5
Laruelle and the Reality of Abstraction
R a y B ra s s ie r
Perhaps the chief ph iloso ph ica l virtue o f Laruelle’s Philosophies
o f D ifferen ce is its rem arkable analysis o f the problem atic of
‘Finitude’ } Laruelle defines the latter ‘ in quasi-Kantian term s’
as grounded in ‘the irreducible distinction between the entity-initself and the entity as objectified or present; as ob-ject’ .2 It is on
the basis o f this distinction, Laruelle maintains, that Heidegger
is able to radicalise K an t’s critique o f dogm atic m etaphysics. For
Kant, a m etaphysical thesis, whether realist, idealist, or m aterial
ist, is dogm atic in so far as it disregards the distinction between
objects and things-in-themselves. W e are affected by things-inthemselves, but we cannot know them independently o f our being
affected by them. We m ay o f course still try to think them, but for
Kant thinking is not know ing. Ignoring this constraint, the claims
o f dogm atic m etaphysics ring hollow because they import into
things-in-themselves conceptual determ inations that apply only to
objects o f representation.
B u t w h y does K an t insist on this distinction? For K an t, it is sen
sibility, i.e. our m aterial constitution, that connects us to things-inthemselves. Since we are affected by things-in-themselves through
our sensibility, our conceptual capacities are conditioned by a
non-conceptual element, originating in sensation. Thus, sensibility
limits the reach o f reason by tethering the conceptual to the nonconceptual, understanding to intuition. In this regard, sensibility
ensures our contact with the in-itself even as it constrains our cog
nitive access to it. H ow ever, if, as K ant him self insists, the category
o f causality can only be properly applied to objects o f representa
tion, then surely it is illegitimate to claim that we are affected by
things-in-themselves, given that the concept o f ‘ affection’ seems to
presuppose a causal relationship between affecting and affected?
C ontrary to a com m on m isinterpretation invited by K a n t’s occa-
Laruelle and the Reality of Abstraction
ioi
sionally injudicious use o f the w ord ‘cause’, things-in-themselves
should not be understood as the causes of appearances in the sense
in which electrostatic discharges are the causes of lightning. This is
not because the category o f causation cannot be applied to thingsin-themselves; for there is a sense in which it can, provided we bear
in mind the distinction between pure and schematised categories.
The pure, or unschematised category o f causation is simply the
logical relation of ground and consequence, and as such it can
be applied to the relation between appearances and things-inthemselves, so long as we are clear that this is a purely conceptual
rather than a cognitive determination. Thus we can think thingsin-themselves as the grounds o f appearances, provided that this
grounding relation is understood in terms o f a modified analogy
with the w ay in w hich appearances cause other appearances.3 The
relevant m odification is that whereas the schematised category of
causality alw ays involves a consequence relation between tem po
ral events, the grounding relation between things-in-themselves
and appearances involves a consequence relation that operates at
the level o f transcendental reflection.4
Still, we m ay ask w h at justifies us in postulating this tran
scendental and hence purely conceptual analogue o f the causal
relation. K an t’s answ er is disarm ingly straightforw ard: ‘Even
if we cannot cognize these same objects [i.e. appearances] as
things-in-themselves, we must at least be able to think them as
things-in-themselves. For otherwise there w ould follow the absurd
proposition that there is an appearance without anything that
appears.’3 What is the precise nature o f the absurdity K ant seeks
to avoid here? On one level, it is obviously absurd to deny that we
can think appearances as things-in-themselves if this distinction is
simply equivalent to the conceptual distinction between appear
ance and that w hich appears. For it is indeed absurd to deny that
the concept o f appearance implies something that appears. If this
is w hat the distinction boils dow n to, then it is precisely its purely
conceptual status that guarantees its validity. It is secured irrespec
tive of whether or not we are able to know if w hat appears is like
or unlike its appearance, or whether things-in-themselves exist at
all. But if the distinction is purely conceptual, then the concept of
the in-itself is a pure abstraction: it is simply the concept o f some
thing considered in abstraction from the w ay in which appearances
are given to us in sensibility and determined by the concepts of the
understanding. This is precisely the view K ant seems to endorse:
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Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
it also follows naturally from the concept of an appearance in general
that something must correspond to it which is not in itself appearance,
for appearance can be nothing for itself and outside of our kind of
representation; thus, if there is not to be a constant circle, the word
‘appearance’ must already indicate a relation to something the immedi
ate representation of which is, to be sure, sensible, but which in itself,
without this constitution of our sensibility (on which the form of our
intuition is grounded), must be something, i.e. an object independent
of sensibility. Now from this arises the concept of a noumenon, which,
however, is not at all positive and does not signify a determinate cogni
tion of any sort of thing, but rather only the thinking of something in
general, in which I abstract from all form of sensible intuition.6
T he noumenon in this specifically negative sense is not to be con
fused with w h at K an t calls ‘the transcendental object = X ’, which,
somewhat confusingly, he also describes as ‘the entirely unde
termined thought o f something in general’ J T he transcendental
object is ‘that w hich in all our cognitions is really one and the same
= X ’;8 it is the ultimate referent o f all our objective representations,
the pure form o f the object in general to which every determinate
representation ultim ately refers. Thus the transcendental object is
still thought in accordance w ith an ultimate categorial determ ina
tion: that o f substance, not in its schematised, em pirical sense as
w h at persists throughout a m anifold o f appearances, but in its
unschematised, transcendental sense as the invariant correlate o f
pure apperception persisting across a m anifold o f representations.
