![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper considers the strange role of angelology in contemporary theoretical arguments about naturphilosophie and messianism. Surveying the work of Christian Jambet and Guy Lardreau, maligned for too long as simply cynical members of the nouvelle philosophie movement, the author then uses that work to creatively re-cast the Islamic angelology of the medieval Ismaili theologian al-Sijistânî. In the end nature is no longer an object of knowledge nor is it the object of knowledge that comes to know itself, but itself is the condition for any such dialectic and is itself outside of any of this dialectic as radical immanence underlying the transcendental dialectic.
Notes
1 The title of this essay comes from al-Sijistânî's text entitled Kashf al-mahjûb [Unveiling the Hidden], which was translated into French by Henry Corbin as Le Dévoilement des choses cachées (in English the French would translate as “The Unveiling of Hidden Things”).
2 Cf. Benjamin Noys, “The End of the Monarchy of Sex: Sexuality and Contemporary Nihilism,” Theory, Culture and Society 25.5 (2008): 104–22. I also want to note that the reason I have chosen to focus on the angelology of Jambet and Lardreau, instead of more familiar names like Irigaray and Benjamin, owes to their particular gnostic orientation that is lacking in most Continental philosophy that engages with religious materials, as well as to Jambet's schooling in Islamic theology and philosophy. It should also be noted that while I do not deal with the sexual politics implied in Jambet and Lardreau's L'Ange, Noys' article does. There may be room here for a feminist critique, but in this instance when Jambet and Lardreau refer to the overcoming of sex they are making reference to a historical instance of this in the first century which included both male and female persons.
3 François Laruelle, Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-philosophy, trans. Rocco Gangle (London and New York: Continuum, 2010) 198.
4 François Laruelle, “The Decline of Materialism in the Name of Matter,” trans. Ray Brassier, Pli 12 (2001) 37. This is a translation of a small part of Laruelle's early work entitled Le Principe de minorité (Paris: Aubier, 1981).
5 Laruelle writes: “idealism and materialism are reciprocally relative, and both relative to or identical with the real – whilst the real is not relative to them or distinguishes itself absolutely from them” (ibid.).
6 Cf. François Laruelle, Philosophie non-standard. Générique, quantique, philo-fiction (Paris: Kimé, 2010) 488–93.
7 Ibid. 493. I do not quote this passage directly as the meaning of it is dependent on understanding some difficult technical language that, to properly understand, would take us too far afield. In short, though, Laruelle locates an important connection between messianism and science. For a summary in English of this idea see François Laruelle, “A Science in (en) Christ,” trans. Aaron Riches, in The Grandeur of Reason: Religion, Tradition and Universalism, eds. Peter M. Candler, Jr. and Conor Cunningham (London: SCM, 2010) 316–31.
8 François Laruelle, Mystique non-philosophique à l'usage des contemporains (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2007) 262, 261. (Unless noted otherwise, all translations are my own.)
9 Henry Corbin, La Paradoxe du monothéisme (Paris: L'Herne, 2003) 106.
10 Ibid. 105. As a corollary to this angelophany we find in Shi'ite Islam a certain necessity of Imamology (Corbin 114). In that discussion Corbin appears to back away from equating the two so directly, speaking of the Imams' spiritual capacity separate from their fleshly capacity, while still making the Angel that being who animates Prophets, those who speak for the unsayable in the political-cultural realm. This separation of the spiritual and the fleshly will remain important in the work of Christian Jambet (his student) and Guy Lardreau when they speak of the Angel.
11 Corbin 114.
12 These are developed in more detail in a forthcoming article entitled “Against Tradition to Liberate Tradition: Weaponized Apophaticism and Gnostic Refusal.”
13 Guy Lardreau, Fictions philosophiques et science-fiction. Récréation philosophique (Arles: Actes Sud, 1988) 30.
14 François Laruelle, Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy, trans. Anthony Paul Smith (London and New York: Continuum, 2010) 4.
15 Christian Jambet, La Grande Résurrection d'Alamût. Les Formes de la liberté dans le shî’isme ismaélien (Lagresse: Verdier, 1990) 362.
16 Christian Jambet and Guy Lardreau, L'Ange. Pour une cynégétique du semblant, Ontologie de la révolution 1 (Paris: Grasset, 1976) 36.
