THE THEORETICAL PRAGMATICS OF NON-PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

Brandom's method of analyzing pragmatic relations among different practices and vocabularies through meaning-use diagrams is used to specify how Laruelle's nonphilosophical suspension of the Principle of Sufficient Philosophy may be distinguished from the philosophical auto-critiques of such thinkers as Badiou and Derrida. A superposition of diagrams modeling philosophical sufficiency on the one hand and supplementation through the Other on the other provides a schematic representation of the core duality of what Laruelle calls The-Philosophy. In contrast to this self-implicating and self-reproducing structure, Laruelle's axiomatic method is shown to enable a unilateral usage of the practices and vocabularies of philosophy as mere material that is no longer subject to the presuppositions or ineluctable restitution of philosophy as such.

Keywords:

• Laruelle
• Brandom
• non-philosophy
• Badiou
• category theory
• axiomatics
• heresy

Notes

1 Laruelle, Une biographie 114. This distinction is already evident in broad outline in idem, Le Principe de minorité sec. 5.

2 Brassier 31.

3 Laruelle, Future Christ 13.

4 Ibid. 14.

5 Ibid. 15.

6 Ibid. xxvi.

7 Laruelle, Principes de la non-philosophie.

8 Idem, Future Christ 15.

9 Brandom.

10 Ibid. 1–30.

11 We pass over the identity and associativity axioms that must also be satisfied to determine a category. Over the past several decades, advances in category theory have led to a refashioning of the foundations of mathematics and powerful unifications of many of the diverse branches of mathematics. The standard reference is Mac Lane.

12 Brandom 7–14.

13 Ibid. 10.

14 Ibid. 11, 19–20.

15 In any case, it is important to emphasize that this is not an exposition of Brandom's own conception of Hegel. One can only speculate on what Brandom's long-brewing book on Hegel will eventually look like.

16 Laruelle, Principes 7. The chiasmic interplay of the 2/1 and 3/2 fractions in Laruelle is complex enough that they could, arguably, be reversed with respect to the interpretations given here. At any rate, what matters are the structures themselves, not their designations.

17 Laruelle, Principes 5, 330.

18 Badiou 327–87.

19 Laruelle, Philosophies of Difference.

20 Badiou 286–314, 410–30.

21 Complete details may be found in Cohen. A diagrammatic presentation based on that of Badiou is found in Caterina and Gangle.

22 Nancy; Malabou.

23 This delicate but important point is explored in detail throughout Laruelle, Philosophies of Difference, but especially in the chapter on Hegel and Heidegger.

24 Laruelle, Future Christ 14.

25 See Laruelle, Principes 162–67, 225–28.

26 Laruelle's own notion of the generic is elaborated in Laruelle, Philosophie non-standard.

27 See Laruelle, Principes 212–15.

28 Idem, Future Christ 48.

29 Ibid. 69.

30 Laruelle, Mystique 254 (my translation).

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.