Disalienation and Liberation of Heresy
François Laruelle
Selections from Mystique non-philosophique à l’usage des contemporains (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007), p.229-235.
Assistance, Detachment, Abandonment
Messianic assistance is the unilateral adjustment of the already-detached detachment and causality of the World
World, philosophy, and/or mysticism are ruled systems of subterfuges to requisition the human to the service of the accumulation of World-Capital (if not the capital-world), indeed to the service of this blend, God-Capital. The mystics were trumped by their God who was more seductive and sublime as he was the false Stranger, the stranger who came from the World. This was a God who was attributed with perfections and “personal properties,” an “essence” and “nature,” a God who was not himself sufficiently poor. God also, perhaps first of all, must “become” poor and not only experience [faire prevue] ascetism and sacrifice. The God of the Christians refuses his identity even in the death of his Son and his resurrection, as if God lacked immanence and identity at the point of having to manifest them, proving them in the eyes of his creatures. God participates in the pretentious weakness of philosophy which believes that it refuses God or exalts God when it refuses God on the mode of the Logos. Even less than in the mystics, it is therefore a question here of a positive and actual detachment from the World, a change of place or ground, terrain or region, like the philosophers want. The problem is now posed entirely otherwise that it is a question of the abandonment of philosophy itself, which is for us the World and perhaps its face of Hell. The mystics only know the tension towards detachment, serenity, and the liberty of vacuity. And the confuse it with the desire of God.
As being-separated and de jure detached before any detachment, the Christ-subject confronts the problem of their participation in the World. How is the detachment from the World and the abandonment as unition with the World organized within this subject? This is a crucial problem according to the embarrassments of philosophy, mysticism, and Marxism when they pose a subject capable of disalienating themselves from the World and all of which is submitted to the “capital-form” or (it’s the same thing here) the World-form without contradiction. If God is immutability, if his repose prevails in dignity over the exit outside of himself and over some other virtues, what does this say about this non-nothing that is Man-in-person, who doesn’t even have to exit from themselves to experience their existence as God does, who is preoccupied with the World like the philosopher? We do not need to ask why non-nothing exists rather than nothing because the nothing does not itself exist as Man. Nor is it to want the nothing rather than wanting anything and to thus give into wisdom, virtue or beatitude. Man-in-person is the Contemplated who contemplates all things as first – even the eternal becoming that the philosophers contemplate.
What we call assistance is, on the other hand, a change of posture reserved for the Future alone in accordance with a new use of the World. Globally, assistance no longer has the investigation of beatitude as the Transcendental Good or Transcendent God as an object. It is the subject effectuated as Man-in-person and liberating themselves for the World. An abandonment from…or towards the One-in-person only makes sense when confusing the One and God. If there is nevertheless an abandonment from the One, it is practiced and involves the subject that we are in any way. The abandonment (toward) Man-in-Man is the gift to the World that the subject makes not from their person but insofar as they are “in-person” or separated. Assistance, more than the former detachment, adjusts two terms as unilaterally separated (wherein one is no longer here God except by placing God in the World). It takes the form of an equation whose solution is the Last Identity and thus organizes the double direction of “abandonment” (from…towards…) otherwise. Detachment (the non-United [non-Uni]) is no longer the condition of a union but only its effect. Man-in-Man does not have to detach themselves because they are already separated, more than detached, and does not have to unite with themselves because they are already One. An ontic or regional, even ontological or fundamental detachment is done within the World for the ultimate glory of the World, if not of God. By contrast, detachment and union give rise to a practice ruled in relation to the World alone. The desire of the One is Hell and Hell is closer and perhaps the closest to Man, giving the change and hallucinating Man-in-person. Detachment must rather be itself determined by the Detached-in-person who only supports it to clone it as being for…There is no first abandonment, only the first names of the Abandoned-without-abandonment or the Renounced-without-renouncement, valid for Man. On this basis, the detachment of the subject is done not in relation to the “creatures” alone, nor in relation to Being or God, but through the unilateralization of their correlation: the World.
