FRAN901s LARUELLE, Professor Emeritus
FRAN<;OIS
at the University of Paris X: Nanterre, is the
author of more than twenty books, including
Biography qfthe Ordinary Man, Theory ofStrangers,
Principles ifNon-Philosophy, Future Christ, Struggle
and Utopia at the End Times ef Philosophy, Anti
Badiou, and Non-Standard Philosophy.
What we describe here are the structures of the ordinary man.
Structures that are individual, invisible in the light q/Reason or Intelligence.
'Ihese are not ideal essences, butfinite, inalienable
(and consequently irrecusable) lived experiences.
FRAN\:OIS LARUELLE
LARUELLE
From
Decision
to Heresy
EXPERIMENTS
IN NON
STANDARD
THOUGHT
From Decision to Heresy
EXPERIMENTS IN NON-STANDARD THOUGHT
11ze question 'what is non-philosophy?' must be
replaced by the question about what it can and
cannot do. To ask what it can do is already to ac
knowledge that its capacities are not unlimited.
11zis question is partly Spinozist: no-one knows
what a body can do. It is partly Kantian: circum
scribe philosophy's illusory power, the power ef
reason or the faculties, and do not extend its suffi
ciency by way efanother philosophy. It is also
partly Marxist: how much efphilosophy can be
tramformed through practice, how much efit
can be withdrawn.from its 'ideological' use? And
finally, it is also partly Wittgensteinian: how can
one limit philosophical language through its
proper use?
But these apparent philosophical proximities
and family resemblances are only valid up to a
point. 11zat point is called the real-determina
tion-in-the-last-imtance, unilateral duality, etc.
whU:h is to say, all efnon-philosophy in-person.
In other words, these kinds efcomparisom are de
void efmeaning, or at best profoundly mislead
ing, because non-philosophy is 'performative', its
capacities being entirely those efan immanent
practice rather than a programme.
From Decision to Heresy provides a collec
tion of English translations of writings by
Fram;:ois Laruelle, one of the most creative
and subversive French philosophers work
ing today. The book opens with an intro
duction based upon an in-depth interview
with the author that traces the abiding con
cerns of his prolific output, from the origins
of 'non-philosophy' to its evolution into
what he now calls 'non-standard philoso
phy'. A selection of experimental texts and
an early presentation in which Laruelle de
velops his 'transvaluation' of Kant's tran
COVER IMAGE: R. H. Q.uaytman, Silberkuppe, Chapter 17, 2010.
Silkscreen, gcsso on wood, 24 � x 40 inches (62.9 x 101.6 cm).
Courccsy of the artist and Miguel Abreu Gallery.
scendental method close the volume .
11ze question 'what is non-philosophy?' must be
replaced by the question about what it can and
cannot do. To ask what it can do is already to ac
knowledge that its capacities are not unlimited.
11zis question is partly Spinozist: no-one knows
what a body can do. It is partly Kantian: circum
scribe philosophy's illusory power, the power ef
reason or the faculties, and do not extend its suffi
ciency by way efanother philosophy. It is also
partly Marxist: how much efphilosophy can be
tramformed through practice, how much efit
can be withdrawn.from its 'ideological' use? And
finally, it is also partly Wittgensteinian: how can
one limit philosophical language through its
proper use?
But these apparent philosophical proximities
and family resemblances are only valid up to a
point. 11zat point is called the real-determina
tion-in-the-last-imtance, unilateral duality, etc.
whU:h is to say, all efnon-philosophy in-person.
In other words, these kinds efcomparisom are de
void efmeaning, or at best profoundly mislead
ing, because non-philosophy is 'performative', its
capacities being entirely those efan immanent
practice rather than a programme.
From Decision to Heresy provides a collec
tion of English translations of writings by
Fram;:ois Laruelle, one of the most creative
and subversive French philosophers work
ing today. The book opens with an intro
duction based upon an in-depth interview
with the author that traces the abiding con
cerns of his prolific output, from the origins
of 'non-philosophy' to its evolution into
what he now calls 'non-standard philoso
phy'. A selection of experimental texts and
an early presentation in which Laruelle de
velops his 'transvaluation' of Kant's tran
scendental method close the volume .
Urbanomic/Sequence Press Titles:
1he Concept efNon-Photog;raphy, Fran�ois Laruelle
Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987 - 2007, Nick Land
The Number and the Siren: A Decipherment ofMallarrni's Coup de Des, Quentin Meillassoux
Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics, Fernando Zalamea
CONTENTS
List of Sources
vii
Bibliography
Xl
Introduction: Laruelle Undivided
A Rigorous Science of Man
33
Toward a Science of Philosophical Decision
75
Revolution within the Limits of Science Alone
107
The Transcendental Method
135
The 'Non-Philosophical' Paradigm
173
What Is Non-Philosophy?
185
Philosophy and Non-Philosophy
245
Non-Philosophy as Heresy
257
v
A Summary of Non-Philosophy
285
From the First to the Second Non-Philosophy
305
The Degrowth of Philosophy:
Toward a Generic Ecology
Appendix I
Experimental Texts, Fictions, Hyperspeculation
353
Variations on a Theme by Heidegger
355
Leibniz Variations
37 1
Letter to Deleuze
3 93
Universe Black in the Human Foundations
40 1
of Colour
What the One Sees in the One
409
Appendix II
Transvaluation of the Transcendental Method
VI
425
LIST OF SOURCES
les fondations humaines de la couleur]' in F. Laruelle
(ed.), La decision philosophique 5 (Paris: Osiris, i988);
the latter first appeared in English translation in Hyun
Sao Choi: Seven Large Scale Paintings (New York: Thread
Waxing Space, i991). 'What the One Sees in the One
[Ce que l' Un voit clans l'Un]' originally appeared in F.
Laruelle (ed.), La decision philosophique 7 (Paris: Osiris,
i989). 'Transvaluation of the Transcendental Method
[La Transvaluation de la methode transcendantale]' in
Bulletin de la Societejranfaise de Philosophie 73 (1979), 77-119.
IX
Bibliography
PHILOSOPHY I
1971
- Phenomene et difference. Essai sur l'ontologi,e de Ravaisson
[Phenomenon and Difference: Essay on Ravaisson 's Ontology]
(Paris: Klincksieck).
1976
- Machines textuelles. Deconstruction et libido d'ecriture [Tex
tual Machines: Deconstruction and the Libido ef Writing]
(Paris: Seuil).
1977
- Nietzsche contre Heidegger. Theses pour une politique nietzs
cMenne [Nietzsche Contra Heidegger: Thesesfor a Nietzschean
Politics] (Paris: Payot).
Xl
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
- Le declin de l'ecriture [11ie Decline ef Writing] ( Paris:
Aubier-Flammarion) .
1978
- Au-dela du principe de pouvoir [Bryand the Power Princi
ple] ( Paris: Payot) .
PHILOSOPHY II
1981
- Le principe de minoriti ['11ie Minority PrincipleJ ( Paris:
Aubier Montaigne) .
1983-5
- Pourquoi pas la philosophie? (I: Descartes, mission ter
minee, retour impossible ; II : Les crimes de l'histoire de
la philosophie ; III: Thforie de la decision philosophique
; IV : Le philosophe sans qualites ; V : Le mystique, le
pratique, l'ordinaire ; VI: Metaphysique du futur ) [Why
Not Philosophy? (/: Descartes, Mission Terminated, No Return;
II: '11ie Crimes ef the History ef Philosophy; III: '11ieory ef
Philosophical Decision; IV: '11ie Philosopher Without Qualities;
V: Mysticism, Practice, the Ordinary; VI: Metaphysics ef the
Future)] ( Paris: A series of 'casebooks' published by the
author ) .
1985
- Une biog;raphie de l'homme ordinaire. Des Autoritis et des
Minoritis [Biography ef the Ordinary Man: Authorities and
Minorities] ( Paris: PUF ) .
Xll
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1986
- Les philosophies de la difference. Introduction critique (Paris:
PUF), trans. R. Gangle as Philosophies ef Difference: A
Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy (London/New York:
Continuum, Qo10).
1989
- Philosophie et non-philosophie [Philosophy and Non-Philos
ophy] (Liege/Brussels: Mardaga).
1991
- En tant qu' un. La «non-philosophie» expliquee aux philos
ophes [As One: 'Non-Philosophy' Explained to Philosophers]
(Paris: Aubier).
1992
- Theorie des identites. Fractalite generalisee et philosophie
artificielle [Theory ef Identities: Generalised Fractality and
Artificial Philosophy] (Paris: PUF).
2011
- Le concept de non-photographie / The Concept ifNon-Photog
raphy (Falmouth/New York: Urbanomic/Sequence Press).
Bilingual edition, trans. R. Mackay (texts dating from
c. 1992).
Xlll
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
PHILOSOPHY III
1995
- Theorie des Etrangers. Science des hommes, democratie,
non-psychanalyse [Theory ef Strangers: The Science ef Men,
Democracy, and Non-Psychoanalysis] (Paris: Kime).
1996
- Principes de la non-philosophie (Paris: PUF), trans. A.
P. Smith & N. Rubczak as Principles ef Non-Philosophy
(London/New York: Continuum, forthcoming 2013).
1997
- Die nicht-borgessche Hypothese. Versuche einer Wissenschafi
von Buch und Bibliothek. [The Non-Borgesian Hypothesis:
Toward a Science ef the Book and the Library] (Stuttgart:
Jutta Legueil).
1998
- (with collaborators) Dictionnaire de la non-philosophie
[Dictionary efNon-Philosophy] (Paris: Kime).
2000
- Ethique de l 'etranger [Ethics efthe Stranger] (Paris: Kime).
-Introduction auNon-Marxisme [Introduction toNon-Marxism]
(Paris: PUF).
XIV
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PHILOSOPHY IV
2002
- Le Christjutur, une leyon d'heresie (Paris: Exils), trans.
A. P. Smith as Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy (London/
New York: Continuum, 2on ) .
2003
- L 'ultime honneur des intellectuels ['11ie Ultimate Honour ef
Intellectuals] (Paris: Textuel).
2004
- La Lutte et l'utopie a la.fin des temps philosophiques (Paris:
Kime), trans. D. S. Burk as Struggle and Utopia at the End
Times efPhilosophy (Minneapolis: Univocal, 2012 ) .
2007
- Mystique non-philosophique a ! 'usage des contemporains
[Non-Philosophical Mysticismfor Contemporary Usage] (Paris:
L' Harmattan).
PHILOSOPHY V
2008
- Introduction aux sciences generiques [Introduction to Generic
Sciences] (Paris: Petra).
2010
- Philosophic non-standard [Non-Standard Philosophy] (Paris:
Kime).
xv
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
- L 'A nti-Badiou: Sur ! 'introduction du maoisme dans la phi
losophic (Paris: Kime), trans. R. Mackay as Anti-Badiou:
On the Introduction of Maoism into Philosophy (London/
New York: Continuum, forthcoming 2013).
2012
- Theorie generate des victimes [General Theory of Victims]
(Paris: Mille et une Nuits).
- Photofi,ction, une estMtique non-standard /Photofi,ction, A
Non-Standard Aesthetics (Minneapolis: Univocal). Bilingual
edition, trans. D. S. Burk.
XVI
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
A Rigorous S cience of M an
(1 985)
Tran s l ated by Robi n M a c k ay
1 . F R O M T H E H U MAN S C I E N C E S
T O T H E S C I E N C E O F MAN
There is every reason to revolt against philosophers. But
to what end? Is revolt its own reason, one more reason?
Isn't it philosophers who, dispensing reason, and in
particular the reasons for revolt, dispense revolt? Should
we not finally cease to revolt, founding our existence
on a firm yet tolerant indifference toward philosophy?
'Ordinary man', the finite individual we also refer to as the
Minorities, maintains himself in this indifference, which
he draws from himself rather than from philosophy. We
shall defend five 'theses', or in truth five 'theorems' human theorems:
33
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
1. Man really exists, and is really distinct from the World:
a thesis that contradicts almost all of philosophy;
Q . Man is a mystical living being condemned to action,
a contemplative being bound to practice for reasons he
knows nothing of;
3 . As practical living being, man is condemned a second
time, and for the same reasons, to philosophy;
4. This double condemnation organises his destiny, a des
tiny called 'The World', 'History', 'Language', 'Sexuality',
'Power', etc. - what we designate in general as Authorities;
5. A rigorous science of the ordinary man - that is to
say, of man - is possible; a biography of the individual
as Minorities and as Authorities; a theoretically-founded
description of the life he leads between these two poles,
which suffice to define him.
This description may be facilitated (but not replaced)
by an introductory outline of the most general programme
of a rigorous science efman designed to replace philosophy
and its avatars, the 'human sciences' ; a transcendental
Science, of course, which is to say one that is not empiri
cal - but not 'philosophical' either . . .
In their existing form, at the moment of their triumph,
the Human Sciences are not sciences, and do not bear
upon man: and these two for the same reason. What is
at issue here is something other than their conflict with
philosophy, or the fact that they lack exact empirical
procedures - two debates into which we shall not enter.
34
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
What we condemn is the globally non-scientific character
of these occasional sciences, which do not form a science;
and the complementary fact that they relate to no real
object. We shall not take up the old combat: defending
philosophy against the human sciences. Does one defend
a father against his sons, or let him die? Rather, we defend
man against this authoritarian family in league against
him and (this is not at all contradictory) we attempt to
constitute him as the object of a rigorous science.
Man has never been the object of the human sciences.
Man does not recognise himself in this authoritarian and
predatory activity; and the human sciences think some
thing other than man. They combine in a strange way the
plural and the singular: we are supposed to understand,
now, that there exists man in itself, inexhaustible, which
multiple, impotent and irreal sciences try to circumvent;
now, that man does not exist really, that only sciences or
methods exist, only the play of universal predicates whose
accumulation one hopes will coincide with his essence.
But this essence slips away and flees like the infinite.
This indeterminate being, evanescent under the crushing
weight of the universal determinations that are slammed
down upon it in the thwarted hope of 'fixing' it - it is
this being we are asked to consider as 'man'. But man is
definitively absent from the rendezvous of the Human
Sciences, because he is absent first of all from that of
35
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
philosophy. In both cases, one of the terms - science, or
man - has to be irreal in order for the other to be real.
Perhaps we ought to reverse the terms: science must be
unique and specific if it would be a real science and cease
to be a techno-political phantasm; and it is man who must
be irreducible in his multiplicity if he would cease to be
this anthropological fetish, this somewhat drab phantom
that is but the shadow of the Human Sciences, that is to
say of the self-screening light of Reason.
The twofold poverty of the human sciences: As far
as 'science' is concerned, they can claim no more than
an indeterminate plurality, or the inorganic unity of a
nebula. In either case, they demonstrate that they are but
an artefact, the foam that the wave of other sciences has
left behind it on the terra incognita of man.
No matter how they heap up, they still do not add
up to a science, with an object and procedures that are
autonomous and theoretically founded. As of this moment,
they are mere imaginary phenomena resulting from the
intersection of other disciplines - theoretical ersatzes
or synthetic 'sciences'. They cannot be said to have any
existence in themselves; they are just a vague institutional
skein that survives on its plasticity, and through com
promise. Having not yet discovered their foundation or
their essence, they are content with being the caricature
of contemporary philosophical impotence and nihilism:
playing out the most diverse theoretical procedures,
36
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
focusing on a mythical and fantastic figure of man whose
only necessity is that of the present conjuncture.
Every science that is born strives to capture all of real
ity, is animated by the old mytho-philosophical ambition
to identify the All with the real, Totality with the absolute.
The most recent - ethnology, linguistics, biology and
the science of history (in the Marxist sense) - like all
the others, do not emerge without trying to moor man,
considered as a residue, to their continent or to their
raft. Whence a series of retroactions or anthropological
artefacts in which, each time, man is declared as having
been accounted for. But all these universals, even when
united by the State in the nebula of the Social Sciences,
do not amount to even the most modest beginnings of
a specific science of man, distinct from the science of
historical man, speaking man, social man, psychical man,
etc. These are false sciences of man, just as there are false
sciences of chemistry or of life; but false sciences that have
succeeded, for reasons of self-avowed opportunism, in
implanting themselves and prospering. They lack both
specific theoretical foundations, distinct from those valid
for the sciences of the living, historical, speaking, sexuated
(etc.) being, and a sufficiently determined experience of
their object.
A genealogy of the Human Sciences would indeed
demonstrate that they derive from the same archaic
and metaphysical presuppositions as those of rational
37
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
psychology, which the cogito did not expurgate: in gen
eral, ontological presuppositions (those of simplicity,
atomicity, substantiality, causality, etc. which are simply
pluralised) combined with others necessary for their
mathematization. Scraps of old philosophy, of politics,
of 'rational' psychology and sociology, stitched together
externally by the process and the security of a cheap
mathematization. It is this generalised intersection that
makes for the techno-political richness - that is to say, the
real vacuity - of this bric-a-brac, as empty of theoretical
rigour as of humanity (and for the same reasons). The
essence of the science of man remaining unthought,
its rigorous phenomenal content being forgotten, it is
recomposed out of practical and theoretical elements
effective elsewhere, but here selected with no necessity,
under the mere arbitrary authority of the psychologist,
the politologist, the sociologist, the historian, etc. There is
no longer any necessary link between the sciences of man
and their object, no theoretical foundation to guarantee
this link and to render it necessary.
How to found a rigorous science of man, established
in the rigour specific to theory as such - that is to say,
in the experience of the full and phenomenally positive
sense of theoria? One that no longer borrows its means of
investigation, of demonstration, of validation, from exist
ing sciences? It must be founded in the specific essence
of its object, in the truth of its object: the discovery of
38
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
the science of man and that of the real essence of man
are the same thing.
As regards 'man' precisely, the concept these sciences
have of him is doubly indeterminate. In the first case,
'man' is a concept indeterminate in its origin and in the
Greco-unitary philosophical presuppositions that serve as
its foundation. Its essence, despite the cogito and rational
psychology (or because of them, but prior to their advent)
has not been elucidated for reasons of principle. One
cannot take the anthropological forms of philosophy for
a science or a rigorous theory of man, since anthropol
ogy is only a phantasmatic projection of Greco-Christian
ontological prejudices onto real man. Man has never been
the real object of philosophy, which, for its part, thinks
and dreams of something else (of Being, for example)
and, at the same time, hallucinates the individual. Greco
ontological thought, with the annexed and bastard sci
ences that now trail along with it like so many disavowed
corpses, has never been able (for reasons of principle to
which we shall return) to determine radically any object
whatsoever or to appraise what a finite individual is. It
is not just the founding text of its psychology and its
anthropology, the cogito, that it leaves undetermined
in its sense and its truth; but more profoundly the non
anthropologi,cal essence efman. Philosophy such as it exists,
precisely because it can be an anthropology, does not
know man. It knows the inhuman, the sub-human, the
39
FROM DEC ISION TO HERESY
too-human, the overman, but it does not know the human.
It knows man only in surrounding him with prefixes or
scare-quotes, with caveats and relations (with himself, with
others, with the World): never as a 'term'. For it confuses
ordinary man with any man whatever, with the universal
individual of which the exemplary figure, the excellent
essence, is the philosopher - the human par excellence in
speaking, knowing, acting. It identifies man with generali
ties or attributes, with a knowledge, an activity, a race,
a desire, an existence, a writing, a society, a language,
a sex; and it is once more the philosopher who pushes
himself forward behind the mask of these generalities - the
philosopher requisitioning man in the service of his aims
and his values, which are very specific but which need the
cover of the universal. The essence of the individual has
remained unthought by the philosophy that is content to
postulate it, that advances a possible supposed-man while
denying the conditions of his real experience with the
multiplicity of authoritarian universals that it uses to filter
that experience. Thus the latter remains undetermined a
second time, because the Human Sciences, not being of
the stature of the old philosophy, can only accentuate its
original theoretical carelessness, and that which in reality it
is part and parcel of: its want of humanity.
The cogito, and all the unitary figures of the subject
and of man, remain unelucidated in their essence, because
they are all without exception founded in anthropologj,cal
40
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
parallelism, in the more or less deformed but never invali
dated mixture and parallelism of man and logos, in the
ruined cradle of the Human Sciences that is anthropologi
cal philosophical difference.
To begin with man, so as to draw consequences as
to the State, Power, Language - the World? Anthropo
logical difference prohibits one from beginning with
man and his solitude. It begins, instead, with a mixture
or a universal: man as language, as desire, as society, as
power, as sex, etc. It cannot content itself with ordinary
man: it does not even see him. It will thus have already
doubled him, at once exceeded and devalued him, with
these philosophical marionettes: the gregarious, the vul
gar, the quotidian, the exoteric, sound understanding
or common consciousness; and with their symmetrical
terms or complements: the overman, the philosopher, the
authentic man, the reflecting subject, Spirit, etc. More
generally, anthropo-logical difference is the scission of
the indivisible essence of man; it separates, or believes it
can separate, what man can do. This is doubtless an hal
lucination that affects unitary thought - that is to say, what
is essential to the Greco-occidental tradition, more than
to the essence of man - but it explains why philosophy
has never known man, and has given rise only to a mere
anthropology. In place of man, in place of his real and
absolutely singular essence, it manipulates anthropo
logical or even andrological images, quasi-transcendental
41
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
androids: the cogito, the ens creatum, Spirit, the I think,
the Worker, the Unconscious, etc. - fictional beings
charged with populating the desert of anthropological
screens, shadows thrown up onto the abrupt walls of
Ideas, inhabitants for ideal caverns.
Anthropo-logical difference is thus the postulation
and the forgetting of the real or 'finite' essence of man.
It is identical to its own history, the auto-destruction
or auto-inhibition of the mixture of man and logos. It
goes deeper than the 'humanism' that contemporary
philosophy attacks, limiting and closing in on the target
so as to be more sure of attaining it. It reigns still in uni
tary deconstructions of humanism. It is qua difference,
not in so far as it speaks of man, that it is henceforth at
issue. Anthropo-logy as parallelism and as difference
(the nuance does not matter here) is the Greco-unitary
myth that must be excluded by a theoretically-founded
science of man, but on the three following conditions:
that this exclusion should be not the cause but the effect
of that science of man and of its positive essence; that
the latter does not take up the vacant place of unitary
anthropology, but should on the contrary be the instance
capable of radically determining it; and finally that the
rigorously described phenomenal content of man should
be, in an origjnal identity, to whose non-circular essence we
shall return, at once the principal 'object' of that science
and its unique 'subject'.
42
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
The human insufficiency of the Human Sciences is a theo
retical insufficiency. We have spoken, against common
sense, of the theoretical carelessness of philosophy. For
the deficit of theoria does not belong originally to those
weak and inconsistent sciences. It comes first of all from
the Greek ontological prejudices that have prohibited the
simultaneous deployment of the essence of theory and the
essence of man and which, in place of a phenomenally
rigorous and positive science of man, have produced a
mere counter-mythology or counter-sophistics - 'phi
losophy' - which, in its prudence, has programmed an
'anthropology' become, under the borrowed name of
'Human Sciences', a cutting-edge discipline.
Is it still a matter of an ultimate philosophical gesture?
Or is this radicality no longer of the order of philosophy?
At least one is obliged here to make a clean slate of the
unitary prejudices of the Human Sciences, in order to be
able to found this rigorous science that philosophy will
have failed to be.
2 . MAN AS F I N I T E OR O R D I NARY I N D IVI D UAL
Just as it is not a matter of reopening the interminable
combat between philosophy and the Human Sciences,
so it cannot be a question of making man 'exit' from the
enclosure that they form together as a function of their
very conflict. It is instead a matter of showing that he
43
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
never entered into it, that this conflict is not his affair,
except from the point of view of a unitary hallucination
whose mechanism must be analysed; that he is determined
and complete from the outset, and absolutely precedes the
phantasms of anthropo-logical parallelism. If philosophy
is an anthropo- or andro-eidetics, we must systematically
oppose what we call 'ordinary man', who retains in him
self an inalienable essence (which above all is not to say
that he is causa sui ... ), to the philosophical android or
anthropoid - that is to say, the homo ex machina, a part
of the philosophical machine, of Being, of Desire, of the
State, of Language, etc. Man, in his real essence, is not visible
within the horizon efthese presuppositions, which are also those
efthe Human Sciences. Anthropology may simulate him,
evoke him magically, but it is not yet a science; anthropo
logical difference is not man, but his transcendent avatar
in the World. If the essence of man is not a difference,
something like an undecidable decision, it is the radical
subject of an ordeal which, far from alienating him, is
finite, retaining him in himself and prohibiting him from
ever exiting himself. Ordinary man is inalienable, which
is what distinguishes him from his projections on the
anthropo-logical screen - projections that are inconsist
ent, ir-real and devoted to history.
Man is the real object of a science once he is rec
ognised in his specificity, irreducible to the objects of
other sciences, and in his reality rather than in the mere
44
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
possibility of his 'figures'. This unique twofold exigency
may later receive various nuances, but it holds in prin
ciple, and is undivided in its foundations. Each science
has its own way of driving back the old unitary ideal of
totality, and the rigorous science of individuals has its
own too: it demands (but radically, at last) that the All
and its modes, the universal or authoritarian predicates,
should not be 'all' ; that man should be, from the start,
outside-all, introduced into the World, or rather outside
the World - a duality of which the World, the All and
their attributes are but one side. The reality-condition of
a science of man is that it ceases to be unitarily closed up
in totalities and unities, and that one no longer confuses
the real relations of sciences amongst themselves with
the Greco-philosophical forms of unity, which are per
fectly mythological. It is this unitary or Greco-occidental
paradigm, which traverses almost all of philosophy right
up to its contemporary deconstructions, that must be
abandoned, along with all its prejudices, in order to
perceive the reality (rather than the mere possibility)
of man. The latter is not and has never been an object
visible within the Greco-unitary horizon, or even within
the anthropological canton of that horizon. There is no
point in renewing or even deconstructing metaphysics.
What is necessary is to change the paradigm of thinking;
to pass out of the philosophical paradigm (which ranges
from Being to Difference, from the Same to the Other)
45
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
to a paradigm that we call minoritarian or individual, and
which is founded on a transcendental butfinite experience ef
the One as distinctfrom Being, the World and their attributes.
The distinction between the individuel and the individual
is the foundation of a science that is non-empirical (non
worldly, non-historical, non-linguistic, non-sexual, etc.):
a transcendental science of individuals or of the ordinary
man. Whereas the individuel is always also universal, the
individual is the undivided without remainder or excess,
that which is nothing-but-undivided and which precedes a
priori all forms of universality. The individual problematic
is thus founded on a thinking of the One rather than of
Being. Being, but also Difference and the play of the Same
and the Other, are always unitary. Aside from their own
particular difficulties, they are incapable of doing justice
to man, or even of rendering him visible; they are content
with the substitute of an anthropology or (what is hardly
any different) a unitary critique of anthropology.
We propose to break the alliance between man and
the authoritarian predicates (Desire, Language, Sex,
Power, the State, History, etc.), an alliance that gives
rise to sciences that are not those of man - the alliance
of man and the philosopher, master of predicates. We
must change hypothesis and even paradigm: break up
the mixtures, found philosophy on man rather than the
inverse; venture a history of the human existent that no
longer owes anything to unitary prejudices; a biography
46
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
of man as solitary or celibate of the World, of Faith, of
Technique, of Language, and even of Philosophy.
But this man, it will be objected, does he exist? Does
man exist in any other form than the residual or epi
phenomenal? Is there a proper and primitive essence efman
that is not an attribute efsomething else? The human in man
cannot be reduced to the sum of its predicates: the living,
the speaking, the acting, the historical, the sexuate, the
economical, the juridical, etc. - the philosophising - how
ever one might calculate these predicates. That would be
possible man, not real man. The latter is subject, nothing
but-subject. But neither is the subject here in turn a special
predicate; it is a subject that has never been a predicate
and that has no need of predicates in general, a subject
that is from the start inherent-(to)-self, or sufficiently
determined essence. The essence of man is retained in the
One, that is to say in non-positional inherence-(to)-self, in
a nothing-but-subject or an absolute-as-subject, that is to
say afinitude. For reasons of principle that will be stated
later, we identify the absolute with finitude rather than
with infinite totality. Individuals are 'real' in advance of
totality - they are not modes of a substance, and they do
not even understand themselves on the basis of infinite
and universal attributes (Language, Life, History, Sexual
ity, Economy, etc.). There is no point in asking whether
these predicates are included analytically or synthetically
in the subject 'man' or whether the latter is the difference
47
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
of himself and language (anthropo-linguistic/logical), of
himself and sexuality, etc. As we understand it, man is
'ordinary' in a positive sense: not a residual, shifting figure
of philosophy, or of the Greek episteme. He is determined
in advance of the latter, and precedes absolutely the
philosophical calculus of predicates, just as he precedes
each of these predicates taken one by one.
Ordinary man is thus stripped of qualities or attributes
by a wholly positive sufficiency. He lacks nothing, not even
philosophy. But that he is stripped of predicates does not
mean that he is stripped of essence: on the contrary, this
is man in so far as he takes his essence from himself or
more exactly from man, immediately, without it having
been, beforehand, an attribute. He does not owe it to
History, to Biology, to the State, to Philosophy. There is
no deprecatory or pejorative nuance to this 'ordinary' or
'minoritarian'. I am a sufficient Solitude, far too short of
'solipsism' to have to disabuse myself of it. I am not a
cogito, a relation to a Site or to an Other. I am out-( of)
the question: not the question of man, but the ontical
or ontological primacy of the question of man. I do not
find my essence in my existence or in my questions, I
feel my subjective essence before these questions arise.
I am the beginning of my life and my thought. And if
I thus exclude the question and its mise en abyme from
my essence, it is because this essence (and essence in
general) is defined by characteristics that are absolutely
48
A R I GOROUS SC I ENCE OF M AN
original, primitive, internal and without equivalent in the
World: it is defined by the One or the irreflective. There
is a question-( of)-Being, but the One is out-(of)-question.
What we describe here are the structures of this
ordinary man. Structures that are individual, invisible
in the light of Reason or Intelligence. These are not
ideal essences, but finite, inalienable (and consequently
irrecusable) lived experiences. The individual structures
of the essence of man are describable outside of any
anthropological prejudice - that is to say, outside all
Greek philosophical rationality. Only these individual
and finite determinations accord to man something other
than a mere possibility - a determined and specific real
ity - and render possible a science of his relations to the
World, to History, to Language, etc., relations that are
not at all those hallucinated by the Social Sciences. This
is the meaning of the 'biography of the ordinary man' : a
rigorous description of the most general experiences that
govern the relations of individuals as such to History, to
the State, to the Economy, to Language, etc.
The text of this science is thus no longer the cogito
and its membra disjecta distributed across the Human Sci
ences. It is the irreducible kernel that one must extract
from the cogito in which it is still enveloped and masked.
But this extraction cannot be conceived, in turn, as a
philosophical operation, since it is rather an immediate
given, to which we are content here to 'sensitize' ourselves.
49
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
The foundation of a science of man consists first of all in
creating a non-philosophical affect: in rendering oneself
sensible to what immediate givens, what non-hallucinatory
reality, what finite transcendental experience, there is in
man; in taking that essential step without which unitary
anthropology will continue to fascinate us with its conjur
ing tricks. There are immediate givens of man. They do
not, doubtless, constitute the whole of his relations to his
predicates and to their unity (World, or Philosophy); but
they are the rock that permits the scientific description
of his relations. They are primary but they do not, of
course, exhaust this science of men and of their relations.
The phenomenal given of this science, its unique text,
is the One: but precisely because it is the One, it is not
unique. The One is (above all) not Unity, the unitary
Ideal that still reigns in the cogito and leaves its essence
undetermined. The complete text of the science of man
is double or dual - dual rather than duel - just as it is
individual rather than individuel: the One and the World,
minorities and Authorities, individuals and History, the
State, Language, etc.
Thus it is not, properly speaking, a Principle efHuman
ity whose statue we are raising here alongside or beyond
the Principles of power, of language, of pleasure... In the
name of ordinary man we take care not to pander to the
slaves in the Cave or, for example, to assure a defence of
sheep against eagles. We describe, rather, a real essence of
50
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
man before the animal difference between eagles and sheep,
which the philosophers would have us believe belong to
man and to his becoming. And ordinary man is not even
the antidote to 'superior man', or to the overman - he is
no more the hero of the future than the trove of the latest
archaeology. It is, rather, against this heroic and agonistic
conception of man that the Greeks have transmitted to
us, and which shoots out new flames under the names
of difference, difffrance, differend, that we try to render
visible a man without face and without qualities. This is
a treatise of Solitudes.
3 . F R O M P H I L O S O P H Y TO T H E O RY : T H E S C I E N C E
O F T H E O R D I NARY MAN
The science of real men is thus no longer a philosophy or
a mixture of anthropological prejudices and mathema
tization. It draws its essential character from its object:
it is itself 'individual' and 'minoritarian'. It is distinct
from philosophy on several counts: It is a thought that is
( 1) rigorously naive and not reflexive; (2 ) real or absolute
and not hypothetical; (3) essentially theoretical rather
than practical or technical; ( 4) descriptive, not construc
tive; (5) human rather than anthropological.
( 1 ) It is not philosophy that has to become a rigorous
science: it cannot do so - its circular essence prevents
this. However, a rigorous non-empirical science is to be
51
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
invented, a theory that precedes philosophy and that will
be the science of philosophy. To become scientific - this
is the essential predicate and the telos of philosophy, an
undetermined project and a Greco-unitary phantasm.
We must think science,Jrom the outset, according to its proper
phenomenal exigencies, and cease to move in the aporetic circle
efphilosophy that gives rise, like an irresolute dream, to the
compulsory goal efscientifically exiting this circle. Such an exit
only brings the aporia back once more, in a higher form.
Now, a science generally does not become rigorous except
by depriving itself, for reasons of positive sufficiency, of
the aporetic essence constitutive of unitary philosophis
ing. The essence of the science of the real (empirical or
even individ ual) is its non-circularity, its non-reflexivity,
its naivety. This principle of sciences, a principle of which
we shall not especially say anything here, but which is
itself founded in the One, is the Principle ef Real Identity
or immanence, a principle of which philosophy knows
nothing, but which is valid for sciences both empirical
and transcendental.
Upon this common basis, the characteristics of the sci
ence of man are obviously not entirely the same as those of
the empirical sciences in which philosophy sees (perhaps
mistakenly) an inferior naivety, an impotence and a failing.
The Principle of Real Identity must receive, in the case
of man, a transcendental specification. Thus the science
of individuals boasts a naivety that is transcendental and
52
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
no longer empirical. A naivety that, without being 'supe
rior' to philosophy (nothing is superior to philosophy,
since it is the very spirit of superiority itself), no longer
owes it anything, and determines it without reciprocity:
it suppresses the circle and no longer passes by way of
a circular procedure of determination. Science's setting
itself-outside-the-circle in general owes to the real itself,
which has never been circular, above all in its essence here
given by individuals. There is no disguised philosophical
operation at work here, but only the experience of the
positive phenomenal tenor of individuals or of ordi
nary man - which is the very foundation of this science.
The science of the real (the real par excellence, the human
real) is a non-positional science-( of)-the-human-real. It is
not constitutive of its object, but fuses with the immanent,
non-thetic and finite experience it has of that object. It is a
transcendental science, of course, but one that definitively
breaks with empirico-transcendentalparallelism, along with
all modes of difference, and in particular anthropo-logical
difference.
Whence its naivety - ante-philosophical and wholly
positive, not merely ante-predicative or ante-reflexive
and consequently still philosophical. The real is not a
presupposition of thought; it is a presupposition at most
ef philosophy and for philosophy. It is already essen
tially thought, but non-thetic, irreflective or individual
thought-( of)-self. We thus advocate, at the basis of the
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
absolute science of man, a transcendental naivety, precisely
not philosophical but real. An absolutely naive science,
stripped of constitutive philosophical operations, opera
tions whose naivety can no longer be, like those of empiri
cal sciences, critiqued, reflected, overcome by philosophy
and its Consciousness, differed by philosophy and its
Other, and so on.
(2) It does not begin with the cogito, which was
never a real beginning, since it was always preceded by
idealising philosophical operations; but with individuals
as transcendental non-positional experiences-(of)-selves.
That is to say that finite individ uality is not a principle
either, always first according to the ratio essendi or even
according to the ratio cognoscendi or even according to
the unity of difference of the two. These are subtilised
forms of the circle, and not yet that finite transcendental
identity which is the essence of the real and which is no
longer a concentrate, a condensate of the relative-absolute,
logico-transcendental circle of philosophy (thought and
the real, being and thinking as the Same, etc.). Such a
transcendental but radically finite identity exists, and it is
man in his non-anthropological experience. An identity
that is neither logico-formal nor logico-real, but nothing
but-real; not at all 'logical', in the sense that the logos is
always a circular relation to the real.
Here again, a science of men is wholly distinguished
from a philosophy. Philosophy is a science of real
54
A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
possibility, not a science of reality before the possible.
It is a transcendental logic, give or take various nuances,
not a transcendental reality. Through fear of transcenden
tal realism, which is in fact an absurdity, it confuses the
real now with the Logos, now with the Other of the logos.
Philosophical magic denies the authentic real in the name
of a fantastic image (sometimes ideal, sometimes empiri
cal) of the real. Philosophy is not, and has never been, an
absolute science - it is only a relative-absolute 'science',
with an irreducible hypothetical moment. Nietzsche,
in his own way, gives us the key to philosophy: the real
is an interpretation; and interpretation is the real, or
represents the real, for another interpretation. It is the
idealist-absolute mixture of real hypothesis or interpreta
tion that the absolute science-(of the)-real excludes so as
to move, from the outset, upon that anhypothetic terrain
that philosophy has always regarded as a promised land.
(3) Greco-unitary philosophy is practical in its essence
and its origin: it is a praxis and/or a techne of superior
essence. For three complementary reasons that we do
not have time to analyse here: it is a form of know-how
that has no absolutely given objects, but only objects,
that is to say stakes, or which takes its own circularity as
an ob-ject; one whose essence is care, concern, interest,
rather than disinterested contemplation; ultimately it
is a mixed, logico-real know-how, which, programming
the intervention of thought into the real so as to bring it
55
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
about, prohibits itself from knowing it as such or in its
'real identity'.
As such, it is deprived of any rigorous theoretical
foundation - it does not have too much theory, but not
enough. It leaves theoria unelucidated in its essence. Of
course it has theoretical aspects: but theoria is included in
philosophy only as a predicate for activities, values, aims
that are nothing but socio-political or other prejudices,
that are not elaborated in their real phenomenal content,
and that make of philosophy an opportunistic and rig
ourless activity, an antimythological strategy rather than
a science. Philosophy does not need to 'become' fully
theoretical - that is to say, be suppressed and realised.
It needs to be de-rived or, as we say, uni-lateralised, as
secondary activity, by theory deployed in its essence.
Thus the theoretical can cease to be a mere predicate of
praxis - it is this mixture that must be broken. Even in
its Greek versions, which seem to give a primacy to the
theoretical, to 'contemplation' over action, the insertion
of theoria into a mixed structure is enough to subvert
the irreversible real order that goes from the theoretical
to the practical.
It goes without saying that these terms can no longer
have their vulgar and/or philosophical meanings. Oth
erwise, such an order would seem a paradox, an idealist
prejudice, or even a return to a Greek prejudice - a badly
understood one, moreover. Philosophy, let us repeat,
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
has always been, up to the present time, a praxis with
theoretical aspects, and not at all the experience of the
real essence of theoria. How is the latter to be conceived?
Theoria ceases to be a universal predicate when it is
the essence of science, but an essence that has never been
a predicate. Theory is a radical subject, an experience-(of)
inherence-(to)-self, whose essence is individual. It ceases
to be an attribute and a unitary goal when it is identified
with the radical, finite and individual immanence of the
subject; when 'contemplation' is (to) itself its proper
essence or when, before contemplating the World, the
Object, Unity, etc., it is inherent-(to)-self, rigorous (that
is to say, non-thetic and finite) transcendental lived expe
rience. This is to exclude the a uto-contemplation that is
proper to Unity rather than the One such as we understand
it, as 'individual'. It is to exclude, in particular, the cogito
or transcendental ego, which are just transcendent modes
of auto-contemplation through the mediation of the
World, precisely because of all the philosophical opera
tions, praxes or technes of doubt, suspense, the quest
for foundations, etc., that it still circularly presupposes.
(4) Thus, brought back to its essence, real theory, not
determined by philosophical operations or prejudices,
is a non-positional contemplation-( ef)-immediate givens or
(ef) -irreflective transcendental experiences. The latter are
the materials of this science that describes the content of
the finite phenomenal experience of man, of his relations
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
with the great authoritarian attributes of History, Lan
guage, Power, etc., and with their totality, which is the
World - without intervening in them. The theory of
man is not a theoretical practice, an intervention into an
object and a transformation of that object. It is rather a
non-positional, but also non-altering, description-(of)
positions (philosophical positions, for example, but more
generally unitary positions): an immediate or irreflexive
description-(of)-the phenomenal descriptions that are the
real content of the life of man and of his relations with the
World. A passive thought, but not before an ob-ject (where
passivity is the counterpart of a production), doubtless
because rigorous science, as will be suggested in relation
to the necessary destruction of the Copernican revolution,
is a thought stripped of ob-jects (but not of 'contents' or of
'objects' in the wider sense); a science that has no 'face
to-face' - which does not mean to say that, in the idealist
manner, it is deprived of reality or of materials: it is content
to describe strictly immanent phenomenal experiences
before (and outside of) all unitary-philosophical prejudice.
In particular, outside all phenomenological prejudice, it
gives phenomena their status as immediate givens rather
than as already-transcendent intuitions. Finite thought
renounces reflection, analysis, and construction; it con
fines itself to the irreflexive, to phenomenality deprived
of phenomenological operations. Phenomenal givens
are not residues, but that which is, from the first, real,
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
and which thus possesses the power not only to make
possible, but to really found the latent phenomenology
that is the essence of unitary thought.
This is why the treatise of the ordinary man will be
constituted of theorems; theorems that, moreover, are not
empirical but transcendental. They are not so much 'the
eyes of the soul' (as Spinoza says of his own theorems)
as the soul itself, describing itself in its individual radical
immanence. They are content with describing phenomena
lived by ordinary man, phenomena that are invisible, in
principle, to philosophy and phenomenology.
(5) Finally, unlike the Human Sciences, which are
merely anthropological, and which usurp the title of
'human', the transcendental science of individuals is
'human' for the very reason of its scientificity. The science
of men should be written 'science-(of)-men': they are
its inalienable subject, without any ob-ject whatsoever.
The theoretical and the human have always been opposed:
but far from opposing their common essence, one has
been content to oppose prejudices that are transcend
ent and have no phenomenal rigour. In reality, man is
the only nothing-but-theoretical living being there is; a
mystical being: the irreflected contemplation-( of)-self is
his essence, because it cannot be the all of his relations
to the World. There is no theory except human theory:
not in the anthropological, but in the individual sense
of these words.
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
4 . T H E P O S I T IVE AN D S C I E N T I F I C M EAN I N G O F
T RAN S C E N D E NTAL NAIVETY
( 1 ) All comparison of one science with another, and
above all that of a science as special as a transcendental
science with empirical sciences, is dangerous, and rarely
goes beyond metaphor. All the same, we have seen that
the former and the latter have in common a naivety, and
that this trait, taken as positive, is probably essential to
their definition as science. The transcendental theory of
individuals possesses yet a second character in common,
this time, with one particular empirical science. Even if
this is but a mere metaphor, it may allow philosophers
better to enter into this project: quantum mechanics
and its foundation in objects (let us say particles) that
qualitatively escape, by definition, the earlier modes of
visibility and objectivation proper to classical mechanics
and thermodynamics. At least.from the point of view of the
habits ofthought (if not from the point of view of the type
of rigour it involves, in terms of which we cannot claim to
compare an empirical science and a transcendental science
for reasons, moreover, that have more than one meaning)
the introduction of the individual conception of man
supposes a qualitative leap in relation to unitary presup·
positions, and cannot be carried out within the framework
of simply solicited, renovated or deconstructed existing
philosophical positions. It is another thing again than a
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
'revolution in thought' since, as will be suggested now
and then in what follows, it is the renunciation of every
'revolutionary' manner of thinking - a renunciation that
no doubt necessitates distinct (and perhaps more difficult)
mental efforts from those demanded by a revolution.
Indeed, it is less a question of soliciting, of fracturing,
of displacing objectivating or metaphysical representa
tion, than of resolutely thinking outside efit, without evergiving
oneselfobjects; which is not to say that this thinking is empty and
without 'objects' - on the contrary. But these objects are not
ob-jects, that is to say realities in the slightest bit affected
by transcendence: they are individuals, defined by their
transcendental immanence alone, and by the experiences
that they undergo in their relations with the World or the
Authorities which, themselves, moreover, are not ob-jects.
Individual or minoritarian thought, as distinct from
unitary or authoritarian thought, moves in the sphere,
wholly positive however neglected by philosophy, of an
invisible radical, an 'unconscious' perhaps, but one that
is, if we might say so, purely subjective - an unconscious
that would be only subject, without this meaning that it
is transcendent or ob-jective (linguistic, biological, etc.)
and constitutive of the subject.
This is another paradigm, not yet another variation
on the unitary paradigm. What we call the minoritarian
paradigm supposes the abandonment of the Greek onto
logical habitus and its deconstruction. It opens up the
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
field of realities that have been absolutely hidden since
the origins of philosophy, and dissimulated for reasons
more profound still than the existence of Greek forms of
philosophy, even if these forms almost definitively killed
off in the West any inclination to shake off the yoke of
unitary hallucination. It is not at all a transcendental field
of individuals that is proposed here as a new transcend
ent back-world of philosophy, but a dispersion of purely
transcendental rather than transcendent individuals, indi
viduals whose essence, consequently, is to no longer obey
the laws of opening-and-closure, the always-unitary laws
of a 'field', of a 'body', of a 'continent', of an 'epoch', of
an 'episteme', etc. From the point of view of theoretico
mental habits, as much effort must be made to penetrate
the laws of these individual, offscreen or out-of-field
outside-Being entities, absolutely unperceived by ontol
ogy, as to penetrate into the domain of 'particles' .
(2) The unitary paradigm, to identify and determine any
object whatsoever, must have recourse to a variable and
relative combination of two philosophical parameters:
immanence and transcendence. These parameters being
relative to each other, they are thus each of them partially
undetermined, and will only be determined reciprocally.
The space or the field is called unitary because it is formed
by this circularity, the circularity of these two dimensions
that are both necessary in order to identify any entity
whatsoever. Suppose now that there exist entities which,
=
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
in order to be fully and sufficiently (if not completely )
determined, need only one of these parameters, the first
one. Minoritarian or individual thought is the experi
ence of these entities that do not enter into the unitary
field, and which are not determinable by that relative
combination, but by one dimension only, thought truly
independently of its unity with the second; and then by
a combination, but a non-reciprocal, non-relative com
bination, of the two. They are not unitarily determinable
because they are determined already by themselves, as
terms before all relation or reciprocity. Finite individuals
are real entities before being magically captured by the
unitary field. It is a matter of thinking of terms firstly in
their finite transcendental identity, before all relation,
and then of describing what follows from this, as to their
potential relations to the unitary World. The relation of
the two fundamental parameters changes completely,
and it is here perhaps that the comparison with quantum
reality ends: precisely, it is no longer a relation, that is to
say a reciprocity or a reversibility, a relativity in any case.
We have, first of all, an immanence that is primary and
stripped of all transcendence. If it is correctly conceived,
it suffices for the determination of finite individuals and
for the founding of a science of individual entities. The
parameter of transcendence only appears with the World
or unitary thought, but itself must be elaborated accord
ing to that first immanence. Unitary reality - what we
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FROM DEC I S I ON TO HERESY
call effectivity - must thus be rethought according to the
individual or minoritarian real. From the first parameter
to the second, there is no longer a unitary relativity/
reciprocity, but a strict asymmetry - an irreversibility
or an order that breaks with the more or less decentred
circles to which the aporetic philosopher is accustomed.
Philosophy is relativist in the bad, Greek, sophistic and
empiricist sense of the word; true relativity is founded in
an absolute and unsurpassable (finite) experience - here,
that of individuals as finite.
Minorities or individuals should not be confused
with the micro-political, micro-psychological, micro
sociological, micro-sexual, etc. The micro always belongs
to the molecular, it does not attain the truly particulate.
It retains a continuity, on the quantitative, qualitative or
even intensive scale, with the macro. It is not a question of
suspending (phenomenologically, for example) the modes
of unity that conceal an invisible world, which will then
be brought into the light of reason, into the philosophical
daylight. It is a question of treating, from the start, the
real in the strict sense as philosophically unengendered
or non-constituted. Here there is a world as immense as
it is invisible, intangible, inobjectivatable; but we must
realise that this world is perfectly thinkable, once it is
thought, and once unitary hallucination has dissipated.
We describe here the immediate givens of the invis
ible. But the invisible is what is seen in the One; it is not
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
the Other, once more an Other or an Unconscious of
our World. These givens cannot be confused either with
objectivated or empirical realities, or with the philosophi
cal procedures of their objectivation. Objectivation can
thus no longer serve to verify experimentally the essentially
transcendental theorems whose sole pertinent criterion is the
irreflexive immanence ef the One that serves them as guiding
thread - that is to say, their descriptive.fidelity to the real. It is on
the basis of, or through, these non-positional experiences
(of)-self that we contemplate and describe the aporias of
language and of philosophy, the agitation of the World,
the goodwill and the barbarousness of the State.
These principles, correctly understood, may perhaps
permit the denunciation of the supposed well-foundedness
of a question that we shall not neglect to pose, without
being able to resist making an apparent objection to
it. Given that we do not seek here, in the traditional
way, a new object - a political object for example, an
unprecedented cause to defend, or the possibility of a
politics of minorities that would rest ultimately upon
certain principles - we will of necessity be asked: Won't
you at last show us your minorities, give us examples
or cases, stop talking so abstractly? Is it a question of a
new interpretation of the political and juridical status of
national, linguistic, cultural, sexual minorities - or else,
if not, on what condition does one become minoritarian,
become a 'man' of the type that you claim to be describing?
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
These questions have become so obvious to us that the
response we shall give here may appear a little flippant.
We write to demonstrate that this sort of question has
no pertinence for a rigorous conception of the essence of
minorities or of individuals; in other words, that its perti
nence is merely politico-logical or anthropo-logical, that
its possibility owes to the (politico-logical, etc.) Difference
that is the matrix of Greco-occidental or unitary thought.
It is this type of question that we must now abandon, to
accede to a problematic of minorities and to a science of
man that will itself be minoritarian, rather than being an
ultimate concession to the State or to Philosophy. Tue
minorities we are concerned with receive no new political
or juridical status. They are not elevated into a cause for
some new revolutionary practice. However, the pre-state
determination of their essence permits the carrying out
of a rigorous critique of the political or the statist and
of the anthropological, without denying massively their
order and their existence.
Whence a thought not without precedents, but without
examples. There are no examples or cases of minorities
thus described. Tuey are the object of an experience,
doubtless, but an experience we shall define as strictly
transcendental, and no longer as simultaneously empirical:
they are thus not given within the universal horizon of
power and governmentality, of culture, of language, of
sex, etc., nor, in the contemporary manner, as the modes
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
of this horizon. Not only do they refuse for their part to
fall under categories and into types; they are that which
permits the exclusion from thought of the descriptions
and argumentations of examples, of the cases and facts
that are always part and parcel of those great universals.
They are, par excellence, the absolutely invisible of the
State, of political or philosophical practice, of language,
etc. This is what gives them their particular pertinence and
their capacity to resist those Authorities. If they were to
become visible at the social, historical or linguistic surface,
they would again become parts or members, more or less
constrained or integrated, of the State. Finite minorities
are the definitively invisible essence of Authorities, and
as such are denied by the latter. This negation must be
destroyed while respecting the absolute invisibility and
inaudibility of finite individuals, supposing that one
renounces philosophical demonstrations of the rational
type, founded upon the primacy of Unity, of Universal
ity, of the Logos, of Being, of the State, of History, etc.
and while making explicit the immediate givens of the
One. Generally speaking, there is no 'minorities question' :
the true minorities are, in History and in the World,
absolutely silent. This is why, ceasing to be at stake, over
and over again, they must instead become the object of a
science. There is a minoritarian question only for the State;
there is only a question of individuals for the World, for
those who ask how to tolerate them, how to define their
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FROM DEC I S I ON TO HERESY
difference or their margin, in other words and always:
how to integrate them. Minorities become a problem or
a stake for philosophers and State intellectuals who claim
to determine their cultural and political, linguistic and
sexual specificity - a task of and for the State, which can
elaborate no concept of them except a tautological and
vicious one, already compromised, as soon as it makes a
question of them. To say it rigorously and more succinctly:
it is a question of breaking (with) empirico-transcendental
parallelism (or, we could say, state-minoritarian paral
lelism) in the thinking of minority; the parallelism that
prevents supposedly minoritarian cases, facts or givens
from coming to reflect themselves in their essence, from
which they draw an existence and a reality that no longer
owes anything to the universal horizon of the State, for
example, or to the rules of governmentality that organ
ise this field. Individual thought in general renounces
concrete representations, representation in all its forms;
it defines the essence of individual multiplicities in such
a way that it excludes all figuration whatsoever - as if
one had passed from a macroscopic and even molecu
lar sphere to a particulate sphere whose laws would be
entirely distinct from the figurative laws of the foregoing
regimes. The One is the criterion that makes the closure
of representation make a definitive leap, permitting us to
abandon philosophy's aporetic knowledge so as to found
a necessary science of man.
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
We shall not subscribe, therefore, because of this refusal of
all empirico-ideal experience, to the notion that minorities
are a concept without reality or the object of merely nomi
nal definitions. They are real essences, lived in experiences
that are pre-political, pre-linguistic, etc. - true immediate
givens. Their necessity, if one insists, proves to be that of
an ultimate and absolute requisite of the existence of
Authorities themselves, and that of the effects that their
conception produces on the State, politico-logical Differ
ence, anthropo-logical, sociological, etc. Difference - that
is to say, the old Greco-occidental couplings that then
lose their validity, and are no longer thinkable circularly
and viciously on the basis of themselves, but must be
thought on the basis of individuality. But the exploration
of these effects confirms the reality of finite individuals,
it does not prove it. This essence of the minority is posi
tive, concrete, and amenable to a rigorous transcendental
description that brings into play notions whose content
and organisation are articulable and definable.
(3) The realisation of a theoretical science of man
obviously supposes not just a complete change of philo
sophical problematic, but a change in the paradigm of
thought in general. It supposes that one cease to describe,
in the guise of the phenomenal givens of man, modes of
Philosophical Decision, which are always mixed and circular
(in general viciously circular) operations or procedures;
and that one entrusts oneself first of all to the real in its
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
individ uality, to that which philosophy cannot (except
by way of a unitary illusion whose mechanism we shall
analyse) any longer claim to determine.
All the same, a resolutely naive science cannot be
tolerated by unitary philo-centrism. Can one thus abstract
from philosophy, it will be said, without manifesting a
very philosophical innocence? Precisely we do not abstract
from philosophy, which would still be one last philo
sophical operation, one last, desperate attempt to 'exit'.
We begin with the real that has no need of philosophy,
and that determines it without reciprocity, assigning it a
place that we shall later specify. The science of the real,
that is to say of individuals in their individ uality and in
the immediate givens of the latter, precedes absolutely
(a precession without counterpart) philosophy and the
Human Sciences, that is to say the unitary mytho-logical
sphere. All these essences (finite multitudes, and even
Philosophical Decision) are immediate givens, and sup
pose no passage of philosophy 'to' the real, as one might
pass to the Other; no transcendent and universal operation
losing itself in exteriority. The irreflective real, in its veritas
transcendentalis, is not a power-to-be, a 'real possibility'.
It is an immediate donation more originary still than the
distinction between Being and beings, beings and the
Other, Being and the Other, the Same and the Other,
etc. The problem of knowing whether it is possible to
'leap' out of philosophy (out of its discourse, its reason,
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
its texts, etc.) into the real is obviously a poorly-posed
problem - it is a unitary problem that has pertinence only
from within the dominant paradigm that imposes itself
through these types of intimidating effects.
The problem is not that of knowing whether there are
any immediate givens. The latter are transcendentals, are
immanent, and draw from themselves their pertinence.
In any case, it is more scientific and less vicious to admit
immediate givens of this type, to install oneself in them
from the start, than to postulate transcendently, in unitary
fashion, rationalfacts, scientific, ethical or aesthetic facts;
or even semi-empirical and semi-transcendental facticities;
or even the O ther, the transcendence par excellence, the
immediate donation of transcendence or of the Infinite. In
all these cases, the real is only tolerated, filtered, mastered,
through its falsificatory melange with a form of possibility
or of transcendence; or even, in extreme cases, reduced to
the latter or to the Other. As if philosophy could, itself,
leap beyond its shadow, its essence as simple possible,
so as to 'posit' (only to posit...) reality. The 'ontological
proof' has been nuanced, differentiated, derationalised,
palliated, etc.; but it has remained the heart and the breath
of contemporary philosophy: to pass - it passes and does
nothing but 'pass' - from the possible, from the Other,
from transcendence, to the real or to immanence, or to the
mixture of the first and the second. Philosophy will have
been, up until now, the mutual embrace of the real and
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F ROM DECISION TO H ERESY
the possible, their non-scientific confusion, the falsifica
tion of the essence, the absolute essence, of individuals.
The real is philosophically indeterminable, but deter
minable by itself, a priori, before all philosophical inter
vention. Philocentrism responds that this is impossible,
that philosophy is always necessary, even if only because
one speaks of the 'real', of 'a priori', of 'singularity',
etc. - all the textuality of philosophical discourse. Our
general response is that this objection is not pertinent,
demonstrative or scientific, because it is vicious - it is
itself circular, and it merely reproduces the exigencies
and the claims of philocentrism, which has decidedly no
reason to renounce its narcissism. The latter transforms
its fact into right, exempts it from its factual existence
and from its brutality so as to prohibit any endeavour
that would radically limit it. This argument comes down
to saying that philosophy is the all, or rather that the All
is the absolute or the real: which is the mytho-logy par
excellence of unitary philosophy. Here, philocentrism
again manipulates an argument that is a sort of displaced,
broadened, apparently inverted 'ontological proof': it
always concludes from existence to essence, or, more
exactly, it concludes from effectivity (the World, Society,
History) orfrom the mixture efthe real and the possible, to the
true real which is also essence. from predicates to a subject
without-predicates; from Authorities to minorities, etc.
It is this vicious argument, this founding paralogism of
. .
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A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF M AN
unitary thought, that the individual experience (scientific
in its manner) of man must reject as a superior form of
mythology.
The transcendental naivety we have invoked is an a
priori indifference to the philosophical such as it exists - it
renders all philosophies contingent. But the real, or abso
lute science, are such that indifference or non-participation
in philosophy do not belong to their essence, do not
define it, but follow immediately from it. Indifference in
the matter of philosophy, no doubt - but it is no longer
entirely that indifference that philosophy secretes with
regard to itself; that of scepticism through an excess of
dogmatism; that of the Other real (nihilism, and then
counter-nihilism); that of the Other as Other-than-real
(contemporary deconstructions), etc. Instead it is an a
priori indifference, but one whose precession over that
which it indifferentiates would be absolute and without
reciprocity - which would permit, at last, the dissipation
of the unitary magic that is Greek philosophy - and the
Other. ..
=
73
Toward a S cience
of Philosophical D ecision
(1987)
Tra n s l ated b y Tayl o r Ad k i n s
1 . P H I L O S O PHY A S T H E O T H E R O F S C I E N C E
To introduce philosophy to science, rather than introduc
ing science into philosophy - this task is already posited
along with philosophy, which is its realisation. It is thus
pointless to posit it again. There is no metaphysics that
does not aspire to be the science of Being, or of the
Logos, or in any case the highest form of all knowledge,
which it would thus complete and render adequate to
its essence. This can no longer be the question, with
philosophy supposed as given. On the one hand, the
scientific self-realisation of philosophy supposes that
the latter produces of itself, and manifests, the concept
of science; that it thereby modifies the empirical concept
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
of the sciences, imposing upon them a certain ideal of
validation and foundation; and that, in this way, it deval
orises and critiques the meaning and truth of the real
sciences. This philosophical endeavour of appropriation
and critique of the sciences calls itself their interpretation
or their ontological foundation (for which the sciences
would be a deficient or lesser mode of the ontological
project of objectivity or of the Idea of science), or their
epistemological interpretation (for which there would be
ajact of the sciences, which philosophy reappropriates
for itself). On the other hand, science remains in the state
of an infinite dream, an impossible dream constantly
deferred and played out again and again. Philosophy
is not a science, because it wants to be one (this is its
essential will): in philosophy, the will runs deeper than
science. It therefore contents itself with the scientific
'form' , with a 'becoming'-science, with its infinite telos,
etc. And it is this that calls itself (even before Husserl)
philosophy-as-(rigorous)-science.
Another project is possible: Supposing Philosophical
Decision to be given, together with its natural desire to
be a rigorous knowledge, is it still possible to introduce it
to ... the experience of science - at least if we suppose the
latter to be autonomous or independent of Philosophical
Decision? To school philosophy in science, not so as to
make it think the latter and instruct itself accordingly
(an epistemological schooling), but so as to allow itself
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to be thought by science? Perhaps in general there are
two sources or paradigms of knowledge: The infinite
ideal of science belongs to Philosophical Decision and
to the historicity of its mode of phenomenalisation of the
real; but only as an essential attribute, not as Decision's
essence in person. Philosophy believes that its mode of
phenomenalisation of the real is universal. Perhaps this
is not the case, perhaps this is the artefact of an illusion
and a naivety internal to every Decision of this type. And
perhaps science is a radically different, more primitive
mode of phenomenalisation that can leave Philosophical
Decision intact, as one of its objects.
It seems impossible, in any case, to renounce the ideal
of a philosophical knowledge that would be rigorous in
its foundation and validation. But does philosophy itself
have the relevance, force and reality necessary to assume
such an ideal? It is perhaps the ultimate maxim and the
ultimate consensus: a founded and validated knowledge.
But its meaning is still hidden. We all seek a rigorous
practice of philosophy - but is this telos so universal
and so certain? More exactly, aren't its universality and
certainty still posited, all too often, as proceeding unprob
lematically from and with Philosophical Decision? Are
they not once again comprised within the philosophical
circle - just as postulated by historicism, hermeneutics
and even, to a lesser extent, deconstruction?
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
I shall suppose (a supposition whose foundation we
shall later discover in science) that it is possible to avoid
completely reducing this scientific postulation to its philo
sophical modes and forms; that there is, for example, a
universality and a certainty proper to science, that one
cannot confuse it with the old metaphysical certitudo,
and that the latter can deny it only in appropriating it.
Philosophy's search for a rigorous and certain knowledge
may not necessarily be reducible to philosophy's need,
desire or therapeutic concern, and perhaps cannot be
assumed by it. if science 'in general' is not a mode of
Philosophical Decision (of the ontological project, for
example) then a non-philosophical science of Philosophi
cal Decision would be possible and would no longer be
a supplementary mode of the latter's quasi-'scientific'
self-realisation.
Philosophy contains almost as many programmes for
the reform or revolution of science as it does systems.
But all of these projects postulate the inclusion of the
scientific within the essence of the philosophical, and leave
to philosophy, whether over the short or long term, the
development of this history and this politics of 'becoming
scientific'. Even, perhaps above all (although in a more
insidious manner than 'grand' rationalism), when (logical
or sociological) positivism claims to renounce the philo
sophical ideal of self-legislation, and submits philosophy
to the sciences interpreted as positive. The positivist critique
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of philosophy is in general a false scientific critique and a
true philosophical auto-critique - just one more system.
One will recall that there are several cases in point of this
Ideal of philosophy as science or science as philosophy;
the most essential being the following (noting in simple
terms the typical tendencies):
1. Two forms that forget the immanent scientific telos of
philosophy as 'absolute science'. These two forms are
dominant in the current conjuncture:
( a ) The historicising critique of philosophy, its reduc
tion to 'History of Philosophy', which is not only (we
shall claim) a particular coded academic practice,
but the presupposition of the majority of academic
practices. It is understood that this presupposition
(the reduction of Philosophical Decision to its texts,
to its corpus, to its institutions, to its politico-textual
'unconscious', etc.) is an inherent (albeit extreme)
possibility of Philosophical Decision, not at all an
external 'happenstance'.
(b) The logico-empiricist critique of metaphysics,
which is ahistorical and atomistic in general, or at
least predominantly (since it is increasingly contested
from within). Here we find still the same type of
presupposition: the reduction of Philosophical Deci
sion to an inert variety of 'ontological' points of view.
No longer the textual or the signifier, but a (factual
and supposedly autonomous) given, consisting of
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
facts or logical forms. This is probably a possibility
of Philosophical Decision, which has the ability to
auto-deny itself as such, under the particularly alien
ating form of a substitution of science (interpreted
as positive) for philosophy.
Since the first of these forms is still largely dominant in
Europe, this is what we shall chiefly examine.
2. Two forms that affirm the immanent scientific telos of
Philosophical Decision.
