THIS IS the complete revised

version of my book
Non-Philosophy
Aphilosophy.

and

This is the free copy, and will be

available on Scribd for a few
weeks, until the revised print copy
begins its distribution.
Please enjoy this first instalment of
The Philosophical Hack.

Non-Philosophy and
Aphilosophy
By Lance Allan Kair

Lance A. Kair
2015

Copyright 2015 by Lance A. Kair

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not
be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without
the express written permission of the publisher except for the
use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
First printing: June 2015
First revision Aug 2015
ISBN 978-1-329-21471-2
Lance Allan Kair
Louisville, Colorado, 80027. U.S.A.
Ordering Information:
Special discounts are available on quantity purchases and
other reasons, by corporations, associations, educators, and
individuals. For details, contact the publisher by one of the
means below.

Contact: Lance Kair (303-589-9492)

Email: erlk2@hotmail.com
Please visit: www.secondmusic.org

This book is the first of a series called

The Philosophical Hack.

11

Contents
Non-Philosophy and Aphilosophy...............................1
THE SITUATION........................................................11
PHILOSOPHY and NON-PHILOSOPHY...................14
THE ISSUE................................................................27
Kant.........................................................................30
Hegel.......................................................................37
THE ANTE-APOLOGISTS:.......................................45
Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche...........................45
Marx........................................................................48
Kierkegaard.............................................................55
Nietzsche................................................................60
APHILOSOPHY AS A CRITIQUE OF NONPHILOSOPHY............................................................64
The Apologists........................................................64
The Aphilosophical Case........................................90
Reiteration.............................................................100
AFTERWORD: Object Orientation........................113

13

Notes.......................................................................119
Selected Bibliography............................................121
Noted Authors........................................................122

15

What happened ??

17

19

HERE
CAN

THEN IS THE ONLY EXPEDIENT, FROM WHICH WE

HOPE

RESEARCHES,

FOR
TO

SUCCESS
LEAVE

IN
THE

OUR

PHILOSOPHICAL

TEDIOUS

LINGERING

METHOD, WHICH WE HAVE HITHERTO FOLLOWED, AND

INSTEAD OF TAKING NOW AND THEN A CASTLE OR VILLAGE
ON THE FRONTIER, TO MARCH UP DIRECTLY TO THE
CAPITAL OR CENTER OF THESE SCIENCES, TO HUMAN
NATURE ITSELF..."

David Hume.

A Treatise On Human Nature.

21

23

THE SITUATION.
1.
The situation is what is happening; the situation is the issue.
Non-philosophy presents the situation in its absolute truth
through discourse. Though the idea of a non-philosophy has
arisen in at least a few texts, we will center our concern and
discussion with the manner that non-philosophy, the idea,
has been transcribed into a more formal setting by the
philosopher Francois Laruelle. So as we begin, for this short
essay, the terms of discourse themselves as indicators of a
constant, relatable and universal reductive potential, cannot
be taken to reflect an absolute truth, for the terms are also
the issue; this is the non-philosophical situation. While this
situation arises at many significant occasions of discourse,
and particularly upon philosophical discourses, the proof of
non-philosophy becomes evident through two mutually

25

exclusive routes. The topic of non-philosophy is the

description of itself, that is, of the situation coming to bare
upon its own condition of being inherently involved with two
routes, and in this way non-philosophy is unique with respect
to its structure of meaning, what can be called axiomatic or
requiring of no proof, because non-philosophy is involved
with the presentation of the proof that is itself. The
discernment of what can be said to be the axiomatic nonphilosophical situation occurs with the issue of method and
what can be seen as the antithesis of such method, a type of
aphilosophical route.
2.
The problem inherent to the discursive representation of
non-philosophy can be described in terms of experiment,
method and results. Within the experiment, the method can
achieve and argue to its result, but the result does not
necessarily argue any particular method, rather, the result
itself could be achieved through many possible methods.
The non-philosophical result thereby can be said to bring into
question the philosophical method. Where method is seen as
inseparable from result, where any result is automatically
referred to one particular method, there we have a non
sequitur. The distinction that arises is between result and

27

method. So likewise this essay proposes that the result that

is non-philosophy arguing or otherwise proposing itself as a
method is non sequitur; that is, as an assertion of a proper
mode over or through an apparent contradiction it is a move
of bad faith, in a usual sense meaning a betrayal of truth, but
likewise in the sense that Jean-Paul Sartre discusses. The
meaning that is non-philosophical is a result that necessarily
disengages or is already disengaged from the method that
brought it, so it is that the author of Non-Philosophy, Francios
Laruelle, is involved in an effort that contradicts itself so
much as he proposes that it, Non-Philosophy, this particular
result, might be learned through its method, which is, for a
term, the non-philosophical philosophical method. Further we
say that this is possible because he has been involved with
the development of his ideas through an ideological
investment, and thus understands his development as due to
this given, proper and unimpeachable methodological
institution; in general, what is called the academy. The
meaning of non-philosophy as method thereby requires of
him, in the end, to back pedal and restate his terms to be
consistent with the institution from which non-philosophy
would otherwise break from. This can be to say that the
method called 'philosophy', or that method by which
philosophy finds itself and through which it operates as such,

29

yielded a result called 'Non-Philosophy' that proposes to

describe a method by which non-philosophy can be arrived
at

philosophically

to

mean

something

other

than

philosophical; which is to say, something non-philosophical.

This proposal is non sequitur, and thus contradictory in-itself.
It is this apparent contradiction, found in a predominance of
philosophical texts, but most clearly in Laruelles NonPhilosophy statement, that implies as it requires a revolution
to occur for its completion in real meaning.

31

PHILOSOPHY and NON-PHILOSOPHY.

3.
The veracity of the non-philosophical situation is self
evident because and while it is describing the situation that
occurs within the significant occasion of certain discourses;
its involvement with philosophy is through a kind of, what we
can call, radical agency. Philosophy, as an object of
investigation, is seen to evidence a lack, and this lack, as
Laruelle identifies, is in its decisional structure, which is to
say, based in a prior decision upon an already operational
method for reconciling the various and discrepant facets of
world. This method, which we shall call the conventional
method, allows for and implements real agency, what it
means to be an active member of world, which by now is

33

thus the world, reality. In as much as the philosophical

method can be said to have yielded non-philosophy as a
result, there do we notice an historically significant mark.
4.
Like a Janus, non-philosophy reflects two truths by its
arrival, one in potential and one in actuality. The meaning of
each of these true situations arise from one another in the
act that is the making of meaning, and the meaning of either
removes itself from the truth of the other necessarily since
the one always reduces the meaning of the other to itself as
to annihilate all dissension and contradiction. This method or
route of meaning evidences its own fault. Analogous to the
situation at hand the situation in which we find ourselves,
the situation we consider and address here the figure itself,
of the Janus, can be viewed as indicating a 'one' truth, but it
is a oneness that can never be realized; this is to say, the
view upon the figure itself is subject to the situation it
represents such that the knowing of the figure overcomes a
sort of gap. This particular overview thus defines a
transcendental event, an event of knowing that is more than
its terms suggest and therefore that cannot be conveyed in
its actuality. The supposition, proposal or assertion that
suggests that a grand unity is indicated through the meaning

35

of the terms of the conveyance, where the terms are taken to

reflect or otherwise refer to or indicate this unitive truth of
things, is thus concordantly based in a redundant function,
consistently conferring the state of meaning to that of the
True State of Reality, in general segregating aspects of the
redundancy through an effective ignorance of the gap and
deferring those elements to what we have called the True
Object, as in the case of our analogy, the state that is
proposed upon the figure of the Janus instead of what the
Janus represents ; which, in a religious frame, can be the
basis for what can be called idolatry. What this means then
is that if the figure is understood for what it represents then
the figure itself represents a blank spot, a gap, between the
view and what is possible of the view; not between the
opposite facing views but between the two views and the
presumption that these views together might constitute or
otherwise represent an obtainable whole view. This limit is,
for all purposes of truth, between the view and what is said
of it, for once something is spoken of a thing and a question
is asked into that thing as it has been spoken of, the world of
deduction arises in potential to become the route that leads
inevitably to the one world that is then deduced from the
objects obtained from it, a redundant move that ignores the
problem of the initial induction of terms. The question has

37

always to do with whether or not an object is associated in

any essential way to the term of its referencing. This is the
condition of which thus returns us to the initial situation
posed by the non-philosophical manifestation of discourse:
The reconciliation of two apparently different aspects of
reality.
5.
As suggested, the two truths are not reducible to
some one truth, but remain eternally suspended in essential
separation, together indicating only their individual truths, i.e.
unilaterally dual in nature. This as opposed to and in contrast
to the view that supposes to be able to obtain the figure of
the Janus itself, that is then a bilateral unity, the suggestion
that either side is involved with the other in a mutual, unitive,
affection and that this affection is in potential directly
communicable

through

the

terms

of

discourse.

The

philosophical decision determines how the affection comes

to pass and thus resolves this passing as an orientation
upon objects that we can call teleo-ontology.
6.
We should be aware of how this situation can
function. The potential meaning is always contained in the
actual meaning; what meaning could be belongs to the
39

actual meaning that is had or come upon. This route is the

actual route of meaning, where the proof of the truth of the
meaning of any discourse is evident at all times through the
situation of itself, the occasion of meaning. There is no doubt
in this, or rather, doubt involves the question of how the
actual meaning might be true. By contrast, the route of
potential meaning looks for the proof of the discourse in
another area, some other arena in which the discourse is
supposed to have meaning, an area that is not discourse but
from which discourse is informed. Ironically, it is always the
ulterior arena that supplies truth, and in this way is never
found by or through the discourse in question; that is, the
route cannot use discourse to find the arena by which itself
gains truth; the discourse is found to be true or false due to
the arena that supplies, or for all other purposes, is truth. Yet,
this route of potential sees discourse as a link between such
two essential substrates that we often call the subject and
object, a link that holds the potential to find the actual truth of
that duality, that truth we are calling the True Object, and the
link or suture, the effective combination of discourse upon
these discrepant aspects whereby reality is problematized, is
called faith.
7.

41

This route that is viewed upon, stemming from and or

towards a True Object is called method, and it occurs
methodologically; the disassociation of method as process or
activity of investigation from the subject or object of its
investigation yields the conventional disclaimer that justifies
the route of potential truth. The discourse is not taken to
present an axiomatic structural meaning of itself, but rather is
taken to be presented upon, through or by an axiomatic
structure that we know as proper argumentative and
referential methodology; in this way and by this route of
potential, method does not evoke a sense of a fundamental
situation of objective quality, but is indeed a route, a path, by
which we may analyze, synthesize, locate or discover truth.
We say that such a found truth is redundant due to its selfreferential system as it is split to always reveal a foundational
depth supporting an overt appearance; it is here that we may
find what is more real and more true of reality. Within this
arena lay the real duality, again, what is commonly known as
the subject and object, because there can be no reality
without these fundamental dual aspects; a 'deep and
foundational' object that yields the appearance that is the
meaning of discourse and their relation, the basis of real
truth. Here we argue that the aphilosophical point of nonphilosophy is the counter partial object of conventional

43

philosophy: The beginning of the object in-itself as an actual,

rather than intuited, manifestation occurs in the irony of an
actual unilateralized duality.
8.
The situation at hand has less to do with subjects and
objects than it does with truth and reality. Subjects and
objects exist in reality as the basis of reality, offering a route
as well as fulfilling that route's potential in the possibility of
truth, or a true reality. This discernment is found through
Laruelle's philosophical decision. Here is not an exceptional
paradigm; that is, it indicates a paradigm that does function
through exception, at that, through the only way exception
may be known, through the exceptional clause, which is,
contradiction as an indicator of what is not true of reality.
Reality, then, becomes that arena, that substrate, within
which all possibility arises according to the dictates of
method that determine what is true and false, as these
conditions reflect essential conditions of the real objects
themselves. Yet the true meaning of non-philosophy is that
the real indication of such a condition is itself informed by a
prior decision such that the real situation arises to be able to
be considered as such, but that this situation, what we may
call conventional reality, is itself a necessary condition of the

45

decision by which the apparent unitive reality may exist, at

that, as a philosophical object.
9.
By this conventional methodological objective we
might then begin to see what exactly non-philosophy is
doing, because it is indeed doing more than making an
argument. By conventional method, non-philosophy is taken
by its philosophical object, philosophy, the object under
investigation as the object that is being described as to its
functioning, as well then its veracity as being. By such
method, the decision is placed out into a medium by which to
have an object: Philosophy. Yet the terming of 'nonphilosophy' is significant, since it attempts by its naming to
displace

the

appearance

conventional
of

its

philosophical

meaningful

(non-philosophy's)

discursive

manifestation. It thus should not be understood as another

conventional argument, but as a disruption of such method,
a suggestion that a particular orientation upon argument is
incorrect as to its presumption of ubiquity and potential in
omnipotence, as to its ability to include non-philosophy in its
absolute discursive paradigm of meaning. In short, nonphilosophy can present as it describes the collapse of the
philosophical method, and so should indicate by its singular

47

presentation, by its axiomatic structure, the removal of doubt

as well as the centrist phenomenal subject, thus revealing a
more historic movement; i.e. the decision already made as
history (its bare fact; historicity) but not by history
(conventional methodology). Yet this type of historicity and its
distinction is always missed in the conventional estimation of
things, so instead, because it's move comes at the 'end', or
'in the last' of the phenomenon, non-philosophy still takes its
cue from the centrist view, as evidenced in Laruelles "Christ"
and "Gnostic" explorations. As part of the phenomenon, one
cannot but present an attempt for reconciliation.
10.
We have now two ways to see the situation. The dual
aspects of reality are deferred to the terms of discourse, or,
the terms of discourse are referencing a basic foundation, or
object, this object thus accounting for all objects of discourse
including the subject. In as much as terms reference such
objects, and the former situation of objects deferring to
discourse

thus

deferred

becomes

another

object

of

reference, we find a problem embedded in philosophical

speculation. This argument thus bleeds over into the
sciences such that we have a reductive disclaimer of
'conceptual models' that sets our cognition within a 'content

49

with good as it gets', a 'functioning' ontology in a limited

purpose.
11.
The problem we treat of non-philosophy concerns the
latter potential case. This situation is of two discourses
proposed within a hierarchical framework or scaffolding
where one discourse is referred to the other for its truth. This
can be called a bilateral consideration of truth, a reductive
move

toward

realized

transcendental

unity,

aka,

immanence. Thus in reference to the axiomatic nonmethodological discourse, it is because this latter route is
likewise true, as opposed to having or containing the
potential for accounting for all truth; that is, it yields truth unto
itself through its own method self evidently, a decision
involving only itself, that we have an essential segregation of
truths: Duality. It is likewise the assertion of methodology as
foundational to all potential of truth that reveals that we are
dealing with an arena of power, but not merely one arena to
which all other arenas reduce and in which power is
negotiated, where many bases of power are negotiated
(reality), but actually two arenas. It is thus the infringement of
a power of truth upon what is essentially foreign and
autonomous in its own right, that accounts for and

51

represents all possibility of philosophically real problem and

it's perpetuation. Reality of potential involves a multitude of
positions in negotiation, this negotiation based upon a
reductive

power

that

stems

from

the

rejection

of

contradiction; again, in other words, duality. The unity that

this duality implies denies that any possibility may exist
outside itself, whether subjective or objective. Yet due to its
axiomatic protocol for meaning, this duality must reside upon
a substrate that is not dual; i.e. the universe or any other
type unitive ideal, from 'empty' bases such as philosophical
'nothingness', to its most 'fulfilling' first cause, to creator. But
these unitive aspects or entities have likewise been gained
within a dual imperative, and thus cannot be true but only
real, or at least potentially true or real; such unity thus relying
upon a faith for its truth moves in the direction of the True
Object of Reality. The reduction must be left to itself, for its
own.
12.
This situation cannot be proven because, for one, it is
merely the truth of reality, but also, the route of conventional
argument cannot be proven unto itself by its own process.
Non-philosophy is, not the rejection (through agency) of
contradiction, but the acceptance (non-agency) of such

53

eternally paradoxical reductive method by which philosophy

gains it stature. This type of acceptance may be called a
revolution,

and

aside

from

strictly

non-philosophical

designations, we might call this the philosophical revolution.

Without reiterating a sizable segment of argument, Georg
Hegel can be seen to fully explore the logical ramifications of
the reductive reality to implicate a realizable essential
historical agency, and Karl Marx can be seen to put such
idea into actual formulation, to see how what is logical is
insufficient to bring this about, and sublate the agent of
transcendence into the conventional discourse to create the
ideological state of reality. Soren Kierkegaard, on the other
hand, can be considered to do the opposite of these fellows,
and retain the ideological for the revolutionary subject, so to
implicate the absurdity of the conventional method and its
solution, and thus supply the 'higher' route toward a type of
revolutionary, or radical, state of what he calls the True
Christian. The realized yet sublated phenomenal agency of
historical motion can be seen as the essential existential
rhetoric found in Nietzsche
13.
Through all these authors, though, the assumption
was or is upon an essential unity represented by duality such

55

that reality itself could or otherwise should resolve to the

'higher' synthetic state. This is to say, the substantial duality
upon which conventional duality resides together would, as a
universal imperative, resolve in a higher state of being. The
mode of all philosophic enquiry is just what this higher state
is and how to get there. What we see in the extents of
method then is the end run that is non-philosophy; it is the
'last' enfolding of symbol and meaning, of discourse unto
itself, exemplifying its meaning as its meaning is inherent in
the exemplification. It is the redundancy inherent of all
philosophical discourse in practice, as performance.
14.
If we are ever to get anywhere, we need come to
terms with what has been historically an infringement upon
innately human providence. But unfortunately the pessimistic
attitude may just be the real attitude, for no one wants to give
up their idols; indeed, they cannot choose to give them up. It
is thus an argument against any actual subjective agency.
This is the situation, the issue at hand. In this context the
question of what human providence is will inevitably arise,
and at this late date what is actual and real is marked by the
'new' schools saying that we get to redefine what 'human' is
to there by become something else.

