Politics of the One: Concepts of the One and the Many in Contemporary Thought 9781441112828, 9781441187192, 9781501301643, 9781441188816

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POLITICS OF THE ONE

About the series The Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series stages an ongoing dialogue between contemporary European philosophy and political theory. Following Hannah Arendt’s and Leo Strauss’s repeated insistence on the qualitative distinction between political theory and political philosophy, the series showcases the lessons each discipline can draw from the other. One of the most significant outcomes of this dialogue is an innovative integration of 1) the findings of twentieth- and twenty-first-century phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction (to name but a few salient currents) and 2) classical as well as modern political concepts, such as sovereignty, polity, justice, constitution, statehood, self-determination, etc. In many instances, the volumes in the series both re-conceptualize age-old political categories in light of contemporary philosophical theses and find broader applications for the ostensibly non- or apolitical aspects of philosophical inquiry. In all cases, political thought and philosophy are featured as equal partners in an interdisciplinary conversation, the goal of which is to bring about a greater understanding of today’s rapidly changing political realities. The series is edited by Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz. Other volumes in the series include: Deconstructing Zionism by Michael Marder and Santiago Zabala Heidegger on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Michael Marder and Peter Trawny The Metaphysics of Terror by Rasmus Ugilt The Negative Revolution by Artemy Magun The Voice of Conscience by Mika Ojakangas

POLITICS OF THE ONE Concepts of the One and the Many in Contemporary Thought Edited by Artemy Magun Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy Michael Marder, Series Editor

N E W YOR K • LON DON • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 175 Fifth Avenue 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10010 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com First published 2013 © Artemy Magun, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-1-4411-8881-6 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

In memory of Professor Alexey Chernyakov (1955–2010)

Contents About the authors ix Introduction xi Part I  The Other One 1

More than One  Jean-Luc Nancy

2

The Fragility of the One  Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback

13

3

Unity and Solitude  Artemy Magun

23

3

Part II  Event of the One 4

Genesis of the Event in Deleuze: From the Multiple to the General  Keti Chukhrov

51

5

Truth and Infinity in Badiou and Heidegger  Alexey Chernyakov

63

6

Suspension of the One: Badiou’s Objective Phenomenology and Politics of the Subject  Vitaly Kosykhin

71

Unity in Crisis: Protometaphysical and Postmetaphysical Decisions  Jussi Backman

87

7

Part III  The Singular Plural 8

Vegetal Democracy: The Plant that is not One  Michael Marder

115

9

Dividuum and Condividuality  Gerald Raunig

131

Part IV  Unity of the World 10 The One: Composition or Event? For a Politics of Becoming  Boyan Manchev

147

11 Elemental Nature as the Ultimate Common Ground of the World Community  Susanna Lindberg

157

viii Contents Part V  Politics of the One 12 Negative Imperialization  Artemy Magun

177

13 … et unus non solus, sed in pluribus: A Citizen as Eikon  Oleg Kharkhordin 203 14 Drawing Lots in Politics: The One, the Few, and the Many  Yves Sintomer

221

15 More than Two: The One as Singularity in Ambiguity  Gerald Raunig

245

Index of names  253 Index  255

About the authors Jussi Backmann, University Lecturer in philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Professor of Philosophy at Sødertorn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Alexey Chernyakov (1955–2010), Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Smolny College) at Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia. Keti Chukhrov, Associate Professor at the Russian State University for Humanities, member of the Moscow Art Magazine Editorial Board, Russia. Oleg Kharkhordin, Professor and Rector, European University at Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Vitaly Kosykhin, Professor of Philosophy at Saratov State University, Russia. Susanna Lindberg, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tampere, Finland. Artemy Magun, Professor of Democratic Theory, Chair of the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the European University at Saint-Petersburg; Associate Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Smolny College) at SaintPetersburg State University, Russia. Member of the group “Chto Delat.” Boyan Manchev, Associate Professor at the New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria. Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz; Editor of the Continuum series “Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy.” Jean-Luc Nancy, Professor Emeritus, University of Strasbourg, France.

x

About the authors

Gerald Raunig, Professor of Aesthetics and Political Philosophy at Zürich University of the Arts, Switzerland; founding member of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics (EIPCP), founding member of the e-journal Transversal and of the review “Kulturrisse.” Yves Sintomer, Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department, at the University Paris 8, France. Invited researcher at Neuchâtel University, Switzerland.

Introduction “Unum est necessarium.” This advice of Christ to Martha became the very formula of Western theology and metaphysics (as a result of what was in fact a pun, because Christ certainly did not speak of “the One” as a principle, but used the word to point at a distinct thing among many others). This mood of heroic allegiance succeeded the more ancient analogy between being and monarchy: “The rule of many is not good; one ruler let there be.”1 In both cases, their difference notwithstanding, the One is an imperative. Which also means that it is recognition of a lack. The divergence between the Neoplatonic transcendent One and the Aristotelian worldly One as an organizing principle, significant as it is, has not prevented theory and practice from a consensus on the preference for the One over the many. The few heretics, such as Étienne de la Boétie, author of a political pamphlet “Against the One”, attest to the general rule. It is not surprising that, in the twentieth century, the “One” became a target for philosophical attack, on different levels of sophistication, which include liberal apologies of pluralism in politics and epistemology (Isaiah Berlin etc.) and the more metaphysical political ontology of “multitudes.” “A multitude,” say Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “is an irreducible multiplicity; the singular social differences that constitute the multitude must always be expressed and can never be flattened into sameness, unity, identity, or indifference.”2 They follow an earlier apology of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in Thousand Plateaus, of a pure “multiplicity” that would not even be correlated with the One, would allow escaping “the abstract opposition between the multiple and the one.”3 “Multa sunt necessaria, Martha,” one could perhaps translate, more in the spirit of contemporary busy life. The problem with this position of Deleuze and Guattari, which, by the way, is borrowed from Plato’s Parmenides (hypothesis #8, based on the premise of the non-being of One) is the assurance that this inversion of the traditional approach would in fact not be an inversion, but a complete severance of relationship with the one. But why is it then rhetorically contrasted with the One? Indeed, in the same book, Deleuze and Guattari say that rhizome, as an instance of a pure multiplicity, is not derived from the one, the one is not added to it, but it is something “from which the One is always subtracted”.4 The Lacanian “minus One” is not that far away. Indeed, maybe the multiplicity is more lively than the One, but it cannot be represented without first considering one as a “negative magnitude” or a fulcrum. “Follow the plants,” say Deleuze and Guattari (see on this the chapter by Michael Marder in this volume), but it is implied that a plant is not just a pure multiplicity (which would go in all directions at once, would not it?) but has rather to do with an excess, overplenitude of the One.

xii Introduction Absolute first principles, such as Being, Unity, Truth, and Good are, if not quite inverted, then attacked, as transcendent abstractions which are usually usurped by hypocritical ideologists. In the twentieth century they are often replaced by structural/ procedural or anthropological concepts. But, in the ruling ideologies, the absolutes remain, albeit in an inverted form: democracy, individuality, freedom of conscience and of ethical choice partly inherited, in the discourse of human rights, the absolute authority of monarchy, totality, orthodoxy, and supreme good which they oppose. Absolute monarchies, religions preaching obedience to authority, social codes dictating uniform morality (at least to the lower classes), and even nationalist, fascist, or “totalitarian” democracies that tried constituting a unitary “people,” now appear as constraining human freedom, offending human dignity, and closing a horizon of possibilities. Of course, police order, the rule of law, and social conformity largely remain in place, but they lose their transcendent legitimacy and have to play a double role of authority and rational technological utility. This does not necessarily make them less oppressive: sometimes, the opposite is the case. But they cannot speak the language of the One. What have been the possible modes of being-one? In philosophy, there are two major models: the many, gathered, like a choir around a conductor, around the One that is radically separated from them (thus Plotinus,5 but even Aristotle thinks similarly), or the many actually forming unity-totality as its parts or members (Spinoza, and almost the entire Modern democratic/materialist thought). The former mode very much depends on divine transcendence, although Oleg Kharkhordin shows in this book how the model of a choir constitutes an actual form of a collective unity around a leader which is alternative to our representational models. The latter, immanent mode of unity poses a further philosophical and practical problem of integration. Without appeals to the transcendent one as a principle of hierarchy, the whole hierarchy becomes illegitimate. A well-ordered harmonious unity may, from a different angle, seem like a system of borders that separate social groups from one another and antagonize them: this is, for instance, the famous critique by Marx of bourgeois civil society with its “division of labor.”6 Hence, in contemporary philosophy, a search for the modes of unifying society that would go beyond a system of parliamentary representation (which in fact stabilizes sociopolitical asymmetries and hierarchies through a procedure of idealization). Badiou’s concept of the “generic”—a set that systematically avoids any substantive criterion of inclusion (technically speaking, a subset that is indescribable in the categories of the original set)—is the most influential attempt to formulate this idea of a true immanent unity. But there are other less metaphysical inquiries into the same subject, such as the chapter by Yves Sintomer on non-representative, or at least non-electoral, politics based on drawing lots, and Gerald Raunig’s reflection (in his second chapter) on non-representative “concatenations.” Badiou’s “communism” sets forward, in fact, the task that is analogous to, even if more radical than, the task of rethinking democracy

Introduction

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and republic in the face of the crisis of representation: an aleatoric logic is proposed, instead of the electoral aristocracy now in place. One can say that the late medieval and Catholic “representative” logic of presenting social groups as ideal essences (the Peasant, the Blacksmith, the Knight) and/or persons, as well as the Modern institutions of the regular mass army, Fordist factory, and mass political party—extreme instances of the “One”—gradually recede, and give place to a fragmented society where units are relatively small, isolated from one another, and constantly run away from each other like galaxies in the Universe. No more estates, no more classes (say some), no more charismatic national heroes. The unifying institutions such as elections, newspapers, or national TV channels arguably lose their significance because of the dissolution of stable public opinion and of mobilized civic culture. Elections are seen rather as a way to switch among several “elites” than to represent a “people.” (This is the reason why the more archaic ways of social integration such as the aleatoric “lots” may be a preferable option.) A network that is interconnected but not total (like family resemblance, or threads in a rope), unlike a unitary organization, has become a privileged model of social integration due to its technological installation through the Internet and cell phones. But it would be wrong to think that, because of the crisis of traditional modes of unifying, unity as such would be disappearing, that Modernity would in some sense be abandoning unity. While this is partly true in what concerns unity as a reflexive idea, in another more direct sense Modern techno-science and Modern capitalist political economy succeeded in an unprecedented unification of the globe. The One, as a hidden spring of numbering, unites the world through monetary exchange and through the binary language of electronics. This is possible via the negative force of the one that makes “everything solid melt into the air” and unites humans and countries “by default.” My chapter on “imperialization” emphasizes a negative and passive character of this process. Such unity, obvious as it is, cannot satisfy us because it lacks a form of unity and remains purely nihilistic (see my first chapter, on the proximity between one and the nothing): in the words of Boyan Manchev (in this volume), this unity lacks a world in the proper sense of this word. A. Negri and M. Hardt tend to oppose the organic multitudes to the unifying logic of empire, but it is clear that the “multitudes” can emerge only as a result of a violent dissolution of borders operated by capital and technology, and by liberal-democratic propaganda. But this Modern unifying process has at the same time led to the atomization of society and dissolution of traditional social links. A subject loses the intermediary levels of reference, finding itself one to one with the totality of the world. Unity of a state, and then, of the planet, implied the unitary atoms as its elements. But today it appears at once as a limitless totality and as an excluded, excepted one-as-singularity. Therefore, throughout the last two centuries, social thought has been lamenting the loss of social solidarity, and social practice was searching for artificial ways to reestablish it. This is particularly a French tradition going from Rousseau to de Tocqueville and then to Durkheim; de Tocqueville prescribing the spontaneous civic organizations that we today classify as “civil society.” In post-revolutionary Russia, after

xiv Introduction a decade of experimenting with actual communes, the party experimented with the creation of “collectives” based on intense practices of cooperation and public denunciation. As Oleg Kharkhordin argues in his book7 and recalls in the present volume, this “collective” structure had its precedents in some Orthodox monastic practices. In the West, psychological training secularizes some of the similar Protestant practices. Contemporary white-collar corporations borrow many of these community-building technologies. Strictly speaking, nothing prevents a fragmented body or network from being somehow unified. There is no contradiction here. In the simplest case, this unity comes from outside: the fragmented and disintegrated multitude is in danger of being ruled by an authoritarian leader (who would profit from the disconnectedness of interests). This is why Negri and Hardt emphasize that this multitude has a mode of acting together. To Aristotle, a joint action was also a way to unite the multiple. But Negri and Hardt—probably following Jean-Luc Nancy—speak of the “common” instead of the “one”. “The multitude, although it remains multiple and internally different, is able to act in common and thus rule itself.”8 By this, they apparently mean being-together without a unitary form, united by a set of relationships rather than a single essence or attribute. But is not commonality (with its “com”, “with”) also a (divided) unity, even though of a special kind? “Which With for the Many?” asks Gerald Raunig, in the first of his two chapters in our volume. And he comes up with the answer of “con-division”: a mode of collectivity which is no longer composed of units but only exists in a centrifuge of differentiation and singularization. My own chapter on solitude in this volume moves (mutatis mutandis) in a similar direction and conceives a unity of the common as a shared solitude. Another non-formal condition of unity is an empty space or a stage where multitudes and singularities could actually meet. In our volume, this question is addressed by Susanna Lindberg and Boyan Manchev, who discuss unity in relation to the concept of the world. In their view, what is in crisis today is not a unitary form of collectivity but rather the open space of occurring events: something which plays a role of non-thematic horizon and not of form, and which is itself formless. The crisis of extreme unification and extreme dissolution pushes us to constantly go back and down, to turn to the foundations of foundations. Both Lindberg and Manchev defend the immanent character of the world thus understood. The former suggests returning to the ancient natural-philosophical language of “elements”; the latter opposes the immanent ubiquitous alteration and transformation of things viewed by a fresh eye to the sublime unity of the event which is privileged by Badiou and, as Keti Chukhrov argues in her chapter, is even present in Deleuze. In philosophy, interest in the problem of One and many as such goes beyond the obvious need to undo (or even invert) the monotheist ideologies of the Old Regime. In the twentieth century, some thinkers (such as Heidegger) had little interest in this concept, and some, as mentioned, were mainly interested in subverting and abandoning it. But there have also been schools that tried to productively renew

