Introduction: Laruelle U ndivided
Robin Mackay
One day, after I had completed my studies, I sat at my
desk, and I cleared away all the books, everything that had
already been written. I started again with a new blank
sheet efpaper, and I began to search myself.
FRAN<;:OIS LARUELLE1
It's an episode easily disavowed as a moment of weakness,
an intellectual lapse on the part of the reader of philoso
phy: glancing up from the page, one undergoes a jarring
shift of perspective. All-encompassing conceptual edifices
abruptly concertina into the localised precincts of a life of
which they now seem an inadequate and tendentious cari
cature. Who will admit to having indulged this momentary
discomposure, as if it could have some pertinence to the
practice called 'philosophy', and the endless repetitions
and reexaminations to which that practice seems con
signed? Perhaps only a naive reader, but perhaps also one
perturbed by a creeping sense of circumscription, a sense
The italicized passages throughout the I ntroduction are drawn from a recorded
conversation with Laruelle in Paris, February 2012.
1
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
of being compelled and interpellated by systems that serve
some other authority. Franc;ois Laruelle's work ultimately
stands for the courage to take hold of this moment of
'naivety' ; to bring this perturbation to bear upon the
powers of philosophy, patiently and delicately drawing
out the threads of thought from their philosophical warp
according to the rectitude of its 'weak force'.
In the figure of the thinker who presumes to sweep
away canonical texts to make room for a new mode of
thought, we are liable to suspect a petulant dismissal of
philosophy on the grounds that it fails to minister to the
therapeutic or pragmatic demands of 'real life'; or another
anti-philosophical polemic, in which philosophy would
be debunked as a grandiloquent mask for some more
mundane power. But although Laruelle's work begins
with the conviction that there is something prior to and
indifferent to philosophy, the real of which it speaks owes
nothing to the spontaneous self-evidence of everyday reali
ties. And far from summarily dismissing the tradition, the
project of 'non-philosophy' or 'non-standard philosophy'
is the outcome of a long and assiduous philosophical
apprenticeship, albeit that of a thinker who has never
really been of the establishment, and whose entry into the
discipline had no air of predestination about it.
I amfrom afamily that is difficult to define, because they were
Jarfrom being cultured. But at the same time, in the family
2
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
there was a very, very strong religi,ous protestant culture. They
were not cultivated people, in the sense ef City people, not at
all. But they were very strong believers. And I had a rather
strict religi,ous education - a Kantian education! - there was
the sensible world and the intelligi,ble world, invisible things . . .
doubtless I retained something.from that.
But I can 't speak efany special experience that drove me into
philosophy. Ifound myselfin a class where I did ayear efphiloso
phy, before I chose to continue it - but I remember that I hesitated
for some time over whether to study literature orphilosophy. In the
end I chose the latter, and it went very well. But I always used to
write very 'literary ' texts aboutphilosophy. When it came to doing
History efPhilosophy, explaining already-written, readymade
texts, I was not so good, although eventually I learned how to
write like that too. And then, as Isaid, after Igraduated I had this
moment where I cleared everything away, and I started to write a
text, very much influenced by Michel Henry, which was already
on the One. Then I wrote a master's thesis, 'The Absence efBeing',
after having seen a.film, Antonioni 's La Notte. At.first I was going
to write something on the young Hegel. But I came back.from
vacation, having seen La Notte, and I told my supervisor, Paul
Ricoeur, that I renounced Hegel! (Not that theyoung Hegel isn 't
interesting. . .) So yes, thatfilm was also a turning point, curious
things like that happen.
So, I would say that in entering into non-philosophy, I
was a philosopher, like everyone is! I studied philosophy in the
classical manner, I graduated, and so on. It was a very long
3
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
process, ef course. I wrotefive books that I consider were still
entirely philosophical. But something had already started to
move, something seismic inside efphilosophy.
These early writings developed a Nietzschean genea
logical method, identifying the libidinal 'machines' at
work in various modern and contemporary philosophies,
including that of Derrida. Laruelle's heterodox 'machinic
deconstruction', operated against the 'ideology of the
signifier', soon saw him excommunicated from decon
structionist circles. But equally, he came to understand
that revolutionary theories of philosophy, overturnings
or subversions of philosophy (including Nietzsche's and
Derrida's) were ultimately revolutions for philosophy.
They invariably reaffirmed and further fuelled an expan
sive, self-differentiating dynamic behind which Laruelle
divined the immobile motor of 'Philosophical Decision'.
Beyond the schizophreny of a still-philosophical material
ism of philosophy, then, a theoretical apparatus began
to take shape fit to engage with the syntax of Decision without thinking it, once again, philosophically. Laruelle
claimed that there was a real alternative, in the form of
the disinterested stance of science (so often accused by
philosophy of irreflexive 'naivety', just as often co-opted
as a gnoseological ideal). For science does not assume
that 'doubled' relation of co-constitution with its object
that sets philosophy spinning in its endless circles.
4
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
For me, it had to do with Nietzsche, ultimately. In Nietzsche,
you have this idea that philosophy is always excessive - the will
to power, to philosophise is to dominate. Thus it is motivated
by excess, by overpowering. But at the same time there is in
Nietzsche a constant critique ef philosophies, as being still
gregarious, frozen in relations efdomination that are dogmatic
orfixed - doctrines ef metaphysics, ontology. So in Nietzsche
there is already a kind efinternal contradiction that Ifelt very
strongly. I was very Nietzschean in thefirstfour orfive books.
