Beyond Sovereignty: A New Global Ethics and Morality 9781935790419, 9781934542194

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BEYOND SOVEREIGNTY

Beyond Sovereignty A New Global Ethics and Morality

D.G. Leahy

The Davies Group, Publishers Aurora, Colorado

The Davies Group, Publishers, Aurora, Colorado 80044 © 2010 by D.G. Leahy. All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced, stored in an information retrieval system, or transcribed, in any form or by any means — electronic, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the express written permission of the publisher, and the holder of copyright. Permission to reprint from the following works has been granted by the publishers. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil by Alain Badiou, translated by Peter Hallward. Copyright © Verso, 2001. Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy by Alain Badiou, translated and edited by Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens. Copyright © 2003 by Continuum et al. Excerpts from Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community. Copyright © 1993 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota. Excerpts from Giorgio Agamben, Means Without End: Notes on Politics. Copyright © 2000 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota. The Open: Man and Animal by Giorgio Agamben, translated by Kevin Attell. Copyright © 2004 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Copyright © 1998 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy by Giorgio Agamben, edited and translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Copyright © 1999 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Leahy, D. G. (David G.), 1937Beyond sovereignty : a new global ethics and morality / D.G. Leahy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-934542-19-4 (alk. paper) 1. Christian ethics. 2. Incarnation. 3. Badiou, Alain. 4. Agamben, Giorgio, 1942I. Title. BJ1275.L43 2010 170--dc22 2009049671

Printed in the United States of America 0123456789

In Memory of John F. Collins

Contents Preface

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Incarnation: Essential Conception of Existing The Global Imperative to Begin to Exist

3

II Omnipotence Nimble: The Ethic of Simplicity 1 The Question of Ethics 2 Ethic of Simplicity 3 Good and Evil

39 69 99

I

III Beginning Now: The Creating Society 1 Beyond Beyond X 2 Creating Society 3 Morality of the New Beginning Appendices 1 The Person as Absolute Particular 2 Categories and Relations of Persons 3 Whether Evil Creates the New World 4 The Scriptural Understanding: Omnipotence Ceasing Completely Works Absolutely Backnotes 1 Note to Faith and Philosophy Further to the Ontology of Real Trinary Logic 2 Beyond the Good: Not Hither the Good (& Not Hither Beyond the Good) 3 The Real Beyond the Void: the Beginning/the Power Body 4 The Simplicity & Syntax of the Concepts, Immediacy, Mediation, Omnipotence, & Beginning Index

133 169 206 249 259 269 277

291 297 305 311 315

Preface In Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact, in the context of critiquing the metaphysical ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, the writer spoke of the ethics of the new form of thinking now beginning as “a physical ethics, an ethics of the existing body, an ethics of the order of essence, an ethics of the order of an essentially new actuality, an ethics therefore inherently disruptive of the world order hitherto existing, an ethics essentially transformative of the order of reason existing hitherto.” The present work elaborates what such an ethics might actually be, its principles and its accompanying morality. An ethic of simplicity and a morality of the new beginning are specified in Sections II and III of this volume whose contents first came to be in seminars conducted for the New York Philosophy Corporation in 2004 and 2005. Section II consists of a foundational critique of Alain Badiou’s ethic of truths. The ethic of simplicity is presented as the alternative. Section III consists of a similar critique of Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the coming community. The creating society and the morality of the new beginning are presented as the alternative. By way of prolegomena, Section I, “The Global Imperative to Begin to Exist,” sets forth an essentially new form of thinking as the form for the first time of the new global order. Building upon the understanding of the history of thought articulated in Faith and Philosophy, the effect of the Incarnation is understood to be now for the first time in history the form of “transcendental consciousness as the self-less beginning of an infinite transaction with the absolute other, as the beginning of infinitely self-less existence—world pragmatism.” The notion of world pragmatism follows upon the critique of C.S. Peirce, Wm. James, and John Dewey contained in the writer’s earlier work, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself. The conception of the body itself articulated in this section is the following: “The first thought of the actually human body is that it is the res cogitans absoluta, the first thought of the ‘thinking thing’ now for the first time in history essentially perfect—the body essentially thinking—is that Earth is the embodiment of the intelligible universe.” The global society beginning to exist for the first time is understood to be the very form of this ‘body essentially thinking’. Likewise, the transcendental a priori is understood to be to create the new world. The new body is the artifactual body at once the perfect conception of the new creation. Infinitely discrete individualities are comprehended

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in the notion of the unum/with, the (singular/plural)/(plural/singular), which is distinguished from Jean-Luc Nancy’s with as ‘foundation without foundation’—the absolute third. The beginning that is the ground of the person is understood to be the perfectly severe trial “absolutely roomless of other than action.” The form of this beginning of the new world is conceived as the outsidedness/onesidedness of existence. Beyond Walt Whitman’s absolute acceptance of Time, beyond the secular effectiveness of Jonathan Edwards’ acceptance of Christ as salvation, the notion is that now for the first time the I accepts to create Time absolutely, and accepts salvation as to create Christ. The notion is that for the first time the “Natural Law” is understood to be ‘to create nature’. There follows the development of the notion that “The beginning of essentially transcendental objectivity is the realization in thought of the actuality of this world identical with the minimum of time.” The beginning is defined as the absolute with of infinite intimacy. In the wake of Altizer’s death of God theology, this new beginning is understood as the resurrection of God after the death of God, in effect, as the creating of the new world absolutely now, as the Creator’s actually embodying the universe for the first time, the beginning of an imperishable reality, at once the beginning of the construction of an essentially infinite society. The new notion of neighborliness articulated in this context transcends the notion of ‘human rights’. Coexistence is conceived essentially as absolutely transcendent withness. Actual contemporaneity is conceived as the beginning of perfectly different times. For the first time personal identity is conceived essentially as absolute nighness, at once absolute singularity and particularity. The latter as absolute specificity, absolute multiplication, is understood to be the complete dissolution of the generic essence of thought, of the thought of the generic essence. Finally, the new beginning is conceived as the Third Beginning in which the absolute essence of the Incarnation is newly thought. The new society is no longer understood as res publica, but rather as res nominata, the wealth called by name—now for the first time absolutely distributed. Section II.1, “The Question of Ethics,” begins by raising the question of an ethics after Heidegger, after the question of being, beyond Heidegger’s “beyond oneself.” In the context of the notion that for the first time the effect of the Incarnation is the conception in essence of the Godhead as the very embodiment of the ontic—the beginning itself of polyontological Being—the essential perception of the absolutely revelatory structure of existence itself—omnipotence itself apocalypse—a critique of

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Alain Badiou’s Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil is initiated, beginning with his conception of “laicized grace,” and, in particular, with his notion that “it is very difficult to detach the Christian doctrine of grace from the idea of a transcendent plan that governs the world.” The essentially new thinking understands for the first time that God refrains absolutely from the determination of events, that very Omnipotence cares not for tomorrow. Thinking this for the first time thinking is absolutely now. It is understood essentially for the first time that omnipotence is the power to be absolutely surprised. This absolute unpredictability puts an end to the Nothing. This absolute situationlessness nonpluses the Void. Modern set theory that prohibits the set of all sets is set aside in favor of the catholicological ‘set’ whose conceptualization as embodiment is here set forth in terms of the real trinary logic first presented in Foundation. The upshot of the conceptualization of embodiment is that the saving of the savior who saves others but does not save himself consists in placing himself absolutely at the disposal of existence: for the first time omnipotence itself is absolutely at the disposal of thought. This understanding of omnipotence is contrasted with Kierkegaard’s understanding of the liberation of the creature as the “continual withdrawing of omnipotence.” In the thinking now occurring for the first time omnipotence is essentially conceived as absolute nimbleness, altogether beyond Badiou’s uncritical reception of the traditional association of omnipotence and “plan.” Likewise the essentially new thinking leaves behind the American pragmatic updating of the traditional notion of the Creator’s “transcendent plan,” viz., Peirce’s notion of the creation as a “general idea” forever in process of realization. For Badiou, with Paul’s proclamation of the Resurrection, “there occurs… a powerful break,” but nevertheless “this break has no bearing on the explicit content of the doctrine. The Resurrection, after all, is just a mythological assertion… [a] claim… as though subtracted from the opposition between the universal and the particular… a narrative statement that we cannot assume to be historical.” For Badiou the Pauline break is “theoretical,” not opposed to the practical, but rather to the real. This understanding, fundamental to Badiou’s enterprise, is, in the wake of the death of God, the appropriation of the form of the proclamation of the Christian event, an appropriation in continuity with, but surpassing in its immediacy, Descartes’ appropriation of the hitherto major consequent of that event, the transcendental form of natural reason. In keeping with his notion of “the Platonism of the multiple,” Badiou takes the form of the Pauline proclamation to be the coming to be

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of a new universal as the Same, a truth, as such, indifferent to differences, the same for all. The thinking now occurring understands that essentially this “indifference to differences” actually expresses a limited capacity for differences—a capacity for differences limited by the Same. The ultimate expression of this limited capacity for differences in Badiou’s ethic of truths is precisely the space of thought in which the different types of truths coexist without being unified—the void of thought. Whereas for Badiou thought lacks the capacity for thinking the unification of the different kinds, in the thinking now occurring for the first time there is not merely the formal indifference to differences of the Same, but, rather, in this essentially new form of thinking, essentially indifferent to differences, truth is neither the same for all nor different for all. Truth is not at all a matter of ‘for all’— neither for all nor not for all, neither for all nor for some, but, essentially indifferent to differences, truth is infinitely and unconditionally different— is unconditional infinite difference(s). In the thinking now occurring for the first time there is no notion of filling the void of truth with presence, but then no notion of filling it with the truth of presence—with absence: there is nothing but existence for the first time, the absolute consistency of the inconsistency of the void embodied in omnipotence. Essentially conceived for the first time there is absolutely no void, and thus the impossibility of the very notion of an actual situation. Thus, if, for Badiou, a truth mediates the inconsistency of a consistency (a ‘situation’)—the truth of an event—in the thinking now occurring a truth is immediately the inconsistency of a consistency (a ‘situation’), the truth of the absolute eventuality of existence itself. There is no consistency not immediately an inconsistency. For the first time the absolute eventuality of existence itself. This is the identification of finite and infinite. Thus Badiou’s distinction between the immortal Subject who is the faithful response to an event and the (contemptible) member of the biological species that is the ‘biped without feathers’ is clearly positioned as the denied identity of the finite and the infinite. Section II.2, “Ethic of Simplicity,” begins with an examination of Badiou’s critique of Nietzsche’s attitude toward Saint Paul. What Nietzsche despises in Paul is for Badiou precisely Paul’s greatest achievement: the invention of the universality of the revolutionary address. The latter involves “the subsumption of the Other by the Same.” Nor does this involve the overlooking of differences. For Badiou infinite alterity is, there is nothing but differences. For Badiou this infinite alterity is being. But for the thinking now occurring the infinite alterity that is is the essence of the world that is

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otherwise than being—neither being nor not being: infinite alterity/what there is, the essence of the world, begins absolutely now. For the form of thinking essentially beginning now, it is neither that the world itself is, nor is it that it is not: the world itself is to begin, the world itself begins absolutely now. It is understood that this consciousness of the beginning obviates the necessity that a subject—a universalizable singularity—punch a hole in the normalcy of a preexisting situation such as is presumed in Badiou’s axiomatic ontology. The thinking now occurring thinks the situation itself beyond the one, whereas Badiou, not beyond the one, but without the one, thinks the multiplicity of the Same as the alternative to thinking its unity. For Badiou there is no reason for the coming to be not only of a truth immanent in a situation but especially no reason for the coming to be of the situation itself, no reason for the coming to be of that whose being remains the Same despite the fact that its appearance is transformed by the truth-procedure that comes to be within it. For Badiou, without the concept of the inconsistency of the indiscernible multiplicity, without the concept of the absolute discontinuity of the continuum that constitutes the structure of the real embodied in omnipotence, the mediation of the consistency and inconsistency of the situation must be immanent. In the light of the thinking now occurring, the denominator common to Nietzsche’s particularizable totality, Altizer’s totality of singulars, and Badiou’s universalizable singular is perceived to be the lack of the notion of that simplicity that encompasses what otherwise are the elements of the “opposition between the universal and the particular.” The essentially new thinking is for the first time beyond dialectical identity neither by way of the negation of identity nor by way of the supplementation of identity by the non-identity of the Subject, but by way of embodying identity. Omnipotence itself embodies identity for the first time as the complex simplicity simpler than the “complex space of thinking whose central concept is that of the objectless subject.” This simplicity is such that it is no longer possible to contrast “Man thinks” with Man “only a biological species.” For the first time the essence of thinking is the simple reality of the living human being embodied in omnipotence (existing/existence). Where man, beyond the Good, is the mind of God predicated of the mind of Man, where revolutionary metanoēsis is the thinking of the species, there can be no question of separating truths from the “circulation of sense.” In Badiou “[p]hilosophy is never an interpretation of experience,” and truth is not the truth of sensible existence, but in the essentially new form of

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thinking now actually occurring for the first time very omnipotence very simplicity is completely sensible. Where Levinas’ ethics prescinds the transcendental unity of apperception, Badiou’s ethic of truths conditioned by a pure ontology from which philosophy has withdrawn prescinds the transcendental unity of perception in the extraordinary coming to be of the Immortal, the Subject, as the insensible, per se rational, form of the self-transcendence of the human animal, the form of its being in excess of itself. Where Levinas thinks a ‘metaphysical’ ethics as the ‘exception to essence’ in the form of a pre-consciousness sensibility, Badiou thinks in effect a ‘diaphysical’ ethics as the exception to sense in the form of a postconsciousness rationality. The ‘human animal’ is human qua potentiality. For Badiou philosophy is not itself a truth procedure. It is the construction of the category of Truth—“by itself void”—“an operation from truths,” which “disposes the ‘there is’ and epochal compossibility of truths.” Badiou’s notion that philosophy states that there are some truths is contrasted to the essentially new form of thinking now actually beginning to exist—thinking beyond philosophy, at once beyond theology—thinking that essentially is the proclamation that there are nothing but truths for the first time. In this new form of thought the I that is the very form of the body now embodied in omnipotence not merely exists in truth but is for the first time the absolute constructor of truth, absolutely as many truths as there are bodies. The ethics of the existing body—physical ethics not metaphysical not diaphysical—understands that the world actually existing is composed of an infinite number of existing worlds, an infinite number of bodies, and that the I is the form of the gifted omnipotence that is the body. There can be no question here of a separation of truth and the “circulation of sense,” no question here of a “circulation of sense” that is not infinitely interrupted— infinitely open to the newness of existence—the truth existing as singularity absolutely particularized—singularity actually embodied in existing omnipotence. The ethic suited to an infinite multiplication of particular truths is the ethic of simplicity. This ethic of simplicity is compared and contrasted with Badiou’s ethic of truths. According to Badiou the three major dimensions of a truth-process are the event, the fidelity, and the truth as such, each with its essential ontological characteristics: the event is situated and supplemented, the fidelity is never inevitable or necessary, the truth as such returns to the immediacy of the situation by violating established and circulating knowledges. The dimensions of the ethic of simplicity are four: Gratitude,

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Readiness, Discretion, and Beneficence. Gratitude, the fourth dimension, foundationally first, embodies the first three dimensions. The dimensional unity of the ethic of simplicity—the unity of a physical ethics—is organic. In accord with the foundational or minimum order of real trinary logic the dimension of the fourth disposition of the cornerstone is the foundational essence that precedes the first, second, and third dispositions. The “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity” illustrates the interrelationship of the four ethical dimensions (together with their logical, historical, exegetical, and scientific analogues). The ontological characteristics of the four dimensions are these: Gratitude, omnipotent embodiment is the beginning of absolute poly-ontological difference, Readiness, being-here infinitely identifies the readiness of consciousness whose readiness for being is the form of faith, Discretion, the absolute discontinuity of the continuum—the inconsistency of the indiscernible multiplicity—assures that there is a finite perception of truth that is absolute, Beneficence, the absolutely particularized reception of being enables the I to shape the real by acting absolutely, without forcing, without violating a set of previous knowledges construed to have been at variance with truth. For Badiou the void sutures being and truth. For the thinking now occurring beyond the void, all logic short of real trinary logic—all logic short of the real of existence—cannot but be in fact the bursting apart of all sutures. Real trinary logic as ground structure of the ethic of simplicity is the recognition of the “absolute originality of the immediately existing other,” in effect the recognition of the immortality of the living human animal. The person, not blindly bound to the “circulation of sense,” now comes into the inheritance that is the creation of the very organs of sense. The person is the absolute exceeding itself, always & everywhere the creating of a new world and a new humanity. “Good and Evil,” Section II.3, begins by examining how Badiou, dispensing with the notion of radical evil, opts for the notion that there is a positive capability for Good in terms of which alone Evil is to be identified, that there is no ethics in general, and that ethics has to do with the possibilities of an always singular situation. Badiou’s revolutionary thought—equating man with a complex possibility of immortality—thinks a concrete, singular generality in the form of the truth-procedure operating in the transformation of a singular situation. Caught up in a truth process a ‘some-one’—an otherwise pre-ethical, pre-human animal—is “in excess of himself,” “co-belonging to a situation and to the hazardous course [tracé

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hasardeux] of a truth, this becoming-subject.” When Badiou points to the fact that Evil is not ignorance of the Good, his thinking intersects the thinking now occurring at the point where the latter likewise understands that Evil is not a matter of ignorance. But at this point revolutionary metanoēsis understands the distinction basic to Badiou’s revolutionary noēsis—the distinction between ontological and moral dimensions—to belong essentially to the past. The thinking now occurring understands the “(re)turn of philosophy itself” with its “will to universal address,” to be but one more form of the modern substitution of “willing” for doing—an additional move away from simplicity itself. In Badiou the void of reason is not ‘all is thinkable’, but ‘one real truth exists elsewhere’. The ‘elsewhere’ is the procedure of inscription carried out by a Subject induced by an incalculable, unpredictable event in which a truth is exposed to eternity and in which ‘becoming-subject’ ‘some-one’ is inscribed ‘in an instant of eternity’. In Badiou Aristotle’s eternal act of knowing (noēsis) actualizing reason’s potentiality has been effectively replaced by an act of transforming knowing—by a revolutionary noēsis. There is no prime mover at the core of an Aristotelian soul, but there are gods who chance to come to be from time to time, the Subjects, the Immortals. In between times, against Nietzsche, all merely natural life is not beyond, but, rather, beneath Good and Evil. If there is Evil, it, like the Good, does not exist outside a truth-process and is to be understood—in relation to the “norm of a prolonged disorganization of life” that is the Good—as something “unruly.” But the new form of thought now beginning understands, as Badiou does not, that this disorganization is not an alternative to organization. The disorganization that is organization, the disorder that is order, is not a breaking in two of a One. Nor is unity, unbroken by the infinite alterity of existence itself, a Same. The unity beyond the One—the unity beginning absolutely now—is the absolute otherness of omnipotence itself now embodying that which embodied omnipotence when hitherto omnipotence compared itself to the creature: the simplicity of omnipotence the embodiment of infinite & unconditional difference(s). The simplicity of omnipotence is omnipotence itself. The embodiment of the universe in existing omnipotence is the consistent inconsistency of an infinite alterity: the embodiment that is the absolute discontinuity of the continuum—from which immortality has not been subtracted in order to resuscitate either philosophy or theology. The Good in this case cannot be as it is for Badiou the norm of a “prolonged disorganization,” the norm of “a duration peculiar to the not-known,” but, rather, the act of constructively

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perceiving the shape of real particular being always here and now. Evil then must be a failure to act. By way of comparison to Badiou’s ethical notions, the thinking now occurring understands that, while there is no radical Evil, Evil is not only real but unnecessary, that it may be formally distinguished from the violence of nature but not from the violence of the human animal, and cannot be considered as distinct from human predation whose banality is precisely a function of the Evil that is Indifference, that the possibility of human Evil is precisely the category of the transpersonal Subject as an abstraction from the singularity of particular persons, that there is Evil to the extent that the I that is the form of the body defects from the absolute imperative to create, and, finally, that the ethic of simplicity has always already put out of play the Evil that is actual in “the will to…” and “the will not to….” The names of Evil in the four dimensions of the ethic of simplicity with a definition of each ethically defective disposition follow: in the dimension of Gratitude: Impotence: the will to defeat; Hatred: the will to destruction; Malice: the will to damnation or the defeated will to destruction in its effect; in the dimension of Readiness: Indifference: the will to not know; Avoidance: the will to not be; Denial: the will to not be ready or the ignorant will to nothingness in its effect; in the dimension of Discretion: Boredom: the will to not perceive; Dissemblance: the will to not appear; Disservice: the will to not distinguish or the blind will to deception in its effect; in the dimension of Beneficence: Inaction: the will to not act; Misfeasance: the will to not correctly act; Malfeasance: the will to do the thing that is not right or the inert will to erroneous action in its effect. The Good is to create the world here and now. This is the absolute imperative to create. The fundamental principle of an operative ethic of simplicity is attention. Defections from an ethical disposition take the form of willing—willing to act unethically or willing not to act ethically—but then too willing to act ethically but not acting ethically—willing that is not acting ethically. Not merely the intending of Evil, but the Evil of merely intending—what can only be a departure from attending. The difference between attending and intending—ethical doing and unethical willing—is the difference between Good and Evil. The twelve dispositions of Evil are what the ethic of simplicity has always already put out of play in enacting a truth as a singularity absolutely particularized. The ethic of simplicity knows nothing of Badiou’s desubstancialized form of history itself—of the resurrected Christ—the “subjective space” in which the “reactive figure” or the “obscure subject” might “take their place.” It is the empty form of

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what for Paul is effectively history itself that provides Badiou with his model for the desubstancialized Subject: the Storyteller who is not his Story: the Historian who is not his History: the generic Subject who bears the truth as the not-known and unutterable eternal of time, all the while keeping its distance above sensibility, descending only to “punch a hole in sense.” Such effectively is the denial of history as world creation. But an essentially new form of thinking thinks the being of the world a matter of being embodied in omnipotence itself. Being itself thought absolutely precludes the coexistence of Good and Evil, the Good of Good and Evil. There can be no Good of Good and Evil where the imperative to create is absolute. There is a Good of Good: it is real being. The Good is the actual. The Good of Evil is that it is real non-being and indeed possibly actual non-being. Evil per se is the nonactual. Evil is actual only as doing without Readiness or Discretion. Real Evil is actual as defection from creating the new world. Evil is not actual as doing without Beneficence unless it is not actually doing without omnipotence. Badiou’s “one more” “single step” “within the modern configuration” brings him, however late or reluctantly, to the acknowledgement that Evil has a place of its own within the subjective space opened by an event, brings him into line with the modern justification of Evil. To speak of the justification of Evil is to say that Evil has standing in the Court of the Subject. But where the imperative is one of actually creating the world, there is no room for the negative figures of the Subject. But then there is no need for the incalculable location of noble gestures in the direction of an eternal truth of equality, gestures of genericity repeatedly punching holes in knowledges to make the point—to make the void—over and over again in the face of negation and the repeated triumphs of opinion, and the domestication of eternal truths—again and again in the face of defeat. Where Badiou’s revolutionary noēsis sings the praise of the indefeasibility of the insensate human spirit— at once the indefeasibility of the void—revolutionary metanoēsis thinks essentially the indefeasibility of the embodied human spirit—precisely the Resurrection—at once precisely the defeasance of the void—for the first time “the proclamation of a truth as a singularity absolutely particularized—as a singularity actually embodied in existing omnipotence.” Real Evil is doing without the possibility of Beneficence (without the possibility of doing the right thing). But actually doing without the possibility of doing right is real on the condition that it is not actually doing without omnipotence. Omnipotence makes actual real Evil not actual per se and makes not actual real Evil actual per se. Revolutionary metanoēsis is the Good saying that

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what is not is not and that what there is is for the first time absolutely new. This is the absolute novation of the notion of time, indeed, of time itself, for the first time. Revolutionary metanoēsis transcends the distinction noēsis/ metanoēsis: revolutionary meta-ontology is absolute noēsis, at once polyontology, at once the indistinguishing of mathematics and sense: the “voice of number itself singing the song of the absolute word. The absolute quality of quantum itself.” Poly-ontological personality—personality whose identity is change—is what it is to “discriminate time as absolute substance”—is what it is to create the essence of the world—to enact the Good itself. Real Evil then is not merely Badiou’s “[that] something is presented as having not to be,” but, rather that the fact of existence for the first time has not been prepared for, has not been perceived discretely, and has not been effected by right doing. Real Evil is the “not willing to… willing not to” that for the first time actually goes, albeit actually defeasible, to the very essence of creating the world. This is a function of the gift of freedom now actually existing for the first time in the form of thought. Badiou accepts that given the fact that the structure of a truth process is founded on the duplicitous structure of subjectivity its perverse imitation in the case of Nazism is practically inevitable. What does not and cannot occur to Badiou is that the root of the practical inevitability of the perversion of truth is the notion of the Same. Badiou is committed to the “return of the Same.” He reads Paul’s “universal address” as the exemplary instance of his ethical notion: “the same for all.” But there is no expectation of the transformation of the mortal human animal as such. There is no thinking essentially the resurrection of the body. Having excised the core of Paul’s proclamation Badiou has no notion of the meta-schematizing of the human body. In rejecting Paul’s message as a fable, as an historical impossibility, Badiou rejects the actuality of the impossible, and settles for the possibility of the impossible: this is the conservatism of the romantic revolutionary. Where Paul speaks of a “new foundation in Christ,” Badiou speaks of “scientific re-foundation.” In the thinking now occurring for the first time the substance or actual plenitude or body embodied for the first time in omnipotence itself— as such at once the defeasance of the void—is an infinitely open infinite particularity beginning. It has been decided once and for all against the continuum that supports the negative in the relation of trace and event: the trace is absolutely the event. Existence itself for the first time precludes the structure of the subjective moment of crisis inescapable in Badiou’s ethic of truths, precludes the necessity of resting the continuation of a truth-process

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on a “plausible fiction”—ultimately on the void—itself certainly such a fiction. The meta-ontological axiom of the ethic of truths is that there is a world “beneath the true and the false.” But the poly-ontological perception of the ethic of simplicity—whose task is not to change the world but to create the world—is that there is no world beneath the true and the false, no world beneath Good and Evil. There is no conception whatsoever of the ‘indiscernible’. Beneficence is always and everywhere the perfectly one-sided activity of persons attending to the appearance itself of existence itself now for the first time. Section III.1, “Beyond Beyond X,” begins with the question, “is there a body beyond politics?” The body existing for the first time otherwise than sovereignty, beyond profane, the body now actually thought as never before, existing beyond politics, is compared to Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the body here understood as the body not beyond but hither politics, the body of the ‘coming politics’. It is understood that Agamben defines the condition in which it is possible to be beyond and not beyond x, the condition that is the infinite potentiality of the beginning of being. Where the thinking now occurring thinks a physical ethics, Agamben, thinking hither the hither and thither of the beginning of being, thinking absolute suchness, thinks an ethics of resemblance. Agamben’s ‘coming thought’ is then understood as the identification of the death of God in Altizer and the God who comes to mind in Levinas, and logically as the identification of sheer breadth and sheer depth, as the identification—in Badiou’s language—of singularity (presentation without representation) and excrescence (represen­ tation without presentation). This resulting excrescence of singularity in Agamben’s thought is the knowability of an entity—its sheer information— dwelling beside it. Agamben thinks otherwise and not otherwise than being abandoned by Being, thinks otherwise than being as such abandoned by Being, thinks being-thus otherwise than abandoned by Being, thinks whatever being abandoned by Being otherwise than actual: the pure modality. Being is its thus, only its mode of being. The life, indeed, the body, that is irreparably its thus, is the living body of the ‘coming community’, the ‘coming politics’. Agamben means to be beyond politics “as we know it,” but not beyond politics founded on the inseparability of “the living and the living well of men.” The mode of life that would be this political life would be the inseparability of the fact and the form of the living of men, the inseparability of the singularity of life (“naked life”) and the possibilities and power of life (“context of the forms of life”) of human beings. Agamben’s

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thought here is understood as the angelic, intentional reverberation of the absolute identification of existence and thought that now actually occurs for the first time in the form of the conception of the absolute creativity of human consciousness, the projected final refuge of self-consciousness from the absolute imperative to create the new world, the refuge found in the infinite potentiality that is the divinity of the simply human world, the world whose profanity Agamben, continuing under the ban of sacred doctrine, understands to be utterly profane. Agamben’s struggle to supersede the sovereign ban from within is precisely what it is to continue to be under the ban of sacred doctrine in the world in which we live. But the lifting of the ban of sacred doctrine now occurs in the form of an essentially new consciousness, a consciousness that is the thought of existence absolutely and immediately the fact of existence. In his exposition of the nature of thought Agamben has resort to Aristotle’s text, but while for Aristotle the conditio sine qua non of potential mind is actual mind—in accord with his principle that “all things coming into being are preceded by being in actuality”—Agamben—making free use of Aristotle’s text—allows himself to think of thought as sheer potentiality, where the potentiality of thought to think itself is the experience of its own potentiality in all things it comes to think. In Agamben’s reading of what was never written in Aristotle’s text the act of altering by which potentiality becomes actuality becomes “the gift of the self [sic] to itself and to actuality.” Agamben discovers in Aristotle’s text a finite potentiality whose very nothingness—self-negating self-relation as limitation—is the infinite potentiality whose form is “its own ability to be its own ability not to be.” Potentiality not bound to the actuality that is bound to it. For Agamben this is precisely the relation of sovereign power to actuality. But for an essentially new thinking the difficulty of thinking a potentiality “entirely freed from the principle of sovereignty” is the very form of thinking a potentiality that is not beyond sovereignty—that is hither politics—its very form “that dwells beside” it, its “paradigm,” which “almost merges with it.” This difficulty is precisely the paradigm of Agamben’s thinking otherwise and not otherwise than being abandoned by Being, the difficulty “not the identity” of this thinking but “none-other” than it, the difficulty that is, precisely, not acting effortlessly: “The existence of potentiality without any relation to Being in the form of actuality.” In contrast to the ‘absolute particularity’ now thought for the first time, Agamben, thinking to be free from politics without leaving the domain of politics, consequently thinks ‘whatever

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particularity’, thinks potentiality of existence as resemblance, thinks the body as the whatever being whose physis is resemblance without archetype, ‘wrested’ from ‘the decline and death of commodities’ and made free use of in a perversion of the intention for which it was originally fashioned. Since in the light of the thinking now occurring for the first time Agamben’s thought is understood to be an extreme expression of modern reason’s complete passivity, it is not surprising that he himself finds his conception of an infinite potentiality anticipated in Kant’s reflection on time, which he understands as “auto‑affection,” “receptivity to the second degree, a receptivity that experiences itself, that is moved by its own passivity.” In the thinking now occurring, in contrast to this notion of ‘receptivity to the second degree’, there is the notion of ‘sheer receptivity’, corresponding not to auto-affection, but to alio-affection, to experiencing some thing actually not itself for the first time, experiencing itself for the first time as nothing but existence, as nothing but the other, as a receptivity whose experience— since its experience of itself apart from the subject is as nothing—is nothing but other-productive. In the thinking now occurring for the first time sheer particular experience is identified with universal experience. This takes place not through the medium of the zone of indifference, but rather in the form of the absolute placedness that is absolute singularity identical with absolute particularity, in the form of the mediation that is immediacy identical with the beginning. Beyond politics—beyond desire—beyond beyond x—not whatever singularity, not the Lovable, the cost of which is the continuing ineffability of the single person, but, rather, absolute singularity, the actually loved, not the Lovable, but the Beloved, absolute existence predicated of the single person. Whereas in the thinking now occurring for the first time the single person is sayable, the absolute saying itself the single person, in Agamben the “undefinable and unforgettable” exemplary life—whose “proper place” is the “empty space” within the zone of indifference established by sovereignty—is “purely linguistic being,” where the whatever is the being in language of the non-linguistic. Where in the thinking now occurring absolute singularities are embodied in omnipotence, in the coming thought whatever singularities “communicate only in the empty space of the example, without being tied by any common property, by any identity. They are expropriated of all identity, so as to appropriate being itself, the sign ε”—the sign of belonging. For the thinking now occurring the answer to the paradoxes of set theory is the discovery that the excluded middle between belonging and not belonging is

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embodiment, that the ultimate ‘set’ is the non-set of non-sets, embodiment, where embodiment is universal unicity. In effect Agamben discovers the excluded middle to be the “multiple common place” of the exemplary being of the zone of indistinction, “the coming to itself of each singularity” of the being “expropriated of all identity.” What Agamben does not think is what now actually occurs in place of the suchness of the individual: for the first time the absolute thisness/the absolute particularity of the existence of the single person. The intelligibility of this absolute thisness is set out in an exposition that adds the real trinary logic categories of beginning/notation/ height and omnipotence/creation/volume to the logical notions shared in one way or another by Peirce, Badiou, and Agamben, viz., presentation/ denotation/breadth and representation/connotation/depth. It is then shown how in the essentially new form of thinking ‘Beginning’, the very notation of singularity is intelligibility: the intelligibility of singularity is very notation: the very writing (saying) of existence is its intelligibility. It is not merely that there is ‘no hors-texte’, not merely that there is nothing apart from the text, but, rather that there is for the first time texte hors d’ hors-texte, text beyond beyond-text, the beginning the very real of existence, the writing/the finite unity that is existence for the first time, the existence that is as never before essentially construction. The absolute imperative is “to write what was never written,” to create, to write essentially and absolutely for the first time. But in the ‘coming thought’ the “fourth figure” added to Badiou’s “three figures,” the ‘excrescence of singularity’ that appears passim in Agamben’s text as the threshold of indistinction, as the halo that is the “matter that does not remain beneath the form,” the “exposure, its being pure exteriority,” of “the such,” as “the experience of the limit itself, the experience of being-within an outside,” is the locus of the infinite potentiality of the beginning of being. The paradox of the ‘coming thought’ is that it is, at the same time, inside and outside the state of exception that sovereignty is, not beyond what it would be beyond, hither beyond x, hither sovereignty and politics, and, precisely so, not beyond sovereignty and politics. Section III.2, “Creating Society,” raises the questions, “Beyond sovereignty, is there for the first time a society of fully unique singulars?” and “Beyond the distinction between community and society, can there be a distinction between society and economy?” Agamben’s notion of the coming politics as a struggle between the State and humanity as whatever singularity is examined. It is demonstrated how whatever singularity, rejecting “all identity and every condition of belonging,” wanting to “appropriate belonging

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itself,” is actually the usurpation by the non-super of the place of the super, the usurpation of the properties of that class that can have only one member none other than itself. This class of whatever singularity is distinguished from the absolute singularity beyond class thought for the first time in the form of the thinking now occurring which banishes the very notion of class, banishes the prerequisite of any banishing. Banished to nowhere, the notion of class now belongs to the past. This banishing of the conditio sine qua non of banishing is essentially beyond self-consciousness in thinking the absolute existence of the other. But Agamben’s class of whatever singularity—hither the death of God and the God who comes to mind—binds together in an inseparable union a perfect anonymity and a pure nomination in the form of the indistinction of singularity and excrescence, in the purified form of the super class that is the zone of indistinction expropriated from sovereignty. Remaining within the zone of indistinction expropriated from sovereignty whatever singularity wages a war against the very ground of war without leaving that ground precisely because it lacks the energy to do so—because it does not “feel up to forgoing” the indistinction of the opposites of public and private, of zoê and bios, etc. Agamben’s problem is “is it possible to have a political community….” The ‘coming thought’, unable to think the beginning of an essentially non-political society for which precisely it lacks the energy (Ô ®n™rgeia), contents itself with turning the spectacle of the spectacular state against that spectacle and that state, contents itself in effect with turning the power to not-be against the power to not-be, to bring about the “self-grasping of evil,” the awakening of things in a state of forgetfulness to “the transcendence inherent in the very taking-place of things.” The logic of the resulting “simply human life”—understood in the thinking now occurring as the utter banality of the good—is quite consistently the logic of means without end. The class of whatever singularity is the class of the Common Itself, absolutely containing the contingent in “the sphere of a pure mediality” altogether without end or ends, requiring of itself that pure belonging itself belong only to itself. Such is the “new plane of immanence.” But where the Good is to create the world here and now, ends are absolutely means for the first time: means and ends are absolutely identical. The absolute middle existing is, precisely, absolute particularity. This absolute multiplicity is for the first time the conception in essence of the “classless society,” the absolute exteriority of the outside for the first time: absolute meta-modality: existence fitting the first time for the first time: being commodious for the first time: as never before intelligibility absolutely beyond ‘containing’.

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The unprecedented thought now occurring beyond sovereignty essentially conceives not belonging none other than itself, essentially conceives absolute thisness for the first time as the very form of the unintelligibility of “no creation.” This absolute discontinuity of the continuum, the perfectly rational distinction between the parts of the continuum, “everything else absolutely unconditionally itself,” is “the thing itself abstracted from nothing (the perfect abstraction, the abstraction ex nihilo).” Beyond “resemblance” this is the absolute break with the unredeemed passivity of modernity. In Agamben this unredeemed passivity takes the form of a thinking alternative to science and knowledge, “contemplation without knowledge.” But in the thinking now occurring for the first time contemplation is the creation of the object—knowing essentially the being of the object for the first time—knowing essentially the image of God for the first time, that is, the image of God qua Creator. Here contemplation is not without knowledge, but beyond knowledge (where knowledge is a matter of intentionality, a being beyond x). This beginning of consciousness as complete objectivity is the essential foundation of the new society identically of the new economy beyond sovereignty, the perfect measure of being the first time, where “perfect” does not exclude change: for the first time absolutely & essentially infinite finitude: finitude that knows nothing of the division inside-outside. Absolute actuality is for the first time precisely not at the expense of the perfect distinguishability of its elements. In contrast, the ‘coming thought’ is an inflection on the ground of genericity shared with Badiou, upon which ground Badiou has erected his version of the pure Sovereign in the form of the Axiom of Choice, the very instantiation of the illegal and anonymous being of intervention without an event, whose obverse is the very principle of “maximal order,” indeed, the very principle of set theory. For Agamben the form of the ‘coming world’ is “absolutely, irreparably profane,” and, as such, God—not the redundancy, sovereign God, but pure God, the sovereign pure and simple, simple human life. Thus, in effect, God is the pure Idea, the resemblance without archetype as the form of whatever being, who does not take place but is the taking place of whatever takes place. In the thinking now occurring what is essentially conceived for the first time is not this essentially dispassionate God, but, rather, God the taking place of all things the very essence of history, the perfect simplicity of being who takes place not taking place—the very Omnipotence that is precisely the absolute exteriority of everything— the very passion of Christ. What now actually occurs for the first time

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is the body itself social whose parts are related in a freedom essentially without strings unified for the first time by the infinite unbinding, infinite particularity. For the first time the absolute passion of existence: perfect withness sans the prerequisites of all banishing, sans wall & class, the body identically Creating Society, the society creating the new world. Agamben’s ‘coming community’ would obviate (were it possible) this Creating Society, placing in the way of the absolute imperative to create the new world an essentially complacent despair, which takes satisfaction in the notion that the world is irreparably and irrevocably profane—this the most recent form of the passion for certitude—its desperate certainty its only hope—the form of a “passage outside the world,” the threshold discovered in and as the sacred limit intrinsic to the utter profaneness of the world. Not beyond sacred—together with Badiou not beyond the Good—not beyond the fact that the world is—knowing nothing of the flight that is the absolute creation of the world in the form of the thinking now occurring for the first time—the ‘coming thought’ thinks the passage outside the world that is at once threshold and halo. For Agamben this threshold (Grenze) is explicitly the alternative to the Kantian notion of “a limit (Schranke) that knows no exteriority.” But for the new form of thinking now beginning the Kantian categorial Einschränkung foreshadows, however weakly, the essentially new notion of the minimum, actual existence absolutely & essentially minimumized/digitalized/particularized, the new world construction taking place “beyond beyond x.” For the first time the “taking place of things” “takes place” essentially/apocalyptically as the absolute placedness of each existing thing, the very form of the new creation, beyond the Kantian distinction of Quality and Quantity upon which Agamben effectively relies in choosing Grenze over Schranke, in choosing the pure notion of extension in its finite form as an empty space added to a singularity. In the thinking now occurring there is no indifference. The absolute specification of the transcendental essence thought in essence for the first time exhausts what otherwise would be “all the possibilities” of whateverness, the halo surrounding the finite. Absolute singularity beyond class, the new economy of existence itself for the first time, is the requisite provision made for every existent. For the first time the economy of existence—omnipotence itself moving to new ground newly embodying the Incarnation—is the distributor. The perceived discrepancy between the requisite provision made for every existent and the appearance of “humanity’s empty hands” arises as the result of the discrepancy between doing and willing, in particular

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as the result of not having the patience to perceive what’s different, as the result of lacking Discretion, that dimension of the ethic of simplicity where, uniquely, willing, qua Spirit, is that doing that is having the patience to see what’s different, finally, as the result of Despair. The fundamental cause of the perceived discrepancy is the failure to attend absolutely to the absolute imperative to create the new world. In the ‘coming thought’ this failure takes, at the most basic level, the form of the notion that nourishing is selfnourishing, takes, in effect, the form of Disservice. Agamben, making free use of Aristotle’s text, would appropriate from him the identity of nourishing with “the very desire to preserve one’s own Being.” But it is demonstrated against Agamben by resort to the text that the Aristotelian soul nourishes the body for the sake of preserving itself as the generator of “such as itself,” another body-actualizing soul. Nourishing is not ultimately self-nourishing, but ensouled-body-nourishing to enable the bringing into being “(another) such as itself.” The ultimate raison d’ être of human nourishing in Aristotle is the preservation of the human oʺknomºa, the preservation of the distribution of body-informing souls. In the thinking now occurring, where the end is absolutely the means for the first time, the end is the creating of another identically the I surfacing the body, mediated by the absolute distribution of existence itself, the quantum-quality of existence for the first time, the oʺkonømoq the “distributor of the dwelling” at once qua beginning the oʺkonomºa the “distribution of the dwelling” of existence. Section III.3, “Morality of the New Beginning,” starts with an examination of the notion of the body of the Resurrection. Beyond resemblance what is actually thought for the first time is the intentio that is the living body. This is the beginning of the perfect construction of the living body—beyond animate, the living body creating the new world. Agamben notes that for Thomas Aquinas the ultimate perfection of human nature is contemplation; animal life—the primary perfection of human nature— “will not exist in the resurrection.” This raises the question for the thinking now occurring whether there is between the first perfection of human nature and its last perfection a third or middle perfection—a middle actually now for the first time embodying the first and the last. To this the answer is Yes. What now actually occurs is the beginning of the medium perfectum wherein the perfection of the living human body is the infinite sharing of the contemplation of the Divine Essence, the beginning of the perfect middle wherein the complete natural life of the body infinitely shares the creaturely life of the Godhead. Against both Thomas and Agamben the thinking now

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occurring understands essentially that there is nothing omnipotence is able to do that it doesn’t actually do. Omnipotence is absolutely not a matter of potentiality. Omnipotence embodying the Incarnation for the first time altogether displaces the question “what am I [are we] capable of doing.” Such as never before is the foundation of the new global ethics and morality, the very ground of the imperative to create the world. For the first time it is thought in essence: the God of Revelation has absolutely no secrets. There is absolutely and essentially no “new plane of immanence” alternative to a “new plane of transcendence,” no tabula rasa—there is nothing but the writing that always and everywhere is for the first time. The resurrected Body of Christ the divine Word incarnate wherein “all that God knows” is known is the eucharistic essence of existence in an absolutely non-paradigmatic form, in the form of the absolute schema the absolutely real. Agamben focuses on the problematic of the resurrected body in the thinking of the Church as a fundamental locus of the problematic of man and animal in Western thought. He does not think as does the thinking now occurring the beginning of the actual identity of notitia simplicis intelligentiae and notitia visionis in the form of an essentially new consciousness. Thus he is concerned with the difference between man and animal in the context of the “collapse upon each other” of “being and the nothing, licit and illicit, divine and demonic.” But in the thinking now occurring where simplicity is not alternative to complexity, the opposites are for the first time absolutely discriminated. Most to the point, the human is perfectly not the inhuman, the human animal is absolutely not the inhuman animal, with the pertinent consequence that there is no necessity whatsoever for the human animal to be redeemed from its presupposed inhumanity by being enlisted in Badiou’s adventitious occurrence of an Immortal, nor, on the other hand, for Agamben’s resignation to the human animal’s unredeemableness, passing beyond from within the anthropological machines of earlier and modern times to the halo surrounding the “simply human life” that ensues when “the world of guilt and justice” have been left behind, when life “shines in the ‘saved night’ of nature’s (and, in particular, human nature’s) eternal, unsavable survival after it has definitively bid farewell to the logos and to its own history.” Grounding itself in the “constitutive Stimmung of Dasein,” boredom, which the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity” identifies as the first defective disposition in the dimension of Discretion, as the very ground of Indiscretion, “the will to not perceive,” the ‘coming thought’ abandons itself to the “great ignorance” of the Gnostic Basilides wherein for Agamben man

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and animal “outside of being, [are] saved precisely in their being unsavable.” Where Agamben passes beyond from within the anthropological machine that functions by “excluding an already human being from itself as not (yet) human,” the thinking for the first time thinking absolutely now essentially conceives for the first time the “not (yet)” “beyond beyond x” as “absolutely now.” This thinking thinks the “not (yet) human” as the “absolutely now human.” Beyond the indistinction of saved and unsavable, the now for the first time beyond unsavable: thought essentially the now for the first time absolutely saved. Agamben would put an end to the abstraction from praxis that perpetuates itself infinitely in a norm without content, by turning such abstraction inside out into an excess of denotation over signification, an excess that cannot be signified but only lived. In the thinking now occurring for the first time such an excess is inconceivable precisely because signification (connotation) is for the first time derived as the product of denotation and notation, such that, strictly speaking, connotation (signification) is not a matter of signifying, but, rather, of being. In the thinking now occurring for the first time the norm is in force without any reference to reality without for that reason being an abstraction from praxis because the norm itself is reality, where the reality is the absolute imperative to create a new world. Neither Levinas’ metaphysical ethics nor Altizer’s cryptophysical ethics nor Badiou’s diaphysical ethics nor Agamben’s paraphysical ethics, this absolutely and essentially physical ethics is “essentially transformative of the world order existing hitherto.” Agamben’s Indiscretion mocks all unawares the Discretion of the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” mocks “having the patience to see what’s different” in the form of his notion of “an eternal facticity beyond Being.” Forgetful of otherwise wanting to appropriate belonging itself, in his reading of love Agamben’s Eternal Indiscretion safeguards the Uralte, the oldest of the old, the point of indifference between potentiality and impotentiality, in the form of nonbelonging and darkness. In the ‘coming thought’ the ‘new creature’ lives within the confines of the establishment again of all things at once the leaving off from their establishment. In the end Agamben is not beyond politics, and complacently so. But in the thinking now occurring for the first time the ‘new creature’ now lives beyond politics in the absolute freedom of an actually new creation. Thought essentially this is the beginning of the Resurrection. The question for the new creature thinking for the first time an essentially new normalcy, the question for the first time is how to live this. What is the norm of the new normalcy? What is the new morality saying

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itself for the first time in the form of the new normalcy? How can there be a norm for a normalcy whose essence is perpetually new creating? The answers as never before: absolute penetration is the absolute norm of the new normalcy: the beginning of absolutely unconditioned omnipotence is the New Norm: the absolutely new/now is the beginning that is the Norm of the New Normalcy. The table entitled “The Morality of the New Beginning” articulates in historico-logical synoptic form the Normal Beginning now actually embodying for the first time the absolute imperative to create the new world. The principle of its organic organization is the ninefold trinary logic array that embodies “the immediate simplicity of the perfectly differentiated Unity of real trinary logic.” The nine imperatives of the morality of the beginning logically arranged are the following: (1) You shall be absolutely now. (0) You shall be wholly engaged with the world. (0) You shall love things. (1) You shall cherish the name. (0) You shall create the world. (0) You shall love the truth. (1) You shall be holy every day. (0) You shall love the body. (0) You shall love the person. Section III.3 closes with an Exposition of this Ennealogue of the Beginning Morality, a preliminary exposition of each of the nine imperatives. They are understood with reference to one another and to their historical precedents, especially the Beatitudes, implicitly and explicitly in comparison to Badiou’s meta-ontology and ethic of truths and Agamben’s coming morality, ultimately in terms of the essentially new form of thinking developed in the whole of the text preceding, and with reference to the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity” in Section II.2. In the course of the exposition the effective relationship of the imperatives You shall love the body and You shall love the truth is shown to be the relation of commodal cause and effect. Omnipotence itself is understood to create without causality. The unique commodal causal relation of these two imperatives—non-displacing effective taking the place of—is at once the displacement of the “eternal facticity beyond Being” and

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of any notion of contemplation without cognition and knowledge. Finally, the ontological/moral import of the logical relationship of another two of the nine imperatives, the last and the first, You shall love the person and You shall be absolutely now, is shown to be the guarantee/proof that the love of the person is absolutely free and unconditioned as is the relation of the Creator and the creature. Included are four appendices, “The Person as Absolute Particular,” first presented at the Seventh International Conference on Persons, in Memphis, TN, in August 2003, “Categories and Relations of Persons,” and “Whether Evil Creates the New World,” drawn from The New York Philosophy Corporation Spring 2007 course Quaestiones Quaelibet, and “The Scriptural Understanding: Omnipotence Ceasing Completely Works Absolutely,” originally compiled for the Spring 2008 course Introduction to the New Testament. Also included are four Backnotes which are referenced from time to time throughout the text. For the real contribution their participation has made to the development of his thought, the writer thanks those who joined one or both of the 2004 and 2005 seminars, Jessica Britt, Todd Carter, Carolyn Cerame, Adam Fuller, Steven Hoath, Waltraud Ireland, Alia Johnson, Teagan Leahy, Zarina Maiwandi, Lissa McCullough, William Pustarfi, and Charles Stein. He also thanks Nancy Baker, Lisa Bruzzone, James and Patricia Conneen, Sara Hurley, Adam Lobel, Jonathan Rogers, and Allan Whiteman for their important contributions to one or more classes he conducted for The New York Philosophy Corporation between 2003 and 2009.

I Incarnation Essential Conception of Existing

The Global Imperative to Begin to Exist ——————————— G™gonan. ®g◊ tØ ùAlfa kaÁ tØ ^ʺV, Ô ΩrxÓ kaÁ tØ t™loq.1 They are accomplished facts. I am the Alpha at once the Omega, the Beginning even the End. ———————————

Beyond beyond being the divine essence of existence exists. Existence Absolute exists for the first time. Righteousness is the thanking and the praising of this perfectly specific existence; the divine is the thanking and the praising of this righteousness. The distance between creature and Creator is transcended in essence: for the first time relation is the absolute actuality of the world itself: as never before the relation creature and Creator is an absolutely unconditioned intimacy in existence. As never before the Creator shares itself with the creature. For the first time history is existence with the other absolute. For the first time the transcendental is essentially transcendence: beginning in time the foundation of the reality of time: time founding itself in beginning. Ever since the Incarnation the human species actually existing has inhabited a transcendental realm. The first phase of this residence, Christian European, was transcendental consciousness as finite self-consciousness; the second phase, Modern European, was transcendental absolute self-consciousness as consciousness of the finite other; the third phase, American Modern, was transcendental self-consciousness as infinite relative transaction, finite self-consciousness as infinite transaction with the other. Now occurring for the first time the fourth phase is the foundation of the first three, and, as such, the final phase, categorial Fourthness, the beginning and end of the beginning and end.2 This is transcendental consciousness as the selfless beginning of an infinite transaction with the absolute other, as the beginning of infinitely selfless existence—world pragmatism.3 Infinite beginning is the essence of absolutely selfless existence. The world-imperative now actually existing is to actualize infinitely the very first thought. This very first thought not the second thought is the beginning.

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The very first thought identically the second thought is omnipotence.4 What is now thought essentially for the first time is the existence of the beginning of omnipotence. The second thought is absolutely identical with the first thought in the beginning; thought essentially the second thought is the beginning of the first thought. The beginning is thought after before— at once thought before after—the first thought. The second thought shares the perfect beginning of the first thought, shares the inexhaustible essence of the first thought’s infinite beginning. The second thought’s beginning is existence: it is the first thought, whose beginning is the first identically the last the very existence of thought. This beginning now actually occurring is the first thought absolutely identified with the second thought (here the with, the Third, is absolute, whereas, in Peirce, while there is Absolute First and Absolute Second, the Third ‘is of its own nature relative’5): existence for the first time the beginning of thought. This is the first time experience of the perfect novelty of the beginning of the existence of everything: at once the first time experience of the beginning of thought itself: the existential experience of the beginning of a new thought-form itself absolutely thought: thought itself the first time perfect transparency of the other’s otherness, the perceptive clarification of the beginning of the transcendent essence of the person, the conception of absolutely every-thing’s essentially beginning in the form of the infinitely different other, the infinitely other relating, in the form of the shared essence of perfect alterity, in the form of the universal distribution of the ‘very substance of divinity’.6 The essentially self-referential reception of this new beginning is Hell, or, the actual death of God, or, Sin transcendent, or the relatively selfless Self.7 On the other hand, the perfectly immediate reception of this essentially new form of thought, the essentially other-related reception of this new beginning, is Heaven Itself, the Sinless transcendental, at once the Deathless Body, the absolutely selfless Other. Perfect alterity for the first time shares itself. Perfect alterity shakes the universe for the first time, reveals the transcendental essence of the universe, the existence of infinitely transcendent persons, at once the transcendental personality conceived, the revelation of the actually existent Transcendental Person, the actually new existence, the existence of the Finite God in the form of the resurrected Christ.8 The conception of the infinitely new existence of the Finite God identically its environment is the form of the inception of the new life of the world, of the life which is the beginning itself of the universe. For the first time the universe itself essentially conceived is perfectly human.

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This conception of the essentially perfect humanity of the universe is the beginning of the species-making species’ transcendence of the universe itself.9 Indeed, the inception of its perfect penetration is the transcendence of the new universe. The universe for the first time opens itself in the form of complete temporality.10 At the new edge of the universe is neither nothing nor almost nothing; at the infinite edge of the infinitely finite/infinitely flat universe is abyssless absolute beginning. This is the unconditionally universal beginning. The absolutely spaceless beginning of the measure of time itself is the new conception in terms of which human organization is actually intelligible. The real beginning of the human body is the abyssless edge of the universe. There is no beginning but that it is the beginning of that corporate humanity which is the actuality of the body. The body is the first thought of the infinite universe. The body is the first transcendental essence. For the first time the human body absolutely & essentially exists: for the first time humanity absolutely exists. The essentially transcendental body conceived in essence is the first. The first conceives in essence that everything is absolutely first. The first thought of the first transcendental essence is the catholicological universe. The first thought of the body is the universality of existence. The first thought of the actually human body is that it is the res cogitans absoluta, the first thought of the ‘thinking thing’ now for the first time in history essentially perfect—the body essentially thinking—is that Earth is the embodiment of the intelligible universe. This is the first time existent actuality of the body itself: for the first time the wholeness of the res cogitans: the complete actuality of the first thought, at once the existence of the second thought, indeed, at once the existence of the last thought. The existence of the wholeness of the first thought is foundation. Thought in essence is the first actuality of the foundation. Where the eternal/temporal distinction is transcended in essence, this is the inception of the actual life of the res cogitans at once the beginning of the absolute temporality of the reality of the thinking body: the ‘thinking thing’ for the first time bodied absolutely in thought: the beginning of the novum cogito: the beginning of the realization of the ‘new heaven and new earth’.11 In this time for the first time essentially temporal, in this first ‘fullness of time’ thought in essence, in this first historical realization of time itself—the abyss is no more. No more more, the beginning is absolutely & essentially the whole. This is the absolute uprooting of the material idealism/idealistic materialism of existence, of the nonhistorical/ imperfect body, of the merely ideal experience of the body.12 This is the

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beginning which is void of the abyss, the inception of abyssless existence/the absolutely pure existence of the abyssless start: the beginning unreservedly nothing but existence. This is very creation: being ex nihilo; this is to create: God first with God: the first word identical with God. This, then, is the beginning of existence identical with thought, the beginning of thought identical with the other. This is the existence for the first time of thought and experience absolutely identical, the thought of absolute experience (nothing is neither present nor absent at this new beginning). Now occurring for the first time in history this is the experience of the absolute increase of existence: the perfect bodying of the initial transparency, the universe-filling cubic absolute absolutely beginning to exist, the foundation for the first time in the form of existence.13 Now a new humanity experiences the startling plurality of a new world that in its essential immediacy is at once the starting block. This is the experience of the start of universal thought. This is the world experience of the divine body which essentially articulates the unconditional imperative to create a new world. This is the new start which is the absolute elimination of rest: the starting block absolute: the existence of the divine body itself, the intelligible essence of which is to begin to build itself in absolute selflessness: divinity transcending itself absolutely in the form of the imperative that an essentially new humanity begin in the form of the transcendental Jesus Christ, that the universe is created in the essentially transcendental form of the Finite God now actually existing. No longer is there either more or less than this imperative to begin—neither the essentially beginningless formal notion of absolute self-consciousness that Man is God in essence—nor the inception of the formally notionless selfless self, which is the death of theology, the imperfect revelation of the beginning just now existing, the realization of the death of God. The imperative now conceived is that the new humanity create the kingdom of heaven ‘on earth as it is in heaven’,14 that is, the new imperative is absolute other-consciousness beginning to exist as the form of the universe itself, and, as such, beginning to exist as the first form of the body, at once as the essentially global form of the first society universally existing, beginning to exist as the form Ô kauolik¸ of society existing absolutely for the first time. This form of the first body is absolutely the new individuality, perfectly identifying the world as the individual, and essentially realizing the Unconditioned Single One of the World. The imperative which is the form of the new singularity is the beginning of the absolute elimination

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of every notion of barrier, save the barrier/the real which is no barrier15— the imperative to create the world.16 The new individuality begins in the actual perception that the a priori of creation is freedom, and that the transcendental a priori is creation. Creation transcends the a priori other:17 there is experience now for the first time of the transcendental a priori ex nihilo: the beginning itself a priori transcendental creation: in the form of the absolute, that is, essentially intelligible, beginning the a priori other no longer a posteriori: the beginning of the essentially intelligible existence of nothing a priori: creation itself nothing a priori. This is the beginning of the absolutely immediate experience of the other. The new form of the world is the inception of the essential priority of the other (where no other is a self)—to create the world. Indeed, in this form is clearly perceived the fact that the vanishing of transcendence is the vanishing of nothing beginning, at once the vanishing of the beginning in reserve, that is, the vanishing of that infinitesimal trace of the transcendental ideal which is the radical inability to transcend transcendence. This is now for the first time the abyss of vanishing at once the vanishing of the abyss, the vanishing which is itself no vanishing, absolutely coinciding the existence which is the beginning of a new plurality absolutely embodying the nothingness of the a priori other: actual self-transcendencelessness after self. The other/the person is the first time experience of the actuality of history: the other is the first actuality of the body allowing no time for thought which is not act, for thought which is not actually the thought of the other, for thought which is not the actual bodying of the other. The universe no longer has time for the other-self distinction. Time itself begins in time: in the absolute temporality of the real now occurring for the first time in thought there is no timeless time itself (no passage of time): time itself is no less the temporal beginning: time itself is the absolute thought of the new act of creation: time itself for the first time is the absolute actuality of the other’s body, at once of the conception of the new body, at once of the conception of the artifactual body.18 The artifactual body is the perfect conception of the new creation. The artifactual body is the inception of the absolutely selfless interchangeability of absolutely discrete individualities, the initiation of the absolutely unconditioned unicity of plural personalities, the beginning of the complete joy of existence. This initiation itself is of the very essence of the realization of personality: no longer is there either waiting (waiting for nothing, anticipation in reserve) or the realization of non-identity (waiting for nothing reduced to nothing, beginning in reserve).

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The beginning at once the end is the infinite postponement of delay, the infinite deferral of deferral, which absolute postponement of postponement is the very essence of personality, the very foundation of personal actuality, the start of the infinite freedom constituting the person. This infinite postponement of delay is the start of the actuality of the body’s new freedom as the body of the essentially new person, as the body of the singular other, the constitution of which is a definite infinite of others, at once a number of infinite others. The infinite postponement of delay is the beginning of an infinite interobjectivity, the inception of a shared universe of objectivity, of objective, that is, real, others, the beginning of a new world of real egos. The I, qua self, is essentially and categorically no longer real; the essentially categorically real I is the first person other. The other, existing for the first time as the essentially universal body, is the (singular/plural)/(plural/singular) which is the unum.19 What universally occurs for the first time in history is the real unity of the first person: the I as the first person unum. This ‘first person unum’ is the actual intelligibility, the transcendental existence which is the real identity of the ego in the act of creating. The act of beginning is absolutely roomless of the conception a priori of the other, that is, the beginning is the perfect emptiness of the conception of self-identity to which inevitably there adheres an irreducible notness which is the form of not having begun at once the form of not beginning, that is, having begun, not not beginning, not, therefore, the abyss of beginning, but, indeed, the beginning not the transcendence ex abysso of beginning, rather, the continuance of beginning which is beginning’s undoing.20 The real unity of the first person is the experience of the otherhood of the other, the experience of the ‘thinking thing’ which in no way whatsoever justifies the attribution of ‘self ’, but of which the right understanding is that the ego that is the first person unum qua the infinitesimal limit which is ‘to begin’ exists as other. The unity of the first person unum is constituted essentially as beginningness. Beginningitself-ness is the minimum unicity of the first person. Separated from the minimum unicity of beginning (were it possible) the first person would be nothing whatsoever, the eternal self self-suspended in the form of the possible impossibility.21 Conceived in essence the specificity of personality is essentially historical for the first time: the particularity of personality is the severity of beginning, at once the perfect uprootedness which is categorical selflessness. This beginning which is the ground of the person is the perfectly severe trial. This start is the absolutely infallible existential

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judgment from which even “no one” does not escape: the perfectly sharp measure of beginning against which even anonymity is not proof: the beginning itself which is the apocalyptic ground of every person now alive in the universe. The absolutely sharp edge of this beginning is absolutely roomless of other than action; the first transcendental reality—which itself is not unnameable—is absolute act. If it is not action entire, the necessity of the new beginning is infinite self-division, the absolute self-severing of self in the rest which is death. To stand on this absolutely sharp edge of beginning is perpetually to create. The reality of the first transcendental is absolutely roomless of perception which is not essentially conception. Now for the first time idealism and materialism are no more: inside and outside are no more: for the first time in history the perpetual and of self-consciousness is not. In the form of beginning intellect itself meta-identifies reason, therefore it does so not in being, as in Aristotle, nor in nonbeing, as in Descartes, nor in the being of nonbeing as in Kant. In the form of beginning to exist for the first time reason in essence is the essence of understanding, therefore it is not absolute being, as in Hegel, nor the being of the nonbeing of being, as in Heidegger, nor the being of the nonbeing of nonbeing, the experience of actual nothingness, as in Altizer.22 In beginning transcendence itself is identified with intellect absolutely understanding. It is so, therefore, not founding itself in Emersonian transcendentalism, nor in Jeffersonian feeling, nor, finally then, in the instinctual idealism of American pragmatism.23 For the first time the pure exteriority of nature, the world body identically spirit/ mind. The now existing now is the first: it is the beginning in essence: it is the open door which ‘none shall be able to close’,24 no longer ‘facing’ the species, through which the species now steps—in beginning transcending the ‘facing’ door—in beginning transcending ‘I Am the door’25—in beginning the absolute outsidedness entered—in beginning the absolute one-sidedness of ‘to create’—in beginning the transcendence of the two-sidedness of the opening, the existence of Heaven Itself after the existence of ‘Heaven become Hell’. Ex abysso ‘The door is I’ is identically “‘I Am the door’ is the I beginning”: after self-identity—self-identity no more—the ego absolutely existing the place of infinite otherness: the beginning of the infinitely other ego, at once the conception of the beginning of the infinite existence of the infinite a priori of the ego: the transcendental ego beginning to exist a posteriori: the categorically selfless creation which is the annihilation in essence of the conception of self-creation, the coming to be for the first

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Beyond Sovereignty

time of the consciousness-identity of the absolute other. The transcendence of the openness of the door is entering in essence the new grammar of the first thought now actually existing, the beginning of being is now the essence itself of intelligibility: the categorical requirement of the selfless beginning of being itself is beginning itself: if God is identified with being, the categorical requirement of an absolutely selfless God beginning is Christ beginning a new world order: the actual beginning is God God beginning: the categorical requirement of the real beginning of the essentially new world now existing is God with Christ. Not the divine identity of Christ, not the Christ-identity of God, but the divine sharing of Christ, the Christ-sharing of God, is the absolute creation.26 This sharing of Christ by the Godshare of Christ is the reception of Wm. James’ ‘the very substance of divinity’ in the form of the creation of a brand new bread of existence. This is the first time bread existing. Nothing short of this absolute sharing of essence is the reality of the new beginning of existence: nothing short of existence itself existing is the reality of an essentially new beginning: nothing short of the absolute sharing of existence itself is the inception of the new reality of humanity.27 The human existence now actually beginning is otherwise than the truth of the present absolute self-consciousness, otherwise than the truth of the absence of absolute self. This new beginning is otherwise than the absence of self which is the total presence of self. The quality of this beginning is absolutely selfless, at once absolutely pre-less. This beginning is the absolute loss, therefore, by categorial ‘Fourthness’ of that quality which is the foundationless ‘originality’ of the essence of American thought, by the loss of which ‘Fourthness’ takes precedence of the categorial ‘Firstness’.28 Beginning, ‘Fourthness’ is absolute existence. Beginning is the existence itself of ‘foundation’.29 The very act of absolute ‘Fourth’ is the beginning to which now for the first time consciousness itself bears witness, as—ex abysso—to the absolute quality of absolute existence. This is the complete qualification of the creation as the work of the species-making species, as the infinite outworking of the reality of the Incarnation, as the word made flesh in essence:30 not the occurrence to self-consciousness of the absolute in time as creation, but the occurrence to consciousness of the creation of an absolute temporality, that is, the conception of temporality the absolute existing ex nihilo, the absolute existing for the first time in essence. What now actually occurs is not Walt Whitman’s radical deduction of American consciousness: “I accept Time absolutely,”31 the incarnation in the form

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of the ‘always now’ of the novus ordo seclorum, the secular effectiveness of Jonathan Edwards’ thought, to wit: “I worship the apparent Christ,” “I perceive God as the appearance of God,” “I accept salvation as Christ.”32 What now actually occurs is “I accept to create Time absolutely,” “I worship the apparent creation of Christ,” “I perceive God as the absolute appearance of God for the first time,” “I accept salvation as to create Christ.” Now for the first time in history the ego hears, as such, the Godly imperative of God: create Christ’s salvation. In the hearing of this word the ego is stripped of the essence of self-consciousness: in acting on this imperative the ego is for the first time pure other-consciousness: the thinking thing is the absolute actuality of the other for the first time. The infinitely thinking thing is thought essentially for the first time. The essential limit of consciousness is no longer Peirce’s ‘the soul’s consciousness of its relation to God’,33 but God’s beginning-relation to Christ, that is, the divine beginning to exist temporality thought in essence. For the first time the ego hears as Christ hears.34 The beginning is absolutely comprehended. Being is sensibly identified with beginning.35 The beginning is perfect withness. The beginning is the perfect withness of existence itself. For the first time in history being sensible is beginning neither with something nor nothing.36 The beginning is an infinitely pure withness. In this beginning God identifies divinity as absolute metaboly— not the divine metamorphosis of self into other,37 but absolute withness.38 The absolute exteriority of the outside of beginning eliminates the room for affirming, as Wm. James does, that there is nothing outside the flux. The absolute first identified with the absolute second is the absolute third, which is the absolute relative, the Holy Spirit.39 This conception of the Trinity is the beginning as the Fourth categorically ordering the categories. The beginning as Fourth is relation (the Third) identified as withness.40 This beginning identifies relation with relation-in-essence: the beginning identifies with with withness: the beginning is the with-relation absolute. The beginning with absolutely with. This beginning is the absolute freedom that is the withness of the with. The beginning of existence now identically thought itself in essence is not some new kind of existence (it is essentially after the form of thought that ‘being is a matter of more or less, so as to merge insensibly into nothing’41). Rather, now for the first time thought in essence God the Creator exists absolutely, or, the Creator is absolutely with the mind of Christ. This beginning is the magnitude of infinite being existing. The being of every thing is this beginning sensible. To

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sense the beginning of the thing is to create. And the global imperative, the absolute mind of Christ the Creator, the global imperative which is the Creator, is to create the new sensible beginning, to construct the new sense of beginning wherein being itself is absolute proportion, wherein consciousness is absolute catholicological non-generic mind, wherein global existence is essentially specificity. This is an actually new perception of the Creator’s essence, which we witness, the new conception of the Creator’s constitution.42 In this new conception of beginning the Law of Nature itself is changed in essence to the Imperative of Creating. For the first time the “natural law” is to create nature. In the beginning the absolute indiscernibility of the not.43 In the beginning absolutely unconditioned discernment. For the first time the Creator’s absolute inability to discern nonexistence is conceived in essence. For the first time thought is absolutely now. Actually conceived for the first time to create is the absolute inability to discern nonbeing. In Thomas Aquinas the (Creator’s) inability (in effect) to discern relative nonbeing precluded the genus being.44 In Jonathan Edwards the (Creator’s) inability (in effect) to discern absolute nonbeing precluded being in general a genus.45 In the thinking now beginning to occur the Creator is unable to discern the nonbeing of the absolute-relative existing now for the first time.46 The Creator’s inability to discern the nonbeing of the absolute-relative, creating, precludes, qua essence of thought, the genus being in essence, essentially precludes generic being. The Creator’s inability to discern nonbeing in the act of creating precludes precluding being in general a genus, that is, precludes the genus absolutely.47 By being itself the beginning which is the transcendence of the form of the infinite postponement of selfconsciousness, by being itself the conception in essence of the very identity of ‘to create’, being itself—precisely by being itself—is the first thought perfectly without the genus: creation is the absolutely non-generic wholeness of absolutely particular being. For the first time the structure of thought is ‘to begin’. This beginning—the first thought perfectly without being in general—the first thought absolutely without generic identity—is thought itself thinking the structure of thought. In the absolute act of beginning the nonexistence of thought in general. The transcendent identity of the first thought. In the beginning the transcendent identity of the thought of time/the time of thought. For the first time to think is essentially to create. To begin with neither being nor nothing: to begin with the absolute matter of thought: to begin with the body. In the beginning the absolute

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matter of thought is neither thought nor nothing: it is the with qua body: the absolute intimacy of God-with-God. Withness itself is the thought of creation/the creation of thought: this is the absolute transparency of the finitude of God beginning: the perfect transparency of the First Finitude of the Infinite God, as such, the absolute thought of matter, at once the conception of the absolute matter of thought. In beginning each another sharing the absolute edge absolutely without the vagueness of the beginningless boundary between the two which would be at once the pairedness of the two.48 In the beginning the absolute relativity of the thought of the matter of thought. The beginning ending in the thought of the transcendental essence of existence:49 the thought of the actuality of the creation of the world, the essentially historical thought of the world’s first time existence: ‘I AM thinks the beginning therefore cogito’: ‘I think the beginning therefore I am the novum cogito’. This is the beginning of the absolutely global thought of The Locale (‫)המקום‬: ‘existence itself exists, I actually create’. Now for the first time this is the form of essentially transcendental objectivity: without being God & without being without God I am God’s new beginning. The beginning of essentially transcendental objectivity is the realization in thought of the actuality of this world identical with the minimum of time. This beginning thought in essence is absolute energy lasting a finite time. The new beginning is the absolute actuality of this temporal existence. The actuality of the inception of the temporal minimum is the absolute wholeness of the being of the finite: the existence of the minimum of temporality in the form of the beginning is the perfect wholeness of relative being. Now for the first time the mind is required to transcend the barrier itself: the imperative is to begin to create the real. The New I Am is the beginning of the imperishability (the inability of being not to be) of the finite.50 The revelation of the beginning is the revelation of the fact that the finitude of the creature is the living analogy of the infinite: the creature infinitely the analogy of God in the beginning: this is the start in essence of the perception that finitude is the analogy of being. Never before has there been as much inception as now exists in the now, nor as much of the end of the world as now exists in the now.51 The now existing transcendental absolute is to create the end of the world, to actually make ex nihilo the categorically selfless novelty of the new, to completely create the goal, to begin the realization of the categorical selflessness of a new existence, to create the absolute identity of end & means. For this undertaking the nothing of the past is useless: the

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beginning is the absolute reality of the not-past/not-future: not thinking essentially beginning in the past (whether in its absolute existence or in the form of its self-postponement, whether bodied or bodyless, or whether, indeed, in the form of the beginning of a past-less perception of the future, the bodyless beginning of the body52), but thinking essentially beginning now: not merely ‘genesis as new creation’,53 but genesis as absolute creation: not the absolute self-postponement of the selfless perception of creation, but the conception of the very genesis of creation: the perception of creation in essence. In the conception in essence of beginning is the transcendence in essence of the necessity of a clean slate:54 in beginning now the essentially new now—in beginning now absolutely new. The existence of the beginning is without the necessity of marking a clean slate, without the necessity of beginning with a slate: beginning, the clean slate is the now-mark identically the slate itself.55 The writing now beginning is the clean slate absolutely not past/future. To begin is to write the slate itself. The absolute imperative to create a new world is the perfect novelty of the beginning now occurring. In beginning the slate is the absolute with. To begin is to write with withness, to write with the infinite negativity of the with, to write the with itself, to write with the with of with (with the perfect separateness of perfect intimacy).56 The absolute with—the infinite negativity/perfect limitation/absolute Einschränkung of the withness—of infinite intimacy is the beginning. In beginning God begins to say ‘write the slate itself’. In beginning God finishes saying ‘write the slate itself’. The silence after God’s speaking is the word the transcendental essence of which is to hear the word: now that God begins/finishes speaking the silence following is the imperative ‘begin to write the slate itself’. After the death of the word the resurrection of the word. After the death of thought the resurrection of thought in essence. The resurrection of thought is not merely ‘the death of death’, not merely ‘there is no death’, not merely ‘there is only life’,57 but the resurrection of thought in essence is life absolutely after death: the beginning of the novum cogito: existence after nothing: life existence ex nihilo. The resurrection of the cogito is the past/future not itself ex nihilo. The creation absolutely not past/future. The resurrection of the res cogitans is the after-silence of the divine itself beginning at once finishing.58 The Resurrected Body is the universality of the absolutely existent after-silence: the after-silence of the divine speech absolutely without ‘only’,59 not the there of no where, but the absolute beginning of thereness now everywhere the where of withness (the where of the infinite negativity of there): the beginning now everywhere

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the perfect negativity/absolute Einschränkung of being there/here in essence. There/here the beginning. Absolutely everywhere the beginning. This is the perfect negativity/absolute Limitation of the Christ. The absolute quality at once the absolute relation the where of the withness of beginning.60 In beginning the transcendence in essence of the ‘stillness’ ‘of the turning world’.61 In the still beginning the motion itself of the world: ‘I am the Beginning’ ends in beginning: still ‘I am the End’ begins. The alternative: unreserved anticipation, the beginning in reserve,62 the dawning of Nothing, the motion of beginning not the still beginning, the reduction to nothing of the moving source itself of motion void of motion: the reduction to nothing of the pure continuity of existence: the beginning itself not the beginning of existence, the beginning of the radical immanence of the nonexistence of the totality of beginning: the end of beginning itself: the redundant beginning, creation itself redundant, indeed, the Creator’s redundance in the form of ‘total presence’.63 But in fact the beginning of totality is the beginning not of a new totality, but of the infinite universe, the beginning of an immanence identical with transcendence, the beginning of a transcendental immanence/the immanence of the transcendental, the beginning identical with the absolute intimacy of the withness of existence. The beginning of the actual immanence now beginning is ‘to create’. Beginning essentially conceived is existence ex nihilo. This is the beginning identically the end for the first time, with the Creator as never before: the beginning of the infinite wholeness of the world the Creator’s actually embodying the universe.64 ‘The goal is to begin’ is the identity of the Creator’s first word, the very identity of ‘I am the Beginning’. The new universe is not merely the transcendence of creation, the Creator reduced to nothing, the abyss of beginning, the beginning not the beginning, the new itself the death of the Creator, the perfect redundancy of the Creator, but, rather, the creation of the transcendence of creation, the Creator embodying the new itself for the first time: the absolutely non-redundant actuality of the Creator—creation ex abysso, the beginning of beginning, the beginning in essence. Not the absolutely new totality displacing the Creator, but the Creator placing the universe as the other of an absolute intimacy: the beginning of the new itself the Creator’s absolute withness. Not the ‘totality transcending any possible origin or goal’,65 but the totality transcending the actual beginning which is itself the goal. The totality transcending the Creator’s “I am,” so that, conceived in essence, the beginning is not the reduction-to-Nothing form

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of the essential redundancy of modern thought, viz., ‘the self-naming of I AM’,66 nor is revelation that which ‘begins with the self-naming of I AM’.67 The beginning is “I am” naming the other: revelation/apocalypse begins with the perfect intimacy of “I am” naming the other. The repetition of the creation occurring for the first time is Revelation the very form of thought,68 the apocalypse itself occurring historically. After the ‘consciousness inseparable from the full actuality of death’,69 after this new kind of ‘perishing’,70 the beginning of the imperishable reality. The imperishable consciousness is the absolute consciousness of the beginning, the infinite sharing of identity which is the essence of beginning, which is the consciousness of beginning with the being of the other. In the intimacy that is the beginning the actual conception of life itself is identical with the beginning of an imperishable consciousness. Indeed, created reality/reality existing ex nihilo is categorically imperishable, not able to be nothing/to not be.71 What now actually occurs is not the abyssal felix culpa, not the not happy fall a happy fall, ‘finally a fortunate fall’, ‘Satan… finally Christ’,72 absolutely not the ‘dawning’ of a certain Nothing, but felix exculpatio, the joyous intimacy of the absolute precision of God’s ‘act of beginning’ as God-with-man as man. What actually exists in essence before now is the ‘closure of the cycle of eternal return’ the beginning in the form of an absolute death, before now the return of the beginning in the form of a ‘final abyss’, before now the return of nothing in the form of beginning: the ‘beginning alone’: the absolute solitude of the beginning heard in the form of a ‘center’ ‘wholly here and now’ ‘in an actual and immediate voice whose own self-naming realizes itself as a total presence’. Before now the pre-owning self-ending of ‘a center which is everywhere’, the self-realization of the pre-centered self ‘wholly here and now’, the absolute realization of the pre-owning self in the form of the ‘ultimate beginning’ which is ‘an ultimate ending’. But the ‘beginning is ending’/the ending is beginning for the first time absolutely now. Not therefore an ‘ultimate beginning’ an ‘ultimate ending’,73 but, rather, now the beginning & end of beginning & end, the apocalyptic I infinitely creating the universe.74 The transcendence of ultimate beginning/ultimate ending, the end of beginning is beginning itself. The beginning is not the new creation in the form of an unnamed self-consciousness, in the form of the unformed ‘new humanity’. The beginning is the new creation in the form of imperishable existence: the ‘new humanity’ in the form of creation itself: “I am” names the creation of the essentially new life that is beginning.

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For the first time “I am” names the essentially speakable perception of the difference identical with the nearness of beginning: “I am” names the ‘nearness of the kingdom’ in beginning. For the first time in history “I am” speaking is the hearing-seeing-thinking identity of the kingdom of God ‘nigh in the beginning’. “I am” names the intimate neighborliness identical with the withness of beginning: hearing “I am” in the beginning is the sighting of the absolute nighness of the new universe. Indeed, the constructive reality of the universe begins in the absolute intimacy (,) being (,) thought. In the form of the inversion and reversal of the cycle of eternal return, in the form of the absolute inversion of the abyss, the final indistinction of beginning and ending is not simply nothing, but rather the complex nothing, the ‘dark emptiness’ that ‘can never be a pure No-saying’,75 indeed, the theological reminiscence of Wm. James’ ‘almost nothing’.76 Such is the end the beginning of an actual nothingness. But conceived in essence the newly perceived essence of neighborliness is the beginning of the absolute construction of reality: the divine neighborliness—the nearness of the Kingdom of God—the absolute nighness of God—God’s beginning to exist absolutely77—is the beginning of the construction of an essentially infinite society.78 In this first time absolute nighness a new quality of freedom actually begins. The new quality of freedom is the transcendence in the form of beginning itself of the connectedness essential to American thought.79 The new quality of freedom is the perception of the beginning of the absolutely unconditioned quality of life: the beginning of the absolutely unconnected/absolutely relative existence: the beginning of the unconnected/absolutely related being of the body. This is the beginning of the Artifactual Body of infinitely interchangeable parts:80 the beginning of divine independence itself incarnate: the pure absolute withness of creation transcending transcendenceless solitude—creation after the creation of absolute solitude—the beginning of transcendence absolute immanence itself. For the first time thought itself builds the beginning: building the withness of beginning, thought itself builds the body. Building the beginning, thought builds the absolute immanence of the very substance of the body: building the beginning, thought builds the absolute immanence of the very substance of existing divinity: building the beginning, thought builds the absolute immanence of divinity in the form of the essentially new global society: building the beginning, thought constructs the new quality of freedom in the form of the divine withness as the embodiment of the new world society. In this new beginning thought thinks the quality

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of freedom as the divine withness of existence: thought begins to think freedom as the absolutely unconditioned intimacy of the novitas mundi: thought begins to think freedom itself as personality’s essential property qua absolute witness to the creation of the world. Now thought essentially freedom itself is not a matter of ‘certain inalienable rights’ bestowed by the Creator81—not essentially a matter of the gift of divine self-righteousness in the creation—not a beginning not a beginning—but the beginning in essence of freedom in terms of which transcendent righteousness itself is unconditionally immanent with the immanence of the absolutely immanent divinity—with the immanence of an absolutely selfless divine fromness. This is the absolutely exposed giving of the beginning of the new world order. Not the unreserved anticipation of the beginning in reserve, the absolutely nonproductive anticipation of the beginning,82 but the beginning absolutely now creating withness. Thought thinks the beginning for the first time in history. The beginning of thought is thought. Thought thought in essence is the absolutely spaceless withness of the act of the Creator transcending coexistence. In beginning withness absolutely transcends coexistence. Or, the coexistence of the beginning is not merely the mind of God, nor merely the Word God with God, but the mind of God absolute, the Word God with God very existence, the mind of God absolutely without the ‘insensible’ ‘merging’ of being and nonbeing,83 therefore absolutely without the sensible merging of being into being—the continuity—which is the concomitant of an absolutely beginningless coexistence. In the coexistence/withness of the beginning the Word God with God transcends the absolute nonbeing of the absolute after-transcendence which is the absolute support of merging one (being) into another—the absolute support of very merging—which ‘merging’ is the ultimate meaning of any ‘coexistence’ which is not the beginning of coexistence itself, not the absolute coexistence of beginning, not the absolute existence of ‘beginning-with’.84 In the essentially new consciousness now actually existing the act of creation categorically eliminates the abyssal support of existence: the creation ex abysso is the absolutely unsupported coexistence now thought essentially for the first time: the essence of beginning is the absolute independence in existence that is coexistence, the transcendence in essence of the substrate of the invisible nonbeing of matter: the absolute transcendence of the unthinkable ‘absolute nothing’.85 Creating is categorically nothing unthinkable: thought in essence the absolutely unconditioned withness of everything creatio ex

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nihilo: the unthinkable creation of nothing thought: the abyssless nothing but creation. But before the absolute displacement of space, before the displacement of the abyss, before the motion itself of the world absolute placedness for the first time,86 before existence absolutely now for the first time—total presence, the transcendence of the past in the form of the absolute future. But now absolutely, thought in essence, existence ex nihilo (after nothing), very existence very beginning: the beginning of transcendence: not the transcendence of the past/not transcendence past, not the new form of the past, not the new/actual immanence of the past transcendence, but the transcendent beginning, the beginning transcending the total presence of the past in the form of the absolute future.87 This is the beginning of the absolute coexistence in which the first are identically last, the last identically first. Actual contemporaneity the beginning of perfectly different times. This is the absolute clarification occurring in thought for the first time (the beginning of the novum cogito): God thinks the Incarnation in the form ‘beginning’. Actual contemporaneity is itself precisely the beginning itself: actual contemporaneity is the imperative to create: beginning is the absolute undoing of the eternal support of the actual (therefore the undoing of that support whether the latter is construed formally/statically as something, even something changing, or materially/ dynamically as nothing, even nothing the same, or, indeed, essentially/ abyssally as the voiding of the ‘history of Spirit’, even the changing of something into nothing the same). Before now the essentially eternal support of eternity which was the voiding of the history of Spirit took the form of the absolute self-alienation of intimacy,88 the self-alienation of the other, the absolute alienation of the self-eternally-other: not the beginning of existence, but the self-alienation of existence, the absolute intimacy of the alienation of self. But now for the first time actually occurring in essence the absolute alienation of the otherness of absolute intimacy: for the first time in essence the absolute alienation of the foreignness of intimacy with God: now for the first time the experience of the absolutely new. This is the absolutely pragmatic experience of the divine actuality, the experience of the absolutely pragmatic substance, the pragmatic experience of the body itself: the beginning of the essential global sharing of absolute existence: now for the first time the conception of matter the body itself: the beginning of the water now wine in essence: the beginning in essence of the wine now blood: the beginning of the flesh in essence now bread, ‘fruit of the earth and work of human hands’: the beginning of the artifactual body.