(a) The controlled importation of the procedures of
proof and 'empirical' scientific validation (logical,
geometric, chemical, etc.). The result is a knowledge
which knows itself and wills itself to be mixed; which,
for example in the classical 'dogmatic' way that is its
most general style, affirms the co-extension of science
and metaphysics, with various nuances, but without
remainder on either side.
(b) The auto-development of the scientific telos of
philosophy as the purest Idea most removed from
any object or any regional and worldly scientific
knowledge (Husserl): same presupposition as before,
but more purified.
If we refuse this basic presupposition of philosophy the co-extension of philosophy and (absolute) science
- as insufficient to the task, and if we intend to keep
Philosophical Decision in its integrity and not devalue it
through an empiricist and positivist critique with recourse
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to the existing sciences, there remains only one solution:
To replace philosophy as auto-legislation, but in another
place, there must be an absolute science (transcendental
and not empirical) that would be a science-( of)-science.
Science does not fall under an epistemology or an ontol
ogy, but 'under' itself. A science-( ef)-science is not neces
sarily a positivist project, if one can only 'reconcile'
science and the transcendental function in a science-(of
the)-real as such, an 'absolute Science'. On this basis,
transcendental science will necessarily also be a science
ojorfor philosophy.
Thus the separation of science and philosophy will no
longer be undetermined, oscillatory and reversible. Unde
termined to the extent that it is determined by philosophy,
for the latter includes in its essence an underdetermination
for which it compensates with an overdetermination, the
play of a process, a history, a becoming, etc. The separation
can then always be read or operated in both directions,
being reversible according to various proportions: the
whole history of philosophy consists in these attempts to
constitute mixtures of science and philosophy. If, on the
contrary, we manage to define in science a thought that
is, of itself, real absolute - a thought index sui which
no longer needs to be externally thought in Decision in
general, in 'ontological Difference', for example - then we
maintain a certain reference, a pole in relation to which
Philosophical Decision must be situated unilaterally.
=
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
We thus propose no longer to think in accordance with
or under the law of mixtures; we propose to render the
separation irreversible and to read it in the following
sense: It is not science that is the Other of philosophy, but
philosophy that is the Other of science, in relation to which
it becomes possible to evaluate its 'specific difference'.
2 . MALAI S E I N P H I L O S O P H Y ?
Can we any longer justify a science of Philosophical
Decision on the basis of the insufficiencies of the latter?
Philosophy has always made its malaises known; and
not only those whose affliction it has displayed, absolutely,
upon itself, through its sheer existence, so that auto
critique consummated critique. It is thus vain to invoke
them as justification for the passage to a scientific form
capable of disabusing it of its congenital dissatisfaction.
However (and this is what motivates our inventory here),
it has perhaps only partially revealed these malaises,
repressing them in the same gesture. But they may be more
visible today, at a time when philosophy is particularly
attentive to itself.
Let us be more specific. It is easy to justify the pro
ject of a science of philosophy through the senility or
sterility of its current state, opposing it to a philosophy
to come, which would be more active, more productive,
less distanced from 'reality', and so on. Such symptoms
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and such dissatisfaction have been manifest whenever
there has been philosophy, i.e. in the passage from one
philosophy to another. Wishing to be universal, it would
have its malaise be universal too, allowing it to be specified
each time by various historical conditions. If this affect is
congenital to Decision, we shall keep from dismembering
it and from complaining about current philosophy as
opposed to an older or future philosophy. We are thus
obligated to displace our critique, to raise its level and
its demands. It is necessary to penetrate more deeply
into the essence of Decision itself so as one day to have
the right, if not the duty, to complain about it. And, in
general, one cannot 'critique' Philosophical Decision by
arguing from its insufficiencies - this would be to proceed
'negatively'. It is still necessary to perceive the origin of
these illnesses, an origin that is probably visible from
anywhere except within philosophy. We shall therefore
not attach too much importance to the inventory of rea
sons for practising philosophy otherwise. But does that
mean we must relativise them? On the contrary - they
must be absolutised.
For, since these malaises belong to the essence of Deci
sion itself, we can take our complaints about them only
to science - and not to philosophy, lest we worsen them.
This is what allows us to give them their full meaning;
and it is here, on the other hand, that the current state of
thought is indispensable: current philosophy is driven,
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above all since Nietzsche, and to various degrees, by the
need for its re-affirmation or its intensification. But it
should above all not be thought that this re-affirmation of
Philosophical Decision is any less naive than its primary
affirmation, or that it suffices to cure the originary malaise.
Reaffirmation is in a sense even more naive than the
affirmation that it confirms and prolongs without really
destroying. In short, it renders philosophical naivety
and spontaneity all the more visible or manifest, without
dissipating them at all. The parousia of pre-scientific and
philosophical naivety, for example, does not really destroy
the latter, and above all does not substitute science for it:
the ideal of parousia is the very success of philosophical
naivety, its ultimate fruit. One does not exit philosophy
at all, one does not go outside metaphysics, by reaffirm
ing them: one simply sees them function better. It is this
supplement of essential sensibility, of the philosopher's
pathos, which is the mark of the conjuncture and which
better allows us to 'relieve' (or sublate) the malaise - no
more. Even History of Philosophy, which creates the
most prevalent malaise as dominant practice, along with
the various forms of rationalist treatment of philosophy,
are in principle and immediately positive possibilities of
Decision - the possibilities of its denial or of its extenu
ation, the programme for its quasi-extinction. We must
place ourselves at the point where Philosophical Decision
manifests itself as such in its spontaneity and its most
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accomplished forms. We shall thus avoid overly brief or
opportunistic explanations which consign themselves
once more to being a part of the symptom.
3 . O BJ E C T IVE P H I L O S O P H I CAL A P P EARAN C E
With the above caveat, we can say that the intimate affects
of Philosophical Decision as such are those of repetition.
In every sense of the word: repetition of the identical,
but also repetition of difference or of the 'same'. The
affects of the 'same' are 'superior' to those of the identical
which they re-affirm, but they do not change its nature.
For example, if we speak of the nausea attached to the
practice of philosophy, it must be understood that this
affect is valid for all practices - from the most identifica
tory to the most differentiated - that are content to will a
'superior' Identity, a universal equivalence, integrating an
alterity that cannot really destroy the latter. Thus we shall
have to respect the heterogeneity, but also the univocity
(for us decisive) of the categories of nausea, repetitiveness,
sterility, etc. through which we shall describe the principal
affect of Philosophical Decision in general, even at its
most 'affirmative'.
(1) Philosophical Decision is an operation-(ot)-tran
scendence, anti-empirical to various degrees, but always
destined to fulfil itself in a position or an ontological
opening, in whatever mode that may be. It is a game
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of positions: not only are the positions finite in number
(however many variations they may be capable of), but the
positionality of philosophy, its nature as game of positions,
encloses the virtual infinity of positions into the finitude
of a structure or circle. Hence its capacity for repetition,
which is its very essence rather than a failing that could
be mitigated by technical correctives or new procedures
to ensure greater efficacity and less sterility. The accusa
tion of sterility, repetitiveness and slow progress must
follow from the recognition of repetition as the essence
of Decision, rather than preceding it; in this way it will
not reduce repetition to a historico-systematic accident
of 'certain' philosophies.
(2) Consequences: philosophical practice is simultane
ously marked - this is not contradictory given the struc
ture of Decision - (a) by the reproduction of a constant
finite stock of authentic information. Authentic, if we
bracket the redundancy which forms the bulk of everyday
philosophical practice, and whose only goal is to extract
the benefits of power from the productions of the social
field, and if we no longer consider the thresholds of
emergence (themselves malleable) of 'new' philosophies;
and ( b) by a diminishing of the proportions of its output:
with exploitation reaching its limit, the finitude of the
possibilities originally included in Philosophical Decision
is exposed, in a progressive exhaustion of the stock and a
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rarefaction of 'novelty' ( which is therefore nothing but a
possibility or virtuality that has not been manifested yet).
(3) The combination of these two traits explains what
I shall call the auto-inhibition or auto-paralysis of Philo
sophical Decision; the feeling that it has only ever worked
by itself and upon itself, broadening its circle only so as
to better conserve it; making it implode, certainly - but
only so as to better reaffirm it. Philosophical Decision is
the care of self that remains self, even when it is interested
in the Other; that plays with itself when it devotes itself
to transversality; or that remains supposedly inevitable
when it is fractured or solicited by the Other. Hence its
regular auto-interment in its texts, its works, its archives
and its history, in its institutions and in the unconscious
that it secretes or as which it reproduces itself.
Philosophical practice, in its most 'academic' form as
in most of its para-academic forms, in the most historical
forms as in the most active and diligent, is followed - and
no doubt also at the same time preceded - by a gigantic,
consoling and vigilant shadow, by a historico-systematic
body that is its unconscious, i.e. Philosophy in person.
We shall ask ourselves to what extent this body could
correspond to a sort of capital of philosophy. It would
be produced by philosophers who are more and more
obsessed with and blinded by it, revering it as the ele
ment that gives them life, being and movement, and
thus stimulating the surplus value of thought that will
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then be attributed to it - whereas it would use its energy
to convince them to work for it. Furthermore, there is
barely any philosophical (especially Continental) prac
tice anymore that is not haunted by this phantasm of
a constituted, undetermined and tutelary philosophy,
the fantastic foundation ef the philosophical community. It
corresponds, if not to the motor, at least to the (always
immobile) motive of practice. It is a stock of knowledge,
a willing of decision whose accumulation seems necessary
to Philosophical Decision; to its reproduction, in any case,
but also (and this is perhaps the height of alienation) to
its production.
The preeminence of this horizon, impeded to the
precise extent of the opening that it seems to procure
for Decision, is not an accident. Even if its increasingly
incommensurable dimension marks our conjuncture and
even if it dominates the present, it belongs nonetheless
to the essence or the will of philosophy. We shall call it
the objective philosophical Appearance, the element of the
manifestation of knowledge that is gfoen and received
as necessary by the labourers of thought who deem it
necessary for the founding of their community. This is
philosophy's intimate seductive force over 'philosophers',
its means of commandeering them to its service, of having
them devote themselves to questioning it, of leading them
to the most spontaneous and naive practice ...
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Corollary: the affect of the 'death of philosophy' is indeed
real. It is lived by concrete philosophers, at least qua
subjects of philosophy; but it is partial. It is only one of
the two sides of a more complete affect, which is that of
auto-inhibition or auto-stalemate. Instead of grasping
that every stalemate of Decision forms a system with
a supplementary opening, this system displacing itself
toward a relative-absolute limit, simultaneously external
and internal to Decision; instead of understanding that
philosophy removes nothing, takes nothing away from
itself without giving itself, but in a sense gives less and
less to the extent that it is increasingly given itself as
such; instead of maintaining the philosophical balance, we
have isolated or abstracted its most negative operation,
its (voluntarily and/or involuntarily) suicidal nature. In
reality, there is indeed a suicide efphilosophy, but it has lasted
as long as philosophy 's own history - and one should never
count philosophy's chickens before they are stuffed and
mounted. There belongs to any essential Decision the
possibility of the impossibility of philosophising. It still
must not be separated from the possibility of thinking
that conjugally animates it, even if this couple's life is
often hell.
( 4) The combination of the finitude of the philosophi
cal circle, its circularity, and its unlimited displacement
within a relative-absolute limit, signifies a permanent
state of conflict. War, an essential war, belongs intimately
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
to Philosophical Decision. Every philosophical position
is also a virtual struggle against another position. The
board for this game of positions is meagre, imposing a
mutual inhibition, a reciprocal attraction and repulsion.
And it is meagre because, if there is a structural rule of
Philosophical Decision, it is that of the Unity efcontraries,
of the Coupling of the opposed, whatever the modes of
this 'transcendental Unity' might be. This type of Unity,
devoted to the tasks of synthesizing a diversity ( Being and
Nothingness, for example) and which must be divided
between contraries all the while remaining indivisible, is
by definition in short supply, and affiicted by intestine
wars. The history of philosophy, or more precisely objec
tive philosophical Appearance, functions as a paradigmatic
dimension of every decision that selects from it its game
of positions; and also as that dimension, syntagmatic or
'historical' in principle, that allows for the organisation
of a philosophical discourse. It is ultimately necessary
to tie together repetition, auto-inhibition, conflictuality
- and historicity ...
4 . T H E M O S T A P PAR E N T SYM PT O M : H I S T O RY O F
P H I L O S O P H Y A S D O M I NANT P RA C T I C E
The ultimate and most manifest symptom of the malaise
linked to the spontaneous, naive and 'compulsory' prac
tice of philosophy is the increasing primacy of History
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TOWARD A SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL DECISION
of Philosophy (HP), which has become the dominant
practice of philosophers.
We shall not rehearse the critique of HP as an academic
practice, which has been pursued elsewhere. 4 This critique
must be limited by recognising that the HP is a possibility
included in Philosophical Decision, whose de jure histo
ricity can always be reified (by means of the mechanism
analysed above which puts into play objective philosophical
Appearance) . Indeed, HP is in this sense the moment in
which the malaise 'takes' or 'congeals' into a particularly
pervasive symptom. However, for the same reason, there
is something too easy in the critique that claims to dissoci
ate and oppose Philosophical Decision and its dominant
academic practice. The argument is too quick because
it miscognises philosophy's vocation to sediment itself
in an inert objective Appearance. And it demonstrates a
certain bad faith. The dissociation of 'good' historicity
from 'bad' History of Philosophy functions to produce
certain, completely short-sighted, 'benefits':
1. It dissimulates the risk-free transference of HP, cor
rected or amended, into other institutions. Its marginalisa
tion is not its suppression; rather, it conserves the essential
qualities of philosophical spontaneity and naivety. One
might correct and at times compensate for HP through
Marxist practices, archaeological practices, deconstructive
4
Cf. F. Laruelle, Pourqoi pas la philosophie?, Volume II, Les Crimes de l'Histoire de la
Philosophie (privately published, 1983) .
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FROM DEC ISION TO HERESY
practices, etc. ; in doing so, no doubt, one modifies and
'works' the watchwords of historicity and history, but
conserves them as an essential optic upon the essence
of Philosophical Decision. Above all, one respects the
essentiality of its will to the auto-application and auto
legislation (more or less differed) that are the ideals of
its naive practice.
2. It spares one the trouble of re-opening the question of
a violence deeper than that of the academy, and which
nourishes the latter, rather than the other way around. All
the 'defaults' of the academic practice of philosophy have
their roots in Decision itself. It is therefore the latter that
ought to be reevaluated, at least in its spontaneous form.
But the interest in history, and ultimately in objective
Appearance, excuses one from the scientific examination
of Decision and its essence. One is content with leaving
it to itself, or at best to phenomena of alterity, opening,
solicitation, etc. which make inroads into it, exacerbat
ing the 'game', but only the better to save it in the last
resort. Philosophy, always more philosophy ! ... To make
it a weapon against politics, against technics, against
society, against the human sciences, etc. As if spreading
the malaise could suppress it ... as if dividing up a naive
practice would not multiply the naivety through this very
amelioration.
3 . The systematic recourse to HP, under various more
or less indirect forms, enables the establishment of a
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consensus ( if not a community ) discreetly and at mini
mum expense. Through its (supposed or apparent) factu
ality, for one thing. But more profoundly, we only invest
so much in HP because it is a half-measure, a compromise
between spontaneous philosophical Faith and an equally
intra-philosophical suspicion and auto-critique. This third
way allows those contraries that had prosecuted intestine
wars at the heart of Decision to reach an harmonious
accord; and attenuates the auto-destruction of philosophy
by realising it in controlled forms. The psychological and
affective importance of H P stems from its essence or its
provenance: it reassures because it furnishes an apparently
certain ground - that of science, supposedly, a science
now confused with the old metaphysical certitudo. History
is the pseudo-scientific, all-too-philosophical alibi for the
forgetting of the 'scientific' essence of philosophy. Instead
of a veritable science of philosophy, one prolongs the
visceral suspicion of itself that the latter had fostered in its
savage state; one brings it back to the poorly understood
ideal of science, the ideal of certainty and facticity, the
'modern' ideal that 'everything is historical' and will be
held to account by the tribunal of history. These practices
have but one goal: to threaten philosophy with itself, all
the better to save it in extremis. It is always the same
logic, that of hypocrisy: History is a consensus against
the basest forms of philosophical war, but it is the con
sensus for a better-managed war. History is the means
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
of strategising, mastering, subjugating at a distance and
even through distance, and dividing-to-conquer. It is primi
tive philosophical violence pursued by other means. For
there is an 'economy' of philosophy: exchanges, debts,
conflicts, a whole market of critiques and violences more
or less disguised as peace treaties, but which are nothing
but sheets of paper, textual games or language games.
History is the consensus of these struggles. Even local
agreements and contracts between philosophers register
relations of dominance, renew hierarchies and are at
the basis of the equilibrium necessary to movement.
The pax philosophica is a snare for those weaklings who
would ignore the heroic essence of the philosopher. To
surpass, to overcome - these are not accidents, this is
the essence of occidental thinking. 'To philosophise is to
dominate' (Nietzsche) - here is the key to the community
of philosophers.
5 . F R O M P H I L O S O P H I CAL FAI T H
T O S C I E N T I F I C K N OWL E D G E
We therefore do not address our critique especially to
'current' philosophy, but to the current good conscience
that believes it has resolved its problems with philosophy
(problems which in reality are born of the latter) by taking
refuge in history understood, once more, philosophically:
a vicious circle ... More radically, beyond any current state
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of affairs, we cannot reproach contemporary philosophers
for doing too much history: they do what they can, and
this can be neither corrected nor reformed. We suggest
that they know not what they do, and that they passion
ately submit themselves to a transcendental Illusion that
affects, beyond 'metaphysics' or 'representation' alone,
Philosophical Decision as such. To the same extent as
their predecessors, perhaps with more critical vigilance,
albeit biased because still of the same order, they confuse
two heterogeneous modes efphenomenalisation efthe real: the
philosophical, which implies Decision or Transcendence
as its major operator; and the scientific, which excludes
from its essence such Decision, and phenomenalises the
real by retaining it in its most realist and most immediate
'naivety', in its immanence most deprived of any exterior
ity whatsoever. This initial confusion is naturally followed
by another: every knowledge is ultimately reduced to
an historical knowledge, i.e. to the deployment of a
transcendence.
This unitary amphiboly is the very soul of philoso
phy, and not simply that of its dominant practice in an
academic setting. Whence that belief, contained in the
spontaneous philosophical Faith which it prolongs, that
it is through history that one might accede to a science of
philosophy - as if this would not lead to another vicious
circle. Philosophical Faith is itself the same thing as the
transcendental Illusion and the negation of science, the
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
same thing as that belief that philosophers have varied,
enriched, displaced and altered, but without destroying:
to think real; to philosophise real. The belief-in-self
as-in-the-real, or as in that which can co-determine and
co-produce it, even in manifesting it. Such is the unfath
omable depth of philosophical Faith.
The intimate connection between historicity, war and
repetition remains visible in the mechanism of Decision,
and forms an indivisible whole. It must in turn be linked
with the savage, pulsional auto-practice of philosophy.
If it is impossible to sceptically dismember Philosophical
Decision, to cleave it, split it or choose - to operate a sup
plement of decision - as philosophical critiques habitually
attempt to, then it is Decision taken globally that must
be reevaluated, along with the Faith that feeds into its
spontaneous practice by philosophers, and even into the
Ideal (as we have seen) of philosophy-as-rigorous-science.
This ensemble formed by Faith, the structure of Decision
and its operation of transcendence, spontaneous practice
( the philosophy of philosophers) and finally history,
must be bracketed-out, by means of a non-philosophical
science of philosophy.
That science allows for the liquidation of historicity,
i.e. the simple vicious auto-application of philosophy, is
a potentially dangerous observation. Let us suppose a
standard or statistical Anglo-Saxon style, exemplified in
the case of logical positivism: it, also, will claim to bracket,
=
=
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TOWARD A SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL DECISION
if not all of history, at least the historicity of philosophical
problems; it will develop an analytical, ahistorical and
atomistic optic in its formulation and solution of those
problems. However, even though this style is a possibility
of Philosophical Decision (or precisely because it is one),
it is difficult not to see in it a negation, still philosophi
cal, of the native historicity of Decision. Here we find a
weak destruction lacking in history and submitted to re
interpretation through this more powerful experience of
Decision represented by the standard 'Continental' style.
If we really want to eliminate the mediation of (Marxising,
archaeologising or historicising) history in the treatment
of Decision, it is Decision itself that must be suspended,
without recourse to the means that it seems to offer for
this operation.
This supposes that science in its most specific stance
is a knowledge ef the real that does not modiJY that real; in
which the observer can modify the phenomenon without
modifying the real implied in and by the immanence of
the scientific stance. Science would not form a circle with
it like philosophy does, when the latter claims to be not
only a knowledge of the real but a co-production of it.
The latter is what is correctly called ob-jectivity - a confu
sion of the real that is known with the object of knowledge
(which is always modifiable). Hence the distinction:
philosophy is the theory and practice of the ob-ject and
of ob-jectivity, it has ob-jects or confuses the real with the
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FROM DEC I S I ON TO HERESY
ob-ject or its representation; whereas science has a real
'object', i.e. has no ob-jects in the philosophical sense;
it maintains a relation with the real which is no longer
that of objectivation. There are two heterogeneous modes
of phenomenalisation that philosophy - always unitary
- would conflate, whereas science seeks the autonomy
of its own way of thinking the real and the distinction of
these two modes.
So as to found in its reality (not only in its mere real
possibility), the scientific phenomenalisation of the real
which we have thus far only supposed or called for, and
so as to distinguish it definitively from that of philosophy,
we shall ask if, and under what concrete mode, we possess
a sufficient experience of this phenomenalisation - an
experience in which we can recognise science's autonomy
of thought and, in the same stroke (a consequence of this
duality), its greater primitivity, its anteriority to Philo
sophical Decision and its essential features (repetition,
auto-inhibition, war and historicity).
Of course, it would be contradictory to claim once
again to accede to the essence of science through the
processes and technical procedures of philosophy. This
means that neither (transcendental) reduction nor medita
tion, nor the analytic and regressive type offoundation nor
the search for ultimate limits, etc., are any longer viable
or legitimate. Even less so the epistemological 'reflection'
upon the so-called 'fact' of the sciences, which is nothing
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TOWA R D A SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL DECISION
but an artefact of philosophical objectivation. Through
what other technique could we accede to their essence?
Through no technique -for every technique co-determines its
ob-ject and co-produces it, as philosophy does. No technique
is necessary in order to re-place oneself into the most general
stance ef the sciences with regard to the real. The technico
experimental apparatus is a means ordained to the essence
of science, it is not this essence itself. The latter resides only
in the positivity, the quasi- 'ontological' consistency, of a
realism and a certainty that are naive and without 'deci
sion'. Of course, it is not a question of the local 'objects'
and 'representations' produced by the sciences, but of that
which every 'scientific' stance immanently postulates as to
the real it relates itself to as such - a question of scientific
'intention' and its transcendental claim, if you will.
Philosophy will always look for and posit science
too late: at the end of its 'reflection', at the end of its
'project' of objectivity, at the end of its 'dialectic' - in
general, at the end of the transcendence that founds
all of its techniques. Now, it is precisely transcendence
that science excludes at least from the relation (of non
relation) that it 'maintains' in the last instance with the
real. Hence its naivety, its irreflectiveness, its realism, its
'blindness', which are so insupportable to philosophical
ob-jectification that the latter never stops denigrating
them, reducing them, falsifying them - this is what goes
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F ROM DEC I S I ON TO HERESY
by the name of 'epistemology' and is the very epistemo-logos
in every epistemology.
By 'non-relation' -(to the)-real, we mean that there are
- they are their own criterion of reality and truth, and are
thus transcendental criteria - gj,vens which are radically or
non-thetically immanent-(to)-self, and which thus refuse the
philosophical artefact of ob-jectivity. Science is the only
a-positional and an-objective mode of thinking, and this
is why philosophy, which wants this a-positionality but
cannot acquire it, denies science's autonomy. It is not only
Kantian or 'neo-Kantian' idealist epistemology that refuses
the existence of radically immanent givens or of a non
thetic self-phenomenalisation, precisely so as to oppose
it to categorical ob-jectivity. All of philosophy, as Decision
or Transcendence, is unable to accede to the essence of
science, and thus produces as a backlash this 'reactive'
symptom called 'epistemology'. If the programme of a
rigorous science of philosophy must in any case pass
through the 'destruction' of epistemology, it is indeed
because the traditional unitary relation of preeminence
between Science and Philosophy is reversed - more than
reversed, since it cannot be a question of a reversal of
hierarchy and a passage to anti-philosophical 'positivism'.
To sum up these simple indications, we shall say that
science does not receive its essence from Philosophical
Decision; that it possesses a positive and specific essence;
that this essence allows itself to be thought neither as
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TOWARD A SCIENCE OF P H ILOSOPHICAL DECISION
mode of Being nor as avatar of the ontological project,
nor as exploitation of the properties of Being; that in
general its non-relation to the real does not pass through
philosophical-type objectivity, and that it does not fall
under the legislation of ontological Difference.
The positive reason for all these phenomena, that
which explains this (non-)relation-(to)-the-real as tran
scendental experience-(of)-the-real, we can sum up in
this term: the One. The element of science is the One, not
Being; which implies a general usage of language, and of
the 'categories', that is completely heterogeneous to that
of the 'logos' that philosophy uses to constitute or unveil
realise the real. Science is a non-thetic reflection-(of)
the-real which does not change the real in manifesting it.
Whereas science changes the order of its representations
instead of the order of the real, philosophy claims to change
the latter with the former - whence its transcendental
Illusion.
=
6 . T H E I D EA O F A P U R E S C I E N C E O F P H I L O S O P H Y
No doubt it is always possible to continue traditional
philosophical practice, with its traits of repetition and
circularity, conflictuality and historicity, its will to appro
priation and auto-inhibition. It is tailor-made for continu
ation, it postulates its own unlimited or interminable
nature. It is always possible to add a 'new' system; to
10 1
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
carry out a new variation on the 'limits-invariants' that
form Decision; to define, for example, a 'new' experi
ence of the Other and, complementarily, to define a new
form of the old metaphysics, its 'logocentric' form to
be 'deconstructed', etc. ; to proceed to new cut-outs or
disarticulations. These are all operations of decision,
possibilities included (more or less immediately) in
the power-to-philosophise. And it is even still possible
to desire an Ideal of philosophy-as-rigorous-science.
But all of this, all these exciting and conflicting endeav
ours, change nothing in regard to philosophical Faith or
to the mirages of objective philosophical Appearance.
This repetition only confirms it in its essence, destroying
only its 'inferior', 'transcendent', 'gregarious', 'natural',
or 'worldly' (etc.) forms. And above all, this is to prolong,
purify and amplify the aspect of spontaneity and violent
savagery that belongs to Decision when it is left to itself.
What we call the naive practice of philosophy is not a
simple possibility of Decision. It is the very mode of
its existence (conflictuality, historicity), and there is no
'historical', 'political' or 'philosophical' reason to arrest it.
What is more, the programme does not consist in
putting a stop to philosophising (for once in its life ... ) or
in interrupting the continuum of philosophical decisions.
This would then be a simple negation. It consists in feeling
the Philosophical Decision and its authority over itself
to be already and actually suspended, by science such as
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TOWARD A SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL DECISION
we have defined it. Not its authority over the World and
effective actuality, where, in a certain way, with all its
risks and dangers, it incessantly battles to enjoy its full
validity. But its authority over science and over the real to
which science accedes; and thus also,from this point efview,
over the rigorous knowledge that can be acquired of it.
Spontaneous philosophical Faith, its unitary belief-in
itself-as-in-the-real, its transcendental Illusion, etc. - none
of this is destroyed in the worldly or effective sense of the
term. In that sense, everything is conserved, but only qua
object to be examined. On the other hand, it is destroyed
or invalidated from the transcendental = immanent = real
point of view. From this point of view where the real =
One, this relation-( to)-self of Decision, its circularity, no
longer relates (to) itself. There is a 'dual' dissociation of
the object of science (Philosophical Decision) and of the
science of this real object. Science is not a segment or a
fragment of its corpus, a moment of Philosophical Deci
sion. No part of the World, and no part of philosophy,
are conserved in the One - in the real and in the science
that gives it in a primitive way. The reality of a Science
of philosophy is founded in this way.
If there is a programme - and this is tentative - it
is that of the passage from the spontaneous and naive
practice of philosophy to its pure science, to a theoreti
cal examination of Decision transcendentally founded
in its own reality. Philosophers have vilified science - its
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
'naivety', its 'technicism', the 'deaf' and 'blind' nature
of its thought, its 'operativity-without-thought' - quite
enough. From the science that 'dreams' (Plato) to the sci
ence that 'does not think' (Heidegger), there is a loop that
is none other than the philosophical circle. It is perhaps
time to tell the last stragglers of epistemology and the
'philosophy of the sciences' that the sciences do indeed
have a consistent and specific thought, but one that is
not exhausted by the philistinism of the 'fact of science' ;
that science thinks, but, simply, that it does not think like
philosophy; that it only objectifies its representations, not
the real; and that, consequently, it has a more primitive
and more essential naivety than the 'secondary' naivety
that pertains to philosophical practice even in its most
exacerbated operations of critical vigilance. This second
ary naivety is a residue, an ignorance - a negation, in the
last instance, of its source, which is the naivety proper to
scientific knowledge.
It is not exactly an operation of turning back or
reversal, as if one turned back onto philosophy itself the
argument of the naivety and spontaneity of its imme
morial practice. Philosophy owes that form of naivety,
which still affects its 'reflection' or its 'critique', to a more
originary experience of thought, that of science; to a
naivety in a sense more well-founded and non-thetically
certain-( of)-itself, albeit muter and frailer from the point
of view of the 'logos'. But this naivety does not falsify
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TOWARD A SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL DECISION
itself, does not deny itself (being too self-inherent) as does
philosophical naivety. Only Science boasts the probity
of its naivety; philosophy falsifies the latter, separates it
from itself or detaches it from its transcendental essence.
Philosophy thus makes it the complement of reflection
(general Transcendence), with which it is summoned to
form a system. It projects an image or an anti-reflexive
or pre-reflexive (ante-predicative, etc.) version of this
naivety, a rather crude version, destined to be refined. This
is how it accomplishes its unitary operation of conquest
over sCience.
Will we manage to extract ourselves from this hal
lucinatory ploy? Such would be the effect of a science of
Philosophical Decision.
105
Revolution within the Lim its
of S cience Alone
(1987)
Tra n s l ated b y C h risto p h e r Eby
That the era of revolutions is over, but less so than the
age of great revolutionary narratives (or whether the
inverse is the case) matters little. A revolution exists only
across a narrative that is too congenital to it merely to
'accompany' it. This undecidable conjugation of the event
and its virtually philosophical sense can, on the other
hand, do nothing other than endure. Certain premature
axioms, then, are invalidated: 'Revolution is dead - long
live liberalism (liberal revolution) ! ' ; 'Revolution is dead
- long live the philosophy and history of revolution ! '
We have become too profoundly Hegelian to become so
once again and one more time. We are too revolutionary
'at heart' to still 'have time' for revolution. Revolution is
metaphysics pursued by other means. The problem of its
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F ROM D E CISION TO H E R E SY
possibility or effective reality - a problem of the recipro
cal support and effacement of event and narrative - is no
longer an interesting theoretical problem, and we now
consider it settled.
On the other hand, new questions can be formulated:
( I ) Is a science of revolution possible that would not be
a history - that is, a disguised philosophy? (2) How,
by way of such a science, can we preserve the material
and political acuteness of revolution and prevent its dis
solution into either the historian's network of infinitely
specific causes or determinations, or the philosophi
cal categories and operations of 'sense bestowal'? How
can we rediscover its real determination and protect it
from these enterprises of confiscation: history (with its
too-diminutive explanations for the event) and philoso
phy (with its too-grandiose explanations for the event)?
Can revolution in turn enter the space of a scientific
continent and, if so, which one?
It is not a matter of a revolution in the way in which
we think revolution, but of both a 'change in terrain'
and a 'transformation' of the way in which we think it.
The problem is no longer, are revolutions still possible?
Anyone will admit that they have populated the past
and that de jure there are still more to come. Rather, the
problem is, what within them is real? 'Real' in this case no
longer designates historical and political effectivity, but
those components of revolution that a science can access.
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REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
For the classic problem - the eminently political and
philosophical preoccupation with effectivity - of how to
produce or render possible a revolution, we substitute a
problem of reality - that is, of science. For the 'antic',
even 'ontological', perspective of its production and
manifestation, we substitute a scientific perspective that
we understand nonetheless in a transcendental manner:
what aspects of revolution can legitimately fall within the
purview of a science?
These questions suggest another, as yet incompre
hensible one. For rather than asking, what is man such
that he is capable ef revolution? (a question indebted to
the revolutionary humanism of philosophy, which levels
man by way of an uninterrogated, empirical concept of
revolution), we must urgently 'invert' the question: what
is revolution if man is capable ef it and, especially, if he is
capable efthinking it under rigorous scientific conditions? The
real critique of German Idealism and, beyond that, of all
philosophy and of the essentially revolutionary humanism that
the latter always retains the power to secrete, passes through
a science of revolution. Indeed, it is this realisation that
was presaged by the only two somewhat rigorous attempts
that have been made, although in a problematic form,
toward a science of revolution: mathematical Catastrophe
Theory (CT), in general and in the branch that applies it
especially to this object, and Historical Materialism (HM).
However inadequate these two attempts may presently
10 9
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
seem, better an inadequacy than an appearance or an
illusion. It is the latter that characterise philosophy, which
(as we shall see) is capable only of being revolutionary
in essence, a philosophy of revolution, and thus leaves
no chance of gleaning from the latter the least morsel of
rigorous knowledge.
From this point of view, 'German Idealism', the col
lection of vicissitudes to which an 'a priori Critique of
Revolutionary Judgement' is susceptible, did not intro
duce revolution into philosophy, in which it already
was, as we shall demonstrate, an invariant structure of
Philosophical Decision. This Idealism is only the com
ing of revolution in its manifestation as the essence
of that thought known by the moniker 'philosophy',
the essence to which revolution was already beholden.
The sanction that a science grants to philosophy thus
cannot be the one which Nietzsche and even Heidegger
give to 'great' idealism; for here, it is given not so much
to a philosophy, to Philosophy, as to its inveterate claim
to exhaust the essence of every thought and every reality.
The end-without-end of revolutionary narrative can now
be the simple, indifferent material of a science. As for
the 'post-modern', it is the micro-revolutionary auto
dissolution, and thus auto-conservation, of the 'great'
revolution. Through it are laid bare the miseries of phi
losophy - at least, its most naive scepticism - which still
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REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
attempt to interest us. Yet revolution is not dead; we are
simply no longer interested in it.
T H E E I D ET I C C O NT E N T O F
'
REVO L U T I O N
'
Perhaps a science requires a dual donation of its object,
or a dual object, a duality that conceals the fact that the
'same' word is used to designate these two objects in
unitary thought - that is, in philosophy. First, as quasi
experimental 'given' (or 'fact'), which one associates
with structures, models, and laws, and from which one
produces an 'object of knowledge' ; then (and this is
quite different) as the 'real object' to which these laws
are related, but only 'in the last instance', and which
constitutes what reality there is in revolutionary effectivity.
A science does not describe or explain facts, but the real.
However, it uses these (theoretico-experimental) facts to
describe the real.
Thus, the first task consists in elaborating what can be
meant by 'revolution' from the perspective that makes it
the object of a science. When historians and politicians
speak of revolution or suppose its existence, of what
object exactly are they thinking? Starting from this point,
an initial correction of their representation is necessary:
rather than taking an empirical and inductive approach
proceeding on the basis of phenomena, supposed and
spoken of as 'revolutionary' without any proof, and from
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
which are then abstracted a vague, generic concept, it is
necessary firstly to undertake a description of the a priori
structures of every revolution, of the eidetic content, as it
were, of this concept, of the system of invariants without
which revolutionary phenomena cannot exist. It is on this
point that the philosopher, provided that he carries out his
work to the very end, is more rigorous than the historian.
The latter loses track of his concept of revolution, or else
preserves it only as a local abstraction from a continuum
of historical and political phenomena. The eidetic content
signifies the undecidable unity of facts and interpretations,
of the event and its narrative, of forces and representa
tions - not the dissolute accumulation of alleged 'facts',
but the mixtures of these facts with horizons or lines of
interpretation from which they are de jure inseparable.
The first scientific given for a truly human science that
would not be the mere transfer of techniques crafted for
other objects, can only be this indiscernibility character
istic of theoretico-factual phenomena.
It is a matter of an imperative prohibition against all
empiricisms and positivisms, a rule grounded in three
reasons: ( 1) In a human science, it is always possible, and
even necessary, to introduce the philosophical dimension
or 'form' into the phenomena themselves; to number the
many virtual philosophical decisions (of which man is
capable and by which he appropriates these phenomena)
within the ranks of the givens of that science. To put it in
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REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
more misleading and external terms: 'ideology' is an effec
tive, 'uncircumventable' dimension of human phenomena
and must be taken with the object of science, rather than
dismissed a priori by the latter. (2) The concept of revolu
tion, in particular, has never meant very much outside of
philosophy. The latter, insofar as it is Philosophical Deci
sion, is firstly an operation of overturning, of re-starting
from the zero point, by way of the edge or the milieu. The
idea that philosophy could not be revolutionary is a revo
lutionary idea lost by philosophy. In reality, philosophy
is the site par excellence of revolutions, never ceasing to
revolutionise the subsisting state of things through new
decisions. (3) Finally, in order to be rigorous, a human
science requires the Principle ef Philosophically Necessary
and Scientifically Insufficient Interpretation: because a sci
ence cannot itself be an interpretation but must take into
account, as human (and perhaps not only as human), all
possible interpretations of its object, it can do so only by
numbering the latter, in their entirety, among the initial
experimental givens. It is here and only here, and only
within these limits, that their claim can be heard. Hence,
when confronted by any commonplace human phenom
enon, it is necessary to derive, as consequences of it, all
of its possible interpretations - at least their principle or
their philosophical invariants - and to 'equip' oneself with
them. Philosophy is the always-possible universalform of
phenomena; and because it is always possible, it becomes
1 13
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
necessary to 'realise' philosophy locally in every case.
In a rigorous science of man, this rule is the equivalent
of the experimental production of phenomena in certain
sciences of matter. Thus, the quasi-experimental object of
this science shall be the complete or developed concept
of revolution, an eidos or an invariant.
If revolution is not a fact but a system of invariants,
then it must be possible to describe its eidetic content.
1. It is the moment of strongest affect in a process - an
affect that bears witness to the Other or the real. At times,
the irruption of the real; at others, the real as pure irrup
tive force. These two formulae cannot be conflated: the
irruption of the real is always less potent than the real
itself, which recaptures it and re-interiorises it, while the
real as irruption is less potent than the irruption itself.
The latter announces itself, then, as a supplement of
reality that sporadically transforms what was initially
given as the real into mere representation and fantasy.
To the first, more attenuated circumstance corresponds
a continual becoming-revolutionary ; to the second, a
revolution that interrupts becoming itself, a generalised
or absolute inhibition that prohibits the setting back into
motion of the ancient machine of power relations, even
if, effectively, it still 'continues'.
Q . It is the moment of the reversal of existing relations, a
specific operation that is impossible to avoid. It comprises
several embedded structures (we ought to distinguish:
1 14
REVOLUTI ON W I THIN THE LIM I TS OF SCIENCE ALONE
inversion, reversal, overturning as re-version, or indeed
repetition of inversion), and several dimensions that
affect all events (whether topographical, topological,
dynamic, economic, etc.). This operation de jure touches
all power relations, de facto only those that resist less or
are more exposed.
3 . Together, these two characteristics render revolution
profoundly unintelligible, even doubly unintelligible:
to the codes of theoretical and political appropriation
of the recent past, which revolution invalidates, tears
down, diverts, etc. ; and more radically, to any rational
ity whatsoever that humanity might have at its disposal.
Overthrowing, inverting, turning, is a problem of force
and only of force, a problem of additional external energy.
As the moment of irruption of the real, and even more
so of the real as irruption, revolution falls by definition
outside anterior legitimacy and the sphere of authority.
Its necessity is operatory and structural - it is, if you will,
the necessary reason of unreason. It surges forth from
within rationality, but as its obscure, primary and semi
unconscious moment, a moment of images and forces, of
myths and acts of violence. There can be no revolution
that does not begin with the refusal to be spoken in the
old language (supposed, out of habit, to be rational)
or in any language whatsoever that is denounced as
recuperative.
1 15
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
However, this unintelligibility is not necessarily lived
as negative, except in relation to anterior rationality.
It is not a problem for revolutionaries themselves. And in
any case, this ir-rationality as absolutely positive eidetic
structure perhaps escapes certain given forms of rational
ity, but not (or not always) philosophy - at least provided
that the latter ceases to adhere to a dogmatic and con
servative rationalism and realises the scope of its proper
functioning (which concerns space and topography, force
and dynamics, just as much as discourse) , realises the spe
cifically revolutionary character of its procedure. Terror
is an essential law or an eidetic necessity of every revolu
tion. That revolution should fall partially but necessarily
outside of language, sense or discursivity, that it should
become locally a problem of force ( i.e. of fracture and
division, decision and inversion) , that it should be, so
to speak, not fully philosophisable and even a riposte to
all philosophy - but necessary for it, forcing it to think
according to this limit - only_ certain modes of thought,
which are historically post-revolutionary ( Nietzsche,
Heidegger, and deconstructions in general ) , can accede
to this phenomenon, recognising it more easily than did
'Idealism', which wanted too immediately to transform
Revolution into a factum and get it philosophizing, by
inscribing it within operations that corresponded to a
more 'metaphysical' phase of philosophy.
1 16
REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
From this point of view, revolution corresponds to the
moment of decision in a philosophical process - not the
decision of a will but decision as willing essence of every
will. Hence its profoundly 'arbitrary' nature, in the sense
that this decision, saddled as it is with the task of found
ing a new political, social and theoretical rationality, can
itself only be on this side of reason and thus devoid of
every right and foundation, except that of believing once
more in the magico-metaphysical virtue of instantiated
auto-foundation. Being 'by right' without legitimacy, and
maintaining what little reason it has only through its force,
a revolution necessarily commits itself to an interminable
process of legitimisation that is at once anticipatory (the
future, the new values) and retrospective (the repetition
of the past, the re-starting at point zero) - a process that
only another revolution can portray as simultaneously
necessary and forever incompletely fulfilled or impossible
to carry out under such conditions. Every revolution must
enlist the aid of another revolution, albeit a phantasmatic
one, to reveal the instant of a quickly fading fulguration,
as opposed to the ground of violence and arbitrariness of
the real; the very real as this ground of violence, arbitrari
ness and war.
4. As we have just described it - in terms of eidetic con
tent - revolution is still abstract. In actuality, there are
two topologically neighbouring concepts of it that belong
together, as its abstract and its concrete sense. Revolution
1 17
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
as an overturning and force of scission of the real such is its abstract sense. It necessarily inscribes itself
within a more vast process from which it is inseparable:
the concrete and complete concept of revolution - as over
turning and displacement, as inversion and re-institution,
as destruction and reproduction. It is an essential law that
revolutionary reproduction exists as much as revolution
itself; it is the effective complete reality within which
irruption is inscribed and, most of the time, 'contained'.
The totality of 'Revolutionarity' is rather a continuum into
which is inserted the force of the inversion of values and
powers, to the extent that every revolution grafts onto it
- at least imaginarily - an anterior (the unfulfilled or the
poorly executed, which must be repeated-rediscovered)
and a posterior (in order to fulfil the present) .
Rather a continuum: The revolutionary continuum
does not exclude inversion, on the contrary; nor is it
completely excluded by it. An inversion is also a dynamic
and even phoronomic operation, a change and also an
inversion of directions. A society passes continually from
one regime to another through the discontinuity of a
revolution - just as, elsewhere, it passes from a stabilised
regime to a revolutionary 'regime' or 'non-regime' - to
the extent that continuity tolerates a bi-directionality
of values, decisions and tendencies. The most stable
societies are perhaps intimately structured or crystallised
by a revolutionary 'fold'. More exactly, since all such
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REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
societies are acquainted with revolution, and since we are
not speaking of a 'fold' contracted by societies like an
historical bad habit, it is revolution itself which is the fold
or which 'folds' ; just as, inversely, the fold is a minimal
articulation, the elementary (but perhaps not the only)
catastrophe of every history. Revolution is in principle
universal and transcendental; it is thus not a fold that
history could contract, seeing as it is the contraction itself,
the originary folding, that creates the space of history.
Revolution, understood in its entirety, is the disjunction
that opens the time and the space of societies.
If the revolutionary fold is the invariant catastrophe
of the philosophical way of thinking (and not just that
of certain philosophies) as well as of the becoming of
societies, then there are several versions of it, depending,
first, on whether the dehiscence that 'makes' the fold and
puts side (by) side two social groups or two partial classes
is more or less accentuated, 're-marked' as irreducible to
the immanence of the entire process; and, conversely, on
whether the totality or the concrete of the process prevails
over the revolutionary 'abstraction'. These philosophical
variations clearly comprise part of the eidetic that consti
tutes the givens of a science of revolution. They are always
possible in principle, and one could distinguish, for
example, two poles, according to whether (this is a ques
tion of hierarchy and proportions) the revolutionary fold
is instead a refolding, a continuous immanence, or even
119
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
instead an un-folding, an Un-foldable, an alterity which
still folds, but according to the supplement of that which
refuses every re-appropriating and normalising folding.
T H E E X I S T I N G S C I E N C E S O F REVO L U T I O N
When faced with our inability to know whether the history
of historians is actually a science, and if one eliminates
the usurped claim, propagated by philosophy in general
and particularly by philosophies of history, to be sciences
(they are such only in the metaphysical sense of the word
'science'), one will admit that there exist two rigorous
attempts to constitute a science of revolution - Historical
Materialism (HM) and Catastrophe Theory (CT) - and
that the latter applies, explicitly or otherwise, to historical
revolutions. The approach presented here is obviously
not reducible to the preceding eidetic description, which
is only the lesser half of it, and it is different still from
these two theories. For reasons of principle that cannot
be recounted here, it necessarily borrows elements from
them, but by radically traniforming them on the theoretical
front. More precisely, it encounters their problems and
ambitions on an entirely-other theoretical basis: that of an
'empirical' science of man, a science which is empirical by
virtue of its object but which would be instituted, founded
and recognised in terms of its transcendental scope, that
is, in terms of its satisfied a priori claim both to originate
120
REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
in the real itself, that is, in the essence of man (and not
in human phenomena) as in a last instance, and to relate
the knowledges it elaborates to this real of last instance.5
This is therefore not an external heteroclite synthesis,
as philosophical syntheses sometimes are, but a science
which founds itself on its own object, which respects the
latter's specificity and takes as immanent guiding thread
the following question which the existing Human Sciences
can only keep at bay a priori: what aspects of revolution
and of its so diverse eidetic content can be given to man
and known within the limits of man as object of science
- that is, as we posed it above, within the limits of science
insofar as man in his essence is its real subject in the last
instance? Every other way of proceeding is heteronomous,
transcendent, and violent - appropriate to non-human
objects but inappropriate to man. This is clearly the case
in the Human Sciences, but also in H M and CT: all
these sciences are still too philosophical, they all simply
postulate or decide the essence of man, or suppose their
object, as given, without having elucidated it according to
the undoubtedly unique way in which it can be given to
them independently of Philosophical Decision. Because
in the end, there will be a rigorous science of man that
is not a mass or an aggregate of techniques designed for
5
On the theoretical problems of a first description of a human science of man, see
Une biographie de l'homme ordinaire ( Paris: Au bier, 1985) [ from which chapter 1 of the
present volume is drawn- ed. ] and La decision philosophique no. 7 ( Paris: Osiris, 1989).
121
FROM D E CISION TO H E R E SY
other objects, only when the mode of presence or specific
manifestation of its object is elucidated - a task that any
philosophy whatsoever will always prohibit, since, qua
this manner of thinking, it has already decided upon what
it must be.
CT and HM do not escape this rule. CT transfers to
history - that is, to an at least partially human phenom
enon - what has been mapped out spatially by way of
dynamic geometry. The geometrisation of the human is
always possible, but, as a venture in philosophical final
ity, it will ever remain merely one of these interpretations
that belong exclusively to the object of a science of man.
It cannot take the place of the latter, which constitutes
itself instead by responding to the question (which CT
does not even pose) of the relation to man as subject
(of)-science. HM is more explicitly and more specifically
a science of human phenomena. But it still conceives the
latter on a truncated level, thus reducing man to this new
attribute - history - while 'forgetting' to describe his
specific essence as such, which is ante-historical and ante
economic. In addition, it carries this out in a transcendent
manner, historicising the human where CT geometrised it.
The rigorous approach consists in founding these
historical and geometric methods - insofar as they must
here refer to man - on the prerequisite of a precise elabora
tion of his radical being. CT and HM are epistemological
transfers of methods and objects, transfers typical of
122
REVOLUTI ON W I TH I N THE LIM I TS OF SCIENCE ALONE
philosophy and which, as I have shown elsewhere,6 assume
this character according to the law of the 'idealist triad' and
its amphibolies: a particular region (nature-space or his
tory), along with its regional knowledge (I), is identified as
or confusedwith a new science as such - Science of Man (11)
- and necessarily with the very essence of all science (111) .
There is no reason why a science should constitute itself
in this very philosophical way, through confusion or
circular identification between objects and procedures.
The transfer to man of bodies of knowledge developed
through work on other objects, and now reputed or sup
posed to be his attributes, is an enterprise without rigour
that has decided once more to ignore that of which it
speaks, or to speak only of that about which it is content
to know nothing.
The essence of man must cease to be simply postu
lated or supposed, in order to be recognised as given or
included within the science of man and within the scien
tific stance in general. We wm thus avoid what in every
way obstructs these enterprises and makes them lapse
into complacency: being an interpretation rather than
a knowledge, a tautological and vicious 'explanation' in
which one finally explains revolution through itself, and
in which the only real content of the latter becomes the
autoposition of Philosophical Decision. Precisely because
6
See La decision philosophique, no. 7.
123
F ROM DECISION TO HERESY
philosophy is revolutionary, it cannot be a knowledge
founded on revolution, but only a mere hermeneutic or
even deconstructive 'commentary'. It is preferable to
exhibit beforehand all the ultimate requisites of science
and philosophy so as to avoid the speculative games of
auto-interpretation between them. Both 'sciences' in ques
tion are indeed sciences with respect to their theoretical
procedures, yet they fall short of the name with respect
to the clarification of their object and of the relation of
knowledges produced therein. So much so that they take
the form and ambitions of philosophies, and can then no
longer remain within the limits of their object, but unduly
transport it elsewhere and attempt to incorporate into
it man understood as an unthought mass of predicates.
The apparently inverse move (for it is real rather than
inverse: precisely, it is not a philosophical revolution, but
a science that founds itself in its object) consists not in
claiming to revolutionise man once more, but in 'humanis
ing' revolution, in the sense that man is the transcendental
or immanent thread of his scientific treatment. By relating
revolution to man as well as to its real basis, we immedi
ately include him in the conditions of revolution's entry
into the scientific order. We do not decree the knowledge
of man a priori; giving ourselves man as real immanent
foundation is 'the contrary' of deciding knowledge of him
a priori. Indeed, we do not confuse his essence - neces
sarily given in a radical, rather than a priori, manner,
124
REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
in the form of an absolute, immanent lived experience,
which is 'the seat' of man - with knowledge of man;
it is philosophical idealism that fosters this confusion.
On the other hand, by giving up on the prospect of
viciously revolutionising revolution once again, we give
ourselves the means truly to transform it, that is, both theo
retically and practically. Until now, we only revolutionised
revolution in various ways; the point is to change it. And
only the 'correction' of the philosophy-(of)-revolution by
a science of revolution can demand and fulfil this task.
C O R R E C T I O N A N D T RAN S F O R M AT I O N
O F R EVO L U T I O N
A science a s such knows that i t is distinct from a phi
losophy by virtue of its concept of knowledge and its
concept of the real it seeks to know. It spontaneously
or a priori makes a triple distinction: on the one hand,
there are its givens, the material that it must work in
order to produce knowledge therefrom: in this case, the
theoretico-factual mixtures of revolution, the entirety of
revolution('s)-representations-interpretations. On the
other hand, its object(s) of knowledge (OK) - that is, the
result of the preceding work, an object that constitutes
itself according to certain rules or procedures. In the
material sciences, these procedures are those of modelisa
tion and experimentation, whereas in a rigorous science
125
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
of man, these procedures express the transforming or
determining causality of the specific object it seeks to
know - not matter and its regions, but man in his essence.
This causality, which expresses itself via procedures that
are themselves specific and distinct from those of mat
ter, is thus founded in the object and can be elucidated
only on its basis. In fact, a science distinguishes its real
object (RO) - in this case, man rather than his attributes
(among which are included history and revolution) - to
which it relates, in a very particular mode, the knowledge
produced. What is essential is this distinction between
the two objects, a distinction that science immanently
demands between the representations of revolution and
revolution as real object.
This distinction is 'radical', but what does this term
mean? As distinct from a philosophy, which always posits
an identity or a similarity between OK and RO, which
forges from representation or knowledge a part of the real
it seeks to know, a science announces the dissolution of this
identity or circle of mutual belonging, and places between
the terms a 'radical' discontinuity - that is, an asymmetry
or a unilaterality of determination, a static duality in
which the second term (representation or knowledge) is
absolutely contingent in relation to the first (to the real)
and cannot determine it in return. This duality which
unilateralises representation is the condition of a science,
and distinguishes it from the philosophical operation.
126
REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
Thus, it demands in this particular case that revolution
in its essence or reality is absolutely nothing 'revolutionary'.
Nevertheless, it clearly does not suffice to posit, in the
ambiguous manner of deconstruction, that the essence of
revolution is nothing revolutionary or is the inhibition of
revolutionary representations. It is even necessary that this
non- derives from the very reality, from the positive reality,
of 'revolution' as real object. The real of revolution, at least
within the limits in which the latter is an object of science
and ceases to be auto-fantasised by philosophy, is nothing
that appears within the horizon of revolutionary projects
or objectives. A science 'dually' distinguishes, without any
mutual belonging, reality and objectivity. It does not place
reality at the terminus of objectivity, but must suppose real
ity to be given a priori without being known a priori, precisely
and solely in order that it can be known 'subsequently' and that
the representations which comprise knowledge can be related to
it alone. This 'relation' itself is clearly more fundamental
than any operation of 'verification' or 'falsifiability', for it
founds such operations and makes them possible. Thus, a
science does not consist in the 'objective reality' (Kant) of
knowledges, but instead, and first of all, in the donation
of its RO (not its knowledges) and subsequently in the
'relation' of its knowledges to the latter. Against objective
reality a science sets the real objectivity of its knowledge.
Insofar as it is postulated immanently by a scientific
stance, the object 'revolution' is first characterised by its
127
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
reality - that is, its self-inherence, its radical immanence,
its real and no longer logico-real identity. What reality
there is in the revolutionary phenomenon - that is, what
is accessible to man within the limits of science - can
only be a unique identity, unknown to Philosophical
Decision, which I describe elsewhere as non-decisional
and non-positional identity-(of)-self.
The procedures of knowledge in a science of man are
constituted, then, from rules of transformation which
express this duality of RO and OK but which cannot
be examined here. The contingent revolutionary repre
sentations, which all are 'unitary' and impregnated with
philosophy, are in this way worked according to the
specific reality of the RO. The results of this transforma
tion, itself non-revolutionary, are knowledges - that is,
new representations becoming capable of rigorously and
truly describing the real content efthe human phenomenon ef
revolution insefar as the latter is not conflated with its (philo
sophical, political, etc. ) effectivity. The effective revolutionary
phenomena (of rupture, terror, inversion, repetition, the
imaginary, etc.) are now mere theoretico-experimental
material inserted into the specific structures of the OK
and defined by these procedures. This is all that a science
of man can do, and this constitutes its proper type of
universality. For it is not content to execute naively these
transcendental and non-empirical procedures, which
comprise a science, upon the material of empirical or
128
REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
theoretico-experimental procedures. This immediate or
irreflexive execution is instead the feature of other sci
ences that possess all these transcendental structures
(RO/OK). But as science-(of the)-subject-(of)-science (of
every science) - of man - a science of man pays special
attention to these structures and the procedures that put
them to work. It thematises - albeit still and always in a
mode equally irreflexive or non-decisional-(of)-self - these
transcendental dimensions of every 'empirical' science,
insofar as the science of man is the science of all sciences,
a science that is also clearly 'empirical' by virtue of its
object. The real transformation of representations into
knowledge amounts to an 'experimentation' proper to
the science of man. Moreover, it is not experimentation
that is real in the sciences of matter, but the necessity
and contingency of experimentation, such that they are
included in the science-essence of each of these sciences.
We cannot describe here those procedures charged
with transforming effective revolutionary representations
into real representations or knowledge - into, more pre
cisely, representations-(of the )-real. We can, however,
give an example of the work to be done: Terror as one of
the modalities of revolutionary phenomena is not given
only as a fact, but undecidably as a (virtual or explicit)
philosophy and a politics, as an effectivity rather than as a
fact. From this point of view, terror forms part of a system
atic multiplicity of possible interpretations, ef which one,
129
F ROM DECISION TO HERESY
among others, might be that efterror as the inversion efregicide.
Once we recognise this eidetic diversity of terror (which
is thus not only a fact but, as 'fact', is inseparable from
this eidetic dimension), we will be able to transform these
representations into knowledge that is clearly not 'historian
[historienne]' or 'politicaf , but specific to a science efman - into
knowledge 'about' revolution, knowledge valid within
the 'human' limits of its science. This real transformation
consists then in making this inversion seem like a still
transcendent mode or form (limited to the transcendence
of political and 'ideological' space, etc.) of an entirely
other experience of exteriority and transcendence itself.
Indeed, terror, in its requisite or ultimately eidetic sense, is
practice and proof of objectivity, of a new social, political
and philosophical objectivity which terror, as a result of its
overwhelmingly philosophical character, clearly confuses
with reality itself. But a science must work this objectivity
of effective terror in its determinations as the simple mode
of another real or immanent experience of objectivity,
as the symptom ef an objectivity that is non-decisional and
non-positional-(qf) -self. Terror is then understood as the
political and philosophical call-to - and the repression of
an objectivity that is impossible and of an entirely other
nature: non-negotiable, for example, from the standpoint
of its political forms.
This work is apparently simple, but the correction
of revolutionary representations is necessarily limitless.
130
RE VOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALON E
One will recall firstly that a science of man does not
replace history, political theory, or the Human Sciences
in general, but uses them as material; and secondly, that
it contents itself with finally putting them into relation
with their real object - man in the last instance - and
transforming them through this putting-into-relation.
T H E N O N - MARX I S T G E N E RA L I SAT I O N
O F R EVO L U T I O N
Every philosophy of revolution - even H M and CT, which
Junction as philosophy - is founded upon a restrictive and
unremarked postulate of philosophers, a postulate that is
contingent for a science, necessarily implying its suspen
sion. This is the postulate, itselfrevolutionary or philosophical,
efscience as revolutionary - the postulate of the reality of
revolution as Philosophical Decision or auto-affection. It
dictates that the theory of revolution itself can only be
revolutionary (the confusion or amphiboly of practice and
revolution). Yet, far from thereby opening up thought
and practice to this phenomenon, it instead simultane
ously closes them or encloses them within the limits of
a revolutionary practice or decision, thus denying them
the radical opening-up of science. This postulate takes
the following precise form in contemporary thought: to
everyfixedform efpower, understood as a 'relation', necessar
ily corresponds - via an essential relation - one and only one
13 1
FROM DEC ISION TO HERESY
other power relation, which takes theform ef an inversion ef
thefirst. The inversion belongs to the essence of power
and precisely defines its relational nature. Both Foucault,
with the motif of the 'permanent ground of struggle', and
Deleuze, with the theory of forces, radicalise this explicitly
'Nietzschean' postulate, which is already present in Marx
in a less clear and less explicit form; they give it multiple
affirmation but do not render it contingent as postulate,
as a science would demand.
Only a science, with the 'non-revolutionary' pragmatic
of revolution that ensues from it, can liberate the practice
and theory of their 'revolutionary fold', which constitutes
the Marxist and Nietzschean space of power and closes
it to a more rigorous theory. In reality, for a science of
man there can be no necessary correspondence between
an event or real affect of power and a determinate type
of revolution or inversion or, moreover, a multiplicity
of revolutions of the same philosophical type - that is
to say, supposed capable of determining in turn that
event. What corresponds to the event, instead - now in
a 'dual' or non-necessary relation - is an open multiplic
ity of philosophically diverse types of revolutions, a
limitless multiplicity of possible effective revolutions, all
contingent or equivalent in relation to it. What science
determines in revolutions can be called the Equivalence
Principle ef Revolutions with Regard to Man and Science.
This principle directly suspends another one, the Principle
13 2
REVOLUTION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE ALONE
efSufficient Revolution, which is clearly the same thing as
the Marxist or Nietzschean postulate of revolution as the
essence of thought (in all thought, revolution is at stake;
in every revolution, thought is at stake).
All contemporary imagery (at least since Nietzsche)
of the revolutionary essence of thought, of the fold as its
elementary catastrophe, sanctions this restriction, this
internal closing of the space of thought, this contraction
(of)-self of occidental thought and the Greco-revolu
tionary narcissism that prohibits its true transformation.
The fold is no more necessary for thought than revolution
is necessary for truly transforming history. It is clear that
neither can be denied its effectivity. Yet precisely because
they define the breadth of transcendent thought and are
the engine of history alone, they are mere objects and
are not necessary as a perspective on themselves. In this
way - with revolution reduced to the state of effective
real-representation and thus not real itself - we establish
a limitless, non-revolutionary pragmatic of revolution,
an opening more radical than that of Marxist 'practice',
which is still limited from within by a philosophical
decision.
13 3
Th e Transcendental M ethod
( 1 989)
Tra n s l a t e d by C h ris to p h e r Eby
1 . A D I F F I C ULT T H O U G H T
That method called 'transcendental' is characterised by a
remarkable plasticity - to which Kant, Fichte and Cohen
have already drawn attention - but also by an equally
well-documented difficulty.
There are three reasons for the difficulty of the 'tran
scendental' and the philosophical style that defines it.
The first stems from the manner in which the notion is
introduced. Sometimes it is presented in scholastic form,
through definitions drawn from Kant but isolated from
both their effects and the manner of thinking that gives
them their concrete meaning; sometimes it is confused
with doctrinal systems, without its own features being
13 5
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
identified, forming mixtures with objects and goals that
are not necessary to it: Newtonian physics (Kant), ethics
and right (Fichte), the phenomenological description
of the world (Husserl, Heidegger), etc. To avoid these
extremes, we shall delimit the characteristic and stable
features of the transcendental 'gesture', the invariants
that make it a style and which are found, in distinct
concrete forms, in the doctrines of thinkers ranging from
the scholastic to the contemporary. In our presentation
of this gesture, we wish no longer to confuse it with the
uses or appropriations that have been made of it in order
to address problems of empirical origin (epistemological
usages, for example); or, worse still, to confuse it with its
original authors. Kant's work is a major but nevertheless
local turning point in a tradition that concerned itself
with recapturing the meaning and continuity beneath,
first, the heteroclite of objects and aims and, second, the
artificial oppositions and exclusions that these provoked.
First objective : to purge the transcendental of its trans
cendent models (science, logic, perception, right, etc ... )
and to extract its unique aim, that of the autonomy
[Sel bstandigkeit] of reason, perhaps, and certainly that of
philosophising thought.
The second reason stems from the overdetermined charac
ter of this term, whose meaning is not summarised by the
definitions given by Kant, however decisive they may be
13 6
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
- these definitions, moreover, are themselves heterogene
ous. There is a history and a fluidity in the meaning of the
word, not only from one to another philosophy labeled
'transcendental' (or not, as in Leibniz and Heidegger),
but within each of them, principally according to the
functions that the word assumes in relation to another
notion that is generally closely related to it but with which
it does not merge: that of the a priori (the universal and
necessary structures of knowledge, of perception, of
language, etc., which have their seat in the 'subject').
'Transcendental' can thus designate any of the following:
singular philosophies (Kant, Maimon, Fichte, the young
Schelling, Husserl), trends or problematics that pervade
a dispersed group of works (transcendental idealism)
or represent a temptation and a reciprocal objection
(transcendental materialism, transcendental realism), a
style or 'allure' (Beneze) of thought; or even a necessary
ingredient of every philosophy: not every philosophy
can be called transcendental, but the transcendental
inheres in any philosophy (whether avowed by the author
himself - Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze - or not Nietzsche - or detected by historians - Descartes). For
philosophising is always a decision or a 'transcendence'.
Finally, more profoundly, 'transcendental' indicates a
method that generalises Kantianism (Cohen, Natorp, Cas
sirer), but indicates also each of this method's moments,
137
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
operations and stases (deduction, analytic, dialectic,
aesthetic, appearance, reflection, etc., transcendentals) .
Second objec tive : So as to avoid the trap of this overde
termination - its absurd and unintelligible inventory and the artificial figures that it would impose, to place
oneself at this methodological level and identify its
invariant operative moments.
