According to Austin, the first condition of happiness of a performative utterance is the existence of "an accepted conventional procedure". We have a curious situation here, and Austin recognizes it, at least in part. In fact, if a performative - the act of accepting - is inscribed in the very structure of performativity, then every performative - including accepting - presupposes an act of accepting, which, in its turn, presupposes an act of accepting, and so on. Accepting - not merely a regular performative, but a condition of the happiness of every performative - is, in the final analysis, is impossible to totalize. In this essay, following Austin's statements, I make an attempt to define life as comingto-accept, a topic analogous to the classical topic of life as coming-to-be. After this, I will try to articulate Austinian philosophy of language to Contardo Calligaris' considerations on modernity, in order to delineate the modern way of dealing with life as comingto-accept.
performativity; responsability; act of accepting; modernity