Substantivism is indeed taken to be a philosophical culprit by my way of proposing indexicalism. Similarly, metaphysics (or onto-theology, or the metaphysics of presence) is the offender according to Heidegger. For him, metaphysics is committed to an endeavor to make things transparent, to extract their intelligibility and to make them subject to command, while substantivism for me is a non-situated view of things that conceives of no respectable obstacle for making everything exposed. The two diagnoses are similar, but what matters for me here is that they have effects. There could be Right and Left Heideggerians, but both are committed to the criticism of metaphysics that arises from Heidegger: both sides are enhanced in their analysis by Heidegger’s reflections on the effects of metaphysics. Further, both sides would endorse these reflections and the corresponding diagnosis. Similarly, indexicalists of different persuasions would be faithful to a refusal of substantivism and endorse a situated metaphysics. Indexicalism has a broad political impact, as the history of being that Heidegger proposed, partly as a consequence of the way he came to read Nietzsche. It has an impact on what I call cosmopolitics (which is a bit different from what Isabelle Stengers has in mind) and I have indeed shown how the same cosmopolitical parties admit of macro-political right and left leanings[xxx]. Cosmopolitical disputes are orthogonal to other, macro-political ones (see my articles “Cosmopolitical Parties in the Post-Human Age”, “Geist and Ge-Stell” and the forthcoming “Cosmopolitics as a Taste for Cunning”)[xxxi]. The metaphysics of the others is engaged in struggle against the view of nowhere, and this can indeed have different macro-political implications. There are connections between philosophical studies, cosmopolitical disputes and macro-political issues, but the passages between these domains are maybe like the Northwest passage through Canada from the Arctic to the Pacific.

Substantivism is indeed taken to be a philosophical culprit by my way of proposing indexicalism. Similarly, metaphysics (or onto-theology, or the metaphysics of presence) is the offender according to Heidegger. For him, metaphysics is committed to an endeavor to make things transparent, to extract their intelligibility and to make them subject to command, while substantivism for me is a non-situated view of things that conceives of no respectable obstacle for making everything exposed. The two diagnoses are similar, but what matters for me here is that they have effects. There could be Right and Left Heideggerians, but both are committed to the criticism of metaphysics that arises from Heidegger: both sides are enhanced in their analysis by Heidegger’s reflections on the effects of metaphysics. Further, both sides would endorse these reflections and the corresponding diagnosis. Similarly, indexicalists of different persuasions would be faithful to a refusal of substantivism and endorse a situated metaphysics. Indexicalism has a broad political impact, as the history of being that Heidegger proposed, partly as a consequence of the way he came to read Nietzsche. It has an impact on what I call cosmopolitics (which is a bit different from what Isabelle Stengers has in mind) and I have indeed shown how the same cosmopolitical parties admit of macro-political right and left leanings[xxx]. Cosmopolitical disputes are orthogonal to other, macro-political ones (see my articles “Cosmopolitical Parties in the Post-Human Age”, “Geist and Ge-Stell” and the forthcoming “Cosmopolitics as a Taste for Cunning”)[xxxi]. The metaphysics of the others is engaged in struggle against the view of nowhere, and this can indeed have different macro-political implications. There are connections between philosophical studies, cosmopolitical disputes and macro-political issues, but the passages between these domains are maybe like the Northwest passage through Canada from the Arctic to the Pacific.