Philosophy and Non-philosophy. Introduction

Abstract

The text makes one of the most important demarcations delineating the subject field of non-philosophy: between this latter and philosophy proper, which appears as relativized «moduses, effects, or particular cases that cumulatively point to a new thinking». This new thinking, which is non-philosophical in character, regards the philosophical as empirical, as datum, as its own raw material, rejecting all self-sufficiency of philosophy (looping in itself as its own foundation, reducing every problem to the necessity of justification within philosophy) called by the author «The Principle of Sufficient Philosophy». The task of non-philosophy is to factualize philosophies and thus to put philosophical belief, which is fundamental, according to Laruelle's thought, and unchanging in all its modulations, out of brackets. Such a quasi-transcendental reduction rests on the One, whereas factualized philosophies turn to chaos/chora, conceptualized as «useless philosophical raw material» operating around the non-philosophical Real-One through «seeing-in-the-One». Partly mystically described by Laruelle, «vision-in-One» is a fundamental non-philosophical operation, «a modus of thinking that resides in one single One, autonomous with respect to Being and acting as the real foundation of <...> science», a kind of new thinking in general in which — as in the ultimate experience — «philosophy can be given to man». The gain envisioned, as Laruelle believes, by such a demarche is the opening up of «an infinite field of combinatorial possibilities» that will not be self-enclosed through the gesture of the repetitive structurally homogeneous gesture of the «philosophical solution», but will thus find a way out. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the «radical humanization of thinking, which has ceased to be transcendent Factum's or the World, in order to become the correlate of the One — the human being brought to its essence».

Translation from French by Nikita Arkhipov according to the publication: Ⓒ Laruelle, F. Philosophie et non-philosophie. Liege; Bruxelles: Mardaga, 1989.

Published with the kind permission of the author.