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the very concept of the One. Philosophy of mathematics was one major school of thought where the One was a central question (Frege, Cantor, etc.). A redefinition of the One as based in zero was advanced by Frege, while Russell, Gödel, and some others demonstrated the logical impossibility of one supreme totality. The One is not one: the existing one is not unitary, and the unitary one does not exist either existentially or logically. This is a powerful critique of the metaphysical and theological conception of being, which makes the one into an aporetic principle of an infinite procedure. However, as we know, the danger of this approach is to make a skeptical or a Neokantian decision and to treat all unity as subjective or formal. The other line of the twentieth century’s “henology” was the French metaphysical tradition stemming from Jacques Lacan. It is Lacan, this philosopher-psychoanalyst who is, strangely, the most eloquent theoretician and apologist of the One in the “continental” philosophy of the twentieth century. Instead of escaping into “multiplicity,” Lacan dialectically reverses the very concept of the One, stating, for instance, that “The One is a pure difference” or even that “The One as such is the Other.”9 On the one hand, Lacan emphasizes the negative aspect of the One as a result of subtraction, separation, and exception. He notices that, in the midst of dogmatic metaphysics, the One constituted a virus of negativity, and is itself inherently negated. Even our negative terms, such as the Latin “non” or German “nein,” contain a reference to the one: the one functions here under subtraction, as “minus one.”10 Lacan uses the concept of One in connection to his structuralist philosophy of language, and for him the One, and numbers in general, are instances of signs without a semantic meaning, pure signifiers that lie at the ground of language. The One, expressed by the minimal, simplest line, “trait unaire,” is a pure, minimal signifier, a borderline not just of quantity but of meaning and sense, which precede and exceed the question of existence. Moreover, for Lacan, the negative designation of the “one” precedes its positive definition: the one emerges in response to a lack. It is in Lacan’s footsteps that his two great heirs, Deleuze and Derrida, developed, at the end of 1960s, the theories of difference as preceding and forming identity. The double, the mimesis, the resemblance, the repetition, are what constituted our notions of truth and sameness. Unlike Lacan, neither Deleuze nor Derrida tried to use the concept of One on its own—both preferred to invent new concepts, and held an acutely polemical relation to traditional metaphysics. Deleuze polemically opposed the philosophy of the One as a kind of policing gesture, while Derrida emphasized “dissemination” and (as we are reminded by Nancy’s chapter in the present volume) the “plus d’un” (more than one) of any phenomenon that he analyzed. The situation changed with Jean-Luc Nancy who, following some ideas of Derrida, nevertheless insisted on a more hermeneutical approach of “deconstructing” the classical concepts and the trivial words of language by giving them a new (or primordial) meaning. Nancy’s classical work from the 1980s11 was dedicated to the notion of the common which, he showed, was not an indication to a totalitarian unity, but to an inherently plural structure of being, of any being thing. This was in fact already an attempt to “save” political unity from the neoliberal individualism, by reinterpreting it as open

xvi Introduction and shared. But at that time, the accent was on plurality rather than unity, on the inherent split and distribution of being. But Being Singular Plural, which developed the same set of ideas, invoked unity in the aspect of singularity, uniqueness. In Nancy’s recent works, in which he “deconstructs Christianity,” he has no reservations to speak of the One as such, although of course this is not a return to any religious orthodoxy. The continued relevance of monotheism, says Nancy, is its proximity to atheism: the negative character of the One God that withdraws from the empirical realm. [W]hat is lost of the very essence of monotheism in all its [present] forms is precisely that the “one” of the “god” is not at all Unicity qua substantial present and united with itself: on the contrary, the unicity and the unity of this “god” (or the divinity of this “one”) consists precisely in that the One cannot be posited there, neither presented nor figured as united in itself. Whether it be in exile or in diaspora, whether it be in the becoming-man or in a threefold-being-in-itself or whether it be in the infinite recoil of the one who has neither equal nor like (thus not even unity in any of its forms), this “god” (and in what sense is it divine? how is it divine? this is what we have to think through) absolutely excludes its own presentation.12

When God becomes one, Nancy develops, he is displaced by becoming a “principle” [“the first captured”: the One appears again] rather than a person, but this “principle or principate [principat] (to appeal to this old word here) can only exempt or make exception of itself in regard to itself.”13 This is a thought that is familiar to us from Giorgio Agamben (who quotes Nancy in his turn), but unlike Agamben, Nancy does not make this observation into an ironic denunciation of sovereignty but uses it to emphasize the potential of self-criticism and access to the abyssal ground that lies in a serious fidelity to the one. In his chapter of our volume, unlike Deleuze and Guattari, Nancy conceives the one as an overflowing excess, not as a stabilizing and “molar” form imposed on a chaos. Here we come to Alain Badiou who is in a way the central author for many chapters of this book because he (well, like Nancy) calls for a creative renewal of traditional metaphysical and scientific concepts, and because he sees in mathematics a chance to reunite science with philosophy, and thus the concept of one plays for him a particular role. Building on Frege and Lacan, Badiou admits that the “One” is naturally not there, and that it only emerges as an operation. “Il y a de l’Un.” [“There is something of One.”] Hence the role of mathematics, which is sufficient to form and structure being, forms the multiple matter from outside. Badiou is a good Kantian here. Further, like Frege, he deduces the One from the notion of zero, “empty set,” which is named by “the name of the void.” Vitaly Kosykhin rightly notes in his chapter the Neoplatonic overtones of this position. The new unity of “sets” and “numbers” is an imperfect unity, since it cannot unite, represent itself. Hence, a new dialectical step is needed, which, according to Badiou, consists in an emergence of the “Ultra-One”14 (a concept to which Nancy’s

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concept of “More than one,” developed in this volume, is probably a rejoinder). The “ultra-one” is the event—a reflexive, impossible set that counts itself: includes its own name. “The ‘ultra-one’ […] counts the same thing as one: once as a presented multiple, and one as a multiple included in its own presentation.”15 The “Ultra” means both that we transcend the one and that we find a new larger unity, like in Cantor’s theory where there is a hierarchy of inconceivably large “cardinal” numbers. But one cannot say that unity, in Badiou, takes over the multiple. He insists that the sets that he studies are “multiples,” even though on the other hand it is clear that they are just multiples counted-for-one by “ontological” rationality. Moreover, the ultra-one of the event, a non-set which exceeds a set, is not, in Badiou, the end of the story: it further leads to the creation of a new peculiar set: the “generic” one. A generic set is a subset that is not discernible from within the original set, but that “runs through” all its possible classes and categories. In Being and Event, Badiou emphasizes that the construction of the generic is an attempt to introduce truth within ontology. But ontology is a regime of counting something as one! In the first Manifesto, Badiou emphatically states that the generic is the multiple as such, and that his theory is a sort of “Platonism of the multiple” which allows for passing between the principles of the “without-being of the One” and “the limitless authority of the multiple.”16 In other words, the generic goes beyond the opposition between the one and the multiple and reconstitutes a multiple in the terrain and in the language of the One itself. Once again, we have something like a dialectical synthesis of the one and the many. Badiou as a thinker of the One is preoccupied with the part, not with the whole: an event, and its generic consequence, are ways to separate and describe the phenomena that stand apart from a common situation. “One divides into two,” he repeats Mao, not “two unite into one”: both in philosophy and politics, truth is derived by distinction and discovery within the existing situation. However, Badiou would agree that “unum est necessarium”, in the direct sense of the Christian ethics of fidelity which he secularizes in his Saint-Paul: there is just one thing necessary, and it suspends all other existing values and rules. Attractive as are Badiou’s apology of the splinter-like Ultra-One and his dialectical construction of it, they pose several problems. One of them is the complicated character of Badiou’s theory that basically posits two images of unity: the event and the generic set, and the relationship between them does not have a clear mathematical or logical form (Alexey Chernyakov suggests in this volume that the event is a risky bet on the possibility of a generic set). The second problem of Badiou’s ultra-unity is his affirmative understanding of event as an advent which makes it ontologically secondary to the original set (situation), from which the new set is separated but which it does not annul or destroy. Without the internal negativity of event it is hard to conceive either historicity (nothing actually disappears here), or the need to keep a fidelity to the event instead of simply carrying through its agenda (“fidelity” implies that the cause has somehow been lost, event interrupted, etc.). If we now try formulating the reason why the One is interesting at all, we can say, in a short cut, that the One, in the all-familiar language of both words and numbers,

xviii Introduction is the most basic term. An indefinite article and a unit of counting. To achieve this “atomic” quality, One had to become a pure name or a pure number: it is the very operator that allows the subject to pass from an egocentric obsession to the happy play of reversible signifiers. But, at the point of this suspension of meaning, it turns out that the One is a highly polysemic name, and that its polysemy reflects the semantic intricacy of the concept. Like so many ancient names, the “one” means contrary things at once: uniqueness and equivalence, inclusion and separation, orgiastic collective and egotistic monad, siege and exile, in the terms of Marcia Cavalcante, who formulates sharply: “The one names both the most singular and individual—each one as opposed to another one—and the most universal and general—each one as each one of a conceptual whole or kind.” This singular is not an element of a totality or an exemplar of a genus; it is a meaning of the One that resists counting, only to be reaffirmed in a new turn in an infinite multiplicity of shared solitude. Being a dialectical, rhythmic (Jean-Luc Nancy), or “heterogeneous” (Jussi Backman) concept, the One unites and dis-unites the mutually contradicting concepts of totality, singularity, and identity in an inevitable temporal deployment which requires a philosophical analysis to discern. A rhythm of affirmation, passage, self-annulment, and re-settlement at a new terrain: it is hidden in all everyday occurrences where we start—and immediately stop—counting, stumbling at the edge of something for which we try to prepare. But this rhythm is infinitely variable, subject to recombinations and reverberations of the meanings of the One. The chapters collected in this book are so many variations in the same scale that stretches from singularity through identity to totality, and then, symmetrically, from the multiplicity as the distinction of singularities through the multiplicity as the anonymous equivalence of hoi polloi, to the power and awe of enormous multiplicity that animates any totality and exceeds it. The inventive paths between the one and the many are compressed, in the chapters of this book, in a series of new (or renewed) promising philosophical concepts: Fragility, Dividuality, Element, Solitude, Icon, Plant. At the same time, the concept of the One helps to throw light on more familiar concepts, such as World, Event, and Representation. The structure of the book groups its chapters in accordance with the specific angles taken by them in rethinking the concept of One. The first, introductory part, entitled “The other One,” contains attempts to conceive unity, or something like unity that could not any longer be called by this name, beyond our general stereotypes of totality, numerical unity, or singular uniqueness. This other angle invariably includes negativity, which makes the one into a moment of rupture, crisis, split, but also reflexive self-reference. The chapter by Jean-Luc Nancy deploys the dialectic of One through the seemingly banal logic of quantity and count, and through exploring the intricacies of the one as signifier. Marcia Cavalcante, inspired by the theme of Saint Petersburg (the venue of the 2010 Unum conference), describes the traditional notion of the one as a “besieged” identity and suggests looking for a new intermediary concept between the one and the other: what Cusanus called the

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“non-other.” My own chapter in this part develops an existential approach to the metaphysics of One and suggests that this abstract and sublime notion can be deduced from the experience of solitude. But then this experience is such that the roof of unity looks very much unlike the closed, oppressive, prison-like totality. The second part, “Event of the One”, unites the chapters that take the One, temporally and existentially, as an eventful encounter rather than a form or substance. The One is singular in the sense of unexpected, it is a product of intense condensed experience and a ground of subsequent time span. Such is, as we have seen, the position of Alain Badiou, and three of the four chapters in this part are dedicated to this great French thinker. Keti Chukhrov contests, with polemical vigor, the ironic reading by Badiou of Deleuze and of his philosophy of event. She insists, in fact, on the proximity of both theories of event, giving a rather unexpected interpretation of Deleuze. Alexey Chernyakov compares Badiou’s eventful temporality with the structure of time explicated by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit. Vitaly Kosykhin argues, on the contrary, for a more objectivist reading of Badiou, emphasizing that the being, for him, is subjectless. Thus seen, Badiou loses some of his glamor as a militant philosopher and appears as a contemplative metaphysician, somewhat in the spirit of “speculative realism.” Jussi Backman, in a detailed reading, explains Heidegger’s reading of Parmenides as an “onset,” presenting the “one” (and “first”) as a name of a permanent crisis. The third part, “The Singular Plural,” brings together two chapters that problematize multiplicity and explore alternative ways to conceive it. Both Michael Marder and Gerald Raunig are less “henophilic” than other authors of the book: both try developing, with the “help” of Deleuze, new ways of conceiving and thinking multiplicity, being not content with its supposed obscurity. While abandoning the metaphysical One, Raunig and Marder do not abandon its more immanent versions, such as singularity and “being-with.” Marder explores the transcendental repercussions of the concept of “plant,” while Raunig uncovers, in the work of Gilbertus Porretanus, a theory of “unum dividuum,” a mode of conceiving of a human being without making it into a self-sufficient unit. Creatively combining Deleuze and Nancy, Raunig describes a mode of joint being that would consist in “con-division” and not in the “common.” In spite of their seemingly abstract concerns, both authors are overtly political, in that they look for a “true” democracy, republic, or community, behind these very concepts/ values that may look trivial or even problematic. The fourth part is titled “Unity of the World”. Boyan Manchev and Susanna Lindberg try to find and re-found unity as non-thematic conditions of gathering and communicating: unity is thus neither a thing nor a transcendent idea, but rather a ubiquitous environment. Manchev emphasizes constant alteration and transformation as a condition for a worldly encounter of things, while Lindberg, with environmental problems in mind, suggests a return to the ancient “elements” as a concept to which we do not have today an exact analogon. The final part of the book, which is homonymous with the whole, is more empirically oriented. It deals with political theory, but its chapters pose the very same problems of the one, the many, and their transformations. In my chapter on “negative

xx Introduction imperialization” I apply my concept of negative unity as solitude to the contemporary political order, showing the force of dissolution hiding behind its apparent imperial integration. This crisis of the Modern state and the void that it opens, obviously, set the stage for the invention of alternative forms of political unity. Oleg Kharkhordin takes a step back from today’s instinct to think of a popular unity as formed by representation. Attempting to think differently, he shows an example of a non-representative union that would not necessarily be authoritarian or anarchic. “Who”, he writes, in restating the perennial political problem of the One’s non-existence, “can claim that s/he has seen or touched a group in toto or a group as such, an entity separate from its members?” And, continues Kharkhordin, “[a]n iconic citizen is characterized by understanding this absence and by a determined pointedness to this ever-retreating group existence.” Unity is not incarnated in a center, there is no idea of resemblance, typifying, or copying: instead, something like a correlation is established among the group and its leader(s). One is reminded again of Lacan’s “Il y a de l’un.” Yves Sintomer speaks of the actual forms in which political unity may exist beyond the standard representation. Democracy, being an organon of social integration, has a potential of transformation, in the situation where the standard parliamentary system starts aging, both historically and conceptually. The participatory forms of government that draw on lot rather than “aristocratic” election help make society into a more perfect larger unity—or a more perfect multiple, if one prefers. Finally, in a coda, Gerald Raunig returns to the opening chapter by Nancy and formulates once more the main problem of the book: to find a way to concentrate, single out, or intensify the multiple that would not at the same time impose the identitarian One upon it. Raunig points at the political answers to this question, in the practices of contemporary art and of militant non-conformist activism. It must be added that the book may provide an additional interest for the fact that most of its authors represent the Eastern/Central and Nordic corners of Europe: Russia, Bulgaria, Finland, and Sweden (plus a Canadian of Russian origin, an Austrian who is very involved in the intellectual life of Central Europe, and, finally, one (the one?) from France). This is a region of intellectual semi-periphery whose intellectual life is relatively separate from the global discussion, not just because of linguistic and cultural barriers, but also because of the logic of the postcolonial world where those without access to rich libraries and living outside of the networks of Anglo-American universities are at a comparative disadvantage. While in Finland and Sweden the state stimulates academics to publish in English, this has only very recently become the case in Russia, for instance. Thus, my effort as an editor and conference organizer was, apart from matters of substance, also to build up and to present a community of thought from the scholars of the North-East corner, scattered around its intense island-like intellectual centers, such as Sødertorn in Sweden, European University and Smolny College in Saint Petersburg, New Bulgarian University in Sofia, and others. The task was thus to build in this region something like a new philosophical