T his is presum ably w h y K an t refers to it as ‘ one and the sam e’
throughout every representation, and w h y he refuses to identify it
with the noumenon, which, since it plays an entirely negative or
limiting role, does not even bear the minimal categorial determi
nation o f substance, and so cannot be conceptually determined as
one rather than as m any.9
But the cost o f m aintaining the negativity o f the concept o f the
noumenon, as devoid o f any categorial determination, seems to be
to render it a w holly indeterminate abstraction, or as K ant himself
puts it ‘an em pty concept w ithout an object’ (ens rationis ).10
This ‘thought entity’, or empty concept w ithout an object, is the
concept o f the intelligible nothing. K an t distinguishes it from the
‘non-entity’, the empty object without a concept (e.g. the square
circle), which is the unintelligible nothing. These are the tw o
types o f empty concept. K an t contrasts them with the tw o types
Laruelle and the R eality o f Abstraction
10 3
o f empty intuition: the privative nothing as the empty object o f
a concept (e.g. shade as the absence o f light), and the im aginary
entity as the pure form of intuition without an object (Kant gives
no exam ple o f the latter and it is significant that both the objectless
em pty concept and the objectless empty intuition defy empirical
exemplification) .n
But how can this intelligible nothing be thought o f a s the ground
of appearances? H o w can we be affected by a w holly indetermi
nate abstraction? M o re precisely: H o w can a w holly indeterm i
nate conceptual abstraction give rise to the kind o f determinate
empirical experience whose possibility K ant seeks to explain?
The difficulty is com pounded by K a n t’s insistence that our intui
tion, unlike G o d ’s, is fundam entally receptive: our minds do not
create appearances in K an t’s specifically transcendental sense,
even though they determine them as objects of representation.
Experience is rooted in something affecting us from ‘outside’. This
is the fundam ental meaning o f Finitude. Thus it seems there must
be ‘som ething’ that ‘causes’ us to have experiences. But in char
acterising the noumenon as an intelligible nothing, K ant seems to
reduce the problem atic ground o f appearances to a mere thoughtentity. Y et it is precisely the reality o f this problem atic nothing
that needs to be accounted fo r, fo r w ithout such an account, the
claim that things-in-themselves are the source o f appearances
becomes unintelligible. Thus it seems the absurdity K an t wishes to
avoid in acknowledging the necessary link between appearances
and things-in-themselves is not merely the contradiction attend
ant upon the denial o f a tautology. The absurdity at issue is more
profound, and follow s from denying the reality o f appearances.
The empirical reality o f appearances m ust be rooted in a tran
scendental reality, albeit one whose determinate characteristics
we are barred from know ing. N otw ithstanding its role as a purely
negative and limiting concept, it seems we are obliged to ackn ow l
edge the problem atic reality o f the noumenon qua abstraction.
Consequently, on a second reading, K a n t’s claim about the nec
essary link between appearances and things-in-themselves can
be interpreted as meaning that the objective reality proper to
appearances in the transcendental (as opposed to em pirical or
Berkeleyean sense) is grounded in the fo rm al reality of thingsin-themselves. The distinction at issue is between the empirical
reality o f appearances qua representables whose being depends
upon their being thought (or represented - these are equivalent
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Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
here), and the transcendental reality o f things-in-themselves,
w hich exist independently o f being represented. For as W ilfrid
Sellars points out, the relation o f analytical dependence between
represented and representing also renders the objective reality of
the represented content conditional upon the form al reality o f the
representing act.12 Since every represented implies a representing,
the objective reality o f a represented entails the form al reality
o f the representing through which it is represented. C learly, this
argument establishes only that i f there are representeds, then there
must be representings-in-themselves; not that there actually are
such representings-in-themselves. W hile it reveals the degree o f
conceptual co-dependence between the concept o f appearance and
that o f things-in-themselves, it does not prove that representings
exist in-themselves, let alone that non-representings do. This is
w h y the determination o f the in-itself in terms o f form al reality
remains insufficient. If the concept o f form al reality as that which
exists in-itself remains analytically dependent upon the concept of
objective reality as that which exists in representation, the being
o f the in-itself remains conditional upon the being o f appearance.
The problem then is that, since an appearance implies a relation
to sensibility, this renders the existence o f the in-itself conditional
upon the existence o f appearance, and hence o f sensibility, which
is precisely the kind o f empirical idealism K ant seeks to avoid.
K an t’s claim is that the existence o (ap p earan ces presupposes the
existence o f things-in-themselves, and that the reality o f appear
ances is grounded in the reality o f things-in-themselves, not that
the existence o f the latter is predicated upon that o f the form er.
If this were the case, then the concept o f appearance would be
intrinsic to that o f reality in-itself, with the result that the idea o f
a reality that does not ap pear, i.e. that is not representable, would
become incoherent. But the claim that to be is to be representable
implies precisely the sort o f dogm atic idealism K ant wishes to
repudiate. Thus, w hat is required is an account o f the reality o f the
in-itself that grounds the reality o f appearances w ithout rendering
the form er conditional upon the latter. But it is difficult to flesh out
the notion o f transcendental reality so long as the relation to sen
sibility in objective representation provides the precondition fo r
cognitive determination. If being is not a real predicate, then the
claim that the reality o f appearances implies that there is a reality
that appears establishes a logical dependency between the concept
o f appearance and the concept o f the in-itself; it does not legiti
Laruelle and the Reality of Abstraction
10 5
mate any ontological inference, either from the being of appear
ance to the being of the in-itself, or from being-in-itself to the
being o f appearance. It is the nature o f the difference between the
reality proper to appearances and the reality proper to the in-itself
that is at issue. Y et the question remains whether it is legitimate to
infer an ontological difference from a conceptual distinction, or to
postulate a domain o f being (or reality) independent o f the condi
tions o f sensibility.
C on trary to a prevalent caricature, the postulate o f the in-itself
does not entail a tw o-w orld m etaphysics. Indeed, K an t explicitly
denies that the noumenon is another kind o f entity, existing in
an intelligible w orld that transcends experience: ‘The division of
objects into phenomena and noum ena, and o f the w orld into a
w orld of sense and a w orld of understanding, can therefore not
be perm itted at all, although concepts certainly perm it o f division
into sensible and intellectual ones. ,13 But then w hat does it m ean to
insist, as Laruelle does, that the transcendental distinction between
appearances and things-in-themselves is to be understood as a real,
rather than m erely ideal, difference, if this is not the fam iliar m eta
physical difference between tw o separate kinds o f being, such as
the sensible and the intelligible? C learly, appearances are real in a
sense that goes beyond the objective reality of their representation,
since they are constituted through acts of representing that are not
themselves encom passed within the represented content. The same
point can be made in a phenom enological register by pointing out
that ‘objectivating’ acts o f consciousness must be granted a reality
that transcends the conditioned reality o f the objects they consti
tute^4 Thus the transcendence proper to form al, as opposed to
objective, reality is not to be understood in terms of the m etaphysi
cal transcendence traditionally ascribed to the intelligible object,
but rather in terms of objectivating transcendence. W hat we are
w orking tow ard is the suggestion that the reality proper to the initself is neither that of the transcendent object, nor of objectivating
transcendence, but rather that o f unobjectivisable transcendence.
