NOTES ON THE AXIOMATIC OF THE DESERT

Abstract

This essay examines the role of mysticism in the work of François Laruelle. Focusing on Laruelle's book Mystique nonphilosophique à l'usage des contemporains, mysticism is discussed through the motif of the desert – a motif found in Laruelle but also prevalent among a number of mystical authors, from the Desert Fathers to Meister Eckhart.

Keywords:

• mysticism
• Laruelle
• desert
• Meister Eckhart

Notes

1 Arguably, Laruelle's interest in mysticism, both as a topic and as a style, stretches back to the 1980s and the series of short, experimental texts he published in his journal La Décision philosophique – texts such as “Du Noir Univers,” “Biographie de l'Oeil,” and “Théorèmes de la Bonne Nouvelle.”

2 Laruelle 8–9. All translations from this text are my own.

3 Pseudo-Dionysius 135.

4 I attempt to draw out these ideas of immediation and antimediation in “Wayless Abyss: Mysticism, Mediation, and Divine Nothingness,” Postmedieval 3.1 (2012): 80–96.

5 Laruelle 159.

6 Athanasius 68.

7 Eckhart 310.

8 Laruelle 258.

9 Ibid. 259.

10 Ibid. 258.

11 Ibid. 259.

12 Ibid. 258.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.