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This is the first essential realization of the work of the historical Jesus. This is the essential realization of the work begun by the historical person, Jesus, as the very substance of absolute intimacy with God, as the very embodiment of God, as the incarnate essence of divinity, as the living body the shared experience of which is the very substance of divinity. The essentially new world actually existing is the beginning of the absolute realization of the Incarnation. This is the new thought of the body, indeed, of society, the first absolute intimacy with God thought essentially. After the death of the man Jesus, indeed, after the ‘eternal death of Jesus’, God thinks the Resurrection of the body of the man Jesus in the form ‘to exist’. This is the actual resurrection of the human body in the form of existence after the death of the transcendent God. The actuality of the existence of the human body is the Resurrection of Jesus the Nazarene after the death of Christ:89 the existence of the human/artifactual body after the transcendental Nothing is, thought essentially, the Resurrection of the man Jesus as the actuality identical with the divine mind in the absolute independence of which Life everything participates absolutely.90 After the death of God everything shares in the resurrection of infinite/infinitely new being: after the death of God the resurrection of the body of Jesus: after the death of God the Resurrection in the form of infinitely shared being. In the essence of beginning itself there is essentially no alternative Jesus, the abyssal Jesus belongs to the past, there is no Jesus not Jesus. For the first time Jesus is absolutely Jesus: in the absolute intimacy of the essence of the beginning the resurrection of Jesus is the historical Jesus, the absolute explication of which fact is the new consciousness of the Resurrection in the form of the actual existence of global humanity, at once the conception of absolute intimacy with God. The global realization of the historical essence of reality is the beginning of the essential realization of the Resurrection identity of the historical Jesus, the beginning of Jesus himself saying for the first time “I am the Resurrection of God.” The Resurrection of the Body is the beginning of the actual transformation of the specific/existing world essence, the beginning of an unconditionally infinite body/magnitude of being:91 this is the absolute inception of the immediate knowledge of the historical Jesus existing in the form of the very structure of an infinitely flat universe,92 the absolute revelation of the absolute nearness which is the Kingdom, that is, which is history. Revelation essentially conceived for the first time is the Kingdom of God the history of God—the history of Being in the form of the body of the historical Jesus—the essential structure of

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which is the creative neighborliness of the intimate other. The conception in essence of the infinitely flat structure of the universe now actually beginning to exist (the beginning of the form of existence for the first time absolute edge93) qua revelation of the essential structure of the beginning itself as the intimately creative neighborliness of the other is the foundation of the perfect personal freedom which is the essential structure of the new world order, the personal freedom absolutely productive of the absolutely valuable society, the personal freedom creating society. This personal freedom is grounded ex necessitate in the absolute beginning, in the actual beginning of existence, in the beneficence essentially existing in the beginning. This personal freedom essentially the new world order is the Creator transcending the goal: the means absolutely the goal for the first time. Transcending the goal the Creator exists for the first time in essence: in the realization of the end the Creator is the Creator: the Creator exists now for the first time in history in the absolutely unconditioned intimacy of the absolute neighborliness of being itself, in absolute neighborliness the being thought Identity (at once in essence the first person of the Trinity the absolute coexistence/withness of the second person of the Trinity with the third person),94 at once the transformation of the conception of personal identity to absolute nighness in essence: the circumference of the circle turned infinitely straight.95 This is the beginning of the absolutely personal environment of the person, but absolutely not of the person thought as self. This beginning is neither the absolutely environmental projection of personality, nor the real sharing of beginningless absolute solitude, that is, this beginning is not the ‘beginning shattering an original quiescence, and thus bringing an end to an eternity that is and only is itself… a beginning that is beginning and only beginning… a new creation… because it is an actuality that never existed before, and an actuality that can only be the consequence of ending or death’.96 The essentially new creation is not (merely) the after-thought of the body, the new universe beginning is not (merely) after the Finite God,97 not (merely) after the death of God, not (merely) after nothing but itself. The death of God is not the necessity of the new beginning, but, in fact, the new beginning is existence essentially new after the death of God. This is the absolute post hoc non propter hoc. This, in fact, is the beginning of absolute novelty. Absolute novelty exists for the first time in the very form of thought. This is ‘an actuality that never existed before’ absolutely.98 The new creation is the after-thought of the body thought. The beginning ex

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abysso is the essentially new ‘eternity’, absolutely infinite identity. This is the beginning of dead center existing absolutely everywhere:99 the beginning the infinite extension of the circumference itself of the circle:100 the beginning itself the ‘absolute discontinuity of the continuum’:101 the beginning of the real existence of the absolute immediacy of other persons: the beginning of absolute singularity, the absolute singularity of the beginning.102 The new universe is the singularity itself which is the beginning: the singularity, which, thought in essence, is at once the essence of personality, and which is in fact the beginning of the universe, is for the first time in history the universe itself. The universe itself is essentially the beginning of the universe. In fact, then, the Creator, conceived in essence, is the actuality of the singularity which is the beginning of the universe, while his Image in essence is the beginning of universal personality, that is, the beginning of the absolutely unconditioned freedom now occurring.103 The absolute intimacy essential to the singularity of the beginning of everything guarantees the absolute discontinuity of the continuum with God, at once, with itself.104 The Creator is the actuality of the universe the universe itself, the energy of the universe absolutely universal. The Creator is the absolutely universal multiplication of the locus of singularity.105 The Creator is the actuality of the identity of the beginning with selfless transcendence of the goal: the Creator’s act is the goal: the Creator embodies for the first time this totality: the Creator embodies the beginning identical with the means identical with the end. This actuality of the Creator, thought in essence, actually eliminates in essence the very possibility of the reduction of ego to self. The Creator as the personal multiplier of the essence of singularity is the actual reality of the absolutely intimate other. No longer is the beginning in reserve: this beginning, as it turns out, is the absolute comprehension of the fact that “at the resurrection they neither marry nor are they given in marriage, but as the angels in heaven are they.”106 In the form of the absolute intimacy of the divine Trinity the universe begins to exist absolutely in the form of the Living Body.107 The absolute dynamic of the universe is: in the very midst of creation creation.108 The infinitely flat selfless structure of the new creation is the absolute surface that is the body of Christ. This start is the absolute dissolution of the generic essence of thought: the start of the absolute dissolution of the essentially American solution being-in-generalnot-a-genus: what now occurs for the first time in history in the form of existence ex nihilo is the absolute dissolution of the generic identity of life: ex

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nihilo the absolute dissolution of the generic identity of the body.109 Now actually occurring for the first time the complete unraveling of the history of the generic essence:110 the beginning of absolute phenomenology/ absolute pragmatism/absolute specificity.111 The beginning essentially itself the fold being-in-essence-not-a-genus, the fold absolutely specific. Thought in essence the creation of the new world now actually occurring is the absolutely unconditioned intimacy, the absolute fold of the divine with the word: the fold of the beginning folded absolutely, the inception of the absolutely folded fold, the start of the absolutely unconditioned multiplication of the intimacy of the Father with the Son: the beginning of the absolutely unconditioned plurality of the First Person Unum the Second Person Unum: the beginning of the absolutely unconditioned Third Person Unum. This, indeed, is the Third Beginning: the beginning of existence the Absolute Third: the beginning of existence the absolute relation: the First the Absolute Second the Absolute Third.112 The First Beginning was the Beginning in which ‘God created the heaven and the earth’. The Second Beginning was the Beginning in which God’s Word was made flesh, the new creation. This Beginning is the Third Beginning in which the absolute essence of the Incarnation is newly/essentially thought. This is the beginning of the absolute unfolding of the totality/ wholeness of history. This is the beginning of the absolute plurality of existence itself: the beginning of absolute particularity: the beginning of a plurality qua existence absolutely & essentially intelligible. Nor is it conceivable that this absolutely folded fold might itself be other in essence than the beginning of the precise conception of the essentially historical order of the new universe.113 This beginning of the existence of absolute relation is the essence of freedom, the foundation of the essentially new form of society, the foundation of the essentially new practice of science, the foundation of the new essentially moral rule.114 To conceive in essence the plurality of existence is to create a new universe.115 To create a new global society is to change absolutely the conception of law, to be beyond sovereignty.116 The new conception of being for the first time is that being changes in essence.117 The history of being is the absolute repetition for the first time. The perfect repetition of being is the beginning of history. The repetition of history is the inception of being itself transcending itself. The essential change in being itself is the beginning of the new law (qua beginning the new law is essentially new): the change occurring is the beginning of the universality of the new law: the beginning of the

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completion of the new law: this beginning is the final realization of the New Law. The law of this beginning is absolute change. For the first time in history it is perceived in essence that law itself begins in the essential singularity of personality, the existence of which essence is the perfectly infinite metanomy of the being-with of the beginning, the absolutely essential lawfulness of the withness of the beginning. The law of the beginning, in which law itself begins absolutely, is the perfect plurality of the with: in the beginning the with itself is perfectly plural, essentially the foundation of an essentially new conception of law. It is this perfect plurality of the withness of beginning which is the essential foundation of the new society, the foundation itself of the new humanity which is the embodiment of the New Commandment essentially conceived, to wit, exist each with the other-in-essence, as I have existed with you-in-essence.118 The beginning of the absolute elimination of absolute self-interest is the start of existing with the other in essence, that is, the inception of absolute being in existence. The foundation of the new world society beginning is not the interest in a commonwealth, but, rather, the essentially perfectly specific interest in the wealth of the body which is the absolute plurality of now existing persons each essentially the first person unum existing with the other in essence, each the existent actuality of the withness of the other, each the actuality of an absolute specificity. Just as this beginning, qua absolute dissolution of the generic essence of the world, absolutely eliminates the distinction in existence generic/ non-generic, so this beginning is perfectly analogously the absolute elimination of the difference in existence public/private: the new global society beginning to exist is essentially unintelligible in terms of the difference between res publica and res privata. Absolutely in place of the generic abstraction of the actual body begins the specific abstraction of the actual body: the beginning of the absolute abstraction of the body.119 Personal metanomy, qua new foundation of law, is the beginning of a new conception of society: society is now conceived as not radically tØ koinøn, the common thing, but as essentially Ô koinvnºa, the partnership, the beginning of the perfect species of individuality—society, essentially conceived, is essentially the beginning of the res pretiosa—of the greatly valued thing—of the res novissima—of the occurrence of the last day— indeed, of the res singillaria—of the absolute multiplication of the onefold reality, which, qua absolute species, is understood in essence as the res nominata, the wealth called by name. Now the wealth nominated in the

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Creator’s Word begins to exist as the living corpus of the new humanity. For the first time society is esse res nominata. This is the beginning of the absolute distribution of the res nominata.

Notes 1. Revelation 21:6. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), p. 439, n. 63. The integral product of ®g◊ tØ = Alfa kaÁ tØ ùV is 8.2944e32. Cf., below, Section III.3, p. 243, n. 62, 8.2944e20, the integral product of |Anaståsevq  ΩrxÓ “the beginning of the Resurrection”. 8.2944e20 is the integral product of ‫“ תורת ישׁו הנוצרי‬Law of Jesus of Nazareth”. The integral product of |Ihsoy^ q Xristøq “Jesus Christ”, also nømoq Xristoy^ “Law of Christ”, is 8.2944e28. The integral product of Ô aªtobasileºa “the Kingdom Itself” (Origen’s understanding of who Jesus Christ is in his commentary on Matthew 12:28, Patrologia Graeca XIII [1862], p. 1197) is 8.2944e16. The integral product of |Ihsoy^ q Xristøq Ô aªtobasileºa “Jesus Christ the Kingdom Itself” is the square of the integral product of ‫נקדת האפס‬ ‫“ שׁל תּנופה‬dead center”/“point zero of energy” (cf. below, p. 243, n. 62). Cf. also, below, Section II.3, p. 120, Paul’s polºteyma “citizenship”, integral product 8.2944e16, and ®n XristÛ^ kainÓ ktºsiq “new foundation in Christ”, integral product 8.2944e26. For the term ‘integral product’, see D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “Technical Note on Integral Product & Related Terms.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com/dgl/p15.html. April 2009. For the discovery of the uniqueness of the cube for which (x/6)4 = 82944, see ibid., “Theorem & Proof: The Uniqueness of the Absolute Dead Center Cube.” For the discovery of the uniqueness of the natural number 82944, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Sections III.6-7; also Sections III.3 and III.5. 2. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Sections IV.1 and V.1; also, D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot and Burlington, 2003), Chapter 7 and Appendix. 3. World pragmatism differentiates itself not only from American pragmatism, that is, pluralistic pragmatism, but also from monistic pragmatism, that is, historical materialism, which substituted objectivity for self only to the extent to which it was the beginning of an essentially end-less instrumentality, the beginning of an essentially non-categorical existence. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section I, et passim.

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4. See Backnote 4, ‘beginning’ and ‘omnipotence’. 5. C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers (Harvard, 1958), 1.356ff. 6. The last term taken from Wm. James who, while recognizing the unique, indeed, ‘momentous pragmatic value’ of the ‘substance-idea’ in scholastic disputations concerning the Eucharist (Pragmatism [Cambridge and London, 1975], 46f.), finally brackets it within the confines of personal belief—a move neither merely personal nor essentially historical, but rather a function of the infinite postponement of infinite self-consciousness essential to pluralistic pragmatism. For the extensive treatment of the distribution of the ‘very substance of divinity’ in the context of the morality of the new beginning, see, below, Sections III.2 and III.3. Cf., also, Backnote 3, the ‘infinite difference of x’. 7. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section II.4, et passim, for a critique of T.J.J. Altizer’s death of God theology. 8. For the Finite God, cf. Wm. James, A Pluralistic Universe (Cambridge and London, 1977), pp. 60f. In the thinking now occurring for the first time the Finite God, pace James, is identically its environment. (cf., below, the notion of ‘embodiment’, Section II, passim, and the disappearance of the ‘halo’, Section III, passim). 9. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 559f. 10. Cf. ibid., pp. 422ff., for a comparison of the beginning of absolute temporality with the self-limiting form of Heidegger’s ‘expectancy’. 11. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany; reprint 1994), pp. 13ff. 12. Cf. ibid., pp. 359f.: “Before now actuality in essence was the absolute selfrelation of the appearance conceived to be in itself nothing but a possibility, other than itself in essence. Indeed, in the moments of thought’s absolute self-clarification what was denied in the first instance was that the essence of thought existed in substance. What was not denied (because in fact before now it could not have been denied) was that reflection existed qua essence, that it had an actuality of its own, an ideal or possible existence, a purely formal existence, transcendent to being conceived in essence. Substantial immediacy conceded the actuality of thought since to do otherwise would have meant the absolutely impossible denial of the possibility of its own actuality, of its own dissolution in thought, since it self-evidently had no knowledge whatsoever of creation itself. It substituted for the fact itself of creation its transcendent passion to exist. Thereby it remained, although by way of the absurdity of an absolute self-contradiction, within the horizon of possibility itself, conforming in essence, therefore blindly, to the thought actuality of another’s existence, transcendent in essence, a pure formality. Thus, darkly apprehending eternal existence, it existed before God. But it is precisely this possibility itself that is

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annulled in the absolute clarification of the absolute now occurring in reality in the form of the transcendental repetition of creation itself (the essential repetition of history in thought), in substance the absolute nullification of everything including thought itself (in which, therefore, the history of thought is for the first time actually thought in essence), transcendentally distinguished as now occurring in essence. (The difference between substance and essence is itself no longer transcendent, but merely a matter of time itself. In essence it is the conception itself of the Spirit implicit in the perception of the body itself.) The annulment of the ideal actuality (actuality thought in essence) is the perception of the fact itself: the perception of a new transcendental, exsistere ipsum. The essence of the new transcendental involves the conception in essence of everything, the absolute nullification of the possible. Everything now comes to exist actually in the form of the body itself. (It goes without saying that now absolutely nothing is possible but what actually exists in essence. But that what actually exists in essence [in the form of man] now is an other in whom every-thing possesses its transcendent identity.) Now nothing is a mere formality; everything is essential.” 13. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section IV.5, et passim. 14. Cf. Section III.3. 15. See Backnote 2, the ‘impasse of ontology’ as never before ‘very existence’. 16. Section III.3. Cf. also Backnote 2. 17. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Sections V.1-2. 18. For the artifactual body, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section V.1. 19. This (singular/plural)/(plural/singular) which is the unum is not to be confused with Jean-Luc Nancy’s understanding of being singular plural (J-L. Nancy, Being Singular Plural [Stanford, 2000]) where the with is essentially not a third to the one and the other (ibid., pp. 5f.), and where the with is “neither a foundation nor is it without foundation” (ibid., p. 92). In the thinking now occurring for the first time the with/the unum is foundation without foundation, the absolute third. For the logical explication of the unum, see Leahy, Foundation, Section III, et passim. The analogy to the unum in the thinking previous to the thinking now occurring would be the fractal dimension of the “Cantor dust” which is more than nothing (the zero dimension or the set of isolated points) but less than unity (the first dimension or the set of connected points where the number of connections is one less than the number of connected points). But the analogy breaks down because in the essentially new thinking/mathematics/metalogic there is no nothing, so that zero + unum (00) = unity (1), that is—with precision—the unity of the beginning (ibid.; also, below, Backnote 4). Now for the first time zero is no longer equal to nothing, as the identity of the ego is no longer self-identity. 20. Cf. Backnotes 2, and 4, Heidegger’s “not”-beginning. 21. Cf. Section III.1, Kant’s reflection on time and the subject.

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22. Cf. T.J.J. Altizer, The Genesis of God: A Theological Genealogy [Louisville, 1993], pp. 139ff. 23. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Chapter 5. 24. Rv. 3:8. 25. Cf. T.J.J. Altizer, The Self-Embodiment of God (New York, 1977), V, where, under the title “Apocalypse,” self-consciousness finally reduces ‘I am the door’ to ‘The door is I’ in the self-opening which is absolute silence. For the critique of this inversion of the abyss of reason, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.5. 26. Cf. Sections II.2, II.3, III.2, and III.3, “omnipotence itself moves to new ground.” 27. Cf. Section III.3, “the medium perfectum wherein the perfection of the living human body is the infinite sharing of the contemplation of the Divine Essence” 28. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section IV.1. Indeed, Peirce’s ‘Firstness’ is relatively ‘pre-less’, that is, as itself as opposed to as appearance-to-consciousness. 29. See Backnote 2, the ‘impasse of ontology’ as never before ‘very existence’. 30. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendix γ. 31. “Song of Myself” 23. 32. Cf. J. Carse, Jonathan Edwards & The Visibility of God (New York, 1967), for an exposition of Edwards’ rejection of Locke’s ‘substance’ as the key to his understanding of the mode of redemption. (Further for Edwards’ rejection of Locke’s substance, cf. The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 6: Scientific and Philosophical Writings [ed. W.E. Anderson, New Haven and London, 1980], pp. 111ff., and for evidence of Edwards’ continuing commitment to and work on “The Mind,” cf. ibid., pp. 34ff., and pp. 313ff.) Carse writes (p. 94): “Edwards intends to make it impossible for us to talk about God as though he were a being somehow apart and independent from the world of our experience. It is because of the doctrine of the trinity that every sentence about God becomes at the same time a sentence that falls within the range of our own understanding. The deity, he said, was all act. Because he used the same categories for God that he used for man, he also taught that every act of the deity was ad extra. Just as there are no actions within man, independent of his actions in the world, there are no actions within the being of God that do not affect the world. At the same time a cautionary word must be uttered over these reflections…. There is nothing about the world in itself that makes God visible. It is only Christ who makes God visible.” Analogously, Whitman’s ‘soul’, the ‘actual Me’, (“Passage to India” 8), ultimately shall surrender, the found face of God, the Christ of the new historical order, the Common Self, to this God: Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d, The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done, Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attained,

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29

As fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found, The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. The essential analogy of God and man in Christ is the great circle of time in Edwards, within which he inscribes the apocalyptic I AM, and which in Whitman is the absolutely temporal now which includes all the ‘inception’ there ever was and all the ‘perfection’ which will ever be. This is the wide belt of the essence of American thought: for the founder of pragmatism this will be the Name which is the “soul’s consciousness of its relation to God,” which is at once the limit of Godconsciousness (cf. Peirce, Collected Papers, 6.495, 502, 508, and 516). 33. Cf. ibid., 6.516. 34. Cf. Section III.3, the medium perfectum “wherein the complete natural life of the body (other than and not other than its nutritive and generative powers) infinitely shares the creaturely life of the Godhead.” 35. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 616ff., “the advent of completely sensible very omnipotence.” Cf. also Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 140f. 36. Cf. below, pp. 11ff., including n. 39. 37. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, p. 222. 38. The absolute metaboly/absolute nimbleness that is Omnipotence itself is at once absolute metåstasiq, absolute change/absolute withstanding. Cf. the notion of metanomy, below, p. 32, n. 81, and pp. 23ff. Cf., also, Appendix 4, the Trinity as sovereignty absolutely sharing. 39. Cf. above, p. 25, n. 3. 40. This Fourth not added to the Three, but the Essence that is the Trinity. 41. Peirce, Collected Papers, 7.569. 42. Cf., above, n. 35. 43. For the Heideggerian “not”-beginning, see Backnotes 2 and 4. 44. Cf. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, New York 1947), I,3,5: “… since the existence of God is His essence, if God were in any genus, He would be the genus ‘being’, because, since genus is predicated as an essential it refers to the essence of a thing. But the Philosopher has shown (Metaph. iii) that being cannot be a genus, for every genus has differences distinct from its generic essence. Now no difference can exist distinct from being; for nonbeing cannot be a difference. It follows that God is not in a genus.” 45. That is, in effect, Edwards’ ‘being in general’ as a genus would have no difference distinct from its generic essence, since, as he says in “Of Being” (cf. The Works of Jonathan Edwards Vol. 6, p. 207): “‘Either being or absolute nothing’ is no disjunction, no more than whether a triangle is a triangle or not a triangle. There is no other way, but only for there to be existence; there is no such thing as absolute nothing. There is such a thing as nothing with respect to this ink

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and paper. There is such a thing as nothing with respect to you and me. There is such a thing as nothing with respect to this globe of earth, and with respect to this created universe. There is another way besides these things having existence. But there is no such thing as nothing with respect to entity or being, absolutely considered. And we don’t know what we say, if we say we think it possible in itself that there should not be entity.” While denying, in effect, that being in general is a genus, Edwards substitutes for Aquinas’ ‘nonbeing cannot be a difference’, the denial of nothing in general, ‘there is no such thing as absolute nothing’. 46. For the exposition of the logic of the absolute relativity of beginning, especially vis-à-vis Peirce’s new logic of relatives, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.1, et passim. For omnipotence itself as absolute actuality for the first time, see, below, Section III.3. 47. Cf. Section III.2, “the absolute distribution/absolute specification of the transcendental essence thought in essence for the first time.” 48. For the radically inessential relativity of the boundary of the two, cf. the synechism of Peirce, for example, Collected Papers, 6.191-208. For a critique of the ‘radical duality of the Peircean triad’, cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 287ff. 49. Cf., below, Section III.2, for the transcendental essence of existence as the ‘absolute distribution of the dwelling’ which is the structure of the new society essentially conceived. 50. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.1; also, below, Section III.2, “nothing is (able to be) removed from the essential wholeness of existence.” 51. Cf. above, n. 32. 52. For the cryptophysical ethics of American death of God theology, see Sections II.2 and II.3, and Sections III.1 and III.3. 53. Cf. T.J.J. Altizer, Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity (Louisville, 1990), pp. 27ff., et passim. 54. For the notion of ‘wiping the slate clean’, cf. J. Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven and London, 1934). Cf., also, Section III.1, Agamben’s understanding of Aristotle’s tabula rasa sans actuality, “forgetful of the writing, essentially unrelated to the actual.” 55. The beginning is absolute verticality. Cf. Section III.2, for an explication of notation/writing as the logico-linguistic function of the real trinary logic category “absolute relation.” For its place in the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” cf. Section II.2. 56. “Infinite negativity” here and throughout is understood in terms of the real trinary logic category “absolute quality” corresponding—as absolute corresponds to relative—to the third moment of Kant’s categorial class Quality, the Limitation or Einschränkung (“restriction,” “curtailment”) that combines Realität and Negation (cf., below, Sections II.2 and III.2) in a wholly positive limitation not derived from beyond the limited.

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57. For this series of assertions embodying the deepest conviction of American consciousness that there is a pure continuity of existence, cf. Eugene O’Neill’s “Lazarus Laughed,” in Nine Plays of Eugene O’Neill (New York, 1941), passim. 58. Cf. Section III.3, Agamben’s “decreation,” effectively the notion of omnipotence within the confines of ‘beginning again’. See Backnote 4, the logical syntax of ‘omnipotence’. 59. What now occurs for the first time is absolute other-consciousness.  The Heideggerian “waiting” is over. For Hegel only God is, but for the thinking now occurring “only” is the place/space analogue of the temporal “waiting.”  The Hegelian God is not omnipotence itself.  Hegel’s God is, as he himself says, the Aristotelian God “more deeply determined” (cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, p. 54), in effect a Particular Agent (cause of the motion of the world) absolutized. Ironically this is reflected in Karl Barth’s theological inversion of Hegel: the exercise of divine freedom as an/one absolutely particular decision, God’s being “God in particular and not in general,” and doing “the general for the sake of the particular” (K. Barth, Church Dogmatics II.2, trans. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance [Edinburgh, 1957], pp. 49ff.).  Hegel’s God is not the God who creates ex nihilo, but the God who creates out of himself.  Hegel’s God (Absolute Self-consciousness) is intrinsically not powerful enough to create the creature as absolute other (cf., below, Section II.1, especially the critique of Kierkegaard’s notion of omnipotence which notion attenuates in the extreme, but does not rupture, the Hegelian notion of absolute elasticity/absolute continuity/ absolute self-enclosedness [something true in general of Kierkegaard’s mode of existentializing Hegel’s Idea]; cf., also, Leahy, Foundation V.2).  If the waiting is over, then for the first time so also is the notion that the absolute reality of God is incompatible with/alternative to the absolute reality of the creature (cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Chapter 5, “pure reason’s passive root,” which is absolutized in Hegel).  God is no longer able to be conceived as what in Hegel is in effect the Absolute Weakling [from P.Gmc. *waikwaz “yield,” *wikanan “bend”] (cf., below, Section III. 1, et passim, for the critique of Agamben’s notion of creation as the power of God to not be his ability to not be, effectively Agamben’s embrace of this dimension of the Absolute Idea [its Softness/Pliancy/Elasticity] which is all that is left of it in the world that comes after the Last Day, when the Logos and Judgment have been left behind). 60. CF., above, n. 54. 61. For the American idea in the form of the ‘still point of the turning world’, cf. T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” in The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909–1950 (New York, 1952). 62. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section V. 63. In the American theology of the death of God, Hegel’s Absolute Weakling (cf., above, n. 59), the Particular Agent absolutized, absolutely inverting and

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reversing itself in an act of absolute self-negation—an act of Absolute SelfJudgment bereft of Logos—empties itself out into “its own otherness”—the actual nothingness of existence—into the purity of the absolute softness/ pliancy/elasticity hitherto the ground of Infinite Being, into the pure “nothing but” of an absolutely generic singular universality in the form of the “absolute future.” 64. Cf. Sections II and III, passim. 65. Altizer, Genesis and Apocalypse, p. 30. 66. Ibid., pp. 31ff. For the essentially redundant, merely formally tautologous, form of modern consciousness, cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendix a. 67. Altizer, Genesis and Apocalypse, ibid. 68. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 334ff., and pp. 350f. 69. Altizer, Genesis and Apocalypse, ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Cf. Section III, passim. 72. Altizer, Genesis and Apocalypse, p. 173. 73. Ibid., pp. 37ff., et passim. 74. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Appendix. 75. Altizer, Genesis and Apocalypse, pp. 186f. 76. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Sections V.1-2. 77. Cf. Matthew 19:19: |Agap¸seiq tØn plhsºon soy ˜q seaytøn, “You shall love your neighbor (tØn plhsºon) as the very one you are.” For the dynamic roots of the notion of the neighbor, cf. the Greek pelåzv, “to approach,” “to draw near,” and plv, “to begin to exist.” Cf. Section III.3, where, in the context of the exposition of the ninth imperative of the Ennealogue of the Morality of the New Beginning, there is set forth the precise relationship of this second ‘great commandment’ to the first and to Jesus’ ‘new commandment’. 78. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Appendix; also, below, Section III.2.  79. A fortiori, then, this beginning transcends the formal connectedness of the monistic pragmatism which is historical materialism (cf. Leahy Foundation, Sections I, II, IV, et passim). Here, and just so far, the thinking now occurring intersects Badiou’s notion of unbinding (cf. Section II, passim). 80. Cf., above, p. 27, n. 18. 81. Also, cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 75ff. for the introduction of the metanomous essence of personality contrasted to “historical materialism’s inessential transcendence of the ‘rights of man’.” What now occurs for the first time in history is the essential transcendence of the ‘rights of man’, that is, the new thought is the material transcendence of the ‘rights of man’ in the form of the Creator, qua absolute matter of thought. Cf. Badiou on ‘human rights’, below, Section II. 82. Cf. above, pp. 14f., and Leahy, Foundation, Section V. 83. Cf. above, p. 29, n. 39.

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84. For diverse non-absolute forms of ‘beginning-with’, for example, the medieval, beginning with the appearance of the transcendental essence of existence itself, and the modern, beginning with being, beginning with the result, beginning with Nothing, etc., cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, passim. 85. Cf. above, p. 29 n. 43. 86. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, p. 391. Also, below, Section III, passim, and Backnotes 3 and 4. 87. Cf., above, p. 31, n. 61. 88. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section IV, especially, pp. 536 ff. 89. For the ‘death of Christ’, cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendix γ, in particular pp. 382f.: “… the temple of death is absolutely nonexistent, there being nothing but the transcendental death suffered now in essence by Christ. Before now Christ died in the flesh, now Christ dies in the flesh in essence. Now, for the first time in history, the death of God is in thought in essence, for thought a new essence. The overcoming of metaphysics in essence in and for thought is the word. There is now no thought of God in essence except for the body itself, the form of man in essence now in the world in essence, the existence itself of the world absolutely. The death of God is now no longer in thought in essence the thought of Being beyond thought in essence, of Being essentially beyond, indifferently, in its essential indifference to the distinction of essences, both man and God, as if the latter were essentially a being among others. Indeed, it is now clear that the body itself is everything’s being in essence. The death of God in and for thought is the incontrovertible fact (nor is there possible contention of this fact) the enunciation of which provides the middle term in the transcendental demonstration that everything exists in fact. Now God himself suffers change itself in essence, undergoes (as thought itself now undergoes the time itself of its conception in essence), in his infinite transcendence, the time itself of the transcendental conception of creation itself, begins in essence to exist absolutely in the form of exsistere ipsum, the body itself.” 90. In Aquinas the creature formally participates esse (creation ex nihilo: the creature is in the form of God [= the analogy of being = the perception of the body]), in American consciousness the creature essentially participates esse (the repetition of the creation: the creature is in the form of Christ or the Finite God [= the sharing of the analogy of being = the perception in essence of the body]), in the new world consciousness the creature absolutely participates esse (the essential repetition of the creation: the creature is in the form of Jesus Christ or the Infinite God or the Finite God Resurrected [= the absolute analogy of being = the absolute perception of the body]). 91. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 132ff. 92. Ibid., Sections III.3 and IV.2. 93. Ibid., Section V.2. Cf., also, below, Section III.1.

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94. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section V.3. 95. For the Nothing coincident to modern mathematics and modern thought as it appears in Galileo’s Two New Sciences, which Nothing is perfectly eliminated from the thinking now occurring, as it is from the essentially logical mathematics now conceived for the first time, cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 478ff. 96. Altizer, Genesis and Apocalypse, p. 38. 97. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section V. 98. So, likewise, the essentially new thought is not ‘a thinking that has never before begun’ (as Peter Manchester rightly avers in a letter to the writer). However, it is a thinking that has never before begun absolutely. This essentially new thinking begins for the first time absolutely. For the absolute beginning of thought, cf. the essential conception of the novitas mentis in Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 296ff. and pp. 318ff. 99. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 439f., et passim. 100. Ibid., pp. 529ff. 101. Ibid., p. 614. For the mathematical proof that there is a unique cube whose structure embodies the absolute discontinuity of the continuum, see D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “Theorem & Proof: The Uniqueness of the Absolute Dead Center Cube.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com/ dgl/p41.html. April 2009. 102. See Backnotes 3 and 4. 103. For the conception of the freedom of personality as ‘being free to say and think that being is a person’, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section II.3, “Metanomy: The Quality of Being Itself.” 104. Ibid., for the conception of itself transcending itself. 105. Thus for the first time conceived in essence Omnipotence itself is absolute nimbleness. Cf. Section II, passim, the critique of Badiou’s uncritical acceptance of the traditional association of omnipotence and ‘planning’. Cf., also Section III.3, the “normalcy whose essence is perpetually new creating,” also Backnote 4. Note that ‘nimble’ shares the PIE base *nem- “to divide, distribute, allot” with the Greek nemein “to deal out,” and thus with the Greek oʺkonomºa ‘economy’ and oʺkonømoq ‘distributor of the dwelling’ (cf. Sections II.1, III.2 and III.3, passim). 106. Mt. 22:30. 107. Cf. Section II, passim; also, Leahy, Foundation, Section V.3 108. ‘Creation in the midst of creation’ is the categorical elimination of the concept of ‘autonomy’, at once the existence for the first time of the conception of categorial metanomy: cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 178f.: “The source is absolutely separated from the catholicity of existence itself in the form of the absolute repetition of time neither deriving, nor deriving from, itself, in the form of time itself transcending itself in the meta-identity of itself existing:

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itself separated neither from its own source nor the source of another, but from the existence of another, an existence without trace of a source of itself, the existence of another itself, the existence the non-identity of which is not not-itself, is not either the source of its own itself nor of identity, but is the meta-identity of identity itself, the freedom of personality to perceive another in the midst itself, in the meta itself, in the middle absolutely, itself suffering the existence of itself, in the absolute objectivity of metanomous existence, in the absolute passion of existence itself, the actually existing person of an essentially historical meta-matter, a specifically historical identity now actually existing in the form of the itself-transcendence of time itself, in the form of an existing personality which names Being with the name of itself, which qualifies Being as metanomy, as personality, which exists in time the absolute freedom of any two identities (otherwise placed in opposition, the one to the other) to freely exist in time, that is, to exist absolutely, absolutely without the necessity, in order each itself to exist/in order to really exist/in order to exist, without the necessity of coming together at a mid-point, itself, but not itself existing, a mid-point itself not itself but not existing, without the necessity of coming together at the mid-point of contrariety itself, at a point opposed to actual identity, at a point contradicting the opposites as such, the unum absolute (ein sich) dividing in two (Entzweiendes).” Cf. also, above, p. 33, n. 93, for the new conception of ‘creating the absolute edge’. 109. Cf., above, pp. 12ff., including n. 43. 110. For phenomenology’s radical lack of clarity before now with respect to its historicity, cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 267ff., et passim. 111. Indeed, phenomenologically, the invariant species of being begins to be absolutely nothing but existence. This is the phenomenological foundation for translating (cf. above, p. 3) Ggonan. ®g◊ tØ =Alfa kaÁ tØ ùV, Ô ΩrxÓ kaÁ tØ tloq as ‘They are accomplished facts. I am the Alpha at once the Omega, the Beginning even the End’, that is, in the ‘I am’ the beginning (of those things which, having come into being, absolutely are) transcends/exists the end. For the transcendental ego itself, for the absolute cogito, for the ‘I am now existing’, the beginning is perfectly specific, the beginning is the generic essence absolutely particularized, absolutely specified. Here, in this conception, phenomenology itself transcends itself: absolute phenomenology. Cf., below, Sections III.2 and III.3, the absolute specification of the transcendental essence. 112. Cf. above, p. 26, n. 5. 113. In this beginning the absolutely folded fold is not a metaphor except the metaphor of the Fold is absolutely unconditioned, that is, exists, that is, is the absolutely folded fold. For the ‘univocal predication of the history of being’ identically the ‘absolute transcendence of the self-destruction of metaphor’, cf. Leahy, Foundation, p. 182. For the graphically literal embodiment of the

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absolutely folded fold embodying the essential change in the history of thought, cf. ibid., pp. 491ff., where the Fold, qua foundation, becomes ‘the measure of the absolute structure of existence’. For the Fold in the ‘divine proportion’ form of the ‘absolutely specified Platonic line’ as the intelligible root, both of the value of the observed electromagnetic coupling constant and of the values of the constant ratios in the bifurcation tree in the approach to chaotic motion, cf. also D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “The Golden Bowl Structure: The Platonic Line, Fibonacci, and Feigenbaum.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com/dgl/p15.html. April 2009. 114. See Section III.3. 115. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section IV. 116. See Section III.1. 117. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendix b, et passim. 118. Cf. Jn. 15:12; also Section III.3. 119. Cf. Section III.3; also, Appendix.

II Omnipotence Nimble The Ethic of Simplicity

1

The Question of Ethics Can there be a question of ethics once the Question of Being has been left behind?1 If for the first time Being itself exists can there be any question of right conduct? If what we now actually experience is the beginning of nothing but existence, the beginning of nothing but Being itself as absolutely unconditioned foreground, can anything be governed by a principle? If for the first time the Very Being of the Godhead embodies the being of the universe—turning all forms of pantheism inside out absolutely—the Divine Being itself absolutely embodying the body, this Body absolutely multiplying bodies, this Body existing the infinite number of bodies—if for the first time God embodying Christ the world itself is the Body of Christ existing/existence—what remains of the possibility of Good and Evil? If in the absolute one-sidedness of the very structure of experience the divinity embodying the universe itself is itself embodied as world itself absolute foreground—if when the universe is embodied in God the world becomes the sheer transparency of existence—what room is left for ethical decision? In a world where God wastes someones/somethings,2 where God does not incorporate his being in infinite multiplicity in order to rescue someones from the “bad infinite” by making possible the participation of these someones in a higher subjectivity, where God does not cease to be apart from the world—embodying the world—in a world where for the first time existence is nothing short of absolutely new, where infinite multiplicity is God’s embodying the world, in a world where the divine embodiment of the historical event of the Incarnation is the beginning that absolutely and essentially precludes the mere possibility of someones composing an Immortal identity, but is the beginning of someones creating the universe itself, the beginning of someones being Very Immortality—in this essentially new world now actually occurring for the first time—how is ethics to be understood? Where God embodies the absolute objectivity of existence and Man rises above the rule,3 what possibility remains of a normative transcendence? For the first time the effect of the Incarnation in essence is the conception in essence of the Godhead as the absolute embodiment of the ontic—the beginning itself of poly-ontological Being—the essential

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perception of the absolutely revelatory structure of existence itself— omnipotence itself apocalypse. In light of this apocalypse of omnipotence itself there is no God perceivable or conceivable save in the form of the world embodied in God: there is no One conceivable or perceivable but the infinite multiplication embodied in the One: for the first time the infinite unicity of all things. For the first time the infinite nearness of the Creator: the finite beginning without limit—but then the beginning of absolute freedom. In “Politics and Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou,” the Appendix to the latter’s Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, in response to a question posed by Peter Hallward, Badiou says:4 “For me, every singular truth has its origin in an event. Something must happen, in order for there to be something new. Even in our personal lives, there must be an encounter, there must be something which cannot be calculated, predicted or managed; there must be a break based only on chance. And it’s to the extent that there is an essential link between the infinite development or construction of a truth, and this element of rupture that is an event, that I understand what Christian writers have called grace. That is not to say that for them the term has exactly this meaning. In effect, if every grace is a divine gift, we cannot absolutely avoid the idea of an ultimate, divine calculation, even if that calculation exceeds our understanding. That would be the difference that subsists between the properly religious understanding of grace, and what I call laicized grace. Fundamentally, what I call laicized grace describes the fact that, in so far as we are given a chance of truth, a chance of being a little bit more than living individuals, pursuing our ordinary interests, this chance is always given to us through an event. This evental giving, based absolutely on chance, and beyond any principle of the management or calculation of existence—why not call it grace? Simply, it is a grace that requires no all-powerful, no divine transcendence. What interests me in Saint Paul is the idea—very explicit in his writings—that the becoming of a truth, the becoming of a subject, depend entirely on a pure event, which is itself beyond all the predictions and calculations that our understanding is capable of.” For Badiou, for something to be new, something must happen: there must be a break, an element of rupture, beyond all calculations and predictions, based solely on chance. This gift of a chance of truth—at once “of being a little bit more than living individuals”—not only does not require an omnipotent, divine transcendence, but, indeed, excludes it on the ground that the notion of divine omnipotence is such that “we cannot absolutely

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avoid the idea of an ultimate, divine calculation, even if that calculation exceeds our understanding.” For Badiou, omnipotence ineluctably implies omniscience, and the latter a transcendent plan. In response to a follow-up question by Hallward, Badiou says: That there are serious problems within Christian doctrine— concerning whether the event was sufficient or not, concerning who is chosen—is something that goes back to what we were saying: that it is very difficult to detach the Christian doctrine of grace from the idea of a transcendent plan that governs the world. Which is where my atheism interrupts the parallel, as I point out on several occasions in my book [on Saint Paul].5 Where Badiou’s atheism interrupts the Christian doctrine of grace it intersects that effect of the Incarnation that is for the first time the form essentially of the new conception of Godhead as absolute embodiment of the ontic, as very embodiment of the occurrence of the God-Man, concerning which ultimate implication of the Incarnation, the writer says in Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being: Being itself now for the first time in history has been delivered from its nonexistence in fact absolutely by history itself. It is now an absolutely unexpected offspring, as it were, of the church, come into existence itself. Being itself is that absolute motion in which it is immediately perceived that God has committed himself in essence to history itself, and, without ceasing to be God, refrains absolutely from the determination of events and exists now absolutely through the body itself. This motion is materially existence itself, in essence the absolute displacement of space, the motion itself of the world’s being, that is, of being absolutely placed, in which it is seen that the world is everything in essence, in which is beheld the absolute passion of existence itself.6 In the thinking now occurring for the first time omnipotence embodying the Incarnate Word prescinds the omniscience that is an alternative to Ωpokålyciq, prescinds the all-knowing that is an alternative to “love’s revelation in truth,” 7 prescinds any alternative to the absolutely revelatory structure of being itself. The thinking now occurring for the

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first time and Badiou’s thinking intersect at the point in his thinking where there is no transcendent plan. But, unlike Badiou, the new form of thought now beginning doesn’t tie the truth of no transcendent plan— at once the truth of an unplanned transcendence—to the thought that therefore there is no omnipotence, to the notion, indeed, perhaps much too modern an anthropomorphism, that were there divine omnipotence it should be anxious about the future in the negative form of having to know about it.8 If Jesus in Matthew 6:34 says “Care not for tomorrow,” then, in the event that Omnipotence is for the first time the very embodiment of the universal Body of Christ, the new essence of Omnipotence— Omnipotence actually existing/existence—is the foundation of the absolute now. Omnipotence the very embodiment of the Body of Jesus Christ the universe itself—the eucharist existence itself—cares not for tomorrow. In its absolute nearness/nowness/newness Omnipotence reveals its absolute indifference to time—its being in time absolutely the latter’s difference—its being in time itself the latter’s change. Most concretely, this perfect freedom of Omnipotence from all care for tomorrow manifests itself in the very fact of the occurrence now for the first time of an essentially new form of thought. Concerning this effective indifference of Omnipotence embodying the world to truth occurring before now in time, now occurring in thought, at once the perfect indetermination of the essential being of the world, the writer says in Novitas Mundi:9 “the historical structure of being is not a determination of the appearance of its essence (no more than the fact of existence is a determination of this world’s essence), but rather that the appearance terminates in existence itself as the essence of this world’s existence in fact, that is, as the fact of creation.” The appearance terminating in existence itself is the essence of creation. In the thinking now occurring God has altogether dissolved the last remnants of the ancient notion of the immutability of the real—of the non-existence of the real. But, ironically, the atheistic ground of Badiou’s notion of the gift of a chance of truth would continue to participate, in the negative, this notion of divine immutability, most particularly—in the light of the thinking now occurring—the notion that omnipotence cannot be surprised. It does not occur to Badiou that omnipotence is the power to be absolutely surprised—the power—precisely because absolutely unconditioned omnipotence is not being nonplused by absolute unpredictability. At once this omnipotence thought in essence for the first time is Not-Being, the Nothing, nonplused (made to be no more)

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by absolute openness.10 This omnipotence for the first time conceived in essence is the Void nonplused by the absolute situationlessness of being, by the fact that the infinite multiplicity of existence/existents is itself the catholicological ‘set’ of those truths that are the coming-to-be for the first time of that which is not yet.11 This catholicological ‘set’—omnipotence actually existing for the first time—brings into existence those ‘sets’ that do not bring themselves into existence. But according to Russell’s paradox applied to this context: “If this omnipotence bringing into existence those sets that do not bring themselves into existence brings itself into existence it does not bring itself into existence; on the other hand, if it does not bring itself into existence it brings itself into existence.”12 In this connection the mockery of the crucified Jesus reported in Matthew 27:42 is relevant: “He saved others; he cannot save himself.” This mockery may be understood as a cryptic exemplification of Russell’s paradox. In effect, it is said that Jesus cannot be othered! Jesus saves those who do not save themselves— like the barber who shaves those who do not shave themselves. The barber who shaves those who do not shave themselves does not shave himself. The savior of those who do not save themselves does not save himself. If he does not save himself he is one of those he saves. If he does save himself he does not save one who does not save himself. The solution of the paradox—the middle term—is embodiment. The ultimate ‘set’ is not a container but an embodiment. The logic of this embodiment is the following:13 •

• •

Where xx = x, x is the square root of x, the ‘set’ of real trinary logic elements that are their square roots is a = {1}, the ‘set’ of elements that are not their square roots is b = {00}, and the ‘sets’ that include both kinds of elements are g = {01} and d = {01}. Since the ‘set’ of squares of the members of b = {{00}{00}} is the square root of a = {{00}{00}} = {11} = {1}, a embodies b. Since g = {01} and d = {01} are each the root of a member of b = {{01}{01}} = {00}, and a square root of a = {{01}{01}} = {{01}{01}} = {1}, then the embodiment of b in a involves identifying a with each of the elements of b.

Transcription: •

Where the ‘set’ of one who saves others but does not save himself is a = {1}, the ‘set’ of those that do not save themselves but are saved

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•

•

•

•

by another is b = {00}, and the ‘sets’ that include both kinds are g = {01} and d = {01}. Where x squared = xx = actual or existing x, since the ‘set’ of existing members that do not save themselves b = {{00}{00}} is the existing root of the ‘set’ of the one who saves others but does not save himself a = {{00}{00}} = {11}= {1}, the savior who saves others but not himself a embodies those who do not save themselves b—“so we many are one body in Christ” (o‹tvq o polloÁ ∕n ^ ^ sv ma ®smen ®n XristÛ) (Romans 12:5). Since those who do not save themselves but are saved by another b = {00} are each rooted in the other’s identity with him who does not save himself but saves others, g = {01} = {0} and d = {01} = {0}, and that identification is an existing root of the savior who saves others but does not save himself, a = {{01}{01}} = {{01}{01}} = {1}, the savior’s embodying those he saves while not saving himself involves his being actually identified with each one who is rooted in the other’s identity with him—“fashioned singly as members of ^ one another” (tØ d‚ kau eq Ωll¸lvn mlh) (ibid.).14 Corollary: for the first time essentially conceived the saving of the savior who saves others but does not save himself consists in placing himself absolutely at the disposal of existence. Now for the first time it is intelligible that the actual content of pure transcendental objectivity is being itself at the disposal of another. Corollary: for the first time there is consciousness whose actual production is the actually existing other/the other actually other. The omnipotence itself of the beginning absolutely at the disposal of thought.

For the first time omnipotence thought in essence, at once for the first time omnipotence itself embodying the savior who embodies those he saves. Not the Kierkegaardian embodiment of omnipotence in the interiority of den Enkelte, the single/particular [the one among others], but, turning den Enkelte absolutely outside, for the first time conceived in essence the absolute exteriority that is the embodiment of the single/particular [the one among others] in omnipotence itself. Omnipotence precisely is that which is absolutely nonexisting in its existing. For the first time thought in essence Omnipotence is absolutely nothing but existence. In his Journal in 1846 Kierkegaard writes:

The Question of Ethics

The whole question of the relation of God’s omnipotence and goodness to evil (instead of the differentiation that God accomplishes the good and merely permits the evil) is resolved quite simply in the following way. The greatest good, after all, which can be done for a being greater than anything else that one can do for it, is to make it free. In order to do just that, omnipotence is required. This seems strange, since it is precisely omnipotence that supposedly would make [a being] dependent. But if one will reflect on omnipotence, he will see that it also must contain the unique qualification of being able to withdraw itself again in a manifestation of omnipotence in such a way that precisely for this reason that which has been originated through omnipotence can be independent. This is why one human being cannot make another person wholly free, because the one who has power is himself captive in having it and therefore continually has a wrong relationship to the one whom he wants to make free. Moreover, there is a finite self-love in all finite power (talent, etc.). Only omnipotence can withdraw itself at the same time it gives itself away, and this relationship is the very independence of the receiver. God’s omnipotence is therefore his goodness. For goodness is to give oneself away completely, but in such a way that by omnipotently taking oneself back one makes the recipient independent. All finite power makes [a being] dependent; only omnipotence can make [a being] independent, can form from nothing something which has its continuity in itself through the continual withdrawing of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not ensconced in a relationship to an other, for there is no other to which it is comparable—no, it can give without giving up the least of its power, that is, it can make [a being] independent. It is incomprehensible that omnipotence is not only able to create the most impressive of all things—the whole visible world—but is able to create the most fragile of all things—a being independent of that very omnipotence. Omnipotence, which can handle the world so toughly and with such a heavy hand, can also make itself so light that what it has brought into existence receives independence. Only a wretched and mundane conception of the dialectic of power holds that it is greater and greater in proportion to its ability to compel and to make dependent. No, Socrates had a sounder understanding; he knew that the art of power lies precisely in making another free. But

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in the relationship between man and man this can never be done, even though it needs to be emphasized again and again that this is the highest; only omnipotence can truly succeed in this. Therefore if man had the slightest independent existence over against God (with regard to materia), then God could not make him free. Creation out of nothing is once again the Almighty’s expression for being able to make [a being] independent. He to whom I owe absolutely everything, although he still absolutely controls everything, has in fact made me independent. If in creating man God himself lost a little of his power, then precisely what he could not do would be to make man independent.15 For Kierkegaard, for what is created to be independent/free, omnipotence “must contain the unique qualification of being able to withdraw itself again in a manifestation of omnipotence.” Only omnipotence can “withdraw itself at the same time it gives itself away, and this relationship is the very independence of the receiver.” Only omnipotence can “form from nothing something which has its continuity in itself through the continual withdrawing of omnipotence.” For Kierkegaard the independence/freedom of the creature requires what only omnipotence can do: the pulling away from the creature, the continual withdrawal of omnipotence in its manifestation. This continual drawing back/subtraction of omnipotence is effectively the continuity in itself of the creature. For Kierkegaard omnipotence is not in a settled relationship to an other “for there is no other to which it is comparable.” In its continual withdrawal in favor of the independence of the creature Omnipotence “still absolutely controls everything.” In continuing to let go Omnipotence continues to hold on. Neither Kierkegaard nor omnipotence is able to the let go the notion of continuity or its surrogate the notion of control. It would seem that the only thing omnipotence can’t do is to make a clean break of it! to make an other to which it is comparable. But it is now conceivable for the first time that in fact omnipotence did make an other to which it was comparable when the Word was made flesh, when before now omnipotence made sin him who knew not sin (2 Corinthians 5:21) effectively the divine righteousness embodying creation. In the thinking now occurring for the first time the incomparability of omnipotence is to that one which before now it made so as to be comparable to him—the realization for the first time in thought that the form of that comparability of omnipotence to a

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second omnipotence is now for the first time the absolutely incomparable embodiment of omnipotence.16 The incomparability of omnipotence is no longer thought to require the continual withdrawal from the creature in order to constitute the creature’s continuity in itself, but is now for the first time thought in essence as the infinite nearness of omnipotence to the creature in the form of omnipotence embodying the creation as that which is absolute as the existing nonexisting real of omnipotence, as that which is absolutely nothing but existence. Thus for the first time in history thinking is free from the presumption and the despair of imposing upon omnipotence any limitation whatsoever. For the subjectivity embodied in Badiou the notion of a subject embodying all the others is anathema. But for the objectivity embodying thought for the first time there can be no objection, for objectivity there is nothing but an unlimited number of others, in Badiou’s words: “[i]nfinite alterity is quite simply what there is.” But that what there is should be embodied in omnipotence is quite simply beyond subjectivity’s ken.17 Indeed, the embodiment of what there is in omnipotence absolutely nonpluses subjectivity. It makes subjectivity to be no more what there is. It makes it impossible for subjectivity to be the possibility of the impossible. The embodiment of what there is in omnipotence makes the possibility of the impossible impossible—makes subjectivity impossible.18 What there is in the hands of actual omnipotence becomes what is beginning to exist for the first time in the form of the not yet. Before now in time the Word was made flesh—verbum caro factum est. Paul writes (2 Corinthians 5:21) “For us the one knowing not sin he made sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” When the savior is made the ‘set’ of those who do not save themselves—made sin—those who do not save themselves are embodied in the one who saves those who do not save themselves— become the righteousness of God in him. The savior saves himself as the very embodiment of those who do not save themselves—of those he saves. Those who do not save themselves become the savior when the savior is made sin—the ‘set’ of those who do not save themselves. For the first time the Word has been made flesh in thought, nunc in essentia verbum caro factum est. Now thought in essence—not before now—omnipotence the form of whose nonexisting real is existing/existence embodies him whose divine righteousness embodies those he saves. For the first time nothing but transcendent omnipotence is precisely not being nonplused by absolute novelty, not being rendered no more

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by something absolutely new. Real existing omnipotence is absolute nimbleness.19 Absolutely existing omnipotence, indeed, very omnipotence very nimbleness, omnipotence absolutely embodying the Incarnate Word prescinds the alternative omniscience/Ωpokålyciq, prescinds the alternative knowledge/truth, the alternative stasis/revelation, indeed, the alternative hidden/revealed. The mind whose being is omnipotence which is not nonplused by absolute unpredictability is the mind whose knowing is creating, where creating is actually existing truth for the first time. Badiou’s fidelity in the negative to a notion of omnipotence involving omniscience with a ‘transcendent plan’ may be compared to the notion of divine creative activity articulated by C.S. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism, who in effect everywhere in his thinking substitutes for the notion of “plan” the notion of the “general idea,” and who says in response to the question whether he believes God to be omniscient: Yes, in a vague sense. Of course, God’s knowledge is something so utterly unlike our own that it is more like willing than knowing. I do not see why we may not assume that He refrains from knowing much. For this thought is creative. But the wisest way is to say that we do not know how God’s thought is performed and that [it] is simply vain to attempt it. We cannot so much as frame any notion of what the phrase ‘the performance of God’s mind’ means. Not the faintest! The question is gabble.20 To the last sentiment the thinking now occurring for the first time replies that the notion of “the performance of God’s mind”—this poem—should be thought not to mean but to be—to be existence itself, at once turning MacLeish’s ideal of stasis absolutely inside out into absolute motion, turning “meaning” into sheer intelligibility: for the first time the word thought to be existence itself. Peirce’s notion of the Creator’s being omniscient “in a vague sense” is, characteristically, his way of reconciling knowing with novelty. But omniscience need not be, while not a plan, still a general idea, something vaguely more like a willing. American pragmatism, as it turns out, is but a halfway house to the thinking now occurring for the first time. Now conceived in essence omniscience is an infinite knowing of what is now catholicologically occurring for the first time in the perfect freedom of the absolutely differentiated existence that omnipotence now for the first time embodies, where the form of the divine will is the incomparably clean

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break with the creation to which before now it made itself comparable, where the form of the divine will truly loving of truth21 is the infinite nearness that is this embodiment, where the form of divine love is the “for the first time nothing but existence.” To the question whether he believes God to be omnipotent, Peirce replied: Undoubtedly He is so, vaguely speaking; but there are many questions that might be put of no profit except to the student of logic. Some of the scholastic commentaries consider them. Leibnitz thought that this was the best of ‘all possible’ worlds. That seems to imply some limitation upon Omnipotence. Unless the others were created too, it would seem that, all things considered, this universe was the only possible one. Perhaps others do exist. But we only wildly gabble about such things.22 Peirce’s notion that the Creator is omnipotent, “vaguely speaking,” is his way of reconciling necessity with possibility. In the halfway house of American pragmatism possibility and necessity are reconciled in the form of a relative actuality. Firstness and Secondness are reconciled in the form of a Thirdness “in its own nature relative.” But in the thinking now occurring there is nothing but absolute actuality, Thirdness is the absolute that identifies absolute Firstness with absolute Secondness. The absolute identification of possibility and necessity in actuality is the Very First Omnipotence itself the embodiment of infinite alterity, the embodiment of what there is.23 What there is so embodied in the Very First is absolute novelty. The universe is neither the best possible nor the only possible, it is as it now actually is absolutely and essentially for the first time, the actuality of beginning itself. For Badiou an event is the break or rupture—a chance happening— immanent to a singular situation that makes possible the production of a new truth transformative of the situation. This is not the clean break of omnipotence itself with the creation to which omnipotence made itself comparable before now and to which it—embodying its embodiment in the Incarnate Word—is now for the first time infinitely nigh.24 For Badiou, the clean break that is the beginning of existence itself cannot be real. Its historical core—Christ resurrected—the savior effectively embodying those who do not save themselves the beginning of the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:20)—is not historical but a myth or fable.

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But nevertheless for Badiou the form of the break that occasions Paul’s proclamation of the Resurrection makes Paul “a founder, one of the very first theoreticians of the universal.” In the conclusion to Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Badiou writes:25 “there occurs with Paul … a powerful break, one that is still illegible in the teaching of Jesus, insofar we have access to it. Only this break illuminates the immense echo of the Christian foundation. The difficulty for us is that this break has no bearing on the explicit content of the doctrine. The Resurrection, after all, is just a mythological assertion. The claim ‘there is a limitless succession of prime numbers’ possesses an indubitable universality. The claim ‘Christ is resurrected’ is as though subtracted from the opposition between the universal and the particular, because it is a narrative statement that we cannot assume to be historical.” Kierkegaard would be quick to point out that to speak of the illegibility of the break in the teaching of Jesus misses the whole point: not Jesus’ teaching, but Jesus himself would be the break! As Jesus says of himself in John 11:25: “I am the Resurrection.” When Paul preaches ‘Christ is resurrected’ he is faithful to the break that Jesus is. Paul, not Jesus, can be faithful to the break that is Jesus. There can be no break to which the break that is Jesus is faithful, except perhaps the absolute break that is omnipotence itself.26 Badiou defines the central content of Paul’s preaching—at once the core element in the essentially new conception of omnipotence itself now actually occurring—as a claim “subtracted from the opposition between the universal and the particular.” Indeed, analogously in Kierkegaard it is precisely omnipotence continually subtracting itself in its manifestation that constitutes the continuity in itself of an individual, its substantial being. It is just omnipotence subtracting itself from the “opposition between the universal and the particular” that constitutes the freedom—the independence in being—of the single one (den Enkelte)—its singular identity. But for Badiou there is no substantial singularity—no singularity in being—there is only a universal singularity through participation in a universal that comes to be by virtue of a response to a chance event. Badiou writes in Saint Paul:27 “if it is true that every truth erupts as singular, its singularity is immediately universalizable. Universalizable singularity necessarily breaks with identitarian singularity.” For Kierkegaard the truth that erupts as singular is not immediately universalizable because the subject who is faithful to this truth is not liberated from what Badiou calls the “straightjacket of sense” or “separate[d] from the law of the world.”28 Indeed, for Kierkegaard, the truth to which

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he is faithful is universalizable but only through a divine mediation that does not interrupt “the circulation of sense,” and which therefore is for the witness to this truth an “absolute paradox.” In Kierkegaard the “subtraction from the opposition between the universal and the particular” that characterizes for Badiou the Pauline truth has come in the course of time to be opposed positively and absolutely to that opposition. The truth of Paul’s consciousness is for Badiou materially “a fable,” insofar as it “fails to touch on any Real, unless it be by virtue of that invisible and indirectly accessible residue sticking to every obvious imaginary,”29 but he nevertheless says:30 “the Pauline break has a bearing upon the formal conditions and the inevitable consequences of a consciousness-of-truth rooted in a pure event, detached from every objectivist assignation to the particular laws of a world or society yet concretely destined to become inscribed within a world and within a society. What Paul must be given exclusive credit for establishing is that the fidelity to such an event exists only through the termination of communitarian particularisms and the determination of a subject-of-truth who indistinguishes the One and ‘for all’. Thus, unlike effective truth procedures (science, art, politics, love), the Pauline break does not base itself upon the production of a universal. Its bearing, in a mythological context implacably reduced to a single point, a single statement (Christ is resurrected), pertains rather to the laws of universality in general. This is why it can be called a theoretical break, it being understood that in this instance ‘theoretical’ is not being opposed to ‘practical’, but to real. Paul is a founder, in that he is one of the very first theoreticians of the universal.” Thus Badiou appropriates the evental form of the Christian reality while leaving behind its fabulous matter. Beneath the fabulous matter that is the Resurrection of Jesus, is ultimately the fabulous matter that is the matter brought into being ex nihilo. Badiou is committed to the distinction between the real and the narrative. Modern philosophy begins with Descartes’ appropriation of the transcendental form of natural reason that came into being in Thomas Aquinas’ faithful understanding of Christian doctrine, and ultimately arrives at the end of philosophy in Heidegger, at the end of metaphysics. In Badiou modern philosophy attempts a new beginning, the end of this end of philosophy.31 If in the thinking now occurring for the first time there is the very form the new beginning that is the end of the end of the world—the beginning and end of the beginning and end of the world—the apocalyptic I for the first time the very form of thought, at once the form of the body itself32—

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in Badiou what ends is not the end of the world, but, rather, the end of philosophy. But then the end of the end of philosophy not the end of the end of the world—not the end of the end of history—not the end of the world in essence—not the end of history in essence—not the intelligibility of being in essence—must occur in the context of the continuing distinction between reality and thought, between ontology and truth. The new beginning of philosophy self-avowedly continuing modernity in the wake of the death of God, true to its modernity is in its inauguration at once a return33—in this case a return to Plato in the form of a ‘Platonism of the multiple’,34 a return that once again requires the formal appropriation of a Christian reality, but this time not the appropriation à la Descartes of the transcendental form of natural reason—which form Descartes appropriated prescinding nature—the fateful appropriation of the hitherto salient intellectual consequence of the Christian event and its proclamation—but a return now in the wake of the death of God the appropriation of the very form per se of the proclamation of the Christian event itself. The return to Plato in the form of a ‘Platonism of the multiple’ is at once the return to the Pauline proclamation in the form of a theory of the coming to be of a new universal. This appropriation of the form of the proclamation of the miraculous event accompanied by a studied indifference to its matter is accompanied as well by a studied indifference to differences in favor of the return of the Same. Ironically, the ‘Platonism of the multiple’—in keeping with the idealism inevitably at the root of materialism—prescinds from the multiple, as Descartes prescinds from nature in the Meditations, by reducing the latter to the former—by reducing nature to the multiple— prescinds from the multiple other in favor of the Subject that comes into being—if it comes into being—in the wake of an event. In his Ethics, Badiou writes:35 “The truth is that in the context of a system of thought that is both a-religious and genuinely contemporary with the truths of our time, the whole ethical predication based upon recognition of the other should be purely and simply abandoned. For the real question—and it is an extraordinarily difficult one—is much more that of recognizing the Same. Let us posit our axioms. There is no God. Which also means: the One is not. The multiple ‘without-one’—every multiple being in its turn nothing other than a multiple of multiples—is the law of being. The only stopping point is the void. The infinite, as Pascal had already realized, is the banal reality of every situation, not the predicate of a transcendence. For the infinite, as Cantor demonstrated with the creation of set theory,

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is actually only the most general form of multiple-being [être-multiple]. In fact, every situation, inasmuch as it is, is a multiple composed of an infinity of elements, each one of which is itself a multiple. Considered in their simple belonging to a situation (to an infinite multiple), the animals of the species Homo sapiens are ordinary multiplicities. What, then, are we to make of the other, of differences, and of their ethical recognition? Infinite alterity is quite simply what there is. Any experience at all is the infinite deployment of infinite differences. Even the apparently reflexive experience of myself is by no means the intuition of a unity but a labyrinth of differentiations, and Rimbaud was certainly not wrong when he said: ‘I am another.’ There are as many differences, say, between a Chinese peasant and a young Norwegian professional as between myself and anybody at all, including myself. As many, but also, then, neither more nor less.” Further on, Badiou says:36 “genuine thought should affirm the following principle: since differences are what there is, and since every truth is the coming-to-be of that which is not yet, so differences are then precisely what truths depose, or render insignificant.” What Badiou particularly has in mind here are the differences important to an ethics based on (multi-)culturalism, an ethics based on what for Badiou is in reality a “vulgar sociology,” the sociology of the tourist. For him the truth that is the coming-to-be of what is not yet is the same for all. He writes: “Philosophically, if the other doesn’t matter it is indeed because the difficulty lies on the side of the Same. The Same, in effect, is not what is (i.e. the infinite multiplicity of differences) but what comes to be. I have already named that in regard to which only the advent of the Same occurs: it is a truth. Only a truth is, as such, indifferent to differences. This is something we have always known, even if sophists of every age have always attempted to obscure its certainty: a truth is the same for all. What is to be postulated for one and all, what I have called our ‘being immortal’, certainly is not covered by the logic of ‘cultural’ differences as insignificant as they are massive. It is our capacity for truth—our capacity to be that ‘same’ that a truth convokes to its own ‘sameness’. Or in other words, depending on the circumstances, our capacity for science, love, politics or art, since all truths, in my view, fall under one or another of these universal names…. The only genuine ethics is of truths in the plural—or, more precisely, the only ethics is of processes of truth, of the labour that

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brings some truths into the world. Ethics must be taken in the sense presumed by Lacan when, against Kant and the notion of a general morality, he discusses the ethics of psychoanalysis. Ethics does not exist. There is only the ethic-of (of politics, of love, of science, of art). As for me, I identify four fundamental subjective ‘types’: political, scientific, artistic, and amorous [amoureux]. Every human animal, by participating in a given singular truth, is inscribed in one of these four types. A philosophy sets out to construct a space of thought in which the different subjective types, expressed by the singular truths of its time, coexist. But this coexistence is not a unification— that is why it is impossible to speak of one Ethics.37 Here in stark relief is the structure of Badiou’s ethic of truths to which may be fruitfully compared the ethic of simplicity. In the ethic of truths, a truth, indifferent to differences, is the same for all. But then the indifference to differences of a truth that is the same for all is not essentially indifferent to differences: its indifference to differences actually expresses a limited capacity for differences—a capacity for differences limited by the Same. There are different truths—singular truths—but their destiny is to coexist—not insignificantly—in a space of thought constructed by philosophy and to do so as instances of ‘subjective types’ (political, scientific, artistic, and amorous). These singular truths inscribed in one or another of the four subjective types are in turn compiled of those human animals—otherwise merely mortal—who by participating in the labor of bringing a singular truth into the world compose an immortality. The ultimate expression of this limited capacity for differences in the ethic of truths is precisely the space of thought in which the different types coexist without being unified—the void of thought. Thought lacks the capacity for thinking the unification of the different kinds. The space of thought wherein the four kinds of singular truths composed of those seized by the chance to be the ‘same’ convoked by a truth to its own ‘sameness’ coexist—this space of thought is the Same— the Same composed of itself and those four domains that are composed in turn of innumerable possible sames. This pervasive sameness—inessential indifference to differences—at once the impossibility of the unification of the coexistents—is effectively the universal pervasiveness of the null set. The truth that is always a truth is not the truth of existence. Infinite alterity has no truth of its own. But in the thinking now occurring no truth of its own is not no truth. The different truth—at once the singular

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truth—is infinitely a truth. Truth is embodied in the fact that for the first time difference itself is truth itself. In the ethic of simplicity, truth, essentially indifferent to differences, is infinitely and unconditionally different—is unconditional infinite difference(s). Not merely the formal indifference to differences of the Same, but, rather, essentially indifferent to differences truth is neither the same for all nor different for all. Truth is not at all a matter of ‘for all’— neither for all nor not for all, neither for all nor for some. The truth of the thinking now occurring for the first time is indeed subtracted from the ‘opposition between the universal and the particular’, as was the center of the Pauline proclamation, without finding itself in opposition to the ‘opposition between the universal and the particular’ as was the Truth that was Subjectivity for Kierkegaard, and most importantly without distinction from the Real. In the thinking now occurring omnipotence itself embodying what does not contain itself—in Kierkegaard’s language what lacks continuity in itself—omnipotence itself the absolute discontinuity of the continuum38 infinitely indistinguishes the real and truth—existing storyteller and existing story39—and, so acting, is the catholicological locus of history itself: for the first time the infinite multiplication of the infinitely finite, the infinitely-not-nothings. This non-set of nonsets, embodying the sets that do not contain themselves, is the absolute embodiment of discontinuity, the beginning otherwise than the universal, the act of creation for the first time constituting absolute particularity.40 In the language of Levinas, but precisely not otherwise than being, a particularity otherwise than the universal—an absolute particularity neither the universal nor not the universal—a particularity beyond the Same: an absolute particularity a particularity neither of the same nor of the different: the particularity of the non-set of non-sets, of omnipotence embodying existence itself: the being nothing of the being of the null set at once the particularity of the particular nothing but existence for the first time. The particularity embodied in the non-set of non-sets coexists with the consistent nonexistence of the opposition between the universal and the particular, since the null set upon which the existence of that opposition depends cannot exist if it is embodied in this non-set of non-sets. But the non-set of non-sets is not absolutely unconditioned omnipotence if it does not embody the null set (the void); therefore omnipotence does embody the void (the null set). If the non-set of non-sets is the embodiment of sets which do not contain themselves then the null set embodied in the

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non-set of non-sets inconsistently contains itself, that is, the null set is not the null set: there is nothing but existence for the first time. In Badiou, the (re)cognition of the Same in the (re)turn of philosophy itself involves the notion that the infinite multiplicity of existence implies an infinite number of differences between beings—in effect the continuity of difference itself. But in the thinking now occurring the differences between beings are not infinitely infinite, but, rather infinitely finite—absolutely specific. The infinitely finite differences between beings require a notion of the One— unity, indeed, uniqueness and unicity—that is compatible with the notion that what there is is an infinite alterity—a notion of the One that is not a filling up of the void of truth with presence. Indeed, in the thinking now occurring for the first time there is no notion of filling the void of truth with presence, but then no notion of filling it with the truth of presence— with absence!41 But a void that can be filled neither with presence nor with absence is nothing but existence for the first time! the absolute consistency of the inconsistency of the void embodied in omnipotence!42 Indeed, creation ex nihilo: nothing but the beginning which is the act of omnipotence itself. In the thinking now occurring for the first time there is neither a notion of the void of being nor of the void of truth. Essentially conceived for the first time there is absolutely no void. The void is neither present (in the form of total presence) (Altizer) nor absent (in the form of the consistency of [any] situation) (Badiou). Indeed, it is the case that neither is there total presence (whose truth is not absent but past) nor is there total absence (any number of situations whose truths are not yet present). When Badiou takes as his starting point the alternatives of being and truth, beingas-being and situation, the indiscernible and that which counts-as-one, the generic operation of Truth and being-True, truth and knowledge, he truly enters into the Platonism of the multiple that is the logical consequence of the death of God philosophically comprehended. In Badiou being and truth each have their own use for the void that opens up when being and truth are subtracted from the Platonic Idea of the Good, subtracted from what for Plato in the Republic is at once the starting point of philosophy and the starting point of all that there is and of all that can be known of all there is.43 When truth takes to itself the void consequent upon the death of the Platonic God it distinguishes from itself knowledge as that which is oblivious of the void. When being takes to itself the void consequent upon the death of God it distinguishes from itself consistency as that which

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is oblivious of the void. In either case the void is the limit that ensures the infinite multiplication of differences. In the thinking now occurring the null set which in set theory otherwise consistently contains itself and would inconsistently not contain itself—not containing itself would not be the null set—for the first time the null set inconsistently contains itself. For the first time the non-set of non-sets that embodies what does not contain itself embodies the null set. The null set embodied in omnipotence consistently does not contain itself: nothing not including itself is nothing but existence for the first time. For the first time the null set consistently not containing itself is seen to be the truth of omnipotence revealing the inconsistency of the situation that is based on this consistency of the void. Based on the consistent inconsistency of the void now essentially intelligible for the first time no situation can consistently be, that is, the situation cannot actually be. What can be consistently inconsistent is not a situation but the creation that is existence itself. If for the first time in history there is a logic consistently inconsistent—the real trinary logic coinciding existence44 —there can no longer be a notion of situation that is not itself past—no notion of the coming to be of what is not yet that is not not yet itself—the notion of the not yet that is the not yet itself. The notion of the not yet that is the notion of the not yet absolutely yet is for the first time the absolute now of consciousness. If there is a notion of the not yet itself that notion is itself the not yet. For the first time the notion itself of the not yet.45 Faced with omnipotence itself nothing but existence, faced with the null set for the first time consistently not containing itself, that is, the null set itself absolutely not being, faced with omnipotence embodying everything that does not contain itself including nothing, there’s nothing for it but the absolute now in which there is no difference between beingas-being—Badiou’s mathematics—and language. Conversely, where quantum is identical with quality, number identically word, being itself poly-ontological identically existence, where the proposition, “a proposition is the truth of existence,” is the truth of existence itself, where the category of truth is for the first time essentially new, the logic of Same & Other is absolutely inadequate to understanding the absolute novelty of actuality now beginning.46 In Manifesto for Philosophy, Badiou writes: The concept of the generic multiple was first produced in the field of mathematical activity. It was in fact proposed by Paul Cohen at the beginning of the sixties to resolve very technical problems

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that had been left in abeyance for nearly a century concerning the ‘power’, or pure quantity of certain infinite multiplicities…. In L’Etre et l’Evénement, I completely unfolded the dialectic between the mathematical edification of the theory of the pure multiple and the conceptual propositions that today can found philosophy again. I did this under the general hypothesis that the thinking of being qua being is accomplished in mathematics and that, to embrace its conditions and make them compossible, philosophy must determine the ‘what-is-not-being-qua-being’, which I designated as ‘event’. The concept of genericity is introduced to give an account of the effects, internal to a multiple-situation, of an event supplementing it. It designates the status of certain multiplicities, which are simultaneously inscribed in a situation and consistently weave within it chance irreversibly subtracted from all forms of naming. This multiple-intersection of the regulated consistency of a situation and the eventful randomness supplanting it is quite precisely the locus of a truth of the situation. This truth results from an infinite procedure. What we can say of it is only, assuming the completion of the procedure, that it ‘will have been’ generic, or indiscernible.47 The event is ‘what-is-not-being-qua-being’. Philosophy constructs a space of thought in which to embrace and make compossible the four conditions of philosophy (science, art, politics, and love) by determining ‘what-is-not-beingqua-being’. ‘What-is-not-being-qua-being’ is the immanent supplement to the being-qua-being of a multiple-situation. That the supplement, the event, is immanent to the situation signifies that with respect to a truth that comes to be in the situation nothing transcends the situation. Genericity designates certain unnameable multiplicities intersecting the consistency of the situation with what prior to the immanent supplement of ‘what-isnot-being-qua-being’ was the non-appearing inconsistency of the beingqua-being of the situation, which multiple-intersection is the locus of an infinite procedure resulting in a truth of the situation which once completed ‘will have been’ indiscernible. Concerning the generic multiple “whose entire being is pure multiple, multiple-without-One,” whose postevental inclusion in a situation is the site of a truth whose function is the material transformation of a situation in the wake of the event, Badiou says:

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Inasmuch as the unfathomable depths of what is present is inconsistency, a truth will be that which, from inside the presented, as part of this presented, makes the inconsistency—which buttresses in the last instance the consistency of presentation—come into the light of day. What is maximally subtracted from consistency, from the rule that dominates and represses the pure multiple (a rule I call the ‘count-as-one’), can only be an especially ‘evasive’, indistinct multiple, without contours, without any possible explicit naming. Exemplarily, so to speak, any multiple whatsoever.48 But in the thinking now occurring where the notion of existence has altogether displaced the notion of ‘what is present’—so that there is neither presence nor absence—where existence is absolute superficiality for the first time—there can be no secreting ‘depths’ secreting the inconsistency of the ‘consistency of presentation’. In the thinking now occurring for the first time, with respect to a truth that comes to be in a ‘situation’, it is essentially thought for the first time that nothing does not transcend the ‘situation’ and that nothing is included in the ‘situation’ that it does not transcend, that is, that the ‘situation’ is existence, and that there is nothing but the Body that is existence. This/a ‘situation’ embodies the ‘situation’-transcendence that is the Body of bodies. To put it positively: with respect to a truth that comes to be in a ‘situation’, something included in the ‘situation’ is something that transcends the ‘situation’: the something in the ‘situation’ that transcends the ‘situation’ is the Body of bodies itself embodied in being itself. If there is no ‘situation’ other than the ‘situation’ of existence—if the ‘situation’ that is existence is the universe embodied in being itself/omnipotence itself—then there can be and is no consistency (redundantly) based on a fundamental inconsistency. There is no consistency not immediately an inconsistency. It is not that there is a truth that mediates the inconsistency of a consistency (a ‘situation’), the truth of an event, it is that there is a truth that is immediately the inconsistency of a consistency (a ‘situation’), the truth of the absolute eventuality of existence itself. There is nothing but existence for the first time. There is the perfect eventuality of the world here and now where omnipotence itself does not contain an event—as if it were an immanent supplement—as if there were no actual act of creation—as if existence were a matter of presence and absence—there is the perfect eventuality where omnipotence does not contain but embodies what-is-not-being-qua-being, embodies the event as something transcendent to itself in the actual act of creation.

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Badiou’s thought of the generic as the “especially ‘evasive’, indistinct multiple, without contours, without any possible explicit naming,” this ‘Platonism of the multiple’ is at once the notion of the generic subject that possibly comes into being with the event that supplements the situation. Badiou writes earlier in Manifesto for Philosophy: I have shown that the decisive function of the poets of the Age of Poets was to establish that access to being and truth presupposed the destitution of the category of object as an organic form of presentation. The object may well be a category of knowledge, it still hinders the post-eventful production of truths. Poetic disobjectivation, the condition of an opening to our epoch as a disoriented one, authorizes the following philosophical statement in its radical nudity: every truth is without an object.49 He says further: “The task of such thinking is to produce a concept of the subject such that it is supported by no mention of the object, a subject, if I might say, without a vís-à-vís.”50 Precisely as generic procedure neither truth nor the subject has an object. Badiou writes: “I maintain that one sole concept, the generic procedure, subsumes the disobjectivation of truth and of the subject, making the subject appear as a simple finite fragment of a post-eventful truth without object.”51 As he makes clear in Ethics, although the situation preexists the event, the subject does not: “I call ‘subject’ the bearer [le support] of a fidelity, the one who bears a process of truth. The subject, therefore, in no way pre-exists the process. He is absolutely nonexistent in the situation ‘before’ the event. We might say that the process of truth induces a subject. It is important to understand that the ‘subject’, thus conceived, does not overlap with the psychological subject, nor even with the reflexive subject (in Descartes’s sense) or the transcendental subject (in Kant’s sense). For example, the subject induced by fidelity to an amorous encounter, the subject of love, is not the ‘loving’ subject described by the classical moralists. For this kind of psychological subject falls within the province of human nature, within the logic of passion, whereas what I am talking about has no ‘natural’ pre-existence. The lovers as such enter into the composition of one loving subject, who exceeds them both. In the same way, the subject of a revolutionary

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politics is not the individual militant—any more, by the way, than it is the chimera of a class-subject. It is a singular production, which has taken different names (sometimes ‘Party’, sometimes not). To be sure the militant enters into the composition of this subject, but once again it exceeds him (it is precisely this excess that makes it come to pass as immortal). Or again, the subject of an artistic process is not the artist (the ‘genius’, etc.). In fact, the subject-points of art are works of art. And the artist enters into the composition of these subjects (the works are ‘his’), without our being able in any sense to reduce them to ‘him’ (and besides, which ‘him’ would this be?). Events are irreducible singularities, the ‘beyond-the-law’ of situations. Each faithful truth-process is an entirely invented immanent break with the situation. Subjects, which are the local occurrences of the truth-process (‘points of truth’), are particular and incomparable inductions. It is with respect to subjects of this kind that it is—perhaps—legitimate to speak of an ‘ethic of truths’. What I will call, in general, the ‘ethic of a truth’ is the principle that enables the continuation of a truth-process—or, to be more precise and complex, that which lends consistency to the presence of some-one in the composition of the subject induced by the process of this truth…. What is to be understood by ‘some-one’? ‘Some-one’ is an animal of the human species, this kind of particular multiple that established knowledges designate as belonging to the species. It is this body, and everything that it is capable of, which enters into the composition of a ‘point of truth’—always assuming that an event has occurred along with an immanent break taking the sustained form of a faithful process.52 The subject is an incomparable particular induced by an event. Qua unique particular it would so far qualify to be a person as the thinking now occurring understands persons, but the subject is not a person but is composed of some-one or some-ones—a living human body or living human bodies—living bodies of the species Homo sapiens. Badiou says: If the ‘rights of man’ exist, they are surely not rights of life against death, or rights of survival against misery. They are the rights of the Immortal, affirmed in their own right, or the rights of the Infinite, exercised over the contingency of suffering and death. The

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fact that in the end we all die, that only dust remains, in no way alters Man’s identity as immortal at the instant in which he affirms himself as someone who runs counter to the temptation of wantingto-be-an-animal to which circumstances may expose him. And we know that every human being is capable of being this immortal— unpredictably, be it in circumstances great or small, for truths important or secondary. In each case, subjectivation is immortal, and makes Man. Beyond this there is only a biological species, a ‘biped without feathers’, whose charms are not obvious. If we do not set out from this point (which can be summarized, very simply, as the assertion that Man thinks, that Man is a tissue of truths), if we equate Man with the simple reality of his living being, we are inevitably pushed to a conclusion quite opposite to the one that the principle of life seems to imply. For this ‘living being’ is in reality contemptible, and he will indeed be held in contempt.53 The Platonism of the multiple is the denied identity of finite being and the infinite.

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Notes 1. That is, beyond Heidegger, in particular, beyond his “beyond oneself.” Cf. M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. P. Emad and K. Maly (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1999), p. 69. For the fundamental template of the thinking now occurring beyond “beyond oneself,” see “beyond beyond x,” below, Section III.1, et passim. 2. D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot and Burlington, 2003), Appendix. 3. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), pp. 87f. 4. A. Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. P. Hallward (London and New York, 2001), pp. 122f. 5. Ibid., p. 124. 6. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany, 1994), pp. 390f. 7. Ibid., p. 296. 8. For modernity’s rampant anxiety, cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Appendix. 9. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, p. 297. 10. For omnipotence as negative analogue to the meta-ontological void, see Backnote 4. 11. Cf. Badiou, Ethics, p. 27. 12. Cf. A. Badiou, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy, trans. and ed. O. Feltham and J. Clemens (London and New York, reprint 2003), pp. 14ff., n. 18. 13. In real trinary logic 0 ≠ nothing, and 00 = 00 = 1. See Leahy, Foundation III.1. 14. If membership in the body is not the fully integral relationship delineated in this and the preceding paragraph then membership is really in a dead body. This can be clearly seen when the real trinary logic of existential/actual embodiment is compared to a dualistic ternary logic. In the latter the following relations obtain (where {U} is an intermediary third): {0U} = {1}, {10} = {U}, {1U} = {0}, {11} = {1}, but {00} = {0}, {UU} = {U}, and therefore {UU} ≠ {00} ≠ {11}, that is, {U} ≠ {0} ≠ {1} (D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “QuantumGravitational vs. Quantum Logic: Virtually Left-handed Trinary Logic.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com/dgl/p19.html. April 2009; also Faith and Philosophy, Chapter 7). So, where {00} would be an existing one who does not save himself and {UU} an existing other who does not save himself, neither would be as such identically the one who saves others but does not save himself {1}, but both would remain, qua actual, one {00} = {0} and another {UU} = {U} members of a body not identically each of its members. Moreover, in dualistic ternary logic the reciprocal constitutional interrelatedness of the members of

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the body—although involving the identification of a member of the body and the whole body—remains qua actual the root of a member of the body {{01} {01}} = {U} and {{U1}{U1}} = {0} and not qua actual a root of the whole body. The identification qua actual of a member of the body and the whole body is still an abstract/nonactual root of an abstract/nonactual root of the whole: {{{01} {01}}{{U1}{U1}}} = {{01}{U1}} = {U0} = {1}. In dualistic ternary logic the body does not embody its members. Members that are nevertheless members of the body are in a real sense disembodied. The body composed of such members is really dead. The notion of membership in a dead body is completely eliminated in the real trinary logic of actual embodiment—the logic of the living body— where {00} = {1}, {10} = {0}, {10} = {0}, and {00} = {00} = {11} = {00} = {1}. The members of the living body are reciprocally interrelated in their respective constitutions, where a is identified with the other of each of the elements of b. But such a mediated identification of the elements of b and the whole body a, something so far true in dualistic trinary logic, in the logic of the dead body, is inadequate to understanding the body qua living. What is required is that the mediated identification be qua actual an existing root of the whole. The members of the living body qua actual b = {{00}{00}} and qua actual reciprocal interrelatedness g = {{01}{01}} and d = {{01}{01}} are embodied members of the body immediately qua actual the whole and an existing root of the whole a = {{00}{00}} = {{{01}{01}}{{01}{01}}} = {11} = {1} that is the body. Each embodied member of the living body qua actual and qua actual reciprocal constitutional interrelatedness is identically the set of logical elements that are their square roots a = {1}. 15. S. Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Bloomington and London, 1970), Volume 2, pp. 62f. 16. See, below, Section III.3, pp. 231f. and Appendices 2, 3, and 4. 17. Note here the fundamental divergence of the thinking now occurring— where being and appearance are absolutely identical and where therefore embodiment is at once an ontological category (cf. Leahy, Foundation, passim)—from Badiou’s (re)turn of philosophy for which embodiment is a category not of ontology absolutely but of an objective phenomenology, first presented in the form of a ‘separate investigation’ in Logics of Worlds: Being and Event, 2 (New York and London, 2009). In this Part 2, revisioning Kant to stay the collapse of the Hegelian One, every phenomenal object for Badiou is the “point of reciprocity between the logical and the onto-logical,” as thought (presubjective and non-cognitive) envelopes the noumenal-phenomenal distinction and determines being as being-there (the latter infecting being-qua-being with relational consistency retroactively). There, in particular, the body/embodiment is the objectivity of the subject, the post-evental trace enveloping an ordered atomicity, the material basis for the subjective formalisms of a truth process.

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18. Since thereby it precludes the very notion of ‘situation’, a fortiori absolutely nonexisting—real—existing omnipotence itself precludes the situation split in two by a real fidelity, thus the body of multiples marked by an event erroneously understood as another situation, the true situation. Cf. Badiou, Being and Event, pp. 237f.: “A real fidelity establishes dependencies which for the state are without concept, and it splits—via successive finite states—the situation in two, because it also discerns a mass of multiples which are indifferent to the event. It is at this point, moreover, that one can again think fidelity as a counter-state: what it does is organize, within the situation, another legitimacy of inclusions. It builds, according to the infinite becoming of the finite and provisional results, a kind of other situation, obtained by the division in two of the primitive situation. This other situation is that of the multiples marked by the event, and it has always been tempting for a fidelity to consider the set of these multiples, in its provisional figure, as its own body: as the acting effectiveness of the event, as the true situation, or flock of the Faithful. This ecclesiastical version of fidelity (the connected multiples are the Church of the event) is an ontologization whose error has been pointed out. It is, nevertheless, a necessary tendency; that is, it presents another form of the tendency to be satisfied solely with the projection of a non-existent— an erring procedure—onto the statist surface upon which its results are legible.” 19. Cf. Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary: “Nimble: ‘agile, lightfooted’, c.1300, nemel, from O.E. nœmel ‘quick to grasp’ (attested only once)… from PIE base *nem- ‘to divide, distribute, allot’ (cf. Gk. nemein ‘to deal out’…, L. numerus ‘number’, Lith. nuoma ‘rent, interest’, M.Ir. nos ‘custom, usage’).” Available online at: http://www.etymonline.com. April 2009. Cf., above, p. 34, n. 105, and Section III.3, passim, the nemein root of nømoq in oʺkonømoq, the “distributor of the dwelling.” 20. C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers (Harvard, 1934), 6.508. 21. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Epilogue. 22. Peirce, Collected Papers, 4.509. 23. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section V.3. 24. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Appendix. 25. A. Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. R. Brassier (Stanford, 2003), pp. 107f. For the analogous notion that what is “at stake” in Pascal, “beyond Christianity,” is “the militant apparatus of truth,” cf. Badiou, Being and Event, pp. 212ff. 26. In this connection, cf. S. Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge, Massachusetts. and London, 2003), pp. 125f., for the childish notion that Jesus’ cry on the cross, “Father, why have you forsaken me,” “hints at an impotent God.” As if it were not precisely the function of fatherhood to make the clean break between father and son, and, in the case of omnipotence, to do so absolutely.

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27. Badiou, Saint Paul, p. 11ff. 28. Badiou, Infinite Thought, p. 166. 29. Badiou, Saint Paul, p. 4. 30. Ibid., pp. 107f. 31. A. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, trans. N. Madarasz (Albany, 1999), p. 121. 32. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Appendix. 33. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, p. 11: “This new thinking now existing is in no sense essentially a return to an earlier form of thinking, nor a rethinking of the appearance itself, returning, as it were, to that original appearance. It understands that any turning whatsoever on its part is essentially inadvertence to the historical perpetuation of time. It turns not; it essentially appears as the transcendental thought of existence itself at this time. Only by abstracting a moment from the form of this new thinking would it even be possible to think that the appearance of the transcendental essence of existence itself returns. However, such an abstraction of a moment from existence is essentially impossible to this thinking whose essence is the essence of history.” 34. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p. 103. 35. Badiou, Ethics, pp. 25f. 36. Ibid., p. 27. 37. Ibid., pp 27ff. 38. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 614f., et passim. 39. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 179f. 40. Since the null set is a subset of every set and every set is a subset of itself, sets that are not subsets of themselves are nonexistent sets of which only the null set is a subset. The sets that are not subsets of themselves constitute the infinite multiplication of the nonexistence of the null set, the being nothing of the being of the null set, its existence identically its non-existence: omnipotence actually embodying nothing but the absolute multiplication of existence for the first time. For the parsing of particularity, singularity, etc., including omnipotence as non-set of non-sets, see Backnote 4. 41. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 478ff. 42. Cf. A. Badiou, “An Interview with Alain Badiou” (7 June 2007) in The Concept of Model: An Introduction to the Materialist Epistemology of Mathematics, ed. and trans. Z.L. Fraser and T. Tho (Melbourne, 2007), p. 99: “With inconsistency (of the void), we are at the point where it is equivocally consistent and inconsistent. That is the void.” In the thinking now occurring for the first time, with inconsistency sans void, we are at the point where everything is univocally consistent and inconsistent. The absolute consistency of the inconsistency of the void is the nonexistence of the void, and with it the nonexistence of all undecidability. For the first time the void and undecidability

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belong to the past, together with the subjectivity which essentially belongs to the past. 43. Plato, Republic, 509c-521b. 44. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.1, et passim. 45. Cf. Section III.1, et passim, for the not yet as beyond beyond x. 46. Leahy, Foundation, Sections II.2-3, et passim. 47. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, pp. 105f. 48. Ibid., p. 106. 49. Ibid., p. 91. 50. Ibid., p. 93. 51. Ibid. 52. Badiou, Ethics, p. 43. 53. Ibid., p. 12.

