The Immediate Givens of Multiplicities
François Laruelle
In Le principe de minorité (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1981), p.5-7.
This essay poses problems of a special type and strives to give them a principled solution, whose philosophical scope must touch on the fundamental questions of the most traditional thought and, perhaps, partially interrogate them. They have the following general form: Can we define parts before the Whole and independently of the Whole? Can we define differences before their repetition and independently of the Idea, of the Logos, of Being? Can we define minorities before the State and independently of the State? Can we define being [l’étant] before Being [l’Etre] and independently of Being? Can we think events before their staging in history [mise en histoire], subjects before objects and deprived of objectivity? Can we think a time without temporality? Can we think singularities or multiplicities before every universal and independently of a universal? Etc. We do not respond to any of these questions in particular. We strive to elaborate a matrix which is valid for questions of this type and a matrix of responses that philosophy may hope to bring them. Therefore, the point is to establish a theory, in the strict sense of these terms, of the essence of multiplicities and, thereby, to reopen on new bases the very ancient problems of truth, being, the absolute and the relative, transcendence, the method of philosophical thought, etc.
Despite the variety of domains where they are customarily formulated, all of these problems are of the same type. We believed we could bring them an identical solution whose form is outlined, reprised and deepened in each of the five sections.
The first section introduces the transcendental problematic within which these problems shall be henceforth posed and their solution prepared. As much as possible, the first section distinguishes the transcendental problematic from classical and idealist transcendental philosophy and strives to make the undying exigency of the veritas transcendentalis heard anew.
The second section exposes the grand phases of the technology of thought which strives to think in view of the veritas transcendentalis. It states some practical rules that hold at once for the classical use of the transcendental method, for its destruction, for its new use elaborated under the title of “dispersion” or “dispersivity.”
The third section extends the field of the analysis and criticizes, under the name of “Difference” or “Continuous Multiplicities,” the contemporary, the Greco-contemporary concept of multiplicities. The goal of this essay is to distinguish between two or three types of multiplicities: the discrete or arithmetical multiplicities, of which we say nothing about here; the continuous multiplicities, identical to the modern concept of Difference; and, finally, the dispersive multiplicities, Unary Multiplicities or Minorities, which (or who) [qui] are the absolute concept or the essence of multiplicities. Therefore, the third section is the description and the “destruction” of the modern and current problematic which, after Hegel, with Nietzsche, Heidegger and those who follow them, that is, most contemporaries, has substituted for the “negative” dialectic the positive dialectic of Difference and, encountering the most original tradition, has inscribed the essence of multiplicities within the old chain of the unity of contraries, making of Difference or the multiple a new form of the ontico-ontological mixture.
The fourth section systematically elaborates the dispersive, unary or minoritarian concept of multiplicities, their essence conforming to the veritas transcendentalis, that is, their absolute essence. This section attempts to bring to the problem of the absolute (not relative) autonomy of parts, differences, minorities, being, events, singularities, etc., a general and positive response, in accordance with a certain Minority Principle which compels us to seek the possibility of multiplicities beyond Being, the Idea, the State, History, etc.
The fifth section reprises all of these themes to broaden the philosophical scope and implications. The title, “Technics and Mystics,” gives the general meaning of this essay, its paradox, its wager, perhaps. Within the notion of the essence of Multiplicities is reconciled (to say it exteriorly and a bit imprudently) a thought of the multiple and becoming, of dispersion and dissemination which bears the contemporary hopes of going beyond [débord] Greco-Western Representation, and a thought of the Absolute, but the Absolute as it is [tel quel]; a thought of the One, but of the One without unity, beyond the Idea, Logos and Being itself. That the individuals are the ultimate constituents of reality before Being, before the World, before History and the State; that there are (to put it in classical terms) absolutely dispersed monads deprived of a monadology, reason or the universal, is a thesis that only makes sense if there exist immediate givens of multiplicities beyond the possible technical objects of their production. To make this thesis if not credible, at least plausible and debatable, we must accept the irruption of the Absolute as inevitable within the general thematic, and take the “step beyond” Being, the Idea, the State, the beyond fulfilled by the Minority Principle with as little fear and trembling as is possible in these circumstances. It becomes necessary, then, to sacrifice the titular, all-too-titular geniuses (Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger) perhaps to not abandon ourselves at the moment where we would have wished to go beyond their horizon in their company. It is inevitable, too, to renounce once and for all, without interrogating it and working it out further, to make it do what it obviously cannot provide and as we had struggled in vain in first investigations, the contemporary problematic of Difference, that is, the continuous and relative multiplicities that it still inscribes within the hypostasis of Being or minorities that it still implants on the body of the State – hypostases that the problematic of Difference does nothing but distend without daring to break them.
An attempt whose means, goals and results are apparently merely theoretical does not solely encompass diverse emotions. The attempt is an emotion through and through; it always gives rise to an encounter, an encounter of a deception and exigency that remains unknown that the emotion encompasses like a certitude higher than it, that defends it and makes it endure. Yet is it just a question of an encounter? Must not the Absolute have already been manifested in its own mode of “immediate givens” so that contemporary philosophy suddenly turns out to be so deceptive, so violent, voluntarist and activist, that it is incapable of keeping its promise? Will contemporary philosophy have kept its promise in breaking Representation by elaborating a concept of becoming, difference, and multiplicities beyond presence? Or will the Greco-Contemporary tradition be content once and for all (once, which is the custom itself) with subordinating these multiplicities to the so-little non-present essence of presence and simply assemble the old violence of reason? To keep this promise, this hope, perhaps we had to let ourselves be convinced by the Absolute, to let ourselves be seized and transfixed, to not resist the powerlessness of this emotion. It is to accept recognizing that this part of contemporary thought has been betrayed within the investigation of multiplicities through its excess of will and by the theoretical means that it had or disposed of. Finally, it is to consent to the One as that which defends the multiplicities beyond Being itself, as that which defends minorities beyond the State.
en-demic 