Future mysticism includes an abandonment that is not already realized or effectuated, even virtually or “potentially” [en puissance]. It is a real, immanent, and necessary abandonment without precisely being sufficient. Abandonment accompanies the World as given-in-One (and it is always so as soon as we think or dream it), and it is more effectuated as soon as the World is explicitly introduced in the operation by the Future-subject. The real detachment “with” the World begins therefore before any enterprise of abandoning or rather (we must invert the formula) determines access immanent to it. It is a “definitive” abandonment because it has never begun or is not eternalized as a hesitant tension, but it assumes a transcendental form with the introduction of the World’s perspective as such and therefore the subject’s perspective. From the real Detached to transcendental detachment, Man-in-Man determines the World as abandoned-and-assisted. The subject-in-person contains this experience of being-separated from the World for more profound reasons than the World itself can give or imagine them: conditions of its being-assisted. The being-detached is at this point closer to the non-nothing than nothing [aucune] is so held that it can lodge within them, even the most immanent God. Only one duality accompanies the non-nothing: the undivided unilaterality of Hell and its support of the World.
Absolute Abandonment and Radical Abandonment of the World
Renouncement, serenity and abandonment (Gelassenheit) are the face of heteronomy towards the World of immanent cloning. Only the non-sufficient indifference to the World can direct the Messiah-subject to the World and perform its unition with the subject.
Renouncement, abandonment, and detachment cannot be first injunctions in the absolute philosophical sense of priority, subject to being exercised as a simple negation conditioned by the World, rather than as its radical unilateralization that comes from Man-in-person.
Unitary desire is not so much the desire of God as the desire for the union with God, the desire to be God or at least become God, to little by little absorb God’s distance by dint of praying. God and Soul, this duality which opens the space of mysticism both within and outside of the philosophical space, rigorously obeys the philosophical structure, but is displaced by a supplementary wave [cran] according to the epekeina. This is theosis: the deification of man and the humanization of God. It is an equality that cannot draw its possibility within a radical identity inalienable in each of them but within a general convertibility and a reciprocal power of one over the other. In the complementary effort to detach itself from the World, the Word detaches itself firstly, by transcendence, from the meta-physical Logos but it folds it over itself, making it coincide with itself through its extreme edge or point, epekeina-. More than ever, the peak of contemplation is the coincidence of substance and relation, the One and Being, and no longer Logos but the logicity of the Logos. Mystical logicity is not the logicity of the abstract concept, representation or the Idea. It is the concrete and assumed real logicity of the Logos realized through the sum of its philosophical conditions or instances.
Traditional mystical purification does not proceed through exclusion of the World but does so in view of also interiorizing it in a more universal discourse. Rather, there is a mystical purification, and it is of the same authoritarian order (though we refuses to envisage such a scandal), than any rational or even, for example, ethnic purification. There is a xeno-phobo-logy of dominant and unitary mysticism, a way of excluding the World as a Stranger to interiorize it within the onto-theo-logical order. There is a level of acceptability and receivability, like a basso continuo within theo-logo-centric pathos, for a Word of desire and despair, waiting and injunction, hatred and love. The level or plane, whether elementary or sublime, of these affects do not matter – authoritarian mysticism excludes, killing within and outside of it, ridding the World of all nothingness and sin. Apparently as gentle, nonbarbarous exclusion by dint of interiorization and conservation, philosophy in general and mysticism are, like the economy, apparatuses to reject the World, to only interiorize the World to better dominate it. They are not a priori amorous thoughts of the World in its identity. They still oppose unition with the World with the unition with God. Instead of being fully a priori, they are just as much determined by the World itself and its own hatred.
Therefore, the mystics who claim first and essentially to liberate themselves from any “representation” in view of a parousia that is by definition absolute remain philosophers. To liberate oneself from philosophy is not possible if the soul is not immediately born-as-free [née-telle-que-libre], cloned-as-vacant of any representation and this master-representation: philosophy. The simple sole is foreclosed rather than annihilated. Auto-annihilation, even hetero-annihilation, do not reach vision-in-One, and do not produce a soul-according-to-theOne but a soul-according-to-the-World. The simply “enfranchised” soul (Marguerite Porete) must give birth to the “franchised,” free or vacant soul without desire for vacancy. Liberty is often only the underside of negation of desire of the One, but the One itself as in-One cannot be liberated, desired, annihilated, and doubly annihilated: the One-in-One is immediately too poor to support these affections. The One-in-One has nothing of an ens and its transcendental passions. It is only this povery that can suspend sufficient philosophical force, conserving it without interiorizing it, respecting rather than conserving it – with its auto-position now become sterile, without negating even less its content of representations. An abyss of unilateral immanence separates the annihilation of the World or desire of the One from native indifference that being-foreclosed of the One implies towards the World.