57

15.
We have thus the basis for a valid critique of nonphilosophy. What is radical non-philosophically, as the
argument Laruelle wants to make of his most significant
revelation, is the move that would encompass the former
actuality in potential while suggesting that what is in potential
is actually true. This is the fault of Laruelle. The unity he
seems to decry is recouped in (capitals:) Non-Philosophical
method; it seems no different than that of its philosophical
counterpart. Laruelle attempts to counter this by his adopting
a new title, perhaps a Non-Philosophy V, "Non-standard
philosophy", which thereby admits in practice his lack, the
incompletion inherent in the non-philosophical proposal, and
in fact, thus, the whole of the philosophical enterprise, and
thereby the solute split whereby history begins to repeat.
16.
This can be understood in its most literal revolutionary
sense. A 'revolving', a revolution, a 'flipping'. When reduced
to be centered upon a single axis, ideology, all of these
terms also refer to a single unimpeachable maxim: irony. The
"last thing one would expect" is a turning of meaning. But in
the end, in the last, such a turn reveals not only what is truly
occurring, but by this view, the reaction. This is to say that

59

the revolution that is supposed of any discourse never

occurs due to the conventional reaction to the true ironic
state of the human being in the world, and that the true
revolution must be said to be of an aspect of the ability for
humans to be in a world more than the phenomenal
manifestation of theoretical (revolutionary) meaning. The
implication of revolution is enough; it need not come to pass
because of the nature of human consciousness.
17.
As we venture upon the exploration of consciousness,
since we are already on our way otherwise, let us look at
some of what revolution means in certain philosophical
contexts. At this point, a disclaimer. This essay is not
intended to be a methodological investigation into the
particular conceptual facets and nuances represented in the
clausal formations or definitional terms of various authors. In
fact, for a highly suspect philosophical form, this essay
approaches from the meaning of Soren Kierkegaard's
enigmatic preface to his thesis, "The Concept of Irony";
which is to say, from the intact phenomena as the solute
concept, for this is likewise a part of the issue of revolution.
We are concerned thus with that which is necessary and not
so much with the sufficiency that draws all truth unto

61

contingency.

18.
For this part, I suggest that non-philosophy is the
meaningful culmination of that which has been and is
exemplified in the whole Western philosophical library having
to do with ontology and what otherwise could be called
universal cosmology, or 'grand theory', but particularly what
is often associated with Continental philosophy. We are not
concerned here with the epistemological and or pedagogical
philosophies of the more conventional and applied bent; their
use and sensibilities fall under the real category of intrinsic
mythology, the functioning of conventional faith.
19.
We address four authors in the stated regard; but this
is not, as I said, a methodologically rigorous academic effort,
and there are many more authors that may be seen in the
light shone here. The extended argument for the complicity
of all such authors is beyond the scope of this essay and is,
for our specific purposes now, highly so. For this we move
upon two fronts; that the reader need not have any but the
most basic and rudimentary want to understand, and two,

63

the reader already has done the investigation. While these

may seem contrary and even contradictory, this essay also
suggests that there is no secret, that the secret is a real
function of the common conventional notion of power and its
assertion, and that esotericism is a feature of much
institutional philosophical structure. So I also propose that
these authors were involved, in one way or another, each
respecting their moments, in an attempt to break the
academic stranglehold on the world of providence, and due
to the nature of the phenomena they all treat, they in effect
were all first describing the same feature, aspect, event and
or object, and offering then their appraisal of what must
likewise be true of reality, a subsequent theory based on the
reiterated premise. The motion is typical to convention: If A
be the case, then b must follow. In this instance, though, I
argue that the case here A is the same for all these authors
in their stipulating of b subsequently where b marks that A is
proposed of reality. The issue has to do with the subsequent
theory, for it is this theory that seems to be based within so
as to

bring

about and

perpetuate

the

conventional

misunderstanding of what is then the same, in retrospect.

What then we have to treat at some point is the difference
between what is necessary of A for what is then sufficient, b,
and how it is possible that what is sufficient thus is likewise

65

necessary. For this essay, though, we deal with the common

premise; what is common of the subsequent theories in
themselves apart from the premise will be shown later. For
now, if the difference is marked in particular discourses
between what is necessary of them and what is sufficient,
then what is sufficient contains what is lacking of the various
theories that are posed upon the possibility of revolution in
as much as the premise(s) are seen as the revolution
already having taken place but noticed in the displacement
that the subsequence exhibits as its theoretical position; i.e.
the object is the premise deferred in the theory. Thus is
marked non-philosophy as that object identified in situ, that
is, in and as that situation thus not deferred, the object and
its repercussions returned as describing the object in-itself,
and the problem, the issue, brought to bear upon nonphilosophy is that it indeed somehow follows the same
method, or, the method of the same, by the stipulation that
the subsequent truth, the truth that emerges from the
disclosing of meaning upon itself, thus accounts for what
convention encloses and obscures by spiritual, esoteric and
religious proposals; in the case of non-philosophy, namely
Gnostic knowledge and wisdom concealed in the Christian
themed objective, that such may be learned through a
discursive method, at that, a philosophically precise method.

67

Yet, the argument made here is upon a completely different

set of axioms; not argument toward proving, but argument of
verification.

69

THE ISSUE.
20.
It seems so clich to begin with Emmanuel Kant, but it
appears with him that the whole problem can arise. We
should expect that any author of such notability should have
addressed the significant issue, the issue that is always the
same object, and thus it is not whether or not they have a
correct or incorrect assessment. By now we should see that
all authors of a certain attitude or orientation indeed have
addressed the object correctly. So also yet see; each and
every author suspected and proposed to place the object in
view, and so is also suspected to have closed the issue to be
able to move on to a more scientific approach or ability to
address its reality. Kant proposed a science of metaphysics,
of sorts; Edmund Hersserl was frustrated that by his science

71

his students kept wandering off the specific path he laid;

Georg Hegel sought to systematize with his this same object;
Martin Heidegger likewise sought a type of science of this
same object. And many more. Much of philosophy since then
can be said to have stemmed from the imperative that it did
not happen "and here's why and what needs be fixed", and
thus can be seen to include our present considerations: Nonphilosophy supposes to reveal why it is seen to never
happen and propose a closing (recognition) of the
unrecognized infinite loop, the loop that he argues is missed
through the philosophical decision; aphilosophy, as a step
from non-philosophy, says that it indeed happened and
explains why it is not understood to have happened by
explaining the issue that is never exposed.
21.
It is counter intuitive, as well as non-conventional,
non-methodological, and of a non-standard philosophical
approach to consider also that when we say that nonphilosophy is the culmination of what these other authors
were attempting in their ways to express as to its objectivity,
indeed Laruelle notes his own concern that non-philosophy
would be made into another object. So in a certain sense,
Laruelle gets nowhere greater or further than anyone else,

73

since they are all meaning the same thing but with marginal
differences, differences taken into conventional definitions
that are used in the place of what is informing the discussion,
so that the actual common element is obscured for the sake
of the potential invested of the terms to present real identity.
Likewise we can place Laruelle in the Rolodex of historical
philosophical ideas and confirm the conventional maxim. But
again, it is not the effort here to go into a breakdown of how
all these authors might relate in the potential meaning of
their ideas through the definition of terms and the arguments
of designation and context; the issue is what they are all
meaning the same thing about, and not how what they are
saying is different might be finding reconciliation, either in
their individual proposals or a number taken together.
22.
The issue is the attempt to find the true thing through
the

methodological

consideration

and

negotiation

of

conventional discourse. The effort here is to develop the

significant idea whereby all these authors gain their veracity,
and to make the futile suggestion that we need thus move
beyond it; we need enact of the revolution by the proper
understanding of the event, yet because this never occurs,
as evidenced by these authors (the subsequent philosophy

75

that felt it must reiterate or improve upon them) thereby do

enact the

non-philosophical to its necessity by the

suggestion inherent of this aphilosophical enterprise, thus

granting the revolution to its deterministic state that inevitably
occurs because it already has occurred.

77

Kant.
23.
We shall call forward the categorical imperative as
well as the synthetical a priori, two fundamental ideas for
Kant, as the main example of the problem that appears to
have perplexed nearly everyone who entertains those terms,
such that much of the history of philosophy since then is
primarily a perpetual reinstatement of these tenants. One
problem that Laruelle addresses of philosophical method is
that the method is so self-evident, so impositional by its
stature, as to its want to convey or otherwise represent what
is true, what we could call a common sensibility is ignored.
The meaning that the author intends to convey is deferred in
the reader away from the sensibility that the author is
intending to address or arouse of the reader herself, such
that the philosophical reader is constantly in an effort of

79

missing herself despite best efforts, seeing the terms of the

author in question as indicating something more than the
reader's ability to see of itself; which is to say, as indicating a
True Object.

24.
In short, a categorical imperative coined by Kant and
rephrased here, is an event that cannot occur or unfold in
any manner other than the way it does. Kant finds this idea
by

considering

what

supernatural

and

or

otherwise

metaphysical claims attempt to account for. He thus finds a

'category' that must be the object of such superstitious
assertions, a reduction of sorts to the common element that
is somewhere of humanity, such that this category, as yet
unnamed, is attempting to show itself in the real world; we
have then what is necessary in a coordination with what is
sufficient. This category seems to make a certain sense to
everyone that even Kant himself can consider it, but then as
well what may be incorrect as to the superstitious reflections.
Further, we should also see this in the context of a universal
whole as the vehicle of this whole might be known: And he
calls this effort, "The Critique of Pure Reason". What may be
81

common of the object that is being expressed in various

forms is, as we might have it, Pure Reason. The critique is
being put forth by the Pure Reason. We have thus an initial
marker or indicator of when truth is being expressed,
because here we have a critique that is being enacted upon
what can be called 'pure reason', the concept and thus the
category by which categories may be categorized, and the
categorization of this, which, by its very nature of being
involved with the motion of truth, thus brings into question
the very ability to have such a dialogue, such a critique.
Here, we should see, the apparent thought asks of itself the
discrepancy involved with its, that is, thought's, occurrence in
the world, and the question upon the discrepancy is called
ethics. Ethics can only exist where there is thought as an
indicator of separation, or at least the perception of
separation, where an act must have an associated choice.
The categorical imperative is thus an answer to the ethical
question that arises to pose thought towards its correct
activity, in other words, the coordination of what is necessary
of the category to what is sufficient of it. So we have an
indicator of the revolution in question, initiated by the
implication of a suspended redundancy, a cyclic motion of
essence to discourse to essence of discourse, which is
stopped at a specific but arbitrary point for the purpose of

83

establishing the dialogue itself. The issue that is begun and

thus allows for the insinuation of what later will be called
"revolution" is an apparent ignorance involved with the
thesis. Kant sees the point where discourse has taken hold,
the arbitrary point of discursive purchase, as indicating an
essential linkage, and the discourse itself its impetus as
well as its meaning, deriving from a particular object that
(Kant's) thought has acquired the truth of, as if this object
was not the discursive motion itself, and that the thought was
not the stopping of it, such that there is thought as an
actual segregate universal element, a tool, if you will, that
consciousness 'uses' to find the truth of things. This is to say,
if the correct and proper use of this tool stems from the pure
reason, then the motion implemented by this linkage is thus
imperative;

indeed,

the

necessary

arrangement,

procurement or otherwise manifestation of discourse for the

truth of the matter to be represented in its truth: The
imperative of the category that is the issue at hand.
25.
The issue of freedom is not itself present with the pure
reason of Kant because of the categorical imperative
involved with the true expression of truth; the idea is that with
the enactment, or however one would speak of it, of such

85

pure reason, one is thereby de facto free. Rather, he is

concerned with how freedom is conditioned, for it is obvious
that there would be no correct manner of describing truth
truly if there was not another way that thus would be the
description of truth that is not true; or, so much as what is not
described or enacted correctly is not true in its essence we
have what is categorically not necessary, or contrary to the
nature of the category, not an imperative of the category yet
something that nevertheless has something to do with it: We
have a hypothetical imperative. For Kant's categorical
imperative, freedom is taken as a given, as the apparent and
essential separation involved with the human being and the
world is manifest as thought, this ethically reconciled. The
world, then, by which the discrepancy is realized, as an
essential condition of having such pure reason, is also the
practical world, which concordantly functions by its own
imperative, the counterpart to the pure reason's categorical
imperative whereby such knowledge as he is exhibiting has
been allowed. So again, the issue for Kant is thus how
thought, which here then arises in the potential of pure
reason, might be aligned or coordinated with a True Object,
or an intuition of such, so that ethically dubious situations
might be mitigated. He thus treats freedom as a moral issue,
rather than an essential issue because freedom is already

87

present in the questioning that he is involved with through

that separation by which thought is seen to be separated
enough from its object thereby to consider it. His question is
thus exactly how it is possible that he (Kant) himself has
been let unto, has been allowed to be privy to, this truth he is
trying to convey, that is so obvious and apparent to him. As
well, how can he bring this state (the later revolutionary
state) around to those who apparently do not know of it,
which is to say, to those of that state which is governed or
that otherwise operates by a hypothetical imperative. He thus
is involved in the attempt to convey through logic a sensibility
where ethics no longer needs to be enforced, but rather
comes along itself as part of an imperative: A capacity or
ability for a reasoning that is pure.

26.
We

can

enjoin

Kant

with

another

notable

consideration, that of the synthetical a priori. This ability or

capacity to find and or have, know or act upon a categorical
imperative, an imperative distinguished from what is
hypothetical and practical, is not gained through the practical
but must somehow reside outside or beyond its purview.
Kant presents an example of how such an extra-practical

89

aspect is necessary through his consideration of analytical,

synthetical, a priori and a posteriori judgments. Three of the
combinations, analytical apriori and a posteriori, and
synthetical a posteriori, can be found and verified against
experience. The manner in which this idea is framed has to
do with propositions, statements, sentences, or just plain
discourse; it is framed by using examples of discourse.
Synthetical means that the predicate cannot be inferred from
the subject. So, very basically, we may have with the
statement "all feet have toes" an analytical statement
because the predicate 'toes' is included in the presumption of
what it is to be 'feet'. Whereas the statement "all men have
hair" can be synthetical because having hair is not an
inherent quality of being a man. Further, when Kant speaks
of experience, he means an experience of some thing in the
world; a posteriori connotes that an experience is needed,
and a priori means that it is not needed, that the veracity of a
statement

is

known

independent

of

an

experience.

Mathematics can be an example of a posteriori knowledge

because it is not apparent that having two things equals
having two things; having these things that they together are
two must be learned through experience of such things in
concert with knowledge. Whereas the knowledge may arise
intact as indeed there are these things and I may indeed

91

know them intuitively 'one' and 'one', the quality of their being
such a 'one' is always in the experience deferred to the
potential involved in that one being 'of two' such that there
may be indeed 'two' at some point. This is the issue of the
void and multiple discussed below, the issue that this essay
addresses incidentally, of how these basic 'two' might be
reconciled.

27.
Thus Kant's main concern is the synthetic a priori,
where the veracity of the statement is confirmed independent
of experience. See first; the examples of statements, of
subjects and predicates, are examples for his meaning. So
much of conventional philosophy finds Kant and then goes
about looking for truth through structural discursive analysis,
taking apart sentences as to the truth they might indicate
depending upon Kant's logical system, and so much does
this kind of humanity find terms expressing objects inthemselves that are ethically dubious, yet looking to Kant's
systemization for a solution to the problem, finding mainly
problem, and miss the issue entirely. Thus to reiterate; Kant
is concerned with synthetical a priori: A predicate (that which
confers meaning) that is not found within the subject (a truth

93

not verifiable by the usual discourse of reality) and that is

verifiable independent of (worldly, physical) experiences.
28.
The whole of Kant's ideas are based upon these two
notions. In consideration of things, consistent with what has
been outlined above, Kant thus ponders the link between the
object and the thinker. This is why Kant is often seen to be
pivotal in the philosophical scheme: Because he places the
whole of his ideas upon the primacy of knowledge, that
objects in-themselves are known only by knowledge. If we
can take such objects that are in essence themselves by
virtue of our knowing them as such, we have then not only a
proposal for a proper One reality, but that there is only one
reality and this reality contains all truth. His solution is that
objects are intuited, and, again, that there are correct and
incorrect intuitions of objects, thoughts that align correctly
with activity and thoughts that do not (ethics), and that the
correct alignment is upon Pure Reason, but that this Pure
reason exhibits a discrepancy of itself. Hence, beyond Kant,
we begin to find irony, and it is this type of reason that
amounts to what we are calling the philosophical revolution.

95

Hegel.
29.
Georg Hegel said it all, but what he said is (still)
based in the polemic of the same. If Kant can be said to
mark the issue in its beginnings, Hegel can be said to be the
issue in its maturity; the view is fully developed with him.
With him we have the effort to reconcile of what we see is
the ironic situation of Pure reason. As with Kant, this view of
the same figures upon a one wholeness, conveyable and
knowable through the human faculties. The wholeness is
always constituent of a thoughtful human being and a world
of material objects, and premised upon the singular ability for
thought and its proper application to yield the true world. As
said, thought uses language as a probe, of sorts, upon world
to thereby find this truth, and this situation is not
problematized, rather, it is problematized within the singular

97

and unitive ethical horizon. In all this view, each element is

understood to have essential capacities and aspects,
abilities and substantialities that naturally, apparently and
obviously amount to their respective roles, as these roles
supply the philosophical meaning towards a revolutionary
manner of being human in the world.