T h is is the key to Laruelle’s interpretation o f Heidegger.
Once the tw o -w o rld interpretation o f the transcendental differ
ence between phenomena and noumena has been ruled out, it
seems we must acknowledge that the reality o f the in-itself con
stitutes a noum enal dimension within appearance as such; or in
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Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
other w ords, a transcendental difference intrinsic to the entity (the
phenomenon) itself. This point can be elucidated by considering
the scholastic differentiation between real distinction (distinctio
realis), conceptual distinction (distinctio rationis), and form al
distinction (distinctio fo rm alis).lj A real distinction corresponds
to a difference in being (i.e. in the 'w hatness’ or essence o f a thing)
that does not depend on our understanding because the difference
is itself an entity or res. A conceptual distinction corresponds to
a difference in the definition or concept o f a thing, without a cor
responding difference in being (i.e. the difference is not). A form al
distinction, how ever, corresponds to a difference in the entity that
is not a difference in being. It is an inexistent difference that makes
an existential difference. This distinction first arose in an attempt
to m ake sense o f the difference between essence and existence,
a topic to w hich w e shall return below. The difference between
the essence o f Socrates (the list o f properties that m ake him what
he is) and his existence or actuality is not merely conceptual or
nominal, and so qualifies as ‘ real’, yet the nature o f this ‘reality’,
as well as o f its contrast with the 'id eality’ o f Socrates’ essence,
both remain obscure. Thus the difference between the definitive
concept o f Socrates, in so far as it circum scribes his essence, and
the actually existing Socrates, is neither a difference in Socrates’
definition, since the latter identifies all those attributes that make
him w hat he is, nor a difference between Socrates and some other
entity, since Socrates’ existence cannot be construed as something
separate from Socrates. Consequently, what separates essence
from existence is not an individuating difference, since the defini
tion o f a thing is w hat individuates it. But nor is it a specific d if
ference, since w hat is specific to Socrates is entirely subsumed by
his essence. Lastly, it is not a generic difference either, since all
o f Socrates’ generic attributes are encapsulated in his definition.
Consequently, the difference between Socrates’ essence and his
existence falls outside every available ontological rubric. Y e t the
difference is undeniable, since there would seem to be all the d if
ference in the w orld between a definition that expresses Socrates’
essence by enumerating all his essential attributes, and the flesh
and blood Socrates w ho incarnates these essential attributes.
Thus, the difference between Socrates’ essence and his existence is
a form al distinction in so far as it is a real, as opposed to merely
nom inal difference; but a real difference that seems to evade all
the available conceptual determ inations (i.e. o f generic, specific,
Laruelle and the Reality o f Abstraction
10 7
or individuating difference) that render differences in being intel
ligible. This is w hy the distinction can be characterised as an ontic
difference without any corresponding ontological coordinates.
The distinction between phenomena and noum ena is not a m eta
physical or (what is equivalent here) an ontological difference, but
a form al distinction in the sense we have just outlined: one that
is rooted in the entity itself but that does not correspond to a dif
ference in being, understood as w h at something is. This allow s
us to see how the difference between phenom ena and noumena
can be construed as a real difference, i.e. a difference rooted in
the phenomenon as such, and hence one that does not hypostatise
a domain o f entities transcending the conditions o f sensibility,
thereby entailing a tw o-w orld m etaphysics. M oreover, to claim
that the difference between phenomena and noum ena is real is to
insist that the difference between the intelligible form and sensible
content o f appearances is not just a distinction o f reason, since it
falls neither on the side o f the understanding, nor o f intuition.
This is w h at Laruelle seems to be indicating w hen he points out
that the in-itself is not something other than the appearance:
the thing-in-itself is the same entity as the phenomenon, as Heidegger
says, it is therefore reduced [i.e. it is not dogmatically posited as a
transcendent entity existing in an intelligible realm - RB], but at the
same time it corresponds to a point of view other than that of the
phenomenon: that of the entity’s uncreatedness or transcendence
relative to Being, the milieu within which Being must be disclosed and
illuminated.16
By ‘Being’ , Laruelle here has in mind transcendental conditions of
objectivation in a Kantian sense, since he view s H eidegger’s inves
tigation into the being o f phenomena as that p art o f his project
which is continuous with K an t’s transcendental problem atic. Thus
Heidegger renders explicit an insight that remains implicit in Kant:
that the reality o f the entity (i.e. o f the phenomenon) is rooted in
its transcendence relative to its conditions o f objectivation. But
this is no longer a m etaphysical transcendence. In fact, L aruelle’s
account requires that we distinguish three varieties o f transcend
ence: first, the transcendence o f the intelligible object vis-a-vis its
sensible instantiation in dogm atic idealism; second, the transcend
ence o f objectivation with regard to the object in critical ideal
ism ;!7 finally, the transcendence o f the entity-in-itself w ith regard
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Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
to its conditions o f objectivation as the key com ponent in the tran
scendental critique o f idealism. It is this latter, unobjectivisable
transcendence that is m arked by K an t’s critical-form al distinction
between phenomena and noumena.