And then I realised that I had to work in a 'doubled' way:
to use Nietzsche, but against philosophy itself, already. And
therefore against Nietzsche too, since he was already working
against himself.
And then wasforged the idea to write a new book, which
gave rise to The Minorities Principle, and most importantly,
Biography of the Ordinary Man. It is here that I started to
invert the movement. That is to say, tofind a more precise and
stronger way ef working with science in the interior efphiloso
phy - inside philosophy, not as an object efphilosophy, but on
the inside ef it. From this moment, little by little, I identified
the Principle ef Sufficient Philosophy, and above all itsform,
its expression, which is what I call double-transcendence, the
doubletform efphilosophy. Foucault identified a transcenden
tal-empirical doublet. But that's not all - there is a second,
transcendental-real, doublet, which we can see at work in Kant,
in Heidegger. There are two doublets, three orfour terms. Once
this analysis efphilosophy as double-transcendence was made
5
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
qften; however it'sjust one modelfor the doctrinal continuum
that I examine under the name of'Philosophy '. Allphilosophies
are possible modelsfor Philosophy. This is the problem ofthe gen
eralisation of'Philosophy-Capital-P '. When I say'Philosophy ',
I mean to imply precisely that Philosophy is no longer seenfrom
within its own self-encompassing, butfrom another perspective
which is that of non-philosophy or non-standard thought. It is
the latter that allows me to say 'there is Philosophy ', to consider
it as completed, if not closed.
This suspension of philosophy's sufficiency through its
theoretical circumscription as Decision is not merely a
matter for philosophers. As Laruelle insists, if the domain
of possible action, the 'world', appears as always already
philosophisable, this testifies to the co-constitution of phi
losophy and the world. To defend a non-philosophisable
real is to defend the possibility of non-standard worlds;
and, inversely, from within the 'standard' model of the
world, the outlook is inevitably, if not philosophical, then
philosophisable.
OJ course it's not necessary to read philosophy to philosophise,
just as it's not necessary to go to church to be a believer. More
exactly, even if one does not professionally, dogmatically, 'do
philosophy ', all ofthe vocabulary ofmore or less general notions
one uses is philosophisable. For me, everything that is phi
losophisable is ultimately philosophical - which is to say that,
8
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
deduction remains perhaps the most explicit model of
Philosophical Decision. And Kant's thematisation of
philosophy's tendency toward 'transcendental illusion'
remains central to non-philosophy, as does his pioneering
attempt to circumscribe philosophical pretensions (albeit,
in Kant's case, so as to consolidate Reason).
Philosophy has always been characterised by its margi,nality:
it continually haunts its own borders. Kant is an important
figure, in soJar as, up until Kant, philosophy had been margi,nal
and had constantly tried to exit itself, but only 'theatrically ',
through a series ef rejections ef the foregoing philosophy, but
always nevertheless advocating Philosophy as such. With Kant
there is a genuine break, whose effects arefelt to this day. For
Kant distinguishes two ways efthinking: the analytic eftruth (a
science), and metaphysics ( 'transcendental dialectic').
ls non-philosophy a continuation ef Kantian critique? I
have <ijien said (although maybe this is too ea.ry) that non
philosophy is a continuation ef every philosophy! But it's true
- non-philosophy is Parmenidean, it is Zen, it is Spinozist, it is
Malebranchist. . . non-philosophy is not a circle, but a straight
line which, like a tangent, touches many philosophical circles,
many philosophical systems. Maybe we can understand it in
that geometrical way: gi,ven a straight line, one can touch upon
a great many circles. . .
So, Kant is indeed a model, in the sense that one speaks, in
science, ef models and modelisation. A model that I use very
7
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
(and it came to me rather late, in its precise and massiveform,
as the Principle ef Sufficient Philosophy) , then everythingfell
into place: Philosophy 's appearing as a necessary mediumfor
thinking - absolutely necessary, but excessive. And above all
the way in which, in its affirmation efitself, it becomes a mode
that is, as Kant says (about Plato) - given to divagation, to
extravagances. It tends toward the mad, the delirious.
1here are many ways ef defining philosophy. We can talk
about it as an Encompassing - a phrase ef]aspers's - the idea
that there are necessarily two terms, but one ef them ends up
coming back over the duality that theyform, enveloping it in
some way, enveloping thefirst duality in a second moment. And
what expresses the auto-encompassing character efphilosophy
is that one cannot speak efphilosophy, one cannot understand
a philosopher, unless one is oneself a philosopher. One cannot
understand Dasein unless one is oneselfDasein. It is an 'auto- '
system; philosophy is an activity ef auto-definition (a very
complex one, ef course) and ef auto-position. For instance,
Being is the positing ef beings, but the relation or difference
Being/beings is itselfre-positedfrom the point ef view efBeing,
notfrom the point ef view ef beings. It's the same with Kant's
distinction between empirical and transcendental, but one can
generalise it beyond Kant's vocabulary.