30.
In

this

regard,

Hegel

offers

his

dialectic.

foundational Hegelian example of how the revolution plays

for his texts is found in his book "The Phenomenology of
Spirit", the passage called 'Lordship and Bondage'. The
motion of the narrative centers on the apparent manifestation
of consciousness in an encounter with an other, another selfconsciousness, as well as the meaning of such an event.
Now, it is here that all the trouble arrives, for as with all
discourses that reflect truth, the text lays itself open for a
double narrative. This is to say the conventional reading of
the text will yield a discussion as to its real merits and
deficiencies, an analysis into the definitional structure of the
report indeed, into all aspects of discursive classifications
such as mechanics, semantics, poetics, history, culture, et
cetera such that the singular author becomes a participant

99

in the multiplicity of happening opinions that never really gain

a consensus of what the author was really saying. The
double narrative is always thus diffused into the real
discussion of reality, that is, of itself, so that it misses the true
meaning. This route unto its own confusion is thus one
narrative against the other narrative that sees the truth of the
discourse before it has even been encountered, such that
the reading of it, the unfolding of the encounter in the
experience, becomes the occasion for the truth of the
matter.
31.
Hegel's dialectic thus concerns the interplay of these
essential components: One that sees in the other a foreign
"other-ness", as a subject-object of real determinations and
universal scientific (if such a term can be used) dimensions,
such that Hegel is seen to address the common reality in
which astute thinkers enjoy the pondering of various
problems, abstract and pertinent, concrete and obtuse; and
another that sees in the other a particular stubborn intimacy
of consciousness interacting with itself, but yet with the
added oddity that this other-self-consciousness is indeed
acting nevertheless, regardless of the self-consciousness in
which this event is occurring. This last is not merely a

101

consideration of what may be, for the simple answer, other

conscious human beings this is the irony of the
revolutionary break, and the double voice but rather merely
a contemplation on a particular significant event where the
truth of the matter is presented, and thus by its being true
addressing of truth in its truth, thus naturally and
axiomatically contains that which is now subsequent by its
representation in reality as reality, which is, conventional
reality. This moment wherein discourse is seen to express
that which is true already, a priori, as opposed to
theoretically and a posteriori true, knowledge already known
in and as the experience, is the philosophical revolution, the
dialectic that is self-consciousness coming upon itself; not as
a part of itself accounted for within the structure of common
and conventionally designated consciousness, but itself in
self reflection, not as a willful and thoughtful consideration of
objectivity upon oneself, but as an unwilled manifestation of
self consciousness against the self consciousness that is
having or doing the thoughtful considering that we are apt to
call the 'person', that one of agency, this then that is the
experience. The dialectic is thus not only some alternate way
of describing an argument or a method by which to have an
argument; such an argument is just another reiteration of
redundancy, of seeing the example as the object itself, as

103

method. Hegel's dialectic concerns the truth of discourse and

the manner that such a truth has come about. He does not
frame it in terms of discourse, but this is because, as we
have said, he is still involved with one truth and the
reconciliation of apparently distinct and segregate modes of
experiencing reality.

32.
In this way and by this way, Hegel's dialectic is a route
to a higher form of knowing. On one hand we have the text
that is exhibiting a truth that is already known. As one reads
the text (encounters in experience), the proceeding clauses
verify that indeed the truth is manifest as has been or is
being revealed. This revelation becomes the issue. So, on
the other hand, we have this truth that is evidenced through
the reading because it is addressing the phenomenon of
self-consciousness coming upon a self-consciousness that is
apparently not an obvious segregated object/person/subject;
which is to say, because the reader (Hegel in this case) has
had an experience of this other self-consciousness. The
interaction of these elements constantly proposes a break
with conventional reality, but because this experience cannot
105

be dismissed, because it indeed involves a consciousness of

consciousness that is behaving as a self-consciousness that
is not the self-consciousness, the break cannot be made.
The insistence of the experience demands accounting, for it
is a preoccupation made upon the consciousness without
askance or recourse to its conventional will: The logical
deduction from the term-object identity (see below), the
given reduction based in conventional reality, is that the route
is yielding a further truth of itself that is the inescapable
inference of an inducing true element that lay outside the
purview of the proposed discourse that is concerning what is
otherwise real discourse-relatable objects.
33.
We may now begin to see the how the titles "Lord"
and "Bondsman" are applicable. This is all occurring within,
or otherwise of consciousness, and so the dialectic is the
exchange of those elements that behave autonomously but
implicit to the arena by which they interact. The meaning of
the initial setting, wherein such exchanges take place as the
dialectic, in its working out along those lines of meaning
implemented through the encountering of certain discourse,
is a process of doubt, which is to say, of investigating the
incredulity in the face of the evidence; not fact checking the

107

evidence, but indeed examining the doubt, because it is

inevitably understood that it is the doubt that has allowed for
the arrival of the evidence. The world being manifest as the
involvement of these self-consciousnesses, it's features and
terms reach out to contain and concern all possibility of world
in its possibility regardless of the opinions had upon its
expression, for the expression has been made and the
opinions expressed. Hence we have the qualification of
conventional reality, or what is the concordant arena of the
Bondsman. In the explaining of this situation, then, the
apparent discrepant meaning of the world expressed in the
terms likewise enjoin the world whereby the self-conscious
other is and has been informing truth, such that the self
consciousness begins to become reconciled in the resulting
discourse. This motion that occurs in the process of the
attempt to explain the synthetical a priori situation thus
succeeds in manifesting the argument whereby what had
been synthetical has become analytical and at that, also a
posteriori. The expository discourse itself, a telling of the
possibility involved in already knowing the content of a prior
discourse through the involvement with an other selfconsciousness, becomes, for a term, a forensic effort, a
dissolving of the other self-consciousness, a negation of the
thesis involved in the initial presentation that is the antithesis

109

in the effort to be disclosed, but in such a way that what is

negated is not annihilated but reconstituted in another
polemical formation, this time of a higher knowledge of
reality and consciousness where the self-consciousness is
no longer needed as an object of doubt: The Lord. This
process of understanding by which self-consciousness
comes to terms with itself as an other, is a conflation
whereby neither aspect is lost but rather contribute to an
uplifting of the whole, has been termed in English as
sublation, and it is the end 'result' of the dialectical process
that can be said to have been the reason it could ever have
occurred in the first place, thus being an account for what
Hegel finds as the motivating and indeed foundational
universal motion of historical consciousness. It is the
culmination of the dialectical process that achieves the
philosophical revolution.
34.
The problem that we see over and over again in
philosophy, is that what is revolutionary is was already
present in the formulation of the discourse that proposes to
describe the system (method) by which the revolutionary
may be achieved, or to have been achieved. In truth, the
discourse is merely a fidelitous report of what occurred and

111

is occurring, a manifestation of the true configuration of

terms of the state of reality. It is beyond the intent of this
essay to explore the more involved repercussions of his
statement, but, even with Hegel, we can begin to see how an
essential segregation of aspects, over reconciliation, is
viable because what we have achieved here is another
reinstatement of redundancy, a falling back into itself, a
supportive motion of itself, a segregation that occurs through
its making claims upon something other than itself, while
making claims only upon itself. Hence again: Revolution, but
this time not indicative of the need to unify, but rather for
divergence.
35.
The main issue with any systematic philosophy always
concerns how seemingly separate elements imply or are
other wise involved with the other. The problem is always
how to disentangle terms to thereby get a true thing, and
though Hegel does not refer to it, the discernment of this true
thing for him is indeed the instruction of how to know, or
become of that knowing, that which is then the philosophical
revolution. We should note the reason he does not refer to
such an occurrence is the same reason that philosophy
persists as a conventional effort: It is based upon the 'object-

113

term identity', the potential invested of such coupling, as this

amounts to all we consider parts of reality. Where Kant
noticed that knowledge is the key element of this dyad, that
our use of objects depends upon the intuited knowledge
gained from the object, Hegel finds the logical extents of
such biased existence in the transcendental object that is
knowledge itself that is, when discourse is understood as a
tool of knowledge; he thus moves toward the absolute truth
of the situation as the situation (here, of this type) is de facto
reality.
36.
We should see the same exemplary manner at work
in Hegel as Kant. Simply speaking, for every thesis there
exists an antithesis that is its opposite and negation. This is
not a strictly discursive application but the comparison of
statements is an analogue for what is occurring at a
supposed 'higher' level. Again like Kant, Hegel's dialectical
reference is already antithetical, and thus in this vein, already
not conventional; thus with Hegel upon Kant we have the
same move that Kant reports of Hume, the same
revolutionary apprehension of meaning, and this situation as
an historical presentation sees that some sort of progress is
occurring, albeit of a 'higher' motion.

115

37.
What we say now is conventional to ironic, and real to
not real, as Laruelle posits philosophy to non-philosophy, so
this is the thesis to the antithesis and by this establishment
thus is already synthesized, already synthetical a priori
knowledge; already the revolution has occurred. Like all
authors who posit the revolution within their text, Hegel is
very subtle and thorough in this regard to be able to speak to
the issue and untangle its conventionally meaningful
defaults, but we find that all the care to detail serves only to
further pronounce and aggravate the discrepancy. It is this
intensity, this devotion that, like Laruelles Non-Philosophical
work, shows what is true in its truth, and thus marks a
particular historically ontological item. The compulsion is
founded in the revolutionary experience, such that because it
indeed is revolutionary, that the meaning is gained
synthetically a priori, gained by the situation where the
meaning of the text cannot be inferred from the conventional
meaning of the text itself but is rather known for its veracity
apart from the worldly, physical, objective experience of
things such a significant event beckons such authors to
explain how it is true, but more: To suggest, against what is
viewed as hiding, that this truth can be taught.

117

119

THE ANTE-APOLOGISTS:
Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
38.
The tension between the individual, as a conscious
and willful agent that makes history, and history as an
impersonal movement of universal things are pronounced in
the ideas of Karl Marx, Soren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich
Nietzsche, philosophers of the first generations after Hegel.
It is with them that the completion that should be occurring is
noticed to not be occurring; so it is we have an emphasis of
the split that remains begging to be mended. The impending
need for such a reconciliation can be felt in the respective
ways of these authors, and it may be seen that they
represent two sides of a motion, Marx with his dialectical
materialism, and Kierkegaard with his irony, and another that

121

finalizes in Nietzsche. It is not the intent of this essay to

delve into proofs, but it is not difficult, despite all that may be
argued upon the conventional positions of the plethora of
philosophers of our day, to see that there is no other position
that can arise after these figures, including Hegel's; this is to
say that all positions propose to reconcile the dialectical
nature of reality by positing toward some ideal, some
transcendental or some existential ideal, of which there can
only be three, i.e. historical, inclusive and exclusive. That is,
until we come to what may belong.
39.
The cumulative effect of such conventional posturing, of
learning the meaning of a previous position, seeing its fault,
and coming up with a position that is not inscribed by
previous meanings, has thus allowed for the ability of
meaning to be inscribed into, what can be said then to be the
non-philosophical position, that which lay 'in between', a
position that is, for a term, a positing of a transcendental
existential ideal that is not ideal in its posture. This we say
can only be ironic, that which defies conventional sense, and
thus we suggest the only way to continue philosophically is
to diverge from the conventional philosophical methodology,
since irony only can be said to arise as a conventional

123

response to the failure to reconcile what are essentially real

polemics; which is to say, irony is historically and commonly
philosophically misunderstood as it is misapplied. Thus, if the
meaning of philosophy can be said to develop only out of the
attempt to reconcile real essential polemics, then Laruelles
formulation of non-philosophy does indeed mark a certain
end of philosophy.
40.
The impetus of both these authors, and then
Nietzsche, is twofold; in one sense, neither Kant nor Hegel's
notions did anything to bring about the supposed 'better' or
'higher' synthesis beyond some sort of conceptual possibility,
but the world is obviously still here (there, for the next
generation of thinkers) in the same manner or form that is
was in Kant's or Hegel's time, and one could say that things
are now even worse, and so now demands a greater and
more profound urgency.

125

Marx.
41.
The material side of what can be said to be dialectical
is found in as much as material things are taken to be
elemental components of reality. We do not yet say it, but
equally it will be that such material is part of being in the
world. For now, for Marx, the material points directly away
from ideal or 'thoughtful' world of contemplative real
transformations; it is apparent by now (then) that the ideal
synthesis did not work, was not sufficient in its idea. Thus
this failure can be reasoned to be due to there being a world
that is not merely of ideas, but one that is actually of
material, of things that we as human beings are involved
with. So much as there is indeed a world of ideas and a
material world, then, the reconciliation takes place through a
significantly different modality. Here is the mark of revolution,

127

where a decisive split occurs between what is given such

that what was given before is now problematized as given;
which is to say, what is given can no longer be assumed to
be of a level playing field within the universal and unilateral
horizon. While the logic of ideas may yield strange,
interesting and surprising things when one really investigates
the possibility of things of ideas and the world through
experience as a particular qualifier for the type of discussion,
what demands a revolutionary reckoning actually considers
reconciliation of two fundamental and different universal
types; what is revolutionary comes into play when what is
given and common loses its obvious sensibility. Here, for
Marx, what is given must be reconciled through revolution.
So he suggests that there are two types of interactors with
material: The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. Here,
consciousness is problematized upon types of attitudes, or
orientations, upon things, as opposed to being a given factor
upon a common things that is things; what may be solely of
the psyche, that is in an ideal sense of itself, is left moot and
what is of the idea of the material, or the material of the idea,
is found active such that we now must think in terms of
ideology, the economy of ideas that interact in view along
particular lines involving a struggle of power concerning the
material of reality. To put it differently; what is revolutionary is

129

to have that which has been silent, speak.

42.
Within this world of material, there is an apparent
control over what is available to freely use, and this control is
asserted by a particular type of person: The Bourgeois; the
Bourgeoisie are the type group that seem to naturally have
control over what is produced in reality. It is this type, or
class, of human being that controls the value of property.
The Bourgeoisie's word has propriety in as much as the
control they assert is understood for the value that is being
set for any material as this material may be owned, that is,
as such material may then be used freely because it is the
bourgeois that understands as it exhibits a certain control
over the system by which material has value. This type
controls the production of material as well as its value. This
control is based in discourse and thus the dialectic that
occurs is between those who have control over the
discursive material, or over the material that is discursive,
and those for whom the discourse of the material is
problematic, which is to say, those for whom the value of the
discursive production not only is not controlled by them, or
rather, not determined by them, but is more so mysterious. It
is apparent, for Marx, that there is this other type who do not

131

control production nor value, but is rather controlled through

the same mechanism of production and value, the group he
calls the Proletariat. For the Bourgeoisie, the Proletariat is
likewise material, and has value only in as much as they act
in production, as much as they may produce, such they are
products themselves. In fact, it is this later type, what Marx
classifies as Proletariat, that must find a way to use the
means of production (the material, or, the manner or ability
from or by which products are produced) in order to bring
about the revolution that is de facto and concordantly the
transformation of discourse.
43.
This is a usual synopsis of Marxism, but it does not
end here, for the usual Marxist interpretation misses the
significance of revolution for this essay. The conventional
Marxist includes the issue at hand only by virtue of the
inescapable realm wherein the negotiation of power is the
ubiquitous element, such that the issue of the human being
is thus entirely and essentially a discursive issue, an issue of
the dialectic of material, the discourse thus being the only
indicator of what material may be but with the further caveat
that this material references what is truly real. Yet more to
the issue here, ideology is not understood for how it comes

133

about, but rather for what it represents, and this is to say that
by now what is represented is taken to be and mean the
thing in-itself, the True Object, but without the question put
forward of some Pure Reason, such that we have the
conventional beginnings of the real axiomatic structure of
identity, as well as the roots of what has been coined as
correlationalism . This is to say that from this point we have
an assertion of power wherein reality comes to contain, as it
must now be delineated and asserted, as doubt has
breached the given, all that may be true. The intuited nature
of the thing in-itself has been sufficiently motivated to be
understood as what we are calling the 'term-object identity'
by which the initial misinterpretation of Kant is transformed
and used to justify and reduce the meaning of Marx's
discourse to ideological considerations only, that is, to the
material objective things of the world to which discourse
refers in its capacity and ability to convey truth. But the
setting is the same: As with Hegel, the description again
finds itself within a one given reality that is being analyzed
and proposed upon toward a revolutionary reconciliation.
This is the mark of conventional method, that discourses of
sense have already determined the truth of things such that
what needs now to be found is what is more true or really
true of the thing in question. This situation is exactly what

135

Marx describes such that here, still, we are indicating the

same true condition, that of an aspect or group where the
term-object identity is not problematized such that the
material of reality may be controlled, and another aspect or
group for which the term-object identity is problematized
such that a revolution is posited as necessary. The difference
here is that we suggest that there is no possible
reconciliation beyond what has already been set of the issue
in question; where no problematization of the term-object
identity occurs, there is no finding or being taught how such
a problemitization is viable because, in truth, there is no
transcendent truth that upholds the position of the term
absolutely; there is no trans-lation, no trans-scription
between sorts of essential substrates irony and this is to
say the same as Kant but without the unproblematized given
one reality: There is no knowable thing in-itself. For the
problem is by the intuited element of being human; for Marx,
the fetish is the vehicle by which the term-object identity
remains unproblematized: Money is the maximized symbol
of this situation, that which allows for the control of the
means of production, and this is to say it is the fetish that
allows of the real unity of problem and un-problem that then
called (or calls) for revolution. But, it is the belief in the One
True reality whereby Marx finds the fetish, as finds

137

commodification as the problem that thus requires revolution.

This prompts a topic to explore in another essay. Only in the
One reality can we say that there was or is a True historical
world wherein a fetish was always functioning in various
ways to manifest humanity against its ideological or political
structures; yet the fetish, as it arose with Marx, shows a
particular fact-ness of history: In so much that an object of
sorts can be said to be of a material by which whatever it is
to be human may operate, that the fetish is identified by
Marx, in his time, so to speak, in the manner that it does,
which is to say philosophically, shows a particular universal
movement of concept-idea into an actual objective state, this
state that thereby precipitates Law as a feature of human
material that does not arise through human agency, through
some kind of essential freely gained and or activated choice.
It is not so much that reality has been problematized
requiring a real revolution, but more that reality itself is not
the problem but only an arena where problem manifests;
indeed, in denial of this nauseating fact reality thereby
argues itself in method as the only possible Truth.
44.
Conventional Marxism places the

discourse

of

revolution totally in the objective world of things wherein the

139

subject of transcendental agency is in a struggle to shift the

potential of products and their value to a position that is
beneficial to the agent itself who by virtue of the revolution,
activates the transcendent clause, which is seen to be
activated and verified by an essentially transcendental affect,
ironically through Marx's fetish is or otherwise becomes
exempt from the material economic oppression. The
oppressed agent here is justified by its alignment with Marx's
rhetorical truth through the transcendent clause, and is
thereby in a position to shift the fulcrum of power away from
the Bourgeoisie, because it is the Bourgeoisie who until this
moment of Proletariat agency were in the position removed
from the economy of production sufficiently enough to
thereby be able to control it; in other words, the world of the
Proletariat is controlled by an aspect that is transcendent to
the world of their immediate experience, and the Bourgeois,
being the controllers of this world thus amount to having
already transcended that world, that ideological world based
in production and value, that Marx refers to as capitalism;
and this is to say that the capitalist is the one who accepts
transcendence as the route to power. The role of the
revolutionary is to shake off the slumber of ignorance, seize
the means of production, to thereby, having learned from
their oppressed condition, bring about and allow for a new

141

instatement of power based in an ethical human equity that

he calls communism.
45.
The significance of the explication thus far is that it
represents a decision upon what is actually being addressed
and thereby opens itself up to a revolutionary interpretation.
The usual revolution is of the conventional type: A group or
segment of society controls production, use and value of
objects, called commodities, such that another group is kept
from their right to freely enjoy them; the situation is evidence
of a type of inequality of subjects; the oppressed subjects
need to realize their situation, gain control of production and
restore or otherwise enact equity to subjects; i.e. to enact
revolution.