The third reason is more obscure but its stakes are more
decisive: the transcendental tradition is traversed as such
by a division, a distribution that is generally repressed.
To allow this tradition its full extent, we must discern
two branches, and a concomitant risk of rupture. Firstly,
a major or dominant branch, illustrated by Kant, Fichte,
Husserl and nearly all contemporary thinkers: that of
empirico-transcendental parallelism, of a co-belonging
and parallelism of the transcendental condition and the
conditioned, sometimes open and broken, but always
maintained. Secondly, a minor or minoritarian branch
(one dominated by the first, in any case) which, against
the unitary conception of the transcendental and the
empirical, asserts more or less clearly their duality and
the irreversibility of the former and the latter. It is
true, however, that this remains more often a proclivity
(Descartes, Maine de Biran, Sartre) than an explicit thesis
(Michel Henry).
13 8
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
Third objective : to avoid the ordinary reduction of the
transcendental thematic to its dominant tradition, a
reduction essentially influenced by German Idealism and
the problematic of self-consciousness and Difference.
Finally, several limitations must be lifted: the limitations
to one author (Kant); to a certain type of philosophy theories of cognition (Kant, Fichte, Husserl); to a theory
of the subject, moreover one misconstrued as a subjectiv
ism (Kant). The transcendental is just as much that which
founds objectivity (Kant, neo-Kantianism, Husserl) or
that which founds the question of authentic ontology
(as Heidegger insists), even in Kant. Kant is the author
who gives the transcendental its philosophical credence,
who distinguishes its meanings and fixes its stakes, but he
himself recognizes, in the existence of a 'transcendental
philosophy of the ancients', ontology in person. It is
necessary, therefore, to remove this confusion of the tran
scendental with aims that are partily foreign to it. Even
the aim of a critique of the speculative power of Reason
does not belong to the essence of the transcendental,
but employs the latter in its service, whereas, after Kant,
it will pass into the service of the Absolute. But, more
profoundly, one must wonder if its destiny is definitively
connected to that of ontology - that is, of transcendence.
13 9
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
2 . F I R S T D I S T I N C T I O N S ! T H E T RAN S C E N D E N T ·
T RA N S C E N D E NTAL C O R R E LAT I O N
Distinguishing between these two terms is a specifically
philosophical conquest; it depends not only on Kant's
difference, for example, from both empiricism and dog
matic rationalism, but more generally on philosophy's
autonomy in relation both to the confusions of common
sense, and to science and theology. But their correlation
and the foundation of this correlation is another kind of
distinction: never an exclusive distinction, but a relation
of conditioning which can take many forms, like the
empirico-transcendental circle or parallelism, of which it
is the equivalent. This relation can be strictly reciprocal
or reversible ( Nietzsche, Deleuze) ; or reciprocal despite
everything, in spite of the facticity of the empirical (the
differently-accented psycho-transcendental parallelisms
of Kant and Husserl ) ; or non-reciprocal and irreversible,
as in the work of certain contemporary thinkers ( Henry ) .
This correlation is, at least within the dominant tradition,
the concrete element of the transcendental.
'Transcendent' denotes a disruption of continuity
that is said in various senses (including the mathemati
cal sense) : epistemologically - as a claim of knowledge
beyond experience ( Kant: the illegitimate or speculative
usage of the principles of understanding beyond the
limits of possible experience) ; ontologically - as a thing
14 0
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHO D
separated, by virtue of its essence, from the subject,
and irreducible to it (Kant: transcendence of the 'thing
in itself' ; Husserl: transcendence of the object or the
invariant and irreducible object-sense); theologically as a sublime order of reality or an infinite being which
hierarchically exceeds the finite being of man (Descartes:
through the perfection of its understanding and its will;
Levinas: through its exteriority and its exalted status as
'Other'); and finally, transcendentally - as the 'objective'
correlate of the transcendental (we shall see how), but then
the transcendent object is transcendentfor consciousness
or the subject, included in an ideal immanence (Husserl).
However, this correlation can again become a simple
identity and then give rise to a terminological, if not
theoretical, confusion. Kant himself employed the term
'transcendental' as equivalent to 'transcendent'. In this
case, it is a matter of a certain usage of representations - a
transcendent usage opposed to the empirical or immanent
usage of representations.
A concept is used transcendentally . . . if it is referred to
things as such and in themselves; but it is used empirically
if it is referred merely to appearances, i.e. , to objects of a
possible experience. 7
7
I. Kant, Critique efPure Reason, trans. W. S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), 305
(A238/B298).
14 1
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
In this sense, even a non-empirical, metaphysical reality
or a reality existing 'in itself' is called 'transcendental' - a
transcendent reality (the 'transcendental object' is thus
the 'thing in itself', the cause of the phenomenon, but
not itself phenomenon). That which is transcendent in the
Kantian sense and transcendental in the scholastic sense
is always that which exceeds the categories - that is, for
Kant, the domain of possible experience. Be that as it
may, 'transcendent' is a term with a deprecatory nuance in
transcendental thought (in Kant, the speculative illusion;
in Nietzsche, the transcendence of values, the creation of
the weak). Its connotation is more positive, on the other
hand, in the works of others (the extreme case being
Levinas, who posits exteriority or transcendence without
any transcendental to posit it).
'Transcendence' is simultaneously said of the state of
a being separated from a subject of reference and of the
operation of separating it (either the subject separates it,
or it separates itself from the subject), thus implying the
verbal origin of the word (transcend-e-nce and transcend
e-ntal) and the activity or operation of 'transcending'
(the Bergsonian neologism), i.e. of going beyond oneself
toward the transcendent. Whence a reversal of object and
subject in which the transcendental power proper outlines
itself. Transcending is henceforth an operation assignable
to the existent-that-transcends or even to the subject that
produces or 'objectivises' the object, thus conditioning the
14 2
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
transcendent. To be able to distance the object, the subject
must in reality distance itself from itself or be affected by
transcendence, by way of a schism, an opening up, or
even a nothingness. In contrast to the supposedly given
object, we shall call objectivity the set of conditions that
only appear to separate the transcendent from the subject
because the subject in reality separates itself from itself
through them. This is no longer an empirical separation;
rather, it is a priori, in relation to the empirical as such.
'Transcendental' will be said, then, of the cause, within
the subject, of the transcendent's transcendence - a cause
that is not transcendence itself or the a priori, but distin
guishes itself from them as the essence (or the a priori
real) of the a priori. The transcendent (the object or
World) is the correlate (Husserl) of the transcendental
subject; the transcendental is what relates-to ... the trans
cendent (the 'transcendental relation' - for example,
'being-in-the-world' in Heidegger, or the principles of the
understanding in Kant). The transcendental subject is no
longer a separated substance (Descartes); it is either an
internal experience or an originary functional unity - in
either case, 'objective' - that relates to a given. It is the
originary difference of subject and World, a difference
that precedes them. The common distinction between the
psychological and the in-itself is shifted and transformed.
There is a 'phenomenological' redistribution of transcend
ence (of objective sense, no longer of the in-itself) and of
143
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
immanence (intentional and no longer psychological):
transcendence within and through immanence. Husserl,
who returns to transcendental experience beyond Kant,
but not to Cartesian substantialism, puts it as follows:
By phenomenological epoche l reduce my natural human
Ego and my psychic life - the realm of my psychologi,cal
self-experienc e - to my transcendental-phenomenolog
ical Ego, the realm of t ransc endental -phenomenologi,cal
self-experience. 8
Whence the most general schema of the transcenden
tal method as composed of three essential regressive
moments: ( 1 ) the transcendent, indicating the given or
the empirical, that is, the continua of common experi
ence or experience which is scientific, perceptual, lin
guistic, etc. ; (2) transcendence, indicating the a priori
conditions of the given or its objectivity (not empirical
but 'ideal', of the nature of the ens imagi,narium, even);
( 3 ) the transcendental, as the subjective cause or essen
tial possibility of the object's objectivity. This order is
the one that the 'transcendental' analytic follows, but
it receives a recurrent necessity from the subject whose
reflection (precisely 'transcendental') accompanies, as
its element, the decomposition of the continua of expe
rience. Hence a progressive enriching of the functions
8
E. Husserl, Carlesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967) ,
26 (§11) .
144
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
of the transcendental: the third moment of the method
assembling the preceding moments in recurrent fashion.
The articulated unity of these moments forms the concrete
content and the full meaning of the famous Kantian
definitions:
I call transcendental all cognition that deals not so much
with objects as rather with our way of cognizing objects
in general insofar as that way of cognizing is to be
possible a priori. 9
We must not call just any a priori cognition transcen
dental, but must call transcendental (i.e. concerning the
a priori possibility of the a priori use of cognition) only
that a priori cognition whereby we cognize that - and
how - certain presentations (intuitions or concepts) are
applied, or are possible, simply a priori . 1 0
Thus the transcendental has a dual function: foundational
or explicative (of knowledge) and critical (of metaphys
ics). That the transcendental conditions the transcendent
is the condition for responding to the question of the
possibility of a knowledge in general and, in particular,
of a speculative knowledge or one that transcends the
limits of experience. The transcendental withdraws from
experience (the 'Analytic': Kant, Husserl, Heidegger)
only in order to better return to it (the 'Transcendental
9
Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, 6 4 (B25) .
1 0 Ibid., 110-11 (A5 6/B80).
145
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
Deduction' ) and close the field of experience (the 'tran
scendental field' ) . This is a decision on behalf of expe
rience and for its knowledge. Whence a circle and a
double game which comprise empirico-transcendental
parallelism - the dominant branch of the tradition.
One of Kant's texts (the Prolegomena) sums up this twofold
pertinence:
The word 'transcendental' . . . does not signify something
passing beyond all experience but something
that
indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to
make cognition of experience possible. If these concepts
overstep experience, their use is termed 'transcendent',
which must be distinguished from the immanent use,
i.e., use restricted to experience. 1 1
3 . T H E T RAN S C E N D E NTAL A S M E T H O D
Thus, a method is called 'transcendental' when it is able
to capture each of the last two moments outlined above,
which a more discriminating analysis shows, in actual
ity, to be three. Each is accompanied by techniques that
differ according to the author, techniques specified by
the type of reality under analysis, which varies from one
thought to another, but which is always Reason itself,
more or less restricted to the sciences, or extended to all
11
I. Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. ]. W. Ellington ( Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2001 , 373.
)
146
THE TRANSCENDENTAL M ETHOD
experience (Reason as mathematical physics, moral judge
ment, perception, language, formal logic, etc ... ). Each of
these three moments can be called 'transcendental', even
if the last is such par excellence:
1. The analytic extrication, or the 'inventory of [local] a
prioris' (Dufrenne) on the basis of either experience, or
the type of reality whose conditions of possibility one
seeks. Kant called this operation - the exhibition of the
forms of intuition and the deduction of intellectual forms
- 'metaphysical' rather than transcendental. This theoreti
cal rigour (the a priori is taken to be the universal and
necessary moment, meta-physical in the literal sense of
the word) will not always find a corresponding historical
rigour (Kant, in accordance with the scholastic tradition,
will still use the term 'transcendental' to designate the a
priori); but the substitution of a priori for transcendental in
this function and the distinction between the two are both
necessary to ground the transcendental method as such.
Q . The gathering of the multiple and local a prioris into
a 'universal a priori' (Husserl), a whole determined by
that Unity called 'transcendental' (and not 'categori
cal': the latter is a particular a priori governed by the
transcendental or superior Unity of experience). This
moment merits being called transcendental for reasons
even more profound than those of the first: it corresponds
to an ascent toward the real or absolute condition of
possibility of experience. This higher condition is always
147
FROM D E CISION TO H E R E SY
a Unity - there is no philosophy without the task of
determining the real through thought - that is, through
a Unity which is not itself entirely synthetic or produced,
but which must be supposed as the ultimate reality of a
thought under whose authority experience is unified and
thinkable. This Unity is 'transcendental' in the sense that
it must surpass experience in a mode that is no longer
only meta-physical - like that of the a priori ( which
remains multiple and diverse because it is connected to
experience) - but absolute, a surpassing carried out, in
other words, in and through the mode of Unity.
Thus, this superior unity transcends beyond the spe
cific, generic and categorical distinctions - beyond the
diversity proper to the universal - but it must be sup
ported or conveyed in turn by transcendental entities
that vary according to the author ( Kant: the I think and
the apparatus of the 'faculties' ; Husserl: pure psychism) .
The passage from categorical to transcendental is a funda
mental and necessary operation, and comes about through
the mechanism of an Aujhebung of the psychological and
transcendent apparatus of the faculties. This operation
can be more or less successful (less successful in Kant's
work, according to Husserl; even less so in Husserl's
work than in Kant's, according to the neo-Kantians) .
In any case, it remains an Aujhebung; it does not manage
to break the empirico-transcendental circle and ground
14 8
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHO D
experience in an absolute knowledge, but it believes itself
capable of doing so.
This second moment rediscovers, in its own way, the
scholastic treatment of the transcendentals. Before designat
ing a style of thought, 'transcendental' designated certain
philosophical objects: the most general terms or predicates
of being, those that transcend categories or predicaments
as well as the natural genera. The transcendentals (tran
scendentalia, or even transcendentia) were recognised by
Aristotle and thematised by Albertus Magnus (Quodlibet
ens est unum, verum, bonum) , Saint Thomas Aquinas and
especially Duns Scotus. In general, Being is the most
universal; the others are its attributes or 'passions', either
simple and convertible with Being (the One, Truth, Good)
or disjunctive (Contingent/Necessary, Actual/Potential).
Whatever may be included in these variable and open
lists, these 'transcendental properties', distinguished
only by their 'point of view', provide a surplus-value of
generality that makes them as valuable as the permanent
and necessary 'categories' of all philosophical discourse
as such. They do not bring to the res any supplementary
reality, any generic content, any real predicate or property
(even if 'transcendental' can just as well be said of an
'in-itself' and 'absolute' reality [Kant] as of an ideality).
Indeed, the 'transcendental terms' could even designate, as
unknowns, the letters comprising the figures of the syllo
gism. They always, however, designate essential relations.
14 9
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
Hence also the 'transcendental relation', a relation of
essential or constitutive dependence of one being upon
another, whose meaning, between the scholastics and
Kant, became inverted, or at least became unilateral, so
that it distinguished a constitutive, verifiable, or condition
ing power in its relationship with a conditioned.
3. The third and most fundamental moment is the sys
tematic unification of the essentialities or a prioris of
this Unity, with Unity understood as relation to experi
ence - the unification, consequently, of the a prioris and
empirical givens under the authority of transcendental or
originary Unity. The nature of experience may vary (sensa
tion, perception, present being, etc ... ) , but this operation,
which Kant christened 'Transcendental Deduction', lies
at the heart of the method. It leads to these great circles,
these concrete and autonomous unities: 'Unity of experi
ence' ( Kant) , 'Lebenswelt' ( Husserl) , 'Being-in-the-world'
and 'Care' ( Heidegger) , 'General Perception' or 'Flesh'
( Merleau-Ponty ) , etc. It is the synthetic moment and no
longer the analytic one, the moment when the unity of all
experience succeeds its dismemberment. In this way, 'tran
scendental' receives its complete and concrete meaning,
at once originary and ultimate, of veritas transcendentalis
( Baumgarten) - that is, reciprocal immanence between
being and thought.
What has happened? The analytic of the structures
of experience generally deduces a prioris that are more
15 0
THE TRANSCENDENTAL M ETHOD
and more universal, or qualitatively different, up to a very
particular a priori endowed with the specifically tran
scendental ability to pivot, 'turn', and bend itself toward
experience: the 'I think'; the pre-reflexive cogito; self
consciousness as a reflection of object-consciousness; but
also Heideggerian (de-subjectivated and de-objectivated)
'Turning' and the 'eternal return' of the Will to Power in
Nietzsche. In general, one passes from the transcendent
to the transcendental (recurring, moreover) through a
'turning', and the analytic is extended continuously in
the major operation of a Transcendental Deduction, a
legitimisation of the a priori in view of possible experience
and depending upon it. Transcendental reflection did
not remain 'in thin air', that is, in the supposed vacuum
(cf. Kant) of transcendence, Ideas, or meta-physics, but
reoriented itself toward experience and put the a priori
in the service of the latter. Here, the transcendental is
foundation and essence (where essence possibility of
experience). It does not explain the empirical reality of
knowledge but the reality of its possibility, of possible
experience or experience considered in that fundamental
and universal legality upon which its validity is grounded:
ultimately the non-empirical effectivity of science. Yet
it is also directly critical, and de-limits metaphysical
divagation. It is opposed to both the empirical (bearing
on the a priori, its relation to subject and object) and the
transcendent, that is to say the a priori liberated from the
=
15 1
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
limits of experience (it turns the a priori toward experience
and fixes its empirical usage). Transcendental Deduction
is a science, a science of the limits of the a priori usage of
our knowledge; in this way it de-limits the appearance
and illusion of transcendent judgements.
The originality of the transcendental method bursts
forth in the Transcendental Deduction. With that in
mind, we must refer to the well-known manner in which
Kant posed the problem of the possibility of knowledge:
neither the rational-analytical nor the merely empirical can
account for this possibility or its indubitable reality. Its
sufficient reason is to be found in the milieu or synthesis
of these opposites - of a priori analytical judgements
and a posteriori synthetic judgements. Kant retains the
a-priority of the first and the synthetic power of the second,
and reveals their unity as an autonomous principle at work
in the operation of the Deduction. A priori synthesis biases
this sterile operation in some way, and demands itself;
Kant can then elevate it to the status of method and argu
ment. The specificity of the 'transcendental proof', which
argues (about the de facto existence of a priori concepts,
about their function in knowledge and the restriction of
their domain to the latter) according to the exigencies of
'the possibility of experience', is nothing other than that
auto-exigency of a priori synthesis, whether or not it bears
its limitation within itself. Of course, this auto-exigency,
specific to the transcendental in its dominant tradition,
15 2
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHO D
does not always receive the juridico-critical and rational
form it assumes in its Kantian version; but, just as the
latter can take on an ontological sense (Heidegger, in
his discussion of Kant), one should seek to rediscover
its universal scope - its invariant functions - across the
whole of the transcendental tradition.
The telos of the transcendental is fulfilled by the
Deduction, and this telos is the real: not in the empirical
and contingent sense, but in the 'higher' or specifically
philosophical sense of the synthetic concrete Unity of the
empirical real and the possible or ideal a priori. In fact,
there is always a partitioning of reality, which is said in
vanous senses:
1. Reality in the strict sense, that which founds 'real
possibility', and which Kant distinguished from mere
logical possibility:
For the deception of substituting the logical possibility
of the concept (where the concept does not contradict
itself) for the transcendental possibility of things (where
to the concept there corresponds an object) can trick
and satisfy only the unseasoned.12
The real, in an even less logical sense, was eventually said
(by Husserl and Sartre) of the subject or the cogito that
stands in proximity to itself, in a non-empirical presence,
12
Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, 309 (B302 ) .
15 3
FROM D E CISION TO H E R E SY
in a con-crete proximity to itself that prevents it from
floating in exteriority and transcendence.
2. The empirical reality of the transcendental given (sensa
tion, being, World).
3. The ideality of the a priori, the material of knowledge or
thought which, however, remains ideal and possible, and
consequently is under threat of collapsing into empirical
contingency and requires a real ground, a concrete (i.e.
singular) foundation (Transcendental Unity).
4. A synthesis of these determinations. On the one hand,
Transcendental Unity (already supposed, or anticipa
tory and recurrent) becomes what it is on its own basis,
without being synthesised from scratch on the basis of
opposing terms (empirical/a priori); it presides over the
synthesis but does not derive from it. Yet, on the other
hand, by uniting itself a second time with them (the
Kantian 'Transcendental Deduction', the Nietzschean 'Re
affirmation', the Heideggerian 'Turning', etc.), it produces
not the real (which cannot be produced) but effectivity,
the synthesis of all determinations. Particularly in the
dominant branch of the tradition, Unity alienates itself
despite everything, and becomes; it conditions a process
in which it finds itself put at stake. The transcendental
is requisitioned to the service of science, art, language,
etc. Even as a simple reflection that can seem to be lost in
exteriority and in the correlative transcendence of the fact
(of science, art, morality, etc.), the transcendental does
15 4
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
not operate without the initiation of a concrete becom
ing, if only that of the thought of science or an a priori
factum (from the perspective of veritas transcendentalis)
and that of illusion's critical delimitation. The authentic
transcendental subject, delivered from the risk of sim
ple transcendence, gives rise to process, to immanent
auto-production, and becomes concrete: perhaps there
was never a process-without-subject at all, outside of a
thought that falls into the most absurd transcendence.
On the other hand, the minor branch of the transcenden
tal tradition conceives of a subject-without-process inalien
able in effectivity - after having conceived, as we shall
see, a transcendental-without-a priori.
These three moments are operative invariants that
we can isolate in non-Kantian forms in the works of the
majority of authors, all of which have otherwise different
conditions: one or several sorts of a priori: a rational or
indeed historical a priori; a formal or material a priori; a
more or less universal and encompassing a priori, limited,
for instance, to physical science (Kant), logic (Husserl),
perception (Fichte, Merleau-Ponty) or indeed to the
ontological difference between Being and being (Hei
degger); and a transcendental unity diversely understood
through its psychologico-transcendent support and even
through its functions. Transcendental can then be said
distributively of the three moments to the extent that all
concern the a priori and suppose a 'reflection' upon it.
-
15 5
F ROM DECISION TO HERESY
And it can be said of them collectively, since it designates
the global method of philosophy. Yet their distinction
and articulation are fundamental for the very notion of
a 'transcendental method'.
Indeed, neo-Kantianism has made specific but pointed
use of this title, intending, in the spirit of Kantianism,
to move against any ontological interpretation (in this
case, the substantialist and reifying interpretation, that
ontology that Heidegger also deconstructs by other means
- and within which he includes, moreover, neo-Kantian
epistemology) and to generalise its operative and episte
mological content. Against the metaphysical and dogmatic
interpretation of the a priori (that of Fichte and Hegel)
made possible by Kant (on anthropological grounds, it
is true), neo-Kantianism emphasises its local and above
all functional nature, its procedural status in the service
of an objective determination of experience. In order to
do so, the psychological entrenchment of the a priori
had to be surpassed in favour of its function, its natural
contingency surpassed in favour of its transcendental
truth; the a priori had to be placed in the service of the
scientific work of the conditioning (the genesis, even)
of the given. This interpretation fulfills the project of
logicising and functionalising the Critique efPure Reason
(the primacy of logic over aesthetics, category over intui
tion; the reduction of the latter to the indexed state of
the given; the limitation of finitude - as a result of the
15 6
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
reception of the given - to intuition or sensibility; the
infinite opening of Reason beyond knowledge, etc.),
restoring it to immanence through an infinite productivity
of science and knowledge in general, which surpasses the
opposition of subject and object in the higher unity of
science as an authentic 'transcendental subject'.
This interpretation is distinctive and historic only by
virtue of its insistence on the primacy of logic over the
intuitive, of infinity over finitude; and the narrow epis
temological signification that it assigns to Kantianism.
Therefore, it belongs not only to the 'Kantian heritage'
(Vuillemin) but to the most traditional philosophical
heritage; it is universal, and emanates, along with the
Kantianism of Plato (Natorp), the inevitable Platonism
of both Kant and of the transcendental in general (at least
in its dominant tradition). It rediscovers the functional
but higher sense, which is that of the Platonic agathon
and of every philosophical decision.
4 . T H E T RAN S C E N D E N TAL AS S U BJ E C T
Transcendental is usually said of subject rather than
of method; this theoretical error is almost ubiquitous
in the dominant tradition; it is also the symptom of an
unresolved problem. The subject's coming onto the scene
is indeed ambiguous and brings out an aporia or a real
duality of the tradition that the 'all-method' conceals.
15 7
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
In the minor branch, concepts appear that are inconceiv
able in the major: a transcendental-without-a priori, a
subject-without-process, an experience-without-method
- in short, a transcendental as radical experience and no
longer as syntax.
It is obvious that, in terms of the reality of doctrines,
these are only two trends, which are mixed and intricated
in diverse proportions (cf. Kant's transcendental Idealism
and that of the young Schelling; the neo-Kantian subject
as object consciousness and Henry's radically subjective
transcendental Ego, etc.). Yet one sometimes dominates
the other, which is enough to define, depending on which
one dominates, two globally concurrent branches in the
transcendental phylum.
Why does the dominant tradition fail to take account
of the experience of the subject as such (of its being
- the being of the cogito or the 'I think' which is left
uninterrogated, according to Heidegger) at the very
moment that it invokes this experience within the tran
scendental framework? It habitually supposes, more or
less explicitly, a dehiscence between the subject and the
transcendental instance, a supplement of transcendence
of the latter in relation to the former. It is precisely in
Kant that the two are most separated: the subject is under
stood either psychologically as inner sense, or, at best, as
transcendental apperception. Yet even in this case, it is
not the bearer of the ultimate transcendental condition
15 8
THE TRANSCENDENTAL M ETHOD
that is formed by objective principles ('principles of the
understanding'). The subject, the seat of the 'human' a
priori, is only one function in the sheaf of conditions of
possibility, a means in the service of the transcendental
conditioning that encompasses and surpasses it. Husserl,
for his part, reconciles the Ego and the transcendental,
but at the cost of an ultimate residuum of 'parallelity'
or 'difference' between pure psyche and the Ego which
the transcendental and its autonomy initiates. The sup
posedly transcendental subject will have been nothing
but a subjective-type condition within the system of
conditions of objectivity, which themselves form a struc
ture endowed with a superior 'objectivity' (Heidegger).
Transcendental Unity surpasses and sublates that of the
subject, which is dismissed into the psychological finitude
of inner sense. Correlatively, transcendental reflection,
that of Reason which, as 'authentic' subject, takes the
place of the anthropological and finite subject, remains
profoundly objective; it floats in transcendence, released
from the moorings of the real subject, which is conflated
with 'self-consciousness' and then condemned to the
designation of 'object-consciousness' (Cohen).
Hence the traditions' divergence around the stakes of
the transcendental subject's radical autonomy and its even
tual intrinsic finitude - that of a subject-without-process:
1. In the dominant branch, objectivation or transcend
ence is a power that belongs to the essence of the subject,
15 9
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
a subject that is transcendental only because it can go
beyond itself toward World (or as World) or Being, can
maintain itself at a distance from itself yet remain itself
throughout this estrangement. Its division either is its
very ipseity, or belongs to it; its alienation is a loss of its
essence, but this essence possesses the ultimate power
of losing itself; therefore, it is also inalienable, and the
subject defines itself by this mixture of inalienable aliena
tion. This structure is invariant whatever the variations of
transcendence: negation, nothingness, nihilation, differ
ence. It is preserved in the passage from the subject as
consciousness (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl) to the subject
as difference (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze), from a
phenomenology of consciousness to a topology specifi
cally called 'transcendental' (Deleuze), from alienation
and re-appropriation to the 'good neighbour' (Nietzsche,
Heidegger). From the point of view of this mixture,
the opposition between philosophies of consciousness,
sense, or the 'transcendental signified' (Derrida) and the
more contemporary philosophies of their deconstruc
tion loses its relevance. Ontological or epistemological
deconstructions of the transcendental subject (Heidegger,
Derrida) content themselves with relaying Nothingness
and ordering Being through an experience of the Other
capable of exceeding Being. They modify the experience
of transcendence by radicalising it, but, in the same act,
they confirm their very membership within the tradition
16 0
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHO D
that they render triumphant. This is the sole worth of the
famous Kantian definitions of the transcendental, when it
is said of a reflection and a relation (of the a priori to the
subject, and then to the object). Hence its real weakness:
it needs to be attached to the a priori's transcendence,
which thus acts as real earth for the originary 'archi-earth'
(Husserl). Undoubtedly, this is an indivisible connection
(Transcendental Unity), but one that requires a support
all the same, just as Transcendental Deduction requires
an Analytic that precedes it.
2. In the minor branch, transcendence itself does not
belong to the essence of the transcendental subject itself;
the former must undoubtedly be founded in the latter, but
does not condition it in return. The correlation between
transcendental and transcendent - i.e. intentionality holds only for the former, not the latter (Henry). It is a
matter of liberating the transcendental subject from this
ultimate residuum of Representation - intentionality and
its Heideggerian radicalisation as 'opening', 'ekstasis',
and 'project' - and of founding its absolute autonomy
with regard to the World upon its most intrinsic finitude that is, the powerlessness to self-alienate. The subject is
transcendental neither as the immanent cause of tran
scendence nor through the operation of objectivisation,
but by itself and in advance of the latter. At this point,
the transcendental is no longer a transcendencejar experi
ence, but an immanence given in a specific experience.
16 1
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
Transcendental experience is sometimes called 'inner'
experience (Maine de Biran, Henry), at other times non
thetic self-experience (Sartre). This solution - sometimes
faintly outlined (as in Sartre, where it is once again part
and parcel with consciousness and intentionality), some
times radicalised (in Henry: the ontology of radically
subjective transcendental Life) - does not at all imply a
simple experience, ante-predicative and even cogitative, of
'presence to self' (Merleau-Ponty), but a dissociation from
the transcendent-transcendental circle or parallelism.
Kant already seemed to condemn this attempt - a
condemnation relayed through the Nietzschean critique,
and then the Heideggerian 'destruction', of the cogito.
But if this condemnation is valid for the cogito, qua
intuition of an intellectual 'nature', it is no longer valid
for a radically pre-cogitative transcendental experience
stripped of all transcendence and representation. For Kant
reduced all experience to intuition - that is, to a mode
of repraesentatio and to a donation of the object. Now,
this transcendental and non-thetic experience-(of)-self
lacks any transcendence or position. It has never been
an intuition - still less an 'intellectual intuition' - that
would still relate to Representation. Transcendental, non
thetic experience-( of)-self, as a radical experience of the
individual distinct from that of totality, is also distinct
from every intellectual intuition grounded in monism
and pantheism (Schelling, Emerson and New England
16 2
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
'transcendentalism'), as a radical experience of the indi
vidual is distinct from that of totality. Nor is it a mode
of the subjective certitudo and presence deconstructed by
Heidegger. Tue equation Self = Self - that is, the formal
identity assumed to be real, undoubtedly summarises or
concentrates the transcendental Illusion of metaphys
ics (Fichte); but finite transcendental experience, the
radically non-thetic self-subject, is not a return to this
amphiboly: it is an immediately transcendental or real
Identity that was never acquired, as was metaphysical
Identity, on the foundation of 'general logic'.
This solution resolves the aporias of the dominant
tradition and those of the Kantian heritage in particular.
The transcendental is henceforth a finite but absolute lived
experience; individual and inalienable, it is a real that no
longer merely comes to crown ideality - an experience
'in itself' rather than a usage of the a priori in view of a
transcendent experience. Transcendental conditioning
and the most radical subjectivity are reconciled by avoid
ing the path through exteriority and circularity, which
are proper to the dominant Philosophical Decision, not
to subjectivity. On the one hand, subjectivity becomes
unconditioned, but not along the lines of metaphysi
cal certitudo - ultimately, it falls outside the 'history of
Being' (Heidegger); on the other hand, the transcen
dental conquers a consistency and a reality, releasing
subjectivity from its logical and metaphysical support.
16 3
F ROM DECISION TO HERESY
The Copernican Revolution is radicalised, i.e. destroyed:
the transcendental subject ceases to be 'revolutionary' ...
because it ceases both to obsess over the emergence of
the object and to be thought through the mediation of
the object (of World, of History, etc ... ).
5. THE ESSENCE OF
'
VE R I TAS TRAN S C E N D E NTAL I S
'
Instead of devoting their energy to the transcendental
itself and mapping it out in its unique essence, phi
losophers often preoccupy themselves with aporias and
undecidable distinctions between the empirical and the
a priori. Hence the innumerable superfluous parts that
encumber the Critique (in particular). Our rule has been
to privilege the internal history of the transcendental
concept, its immanent telos, over its external and local
definitions, over the objects, themes, finalities and trans
cendent models it historically conveys; to substitute a
taxonomy of operations and techniques for the more or
less external architectonic of the Critique efPure Reason,
which is founded upon a psychology of faculties and an
epistemology of physics simply sublated [ aufheben] into
the transcendental mode. A concept always has several
overdetermined senses, but they eventually converge
under a rule of distribution. Such is the case with veritas
transcendentalis. Whether truth is transcendental in the
last instance is perhaps a particular philosophical decision
164
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHO D
- this is still doubtful; perhaps it is even a matter of phi
losophising itself. In any event, it is the highest concept
of the tradition we are examining. Veritas transcendentalis
is the manner by which philosophers name two essential
problems: that of the autonomy of Philosophical Decision
and that of its reality. These two problems intersect in the
problem of immanence. For the transcendental designates
(in Kant, for example) the highest usage of a faculty, i.e.
its a priori power. Yet, more profoundly, it designates a
higher and foundational usage of the a priori itself. The
second stage of thought is that of immanence: it distin
guishes itself from the first stage - transcendence, or the a
priori. It puts into play Transcendental Unity, that is, the
autonomy of a thought (if not a subject) that drafts the
rules of its veritative functioning from its own grounds.
There is a latent conflict between immanence and
transcendence here. We must review its origins. First, we
can elucidate two modes of transcendence: (a) a surpass
ing in the direction of genera, or the surpassing of one
genera by another; (b) the surpassing of all genera and
distinctions in the direction of Being, which is not a genus
but a 'transcendental'. The latter in turn bifurcates into
a 'horizontal' transcendence toward Being as universal
and a 'vertical' transcendence toward Being-as-being,
as 'One' or God (the bifurcation of Heidegger's 'onto
theo-logy'). The transcendental is thus superior to the
transcendent - the transcendental is transcendens par
165
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
excellence - but remains bound to it through a correlation.
To 'go beyond' onto-theology itself would suppose an
originary transcending which Heidegger will call 'absolute
transcending' since it surpasses the transcendental itself.
Thus, a dual historical solution is outlined here: either
the transcendental is itself submitted to transcending, or
transcendence is submissive to the transcendental, whose
concept must then be revised in turn.
Therefore, immanence is the telos or the engine of
any history of the transcendental. Yet it is also, to this
extent, an aporia of the dominant tradition. How do we
render philosophising truth autonomous with regard to
the sky and the earth - between which it is suspended
( Kant) - without grounding ourselves in a theology, or
reducing ourselves to experience? How could the phi
losopher produce from himself his own laws if, on one
hand, the a priori is traced from the empirical, then the
transcendental from the a priori, and if one thus returns,
turns back [Ziiruckkehr] to the foundation on the basis of
experience instead of actually possessing it immediately
and entering only into an descending dialectic? And
what if, moreover, this Aufhebung of the psychological
condemns the transcendental to becoming the guard
ian of the a priori, to care for the meta- (physics) of the
metaphysical and to re-assert the a priori as such? Or if
the entire veritas transcendentalis is reduced to 'repeating'
meta-physical Difference ( Nietzsche) ? Or if one passes
16 6
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
from meaning to value, from the a priori to its ground,
with the latter remaining ordered by the former even as the
ground in turn is fractured as non-ground ( Heidegger) ?
How could the transcendental not be in the service of
ideality and the break it introduces into the real - that
is, in the service of transcendence in general, regardless
of its modes ( Nietzsche and Deleuze: Difference or the
re-affirmed distance in a transcendental topology; Hei
degger: ontological Difference, into whose essence it is
necessary to 'reenter' after a 'withdrawal', and which
continues unfailingly to be part and parcel of that which
it leaves so as to enter ) ?
The autonomy of truth is never as rigorous as is hoped
for, which makes it easy to challenge its 'auto-nomy'
and to deconstruct the rational usage of the transcen
dental ( Heidegger) . Yet it is still the exigency of the
'transcendentalis' (at once, of transcendence, alterity
or withdrawal and, despite everything, of immanence) ,
that reveals itself in this 'Turning' (Kehre, Heidegger) .
The invariant of the dominant tradition is that the tran
scendental instance remains defined by its functions or
usages ( Kant: conditioning; Fichte: genesis; Nietzsche:
genealogy; Heidegger: appropriation-expropriation
[Er/Ent-eig;nis ]; Derrida: exappropriation; etc. ) with regard
to an empirical given. It exhausts itself in a fundamental
operation: a demarcation line in general, a critical line
of separation ( Kant) or gathering ( Heidegger) , a line
16 7
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
either topographical (Kant) or topological (Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Deleuze). More generally, this essence of the
transcendental in its dominant version is governed by
the more traditional task of Greco-occidental thought:
to ensure the unity of opposites (in this case: empirical
and a priori, singular and universal, object and subject,
illusion and truth, metaphysical and physical, etc.). Here,
it is instead denounced as experience and asserted as
method (Kant, Cohen), process (Nietzsche, Deleuze),
syntax (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty), paths (Heidegger),
endless labour (Derrida), etc.
Here we also find, of course, well-known remedies
for the exteriority of transcendence and the empirical
contingency that together threaten the transcendental.
Yet like all remedies, these register, differ and temper
the pain; they interiorise it, relieve it, fracture it, but
preserve it all the same. The pain - the amphiboly of the
transcendent and the transcendental - afflicts the entire
dominant tradition and explains its history, full of cross
ings, regrets, perpetual recommencements, and imbued
with a limitless effort; a history of oscillations from the
triumphant will (Nietzsche: the Bacchic transcendental)
to the sobered-up will, and to failure (Heidegger: the
disenchanted transcendental). By force of will and then
of not willing a transcendental authority, the dominant
or unitary philosophy forgets that the transcendental
can be the object of a specific experience, and that it also
16 8
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHO D
possesses phenomenal givens which must be described.
The unitary forgetting of the proper essence of the tran
scendental grounds its historicity or its errancy.
The essence of Transcendental Unity - the imbrication
of the Absolute with the transcendental function - is the
problem that divides the two traditions. The principle
of the dominant tradition is as follows: the undivided
kernel, which is the real element in the transcendental, is
simultaneously a relation, and thus needs an empirical,
and then a priori, support. The Absolute is conceived as
being this transcendent support, analytically obtained
on the basis of experience. A meta-physical Absolute
which can itself be conceived and imbricated with the
transcendental functions in various ways. In the dogmatic
metaphysics that Kant critiques, the transcendental is
effaced and denied by Unity as causa sui or infinite Auto
position. In Kant, the introduction of finitude limits
Auto-position or transcendence; it discovers and makes
manifest in the latter the precisely transcendental nucleus
of the relationship necessary for experience, but which
remains hidden. Yet the doublet of the transcendental
and finitude (the latter appearing in the form of the
'thing in itself', which resists the illuminating opening
of the a priori) again gives rise to (cf. neo-Kantianism) a
rational principle and an auto-position of finitude itself:
the auto-limitative principle of the Unity of Experience,
which explains that it is still Reason that makes itself
16 9
FROM DEC I S I ON TO HERESY
finite. In Heidegger, Reason is undoubtedly finite, as
Being ordered with respect to the given or to a fate over
which Being does not have control. But Reason is still
not completely dismissed: Auto-position - the means
by which transcendence can become absolute - subsists
qua residuum of 'Representation' or the 'Metaphysical',
de-limited only by an 'absolute transcending' or a 'Turn
ing' that conserves the essential - namely, transcendence
- even if it conserves it henceforth as One ('Withdrawal').
The real destruction of this account is presented, and
can be found, in the minor tradition. What is its proper
telos, beyond its inchoate realisations? To carry out a
fundamental reversal, to cease putting the transcendental
at the service of transcendence, meta-physics and the
absolute forms of which they are capable; to subordinate
the absolute to the transcendental by directly imbricating
the latter with the finitude of the subject without availing
itself of the services of transcendence. To reconcile them
without passing through the mediation of meta-physics,
which is perhaps a pointless manoeuvre. This is, in rela
tion to Kant and the old metaphysical conception of the
Absolute (to make a risky but suggestive comparison)
much as the Relativity Revolution is in relation to the
Copernican Revolution: There is a.finite absolute, which is
the subject as radically finite transcendental experience that is, inalienable or non-positional experience-(of}self
and experience-(of}World. The Absolute is intrinsically
17 0
THE TRANSCEN DENTAL M ETHOD
finite; it is no longer affected from without, as is the
case in Kant and in Heidegger, whose 'finitude' and
'withdrawal' generalise the Kantian hypothesis of the
'thing in itself' to apply to all possible metaphysics.
Here, finitude is absolute as such, no longer merging
with a form of transcendence or 'critical limitation'.
This nothing-but-immanent-absolute completes the libera
tion of the transcendental element (that is, radically imma
nent subjectivity) whose existence Kant had discovered
only to reinter it in the metaphysical and Auto-positional
sands, by settling for the compromise of the Copernican
Revolution - which, oddly, passes for a philosophy of the
subject, even though it constitutes the contrary and the
impossibility of such a philosophy. This new, nothing-but
subjective conception of the absolute, frees the latter from
the infinite and from the Copernican aporias of the finite
and the infinite. It establishes the transcendental upon
the ruins of transcendence, of metaphysical hierarchies
and of the pre-established harmonies (between faculties,
between subject and object), euphemistically dubbed
'adequation' (Heidegger), that were necessary for them.
A new, non-Copernican path to the transcendental can
now be opened up.
17 1
The 'Non- Phil osophical ' Paradigm
(19 9 1)
Tra n s l ated by N i co l a Ru bczak a n d A n t h o ny P a u l S m ith13
C HAN G I N G T H E PARAD I G M O F T H O U G H T
The ordinary of culture is that relentless struggle of
philosophers that leaves philosophy intact. To occupy
attention and to distract it from the principal problem
- what philosophy can do in itself and globally - is the
very function of this interminable combat. Nothing,
especially not the 'critique' of metaphysics or its 'decon
struction', is strong enough to obligate us to reconsider
the validity of this paradigm come forth fully armed and
complete, the scale of this already-established horizon,
the depth of this fold in which our least interrogable
13
The translators wish to thank Iain Campbell for his assistance in translating this essay.
173
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
space of thought is contracted. Nothing can solicit this
authority, this philosophical authorisation of thought,
unless perhaps the obstinacy, the strange obstinacy that
has always belonged to the sciences, and the misunder
standings of an obvious and, all things considered, incred
ible dialogue between philosophies at once garrulous
and deaf, and sciences which are mute but which think
nonetheless. 'We shall force them to philosophise ! ' - but
the sciences themselves have nothing philosophical to say
to the philosophy that puts the epistemological question
to them. And if their mutism is perhaps not merely the
effect of their operatory obstinacy, if it does not prevent
them from thinking otherwise, then it is this entirely other
paradigm of an experience which is non-philosophical but
not necessarily positivist that needs to be disinterred from
its burial beneath the heap of philosophies-of-science and
epistemologies; to be elucidated in its originality and
its force-( ef)-thought, to be opposed to philosophy qua
norm of thought and of humanity anterior to all culture.
We have thus found it necessary to limit philosophy in
order to make room for science-as-thought.
Such is the origin of what we call, for reasons already
clarified elsewhere, the 'non-philosophical' paradigm:
it is obtained in the form of the auto-description of which
the essence of the sciences is capable. But it finds else
where its occasion, the material to which it cannot be
reduced but which renders it usable: first and foremost
174
THE
'
NON - PHILOSOPHICAL
'
PARADIGM
the philosophical, but also the crucial phenomena of our
time, the points of effervescence and the sharpest edges
of the contemporary. A line that would pass through
all points of this disordered experience, that could do
justice to the most 'aberrant' deliverances of the media,
to the most specialised executions of technology, to the
wagers of the visual or musical arts, to new political fic
tions and affects ... such could be the effect (the effect,
rather than the condition or the essence) of this stance of
thought undoubtedly more elementary (perhaps minimal)
and more universal than the philosophical. Instead of
deploring in these phenomena the decline of metaphys
ics or of culture, and confusing the end of man with the
decomposition of humanism, it would find in them its
necessary impulsions. Impulsions rather than determin
ing contents, materials rather than structures, occasions
rather than effects: neither a positivism of actuality nor
a 'postmodern' auto-decomposition of metaphysics. We
no longer believe - but this disenchantment took place
long ago - that the diagram of Philosophical Decision
has some real importance or other for man, even if he
profits from a relative techno-ideological efficiency, and
despite his regular rebirths through his cultural mediatisa
tion. And again, the human and scientific obsolescence
of the philosophical paradigm is nothing new - even if
it is becoming a more and more crucial task to save the
175
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
phenomena from their devalorisation and complementary
overvalorisation by their philosophical counterparts.
S O M E G U I D I N G I D EAS O N S C I E N C E
Science is not ordered, in its essence at least, by philosoph
ical or cultural paradigms: the latter may overdetermine
it, but they do not determine it. Rather, it constitutes by
itself another specific experience of thought. It draws
from itself, from its 'cause', which is to say man-as-One,
the power to accede to the real or to phenomenalise it in
an original mode, distinct from the philosophical. While
the latter proceeds through decision or transcendence, sci
ence proceeds by having recourse only to a non-decisional
immanence-(of)-self, at least when it comes to defining
the real object of a science - that to which it relates the
object ef knowledge as to a reality in the last instance,
absolutely distinct from knowledge, without conflating
them philosophically. It thereby locates calculation and
technique, the operatory and the manipulative, in the
object of knowledge alone, excluding it from the real. That
which is nothing but an encrustation of epistemological
acts - positivism, but equally all epistemology - abstracts
it from its subordinate status and elevates it unduly to the
status of essence. This abusive operation is the spontane
ous idealism of the philosophers, not an opposition to
the 'ordinary' realism of scientists.
176
THE
'
NON - PHILOSOPHICAL
'
PARADIGM
Rather than one diagram among others, or a syntaxico
semantic schema, science restored to its essence is thus
something like a real base or an infrastructure. Let us say:
that which remains of the real or of the immanent, of
the non-metaphysical, in the function ( often crudely
understood) of infrastructure. While philosophy effaces
this radical distinction in hybridisations with transcend
ent phenomena (the real content of the superstructure )
and wants it to disappear in favour of mixtures, science
ceaselessly restores, against Philosophical Decision, this
primitive, ahistorical duality which has never been a deci
sion and which works according to a non-philosophical
causality. Marxism has identified this - yet understood
it still philosophically - as 'determination in the last
instance'.
T H E N O N - P H I LO S O P H I CAL P RAC T I C E O F T H O U G H T
Rather than denying them, then, we must limit the validity
of the gestures that seem more than evident to us, and
which have never been reconsidered as such; along with
the necessity upon which philosophical consensus is
founded, and which decides upon our legitimacy and our
belonging to the community of philosophers. We wish to
speak of all these operations that exploit transcendence
and take it as given without having elucidated their right
to do so, which is to say the theoretical pertinence of
177
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
this exploitation in the last instance: reflection, decision,
interpretation, dialectic, difference, analysis, synthesis,
etc. These gestures we continue to carry out; this belief
we continue in a certain manner to subscribe to - but,
from now on, according to the limits within which we are
constrained to consider them: as simple givens that we
shall work on according to other rules, not as the very
rules of thought. And what can we no longer do? We can
no longer think in terms of reversal and displacement,
of differences and mixtures, of game and of world, in
terms of unity, of reconciliation or of the co-belonging
of opposites, as philosophy does and as its deconstruc
tions continue to do. In terms of decision or analysis, of
synthesis or of the undecidable.
These gestures of philosophy, which we renounce in
order to think, but which we still require as occasions of this
activity, we can only penetrate right to their most secret
mechanism if we begin with an inkling of what a scientific
thought is: by dualysis rather than analysis. That is to say:
firstly, to take the prototypical case of the science of the
One, according to the real which is the cause-( of)-self of
science: it is rigorously 'individual' in its foundation and
'individual' through immanence alone, stripped of all
constitutive representation. Next, according to what we
call the 'Uni-verse', which comes after this real of science,
which is the type of radical unlimited opening that the
cause-(of)-science brings to the World from somewhere
17 8
THE
'
N O N - PHILOSOPHICAL
'
PARADIGM
prior to the World, and which will betoken the end of
philosophical authority. On one hand, in terms of an
immanent stance rather than of a decision which is mixed,
at once immanent and transcendent. And on the other, in
terms of the identity of knowledges: the identity, radical
in all senses, of materiality and of ideality. In other words:
we think firstly in-One and then in-Dual, or in-Duality
determined in the last instance by the One, rather than by
hybridising the One and the Dyad (as do philosophical
amphibologies) and thus impeding thinking, working,
and pleasure.
For example, the first operation, instead of transcend
ing or idealising the real, deciding and positing it as
ideality in the philosophical manner, devalorising it and
overvalorising it, civilising it and redoubling it, now
consists in re-materialising, as manifold and data, all
that gives itself as generality and totality, as attribute and
being, as a priori and essence. Rematerialising the ideality
of essences by reducing them to the status of inert singu
larities stripped of the power of transcendence, treating
them as passively offered right down to their innermost
secret reserve, withdrawal or invisibility: allphilosophy can
and must become the object efscience or identity. Because man
as cause-( of)-science is the secret-being, or the being of
an absolutely invisible real; all the rest, that is to say the
All or Being, ceases to be for him a secret, and becomes
visible to him.
17 9
F ROM DECISION TO HERESY
The second gesture (but it is identical in the last instance
to the former) now consists not in making use of philo
sophical objectivity itself, of broaching or opening it, or
even in over-objectivising this manifold, but in simplifying
it, removing the fold that turns it onto itself. In minimis
ing or reducing it to its ingredient of pure universality
or transcendence stripped of things, rules and universal
forms. A field of a priori objectivity, unlimited but devoid
of rational entities or philosophical syntaxes charged
with dividing and redoubling it; devoid also of all the
transcendent forms of the Other, and filled only with
this materiality of singularities - this field is the Universe
in its transcendental sense, that which is the correlate of
'simple' transcendence or the science of the One.
Here, in the most general terms, is how science does
not think: by dividing and under-determining the identi
ties of the real by means of generalities and totalities which
are equally and circularly charged with resynthesising and
redetermining it. And here is how it does think, in a non
philosophical manner: by giving itself (but renouncing the
division of) these identities of the real: inscribing them in
a Universe-space, disencumbered of its generalities and
its totalities, absolutely and actually unlimited, the data
of the World and of Philosophy reunited; in treating the
latter, finally, as a material according to identities which
are the only 'law' of the last instance, the only phenomenal
content of the rational norm. No longer Reason as reason
180
THE
'
NON - PHILOSOPHICAL
'
PARADIGM
of singularities, but Identity as that which determines
reason in the last instance.
What is the advantage of this paradigm? If philoso
phy is the knot of the general and the total, the fold
through which they impede one another and diminish
their capacity to describe experience, if it traces limits
and pronounces decisions, science deploys an already un
folded space, or one devoid of any fold. A transcendence
freed from its hybridisation with transcendent objects;
an absolutely uni-versal opening structured by origi
nal a prioris, but purged of any regional as well as any
philosophical-transcendental distinction, of any ideal
model that applies without exclusion to all possible
phenomena. While philosophy inhibits thought in the
Cosmos-function, deploying it there only to alienate it,
science is accompanied by the Universe-function which
is the radically universal space, free from decision, and
which it provides to singularities. While philosophy
ceaselessly knots and re-ties, crossing and mixing, in
order to enrich a real impoverished by decision, science
unbinds once and for all and dissolves the composites,
freeing singularity and universality from one another
so that they are now strictly identical rather than in a
relation of mutual belonging. No mystery or withdrawal
can any longer escape from this universal materiality of
singularities. And everything is identically, without any
difference at all, manifested as it is without remainder.
18 1
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
While philosophy surveys identities and accompanies
them with its interminable procession of models and
operations that are 'universal' but nonetheless restrained
(interpretation, decision, reflection, critique, semiology,
deconstruction, communication, etc.), science frees them
from their supercilious guardians charged with dispens
ing the geniality of sound thought and the norm of the
tradition, and makes them shine for themselves - with
a dull, almost bland lustre, no doubt - rendering them
unto this objectivity which is pure and stripped of the
false linings of objective things.
It is humiliating but necessary to hear this: there is
more real and really universal thought in, let's say, Riemann
and Einstein (but they are not the only ones) than in
Heidegger or Hegel. For the problem between science
and philosophy is not that of novelty, but that of reality.
And in these figures, there is the kernel of an experience
of thought other than the philosophical. We need only
extract this kernel, real rather than rational, and give it its
place in the cause-( of)-science, in order to see the claim
of philosophy - if not philosophy itself - instantaneously
dissolve like vapour in an infinite space. As such, we no
longer need the philosophical authorisation to think,
which gives and removes the forbidden-to-think ...
182
THE
'
N ON - PHILOSOPHICAL
'
PARADIGM
As far as philosophy is concerned, the only problem is
now that of its usage. The philosophy of philosophy, this
spontaneous auto-legitimation or hallucinatory auto
pragmatism, we replace with its finally immanent prag
matism, and that is to say: in terms of science, for it, and
from its sole point of view. Non-philosophers are not
anti-philosophers. Tuey are without doubt more Spinoz
ist than Spinoza, more Nietzschean than Nietzsche, and
perhaps also more Heideggerian than Heidegger, etc. But
it is because they have found, in the immanence of the
One, this Archimedean point that philosophy, for its part,
has always sought and always lacked since it has sought it
in itself, or, if need be, in a particular science, rather than
seeking it where it was, which is to say in science as such
in its identity. Non-philosophers invent an occasionalism
of philosophy, freeing themselves from the violence of its
auto-affirmation and its spontaneous idealism ...
18 3
What Is N on- Philosophy?
(1997)
Tran s l ated b y Tay l or A d k i n s
Non-philosophy cannot be born quite in the same way as
a philosophy. When philosophers present their doctrine,
they invoke a system of questions, influences and autono
mous decisions, but also of accomplishments and innova
tions that conform to the essence or authentic telos of
philosophy. There were many influences and decisions at
the origin of non-philosophy, and there will be new ones
along the way. But they do not determine its essence, nor
are they capable of explaining it. Rather than influences,
there is firstly a conjuncture reevaluating the essence of
philosophy itself, and not just some previous position
or other to be contested, extended or completed by the
new philosopher. Rather than an original decision, there
is the constraint of a discovery - within whose horizon,
185
FROM DEC I S I ON TO HERESY
however, decisions can be grasped in a continuous way.
However, the correlation of a conjuncture and a discovery
is still a phenomenon that might seem philosophically
intelligible without further elucidation. It can only give
rise to a non-philosophy when the discovery radically
exceeds this conjuncture, to the point of granting it only
the causality of an 'occasion' which motivates the thought
of the discovery without determining its essence as dis
covery; or the causality of a 'symptom' whose discovery
would allow us not merely to interpret but to explain, in
the strongest sense of the word, the mechanism of phi
losophy and thus its essence. A 'new thought' must be a
novelty in the real, rather than a thought; and rather than
registering the conjuncture, it must reduce it to the status
of a symptom, i.e. to that which manifests the essence of
its object, philosophy in person, capable of an explana
tion that emerges without any possible representation
in its object. Properly speaking, a philosophy cannot be
discovered - it can only be invented within certain limits,
because it can never treat the philosophical tradition
in its entirety in this way. On the other hand, since it is
condemned to the primacy of decision and the inability
to explain itself when faced with a discovery anterior to
all decision, philosophy of itself can only give rise to new
philosophies, never to a non-philosophy.
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WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
T H E P H I L O S O P H I CAL C O NJ U N C T U R E
A philosopher never presents her thought without prefac
ing it with a complaint concerning the philosophical pov
erty of the times, nor without opposing it to the urgency
of the true and the authentic 'modern' philosophical deci
sion, which is simultaneously coherent with the critique of
the age, its real demands and (big surprise ! ) the originary
meaning of philosophy ... Following the discovery that
lays down the law for it, non-philosophy cuts out and
delineates a conjuncture, using it as a material through
which to treat philosophy - not its 'all' but its identity.
Of course, nothing in the phenomena that constitute a
conjuncture is really new or emergent. A conjuncture is
not a radical emergence - it is a new twist, the new face
of an essentially old situation that dominates the present
rather than actually appearing; nor is it a purely factual
constraint: it is we who decide, in a certain way (without
arbitrary voluntarism), on what constitutes a conjunc
ture. From this point of view, three phenomena, three
singular points, are knotted together, overdetermining
one another, so that their correlation seems to constitute
the current philosophical situation.
On the one hand, there is a doxic dilution of the
philosophical tradition. The traditional aspect of Philoso
phy has always displayed some sort of doxa or superior
and knowledgeable form of doxa. But once attempts at
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F ROM DECISION TO HERESY
rigorous science, from Plato to Husserl, are foiled, this
doxic origin reappears, transformed into a universal mar
ket of philosophical flows. Since the Platonic, Kantian and
Husserlian 'scientific' revolutions were nothing but breaks
and therefore not radical enough, philosophy returns to
its sophistic source in the contemporary form of its usage
by intellectuals, scientists and the media - essentially
appropriated, we say again, by a will-to-speak taking
philosophy as an object. An extended doxa or sophistry,
it crudely admits what it has always been: an aid to politi
cal or everyday decision, continuously plunging into the
technology-all, the ambient technologism. Nevertheless,
several theoretical, pragmatic and institutional regimes
of philosophy coexist. In one aspect, philosophy can be
treated as a quasi-natural activity with invariant proper
ties which would be interesting to explain as such - not
least since its becoming-mediatised grafts itself onto this
perceptual, representative, imaginary and thus hardly
spiritual nature. But of course, as exceptions to this
becoming-mediatised, there are the 'serious academic
philosophers' - quite deadly serious, indeed mortifying
- who can only save it by 'embalming' it (Nietzsche); or
the 'serious critics' and the 'hermeneutic engagement'
of phenomenology, which are local activities or subsets
of the grand tradition, and which can neither modify
the bases of the latter nor renovate its general style, i.e.
its metaphysical presuppositions. They discover their
18 8
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
true signification in functions that are at best those of
'respiration' or of the 'possible', of non-creative critique
or critique as alibi, functions that they fulfil within the
academic world. This is to say that the apparent exceptions
to this process, through which it grows and enriches the
noble part of the tradition - for example, deconstruc
tion or any other philosophical endeavour to which a
proper name can be affixed - are nothing but effects of
resistance to this dilution, as it comes into contact with
those reified and institutional forms - dead forms, in
short - that constitute 'academic philosophy'. Like any
other market, the market of philosophy thus comes up
against sites of resistance that present themselves in the
name of the 'tradition' and the 'serious', but they are no
more new than the sophistic grounds and mediatised
will animating the oldest philosophy, with which they
never cease to turn, in a vicious circle. Kant said that
metaphysics was an ocean without shores or lighthouse:
what does this say about the element of waves, flows and
communication, mobile and turbulent, this element of the
market that subsumes, in new forms, the metaphysical
ocean? Giving itself philosophy as its point of applica
tion while modifying its conditions and its objectives,
non-philosophy resumes the Platonic project: no longer
philosophy as science 'overcoming' opinion, but a non
philosophical science taking philosophical opinion itself
as object. The norm of truth - which philosophy seeks
18 9
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
and a priori attributes to itself without possessing the
proper means to do so - is discovered by non-philosophy,
by reducing its claims of metaphysical origin, in the
form of a simple 'transcendental' theory (but one that is
identically scientific and philosophical, which changes
everything) - a theory of philosophical systems, rather
than a new system of philosophy.
The second trait of the conjuncture is a powerless
ness of philosophy with regard to 'new problems' - a
powerlessness that is nonetheless not new, but which the
conjuncture renders particularly visible. Philosophers'
universal complaint concerning what there is to think,
when this would be nothing but philosophy itself, is
symptomatic of a posture of delay/anticipation which
they affect to believe is accidental and the fault of the
preceding philosophy, but which is so structural that
it is one of the most certain criteria for recognising a
philosophy. We shall call 'philosophy', beyond any given
doctrine's claim to this title, any thought, explicitly 'philo
sophical' or not, that postulates that it holds within itself
its ultimate validity for itself and consequently for the
Real - and thus its radical non-subordination to the
latter. This postulation is more precisely the Principle ef
Sufficient Philosophy. But this statement suffices to reveal
philosophy's deep-seated malaise, i.e. its in-principle
inadequacy to the present of the conjuncture. The 'actual
present' of philosophy has only a divided depth, and
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WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
is not a conjuncture. It sediments old conjunctures for
which are valid only philosophies that have no actuality
other than a retained one (a retentional actuality) or else a
claimed one (a protentional actuality) that is nonetheless
maladapted in principle. It thus manifests in regard to
regional experience and its problems a claim, an empty
and general meta-regional anticipation, and it pays for
this anticipation with finitude and anxiety - such is its
constitutional malaise. Philosophy and experience form
nothing other (or barely so) than a vicious circle, so that
the former is incapable of explaining the latter and is
confined to commenting on and 'interpreting' it. Except
from the point of view of knowledge, philosophy is not
sterile properly speaking, for it works to adjust man to
fleeting experience or to some particular knowledge or
another, or more precisely to make it tolerable for him.
It is a practice with local theoretical aspects, a pragmatics
and a therapeutics for humanity. It is perhaps the victim
of a poorly posed problem, but one that now forms a part
of its own clinical situation.
The third element of the conjuncture is the new philo
sophical terrain upon which non-philosophy is born
and from which it departed. It is at this point of the
conjuncture, as minuscule and invisible as it may still
remain to philosophical doxa, that the discovery proper
to non-philosophy took place, without being reducible
to philosophy - indeed, it exceeded philosophy, but
19 1
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
undoubtedly was only able to do so with the aid of phi
losophy. It is worth relating once again that a conjuncture
and a discovery are not the entirety of thought, and that
a certain philosophical common sense constitutes an
extension of what is essential to the normalised activity
of thought. But the conjuncture is precisely also this
point that is destined to change the face of thought and,
following this, to enrich philosophical doxa. Of what
does it consist here? It has produced a double change of
the transcendental terrain of thought after and indepen
dently of Heidegger, a mutation that renders obsolete
not the horizon Heidegger posited and called the 'end
of metaphysics' - a horizon as 'avoidable' as the famous
'unavoidable horizon of Marxism' (Sartre) has become
- but more exactly the claim to posit this horizon as
unavoidable for all thought. More decisive not so much
for Heidegger's thought as for his claim to delimit all
thought, there is, on the one hand, Michel Henry's substi
tution of the One for Being, of radical immanence for the
transcendence of the world. And, on the other hand, and
symmetrically, Levinas's substitution of the Most-High,
if one can call it that, for the Same, of infinite ethical
transcendence for philosophical immanence. By catching
Being - the pivot of traditional philosophy - in a 'pincer
movement' between the two extremes of immanence and
transcendence, this allows us to show at least that it is
technically possible to treat philosophy otherwise than
192
WHAT IS N ON - PHILOSOPHY?
through itself - even if these authors have not found a
serious or positive 'scientific' recourse other than the
phenomenological for this treatment.
It is possible, with certain caveats, to baptise the Real,
which posits a certain non-philosophical 'identity' of
transcendence and immanence, under the old transcen
dental name of the 'One' so as to bring forth a new cycle
of thought, a new general economy beginning with Being,
from the Greeks up to Nietzsche, continued by the Other,
from Freud to Levinas through Wittgenstein, Heidegger
and Derrida as mixed positions between Being and Other,
and ending - perhaps provisionally - with the One itself
placed in a position of priority, but this time radical.
It is impossible to gauge the extent of this change, and
it is thus a 'force' whose most innovative effects will still
take a while to be 'drawn out'. But it is obvious that its
presence alone relativises the 'end of metaphysics' because
it proposes for it a new, much more radical end through
another usage or its transformation. It could be that 'radi
cal immanence' in its transcendental and auto-affective
form (Henry) is still nothing but a half-solution, i.e. a
philosophical solution. A strange ambiguity traverses
Henry's recent work and becomes symptomatic: that
of auto-affection, the essence of immanence, and that
of identity, the new theme called upon to correct the
transcendental register, and which is at least as classical
as 'auto-affection', but reinforces it because it remains
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F ROM D E CISION TO H E R E SY
oriented around a 'trinitarian' thematic despite this appeal
to identity. In other words, in the majority of its current
uses, radical immanence seems to continue to belong,
if not to the most worldly transcendence of the Greeks,
at least to one last residue of religious transcendence
conveyed by the act of philosophising as such, and not
simply by certain of its ontological presuppositions. Henry
did not have the theoretical means to 'reduce' them, and
some of his successors even less so. Radical immanence,
auto-affection or 'Life' imply the critique of 'Greek presup
positions' and the 'philosophy' which the latter delimit,
particularly those of ontological intuition. But it is also
obvious that these presuppositions are broader than those
of intuition alone, and that 'radical immanence' , such as
it has been understood until now, has been understood
on the broadest terrain of philosophy and transcendence
insofar as the latter is (and remains here) the principal
organon of philosophy, giving rise to the pathos of 'Life'
and its perpetual coming to itself or 'auto-generation'.
As for Levinas, his infinite absolutisation of transcend
ence has the effect of an ethical and Judaic provocation,
which confirms that his thought is on the way toward
a reevaluation of the authority of philosophy. What do
we make of this ultimately religious double contestation
of philosophy? Among others, one of the objectives of
non-philosophy is perhaps to show how these extremes
can be brought into agreement if we discover the means
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W H AT IS NON - P H ILOSOP H Y ?
to suspend philosophy, which separates them and thus
opposes them in an irreconcilable way.