Although Laruelle concerns himself very early with decou
pling the 'transcendental method' from any of its specific
philosophical instantiations, the Kantian transcendental
6
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
even if the philosophical is very limited, in reality, from the
moment when everything is philosophisable, .from the moment
it could pass through the screen ef the philosophy ef the con
cept, then we must act as if it were philosophised. This is why I
postulate that the extent efphilosophy is truly immense - it is
all-encompassing, auto-encompassing. Once again, this notion
ef 'The Encompassing' upon which Jaspers's existential (not
existentialist) philosophy is founded: There are limit experi
ences - death, grief, affects like these, crises - where experience
is taken to its last limit in some way. These experiences are not
necessarily expressly philosophical or philosophized explicitly
in some book or other, but they are in principle philosophisable.
And that they are philosophisable is enough, for me, to class
them in principle inside philosophical sufficiency. My critique
is a critique ef all possible philosophy.
And so, I wish to make something non-philosophisable,
something that would no longer be possiblefor philosophy.
Although non-philosophy or non-standard thought may
appear to the non-initiated as a rather severe and abstract
mode of thought, Laruelle ceaselessly reminds readers
that the struggle against philosophical sufficiency can
only be prosecuted from a stance at once immediate,
concrete and human. Yet this 'ordinary' that orients the
work remains itself to be determined by it - no apodictic
deduction or any spontaneous knowledge of it is assumed.
It falls precisely to non-standard thought to discover
9
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
this genericity - to chart the effects of introducing into
thought that moment in which an individual is nothing
more-than-individual, comprising neither difference nor
distance - a moment that corresponds to no received
image of self, or to any of the various subjects constructed
by philosophy.
Indeed, rather than furnishing a philosophical 'proof'
of the existence of this undivided 'One', so as to provide
a ground for non-standard thought, Laurelle employs
an axiomatic approach that also brings the messianic
aspect of his project into view: It is through the axiomatic
positing of a non-philosophisable experience that non
philosophy is able to experimentally realise the 'thought
force' of a generic humanity unbound from its admixture
with the Logos. This experiment proceeds by way of the
shift in perspective that Laruelle calls 'vision-in-One', a
generic effectuation of the essentially irreflexive mode
of 'seeing' characteristic of science, through whose optic
philosophy is 'prepared' for a non-philosophical usage.
Non-standard thought is centred on the term qf 'man ', on man
and on the knowledge that we can have qfhumans. Andyet it is
not really a centre, since 'man ' is a somewhat marginal instance
efa theoretical apparatus that is necessary to approach the prob
lem qf man. This non-standard thought is at once abstract - it
involves a quite highly-developed theoretical apparatus, which
refers to philosophy and to science - but also claims to be concrete,
10
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
arisingfrom an experience or experimentation. 1here are various
termsfor the latter, including 'vision-in-One'. 1his term isjust a
formula that sums up a set efphenomena or experiences.
So, this is a difficult thoughtfor those who are not initiated
in philosophy. Althoughforphilosophers themselves it is also very
difficult, because it goes counter to philosophy as traditionally
practised, in the course ef the great philosophical tradition.
But at the same time it is a thought that claimedfrom the
start to be for the ordinary man, or what I now call generic
man. So, the paradox if non-standard thought is that it strug
gles against philosophy, against philosophical authority, and it
does so by making use efphilosophy (and efscience also - the
combination qfthe two is very important); but at the same time,
it is undertaken so as to avail oneself ef afield ef experience
(itself rather paradoxical) that might be called the human
phenomenon or phenomena.
All of this gives Laruelle's work a complex relation to his
contemporaries' antihumanism:
lf, within non-standard thought, the knowledge efhuman nature
(to put it in traditional terms) remains entirely problematic, not
at all becoming the object efsome dogmatic knowledge, this only
goes to show that there is no absolutely determined knowledge ef
the human, efman; and in particular it aids the struggle against
every dogmatic definition efhuman nature - against racism,for
11
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
example: if one has no absolutely certain knowledge efhuman
nature, it isfar more dijficult to develop a racist thought.
It's an antihumanism in the sense ef a broadly speaking
structuralist anti-metaphysics. It is above all the structuralists
who brought about this term - theoretical, not practical, anti
humanism. And I am also a theoretical antihumanist. From
the point qf view ef theory, one can speak ef man, but not in
terms ef humanism. For traditionally, humanism is, despite
everything, aform efthought very much marked by metaphysics
(as Heidegger says), or else marked by idealism, by bourgeois
ideology (as Althusser says). So, generic man is a man without
humanism, I would say. This is not to say that practically speak
ing one abandons man. Quite the contrary, but one defends him
against what?Precisely against the superior, dominant authority
efphilosophy, ef the Principle efSufficient Philosophy.
The disenthralling effects of a 'science of Man' that would
no longer be anthropo-logical (a philosophical amalgam
of man and logos) have fundamentally Marxian political
stakes. Take Marx's rejection, in The Jewish Question, of
Bauer's claim that true political emancipation requires
religious affiliation to give way to a primary commit
ment to the secular state. This 'theological problem',
Marx argues, only serves to obfuscate the more radical
question of the state as such, and the ways in which the
political emancipation it offers falls short of universal
human emancipation. The state is in fact consummated
12
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
in its secular form, which allows the real forms of power
that oppress man (including religion and capital) to fall
outside its purview. Its empty universality and 'freedom'
herald a form of power that accommodates its citizens to
the inevitability of the world as it is.