Yet

the

actual

philosophical

revolutionary

meaning dismisses itself from such objective formulations,

for it deals only in real material and in fact thus allows for, not
some truly inspired phenomenal agency, but a true objective
case. Here, while the rhetoric is consistent with the
conventionally objective representation, the revolutionary
agent's main goal is to shake off the mystique of fetishism, of
the investment in the ideological stakes, the opiated state of
religious ideological fantasy, to thereby actuate an unbiased
affect of power; which is for all purposes, the destruction of

143

the transcendent.
46.
Understand

that

the

description

of

the

usual

interpretation is not suggesting that it is somehow essentially

wrong in its interpretive effect. Rather, in as much as it may
be correct, there do we likewise have an object: The
ideological world of named and true objects being used and
negotiated by subjects that exist as exceptional agents that
intuit the truth of reality through a transcendental clause.
This is a description of how reality might function. Yet, see
also that we are not specifically involved with this essay
towards another explanation of how reality might function,
that is, how it is really true. The debate of the truth of reality
we leave to others, and simply say that reality is real,
whatever one wants to say about it. This essay concerns
only how the philosophical revolution is involved in certain
discourses. Thus in the case of Marx, we are not concerned
with whether there is indeed a real situation as he proposes,
for the case to be made has more to do with the fact of the
revolution involved with the case as it is proposed to concern
all that is true.

145

Kierkegaard.
47.
Kierkegaard may be said to be the only philosopher
that deals with the issue directly. Of course, it is easy to
show Marx when we speak of the philosophical or for that
matter, any revolution, but Kierkegaard moves in the
direction of the issue instead of

a unity that is not

understood; his pivots upon what can be said to be a unity

that can not be understood , a condition of being which
beckons a revolution. Kierkegaard moves toward the unity
that can only be understood by abolishing the usual route for
understanding. He proposes an essential segregation that is
only reconciled through a desperate act which he calls the
leap; yet for Kierkegaard, this act is into faith, and not from a
position of faith; this is to say, faith does not implore or
compel one to make the leap. This act together with the

147

abandonment of reason thereby may be understood as the

reason of all reasons, enacting again a split from the
practical reason that was left behind, and the pure reason
drawn by Kant; but to its own veracity, its own in-itself-ness,
the move can be called thus not only a leap of absurdity, but
indeed a leap into absurdity, because what was once the
entire possibility for truth, reality, that which defines what is
rational and real and true, is seen now to be not so much,
but in fact rooted in fallacy, and thus the revealing of this
truth translated for reality is absurd. Yet the significance
involved in the revolution having already occurred is the
transformation of Kierkegaard's meaning that shows him as
ignorant of his own position, that this ignorance is indeed the
Pure Reason set aside in faith. So it is that the most absurd
thing possible is to have made that leap only to find the leap
was not necessary for it was entirely necessary and
determined as such and that if the leap were never made
then it could not be made because the leap there was
entirely a conceptual exploration and thus based in a choice
of reason; in other words, the leap only is viable in so much
as it is not possible. This is consistent with the philosophical
revolution where we are not speaking about some new
subjective awareness of what is really real, but rather a
relinquishing of the conventional method for coming to the

149

truth of the matter.

48.
Kierkegaard is conventionally understood for irony as
indicating a deep kind of spiritual knowledge, a kind of
philosophical consideration of things that may have to do
with a human soul or spirit, because the real ungrounded
possibility of any statement is left to an absolute unknown
that is assumed by the absence marked of any stated
meaning. Yet while what is revolutionary is indeed this
absence of fulfillment in the ironic life, he is recognized for
irony because of this fundamental fact, encompassed of
multiple enfolding clauses, the irreconcilable condition of the
revolutionary event: He still saw that such revolutionary
knowledge should be able to be sufficiently described if not
proven, to a common sensibility, such that people would
make the leap, and he shows a bit of frustration toward the
people that apparently are not understanding his ideas: In
his time, he is publishing within an obvious public arena, but
intends his writings for only certain individuals; he outlines
the repercussions of faith as well as acknowledges that any
choice made outside of reason is not a choice that could be
had. The ironic moment thus falls away and outside of the
conventional existential (mis-)understanding that would have

151

Kierkegaard show a limit that indeed is never traversable:

This is the revolution having already occurred, because it is
indeed that revolution that can only occur when there is no
option. His whole effort is to present the possibility of there
being an existence outside of what is a reasonable world
through the question, "Is there a teleological suspension of
the ethical", whereby he defines what is reasonable with
reference to what is universal, defining the universe as that
ethical state of existence. His preponderance with this
question places him in an odd sorting, where ironically his
activity met with misunderstanding causes him to sink into
ever more despair, which, as he claims, is the mark of "sin";
this sin, in the context that traverses Kierkegaard and the
philosophical revolution as presented in this essay, the
equivalent to gaining justification by the True Object.
49.
So above all, the significance of Kierkegaard is this
irony. Though he himself could not see it and instead thus
posited absolute transcendence without the need for the
transcendental

clause

(this

the

ironic

situation),

he

nevertheless presents by his very existence the situation at

hand. For just as all the others, he attributes his experience
upon the truth of discourse to some primal cause, some

153

originating agency that transcends or has been transcending

the universal capacity to know it. This is to say that an
experience of discourse through which truth is expressed
discourse in the broad sense of all that is being known as
experience is seen to indicate an agent source, so to
speak, that is speaking through the discourse, a truth that
cannot be inferred from the discourse itself that is to say, if
one were to ask others what the meaning of the discourse is,
the answer would be different than the meaning that was
gained by the questioner. In other words, the predicate, the
verb, the 'is', that which conveys or places meaning to the
subject, cannot be inferred from the subject, but neither is its
truth verifiable in the experience of the objective, universal,
ethical, world. The irony is found in the synthetical a priori; in
as much as the experience of meaning further indicates a
truth larger than the conventional discourse can contain, a
truth that apparently is not noticed by the rest of the world,
thus likewise is the impetus of this experience the effort to
effect a containment, of expressing the larger truth through
the vehicle of discourse that is seen to be inadequate to the
task in the initial moment that is the experience itself. But we
cannot even say that it is inadequate as a whole; rather,
because it was adequate to the significant experience, we
must thereby realize a division, and this division thus

155

indicates what is revolutionary, in Kierkegaard's terms, that

which is a teleological suspension of ethical, universal
(practical) reason: The experience justified by the absurdity
that is the history that he could not know of: The history of
the future, or for the meaning of that moment: Faith, in the
most Kierkegaardian mode. Kierkegaard admits that he
cannot make the move of Abraham, the figure he uses to
propose the Knight of Faith, the one who by virtue of the
absurd is able to accomplish revolutions, is able to overcome
and otherwise bypass the ethical, universal world because
through the absurd faith the Knight no longer is subject to the
ethical world. Kierkegaard thereby resides in irony because
he could not see the meaning of his own proposals, was
incapable of understanding what it means to have faith by
virtue of the absurd. He thereby has achieved what is
absurd; his sacrifice, his fidelity to the absurd situation,
marks the historicity of the significant event, because he
could not overcome his faith in the True Object and the
possibility of philosophical revolution, such that in the face of
absurdity he could only achieve what has been determined
of him, as Laruelle might put it, in the last instance: He is the
example of the Knight of Faith in as much as he was the
Tragic Hero who accomplishes his faithful task, but then is
doomed to relinquish the object of that faith. Kierkegaard's

157

irony is unfathomable.

159

Nietzsche.
50.
Jean-Paul Sartre is known for labeling Kierkegaard as
the first existentialist, but with regards to Kierkegaards faith,
it seems more proper to place Friedrich Nietzsche in that
position, since he appeals to nothing beyond that which
exists as a holistic presence of life. Conventionally speaking,
he does not hold an ironic position that tells of an absolute
transcendence through the limit of universal reality. But his
irony nevertheless involves the same revolutionary position;
that is, the human being holds a potential within itself that is
held back by the tendency to believe and hold onto a truth
that transcends reality. Nietzsche's revolutionary subject he
calls the bermensch, and by this title he thus situates 'man'
as a neotenous state of being. The new man, or depending
on how the original German is translated, this 'over', or

161

'beyond' man, who nevertheless is man grounded 'of the

earth', in a manner of speaking, is a being who now realizes,
accepts or otherwise comes to terms with the actuality of its
existence. Through no recourse to some God, nor idols that
take the real effect of such transcendental position, but a
complete rejection of it, Nietzsche's beyond-man is able to
enact a kind of true potential of human agency.
51.
With Nietzsche we see not only another meaningful
reversal of position, but as well a type of intensity that is not
evident in other philosophers. Marx and Kierkegaard surely
make a call to arms and show a certain frustration with the
world Marx to beat the Bourgeois at their own game, and
Kierkegaard to overcome the universal hypocritical religious
disparity but aside from what mental instability might have
existed before his breakdown in his later years, Nietzsche
has an intensity all his own. With him we see a figure in
which the sensibility not only should have been understood
by now (his time), but definitely when he gets done. It is the
frustration like that toward an obstinate child, one who is
being dense for the mere fun of it, despite the severity of its
situation.

Indeed,

Nietzsche

offers

'new'

human

consciousness, one that overcomes the childishness of what

163

will have been before, and it is as if the pangs of

revolutionary birth is evidenced in the density of conventional
misunderstanding that must be countered with a proportional
intolerance.

52.
Of course many other philosophers can be viewed in
this way, each attempting to expose that which should have
already been revealed by its obviousness, and that indeed
has already been revealed to them but why not anyone
else? Unfortunately we are at a point where we must expose
what has been occurring philosophically; this essay is but a
beginning. We shall see below; no longer should we
equivocate philosophically to what is methodologically real,
to the correlational maxim that says that what has been
revealed to them is evidenced in what they said, and quibble
and signify how the pieces can be made to mean so much
for various real situations. No longer do we attempt to
reconcile reality to never-ending discussions and proposals
of true reality; we grant these discussions do well to make

165

reality whatever it is. Such is a spiritual dimension of being

an individual in reality, of willfully having to create purpose
and meaning to one's life. Nevertheless; we are not
concerned here with how individuals justify themselves in
their own process and discovery of agency, of psychological,
social and ideological transformations: These real spiritual
ventures are always concerning revolution. We propose that
the philosophical revolution has already occurred and was
missed; this then reveals what is most offensive to human
identity: The human standard against which all truth is
measured shows for our time that the human standard
merely repeats an historical motion, and that human agency
itself is but a real and thus conventional determination.
Whatever is an actual universal object, it is moving along its
own path, ontologically manifesting in its own in-itself-ness,
and

we,

as

consciousness,

the

universal

object

are

merely

justifying

that

is

human

ourselves

with

explanations of a true reality that cycles upon itself, always

involved with the forgetting the possibility of beginning for the
sake of the origin that eternally explains our purpose for
being in a transcendental clause. This is the fact of being
human such that where it is denied, there we have both
arguments, both sides that verify that indeed we are merely a
universal object among other universal objects, making our

167

way in our own way: One, the Kantian intuition, and two,
what can be called, empiricism, or maybe the scientific
object. Either way, difference is never acknowledged in
reality.

53.
Nevertheless; regardless of whether the revolution is
meant

to

be

ultimately

or

existentially

'different'

or

speculatively real, the meaning of such a notion invested for

reality never achieves that which is posited as composite of
the new difference, and thus is always a notion set in a
transcendental aspect, that is, gained through faith. Yet the
offense is not the assertion that what is real is not real, that
what is real can be reduced or otherwise relinquish its reality
to something more real; rather, in so much as the
philosophical reduction has yielded a revolution that has
already occurred, and that this reduction thus marks a
repetition that cannot be avoided but only denied, what is not
real thus occurs in a manner by which a total explanation of
all ideological ground may be gained.

169

APHILOSOPHY AS A CRITIQUE OF NONPHILOSOPHY.

The Apologists.
54.
The

insistence

upon

an

essential

perception,

experience and or existence of non-philosophy as method

located of the author indicates an involvement with a
proposal of transcendence, but that this transcendence
might occur immanently. Laruelle must assert that he has a
valid position, so he must enter into the transcendental
clause very carefully so as to disguise that he is merely
verifying the Kantian maxim of an intuition of ethically correct
transcendental truth. To avoid the scent of religion, his task is
to posit a synthetical a priori judgement as analytical a
posteriori. But

we have already seen, and already thus

171

implied, that the philosophical motion that Non-Philosophy

marks in significance already does this by virtue of the
revolution already haven taken place as evidenced in the
subsequent discourse not deferred. It is here the divergence
is pronounced, for Laruelle must thereby propose that the
linkage is no link, but merely a marker of a type that he
frames as philosophical, that is non-philosophically an
already essential unity. He must posit himself as an ethically
suspended agent, one that is not separated from the act of
his agency nor the apprehension of world by which such
agency arises to perform, and argue that the performative
situation is Real. Yet, the argument itself, the description of
philosophical problem and it's solution as spelled out through
the method of representation is also, indeed, merely the
performative side of what is unilaterally axiomatic unto that
performance, already at all times. This is the meaning by
which the tool has been said to be withdrawn by its use. As
we have said, to suggest that the view that includes by virtue
of that which belongs to it is the more true case merely
succeeds in arguing that the proposal is using the very same
method that is supposed to be excluded from its axiomatic
structure; for what can be axiomatic of a method that must
be learned for it to be so? If something is obviously true, why
would it need to be learned? This is irony incarnate, the

173

definition of irony as situation; this is the significance of nonphilosophy. But Laruelle is not involved, as a radical agent,
with what may be ironic of a method; rather, he is involved
with what may be real, and the enactment of revolution,
evident by his proposal for attaining that imperative to the
category of real, the same ideal proposed by all the authors
mentioned

above,

and

more:

The

non-philosophical

methodological reduction to an "actually Real truth of reality"

shows its problem even before one begins to entertain and
learn Laruelles Non-Philosophical jargon.
55.
The inherent contradiction of non-philosophy poses a
serious philosophical problem. This problem is that the
contradiction of non-philosophy can only be solved through a
type of privileged knowledge. There are two types of
privilege; one that is allowed and one that is not allowed. The
type of privilege that is allowed we call real privilege, and it is
socio-economically as well as educationally founded. This is
to say that one can be taught such privilege, and this is
allowed, though with qualifiers of present day issues of social
justice; the conventional method is the route to real privilege.
Privilege that is not allowed is what can be called revelatory
or prophetic privilege where a person makes claims to truth

175

based solely upon communion with a transcendent entity or

element such as God, gods, goddesses, spirits, universal
consciousness, spiritual center, pure reason et cetera. This
latter also has qualifications in the ideological arena, but
tending more upon religious and spiritual genres and groups
that are already open and acclimated to the possibility of
such occurrences. This latter privilege is not allowed in
certain philosophical circles because it is just these types of
essentially subjective experiences and claims that are
investigated and proposed upon as to what might really be
occurring philosophically. Nevertheless, aside from such
strictly revelatory experiences, we have then what is
philosophically permitted: Intuition, of subjects and objects,
allows for the philosophical distinction between real and
revelatory privilege for the purpose of investigating the
matter. Thought and the phenomenon of knowledge is
thereby determined upon a method, conventional method,
whereby further the affect of privilege becomes the method
for the True Object; that is, the effect itself of consciousness
is deferred and ignored for the sake of the method, thereby
becoming that eternally elusive object, or purpose, of the
method: The transcendental clause. The method thus
becomes its own proof for its validity and veracity in every
possible truth. While revelatory privilege is often at least

177

acknowledged for possibility, if only to say that people attest

to

it,

conventional

philosophy

adamantly

closes

the

possibility to its ranks, namely, that which can be proven in

some manner or another. It is here that the main problem
arises, as we say, the limit of discourse, for the issue
becomes about if the terms of discourse are indicating and
or are able to indicate true things.
56.
Perhaps the most significant reconciliation of the two
types of privilege we have just spoken was put forth by
Martin Heidegger. In short, he calls the real reconciliation of
what is transcendental and imminent being authenticity.
Again, the reiteration he makes is of an oppressive element
or aspect and the question of relief from that situation. The
question is made within a One reality where there is an issue
of freedom. Might we say his proposal was the beginning of
the last to stem from as it holds onto what we might call the
real essentialist position, the effort of which position that we
have been discussing of a One real truth of the universe and
or the One true reality in general, and a reconciliation of what
is viewed as obvious and essential polemical aspects. After
Heidegger, an adjustment was made upon the view to the
evidence of such knowledge and the repercussions of there

179

having to be evidence (what is evidence of evidence of

Being?): One need only ask why such an adjustment would
be necessary to see the completion that Laruelle represents
by his Non-Philosophy. The issue we address now, through
this essay, is how this subsequent view, the Post-Modern
and the Post Post-Modern, in so much as they might pose a
step

away

from

Heidegger

and

or

some

sort

of

enlightenment of what he and others were really saying, is

really merely a reinstatement of what has been occurring not
only with Heidegger but indeed many if not all philosophical
proposals. This is the issue of non-philosophy. And, if we can
indeed take Heidegger for his concern, we should then
rightly see that where we revive proposals of Realism we
have indeed forgotten out existential angst; but again,
whether this is good or bad is not our concern, for our
concern is really the issue at hand.

57.
The distinction between revelatory and real privilege
has already been formulated. For our certain philosophical
mind, it is the difference between superstitious and rational
thought, and as we have seen, is the question that Kant
181

starts with, i.e. what is the object that is informing

superstitious assertions. Hence, once we begin in this
'rational' venture, we inevitably come to the problem of
intuition; with Kant, things are qualified in knowledge only,
and things are qualified in this way correctly and incorrectly.
The question then becomes, how do we know which intuition
is

correct?

The

revolutionary

answer:

Through

the

categorical imperative of synthetical a priori knowledge,

where the categories of knowledge are already situated to
their true, ethically uncompromised meaning. For how do we
account for answers that arise otherwise? How do we
account for, say, the knowledge apparent of analytical a
posteriori statements without a synthetical a priori judgement
already intact, already operating, for the apprehension of the
truth of the statement in general? It is knowledge of this type
that is proposed to be come upon in the philosophical
revolution, and it is this type of knowledge that certain
authors have been writing about, the position that they are
writing from. Indeed, we are talking about the appropriation
of discourse, and not so much about some real state of the
human being. We are not in an effort here to argue or
describe what may be more or less real of our situation.
58.