This form al distinction is not to be confused w ith H eidegger’s
ontological difference between Being and beings. F o r Laruelle, the
ontological difference remains m etaphysical because it is posited
a priori and established in the element o f the a priori, i.e., the
conceptual: ‘ M etaphysics establishes itself in the relation between
beings and the a priori, a relation which is itself a priori, a prior
place o f thought.’18 T his relation exposes the correlation between
Being and beings as the necessary condition for experiencing the
entity as object. In this regard, Being, or m ore precisely, what
Heidegger calls ‘pre-ontological understanding’, functions as a
priori condition of objectivation. H ow ever, as an a priori, this
ontological distinction between Being and beings remains ideal. It
is what Laruelle calls an ‘a priori factum ’ for thought, in the sense
o f that w hich establishes the correlation between objects and their
conditions o f objectivation. Such a correlation presupposes an
idealising reduction o f the dogm atic postulate o f reality as some
thing existing in-itself (the postulate characteristic o f w hat Husserl
called ‘the natural attitude’ ). T his idealising reduction preserves
the independence o f the real, but only as a correlate o f the ideal,
conditioned by the a priori within the element o f ideal immanence
(whether that o f consciousness, intersubjectivity, or language). It
yields w hat Husserl called ‘transcendence in immanence’ , accord
ing to which the real is in-itself for the consciousness (or dom ain
o f intersubjectivity) that constitutes it.
But Laruelle credits Heidegger with carrying out a second, more
radical reduction; one that suspends not only the transcendence of
the object, but also the transcendence that an insufficiently critical
idealism continues to attribute to the a priori (i.e. the conditions
o f objectivation).!9 Thus in L aruelle’s reading o f H eidegger, Being
conditions the entity, but Being itself, i.e. the form al reality of
objectivating transcendence, is also conditioned by the entity. It is
the relation o f objectivation itself, the transcendence o f the a priori
in so far as it conditions the presence o f ‘ beings as such and as a
w h o le’, which is now reduced to the status o f immanent factum-.
an a priori fact o f reason. The transcendence o f Being is affected
by the entity, which, since it is not created by Being in the w ay in
which the transcendent Creator produces his creatures, must be
Laruelle and the R eality of Abstraction
i 09
given som ehow , but in a w ay that is independent of its objectivation. Consequently, there are tw o dimensions o f givenness: one
through which the phenomenon is objectivated, and one through
which the phenomenon at once precipitates and transcends its
own objectivation. The difference between these tw o is the differ
ence between the form al reality proper to objectivating transcend
ence, and the transcendental reality proper to unobjectivisable
transcendence. It is this latter brand o f transcendence that consti
tutes the reality o f the phenomenon or entity in-itself. Although
Laruelle himself never explicitly form ulates this distinction as
such, it is essential to his interpretation o f H eidegger. M oreover,
it also sheds light on the grounding relation between the reality o f
the in-itself and the reality o f appearances. The reality o f appear
ances, understood as the mode in w hich they are given prior to
being objectivated, is constituted by the transcendence intrinsic to
the entity (or phenomenon) itself. This transcendence is the unob
jectivisable dimension immanent to the entity as such in its form al
distinction from the present-at-hand object o f representation,
whether interpreted in term s o f the determinate, particular object,
or the ideal category o f the object in general (O b jek t uberhaupt).
It is obscurely prefigured by the m etaphysical distinction between
essence and existence, usually glossed in terms o f the difference
between w h at something is, and that it is. As we saw above, while
the form er is conceptually determinable, the latter is a sym ptom of
something in the difference between possibility and actuality that
resists conceptual determination. In the theological w orldview
organised around the distinction between potentiality construed
as essence and actuality construed as existence, all form al reality
is tributary to the entity’s createdness - the actualisation through
which God converts potentiality into actuality. As Heidegger
himself explains, this process does not involve the addition of
something lacking in the possible (i.e. a missing determination),
since actualisation is synonym ous with creation understood as the
transition from essential potency to actual existence:
When in creation [the] possible goes over into actuality, this transition
is to be understood, not in the sense that the possible relinquishes a
way of being, but rather in the sense that it first of all receives a being.
The essentia now is not only . . . in that potency, namely of being
thought by God, but it is only now properly actual . . . the being is only
now first created by God and as this created being, it at the same time
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Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
stands on its own in its own self . . . The difficulty of the problem of
making the distinction [between essence and existence] intelligible at
all depends on how in general actualization is thought of as the transi
tion of a possible to its actuality. Expressed more exactly, the problem
of the distinction between essentia and existentia . . . depends on
whether in general the interpretation of being in the sense of existence
is oriented towards actualization, towards creation and production.20
Heidegger w ill o f course insist that it is the ancient Greek concept
o f production (po iesis) that holds the key to the proper interpre
tation o f the role played by the concept o f existence in actualisation. But w hile he detects in this venerable distinction the seed o f
the ontico-ontological difference (although pointing out that it
remains entirely on the ontic side), the dimension o f unobjectivisable transcendence intimated by ‘thatness’ continues to be occluded
by H eidegger’s ow n subsequent characterisation o f the ontological
difference as distinguishing the ‘h o w ’ from the ‘w h at’ o f being,
and his claim that the ontological is to be grasped in terms o f h o w
beings are, i.e. their w ay o f being, rather than w hat they are. Y et
part o f H eidegger’s remit in exposing and ‘destroying’ the m eta
physical determination o f being as presence involves querying this
identification o f ‘thatness’ w ith existence construed as sheer occurrentness, devoid o f every determ ination other than that o f its bare
presence-at-hand. From H eidegger’s point o f view , it is precisely
this identification o f existence w ith a degree-zero o f presence that
occludes w hat is most essential in ontological transcendence, i.e.
being’s w ithdraw al from presence, its congenital nothingness as
unpresentable condition o f presence. This nothingness clearly
echoes that o f K an t’s noumenon, but while the latter remains an
intelligible thought-entity m arking the porous frontier between the
ideal and real, Being m arks the juncture o f pre-conceptual under
standing and supra-conceptual transcendence. Ultimately, the
contrast is one between a rationalist and a non-rationalist concep
tion o f transcendence. H eidegger’s decisive insight comes w ith the
realisation that, just as the m etaphysical characterisation o f exist
ence as indeterminate occurrentness in contrast to the determinacy
o f essence leaves the unpresentable ground o f presence unthought,
it also obscures the real difference between w hat is given accord
ing to the mode o f objectivation and its unobjectivisable residue.