We could say that Laruelle extends this critique to
the entry requirements for becoming a citizen of one of
the various (more-or-less united) states of Philosophy: In
them, as in the secular nation-states Marx addresses, the
human accedes only to a 'devious' emancipation, by way
of an intermediary ('however necessary this intermediary
may be') in whose bureaucratic profile it will henceforth
recognise itself - as a subject defined by certain a priori uni
versal attributes. In return, the citizen may be allowed the
privilege of private attributes that do not fall under its leg
islation (the spurious particularities of sensation, the right
to speculation within reason). But the political freedom
brokered by and enjoyed through this intermediary falls
short of universal human emancipation, since it disjoins
the real human from the subject. By the lights of the polity
of philosophical subjects, 'insofar as he appears both to
himself and to others as a real individual he is an illusory
phenomenon' ; and as homo philosophicus, he appears to
himself 'divested of his real, individual life, and infused
with an unreal universality'. Just as, for Marx, political
emancipation is thus merely 'the final form of human
emancipation within the framework of the prevailing
13
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
social order', for Laruelle the history of the philosophical
subject, for all its radical renovations, radicalisations and
revolutions, amounts only to a drawn-out subtilisation
of the philosophical order. In presuming to represent it
in and for thought, Philosophy adulterates the 'thought
force'2 that constitutes its real productive basis. How,
then, to challenge this state's auto-positing, self-legislating
character, its claim to have always already encompassed
the possibilities of thought tout court ('it appears like light
ning, too terrible, too sudden ... ' [Nietzsche]); and how to
defend the human against it?
Laruelle's defence of humanity as immanence unaf
fected by any transcendence whatsoever undoubtedly
owes a great debt to Husserl, who radicalised transcen
dental thought, reinvigorating its attempt to expunge
the categories of empirical experience from the tran
scendental ego. But his defensive strategy owes more to
two borderline non-philosophical thinkers for whom the
Husserlian transcendental ego itself continues to imprint
upon radical subjectivity predicates drawn from objective
transcendence.
For Michel Henry, Husserlian phenomenology reiter
ates the 'murder' that is the founding act of philosophy:
Since 'immanent perception' still involves a phemome
nological distancing between given and givennness,
2
Laruelle's 'force· ( de) -pensl:e' , echoing 'force de travail' , Marx's 'labour power' .
14
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
Husserl, despite himself, participates in philosophy's
elimination of the heterogeneity of subjective 'Life' by
imbuing it with the predicates of transcendent perception.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel Levinas claims that Husserl
remains motivated by the philosophical drive to gnoseo
logical immanence, which deprives his Ego of the found
ing moment of absolute transcendence heralded by the
experience of the 'face of the Other'. Henry and Levinas
both move to delimit philosophy, as a relatively narrow
space of thought that must be supplemented by something
extra-philosophical (quasi-religious, even) - 'Life', 'the
Other' - in order for the real nature of the subject to be
registered. They constitute two cardinal points - absolute
immanence, absolute transcendence - whose 'impossible'
superposition allowed Laruelle to sharpen his defence
of the real against the philosophy-world's mixtures of
transcendence and immanence.
The humanity efgeneric man is radically distinctfrom the world
- which is not to say absolutely distinct. This is where we depart
from Husserl. For Husserl, consciousness, the transcendental ego
or transcendental consciousness is distinct in a certain way Husserl uses a vocabulary qf'absoluteness', but I am content to
say radically distinct. That is to say,Jor me, there is a distinction
in principle between two regions that are ontologically totally
distinct, different. But they are unilaterally different. That is to
say, nothing ef the world enters into the definition ef human
15
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
nature, but nevertheless human nature is ajfected by, or has to
do with, the solicitations or occasions comingjrom the world,
from objects, attention, the psychologi,cal, the political, etc.
So, this is very close to Michel Henry, yet at the same time,
there is not that type ef break that wefind in Henry. In par
ticular, there is not the same kind efcut or separation between a
transcendental ego, a moment efradical or absolute immanence,
as Henry sometimes says, and the world as being, as horizon.
Both Henry and Levinas salvage radical subjectivity only
by defining it against - and thus once more in relation
to - the worldly (whether as transcendent objectivation
or immanent adequation). Laruelle's logic of 'unilateral
duality' refuses the mutual imbrication or 'othering'
implied by such a relative definition. The One, radical
immanence, is not thought against transcendence, but as
indifferent to it. Consequently, if there is a difference or
distance between this immanence and the transcendent
objectification it undergoes, such a difference is opera
tive only on the side ef the latter. It is this unilaterality that
philosophy, which habitually thinks in terms of dyads
and their unity, fails to grasp. Indeed, unilaterality entails
that the One is utterly foreclosed to thought except in so
far as it allows itself to be 'cloned', modelled in thought
as 'determination-in-the-last-instance'. It is through this
procedure that non-philosophy 'unilateralises' its philo
sophical materials, consuming the philosophical only
16
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
once it has been meticulously prepared, as one might
dine onjugu once an expert chef has disemboweled it
and removed its toxic organs of reproduction.
