pleasure Principle by S. Freud, as well as the expanded context of this game in J. Derrida’s deconstruction interpretation.

The article outlines the possible vectors for further development of this approach within the framework of the dialectic of relations between man and things, man and technology, and between people. The author considers a number of modern articles that trace the connection of the ‘closeness — distance’ opposition with physics (confusion of time and space), computational analytics of big data (the problem of unique and mass), and social processes (technical mediation of interaction between people). Special attention is paid to the relationship between the concepts of ‘neighbor’ and ‘other’ in the works of R. Girard and J. Agamben and the possibility of their interpretation through the categories of closeness and distance. In general, the article focuses more on outlining the prospects of addressing the ‘closeness — distance’ antinomy as philosophical categories and not just as auxiliary metaphors, rather than offering ready-made interpretations.