Laruelle on Truth and Philosophy

The following essay by the ‘non-philosopher’ François Laruelle is the only work of his I have read. My interest in this particular thinker flows from my interactions with Anthony Paul Smith and my intitial absorptions of the work of Ray Brassier.

On the surface what I like about Laruelle is his appeal to the immanence of thought and his intention to move beyond the insular self-reflective tendencies of academic theory. Human thought takes place within a vast ecology of things, discourses, practices and consequences. Attempts to bind critical thinking to traditional genres and logical systems is a violent act against creativity.

Consider this a sign of what will no doubt be an ongoing investigation: 

The Truth According to Hermes: Theorems on the Secret and Communication

By François Laruelle

“Non-philosophy hinges on a rejection of what Laruelle calls the philosophical decision. To engage in the philosophical decision is to endorse the position that anything and everything is a candidate for philosophical reflection. Thus to do philosophy means to reflect on the world, and likewise if one is being philosophical, one is necessarily being reflective or meta-philosophical. Non-philosophy means simply to refuse such a decision. In other words non-philosophy refuses to reflect on things. Instead non-philosophy withdraws from the decision, and in doing so enters into a space of what Laruelle calls science. As John Mullarkey describes it, Laruelle is “abstaining from philosophy as such while simultaneously taking it as its own raw material.” - Alexander R. Galloway

The unitary or dominant way of thinking is that of a generalized hermeneutics, a hermeto-logy. The economy of hermetology and its most general structure are both those of a “difference.” Hermeto-logical Difference is the indissoluble correlation, the undecidable coupling of truth and its communication. It postulates that truth needs meaning, that meaning and presence—as differentiated and sought after as they may be—belong to the essence of truth, that the secret and the logos, the secret and its manifestation are reciprocally necessary and are mutually determined.

The hermeto-logical circle is deeper and more original than the “hermeneutic circle.” Hermeto-logical Difference is a fundamental invariant, a matrix for what is called “metaphysics” in general. It is more powerful than its modalities or avatars, among which the hermeneutic conflict of interpretations, as well as the textual and signifying critique within hermeneutics, and all possible theories of communication. The conflict between Being and Dasein, between truth and the meaning of Being is itself one of the modalities of a more general conflict, that between the secret—the supposed secret—and logos. Hermeto-logical Difference programs, predraws, and teleologically orders all its modalities. It is their internal and external boundary, continually redrawn.

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