2

Ethic of Simplicity Badiou privileges a universalizable singularity over the particular. The universalizable singularity that comes to be in fidelity to an event that occasions a truth procedure traverses the particular. The truth that comes to be is indifferent to differences. What is to be made of this? For the philosopher Badiou the death of God signifies the death of the One.1 The death of the One signifies the death of the notion of totality. If we understand Nietzsche to be a thinker for whom the death of God also meant the death of the One, how is Badiou related to Nietzsche? In Nietzsche the death of the One did not portend a universalizable singularity, but rather a radical particularizing of totality, a totality of particulars without unity, an irreducible duality of ascending and descending lines of human beings. Nietzsche himself was a ‘piece of fate’.2 Commenting on Nietzsche’s attack on Paul in The Anti-Christ, Badiou says: To say that Paul shifted ‘the center of life out of life into the “Beyond”—into Nothingness’, and that in so doing he ‘deprived life as such of its center of gravity’ (The Anti-Christ, §43), is to maintain the very opposite of the apostle’s teaching, for whom it is here and now that life takes revenge on death, here and now that we can live affirmatively, according to the spirit, rather than negatively, according to the flesh, which is the thought of death…. In reality, the core of the problem is that Nietzsche harbors a genuine loathing for universalism. Not always: this mad saint is a violent living contradiction, a breaking in two of himself. But where Paul is concerned, yes: ‘The poison of the doctrine “equal rights for all”—this has been more thoroughly sowed by Christianity than by anything else’ (The Anti-Christ, § 43). Where God is concerned, Nietzsche extols the virtues of the most obstinate particularism, the most unbridled racial communitarianism: ‘Formerly he [God] represented a people, the strength of a people, everything aggressive and thirsting for power in the soul of a people … There is in fact no other alternative for Gods: either they are the will to power— and so long as they are that they will be national Gods—or else the

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impotence for power’ (The Anti-Christ, §16). What Nietzsche… cannot forgive Paul for is not so much to have willed Nothingness, but to have rid us of these sinister ‘national Gods’ and to have formulated a theory of a subject who, as Nietzsche admirably, albeit disgustedly, puts it, is universally ‘a rebel … against everything privileged’ (The Anti-Christ, § 46).3 The theory of the subject as ‘universally a rebel against everything privileged’ formulated by Paul according to Badiou and appropriated by the latter is in effect a theory of the subsumption of the Other by the Same. In the conclusion to Saint Paul, Badiou writes:4 Thought becomes universal only by addressing itself to all others, and it effectuates itself as power through this address. But the moment all, including the solitary militant, are counted according to the universal, it follows that what takes place is the subsumption of the Other by the Same. Paul demonstrates in detail how a universal thought, proceeding on the basis of the worldly proliferation of alterities (the Jew, the Greek, women, men, slaves, free men, and so on), produces a Sameness and an Equality (there is no longer either Jew, or Greek, and so on). The production of equality and the casting off, in thought, of differences are the material signs of the universal.4 The key phrase in the last sentence is “in thought.” The production of a Sameness and an Equality “in thought” is ultimately intelligible as the form of world-transcendence peculiar to Badiou’s non-dialectical philosophy. The world into which a Sameness and an Equality is introduced is other than the thought producing the latter. The change effected in the world by the subject’s immanent fidelity to a chance event takes the form of an immanent world-transcendence. Speaking of the exemplary Pauline instance Badiou writes: That hope is the pure patience of the subject, the inclusion of self in the universality of the address, in no way implies that differences should be ignored or dismissed. For although it is true, so far as what the event constitutes is concerned, that there is ‘neither Greek nor Jew’, the fact is that there are Greeks and Jews. That every

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truth procedure collapses differences, infinitely deploying a purely generic multiplicity, does not permit us to lose sight of the fact that, in the situation (call it: the world), there are differences. One can even maintain that there is nothing else.5 For Badiou what there is is nothing else than differences, what there is is infinite alterity. Infinite alterity is, the situation is, the world is. In the thinking now occurring this infinite alterity that is the essence of the world is otherwise than being—neither being nor not being: infinite alterity/ what there is the essence of the world begins absolutely now: it is neither that the world itself is nor is it that it is not, the world itself is to begin, the world itself begins absolutely now: infinite alterity otherwise than being—essence the exception to essence beginning absolutely now.6 But for Badiou’s immanent world-transcending subjectivation of truths, in the wake of the death of God, of the death of the One, the world remains as the nonsublatable substrate of infinite differences: differences are subsumed by sameness but not thereby sublated: differences are not contradicted but supplanted by the universal, but therefore supplanted in the form of an infinite procedure, the conception of whose completion is the creative fiction that forces the transformation of the situation. The death of God, the death of the One, is an event in philosophy that makes possible Badiou’s transformation of the philosophical notion of the subject—hitherto either pure or substantive pre-evental subjectivity—into that of the bearer of a pure insubstantial post-evental truth-procedure, effectively supplanting the dialectical notion of identity fundamental to Hegel. But since he supplants the Hegelian dialectical identity without resorting to contradiction, Badiou supplants at once in effect, again without contradicting it, the peculiar form of the negation of dialectical identity found in Sartre. In the wake of the death of God/the One Badiou supplants negation with pure affirmation. In this connection—responding to Oliver Feltham during an interview in September 1999—Badiou says: It can be necessary to destroy something for the newness of the event. But I don’t think it is a necessary part of the newness. Because I think the newness is a supplementation and not a destruction. It is something which happens, something which comes, and this point is the crucial point. It is possible that for the becoming of the newness something has to be destroyed but it is not the essence, the being, the

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kernel of the process. It can just be a consequence. In Théorie du sujet I thought that negativity was creative in itself and I don’t think that now. I think that creativity is a sort of affirmation and not a sort of negation.7 Thus, having moved beyond the notion of the creative function of negation intrinsic to the Hegelian dialectic, at once beyond Nietzsche’s notion of the indispensability of destruction to the creative act,8 Badiou, in kinship, no doubt not incidentally, to the Emerson affirmation of affirmation,9 while sharing with Sartre the notion of the insubstantiality of subjectivity,10 does not share Sartre’s notion that the subject is an ontological nothingness—a hole in being—nor, consequently, does he share Sartre’s notion of the impenetrability of being.11 For Badiou, the subject is not an ontological nothingness but, rather, a logical nothingness—a hole in sense—a hole in the presentation and representation of being. The subject is a universalizable singularity. Being-qua-being is not conceptually impenetrable but, rather, impenetrable to language,12 with the upshot that Leibniz’ notion of the identity of indiscernibles is supplanted in effect by the notion of the universality of indiscernibles: identitarian singularity is supplanted by universalizable singularity, identitarian indiscernibility by universalizable indiscernibility.13 But indiscernibility lives! The generic is alive and well! The conceptually discernable being-qua-being qua discernible to language is actually not universalizable—what counts-as-one in a situation is not the universalizable indiscernible part—the hole in the field of the nameable14— the part that could be any part whatsoever—the part that does not count-asone. This dichotomy is reassembled in the very structure of the subject who faithfully bears the truth of the situation as the constant temptation not to ‘keep going’ in the materially transformative inscription in the situation of the discontinuity upon which the existing presentation of being is founded. It is possible to understand that the hole made in thought by the event that is the death of God, the death of the One, makes possible Badiou’s notion that the task of philosophy is to construct a space of thought in which the four conditions of thought (politics, science, art, love) are to be held and sheltered in their compossibility and disparate being. Concerning this space of thought Badiou says in Manifesto for Philosophy: Today philosophy must knot together the destitution of the object, the reversal of the instance of the Two and the thinking of the

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indiscernible. It must withdraw from the form of objectivity to the benefit of the sole subject, maintain the Two as the fortuitous and tenacious descendant of the event, and identify Truth with the nondescript, the nameless, the generic. To knot these three prescriptions together supposes a complex space of thinking whose central concept is that of the objectless subject, itself the consequence of genericity as the faithful becoming, in being itself, of an event supplementing it. Such a space, if we manage to organize it, will greet the contemporary figure of the four conditions of philosophy.15 The space of thought whose core concept is the objectless subject is the form of genericity consequent to a supplemental event in being itself. Pure subjectivity embodying genericity as the supplemental form of an event in being itself is immanent to being—not an event external to being itself as in Sartre, but a subjective event in being itself revealing the inconsistency upon which being itself is founded—the coming to be of the subjective in being itself, the supplanting of being itself with subjectivity—not merely the insubstantiality of subjectivity, but the coming to be of the insubstantiality of Truth and of Being, not merely, as in Sartre, the insubstantiality of subjectivity in absolute proximity to the eternally oblivious substantiality of being, pure ego-less transcendental subjectivity, but the insubstantiality of a fortuitous subjectivity as the form of the infinitely patient work that is the desubstancialization, the subjectivication of Truth and Being. Just here it can clearly be seen that the taking leave of the dialectical identity of the Same and the Other is not the contradiction of that identity, but rather its supplanting in the form of the continuing subjective faithfulness to an event in being itself which is the subsumption of the Other by the Same, the subsumption of being by truth, the deobjectification of beingqua-being.16 In Badiou philosophy supplants dialectical identity without contradiction by constructing the space of thought wherein identity is subject to being supplanted by the incalculability of an event, wherein being is subject to being supplanted by non-being on the assumption of the completion of an infinite generic procedure of transformation. In a word, where philosophy is a generic procedure for seizing truths, being is subject to newness. But being and nothing are not newness itself in the form of beginning—as is the case in the thinking now occurring, where the

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discontinuity of being and nothing in the beginning is thought for the first time.17 Indeed, in Badiou, since being-qua-being is the indiscernible Same of infinite alterity, the event in being itself can only be the inconsistency of this Same, that is, a different consistency, a finite alterity, but then being-qua-being is not affected by the event in being itself but being qua presentation, qua appearance, qua existence: not sein but da-sein, not being but being-there is subject to novelty.18 The question raised by this fact was put to Badiou by Oliver Feltham as follows:19 “we know how to proceed from non-ontological situations to the situation of ontology—abstraction, subtraction—but how can the ontological difference be traversed in the other direction (in a positive manner)?” Badiou’s response puts the question out of play: It’s the same problem! There is just one question, and it is, ‘What is the difference between different situations?’ I think it is the question—for you! The moment of thinking from concrete situations is by subtraction and abstraction and the question is how are we going [can we go] in the other direction, from ontology to concrete situations. But I think we don’t have to go in the other direction. We have a concrete situation. We can think the ontological structure of that situation…. The crucial point is, are we able to understand the situation from the point of view of truth or only from the point of view of knowledge? If we can understand the situation from the point of view of truth then there is a process of truth which is irreducible to the ontological categories…. When we are in a political fight, or in love, or in a concrete artistic creation we are not in the ontological situation.20 In truth, Badiou has supposed “that the thinking of being-qua-being is accomplished in mathematics,”21 and that, “to embrace its conditions and make them compossible, philosophy must determine the ‘what-is-not-beingqua-being’, the ‘event’.” In Badiou the resumption of philosophy after the death of God/the death of the One is a new beginning in which philosophy surrenders to mathematics the thinking of ontology as such—surrenders to mathematics the thinking of mathematics as such—in principle generally surrenders to its conditions the thinking of themselves as such—contents itself with not being the thinking of its conditions—with thinking the not being of its conditions. Moreover, although no longer suturing itself

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to any one of its four conditions, while constructing the void of thought within which to gather and shelter the separate domains of politics, science, art, and love in their compossibility, philosophy, quite consistently, understands events within those domains to be part and parcel of those— its—conditions—part and parcel of the conditions of philosophy. So it is that with a good philosophical conscience Badiou puts out of play the question of going from being-qua-being to the situation. Badiou thinks the inconsistency of the situation as the coming to be of a truth that is the Same for all, but he does not think the inconsistency of the Same that is the coming to be of the situation, especially he does not think the coming to be of different situations in their difference. We may understand that if he were to think the inconsistency of the Same the Same would be a situation. But although every situation can be thought to be inconsistently the Same, the Same cannot be thought to be so, that is, the Same cannot be thought to be a situation, that is, the Same cannot be thought to be a unity. The Same is the uncountability of the infinite multiplicity of beingqua-being. Badiou says in response to a question from Oliver Feltham: If history is constituted by events and generic truths there is no unified history, there is nothing like ‘History’. There are historical sequences, a multiplicity of historical sequences…. I think it is necessary to speak of historicity and not of a History. I think there is a profound historicity of truth, which is quite natural, since truth is a process and not a donation. But there is not a History of being or a History of truth; rather there are histories of truths, of the multiplicity of truths. So, I am neither Hegelian, nor Heideggerean!22 Badiou thinks the multiplicity of the Same but not its unity, which, in effect, is the reason why there is no reason for the coming to be not only of a truth immanent in a situation but especially no reason for the coming to be of the situation itself, especially no reason for the coming to be of that whose being remains the Same despite the fact that its logic/appearance is transformed by the immanent truth-procedure that comes to be within it. Badiou says, responding to Oliver Feltham’s question: “What is it that regulates the fact that there are certain situations which exist?”: In my philosophy there are two instances of

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contingency and so of modality. First in a situation there is no reason for the existence of that situation. I am not Leibnizean. I don’t think there is a principle of sufficient reason. There is an irreducible contingency to a situation because, on the one hand, there is no intrinsic interior mark of the necessity of the situation. On the other hand, the event itself is marked by contingency. There is a double contingency of truth: the contingency of the situation of which it is the truth, and the contingency of the event of which the truth is the process of consequences. The ontology of truth, the thinking of the being of the truth, is a theory of modality…. the process of truth is not necessary but contingent…. This question is a logical question because truth, in my conviction, is a transformation—not of the being of a situation, because its being remains the same—but of the logic of the situation…. The logic of a situation is different to its being. We have to think not only multiplicity but also multiplicity here— not sein, but da-sein. The logic is of the da, of here, of localization. Localization requires a sort of transcendental conception of the situation. I can demonstrate that the logic of the situation is a sort of modal logic. It’s between classical logic—because being in itself is classical, set theory is classical—but the logic of the situation, of the localized multiplicity, that sort of logic is between classical logic and intuitionist logic.23 The infinitude of the truth procedure that comes to be in the wake of the event in being itself precludes the transformation of being in any form other than its appearance. But the ultimate reason why there is no reason for the situation is that the contingency of the situation is a function of the inconsistency of the Same, a function of the inconsistency of pure multiplicity, a function of the inconsistency of the indiscernible. Badiou thinks the consistency of the indiscernible multiplicity.24 He does not think the absolute discontinuity of the continuum that constitutes the structure of the real embodied in omnipotence.25 He does not think the mediation of existence that is absolute placedness.26 He does not think the absolute distribution/absolute specification of the transcendental essence: he does not think “existence the absolute distribution of the dwelling.”27 Badiou settles upon the distinction between the being of the situation and the appearance of the event, between a pure multiple and the effect of a “transcendental regime,” between ontology

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and logic, where appearance, the effect of the transcendental regime, and logic—fundamentally equivalents—come to mediate the inconsistency of a situation with its consistency.28 This mediation is immanent to the situation: there is no accounting for its coming to be, nor for the coming to be of the situation itself. Modal logic—situated between the necessities of classical logic and the contingencies of an intuitionist logic—the logic of the localized multiplicity—the logic, in effect, of a contingent necessity—is the logic of the structure of a situation: the logic of a different sameness. The contingency of this different sameness is consistently beyond the scope of what is its immanent transcendental conception. Philosophy after the death of God/death of the One cannot think the Same as inconsistently the Same, as the Sufficient Reason for the situation/the world. The return of philosophy itself thinks the consistency of the Same, the pure multiple as the real of the situation. Badiou says: I have to explain that the situation is not only a multiplicity but as also a multiplicity-here—sein-da—a localized multiplicity, and not localized from the point of view of totality because there is no such totality. There is a characteristic of multiplicity which is that of being here, and it is necessarily internal to the situation: such is the appearing of the situation or its logical constitution, it’s the same thing.29 The da without there being a totality in terms of which it could be thought is the inconsistency of the Same in the form of the sheer contingency of the situation. The localization of an infinite multiplicity is an inexplicable fact of thought in the form of the void, in consequence of a pure genericity. The here of being-qua-being, the appearing of being-qua-being, is the effect of a transcendental logic immanent to the situation. Nietzsche’s particularizable totality in the wake of the death of God/the death of the One, where the dead One is the unified singular, and Altizer’s totality of singulars in the wake of the death of God/the death of the One, where the dead One is the particularized unity, and Badiou’s universalizable singular in the wake of the death of God/the death of the One, where the dead One is the totality or unity of particulars—the denominator common to these three is the lack of the notion of that simplicity that encompasses what otherwise are the elements of the “opposition between the universal and the particular.” The thinking now occurring for the first time is beyond dialectical identity neither by way of the negation of identity—substituting

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non-identity for identity—nor by way of the supplementation of identity by the non-identity of the Subject, but, rather, by way of the embodying of identity. For the first time embodied identity. Omnipotence itself embodying identity for the first time essentially thought is the complex simplicity simpler than the “complex space of thinking whose central concept is that of the objectless subject, itself the consequence of genericity as the faithful becoming, in being itself, of an event supplementing it.” Speaking of the complex simplicity of the beginning in Foundation: Matter the Body Itself, the writer says: Such is the absolutely simple complexity, absolutely complex simplicity of the conception of creation. Thought now for the first time identifies absolute dead center as creation in the form of an absolutely unconditioned cogito ergo sum (absolutely self-less), identifies the beginning of an absolute ‘I Am’ as dead center everywhere (the ground of the absolute explosion of identity) existing now in the very form of time itself. This is at once itself for the first time the perfect reduction of depth to surface. Neither the equivocation which was the depths of the ‘Dawn’,31 nor the relatively unequivocal identification of the depth of identity, which was the absolute liquidity of identity,32 but the absolutely unequivocal identification of the depth of identity as the surface. This is the body of the Living God thought in essence for the first time. Being atoning in every now for the first time. ‘Concrete infinite potentiality’ sans horizon/ex nihilo: the absolute actuality of the beginning: the transcendence of the modern project in the form of the reduction of pure potentiality, absolutely & essentially, to the absolute act of creation. Now for the first time in history the categorically selfless transcendence of the transcendental ego: for the first time, ‘I think’ absolutely the appearance in essence: not an epiphany, but the phenomenon. The Face of God appearing for the first time as the face of existence: the divine and absolute superficiality of every actual thing ex nihilo.30 This conception of the absolutely complex simplicity of the creation is for the first time the very form of thought. In the shining of the light of this unprecedented occurrence to the very essence of thinking, when Badiou says that “Man thinks, that Man is a tissue of truths,”33 this “tissue of truths” can no longer be understood metaphorically.

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What now actually occurs for the first time is “the absolute transcendence of metaphoric thought.”34 It is no longer possible to contrast “Man thinks” with Man “only a biological species,” “Man is a tissue of truths” with Man “the simple reality of his living being.” For the first time the essence of thinking is the simple reality of the living human being embodied in omnipotence (existing/existence). Indeed, the language of the thinking essentially occurring for the first time—the language of thought not merely essentially but absolutely evental—is the “language of life itself transcending the irrelevance of itself…. The irrelevance of this language is itself the beginning. The remainder of itself the irreducible transcendence of itself, this language is the absolute context existing in time in the form of the irreducible, in the form of the minimum.”35 Thus where thought is “for the first time the absolute analogy of being,”36 essentially omnipotence itself embodying identity for the first time, absolutely evental, where what now actually occurs is the “absolute explosion of the complex absolute itself, in the form of the absolute perpetuity of an actually existing person, in the form of the essentially historical meta-matter of the metanoēsis which is thought existing for the first time in the form of man, which is man-thought/God-thought, species-thought/meta-thought, mid-thought/ quantum thought … the meta-material existence of the meta-conception of identity…,”37 that is, where man, beyond the Good,38 is the mind of God predicated of the mind of Man, where revolutionary metanoēsis is the thinking of the species, at once the quantum itself predicated of the midst itself—the absolute discontinuity of the continuum—there there can be no question of separating truths from the “circulation of sense.” In “Definition of Philosophy”, Badiou says: The philosophical seizing of truths exposes them to eternity—we can say along with Nietzsche, the eternity of their return. This eternal exposure is all the more real since truths are seized with the utmost urgency and extreme precariousness of their temporal path. The act of seizing, such as an eternity orientates it, roots out truths from the gangue of sense. It separates them from the law of the world. Philosophy is subtractive in that it makes a hole in sense, or makes an interruption in the circulation of sense, for truths to all be said together. Philosophy is an insensate act, and by this very fact rational…. Let us call ‘religion’ everything that presupposes continuity between truths and the circulation of sense. It will then be said: against any

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hermeneutic, that is, against the religious law of sense, philosophy disposes compossible truths with the void as background. Thus, it subtracts thought from every presupposition of Presence.39 Here the (re)turn of philosophy itself in Badiou intersects the thinking now occurring for the first time so far as the latter leaves behind forms of thinking that either presuppose or establish “continuity between truths and the circulation of sense,” especially the absolute form of religion that is Hegel’s absolute Idea,40 including the universal counterpoint that is the Heideggerian hermeneutic of Dasein.41 But in Badiou the form of the discontinuity between truths and the circulation of sense is not the exhibition of the dialectical element in the beginning of the Hegelian dialectical identity,42 but rather it is the latter’s being supplemented by the Heideggerian abyss here in the form of a logical void. This void “makes a hole in sense… for truths to all be said together,” a hole in sense, but not in being, that is, a hole that presupposes the discontinuity between beingqua-being and the appearing of being, the discontinuity between Sein and Dasein.43 Thought is subtracted “from every presupposition of Presence,” intersecting the thinking now occurring for the first time so far as the latter likewise leaves behind any form of the notion of Presence, especially the total presence that is the absolute kenosis of God in the form of an actual nothingness.44 But since, in Badiou, the death of God/death of the One is not contradicted, but, rather, supplemented by the thought of the void/the void of thought, thought is not subtracted from the presupposition of absence, not subtracted from the hole that is the presupposition of the discontinuity between being and sense, the presupposition of genericity. In Badiou “[p]hilosophy is never an interpretation of experience,” but, unlike the thinking now occurring—itself likewise not an interpretation of experience—neither is thought the thought of experience: truth for Badiou is not the truth of experience: most precisely stated, truth is not the truth of sensible existence. This is perhaps the most critical point of divergence between the (re) turn of philosophy and the thinking now occurring, indeed, the point of divergence most critical to understanding the respective notions of what might be understood by the term ‘ethics’. In Foundation, the writer says: … the transformation of the divinity of the divine which is an actual beginning is not the total ‘presence’ of divinity, not in fact the

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ultimate form of the modernization of the disbelief of the Christian mind, the universalized form of the disbelief of the mind, but rather the actual elimination of ‘total presence’, the immediate elimination of the very notion of the presence of divinity: the form of the divine actually beginning is very existence very divine. This beginning is the immediately mediated immediacy of divine existence, actually and ideally the absolute elimination of the divine pre-sence. Just as John writes (Revelation 21:23): ‘the city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God, and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it’, so now for the first time in history the absolutely self-less distance of the Godhead of God in the form of sensible very existence: the very existence of the Godhead of God for the first time the actual universe qua sensible existence…. You, the actual reader, you who are not able to say ‘I am Christ’, you, nevertheless, are the Jesus Christ who is the beginning. For the first time ‘who touches this book touches a man’ absolutely…. This is the beginning of the advent of the totality of history as the advent of completely sensible very omnipotence. The arrival of very omnipotence completely sensible which is the absolutely pure beginning of a universal faith is the very simplicity of the Godhead of God.45 In the thinking now occurring there is nothing as it were hidden behind sensible existence, no being in reserve hidden behind sense, in terms of which sense or sensible being might be construed to be presence. If, in Levinas, “responsibility for the Other” is “extraordinary” and “floats above the waters of ontology,” prescinding the transcendental unity of apperception,46 in Badiou, for whom Levinas’ thought is philosophy “annulled by theology, itself no longer a theology… but, precisely, an ethics… a category of pious discourse… without piety,”47 the ethic of truths conditioned by a pure ontology from which philosophy has withdrawn itself prescinds the transcendental unity of perception and makes a hole in sense in the extraordinary coming to be of the Immortal, the Subject, as the insensible/per se rational/purely generic form of the self-transcendence of the human animal, the Subject as the form of the human animal’s being in excess of itself. Badiou’s Platonism of the multiple is at once the Aristotelian rational mind minus its divine motor, its principle of unity: the mind qua human—in Aristotle potentially all things—in Badiou prescinding the unity of knowledge—is, indeed, a hole made in knowledges,

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precisely because knowledge—unlike the infinite truth procedure that reason has become in Badiou—cannot be apart from the “circulation of sense.” Badiou’s Platonism of the multiple making a hole in sense places the living being of Man together with his knowledge and the latter’s sensible conditions on the side of the potentially human, on the side of the notion of the human animal as mortal predatory killer. The human animal is such qua potentiality. Levinas thinks a metaphysical ethics as the exception to essence that is pure pre-consciousness sensibility.48 But Badiou thinks in effect a diaphysical ethics as the exception to sense that is pure postcognitive rationality. In “Philosophy and psychoanalysis” he writes: In the end, to localize the void and truth, both philosophy and psychoanalysis need an axiom concerning thought. The philosophical axiom: Thought must be understandable on the basis of being. The psychoanalytic axiom: There is unconscious thought. What the two have in common… is that truth is torn away from consciousness; the effect of truth is thought outside conscious and reflexive production. This also means that the void is not that of consciousness: it is not Sartre’s nothingness. One very important consequence of this localization of the void outside consciousness is the importance of mathematics. Why? Because mathematics is precisely the thinking which has nothing to do with the experiences of consciousness; it is the thinking which has no relation to reality, but which knots letters and the real together; a thinking faced with the void because it obeys the ideal of formalization… entirely empties out what separates us from the real. Between the real and mathematical form there is nothing…. I posit that mathematics is the science of being qua being.49 For Badiou philosophy is not itself a truth procedure, it is not the construction/production of a truth, but rather the construction of the category of Truth, where Truth “is by itself void.”50 Philosophy is “an operation from truths, an operation which disposes the ‘there is’ and epochal compossibility of truths.”51 Truths are ‘external’ to philosophy. Philosophy seizes and is seized by the truths of science, politics, art, and love. Philosophy states that there are some truths and ‘avers’ the unity of thought. Constructing the category of Truth, the void, philosophy’s construction of thinking is not the construction of truths: “Prior to philosophy, a ‘prior to’

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that is not temporal, there are truths. These truths are heterogeneous, and proceed within the real independently of philosophy.”52 There where the God of Leibniz, God as Sufficient Reason, disposed the compossibility of eternally preexistent essences by bringing them into existence, philosophy after the death of God/the death of a sufficient reason for existence disposes the epochal compossibility of non-temporally prior truths whose ‘there are’ it proclaims. In the thinking now occurring the construction of the category of truth is at once the construction of the plurality of truths whose unity is not a matter of compossibility but rather the absolute actuality of existence. For the first time thinking essentially is not the proclamation that there are truths compossible against the background of the void—thinking essentially is not philosophy, no more than it is theology—but rather thinking essentially is the proclamation that for the first time there are nothing but truths—excluding the truth of nothing but not excluding the truths of defection, not excluding the truth of falsity, but excluding the truth of truth & falsity,53 not excluding the void of truth but excluding the truth (the notion)54 of the void of truth. When it comes to the void what is said cannot be the truth. Since saying is identical with truth for the first time it is false to say there is a void of truth. If the construction of the category of truth is for the first time the construction of the absolute actuality of existence, the construction of the plurality of truths at once the construction of the infinite alterity of existence, then the immediate consequence for the notion of ethics is that the truth of living human animals is not dependent upon a process following upon a chance event that induces a Subject, a bearer of a truth convoking living human animals to self-transcendence. The complex simplicity of the beginning displacing the complex space of thought—the void displaced completely in the embrace of omnipotence— is the infinity of existent totalities existing absolutely in the act of creation. In Foundation, the writer says: For the first time the do-able is in fact the actual achievement of I conceiving I, I thinking the passibility and passability of I in the face of very omnipotence, and, in the immediately mediated immediacy of the divine, the achievement of omnipotence thinking omnipotence in the face of the I of I think. This beginning is the perfect mutuality of human and divine conceptions of existence, indeed, the perfect grace of perfect mutuality. Now as never before the non-being of

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the finite is not merely as it was in Hegel the ground of the infinite, indeed, now as never before the non-being of the Finite God is not merely as it is in Altizer the ground of the infinite, at once the actual, final nothingness of the transcendent God. Now as never before omnipotence itself, very love, actually moves to new ground: now for the first time in history the finite is absolutely, that is, absolutely without reference to the infinite, without reference to non-being, the absolute ground of ipsum esse, and in the perfect mutuality of this absolute ground omnipotence itself suffers passibility without ceasing to be omnipotence, as in this mutual change the finite itself suffers passability without ceasing to be the absolute ground.55 This I—neither self nor subject—I that is “simple doing” absolutely existing56 —in the perfect mutuality of the grace of the act of creation the comparison to itself hitherto existing—the word made flesh—now embodied in omnipotence—not merely existing in truth but for the first time the absolute constructor of truth—this I that is not the insensible/ insensate form that comes into being from time to time as the selftranscendence of the human body, is, to the contrary, the very form of the body: the I form of the body the absolute constructor of truth: absolutely as many truths as there are bodies. In the Appendix to Faith and Philosophy the writer says:57 “For the first time essence is conceived as absolute gift of being. The I acting absolutely is the reception of the gift of being itself. The I that is the infinitely transparent surface of the body is the form absolutely of the absolute gift of being. The I is the form of the absolute gift that the body is for the first time.” Further: In the thinking now occurring for the first time the exception to everything including nothing is not an exception to essence: essence is the exception to everything including nothing: essence is the exception to essence: for the first time there is conceived a new form of essence. Essence is the absolutely objective I otherwise than presence. This essence or I is the beginning of the consciousness of essence as absolute gift of being. The ethics indicated by this beginning of the conception of a new essence is not a metaphysical ethics, but, indeed, a physical ethics, an ethics of the existing body, an ethics of the order of essence, an ethics of the order of an essentially new actuality, an ethics therefore inherently disruptive of the world

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order hitherto existing, an ethics essentially transformative of the order of reason existing hitherto.58 What might be such an ethics of the existing body? Clearly an ethics that understands that a world actually exists composed of an infinite number of existing worlds, an infinite number of bodies, and that the human body—the body of the I—is for the first time the I’s gift of omnipotence, that is, that the I is the form of the gifted omnipotence that is the body. Obviously there can be no question here of a separation of truth and the “circulation of sense.” More particularly, there can be no question here of a “circulation of sense.” The relation existing among an infinite number of existing worlds, albeit they are sensible existents, cannot be a matter of “circulation” or the “circulation” is infinitely interrupted/absolutely discontinuous. But insofar as the “circulation of sense” is infinitely interrupted it is not only not incompatible with the truth of truths, but is in fact not merely the universalizable singularity which is the form of the truth proclaimed as the “same for all,” but, on the contrary, a “circulation of sense” infinitely interrupted—infinitely open to the newness of existence— is the existence of truth as singularity absolutely particularized—singularity actually embodied in existing omnipotence.59 This I, personal humanity, is an absolute particular, constructing the category of truth as absolutely particularized productive receptivity of being.60 Ironically, the appropriate ethic for such an infinite multiplication of particular truths is not an ethic of truths but rather an ethic of simplicity. The ethic of simplicity is to be contrasted with Badiou’s ethic of truths. Badiou says that underlying the ethic of truths there are “three major dimensions of a truth-process… as follows: •

•

•

the event, which brings to pass ‘something other’ than the situation, opinions, instituted knowledges; the event is a hazardous [hasardeux], unpredictable supplement, which vanishes as soon as it appears; the fidelity, which is the name of the process: it amounts to a sustained investigation of the situation, under the imperative of the event itself; it is an immanent and continuing break; the truth as such, that is, the multiple, internal to the situation, that the fidelity constructs, bit by bit; it is what the fidelity gathers together and produces.61

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“These three dimensions of the process have several essential ‘ontological’ characteristics: •

•

•

The event is both situated—it is the event of this or that situation—and supplementary; thus absolutely detached from, or unrelated to, all the rules of the situation…. At the heart of every situation, as the foundation of its being, there is a ‘situated’ void, around which is organized the plenitude (or the stable multiples) of the situation in question…. We might say that since a situation is composed by the knowledges circulating within it, the event names the void inasmuch as it names the not-known of the situation…. To sum up: the fundamental ontological characteristic of an event is to inscribe, to name, the situated void of that for which it is an event.62 As for fidelity…. The essential point is that it is never inevitable or necessary. What remains undecidable is whether the disinterestedness-interest that it presumes on the part of the ‘some-one’ who participates in it can, even if only as part of a fictional representation of self, count as interest pure and simple. And so, since the sole principle of perseverance is that of interest, the perseverance of some-one in a fidelity—the continuation of the being-subject of a human animal—remains uncertain.63 Finally, as regards the truth that results, we must above all emphasize its power…. A truth punches a ‘hole’ in knowledges, it is heterogeneous to them, but it is also the sole known source of new knowledges. We shall say that the truth forces knowledges. The verb to force indicates that since the power of a truth is that of a break, it is by violating established and circulating knowledges that a truth returns to the immediacy [l’immédiat] of the situation…. If a truth is never communicable as such, it nevertheless implies, at a distance from itself, powerful reshapings of the forms and referents of communication…. There is no progress here…. [T]hese modified opinions are ephemeral whereas the truths themselves… shall endure eternally.”64

In contrast to the three dimensions of the truth-process underlying the ethic of truths, there are four dimensions constituting the ethic of simplicity. The first thing to be noted is that the fourth dimension of the

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ethic of simplicity embodies its first three dimensions. The dimensional unity of the ethic of simplicity—the unity of a physical ethics—is organic. The fourth ethical dimension is indifferently the difference of the first three dimensions. This simplicity of organic ethical unity accords with the foundational or minimum order of real trinary logic where the dimension of the fourth ethical disposition is the foundational essence that precedes the first, second, and third dispositions, as illustrated on the following page:65 The fourfold ordered set of ethical dispositions is: •

•

•

•

4D. Gratitude, productive receptivity. The foundational essence of the ethic of simplicity is the understanding that omnipotence embodies the universe, that now for the first time omnipotence itself moves to new ground, and that this is the beginning of the Resurrection. 1D. Readiness, being at the disposal of another. Understanding that omnipotence embodies the universe, it is clear that there is no void in being or in thought. The fact that the complex simplicity of beginning always here and now involves being at the disposal of thought requires of thought a reciprocal response to being. 2D. Discretion, having the patience to see what’s different. Since what happens does so neither automatically nor according to plan but rather is a construction of consciousness absolutely now, the complex simplicity of beginning always here and now requires attention. 3D. Beneficence, doing the right thing. The required attention to the complex simplicity of beginning precludes forcing. There is no preexistent matter to be reshaped or forced by truth occurring. There is always essentially new shaping for the first time. In the unity of existing truth Omnipotence embodies/accommodates infinitely different truths.

The ontological characteristics of these dimensions of simplicity are as follows: •

4D. The embodiment of the universe by omnipotence itself for the first time displaces to the past the paradoxical foundation of the mathematics and ontology of subjectivity. The identity

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Index of the Ethic of Simplicity 1D. Consequently, there is no void, neither in being nor in thought. There is being at the disposal of thought, the complex simplicity of beginning.

4D. Omnipotence embodies the universe. Omnipotence itself moves to new ground. The beginning of the Resurrection.

Real trinary logic element: 0 Ethical disposition: Readiness (being at the disposal of another) Ontology: Freedom

Real trinary logic element: 1 = 001 Ethical disposition: Gratitude (productive receptivity) Ontology: Creation

Theological virtue: Faith Augustinian analogue: Understanding/Son Platonic analogue: Temperance

Theological virtue: Love/Mercy (God’s, Creator’s) Augustinian analogue: Simplicity/Godhead Platonic analogue: Justice

Domain: Art RTL category: Quantum-quality Platonic analogue: Producers Kantian category class: Quantity

Domain: Economy RTL category: Absolute quality Platonic analogue: Society Kantian category class: Quality

Defective dispositions: Indifference; Avoidance; Denial

Defective dispositions: Impotence; Hatred; Malice

Logico-linguistic function: Denotation/breadth Ordinary logic: pq (p: not discriminating q: not doing) Exegetic analogue: Figurative/Allegorical Ecclesiastical mark: One Physics analogue: Weak force 2D. The complex simplicity of beginning requires attention. What happens does so neither automatically nor according to plan. Real trinary logic element: 0 Ethical disposition: Discretion (having the patience to see what’s different) Ontology: Factuality Theological virtue: Hope Augustinian analogue: Will/Spirit Platonic analogue: Courage

Logico-linguistic function: Creation/volume ~ (p: not discriminating ~ Ordinary logic: pq q: doing) Exegetic analogue: Literal/Historical Ecclesiastical mark: Apostolic Physics analogue: Gravitational force 3D. The required attention to the complex simplicity of beginning precludes forcing. Omnipotence embodies/accommodates infinitely different truths. Real trinary logic element: 1 Ethical disposition: Beneficence (doing the right thing) Ontology: Reality Theological virtue: Love (neighbor’s, Samaritan’s) Augustinian analogue: Memory/Father Platonic analogue: Wisdom

Domain: Science RTL category: Commodality Platonic analogue: Guardians Kantian category class: Modality

Domain: Society RTL category: Absolute relation Platonic analogue: Rulers Kantian category class: Relation

Defective dispositions: Boredom; Dissemblance; Disservice

Defective dispositions: Inaction; Misfeasance; Malfeasance

Logico-linguistic function: Connotation/depth ~: discriminating q: not Ordinary logic: ~ pq (p doing) Exegetic analogue: Moral/Tropological Ecclesiastical mark: Holy

Logico-linguistic function: Notation/height ~: discriminating ~ Ordinary logic: ~ p~ q (p q: doing) Exegetic analogue: Spiritual/Anagogical Ecclesiastical mark: Catholic

Physics analogue: Electromagnetic force

Physics analogue: Strong force

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of mathematical form and the real is freed from its axiomatic limitations. Being embodying matter/mathematics is ontology. Omnipotent embodiment is the beginning of absolute polyontological difference. 1D. It follows from the omnipotent unconditioned embodiment of every-thing for the first time that nothing is not contained in nothing. Every-thing except nothing contained in nothing is embodied in omnipotence—every-thing embodied in omnipotence is the actual annulment of the void. There is then nothing but infinite alterity. There is no Same to which the infinity of differences might be compared. There is nothing but the infinitely evental being of existence itself—being-here infinitely that identifies the readiness of consciousness whose readiness for being is the form of faith. 2D. There is neither a void of thought nor a situation masking it to provide support for the notion that events inaugurate truth procedures whose upshots are the same for all. The truth perceptions that provide the matter of the ethic of simplicity occur incessantly and are by no means without objects. This for two reasons: first, the I that perceives truth is not a Subject destitute of an object and composed of one or more living beings of the species Homo sapiens engaged in a form of self-transcendence. The I engaged in patient attention to the particularity of the shape of the infinite details actually there to be now seen—which patient attention at once constructs that particularity—is the form of “the I infinite being at the disposal of across the surface of the body,”66 and as such the form of the objectivity that is the body itself. The identity of the I is its now absolutely existing particularity. Second, this body of which the I is the form is identically what is now actually occurring— identically its object(s). The perception of truth is not an infinite procedure. The falsity of truth and falsity not excluding the truth of falsity excludes the truth of the hypothesis of continuity, thereby excludes its undecidability as well as the notion of undecidability whose continuity infinitely depends upon that undecidability. The absolute discontinuity of the continuum—the inconsistency of the indiscernible multiplicity67—assures that there is a finite perception of truth that is absolute—for the first time the absolute objectivity of the particular not the opposition of the universal and the particular: truth as a singularity absolutely particularized. This I,

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•

personal humanity, an absolute particular, constructs an absolutely particularized productive reception of being that is categorically truth. This I constructing being is the concrete form of hope. 3D. The absolutely particularized reception of being enables the I to shape the real by acting absolutely. This action absolutely for the first time absolutely shapes the real, that is, does so without forcing, without violating a set of previous knowledges construed to have been at variance with truth. The I existing truth for the first time immediately mediates the immediacy of the particular/of the other which is itself the identity of its consciousness. The truth is not that which punches a hole in knowledges; it is not the rearrangement of knowledges. The truth enacted for the first time is knowledge essentially new. Itself conformed to the fact that omnipotence now for the first time displaces to the past knowledges based on the void the I’s enactment of truth is an infinitely particular existence infinitely new. The knowledge/the particular/the other newly shaped by the I’s enacting truth—this doing the right thing as the realization of the actual readiness for being {00} that is faith and the actual exercise of discretion {00} that is trust—is at once identically {{00}{00}} the act of creative love {1}.68

These are the four dimensions of an ethic of simplicity together with certain fundamental ontological characteristics of each. This ordering of the ethical dimensions of the infinitely evental being of existence itself in accord with the foundational or minimum order of real trinary logic is thereby in accord with what that order embodies, an event in logic embodied in the occurrence to thought of the category of Fourthness. Speaking with reference to Peirce’s three phenomenological categories, Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, the writer says in Foundation, concerning the categorically new real trinary logic: The categories are ordered categorically. For the first time the category of Fourthness exists. If Firstness is the ‘orience’, being, or freedom, irreducible to self-consciousness, if Secondness is pure otherness, or existence as force or resistance, and if Thirdness is the middle term, relation, or essence, then Fourthness is that which is originaliter after Secondness, but before Thirdness, that is, after the pure other, but before mediation, namely, the immediate existence

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of the other: not Secondness, not the fact of existence as force, but the fact of existence as actual force, the fact of existence as actuality, the fact of identity. Fourthness cannot, as has been noted, simply follow Thirdness, since qua absolute relation it is more than is required for ordering the pure relativity of consciousness, nor can it precede Secondness simply, since qua immediate existence, qua actuality, it must follow the pure other. And, in fact, Fourthness, the Fact of Identity, forces itself between Secondness and Thirdness, and forces itself between the-fact-of-existenceas-force and mediation with an absolute originality, indeed, as absolute originality, as that beginning absolutely irreducible to self-consciousness, as the beginning of a categorically other consciousness, the beginning of the consciousness of the absolute force of Identity, the transcendence in essence of the originality of the essence of American thought.69 The fourth dimension of the ethic of simplicity in which it is understood “that omnipotence embodies the universe, that now for the first time omnipotence itself moves to new ground” is itself an embodiment of Fourthness ‘forcing’ itself “between the-fact-of-existenceas-force [Secondness] and mediation [Thirdness] with … [and as] absolute originality” “as the beginning of a categorically other consciousness, the beginning of the consciousness of the absolute force of Identity.” The ethical embodiment of this absolute force of the Fact of Identity forcing itself between Secondness and Thirdness—not forcing Secondness—not forcing the force of existence, but essentially newly constructing the latter as finite perception—is the fact that Discretion is “the absolutely finite perception of truth” that qua actual {00} is “the immediate mediation of the immediacy of the particular” without forcing in the form of the act of Beneficence {1} as absolute objectivity, that is, objectivity without desire. Thus the essentially new structure of the four-dimensional ethic of simplicity embodies the displacing to the past for the first time of the otherwise diverse logics of intermediary truth common to Peirce and Badiou. For Badiou, for whom it is necessary for the continuation—“the one more step”—beyond the death of God that philosophy be desutured from its conditions—the domains in which truth procedures operate (politics, science, art, love)—so as to turn to its proper function of constructing the void of thought wherein to shelter these disparate realms of truth production in their compossibility,

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it is nevertheless the case that at bottom there is a stitching together of being and truth. Badiou says straight out in “Philosophy and art”:70 “the void sutures all truth to the being of that of which it is the truth.” Indeed, this suturing of truth to being is of a piece with the axiomatic essentially arbitrary foundations of Badiou’s (re)turn of philosophy itself and “its will to universal address.” 71 In Foundation, immediately after the place last quoted the writer says in effect that short of real trinary logic—the essentially new logic of absolutely evental existence—all logic is at bottom a bursting apart of sutures:72 What occurs here & now is the fact that logicality forces itself (at once, is logicality forcing itself) through & over the radical illogicality of a logicality the elements of which do not exist in such a way as to reduce the radical dis-hiscence [dehiscence, the rupture of sutured edges of a wound] of the circle of merely logical elements to logic, to, in the first instance, the logical order par excellence (Firstness, Secondness, Fourthness, and Thirdness), and, in the second instance, to the absolute order transcending the logical order, the existential order par excellence, the logical order logically grounded, that is, Fourthness, Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, or, Fact of Identity, Reflection, Appearance, and Essence.73 Stating the order in terms of its ethical embodiment: Gratitude, Readiness, Discretion, and Beneficence. The ground structure of the ethic of simplicity is then the recognition of the “absolute originality of the immediately existing other,” in effect the recognition of the immortality of the living human animal. For Badiou the person otherwise bound to the circulation of sense exceeds itself through participation in the Subject, the Immortal, who may come to be from time to time in the wake of one or another chance event. For the thinking now occurring the person is always & everywhere creating the world—existing the world for the first time—and in this way essentially and absolutely exceeding itself, indeed, the person is the absolute exceeding itself, always and everywhere the creating of a new world and a new humanity.74 Nor is the person blindly bound to the “circulation of sense,” but now comes into the inheritance that is the creation of the very organs of sense. In Foundation, speaking of the foundational order of the logical elements following the event of

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Fourthness, the writer says:75 This last [is] the order of the transcendental dichotomy in which the priority of the absolute originality of the immediately existing other is logically perceived, that is, in which the priority of the absolute irreducibility to self-consciousness of the immediately existing other is logically perceived: absolute identity is perceived. If the essence of the new world order is ‘to create a new world’, then it is clear that the transcendence of the merely relative originality of the essence of American thought, while, & precisely because, it is the transcendental founding of the organs of sense, while, & precisely because, it is the absolute window of ‘the knowledge of what is transcendent’, while, & precisely because, it is the absolute perception of the new humanity, is not, nor can it be, a form of time itself before now, a form of expectancy, a form of experiencing the presence of the world (not even the presence of a new world): the essence of the new world is absolutely to create the new world, to create the new humanity.75 Beyond presence, but then beyond absence—beyond the void.76 For the first time thought in essence omnipotence is nothing but existence itself. There is no generic multiple as the alternative to the specified. There is neither Leibniz’ preexistent essences nor Badiou’s conditions prior to philosophy. There is neither philosophy nor theology. There is nothing but the thinking now occurring for the first time. This is not a situation that can be interrupted. It is the absolute interruption of transcendental consciousness with existence itself. What for the first time is discernible is precisely creation ex nihilo the absolute inconsistency of the consistent structure of existence itself.

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Notes 1. For Badiou’s “the one is not”, Heidegger’s avoidance of the one, and the relation of both to the thinking now occurring beyond the one for the first time, see Backnote 2. 2. F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London, 1990), p. 64. 3. A. Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. R. Brassier (Stanford, 2003), pp. 61f. 4. Ibid., p. 109. 5. Ibid., p. 98. 6. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot and Burlington, 2003), pp. 115ff. 7. A. Badiou, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy, trans. and ed. O. Feltham and J. Clemens (London and New York, reprint 2003), p. 176. 8. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 95f. 9. Ibid., pp. 89ff. 10. Cf. J.-P. Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, trans. F. Williams and R. Kirkpatrick (New York, 1960). 11. Cf. J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. H.E. Barnes (New York, 1966). 12. A. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, trans. N. Madarasz (Albany, 1999), p. 80. 13. Badiou, Saint Paul, pp. 11ff. Cf., also, A. Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (Continuum, 2005), Meditation Thirty: Leibniz, et passim. 14. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p. 104. 15. Ibid., p. 96. 16. For Badiou the death of the One obviously cannot manifest as one event, but as a set of events occurring in the four domains conditioning philosophy (politics, science, art, love). With regard to being-qua-being Badiou speaks of the event in science that “prescribe[s] the return of philosophy,” as follows (ibid., p. 80): “In the order of the matheme, the route leading from Cantor to Paul Cohen constitutes this event. It founds the central paradox of the theory of the multiple, fully and demonstratively articulating for the first time in a discernible concept what is an indiscernible multiplicity…. [I]t is strictly impossible to think the quantitative relation between the ‘number’ of members of an infinite multiplicity and the number of its parts. This relation has the form only of a wandering excess: it is known that the parts are more numerous than the members (Cantor’s theorem), but no measure of this ‘more’ can be established.” Cantor’s theorem can be stated as follows: the set of all subsets of a countable infinite set is an uncountable infinite set. Further for Badiou on Cantor’s theorem,

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see Backnote 2. The continuum hypothesis deals with the smallest countable infinity, the set of the integers, and says that between it, )0, and the uncountable infinity that is the set of real numbers, c, there is no infinite set with a cardinal number, in other words, that )1 = c. Cohen proved that the truth or falsity of the continuum hypothesis is undecidable. Cf. P.J. Cohen, Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis (New York and Amsterdam, 1966). 17. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), pp. 627f. See also Backnote 4. 18. Badiou, Being and Event, p. 190: “There is no acceptable ontological matrix of the event…ontology demonstrates that the event is not, in the sense in which it is a theorem of ontology that all self-belonging contradicts a fundamental Idea of the multiple, the Idea which prescribes the foundational finitude of origin for all presentation.” 19. Badiou, Infinite Thought, p. 178. 20. Ibid., pp. 178f. 21. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p. 105. 22. Badiou, Infinite Thought, p. 181. 23. Ibid., pp. 185f. 24. Cf., above, nn. 16 and 18. 25. See Section II.1, passim. 26. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 612ff. See also Backnote 4. 27. See Sections III.2 and III.3. 28. Badiou, Ethics, pp. lvi-lviii. 29. Badiou, Infinite Thought, p. 188. 30. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 439f. 31. Cf. Peirce’s trichotomic mathematics, ibid., pp. 287f. 32. Cf. Altizer’s theology, ibid., pp. 188ff., et passim. 33. Badiou, Ethics, p. 12. 34. Leahy, Foundation, p. 183. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., p. 179. 37. Ibid. 38. See Backnote 2. 39. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p. 142. 40. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany, 1994), Chapter 12 and Appendix g.; cf., also, Leahy, Foundation, p. 424f. 41. See Backnote 2. 42. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 151ff. 43. Ibid. 44. Cf. T.J.J. Altizer, The Genesis of God: A Theological Genealogy [Louisville, 1993].

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45. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 619f. 46. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 157f. 47. Badiou, Ethics, p. 23. 48. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 107 and 112, et passim. 49. Badiou, Infinite Thought, pp. 88f. 50. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, pp. 123ff. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 287ff., et passim. Cf., also, below, Section II.3, “There can be no Good of Good and Evil (just as there can be no truth of truth and falsity) where the imperative to create is absolute.” 54. Cf. Section II.1. 55. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 620f. 56. Cf. Backnote 2, Heidegger’s “increasingly shifting into simple doing.” 57. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, p. 156. 58. Ibid., p. 158. 59. See Backnote 4. 60. Cf. S. Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Bloomington and London, 1970), Volume 1, p. 395: “Out of the eater come something to eat—just as we say upon seeing a certain kind of sea plant: There are tench and eel here, etc., but do not reason that because these plants are present, the fish are there, but rather, because these fish are present, therefore there are these plants—so also in spiritual things all receptivity is productivity.” Beyond Kierkegaardian presence and the distinction of spiritual and non-spiritual in the thinking now occurring the existence of everything essentially for the first time—very creation—is productive receptivity. See below, the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity.” 61. Badiou, Ethics, pp. 67f. 62. Ibid., pp. 68f. 63. Ibid, p. 69. 64. Ibid., pp. 69f. 65. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.1. For the treatment of the defective dispositions in each dimension, see, below, Section II.3. For the relation of the real trinary logic elements and their Trinitarian analogues in each dimension, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Appendix, and D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “Thinking Creation Ex Nihilo.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com. February 2009. 66. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 156f. 67. See, above, p. 94, n. 16, and pp. 74ff. 68. For real trinary logic digital and relational values, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.1.

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69. Ibid., pp. 460f. 70. Badiou, Infinite Thought, p. 104. 71. Ibid. [italics added]. 72. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 460f. 73. Cf. ibid., Section III.1, et passim; also Backnote 4. 74. Cf. ibid., the beginning as “absolute excrescence.” 75. Leahy, Foundation, p. 461. 76. Cf. Backnotes 2 and 3.

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Good and Evil For Badiou there is no radical Evil—no Evil “identifiable a priori”—with which to justify the smug self-satisfaction and purely negative thrust of contemporary ‘ethics’ with its notion of a universal human subject possessed of ‘human rights’ that are “rights to non-Evil: rights not to be offended or mistreated with respect to one’s life (the horrors of murder and execution), one’s body (the horrors of torture, cruelty and famine), or one’s cultural identity (the horrors of the humiliation of women, of minorities, etc.).”1 The notion that Evil is known a priori supports a fundamentally negative and reactionary notion of the Good that reduces man to being merely a mortal animal. Badiou says: We must reject the ideological framework of ‘ethics’, and concede nothing to the negative and victimary definition of man. This framework equates man with a simple mortal animal, it is the symptom of a disturbing conservatism, and—because of its abstract, statistical generality—it prevents us from thinking the singularity of situations. I will advance three opposing theses: •

•

•

Thesis 1: Man is to be identified by his affirmative thought, by the singular truths of which he is capable, by the Immortal which make of him the most resilient [résistant] and most paradoxical of animals. Thesis 2: It is from our positive capability for Good, and thus from our boundary-breaking treatment of possibilities and our refusal of conservatism, including the conservation of being, that we are to identify Evil—not vice versa. Thesis 3: All humanity has its root in the identification in thought [en pensée] of singular situations. There is no ethics in general. There are only—eventually—ethics of processes by which we treat the possibilities of a situation.2

In place of the “abstract, statistical generality” of conservatism, Badiou’s revolutionary thought—equating man with a complex

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possibility of immortality—thinks a concrete, singular generality in the form of the truth-procedure operating in the transformation of a singular situation. For Badiou a ‘some-one’ is “nothing other than himself, a multiple singularity recognizable among all others.”3 Some-ones as such are individual human animals engaged in activities ultimately reducible to preservation in being. For Spinoza preservation in being is the fundamental principle of ethics, but for Badiou preservation in being is merely the basic interest of animals in general and of the pre-ethical human animal. Caught up in a truth process a ‘some-one’—a known singular multiple—is “in excess of himself, because the uncertain course [tracé aléatoire] of fidelity passes through him, transfixes his singular body and inscribes him, from within time, in an instant of eternity…. [This] ‘some-one’ is internally and imperceptibly riven, or punctured, by this truth that ‘passes’ through that known multiple that he is…. [T]he ‘some-one’ was not in a position to know that he was capable of this co-belonging to a situation and to the hazardous course [tracé hasardeux] of a truth, this becoming-subject.”4 Just here it can be seen that Badiou conceives a revolutionary form of reason. In Aristotle essence is understood as tØ tº Σn e}nai, “what it was [for reason] to be” its object in the act of knowing—as the act of the immortal/eternal/divine element of mind beyond reason as the intelligible form of the living body.5 Analogously, in Badiou reason is a void pointing to a real truth existing elsewhere. At the end of “Philosophy and art,” availing himself of a fiction of art in constructing the category of Truth,6 Badiou writes: The poem marks the moment of the empty page in which the argument proceeds, proceeded, will proceed. This void, this empty page, is not ‘all is thinkable’. It is, on the contrary, under a rigorously circumscribed poetic mark, the means of saying, in philosophy, that at least one truth, elsewhere, but real, exists, and drawing from this recognition, against the melancholy of those who regard from afar, the most joyful consequences.7 In Aristotle, reason qua reason is a blank slate, “an empty page,” potentially all things, but the mind in the act of knowing (noēsis) is a single thing.8 By way of a complex negative analogy, in Badiou the void of reason is not ‘all is thinkable’, but, yes, ‘one real truth exists elsewhere’. The ‘elsewhere’ is the procedure of inscription carried out by a Subject induced by an incalculable, unpredictable event in which a truth is exposed to eternity

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and in which ‘becoming-subject’ ‘some-one’ is inscribed ‘in an instant of eternity’. In Badiou Aristotle’s eternal act of knowing (noēsis) actualizing reason’s potentiality has been effectively replaced by an act of transforming knowing—by a revolutionary noēsis. There is no prime mover at the core of an Aristotelian soul, but there are gods who chance to come to be from time to time, the Subjects, the Immortals. And when a some-one will have entered into the composition of one of these Subjects, “in so far as he is self-subjectivization, the ‘some-one’ exists without knowing it [existe à son proper insu],”9 as surely as does Aristotle’s rational form of the body in the act of knowing.10 In Badiou’s revolutionary form of noēsis as interruptive transformation of established knowledges consistency in the midst of a truth-process is “the engagement of one’s singularity (the animal ‘some-one’) in the continuation of a subject of truth…. [I]t is to submit the perserverance of what is known to a duration [durée] peculiar to the not-known.”11 Someones are capable of exceeding themselves through their participation in the singularity of a truth-bearing Subject. For Badiou the hither side of “our boundarybreaking treatment of possibilities and our refusal of conservatism” there is neither Good nor Evil. The concept of the “duration peculiar to the not-known” that needs to be sustained and the concept of the Good are intimately related. In Ethics, Badiou says: Considered in terms of its mere nature alone, the human animal must be lumped in the same category as its biological companions…. Thus conceived (and this is what we know him to be), it is clear that the human animal, ‘in itself ’, implies no value judgement. Nietzsche is no doubt right, once he has assessed humanity in terms of the norm of its vital power, to declare it essentially innocent, foreign in itself to both Good and Evil. His delusion is to imagine a superhumanity restored to this innocence, once delivered from the shadowy, life-destroying enterprise led by the powerful figure of the Priest. No: no life, no natural power, can be beyond Good and Evil. We should say, rather, that every life, including that of the human animal, is beneath Good and Evil. What provokes the emergence of the Good—and, by simple consequence, Evil—exclusively concerns the rare existence of truth-processes. Transfixed by an immanent break, the human animal finds its principle of survival—its interest—disorganized. We might say, then, if we accept that

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some-one can enter into the composition of a subject of truth, that the Good is, strictly speaking, the internal norm of a prolonged disorganization of life….12 The “duration peculiar to the not-known” is a “prolonged disorganization of life.” The Good is the “internal norm” of the “prolonged disorganization” of the principle of survival. If there is Evil, it, like the Good, does not exist outside a truth-process and is to be understood—in relation to the “norm of a prolonged disorganization of life” that is the Good—as something “unruly.” Badiou continues: “If Evil exists, we must conceive it from the starting point of the Good. Without consideration of the Good, and thus of truths, there remains only the cruel innocence of life, which is beneath Good and beneath Evil. As a result—and however strange the suggestion may seem—it is absolutely essential that Evil be a possible dimension of truths. We cannot be satisfied, on this point, with the overly facile Platonic solution: Evil as the simple absence of truth, Evil as ignorance of the Good. For the very idea of ignorance is hard to grasp. For whom is a truth absent? For the human animal as such, absorbed in the pursuit of his interests, there is no truth, only opinions, through which he is socialized. As for the subject, the Immortal, he cannot lack the truth, since it is from the truth and the truth alone, given as faithful trajectory, that he constitutes himself. If Evil is, all the same, identifiable as a form of multiplebeing, it must then be that it arises as the (possible) effect of the Good itself. That is to say: it is only because there are truths, and only to the extent that there are subjects of these truths, that there is Evil. Or again: Evil, if it exists, is an unruly effect of the power of truth.” Badiou, dismissing the Platonic idea that Evil is ignorance of the Good, asks “For whom is truth absent?” He says “for the human animal as such … there is no truth,” while the Subject constituting himself from “the truth alone” cannot lack the truth. When Badiou points to the fact that Evil is not ignorance of the Good, his thinking intersects the thinking now occurring at the point where the latter likewise understands that Evil is not a matter of ignorance. But at this point revolutionary metanoēsis

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understands the distinction basic to Badiou’s revolutionary noēsis— the distinction between ontological and moral dimensions—to belong essentially to the past, at this precise point the question arises: Is the “(re) turn of philosophy itself” with its “will to universal address,”13 not itself a new form of the substitution of “willing” for doing14—a new form of taking leave of simplicity itself—the “will to universal address” marching along in the long train of “wills”: the “will to nothingness,” the “will to power,” the “will to create,” the “will to believe,” and, finally, the “absolute will?” This question arises at the intersection of thinking formally and thinking essentially revolutionary. The immediate answer is yes, and that the “will to universal address” is to be understood as the “will to change.” Badiou’s thought that the starting point for the conception of Evil is the Good incidentally intersects the thought of Thomas Aquinas.15 In Summa Contra Gentiles III.71.10, Thomas writes: Now, with these considerations we dispose of the error of those who, because they noticed that evils occur in the world, said that there is no God. Thus, Boethius introduces a certain philosopher who asks: ‘If God exists, whence comes evil?’ But it could be argued to the contrary: ‘If evil exists, God exists.’ For, there would be no evil if the order of good were taken away, since its privation is evil. But this order would not exist if there were no God.16 For both Aquinas and Badiou, Evil is not conceivable without the prior being of the Good. But, whereas for Thomas the Good is a matter of the organization/order of being in general which organization/order “would not exist if there were no God,” for Badiou the Good is the norm of a disorganization/disordering of the being internal to a situation which disorganization would not exist if there were no truth coming to be in the situation and no Subject who bears that truth. In complementary ways the diverse understandings of the relation of Good and Evil in Badiou’s revolutionary form of noēsis and Thomas’ transcendental form of natural reason intersect and diverge from the revolutionary metanoēsis now actually occurring for the first time. Revolutionary metanoēsis, qua “unum absolutely transcending—unity ex abysso—the death of philosophy,”17 shares with Thomas the notion that there is God, that there is unity, but understanding this unity precisely qua unity ex abysso, as simplicity of very omnipotence, diverges from Thomas insofar as in

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a certain way it shares with Badiou the notion that the Good is related to a disorganization/disorder of being. But, unlike Badiou’s formally revolutionary noēsis, revolutionary metanoēsis—essentially revolutionary noēsis—qua “identity univocally predicated of the change of identity”18 understands that the disorganization/disorder of life or being is not an alternative to an organization/order of being, that the organization/order of life or being is not a characteristic of a preexisting situation. Revolutionary metanoēsis knows nothing of the potentiality for ståsiq, sedition, faction or party. Essentially revolutionary noēsis knows nothing of the necessity for a division of a whole in order to accommodate novelty—least of all to accommodate the incessant novelty of existence itself. The disorganization that is organization, the disorder that is order, is not a breaking in two of a One. Nor is unity, unbroken by the infinite alterity of existence itself, a Same. The unity beyond the One—the unity beginning absolutely now—is the absolute otherness of omnipotence itself now embodying that which embodied omnipotence when hitherto omnipotence compared itself to the creature. As such the unity beyond the One, unity ex abysso, is the simplicity that is existence itself: the simplicity of omnipotence the embodiment of infinite & unconditional difference(s).19 If omnipotence is the fourth-dimensional ontological analogue in the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity” corresponding to the ethical disposition of Gratitude, one might inquire: Where is simplicity as ontological analogue in the ethic of simplicity? If omnipotence actually existing for the first time is the foundational essence of ontological order, where is simplicity? Simplicity might be a fifth dimension conceived as (a supplement) transformative of omnipotence. But simplicity itself is that which neither contains nor can be contained. Were it possible for omnipotence to contain the uncontainable, omnipotence would be indistinguishable from the idea of omnipotence, the idea that contains itself as uncontainable, the idea that contains itself as absolute Idea. Were it possible for omnipotence to contain the uncontainable simplicity without becoming the absolute Idea, it would still be the case that omnipotence as absolute ‘power set’ would be incapable of the extension necessary for simplicity to be included as a supplement together with everything else. The essence of omnipotence itself precludes the infinite extension necessary to include (were it possible) simplicity itself—the finite extension that would have been necessary in order to include the void having been precluded by its embodying the void together with everything (not otherwise than containing itself) that does not contain

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itself. In fact omnipotence now actually the body of existence for the first time—omnipotence the absolute power body20—is the absolute elasticity that is Hegel’s absolute Idea turned inside out. The absolute elasticity of the Hegelian Idea has no room for what neither contains nor can be contained, no room for the simplicity of existence, no room for actual omnipotence itself.21 The absolute Idea was precisely the simulacrum of omnipotence, the turning inside out (were it possible) of omnipotence, but then (since that is not possible) merely the turning inside out of the notion of omnipotence so that its definition was its having nothing outside of itself. Having nothing outside itself the absolute Idea excludes without being able to preclude what cannot be contained—simplicity itself. The identity of omnipotence with simplicity itself is its being absolutely without the necessity of maintaining the notion of continuity fundamental to the notion of elasticity. Absolutely unconditioned omnipotence displacing space itself22 is not the embodiment of simplicity—as if simplicity not otherwise than containing itself, beyond containment—as if simplicity itself were either something or nothing, either the null set (the void) or something not containing itself together with others not containing themselves embodied in omnipotence: existing omnipotence is the simplicity itself that is the beginning.23 The embodiment of the universe in existing omnipotence is the consistent inconsistency of an infinite alterity:24 the organization that is the disorganization of being: the orderly disorder/disorderly order of being coinciding real trinary logic:25 the embodiment that is the absolute discontinuity of the continuum—from which absolutely created/creating form of infinite alterity—absolutely created/creating form of existence— immortality has not been subtracted in order to resuscitate either philosophy or theology. The Good in this case cannot be the norm of a “prolonged disorganization,” the norm of “a duration peculiar to the not-known,” but, rather, in the now absolutely existing for the first time, the Good must be not the norm of a prolonged disorder but the act of constructively perceiving the shape of real particular being always here and now. Evil then must be not “an unruly effect of the power of the Good,” but a failure to act. Concerning Evil, Badiou says: “I shall posit the following general principles: • •

that Evil exists; that it must be distinguished from the violence that the human animal employs to persevere in its being, to pursue its interests—a violence that is beneath Good and Evil;

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• • •

that nevertheless there is no radical Evil, which might otherwise clarify this distinction; that Evil can be considered as distinct from banal predation only in so far as we grasp it from the perspective of the Good, thus from the seizing of ‘some-one’ by a truth-process; that as a result, Evil is a category not of the human-animal, but of the Subject; that there is Evil only to the extent that man is capable of becoming the Immortal he is; that the ethic of truths—as the principle of consistency of a fidelity to a fidelity, or the maxim ‘Keep going!’—is what tries to ward off the Evil that every singular truth makes possible.”26

By way of comparison to this list of general principles concerning Evil that obtain in the case of Badiou’s formally revolutionary thinking, here is the list that obtains in the case of revolutionary metanoēsis: • •

• •

•

• •

that Evil is real but unnecessary; that it may be formally distinguished from the violence of nature but not from the violence of the human animal whose nature embodied in existing omnipotence is essentially conceived as a construction of freedom through and through; that there is no radical Evil, which would only serve to completely obscure the truth; that Evil cannot be considered as distinct from human predation whose banality is precisely a form of Evil—indeed a function of the first first-dimension defective disposition in the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity”—Indifference;27 that the possibility of human Evil is precisely the category of the transpersonal Subject as an abstraction from the singularity of particular persons; that there is Evil to the extent that the I that is the form of the body defects from the absolute imperative to create; that the ethic of simplicity—as the principle of the organic consistently inconsistent patient construction of the infinite particularity that is always the actual structure of existence here and now—is what has always already put out of play the Evil that is actual in “the will to…” and “the will not to….”28

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Badiou identifies three forms of Evil that depend for their existence on the three dimensions of the truth-process: “It is upon these three dimensions of the process of truth—the convocation by an event of the void of a situation; the uncertainty of fidelity; and the powerful forcing of knowledges by a truth—that the thought of Evil depends. For Evil has three names: • • •

to believe that an event convokes not the void of the earlier situation, but its plenitude, is Evil in the sense of simulacrum, or terror; to fail to live up to a fidelity is Evil in the sense of betrayal, betrayal in oneself of the Immortal that you are; to identify a truth with total power is Evil in the sense of disaster.”

Terror, betrayal and disaster are what an ethic of truths—as opposed to the impotent morality of human rights—tries to ward off, in the singularity of its reliance on a truth in progress.”29 The potency of an ethic of truths is a function of the fact that it is the form of a revolutionary thinking. By way of comparison to Badiou’s three names of Evil, there follows the list of the names of Evil in the four dimensions of the ethic of simplicity with a definition of each ethically defective disposition: •

•

•

•

4D. Defective dispositions in the dimension of Gratitude: Impotence: the will to defeat; Hatred: the will to destruction; Malice: the will to damnation or the defeated will to destruction in its effect; 1D. Defective dispositions in the dimension of Readiness: Indifference: the will to not know; Avoidance: the will to not be; Denial: the will to not be ready or the ignorant will to nothingness in its effect; 2D. Defective dispositions in the dimension of Discretion: Boredom: the will to not perceive; Dissemblance: the will to not appear; Disservice: the will to not distinguish or the blind will to deception in its effect; 3D. Defective dispositions in the dimension of Beneficence: Inaction: the will to not act; Misfeasance: the will to not correctly act; Malfeasance: the will to do the thing that is not right or the inert will to erroneous action in its effect.30

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The Good is to create the world here and now. Omnipotence itself now moves to new ground. Now for the first time what there is is embodied in omnipotence. This is the absolute imperative to create. The ethical dispositions in the ethic of simplicity—Gratitude, Readiness, Discretion, Beneficence—are logically ordered pairings of discriminating and doing in the accomplishment of the Good. The fundamental principle of an operative ethic of simplicity is attention. Defections from an ethical disposition take the form of willing—either willing to do or discriminate in a way inconsistent with the ethical disposition or willing to not do or discriminate in a way consistent with the ethical disposition—willing to act unethically or willing not to act ethically—but then too willing to act ethically but not acting ethically—willing that is not acting ethically. Defection or departure from the ordered relation of discriminating and doing that is an ethical disposition can only be a form of not willing to or willing not to, it cannot be a matter of incapacity since the ethical assumes capability. In the ethic of simplicity the fundamental principle of defection is will. Not merely the intending of Evil, but the Evil of merely intending—what can only be a departure from attending. The difference between attending and intending—ethical doing and unethical willing—is the difference between Good and Evil.31 The twelve dispositions of Evil—Impotence, Hatred, and Malice; Indifference, Avoidance and Denial; Boredom, Dissemblance and Disservice; Inaction, Misfeasance and Malfeasance—these twelve forms of defection from the Good—are what the ethic of simplicity has always already put out of play in enacting a truth as a singularity absolutely particularized. It does not share with the “impotent morality of human rights” a defensive relation to Evil as does Badiou’s formally revolutionary thinking—never mind Evil’s being an “unruly effect of the power of truth.” Revolutionary metanoēsis knows nothing of ståsiq, altogether beyond the notion of the Subject, knows nothing of the necessity of faction, knows nothing of the need for a splitting of the wholeness of the Person in order to accommodate novelty, nothing of the breaking in two of One in order to introduce change. The ethic of simplicity knows nothing of the “subjective space” in which the “reactive figure” or the “obscure subject” might “take their place.”32 It is precisely in its resort to the Subject that it can be seen that Badiou’s revolutionary noēsis—dismissing the Pauline proclamation “Christ is resurrected” as a fable, as “a narrative statement that we cannot assume to be historical,”33 while appropriating the form of Paul’s fidelity to

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the event of the Resurrection—is completely insensible to the fact that for Paul the “narrative statement” “Christ is resurrected” is Christ resurrected, that, in effect, what Badiou “cannot assume to be historical” is for Paul history itself. And the cause of this paradox—the paradox of appropriation that is no paradox—is precisely the self-conscious reading that infiltrates the text of Paul with the Subject who effectively takes the place of the resurrected Christ, the Subject who must then be de-Story-ed, indeed, “desubstancialized.”34 It is within this de-Story-ed, desubstancialized, “subjective space” that the figures of Evil have the room in which to “take their place.” The resurrected Christ who is not the resurrected Christ, the Subject, the Immortal, is the desubstancialized form of history itself. In Novitas Mundi the writer says: Indeed, history is that form of knowledge in which the story of what has occurred is what has occurred; history, then, is the identity of the storyteller with what has occurred to him; it is the identity of the storyteller with the fact of his being in the world. History belongs properly only to man, then, because only in his case is the fact of being in the world identically that of the historian. The historian, qua historian, is what has occurred to him in the course of his being. History, therefore, if it exists, exists only as a matter of personal experience…. That the essence of history is that it is a personal experience of man seems… to be merely a regulative principle, in the manner of Kant’s ideas of pure reason, for the organization of a science of history within the spatiotemporal limits of understanding. But by such an inversion we would be immediately returned to those perspectives that take man as a creature active in a natural environment, which views, since they lack the identity of the storyteller with the story of what has occurred to him, stand back in their freedom from the thought of the unconditioned, concerned essentially with man’s future, but not with his history…. If history actually exists, to the contrary, it is a matter of personal experience of an occurrence to the essence of man; it is necessarily freed of the conditions of Kant’s sensuous intuition.35 Actually existing history is a matter of the personal identity of an occurrence to the human essence. History is the absolute occurrence of personal identity that is humanity itself. History is occurrence as personal

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identity. Where the person is neither subject nor self the identifying historical occurrence can only be objectivity.36 Where the foundational ethical disposition is Gratitude, or productive receptivity, the objective occurrence that is the person is a personal construction—essentially historical at once the essence of history—actualized by being at the disposal of thought. In any event, there can be no person who is not an historical occurrence—no Storyteller whose Story cannot be assumed to be historical. In Paul’s case the Storyteller whose Story cannot be assumed to not be historical—cannot be assumed to be a fable—would be the resurrected Christ whose embodiment of Paul and the Christian community is such that in the language of 2 Corinthians 5:21:37 “in him [one not knowing sin made sin by God] we might become the uprightness of God.” Paul designates the quality of mind of those embodied in the resurrected Christ later in the text (2 Corinthians 11:3) as ·pløthq, simplicity. To be embodied in the Storyteller whose Story cannot be assumed to not be historical is to be embodied in him in whom is the very simplicity that qualifies the relation to him. The simplicity in relation to (the resurrected) ^ Christ (eʺq Xristøn) is in (the resurrected) Christ (®n XristÛ). There is no simplicity in the relation to Christ that is not in Christ. If the proclamation “Christ is resurrected” is Paul’s simplicity of mind in relation to Christ it requires that Paul be in Christ. If Paul is in Christ Christ is resurrected. In 1 Corinthians 15:14 Paul says: “If Christ has not been raised, then our ^ preaching is empty (kenØn “ra tØ k¸rygma Êmv n), and so is your faith ^ (kenÓ kaÁ Ô pºstiq Êmvn).” It is the emptied form of this proclamation and faith that—turned oppositely to Paul—provides Badiou with his model for the desubstancialized diaphysical Subject: the Storyteller who is not his Story: the Historian who is not his History: the generic Subject who bears the truth as the not-known and unutterable eternal of time, forcing the representation of being-qua-being but all the while keeping its distance, hovering as it were not above the waters of ontology—although this Subject is a sort of creator—but hovering above the waters of sensibility and descending only to “punch a hole in sense.” This incapacity to assume that the Storyteller is the Story is effectively the denial of history as world creation. So Badiou says concerning the eventuality of truths in the domains that are the conditions of philosophy and philosophy’s (re)turn: If a truth is never communicable as such, it nevertheless implies, at a distance from itself, powerful reshapings of the forms and referents

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of communication. This is not to say that these modifications ‘express’ the truth, or indicate ‘progress’ among opinions. For instance, a whole body of musical knowledge was quickly organized around the great names of the classical style—a knowledge that could not previously have been formulated. There is no ‘progress’ here, for classical academicism, or the cult of Mozart, are in no sense superior to what went on before. But it marks a forcing of knowledges, an often extensive modification of the codes of communication (or the opinions on ‘music’ that human animals swap). Of course, these modified opinions are ephemeral, whereas the truths themselves, which are the great creations of the classical style, shall endure eternally. In the same way, it is the eventual destiny of the most astonishing mathematical inventions to wind up in college textbooks, even to help decide the selection of our ‘governing elite’ via the entrance exams to the Grandes Ecoles. The eternity produced from mathematical truths is not itself at issue here, but they have forced knowledges required in this fashion for the arranging of sociality, and such is the form of their return back to the interests of the human animal38 The truths themselves “shall endure eternally” in the space of thought— in the “always of time”39—(re)opened by philosophy, but the being of the world itself—the world of consciousness and sense and sociality—the world of opinions—is ephemeral—precisely insofar as it is forced by truths. Just here Badiou’s thought intersects revolutionary metanoēsis in the negative, that is, the thinking now occurring for the first time would likewise think the being of the world itself—the world of consciousness, sense, and sociality—ephemeral, were it possible for it to think the being of the world a matter of forcing. But an essentially new form of thinking thinks the being of the world to be not a matter of forcing but a matter of being absolutely unconditioned—a matter of being embodied in omnipotence itself. This absolutely momentous and unprecedented occurrence to thought—being itself thought absolutely—precludes the coexistence of Good and Evil, the Good of Good and Evil. There can be no Good of Good and Evil (just as there can be no truth of truth and falsity)40 where the imperative to create is absolute. Although there can be no Good of Good and Evil, there is a Good of Evil (just as there is a truth of falsity): it is real. There is a Good of Good: it is real being. The Good is the actual. The Good of Evil is that it is

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real non-being and indeed possibly actual non-being. Real Evil per se is the non-actual. Evil is actual only as doing without Readiness or Discretion. Real Evil is actual as defection from creating the new world. Evil is not actual as doing without Beneficence unless it is not actually doing without omnipotence. Just here the actual freedom of creation comes home with the power of the negative: omnipotence makes possible the actuality of Evil as doing without Beneficence. The absolute imperative to create—being embodied in existing omnipotence for the first time—is the catholicological imperative to create the world, that is, the absolute imperative to create that is operative always and everywhere, from which imperative there is therefore no relief, not even that which might be thought to be found in ‘warding off’ Evil, as if Evil were to be looked for alongside Beneficence. Where there is actual Beneficence {11} there there is no Evil: there is omnipotence {1}. Thus the intelligibility of the injunction in Matthew 5:43: “Love your enemies” and the summary in Matthew 5:48: “You be perfect as your magnificent (oªrånioq) Father is perfect”: “You be the simplicity of omnipotence {1}.” When Readiness is actual {00}, when Discretion is actual {00}, one is doing the right thing {1}41—when there is the actual Good—there Evil otherwise real is not actual. But when Badiou empties the resurrection of Christ out of the proclamation “Christ is resurrected” as what ‘cannot be assumed to be historical’, turning the Pauline proclamation “Christ is resurrected” into the prototype of the empty form that is a pure singular transpersonal subjectivity—neither transcendental nor psychological nor reflexive—that comes to be in fidelity to an event, the generic space of a truth process, he fashions a space of pure subjectivity where Evil must be allowed to coexist with the Good. Badiou makes room for Evil. In the (re)turn of philosophy as “taking one more step…. [a] single step…. [a] step within the modern configuration…”42 he inevitably assumes the modern burden of justifying Evil. In the “Preface to the English edition of Ethics,” Badiou says: The subject cannot be conceived exclusively as the subject faithful to the event. This point in particular has significant ethical implications. For I was previously unable to explain the appearance of reactionary innovations. My whole theory of the new confined it to the truthprocedures. But when all is said and done, it is obvious that reaction, and even the powers of death, can be stamped with the creative force of an event. I had already emphasized the fact that Nazism was inexplicable without reference to communism, and more precisely to

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the Revolution of October 1917. I was then obliged to admit that the event opens a subjective space in which not only the progressive and truthful subjective figure of fidelity but also other figures every bit as innovative, albeit negative—such as the reactive figure, or the figure I call the ‘obscure subject’—take their place.43 Although he eschews the absolute self-consciousness of Hegelian philosophy, and would do likewise vis-à-vis the absolute self-emptying of absolute selfconsciousness into its own otherness in the theology of Altizer, Badiou’s “one more” “single step” “within the modern configuration” brings him into line with the absolute beginning and end of modern subjectivity, brings him, however late or reluctantly, to the acknowledgement that Evil has a place of its own within the subjective space opened by an event— just as it does in the subjectivity of the Hegelian Absolute Idea and in the absolute self-emptying of that subjectivity in the form of Altizer’s ‘absolute will’.44 To speak of the justification of Evil is to say that Evil has standing in the Court of the Subject.45 There is room for the standing of Evil within the Subject precisely because the Subject is the remains of the denial of history, of the denial of the identity of the Story and the Storyteller, the evacuation of the latter from the former. Indeed, the duplicity of the remaining emptiness is both the beginning and the end of the coming to be of the Subject. Where the Storyteller and the Story are identical, where the essence of history is creation, where the imperative is one of actually creating the world, in the ethic of simplicity, Evil has no standing room whatsoever. There is no room for the negative figures of the Subject who are incompatible with the simplicity of creating. But then there is no need for the incalculable location of noble gestures in the direction of an eternal truth of equality, gestures of genericity repeatedly punching holes in knowledges to make the point—to make the void—over and over again in the face of negation and the repeated triumphs of opinion, and the domestication of eternal truths—again and again in the face of defeat. In “Philosophy and the ‘death of communism’” Badiou quotes from part of his opera libretto, L’Echarpe rouge, his ‘chorus of the divisible defeat’, which he calls “a chant of announcement, the multiple name of what is always to come”: Who then spoke of solitude? Defeated! Legendary defeated! I call here for your unacceptance…. The crowd of so many others: to have

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done with what they were; discovering in the declaration of their act the latent separating thought…. for of what breaks the circle nothing is lost. No one forgets, ever…. The few-numbered (epochs against the grain): maintainers of the exact idea in the basements with handrun presses. Thinkers of the obsolete and of the to-come…. For, out of a dimensionless liberty, writing forms the innumerable…. For meditation upon what gathers and multiplies will not rest. Nothing is forever disseminated…. All of you. You judge what is lacking and you examine the abolition: ‘Who speaks of failure? What was done and thought was done and thought. In its beginning, its time and its caesura. Leave the weighing of results to the accountants. For what was at stake in our reign was the invention of separation, and not the establishment of the weighty office of a duration. The infinity of situations, who then will exhaust them? The event in which the dice are cast, who then will appease it? Trust yourself to your imperative. Turn yourself away from power. That you be indifferent to the verdict, and that nothing in you ever consents. To necessity. The satisfied, they can pass on. The fearful, they can proliferate. It is our intact singularity which has made this great hole in the world in which, century after century, the semaphore of communism is fixed’.46 Badiou comments: “The glancing light of the semaphore, the illumination of centuries by the rare pivoting insurrection of this light; would this all be extinct because a mediocre tyranny decided to take it upon itself to announce that it was dead? This is exactly what I do not believe.” ‘Communism’ names the “eternity of the equal” to which “any event, which is politically foundational of truth, exposes the subject that it induces….”47 The ‘communist invariants’ are the heroes of “what is always to come” who have as their arenas of action an inexhaustible “infinity of situations.” This “rebellious subjectivity,” has room for positive and negative figures—indeed positive and negative figures who can take turns enlisting one human animal, a someone: the “rebellious” Mao and the “Mao of the State.” Because the diaphysical ethic of truths hovers above the waters of sense it glorifies the ever recurring “division of defeat” by those who “out of a dimensionless liberty”—out of an insensate reason, out of a thinking subtracted from the circulation of sense—“break the circle” of defeat time and again with a “separating thought.” The invariant imperative of the truth-process is innovation, not to create the world but to transform any one of a random

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infinity of situations. Where creation is not essential novation but merely innovation, not always essentially new shaping but rather always reshaping, then the carefree leaving of the weighing of results to others is the reciprocal of the essential incompleteness of those results. In his own way—turning American idealism inside out—Badiou parallels pragmatism’s infinite postponement of absolute particularity—the infinite postponement of the absolute exhaustion of subjectivity—with the infinite postponement of the ultimate defeat of “rebellious subjectivity.” Revolutionary noēsis sings the praise of the indefeasibility of the human spirit—in Badiou’s case the immortality of the rebellious Subject—at once the indefeasibility of the void. But revolutionary metanoēsis thinks essentially the indefeasibility of the embodied human spirit—the immortality of the live human body— precisely the Resurrection—at once precisely the defeasance of the void— the annulment of the void, the making void the void—for the first time the proclamation of a truth as a singularity absolutely particularized—as a singularity actually embodied in existing omnipotence.48 The embodiment of the void by omnipotence together with all that does not contain itself is precisely the defeasance of the void of thought. But the “fullness” of thought that is the actually existing omnipotent defeasance of the void for the first time is precisely not what Badiou fights against, not the disastrous claim that the circle is unbreakable, nor that the defeat of rebellious subjectivity is complete. In a logic otherwise than containing itself—the logic of simplicity—the Subject remains as the possibility of real Evil: not otherwise than containing itself, the Subject not containing itself is the possibility of the will to not be absolutely now: defection from the Good. Not otherwise than containing itself, the Subject not containing itself is the duplicity alternative to the simplicity of existence, the possibility of defection from the Good—the possibility of the will not to be contained by another—the will to contain itself— the will blind to the fact that the body exists for the first time otherwise than containing itself, beyond continuity, and blind to the omnipotent embodiment of newness for the first time. Real Evil is the refusal of the absolute simplicity of existence itself, the refusal of the beginning embodied in existing omnipotence. Real Evil is doing without actual Readiness (without actually being at the disposal of another) or actual Discretion (without actually having the patience to see what’s different), that is, real Evil is doing without the possibility of Beneficence (without the possibility of doing the right thing). But actually

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doing without the possibility of doing right is real on the condition that it is not actually doing without omnipotence.49 Omnipotence makes actual real Evil not actual per se and makes not actual real Evil actual per se. The Subject is the possibility of real Evil not actual per se. Revolutionary metanoēsis is not Evil saying that what is must not be, certainly not the assertion of the nothingness of what is,50 but rather Good saying that what is not is not and that what there is is for the first time absolutely new. This is the absolute novation of the notion of time, indeed, of time itself, for the first time.51 In Foundation, the writer says: Just here in the midst of the absolute articulation itself of thought itself, in the absolute harmony itself of the absolute itself, in the midst itself of the perception of the absolute itself, in the absolute balance of personality itself, in the perception which is the discrimination of the midst of discrimination itself as voice itself itself articulating the absolute word, as the absolute in the midst of saying itself/the absolute saying itself in the midst of saying itself/the absolute absolutely interrupting itself, here in the midst absolutely without spatiality itself, in the identification of the interminable interruption itself, personality manifests itself, personality itself is manifest as the perception in essence of the voice of God saying itself ‘I Am Christ’, itself (the absolutely unconditioned balance itself) the absolute quality of quantum: the voice of number itself singing the song of the absolute word. The absolute quality of quantum itself is personality…. Very existence is the absolute quality of quantum now thought in essence as itself the absolute itself saying itself, the Trinity itself quaternal, the very being itself which is Trinity:52 the manifest individuality of substance itself, the absolute identity of manifest substance, the circle itself the absolute explosion of identity itself, substance itself the manifest Trinity, the absolute minimum. To absolutely discriminate time as absolute substance, to perceive the factuality of the absolutely irreducible form of existence itself, to perceive the factuality of time itself, to perceive the existence of change transcending time as the absolute identity of time, as time itself, to perceive time as time in fact absolutely is, the itself-transcendence of time itself/being itself, the absolutely unconditioned immediate mediation of the absolute/number itself, to perceive the absolute itself articulating the being of time is transcendent

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personality. To hear the word sounding being itself the absolute, this absolute discrimination of the species of perception, as being newly articulate, this absolutely historically existent liberation of the essence of thought from the necessity of itself to be distinguished from its own necessity is personality transcendent.53 Revolutionary metanoēsis is the transcendence of the distinction noēsis/metanoēsis, at once the transcendence of the distinction ontology/ meta-ontology: revolutionary meta-ontology is absolute noēsis, at once polyontology. The absolute noēsis that is poly-ontology is the indistinguishing of mathematics and sense: the “voice of number itself singing the song of the absolute word. The absolute quality of quantum itself.”54 Poly-ontological personality—personality whose identity is change—is what it is to “discriminate time as absolute substance”—is what it is to create the essence of the world—to enact the Good itself. Here can be seen the template of the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity”: “Very existence… the Trinity itself quaternal… very being itself… the manifest individuality of substance itself… the circle itself the absolute explosion of identity itself… the absolute minimum.” Where the imperative is to create the world—omnipotence itself having moved to new ground—the nature and magnitude of real Evil is infinitely intensified. Real Evil is not merely the negative will after the fact, Badiou’s “[that] something is presented as having not to be,” but, rather—where for the first time existence is the poly-ontological identity of being and sense, where the infinite is the finite for the first time—real Evil is that the fact of existence for the first time has not been prepared for, has not been perceived discretely, and has not been effected by right doing. Real Evil is the “not willing to… willing not to” that for the first time— not actually doing without omnipotence—actually goes, albeit actually defeasible, to the very essence of creating the world.55 The unprecedented scope of actually defeasible real Evil is a function of the gift of freedom now actually existing for the first time in the form of thought. In the section of Ethics entitled “Outline of a theory of Evil, I Simulacrum and terror,” Badiou writes: We have seen that not every ‘novelty’ is an event. It must further be the case that what the event calls forth and names is the central void of the situation for which this event is an event…. [I]t should be easy to understand that since the event is to disappear, being a

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kind of flashing supplement that happens to the situation, so what is retained of it in the situation, and what serves to guide the fidelity, must be something like a trace, or a name, that refers back to the vanished event. When the Nazis talked about the ‘National Socialist Revolution’, they borrowed names—‘revolution’, ‘socialism’— justified by great modern political events (the Revolution of 1792, or the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917). A whole series of characteristics are related to and legitimated by this borrowing…. However, the ‘event’ thus named—although in certain formal respects it is similar to those from which it borrows its name and characteristics, and without which it would have no constituted political language in which to formulate proposals of its own—is distinguished by a vocabulary of plenitude, or of substance …. So that the ‘event’ is supposed to bring into being, and name, not the void of the earlier situation, but its plenitude—not the universality of that which is sustained, precisely, by no particular characteristic (no particular multiple), but the absolute particularity of a community, itself rooted in the characteristics of its soil, its blood, and its race…. When a radical break in a situation, under names borrowed from real truth-processes, convokes not the void but the ‘full’ particularity or presumed substance of that situation, we are dealing with a simulacrum of truth…. Fidelity to a simulacrum…regulates its break with the situation not by the universality of the void, but by the closed particularity of an abstract set [ensemble] (the ‘Germans’ or the ‘Aryans’)…. The void, ‘avoided’ [chassé] by the simulacrous promotion of an ‘event-substance’, here returns, with its universality, as what must be accomplished in order that this substance can be. This is to say that what is addressed ‘to everyone’ (and ‘everyone’, here, is necessarily that which does not belong to the German communitarian substance—for this substance is not an ‘everyone’ but, rather, some ‘few’ who dominate ‘everyone’) is death, or that deferred form of death which is slavery in the service of the German substance…. [T]he name ‘Jew’ was the name of names, serving to designate those people whose disappearance created, around that presumed German substance…, a void that would suffice to identify the substance…. [I]n the ethic of truths every ‘some-one’ is always represented as capable of becoming the Immortal that he is. So we may fight against the judgments and opinions he exchanges with

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others for the purpose of corrupting every fidelity, but not against his person—which, under the circumstances, is insignificant, and to which, in any case, every truth is ultimately addressed. By contrast, the void with which those who are faithful to a simulacrum strive to surround its alleged substance must be a real void, obtained by cutting into the flesh itself. And since it is not the subjective advent of an Immortal, so fidelity to the simulacrum…presumes nothing more about those they designate as the enemy than their strictly particular existence as human animals. It is thus this existence that will have to bear the return of the void. This is why the exercise of fidelity to the simulacrum is necessarily the exercise of terror.56 For Badiou terror is what follows when in the perverse imitation of a truthprocess a particular community of human animals enlisted in a simulacrum of a Subject is subtracted from the universal with the ensuing reversal in which ‘everyone’ becomes ‘everyone else’ who are seen as outside the possibility of being anything more than the contemptible human animals they in fact are and who are treated accordingly—sooner or later put to death. Badiou accepts that given the fact that the structure of a truth process is founded on the duplicitous structure of subjectivity its perverse imitation is practically inevitable. Indeed the practical inevitability of the perversion of the truth process is unavoidable as long as Badiou is committed to taking “one more step,” albeit “a single step” “within the modern configuration,” within subjectivity. What does not and cannot occur to Badiou given his commitments is that the root of the practical inevitability of the perversion of truth is the notion of the Same. Badiou is committed to the “return of the Same.” He reads Paul’s “universal address” as the exemplary instance of his ethical notion: “the same for all.”57 For Badiou—whose thinking is the (re)turning of Hegel-Marx post mortem Dei—Evil is the substitution of a closed particular preexisting subjectivity for the coming to be of a subjectivity universally addressed. Throughout, Badiou takes for granted the ultimate mortality of the living human animal. Both the authentic Subject and the Simulacrum (the latter perversely) convoke mortal human animals to exceed themselves in the “always of time.” But there is no expectation of the transformation of the mortal human animal as such. There is no expectation of the coming into being of the apocalyptic end of time. There is no thinking essentially the resurrection of the body. In the irreducibly duplicitous space of the ethic of truths may be seen in the