All the more so given that it remains to explore the
transcendental of the One, which had been as forgotten
as Being, and was still forgotten when the meaning or
truth of Being had been drawn out from the forgetting.
Still remaining a philosophical root to be brought back
to the surface of thought, the One returned to thought in
this ambiguous register of the radical immanence of 'life'
on the one hand, and the Other identifying the ego on
the other hand - ambiguous because it was able to orient
the investigation (indeed, this is what happened) toward
the idea of a subjective interiority, no doubt 'radical' but
still posited in opposition or 'immediate negation', i.e. in
the neighbourhood of transcendence, thus risking once
again the loss of the generic and complementary 'identity' with
philosophy within unilaterality, through which the One is One
and does not exhaust itselfin an auto-qffection. This was, in any
case, a novelty and a progression, a happy invention: while
the philosophical tradition consumed itself with chatter
that is simultaneously academic, intellectual and media
friendly, while phenomenology thought its recommence
ment in a historical mode, while the 'end of metaphysics'
was posited as the delimiting condition of any renovation
of thought, and while deconstruction pored over critique
and textuality, a true discovery occurred silently elsewhere
and was destined to remain unperceived for a long time
195
FROM DEC I S I ON TO HERESY
within the current configuration of philosophy, where it
would seem (and will always seem to the majority) but a
contradictory oddity. In presenting itself as phenomenol
ogy and as an offshoot of Cartesianism, it would not at
all do itself justice, thus testifying to its unstable combat
with philosophy. The best thinkers who use it, in fact,
maintain a strained relation to philosophy without having
discovered the principle of this tension, the 'force-(of)
thought' wherein the One - as real or immanent drive,
not as transcendental and phenomenological - exerts
and confirms its purport. These philosophies of radical
immanence are condemned to an aporia created by their
own originality, but from a half-originality insufficient
to legitimise itself - how, by what right, does one use
philosophy and its Greek presuppositions so as to speak
the immanence that escapes all concepts? Ambushed,
more or less directly, by a negative henology, they have
no response to the combined objections of metaphys
ics, scientific phenomenology and deconstructions.
So long as it is not clearly posited, outside philosophical
sufficiency, with adequate and novel theoretical means,
radical immanence remains a rough approximation.
These ways of thought have not freed themselves from
philosophical sufficiency and thus have not freed philoso
phy itself and the 'Greek' in philosophy.
Non-philosophy is apparently born, in its first form,
in the immediate neighbourhood of these philosophies of
196
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
immanence, but from the start under the tutelage of the
One. Responding to the demand for a thought that would
finally be adequate to the One rather than to Being or the
Other, it has progressively specified and limited its own
objectives by laboriously developing its own techniques
and concepts. Considered from outside, it can seem like
the solution to the preceding aporia (how to 'speak'
the One, how to 'conceptualise' radical immanence?),
justifying the recourse to philosophy as inevitable, and
its transformation by 'dualysis' - the practice of 'unilat
eral duality' - as the only possible procedure. But the
invention of the method of 'dualysis' and the solution
to the aporia would suppose an understanding of the
radicality of immanence as a special form of identity rather
than as the immediatised mixture of an auto-affection.
This alone could make us admit that, if it is impossible
to exit philosophy, the true question is that of knowing
whether we ever entered it; and that, in any case, only a
force-(of)-thought as vision-in-One can free itself, not from
philosophy in its materiality, but from philosophical suf
ficiency. Vision-in-One is therefore neither an abstraction
of the metaphysical triad of One, Being, Other, nor even
a neighbouring concept. Consequently, if the identity of
immanence has never been thought by philosophy, which
has thought nothing but a transcendent One (or a trans
cendent and immanent One as in later Platonism), this
powerlessness cannot constitute a determining motivation
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
for non-philosophy. Non-philosophy has passed through
the philosophies of immanence momentarily in order to
discover their impulse, but will no longer cross paths with
them except to discover in them an 'occasional' cause.
It also speaks of radical immanence, laying claim to it, but
it means by this concept something different than these
philosophies, and proposes another usage of it than that
of any possible philosophy. This is its specific discovery
of 'vision-in-One' or the 'One-in-One'. Thus we leave the
conjuncture, to approach non-philosophy itself.
F R O M T H E T RAN S C E N D E NTAL O N E
T O VI S I O N - I N - O N E
Th e discovery (the meaning of this term will have t o be
elucidated) that founds non-philosophy is that of the One
such as it is, i.e. in its radical autonomy, as One-in-One
or vision-in-One. Philosophy knows the One as convert
ible (with several nuances, ranging from dissymmetry
and disparity to differe[/a]nee) either with Being (the
transcendental philosophy of the Ancients and Moderns)
or with the Other (contemporary, semi-transcendental
philosophy and 'deconstructions'). That the One be pre
cisely convertible, or simply associable, able to be paired
with something else and ultimately with thought - such
is the ultimate principle of philosophy, regardless of all
doctrinal and thematic diversity. But this convertibility
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WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
has a specific meaning: it signifies the powerlessness of
philosophy to think the One strictly reduced to itself, the
nothing-but-One. It only thinks identity in general and
a fortiori the One itself in and through its amalgamation
with Being, the Other, and sometimes beings; as accom
panied by other transcendentals and within the universal
horizon - a completely predicative and logical, even
logocentric horizon - constituted by these predicates.
From this point of view, which we provisionally suppose,
non-philosophy's thesis might be as follows: the One in its
solitude is unthinkable, but the sufficiency of philosophy
consists precisely in wanting to, and believing itself capa·
ble of, thinking it such as it is; whereas it only thinks it as
it is, as such. Non-philosophy then can seem like thought
abandoning the One, thought letting go of this claim
and this contortion around the object which is ontology,
no longer wanting it, i.e. wanting to think it. Thought
could therefore always be indebted and obligated to the
One without still claiming to determine it as it would an
object, be it the most secret or most high. However, this
interpretation of non-philosophy's origin, aside from
the fact that nothing would force it to conclude as to
the positivity and specificity of the One as in-One and
vision-in-One, still remains on the terrain of philosophical
motivations - it is altogether in the Heideggerian style,
even if it relates to the One (a henological Difference).
It ends up in a simple anti-philosophy and always relies
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
on philosophical sufficiency, i.e. the supposedly relative
absolute autonomy of thought. How do we restore to
vision-in-One the radical novelty of its discovery?
A new approach, no doubt still insufficient but already
more accurate than the preceding, consists in positing
that vision-in-One exceeds a solely philosophical type
of discovery; that it is simultaneously, even identically,
motivated by philosophy and science - not by a par
ticular philosophical doctrine or scientific theory but
by the essence of the former and the latter, insofar as it
is possible to grasp them on the basis of their immedi
ate claims, yet only in a sense we accept ( as material, at
least) . Vision-in-One is not an 'arbitrary' invention, a new
ultra-philosophical or mystical decision, for it only has
meaning in so far as it is produced on the basis of (but
also beyond ) thought in its two major forms which are
science and philosophy. This is a discovery that indeed
takes place in thought, and thus always somewhat with its
assistance. But it is such that, if it must be able to identi
cally explain the phenomena of science and philosophy, it
also radically exceeds them, together with the horizon they
form, an horizon that can no longer integrally determine it.
As a result, it becomes capable of giving a veritable but a
priori explanation of what philosophy has always been,
a philosophy to science or of science, a mixture of the
two - an epistemo-logical Difference.
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WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
But if vision-in-One is a discovery carried out in thought,
and, in part, with the concurrence of philosophy, if it must
also be capable of explaining the latter, we still do not
know the possibility of the essence of discovery, or that
which 'in reality' explains its explanatory force, and which
can and must no longer have any relation to philosophy.
The radical autonomy of the One, the plane or element
of non-philosophy, once again and this time without the
residue of an ultimate relation to thought, 'exceeds' the
discovery itself and its operation. How do we 'pass' from
the latter, which is always relative and without primacy,
to the One of vision-in-One insofar as it is radically
autonomous 'in relation' to it and determines a veritable
non-philosophy instead of a 'negative philosophy' or even
an 'anti-philosophy'? So as to simplify the givens of the
problem, let us posit that the One discovered in and by
thought is by definition a radical One distinct from the
'transcendental' One of philosophy, since it must indif
ferently relate itself to any form or autonomous type of
thought whatsoever and must, in particular, respond to
a scientific type of explanatory requirement. The latter
stipulates that this radical One not be confused, even in
part, with the difference of philosophy, with the body of
phenomena to be explained: that it be heterogeneous,
but within the limits in which it by definition involves
an (explanatory) relation with thought. Thus to explain
thought (as epistemo-logical Difference) is an ambiguous
20 1
F ROM DECISION TO HERESY
formula, because the radical One must relate itself by
essence to the thought to be explained, but without
exhausting itself in it. Vision-in-One, if it indeed pos
sesses this capacity proper to discovery a fortiori, is no
longer definable by it and does not exhaust itself in it.
This is the meaning of its radical autonomy, immanence
through and through without the slightest fragment of
transcendence; not an autonomy that is absolute or is due
to an auto-position using transcendence, re-positing the
latter as is the case with the great entities of metaphysics.
Thus it no longer involves any de jure positive or negative
relation with thought; neither positing the latter with it
nor expelling the latter from it, it is really indifferent to
transcendence.
Once again, how do we 'pass' from the transcendental
One to the real One, how do we bridge the gap between
the former and the latter, if these questions at least still
have some meaning, i.e. if this instigation of the 'philo
sophical recovery of foundations' is more than a mere
semblance and constitutes (as hardly seems likely) the
non-philosophical method? The real One is gi,ven with and
by the transcendental One, but without being alienated by this
gi,venness or constituted by it. In order to speak of these rela
tions, we introduce the thematic of cloning: The real One
is given in the sense that the clone supposes what clones,
where givenness is second like the clone in relation to
the cloned, but transparent to the latter. It gives the real
202
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
One completely, and precisely it gives it in its integrity
without commencing it, deferring it or conditioning it.
The principle of the solution is therefore as follows: the
radical One of vision-in-One can only be discovered in and
by thought as a force that is identically explanatory and
transcendental, identically scientific and philosophical,
discovered by thought as that which it is; if it is already
discovered or already given such as it is, as such, to thought
without its aid (as the transcendental would be ) . As such:
discovered in flesh and blood in its immanence, given
without an operation of givenness. Discovery only finds
its full phenomenal meaning if it itself depends upon a
Discovered-without-discovery that radically 'precedes' or
determines it. The One is the Real or the given 'in itself' :
not as an in-itself outside thought, but as the in-itself- ( of
the ) -phenomenon itself, which precedes or determines
thought, an in-itself that is neither ontic nor ontological
but seen-in-One through and through. It is on this con
dition that it can be given- (to) -thought, i.e. without the
aid of thought, without its determination by the latter.
More heteronomous to thought than the transcendental
One, it is primarily indifferent rather than heteronomous,
and this indifference determines the heteronomy of the
transcendental One to thought.
This is the phenomenal or real content of the formula:
'non-philosophical discovery of vision-in-One'. The pro
cess might evoke the ontological argument, but its being
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
applied to the One or the radical phenomenon rather than
God or Being totally modifies its character and pertinence.
Once it is reduced to its theological content and pinned
to the three corners of the trinity or Philosophical Deci
sion (of which it is an inevitable mode), the essence of
the ontological argument signifies that the self-evident
necessity of passing from thought (qua being) to being
(qua thought, for example in the cogito) necessarily
supposes a One-thought-and-being whose function is
then maintained by God. The One, as much 'being' as
one decides it is, and precisely because it is only 'being',
remains a transcendental One without attaining to a real
One. In this approach, non-philosophy seems to infer the
latter from the former, but this 'conclusion' is not one that
is structured by Philosophical Decision, for it is precisely
not any kind of inference or 'passage' whatsoever. In any
case, the vision-in-One-(of)-the-transcendental-One (in
whatever sense we take it) is definitely not a continuity
or a leap: a leap of thought into existence, a continuity of
thought with being, assured by the transcendental One.
The non-philosophical relation requires other formula
tions. We shall say that the transcendental One in the new or
traniformed sense is that which the real One clonesfrom thought
or the World. From the cloned to the clone, there is neither
leap nor excess, neither supplementary 'transcending'
nor even that half-leap, that gentler leap that is the 'turn',
but a reflection-without-reflected, unless the radically
204
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
immanent One is reflected and alienated in its image or its
transcendence as in a mirror. We shall say that thought is
determined-in-the-last-instance, via the 'mediation' of the
transcendental One, by the real One; or that thought is
determined by the Real not directly, but simply in the last
resort ('in-the-last-instance'), and directly by its transcen
dental essence. There is no conversion or reversion, just a
completely immanent 'turn' between the transcendental
One and the vision-in-One which forms the real content
of the new transcendental subject but which remains in
the Real without alienating itself in this subject. In the
transcendental One, we do not see the real One in the
transcendental, intentional and phenomenological sense
of vision, in the sense in which one would see it or even
turn into it. But this transcendental One is only given if
it is itself seen-in-One or cloned. There is no difference
between the real One and the transcendental One insofar
as they are 'seen-in-One', i.e. given in the mode of the
real One. Hence the real One is already in the definitive
state of 'givenness' when the transcendental One is given.
It suffices to think in the mode of this transcendental One
- this is thought itself reduced to its non-philosophical
essence - in order to think not the real One but accord
ing to the real One and according to its radical autonomy
of the Real in regard to the transcendental One itself.
The transcendental One, the subject, is simply the first
position (and the essence of the position-in-thought) of
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
the real One. If the real One is like a Last Instance or a
Prior-to-priority, the cloned subject is the essence of its
position or its first givenness, and it is through the latter
that the One determines thought or transcendence 'in
the-last-instance'. The 'last instance' is not simply the last,
first-and-last, cause of metaphysics, but instead annihilates
the latter and its transcendence as being nothing but a
backworld. There is no longer any backworld, because
the Real is completely given without an act or operation
of givenness, and because the phenomenon or the Real,
in its essence, is radically worldless. Nonetheless, there
is a cloning by the Real of the transcendental instance
or the subject.
Thus, for positive phenomenal reasons rather than
anti-philosophical reasons, non-philosophy renounces any
attempt to ultimately think the Real or the One, which has
no need of it and is indifferent to it, sufficing as vision-in
One. If there is some thought that is not philosophical or
scientific, separately and/or inclusively, it exerts itself in
the form of the transcendental One, and thus according
to the One without still claiming to be a 'science of the
One' in the metaphysical manner. The true non-idealist
limitation of thought has been obtained. Understood as
One-in-One, radical immanence can no longer be obtained
or produced by an operation of radicalisation, purifica
tion or auto-affection of transcendence, an operation
that enslaves it to the task of founding transcendence, an
206
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
eminently and definitively philosophical task. In general,
thinking is not a passage or becoming between contraries,
the excessive leap of the 'ontological argument' or the
half-leap, the little jump of the 'turn'. There is no becom
ing of thought, of the World toward the One, of the One
toward the World - no amalgamation or dialectic - there
is only the immanent performation of a structure. Whoever
has 'seen' the transcendental One has already seen the
One-in-One ...
RE MARKS O N T H E C O N S T I T UT I O N O F
N O N - P H I L O S O PHY
Between conjuncture, discovery and invention (philo
fiction), while progressively thematising them, non-phi
losophy has undergone, since Philosophy I, three or four
mutations of its object and its parameters (rather than its
grounds or terrains), designated as Philosophies II, III,
IV and, currently (2009-2011) V, along with a great deal of
analytical work, specifications and corrections carried out
between any two of these stages. Philosophy I as a whole
is still governed by the Principle of Sufficient Philosophy,
despite including several themes capable of invalidating
philosophical systems (the One as identity of the indi
vidual, the transcendental, the theoretical domination of
philosophy), which it will suffice to turn in all directions
and bring into play as one of the factors driving breaks
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
or lines of weakness and leading to a reevaluation of
the authority of philosophy. Without belonging to non
philosophy, it certainly announces several motifs of the
latter. Even the discovery that inaugurates Philosophy II
and a general reworking of these themes - vision-in-One
as human, 'ordinary man' announcing the future theme
of 'generic humanity' - is itself an ongoing process in
its formulation and is no doubt still not completed,
supposing it ever can be. The elaboration of the stakes,
effects and limits of vision-in-One has been a lengthy task,
since it long remained captive not only to philosophi
cal formulations, but also to philosophical limitations.
It was necessary to take together, on the one hand, the
strict unilateral order that goes from the Real to thought,
from the vision-in-One to theory, an order that passes
through the transcendental as clone seen-in-One; and
on the other, the rectification or reciprocal deepening
of the formulations of vision-in-One and those of the
thought called 'non-philosophical' precisely stemming
from the One. Many hesitations and resistances have
been encountered by non-philosophy, with many more to
come, arising from the confusion between the unilateral
but de jure complementary order of the instances (of the
Real, the transcendental, force-(of)-thought, philosophy
material) and the anarchy of invention or theoretical
research, always more or less in the grip of philosophical
authority and its vicious circle, always threatened with
20 8
WHAT IS N O N - PHILOSOPHY?
losing the dignity of theory and falling into the games
with which philosophical sufficiency occupies itself. It is
obvious that if we began with the acquisition of vision
in-One (Philosophy II) before perceiving its validity for
the philosophical field and the inevitable suspension of
philosophical authority, first positing the radical One as
simple requirement repressed by philosophies themselves
(particularly those of Differe[/a]nee) and before inferring
thought by induction and deduction on the basis of the
One and philosophy complementarily, this is because
philosophical sufficiency still held us fast with many
undetected ruses. A reciprocal action of vision-in-One
upon philosophy (what are the consequences for its
authority?) and of the latter upon the former (how do we
adequately think the One or according to the One?), little
by little drove the point of departure for non-philosophy
back outside the vicinity of philosophy, science always
assisting in principle. It took all that time to correctly
grasp the requirements implied for thought by such an
experience as that of vision-in-One as 'foreclosed' or indif
ferent to thought; and in order to limit the total-power of
philosophy so as to make way for the radical given such
that, in reality, it comes of itself 'futurally', or sub-venes
and operates this limitation by determining thought in
the-last-instance. Now that the essential bases have been
acquired, Philosophies II and III seem like a work of vari
ations - of specifications, explanations, analyses - upon
20 9
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
non-philosophical structure. Philosophy II theoretically
establishes the entirety of the schema. Philosophy III is
dedicated to various ethical and Marxist themes. Other
accents have appeared little by little, such as messian
ism and the meaning of Christ for thought (IV). Lastly,
Philosophy V, which is still underway, reprises a theme
already present in the beginnings of non-philosophy, a
rather paradoxical theme - namely that of a privileged
affinity between vision-in-One and science. It also intro
duces more systematically a major liberation of this struc
ture from philosophy, by suspending the transcendental
postulate and actually positing the scientific differential
as generic, through a certain use of quantum mechanics.
Non-philosophy is so continuous, diverse and monoto
nous in its themes that its being divided between II, III,
IV and V will prove rather artificial if taken as a claim to
linear evolution. It is more a question of kaleidoscopic
views, all similar yet rearranged each time, on the game
of non-philosophy. Each book in a sense reprises the
same problems 'from zero', again throwing the dice or
reshuffling the cards of science, philosophy, Marxism,
gnosis, man as Stranger and Christ. The essence of non
philosophy would be, let's say, fractal and fictioned.
2 10
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
T H E U N IVE RSAL I TY O F N O N - P H I L O S O P H Y
Non-philosophy is a radically immanent practice, and
this is precisely why it is heteronomous to philosophy.
It considers and treats the latter in terms of its universality
and its traditional 'all', not in terms of the diversity of
its problems. There are two ways in which this is done:
( I) From the point of view of its material, it is examined
in its most singular concepts and philosophemes, but
on condition that this philosophical given not remain
in the state of an amorphous assortment of objects and
statements (there would be no possible science of this
non-object), but that it be susceptible to a preliminary
formalisation, and that its factuality be provisionally
reduced to a structure, that of Philosophical Decision
(of the mixture, the empirico-transcendental doublet,
etc.); (2 ) From the point of view of that in it which is
non-philosophy's object and no longer its material, it is
reduced by the Last Instance which determines its 'all'
and its 'being'. Non-philosophy phenomenalises the real
identity-( of)- or (for)- philosophy, an identity that is valid
for the new a priori structures (unilateral duality, cloning,
material) capable of explaining its various properties.
This is why, both from the point of view of its material
and that of its object of knowledge, it is truly a theoreti
cal practice of philosophy and not a particular doctrine
or position to the exclusion of others. For example, it
211
F ROM DECISION TO HERESY
is a non-Marxism or a non-phenomenology in virtue of
its philosophemes and its statements which specify or
effectuate the structure of Philosophical Decision and
obviously subsist at the core of its own discourse as the
materiality of its own statements. But it is insofar as it is
non-philosophy that it is non-phenomenology, for exam
ple, and it guards against limiting its own relevance merely
to the initial decisions of phenomenology, considering
them only qua already reduced to their own philosophical
universality. Thus a multiplicity of presentations of non
philosophy is possible, and this testifies to its plasticity
and its universality rather than to a formalism. In this
sense it would instead be of the order of an organon.
For example, because of this new (generic) universality,
that of real identity, it cannot assume one hypothesis of
the Parmenides over another, except as mere material.
The hypotheses of the Parmenides are retained entirely
within the horizon of transcendence or the ontological
predication of the One, evert as they deny its Being or
predicate it directly or indirectly (by supposition) of
the Other or the Multiple. This horizon is that of the
philosophical co-belonging of the One and Thought,
Being and Thought reciprocally mediating themselves
alongside the One. Whence all those 'hypotheses' which
are merely modes of the One's convertibility with Being,
non-Being, the Other or the Multiple, and which allow
philosophy to deploy its intelligible heaven, traversed by
212
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
so many storms. If the history of philosophy can seem like
a perpetual dismemberment and traversing of the Parme
nides, henceforth it can no longer assume the all of the
latter, even if this all is decided by a transcendental 'One'
which is simultaneously internal and external, immanent
and limiting to it. It only assumes this 'all' as real in-the
last-instance and as determined by vision-in-One rather
than by a new philosophical decision. On the one hand,
non-philosophy only posits the real One as inconvertible
or non-commutative with all transcendentals, even with
the transcendental One as simple clone. This indiffer
ence, nevertheless, cannot mean that it is exclusive of
any relation or that it cannot enter into any 'rapport', for
it can 'enter', without alienating itself, into that radical
relationless relation of immanence which is its cloning
of thought. On the other hand, it reserves for thought a
non-Platonic or non-philosophical status of hypothesis:
not a relative-absolute or an-hypothetical hypothesis, but
hypothesis as clone of its object, as a position 'cloned' by
vision-in-One. This change in the status of a transformed
Parmenides supposes a re-elaboration of non-philosophy's
style of 'hypothesis'. If philosophical hypotheses on the
One give rise to a system, auto-closing themselves into a
One simultaneously immanent and transcendent to them,
non-philosophical hypotheses cannot close the Real and
even less close themselves and roll up into a relative
absolute system; instead they remain as, definitively,
2 13
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
hypotheses. From this perspective, the Parrnenides and
the neo-Platonic attempts to prolong it in some, indeed
all, of its hypotheses, can at most designate the system of
possible philosophies or lead to a 'negative philosophy',
which is everything philosophy can do to itself, but which
cannot generate a non-philosophy.
The discovery of a 'radical' capable of suspending the
principles of philosophy could undoubtedly only do so
in the vicinity of the greatest objects of philosophy, the
transcendentals, but henceforth on condition of ordering
them according to the real-One and reducing them to the
state of givens or positions cloned or determined-in-the
last-instance by the Real. What can sometimes seem like
a protraction of neo-Platonism, following Damascius,
for example, by postulating an 'ineffable' One whose
transcendence and immanence are reciprocal, is an una
voidable philosophical appearance. What is more, this
appearance is necessary, since in general such appearances
motivate the philosophical resistance and sufficiency that
non-philosophy requires. Non-philosophy's 'principle'
is the ultimate status of the One or the Real, no doubt
reduced to immanence, but indifferent to any suspicion
of reciprocation with transcendence, at least such as is
used by philosophy. So that the One it uses has never
given rise to a negative henology, an auto-negation or
an auto-limitation of the logos. If there are aspects of
such an auto-limitation or auto-suspension, they are not
2 14
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
even simple means of non-philosophical discourse, but
objective philosophical appearances of this discourse.
This generic universality of non-philosophy explains
its style of reference to philosophies. A conjuncture already
possesses its own universality; it must be cut out and
delimited as a singular set of singular points. But in its
lengthy elaboration and constitution, non-philosophy has
used, and will always use, as what it calls its 'materials'
rather than its 'influences', Marx as well as Husserl, as
much Descartes as Kant, Derrida just as much as Deleuze,
etc., without giving rise to a syncretism (which would
have no meaning for non-philosophy since it is not a
philosophical position). This is the force of its weakness
(or the other way around, as a philosopher would argue),
of its ultimate status and its radical poverty: as a stranger,
it speaks in all philosophical languages without recog
nising itself in any of them or claiming to belong. From
this perspective, our conjuncture is not simply the doxic
drift of philosophy - its becoming-commodity through
its scientific, political, artistic appropriation - it is not
merely the 'philosophical ballet' wherein philosophy
fails by trying to 'dance' ; it is also the 'noble' philo
sophical tradition constituted by singular statements and
several proper names. But these exceptions can signify
only that a thought that would be adequate to the iden
tity of the real should take these singular points into
account as rigorously as possible within the conjuncture.
2 15
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
What would be the point of a non-philosophy that didn't
register all the enquiries posited and carried out by Hus
serl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida? That would not
be valid for Deleuze, Henry, Badiou and perhaps also
the 'analytics'? Such a broad calculus would be dubious
for philosophy, obviously; but it is necessary for non
philosophy, lest it reconstitute a new metaphysics on
the basis of its themes. It is indeed philosophy, insofar
as it is structured as a metaphysical sufficiency, that must
be thought and consequently excluded from the sole
essence of non-philosophy. Non-philosophy is vested in
philosophy and does not believe, through naivety and
new sufficiency, that it should be simply written off, above
all in its contemporary forms which are most attentive to
the philosophical gesture. No doubt philosophical resist
ance prefers those who reject philosophy (it knows that
they participate in its belief) to those who explain it and
come to it as to a destiny to which they are nevertheless
essentially strangers.
N O N - E U C L I D EAN AN D N O N - PARM E N I D EAN
Let us put these indications into rapid effect, through
a statement of Parmenides himself; one, moreover, that
is decisive in demonstrating the universality of non
philosophy. Parmenides announces a universal axiom
for what philosophy has become: 'The Same is Being and
2 16
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
Thinking'. This axiom is directly that of the structure of
Philosophical Decision insofar as it posits the correlation
or convertibility - give or take various specific differences,
folds or refoldings - of Being and Thought. We obviously
oppose this axiom to that of non-philosophy, which is that
Being - at least insofar as it is understood as the 'Real'
- determines Thinking without reciprocity. In reality, we
oppose it to two forms of the same axiom according to
the level of the instances in play: (I) Being, in the sense in
which it would designate the Real, determines Thinking
in-the-last-instance or without reciprocity - this is the
'force- (of)-thought' ; (2) More completely, as the radical
identity of Being and Thinking, force- (of)-thought deter
mines thought in-the-last-instance as non-philosophy.
Moreover, what matters is that, on the new basis of vision
in-One, which is neither Being nor thought but perhaps
the generic Same, this is a 'unilateral' relation which
establishes itself between these old oppositions or, better
still, between the real One and their relation of opposition
and sameness such as it is posited by Parmenides. On the
one hand, the real One is positively non-Parmenidean - it
is the Discovered or the radical Manifested; but it alone
allows us to posit really non-Parmenidean axioms or
axioms which are not auto-critiques of philosophy, and
to remove philosophy from its own enclosure. Being and
Thought are no longer, separately or together ( according
to the various doctrines ) , co-constitutive of the Real,
2 17
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E SY
but only, and in-identity, force- (of ) -thought as vision-in
One. It is thus a question of a limitation of philosophy,
of its interpretation of Being and Thought, rather than
of the latter themselves. On the other hand, the axiom
of unilateral determination is fully and positively non
Parmenidean, or uses the Parmenidean axiom only in
order to suspend it, not to posit itself and validate itself
on its basis through a sort of auto-negation.
Hence thought gains in universality what it loses in
the will to power and domination. Because it posits the
One as convertibility with the Same, philosophy must
posit that to each determination of Being (i.e. also to
the Real, in the sense that philosophy can understand it
as 'total' or system of the Same) there corresponds one,
and only one, determination of thought, reciprocally or
bi-univocally. But now, with the real One as indifferent
to the dyad of Being and Thought separated, to each
determination of the Real One there corresponds no
single or privileged determination of Being and Thought
(indifference of the Real) ; but instead an infinity of these
determinations, each equivalent in regard to the Real,
either because these thoughts are philosophical deci
sions which are in every way without adequate relation
to the Real or non-exchangeable with it, simply being
in a relation of transcendental illusion; or because these
thoughts are non-philosophical effectuations on the basis
of determined philosophies, which are then adequate
218
WHAT IS NON -PHI LOSOPHY?
in-the-last-instance to the real-One in their multiplicity
but always without being able to co-determine it bi
univocally. Or, in 'non-Euclidean' style: philosophy is
the general thesis that with the Real there corresponds
one and only one thought (one philosophical position
or system). Non-philosophy suspends the validity of this
limiting postulate, which is overly empiricist and can only
lead to theoretical impotence and to a state of conflict.
It generalises or universalises philosophy a priori by free
ing it from a postulate that is foundational within certain
limits, but which conceals from thought the vision and
practice of its most transformative form. It is obvious
that the suspension of the Parmenidean axiom as syntax
is accompanied by a modification in the objects or terms
at stake; and that the One, Being and Thought change
meaning and relation in their modified usage. With the
dawning of a syntax of unilaterality, non-convertibility
and determination-in-the-last-instance which affects the
philosophical assemblage of the One, Being, Thought,
the Other and the Same, these transcendental entities are
reduced to the state of simple non-philosophical a prioris,
and are taken as identities of a new type: through cloning
(the One as transcendental subject), in-the-last-instance
(Being and Thought or the Other) or as object of experi
ence whose a priori identity is sought (the Same, the All,
the Mixed, etc.). All these operations employ a philosophi
cal material but are unintelligible within philosophy itself.
219
F ROM D E CISION TO H E R E SY
Apparently, from within philosophy alone they can seem
like subtractions: from the One is retracted or subtracted its
usage of the Same, from Being its claim to the Real, from
Thought its claim of co-determination of the Real, from
transcendence, which is always double, its redoubling;
from the Same its function of quasi-totality or quasi-system
in order to be reduced to the state of simple material of
non-philosophy, then more specifically, of simple support
in itself of non-philosophical a prioris. But this is an intra
philosophical interpretation that somewhat betrays the
spirit of vision-in-One, for these are positive subtractions,
subtractions of-the-last-instance.
Ultimately, the emergence of a non-Parmenidean
thought is not that of an anti-Parmenidean philosophy,
but firstly supposes the introduction of a new 'point of
view' or experience- (of the) -real that can never be obtained
by philosophical operations, that must already be given,
and to which thought's only task is to render itself ade
quate. Non-philosophy is therefore not a modification
of philosophy nor, in particular, another attempt at a re
commencement within the space opened up by the retreat
of metaphysics in its essence and its end. We thus can
not imagine any ongoing transformation through which
the old One would become the One-in-One. From the
One-Being to vision-in-One or One-of-the-last-instance,
there is neither passage nor even 'identification' and
'radicalisation'. There is the radical discovery of a given
220
WHAT IS N ON - PHILOSOPHY?
which has not been given by philosophy but which opens
an 'infinite' field of possibilities. Discovered-without
discovery or Revealed-without-revelation - above all
without revelation - vision-in-One establishes a universal
thought as generic, a thought that uses philosophies only
as materials and models. Which explains why the usage
of the 'non-Euclidean' model only became possible at the
theoretical origins of non-philosophy due to the primacy
of the One-in-One 'over' all philosophical forms of the
One. Of course, it is still the subject who, as cloned agent,
posits for the first time - prior-to-priority - what is held
within indifference to thought. But one can now question
whether the relation between non-philosophical thought
and its 'object' (the One-in-One) is any longer of the
reversible or philosophical type, for example a relation
between two consciousnesses, one phenomenological and
naive, the other philosophical, one the non-Self and the
other the Self Self; instead, it is a relation of cloning
and determination-in-the-last-instance. The Real and
knowledge are not transcendent to one another like the
terms of a philosophical dyad. In non-philosophy, it is
still 'ordinary' or 'generic man' who thinks and explains
the philosopher.
=
221
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
T H E B E I N G - F O R E C L O S E D O F T H E REAL
A N D T H E N O N - P H I L O S O P H I CAL S O L U T I O N
The different relations of philosophy and even non-philos
ophy to vision-in-One are gathered under the general title
of the Real's foreclosure. Here the term does not have its
strict psychoanalytic signification, although it maintains
certain affinities with it. We shall distinguish between two
meanings of this term, both of which register the absence
not of every relation but of any relation of reversibility
between the One and thought, the indifference of the for
mer and the effects in the latter. There is a foreclosure that
we shall call secondary, perhaps not exactly a repression:
the foreclosure of the Real, of Identity, by philosophical
type thought. Since the One is neither thinkable nor
unthinkable on this side of the philosophical antinomy,
philosophy refuses this situation and claims to make the
One fall under the antinomy, concluding that it is either
thinkable, unthinkable or an amalgam of the two. It is
this primary refusal opposed to the Real by philosophy,
the refusal of its most original powerlessness to think the
One, that is the secondary foreclosure. When philosophy
declares the One-in-One unthought or unthinkable, or
when it is forced to regulate this problem through a
negative henology, it radically rejects it without even
trying to repress it. Such a foreclosure is at the origin of a
radical transcendental appearance that affects philosophy.
222
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
It consists in a transcendental rejection of another being
foreclosed, specifically that of vision-in-One. The primary
foreclosure is more universal - it concerns both philoso
phy and non-philosophy, and above all it is the cause and
the object of the secondary foreclosure. This is the real
essence of vision-in-One's indifference with regard to any
thought, whatever it might be, or any immanent given
in regard to any givenness: of itself, without subtracting
itself from thought, without retracting from it, no doubt
also giving itself over to the solicitation of the latter but
without denying its indifference, without having any
need of it, i.e. of a givenness. Real indifference is not an
absolute indifference, i.e. an indifference through tran
scendence, autoposition or metaphysical abstraction. It is
a radical indifference through flawless-inherence-(to)-self
or immanence. Rather than a retreat outside thought or
a repulsion from it, the One is positively given-(to)-self
in the sense that it is constituted by this given or this
identity without any need of a givenness by thought or
being so as to confirm it, just to request it or to motivate
the acting of the Real. Such an indifference, real rather
than transcendental, neutral rather than affirmative and
positing or negative and denying, takes place before
any reciprocal relation with thought. But it is on the
one hand a 'negative' (and not 'negating') condition for
every thought, in virtue of its radical inherence - vision
in-One is imposed non-violently upon indifference, and
223
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
the latter is necessarily condemned to 'pass' through the
former, not to affect it but to let itself be affected by the
One and its being-foreclosed. And on the other hand,
it cannot alienate itself like an absolute being, given
its radicality, but can always be the cloned of thought,
which means that unilaterality is not the absence of any
relation but a certain type of complementarity of the One
and philosophy.
Thus the secondary being-foreclosed of the One is
a rejection or a transcendental foreclosure rather than
a repression; it takes on the form of a specifically meta
physical attempt not to repress or forget it but to pro
duce its anamnesis, to think it 'at last'. But its primary
being-foreclosed is no longer symmetrically a rejection
of thought by the One itself, but instead immanence as
radical inherence of the given-without-givenness, a being
foreclosed that necessarily affects thought. This immanent
One has its own way of being given to thought without
losing itself in it, like a cause-through-immanence which
can only act as a sine qua non universal cause, universal as
generic precisely to the extent of its immanence-(to)-self.
The thought that registers this radical being-foreclosed
rather than rejecting it, and is adequate to it or maintains
it and makes it valid in the World or philosophy, is non
philosophy. The latter ultimately refuses (for positive
reasons, not through powerlessness like philosophy) to
think the One-as-such in-person once again as an object
224
WHAT IS NON - PHILOSOPHY?
or in a similar mode through its transcendence of that of
the object (as Other, for example). Non-philosophy is the
solution to the following problem: what is the thought
adequate to the One insofar as it (is) One rather than inso
far as it is, i.e. insofar as it is taken in its identity radically
on this side of Being and non-Being, the Other and the
Multiple, and generally insofar as it no longer falls under
Parmenides' hypotheses? The identity of immanence
has been labelled unthinkable by philosophy, which has
discovered the expedient of its convertibility with Being
and then the Other so as to think it. But non-philosophy
is the thought that recognises for positive reasons, without
auto-critique, auto-negation or 'tribunal', that the One or
the Real does not require philosophy except as a material,
occasion or aid - in short, as a means.
The problem symmetrical to the preceding one is
then posited: does the One such as it is in-One, Identity
outside-Being, suffice by itself to determine a thought?
The solution is that it suffices to determine - but only
in-the-last-instance, thus with the aid of philosophy and
science, of the worldly forms of thought as occasional
cause - thought as 'force-( of)-thought' and in general as
thought whose objects and means are taken from science
and philosophy but treated as mere material. In order to
resolve this problem that philosophy has always deemed
aporetic, it is necessary to discover the 'key' to non-phi
losophy in cloning and determination-in-the-last-instance,
225
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
which dictate that the real One no longer be posited as
object-to-be-thought and instead be posited as immanent
cause for a thought-according-to-the-One. But the thought
adequate to the One, as to its cause rather than to its
object, must also be a non-philosophy, i.e. inseparable
from philosophy taken in its phenomenal sense, though
obviously not in its sufficiency. Absent any recognition
of philosophy as a complementary occasional cause of
determination-in-the-last-instance, even non-philosophy
itself will give birth to a new metaphysics; it will be born
from the refusal to recognise this resistance of philosophy
and this incapacity to limit the hubris of metaphysical
transcendence. Thought-according-to-the-One is the phe
nomenal content, real-in-the-last-instance, and thus the
critical content, of the old Greek project of a 'science of
the One'. It is the radical residue, the real kernel that it
exhibits when the reduction of philosophical sufficiency
is carried out by the transcendental subject now as clone
of the Real.
RAD I CALITY, U N I LAT E RAL I TY, C O M P L E M E NTARI TY
If categories are the concepts of the apophantic structure
of ontology, the transcendentals still more universal con
cepts of all philosophical discourse qua onto-theo-logical
or metaphysical system, philosophy has at its disposal yet
another distinct type of operative concepts, which are like
226
W H AT I S N O N - P H I L O S O P H Y ?
its own 'predicables': 'identity' and 'difference', 'absolute'
and 'relative', 'totality' and 'system', 'convertibility' and
'reciprocity'. From this point of view, the main 'predica
bles' of non-philosophy, which distinguish its general style
from the philosophical, are the radicality of the immanent
phenomenon and the unilaterality of relations. The first
is the major concept of the experience of the Real that is
at the core of non-philosophy, the second the concept of
the strange syntax which assembles the terms or rather the
identity of the terms or relations, i.e. 'mixtures' (another
predicable). It is another organisation in the form of
'unilateral dualities' that assemble phenomenal identities
(the real nucleus of terms and relations) and their mixed
philosophical forms, specifically the form of the terms
and relations. In reality, melanges or amphibolies form
the only complete and concrete fabric of philosophy, a
fabric from which are cut out the old antinomies of the
terms and relations, of external and internal relations, by
an entire system of operations and distributions which
are analytic, synthetic, dialectical, differential, atomistico
logical, etc. For these two reasons, non-philosophy is not a
thought of terms rather than relations, of the parts rather
than the whole, of the local rather than the global, etc. ;
but of unilateral identities (individu-alities or undivided
dualities) which 'invalidate' philosophical antinomies.
' Radical' is neither 'absolute' nor 'principial [Prin
cipie� ' , but is said of the One as vision-in-One, i.e. as lived
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FROM DEC I S I ON TO H ERESY
identity and lived experience-(of)-identity or immanence
through and through. Identity as such, that of which
philosophy knows nothing or whose 'existence' it refuses
(and precisely because of this wants to make it be or exist
when it is without-being or worldless) is neither a new
absolute - for the absolute is always both relative and
absolute, a mixed entity with neither the simplicity nor
the radicality of the One - nor a new principle or a first
cause - for a principle is a mixture of primacy (the real)
and priority (thought) and does not simply enjoy primacy
like the real One. Only the transcendental clone, the sub
ject, can be the first cause, or indeed itself is it - but only
qua clone. Radical is said of identity as an autonomous
sphere or instance, precisely autonomous in a radical
and not 'absolute' way; or of immanence insofar as it
does not contain within it the least bit of transcendence
(world or philosophy) and such that the radical 'precedes'
radicalisation or determines it in-the-last-instance rather
than being the product of its operation. Precisely because
of its universality, radicality understood as that of the
Real prohibits a new systematic thought and inaugurates
a generic theory of philosophical systems (rather than a
'theoretical system', which is an abstract formula), a theo
retical practice open to philosophical and scientific givens.
In other words, vision-in-One announces the suspension of
the validity of thought by 'principles', or acts as a 'radical'
reduction of the philosophical or worldly stance, which
228
WHAT IS NON- PHILOSOPHY?
are henceforth the same thing. The 'radical' style takes
the 'principial' as its object, just as its axiomatic - cloned
from the mathematical and purely transcendental - can
take the mixed ontologico-mathematical axiomatic of
philosophy as its object.
'Unilateral' no longer has any philosophical mean
ing, although philosophy has incessantly required it,
but specifically as a foil, so as to identify it with the
'abstract', the 'dependent' and the 'incomplete'. If the
philosophical concrete is always bi-lateral and perhaps
even tri-lateral, thus adequately corresponding with the
system as relative-absolute, the non-philosophical radical
adequately expresses itself through unilateral dualities
or, more rigorously, 'mixtures' (but not melanges) of
immanence and transcendence, which are both a pri
ori and valid in-the-last-instance for philosophy. But
don't dualities contradict the radicality of unilaterality?
Its potential absoluteness, but not its radicality. In short,
schematically, the radical is the Real which (1 ) sometimes is
lived as One withoutforming an all or a unity; (2) sometimes
presents itselfas a duality which (J) whilefulfilling itselfpracti
cally as unifacial or one-sided, is immediately interpretable,
at least by philosophy, as one ef these dualities ef opposites
which are the life and movement ef the latter. These duali
ties are unilateral due to their relative autonomy, due to
the non-intervention of vision-in-One which determines
them without amalgamating with them, and due to its
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
indifference which has its 'negative' specific 'action' of
indifference. 'Unilateral' has a double meaning that is not
completely circular, because it can precisely only make a
one-sided circle. It is said of the term of empirical origin
'against' the real One, against philosophy, and above all
against the transcendental One or the subject with which
it establishes a circle of objective appearance. It is also
said as 'unilateralisation' which indifference, exercised by
this transcendental One of the subject upon the empirical
term, produces by combining itself with the autonomy
of the latter.
U nilaterality is said not so much of the Real, which
is but its negative condition, as of the dualities aroused
by the occasional cause which is the philosophy-world.
It is the minimum of relation or syntax tolerated by the
transcendental One, signifying the suspension, if not the
dismemberment, of philosophical syntaxes. It constitutes
a new 'form of order' which no longer amalgamates prior
ity (now assigned to the empirical term and its occasional
intervention) with prior-to-priority (now assigned only
to the Real, to the phenomenon which is always in-the
last-instance), and which therefore 'radically' dismantles
philosophical hierarchies. For example, it is neither an
internal, substantial and idealist relation, nor an external,
logical and atomistic relation, but permits the elaboration
of a 'unified theory' of external and internal relations, and
thus (to jump forward a little) of 'Continental' philosophy
23 0
WHAT IS NON -PHILOSOPHY?
and so-called 'Analytic' philosophy (of the predicative
transcendental style and the logical-propositional style,
etc.). Here as elsewhere, however, it is possible to make a
philosophical misuse of radicality, where the latter is no
longer anything but an attribute of immanence instead
of being its real essence; and of unilaterality, where this
transcendental property cloned by the Real is confused
with transcendence, which is of philosophical origin,
and doubled.
As always, non-philosophy has no quarrel with any
philosophical habitus as simple objective property of the
'phenomena', but for the remainder, i.e. the essentials of its
stance, it is more than an ascesis, it is, if you will, the 'spirit
of ascesis' that moves in the already-reduced before any
reduction. It begins when it is forced to renounce certain
facilities which all philosophers (not only contemporary
philosophers) agree to define philosophically, and through
an auto-cutting-out of that which critique or deconstruc
tion should suspend or eliminate. It is therefore no longer
dogmatism (Kant), representation (Hegel, Nietzsche,
Heidegger), logocentrism (Derrida), i.e. the inferior and
limited, inferior or metaphysical forms of philosophy,
that it 'critiques', but instead what is most 'superior' in
philosophy and is of a piece with its most representa
tive forms. No matter what object or theme, from the
most empirical to the most transcendental, it is indiffer
ently valid for both object and material and that which
23 1
FROM DEC ISION TO HERESY
deserves an a priori explanation, provided that it relies on
philosophical-type thought or that it be philosophisable.
To that end, it invents its own theoretical instruments
in view of its main practice, which is precisely dualysis,
the manifestation of the unilateral dualities that conceal
themselves in every unitary concept of philosophy. Hence
the organon of the force-(of)-thought acting upon these
philosophical givens and inferring, identically through
transcendental induction and deduction in accordance
with the subject, these dualities which are new a prioris
of generic origin. The substitution of generic theory for
the philosophical system is decisive here, namely because
it is a question of a transcendental theory, and thus of
one that conserves an essential philosophical ingredient,
but in reduced form.
The general form of its a priori explanation is this
relation of unilateral duality which is the identity, a radi
cal identity, (of) the reciprocal or bilateral relation of
philosophy and the functional relation of science. From
this point of view, non-philosophy first realises itself and
exerts itself as what we call a unified theory of science
and philosophy. It introduces (but under the reason-of
the-last-instance of vision-in-One) the scientific relation
to objects into philosophy and the philosophical relation
into science. More precisely, the transcendental One as
clone of the Last Instance brings about the unification
without-synthesis of the transcendental relation to the
23 2
WHAT IS NON- PHILOSOPHY?
phenomena proper to philosophy, and of the heterogene
ous explanation to the supposedly 'in-itself' properties
that belong to science, because it conceives the Real in itself
postulated by science as being in-the-last-instance phenomenon
through and through, and because it conceives thephenomenon
as in itself or real.
A M Y S T I CAL K N OW L E D G E - ( O F ) -WO R L D
To the widespread question: what is it to think?, non
philosophy responds that thinking is not 'thought', but
performing, and that to perform is to clone the world 'in
Real' . Above all, it does not think the Real (that would be
yet another philosophy ) but is the minimal and the radical
that ultimately oblige thinking and inventing, the most
One-adequate thinking, adequate to the One's principal
inadequation to the Real. Thinking the world according
to the last or before-first One rather than according to the
couplet of the One and Being, of the One and the Other;
of the One insofar as its solitude is before any abstrac
tion, outside these melanges. In other words, a mystical
knowledge of the world is here not a clinging to, but on
the contrary a detachment from, the world.
The being-foreclosed of the real-One seems to render
any thought impossible, but it only renders the claims of
philosophy impossible. This is not because the real-One
is open to every thought that presents itself to it, open
23 3
F ROM D E C I S I ON TO H E R E SY
rather than closed; it is because it has its own way of
necessarily affecting thought by virtue of its very indiffer
ence. Yet this indifference no longer affects it through a
direct operation and an objectifying activity that it merely
receives passively. If identity truly remains in itself, in its
radical inherence-( to)-self, without consequently passing
through the double transcendence of philosophy, it can
not but 'affect' every thought insofar as it is its negative
universal condition; or, any thought can only exist by
being forced toward it or having to 'pass' in one way or
another through its immanence, which it 'gathers up', if
you will, through vision-in-One. Ordinarily, either the
'first principle' actively affects thought, or is actively
affected by it or by the World, of which philosophy is
the universal figure. But the One, not as a possibility
but as reality, affects every active or passive possibility
of thought. The being-foreclosed of the Real is paradoxi
cally what 'opens' it to the World, or instead opens the
World to it. Radically autonomous, or indifferent rather,
in regard to the World; but precisely no more exclusive
than inclusive of the World, no more turned toward it than
turned away from it, simply because it is neither negation
nor annihilation of the World and its predicates (Being,
Thought) but foreclosed to the world, its 'negative' uni
versal condition. It is paradoxical that a 'vision-in-One',
so mystical in its essence but not in its objects, settles
neither for any withdrawal outside the World nor for any
23 4
WHAT IS NON-PHILOSOPHY?
exclusive contemplation of the One as divine. Here there
is no longer an active, always transcendent, contemplation
of the One. And if vision-in-One does indeed determine
a mystical stance, it is a mysticism-( of)-World - and no
less so, moreover, than a passive and lazy acceptance,
like that of which philosophy can always be suspected
due to its idealism.
Non-philosophical knowledge properly speaking once the essential first terms are posited quasi-axiomati
cally - is of the order of an inference of the most universal
theoretical structures, a priori structures that are valid
for and that speak of, no longer a primary experience,
but this new experience constituted by philosophy and
science in their unitary separation, their unitary exclu
sion and synthesis ('epistemo-logical Difference' ) . Such
an inference proceeds via induction and deduction, but
transcendental induction and deduction. Therefore this
is a radical phenomenalisation in-the-last-instance of
philosophy in its a priori structures as well as a process
involving scientific-type reasoning. Non-philosophy is
nothing but the continuation of the vision-in-One at the
core of philosophy and science through procedures that
are identically scientific and philosophical. Ultimately, if
non-philosophy complies with a theoretical and pragmatic
interest, it is paradoxically a question of an interest in
the World, i.e. philosophy, which gives it every possible
form and which it transforms through its explanation.
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
Philosophy is interested in the World only via some
withdrawal or difference, thus in a divided and deferred
thought favourable to bad conscience and ressentiment.
Instead, vision-in-One throws thought once every time,
without deferral, to the World. There is no higher func
tion than to explain, a priori, the World, i.e. the unity
of the primary experience, of science and of philosophy.
But the renunciation - for the positive reason of vision
in-One - of the culture of the metaphysical One, of the
transcendental as supposedly real and first, is the condi
tion for the emergence of a unilateral or 'unidirectional'
thought attributed unreservedly to the World in this
new sense. This renunciation of meta-physical hubris,
of a divided or double thought, is thought according to
the One. One of non-philosophy's implications is that
man as vision-in-One is a generic subject rather than a
metaphysical animal, consigned to philosophy for reasons
of which he knows nothing.
T H E F U N C T I O N AN D R E S I S TAN C E
O F P H I L O S O PHY
Let us broach the most unpleasant aspect of the relations
between philosophy and non-philosophy: its reception
through its resistance. There is nothing glorious in this,
but it all merits an analysis. The place and function of
philosophy are deduced exactly from the radicality of
236
WHAT IS NON-PHILOSOPHY?
vision-in-One and the duality of the two causalities it
requires: that of the real One as determination-in-the
last-instance and that of philosophy as occasional cause.
Both are necessary, for heterogeneous reasons, for the
production of non-philosophy. In particular, philosophy
is simultaneously an object of experience or a field of
objective properties and, owing to its basic sufficiency,
a new 'expanded' concept of the world. The impression
that philosophy plays an excessive role in non-philosophy
stems from the fact that the functions of the former are
now clearly defined and specified. Under the regime of the
Principle of Sufficient Philosophy, philosophy incessantly
refers to itself, but this interest in or concern for itself
goes unnoticed or passes for natural, since it is not truly
elucidated but merely practised naively or unconsciously.
This simple difference, however, is still insufficient: it is
clear that philosophy is far more decisive and important
for itself under the regime of sufficiency, than it is for
non-philosophy once the Principle is suspended. Tue
objection according to which non-philosophy overval
ues philosophy or has not invented its 'own' language
would be laughable were it not the direct expression of
philosophy's resistance. And this is the case in all pos
sible instances.
Indeed, when this objection comes from militant phi
losophers, it sometimes means that they no longer want
philosophy at all, or that they imagine that the project
237
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
of non-philosophy is a putting to death and a radical
overcoming of philosophy; sometimes it demonstrates that
they regard non-philosophy as ' still' (despite their own
objection) and 'basically' philosophy, and as crudely self
contradictory. These two forms of the objection comprise
a system and echo one another in the circular service of
resistance; they form a philosophical antinomy because
resistance can only operate under the antinomian form
on the grounds of a global refusal or foreclosure of the
identity-( of) -philosophy. The debility of these objections,
in all its unfathomable depth, is ascertained quite precisely
whenever they are concentrated in the accusation of 'philo
sophical parasitism' - as if the physicist, for example,
were the parasite of the object she studies, the parasite
of 'particles ' . Here too, the sufficient philosopher, who
is content with consummating philosophy by producing
its minimum - remaining especially preoccupied with
reproducing its consummation even when she produces
works, being effectively parasitical upon tradition, living
on and from Plato or Hegel or Nietzsche - projects onto
non-philosophy her bad conscience and ressentiment.
If there is an ultimate residue of 'parasitism' in non
philosophy, then it stems from this basic philosophical
parasitism, but with the benefit of its transformation, such
that the non-philosopher is kept from practising a simple
retaliation. But the argument from resistance possesses an
even more comical form: non-philosophy does not invent
238
WHAT IS NON-PHILOSOPHY?
its own concepts, its own language? Either there is a read
ing error, a dyslexia before the non-philosophical text,
whose labour of syntax, conceptualisation and above all
formation of a new vocabulary is not perceived; or there is
a fetishisation of the word, that is held to be either ancient
or new - a logocentric illusion, if ever one existed, of the
ex nihilo creation of the words of philosophy. When it is
known that philosophical language at every level is but
natural and common language reworked, functioning
under a regime of 'superior' meaning, it must again be
proclaimed that philosophy is in a far less favourable
stance for what is called inventing a new language than
is non-philosophy. Even what, to all appearances, owes to
the idiosyncrasy of its author - a conceptual concentra
tion and over-determination felt to be excessive - also
finds in the non-philosophical style of thought and its
usage of the concept a reason and a justification, neither
of which is absolute .
Now, when the objection comes from the side of the
direct neighbours of non-philosophy - certain users of
radical immanence - it bears witness to a misunderstand
ing of the precise meaning of the endeavour, a misunder
standing that grafts itself onto philosophical resistance,
which finds therein one last trick. The main axiom of non
philosophy can be formulated in entirely quasi-Kantian
terms (nevertheless remaining not anti-Kantian but simply
non-Kantian) : if immanence is truly radical, if it is truly an
239
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
identity, then it must be, as much as the 'thing in itself' ,
but not in the same way (through immanence rather than
through transcendence) absolutely devoid of any determi
nations or predicates other than its identity, which is not
a simple predicate in its essence or its content alone, but
identity through and through. Consequently, immanence
is not inner sense, neither internal transcendental experi
ence nor any other depth that would be attributed to the
One. In order to describe immanence, on the other hand,
one cannot avoid using philosophical models such as that
of the internal, and eventually scientific ones; but they
must be used precisely as mere models of an axiomatic,
and no longer as predicates . These models are no longer
'anthropologies' (Leibniz) or 'metaphors' , but ought to
be called 'philosophies' in which the concept is required
only insofar as it is material to be reworked according
to exact rules, and as a support for non-philosophical
a prioris. By ignoring the duality of the Real, or more
exactly that of its clone and its positing/givenness - a
duality in which the former determines-in-the-last-instance
the latter - one slips imperceptibly into philosophy and
its prejudices, and again into amphiboly, mixture and
every philosophical teleology. It is inevitable that such a
transcendental appearance (re )constitutes itself and that
non-philosophy is put back into circulation alongside
philosophy, re-established on the philosophical scene,
upon which it must then cut a sad figure.
240
WHAT IS NON-PHILOSOPHY?
To summarise these considerations touching upon the
situation of non-philosophy within an intense philosophi
cal milieu:
1 . In the eyes of philosophy, non-philosophy has only a
single fault, which is not 'theoretical' : the fault of existing.
There are neither objections nor responses to objections;
there is a resistance, and there is an a priori defence against
non-philosophy.
2. In the eyes of non-philosophy, philosophy possesses
the merit of existing but the fault of concluding from
existence to the Real.
T H E P H I L O S O P H I CAL P R O H I B I T I O N O F I D E N T I TY
A N D C LO N I N G
Thinking i s the clone o f the Real, but precisely not as
the Real or any part of it. Cloning is no longer the active
operation of a duality or binary fission, a division, but
is instead vision-in-One, as One itself, (of) thought or
of an Other, extracting a clone from it: not a double of
thought or the One itself, but a (transcendental) identity
that is said of thought or is related to it as its occasional
cause. Here cloning is itself differentiated: if the One
clones thought in the form of the transcendental One,
then philosophy is also cloned by it in the form of uni
lateral dualities, the essence of which is identity. In this
sense, philosophy is cloned in the form of a unilateral
241
FROM DECISION TO HERESY
identity, insofar as it is reproduced under conditions
of philosophical repetition, i.e. under conditions that
exclude Difference. The transcendental One is the origi
nary clone, the essence of empirical clones that are of
regional or fundamental origin. Cloning is a biotechno
logical procedure that seems to threaten human identity
but really threatens only the difference - particularly (but
not only) sexual difference - that is supposed to define
the essence of man. It could be that non-philosophical
cloning, although extremely different, is also entirely
'prohibited' by philosophy, i.e. by the supposed 'differ
ence' of the essence of man. Either non-philosophy will
sink with all hands into the philosophical indifference to
which resistance will turn; or it will have circumvented a
covert barrier, namely the prohibition of identity, which is
as essential to philosophy as the prohibition of incest and
cloning is to societies. This is what lends a profundity and
a seriousness to philosophical resistance - to resistance
and misunderstanding. For clearly, from non-philosophy's
point of view, incest and the bad identity of difference, the
lack of true heterogeneous duality, are, on philosophy's
side, powerless to think identity and duality in their
radicality. Cloning is the surest destruction of the image
of thought, of the procedures of projection and reflection
at the heart of 'representation' , processes from which
philosophy has never been able release itself, captivated
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WHAT IS NON-PHILOSOPHY?
as it is by the transcendental imagination even once it has
escaped from the empirical image.
T H E I N C R E D I B L E C LAI M S O F N O N - P H I L O S O P H Y
Philosophers, who love rashness, i.e. sufficient reason, also
love to have the last word; non-philosophy would refuse
'discussion' or 'dialogue' and shatter the consensus that
founds the community of thinkers and even the essence
of thought itself.
L What thinker, whoever it may be, would not want
to shatter the consensus that is always that of ancient
thought, that of the old normalising alliance? Who does
not thank Freud for having shattered the consensus of
the psychologists and philosophers ?
2. What concept is more oppressive or suffocating than
that of consensus? Consensus is the lazy and hackneyed
argument of contemporaries (even the notions of ' demo
cratic discussion' and 'communication') , the de facto sanc
tification of the state, as well as that of the institutional
normalisation and fetishisation of thought. Philosophers
who invoke such arguments clearly do so out of weariness
at the struggle, renouncing their single-handed mainte
nance of the sullied honour of philosophy. They do noth
ing but reveal the sophistical and opportunistic resources
of philosophy, its cultural and institutional bases.
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
3. Contemporary philosophy, which begins with the
'linguistic turn' and its different modes, has added a fifth
question to the four Kantian ones, because it has not
responded satisfactorily to man's question: about what
can I speak (and not simply what can I think) ? Clearly,
it has thereby only revealed an originary possibility of
philosophy. But discussion and communication, ordered
up to this point by the will to science, have unleashed
themselves as the will to speak and have given rise to a
micropolitics of speech which is the low point of thought,
the point at which philosophy dissolves itself into its
own doxic and linguistic nature and cannot resist the
temptations of its essence. Against this congenital decline
of philosophy - a decline which is neither its 'death' nor
its 'end' - non-philosophy opposes not the beginning of
a new philosophical position, but the undertaking of a
unified theory of science and philosophy, unified under
minimal conditions.
244
P h i l os o p hy a n d N o n- P h i l o so p hy
(1 9 9 1)
Translated by Anthony Paul Smith and Nicola Rubczak
The expression 'non-philosophy' can take on two com
plementary meanings.14
In its widest conception, it is a new distribution of
the relations between science, philosophy and thought,
a distribution established on the basis of distinctions
and definitions that are no longer of philosophical ori
gin but which, strictly speaking, we must call scientific.
We will explain why. In its narrowest conception, it is a new
practice - precisely, a scientific practice - of philosophy,
which is thereby relieved of its own authority.
14 On the foundation of non-philosophy and its practice, the reader is referred to the
preceding 'Letters' [in En tant qu 'Un (Paris: Aubier, 1991)] and above all to my Philosophie
et non-philosophie (Liege/Brussels, Mardaga: 1989).
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
Broadly speaking, non-philosophy registers a twofold
discovery regarding the traditional claims of philoso
phy: 1 . Thought - as distinct from understanding - is not
the privilege of philosophy; there is an authentic and
specific thought in science, a thought whose form is in
fact completely different from consciousness, reflection,
meditation, a form that is, in particular (but not only) ,
'axiomatic' (meaning: anapodictic, irreversible and pro
ceeding via invariant identities) ; Q. Access to the real,
to the ultimate and absolute essence, is no longer the
privilege of philosophy. In and through science, there is
an experience of the last instance of the real or absolute,
qua intrinsically finite or immanent, precisely in so far as
science also comprises a thinking and not only a stock of
knowledge. This specific real of science is characterised by
its radical immanence, without relation or transcendence
( . . . of transcendence) . It may be called the One, and is
completely distinct from the Being that is the principal
object of philosophy. In its essence, science offers the
experience of thought outside of the limitations of Being.
This thought-correlate of the One takes the form of a
mathesis distinct from every ontology or metaphysics.
And since it is a real or transcendental discipline, it is
also distinct from logical axiomatics and not just from
the transcendental logics that constitute so many philoso
phies. In any case, it demands a thoroughgoing correction
of the Greek and ontological concept of the One: this is
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PHILOSOPHY AND NON-PHILOSOPHY
what we call the 'vision-in-One', for which transcendence
(Perception, Reason, Language, Representation, World,
Being, etc.) is no longer constitutive, but functions merely
as occasional cause.
This is the 'minimal' and positively 'minoritarian' form
of thought. Concealed by philosophy - by the thesis that
transcendence is co-constitutive of the real - it must be
exposed and systematically described in its effects: for
example, in the refusal of the philosophical distinctions
between philosophy and science, sense and nonsense,
reflection and operatory technoscience, etc. It has become
possible to overturn that traditional distribution, made
by philosophy for its own profit, by making thought, in
its new conception, slide from philosophy toward science.
Although the bringing to light of this thinking grounded
in the One - and thus by its nature at once experimental
and axiomatic, but in a transcendental and no longer a
logical mode - is not undertaken against philosophy,
but against its claim to the absolute real, a claim now
consigned to the sphere of transcendental illusion.
In a stricter sense, 'non-philosophy' designates the
new response, thus rendered possible and grounded, to
that which must be called the 'labyrinth of philosophy' .
If reason, as Leibniz remarked, is put to the test by the
labyrinth of the continuum and that of predestination,
thought is put to the test by the labyrinth par excel
lence that is philosophy. Regardless of the attempts at a
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
'rationalist' solution, involving the closure or the suture
of Philosophical Decision onto some constituted field of
knowledge, philosophy has ceaselessly (and now more
than ever) tested itself, like a thought in a state of unease,
circular and aporetic, vicious and amphibological, amal
gamating impossible contraries, affirming its incoherence
as a new coherence, refusing the self-dislocation toward
which it nevertheless tends. For two-and-a-half-thousand
years, this thought has ceaselessly fired off its vain pyro
technics, paralysed itself in the 'grammar' of its Greek
decision; it has obfuscated every search for a thought
more rigorous and free. So do we need some new critique
or therapeutics? Not at all: philosophy has no need for
this injunction to take care of itself - it is already this
care of the self. Only a thought whose origin is other
than ontological constitutes the appropriate treatment
for this aporia in action. Non-philosophy is the 'scientific'
treatment, through rigour and reality, of the labyrinth of
philosophy - the solution brought to bear on this infinite
(and no doubt indestructible) predicament of thought,
but the only treatment that respects this difficulty com
pletely while preserving the possibility of a 'thought' that
otherwise risks disappearance, between understanding
and reflection. The science of philosophy, its thought-in
One, a real rather than a logical operation, is the means
by which thought leaves the labyrinth, which is to say the
means by which it recognises that it never entered into it.
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PHILOSOPHY AND NON-PHILOSOPHY
We shall lay out a brief parallel between philosophy and
non-philosophy, of that which we call, on the one hand,
Philosophical Decision and, on the other, vision-in-One.
1. Injunction or drive? Philosophy is the unitary and
authoritarian style in thought, a style of the injunction
or of the question posed by the Other. A Greek injunc
tion ('take into care beings as a whole') or a Jewish one
('keep care for the other as for a brother') . Thinking
by way of a motto: that which we must think, do, hope.
