Response to Deleuze. I, the philosopher, am lying

Abstract

The proposed text is one of the key works of non-philosophy that allows us to draw a demarcation line between the old and the new mode of existence of philosophy as a science of philosophy; otherwise, non-philosophy as a science of philosophical decision, distinct from meta-philosophy. Written in 1993 as a response to the remarks left in the program text «What is Philosophy?» by Deleuze and Guattari, the non-philosophical work attempts to emancipate non-philosophy from the shackles of philosophical transcendence, which asserts itself through the subjugation of immanence in favor of multiplicity. Deleuze and Guattari see non-philosophy as one of the «most interesting attempts in contemporary philosophy» to work with immanence, combining, according to Deleuze and Guattari, the philosophical and the non-philosophical, where the latter, according to Laruelle's thought, finds itself pushed to the periphery — the Other of philosophy. The reception of the project of non-philosophy, Laruelle notes, is distorted by philosophy's attempts to incorporate the radical immanence of the Real, which is itself affected by non-philosophy. Philosophers clone Laruelle's Universe as substance, of which Spinoza is the king of immanence. In his Reply, Laruelle details the basic principles and ideas of non-philosophy, as well as the mechanics of dealing with philosophies as datum — mere «datum» or «raw material». At the same time, analyzing Deleuzian thought, which, in Laruelle's view, has never been able to escape from the «self-sufficiency» of philosophy — its recursive loop on itself — Laruelle, recognizing Deleuze as one of the greatest philosophers, argues that the aim of non-philosophy is not to destroy philosophy, but only to suspend its quasi-self-sufficiency and thus awaken it from its dogmatic slumber. Non-philosophy becomes a way of doing away with philosophy constituted by philosophical decision, which means: doing away with every possible philosophy. The demonstration of the method of the science of philosophy is realized in the extension of the Spinozism discovered by Deleuze and Guattari in non-philosophy, which receives the name of non-spinozism expressed by new principles.

Translation from French by Mikhail Lyaskovsky according to the publication: François L. Réponse à Deleuze. La Non-Philosophie des Contemporains. Paris: Kime, 1995, pp. 49-78.

Published with the kind permission of the author.