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negative the intimate relationship that exists between the core of Paul’s proclamation (excised by Badiou) and the possibility of an actually or fully ethical existence. The proclamation “Christ is resurrected” that is the ^ simplicity in relation to Christ (eʺq Xristøn) in Christ (®n XristÛ) assures Paul of the transformation of the human animal, as he says in Philippians 3:20-21: “For our citizenship (polºteyma)58 begins where God is (®n oªranoi^q) from where we expect the savior the Lord Jesus Christ who will ^ meta-schematize (metasxhmatºsei) the body of our lowliness (tØ sv ma ^ th q tapein√sevq Ôm√n) conformed (s¥mmorfon) to the body of his glory (tÛ^ s√mati th^ q døjhq aªtoy^ ).” Not simply the Platonism of the multiple thinking the revolutionary exceeding of human animality, the notion of the meta-schematizing of the human body forms the core of revolutionary metanoēsis. In Ethics, Badiou says: Every age—and in the end, none is worth more than any other—has its own figure of nihilism. The names change, but always under these names (‘ethics’, for example) we find the articulation of conservative propaganda with an obscure desire for catastrophe. It is only by declaring that we want what conservatism decrees to be impossible, and by affirming truths against the desire for nothingness, that we tear ourselves away from nihilism. The possibility of the impossible, which is exposed by every loving encounter, every scientific re-foundation, every artistic invention and every sequence of emancipatory politics, is the sole principle—against the ethics of living-well whose real content is the deciding of death—of an ethic of truths.59 Badiou looks for the possibility of the impossible. In rejecting Paul’s message as a fable, as an historical impossibility, Badiou rejects the actuality of the impossible, and settles for the possibility of the impossible: this is the conservatism of the romantic revolutionary. Where Paul speaks of a “new foundation in Christ” (®n XristÛ^ kainÓ ktºsiq),60 saying “Look, the new has come into being” (ʺdo g™gonen kainå) (2 Corinthians 5:17), Badiou speaks of “re-foundation.” Badiou does not look for the actuality of the impossible. He wants what conservatism declares to be impossible, but he thinks the impossibility of conservatism to be impossible. When he speaks of the fact that “the void with which those who are faithful to a simulacrum strive to surround its alleged substance must be a real void, obtained by

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cutting into the flesh itself,” Badiou has already accepted that this void made by cutting into flesh is the dark literal of the shining spiritual of his diaphysical ethics that again and again makes a hole in sense—a hole in the world—because in effect it “cannot assume” the Resurrection “to be historical,” cannot believe that any age is “worth more than any other.” The event of omnipotence itself moving to new ground neither brings into being nor does it name the void of “the earlier situation,” but this omnipotent actual embodiment of existence for the first time annuls the notion of ‘situation’ together with its void—whether that void be named or masked as plenitude. The substance or actual plenitude or body embodied for the first time in omnipotence itself—as such at once the defeasance of the void—the resurrected body—is not and cannot be an alternative to the void—it is not a solid that might be reduced to a mass point—nor a circle that might be reduced to a vanishing point—nor a line that might be reduced to a moving point. The resurrected body beginning is the fourthdimensional discontinuity of a third-dimensional continuity.61 The body embodied in omnipotence itself is an infinitely open infinite particularity beginning.62 In Foundation, the writer says: In the delicate factuality of transparent identity complementarity itself is absolutely transcended: memory itself absolutely coincides with perception, absolutely exists in the delicate transparency of perception, the simulacrum which is no simulacrum, the product of an absolute repetition, identity itself…. Indeed, memory itself for the first time is the absolute transcendence of the negation within actuality by actuality itself. In memory itself for the first time there is absolutely no trace, no repetition of the becoming itself of absolute subjectivity, no repetition of repetition itself, no actual trace of trace itself. The absolute indifference of memory itself to becoming itself is identity itself absolute. Identity is the absolutely unconditioned indifference of memory itself to becoming…. There is no non-identity arising out of the repetition of perpetuity (while the original absolute non-identity was a perpetual non-existence): there is the absolute repetition of absolute existence, the perpetuity of existence itself. There is absolutely no alternative to actual identity. The absolute other of identity itself is not other-than it, because absolute identity itself is not other-than.63

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What Foundation says in contradiction to “the becoming itself of absolute subjectivity” is to be said of the singular subjectivity in the (re)turn of philosophy: there is no trace of the event that is not the event.64 In the thinking now occurring for the first time it has been decided once and for all against the continuum that supports the negative in the relation of trace and event. The trace is absolutely the event. The schema of the meta-schematized body is existence itself for the first time. This precludes the structure of the subjective moment of crisis in the ethic of truths. In the section of Ethics entitled “Outline of a theory of Evil, II Betrayal,” Badiou writes: [U]nder pressure from the demands of interest—or, on the contrary, because of difficult new demands within the subjective continuation of fidelity—there is a breakdown of the fiction I use to maintain, as an image of myself, the confusion between my ordinary interests and disinterested-interest, between human animal and subject, between mortal and immortal. And at this point, I am confronted with a pure choice between the ‘Keep going!’ proposed by the ethic of this truth, and the logic of the ‘perseverance in being’ of the mere mortal that I am…. What I am then exposed to is the temptation to betray a truth…. I must betray the becoming-subject in myself, I must become the enemy of that truth whose subject the ‘some-one’ that I am (accompanied, perhaps, by others) composed…. So it is that the defeat of the ethic of a truth, at the undecidable point of a crisis, presents itself as betrayal.65 At the mid-point of the ethic of truths—at the pivotal moment of fidelity—Badiou suddenly abandons the meta-ontological structure of his ethic of truths in favor of the notion of a psychological “crisis”: Evil here would be to succumb to the “temptation to betray a truth.” Badiou’s ethic of truths is suddenly betrayed by the void. He says: “‘In itself’, a truthprocess is untouched by crisis…. What can go into crisis is the one or several ‘some-ones’ who enter into the composition of the subject induced by this process.”66 But then the continuation of the truth-process depends upon the unchallenged “plausible fiction(s)” of the unity of subject and someone(s), or, in the event of crisis, the pure choice (without support) to ‘Keep going!’ or to betray a truth. The ultimate support of a truth-process—the support of the support of the bearer of a fidelity67—the support of the Subject of

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a truth—is someone’s psychological fiction of “his own unity,” or, in the event that fiction fails, someone’s pure unsupported choice. The ultimate support of an ethic of truths is not a matter of ethics—it is the void— indeed the ultimate “plausible fiction.” Such indeed is the “rebellious subjectivity” that despairs of changing the world. In the section of Ethics entitled “Outline of a theory of Evil, III The unnameable,” where Badiou turns his attention to the change brought about by a truth process, he says: The important thing is that the power of a truth, directed at opinions, forces the pragmatic namings (the language of the objective situation) to bend and change shape upon contact with the subject-language…. We can now define what the total power of a truth would be: it would imply the ability to name and evaluate all the elements of the objective situation from the perspective of the truth-process. Rigid and dogmatic (or ‘blinded’), the subjectlanguage would claim the power, based on its own axioms, to name the whole of the real, and thus to change the world…. [T]he hypothesis of total power here has consequences… In the first place, we thereby presume that the totality of the objective situation can be organized in terms of the particular coherence of a subjective truth. We next assume that it is possible to eliminate opinion…. A truth would then force the pure and simple replacement of the language of the situation by a subject-language. That is to say: the Immortal would come into being as the wholesale negation of the human animal that bears him…. [But] every truth presumes, in fact, in the composition of the subjects it induces, the preservation of ‘someone’, the always two-sided activity of the human animal caught up in truth…. Truths make their singular penetration [percée] only through the fabric of opinions…. It is we ourselves, as ourselves, who expose ourselves to the becoming-subject. There is no History other than our own; there is no true world to come. The world as world is, and will remain beneath the true and the false. There is no world that might be captive to the coherence of the Good. The world is, and will remain, beneath Good and Evil. The Good is Good only to the extent that it does not aspire to render the world good. Its sole being lies in the situated advent [l’advenue en situation] of a singular truth. So it must be that the power of a truth is also a

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kind of powerlessness. Every absolutization of the power of a truth organizes an Evil. Not only does this Evil destroy the situation (for the will to eliminate opinion is, fundamentally, the same as the will to eliminate, in the human animal, its very animality, that is, its being), but it also interrupts the truth-process in whose name it proceeds, since it fails to preserve, within the composition of its subject, the duality [duplicité] of interests (disinterested-interest and interest pure and simple). This is why I call this figure of Evil a disaster, a disaster of the truth induced by the absolutization of its power…. At least one real element must exist, one multiple existing in the situation which remains inaccessible to truthful nominations, and is exclusively reserved to opinion, to the language of the situation…. I call this element the unnameable of a truth…. Evil in this case is to want, at all costs and under condition of truth, to force the naming of the unnamable.68 Here Badiou’s meta-ontology resting on the void and revolutionary metaontology the defeasance of the void are clearly seen to diverge at once from all points of intersection. The meta-ontological axiom of the ethic of truths is that there is a world “beneath the true and the false,” effectively the formal support (the buttress to the truth) of the true and the false, and that there is a world “beneath Good and Evil,” effectively the formal support (the buttress to the Good) of Good and Evil. The poly-ontological perception of the ethic of simplicity—whose task is not to change the world but to create the world—is that there is no world beneath the true and the false, and that there is no world beneath Good and Evil. The schema of the meta-schematized body existence itself for the first time precludes the very conception of the ‘indiscernible’. In the ethic of simplicity actual Discretion {00} naming the different beginning to exist for the first time without forcing is the Beneficence {1} that does the right thing without duplicity. This is always and everywhere the perfectly one-sided activity of persons attending to the appearance itself of existence itself now for the first time. In “Philosophy and politics” Badiou writes: We have too often wished that justice would act as the foundation for the consistency of the social bond, when it can only name the most extreme moments of inconsistency; for the effect of the egalitarian axiom is to undo bonds, to desocialize thought, and to

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affirm the rights of the infinite and the immortal against finitude, against being-for-death.69 In the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity” the domain of Society—displacing Badiou’s Politics—coincides the Justice that liberates from all bondage, the actually nameable Economy of existence, the ethical disposition of Gratitude that freely relates every one to every other in productive receptivity.70 The ethic of simplicity is neither the ethics of consensus nor the combative ethic of truths but in the perfect flexibility of the imperative to create the world excludes in principle neither perfectly free consensus nor precisely particularized combativeness. Badiou continues: “Justice is the philosophical name of the inconsistency, for the State or society, of any egalitarian political orientation. Here we can rejoin the poem in its declarative and axiomatic vocation, for it is Paul Celan who probably gives us the most exact image of what we must understand by ‘justice’: On inconsistencies Rest: two fingers are snapping in the abyss, a world is stirring in the scratch-sheets, it all depends on you Keep in mind the lesson of the poet: in matters of justice, where it is upon inconsistency that we must lean or rest, it is true, as true as a truth can be, that it all depends on you.” Thinking ex abysso there is no rest or resting on. Certainly there is no resting on inconsistencies. Resting on inconsistencies is relying on the void—the inconsistency of inconsistency. This is the Same. But revolutionary metanoēsis does not rely on the void. In the defeasance of the void persons do not rest on inconsistencies. Persons are the consistencies of inconsistencies.71 These are the News. The creation of the world is the actual existence of every one.72

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Notes 1. A. Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. P. Hallward (London and New York, 2001), pp. 8f. 2. Ibid., p. 16. 3. Ibid., p. 45. 4. Ibid., pp.45f. 5. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany, 1994), Chapter 1, et passim. 6. A. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, trans. N. Madarasz (Albany, 1999), p.124f. 7. A. Badiou, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy, trans. and ed. O. Feltham and J. Clemens (London and New York, reprint 2003), p. 107. 8. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Chapter 1, et passim. 9. Badiou, Ethics, p. 46. 10. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Chapter 1, et passim. 11. Badiou, Ethics, p. 47. 12. Ibid., pp. 58ff. 13. See Section II.2. 14. Ibid., pp. 104ff. Also cf. Backnote 2, Heidegger’s “increasingly shifting into simple doing.” 15. Ibid., for the intersection of Badiou and Aquinas with respect to the notions of excess and the void. 16. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles III.1, trans. V.J. Bourke (Notre Dame, 1956), pp. 240f. 17. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), p. 180. 18. Ibid., p. 237. 19. Cf. Backnote 2. 20. See Backnotes 3 and 4. 21. Cf. Section II.1, for the impact of this fact on Kierkegaard’s understanding of omnipotence as the continual withdrawal of the Creator from the creature. 22. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany; reprint 1994), pp. 326f. and 390f. 23. By analogy the gravitational force universally attractive, neither containing nor contained by the cosmological force, nor embodying it, does not go beyond itself in being coextensively identically the ever increasing rate of acceleration in the separation of the large scale bodies of the physical universe produced by the latter. See Section II.2, the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity.” 24. Cf. Cantor’s notion of an absolute infinite multiplicity as necessarily inconsistent (The Free Dictionary. Available online at: http://encyclopedia. thefreedictionary.com/Absolute%20Infinite. April 2009): “Cantor is quoted as saying:

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The actual infinite arises in three contexts: first when it is realized in the most complete form, in a fully independent otherworldly being, in Deo, where I call it the Absolute Infinite or simply Absolute; second when it occurs in the contingent, created world; third when the mind grasps it in abstracto as a mathematical magnitude, number or order type. Cantor also mentioned the idea in his famous letter to Richard Dedekind 28 July 1899: A multiplicity is called well-ordered if it fulfills the condition that every sub-multiplicity has a first element; such a multiplicity I call for short a sequence. Now I envisage the system of all numbers and denote it Ω. The system Ω in its natural ordering according to magnitude is a ‘sequence’. Now let us adjoin 0 as an additional element to this sequence, and certainly if we set this 0 in the first position then Ω* is still a sequence … of which one can readily convince oneself that every number occurring in it is the [ordinal number] of the sequence of all its preceding elements. Now Ω* (and therefore also Ω) cannot be a consistent multiplicity. For if Ω* were consistent, then as a well-ordered set, a number Δ would belong to it which would be greater than all numbers of the system Ω; the number Δ, however, also belongs to the system Ω, because it comprises all numbers. Thus Δ would be greater than Δ, which is a contradiction. Thus the system Ω of all ordinal numbers is an inconsistent, absolutely infinite multiplicity. 25. Leahy, Foundation III.1. 26. Badiou, Ethics, pp. 66f. 27. See Section II.2, p. 88, and, below, p. 107. 28. Concerning the difference in the understanding of ‘particularity’ in the thinking now occurring and in Badiou, see, below, p. 129, n. 62. 29. Badiou, Ethics, p. 71. 30. See Section II.2, p. 88. 31. Cf. S. Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. and trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Bloomington and London, 1970), Volume 1, pp. 392f.: “On the basis of the a priori which lies in purpose as compared to temporal, successive development, intentions toward the good are very tempting and often contain a kind of narcotic that develops an opinion and not an elasticity that generates energy.” Beyond Kierkegaardian “purpose” and “elasticity,” in the ethic of simplicity intentions toward or away from the good—intentions that take the place of ethical doing—are not merely “very tempting” but are the very real of Evil. 32. Badiou, Ethics, p. lvii.

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33. A. Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. R. Brassier (Stanford, 2003), pp. 107f. 34. Cf. Section II.2. 35. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 179f. 36. But this objectivity cannot be—where, as here, there is neither subject nor self—outside an infinitely pathetic subjectivity that is wholly identified with a world whose essence is its nothingness. What for Kierkegaard was the demonic potentiality of the individual is now for the first time essentially understood to be the infinitely pathetic alternative to creating the world—the real not real that may or may not be actual as willing or not willing the Good—the real irreality that qualifies every Subject—including Badiou’s corporate Immortal— the real possibility of Evil. For Kierkegaard’s restricted notion of the demonic potentiality of subjectivity, cf. ibid., p. 237f. For the irreality actually real in Altizer’s death of God theology, cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 236ff. 37. Cf. Section II.1. 38. Badiou, Ethics, pp. 70f. 39. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p. 123. 40. See Section II.2. 41. Ibid. 42. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p. 32. 43. Badiou, Ethics, p. lvii. 44. Cf. Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford, 1971), pp. 15f., et passim, and T.J.J. Altizer, The Genesis of God: A Theological Genealogy [Louisville, 1993], p. 181, et passim. Further for modern subjectivity’s absolute justification of evil, cf. T.J.J. Altizer, Godhead and the Nothing (Albany, 2003), passim. 45. For Badiou Evil is the negative within the space of subjectivity opened by a truth-process. Within that space of subjectivity the figures of Evil “take their place.” The analogue of this duplicitous structure of the truth-process within the general space of subjectivity opened by the (re)turn of Philosophy as the sheltering of the compossibility of the truths is sophistry. Sophistry is the denial that there are truths. Withdrawn from the domains of truth sophistry exists as the negative twin of philosophy. The irreducibly duplicitous structure of philosophy’s situation is testified to by Badiou in Manifesto for Philosophy (pp. 132f.): “Philosophy must never abandon itself to anti-sophistic extremism. It goes astray when it nourishes the dark desire of finishing off the sophist once and for all…. No, the sophist must only be assigned to his place.” 46. Badiou, Infinite Thought, pp. 131ff. 47. Ibid. 48. Cf., above, Preface, and pp. 87ff. and 108. 49. Cf., above, p. 112. See, also, Appendix 3. 50. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy, p. 131.

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51. Cf. Backnote 4, omnipotence as ‘having happened as of now having ceased as of now’. Cf., also, Appendix 4. 52. Cf. Section I, p. 29, n. 40. 53. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 161f. Cf., also, Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendix a. 54. Cf. Sections III.2 and III.3, passim. 55. Cf., above, p. 128, n. 36. See, also, Appendix 3. 56. Badiou, Ethics, pp. 72ff. 57. Cf. Section II.1 and Section II.2. 58. Integral product, 8.2944e16. Cf. Section I, p. 28, n.1, and Section III.3, p. 243, n. 62, and p. 245, n. 93. 59. Badiou, Ethics, pp. 38f. 60. Integral product, 8.2944e26. Cf. Section I, p. 25, n.1, and Section III.3, p. 243, n. 62, and p. 245, n. 93. 61. This “fourth-dimensional discontinuity of a third-dimensional continuity” is indistinguishably the volume per se of the cube/hypercube. The volume per se of a cube : hypercubic surface volume :: hypercubic surface volume : the unimageable volume of the hypercube. The proof-form of this proportion: cubic volume per se identified with unimageable hypercubic volume has as its predicate existent hypercubic surface volume. The latter is the beginning of the resurrected body. Cf. Section III.1. See also D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “Theorem & Proof: The Uniqueness of the Absolute Dead Center Cube,” and “Measure Beyond Beyond Reach.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com. April 2009. 62. In the thinking now occurring where embodiment is thought in place of set, this infinitely open infinite particularity is the very antithesis of Badiou’s notion of “the closed particularity of an abstract set” (above, pp. 117ff.). 63. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 144f. 64. For the pathetic constitution of both individual and corporate subjectivity, cf., above, p. 128, n. 36. 65. Badiou, Ethics, pp. 78ff. 66. Ibid., p. 78. 67. Cf. Section II.1. 68. Badiou, Ethics, pp. 80ff. 69. Badiou, Infinite Thought, pp. 77f. 70. Cf. Section II.1, the logic of existential embodiment now for the first time embodied in omnipotence: a = {{00}{00}} = {11} = {1} and a = {{01}{01}} = {00} = {1}. 71. Cf., ibid., p. 66, n. 40. 72. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 354f.

III Beginning Now The Creating Society

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Beyond Beyond X Is there a body beyond politics, is there a beyond the body politic? Is Giorgio Agamben’s whatever body a body beyond politics? Is the body as such beyond politics? If not, is there a body beyond politics that is not the body as such? In “Note to Faith and Philosophy Further to the Ontology of Real Trinary Logic,” the writer says: In the thinking now occurring for the first time the beginning otherwise than the beginning of being not otherwise than being2… is the beginning of being and nothing otherwise than otherwise than x, or, beyond beyond x…. [T]he real trinary logic conception of existence absolutely differentiated for the first time is the beginning of absolute thisness, the beginning of the absolute here (and) now, or,… THE NOT YET = BEYOND BEYOND X….1 Let the existential-worldly instantiation par excellence of ‘beyond x’ be politics or sovereignty, then the Not Yet that is “beyond beyond x” is the existing Body that is this life beyond politics or sovereignty: the existing Body that is this Life not naked and not legal: this Body existing for the first time otherwise than sovereignty; beyond profane: the new and unprecedented Body not sacred and not not sacred. Sovereignty and politics vanished beyond trace: the absolute trace of existence for the first time absolutely now:3 the absolutely not intended body, the body very intention, the angelic body, now actually occurring for the first time. The thinking now occurring for the first time—beyond hither and thither the beginning of consciousness—is beyond beyond x, beyond hither x and thither x, beyond the hither the beginning of consciousness of Levinas’ absolute past and the thither the beginning of consciousness of Altizer’s absolute future.4 Absolute actuality thought essentially for the first time is beyond these historically specific forms of hither and thither the beginning of consciousness in a manner that Giorgio Agamben’s infinite potentiality—potentiality with the potentiality to not-be—in fact is not. The thought of Agamben is beyond and not beyond x. In

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Agamben’s thinking the ‘coming thought’, the ‘coming politics’, the ‘coming community’, ‘the coming singularity’, is not beyond beyond x: the ‘coming community’ is hither beyond x. More particularly, Agamben, hither Levinas’ hither the beginning of consciousness, this side this side the beginning of consciousness, oriented toward the transcendence of the world, essentially oriented toward the ‘coming world’, is hither hither x and qua hither hither cannot not be not beyond hither and thither x, cannot not be not beyond beyond x, cannot not be beyond and not beyond x, hither beyond x. The illustration in Figure 1 is an index of the ontological topos of Agamben’s thought. beyond and not beyond (hither beyond)

beyond, thither, beginning of

x

beyond

hither, hither, Agamben Levinas consciousness

otherwise and not otherwise than (hither) being abandoned by Being

Altizer Thinking Now Occurring For the First Time

Figure 1

Where the thinking now occurring for the first time is beyond politics, beyond sovereignty, beyond hither and thither the beginning of consciousness, absolutely incapable of being at once absolutely incapable of not being—absolute world-creating actuality—infinite beginning of actuality5—Agamben is hither hither the beginning of consciousness, not beyond the beginning of consciousness hither and thither: hither hither the sovereign, another politics, not beyond politics: the coming politics, the coming thought. Indeed, Agamben defines the condition in which it is possible to be beyond and not beyond x, viz., the condition in which the absolutely capable of being is absolutely capable of not being: the condition that is the infinite potentiality of the beginning of being. Where Levinas, thinking hither the beginning of being, thinking absolute past, thinks a metaphysical ethics, and Altizer, thinking thither

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the beginning of being, thinking absolute future, thinks a cryptophysical ethics, the ethics of dissemblance,6 and the thinking now occurring for the first time beyond beyond the beginning of being, thinking absolute thisness, thinks a physical ethics,7 Agamben, thinking hither the hither and thither of the beginning of being, thinking absolute suchness,8 thinks a paraphysical ethics, the ethics of resemblance. If it is understood that the fundamental oppositional elements of the dynamic essence of politics or sovereignty—immanence of life and transcendence of life—are embodied, respectively and in extremis, in Altizer’s death of God theology and Levinas’ philosophy of the God who comes to mind, then it can be seen that the ratio of the former to the latter has the following form: universal singularity : singular universality :: absolute existence : absolute meaning :: absolute anonymity : absolute nomination :: sheer breadth (sheer denotation) : sheer depth (sheer connotation) :: fall of God into existence (total presence: never having been absent) : fall of God into meaning (total absence: never having been present)9 :: absolute future : absolute past. It is then possible to understand Agamben’s ‘coming thought’—hither the hither and thither of the beginning of consciousness—as the identification of the elements of this ratio in the history of thought, as the identification of the death of God in Altizer and the God who comes to mind in Levinas, as such, as the identification of sheer breadth and sheer depth, as such, as the identification—in Badiou’s language—of singularity (presentation without representation) and excrescence (represen­tation without presentation), as such.10 Of the being-such of each thing Agamben says, in The Coming Community:11 “The being-such of each thing is the idea. It is as if the form, the knowability, the features of every entity were detached from it, not as another thing, but as an intentio, an angel, an image. The mode of being of this intentio is neither a simple existence nor a transcendence; it is a paraexistence or a paratranscendence that dwells beside the thing (in all the sense of the prefix ‘para-’), so close that it almost merges with it, giving it a halo. It is not the identity of the thing and yet it is nothing other than the thing (it is none-other).”12 Paraexistence, paratranscendence, what we shall call excrescence of singularity,13 ever so slightly the absence of the totality of presence: the halo. This intention, in Peircean terms,14 the entity at once the sheer information of itself—its form in and beside it. The direction in which it is not impossible to be beyond beyond x (the direction in which it is possible to be beyond beyond x, the direction in which what is just possible is the beginning of the thinking now occurring) is

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delineated in Altizer’s death of God theology: thither x not beyond and not beyond x,15 the absolutely capable of not being at once the absolute actuality of not being: the capability to actually not-be at once actual nothingness. Hither the thither and hither of the beginning of consciousness (hither Altizer and Levinas), Agamben cannot not be not what for Levinas is the absolute potentiality sans potentiality (to not be).16 If Levinas thinks hither the beginning of being, and Heidegger thinks being abandoned by Being,17 Agamben thinks otherwise and not otherwise than being abandoned by Being, thinks otherwise than being as such abandoned by Being, thinks being-thus otherwise than abandoned by Being, thinks whatever being abandoned by Being otherwise than actual: the pure modality. He writes in The Coming Community: The Irreparable is neither an essence nor an existence, neither a substance nor a quality, neither a possibility nor a necessity. It is not properly a modality of being, but it is the being that is always already given in modality, that is its modalities. It is not thus, but rather it is its thus…. Being-thus is not a substance of which thus would express a determination or a qualification. Being is not a presupposition that is before or after its qualities. Being that is irreparably thus is its thus; it is only its mode of being. (The thus is not an essence that determines an existence, but it finds its essence in its own being-thus, in its being its own determination.) Thus means not otherwise.18 Being thus is otherwise than being abandoned by Being. The life, indeed, the body, that is irreparably its thus, is the living body of the ‘coming community’. In Means without End: Notes on Politics, Agamben writes: The ancient Greeks did not have only one term to express what we mean by the word life. They used two semantically and morphologically distinct terms: zoê, which expressed the simple fact of living common to all living beings (animals, humans, or gods), and bios, which signified the form or manner of living peculiar to a single individual or group. In modern languages this opposition has gradually disappeared from the lexicon (and where it is retained as in biology and zoology, it no longer indicates any substantial difference); one term only—the opacity of which increases in proportion to the sacralization of its referent—designates that naked presupposed

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common element that it is always possible to isolate in each of the numerous forms of life. By the term form‑of‑life, on the other hand, I mean a life that can never be separated from its form, a life in which it is never possible to isolate something such as naked life. A life that cannot be separated from its form is a life for which what is at stake in its way of living is living itself. What does this formulation mean? It defines a life—human life—in which the single ways, acts, and processes of living are never simply facts but always and above all possibilities of life, always and above all power. Each behavior and each form of human living is never prescribed by a specific biological vocation, nor is it assigned by whatever necessity; instead, no matter how customary, repeated, and socially compulsory, it always retains the character of a possibility; that is, it always puts at stake living itself. That is why human beings—as beings of power who can do or not do, succeed or fail, lose themselves or find themselves—are the only beings for whom happiness is always at stake in their living, the only beings whose life is irremediably and painfully assigned to happiness. But this immediately constitutes the form‑of‑life as political life. ‘Civitatem ... communitatem esse institutam propter vivere et bene vivere hominum in ea’ [The state is a community instituted for the sake of the living and the well living of men in it]. Political power as we know it, on the other hand, always founds itself—in the last instance—on the separation of a sphere of naked life from the context of the forms of life.19 If, for Agamben, the form-of-life as life inseparable from its form is political life, then he means to be beyond politics “as we know it” which is founded on the separation of “a sphere of naked life from the context of the forms of life,” but not beyond politics founded on the inseparability of “the living and the living well of men” (vivere et bene vivere hominum), on the inseparability of the fact (vivere) and the form of living (bene vivere) of men, on the inseparability of the denotative (vivere) and the connotative life (bene vivere) of men, on the inseparability of the breadth (vivere) and the depth (bene vivere) of life of men. The form-of-life is political life founded on the inseparability of the singularity of life (“naked life”) and the possibilities and power of life (“context of the forms of life”) of human beings. This is political life founded on the inseparability of the pure denotative (“naked”) and the pure connotative (“context of the forms of”) life of human beings, elements whose

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inseparability, precisely qua singularity (presentation without representation) and excrescence (representation without presentation), is such that the latter almost merges with the former, not beyond the polarity of immanence and transcendence. Agamben thus intends to be hither politics, thus intends, beyond politics “as we know it,” the “coming politics.” Insofar as Agamben insists on the inseparability of naked life and possibilities and power of life, insists on the unbreakable linkage of the categories of pure immanence and pure transcendence, his thinking may be understood as the angelic, intentional reverberation of the absolute identification of existence and thought that now actually occurs for the first time in the form of the conception of the absolute creativity of human consciousness.20 Hither-beyond politics is the image-reverberation of the beyond politics/of the Not Yet/of the absolute novelty now actually occurring for the first time: the projected final refuge of self-consciousness from the absolute imperative to create the new world: the projected final taking-refuge from the absolutely unconditional identity of existence and thought, the projected final taking-refuge in the form of the infinite potentiality that is the divinity of the simply human world. Where the thinking now occurring for the first time is beyond sacred (beyond profane), therefore beyond the interdict of sacred doctrine, Agamben, hither sacred, announcing the utter profanity of the profane, continues under the interdict of sacred doctrine within the limits of the zone of indistinction set by sovereignty (the zone of indistinction of public and private, law and body, juridical and factual, logos and praxis)21 to be hither sovereignty. In Novitas Mundi, the interdict of sacred doctrine is spoken of in the following way:22 “… to take contingency for granted is to remain under the interdict of sacred doctrine. That is, it is to be cut off from access to the transcendental essence of existence, cut off precisely as natural reason, qua natural, from the fact of existence, confined to the thought of existence, a confinement in which free reason abstracts from the simplicity of creation ex nihilo to the absoluteness of its own thought, from the isolation of the Now to the solitude of thought in which the existence of the totality of things is implicit.”23 To be under the ban of sacred doctrine is to be “cut off from… the transcendental essence of existence… cut off precisely as natural reason… from the fact of existence, confined to the thought of existence.” In the context of Agamben’s thought it becomes clear that the sovereign ban, the very sovereignty he would supersede from within, all-pervasive as it is in the world of our experience—the separation of naked life from possibilities and power of life, this sovereign ban—very sovereignty—follows upon the interdict of sacred

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doctrine as its immediate consequence, that very sovereignty/very politics embodies the separation of “the thought of existence” from “the fact of existence,” embodies being cut off from the transcendental essence of existence, with the further and ultimate consequence that the thought of existence cut off from the fact of existence cannot but constitute the zone of indifference that is the blurring with each other of outside and inside, logic and praxis, law and life.24 The struggle to supersede the sovereign ban from within is precisely what it is to continue to be under the ban of sacred doctrine in the world in which we live. The lifting of the ban of sacred doctrine now occurring in the form of an essentially new consciousness, a consciousness that is the thought of existence absolutely and immediately the fact of existence— altogether without the absolutely self-involved process of the modern notion of creation from Descartes to Hegel, only modified but not eliminated in American pragmatism—essentially precludes the blurring of logic and fact by being itself the absolute receptivity that absolutely constructs existence for the first time.25 In Novitas Mundi the writer says:26 “Now the ban is lifted in the form of the conception in essence of the innocence of the world; now the ban is lifted in time itself in essence, that is in the form of thought’s construction of an essentially new universe.” The inseparability of fact of life and form of life that is Agamben’s form-of-life not beyond politics is constituted by thought qua nexus, that is, by thought qua bond or connection. It is precisely this thinking of thinking as the means of tying together that constitutes the “ease” with which Agamben makes “free use of the proper” in his reading of Aristotle’s notion of thinking—in contrast to the unfettered freedom of the thinking now occurring for the first time which makes no such “free use of the proper,” ultimately because it makes no “free use of the self,” precluded from doing so by virtue of its being absolutely beyond self-consciousness, for the first time absolutely & essentially other-consciousness.27 Agamben writes in Means without End: I call thought the nexus that constitutes the forms of life in an inseparable context as form‑of‑life. I do not mean by this the individual exercise of an organ or of a psychic faculty, but rather an experience, an experimentum that has as its object the potential character of life and of human intelligence. To think does not mean merely to be affected by this or that thing, by this or that content of enacted thought, but rather at once to be affected by one’s own receptiveness

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and experience in each and every thing that is thought a pure power of thinking. (‘When thought has become each thing in the way in which a man who actually knows is said to do so… its condition is still one of potentiality… and thought is then able to think of itself.’ [Aristotle, De Anima 429 b 10]) Only if I am not always already and solely enacted, but rather delivered to a possibility and a power, only if living and intending and apprehending themselves are at stake each time in what I live and intend and apprehend—only if, in other words, there is thought—only then can a form of life become, in its own factness and thingness, form‑of-life, in which it is never possible to isolate something like naked life.28 Thus Agamben makes “free use of the proper,” of Aristotle’s text. But, for Aristotle, when thought actually thinks itself, that is, when it is no longer able to think itself, it is pure act of knowing, not a pure power of thinking: indeed, as such, the act of knowing is divine not human. In the context of founding a new politics on the basis of being-such-as-it-is, on the basis of whatever being, Aristotle’s notion of the act of knowing is as such ignored. Agamben here and throughout founds his notion of thinking on a notion that precisely as such is under the ban of Aristotle’s notion of actuality, separated from its form and conceived as a naked thought—as a thought not written. Agamben, ignoring Aristotle’s notion of the act of knowing (the identity of the knower and known), reads in the text what as such is not there. Retaining the text while reading there what was never written there—in a world where the state of exception has become the rule, where the zone of indistinction is all pervasive—Agamben ignores the Aristotelian distinction between agent intellect and possible intellect. Agamben does actually reference Aristotle’s understanding of human thought (above, De Anima 429 b 10) qua human, that is, qua potential mind. But whereas in Aristotle the conditio sine qua ^ non of potential mind (mind that “becomes all things,” ∏ noy^ q tÛ pånta ^ ^ gºnesuai) is actual mind (mind that “makes all things,” ∏ noy q tÛ pånta poie^i n ), in accord with the fundamental Aristotelian principle that “all things coming into being are preceded by being in actuality,” ‘sti gÅr ®j ®ntelexeºÄ œntoq pånta tÅ gigømena (ibid., 431 a),29 Agamben allows himself to think of thought as sheer potentiality, where the potentiality of thought to think itself is the experience of its own potentiality in all things ^ it comes to think, where the mind’s making all things (∏ noy^ q tÛ pånta ^ ^ poie i n ) is bound to potentiality. Mind’s making all things (∏ noy^ q tÛ

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^ pånta poie^i n ) bound to mind’s becoming all things (∏ noy^ q tÛ pånta 30 gºnesuai) becomes a “task.” It is this notion of thought as sheer potentiality—as “a possibility and a power”—that is the conditio sine qua non of the impossibility of isolating “something like naked life,” the conditio sine qua non of inseparably binding “naked life” to the “context of the forms of life,” the conditio sine qua non of freedom within the confines of the ultimate embodiment of the interdict of sacred doctrine—of being free and not being free from sovereignty and politics. For Agamben the form of the receptiveness of thought is possibility and the form of the actuality of thought is pure power. In all the things it thinks thought experiences its own potentiality to think as its actuality in the form of pure power. This notion of thinking not only subtracts itself from the Aristotelian notion that actuality precedes potentiality,31 but takes as its point of departure isolating the understanding of Aristotle’s text from its manifest form, takes as its point of departure a certain violence to which it has exposed Aristotle’s notion of potentiality—the violence whereby the substance of the text no longer presupposed is read qua naked as what was never written. Where Aristotle speaks of potentiality’s act of altering (Ωlloºvsiq) as growth or increase into itself and into actuality (eʺq aªtØ gÅr Ô ®pºdosiq kaÁ eʺq ®ntel™xeºan)—the realization of its nature (417b 15-16: ®pÁ tÅq ’jeiq kaÁ tÓn f¥sin)—always and everywhere in Aristotle the realization of a particular nature precisely because the actuality precedent to potentiality is radically particularized—in Agamben’s reading of what was never written the act of altering (Ωlloºvsiq) by which potentiality becomes actuality becomes “the gift of the self [sic] to itself and to actuality.” In Homo Sacer Agamben writes:

What is potential can pass over into actuality only at the point at which it sets aside its own potential not to be (its adynamia). To set impotentiality aside is not to destroy it but, on the contrary, to fulfill it, to turn potentiality back upon itself in order to give itself [sic] to itself. In a passage of De anima, Aristotle expresses the nature of perfect potentiality perhaps most fully, and he describes the passage to actuality (in the case of the technai and human skills, which also stands at the center of Book Theta of the Metaphysics) not as an alteration or destruction of potentiality in actuality but as a preservation and ‘giving of the self [sic] to itself’ of potentiality:

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To suffer is not a simple term, but is in one sense a certain destruction through the opposite principle and, in another sense, the preservation [sōtēria, salvation] of what is in potentiality by what is in actuality and what is similar to it.… For he who possesses science [in potentiality] becomes someone who contemplates in actuality, and either this is not an alteration—since here there is the gift of the self [sic] to itself and to actuality [epidosis eis eauto]—or this is an alteration of a different kind. (De anima, 417b, 2–16) In thus describing the most authentic nature of potentiality, Aristotle actually bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy. For the sovereign ban which applies to the excep­tion in no longer applying, corresponds to the structure of potentiality, which maintains itself in relation to actuality precisely through its ability not to be. Potentiality (in its double appearance as potentiality to and as potentiality not to) is that through which Being founds itself sovereignly, which is to say, without anything preceding or determining it (superiorem non recognoscens) other than its own ability not to be.32 If Aristotle “actually bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy,” he too must have fallen under the ban of sacred doctrine, which is no more possible historically than Agamben’s reading of Aristotle’s text is defensible.33 What Agamben omits from his translation of Aristotle’s text is the qualifying clause that follows the positive definition of “to suffer” or “to be acted upon” as “the preservation [sōtēria, salvation] of what is in potentiality by what is in actuality and what is similar to it,” the clause that reads, “in this way as potentiality is with respect to actuality (o‹tvq ˜q d¥namiq ‘xei prØq ®ntel™xeian).” For Aristotle the preservation of what is in potentiality (toy^ dynåmei œntoq) by what is in actuality (ÊpØ toy^ ®ntelexeºÄ œntoq) is extrinsic to what is in potentiality (tØ aªtØ dynatØn) but intrinsic to potentiality (d¥namiq): extrinsic to the being which is in potentiality, it nevertheless is the way potentiality is with respect to actuality. When what is in potentiality is preserved by what is in actuality this happens in accord with the nature of potentiality; when what is in potentiality is not preserved by what is in actuality this happens because either what is in potentiality ceases to be altogether or ceases to be

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in “whatever category is being used with regard to it.”34 But potentiality as such is related to actuality as to its savior: potentiality as such is not indifferently related to actuality: the latter is neither potentiality’s gift of itself [sic] to itself nor its own capacity to not be. Agamben, reading what was never written, discovers in Aristotle’s text just such a potentiality whose preservation “by what is in actuality” is not inseparable from its notion: a potentiality to which actuality is bound as to that which is not bound to it. This potentiality is as such in Agamben’s reading the very epitome of the state of exception whose very epitome in turn is sovereignty. When Agamben reads in Aristotle’s text what was never written, he discovers there, in Hegelian terms, a finite potentiality whose very nothingness—selfnegating self-relation as limitation—is the infinite potentiality whose form is “its own ability to be its own ability not to be.” Potentiality not bound to the actuality that is bound to it. For Agamben this is precisely the relation of sovereign power to actuality. This is the potentiality that sovereignty is as the capacity to realize itself. Agamben writes in Homo Sacer: And an act is sovereign when it realizes itself by simply taking away its own potential not to be, letting itself be, giving itself [sic] to itself. Hence the constitutive ambiguity of the Aristotelian theory of dynamis/energeia: if it is never clear, to a reader freed from the prejudices of tradition, whether Book Theta of the Metaphysics in fact gives primacy to actuality or to potentiality, this is not because of a certain indecisiveness or, worse, contradiction in the philosopher’s thought but because potentiality and actuality are simply the two faces of the sovereign self-grounding of Being. Sovereignty is always double because Being, as potentiality, suspends itself, main­tains itself in a relation of ban (or abandonment) with itself in order to realize itself as absolute actual (which thus presupposes nothing other than its own potentiality). At the limit, pure poten­tiality and pure actuality are indistinguishable, and the sovereign is precisely this zone of indistinction. (In Aristotle’s Metaphysics, this corresponds to the figure of the ‘thinking of thinking’, that is, to a thinking that in actuality thinks its own potential to think.36) This is why it is so hard to think both a ‘constitution of potentiality’ entirely freed from the principle of sovereignty and a constituting power that has definitively broken the ban binding it to constituted power. That constituting power never exhausts itself in constituted power is not enough: sovereign

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power can also, as such, maintain itself indefinitely, without ever passing over into actuality. (The troublemaker is precisely the one who tries to force sovereign power to translate itself into actuality.) Instead one must think the existence of potentiality without any relation to Being in the form of actuality—not even in the extreme form of the ban and the potentiality not to be, and of actuality as the fulfillment and manifestation of potentiality—and to think the existence of potentiality even without any relation to being in the form of the gift of the self and of letting be. This, however, implies nothing less than thinking ontology and politics beyond every figure of relation, beyond even the limit relation that is the sovereign ban. Yet it is this very task that many, today, refuse to assume at any cost.35 Agamben intends to think the Being of existence as infinite potentiality. He intends the binding together of the existence and the idea of potentiality: each thing bound together with its being-such, with its form dwelling beside it as its inseparable intentio, its halo.37 Just here it can be seen that the difficulty of thinking a potentiality “entirely freed from the principle of sovereignty,” the difficulty of thinking a potentiality beyond sovereignty, is the very form of thinking a potentiality that is not beyond sovereignty—that is hither politics—its very form “that dwells beside” it, its “paradigm,” which “almost merges with it.” This difficulty is precisely the paradigm of Agamben’s thinking otherwise and not otherwise than being abandoned by Being, the difficulty “not the identity” of this thinking but “none-other” than it, the difficulty that is, precisely, not acting effortlessly: “The existence of potentiality without any relation to Being in the form of actuality:” being as such not abandoned by Being, not, being not abandoned by Being: the Being of existence as infinite potentiality. Where the thinking now occurring for the first time is beyond beyond being abandoned by Being (beyond Heidegger38), and where Badiou’s (re)turning philosophy is hither beyond beyond being abandoned by Being—thither belonging and inclusion—beyond belonging not beyond inclusion39—thither beyond being abandoned by Being—the ‘coming thought’ of Agamben is hither beyond being abandoned by Being, where hither—analogous in a way to Levinas’ thinking hither the beginning of being responsibility as such—here betokens suchness, that is, indicates essentially that suchness in Agamben— hither Heidegger—the almost merging with being abandoned by Being— is sans identity, the excrescence of singularity.40 Where the essentially

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new form of thought is for the first time beyond sovereignty/politics, the ‘coming thought’ is not beyond but hither sovereignty/politics. Where the absolutely new form of consciousness—absolute other-consciousness—is for the first time beyond beyond being, the ‘coming thought’ is hither beyond the beginning of being abandoned by Being, almost beyond being merging with the abandonment of the beginning of being. The irony in Agamben is that the guarantee against the isolation of “something like naked life”—the possibility of being entirely free from the situation in which the state of exception has become the rule—includes ignoring the proper or natural reading of the Aristotelian text, requires the impropriety of discovering a certain intelligibility of the text excluded by the text as the possibility of its “reading what was never written,” of its “making free use of the proper,” yes, being beyond interpretation—where reading is always and everywhere misreading—by being beyond writing. If the actuality of thought in Aristotle is the writing on the tabula rasa that is the potential intellect, then in Agamben the writing as such is ignored, that is, actuality as such is ignored: “To think does not mean merely to be affected by this or that thing, by this or that content of enacted thought…. Only if I am not always already and solely enacted…”41 is the separability of life and form impossible. Only if actuality never precedes and never excludes potentiality but is rather the recipient of the “self ’s [sic] gift of itself [sic] to itself.”42 Just here Agamben’s thought, neither “floating over the waters of ontology” as Levinas’ metaphysical ethics does,43 nor “immersed” in the those “waters” as is the physical ethics of the thinking now occurring, but effectively scanning the surface-without-substance of the “waters of ontology” sees not the absolute superficiality of existence itself for the first time,44 nor the productive receptivity essentially constructing existence for the first time, but fascinated, Narcissus-like, with the notion of the infinite selfproduction of receptivity, sees only its resemblance empty of all actuality: the tabula rasa drowning in its own infinite potentiality, forgetful of the writing, essentially unrelated to the actual. Agamben’s manner of dealing with Aristotle’s text exemplifies his manner of dealing with a world in which the state of exception is the rule, viz., not to think essentially beyond it, but rather to think inessentially, merely formally, beyond it, by thinking its form ever so slightly beyond it its resemblance bound to it bereft of identity, the form of the body of a new humanity. The form of a sovereignty that has lost its substance appropriated to a free use beyond itself: precisely the form of the sovereignty Agamben would be beyond.

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Concerning whatever being Agamben writes in The Coming Community: Common and proper, genus and individual are only the two slopes dropping down from either side of the watershed of whatever. As with Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky’s Idiot, who can effortlessly imitate anyone’s handwriting and sign any signature… the particular and generic become indifferent, and precisely this is the ‘idiocy’, in other words, the particularity of the whatever. The passage from potentiality to act, from language to the word, from the common to the proper, comes about every time as a shuttling in both directions along a line of sparkling alteration on which common nature and singularity, potentiality and act change roles and interpenetrate. The being that is engendered on this line is whatever being, and the manner in which it passes from the common to the proper and from the proper to the common is called usage—or rather, ethos.45 Whatever particularity—the idiocy that is whatever being—is the indifference of common and proper, of genus and individual, of generic and particular, engendered by “a shuttling in both directions along a line of sparkling alteration on which common nature and singularity, potentiality and act change roles and interpenetrate.” Thus the state of exception, the threshold of indeterminacy, the zone of indifference becomes the very model for the particularity of the whatever. The starting point of whatever particularity is set out in The Coming Community, where Agamben writes: The commodification of the human body, while subjecting it to the iron laws of massification and exchange value, seemed at the same time to redeem the body from the stigma of ineffability that had marked it for millennia. Breaking away from the double chains of biological destiny and individual biography, it took its leave of both the inarticulate cry of the tragic body and the dumb silence of the comic body, and thus appeared for the first time perfectly communicable, entirely illuminated. The epochal process of the emancipation of the human body from its theo­logical foundations was thus accomplished in the dances of the ‘girls’, in the advertising images, and in the gait of fashion models. This process had already been imposed at an industrial level when, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the invention of lithography and photography encour­aged

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the inexpensive distribution of pornographic images: Neither generic nor individual, neither an image of the divinity nor an animal form, the body now became something truly whatever. Here the commodity betrays its secret solidarity (glimpsed by Marx) with the theological antinomies. The phrase in Genesis ‘in the image and likeness’ rooted the human figure in God, bound it in this way to an invisible archetype, and founded with it the paradoxical concept of an absolutely immaterial resemblance. While commodification unanchors the body from its theological model, it still preserves the resemblance: Whatever is a resemblance without archetype—in other words, an Idea…. This is also the basis of the exodus of the human figure from the artwork of our times and the decline of portraiture: The task of the portrait is grasping a unicity but to grasp a whateverness one needs a photographic lens…. Never has the human body—above all the female body—been so massively manipulated as today and, so to speak, imagined from top to bottom by the techniques of advertising and commodity production: The opacity of sexual differences has been belied by the transsexual body; the incommunicable foreignness of the singular physis has been abolished by its mediatization as spectacle; the mortality of the organic body has been put in question by its traffic with the body without organs of commodities; the intimacy of erotic life has been refuted by pornography. And yet the process of technologization, instead of materially investing the body, was aimed at the construction of a separate sphere that had practically no point of contact with it: What was technologized was not the body, but its image. Thus the glorious body of advertising has become the mask behind which the fragile, slight human body continues its precarious existence, and the geometrical splendor of the ‘girls’ covers over the long lines of the naked, anonymous bodies led to their death in the Lagers (camps), or the thousands of corpses mangled in the daily slaughter on the highways. To appropriate the historic transformations of human nature that capitalism wants to limit to the spectacle, to link together image and body in a space where they can no longer be separated, and thus to forge the whatever body, whose physis is resemblance—this is the good that humanity must learn how to wrest from commodities in their decline. Advertising and pornography, which escort the commodity to the grave like hired mourners, are the unknowing midwives of this new body of humanity.46

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Just as Agamben’s thought is not beyond but hither politics, it is not beyond but hither “the commodification of the human body.” Humanity must wrest from the decline and death of commodities the whatever body whose physis is resemblance without archetype, an Idea.47 Where in the thinking now occurring there is the unicity of the body as existence, in Agamben there is the whateverness of the body as resemblance. Where in the thinking now occurring there is the beginning of the absolute existence of the particular, in Agamben there is the potentiality of existence as resemblance, precisely “the existence of potentiality without any relation to Being in the form of actuality.” Where in the thinking now occurring for the first time there is absolute particularity, in Agamben there is whatever particularity: in the place of existence as infinite actuality, existence as infinite potentiality: in the place of existence, resemblance: in the place of the absolute unicity of the body itself—the identification for the first time of the body and unicity—the “link[ing] together image and body in a space where they can no longer be separated” at once the “appropriat[ion of] the historic transformations of human nature that capitalism wants to limit to the spectacle.”48 Indeed, when Agamben says, “The task of the portrait is grasping a unicity but to grasp a whateverness one needs a photographic lens…,” he articulates in effect the proportion, portrait : photograph :: unicity : whateverness, which proportion in the light of the thinking now occurring for the first time may be extended as, existence : resemblance :: alio-affection : auto-affection :: productive receptivity : selfproduction of receptivity :: absolute transcendence of time : time of absolute immanence. The self-production of receptivity—at once auto-affection and time of absolute immanence—that Agamben thinks when what is read in Aristotle’s text is what was never written—this “existence of potentiality without any relation to Being as actuality” is an extreme expression of modern reason’s complete passivity,49 here taking the form of thinking to be free from sovereignty without leaving the domain of sovereignty, thinking to be free from politics without leaving the domain of politics, to be free from the ultimate embodiment of the interdict of sacred doctrine while nevertheless remaining within its limits, and, as a consequence, thinking the body as the whatever being whose physis is resemblance without archetype50 ‘wrested’ from ‘the decline and death of commodities’ and made free use of in a perversion of the intention for which (the intentio as which) it was originally fashioned. It is not surprising that Agamben himself finds his conception of an infinite potentiality anticipated in Kant’s

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reflection on time. In Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, speaking of the passivity that shame is as “the most proper emotive tonality of subjectivity,” Agamben writes: According to Kant, what defines time as the form of inner sense, that is, ‘the intuition of ourselves and of our inner state’ (Kant 1929: 77), is that in it ‘the understanding… performs this act upon the passive subject, whose faculty it is, and we are therefore justified in saying that inner sense is affected thereby’ (ibid.: 166) and that therefore in time ‘we intuit ourselves only as we are inwardly affected by ourselves’ (ibid.: 168). For Kant, a clear proof of this self‑modification implicit in our intuition of ourselves is that we cannot conceive of time without drawing a straight line in the imagination, a line which is the immediate trace of the auto‑affective gesture. In this sense, time is auto‑affection; but precisely for this reason Kant can speak here of a genuine ‘paradox’, which consists in the fact that we ‘must behave toward ourselves as passive’ (wir uns gegen uns selbst als leidend verhalten mussten) (ibid.). How are we to understand this paradox? What does it mean to be passive with respect to oneself? Passivity does not simply mean receptivity, the mere fact of being affected by an external active principle. Since everything takes place here inside the subject, activity and passivity must coincide. The passive subject must be active with respect to its own passivity; it must ‘behave’ (verhalten) ‘against’ itself (gegen uns selbst) as passive. If we define as merely receptive the photographic print struck by light, or the soft wax on which the image of the seal is imprinted, we will then give the name ‘passive’ only to what actively feels its own being passive, to what is affected by its own receptivity. As auto‑affection, passivity is thus a receptivity to the second degree, a receptivity that experiences itself, that is moved by its own passivity.51 Notice that Agamben takes passivity in the first instance to be “being affected by an external active principle.” Then the “passive subject… active… against itself as passive,” “a receptivity to the second degree,” experiences itself as “moved by its own passivity” in lieu of “an external active principle.” In Agamben modernity confesses outright its perfect passivity. Certainly a receptivity that is moved by its own passivity is Narcissus-like! Now, for Kant, in the places cited by Agamben, time is “the given a priori form of self-

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intuition,” its condition. That Kant distinguishes, if only in the negative, time as condition from the self-intuition it conditions is clear. Kant says that time in itself, apart from the subject, that is, time with respect to “things in general,” is nothing. But where appearance is immediately absolute substance for the first time, as it is in the thinking now occurring (as distinguished from Hegel, where appearance is absolutely mediated absolute self-relation, modernity’s passivity as dialectical machine), where, in other words, the fundamental presupposition of self-consciousness is no longer operative—that is, where ontological dualism in all its forms is passé—the time/line that is nothing, when distinguished from the Kantian “self-intuition,” is now seen for the first time to correspond to sheer receptivity. Then this time/line, sheer receptivity, so distinguished and raised to the second power or squared, corresponds not to the form of auto-affection, but to the form of alio-affection, viz., sheer receptivity (nothing apart from the subject) experiencing some thing actually not itself for the first time: sheer receptivity for the first time experiencing itself as nothing apart from the subject, but then not experiencing itself as moved by its own passivity. Then this time/line, sheer receptivity, raised to the third power or cubed is receptivity experiencing itself for the first time as nothing but existence. Finally, this time/line, sheer receptivity, cubed, at once volume, experiences itself as nothing but the other, as receptivity whose experience— since its experience of itself apart from the subject is as nothing—is nothing but other-productive.52 Here the particular experience of the transcendental ego—for the first time absolutely existent particular experience—is not an alternative to an impossible experience of “things in general,” but rather sheer particular experience identified with universal experience. This identification of sheer particular experience with universal experience takes place not through the medium of the zone of indifference, not through the medium of whateverness, in the form of a time/line upon which potential and actual exchange places continuously, but rather in the form of the absolute placedness that is absolute singularity identical with absolute particularity, in the form of the mediation that is the absolute and essential unicity of the body—the mediation that is immediacy identical with the beginning.53 Agamben’s alternative to the absolute unicity of the body itself, the pure resemblance without archetype, the Idea that is the whateverness of the body ‘wrested’ from ‘the decline and death of commodities’, is, qua perversion of the original intention to the intention of another politics that almost merges with the body, nevertheless and consequently, the desirable, the whatever you want. He writes in The Coming Community:

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The coming being is whatever being…. Quodlibet ens is not ‘being, it does not matter which’, but rather ‘being such that it always matters’. The Latin always already contains, that is, a reference to the will (libet). What­ever being has an original relation to desire. The Whatever in question here relates to singularity… in its being such as it is. Singularity is thus freed from the false dilemma that obliges knowl­edge to choose between the ineffability of the individual and the intelligibility of the universal.… In this conception, such‑and‑such being is reclaimed from its having this or that property, which identifies it as belonging to this or that set, to this or that class… —and it is reclaimed not for another class nor for the simple generic absence of any belonging, but for its being‑such, for belonging itself.… The singularity exposed as such is whatever you want, that is, lovable.… The lover wants the loved one with all of its predicates, its being such as it is. The lover desires the as only insofar as it is such—this is the lover’s particular fetishism. Thus, whatever singularity (the Lovable) is never the intelligence of some thing, of this or that quality or essence, but only the intelligence of an intelligibility. The movement Plato describes as erotic anamnesis is the movement that transports the object not toward another thing or another place, but toward its own taking‑place—toward the Idea.54 In the thinking now occurring—beyond politics—beyond desire—beyond beyond x—not whatever singularity, the Lovable, the able to be loved, the cost of which is the continuing ineffability of the single person, a cost compensated for by its indistinguishability from a universal intelligibility, but, rather, for the first time thought in essence, absolute singularity, the actually loved, not the Lovable, but the Beloved, absolute existence predicated of the single person, absolute unicity the single person for the first time.55 In Agamben it is not that the ineffability of the individual is left behind in the past (as in the thinking now occurring for the first time where the sayability of the individual is for the first time absolute), but—the body reduced to a resemblance without archetype, to this alternative to unicity, to its intention almost merging with it—the ineffability of the individual lasts without needing to be an alternative to the intelligibility of the universal as it is within the zone of indifference, within the state of exception that has become the rule in the world, as it is within that within whose confines Agamben feels himself unable not to remain as the condition from which he must seek to be free. In Means Without End, he says:

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Living in the state of exception that has now become the rule has meant also this: our private biological body has become indistinguishable from our body politic, experiences that once used to be called political suddenly were confined to our biological body, and private experiences present themselves all of a sudden outside us as body politic. We have had to grow used to thinking and writing in such a confusion of bodies and places, of outside and inside, of what is speechless and what has words with which to speak, of what is enslaved and what is free, of what is need and what is desire. This has meant—why not admit it?—experiencing absolute impotence, bumping against solitude and speechlessness over and over again precisely there where we were expecting company and words. We have endured such an impotence as best we could while being surrounded on every side by the din of the media, which were defining the new planetary political space in which exception had become the rule. But it is by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of another body, of another word. I would not feel up to forgoing this indistinction of public and private, of biological body and body politic, of zoê and bios, for any reason whatsoever. It is here that I must find my space once again—here or nowhere else. Only a politics that starts from such an awareness can interest me.56 Agamben—“once again”—seeks to find “the path of another politics, of another body, of another word.” It is in the zone of indifference that Agamben “once again” must find his space. It turns out that in the indistinction of public and private, the space found will be the “empty space” that is “the proper place of the example” “in which its undefinable and unforgettable life unfolds.” Whereas in the thinking now occurring for the first time the single person is sayable, the absolute itself saying the single person, the single person absolutely the saying itself, in Agamben exemplary life is “purely linguistic being,”57 where the whatever is the being in language of the nonlinguistic. For Agamben the paradoxes of set theory “define the place of linguistic being. Linguistic being is a class that both belongs and does not belong to itself, and the class of all classes that do not belong to themselves is language.”58 Whatever singularities “communicate only in the empty

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space of the example, without being tied by any common property, by any identity. They are expropriated of all identity, so as to appropriate being itself, the sign e.”59 For the thinking now occurring the answer to the paradoxes of set theory is the discovery that the excluded middle between belonging and not belonging is embodiment, that the ultimate ‘set’ is the non-set of non-sets, embodiment,60 where embodiment is universal unicity. Concerning this universal unicity, it says in Foundation: “The absolutely unconditioned freedom itself thought itself is actuality itself: the unicity of the body itself in which matter itself exists ex nihilo in and for thought itself,”61 and further in the text, Even now and here the unicity of the absolute mediates the universal realization of the new fact (novitas mentis), mediates the actualization of catholicological being itself. The absolute intel­ligibility of unicity itself mediates the acknowledgement that mere appearance is absolutely nothing, that the appearance is the body itself, that the absolute itself is individuated.62 But in effect Agamben discovers the excluded middle to be the “multiple common place”63 of the exemplary being of the zone of indistinction, “the coming to itself of each singularity”64 of the being “expropriated of all identity,” where ‘identity’ therefore must be and is other than absolutely inexpropriable unicity, must be and is a form of being the same.65 Agamben, in his quest for the “path of another politics,” discovers the excluded middle between biological body and body politic, between zoê and bios, to be the intelligibility of particular whatever being, the intelligibility of denotation as such, the incorruptible being-thus of each thing, its eternal as-suchness,66 in the form of the inseparable linkage of icon and life in the empty space of exemplary being. What Agamben does not think is the absolute sayability of the single person, the ineffability of the single person as such left behind. What Agamben does not think is what now actually occurs in place of the suchness of the individual, in place of the individual as such unsayable, in place of absolute suchness, is this sayable single person, for the first time the absolute thisness/the absolute particularity of the existence of the single person. To think embodiment for the first time, to think absolutely beyond sovereignty for the first time, to think the absolute thisness/singularity of the person, is to think precisely what Agamben, Badiou, and Peirce

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do not think, viz., the derivation of intelligibility (connotation), that is, the identification of writing (notation) and denotation as the very identity of intelligibility (connotation).67 To be able to more precisely relate the thinking now occurring to Agamben’s thought, it will help to pay attention to his explanation of Badiou’s development of set theory. In Homo Sacer, Agamben writes: Set theory distinguishes between membership and inclusion. A term is included when it is part of a set in the sense that all of its elements are elements of that set (one then says that b is a subset of a, and one writes it b ⊂ a). But a term may be a member of a set without being included in it (membership is, after all, the primitive notion of set theory, which one writes b ∈ a), or, conversely, a term may be included in a set without being one of its members…. Alain Badiou has developed this distinction in order to translate it into political terms. Badiou has membership correspond to presentation and inclusion correspond to representation (re-presentation). One then says that a term is a member of a situation (in political terms, these are single individuals insofar as they belong to a society). And one says that a term is included in a situation if it is represented in the metastructure (the State) in which the structure of the situation is counted as one term (indi­viduals insofar as they are recodified by the State into classes, for example, or into ‘electorates’). Badiou defines a term as normal when it is both presented and represented (that is, when it both is a member and is included), as excrescent when it is represented but not presented (that is, when it is included in a situation without being a member of that situation), and as singular when it is presented but not represented (a term that is a member without being included)….68 So, in the language of Agamben and Badiou,69 what the thinking now occurring essentially understands for the first time is the derivation of “representation:” the identification of “writing” and “presentation” as the very identity of “representation.” This essentially new understanding is articulated in C.S. Peirce’s terms in “Real Trinary Logic Geometric Series Matrix of the Numeric Geometric Series & the Series of Perfect Numbers” where the writer says: Note that although for Peirce logical area or information is understood to be the product of logical breadth and logical depth [Figure 2],

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what for Peirce would be no information (very breadth or denotation without depth) is made information in the medium of intelligibility (depth) that is notation (height) identified with denotation (breadth). In the thinking occurring before now very comprehension underived equaled no information as did very extension underived. In the thinking now occurring for the first time the identification of notation and denotation is the comprehension that creates information where information was impossible when an underived denotation was the counterpart of an underived comprehension.70 In the simplest terms—in the thinking now occurring it is impossible to even conceive of a condition of which the predicate “no information” would be true. In Badiou’s terms, what would be no normalcy or singularity (presentation and no representation, membership and no inclusion) is made normalcy in the thinking now occurring in the medium that is the “representation” (inclusion) that is notation identified with “presentation” (membership). Singularity (membership and no inclusion) is made normalcy (membership and inclusion) by intelligibility (inclusion) as notation identified with presentation (membership). This notation (height) is at once ‘finite unity’ (1), ‘absolute particularity’, and ‘Beginning’.71 In the essentially new form of thinking ‘Beginning’, the very notation of singularity is intelligibility: the intelligibility of singularity is very notation: the very writing (saying) of existence is its intelligibility. It is not that there is ‘no hors-texte’. It is not that there is no except-text—not that there is no without-text, no beyond-text—not that there is nothing apart from the text, not that there is nothing apart from the writing. The thinking now occurring for the first time is not existence without the One (Badiou) but existence beyond the One. For the first time there is texte hors d’ hors-texte, text beyond beyond-text, the beginning the very real of existence.72 The sheer receptivity here illustrated as cubed volume73 (= ‘infinite unity’ 1 = absolute simplicity = Omnipotence = 001) experiences itself as nothing but other-productive—as nothing but writingproductive, as nothing but the writing that is the finite unity of existence for the first time: sheer receptivity nothing but absolute text of existence for the first time.74 What is now thought essentially for the first time is that existence itself qua writing/text is absolutely and essentially construction. In the thinking now occurring for the first time it is not that the task is “to read what was never written,” 75 but the absolute imperative is “to write what was never written,” to create, to write essentially and absolutely for the first

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time. This writing for the first time is the absolutely new. This writing for the first time is the absolute novelty of the world. Continuing his explanation of Badiou’s development of set theory, Agamben asks: What becomes of the exception in this scheme? At first glance, one might think that it falls into the third case, that the exception, in other words, embodies a kind of membership without inclusion [singularity]. And this is certainly Badiou’s position. But what defines the character of the sovereign claim is precisely that it applies to the exception in no longer applying to it, that it includes what is outside itself. The sovereign exception is thus the figure in which singularity is represented as such, which is to say, insofar as it is unrepresentable. What cannot be included in any way is included in the form of the exception. In Badiou’s scheme, the [sovereign] exception introduces a fourth figure, a threshold of indistinction between excrescence (represen­tation without presentation) and singularity (presentation without representation), something like a paradoxical inclusion of mem­bership itself. The exception is what cannot be included in the whole of which it is a member and cannot be a member of the whole in which it is always already included…. The exception expresses precisely this impossibility of a system’s making inclusion coincide with membership, its reducing all its parts to unity. From the point of view of language, it is possible to assimilate inclu­sion to sense [intelligibility or connotation] and membership to denotation.76 For Agamben, Badiou’s category of the event “corresponds to the structure of the exception.” 77 Agamben tells us that Badiou assigns the exception to the “figure” of singularity (membership without inclusion), and says that “Badiou defines the event as an element of a situation such that its membership in the situation is undecidable from the perspective of the situation. To the State, the event thus necessarily appears as an excrescence.” But, then, for Agamben, the peculiarity of the sovereign exception requires a “fourth figure.” In addition to Badiou’s three “figures,” normalcy (analogous to C.S. Peirce’s information78), excrescence (Peirce’s connotation/ depth without denotation79), and singularity (Peirce’s denotation/breadth without connotation80), Agamben introduces as a fourth “figure” excrescence of singularity. This excrescence of singularity appears here and everywhere

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in Agamben’s text as the threshold of indistinction, as the halo that is the “matter that does not remain beneath the form,”81 the “exposure, its being pure exteriority,” of “the such,”82 as “the experience of the limit itself, the experience of being-within an outside,” the ek-stasis of singularity.83 In The Coming Community, he quotes Walter Benjamin’s retelling of a rabbinic parable concerning the Kingdom of the Messiah: Benjamin’s version… goes like this: ‘The Hassidim tell a story about the world to come that says everything there will be just as it is here. Just as our room is now, so it will be in the world to come; where our baby sleeps now, there too it will sleep in the other world. And the clothes we wear in this world those too we will wear there. Everything will be as it is now, just a little different…’. The tiny displacement does not refer to the state of things, but to their sense and their limits. It does not take place in things, but at their periphery, in the space of ease between every thing and itself.… the parable introduces a possibility there where everything is perfect, an ‘otherwise’ where everything is finished forever, and precisely this is its irreducible aporia.84 Two things inseparable in Peirce’s category of Thirdness are lawfulness (Peirce’s Secondness) and chance (Peirce’s Firstness), effectively Agamben’s “minute displacement.”85 In his analysis Agamben discovers the inadequacy of Badiou’s assigning the exception to the “figure” of singularity, discovering, in effect, the inadequacy of Badiou’s “figure” of normalcy, viz., that, unlike its Peircean analogue, Thirdness, normalcy, qua figure, is short on change. Agamben supplies the deficiency in Badiou’s notion of normalcy (a member and included) by supplementing that “figure”—together with its extreme alternatives, the “figures” of excrescence (included but not a member) and singularity (a member but not included)—with a “fourth figure,” excrescence of singularity (membership as such included as not-includable). Agamben effectively repairs the deficiency in Badiou’s figure of normalcy, not by reverting in any way to Peirce’s category of Thirdness, but rather by distinguishing out— that which is inseparably united in the Peircean Thirdness as Firstness with Secondness—a “fourth figure,” a zone of indistinction. Just here Agamben would be (were it possible) at the threshold (were there a threshold thereof as such) of the thinking now occurring for the first time—except that being at the threshold is not being the creation of the world. The Messianic world as the ‘world to come’, the ‘coming world’, the making of which is a “task,”

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takes the form of the infinite potentiality of the beginning of being: hither hither the beginning of being,86 “Creation—or existence—… the impotence of God with respect to his own impotence, his allowing—being able to not not-be—a contingency to be:”87 God’s power to not-be his power to notbe: his power to not-be his demon.88 In Peirce’s Thirdness, the analogue of Badiou’s normalcy, Secondness, and its counterpart, Firstness, the analogue of Badiou’s singularity, were inseparable but not in fact indistinguishable, which is to say that in Peirce’s Thirdness actuality and potentiality though inseparable were irreducibly distinguishable. In Agamben the “fourth figure,” excrescence of singularity is the halo that is the “zone in which possibility and reality, potentiality and actuality, become indistinguishable… the imperceptible trembling of the finite that makes its limits indeterminate and allows it to blend, to make itself whatever…”89 What at first glance might appear to be the analogue of the foundational Fourthness of real trinary logic,90 Agamben’s “fourth figure,” is in fact a construct whose nature is the blending of Badiou’s excrescence and singularity. In Peirce “being is a matter of more or less, so as to merge insensibly into nothing,”91 The limits of the finite are not simply indeterminate as in Agamben, but rather the limits of the constituents of the finite are indeterminate: there are determinate limits of the indeterminate limits of the finite (thus probability theory).92 But in Agamben, the blending of being and nothing, the finite, blends: the blending blends: it is not simply that being and nothing “insensibly merge,” being and nothing are indistinguishable. This being so, no wonder that for Agamben what is “astonishing” is that “something is rather than nothingness”—“that it was able to not not-be.”93 For Peirce, on the contrary, the whole of our experience must actually be an absolutely necessary result of a state of utter nothingness.94 Whatever is is—but was not—able to not not-be, whatever is is able to continue to be. Where the blending of being and nothing, the finite, blends, where the blending blends, where being and nothing are indistinguishable, where the Being of existence is infinite potentiality, there Agamben is not beyond the sovereignty of language itself. As he writes in The Coming Community: Whatever does not therefore mean only (in the words of Alain Badiou) ‘subtracted from the authority of language, without any possible denomination, indiscernible’; it means more exactly that which, holding itself in simple homonymy, in pure being-called, is precisely and only for this reason unnameable: the being-in-language of the

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non-linguistic. What remains without name here is the being-named, the name itself (nomen innominabile); only being-in-language is subtracted from the authority of language.” Not merely being, as in Badiou, but being-in-language is subtracted from the authority of language. The overcoming of the sovereignty of language in the form of “pure being-called.95 In Homo Sacer Agamben says:96 “The paradox of sovereignty consists in the fact that the sovereign is, at the same time, inside and outside the juridical order.” The paradox of the ‘coming thought’ is that it is, at the same time, inside and outside the state of exception that is sovereignty, and outside what it is not outside, not beyond what it would be beyond, hither beyond x, hither sovereignty and politics, and, precisely so, not beyond sovereignty and politics. But for the first time notation identified with membership as very identity of “inclusion” makes membership and not “inclusion” membership and “inclusion”, makes singularity normalcy: placedness identified as Beginning identified with membership makes not beyond and not beyond x, makes not “not inclusion and inclusion”, makes not excrescence of singularity—but makes embodiment. For the first time essentially conceived world-embodying omnipotence makes beyond beyond x, makes beyond politics. To think intelligibility (connotation) as the identification of existence (denotation) and writing (notation), in effect to liberate Aristotle’s text (and all texts henceforth) from the “free use of the proper,” indeed, to think the absolute intelligibility of the text itself of existence— beyond interpretation—beyond beyond writing—is to think actually writing for the first time what was never written, to think for the first time the construction of the body.

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Notes 1. Cf. Backnote 1. 2. D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 115ff. and 152ff. 3. Cf., above, Section II.3. 4. �������������������������������������������������������������������������� D.G. Leahy, “The Diachrony of the Infinite in Altizer and Levinas: Vanishing without a Trace and the Trace without Vanishing,” in Thinking through the Death of God: A Critical Companion to Thomas J.J. Altizer (ed. L. McCullough and B. Schroeder, Albany, 2004), pp. 105-124. 5. Cf. Backnote 4. 6. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), pp. 472ff. Also, cf. T.J.J. Altizer, Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir (Albany, 2006), pp. 118f. “Weber had a fundamental impact upon my thinking, and most so in his unique understanding of Calvinism and an ‘inner-worldly’ asceticism. Thereby Calvinism can be understood to have truly transcended its origin in Calvin and a theocratic Geneva, but as Weber knew it never loses its ground in an absolute predestination; yet here predestination is embodied in historical actuality itself, and even embodied in the very secularization of Christianity. Only Weber in the twentieth century has given us a deep understanding of secularization, here, as elsewhere, Weber is a deep Hegelian and a deep Marxist at once. Here, too, we discover an ultimate ‘cunning of reason’, a providential or necessary and inevitable history, but one now culminating in the very reversal of its original ground, a culmination enclosing us within an ‘iron cage’. It is Weber above all others who has given us an ethical understanding of our historical prisonhouse, and just as Weber stands alone as a sociologist of the world religions, he stands alone in giving us a genuinely ethical understanding of our actual historical world. Indeed, Weber could understand that a truly inner-worldly asceticism is a genuine expression of faith, one releasing a full and pure action in the world, and a truly pragmatic action, just as he could understand that the prophetic revolution was made possible by what he termed the ‘psychic economy’ of the prophets, wherein all the energy of the prophet is directed to a demand for action rather than mythical vision or understanding, a pure action that is total obedience to Yahweh. While Weber himself was broken by his own work, thereby allowing us a glimpse of its ultimate power, and even demonic power, his work does give us something like a sanctification of the forbidden, a theological justification of secularization, and one occurring in the realization that it is precisely a comprehensive secularization that releases the deepest energy, and one occurring not only in modern Calvinism but in ancient Confucianism. Thereby we can see that these are the driving forces in modernity, and forces which are most powerful when they are most theologically disguised. Genuine Calvinism,

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in this sense, is truly an invisible religion, or a profoundly secularized faith, and it is precisely as such that it is most powerful….” 7. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 157f. 8. G. Agamben, The Coming Community (trans. M. Hardt, Minneapolis and London, 1993), pp. 95ff. 9. See, above, n. 4, and Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, p. 112, et passim. Also, D.G. Leahy, “The Originality of Levinas: Pre-Originally Categorizing the Ego,” in Paideia Project On-Line: Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. Available online at: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContLeah.htm. April 2009. 10. See, below, pp. 153ff. 11. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 100. 12. See, below, pp. 157f. 13. Ibid. 14. See C.S. Peirce, Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition Vol. 2 (Bloomington, 1984), pp. 70ff. See, below, pp. 153ff. and 176ff. 15. Thither x not beyond and not beyond x, effectively, beyond beyond x thither x, the Not Yet thither the beginning of consciousness, the beginning of consciousness not absolutely now, the Not Yet not, “the disintegration of all that interior distance separating men from men and self from self” but not the disintegration of all distance (cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section II.4, pp. 221ff., et passim). 16. Cf. Leahy, “The Diachrony of the Infinite in Altizer and Levinas,” in Thinking through the Death of God, p. 122, et passim. 17. M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) (trans. P. Emad and K. Maly, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1999). 18. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 91f. 19. G. Agamben, Means without End: Notes on Politics (trans. V. Binetti and C. Casarino, Minneapolis and London, 2000), pp. 3f. 20. Cf., above, pp. 135ff. 21. Cf. G. Agamben, The State of Exception (trans. K. Attell, Chicago, 2005). 22. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany, 1994), p. 189. 23. The text continues (pp. 189ff.): “We are now in a position to see that Descartes’ solitary thought of existence is the original Moment corresponding to the Moments of Kant, which make possible the experience of time by generating uniformly an alteration from one state to another state within the limits of two instants, Now themselves incorporated as parts of the total alteration or change, by virtue of what becomes in Kant the original synthetic unity of consciousness, itself the ultimate origin, through sensuous intuition, of time itself, as well as of the laws by which pure understanding conceptualizes the world of sensible experience. The Moment, then, is pure reason generating out

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of its own resources a world of appearances; as the poetry of Faust’s last moment reveals, it is by its very nature pregnant of the future. As we see in Descartes, it is in its very inception a denial of history because it takes for granted contingency, which, in Kant, reduced to sensible conditions of knowledge, is the world of appearances, so that, finally, the Moment is the actual time of Reason in which it establishes, according to its own laws, nature itself, or the contingency of things. The interdict of sacred doctrine, under which reason lies cut off from the fact of existence, restricted to the thought of existence, is, ironically, that by which it is condemned to confusing itself for practical purposes with the transcendental essence. Since the matter of the confusion is time, reason’s demonic insistence on its freedom to create, or better, to conserve what from a pure transcendental viewpoint is, in itself, nothing, is given over to an insatiable appetite for a future. The revulsion that Kant tells us that imagination experiences at the thought expressed by the angel of the Apocalypse that change itself will come to an end has its root in reason’s confusion of the transcendental essence of existence with the conditions of its own understanding. It, therefore, appears to it that a last moment, by which time would be united to eternity, is formally impossible. We may understand that reason’s original resolution to be for this sensible universe its transcendental existence sees in an announcement of an actual realm of intelligible existents an end of that reason for existence that it took itself to be. Now, while it is undoubtably true that, in the event of an actual transition from a realm of what is nothing in itself to a realm of what is in itself possible, pure reason would be destroyed, what is, perhaps, most remarkable is that reason is, by sacred doctrine’s interdict, precluded altogether from even the faintest perception of what would be the true source of its downfall. This darkness in which it is bound is immediately shown by its assumption that the necessary condition of change is time, that therefore the end of time is the end of change, or simply eternity.” 24. Agamben, The State of Exception, pp. 23, 40, 63, 80. 25. Cf., above, Sections II.2 and II.3. 26. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, p. 372. Cf., also, Leahy, Foundation, pp. 241ff. 27. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 24ff. 28. G. Agamben, Means without End, p. 8. 29. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics (trans. R. Hope, Michigan, 1968), 1049b 4-9 (translation modified): “Since we have previously distinguished the various ways in which things are ‘prior’, it is evident that actuality is prior to potentiality. And I mean prior not only to the definite power which is said to be the source of change in something else or in some other aspect of the identical thing, but to any source of motion or of rest generally. For nature, too, may from this point of view be placed in the identical genus with power, since it is a source of motion; not of motion in something else, but in a thing as the

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very thing. Actuality is prior to such potentiality both logically and in being; it is also prior in time in one sense, but not in another sense.” Aristotle adds (1050b 6–10) (translation modified) “However, actuality is prior in an even more fundamental sense; for eternal beings are by their very being prior to those that perish, since nothing eternal is potentiality. The reason is this. Every power may eventuate in one of two opposite ways: for whatever is not even potentially real will never be realized, but whatever is potential may possibly not become actual. Accordingly, whatever is potentially in being may either be or not be; thus, the identical thing is potentially (tØ aªtØ “ra dynatØn) being and not being. But what potentially is not may possibly cease to be; and what may cease to be is perishable, either simply ceasing to be, or perishable in whatever category is being used with regard to it, that is, with regard to place or quantity or quality.” 30. G. Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy (ed. and trans. D. Heller-Roazen, Stanford, 1999), p. 115. In the thinking now occurring for the first time creating the new world is not a “task,” as if it might or might not be accomplished, as if it might be assigned to someone standing at the presupposed point of indifference, indeed, starting out within the zone of indifference. The essentially new and unprecedented thought is that creating the new world is the absolute imperative of existence (see, above, Sections I, II.2, II.3, and, below, Sections III.2 and III.3). 31. Cf. Aristotle, On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath (trans. W.S. Hett, Harvard, 1964), p. 171 (translation modified): “Potential is prior in time to actual knowledge in the individual, but in general it is not prior in time. Mind does not think intermittently. When isolated it is just the very this which it is (mønon toy^ u| Œper ®sti) and just this (mønon toy^ to) is immortal and everlasting… and without this (”ney to¥^ toy) nothing thinks.” 32. G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (trans. D. HellerRoazen, Stanford, 1998), pp. 46f. 33. Cf., above, pp. 139ff. 34. Cf., above, p. 163, n. 29. 35. Agamben, Homo Sacer, pp. 46f. 36. Perhaps the boldest instance of Agamben’s reading what was never written in Aristotle’s text. Here Agamben transforms Aristotle’s “the act of knowing of the act of knowing” into the power of thinking of the power of thinking. 37. See, above, p. 134f. 38. For ‘beyond being abandoned by Being’ in the form of Heidegger’s “turning off into beyond,” see Backnote 2. 39. Ibid. 40. See, above, pp. 134ff., and, below, pp. 157ff. 41. Above, p. 140.

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42. Above, p. 141. 43. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 157f. 44. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 439f. 45. G. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 19. 46. Ibid., pp. 46ff. 47. Cf., above, pp. 134f., the intentio as “sheer information.” For the missing intentio in Descartes, cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 21f., et passim. 48. For the identity of absolute particularity as finite unity and beginning, see Backnotes 3 and 4. Agamben’s substitution of whatever particularity for the absolute particularity now thought for the first time is the necessity of binding together what would otherwise be the sheer disunity of life and form of life, is the infinite potentiality that is at once the side-stepping of the beginning. 49. Cf., above, Section II.3, p. 128, n. 36; also, Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 116f.: “Whereas in Thomas reason is explicitly infused with God’s light so as to be, at least in principle, not simply left to its own passivity, as it would otherwise most certainly have been when metaphysics was subordinated to sacred doctrine, in Descartes reason is completely on its own, so that its passivity, which prior to revelation is limited by a superior active intellect, is now, after revelation, unlimited altogether except, in Descartes, by its own idea of God; later, in Kant, by its own idea of freedom. Or doubt itself, the doubt in which existence is involved is the measure of reason’s passivity, so that in Kant where doubt is institutionalized in the form of the doubt of things in themselves, in the noumena, modern thought is most explicitly passive.” 50. ��������������������������������������������������������������������� Further concerning the connection of modern passivity and this resemblance without archetype, cf. ibid., p. 121: “There is, perhaps, yet another direction in which pure reason’s passive root, that is, its inability to maintain itself face to face with its object’s otherness, might be explored, a clue to which is given us by the ancient Greek word, paránoia, meaning madness, more basically (parano™v) ‘to think amiss’, ‘to misconceive,’ ‘to misunderstand.’ If one looks at Greek literature in order to discover instances of paránoia or madness, one will soon see that they abound in Athenian tragedy; Oedipus, Ajax, Heracles— each suffered paránoia, which, in Greek tragedy, is practically spiritual sickness’ universal form, the ‘mistake’ of madness being everywhere a substitution of appearance for reality.” In the thinking now occurring for the first time absolutely receptive productivity as the form of the new creation precludes the possibility of paránoia. 51. G. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (trans. D. Heller-Roazen, New York, 2002), pp. 109f. 52. Cf. ���������������������������������������������������������������������� Backnotes 3 and 4, where the time/line as sheer receptivity corresponds to ‘something’ (0 = absolute singularity = Immediacy), as sheer receptivity squared—alio-affection—corresponds to ‘something else’ (0 = absolute

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placedness = Mediation), as sheer receptivity cubed—experiencing itself for the first time as nothing but existence—corresponds to ‘finite unity’ (1 = absolute particularity = Beginning), and, finally, as sheer receptivity cubed volume— experiencing itself as nothing but other-productive—corresponds to ‘infinite unity’ (1 = absolute simplicity = Omnipotence). Cf., also, above, Section II.2, p. 88, the logico-linguistic functions on the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” and below, pp. 153ff. 53. Cf. Backnotes 3 and 4. 54. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 1f. 55. Cf. the Appendix, “The Person as Absolute Particular.” For the continuing ineffability of the individual in the ‘coming thought’, in the form of the impenetrability of the lovers, see Section III.3. 56. Agamben, Means without End, p. 137f. 57. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 9. 58. Ibid., p. 8. 59. Ibid., p. 10. Cf. A. Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (Continuum, 2005), p. 44: “The axiomatization [of set theory] consists in fixing the use of the relation of belonging, ∈, to which the entire lexicon of mathematics can finally be reduced, if one considers that equality is rather a logical symbol.” 60. See, above, Section II.1. 61. Leahy, Foundation, p. 9. 62. Ibid., p. 23. 63. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 24. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� p. 95: “The expositive relationship between existence and essence, between denotation and meaning, is not a relationship of identity (the same thing, idem), but of ipseity (the same thing, ipsum)…. The thing of thought is not the identity, but the thing itself. The latter is not another thing toward which the thing tends, transcending itself, but neither is it simply the same thing. The thing here transcends toward itself, toward its own being such as it is.” The contrast here between identity and ipseity is between the same unchanging and the same changing. There is no recognition of the identity/ipseity that is unicity identified with change itself. 66. Ibid., pp. 100ff. 67. For the substantive analogue, “the absolute placedness that is absolute singularity identical with absolute particularity,” at once “the mediation that is immediacy identical with the beginning,” see, above, pp. 149f. For Peirce’s thought in relation to that of Agamben, see, above, p. 134f. 68. Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 24. 69. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� It is noted that their terms though formally retained in the following analysis will actually have been transubstantiated in the course of the analysis.

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70. D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “Real Trinary Logic Geometric Series Matrix of the Numeric Geometric Series & the Series of Perfect Numbers” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com/dgl/p05.html. April 2009. 71. See, above, p. 165, n. 52. 72. See Backnote 2. For the fundamental critique of Derrida’s notion of horstexte, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section II.3, et passim. 73. See, above, pp. 148ff. 74. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, p. 173: “Now for the first time identi­ty is absolutely concrete personal existence, is time itself. Not that there is no exit, but that there is no concept of an exit: not that there is no outside of the text, but that there is no concept of an outside of the text to be denied. The thinking now occurring for the first time essentially says nothing of nothing. The essentially new form of thought for the first time essentially denies nothing. The text no longer absolutely precedes itself, but for the first time the text itself is itself absolutely, the outside of the text is the text itself for the first time, the text transcending itself is the identity of time as itself‑consciousness, as the per­petuity of individuality, time itself the text of being itself for the first time (the transcendence in essence of the time the exis­tence of which was the non‑existence of itself in the form of an ideal individual identity—in the form of the absolute Idea). Time itself being itself now for the first time is the existence of absolute world‑consciousness. This is the new world order in terms of which the existence of the actually existing person, the existence of personality, the essence of individuality, the unity of life, is for the first time the end of the world now actually exist­ing, the consciousness of itself, the transcendence of itself, the revelation of itself being itself very simplicity. This is the abso­lute revelation of the complexity of the simple itself. The exis­tence of absolute world consciousness is now for the first time in history categorically actual, the category of the actual, the actual category absolutely transcending the mere potentiality of the law of identity, the mere potentiality of categorical simplicity, the merely potential category of the absolute unconditioned form of the absolute, the qualification of being without body itself, without the substance or identity of itself, without the metanomy or personality of itself which, qua categorical exis­tence, is the absolute quality of being. For the first time metanomy is the category of quality, the categorically absolute quantum‑quality, the qualification of being which is the catego­r y itself of being. Now for the first time in history the category of being is itself absolutely in the predicament of existence, is itself categorically absolute, is the category of freedom.” 75. See, above, pp. 139ff., et passim. 76. Agamben, Homo Sacer, pp. 24f. 77. Ibid. 78. See, above, p. 135 and pp. 154ff., and C.S. Peirce, Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition Vol. 2 (Bloomington, 1984), pp. 70ff.

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79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 55. 82. Ibid., p. 97. 83. Ibid., p. 67. 84. Ibid., pp. 52ff. 85. Cf. ibid. 86. Cf., above, pp. 133ff. 87. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 31f. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid., p. 55. 90. For Fourthness as “the beginning of the consciousness of the absolute force of Identity, the transcendence in essence of the originality of the essence of American thought,” see Section II.2. For Fourthness as infinite 1, omnipotence/absolute simplicity, see Backnotes 3 and 4. 91. C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers (ed. A.W. Burks, Harvard, 1958), 7.569. 92. In ����������������������������������������������������������������������� the thinking now occurring the limits of the finite—neither indeterminate nor determinate—terminate in essence (Leahy, Foundation, p. 91) and essence terminates in appearance itself (ibid., p. 6: “In the unlimited ontology that thought itself now is, essence terminates in appearance itself, and there is no being prior to existence itself terminating in thought itself ”). The limits of the finite are absolute for the first time: the limits of the finite terminate essentially in appearance itself. Cf. Backnote 2, existence as the real. 93. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 103. 94. Peirce, Collected Papers (ed. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss, Harvard, 1935), 6.490: “Now imagine, in such a vague way as such a thing can be imagined, a perfect cosmology of the three universes. It would prove all in relation to that subject that reason could desiderate; and of course all that it would prove must, in actual fact, now be true. But reason would desiderate that that should be proved from which would follow all that is in fact true of the three universes; and the postulate from which all this would follow must not state any matter of fact, since such fact would thereby be left unexplained. That perfect cosmology must therefore show that the whole history of the three universes, as it has been and is to be, would follow from a premiss which would not suppose them to exist at all. Moreover, such premiss must in actual fact be true. But that premiss must represent a state of things in which the three universes were completely nil. Consequently, whether in time or not, the three universes must actually be absolutely necessary results of a state of utter nothingness.” 95. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 75f. 96. Agamben, Homo Sacer p. 15.