That supercategorical injunction defines a duty to philoso
phise, and a tradition; it is an authoritarian thought that
does not know the real as given, but only the supposedly
gi,ven, and demands that we believe in it: a philosophical
faith and a residue of mythology.
Non-philosophy is the style of the inner drive of
thinking in thought. Rather than duty and calling, it
is immanence as sole internal rule, it is the force-( of)
thought that remains in itself even in its efficacy. Far from
responding to an injunction or corresponding to a call
from the Other, it is a stance [postura�. It grounds itself
in the given (immanence) rather than the supposedly
given (the transcendence and mythology of rational facts
and language) ; within the finitude of the real-One, that
without which thought would be irreal and evacuated,
would be mythology.
2. Linguistic bondage orfreedom? Philosophy is the idea that
language is not merely an object, but is co-constitutive of
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
the real - and thus of philosophy. Philosophy amalgam
ates language with the real-One and attributes to it an
a priori and transcendental pertinence - it is the Logos
as the original linguistic turn of thought. There is no
philosophy that does not organise itself according to a
double articulation that reproduces in 'superior' form
the linguistic form of the latter. One half of philosophy
doubtless consists in a transcendental topology, but its
other half is a transcendental linguistics, even when it
ignores the problem of language.
Non-philosophy suspends that constitutive claim of
language, and recognises language only as conditional
condition, as an element that is necessary only ija descrip
tion of the real is attempted, but which does not amal
gamate with it; an element that represents the real in a
non-speculative and non-constitutive manner. It frees itself
from contemporary textualism and, in general, from philo
sophical prestige, through an occasionalist conception of
language (of syntax, textuality, etc.) . For, when taken in
hand by philosophy, language becomes the element of all
injunctions and the heaven of all mythologies. Whence
the complaint of philosophy: we lack words (Heidegger) ,
syntax (Russell, Heidegger) , grammar (Wittgenstein) ,
writing (Derrida) . The call-to-language turns back on
itself, as a call-from-language. For non-philosophy, on
the contrary, language is in excess, something more, but
not as an Other; it is not constitutive of the real, but is
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PHILOSOPHY AND NON-PHILOSOPHY
the occasion of a mere representation; flung back from
the real toward the knowledge that represents it without
constituting it.
3. Thinking = amalgamating or identifying? Philosophy,
although it is more than this, is thus always an exterior
image, specular and then speculative, of the relation
between thought and the real. To think is to alloy and
temper contraries, one by the other (the universal and
the singular, for example) . It annihilates them as terms
by dividing or crossing them out, then by doubling or
repeating the one with the other. Philosophy inhibits or
paralyses terms or individuals, it cuts out what it can from
force-( of)-thought by dissolving it in alloys, mixtures
and doublets.
Non-philosophy is the exercise of purely internal or
real-identical force-( of)-thought, with no transcendence
or image, except an occasional one. It goes from the real
to that which it is not (representation) ; from the given
to the supposedly given, by transforming it in turn into
an adequate representation of the given. So one term is
thought through another? Doubtless - on condition of
conserving the asymmetry in the causality, not transform
ing the 'through' into 'each through the other' or 'recipro
cal determination' . To think is no longer to amalgamate
the universal and the singular, but to assemble universal
representations as functions of the 'individual' real or so
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
as to represent it in the last instance alone. The rules of that
assembly are the rules of non-philosophical practice.
4. Appropriation or liberation efthe sciences? Philosophy car
ries out a threefold operation with regard to the sciences:
(i) appropriation efconstituted knowledge, produced by the
sciences, which philosophy needs and from which it draws
a surplus-value of authority and reality; (ii) resistance to
allproperly scientific thought, for which it substitutes itself;
(iii) unitary- or hierarchical-type unification of science which it exploits as knowledge and represses as thought
- and of the philosophy which dominates it.
Non-philosophy, as a specific thought of/in science,
is characterised by a wholly other approach: (i) it lets be
knowledge and its object without appropriating them to
itself through philosophical-type objectification. It places
between itself and knowledge a duality that is open and
free, never reappropriative or teleologically closed by a
mode of objectivation or by transcendence in general;
(iii) it suspends philosophy's claim over the real without
claiming to intervene in philosophy and dismember it, as
philosophy does with science; (iii) it is a unified, not unitary,
theory of the fields of thought: it proceeds via a duality-in
contingency rather than via appropriation, integration,
or hierarchisation. The placement of knowledges within
the universal space of theory suspends only the hierarchy
form, and lets them be as knowledges without ordering
them according to philosophical finalities. A unified theory
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PHILOSOPHY AN D NON-PHILOSOPHY
of philosophy and science proceeds by letting-be their
identity, by avoiding hybridisation and confusion. Science
is a thinking thought that remains within the immanence
of its exercise and recognises the identity of knowledge
as such. For example, we shall oppose axiomaticfreedom
to the givenness of philosophical meaning and to violent
operations of the same type (reflection, subsumption,
supersumption, differentiation, mediation, etc.) .
5. Unitary generalisation or axiomatic generalisation? Philoso
phy is universal (i) through its addition of the principles
of experience, through the supplement of alterity and
universality: the General and the Total, Being, the World,
Reason, Language, Desire; (ii) in its passing from the
empirical to that ideal generality: idealisation or even
abstraction, the conquest of ideal neighbourhoods, the
passage from a mode to the universal attribute and to
the essence; (iii) through its division of the singular or of
the determined by means of that plane or that universal
instance; (iv) through its integration, subsumption, etc. of
this determined to that instance; (v) through its idealisa
tion and conservation (regardless of various continuous
transformations) of empirical, perceptual and linguistic
intuitivity.
Non-philosophy universalises in a completely other
way: (i) The universal precedes universalisation and can
not be added to experience as a supplement. It is con
tingent experience, universal in a 'gregarious' mode,
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
which adds itself to that which is from the start, by
its One-essence, the true 'individu-el' (-al) instance;15
(ii) it neither idealises nor transcends experience; instead,
inversely, it reduces every essence or ideality to the state, if
not of a 'mode', at least of an 'occasion' , every attribute
to the state of a mere given or philosophically inert mate
rial; (iii) it manifests the very identity of the singular as
such without dividing it - or rather, it does not begin by
dividing it in order to manifest it; (iv) it determines or
singularises universal representations and orders them
according to the invidue(/a)1 real rather than the inverse;
( v) as axiomatic, it frees itself from empirical, perceptual
and linguistic intuitivity, and transforms it in a heter
onomous or discontinuous manner by putting it in the
service of the representation of the real-One. Axiomatic
or non-philosophical universalisation runs contrary to
the despotic or unitary universalisation of philosophy.
6. Complexity: through splitting or through simplicity? Phi
losophy proceeds via (i) division/doubling, scission/
redoubling; the interminable proliferation of vicious cir
cularities, of mixtures, doublets or alloys; a pullulation of
linguistico-philosophical artefacts; (ii) a complexification
i5
[Laruelle is here playing on the two different meanings of 'duality' that are available to
him in French and inserted into 'individuel/al'. The two forms of duality are markers
of standard philosophy, where there is a 'duel' or opposition of one term with another,
and non-philosophy, where there is a strict duality of identity between constitutive
and accidental conflicts indicative of philosophy and the One as individual. Cf. Rocco
Gangle's translator's introduction to Fram;;:ois Laruelle, Philosophies efDifference: A Critical
Introduction to Non-Philosophy (New York/London: Continuum, 2010) , xi-xii� trans. ]
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PHILOSOPHY AND NON-PHILOSOPHY
of the already complex (where the simple is a metaphysical
optical illusion) ; (iii) re-division of the amalgam of the
universal (-singular) ; (iv) extension (at worst) , intensifica
tion (at best) ; (v) continued fabrication of mythologies
(Being, Reason, Language, Duty, Desire, etc. ) .
Non-philosophy proceeds via (i) manifestation of the
simple or the (One) Identity as such before every doublet;
criticism of every philosophical complexity in the name of
the simple that is really simple (without transcendence)
and is no longer metaphysical; (ii) an irreversible causality
of simple identity over the philosophical complex, real
identity over the artefacts; (iii) universalisation grounded
on the 'individual' who is the true universal; (iv) given
manifestation in a really infinite space of understanding,
devoid of the teleological closures that accompany exten
sion and intensification; (v) production of free axiomatic
enunciations, of rigorous fictions that know themselves
to be real and freed from all philosophical mythology.
If philosophy is the culture of the Same and of dif
ference as the Same, non-philosophy is the thought of
Identity that precedes the Same and Difference.
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N o n-P h i l o s o p hy a s H e resy
( 1 9 9 8)
Translated by Taylor Adkins
De deux opinions et de leur difference
Trois motsJeront par tout le vrai departement
Des contraires raisons: seul, seule et seulement16
AGRIPPA n'AUBIGNE, LES TRAGIQUES, CHANT V
Presenting non-philosophy in a somewhat external way,
through its effects, we shall say that it is the solution to
two problems that the practice of philosophy poses but
to which it has never responded without attempting to
bias the outcome. The first problem is the programme
of a critique that is 'complete' , i.e. leaves no presupposi
tion uncritiqued or theoretically undefined. Distributed
amongst conflicting systems, parcelled out to the exact
extent that it is left to the attentions of 'professional'
philosophers, divided internally to the point of being
16
[Of two opinions and their difference
Three words will give the true deviation
Of contrary reasons: sole, alone, only. ]
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
implicated or compromised in its own critique, it is inevi
table that its reproduction prevails over its production, its
repetition over its renovation. Its auto-critique leaves it
intact in what is essential, i.e. in itself, soliciting nothing
but external objects. The duration of a philosophy's active
life is extraordinarily short, ephemeral; a philosophy is
barely born before it is old enough to die. Consequently,
it ensures its survival through its tradition and its institu
tionalisation, through the heroism of the will and ongoing
magic tricks, by means of which it ceaselessly reinforces,
more systematically through its perpetual redoubling, the
production of the doublets that only signify its weakness
and its precariousness, compensated for by sufficiency.
It exhausts itself in the research and culture of its own
possibilities, from the most elevated or most auto-critical
to the basest and most nihilistic, from auto-affirmation
to auto-negation (the post-metaphysical, the post-philo
sophical, etc.) . Its most secret mechanism is repetition in
the origin, albeit dissimulated in the name of difference,
that repetition which is the auto-potentialisation and
affirmation of (the will to) power and force. Only the
formulation here is Nietzschean; the concept is universally
philosophical. Non-philosophy is the motivated, positive
and founded refusal, as far as possible, to enter into this
revolving door. But only on the dual condition of expand
ing and identifying philosophy as 'thought-world' , the
only thought that 'makes' world, and of being given the
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NON-PHILOSOPHY AS HERESY
conditions of going to the end of philosophy's constitu
tive repetition, without denying its concept, thusforcing
it into simplicity. So we see that non-philosophy will not
define itself by new themes or objects but by a new style
of thought for 'any' philosophical object 'whatsoever' .
In order to make it pass from the doublet to the state
of simple thought, it is no longer possible to leave it to
itself; it is necessary to determine it and transform it into
the object of a thought according-to-the-real, which we
wager is simple or without doublet, is 'One', i.e. non
exchangeable with philosophy. But the real as One, what
can this mean?
The second problem: that of a human subj ect for
philosophy but one which is not implicated in it, a
subject capable of setting conditions for it rather than
the other way around, and thus limiting its sufficiency.
The two problems merge in this question: what is the
subject of 'Philosophy' , i.e. of its identity rather than of its
separate pieces in the form.of systems at once individual
and sedimented in a tradition? How to place it under a
determining condition? Non-philosophy is a theory of the
real subject for philosophy, but a theory that represents
in itself a certain rigorous practice of its object. Without
at all neglecting the traditions that serve as its materials,
it is thoroughly non-traditionalist - this goes without
saying - and even 'non-traditional' in the sense that we
understand this 'non-', namely as cumulating the forces of
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
what we call heresy rather than the false, the non-power
of hairesis rather than the powers of pseudos.
Until now, the critique of philosophy has never been
universal, has never been applied to the subj ect that
receives and thinks it, but only to a subject implicated in it.
It has always been split between auto-critique and hetero
critique, between metaphysics and philosophy, between
a subject who produces it and a subject who consumes
it, between scientific rigour and a vision of the world,
logical positivity and thinking thought, etc., and more
recently between the Greek logos and a 'Judaic affect'
which has been as decisive for the twentieth century as
the 'linguistic turn' . Divided between 'end' and 'return to
. . . ' , between post-( metaphysics) and neo-(Aristotelianism,
Platonism, Kantianism, etc.), it is not content with arrang
ing here and there the military and commercial frontiers,
the demarcations that territorialise thought and bring
about veritable transferences of conceptual technology.
It is a system of appropriations and delimitations, but
in principle always divided from itself. This particular
philosophical division of labour is fundamental, but
can be overdetermined by more localised oppositions
and divisions. In its spontaneous practice, it produces
images of itself, sometimes naive in their sufficiency and
loftiness ('strong philosophy') , sometimes desolate with
superficiality ('pop-philosophy') .
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NON-PHILOSOPHY AS HERESY
A universal critique of philosophy valid for all its divisions
and decisions first implies, in a preparatory way, that its
problem be posed in all its generality, in the universality
of its practices and forms, and consequently lifted above
the particular interests of professional philosophers or
'systems' . What concept could thus envelop and struc
turally span Philosophical Decision on this side of the
inter-systemic wars? We posit the following hypothesis to
be developed, nuanced and tested, which formulates the
structure of Philosophical Decision (the triangle Dyad
Unity) in a new way: philosophy is the capital-form in
thought. We do not say that the Marxist account is neces
sarily pertinent to capitalism, but that it 'fits' and is effec
tive for philosophy. The capital-form here is connected
with the commodity-form, and constitutes the other face
of the division-form of thought. Thus defined, it is uni
versally valid for all particular philosophical decisions. It
is articulated according to a duality of phenomena which
combine - this is its identity of division - into a single
structure. The first of these levels is in some sense its
base: this is the duality or dyad of the opposed concepts
through which it commences, the site of its reciprocity
or convertibility (according to the type of philosophy
concerned) , i.e. the exchange-form or marketplace of
concepts. The second level is that of the One of the dyad
or Identity, which itself has two faces: ( 1 ) What might be
called the philosophical division of labour, not between
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
the dyad, site of exchange or market of concepts and the
superior instance that regulates this exchange, but inside
the latter, divided between the production or the market
of concepts in which it participates and the appropriation
of this conceptual production. (2) This instance presents
itself as unique (even if it only functions through the
division that it is) and precisely as an appropriation of a
share of the conceptual production. Beyond particular
systems and their reciprocal critiques, which are merely
symptoms of this malaise, the true dimension of philoso
phy and its 'malaise' is that, obviously without being a
simple capitalist phenomenon in the historical and social
sense of this word, it is at least homologous with it and
represents capitalism and the consumption of surplus
value within the organisation of thought.
In turn, the philosophical market has at least a triple
form: ( I ) The internal market of philosophy, the exchanges
of concepts, critiques, arguments and techniques among
professional philosophers, the whole ideal life of philoso
phy, with its advances and regressions, its 'new philoso
phies' and its 'reactivating returns' to . . . (2) A second,
relatively closed market, but which indirectly underwrites
the first: the academic and institutional market of phi
losophy and its teaching and transmission, a market that
has been around since Plato and Pythagoras and whose
main function is to normalise, through the experts of
'thought' who control it, a median (albeit very erudite)
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NON-PHILOSOPHY AS HERESY
and transmissible philosophy, later to be purchased by
the S tate and distributed as 'thought-providence' or
providence of thought. (3) Finally, more and more active
and solvent, the mediatised market of philosophy, which
seems opposed to the second but in fact is of a piece with it.
Its span reaches from the small-scale commerce of 'ideas'
(philosophy cafes, debates) to the exchange-network
(Internet) , which is drawn on equally by institutional
and mediatised users of philosophy by way of the vague
approximations of a personal and capricious 'professional
critique' . The univocity of the structure of Philosophi
cal Decision as market and division of labour allows it
no longer to be abused by these three markets' specific
claims of ' originality', of 'seriousness' and of 'popularity'.
It gives a universal concept of the field of philosophy that
implies its identity as divided. It is all the less divided in a
simply external way because it includes or 'programmes'
the division of philosophy as constitutive of the latter.
It is thus as a philosophical concept that it considers
itself 'universal' .
This hypothesis, evidently rather schematic, neverthe
less allows a new formulation of philosophy and perhaps
at the same time an indication toward the attempt to
resolve one of the classical aporias of Marxism. On the
one hand, philosophy is the heterogeneous duality of
the Dyad (the market) and the One-(of)-division, of
capital as division of labour; and on the other hand, their
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
unity in capital, in the use it makes of the market with
which it should not be conflated, but with which it is
involved, being connected with it: distinct but inseparable.
According to Marxist interpretation, capital is inseparable
from the division of labour without which it does not
exist, but it is furthermore said of the totality that this
division re-forms with 'commodity' production when it
is appropriated. A nuance is thus introduced which leads
us toward the sense of universality we seek: we shall say
that philosophy is on the one hand the necessary market
of concepts, of their more or less reversible exchanges;
that it is on the other hand 'capital' or division of labour
of thought; and finally that it is the appropriation of
this labour of conceptual exchange and production, to
the profit of its identity - its capital - as philosophy.
This capture efits own identity through philosophy itself, we shall
call capitalism; but also 'thought-world' , so as to give it - since
it is precisely a question efphilosophy, not efhistory and society
- itsfall extent. The structure of Philosophical Decision
gives the broadest extent and the real meaning, which
develops its cosmopolitical dimension, of philosophy as
'thought-world' .
We all know that philosophy is not any thought what
soever, that it is partially contingent, no doubt - but that it
has found out how to acquire a necessity and a universality
that completely surpasses its practical, institutional or
geo-philosophical ('occidental') limitations. But why this
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N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y AS H E R E S Y
universality and this necessity? We do not know, any more
than we can really explain the universality and necessity
of capitalism. An important theoretical step along the
path of this explanation is taken when Marx discovers the
correlation of the universal commodity structure and the
division of labour that spans history. Perhaps it is possible
to take a similar step in philosophy, when we note that
it has essentially the same internal macro-structure as
capitalism, and that 'Philosophical Decision', under which
we formalise the philosophical gesture, is the correlation
of a universal structure of exchange between notions
and a divided unity that participates in this exchange,
yet exceeds and appropriates it. It matters little (this is
another, more empirical problem) which generated which,
or which is traced from the other.
This is the object of a new practice of critique: the
thought-world with its philosophical and theological
avatars. Any position internal to philosophy, and above all
to the doublet that philosophy is, cannot explain thought
expanded in this way and understood as world, but in
general can be understood through it. The task is then
no longer to seek a first or last possibility of philosophy
that it has not yet developed. It is even less to participate
in its mediatised nadir, its becoming-opinion. A com
pletely different type of decision is necessary 'against' the
thought-world, a decision as unknown to the philosophi
cal discourse of the Ancients as it is to the Moderns and
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
Postmoderns, and which does not rely upon the dominant
twentieth-century opposition between Greek and Jew.
However, this type of 'decision' , which is no longer the
classical line of demarcation of the frontier, discovers its
choicest employment in religion. This possibility, neither
first nor last nor even simply other, has received the Greek
name of 'heresy' .
Heresy is formally distinct from the various types
of decision with which it tends to be confused. But it
is capable of making possible their genealogy without
being by definition commutable with them. Our project
is now clearer and we shall gladly call it 'generic' rather
than 'philosophical' . The generic style of thought oper
ates with two variables, the strictly philosophical and
another variable, scientific in the best case, religious in
others - religious in the form of this precise 'limit' notion
of religious all-encompassingness, heresy. But far from
juxtaposing these variables, it multiplies their reciprocal
relations through one of them as a factor, and precisely
here through heresy. Hence the most precise definition
of the generic such as we understand it is the fusion or
unity of philosophy and religious heresy under heresy
or determined by a heretical regime. It will therefore be
necessary to distinguish meticulously the philosophical
doublet from the apparent repetition of heresy as variable
and as factor.
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N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y AS H E R E S Y
What relation can there be between non-philosophy and
heresy? The preceding 'critical' motivation of non-philos
ophy is still partially driven by the spirit of philosophy.
If non-philosophy takes its material from philosophy,
it takes its principle - its cause rather, and its general
style - from a stance we shall call purely heretical or
heretical as such so as to distinguish it from the specified
historical forms of heresy. Non-philosophy has 'occa
sional' philosophical causes or origins, but in principle
it is not any kind of philosophical position whatsoever. It
is the response to the following question (itself not espe
cially philosophical) : what are the conditions of heresy?
Not of religious, scientific or artistic heresy, but pure
heresy and its emergence? And is it a question of introduc
ing the spirit of heresy into philosophy - into philosophy
where there are torsions, reflections, deformations and
deviations, but no heresy? It is not a question of replaying
the 'philodrama' of the moderns and the postmoderns,
of leading philosophy back to its limits, its limitrophic
alterity, margins and decentrings, to its death or its 'end',
etc., of restaging the spectacle of the Greco-Judaic conflict
- but of introducing a heretical variable into the generic
relation to philosophy.
It is impossible to resolve these problems without
recourse to this thought, this most incisive thought, when
confronted with philosophy, the most enveloping philoso
phy; nor without defining pure heresy as non-philosophy
267
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
rather than specifically non-phenomenology, non-Marx·
ism, etc. How do we give heresy its concept and the form
of a rigorous thought? In the first place, it must no longer
designate the deviant quality of a scientific theory or a
religious interpretation, the errancy and unorthodoxy
of a doctrine - it must no longer be a critical or insult·
ing attribute, instead being elaborated and treated as a
consistent, autonomous manner of thinking possessing
an internal essence that can be ascribed to nothing else.
It is not even a question of introducing the concept of
heresy into philosophy, but of directly constituting it
through non-philosophy. One can be 'heretical' in art, in
religion, in science; this is a formula of doxa, but what
is the identity of heresy as such? This problem is barely
philosophical save through the obj ective appearance
of language, because it is the answer that contains the
question, rather than the other way around: the identity
ef heresy is that identity is heresy itself or 'in-person' . This is
a tautology - is it some kind of joke? Precisely not: this
formulation is still incomplete, and the doubling or vicious
circle that it seems to manifest is precisely a philosophical
type of response, this tautology tolerating several nuances
and differences in identity. To be called non·philosoph·
ical, the formulation must be completed: identity is the
cause-in-the-last-instance ef heresy; heresy is the thought and
practice according to the cause-in-the-last-instance. In this
way, the answer contains the question or determines it 268
N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y AS H E R E S Y
but only in the last-instance. The discovery that founds
both non-philosophy and pure heresy, the former as the
latter and reciprocally, is that identity is not simply the
object of heresy, but that real identity is its cause - that
heresy is thought in-identity and according-to-identity.
It suffices to think strictly in accordance with the most
naked identity, the identity most deprived of being, mean
ing and transcendence, the least convertible, to ' make'
heresy, secession and dissidence - the only dissidence
whose cessation can be nothing but a vain hope, illusion
or faith . . . all of which would be philosophical. If, for
example, heresy is understood as a radical form of alterity,
it is immediately necessary to specify that the heretical
Other, unlike the Judaic Other, is all the ' more other' in
that it is itself determined by a special, philosophically
'impossible' cause, what we call the Real as vision-ef-the
One-in-One, a concept whose elaboration requires much
more attention because of its very simplicity.
As abuse, accusation and condemnation, heresy is
an eminently indeterminate and vague term. As a 'philo
sophical' or 'Greek' concept, it already tends to exceed
philosophical authority, signifying separation with unity
itself, dissidence-without-return. But even more radically,
no longer being a relation to philosophy except 'in
the-last-reference' , heresy complicates itself; it breaks
the symmetry of the doublet separated-separation, for
it is less separation for separation than the Separated
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
without the act of separation that would generate a dual
ity, a multiplicity even. The real kernel of heresy is the
One separated with the One-All itself, without thereby
constituting a mode more or less distant from this All or
from Unity. But, furthermore, the act of separation is not
denied - or is only denied in the doublet that it forms,
for its part, with the Separated. Overall, the Separated
acquires its autonomy, frees itself from separation, which
also frees itself from itself or from its doublet; and the
former determines or under-determines the latter. Heresy
is sterile, but in what sense? It is not the ' first' or once
again philosophical separation, but the 'before-first' ,
which generates nothing, but which is itself generated
without separation by the Separated. Since separation
is generated by being-Separated-without-separation, it
is as such or in turn consists in its separation-identity.
On the other hand, albeit first, it is ' second' in relation to
the absolutely first All from which it separates. The Sepa
rated is radically first, the All self-implied by philosophy
is absolutely first, and finally separation is relative either
to the Separated or to the All according to the angle
from which it is seen. The philosophically unintelligible
character of separation stems from the fact that it does
not double itself, that it has no need of an anterior separa
tion - but of a being-Separated-without-separation - and
that it does not divide the All.
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Given the axioms o f pure heresy (the principle o f heresy) :
• The Separated-without-separation has the primacy
of-the-last-instance over separation.
• Separation, determined-in-the-last-instance by the
Separated, has primacy over the decision implied in the
All (World) .
• The Separated-without-separation is not as such
because it is self-Inseparate.
• The self-lnseparate or the Separated-without-sep
aration is uni-versa} in an immanent (generic) way, not
universal in and through transcendence.
•The doublet of the separated and separation is trans
formed. No longer being a division of the One but the
One-( of)-separation, it becomes a unilateral, unequal,
non-reciprocal duality.
• We call vision-in-One the determination-in-the
last-instance of the World (All) by the Separated or the
heretical.
Consequences: ( 1 ) The One is not inseparate from
the World. On the contrary, being self-Inseparate, it
is, for its part, separated from the World which can do
neither anything for nor against it. But it is at the same
time inseparate from the World - if there is World - in
the immanence of its being-Inseparate. It is separated
from the World within the inseparability of the World
with it, thus for the World's part. This is what we call
'unilateral duality' or the heretical form of thought or
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even uni-versal ('generic') vision-in-One as pure heresy.
Pure heresy is not the direct givenness of the World but
being-given-without-givenness which nevertheless gives
or brings the World.
(2) Pure heresy is neither the weak nor the extreme
'Alterity' that contemporary philosophy traces cheaply
either from the worldly experience of the Stranger or from
the religious All-Other, and which has taken twenty-five
centuries to discover and explore. It is Identity as self
Inseparate without an act of separation, presenting itself
to the World as inseparate separation, i.e. uniface. Radical
Identity is alogical and presents itself as unifacial or as
Stranger. What distinguishes this postmodern style and
the style of non-philosophy is simple. The universality of
the thought-world envelops the contemporary attempts
at the critique, differentiation and deconstruction of
philosophy by recourse to various modes of alterity; it
understands the Real as Other and the Other as simultane
ously internal and external to metaphysical representation
according to the various propositions. Non-philosophy
understands the Real as One-in-One immanent-(to)-itself
rather than to the philosophy-world; it presents itself as
Other or uniface, but as One-(of) -the-Other in-the-last
reference to the World, thus distinguishing itself from
an Other that would retain a direct reference to philoso
phy. Neither the terms nor their combinations are the
same. This is why the most invariant double operation of
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philosophy, the inversion (in syntax) of old hierarchies
and the displacement (in the experience of the Real)
toward objects always supposedly more real, or toward
supposedly more originary and fundamental grounds, is
transformed from the ground up. This schema is detached
from philosophy (Platonism) and psychoanalysis. Under
the condition of vision-in-One, ( I ) Inversion or reversal
gives way to unilateral duality and a generic universali
sation; (2) The displacement of ground by ground, of
foundation by foundation, gives way to the utopia or the
placeless for the futural Real itself; (3) The thought-world
is 'emplaced' in the place determined-in-the-last-instance
by the Real-One, an ontological place which phenomenol
ogy would call the noema.
The ungraspable force of heresy's rebellion is to be, like
immanence, as if it were completely inside the All from
which it emerges and from which it separates itself; but
also completely external to it, already separated from it,
because it does not shatter, deconstruct or break down
- without this interior and exterior forming a process at
equilibrium, but instead an identity-of-the-last-instance.
It is only of the heretic, of the Stranger in the radical
sense in which we understand it, that one can say that
they did not need to 'exit' philosophy because they never
'entered' it with hands, feet and soul bound, but that
they took responsibility for transforming it. This is the
paradox: if heresy must have a cause, a heretical cause, it is
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unalienated in that from which it separates itself through
a separation which is in some sense a priori or prior to all
alienation, that which can only be an immanent-( to )-self
identity. To be first in her own way, the Stranger cannot
be an Other person, an Other man; she is the One-( of)-the
Other, the being-Separated which is identity. Only identity
can be definitively and simply heretical: non-identitarian
identity, of course, whose essence is being-Separated
without-separation, forever separated from the Existent,
Being, the 'Other' , etc. Nevertheless, if it has no need
of separation, being-Separated draws out this act in its
wake. It must relate itself to the World heteronomously,
invalidating it without destroying it since it is related to it
in-the-last-instance. It is in this way that the Separated is
also in a complementary but 'occasional' way an instance
of separation-one or One-separation with the All, the
unique face the heretical One shows to the world. More
precisely, the One separated is the cause of heresy, and
the operation of heresy properly speaking can be called
Stranger with a certain generality; but more rigorously,
the ultimate heretical kernel is not the Stranger but its
bearing in the real or in immanence, and the Stranger is
separation as operation, but determined by the Real to
reveal itself as a unique face, a unifacial Stranger.
This rigorous understanding of the identity- ( of)
heresy conforms with the formula that the Roman Cath
olic Church assigns, with objective irony, to heretical
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Protestants : 'our separated brothers' . But we obviously
understand it antithetically to the commiseration of the
Church, for we certainly are not awaiting the heretic's
return. Heresy does not divide, only churches divide and they do so only so as to unify. The heretic asks for no
authorisation but his own, yet he is not just anyone - not
a philosopher or a priest, perhaps not a psychoanalyst
- but precisely a 'separated brother' in whose place no
other - neither State nor Church, nor perhaps a 'com
munity' - can stand, but who can generically be set in
place, saying 'we', in the place of every other. This is a
substitution that no longer takes place under the sign of
the Other, assigning me my responsibility (Levinas ), but
instead that of the radical immanence of the only non
exchangeable 'belonging' , that of the 'human genus' .
Th e rock o f non-philosophy a s heretical practice i s man,
who is neither an Ego nor an Other person set against
it, but the closest Stranger, the 'brother' in a sphere of
humanity we shall call generic, and which puts separation
in relation to the thought-world instead of the division
in it. In more contemporary terms, man as 'separated
brother' is a clone in the sense that every clone is an
heretical identity produced not by the division of a One
or a Unity, but by identity or the One-( of) -its separation
on the basis of the All.
These conditions brought together and correctly
understood allow us to identify a universal heretical Idea
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in the restrained or generic sense; one that is neither a
philosophical possibility, nor a rupture within common
religious dogma, but which can be valid for all these
discourses and treat them as new means at the disposal
of generic humanity. No historical heresy is universal not because qua heresy it would condemn itself to the
loss of the supposedly native element from which it is
taken, but because in it, the heretical Idea is effectuated
under restrictive conditions, either regional and positive
or fundamental and philosophical. It is thus possible to
endow this formless and polemical concept with positive
and precise determinations, to make it function in a non
polemical way. Pure heresy is neither Greek nor Judaic,
but it is also neither anti-Greek nor anti-Jewish; on the
contrary, through a system of deformations certainly
irreducible to any philosophical topology, any 'reversal
and-displacement', it allows the generic depotentiation
of philosophy and the Judaic affect of Alterity. This depo
tentiation is an effect of their jdentity - identity, the only
object of heresy, its 'phantasm' . . .
We shall strictly distinguish that which philosophical
and theological generalities essentially confuse or only dis
tinguish in terms of their objects, historical behaviours or
subjective postures: the sect and schism on the one hand,
heresy on the other. Sect and schism are quite different
but are both separations that reconstitute churches on a
partial basis, in a reduced, specific or global form against
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the universal Church, as rivals of the latter and laying
claim to being the authentic church. Heresy is individual
rather than partial - indivi-dual even, a formula to be
decomposed according to the model of the uni-lateral.
Founded on a separation that remains a separation rather
than being founded on the partial and its connivance with
the all, ultimately it is radically uni-versal, otherwise-than
catholic, because it is universal qua One and not qua All,
according-to-the-One rather than according-to-the-All.
Heresy is the most profound adversary of churches : sects
are limited, watched over and controlled, but heretics are
burnt, burnt in the flesh, and moreover, burnt as flesh.
This difference in treatment cannot be purely historical .
This is certainly not the first time in the history of
Occidental thought that rebel spirits have attempted to
use philosophy in order to speak of an experience that
no longer relies on its competence and authority (Levi
nas ) , so as to fold philosophical language to this experi
ence. But we must distinguish between the conceptual or
metaphysical abstraction which uses the words of natural
language in order to make them signify philosophical
meaning, truth and value, and the heretical separation
of the same terms of this natural and/or philosophical
language, a usage that transforms 'concepts' into 'non
concepts'. Considered in its heretical cause and no longer
in its material, non-philosophy is a new language cloned
from the ancient, from the philosophical; not exactly a
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new 'unprecedented' language, then, but a new usage of
philosophical discourse. Through its cause, it resembles
the language-material from which it is taken; it shares a
'familiar air' with it and 'for good reason' . . . but this clon
ing of non-philosophy on the basis of philosophy under
conditions of radical identity is not an empirical-type
cloning, it is a transcendental-type cloning. This is why
here the clone is heterogeneous to its 'occasional' parent
- cloning produces from the emergent, the Other-than
'cloned' -object-material, the Other-than-philosophical.
I f cloning is here radically distinct from mimesis, from
its specular forms, from differential repetition itself, this
is because its principle is simply radical identity, and
because identity is not what is produced as a property
or attribute of a new being, but is the silently operating
cause of cloning itself. Non-philosophical cloning is a
philosophically unintelligible operation foreclosed to
thought because it produces force-( of)-thought as the
clone of existing or given thought and produces it as
Other than this given thought-world.
Given its 'real presupposition' (the One) , non-philoso
phy unifies - without synthesis, without Catholic univer
sality - the traditional opposites: theoretical explanation
and deconstruction through the undecidable; the non
Euclidean-style universalisation of philosophy and the
radical displacement of its terrain; the theoretical and the
pragmatic; discovery and invention, etc. Let us take only a
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few of these non-philosophical unifications. Philosophy is
essentially the invention of concepts and logics, terms and
syntaxes. Its invention dominates its discovery because
it is a tradition and a pre-given structure that favours
reorientations, redistributions and new divisions, thus
limiting the possibilities of novelty. Even philosophical
'creation' (Nietzsche, Bergson, Deleuze) and 'revolution'
follow the thread of invention rather than discovery. More
generally, philosophy is of the order of experience and rea
son at worst, of the (transcendental) imagination at best;
it remains a transcendental technology that sometimes
believes itself to be a theory but which manages only to
produce local and contingent 'systems' . Non-philosophy
instead articulates itself through discovery as true novelty,
that which is not programmed, distributed and delimited
by the pre-given structure of Philosophical Decision and
has the power to overturn the theoretical field. Nothing
precedes discovery except the Discovered itself, i.e. the
Real or the One which determines it in-the-last-instance.
But the Real, given or Discovered-without-discovery,
is a 'negative' condition that unlocks the possibility of
discovery - of separation - and not a positive cause (as
the point of view of invention would continue to sup
pose) that determines such a discovery. If non-philosophy
expresses itself through a cause of discovery that gives it
its primacy and identity, it nevertheless does not exclude
invention, the variable combination of the givens of the
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World, or philosophy. On the contrary, it complexifies
the invention proper to Philosophical Decision through
its depotentiation. However it is important, so as not to
confuse non-philosophical invention with philosophy, to
orient it in-the-last-instance toward that 'negative utopia'
that is vision-in-one and which has no reason in the past
present of thought.
In all fields of knowledge, non-philosophy is an
instigator of rebellion, not revolution; an operation of
revolt and separation, not direct resistance. It introduces
into the relation to philosophy or the world a practice
of heresy rather than apocalypse, of transmutation or
transvaluation. It does not belong to the philosophical
tradition - that of Marx and Freud, as well as Lacan,
and of course that of artists, even if only a philosopher
can elaborate it. If Marx and Freud have a practice in
common, it is certainly not that desolate practice of
suspicion, nor that of philosophical heroism (Nietzsche
combines both) but that of the discovery that exceeds
both philosophy and science and puts them into rela
tions unknown to either. Heresy is closer to a stance of
radical fiction, non-fictive fiction, imagination freed of
images, discovery and invention of thought for thought.
Its resources are not especially those of positive science
or those of philosophical and conceptual rationality,
but instead are of the order of the 'fictioned' usage of
both, as well as art. This rebellion-through-fiction, i.e.
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this invention of lived experience or of life, takes, from
the object's point of view, the form of a 'unified theory'
(of philosophy and a region of thought or knowledge) ;
and from thought's point of view, the form of a theory
practice. Practice and theory are known in philosophy as
contradictories: the heterogeneity of the explanation to
its object excludes the usage of the latter within the form
or essence of thought itself; and this usage excludes the
theoretical relation of knowledge. From this perspective,
'pragmatism' is an attempt to unify thought and action,
but within the transcendent context of philosophy - an
attempt that, consequently, is vicious, proceeding through
doubling. Non-philosophy leads pragmatism back to its
minimal and radical conditions, in the scientific stance on
the one hand (the specificity of theory: the irreducibility
of the explanation to the properties of the thing known)
and the philosophical stance on the other (the specificity
of philosophy: the transcendental relation of thought to
the object, thought as the thought of this object) . Thus
the theory of philosophy is also a certain usage of it, the
only possible usage of its identity. And symmetrically, a
pragmatics of philosophy or of its identity is the only way
to realise its theory: in order to explain philosophy, it is
necessary, given the specific character of this object, to
make use of it within thought itself and within its means.
Non-philosophy makes its own use of philosophy (as
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material, occasion, symptom) but with a view to explain
ing it in the most theoretical way possible.
Within the optic of heresy as being-Inseparate-in-itself
but separated from philosophy, the latter is considered no
longer as 'philosophy' in the narrow sense (the sense that
it takes from its belonging to each of the three markets) ,
but more broadly as thought-world. It is therefore only
from the explicitly heretical point of view that it becomes
material and 'occasional cause' . This is the condition
for its making use of philosophy, a usage of theoretical
rather than utilitarian means. The thought-world must
be explained by statements that are irreducible to it.
Explained, because these statements put the properties
of philosophy, its 'concepts' , into new relations that are
simultaneously induced from it as from an object of expe
rience, and deducible. But not explained without being
deconstructed or transformed, since these statements are
the Other-than-philosophy. The two tasks of theory and
critique - of deconstruction through undecidables - are
no longer separate.
Pure heresy proceeds with indifference regarding his
tory and philosophy, regarding their common sense which
is that of consumerist nihilism, mortifying institutions and
worldly and mundane training. But with the indifference
that one has for one's unilateral enemy. It is not even that
counter-nihilism that Nietzsche called for, which forms
a circle (give or take a transvaluation) with nihilism.
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True nihilism, namely that of the thought-world, is instead
this circle itself which embraces human hopes and malaise
in a single flux. Moreover, it does not accelerate history or
philosophy as if it were the development of one of their
possibilities, a progress, an evolution, a revolution; no
more than it breaks them down, if not 'in two' then into a
duality in which history or philosophy itself is merely one
of the terms. To sum up, the enemy that it faces is Being
as-transcendence and Time-as-history. It is a utopia - real
rather than transcendental or imaginary, for the Real is
'without reality' , a universal and necessary utopia, but as
negative condition. Pure heresy is never actualised, but
all the more effectuated in the conditions of existence,
the thought-world, with which it cannot be confused even
after this effectuation. It conveys neither an ideology of
progress nor even that (already more interesting) of the
avant-garde. It is a pure verticality as an a priori power
of refusal, capable of uncovering the enemy-World, the
only enemy proportionate with our identity. Heresy is
the eternal and foreclosed protestation of the Stranger
who no more has a place in the World than in History.
Among other things, it is a protestation against philo
sophical consolation, against philodicy and against not
only religious but also philosophical apocalypses, those
through which the congenital malaise of philosophy
disguises itself as a cure. The philosophical pharmakon is
not its strength, and the logical therapeutics of thought
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seems to be a secondary task for it, a consequence or a
limited effect. Its problem: to instigate a non-orthodox
or non-standard usage of all philosophy but one that
is not simply a deviation. The secret of heresy is being
Stranger not as consequence or secondary property, but
as before-first, definitive, without recourse. Heresy is
being-separated and the jouissance of being-separated;
it is hopeless rather than consoled, militant rather than
triumphant, urgent . . . The pure heretic, not the heretic of
something, of some institution of knowledge or belief, is
therefore the only non-believer, the only Knower, in the
sense that only she can say: given that . . . X, Y, knowing the
One-in-One, then . . . Only heretics have both philosophy
and religion, philosophy and science together at their
disposal. Only they know how to simultaneously relieve
religion of faith, and to bring it permanently into the
knowledge and practice of humans . . .
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A S u m m a ry of N o n-P h i l os o p hy
(2004)
Translated by Ray B rassier
T H E TWO P R O BL E M S OF N O N - P H I L O S O P H Y
1.1.1. Non-philosophy is a discipline born of reflection
upon two problems whose solutions finally coincided.
On the one hand, the problem of the One's ontological
status within philosophy, which associates it, whether
explicitly or not, with being and with the other, but
refuses to acknowledge its radical autonomy. On the other
hand, the problem of the theoretical status of philosophy,
insofar as the latter constitutes a kind of practice, affect,
or existence, but one lacking in a rigorous knowledge of
itself: philosophy remains a field of objective phenomena
that have not yet been subjected to theoretical overview.
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1.2.1. Concerning the first point, there follow an obser
vation and a proposal. First the observation: the One
is an object at the margins of philosophy, an object of
transcendence stated in terms of the epekeina rather than
of the meta. Accordingly, it is as much other as One, as
divisible as it is indivisible; an object of desire rather than
of 'science' . It occurs to the thinking that is associated
or convertible with being, without being thought in its
essence and origin (' How does the One necessarily occur
to man-the-philosopher?' ) . Philosophy establishes itself
within being and within a certain 'forgetting of the One'
which it continually exploits in the name of being while
supposing it as given from the start.
1.2.2. Now the proposal: finally to think the One 'itself' ,
independently of being and the other, as that which
is incommensurable with them and non-determinable
by thought and language ('foreclosed' to thought) ; to
think according to the One rather than trying to think the
One. But to think this non-relation to thought using the
traditional means of thought; to think this displacement
relative to philosophy with the help of philosophy; to
think by means of philosophy that which is no longer
commensurate with the compass of philosophy and
escapes both its authority and its sufficiency. These are
the terms of the new problem.
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1.3.1. Concerning the second point, there follow an obser
vation and a proposal. First the observation: philosophy is
regulated in accordance with a principle higher than that
of reason: the Principle ef Sufficient Philosophy. The latter
expresses philosophy's absolute autonomy, its essence
as self-positing/donating/naming/deciding/grounding,
etc. It ensures philosophy's domination of all regional
disciplines and sciences . Ultimately, it articulates phi
losophy's idealist pretension as that which is able to at
least co-determine the most radical real. The obverse
of this pretension, the price of this sufficiency, is phi
losophy's congenital inability to think itself in a manner
that would be rigorous, non-circular, and non-question
begging; in other words, that of theory. Philosophy is
self-reflection, self-consciousness; it thinks, or in the best
of cases, feels itself thinking when it thinks; this is its
cogito. Philosophy never proceeds beyond the scope of an
enlarged cogito; an immanence limited to self-reflection
or self-affection. It is a practice of thought, or a feeling
and an affect. As such, philosophy manifests no more
than its own existence and fails to demonstrate that it is
the real to which it lays claim, or that it knows itself as
this pretension. Implicit in philosophy's existence is a
transcendental hallucination of the real, and implicit in
philosophical 'self-knowledge' is a transcendental illusion.
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1.3.2. Now the proposal: how to go about elaborating,
with the help of philosophy and science but indepen
dently of the authority of the Principle of Sufficient
Philosophy, a rigorous theoretical knowledge, but one
that would prove adequate or attuned to philosophical
existence, to the philosophical manner of thinking? These
are the terms of the new problem.
T H E I D E N T I TY O F T H E P R O BL E M O F
N O N - P H I LO S O P HY O R T H E S O LUTI O N
2.1.1. Th e principle of the solution: this i s the same thing
as positing the One as a radically autonomous real with
regard to philosophy, but a real thought according to
a novel use of philosophy's now reformed means . It is
the same thing as making of the One the real condition
or cause for a theoretical knowledge of philosophy. The
solution constitutes a new problem: How can we, using
the ordinary means of thought, conceive of the One as
no longer philosophisable or convertible with being, and
at the same time as capable of determining an adequate
theory of philosophy?
2.1.2. Non-philosophy typically operates in the follow
ing way: everything is processed through a duality (of
problems) that does not constitute a two or a pair, and
through an identity (of problems, and hence of solution)
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that does not constitute a unity or synthesis. This way is
known as that of the 'unilateral duality' which is just as
much an 'identity' .
2.1.3. The resolution of the problem requires two transfor
mations which form an identity of transformation. First,
the transformation of the philosophical one-other into a
radically autonomous One-in-One; the transformation of
the One as object of philosophy into vision-in-One and
into a phenomenality capable of determining knowledge.
2.1.4. Second, the transformation of the self-referential
usage of philosophical language that regulates the state
ments of philosophy, into a new usage (both real and
transcendental, of identity and of unilateral duality) that
furnishes those statements with a double yet identical
aspect: at once axiomatic and theorematic. The statements
of the One and of its causality as vision-in-One, rather
than as object or instance of philosophy, are generated
by gradually introducing terms and problems of philo
sophical extraction, but terms and problems that are now
subjected to a usage that is other than philosophical;
a usage with a double aspect: axiomatic on one hand,
theorematic and thus transcendental on the other; or
relating to the real on one hand, and to its effects on
philosophical existence on the other.
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2.1.5. The One is not an object or entity 'in itself' , m
opposition to a language subsisting 'in-itself' , such
as to compose a philosophical or dialectical pairing
of opposites. Vision-in-One as matrix of thought is a
' speaking/thinking according to the One ' . Nor is it a
relation of synthesis between the One (i.e. the real)
and language. It is a non-relation, a 'unilateral duality' .
2.1.6. All the statements of non-philosophy appear as axi
omatic insofar as they constitute the identity (in-the-last
instance) of the unilateral duality, and as transcendental
theorems insofar as they constitute the unilateral duality
that accompanies this identity. The theorems may serve as
axioms on condition of determining-in-the-last-instance
other theorems; the axioms may serve as theorems on
condition of being determined-in-the-last-instance by
other axioms . Axioms and theorems do not constitute
two distinct classes of expressions, as they do in science.
But nor do they constitute a reciprocal duality of propo
sitions whose donation and demonstration are, certain
exceptions aside, ultimately convertible, as they do in
philosophy.
F R O M T H E O N E TO VI S I O N - I N - O N E
3.1.1. Immanence. Th e One i s immanence and i s not think
able on the terrain of transcendence ( ekstasis, scission,
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nothingness, objectivation, alterity, alienation, meta or
epekeina) . Corollary: the philosophies of immanence
(Spinoza, Deleuze) posit immanence in a transcendent
fashion. Even Henry posits in a quasi-transcendent fash
ion the non-ekstatic immanence he objectifies.
3.1.2. Radical immanence or self-immanence, the One-in-One.
The One is self-immanence without constituting a point
or a plane; without withdrawing or folding back upon
itself. It is One-in-One and hence that which can only
be found in the One, not with being or the other. It is
a radical rather than an absolute immanence. The 'more'
immanence is radical, the 'more' it is universal or gives
in-immanence philosophy itself (the world, etc.) .
3.1.3. Identity, the real and the ego. The other possible first
names for the One are identity, the real or the ego. The
One is identity 'in flesh and blood' ; the identity that is
no longer attribute or even subject. It is the ego rather
than the subject, the latter being determined-in-the-last
instance by the ego. The One is the radical real which
'is' not, not because it could have 'been' , but because it
is 'without-being' ; the One or the real does not 'exist'
but (is) in-One.
3.1.4. Non-intuitive phenomenality. The One is vision-in
One. The latter manifests the One alone and manifests it
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according to the mode of the One. Consequently, it is not
a mode of perception; its phenomenal-being falls neither
within the purview of perception nor that of the phenom
enological phenomenon. It is devoid of intuitiveness in
general, neither an objective nor an intellectual intuition
and devoid of thought or concept; it does not think yet it
'gives' . . . without-givenness. Its radical non-intuitiveness
allows philosophical terms to be used according to a mode
of axiomatic abstraction, but one that is transcendental.
3.1.5. The gi,ven-without-gi,venness. Vision-in-One is a mode
of being-given that is without-givenness (devoid of any
mixture of given and givenness, devoid of any 'backstage'
or 'background' givenness, and devoid of any self-giving) .
It does not give, it is the given, but it is able to give
an instance of givenness according to its own mode of
being-given, which is neither that of cognition nor of
representation: this is its universality.
3.1.6. Non-consistency. Since the One is not beyond
(epekeina) essence or being but only in-One, it is devoid
of ontological, linguistic, and worldly consistency. It is
without-being and without-essence, without-language
and without-thought, even though it is said to be thus
with the help of being, language, and thought, etc. This
non-consistency entails that the One is indifferent to or
tolerant of any material, any particular doctrinal position
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whatsoever. It is able to determine the usage of any mate
rial so long as the latter possesses the ultimate form of
philosophy. This does not mean that the One subsists
in-itself, in transcendent isolation, absolutely unrelated
to language, etc . , but rather that it is foreclosed to any
'reciprocal' causality exerted through language, thought,
or philosophy. Nevertheless, although it has no need of
them, it is able to manifest them or bring them forth
according to its own particular modality (if they present
themselves) . With philosophy given as a condition, the
non-consistency or indifference of the real becomes a
transcendental indifference, yet the latter adds nothing
to the former.
3.1.7. Non-sufficiency. Since the One is nothing but the
being-given-without-givenness-( of)-the-One, it in no way
produces philosophy or the world (whether through
procession, emanation, ontologico-ekstatic manifestation,
creation ex nihilo, onto-theo-logical perfection) - there is
no real genesis of philosophy. This is the non-sufficiency of
the One as necessary but non-sufficient condition. The real
is a 'negative' condition or condition sine qua non for . . .
precisely because it is not itself nothingness o r negation.
Consequently, it is additionally necessary that philosophy
be given in order for the vision-in-One to be able to give
philosophy according to its own mode of being-given.
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P H I L O S O P H Y S E F F E C T UAT I O N O F VI S I O N - I N - O N E
4.1.1. Th e existence ef philosophy o r the affect ef the world,
and its real contingency. Vision-in-One gives philosophy if
a philosophy presents itself. But philosophy gives itself
according to the mode of its own self- positing/givenness/
reflection/naming, or according to that of an enlarged
self-consciousness or universal cogito. It is, at best, exist
ence and gives itself with the feeling or affect of its own
existence ('I know, I feel that I philosophise'), taking the
latter to be the real as such rather than merely its own
reality. But existence cannot engender knowledge of
existence; knowledge that would not be viciously circular.
The existence of philosophy amounts to an automatism
of repetition that believes itself to be the real because of
a well-founded hallucination; a hallucination that only
the vision-in-One can expose.
4.1.2. The effectuation ef vision-in-One by the givenness ef
philosophy. Because of its non-sufficiency, vision-in-One
requires that philosophy (which provides a usage of lan
guage and of thought) be given in order to be effectuated.
The effectuation of vision-in-One does not cancel its status
as negative condition, or render it 'sufficient' . Thus, it is
neither the actualisation of a virtual nor the realisation of
a possible. It is a sign and witness of philosophy's relative
autonomy (one that is not absolute or in-itself) once the
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A S U M M A RY O F N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y
latter is given according to the mode of being-given-in
One. It is the taking into account, not of philosophy in
general, or as something supposedly in-itself, but of the
autonomy of philosophy, once the latter has been released
from the grip of its own hallucinatory absolute form, such
that this autonomy indexes philosophy's specific reality
and structural consistency as ' Philosophical Decision' .
4.1.3. Non-philosophy as unilateral duality. Non-philoso
phy is not a unitary system but a theoretical apparatus
endowed with a twofold means of access, or a twofold
key, but one that is radically heterogeneous because one
of these keys is identity. This is the 'unilateral duality' .
Because of its radical immanence, which refuses all posit
ing or consistency for itself, vision-in-One is never present
or positive, it is never given within representation or
transcendence or manipulable in the manner of a 'key' .
This duality does not have two sides : the real does not
constitute a side, only non-philosophy or philosophy's
relative autonomy does so. This is no longer a bifacial
or bilateral apparatus like that of philosophy, but rather
one that is unijacial or unilateral. A duality which is an
identity but an identity which is not a synthesis: this is the
very structure of determination-in-the-last-instance. Non
philosophy thinks without constituting a system, without
being unitary. For example, the subject in accordance with
which it is produced ('the stranger') is not something
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facing me, it is as a uniface and is for this reason a stranger
to the world, a stranger to the law of bilaterality which
is proper to philosophy and to the world, yet it is not a
stranger to the real.
4.1.4. Contingency and necessity efthe non-philosophical effec
tuation. Because of the philosophical origin of the material
from which its axioms and theorems are drawn, and thus
as instance of thought in general, non-philosophy is, from
the viewpoint of the One, globally contingent relative to
the real which remains foreclosed to it. But as thought
determined by the real, it acquires the real necessity of
vision-in-One that is also the transcendental necessity
of this real contingency. The One does not legitimate
philosophy as it is or as it gives itself, but only insofar
as philosophy becomes transformed in its 'being-given' .
From the viewpoint of philosophy, non-philosophy is
necessary but partly tautological. To think according-to
the-One (to think philosophy according to this mode) is,
on account of this aspect, a philosophical objective, one
that utilises philosophical means.
4.1.5. The beingforeclosed ef the real One. Non-consistency
implies or presupposes (these are equivalent here) the
being-foreclosed of the real to thought, whether the latter
be philosophical or non-philosophical - a thought which,
nevertheless, the real is able to give according to its own
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mode of being-in-One. Consequently, thought does not
affect it, the real does not receive it but gi,ves it and does
nothing but give it. That which is given-in-One is with
out a prior reception. This is the radical autonomy, the
primacy of phenomenality over phenomenology, of the
phenomenon over the empirico-philosophical model of
donation-reception, passivity, etc. The being-foreclosed of
the One is not cancelled once there is an explicit effectua
tion of the vision-in-One by philosophy; it is maintained
through this effectuation. This being-foreclosed suspends
philosophy's causality with regard to the real, but it does
not suspend the entirety of philosophy's causality relative
to thought as such, for which philosophy represents a
mere effectuating 'occasion' . In any case, this being
foreclosed does not prevent the One from giving (-receiv
ing) thought, language, and, more generally, the world.
4.1.6. Philosophy 's relative autonomy . Philosophy gives
itself as absolute autonomy. The latter is revealed to be
the same real hallucination and ' transcendental' illusion
concerning the One as was philosophy's sufficiency or
pretension with regard to the real . Absolute autonomy is
also effectively given - according to - the One as a merely
relative autonomy. This preserves the autonomy of its real
ity as occasion and hence as material for non-philosophy.
This autonomy is relative insofar as it is limited with
regard to philosophy's spontaneous belief, and relative
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also in a more positive sense insofar as it is now transcen
dentally legitimated by the real, which ratifies philoso
phy's structural consistency, its quasi-materiality.
T H E C L O N I N G O F N O N - P H I L O S O PHY O N T H E
BAS I S O F P H I L O S O P H Y
5.1.1. Effectuation is the taking into account of philoso
phy's reality, of its relative autonomy. This reality and
autonomy imply that the One no longer gives philosophy
just as a mere 'occasion' , but that it fulfils a new role
with regard to the latter; a role which is now 'decisive'
and which constitutes a positive 'intervention' within
philosophy. The real as One thereby assumes a transcen
dental function, while remaining the inalienable real that
it is, without changing in nature or 'becoming' a second
'transcendental One' alongside the first. This transcen
dental cloning of the real on the basis of a philosophical
material is possible without contradicting the real's radical
autonomy since philosophy is already given in-One and
consequently the real does not enter into contradiction
with itself by assuming a transcendental role with regard
to philosophy. Unlike philosophy, non-philosophy does
not proceed from the transcendental to the real (and from
the a priori to the transcendental) , but from the real to
the transcendental (and from the latter to the a priori) .
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5.1.�. The clone is that which is said of non-philosophy,
not of philosophy as material for the latter, and even
less of the real which, without being transformed, is
rendered agent, transcendental agent, of cloning. The non
philosophical clone is in essence or according to its matrix
a transcendental instance, which is to say a vision-in-One
which is said of this or that material of the philosophi
cal type. It is thus the exact content of all speaking or
thinking according to the One. The transcendental is a
clone because it is said of the inalienable One, but said
with regard to the material whose autonomy and reality
are now taken into account or introduced. The clone is
thus 'transcendental' and not real, but it remains real
in-the-last-instance or, more precisely, the clone is the
concentrate of the entire structure of determination-in
the-last-instance as such.
5. 1.3. The 'according to' or clone appears to exceed the
One, just as the transcendental appears to exceed the
real. In actuality it does not exceed it: it is a mode of the
in-One, which does not exceed itself within philosophy
by 'becoming' transcendental. It is rather philosophy that
exceeds the in-One (duality) , but it does not exceed it in
exteriority (philosophical dyad) because it is already and
in any case given-in-One. It only exceeds the One through
its own intrinsic reality 'within' its immanent-being-given
or being-given-in-One. Cloning is necessary ifphilosophy
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presents itself or rather ifit is taken into account according
to its own consistency and autonomy, and it is possible or
non-contradictory from the viewpoint of the real.
5 . 1 .4. The clone is not the double of a given identity
which is in reality already a double or doublet. It is 'on
the contrary' the real-transcendental but indivisible identity
( efJ a philosophical double. The real is not a clone of itself,
it is a radically simple identity, neither divided nor even
clone (of) itself. But it is thereby able to determine non
philosophy (rather than philosophy as such) . To clone, to
determine-in-the-last-instance, to bring-forth non-philos
ophy: all these formulations express the same operation
and they express it better than would the term 'produce' .
Th e Subj ect and World-Thought ( Essence, Existence,
Adsistance)
6.1.1. Non-philosophy is a globally transcendental
discipline, that is to say, a discipline that is real-in
the-last-instance (one that makes use of philosophy's
transcendental dimension in order to formulate itself) .
I t is at once the determination-in-the-last-instance of a
theory (of a knowledge that remains distinct from its
object, adopting a model taken from science) , and also
of a pragmatics (of a usage of philosophy 'with a view to'
the non-philosophical subject, adopting a model taken
from philosophy) . It is theoretical by virtue of one of
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its models: science. But it is neither a philosophical and
therefore self-positing theoreticism, nor a philosophical
and therefore self-positing pragmatics . It is theoretico
pragmatic only by virtue of its aspect as a non-philosoph
ical operation, but real or practical by virtue of its cause.
Thus, it is not a ' negative' theory-pragmatics either, but
rather one requiring that the vision-in-One be effectuated
by invariant scientific and philosophical models.
6.1.2. The non-philosophical subject distinguishes itself
from the subject of the philosophical type. It is a purely
transcendental subject, distinct from the real ego, turned
toward the world to which it is a stranger and toward
which it turns itself as stranger. But it is ego-in-the
last-instance. The unilateral duality of ego and subject
marks the end of their unitary confusion. The subject
does not use philosophy as if it were already consti
tuted, it is that use. It is not only pragmatic, making
use of world-thought, but also and equally theoretical.
Moreover, it does not 'do' theory, it is the theoretical.
Transcendental science, which is the clone of philosophy
science, is thus the subject-as-such-( of)-non-philosophy
('force-( of)-thought'). The subject is theoretical and prag
matic through the scientific and philosophical material
in accordance with which it varies , but it is globally
transcendental as real-in-the-last-instance, or as ego that
clones the real subject transcendentally.
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6.1.3. Non-philosophy is the transcendental science that
constitutes the essence-of-the-last-instance of the subject
- 'force-( of)-thought' - one that may additionally be
specified on the basis of the particular material indexed
by 'ego-subject-other' . Thus, the subject is existence solely
on account of the philosophy that it integrates, the ekstatic
nature of the latter representing its aspect as 'existence' .
Accordingly, the complete unilateral duality o f the subject
cannot be said to 'exist' in general but pertains instead to
another structure of thought: it is adsistance, according to a
theoretical and pragmatic mode, efandfor world-thought.
6.1.4. Non-philosophy demands the identification of
that which is philosophical and fundamental, and that
which is regional (art, science, ethics, technology, etc.) .
But it identifies them only in-the-last-instance, rather
than through their immediate confusion or by collapsing
one into the other in conformity with the law of their
philosophical association or 'mixture'. Non-philosophy
postulates the identification-in-the-last-instance, through
cloning, of philosophy and world in a 'world-thought' .
The hypothesis of a world-thought is one that could
be legitimated for philosophical reasons (the 'world'
as philosophical concept, philosophy as cosmo-logy,
cosmo-politics, onto-cosmo-logy, etc.) and in accordance
with the authority of philosophy alone, but this concept
partakes of the real contingency of the world in general.
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Yet it is also amenable to a more profound legitimation
through non-philosophy insofar as the latter posits it in
a theorem as identity of a clone. It then possesses the
'given' status of an axiom, along with the transcendental
status or status as given-in-the-last-instance of a theorem
'for' philosophy.
6.1.5. What does this non-philosophical adsistance mean?
It cannot 'transform' (produce, engender, create, etc.) the
objects of philosophy or the entities of the world. But it
can transform (cause to occur according to their being
determined-by-the-One-in-the-last-instance, or according
to their relative autonomy, or cause to be broughtforth
through the vision-in-One as cloning) philosophy as a
whole which is a self-presenting hybrid of identity and
difference. It does not intervene 'within' the specificity of
experience, in the manner in which philosophy often and
mistakenly claims to, nor does it even provide that speci
ficity with meaning. It is not, generally speaking, an opera
tion or activity to which the subject would remain external.
The subject is adsistance in its very essence (essence which
is without-essence in-the-last-instance) . If adsistance is
neither interpretation nor practical intervention, it is
the bringing-forth of world-thought, one that is practi
cal only in-the-last-instance - the being-brought-forth
or being-given which transforms the latter's type of
autonomy and liberates it, and thereby liberates the
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subject (as transcendental identity (of) world-thought)
from its entrapment by the hallucinatory belief in its
own sufficiency. This transcendental identity, which is
that of philosophy as such, remains incommensurable with
'philosophy' in the philosophical sense.
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Fro m t h e Fi rst to t h e S e co n d
N o n-P h i l o s o p hy
(20 10)
Tra ns l ated by A n thony Pau l Smith and N i co l a Rubc z a k
'
N O N - P H I L O S O P H Y S G E N E R I C T U R N AN D I T S
Q.UAN T U M R E AL I SAT I O N
Non-philosophy was and remains based on two main
principles that appear to contradict each other. The first
principle is that of the real specified in terms of a radical
immanence, symbolised by the One rather than by Being.
This radical immanence is distinct from the absolute or
infinite immanence associated with Spinoza or Deleuze.
The second is a principle of method or syntax, based on a
duality said to be unilateral, not on a reciprocal or revers
ible unity. They have functioned together as 'dualysis',
a method that is neither analysis nor synthesis. Despite
these 'principles', non-philosophy might appear to be a
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crime of lese-philosophie, an assassination of Parmenides
that extends to his entire family, i.e. to all we philoso
phers . But the non-philosopher does not feel himself
to be a child of Parmenides alone; he complicates the
philosophical filiation, attributing to himself an ancestry
that diverges from the twentieth-century norm (a Greek
ancestry affected by Judaism) . He is the complex descend
ant of philosophy, of that modern science par excellence,
quantum physics, and of a certain religious affect intro
duced by Christianity. In recent years I have given a more
precise, less abstract, content to radical immanence, to
the method of dualysis that exploits it, and have also
proposed other names for this stance. Non-philosophy
has always wanted to place philosophy under a scientific
condition that is determining in-the-last-instance, so as to
make it a problem, rather than a question for itself, and
above all to make it an inventive rather than an historical
method. This is what I now call a 'generic science' (GS)
of philosophy - utilising quantum positivity and philo
sophical spontaneity only on condition of their 'generic'
suspension - or even a 'non-standard philosophy' .
The two principles of non-philosophy have an affinity
with the two main principles of quantum physics: radi
cal immanence with what is called 'superposition' , and
unilateral duality with what is called 'non-commutativity' .
Two wave-phenomena necessarily are superposed when
their addition produces a third of the same nature or an
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FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND NON-PHILOSOPHY
idempotent result ( i+ 1 = 1 ) , a result that is neither analytic
nor synthetic. Non-philosophy can make use of quantum
mechanics as a model and only as a model - this represents
just one possible use of it, which does not claim to exhaust
its meaning. Both call into question traditional philosophi
cal categories in a way that is completely novel in relation
to the critical method and its extension in deconstruc
tion. A new way is opened up - more rigorous, but also
more intuitive - for a second version of non-philosophy.