183

Once this is understood, then we must see that the

revolution has failed, that it apparently is either sought after
as a vocation, ideological position or identity, or it is eternally
missed. Rather, if it has already happened then it is not
being communicated, not occurring due to the discourse that
arises from it. The vehicle works; no one really cares how or
why it works except in as much as they may ride in the
proposal. We can only admit, then, that the knowledge that
has arisen with such authors is not practical, did not arise
through the hypothetical reason, but is indeed of a revelatory
privilege, but pure reason, and that the meaning of these
'knowledges', this 'pure' reason, what Alain Badiou calls
"truth procedures", is not being conveyed in their truth(s).
What is occurring, though, is that some kind of knowledge is
being conveyed, the whole of academic critical theoretical
and political discussion and negotiation floats upon this kind,
and this is thus Kant's practical reason that occurs by a
hypothetical imperative in an essential sense. What this
means is that no such essential (revelatory) privilege can be
methodologically proven or shown in its actuality but only
(really) taught of conveyed in potential, so such (nonphilosophical) knowledge in a proposal of being teachable
through what we can generalize to call the banking model of
education (to borrow a term) is thus a contradiction in-itself.

185

The aggregate of real knowledge in an effort towards its own

foundations yields an inevitable contradiction in the last
analysis of itself such that the route of potential comes upon
itself as itself, potential potentially in potential, so to speak,
such that this potential can no longer uphold its own means,
which is to say, intuition intuited of itself can no longer be put
off onto or into another True Object and is therefore an
indication of at least one true non-intuited object. Yet the
inherent problem of this synthesis is that it does not
automatically occur along some sort of line of common
sensibility; the real problem is the reliance upon intuition as a
qualifier of what it is to be human. This is to say, even if such
a contradiction is an inevitable result of taking the
conventional route to its end, the result is not inevitable, for if
it were, these authors we have been entertaining would not
need to explain it further, nor would the subsequent authors
need to offer attempts, and we could get on with whatever is
supposed to come next. Yet we continually see in philosophy
that the improbability of the success of such a venture, of
opening the privileged sector, is proposed able to be
successfully

countered

through

type

of

discursive

manipulation, a contrivance of meaning upon the actual

situation that is this one true thing. Due to the philosophical
reductive imperative located within non-philosophy, within the

187

idea of radical agency, or radical performativity, the tracking

of meaning to its source, to its place of recognition, which is
the event replayed as a distanced object the notion to be
placed outside of itself as a propriety, as a proper or more
real reality, requires also a displacing of this essential gap: It
requires that the contradiction itself as contradiction not
indicate at least one true thing but rather essential falsity that
shows the proper route we must go if we wish to find what is
true and real, the potential route that already includes the
reconciliation in a denied displacement. Hence we must now
say that the significant question put toward all philosophical
proposals should be no longer how structurally, this is to say,
syntactically, nor semantically, this gap is displaced, but
rather how logistically. We need describe how it is that an
object ontology has arisen, how it is possible. Yet for this to
happen we cannot merely argue over transcendence and
theism and such, continue to quibble over a perpetual
misunderstanding of correlational reality which only verifies
the correlational accusation; again, we must expose what is
occurring not merely neuro-physiologically, because then
we are still left with the doubt upon the knowledge that is
toward the science, still left with the revelatory knowledge
that may be had to question such science. We must instead
expose what is occurring in the revelatory experience itself;

189

we must speak about what is most offensive to human

experience: Not merely how intuition operates, but more
what happens when consciousness is formed upon an
ideology of freedom based upon a transcendental intuition, a
motion of unity within a concept already segregated in its
formulation. But better: How this operation, a notice of
segregation as opposed to reconciliation which is to say, in
full recognition of the transcendental clause as opposed to
an implicit (but unspoken) cooperation of inspiration
witnessed as an operation, the revolution having already
occurred, yields a complete historical determination of
meaning. For those so keen: This is not a move for a
reconciled austerity. If it were so, then we would find again a
conventional usurpation of what is natively ironic; we are
talking about the appropriation of discourse and not how
discourse might align itself with any true real thing. Austerity
in the real world often can be seen to function in the short
term, and then fail in the long, because while reality is all
there is, it cannot be divided unto itself, but only biased in its
accounting; and that is what we see: The motion for a total
ideological inclusion, which is for all meaningful purposes, a
global religion but negated as such concepts are sublated
into the real conventional arena.

191

59.
So it is that in finding our critique of non-philosophy
we uncover a method that continues as a route for truth
despite its fallacious basis. Though it might honestly be
proposed in the context of a more proper manner of
understanding reality, "should humanity be saved" in the call
of potential 'savior', non-philosophy works ironically to hide
its complicity in the real displacement if not instigation of
contradiction through what we can call the Post Post-Modern
gambit. The gambit is necessary due to the repetition that
has occurred, a retreading of philosophical grounds. Instead
of asserting upon the gap towards a righteous and absolutely
true and best world, which is the Modernist move of
displacement through reconciliation by demand (the One),
the Post-Modern exposed the facade of an argued previous
totalitarian view by the converse assertion of the gap, a type
of reconciliation by supply (the multiple). The general PostModern position is where the One may be associated with
what is essentially human reality, what is multiple not only
consists of other humanities but also an instatement of new
mechanisms to enforce the (ideological material) consistency

193

of reality; so it is argued. So likewise is history viewed as an

enforced narrative that is being disrupted. The Post-Modern
proposes to uncover implicit codes of force and power, codes
that likewise are implied in the ethical narrative of reality. The
problem of this move, of realizing and then exposing the
ethical inconsistency involved with such an assertion, is it
opens up the inconsistency of its own assertion, namely that
the opening is supposed to reveal what may be more proper
and true, but that this more proper and true manner is only
gained by virtue of the previous order of what can possibly
be proper and true. The Post-Modern solution offers thus the
same solution that is never being recognized, the same
solution offered of the authors we treat in this essay, albeit
formed differently; which is to say, stemming from the
situation that already showed itself insoluble through the
routes of the Ante-Apologists, the Post-Modernists still
attempted to find a route, a way to describe and therefore
break through the ideological faade to be able to get to and
communicate the significant meaning, the Event itself. But
alas, they suffered the same fate, or maybe, the fate of the
same.
60.
The solution of what we call here the Post Post-

195

Modern is a flattening of this irony: In the act of proposing

what is correct, by the tenants of the proposal, I open my
position to compromise. Thus the Post-Post-Modern solution
says that the agent of truth must relinquish such truth for the
sake of and in acknowledgment of the fact that it will not be
apprehended for its truth, but only for the value of truth the
discursive item has within the real economy of meaning, or
for other words, the material; the One cannot retain its
oneness within the multiple. This is to say that there is a
consistency of narrative that is being downplayed in the Post
Modern, and that the Post Post-Modern thus repeating this
motion a motion that we can be safe in pleading the
ignorance of the Post-Moderns has allowed for its
exposure in its subsequence; that is, the new Realists. But
also, that the Post Post-Modernists could not find their
proposals through the rhetoric of the same that now
identifies conventional philosophical discourse (see below),
but thereby such Realism must be the occasional signal to
revisit the meaning of philosophy all together: This is the
non-philosophical Event, that whatever real discourse is
occurring it is inadequate and insufficient to describe what is
truly happening. Better: That which is multiple can be said to
be so in as much as its position is never compromised due to
its imperative to enjoin with all else but itself, for if it were to

197

ever enjoin with itself, by virtue of its multiplicity it would

thereby be in a state of contradiction, and thus no longer
multiple (the fault of Post-Modernism); this is to say the
multiple cannot include itself as it belongs to itself only (the
fault of the Post Post-Modern and its subsequent Realism).
We thus say reality, that which is of the multiple, is not true,
but only real, and despite what conventional determinations
may arise to locate True Objects, reality is always of
Oneness. What is true then occupies that region for which
reality by its method can never account, it's way being
multiple in its truth, such that in as much as reality is
meaningfully constituted (read: Defined) as a true 'one'
reality such a meaning is based in a denial of the truth of
reality, but not the real truth; thus due to the real insistence of
conventional method, the truth and void arise in the same
moment but by different occasions; hence the modern
preoccupation with nihilism. We can say then in essence the
truth that might arise from the void is thrown back into the
void whereby the truth is recouped by virtue of the void itself,
which has no inherent consistency in itself aside from the
fact that it generates truth against no knowable method of
accounting, that is, except that method that appears in and
as reality says it does. In other words, the One is so by virtue
of the multiple it addresses by its being the first instatement

199

of the void that is multiple, but before the one must have
been found as 'that' one among many. Once that One is
found, conventional faith has taken hold.

61.
The watershed evidenced of this Event just mentioned
(which could be non-philosophical) concerns thus this
gambit, this solution of compromise; but as we will see, it is
not so much compromise as it is deception. The single
discernment by which this pivotal case arises has to do with
what we shall call the Discursive Principle. The Principle
states that discourse reflects the present condition of reality,
and vice versa, that the state of reality is the condition of
discourse for any time. See that this is not another form of
Presentism,

and

is

more

in

line

with

the

strong

correlationalism coined by Quentin Meillassoux, but voiced

to emphasize the inclusivity of the correlational position in
general, as well as the hard limit it imposes: Only discourse
exists; if there is something outside or beyond discourse then
it is entirely unknowable. Now, what this actually is saying is

201

that existence is what can be communicated, and if there is

something that is not communicable then it does not exist.
There is a difference between what might be and what is
communicated, yet the caveat that is often withheld from this
imperative, the blank around which argument arrives, is that
in reality there indeed may be something that is not yet
communicable, that discourse is the process of having some
thing

be

communicable,

that

some

thing

may

be

communicable in potential. What we have with this caveat,

though, again, is a non sequitur; indeed, discourse may be
communicating a meaning that is not conventionally
conveyable. The problem is a misunderstanding of the
meaning of the Discursive Principle as well the meaning of
Jean-Francois Lyotards discussion of idioms.
62.
The meaning of the Principle is typically understood to
be an aspect of the tool of discourse. This meaning is
automatic to sensibility as evidenced by the confusion we
wish to sort out, the confusion of missing the watershed. It
shows a particular attitude or orientation, a certain idea of
how truth should be ascertained. We have called this route
'method', but it is, indeed, conventional method. Here, the
tool of discourse exceptionalizes human agency, even while

203

it is the subject that is at issue. Here, the 'not yet' specifically

indicates the psychic human being as the object of the
investigation, the point of the endeavor. The human being is
a privileged being, a user, an observer; discourse, like and
arm or a leg or a pencil or computer is a thing that a human
being uses. Hence, we can use discourse as a tool to find
out just what the human being is as well as everything about
it, and inso using discourse, the human being argues its
privilege within the potential for displacement, i.e. A One
ubiquitous power and the impetus to bring its effect. So
usually when we say "discourse reflects the present state of
reality" we take it to mean that indeed there is this some
thing that is reality made up of all sorts of interrelating and
acting things, together behaving in a certain fashion to be
able to be called reality, and that discourse is only suited as
a tool to its purpose: To name and categorize these real
things for further use, and we can only have whatever use is
presented to us for its function. In terms of humanity, this is
called agency, but in so much as having the power upon the
displaced gap, a more precise formulation is the agent of
transcendence.
63.
The actual, or perhaps, intended meaning of the

205

Principle follows in general from the contradiction inherent of

the Post-Modern findings: The state of reality as discourse,
set in discourse as to its condition, presents what can only
be said to be an essential contradiction, essential because it
is of discourse in its indisputable state. This state thus
presents a condition of knowledge that says nothing of any
actual, 'in-itself', things such as a past and a future or even a
free agent. Indeed; the Post-Post-Modern gambit arises as
an inevitable and inherent condition of its own position. At no
other time, through no other discursive setting is there a
need for the gambit because it is only within the post-modern
setting that the objectival transcendent is encountered for
what it is: Irony, in the most capital repercussion that can be
imagined. This is as we have already discussed earlier; the
investigation into the possibility of an actual transcendent
agent or aspect of the universe yields the object of the
investigation itself: Nothing; but nothing in a particular sense,
the sense of sense itself which is meaning, yet the meaning
of this encounter with meaning nothing is exactly still
meaning. The question of this becomes the pronunciation of
the transcendent itself: A faith that cannot be swayed, that is,
what we are calling reality itself, because the meaning of the
effort has yielded nothing as its meaning is taken to have
been granted by something that is beyond the term that

207

presents the meaning, which is to say, as an actual True

thing of the universe: The True Object. Thus by the material
manifestation of its position, the position or asserted position
of the gambit, the terms of discourse by which it sets itself
aside

to

debate

transcendence

and

immanence,

acknowledges and incorporates the indicated nihilism, we

thus posit by its apparent materiality only, a singularity that
manifests meaningfully within the ends of discourse. The
precipitated contradiction thus shows that the phenomenal
agent of transcendence is but a universally determined
object of discourse, and not of some essential free human
agency, but further, that this reduction does not function to
include the conventional method in its functioning; the agent
of transcendence maintains its freedom by virtue of its faith
and the conventional method remains real while exhibiting a
truth whereby mutual exclusion is the necessary and true
condition. Being honest in our philosophical effort then, the
gambit is, with the assertion of an object ontology, that the
reliance upon the transcendental clause will not be noticed,
but more, that the irony is upheld without having to include it
in the proceeding considerations; it proposes to be done with
the phenomenal agent through a stroke of discourse. This is
deceptive behavior: The expression of a truth that admits its
appropriation will be based in misunderstanding, defaulting

209

to this misunderstanding in an attempt to further explain

where it is mistaken, is an effort of bad faith.
64.
The extremity of this latter idea opens another
accusatory door that again argues the default of tool use:
Absurdity. It is absurd because of the singularity it evidences.
The Principle states that discourse refers only to itself, and
thus is not a tool, but an essence, a thing in-itself reflecting
only itself; in fact, as itself it is never another segregated real
object, it can thus be said to be the only object in-itself.
Discourse thus has a self referential quality, and thus allows
for another mistaken idea that reifies tool use; we can say
that conventional method recoups all meaning unto itself:
Discourse being self referential, it thus refers only to the
user. This is another common mistaken post-modern
theoretical derivative; this idea forms a basis of the breaking
away from the previous modernist paradigm in the form of
multiplicity, since we have then a bunch of discourse using
agents interacting and actively producing reality through a
discursive negotiation with one another, agents that can now
be 'revealed' to their subjectivity through the science of
psychology, one of the sciences, as we have seen, that is
admittedly short sighted by design, merely in blatant denial

211

of is clausal basis. Nevertheless, the result is always a

mistaken appropriation of meaning, always a containing or
upholding some sort of essential but withheld element that is
'really doing' the act.
65.
Another manner of discerning what we can call the
defect of conventional discourse is the investigation into the
referent of the term, the object of the subject. This shows in
two ways. In terms of the phrase, the meaning is the subject
of the discourse in question where the point or purpose is
the object. For example, while I may be talking about
prisons, the object of the discourse is to bring about a
change in the treatment of prisoners, but not merely some
sort of change, rather, a specific change addressing a
specific issue. While still on the subject of prisons, the
change may come about, the object may be achieved, but
then that object dissolves into being a part of the subject by
which to address another object. The subject of prisons is
always limited by the object; the object being achieved only
serves to show another object such that the subject is never
found but always deferred to the object of discourse.
Whatever is was 'really' the subject was never acting in-itself
but was always acting through the problem of the object,

213

such that what ever the object was, it could not be framed in
any other way to remain consistent with the subject of the
matter; one could not, say, put air in the tire to address the
object of the treatment of prisoners in the subject of prisons;
that is, if we are confined by conventional method. In terms
of the Kantian scheme, the referent is always implied in the
subject of the object. The distinction we make here has to do
with where the contradiction occurs and how it is used. For
conventional method, the experience of the truth of the
matter is always in reference to objective experience, verified
against the True Object that is viewed to be granting aspects
of itself to our (human) knowledge, analytical and synthetical
a posteriori. Yet the contradiction itself is the fact that the
object is always implied in the subject, and that this situation
occurs in knowledge as experience a priori such that this
type of experience is foreign to the ability of conventional
method to discern.

66.
In terms of the term, earlier in our conversation about
Marx we brought the notion of the object-term identity. This
notion arises simply: When we have an object, a thing of the
world, in the world, such as a chair or a tornado or a thought,

215

and we try to identify what that thing is that is, when we try
to communicate with another person as to what the thing
may be never do we find a complete and total description
that identifies absolutely what that thing is. Always there is
discussion and references to other terms and ideas. So the
best we can do with an object is offer a sufficient description
accompanied by the inclusion of what we can call a common
human experience; again, conventional reality. Yet again,
once we include this human aspect, we further aggravate the
situation because we can never account for what this human
aspect is that is allowing us to come to consensus of what
the object is. The best we can say is that there is a
consensus over what it is. This consensus is likewise never
found through conventional methodology, but instead is only
justified against the method's failure; this failure, when
applied to the method by which reality is reckoned thus
amounts to the gap mentioned earlier, that which is the
conventional subject, which is to say, individual identity. We
have here then the notion offered of this essay of
conventional faith in the True Object. So, because reality is
viewed as a common sense, not of or requiring of any sort of
faith, any real effort of discourse toward the truth of an object
is viable due to the potential involved with the ability or
capacity of discourse to procure its object, what we call then,

217

the object-term identity. The object is seen within the teleoontological horizon of the terms and vice-versa. Yet what the
actual object is in-itself is thus a contradiction in terms, but
not just any terms: Exactly terms from which they arise
designated as to their proper meaning by the conventional
method.
67.
Again, the meaning of the Principle harkens away
from real community; the community is taken as a condition
of discourse wherein and accorded to do we find the
oneness of conventional meaning. Community thereby
excludes and functions through selective biases. The irony
involved with this situation is that where modernism is often
associated with an assertion of a proper and absolute
oneness upon what is otherwise a faceted world, postmodernity is concerned with how such a oneness is possible
within an established multiplicity that has yet to be
enlightened to its true reality. That is, the extent of potential
of the multitude has yet to be revealed; hence a startling
discovery: This is the same Modernist type effort that PostModernism was supposedly treating differently: All must fall
under the One methodological type. Thus in this instance,
the position of the 'one' is compromised by the formulation of

219

idea that has compromised the veracity of its own meaning,

that is, the position itself as multiple; at every juncture of
meaning, the discourse is taken to indicate more than itself,
a singular position or situation 'behind' the rhetoric. The
position that is the multiple is always denied, and hence by
the watershed noted above and the essential duality brought,
we may now speak of an orientation upon objects. Belief
based upon an assemblage of definition, knowledge of the
multiple informing position is not sufficient for our meaning
here; the situation at hand has been found to be
incommunicable, but where it is seen as communicable,
even within the Post Post-Modern gambit, we have then to
figure upon orientation on objects and not knowledge itself.
We may now begin to understand the significance of the
Janus allusion and the irony of the non-philosophical
splitting, for the notion that we as human beings are moving
into a new era of oneness is still merely an ideological
construct of the phenomenal agent. We will take up the
social and historical implications in a subsequent work.
68.
Still another problem that has plagued philosophy is
what can be said to be the investigation into God and
religion. In fact, it is difficult to ask into the truth of things

221

without bringing up what is typically a theological problem.