2

Creating Society Beyond sovereignty/politics is there a distinction between community and society? Is there a community that is not a society? Is it any longer possible to imagine a ‘coming community’ to be contrasted with ‘society’? Is there for the first time an existing society that is not civil society, but not the ‘coming community’ of whatever singularities/particularities without identity? Beyond sovereignty, is there for the first time a society of fully unique singulars? Is there for the first time the person as absolute singular beyond the identification of the individual as subjectivity and sovereignty?1 Beyond sovereignty/politics, is it any longer possible to undertake a critique of political economy? Beyond the distinction between community and society, can there be a distinction between society and economy? Agamben, who is not beyond politics/sovereignty, who, as we say, “thinks otherwise and not otherwise than being abandoned by Being, thinks otherwise than being as such abandoned by Being, thinks being-thus otherwise than abandoned by Being, thinks whatever being abandoned by Being otherwise than actual: the pure modality,”2 writes in The Coming Community: What could be the politics of whatever singularity, that is, of a being whose community is mediated not by any condition of belonging (being red, being Italian, being Communist) nor by the simple absence of conditions (a negative community, such as that recently proposed in France by Maurice Blanchot), but by belonging itself?…The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest or control of the State, but a struggle between the State and the non‑State (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the State organization. This has nothing to do with the simple affirmation of the social in opposition to the State that has often found expression in the protest movements of recent years. Whatever singularities cannot form a societas because they do not possess any identity to vindicate nor any bond of belonging for which to seek recognition. In the final instance the State can recognize any claim for identity—even that

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of a State identity within the State (the recent history of relations between the State and terrorism is an eloquent confirmation of this fact). What the State cannot tolerate in any way, however, is that the singularities form a community without affirming an identity, that humans co‑belong without any representable condition of belonging (even in the form of a simple presupposition). The State, as Alain Badiou has shown, is not founded on a social bond, of which it would be the expression, but rather on the dissolution, the unbinding it prohibits. For the State, therefore, what is important is never the singularity as such, but only its inclusion in some identity, what­ever identity (but the possibility of the whatever itself being taken up with­out an identity is a threat the State cannot come to terms with). A being radically devoid of any representable identity would be absolutely irrelevant to the State…. Whatever singularity, which wants to appropriate belong­ing itself, its own being‑in‑language, and thus rejects all identity and every condition of belonging, is the principal enemy of the State. Wherever these singularities peacefully demonstrate their being in common there will be a Tiananmen, and, sooner or later, the tanks will appear.3 Agamben is beyond “all identity and every condition of belonging”— beyond “every condition of belonging” not beyond belonging itself. In order to understand in a precise way how it is that not beyond sovereignty is not beyond belonging itself, consider the etymological roots of sovereignty, super + anus + itas, where super is “above”/”over,” anus is “belonging to the class of,” and itas is “the being of”. In its roots, sovereignty is “belonging to the super class.” Since the super class as such prohibits equality and inferiority, sovereignty is membership in a class that has only one member, which member must be none other than itself. In effect Agamben places the being of the non-super—the non-being of the super—in the class of the super. He places the being of the non-super in the class that must have only one member none other than itself. The being of the non-super—whatever singularity the non-being of the super—thus placed in the class of the super is subtracted from the authority of that class. This is the usurpation of the place of the super. This non-being of the super in the place of the super is pure “belonging” together with its halo the pure “none-other.”4 According to Agamben, Badiou has developed the distinctions of set theory in order to translate them into political terms. What Agamben would

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generate through the logical procedure here outlined is none other than a new politics of humanity itself as pure belonging, humanity conceived as none other than pure belonging. In this aspiration the super class, whose membership must be none other than itself, turns out to be the conditio sine qua non for the coming of whatever being, the conditio without which there is not that which “rejects… every condition of belonging” while appropriating belonging itself. The usurpation of the place of the super in the class that must have only one member none other than itself constitutes at once the class of whatever singularity. This class of whatever singularity is not to be confused with absolute singularity beyond class—beyond beyond x—thought for the first time in the form of the thinking now occurring. This essentially new form of thinking qua lifting of the interdict of sacred doctrine5 banishes for the first time the very notion of class, banishes the prerequisite of any banishing. Where could it have gone, this banished prerequisite of any banishing? Nowhere. This notion now belongs to the past. In the thinking now occurring for the first time, class is gone, nowhere now to be found. Nor could this prerequisite have remained in the form of the prerequisite for banishing the prerequisite for banishing, remained as the prerequisite for its being banished, the conditio sine qua non of its own banishment. The banishing of the conditio sine qua non of banishing—banishing the very notion of class—this form of thinking otherness for the first time beyond beyond x—is essentially beyond self-consciousness in thinking the absolute existence of the other. Where for the first time there is absolute otherness the prerequisite for banishing is inconceivable. Where there is no within within which to include the outside,6 then, thought essentially, there is no possibility of the sovereign ban: the sovereign ban will have been banished absolutely. Nor is the prerequisite of banishing, the notion of class, a prerequisite of its inconceivability as the super class is the prerequisite of whatever singularity. The ‘coming thought’ not only does not leave behind the oppositeness of within and without constitutive of selfconsciousness, as the thinking now occurring for the first time does, but, indeed, incorporates the poles of sheer existence and sheer thought in the form of their indistinction,7 in the form of the indistinction of singularity and excrescence, in the purified form of the super class that is the zone of indistinction expropriated from sovereignty, the halo none other than belonging itself, the excrescence of whatever singularity, the non-super being usurping the place of the super. Agamben’s “fourth figure,”8 which

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we have called excrescence of singularity, the supplement Agamben provides to Badiou’s three “figures” of normalcy, singularity and excrescence, the supplement required to account for the “sovereign exception,” comes into being as—has as its very form—the appropriation of belonging itself by singularity at the expense of “the super,” that is, has as its very form the rejection of the very epitome of the “condition of belonging,” the rejection precisely of “the super,” where “the super” is, for self-consciousness, the very epitome of any naming of the name. Excrescence of singularity— hither sovereignty, hither the hither and thither of the beginning of being, hither “the death of God” in Altizer and “the God who comes to mind” in Levinas,9 hither the polarity, the Heraclitean “strife” (pølemoq), the war, indeed, the civil war/strife, that is the very essence of politics—is at once the insistence on binding together in an inseparable union a perfect anonymity and a pure nomination. Humanity not beyond the death of God and the God who comes to mind finds itself rehearsing the strife of politics hither thither and hither God, engaged in “a struggle between the State and the non‑State (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the State organization,” in a war hither war, indeed, in a civil war hither civil war, in a war against the very ground of war, waged from within—humanity the “non-State” hither beyond the State. Thinking now actually for the first time beyond profane10 banishes to nowhere what, insofar as it has existed, now essentially belongs to the past as that which, despite the fact that the ban of sacred doctrine has been lifted, precisely lacks the energy (Ô ®n™rgeia) to remove itself from the plane of immanence fashioned by the very sovereignty from which it would otherwise be entirely free.11 Despite the lifting of the ban of sacred doctrine, the ‘coming thought’ lacks quite precisely the energy to exit the plane of immanence fashioned by the politics that came into being under that ban. In Means Without End, Agamben writes: However, the problem that the new politics is facing is precisely this: is it possible to have a political community that is ordered exclusively for the full enjoyment of worldly life? But, if we look closer, isn’t this precisely the goal of philosophy? And when modern po­ litical thought was born with Marsilius of Padua, wasn’t it defined precisely by the recovery to political ends of the Averroist concepts of ‘sufficient life’ and ‘well‑living’? Once again Walter Benjamin, in the ‘Theologico­-Political Fragment’, leaves no doubts regarding

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the fact that ‘The order of the profane should be erected on the idea of happiness’. The definition of the concept of ‘happy‑life’ remains one of the essential tasks of the coming thought (and this should be achieved in such a way that this concept is not kept separate from ontol­ogy, because: ‘being: we have no experience of it other than living itself ’). The ‘happy life’ on which political philosophy should be founded thus cannot be either the naked life that sovereignty posits as a presupposition so as to turn it into its own subject or the impenetrable extraneity of science and of modern biopolitics that everybody today tries in vain to sacralize. This ‘happy life’ should be, rather, an absolutely profane ‘sufficient life’ that has reached the perfection of its own power and of its own communicability—a life over which sovereignty and right no longer have any hold.12 Agamben’s problem is the problem of a “new politics,” the problem, “is it possible to have a political community….” The ‘coming thought’ is unable to think an essentially non-political society, is unable to think the beginning of an essentially new form of society for which precisely it lacks the energy. This lack of energy (Ô ®n™rgeia) in what might be understood to be Agamben’s “Aristotelianism of the whatever” is the counterpart of the lack of the One in Badiou’s “Platonism of the multiple.”13—in both cases the sign of exhaustion, the sign—lack of energy (Ô ®n™rgeia) in the case of Agamben’s “new plane of immanence,”14 lack of Unity in the case of Badiou’s immanent world-transcendence15—of the merely formal transcendence of the dialectic of the exhausted self, thither and hither the essentially immaterial transcendence of the dialectic of the exhausted self in Altizer and Levinas.16 Thus, Badiou and Agamben, thither and hither politics, respectively, not beyond politics (not beyond beyond x), can not and do not constitute Creating Society at once the new world. In its lassitude the ‘coming thought’ (whose highest idea of creation is “the power to notbe the power to not-be”)17 contents itself with turning the spectacle of the spectacular state against that spectacle and that state. In Means Without End, Agamben writes: The plane of immanence on which the new political experience is constituted is the terminal expropriation of language carried out by the spectacular state. Whereas in the old regime, in fact, the estrangement of the com­municative essence of human beings was

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substantiated as a presupposition that had the function of common ground (nation, language, religion, etc.), in the contemporary state it is precisely this same communicability, this same generic essence (language), that is constituted as an autonomous sphere to the extent to which it be­comes the essential factor of the production cycle. What hinders communication, therefore, is communicability itself: human beings are being separated by what unites them. This also means, however, that in this way we encounter our own linguistic nature inverted. For this reason (precisely because what is being expropriated here is the possibility itself of the Common), the spectacle’s violence is so destructive; but, for the same reason, the spectacle still contains something like a positive possi­bility—and it is our task to use this possibility against it.18 The task of the ‘coming politics’ is in effect to turn the power to not-be (the evil) against the power to not-be (the evil), to discover/uncover the good in the evil by turning the evil against the evil. The task is to bring about the “self-grasping of evil,” the awakening of things in a state of forgetfulness (which forgetting is evil) to “the transcendence inherent in the very takingplace of things.”19 Hither Levinas’ being without anxiety hither the beginning of being,20 Agamben also is hither Heideggerian Angst. Not Angst, but the experience of the utter banality of evil, awakens things from their fallenness: the turning of this utter banality of evil against itself brings about what we understand as the utter banality of the good. Turning its back on what we have called Levinas’ “pre-original incarnation of the heteronomous authority of the Infinite,”21 leaving the “world of guilt and justice behind,”22 the ‘coming thought’ faces into “the life that begins on earth after the last day [the novissima dies of judgment] [which] is simply human life.” Now the logic of the utter banality of the good is quite consistently the logic of means without end. In Means Without End, Agamben writes: What is at stake in this experiment [the experience of the fact of speaking as such] is not at all communication intended as destiny and specific goal of human beings or as the logical‑transcendental condition of politics (as it is the case in the pseudophilosophies of communication); what is really at stake, rather, is the only possible material experience of being‑generic (that is, experience of ‘compearance’—as Jean‑Luc Nancy suggests—or, in Marxian terms,

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experience of the General Intellect). That is why the first consequence deriving from this experiment is the subverting of the false alternative between ends and means that paralyzes any ethics and any politics. A finality without means (the good and the beautiful as ends in themselves) in fact, is just as alienating as a mediality that makes sense only with respect to an end. What is in question in political experience is not a higher end but being‑into‑language itself as an irreducible condition of human beings. Politics is the exhibition of a mediality: it is the act of making a means visible as such. Politics is the sphere neither of an end in itself nor of means subordinated to an end; rather, it is the sphere of a pure mediality without end intended as the field of human action and of human thought.23 The utter banality of the good in the eventuality of the overcoming of sovereignty from within, of the overcoming of the class of absolute singularity (not to be confused with absolute singularity beyond class), the super class, by the non-super within subtracted from its authority constitutes the ‘coming community’, in effect, the class of absolute commonality, the class to which whatever belongs. Whatever without limitation is the class of the Common Itself. The overcoming of the super class by the non-super in the form of the class of the Common Itself will have inherited from the super class what will have become the contingent necessity of having a membership none other than itself, at once the necessary contingency of having a membership none other than whatever, and which must therefore absolutely contain the contingent in “the sphere of a pure mediality” altogether without end or ends, able to embrace no goal or goals whatsoever, either goals beyond itself or not beyond itself. Indeed, the class of the Common Itself—this “multiple common place”24 —in consequence of its origin as expropriator of the class that must have only one member none other than itself—requires of itself that pure belonging itself belong only to itself. Such is the “new plane of immanence.”25 In the thinking now occurring for the first time, where absolute contingency is not the form of the utter banality of the good, absolutely embodying the contingent is not a matter of necessity, ergo, not without end or ends. In the essentially new form of thinking now actually beginning to occur, where the good is absolutely not a banality, where “The Good is to create the world here and now,” in effect, to create absolutely now,26 ends are absolutely means for the first time: means and ends are absolutely identical.27 Agamben’s “sphere of a pure mediality”

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is not to be confused with the absolute middle existing for the first time in the now actual form of an essentially new thought. This absolute middle is, precisely, absolute particularity, that is, an essentially particular particularity, not a whatever particularity, not a particularity inessentially particular, not a particularity not finally particular.28 Within and upon the plane of the utter banality of evil Agamben seeks the path of a new politics within the domain of the old in the purest form of the prerequisite of any banishing, in the form of the usurped class of absolute singularity, making free use of the class that is the very epitome of banishment. But the thinking now occurring for the first time banishes to nowhere the prerequisite of banishing in the clear perception of the fact that such a free use of the super class, perverting the latter from its original intention to the form of another politics, is inherently incompatible with the absolute multiplicity of absolute singulars, the absolute particularity of being itself now actually existing for the first time. This absolute multiplicity, being absolutely and essentially commodious, being absolutely and essentially—not the thing its own modality29 but the thing its meta-modality—being itself the absolutely fit measure for the first time—absolutely excludes inclusion, indeed, is for the first time the conception in essence of the “classless society,” absolutely excluding inclusion’s contingent necessity at once its necessary contingency.30 Such is the absolute exteriority of the outside for the first time: the absolute meta-modality/after-modality/with-modality of actuality: existence fitting the first time for the first time: being commodious for the first time:31 as never before intelligibility absolutely beyond ‘containing’: for the first time the absolute simplicity of intelligibility. The unprecedented thought now occurring beyond sovereignty essentially conceives not belonging none other than itself, essentially conceives not the excrescence of what does not belong, essentially conceives not whatever predicate of whatever being, that is, conceives absolutely unconditionally not such, that is, sans the necessity of such first having to have been there. To say that the thinking now occurring “essentially conceives not belonging none other than itself, essentially conceives not the excrescence of what does not belong, essentially conceives not whatever predicate of whatever being,” is to say that there is a particular predicate of what otherwise would be whatever being, that is, that what otherwise would be whatever predicate (the predicate universally) is a derivative of a particular identification of being, that connotation (universal, intelligibility) is universally the product of notation (particular, writing) and denotation (singular, existence), that

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intelligibility is absolutely the product of the identification of writing and existence.32 To say that the essentially new and unprecedented thinking “essentially conceives not whatever predicate of whatever being” is to say that what otherwise would be whatever depth is the product of the identification of height and breadth, that depth is universally the derivative of surface (the identification of existence and the absolute plaintext) such that the ensuing volumetric identity/unicity33 is the absolute perpetuity of existence (where perpetuity goes back through the Latin petere “to require, seek, go forward,” “to rush at, attack,” to the IE root *pet- “to fly;” Sanskrit patram “wing, feather, leaf,” patara- “flying, fleeting;” Hittite pittar “wing;” Greek piptein “to fall,” potamos “rushing water,” pteryx “wing;” Latin penna “feather, wing;” O.C.S. pero “feather;” Old Welsh eterin “bird”)34, that is, existence each absolutely, absolute thisness, that is, absolute punctuality of existence, where, however, the point for the first time is (not nothing, but) the fullness of being,35 the absolute flight that is the essential intelligibility of creare. What, then, is the essential unintelligibility of “no creation” may be imaged in terms of the analysis of the derivation of intelligibility as the product of notation and denotation, as illustrated in Figure 1 (where “creation” has replaced the Peircean “information,” and, therefore, the inconceivability of “no creation” has replaced that of “no information”):36

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In Foundation, the writer says: Now that for which before now in fact no power existed, for which no one being itself existed, but rather a multiplicity of beings, being itself before now alienated in capitalism, or reappropriated in communism—now for the first time in history being itself is integrally the middle term, the absolute clarification of existence itself: the consciousness of being itself commodious: the novitas mentis: the new state of the mind for which precisely the power before now did not exist in the merely formal dialectic of matter itself. But now that very power exists in the essential dialectic of matter itself the ultimate resolution of which is the integrity itself of the perception of the body, that is, the absolute existence of man in essence. Indeed, the ultimate resolution of the essential dialectic of matter itself is itself in essence, that is, is itself perceived in the light, that is, is itself everything else in essence, is, that is, everything else absolutely unconditionally itself. Now for the first time in history it is seen to be of the essence of the thing itself to be the body itself—the cup, the table, the mountain—everything, qua thing, proclaims the body itself, proclaims the body itself itself in essence. This now is the absolute foundation, the essential distribution of the perception itself of the existing body itself, the essentially penultimate resolution of the essential dialectic of matter itself, the beginning in the form of the comprehension of man itself the absolutely unconditioned foundation: the thing itself (prescinding from nothing)/existence itself/absolute precision itself the perception itself of the body itself. This formal comprehension of the beginning precludes once and for all, and now in its absolute form, monadology itself (the essential form of the logic of modern consciousness from Descartes and Leibniz through Marx): this formal comprehension now of the absolute distribution of the perception itself of the body itself—this absolute opening of monadology to the beginning. Now mankind stands upon the wing-level of life itself soaring. Now humanity sees in a glass clearly, sees it to be of the essence of existence itself, of man itself, of the species itself deciphered to itself perceive itself as it itself is perceived ultimately. The proclamation of the body itself (now matter itself) is this ultimate perception itself now explicitly absolute. Now everything, qua thing (prescinding from nothing),

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is the clarified existence of the word itself. Now the clarified image in the glass is the thing itself abstracted from nothing (the perfect abstraction, the abstraction ex nihilo). For the first time matter itself is change itself, motion itself existence itself perceived in essence. What now occurs for the first time in history is change itself in imagination itself: now flesh itself transcendentally imagines change itself. Now for the first time in history flesh itself imagines intelligible matter. The foundation, qua foundation, is the power of a transcendent substance: now substance itself is the essential power of substance itself, is the unity of substance itself, is the spirit itself, is the absolute identity of substance and function.37 Now humanity stands on the “wing-level of life itself soaring”: now for the first time the flight of the human species, the flight absolute: the species making species now writes/pens absolutely the plaintext of existence itself for the first time. To think existence itself essentially text/writing, to think texte hors d’ hors-texte, text beyond beyond-text, the beginning the very real of existence,38 is to think essentially the body absolute construction for the first time. If the notion of a continuum is such that a distinction between its parts is always arbitrary, then the absolute discontinuity of the continuum, the perfectly non-arbitrary, rational distinction between the parts of the continuum that is the thinking now occurring for the first time, “the absolute punctuality of existence” where the point is unity, not nothing,39 “everything else absolutely unconditionally itself,” “the absolute distribution of the perception itself of the body itself,” “the clarified image in the glass [that] is the thing itself abstracted from nothing (the perfect abstraction, the abstraction ex nihilo),” is the continuum itself, essentially understood, absolutely created, the continuum absolutely now for the first time, in effect, existence itself essentially metanomous for the first time.40 Agamben’s Idea without archetype is “wrested” from the decline and death of commodities. But that “wresting” is no more essentially creative than is the image wrested, indeed, that “wresting” is in no essential discontinuity with modernity’s unredeemed passivity,41 with precisely that passivity that underlies the “commodification of the body”42 which otherwise “seemed” to “redeem the body from the stigma of ineffability” but did so only at the expense of separating the image from the “fragile, slight human body” destined to become the naked and anonymous body of the death camp and the mangled slaughter on the highways. In the ‘coming thought’ the

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image that could not be the body is appropriated, that is, formally but not in essence productively received, so that the image that could not be the body is still not the body but is bound as such inseparably to the body in the zone of indistinction. The foundation of Creating Society, of the economy of the new beginning is the essence of existence itself digitalized, the essence of existence the absolutely particularized universal and perpetual distribution of persons, the absolute freedom of consciousness disowning absolutely and essentially appropriation, where beyond “resemblance” the image is change itself absolutely the body itself the product absolutely of the productive receptivity that is the essence of thinking for the first time. To say that the essentially new form of thought for the first time “conceives not whatever predicate of whatever… absolutely unconditionally, that is, sans the necessity of such first having to have been there,” is to say what is true universally and essentially of the thinking now occurring for the first time qua thinking essentially creating the new world, qua thinking creating existence. Moreover, if what now for the first time is essentially inconceivable should be thought to exist, the fact of that existence—a necessary contingency at once a contingent necessity43—is essentially unnecessary, and only formally conceivable and as such only as being without knowledge, as a form of thinking that is an alternative to science and knowledge. Indeed, Agamben writes in “Absolute Immanence:” This is the wealth and, at the same time, the ambiguity contained in the title ‘Immanence: A Life… [Deleuze’s text] .’ To assume this legacy as a philosophical task, it will be necessary to reconstruct a genealogy that will clearly distinguish in modern philosophy—which is, in a new sense, a philosophy of life—between a line of immanence and a line of transcendence, approximately according to [the diagram in Figure 2]. It will be necessary, moreover, to embark on a genealogical inquiry into the term ‘life’. This inquiry, we may already state, will demonstrate that ‘life’ is not a medical and scientific notion but a philosophical, political, and theological concept, and that many of the categories of our philo­sophical tradition must therefore be rethought accordingly. In this di­mension, there will be little sense in distinguishing between organic life and animal life or even between biological life and contemplative life and between bare life and the life of the mind. Life as contemplation without knowledge will have a precise correlate in thought that has freed itself of all cognition

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Immanence

Kant

Spinoza

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Nietzsche

Heidegger

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Figure 2 and intentionality. Theōria and the contemplative life, which the philosophical tradition has identified as its highest goal for centuries, will have to be dislocated onto a new plane of immanence. It is not cer­tain that, in the process, political philosophy and epistemology will be able to maintain their present physiognomy and difference with respect to ontology. Today, blessed life lies on the same terrain as the biological body of the West.44 The ‘coming thought’ would carry forward the underlying oppositional logic of modernity, indeed, betraying in an original way the theological essence of modern philosophy by positing that “’life is not a medical and scientific notion but a philosophical, political, and theological concept.” Just here it can be appreciated that modern thought is incorrigibly political, that it, as such, is thinking under the ban of sacred doctrine, and so essentially so that, though the ban is now lifted for the first time in history, modern thought, in the form of the ‘coming politics’, in the form of rethinking the categories of “our philosophical tradition,” holds in a new way to that which was fashioned by that which came into being under the ban of sacred doctrine, holds in a new way to the sovereign ban, holds in a happy desperation to “a new plane of immanence,” and to a philosophy of life in “a new sense.”45 Though it imagines “there will be little sense

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in distinguishing between… bare life and the life of the mind,” that life, indistinguishably “bare” and “mind,” it imagines will be “contemplation without knowledge.” But in the essentially new form of thinking now actually occurring (where the difference between philosophy and theology belongs to the past),46 beyond politics, there is no opposition between medicine and science on the one hand and philosophy and theology on the other. Contemplation is the creation of the object—knowing essentially the being of the object for the first time—knowing essentially the image of God for the first time, that is, the image of God qua Creator. Here contemplation is not without knowledge, not other than knowledge, but beyond knowledge (where knowledge is a matter of intentionality, a being beyond x). The thinking now occurring for the first time not other than knowledge but beyond knowledge—beyond beyond x—is at once therefore beyond as well the intentionality of God’s creative knowledge as understood by Thomas Aquinas. Thus it is that in the thinking now occurring “omnipotence itself moves to new ground.”47 In the Appendix to Faith and Philosophy, concerning the absolute other-consciousness now actually occurring for the first time, the writer says: Such is a consciousness other than the known & unknown: a consciousness beyond knowledge, but not beyond being: a consciousness otherwise than knowledge but not otherwise than being: a consciousness otherwise than the beginning of being but not other than being & nothing: a consciousness other than the beginning of being & nothing.49 This consciousness of being & beginning otherwise than knowledge, consciousness of the beginning otherwise than being, is consciousness of the beginning not a species of becoming.50 For the first time the new world consciousness, the consciousness of the beginning, is consciousness of the beginning not a becoming and of being beyond ignorance and knowledge. This is the beginning of consciousness as complete objectivity. Otherwise than knowledge the beginning of the absolute transcendence of knowledge.48 Consciousness other than knowledge & ignorance, that is, consciousness essentially creating existence, is “the beginning of an essentially transmural consciousness,”51 at once the essentially transmural consciousness of beginning. This consciousness of the essentially transmural beginning is

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the essential foundation of the new society identically of the new economy beyond sovereignty and politics: freedom absolutely for the first time: being absolutely without strings: absolute independence-being: being commodious: the perfect measure of being the first time, where “perfect” absolutely & essentially does not exclude change: for the first time absolutely & essentially infinite finitude: finitude that knows nothing of the prerequisite of banishing, that is, the prerequisite of sovereignty and politics, knows nothing of the wall (exterior division) or the class (interior division) because it knows nothing of the division inside-outside. The absolute actuality of existence itself for the first time is precisely not at the expense of the perfect distinguishability of its elements, whether particular or categorial.52 But Agamben, who would be free of all intentionality, remains on the territory of all intentionality, on the essential ground of intentionality, that is, remains within the sphere of the generic essence of existence, the sphere of general mind,53 within the zone of indifference par excellence, hither transcendence and immanence, hither the hither and thither of the sovereign God, hither the hither and thither of the Idea of God, holding to the thought of the pure Idea, in effect to the thought of the pure Sovereign in the form of the ‘coming politics’, in effect to the Idea of God without God, the “resemblance without archetype” par excellence. Just here it can be seen how Agamben’s thought is an inflection on the ground shared with Badiou, the ground that is genericity, upon which Badiou has erected his version of the pure Sovereign in the form, effectively, of the Axiom of the One without the One,54 the Axiom of Choice, standing in the place, effectively, of an Axiom of Two, indeed, the instantiation of the illegal and anonymous being of intervention without an event, whose obverse is the very principle of “maximal order,” indeed, the very principle of set theory.55 Hither the transcendence of life in Levinas, and its polar opposite, the immanence of death in Altizer, Agamben, remaining beyond and not beyond x, occupies “a new plane of immanence” whose form is the world as the “absolutely, irreparably profane,” and, as such, God—not the redundancy, sovereign God, but pure God, the sovereign pure and simple, simple human life.56 Thus, in effect, God is the pure Idea, the resemblance without archetype as the form of whatever being. In The Coming Community, Agamben writes: The transcendent, therefore, is not a supreme entity above all things; rather, the pure transcendent is the taking-place of every thing. God or the good or the place does not take place, but is the taking-place

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of the entities, their innermost exteriority. The being-worm of the worm, the being-stone of the stone, is divine. That the world is, that something can appear and have a face, that there is exteriority and non-latency as the determination and the limit of every thing: this is the good. Thus, precisely its being irreparably in the world is what transcends and exposes every worldly entity.57 God is the pure Idea of God without the existence of God as the very form of whatever: the pure Idea of God without Christ that “does not take place,” but is the “taking place” of things. But in the thinking now occurring for the first time God without Christ is not the “innermost exteriority” of every thing. God without Christ is not the profane halo, not the Idea which “floats” above everything without taking place.58 God without Christ for the first time is God beyond the God—not the God and not not the God: the very existence of God without the very existence of God: not passionless God without Christ but Christ without Christ, very existence the passion of Christ, the very Christ embodied in very Omnipotence. In the thinking now occurring what is essentially conceived for the first time is not the essentially unhistorical God who does not take place but is the taking place of whatever takes place, but, rather, God the taking place of all things the very essence of history the perfect simplicity of being who takes place not taking place.59 This is precisely the absolute exteriority of everything the very passion of Christ. In Foundation, the writer says: … existence itself for the first time the existence of the passion of Christ: Christ without Christ (the passion of Christ) for the first time the very essence of identity, the known fact itself, the out-identity (there being no outside-identity of the absolute plaintext, no outside of transcendence ex abysso, of transcendence without point, of without itself without center, of existence without division, neither point, nor center, nor division of transcendence without side, there being no outside-identity of the circle itself: there being no outside-identity of the outside absolutely without, of the absolute limit without limit): the passion of Christ the absolute out-identity of existence (the absolute meta-identity of the identity of existence, since with without out/out without with is out absolutely with/ with itself out): the outside of thought itself existing as thought in essence, the absolute outside of thought actually existing freely in

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time: for the first time the absolute reference the very midst of existence itself. This absolute out-identity of (any)side (Christ existing without Christ/I Am speaking for the first time without existing in time, the first absolute silence, the absolute impossibility of any ecstasy whatsoever), this absolute passion of existence, is the logical foundation of an absolute society: this beginning is the fact of the absolute freedom of this passion.60 For the first time the “logical foundation of an absolute society”: the “with without out/out without with”: “out absolutely with/with itself out.” This is the body itself social, the angelic body that for the first time knows nothing of walls or classes,61 the body whose parts are related in a freedom essentially without strings unified for the first time by the infinite unbinding,62 infinite particularity, the foundation for the new morality now conceived for the first time: for the first time the absolute passion of existence: perfect withness63 sans the prerequisites of all banishing, sans wall & class: the body matter itself for the first time: the body identically Creating Society, the society creating the new world. The Creating Society: the Body that is for the first time the new plane of immanence absolutely & immediately the new plane of transcendence, the Body that is creating the new world. Agamben’s ‘coming community’ would obviate (were it possible) this Creating Society, placing in the way of the absolute imperative to create the new world an essentially complacent despair. He writes in The Coming Community: The Irreparable is that things are just as they are, in this or that mode, consigned without remedy to their way of being. States of things are irreparable, whatever they may be: sad or happy, atrocious or blessed. How you are, how the world is—this is the Irreparable. Revelation does not mean revelation of the sacredness of the world, but only revelation of its irreparably profane character. (The name always and only names things.) Revelation consigns the world to profanation and thingness—and isn’t this precisely what has happened? The possibility of salvation begins only at this point; it is the salvation of the profanity of the world, of its being‑thus. (This is why those who try to make the world and life sacred again are just as impious as those who despair about its profanation. This is why Protestant theology, which clearly separates the profane world

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from the divine, is both wrong, and right: right because the world has been consigned irrevocably by revelation [by language] to the profane sphere; wrong because it will be saved precisely insofar as it is profane.)64 For Agamben Protestant theology is right about the irrevocable profanity of the world, but wrong because that profanity is the form of its salvation. But for the thinking now occurring Protestant theology is wrong about the irrevocable profanity of the world (falling as it does qua modern under the interdict of sacred doctrine), but wrong also about redemption as the form of creation65 (a notion not formally at variance with Agamben’s perfectly profane salvation), because for the thinking now occurring for the first time redemption is the form not of the original but of the new creation. It is precisely the irrevocability & irreparability of the profanity of the world—the finality of its being such—that Agamben is pleased with, as Descartes was analogously essentially satisfied by finding himself on the rock of the indubitable. Whereas in the thinking now occurring for the first time omnipotence itself cuts loose the creation and thus cuts itself loose from any and all certainty,66 in the ‘coming thought’ to be free of doubt—this is what is divine in the conservatism essential to self-consciousness—is the divine quality that allows one to be pleased with despair. Agamben continues: The world—insofar as it is absolutely, irreparably profane—is God. According to Spinoza the two forms of the irreparable, confidence or safety (securitas) and despair (desperatio), are identical from this point of this point of view (Ethics, III, Definitions XIV and XV). What is essential is only that every cause of doubt has been removed, that things are certainly and definitively thus; it does not matter whether this brings joy or sadness. As a state of things, heaven is perfectly equivalent to hell even though it has the opposite sign. (But if we could feel confident in despair, or desperate in confidence, then we would be able to perceive in the state of things a margin, a limbo that cannot be contained within it.) The root of all pure joy and sadness is that the world is as it is. Joy or sadness that arises because the world is not what it seems or what we want it to be is impure or provisional. But in the highest degree of their purity, in the so be it said to the world when every legitimate cause of doubt and hope has been removed, sadness and joy refer not to

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positive qualities, but to a pure being‑thus without any attributes. The proposition that God is not revealed in the world could also be expressed by the following statement: What is properly divine is that the world does not reveal God. (Hence this is not the ‘bitterest’ proposition of the Tractatus.) The world of the happy and that of the unhappy, the world of the good and that of the evil contain the same states of things; with respect to their being‑thus they are perfectly identical. The just person does not reside in another world. The one who is saved and the one who is lost have the same arms and legs. The glorious body cannot but be the mortal body itself. What changes are not the things but their limits. It is as if there hovered over them something like a halo, a glory. If Levinas and Altizer are, in opposite directions, hither and thither, respectively, a reminiscence of ‘beyond good and evil’,67 Agamben is hither the hither and thither of the reminiscence of ‘beyond good and evil’: “the world of the good and that of the evil” qua “being-thus” “perfectly identical.” Thus the complacency of Agamben’s despair in withdrawing to a world hither the hopeful despair of God’s fall into existence and hither the desperate hopefulness of God’s fall into meaning, a world “free of all cognition and intentionality,” free, therefore, of the thither cognition which is the death of God and of that hither intentionality which is the God who comes to mind.68 The complacency of Agamben’s despair, founded as it is on the irrevocability and irreparability of the profanity of the world, finds in the contemplation of its desperate certainty its only hope—the form of a “passage outside the world.” In The Coming Community, Agamben writes: Redemption is not an event in which what was profane becomes sacred and what was lost is found again. Redemption is, on the contrary, irreparable loss of the lost, the definitive profanity of the profane. But, precisely for this reason, they now reach their end— the advent of a limit. We can have hope only in what is without remedy. That things are thus and thus—this is still in the world. But that this is irreparable, that this thus is without remedy, that we can contemplate it as such—this is the only passage outside the world. (The innermost character of salvation is that we are saved only at the point when we no longer want to be. At this point, there is salvation—but not for us.) Being-thus, being one’s own mode of

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being—we cannot grasp this as a thing. It is precisely the evacuation of any thingness…. Non-thingness (spirituality) means losing oneself in things, losing oneself to the point of not being able to conceive of anything but things, and only then, in the experience of the irremediable thingness of the world, bumping into a limit, touching it. (This is the meaning of the word ‘exposure’.)69 Thus is Agamben’s limit within and without the world. His despair is at once his hope. Beyond and not beyond x, the “spirituality,” the “non-thingness,” that is the excrescence of the singular: the spirituality of the non-spiritual, indeed, in effect and not surprisingly, the sacredness of the profane. “Redemption is not an event in which what was profane becomes sacred” only because the sacred is discovered in the irreparable profanity of the profane, in and as the experience of the limit that is at once the passage outside the world—the threshold. Agamben writes in The Coming Community: Whatever is the figure of pure singularity…. it is determined only through its relation to an idea, that is, to the totality of its possibilities. Through this relation, as Kant said, singularity borders all possibility and thus receives its omnimoda determinatio not from its participation in a determinate concept or some actual property (being red, Italian, Communist), but only by means of this bordering…. In Kantian terms this means that what is in question in this bordering is not a limit (Schranke) that knows no exteriority, but a threshold (Grenze), that is, a point of contact with an external space that must remain empty. Whatever adds to singularity only an emptiness, only a threshold: Whatever is a singularity plus an empty space, a singularity that is finite and, nonetheless, indeterminable according to a concept. But a sin­g ularity plus an empty space can only be a pure exteriority, a pure exposure. Whatever, in this sense, is the event of an outside. What is thought in the architranscendental quodlibet is, therefore, what is most difficult to think: the absolutely non‑thing experience of a pure exteriority. It is important here that the notion of the ‘outside’ is expressed in many European languages by a word that means ‘at the door’…. The outside is not another space that resides beyond a determinate space, but rather, it is the passage, the exteriority that gives it access—in a word, it is its face, its eidos. The threshold is not, in this sense, another thing with respect

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to the limit; it is, so to speak, the experience of the limit itself, the experience of being-within an outside. This ek‑stasis is the gift that singularity gathers from the empty hands of humanity.70 Such is the ek-stasis, “the only passage outside the world” that is the sacredness (the divinity) of the profane in the simply human world that arrives the day after the day of reckoning. Not beyond sacred (not beyond profane)—together with Badiou not beyond the Good71—not beyond the fact that the world is72—knowing nothing of the flight that is the absolute creation of the world in the form of the thinking now occurring for the first time—knowing nothing of the righteousness of the line that “rules the body itself, the infinite surface, the infinite body now actually existing” 73—the ‘coming thought’ thinks the crimped passage outside the world that is at once threshold and halo. Let the following proportion indicate the relation of the ‘coming community’ to Creating Society: the ‘coming community’/a passage outside the world : Creating Society/creating a new world :: the “angel that writes nothing but its potentiality to not-write”74 : the angel that writes nothing but the actuality of its writing :: the finite epitome of Hegel’s bad infinite : the finite epitome of Hegel’s good infinite. In Agamben’s thought the finite epitome of Hegel’s bad infinite is the threshold, the halo, the limit at once the plane of the indistinction of opposites defined quantitatively as “a point of contact with an external space that must remain empty.” In the thinking now occurring for the first time the finite epitome of Hegel’s good infinite, which in Hegel would simply not be, is ‘having happened as of now having ceased as of now’—very Omnipotence75—the absolute quality that is the absolute quantum of existence, the absolute limit for the first time quantum beyond beyond x—the beginning of absolute discretion, the quantum-quale the very substance of the new world.76 Agamben’s text reveals in the most precise way the ground of its being beyond and not beyond x, the ground of its being hither politics (at once the ground of its thoroughgoing incompatibility with the conception of society as economy of the new beginning in the thinking now occurring): the bordering of singularity understood as threshold (Grenze) (the passage outside the world), singularity’s being determined by its relation to an idea (the totality of its possibilities),77 is explicitly the alternative to the Kantian notion of “a limit (Schranke) that knows no exteriority.” Limitation is the third category in Kant’s category class Der Qualität. Kant’s alternate term for Limitation is

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Einschränkung (“restriction,” “curtailment”). What is immediately clear is that the ‘coming thought’ eschews, in the form of its rejection of the third moment of the categorial class Quality, the Einschränkung that combines Realität and Negation. Agamben rejects the Limitation that is the third member of the class Qualität, the Einschränkung, the ein-limitation that is essentially a function of the thing itself, the one-limit that is the singularity, placedness, and particularity itself of the thing, the thing (not limited from without) limiting itself, the thing “curtailing” itself. This is the limitation that is of the thing itself, the unicity of the thing itself. Not the limit of the thing determined with reference to something beyond it (beyond x); this limitation is not the limitation of something qua having something beyond it. This Kantian notion of categorially concrete Quality as Einschränkung foreshadows the notion of the minimum in the thinking now occurring for the first time, actual existence absolutely & essentially minimumized/ digitalized/particularized for the first time, the beginning of the construction of the new world taking place “beyond beyond x,” the economy of existence itself for the first time absolutely economic: existence itself for the first time essentially beyond beyond x. In Foundation, the writer says: For the first time reason conforms to faith. Not merely the clarification of the Aristotelian essence as occurred before now in consequence of the Incarnation, the appearance in time of the transcendental essence of existence, but now for the first time occurs the essential clarification of the Aristotelian essence, the clarification of the essence of the Aristotelian essence. What now occurs for the first time in history is the clarification of the created godhead. This clarification is the perfect perception of the absolute quality of metanomous being, such that being is person, being is itself, person is itself, itself is person (nor is being itself anything but person). Just here it is able to be stated with the least fear of being misunderstood that quality is quantity: quality itself itself quantum, quality itself quantity of existence. The quantum identity of being is quality, is the freedom of personal identity, is the person’s actual itself, the person’s absolute existence.78 Omnipotence moving to new ground is the clarification of the essence of the Aristotelian essence—beyond beyond Aristotle (and Kant & Hegel)—the identity of the knower and the known (very substance) very

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quality—quantum: the productive receptivity that is the beginning of the new world. Such is “the quantum identity of being [that] is quality,” quality whose essence is quantum, infinitely specific existence, absolutely digital being. Beyond politics being itself for the first time is being commodious, being itself/thing itself is person, perfectly fitting (for) the first time. Beyond politics persons absolutely existing (for) the first time are commodities, perfectly fitting (for) the first time, where this perfect fitness, absolute quantum/digital existence, is the quality that is the thing/person that is itself limit absolutely & essentially. This quantum identically quality is for the first time the absolute beyond, the absolute outside. This absolute exteriority of the outside for the first time is the limitation that “knows no exteriority,” because this limitation is exteriority, because this limitation knows no exteriority not identically itself. The limitation that knows itself exteriority knows itself absolutely other. The “taking place of things” “takes place” neither “not… in the world [where u]topia is the very topia of things,” 79 nor in the world, but—beyond beyond x—beyond “in the world”—takes place not taking place.80 For the first time the “taking place of things” “takes place” essentially/apocalyptically81 as the absolute placedness of each existing thing,82 the very form of the new creation. Things take place not merely as in the ‘coming community’ sans any condition of belonging,83 things taking place in the form of a belonging free from “every condition” and “all identity,” but in Creating Society, in the economy of the new beginning, the taking place of things is not a belonging unconditionally, a belonging without identity, but a unicity absolutely unconditioned, the economy of existence itself in the form of the unicity beyond belonging constituting society itself, the body of the individual identically society itself. The thinking now occurring for the first time, in being for the first time beyond belonging, as Agamben is not, is also beyond the Kantian distinction of Quality and Quantity upon which Agamben effectively relies in choosing Grenze over Schranke, in choosing ‘a sin­g ularity plus an empty space [that] can only be a pure exteriority, a pure exposure’, in choosing the pure notion of extension in its finite form as an empty space added to a singularity, indeed, beside a singularity as “the experience of being-within an outside.”84 This experience of being-within an outside is precisely the experience of an empty space within a “resemblance without archetype” outside. Indeed, a singularity seeing itself within outside of itself sees an empty space. This emptiness is its salvation. This is the gift it gives to itself, that is, the gift it “gathers from the empty hands of humanity.”

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In the thinking now occurring the “hands of humanity” conceived essentially for the first time are not empty but full. There is for the first time the requisite provision. Where there is no(t) nothing there is no actual scarcity: nothing is (able to be) removed from the essential wholeness of existence, from the infinite perpetuity of existence. Nothing able to be is not, what is able to be is. Nothing not (able to be) removed from the essential wholeness of existence is not, that is, what is not able to be is not. There is nothing able to not-be. There is not nothing. There is is. There is not is not. There is difference. Difference is not is not (nothing). Difference is. Difference is absolutely different for the first time. There is no(t) indifference to difference not essentially so. The angel that is not merely “one of a kind” but “one kind of one,” having exhausted its species, not able to be one of a species of a genus, immediately specifies what otherwise would be common to genera, viz., the transcendental essence.85 This absolute distribution, absolute specification of the transcendental essence thought in essence for the first time—unicity existing for the first time—exhausts what otherwise would be “the [pure] idea,” what otherwise would be “all the possibilities” of whateverness, what otherwise would be the halo surrounding the finite. Absolute singularity beyond class, the new economy of existence itself for the first time, the oʺkonomºa of the beginning of existence, the beginning of existence absolutely & essentially beyond beyond x, is the requisite provision made for every existent. Where oʺkoq is “house” or “dwelling,” the oʺkonømoq is the “manager of the house” or the “distributor of the dwelling.” Where being itself is person for the first time,86 the oʺkonomºa is the oʺkonømoq: the distribution of the dwelling is the distributor of the dwelling. Thought in essence for the first time existence the absolute distribution of the dwelling—omnipotence itself moving to new ground newly embodying the Incarnation—is the distributor of the dwelling. The I that is the Distributor is the Way, the Truth, and the Life identifying itself in John 14: “In my father’s dwelling are many dwellings (®n të^ oʺkºQ toy^ patrøq moy monaº pollaº eʺsin): if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to ready a place for you („toimåsai tøpon Êmin). And if I go and ready a place for you, I will come again, and take you to myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” Conceived in essence this is the Word incarnate, faith incarnate, being at the disposal of another in essence,87 or, in terms of the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,”88 Very Readiness (real trinary logic digit: 0 [= not nothing]). This Readiness for the first time thought essentially is the transcendental

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essence of existence, the divine oʺknomºa absolute, incapable of “running aground” on life that is “simply human life,”89 is at once the eucharist of existence itself.90 But the question arises, if such is the case how is it that there is perceived to be a discrepancy between this requisite provision made for every existent, between the absolute distribution of the transcendental essence, between this and the appearance of humanity’s empty hands? The answer is that the perceived discrepancy is intelligible as a negative function of the appearance for the first time of the transcendental essence of existence itself in and as the essential form of thought. That discrepancy, understood in terms of the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” arises as the result of the discrepancy between doing and willing, as the result of not doing but, instead, of willing to or willing not to, in particular as the result of not having the patience to perceive what’s different, as the result of lacking Discretion (that dimension of the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity” where, uniquely, willing, qua Spirit, is that doing that is having the patience to see what’s different), finally, then, as the result of lacking Hope, of lacking Knowledge, of lacking Courage—in a word, as the result of Despair. In the place of Discretion (0) the empty space dwelling beside singularity91 (O)92 whose image is the zone of indistinction, at once the halo and the threshold, the opening to nowhere that is the face of whatever being. Despair finds this empty space (O) into which it puts itself in the place of Discretion (0), finding its “only hope” in the form of the passage outside the world, when Connotation (0) is not the identification of Denotation (0) and Notation (1), when Intelligibility (0) is not the identification of Existence (0) and Writing (1), when Factuality (0) is not the identification of Freedom (0) and Reality (1), when the wholeness of existence is not the productive receptivity that is Creation (1 = 100).93 The perceived discrepancy between the eucharist of existence itself thought essentially for the first time and the experience of the “empty hands of humanity” is seen in the light of the thinking now occurring for the first time to be a function of the Despair that is complacently the hope that is the passage outside the world, at once the passage to nowhere, the Despair for which “the political task is to select those characteristics of humanity that fit it for survival.”94 Where politics is the sphere of a pure mediality without end or ends, the means of survival without end or ends make of this survival just such an emptiness (O) as dwells beside whatever singularity in the place of Discretion (0). The fundamental cause of the perceived discrepancy between the eucharist that is existence itself and the “empty hands of humanity” is

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the failure to derive factuality (0) from the identification of freedom (0) and reality (1), the failure to attend absolutely to the absolute imperative to create the new world (where the root of “imperative” is imperare, “to command,” “to requisition,” from paro, “to ready,” “to prepare, furnish, provide,” “to order, contrive, design,” and related to pareo, “to produce,” “to bring forth”). This failure to attend to creating the new world, this failure to think essentially the new beginning, to think essentially the requisite provision/the absolute requisition that is the new beginning now occurring, takes, in the ‘coming thought’, at the most basic level, the form of the notion that nourishing is self-nourishing, in effect, takes the form of Disservice.95 In the course of relating Deleuze’s thinking to Spinoza’s theory of “‘striving’ (conatus) as the desire to persevere in one’s own being,” which for Spinoza is the fundamental principle of ethics, Agamben, speaking of conatus, writes in “Absolute Immanence:” … its paradoxical formu­lation perfectly expresses the idea of an immanent movement, a striving that obstinately remains in itself. All beings not only persevere in their own Being (vis inertiae) but desire to do so (vis immanentiae). The movement of conatus thus coincides with that of Spinoza’s immanent cause, in which agent and patient cannot be told apart. And since conatus is identical to the Being of the thing, to desire to persevere in one’s own Being is to desire one’s own desire, to constitute oneself as desiring. In conatus, desire and Being thus coincide without residue…. But to what degree can life, thus defined in terms of conatus and desire, be distinguished from the nutritive potentiality of which Aristotle speaks and, in general, from the vegetative life of the medical tradition? It is worth noting that when Aristotle defines the characteristic functions of the nutritive soul (threptikē psychē) in De anima, he makes use of an expression that closely recalls Spinoza’s determination of conatus sese conservandi. Aristotle writes [De Anima 416 b 18–19] ‘It (trophē, nutritivity) preserves its substance…. This principle of the soul is a potentiality capable of preserving whoever possesses it as such (dynamis estin hoia sōzein to echon autēn hēi toiouton].’ The most essential character of nutritive life, therefore, is not simply growth but above all self-preservation. This means that whereas the medico‑philosophical tradition seeks care­fully to distinguish the various faculties of the soul and to regulate hu­man life according to

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the high canon of the life of the mind, Deleuze (like Spinoza) brings the paradigm of the soul back to the lower scheme of nutritive life. While decisively rejecting the function of nutritive life in Aristotle as the ground of the attribution of subjectivity, Deleuze nevertheless does not want to abandon the terrain of life, which he identifies with the plane of immanence. But what does it then mean to ‘nourish’…? If the original meaning of trephō is ‘to let a being reach the state toward which it strives’, ‘to let be’, the potentiality that constitutes life in the original sense (self-nourishment) coincides with the very desire to pre­serve one’s own Being that, in Spinoza and Deleuze, defines the potentiality of life as absolute immanence.96 Agamben, making free use of Aristotle’s text, taking advantage of an easement thereon secured by the ‘coming thought’, reads again in Aristotle what was never written,97 omitting what was written, finds that in Aristotle “the potentiality that constitutes life in the original sense (selfnourishment) coincides with the very desire to pre­serve one’s own Being that, in Spinoza and Deleuze….” But does nourishing in Aristotle coincide with “the very desire to preserve one’s own Being?” In the text of De Anima 416 b 9–25, Aristotle writes: Since nothing except what is alive can be fed, what is fed is the ensouled body and just because it has soul in it. Hence food is essentially related to what has soul in it. Food has a power which is other than the power to increase the bulk of what is fed by it; so far forth as what has soul in it is a quantum, food may increase its quantity, but it is only so far as what has soul in it is a ‘this‑somewhat’ or substance that food acts as food; in that case it maintains the being of what is fed, and that continues to be what it is so long as the process of nutrition continues. Further, it is the agent in generation, that is, not the generation of the individual fed but the generation of another like it; the substance of the individual fed is already in existence; the existence of no substance generates itself but only maintains itself. Hence the psychic power in question is such that it preserves the individual that as such possesses it (®stin oÒa s√zein tØ ‘xon aªtÓn ë^ toioy^ ton), while food readies it for working (paraskeyåzei ®nergei^n). That is why, if deprived of food, it must cease to be. The process of nutrition involves three

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factors, (a) what is fed, (b) that wherewith it is fed, (c) what does the feeding; of these (c) is the first soul, (a) the body which has that soul in it, (b) the food. But since it is right to call things by name after the ends they realize (®peÁ d‚ Ωpo toy^ t™loyq ”panta prosagore¥ein dºkaion), and the end of this soul is to ^ generate such as itself (oon aªtø), the first soul ought to be named the generative soul.98 In Aristotle the soul is not simply “self-nourishing” as represented in Agamben’s reading of the text, but rather the first soul nourishes the body that it informs, the body from which it is ontologically distinguished as the actuality and cause thereof. For Aristotle, who knows nothing of “pure mediality,” the first soul (pr√th cyxÓ) (c) nourishes not itself but the body ^ it informs qua essence as “this something and substantial being” (ï d‚ tøde ti kaÁ oªsºa) (a) by means of food (b). The soul nourishes the body for the end of preserving itself as the generator of “such as itself,” for the end of generating another body-actualizing soul. Nourishing is ensouled-bodynourishing to enable the bringing into being “(another) such as itself.” If human life is grounded—as all life is—in the act of nourishing (tr™fein), then for Aristotle the ultimate raison d’ être of human nourishing is the preservation of the human oʺkonomºa, the preservation of the distribution of body-informing souls. The generation of “(another) such as itself,” the preservation of the human oʺkonomºa, involves the category of Quality (poiØn) and the notion unique to that category, likeness (∏moiøthq). As Aristotle says in Categories 11a 15-17:99 “What is peculiar [to quality] is this, that we predicate ‘like’ and ’unlike’ with a reference to quality only. For one thing is like to another in respect of some quality only. So this is distinctive of quality.” But in the thinking now occurring the end is not the generation of “another such as itself,” such as the I surfacing the body, mediated by the quale. Where the end is absolutely the means for the first time, the end is the creating of another identically the I surfacing the body mediated by the immediacy100 that is the quantum-quale, mediated by what admits of degrees (quale) identically what admits of no degrees (quantum), mediated by the absolute discontinuity of the continuum,101 the absolute explosion of identity/unicity,102 mediated by the absolute distribution of existence itself, the quantum-quality of existence for the first time,103 the oʺkonømoq the “distributor of the dwelling” at once the oʺkonomºa that is the beginning of existence.104

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After Aquinas’ substitution of dimensive quantity for substance as the subject of which the qualities of bread and wine are predicated when the transubstantiation of the latter into Christ’s body and blood is effected in the Mass,105 and after Kant’s inclusion of the category Substance in the category class Relation, Agamben, wresting to the sphere of a pure mediality without end or ends the image and likeness produced by the commodification of the human body, the resemblance without archetype,106 restores a certain purely phenomenal intelligibility, a certain purely phenomenal “substantiality” to singularity in the form of the quantitatively defined “limit,” the halo that “almost merges with the body”,107 the threshold that is the empty space (O), at once the eidos of “all [its] possibilities” that “dwells beside” whatever singularity as its luminous shadow. Relying on this purely phenomenal substantiality wrested from the “impenetrable extraneity of science and of modern biopolitics,”108 relying on its imperfect coincidence with the body, relying in effect on its being the pure Idea (of God without God),109 the ‘coming thought would select from the “new planetary humanity those characteristics that allow for its survival,”110 rather than create a new world.

Notes 1. For a notable instance of the modern equation of subjectivity and sovereignty, cf. K. Wojtyla, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II to the Bishops, Priests, Religious Families, Sons and Daughters of the Church, and All People of Good Will, for the Twentieth Anniversary of “Populorum Progressio” (Rome, 1987. The Holy See. Available online at: http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals. April 2009) 15: “It should be noted that in today’s world, among other rights, the right of economic initiative is often suppressed. Yet it is a right which is important not only for the individual but also for the common good. Experience shows us that the denial of this right, or its limitation in the name of an alleged ‘equality’ of everyone in society, diminishes, or in practice absolutely destroys the spirit of initiative, that is to say the creative subjectivity of the citizen…. Such a situation has its consequences also from the point of view of the ‘rights of the individual nations’. In

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fact, it often happens that a nation is deprived of its subjectivity, that is to say the ‘sovereignty’ which is its right, in its economic, political-social and in a certain way cultural significance, since in a national community all these dimensions of life are bound together. It must also be restated that no social group, for example a political party, has the right to usurp the role of sole leader, since this brings about the destruction of the true subjectivity of society and of the individual citizens, as happens in every form of totalitarianism. In this situation the individual and the people become ‘objects’, in spite of all declarations to the contrary and verbal assurances.” 2. See Section III.1. 3. G. Agamben, The Coming Community (trans. M. Hardt, Minneapolis and London, 1993), pp. 85f. 4. Section III.1. 5. The ban of sacred doctrine is distinguished from its consequence, the ban of sovereignty or politics, since the former essentially constitutes the distinction of sacred and profane, the distinction of inside and outside that transcends the merely political distinction. The ban of sovereignty or politics that has become the rule presupposes the division of sacred and profane constituted by this interdict as the ancient precedents for sovereignty or politics actually do not, as is attested to, in effect, by the designation of the man who could be killed but not sacrificed, as homo sacer. See Agamben’s analysis of ancient political thought in The State of Exception (trans. K. Attell, Chicago, 2005). Prior to faith in God there could be no outside of faith in God, that is, nothing was intelligible but that—as Thales says, and Aristotle thinks—everything was “full of gods.” Sacred doctrine having first constituted the distinction between sacred and profane, the lifting of the ban of sacred doctrine now actually occurring in the form of the thinking now occurring for the first time—thinking itself beyond sacred—is other than sacred doctrine at once other than profane doctrine. This is conceivable as absolutely God’s work, as absolutely and immediately the work of omnipotence itself, which work, taking history with utter seriousness, is perfectly inconceivable apart from its now actually occurring for the first time. 6. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), p. 246, et passim: “the absolute exteriority of the outside/the absolute out-identity of any side.” Also, above, Section III.1. 7. Section III.1, passim. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany, 1994), p. 381: “Now the unicity of the individual man, his being the individual in essence, is the existence itself of the world in essence. This is the essential

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individual’s infinite transcendence of the preexistent world, of the world in essence preconceived. The individual’s being absolutely the word in essence is the existence of the world now conceived in essence for the first time in history. The middle term is the word in essence, the essential copula in which the two exist in one flesh in essence, in which everything is perceived in essence to be created. The burden of the word spoken in essence is light: the transcendent identity of everything now thought for the first time in history. (This is the transcendentally differentiated identity of substance and function, now existing in place of the transcendently differentiated unity of substance and function. This essentially perfect substitution of the passion of existence itself for its mere formality in and for thought its absolutely new essence is the elimination once and for all of the essential supposition of thought itself that there is such a thing as a profane creation, that there is something there to begin with, that there is an immediacy before thought….)” 11. See Section III.1, p. 152, the quotation from Agamben: “it is by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of another body, of another word. I would not feel up to forgoing this indistinction of public and private, of biological body and body politic, of zoê and bios, for any reason whatsoever.” 12. G. Agamben, Means without End: Notes on Politics (trans. V. Binetti and C. Casarino, Minneapolis and London, 2000), pp. 113f. 13. Cf. Section II.1. 14. G. Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy (ed. and trans. D. Heller-Roazen, Stanford, 1999), pp. 238f. See, below, pp. 180ff. 15. Section II.2. 16. Cf. D.G. Leahy, “The Diachrony of the Infinite in Altizer and Levinas: Vanishing without a Trace and the Trace without Vanishing,” in Thinking Through the Death of God: A Critical Companion to Thomas J.J. Altizer (ed. L. McCullough and B. Schroeder, Albany, 2004), p. 122. 17. Section III.1. 18. Agamben, Means Without End, p. 114. 19. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 14f. 20. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 149ff. 21. Ibid., p. 106. 22. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 6. 23. Agamben, Means Without End, pp. 115f. 24. Ibid., p. 24. Cf., also, above, Section III.1. 25. Agamben, Potentialities, pp. 238f. See, below, pp. 180ff. 26. Section II.3.

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27. ������������������������������������������������������������������������� See Section III.3, p. 230, things as “the means of creating the world absolutely the creating of the world.” This absolute identity of means and end is a function of the fact that real trinary logic : the golden section :: logical foundation : ordinary mathematics :: perfect : imperfect. ∏ “kroq kaÁ m™soq løgoq, “the extreme and mean ratio,” is precisely the unique ratio of ordinary mathematics that is the relative identity of means and end—unity composed of the end and the means. The absolute identity of real trinary logic is very simplicity—unity beyond composition at once the end identically the means. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.1, passim. See also Section III.3, p. 246, n. 118. 28. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� The absolute middle qua absolute particularity is the identification of absolute singularity/immediacy and absolute placedness/mediation, that is, 1 = 00, precisely corresponding in the negative in its formal constitution to the excrescence of singularity that is whatever particularity (cf. Section III.1, passim; also Backnotes 3 and 4). 29. Section III.1, pp. 136ff. 30. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section I, “Critique of Absolute Contingency.” 31. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� For real trinary logic’s new category of commodality and its role in the articulation of the new morality of the beginning, see Section III.3. 32. Section III.1, pp. 154ff. 33. Ibid. 34. Adapted from D. Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary. Available online at: http://www.etymonline.com. April 2009. 35. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Sections III.3 and IV.2, et passim. 36. �������������������������������������������������������������������������� See, above, Section III.1, pp. 154ff. Also, D.G. Leahy, “Real Trinary Logic Geometric Series Matrix of the Numeric Geometric Series & the Series of Perfect Numbers,” in The New Universal Consciousness. Available online at: http://dgleahy.com/dgl/p05.html. April 2009. 37. Leahy, Foundation, 53f. 38. See Section III.1, pp. 154ff., and Backnote 2. 39. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 478ff., et passim. 40. ������������������������������������������������������������������������ For Jonathan Edwards’ notion of the “arbitrary constitution” of the continuum, and his distinguishing it thereby from the completely “new effect” in every moment that is creation ex nihilo, cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 90f. For Edwards nothing comes into being without a cause, but in the thinking now occurring omnipotence is precisely that which brings the world into being, effects the world, without causing it to be, nay, rather, embodies the world for the first time. For “commodal causality” in relation to the simplicity of omnipotence, see Section III.3, pp. 234ff., including n. 111. 41. Section III.1, pp. 150ff. 42. Ibid.

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43. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 103f.: “In the principle of reason (‘there is a reason why there is something rather than nothing’), what is essential is neither that something is (being) nor that something is not (nothingness), but that something is rather than nothingness…. What the principle properly says… is that existence is not an inert fact, that a potius, a power inheres in it. But this is not a potentiality to be that is opposed to a potentiality to not-be… it is a potentiality to not not-be. The contingent is not simply the non-necessary, that which can not-be, but that which, being the thus, being only its mode of being, is capable of the rather, can not not-be. (Being-thus is not contingent; it is necessarily contingent. Nor is it necessary; it is contingently necessary.)” 44. G. Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy (ed. and trans. D. Heller-Roazen, Stanford, 1999), pp. 238f. 45. For the Cartesian project as the intention “to establish the reality of the vivere,” cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 20f., et passim. 46. Leahy, Foundation, “Preface.” 47. Ibid., pp. 620f. Also, above, Section II.2, pp. 88ff. 48. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, p. 153. 49. Where the beginning of being and nothing is otherwise than otherwise than x. Cf. Section III.1, p. 133. 50. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 148ff. 51. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 526ff. 52. For the absolute discretion of motion itself, change itself, and time itself, cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 323ff., and Leahy, Foundation Sections I and II.2, et passim. See Backnote 3, for the “finite difference of x” in set theory and the “infinite difference of x” in the thinking now occurring for the first time. 53. Cf. for example, Agamben, Means Without End, pp. 9ff., where he quotes from Dante’s De Monarchia: “It is clear that man’s basic capacity is to have a potentiality or power for being intellectual. And since this power cannot be completely actualized in a single man or in any of the particular communities of men above mentioned, there must be a multitude in mankind through whom this whole power can be actualized.... [T]he proper work of mankind taken as a whole is to exercise continually its entire capacity for intellectual growth, first, in theoretical matters, and, secondarily, as an extension of theory, in practice.” Dante presents here, in effect, the notion of Averroes that there is a universal human (possible) intellect. Cf. Summa Contra Gentiles (trans. J.F. Anderson, Notre Dame and London 1975), II.73, for Thomas Aquinas’ refutation of this notion. 54. Sections II.1 and II.2, passim. For one without one, choice, and the two, cf. the Banach-Tarski paradox. 55. See Section III.1, pp. 159f.; also A. Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (Continuum, 2005), pp. 38ff., and pp. 499f.

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56. See Section III.1, p. 137ff. 57. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 14. 58. Ibid., pp. 39f. 59. Cf. Backnote 4, the definition of Omnipotence, ‘having happened as of now having ceased as of now’. Cf., also, Appendix 4. 60. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 197f. 61. In Aquinas each angel exhausts its species (cf. Summa Contra Gentiles, II.95). In the thinking now occurring each angel exhausting its species exhausts the genus (angel): there is absolutely no basis of comparison: not merely is an angel “one of a kind,” but “one kind of one”, one species of the absolute specification of existence itself, not merely unique, but very unicity absolutely embodied. This angelic unicity absolutely embodied for the first time is the foundation of society itself. 62. Cf., above, p. 170, the (effectively finite) unbinding that, according to Badiou, is prohibited by the State. 63. Section I. 64. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 89ff. 65. In addition to the Calvinist theologies of Jonathan Edwards and Karl Barth, cf. especially Altizer’s death of God theology, in particular, T.J.J. Altizer, God and the Nothing (Albany, 2003), The Genesis of God: A Theological Genealogy (Louisville, 1993), and Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity (Louisville, 1990). 66. Cf. Section II.1. 67. Leahy, “The Diachrony of the Infinite in Altizer and Levinas: Vanishing without a Trace and the Trace without Vanishing,” in Thinking through the Death of God, p. 121. 68. Cf., above, p. 172. 69. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 101. 70. Ibid., pp. 67f. 71. See, Backnote 2. 72. Cf., above, p. 183ff. 73. Leahy, Foundation, p. 535. 74. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 36. 75. See Backnote 4. 76. For the identification of time and distance in the thinking now occurring, cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendix α. Also, Foundation, pp. 132ff. For ‘absolute quality’, ‘quantum-quality’, etc., see, above, Sections II.2, II.3, III.1, and below, Section III.3. 77. Cf., above, pp. 176ff. where singularity’s intelligibility is the product of its relation to notation or writing 78. Leahy, Foundation, p. 161.

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79. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 102. 80. Cf., above, p. 202, n. 59. 81. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Appendix. 82. Cf. D.G. Leahy, “Physical Variables, Placedness, & the Absolute Dead Center Cube,” in The New Universal Consciousness. Available online at: http://dgleahy.com/dgl/p33.html. April 2009. 83. Cf., above, pp. 169ff. 84. ���������������������������������������������������������������������� Where Agamben is beyond neither belonging nor inclusion, Badiou is beyond belonging, but not beyond inclusion. See Backnote 2. 85. See, above, p. 202, n. 61. 86. Leahy, Foundation, Section II.3, passim. 87. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendices b and g, passim. 88. Section II.2, p. 88. 89. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 5f. 90. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendices b and g, passim. 91. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 101. 92. If Ø is the mark of the void in Badiou who takes its measure (See Backnote 2), let O be taken as the mark of the unmarked void in Agamben who does not take its measure. O then is the negation of the mark of the unmarked void, the mark of not not Ø, the mark of not not nothing (= the 0 of real trinary logic). Thus the notation indicates how it is that the thinking now occurring thinks what otherwise would simply be whatever singularity O as absolute singularity 0, not the opening to nowhere but to being, the 0 (Readiness) that is the prerequisite for absolute placedness 0 (Discretion). 93. Cf., above, pp. 176ff. 94. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 64. 95. The “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” Section II.2, p. 88. 96. G. Agamben, Potentialities, pp. 236f. 97. Section III.1, passim. 98. Aristotle, On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath (trans. W.S. Hett, Harvard 1964), p. 93 (translation modified). 99. Aristotle, The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics (trans. H.P. Cooke and J. Tredennnick, Harvard 1967), p. 77. 100. Cf. Backnote 4, the definition of Immediacy, ‘having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’. 101. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 614, 627, and 628. 102. Ibid., pp. 157f., 162, 245, 429, 439, and 518. 103. Cf., above, p. 202, n. 76. 104. ������������������������������������������������������������������������� The infinite simplicity that is this mediation by immediacy at once absolute particularity is 1 = 001 (see Section II.2, the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” also, Backnotes 3 and 4).

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Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 76f. Section III.1, pp. 146ff. Ibid., p. 135. Cf., above, p. 173. Cf., above, pp. 183ff. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 64.

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Morality of the New Beginning Beyond sacred the beginning of the whole body, of the holy living body. For the first time thought essentially the full integrity of the living body absolutely without the halo. The beginning of the saved body, of the healthy body conceived essentially. What is actually thought for the first time is not the angel that “almost merges” with the body,1 but the angel that is the living body. Beyond consciousness of the other that is intentionality (beyond beyond x), the beginning of the intentio that is the living body. Beyond resemblance without archetype, the image that for the first time is the living body. This is the beginning of the perfect construction of the living body, the beginning of the immediate quantum-quality of the body2—beyond nutrition, beyond generation— the beginning of the body of the resurrection—beyond animate, the living body creating the new world.3 In The Open: Man and Animal, Agamben calls attention to certain problems traditionally attendant on conceptualizing the Resurrection of the Body: How should the vital functions of the paradisiacal body be conceived? In order to orient themselves on such an uneven ground, the Fathers had a useful paradigm at their disposal: the Edenic body of Adam and Eve before the Fall. ‘What God planted in the delights of eternal and blessed happiness’, writes Scotus Erigena, ‘is human nature itself created in His image and likeness’. From this perspective, the physiology of the blessed body could appear as a restoration of the Edenic body, the archetype of uncorrupted human nature. This, however, entailed some consequences which the Fathers were not ready to fully accept… how should we conceive of the use of the sexual parts—or even simply of food—on the part of the blessed? For if it were allowed that the risen would reproduce by means of sexuality and nourish themselves with food, this would mean that the number and bodily form of men would grow or change infinitely, and that there would be countless blessed ones who had never lived before the resurrection and whose humanity would therefore be

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impossible to define. The two principal functions of animal life— nutrition and generation—are directed to the preservation of the individual and of the species; but after the Resurrection humanity would have reached its preordained number, and, in the absence of death, these two functions would be entirely useless. Furthermore, if the risen were to continue to eat and reproduce, not only would Paradise not be big enough to contain them all, but it would not even hold their excrement—thus justifying William of Auvergne’s ironic invective: maledicta Paradisus in qua tantum cacatur! {Cursed Paradise in which there is so much defecation!} There was, however, a still more insidious doctrine that maintained that the risen would use sex and food not for the preservation of the individual or of the species, but rather (since beatitude consists in the perfect operation of human nature) so that in Paradise all of man, his bodily as well as his spiritual powers, would be blessed. Against these heretics—whom he likens to Muhammadans and Jews—Thomas, in the questions De resurrectione that were added to the Summa theologica, forcefully reaffirms the exclusion of the usus venereorum et ciborum from Paradise. The resurrection, he teaches, is directed not to the perfection of man’s natural life but only to that final perfection which is contemplative life. [Summa Theologica Supplement 81.4] Those natural operations which are arranged for the purpose of either achieving or preserving the primary perfection of human nature will not exist in the resurrection…. And since to eat, drink, sleep, and beget pertain to… the primary perfection of nature, such things will not exist in the resurrection.’ The same author who had shortly before affirmed that man’s sin had in no way changed the nature and condition of animals now proclaims unreservedly that animal life is excluded from Paradise, that blessed life is in no case an animal life. Consequently, even plants and animals will not find a place in Paradise: ‘they will cor­rupt both in their whole and in their parts’. In the body of the resurrected, the animal functions will remain ‘idle and empty’ exactly as Eden, according to medieval theology, remains empty of all human life after the expulsion of Adam and Eve. All flesh will not be saved, and

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in the physiology of the blessed, the divine oikonomia of salvation leaves an unredeemable remnant.4 Now for us the question raised by Thomas’ distinction between the “primary perfection of human nature” (prima perfectio humanae naturae) and its “ultimate perfection” (ultima perfectio) is the question whether there is between the first perfection of human nature and its last perfection a third or middle perfection—a middle actually now for the first time embodying the first and the last. To this question the thinking now occurring for the first time answers yes. This media perfectio is the absolute intelligibility of the body now essentially occurring for the first time. What now actually occurs is the beginning of the medium perfectum wherein the perfection of the living human body is the infinite sharing of the contemplation of the Divine Essence, that is, the infinite sharing of the Beatific Vision, the beginning of the perfect middle wherein the complete natural life of the body (other than and not other than its nutritive and generative powers) infinitely shares the creaturely life of the Godhead. Concerning this creaturely life of the Godhead, Thomas writes in Summa Theologica: God by seeing his essence knows all things whatsoever that are, shall be, or have been: and He is said to know these things by His ‘knowledge of vision’ [notitia visionis], because He knows them as though they were present in likeness to corporeal vision. Moreover by seeing this essence He knows all that He can do, although He never did them, nor ever will: else He would not know His power perfectly; since a power cannot be known unless its objects be known: and He is said to know these things by His ‘knowledge of simple intelligence’ [notitia simplicis intelligentiae]. Now it is impossible for a created intellect, by seeing the Divine essence, to know all that God can do, because the more perfectly a principle is known, the more things are known in it; thus in one principle of demonstration one who is quick of intelligence sees more conclusions than one who is slow of intelligence. Since then the extent of the Divine power is measured according to what it can do, if an intellect were to see in the Divine essence all that God can do, its perfection in understanding would equal in extent the Divine power in producing its effects, and thus it would comprehend the Divine power, which is impossible for any created intellect to do.

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Yet there is a created intellect, namely the soul of Christ [anima Christi], which knows in the Word all that God knows by the knowledge of vision [notitia visionis].5 Concerning God’s notitia visionis Thomas concludes:6 “Thus the knowledge of the angels and of the souls of the saints can go on increasing until the day of judgment, even as other things pertaining to the accidental reward. But afterwards it will increase no more, because then will be the final state of things, and in that state it is possible that all will know everything that God knows by the knowledge of vision.” In the thinking now occurring omnipotence itself is actuality itself. There is nothing omnipotence is able to do that it doesn’t actually do (on the principle “that nothing able to be is not, that is, what is able to be is” 7). Omnipotence is absolutely not a matter of potentiality. Indeed, if the ultimate import of the fact that now for the first time omnipotence itself moves to new ground is that nothing that can be is not, then the question “what am I [are we] doing” absolutely displaces the question of “potentiality.” First and foremost, omnipotence embodying the Incarnation for the first time altogether displaces the question “what am I [are we] capable of doing.” Such as never before is the foundation of the new global ethics and morality, the very ground of the imperative to create the world. In the event of this essentially new and unprecedented form of thought Thomas’s distinction between notitia simplicis intelligentiae and notitia visionis is obsolete. The knowledge of God is absolute simplicity: the absolute identification of conception and perception: perception identically conception, the simplicity of perception that is the simplicity of conception.8 Thus in the thinking now beginning to occur the “created intellect, namely the soul of Christ [anima Christi], which knows in the Word all that God knows by the knowledge of vision [notitia visionis]” knows absolutely “all that God knows.” For the first time it is thought in essence: the God of Revelation has absolutely no secrets. Omnipotence itself absolutely exposed—absolutely outside—for the first time. The ultimate offence is that omnipotence itself reveals there is absolutely and essentially no plan, no plane, therefore no “new plane of immanence” alternative to a “new plane of transcendence,”9 no tabula rasa—there is nothing but the writing that always and everywhere is for the first time, “texte hors d’ hors-texte, text beyond beyond-text, the beginning the very real of existence.”10 There is no planning that is not the plan that is the absolute transcendence of the plane of absolute immanence. Here is the plan: the plan/plane of

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existence is what I/we am/are now writing for the first time. This being of omnipotence itself without plan or plane other than what occurs, this being absolutely now, is creating love. Without plan or plane for the first time conceived in essence Omnipotence itself is indeed absolute nimbleness.11 This creaturely life of the Godhead—the resurrected Body of Christ the divine Word incarnate wherein “all that God knows” is known—is now for the first time infinitely digital, infinitely parsed, infinitely particular, and, indeed, infinitely deictic. The now actually occurring infinite parsing of the resurrected Word made flesh is the eucharistic essence of existence at once omnipotence itself now actually embodying the Incarnation for the first time in an absolutely non-paradigmatic form, in the form of the schema itself the absolutely real. This is the absolute distribution of existence itself for the first time identically the Distributor,12 the beginning of an essentially new world.13 Agamben focuses on the problematic of the resurrected body in the thinking of the Church as a fundamental locus of the problematic of man and animal in Western thought. He writes in The Open: In a passage of the Summa bearing the significant heading Utrum Adam in statu innocentiae animalibus dominaretur [Whether Adam in the State of Innocence Had Mastery Over the Animals], Thomas seems for a moment to come close to the center of the problem, evoking a ‘cognitive experiment’ whose place would be in the relationship between man and animal. [Summa Theologica I.96.1 ad 3] In the state of innocence man did not have any bodily need of animals. Neither for clothing, since they were naked and not ashamed, there being no motions of inordinate concupiscence; nor for food, since they fed on the trees of Paradise; nor for means of transport, their bodies being strong enough for that purpose. Yet they needed them in order to draw from their nature an experimental knowledge [Indigebant tamen eis, ad experimentalem cognitionem sumendam de naturis eorum]. This is signified by the fact that God led the animals before man, that he might give them a name that designated their nature.

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We must try to grasp what is at stake in this cognitio experimentalis. Perhaps not only theology and philosophy but also politics, ethics, and jurisprudence are drawn and suspended in the difference between man and animal. The cognitive experiment at issue in this difference ultimately concerns the nature of man—or, more precisely, the production and definition of this nature; it is an experiment de hominis natura. When the difference vanishes and the two terms collapse upon each other—as seems to be happening today—the difference between being and the nothing, licit and illicit, divine and demonic also fades away, and in its place something appears for which we seem to lack even a name. Perhaps concentration and extermination camps are also an experiment of this sort, an extreme and monstrous attempt to decide between the human and the inhuman, which has ended up dragging the very possibility of the distinction to its ruin.14 Not thinking the beginning of the actual identity of notitia simplicis intelligentiae and notitia visionis in the form of an essentially new consciousness, Agamben is concerned with the “collapse upon each other” of “being and the nothing, licit and illicit, divine and demonic” that “seems to be happening today” and “for which we seem to lack even a name.” But in the thinking now occurring where simplicity is for the first time identical with conception/perception, where, therefore, simplicity is not alternative to complexity, where there is the absolute distribution of existence itself for the first time, where as never before the absolute specification of the transcendental essence is the form of creating the new world,15 for the first time being is absolutely not the nothing, the licit is perfectly not the illicit, the divine is altogether not the demonic, and, most to the point, the human is perfectly not the inhuman, the human animal is absolutely not the inhuman animal, with the pertinent consequence that there is no necessity whatsoever either for the human animal to be redeemed from its presupposed inhumanity by being enlisted in Badiou’s adventitious occurrence of an Immortal, that is, in the coming to be of the faithfulness of the Subject to an adventitious event, or for Agamben’s resignation to the human animal’s unredeemableness in the form of the ‘happy life’, the “absolutely profane ‘sufficient life’.”16 The inhuman animal is neither outside nor inside the human animal, the inhuman is neither inside nor outside the human, where, as is actually “happening today,” the latter is

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the absolutely unconditioned outside of existence without precedent. The perfectly adventitious happenings of Creation and Incarnation—happenings not accidental and not not accidental—happenings beyond purpose—not in any event able to be assimilated to retentive/protentive self-conscious temporality—not at all able to be assimilated as if they were intrinsic, exemplary, paradigmatic forms of world consciousness—are now for the first time understood to absolutely and essentially eventuate in the perfectly adventitious structure of reality. But from within the zone of indistinction and indifference, perpetually short of the absolute distinction of being and nothing now thought for the first time, speaking of what he calls the “anthropological machine” “at work in our culture,” the machine by means of which the cognitio experimentalis come upon in the Garden by Aquinas has actually been prosecuted in our culture, Agamben writes in The Open: Insofar as the production of man through the opposition man/ animal, human/inhuman, is at stake here, the machine necessarily functions by means of an exclusion (which is also always already a cap­ turing) and an inclusion (which is also always already an exclu­sion). Indeed, precisely because the human is already presupposed every time, the machine actually produces a kind of state of exception, a zone of indeterminacy in which the outside is nothing but the exclusion of an inside and the inside is in turn only the inclusion of an outside. On the one hand, we have the anthropological machine of the moderns. As we have seen, it functions by excluding as not (yet) human an already human being from itself, that is, by animalizing the human, by isolating the nonhuman within the human: Homo alalus, or the ape‑man. And it is enough to move our field of research ahead a few decades, and instead of this innocuous paleontological find we will have the Jew, that is, the non‑man produced within the man, or the néomort and the overcomatose person, that is, the animal separated within the human body itself. The machine of earlier times works in an exactly symmetrical way. If, in the machine of the moderns, the outside is produced through the exclusion of an inside and the inhuman produced by animalizing the human, here the inside is obtained through the inclusion of an outside, and the non‑man is produced by the humanization of an animal: the man‑ape, the enfant sauvage or Homo ferus, but also and above all the slave, the barbarian, and the foreigner, as figures of an

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animal in human form. Both machines are able to function only by establishing a zone of indifference at their centers, within which— like a ‘missing link’ which is always lacking because it is already virtually present—the articulation between human and animal, man and non-man, speaking being and living being, must take place. Like every space of exception, this zone is, in truth, perfectly empty, and the truly human being who should occur there is only the place of a ceaselessly updated decision in which the caesurae and their rearticulation are always dislocated and displaced anew. What would thus be obtained, however, is neither an animal life nor a human life, but only a life that is separated and excluded from itself—only a bare life. And faced with this extreme figure of the human and the inhu­man, it is not so much a matter of asking which of the two machines (or of the two variants of the same machine) is better or more effective—or, rather, less lethal and bloody—as it is of understanding how they work so that we might, eventually, be able to stop them.17 Agamben would put a stop to the working of the anthropological machine(s) whose product is the “bare life” separated and excluded from human life either in the form of the within without (the inside excluded, the human made inhuman) or in the form of the without within (the outside included, the inhuman made human).18 But, hither politics, he understands that there is no possibility of going back from the impasse to which the anthropological machine(s) has(have) brought us, no possibility of returning to a “classical politics.” He writes in Homo Sacer: Every attempt to rethink the political space of the West must begin with the clear awareness that we no longer know anything of the classical distinction between zoê and bios, between private life and political existence, between man as a simple living being at home in the house and man’s political existence in the city…. There is no return from the camps to classical politics. In the camps, city and house became indistinguishable, and the possibility of differentiating between our biological body and our political body—between what is incommunicable and mute and what is communicable and sayable—was taken from us forever. And we are not only, in Foucault’s words, animals whose life as living beings is

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at issue in their politics, but also—inversely—citizens whose very politics is at issue in their natural body. Just as the biopolitical body of the West cannot be simply given back to its natural life in the oikos, so it cannot be overcome in a passage to a new body—a technical body or a wholly political or glorious body—in which a different economy of pleasures and vital functions would once and for all resolve the interlacement of zoê and bios that seems to define the political destiny of the West. This biopolitical body that is bare life must itself instead be transformed into the site for the constitution and installation of a form of life that is wholly exhausted in bare life and a bios that is only its own zoê.19 Bereft of the possibility of a return from the camps to the distinction of polis and oikos, without the possibility of “a passage to a new body” “in which a different economy of pleasures and vital functions would once and for all resolve the interlacement of zoê and bios,” Agamben inverts the antics, the oppositionality, of the anthropological machine, turning it inside out to expose the “central emptiness” that “separates man and animal” “within man.” This move on Agamben’s part is grounded in the analysis of Heidegger’s notion of boredom as “something like the fundamental and properly constitutive Stimmung of Dasein.”20 He writes in The Open: If our reading has hit the mark, if man can open a world and free a possible only because, in the experience of boredom, he is able to suspend and deactivate the animal relationship with the disinhibitor [Benommenheit, “captivation”22], if at the center of the open lies the undisconcealedness of the animal, then, at this point we must ask: what becomes of this relationship? In what way can man let the animal, upon whose suspension the world is held open, be? Insofar as the animal knows neither beings nor nonbeings, neither open nor closed, it is outside of being; it is outside in an exteriority more external than any open, and inside in a intimacy more internal than any closedness. To let the animal be would then mean: to let it be outside of being. The zone of nonknowledge—or of a-knowledge— that is at issue here is beyond both knowing and not knowing, beyond both disconcealing and concealing, beyond both being and the nothing. But what is thus left to be outside of being is not thereby negated or taken away; it is not, for this reason, inexistent. It is an

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existing, real thing that has gone beyond the difference between being and beings. However, it is not here a question of trying to trace the no longer human or animal contours of a new creation that would run the risk of being equally as mythological as the other. As we have seen, in our culture man has always been the result of a simultaneous division and articulation of the animal and the human, in which one of the two terms of the operation was also what was at stake in it. To render inoperative the machine that governs our conception of man will therefore mean no longer to seek new—more effective or more authentic—articulations, but rather to show the central emptiness, the hiatus that—within man—separates man and animal, and to risk ourselves in this emptiness: the suspension of the suspension, Shabbat of both animal and man.21 This “Shabbat of both animal and man,” this “suspension of the suspension” within man, is quite appropriately grounded in the so-called “constitutive Stimmung of Dasein,” boredom, which the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity” identifies as the first defective disposition in the dimension of Discretion, as the very ground of Indiscretion, “the will to not perceive.”23 In terms of the thinking now occurring boredom is the ground phenomenon of not “having the patience to see what’s different.” The ‘coming thought’, the ‘coming politics’, abandons itself to the “great ignorance” of the Gnostic Basilides wherein for Agamben the anthropological machine’s(s’) constantly shifting decision between the human and inhuman within man is suspended in a state of nonknowledge (indifference), and man and animal “outside of being, [are] saved precisely in their being unsavable.”24 Through the mirror of an inverted boredom Agamben would pass beyond anthropological machinations, inversely aping their antics, would pass beyond the machine(s) from within—be outside the machine(s) from the inside—would have the inside outside of the machine(s) in the form of the threshold/halo surrounding the “simply human life” that ensues when “the world of guilt and justice” have been left behind,25 when life “shines in the ‘saved night’ of nature’s (and, in particular, human nature’s) eternal, unsavable survival after it has definitively bid farewell to the logos and to its own history.”26 It is precisely in his resort to what is in effect an Eternal Indiscretion that Agamben passes by without noticing the essentially new universe now actually existing for the first time. When Agamben says of the

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anthropological machine of the moderns that it “functions by excluding an already human being from itself as not (yet) human,” just here he draws attention to the question for the first time immediately answered in the essentially new form of thought that is beyond beyond x, the question answered in the form of thinking for the first time thinking absolutely now. In the phrase, “excluding an already human being from itself as not (yet) human,” the thinking for the first time thinking absolutely now, the thinking that thinks The Not Yet for the first time as (not beyond x but) beyond beyond x—this thinking thinks for the first time the “not (yet)” “beyond beyond x” as “absolutely now.”27 This thinking thinks the “not (yet) human” as the “absolutely now human.” The question to be asked is, “Is x ‘not (yet)’?” Of what “not (yet)” is properly predicated—whether it be Agamben’s hominid or the zygote—of that x is properly predicated “actually existing now.” Where the beginning of existence is absolutely now—beyond beyond x—“not (still) x” is not an alternative to “not (yet) x”. Where “not (yet) x” is “not (still) x,” “not (still) x” is likewise for the first time absolutely x: what is “not (still) human” is for the first time now absolutely human. In the case of Agamben’s “néomort” or “overcomatose person,” if “not (yet)” human—“not (still)” human—can be properly predicated of what “will be” human, or, as the case may be, “was” human, then that is absolutely human. Concerning proper predication note that brain dead cannot be properly predicated of a neomort because the neomort is not one of a number of neomorts some of whom are not brain dead. Communication cannot be properly predicated of an overcomatose person because such a person is not one of a number of overcomatose persons some of whom communicate. Life cannot be properly predicated of a dead body because the dead body is not one of a number of dead bodies some of whom are not dead. But “not (still) human” can be properly predicated of a neomort, an overcomatose and, indeed, a dead body, because each is one of a number some of whom are not “not (still) human.” What is “not (still) human” is absolutely human for the first time. Conversely then “not human” (not “not [still] human”) can, for example, be properly predicated of a neomort that is one of a number of neomorts some of whom are not “not human” (not not “not [still] human”). In this number of neomorts some, the absolutely human (those “not [still] human”), are not “not human,” and some, the not absolutely human (those not “not [still] human”), are “not human.” This is the operative logic of the absolutely pragmatic transcendental dichotomy now actually occurring for the first time: difference infinitely precise absolutely existing for the

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first time. Because the thinking now occurring for the first time is beyond beyond x, it is able to (and since it is able to, it does28) absolutely distinguish not only being and the nothing, but this and that. Where the absolute distribution of existence is absolutely existing simplicity,29 whatever “this” or “that” is—just as, what is “past”—just as, what is “future”—is either absolutely now or it is nothing whatsoever. Indeed, “not (still) not (yet) x” is the very form of the beginning that is the beginning of existence—at once the beginning of the beginning of thought identically the end that is the end of thought. The beginning of thought for the first time even the end—the beginning of existence, “not (yet) not (still) x”, absolutely now the thought-form of the apocalypse, the apocalyptic beginning the very essence of thinking.30 Beyond the indistinction of saved and unsavable, the now for the first time beyond unsavable. Thought essentially the now for the first time absolutely saved. In “The Messiah and the Sovereign,” Agamben writes: If we accept the equivalence between messianism and nihilism of which both Benjamin and Scholem were firmly convinced, albeit in different ways, then we will have to distinguish two forms of messianism or nihilism: a first form (which we may call imperfect nihilism) that nullifies the law but maintains the Nothing in a perpetual and infinitely deferred state of validity, and a second form, a perfect nihilism that does not even let validity survive beyond its meaning but instead, as Benjamin writes of Kafka, ‘succeeds in finding redemption in the overturning of the Nothing’…. The Messiah’s task becomes all the more difficult from this perspective. He must confront not simply a law that commands and forbids but a law that, like the original Torah, is in force without significance. But this is also the task with which we, who live in the state of exception that has become the rule, must reckon.31 The perfect messianism or nihilism “does not even let validity survive beyond its meaning”: the messianic state of perfect nihilism is the state of the utter banality of the good where whatever particularity survives the end of validity itself,32 and life will have left behind “guilt and justice,” in the form of “nature’s (and, in particular, human nature’s) eternal, unsavable survival after it has definitively bid farewell to the logos and to its own history.”33 The Messiah is to overturn the law in force without significance.