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archipelago (that would not at the same time resemble the Gulag or the besieged Leningrad). Certainly, the presence of the great European centers of gravitation, such as Strasbourg, Paris, and Zürich, remain crucial for not closing this contour of generic energy into an identitarian “one.” The origin of this book is a joint interest in the notion of One and in the philosophy of Badiou that in 2006 made me start a joint seminar with Alexey Chernyakov. Not just age but also the styles of our thinking and the character of our questioning separated us, but nevertheless there emerged a sort of intellectual resonance, as a result of which we ran, from 2006 to 2008, a seminar on the One (“Unum-Seminar”), first in the Saint Petersburg Higher Religious and Philosophical School, later in the Smolny College of Saint Petersburg State University. From 2008 to 2010, Chernyakov ran his own seminar, where he provided a detailed exegesis of Badiou’s works. A mathematician and a philosopher of phenomenological orientation, author of a book on temporality in Heidegger,17 and a long-time professor of the Saint Petersburg Higher Religious and Philosophical School, Chernyakov quite unexpectedly became interested in the French Maoist Badiou: apparently he saw in him the continuation of the early Heidegger’s ethical pathos, but without his stoic and atheist principles of finitude and death, and without his prejudice towards science and particularly mathematics which, for Chernyakov as for Badiou, was an obscure, almost illegible, language of infinity. In this, he followed not just Cantor but the great Russian mathematicians of the twentieth century who interpreted their own mathematical discoveries in the sense of “imyaslavie,” a tendency in Orthodox Christianity that emphasized the power of the name of God and made its pronouncement into a special cult.18 Hence the strange alliance of an apolitical and theologically oriented phenomenologist with a leftist political philosopher, out of which this book, in the final analysis, was born. In April 2010, thanks to a generous grant from the Center of Franco-Russian Friendship in Moscow, to the French Institute at Saint Petersburg, to the Andrew Gagarin foundation, to the Smolny College (now the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Saint Petersburg State University), and to the Center “Res Publica” of the European University at Saint Petersburg, I organized a large international conference, “Politics of the One,” which was centered around the issues previously discussed in our seminars but which involved a broad circle of thinkers from Europe and North America. The next step was a publication developing the same questions in depth, and this is now achieved thanks to the energy and intelligence of Michael Marder, the editor of the series, to the publishers, Continuum and, in particular to its editor, MarieClaire Antoine, and to the serious efforts and sharp minds of all the authors of the book. Special thanks go to the European University at Saint Petersburg for supporting the translation of Gerald Raunig’s chapters, to Aileen Derieg and Brian Currid, and to Jonathan Chalier for translating Raunig and Nancy, respectively. Tragically (in the literal sense of the word), Alexey Chernyakov, who stood at the origin of this project, did not live to see this book: he died from a stroke during a period of intense heat in July 2010. We dedicate this book to the memory of the one who was thus singled out for interruption.

xxii Introduction

Notes 1 Aristotle, Metaphysics (12), 1076а5. 2 M. Hardt and Antonio Negri, The Multitude (Penguin Press, 2004), 105. 3 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 32. 4 Ibid., 21. 5 Plotinus, Ennead, 6, 9. 6 See “On the Jewish Question,” in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1975–2005), 146–74. 7 Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 8 The Multitude, 100 9 Jacques Lacan, L’identification, Séminaire IX (unpublished), 1961–2, 15.11.1961, 35. There are two seminars of Lacan devoted in a large part to the concept of One. They are separated by an interval of 10 years, the first is #9, 1961–2, the second is #19, 1971–2. The second one returns to the same problem that Lacan posed in 1961–2, but with new philosophical references such as Frege and Plato. 10 Ibid., 21.02.62, 109. 11 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, trans. P. Connor et al. (University of Mionnesota Press, 1991). 12 Nancy, Dis-enclosure (Fordham University Press, 2008). 13 Ibid., 23. 14 A. Badiou, Being and Event, 181–2. 15 Ibid. 16 A. Badiou, Manifesto for Philosophy (SUNY Press, 1999), 103. 17 Alexey Chernyakov, The Ontology of Time: Being and Time in the Philosophies of Aristotle, Husserl and Heidegger (Kluwer, 2002). 18 Lauren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor, Naming infinity: a true story of religious mysticism and mathematical creativity (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Part I

The Other One

1

More than One Jean-Luc Nancy

[W]e shall at one time be descending, tearing apart, like Osiris, the one into many by a titanic force; and we shall at another time be ascending and gathering into one the many, like the members of Osiris, by an Apollonian force. Pico della Mirandola1 [T]he double did not only add itself to the simple. It divided it and supplemented it. There was immediately a double origin plus its repetition. Three is the first figure of repetition. The last too, for the abyss of representation always remains dominated by its rhythm, infinitely. The infinite is doubtless neither one, nor empty, nor innumerable. It is of ternary essence.2

One, two, and the resumption of this division and this addition. Resumption that counts for one more, and makes three. Two divides one and supplements it: one has not taken place; it has only taken place by redoubling [dédoublant] and repeating itself. The “abyss of representation” is the non-presence that is replayed at each new proposal of meaning: a sign, as soon as it makes a sign, refers to another sign and their reference refers to nothing (to nothing as a “thing,” a “presence,” a “given”). Sign, and sign, and nothing, such is the rhythm. But nothing—no thing, not any thing, not “one”—we begin to know that it is “something,” as in French (res, rem, un rien). In order to understand what “thing” nothing is, if it can be understood, one might consider how reference is there made: through rhythm. In other words, nihilism consists in contending that no sign refers to any thing and that signs only carry this nullity on. It therefore contends that “one” corresponds to “one,” to a “one.” But if the repetition of signs—language, and even more than language, the significance [signifiance] of all things—is valid as rhythm, isn’t there a scene change? Rhythm throws in more than one. More than one, more of one, “neither one, nor nil, nor innumerable” and nothing, the thing, in the form of infinity. Exit from nihilism. This is what we are here taking care of. The un- of the unfolding [dédoublement] and the re- of the repetition make “one” more—one that is not another one added in the indefinite series of units, but one,

4

Politics of the One

the addition of which is also the distance between one and two, the gap that divides one at the same time as it supplements it, that is to say the gap sustains its place and role and, in doing this, it adjoins the one to itself, the simple “one” to the split, double “one.” This adjoining through division, this inflection, this articulation transforms monotonous addition of one to one into rhythm. The return of the same substitutes for linear succession—the return with which Nietzsche has opened what one could call the epoch of “more than one.” The “same” indeed is not the “one”—at least as identical. It is what, in order to be the same or similar (das Gleiche), must precisely not be “one.” Or must sweep the one—with its own unity and unicity—in a displacement the movement of which we begin to feel, while feeling that in reality, since the very beginning of our history, the “one” displaces itself, in itself or out of itself. We will have reasons and occasions to go back to this, without claiming to reconstitute—that would be the task of a vast treatise—the history of the one, this history that, all in all, is one from Heraclitus to Derrida and to ourselves, but that is one by way of having from the outset displaced [déplacé], carried off course [déporté], and extended beyond limits [débordé] its own unity as well as the “one” of which it seemed to be in charge. (To say no more about this now, it may suffice to take a moment and recall some flashes of the one in Heraclitus, in Plato, in Aristotle or Plotinus, the unity of Augustinian Trinity and that of the God of Averroes, of the God of Thomas Aquinas, without mentioning Ibn Arabi or Eckhart, Leibniz’s monad, the one-for-itself by Hegel or Stirner’s unique. A few references are not much, of course, within the vast and proliferating course of the history that could one day be characterized as the history of the One, the unique history of the One, of its advent and its avatars3—“one day” when the One is disunited from itself. As a matter of fact, we are already there. This is precisely what we are talking about.) “More than one,” this was, later than the text I’ve quoted, one of Derrida’s favorite phrases. I might say: a fetish phrase. More than one language, more than one session, more than one law, etc.—and maybe more than one “one”: whether he has taken the risk of such a turn of phrase or not, it is legitimately prescribed. Prescribed by the logic of the supplement of origin, to take over his own words, but prescribed to this logic itself since the most ancient departure (was there one departure, only one?) of philosophy. More than one philosophy? More than one, philosophy, itself? The unity of philosophy has not ceased to be for itself an object of litigation. Now there have to be essentially several philosophies that diverge or confront themselves, now there has to be one philosophy that continues and reasserts itself unless it comes to pronounce its own “end” and its opening to an other “thinking.” But philosophy itself presupposes the putting at a distance of a unique principle of the sophia it talks about. The philein is a principle of non-unity: it implies the possibility of variations, distances, and approaches, and on principle then it holds at a distance the unity and unicity that we would always obstinately tend to assign to a sophia. It also means that always and constantly, in one way or another, philosophy is more than philosophy. More than one and more of one. More than itself: this too is indicated by philein. Hence, necessarily and originally, philosophy would throw in an



More than One

5

excess over unity: its own unity as well as that of its theme (whether it is called “being” or as one wishes; here precisely only counts the excess of any meaning [signification] or significance [signifiance] over one sense [sens] whatever it may be). “One way only”—that is also one of the main names of our history as a process and as a calling the process in question. “More than one”: it obviously means more than one thing (and what is “a thing” in this remarkably undetermined sense? A signified, a reference, an object, a concept? In truth, it simply means “one,” any given unit, the fact that we can fulfill the intention of “meaning” [vouloir dire] through something else than “nothing”—therefore simply that “one” is not nothing, and that for this reason the minimal question of the “one” is the question of nihilism: nothing, or something of the one). “More than one” means first and foremost “more than only one,” more numerous; it means in this sense the number itself, or numeration. More than one: one, two, three, four … (non-rhythmic succession). It immediately entails a plurality of “ones”: the one-one is followed by a second one, then by another. But the plurality of “ones” opens straightway the question of its nature: is it addition, multiplication or else distinction, dissimilarity? If plurality results from addition or multiplication, “more than one” may extend indefinitely like the series of numbers, of all possible numerations (“natural,” “real,” “imaginary,” “irrational” numbers, …). The principle is that of numeration or numerality: more than one, which is to say not only some ones but also many. More precisely, there are never “some ones” without there being “many” at the horizon. Many, the multitude, i.e. the multiplication of the ones that are not brought back to the jurisdiction of a One, simply because there is neither a jurisdiction nor a “One” with a capital, but only the enumeration of “ones.” Enumeration is the principle of the crowd, of the numerous of which the number continually increases. Addition brings always further the indefinite sum that will never make up a unity. When humanity counts seven billion individuals—nine billion in 40 years, according to forecasts—the large number seems to disseminate in itself any alleged unity of “man,” of “human kind,” which, in fact, turns out much more similar to the kind of an indefinite multiplication than to the kind of growth of a generic unity. And that could therefore turn out [s’avérer] to be the kind of no kind, as a blurring of genre or more precisely of species, since homo sapiens is a species of the genre homo. A species that does not let itself be grasped as such, that is to say specified or grasped under an aspect that would be distinctive of it: the aspect that, all in all, is a term akin to “species.” The species without aspect, or the species characterized by what defines as a rule the zoological “species,” namely inner fertility. The human species could not develop any other aspect than its own exponential reproduction accompanied by a reduction and a destruction of many other living species and by a genetic transformation of many others, and even of itself thanks to technologies such as cloning. More than one, yes, up to nine billion, and not one man? Can we imagine that: that a specific identity deploys itself as pure multiplication of units that tend to be only of worth as units of account within the interminable counting? The seme or semen of “man” disseminated in its pure dispersion?

6

Politics of the One

Multiplication also makes the other value of “more than one” appear. Dissemination—this other word by Derrida—steals the sense [dérobe le sens] (and the seme, and the semen) from unity and unicity. “More than one” is thus multitude, less as proliferation than as efflorescence, as overabundance and in the end as excess of sense [sens]. No doubt the growth of the human population proceeds from the activity of man who never stops pursuing anything else than the reproduction of its conditions of life and of its species, always paving the way for unpredicted lives, lives that do not appear on the table of species, and transcends any novelty that mutations could introduce among the living. As more than one and more than one species, man is itself a mutation of the living: it transforms life, which is maintenance, into enterprise—if one may retain the original meaning of the word, i.e. nothing else than “realization, fulfillment.” As long as life maintains itself, it responds to rhythms, to the alternation of sleep and wake, action and passion, words exchanged, languages and peoples. When it turns maintenance into enterprise, life breaks the rhythms, creates new ones though, invents complex cadences, but also carries any cadence along an indefinite speedingup. Here is another aspect of the passage to large numbers: population, speed, dimensions of economic bubbles or measures of the universe, everything receives the sign of large numbers. Large numbers are both received and produced by this movement called “globalization” that increases the presumption of unity. But “global” unity cannot be anything else than a unity itself numerical, numerous, cumulative and dissociative at the same time, the “more than one” unfolded [déplié] into “one plus one plus one …”. The “plus,” hence as a sign of addition and not as an indication of overcoming. In addition, the unity of the whole is not distinct from the uniformity of additive operation. And yet the value of “plus” changes completely between “one plus one” and “more than one.” The former is reduced to arithmetic writing (1) and our linguistic use distinguishes it from the latter.4 1 In the latter use, “more than one,” the issue is to overcome the unity of one. It is not only a question of being able to count many “ones” or several times the same “one”. What is thrown in is neither several, nor a lot, but the status of the “one” itself. But this throw-in is not opposed to addition and multiplication: Derrida’s text reads precisely “the double did not only add itself to the simple”. Addition is not denied; it is animated by another movement: by going from one to two, therefore from one “one” to two “ones,” I do not place only units side by side— which are furthermore necessarily supposed to be identical in so far as one can be added to the other—but I also affect the nature or the state of the “one” (and as a consequence not only of the first one, but of the second one and any other “one” to come). This affection is a division and a supplementation or a substitution: of course there is a given one, followed by a second one, but as a consequence of this fact the first



More than One

7

“one” cannot remain immobile in itself. On the one hand, it becomes [passe dans] the second—as a “one,” precisely—and it is thus divided from itself. On the other hand, since this division withdraws from the one its propriety of initial unicity, and since in this way one has not started to count—one has not really counted “one plus one”— therefore the beginning or origin establishes [avère] its propriety instead of what should or could have begun, what we tend to represent as making the “one” of the first step [pas], even though a “step,” by itself, divides itself. One could say that there are two logics of the “one”: one that posits the one as immobile, but raises the difficulty to know how to step towards [passer à] more than one, and the other that receives the one as the step itself, that divides itself by itself and replaces its own initiality [initialité]. “One” divided is not “one 1 one” but two “ones” resulting from the division of the first one that has not taken place. Two times, then, and the division itself as initiality of what has not “begun” and therefore a third time. A ternary rhythm, the metric figure of which could be the so-called “amphibrachic” meter - , and it does not exclude ˘ ˘ other possible beats, or the possibility to move [passer] to four by splitting and thus doubling up [dédoublement] the second time. As we know, this is what happens in Hegelian dialectics, as well as in the Christian Trinity, which could be considered as the unity of the three with this unity itself called “God” (or, in the human analogy employed by Augustine, the unity of memory, intelligence, and love with the person who is only herself in these properties taken together)—without the fourth time indicating any further “unit” but rather the extension or the inner tension of the ternary. Hence the Geviert by Heidegger is the figure [figure] of the extension or the opening of the world, an extension in which existence is possible according to the Ereignis understood as the event of the one (of each one and/or of the one of “Being”) and therefore also as its division or partition.5 I do not undertake, obviously, to go through the figures and concepts of the three and the four in philosophy, theology, mysticism, alchemy: I only want to mention how this numeration has been significant throughout our history. A numerology and an arithmosophy has, from time immemorial and well before philosophy, covered and doubled enumeration. The “one, one …” has always given rise to speculation about the “one” itself, the “one” that is not enumerated. Beyond any numerology, however, it matters to hear: because there is a beat [battue], a beating [battement], a pulsation. Maybe “one” is only possible without this pulsation, which is not numeration and yet already plays in numeration, already percussive in the simple “one 1 one 1 one …”. There is no addition without repetition, and no succession without scansion. No chant of the recitation of tables—“one plus one, two, two plus one, three …”—without suggesting a song, an incantation. It is no longer the count that is important, but the resonance: it is the language of calculus referring back to itself, that which exceeds both calculus and language. “One,” perhaps, is a matter of rhythm and not of counting, and not of the number of the rhythm—3, 4, etc.—but of movement, of gait [allure], of drive [allant], and