Heidegger then demarcates himself from K a n t’s residual rational
ism w ith the claim that this difference remains as unthinkable from
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i i i
the critical standpoint o f objectivation as it was from the dogmatic
view point o f actualisation (i.e. creation). Just as the transcendence
of the possible vis-a-vis the actual is a sym ptom of the entity’s createdness, so the transcendence o f objectivation vis-a-vis the object
is a sym ptom o f the entity’s producedness. Both the theological
conception of creation and the transcendental conception o f objec
tivation continue to think the absoluteness o f being in terms o f a
notion of form al reality whose transcendence vis-a-vis the created
or objectivated shuts out that aspect o f the entity which is not con
ditioned by actualisation or objectivation, because both processes
unknowingly presuppose it. The transcendence o f the in-itself is
the seal o f the entity’s uncreatedness precisely in so fa r as it cannot
be m apped in terms o f the junction o f potentiality and actuality.
Sim ilarly, it is because the entity is uncreated that its reality cannot
be w h olly subsumed by its relation to Being, understood as objec
tivating transcendence. Since objectivating transcendence perpetu
ates the transcendence of creation (i.e. o f actualisation), atheism
entails the renovation o f transcendental realism; its transform ation
from a thesis upholding the autonom y o f substantial form as exist
ing in the mind o f G od, to a thesis acknowledging the autonom y
of the insubstantial and the form less, understood as that aspect of
reality which must be thought in order to secure our knowledge
of the reality o f appearances. As we saw above, this noumenal
ground o f appearances is not a substance considered in abstrac
tion from its relation to the subject, but a concept considered in
abstraction from its relation to the object. T hus the noumenon
as ‘thought-entity’ or intelligible nothing is not just an abstract
concept, but rather the concept o f an absolute abstraction, existing
independently o f its abstraction from experience. In this regard,
and contrary to the fam iliar H egelian rebuke according to which
Kant abandons the in-itself to the domain o f the inconceivable, the
noumenon as intelligible nothing lays claim to the territory o f the
in-itself for conceptualisation, w ithout presum ptively annexing
it to the latter. From Kant, through H eidegger, to Laruelle, the
postulate o f the in-itself requires that we rethink the m etaphysical
hypostatisation of being-in-itself, w hich is an abstraction relative
to an em pirically given reality, as the absolute reality o f abstrac
tion. Laruelle takes his cue in this endeavour from H eidegger’s
transform ation o f the concept o f essence.
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Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
Laruelle identifies unobjectivisable transcendence with the dimen
sion o f w ith d raw al that Heidegger takes to be inseparable from
Being’ s disclosure o f the entity. H ow ever, in Laruelle’s interpre
tation, it is not Being itself that w ithdraw s - in fact, the very
notion o f ‘ Being itself’ involves a metaphysical hypostatisation
- but rather the entity-in-itself, since Being remains an illum inat
ing projection, and hence an ideal correlate o f D asein’s ‘throw n
projection’; a projection whose function is at once revelatory and
objectivating.21 A ccordingly, on L aruelle’s account, it is in fact the
entity’s unobjectivisable transcendence that constitutes the noumenal dimension o f phenom ena, i.e., that which is in-itself within
appearances. This is the immanent dimension o f transcendence
in w hich appearances are rooted, and w hich conditions Being’s
w ithholding from presence, its inapparence within appearances.
Contrary to those w ho w ould interpret it phenom enologically as
the ‘presencing’ or Being o f the phenom enon, understood as the
non-conceptualisable residue that resists assim ilation to m etaphys
ical essence or ‘w hatness’ ,22 Laruelle identifies it with the entity’s
w ithdraw al from presence and view s this as the veritable source
o f w hat Heidegger w ill subsequently describe as the ‘essence’
(Wesen) o f Being:
Essence is no longer a transcendent ideality, in the metaphysical sense.
It is rather a real or absolute transcending - not a particular, i.e. objectivized being that is transcendent in the theological style, but rather
the transcending of the real in-itself that no longer has any objectterm and that is an absolute scission. Under the name of Finitude,
Heidegger thinks the real, absolute opposite, the ‘Other’ of every rela
tion of objectivation; the un-objectivizable real that is the essence of
Being . . .B
From essence as eternal identity to essence as ‘absolute scission’
or Finitude a rem arkable shift takes place. It is this scission o f the
entity - or rather this entity as real scission - that constitutes the
essence o f Being understood as disclosive opening (or ‘clearing’ )
within which beings can be encountered as present. H ow ever,
while H eidegger’s existential phenom enology tells us w hat is given
and how it is given, the tw o ontological facets o f givenness, it
stops short o f trying to grasp the given independently o f its given
ness. This is precisely w hat Laruelle, radicalising Heidegger, will
seek to do. And it is im portant to note that he does so initially,
Laruelle and the R eality of Abstraction
i i 3
at that point where he is still providing a philosophical ration
ale for his dissatisfaction w ith philosophy’s m odus operandi,24
by striving to seize this moment of absolute scission, which he
identifies as the hidden wellspring o f absolute transcending, and
by trying to think it independently not only o f the form o f the
object, but also o f objectivating transcendence. This is arguably
the pivotal point on which the theoretical cogency o f the transi
tion from philosophy to non-philosophy depends, at least in so
fa r as this transition is not to be reduced to some gratuitous and
ultimately arbitrary abandonm ent o f philosophy. To wrest this
moment o f absolute scission free from the horizon o f ontological
transcendence, Laruelle must think it in its immanence, which
is to say non-relation, rather than its transcendence, which here
means relation, vis-a-vis objectivation, since to think it as tran
scendent is to re-inscribe it in and as a mode o f Being. The goal is
to think scission absolutely, in and from its absoluteness, rather
than thinking it relative to w hat it divides, which would render it
relative, and thereby transcendent, once again. But paradoxically,
and in an eminently dialectical twist, thinking division absolutely
requires thinking it as absolute indivision, uncontam inated by
difference or division, w hich is alw ays relational. T his absolutely
immanent indivision - not to be confused with unity, w hich is
synthetic and hence relational - is o f course w hat Laruelle calls
‘the O ne’, and the entire impetus o f his analysis o f the ‘philo
sophies of difference’ is to demonstrate that philosophy cannot
but subordinate the indivisible scission of the One, which for him
is ultim ately of the order of (non-thetic) experience rather than
o f the concept, to a division in and o f conceptual transcendence.
