Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy by François Laruelle

Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy Reviews

• 
  Phillip

  For Laurelle philosophies of difference reconstitute, at a point of maximum axiomatization, the condition which has determined greco-occidental philosophy across its history. In philosophies of difference the autopositioning of an ideal-real mixture, always the fundamental characteristic of philosophical thought, the 'decision' characterising this thought, is perpetually reconstituted for philosophies of difference soley in the mode of its overcoming. Differential philosophy must perpetually presuppose the transcendental ideal-real mixture which it overcomes, in order to acheive this act constituting its identity. This reproduction is interiorised, and forms the transcedental ground of its possiblity.
  
  For Laurelle such thinking will always have produced a parasitic relationship with the properly transcendental, immediate condition which Laurelle determines "the one" (transcendental insofar as in its immediacy, it denies the possibility of any autopositional cut). The one is that which will always be, necessarily, indifferent to any act of autopositional determination or 'philosophical activism'. It is absolutely irreducible and in its irreducibility absolutizes thought against the possiblity of being determined through the presupposition of a real-ideal mixture taken as sufficient expression of its essence. The one will be absolutely resistant to any such mode of accountancy. Differential philosophy will be that philosophical mode which absoutizes the philosophical decision, internalising it in thought in the mode of its perpetual overcoming, precisely at the moment when it believes itself to overturned any such autopositioning. In this way it is the paradigmatic mode of greco-occidental philosophical practice, a supra-logocentrism rather than irreversible overturning of the logocentric. It sustains the philosophical decision at the very limit of its possible extinction.
  
  In its relation to the one, a relation always suppressed, differential philosophy illuminates necessarily the possiblity of the non-philosophical solution (non-philosohpical insofar as the one refuses any mode of autopositioning which is the basis of philosophical practice) of an always immediate, irreducible real, discoverable behind any philosophical, decisional representation of it.
  
  All of which is a long way of saying that reality exists and doesn't much care what we have to say about it.
  
  Laurelle describes his thought as heterodox in its relation to philosophical history. This book deals with the holiest cows of contemporary continental thought (Nietzsche, Derrida, Heidegger and Deleuze) in an incredible way. Very worth reading if you are interested in these thinkers.
  
• 
  Alexander Smith

  This book is an excellent critical perspective of the philosophy of difference and a great primer to the nuances of Laruelle's non-philosophy. As many others have claimed, his outline of the philosophy of difference as a review is anything but neutral. It seems as though Laruelle in particular is using a technique that's somewhat in the genre of Deleuzian interpretations of philosophers. In this approach he reads a philosopher closely in synthesis with other philosophers in order to give birth to monsters. Except in Laruelle's case, he disowns the monsters rather than adopting them from their original estranged beginnings as Deleuze does. The reason he does this is that he provides what essentially amounts to a case study of patterns of philosophy that specifically focuses on the distinctions between Being and beings, and how ultimately they all lead an uncritical transcendence of Difference.
  
  Instead Laruelle adopts a rather "simple" notion of the One which disowns the mystical and metaphysical history of "Oneness". It simply reports that everything is One, and that all differences in empirical experiences are all correlates of metaphysical "decision" that accounts for Philosophy. In this sense, Laruelle is an origin point to "The Speculative Turn" as Speculative Realists/Materialists might call it. He suggests a somewhat unique space for critique in the "correlationist" debate. That is, "the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other."
  
  That said, I think there are definitely points at which it is clear that this philosophy poses a particular problem for empirical experience that may never be surmounted. Until a clear metaphysical development is made that can be interpreted, it's not clear that this "escapes" philosophy.
  
  Something that struck me as odd is how little Deleuze is discussed directly. Perhaps this is because, from my read, Laruelle seems to insinuate that Deleuze never takes the leap into real transcendence. Perhaps this leaves Deleuze open to connection with non-Philosophy. It might be interesting to put Deleuze's notion of "fold" next to Laruelle's notion of "decision." On their surface, they seem to be comparably similar metaphysical concepts for how "difference" can come about.
• 
  Rui Coelho

  Laruelle's "my philosophy is not philosophy" act is unconvincing but I don't mind playing along since Ethics of the Stranger was a great take on ethics and one o my all time favorite books. I found Philosophies of Difference less impressive but I still had a good time reading it. In this work, the author uses a critique of Nitzschean/Post-structuraliat philosophers (the philosophies of difference) to present the basis for his own "non-philosophy". Unfortunately, is tought system is basically Heidegger in other words.
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  Derek Fenner

  Since reading the engrossing and complex non-photography book, I was not let down. On to emancipated spectators.
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  Msrobot0

  
  
  Escape the subject-object