Thus non-philosophy's advocacy of real immanence
goes hand-in-hand with its modesty in acknowledging
that it sets out, not from a 'pure' immanence, but from the
interference pattern between the philosophy-world that
gives it occasion to think (occasional cause), and a real
that unilaterally determines all worldly phenomena and
thought (the One). This interference or double-causality
is the very condition of non-philosophy. Unilateral dual
ity (a 'relation of relation to non-relation') thus replaces
unitary thought (in which dyads are always encompassed
by unity). Accordingly, the human arrives in thought
only as already 'harassed' by the philosophy-world; and
yet, in so far as it is the locus of a radical ('prior-to
priority') experience, the human cannot be said to be
either tragically predestined to its fate, or intimately
affected or alienated by it.
Harassment, in my problematic, replaces alienation. And
Philosophy is the mistress ef harassment! It is not a matter ef
alienation; it is not the idea, as in Hegel or in the young Marx,
ef a becoming-other ef consciousness through objectivation.
I am Jar closer to the later Marx, who, reading Feuerbach,
affirms that man is not alienated, in the Hegelian manner, qua
object-consciousness; but that objectivation is what there is that
17
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
is positive in the relation to the world. Alienation was therefore
an overhasty interpretation ef objectivation. Objectivation is
necessary: the human being (even the human being qua generic,
so to speak) expresses himselfobjectively in the world and through
his objectivation, and we must not say that he alienates himself
in doing so. The alienation occurs subsequently, through a bad
interpretation efthis objectivation. In Marx we have this dis
tinction between objectivation and alienation - so we shouldn 't
reduce Marx too quickly to the Hegel efthe Phenomenology.
The world is not the other efman. I would rather say, ifpushed,
that man is the other ef the world. But the human being as
generic is not alienated in, does not conjUse himself with, the
world. He has to do with the world, or it has to do with him.
Of course, the world is a perpetual occasion efstimulationfor
human thought. But in itself, the world is not, in the classic
sense, an alterity in which one may be alienated. The world
is the milieu in which man necessarily is involved - and here
I come closest to Heidegger's being-in-the-world. But even for
Heidegger, there is the idea that there is a sort efcorrespondence
between Dasein and the world, through this being-in the-world,
which is a kind efcomportment in regard to the world. For me
what replaces Dasein is generic man; and generic man does
not comport himself with the world, that is to say he does not
realise a synthesis with the world. He is solicited, motivated, by
the occasions ef the world, but remainsforeclosed in a certain
way to being constituted in any way by thefacticity efthings.
18
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
It must be seen that all efthis is governed by a certain type ef
relation which is a 'relation-without-relation ': unilateral dual
ity. This is.fundamental, though perhaps abstract and difficult
to understand, because it is very much opposed to the common
representation efthings, which tends to place instances or terms
in a pre-existing space, so that the relation between A and B is
always in reality a doubled relation - not just A to B but also
B to A, reversibly or reciprocally. if, in this way, one places this
'A to B ' in a space presumed to pre-exist it in reality, then one
has already made the trajectory to B afirst time, and one then
merely goes on to do it again a second time. That is to say, there
is a whole system ef relations that is reflected in itself.
In unilateral duality one is dealing neither with external
relations between atomic points, nor entirely internal relations.
Because internal relations suppose that the world or the object is
an accident efthinking substance. Now what replaces thinking
substancefor me is generic man, and generic man has noth
ing to do with substance, we cannot know it as substance. In
which case the world is not an accident, either. There is a sort ef
dualism or duality between generic man and the world, but this
duality is unilateral - that is to say, there is a sort ef relation
that takes place between generic man and the world, the world
is not completely foreign to us, it is interiorised, passing into
immanence, in the same way that Husserl says that the noema
is immanence, the immanent side efthings. Whereas the things
always remain relatively independent or autonomous in relation
to generic man.
19
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
Laruelle's analysis of philosophy's self-evident sufficiency
positions him in an unusual relation to the critique of
the 'spontaneous', one of the pillars of the French philo
sophical convergence between Marxist critique and epis
temology. Althusser, undoubtedly a major influence on
Laruelle's thinking, still upheld the distinction between
spontaneous philosophy and philosophy 'proper', pro
claiming the impossibility of taking up any position that
would not be within the philosophical 'circle'. Indeed,
in order to demonstrate the impossibility of escaping
it, Althusser declares that he 'enters the necessary cir
cle deliberately'. Laruelle's neat answer is that the non
philosopher renounces the dream of exiting the circle,
once she realises that she (qua One) never entered it.
Philosophy, as formalised in the axiomatic of Decision,
is a circumscribed and suspended body of thought, and
can no longer exert its all-encompassing mode of capture.
Other modes of thought also lose their respective princi
ples of sufficiency, becoming,like philosophy, mere models
of the One, determined in the last instance by the One.
It's true that what I call 'Non-philosophy ' is a way efdelivering
us - locally, but at the same time in a certain way globally, each
time -from philosophical spontaneity, which I call the Principle
<ifSufficient Philosophy. For me it was absolutely capital when
I arrived at this idea efphilosophy sufficiency - and not only
philosophical, because every discipline very soon arrives at its
20
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
own sufficiency, in the sense that it tends to autoji,nalise itself,
raise itselfto the level efa total, complete or all-powerful thought.
So, the problem is that ef demarcation: Is one to constitute
a device, an apparatus that one calls historical materalism, or
dialectical materialism, to make this difference between ideology
(spontaneous philosophy) and a more 'scientific ' philosophy?