Along this line, what can be said to be the main philosophical
impetus is an accounting for assertions that gain their
credence from what we could call inspired or revelatory
experience, but at least it is what we can call induced, or
given

knowledge;

in

short,

the

destruction

of

the

transcendent. It is for this reason that we say that we must

be involved with a forensic effort, rather than an evidential
hearing. The reason for this is aptly clear: If an individual
human consciousness may have communion with a
transcendent agent, of sorts, God, if you will, or any other
extra-universal possibility, of which we may have an intuition,
at length, then by what crucible would we know that its
communication and or inspiration was valid? Simply
speaking, if you say that God has spoken to you, how would
I know if what He/She/It told you is true? Of course, on an
individual level, where activity is left to some peaceful and
unobtrusive effect, our concern should be little swayed. The
issue comes to bare upon social effects and situations. If
God has told someone that abortion is wrong and that they
need to go get rid of places that do abortions, then there is a
problem; one, because it is affecting other people, and two,
because there is just as likely a pregnant woman whom God
told to get an abortion.

223

69.
The problem with conventional method is it sees its
products as emanations of truth, and discourse is one of
these products. The recourse is that if we cannot be sure if
one person has been inspired by (a) God, then surely if all of
us get together then the result must have been so inspired.
Indeed, all of science and much philosophy is based upon a
suspension of the investigation into the induction of
knowledge; the effort is satisfied to allow the deduction to
show us how we come upon knowledge of things, to deduce
from the product of deduction, to assess causality upon as
essentially

traceable

causality.

And

vice

versa:

The

production of discourse is seen to solve problems truly. Yet

any suspension relies upon solution which it cannot discover,
cannot locate; scientific effort seems admittedly short sighted
by design. We thus speak about effects, rather than
objectival substance. The social theorists often capitalize
upon the one-sided material of ideological effects and
suppose to find how power functions through discursive
structures (substantial objects). Nevertheless and contrary to
the ubiquitous assertion of route, the significance of
orientation upon objects occurs when the induction is
investigated by its inductive capacity; only in this way the
object is found lacking such that this lack, by virtue of the
225

nature of the investigation, becomes the source of

knowledge of the object, such that orientation thereby
becomes pronounced. On the other hand, conventional
philosophy takes the long tack and supposes to thereby be
able to find the user of the tool by using the tool upon the
user; it does not see or admit that the tool is the user
withdrawn from its using. The disclaimer for its own method
is that there is no getting beyond its method, but this method
relies, for its ability to find truth, upon a transcendent aspect
to reality itself, and though real we have found this method
lacking in essence. Hence we say that conventional method,
the manner through which the facets of reality may be said to
be true, is based in justifying denial, and that this denial is
necessary. All the same, the conventional effort is seen to
involve only one possibility of truth, and reality reflects what
this truth is. So we can stay in the suspension and deduce
that reality behaves as a type of processor, the individual
subject-agent inputs data into the processor, and sees what
comes out. What comes out then reflects whether the
position of the subject is a valid position, as in the example
of the change of the treatment of prisoners still reckons the
prison subject as indeed still a prison, as well, whether the
idea the individual has is viable in reality, which is to say, true
and real. Likewise, ideas that we human beings as

227

processors are thus in an ever eternally chaotic patterned

dance; knowledge, a point marker of wave forms; et cetera.
We should be clear what this implies: That there is nothing
exceptional, outside, or beyond reality, and this is to say that
if there is anything outside reality, it is not allowed to be true
this, the conventional correlation of discourse.
70.
Again, there is an inherent but suspended irony of
such a method. It calls forth an extraordinary element that is
routinely negated in the negotiation for its inclusion with
reality, all the while being reified by the conventional
institution of faith. In fact, the history of at least Western
philosophical effort of the past 300 years can be seen to be
the noticing of this element as a source of a proper truth for
reality, and the attempt to bring such a truth into a
meaningful ideological formulation. Even as the varieties of
post-modernisms want to propose that they are or finding the
'real-true' solution to the great philosophical problem of
exception or difference is no exception to the status quo of
the conventional method. Hence the latest versions of
philosophical

proposals

that

take

the

conventional

representations as the default material with which to work,

while at the same time reifying as they may assert that they

229

are indeed addressing all that may be true.

71.
We thus can say that, now, Laruelle and the PostPost-Modernists, as well as the New Realists, are in an effort
of bad faith because they are involved in a perpetuation of a
method that they appear to want to disrupt in their proposals
of solution; radical or not, we should see that the term
'radical' is often a patsy term, a discursive magic, that is
used in place of what is otherwise "of the spirit" or
transcendent; their effort appears more toward ideological
consolidation. That this bad faith is indeed a condition of
reality, ironically we can excuse their mistake, since each in
their own way admit to their involvement in the situating of
reality. Yet we see through their gambit: Their wager is that
no one will notice their bluff (or no one will care). Speaking to
the event of production (displaced truth event): Their faith
lacked sufficient power to overcome the real power of
methodological reductive argument and was thus bad faith,
so they had to cover this offense and direct (force)
justification to that power which effectively nullified the truth
that was come upon by them in the significant event, and
involve themselves thus in the activity of ideological
deception, an effort in bad faith, because their assumption

231

but hope is that their experience is of a potential contained

in the general humanity, but more, that their experience is
derivative of a common real type called human. The real
catholic faith is being developed as we speak.

72.
We therefore suggest that Laruelle and these other
authors intimated were and are involved with a deal wherein
they had/have to play the hand given to them and thus chose
to bluff in the game of big stakes because their faith
demanded it as this is the accepted mode of operation of
the conventional method, the value of the fetishized
commodity for the investment of individual identity. The deal
plays with the involvement of choice in as much as choice
becomes the pivotal philosophical element. In this regard, we
shall say that the deal is a voluntary acquiescence to a
particular condition that formulates or structures activity,
such that once agreed to, the formulation is or otherwise
behaves to be thence forth true, and inescapable in this
capacity. For this essay we suggest that in as much as there
is or has been a deal, there has been a situation discerned
in a non-philosophical manner by which the aphilosophical
view could not have been chosen. If I have made a choice

233

upon my future within an historical idea of progress, then the

philosophical result of that choice will yield only a
philosophical idea of any consequence. This idea, then, in as
much as there is or has been a real choice to be had and
made, is thus identified and determined in and as ideology,
the real scheme developed of this, a real institution.
73.
There is no deal, though, to be made with an
institution. The deal arises out of conventional faith, out of
the possibility that might be beyond faith, beyond what is
real, because what is real evokes the dichotomy between
subject and object. Of the One, faith is not seen as operative
but instead only reality is known as true in potential of the
One. Here, the person, the human being, exists in a natural
potential that concerns True Objects; on one hand, the true
physical things of the universe, and on the other, the true
things of spiritual and or psychic or mental knowing. The
confusion of thought in this arena thus contains a potential to
encounter that which is the effector of faith, the suture itself,
which is at once an actual transcendent, the True aspect of
its identifying term, the object by which the term is come by,
regardless of what that object may be. Within this arena of
decision, a deal is made, a pact, or even a covenant. The

235

authors indicted here are involved in an assertion over the

failure of communication, as this is the imperative of the
deal: Communicate by any means.
74.
The deferring of truth to any institution develops the
idea of reality as an attainable, knowable one thing, the
oneness that is the true reality, even if this one piece of
knowledge is that the oneness cannot be known that this
one reality is known as not a knowable one thing. Most often,
despite best efforts, any member of the institution, an
individual invested in identity, will yield results that argue the
institution. The question that must be asked of any result is
what prompted the investigation. In the case of philosophy,
one usually likes to think and ponder about things, is prone
to asking probing unconventional questions, is interested in
thought and thoughts, and thoughts of thoughts; when they
go into life, they are often not so much interested in truth as
they are in their own person, their own interests as these
might be converted for identity; this is to say, if they were
interested in finding truth then it was an interest that did not
surmount their interest founded in identity. They study things
and thus find more things and things of things, philosophy
and critical theory and such, ideas, people, history. So it is

237

that philosophy must be distinguished, for the polemics it

reveals hence must be mitigated, denied, for the sake of
identity, for the sake of the individual finding the truth and
likewise supporting itself within the presented reality; which
is, correctly now, capitalism; we cannot have a member of
the institution revealing and discrediting the institution. All
those who are rewarded by the institution ( the incessant
they, the philosophical straw man, but reinstated for its
negating effect), whether it be the reward of punishment
called oppression and repression, or the reward of success,
the reward of justified power, often called authorial
authenticity, must argue its veracity; this is the imperative of
conventional faith for maintaining the practicality of what
would be otherwise pure: When it is found out, again, we call
it correlationalism, but then we follow the meaning laid out in
this essay, for we have located a one. In this anticorrelational endeavor, though, they just might ponder the
question of truth, but truth is not and has not been their
concern, and so truth is not found, only problematized into a
reflexive definition of problem, and by this problem they have
succeeded in parleying their idea into identity; through an
effective denial of the lack involved with identity, an object is
created, as well manifested toward its justification, its
establishment, it's institutionalization, what is typically known

239

as a proposal for real solution, and or a real proposal. The

truth in this manner is thus converted into real method,
because the impetus of their effort is identity and not truth,
but only truth in identity. They thus find only method because
they are invested in method; in fact, instead of investigating
the grounds of the deal, they delay and distance themselves
from it by arguing what elements might appear around the
terms of the deal which are invested of a deceptive power,
of mistake, such that argument can be said to be toward an
object that is thereby always initially avoided, but proposed
teleologically and ontologically sound, but at that, by faith
their findings, so invested of the institution, commandeers
what could be extra-institutional findings such that they are
absolutely incapable and foreign to the question of truth, and
only privy to what may be real. So it is thus, by this formula,
that we can begin to address the logistics of how
philosophers have indeed been able to consider and make
proposals of truth; and this is to say, we can begin an
exegesis concerning the individual of conventional faith.
75.
For now, see that this is not a picture to discredit, but
merely a laying out of facts. Concordantly, truth is not some
sort of subjectivity, some sort of intuition. We are not setting

241

in the conventional arena of the one reality, where there is a

multiplicity of belief, experience and physiological possibility
that go into a unique individual among many, discussing their
various

perspectives,

perceptions

and

interpretations,

and needing to be discerned, classified and governed.

Indeed, as to what is real, we cannot escape its gravity, but
at the same time, in mind of such a force, we can speak of
the truth of things that are beyond a gravitational possibility
without calling into question the fact of gravity as a real
effect.
76.
Identity is not a ubiquity, an omniscience; it is an
ideological state, a mandate, a justifying construct, that
which is the coercive aspect of a deal. Identity holds and
implements power, but not of its own, rather the power of the
institution in which it is invested. Within reality, identity, as a
ubiquitous relational phenomenon, occurs through an initial
investment that is capitalized upon with further investment.
Identity,

as

universal

operation,

though,

occurs

independently, as an object in itself. The contradiction as

contradiction yields the first true object that exists outside of
faithful intuition, and thus marks the terms of the deal as an
oriented identity. Where faith does not guide choice, identity

243

does not reduce to discursive relations, rather, does not

involve a total economy of a sort of global interaction or
informational exchange because such an economy is real
and thus always misses what is true for the sake of
marketable and negotiable identities; the deal thus rests in
the potential that the investment holds for real interest.
77.
So to suggest that there is a truth independent of real
objective identity is to call upon the non-philosophical as not
method, which is to say, aphilosophy. It is to invoke the
meaning of non-philosophy aside from its suggestion that it
is and provides a methodological path not only to its
meaning, a proper conceptual frame, but to some sort of
living a proper life. Here, though, we have not succeeded
because no investment was made. This is the only way that
the method can be viewed: The first object must arise
outside of reality, aphilosophically; where a method exists to
arrive there, the deal is presented in the situation of two
parties, for a choice to be made but in this case, in the last
instance, a choice that is no choice.

245

The Aphilosophical Case.

78.
From the standpoint of reality, a critique of nonphilosophy may stem from a type of jealousy, but a nonphilosophical one if any, since it is non-philosophy that
further confirms the point of contention is indeed being
addressed in a manner suitable to its real difference;
transcendental privilege is not allowed. Yet, it is actually
more a debt of gratitude that an occasion specific to the
issue has been presented outright, in its positive form. Good
critique and rebuttal can only originate from such a jealous
position toward (if such a position can be said to be soluble)
non-philosophy, because jealousy is a type or indication of
anxiety, which marks a significant approach; otherwise we
are still involved with a deception. So in a sense it is no

247

jealousy; rather it is exactly the hint or impetus of simpatico

non-philosophical exchange, an exchange that I would say is
exactly philosophical as opposed to methodological. In some
way, Francois Laruelle spent all this time to see if and how
strangers might really get along.

79.
The non-philosophical situation can be broken down
in the following manner.
One might see non-philosophy as a non-method,
which is to say, as its occasion of the last instance over its
presentational method, its passive rather than active
situation in its active rather than passive mode, forecloses
debate by its very nature. It is a description that concerns the
appropriation of discourse. At every challenge, every
accusation of intention is absorbed; it is an eternal 'yes': Yes,
it is true that it is; yes, it is not true that it is; yes, it is true that
is it not; yes, it is not true that it is not agreeing with every
statement that can be formed concerning its foundation while
equally comfortable in its incessant 'no': there is no
phenomenal intention all query centered around its

249

fundamental problematic: Is non-philosophy philosophy? The

answer of which answers the philosophical reduction: What
is philosophy? What problems are posed and solved with
philosophy? In fact, to argue with the points of nonphilosophy tends to validate and verify the maximum
inclusionality of its axiomatic structure which discerns itself
from (conventional) philosophic methodological scission.
What this means is, if one has understood before the
presentation of non-philosophy such that non-philosophy has
become

the

coincidence

of

knowledge

known

and

knowledge presented, then non-philosophy is exactly the

occasion to speak, this discourse being of nothing that arises
outside of the immanence that Laruelle calls radical. What I
would say, then, is that only an aphilosophical rebuttal is
relevant because only such speaking can involve the talk
about the philosophical object of conventional methodology
while remaining viable non-philosophically. And this is to say
that there is no comment to be made, no link that can negate
its move that does not at once contain the original premise
as step from it. Only when the step, the link, accounts for the
premise within its stepping, as its stepping indeed reflects
the premise in its entirety, and yet by this step critiques or
rebuts the premise, can a step be made. Such a move is
serial, not propositional. Thus, in so much as non-philosophy

251

may be methodological, such is aphilosophy a step from

non-philosophy, the mark of atemporality in history, the
absolute 'no' of the axiomatic 'yes'.
80.
This movement may seem ridiculous to some, but
only to those who do not understand (stand under) the
premise, since the apprehension of the series, that which
falls within or is otherwise characteristic of or qualified by
scission from the particularity of the conventional de-cision,
is actually absurd. I shall explain.
81.
Non-Philosophy addresses the philosophical method
of dividing or splitting issues (universal objects) into
polemical aspects thereby to gain what may be true of the
issue. In this way any particular issue arrives through a
previous decision, that issue that is posed as no longer an
issue, whereby the truth of the matter is represented by
particular argumentative moves. For example, one may wish
to speak about the universe, but the universe has already
been problematized by the philosophical method such that
one is never sure of what such a universe may be; a decision
has already been established that concerns the correct
avenue or route for the truth of the matter. Often this method
253

is associated with doubt, but even such doubting is highly

problematized to the point that philosophy itself arises as a
certainty of problem, this hailed in the nobility of its method
toward a real solution. Laruelle works on specific exemplary
issues to show just how a particular ethical-discursive
horizon establishes the true philosophical universe. This
method of splitting, scission, and then resolving, de-cision,
is thus a methodological axiom, that is recouped as method
for itself, such that it's ways argue itself: The decisional
structure of the philosophical universe. Non-philosophy takes
philosophy as its issue, as its object, and thereby can make
claims about the apparent ubiquity of its route unto itself by
presenting a universe that is not decisional, which is to say,
is established upon a basic and fundamental scission that is
not recouped by the philosophical method of splitting and
resolving objects, a universe that requires no decision to be
made because it indeed is already made.
82.
He thus proposes a unilateral duality whereby nonphilosophy can be proven to logically include philosophy;
philosophy, by its method, that excludes the possibility that
any other reality may exist multiuniverses and alternate
realities only confirm that reality informs what may be real

255

thus must be immanent to itself, it's decisional structure

accommodating only for that reality which it can discern
through its decision. Transcendence and immanence are
called into play here because by philosophical rights, nonphilosophy should be proposing itself as some sort of
transcendent possibility to what the (philosophical) universe
rightly is, and thus non-philosophy becomes merely another
(immanently) philosophical argumentative approach. Hence
Laruelle and others propose a radical immanence that
includes transcendence as an operational mode but that
does not exclude its immanent possibility through the
decision. This is why we refer to the 'radical nonphilosophical agent', a term that I believe is not used by
Laruelle himself.
83.
The Discursive Principle discussed earlier thereby
exists in meaning as a segue to understanding a 'whole'
through essential difference; which is to say difference not
recouped in the liberal application of what it means to be
different: In line with Alain Badiou, a content that is not
contained in the ethical ideal of difference, but rather a
difference that allows even for the ideal that difference is not
to be, and or cannot be, abided.