The One-in-One, already separated (from) the World, separates itself from the intention of the One because it is immediately the Real. The One-in-One separates itself from double negation as the philosophical desire of the One. The One-in-One separates itself from Christian experience to immediately give itself as heretical Christ in its structure of immanence. The One-in-One is neither created nor posed, not leaving the time to invest its immanence to transcendence, desire, negation. Different from the Deity, Humaneity is non-negational (of) oneself as would still be a super-nothingness [sur-néant] or a reflected negation. It goes without saying that negative henology makes no sense here and is just the underside of a positive and metaphysical henology. Heno(-logy) can be negative only on the side of the One which is the non-sufficient condition containing no nothingness; it is not so through a procedure of auto-negation of the Logos. Since nothing immediately is added to the One-in-One, because it is still Other-than…less-than-nothing, it does not have to detach itself from the World through a whole system of dialectical or simply ascetic operations with degrees and scales, ways and paths which (since they lead outside of the World rather than going to it) surely bring them back. If a Word of fiction must be invented, it is however only within the limits of a material-world on the one hand, and its determination by the poverty-in-person of Humaneity on the other hand. Foreclosed to any representation (and it alone delimits this “all”) and not only to an ad hoc or artificially delimited “representation,” the Real draws a clone from the groundless ground [du fond sans fond] of religion through its poverty that is more gentle than a withdrawal, a bracketing, a negation, or even a nullification.
Love-for-the-World is first or before the World
The Messiah-subject is unbound-for-the-World and was the first to love the World. Love is a first or transcendental beginning ordered to the primacy of Man.
Man-in-person is unbound (from) the World and unbinds the subject from any substantial bond with the World or God. Man-in-person leaves-the-World-unbound before there is any operation of unbinding. Hence this triple distinction: Humaneity is Unbound-without-unbinding, the World is bilateral unbinding, and the Messiah-subject is unbound from the World for the World, unifacial in some way, or unilational rather than relation.
It is through this indifference that the abandonment of the World is no longer the condition for the abandonment towards God because vision-in-One is intrinsic pauperity: it is so a priori within Being and the World. Undoubtedly, being non-sufficient or foreclosed, the negative condition through itself, vision-in-One needs (at least to clone a subject) a symptom of the World but it gives it a new and simple function as a model which forbids that it still condition the detachment or Gelassenheit itself in its messianic force. One such real detachment which is not a simple ontological “supersession” of being, is already determined immanently by something more radical than it and bears over the World in person, the philosophical correlation of the Entity [Etant], Being and the One. This detachment must be understood outside of any philosophical negativity or hatred of the World for the World. It is a simple immanent uni-lateralization, an operation which has never used transcendence against transcendence, which has never turned ressentiment against itself. The heresy of-the-last-Humaneity, even in the subject that it clones, is without ressentiment: it neither resents nor even “sents” [sentie] in a specific affectivity of the Lived-without-Life. It is detached from…or unilateralizes the most interior and most isolated affectivity itself so that it renders this heroic effect of Being towards the Real-as-Other useless, an effort which makes up the entire traditional mysticism as the living experience of the Beyond of essence. The non-sufficiency of the vision-in-One is not a lesser heroism or its deficiency, but what suffices-without-sufficiency, to the nearest givenness of mysticism, to determine a Messiah for the World.
If the soul is “one with God” and God is one with creation, Man-in-Man is one “with” the World as it is: without-the-World. Therefore, it is not the love of the One that we replace the philosophical “science of the One” but vision-in-One determines an amorous subject of the human and the World alone insofar as it is the human’s occasion, dualyzing their anthropo-logical confusions. Like all things in-the-last-identity, renouncement of the World must be uni-versal and consequently incommensurable with the World though for it. The Messiah, first detached from the World, loved the World first, and therefore before the World even with its contest.
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