This is what Althusser calls the line ef demarcation - and,
incidentally, Deleuze also speaks qflines efdemarcation, he says
that thefirst philosophical act is to trace a line efdemarcation.
Plato himself says this, if not in the same way: tracing a line
between the shadows, the flux ef sensations, objects, and the
Ideas and the Good. In Kant, we also find this, between the
judgement efexperience and thejudgement efperception - the
latter is human sensation, whereas thejudgement efexperience
is also governed by mathematicised physical laws.
Instead ef tracing such a line, I propose a special device
that I call generic, and which does not share the topography ef
historical materialism - structure, superstructure, etc. Iproceed
through a sort ef reduction ef the amplitude ef philosophy.
Philosophy is a type efthought that goes to extremes, that traces
the diameter from one extreme to the other - from the most
empirical, meaningless experience, up to God. Philosophy itself
plays the role ef mediation between science and theology (yes,
theology as the crowning moment efphilosophy - obviously this
might not be such a popular idea!). But I reduce this range, this
amplitude. First ef all by observing one very particularfeature
ef it - it takes theform ef a hierarchy: Theology comments on
21
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
philosophy globally, and then philosophy comments on science,
and then there are other smaller local hierarchies within each
level. What I do is to operate a reduction that I call generic.
Generic reduction consists in bringing together science and
philosophy very closely, through an operation that I borrow
essentially from quantum mechanics, that ef superposition.
A superposition efscience and philosophy - so that we are no
longer in a hierarchy. There is no longer a hierarchy efscience
in relation to philosophy, no 'philosophy <ifscience'. Philosophy
efscience has always reaffirmed the privilege efphilosophy, or
a theology efphilosophy, a theology efscience. So I reduce in a
certain way the extremes, and I attribute to this reduced sphere
the term generic. Why generic? Because it is a reduction to the
genus ef knowledge. Knowledges are animated, propelled, by
a desire ef philosophy, a transcendental or even speculative
desire. Knowledges surpass themselves because ef this desire.
Experience surpasses itself toward science, and science toward
philosophy. But in the generic, there is no longer this vertical
surpassing (from experience toward God). There is a differ
ent kind ef surpassing, a purely horiwntal surpassing. I call
generic the usages efknowledge in sofar as they are destinedfor
man - madefor man,for humans. Knowledges are not.free ef
themselves, they are always taken up again by philosophy, by its
sense efexcess toward a theological dimension. On the contrary,
qua generic these knowledgesform a new sphere efreality or ef
the real that is at once philosophical and scientific. There is no
longer a philosophy efscience, nor a science efphilosophy, in the
22
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
sense efone being object, the other subject. A generic knowledge
is one that is turned toward or quasi:finalised by humanity.
Not by God, not by pure, completely autonomous technology or
pure scientificity. But it is oriented toward humanity. I think
that Hegel is the great disorienter ef thought, in the sense that
he can go in almost any direction. And my problem is that ef
the re-orientation ef thought, toward its usage to the prqfit ef
humans - the idea ef a politics and an ethics ef the defence ef
the human.
By 'colliding' bodies of knowledge reduced to this generic
state, Laruelle's formidable masterwork Non-Standard
Philosophy (2010) claims, with the aid of borrowings from
quantum theory, to finally acquire the necessary means
for the description of the 'structures of the ordinary man'
anticipated at the dawn of Philosophy II.
This new project announces not so much a materi
alism as a materielism, noting the distinction between
matter and materiel, a term appropriated from Max
Scheler, who used it to describe something like Hus
serl's Erlebnis or lived experience. 3 Non-standard thought
seems to envisage a theory of knowledges generically
'reduced' to this materiel register, which can then
Scheler sought to remove ethical values from the sole realm of pure reason, making of
them material a prioris whose only existence lies in their beingfelt. With the English
coinage materie!I seek to retain the neologistic character of Laruelle's French material- a
word that does not exist in French, and which he introduces to mark the foreignness
of Scheler's materiale.
23
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
be described without succumbing to their objective
appearance (the latter, as the deliverances of models,
are never to be confused with the real that they serve).
Thus Laruelle arrives at a rigorous generic theory of the
lived experience of knowledges qua materiel.
I distinguish the materiel.from materiality. Max Scheler speaks
efMateriel Value-Ethics [materiale Wertethik]. It's a difficult
word because it is usually translated, in most languages, as
'material'. But materiel is a content, something continuous that
needs aform or a syntax, an articulation: it isfor me, essentially
lived experience that is materiel - the phenomenological hyle,
you could say. This is not a materialism, because a materialism
is a thought where there is a philosophical positing efmatter as
being, in the sense ef being or human being.
For me, generic man is that which replaces - although not
with the same site, or.function - the subject. One can speak efa
subject, but one must speak efa non-individual, generic subject
- one can only qualify it as individual under condition ef the
philosophical. The device ef materielity, which is scientific or
algebraic, must at the same time be something human. Generic
man is not tracedfrom psychological man, even psychoanalytic
man. It is rather the reverse that is true. Everything we call
human is understood ultimately, perhaps better, through physi
cal nature, through a (quantum-) physical-type procedure or
event. The idea ef superposition permits thefabrication ef a
non-individual generic. It allows us to fuse contraries into a
24
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
quasi-identity, not a logjcal identity but an algebraic identity:
A+A=A. This is what I call a strongly analytic but weakly
synthetic relation. We remain in idempotence. We exit from
the analytic (since a synthesis is made) but in approaching the
synthesis we remain ultimately within things that are analytic,
that have hardly exitedfrom the analytic. It is a thinking ef
tension that can be annotated algebraically, particularly through
this relation efidempotence. Andfor me this is the principle or
the basis efsuperposition.