257

84.
Laruelle also describes how in philosophy being an
object, it supplies the only route to the uncovering of its
decisional structure, but that discourse itself must be used
carefully in order to explicate and uncover its methodological
redundancy. The non-philosophical situation should thereby
be beyond its philosophical bearings and since then there is
no decision by which to split aspects of reality, the
philosophical reading will necessarily amount to and supply
an incorrect meaning to the discourse at hand.
85.
Hence, the aphilosophical route will play.
The issue is the term; I develop the term, the issue,
and this reveals the point of contention as the issue of the
term as differend, the term being the site of contention, the
marker of difference. I begin the count; existence and reality
are operational bases. In so much as Laruelle is merely
using the terms of conventional method to reveal his
experience, and due to the fact of describing the process of
his experience, non-philosophy appears as method. His text
may be telling about the manner by which one may come
about the object(-ive) supposed of the method, but he is
actually justifying his own experience to himself as a
259

distanced object, what is debated historically concerning the

dialectic, the sign, signified, and signifier. The point of
contention can be said to be located exactly between the
experience and the reporting of the experience as a rationale
that includes the potential of all humanity; Laruelle proposes
to close this series and may appear to have done so when
the methodological assertion is sublated in the (nonphilosophical) experience itself. In mind of this dyadic
closure, he thus proposes to be able to explain how one
might reach the dialectical departure, the point of the break,
which is the philosophical revolution. Yet what actually
occurs

is

much

more

insidious:

While

subsequently

(posterior) he can only speak sufficiently from his orientation

and then watch as what has essentially arisen from the
unilateral

dual

condition

is

presented

and

then

commandeered by convention (reality), nevertheless, initially

he speaks to the point of contention in its necessary
condition (existence). He can only hope for more. Such is the
case of the one who understands before understanding as it
should be understood by the one who understands through
the method of learning but likewise includes the one who
already understands as this situation reiterates it. Similarly,
as mentioned earlier, the difficulty in speaking of the situation
of rebuttal is that it appears to implicate privilege, but it is

261

actually a move of inclusion, explanation and acceptance, as

opposed to proof through exclusion, justification and denial.
Hence, when the rebuttal speaks, it is the rebuttal of the one
who understands before learning, but through experience.
But alas; if I do not already understand, it is only because I
am oriented in the re-presentation of myself, as I might learn
of my self through a method that was at some point initially
presented to me but I ignored it, forgot about it, or plain
denied it.
86.
Such an aphilosophical rebuttal can only be a second
critique; the first critique is always to come. The nonphilosophical method is the presentation 'in the last', as the
'instance' of the conventional religious-ideological 'utopia', of
the 'Future Christ', of the 'Man in man', the 'Son of Man',
returned in the 'end of philosophy' as represented within the
progress of conventional reality. Rebuttal and critique must
necessarily rebuke such progress and recede, or else nonphilosophy suffers in becoming necessary not unto itself, but
sufficient to conventional faith, which is, in the last, a
revocation of non-philosophy as a radical enterprise; that is,
unless what is radical is itself an historical convention. For
non-philosophy to be solute as 'Real' (in its most non-

263

philosophical situation), there can be no option; hope must

be run-out. As Slavoj Zizek has said somewhere (I
paraphrase and summarize):

Only on the precipice do

things change; there is no decision that brings change. We

do not choose to have a revolution; revolution comes as a
matter of course, when there is no choice. Only when there
is no other option beyond necessity do things change. The
representation of non-philosophy as method, as a proposal
for the future, even if that future is 'foreclosed' to or by some
'vision-in-one', leaves open the option for conventional
recourse, which is exactly the current problematic of
conventional reality, its assertion of its total (true object)
truth. The solution is thus not method, but absorption into the
fact of motive history.
87.
We are no longer concerned with what is the same, in
the sense of Hiedegger's Dasien; Oneness is always used
for conventional power. Non-philosophy iterates the same
solute in difference, in contrast to the conventional solution
that wants to find difference through the same; but this
distinction is nearly negligible and the confusion offered by
the ambiguity beckons the conventional default. Nonphilosophy's meaning rides the line, so to speak, of

265

presentation and conventional representation. This does not

mean that we are done with these, or this, though, as the
case may be. So long as there is an option, we will have
discussion and argument as an indictment of what is true.
Just as this essay will present an opportunity to be misread
in its representation, history indicative of a progression
towards the truth finds its effort in a method of discarding of
contradiction. In conventional argument, the presentation of
the case exhibits what is wrong and a proposal of solution;
this method is based in the option of sameness. Therefore,
for our argument here we are not indicating what is incorrect
as to then set up what might be then a correct formulation;
rather we are merely describing the situation and how
historically this situation is reduced to a one particular truth.
This is also what we may call the philosophical decision; at
some point before we were concerned with reconciliation, of
a more proper reality aligned with truth, but neither the
conventional sensibility nor the assertion could achieve it.
Hence the decision was made moot such that it was no
longer a substantial informing aspect but merely evidence of
a kind of power. In fact, it is the blind spot involved with the
decision that has revealed the decision as the culprit, the
reason why the conventional method for truth remains rooted
in the effort of the same, as well as the effort of difference:

267

One had to make a choice. It is the offense that comes with

the decision that the truth of its method yields only more
method; conventionally speaking, the method cannot have a
counterpart for the method is of oneness. What would be its
counterpart can no longer merely suggest or argue its
veracity, for the condition of that veracity is marked by
convention; instead we must speak as the revolution has
already occurred. It is no longer necessary to attempt to
convince.

Where

there

is

choice,

the

choice,

representation of division, is deferred to the common

humanity of a one reality, de-cision. That which is of the
exception is routinely injected into reality, so we are always
addressing what is the same in potential. Here then, we are
thus not concerned with what is the same, but neither are we
done with it because we are not involved with what options
we may have, for we have found that where choice is
involved with what is proposed to be of the same, we have
the basis for no communication, or rather, a restitution of
difference as being the same: The achievement of the failure
of the same is the confidence of deference; the same,
though, is not discarded upon the progress of decisive
choice, but rather is retained within the presence of
difference. This is what non-philosophy presents in the
meaning that defies conventional method, yet shows as of

269

such method. Non-philosophy marks an historical epoche, a

moment that can only occur in the facticity of history, as an
historical motion, and, it is by this epoche that an essential
divergence in the meaning of the discourse of reality is
marked.
88.
Non-philosophy is the Western Greek-traditional
reconciliation that can be able to find that by which Eastern
philosophies addresses distinction. But see that we do not
suggest that the Eastern philosophies are more true, merely
that history withdraws at this point when we see the Eastern
reconciliation as having been subjected to the same attempt
and conventional usurpation. Still, we thereby might
understand from where the current Realist efforts stem: They
stem from a coming upon world as new world. Yet as well, in
much the same way as non-philosophy presents and
conventional method commandeers the manner of coming to
terms with non-philosophy, what is different is always
recouped into the same conventional reality; what is true
always warped into the conventional purpose of oneness;
which is to say, un-admitting of a non-agency, so to speak,
where history is the causal formation of agents of
transcendence behaving in a medium of freely available real

271

option. So also we can begin to understand how ideology is

now a religious position, since the productions of a soul or
spirit have now been flattened to such an extent of large
acceptance (God is love; all religions are reflections of the
One God), any assertion of belief merely another clausal
position of ethical negotiation. We just have left to tame the
left over zealots. Due to this fact, we need no longer concern
ourselves with the conventional mistake, for it involves itself,
yet, methodologically, in faith. We need now only to
distinguish philosophy from conventional methodology.

89.
The significance lay in the appropriation of rhetoric.
What I write should (it seems)only be that which is presented
to the subject (the point of the endeavor; the subjunctive; the
non-philosophical 'Ego'), but not re-presented for the subjectobject (the purpose; that which is spoken to, the indicative;
the individual; Laruelle's 'philosophical subject') necessarily.
Where I am speaking, to the subject, non-Ego, or nonphilosophical vision-in-one, I am then at once heard as
originating from 'nowhere' but exactly in the occasion of
reading arising in knowledge already known, a confirmation
of experience in the experience. If such a manner of

273

appropriation can be learned through a banking type

education, then the meaning of such a non-philosophy exists
beyond a fantasy, over a fabrication of discourse, for the
content would then be present in two states. Hence, nonphilosophy announces the aphilosophical approach, as well
as falls back into its conventional security, and reneges with
a Non-Standard Philosophy,which is exactly non-philosophy
in the act of the methodological negation of its own proposal.

275

Reiteration.
90.
We

may

encounter

such

reading

in

the

aphilosophical rebuttal to non-philosophy, a critique that only

arises ironically in the occasion.
You

mentioned

'unilateral

duality'.

What

am

understanding of non-philosophy is the reason why your

interaction with me does nothing but confirm that I
understood Laruelle at first read, though I may not have used
his terms. The axiomatic structure of meaning coincides
historically with non-philosophy, but the discursive framing of
Non-Philosophical discourse, as opposed to the objective
frame of discourse, is merely sufficient to its purpose of
verifying the self evidence of its truth; through the
conventional method one may indeed come to a certain
meaning that instructs the reader to a certain understanding,
277

but what is radical of the proposed (non-philosophical)

immanence should be not merely an understanding. The
mere sufficiency of method still leaves the meaning gained to
that of a distanced object. Obtained through the choice to
investigate, the meaning of Non-Philosophy may be a
meaning that is thereby, by definition, not radical but still
conventional and reactionary; such a meaning gained is
radical by proxy which is at all times the best method can
gain. If this be the case, then aphilosophy is not what
Laruelle terms radical as method, but radical in its radicality
as Laruelle himself has said is the point of Non-Philosophy,
but

non-philosophy

as

well:

Immanence

behaving

immanently. Since, using my terms and Laruelle's, you are

(as addressor) the occasion for my radical performance of
unilateral duality (or however one would put such an idea),
you cannot be but that part or expression of myself that I
come upon in the Real, but yet exclude in the localization of
my strange situation of being one of a democracy of such
awarenesses. In that I am not a-part, but am indeed (for all
meaning) unilaterlized-in-duality as the expression Man-inthe-last-instance, not only do I appropriate your replies as
that which is me unaccounted-for before hand in the apriori,
outside the experience, in the 'you', but in the last instance,
that which I can only occasion in my performing radically.

279

91.
If I have somehow not yet been clear; the issue is with
Laruelle suggesting non-philosophy is a method. I have
come upon no method but that he has written it, and he even
says that non-philosophy is a method; the reason I know
what Laruelle is saying and means, even as I only
encountered him at first through the presentation of his book
The Dictionary of Non-Philosophy, is exactly because I used
no method: I accounted for his occasion as a matter of
course, such that what he has to say is indeed now that I
see how he has situated the point of contention, which is to
say, what terms he used axiomatic within the unilateral
duality. That is to say, the terms, the phrases, are presented
as axioms, as reflecting a prior (ante-) 'institution' of truth, an
idiom of the differend of the terms.
92.
The problem with method is exactly the denial of this
idiom for the proposal of method; non-philosophical radicality
is not a proposed method of acting in the world, for the world
of method is already problematic. For one, it is not a method,
or maybe non-method; it is the method that Laruelle himself
did or continues to do. He only learned it by virtue of him
doing it, and in that sense, it was a radical method because

281

though he was taking the route that conventional method

laid, the route of understanding historical figures and ideas,
logic and critical analysis, the end result at any moment
along the line was exactly his enterprise, that no one could
have dictated upon him, indeed, nor influenced. But to the
extent we might say him or his we have already denied
the radical manner by which such performance occurs, for
the situation is supposed beyond conventional reckoning. Of
course, one could say that all the circumstances of his
doing went into his doing and cannot be separated out in
that way, so then I would say just try and communicate that!
And, is not this the whole issue that we are treating? This is
the meaning of difference, of radical performativity. His
method thereby cannot be based around some learning or
developing of some skill that is initially one's person such
that a method can lead one to himself or world (but One
world??): It is the appropriation (as Laruelle himself has put
it) of immanence behaving immanently. The truth laid out as
truth in its truth is an axiomatic presentation and ironic
when it is a part of the potential that misses it; i.e. that it
would have to be explained. This is the significance of
Kierkegaards life and work: As we say, 'In practice as
performance' is not about a method that can be learned;
neither are we suggesting the ridiculousness of a method to

283

learn how to be Laruelles subjective person, or something

like that, however one would say that. Rather, it is about a
series of verification, that a particular experience is not of an
individuals,

subjective

privilege.

This

is

the

issue

Kierkegaard discusses in his essay concerning the

contemporary.
93.
This 'radical' version is why we can say that Laruelle
appears in bad faith: Because he is merely stating the facts
of his experience, the facts as the experience itself, the
experience of viewing the experience, the reason gained
thereof and disseminated into a logical scheme yet it is
evident, at least, by his apparent proposal of a sort of "one
day..." or "this is actually the correct way..." within a guise
as if the method might be learned, as if everyone should
learn it. If this is indeed what has occurred or can occur then
the non-philosophical proposal has no fidelity to its meaning.
If he indeed is involved with a proposal of this sort then it is
likely

due

to

himself

having

come

upon

such

an

understanding through learning by being taught (the banking

model of education), seeing his experience as due to the
learning of things he did not somehow possess. Yet if such a
project is a learnable skill then it completely defies that his

285

situating of Real is actually (big T) True, largely because the

majority of people could not care less, but more significantly,
because then the method reveals that he is involved in a
division of labor where radical is merely another idea, a
project of advocating or asserting a particular way of
understanding reality that is best, in particular and
specifically, that what he has developed is merely a
discursive structure however inspired or intuited
contrived upon a particular method, and that thus the
meaning means nothing that we could call philosophically
sincere unless the very nature of philosophical sincerity is
found in the repeating of methodological propriety. One can
only wonder if by this model the academy is not a religious
institution because he is then projecting the experience he
gained through the banking model as well as the meaning of
that experience, as it was indeed gained upon the cumulative
and combined knowledge of the academic institution, upon
the world as if the world should harken unto him as a voice
of the academy, or might I say, religious institution. This is to
say if Laruelle is indeed promoting a type of skill, a type of
applied understanding, then it is because either he himself
came to an understanding through this very method, or he is
not understanding what he himself wrote, or both. It is then
this type of contradiction that should then bring an

287

aphilosophical move; but this is further the significance of

Laruelle's notice (concern) that non-philosophy will fall prey
to the tendency to be made into another philosophical object:
The meaning of non-philosophy defies its completion in a
conventional method, and this would be because his project
is exactly thus involved with a transcending element, as
Lyotard may have put it, an unrecognized and unaccountedfor differend, a presentation of a presentation, but put off into
an unknown a posteriori event, that of direct experience of
the world and its "in-itself" True Object: A re-presentation that
denies what may be radical by Laruelle's terming, unless
Laruelle indeed feels that he has been inspired by some
transcendental agency, but an agency that no longer implies
a segregation in knowing. Yet by advocating a method,
Laruelle is exactly

promoting such a segregated arena,

and a reckoning, a transformative return in so much as and

by virtue of his denial that any such return cannot come in
the decisive world, or that it eternally does. A possible
answer or solution to this paradoxical situation is that
Laruelle himself, the one premiere advocate of nonphilosophy, has not actually been able to complete the
motion he prescribes thus he must include a disclaimer in
the last as a non-standard route, because it is the last
disclaimer that can be made this side of the aphilosophical

289

divergence. Indeed, Christ says "I am the door ... the way,
the life...the truth".

94.
Hence, the aphilosophical rebuttal is ironic: Only in as
much as he can prescribe a method does his project-asmethod have any credence, because such a radical method
evidences a foundation in conventional history as such that it
becomes just as good or bad as any other proposed method.
Yet if non-philosophy is subject to the opinion of conventional
comparison, if it stands on the historical structure of an
actual temporal and true objective history, a segregate and
distanced object, an actual philosophical tradition with which
it breaks only to return to it

then it is hardly a radical

enterprise and has exceeded (overdetermines) itself for its

concern except if we can see the potential of radicality as
the conventional reconciliation of essential polemics, which
is the exposure of the post-post-modern gambit of revolution
posited through methodological application.
95.
Also, when we see that the method of which he
speaks concerns the performance that is the discourse itself

291

then no one except the one who already performs radically

within or of the unilateral duality understands it and that the
one who does needs no method for they used no method in
the conventional sense. Instead, non-philosophy becomes
the occasion that verifies that the axiomatic situation for
Laruelle is Real. For him the case is Real, for he is situating
discourse in the only manner that conveys a solute meaning,
the solution. Due to this fact we should see that the true
issue is not therefore some Grand Reality, but discourse
itself and how it is appropriated; not whether that what he is
saying is true of false it is true and not about some
quality or ability to be true. The truth itself therefore shows
that our issue is one of how discourse is situated, how the
terms are laid and presented, then as well, how one is
appropriating for what meaning is gained, which is to say,
ones orientation upon the ontological basis of the presented
term. Because Laruelle has no recourse to orientation, he is
hedging his bets by sticking close to philosophy as his
object, riding the fence, so to speak, so he can thereby
disclaim his proposal if need but without losing theoretical
face. The furthest he can see, here, is the meaning of "inthe-last-instance": The proposed radical enclosure whereby
what is Real may mean all that may be. The conventional
methodological

reduction

reveals

293

contradiction

that

becomes the point where an irresolvable contention appears.

Once this point is breached, then phenomenal appearance
loses its potential for ubiquity.
96.
Now the question becomes about this breach; this is
the philosophical revolution. Specifically: What is traversing
the gap? Or more properly in the context of his essay: Is
there a bringing of the truth into reality? The same founding
question of Kierkegaard; Is there a teleological suspension
of the ethical. In looking at Laruelle, while the answer is
there is no bringing, in as much as he may be oriented
toward the True Object indicated of a Real, he is involved in
the description of the situation of there no available
traversing route, yet by this description, the contradictory
stance this effort evidences, he is thus advocating a leaving
of the conventional route for the possibility of a reality that is
somehow more real, i.e. Real. Further, in as much as this
Real implies a total Truth in correspondence with a real truth
that can never be known, a condition of Truth, what could be
understood as other agents, he thereby suggests a setting
wherein interaction is highly conditional, a democracy of
strangers.
97.

295

The irony continues, incessantly. So it is that we have

the point of contention exhibited through another discursive
situation. This is the notice of divergence, the watershed
mentioned earlier. The phenomenal agent exists within a
particular ontological horizon that is evidenced by discourse;
discourse is the evidence and tool of reality. The
phenomenal method taken to its ends yields contradiction,
and the contradiction indicates the route that is to be taken
for a proper understanding of the true reality. The PostModern is still Modern, and what we are calling the post
Post-Modern is another reinstatement of this route, it's
method. Laruelles Non-Philosophical proposal is made
within this route. The proposal, for any other terms, is that a
person may have a revolution in their understanding of
reality. While this may be true, his proposal thereby becomes
no

more

interesting

than

any

other

proposal

of

transformation, be it social, intellectual, spiritual or religious.