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Elsewhere, in The State of Exception, Agamben writes: The structural analogy between language and law is illuminating here. Just as linguistic elements subsist in langue without any real denotation, which they acquire only in actual discourse, so in the state of exception the norm is in force without any reference to reality. But just as concrete linguistic activity becomes intelligible precisely through the presupposition of something like a language, so is the norm able to refer to the normal situation through the suspension of its application in the state of exception. It can generally be said that not only language and law but all social institutions have been formed through a process of desemanticization and suspension of concrete praxis in its immediate reference to the real… the patient work of civilization proceeds in every domain by separating human praxis from its concrete exercise and thereby creating that excess of signification over denotation that Levi-Strauss was the first to recognize. In this sense, the floating signifier—this guiding concept in the human sciences of the twentieth century—corresponds to the state of exception, in which the norm is in force without being applied.34 Agamben would overturn the “floating signifier” and its analogue, the “state of exception,” putting an end to the abstraction from praxis that perpetuates itself infinitely in a norm without content, by turning both, “floating signifier” and “state of exception,” inside out into whatever particularity, into an excess of denotation over signification signifying its insignificance, its banality, in the form of the profane halo that surrounds it, an excess of denotation that cannot be signified (cannot any longer be this or that) but only lived (as the such as it is that it is) in its pure suchness. But then the “simply human life” of the perfect nihilism of the ‘coming world’, the norm not applied and no longer in force, human nature’s “unsavable survival,” is and is not beyond— is imperfectly beyond—the “floating signifier” and the “state of exception,” is, in its suchness otherwise than being abandoned by Being, in fact beyond the not simply empty abstraction—the imperfect abstraction that maintains the validity of the Nothing—having arrived at the lawless invalidity of the Nothing, at the actual non-existence of the Nothing, hither the hither and thither of the beginning of being, hither politics and sovereignty, having arrived at a purely potential nothingness rather than which—

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astonishingly!—there is something.35 For the not simply empty abstractions of the “floating signifier” and the “state of exception” Agamben’s perfect nihilism/messianism substitutes the “real state of exception,” the concrete empty space that is added to a singularity as its “experience of being-within an outside.”36 This concrete empty space that “dwells beside” a singularity in the state of perfect nihilism is there, all unwittingly, instead of the Distributor of the dwelling.37 Indeed, this concrete empty space added to a singularity is its being-as-such not abandoned by being,38 but, “abandoned in the midst of being,” “perfectly exposed.”39 The “empty space” that “dwells beside the thing” is the dwelling in which it does not dwell. But absolutely beyond the not simply empty abstractions of the “floating signifier” and the “norm in force without being applied” that Agamben would exchange for the dwelling beside the singularity in which it does not dwell—the thinking now occurring for the first time, beyond beyond x, is the “perfect abstraction, the abstraction ex nihilo.”40 In the thinking now occurring for the first time the excess of signification over denotation is inconceivable precisely because “signification” (connotation) is for the first time derived as the product of denotation and notation,41 where notation/writing is the actuality whose identity with denotation is such that, strictly speaking, connotation is not a matter of signifying something or nothing, but, rather, of being something, or, to “signify” is to be. In the thinking now occurring for the first time “the norm is in force without any reference to reality” without for that reason being a “floating signifier” or effectively the “state of exception,” because the norm itself, notation identified with denotation, writing identified with being, discriminate doing identified with existence, 0 = 10, identified with its constituting factors as such, 001, is reality, 1, is the creating/creation that qua absolute quality of existence itself is absolutely without reference to itself or to anything else.42 The norm that is now for the first time in force is the absolute and essential real of existence,43 where reality is the absolute imperative to create a new world. It is precisely in the thinking now occurring for the first time that normalcy is not the state of a situation (coincidence of membership and inclusion) interrupted by an event, by an occurrence not able to be accounted for in terms of the existing situation.44 In the essentially new and unprecedented thinking now actually occurring normalcy is for the first time essentially evental, normalcy is the new creation/creating: the absolute novelty of existence itself for the first time. As never before normalcy is the absolute coincidence of embodiment and membership in omnipotence itself. What now actually occurs for the

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first time is not the reappearance of the zone of indifference in the form of the halo surrounding the finite in the “simply human” world that for Agamben would follow the last day of judgment, not Benjamin’s real state of exception, but in fact the absolute exceptionality of normalcy: existence for the first time essentially the exception: the absolute beginning of the exception—the exception newly existing ex nihilo. In Faith and Philosophy, the writer says: In the thinking now occurring for the first time the exception to everything including nothing is not an exception to essence: essence is the exception to everything including nothing: essence is the exception to essence: for the first time there is conceived a new form of essence. Essence is the absolutely objective I otherwise than presence. This essence or I is the beginning of the consciousness of essence as absolute gift of being. The ethics indicated by this beginning of the conception of a new essence is not a metaphysical ethics, but, indeed, a physical ethics, an ethics of the existing body, an ethics of the order of essence, an ethics of the order of an essentially new actuality, an ethics therefore inherently disruptive of the world order hitherto existing, an ethics essentially transformative of the order of reason existing hitherto.45 Neither Levinas’ metaphysical nor Altizer’s cryptophysical nor Badiou’s diaphysical ethics nor Agamben’s paraphysical ethics, for the first time an absolutely and essentially physical ethics—at once for the first time the dwelling of the spirit conceived in essence—is essentially transformative of the hitherto existing world order.46 Neither Levinas’ back-stepping nor Agamben’s side-stepping the actual world, this physical ethics is the conception in essence of the absolute imperative to create the new world. Agamben’s paraphysical ethics is well articulated in his comments on Titian’s late work, Nymph and Shepherd. Concerning this painting, he writes in The Open: Sensual pleasure and love—as the half-bloomed tree bears witness— do not pre-figure only death and sin. To be sure, in their fulfillment the lovers learn something of each other that they should not have known—they have lost their mystery—and yet have not become any less impenetrable. But in this mutual disenchantment from their secret, they enter, just as in Benjamin’s aphorism, a new and more

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blessed life, one that is neither animal nor human. It is not nature that is reached in their fulfillment, but rather (as symbolized by the animal that rears up the Tree of Life and of Knowledge) a higher stage beyond both nature and knowledge, beyond concealment and disconcealment. These lovers have initiated each other into their own lack of mystery as their most intimate secret; they mutually forgive each other and expose their vanitas. Bare or clothed, they are no longer either concealed or unconcealed—but rather, inapparent {inapparenti}. As is clear from both the posture of the two lovers and the flute taken from the lips, their condition is otium, it is workless {senz’opera}. If it is true, as Dundas writes, that in [his] paintings Titian has created ‘a realm in which to reflect on the relationship between body and spirit’, in [this] painting this relationship is, so to speak, neutralized. In their fulfillment, the lovers who have lost their mystery contemplate a human nature rendered perfectly inoperative—the inactivity {inoperosità} and desœuvrement of the human and of the animal as the supreme and unsavable figure of life.47 If in the thinking now occurring for the first time “the God of Revelation has absolutely no secrets,”48 in the ‘coming thought’ the lovers have “lost their mystery” in “mutual disenchantment from their secret,” they are, “bare or clothed,” as naked as Adam and Eve after the fall, but, unlike their progenitors, sans guilt, sans shame.49 The lovers are “inapparent {inapparenti},” “their condition is otium,” “workless {senz’opera}.” This is salvation experienced as the utter profanity of the world.50 If, beginning with Descartes, modernity is productive paránoia,51 in Agamben this paránoia—in the course of overturning the Nothing, of turning the state of exception inside out—is transformed into nonproductive, “workless,” paraphysis.52 The form of this paraphysis is “the whatever body, whose

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physis is resemblance.”53 The form of this paraphysical ethos, this dwelling beside/outside the physical, in the “passage outside the world,” the form of this “abandonment in the midst of being,” this dwelling of the empty within beside the physical as the empty space added to a singularity,54 is the “inapparent.55 Indeed, what is “inapparent” are the lovers themselves, that is, their identities. Where identity can only be “mystery,” the lovers are indeed bodies sans identities. Their “most intimate secret,” mutually revealed, is that the lovers have no “mystery,” no identity. Their “most intimate secret” is their emptiness, their vanitas—out in the open. In the “Passion of Facticity,” a text in which he uncovers the notion of love in Heidegger, Agamben writes: This is the sense of the Gelassenheit, the ‘abandonment’, that a late text defines as die Offenheit für das Geheimnis, ‘the openness to the mystery’: Gelassenheit is the e-motion of the Ereignis, the eternally nonepochal opening to the ancient something [Uralte] which conceals itself in the word a-lētheia. We may now approach a provisional definition of love. What man introduces into the world, his ‘proper’, is not simply the light and opening of knowledge but above all the opening to concealment and opacity. Alētheia, truth, is the safeguard of lēthē, nontruth; memory, the safeguard of oblivion; light, the safeguard of darkness. It is only in the insistence of this abandonment, in this safeguarding, which is forgetful of everything, that something like knowledge and attention can become possible…. Love is the passion of facticity in which man bears this nonbelonging and darkness, appropriating (adseufacit) them while guarding them as such. Love… is… the passion and exposition of facticity itself and of the irreducible impropriety of beings. In love, the lover and the beloved come to light in their concealment, in an eternal facticity beyond Being…. Just as in Ereignis, the appropriation of the improper signifies the end both of the history of Being and of the history of epochal sending, so in love the dialectic of the proper and the improper reaches its end. This, finally, is why there is no sense in distinguishing between authentic love and inauthentic love, heavenly love and pandemios love, the love of God and self-love. Lovers bear the impropriety of love to the end so that the proper can emerge as the appropriation of the free incapacity that passion brings to its end. Lovers go to

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the limit of the improper in a mad and demonic promiscuity; they dwell in carnality and amorous discourse, in forever-new regions of impropriety and facticity, to the point of revealing their essential abyss. Human beings do not originally dwell in the proper; yet they do not (according to the facile suggestion of contemporary nihilism) inhabit the improper and the ungrounded. Rather, human beings are those who fall properly in love with the improper, who—unique among living beings—are capable of their own incapacity.56 In the “abandonment” that is Gelassenheit [calmness, patience, dispassionateness] that is “forgetful of everything” “something like knowledge and attention can become possible.” Here Agamben’s Indiscretion mocks all unawares the Discretion of the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” mocks “having the patience to see what’s different.”57 The “concealment” in which the lovers “come to light”—the inapparence of Titian’s lovers—is “an eternal facticity beyond Being.” Hither Levinas, not otherwise than beyond wanting to appropriate belonging itself, drinking at the Heideggerian river of lēthē, Agamben’s Gelassenheit safeguards the Uralte in the form of nonbelonging and darkness.58 What is this Uralte, this very oldest x, “concealing itself in a-lētheia,” that the dispassionate passion of the “inapparent” lovers is beyond and not beyond? What is this oldest x to which the calm Indiscretion of the “inapparent” lovers is the “eternal nonepochal opening?” Agamben writes in “Bartleby, or On Contingency”: Scripture is the law of the first creation (which the Cabalists call the ‘Torah of Beriah’), in which God created the world on the basis of its potential to be, keeping it separate from its potential not to be…. The interruption of writing marks the passage to the second creation, in which God summons all his potential not to be, creating on the basis of a point of indifference between potentiality and impotentiality. The creation that is now fulfilled is neither a re-creation nor an eternal repetition; it is, rather, a decreation in which what happened and what did not happen are returned to their originary unity in the mind of God, while what could have not been but was becomes indistinguishable from what could have been but was not.59 The Uralte, the very oldest x, is the point of indifference, and abysmally so—between potentiality and impotentiality. The Indiscretion of the lovers

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is the patience to see the darkness that is this indifference, the alētheia of “their essential abyss.” Not beyond this oldest x are those in whose love “the dialectic of the proper and the improper reaches its end.” And Agamben, is, in the end, not beyond politics, not beyond “the walled courtyard,” not beyond beyond x, and complacently so. He concludes “Bartleby”: Decreation takes place at the point where Bartleby stands, ‘in the heart of the eternal pyramid’ of the Palace of Destinies, which, in this ironic and inverted theodicy, is also called the Halls of Justice. His word is not Justice, which gives a reward or a perpetual punishment to what was, but instead Palingenesis, apokatastasis pantōn, in which the new creature—for the new creature is what is at issue here—reaches the indemonstrable center of its ‘occurrence-or-nonoccurrence’. This is the irrevocable end of the letter’s journey, which, on errands of life, sped toward death. And it is here that the creature is finally at home, saved in being irredeemable. This is why in the end the walled courtyard is not a sad place. There is sky and there is grass. And the creature knows perfectly well ‘where it is’.60 As Agamben says, “the new creature is what is at issue here.” In the ‘coming thought’ the new creature lives in “the walled courtyard,” effectively within the confines of Agamben’s “palingenesis,” that is, not within the constriction envisioned by Levinas back before the beginning, but, hither Levinas and Heidegger, within the confines of the backwards beginning/ the beginning backwards/the beginning again at once the decreation that is the apokatastasis pantōn, the establishment again of all things at once the leaving off from their establishment: “the indemonstrable center of [the ‘new creature’s’] ‘occurrence-or-nonoccurrence’.” But in the thinking now occurring for the first time the new creature now lives without walls,61 beyond politics, in the absolute freedom of an actually new creation. Thought essentially this is the beginning of the Resurrection, |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸.62 The question concerning the new creature living the beginning of the Resurrection, living in the dwelling without walls that is omnipotence itself for the first time the embodiment of the Incarnation63—the question for the new creature thinking for the first time an essentially new normalcy, thinking essentially the “Commodality [that] is the category of the New

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Law or New Norm, that is, of the ‘normalcy’ that is the creation/creating of the new world,”64 —the question for the first time is how to live this. What is the norm of the new normalcy? What is the new morality saying itself for the first time in the form of the new normalcy? How, indeed, can there be a “norm” for a “normalcy” whose essence is perpetually new creating? According to Agamben, in the fulfillment of “sensual pleasure and love” Titian’s shepherd and nymph “learn something of each other that they should not have known—they have lost their mystery—and yet have not become any less impenetrable.” This impenetrability, indeed, the penetrating impenetrability of the lovers one to the other in the fulfillment of their love, the love of creatures who dwell in the “walled courtyard,” who live in being-within an outside, who live outside whether inside or beside the dwelling, precludes their dwelling with those who dwell without walls. The love of those who dwell with one another without walls in the absolute outside of existence itself is the love of those who penetrate one another absolutely, the love of creatures who dwell for the first time absolutely now. The beginning of this absolute penetration, |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸, Resurrection’s beginning, absolutely existent, is the norm of the new normalcy. In Foundation, the writer says: What now occurs for the first time in history is the absolute penetration which is the absolute suspension of the process of beginning and ending/the absolute suspension of the beginning and ending of the process: the absolute unity of the absolute penetration is the midst itself absolutely existent for the first time, the absolutely existent beginning.65 |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸: absolute penetration the absolutely existent beginning the midst itself. Of this beginning identically absolute penetration, the writer says further: Indeed, the One absolutely penetrating the ‘one another’ for the first time/the One absolutely penetrating the two (the others)… this absolute penetration… is now for the first time in history clearly perceived as the foundation of society, that is, the absolute penetration/ the unconditioned love of unity is for the first time the foundation of society: Foundation is for the first time the Absolute Shaking of the Absolute One, the Absolute One moving unconditionally.66

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This is to say that for the first time absolute penetration is the absolute norm of the new normalcy: the Norm is the Absolute One moving unconditionally. |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸: the beginning of absolutely unconditioned omnipotence is the New Norm. The writer continues in Foundation: The new identity beginning is the actually other one. Existence is not also nothing. Writing is not also nothing. Existence/writing is nihil ex nihilo. The new identity is existence absolutely/writing absolutely/the Word absolute. Absolute sociability is the Absolute Word absolutely embodied in the One World Now absolutely penetrating every-one, concretely existing universality. Absolute sociability is a function of the absolutely unconditioned substitution of the irreversible for the reversible.67 Then absolutely not Agamben’s “Palingenesis,” “apokatastasis,” “decreation,” but the new identity writing absolutely: what otherwise would be whatever, identified with writing that is neither also nothing (Derrida) nor merely nothing (Agamben).68 “Existence/writing”: “existing universality”/“absolute sociability”: absolute sociability/writing (notation/absolute relation 1) predicated of existence/existing universality (connotation/commodality 0) = IT (denotation/quantum-quality 0) nihil ex nihilo. The THING nothing after nothing: to be for the first time sans nothing. This IT is not Uralte, the oldest x, the “point of indifference,” “the indemonstrable center of [the ‘new creature’s’] ‘occurrence-or-nonoccurrence’,” but perfectly irreversible newness.69 This IT is x very newness, IT beyond beyond x the beginning of the absolutely new/now. The absolutely new/now thought essentially is the beginning that is the Norm of the New Normalcy. Figure 1, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” articulates in historico-logical synoptic form the Normal Beginning now actually embodying for the first time the absolute imperative to create the new world. The organizing principle, illustrated at the head of the table, is the ninefold array that embodies “the immediate simplicity of the perfectly differentiated Unity of real trinary logic.” 70 The column headings, respectively, III 1, I 0, II 0, IV 1, correspond to the dimensions and real trinary logic elements of the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity.” 71 The color-coded guidelines on the right side of the table illustrate the relations among the rows within each of the four columns (where Black is 1, Gray is 0, and Light Gray is 0). Column III 1, corresponding to ethical Beneficence, logical

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Figure 1 The Morality of the New Beginning 1

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I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods beside me.

Our father in heaven,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

You shall be absolutely now.

You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.

may your name be held holy,

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

You shall cherish the name.

You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it holy

your kingdom come,

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land.

You shall be holy every day.

Honor your father and mother.

your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

You shall be wholly engaged with the world.

You shall not kill.

Give us this day our daily bread,

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.

You shall create the world.

You shall not commit adultery.

and forgive us our debts,

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.

You shall love the body.

You shall not steal.

as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

You shall love things.

You shall not bear false witness.

And do not put us to the test,

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

You shall love the truth.

You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.

but save us from the evil one.

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven.

You shall love the person.

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Notation, and categorial Absolute Relation is the ennealogue of the commandments written in stone by Yahweh (Deuteronomy 5:22). Column I 0, corresponding to ethical Readiness, logical Denotation, and categorial Quantum-Quality is the ennealogue of the elements of the prayer given to his disciples by Jesus (Matthew 6:9-13). Column II 0, corresponding to ethical Discretion, logical Connotation, and categorial Commodality is the ennealogue of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10). As the Spirit is the identification of Father and Son, as Connotation is the product of Notation and Denotation in the thinking now occurring for the first time, as Commodality is the identification of Absolute Relation and QuantumQuality, Column II 0 is the product of Column III 1 and Column I 0. Column IV 1, corresponding to ethical Gratitude, logical Creation, and categorial Absolute Quality, is the ennealogue of the morality of the new creation. Column IV 1, is the articulation of the Cornerstone of the Beginning Morality, the specification of the Norm of the New Normalcy— das neunfach vom neuen.72 The Cornerstone of the Beginning Morality (Column IV 1) embodying the ninefold array that embodies the “immediate simplicity of the perfectly differentiated Unity of real trinary logic” is illustrated in Figure 2 (where M, L, and N stand for, Mind, Logic, and Nature73). Following the color-coded guidelines to the organization of “The Morality of the New Beginning,” the organic organization of the Norm of the New Normalcy is the following: (1) You shall be absolutely now. This imperative is the beginning of the beginning of |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸, omnipotence itself saying what it is that is the requisite provision for creating the new world. (0) You shall be wholly engaged with the world. This imperative is the middle of the beginning of Resurrection’s beginning, saying what it is that is thorough-going commitment to creating the new world. (0) You shall love things. This imperative is the beginning of the middle of Resurrection’s beginning, saying what it is that is the manner and means of creating the new world.

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Figure 2 Cornerstone of the Beginning Morality 1

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You shall be absolutely now

You shall be wholly engaged with the world

You shall love the body

N

M

L

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You shall love things

You shall cherish the name

You shall create the world

L

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You shall love the person

You shall love the truth

You shall be holy every day

M

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(1) You shall cherish the name. This imperative is the middle of the middle of |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸, indeed, the very middle of the Cornerstone of the Beginning Morality, omnipotence itself saying what it is that is the very Unity that is the creation of the new world. (0) You shall create the world. This imperative is the end of the middle of the beginning of the Resurrection, saying what it is that is new in creating the world. (0) You shall love the truth. This imperative is the middle of the end of the beginning of the Resurrection, saying what it is that is

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the means and manner of what is new in creating the world. (1) You shall be holy every day. This imperative is the end of the end of |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸, omnipotence itself saying what it is that is the actuality of creating the new world. (0) You shall love the body. This imperative is the end of the beginning of Resurrection’s beginning, saying what it is that is the manner and means of the actuality of creating the new world. (0) You shall love the person. This imperative is the beginning of the end of Resurrection’s beginning, saying what it is that is the new in creating the actuality of the new world. Exposition of the Ennealogue of the Beginning Morality You shall be absolutely now. This imperative relates to the person of the Father.74 The requisite provision for creating the new world is the perfect independence of the creature effected by omnipotence itself for the first time. The perfect liberation of the creature is the proof of divine omnipotence. In the thinking now occurring the poverty of spirit enjoined in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” is for the first time conceived in essence as the existential witness of the creature to its perfect freedom as the productive receptivity that is creating the new world. For the first time it is conceived essentially that the statement describing the Creator in Matthew 25:26, “I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered,” is at once the statement that describes the creature. Thus the imperative to be absolutely now precludes absolutely and essentially the potentiality to be and the potentiality to not-be.75 You shall be wholly engaged with the world. The response to this imperative requires the positive response to the demand of the first. The perception/ conception of being as absolutely unprecedented gift of omnipotence

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grounds the imperative of whole-hearted commitment to the world. Being wholly engaged with the world precludes absolutely and essentially otium and “semi-indifference.” 76 In the thinking now occurring the hunger and thirsting after righteousness enjoined in the Beatitude, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied,” Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” is for the first time conceived in essence as the imperative to be the betrothed of the world, to be the Bridegroom altogether faithful, thoroughly exposed. You shall love things.. The unqualified commitment to the world brings into being for the first time the imperative of the love of things as the manner and means of creating the new world. What is it to love things? What is it to know the how of the new creation? In 1 Corinthians 11:27-29, Paul writes concerning the proper reception of the Eucharist: “Therefore anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is liable (‘noxoq) for the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and then eat the bread and drink the cup. For one who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks judgment (krºma) to himself, not distinguishing the ^ body (mÓ diakrºnvn tØ sv ma).” Now for the first time essentially to love things is to perceive things as the appearance of the transcendental essence of existence itself—things as the apparent and living body of Christ.77 In the thinking now occurring the approbation of peacemaking in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”, Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” is conceived in essence as the imperative to be reconciled to the absolute placedness of all things.78 The imperative to love things—at once not stealing—at once suffering the loss of things—precludes the “spirituality” that is “non-thingness.” 79 To love things is now actually to exist for the first time beyond being held in (‘noxoq) by the utter thingness/utter profanity of things—their ultimate impenetrability. To love things is as never before to be absolutely beyond “bumping into things,”80 beyond encountering in things a limit, including the indeterminate limit surrounding the whatever particular, beyond the judgment (krºma) that does not “have the patience to see what’s different,”81 the Indiscretion that does not distinguish the ^ body (mÓ diakrºnvn tØ sv ma) as the actual essence of things. For the first time things qua body of the world embodied in omnipotence itself are absolutely the media/means that is the absolute distribution of existence itself—as such the means of creating the world absolutely the creating of the world.82

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You shall cherish the name. This imperative relates to the person of the Son.83 The form of the creation of the new world: essentially the perception/ conception that the center of the Cornerstone of the Beginning Morality is the identification of the proclamation of the death and resurrection of the Incarnate Word and the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine, the identification of the things that nourish and the Distributor of the dwelling increasingly called to mind (1 Corinthians 11:24: toy^ to poiei^te eʺq tÓn ®mÓn Ωnåmnhsin “Do this to increasingly call me to mind”) as now for the first time the very essence of thought—the appearance itself.84 For the first time the name of the things that nourish is named oʺkonømoq oʺkonomºa: the distributor of the dwelling identically the distribution of the dwelling: the distributor identically the body qua absolute particularity, qua absolute singularity identical with absolute placedness.85 The name that names the things that nourish is the object mourned in the Beatitude, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning.” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:26 “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim (katagg™llete) the Lord’s death until he comes.” The cherished name naming the things that nourish essentially and absolutely for the first time is the name that shall not be taken in vain. The imperative to cherish the name precludes the vanitas of the lovers, the “concealment in which they come to light,” the darkness that is “an eternal facticity beyond Being,” precludes, that is, the “passion of facticity”86 that takes the name in vain, that does not name “the name itself,” that does not name “the beingnamed” of the thing.87 To cherish the name is essentially to participate in the passion of Christ oʺkonømoq, the very substance of things, the absolute facticity that is “the beginning otherwise than the beginning of being not otherwise than being,” “the beginning of being and nothing otherwise than otherwise than x, or, beyond beyond x,”88 the beginning absolutely now, the beginning that is the absolute separation of being and nothing, the beginning that qua absolutely now is absolutely nowhere for nothing. This beginning that is the absolute separation of being and nothing conceived in essence names the name itself the body and blood of Christ, doing so, precisely qua absolute separation of being and nothing, beyond sacred (beyond profane), in the form of the absolute predicament of existence itself.89 You shall create the world follows upon the positive response to the imperative to cherish the name. To heed the imperative to create the world is to create the new world—nor could it be otherwise beyond

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beyond x where the not-yet is absolutely now. What is new in creating the world, omnipotence itself moving to new ground for the first time, is I/we the freely existing creator(s).90 What is new for the first time is I/we the beginning of the body omnipotence itself. Concerning divine omnipotence Aquinas writes in the Summa Theologica:91 “… mercy is accounted as being proper to God: and therein His omnipotence is declared to be chiefly manifested.” In the thinking now occurring the mercy enjoined in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy,” Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” is for the first time conceived in essence as the imperative of world-creating, as the world-creating imperative: to create the new world is to be merciful: to create the new world (to be merciful) is to be created absolutely (to be shown mercy thought in essence for the first time), to create the new world is to exist in the image of omnipotence itself qua creator of the world. For the first time humanity thought properly is commodious mercy—not killing, making provision for life—the chief means (absolutely the end) of creating the world. For the first time world-creating mercy is morality. Following the imperative to create the world You shall love the truth. The absolute facticity that is the beginning absolutely now is the foundation itself of the imperative to love the truth. The suffering encouraged in the Beatitude, “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” not betraying the truth when put to the test, is, essentially conceived, loving the truth, the absolute essence of truth. The beginning of absolute facticity absolutely now essentially perceives that Indiscretion falsely witnesses to the abyssal essence of truth (alētheia), falsely witnesses to love as the inessential passion of facticity that, as such, shelters darkness in light in the form of the concealment in which the lovers come to light.92 What now actually occurs in the form of the conception in essence of the new morality is Ô Ωrx¸ th^ q |Apokal¥cevq, the beginning of the apocalypse.93 The new morality essentially thinks the essentially historical structure of facticity as love’s revelation in truth. In Novitas Mundi, speaking of “Ωl¸ueia, loving of truth, the essential fact of being disclosed in the essence of history now manifest in thought itself,” the writer says: “The essential fact of being is indifferent to the frame of reference absolute‑relative. The historical structure of being is erected without

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reference to this framework, the latter belonging essentially to the point of view in time. Indeed, so perfectly indifferent to the frame of refer­ence is the essential fact of being that it is indifferently the historical structure in the exaltation of its being Ωgåph, truly loving. This exaltation of the essential fact of being, its historical structure, is love’s revelation in truth, Ωpokålyciq, in which structure the essential fact of being abides indifferently to its manifestation in the appearance of the transcendental essence of existence itself as truth occurring before now in time, now as the occurring truth or essence of history absolutely evident in its effect in thought. The revelatory historical structure of being (apokalypsis) manifests that the essential fact is indifferently love (agapē)—truth (alethēia). The abiding indifference of the historical structure of being (apokalypsis) to truth occurring before now in time—now occurring in thought is not that in fact existence itself has not appeared in the transcendental essence…. It is to say that the historical structure of being is not a determination of the appearance of its essence (no more than the fact of existence is a determina­tion of this world’s essence), but rather that the appearance terminates in existence itself as the essence of this world’s existence in fact, that is, as the fact of creation.94 The essentially historical structure of facticity is the manifestation of the absolute freedom that is creation. The imperative is to love this truth. The truth witnessed to, loved, is not the essentially unhistorical structure of facticity outside of being, where being is knowing, and where, therefore, outside of being is outside of knowing.95 The faithful and true witness witnesses to the essentially historical structure of facticity—the beginning of being—beyond beyond the beginning of being—absolutely now— being and nothing absolutely spoken, otherwise than knowledge (beyond ignorance), but not beyond being (so absolutely separate from nothing)— knowing absolutely creating the world.96 The love of truth is not, hither the ontological difference, the possibility of patiently attending to the Uralte, the point of indifference,97 but true love is the ontological absolute of attending to the very beginning of perfect and essentially existent newness, to the very beginning of absolute difference. You shall be holy every day. This imperative relates to the person of the Spirit. With this imperative and, in particular, with the transposed order

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of its companions, the New Morality of the Beginning announces in its very structure the essentially historical structure of facticity manifest in the fact that after having the Spirit and sharing the Father, the Son having the Father, then, and now newly, shares the Spirit.98 The Spirit shared by the Son announces itself in the imperative to be holy every day, that is, to be, always and everywhere for the first time, absolutely whole/wholly in place. For the first time the meekness enjoined in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land,” Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” is essentially conceived as the imperative to embody the perfectly qualitative limitation of the quantum.99 Matthew 5:5: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land (makårioi o praei^q, Œti aªtoi klhronom¸soysin tÓn gh^ n100)” is essentially conceived for the first time as the imperative to begin to dwell in the dwellings of the new world distributed by the Distributor, the imperative to inhabit for the first time the absolute placedness of existence itself.101 The thinking now occurring for the first time conceiving essentially the displacement of space itself102 precludes the minute displacement of the thing that constitutes its profane halo,103 its being just “a little bit different,” precludes the angel “almost” merging with the body. The imperative to be holy every day is the imperative to be in heaven, the imperative that the angel/intentio/image be identically the body. This is the imperative to be the new heaven and new earth qua distribution of the dwellings, qua absolute placedness. “This imperative is the end of the end of |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸, omnipotence itself saying what it is that is the actuality of creating the new world.”104 This for the first time is the imperative to be the resurrected body. Thus, following the imperative to be holy every day there occurs in the organic organization of the Norm of the New Normalcy (Figure 2) a change in the real trinary logic order of the last three imperatives, a change that actually embodies the logic of the simplicity of the ontology of creation, 1 = 001.105 The change is such that the commodal imperative (0) You shall love the body is no longer a cornerstone, as was the imperative to love things (0), to the beginning, the imperative to be absolutely now (1), and middle, the imperative to cherish the name (1), of Resurrection’s beginning and middle, respectively. Neither is this commodal imperative (0) a cornerstone, as was the imperative to love the truth (0), to the middle, the imperative to cherish the name (1), and end, the imperative to be holy every day (1), of Resurrection’s middle and end, respectively. The commodal imperative (0) to love the body is the first and the last in the organic structure of the Moral-

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ity of the New Beginning that is middle to the beginning (0), the imperative to love the person, and end (1), the imperative to be holy every day, of the end of Resurrection’s beginning—001 = 1, thereby constituting the end of Resurrection’s beginning very Creation, very Omnipotence, Absolute Simplicity. This middle so constituting the end of Resurrection’s beginning is effectively in the place of the imperative to love the truth (0), without displacing the latter. The one effectively in place of the other without displacing the other the two imperatives manifest absolutely the whole wholly in place. Immediately after the imperative to be holy every day follows, then, this imperative to love the body, effectively in the place occupied by the imperative to love the truth, without displacement, yet not without distinction. This is the imperative to liberate the body from all division, the imperative to heal the body, the imperative to purge the body of “the inconsistency of [its] schema.”106 This is the imperative to bring the body into accord with “the notion of the meta-schematizing of the body that forms the core of revolutionary metanoēsis,”107 indeed, this is the imperative to meta-schematize the body. In the thinking now occurring the injunction to be clean of heart in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God,” Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” is conceived in essence as the imperative to singlemindedly love the undivided body, to liberate the body from all indenture and slavery arising from the discrepancy of the body and its schema. To liberate the body from its discrepant relation to its schema is—beyond adultery—to conceive for the first time that the body itself is beyond beyond x, that is, beyond ad alterum. This is to conceive essentially the absolute penetration of the one and the other that is the absolutely new foundation of society.108 The imperative to love the body is at once the imperative—indebtedness forgiven—to redeem the body from its vulnerability to disease and death, the imperative to set the body free from all its burdens. Now, the identification of the imperative to love the body (0) and the imperative to love the truth (0) is the absolute relation (1) that is commodal causality, 00 = 1.109 The absolute relation (1) is loving the body (0) effectively in the place of loving the truth (0), the former identified with the latter as its effect. In the articulation of the Norm of the New Normalcy this commodal relation of cause and effect is unique to these two imperatives. The commodal imperative to love things (0) is neither in the place of another nor is it the place of another. The commodal imperative to love the truth (0) is not in the place of another but is the place of another. The .

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commodal imperative to love the body (0) is in the place of another but is not the place of another. Consistent with the fact that the thinking now occurring for the first time conceives the absolute discontinuity of the continuum, effectively the perfectly qualitative limitation of the quantum,110 there is no commodal imperative that is both the place of another and in the place of another. In the thinking now occurring for the first time the place where something takes place is the cause of its taking place.111 In the articulation of the Norm of the New Normalcy the imperative to love the truth (0) is such a causative place; the imperative to love the body (0) is such a place as effectively takes place in the place of another. This unique commodal causal relation of the two imperatives—non-displacing effective taking the place of—is as such the displacement of the “eternal facticity beyond Being,” as well as of any contemplation without cognition and knowledge,112 and speaks to the unique place of the imperatives to love the body (0) and to love the truth (0) in the new morality of the beginning. This uniqueness is a function of the fact that the imperative to love the body is “the manner and means of the actuality of creating the new world.” So it is that ethics is as never before neither meta-, crypto-, dia-, nor para-physical, but essentially and absolutely physical.113 You shall love the person. This is the imperative to be absolutely ready for the person. Loving the person is readiness for the place where perfect and essentially existent newness takes place. This place is always and everywhere absolutely particular for the first time.114 The imperative to love the person, as the beginning of the end of Resurrection’s beginning, is the imperative to be free, to believe, to act with temperance, that is, harmoniously and with measure. To be absolutely ready for the person is to perceive that persons perfectly embody independence in existence, that they abide for the first time in the absolute distribution of existence. In the thinking now occurring the encouragement of the suffering endured explicitly because of the Distributor of the dwelling in the Beatitude, “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven,” Column II 0 on the table, “The Morality of the New Beginning,” is conceived in essence as the imperative to dwell in the absolute particularity of existence. John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment: love one another as I [the Distributor of the dwelling] have loved you.” Quite fittingly, as related to the Father, qua Very First,115 the imperative You shall be absolutely now, the very first, is the only imperative directly associated with the

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Trinity (1) in the articulation of the Norm of the New Normalcy that is not mediated by a commodal imperative (0). In the imperative associated with the sharing of the Spirit whose index is the transposed order of the companions to the imperative You shall be holy every day (1), the imperative You shall love the person (0) becomes the very last, and the only imperative not directly associated with the Trinity that is mediated by a commodal imperative (0). The commodal imperative (0) properly lacking to the first imperative (1) is proper to the last (0). While it does not take the place of the imperative You shall be absolutely now (1)—as its companion You shall love the body (0) takes the place of the imperative You shall love the truth ( 0)—nevertheless in its place the last imperative (0) embodies the relation that—supposing the absolutely contrary to fact condition—the first imperative (1) would have were it not related to the Father who is omnipotence as the Very First absolutely unconditioned simplicity qua person. This inverse complementarity in the relationship of the first (1) and last (0) of the imperatives to the commodal imperative (0) marks the relation of the imperative to love the person to the imperative to be absolutely now as fulfillment116 —at once the absolutely irreversible relation of relative and absolute exceptionality. As omnipotence effects without causing the creature, creates ex nihilo, so the imperative You shall be absolutely now effects without causing the imperative You shall love the person. Creation, precisely as effecting without causing, is the absolute freedom of Creator and creature in which the latter is to the former as what is properly “lacking” (de¥teron, second) to the former, viz., commodally mediated existence.117 As the commandment in Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love the one you walk with as such as you” (‫)ואהבת לרעך כמוך‬, is properly “lacking” (Mark 12:31, deyt™ra a‹th, “the second [is] this”) to the commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” in Mark 12:30 (similarly in Deuteronomy 6:5), so the commandment articulated by the Distributor of the dwelling in John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment: love one another as I [the Distributor of the dwelling] have loved you,” is properly “lacking”/second to the two great commandments of the Torah,118 as the Incarnation of the Word is what is properly “lacking”/second to the creation of the world.119 So the last imperative in the Norm of the New Normalcy is to the first as what the first properly “lacks.” The last is to the first as what is properly second to the first.120 The imperative that is the beginning of the end of Resurrection’s beginning is properly second to the beginning of the

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beginning thereof. Existence beginning beyond beyond x, that is, absolutely now, is existence absolutely unconditioned productive receptivity. The fact that the imperative You shall love the person is properly second to the imperative You shall be absolutely now—the fact that this is made perfectly evident by the immediate simplicity of the perfectly differentiated Unity of real trinary logic in its ninefold array—this is the absolute guarantee/proof that the love of the person is absolutely free and unconditioned as is the relation of the Creator and the creature.

Notes 1. Section III.1, passim. 2. Section II.3, pp. 120ff. 3. Section III.2, p. 196, “the creating of another identically the I surfacing the body mediated by the immediacy that is the quantum-quale.” 4. G. Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal (trans. K. Attell, Stanford, 2004), pp. 18f. 5. Aquinas, Summa Theologica (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, New York, 1957), Supplement 92.3. 6. Ibid. 7. Section III.2, pp. 192f. 8. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), p. 95, et passim. 9. Section III.2, passim. 10. Section III.1, pp. 154ff. and Section III.2, p. 179. Also, Backnote 2. 11. Section I, p. 34, n. 105 and Section II.1, p. 47f. 12. Section III.2, pp. 192ff. and p. 196. 13. The inextricable union of the notions of redemption, Eucharist, resurrection and “new heavens and new earth” is affirmed in several places in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Charles Borromeo Parish, Mississippi, USA. Available online at : http://www.scborromeo.org/index2.htm. April 2009), but not in terms of the thinking now occurring for the first time—not in terms of the perfect objectivity of absolutely digmatic thought—rather in the terms of the

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form of thinking essentially past for which the future remains an operative category, the terms of an essentially subjective form of thinking, the terms of a paradigmatic or dogmatic, that is, non-digmatic form of thinking. So Catechism Paragraph 1000: “This ‘how’ exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is accessible only to faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ’s transfiguration of our bodies: Just as bread that comes from the earth, after God’s blessing has been invoked upon it, is no longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, formed of two things, the one earthly and the other heavenly: so too our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but possess the hope of resurrection.” So Catechism Paragraph 1042: “At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. After the universal judgment, the righteous will reign for ever with Christ, glorified in body and soul. The universe itself will be renewed: The Church… will receive her perfection only in the glory of heaven, when will come the time of the renewal of all things. At that time, together with the human race, the universe itself, which is so closely related to man and which attains its destiny through him, will be perfectly re-established in Christ.” So Catechism Paragraph 1405: “There is no surer pledge or dearer sign of this great hope in the new heavens and new earth ‘in which righteousness dwells’, than the Eucharist. Every time this mystery is celebrated, ‘the work of our redemption is carried on’ and we ‘break the one bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live for ever in Jesus Christ’.” 14. Agamben, The Open, p. 21f. 15. See Section III.2, pp. 184f., including n. 61, and pp. 189ff. 16. For Badiou on this point, Section II.1, passim. For Agamben, Section III.2, passim; also below, this Section. 17. Agamben, The Open, pp. 37f. 18. For the deconstruction of the dialectic of the within/without operative in Derrida, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section II.3, passim. Also, for the “eternal outwardizing of the within” in Altizer’s death of God theology, cf. ibid., Section II.4, et passim. 19. G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (trans. D. HellerRoazen, Stanford, 1998), pp. 187ff. 20. Agamben, The Open, p. 64. 21. Ibid., pp. 91f. 22. Ibid., pp. 52ff. Agamben notes that the Indo-European root of Benommenheit is *nem, “to distribute, to allot, to assign.” It is also to be noted that it

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is also the Indo-European root of nomos, as in oikonomos, “distributor of the dwelling.” See, above, Section III.2, pp. 192ff. 23. Section II.2, p. 88, the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” and Section II.3, pp. 107ff. 24. Agamben, The Open, p. 92. 25. Section III.2, p. 174. 26. Agamben, The Open, p. 90. 27. Section III.1, pp. 133ff. and Backnote 1. 28.������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Section III.2, p. 192: “Where there is no(t) nothing there is no actual scarcity: nothing is (able to be) removed from the essential wholeness of existence, from the infinite perpetuity of existence. Nothing able to be is not, what is able to be is. Nothing not (able to be) removed from the essential wholeness of existence is not, that is, what is not able to be is not. There is nothing able to not-be.” 29. Cf., above, pp. 207f. 30. See Backnote 4. Also, D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot, 2003), Appendix. 31. G. Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy (ed. and trans. D. Heller-Roazen, Stanford, 1999), p. 171. 32. Section III.2, pp. 174ff. 33. Cf., above, p. 214. 34. G. Agamben, The State of Exception (trans. K. Attell, Chicago, 2005), pp. 36f. 35. Section III.1, p. 159. 36. Section III.2, p. 188ff. 37. In Mt 19:21, the Distributor of the dwelling says to the man asking about eternal life (zv¸n aʺ√nion): “If you would be perfect (t™leioq) come, sell what you have, give the proceeds to those cringing in fear (ptvxo^iq)—you will have a store where God dwells (®n oªrano^iq)—then come, walk with me (Ωkolo¥uei moi).” 38. Section III.1, pp. 137f. and p. 148. 39. Agamben, The Coming Community, p. 99. 40. Section III.2, p. 179. 41. Section III.1, pp. 83ff., Section III.2, pp. 176ff. and pp. 193, and Backnote 1. 42. See below, pp. 236ff., for the notion of the second, or what this creating/ creation qua absolute quality of existence itself is “lacking.” See Backnote 3, for the distinction 1/1, finite/infinite unity. For non-referential pure quality, cf. C.S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings Vol. 1 (ed. N. Houser and C. Kloesel, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1992), pp. 248ff. While the transformation of the Kantian categories in Peirce undergoes further and essential transformation in the thinking now occurring,

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Peirce’s understanding of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness remains a fundamental point of departure for understanding the implications of the fact that Fourthness is—in the thinking now occurring for the first time a New Firstness (see, Leahy, Foundation, Section IV.1, also, below, Appendix, “The Person as Absolute Particular”)—qua foundation. The essential transformation of the Peircean transformation of the Kantian categories that constitutes the absolute novelty of the new thinking consists of the substitution of the Quantum-Quality element 0 = not nothing for 0 = nothing, its identification with the Absolute Relation element 1, which identification, 01 = 0, replaces at once Kantian Modality and Peircean Secondness with the new category Commodality. Commodality is the category of the New Law or New Norm, that is, of the “new normalcy” that is the creation/creating of the new world (see, below, pp. 225ff.). In terms of the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity” (see Section II.2, p. 88) Commodality is the dimension of Discretion, and, qua logical function, the category of connotation/intelligibility. For the first time the category of intelligibility is Commodality. 43. See Backnote 1. 44. Section II, passim. Section III.1, pp. 153ff. 45. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, p. 158. 46. See Section II.2, pp. 84f., Section II.3, pp. 137ff., and Section III.1, pp. 160f. 47. Agamben, The Open, p. 87. 48. Cf., above, p. 208. 49. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 559ff., and 578ff., for the artifactual body, and 592f., for the body itself as clothing itself. 50. Section III.2, passim. 51. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany, 1994), pp. 121ff. 52. Agamben finds this “workless” humanity in Aristotle’s text. Reading what was never written there, he writes in Means without End: Notes on Politics (trans. V. Binetti and C. Casarino, Minneapolis and London, 2000), pp. 140f.: “In a crucial passage of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wonders whether there is such a thing as an ergon, a being‑in‑the‑act, a being‑operative, and a work proper to man, or whether man as such might perhaps be essentially argōs, that is, without a work, workless [inoperoso]: For just as the goodness and performance of a flute player, a sculptor, or any kind of expert, and generally of anyone who fulfills some function or performs some action, are thought to reside in his proper function [ergon], so the goodness and performance of man would seem to reside in whatever is his proper function. Is it then possible that while a carpenter and a shoemaker have their own proper

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function and spheres of action, man as man has none, but was left by nature a good‑for‑nothing without a function [argōs]? Politics is that which corresponds to the essential inoperability [inoperosità] of humankind, to the radical being‑without‑work of human communities. There is politics because human beings are argōs‑beings that cannot be defined by any proper operation—that is, beings of pure potentiality that no identity or vocation can possibly exhaust. (This is the true political meaning of Averroism, which links the political vocation of man to the potentiality of the intellect.) Over and beyond the planetary rule of the oikonomia of naked life, the issue of the coming politics is the way in which this argīa, this essential potentiality and inoperability, might be undertaken without becoming a historical task, or, in other words, the way in which politics might be nothing other than the exposition of humankind’s absence of work as well as the exposition of humankind’s creative semi‑indifference to any task, and might only in this sense remain integrally assigned to happiness.” Aristotle’s immediate response to the question he has posed (omitted by Agamben) is (The Nicomachean Ethics [trans. H. Rackham, Harvard, 1962], pp. 31 and 33): “Must we not rather assume that, just as the eye, the hand, the foot and each of the various members of the body manifestly has a certain function of its own, so a human being also has a certain function over and above all the functions of his particular members? What then precisely can this function be? The mere act of living appears to be shared even by plants, whereas we are looking for the function peculiar to man; we must therefore set aside the vital activity of nutrition and growth. Next in the scale will come some form of sentient life; but this too appears to be shared by horses, oxen, and animals generally. There remains therefore what may be called the practical life of the rational part of man…. let us assume that we are here concerned with the active exercise of the rational faculty…. If then the function of man is the active exercise of the soul’s faculties in conformity with rational principle, or at all events not in dissociation from rational principle, and if we acknowledge the function of an individual and of a good individual of the same class (for instance, a harper and a good harper, and so generally with all classes) to be generically the same, the qualification of the latter’s superiority in excellence being added to the function in his case (I mean that if the function of a harper is to play the harp, that of a good harper is to play the harp well): if this is so, and if we declare that the function of man is a certain form of life, and define that form of life as the exercise of the soul’s faculties and activities in association with rational principle, and say that the function of a good man is to perform these activities well and rightly, and if a function is well performed when it is performed in accordance with its own proper

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excellence—from these premises it follows that the Good of man is the active exercise of his soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them.” 53. Section III.1, passim. 54. Section III.2, pp. 190ff. 55. For ethos as “dwelling place,” cf. Agamben, Potentialities, pp. 116ff. 56. Ibid., pp. 203f. 57. Section III.2, pp. 192f. 58. See Section III.2, pp. 169ff. This darkness in which the lovers come to light in Agamben is to be carefully distinguished from the light in which selves come to darkness in Altizer. Agamben’s paraphysical ethics is to Altizer’s cryptophysical ethics as resemblance is to dissemblance, as concealment in light is to revelation in darkness. See Section III.1, pp. 133ff., including n. 6. 59. Agamben, Potentialities, pp. 270f. 60. Ibid. 61. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 526ff. 62. The mathematical structure of |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸ (integral product 8.2944e20, rational product 3.6e0, linear product 2.304e20) incorporates that of the unique natural number 82944 (integral product 82944, rational product 36, linear product 2304). For 82944, cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.6. For the absolutely balanced appearance of 82944 in relation to Unity in the Hebrew for “dead center”/“point zero of energy,” ‫האפס שׁל‬ ‫( תּנופה נקדת‬integral product 8.2944e22, rational product Unity, linear product 8.2944e22), cf. ibid., pp. 426ff., et passim. Cf., below, n. 70, and p. 245, n. 93. 63. Section II.1, passim. 64. Cf., above, p. 240, n. 42. 65. Leahy, Foundation, p. 406 [italics removed]. 66. Ibid., p. 408. 67. Ibid. 68. Cf., above, pp. 208f. 69. For the real trinary logic categories as essential transformations of Peirce’s transformation of the Kantian categories, cf., above, p. 240, n. 42. 70. Backnote 1. Re the beginning and the 9-fold, cf. the integral product of ‫חדוש גמור‬, “Absolute Newness”/”Absolute Creation,” 82944 × 9. Its linear product is 8.2944 × 109. Its rational product is 9 × 10-5. Cf., also, above, n. 62, and below, p. 245, n. 93. For Cordovero’s use of ‫חדוש גמור‬, referring to the first beginning, cf. E.R. Wolfson, Aleph, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley, 2006). 71. Section II.2, p. 88.

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72. Categorial Absolute Quality is the Fourthness foundational to the three preceding categories whose Peircean analogues are, respectively, Thirdness, Firstness, and Secondness (cf., above, p. 240, n. 42). 73. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Chapter 7. 74. For the Trinitarian analogues to the elements of real trinary logic and their ethical counterparts, see Section II.2, p. 88, the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity.” See also Leahy, Foundation, Appendix: “The De Trinitate of Augustine and the Logic.” 75. Cf. Section III.1, pp. 133ff. and pp. 158ff. 76. See, above, pp. 219ff. 77. Cf. Section III.2, pp. 190ff. 78. See Backnotes 3 and 4. 79. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 102f. 80. Ibid. 81. Cf. Section II.2, p. 88, the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity.” 82.����������������������������������������������������������������������������� Cf. Section III.2, pp. 173ff., including n. 27, the absolute means-end identity in the thinking now occurring for the first time. 83. For Maimonides on the Name that was with God before the creation as the Tetragrammaton, cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 359ff. 84. Greek , “above,” in composition connotes increase.  is here translated accordingly. Cf., also, Leahy, Novitas Mundi, Appendix γ. 85. Section III.2, pp. 189ff., et passim. 86. Above, pp. 221f. 87. Agamben, The Coming Community, pp. 75f. 88. Section III.1, p. 133. 89. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 627f., for the discontinuity of being and nothing in the beginning thought for the first time; also, ibid., pp. 13ff., for the absolute predicament of existence itself. The beginning thought essentially as absolute separation of being and nothing—at once as absolute embodiment precluding every presupposition—precludes in particular set theory’s presupposing existence to language in the axiom of separation which “indicates that being is anterior to language” (A. Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham [Continuum, 2005], p. 501) and “that it is solely within the presupposition of existence that language operates—separates—and that what it thereby induces in terms of consistent multiplicity is supported in its being, in an anticipatory manner, by a presentation which is already there” (ibid., p. 47). The name that “names the name itself ” names the “being-named” of the thing,” names being itself, names the name that is existence—precluding the intelligibility of the ultimate form of presupposing being—the Void—precluding ontology as “theory of the void” (ibid., pp. 52ff.). 90. Cf., above, pp. 207ff.

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91. Aquinas, Summa Theologica (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, New York, 1957), II-II, 30, 4. 92. See above, pp. 221ff. 93. The integral product of Ô Ωrx¸ th^ q |Apokal¥cevq (“the beginning of the Apocalypse”) is 6.5028096e31. The integral product of |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸ (“Resurrection’s beginning”) is 8.2944e20 (above, p.9 243, n. 62; cf. also, ibid., n. 70). Qua natural number 6.5028096e7 = (9!/i∑=1i)2 = 1 × 784 × 82944 (the product of the natural numbers that are uniquely their integral products [cf. Leahy, Foundation, p. 444, n. 2]). Qua integral products, Ô Ωrx¸ th^ q |Apokal¥cevq/|Anaståsevq Ωrx¸, 6.5028096e31/8.2944e20, = 7.84e10, the integral product of Apokålyciq (“Apocalypse”). 94. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 296f. 95. Agamben, The Open, pp. 91f. 96. Cf. Section III.2, pp. 181ff.; also, Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 152f. 97. Cf., above, pp. 221ff. 98. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 622ff. 99. Cf. Section III.2, pp. 189ff. ^ 100. praeiq, “meek/gentle,” shares the Sanskrit root prīnāti with (the following etymology adapted from D. Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary. Available online at: http://www.etymonline.com. April 2009) O.E. freond, prp. of freogan “to love, to favor,” from P.Gmc. *frijojanan “to love” (cf. O.N. frændi, O.Fris. friund, M.H.G. friunt, Ger. Freund, Goth. frijonds “friend,” all alike from prp. forms). It is thereby related to O.E. freo, “free.” The meekness conceived essentially as the embodiment of the perfectly qualitative limitation of the quantum—absolute placedness of existence—is substantively analogous to the perfectly free limitations characterizing the relations of friends. The noun substantive of klhronom™v, “to receive a portion/lot,” klhrønomq, “the Receiver of the apportioned allotment,” is the counterpart of oʺkonømoq, the Distributor of the dwelling. 101. See Backnotes 3 and 4. 102. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 326f. and 390f. 103. Cf. Section III.1, p. 135, pp. 157f., and pp. 188ff. 104. Above, pp. 227ff. 105. Cf. Section II.2, p. 88, the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity.” 106. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, p. 17. 107. Cf. Section II.3, pp. 120ff. 108. Cf., above, pp. 223ff. 109. Cf., above, p. 240, n. 42. 110. Cf. Section III.2, pp. 189ff. 111. Omnipotence itself creates sans causality. The unprecedented actuality of the object of consciousness, or of the existence of the person, is qua absolutely

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other identity of consciousness or the person nevertheless effectively caused by the consciousness or the person qua place where it actually takes place, which, supposing the absolutely contrary to fact condition, would be not at all the case were it not for the real and absolutely unconditioned simplicity of omnipotence. 112. Cf. Section III.2, pp. 180ff. 113. Cf., above, p. 219f. and p. 243, n. 58. See also Section II.2, p. 84f., Section II.3, passim, and Section III.1, pp. 134f. 114. Cf. Appendix, “The Person as Absolute Particular.” 115. For the “Very First,” cf. Leahy, Foundation, pp. 610ff., 622f., and 627f. 116. In the analysis following, note the analogue to Paul’s understanding of the relation of his sufferings and those of Christ in Colossians 1:24: ^ “For the sake of his body the church I fill up (Ωntanaplhrv ) in my flesh ^ what Christ’s afflictions properly lack (tÅ Êster¸mata tvn ulºcevn toy^ Xristoy^ ).” 117. Nota bene: what omnipotence “lacks” is not existence, but mediated existence, and, as real trinary logic makes clear for the first time, most particularly, commodally mediated existence, that is, existence mediated by withness. The real withness of the persons of the Trinity as such is precisely their unmediated, that is, immediate, existence. Prior to the thinking now occurring for the first time this distinction of the persons of the Trinity could be thought to be unthinkable (cf., below, pp. 264ff, nn. 21 and 22). Now Three who are One are conceived in essence, not as Êpoståseiq, but as metaståseiq, not as ‘substances’ but as ‘withstandings’, as the constituents of the immediately commodal change (metåstasiq) itself that is Omnipotence—of the One absolutely manifest as absolute nimbleness. 118. This precise relationship of the three commandments has its perfect mathematical expression in the extreme and mean ratio (the divine proportion) where the division of the line AB at C is such that CB (f-2) : AC (f-1) :: AC (f-1) : AB (f-2 + φ-1) :: Creature : Creator :: Incarnate Word : Creature & Creator :: Love of neighbor : Love of God :: Love of neighbor in Christ : Love of neighbor & Love of God. The proof of this proportion is the Creature identified with the Creature & Creator is identically the Creator identified with the Incarnate Word. Thus the proof of John 14:9: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (cf. Leahy, Foundation, p. 623). Cf. Euclid, Elements 6, def. 3, ∏ “kroq kaÁ m™soq løgoq “the extreme and mean ^ ^ ratio,” with John 13:14: ∏ PatÓr ®n tÛ YÛ “the Father in the Son,” where 9 the integral product of the former is 6.5028096e30 = (9!/i∑=1 i)2 × 1023 = 1 × 784 × 82944 (the product of the natural numbers that are uniquely their integral products, Leahy, Foundation, p. 444, n. 2) × 1023 and that of the lat9 ter is 6.5028096e33 = (9!/i∑=1 i)2 × 1026 = 1 × 784 × 82944 × 1026. Cf. Luke

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20:36, yoº th^ q Ωnaotåsevq “the sons of the resurrection,” whose integral product is likewise 6.5028096e33. Cf., also, above, p. 245, n. 93, Ô Ωrx¸ th^ q |Apokal¥cevq “the beginning of the Apocalypse,” whose integral product 9 is 6.5028096e31 = (9!/i∑=1 i)2 × 1024 = 1 × 784 × 82944 × 1024 . 119. For the distinction between original creation and new creation, cf. Section III.2, pp. 185f. 120. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� Cf. Backnote 3, where the last is actually second to the first in the transcendental deduction of the Cornerstone construction order.

Appendix 1 The Person as Absolute Particular1 In what follows Kierkegaard’s notion of den Enkelte is situated in its Hegelian context as “self-equal and immediate,” C.S. Peirce’s notion of the person as idiosyncratic idea is contrasted as “other-equal and mediate,” and, finally, an understanding of the person as “other-equal and immediate” is set forth. That there might be an absolute universal does not immediately discomfort thought. Take for example the Thomistic notion of being itself as the universal agent of creation. Likewise that there should be an absolute individual is not intrinsically a problem for thought. Consider the Hegelian notion of the Absolute Individual that is the Divine Mind. But that there should be an absolute particular would appear to be a contradictio in adjecto. This was certainly Kierkegaard’s notion concerning the spiritual category of den Enkelte, the “single,” the “particular” person who, in the extreme, existed on the far side of the universal (a place non-existent for reason) in passionate commitment to the absurd notion that the eternal begins in time. Kierkegaard’s thought was that the proper medium for den Enkelte was not thought but existence. The particular person cannot be absolute, and yet it absolutely is. For Kierkegaard den Enkelte, the single one, exists after having been subsumed by the universal, that is, after the moment of the individual—the moment wherein the particular is within the universal—precisely as that individual’s impossible predicate. In terms of the logical syllogism den Enkelte may be written as the predicate P in (U + P = I)/P. What is predicated of what is brought under the universal is what is brought under the universal not brought under the universal. Or in the terms of Kierkegaard’s existentialist subjectivity: what is predicated of the particular self is the particular self not the particular self, but in effect the (particular) God.2 As in Philosophical Fragments, so also in effect in his last entry in his Journal, on September 25, 1855, where Kierkegaard writes: Like a man traveling around the whole world with the fixed idea of hearing a singer with a perfect tone, God sits in heaven and listens. And every time he hears praise from a person whom he has brought to the extremity of life-weariness, God says to himself: This is it. He

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says it as if he were making a discovery, but of course he was prepared, for he himself was present with the person and helped him insofar as God can give help for what only freedom can do. Only freedom can do it, but the surprising thing is to be able to express oneself by thanking God for it, as if it were God who did it. And in his joy over being able to do this, he is so happy that he will hear absolutely nothing about his having done it, but he gratefully attributes all to God and prays God that it may stay that way, that it is God who does it, for he has no faith in himself, but he does have faith in God.3 The particular as the predicate of the individual in Kierkegaard is not at all a simple rejection of Hegel’s notion of the individual. For Hegel the moment of individuality was the concrete recognition that the concept of a universal that was not the particular and the concept of a particular that was not the universal were false concepts of the abstract understanding. For Kierkegaard only the moment of existence is the concrete realization of the truth of individuality. Apart from existence the truth of individuality remains itself an abstraction of reason assimilating reason to the false understanding. Kierkegaard’s thinking out-Hegels Hegel. The task—no mean task—is to exist the reality of individuality. Kierkegaard writes in his Journal, on July 4, 1840: After the system is complete and has reached the category of reality, the new doubt appears, the new contradiction, the last and the most profound: by what means does the metaphysical reality bind itself to historical reality…. This unity of the metaphysical and the accidental is already resident in self-consciousness, which is the point of departure for personality. I become conscious simultaneously in my eternal validity, in, so to speak, my divine necessity, and in my accidental finitude…. This latter aspect must not be overlooked or rejected; on the contrary, the true life of the individual is its apotheosis, which does not mean that this empty, contentless I steals, as it were, out of this finitude, in order to become volatilized and diffused in its heavenward emigration, but rather that the divine inhabits and finds its task in the finite.4 The unity of the metaphysical and the historical in self-consciousness, the absolute form of which is the Hegelian synthesis, is by no means a ground

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for complacency but rather the starting point for the task of personality, viz., for the deification of “this finitude.” The I filled with the experience of its accidental nature is required to realize its divine necessity while and as it is clothed in finitude. Hegel’s Absolute Idea may be succinctly understood historically as the synthesis of the Aristotelian notion of the divine mind’s contact with itself and the Augustinian notion of the divine mind’s contact with the world.5 The logical deep-structure of this synthesis is stated by Hegel in the Science of Logic: In ordinary inference, the being of the finite appears as ground of the absolute; because the finite is, therefore the absolute is. But the truth is that the absolute is, because the finite is the inherently selfcontradictory opposition, because it is not. In the former meaning, the inference runs thus: the being of the finite is the being of the absolute; but in the latter, thus: the non-being of the finite is the being of the absolute.6 The power of this argument is its simplicity, its sheer enkelhed. This argument from the nothingness of the finite to the being of the absolute enables Hegel to overturn with one blow all previous arguments for the existence of God, and, not least, to set aside the antinomies of Kant, as fundamentally mistaken in their taking as the starting point the being of the world. Hegel’s extraordinary argument instantiates the inference that sublates itself through the negative ground and, as vanished, grounds itself as “self-equal and immediate” (das sich selbst Gleiche und Unmittelbare).7 For Kierkegaard the new immediacy that is the faith “that can never be canceled in existence, since it is the highest, and by canceling it one becomes null and nichts”8—this new immediacy that is faith is the concrete form of the abstract self-equality and immediacy of the inference to the being of the absolute—realized by the existing individual whose esthetic-ethical immediacy has otherwise simply ceased to exist. Nor is Kierkegaard unaware that den Enkelte is itself a certain abstraction. He writes in Postscript: In a certain sense, the subjective thinker speaks just as abstractly as the abstract thinker, because the latter speaks about humanity in general, subjectivity in general, the other about the one human being (unum noris, omnes [if you know one, you know all]). But this

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one human being is an existing human being, and the difficulty is not left out.9 Den Enkelte is humanity in particular, as Kierkegaard says, subjectivity in particular, the particular form of the Idea of God realized in and through the experience of the nothingness of finite existence, hence, itself an abstraction, indeed, as it were, an absolute induction (unum noris, omnes), but, qua absolute induction, itself in its very form calling attention to the difficulty that existence is for abstraction.10 That is, the subjective thinker’s speaking calls attention not to the difficulty that abstraction is for existence (it is no difficulty for the existing person who is not absent-mindedly forgetful of his or her existence), but rather to the difficulty that existence is for abstraction, the difficulty explicitly included in the form of the subjective thinker’s abstraction, that is, in the very form of the abstraction as the particular one, the single one, den Enkelte. This is so because what is still operative in Kierkegaard’s notion of den Enkelte is the Cartesian reduction of humanity to the cogito, to the abstraction from the body, to the soul as finite mind at once the Idea (image & likeness) of God containing the Idea of God,11 the soul as finite self-reflective notion. The Cartesian I is effectively the I of a ‘mere man’ abstracted from the body and its world. For Descartes, this I, although finite, was not nothing.12 But for Hegel this I, qua finite, is nothing and as such vanishes in the infinite.13 The Kierkegaardian move to particular subjectivity is then not a move beyond the abstraction inherent in selfreflection, but rather the acknowledgment within the abstraction of the subjective thinker of the difficulty of existing the self-equality and immediacy of the divine idea. This difficulty is absent in Descartes whose immaterial finitude prescinds the nothingness of corporeal finitude. This difficulty is present in Kierkegaard following Hegel’s elevation of the Cartesian Idea of God to the position of the Infinite in the wake of Kant’s reduction of temporal-spatial substance to being purely phenomenal and at once the substance and limit of the finite consciousness. This is the context in which the refusal of its own nothingness on the part of the self of the natural man is the incomparable difficulty included in the abstraction of the subjective thinker. The absolute particular—the particular predicated of the individual whose identity involves the nothingness of the particular qua particular— the incomparable difficulty for Kierkegaard’s subjective thinker—is not

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such a difficulty for the thinker whose subjectivity is ultimately a negative inference from the objective state of the world mediated by others as others. For C.S Peirce, the father of American pragmatism, the Absolute Idea of God is in fact the General Mind of God evolving in time and in continuity with the general mind of humanity, and, as he says in Some Consequences of Four Incapacities, the “individual man, since his separate existence is manifested only by ignorance and error, so far as he is anything apart from his fellows, and from what he and they are to be, is only a negation.”14 Peirce assumes that the thinking of the child is initially without self-consciousness and that the latter only lately develops in the context of discovering that the judgments of others are better predictors than the child’s when it comes to what is true of the world independently of its contact with his or her body. In effect self-consciousness arises with the discovery that the testimony of others is a better predictor of truth and reality than the individual’s judgment in the absence of immediate contact. It is the discovery that the truth and reality of one’s own judgment compared to the general judgment of others is more likely than the latter to be erroneous. In Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man, Peirce contrasts individual self-consciousness with “the pure apperception” that “is the self-assertion of THE ego.”15 But for Peirce for whom there can be no simple line of demarcation between the phenomenal and the noumenal—between appearance and substance—THE ego is in the process of realizing itself concretely in the evolutionary growth of the universe, while the concomitant tendency of the generality of human judgments to come more and more to agree upon what is the reality of the world explains in part what has so far been realized. The individual man is but a negation apart from the general judgment of his fellows, but, unlike its Hegelian analogue, in Peirce’s pragmatism the particular person or I is not absolutely but only relatively negated. Likewise the inference to the I is not one to self-equality and immediacy but to other-equality and mediacy. In Some Consequences of Four Incapacities, Peirce writes: “We have no power of Introspection, but all knowledge of the internal world is derived by hypothetical reasoning from our knowledge of external facts.”16 The immortality of the I is assured to the individual insofar as the idea which he or she is is seen to be a part or limitation of the whole truth that it will in the long run not have been possible to ignore. The ultimate possibility of the person is not its being ignorant and erroneous, not its being apart from, but rather a part with, a participant, in the ultimate general agreement that

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will constitute reality, precisely its not being a “self.” The whole tendency of the universe is toward the ideal final state—never however fully and finally to be realized—although gradually always more and more so—in which the habit-taking tendency will have brought all possibilities to a perfect particularity from which all that was merely a function of the vanity of the person, that is, a function of the “self,” will have been once and for all eliminated, while the particularity per se, the “idiosyncrasy” or true idea that the person is, will live forever.17 The pragmatism of Peirce inverts and subverts the anancistic order of the Hegelian eternally actualized unfolding of the divine mind.18 In Hegel Necessity precedes Freedom, Freedom recognizes its own Necessity. In Peirce there is the contradiction to Hegel in the form of the agapistic order of evolutionary cosmological growth. Freedom or Mind precedes Necessity or Nature. In pragmatism Nature recognizes and realizes its own Mind, its own Freedom.19 As Augustine would have understood it, Mind in American pragmatism is contemperated with Nature.20 The realization of its own Mind by Nature is then to be continued into the indefinite long run as the never finally perfect specification of the original possibility—a specification never simply to be, but, on the whole, forever more closely to be approximated. This never-ending approach to the full realization of “the Creator’s purpose” is the cosmological implication of the three categories of Peirce’s phenomenology, wherein what otherwise would be the moments of the Hegelian system are understood to be irreducible to one another, each—Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness—distinctly different from the others. In place of Hegel’s Aufhebung, in place of the abyss, instead of the negative mediation, there is in Peirce’s pragmatism what one might call Bewarhung, the affirmative mediation of the others, the preservation beyond death of the particular individual precisely insofar as he or she is not a self, but will have become, as he says, in Immortality in the Light of Synechism, “a spiritual consciousness,” “one of the eternal verities, which is embodied in the universe as a whole…[and] as an archetypal idea can never fail; and in the world to come is destined to a special spiritual embodiment.”21 Now the question arises: Is there an understanding of the particular person that is entirely free of the limits of abstraction?22 Is there a completely concrete understanding of the person? Is there an understanding of the person beyond the Hegelian idea and the Peircean symbol? What might be such an understanding? It would be the essential and absolutely noninevitable perfect specification of freedom no longer postponed. The

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other-equal and otherwise mediate person terminating in existence where essence is not an alternative to existence but where essence is, indeed, existence absolutely, absolutely particular or simple. It would be the beginning of existence transcending the relative middle. The beginning of existence as relative absolute. The relative absolute would be the person existing absolutely for the first time: the person existing in the form of the absolute simplicity of the beginning: the person thought essentially, that is, as what is thought, as the thought of existence: die Person als Bestehengedanke. In Kierkegaard the particular is at variance with the nothingness of its own particularity. In Peirce the particular is in accord with the notnothingness of its being (nature) potentially at one with the totality of things (the eternal set of things), this totality of things the universe as “a great symbol of God’s purpose.”23 In Peirce the other-equal and perfectly mediated reality of the person is never finally realized in matter. Indeed, its ideal truth is a spiritual existence that is essentially not material.24 But let the other-equal otherwise mediate person terminate in existence, rather than in idea. Then the actual existence of the person is the complete realization of its freedom. Then “all men are created equal” in actual fact, not merely in idea. Or, what is otherwise the idea (otherwise the abstraction) is existed absolutely in the form of an essentially concrete thinking for the first time the absolute otherness/particularity/simplicity itself of the person. Not the person existing the symbol, but for the first time the simplicity of the person beyond symbol: the particularity of the actual person: the person beyond that whose formal essence precludes matter: the person constituting essentially its material identity. In A Guess at the Riddle Peirce writes: “there is no absolute third, for the third is of its own nature relative, and this is what we are always thinking, even when we aim at the first or second,” “every state of the universe at a measurable point of time is [this] third.”25 This third relates the Absolute First or nothing particular to the Absolute Second or everything particular. But now imagine the third absolutely abbreviated to “every state of the universe” at an immeasurable point of time: every state of the universe now the absolute third. In that case the phenomenology of consciousness will have become that of the object. If Peirce distinguished Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, then add to these a Fourthness, an Absolute Now, Fact or Identity, in effect, an Absolutely Unconditioned Break in the Continuum, in which the three Peircean categories are themselves the elements not of

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“one undivided feeling without parts,”26 but of “one undivided feeling” not without parts, no less undivided—the elements of the category of absolute quality—the object absolutely and immediately cognized as the now actual particular.27 That reality is identically the simplicity itself or singleness of the person. That everything particular—the terminus of the universe—is the person now other-equal and immediate.28

Notes 1. Presented at the Seventh International Conference on Persons held at the University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, August 2003. 2. Cf. S. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton, 1985), passim. 3. Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers Vol. 6, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Bloomington and London, 1978), p. 576. 4. Soren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers Vol. 2, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Bloomington and London, 1970), pp. 213f. 5. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot, Burlington, and Singapore, 2003), Chapter 3, et passim. 6. Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (London and New York, 1969), p. 443. 7. Ibid., p. 483, where, further on, Hegel writes: “Existence is the reflection of the ground into itself, its identity-with-self (Identität mit sich selbst) achieved in its negation, and therefore the mediation (Vermittlung) that has posited itself as identical with itself and thereby is an immediacy (Unmittelbarkeit).” 8. S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Vol. 1, trans. H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong (Princeton 1992), p. 347. 9. Ibid., p. 353. 10. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, p. 84. 11. R. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy III, trans. J. Veitch, 1901. Available online at: http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/meditation3.html. April 2009. 12. Ibid., II. 13. Hegel’s Science of Logic, pp. 137ff. For the contrast between Descartes and Hegel on the significance of the finite and the infinite, see Leahy, Faith and

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Philosophy, pp. 37ff., et passim. 14. C.S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings Vol. 1, ed. N. Houser and C Kloesel (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1992), p. 55. 15. Ibid., p. 18. 16. Ibid., p. 30. 17. C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, ed. A.W. Burks (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 7.595. 18. Cf. Peirce, The Essential Peirce Vol. 1, pp. 352ff. 19. Cf. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Chapter 7. 20. Ibid., Chapters 4 and 5. 21. C.S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings Vol. 2, ed. Peirce Edition Project (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1998), p. 3. In contrast to Kierkegaard, it may be understood that for Peirce the proper medium for the person is not existence but thought! 22. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), p. 54, “the thing itself abstracted from nothing (the perfect abstraction, the abstraction ex nihilo).” 23. Peirce, The Essential Peirce Vol. 2, pp. 193f. 24. Peirce, Collected Papers, 7.593. 25. Peirce, The Essential Peirce Vol. 1, pp. 250f. 26. Peirce, Collected Papers, 7.540. 27. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� The break in the continuum is absolute insofar as it intervenes as the beginning of the mediation of absolute possibility and absolute actuality. If Thirdness is relative by its nature, presupposing Firstness and Secondness, then Fourthness intervenes as the beginning of Thirdness following Secondness. Although it is the beginning of the Thirdness that is the middle between Firstness and Secondness, Fourthness does not immediately follow Firstness as might be imagined; it is not likened to bare Secondness. Fourthness is the beginning qua foundation of order. It is the beginning of the Absolute Middle or Absolute Third: a New Firstness or Essential Newness, an Absolute Now: the intervention of the beginning that is the subvention of all experience. Fourthness is the intervening subvention constituting the Identity of Possibility and Measurable Actuality. As such, Fourthness is Kierkegaard’s “new immediacy” altogether beyond subjectivity now beyond Peirce categorically rational and other-equal. For more on the logical relation of Fourthness to the Peircean categories, cf. Leahy, Foundation, IV.1, III.1 and V.1. Cf., also, above, Section III.3, p. 240, n. 42. 28. For the parsing of singularity, particularity, etc., see Backnote 4. For more on persons, see Appendix 2.

Appendix 2 Categories and Relations of Persons1 Definition: A person is the absolute ceasing that an absolutely deictic otherconsciousness is.2 Q. How does the thinking now occurring distinguish between human persons and non-human persons? A. If one of the three divine persons of the Trinity each identically the one divine nature3 assumed human nature, then the other two divine persons qua the one identical divine nature—not qua specific persons—assumed human nature. So the non-human/divine persons qua the one identical divine nature of the three persons assumed human nature. Thus while there are divine specifically non-human persons, one has to say that there are no divine persons absolutely non-human. Moreover, if omnipotence moving to new ground embodies the universe hitherto embodied in the resurrected Distributor of the dwellings,4 then not only are all things ‘living’ and ‘non-living’—so embodied—to be construed as persons not absolutely non-human, but also those transcendental persons known to Aquinas as ‘spiritual substances’ are—so embodied—not absolutely not human. For the first time being thought essentially is universally human. Does this universal humanity now actually occurring essentially conceived for the first time admit of being quantum-qualitatively differentiated? Yes. This new universal humanity is transcendentally differentiated as being(s each) at the disposal of the other(s).5 In the thinking now occurring for the first time transcendental difference is identity: different species of being (person) are essentially identically with one another, withstanding/ standingwith the other(s).6 In the thinking now occurring humanity is not merely rational animality, but is for the first time the species making species,7 at once commodious mercy.8 It was thought before now that the Incarnation was not the divine becoming a person but the divine person becoming human. Analogously the participation of specifically non-human non-divine created persons in the humanity of this divine person is not their becoming persons nor their becoming creatures but their (ac)commodating human nature. Since

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human being essentially personal is identically the existing universe it is now essentially thought for the first time that there are not only specifically but not absolutely non-human persons, both divine and not divine, but also specifically but not absolutely non-personal creatures. As the other two divine persons qua one identical divine nature assumed human nature when the Word qua person assumed human nature, so that there were then no absolutely non-human persons, so the divine person assuming human nature assumed by virtue of the one human nature the existing universe of specifically personal and specifically non-personal creatures. In the Incarnation the person of the human nature was not created— that person was the Word. What was created was the human nature. While human being is essentially personal, the person who is this human being is divine. This human is absolutely personal. The identity of specifically non-personal creatures and humanity effected by omnipotence moving to new ground is then an identity of specifically non-personal creatures and humanity both essentially and absolutely personal. This is not those creatures becoming creatures but their being (ac)commodated by the particular absolute person—the person human and divine—in whom they are embodied together with all other creatures. Some specifically non-human persons qua creatures are incorporated in humanity for the first time by the Resurrection. These are humbled by the Incarnation. Some non-human non-personal species qua creatures are understood to be incorporated in humanity/in personal being by omnipotence newly embodying the Resurrection for the first time. These are exalted by the Incarnation. To these latter in a special way (commodally) apply the following: the eucharist of existence itself now actually occurring for the first time: the beginning of omnipotence itself absolutely sensible:9 as never before matter the Body itself (the Body withstanding). The categories of persons, then, are four in number: absolute persons (the Trinity), formal persons (‘spiritual substances’), essential persons (humans), and material persons (‘living’ and ‘non-living’ things).10 The last, the specifically non-personal creatures not absolutely non-human not absolutely non-personal embodied for the first time in omnipotence embodying the universe embodied in the Distributor of the dwellings are personal qua human being essentially personal embodied in a human being absolutely personal. The absolutely personal human embodies all creatures formally, essentially, and materially personal.

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Persons essentially persons share the humanity of the person absolutely person. By virtue of this shared humanity persons essentially persons are not absolutely not absolute persons. By virtue of their embodiment in the human absolute person persons essentially personal are absolutely personal. Q. In the Appendix to Faith and Philosophy:11 “The I is that something— excluding nothing, not a self—wasted when everything including nothing is consumed.” Why is the I wasted, not consumed? A. Were the I not wasted, there would be no real other, rather we would be returned to the Hegelian notion of absolute self-creation. The apocalyptic God, unlike the Absolute Weakling that is Hegel’s God,12 is actually omnipotent. Omnipotence is to actually create a real other. Q. Then: “The society of wasted somethings is something not wasted, is something consumed by God after being & nothing have been consumed.”13 Why does God not consume the I but consumes the society of I’s? Because there exists no one I to consume but at least always two I’s? A. Perhaps more precisely, “after being and nothing have been consumed”— after the manifestation of actual omnipotence—after the I is created as withstanding/standingwith—as with others—these others, this society of I’s, is the pièce de résistance, the “piece with staying power,” the other withstanding/standingwith others: absolute résistance, absolute withness whose truth is omnipotence. This is the created omnipotence that is properly lacking, i.e., second,14 to uncreated omnipotence. Omnipotence itself (Creator) with the withness that is omnipotence itself other for the first time (creature).15 This is existence absolutely after the beginning beyond beyond x,16 the new world after the never before absolute now, indeed, “a new heaven and a new earth,”17 a belonging beyond belonging. Q. In the Appendix to Faith and Philosophy:18 “. . . the God of the essentially apocalyptic thinking now actually beginning is the truth of being & nothing but not the truth of the I.” Why is God not the truth of the I? What, if something, is the truth of the I? A. The I is the truth of the I. God is not the truth of the I = the I absolutely is an other. God who is not the truth of the I (the particular) is the truth

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of the infinite number of I’s (the infinity of particulars) whose truth is to absolutely exist. Omnipotence is the truth of the second omnipotence now existing for the first time. Q. Yes, identity and difference are identical, but not the same. I am asking how 2 is not the same as 1 and 3. A. In effect you are thinking: difference = not the same. But in the thinking now occurring there is no concept of “same.” The difference that is identically identity is not a matter of not the same as something else: the difference that is identity is not a function of any comparison, positive or negative. There is absolute (non-relative) particularity (absolutely different existents) for the first time.19 An infinite number of non-relatively (absolutely) different existents absolutely relating with one another. Personality is not relatively specific, i.e., not a genus whose species (persons) are it incompletely. Each (this particular) person is absolutely personality. But absolutely specific/ personal personality is 3 persons. In the thinking now occurring for the first time Unity = 3 and 3 is always predicated of 2.20 The personality (the 3) that each 1 of 2 is is predicated of the 2 since absolutely non-generic (specific) personality is such that while every 1 is it, no 1 is it either actually or potentially (there is no genus) at the expense of the other 1.21 The personality, the 3 persons, that 2 persons are, each completely, is a 3rd person, since 3 = 1. So to predicate 3 of 2 is to predicate absolutely specific personality of each absolutely, to predicate at once a 3rd person. There can never be less than 3 persons, since where there is 1 (formal withstanding) there are 2 (essential withstanding), and where there are 2 there are 3 (absolute withstanding).22 The Trinity is absolutely specific personality = 3 persons = 1 God. Thus, 1 person = absolute specific personality = the Father = 1 = 3 = 1 absolutely another/different, identically a second person = the Son; 2 persons = absolute specific personality = the Father the Son = 1 = 3 = 2 absolutely another/ different, identically a third person = the Spirit. Now, at 3 the difference between Creator and creature manifests itself as follows: in the case of the Creator: 3 persons = absolute specific personality = the Father the Son the Spirit = 1 = 3 = 3 absolutely another/different, identically the Incarnate Word ≠ a fourth person. In the case of the Creator the series ends here. In the case of the creature the series continues: 3 persons = absolute specific

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personality = the three persons specifically but not absolutely non-divine the Incarnate Word = 1 = 3 = 4 absolutely another/different, identically a fourth (created) person; 4 persons = absolute specific personality = the four persons specifically but not absolutely non-divine the Incarnate Word = 1 = 3 = 5 absolutely another/different, identically a fifth (created) person, and so on ad infinitum. To any number of creatures is always added 1 human/ divine absolute person = the Incarnate Word embodying the universe— the ‘non-set of non-sets’—the setting free from all sets, the absolute withstanding/standingwith, omnipotence free from all “togtherness.”23

Notes 1. Answers to Questions submitted by Zarina Maiwandi on behalf of the class in The New York Philosophy Corporation Spring 2007 course Quaestiones Quaelibet. 2. A person is I, at once other, without loss of identity, not at all self. Consciousness: existence thoroughly with-knowing. For absolute ceasing cf. Appendix 4. 3. Saint Augustine: The Trinity (trans. S. McKenna, Washington, D.C., 1963). 4. See, above, Sections II.2, II.3, III.2, and III.3. 5. D.G. Leahy, Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being (Albany; reprint 1994), Appendix γ. 6. See, above, Section I. 7. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), pp. 559f. 8. See, above, p. 232. 9. Leahy, Foundation, Section V.3. 10. See, below, p. 265, n. 22. 11. D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot and Burlington, 2003), p. 155. 12. See, above, p. 31, n. 59. 13. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, p. 160. 14. See, above, pp. 236f., including n. 116.

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15. See, above, pp. 10ff., et passim. 16. See, above, Section III.1, et passim. 17. Revelation 21:1 and Isaiah 65:17. 18. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, p. 156. 19. See, above, Appendix 1. 20. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.1, real trinary logic. See, also, Backnote 1. 21. See, above, Sections I, II.2, and III.2-3, the notion for the first time of the absolute specification of the transcendental essence. The latter is at once “the absolute nullification of the Trinity” (cf. the treatment of the Trinity following immediately in the text above)—where nullification ex abysso is differentiation—the absolute differentiation of the Trinity existence itself for the first time. Cf. Leahy, Novitas Mundi, pp. 363f.: “In this thinking now occurring life itself is conceived to be, formally, the substantially transcendent identity of the transcendental (the essence, exsistere ipsum). In the transcendental repetition of creation itself now occurring the spiritual reality of the church in essence in conceived to be the absolute nullification of the Trinity now occurring for the first time in thought (not, therefore the relative nullification as in that thinking belonging in essence to the past).” The Hegelian die Aufhebung is the annulment of the negation of the affirmative that puts an end to that negation, preserving at once its momentary truth in the concept that is the divine process. This relative Aufhebung wherein not for the first time the now is not absolutely not now is the absolute weakness/ elasticity that is the Hegelian Idea of God (cf., above, p. 31, n. 59). But the absolute Aufhebung of the Trinity now occurring for the first time (in and as the form of an essentially new thinking) is, firstly, not the annulment of a negation of the affirmative, and, secondly, qua ‘absolute’ nullification of the Trinity existing for the first time, the truth of the sheer affirmative (the Yes and Amen) at once preserved in and as its ceasing (cf., below, Appendix 4 and Backnote 4)—the truth of the Trinity qua essence of being itself (ipsum esse) at once preserved in and as its ceasing—the Yes and Amen that is very ‘omnipotence’ (cf. Isaiah 65:16-25, 2 Corinthians 1:19-20, and Revalation. 3:14). As never before(, the) now omnipotence itself—absolutely now. Cf. Leahy, Foundation, p. 616: “For the first time the nothingness of the transcendent God is the actual existence of the transcendent God: now actually existing for the first time in history actually and ideally, the absolute and pure nothingness of the Creator—neither the perfectly impure nor the imperfectly pure negativity of ‘Trieb or kenosis’—the absolute and manifest very omnipotence of ipsum esse.”

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22. The foundational truth of personality is the Three-One that is the Trinity conceived essentially for the first time in the thinking now occurring as follows: Absolute Quality is the Minimum Absolute, or, employing Kant’s term for Limitation in an essentially new context (cf., above, pp. 189ff.), Infinite Einschränkung. This Infinite Einschränkung that is Absolute Quality or Omnipotence is absolutely essentially an infinitely discrete identity of Three infinite others: The Uncreated Persons 1) An infinitely discrete identity is absolutely sans exteriority (therefore sans interiority)—therefore absolutely not delimited either by itself or by another. 2) Another infinitely discrete identity is immediately second to it, else it is not an infinitely discrete identity but is an identity absolutely delimited by itself. a. If another is immediately second to it that second is likewise properly an infinitely discrete identity to which another is immediately second, else neither the first nor the second would be absolutely sans exteriority, i.e., an infinitely discrete identity. b. If another is not immediately second to the infinitely discrete identity second to the first, the latter second is properly not an infinitely discrete identity. 3) Another second to the infinitely discrete identity second to an infinitely discrete identity is thereby likewise immediately second to that to which the second is second, else that to which the second is second would be absolutely delimited by another. This third another immediately second to the first and second infinitely discrete identity is an infinitely discrete identity to which there is properly no immediate second, else this third would be not a third but indistinguishably the second infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first to which another immediately second to it would be immediately second to the first. a. If another infinitely discrete identity is not immediately second to this third it is absolutely not its delimitation by itself or by another—not by another since it is immediately second to the first which is absolutely not delimited by another; not by itself since it is immediately second to the second which is absolutely not delimited by itself—it is the infinite discretion of the third itself. b. That there is not another infinitely discrete identity immediately second to this second to the second infinitely discrete identity is

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compatible with the infinite discretion of the third itself qua infinite transparency of the Three infinite others. Since the Third is immediately second to the First as well as to the Second it is no less an Absolute discrete identity than are each the First and the Second. Cf., above, p. 4, including n. 5, also, Backnote 1, for Peirce’s Third, naturally a Relative in contrast to the First and the Second which are each an Absolute. The Relations of the Uncreated to Created Persons 1) If there is an infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first infinitely discrete identity, another infinitely discrete identity not immediately second to the first is mediately second to the infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first, else the mediately second infinitely discrete identity would be another infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first. 2) If there is an infinitely discrete identity mediately second to an infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first, it is mediately second to the infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first. Were this not the case the infinitely discrete identity that is not immediately seconded by another infinitely discrete identity would be absolutely precluded from having a second, precluded from creating, qua infinite transparency of the Three infinite others absolutely delimited by itself and by the others, in contradiction to the Infinite Discretion that is the Trinity. 3) Should there be an infinitely discrete identity mediately second to the infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first immediately discrete identity absolutely not delimited by another (at once mediately second to that infinitely discrete identity immediately second to that immediately second to the first) it is essentially not delimited by another. In this case there may or there may not be another infinitely discrete identity mediately second to it. a. Should there not be another infinitely discrete identity mediately second to it it would be formally an infinitely discrete identity essentially not delimited by another. b. Should there be another infinitely discrete identity mediately second to it it would be essentially an infinitely discrete identity essentially not delimited by another.

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i. In this case there would be another essentially infinitely discrete identity essentially not delimited by another mediately second to it that would likewise be at once mediately second to the infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first (at once to the immediately second to the immediately second to the first). ii. Should there be another essentially infinitely discrete identity essentially not delimited by another mediately second to this mediately second to the mediately second to the immediately second to the first infinitely discrete identity it would be at once mediately second to the mediately second to the immediately second to the first and mediately second to the immediately second to the first (at once to the immediately second to the immediately second to the first). iii. Should there be another infinitely discrete identity essentially not delimited by another not mediately second to that immediately second to the first but mediately second to the infinitely discrete identity mediately second to the infinitely discrete identity immediately second to the first that would be materially an infinitely discrete identity essentially not delimited by another. Such a materially infinitely discrete identity would be mediately second to all mediate seconds to the immediately second to the first, except in the case of a formally infinitely discreet identity. 23. See, above, pp. 55ff., and Backnotes 3 and 4. For Badiou’s equating ‘set’ and ‘togetherness’ see A. Badiou, The Century, trans. A. Toscano (Cambridge and Malden, 2007), p. 97.

Appendix 3 Whether Evil Creates the New World1 Q. Don’t both acting and not acting create the world? Don’t evil actions (or non-actions) create the world as fundamentally as ethical actions? A. Omnipotence is doing,2 indeed, absolute doing, “having happened as of now having ceased as of now”.3 If Evil is the “failure to act”4 then to fail to act is not actual “unless it is not actually doing without omnipotence,”5 unless it is not actually doing without “having happened as of now having ceased as of now.” Evil is not actual unless it is not actually doing without the absolute doing that is omnipotence. Omnipotence is that to which something is properly lacking.6 What is properly lacking to omnipotence is what is otherwise than beyond omnipotence—created omnipotence. The Good is the actual.7 Actually doing the Good is Beneficence.8 Beneficence is doing otherwise than without omnipotence (otherwise than beyond omnipotence: beyond beyond omnipotence). It is doing for the first time not without omnipotence and not not without omnipotence. Beneficence is actually doing as created omnipotence, as that which in the place of omnipotence actually creates. Beneficence is omnipotence for the first time beyond beyond x, omnipotence as never before absolutely Da, absolutely here/there, absolutely now, absolutely deictic. As never before omnipotence itself (omnipotence withstanding) absolutely sensible.9 Unlike utopian thinking which is thinking not being placed, being nowhere, not being here/now—not creating the world,10 essentially apocalyptic thinking, created omnipotence here and now, is anypothetotopian, absolutely placed, absolutely Da/here, absolutely now. Qua anypothetotopian, far from being just another story/idea, the thinking now occurring/essentially apocalyptic thinking for the first time is the absolutely real story/schema/idea—not the simulacrum of the absolute idea, not the simulacrum of omnipotence itself, not the representation of a reality but absolutely the reality. Anypothetotopian thinking is thinking for the first time a non-suppositional place, a place not under-placed, a

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non-subjective place—the place absolutely Da. Neither no place nor a place beyond place, nor ‘a place [that] fuses with beyond’,11 but the place beyond beyond place for the first time. Q. Please explain precisely how acting out one of the defective dispositions is different than creating the world absolutely here and now. A. The defective disposition, for example Malfeasance (not Beneficence, actually doing what is not right), is not actually doing without omnipotence. Evil is not actually doing for the first time in the place of omnipotence. Evil is improperly lacking to omnipotence, it is not beyond beyond omnipotence, but (merely) beyond omnipotence, second/lacking to omnipotence incommodiously/improperly. Evil is second/lacking to omnipotence not withstandingly, in the mode of non-being/non-with, as a quasi nihil, as a void.12 Evil—not beyond beyond omnipotence as created omnipotence actually doing—is (merely) beyond omnipotence, actually not doing, actually failing to act—such is the absolute simplicity of existence existing ex nihilo. Where omnipotence = absolute withstanding, something is properly lacking to omnipotence, that is, it creates the world. What is not properly lacking to omnipotence is what is (merely) beyond omnipotence—omnipotence and not omnipotence—the abyss of omnipotence—that to which nothing is properly lacking and something is improperly lacking—that which in the place of omnipotence does not create—which omnipotence creates13 as what does not create—that doing/ acting to which nothing is second/lacking. Properly sterile, Evil is the ontological mule—the hybrid sans offspring that actually does nothing— actually does not act.14 Q. A person cannot succeed at failing to create the world? A. Yes. Q. Evil is to fail at failing to create the world? A. No. That’s grace. Evil fails at failing to create the world by the grace of God—failing to act fails at failing to act—by virtue of divine mercy, by virtue of the forgiveness of sin.