So obviously, there is no subject in thepsychologjcal sense, no
consciousness in the reflexive sense anymore, one has evacuated
this with algebra, with theformula efidempotence. And the lived
experience, the 'materiel-ity ' that goes with this idempotence,
is no longer psychologjcal. It is a neutralised lived experience,
Husserl's Erlebnis - only in Husserl, lived experience is a
lived experience efconsciousness, whereas in my work it is one
efidempotence. An algebraic lived experience - it isfused here
with algebra, not aform efobjectivity - A+A=A is not objective,
but a certified algebraic knowledge. Generic man is afusion ef
idempotence and lived experience.
With idempotence taking the place of identity, and non
commutativity taking the place of unilaterality, the science
of man now takes the form of a minimal transcendental in
the form of an algebra that, like quantum physics itself,
does not claim to bear directly upon objective phenom
ena, but on operators (not on objects, but on theories
25
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
of objects, i.e. philosophies and other knowledges), and
in which the amplitude or tension between the One and
its occasional effectuation in thought can be registered.
In Laruelle's own classification of his works, the non
standard experiment opens a new chapter:
There is a continuousflow of work, which might well gi,ve the
impression ofbeing repetitive. And it's true that there is a globally
invariant structure, with local modifications, but this continuous
flux is divided up into Philosophy 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . like waves, like
pulsions, each number corresponding to a new push. So, it's not
like the classification ofHeidegger's or Wittgenstein 's work into
1 and 2, into a before and an after. It is a multiple pulsion, each
time oriented in a certain sense toward the same thing. But at
the same time there is a great dijference between Non-Standard
Philosophy and myfirst two books, which are entirely philosophi
cal. There is the large wne in-between which is non-philosophy,
and Non-Standard Philosophy is again dijferent.
Laruelle is at pains to point out that what he intends with
his usage of quantum thought is something quite different
to the philosophical fetishisation of a constituted science
that he often criticizes (most recently in the polemical
Anti-Badiou, with regard to Badiou's use of set theory).
The generic reduction of knowledges (philosophy and
science) is to be carried out 'under science' and not
'under philosophy' - that is, their combination is not to
26
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
be submitted once again to the reflexivity of philosophy.
That materiel has idempotence as a property is not to say
that, for instance, the biological object of the brain is
governed by the physical principles of quantum mechan
ics; or that the concepts of the latter, as elaborated in the
very well-determined context of physical experiments, are
applicable in a positive way to philosophy conceived as
a physical mass.
There is a body ef philosophy, a philosophical materielity, a
conceptual and lived materiel, and one can treatphilosophy as
a part ofphysical nature - physical in the contemporary sense,
that is to say in using methodsfrom quantum thought. But this is
not a philosophicalfetishisation efscience, because it is a generic
generalisation efa science. It is not a physicalism - physicalism
would mean a reduction ef lived experience, ef the concept,
to physical positivity. I don 't use Quantum Mechanics in this
positivist way, but according to a usage I call generic, a generic
usage efthe discipline or efa body efknowledge. A generic usage
ef science, just like a generic usage efphilosophy, consists in
depriving it ef its dimension efsufficiency or auto-promotion,
ef auto-affirmation - since every discipline arrives very soon
at its own sufficiency, in the sense that it auto-finalises itself,
it raises itself to the level ef a total, complete or all-powerfu l
thought. It consists qf treating it simply as a reduced range or
property ef thought - reducedfrom the extremes, the extremes
are eliminated. Theology remains theology. The most banal
27
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
experience remains what it is, science remains what it is, but
all ef this outside the PSP, which isfor me the Great Satan!
At the same time, my non-standard philosophy has its own
contingency, in a certain sense. The contingency efany produc
tion efnon-standard thought comes.from the philosophical model
one chooses - in my case, from the utilisation ef the quantum
mechanical reference. In a sense, nothing especially authorises
it, but nothing prohibits me from doing it either! lf someone
wanted to prohibit me, I would wonder why!
So I can speak efcontingency, contingency in the rather banal
sense that it is my decision, a decision that I took that seems
interesting and productive, not innovative but surprising.
And there you have it, now I am ready to know that it will
all disappear . . .
Exploring Laruelle's oeuvre, it is difficult to avoid the
impression of a continual anticipation of the moment
when non-philosophy will begin to function, to produce
its promised heresy. The texts collected in this volume lead
us from the programmatic Biography efthe Ordinary Man
to the new matrix of Non-Standard Philosophy, where this
experiment is put into action. But toward the end of the
eighties, Laruelle produced a number of experimental
texts (a selection of which are collected in the Appendix)
which seemed to set non-philosophy in motion in a very
different way, once more scrambling expectations by
identifying the science of philosophy with a poetics.