The problem is to find a conceptual or natural language
equivalent for the (essentially algebraic) mathematical
operator of this physics . An equivalent that makes use
of philosophy, allowing it a certain function while at
the same being capable of questioning its 'sufficiency' .
All the more so given that there are, reciprocally, quasi
quantum phenomena in philosophy (the undulatory flash
of the Logos and the Heideggerian sendings of Being, the
corpuscular One and Identity as the form of concepts,
the spin and rotation of concepts, Deleuze's oscillating
and resonance machines) that suggest the possibility of
a more explicit, quantum theory of philosophy.
Additionally, another old but global theme of non
philosophy, that of the Determination in-the-last-instance
of philosophy by humanity as an ultimatum addressed to
it, has received the support of a new thematic that brings
together all the oppositions to the classical practice of
philosophy: that of the generic, from both a mathematical
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
(P.J. Cohen, followed by Alain Badiou) and philosophi
cal (Feuerbach and, in part, Marx) background. All the
classic objectives of non-philosophy are rediscovered
within it: humans as subjects of a generic nature, the
non-metaphysical unity of science and philosophy as
variables combined in a humanity-function said to be
of-the-last-instance, philosophy placed under the under
determining condition of science. The most recent figure
of non-philosophy, which is a plastic and open discipline,
finds it resembling an unexpected synthesis of quantum
mechanics and Marxism.
'Generic' signifies that science and philosophy are
no longer anything more than means or predicates that
have lost their disciplinary sufficiency and autonomy;
bodies of knowledge forced to abandon their specific
finality in order to take up another that is generic, a form
of universality that traverses their traditional domains of
objects as modalities of the philosophical All. So let this
be the formula of non-philosophy renewed or renamed as
GS or Non-Standard Philosophy: it is the.fusion efscience
and philosophy under science, a.fusion under-determined in
the-last-instance by science, i. e. quantum physics. This is our
guiding formula, that which we call the generic matrix.
To take an image from physics, the generic matrix
is an experimental chamber that brings physical and
philosophical particles into combat or collision, in order
to produce new knowledge. In other words, the generic
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matrix is a concept collider, more modern than those
other colliders, the Parmenidean Same, the Cartesian
cogito, the Fichtean transcendental Imagination, and the
Nietzschean or Deleuzean eternal return of the same. The
collision is assured by the chamber of radical immanence,
the acceleration of the conceptual particles assured by
unilateral duality. This injection of quantum means into
the former non-philosophy imbues it with the air of a
physics, but paradoxically, one that is not mathematical or
calculative. The science of philosophy is a quasi-quantum
physics of concepts. But more generally it is a confronta
tion of two mirrored players or bodies of knowledge,
one of which - the quantum and not the philosophical
- forces their specularity to evaporate under the form of
the Real or in immanence. In other words, our descrip
tions follow the suggestion of the quantum rather than
those of perception.
THE N E W I MA G E OF T H O U G H T
1 : T H E WAVE AS P E C T
The deconstruction of 'representation' by contemporary
thinkers is an overly general critique, because the signifier,
the molecular, alterity, difference, the simulacrum, etc., are
in general still discussed in a spirit at once corpuscular and
realist - two characteristics that only a quantum approach
can detect and call into question. Why? Philosophy is not
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
at all as simple as such philosophers implicitly suppose,
and so it remains basically undisturbed by these types
of operators which allow the subsistence of an essential
presupposition, a background horizon, a sufficiency of
philosophy as sole autonomous and ultimate master of
knowledge. There is always a specular doublet, a double
layer, double stratum or double face, either parallel or
arranged in a Moebius strip . One believes oneself to
be critiquing the whole of representation whilst in fact
one critiques only one stratum. Hence the return of the
doublets and of specularity that obliges the critique to
begin again, and prevents it from transforming itself into
a fully inventive activity.
Non-philosophy sets up another thought-experiment:
The real is no longer made of objects, autonomous or
in-itself terms; neither is it composed of elementary micro
objects (signifiers, partial objects) - this is the end of
specular realism and even of the modern micro-fetishism
that believes itself to have put an end to such realism.
The new model of the real is of a quantum kind; it is
ultimately constituted by asymmetrical or strange duali
ties, continuous on one side and discontinuous on the
other, like uni-lateral quanta. These entities are sometimes
apprehended as dualities, sometimes as unifacial phe
nomena - sometimes bifacial, sometimes unifacial. They
are not doublets or modalities of a complete circle, that
basic cosmic model that impregnates every philosophy
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F R O M T H E F I R S T TO T H E S E C O N D N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y
and persists in the modern figure of the Moebius strip.
They are the Real in the state of a half-circle, and there
fore as a wave with one face configuring a particle that is
inseparable from it. The undulatory morphe as inseparable
correlation ('unilation') of the curve of thought and its
content, a curve with which the intended object coincides,
at once in excess over it and included in it. Now, the
wave is defined by its amplitude or its wavelength, not
by the straightforward, objective intention of objects in
themselves or of corpuscular representations. Amplitude
is the periodic variation of the interval's maximal value.
Therefore it is distinct from phenomenological or ecstatic
distance. The latter belongs to the complete circle - the
depth that extends before the subject is a circle flattened
onto itself, the identity of a going/return which can later
ally open up, and ends by crossing and reversing itself
(Lacan) . But amplitude is not ecstatic, just semi-ecstatic,
in a single section or a single face without return or clos
ing. The wave is a form that is apparently unfinished,
only begun; at best it is completed by its object as being
identical to its object (which is not an in-itself) . It is no
longer phenomenological distance possibly inverted, clos
ing on or making a return to itself. The wave is completed
in its objects but without making a return to itself or in
itself as a large object. In the same way, if the curve is
completed as curve but not closed, its object, the particle
that is carried and transported by the wave, is partial as
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a half-whole, a semi-object with one face which is the
completion of the wave. The wave is the beginning of
the object and the object the completion of the wave. In
the strict sense of the terms, wave and particle are two
halves of a half-circle that they share.
First difference with Deleuze: the undulatory-particu
late real is made of machines that are unilateral rather than
molecular, orientedrather than disoriented. Wave-particle or
unilateral machines are complexes of non-exchangeable
or non-permutable non-separability and separability; the
undulatory flux is also - but in a single sense, not recipro
cally - the objective morphe of the particle. In reality,
Deleuze's break-flux machines presuppose from the start
the multiple 'in itself' of partial objects or breaks, and
introduce different types of their reversibility, including
that of the Body without Organs (BwO) . This is to retain
a priority of the multiple or of the empirical instance
in the ground of the continuity of the One-All that it
molecularises, and to accept an inversion between the
particulate and the undulatory, an inversion comprised
in the BwO . The generic model invested in the quantum
approach imposes a shift in relation to the philosophical
One-Multiple: the priority is no longer that of the wave
over the particle, or the inverse. Instead, there is a prior
ity of the wave alone as a priori over the particle, and a
prior-to-priority of the wave-particle as inseparable bloc of
unilateral duality over the supposedly in-itself corpuscle
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F R O M T H E F I R S T TO T H E S E C O N D N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y
(or wave) , which are the same duality but seen from the
other side, from the side of the particle. Unilateral duali
ties or machines are only intelligible, only make sense,
within the 'complete' generic matrix.
T H E N EW I MA G E O F T H O U G H T
2 : T H E V E C T O R I A L AS P E C T
Let us come back to the source of the wave as undulatory
particulate morphe. If the wave is a half-circle, one can
still divide and isolate a quarter of the circle or of the
turn in which the Real is now concentrated. The quarter
represents not an arithmetic number but a complex or
imaginary number that quantum theory uses in order
to define the quarter and generate the wave. Thought's
essence is no longer the still too-intuitive curve, but the
vector proper to Hilbert space and which characterises
the typical imaginary number of the wave function. The
vector is an even more elementary machine than the
wave, but it repeats the generic structure; it is like an
atom of thought, an inseparable fusion of the arrow and
the angle, of the module and the phase. If the wave form
was noematically oriented as a priori over the particle,
the vectoral form is noetically oriented toward the subject
as Last Instance.
In anticipation of what is to follow, and in order to
indicate the stakes, we will say that the curve is the a priori
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
form of thought as quantum theory and philosophy mixed,
giving rise to an aesthetic that is undulatory rather than
corpuscular like Kantian aesthetics; but that the vector is,
in first approximation, the real condition of possibility, the
Real itself, of quantum experience qua 'transcendental'
(to speak provisionally and in the classical manner) . But
it is evident that our matrix qua generic forbids us from
settling for that traditional solution. All the more so since
it defines a theoretical strategy of the invention or design
of concepts, of philo-fiction, and not only of the struggle
against philosophical sufficiency. The matrix stipulates
the fusion of quantum theory and philosophy (which is
what we have done) but under or in a dominant quantum
regime, not under philosophical dominance (which we
have just ensured once again) . So we must now cut out
the excess of philosophy that we no longer want, and in
the same gesture give to the vector or to the 'quartial' object
their proper consistency and genetic force. The fusions
and the distinctions that have been asserted are brought
about in the quantum regime. This overthrows the primacy
of a philosophy of science, but does not lead to a positive
science of philosophy, since the overthrowing is achieved
by philosophised quantum means, and is the enactment
of generic unilateralisation. It is a question of making a
transfer that is unilateral or broken by subtraction and
addition, of cutting out the excess of transcendence in
which the vector is bathed, and thickening its immanence
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F R O M T H E F I R S T TO T H E S E C O N D N O N- P H I L O S O P H Y
according to a distribution that follows the divisions of
the circle, but by way of unilateral duality. Inversely, the
'philosophy of quantum physics' is a counter-transference
of generic science.
D UALYS I S AS PRACTI C E OF U N I LATE RAL D UALIT I E S :
F R O M T H E Q.UAN T U M T O T H E G E N E R I C
As in Platonic division, there is in dualysis a principle
of choice for the most real (or 'best') half. Instead of
dismembering the All into its terms, or differentiating
it into Being-beings or some other difference that is not
(quantum-) scientific but philosophical, we have twice
geometrically divided the circle that symbolises the All,
but each time choosing one of the sides as bearer of the
Real (or of immanence) , and thus of the One rather than
of Being. The Real is a sort of coefficient symbolised by
the One. The other side is not denied or abandoned; we
shall say that it is determined in-the-last-instance by the
real-One without our even knowing yet what is behind
this expression 'last instance'. It is now the quarter which
is the real-One, and it determines the wave in-the-last
instance. It is the quarter that must be thought generically
for itself.
The generic takes the ways and means of quantum
theory as far as possible, but only in order to turn them
against themselves. For its problem is that of acting on
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
the 'alls' that philosophy proposes, and of extracting what
there is in them of the Real, without analysing them and
without synthetically producing yet more of them; to
extract from the All that which it has in excess or exces
sively over itself, its pretention or sufficiency over the Real,
then; to impoverish the function of the All in the sphere
of the Real without absolutely destroying it (a radical,
but not absolute, deconstruction of the All) . But also,
and complementarily, its problem is also that of 'forcing'
the terms that fell under the law of the All, not in their
singularity but in their indivi-duality, forcing them into
uni-laterality rather than totality. Indivi-duality (or uni
laterality) is not the more or less corpuscular individual,
it is at once non-separable from self or immanent and at
a semi-ecstatic self-distance; it is thus in an indirect self
relationship which is neither phenomenological distance
nor its opposite, affective interiority. The generic does
not reinforce the mediation of singularity by the All (the
singular universal) . On the contrary, it raises the terms
in the mediation, elevating them to the state of means or
mediates in their very existence, which is the Real. The
generic is the process of a 'broken transfer' , a continuous
or discontinuous operation, of consistency, of the power
of determination, from philosophy toward indivi-duality,
from transcendence toward complex immanence, from
the particle toward the wave and finally from the latter
toward the quarter-turn. But it is not the same reality
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F R O M T H E F I R S T TO T H E S E C O N D N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y
that will be passed on or exchanged or which switches
from one side to the other. This is not a redistribution of
wealth on an equity basis, but a radical redistribution of
the means of production. Or even of reality's force toward
the Real. On the side of reality one subtracts, on the side
of the Real one adds or augments; it is therefore not the
same thing. This method is dualysis.
Second difference with Deleuze: there is no Body without
Organs (BwO) or Eternal Return of the Same (ERS) , only a
Last Instance. Rather than finishing the treatment of the
All with the half-circle or the wave - which would be to
remain within the orbit of the philosophical circle or the
All (or the Spinozist One-All) - it is a matter of taking up
an extreme, and perhaps 'fictioning' thought-experiment,
of introducing into the generic the approach via quantum
means, the quarter of the circle or imaginary number,
and not as a simple half-circle whose genetic key one
does not possess. In another sense Deleuze is very close
to a quantum thinking, but as a positive science that he
wants to philosophise about: he lacks the passage to the
generic, and thus also a quantum thinking in so far as it
allows that passage - as evidenced by the themes of the
One-All, the BwO and the E RS , of the twisting plane of
immanence, which fall back on the desiring machines, the
constant practice of a doublet (disjunctive synthesis) that
is certainly non-metaphysical but nonetheless insistent, the
empirico-transcendental style in general. Non-philosophy
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
has always opposed unilateral duality or unilateral com
plementarity to disjunctive synthesis; the former are no
longer doublets for which transcendence is axial, but
superpositions for which immanence is axial. The matrix is
precisely not structuralist or mathematical, nor is it philosophi
cal or transcendental; it is uni-lateral, and every doubling is a
complementarity, but a unilateral complementarity.
F R O M T H E VE C T O R TO VE C T O RA L I TY , F R O M T H E
I MA G I NARY TO I NV E N T I O N
The wave, even mathematically rooted in the quarter
turn, is thus not sufficient in itself; it is only an a priori,
a certain level that physics reaches. To the two successive
unilateral cuts, principally to the second, that isolates the
quarter, it is necessary to add an additional operation that
will address it, or the imaginary, as generic - something
quantum physics does not do since it must make a positive
use of it. We transpose to that new object, the quarter,
our matrix; it posits the fusion of the imaginary and the
philosophical (and so also the geometric and the physical)
under or in an imaginary or complex regime. The fusion
of the vector and its philosophical interpretation must
be determined as the vectorality of the vector, this time
generic, neither geometric nor transcendental.
We must now travel the inverse path: Instead of going
from wave to quarter-turn, one can only descend from
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F R O M T H E F I R S T TO T H E S E C O N D N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y
the quarter, but by force of the quarter itself, toward or
as wave. Why? Because the generic becoming still forms
itself via quantum theory, i.e. via the superposition or
the excess proper to immanence. We pass beyond the
imaginary by way of the imaginary itself, in a sense; but it
is not a reflection of the quarter on and in itself, it is not a
reflexive subject, a consciousness, or even a transcendental
ego replenishing itself (Henry) . It is a superposition of the
quarter and the wave, which is possible since the quarter
is that which engenders the wave. In this operation, in
being superposed with the wave the quarter is superposed with
itselj,.fills itself. The quarter is not exhausted by the wave
but is only known or thought by and as wave, essence
through existence. It is not delivered to the wave as if to an
alienating exteriority, but it only reaches its effectivity, only
actualises itself, on condition that it is resumed as immanent
or superposed with itself, on condition that it agrees to receive
a solicitation or impulsefrom the wave. The Last Instance as
'generic subject' is a causality that only awakens given
an occasion, but which alone 'decides' that there may be
occasions to act. As generic or self-superpositional, the
quarter thus achieves a consistency that undoubtedly is
no longer absolute or closed upon itself, but concluded
each time in the sense that the wave falls (again) into
itself only in order to go further, pushed or inclined by
the quarter superposed with itself. This ultimate and
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
highest point that non-philosophy can reach, w e also call
generic messianity.
Third difference with Deleuze: the plane ef generic or
tranifi,nite immanence is also the plane ef scientific reference.
There is indeed a plane of immanence called a 'generic
plane' or plane of messianity. It transcends or 'rises' , iden
tical to the transcendence of the wave before falling 'into
itself' . But that 'itself' is not an infinite self or the band of
a BwO; the wave is cut or arrested before having 'looped'
around a turn of the circle. Deleuze conserves the circle as
All and molecularises it rather than unilateralises it. Now,
the wave can only repeat itself without ever closing itself
in a circle, even an infinite one, though divergent. It is
transfinite and comes out of its own immanence, that of the
quarter. Even closing itself to the infinite is not possible
here for a very simple reason: the plane of immanence is
at the same time a plane of reference or a scientific, non
absolute plane. On a circle or an all, what can one do?
Deduct the all from itself, thus supposing that it remains
an all = -1 even if one molecularises disjunctively. Against
the doublet of representation, Deleuze correctly simplifies
the All to the state of a One-All, but does not pass via
quantum theory, which ends by demolishing, without
fail, philosophical sufficiency, more than philosophy itself
is able to do. Deleuze does not introduce science (here,
algebra) into the quarter, and does not achieve a rigor
ous imaginary, a generic and scientific philo-fiction. As
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F R O M T H E F I R S T TO T H E S E C O N D N O N-PH I L O S O P H Y
if he disperses or molecularises the human Last Instance
in the all-ideology. What he calls ' non-philosophy' is an
auto-simplified philosophy, but one that scarcely consents,
any more than Michel Henry's, to pass by way of science;
it is only absolute-generic and not radical-generic. What
consists is always the great macroscopic object, the BwO,
and not the broken system of indivi-duality, of the undula
tory quarter as uni-lateral. This Last Instance is vectorality,
generic messianity is ' our' infrastructure. How and with what
can those without philosophy work? We understand the
ultimate vectorality of thought as the messianity proper
to last-instance humanity, generic humanity. Messianity
is the only rectitude capable of adding itself to itself, yet
indirectly. It is a transfinite task, neither finite or closed
nor infinite.
WH O IS A N O N - P H I L O S O P H E R?
One of the things that motivate non-philosophy is the
eternal question 'what is to be done'? In the face of what?
In the present situation, in the face of the excess of com
municable knowledge which, potentialised by philosophy
become doxa, now harasses rather than alienates us.
Plato was surrounded by the doxa of his time, as are we
by forms of knowledge, no doubt well-sanctioned, but
whose precarious truths, amalgamated with philosophy,
produce a toxic and particularly unstable alloy, a new,
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
more complex, high-grade doxa. Humans as individuals
possess a universal capital of disciplinary knowledge that
grounds them in cosmic inhumanity, like a prodigious
life-sapping mythology - the new unconscious of the
Moderns, a knowledge that they have but of which they
cannot make good use according to their generic human
ity. Philosophy is the universal mediator in which forms
of knowledge participate, and it allows itself, along with
them, to be dragged into a certain corruption, that of
communication as universal mediation. But the mediator
or the mediate that is without-mediation is still something
else: Man-in-person and his messianity. Only this other
type of mediator can save us from the corruption of
cosmic doxa that is philosophy.
Non-philosophy is a set of technical specifications
regarding the means to be used in order to confront that
Platonic situation which demands a non-Platonic solution.
Opening these specifications to a blank page or a blank
computer screen, you have to decide that nothing is writ
ten there, that even software is materiality, nothing more.
Do not forget that even you yourself are no longer that
subject, immediately consistent and self-assured, that you
believed yourself to be, but just another machine, almost
empty of purpose; and that your only option is to make
denser or to superpose the other machines, not just to
connect them. You have to make the best use of that which
is no longer a blank slate, but a technically-sophisticated
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FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND NON-PHILOSOPHY
experimental chamber containing yet other chambers. It
is from this inventive expectation, this indirect action at a
distance - which is also that of robots, do not forget - that
you will become that which you only virtually are, or that
you will fulfil or accomplish yourself as generic subject.
Philosopher, scientist, artist, or theologian, there is
no subject, in this well-known sense, that could be non
philosophical from the start, defining itself by a body of
knowledge listed in the pages of the encyclopaedia. The
non-philosopher holds no place between philosophy and
anti-philosophy - she is a mediator of transformation,
not transmission, her only mission is to transform (not
to transmit) the knowledge that plagues us into simple
means - but why? For the invention of her own generic
humanity - human in-the-last-instance, not individual
humanity. The generic is a strategy of thought that uses
means taken from elsewhere or even already exploited
(this is not a problem for it) , like the imaginary number
or quantum immanence, in order to actualise the under
standing of the acquired knowledge that one is. Generic
humanity is condemned to know itself only indirectly,
through interposed mediatum and not through the trans
parency of an interiority. The task for the philosophical
subjects that we spontaneously are is to become a generic
human that we are only virtually, not actually. This is why
we are condemned to an ethics and a practice of means,
not of means raised to an undignified dignity of ends, but
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
rather weakened in regard to any possible and imposed
purpose. The generic ethic renders destitute both ends
and separated subjects in favour of means and their proper
immanence; it consists in correctly understanding the
specific and original purpose of the means in so far as it
no longer exceeds the former but is only the phenomenon
of their immanence or their superposition.
Science and philosophy are the extreme means that
limit the others and allow humans to forge an adequate
and real knowledge-( of)-self that does not stand in contra
diction to their generic-being. The understanding of self
as generic indivi-duality comes about indirectly through a
process and a transformation, mobilising the means rather
than believing oneself immediate, direct or even objective.
For, exactly, mathematism, just like philosophism, is a will
to act too directly, through positivity and spontaneous
sufficiency. But humans realise themselves or participate
in the real by inventing; invention being the great means
of struggle against the claims of received and transmitted
knowledge. Now, for the masses to take hold of theory as a
means and develop this knowledge-( of)-self, it is necessary
that they superpose themselves with it, that the masses
'fuse' with theory, as Marx said; with theory but this time
under theory. Non-philosophy is the thought of those who
have suspended their philosophical faith and found a
way to furnish the means of the generic end that is their
own. It is appropriate to distinguish the absolute poor 324
F R O M T H E F I R S T TO T H E S E C O N D N O N-P H I L O S O P H Y
those who are stripped of all their predicates but full of
the bedevilling image of Capital as universal predicate,
or of the philosophical All - from the radical poor, who
are divested only to the point of making apparent their
human root, of being able to use their dispossession and
turn their destitution against that image itself; that is to
say, to subtract themselves from it.
This situation is not without a certain practical paradox
of theory: the non-philosophers who proclaim a certain
poverty of knowledge, especially of philosophy, need to
acquire more and more knowledge, to master philosophy,
in order to subtract themselves from the latter's spontane
ous excess if they would produce understanding. Here
lies precisely the whole art of invention: the poor are
condemned to invent on the basis of bodies of knowledge
that exist and that they cannot produce ' firsthand' , but
must appropriate, not even 'secondhand' but 'lasthand',
already-finished. The generic allows the establishment
of the form of excess or invention, but also the form of
insufficiency or weakness that is appropriate to humans
in so far as they must abandon - that is to say transform
- the predicate of 'all ' . Philosophers must make their way
through 'all' acquired forms of knowledge (or at least
two) , but must do so as if they do not possess them, or as
if they were without-philosophy, i.e. without spontaneous
faith in transcendence. What will remain for them will
be the immanent faith of poverty, inventor of thought.
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T h e D egrowth of P h i l o s o p hy :
Towa rd a G e n e r i c Eco l ogy
(20 1 2)
Translated by Ro b i n M a ckay
E C O L O G I CAL T I M E S
Take a programme entitled ' Struggle and Utopia a t the
E ndtimes of Philosophy' . An anti-Hegelian formula,
obviously: all thought is not determined by the phi
losophy that is supposed to give meaning to history. It
speaks of the 'endtimes', not of the end ef philosophy
(a still-philosophical, intra-historical event) . 'The end
times' is an eschatological formula, and the context is
that of humanity of-the-last-instance. Such is the new
usage - of struggle and of utopia, and of philosophy at
last brought within the reach of humans. What function
could philosophy still perform in the epoch of ecological
distress, an epoch wherein ecological finitude replaces
metaphysical finitude?
327
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
It is not a question of a 'philosophy of degrowth', such as
we sometimes hear of today, but of the degrowth of phi
losophy itself. The most evident effect of non-philosophy
is the reduction of philosophy simultaneously to the
state of an object and that of a production material, for a
special science called 'generic' which is not a philosophy
of positive sciences. Philosophy is but a productive force
to place in the service of humans, and I maintain that
it is not yet so placed, and never has been, except in a
somewhat restricted and perverse sense. I do not claim
that philosophy is nothing but ideology; it is a productive
force that has been 'turned' to reproduction.
'
P H I L O S O P H I C AL H O R R O R
'
To prepare ourselves, let's begin with a few scandalous
statements, under a celebrated heading that no doubt
could be further nuanced: ' Man is the most terrible of
beings' (Heidegger) ; 'Man is a wolf to man' (Hobbes) ;
'Man is a monstrous living being' (a neuro-biologist) .
Now, 'the philosopher is the man par excellence' (phi
losophers) . And the conclusion is . . . ? We shall call this set
of presuppositions the symptom of the non-separability
of man and animal. What is this non-separability, which
prevents us deciding straight away who is the man in
what is usually called man, and who is the animal in the
animal? We find ourselves here in a great uncertainty as
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T H E D E G ROWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
to the determination of these two entities. Philosophical
horror stems from this always possible argument, but also
to the ambiguity of philosophy itself.
The primary ideal of overgrowth, above all, that which
legitimates if not produces it, is that of philosophy. There
is a misunderstanding as to its aims: the increase of virtue
or of the good, the diminution of evil - yes, perfect.
But philosophical humanism accomodates itself to that
causality called domestication, rearing, breaking-in, which
is the content of a realist and determinist ethics . We
must ask whether this ethics is truly made for the human
genus. Alongside virtues, which are the humanist and
median version, there are the transcendentals and their
categorical vocation; and higher still, the ideal of the
Platonic more-of-philosophy, more enj oyment for the
philosopher. And it is true that philosophy is an object of
extraordinary enjoyment - now a Foucauldian pleasure,
now a Deleuzian desire. There is also the right to philoso
phy (Derrida, Nietzsche) , the duty to philosophise, and
ultimately the immanent auto-justification of philosophy.
To philosophise is to ultimately justify philosophy, to
assure the full employment of the will without having to
be measured about it.
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
P H I L O S O P H I CAL M O D E L S O F D E G R O WT H
To philosophical inflation, must we oppose (and for what
reason) philosophical models of degrowth? Of deflation?
Occam's razor? Less philosophy? I ts deconstruction,
another weaker practice, as the Italians would have it,
or more multiple as in Deleuze? Or else its economic
marginalisation, its final nihilism? Or, on the contrary,
do we need a philosophy that is stronger, always stronger,
like Plato and Badiou? These solutions all suffer from
a vicious disease: they are continuist, recognising only
a philo-diversity that is vague, ultimately naturalist, and
which, so to speak, lacks any scientific principle. But
they do not recognize the complex or dual structure, the
specular invariant of philosophy, whose auto-sufficiency
and its homogeneity they extend, supposedly transform
ing it through their own means.
We pose the problem otherwise: How to continue
to utilise philosophy, but in conjugating it with a more
radical means, one that is truly heterogeneous to it - that
is, science within it and outside of it - as opposed to the
now vague, now theological alterity of the moderns.
Already the science of language shows that philosophy has
the structure ef a double articulation, on two levels, which
give it an affinity with language; that it forms a spectrum
to be analysed and explained as a doublet structure or
a structure in double transcendence; that it is governed,
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THE DEGROWTH OF PHILOSOPHY
specifically, by the Principle of Sufficient Philosophy,
which is the superior strata and the unity of sense that
transforms dualities into doublets . In reducing it to a
global thought, to one sole stratum with varying degrees,
cases or nuances, the solutions evoked above flatten it
onto science as if onto a mirror, without truly making any use
efscience. So that, for philosophy, science does not spon
taneously think, because to think, one must speak; and
moreover, philosophy makes use of science as a looking
glass, in which it merely admires itself.
N O N - P H I LO S O P HY I S N O T
A S H O RT - S E L L I N G S P E C U LAT I O N
It i s obviously not a matter o f simple, continuous and
quantitative degrowth - so what would it be to degrow?
Such a degrowth of knowledge, of art, of philosophy,
of science, of religion would take against philosophical
growth, but would in fact be the same auto-philosophical
model, understood this time as a conservative reaction
and regression. Generic deg;rowth, on the contrary, proposes
to reduce philosophy to the state ef a productiveforce - thus,
it is only the Principle of Sufficient Philosophy that must
be rescinded. And in order for this to happen, we need
science.
Philosophy is a speculation that sells short and long at
the same time, that floats at once upward and downward.
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
But this is how it describes itself - as if the wave were being
described by the sailor tossed upon it (see Leibniz and
Kant) . Or, according to another nostalgic trope, agrarian
rather than marine, philosophy thinks only to grow like the
Cartesian tree, or to root itself in the soil, as in Heidegger.
Or again, it projects itself into a great living being. I take
seriously all these aquatic, vegetable and vital metaphors
of thought, which bear witness to an ecological nostalgia.
But non-philosophy is not content to describe fluctuations
or oscillations without explaining them, receiving them as
affects, contenting itself with undergoing and living them.
It is a matter of understanding the undulations, the lulls
and surges of philosophy by requisitioning the science of
waves (of waves and particles through vectors in a con
figuration space, or of imaginary numbers) . A science for
philosophy must respond to specific constraints: not only
is it not on the same plane as its object, but this object is
very special, since it is philosophy, which never allows itself
to be manipulated by a simply positive and brute science.
To avoid mere confrontation, and the war that knowledges
and thought engage in, it is necessary to invent a device
imposing upon them a 'perpetual peace' - a device for
the conjugation of the two disciplines which preserves
their autonomy, their specificity, while depriving them
of their will to domination, rescinding their principles
of sufficiency pertaining respectively to philosophical
spontaneity and to the positivity of scientific domains .
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T H E D E GROWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
Thus they are prepared so as to prevent their immediate
usage, so as to lead them by force to a negotiation table, to
create a common or generic space. This negotation table is
the 'generic matrix' . I do not claim to propose a 'general
ecology' , only a generic one - this is the contribution I
can make, in so far as I live in an originally philosophical
milieu, without limiting myself to everyday measures,
saving water by shutting off the faucet, for instance. Let
us not squander philosophy in tasks of substitution for
theology, and above all of specular auto-exaltation.
AN E C O L O GY I N T H E Q.UAN T U M S P I R I T
In order for philosophy to become an ecological object
or preoccupation, a certain number of conditions must
therefore obtain. We must design their implementation,
creating, in a word, an adequate theoretical 'installation' .
We cannot transfer ecological problems and means of
thought directly and continuously into philosophy; we
need new definitions of vicinities and risks, new ways
of marking out knowledges, and we must set our goals
according to them.
1 . The Paradox efthe Productive Forces efDeg;rowth
I place quantum physics and philosophy together in a
matrix, as non-separable, having a common interest or a
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
common meaning for nature, so as to re-examine each of
them in this situation, in terms of human subjects. It is
not a question of raising each to the power of the other in
an apparently reciprocal manner, seeking a meta-science
or a meta-conjugation of knowledges. On the contrary,
we wish to deliver ourselves from the stranglehold of
knowledges that root us in the world under the author
ity of philosophy. This is the object of non-philosophy
- not just a brute and positivist scientific diminution of
philosophy.
The procedure seems to be a ruse, since one multiplies
knowledges one by the other as if one was raising their
power. But, on one hand, they are no longer disciplinary
knowledges posited separately in their transcendence,
their spontaneity and under their own principle of suf
ficiency. Disciplinary knowledges are now simple states or
reduced properties ef a human subject=X that they do not
determine directly. And on the other hand, these knowledges
deprived, by this device inspired by quantum thought,
of their respective principle of sufficiency, are generically
ordered according to this subject=X, or indexed to the
imaginary number that is the secret of quantum thinking.
The multiplication of properties produces the paradoxi
cal effect of a generic degrowth of knowledges oriented
by and for a new subject. It is rather a prolonging and
an activation, a subj ective repetition of the quantum
degrowth of determinism and realism, an aggravation of
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T H E D E G ROWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
this movement through the putting of these properties at
the service of man as subject=X. The generic matrix resolves
the ecologi,cal paradox that productiveforces with a degrowth or
de-productivity effect. How to produce de growth rather than
always producing overgrowth? Generic science therefore
cannot be a general meta-science, but only a 'sub-science'.
2 . From Linguistic Doublets to Quantum Dualities
I shall therefore pass from a linguistic or language-based
interpretation to a physical and quantum interpretation of
philosophy, an interpretation that better respects certain
distinctions, and founds a reasoned degrowth. A model
of quantum analysis (completed by a generic orientation)
replaces the language-based model which favours the
logocentric auto-effacement of dualities . The degrowth
proposed would be dangerous or irrational, primary and
reductive, if it were interpreted within the framework of
language-based presuppositions. But the physicist reduc
tion is not physicalist and naturalist - it does not arrive at
primary representations, but at dynamic conceptual liveds
[ vicus] . I substitute for the still massively philosophical
model of Lacan and Derrida an analysis according to a
model that we shall call onto-vectorial rather than vecto
riell - ontological rather than geometrical, even though
it uses the underpinnings of geometry. Whereas double
articulation and the doublets that underwrite it tend to
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
efface themselves in a language-based practice that stays
within auto-philosophy, and which limits deconstruction
to being auto-deconstruction, an entirely other duality
is possible - a quantum duality, that of the wave and
corpuscle, in the form of the vector and the particle.
Even if it seems to imitate that of the signifier and the
signified, which is the lower layer of double articulation,
it is more scientific, mathematical even, and does not
risk falling back into logocentrism since in it, vectors
are not oppositional, negative and relative (Saussure)
but are representable in an imaginary space, what we call
a configuration space, determined algebraically by the
imaginary number (square root of 1 ) And moreover the
model of the corpuscle and then of the particle allows the
subsumption of all forms of signified and of sense. As to
the superior layer of the double articulation, that of dis
course and units of meaning, it will also be transformed,
losing its theological and fetishistic virtues of the envel
oping of dualities. Concretely, the double articulation of
philosophical discourse will be under-determined - that
is to say, in conformity with the quantum model, it will
lose its identities as a layer and a hierarchical relation,
its identity as sufficient unity, which allows its singularity
and philosophical-type universality. It will instead acquire
a quantum indetermination and a non-localisation (a
signifiant non-opposition, for example) in relation to a
subject called 'generic' . The sequencing of philosophical
-
336
.
T H E D E GROWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
discourse by itself, which continues in spite of everything
in Lacan and Derrida, will be prohibited - for this would
be a false degrowth of philosophy.
Anyhow, the enterprise does not end there; it also
reduces metaphysics in favour of the generic subject.
There is a subject of this degrowth, a subject which is no
longer the philosophical subject. It undergoes degrowth
only in operating it, but in a relation of causality called 'in
the-last-instance' . Degrowth as a theoretical and generic
concept (rather than as economico-political doxa) is
therefore founded on what we might call, in a remote
sense, a 'generic Marxism' - in any case, on a scientific
practice. It does not describe a situation in the concrete
world, nor a phenomenological anthropology of man in
the world. It is a theory of philosophical action in ecology,
an action which we must conclude is more probable than
certain and dogmatic.
AN E C O LO GY IN A G N O S T I C S P I RIT! T H E NATURAL
E P I STE M I C M I LI E U , FROM WO RLD TO U N IVE R S E
I propose to change the ultimate reference environment
for ecology, and to respond a little differently to the
question of nature and environment. The quantum model
obliges me to maintain that the correlate of physics (phys
ics as essentially quantum, not the traditional physis) is the
universe, and not the world. I understand by 'universe' the
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FROM DECISION TO HERESY
correlate of modern knowledges, by 'world' the correlate
of philosophy. I would add that the universe is not the
great mystical All evoked by certain physicists, but an epis
temological correlate of physico-mathematical knowledge.
The universe, even as object of experimentation and
above all if it is an object of experimentation, is an object
of knowledge, not a material object. This granted, the
reference to knowledges must be distinguished from the
reference to the world, and must find the universe as its
true correlate - such is the consequence of this gnosis .
But aside from these generalities, my objective is very
limited in relation to the field of ecology and its Platonic
presuppositions (even if gnosticism is in part a product
of Platonism) . Contemporary humans inhabit a world
of proliferating knowledges, rather than a world of sen
sible objects marked by theology and thus by sin as was
formerly the case. Thus we suggest an extension of the
ecological domain: man must be prepared to transgress
the natural world and to enter into the universe as theo
retical object, not only into the world as biological milieu.
Ecological or generic finitude cannot exactly replace the
old finitude of the subject. Its sensible and cognitive
sphere of existence is extended in its materiality, and in its
formal possibilities, by renouncing the mirages of totality
and the absolute. In terms of this modernised gnostic
context, we shall no longer say that man is in general
thrown into the world as evil and nothingness, and that
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T H E D E G ROWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
his problem is to flee this world-here, but instead (and
less religiously) that he is thrown-to-knowledge, that is to
say to the universe by way of knowledges. His problem is
not to rediscover, like an originary ante-predicative, the
universal environment that he would have lost, but to
defend himself from the confusion of world and universe
by using knowledges against their philosophical capture
by the world. The epistemic environment is, doubtless, a
carrier of our very own 'disease' , no longer absolute but
in so far as it still retains its old philosophical form of
the 'world' . The ecological problem is then displaced into
that of the best usage-without-world, without-the-whole
world, of the natural epistemic environment. Particular
attention is required as to the place of philosophy, which
is duplicitous, at once one knowledge among others or
a productive force, and the world-form par excellence
that turns knowledges astray from their usage in view
of the universe.
This way of posing the problem does not imply a
globalization, but a naturalisation of the episteme. If there
is a capital-world, it is that of knowledges; but can one
reappropriate these knowledges outside of their world
form? The paradox of the procedure we adopt is to treat
philosophy, which gives knowledges their sense and their
truth, in its turn as a knowledge, so as to disencumber it
of its relation of self-duplication, its closing in upon itself,
quantum 'decoherence' , in short. Knowledge, including
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
the most ambitious thought, must be treated as a natural
ecumenon, an inhabited surface of the terrestrial crust,
but more extended, more universal, with dimensions sup
plementary to those of its ancient relation to physis - it
is universe-oriented rather than world-oriented. There is an
intention of knowledges, and it is the universe, just as the
world is the intention of consciousness or of being. It is
a matter of naturalising philosophy, in the strong sense
of modern physics rather than of physis - not like Quine
but more like Marx. The generic extension of humans to
the universe is not a continuous, even infinite, extension
of the world to the universe in the Husserlian manner. We
pass from world to universe, from worldly ecology to the
ecology of the universe, by way of what we might call the
true 'quantum leap'. Thought is not the intrinsic property
of humans that must serve to define their essence, an
essence that would then indeed be 'local'; it is a uni-versal
milieu. If we tend now to emphasise animality, bringing it
within the sphere of culture, then why not emphasise the
most elevated humanity, so as to bring it into the universe;
and, through a paradoxical example, why not reexamine
its links with animality, of which it will then a matter of
knowing whether it, also, is universal? Let's suppose an
ecology of the relations of thought, of its highest forms
of which we can make use - science and philosophy, art
and religion, relations with and within the universe which,
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T H E D E GROWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
I insist once more, is not the mystical great All, but the
correlate of knowledges.
T H E I MA G I NARY N U M BE R A N D T H E R E S C I N D I N G
O F T H E O N E A S MAC R O S C O P I C S U F F I C I E N C Y
The wellspring of non-philosophy is the One, but this
thesis has been poorly understood. Not the One as
metaphysics or duplicity of the One-of-the-One, but as
radical immanence of the One-in-One which designates
nothing other than quantum superposition. This is a
new ontology: the representation of variables - that is
to say, quantum thought and philosophy, by vectors, as
is demanded by the imaginary number used in quantum
mechanics - vectors that form a new duality with philo
sophical representation, but no longer a duplicity. This
is a reversal of the One proper to a super-structure in the
One-in-One as infrastructure composed of vectors. The
imaginary number has a general effect of onto-vectoriel
[ onto-vectoriale] subtraction, or rather under-determi
nation, from knowledges subtracted from philosophi
cal representation but not subtracted from it. In other
words, the One as factor of unity or ultimately duplicitous
identity is suspended, apparently a little like the one-of
the-count of which Badiou speaks, but the imaginary
number suspends only the One of sufficiency, or renders it
immanent without suppressing it in a materialist manner.
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
It weakens the worldly sufficiency of knowledges, that
of the encyclopaedia in general, including that of philo
sophical knowledge in so far as its proper sufficiency is
not only the positive naivety of science but is sufficient
twice over: once as direct, primary or principal, a second
time vectorially or indirectly.
Now philosophy and quantum thought no longer
face each other down in their sufficient and macroscopic
spontaneity, but are two simple properties or predicates for
a subject=X. To refuse to presuppose two, this is precisely
the sufficiency of those knowledges that believe themselves
to be unique. But our very own rational kernel is not of a
dialectical order, but is physical, quantum. Thus what must
be rescinded is not the One in general, in its abstraction
as unit of the count, but the-One-as-sufficiency. I seek in the
One-in-One as superposition of vectors the formula of a
contemporary gnosis capable of weakening the grip of the
world, which is exerted in the form of knowledges in so far
as they are overdetermined by philosophy. It is not the sort
of imaginary that increases philosophy; on the contrary,
the imaginary or complex number is a productive force of
the degrowth of metaphysics. It is an amputation of philo
sophical excess with a directly positive effect, a positivity
of retreat-without-retraction or of subtracted-without
subtraction. Onto-vectoriel immanence underdetermines
philosophical growth or overdetermination; so degrowth
or underdetermination is not an ontology of lack or of
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T H E D E G ROWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
the negative, which one might oppose immediately to
the full and affirmative ontology of Spinoza, Nietzsche,
Bergson and Deleuze. It is a vectoriel affirmation without
re-affirmation - but here, the absence of a second affirma
tion does not destroy every selection. On the contrary.
Here, philosophy is 'degrowth-oriented'.
The One-in-One is presently a form of un?conscious
or infrastructure - the impossible real, if you like, the real
that does not enter into the philosophical order. But it
is not a question of eliminating it, as in Badiou, killing
it. For it will fuse with the philosophical superstructure
and its doublets, but under its own authority, that of
the imaginary number or vector indexed to itself as 'last
instance' . Standard quantum thought makes for (or helps
to make) non-standard philosophy. It is not projected
specularly within philosophy, but transforms the latter.
The quantum, and then generic, underdetermination by
the Last Instance is a general diminution of disciplines
to the state of vectoriel properties, and of transcenden
tal principles and absolutes to the state of objective or
immanental appearances .
This is to abandon the procedures of Lacanianism and
deconstruction (which is a complex Judaic-oriented Laca
nianism) . Philo-fiction is a parallel genre to science fiction,
a diminution of dogmatism and of the philosophical axi
omatic to the state of a fiction. Fiction places itself between
the real and objective reality, and allows the connection of
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
the two. Philosophical dogmatism strangles truth between
macroscopic experience and objectivity. It is a question of
slackening this noose that would encircle truth.
T H E P RO D U C T IVE F O R C E S OF D E G ROWT H
( E P I S T E M O L O G I CAL R E D U C T I O N S )
We need a new analysis o f philosophical duplicity, but also
of the semi-conscious (or un?conscious) naturality of posi
tive knowledges, such as they are required in their mutual
production and usage. Thus, a new analysis of knowledges
that have found their proper form but remain relatively
un?conscious in their pragmatic or instrumental purchase.
Science and philosophy are theoretical productive forces
usable in the circuits of theoretical pragmateia. There is
a use of scientific positivity included in any practice of
understanding. This is not to say that sciences are nothing
but practices; but that we treat them here uniquely as
productive forces that do not have their end in themselves,
but as both within and without themselves - that is to
say, for humans as ecological subjects. Once 'naturalised' ,
science and philosophy are n o longer models outside
of the order of knowledges, or metaphysical paradigms
of thought and life. They are 'only' knowledges used as
productive forces in the service of humans in view of a
transformed type of knowledge that we might call 'truth' .
It is curious, in the context of degrowth, to announce an
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T H E D E G R O WT H O F P H I L O S O P H Y
extension of productive forces. But in reality the naive
usage of science and of philosophy under their respective
principles is the source of all excessive derives, and their
reduction to the state of forces is the best way to put them
consciously in the service of humans. It is true that this
reduction is implied for and by the construction of the
matrix - the matrix already presupposes this reduction,
which otherwise would be meaningless. The matrix is
the only concrete or real, it is no longer the sciences or
philosophy as paradigms which are the concrete.
S UBJ E C T IVE E C O L O GY O F T H E F I R S T
A N D LAS T I N S TAN C E
In what sense are humans ecological subjects? The meta
physical dissociation of man and animal is too simple and
macroscopic. As always in the quantum spirit, we work
with non-separable dualities. Firstly that of animal and
man: their non-separability or non-locality is posited, in
various possible versions. And then the primary objective
and the prior-to-primary objective, or objective of-the
last-instance, which both apply to this non-separability of
man-animal. To preserve the natural environment of exist
ence, to preserve man and his survival qua species even,
is the immediate and primary aim of ordinary ecology.
Nevertheless we distinguish from this a prior-to-primary
aim or an aim of-the-last-instance: again, man-animal, but
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
in his power of under-determination of primary aims. The
'defence' and the maintenance of human environments,
spontaneous and naturalist ecology, must be reordered
in view of a defence of generic man in (and sometimes
against) the environment or milieu of knowledges. This
new objective of ecology cannot be called superior or
meta-ecological. It is in-the-last-instance a generic usage of
epistemic milieus, the best appropriation of knowledges
(including philosophy itself) in view of the defence of
humans against their self-destructive drive, which has its
origin in the world. I distin[5Uish between thephilosophical ecol
ogy efhuman animals who live in-the-world, and the ecology ef
human animals who live generically in-man and thus with a view
to the universe; between the protection efthe environment and the
defence in-the-last-instance <if humans. Whence the subordi
nation of the great classical objectives of philosophy, and
even of truth, of the moral conception and the metaphysi
cal elevation of humans, to their ultimate horizon which
is the safeguarding of humans in-the-last-instance against
violence, including ecological violence.
D E G R OWT H : A M E R E LY P R O BABL E I M P E RAT IVE
OF N O N - P H I L O S O P H I CAL E C O L O GY ( E C O - F I C T I O N )
All of this allows the diminution or the degrowth of
knowledges, in so far as they are governed by philosophy.
It is a matter of founding ecology upon a non-Aristotelian,
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T H E D E G ROWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
but also non-Newtonian, basis. We refuse philosophi
cal sufficiency and its naturalism (rational animal or
creature) . We must change terrain at least epistemologi
cally, suspending the metaphysically idealized world or
nature - that is to say, the determinism that goes along
with realism and which permits anti-animal violence. But
after having eliminated causalist determinism through
quantum thinking, it is necessary to attain the generic
terrain or point of view, a point of view at once quantum
or matrixial and indexed on the human as generic subject
destined to the practice of eco-fiction, since it is in-the
last-instance an ecology and not a physics .
L Since it invariably affects that shifting duality that is
philosophy, generic degrowth cannot be a quantitative
question but must be a qualitative one, and must make
use of philosophy itself as its occasion. So it supposes an
analysis of philosophical complexity, the quantum device
of a probabilist understanding of that special object,
philosophy. The degrowth of philosophical sufficiency
is founded upon this understanding rather than upon
disciplinary practices of rearing and domestication, or
of macroscopic transformation.
Q. Generic man necessitates an experimental-type under
standing, not a mechanically deterministic and substantial
deduction. In conformity with the quantum spirit of the
two states of the generic object, we should distinguish
between its real state named 'generic man' , made of
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
virtual possibilities (non-philosophy as 'prepared philoso
phy') and its state of effective understanding named 'Last
Instance' and given as the final measure of humans. The
uncertainty of understanding concerns only the experi
mental understanding that leads humans as a generic set,
not as philosophers. It is not an immediate understanding,
flush with its premises, not a vicious ideological confu
sion. It appears only with the repetition of the experiment
or a 'second measurement', as physicists say, rather than
immediately with the empirical or a priori givens. If it
has a restricted or under-determined 'a priori' aspect, it
is not as primary but as 'prior-to-primary' or as prepara
tion of the conditions of knowing. Probable knowing
that commands only with uncertainty, with probability,
because generic man is not the object of an absolute and
axiomatic definition. He is known across his properties,
which are variables; he is an observable object before
being an observed object. Thus it cannot be a question
of a continuous degrowth of transcendence in general non-philosophical ecology is a 'prepared' ecology.
3. There are negative ecologies in the same sense that there
are 'negative theologies' . But the under-determination
of transcendence is a positive operation of selection in
philosophy, rather than an exclusion of the latter. It is the
effect of a pre-emptive operation, or of the sampling of a
slice of the most human transcendence, such as it results
from unilateral causality, or from what we call the clone
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T H E D E G R OWTH O F PH I L O S OPHY
(at once vectorial [vectorial] and lived) . To preserve the
part of transcendence that defines human genericity is the
effect of a positive act that no longer aspires, like philoso
phy, to a sur-transcendence, but to a 'sub-transcendence' .
It was incorrect t o understand negatively the notions o f
a n a priori defence of man, and o f degrowth.
4. For all these reasons, which are the effects of generic
man (and not only man as species faced with other species
under conjoint genuses, or under the generalities of the
animal and of reason, or as dominant, reigning species)
we shall refuse the Principle of Sufficient Ecology, and we
shall conclude from this to a probabilist ecology founded
upon a principle of uncertainty. Ecological sufficiency, or
indeed anti-ecological sufficiency, balances up absolute
and ideological decisions in one direction or another for example, the refusal to train or consume animals as
supposedly simply natural beings (whether in-man or
outside-of-man) . This is still to presuppose that man can
decide freely, in some all-powerful manner, to safeguard
nature or to destroy it. Whereas he does not really have
this power to transform it wholesale, since he himself
belongs to every decision, is included in it and perturbs
it, puts it back into play with every decision or repetition.
He has only the power to underdetermine his decisions .
What is needed is a reflection upon the non-separability
of man and animal, and on the animal as, at once, model
for man and clone of man.
349
Experi m e n t a l Texts,
Fi cti o n s, H y p e r s p e c u l ati o n
(1989)
Translated by Ro b i n M ac k ay
The texts assembled under this rubric cannot be under
stood outside of the conception of science - of the think
ing of the One [ . . . ] They belong to a genre that we call
'non-philosophy' , which is the operation of science upon
philosophical material and, at the same time, its result.
These texts are in principle unacceptable to philosophy
and its most general codes, but they are produced on
its basis . In a word: rather than produce apparently
non-philosophical (literary, psychoanalytic, etc.) effects
by means of procedures that remain essentially philo
sophical (deconstructions, for example) , it is proposed
to use really non-philosophical procedures to produce
effects that would have a final semblance, a last 'family
resemblance' , with philosophy. 'Non-philosophy' is not
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
anti-philosophical, it contains the philosophical genre
as a particular case or a limited thought; it is what the
philosophical qua genre becomes when it is grasped
and transformed by vision-in-One. The statements thus
produced only belong to 'philo-fiction' or 'hyperspecu
lation' from the point of view of the criteria of philo·
sophical thought. In other respects they are 'scientific'.
This scientific character is neither founded upon their
apparently logical disposition, nor contradicted by their
quasi-poetical, quasi-religious, quasi-logical (etc.) effects
(poetry-fiction, religion-fiction, logic-fiction, etc.) .
354
Va riati o n s o n a T h e m e by H e i d egge r
(1987)
Translated by Ro b i n M ac k ay
O R I G I NAL T H E M E
Da-sein is a being that is not limited to appearing among
other beings. Rather it has thefollowing ontic distinction:
in its being this being is concerned about its very being.
Thus it is constitutive ef the being efDa-sein to have, in
its very being, a relation ef being to this being. And this in
turn means that Da-sein understands itselfin its being in
one way or another and more or less explicitly. It is proper
to this being that it be disclosed to itself with and through its
being. Understanding ef being is itself a determination ef
being efDa-sein. The ontic distinction of Da-sein lies in the
fact that it is ontological.
B E I NG AND TI M E ,
355
§4, SZ 1 2 .
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
I
Dasein - this is retranslated, in the philosophical wherein
it is already translated, as Being-as-a-being. It is a being
that is not limited to simply being - that is to say (as this
is retranslated in the philosophical) to being an object,
in the full or phenomenal sense, henceforth, of objectiv
ity. Being-as-a-being is a being, but is not limited to
being a-being-as-Being. As a being it has the following,
originally ontic distinction, which distinguishes it from
every other being: in its objectivity it is concerned about
its objectivity. Thus it is constitutive of the constitution
of-objectivity of the Object-as-a-being, to have, in its
objectivity, an objective relation to the latter. Being-as
a-being understands itself in its objectivity in one way or
another and more or less explicitly. It is proper to this
being that its objectivity be disclosed to itself with and
through its objectivity. Understanding of objectivity is
itself an objective determination of Being-as-a-being. The
ontic distinction of Being-as-a-being lies in the fact that,
as objective, it understands objectivity.
II
Being-as-a-being i s a being that i s not limited t o simply
being a being-as-Being, an object indifferent to its objec
tivity. It is Difference, the divided point that recrosses - a
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VA R I AT I O N S O N A T H E M E BY H E I D E G G E R
broken circle o f inversion - its twin sides, Being-as-a
being and a being-as-Being. It has the following ontic
distinction: that its being is not indifferent to itself, but
is concerned by itself; that its objectivity is affected by
itself; that its being is not only identical to itself give
or take a division through which it is augmented qua
Being itself; that it is open to being affected by itself, to
inhibiting itself as that being that it is, and of augmenting
itself as Being. Ontological Difference is that chiasm of
Being and beings, a chiasm with four sides (Being-as-a
being, a being-as-Being) and four forces (two repulsive,
two attractive) . Being-as-a-being is thus understood as
ontico-ontological Difference. Its ontic distinction lies
in this circle, broken by an inversion, that returns to it
from itself.
III
Being-as-a-being i s a being that i s not limited t o simply
being a theme or an object for ontology. It has the follow
ing ontic distinction: that of implying ontology in itself
and of being this chiasm. It practises it in the mode where
it constitutes its own stakes; in every instance it invests all
of ontology in the particular ontology that is its own. Its
understanding of its being and of Being is, each time, for
this being, an ontological game, a decision that implicates
all the rules of ontology in the undecidable conflict of two
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
particular ontologies. The ontological games that it prac
tises are one-player games (Being-beings) , that is to say
two-player games (Being-as-a-being, a being-as-Being) ,
that is to say four-player games (each player 'Being-being'
functioning now as Being for the next being-Being, now
as a being for a neighbouring Being-being) . Being-as-a
being is the friend of those games where good neighbours
take each other on, and upon which it cannot, and does
not wish to, impose the rules of a meta-ontology.
IV
Dasein is resaid, in the philosophical wherein it is already
said, as the 'Saying-as-said'. It is a said that is not limited
to simply being itself said without its saying it again. It
has the following ontological distinction: that of saying
that it does indeed have the ontic distinction of being
able to say that it is not limited to simply appearing as
a said within saying, but that it has the ontic distinction
of having the ontological distinction of saying that in
its saying it is concerned about this very saying, and of
saying that in this saying it is concerned with this auto
affection of saying, and of having a relationship-of-saying
to the relationship-of-saying that it has with this power of
saying. The Saying-as-said is said as saying itself in one
way or another and more or less explicitly in its power
of saying. It is proper to this said that it is said to itself
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with and through its saying of the power of saying. The
saying of the power of saying is itself a mode of saying
itself proper to Saying - as said. The on tic distinction of
Saying-as-said lies in the fact that it is said as saying itself
in its saying. The Saying-as-said is resaid in the saying as
the self-saying which, saying its saying, says it each time
entirely in every particular saying.
v
Being is not only the Being of the being, it is Being-as-a
being. It is not only ontological, it is antic. 'Ontological
Difference' is the abbreviation - and the idealist reduc
tion - of 'ontico-ontological' or 'ontological' 'Difference' .
(Ontico-)Ontological Difference i s fundamental, but
more fundamental still, in delimiting the latter or meta
physics, is ontico(-ontological) Difference. The former is
subordinated to the latter, which is the auto-affection of
ontology divided, and recombined in itself, by beings or
ontico(-ontological) Difference. The antic distinction of
this being is that, within its being-ontological, it is the
antic, and no longer ontological, distinction between
Being and beings . It distinguishes between the 'antic'
meaning properties of the object-being, or properties
grasped within an ontological horizon, and the 'antic'
meaning that which never falls within such an horizon,
as withdrawal or differe(/a)nce that renders ontology
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finite. Unlike other beings, indifferent to their being,
and whose infinite ontology gives rise to 'metaphysics' ,
for that being and for the ontology that it announces,
the ontic is the necessary reference of the ontological and
the site-of-division where infinite ontology must come to
pass. The reference in the mode of auto-affection which
is that of ontology makes the most undecidable reference
still to beings .
VI
Dasein - this is retranslated, in the philosophical wherein
it is already translated, as Logos-as-Other, as Presence-as
Other. It is an Other that is not limited to being present.
Rather it has the following ontic distinction, as Other:
for this Other, and qua Other, its particular mode of
presence is such that its presence is divided, is affected
in itself and is extended as Presence. It is constitutive of
this constitution-in-presence of Presence-as-Other to have
a relation of presence to presence. Presence-as-Other is
grasped again, in its chiasm, as mode of Presence. It is
proper to this Other that it be disclosed to itself - that it
be divided - in a relation to presence, with and through
its guise of presence. But Presence only returns to itself
as Other and after the Other. The Other has the yet more
fundamental distinction of making the difference between
the auto-affection of presence that believes itself the
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power o f Presence upon itself, and the on tic auto-affection
through which, as Other, it differs the former without
return. Thus Presence-as-Other explains to itself that it
must always consider thus the suspension of Presence to
the Other and situate Presence in the differe(/a)nce of
the Other to Presence.
VI I
Actuality-as-subject is a subj ect that is not limited to
being an object of knowledge. Rather, as subject, it has
the following distinction: for this subject its actuality is
concerned about its very actuality; it is care of self. Thus
it is constitutive to its sense of actuality to have a relation
of care, itself actual, to its own actuality. And this in turn
means that the care of self interprets itself in one way or
another and more or less explicitly, in its own sense. It is
proper to this subject that this actuality is disclosed, as
care of self, to itself and to its actuality, with and through
its actuality. The hermeneutics of actuality is itself an auto
interpretation of Actuality-as-subject. The distinction,
qua subject, of Actuality-as-subject lies in the fact that it
is the actuality of a hermeneutic of actuality.
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VI I I
Desire-as-lack i s a lack that i s not limited t o being present
or absent like a thing. Rather it has, as lack, the follow
ing distinction: for this Desire-as-lack, there is Desire for
itself, Desire is desire for itself, Desire is desire for self
and desires itself as desire for self. It is constitutive of this
Desire which disguises this lack or which is its existence,
to have a relation of desire to itself in particular and to
extend itself as universal Desire. And this in turn means
that Desire-as-lack desires itself in its desire in one way or
another and more or less explicitly. It is proper to Desire
as-lack qua lack-as-desire that this desire is disclosed to
itself as lacking in itself with and through its desire. The
distinction, as lack, of Desire-as-lack lies in the fact that
it exists and understands itself as desire for desire.
IX
Difference or the mixture of Being-as-One is a One that
is not limited to being a mode of Being. Rather it has
the following, originally unary, distinction: this One
qua One, in its Difference, is concerned with Difference.
Thus it is constitutive of the constitution-of-difference
of this mixture in so far as it is One to have a relation
of difference to Difference, a divided and recombined
relation, or a relation of chiasm. And this in turn means
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VA R I AT I O N S O N A T H E M E BY H E I D E G G E R
that Difference-as-One understands itself o r uses itself in
so far as it is a mixture. It is proper to this One, to this
usage-of-difference of the One, that Difference is more or
less disclosed to itself with and through its existence as
mixture. The more or less differed autoreference of Dif
ference to itself is a mode of existence of Difference. The
originally unary distinction of Difference lies in the fact
that it exists actually in the mode of an already-differential
thought of Difference.
x
The mixture of mixtures or Difference is philosophical
Decision-as-One. The latter is a One that is not limited
to appearing as Difference. Rather it has this specifically
unary distinction: it - One in the last instance, in its mode
of mixture, Philosophical Decision - is concerned about
this mixture itself, which affects itself, reduces itself, or
inhibits itself and is resumed as superior mixture. It is
constitutive of the mixed-constitution of philosophical
Decision-as-One to have in its mixedness a relation and
a non-relation of chiasm. And this in turn means that the
mixedness of Philosophical Decision understands itself
always more or less explicitly in its form of a mixture or
of Decision. It is proper to this philosophical usage of
the One that Philosophical Decision is disclosed to itself
and understands itself as philosophical with and through
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its existence as mixed. The philosophy of philosophy is
a philosophical possibility of Philosophical Decision.
The unary distinction of Philosophical Decision lies in
the fact that it exists philosophically in the mode of a
philosophy of philosophy.
XI
Dasein this is retranslated, in the philosophical wherein
it is already translated, as human Reality. Human Reality
is a One that is not limited to appearing as a mode of
Being or as object. Rather it has the following unary or
real distinction, which is however a distinction of the last
instance: its objective existence in the World is affected
by itself and tied up in itself. It belongs to this existence
of human Reality that it exists in its own mode and that
this human Reality should include itself on its own basis.
The comprehension of self is a determination of human
Reality that is itself ontological. The distinction of human
Reality, as unary or real, in the last instance, lies in the
fact that it exists in the mode of ontological decision.
-
XII
Human Reality is not only that by which Dasein can be
retranslated, and in which Dasein can detranslate itself; it
is that which describes the real and ultimate phenomenal
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VA R I AT I O N S O N A T H E M E BY H E I D E G G E R
content that masks Dasein. It is the One, but the One
that precedes mixture, Being or Difference, and which is
not content to be commanded and utilised by the latter.
Human Reality has the unary distinction of experiencing
itself in itself without having to abandon or alienate itself
in existence, being or objectivation. It experiences itself
in its reality before any thetic project of self, without
passing via Being and is concerned in its very . . . with Being
in itself, that is to say via the general form of the World.
The comprehension of Being is not a determination of
being of the One, which has no such determinations, but
a contingent event whose advent in human Reality comes
along with the World. The unary distinction of this Real
ity is to remain in itself and to be able to describe itself
rigorously without passing via ontological statements.
Man can say the truth of Being without being affected
by it; he locates once and for all Philosophical Decision,
the chiasm that it makes with itself.
XIII
Being-as-One - that i s t o say, from now on, human Reality
- is a real transcendence that is not limited to appearing
among the transcendence of Being nor even to speaking
this Being. It does not manifest itself either in a decision
and a position, or in this decision and this position. It is
the trial of a Transcendence that retains itself on this side
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of disjunction and of the unity of chiasm of decision and
position. Rather it has the following unary distinction
in the last instance: for this real transcendence, itself
no longer concerned with itself, it experiences itself in
itself before straying into the World and affecting itself,
redividing itself, reflecting itself, making a chiasm. It is
constitutive of the constitution-in-transcendence of man
to give himself (to) himself as this transcendence, without
having once more to re-transcend toward himself; and
it is constitutive of man to be already in transcendence
without having to transcend. It is affected (affects itself)
ceaselessly and is exhausted at once without it having need
of a decision to begin itself, of a plan or position to extend
and realise itself. It is proper to man as One or individual
that his human, non-philosophical transcendence should
be an immediate and non-thetic lived-experience-( of)
self. But this non-thetic transcendence is but one mode
of the real essence of man, and is determined in the last
instance by the latter.
X IV
Dasein or Being-as-a-being is not only Being. Human
reality-as-One is not only Dasein or Being-as-a-being, it
is not limited to having a relation of being to self, it is
more radically non-thetic Transcendence-( of)-self. But
Human-reality-as-One, moreover, is not limited to being
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this transcendence. Not only i s i t via the unary distinction
or real essence, but it is also now the non-thetic vision of
the mixed nature that it has in the World and as Being.
Dasein or Being-as-a-being is the necessary signal or sup
port of this human or non-thetic transcendence, a support
now lived by the latter and perceived according to this
experience of exteriority. All metaphysical ontology, and
also all ontology-as-ontic, is now experienced by real man
as a non-thetic event of exteriority - decision as absolutely
undecidable, position as absolutely non-positional. It
is constitutive of human Reality to experience without
any delay, albeit in a non-thetic mode of exteriority, the
auto-affectation of Being and its chiasm . It is proper to
it that this auto-affectation should be given to it yet more
originarily and radically than in its own mode of auto
affection (or of hetero-affection) . Understanding of Being
is not necessary to define the essence of man, but it is the
determination in the last instance of the latter. The unary
distinction of human Reality lies in the fact that it lives
in a non-ontological mode, and thus also in the fact that
ontology, for it, is experienced as a non-ontological affect.
xv
Human Reality is a One that is not limited to experiencing
the affect of an ever-undecided exteriority; of a division
forever undivided and given (to) itself as undivided; nor
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to experience thus all ontology, the mixture of Dasein
or of Being-as-a-being, in that non-thetic mode and to
be able to generate ontology in this mode. Rather it has
the following unary distinction: it can also make and let
float away from it, indifferently, the whole set of these
objects, including transcendence, drawing from them a
non-specular image or reflection that has still less real
ity, still more contingency than them. It is constitutive
of this One that it can experience, not only as lived real,
but as henceforth non-thetic knowledge of this lived, the
auto-comprehension of Being, all the circles and chiasms
of philosophy. Thus Being is not only disclosed to itself;
this disclosure is not only the lived of a non-thetic object;
it itself passes into the state of a non-thetic reflection of
self, a reflection without chiasm, a knowledge that neither
posits nor modifies and is content to reflect 'absolutely'
and 'vacuously' . Being-as-a-being, but also the essence
of-Being-itself, all ontology, all deconstructions, are not
only events of a non-thetic exteriority; they now become
mere descriptive and non-constitutive representations of
themselves. From now on they belong to a uni-versal and
abyssal reflection that reflects in non-specular manner
man or the One. And now they are even stripped of the
non-thetic Transcendence under which they formerly
appeared.
