Philosophy and Non-Philosophy

by François Laruelle, Taylor Adkins (Translator)

Each generation invents new practices and new writings of philosophy. Ours should have been able to introduce certain mutations that would at least be equivalent with those of cubism, abstract art, and twelve-tone it has only partially done so. But after all the deconstructions, after Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida, this demand takes on a different What do we do with philosophy itself? How do we globally change our relation to this thought, which keeps indicating that it is increasingly conservative and repetitive? These two questions together have prompted what we call “non-philosophy.”
Non-philosophy is not the negation of philosophy. It is the suspension of philosophy’s claim to think the real (Principle of Sufficient Philosophy), and it is the invention of new usages of thought and language that disrupt the rational narrative of the real, which is precisely what every philosophy is. Non-philosophy should rather be understood à la the “non-Euclidean,” namely, as a generalization of the philosophical beyond its traditional limitation by the unitary or “Heraclitean” postulate. From then on, an infinite number of philosophical decisions that are no longer mutually exclusive will correspond with any real phenomenon.
Philosophy and Non-Philosophy is widely considered the first fully explicit elaboration of non-philosophy and one of its most important introductory texts.

Genres: Philosophy

248 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

François Laruelle was a French philosopher, of the Collège international de philosophie and the University of Paris X: Nanterre. Laruelle began publishing in the early 1970s and had around twenty book-length titles to his name. Alumnus of the École normale supérieure, Laruelle was notable for developing a science of philosophy that he calls non-philosophy. Until his death, he directed an international organisation dedicated to furthering the cause of non-philosophy, the Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale.

Reviews

[channel]

this doesn't translate cleanly into a star rating, but:

i do realize it's supposed to be playful/jokey but taylor adkins' translator's introduction to "philosophy and non-philosophy" singlehandedly caused me to never read laruelle, and then completely reject my entire metaphysics i'd been nurturing for years (centered around pure immanence). i really don't know how it - or more importantly, laruelle generally - are supposed to be approached.

i don't think i'm really a slouch with challenging reading, i picked up 'the infinite conversation' after this and found the delirious, panicked battle that that books is to be intriguing, for whatever that's worth. something here though crossed the line from 'a challenge, but the texture of the challenge is necessary to lead somewhere rewarding' to what i could only receive as a genuine sadism exceeding some semiotic pain tolerance i apparently have. i was pretty indignant about it.

but i made the decision as a result of this to just say that a bunch of stuff is God, and that's been pretty healthy for me. got really into the occult. felt like switching majors from physics to engineering. constructive. your mileage may vary, but if you also find this hard to read it's an option you have.

[Rei K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophy and Non-Philosophy was the first book of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy that I have read. It was a tough read, for sure - Laruelle describes the contents of his books as a "conceptual deluge", and nowhere is this more apparent (in the work I have read of his so far) than this book. He moves extremely quickly, not taking much time to explain himself, taking you through a whirlwind of concepts from the one (vision-in-one, the real), non-thetic transcendence, non-thetic universe, philosophical decision, and etc. Further elaborated is non-philosophy's relationship to other philosophies - deconstruction, henology, Wittgenstein.
The basic principles become clear as you begin to learn Laruelle's abstruse vocabulary. All philosophy depends on a prior decision, which attempts to split the One in order to grasp it, but in doing so fails and leaves the One outside it. Philosophy presumes to give itself authority over the One, and desires to become a science - in this way having direct access to the real.
The One, importantly, is indifferent, unilateralizing philosophy and placing it in the chora as disorganized material. One such important consequence is the ability to think parts independently of their wholes.
Beyond this, there is not much to say that would not require a lot more elaboration - and even what I have said is not entirely clear.
That said, it is my favorite of Laruelle's work right now. Taking the time to work through it and the context around it was well worth the time.