28
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
I have always wanted to write experimental texts, I would love
to write more ef them. But I am held back by scruples, or by a
self-critique - shame, even. Because I know they will bejudged
harshly by poets, by philosophers, by pretty much everyone!
Ifeel that this infact is what I want to do, but I dare not do, any
longer. I am still obsessed by the idea that one day I may write
such a book, with texts that are.freer like this. However, in most
ef my longer books there are sections that are at the limit, that
become 'experimental' texts. Above all in the 'christo:fiction ',
or in the book on mysticism, there are texts that are really at the
limit efa type efpoetry efthought, or an experimental writing.
So it is not something I have entirely distanced myselfrom. But
I have these scruples, I dare not.free myself completely.
My problem is really that ef how to treat philosophy as a
material, and thus also as a materiality - without preoccupy
ing oneself with the aims ef philosophy, ef its dignity, ef its
quasi-theological ends, efphilosophical virtues, wisdom etc. . .
None ef that interests me. What interests me is philosophy as
the materialfor an art, at the limit, an art. My idea, which
has been growingfor some years, and may last a little longer,
is to make art with philosophy, to introduce or make a poetry
ef thought, not necessarily a poetry made ef concepts, a poetry
that would putforward some philosophical thesis - but to make
something poetic with concepts. Thus, to create a practice that
could destroy, in a certain way, the classical usage efphilosophy.
Obviously, in the books I have published, I still respect the dignity
efphilosophical work - at least, I hope so. I still make those books
29
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
for philosophers. But my experimental texts, I don 't know who
those are writtenfor. I don 't know. Which is rather embarrassing
for me! When people speakfavourably about them, I say, yes,
but even I myself don 't know how to evaluate them, I have no
judgement on them. They are a sort ef non-sense, evenfor me!
Laruelle's term 'philo-fiction' may be understood as refer
ring primarily to the 'fictionalist' school of philosophy
of mathematics, where the warring ontological commit
ments of traditional debates are eliminated by taking
up a stance of hypothetical 'acceptance' with regard to
the implications of the various objects they propose.
In a similarly modest spirit of acceptance, the non-stand
ard approach is content to allow all knowledges equal
validity as fictions or partial models of the real that deter
mines them in the last instance. Every philosophy, once
its intricate and dense meshwork of decision is combed
through by the unilateralising force of generic thought,
tells us something about how the Individual fares in its
inevitable struggle with the Authorities of the world - a
one-sided struggle that non-philosophy refuses to make
into a confrontation, all the better to issue an 'ultimatum'
from its position of eternal weakness - from the uni-verse
that is the human's true habitat - to the philosophy-world,
its doublets and its subjects.
However, considering that phenomenology, in its
stringent attempts to describe the phenomena and their
30
INTRODUCTION: LARUELLE UN DIVIDED
mode of givenness, always risked becoming a formal
ist counterpart of the modern novel, Laruelle's radical
consummation of transcendental method, his phenom
enology-without-logos, does present us with a 'fiction'
in this other sense: Setting out from a science aiming to
describe the 'structures of the ordinary man', non-standard
thought today still speaks of an algebraic 'description of
the human phenomenon'. This reduced description or
performance of the experience of the philosophy-world,
on the part of a colourless Stranger-subject lacking all
recognizable characteristics, makes for a 'novel without
qualities' - philosophy as the material for a (non-) art. In
Laruelle's black universe, as in Antonioni's Milanese night,
this Stranger scans the surfaces of the world, of language,
of thought, without finding in them anything that reflects,
expresses or relieves her inner forces - forces that remain
a non-given. Character without action, struggle without
confrontation, interior life reduced to the finest thread of
a generic humanity - this remains the insistent promise
of Laruelle's work, from the biography of the Ordinary
Man to the quantum xenography of the Stranger.
If the reader is disappointed with my 'programmatic mes
sianism ', yes, messianity is what I do. There is nothing else to
announce, it must be announced many times, repeated - as
Bergson said, a philosopher has only one idea.
31
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
NOTES ON THE TRAN S IATIONS, ACKNOWLE DGEMENTS
A sizable group of translators contributed toward this
book. My thanks to them all for their hard work and
patience as the project progressed. As editor, I took respon
sibility for ensuring a consistency not only of technical
vocabulary but also of tone, in the hope of rendering
Laruelle's prose as readable and idiomatic as possible while
preserving its rigour and its inherent strangeness.
Useful in preparing this volume were John Mullarkey
and Anthony Paul Smith's volume Laruelle and Non-Philos
ophy and Gabriel Alkon and Boris Gunjevic's collection
The Non-Philosophy Project. I also found invaluable Hugues
Chaplin's pedagogical guides La non-philosophie de Fran
fOis Laruelle and De la phenomenologi,e a la non-philosophie,
along with the indispensible writings of Ray Brassier, the
thinker who first introduced myself and many others to
Laruelle's work, and who has been most helpful at key
points in the editorial process. My thanks to Miguel
Abreu and Katherine Pickard at Sequence Press, to Anne
Frarn;oise Schmid for many clarifications and valuable
discussions, to Marjorie Gracieuse for her advice, and
above all to Louise for her patience and support as this
project slowly came to fruition alongside our own. And
finally, thanks to Fran�ois Laruelle - we hope that this
volume will contribute to the growing awareness and
discussion of his work.
32