8

Politics of the One

of pulsation. For a long time, the question of the primacy of the one or being was disputed—in particular between the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neo-Platonic traditions. Pico della Mirandola tried to end this debate by writing his De Ente et Uno. His solution consists in overcoming the rivalry of the two pretenders by ascribing them both (along with the good and the true) to God, who cannot be grasped by thinking6 because its unity comes “prior” to that of the one itself. Its unity is actual infinity and at the same time intimacy with itself such that “true knowledge” of God’s unity is a “total ignorance.”7 In other words, there is one and one. There is more of one buried at the heart of the one—and of being. If it is impossible, indeed, that a being be without being one, it is yet possible, and maybe even necessary, that the one and being come under a different logic of the One. Distancing oneself from substantive “being”—which indeed readily submits to numeration—so as to approach “Being,” the verb “to be,” this verb that “is not” as Heidegger says and that for this reason calls for its crossing out—not a deletion, but a spacing [écartement] (a quartering [écartèlement] if I may, or a star-shaped crack [étoilement])—one comes to think of this verb as a transitive verb (Heidegger requires it sometimes). This non-grammatical transitivity could be rendered thus: Being spaces being out [être écarte l’être]. Being is thus not “one” being, nor the production of beings one by one. But “Being” forms the act of spacing [écartement], distinguishing and dividing beings. This act is one—without being “one being.” It is the unity of the act, the transitive unity that does not precede the “ones” of beings and that does not take place [survient] but that is acted or rather acts, that enacts their event [événement] or advent [avènement]. This “one” does not let itself count. It is the one of the upsurge [poussée], of the pulsation or the drive [pulsion] that makes what is be. A rhythmic one, that is to say both composed, plural in itself, and one that eludes counting. We are not talking about counting the times of the rhythm here: we are talking about clapping one’s hands or beating the drums, and that is something completely different. We talk about dance and cadence. The apprentice counts his steps, but the dancer does not; the dancer takes steps or is carried and pushed by them. “Being” is being pushed outside, that is to say ex-isting. Each existent being is one existent being—which does not mean that it is one in itself and for itself [en soi et pour soi], unique and united—but the pulsation that projects all and each falls within a very different unity. In this sense, the world is indeed “one” but this unity is taken away [dérobée] from us by number—not the magnitude of number, even though this magnitude itself seems to indulge in adding itself for the sake of adding itself—but because of our struggle to understand what unity could be revealed beneath numeration and multitude. Of course, the world’s unity is not revealed, in the sense we give to this word. It does not come to light, it does neither let itself be known, nor counted. But it testifies of itself always and everywhere. Always and everywhere indeed, in the exorbitant profusion of nature as in the proliferation, or even the swarm [pullulement] of our machines, our signals and our purposeless purposes [fins sans finalité], always and everywhere there is a testimony to [s’avère] something like “one” dispatch [envoi]—not



More than One

9

a project but a je(c)t, an ejection from the world (by us, within us) towards an outside that is always wider and always more exempt from the certitude of a unity, unity of intention, of design, of history. It could indeed be the case that the One prior to any unity be withdrawn not only from our grasp—it has always been as we have always known—but from itself. This is said, “God is dead.” But another aspect of this withdrawal could be that the prior One, the eminent one or “maxime unum” as Thomas Aquinas puts it,8 withdraws from all unity and all numeration. By withdrawing itself, and by leaving behind the empty remains of the “one,” it indicates a higher, incalculable, innumerable unity—therefore also countless and taking care of the countlessness of large numbers—but “one” in so far as it exceeds any multiplicity, any diversity, but because of this also any unity that could be countable within a multiplicity. One from beyond or before the One. One punctual, without dimensions, not taking place, without place or time but opening up every possibility of time and place. This excess has nothing magical or mystical and it is not a hazy metaphysical entity: the excess is given within the nature of “one.” If “being and one convert into one another” as in the classical doctrine of transcendentals, and if “Being” is being pushed outside (outside, ahead, further, elsewhere, as one likes), then “one” provides the energy for the drive, and it provides it as rhythmic pulsation. The “maxime unum,” the greatest one, is greater in so far as it is “maxime indivisum,” as again Thomas puts it. To be supremely indivisible is to be not liable to any manner of division, neither in parts, nor in substance and accidents, nor in actuality and potentiality, nor to end up as “something” and the nature, the position, or the existence of this thing. The exceeding one, the one exceeding itself, prevents any ascription of this kind and can only be considered as this unity and unicity of the pulsation, pulse, and impulse [pulsation, pulsion, impulsion]. It is not a “one”; it is only the absolute simplicity of an upsurge [poussée], of a leap, of a momentum. Its unicity is absolute, and that is why it is both “one and all” according to the unity of the whole, a thought attributed to Heraclitus, to whom we also owe the words “the one adjoins to itself by differing from itself.” The exceeding one “is” all precisely by differing from itself, by differing itself in the upsurge [poussée] that opens, spaces out [écarte] and scatters all things. Nevertheless it does not differentiate from itself and does not resolve itself into differences. It defers itself—that should be understood according to the logic of différance: this deferring does not happen [survient] to it, but it is rather this deferring itself. It “is,” if one may say so, it is only but fully the movement, the upsurge, the drive that carries itself and carries ahead [qui se porte et porte en avant], that is carried [qui se transporte] and communicated to any existence, to every existence. One should not overlook the fact that in the famous “one differing from itself ” of Heraclitus, the verb diapherô has to be also or foremost understood according to its value of carrying [transport], movement, and shaking that carries away [qui emporte]. The exceeding one is a carrying away [emportement]. Because there is a world, or there are worlds, as many as one likes, because there is something. It is the secret

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Politics of the One

one of this undetermined, anonymous, and discrete “something,” the discretion of which bursts into indefinite multiplicities of unities and unicities. One might say, thus following the logic of différance, that this carrying away does not carry anything that preexists to itself, not even itself. This one is another “more than one.” It is—as far as it “is”—the “more than one” that turns into “somewhat more than one” [plus qu’un]: more than “one” but not more numerous than it, on the contrary, even more one than one; not counting but carrying, not a unit but a dispatch [envoi], not given but giving. Unique, but not isolated, replayed [repris] on the contrary and restarted [relancé] in every scansion of existence, each one being unique. One of absolute simplicity and not of union: it does not unite anything in itself since it opens up the pass—the passage, the pass band—to the diverse, the pass itself divided of the division of all things. As Blanchot writes: “The ‘One’ is what least authorizes union, even with the infinitely distant; still less does it authorize mystical elevation and fusion.”9 No confusion, but profusion. The one that is not added—or “not only” added, and transforming the very meaning of “addition”—and that is not reunited in itself, the one neither additive nor inclusive is not, for all that, withdrawn in itself like a point (such as the Kantian “I,” for instance): on the contrary, it is this carrying by itself and out of itself (but it has no inside and no outside), carrying of the point, in a sense, but then carrying that makes a line, not continuous but rhythmic, the cadence of the always renewed plurality of all singulars. Each singular is itself “one” in this sense: in so far as it repeats the initial carrying—the carrying of the initial—being itself in its turn the opening of other profusions (a life, for instance, every moment, every way [allure], every up and down of a life, and its death). If there is a unity of the world, or rather if the “world” can be thought as the non-numerable unity of Being, of this being understood as rhythmic singularity and according to the ternary essence of the infinite Derrida was talking about, the world’s unity has to be of this nature. That is to say of the nature of the profusion of species, aspects and manners of the existent, the prolific upsurge of living beings and of this other proliferation, that of our machines, apparatus, devices, and our transplanted, transorganic, virtual, fiduciary, fictive organs. This requires that proliferation and profusion be abundance and not accumulation by addition. Neither addition of a moment in time to another, nor addition of a section of space to another. We know that the general and most abstract form of this addition is money or currency: the equivalence and the permutability of cumulative units (of “specie” we used to say). We also know that it is the exponential development of money’s techniques (credit, options, banks, etc.) that made possible the deployment of other techniques and, along with them, of our entry into the era of large numbers— cosmic, demographic, electronic—of which we do not know whether they count as swarm, plethora, glut, or else as abundance, generosity, wealth—but in what sense of wealth? Wealth, another word for “more than one.” And this clearly shows [expose] the crossroads: between the accumulation of countable units and a generosity that can only come from elsewhere and before, from the unity of an infinite rhythm. This might



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be why, since the beginning, our civilization has been so much concerned with the one: because it knows that it has committed itself between the one that adds to itself and the one that carries itself away from itself [s’emporte hors de soi]. Between the one and the other: we know today that we have to take over all the terms of this alternative, interval, contradiction, or complexity. Between the one and the other one. This immediately entails: between the one and the other. Is the other the other one or the other of the one? And of which one then? To be continued.

Bibliography Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (CreateSpace, 2009). Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, translated by Ann Smock (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995 [1980]). Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, translated, with an introduction and additional notes, by Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978). —Dissemination (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983). Pico della Mirandola, De Ente et Uno [On Being and the One] (1491). —On the Dignity of Man, translated by Charles Glenn Wallis (Annapolis: The St. John’s Bookstore, 1940).

Notes 1 On the Dignity of Man, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, 1940. 2 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans, with an introduction and additional notes, by Alan Bass (The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 299. 3 The only contemporary writer who has wished to build in proper terms an “ontology”—Alain Badiou—calls it “ontology of the multiple” and its main proposition is that “the One is not.” He thus both takes over this history and interrupts it by opposing the non-being of the event to the not-being of the One. In Derrida, the (un)folding of the origin opens up event in being or rather in the place left free by the Heideggerian Destruktion of all ontology. The one does not have to be or not to be if being itself is not. But it happens, as rhythm. That is to say also it happens to itself, it befalls—as “more than one.” One may notice an asymptote common to both ways to proceed: in both cases the one would be its own excess. In a manner analogous to, this time, on the one hand, Heidegger’s Ereignis (which is “appropriation” of the non-one of the proper on the background of the “unicity” of being—Einzigkeit des Seyns appearing in, for instance, Beiträge 12); on the other hand to the “univocity of being” of Deleuze (which is only made of the different). The kind of network I am working at in this hasty fashion does not intend to gather all these thoughts—if not, after all, in the perspective of a question such as: what is an epoch? How is the unity of a moment, a phase, or a stage decided? There never is a pure heterogeneous disparity between thoughts of an epoch even though we hardly know what makes it an “epoch” (and “one”) and even though there are at the same time obvious differences. “An

12

4 5 6

7 8 9

Politics of the One epoch” is not a consensus but, within the most acute dissensus, a relative possibility to refer the ones to the others. In French, “1” and “more” are both “plus,” but the final s is only pronounced when employed as “1”. To move from the ternary to the quaternary, one would have to consider how Derrida receives the Geviert about which he reminds us that it is formed for Heidegger “out of an original Unit” (e.g. in Dissemination). Pico quotes Anselm: “Domine, non solum es quo majus cogitari nequit; sed es quiddam majus quam cogitari possit” [God is not only that than which no greater can be conceived, but he is that which is infinitely greater than everything that can be thought] (Proslogion XV). De Ente et Uno [On Being and the One (1491)] Summa Theologica, Ia, qu.11. Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster [1980], trans. Ann Smock (University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 139.

2

The Fragility of the One Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback

To Irina Sandomirskaja And all things are lit by a nacreous glow— The source of the light is a mystery, though. Anna Akhmatova, The Summer Garden, 19591

The announcement of the conference reads as a call, the call for thinking the one beyond its hegemony and beyond its fragmentation. To read a call is in itself something strange, thus a call is to be heard rather than read, at least when taken literally. But maybe at stake here is precisely the call for listening when reading, the call for listening to the call of the one. How does the call for the one sound? It sounds as the call for listening to the unheard voice of the one in a world experienced as the gigantism of the too much. Too much things, too much words, too much products, too much information, too much conferences, too much calls, too much people; a world of excess with too little exception. Because today the one faces the too much (to agan) rather than the many (hoi polloi), modern concepts such as of “mass,” “crowd,” and “multitude” seem insufficient to describe the sense of the world’s too much. Thus the too much of the world does not mean simply that this world is inhabited by too many people, products, uses and abuses, but that the world itself seems to have become too much. At stake in the too much of the world is not simply the quantitative meaning of the too much but the fact that the quantitative too much became the only possible quality. The quantitative too much is the only quality not merely because everything is measured exclusively by economic parameters but mainly in so far as everything has lost the need for determination. The too much of the world that appears when quantity becomes the only quality implies the indeterminacy of everything. In this indeterminacy, not only men are redefined as “men without qualities” but things are redefined as “matters without determination,” in so far as they are nothing but the flexibility to be used in most various functions, to serve to most different purposes, to act in whatever way to whatsoever play of forces. Here, everything becomes anything. If the limits between men and things appear as erased it is because “Being” as such has lost the need for

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defining itself from out qualities and determinations. [Being today has no longer a need for an ontological discourse on to on kata symbebekos.] Global capitalism, capitalism of global market and medialization, does not expose solely the expansion of capitalism over the planet but the logic of indeterminacy that over-determines everything that is. Indetermination over-determines the meaning of everything. Indetermination over-determines the meaning of “Being.” More complex than emptiness of the meaning of Being through its total reification, the too much of the world relies on a strange de-reification of the meaning of Being. De-reification means here the loss of the determination as thing, as res, in the sense of what has a proper spatial and temporal delimitation, of what can only be what it is and not something else. In the too much of the world, everything exists as what has to be something else and therefore as what cannot be something in itself. This means that capitalism is no longer defined as a process of reification, in the sense that everything is converted into a value of thing. Global capitalism means instead the conversion of the determination of thing (reification) into the value of indeterminacy (de-reification). Heidegger pointed towards this transformation when he defined technique as the transformation of the meaning of being as objectification (Gegenstand) into the meaning of being as resource (Bestand). This explains not only the banal fact that richness today shows itself more and more in having as little “things” as possible but above all how the impact of different philosophical critiques of the understanding of being as substance and subjectivity are easily absorbed and banalized in a rhetoric of “becoming,” of “forces,” of “potentiality.” When things lose their determination of thing and are converted into the value of indeterminacy, the notion of the one becomes even more ambiguous than it has always been. The notion of the one oscillates between two strong senses. In the first strong sense, the one is the only one, the one of a whole, the whole as one—hen kai pan, the very definition of the world. In the second strong sense, the one is each one, the one in a comparative, serial, exemplary relation to other ones and to the whole. The relation between both senses of the one confers the condition of possibility for determinacy. When we say, this is one thing and that another thing, we relate what something is to its being as “one” thing. In an everyday way of determining things, the one is understood as “each one” and the “each one” as the one. This has also two senses: on the one hand, things are determined as “each one” for being this and not that, and, on the other hand, things are determined as “each one” of a certain kind of things, of general determination or conceptual whole. The one names both the most singular and individual—each one as opposed to another one—and the most universal and general—each one as each one of a conceptual whole or kind. In the ambiguity of its conceptuality, the one oscillates between the unique and the banal, between what only belongs to itself and what belongs to everyone. In its ambiguity, the one oscillates between what is the most inapprehensible because it cannot be subsumed to a general kind, not even to a name, being ineffabile, and what is only an example of a general kind. The concept of the one binds together not only the each one and the other one, but what is the most other in relation to the one—namely every-one. In this sense, if the concept of the one is what confers the condition of possibility for determinacy,



