A Biography of Ordinary Man by Laruelle François; Hock Jessie; Dubilet Alex

Author:Laruelle, François; Hock, Jessie; Dubilet, Alex
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2018-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

SECTION III: Determination in the Last Instance and the (Non-)One

21. Thinking the (Non-)One

Theorem 66. Unitary thought has “forgotten” determination in the last instance and its phenomenal content, which is the (non-)One. Thinking the essence of the (non-)One in its truth is a minoritarian task.

We have just described the primitive phenomenal content of determination in the last instance as a finite topics or a chora, which we immediately contrasted to the Unitary Illusion. But we must reflect upon the way we have acquired this chora and recover its transcendental truth. We thus start again from the beginning, that is, through the One and the possibility of a determination in the last instance. To highlight what it now at stake, the transcendental truth of uni-laterality, we will speak of the (non-)One rather than of a chora or a finite place. The (non-)One is the real content of determination in the last instance.

Just as unitary philosophy as a whole, and not only metaphysics, has not thought the essence of the One, it has also not thought the essence of the (non-)One, having reduced it to secondary forms, such as those of Being. We must think the non – the finite em-place – as mode or manner of the One, as this finite-void-of-finitude, as a nihilation even softer than the difference between Nothingness and Being recognized in the thought of contemporary thinkers. Above all, it cannot be thought according to the World and the authoritarian mixtures, according to Being and as the essence of Being: this would yet again determine it relative to unitary – not only metaphysical – structures, and lose its finite essence, which it takes from the One alone. Perhaps we will later find a special and restricted form of the (non-)One that will sustain something more than occasional and indicative relations with the World. But it is imperative, indeed the One compels us, to stop thinking the phenomenal content of the (non-)One according to transcendence (being and its Being) in order to describe it as the aura of indifference that the finitude of the One immediately induces.

Theorem 67. The experience of the (non-)One is not metaphysical or ontological, worldly or authoritarian in general. It is an immediate given and its conditions are those of transcendental truth or of the One.

There is no genetic or effective explanation for the (non-)One. Such an explanation would be vicious and would presume the World as constitutive of the (non-)One, or the One as prone to being alienated: two hypotheses that have been ruled out. None of the content of the World can claim to factually or effectively explain it, nor does the One create it by following the paths of effectivity. Determination in the last instance no doubt “is concluded” from the dual, that is, from the One and the World, from the One and the non(-One) as unitary resistance to the One, but in the sense that it is transcendentally necessitated by the One and not effectively produced by the World or taken from it.

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