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Concerning forgiveness of sin: In the thinking now occurring the nondialectical perfectly differentiating negative sequence concerning Evil is: • • • • • • •

To act—Creation − (To act)—Evil − (− (To act))—Forgiveness/Mercy − (− (− (To act)))—Sin Against the Spirit − (− (− (− (To act))))—Condemnation/Justice − (− (− (− (− (To act)))))—Beginning of Resurrection − (− (− (− (− (− (To act))))))—Belonging Beyond Belonging15

Q. Evil is so because it is impotent and incomplete? A. If the “so” is ‘to fail at failing to create’, no, that’s forgiveness of sin. If the “so” is ‘Evil’, no, not because it is ‘impotent and incomplete’. Rather, because it is completely the will to defeat16 —actually the failure to act— perfectly impotent—actually doing nothing. Q. Is not complete defection/total darkness impossible? A. Evil is willed darkness. Willed darkness is not total darkness. That’s what makes it willed darkness. Indeed, defection, condemned to its own inherent impotence can never be complete/perfect—left to itself it is perpetually staving off creating the new world. But this ultimately futile defection is a real negative response to the imperative to create the world. It is one thing to not be able to actually prevent the creation of the world and another to actually create the world. Evil’s perfect impotence is the imperfection of its defection—its actual defeasibility.17 Q. Absolute freedom is not a freedom of choice but a freedom from choice. Is not freedom for the first time absolutely having no choice but to create the world? A. Freedom from choice does not preclude not actually creating the world. Yes, the perfect freedom now actually existing for the first time does not allow one to choose to create or not. Nevertheless one may not do what is required—one may not create—effectively will darkness. Willing darkness is not a choice, it is the assertion that I have a choice. It is effectively

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the denial that there is nothing but creating—just so it does not clarify, but (willfully and thoughtlessly) obscures. It is self denying freedom in any form but that of absolute choice. Thus it is that one may actually invest absolutely nothing of the freedom now actual for the first time. Q. It would seem that defection/willed darkness/self-consciousness clarify this new world, since there is nothing but creating the world for the first time. A. Yes, there is nothing but creating the world for the first time. Expanded, there is nothing beyond beyond x but creating the world for the first time. Then, the expanded in the negative: there is something (self-consciousness) beyond x but not creating the world for the first time. But for the first time absolute other-consciousness (absolutely focused consciousness—the very form of thought the essentially new/different/other) essentially clarifies this world as absolute newness. Self-consciousness is banished to nowhere—belongs to the past—as being not absolutely now (as not being beyond beyond x for the first time), and, as such, is not clarifying the new world. Q. Evil is not so because it succeeds at failing to create the world but because it ineffectually and impotently asserts a choice in the matter of creating the world. So, there is no such thing as succeeding at failing to create the world? A. If the first “so” is ‘Evil’ (here it must be), yes. Q. What does succeed mean? A. Note the etymology:18 from L. succedere ‘come after, go near to’, from sub ‘next to, after’ + cedere ‘go, move’. From L. cedere ‘to yield’, originally ‘to go, leave’, from PIE base *ked- ‘to go, yield’ (cf. Gk. hodos ‘way’, hodites ‘wanderer, wayfarer’; O.C.S. chodu ‘a walking, going’, choditi ‘to go’). When it comes to actually doing, Evil does not ‘take the place of another’ (omnipotence), or, insofar as it does ‘take the place of another’ (omnipotence), it actually does nothing. It is not properly second to—it is improperly lacking to—omnipotence. Evil does not ‘walk’ with, ‘go’ with, the Distributor of the dwelling, the oʺkonømoq.19 Evil is not at the disposal of—does not ‘yield’ to—the other. Succeed is, precisely, what Evil does not do.

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Q. Since a person cannot succeed at evil, cannot succeed at failing to create the world, does evil then not create the world in some inactive/unfocused way? Evil as occasion for grace? A. Your question is the occasion for this answer. But I might not have produced this answer. Your question then would not be the occasion for this answer. The actuality of the answer is extrinsic to the question. Likewise is the Good to Evil. To occasion the Good by doing what is right is Good, but to occasion the Good by doing what is not right is merely Evil. Furthermore, ‘inactive’ and ‘unfocused’ are not to be confused. By way of analogy, let the Sun (pace Plato, not his Good/One ‘beyond being’20) be the thinking now occurring for the first time beyond beyond being, and let it be granted that, as in the city described in Revelation 21:25, there is now for the first time no night/no darkness, that the Sun (the thinking now occurring for the first time) is always illuminating this essentially new world. Nevertheless this thinking now occurring for the first time/ consciousness for the first time may be focused or not focused. The analogy: the Sun’s radiant energy unfocused : to the Sun’s radiant energy focused :: the thinking now occurring for the first time unfocused : this consciousness absolutely occurring for the first time focused :: consciousness for the first time : conceiving for the first time.21 There is, moreover, the further real possibility that while/although the Sun shines one can cover one’s eyes and/or turn one’s back on the light. So the further analogy is: the person not having the patience to pay attention to what’s different : the person having the patience to pay attention to what’s different :: Indiscretion : Discretion. In terms of the formula, R = V2/C, where R is return on investment, V amount ventured, and C available capital, the difference between unfocused consciousness and willed darkness may be understood to be the difference between investing something less than one hundred percent of the capital created by omnipotence and investing absolutely nothing.22 Were either unfocused consciousness or willed darkness not possible—were imperfection and defection in one or another form not possible—even though/as the thinking now occurring perfectly shines for the first time, neither ethical freedom nor moral imperative(s) would exist. Nor, comprehensively, would there be a created omnipotence properly second to uncreated omnipotence. Nor, that is, would there be an actual creation of the world.

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Notes 1. Answers to Questions submitted by Zarina Maiwandi on behalf of the class in The New York Philosophy Corporation Spring 2007 course Quaestiones Quaelibet. 2. See, above, p. 88, “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” 4D: pq^ (p: not discriminating q^ : doing). 3. See Backnote 4. 4. See, above, p. 105. 5. See, above, p. 112. 6. See, above, pp. 236f., including n. 116. 7. Ibid. 8. See, above, p. 88. 9. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), pp. 620ff. 10. See, above, pp. 181ff. 11. Cf. A. Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (London and New York, 2005), p. 157. 12. Compare Evil as void to the “subject . . . as void or lack-of-being” that “comes to be… in the place where… ‘it is lacking’,” whose “‘Who you are’ as a subject is nothing but the decision to become this subject,” in A. Badiou, The Century, trans. A. Toscano (Cambridge and Malden, 2007), pp. 100f. 13. See, above, p. 245, n. 111. 14. Cf. the ‘actual nothingness’ in T.J.J. Altizer, The Genesis of God: A Theological Genealogy (Louisville, 1993), pp. 139ff., et passim. 15. See, above, Appendix 2, for Belonging Beyond Belonging. Also, compare this non-dialectical sequence to the Hegelian-Kierkegaardian absolutely selfconscious dialectical sequence, depicted at Backnote 1, Figure 1, where, instead of Sin Against the Spirit, one finds Kierkegaard’s moment of sin-consciousness, and, instead of Condemnation/Justice, the moment of salvation (the equality of ‘the God’ with the learner). In the thinking now occurring for the first time what in Kierkegaard is the moment of self-salvation attributed to God (see Appendix 1) is the act of Condemnation/Justice, the judgment following upon the failing of Forgiveness/Mercy—the judgment upon blasphemy (blasfhmºa, inactive saying) with respect to the Spirit. Cf. Matthew 12:32: “Every human sin and blasphemy (inactive saying) will be forgiven, but the blasphemy (inactive saying) with respect to the Spirit will not be forgiven.” ^ Cf. Matthew 12:36, “I tell you that for every workless word (pan Wh^ ma ΩrgØn) humans speak they will give account (løgon) in the day of judgment.” Cf., above, pp. 219f., Agamben’s workless lovers in the limbo of their confident despair/desperate confidence (187ff.) after the day of judgment (173ff.). 16. See, above, Section II.3.

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17. See, above, pp. 115ff. 18. Adapted from Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary. Available online at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php. April 2009. 19. See, above, Sections II.1 and III.2–3. 20. See Backnote 2. 21. See, above, p. 88, “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” where Readiness is the ethical category corresponding to the real trinary logic category Quantumquality—“the immediacy that is the quantum-quale… what admits of degrees [quale] identically what admits of no degrees [quantum]—what does not admit of degrees admitting of degrees,” above, p. 196. 22. Leahy, Foundation, p. 562.

Appendix 4 The Scriptural Understanding: Omnipotence Ceasing Completely Works Absolutely1 ∏ pat¸r moy ’vq “rti ®rgåzetai kΩg◊ ®rgåzomai . My Father is at work right up to now just as I am at work. John 5:17 The Complete Ceasing of Omnipotence is not Rest2 Omnipotence never rests. Omnipotence completely ceasing works absolutely for the first time. The working of omnipotence qua omnipotence is its completely ceasing from its works and from its working to make its works without the latter thereby ceasing to exist. Compare Genesis 2:2-3: ‫וישבת ביום השביעי מכל מלאכתו אשר עשה ויברך אלהים את יום השביעי ויקדש‬ ‫אתו כי בו שבת מכל מלאכתו אשר ברא אלהים לעשות‬. ^ kaÁ  kat™paysen  të^  Ôm™ra  të^  „bdømh  ΩpØ påntvn tv n ‘rgvn ^ ^ aªtoy , ˜n ®poºhsen. kaÁ hªløghsen ∏ ueØq tÓn Ôm™ran tÓn „bdømhn kaÁ Ôgºasen aªt¸n, Œti ®n aªtë^ kat™paysen ΩpØ påntvn ^ ^ tv n ‘rgvn aªtoy^ , ˜n ˚rjato ∏ ueØq poih^ sai.

“He completely ceased on the seventh day (kat™paysen të^ Ôm™ra të^ „bdømh) (‫ )וישבת ביום השביעי מכל‬from (all) his works (ΩpØ ≤påntvn≥ ^ tv n ‘rgvn) (‫)מלאכתו‬, which he made (®poºhsen) (‫)עשה‬. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he completely ceased ^ (kat™paysen) (‫ )שבת מכל‬from (all) his works (ΩpØ ≤påntvn≥ tv n ‘rgvn) ^ (‫)מלאכתו‬, which he worked (˚rjato) (‫ )ברא‬to make (poihsai) (‫)לעשות‬.” Here doing/working (˚rjato) = creating (‫)ברא‬. Omnipotence: to completely cease from the works made: to completely cease not from doing/working but from the works which working makes.

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God ceases from his works not from his doing/working, i.e., God’s doing/ working his works is his ceasing from his works. His doing/working/creating (˚rjato/‫ )ברא‬precedes not only his works but even his making his works; his complete ceasing from his works and his making his works therefore is not ceasing from doing/working/creating but identical therewith. The complete ceasing (kat™paysen) (‫ )שבת מכל‬from the works is the doing/working/ creating (˚rjato) (‫ )ברא‬that makes the works.3 Qua proportion, God’s working to make his works : his making his works :: his making his works : his works, the proof-form of which proportion is: God’s working to make his works identified with his works = the transcendence of his making his works = his making the transcendence of his works = his making the absolute otherness of his works = omnipotence identified with its works = omnipotence making created omnipotence.

The Creature Enters into God’s Complete Ceasing as Created Omnipotence Hebrews 3:7–11: diø, kau◊q l™gei tØ pney^ ma tØ ”gion, s¸meron ®Ån th^ q ^ fvnh^ q aªtoy^ Ωko¥shte, mÓ sklhr¥nhte tÅq kardºaq Êmv n ˜q ^ ^ ^ ^ ®n tv parapikrasmv, katÅ tÓn Ôm™ran toy peirasmoy ®n të^ ^ ^ ^ ®r¸mÛ, oª ®peºrasan o pat™req Êmv n ®n dokimasºQ kaÁ eʺdon ^ ^ tÅ ‘rga moy tesseråkonta ‘th? diØ pros√xuisa të geneQ ta¥të ^ ^ kaÁ eʺpon, ΩeÁ planv ntai të^ kardºQ? aªtoÁ d‚ oªk ‘gnvsan tÅq ∏do¥q moy? ˜q ~mosa ®n të^ πrgë^ moy, eʺ eʺsele¥sontai eʺq tÓn katåpaysºn moy. “So, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear his voice do not harden ^ your hearts (mÓ sklhr¥nhte tÅq kardºaq Êmv n [−0]) as in the rebellion during the day of testing in the desert where your fathers tried me and saw my deeds for forty years. This is why I was angry with that generation and said “They are always wandering in mind, and have not known my ways ^ (ΩeÁ planv ntai të^ kardºQ, aªtoÁ d‚ oªk ‘gnvsan tÅq ∏do¥q moy [−0]).” So I swore in my anger, “They shall never enter into my complete ceasing (eʺ eʺsele¥sontai eʺq tÓn katåpaysin moy [−1,−1]).”’”4

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Hebrews 4:9–10: ^ ^ “ra Ωpoleºpetai sabbatismØq tÛ laÛ ueoy^ . ∏ gÅr eʺselu◊n eʺq ^ ^ ^ tÓn katåpaysin aªtoy kaÁ aªtØq kat™paysen ΩpØ tv n ‘rgv n aªtoy^ ^ ¯sper ΩpØ tv n ʺdºvn ∏ ueøq.

“There remains then a Sabbath condition for God’s people. For one who has entered into God’s complete ceasing (katåpaysin), just so he has completely ceased (kat™paysen) from his works, just as God has from the works proper to him.” So, in Revelation 8:1: ^

kaÁ Œtan ˚noijen tÓn sfrag^i da tÓn „bdømhn, ®g™neto sigÓ ®n tÛ ^ oªranÛ ˜q Ômi√rion. “When he opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” There was silence embodied in God’s complete ceasing—sharing time equally as it were (˜q Ômi√rion) with his doing.5 Cf. Revelation 14:13: makårioi o nekroÁ o ®n kyrºÛ Ωpoun¸skonteq. Ωp| “rti, l™gei ^ ^ tØ pney^ ma, Òna Ωnapa¸sontai ®k tv n køpvn aªtv n, tÅ gÅr ‘rga ^ ^ aªtv n Ωkoleyuei^ met| aªtv n. “Happy are the dead dying embodied in the Lord. ‘From now on’, says the Spirit, ‘they will thoroughly increasingly cease (Ωnapa¸sontai) from their ^ labors, that is to say, their works go along with them (tÅ gÅr ‘ra aªtv n ^ Ωkoleyuei^ met| aªtv n).’” The embodiment of creatures in the Distributor of the dwellings,6 in effect in the place(s) of complete ceasing = the creature sharing omnipotence: created omnipotence.

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Further, in accord with the thinking now occurring for the first time, this entrance into God’s complete ceasing is not simply deferred but begins to exist beyond beyond now: 1 John 4:17: ^ ®n toªtÛ^ teteleºvtai Ô Ωgåph meu| Ômv n, Òna parrhsºan ‘xvmen ^ ^ ^ ®n t ë Ôm™ra t hq krºsevq, Œti kau◊q ®ke i noq ®stin kaÁ Ôme^i q ®smen ®n tÛ^ køsmÛ to¥tÛ.

“In this has love been perfected among us, that we may have audacity on the Day of Judgment, because exactly as he is, just so are we embodied in this world.” Matthew 11:27: pånta moi paredøuh ÊpØ toy^ patrøq moy, kaÁ oªdeÁq ®pigin√skei tØn yØn e mÓ ∏ patÓr, oªd‚ tØn pat™ra tiq ®pigin√skei eʺ mÓ ∏ ^ yØq kaÁ À ®Ån bo¥lhtai ∏ yØq Ωpokal¥cai. “All things were entrusted to me by my Father, that is to say, no one perceives the Son except the Father, nor does anyone perceive the Father except the Son and him to whom the Son is disposed to make him manifest.” Matthew 11:28–30: ^ dey^ te prøq me pånteq o kopiv teq kaÁ pefortism™noi, kåg◊ ^ ^ Ωnapa¥sv Êmaq. “rate tØn zygøn moy ®f| Êma q kaÁ måuete Ωp| ®moy^ , ^ Œti pra¥q eʺmi kaÁ tapeinØq të kardºQ, kaÁ eÊr¸sete Ωnåpaysin ^ ta^i q cyxa^i q Êmv n? ∏ gÅr zygøq moy xrhstØq kaÁ tØ fortºon moy ®lafrøn ®stin.

“Come to me, all you who are wearily toiling laden with burdens, at once I ^ will make you increasingly thoroughly cease (kåg◊ Ωnapa¥sv Êma q). Take on my yoke so as to learn from me, for I am meek, even humble of heart— just so you will find increasing thoroughgoing ceasing (Ωnåpaysin) for your lives. For my yoke provides what is needed (xrhstØq), that is, my burden makes nimble (®lafrøn).”

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Thus the following: Where John 1:14 says, ∏ Løgoq sÅrj ®g™neto, and Mark 2:27, tø såbbaton diÅ tØn “nurvpon ®g™neto, i.e., where Logos : Sabbath :: Flesh : for the sake of Man, this substantive splice is to be understood: ∏ Løgoq tØ såbbaton sÅrj diÅ tØn “nurvpon ®g™neto: The Word the Complete Ceasing of God became flesh for the sake of Man. Created omnipotence: bodily embodiment in God’s complete ceasing.7

Absolutely No Returning The corollary of the fact that omnipotence completely ceasing (katåpaysiq) works absolutely for the first time is that when omnipotence acts to negate the deficiency in being due to sin what occurs is not simply the restoration of an original state of being subsequent to creation ex nihilo, but, rather, the consequent of catargetical negation (katårghsiq) is an essentially new state of being for the first time, the beginning of an essentially new creation. So, in the case of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God in place of the perpetual sacrifices offered under the Law (Hebrews, passim), katårghsiq works as follows, where ‘–( )’ embraces what is catargetically negated: –(sacrifice of priest not entering into God’s katåpaysiq → perpetual [thoroughgoing] annual cleansing of worshippers) ≠ no sacrifice of priest not entering into God’s katåpaysiq → no perpetual (thoroughgoing) annual cleansing of worshippers = sacrifice of priest entering into God’s katåpaysiq → single perpetual (thoroughgoing) cleansing of worshippers. Succinctly: –(no pay^ siq) ≠ pay^ siq = katåpaysiq. Hebrews 10: 1–2: ^ ^ skiÅn gÅr ‘xvn ∏ nømoq tv n melløntvn Ωgauv n, oªk aªtÓn ^ ^ tÓn eʺkøna tvn pragmåtvn, kat| ®niaytØn ta i q aªta^i q uysºaiq

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Ÿq prosf™roysin eʺq tØ dihnek‚q oªd™pote d¥natai toÂq ^ proserxom™noyq teleiv sai? ®peÁ oªk •n ®pa¥santo prosferømenai, ^ diÅ tØ mhdemºan ‘xein ‘ti syneºdhsin ·martiv n toÂq latre¥ontaq ”paj kekauarism™noyq; “The Law having the shadow of the coming goods, not the exact image of the things themselves, was never able by these annual sacrifices which they offered perpetually (prosf™roysin eʺq tØ dihnek‚q) to make sinless ^ (teleiv sai) those worshipping. Otherwise, would not, on account of the worshippers no longer having the guilt of sin, having been cleansed once, the sacrifices have ceased (®pa¥santo)?” Cf. Hebrews 10:14: miQ^ gÅr prosforQ^ teteleºvken eʺq tØ dihnek‚q toÂq ·giazom™noyq. “By a single offering he made perpetually sinless those being made holy.”

The Second Man the Catargesis of the First Likewise to be understood in terms of catargetical negation is the complex relationship in Paul between the First Man and the Second Man: 1 Corinthians 15:42–47: ^ ^ o‹tvq kaÁ Ô Ωnåstasiq tv n nekrv n. speºretai ®n fuorQ^ , ®geºretai ®n ΩfuarsºQ? speºretai ®n ΩtimºQ, ®geºretai ®n døjë? speºretai ®n ^ ΩsueneºQ, ®geºretai ®n dynåmei? speºretai sv ma cyxikøn, ®geºretai ^ ^ svma pneymatikøn. eʺ ‘stin svma cyxikøn, ‘stin kaÁ pneymatikøn. ^ o‹tvq kaÁ g™graptai, ®g™neto ∏ prv toq “nurvpoq ΩdÅm eʺq cyxÓn ^ ^ ^ zvsan? ∏ ‘sxatoq ΩdÅm eʺq pneyma zÛopoioy^ n. Ωll| oª prv ton tØ ^ pneymatikØn ΩllÅ tØ cyxikøn, ‘peita tØ pneymatikøn. ∏ prv toq “nurvpoq ®k gh^ q xo›køq, ∏ de¥teroq “nurvpoq ®j oªranoy^ .

“It is the same with the resurrection of the dead: what is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is not honored but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; it is ^ sown a psychic body (cyxikøn sv ma), it is raised a spiritual body (®geºretai

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^ ^ pneymatikøn sv ma8). If there is a psychic body (cyxikøn sv ma), there ^ is also a spiritual (pneymatikøn). So the first man (prvtoq “nurvpoq), ^ Adam, as scripture says, became a living soul (zv san cyxÓn); and the last (‘sxatoq) Adam has become a life-giving spirit (zÛopoioy^ n pney^ ma). But first came the psychic body, not the spiritual one; that came afterwards. The ^ first man (prv toq “nurvpoq) was of the dust of the earth, the second man (de¥teroq “nurvpoq) from heaven.”

Earlier Paul has distinguished cyxikØq “nurvpoq from “nurvpoq ^ pneyatikØq.9 When Paul now speaks of cyxikøn sv ma he has in mind ^ “nurvpoq sarkikøq. But since what is resurrected is sv ma pneymatikøn ^ it is clear that sv ma is not per se sarkikøn, but sarkikøn qua cyxikøn: ^ sv ma|cyxikøn ≠ pneymatikøn. The spiritually dead person, fallen man, “nurvpoq sarkikøq, is what s/he is ^ ^ not qua sv ma but qua cyxikøn sv ma. And the disorder that is “nurvpoq cyxosvmatikøq improperly second to the pney^ ma is not simply a personal fact but historico-ontologically founded: ^ Psychic body (cyxikøn sv ma) → Spiritual (pneymatikøn), ergo, the first ^ ^ man (prvtoq “nurvpoq) is qua first (prv toq) improperly second/lacking 10 to the second man (de¥teroq “nurvpoq). ^ Likewise, the living soul (zv san cyxÓn) → the life-giving spirit (zÛopoioy^ n pney^ ma). Hence, since they are respectively so constituted— ^ the first man (prv toq “nurvpoq) → the last/second man (‘sxatoq/ de¥teroq “nurvpoq)—and since the first is properly second to the last/ second, the ontological impropriety of the first preceding the last/second.11

The resurrection of Christ puts an end to the above mentioned ontological impropriety (an end realized personally by being embodied in Christ’s death and resurrection) not by restoring the status quo ante, not by way of the double negation of self-consciousness, but by way of the double negation of other-consciousness, for which 0 ≠ nothing and for which therefore negation is differentiation and double negation = something new/different. The resurrection of Christ redeems the fallen creature/ creation by way of the negation of the ontological impropriety in the following way:

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The resurrection of Christ qua negation of the first Adam = −(body informed by the living soul improperly second to the life-giving spirit) = the cyx¸ eliminated as first form of the body, the first form of the body is the last, the pney^ ma, the life-giving spirit, i.e., the body is in the very form of the divine I, in the form of the absolute person(s):12 Revelation 21:6: ®g◊ ^ ^ tØ =Alfa kaÁ tØ ʺV, where τò =Alfa kaÁ tØ ʺV = A|V = the First IS (is nothing but) the Last  the living soul beyond properly second to the lifegiving spirit.13 Paul’s understanding of the relation of law and faith is likewise a matter of catargetical negation: Romans 3:31: ^

nømon oªn katargoy^ men diÅ th^ q pºstevq; mÓ g™noito? ΩllÅ nømon stånamen. “Do we make the law inoperative through faith? It cannot be! Indeed we raise up the law!”

Comparison of the Pauline ἡ κατάργησις and the Hegelian die Aufhebung katårghsiq: deactualizing the inoperative law ≠ freedom removing the inoperative law = freedom actualizing the operative law. The substantive analogy of Paul’s thinking to the thinking now occurring for the first time: Law without the righteousness of God embodied in the righteousness of God manifest without the law (®n XristÛ^ ) : nothing but fulfillment of the law for the first time :: Null set embodied in the non-set of non-sets : nothing but existence for the first time.14 Whereas in the case of the Hegelian die Aufhebung: The sublation of the inoperative law = freedom removing the inoperative law ≠ freedom actualizing the operative law.

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Phenomenology The phenomenological import of the thinking now occurring for the first time can be understood as the difference between Ωrgºa and katårghsiq. Husserl’s phenomenological ®poxÓ is a theoretical Ωrgºa that puts out of play the existence/substance of this world, i.e., puts it on pause, suspends its operativeness. But thus Husserl’s phenomenological ®poxÓ is essentially hypothetical: ®poxÓ Êpouetik¸. The katårghsiq of the anypothetotopian thinking now occurring for the first time15 is an ®poxÓ Ωnypøuetoq, an absolute/non-hypothetical epochē.16 That is, not merely an ®poxÓ that is a pay^ siq, the argetical theoretical ‘ceasing’ of the existence of this world such that a return to the latter is essentially possible, indeed, such that this world is never actually left behind while the mind attends to the essence ‘world’, i.e., attends, though essentially, to this world. Argetical/paustical thinking (hypothetotopian phenomenology) is beyond and not beyond the world.17 But the ®poxÓ Ωnypøuetoq that is katåpaysiq is the catargetical ‘complete ceasing’ with respect to the existence of this world such that a return to the latter is impossible, indeed, such that the existence of this world is actually left behind while the mind attends to the essence ‘new world’, i.e., attends, though essentially, to the new world. Catargetical/catapaustical thinking (anypothetotopian absolute phenomenology) is for the first time beyond beyond the world. To attend essentially to the essentially new world is to create the new world (= the good or the global imperative of the new global ethics and morality).

Creating the New World is the Work of Created Omnipotence Revelation 3:20–21: ʺdo ’sthka ®pÁ tÓn u¥ran kaÁ kro¥v? ®ån tiq Ωko¥së th^ q fvnh^ q moy kaÁ Ωnoºjë tÓn u¥ran, kaÁ eʺsele¥somai prØq aªtØn ^ kaÁ deipn¸sv met| aªtoy^ kaÁ aªtØq met| ®moy^ . ∏ nikv n d√sv aªtÛ^ kauºsai met| ®moy^ ®n tÛ^ urønÛ moy, ˜q kΩg◊ ®nºkhsa kaÁ ®kåuisa metÅ toy^ patrøq moy ®n tÛ^ urønÛ aªtoy^ .

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“Here I stand at the door and knock. Whoever hears my voice and opens the door, I will at once come in with him, indeed, he and I will share a meal with each other. He who conquers I will grant to him to sit with me on my throne, just as I conquered and just so sat with my Father on his throne.” This is the super-sovereignty that is the beyond sovereignty. The Simplicity of the One that is the Trinity sharing sovereignty with the creature: thought essentially, sovereignty as absolute sharing for the first time.18 Revelation 20:11: ^

^

kaÁ e ʺdon urønon m™gan leykØn kaÁ tØn kau¸menon ®p| aªtøn, oÊ ΩpØ toy^ pros√poy ‘fygen Ô gh^ kaÁ ∏ oªranØq kaÁ tøpoq oªx eÊr™uh aªto^i q. “Then I saw a great white throne and the One seated on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled, that is to say, no place was found for them.” The Last Judgment makes manifest that it is this world, fallen and blind to revelation, whose existence is finally utopia; while it is the new heaven and the new earth of the apocalypse whose existence for the first time is anypothetotopia, absolutely t/here, absolutely Da.19

ἡ κατάργησις and the New Jerusalem –(This world) ≠ apokatastasis (Agamben) ≠ the being of the infinite (Hegel) = a new heaven and a new earth = an essentially new universe. In the thinking now occurring for the first time the new universe following the end/negation of the first universe, the second universe properly lacking to omnipotence, absolutely relegates to utopia the first universe improperly lacking to omnipotence. The coming into existence of the new heaven and the new earth qua essentially new is the absolutely unconditioned increase of existence for the first time—absolute intensification—at once absolute crescendo and differentiation of creation embodied in Christ absolutely embodied in the Father’s complete ceasing at once the infinite working of Omnipotence.20

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Revelation 21:1: ^

^ kaÁ e ʺdon oªranØn kainØn kaÁ gh^ n kain¸n. ∏ gÅr prv toq oªranØq ^ ^ kaÁ Ô pr√th gh Ωphluan kaÁ Ô uålassa oªk ‘stin ‘ti. kaÁ tÓn ^ pølin tÓn ·gºan |IeroysalÓm kainÓn e ʺdon katabaºnoysan ®k toy^ oªranoy^ ΩpØ toy^ ueoy^ Ôtoimasm™nhn ˜q n¥mfhn kekosmhm™nhn tÛ^ ΩndrÁ aªth^ q.

“Then I saw a new heaven and new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth passed away and the sea was no longer. I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride dressed for her husband.” The New Jerusalem completely coming beyond beyond the complete ceasing (toy^ oªranoy^ ) of God (toy^ ueoy^ ): the bride dressed for her husband: created omnipotence.

Catargetical Man and Catapaustical Man Catargetical negation is the second doing (therefore the iteration of catapausis) that doingly/catapaustically undoes the undoing of the first doing. This second/last doing/complete ceasing is the working that, altogether displacing what is thus doingly undone, makes a new world in the form of created omnipotence. Doing/complete ceasing, whether in its first or second edition, whether uncreated or created, is what it is to be (esse/exsistere), and, in the case of created omnipotence, is what it is to be absolutely for the first time. Catargetical man, uncreated omnipotence assuming human nature, qua catapaustical makes catapaustical man, makes created omnipotence. The catargetical negation of past thought now occurring for the first time is properly the doing of catargetical man. The fashioning of the essentially new universe now beginning to exist for the first time is properly the doing of the catapaustical man whom catargetical man catapaustically makes. The form of created omnipotence as such is properly non-catargetical catapaustical negation: the negation of a doing not an undoing of a doing, exemplified in the definition of the real trinary logic elements: 0 = not

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nothing, 0 = not not nothing, 1 = not not not nothing.22  Non-catargetical catapaustical negation as the form of created omnipotence absolutely differentiates existence for the first time.

Notes 1. Originally compiled for the The New York Philosophy Corporation Spring 2008 course Introduction to the New Testament. 2. Rest is defined with respect to distance traveled and its associated weariness and is a completely inappropriate notion with respect to Omnipotence. Cf. Dictionary.com. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary. MICRA, Inc. Available online at: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rest. April, 2009): “Rest\, n. [AS. rest, r[ae]st, rest; akin to D. rust, G. rast. OHG. rasta, Dan. & Sw. rast rest, repose, Icel. r[“o]st the distance between two resting places, a mole, Goth. rasta a mile, also to Goth. razn house, Icel. rann, and perhaps to G. ruhe rest, repose, AS. r[=o]w, Gr. ‘erwh`…].” 3. Cf., above, p. 44: “Omnipotence precisely is that which is absolutely nonexisting in its existing. For the first time thought in essence Omnipotence is absolutely nothing but existence.” Also, with reference to Backnote 4, Tables 1 and 2 (below), and the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity, 4D, “productive receptivity” (above, Section II.2), note that where p = having happened as of now = the heavens and the earth (= non-discriminating = the universe qua whole), and q^ = having ceased as of now = doing, Genesis 1:1, ‫בראשית ברא‬ ‫אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ‬, can be parsed as follows, where (1, p^ q^ ) = not having happened as of now having ceased as of now = the non-existence of the heavens and the earth completely ceasing in the doing of their making = the Beginning, and (1, pq^ ) = having happened as of now having ceased as of now = the existence of the heavens and the earth done in the complete ceasing of their making = Omnipotence: “In the beginning (1, p^ q^ ) God created the heavens and the earth (1, pq^ ).” Indeed, not to completely cease from his works in and as the doing of his making them is not to be Omnipotence, witness Hegel’s “Absolute Weakling” (above, p. 31, n. 59). The integral product of ‫בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים‬ ‫ ואת הארץ‬is 2.359296e28. The integral product of Ô katåpaysiq is 2.359296e20. 4. For the negatives of the real trinary logic elements here inserted, cf. the “Index of the Ethic of Simplicity,” above, Section II.2. Note also the attribution of the

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quotations from Psalm 95:7-11 and Numbers 14:21-23 to the Holy Spirit. To enter into God’s katåpaysiq, completely ceasing from one’s work as God does from his, is to come into the inheritance (klhronomºa) of the children of the Resurrection, to inherit the Kingdom of God, salvation, to enter the Promised Land (g¸ th^ q ®paggelºaq), becoming the created omnipotence properly lacking to uncreated omnipotence (cf., above, Appendices 2-3). 5. Further concerning the divine katåpaysiq, here and now, cf. 1 Corinthians 14:34, et passim, the silence of woman < man < Christ < God. For < = ‘embodied in’ see below, Backnote 3. 6. Cf., above, Sections II–III, passim. 7. Cf., above, pp. 233f.: the imperative, “You shall be holy every day,” associated with Matthew 5:5: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land (makårioi o praei^q, Œti aªtoi klhronom¸soysin tÓn gh^ n)”: “The imperative to be holy every day is the imperative to be in heaven, the imperative that the angel/intentio/image be identically the body. This is the imperative to be the new heaven and new earth qua distribution of the dwellings, qua absolute placedness. ‘This imperative is the end of the end of |Anaståsevq Ωrx¸, omnipotence itself saying what it is that is the actuality of creating the new world’. This for the first time is the imperative to be the resurrected body.” Cf. Romans 8:13–17 and 12:1–2. 8. Integral product = 8.2944e40. 9. 1 Corinthians 2:14–16. 10. See above, pp. 236ff., for “second” as “lacking.” 11. For the corresponding ontological propriety of the real trinary logic minimum order: 4, 1, 2, 3, cf. Leahy, Foundation III.1, et passim. 12. Embodied in the resurrection of Christ essential persons are as formal persons, i.e., angels (cf. Appendix 2 and Luke 20: 27-40: “They are angel-equals [eʺsin ʺsåggeloi], even children of God [kaÁ eʺsin ueoy^ yoº] being children of the Resurrection [œnteq yoº th^ q Ωnaståsevq].” Cf. Matthew 22:30 and Mark 12:25). Their bodies meta-schematized and conformed to the body of the resurrected Incarnate Word, the first form of their bodies is then the form of the body of the absolute person who is the Word of God (cf. Philippians 3:20– 21, also, above, pp. 119f.): the holy qua resurrected bodies are formally absolute persons/formally divine. 13. Cf., above, p. 3, n. 1, for the integral product of ®g◊ tØ =Alfa kaÁ tØ ^ʺ V. See also D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot and Burlington, 2003), Appendix. 14. Cf., above, p. 57. 15. Cf., above, Appendix 3. 16. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), pp. 478ff., et passim.

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17. Cf., above, Sections III.1–3, critique of Agamben. 18. Cf., above, p. 29, n. 38 and p. 246, n. 117. 19. Cf. Thomas More’s Utopia: a society governed by reason sans revelation. 20. Cf., above, p. 6: “Now occurring for the first time in history this is the experience of the absolute increase of existence: the perfect bodying of the initial transparency, the universe-filling cubic absolute absolutely beginning to exist, the foundation for the first time in the form of existence.” 21. Cf., above, p. 203, n. 92, and, below, Backnotes 1 and 4. Cf., also, Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 123ff., et passim.

Backnote 1

Note to Faith and Philosophy Further to the Ontology of Real Trinary Logic

In Figure 1, an index of logico-existential relations existing between Hegel’s dialectic of absolute reason (White), Kierkegaard’s transcription of faith as the absolutely absurd beyond reason on the edge of existence (Light Gray),1 and the thinking now occurring for the first as the creation of the absolute edge/existence (Gray), N negates what lies to its right, I (in the left set of circles) = Infinite, U = Universal, P = Particular, and I (in the right set of circles) = Individual. NNNNNNI  THE NOT YET

U  [{PU} → {P→U}]

NNNNNI NNNNI NNNI NNI NI

P{P→U} I{PU} P{PU} I{U→P} P{PU}

I

↔

U

Figure 1 In the New York Philosophy Corporation Fall 2004 course Introduction to Faith and Philosophy the following was posted to the Question & Answer Forum by Zarina Maiwandi on October 26:  “How is the not yet NNNNNNI a negation of the thinking now occurring for the first time NNNNNI?  Analogously, how is the identity of particular and universal {P=U} creating the absolute now {P→U} as universal a move ‘beyond’ the outer ring of the thinking now occurring for the first time?” The first and most fundamental thing to notice on the Index of Logico-Existential relations is that only in the case of Hegel is there a consistency of color throughout the three rings (white). If Kierkegaard’s

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absurd transcendence of Hegel involves his taking the latter’s endpoint (Hegel’s third ring [White]) as his starting point, nevertheless, immediately Kierkegaard’s second and third rings are of a different color (Light Gray), this different color indicating his essentially ecstatic position vis-à-vis absolute self-consciousness.  Kierkegaard’s second ring/ moment of particularity P = {P≠U} repeats Hegel’s second ring/moment of particularity P = {P≠U}, but, as indicated by the color change from white to light gray, now outside the self-enclosedness of the Absolute Idea, so that his conclusion/conexio, his third ring, wears the color of his pivotal second ring (the moment of sin-consciousness). The formal identity of content shared with Hegel when it comes to second rings P = {P≠U} indicates Kierkegaard’s continuing tie to self-consciousness and the latter’s conception of negation as related to ‘nothing’ and of double negation as a form of reaffirmation or restoration.  Now notice that what in the thinking now occurring is effectively in the place of the preceding second rings—indeed, the thinking now occurring itself—is no longer a ‘moment’ to be ‘sublated’ by a third ring since what would be a third ring—the not yet NNNNNNI = U = [{P=U}→{P→U}]—is not a third ring outside/ beyond the second ring P = {P→U} whose relation to its second and first rings is respectively a relation to nothing (vis-à-vis the second) or a selfreaffirming or self-restoring relation of double negation (vis-à-vis the first), but rather that of the Unity of real trinary logic 1 (not not not nothing 2) that is the completely differentiating Unity of 0 (not not nothing) and 0 (not nothing).3  NNNNNNI corresponds to the Unity (1) of real trinary logic as N(NNI) (= 1) in its relation to N(NI) (= 0) and (NI) (= 0), where (NI) is the Kierkegaardian impolite/absurd assertion of the Cartesian not nothing outside the bounds of absolute reason,4 the Kierkegaardian moment of salvation (the equality of ‘the God’ with the learner) I = {P=U}.  Kierkegaard’s endpoint (his third ring [Light Gray]) is now the starting point of the thinking now occurring whose endpoint NNNNNNI = U = [{P=U}→{P→U}]) is precisely not a form of self-conscious negation or selfconscious double negation but rather is the perfect liberating-comprising in which the act of absolutely particular other creation now actually occurring for the first time {= the thinking now occurring epitomized as 0 = ( )NN(I) [= 0], NN(I) [= 0], N(I) [= 0] [Kierkegaard’s second ring wearing a new color (Gray)]} is the consequence of the saving equality established by ‘the God’ epitomized as 0 = ( )( )N(I) [= 0], NN(I) [= 0], N(I) [= 0].  Finally, note that the thinking now occurring for the first time

Backnote 1

293

qua second ring/ring of the particular has a content completely different from that shared by the second rings/moments of Hegel and Kierkegaard, viz., P = {P→U}. It is precisely this reversal of Hegel’s third ring/I-moment predicated of absolute P = {P→U} (= Absolute Particular the Particular creating the Universe) that is the pivotal beginning of the Resurrection and precisely that which is not found in Kierkegaard due to his absolute negation of reason. The constellation of images in Figures 2 and 3 illustrates the complex simplicity of the Unity of real trinary logic that preserves in a perfectly differentiated Unity the real differences in its constituents:

1 = (N)NN(I)NN(I)N(I) 0 = ( )NN(I)NN(I)N(I) 0 = ( )( )N(I)NN(I)N(I) Figure 2

=  

3

2 3

1

2 2

1 1

Figure 3 In the thinking now occurring for the first time the beginning otherwise than the beginning of being not otherwise than being is the beginning of being and nothing otherwise than otherwise than x, or, beyond beyond x.5  Where N, NN (x) = otherwise than x, i.e., not x [N(x)] and not not x [NN(x)], or, beyond x, and x = otherwise than x, or, beyond x, i.e., [(N[x]) (NN[x])], then the real trinary logic conception of existence absolutely differentiated for the first time is the beginning of absolute thisness, the

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beginning of the absolute here (and) now, or, NNNNNNI = THE NOT YET = BEYOND BEYOND X = [N,NN (x)] = [N(N[x])], [N(NN[x])], [NN(N[x])], [NN(NN[x])] where the number of N’s preceding (x) within the brackets on the left side of the equation corresponds to the number of blacks in the real trinary logic categorial array illustrated last above (reading indifferently right to left or left to right), and the number of N’s preceding [x] within each parenthesis on the right side of the equation corresponds to the sequence of grays and light grays (reading left to right) marked here by the respective outer bracket colors: {3 (= 3 black)} + {1 (= 1 gray) + 2(= 2 light gray) + 1(= 1 light gray) + 2 (= 2 gray)}.  Where p = identical number of N’s inside and outside the parentheses (on the right side of the equation) and q = identical color of bracket and inside N’s (on the right side of the equation) the reversal above in the trinary logic categorial array of the one gray, two light gray subsequence to the one light gray, two gray subsequence is the immediate (sensible) manifestation of the fact that the logical structure of NNNNNNI = THE NOT YET = BEYOND BEYOND X (reading right to left) conforms to the fundamental form of all logical statements in which the ordinary order of the third and fourth logical elements is likewise reversed (pq + p q̃ + p q̃ ̃ + pq̃).6  The visible reversal of the one gray, two light gray numberto-color ratio in the trinary logic array is sensibly the reversal of the relative positions of the uniformly positive and negative logical elements vis-à-vis the non-uniformly positive and negative elements and at once the reversal of the positive and negative order within the latter. The ratio of the number of THE NOT YET N’s to the number of N’s associated with the elements of the real trinary logic array (N+N+N+N+N+N)/(NNN+N+NN+N+NN) is 2/3. The immediate simplicity of the perfectly differentiated Unity of real trinary logic, where, as here, an essentially relative or absolute Unity predicates 3 of 2,7 contrasts with the imperfectly differentiated Unity of the real triadic duality of C.S. Peirce’s logic of relatives as drawn by Peirce himself (Figure 4) in The Categories Defended,8 where an inessentially relative Unity effectively predicates 3 of 1,9 and where Peirce’s inessentially relative Thirdness can literally be seen to fall short of the perfect unification of the absolutes Firstness and Secondness.  Here the essentially mediated existence of the categories = 9 + 1 = 10 the foundational 9 natural numbers plus the repetition of 1 displaced to the left by 0 that effectively extends the Unity of the foundational set of 9 beyond itself in an infinitely ascending repetition of the elements of existence.

Backnote 1

295

2 3

1

Figure 4 Peirce’s inessentially relative Thirdness contrasts with the absolutely mediated existence of the categories that is the identification of real trinary logic and existence whose elements = 9 (illustrated three and two paragraphs above) the foundational set of natural numbers.  Note that the product of the natural numbers that are their integral products (1, 784, 82944)10 involves precisely and exclusively this foundational 9-set of natural numbers:11 9

1 × 784 × 82944 = (9!/ ∑ i)2 . i  =1

Finally, in real trinary logic thought is predicated of existence for the first time so that here the elements of which 3 is predicated (see above) are at once the powers of 3.  The Unity of real trinary logic is to the Unity of Peirce’s real triadic duality as 32 is to 31 (where the former is existence absolutely and the latter is mediately related to existence), while the Unity that is the logic of Hegel’s Absolute Idea where a formally relative Unity effectively predicates 3 of 0 is equivalently 30 = 1 (where “logic coincides with metaphysics the science of things set and held in thoughts”,12 as illustrated in Figure 5.

1

1

1

Figure 5

1

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Notes 1. D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot, 2003), Chapters 4-5, et passim. 2. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 116f. 3. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), Section III.1. 4. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Chapters 2-4, et passim. 5. Ibid., pp. 115ff. and 152ff. For beyond beyond x as existence for the first time beyond the Good, see, below, Backnote 2; for beyond beyond x as beginning the infinite difference of x, see, below, Backnote 3; for beyond beyond x as mathematically instantiated in the absolute dead center cube, see D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “The Deep Epidermal Surface: The Cornerstone Construction Order, Minimum Order Tetrahedron Hypercube, & Absolute Dead Center Hypercube” and “Theorem & Proof: The Uniqueness of the Absolute Dead Center Cube.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com. April 2009. 6. Leahy, Foundation, p. 258, n. 3. 7. Ibid., Section III.1, Afterword 2. 8. C.S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1998), p. 162 [shading and numbers added]. 9. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.1, Afterword 2. 10. Leahy, Foundation, Section III.6. 11. Further for the ninefold real trinary logic cornerstone, see, below, Backnote 3. Note that the integral product of the Hebrew for “Absolute Newness”/”Absolute Creation,” ‫חדוש גמור‬, is 82944 × 9. Its linear product is 8.2944 × 109, and its rational product 9 × 10-5. For ‘integral product’ etc., see D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “Technical Note on Integral Product & Related Terms.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com/dgl/p15. html. April 2009. 12. G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, I.II.24. Cf. Peirce’s critique of the nominalism of Hegel’s Absolute One, The Essential Peirce, pp. 164 and 177, et passim; also, Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Chapter 7, et passim.

Backnote 2

Beyond the Good: Not Hither the Good (& Not Hither Beyond the Good) With reference to the Platonic notion of the Good as ‘beyond being’, Heidegger writes in Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning): “In ^ beingness (oªsºa) eʺnai, being, is intimated as what is somehow other, which is not fully fulfilled in oªsºa. Thus, in going further on the same way, i.e., by grasping presencing, one tries to go beyond beingness: ®p™keina th^ q oªsºaq…. But since the only question concerns beings and their beingness, it can never encounter be-ing itself or come from it. The ®p™keina can thus be determined only as something that henceforth designates beingness as such in its relation to man (eªdaimonºa), as the Ωgauøn, befitting [das Taugliche] that founds all befittedness—thus as condition for ‘life’, for cyx¸, and thus its essence itself.… The ®p™keina th^ q oªsºaq as Ωgauøn (that means: the fundamental denial of any further and orginary questioning of beings as such, i.e., questioning of being)….”1 Returning later in his text to the question of the Platonic beyond being, Heidegger writes: “Occurrence of the truth of be-ing—that is essential swaying. Thus essential swaying is never a way of being that is added onto be-ing or even one which persists in itself above be-ing. By what means must this manner of seemingly genuine continuation of questioning (a being—its being—and then being of being, etc.) be cut off and redirected into genuine questioning? As long as everything stays with oªsºa, a ground for no-longercontinuing-the-questioning-in-the-same-manner is not to be found. The only thing left is to deviate [das Abbiegen, the turning off ] into ®p™keina.”2 Eschewing beyond being, but refusing to stay with being, Heidegger is forced to turn off into beyond. He articulates the logical import of this deviation into beyond in the context of his understanding of the Da as follows: “In the other and future meaning ‘being’ [sein] does not mean occurring [vorkommen] but inabiding carriability [Ertragsamkeit] as grounding the t/here [Da]. The t/here [Da] does not mean a here and yonder that is somehow each time determinable but rather means the clearing of being itself, whose openness first of all opens up the space for every possible here and yonder and for arranging beings in historical work and deed and

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sacrifice.”3 Turning off into beyond as the only alternative to staying with being when the metaphysical beyond being is no longer an option is in fact deviating into the openness of be-ing itself that “first of all opens up the space for every possible here and yonder.” The Platonic ®p™keina th^ q oªsºaq fundamentally anchors metaphysics in what the thinking now occurring for the first time understands as the logic of ‘beyond x’.4 Heidegger’s project is not to do away with this logic of ‘beyond x’, but rather, turning off into beyond just before beyond becomes beyond being (‘beyond x’), his project is to originarily ground every possible ‘beyond x’ (“every possible here and yonder”), to retrieve the truth of being (Seyn) just this side—hither—the inception of the truth of being (Sein). Heidegger’s only notion here is to ground “every possible here and yonder” (every possible ‘beyond x’) in an origin hither the origin of metaphysics, in the be-ing of the origin before the origin of being. His thinking is in effect the originary grounding of origin. Since the Platonic (Neoplatonic) ®p™keina th^ q oªsºaq is the Good (Ωgauøn)—the One („n), the Source (phg¸), the Cause (a¬tion), the First Principle (Ωrx¸), the God (ueøq), the Absolute (Ωnypøueton)—Heidegger’s thought originarily grounds the Origin, the One, the Good, the Divine (uei^on), as ‘belonging’, the Absolute as ‘own-dom’ (Eigentum), mastery of ownhood. It is precisely here that the thinking now occurring for the first time qua beyond beyond x is clearly able to be seen to be not only beyond origin, beyond the God, beyond cause, but to be consequently the nonbeing of Heidegger’s originary sovereignty, the nonbeing of own-dom, the nonbeing of avoidance of the Good: thinking for the first time actuality absolutely now. Beyond beyond being (beyond the Good, not the Good and not not the Good, beyond the God, beyond the One) thought essentially the act of world-creating, the absolute simplicity of act of existence for the first time. Nor is this beginning of an absolutely new existence beyond the Good to be confused with an impossible return to Meister Eckhart’s beyond the God not the God and not the creature, with the possibility of an infinitely regressive beyond beyond the God. For the first time the beginning & end of the beginning & end of the thought of existence is the very simplicity of the historical existence of very simplicity.5 Existence is the real for the first time: simplicity of existence the beginning as absolute impasse. In this connection it is noted that Alain Badiou is not beyond the One, but, thither the death of God, thither thither Heidegger, hither beyond the One (“the truth of the situation… not the absolute commencement of another”6),

Backnote 2

299

given over to the ‘Platonism of the multiple’, being and truth sans the One, beyond the belonging together of being and truth (“the Heideggerean thesis of an originary co-belonging of being [as f¥siq] and truth [as Ωl¸ueia, or non-latency] must be abandoned”7), beyond belonging, not belonging not not belonging, the indiscernible not indiscernible (“a subject… discerned realization of an indiscernible”8), the void the proper name of being.9 Badiou describes Cantor’s theorem concerning the relation of a set a to its power set p(a), | a | < | p(a) |, as “the law of the quantitative excess of the state of the situation over the situation.”10 Concerning this excess he says: “It is the impasse, or point of the real, of ontology.” Earlier he writes concerning Cantor: Cantor’s ontological thesis is evidently that inconsistency, mathematical impasse of the one-of-the-multiple, orientates thought towards the Infinite as supreme-being or absolute… . However, one could also argue that Cantor, in a brilliant anticipation, saw that the absolute point of being of the multiple is not its consistency… but its inconsistency, a multiple-deployment that no unity gathers together. Cantor’s thought thus wavers  between onto-theology… and mathematical ontology, in which consistency provides a theory of inconsistency, in that what proves an obstacle to it (paradoxical multiplicity) is its point of impossibility, and thus, quite simply, is not. Consequently, it fixes the point of non-being from whence it can be established that there is a presentation of being… . That it be in the place of this non-being that Cantor pinpoints the absolute, or God, allows us to isolate the decision in which ‘ontologies’ of Presence, non-mathematical ‘ontologies’, ground themselves: the decision to declare that beyond the multiple, even in the metaphor of its consistent grandeur, the one is. What set theory enacts, on the contrary, under the effect of the paradoxes—in which it registers its particular non-being as obstacle (which, by that token, is the nonbeing)—is that the one is not.11 Badiou: beyond avoidance of the Good, hither beyond the Good, the void in place of the Good. Badiou’s nomination of the void as ontology’s real in place of the one is not insignificantly prepared in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas. In Summa Contra Gentiles III.57.3, the paradox in Aquinas is formulated as

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the proportion of improportionality between God and the natural intellect: “the distance of the highest intellect in the natural order to God is infinite in perfection and goodness. But its distance to the lowest intellect is finite, for there cannot be an infinite distance of finite to finite. So the distance between the lowest and highest created intellect is as nothing [quasi nihil] in comparison to that distance which is between the highest created intellect and God. However, what is as nothing [quasi nihil] cannot make a sensibly perceived difference.”12 Now thought thinks absolutely beyond the origin for the first time. In the absolute immediacy of the act of creating the world no situation is and a fortiori the state of the situation is not. Beyond sovereignty the latter’s excess over the former—whether minimally measurable or immeasurably errant13—is essentially & absolutely conceivable as belonging but to thinking in the past. Likewise no longer conceivable is the void in Thomas’ comparative-incomparability of God and creature—distancefinite/∅ = distanceinfinite—that which, qua predicate of this ontologically dimensionless ratio, is effectively the mark of the Void the mark of the Idea: {the Finite/ the Infinite}/∅.14 Beyond set and power set, beyond belonging and inclusion, beyond axiomatic ontology and excess, neither the one nor the void is conceivably “the point of the ontological real.” As never before the impasse of ontology is very existence. Beginning now reason actually beyond absolute reason. As never before absolute proportionality beyond proportion. The real for the first time absolute simplicity itself—existence itself absolute particularity.15 ____________________________________________ Concerning the first beginning, Heidegger writes: “When id™a is once set up as beingness of beings and when it is grasped as koinøn, then it must— again be thought from beings, as it were (the individual ones)—be among these the most being, the œntvq œn…. the most-being [Seindste] and actually a being.”16 But now “before the gate of a new moment of… [the] hidden history [of the essential sway of truth],” the truth “that never ‘is’ but rather holds sway,” the “truth of be-ing,” is the “[t]ruth [that] is what is originarily true…. the most-being…. [m]ore-being than any being…be-ing itself…. [t] he most-being [that] ‘is’ no longer but rather holds sway as essential swaying (enowning).”17

Backnote 2

301

Thus Heidegger displaces the Idea as beginning and end of the world18 with the question of truth—the “questioning” that is “here beginning and end,”19 effectively & precisely, of the Idea (absolute in Hegel) of the beginning and end of the world. Heidegger, unable to think the essentially apocalyptic thinking now actually existing for the first time beyond the Good, instead originarily grounds absolute idealism’s “absolute occlusion of the formally apocalyptic identity of thought.”20 Hither the Good, Heidegger ventures into the abground, into the originary depth. Beyond belonging not beyond inclusion it remains for Badiou hither beyond the Good to take the measure of this Void. “Every Subject… opens upon… an un-measure in which to measure itself; because the void, originally, was summoned.”21 Beyond Heidegger’s originary grounding of “correctness” (∏moºvsiq, adaequatio) as “the essential sway of truth,”22 it falls to Badiou to understand “an opening on to a history of truth which is at last completely disconnected from… exactitude or adequation.”23 ____________________________________________ Heidegger writes: The surpassing of gods is the going-under into the groundership of the truth of be-ing. But be-ing en-owns Da-sein for itself, for grounding its truth, i.e., its clearing; because without this lit up, separating-deciding [lichtende Entscheidung] of it itself into the needfulness of god and into the guardianship of Da-sein, be-ing would have to be consumed by the fire of its own unredeemed glow. How can we know how often this has not already happened? If we knew that, then there would be no necessity of thinking be-ing in the uniqueness of its essential sway.24 The self-consumption of be-ing by the fire of its glow is now known never to have been capable of having happened—out of its own necessity, its unredeemedness. The undecidability of the necessity of thinking being, the inability of avoidance of the Good to know anything about the nonexistence of its own necessity—this for the first time, otherwise intact, is now nonexistent. Now for the first time there is no such necessity. Now actually happening the beginning of existence beyond the Good, the nonbeing of be-ing/hither the Good, the nonbeing of not not yet no

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longer (“the not, as not-yet and no-longer”25), the nonbeing of “the not”beginning, the nonbeing of the “crossing” between the first beginning and the other beginning in whose “ambiguity” [Zweideutigkeit] “mindfulness [Besinnung] must continue to touch upon that which… increasingly shifts itself into a simple doing.”26 Now for the first time, beyond recollection, existence, essentially thought, is “simple doing” absolutely.27 Now as never before the unicity of being itself freely thought: existence not still not yet: existence beyond the Good not still beyond the Good: existence—absolute world-creating beginning.28

Backnote 2

303

Notes 1. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. P. Emad and K. Maly (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1999), pp. 146f. 2. Ibid., pp. 202f. 3. Ibid., p. 210. 4. See, above, Backnote 1. 5. Cf. D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact [Aldershot and Burlington, 2003], Appendix. 6. A. Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (Continuum, 2005), p. 417. 7. Ibid., p. 355. 8. Ibid., p. 409. 9. Ibid., pp. 52ff. 10. Ibid., p. 502. 11. Ibid., p. 42. 12. S. Thomae Aquinatis, Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra errores Infidelium (Turin, 1967), III.57.3. 13. Badiou, Being and Event, pp. 410ff. 14. For the relation of excessus and “the empty concept of being” in Thomas Aquinas, cf. K. Rahner, Spirit in the World, trans. W. Dych [Continuum, 1994], p. 401, et passim. 15. For beginning the infinite difference of x, see, below, Backnote 3. 16. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), p. 146. 17. Ibid., p. 239ff. 18. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, Appendix. 19. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), p. 242. 20. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy, pp. 148ff. 21. Badiou, Being and Event, p. 430. 22. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), pp. 229ff. 23. Badiou, Being and Event, p. 433. 24. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), p. 343. 25. Ibid., p. 288. 26. Ibid., p. 325. 27. That which increasingly shifts itself into a simple doing : existence for the first time simple doing absolutely :: being toward death : being for the first time living death absolutely. In the thinking now occurring for the first time existing absolutely now is living the death that is the end of the future and the beginning of the past—the immortality of absolute mortality. 28. See, below, Backnote 4.

Backnote 3

The Real Beyond the Void: The Beginning/the Power Body  

Table 1 THE REAL VOID1 — FINITE DIFFERENCE OF X   Product Set Product Set: X × Y = {(x,y) | x ∈ X, y ∈ Y}

  Power Set Power Set: p(a) = 2a

p(x) = 21 = {{x}, Ø} p(y) = 21 = {{y}, Ø} p(x,y) = 22 = {{x}, {y}, {x,y}, Ø} p(x,y,z) = 23 = {{x}, {y}, {z}, {x,y}, {y,z}, {x,z}, {x,y,z}, Ø}

Table 2 THE REAL BEYOND THE VOID — INFINITE DIFFERENCE OF X2

  Definitions3 Real Trinary Logic Digital Values: 0 = not nothing 0 = not not nothing 1 = finite (absolute particularity) 1 = infinite (absolute simplicity)   Product/Power Body Operational Values: < = embodied in (,) = identical with (/) = identically

 

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Table 3 Product Body Where X = finite (1), Y = infinite (1), x = something (0), y = something else (0), Product Body, X < Y, = x,y | x/X, y/Y X < Y = 0,0 | 0/1, 0/1 = 0,0 | 0,0 X < Y = 0,0 | 0/1, 0/1 = 0,0 | 0,0/1,1   Simplicity of Existence

0,0 = something else(,)something 0,0/1,1 = something(,)something else (/) finite(,)infinite Power Body Where X = finite (1), Y = infinite (1), x = something (0), y = something else (0), Power Body, p < a, = 2α p p p p

< x = 21 = x, 1 = x, X < 0 = 21 = 0, 1 = 0, 1 < y = 21 = y, 1 = y, Y < 0 = 21 = 0, 1 = 0, 1

p p

< x,y = 22 = x, y, xy, 1 = x, y, X, Y < 0,0 = 22 = 0,0, 00, 1 = 0, 0, 1, 1

p < x,y,z = 23 = x, y, z, xy, yz, xz, xyz, 1 = x, y, (X), X, (x), (y), (X), Y p < 0,0,1 = 23 = 0, 0, 1, 00, 01, 01, 001, 1 = 0, 0, (1), 1, (0), (0), (1), 1   Simplicity of Existence Where a > 1, embodied in a the absolute repetition of beginning4 Beyond the void the foundation of ordinary mathematics for the first time

 

1

2

3

a=1

a=1

a=1

a a a Power Body ∑ 2 = ∑ 2 = ∑ 2 = 0,0 (/) 0,0/1,1

0, 1 = 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1 = 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, (1), 1, (0), (0), (1), 1 = 0 0, 1 = 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1 = 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, (1), 1, (0), (0), (1), 1 = 0   The Cornerstone5 1, 1, 1, 1, (1), 1, (1), (1), 1 = 0,0 (/) 0,0/1,1

Backnote 3

307

Notes 1. For Alain Badiou and the void as ontological real, see Backnote 2. For set theory, cf. T. Jech, “Set Theory,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2002 Edition), ed. E. N. Zalta.  Available online at: http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/set-theory. April 2009. 2. For the absolute dead center cube as the mathematical instantiation par excellence of the relation of the infinite difference of x to the finite difference of x, see D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “The Deep Epidermal Surface: The Cornerstone Construction Order, Minimum Order Tetrahedron Hypercube, & Absolute Dead Center Hypercube,” “Theorem & Proof: The Uniqueness of the Absolute Dead Center Cube,” “Measure Beyond Beyond Reach,” and “Epidermal Immunity Structure & the Absolute Dead Center Hypercube Volume/Boundary Ratio.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com. April 2009. 3. For real trinary logic, cf. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), Section III.1, et passim, and D.G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Aldershot and Burlington, 2003), Chapter 7, et passim.  See also Backnote 1, and D.G. Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “Real Trinary Logic Geometric Series Matrix of the Numeric Geometric Series & the Series of Perfect Numbers,” and “Quantum Gravitational vs. Quantum Logic: Virtually Left-handed Real Trinary Logic.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com. April 2009. 4. Matthew 18:20. 5. The Cornerstone ninefold [111,(1)(1)(1),111], the blueprint for its construction, the product/power body, 1(,)1 (see Backnote 4.), the finite identical with the infinite (cf., above, n. 3, real trinary logic references). The transcendental deduction of the order of construction of the cornerstone is accomplished by starting with the power body analogue of the power set (above, this table), substituting the real trinary logic digits for x, y, X, and Y (ibid.), marking the rightward displacement of 2 power body variables by parenthesizing the places newly occupied by 3 power elements that were formerly occupied by 2 power elements (ibid.), and, recognizing that the threefold real trinary logic power body series exists (ibid.), by reducing the 3 power body series initially containing the three 1’s to the series containing 3 each of 1’s, (1)’s, and 1’s as follows, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, (1), 1, (0), (0), (1), 1 = 0 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, (1), 1, (0), (0), (1), 1 = 00 1, 1,

1, 1, 1,

1, (1), 1, (1), (1), 1 = 00

1, 1,   1, (1), 1,    (1), (1), 1 = 00,

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whereupon the cornerstone is constructed by placing the digits on the left side of the last equation, each in order, successively in the leftmost topmost appropriate and unoccupied cornerstone subsquare. Thus, following the Beginning/Power Body sequence, 1, 1, 1, 1, (1), 1, (1), (1), 1, the cornerstone is constructed in the order here illustrated, 

1

0

0

1

1

(1)

1

4

8

0

1

0

(1)

1

1

5

3

6

0

0

1

1

(1)

1

2

7

9

where the sum of the corners of each of the alternate diagonals = 10, the sum of each of the center vertical and horizontal poles = 11, and the square root of the ratio of the latter to the former, 1.11/2 , is the body-face-diagonal ratio of the absolute dead center triple-cube (see Leahy, The New Universal Consciousness, “Report on a Dream & Related Matters & the God Particle,” “Sorted Diagonals,” and “Maxwell’s Constant & the Trinary Logic Triple-cube.” Available online at: http://dgleahy.com. April 2009).  The ratio of the rational product of the sums of the squares on the successive diagonals beginning with 1 and ending with 9 to that of the sums of the squares on the successive diagonals beginning with 8 and ending with 2 in the Beginning/Power Body ordered cornerstone, [1/(4+5) × (8+3+2)/(6+7) × 9]/[8/(4+6) × (1+3+9)/(5+7) × 2] = .5769230, (1/9 × 13/13 × 9)/(8/10 × 13/12 × 2) = .5769230, the ratio at infinity of the total arithmetic value of the edge-sharing triangles to the total arithmetic value of the whole infinitely expanding triangle of digits produced by the iterative sequential summing of the real trinary logic geometric series (see ibid., “Real Trinary Logic Geometric Series Matrix of the Numeric Geometric Series & the Series of Perfect Numbers”). The ratio of the rational product of the sums of the rows top to bottom to that of the sums of the columns left to right (13/14 × 18)/(8/14 × 23) ~ f1/2 (f = 1.618033989) (see, ibid., “The vmaxwell1/16 × 1 s/m Cube, Human Body Surface & BSA, & the Infinitely Flat Structure of the Universe”). (13/14 × 18)/(8/14 × 23) × (829.44/784)1/256 (ibid., for 829.44/784) = 1.272019052 ~ 1.27201965 = f1/2 , accurate to 1 part in 1 million. (829.44/784)1/256 × f1/1024 = 1.000690257 ~ 1.000692286 = vmaxwell/c, accurate to 1 part in 100,000 (ibid., for vmaxwell/c).  ‘Simplicity’ in Hebrew is

Backnote 3

309

‫ פשׁטות‬whose integral product (see, ibid., “Technical Note on Integral Product & Related Terms”) is 8.2944 × 1010. The factors of 82944 are powers of the first -14 primes, 210 and 34.  829442 = vmaxwell/c accurate to one part in 1 million. For more on the cornerstone construction order, see ibid., “The Deep Epidermal Surface: The Cornerstone Construction Order, Minimum Order Tetrahedron Hypercube, & Absolute Dead Center Hypercube.”

Backnote 4

The Simplicity & Syntax of the Concepts, Immediacy, Mediation, Omnipotence, & Beginning

Table 1 Consciousness (/) Beginning   p = ‘having happened as of now’ = ‘yet’ q = ‘having not ceased as of now’ = ‘still’   p̃ = ‘not having happened as of now’ = ‘not yet’ q̃ = ‘having ceased as of now’ = ‘not still’   p̃ (/) q̃ = ‘not yet (/) not still’ = ‘beginning’

 

Table 2 Logical Structure of the Concepts   p (/) q = ‘having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’   p̃ (/) q = ‘not having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’   p (/) q̃ = ‘having happened as of now having ceased as of now’   p̃ (/) q̃ = ‘not having happened as of now having ceased as of now’

 

Immediacy Mediation Omnipotence1 Beginning

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Beyond Sovereignty

Table 3 The Minimum Order2 p (/) q̃ : p (/) q :: p̃ (/) q : p̃ (/) q̃

 

Omnipotence : Immediacy :: Mediation : Beginning

 

Proof where (,) = identical with and (/) = identically

 

Omnipotence(,)Beginning (/) Immediacy(,)Mediation

 

Real Trinary Logic Product/Power Body Equivalent3 where p (/) q̃ = 1, p (/) q = 0, p̃ (/) q = 0, p̃ (/) q̃ =1

 

1(,)1 (/) 0(,)0 = 0,0 (/) 0,0/1,1 = 0,0 | 0,0/1,1 = 1(,)1 (/) Simplicity

Table 4

 

 

 

 

Meta-ontological Negative Analogues (Badiou)4 stateless element of a situation (the singular) ≠ the absolute situation (something = 0 = not nothing), ≠ absolute singularity

≠ Immediacy

element of the state & the situation (the normal) ≠ non-absolute situation (something else = 0 = not not nothing), ≠ the normalcy of the new, ≠ absolute placedness

≠ Mediation

situationless stateless void (the nothing) ≠ the absolutely situationless (the infinite = 1 = the non-set of non-sets), ≠ the nonbeing of the void, ≠ absolute simplicity

≠ Omnipotence

situationless element of state (the excrescent) ≠ nonabsolutely situationless (the finite = 1 = not not not ≠ Beginning nothing), ≠ absolute excrescence, ≠ absolute particularity

Backnote 4

313

Table 5 Heideggerian Eigentum5

 

~ (p̃ (/) q̃) = not ‘not yet (/) not still’ = ‘not beginning’ Table 6

Logical Structure of Negation of the Concepts

 

~ (p (/) q) = not ‘having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’ = either ‘not having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’ = Mediation, or ‘having happened as of now having ceased as of now’  = Omnipotence

 

~ (p̃ (/) q) = not ‘not having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’ = either ‘having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’ = Immediacy, or ‘not having happened as of now having ceased as of now’ = Beginning

 

~ (p (/) q̃) = not ‘having happened as of now having ceased as of now’ = either ‘not having happened as of now having ceased as of now’ = Beginning, or ‘having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’ = Immediacy

 

~ (p̃ (/) q)̃ = not ‘not having happened as of now having ceased as of now’ = either ‘having happened as of now having ceased as of now’ = Omnipotence, or ‘not having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’ = Mediation

 

~ (p (/) q) ↔ ~ (p̃ (/) q̃) = not Immediacy ↔ not Beginning = Mediation/ Omnipotence = p̃ (/) q / p (/) q̃

 

~ (p̃ (/) q) ↔ ~ (p (/) q̃) = not Mediation ↔ not Omnipotence = Immediacy/Beginning = p (/) q / p̃ (/) q̃

 

314

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Table 7 The Positive Negation Order p̃ (/) q : p (/) q̃ :: p (/) q : p̃ (/) q̃   Mediation : Omnipotence :: Immediacy : Beginning   The Proof where (,) = identical with and (/) = identically   Mediation(,)Beginning (/) Omnipotence(,)Immediacy   Real Trinary Logic Product/Power Body Equivalent   where p (/) q̃ = 1, p (/) q = 0, p̃ (/) q = 0, p̃ (/) q̃ =1   0(,)1 (/) 1(,)0 = 0,0 ~ (/) 0,0/1,1 ~ | 0,0/1,1 ~ 1(,)1 (/) Belonging  

Notes 1. See, above, Appendix 4. 2. D.G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself (Albany, 1996), Section III.1, et passim. 3. See, above, Backnote 3. 4. Cf. A. Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (Continuum, 2005), pp. 95-111; also, above, n. 2. 5. See, above, Backnote 2.

Index The case of English words need not match that found in the text. Works cited and quotations therefrom are indexed under the author’s name. Material within quotations, as such, is generally not indexed. Biblical citations are grouped under New Testament and Old Testament. Foreign words and phrases are included, except that Greek and Hebrew are indexed separately. Longer Greek and Hebrew Scripture passages (Appendix 4) are indexed with other biblical citations as above. In the Numbers and Symbols index numbers are indexed according to the first factor in scientific notation, and symbols alphabetically as applicable. able to be, what is, is, what is not, is not 192, 208-209, 240 absence 80; truth of presence 56; beyond 93; total 135 absolute—cubic 6; relative 12, 254-256 abstraction—perfect, ex nihilo xxv, 179, 218, 257; from praxis xxix, 217-219; den Enkelte 251-252; free of limits of, particular person 254-256 abyss—no more 5-6; inversion, absolute 17; displacement of 19; reason 28; Heideggerian 80; ex -o 8-10, 15, 18, 21-22, 103-104, 125, 184, 264; Hegel 254; of omnipotence, that to which nothing is properly lacking 270 action—entire 9 actuality—potentiality not bound to xxi, 142-145, perfect distinguishability xxv, 159, 183; absolute 13; eternal support, absolute undoing of 19; divine, pragmatic experience 19; absolute, omnipotence 30, itself 208209; novelty, absolute 57; existence, construction 83; of not being, absolute 135-136; Aristotle’s notion 139-143; precedent to potentiality, radically particularized 141; of creating new world 234; identity of measurable, and possibility 257 address, revolutionary xii; universal xix, 119, will to xvi, 102-103 affection—auto-/alio- xxii, 148-150, 165-166

Agamben—beyond and not beyond x ix, xx-xxx, 30-31, 133-146, 148-154, 164, 169-176, 179, 183, 185-191, 194-197, 209-223, 225, 239, 241-243, 286; beyond neither belonging nor inclusion 203 Agamben (works): The Coming Community 135-136, 146-147, 150-151, 158-160, 162-163, 165-166, 168-170, 183-189, 198-199, 201-204, 240, 244; Means Without End: Notes on Politics 136-137, 139-140, 151-160, 162-163, 166, 172-175, 199, 201, 241-243; Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life 141-44, 154, 157, 160, 164, 166-168, 212-213, 239; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive 149, 165; The State of Exception 162-163, 198, 217, 240; Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy 164, 180-181, 194-195, 199, 201, 216-217, 221-223, 240, 243; The Open: Man and Animal 205-207, 209-212, 219-220, 238-241, 245 agent—particular, absolutized 31 alētheia 223 Alpha and Omega 3 alterity, infinite xii, consistent inconsistency xvi, 105, embodiment of, omnipotence 49, 105, no truth of its own 54, existence, construction 83, nothing but 89; perfect, shared essence 4; otherwise than being 71

316

Beyond Sovereignty

Altizer x, xiii, xx, xxix, 9, 26, 28, 30, 56, 95, 113, 128, 172-173, 183, 187; absolute future 133-136, 202, 219, 239, 243 Altizer (works): The Genesis of God 28, 95, 128, 274; The Self-Embodiment of God 28, 202; Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity 30, 32, 34, 202; Godhead and the Nothing 128; Living the Death of God: A Theological Memoir 161-162 analogy—essential, God and man 29; being, absolute 33 and—perpetual, no more 9 angel—writing potentiality to not-write vs. actuality of writing 189; not one of a kind, one kind of one 192, 202; identically living body 205; almost merging with body 234; -s, essential persons as 289 Angst and anxiety 174 anima Christi 208 animal—pre-human/pre-ethical xv; human 54, transformation xix, immortality 92, no truth for 102, unredeemableness 210 ; life, vs. contemplation xxvii; -man problematic xxviii, 209-212; human not inhuman animal, perfectly xxviii, 210-216; saved in being unsavable xxix, 214 anonymity xxiv, 9; absolute 135; perfect, and pure nomination 172 anticipation in reserve—waiting for nothing, no longer 7 apocalypse—beginning 232-233, essence of thinking 216 apokatastasis pantōn 223, 225, 286 appearance—terminating in existence 42; apocalypse 28; occurring 16; omnipotence itself 39-40; logic 7677; itself, limits of finite terminate essentially in 168 appropriation 51-52, 108-110, 152-153; consciousness disowning 179-180

Aquinas xxvii-xxviii, 12, 30, 33, 51, 103-104, 126, 182, 197, 202, 207-208, 211, 232, 249, 299-300, 303 Aquinas (works): Summa Theologica 29, 238, 245; Summa Contra Gentiles 103-104, 126, 201-202, 207-208, 299-300; Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra errores Infidelium 303 Aristotle xvi, xxi, xxvii, 9, 30-31, 81, 100-101, 139-143, 145, 160, 164, 195196, 241; beyond beyond 190 Aristotle (works): On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath 139-143, 164, 195-196, 203; Metaphysics 163-164; The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics 203 attention—attending vs. intending 108, 127 Aufhebung—relative vs. absolute 263264; catargesis vs. 282-284 Augustine 251, 254 Augustine (works): The Trinity 263 Augustinian analogue 88 autonomy, categorical elimination 34 Averroes 201 avoidance xvii, 107-108; of the Good 298-299, 301 axiom—choice xxv, 183 Badiou ix-xx, xxiii, xxv-xxvi, xxviii, xxx, 32, 34, 40-42, 47-58, 60, 64, 69-82, 91, 93-94, 99-115, 117, 119-126, 128, 135, 153-160, 170, 172-173, 183, 189, 202-203, 219, 239, 307; beyond belonging not beyond inclusion 144, 203, 301; set and togetherness 267; hither beyond (without) the One 298300, the Good 301 Badiou (works): Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil xi, 40-41, 5254, 60-61, 63, 66-67, 95-96, 99-102, 105-107, 110-113, 117-120, 122-124, 126-129; Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism 50-51, 65-66, 69-71, 94, 128; Infinite Thought 50, 63,

Index 66, 75-76, 82, 94-97, 100, 124-126, 128-129; Manifesto for Philosophy 51, 57-60, 66-67, 79-80, 82-83, 94-97, 100, 126, 128; Logics of Worlds: Being and Event 2 64-65, 274, 298-299, 303; Being and Event 65, 95, 166, 200, 314; The Concept of Model: An Introduction to the Materialist Epistemology of Mathematics 66; The Century 267, 274 ban—sacred doctrine, now lifted 172, 181; sovereignty, sacred doctrine xxi, 142, 181, 198; sovereign, consequence of interdict of sacred doctrine 138139, banished absolutely 171-172 banality xvii; of good, of evil, utter xxiv, 174-176, 216; of evil, indifference 106 banishing xxiv, xxvi, notion banished 171, 176 Barth 202 Barth (works): Church Dogmatics II.2 31 Basilides xxix, 214 Beatific Vision 207 Beatitudes xxx, 226, 229-238 begin—write the slate itself 14; to exist 32 begin with—absolute matter of thought, the with qua body 12-13; existence, absolute 18, 33 beginning—'not having happened as of now having ceased as of now’ 311-314; third x, 23; notation, height xxiii, 153-160, 176-177; real of existence xxiii 156, 179, 208; consciousness, complete objectivity xxv, essentially transmural 182-183; infinite 3; omnipotence, existence 4, real trinary logic 166; new, requisite provision/absolute requisition 194, self-referential reception Hell vs. other-related reception Heaven 4; abyssless absolute 5; essentially and absolutely the whole 5; nothing but existence 6, act of omnipotence 56;

317

in reserve 15, vanishing 7, no longer 22; continuance of, its undoing 8; severity, particularity of personality 8-9; pre-less, absolutely 10; withness, perfect 11; new, I am God’s 13; still, motion itself of world 15; in essence 15; of imperishable reality 16; and end of beginning and end 16, 51, of thought of existence 298; anticipation of 18; flesh in essence now bread 19; first, second 23, crossing (Heidegger) 300-302; unity 27; “not”- 27; again 31; finite, without limit 40; omnipotence itself, at the disposal of thought 44; complex simplicity 87-90; of being, hither hither 159, beyond beyond, the beginning of 233; of absolute discretion 189-191; new, failure to think essentially 194; being and nothing 201, absolute distinction 211, beyond beyond x 231, 293-294; body of resurrection 205; of exception, absolute 218-219; beginning backwards/beginning again 223; absolute penetration 224-225, 235; Resurrection’s 227229; body, omnipotence itself 232; attending to, of existent newness 233; absolute simplicity of, person 255-256; of essentially new creation, catargetical negation 281-288; Genesis 1:1, logically parsed 288-289; absolute impasse 298; of existence beyond the Good 297-302; absolute world-creating 302; absolute repetition 306 Beginning even the End 3 beginning itself—apocalyptic ground 9; not beginning of existence 15; absolute discontinuity of continuum 22; actuality, universe 49 beginningness—unity of first person unum 8 being—question of x, 39; polyontological x, 39-40; infinite alterity

318

Beyond Sovereignty

xii-xiii; otherwise than xiii, beginning of being not 293-294, infinite alterity 71; reception of xv; potentiality, infinite xx, 133-134, 141-146; abandoned by Being xx-xxi, 145, being-thus otherwise than 136, 169, 217-218, whatever xx, xxii, otherwise than actual 169, face of, opening to nowhere 193; linguistic, purely xxii, exemplary 152-153; within, outside xxiii, 218; commodious xxiv, 176, 191; beyond x xxv; perfect measure xxv, not excluding change 183; illegal, anonymous xxv; matter of, connotation (signifying: to signify is to be) xxix, 218; ex nihilo 6; identified with beginning, sensibly 11; magnitude, of infinite, existing 11, of being 20; generic, essentially precluded 12; finite, absolute wholeness 13; not to be, impossibility 13; of body, absolutely related 17; shared, infinitely 20; history of, history of God 20-21; in-general-not-a-genus, dissolution 22; -in-essence-not-a-genus 23; -with, beginning 24; infinite, ground hitherto 31-32; divine, embodying the body 39, universal body of Christ 42; situationlessness, absolutely 43; in essence, intelligibility 52; -as-being, language 57; impenetrability 72; subsumption by truth 73; -qua-being, deobjectivication 73; in reserve, hidden 81; receptivity of, productive 85; at the disposal of another 87-89, in essence 192-193; evental, infinitely 89; preservation in 100; particular, constructively perceiving 105; at the disposal of thought, objective occurrence 110; of world, absolutely unconditioned 111; and sense, polyontological identity 117; -such 144; hither hither beginning of, being able to not not-be 159; without strings,

absolutely 182-183; digital, absolutely 191; and nothing, collapse upon each other 210, absolute separation 231; abandonment in midst of 221223; commodality 225, 227; gift of omnipotence 229-230; outside of, outside of knowing 233; thought essentially, universally human 259261; essentially new state, catargetical negation 281-288; vs. be-ing 297-302; and truth, beyond belonging together 298-299; proper name, void 299; empty concept and excessus 303 being itself—proportion, absolute 12; transcending itself 23; foreground, absolutely unconditioned 39; revelatory structure, absolutely 41; at disposal of another, absolutely 44; language 57; event in 73-77; absolutely fit measure 176; being commodious, perfectly fitting 191; person 191-192; unicity, freely thought 302 being there (here) 14-15; not being but, subject to novelty 74; transcendental logic 77 belonging—sign xxii, being itself appropriated by whatever singularities 152-153; not belonging xxiii, 152-153; not, none-other than itself xxv; condition of xxiii-iv; itself xxiv; beyond, not beyond belonging itself, pure, humanity 170-172, belonging 261, 274; itself, belonging only to itself 175; none other than itself, thinking essentially conceives not 176-183; sans condition of belonging 191; the Good grounded as own-dom (Eigentum) 298; together of being and truth, beyond 298-299; real trinary logic product/power body equivalent 314 beloved xxii Beneficence xv, xvii-xviii, xx, 87-93, 225; in beginning 21; defective

Index dispositions 107-108; actual, omnipotence 112; without duplicity 124; omnipotence beyond beyond x 269-273 Benjamin 158, 219 betrayal 107, 122-123 Bewarhung 254 beyond—politics xx, xxii, 133-134, 151, 191, not 223; x xxii, xxv-xxvi, 63, 133, and not xx 133-134, 145, 188-189, hither xxiii, 133-134, 145, hither and thither 173; sovereignty, not xxi, 134, 145, not beyond belonging itself 170-172; beyond x xxii, xxv-xxvi, 63, 133-135, 151, 232, 291-295, originary grounding 296-298, not impossible 135-136, quantum 189-191, thinking, absolutely now 214-216, Agamben not 223, beyond place 269-270, beyond complete ceasing of God 286-287; desire xxii, 151; self-consciousness xxiv; resemblance xxv, xxvii, beyond being 3; Kantian quality and quantity distinction xxvi; class, absolute singularity xxvi; beyond oneself 63; the Good, beginning of existence 297-302, man 79; sacred/profane and interdict of sacred doctrine 138, 172; Heidegger 144; interpretation, beyond writing 145; being abandoned by Being 164, 217-218; identity and belonging 170; other-consciousness that is intentionality (beyond beyond x) 205; symbol, person 255-256; turning off into (Heidegger) 297-298; the One 298 bios xxiv, 213 blasphemy 274 bodies—infinite number xiv; sans identities 219-223 body—thinking, essentially ix; artifactual ix, 7, 17, 27, clothing itself 241, beginning 19-20; I form of xiv, gifted omnipotence 83-85; beginning,

319 omnipotence 232; resurrection xix, xxvii, 205; beyond politics/ sovereignty xx, 133; parts related without strings xxvi, 185; creating society xxvi, world xxvi-xxvii, 185, new world 205; nourished by soul xxvii; living, composes Subject 61-62, intentio xxvii, identically, imperative 234; shares creaturely life of Godhead xxvii-xxviii, 207-209; of Christ, resurrected xxviii; you shall love xxx, 229, 234-237; deathless, absolutely 4; beginning, real 5; first thought of universe 5; divine, essence to build itself 6; first actuality, the other 7; definite infinite of others 8; world-, spirit/mind 9; with qua, intimacy of God-with-God 13; bodyless beginning 14; being, absolutely related 17; parts, infinitely interchangeable 17; after death of Christ 20; magnitude of being 20; thought, new creation after-thought 21; living, universe 22; existing infinite number of bodies 39; of bodies 59; living vs. dead, logic 63-64; material basis of truth process 64; identically its object(s) 89; power, vs. power set 104-105, 307-309, 312, product, vs. product set 305-306, 312; meta-schematizing 119-122, 124, 235; resurrected, discontinuity of continuity 121-122, beginning 129, problematic 205-212, imperative to be 234, 289, spiritual (Paul) 283, formally divine 289; whatever 133, physis resemblance without archetype xxii, 220-221; beyond sacred/profane 133; very intention/angelic 133, 234; coming community 136; human, commodification 146-148, 179, 197; to think construction of 160, 179; image not, appropriated, bound to body in zone of indistinction 179180, 197; individual, society itself 191; first soul nourishes (Aristotle)

320

Beyond Sovereignty

195-197; whole, holy living, without halo 205; angel almost merging with 234; to liberate 235; beyond beyond x 235; vulnerability 235; withstanding, matter itself 260; psychic vs. spiritual (Paul) 282-284 body itself—social xxvi, knows nothing of walls or classes 185; pragmatic experience 19; matter 19; absolute unicity vs. whateverness 148-150; beyond adultery, beyond ad alterum 235 boredom xvii, xxviii, 107-108, 213-214 breadth xx, xxiii, 153-160, 176-177; sheer 135 calculation—divine 40-41 Cantor—dust 27; theorem 94-95; inconsistency 126-127; power set 299 Carse (works): Jonathan Edwards & the Visibility of God 28 Catechism of the Catholic Church 238239 ceasing—Yes and Amen of the Trinity 263-264; absolute, person 259; complete, omnipotence (created and uncreated) 277-281, Word became flesh 281-282 certitude/certainty—passion for xxvi; omnipotence cuts itself loose from 186 chance—of truth, gift 40; happening, event 49, 83 change xxv; absolute, law of beginning 23-24; breaking in two the One 108; poly-ontological personality 117; world, vs. create 123-125; itself, the image body itself the product of productive receptivity 180; immediately commodal 246 choice 122-123; axiom 183; freedom from 271-272 Christ x; resurrected xvii, body xxviii; passion xxvi, substance of things 231; puts end to ontological impropriety

282-284; transcendental Jesus, essentially new humanity 6, Subject take place of 109; beginning new world order 10; divine sharing 10; I accept salvation as to create 10-11; perfect negativity/absolute Limitation 14-15; Satan finally 16; body of, infinitely flat structure of new creation 22; new historical order 28-29; death 20, 33; God embodying body of, world itself 39; ‘is resurrected’, fable 49-51, 108-110, 112, 120-121, relationship to fully ethical existence 119-120; without Christ, embodied in very omnipotence 183-185; -’s body and blood in the Mass 197; names the name itself 231; creation embodied in, in Father’s complete ceasing 286287; resurrection of, essential persons embodied in as angels 289 Church xxviii, 209 circle—circumference infinitely straight 21-22; time 29 class—beyond xxiv; super, member none other than itself xxiv, 170-172, to which whatever belongs, common itself xxiv, 175-176; sans, body xxvi; belonging and not belonging to itself, language 152-153 clean slate—itself the now-mark 14; Dewey 30 coexistence—unsupported absolutely 18; absolute 19 cogito—resurrection 13-14; absolute 35 cognitio experimentalis 211 cognition—thither 187 Cohen 94-95 Cohen (works): Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis 95 commandment—new 24, relation to first and second great –s 32, 237-238, 246 commodal—cause xxx, 200; causality 235, 145-246; imperative 234-238

Index commodality xxx, 200; category of New Law 240-241, new creature thinking 223-224; connotation 225, 227 commodities—decline and death xxii, 148-150, 179; persons, beyond politics 191 common—place, multiple xxiii, 153, 175; itself, class xxiv, 175-176 communism—names eternity of equal 114 community—coming xx, 134, 136, 169, 189-191; vs. society xxiii, 169; political xxiv, vs. essentially nonpolitical society 173-174 conatus 194 conception—perception 9, 208-210 condemnation/justice 271, 274 connectedness—transcendence of 17, 32 connotation xxiii, xxix; sheer 135, 153160, 176-177, 193 connotative life 137 consciousness—transcendental ix, interrupted absolutely 93; readiness xv; human, absolute creativity xxi, 138; self-, beyond xxiv, oppositeness of within and without 171, banished to nowhere 271-272; objectivity, complete xxv; new, essentially xxviii, 139, 210-211; transcendental: finite self- (Christian European), absolute self- (Modern European), finite self- as infinite transaction with the other (American Modern), selfless consciousness as infinite transaction with absolute other (World Pragmatism) 3; American 10-11; imperishable, beginning 16; modern, formally tautologous 32; construction, here and now 87-90; beginning of, hither and thither 133-134; disowning appropriation 179-180; creating existence 182-183; beyond other- that is intentionality (beyond beyond x) 205; spiritual (Peirce) 254-255; other-, absolutely

321

deictic 259, clarifies world as absolute newness 271-272; focused, conceiving 272-273; identically beginning 311 consistency—inconsistency, immediately xii, 59; mediation, immanent xiii; distinguished from being 56-57; of indiscernible multiplicity 76-77 construction xiv-xvii, xxiii, xxvi; reality 17; truth 40, 82ff.; body xxvii, 160, 179, 205; consciousness 8790; freedom 106; person 110; new universe/world 139, 190; existence 159 contemplation—without cognition and knowledge xxxi, 236; vs. beyond 182; vs. animal life xxvii; vs. knowledge xxv, 180-183 contemporaneity—times, perfectly different 19 contingency, necessary 175-176; essentially unnecessary, 180 continuity—concomitant beginningless coexistence 18; absolute 31; of creature 46-47; of individual 50; hypothesis, truth excluded by falsity of truth & falsity 89; thirddimensional, fourth-dimensional discontinuity of 121-122, 129 continuum—discontinuity, absolute xiii, xvi, xxv, 21-22, 55, 76, 79, 236, absolute punctuality of existence 179; break in, absolute 255-257; discretion xv, 89-90; trace, event xix, 122; hypothesis 94-95; mediates creating another identically the I surfacing the body 196; arbitrary constitution (Edwards) 200 control—omnipotence 46-47 Cordovero 243 cornerstone (real trinary logic) 296, 306; construction order 247, 307309; to 234-235 Cornerstone of Beginning Morality 227-229