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it is because it touches the limits of determinacy, touching the indeterminability of each one. It is because it is a Grenzbegriff, the limit of concept in the concept of limit. Oscillating between what is in itself the most undeterminable, the uniqueness of each one, and what is the most determinable, the generality of the each one of a universal kind, the concept of the one points towards the point where the most undeterminable and the most determinable meet each other. The ambiguity of the concept of the one shows what Nicolas of Cues called coincidentia oppositorum,2 a coincidence of opposites, a point where extremes tend one to another, the point where one begins to become the other or another. Here, the one appears as differentiated with itself, hen diaféron heautón.3 Because the concept of the one touches both the determinable and the undeterminable, we could say that it can be considered both as an obsolete effort to seize our global and globalized world and as capable to seize the indeterminacy of being, at stake in our global and globalized world. In order to understand this, we should depart from the way the one appears in our global and globalized world. It appears in a very ambiguous way. On the one hand, we experience an increasing disappearing of the “each one”, understood as what is itself and not another. The each one of nations, of ethnicities, of people, of regions, of sides, of dimensions, of frontiers, of positions, appears as what can no longer be clearly distinguished. It appears as no longer being a clear “one.” The experience is not however of indistinct oneness but of a mixing of limits, in which the each one appears as no longer one. In this sense, we talk about fragmentation and “broken hegemonies” (to recall a title from Reiner Schürmann).4 On the other hand, we experience the most hegemonic sense of the hegemony of the one as only one, in so far as the global and globalized world means a world without otherness and transcendence. Global and globalized world means a world that has no way out of itself, a world that does not know any way to escape out it. It is a world in besiegement, a world of total immanence, the state of siege of the world. Hegemony means here the only one as the one without any other. Each one becoming other: this is a way of defining the global world as a world of global fragmentation. The one without any other: this is a way of defining the global world as a world of global hegemony. To the indeterminacy of beings—that is, to the meaning of being as what can function whenever and wherever as whatsoever—corresponds not only an ontology of flexibility but above all the inflexibility of a world that does not admit a transformation of this continuous flexibility. Hegemony does not mean here primarily the power of one principle or the principle of one power but the no way out of the global world, a no way out both in space and in time. As much as there is no space outside the global regime and system of power, there is no time beyond the timing of the global regime and system of power. The global character of the world does not rely first on the fact that different places and times can be experienced simultaneously, that distances in time and space can be shorter or even deleted, briefly, that we have to do with another kind of “transcendental aesthetics” and therefore with other forms of perception and sensibility. The global character of the world relies rather on this circularity without escape, on this no way out that affirms the world as besiegement, as immanence that includes everything with the exception of any possibility of self-transcendence. The self-evidence of this no way out of our global world

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is so powerful that the dreams of liberation and escape, hopes of transformation and revolution, and theologico-political discourses on a possible beyond have torn with all sense of “beyond, ” assuming that, because there is no way out, the only possible utopian transformation would be a conformation to the global, in a more just and equal globalism. The no way out of the global world does not appear, however, simply in the worldwide admission that there is no way to escape from globalism or global capitalism. The no way out appears rather in the experience of powerlessness to change the world. This powerlessness is not due to a suspicion towards rational dreams of total revolution, of a revolution of principle, in so far as such dreams of reason create monsters, as Goya once depicted them. The no way out of the global world appears in the experience that it is the all-power of man over being and life that, in its too much, discovers itself impotent and powerless to control its own power. Today, we face a state in which human life became a slave of its own freedom and the human appears subjected to her own subjectivism, losing her own image when everything became its own image. The society of control, even when called global society of knowledge, is the society that, controlling everything, discovers its powerlessness to control its will to control. In this acceleration and over measure of control, power, and knowledge, in the too much of the world, where nothing can be lost, not even a loss (our garbage!), we experience, in different levels of singular and collective existence, the powerlessness of this incommensurable power, the impotence to control of this overwhelming control, the not-knowing of this encompassing knowledge. A limit of power, of control, of knowledge appears in the too much of power, of control, of knowledge. What appears in the individual and collective experiences is the fragile point where there is too much power and no power at all, too much control and no control at all, too much knowledge and no knowing at all meet and touch each other. This fragile point is the singular. In a world besieged by the too much—too much power, too much control, too much security, the singular appears as what has no power over power, no way of controlling control, no possibility of assuring either the possible or the necessary. In the world of excess, the singular appears as the most extreme fragility—a little “flower in the crannied wall” (Tennyson),5 a grass straw in a cement block, a child of the streets, a single life in massacres of indifference. No power of the singular each one in the middle of the besieged world of the too much: however, in this no power, the singular still appears as a point of fragility. How to grasp this point of fragility? How to grasp the fragility of the singular? How to grasp the fragility of the singular as the solitary one? We are used to discuss it either from out of the difference between the singular and the universal or from out of the difference between one and other. We are used to discuss the singular from out of a clear distinction between measures, the little and the big, from out of a clear distinction between positions, the self and the other, etc., without asking from where these oppositions are pronounced and constructed. In the too much of a world with no way out, where clear distinctions appear blurred, unclear, and ambiguous, where one is already the other and the little totally absorbed by the big, how to grasp the fragility of the singular one? It can be described as the



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fragility of a point, in the sense in which Kandinsky defined the geometrical point as “invisible being,” as the first element in a sensibility of the “in-existent,” to follow the way Alexandre Kojève interpreted Kandinski’s intention of non-representative art.6 The fragility of the point is the fragility of the smallest circle of concision, the incision of the invisible tension in a form, and therefore the invisible beginning of a form. Kandinsky describes the point as excentric–concentric tension, a tension that tends towards a center while tending outwards. The point is, in this sense, most intensive tension of contraries, at the edge of its own breaking down. The point is a breaking through in its own breaking down, irruption in its own disruption, disruption in its own irruption. That is why, for Kandinsky, the point is “the most concise temporal form”7 and must be described as the beginning of a sound where sound and silence touch one another. In Kandinsky’s pictorial description, the point is not the force of a pole against other poles and further against a sum of poles. It is neither what opposes the line and the surface. It is rather the fragility of the resonating silence of a tensional coincidence of contraries. As a tensional coincidence of contraries, the fragile point of singularity is neither a point of oneness nor of otherness but a between one and other. This between is not to be understood as undecided tension waiting for resolution. It is also not merely a spatial or temporal interval between positions, the self and the other. Neither oneness nor otherness, between one and other, the fragile point of singularity can be characterized as a “between,” in the sense proposed by Heidegger. As care Dasein is a “between”, he says.8 But this is another way to show in the saying how the “between” one and other of Dasein means an ek-static movement, “ek-static temporality.” Being as Dasein, as ek-static temporality, means being in itself out and beyond itself.9 This is not the same as being with the other and others inside oneself, either in the sense of being alienated (possessed by the “they”) or being altered (to become another one). Being-in-itself-out-and-beyond-itself is not a “concept of fragile singularity” but a formal indication of what is concretely experienced, as for instance in a situation of exile. Exiles are not only extraterritorial exiles. In a besieged city, in the besieged world of the too much, each one exists in exile. And this is not a metaphor. Why? Because the existential situation of an exile is one of no longer having a world in the home-world and never arriving at an alien home, being alien at home and not at home in the alien. It is a situation of in-betweenness that has nothing to do with being between places or experiencing an interval between two times. It is, on the hand, a situation of being without return and without arrival. It is a situation of continuous being with the others that have been left behind in time and space, alive or dead, and therefore being without them with them. And it is, on the other hand, a situation of being without the others that have not yet existed, without the unborn, without promising births, being with this without, being without others with them. The fragility of singularity lies on this being in itself out and beyond itself in so far as singular existence means being at once with and without others, being with and without past and present, being as a life after the others’ death that is at the same time a life before the others’ birth. The fragility of the singular lies in its exilic situatedness, in so far as it is never here and now, thus the fragile here and now is the fragile point where life after the others’ death and life before the others’ birth coincide. It is an exilic

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existence, not only in the sense of not being able to be in one’s other place but in not being able to be in one or another place, thus it exists in between lost existence and never acquired existence. Difficult to grasp is, however, not so much that the singular existence is between past and future, and being itself a present past future, but how this existence in between, the between of existence itself is in itself out and beyond itself. Ancient Greek philosophy and especially Aristotle had some thoughts about how singular life relates to the whole of life, thoughts that we can find rethought in the philosophical tradition, and not only among the more mystical and romantic thinkers of nature such as Schelling and Bataille. Aristotle expressed how “marvelous is life” when describing, in the Part of the Animals, the cyclic change of life and death in nature.10 The marvelousness of life was for him the strange force of fragile singularity, even if not in these terms. Thus, for him it had to do with the way singular life appears as a discontinuity in the continuous cycle of nature. Thus the singular life, as for instance the life of a child, being unique, is at once continuity of the species and its discontinuity, being what could not be otherwise for the sake of life’s necessity of being always otherwise. In this view of a cosmos in harmony, a glimpse of vision into the exilic nature of fragile singularity takes place when Aristotle recognizes singular life as the coincidence of discontinuity and continuity of the species. Ancient ontology developed this glimpse of vision about fragile singularity in terms of the relation between part and whole and reserved the term metexis, participation, to describe how the sensible takes part in the intelligible, how fragile singularity, even if understood mainly as an example of a general kind, takes part in the cosmic all. Metexis is one of the first terms in the vocabulary of ontology to describe fragile existence in the in-between, a certain sense of exilic existence, something we can read, without too violent projections, in Plato’s Symposium. The ancient ontology discovers the exilic in-between as a relation between the singular life of the one and the cosmic life of the whole, considering the singular one as a part of the whole and thereby as discontinuous continuity of the whole. The ancient ontology admitted singular life as treat, sustaining a tragic cut between mortal and immortal life, between the human and the divine within the one of the cosmos, almost as a canvas by Fontana. The medieval ontology made the first existentialization of this view, describing fragile singularity in terms of exile and assuming exilic life as the only improper way human existence can exist, cut from its divine origin and longing for coming back to dissolution in divine existence. Human exilic existence is understood as a movement from exitus to reditus, departing from God, suffering in an existence far from God and wanting to return to unity with God.11 Among different ways of interpreting, in the Middle Ages, the human exilic existence which faces God as creator, is a more mystical tradition that follows from Dionysus Pseudo-Areopagite, through Meister Eckart to Nicolas of Cues. This tradition developed a different view, to a certain extent closer to Ancient Greek experience and to existentialist philosophers. Nicolas of Cues described the fragile nature of singular existence, the fragility of finitude as a non-other in relation to God. Instead of thinking it in a dialectical opposition between self and other, creator and creature, infinite and finite, omnipotence and impotence, he describes as non-otherness, the non aliud, the difference within the identity presented by human



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existence in divine existence and the identity of this difference revealed by divine presence.12 Cues’s medieval expression non-aliud, “non-otherness,” shows in its saying how to understand the between of exilic existence as a relation between continuity and discontinuity. It points to the necessity of dis-learning the dialectics of one and otherness in order to grasp the fragility of the singular. Thus, at stake today is not how to solve or to overcome the One or the Other but to dis-learn oppositional thought and its reifications. Non-otherness points towards the necessity of thinking the between one and other from within the in-between, from within exilic experience and not from one of the poles, that is from an empty formal standpoint. However, it is only by dis-learning the poles, leaving them behind, that a thought from within the in-between can appear. Otherwise, the between would be nothing more than another pole, another harbor. The thought of non-otherness is a paedagogia negativa. Non-otherness neither negates the opposition of one and other, reducing it to an empty identity, nor affirms this opposition by negating the experience of their fragile identity. Non-other is a way of naming what has no name, that is, being at the same time and at once with and without one and other within ourselves. Non-other names the white nightly instant in which day appears as the non-other of night and night as the non-other of day. It names the fragility of the exilic existence of the singular, which is not merely the fragility of having lost roots and grounds but the fragility of getting roots in the loss of roots, getting grounds in the loss of grounds. A lot has been said and debated about the grounds for the successive loss of grounds and roots that characterizes contemporary history. The global and globalized world, the world of the too much, affirms itself as a world beyond and after grounds and roots. It presents itself, however, as a new ground and root, a ground in the undifferentiated common, a root in global indifference, that is, in what belongs to everybody in so far as everybody and everything can be anybody and anything. This is not the same as the fragility of the singular, as what is grounded in the loss of grounds. This is not the same because the fragility of the singular is the fragility of being without grounds and reasons, the fragility of being as a little flower in the crannied wall, as a “source of light” in the poem of Akhmatova quoted in the exergue, as the child’s feet that Dostoevsky uses to kiss in his dreams of ridiculous man,13 naming the lack of name for what has no reason and discovers no ground to exist, even less to exist after the loss of grounds and reasons, after the death of God. Grounded in the fragility of having lost grounds and roots, the singular names the being-thrown of existence itself, without laments of guilt, that is, of reasons and grounds and without the anxiety of projecting new grounds and reasons to a future. The fragility of the singular is sharp like a pointy peak. It hurts and is silently incisive in so far as it shows in itself that singular existence is the appearing of the ungrounded and unreasonable fact that there is still existence. And if, quoting some verses of T. S. Eliot, “the lost word is lost, […] the spent word is spent, the unheard, unspoken word is unspoken, unheard; still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, The world without a word, the Word within the World and for the world.”14 This “still,” resonating the silence of a fragile point, shows, when saying, the groundlessness and uprootedness of existence itself. No God,

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no state, no nation, no belongings and even no language but the groundlessness and rootlessness of existing without returns and without arrivals. This is neither living in one’s ground and root nor in another ground and root, thus it is a ground without ground, a root without roots. It names therefore both the fragility of grounds and roots and a grounding and rootedness in fragility. The question to ask then is how to think the politics of the one when the one is experienced singularly as fragility and collectively as too much? How to think the politics of the one, beyond fragmentation and beyond hegemonies, as a political ground in the loss of grounds and roots, as a political ground in fragility? In this sense, politics of the one does not mean politics understood as a tekné politiké, a technique of politics, but the fragility of the one as a decisive sense of the political. If the political is to be defined not as a technique of deeds but as the way common existence discovers its own grounds and roots, then it would be possible to admit the fragility of the one as the groundless ground and the rootless root of common existence. This would mean first of all to recognize that common existence is not only a being with but a being with-out, in the sense of being at once and at the same time with and without oneself and the others, being with and without living, dead and unborn others, with grounds and roots in the without grounds and roots. In this sense, it comes to say to our dead and unborn others: “I am your non-other, as you are my non-other.” This expresses a relatedness that experiences, in the common, the uncommon, and in the uncommon the common. A lot is being discussed today about the common, beyond the liberal and communitarian views. In these discussions, the force of the singular is being brought into light, and the notion of a plurality of singulars is aimed at finding political views beyond relativism and universalism, beyond individualistic and collectivist positions.15 In these current views, the singular means force and potency. But who is this singular? In the too much of the world, the singular appears disappearing. It appears as a fragile, invisible, incisive rather than decisive point in the visible, potent and decided indeterminacy of the too much of the world. The question is, then, how the fragility of the singular can be assumed as a “force” in the no way out of the too much of the world? Maybe, the fragility of the singular does not have to do with force and power to revolutionize the regime and the system of power, but, in the fragility of the singular it is the powerlessness and limit of the system of power itself that appears. The fragility of the singular shows, therefore, another meaning of the whole and of the one, it shows the meaning of the whole in which the instant all and nothing coincide. It shows another meaning of difference, thus it shows difference out of the instant of differentiation, the instant in which life and death coincide. The fragility of the singular is the fragility of a lightning, of an éclair, reminding us that the human world is not the whole about the whole and the one, human life and human death is not the whole about life and death and even less about the human. Still, “all things are lit by a nacreous glow—The source of the light is a mystery, though”, listening again to the verse of Akhmatova. The fragility of the singular, the resonance of its silence, can do very little. But it can at least remind us that still is the fragile existence of life in nature, in history, in the human. The task today is to think carefully and to care thoughtfully about this fragile “still” of life in our “today” as a source of political common existence, naming again and again what has no name.