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XVI
Two series of variations distribute Philosophical Decision
and open it to 'non-philosophy' . On one hand we have
variations on the circle, or the circle as variation: Being-as
a-being, Saying-as-said, Logos-as-Differe(!a)nce, Desire
as-lack, Actuality-as-subject, and even Difference-as-One.
Logos, the ontologos, turns itself in sudden inversions
and chiasms around beings, like a function (that is also a
variable) around a variable (that is also a function) . The
ontic root subsists in it as the pivot of these inversions
and recurrences, but the circles thus engendered are not
limited to appearing within the circle of ontology, but
have the ontic distinction of being modes of the latter, or
chiasms. On the other hand, though, we have variations
affecting the ontic itself, which is said as being, as Other,
as lack, as substitution - finally as One. This last variation
brings to bear ontological variations on the real, and ontic
variations on the ontological - a real around which turn
the logos and its satellites - on an in-variable real, the
One. The One or man is thus, on one hand, the highest
point of philosophical revolutions, the absolute limit of
their successive torsions, beyond which it is no longer
possible to spin the philosophical or to make implode the
circle of circles; and on the other hand, the real which is
never limited to appearing among Being and to serving
as a pivot for its circles: Vision-in-One, which lets the
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philosophical cosmos float freely in infinite spaces. When
finally man, through Vision-in-One, in whose mode he
'is', before all understanding of Being, sees the circle of
circles passing by again, it is to perceive it outside the One
and passing under the One, below it, and even 'upon'
it, like clouds over the moon, or the sun of reason upon
the unalterable opacity of man. Thus philosophy floats,
indifferent, in the 'non-philosophical' element.
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Lei b n i z Va riati o n s
( 19 88)
Tra n slated by Robi n M a c kay
I
1.1. There exists something rather than nothing
1.2. There exists a statement rather than nothing at least
a statement rather than no statement at all it says that
beings exist rather than nothing or that the nothingness
of-beings or that the nothingness that being exists rather
than nothing or that the nothingness-of-being or that
beings that the One exists rather than nothing or that the
nothingness-of-One or that Being it says that rather than
negation ( n')17 - not beings not being not One - exists
that which is determined by the function (n')
17
Laruelle plays throughout on an ambiguity between 'not' (as in n 'est is not) and a
differential function n' thus dramatising the function of the 'non' of non-philosophy.
-
-
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1. 3. There exists rather than nothing a philosophy that
says that a philosophical exists at least a philosophy rather
than nothing it says that the contrary of a statement is not
a simple privation but that there exists - rather - in its
way in so far as that statement that the nothingness of the
statement is not a lack but that there exists - rather - in so
far as the statement that says that there exists something
rather than nothing than the absence of beings the not
being exists just as positively as being that being as not
being in so far as being that being as not One in so far as
the One there exists rather than nothing a philosophy that
says that the nothingness of philosophy exists - rather in so far as a philosophy that nothing exists in so far as
something rather than nothing
1.4. There exists rather than nothing a statement that says
that a philosophy exists at least a philosophy rather than
nothing it says that there exists rather than nothing a
philosophy which inverts that which says that there exists
a statement rather than nothing in that which says that
nothing no statement at all exists rather than a statement
or the existence of beings rather than of nothingness of
beings in the existence of the nothingness of beings rather
than of beings the existence of being rather than of the
nothingness-of-being in the existence of the nothingness
of being rather than of the being the existence of the One
rather than of the nothingness-of-One in the existence of
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L E I B N I Z VA R I AT I O N S
the nothingness-of-One rather than of the One the exist
ence of something rather than nothing in the existence
of nothing rather than of something
1.5 . There exists rather than nothing a philosophy that
says that rather than nothing a statement exists to say
that a philosophy exists at least a philosophy rather than
nothing it says that there exists a supplementary state
ment to that which says that something a statement exists
rather than nothing exists rather than the statement and
despite this statement that says that the nothingness of
the statement exists rather than a statement that it exists
of beings rather than of the nothingness of beings exists
rather than the existence of the nothingness of beings
rather than of beings and despite the nothingness of
beings that there exists some of being rather than of not
being exists rather than the existence of not being rather
than of being and despite this not being that there exists
some of the One rather than of no One exists rather
than the existence of no One rather than of the One and
despite this no One that there exists something rather
than nothing exists rather than the existence of nothing
rather than of something
1.6 . Existence wills something rather than nothing and
even nothing rather than not to will there exists rather
than nothing a will of philosophy that wills rather than
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
nothing a statement to say that a philosophy wills the
nothing rather than not to will that it wills a statement of
nothingness even the nothingness of the statement rather
than not will than not will statement of All that it wills
beings of nothingness even the nothingness of beings
the being of nothingness even the nothingness of being
the One of nothingness even the nothingness of the One
rather than not will than not will at All
II
2 . 1 . One exists rather than something than nothing than
the existence of something rather than nothing One
exists rather than nothing rather than All rather than
nothing at All
2 . 2 . One exists rather than a statement than the existence
of a statement rather than nothing than no statement at
All One rather than the statement that says the One or
that says that that which is not truly a statement is also
not truly a statement a statement rather than nothing
One exists rather than the statement that does not exist
except as One and that says that there is no being that
is not a being and that beings are One rather than the
nothingness-of-beings is not One that there is no being
that is not a being and that being is One rather than the
nothingness-of-being is not One that there is no One
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that i s not a One and that the One i s One rather than the
nothingness-of-One is not One One exists rather than the
statement that is One rather than what the statement says
of the being of the being of the One rather than that which
is determined by the function ( n') One exists rather than
the function (n') or (non-) One that exists thus as One
rather that as nothing and rather than something than
nothing than something rather than nothing
2.3. One exists rather than a philosophy than nothing
than the existence of a philosophy rather than nothing
or than no philosophy at All rather than the philosophy
that says that what is not truly a philosophy is also not
truly a philosophy a philosophy rather than nothing One
exists rather than the philosophy-One that says that the
contrary of a statement is not a privation but in its way
exists just as much as this statement and exists as One
that no statement at All is not a lack but is One just as
much as the statement that says that a statement is One
rather than the nothing is not One than the nothing of
beings is just as positively One as beings as beings as
nothingness of being is also One than being than being
as nothingness of One is also One as One
2.4. One exists rather than a statement-One that says that
there is no philosophy that is not One and that there exists
rather than nothing a philosophy that inverts that which
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says that a philosophy exists and exists as One rather than
the nothing does not exist as One in that which says that
nothing no philosophy at All exists and exists as One
rather than a philosophy that nothing-of beings is One
rather than beings is than the nothingness of being is One
rather than being is not than the nothingness of One is
One rather than the One is not One exists rather than a
philosophy that says that there is not such an inversion
that is not One
2.5 . One exists rather than a philosophy-One that says
that One exists rather than a statement-One exists rather
than nothing One exists rather than a supplementary
statement-One that says that a statement that exists and
exists as One rather than the nothing does not exists as
One exists as One rather than and despite the statement
that says that the non-existence of a statement exists as
One rather than a statement exists as One than something
that is One rather than nothing is not exists as One rather
than and despite the One of nothing which is One rather
than something is not than being which is One rather than
the not being is not is One despite the One of not being
which is One rather than the being is not that the One
which is One rather than the One is not is One despite
the One of not One which is One rather than the One is
not One exists rather than a philosophy-One that exists
despite the nothingness-of-philosophy and rather than it
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2 . 6 . One exists rather than a will-One of philosophy that
wills rather than nothing a statement-One to say that
a philosophy-One wills the One of the statement and
the statement of the One rather than nothing or than
not willing that it wills as One the statement of nothing
even the nothing of the statement as One the beings of
nothingness even the nothingness of beings as One the
being of nothingness even the nothingness of being as
One the One of nothingness even the nothingness of the
One rather than not willing to will nothing at All One
exists rather than a philosophy-One that wills the One
of willing the willing of the One rather than not willing
One exists rather than not existing as One the willing
nothing rather than the not willing nothing
III
3.1. (not-) One exists a n ch6ra-One rather than something
than nothing than something rather than nothing than a
philosophy rather than nothing there exists or not indif
ferently indifferently rather than nothing indifferently in
so far as rather than nothing a statement or a philosophy
indifferently a ch6ra that says that there exist indiffer
ently rather than nothing 'a statement' a 'nothing' an 'a
statement rather than nothing' a 'nothing rather than a
statement' a 'rather than' an 'in so far as' or an 'indiffer
ently' or indifferently that there exists indifferently in so
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far as nothing an 'a statement' a 'nothing' etc. an 'Etc.' or
indifferently an 'a statement' in so far as an 'there exists'
a 'nothing' in so far as a ' something' a 'being' in so far as
a 'One' a 'nothing' in so far as an 'Etc.' or statements that
say indifferently rather than indifferently that something
exists rather than nothing or indeed rather than rather
than that nothing exists rather than something or that
rather-than that rather-that exists rather than something
or something or that nothing or again indifferently in
so far as indifferently that something exists in so far as
nothing or as rather that something exists in so far as
something or that rather than rather-than exists in so far as
something or that nothing or again indifferently because
indifferently that something exists rather than nothing or
rather than rather-than because nothing or rather exist
rather than something that nothing exists rather than
something or that rather because something or rather
exists rather than nothing that rather exists rather than
something or that nothing because something or nothing
exist rather than rather-than or again indifferently that
indifference wills the indifference of nothingness and of
something of rather and of the in so far as rather than
nothing or indifferently in so far as nothing that some
thing wills the statement of nothingness or indifferently
the nothingness of the statement rather or in so far as to
will nothing at All that something wills the nothing of
nothingness or indifferently the nothingness of nothing
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L E I B N I Z VA R I AT I O N S
rather o r i n s o far a s t o will nothing a t All that i s wills
the rather-than of nothingness or the nothingness of
rather-than rather or in so far as to will nothing at All
that nothing wills the something of nothingness or the
nothingness of something rather or in so far as to will
nothing at All that it wills the rather-than of nothingness
or the nothingness of rather-than rather or in so far as
no rather of All that rather-than wills the something of
nothingness or the nothingness of something rather or
in so far as to will nothing at all that it wills the nothing
of nothingness or the nothingness of nothing rather or
in so far as to will nothing at All in so far as or rather
indifferently a chOra . . .
IV
4.1. Rather-One exists rather than something than some
thing rather than nothing rather-One that is to say that
that which is not truly a rather or rather-One is also
not truly a rather One exists rather than rather-One and
rather-One rather than rather-than
4 .2. Rather than a statement that says that there exists a
statement rather than nothing there exists as rather-One
a statement that says that rather than a statement and
that no statement at All there is no statement that is not
One rather - a rather-One - than nothing and that does
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not say that rather is rather-One rather than something or
that nothing that something or that nothing is not One
that beings or not beings that beings or not beings is
not One that being or not being that being or not being
is not One that One or the not One that One or the not
One is not One
4.3. Rather than a philosophy that says that there exists a
statement rather than nothing there exists as rather-One
a statement that says that rather exists as One that the
equality of non-beings to beings exists as rather-One
rather than its inequality is not rather-One that the equal
ity of non-being to being exists as rather-One rather than
its inequality is not rather-One that the inequality of
non-One to the One exists as rather-One rather than its
inequality is not rather-One
4.4. Rather than a statement that says that there exists
a philosophy rather than nothing there exists as rather
One a philosophy that says that rather exists as One that
there exists a statement that inverts that which says that
there exists a statement that is rather-One rather than a
statement or that nothing that a statement or that nothing
is not One in that which says that no statement is rather
One that not beings exist as One - Onenotbeings - or
as rather-One rather than the being that the not One is
One - OnenotOne - or rather-One rather than the One
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L E I B N I Z VA R I AT I O N S
and that this inversion exists a s rather-One that a s rather
than or that as inversion
4.5. Rather than a statement that says that there exists
a philosophy to say that a statement exists rather than
nothing there exists as rather-One a statement that says
that there exists a philosophy to say that a statement exists
as rather-One rather than a nothingness of statement and
despite this nothingness or that a statement that says that
there exists a statement-One rather than nothing is itself
One and rather-One rather than a statement and despite
the statement that says that no statement is One that a
something is One and rather-One rather than nothing is
One this is One and rather-One despite the existence of
nothing as One and rather One rather than of something
that being should be One and rather-One rather than the
not being is One this is One and rather-One despite the
non-being being One and rather-One rather than being
that One should be One and rather-One rather than the
non-One is One this is One and rather-One despite the
non-One being One and rather-One rather than the One
4.6 . Rather than a will of philosophy that wills willing
rather than nothing or than not willing there exists as
rather-One a statement that says that a will of philoso
phy wills the rather-One rather than the rather-than or
than not willing the rather-One rather than willing the
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
statement of nothingness even the nothingness of the
statement being of nothingness even the nothingness of
being the One of nothingness even the nothingness of the
One it wills the rather-One rather than willing nothing
ness rather than not willing at All it wills the rather-One
of this willing rather than this willing that nothing that
willing this willing rather than nothing
v
5.1. One exists rather than a something-One that is to say
that this that that which is not truly a something is also
not truly a something One and rather-One exist rather
than something-One and rather-One and something-One
rather than something than nothing than something
rather than nothing
5.2. Something-One exists rather than a statement-One
rather than nothing a statement-One that says that there
is no statement that is not something-One and rather
One rather than something that there are no beings that
are not beings-One and rather-One rather than beings
than not beings than beings rather than anotbeing that
there is no being that is not being-One and rather-One
rather than a being thananotbeing than a being rather
thanabeing that there is not a One that is not One-One
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L E I B N I Z VA R I AT I O N S
and rather- One rather than a One thanaOne than a One
rather thanaOne
5.3. Something-One exists rather than a philosophy-One
rather than nothing a philosophy-One that says that the
non-existence of a statement is not an absence nor an
absence of something-One but that it is just as much
something-One as a statement is that there is no equality
of beings and of not beings of being and of not being of
One and of not One that is not something-One equality
One just as much as an equality as an inequality as an
equality rather than an inequality is One
5.4. Something-One exists rather than a statement-One
rather than a statement rather than nothing a statement
One to say that there is not a philosophy that is not
philosophy-One if it must invert that which says that a
statement is One rather than nothing or that no statement
is One in that which says that nothing no statement at
All is One and statement-One rather than a statement is
not or that anotbeing is One and being-One rather than a
being is not that anotOne or thatnooneONE is One and
One-One rather than a One is not it says that there is no
such inversion that is not One and something-One rather
than a non-inversion is not rather than an inversion that
nothing that an inversion rather than nothing
383
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
5.5. Something-One exists rather than a philosophy-One
rather than nothing a philosophy-One to say that a state
ment that says that there exists a statement rather than
nothing is something-One rather than the statement that
says that no statement-One exists rather than a statement
that a statement that says that a statement-One exists
and exists as rather-One rather than nothing exists as
something-One and as rather-One rather than the exist
ence of nothing rather than a statement that a being-One
exists rather than a being this exists as being-One and as
rather-One rather than the existence of notbeing existing
rather than being than a One-One exists rather than a
anonOne this exists as One-One and rather-One rather
than the existence of anon One existing rather than a One
5.6. Something-One a will-One of philosophy exists that
wills rather than nothing a statement-One to say that
a philosophy that wills something rather than nothing
exists as will-One and rather-One rather than as will that
something that nothing that will of something rather
than nothing rather than nothing than a philosophy-One
wills beings-Ones of nothingness even the nothingness
One of beings the being-One of nothingness even the
nothingness-One of being the One-One of nothingness
even the nothingness-One of the One rather than no One
at all but that it wills also rather-One rather than rather
than or than willing nothing at All
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L E I B N I Z VA R I AT I O N S
VI
6.1. Rather than something than nothing than some
something rather than nothing there exists the occasion
for which there exist rather than nothing to signal the
existence of something-One and of rather-One and to
signal this signal itself as something-One and rather-One
rather than as signal something nothing something rather
than nothing beings and nothingness of beings being
and nothingness of being One and nothingness of One
exist rather to signal that something nothing something
rather than nothing exist as something-One and rather
One rather than as something nothing something rather
than nothing and as occasion that signals it
6.2. Rather than a statement that says that a statement
exists rather than nothing statement that exists as rather
One and as something-One rather than as the statement
of which it says that it exists rather than nothing there
exists a statement that says that a statement exists rather
than nothing or that no statement exists rather so as to
signal that this statement-One exists and that it exists as
something-One and as rather-One rather than no state
ment at All that a statement or even that no statement
exists a statement says that this exists rather than as the
occasion that signals that the statement exists that says
385
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
that there exists something rather than nothing also that
his signal as rather-One and as something-One
6.3. Rather than a philosophy that says that the nothing
ness of the statement exists just as positively as a statement
philosophy that exists as rather-One and as something
One rather than as the statement of which it says that it
does not exist any more than the lack of statement there
exists a philosophy that says that the statement that says
that the nothingness of the statement exists in so far as
a statement or that the nothingness of beings exists in
so far as the beings of nothingness in so far as being the
nothingness-of One in so far as the One exists rather so
as to signal itself and this occasion itself as existing as
rather-One and something-One rather than a statement
that an occasion that the occasion of a statement rather
than nothing
6.4. Rather than a statement that says that a philosophy
exists that inverts the statement that says that there exists
a statement rather than nothing in that which says that
no statement exists rather than a statement there exists
a statement that says that this inversion and that the
statement that says that the nothingness of beings exists
rather than beings the nothingness of being rather than
the being of nothingness of One rather than the One
existing rather as occasion to think the statement that
386
L E I B N I Z VA R I AT I O N S
says that the nothingness o f the statement exists rather
than a statement and that this statement and this occasion
itself as rather-One and as something-One rather than as
a statement
6.5. Rather than a philosophy that says that the statement
that says that a philosophy exists rather than nothing
exists rather than the statement that says that the nothing
ness of philosophy exists rather than a philosophy there
exists a philosophy that says that this statement serves
rather as occasion to signal that itself and the occasion
by which it exists exist as something-One and as rather
One rather than as this statement and this occasion that
the statement that says that beings exist rather than the
nothingness-of-beings exists rather than the nothingness
of beings exists rather than beings or that being exists
rather than the nothingness of being exists rather than
the nothingness-of-being exists rather than being or that
the One exists rather than the nothingness-of-One exists
rather than the nothingness-of-One exists rather than the
One exists only to signal that there exists it or that it says
it and it as occasion as rather-One and as something-One
rather than as this statement and this occasion
6.6. Rather than a will of philosophy that wills rather
than nothing a statement to say that a philosophy wills
a statement rather than nothing there exists a philosophy
387
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
that says that the will of the statement exists as occasion
to exist itself and the occasion that it is as rather-One
and something-One rather than as will than will beings
of nothingness and the nothingness of beings the being
of nothingness and the nothingness of beings the One
of nothingness and the nothingness of One rather than
will nothing is rather that which gives the occasion for
there to exist this will as rather-One and something-One
rather than as philosophy than as willing than as willing
a philosophy rather than nothing
VI I
7.1. One exists rather than (non-) One and (non-) One
rather than rather-One and something-One (non-) One
exists rather than the statement that says that a state
ment that is not and does not say truly the One - One
rather than rather-One - can also not truly describe the
statement that says that rather-One or something-One
exist rather than the statement that says that there exists
something rather than nothing
7. 2 . (non-) One exists rather than a statement that exists
as rather-One and something-One rather than as state
ment that says that beings exist rather than non-beings
and exist as rather-One and something-One rather than
beings non-beings beings rather than non-beings that
388
L E I B N I Z VA R I AT I O N S
being exists rather than non-being and exists a s rather
One and something-One rather than as the being of
non-being being rather than non-being than the One
exists rather than the non-One and exists as rather-One
and something-One rather than as One non-One One
rather than non-One
7.3 . (non-) One exists rather than a philosophy that says
that a statement exists as rather-One and something-One
rather than as the statement that says that a statement
that does not truly say that the equality of beings and
non-beings of being and non-being of One and non-One
exists rather than their inequality and exists as (non-)
One rather than rather-One and something-One can also
not truly describe their equality as existing rather than
their inequality
7.4. (non-) One exists rather than a statement that says
that a philosophy exists as rather-One and something-One
rather than as a statement that says that non-beings exist
rather than beings and exist as rather-One and something
One rather than as non-beings beings non-beings rather
than beings that non-being exists rather than being and
exists as rather-One and something-One rather than as
non-being being non-being rather than being that the
non-One exists rather than the One and exists as rather
One and something-One rather than as non-One One
389
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
non-One rather than non-One that a statement that does
not truly say that the statement that inverts that which
says that beings exist rather than non-beings or that
being rather than non-being or the One rather than the
non-One in that which says that non-beings exist rather
than beings non-being rather than being the non-One
rather than the One exists as (non-) One rather than as
rather-One and something-One also cannot truly describe
this inversion as existing rather than nothing
7.5 . (non-) One exists rather than a philosophy that says
that a statement exists as rather-One and something-One
rather than as a philosophy that says that this the state
ment that says that there exists something rather than
nothing exists rather than the statement that says that
nothing exists rather than something or that the statement
that says that being exists rather than non-being existing
rather than being or that the One exists rather than the
non-One existing rather that the One exists rather than
the statement that says that non-being exists rather than
being or that the One rather than the not-One or that the
statement that says that the statement that says that some
thing rather than nothing exists rather than the inverse
exists as rather-One and something-One rather than as
statement exists itself rather than this statement that this
also cannot truly be described unless by a statement that is
(non-) One rather than nothing that non-being non-One
3 90
L E I B N I Z VA R I AT I O N S
o r nothingness-of-statement (non-) One exists rather than
a statement that if it is not and does not truly describe the
(non-) One rather than rather-One and something-One
also cannot truly describe the statement that says that
something exists rather than nothing or the statement
that says that a statement-One exists as rather-One rather
than as the statement that says that no statement exists
as rather-One
7.6 . (non-) One exists rather than a will of philosophy
than a will of nothingness or of a nothingness of will
(non-) One exists rather than to will nothingness rather
than not willing at All (non-) One exists rather than the
statement that says that (non-) One exists rather than this
statement or that the statement that says that a statement
cannot say that there exists a statement that wills the
statement of nothing even the nothing of a statement as
(non-) One rather than not will if it is also not truly (non-)
One rather than nothingness of statement or that there
exists a statement that wills beings of nothingness and
even non-beings as (non-) One rather than not willing if
it is also not truly (non-) One rather than nothingness of
beings or that there exists a statement that wills the being
of nothingness and even not-being as (non-) One rather
than not willing if it is also not truly (non-) One rather
than nothingness-of-being or that there exists a statement
that wills the One of nothingness and even the notOne as
391
Lette r to D e l e u ze
(1988)
Tra nsl ated by Robin M ackay
What disting;uishes the One.from Spinoza 's substance?
LE TTER FR OM DELE UZE TO THE A UTHOR
1.1. By Philosophical Decision, I understand that whose
essence encompasses existence to the nearest nothing, or
indeed to the nearest non-existence, or indeed to the near
est difference, or indeed to the nearest Other, or indeed to
the nearest negation of negation, etc., to the nearest Etc.
In other words, that whose nature can be conceived only
as existing to the nearest 'to the nearest Etc.' .
1.2. By real, I describe that whose essence is indivisibly
without the nearest nothing or difference or Etc . , reality
rather than existence or difference, Etc . , in existence.
In other words, the Identity whose nature can only be
described as real rather than conceived as existent or as
different, etc . , in existence.
393
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
2.1. A thing is calledfinite in extrinsic manner when it can
be limited by another thing of the same nature, however it
may remain infinite in another aspect, or when its limita
tion encompasses its illimitation to the nearest nothing,
difference, etc., the nearest Etc. For example, a philosophy
is said to be finite because we can always conceive of
another possible philosophy, just as a decision is limited
by another decision. But on the contrary, a philosophy
is not limited, as simple position, by another philosophy.
2.2 . A thing is described as.finite in intrinsic or immanent
manner when it is limited in itself, when it is itself through
this limitation and cannot be limited by another. The real
is limited or finite in itself and not by virtue of the possible
or by effective existence. For example, an individual is said
to be finite because we conceive him as real and cannot
conceive a merely possible or existent other that would
limit the real one. But on the contrary an existing deci
sion is limited by another possible or existent decision.
3.1. By sufficiency, Principle efSufficient Existence, or objec
tive philosophical appearance, I understand that which,
existing in itself and being conceived by itself, claims to
be real and concludes from its existence to its reality. In
other words that whose existence claims to suffice to be
real and not to have need of the real to be determined.
394
L E TT E R TO D E L E U Z E
3.2. B y last instance, I describe that which i s real i n itself,
that is to say that which has no need of existence in order
to be real. Or that of which the description as real in itself
has no need of this description in order to be real in itself,
and of which it must be constituted.
4.1. By attribute, I understand the dimension, at once
finite, infinite and empirically determinate, that thought
grasps of the objective philosophical Appearance or of
Philosophical Decision.
4.2 . By real a priori I describe the essence of existent
things, an essence that thought describes as determined
in the last instance by the real.
5.1. By empirical g;i,vens, I understand that which is posited
by Philosophical Decision and its sufficiency to affect
the latter, in other words that which is in Philosophical
Decision by means of which it is also interpreted.
5.2. By support or occasion, I describe the empirical or ideal
givens that are necessary as materials from which thought
extracts the real a prioris, in other words that which,
existing in Philosophical Decision, has its condition of
reality in something else or in the real as last instance.
395
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
6.1. By chaos, ch6ra or ( non-) One, I describe an absolutely
infinite and indivisible receptacle, containing an infinity
of philosophical decisions, each of which expresses an
essence at once finite and infinite.
Explanation: I say absolutely infinite, and not a mixture
of finite and infinite at the same time, for from that which
is merely finite and infinite at the same time we can deny
an infinity of philosophical decisions; on the contrary, the
real or intrinsically finite essence of that which is absolutely
infinite means that it contains all that is expressed by a
decision at once finite and infinite.
6.2. By One, I describe an individual that is absolutely
finite or stripped of attributes or of philosophical deci
sions, that derives its essence from its identity without
which it would be necessary to express it in a universal
attribute; that is to say a last instance that is not infinite
and constituted by a universal collection of individuals,
but which is immediately a multiplicity of individuals that
know themselves to be multiple and solitary without ever
forming a collection or a universality.
Explanation: I say absolutely finite, and not finite in
extrinsic manner; for, from that which is merely finite in
extrinsic manner, we can deny that it could also be a
merely real, and not logico-real or universal, multiplicity of
individuals; on the contrary the essence of the individual
396
L E TT E R TO D E L E U Z E
o r o f that which i s absolutely finite implies that i t must be
multiple not despite its finitude but because of it.
7.1. A thing, a philosophy, will be called free when it exists
as cause of itself or through the sole necessity of its nature,
and when it is at once determinate and determinant itself.
On the contrary, a thing will be called constrained or
conditioned when it is determined by another to exist
and to operate, according to the fixed and determined
law of some philosophical decision.
FJ. . A thing, the One or the individual, will be called
determinant when it is real or sufficiently determined by
its sole passivity toward itself which is its essence, and
when it is incited to act only on the occasion of another,
World or Philosophy, acting under condition of the (non-)
One. On the contrary, a thing will be called determinate in
the last instance when it is determined without reciprocity
in its reality, rather than incited in its existence and its
operation, by another: the One.
8.1. By objective eternity or eternity of existence, I under
stand the existence itself of philosophy in so far as it is
conceived as resulting necessarily from its sole definition
or its essence.
Explanation: For such an existence is conceived as an
eternal truth, as well as the essence of the thing; thus the
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
eternity of philosophy cannot be explained by way of
duration or time or by the given multiplicity of historical
philosophies, even if duration is conceived as having no
beginning and no end.
8.2 . By subjective or real eternity, I describe the reality
itself of the individual in so far as it is identically, with
no approximation, its essence and the joyful immanence
of this essence.
Explanation: For such a reality of the individual is
thought as an eternal truth, as well as the essence of the
individual; thus it cannot be explained by way of dura
tion or time or historicity, even if duration is conceived
as having no beginning and no end, or by way of the
objective eternity or eternity of existence of philosophy.
9.1. All that is, is either philosophy or interpretable by
philosophy or, better still, is the difference of philosophy
and the non-philosophical.
9.2. All that is, is either immanent and in-itself, or mixture
and immanent-and-transcendent.
10.1. That which cannot be conceived by way of the non
philosophical must be conceived through the philosophi
cal, or, better still, through their difference.
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L E TT E R TO D E L E U Z E
10.2 . That which cannot b e described a s being o f itself or
as immanent-(to)-self, must be thought by way of tran
scendence, that is to say by way of the a priori amalgam
of immanence and transcendence.
11.1. From a determinate philosophical decision results
necessarily certain effects, and every philosophy draws
at every instant all its consequences; and on the contrary,
if apparently no philosophical decision or causality is
given, it is impossible that an effect should follow from
it; but a philosophical decision is always given and the
philosophical explanation of a phenomenon is not only
required, but always assured.
11.2. From a determinate cause in the last instance there
does not necessarily follow any effect, for this supposes
an occasion or an incitement in existence; but, on the
contrary, if no cause in the last instance is given, it is
impossible that a real effect should follow.
12.1. Knowledge of the philosophical cause and that of
its effect mutually encompass one other.
12.2. Knowledge of the real effect depends on the knowl
edge of the cause in the last instance and encompasses it;
but not reciprocally.
399
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
13.1. Things which, exceptionally, have nothing in com
mon with one another, also cannot be understood one
by means of the other; in other words, the philosophy
of one does not encompass the philosophy of the other.
13. 2 . Things that have nothing in common with one
another or which are in chaos, also cannot be understood
reciprocally one by means of the other; in other words
their description does not encompass the concept of
Philosophical Decision and no longer has philosophical
meaning.
14.1. A philosophy claims to accord with the real.
14.2. A true representation accords only in the last instance
with the real that it describes.
15.1. Of all that can be conceived as non-philosophical,
its essence and existence do not mutually encompass
one another.
15.2. Of all that can be thought as non real or as effective,
its essence is not identically reality, but only encompasses
existence.
400
U n iverse B l ack i n t h e H u m a n
Fo u n d ati o n s o f Co l o u r
(1988)
Tra n s l ated by Miguel Abreu and Robi n M ackay
I
In the foundations of colour, vision sees the Universe;
in the foundations of the Universe, it sees man; in the
foundations of man, it sees vision.
The Earth, the World, the Universe have to do with
man: the Earth a little, the World a lot, the Universe pas
sionately. The Universe is the inner passion of the Distant.
Man works the Earth, inhabits the World, thinks
according to the Universe.
The Earth is man's ground, the World his neighbour,
the Universe his secret.
The Earth is the strait through which light from the
40 1
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
World finds its way; it is the tongue made of sand and
water upon which, upright, man strides against the World.
The World is everything too vast and too narrow for
the Earth, and again too narrow for the Universe.
Man gropes around the World and the World floats
in the Universe unable to touch its borders.
Man brings into the World of narrow-minded thoughts
the emotion of the Universe.
The Universe isn't the object of thought, a greater
object than the World; it is thought's how or its according to.
The Universe is an opaque and solitary thought which
has already leapt into the closed eyes of man like the space
of a dreamless dream.
The Universe isn't reflected in another universe, and
yet the Distant is accessible to us at all points.
The World is the infinite confusion of man and of the
Universe; the Universe being treated as man's object.
The forgetting of the essence of the Universe is more
inapparent than the forgetting of the World. The forget
ting of man as One-( of)-the-Universe and that of the
Universe as One-by-man is more inapparent than the
forgetting of being-in-the-World.
II
In the beginning there i s Black - man and the Universe,
rather than a philosopher and the World.
402
U N I V E R S E B LA C K
Around the philosopher everything becomes World
and light; Around man everything becomes Universe
and opacity.
Man, who carries the Universe with him, is condemned,
without knowing why, to the World and to the Earth; and
neither the World nor the Earth can tell him why: The
Universe alone responds to him, by being black and mute.
Black is neither in the object nor in the World, it is
what man sees in man, and that in which man sees man.
Black isn't merely what man sees in man, it is the only
'colour' inseparable from the hyper-intelligible expanse
of the Universe.
Solitude of the man-without-horizon who sees Black
in Black.
The Universe is deaf and blind, we can do nothing
other than love it and assist it. Man is the being who
assists the Universe.
We can unfold the future only with closed eyes and
can believe we enter it only with opened eyes.
Light strikes the Earth with repeated blows, divides
the World infinitely; solicits in vain the invisible Universe.
The Universe was 'in' the World and the World didn't
see it.
Black, before light, is the substance of the Universe,
what escaped from the World before the World was born
into the World.
403
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
Black is the unGround which stares at light in the Distant
where man observes it. Here lies the mad and catatonic
light of the World.
Man reaches the World only by way of transcendental
darkness into which he never entered and from which he
will never leave.
A phenomenal blackness entirely fills the essence of
man. Because of it, the most ancient stars of the paleo
cosmos together with the most venerable stones of the
arche-earth, show themselves to man as being outside the
World, and the World itself shows itself as outside-World.
III
Universe Black i s the opacity o f the real o r the 'colour' that
renders it invisible.
No light has ever seen universe black.
Black is prior to the absence of light, whether this
absence be the shadows where it is extinguished, whether
it be its nothingness or its positive opposite. Universe
black is not a negative light.
Black is the Radical of colours, what never was a colour
nor the attribute of a colour, the emotion that seizes man
when affected by a colour.
As opposed to the objectified black from the spectrum,
Black has always already manifested itself before any
process of manifestation. This is vision-in- Black.
404
U N I V E R S E B LA C K
Black is definitively interior to both itself and man.
Black is without opposite: even light, which tries to
turn it into its opposite, fails to do so when confronted
with the rigour of its secret. Only the secret can see into
the secret, like Black in Black.
The essence of colours is not colourful: it is universe
black.
Metaphysical white is a mere blanching, the prismatic
or indifferent unity of colours. Phenomenal blackness
is indifferent to colours, for it is their ultimate tenor in
reality, that which prevents their final dissolution into
the melanges of light.
Philosophy, and at times painting, treat black and
white as opposites, colours as contraries, colours as
opposed; mixing them under the authority of light as
the supreme melange.
The human science of colours is founded on black
known as 'universe' . It thinks together man, the Universe,
and theories of colour - and their tone of Black which
is their common reality (but in the last instance only) .
A human science of colours makes universe black the
real or immanent requisite of their physics. Black is the
very stance of science and of its 'relationship' to colours.
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
IV
Science is a thought in black and white which studies
the light of the Cosmos and the colours of the World.
Black in its stance or its inherence to the real, white in
its representation of the real. A thought in which white is
no longer the opposite of black, but rather its positively
faded reflection.
Science is the mode of thought in which black deter
mines white in the last instance.
Universe black transforms colours without mixing
them. It simplifies colour in order to bring out the white
ness of knowledge in its essence as non-pictorial reflection.
Our uchromia: to learn to think from the point of
view of Black as that which determines colours in the last
instance rather than that which limits them.
Philosophical technology was drawn mimetically from
the World, to reflect and reproduce it. It is inadequate to
thinking the Universe.
We are still postulating that reality is given to us
through the paradigm of the World. We perpetuate the
inhuman amphiboly that confuses World and Universe.
We believe that reality is horizon and light, aperture
and flash, whereas it resembles more the stance of an
opaque non-relationship (to) light. At the very moment we
explore the uni-versal dimension of the cosmic, we remain
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U N I V E R S E B LA C K
prisoners of cosmo·logical difference. Our philosophers
are children who are afraid of the Dark.
Philosophy is thinking by way of a generalized 'black
box'; it is the effort to encase black into light and to push
it back to the back of the cave. But the cosmo-logical
generalisation of black doesn't save it, quite the contrary,
from still having the status of an attribute. Black alone
is subj ect and may render manifest the philosophical
encasement of concepts.
Don't start by thinking technology: rocket and launch·
ing of the rocket. Instead look, as in the depths of a closed
eye, into the opacity of the knowledge through which,
becoming one with it without distance, the rocket crosses
infinite distances. Think according to the knowledge that
steers it as in a dream, heavier and more transparent than
the boundless night it penetrates with its silent thunder.
Start by thinking science.
Stop sending your vessels through the narrow cosmo
logical corridor. Stop making them climb the extreme
walls of the world. 'Allow' them to leap over the cosmic
barrier and enter the hyperspace of the Universe. Cease
having them compete with light, for your rockets too can
realise the more-than-psychic, postural mutation, and shift
from light to universe black, which is no longer a colour;
from cosmic colour to postural and subjective black. Allow
your rockets to become subject of the Universe and to be
present at every point of the Distant.
407
F R O M D E C I S I O N T O H E R E SY
Simplify colours ! See black, think white.
See black rather than believe 'unconscious' . And think
white rather than believe 'conscious' .
See black ! Not that all your suns have fallen - they
have already returned, only slightly dimmer - but Black
is the 'colour' that falls eternally from the Universe onto
your Earth.
408
W h at t h e O n e S ees i n t h e O n e
(1989)
Translated by Rob i n M ackay
P R O S E F O R P H YS I C S
Th e opaque foundations of
knowledge remain in man
There where the invisible Manifest did
name itself
More than Being-in-language
It called itself the vision
that is neither seen nor seeing
The one to whom, looking
in itself, is proved
the solitude of vision.
409
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
For it the World is described
without it having to go out of itself
For it all the things
of the World without going out of itself
nor becoming World.
For it the stars
more profound than history
without it having had to make itself
light of time.
All totalities without delirium
All the exteriorities
without hallucination
The proximities and
the coiled distancings
in the infinite and even
the interior and sensible body of the Distant
without making itself either horizon
or mass, neither force nor gravity.
The shock of simultaneities
and the ardour of instantaneities
without knotting itself in itself
like time
Like the wave of time
contracts itself to expel
410
W H AT T H E O N E S E E S I N T H E O N E
the World
For it all the computers
that reflect the glory
of the universe and multiplying it
All the bodies that light
observes from the depths of matter
Without entering the eye
of reason.
The effusions of space and
the insensible slidings
of the Cosmos
The excessive universes
and the discretion that surrounds
the birth of World
Without entering into the ring
of Tradition
All the chaos and hubbub
babels and hurly-burly
all the zigzags and artefacts
And the tortuous ways of God
Without borrowing
the rectitude of God.
41 1
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
S O L I T U D E O F P H RAS E S
Th e opaque foundations of
language remain in man
There where the phrase the Solitary
named itself
More than language-in-Being
it named itself the phrase that
is neither spoken nor speaking
That to which, looking
in itself, has proved to itself
the solitude of phrases.
What the One says when it looks
in the One:
that there is nothing in the World
or outside the World
to separate it from itself;
or unite it to itself;
that separation exists only
in things already
separated and unity
in things
already united.
412
W H AT T H E O N E S E E S I N T H E O N E
What the Contrary says when it
looks in the Contrary:
that there is nothing
in philosophy
or outside of philosophy
to thwart it or to
continue it;
that contrariness exists only
in things already contrary
and continuity in things
already continued.
What the Opaque says when it
looks in the Opaque:
that there is nothing in light
or outside of light to
manifest it or obscure it;
that light exists only
in things
already illuminated
and obscurity in things
already obscured.
413
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
What the Eagle says
when it looks in the Eagle:
that there is nothing in the sky
or outside the sky to nail it down
to the peak of its flight or to cast it
into the hallucination of the fall;
that suspense exists only
on earth and the fall
for things that have already fallen.
What the Serpent says when it
looks in the Serpent:
that there is nothing on the ground
or outside the ground to knot
or unknot the ruse;
and that only
already broken rings
celebrate
the multiplication of rings.
What the Sea says
when it looks in the Sea:
that it is impossible to be
the enemy of the Sea, and
that there is nothing in the wave
or outside the wave
to quell it or
414
W H AT T H E O N E S E E S I N T H E O N E
to swell it.
What the Phrase says when it
looks in the Phrase:
that there is nothing
in speech or outside
of speech
to render more solitary
the black diamond
of phrases.
415
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
L E TT E R F R O M T H E O N E TO T H E M O S T - D I S TANT
We the Anteriors
Anteriors of the future
not of the past
Precessors
of the restraint of time
We remain in the Before
of every thing
We hold our life from the Before
that is in the Before,
More interior to ourselves
than the first
and the originals
are to time
Whence we institute
the Precession of rigour
And pay the oracle
of the in-place.
We the Insouciants
Insouciant of the contrary and
of its contrary
Indifferent to this and to that
We remain in the intimate
emotion of the One
More interior to ourselves
416
W H AT T H E O N E S E E S I N T H E O N E
than the Dyad to the One
More shut up in the vision
of the World than
in the World itself
Whence we receive
the endless rolling of logos
And pay the oracle
of Suspense
We the Unhabitants
U nhabitants of the sky
and of the earth
Driven from the luminous soil
of the World
We remain
in the unsuspected
foundations of the fold
More interior to ourselves
than ourselves to space
Of all the lives
our life is
the most foundational
Whence we warn
the phrases
And pay the oracle
of the Distant
417
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
We the inapparents
Inapparent of the invisible
as of the visible
Unscathed by the occidental
fall
We remain in the Night
that is in the Night
Anterior to the creative fall
of suns
More interior to ourselves
than solitude is to solitude
Whence we drink at length
the vigilant Night
And pay the oracle
of Universe
418
W H AT T H E O N E S E E S I N T H E O N E
S H O RT T R EAT I S E O N T H E S O U L
Defi,nitions and Axioms efthe Soul
I.I.
I call Soul that which suffices to the soul
1.2.
The Soul is the multiple and solitary daughter of the Soul
rather than the daughter of the World.
1.3.
The Soul is that which is seen in the Soul rather than in
the Distant as in something-Other.
2.1.
I call Distant or something-Other that in the world which
is seen in the Soul in the Soul's way.
2.2.
The Distant is that which, as something-Other, is seen in
the Soul rather than in the Distant.
3.1.
I call World that which is seen in something-Other rather
than directly in the Soul.
419
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
3.2.
The World is that which the Soul sees in itself rather than
in it, at the same time as it sees it in the Distant.
4.1.
I call Time the Before that does not turn, the Infallible
that has its essence in the Soul rather than in the World.
4.2 .
Time flows from the Soul t o the World.
4.3.
Time Infallible separates Time and the World.
5.1.
I call Philosophy what philosophy sees in philosophy
without seeing it first of all in the Soul.
5.2.
Philosophy sees in philosophy the Soul as soul of the
World or else as soul of the Other man.
6.1.
I call science of souls or non-psychology these definitions
and axioms with the theorems that follow from them.
420
WHAT T H E O N E S E E S I N T H E O N E
'Iheorems ef the Soul
1.
In the freed Soul, freed from the Distant, the Soul sees
the Soul before seeing the Other soul; the Other soul
before seeing the soul of the Other man; the soul of the
Other man before seeing the soul of the World, the soul
of philosophers playing the soul's turn.
2.
In the freed Soul, freed from the Distant, the Soul sees the
Soul before seeing the chaos of the World and the soul of
the World, the chaos of equivalent philosophies before
seeing the blackest soul of philosophy: 'the soul's turn ! ' .
3·
In the freed Soul, freed from the Distant, the Soul sees
the Soul before seeing the Other soul as interior image
of the World and of the soul of the World; its un-altered
height, its imposed extent; it sees the interior image of the
soul of the World before seeing the chaos of the soul; the
chaos of the soul before seeing the soul of the philosopher
making the World turn around the soul.
4.
In the freed Soul, freed from the Distant, the Soul sees
the Soul before seeing the science of the World and of
42 1
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
the soul of the World; their inert reflection, their sterile
representation; it sees the science of the World and of the
soul of the World before seeing the Other soul as their
interior image; their interior image before seeing their
chaos; their chaos before seeing the philosophers making
the soul turn around the World.
5·
In the freed Soul, freed from the Distant, the Soul sees
the Soul before seeing the Infallible of time; the Infal
lible of time before seeing what it locates in the Distant;
the interior image of the soul outside the science of the
soul; the chaos of the soul outside its interior image; the
soul of the World and the turnings of the soul outside
the chaos of the soul.
6.
In the freed Soul, freed from the Distant, the Soul sees
the S oul rather than the turning of the soul, and the
World in the Distant, far away from the Soul rather than
around the soul.
422
Tra n sva l u at i o n of t h e
Tra n s ce n d e n t a l M et h o d
(1979)
Tra n s l ated by Ro b i n M ac kay
Meeting ofthe Societejranfaise de Philosophie, 24 March 1979.
P R O G RAM M E
A transvaluation o f the transcendental method i s pro
posed, so as to relieve the latter of its epistemological,
logical, and moral hypotheses and to overcome the classic
objections to it (those of vicious circularity and steril
ity) . This transvaluation thinks the method no longer
according to its objects, but according to its essence (or
the immanent rules of its becoming-transcendental) . It
attempts to deliver the eidos of the transcendental from
its empiricist and formalist limitations by assigning it
'reality' as instance.
425
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
Systematic Exposition <ifthe Rules <ifthe '!Tanscendental Method
or its '!Tansvaluation
( 1 ) First rule: Constitute a 'factum' under already tran
scendental conditions; do away with the question quid
facti? as question (the method is a continual process of
reduction rather than a description) and in terms of the
'fact' sought (it is a transcendental and synthetic residue
rather than a ' fact') ; in turn, treat the residual factum as
capable of being reduced (dissociate ideality and the a
priori) .
(2) Second rule: Proceed with the continuous given, by
way of two cuts (on tic or realising, ontological or idealis
ing) ; define the 'transcendental reduction' as 'unilateral'
cut and synthesis, and its objects as 'residual transcen
dental objects' (destruction of the 'analytic') .
(3) Third rule: Define an additional cut or reduction
that extracts a supreme synthetic Principle or Essence
responsible for unifying the diversity of 'residual objects';
assign to this factor a non-logical and non-ideal type of
reality according to which the technique of cuts receives
a 'transcendental' status.
( 4) Fourth rule: Define a 'transcendental genesis', i.e. the
particular modes of synthesis of residual objects or reality
and ideality under the conditions of the immanence of
Essence (destruction of the question quidjuris?) .
426
T RAN SVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
P RE S E NTAT I O N
FRAN <;: Ois LA.RUELLE : In a word - a n apparently simple
word, but it is only a word - I seek a return, a return to
Kant that would be an 'eternal return' . Is it now possible
for such a repetition no longer to be what it was in a
former era: the lot of unfortunate heirs, disinherited by
the ruin of Hegelianism, and suddenly in want of episte
mology? Nor that which it is on the way to becoming: the
act of those who have been deprived of all hope by the
fall of Marxism, and find themselves demoralised? Can
a new return to Kant cease to be this reaction of defeat,
this suspect vocation of modesty, to become finally what
it ought to be - an inventive recurrence? Such, at least,
is the cause - the wager, perhaps - for which the good
will (and, I fear, the temerity) of the Societi Franraise de
Philosophie will allow me for an instant to don the colours
of 'transcendental philosophy' .
If we are particularly in need of something, it is not
objects (we have far too many) ; and it is not even theory;
it is method. Since we are constrained to palliate the
distress in which the political and theoretical evacuation
of Dialectic and Structure has left us, is it possible to
rediscover some kind of living force in the transcendental
method, without re-enacting the neo-Kantianism of the
nineteenth century, or palaeo-Kantianism, as some today
attempt, out of spite (that is, out of morals) ? Armed with
427
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
new techniques, having undergone several non-Kantian
and non-Husserlian mutations, can it become that 'new
kind of order' that we all seek, capable of taking up
anew modern tasks (political and revolutionary tasks,
for example) that have fallen dormant, but also classical
tasks: What is it to think? What is Being? What is it to
speak? Is it, above all, capable of re-unifying the two,
within a new project that would change the very style
and the force of these questions?
The critique of the transcendental method oscillates
between two contrary objections: On the one hand, it
denounces this method's vicious and circular character,
the raising of the empirical properties of the object into
the sphere of the essence of experience: In Kant, the
properties of the Newtonian scientific obj ect, in Hus
serl the properties of the perceived and more gener
ally of the empirical paradigm of seeing. Both come
to be reflected in their proper essence, the conditioned
reflected in the condition, giving rise to those mixtures
that are transcendental epistemology or the critical theory
of cognition, phenomenological psychology - or even
Husserl's absolute transcendental philosophy, in so far
as it still continues, despite itself, to secrete the prop
erties of the perceived into the a priori structures of
pure consciousness. If one admits - a postulate that is
perhaps part and parcel of the method - that there is 'a
transcendental truth' distinct from the truth proper to the
428
TRANSVALUAT I O N OF T H E TRAN S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
sciences, then it becomes an urgent matter to overcome
this objection and to exorcise, from within what moderns
call the 'empirico-transcendental doublet' , and Husserl
the 'parallelism' of the psychic and the transcendental,
all trace of this vicious 'reflection' of the founded in the
foundation. The battle against empiricism is perhaps an
infinite proj ect, but imperative nonetheless; it merges
with a true 'becoming-transcendental' of method, even
if it is only a means for the latter.
On the other hand, the critique of the transcendental
method denounces its sterility, formalism and will to
purity: that which, since Hamann at least, has been known
as the purism of pure reason.
Whether the transcendentals preside over experience,
as in the scholastics (since Being, the ens, to which all
relate, is itself the first of the transcendentals) , or whether
they relate to experience, they do so qua pure form and
ideality, too universal for the singularity of experience
and its contingency. The transcendental method proposes
'pure cuts', but the destiny of purity is either the sterility
of formalism, or compromise with the empirical, or else
that form of spiritual materialism which]acobi denounced
in Fichte.
It is appropriate not to respond in an external man
ner to these critiques, which denounce inherent traits of
the classical method. On the contrary, a good strategy
is to accept them, but to make their destruction, if not
429
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
the constitutive problem and the principal aim of the
transcendental method, at least one of the resources for its
renewal. The whole strategy here consists in provisionally
redefining the method according to new aims, and accord
ing to these aims alone. On one hand, against the first
objection, it must be admitted that the method consists in
determining the a priori structures - i.e. the being - of any
being whatsoever, not including in this being in general,
or in its a prioris, its determinate properties whatever
they may be (scientific, logical, perceptual, aesthetic or
moral) . It is obviously this generality that is important.
To decide thus between a being and its being is perhaps
not immediately possible, but is the object of a rule that
only defines a tendency or a becoming. But to distinguish
being as such from its reputedly empirical properties,
which are bracketed out, is at least the aim that must be
fulfilled in order to free the method from its traditional
subjection to regions of objects that are privileged for cul
tural reasons, reasons that must indeed be called political
in the broad sense of the word. It is enough to interiorise
this programme in the very definition of the method to
render the latter capable of thinking the conditions of
any object whatsoever. Its aim is no longer to found this
or that science, or ' Science' as such - an ambitious task
whose sterility no longer needs any demonstration - nor
even to serve as organon for a science or a philosophical
logic that would be one of those mixtures that we refuse.
430
T RAN S VA L U AT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
The 'higher form' of the transcendental method lies in
its becoming-immanent: in keeping it within the limits
and the very power of thought qua power of evaluation
and of critique of the 'any being whatsoever' . The higher
interest of a simply thinking thought necessitates that
it content itself with penetrating the interior life of this
power, so as to think on the basis, as Kant says (albeit of
reason) of its 'original germs' .
But, in order not to be vicious, it must court the
risk of being sterile. We shall annul this risk by means
of a second rule, apparently contradictory to the first,
and which will complete the definition of the method
according to its aims. This rule is as follows: although
the empirical properties of the being are bracketed out,
the being is still always determined and individuated, but
under transcendental and internal conditions and perhaps,
further, under empirical or merely empirical conditions.
The method is thus transcendental and not transcendent:
it does not preside over all experience, it determines
only an object that is already determinate - but which
is nonetheless 'any object whatsoever' from the point of
view of its empirical properties in so far as it is thus tran
scendentally determined ! It is the object indifferent (or
which becomes indifferent) to its mundane properties, but
whose indifference is one of the ingredients of difference
or determination. The two preceding rules will no longer
be contradictory if they are united in this one, which is
431
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
characteristic of thinking in the transcendental mode: the
a priori is distinct from the empirical, but reconstitutes
a new a priori (and no longer empirical) unity with the
empirical. Or again: Being is distinct from the being, but
re-forms a new higher - transcendental - synthesis with it.
Everything will thus depend upon the extension
we can give to the empirical and consequently to the a
priori - upon the generality of their respective domains.
In particular, ideal and formal properties, which define the
object according to a logico-scientific point of view, must
perhaps suffer the fate of everything empirical. There will
be no transvaluation unless one begins by severing the
alliance between the transcendental method and rational
ism (not to mention logicism) , and thereby detaching it
from reason's self-interest. It will therefore not be enough
to extend the field of the a priori by extending the field
of reason, as Cassirer does. Because the question is not so
much the one which drives all returns to Kant - With what
new objects can we replenish the transcendental field? as the following: What new, non-rationalist conception
to make of the a priori itself and of the transcendental
field? Kant himself (not to mention Husserl) proceeded
with just such an extension, recognising that there existed
an a priori in the judgement of taste and in the faculty
of pleasure and displeasure. From this, we can imagine
a tendency that would require us to seek an a priori of
linguistic reason, etc . . . But such a prioris would still give
432
T RAN SVA L U AT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
rise to a critique not only efreason, but by andfor reason something that, for us, can no longer constitute either the
means or the end: if there is, for example, a 'linguistic' a
priori (and why not?) , it need no longer be a rational one.
In order to be able to extend the transcendental to cultural
dimensions, we must firstly modify the concept that we
have of the a priori and of essence, or the transcendental
principle, so as to sever - not immediately, that would
be impossible, but as a tendency or an aim (at the 'limit' ,
really) - the ' Greco-occidental' alliance of the a priori
and ideality. More important than the new objects with
it is to be replenished, there is, on one hand, the style of
the cutting-out of the a priori field, and on the other, the
'objectively real' status of those techniques of cutting,
or the type of reality of the agent who assumes them.
On one hand, true transcendental cuts which determine
Being from beings; on the other hand, the very being of
these cuts themselves. Not only the difference between
Being and beings, but the being of this difference. Philoso
phy has always been an art of cut-outs, and transcendental
philosophy more than any other, because it is perhaps
the only philosophy to have been able to elevate cutting
to the power of the subject, to that of a substance even,
and its technique to the height of a techne that makes of
philosophy itself a physis, that is to say an autonomous
'nature', the object of ajouissance proper to it.
433
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
It could be that this programme contributes to rendering
the transcendental to us - that is to say, rendering it to its
essence. Kant and Husserl were only able to build on this
essence such as it was delivered to them by the scholastic
tradition, which made of the transcendentals the predi
cates or the passions of beings in general; to build on it
by imposing upon it idealist-style epistemological and
logical decisions that would function as so many found
ing limitations for its later history. Since we renounce
any definition of the method (even a partial one, as in the
classical thinkers) on the basis of its empirical regions of
objects, i.e. of empiricist and formalist local restrictions
which it has folded back onto, we are obliged to think it
on the basis of its essence - the eidos or the Wesen of the
transcendental - which alone is capable of restoring its
generality and its power of genesis, its generativity.
Neither Kant nor Husserl really interrogate themselves
about the historicity and the 'status' of the transcendental
motif. By 'really', I mean beyond the more or less common
idea they have of the 'reason' within whose limits they
take it to be enclosed. For is the 'reason' of philosophers
really anything other than a mixture of the transcenden
tal as tendency and an historical, all-too-historical idea
of science? The transcendental motif - they describe it,
they exploit it, they limit it, they invest it with various
tasks and aims of diverse origin, but they never really
critique it . . . in the name of the transcendental itself.
434
TRAN S VA L U AT I O N O F T H E TRA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
Because ultimately, if this method determines the status of
objective reality, what is going to determine the status of
these procedures of evaluation? The response is as follows,
once we admit that it is no longer 'reason' as seat of the a
priori: Only the transcendental method is authorised to cri
tique and to reproduce itself - in short, to transform itself.
It is enough to conceive of it in such a way to see that (at
least at the level of its internal conditions or its essence,
because as to this metamorphosis itself, it is perhaps an
infinite process) it belongs, in turn - this is indeed the
least we can require - to 'transcendental truth' .
If there is a critique and an extension of this method,
they must be immanent to the very process of the tran
scendental operation. Now rather than submitting to this
rule of immanence that is perhaps the secret, the last word,
of the transcendental method, something like its telos,
Husserl, for example, proposes that dubious compromise
that consists in separating the description of the fact of
the transcendental from its critique.
On the contrary, I call transvaluation - it is the aim
and it is already the means - the set of immanent rules
that describe the method according to its essence alone,
and which make of this essence the unity of the genesis
and the critique of its classical procedures. The essence is
the set of rules that precede and govern (a priori, then)
the historical and systematic possibility of empirical
limitations and rationalist decisions about method, at the
435
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
same time that they precede and govern (still a priori) the
overflowing of these limitations, the ' generalisation' of the
method beyond its restrictions. This essence is thus none
other than what there is, within the heart of the classical
transcendental method (but restrained, bridled) of the
force of destruction of its historical forms. The rules to
be put forward below will describe the broad outlines
of the classical usage, but always in formulating at the
same time the conditions of its transformation in view
of a new usage.
It is only in giving the detail of these rules that one
can, here and there, and obviously with a certain reference
to the Nietzschean project, perceive in what sense, and
within what limits, this term ' transvaluation' is histori
cally justified.
But in all probability, in this 'transvaluation' , we need
not expect to hear of some unprecedented, extraordinary
operation; it consists in a precise inventory of gestures - in
the form of determinate rules, indeed. No, trans-valuation
is the transcendental method itself - up to a transforma
tion that remains to be determined, and which cannot but
be its essence. It is thus the true sense of that enigmatic
formulation that can be taken up again in order to try and
give it a minimally articulable content: the 'transcendental
of the transcendental' - and it is not I who advances this
'abstraction' . Transvaluation is not a super-method or a
meta-method, it merges with the transcendental itself, or
436
T RA N S VA L U AT I O N O F T H E T RA N S C E N D E N TAL M E T H O D
rather, with its will to auto-suppression or decline. It is
the telos, at once internal and external, of the method implying a correction of what I said about aims: a telos
that programmes its own destruction, a destruction that
will come to it, however, from the outside - that is one of
the definitions of ' Nietzschean' transvaluation; and this
is, in any case, what I understand by the 'essence' of the
transcendental method. We must define a transcendental
concept of the 'limit' that would be simultaneously a
limit of (the production and destruction of) the field of
transcendental philosophy.
But as unity of these classical limitations at the opening
of this border, the eidos that we envision can no longer be
a pure logical signification. To determine the eidos of the
transcendental, the transcendental conception of eidos, and
ultimately the eidos as last procedure of the transcenden
tal analytic (the essence of experience) - here are a few
operations that we must undertake simultaneously and
circularly, every characterisation of one serving to prob
lematise the others. Not only is the transcendental, qua
gesture immanent to the real movement of thought, not
exhausted in the external architectonic or the semantics of
a philosophy; but it would be like some kind of alchemi
cal transmutation to expect this transvaluation to emerge
from a body frozen by rules, like a dove appearing before
your eyes from the hat of pure reason. For reasons that
will become evident below, a concept of transcendental
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status cannot be a pure and closed signification - it is a
limit or an a-signifying cut on a signifying and semantic
chain. But a limit that is at the same time illimiting for
thought, or which induces new signifying and semantic
continuity. In which case it is impossible to posit the
essence in the mode of logical representation. I sample
the concepts of the transcendental, cutting them from the
texts of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, the Scholastics; but
these cuts will in turn define becomings or tendencies.
Everything is under condition and in progress. We are
not transcendental philosophers; we have to become them,
which is an infinite task. This is why the transvaluation
of the transcendental is both a twofold and a unique
operation: on one hand, it involves gathering its invariant
historical traits into an essence; on the other (but this
may well be the same gesture) in bringing this eidos to
a limit-state, on the basis of which can be determined a
recommencement of thinking, a new usage, new forces
of the transcendental.
There is no reason to be surprised by this word 'trans
valuation' . Because Nietzsche is perhaps the thinker
who gathers the essence of all the forms and powers of
transcending, and who assigns to this power an unprec
edented force. Tue nineteenth century is for Nietzsche
the 'era of methods' . As it is for Hermann Cohen, who
taught us that the transcendental is method and nothing
but method? No doubt - and it is true that Nietzsche is
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one of those who, at the end of the nineteenth century,
made a return to Kant - but the one, precisely, who made
of the transcendental the method of thinking thought
co-extensive with the encyclopedia of culture, and not
the mere thinking of science. For he was not content to
say, banally, that method overrides object; he spoke of a
triumph, of a victory of method over science itself. Which
is also to say: science is only one method among others .
It is this victory of method - its universal reign, method
becoming a thinking thought and thought becoming a
nature - that we must think as its entering into the law
of its essence.
Perhaps you are waiting for an example to shed some
light on this transvaluation. I only have time for an exam
ple that may suggest to you the aim of this operation,
but will not exemplify the steps of its method. I shall be
rather caricatural and schematic on this point. If I were to
reprise just one thing from Kant, it would be the famous
example of the mercury sulphide, which philosophers still
call vulgarly (i.e. in the Greek fashion) 'cinnabar' . In the
name of its 'conditions of possibility', the classical method
set out the inventory of a priori elements which are all, or
nearly all, ideal, but at the same time are sampled from
the real faculties (intuition, understanding, etc . . . ) . Now,
these a priori elements are perhaps only mere duplica
tions, doublings or redoublings of the gi,ven identity of
the object or of the unity of experience; so the latter is
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not at all explained by them. As Nietzsche said of Kant
and the idealism that followed him, one contents oneself
with repeating the object of the question in the response:
for every sort of synthetic a priori judgement discovered,
one invents a 'faculty' . It is more appropriate instead to
return to the simplicity of the hypothesis - that is, of
any object whatsoever - and to its a priori conditions,
with the same conditions being valid for every region of
objects. Thus the rarity and univocity of the transcendental
method. For it is rather those forms and those idealities
that require explanation. Rather than going from the
empirical manifold of the cinnabar toward its objectivity,
one goes from the latter toward an entirely other, a priori,
even transcendental, manifold that will now furnish a true
explanation. The dispersion of sensible qualities that Kant
threatens us with, in order to make us accept the rules
of the imagination and all the factors of order, is but a
parody of an entirely other, pre-phenomenal - that is to
say, noumenal - dispersion, where these qualities pull
so indiscriminately in all sorts of divergent directions at
once, that the understanding would indeed be hard-put
to recognise in them its categories, the imagination its
rules of reproduction, the phenomenology of perception
its horizons . We must re-immerse the object cinnabar in
this veritable transcendental background noise for which
the Greeks invented the word chaos, and which forms the
element of the internal constitution of things.
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T RAN SVA L U AT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E N TAL M E T H O D
The aim of a transvaluation is thus very simple: it is a
matter of understanding why mercury sulphide is not
merely mercury sulphide, but an ideality whose a priori
constituents are not only scientific laws. 'The' cinnabar
is part and parcel with its circle of determinations that
inscribe it into the web of culture, and first of all into the
Greco-occidental field; with its poetry, with its force of
imposing itself on us as a myth, and as a joke; of imposing
itself on Kant also as an ideal object, an example of an
example - without which imposition, perhaps, Kant (as
obsessed by chemistry and perception as he was) would
have seen that it was also cinnabar that Roman ladies used
as lipstick; or that 'the alchemical sign for cinnabar is a
circle with a central point . . . [or that] the same symbol
was later used, toward the end of the middle ages, for the
philosophical egg, for the sun, and for gold' . 'Whence [so
the encyclopedia I have just cited concludes sagely, more
Kantian than Kant himself] various confusions, against
which one must be vigilant.' Even more so, Kant could
have known that cinnabar is also that red paint known as
'minium' with which any Sunday philosopher, returning
to his country home as to his island of truth, would begin
by painting the shutters of his understanding, before
clothing them in the discrete colours of morality. Did Kant
know this? In any case, the Critique, which demonstrates
so many things, does not demonstrate the true reasons
that make of cinnabar an ideality, and of that ideality an
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encyclopedia - that encyclopedia of knowledge for which
Nietzsche quite rightly re-invented the rigorous name
'eternal return' , and which is still not quite the same thing
as that dictionary-knowledge by which you are not fooled.
This is to say that a transvaluation proposes to furnish
(but it would be the most naive insolence to believe that
it could furnish them all) the reasons why Kant did not
have more reasons to write the Critique ofPure Reason - or,
since he had to write it, to demonstrate why it was pre
cisely this positive absence of reasons that served as the
reason for him to write a critique. It is the meaning of this
abyss - whence the 'Critique' , and indeed the cinnabar
itself, derive reasons to render themselves necessary and
to impose themselves upon us, with their self-evidence
and their force - that we must now recognise.