322

Beyond Sovereignty

count-as-one 56-59, 72 courage—lacking 193 creare—essential intelligibility 177 creating—world, absolute beginning 302, absolute immediacy of act of 298-300, essence of xix, evil defeasible goes to 117; new world 210, 240-241, work of created omnipotence 285288, new in 228-229, 232, absolute imperative, not task 141, 164, Cornerstone of Beginning Morality 227-229, thoroughgoing commitment 227, 230, relation of Evil to 269273; perpetually new xxx, 34; nothing unthinkable, categorically 18-19; society, personal freedom 21; universe, someones 39; mind whose knowing is 48; love, omnipotence without plan or plane other than what occurs 209; absolute quality of existence itself 218; doing/working is ceasing from works 277-278; universe, the Particular 291-293 creation—idea, general xi, 48; world, absolute 189, history as, denial xviii, 110, actual existence of every one 125; omnipotence, volume xxiii, 153-160, 176-177; no, unintelligibility xxv, 177; new ix, vs. original 185186, 247, form xxvi, 191, actually xxix, 223, essentially, catargetical negation 281-288; being ex nihilo 6; transcendental a priori 7; artifactual body 7; absolute, Christ-sharing of God 10, genesis 14, absolute newness 243; inability to discern nonbeing 12; wholeness of existence 193, non-generic, of particular being 12; thought, withness 13; perception in essence 14; itself, redundant, ‘total presence’ 15; act of, abyssal support eliminated 18, omnipotence embodying event as transcendent 59; abyssless nothing but 19; new, essentially 21, infinitely flat structure,

body of Christ 22; in midst of creation 22; essential repetition 33; divine righteousness embodying 46; ex nihilo, omnipotence 56; infinity of existing totalities 83; essence of history 113; modern notion 139; impotence of God with respect to own impotence 159; omnipotence cuts loose 186; beyond purpose, eventuates in perfectly adventitious structure of reality 211; absolute quality of existence itself 218, 227; absolute freedom 233; Resurrection’s beginning 235; embodied in Christ embodied in Father’s complete ceasing 286-287; other, absolutely particular 291-293 Creator 18; embodying the universe x, 15; qua, image of God xxv, 232; creature, relation xxxi, 232, free and unconditioned 237-238; creature properly lacking to 237; shares itself with creature 3; with mind of Christ, absolutely 11; essence, new perception/conception 12; unable to discern nonexistence 12; with, as never before 15; transcending goal 21; actuality of singularity 22, of universe universe itself 22; absolute, not alternative to absolute creature 31; matter of thought, absolute 32; identified with Incarnate Word 246; ‘s purpose, realization of 254; absolutely specific personality, difference from creature 262-263 creature—new xxix, lives in dwelling without walls that is omnipotence itself 223-225, thinking essentially new normalcy 223; Creator- distance transcended 3; finitude, analogy of infinite; absolute, not alternative to absolute Creator 31; omnipotence comparing itself to xvi, 104; perfect independence/liberation 229; properly lacking to Creator 237-

Index 238; identified with Creature & Creator 246; -s, not absolutely nonpersonal 259-261; absolutely specific personality, difference from Creator 262-263; enters into God’s complete ceasing, created omnipotence 278281 cube, absolute dead center 25, 296, 307; unique, proof 34; /hypercube, volume per se 129, 153-160, 176-177; triple308 Da 77, 297-298; absolute 269-270, 285-286 Dante 201 Dante (works): De Monarchia 201 darkness xxix, 222-223, 243; precluded 231; willed, evil 271-273 Dasein xxviii, 74-77, 80 dead center 25, 243; existing absolutely everywhere 21 death—of God 31-32, 172, of the One 69-73, 77, 80; actual, Hell 4, formally notionless 6, after 20, cryptophysical ethics 30; of Christ 33, after 20; Platonism of multiple 56; theology 135-136; being toward vs. living absolutely: end of future, beginning of past 303 decision—ethical 39 decreation 31, 223, 225 defection(s), ethical xvii delay—infinite postponement of 8 Deleuze 194-195 denial xvii, 107-108 denotation xxiii, 153-160, 176-177, 193, 227; excess over signification xxix, inconceivable 217-219; sheer 135 denotative life 137 depth xx, xxiii, 153-160, 176-177; sheer 135; originary, abground 301 Derrida 167, 225, 239 Descartes xi, 9, 51-52, 139, 165, 186, 252; project 201, 256-257, 292 Descartes (works): Meditations 52, 256

323

despair—complacent xxvi-xxvii, 185189; in place of Discretion 193 Dewey ix Dewey (works): A Common Faith 30 difference—indifference to xii, 52-55, no, not essentially so 192; absolutely different 192; poly-ontological xv, absolute beginning 88-89; omnipotence embodying xvi, 104; specific, absolutely 56, subsumed/ supplanted, not sublated by sameness 71; of x, infinite 296, 303, finite and infinite 201, 305, 307; infinitely precise 214-216; semi-, otium and 230; absolute, beginning 233; that is identity not function of comparison 262-263 difference itself—truth itself 54-55 different—patience to perceive xxvixxvii, xxix, lacking 193 difficulty xxi, 144 (Agamben); of existence for abstraction 252-253 disaster 107 discernment—absolutely unconditioned 12 discontinuity—being and nothing, in beginning 73-74; of continuum, absolute xiii, xvi, xxv, 21-22, 55, 76, 79; being and sense 80; mediates creating another identically the I surfacing the body 196 discrepancy—doing and willing xxvixxvii; absolute distribution and humanity’s empty hands 193-197; body and its schema 235 discrete—identity, infinitely 264-267 Discretion xv, xvii, xxviii, xxix, 87-93, 214, 222, 227, 240-241; absolute, beginning 189-191; lacking xxvii, 193; actual exercise 90-91; defective dispositions 107-108; doing without, evil 115; actual, naming the different beginning to exist 124; emptiness in place of 193; motion itself, change itself, time itself 201; absolute

324

Beyond Sovereignty

placedness 203; Infinite, Trinity 264267; relation to Indiscretion, actual creation of world 272-273 dissemblance xvii, 107-108, 243 disservice xvii, xxvii, 107-108, 194 distance—finite/infinite 300 distribution—existence, absolute xxvii, 196, 208-210, persons abide in 236; universal, substance of divinity 4, 26; absolute, res nominata 25, perception itself of body itself 179, transcendental essence 30, 76, absolute specification 192-197; means of creating world 230; dwelling of new world 234 distributor—existence xxvi; of dwelling(s) xxvii, 65, 192, 196, 218, 234, 239-240, 272, counterpart 245; absolute distribution of existence 208-210; universe embodied in, embodied in omnipotence 259-261 division—whole 104, 108; insideoutside 183 doing—vs. willing xvi-xvii, xxvixxvii, 102-103; simple, shifting into (Heidegger) 96, vs. absolute 301-303; right thing 87-93; and discriminating, logically ordered pairs 88, 108; discriminate, identified with existence 218; absolute, omnipotence 269-273 duality—Nietzsche 69 duration—prolonged disorganization of life 101-102 dwelling—beside, knowability of entity xx-xxi, 135 earth ix; embodiment of intelligible universe 5 ecclesiastical mark 88 Eckhart 298 economy—society xxiii, 125, 169; new, essential foundation xxv, of existence, requisite provision xxvi, 192-197, distributor xxvi, 34, of new society

beyond sovereignty and politics 182183; existence absolutely economic 190-191 edge—universe, abyssless 5; absolutely sharp, beginning 9; absolute 21, 35, each another sharing 13, creation of 291-293 Edwards x, 11-12, 28-30, 200, 202 Edwards (works): The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 6, Scientific and Philosophical Writings 28-29 ego—exists as other 8; place of infinite otherness 9; pure otherconsciousness 11; irreducible to self 22, 27; transcendental 35, particular identified with universal 150; THE, realizing itself 253 Eigentum 298, 313-314 Einschränkung xxvi, 30; absolute, withness 14-15; infinite, absolute quality or omnipotence 264-267 elasticity—absolute 31-32, 263-264, turned inside out 104-105; and purpose (Kierkegaard) 127 Eliot (works): “Four Quartets” 31 embodiment xi, xvi, xviii, 26; non-set of non-sets xxiii, 55-56, vs. linguistic being belonging and not belonging to itself 152-153, setting free from all sets 262-263; of God, historical Jesus 20; of ontic, absolute 39-41; Russell’s paradox, solution 43-44; discontinuity, absolute 55; ontological vs. phenomenological category 64; of newness, omnipotent 115; of existence for first time 121-122; in place of set 129; existential, embodied in omnipotence 129; ultimate, interdict of sacred doctrine 141; coincidence of, and membership embodied in omnipotence, new normalcy 218-219; of Incarnation, omnipotence itself 223; of creatures in the Distributor of the dwellings 279; bodily, in God’s complete ceasing 281-282

Index Emerson 9, 72 emptiness—salvation 191; dwells beside whatever singularity 193, 197, 221; central, within man separates man and animal 213-214 energy—lacked xxiv, 172-173; absolute, finite time 13; point zero of 25, 243 Enkelte, den—249-252, embodied in omnipotence itself 44; freedom 50 Ennealogue of Morality of New Beginning xxx, 32, 225-238 environment—of person, absolutely personal 21 equality xviii, 166, 170, 197, 274, 292; sameness 70-71; eternal truth 113-115; self-, realized by existing individual 251 esse—creature participates absolutely 33 esse res nominata—society 25 essence—generic 29, thought x, 22, world xiii, history of, unraveling 23, dissolution 24, absolutely particularized 35; transcendental, absolute specification xxvi, 30, 35, 76, 210, existence, thought 13, 192-197, angel, one kind of one, immediately specifies 192; Divine, contemplation, infinite sharing xxvii, 207-209; Divine, existence, exists 3; eucharistic, of existence xxviii, 193; first transcendental, body 5; Trinity 29; new, of omnipotence 42; preexistent 93; Aristotle 100-101; of history, creation 113; and demonic, collapse upon each other 210; ‘new world’, mind attends to 285 eternity—instant of, inscribed in xvi, 100-101 ethics—physical xv, xx, xxix, unity, organic 87, dwelling of spirit, conceived in essence 219; physical vs. metaphysical ix; metaphysical vs. diaphysical xiv, xxix, 81-82; physical, metaphysical, cryptophysical, paraphysical xxix, 134-135, 236,

325

diaphysical 219; cryptophysical 30, vs. paraphysical 243; question of 39; (re)turn of philosophy vs. thinking now occurring 80-93; existing body 85; preservation in being 100; relationship to core of Paul’s proclamation 119-120; new global, and morality, foundation 208-209 ethos—dwelling place 243 Eucharist 26, 230, 238-239; existence itself 42, 193; of existence, occurring for first time 259-261 Euclid 246-247 event—Christian xi, appropriation of form 51-52, 108-110; truth process xiv, 100-103, 107; trace xix, 122; break/rupture 49-51; not being qua being 57-59, 74; appearance 76; chance 49, 83; structure of exception 157 evil—not radical xv-xvii, 99, 103104, 106; failure to act xvii, 105, 271; unnecessary xvii; possibility of, transpersonal Subject xvii, 106, Subject not otherwise than containing itself, not containing itself 115; good of, real 111, possibly actual non-being xviii, 111-112; willing xix, darkness 271-273; self-grasping xxiv, 174; good and, no good of 96; general principles and names, ethic of truths vs. ethic of simplicity 105-109; doing without Beneficence, not doing without omnipotence 112, 115-116, improperly lacking to the latter 272; justifying, modern burden 112-113, 128; refusal of simplicity of existence itself 115; doing without actual Readiness/actual Discretion 115; real, not actual per se 116; infinitely intensified 117; relation to creating new world, ontological mule 269-273 exceptionality—relative and absolute 237 excluded middle xxiii, 153

326

Beyond Sovereignty

excrescence xx; singular(ity) xxiii, 157159, sovereign exception 157, 171-172, indistinction/inseparability xxiv, 135-138, suchness 144; absolute 97, negative of absolute particularity 200, 312; spirituality, non-thingness 188, 230 exegetic analogue 88 existence 27-28; outsidedness/ onesidedness x, 9; structure, absolutely revelatory x, 39-40; eventuality of, absolute xii, 59; sensible xiii, 80-81; nothing but xxii, 55-59; construction xxiii, actuality 83; fitting first time xxiv, 176; passion, absolute xxvi, 185, of Christ 183-185; minimunized, digitalized, particularized xxvi, 190-191; absolute, infinitely selfless begins to exist 3; beginning of thought 4; thought, indistinction 171, person 255-256 second/last 5; abyssless, beginning 6; increase, absolute 6, 286-287; Heaven itself 9; bread, brand new 10; global, essentially specificity 12; absolutely relative 17, 254-256; withness, divine 18; now, absolutely 19, imperative to be 234-238; new, essentially 21; ex nihilo 22-23; non-categorical 25; wholeness, essential 30, productive receptivity that is creation 193; sheer transparency 39; nothing but, omnipotence 44; beginning of, clean break 49-50, beyond beyond x, productive receptivity 237-238; superficiality, absolute 59, 145; distribution of dwelling, absolute 76, 192-197, 208-209, persons abide in 236; sensible, not truth of 80; infinitely particular, I’s enactment of truth 90; absolute trace 133; absolute 135; and thought, identification 138139; being of, infinite potentiality 133-134, 141-146; vs. resemblance 148; without the One, vs. beyond

156, 298-300; real 168, of, beginning 156, 179, 208; absolute perpetuity 176-177, 192; thinking creating 180; economy, absolutely economic 190-191; specific, infinitely 191; discriminate doing identified with 218; exception, essentially 219; / writing 225; commodally mediated, lacking to Creator 237-238, 246; eucharist of, now actually occurring 259-261; absolutely differentiated 293-294; elements, infinitely ascending repetition vs. 9-set of natural numbers 294-295; beyond the Good, beginning 297-302; not still not yet 302 existence itself xix-xx; appearance itself xx, 124; distribution, absolute xxvii, 192-197, 208-210; essence, non-paradigmatic xxviii, 209-211; exists, I actually create 13; plurality, absolute 23; revelatory structure 39-40; eucharist 42, 193; word 48; eventuality, absolute 59; evental being of, infinitely 89-90; absolutely interrupting transcendental consciousness 93; simplicity 104; superficiality, absolute 145; qua writing/text, construction 156-157; plaintext, species-making-species writes/pens 177-179, essentially metanomous 179; absolute quality, creating/creation 218; absolute predicament 231; absolute placedness 234, 245; absolute differentiation 293-294, Trinity 262-264; absolute particularity 300 expectancy 26 experience—particular/universal xxii, 150; body, ideal 5; absolutely new 19 exteriority xxiii-xxvi, 9, 11, 158, 184, 188-189, 198, 213, 265; absolute 44, of everything, passion of Christ 183-185; outside, absolute xxivxxvi, 11, 198, excludes inclusion’s

Index necessary contingency 176, knows no exteriority 191 extreme and mean ratio (golden section) 200, 246 facticity—eternal, beyond Being xxix, 222; displacement xxx-xxxi, 236; passion of 221-223, precluded 231; absolute, foundation of imperative to love the truth 232, essentially historical structure 232-234 factuality—freedom and reality, identification 193-194 faith xv; incarnate 192-193; in God, no outside of faith in God 198; law and, catargetical negation 284; absurd, beyond reason (Kierkegaard) 291-293 felix culpa—vs. felix exculpatio 16 fiction, plausible xx, 122-123 fidelity xiv, 51, 65, uncertainty 107; moment of crisis 122-123 finite—infinite, identified xii, denied identity 62, infinite multiplication 55, Hegel and Descartes 256-257; perception of truth, absolute xv; imperishability 13; imperceptible trembling, to make itself whatever 159; limits terminate essentially in appearance itself 168; epitome of Hegel’s bad infinite vs. that of good infinite 189; halo surrounding 218-219 finitude—infinite xxv, 183; analogy of being 13; deification of 251; nothingness 252 first—absolute 4, 11; last 3, 25, 35, 282-284 firstness--153-160, 240-241, 244, 255257, 294-295; absolute 49 floating signifier 217-219 fold—divine with the word, absolute 23, 35-36 force—gravitational and cosmological 126 forcing xv, representation of being 110-111; precluded 87; without,

327

real shaped absolutely 90-91; of knowledges 107 foundation—without foundation x, 27; new vs. re- xix, 120-121; wholeness of first thought 5; existence, beginning 10; new, in Christ 25; of absolute now, new essence of omnipotence 42 fourth—precedes first, second, third xv; figure xxiii, 171-172; absolute quality 10; ordering categories, categorically 11; not added to three 29 fourthness—takes precedence of firstness 10; event in logic 90-93; absolute force of identity, infinite Unity 168; new firstness 240-241, 257; absolute quality 244; absolute now, Fact, Identity 255-257 free use of (the proper) 139-140, 145, 195; to liberate all texts henceforth from 160 freedom xix; parts of body xxv; absolute xxix, creation 233, beginning 40, 182-183, withness of the with 11; a priori of creation 7; new quality 1718; personal, structure of new world order 21; Image in essence of Creator 22; divine, particular decision 31; personality 34; construction of, human nature 106; gift, in form of thought 117; and reality, factuality 193-194; preceding vs. preceded by necessity 254; no longer postponed, perfect specification 254-256; relation to imperfection and defection 272-273; actualizing vs. removing operative law 284 fromness 18 fulfillment—relationship of first and last imperatives marked as 237-238, 247; of law, nothing but 284 future—pastless perception 14; absolute 31-32, 135, transcending total presence of past 19; anxious about 42; absolutely now or not at all 216 Galileo (works): Two New Sciences 34

328

Beyond Sovereignty

Gelassenheit 222 generality—singular 100 generic—being 29-30, precluded, essentially 12; body, dissolution 2223; multiple 58-60; singularity 72; procedure, infinite 73 gerenicity xviii, xxv, 58, 80; inexplicable fact of localization 77; gestures 113115; ground shared with Badiou 183 gift—self to itself xxi, 141-142, 145, 191; of freedom, form of thought 117 God—hither thither and hither, politics 172; death of x-xi, xx, 135, after 21, hither xxiv, 69-73, 77, 80, 172, 187; mind of xiii, anancistic order 254, predicated of mind of Man 79; who comes to mind xx, 135, hither xxiv, 172, 187; image of, knowing essentially xxv, 181; Idea 252, pure xxv, 183; takes place not taking place xxv, 183-185, 191; Finite, after 21, resurrected 33, Christ 4, identically its environment 4, 26, transcendental form of created universe 6; first with God 6; absolutely selfless 10; absolute appearance of God 11; infinite, first finitude 13; thinks Incarnation, form of beginning 19; intimacy with 19-20; history of, history of being 20-21; found face 28; weakling, absolute 31, 261, 264, 288-289; in particular, not in general 31; embodying world, not ceasing to be apart from the world 39; impotent, hint 65; kenosis, absolute 80; fall into existence, into meaning 135, 187; impotence with respect to own impotence 159; without God, Christ without Christ 183-185; knowledge of, absolute simplicity 208-209; not truth of the I 261-263; the, equality with learner (Kierkegaard) 291-293; and natural intellect, proportion of improportionality 299-300 God of Revelation—no secrets,

absolutely xxviii, 220, thought in essence for first time 208-209 Godhead—creaturely life shared xxvii-xxviii, infinitely digital, parsed, particular, deictic 207-209; embodies universe 39; embodiment of ontic, absolute 39-41 Godshare of Christ 10 good—beyond the xiii, beginning of existence 297-302, not, the fact that the world is 189; capability for xv; constructively perceiving, act of xvi-xvii; to create the world xvii, xix, xxiv, 105-108, 117, 175-176, 285; good of, actual xviii, real being 111; reactionary notion of 99; prior to evil 103-104; defection from, possibility 115; willing or not willing 128; void in place of 298-300; hither the 300301 good and evil—beneath xvi, xx, 124; coexistence precluded xviii, 111; possibility of, remaining 39; reminiscence of beyond, hither hither and thither 187 grace—laicized xi; failing to fail to create the world 270-271; evil as occasion for 272-273 Gratitude xiv, xvii, 227; foundational fourthness xv, 87-93; defective dispositions 107-108; being at disposal of thought 110 Grenze xxvi, 189-191 guilt and justice left behind xxviii, 174, 214, 216 halo xxiii, xxvi, xxviii, 26, 193; each thing’s being such, beside it 144; matter not remaining beneath form 158; limit itself, being-within an outside 158, 171, 191, 218-219, 224; excrescence of singularity 159, threshold, passage outside world 187193; pure none-other 170, belonging itself 171; almost merges with body

Index 197; whole, holy living, body without halo 205, wholly in place 233-234; inside outside of the anthropological machines 214; profane 234 hatred xvii, 107-108, 113 Hegel 9, 31, 64, 75, 139, 150, 189, 249-252, 256-257, 261, 264, 288289, 291-293, 295-296, beyond beyond 190; dialectical identity 71, 80; absolute religion 80; simulacrum of omnipotence 105; -ian-Kierkegaardian self-conscious dialectical sequence 274 Hegel (works): Philosophy of Mind 128; Science of Logic 251, 256; Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences 296 Hegel-Marx—post mortem Dei 119 Heidegger x, 9, 26-27, 29, 31, 51, 63, 75, 80, 96, 136, 144, 174, 213, 222, 313; turning off into beyond 164, 297-303 Heidegger (works): Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) 63, 162, 297-298, 300-303 height 153-160, 176-177; beginning, notation xxiii, 156 Heraclitus 172 history—desubstantialized xvii-xviii, 108-110; existence with the other absolute 3; absolute nearness, the Kingdom 20; of being, history of God 20-21; totality/wholeness unfolding 23; repetition 23; end of, in essence 52; occurrence to human essence, personal identity 109-110; denial of 113 history itself—catholicological locus 55; Christ resurrected, Paul 108-110 holy—you shall be, every day xxx, 229, 233-234, 237, qua resurrected bodies formally divine 289 Holy Spirit 289; absolute relative 11 hominid 215 homo sacer 198 hope—concrete form, I constructing being 89-90; lacking 193

329

hors-texte xxiii, 156, 167, 208 human—rights x, 32; being, embodied in omnipotence xiii; animal xiv, potentially human 82-83, immortality of xv, 54, 92, transformation xix, 119, -s, outside possibility of being more than contemptible 119, essential persons 259-261; spirit, indefeasibility xviii; beings, power of life xx; life, simply/simple xxiv-xxv, xxviii, 174, 183, 189; nature, perfection xxvii; not inhuman, perfectly xxviii, 210-216; not (yet) xxix; species has inhabited transcendental realm since Incarnation 3, flight absolute 179; body, resurrection of Jesus after death of Christ 20; species, revolutionary metanoēsis 79; world, divinity of 138; made inhuman, inhuman made human 212 humanity—new xv, unformed vs. creation itself 16; vs. state xxiii, 172, pure belonging 170-172, foundation 24, person creating 92; empty hands xxvi-xxvii, 191-197; species-making species 5, 259, essentially new, transcendental Jesus Christ 6, writes/ pens plaintext of existence itself; new reality, inception 10; personal, I absolute particular 85; personal identity, history 109-110; form resemblance bereft of identity 145; thought properly, commodious mercy 232, 259; workless 219-223, 241-243 I—form of body xiv, xvii, 51, 8485, defecting from imperative to create, evil 106; shapes real xv; surfacing body xxvii, creating another identically the 196, 238; real, first person other/unum 8; apocalyptic 16, form of thought 51; constructor of truth, form of gifted omnipotence 84-85; patient attention to/construction of particularity 89;

330

Beyond Sovereignty

immediately mediates immediacy of the other (Discretion qua actual) 90-91; transcendental essence of existence/distributor of the dwelling 192-193; /we, freely existing creator(s) 232; finite, divine necessity 251; other-equality and mediacy 253-254; immortality 253-254; wasted, real other 261; absolute other 261; truth of, God not 261-263 I am—new 13; beginning/end 3, 15; naming the other 16, nearness of kingdom 17; the Resurrection of God, Jesus saying 20; apocalyptic 29; now existing 35; ‘the Resurrection’ 50 idea—of God 264; pure, God xxv, God without God 197, Christ without Christ 183-185; absolute 31, 105, 113, logic of (Hegel) 295, synthesis of Aristotle and Augustine (Hegel) 251; American 31; general (Peirce) 48; omnipotence 104-105; resemblance without archetype 148, 183, image not the body, appropriated 179-180; mark of, mark of void 300; beginning and end of world 300-301 idealism 9; materialism 52; absolute, originarily grounded 300-301 idealistic materialism 5 identity—personal x, absolute nighness 21; self-, no more 9, 27; infinite, absolutely 21-22; dialectical xiii, 71, 77, 80; mathematics and real, axiomatic limitations 88-89; I, absolutely existing particularity 89; vs. ipseity 166; beyond all 169; knower and known, very quality 190-191; absolute explosion of 196; inapparent, mystery lost 219-222 immanence—new plane xxiv, 172176, 181, 183, absolutely no 208, not alternative to new plane of transcendence xxviii, 185; identical with transcendence, beginning 15; absolute, itself transcendence 17; and

transcendence, polarity 138 immediacy—‘having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’ 203, 311-314; and mediation 165-166; new (Kierkegaard), beyond subjectivity 257 Immortal xii, xxviii, 101; history itself desubstantialized 109; real irreality 128; adventitious occurrence 210 immortality xvi; very, someones being 39; composed 54; living human animal 92; possibility 99-100; live human body, Resurrection 115; of absolute mortality 303 impenetrability 166 imperative—to create, absolute xvii, xxi, xxiii, xxvi-xxvii, 96, 208-209, I defecting from, evil 106, reality xxix-xxx, new world 6, 219, 225, kingdom of heaven on earth 6, actual contemporaneity 19, world 117; to write what was never written, absolute xxiii, 156-157; -s, nine xxx; world-, actualize very first thought 3-4; Godly, create Christ’s salvation 11; create real 13; ninth 32; to create new world 193-194, refuge of self-consciousness from 138, not a task 141, 164; to dwell in dwellings of new world 234; to be resurrected body 234, 289; to be absolutely ready for person 236-238; last, properly lacking to first 237-238, 247; global, to create new world 285 impossibility—possible 8 impossible—possibility/actuality of xix, 120-121; possibility of, impossible 47 impotence xvii, 107-108 inaction xvii, 107-108 Incarnation ix, 3; newly thought x; omnipotence newly embodying xxvi; infinite outworking, work of speciesmaking species 10; God thinks, form of beginning 19; realization, absolute 20; newly/essentially thought 23; divine embodiment of, precludes

Index possibility of Subject 39; effect 41; absolutely non-paradigmatic, schema itself absolutely real 208-209; beyond purpose, eventuates in perfectly adventitious structure of reality 211; of Word properly lacking to creation of world 237; creatures affected by 259-261 inconsistency—indiscernible multiplicity 89, concept xiii; discretion xv; sans void 66-67; of same 73-77; of situation 76-77; absolute, consistent structure of existence itself 93; consistencies of inconsistencies, persons 125; Cantor 126-127 independence—creature 44-47, 50-51; in existence, persons embody 236 independence itself—divine, incarnate 17, everything participates absolutely 20 Index of Logico-Existential Relations (Hegel, Kierkegaard, thinking now occurring) 291-295 Index of the Ethic of Simplicity xv, xxviii, xxix-xxx, 192-193, 203, 222, 225, 240, 244, 274275, 288-289, four dimensions, ontological characteristics 86-93; simplicity, omnipotence 104-105; Indifference 106; Society coincides Justice/Economy 125; absolutely unconditioned outside of existence 210-211 indifference (indistinction) xvii; zone xxii-xxiv, 138-139, 150-152, 183, 218-219; no xxvi; point, potentiality/impotentiality; to differences 52-55; banality of evil 106; defective disposition 107-108; point of, between potentiality and impotentiality 222-223 indiscernible—no conception xx, 124; truth 58-59; universalizable 72; inconsistency 76; not indiscernible 299

331

Indiscretion xxviii, xxix, 214-216, 222223, 230, 232; relation to Discretion, actual creation of world 272-273 indistinction—threshold xxiii, 189; zone 138, 158, 180, 193, 211; expropriated from sovereignty 171172 individualities, infinitely discreet ix-x; absolutely discrete, interchangeability 7 individuality—Kierkegaard and Hegel 249-252; new 6-7; infinite—heteronomous authority 174; and finite, Hegel and Descartes 256-257 information xx, 135; no, not conceivably true 156, 177 innovation—vs. creation/novation 114-115 inside-outside xxv, 9, 210-211 instrumentality—endless 25 intellect—understanding, absolutely 9; agent vs. possible 139-143; potential 145; universal (Averroes) 201 intelligibility—notation of singularity xxiii, 153-160, 176-177, 193, 202; beyond ‘containing’ xxv, 176; essence, beginning of being 10; of being in essence 52; identification of writing (notation) and denotation 153-160, 176-177, 193, 218; connotation 240241 intentio—the living body xxvii, 205; paraexistence 135; each thing’s beingsuch beside it 144; sheer information 134-135, 165; identically the body, imperative 234 intention—intending vs. attending 108 intentionality xxv, sphere of generic essence of existence 183; God’s creative knowledge 182; hither 187; cognition and, free of all 187; beyond, (beyond beyond x), intentio identically the living body 205, 234 intervention—without event xxv, 183

332

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intimacy—infinite x; in existence, absolutely unconditioned creatureCreator relation 3; perfect, with perfect separateness 14; absolute, withness of existence 15, (,) being (,) thought 17; self-alienation, absolute 19; with God, foreignness alienated absolutely 19; absolute, thought essentially 20; Father with Son, multiplication 23 invariants—communist 114 IT—x very newness, beyond beyond x 225 itself—transcending itself 34 James ix, 10-11, 17, 26 James (works): Pragmatism 26; A Pluralistic Universe 26 Jefferson 9 Jesus 42; historical, essential realization of work of 20, identically resurrection of 20; of Nazareth, Law 25; Christ, the Kingdom Itself 25; othered, cannot be 43; the break 50; resurrection 51; cry on cross 65; prayer given disciples 227 judgment—existential 9; left behind 31; self-, absolute 31-32; last day 218219; last, utopia vs. anypothetotopia 285-287 justice xxviii, 274; coincides society/ economy 125 justification of evil xviii, 113, 128 Kant xxii, xxvi, 9, 27, 30, 64, 148-150, 189-191, 197, 240-241, 243, 251-252 keep going 72 Kierkegaard xi, 31, 44-46, 50-51, 55, 96, 126-128, 249-252, 257, 291-293 Kierkegaard  (works): Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers 44-46, 64, 96, 127, 249-250, 256; Philosophical Fragments 249, 256; Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments 251-252, 256 kingdom—itself 25; of God 17, 20, 289;

of heaven 232 knowing—divine, not human (Aristotle) 140, act of, transformed to power of thinking 164 knowledge—thinking alternative to xxv, 140, 180-183; oblivious of void 56; hole made in –s 81-82, 113-115; essentially new, truth enacted 90; transformation 100-103; lacking 193; of God, absolute simplicity 208-209 language—being-as-being 57; of thought absolutely evental 79; belonging and not belonging to itself vs. embodiment 152-153; itself, sovereignty 159-160 last second to first 237-238, 247 law—of nature, imperative of creating 12; new 23-24, 240-241; Christ 25; Jesus Christ 25; Jesus of Nazareth 25; fulfillment of, nothing but 284 Leahy (works): Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact ix, 25, 28-29, 31-32, 63, 66, 84-85, 95-96, 161-162, 165, 182, 199-201, 203-204, 219, 240-241, 244-245, 256-257, 261, 263, 289-290, 296, 303, 307; Foundation: Matter the Body Itself ix-x, 25-36, 6364, 66-67, 78-81, 83-84, 90-93, 9597, 104, 116-117, 121-122, 126-127, 129, 153, 161-162, 165-168, 178-179, 184-185, 190, 198, 200-203, 224-225, 238-239, 241, 243-246, 257, 274-275 289-290, 296, 307, 314; The New Universal Consciousness 25, 34, 36, 63, 96, 129, 133, 154-156, 167, 200, 203, 263-264, 296, 307-309; Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being 26, 28, 32-36, 41-42, 63, 66, 109, 126, 128-129, 138-139, 162-163, 165, 198-99, 201-203, 232-233, 241, 244-245, 263-264; “Diachrony of the Infinite in Altizer and Levinas: Vanishing Without a Trace and the Trace Without Vanishing” 161-162;

Index “The Originality of Levinas: PreOriginally Categorizing the Ego” 162, 199, 202 L’Echarpe Rouge 113-115 Leibniz 72, 77, 83, 93 Levinas ix, xiv, xx, xxix, 55, 81-82, 172174, 183, 187, 219, 222; absolute past 133-136, 144-145 life—naked xx, and power of life, inseparability 137-141, 145, 165, separated 212; simply human 183, 189, logic xxiv; after death, absolutely 14; quality, absolutely unconditioned 17; immanence of, transcendence of 135, 183; inseparability of fact and form of, thought qua nexus/ connection 139; exemplary, purely linguistic being 152-153; itself, winglevel soaring 177-179; philosophy of, in new sense 181; profane, sufficient 210 limit/limitation xxvi, 30; perfect, withness 14-15; imposed on omnipotence 47; determinate -s of indeterminate 159; -s of finite terminate in essentially in appearance itself 168; within and without the world 188; absolute, quantum beyond beyond x 189-191; knows itself absolute other 191 living—well xx, 137 Locke 28 logic—trinary, real xv, 203, 263, categories xxiii, 240-241, ninefold xxx, cornerstone construction 307-309, organizing principle of Ennealogue of New Morality 225238, vs. dualistic 63-64, vs. logics of intermediary truth 91, logical foundation to ordinary mathematics 200, 305-306, complex simplicity of unity 293-294; simply human life xxiv; consistently inconsistent 57; values 96, definitions 305; relatives 30; of same and other, absolutely

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inadequate 57; living vs. dead body 63-64; transcendental, vs. ontology 76-77; modal 77; order, foundational/ minimum 87, 90, 289; event in, Fourthness 90-93; orderly/disorderly 105; means without end 174-176; oppositional, of modernity 181; operative, of absolutely pragmatic transcendental dichotomy 214216; cornerstone element 227228; simplicity of, of ontology of creation 234; theory of the void 244; geometric series, iterative sequential summing 308; -al structure of concepts 311, of negation of 313-314 logical fourfold 88, 294 logico-linguistic function 88 logos xxviii; left behind 31, 214, 216, bereft of 31-32 lovable vs. beloved xxii, 151 love—divine, nothing but existence 48-49; act of creative 90; of creatures who penetrate one another absolutely 224-225; relation to truth, historical structure of facticity 232-233; of person, absolutely free and unconditioned 238; of God, of neighbor 246 lovers—impenetrability 166; coming to light in concealment 219-223, 243, precluded 231-232 machines—anthropological xxviii-xxix, 211-216 MacLeish 48 Maimonides 244 malfeasance xvii, 107-108, 270 malice xvii, 107-108 man—biological species xii-xiii; mind of xiii; -animal problematic xxviii, 209-212; saved in being unsavable xxix; God in essence 6; God-withman 16; rises above rule 39; thinking vs. biological 78-79; beyond the Good 79; mortal animal 99; First (Adam)

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and Second (Adam) (Paul) 282-284; catargetical and catapaustical, relation 287-288 material idealism/idealistic materialism 5 materialism 9; historical 25, 32; idealism 52 mathematics xix; modern, the nothing 34; being-as-being, language 57; beingqua-being, thinking 74; paradoxical foundation 87-88; and sense, absolute noēsis indistinguishing 117 matter—absolute, thought 13; substrate of invisible nonbeing, transcended 18; the body itself 19, 185, 260; brought into being ex nihilo 51; preexistent, no 87 meaning—absolute 135 means—without end xxiv, 174-176; ends, absolutely identical xxiv, xxvii, 175-176, 200, to create 13; absolutely goal 21; beginning identical with, identical with end, Creator embodies 22; manner and, of creating new world 227-230, 236; chief, of creating world, absolutely the end 232; -end identity 244 measure—to act with 236; take, of the void 301 media perfectio 207-209 mediality—pure xxiv, 175-176, 193, 196-197 mediation—‘not having happened as of now having not ceased as of now’ 311-314; immediacy identical with beginning xxii, unicity of body 149150, 166; affirmative, of others 254 medium perfectum xxvii, 28-29, living human body sharing creaturely life of the Godhead 207-209 meekness 233-234, 245 mercy 270-271, 274; world-creating, morality 232 Messiah—overturns law in force without significance 216-217 meta-ontological negative analogues 312

meta-ontology xix-xx, xxx, 63, 117; resting on void vs. revolutionary, defeasance of void 123-125 meta-schematizing of human body xix, 119-122, 124, 289 metaboly—absolute 11, 29 metanoēsis, revolutionary xiii, xviii-xix, thinking of the human species 79, indistinguishes ontological and moral 102-104, transcends distinction noēsis/metanoēsis 117, beyond notion of Subject 108; notion of metaschematizing human body 119-122, 124, 235; indefeasibility of embodied human spirit; Good saying that what there is is absolutely new 116 metanomy 29; infinite 24; vs. autonomy 34 middle—absolute, existing xxiv, 175-176, qua absolute particularity, negative of excrescence of singularity 200, transcending relative 254-255; perfection, human nature xxvii midst itself—quantum predicated 79 mind—actual/potential xxi, 139-143; catholicological non-generic 12; transcends barrier 13; not nonplussed by absolute unpredictability 48; of God predicated of mind of Man 79; rational, Aristotle 81-82; general, zone of indifference 183; cornerstone element 227-228; divine, anancistic order 254 minimum xxvi, 190; temporality 13; order, real trinary logic 289, concepts 312 misfeasance xvii, 107-108 modality—240-241 (Kant); pure xx, 136, 169; meta-, absolute xxiv, the thing 176 modernity—anxiety 63 moral rule—new, essentially 23 morality—new xxx, 200, foundation 185; of new beginning ix, 32, table of xxx, 225-238

Index More (works): Utopia 290 mortality 119 multiple—Platonism of xi, 52, 81-82, 299; Subject prescinds from 52; generic 58-59, 93; pure, vs. effect of transcendental regime 76 multiplicity—absolute xxiv, absolute singulars 176; infinite 43, God’s embodying world 39; the same a, not a unity 75; pure, inconsistency 76 name x; naming of 172; you shall cherish the xxx, 228, 231, 234; multiple 113-115; Tetragrammaton 244 Nancy x, 27 Nancy (works): Being Singular Plural 27 Narcissus 145, 149 natural law x; to create nature 12 nature—cornerstone element 227-228; mind contemperated with 254 nearness—absolute 20; infinite, Creator 40, omnipotence 47 negation 30, 190; self-, absolute 31-32; supplanted by affirmation 71-72; catargetical 281-288; non-catargetical catapaustical absolutely differentiates existence 288; of reason, absolute 291-293 negative—and positive, figures of Subject 114; will, after the fact 117 negativity—infinite, withness 14-15; absolute quality 30 neighbor—notion, dynamic root 32 neighborliness x, 17, 20-21 néomort 215 neunfach vom neuen 227 new heaven and new earth 234, 261, 286-287 New Jerusalem 286-287 New Testament: Revelation 21:6, 25, 284; 3:8, 28; 21:1, 263; 3:14, 264; 21:25, 273; 3:20-21, 285-286; 20:11, 286; 21:1, 287; Matthew 12:28, 25;

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19:19, 32; 22:30, 34; 6:34, 42; 27:42, 43; 5:43, 112; 5:48, 112; 6:9-13, 227; 5:3-10, 227; 25:26, 229; 5:5, 234, 289; 19:21, 240; 12:32, 274, 8:1, 279; 14:13, 279; 11:27, 280; 11:28-30, 280; 22:30, 289; 18:20, 307; 2 Corinthians 5:21, 46-47, 110; 11:3, 110; 5:17, 120; 1:19-20: 1 Corinthians 15:20, 49; 15:14, 110; 11:27-29, 230; 11:24, 11:26, 231; 14:34, 289; 2:14-16, 289; John 11:25, 50; 14, 192; 13:34, 236; 13:24, 237; 14:9, 246; 5:17, 277; 1:14, 281; 1 John 4:17, 280; Philippians 3:20-21, 120, 289; Mark 12:30-31, 237; 2:27, 281; 12:25, 289; Colossians 1:24, 246; Luke 20:36, 246-247; 20:27-40, 289; Hebrews 3:7-11, 278; 4:9-10, 279; 10:1-2, 280-281; Romans 3:31, 284; 8:13-17, 289; 12:1-2, 289 newness—creation, absolute 243, 296; essential, new firstness 257 Nietzsche xii-xiii, xvi, 69-70, 72, 77 Nietzsche (works): The Anti-Christ 69-70, 94 nighness--absolute 17 nihil ex nihilo 225 nihilism—messianic state 216-219 nimbleness 65; absolute, omnipotence 29, 34, 48, 208-209, 246 noēsis, revolutionary xvi, xviii-xix, Aristotle vs. Badiou 100-103, formally vs. essentially 103-104; indefeasibility of human spirit 115 nomination xxiv; absolute 135; and perfect anonymity 172 non-set of non-sets xxiii, 55-56, embodiment, universal unicity 152-153; setting free from all sets 262-263; null set embodied in, as law without righteousness in righteousness manifest without law 284 nonbelonging xxix, 222-223 norm—without content xxix, connotation, discriminate doing

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identified with existence 217219; reality xxix, 218; new, of new normalcy xxx, 218, 234-236, 240-241, Resurrection’s beginning 223-225 normalcy—new xxix-xxx, 234-236, 240-241, creating perpetually 34, new creature thinking essentially 223; singularity made normalcy 156160; essentially evental, for first time 218-219; of the new 312 normative transcendence 39 not—indiscernibility of, in beginning 12; beginning 27, 29, 301-302 not (yet)/not (still)—beyond beyond x xxix, 133, 214-216, 232, 291-295; coming to be for the first time 43; what there is 47; notion itself 57; image-reverberation of 138; human (x), absolutely now human (x) 214216; not, no longer 301-302 not-being—nonplussed 42-43 notation xxix, 193, intelligibility of singularity, beginning, height xxiii, 153-160, 176-177, 193, 202; absolute relation 30; absolute relation 225-227 nothing 27, 29-30; end put to xi; past, useless 13; dawning 15; almost 17; unthinkable absolute, transcended 18; but, pure 31-32, existence, beginning of 39; mathematics, modern vs. essentially logical 34; nonplussed 42-43; -s, not-, infinitely55; -ness, actual 80, purely potential, actual non-existence 217-218; blending of being and, blends 159; being and, thinking absolutely distinguishes 216, absolutely separation, names name itself 231; that which properly lacks, abyss of omnipotence 270; not 288, Cartesian 292 nothingness—actual 135-136, 274; whole of experience result of utter 159; purely potential 217-218; finite

existence 252 notitia simplicis intelligentiae xxviii, 208-210 notitia visionis xxviii, 208-210 nourishing—self- xxvii, 194-197 novelty—perfect 4, beginning 14; absolute, beginning 21, of existence itself, normalcy 218-219, imagereverberation of 138, now 57, what there is 49, of world, writing 156-157; absolute, not being nonplussed by 4748; division of whole 104 novissima dies 174 novitas mentis 34 novitas mundi 18 novum cogito 5, 13-14, 19 now—absolutely xxix, 232, thinking 214-216, 298, you shall be xxx-xxxi, 227, 229-230, 236-238, thought 12, world begins 71, to create 175-176; beyond unsavable xxix; inception, end of world 13; new, absolutely 14; temporal, absolutely 29; absolute, fourthness 255-257; here and, absolute 293-294 numbers—natural, foundational 9-set 294-295 objectivity—transcendental, essentially x, 13; complete, consciousness xxv; shared universe 8; substituted for self 25; existence, God embodies 39; unlimited number of others 47; absolute, without desire 91; identifying personal occurrence 109110; not outside pathetic subjectivity 128; thought, absolutely digmatic vs. paradigmatic/dogmatic238-239 obscure subject 108 Old Testament: Deuteronomy 5:22, 227; 6:5, 237; Leviticus 19:18, 237; Isaiah 65:17, 263; 65:16-25, 164; Genesis 2:2-3, 277; 1:1, 288-289; Psalm 95:711, 289; Numbers 14:21-23, 289 omnipotence—‘having happened as of now having ceased as of now’ 129,

Index 202, 288, 311-314, finite epitome of Hegel’s good infinite 189; apocalypse, itself x-xi; withdrawal, continual xi, 44-47, 126; nonexisting in existing 44, 288; embodying human being xiii, 78-79, body xix, 121-122, absolute singularities xxii, Incarnate Word 41, 48, universal body of Christ 42, very Christ 183-185, what there is 49, null set (void) 55-59, 89, 104-105, 284, event as transcendent to itself 59, singularity absolutely particularized 85, 115, universe 105, being of world 111, body of world 230, Incarnation 192, 223, absolutely non-paradigmatic form, schema itself absolutely real 208-209; identity 7779, universe 87-93, infinitely different truths 87-90; sensible, completely xiv, 259-261, deictic, absolutely 269-273; otherness, absolute xvi, 104; comparing itself to creature xvi, 104; real evil not actual doing without xviii, 111, improperly lacking to 269-273; creation, volume xxiii, 153-160, 176-177; God taking place not taking place xxv, 183-185; itself moving to new ground xxvi, 28, 8793, 108, 117, 121, 190, 192, 208, 232, 259-261; not potentiality, absolutely xxviii, 208-209; creates without causality xxx, 200, 237, 245-246; very first thought identically the second thought 4; nimbleness, absolute 29, 34, 48, 208-209, 246; actuality, absolute 30, itself 208-209; beginning again, confines 31; omniscience/plan 41, 48, cares not for the morrow 42, reveals that there is absolutely no plan 208-209; power to be absolutely surprised 42-43; itself, of beginning, at disposal of thought 44, absolutely exposed, absolutely outside 208209; comparable to other, second omnipotence 46-47; prescinds

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alternatives, knowledge/truth, stasis/ revelation, hidden/revealed 48; itself, absolute break 50; indistinguishes real and truth 55; negative analogue to void 63; real embodied in 76; displaces void, absolutely 83; gifted, body 84-85; simplicity 104-105, 112, 156, absolutely unconditioned 245-246; simulacrum 105; actual Beneficence 112; annuls situation and void 121; world embodying, makes beyond beyond x, beyond politics 160; cuts loose creation and itself from certainty 186; saying what is requisite provision, unity, actuality of creating new world 227-229, 234; gift 229-230; Resurrection’s beginning 235; Father, as Very First 237, 246; created, properly second to uncreated 261, 273, 289, omnipotence making 277-281, catargetical man catapaustically makes 287-288, absolute withness 261, relation of Evil to 269-273; free from all togetherness 262-263; ceasing completely, works absolutely 277-278; complete ceasing, creature enters into 278-281; Genesis 1:1, logically parsed 288-289 omniscience—as alternative to apocalypse 41; general idea vs. infinite knowing 48-49 One—Two xvi; world, unconditioned single 6; infinite multiplication embodied in 40; for all 51; not presence 56; death of 69-73, 77, 80; unity beyond 104; breaking in two 108, change; existence without vs. beyond O’Neil (works): “Lazarus Laughed” 31 ontology—impasse 27-28, very existence 300, excess 299; vs. logic 76-77; paradoxical foundation 87-88; revolutionary meta-, absolute noēsis 117; waters of 145; impropriety and propriety 282-284, 289

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open door—species now steps through 9-10 opening to nowhere—face of whatever being 193 openness—absolute 42-43 opposites—discriminated, absolutely xxviii, 210 order, minimum/foundational xv, 87; disorder xvi, 101-105; maximal xxv, 183; of new universe, essentially historical 23; new historical, Christ 28-29 organization—disorganization xvi, 102-105 Origen (works): Patrologia Graeca XIII (1862) 25 origin—originary grounding of 298; thought thinks beyond 300 originality—essence of American thought, loss 10 other—absolute ix, I 261-262, existence 171, limitation that knows itself exteriority 191; subsumption by same xii, 70-73; none- xxi; nothing but xxii; -productive xxii, time/line cubed 150, 166; existence, absolute xxiv; soul generates an, such as itself xxvii; selfless, absolutely 4; identical with, thought 6; -consciousness, beyond intentionality 205, absolute 6, 139, clarifies world as absolute newness 271-272; a priori, transcended 7; immediately experienced, absolutely 7; thought actual bodying 7; exists as, ego 8; absolute, consciousness 31, identity 9-10; “I am” naming 16; self-alienation 19; intimate 20-21, absolutely 22; withness, person 24; omnipotence comparable to 4647; immediately existing, absolute originality 92; in place of, not place of 236; -s, mediation of 253-254; to create real, omnipotence 261; -s, three infinite, infinitely discrete identity 264-267

otherness—absolute xvi, 171, omnipotence 104, of person 255-256; other’s, thought itself 4; infinite, ego place of 9; of absolute intimacy, alienated absolutely 19 otium 220, 230 pairedness 13 palingenesis 223, 225 pantheism—turned inside out absolutely 39 paradigm xxi, 142-144, 208-211, 238239 paradox—absolute 51; to see what’s different 87-90; Banach-Tarski, axiom of choice 201 paraphysis 219-223 paratranscendence 135 particular 31; opposition between, and universal 50, 55, 77, 249-256; relation to singularity 69; infinitely existent, I’s enactment of truth 90; being, constructively perceiving 105; experience identified with universal experience 150; whatever, limit surrounding 230; predicate of the universal 249-251; at variance with nothingness of particularity 249-255; I, truth to absolutely exist 261-262; absolute, Particular creating universe 291-293 particularity 66, 127, 257, 291-293; of existence, absolute 236, 300; real trinary logic 165-166; infinite xxvi, 185, beginning xix, 121-122; absolute xxi-xxiv, 55, 312, person 255-256, patient construction 106, infinite postponement 115, vs. whatever 148-153, 165, 169, absolute middle 175-176, negative of excrescence of singularity 200, absolutely different existents 261-263; whatever xxii, beginning 23, indifference of common and proper, etc. 146, survives end of validity itself 216-217;

Index communitarian 69-71; I’s patient attention to/construction of 89; infinite vs. closed 129; nothingness of 249-255 Pascal 65 passivity xxii; modern 165, unredeemed xxv, reason 148-150 past—absolute 135; absolutely now or not at all 216 patience xxvi-xxvii, xxix, 193 Paul xi-xii, xviii-xix, 47, 108-110, 112, 119, 230-231, 246; theoretician of the universal 50-52; citizenship 25; Nietzsche’s attack 69-71; catargetical negation, re First and Second Man 282-284, re law and faith vs. Hegelian Aufhebung 284 Peirce ix-x, 4, 11, 28, 30, 252-256, 265; reconciling necessity with possibility, 48-49; phenomenological categories, three 90-93, 134-135, 153-160, 166, 177, 240-241, 243-244, 255-257; person as idiosyncratic idea 249, 253-257; real triadic duality 294295; critique of Hegel’s nominalism 295-296 Peirce (works): Collected Papers 26, 29-30, 65, 135, 168, 257; Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition Vol. 2 162, 167-168; The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings 240, 257, 296; “The Categories Defended” 294-296; “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” 253; “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man” 253; “Immortality in the Light of Synechism” 254; “A Guess at the Riddle” 255 perception—of truth, finite xv; conception 9, absolute identification 208-210 perfection (human nature) xxvii person x, xx; absolute particular 166, 249-256, singular 169; absolute

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exceeding itself xv, 92; singularity of particular xvii; single, absolute existence xxii-xxiii, the Beloved 151; you shall love the xxx-xxxi, 229, 236238; love of, free and unconditioned xxxi, 237-238; transcendent essence 4; Transcendental, actually existent 4; experience of actuality of history 7; start of infinite freedom 8; environment, absolutely personal 21; First, Second, Third, unum 23, Trinity 264-267; existent actuality of withness of the other 24; creating world 92; actualized by being at disposal of thought 110; perfectly one-sided activity 124; consistency of inconsistency 125; sayability, ineffability 151-153, 166; being itself/ thing itself 191-192; -s commodities, beyond politics 191, essential, formally absolute 289; the Father 229, 233-234, 236-238; the Son 231, 233-234; Spirit 233-234; ready for, imperative 236238; qua, absolutely unconditioned simplicity 237; self-equal and immediate vs. other-equal and mediate vs. immediate 249-256; thought of existence 255-256; beyond symbol, constituting material identity 255-256; proper medium, thought vs. existence 249, 257; absolute ceasing, absolutely deictic other-consciousness 259; -s, human and non-human, categories 259-261, infinitely discrete identities 264-267; absolute, body of 289 Person als Bestehengedanke 254-255 personality/personalities xix; plural, absolutely unconditioned unicity 7; essence, postponement of postponement 8, absolute singularity 22; particularity, severity of beginning 8-9; witness to creation, absolute 18; metanomous 32; freedom 34; poly-ontological, identity change 117; absolutely specific, 3 persons

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262-263; -s, relation of uncreated to created 264-267 phenomenology—absolute 23, 35; objective 64; consciousness, the object 255-256; anypothetotopian absolute vs. hypothetotopian 285 philosophy, (re)turn xvi, 64, 80, axiomatic foundations 92; modern, appropriation of transcendental form of reason 51, theological essence 181; end of end of 51-52; conditions, four 58, 72, 93-95, desutured from 91; events part and parcel its conditions 74-75; constructs category of truth 82; truths proceed independently of 83; not, thinking essentially 83; irreducibly duplicitous situation 128; difference between, and theology belongs to past 182 physics analogue 88 physis—without archetype xxii, 148, 220-221 pièce de resistance 261 place—common, multiple xxiii, 175-176; of super, usurpation xxiv, 170-172; where, cause of taking place 236; non-suppositional, absolutely Da 269-270; -(s) of complete ceasing, creatures embodied in 279-281 placedness—real trinary logic 165-166; absolute xxii, xxvi, 19, 76, 230, 312, imperative to inhabit, of existence 234, absolute singularity identical with absolute particularity 150, of each existing thing 191; as beginning identified with membership makes embodiment 160 plan—omnipotence xi, 34, reveals that there is absolutely no 208-209; transcendent 40-42, 48 Plato 52, 56, 272; notion of the Good 297-302 Plato (works): Republic 56 Platonic analogue(s) 88 Platonism—of multiple 52, 81-82;

death of God 56; denied identity of finite and infinite 62; lack of the One, sign of exhaustion 173 point—resurrected body not a 121; not nothing, fullness of being 177, unity 179 politics—coming xx, 134, holds to sovereign ban 181, abandons itself to the great ignorance 214; hither, not beyond xxiii, xxix, 134, 138, 189, hither and thither, 173, no possibility of return to “classical” 212-213; and living well of men 136-137; sovereignty and, free and not free from 141; essence, civil war/strife 172; new 173-176 poly-ontology x, xv, xix, 39-40; absolute noēsis indistinguishing of mathematics and sense 117 post hoc non propter hoc—absolute 21 potentiality—being, infinite xx-xxiii, 133-134, 141-145, of beginning of 159, anticipated in Kant 148150; omnipotence absolutely not xxviii, 208-209; demonic 128; absolute, potentiality to not be 136; act of altering 141-142; what is in potentiality vs. potentiality 142143; its own ability to be its own ability not to be 141-145; difficulty of thinking, beyond sovereignty 144, without any relation to being of actuality 144, 148; actuality, indistinguishable 159; infinite, sidestepping the beginning 165 power—to not-be xxiv, 174; body vs. set 104-105 pragmatism—world ix, 3, 25; American 9, 25, 48-49; absolute 23; pluralistic vs. monistic 25; pluralistic 26; monistic 32; infinite postponement of absolute particularity 115; Peirce 253-254 praising 3 presence—truth of, absence 56; neither, nor absence 59; thought leaves behind

Index 80-81; beyond 93; total 135 presentation xx, xxiii, 135; identification of, and writing identity of representation 153-160, 176-177, 193 preservation in being 100 prima perfectio humanae naturae 207 productive receptivity 96, 165, 288289; Gratitude 87-93, 124-125, being at disposal of thought 110; vs. receptivity infinite self-production 145; essence of thinking for first time 180; quantum identity of being, quality 190-191; wholeness of existence, Creation 193; absolute quality 218 profane—beyond xx, 133, 138, 172, 231; utterly xxi; world, form xxv, irreparably, irrevocably xxvi, 183-189 Promised Land 289 proportion 12, 36; beyond, absolute proportionality vs. proportion of improportionality 299-300 Protestant theology 186 public/private xxiv, 24-25, indistinction 152 Qualität 189-191 quality—absolute 202, 227, 244, absolute existence 10, 218, absolute relation, where of withness 15, absolute quantum of existence 189-191, one undivided feeling, not without parts 255-256, minimum absolute 264-267; of freedom 17-18; quantum identical with 57; category, involves likeness (Aristotle) 196 quality-quantity—distinction xxvi, identification 190-191 quantity—dimensive, substituted for substance 197 quantum—beyond beyond x 189-191; -quale 189, 196, 238; -quality 202, 227, 240-241, of body, immediate 205, Readiness, corresponding ethical

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category 275; qualitative limitation, perfectly 234, 236, 245 question—of being x, 39; of ethics 39; of truth (Heidegger) 300-301 Rahner (works): Spirit in the World 303 reactive figure 108 Readiness xv, xvii, 87-93; form of faith 89-90, 227; defective dispositions 107-108; doing without, evil 112; transcendental essence of existence 192-193; absolute singularity 203; for place where newness takes place 236-238; corresponding to quantumquality category 275 ready—to be absolutely, imperative 236-238 real—existence 168, 298, beginning xxiii 156, 179, 208; absolute xxviii; immutability/nonexistence, God altogether dissolves 42; existing/ nonexisting, omnipotence 47; vs. narrative 51; not real 128; void vs. beyond void 305, 307 Realität 30, 190 reality—imperishable x, categorically 16; absolute imperative to create new world xxix; first transcendental, absolute act 9; not-past/not-future 14; Christian, evental form appropriated xi, 51-52; 108-110; and freedom, factuality 193-194; perfectly adventitious structure, Creation and Incarnation eventuate in 211; the product of discriminate doing identified with existence, identified with its factors 218; ultimate general agreement (Peirce) 253-254 reason—transcendental, natural form xi, 51-52; modern, passivity xxii, 148-150; intellect meta-identifies as beginning 9; sufficient 77, 83; postcognitive 82; revolutionary form 100103; insensate 114; absolute negation of 291-293; now actually beyond

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absolute reason 300 receptivity xxii, 156; productive, existence beginning 237-238, vs. selfproduction, infinite 145, 148-150 redemption 28, 238-239; form of new creation 186 relation—actuality of world, absolute 3; absolute 23, 30, 235, 240-241; category class including substance (Kant) 197 relativity—absolute 13 representation xx, xxiii, 135; identification of writing and presentation 153-160, 176-177, 193 requisite provision xxvi-xxvii, 192-197, 227 res cogitans—resurrection, after-silence of divine itself 14; absoluta ix, 5 res nominata—society distributed, absolutely x; multiplication of onefold reality, absolute 24-25 res novissima 24 res pretiosa 24 res privata 24 res publica vs. res nominata x, 24-25 res singillaria 24 resemblance xx, xxii, dissemblance 134-135, 145, 243; beyond xxv, xxvii, image change itself 179-180; without archetype 148-152, 165, 191, 197, par excellence, idea of God without God 183, 197 rest—elimination of, absolute 6; death 9; no 125; omnipotence never -s 277278, 288 Resurrection xi, xviii-xix, xxvii, 238239; beginning xxix 25, 87-88, 291-293, middle and end 234-235; of thought 14; of man Jesus, ‘to exist’ 20, actual existence of global humanity 20; event, form appropriated xi, 51-52, 108-110; of body, thinking essentially 119, problematic 205-212; beginning of end properly second to beginning of beginning 237-238;

creatures incorporated in humanity by 259-261; first form of body the last 282-284; children (sons) of 246-247, 289 revelation—love’s, in truth 41 righteousness 3; divine, embodying creation 46-47; divine self- vs. absolutely selfless divine 18 rights—inalienable 18; of man, essential transcendence 32; human, impotent morality 107-108 Russell’s paradox 43 sacred doctrine—lifting of ban xxi, 138-139, ultimate embodiment 141, 148, sovereignty presupposes division of sacred and profane constituted thereby 198 sacrifice—of priest 281 same xi-xiii, xvi, no concept of 262-263; return xix, 52, 119; for all 53-55, 119; space of thought 54; particularity beyond 55; subsumption of other 70-73; inconsistency of the Same, not thought 73-77; no, to which differences might be compared 89; notion, root of perversion of truth 119; whatever singularities, form of being the 152-153; changing vs. unchanging 166 Sartre—71-73 Sartre (works): The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness 94; Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology 94 savior—absolutely at disposal of existence 44; embodies those who do not save themselves 43-44, 47 sayability, ineffability of person(s) 151153, 166 scarcity—no actual 192 schema—absolute xxviii, 269-270; absolutely non-paradigmatic, absolutely real 208-209; of body,

Index inconsistency 235 Schranke xxvi, 189-191 science—thinking alternative to xxv, 180-183; practice, essentially new 23 second—absolute 4, 11, 23; omnipotence 46-47; “lacking” 237238, 289; to uncreated omnipotence, created omnipotence 261, 289; immediately and mediately, identity (persons) 264-267 secondness—153-160, 240-241, 244, 255-257, 294-295; absolute 49, 91-93 Sein 74-77, 80; vs. Seyn 297-302 self—gift to itself xxi, 141-142, 145, 191; selfless, relatively 4; selfless, death of God 6; after, actual selftranscendencelessness 7; ego qua, no longer real 8; -lessness, categorical 8; -division, infinite, alternative to action entire; -creation, conception annihilated 9; otherwise than absence of absolute 10; -naming of I AM 16; -righteousness, divine 18; absolutely not, person 21; -interest, absolute, elimination 24; -identity 9, 27; -negation, absolute 31-32; -intuition, Kant 149-150; exhausted, dialectic 173; -grasping of evil xxiv, 174; vs. true idea 253-254; I, not a self 261263; -salvation 274 self-consciousness—beyond xxiv, 139; beginningless, essentially 6; perpetual and, no more 9; otherwise than truth of present absolute 10; infinite postponement, transcended 12; absolute, God (Hegel) 31; ontological dualism 150; oppositeness of within and without 171; absolute 250-252; banished to nowhere 271-272 self-nourishing xxvii, 194-197 sense xix; circulation of xiii-xiv, 51, 92, thinking subtracted from 114, truths, discontinuity 81-82, infinitely interrupted 85; organs of, creation of xv, 92; a hole in xviii, 72, 81-82,

343

110; straightjacket of 50; exception to, post-cognitive rationality 82; mathematics/being and, absolute noēsis indistinguishing 117 set—catholicological xi, not a container 43-44; null, universal pervasiveness 54-56, inconsistently contains itself 55-57, nonexistence, infinite multiplication 66; embodiment in place of 129; beyond, and power set 300; vs. body, product and power 305-306 set theory xi, xxii, 307; defines place of linguistic being 152-153; principle xxv, 183 Shabbat 277-282; of animal and man 214 shame 149 shaping—new, essentially 87, vs. re- 115; I, acting absolutely 90 sharing—Divine Essence xxvii; absolute, existence 10, essentially global 19; absolutely, Trinity 29, sovereignty with creature 285-286; Son, Father, Spirit 233-234, 237 signification—excess of denotation over xxix, inconceivable 217-219 silence—28; to hear the word 14; embodied in God’s complete ceasing 279; of woman 289 simplicity—ethic of ix, xiv, xxvii, 30, 54-56, vs. of truths 85-93, 113, defective dispositions 96, dimensional unity of, organic xv, 203, of xv, xxviii, xxix-xxx, 192-193, template 117, four dimensions 165166, ontological characteristics 86-93, ground structure 92, excludes neither free consensus nor particularized combativeness 125; complex xiii, 77-78, 83, of unity of real trinary logic 293-294, of beginning 87-90, absolute 312, person existing as 255256; sensible xiv; itself xvi, absolute, the real 300; existence itself 104;

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omnipotence xiii-xiv, 104, 156; not alternative to complexity xxviii, 210; notion, lack of 77-78; in relation to Christ, in Christ 110; alternative to, Subject the possibility of defection from the Good 115; infinite 203; absolute, knowledge of God 208209; immediate, real trinary logic 225, 238; of ontology of creation 234; absolute 235, unconditioned qua person 237; Hegel’s argument 251; of One that is Trinity, sharing sovereignty with creature 285-286; simplicity of historical existence of 298; existence (real trinary logic) 305-306 sin—transcendent 4; made, who knew not 46-47; forgiveness 270-271; against the Spirit 271, 274 singular(s) xiii; unique, society xxiii; universalizable 50-51, 69-71, 77; absolute, person 169; /plural 8, 27 singularities—absolute, embodied in omnipotence xxii; whatever xxii, 169172, expropriated of identity 152-153, emptiness dwells beside 193, 197 singularity xx, 66, 257; particularized, absolutely xiv, xviii, 85, 115, truth 89; absolute xxii, xxiv, 312, beyond class 171-172, beginning 21-22, identical with absolute particularity absolute placedness 150, class usurped 176, opening to being 203; whatever xxii-xxiv, emptiness dwells beside 193, 197, class xxiv, 169-172; notation, intelligibility xxiii, 193, 202; excrescence, indistinction xxiv, 135, 171, 188, suchness 144; empty space added to xxvi, 191, 193, 197, 217-218; beyond class xxvi, the Lovable; new, elimination of notion of barrier 6, sovereign exception 157; universe itself 21-22; universalizable vs. identitarian 50-51, 69-71, 77, vs. absolute particular 85; embodied

in omnipotence 115; coming 134; universal 135; made normalcy 156160; ek-stasis of 158; real trinary logic 165-166; bordering of, threshold 189 situation xii; no 89, 93, a fortiori no state of 300; state, stateless element 312; beyond the one xiii; singular xv; vs. being-as-being 56; no, can be 57; event, immanent supplement 58; -transcendence, Body of bodies 59; preexists event 60; split in two by fidelity 65; no reason for 73-77; -s, infinity of 113-115; negative analogues to real trinary logic fourfold 312 situationlessness xi, 57, 312 sociability—absolute, writing 225 society—absolute 185; creating ix, new world 173, 189-190, body xxvi, 6, 185, personal freedom 21, foundation, existence itself digitalized 180, individual 191, angelic unicity, embodied 202; infinite, essentially x; vs. community xxiii, non-political, essentially xxiv, 173-174; economy xxiii, 124, 189-191; classless xxiv; new, essential foundation xxv, 24; essentially global, universally existing 6; essentially infinite 17; essentially new global 17; distribution of dwelling, absolute 30, 192-197 some-ones—human animals 100 someones—God wastes 39 something, something else (real trinary logic) 165-166, 305-306 sophistry, negative twin of philosophy 128 soul—nourishes body, generates another such as itself xxvii; Whitman 28 sovereign—power xxi; pure xxv; exception 157, 172; God, hither hither and thither of 183 sovereignty xxii, xxiv; otherwise than/ beyond xx, xxv, 133, 300; hither, not beyond xxiii, 133-134, 138, 145, not

Index beyond belonging itself 170-172; very, sovereign ban 138-139; and politics, free and not free from 141; paradigm 142; of language itself 159-160; coming thought inside and outside 160; belonging to the super class 170172; presupposes interdict of sacred doctrine 198; super/beyond, absolute sharing 285-286 space—thought xii, 54, 72-74; subjective xvii, 108-109, 128; generic, truth process 112; empty xxii, 189191, 193, indistinction of public and private 152, added to singularity xxvi, 191, 197, 217-218; displacement, 234, absolute 19; omnipotence displacing 105 specificity—absolute 23-24 spectacle xxiv, 148, 173 Spinoza 100, 194-195 Spirit xxvii, 11, 233-234, 237; history of, voiding 19; sin against 271, 274; life-giving vs. psyche 282-284 start 22; new 6 starting block 6 state—vs. humanity xxiii, 172; spectacular xxiv, 173-174; unbinding prohibited by 202; situation 300, 312 state of exception 140, 145-146, 151-152; beyond, inessentially 145; coming thought inside and outside 160; floating signifier, analogue 217219; vs. absolute exceptionality of normalcy 219 still—point 31 Stimmung xxviii, 213-214 story—absolute 269-270 Storyteller—Story, not xviii, 109-110, denial of identity 113; omnipotence indistinguishes 55 Subject, immortal xii, 101; nonidentity xiii; insensible, rational xiv; becoming- xvi, self-transcendence of human animal 81; abstraction from singularity of particular

345

persons xvii, possibility of evil 106, 112-113; reactive, obscure xvii; desubstantialized xviii; time 27; faithful (Kierkegaard vs. Badiou) 5051; prescinds from multiple 52; finite, without object 60, 72-73; composed of some-one(s) 61-62, 100-100; postevental 71; logical vs. ontological nothingness 72; cannot not lack truth; takes place of resurrected Christ 109; desubstantialized diaphysical, hovering above sensibility 110; coming to be, duplicitous emptiness 113-115; not containing itself, alternative to simplicity 115; simulacrum 119; ultimate support, psychological fiction or unsupported choice 122-123; real irreality 128; void or lack-of-being, relation to evil 274 subjective types 54; thinker 249-256 subjectivity—duplicitous structure xix, 119; higher, participation in 39; nonplussed, absolutely 47; truth (Kierkegaard) 55; belongs to past 66-67; post-evental 71; coming to be in being itself 72-73; transpersonal 112; rebellious, exhaustion infinitely postponed 113-115; pathetic 128-129; existentialist (Kierkegaard) 249-253; negative inference mediated by others 253-254 substance—of divinity 4, 10, existing, absolute immanence 17, shared experience 20, distribution 26; pragmatic 19; Locke 28; new world, quantum-quale 189; dimensive quantity substituted for 197; vs. withstanding 246; -s, spiritual, formal persons 259-261 suchness xx, xxiii, absolute 135, single sayable person in place of 153; excrescence of singular(ity) 144, 188; excess of denotation over signification, inconceivable 217-219

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suffering 236-238, 246 super—place, usurpation of xxiv, 170172, 176 surface—identification of existence and absolute plaintext 177 survival xxviii; unsavable 214, 217; political task 193; alternative to creating new world 197 suture(s)—bursting apart of xv, 92; void, truth to being 92 tabula rasa xxviii, 30, 145, absolutely no 208; blank slate 100 taking-place—things xxiv, 174, essence of history xxv; of things takes place xxvi, essentially/apocalyptically 191; whatever xxv; non-displacing xxxxxxi, 235-236; place where, cause of 236 temporality—complete, universe 5; God beginning to exist 11; minimum 13; absolute 26 terror 107, 119 TEXT BEYOND BEYOND-TEXT xxiii; absolute text of existence 156, 177-179, the beginning the real of existence 208-209 thanking 3 theological virtue 88 thing—“curtailing” itself, unicity of thing 190; itself, person 191; beingnamed of, 231, 244 things—you shall love xxx, 227, 230, 234; profanity and impenetrability of, vs. body of Christ, apparent and living 230; material persons 259-261 thinking—essentially conceives not belonging none other than itself 176-183; absolutely now xi; new form, essentially xii, 34, not philosophy, not theology 83; beyond dialectical identity xiii; species xiii; beyond philosophy/theology xiv, 93; alternative to science and knowledge xxv, 180-183; to think is to create

12; I AM thinks beginning, I think beginning 13; beginning in past, not 14; not occurring, not interpretation of experience 80; revolutionary 107-108, formally vs. essentially 103-104; subtracted from circulation of sense 114; essentially resurrection of the body 119; not able to think itself, not power of thinking 140; beyond beyond being abandoned by Being 144-145; construction of the body 160; essentially creating new world 180; itself beyond sacred 198; beyond beyond x, absolutely now 214-216; new normalcy, new creature 223; utopian vs. anypothetotopian 269-270; argetical/paustical vs. catargetical/catapaustical 285; essentially apocalyptic, beyond the Good 301 third—absolute vs. relative 4, 11, 23, 27, 265, immeasurable point of time 255-256 thirdness—153-160, 240-241, 244, 255257, 294-295; absolute 49, 91-93 this and that—thinking beyond beyond x absolutely distinguishes 216 thisness—absolute xxiii, xxv, 135, 153, 293-294 thought—essentially conceives not belonging none other than itself 176-183; existence, indistinction 171; generic essence x; coming xx, xxiii, xxv, xxviii-xix, 134-135, 166, 171, 189-190, 194, inside and outside the state of exception that is sovereignty 160, lassitude 172-174, abandons itself to the great ignorance 214; existence, absolute identification xxi, intentional/angelic reverberation 138139; experience of own potentiality xxi, 140-141; saved, absolutely xxix, 216; very first, the beginning 3-4; second, beginning of first 4; first, catholicological universe 5, new

Index grammar 10, transcendent identity 12; identical with other 6; bodying of the other, actual 7; structure ‘to begin’ 12; in general, nonexistence of 12; absolute, matter 13; Revelation very form 16; builds withness of beginning 17; thought, spaceless withness 18; after-, of body thought 21; American 10-11, 17, 22-23, 29; beginning, absolute 34; new form, essentially 42, beyond beyond x, absolutely now 214-216; hole made in 72-73; language, absolutely evental 78-79; being at disposal of 87; void of xii, 89, 91, defeasance of 115; sheer potentiality 140-141; beyond vs. hither sovereignty/politics 145; modern, incorrigibly political 181; absolutely digmatic vs. paradigmatic/ dogmatic 238-239; of existence, person 255-256; essentially act of world-creating 298; thinks absolutely beyond origin 300 thought itself—other’s otherness perfectly transparent 4 thought-form—new, absolutely thought 4 threshold xxvi, 188-189, 193; indeterminacy 146; indistinction 158; inside outside of the anthropological machines 214 time x; eternal of, unutterable xviii, 110-111; novation, absolute xix, 116; Kant’s reflection on xxii, 27, 148-150; founding itself in beginning 3; no, for thought not act 7; I accept to create 10-11; thought, transcendent identity 12; minimum, actuality of world 13; great circle 29; absolute indifference to, omnipotence 42; always of 119; apocalyptic end 119; transcendence of vs. absolute immanence 148; / line sheer receptivity, nothing but existence 150, 165; and distance, identified 202

347

time itself—no timeless 7; absolute novation 116 Titian: Nymph and Shepherd 219-223 totality xiii; particulars 69-70, 77 trace—event xix, 122; absolute, existence 133 transcendence—new plane xxviii, absolutely no 208; world-, immanent 70-71 transcendental—a priori ix, 7; unity, apperception vs. perception xiv; essence, absolute specification xxvi, 76, 192-197, 210, 263-264, of existence, appearance 230, sovereignty/politics cut off from 139; transcendence, essentially 3; essence, first 5; Jesus Christ, essentially new humanity 6; ideal, vanishing of trace 7; immanence, beginning 15; ego, beginning, absolutely specific 35; form of reason, appropriation 51-52; regime 76-77; consciousness, interrupted absolutely 93 transubstantiation 197 Trinity 11, 21-23, 236-237, real withness 246; sharing, absolutely 29, sovereignty with creature 285-286; absolute persons, none absolutely non-human 259-261; absolute nullification 263-264; Infinite Discretion 264-267 truth—different, essentially, unconditionally xii; of presence, of absence xii; procedure/process xiii-xvi, xix-xx, 49-51, 100, three dimensions (Badiou) 107, generic space 112, duplicitous structure 128; philosophy not 82, perverse imitation, practically inevitable 119, plausible fiction, ultimate support 122-123; category, construction xiv, (re)turn of philosophy vs. thinking now occurring 82-83; finite perception xv, absolute 89, 91; one real, exists elsewhere xvi; singularity

348

Beyond Sovereignty

particularized, absolutely xvii-xviii, 108; you shall love the xxx, 228-229, 232-237; truly loving of, divine will 48-49; subjectivity (Kierkegaard) 55; and knowledge 56; generic operation 56; eventuality of existence itself 59; being subsumed by 73; thought not, of experience 80; and falsity, truth excluded 83; singularity absolutely particularized 89; enacted, knowledge essentially new 90; realms of -production, compossibility 91; exists elsewhere 100-101; human animal vs. Subject 102; power of, unruly effect 102, 105, 108; love’s relation to, historical structure of facticity 232; of I, God not 261-263; being and, beyond belonging together 298-299; question of (Heidegger) 300-301; adequation, Heidegger vs. Badiou 301 truth itself—difference itself 54-55; void 82 truths—ethic of x, xii, xix-xx, 53-55, 81, betrayed by the void 122; nothing but, for first time xiv; seized 73, 82; circulation of sense, discontinuity 80; compossibility, epochal 82-83; proceed independently of philosophy 83; nothing but, for first time 83; eventuality of, in conditions of philosophy 110-111 two xvi; axiom of choice 183, 201; boundary 30, between, beginningless 13

unity xvi, 27; same not a 75; of perception, transcendental, prescinded 81-82; beyond the One, beginning absolutely now 104; finite, infinite (real trinary logic) 166; = 3, predicated of 2 262-263, 294-295; complex simplicity (real trinary logic) 293-294 universal—new, coming to be xi; vs. particular xiii; opposition between, and particular 50, 55, 77, 249256; Pauline break not based on production of a 51; predicate of, particular 249-251 universality—singular 135; existing 225 universe—intelligible ix; embodied in God x, in omnipotence 105; transcendental essence 4; perfectly human 4-5; absolute otherconsciousness, form 6; placed as other of an absolute intimacy, by Creator 15; structure, infinitely flat 20-21; singularity, absolute, Living Body 21-22; actuality of beginning itself 49; new, essentially 214-216, doing of catapaustical man 287-288; existing, human being essential personal 259261; Absolute Particular creating 291-293 unum x, 27; first person other 8; First, Second, Third persons 23; first person 24 Uralte—point of indifference between potentiality and impotentiality xxxix, 222-223, 233

ultima perfectio 207 unbinding 32; infinite xxvi, 185; effectively finite, prohibited by state 202 undecidability—nonexistence of 66-67, excluded 89 unicity—infinite 40; vs. whateverness 148; universal, embodiment 152-153; beyond belonging 191

vagueness 13 verbum caro factum est, nunc in essentia 47 verticality—absolute 30 violence xvii, 105-106, 141 vivere et bene vivere hominum 137 void xx, 55-57, 113; nonplussed xi, 42-43; thought xii, 89; truth xii, excluded 82-83; inconsistency,

Index consistency of xii, 55-57; sutures being and truth xv; of reason xvi; indefeasibility/defeasance xviii-xix, 115, defeasance 121-122; negative analogue to, omnipotence 63; sans, consistent univocally inconsistent 6667; logical 80; displaced absolutely 83; annulment, actual 89; beyond the 93; reason 100-101; mark of 203, mark of the Idea 300; ultimate form of presupposing being 244; quasi nihil 270, 299-300; in place of the Good (the One), no longer conceivable 298300; real vs. real beyond 305-307; situationless, stateless, non-being 312 volume—omnipotence, creation xxiii, 153-160, 176-177; hypercubic surface 129; nothing but other-productive 166 waiting—no longer 7; over 31 war—against war xxiv, 172 wealth—common vs. called by name 24-25 whatever—Aristotelianism of the, lack of energy 173; predicate of whatever being 176-183; being, face of 193 whateverness 148-150 Whitman x, 10, 28-29 Whitman (works): “Song of Myself ” 28; “Passage to India” 28 whole—division 104 wholeness—of person, splitting 108; of existence, nothing able to be removed 192, productive receptivity, Creation 193 will—to universal address xvi, 92, 103; to not perceive xxviii; divine, clean break with creation 48-49; to nothingness, to power, to create, to believe, and absolute 103; to/not to, evil 106-108, 117; absolute 113; negative, after the fact 117 willing—God’s knowledge 48; vs. doing/acting xvi-xvii, xxvi-xxvii, 102-

349

103; to/not to, evil 106-108, 117; or not willing the Good 128 with 24, 27, 185; absolute x, slate itself 14; existence, history 3; third, absolute 4; withness of, absolute freedom 11; qua body 12; to write the 14; beginning- 18, 33 within—outside xxiii, 171, 191, 218; without, without within 212, 239 withness x; perfect xxvii, sans banishing 185, beginning 11; itself, thought of creation 13; where of, thereness now everywhere 14; existence, absolute intimacy 15; beginning, transcending coexistence 17-18; perfect plurality 24; immediate vs. commodally mediated 237, 246; absolute, created omnipotence 161 withstanding—absolute 29, omnipotence 270; -s, Trinity 246; / standingwith the others, different species 259 Wojtyla (works): Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II for the Twentieth Anniversary of “Populorum Progressio” 197-198 Wolfson (works): Aleph, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death 243 Word—incarnate xxviii, 192-193, embodying universe 262-263; first, identical with God 6; Godshare of Christ 10; made flesh 46-47, in essence 10, resurrected, infinite parsing 209; resurrection of, after death of 14; God with God very existence 18; Creator’s, corpus new humanity 24-25; existence itself 48; bread and wine, the distributor of the dwelling 231; Creator identified with 246; complete ceasing of God became flesh 281; of God, conformed to body of 289 world—to create 117, vs. change

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123-125; new ix-x, beginning of x, essentially, the Distributor 209, actuality of creating 234-236, Evil and 269-273; begins absolutely now xiii, person creating 92; embodied in omnipotence (God) xviii, 39-40; 111; creating xix-xx, new 210; beneath good and evil, beneath true and false, no xx, 124; simply human, divinity xxi, 183, 189, 218-219; coming xxv, 158-159; new, body creating xxvixxvii; passage outside xxvi, 187193, 221, dwellings distributed by Distributor 234; new, construction xxvi, 190, essentially 20; you shall be wholly engaged with xxx, 227, 229-230; you shall create the xxx, 228, 231-232; to create, essential priority of other 7; end of, to create 13; infinite wholeness, beginning 15; motion itself 19; essential being, perfect indetermination 42; end of end of 51-52; -transcendence, immanent 70-71, 173; to create, the Good 108, 285; being of, absolutely unconditioned 111; creation of 158, actual existence of every one 125, absolute 189; where state of exception is the rule 140, 145, 151; novelty, absolute 157; the fact that the, is, not beyond 189; in the, beyond 191; phenomenology beyond beyond, vs. beyond and not beyond world 285; -creating, act of 298, absolute beginning 302 writing (saying)—existence xxiii, 193, plaintext 177-179; nothing but xxviii, 208-209; forgetful of (Agamben) 30; identification of, and denotation is intelligibility (connotation) 153160, 176-177, 193, 202, 218; beyond beyond, beyond interpretation 160; angel, potentiality to not-write vs. actuality of writing 189; absolutely, new identity 225

written, reading what was never 140141, 143, 145, 148, 195; to write what was never 156-157, 160 Žižek 65 Žižek (works): The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity 65 zoê xxiv, 213 zygote 215

Greek Ωgauøn 297-298 |Agap¸seiq tØn plhsºon soy ˜q seaytøn 32 ^ ^ ntai të ΩeÁ planv kardºQ, aªtoÁ d‚ oªk ‘gnvsan tÅq ∏do¥q moy 278 a¬tion 298 Ωkolo¥uei moi 240 Ωl¸ueia 232, 299 Ωlloºvsiq 141 “na 244 Ωnåmnhsiq 244 Ωnapa¸sontai 279 Ωnåpaysin 280 |Anaståsevq ΩrxÓ 25, 223-225, 227-229, 234, 243, 245 ”ney to¥toy “nurvpoq pneymatikØq 283 “nurvpoq sarkikøq 283 “nurvpoq cyxosvmatikøq 283 Ωnypøueton 298 ^ n ‘rgvn 277 ΩpØ påntvn tv ·pløthq 110 Ωpokålyciq 41, 48, 245 Ωrgºa 285 Ωrx¸ 298 aªtobasileºa 25

Index

blasfhmºa 274 ^ G™gonan. ®g◊ tØ =Alfa kaÁ tØ | V, Ô ΩrxÓ kaÁ tØ t™loq 3, 25, 35 g¸ th^ q ®paggelºaq 289 deyt™ra a‹th 237-238 de¥teron 237-238 de¥teroq “nurvpoq 283 d¥namiq 142 ^ ma ®geºretai pneymatikøn sv 282-283 ^ ®g◊ tØ =Alfa kaÁ tØ | V 3, 25, 35, 284, 289 eʺ eʺsele¥sontai eʺq tÓn katåpaysin moy 278 eʺq aªtØ gÅr Ô ®pºdosiq kaÁ eʺq ‚ntel™xeºan 141 eʺq Xristøn 110, 120 ®lafrøn 280 „n 298 ®n oªrano^i q 120, 240 ®n të^ oʺkºQ toy^ patrøq moy monaº pollaº eʺsin 192 ®n XristÛ^ 110, 120, 284 ®n XristÛ^ kainÓ ktºsiq 25, 120 ®n™rgeia xxiv, 172 ‘noxoq 230 ®pa¥santo 282 ®p™keina th^ q oªsºaq 297-299 ®pÁ tÅq ’jeiq kaÁ tÓn f¥sin 141 ®poºhsen 277 ®poxÓ Ωnypøuetoq 285 ®poxÓ Êpouetik¸ 285 ‘sti gÅr ®j ®ntelexeºQ œntoq pånta tÅ gigømena 140 ‘sxatoq 283 „toimåsai tøpon Êmin 192 zv¸n aʺ√nion 240 zÛopoioy^ n pney^ ma 283 zv^ san cyxÓn 283 Ô Ωrx¸ th^ q |Apokal¥cevq 232, 245, 247

^

351

ï d‚ tøde ti kaÁ oªsºa 196 ˚rjato 277 uei^on 298 ueøq 298 ʺdo g™gonen kainå 120 |Ihsoy^ q Xristøq Ô aªtobasileºa 25 ^ kåg◊ Ωnapa¥sv Êmaq 280 kauolik¸ 6 katagg™llete 231 katåpaysiq 279, 281, 285, 289 katårghsiq 281, 284-285 kat™paysen 279 kat™paysen të^ Ôm™ra të^ „bdømh 277 ^ kenÓ kaÁ Ô pºstiq Êmv n 110 ^ kenØn “ra tØ k¸rygma Êmv n 110 klhronom™v 245 klhronomºa 289 klhrønomoq 245 koinøn 24 koinvnºa 24 krºma 230 løgon 274 makårioi o prae^i q, Œti aªtoi klhronom¸soysin tÓn gh^ n 234 metaståseiq 246 metåstasiq 29, 246 metasxhatºsei 120 ^ ma 230 mÓ diakrºnvn tØ sv ^n mÓ sklhr¥nhte tÅq kardºaq Êmv 278 mønon toy^ u| Œper ®sti 164 mønon toy^ to 164 nømoq 65 nømoq Xristoy^ 25 ∏ “kroq kaÁ m™soq løgoq 200, 246 ∏ Løgoq sÅrj ®g™neto 281 ∏ Løgoq tØ såbbaton sÅrj diÅ

352

Beyond Sovereignty

tØn “nurvpon ®g™neto 281 ∏ noy^ q tÛ^ pånta gºnesuai 140 ∏ noy^ q tÛ^ pånta poiei^n 140 ∏ PatÓr ®n tÛ^ YÛ^ 246 oʺkonomºa xxvii, 34, 192, 196, 231 oʺkonømoq xxvii, 34, 65, 192, 231, 245, 272 ∏moiøthq 196 ^ o‹tvq o polloÁ ∕n sv ma ®smen ^ ®n XristÛ 44 o‹tvq ˜q d¥namiq ‘xei prØq ®ntel™xeian 142 ^ pan Wh^ ma ΩrgØn 274 parano™v 165 pay^ siq 281, 285 pelåjv 32 p™lv 32 phg¸ 298 pney^ ma 284 pneymatikøn 282-283 poih^ sai 277 poiØn 196 pølemoq 172 polºteyma 25, 120 praei^q 245 prosf™roysin eʺq tØ dihnek‚q 282 pr√th cyxÓ 196 ^ toq “nurvpoq 283 prv ptvxoi^q 240 sarkikøn 283 ståsiq 104, 108 s¥mmorfon 120 ^ ma pneymatikøn 283 sv ^ n Ωkoleyuei^ tÅ gÅr ‘rga aªtv ^ n 279 met| aªtv t™leioq 240 ^ sa 282 teleiv ^ tØ =Alfa kaÁ tØ | V 3, 25, 35, 284 tØ aªtØ “ra dynatØn 164

tØ aªtØ dynatØn 142 ^ tØ d‚ kau| eq Ωll¸lvn m™lh 44 tØ såbbaton diÅ tØn “nurvpon ®g™neto 281 ^ ^ ma th tØ sv q tapein√sevq Ôm√n 120 ^ ^ tØ tº h| n e|i nai 100 ^ toy dynåmei œntoq 142 toy^ to poiei^te eʺq tÓn ®mÓn Ωnåmnhsin 231 tr™fein 196 tÛ^ s√mati th^ q døjhq aªtoy^ 120 yoº th^ q Ωnoatåsevq 247 ÊpØ toy^ ®ntelexeºQ œntoq 142 Êpoståseiq 246 f¥siq 299 xrhstØq 280 cyx¸ 284 ^ cyxikøn sv ma 282-283 cyxikØq “nurvpoq 283 ˜q Ômi√rion 279

Hebrew ‫ברא‬ ‫בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים‬ 288-289 ‫ואת הארץ‬ 13 ‫המקום‬ 237 ‫ואהבת לרעך כמוך‬ 277 ‫וישבת ביום השביעי מכל‬ 243, 296 ‫חדוש גמור‬ 277 ‫לעשות‬ 277 ‫מלאכתו‬ 25, 243 ‫נקדת האפס שׁל תּנופה‬ 277 ‫עשה‬ 277-278 ‫שבת מכל‬ 25 ‫תורת ישׁו הנוצרי‬ 277-278

Index

353

Numbers and Symbols 1: 262-263, 294-295, 308-309 1.00069: 308 1.1 (√): 308 1.272019: 308 1.618033989: 308 2: 262-263, 294-295, 307-309 2.304: 243 2.359296: 288 3: 262-263, 294-295, 307-309 3.6: 243 4: 262, 308 5: 262, 308 5.769230: 308 6.5028096: 245-247, 308 7.84: 245-247, 295, 308, 308-309 8: 308 8.2944: 25, 129, 243, 245-247, 289, 295-296, 308-309 9: 243, 294-296, 308 10: 294, 308 11: 308 12: 308 13: 308 14: 308 18: 308 23: 308 0 (logical digit): 27, 43-44, 63-64, 88, 90, 112, 129, 155-156, 165, 192194, 200, 203, 218, 225-229, 234235, 237, 240-241, 278, 283, 288, 292-293, 305-308, 312, 314 0 (logical digit): 27, 43-44, 63-64, 88, 90-91, 112, 124, 129, 155-156, 165, 193-194, 200, 203, 218, 225237, 240-241, 278, 288, 292-293, 305-308, 312, 314 1 (logical digit): 27, 43-44, 63-64, 88, 90-91, 112, 124, 129, 155-156, 166, 193-194, 200, 203, 218, 225-229,

234-237, 240-241, 278, 288, 292293, 305-308, 312, 314 1 (logical digit): 155-156, 166, 168, 193, 203, 218, 225-227, 234-235, 240-241, 278, 288, 305-308, 312, 314 U (logical symbol): 63-64 O: 193, 203 c: 308-309 C: 273 I: 249, 291-293 L (cornerstone): 227-228 M (cornerstone): 227-228 N (cornerstone): 227-228 N: 291-294 P: 249, 291-292 pq: 88, 274, 288, 294, 311-314 R: 273 U: 249, 291-293 vmaxwell: 308-309 V: 273 O: 203 Ø: 203, 305 f: 246-247, 308