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Bibliography Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, trans. Judith Hemschemeyer (Boston: Zephyr Press, 2000). Aristotle, Parts of Animals. Movement of Animals. Progression of Animals (Loeb Classical Library, 1937). St. Augustin. “De doctrina christiana. De vera religione” in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL 32) (Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 1996). Nicolaus Cusanus, De Docta Ignorantia. Liber Primus; Die Belehrte Unwissenheit. Paul Wilpert (ed.) Lateinisch-Deutsch [Philosophische Bibliothek Heft 264a] (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1964). —De li non aliud, Vom Nichtanderen (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1987). T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909–1962 (London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1963). Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1986). Wassily Kandinsky, Point, Ligne, Plan. Pour une grammaire des formes (Paris: Denoël, Gonthier, 1970). Alexandre Kojève, Kandinsky (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2005). Plato, Symposium, trans. B. Jowett, Project Gutenberg, 2008. Available online at http:// www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm (accessed 15 May 2012). Reiner Schürmann, Des hégémonies brisées (Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress, 1996). Alfred Tennyson. The works of Alfred Tennyson. Poet Laureate (London: c. Kegan Paul & Co, 1878).

Notes 1 Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, trans. Judith Hemschemeyer (Zephyr Press, 2000), 187. 2 Nicolaus Cusanus, De Docta Ignorantia. Liber Primus; Die Belehrte Unwissenheit. Buch I (1). Paul Wilpert (ed.) Lateinisch-Deutsch [Philosophische Bibliothek Heft 264a] (Felix Meiner, 1964). 3 Plato, Symposium, 187a. 4 Reiner Schürmann, Des hégémonies brisées (Trans-Europ-Repress, 1996). 5 Alfred Tennyson. The works of Alfred Tennyson, 278. “Flower in the crannied wall/I pluck you out of the crannies,/Hold you here, root and all, in my hand./Little flower— but if I could understand/What you are, root and all, and all in all, /I should know what God and man is”. 6 Alexandre Kojève, Kandinsky (Quodlibet, 2005). 7 Wassily Kandinsky, Point, Ligne, Plan. Pour une grammaire des formes (Denoël, Gonthier, 1970), 33. 8 M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1986), § 72, 374. 9 Ibid., § 65, 329. 10 “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous,” Aristotle: Parts of Animals. Movement of Animals. Progression of Animals (Loeb Classical Library, 1937), Book I, 645a.17 11 St. Augustin, De doctrina christiana. De vera religione, in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL 32) (Brepols Publishers, 1996). 12 Nicolaus Cusanus. De li non aliud, Vom Nichtanderen (Felix Meiner, 1987).

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13 Anna Akhmatova, The Summer Garden, in The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, trans. Judith Hemschemeyer (Zephyr Press, 2000), 187. 14 T. S. Eliot, “Ash-Wednesday,” in Collected Poems 1909–1962 (Faber and Faber, 1963), 102. 15 See Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (Stanford University Press, 2000).

3

Unity and Solitude Artemy Magun

“Solitude teaches us the essence of things because their essence is also solitude.”1 This line of Joseph Brodsky, a twentieth-century Russian poet, points at the ontological significance of solitude as an existential condition and hints at the paradoxes pertaining to this condition. It would be quite banal, even though true, to say that a human being is singular, and via its singularity s/he perceives, or even constitutes, the singularity of everything else. But there is more: solitude is not just unity but a longing of the one to go beyond itself. And, indeed, the moment when humans perceive a thing’s loneliness, both are not lonely anymore. Or, maybe it is because they meet, qua solitudes, they are truly solitary: together. This lyrical thought will guide us below through the labyrinthine paradoxes of the fundamental anthropological and ontological concept. My article aims to elucidate the negative aspect of the concept of unity, using historical, logical, and phenomenological perspectives. This is conceived not as yet another inversion of classical metaphysics but rather as a way to move forward and to achieve, pushing off from the negative fulcrum, a new synthetic view on the problem of the one and the many. The particular importance of One as a concept is threefold. First, it is a metaphysical correlate of the political sphere. The political is a sphere where the unity of human subjects stands in question: the unity that is not naturally given but has to be actively constituted and maintained. Today, this political unity is endangered, because society is in a state of dissolution (apathetic atomization) and because unity tends to be naturalized (as a unity of humans as such, or as ethnic or racial unity of all sorts). Second, unity is a negative ontological concept, one that logically contains the movement of destruction and reduction. It is therefore the most Modern, and democratic, philosophical concept—but before late Modernity, this negative aspect of it had been downplayed. Third, the One is a concept that sutures philosophy with mathematics. After a period of a split between philosophy and science, and a defensive posture of “Continental” philosophy against the naturalistic and nihilistic tendencies of scientific ideology, it is now necessary to reunite philosophy with Modern mathematized science, to supplant the non-formalizable self-critical movement of metaphysics with the strict and at the same time playful structural logic of the signifier.

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All of this is a trend of a certain recent tradition; the task of this chapter is to return from the logical and metaphysical construction to the experiential constitution of unity, which would allow bringing the conceptual work down to earth and avoid its degradation into an idealist art pour l’art. Experiential, phenomenological analysis requires, however, a support in the cultural tradition of the last two centuries, which I will further cite (rather than objectively describe).

History Philosophy The One is a central concept of Western metaphysics. Starting with Parmenides and throughout Antiquity, being was understood as inherently one (to hen), and thus the task of thought was to grasp the internal unity of a thing. Already in the Pythagorean school, of which we have few surviving fragments, the one was considered an origin of number and a universal principle.2 But the one did not come first: it was, to Pythagoreans, a way to limit and frame the original indeterminacy (apeiron), or perhaps a synthesis between this indeterminacy (characteristic of even numbers) and the stubborn identity (characteristic of odd ones).3 Pythagoreans started the Greek philosophical tradition with a beautiful-minded arithmology, but their intuitions lay in the ground of the first two ontologies: those of Parmenides and Heraclitus, because both were in dialogue with Pythagoreans, and their ontology was ontology of the One: but without an explicit regard to numbers. As Parmenides famously says in his poem: “One way only is left to be spoken of, that it is […] It was not in the past, nor shall it be, since it is now, all at once, one (hen), continuous (synekhes); for what creation wilt thou seek for it? how and whence did it grow?”4 Heraclitus also writes about unity as an ontological principle and a value: “The wise [or wisdom] is one (hen to sophon).”5 It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one (hen panta einai);6 And it is the law, too, to obey the counsel of one. According to a quote by Plato (now considered not precise), Heraclitus even said that “the one differs from itself and at the same time coordinates with itself ” (to hen autoi diapheromenon auto autoi symphereshai).7 This phrase became almost a motto for the young German idealists at the end of the eighteenth century. Both Parmenides and Heraclitus point at different aspects of unity. Thus, Parmenides’ “One” is identical with itself, whole, complete. But it is also held in “shackles” by Justice that prevents it from dying or being born. Mythical as this account is, it underlines the negativity of unity. Heraclitus is more articulate than Parmenides on these different meanings, since he speaks of “one” as distinct from “all”: one is the wise that is “separated” (kekhorismenon) from everything,8 and the all is what the one “rules.” There is thus already a hint at the exceptional if not transcendent character of the One as a number and as an ontological principle. Aristotle says that “in a sense unity means the same as being. […] In ‘one man’ nothing more is predicated than in ‘man’.”9 As Aristotle makes clear, and as it remains



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true in today’s language, “one” means several different things at once, particularly “the naturally continuous and the whole, and the individual and the universal” (the latter means also: in form, in definition).10 Subsequently, he adds yet another, functional meaning of the one, that, in a sense, is applicable to all those listed above. This is measure, which allows knowing other things, in their quantity and in other aspects. In all these senses, the one coincides with the being and helps us understanding its complex structure. But, paradoxically, the “one” is itself not one, and must therefore send back to a higher theological unity. Aristotle does not just describe the one as a synonym of being but valorizes and deifies it, likening his ontotheology to politics. He quotes Homer: “the world refuses to be governed badly. ‘The rule of many is not good; one ruler let there be.’ ”11 Neoplatonism, while agreeing on the highest value of the One, put it even higher than being, into the very center of the philosophical worldview. In spite of its theological dogmatism, Neoplatonism has a critical potential as a teaching that dissociates being with unity. The trinitarian doctrine, while complicating the simple deification of the One (and departing from a simplistic monotheism12), preserved the substantial unity of the three persons. Besides, the idea of trinity thematizes and problematizes the numerical determination of being, as its key definition, and it is easy to recognize in the “hypostases” of the trinity the meanings of the notion of “one”: totality, individuality, and connection. Later, in the medieval scholastics we see a return to the Aristotelian ontotheology, where one is subordinated to being, as its “transcendental” definition. “Unum … convertitur cum ente.”13 However, the scholastic thinkers could not fully escape from the influence of Neoplatonic mysticism. Thus, in St. Thomas Aquinas, unity, being a transcendental determination of being, is responsible for the negativity present in God. From the point of view of his unity, God “is only cognized by us in the mode of privation and negation (remotio).”14 The Modern scientific philosophy never questions the claim of the transcendental unity of being. “Ce qui n’est pas véritablement un être n’est pas non plus véritablement un être,” elegantly says Leibniz,15 while Kant attributes to human reason the task of uniting the indeterminate manifold into the “transcendental unity of apperception.”16 Notably, all of these authors, with the partial exception of Kant (we do not know much of Parmenides’ politics), were supporters of political monarchy. However, unity is a contradictory, complex notion. At the end of the eighteenth century, European thought turns back to the Neoplatonic dialectic in order to reconcile scientific knowledge with reason. Hegel, one of those who effectuates this move, writes about unity in his Science of Logic, in the first volume that is dedicated to Being. And, to him, the one is a unity of an object with itself that is revealed after its qualitative determinations have been attributed to its being: a being is one when it is “for itself.” But what is important for us is that Hegel emphasizes the primarily negative character of the constitution of the one: being for itself is a “polemical, negative relating to the limiting other and, through this negation of the other, is beingreflected-within-itself—even though, side by side with this immanent turning back of

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consciousness and the ideality of its object, the reality of this object is also retained, for the object is at the same time known as an external existence.”17 The one as such is then “an abstract limit of itself,”18 because its qualitative difference disappears in the process of delimitation. The next moment of the dialectical movement is the split of the one into the properly one and the nothing. In the one “there is nothing; and this nothing […] is [not an immediate but] a posited nothing.” Thus, “The one is the void as the abstract self-reference of negation.”19 The one is both one and the nothing—the logical movement that Hegel refers back to the Greek atomists with their ontology of atoms and void. Finally, in the third move, he shows that the one is so unitary that it excludes itself from itself, enters a negative relationship to itself. This further leads to the plurality of “ones” and the duality of forces of repulsion and attraction that act on them. This process leads, in its turn, to “a limit which is none, a limit which is in being but is indifferent to it,”20—the definition of quantity, or number, that is many in the one and one in the many. This argument of Hegel looks at a unity from outside, from the point of view of its other. This is why it is constituted negatively, and what is emphasized is neither totality nor unicity (as in the traditional metaphysics) but the redoubled, reflected negativity that detaches a thing from the world, separates it from itself, denudes its nothingness but keeps it permanently at the border of itself as something that does not lose itself even in infinitely reaching beyond itself. Hegel’s doctrine of the One attracted interest in the twentieth century, after the problematization of the number One in arithmetic. Here, I would like to evoke Henry Horace Williams, an American neo-Hegelian. In the article named “The One and the Many,” Williams emphasizes, more univocally than Hegel himself, the primarily negative nature of unity, and the consequences this has for political history: What is one? Historically one establishes itself by destroying all not itself. “Thou shalt not have other gods” […] The one is the all-excelling […] When all has been negated, there remains, what? Alexander, having overcome all others, wept. But weeping is an effort to overcome.21

This logic of the residual negativity of solitude recalls the logic of melancholia in revolutions (the negativity turns against revolutionaries themselves when a tyranny is overthrown) that I analyzed in La révolution négative.22 Williams continues: “The unity is ideal and pure […] It is a lonely one,”23 and ends his treatise thus: A state is not the people nor the government, but the unity of people in government. This unity is its only quality. Therefore wherever there is this unity there is the one, the state […] The one in itself is infinite and can never be other than one. And it can apply without limits, the moment of negation being absorbed […] From the point of view of the one, any other is to be destroyed. This is abundantly illustrated in history.24



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This idealist interpretation of Hegel turns his theory into that of atomistic militant states in which a government tends to turn (one would guess) against its own people after it defeats others. Interestingly, the Hegelian argument was mirrored in a philosophy that is seemingly quite distant from his, that is, Gottlob Frege’s. Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic is a book that is largely dedicated to the concept of One. It describes various attempts to define the one and comes to the conclusion that it cannot be a property of a thing, and that its definition contains an internal contradiction between identity and distinguishability (of units). To resolve this problem, Frege suggests that a number is a logical attribute of a concept, and defines the one … through the zero. Frege founds the system of numbers on zero (an empty set), which is the number that can be defined logically, as a set of objects non-identical with themselves.25 And the way that the natural numbers are derived from zero is the following: the one is simply the zero counted as identical with itself (made into a set), and the subsequent numbers count the preceding ones. This is literally the same as Hegel’s idea of identity between the one and the nothing, where one is a “posited” nothing, except that Frege does not question the idea to ground the arithmetic in the “nought,” but uses it as an argument against the empiricist tradition, while for Hegel this paradox is a sign of insufficiency and a reason why the ontology of one falls into an indiscriminate sphere of numerical quantity. For Hegel, as for most of the philosophical tradition, the one is per se not a number, while Frege and his followers Miller and Badiou do not make a difference here. Frege’s argument was used, in the second half of the twentieth century, by Jacques Alain Miller, in his article “Suture,” where he likens the emergence of one from zero to the constitution of the subject, in the Lacanian system, from the point of the indeterminate lack, “lack of nothing.” The counting of the 0 as 1 (whereas the concept of the zero subsumes nothing in the real but a blank) is the general support of the series of numbers. That which in the real is pure and simple absence finds itself through the fact of number (through the instance of truth) noted 0 and counted for 1. Which is why we say the object is not-identical with itself: invoked-rejected by truth, institutedannulled by discourse […] —in a word, sutured.26

Miller points out that the number “one” in the Fregean sense is not just the effect of the hypothetical position and denial of a counterfactual hypothesis, but also a ground of passing from one number to another. Zero, this vanishing negativity of the one, is thus present in every act of addition, in every next number. Alain Badiou continues the same tradition, showing, in his Being and Event, how the “ontology” elaborated in the theory of sets builds on the Fregean move that counts the pre-existing inconsistent multiplicity for the zero of an empty set, only to start counting and ordering being from this point. Badiou, in his book, points at the nihilist implications of this move27 and therefore sees a need to supplement the “ontology” with an “ultra-one”