First rule: Against empiricism, which subordinates cut
tings-out to the articulations ofthe given, engender the a
priorijactu m on the basis oftranscendental-style cuttings;
against rationalism, dissociate the a priorifrom ideality.
To determine an a priori 'fact', to cut out a field from the
a priori that might serve as primary matter for further
cuts - such is the object of this rule, which we shall call
the rule of factualisation, and which institutes the struggle
against all empiricism.
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The philosopher finds before him continua that will only
later appear as illusions, but which make themselves
evident to him as common sense. Continuity of percep
tion and of science in the equivocal notion of the object;
continuity of empirical properties of the being and of
Being itself in the equivocal word 'being' ; continuity
of the perceived and of perception in the belief in a
perceived-in-itself; continuity of pure will and desire in
the immediate experience of the will; continuity of given
forms of power and the a priori of power in the ambiguous
concept of the institution, etc . . .
Th e first rule necessitates that we divide u p these
mixtures, cutting out an a priori field such that although
it sets out, doubtless, from experience (from those con
tinuities within which it is immersed) it does not derive
from it. Deducted from these continuities by means of a
cut that is not just any cut, a cut we shall determine as
transcendental - a reduction - it cannot be an object 'in
itself' : we must here make of the noumenon and of the
limit a weapon against every attempt to conserve, this side
of the empirical, a fact or a given (albeit a priori) for a
description (albeit pure or eidetic) . Even the pure sciences
that Kant places in the factum suppose a first reduction
which bears upon the judgement of perception, and which
is all too often forgotten. Husserl recognises the necessity
of this preliminary suspension that isolates pure, albeit
mundane, psychism. So that, even if there is something
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originary, it is perhaps not, despite Kant, the a priori as
'fact' , but the operation of reduction that produces the
fact. One cannot abstract the a priori from the totality of
conditions of its obtaining: the factum exists only through
cutting and suspension. We must speak ofjactualisation
rather than of a factum, and subordinate all description
to the work of cuts. Produced under these conditions,
the factum is always itself a transcendental residue, the
remainder of an operation of bracketing out that can be
generalised as continuous and incomplete. Formulated
in view of its transvaluation, this rule will say that there
is no fact of reason in the sense that reason itself would
be, in its own way, a fact. ' Reason' is no more than the
set of cuts that engender the 'given' , which should not
be confused with the divisions of the given, and which it
remains, moreover, to determine, under non-rationalist
conditions of practice. The method is constitutive from its
very first gesture, or, if not, must renounce all autonomy
it cannot allow itself to be guided by specific and generic
distinctions between things, it indifferentiates them and
renders them contingent in favour of its own cuts, which
it imposes upon nature. It abhors so-called 'given' nature,
that is to say (if you will allow me the expression - in
which I include myself) stupidity, and not just illusion.
But this is a transcendental abhorrence - for it remains,
in any case, forever immersed in this real.
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The question quidjacti? is no longer, in Kant, anything
but a rationalist, and indissolubly empiricist, interpreta
tion and fixing of reduction; a halting of the continu
ous process of cutting at one of its provisional stages.
Such are the conditions of what I will call the transcen
dental destruction of the question quidfacti. Destruction,
that is not to say negation (here, negation is an effect, not
the essence) , but critique and displacement (we shall see
how) ; another cutting-out according to a gap governed
without negativity as principle, an other economy of this
question, whcih must be displaced into the margins of
the terrain where Kant and Husserl placed it during their
j oint, fascinated struggle against Hume . Although it has
its own concept of what is empirical and susceptible to
being destroyed, the principal objective of the transcen
dental method is not the struggle against empiricism in
the historical sense; this combat is the aim and the affair
of rationalism. It need not rely on Kant and Husserl's aims
and means of combat in favour of the 'fact' of science. Its
affair is elsewhere; it retires from a game where there are
more accomplices than real rivals, let us say more com
plementary than ' supplementary' positions; it proposes
as its aim the genesis and the critique of culture, and also
of history, where the subject is 'interested' .
To integrate the question quidfacti? into a continuous
process of reduction is only the first step, however. Because
what really needs to be changed to give the struggle its
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full extension, this time against rationalism and idealism
themselves, is the content of the reduced side and the
residual side - and even more than their content, these
classical concepts themselves, that is to say the rationalist
concept of the a priori and the rationalist and empirical
concept of the empirical; and to proceed with a simulta
neous overthrowing and displacement of the rationalist
hierarchy. On the empirical side, reduced or suspended,
we shall place (not all at once, that would be impossible,
but via repeated reductions) all given forms of continuity,
of synthesis and thus of ideality. Even the Kantian formal
a priori, even the Husserlian material a priori (which
are not yet a priori enough for us, for they remain too
empirical, too given) will fall within the sphere of the
reduced. Ideality and formality are thus suspended, but
not negated; they become, in turn, objects that demand
a transcendental genesis. To know now what we shall
place in the a priori as residue, we begin by dissociating
the other alliance, the other chain of Kantianism and
phenomenology - that of the manifold and the empirical.
We shall make a certain manifold - but obviously not the
so-called sensible manifold of space and time, empirical
or even pure, for that manifold is always presented as
such in a synopsis which is already an ideality - we shall
make a certain manifold pass over to the side of the a
priori and into its functions.
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It is indeed a reversal of Kant and Husserl's idealising
positions, but also their displacement; because the con
tent of the terms has changed, and has not merely been
inverted. On one hand we now see as empirical every form
of ideality or synthesis, identity, formality or presence;
but more generally everything that can be given - even
to pure intuition. Givenness, evident or not, is no longer
the criterion of the transcendental residue (as it is for phe
nomenology) . On the contrary, it is now the criterion of
the empirical. On the other hand, the manifold that now
constitutes the residue in the new sense of the word can
no longer be, by definition, a given manifold as is that of
synopsis, simple presence but presence all the same. It is a
manifold that precedes a priori synopsis or intuition itself. And
it is no longer given, but merges with its own production,
since it merges with the cut itself. The manifold is subor
dinated to the immanent divisibility of the residue. It is
less a manifold than a continuous division. If givenness
is the criterion of the empirical, (re ) flexivity or splitting
will be the immanent criteria of transcendental residues.
Heidegger evokes a certain 'transcendental dispersion'
which suggests that we speak of a dispers rather than a
manifold [divers] . It is essential to remark: ( 1 ) that these
residual objects that merge together with the cut of reduc
tion (or at least tend to do so) are by definition anterior
to (that is to say are a priori conditions of) all species
of synthesis, continuities or totalities, whose derivative
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status consigns them from now o n t o assuring only the
reproduction of this manifold; (2) that at this level of the a
priori, which is not the truly transcendental level, the two
sides are still mixtures, and contain at once both forms of
this manifold and forms of this ideality, mixed together
but in the process of separation. Here it is a question of
the concept of a residual object as a priori, and no longer
of its (essential and purified) concept as transcendental
(Essence) . All that matters is the movement of reduction
and the tendency.
A transcendental manifold that precedes the unity of
experience and renders it possible - this is the only 'fac
tum' that the transcendental method can 'give itself' , i.e.
produce immanently, if it would free itself from the start
from its logicising limitations. It then has at its disposal
the means (in the long term) to cease reflecting viciously
the syntheses found in experience, in the form of those
transcendental idealities that are the forms of intuition,
the pure concepts and the 'I think' . It will treat them, on
the contrary, as objects to be engendered, and will make
of transcendental genesis a theory of idealisation, of the
production of idealities - a theory that will be its very
own concept of the critique of ideology.
Generally speaking, synthesis as given is something
to evaluate, the object of a transcendental genesis, or
one whose degree of objective status is to be sought; it
is not a means of explanation. To be freed not only from
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psychologism, from the confusion of the a priori and
the innate (as Husserl, just as much as Cohen, aimed
to be) , one must also free oneself from the confusion
of the a priori and form, and assign to the a priori, as
its transcendental essence (as we shall see below) only
the flexivity, the irreflective self-division, that should be
written division-( ef)-self, and of which the residual objects
are the correlate. The struggle of neo-Kantianism and of
Husserl against psychologism in favour of the transcen
dental must be relayed and completed - from now on,
against both of them - by the struggle against formalism
and rationalism. Experience might then be extracted from
its (still naive) logical possibility, to be brought into its
real possibility.
Second rule: Rediscover the true transcendental cuts, as
opposed to empirical, quantitative and qualitative, generic
and specific differences.
The essential point of the second rule is already contained
in the first, which defines residual objects, or cuts out the
singular being according to its a priori, i.e. its individuat
ing being. The second and third, in a certain way, break
down the content of the first. The second bears more
especially upon the articulation, the syntax, or (as Kant
says) on the 'manner' and the 'mode' of the a priori; the
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third on the status or the transcendental reality of that a
priori residual object.
Once the factum or fact is established, transcendental
philosophers, in general, conjugate two types of cut: on
one hand, a cut between real factors (for example Kant's
distinction between the faculties, intuition, understand
ing, reason, imagination; or Husserl's between the spatio
temporal world and pure psychism) . We shall call this
one, if not 'real distinction' like the Scholastics, at least
a realising or ontic cut (reserving 'factualising' for the
initial cut) . And on the other hand, a cut that distinguishes
the real from ideality, and which we shall call an idealis
ing or ontological cut. One is the cut of fact, the other
of sense; between them, they decompose the factum,
which is synthetic from the point of view of its content,
always real and ideal at once (the Kantian factum of the
sciences contains the real affect and the ideality of the a
priori; the Heideggerian factum of the being in general
or of the being's being-in-the-midst-of-being, contains
the real being, but grasped in its ideal and non-empirical
generality, etc . . . ) .
In general a cut can be called transcendental on the
following condition, which we draw from the rule that
serves us as organon, or again from the factum: the residue
deducted by the cut, or that which is called the a priori, is
identical to the cut itself; the reduction is transcendental
if it is the fact of the residue in person. Transcendental
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TRAN SVALUAT I O N OF T H E TRA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
means to say immanent, and the transcendental method
is not at all the act of a philosopher ex machina. The cut
being solely the work of the residual side, it can be said to
be unilateral. Since the residue, in cutting into the empiri
cal continuities, in fact cuts itself, it can be understood
how the a priori is always that which precedes experience
and conditions it: after the withdrawal of the cut, the
donation of condition and genesis. There is thus, if not
a synthesis, at least an immanence - properly residual
or transcendental, specific - of the manifold of self-cuts,
and which is the work of the a priori, in such a way that
we shall say: the side that divides or residualises is at the
same time the whole of the two sides; in short, the cut
that defines the residual object or the transcendental
limit includes an illimitation. As to the reduced, cut, or
empirical side, it is this side that contains the synthetic
factors and ideal givens, and which unites, in its own way
and by virtue of them, with the residual side. A unilateral
synthesis also, ideal and no longer residual immanence,
and to be regarded from this point on as empirical and
no longer transcendental - that which Kant has in mind
when he says that understanding begins with experience.
The meaning of the Transcendental Analytic will consist,
as we have already seen, in passing from the empirical
synthesis that defines the mixtures of representation and
illusion, to the affirmation of real transcendental imma
nence, to 'transcendental truth' . Synthesis does indeed
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remain the horizon of the Analytic, but in the same way
that, in Husserl, the object remains a transcendental
guide - changing in status, it derives from the a priori
as from a manifold upon which, however, it folds back.
The classical thinkers obviously understood the cut
as a synthesis : it is always, to some degree or other,
the residue of the a priori, and then the supreme tran
scendental condition, that operates differences or cuts.
But this is the point at which it is possible to reverse Kant
and Husserl's transcendental logic: because, for them,
only the idealising cut is really transcendental.
Certainly Kant is constrained (lapsus of transcenden
tal logic) to double and to reinforce his a priori forms
and categories, Husserl his transcendental ego, through
reference to real agents qua 'powers' (the power of recep
tion, the power of concepts, the power of rules) ; not to
mention imagination as time, which resumes all there is
of the real, i.e. of the repressed, in Kantianism; or indeed
by reference to immanent psychism. But the real cut is
often simply traced from psychology - it is accessory, or
serves at best as a support to that which detaches form
and in general ideality as sole content of the a priori. The
real factors, in any case, play a secondary role and are
idealised, sublimated, raised up as 'forms'. This is surely to
identify the immanence of the a priori, which is or which
must be real, with all the forms of ideal synthesis or unity,
which obviously do exist, but which are only derivative,
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T RA N S VA L U AT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
and which only intervene later in transcendental genesis.
Transcendental idealism is condemned to conflate the
immanent production of the a priori manifold with its
ideal forms of reproduction.
To transvaluate the method would be to subordinate
the idealising cut to the real (but not empirical) cut, the
ontological to the ontic. If Kant seeks the conditions
of possible experience and not of real experience, then
let us reprise and radicalise, perhaps against Kant, and
against Husserl also, a Scholastic tendency: not only are
the transcendentals, and all ideal elements in general - not
just the categories - relative to the real; but the primacy is
that of the on tic over the ontological, it is the being (but
which being? here lies the whole question) that cuts and
transcends. The transcendental method begins neither
with God, nor with things, nor with man; it begins with
nothing, that is to say with a cut - but this cut is perhaps
identical to the real itself. Whoever said that the real
comprises nothing more than God, things, and man?
Which brings us to the third rule.
Third rule: Define a transcendental cut par excellence that
isolates an Essence as supreme synthetic principle or unity of
reality and ideality; define this unity as that of a hierarchy,
of a primacy of the real over ideality.
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All the techniques, all the objects of the analytic, are
brought together into a last problem, that of the prin
ciple that unifies them and governs their economy so as
to produce the unity of experience. This principle, this
Essence that all operations of cutting-out come down to,
contains all of the preceding cuts and the whole of their
reality. But it is an additional reduction. It brings together
the preceding cuts, and presupposes them, for it cannot
relate itself directly to the empirical instance, but acts
solely through a priori residual objects, which it raises,
moreover, to the power of transcendental conditions .
The preceding cuts do not deserve the name 'transcen
dental' unless they postulate their unity, which is only
posited confusedly in the factum. On the contrary, it is
this Essence, itself coming out of the movement of the
Analytic, but which completes or closes it in opening up
the possibility of a transcendental genesis, that merits par
excellence the appellation 'transcendental' .
O n one hand, i t i s the unity o f the preceding cuts, of
what one might call the manner, the trope, the how or even
the syntax of the a priori factors, whether or not they are
those of the understanding; on the other hand, it is the
essence of this a priori and of these cuts, the agent that
evaluates and measures immanently the degree of their
objective reality. It thus contains the how and the that of
the unity of experience. But it unifies the two contraries
- on one hand the syntax of the a priori, on the other
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T RAN SVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
the power of the a priori - without itself reconstituting
a third term. As essence, it is one of the contraries and
simultaneously the unity of contraries; and thus, from
the point of view of its own syntax, it responds to the
definition we have given of reduction - in other words,
it is, in turn, a residual object.
There is thus a parallelity [parallelite1 (to take up Hus
serl's word) between the residual objects corresponding
to anterior cuts, postulated as transcendental, and the
residual obj ect of the Essence in which they are dif
ferentiated and which is, itself, the truly transcendental.
Which arouses our suspicions: What prevents this paral
lelity from falling into parallelism f.Parallelisme], and the
whole mechanism from giving rise to a vicious reflection
of the empirical into the Essence? For if this reduction
resumes, reprises and extends those that preceded it, it
only bases itself upon the latter, which are turned toward
the object, because it distinguishes itself from them in so
far as it is non-synthetic self-cut and thus, as transcen
dental, is the subject itself, the only subject possible.
This subject is no longer a real instance in the sense of
being constituted and claiming to be constitutive; it is no
longer a representation or a generality drawn from the
empirical (I think, Ego) and the transcendent real, then
endowed afterwards with a power of idealisation and
infinite reproduction. In point of fact, it is only the cut,
but the cut in itself and outside all ideal relation with an
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other, pure dispersion, which is here identified, entirely,
with the residual object of which it is the (re) flexive or
subjective (albeit 'irreflexive') face.
In a sense it is not distinguished from a priori objects
except in so far as there is, immanent to them, the principle
which at the same time gives an objective status or an
empirical field to this manifold. It is that in them which
cuts or reduces, that which synthesises or unifies, but also
that which is cut and synthesised. It is the a priori and
it is the empirical, but in relations that, from this point
on, conform to transcendental truth. Co-extensive with
residual objects, it is a transcendental principle, i.e. a
principle of non-synthetic or real immanence. But here,
already, is the second side of Essence, according to which
it is an evaluating agent of the transcendental, i.e., objec
tive status of the a priori. There is a power proper to the
a priori, but the question is now that of the possibility
of this power, that is to say of the power of power, since
Essence implies a redoubling of power.
But what type of reality to put under the name of this
second power? Essence is not only that which relates to
the real of the a priori, which determines, on its side,
beings or what there is of the ideal in beings . Essence
itself determines the a priori in its relation to beings.
The whole anti-idealist thesis, the thesis that is the last
step in the transvaluation, consists in affirming that it
is the real itself that is essence, that it is the being itself,
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but obviously only in so far as it is no longer grasped
through its ideal determinations as object, in its objectiv
ity. Essence is, from this point of view, noumenon - it is
the being or the real in itself. But noumenon in so far as
(contra Kant) the latter receives a positive (albeit non
empirical) content; noumenon grasped from the side
of the transcendental and as constituent of the a priori
manifold, and no longer from the side of the empirical of
the spatio-temporal manifold of affection. In short (too
short) , noumenon is the a priori manifold in so far as it
is self-subject or self-affection.
Let us consider three points, in order to explicate
this thesis:
( 1 ) Essence is indeed that which renders possible, but
that which renders possible should not be confused with
possibility as a pure logical form to which is raised a real
of the type 'I think' or 'Ego', and which remains second
ary qua real; even if it permits the passage from logic to
the transcendental. The ascent of ideality into Essence is
the basis of transcendental logic, and of neo-Kantianism
in particular, but it conflates the possibilitas as Wesen - as
active and productive essence, as real condition - with
a simply possible possibility, doubling itself in an ideal
and invariant form that is afterwards endowed with a tran
scendental function. The transcendental method might
find a future in the thesis that essence is the being itself
(not the 'objective' being) , and in positing a primacy of
457
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
the ontic, of the real, over the ontological. But, of course,
just as the Critique ef Pure Reason, according to Kant's
celebrated phrase, teaches us to take the word 'object'
in two senses (as phenomenon and as thing-in-itself) , we
must also learn to consider the word 'being' in two senses:
as empirical being and as being-essence or as noumenon.
It is true that we take noumenon also in two senses: in the
negative, Kantian sense, which marks the primacy of its
!imitative function at the expense of its potential function
in a genesis or a production of experience; and then in
a positive sense - positive but obviously not empirical,
for this would see us fall prey once again to the Kantian
critique. Residual objects, and above all Essence, are a
noumenon whose function is no longer merely !imita
tive, but which is instead subordinated to a genetic and
productive function. Noumenon is auto-limitation of
experience because it is first of all production-( of)-self
(rather than 'auto'-production) .
(2) What, from the point of view of its reality and not
only that of its syntax, distinguishes Essence from residual
objects, if, in its turn, it is one? From now on we shall
assign one instance, and one only (real, or ideality) , to
each of these functions: It is the real that is preeminently
the power of cutting, and it is the ideal that is the power
of synthesis. So that, in order to reduce the two types of
cut to one only, we shall hierarchise them. We shall oppose
real cutting, which does not proceed by following the
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TRANSVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
generic and specific articulations of things, to cutting by
and for ideality, which in general distinguishes one ideal
generality from another, and is consequently carried out
under the auspices of representation - a cut impregnated
with negativity and giving rise to oppositions, or even
contradictions. Real dispersion or transcendental division
is a priori in relation to ideality; it forms an absolutely
singularising cut, and, since it is not mediated by the
whole that precedes it, it is without negativity. The hier
archy of the real and the ideal thus signifies that even in
the idealising cut itself, nothing but the real or the being
can cut, and can thus be the power that unifies, even
in the activity of the unification of syntheses. But from
now on the real or the cut is entirely on one side, ideal
synthesis entirely on the other. This is what distinguishes
the transcendental concept of the residual object from the
a priori concept of the residual object.
In short, beings have power or sovereignty over Being
because we are no longer talking about the empirical being
in its ideality, but the noumenal being as immanent power
of self-cutting. It is perhaps not Being that must be barred
- that is a project still marked by the old transcendental
idealism. Being is barred only because it receives from
the being, itself barred, the bar of the transcendental cut.
What is more, the being is not only barred qua ideal, i.e.
empirical in the new sense of the word; qua Essence, being
is nothing but the bar itself in its sovereignty over Being.
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
The bar is (re )flexive and dispersive, but it is the true
transcendental subject. As to the Ego and the 'I think' ,
here we must salute Sartre: they are transcendent entities,
our own 'beings of reason' which would have us readily
think that reason itself is but a being of reason. They are
mixtures, empirico-transcendental doublets - they are
necessary to transcendental logic, but not to the transcen
dental method considered in its essence, i.e. considered
with regard to its future.
(3) What now to put under the name of Essence or of
real, what to put in this power-to-differ which Heidegger
tells us is the power to hold jointly and severally together
Being and beings, the ideal and the real? The bar or the
cross is indeed the Essence of Being; but this cross is
the one from which Antichrists are made. Here an abyss
opens up, an abyss where Transcendental Idealism, and
many other good things (like Marxism) complete their
course. If there absolutely must be a name to occult it,
a name which itself has abyssal consequences, why not
(this is a question open to debate, not a solution) that of
'will-to-power' , which perhaps is not only this Essence
of Being and of beings, but the being itself, that assigns
its Being to the cut? The 'will to power' is a new way of
replenishing the supreme synthetic principle of experi
ence, the way in which Nietzsche pays homage to Kant
even as he buries him. It designates the very abyss of the
real as transcendental cut, a real but not empirical matter
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T RAN SVA L U AT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
upon which, here, I can say nothing. In any case 'will
to power' is necessarily a quid pro quo and the name of a
snare that can mislead only we, those who are astray. In
evoking the will to power as the world of the multiple,
did Nietzsche wish to designate anything other than
an a priori dispersion which, beyond the pure forms of
intuition and the categories themselves, beyond pure
time (always hybridised with space) , resonates precisely
like that immense transcendental backgro und noise that is
the true subject of the universe? When Heidegger says
of the Essence of Being that it is desire and power, he
takes a Nietzschean step - however hobbled by idealist
reminiscences - along the road of the transvaluation of
the transcendental method. This conception of Essence
gives us the unique chance, the rather serious opportunity,
of a transcendental materialism which we all know is the
'dead dog' of the idealism that goes by the same name.
I have been so bold as to think it would be possible to
fish it out of the same Heraclitean river twice. I would
add that this real condition of experience should not be
confused in any way with an originary temporalisation
or a productive imagination, except in considering that
this dispersion without negativity or this positive division
is that of an intensive temporality, hyle or transcendental
matter, as is perhaps the 'will to power' - but I leave this
question in suspense, because it is not even certain that
46 1
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
the notion of hyle is here sufficient to satisfy this concept
of real immanence.
Fourth rule: Defi,ne a 'transcendental genesis', i.e. the
particular modes efsynthesis efresidual objects, or efthe
real and ef ideality, under the conditions ef immanence
efEssence (destruction efthe question quid juris ?) .
The three first rules have allowed us to take stock of the
a priori materials at our disposal. But it is not as 'pure
reason' , nor upon it, that we have made this survey. The
transcendental method is 'residual' rather than 'elemen
tary' ; its model is surgical just as much as (and perhaps
more than) it is chemical. As its elements, it knows only
the techniques of cutting, procedures of evaluation, rules
that in any case define only becomings, tendencies, limits.
The task is now to rebuild the temple, to reconstruct the
edifice on bases of 'transcendental truth' infinitely more
unsteady than that 'complaint of experience' evoked by
Kant. It is time to place ourselves in the conditions of the
re-unification of residual objects in view of the unity of
experience - in short, to proceed toward a new distribu
tion of these materials.
This economy serves at once as 'transcendental deduc
tion' and 'transcendental genesis'. Essence is the highest
result of the Analytic, but it is the means of genesis itself;
the production of residual objects or of manifolds is
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T RAN S VALUAT I O N OF T H E T RAN S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
immediately their reproduction. As Being, it has still to
become what it is, through that which it is capable of
producing - namely, the forms of unity of this manifold,
forms we do not yet know.
On one hand, since an Essence of this type is unifying
and immanent, by virtue of its very dispersion (otherwise,
it would not be transcendental) , it is a principle of legiti
mation or evaluation of the objective reality of residual
objects in so far as they are always invested in experience.
The evaluation of their objective status, that is to say their
capacity to relate to a transcendental object = X, which
they precede a priori and produce, and which meanwhile
always accompanies them and makes them converge in
it. It is a true transcendental deduction, because they are
constrained not only to unite, but to abandon forthwith
their empirical and transcendent forms, which are cri
tiqued and delimited, so as to re-enter, with the object =
X itself, into the heart of Essence, that is to say to form
really (but this can only be a tendency) nothing but a tran
scendental dispersion. For Essence makes them become
what it is, that is to say, this dispersion. It is animated by a
tendency or an intention, a becoming-really-residual that
is the same thing as a becoming-immanent. It achieves
this by laying down in itself the obligation for the two
sides of every residual object (the real a priori and the
ideal empirical, the ontic and the ontological) to unify
or rather to re-unify on new bases, bases that will no
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
longer be empirical, after having been separated by the
transcendental reductions. That Being, for example, must
be the Being of a being, we have always known this - it
is a knowledge inscribed in our language; but we will
now be equipped to think - that is, to transform - this
relation of synthesis according to transcendental truth or
the Essence of Being - Wesen des Seins.
On the other hand, as an Essence of this type is the
real condition of experience, it is at the same time the
principle of a genesis. One can only destroy the idealist
interpretation of the question quidjuris? by re-inscribing
the latter within a real, and no longer ideal, genesis. It is
Essence as real and no longer as ideal that determines the
objective 'status' of residual objects, even if, to this end, it
also has recourse to synthetic (that is, ideal) procedures.
We no longer have any reason to separate, as Kant and
transcendental idealism were obliged to do, the ideal
condition of experience (the 'I think') and its real condi
tion (the imagination) ; nor, as Husserl was often tempted
to do, transcendental description, critique, and genesis.
We cannot detail the content of this rule here. On one
hand, what is essential in transvaluation is established as
a passage to Essence as real transcendental dispersion.
With it, we thus acquire the principle of every genesis
(an equivalent of the Objective Deduction) - a productive
acquisition, we must say, to parody Kant who speaks of an
'originary acquisition' of the a priori. On the other hand,
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TRANSVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
it is the least inventive part of the method, the most dry
and mechanical. Once we possess the concept of residual
objects, it is enough to seek (we do not have time here)
the two or three modes of their synthesis, the how of their
articulation that permits them to form aggregates or
objects - this object as any-object-whatsoever - accord
ing to the form of objectivity = X. To analyse the three
ways in which the a priori or residual manifold relates to
the form of objectivity (an equivalent of the Subjective
Deduction) one can take as one's model (albeit a little
misleading, a little empirical) the three Kantian syntheses.
Thus thought penetrates into the internal life of power,
the internal life of the real or, ultimately, of matter; and
the subject, which is thus within the secret of matter since
this matter is the subject itself, recognises itself to be of
the same stuff as cinnabar, at least in so far as it ceases to
be mercury sulphite and becomes that object inhabited by
a background noise, an evil genius, fugitive and surreal,
that seems to trouble Kant so.
DISCUSSION
ANTOINETTE Vrnrnux-REYMOND: I have listened with
much interest to M . Laruelle. I must say that I was very
troubled, because, in seeking the method, he cannot
destroy the question quidJuris?, since a method implies
something that must be followed. Thus, there is a reference
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
to right. I do not think one can evacuate (if this is the
meaning of the word destruction) the question quidjuris?
Even if you were to reconstruct the fact as something
that is not given, that is in part constructed, after all, fact
and right are opposed, and I don't believe that you can
eliminate the question of right.
What's more, I was a little perturbed when you spoke
of a cut on the basis of nothing, if I understood you
correctly; because it seems to me that a cut always exists
between things situated on two sides of the cut; and, on
the other hand, it seems that, if one brings in the noth
ing at the origin, it would take a divine power to create
something from nothing - creation ex nihilo has always
been considered to be the preserve of the divine. Those are
the questions to which I would like to hear your response.
FRAN�OIS LAR.UELLE: On the first question, I am entirely
in agreement with you . ' Destruction' of the question
quidjuris? does not mean negation - I did not repeat this
a second time, having already said so for the question
quidfacti. We cannot simply shake off, as if by magic,
what Kant wrote, and in particular this question, which
is consubstantial with the transcendental method. Even
in Nietzsche - in fact, above all in Nietzsche - there is
always a problem of right for any affirmation or 'value' .
I know no greater philosopher o f right, besides Fichte and
Hegel, than Nietzsche. 'Destruction' means displacement
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TRANSVALUATION OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL METHOD
according to a controlled distance - according to a cut, pre
cisely, which is the whole object of the question and which
has effects of negation, but which is not essentially negative.
With regard to what I call residual objects - that is to say, a
prioris that are not (or not just) ideal a prioris - the prob
lem is always posed of their validity, i.e. the degree of their
objective reality, of measuring their capacity to enter into the
empirico-ideal constitution of an object. Because it is not a
question of suppressing, in the transvaluation of the tran
scendental method, the problem of the objectivity of objects
or of their constitution. It is precisely their unity, their iden
tity, that we must account for, and which is thus suspended
by the method. This is exactly what I wanted to suggest
when I spoke about the 'cinnabar' as I did. The cinnabar is
indeed something other than mercury sulphite. The ideality
of cinnabar, Cinnabar capital C, is an identity that is a circle
of reproduction; it supposes the passage, the composition or
the synthesis of a multiplicity of determinations. There are
also various jokes that could be made about the cinnabar.
Cinnabar is an encyclopedia. The problem always arises,
therefore, of a legitimation of residual objects. The transcen
dental method must, whatever happens, remain critique - a
critique of illusions that arise with respect to experience.
As to your second question about the cut and the noth
ing, if I said that the transcendental method begins from
nothing, it was as a provocation, for I immediately added:
through a cut, and the cut is the real in the non-empirical,
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
noumenal sense of the term. Thus, it does not begin with
a nihil, but with the fullness of Being. But this fullness of
Being is not substance, it is Essence, it is the fullness of a
manifold, it is immanent. This is how the transcendental
method begins, its concrete beginning, the 'site' where
it always already is, the non-region it has always already
trodden. Incidentally, I did not go into the very complex
relations internal to this manifold ef cuts, I just produced
it without analysing it. Difference is not 'between' two
things, it is one of those two 'things' . . .
jACQ,UES M ERLEAU-PONTY: I t seems a s i f you have
destroyed chemistry. You yourself said 'mercury sulphite' .
What does that mean? Are there not questions t o ask
about mercury sulphite, about what the empirical is and
what the rational is, what the formal is, what content is,
perhaps what experience and the transcendental are? All
these questions can be asked of cinnabar, because there
are electrons, wave functions, experiments, etc. in there,
but you did not pose them. Lipstick, very well, but . . .
FL: And why not ! There are verses in La Fontaine where
he speaks of cinnabar in relation to the complexion of
young girls.
JM-P: There are also treatises on chemistry that speak
of it.
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TRAN SVA L U AT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
F L : Chemistry enters partially into 'culture'. Precisely the
object of the transcendental method is to take culture as
its object and to 'destroy' it.
JM-P: So chemistry must be destroyed in the process .
FL: Not entirely. Th e problem you raise i s either one o f
chemistry, i n which case it has nothing t o d o with the
philosopher; or one of epistemology or the theory of
science. As to the latter, I said just now, in responding to
another question, that the philosopher intervenes therein
only to 'destroy' the strictly philosophical part that enters
into that 'melange' that is epistemology.
JM-P: Cinnabar is a 'being' . If you preserve cinnabar's
property of being a lipstick, this proves that you have
not stripped the being of all its properties. So why not
keep the others, too?
FL: I seek the determination or the proper internal dif
ference of cinnabar; which is indifferent to its properties,
but precisely makes it not only mercury sulphite, since
it accumulates the latter simultaneously with various
other, non-scientific, determinations. Cinnabar is a point
of condensation of all ef culture, and not only an object
of science.
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
JM-P: Yes, but don't neglect the fact that there is culture
in wave functions, in atoms, etc.
FL: I entirely agree: in science, too. The difficulty, then, is
to determine that specifically philosophical element that
enters into the constitution of science. Not only aims,
values and ideologies; not only the philosophemes and
theories that may play the role of 'relations of production'
in the process of production of science; but something
that is perhaps even more profound, and which affects
the idea that scientific producers have of 'objectivity' . The
latter may well be a hybrid theme, referring at once to
internal criteria or precise procedures of verification, and
to a philosophical (too philosophical?) idea of objectivity
as 'auto-position' of reality. To be brief, I would say that
scientific work needs a concept - a philosophical category
- of 'position' or existence, but that it does not need that
of the 'auto-position' of empirical reality, which belongs
to common sense and thus still to a certain philosophy,
from which I suggest the transcendental method must
demarcate itself - if need be, against Kant.
GILBERT KAHN: I do not really understand on what basis
you make a distinction between 'beings ' . Do you wish to
begin from the ontic and not from the ontological, and
from a 'being' that would not be empirical?
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T RAN SVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
F L : Just as Kant asks us to take the object in two senses
(a cut that is the effect of the transcendental method) , i.e.
the object as phenomenon and the object as thing-in-itself,
so a transformed transcendental method will always imply
a cut (but now displaced) between a transcendental and
an empirical concept of the 'being' , a concept that is still
transcendental in its way.
GK: But on what basis?
FL: It is the very definition of the transcendental method
to impose this cut between empirical and transcendental.
The latter is nothing other than its own proper difference
(cut) with the empirical. But this is an invariant trait of
any form of the transcendental method, whereas what
characterises its transvaluation is the new economy that
this cut brings about, the new distribution of the real
and ideality. I define as empirical, beings such as they
are given in their spatio-temporal form. Even ideality
and scientific 'laws' are said to be empirical, through an
additional extension of what is 'empirical' outside the
limits fixed by rationalism, thus overthrowing-displacing
Kantian idealism. One is then obliged to distinguish,
from this empiricist concept of the real (which is nothing
other than 'reality', the ontological ideality of the real)
the transcendental and 'true' concept of the real, that is
to say 'essence'. This real still merits the name of 'being'
471
F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
(whence the Scholastic communication between the ens
as the first of the transcendentals and essence) , but it is a
being indifferent to its ideal determinations of identity, a
noumenon in the state of an a priori and even transcen
dental manifold - and this is no longer the manifold
of 'formal intuition' . . . If this being, a manifold-being
rather than a being, were determined empirically, we
would obviously fall prey to Kantian critique. It seems to
me - this is a very important point for the organisation of
the philosophical field after Heidegger, and I will come
back to it soon - that the primacy habitually attributed,
upon a reading (in my opinion an overhasty reading) of
Heidegger, to Being over 'beings', must always be cor
rected: In Heidegger, one must never neglect 'beings',
and even less the essence that is (the) being upon which
Being depends. As soon as Heidegger poses the problem
of the essence of Being, he establishes in fact the problem
of the power-to-differ Being from being, and this power
to-differ is noumenon. But the content of noumenon is
'transcendental dispersion' , for noumenon can perhaps
receive a positive concept.
BALDINE SAINT-GIRONS: Are we saying - to parody a
well-known phrase - that 'a being is that which represents
a subject for another being?'
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TRA N S VALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
F L : A being, at least qua residual object, is effectively that
which the subject, or a subject, represents for another
being; and Lacan's formula (or Peirce's, as Pierre Kaufman
reminds me) is wholly suitable in this context. However,
the true subject is the residual object, and above all it is
subject not relative to another residual object, but in so
far as another residual object is relative to it. A formula
that I doubt would be acceptable to structuralism: On one
hand because structuralism distinguishes the differential
object from its correlate, the subject, and subjects the
latter to the former. On the contrary one of the theses of
the transvaluation of the transcendental method is that
the residues, the manifold of cuts, are the subject itself,
the selfof the dividing [se-deviser] (no longer, perhaps, the
'complete' or even 'whole' subject, but the matrix of the
subject) . And on the other hand because structuralism
knows the residual object only as the signifiant or dif
ferential relation of two phenomena relative to each other.
A relation is necessarily an ideality: structure is there
fore entirely relative to itself, a relation of relations .
Which is to say that it is vain and empty, a pure ideal
ity that sinks into relativity, a relative autonomy that
has not succeeded in founding itself in any 'instance'
endowed with an absolute autonomy. On the contrary,
the essential thesis of 'transcendental materialism' is that
residual objects are not, in themselves or qua essence,
relations. They are non?-relations, they are contiguous or
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
positively dispersed. This anti-idealist, and consequently
anti-structuralist thesis 'supposes' an absolute, endowed
with an absolute autonomy - the subj ect as positive
dispersion or transcendental abyss (the refusal to make
a relation of it does not lead back to substance, but
constrains us to dijfer the classical opposition of Relation
and Substance, of substantial relative and absolute) . A
'transcendental materialism' supposes a rupture with the
idealist ontological postulates that made possible struc
turalism and its avatars - psychoanalytical, Marxist, and
even ' Nietzschean' , for there was a structuralist version
of Nietzsche's thought . . . Thus, by residual object, we do
not understand, like Lacan, something like the signifier.
The content of the residual object, the content of the cut,
will not be the signifier.
B S-G: Isn't there the problem of the ultimate indestruct
ibility of the signifier?
FL: It's true, it is an extremely difficult problem. It's the
problem of the indestructibility or (perhaps one could
formulate it otherwise) of thefinal invariance in the last
instance of residual objects. This poses the problem of the
unconscious, if that which is indestructible is the uncon
scious. I think that, in this context, there is an unlimited
destruction of invariants. Residual objects are not formal
indivisible obj ects, as would be the signifier or even
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T RA N S VA L U AT I O N OF T H E TRAN S C E N D E N TAL M E T H O D
the 'distinctive trait' that rests on the same unthought
ontological postulates.
Residual objects are not susceptible to a finite inven
tory. There are no invariant residual objects; or, more
exactly, their invariance is 'at the end' of their internal
variance in principle, it is the objective appearance of
their internal multiplicity.
ANDRE jACOB: In the context of this recusing of rational
ism, what is the least worst qualification?
FL: Above all not irrationalism. Irrationalism is the affair
of rationalism, not that of the transcendental method
such as I see it at work partially in Nietzsche. Why give
it a name? ' Surrationalism', that would be a possible
formula. I would add, all the same, that all this is only a
sketch, an attempt and a temptation . . .
AJ : That term has already been used by Bachelard.
FL: I believe Bachelard used it in a text where he speaks
of Nietzsche . . .
PHILIPPE ENCRENAS : I n assigning the instance o f reality
to a positivity or transcendental matter, you effectively ren
der obsolete the traditionally empirical determinations,
at least in philosophy, of the concept of matter. . . If you
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
had to give, even in brief, some criteria for the descrip
tion or determination of this transcendental matter, what
would they be?
FL: I cannot give you any more than I have already given
- that is, the rules . . . Your question could not be more
pertinent, and yet it is beyond my capabilities.
PE: I am not speaking here of the cutting-out to be oper
ated, the articulations to be effectuated, but of the very
being of that which is cut and articulated . . . You even
spoke of the Being of the cut . . . Of what order is it? Of
what order is the transcendental matter of the residual
object?
FL: You allude to the problem of intensive magnitudes,
of the will to power as fluctuation of intensity. I said
that I would not say anything on this question, I would
like to reserve this . . . It is an immense problem, a largely
unknown territory. On the other hand, the problem of
intensity is also an historical problem that has its origins
in scholasticism.
To begin treating it with materials, one must put into
relation the usage of the transcendental method in the
scholastics with their concept of intensity, i.e. of quanti
tative variations of qualities (charity, for example) ; and
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T RAN SVALUAT I O N O F T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
one must refer to the work of the Parisian physicists of
the fourteenth century. Not to mention the obligatory
passage via thermodynamics . . . I will content myself for
now with doing what all transcendental philosophers
have always done: with putting in place the notions of the
real, ideality, and objective reality - which is, after all, the
beginning of a response to your question. It is certainly
the case that, up to and including Cohen, the classical
transcendental method and the problem of intensity
maintained very close ties.
PIERRE KAUFMANN: I was struck by the fact that the
allusion you made to an anticipation of the positive
critique of Kantianism was drawn from the sphere of
communication, since this allusion related to the third
Critique. I would ask whether it is not within this sphere
of communication that the problem is posed of that
positivity of the non-empirical; or, if you go by way of
Husserl, it would be in the fifth Cartesian Meditation that
we would have to seek an anchor point. But doesn't the
pure appresented precisely have something to do, as to
its status, with what you envision, and in liaison with it
- I refer to the question that was posed earlier about the
dejure, the quidjuris. I thought that I spotted something
there about guilt. Isn't the question of guilt at issue
here (and this would be my third question) concerning
Heidegger? Is it not this theme of guilt, along with the
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
problem that you have posed, that allows the clarification
of the enigma that remains attached, in Heidegger, to the
coexistence of the meta physician and the Rector of 1933 ,
whose initiatives and activities might appear as a sort of
reprojected guilt or sur-guilt? And this touches on the very
ground of our problem. For I believe that in this regard
Heidegger is the most interesting of philosophers, for he
presents the unique case of a philosopher who was writing
staggering texts in the period around 1933. We have other
great philosophers. But it is a matter of a unique case of
residues. Finally, it is as if there were residues above and
residues below: Jean Wahl's 'transcendence and trande
scendence' . Can the method be called the constitution
of criteria? What criteria, in the event?
FL: It is difficult for me to respond to the problem of
appresentation, unless I say that appresentation is the
relation to the alter (ego) , as these 'objects' by definition
are, and that this relation conditions the constitution of
the form of ideal objectivity, as is still the case here. As
these residues are the matrix of subjectivity, they imply
that subjectivity is multi-or pluri-subjectivity (rather than
'intersubj ectivity') . In Husserl's own work, however,
appresentation is but a mode of absolute presence to self
of the living Present; and it is only outside Husserl, with
another method, another 'reading' of his text, that one
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TRANSVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
can suggest that, ultimately, in his work, appresentation
conditions the constitution of a field of presence to self.
As to the problem of political guilt that may be at
the origin of a political engagement by a philosopher,
personally I would not pose the problem only in terms of
'guilt' and of 'sur-guilt' , in order to explain Heidegger's
deviation (if indeed it is a deviation) . I wonder whether
we must not first proceed from the very interior of Hei
degger's thought. A thought whose aim is to overcome
or displace (to 'differ') all the contradictions, all the
oppositions handed down to us by the Greeks, will neces
sarily - owing to the very fact that it assumes one of the
'contrary' positions that itself assumes the power-to-differ
and no longer the power-to-contradict - find itself in the
position of a contrary in relation to another contrary.
Politically, I believe that on the basis of Heidegger's
thought, and more clearly Nietzsche's, it is impossible to
content oneself with thinking the relations of power in
terms of contradiction. They are relations of difference, of
proximity and of contiguity, and also of continuity, and
proximity is a risk to run that must always give rise to
compromise and treason. I believe that in a thinking such
as Heidegger's, and such as Nietzsche's, treason is a pos
sibility that belongs to that mode of thinking. One must
run this risk. It has become decidedly too easy to reject
the adversary, in this case fascism, as a simple contrary,
outside oneself. A thinking in the transcendental mode
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
feels itself responsible for that which dialectic is made to
wash its hands of. Irreducibly compromised by fascism,
nevertheless irreducibly resistant, such is the paradox of
the politics of residual objects . . .
PK: I don't believe there was any 'treason' on Heidegger's
part. You used Heidegger in your discussion of the cut. I
believe, on the contrary, that there was on his part a fidel
ity to a very particular sensibility to guilt, and that it is on
the basis of the theme of guilt that one can address the
theme of reprojected guilt. For me, I am infinitely grateful
to Heidegger for having given to philosophers the unique
example of having written and said what he wrote and
said, and of having had the political investments he did.
I believe that one cannot find within the whole history of
philosophy anything approaching this. His bust ought
to be present in all Societies of Philosophy. It is a unique
case, in some sense a mystery that must be explored. We
never speak of these things any more, and yet we touch
there on the problem of the cut. But we had better not
continue too long on Heidegger.
FL: Just a brief word. I entirely agree with all that - and
I come now to the problem of guilt - but beginning
from other bases, to say that much guilt remains with
Heidegger, but I say this in opposition to Nietzsche.
Everything that differentiates Heidegger from Nietzsche
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TRANSVALUAT I O N OF T H E TRAN S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
seems to me to have been accounted for by a remainder
of guilt - of which he, in turn, accuses Nietzsche, of
course . . . All the same, have we any criteria by which to
assign guilt or innocence? A prej udicial question. These
criteria cannot be transcendental, that is to say immanent.
Innocence is index sui et mali, and if it is part and parcel
of the innocence of the dispersion of cuts, it cannot be
assigned to a subject 'in person' - no more to Nietzsche
than to Heidegger. And neither can guilt. Unless we admit
that the innocence or guilt of a thinker - or any individual
whatsoever - pervades the whole of his existence and his
acts, is as one with his proper name or person - which, also,
condenses all of culture . . .
PK: This was just a commentary on the question o f the
person who preceded me, on the dejure.
ANNE-FRAN «; OISE SCHMID (read from a letter) : Your pro
gramme proposes a transvaluation of the transcendental
method. If we are to take seriously this double usage of
the 'trans-' , the transcendental no longer belongs so much
to a typology as to a topology: a continuous passage, as
you say elsewhere, an errance perhaps, a line of flight
(the object (r) of your Au-dela du Principe de pouvoir) . 1 So
that your method is not thought according to its objects.
Which suggests to me two reflections:
[Bqand the Power P rinciple]; Paris: Payot, 1978.
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
How do you think the passage of this method to the
'disciplines' and 'objects' of which you speak elsewhere
- power, language, linguistics (a passage that would
be, apparently, the simple inverse of the approach that
you have presented today) ? How do you evaluate these
'objects' - if one can still treat them as such? Is it through
the notion of the 'residual' that you think this passage?
Is it equivalent to that of the 'fractionnel' in Au-deta du
Principe de pouvoir? This is the question of the 'applica
tion' of your method (although the term is inadequate) .
This transcendental thought at once relativises (through
auto-affection) and revalorises 'theory' in philosophy,
by operating a displacement characterised in particular,
it seems to me, by the passage from 'external' referents
to a referential internal to thought; this is the limit you
'impose' upon 'relativism' in philosophy. Do you think
that it would be possible today to 'surpass' this 'limit' that is to say, also, for you to do without the notion of the
object (in general) and its (positive) critique? This is the
question of the 'absolute' and the 'relative' in philosophy.
These two reflections are also suggested to me by your
reticence to use examples ('if such a thing exists', you
say somewhere . . . )
FL: The pertinence of these questions comes from the
fact that they touch on the thing itself. But the thing,
as you have seen, is not just the object; the thing is the
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TRANS VALUATION OF THE TRANS CENDENTAL METHOD
gesture, the continuous movement of a displacement. In
this movement, I try to reconcile the trans-cendental and
trans-valuation as being the same apart from one dispar
ity, which is that of the displacement itself, the 'trans-'
itself; which is, in short, no doubt, the 'transcendental
of the transcendental' , the term that I have reprised and
which, as you have been able to see, contains two gestures
that belong together, a gesture of overthrowing and a
gesture of displacement in relation to the positions of
Transcendental Idealism.
Consequently, the reference of this mode of thinking to
what it is convenient to call 'object' becomes problematic which is not to say inexistent, but simply open to question.
In so far as, under the name of 'method' - of a method
become subject and substance, production and nature - I
understand thought as nothing but thinking or simply
thinking, it becomes easy to imagine that, in clearing its
head of the intoxicant of objects, it becomes drunk on itself
and becomes even more sterile than its classical forms.
For what a risk it would be, apparently, if philosophers
allowed themselves a little to enjoy philosophy itself - to
enjoy, that is to say to live and die of thought alone; if they
suddenly asserted a will to sterility, to non-production and
uselessness. What risk, and above all what wastefulness !
If I may be permitted to place under the patronage (or the
'matronage . . . ') of Socrates (childbirth) and Nietzsche
(pregnancy) this obstetric figure of the transcendental
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
method: It is a woman who remains united with her child,
in an infinite parturition. An uncomfortable situation that
cannot be tolerated by one who is eager to have a son or
to recognise a father, or simply to get on with attending to
worldly matters . Or just to end the suffering . . .
And the relation to objects, to experience, to facts? And
the examples that you have not given, or only so as to mock
them? I thank you for posing these questions in a spirit
that is not philistine. The method would not be transcen
dental if did not relate to real experience, and not only to
experience 'in general' - it would be transcendent . . . The
a prioris, even qua residual, are always and by definition
invested in empirical instances, through which they pass,
with which they begin, without ever deriving from them.
But the thesis that seems to me consubstantial with all
transvaluation is that of the univocity of method - it is the
'same' , it enjoys a continuous validity for all regions of the
object, it produces from itself, with no separation, its own
field of 'application' . Hence, no typology (at least in the
classical sense of the word) , but a transcendental topol
ogy that is, if not the whole manner of thinking, at least
half of the method (the other half being the dispersion
of cuts . . . ) Not even the self, or the Ego, can any longer
benefit from what Heidegger calls ontico-ontological
primacy. Not even Science - for example, mathematical
physics, as in Kant. Not even 'discourse' and 'works' , as
for contemporary hermeneutics.
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TRAN SVA L U AT I O N O F T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
Tue indistinct obj ect is not the indeterminate obj ect.
However empirically determined, this empirical deter
mination is suspended, reduced: the empirical instance
becomes indistinct from the transcendental, which does
not supress it, but suspends it. And what is isolated by
these reductions or these cuts, are the cuts themselves and
their syntheses qua transcendental determination of the
object. The object thus 'residualised' is transcendentally
individuated. It is already a residual object, even if a
whole (perhaps interminable) chain of reductions or cuts
is necessary to draw out its a priori. If 'for example' (but
the theoretical conditions of possibility of the 'example'
are destroyed here) I were to try and draw out a linguistic
a priori (to make a transcendental, rather than Cartesian,
linguistics) I would seek to elaborate a residual object
of language. Let's call it the phonese. I would distinguish
it from the phoneme, which is a ' Kantian' concept, i.e.
a hybrid entity of empirical speech and ideality. It is
the phonese that is, beyond the phoneme but also in the
phoneme, the true real power-of-differing. And also the
true ideal power-of-differing? Doubtless, but such that the
two sides, real and ideal, of the phonese are no longer held
in a relation mediatised by a totality - that is, by what
linguists call the ' system' . For a phoneme does not relate
immediately to another, as one might wish. Its ontological
constitution as ideal indivisible entity proves that it exists
only surreptitiously, through the mediation of a whole or
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
a system - in short, an empirico-ideal entity. And then
one will have to isolate the diverse concrete and historical
forms of linguistic a prioris, i.e. the different manners in
which determined languages have found to link, close,
suture, code the abyss of the phonese or of the power-to
differ, thus rendering possible the reproduction of language.
For, needless to say, language conserves and reproduces
itself, but structural linguistics only exploits this repro
duction, without being able to explain how it happens - I
mean to say, its internal transcendental production. In
particular, the phoneme will be interpreted as one of the
fundamental means found by languages (and abusively
generalised by linguists) to suture and 'overcode' the
phonese: one 'techno-linguistic' procedure amongst others.
Obviously the same schema (i.e. , these three or four
rules) is valid for every other region of objects. The tran
scendental method is a sort of universal or singular writing
(a residual writing . . . ) sufficiently plastic to be adapted
to every object and to transform itself with that object:
because it produces problems, and only produces solu
tions as an extension, without any rupture, of problems.
Let it not be said that it is incapable of explaining
such and such a determinate object, its properties, etc.
That is the work of the sciences, not of philosophy. But
what about the properties of that special object that is
called science or knowledge, and which, as we know, was
Kant's object? The response must be that epistemology,
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T RAN SVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
which concerns itself with this object, takes the consider
able risk, whether it wants to or not, of presenting itself
as a science, or of falling under the criteria of a science
(history, for example) . It takes the risk of no longer being
philosophy, or of playing on two tables at once . . . Perhaps
a science? That is its own affair, or rather that of the sci
ences, which are the judges of epistemology . . . As to the
transcendental method, it is not responsible for deciding
what is science or non-science, it is incapable of doing so.
Only science is judge of itself and index sui (which is not
to say that it has no need of 'philosophical' concepts to
establish itself. . . but so-called 'philosophical' concepts
and the internal essence of philosophy, its transcendental
aims and style, are two very different things . . . )
To come now to the notion of the object, the residual
object is the non-idealist concept of the a priori; it does not
at all designate an empirico-ideal object. I now prefer to
speak of residual rather thanfractional. For 'residual' has
the advantage of attaching this enterprise to a tradition
(that of Husserl) and to its terminology enough so that
the gap thus imprinted on the notion of residue comes
to perturb the conceptual field of transcendental phe
nomenology (a problem of strategy and palaeonymy . . . )
Because, consequently, 'residual' allows one to avoid the
confusion with the partial object of psychoanalysis and the
(potential) misfortune of a Nietzschean usage of the 'par
tial object' in an analytical usage. And finally because the
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
term 'residual' cuts short, hopefully at least, any positivist
attempt to make the manifold of cuts, the dispersion of
essence fold back onto micro-physics or micro-something.
The transcendental sense of the residual object, or
of its cut (but the transcendental, here, has but few
traits in common with the classical transcendental) , it
seems to me, prohibits us from folding the residual back
onto the two extreme poles of representation, the Large
and the Small, since it precedes a priori every form of
representation. This is important for the cutting-out of
a political or techno-political a priori, of an a priori of
power. If I insist, as I did today, on the transcendental
function of the concept of 'residual' , it is so as to struggle
against the positivist and empiricist insipidity of a certain
usage of Nietzsche . And also, on a second front (but one
that has much in common with the first) , to struggle at
the same time against the Heideggerian interpretation.
What a great thing this Heideggerian interpretation of
Nietzsche was . But on one hand it has become a breviary
that even journalists can now recite, and which prohibits
any re-evaluation of Nietzsche's importance, his step
beyond 'metaphysics' . On the other hand, the insistence
on Being at the expense of beings is an idealist archaism,
at least in the interpretation that the 'young' Heidegger
gives of it, for it is true that he increasingly 'reduced' it in
insisting (but only on his own account) on the Essence ( ef
Being) . Heidegger showed us little by little that it is the
488
T R A N S VA L U AT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
meditation on Essence rather than Being that is the non?
philosophical object of thinking thought. Unfortunately,
as far as Nietzsche is concerned (who he read regularly
and at the closest level - 'Being' is but the 'closest level' of
the Greco-occidental text) , he proved less generous: Not
only does he enclose him in the nihilist circle he traces (but
which Nietzsche himself had also traced) of occidental
metaphysics, a circle that he can only trace in already
overstepping it; he can only allow himself this denial, this
incarceration ef Nietzsche, because his own insistence on
Being at the expense of the being still belongs to what I
have called the primacy of idealising cuts over real cuts.
They make him conflate the Nietzschean thinking of the
essence (of Being) with a 'brute' philosophy of empirical
beings . His own concept of difference (the power-to
differ) - this is my hypothesis - is still a melange (an
Aujhebung) of the real cut and the idealising cut . . . But
that's not the most serious thing. The most serious thing
is the conj uncture - that is, the ' sociological' effects of
repetition, of automatism and of a training by rote that
this reading had on contemporaries - the now famous
vulgate of Nietzsche, last metaphysician of the West, that
is to say of Being ! And the incapacity one finds oneself in
of reading Nietzsche outside of this reductive framework.
This Nietzsche is already a part of our philosophical com
mon sense, a Nietzsche who would inspire the disgust of
a thousand Zarathustras !
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
JM-P: When linguists talk about a system, this concept
is proposed as an operatory concept, which allows the
understanding of everything you have explained. The
concept of system must prove whether it is or is not
operatory for the knowledge of languages, whereas your
phonese, it exhausts itself in itself, it cuts and reforms itself,
it is not comparable.
FL: You're right, it is not comparable. Phoneme and sys
tem are operatory concepts, 'phonese' is a philosophical
and transcendental concept. But, on one hand, what is the
'operatory'? Doesn't it suppose philosophical conditions
of possibility, isn't it a notion that, like that of cinnabar,
is a selective sample taken from a whole encyclopedia?
And, on the other hand, 'phonese' is not a transcendent
or abstract concept, but transcendental: it has no use
except in linguistic experience taken in the totality of its
aspects and not only in the closed corpus of complete
statements that the structuralists extract from it in order
to be able to make their concept of phoneme function. In
these conditions, moreover, the 'operatory' is certainly a
good criterion - a good criterion for a philosopher, that is.
As to the introduction of the notion of 'phonese' ,
i t responds t o exigencies which, i n spite o f not being
'operatory' , are nonetheless precise. It is a question (to
sum up some work done elsewhere) of re-introducing into
linguistics : ( 1 ) against structuralist anti-humanism, the
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TRA N S VA L U AT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
speaking subject, but as producer and agent of the unity
efthe chiasm of lang;ue and parole. A unity that is no longer
this side of their Saussurian distinction, but beyond: the
two series of phonematic phenomena and phenomena
of parole extending each other continually and at the
same time cutting each other each time perpendicularly,
a 'torsion' that only the phonese immanent to the two
series can support; (2) against the psycho-physiological
subject whose remainders or avatars haunt almost all of
linguistics, the radical subjectivity of linguistic existence
conceived as that of a power-to-speak. Phonese is thus an
'active' and 'productive' concept of a real power-to-differ
pendant to, or rather, supplementary to, the abstract and
ideal concept of the phoneme. The phonese does not
exclude the phoneme (which is necessary to assure the
social reproduction of parole) ; it permits the description
of a generativity at the level of the phoneme rather than
that of the phrase.
It comprises, like any residual object, a double face:
on one hand, a differenciating power that is the genetic a
priori of the phoneme itself, too abstract and general, too
idealised to take account of all the real 'facts of language'
of the speaker; on the other hand, a power of continuity,
of continuation and of synthesis which, without being
afo rm opposed to a substance, animates the ideal form
of the phoneme and explains the possibility of forming
a quasi-infinity of words and phrases, but this time in
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
respecting strictly the immanence of language and with
out suspending the spoken in relation to extra-linguistic
'innate' essences. (3) Finally, it permits an 'affirmative'
critique of the dissociationist and abstract postulate of
langu,e as instrument of parole (albeit in the form of an ele
ment of pure negative, and without-existence relations that
come to animate a parole that sinks into this 'defile'); of the
corpus as a spoken that is supposed terminated and dead;
of the primacy of receiver and hearer over producer, an
old-hermeneutic primacy that still animated structuralism.
The notion ofphonese corresponds to the introduction
of a materialist and transcendental point of view into
linguistics, and to the simultaneous critique of structural
ism and generative grammar. It does not reintroduce the
'phonetic' point of view against that of phonology, it is an
entirely other problematic. If we remember the inspiration
that Jakobson and phonology drew from the H usserlian
theory of 'wholes' and 'parts' , why not try to animate
(from afar. . . ) the linguistic field with a theory of residual
objects that is a form of anti-idealist radicalisation of the
Husserlian theory? An overthrowing-and-displacement
of structuralist idealism . . .
JM-P: I t is you who spoke of the critique of the indistinct
obj ect, but if it is indistinct, then what is the object of
critique?
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TRANSVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
FL: Precisely the 'indistinct' : it is determined transcenden
tally as empirically indeterminate. What makes the object
of critique is the confusion of the empirical determination
of the object with its transcendental determination.
JM-P: What is its transcendental determination?
FL: The set of syntheses of cuts that are programmed by
the fourth rule. But this is all too brief, it's true . . .
PATRICK HENRIOT (read from a letter) : I would have
liked to have posed the question of the status of time
in the perspective of the transvaluation you evoked.
Wouldn't it be one of those 'hypothecations' of which
the transcendental method must be disencumbered?
What I wonder, personally, is whether the theory of
the transcendental ideality of time furnishes the means
to found the historicity of history (the time of nature
opposed to properly historical time) . For example: doesn't
the double immortality, of humanity in fact (species) and
of each man as reasoning person, call into question the
ontological status of time? How, for example, to link
phenomenal time and the ideal of a noumenal 'progress'?
It may seem as though these questions remain external
to your problematic. But I wonder whether there is not the
occasion for an interrogation of the notion of ' destruction' .
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
FL: These questions, not being solely internal to Kant's
problematic (does such an interiority exist other than as
a semantic illusion, other that as an artefact linked to the
history of philosophy?) are also not entirely external to
those of transvaluation. They form instead the common
border of the two perspectives, extending one into the
other. Effectively, the question of time is not a 'hypotheca
tion' in the sense of a simple obstacle of which thought
can disencumber itself without any risk. But it is, if one
understands it as a right of the tradition over thought one that we might believe thought would seek to absolve
itself of, as one pays off a debt. Whether it is a matter of
time or whatever other 'concept' ('form', 'condition' , 'a
priori', 'transcendental' , etc . ) . For I consider that the
univocity of the transvaluated transcendental method
(its equal validity for all regions of objects) demands that
one begins, precisely through an observance of 'method',
by according no particular privilege even to time; and by
'streamlining' all concepts, i.e. by proceeding upon them,
considered as indistinct objects, with cuts that isolate
their (residual) a prioris. Time, also, is first of all a given.
Even as ideal continuity, it remains 'empirical' , up to the
point where successive reductions 'purify' it of its spatial
elements (here the spatiality of extensive-being stands as
an index of given-being, and thus of that which, from my
point of view, still needs to be reduced) .
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T RAN SVALUAT I O N OF T H E T RA N S C E N D E NTAL M E T H O D
This is to admit that one does not disencumber oneself
all at once of the 'hypothecations' (even epistemological,
even moral - above all moral - ones, etc . . . ) that form
the continuous fabric of a tradition that closes itself up
behind and upon each cut, and that the transvaluated
'transcendental' character can only define a limit, at once
a tendency and a mutation in the becoming of a concept.
This limit is still 'transcendental' , but in a sense new,
precisely transvaluated - or on the way . . . 'Destruction'
is a process, not a magic spell.
One is thus constrained by the tradition, simultane
ously and strategically, to recognise a certain privilege or
primacy of time, even if this primacy recedes and sees its
domain and its meaning change. From this point of view,
one can say - this is an entirely possible strategic, but at the
same time contingent, thesis, from which it suffices to draw
and limit certain effects - that 'will-to-power' is a Nietzs
chean concept of temporalisation as production of time,
it is intensive and intemporal time which is immanent to
empirical time and even to Kant's ideal time, as their genetic
a priori. On this point, it appears to me that every theory of
the ideality of time ends up privileging its consistency and
reproduction. We see this in Kant, where time manifests
a veritable lack of being and a petitioning of space - as
good a way as any of giving reality to ideal time by giving
it objectivity - at the expense of its production on the
basis of cuts-sources, or of its 'real' transcendental history.
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F R O M D E C I S I O N TO H E R E S Y
The transcendental manifold of residual objects, which
merge with their production by immanent division without
negativity - here is true temporalisation, it is the radical,
finally de-spatialised concept of 'originary' temporality,
and it is a condition - a real (in the non-empirical sense)
and non-ideal condition - of history.
The transcendental ideality and empirical reality of
time? Allow me to reverse and displace this duplicity: the
ideality of time is empirical, its reality is transcendental but this thesis does not just give rise to a 'transcendental
realism' . For the residual manifold is time as noumenal
self-producer, and no longer as phenomenon. All the same,
given the univocity I spoke of earlier, I would prefer to
say that the residual and real manifold is noumenon in
relation to time itself. As to the distinction natural time/
historical time, it is transcendent and must be reduced; it
is not 'external' , but, from my point of view, transcendent
and not transcendental. It is fitting to seek the residual
object - the a priori that relates one to the other, at the same
time as it divides them, natural time and historical time.
Of course, all these concepts no longer have quite
their Kantian sense, otherwise no transvaluation would
be possible. I can only distribute otherwise and 'displace'
your questions themselves: all the rest, all my responses,
result from that recutting, or only continue it by further
determining it.
496
FRAN901s LARUELLE, Professor Emeritus
at the University of Paris X: Nanterre, is the
author of more than twenty books, including
Biography qfthe Ordinary Man, Theory ofStrangers,
Principles ifNon-Philosophy, Future Christ, Struggle
and Utopia at the End Times ef Philosophy, Anti
Badiou, and Non-Standard Philosophy.
COVER IMAGE: R. H. Q.uaytman, Silberkuppe, Chapter 17, 2010.
Silkscreen, gcsso on wood, 24 � x 40 inches (62.9 x 101.6 cm).
Courccsy of the artist and Miguel Abreu Gallery.
What we describe here are the structures of the ordinary man.
Structures that are individual, invisible in the light q/Reason or Intelligence.
'Ihese are not ideal essences, butfinite, inalienable
(and consequently irrecusable) lived experiences.