The Beginnings of non-philosophy. Introduction

Abstract

The text is an authentic introduction to non-philosophy and a literal introduction to Laruelle's seminal work, Principles of Non-Philosophy, in which Laruelle unfolds his basic principles and ideas, as well as his basic non-philosophical axiomatics. Beginning with the non-philosophical, or rather with the «non-philosophical fields»‎ that all philosophy sets up, peripherally fixing them as by-products of its philosophical work, its Other, he proposes to axiomatize the discovered «One»‎ as the most fundamental, or «last»‎, instance, not akin to Difference, the Other, or even to Being. This One, the One-in-One, is the Real, the non-reducible residue and something that philosophy claims in its usual Midasian gesture of totalization. Such a Real, according to Laruelle's thought, suspends the philosophical machinery of the production of «hallucinations»‎, while wishing neither the death nor the end of philosophy, but establishing non-philosophy as a theory of philosophy that treats the various philosophies as its subject, data, or raw material. According to Laruelle, non-philosophy allows us to fix a basic philosophical matrix where transcendence and immanence are extreme terms shuffled around in various combinations, but neither of which reaches the Real by presenting put-downs, but certainly claims it in its obligatory philosophical gesture of self-presentation and self-sufficiency. Instead, Laruelle proposes to consider the relation of combinatorial matrices to the Real as a «unilateral duality»‎. Unilateral, or unilateral-term, unilateral duality can be formalized as follows: some X depends on Y, but is itself independent of X, where X is the always-clone of the Real, or One-in-One, transcendent and derived from transcendence, and Y is the Real-One, axiomatically given and absolutely indifferent.

Translation from French by Nikita Arkhipov according to the publication: Ⓒ Laruelle F. Principes de la non-philosophie. Paris: PUF, 1996. P. 1-18.

Published with the kind permission of the author.