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of the event, which counts for one the elements that are systematically ignored by the ontological unity (which counts them for zero and founds itself on them). Heidegger, whose thoughts on solitude I will analyze below, does not dwell much on the problematic of the one. His disciple and our contemporary, Jean-Luc Nancy, does make this step. His recent short treatise on the concept of one is in this book, but already, in Being Singular Plural,28 Nancy took Heidegger’s concept of Vereinzelung not in the banal (Leibnizean) sense in which all beings are unique and self-identical, but in the sense that, in the world of Dasein, each being is inherently plural by the very act of being; being present means already being split between what is and its existence, and from this split, other internal splits of a thing follow. Negativity or difference, there is something that breaks apart the illusion of a unitary thing. Hence the idea expressed by Nancy in the present volume, that the one is a principle of addition, always “more than one”: of excess and of reaching out, and not as much of self-identity (Nancy agrees with Frege and Miller on this point). Translated into social ontology, this principle, in Nancy, draws attention to the primary ontological co-belonging of humans, before any conscious totalization into a social contract or “collective.” This much for a very schematic history of trying to constitute and understand the one. But, it is not surprising that the twentieth century, with its liberal–democratic stance of subverting any dogmatic authority, and with its corresponding philosophical criticism of metaphysics as a doctrine of pre-given transcendent principles, attempted to criticize and “unseat” the primacy of the one. The obvious move was to announce an ontology, and priority, of the many, either in the sense of numerical plurality, or of an infinite continuum newly discovered by mathematicians. The most radical statement and elaboration of this ontological “polyarchy” belong to Gilles Deleuze and his school, while criticism of the One can be found, for instance, in the work of Reiner Schürmann.29 But previously, similar arguments surfaced in social and political thought, and already there, they were formulated in a metaphysical language. As early as in the sixteenth century, witnessing the rise of absolute monarchies, the young French noble Étienne de la Boétie wrote his “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude” additionally entitled by his readers “Against the One.”30 His metaphysical republicanism was half forgotten for a while, but in the twentieth century it was revived. La Boétie draws on a paradox, that the “one,” usually considered as a higher principle, is in fact the lowest number. “I should like to understand […] why so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him.” La Boétie thus makes a “forbidden” shift from the ontological to the numerical concept of one, to question the metaphysical foundation of monarchy by Aristotle (which implies a distinction between the two meanings of the “one”). The one turns out to be small and powerless—“just one.”31 One should also mention here Eric Peterson, a twentieth-century German Protestant theologian who argued against C. Schmitt’s “political theology” with an argument that Christianity was not a monotheism, and thus not a political teaching.32 Peterson mobilizes the old Trinitarian doctrine to struggle against the metaphysic of the state. Another German thinker, Hannah Arendt, gave a political twist to



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Heidegger’s critique of traditional metaphysics and, unlike Heidegger, was highly interested in the problem of unity and plurality. Her book The Human Condition starts with a philosophical premise that “men, not Man, live on the Earth and inhabit the world”33 and thus, humanity and society are not reducible to a single collective subject; they are rooted in a fundamental “plurality” understood as a network of relationships and a potential of joint action. One other classic expression of anti-monist political philosophy is the work of French anthropologist Pierre Clastres. In his book of 1974, Clastres reconstructs a peculiar metaphysic of savage tribes, where, if we trust him, the One is associated with evil. In fact, continuing an old French tradition and joining it with an anarchic mood of 1968, Clastres makes the South American Guarani tribe into the spontaneous followers of La Boétie: […] Guarani thought says that the One is Evil itself. The misfortune of human existence, the imperfection of the world, a unity seen as a rift inscribed at the heart of the things that comprise the world: that is what the Guarani reject; that is what has impelled them from time immemorial to search for another space where they might know the happiness of an existence healed of its essential wound—an existence unfolding towards a horizon free of the One. But what is this not-One so stubbornly desired by the Guarani? Is the perfection of the world to be found in the Many, according to a dichotomy familiar to Western metaphysics? And do the Guarani, unlike the ancient Greeks, place the Good there where, spontaneously, we deny it? While it is true that one finds in the Guarani an active revolt against the tyranny of the One, and in the Greeks a contemplative nostalgia for the One, it is not the Many which the former embrace; the Guarani lndians do not discover the Good, the Perfect, in the mechanical disintegration of the One.34

Instead: “Good is not the many, it is the dual, both the one and its other, the dual that truthfully designates complete beings.”35 Clastres immediately associates this ideology with the actual strategy of these tribes that consisted, he says, in blocking the way to the construction of a state. Moreover, paradoxically as it may seem, he also points at the solitude (a solitary song of a hunter allowing him “the conversion of an individual into the subject of his solitude”) as a condition that allows American Indians to protest and to hide against the regime of the social as such.36 Note how, for Clastres, not just the dual, but the one itself, understood as a state of suspension and ambiguity, serves as a weapon against the one, understood as isolation. This is the logic highly characteristic of the political usage of solitude. All of this is a highly original and historically pertinent proposal to reconsider the coordinates of the world we live in. However, the question remains, what the alternative to unity as an organizing principle can be. An apology of plurality sounds simply as an inversion of the former structure and, as any such inversion, it depends on what it inverts. A simple dialectical reasoning shows that the multiple, or even dual, as opposed to the One, is itself the one multiple: the opposition and exclusion suffices to determine and restrain it. So, in Clastres, for example, the everyday life of the tribes is busy with resisting potential unification, through internal war and other mechanisms of dissolution.

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Alain Badiou, in his book on Deleuze, shows that Deleuze’s multiplicity has a hidden reference to unity because it depends on the defense of the univocality of being.37 It is only when we accept that being is a uniform sphere, that it then appears as an overflowing chaotic multiplicity. Univocality inevitably involves a (transcendental) delimitation of the being as a region.

Society If we now turn to socio-political experience, we can see that the appeal to multiplicity and critique of a unitary subject, while they do reflect actual social processes, in no way help resisting unity. Yes, unitary states and theological ideologies of submission do to an extent lose ground in the today’s world. But, the resulting “globalization” is leading to a unification of the world that had never been achieved before. This unification lacks an identitary form, but imposes a unity of measure and mediation. Not a monarchic authority, but a unitary (monetary) measure of money and, more broadly speaking, a unifying quantification of differences (where upper, middle, and lower classes replace, in social self-reflection, the former structural class divisions), are new principles of unity. In this sense, we live in a time of an unheard of realization of metaphysics, where unity, not plurality, is the most adequate slogan of the time. However, the critical side of today’s moment, and a potential for new forms, lies in rethinking the concept of one itself. Thus, if anything specifies the current historical moment, it is the sense of exhaustion of European expansion, and of the extensive growth of the rationalized world. There are no longer blank spots on the map, and the hope/anxiety of conquering “space” has so far ended in a disappointment. Media and transportation integrated the world and contributed to its shrinking, so that neither escape from information nor free space to realize a utopia (like islands or planets) is immediately available anymore. In this sense, the realized metaphysics of the One resulted in the reign of just one. The One is not cancelled, but appears in its negative definition, of a unit excluded from the rest, but excluded in the way that no possible concept of what is beyond it, is available at all. It is a privation of nothing in particular, and an incomplete but fully presented presence. This solitary unity of the “globe” corresponds to the current condition of an individual who, because of the dissolution of large collectives and firm identities, is more individual than before: our societies are increasingly atomized, and the emerging supra-state international entities (such as the EU) fail so far to provide for a sense of belonging and solidarity. This is not to say that a person became self-sufficient: not at all, since the Modern world requires constant attention to changes, it fills free time with information. Rather, s/he exists in the state of a suspended atom with open and changing valences. David Riesman, in the middle of the century, rightly called this society a “lonely crowd.”38 Today, with the presence of TV and the Internet, the media that unite solitaries as such, his analysis is even more adequate. Not even “singular” is a good word here, because singularity usually implies a positive factuality. Rather, we may speak of the “solitary” being, one in the absence



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of the other, although we have to extrapolate this concept from the purely anthropological to the ontological meaning. The fact that we use it anthropologically is not arbitrary: human experience of the One is solitude, and we have to retranslate it back into ontology, because the previous interpretation had been too pacifying. Heidegger was the first to suggest this operation when he included solitude into the “fundamental concepts of metaphysics.”39 But he did not elaborate on solitude in this work: it is mentioned only in passing, and usually along with the two other fundamental concepts (world and finitude). Some sporadic comments on solitude from other books help us better understand what he meant (I will deal with them later). Heidegger, like most of the social critics of his time, repeatedly spoke of nihilism as the main historical diagnosis. Let us note the direct relation of alternative between nihilism and solitude, zero and one, as metaphysical-historical concepts. Nihilism is clearer, and is negative both logic-wise and value-wise. Heidegger preferred it, following Nietzsche, Jünger, and some Nazi ideologists of the time. However, the term “nihilism” (meaning that there is void in the place of God, etc.) is inadequate to our condition, even in the sense that Heidegger himself analyzed it. Today, in spite of revolutions and rationalizations, the big concepts of metaphysics and theology are alive and well, they just lost their grand status of first principles and turned into the tools and media of bringing the world together. Empirically, religion is back on the rise, great powers play their chess games—in spite of the fact that they have to appeal to instrumental rationality and/or to national identity instead of the real universals. Moreover, it is hard to accuse of emptiness and nothingness a social form that requires of citizens the increasingly hectic forms of work and offers them countless goals of private enjoyment. Finally, the gloomy promise of dark catastrophe and collapse that was implicit in the concept of nothingness seems suspended, because catastrophes happen each year and will probably continue doing so in the near future. One, not zero; solitude, not nothingness, appears to be the word of the day. It may sound strange that, at the time when the power of the dogmatic unity as unique totality is diminishing, it is solitude and multiplicity that describe our experience. But, we have a proof of this, as the same authors who try to undermine the dominance of the One as a principle, at the same time valorize solitude as anthropological experience. Nietzsche, who is often presented, in the school of Deleuze, as a philosopher of “becoming, multiplicity, and chance”40 who presents, for instance, in his late aphorisms, the body as an order of many souls that are united only by force, the same Nietzsche repeatedly writes about the highest value of solitude. For example, Nietzsche himself makes a similar gesture when, in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” he finishes his fierce critique of the state as the “coldest of all cold monsters,” with a call to “Zweisamkeit”—a solitude for two: “Many seats are still empty for the lonesome and twosome, fanned by the fragrance of silent seas.”41 Or, in a fragment of 1880, Nietzsche writes: “1000 deep solitudes build up the city of Venice—hence its magic. An image for humans of the future.” 42 Here the motive of solitude is brought together with a preference for a great number: many solitudes can coexist and perhaps even communicate. Hannah Arendt, for whom the plural essence of a human is fundamental, and who

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is also a defender of a collective, public life, also gives solitude an important place in her system. Thus, in the very last pages of the voluminous Origins of Totalitarianism, a book that describes the advent of a “mass” society composed of lonely individuals and deprived of genuine public life, Arendt unexpectedly claims that solitude, as opposed to loneliness, may be a remaining hope (even though totalitarianism threatens it, too). To prove this, she cites Cicero, Epictetus (for whom a solitary man can be “together with himself ”), and, again, Nietzsche who, in the “Songs of the Prince Vogelfrei,” describes solitude as a split unit: “Noon was, when One became Two.”43 Solitude, then, is paradoxically the very condition of a connection, and of duality. And “Life of the mind”: “Wherever there is a plurality—of living beings, of things, of ideas—there is difference (Heidegger’s Differenz), and this difference does not arise from the outside but is inherent in every entity in the form of duality, from which comes unity as unification […] Solitude is that human situation where I keep myself company.”44 The same is found in Pierre Clastres who depicts in his Paraguayan tribes, not just the prevalence of duality over unity, but equally solitude: thus, songs of the hunters of a tribe which “resists the One” carry in themselves, says Clastres, the “freedom of solitude,” because they represent a kind of egocentric speech beyond communication.45 All of these thinkers can hardly be suspected of a naïve escapist and privatizing gesture, in the face of a political disaster. They mean solitude as a social and political alternative, at the time of the crisis of the One. All of these are not properly ontological arguments; they are rather empirical or ethical comments. Nevertheless, they do refer to logic and even mathematics and, doing so, they run into an apparent contradiction. The One, banished from the sky as a unique totality (God, or transcendental subject), returns as a principle of solitude. Methodologically, it appears to me, following Hegel and Heidegger, that anthropological experience is a key to problems and transformations in ontology and logic, because, when such experience reaches enough intensity and clarity to appeal to an ontological reading, it leads us into the concrete historical substance of which ontology had originally been an interpretation and without which it could be reduced to mechanical and trivial deduction. Thus, one may speak here not just of a phenomenological, but of a logico-hermeneutic method. Following this method, I will try to systematize what we know of the experience of solitude, from writers, historians, sociologists, and psychologists (relying also, inevitably, on personal experience), in the form of irreducible and puzzling polarities.

Polarities of solitude The void or an inconvenient presence (One and the nothing) Prima facie, solitude appears as a phenomenon of separation. As such, it is intimately tied with melancholia: the construction of melancholia by Freud and his school, for example, derives it from the loss of a beloved object: all melancholia is thus fundamentally solitude.



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On this understanding, solitude is also related to jealousy. Both Proust and Benjamin (in his Moscow diary) observe the most intense suffering produced not just by the absence of a beloved person but by the fact that she currently enjoys herself. “The feeling of solitude would therefore seem to be basically a reflexive phenomenon that only strikes us when emitted back to us by people we know, and most often by people we love, whenever they enjoy themselves socially without us.”46 Somewhat more complicated is the theory of solitude expressed by Emmanuel Levinas and, more recently, by Nicholas Grimaldi in his Treatise on solitude.47 These authors suggest that solitude is an obverse side of the formation of a human being as a self-sufficient individual or subject. Identity, autonomy, and responsibility are, they say, paid by the price of being and feeling enclosed, imprisoned in one’s Ego, which provokes solipsistic anxieties of being unable to reach out towards other beings. While these authors rightly pinpoint the ambivalence of solitude, they still consider its effect as purely negative—limitation or privation. They also somewhat hastily identify solitude with an individual (on this more below). More paradoxical is an account of solitude proposed by Melanie Klein. In her essay “On the sense of loneliness”48 she writes, like Levinas and Grimaldi, that solitude is the result of the Ego’s integration rather than its destruction. But the problem with integration is not separation from the world but rather the unwanted presence. A lonely person, she says, is “alone with what seems to him a bad part of one’s ego.”49 It is thus what is here, within the “one,” not what is absent, which makes trouble. Levinas, in spite of his predominant accent on solitude as autonomy of Ego, also associates solitude with presence rather than absence: “My being doubles with a having; I am encumbered by myself.”50 Jacques Lacan synthesizes, in a way, the approaches of Freud and Klein. While he rarely addresses solitude as such, his classical analysis of Antigone in the Seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis51 presents the tragic Ego as an (abject) object rather than a subject. The problem lies not in a delimited subjectivity but in the fact that an individual who transcends his/her own borders turns into a materialized remainder of a symbolic structure. The negative subtraction of the symbolic leaves one with a positive presence of oneself as a sheer inanimate “thing.” On a more affirmative side, we can think here, again, of Arendt’s and Nietzsche’s apologies of solitude that we evoked earlier. Both value solitude because it puts a person into his/her own company, thus redoubling the “one” from inside and creating an elementary community and commonality, which is more fundamental than any community of the already established selves.

