NEW THINKING OR NEW CREDULITY? Laruelle de-sutured

This is a first draft for an overview of Laruelle's development, all comments are welcome.In this text am trying to see non-philosophy as a path rather than as an illuminated state attained by conversion to a set of principles. The non-philosophical conversion is not an all-or-none once-and-for-all event. It comes in degrees and flashes, or in successive waves, and may well be different for each individual. The non-philosopher is not at the end of his or her journey, but is on the way to immanence, under the condition of immanence itself.

Performance Philosophy, 2015

A Non-Parmenidean Equation: Practice = Thought […] In order to clearly distinguish philosophy, we will say that practice and thought are identical in-the-last-instance, or even that practice is the presupposed that determines thought. This is the non-Parmenidean paradigm and it must put an end to theoreticism and idealism, which are both the effect of philosophizability François Laruelle (2012d), 114-15

2013

Radical Philosophy, 2015

Performance Philosophy, 2017

François Laruelle's non-philosophy aspires to bring democracy into thought. As a philosopher of ' radical immanence' everything is equal or equalized-no thing or thought transcends the rest. But of course all things do not appear equal. And Laruelle argues that philosophy is the discipline that posits itself as the power to think at the highest level-the utmost unequal thought. Despite appearances to the contrary, philosophy remains our dominant form of knowledge, according to Laruelle. Or rather, it is the very form of domination within knowledge. Adopting many positions, or 'decisions' as he puts it (empiricism, rationalism, idealism, materialism, scientism, even antiphilosophy), its fundamental pose is as a form of exemplary thinking. It is the model for all foundational thought, even when those foundations are differential or anti-foundational (multiplicity, alterity, differance, etc.). As Laruelle sees it, "philosophy is not 'first' for nothing; it is that which declares itself first and possessor […]" (Laruelle 2013c, 110). Even in our contemporary scientistic era, in epistemic relations… [p]hilosophy holds the dominant place, science the dominated place. In positivism or scientism, the hierarchy is reversed or inverted; but it is still philosophy that dominates in anti-philosophy. The superior or dominant place is in effect always occupied by philosophy […]. (Laruelle 2013b, 43) So even scientism is a philosophy too (albeit a self-hating one). Laruelle, on the other hand, believes that philosophy does not have a monopoly on (philosophical) thinking. In non-philosophy, all thoughts are equalized in value. However, this

2007

The project of François Laruelle’s non-philosophy consists in creating a methodology that will enable surpassing dualisms of theoretical thought inevitably and endlessly produced by Philosophy. Laruelle’s first work of his post-Derridian, i.e., of his “non-philosophical period,” Philosophie et non-philosophie (1989), is an exhaustive demonstration of the thesis according to which (all western) Philosophy is based on a constitutive split produced by Reflection as its defining cognitive tool. Philosophy is trapped, claims Laruelle, in the vicious circle of “auto-mirroring.” One of the axioms upon which the non-philosophical methodology of stepping out of the aporia of auto-reflexivity is based is the “Thought-in-terms-of-the-One.” The latter consists in an epistemic procedure generated by a “posture of Thought” that correlates with the Real of the object of investigation rather than with concepts within philosophical “uni-verses” (= doctrines). In this respect, non-philosophical interrogation (of philosophical phenomena) resorts to copying (“cloning” as Laruelle would put it) the model of modern scientific thinking.

HTS, 2019

This study brings the thoughts of Derrida into conversation with François Laruelle’s nonphilosophy or non-standard philosophy. Laruelle argued that Derrida is a philosopher of difference, thereby grouping Derrida together with Heidegger and Deleuze as philosophers of difference. The argument of this article is to explore Derrida’s work, bringing it into conversation with Laruelle’s non-philosophy and non-standard philosophy. This article is focussed specifically on Derrida’s democracy to come in line with Laruelle’s democracy of thought. The context of this discussion is the end of philosophy or the closure of philosophy, and the opening of this closure for a democracy is yet to come – or whether the ideas of the end of philosophy or the closure of philosophy (metaphysics) are philosophical materials for Laruelle’s science of philosophy or non-philosophy. Laruelle does not seek a democracy to come, but understands these different thoughts as democracy of thought: all thoughts equal and unifacially turned not towards a democracy to come, but a future.

Dialogue, 2015

In recent years, in the field of philosophy of religion, François Laruelle’s “non-philosophy” has opened up a path out of the battles between secularist philosophies and resurging Christian theologies. It has done so by theorizing the radical immanence of the Human (or, as he writes, Man-in-person) separated from and foreclosed to simultaneously the (philosophical) enclosure of the World and the (theological) transcendence of God. This paper explores the way Laruelle’s 2007 work Mystique non-philosophique à l’usage des contemporains further articulates radical immanence by engaging with materials from the traditions of mysticism and mystical theology. Mystique non-philosophique diagnoses the ways traditional mysticism remains complicit with philoso- phical operations by enchaining the radical immanence of Man-in-person or the One, making it desire, need and work for divine transcendence. In contrast, it proposes the practice of “future mysticism”, which seeks to subvert all conceptual mechanisms that subjugate the Human and render it servile to operations such as dialectical synthesis, conversion or desire for the Other. This approach underwrites Laruelle’s critique of Meister Eckhart’s thought for its enclosure of the Human within the Neo-platonic grammar of procession, conversion and return, and for the way it retains an emphasis on transcendent super-essentiality in its discourse of the God(head) beyond God. The paper suggests, however, that Eckhart’s sermons, despite deploying such inherited philosophical vocabularies, already articulate radical immanence that undermines the necessity of mediation and work, through mystical topoi such as poverty, humility and “without a why”. In so doing, the paper not only proposes the necessity of a more generous hermeneutic framework for non-philosophy, but also offers the possibility of de- emphasizing the name of “Man” in the theorization of radical immanence. As the paper shows, Eckhart’s conceptuality of poverty, humility and “without a why” points not only to the capacity to subvert transcendence, but additionally to articulate radical immanence decoupled from any Human figure. The radical immanence of the One, however, is not just foreclosed to the World, but, as Mystique non-philosophique makes clear, also entails a messianic dimension: the text repeatedly proposes cloning “Christ-subjects” or “Future Christs” who are not of the World but “for the World”. The final part of this paper argues that it is necessary to read such messianic concepts or “first names” without reverting to economic thinking, without, that is, re-introducing the mechanism of transcendence and specular enclosure. The real subversion of the World lies not in the affirmation of divine transcendence, nor in the nihilism of the desert, but in an immanent One, which is foreclosed to the World but nevertheless messianically displays its insufficiency. Finally, the paper suggests interpreting the radical immanence of the One as an undercommons of the World and (eschatological or divine) transcendence taken together, an undercommons that indexes the mobile lives, generic uncountable forms of living and anonymous forces that pose a perpetual danger to the order enforced by the World and its Gods. This paper is published as part of a thematic collection dedicated to radical theologies.

Produced during a residency at the NYPL Research Libraries, and completed in 2018, this is an 80,000 word anthology of (mostly translated from French by myself) and annotated excerpts, introduced by my 8,000 words introduction, from writings more or less directly related to the ‘non-philosophy’ of François Laruelle. I call this work: The Poverty of Philosophy: An Anthology of Non and other Philosophies or Arts of Immanence.