Thus, for Laruelle, H eidegger’s conception o f Finitude remains
mired in a fatal equivocation, using the absolute indivision o f the
Real to bind Being to beings even as it petitions its pow er o f scis
sion to split the entity from the object. A lthough this blocks the
absolute idealist suspension of ontic transcendence by grounding
Being’s determination o f beings in the transcendence o f the initself, it stops short o f thinking this absolute division in and fo r
itself, independently o f its conjunction with division:
What distinguishes finite Difference from the idealist usage of
Difference is that this gap, the scission from whence transcendence is
deployed, is no longer relative to transcendence, as it is in Idealism; is
not in its turn a relation or an Idea. It is a non-relation or an absolute
i 14
Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
‘relation’, one that is perhaps unthinkable in itself since one of its
‘terms’ - the entity in-itself - is real, and hence by definition nonobjectivisable and non-manifest; and so it is thinkable only through its
other side, that of Being as relation (of transcendence) to beings, a rela
tion which is itself ideal. Difference is indeed an indivision or a unity of
Being and beings, and a real indivision; it is not an ideal and infinitely
divisible continuum. Finitude is what gives its reality and consequently
its indivisibility to Difference, its repulsion of every division and every
integration into itself of new immanent relations. But on its other
side, which is no longer the real or ontic origin of transcendence, but
transcendence as deployment, as intentional continuity, Difference is
divisible and able to integrate new relations into itself; it is the site for
the deployment of the analytic of Being or the objectivation of beings,
the divisions and new relations that philosophizing thought operates
with a view to raising itself up to the essence of Being.2^
H eidegger’s Finitude evokes the absolute scission o f a transcend
ence that punctures the horizon o f objectivation, but does so in
order to relate Being’s determination o f beings to Being’s determi
nation by that w hich is not in beings. This non-being within beings
is the noumenon as intelligible nothing, a thought-entity that is at
once substance-less concept and form less thing. But to think this
non-entity as the ground o f phenomena is to concretise absolute
abstraction and acknowledge the differentiating pow er o f the in
different: the Real as indivisible divisor o f reality and ideality. This
is the dialectical inversion through which the thought o f absolute
difference, i.e. difference in its non-relation to identity, nonsubsum able by the categories, turns into the thought o f absolute
indifference, the One as absolutely indivisible immanence, which is
the operator o f absolute, a-categorial differentiation precisely in so
far as it is without distinction or differentiation. For Heidegger as
for Laruelle, such an outcom e is at once too dialectical, because o f
its assertion o f the reversibility between the abstract and the con
crete, and too idealist, because o f the w ay in which it affirm s the
convertibility between transcendence and immanence. Abjuring
this dialectical, and hence perniciously philosophical conversion,
Laru elle seeks to isolate the moment o f scission, the irreversibility
o f the absolute division between transcendent division and im m a
nent indivision, and to separate it from the reversibility proper
to the dialecticisation of scission. Yet is this separation itself not
precisely the dialectically necessary acknowledgem ent o f the need
Laruelle and the Reality o f Abstraction
i i 5
to think the absolute abstraction of scission in and for itself, even
if this entails insisting on its foreclosure (non-reciprocity) to and
fo r thought? In this regard, L aruelle’s attempt to think immanence
in and from its absolute separation is the necessary next step in
unfolding the logic o f absolute abstraction, one that provides an
exem plary dialectical absolutisation o f abstraction. Laruelle sub
jects the general dialectic o f the One and the D yad, o f Finitude and
Difference, to a one-sided splitting (or ‘dualysis’ ), but mistakes
his ow n abstract separation o f abstraction for its realisation. He
separates the separate and the inseparate - indeed he uncovers
the logic o f this separation w ithout separation, which he calls
‘unilateralisation’ - but he misconstrues this startling tw ist in the
dialectic - the dialectic o f dialectics and non-dialectics - for a sus
pension o f dialectics, and ergo o f philosophy, as such. For w hat is
the One conceived as fulcrum for the articulation of dialectics and
non-dialectics but an effect upon philosophy?
O bviously, this is not how Laruelle him self w ill view the situa
tion. He w ill insist that, despite H eidegger’s ‘finitising’ reduction
of objectivating transcendence, the transcendence o f the entity
in-itself is not so much given as posited as given by both K ant and
Heidegger, in a manner that remains a priori, idealising, and hence
transcendent (which is to say, objectivating). Counterm anding this
residual concession to idealism, Laruelle w ill claim that the One
is not a conceptual posit but an experience given independently of
all phenom enological objectivation. Unobjectivisable transcend
ence is the intra-philosophical sym ptom o f an unobjectivisable
immanence that is no longer philosophisable because it is o f the
order o f a ‘non-thetic experience’ that determines conceptual
determination, without being conceptually determinable in return.
The One is this non-thetic experience, presupposed w ithout being
posited, given-without-givenness, etc. Thus Laruelle insists that he
has converted the philosophical absolutisation o f immanence into
a non-philosophical radicalisation that ‘unilateralises’ and hence
m arginalises philosophical absolutisation as such, in the name of
an experience o f immanence - or rather, o f a radically immanent
experience - whose imm ediacy is no longer susceptible to dialecti
cal mediation.
