Place and Scale

Abstract

In Indexicalism Hilan Bensusan brings together a multiplicity of strands in contemporary thought in trying to build a thoroughgoing foundation for a situated metaphysics. In this paper I try to connect the solutions that are specific to the book to the problems identified in two different papers of Bensusan. In these, the author takes a polemical stand against inhumanism, as representing a continuation of the project of the extraction of intelligibilities that is continuous with the history of Western metaphysics. Under this light, indexicalism becomes a way to deal with the will to knowledge. In this paper I try to connect the project of indexicalism with these problems by examining some of the solutions proposed in the book concerning the philosophy of language and or perception, trying to propose an answer to Bensusan’s criticisms, through an immanent engagement with the indexicalist position - but in doing so we will not be kept in the confines of what indexicalism might be prepared to countenance. Unforeseen consequences lurk- reversing from within some of the philosophical valences of the position-a transvaluation towards a non-indexicalist position that, nevertheless, gives justice to the situated point of view that is always the causal starting point of contact with the real.