This is to say while it may be important, it is no more
important than any other, as it might be weighed in the court
of reality. This can only be the case if the philosophical
revolution has already occurred.
98.
In stark contrast to this case, interestingly enough,

297

aphilosophically, we don't go so far as to propose a total

inclusion and instead speak about what may belong. If we
are staying with the phenomena as an experience of
knowing that occurs at the end of discourse, in the last
instance, we cannot say it is Real, except using Laruelle's
conventional definition; we must say it is not real but true, for
reality cannot be any more than it is, which is to say that
reality is exactly the arena in which the decision takes place:
Only by virtue of the speculative world can there be a more
or less real, as it grants the arena by which to make practical
decisions. To take non-philosophy as some sort of practical
method of living a true or otherwise ethically correct life is
based in utter fantasy, for the description (above) of what
such a radically activated life may be never occurs except in
the same fashion as one upholds a creed; or better: Except
as one is religiously motivated to conform to a set of ethical
principles: True Objects which is then often quickly
followed by an assertion of the proper ethical behavior. If this
is indeed the true case, then we have gotten nowhere and
should then go back to the beginning of this essay, for
something has been missed. The difference between non
and aphilosophy is that the former may be involved with
some sort of progress occurring in history; yet, the assertion
and or apprehension of method (if Laruelle in fact is

299

promoting a conventional method) reveals ignorance, a

'misplaced' faith, and is the pivotal reason whereby he may
equate a type of gnostic knowledge with the 'everyday'
people, the masses: Because they have no problem with
situating reality through all sorts of problematic ideals, such
as the link of progress that includes faith. So, consistent with
this strange situation where all of what may be real is not
proclaimed upon, we maintain that no such 'awakening' ever
comes at the end-beginning of some methodological
progress, and that any such awakening that occurs happens
only within faith, which is to say, in reality by the
transcendental clause. It is only in-the-last-instance that
never occurs, but only occurs as one is already-situated. If
Laruelle can take this situation and transform it into a true
object of some progressed humanity, then he is truly a
magician as well as philosopher; we might then also call him
a prophet.

99.
To reiterate; the fact that I may need not Laruelles

301

Non-Philosophical method to know what he means before I

read more than a smidgen and that I may have objections to
his conclusions (not his premises), reveals either that I (too?)
am ignorant, or that he is incorrect. Better: He is in bad faith,
but due to the misappropriation of his meaning. The fact is, is
that there is nothing he says that does not verify to me the
truth of the matter, as well as his truth, that what he is saying
is true. The fact that I can account for all of his proposal and
not agree with his conclusion of method, reveals that his
method-as-progress fails, or has-already-failed because it
needed no method. Indeed, to explain how I understand him
through a further explication of his terms and ideas would
place the situation back into the decisional contradiction that
Laruelle cannot escape. The divergence is thus evidenced
by this essay: We have already left, already on our way. The
explication already fails in its consummation as true instead
of Real because if it excludes one person it then becomes
merely another proposition rather than an example of a truly
radical enterprise; hence Non-Philosophy becomes an
example of an aphilosophical proposition, but a proposition
in the last philosophical position, which is a manner of saying
that it announces a certain divergence. The revolution is
missed as it has now already occurred, but indeed is
occurring. The only way one might prove that indeed non-

303

philosophy is somehow activated in method is to not merely

reiterate but indeed repeat the exact structural-definitional
real representation. Inevitably, those who will suggest they
are

working

non-philosophically

do

so

within

an

argumentative suspension because if investigated and

prodded they would inevitably have to do away with the
paraphrasing of Laruelle's form, the appropriating of his
jargon to new Real 'non-philosophical' conventions, and
eventually give the Non-Philosophical phrasing of the texts
themselves. So by method, where non-philosophy hesitates
and balks, does aphilosophy become the completion of
radical as radical instead of radical as some learned and
applied definition of reality as a configuration of objects. Here
the explanation that arises as authority: Non-philosophy is
the occasion which verifies that the point of contention is
indeed being addressed through its necessary difference. In
so much as we might speak of experience, we then can
invoke the significant event as true and end our doubt, finally.
100.
Further, his project cannot be a personal subjective
truth, and it cannot decide that others 'do not understand'
and so must be taught; his presentation appears, as I (the
addressee) am involved not in a method but radical

305

immanence itself, as a consideration of an 'over-viewer': not

Real, but exactly of reality as I cannot but situate it, a vision
that takes place due to the one being that place where
visions may occur, though the vision is not of the oneness.
Likewise it cannot be of some innate human capacity or
ability; that is, unless the project is a conventional program,
for then again we have stepped onto the platform of Real
prophet, like some god-man guru who can bring lowly
pedestrians up into the light of true, Real, Being (or nonBeing, as the non-philosophical case may or may not be).
Thus his method activated, as it might, conventionally is
through what Aristotle sees as 'poetry', or, so far as a poetics
of difference, it can only be achieved conventionally. This
having been said, the method-that-is-not-taught-or-teachable
is discernible by those who already practice it, and nonphilosophy is thereby a verification for not the individual
subject-object, the conventional agent rather, what we
might call, the true subject, that which we are discussing, the
issue, the point of contention. The intact phenomena of the
solute concept.
101.
We

need

not

fall

back

into

looking

for

the

correspondents in the letter; the addressor and addressee

307

call forth the referent and defy conventional sense. This

operation is that of the differend, of the third possible witness
in occasioning the conventional conversation; we need look
nowhere else. The Event, in this case, is a significant event,
but the Significant Event, that occasion first come upon as
an occasion, and not the perpetuated tallying move toward
the conventional True Object of faith.
102.
Hence we have the first problem before us. We find it
in the effort of Laruelle presenting non-philosophy in the
least offensive way possible: As method. This conventional
effort towards inclusion reveals a self-centered philosophy to
a 'Real' experience, he thus may move in historical practice:
He merely repeats the motion of all conventional religious
ideologies, summed up by the phrase: "If only everyone
could or would...and should!." But the fact is revealed
existentially that types of knowledge cannot bring an
inclusion that defies such diversion and difference: The
category is true. Though Laruelle would have it be radically
relatable, it's relation annihilated beckons for a Real rebirth,
a revolutionary radical transformation, but one that merely
rejoins conventionally. His rejoining, at length, evidenced by
his rephrasing his project to "non-standard philosophy",

309

could be because he had received no objective (from a

distance)

confirmation

that

his

proposal

had

been

understood in its truth. This then, the message that arrives

without a messenger, is an ironic, and only partially nonphilosophical, enterprise; not a mis-reading of Laruelle, not a
Real conventional appropriation of some eternally happening
present truth, but a necessary aphilosophical extension.

End.

311

313

AFTERWORD: Object Orientation.

103.
The issue this essay treats can be said to address
what has occurred concerning what I have termed
orientation upon objects. The obvious similarity to Graham
Harmans Object Oriented Ontology cannot be missed. It
seems then we have the oddity that prompts my essays that
fall under the title The Philosophical Hack.
104.
It will appear that I am back pedaling, attempting to
gain a sort of credential that has already been given to
Professor Harman and the authors of Speculative Realism
note (or infamy, as the case may be). Perhaps, but this is
also the issue I treat; I cannot in good faith deny the real
facts of existence. It would be a most ridiculous thing to

315

come out in 2015 (or my blog prior) and demand that I was
somehow or in some way the first or one of the first to see
things in this way. Useless and ridiculous. The fact of the
matter is that at a certain time a number of people began to
see things in this way, myself included, and, that at a certain
time I began to hear rumors of these authors and when I
encountered their texts, echoes of what I already knew, first
Laruelle, then Badiou, then Harman, Meillassoux, and
others. It can be no miracle of unlearning that Badious
Being and Event, read to me like a high school book; but of
course many will say that I thereby indeed did not
understand him. So be it. I will, at some point, put out a
description of the path that Badiou took in that book.
105.
A question is then: How can this be so? But
aggravating to the ready-made answer is that somehow I
was come upon by this view without having been privy to any
contemporary philosophical discourses whatsoever. At most,
for the time and the view, I had but a preliminary knowledge
of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard barely in the year 2004 when I
returned to school; I did so for the sole purpose of finding out
just where modern academia was and what it had to say; I
was not really looking for a career (but it would have been

317

nice). Before that I had read a small bit of Sartre and keyed
into the Bad
referential

Faith idea of his, as well the relations of

time, but other than that, his Zen

type

philosophizing did very little for me; I found what tiny bit of
Heidegger I did read nearly unreadable, and for all purposes,
completely nonsensical. Further, even in my anthropological
and philosophical studies, I had not heard anything of any
sort from what might be current philosophical veins. In fact,
most of what I gained at university could be categorized
under the problematizing of anthropological participant
observation; I will admit, though, that perhaps there was
some seeds there. Even in my philosophy classes I learned
only about the historical figures, mainly the undergrad
learning of the Existentialists, Dostoyevsky, Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Camus, de Beauvoir,and Sartre, but I took
classes where Feuerbach and Wittgenstein came up. I
understood and or retained very little from all that; I was very
intoxicated most of my college time. I did ok in my classes
but the problem I was attempting to deal with, even then,
was not readily apparent in the undergraduate syllabus; I
even remember asking one of my professors about the issue
I was obsessed with, for Existentialism seemed like it had
something to do with it (I had signed up for the class, after
all), but she had nothing to say to me of any consequence,

319

and actually gave me a look like my questions were, well,

kind of insane. There was no way, beyond some very
useless type of ontological philosophizing, not even through
some trickle-along dissemination of ideas through society
and the people I interacted with, that I gained such a view
through some kind of human economical osmosis. I was
quite self absorbed, watched little news, and had no one who
would or even could engage with me intellectually even if I
wanted them to; I was adrift in a sea of people who really
didnt want to think critically about anything beyond the
conventionally regular intellectual tropes of academian life,
fun, work, money, intoxication and the like, that might gain a
cool identity or even a job at some point.
106.
The ideal behind who is noted for what is also the
issue. We cannot in good faith reduce everything to the
occurrences of contingent circumstance; we would hardly be
thinking critically if we did. There is no luck or providence
that favors an individual over another; at least in this case.
The point here is that there was nothing of any type of
learning that I did not have or was not privy to, that Professor
Harman had or was privy to, that allowed for him to come up
with his ideas, the basis of which he frames as Object

321

Oriented Ontology. All one can say is that Harman had more
access to objectival references by which to talk about and
put forward his ideas; but thats not all. It is most proper that
the Object be presented first as the philosophical motion
always should recede; the first is always a motion of
ideological progress. Nevertheless, there was no educational
learning that allowed him to come to his idea; O.O.O. was
already there in history, it needed a vehicle, a platform
through which to be expressed; orientation upon objects is a
necessary precipitative meaning in historical philosophical
context, and Harman just saw the conventional half of it. This
is also part of the issue.
107.
The significance here, of our coincidence, is that the
ideas put forth by previous authors are not novel ideas,
rather, they are discursive variations of the same idea, such
that over a span of discursive space, symbolic emanations of
various authors fill out universal place-holders of meaning,
outline, color in, occupy and or otherwise inscribe an object
into being, but at that, within a particular ontological horizon,
such that a teleo-ontology remains effective as World until
the object being inscribed fills out the object that is World
itself. This all occurs in meaning, not necessarily involved

323

with any actual True objectival thing, as a thing may be; the
issue of a True thing is moot, but Harman is involved in a
way to speak about True Objects. We speak instead of
effects. The effective World is a world that has not been
revealed to its basis in meaning only.
108.
Conventionally speaking, the Speculative and Realist
move(s) came out of the sheer boredom with what we can
call general Phenomenalism. Philosophically speaking, it is
the view that sees what is meant as having equivocation to
real-true objects, that will come across this saturation of
meaning described above as meaning something essential is
occurring, like some previously undiscovered True thing or
aspect of the universe has been let to our understanding
because of our innately innovative and imaginative ability for
creativity in thinking, experiment and tool use. Such
philosophers are thus oriented upon the True Object. Hence,
the significant issue has to do with ones orientation upon
objects; not that there is indeed some more-true possibility
of real objects, but that in so much as one might argue such
a case as if it is indeed true they must be oriented upon such
True objects.
109.

325

This is the reason why I say that such philosophers

are involved in an effort of bad faith: Because they assume
that the revelation indicated by at least Alain Badiou and
Francois Laruelle is of an essential case, as indicating a
particular vector of argument that avoids contradiction, but it
is only the contradiction in as much as indeed the Objects of
such clausal reference are True, essential entities. It is thus
ironic because this effort that is designated bad faith is, initself, as an operation of the universe called human
consciousness that has reality as its functional arena,
actually good faith in so much as it indeed supplies a true
reality, an arena by which humans can operate effectively: A
viable intrinsic mythology. The functioning of consciousness,
the manner that it operates as a universal element or aspect,
which is to say by the reductive exclusionary method, due to
its universal determination that offers no essential freedom,
eventually reduces the universe/World to itself, to itself the
free producer of meaning (the subject), and to itself that
World of True Objects (the object), in the same moment (this
is the non-philosophical); the terms of the universe do not
matter, the effect is always the same and occurs in and as
time as time is a universal marker of meaning. When the
epochal reduction happens a divergence in universal
meaning occurs; difference occurs as the One route that has

327

come upon its own contradiction, its own incompletion,

bifurcates. Hence we see the reduction of conventional
philosophy shows that there are two routes, and not only
One route wherein the combination of polar elements reveals
the contradiction that then shows which route should be
taken to be True it only shows what is really true, or, what
is allowed to be counted as real. In this moment after the
philosophical revolution, while there may be one reality, there
indeed are two true routes.
110.
The other route is then that which destroys as it
describes, and this seems quite distasteful for those who are
employed in the service of the Great One ideology, for we
need begin construct this new should we say it? World
(Foucault) Order. But in order to bring this about, in order to
allow a movement onward, we cannot merely say the body is
dead, we must look into it, then we find out why it is dead
and the issue is closed and we can move on (maybe). This
other route thus does not assert that what is real is not real
or based in some kind of illusion, it merely situates itself with
reference to what is real by saying that its own route is not
real. The (real) evidence is in and has already been
considered; this does not mean we merely dig up some more

329

evidence: There is only a finite amount of evidence (do I

hear Meillasoux?). What is infinite is located by the faith in
the True Object. Thus we are no longer concerned with
describing how objects may be True or Real; instead, we
merely describe what is occurring. A new teleo-ontology can
only arise once the previous universe has died; but in
conventional reality, this transference, this conversion, is
never witnessed, as reality remains the only route to what is
true.
.

331

Notes.
The foregoing paper is strictly philosophical; perhaps one
could say it is free philosophy in the sense that it is not
proposed within an academically rigorous setting. But this in
no sense should be taken to mean that the ideas of
philosophers were not well considered or not thoroughly
researched. In fact, part of the issue behind this series,
Philosophical Hack, is that for a very long time I thought that
the meaning of various philosophical essays was obvious; it
was only after a time that I realized that this was not true.
Non-Philosophy and Aphilosophy is the first installment in the
series that deals with the apparent break that involves the
obscurity of the philosophical endeavor. There is a multitude
of literature that addresses the multitude of facets that may
accompany philosophical proposals, and the question that
guides should always be why am I investigating. If there is
never a why, then there is always more to investigate; but
indeed, if there is a one thing that each philosopher is
involved with, then most often we do not find out the why
until we have found the answer. But that it is and was always
with us. What hundreds of various opinions have to say

333

about a topic, or a phrase or a term, often never find a why,

but only a perpetuation of real confusion, nonsense, and
nihilism.
The reader may have noticed that there are no footnotes, no
references in the body of the essay. In intend no slight upon
any authors. Rather, I would first admit that its all been said
before. Yet somehow I also cannot properly say that I got any
of my ideas from other authors; I would say that the benefit
from them is the particularly good way of analogizing things
about the issue that I also address, and not so much that
they said it and I had an awakening to some new idea so I
used it; I do not know how to crunch or assemble
philosophical ideas to pop out or come to a new idea. In fact,
this is the issue I treat through the Philosophical Hack, so I
will shut up about it for now.
Nevertheless, I do owe my readers some references, and the
authors I drew from some gratitude if only for letting me
know its OK. .
If this essay actually gets any attention, perhaps I will be able
to annotate more completely with footnotes and all. For now,
I hope the essay stands on its own.
.

335

Selected Bibliography.
The following list of books I site as they indicated to
me that it was time, and in the essay I reference their ideas
specifically. This is not an exhaustive list, but merely a
significant one:

Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. 2005 Continuum.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed 2007

Continuum.
Hegel,Georg. The Phenomenology of Spirit.Oxford

University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Practical Reason.

Published 1788.
Ibid. The Critique of Pure Reason. Published 1781.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature.

Published 1776.
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Irony 1989

Howard V. Hong. Princeton University Press.

Ibid. Fear And Trembling and The Sickness Unto

Death1941 Princeton University Press.

Ibid. Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs 2009
Oxford University Press.
337

Laruelle, Francois. Future Christ: A Lesson in

Heresy 2010 Continuum.

Ibid. Philosophy and Non-Philosophy.

2013

Univocal.
Ibid. Principles

2013

Bloomsbury
Ibid. Dictionary of Non-Philosophy 1998 Editions

Kime. Translated into English by Taylor Adkins, 2009

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Differend: Phrases in

Dispute. 1988 Regents of University of Minnesota.

Marx, Karl. Capital Published 1867.
Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude. 2008

Continuum.
Nietzsche, Friedrich.

Published 1885.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul

of

Non-Philosophy.

Thus

Spoke

Zarathustra

Sartre. Edited and introduced by Robert Denoon

Cumming. 1965 Random House.

339

Noted Authors.
I cannot in good conscience neglect to also name
others that also inspired me to keep going for this essay
about the phenomena involved in encountering texts. The
very short list:

Graham Harman. On Vicarious Causation Essay

from December 2006. His objects dont fool us.

Slavoj Zizek Can never be left out; (I could not

locate the specific reference site in the essay).

Martin Heidegger. The seminal phenomenologist.

-----and the great Phenomenalist apologists:

Jacques Derrida
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

341