But is Laruelle invoking the reality o f a concrete experience o f
immanence, or the concretisation o f an absolutely abstract concep
tion o f immanence? Here the congenital am biguity constitutive o f
the logic o f abstraction and concretion persists, and it infects both
i i 6
Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
the transcendence and the immanence attributed to the entity initself: Is it the One qua indivisible that w ithdraw s (i.e. divides), or is
its w ithdraw al (i.e. division) One qu a indivision? If the w ithdraw al
o f the One is not a thing but rather an absolute ‘un-thinging’ , then
the ‘un-thing’ (unbedingt) exerting this pow er cannot be identified
with any individual entity - least o f all the human person. Likew ise,
am biguity persists in the m eaning o f ‘absolute’ transcendence and
‘absolute’ immanence. Is it possible to separate them? O r is the
separation itself the ultimate abstraction? H as Laruelle realised
abstraction or abstracted the R eal? O r has he identified the R eal
itself (=One) with abstraction? A t this juncture, the problem of
dogmatism, and o f Laruelle’s relation to the critical-transcenden
tal legacy from which he draw s inspiration, re-emerges. Laruelle
uses philosophical abstraction to define the non-philosophical
R eal that suspends philosophical abstraction: ‘lived experience’ ,
‘know ing-w ithout-know ledge’ , ‘M an-in-person’, ‘One-in-O ne’ ,
etc. Yet he insists these have a non-constitutive, merely occasional,
nominative function: they do not constitute w h at they name or
describe. But w hat do they name or describe? Immanence ‘itself’ ,
the immanence o f the R eal ‘in flesh and blood’ , as he likes to put
it? O r the abstract reality o f an absolute abstraction that positively
realises the transcendental negativity o f the Kantian noum enon as
objectless ‘thought-entity’ ? Laruelle insists on the form er, on the
grounds that ‘w e k n o w ’ ourselves to be this immanent experience;
a claim which he o f course im m ediately qualifies with the proviso
that we know it w ithout ‘know ing’, which is to say, without the
conceptual mediations involved in reflection, com prehension,
understanding, judgement, etc. This is gnosis understood as a
‘radically im m anent’ m ode of know ing immunised against the
all-too-philosophical demand fo r justification: ‘M an-in-person is
defined by this idempotent “ gn o sis” , this indissolubly scientific
and philosophical lived experience, which is not a being in the
w orld, or a being in philosophy. The genericity o f man consists
in being know ledge that he himself does not “ k n o w ” , a lived
experience that is not reflexive and cum ulative.’26 The problem
is that this distinction between imm anent gnosis and transcend
ent knowledge already presupposes the separation it is supposed
to secure: the separation between the Real-O ne as that which is
already determinate (‘w ithout-determ ination’ ), and the realm o f
philosophical ideality as the domain o f that w hich is determined
as this or that, as subject or object, as immanent or transcendent,
Laruelle and the Reality o f Abstraction
117
as abstract or concrete, etc. Laruelle invokes a self-authenticating
experience o f the Real in the w ake o f its conceptual separation in
order to prevent w hat he has separated in an abstraction which he
of course immediately disavow s - the One as radically immanent
experience is ‘separate-w ithout-separation’, ‘abstract-withoutabstraction’, etc. - from being re-incorporated into the necessarily
interminable m ovem ent o f abstraction. W hat shores up this pre
emptive blockage o f abstraction? Simply Laruelle’s identification
o f the R eal-O ne with the ‘human in flesh and blood’ qua ultimate
determinant o f abstraction. But this continues to beg the question:
H o w do I know I am the One ‘in-person’ ? W hat distinguishes this
gnosis from any number o f m erely doxastic em pirical identifica
tions I am able to reel o ff unreflectingly (‘I am Francois, I am a
man, I am French, I am . . . etc.’ )? Laruelle presumes to be able
to discharge him self o f the obligation to justify the gnosis that
m otivates this nomination, yet the case fo r exem ption continues
to depend upon a (highly sophisticated) theoretical rationale satu
rated w ith the kind o f conceptual understanding that gnosis itself
is supposed to render redundant. Shorn o f this elaborate theoreti
cal alibi, Laruelle’s identification o f the R eal with ‘M a n ’ or ‘the
hum an-in-person’ - a nom ination which retains a determinate
semantic valence, relying as it does on our understanding o f the
m eaning o f terms such as ‘M a n ’, ‘hum an’, and ‘in-person’ - is as
arbitrary, abstract and ultim ately as ‘ decisional’ as other possible
identifications of that which is pre-eminently R eal, whether as Self,
Spirit, Life, or N ature. It is im portant to remember that everything
that distinguishes the latter’s alleged philosophical transcendence
from the form er’s supposedly non-philosophical immanence is
itself abstract, and hence nothing if not conceptual.
Ultimately, Laruelle faces a dilemma: either he regresses to
M ichel H en ry’s phenom enological idealisation o f radical im m a
nence,27 or he accepts that the radicalisation o f the immanence of
the Real necessitates the dissolution not only o f intentionality, but
also of intuition itself, which is to say, o f gnosis. Our knowledge
of ourselves certainly com prises a dimension o f non-inferential
imm ediacy that endows us w ith a privileged epistemic access to
our own internal states, but only within certain limits, since the
imm ediacy o f self-knowledge is itself mediated and cannot be
evoked to ratify the appeal to an allegedly intuitive, pre-discursive
gnosis o f ourselves as ‘the Real-in-person’ . Only the appearance
that immediacy is not the result o f a mediating self-relation allow s
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Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
experience to be absolutised. T his is, o f course, ‘the myth o f the
G iven ’, originally targeted in H egel’ s critique o f sense-certainty,
and more recently dismantled - arguably in a m ore profound and
definitive fashion than it w as by Hegel - by W ilfrid Sellars.28 But
the crucial Kantian insight is that we can abjure this m yth without
succumbing to the lure o f absolute idealism, once we realise
that the reality o f appearances is grounded in the reality o f w hat
does not appear; that acknow ledging the concrete reality o f the
phenomenon requires acknowledging the abstract reality o f the
noumenon; and ultim ately, that sensible being is founded upon
the intelligibility o f that w h ich is not. Thus the identification o f
the R eal with ‘M an-in-person’ is the height o f abstraction, fo r it
brusquely identifies the noum enon w ith the phenom enon, using
the divisive pow er o f the form er to secure the absolute indivisibil
ity o f the latter. The result is a term inal abstraction m asquerading
as the termination o f abstraction. Laruelle has hypostatised an
absolute abstraction and subjected it to a premature identification
with an em pirical instance - the hum an individual ‘in flesh and
blood’ - in a misguided attem pt to stave o ff its re-idealisation in
a transcendence in and o f the concept. He successfully concep
tualises the separation o f the in-itself, but misidentifies it as an
experience, refusing to recognise that no residue o f experience can
withstand determination by m ediation. The rejoinder that the One
is ‘abstract w ithout abstraction’ begs the question, fo r it simply
radicalises abstraction in an attempt to neutralise (‘unilateralise’ )
the dialectic o f m ediation and abstraction. The given-withoutgivenness is certainly a real abstraction, or the Real as abstract,
and its absolute separation, or unilaterality, the reality o f abstrac
tion. By the same token, Laruelle’ s struggle w ith the very possibil
ity o f philosophising is undoubtedly m ore instructive than any
com placent passage a I’acte. Yet in the final analysis, his attempted
suspension o f the pretensions o f philosophy - epistem ological as
w ell as ontological - is m ore indicative o f a frustrated philosophi
cal agenda than o f a genuine alternative to the philosophical prob
lematic bequeathed to us by Kant.