17 Christian Jambet and Guy Lardreau, Le Monde. Réponse à la question: Qu'est-ce que les droits de l'homme? (Paris: Grasset, 1978) 188.
18 Ibid. 177.
19 Jambet and Lardreau, L'Ange 79.
20 Ibid. 22.
21 Ibid. 36.
22 Cf. Ibid. 213–24.
23 Cf. Ibid. 92.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid. 84.
26 Ibid. 87.
27 Ibid. 100.
28 Ibid. 109.
29 Ibid. 20.
30 Cf. Jambet and Lardreau, Le Monde 187.
31 Guy Lardreau, La Véracité. Essai d'une philosophie négative (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1993) 237.
32 Ibid. 241.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid. 243. Cf. Philip Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion: The Prince of Piety (London and New York: Routledge, 2002) 148–55.
35 Lardreau, La Véracité 241.
36 Jambet and Lardreau, L'Ange 233.
37 Ibid. 131.
38 Jambet and Lardreau, Le Monde 188–89.
39 Ibid. 181.
40 Laruelle, Future Christ 17.
41 Ibid. 39, 40.
42 Ibid. 6.
43 Ibid. 4.
44 Ibid. 34. I should note that, though this article is not the place to develop it, I don't share Laruelle's anthropocentric characterization of man as such and consider it a form of philosophical determination of the Earth that has remained within his theory. My own work within non-philosophy, drawing again on theological material is dependent upon the radical immanence of the in-Creature rather than the in-Man, for, at the more fundamental level, the Creature is more generic than Man, especially if there is no Creator. This will be the focus of another article in this series on non-theology.
45 Ibid. 42–43.
46 Ibid. 4.
47 Ibid. 7.
48 Ibid. 4, 8.
49 Ibid. 117.
50 Laruelle, “A Science” 318.
51 Gilles Grelet, Déclarer la gnose. D'une guerre qui revient à la culture (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002) 119f50.
52 Ibid. 119f49.
53 Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, La Psychose française. Les Banlieues: Le Ban de la République (Paris: Gallimard, 2006) 18.
54 Cf. Alberto Toscano, Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (London: Verso, 2010) 164 and the entirety of the chapter “The Revolution of the East,” which is an excellent examination and exposition of the weaknesses of the engagement of Hegel and Žižek with Islam, specifically with regard to the One of Islam.
55 Ibid. 153.
56 François Laruelle, En tant qu'Un. La “Non-philosophie” expliquée aux philosophes (Paris: Aubier, 1991) 253.
57 Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007) 128.
58 François Laruelle, Philosophie et non-philosophie (Liège: Mardaga, 1989) 176–77.
59 François Laruelle, Théorie des identités (Paris: PUF, 1992) 59.
60 See Eric del Buffalo, Deleuze et Laruelle. De la schizo-analyse à la non-philosophie (Paris: Kimé, 2003) 40.
61 François Laruelle, Les Philosophies de la différence. Une introduction critique (Paris: PUF, 1986) 215–19. See also 237–40 for an early formal schema of the One; and idem, Principes de la non-philosophie (Paris: PUF, 1995) 168–92.
62 See Jambet 33–49 for a compressed history.
63 Christian Jambet, “The Paradoxical One,” trans. Michael Stanish, Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious (2009) 141; idem, La Grande Résurrection d'Alamût 142; translation slightly modified.
64 Jambet, “The Paradoxical One” 142, 143.
65 St Thomas Aquinas, “On Kingship or The Governance of Rulers (De Regimine Principum, 1265–1267),” trans. Paul E. Sigmund, in St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, ed. Paul E. Sigmund (London and New York: Norton, 1988) 17–18.
66 Cf. Laruelle, “Decline” 41.
67 Ya'qûb al-Sijistânî, Le Dévoilement des choses cachées (Kashf al-Mahjûb), trans. Henry Corbin (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1988) 33–35.
68 Ibid. 81.
69 Jambet, La Grande Résurrection 210.
70 Al-Sijistânî 77.
![Supercharge Your Next Research Paper: Research and write your next paper with Jenni AI.]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/112444/Skyscraper-humanities.png"})