N o tes
I. Francois Laruelle, Les philosophies de la difference. Introduction cri
tique (Paris: PUF, 1986), tra nslated by Rocco Gangle as Philosophies
o f Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy (London
Laruelle and the R eality o f Abstraction
119
and New York: Continuum, 20 1 o). Page references will refer to the
French edition followed by the English translation.
2. Ibid., p. 57/40 (translation modified).
3 This is a point made by Wilfrid Sellars: see his Kant and Pre-Kantian
Themes (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 2002), p. 168.
4 See Immanuel Kant, Critique o f Pure Reason, translated by Paul
Guyer and Alan Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), A 26 1/B 317.
5. Ibid., Bxxvi.
6. Ibid., A252.
7 Ibid., A 253.
8. Ibid., A 109.
9 - See ibid., A 253. This is one of the more confusing passages in the
First Critique. In the course of explaining why the transcendental
object is not the noumenon, Kant writes: ‘I cannot think [the tran
scendental object] through any categories, for these hold of empirical
intuition, in order to bring it under a concept of the object in general.
To be sure, a pure use of the category is possible, i.e. without contra
diction, but it has no objective validity, since it pertains to no intui
tion that would thereby acquire unity of the object, for the category
is a mere function of thinking, through which no object is given to
me, but rather only that through which what may be given in intui
tion is thought’ (A25 3 ). But the determination of the concept of the
transcendental object via the pure category of substance, understood
as the relation of inherence and subsistence, does not surreptitiously
endow the category with objective validity, since it does not involve
conflating the transcendental object with an empirical object.
10. Ibid., A290-2IB347-9.
1 1 . Ibid.
12. See Wilfrid Sellars, Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian
Themes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), p. 4 1. See also
Sellars, Kant and Pre-Kantian Themes, p. 6 5.
13. Kant, Critique o f Pure Reason, A 2 5 5 1B 3 11 (my emphasis).
q . We will write ‘objectivating’ and ‘unobjectivisable’ rather than the
more common ‘objectifying’ and ‘unobjectifiable’ in order to empha
sise the link with the phenomenological concept of ‘objectivation’,
which Laruelle constantly invokes, and which Rocco Gangle retains
in his admirable English translation of Philosophies o f Difference.
These three distinctions are discussed by Heidegger in Basic Problems
o f Phenomenology, translated by Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 88-99. The
12 0
Laruelle and N on-Philosophy
context there is a discussion of the scholastic distinction between
essence and existence.
16 . Laruelle, Les philosophies de la difference, p. 63/46 (translation
modified).
I 7. This isone way o f understanding ontological transcendence, as when
Heidegger describes Being as ‘the transcendens pure and simple’, in
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie
and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), p. 62.
18. Laruelle, Les philosophies de la difference, p. 56/40 (translation
modified).
19 . Ibid., pp. 62-3/45-6. Here one could object to Laruelle that neither
neo-Kantianism, nor Husserlian phenomenology, nor Habermas’
communicative discourse theory, treats the a priori conditions of
objectivation as a transcendent (trans-historical) ‘fact of reason’ in
this uncritical sense. On the contrary, all have sought in their dif
ferent ways to historicise the a priori. But Laruelle’s point seems to
be that even a historicised a priori is posited as given relative to a
set of empirical data. And because of this co-dependence between a
priori factum and empirical datum, the former becomes relatively
transcendent with regard to an empirical conjuncture. For Laruelle,
it is the very relativity of the a priori that perpetuates the metaphysi
cal hypostasis of transcendence as intelligible form or Idea. He views
it as the source of the residual dogmatism infecting even the most
historicised forms of idealism.
20. Heidegger, Basic Problems, p. 98.
2 1. In this regard, the distinction between Being and the entity-in-itself
in Heidegger can be understood as analogous to that between the
transcendental object and the noumenon in Kant.
22. This is Richard F. Grabau’s interpretation in his unduly neglected
paper, ‘Kant’s Concept of the Thing-in-Itself’, Review o f Metaphysics
16 .4 (1963), pp. 770-9. Although Grabau explicitly distances his
interpretation from Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant, of which
he is critical, there is an undeniable affinity between his interpreta
tion of the in-itself in terms of the presence of the phenomenon and
Heidegger’s characterisation of Being as that which does not show
itself within appearances and yet constitutes their ‘meaning and
ground’. In Heidegger’s own words: ‘that which remains hidden in
an egregious sense, or which relapses and gets covered up again, or
that which shows itself only “ in disguise” , is not just this entity or
that, but rather the Being of entities’ (Heidegger, Being and Time,
P. 59)-
Laruelle and the R eality of Abstraction
12 1
23. Laruelle, Les philosophies de la difference, pp. 79-80/63-4 (transla
tion modified).
24. Thereby revealing the extenttowhich the impulse for non-philosophy,
its conceptual motivations and theoretical rationalisations, still
come from philosophy - a point that is too often overlooked in any
straightforward affirmation of the discontinuity between philosophy
and non-philosophy.
25. Laruelle, Les philosophies de la difference, pp. 79-80/63-4 (transla
tion modified).
26. Francois Laruelle, ‘The Generic as Predicate and as Constant: Non
Philosophy and Materialism’, translated by Taylor Adkins, in The
Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, edited by
Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, Nick Srnicek (Melbourne: re-press,
2 0 11) , p. 248 (translation modified).
27. An idealisation he has himself vigorously criticised. See Francois
Laruelle, Pringipes de la non-philosophie (Paris: PUF, 1996), pp.
I 33- 4328. See Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy o f Mind
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).