Excursus: Von Trier’s “Melancholia” To illustrate the “positive” component of solitude, I can refer to a recent movie by Lars von Trier, “Melancholia” (2011). This film is seemingly the story of a total loss of the world by the protagonist, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), an advertising specialist who at some point invents the tagline “nothing.” She lives in an alienated and hypocritical bourgeois society, with empty inefficient rituals and false feelings, which is subsequently presented

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as a physical collapse of the world hit by a vagabond planet: “Melancholia.” The film elaborates the motifs of Dürer’s “Melencholia” (1514), such as the mysterious star seen from a picturesque seacoast, paralytic immobility of the melancholic woman protagonist, the abundance of optical instruments used to observe the coming planet, and the derision of scientific calculations that predict that the planet would miss the Earth (numbers and calculations are present also in Dürer’s image of the magic square). It also implicitly quotes Freud, in saying that the planet casts its shadow upon Earth (like the lost object casts its shadow on the Ego, in Freud’s account of melancholia). Now, all of this looks like yet another comment on European nihilism and Western depression: clever but banal. But there is in the movie yet another, less obvious logic. “We are alone,” says Justine in the central scene of the movie, where she and her sister discuss the existence of life beyond Earth. She seeks and enjoys a narcissistic solitude, for instance when escaping her own wedding ceremony and taking a bath, and, later, when lying naked in front of the approaching planet and caressing herself. As mentioned, the protagonist has a sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Sisters are very close. The encounter with the sister and the whole family makes the protagonist lose the desire to marry. There are several scenes where sisters embrace and caress each other. Their mother says to Claire about Justine: “You’re bewitched by her.” The two symmetrical parts of the movie, one realistic, another fantastic, are titled by the sisters’ names: “Justine” and “Claire.” At the end, the two sisters remain alone with the son of the second one, unsuccessfully try to escape (there is no escape from Earth, the film says) and “hide” in a symbolic shelter at the moment when the apocalyptic planet (which is blue, and shown as identical to Earth viewed from space) finally hits the Earth and everything is destroyed.52 This seems to be a story not as much about the severing of one’s connection with an object (Freud’s definition of melancholia), but about overidentification with a sister, which can bring a person into a crisis because of the homosexual attraction mixed with the competition of the two for one identity (a preferred theme of Lacan and René Girard). The melancholia of Justine is caused not by a loss of the world (which she rather desires) but by a suffocating presence of others with their multiple demands, and by the traumatic mixture of narcissism and incestuous feelings toward the sister in whom she sees her own reflection. In the final scene, the two sisters hold each other’s hands, and at this moment the world collapses, as though in a short circuit. This story is mirrored by the story of an apocalyptic encounter of the lonely Earth with its twin, which increasingly casts its shadow upon it. In the scenes where the characters watch the planet approaching through a self-made device where the image constantly exceeds its frame, an additional reference is made to the proximity of objects shown on the huge cinema screen, of art’s ability of rendering close, and even increasingly closer, the distant, and of the traumatic character of this proximity. Which is even more traumatic when art aspires to be a mirror of reality and to show to the public its own image. Telescopes and mirrors as instruments of melancholia in art. Thus, von Trier presents and explains melancholia (or depression) as solitude. And this solitude appears as a narcissistic reorientation of one’s libido towards oneself (with a correlative “reduction” of the rest of the world) which is obstructed by the presence



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of one’s own subjectivity in the adored narcissistic image, and by the existence of a double or twin who is the object of identification and love, at the same time. The one turns out to be another one, an alter ego, a discovery that reduces both to zero. 1 1 1 5 0. But at the same time, the very strange fact that a planet is called “Melancholia,” as though by homonymy, gives the loose negativity of depression an object, or discovers its hidden object—the ego and the alter ego. The very naming of the nothing makes it into more than a nothing; the name of the zero is one. The specular structure of the movie, and of the relationship of the two sisters, is a meta-commentary on the aesthetic form of the movie itself. Art is speculum mundi, and as such, like Lacan’s famous mirror image of a child, it is a petrified image of death, and may itself be deadly. Moreover, being a “mere” image, but at the same time a double, it can switch places with the “real” model and return its gaze (thus, in Plato, everyday appearances turn out to be copies of fantastic models; thus in Lacan, the site of the Real is fantasy). Endless assurances in von Trier’s movie, by the husband of Claire, that the planet will “fly by”, are an allegory of a regular attitude to art as harmless entertainment. But the planet does exceed the frame and collide with the spectator: the giant planet fills the screen making one feel its (the screen’s) size, the wave of fire seems to run out of the screen onto the spectator. “Objects seen in the mirror are closer than they appear.” As in Greek tragedy, the spectacle leads the spectator out of his/her alibi, exposes him/her in the very position of the ego that had seemed to be immaterial. And, as in Greek tragedy, this leads to a paradoxical sense of joy felt in destruction and suffering: art liberates one from one’s ego, and converts negativity into being simply by copying and naming it. But this is also why art is dangerous: inherently sacrificial and sadistic. In most of von Trier’s movies, art kills, sacrifices women, but in “Melancholia” it does so in the most complete and joyful way, so that no moral denunciation of art is any longer possible.53 In Hegel’s Introductory Lectures to Aesthetics, he compares art to a boy throwing stones into water.54 Von Trier would add that sometimes this stone unexpectedly returns like a boomerang, and smashes you. One is not a thing but an event, some of my co-authors in this book would say. But this event is still a collapse. One can say that, in it, there collapse all three main senses of the word “one”: solitude of an individual; experience of the totality of the world, in this solitude (located at the front edge of it); and a negative, Heraclitean energy of dissolution which unites all beings. Von Trier’s logic here is that of a classical tragedy, and in fact the end, with a triumphant, comic (because expected) destruction of the world achieves a catharsis (“Many have tried, but in vain, to express the most joyful; Here at last, in great sadness, wholly I find it expressed”55). Only the irresistible, devastating violence of spectacle, thinks von Trier, opens the subject up to the world and makes him/her fit for a community.

Closure and openness A solitary person does, as we have seen, at times appear as a self-enclosed monad. S/he abstains from enjoying worldly goods. But experience presents us with an opposite

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phenomenon. Solitude is a condition when one is unusually open, vulnerable to every minuscule fact. The writings of nineteenth century Romantics, such as Thoreau, abound in the pictures of solitary people immersed in nature. But natural beauties are not the only objects attacking a solitary consciousness. Pascal, who spends much of his Pensées discussing the solitude of a human being, particularly of a monarch, abandoned by God, in an immense empty universe (even if rarely calling it by name), says: The mind of this sovereign judge of the world is not so independent that it is not liable to be disturbed by the first din about it. The noise of a cannon is not necessary to hinder its thoughts; it needs only the creaking of a weathercock or pulley. Do not wonder if at present it does not reason well; a fly is buzzing in its ears; that is enough to render it incapable of good judgment. If you wish it to be able to reach the truth, chase away that animal which holds its reason in check and disturbs that powerful intellect which rules towns and kingdoms. Here is a comical god! O ridicolosissimo eroe!

And the next aphorism: The power of flies; they win battles, hinder our soul from acting, eat our body.56

The nothingness of men is matched here only by the nothingness of flies that obsess them. A classical eighteenth century account of solitude, that by Johann Georg Zimmermann, accentuates its capacity to intensify feelings. “Spirit and heart are magnified, inflamed and strengthened by solitude.”57 Nietzsche, in the nineteenth century, agrees: One shouldn’t go to solitary places with one’s mother, sister, daughter and other relatives: the sensations, inflamed by solitude, are so powerful that they can for a while prevail even over the wisest one.58

Solitude opens us not just to sensations but to the substance of things. Heidegger, who gave solitude the status of a “fundamental concept of metaphysics” but failed to give a systematic account of it, nevertheless writes in this book: This individuation (Vereinzelung) is rather that solitariness in which each human being first enters into a nearness to what is essential in things, a nearness to world.59

As we saw in the beginning of the chapter, this thought is later repeated, in a powerful way, by Joseph Brodsky, in his poem “Lullaby to Cape Cod”: “Solitude teaches the essence of things because their essence is also solitude.” Later, Brodsky writes an autobiographical essay entitled “Less than one.”60 The idea of the piece is that he has never been able to form a stable identity and that in his memory the characters of the past, and himself, become indistinguishable. The “less



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than one” is not a fraction, but a paradox—to be less than an indivisible minimum, but not to be nothing. The “less than one” is solitude, weakness, and helplessness without borders, which goes down into the infinitely small. Mathematically you can represent this as a segment of a straight line, with its ends carved out. As Brodsky writes in the poem from which I quoted above: I am writing from an Empire whose ends descend under the water. Having tasted two oceans and two continents, I feel the same that the globe feels. That is, nec plus ultra. Beyond – there is a row of stars. And they burn with shine.61

Empire, for Brodsky, is a political condition of unity and solitude (by empires, he means the USSR and the US). This is why he depicts both great powers where he had lived as “empires” which are self-enclosed and substantially identical (like Leibniz’s monads, one could add). This is why both directly push an alienated human being into empty space, but sensibilize it towards the world. As a negative (value-wise) counterpart of this experience, and the one that returns us back to the first “polarity,” one must mention various psychopathologies which are traditionally associated with solitude. An overly attentive solitary person may become a victim of a particularly intense sensation and become obsessed with it. A solitary subject is fascinated by a solitary object: “a unique escapes towards the unique” as Plotinus once wrote, in an ontological sense.62 A philosophical universalization of this experience belongs to Max Stirner who attributes to his solitary “Unique” a tendency to be obsessed with “specters” such as God, State, or Ego.63 The logic of this experience forces us to rethink the One not as a closed totality or a singularity but as a product of an almost complete destruction of hypostasized symbolized world, where the only remaining object is a pure border through which one registers beings.

Solitude as collectivity (One and the many) It seems obvious that solitude is a condition of an individual. In a way, it even produces individuals itself. The paradox, however, is that the individual can be not alone in his/ her solitude: it may be shared. This is possible, on the condition that the only thing that the subjects in question share is … their solitude. As we have seen above, solitude does not just close, it also opens subjects to the world, through the privation that an arbitrary limit of Ego produces. As a phenomenon of unity, solitude precedes a numerically unique individual. Phenomenologically, it is rather a condition that reframes the whole world, not just the individual in question. Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst of the mid-twentieth century, suggested that a child must learn to be lonely (to sustain physical loneliness) only if for a transitional period his parents let him/her feel alone in their presence.64 This pedagogic

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strategy may teach us something about solitude writ large: it may exist in the presence of the other and implies, except for separation, a will to let another person retreat into himself. I have already quoted an aphorism of Nietzsche that projects a utopian society on the basis of a simile with the island structure of Venice. Martin Heidegger evokes this message in a letter to Jaspers, as a proof that a communication between solitary thinkers is somehow possible.65 Earlier, in Being and Time, Heidegger writes: Even Dasein’s Being-alone is Being-with in the world. The Other can be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its very possibility is the proof of this […] Being missing and “Being away” [Das Fehlen und “Fortsein”] are modes of Dasein-with, and are possible only because Dasein as Being-with lets the Dasein of Others be encountered in its world.66

Here he understands solitude as a peculiar case of sociability, emphasizing its privative character: we are solitary when we relate to the missing others via this very lack. But later he speaks even more radically: The “most solitary solitude” lies before and beyond any distinction of the “I” from the “you”, and of the I and the you from the “we”, of the individual from the community. In this most solitary solitude there is nothing of singularization and separation; it is that singularization (Vereinzelung) that we must conceive as appropriation, where man comes into his own in his self. The self, authenticity is not the “I”, it is that Da-sein in which the relation of the I to the you and of the I to the we and of the we to the you is founded, and from which these relations first and alone may be mastered and must be mastered if they are to become a force.67

Solitude thus appears as a fundamental Stimmung that precedes and grounds both the individual Ego and its social relations. In the essay “On the Way to Language,” Heidegger notes that the German word for solitude, Einsamkeit, used to mean unity as totality, unio: the true meaning of it, one could add, is thus unity tout court, understood as a transcendental condition.68 The reinterpretation of it in the language as solitude has to do with the objective historical shift towards the metaphysics of subjectivity (and with Protestant mystical individualism). But still, history shows that its meaning does not have to do with an atomic individual, but rather with a positive or negative linkage. Solitude appears, then, for Heidegger, as a Stimmung that conveys an intuition of Mitsein, and as a unitary root of the principle of unity that explains the internal split (unity/unicity) of the one itself. As I mentioned above, Heidegger also wrote a book where solitude is mentioned thematically, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. The few words that are dedicated to solitude there make us think that it constitutes the thrownness of Dasein into the midst, or proximity, of things, is responsible for the opening up of a thing that the Dasein is, to all others, but this time in a negative connection with them.



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As I mentioned above, Nietzsche, in “Thus spoke Zarathustra,” opposes to the cold totality of the Hobbesian state “Zweisamkeit,” a solitude of two. The figure of “solitude à deux” is by now a romantic cliché and is normally understood in the sense that two lovers form together a unitary and lonely unit. But there is also a strange way in which solitude and collectivity are tied in a dialectical, paradoxical fashion. This logic is traced, for instance, in the literary work of the great Russian-Soviet prose writer of the 1920s and 1930s, Andrey Platonov. Platonov’s large works of the post-revolutionary period are usually stories of utopian collectives or communes which are extremely poor and try to realize “communism” here and now, not waiting until it comes in a distant future. These communes try to build fantastic machines in order to produce food and water. They usually end up in fratricidal violence or deadly hunger. Platonov’s works are classics not just because of this utopian content but because of a surrealist and at the same time bureaucratic language, recalling somewhat Kafka or Queneau (as distant analoga in the West). One dominant feature of Platonov’s texts is his constant references to melancholia (toska) and solitude (odinochestvo).69 But in Platonov, moods of melancholia and solitude are reflecting not the separation but a communal sharing of his characters. The best reflection of this is perhaps Platonov’s note from a diary: The mystery of prostitution: union of bodies implies a unity of souls, but in the prostitution the unity of souls is so absent, and it is so apparent and terrible, that there is no love, that from surprise, from the fall, from fear—“unity of souls” starts to emerge. (1931)70

Figure and background The one understood as principle is inevitably central, it attracts all attention (sometimes, like in Levinas, taking it away from the rest of the world). Moreover, there is, in solitude, the potential of a neurotic or a psychotic obsession. The capacity of solitude of closing up on things, of bringing one in their “proximity” (which was mentioned above on page 36) can bring forward, as a possible dysfunction, the overwhelming of a subject by an object, a fetishistic obsession.71 Pascal, in the quoted fragment on the power of the flies, makes this very transition from attention to obsession: but, notably, this is an obsession by the insignificant. A neurosis of this sort always consists in a conscious or unconscious oscillation between the subjectively excessive and objectively null significance of a thing in question (Pascal’s flies are here an allegory of a human being, who is insignificant but appears as super-important). On the other hand, such an object represses the subject itself, reduces it to nothing, distributing thus the moments of the concept of one into the absolute one (the object) and the absolute zero (the subject). Feuerbach and Stirner, in the 1840s, both showed that religion had this obsessive structure: Feuerbach explained monotheism by the solitude of the human being and the desire to find a partner, but pointed out that the monotheistic God, this “idée fixe” as he calls him,72 before Freud, is solitary itself.73

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Stirner, on his part, explained religion and most of human culture (state, money …) as the “possession” of humans by various “specters” (Carl Schmitt later noted the role of solitude in Stirner’s construction, in his Wisdom of a Prison Cell74). The tenacious character of these syndromes of solitude makes it hard to pass from them back to the unstable oscillation between one and zero that characterizes solitude. Nevertheless, solitude is capable of an opposite, non-fetishistic attitude to things: it may obsess, but it may unfocus and suspend, too. Brodsky, in the poem “Lullaby to Cape Cod”, which we have been commenting on as a great text on solitude, observes, reflecting on the meditative style of his own poem: “and there is no one who can focus the gaze.”75 Solitude as a mood may provide the subject with a periphery, non-thematic vision directed at the ground, not the figure.76 This follows from experience: the light of the public sphere underlines, selects objects, while in solitude, objects stay in a state of quiet proximity. Heidegger would say that the first ones are vorhanden, and the second ones, zuhanden. J.-P. Sartre was an author invariably attentive to the problem of figure and background. In his famous analysis of the look of the Other in Being and Nothingness, Sartre notes that this look (gaze) narrows and sharpens our perception, objectifies us and our world, alienates our possibilities and turns them into facts. Solitude, then, is mainly the state of non-thetic perception that the intrusion of the Other destroys.77 Here, Sartre thinks of solitude objectively as of an individual condition. But, dialectically, the introduction of a third one into this play changes the picture— it un-focuses attention back, by making it oscillate from one to another source. “I can in fact apprehend the Third not directly but upon the Other, who becomes the Other looked at. Thus the third transcendence transcends the transcendence which transcends me and thereby contributes to disarming it.”78 This could be a paradigm of a communist action: acting together, but being each individually liberated in a large group which is not a “group of fusion.” Alibi (emerging in a large anonymous crowd) and resoluteness (suspension of all irrelevant choices and identities), at the same time, are two faces of such freedom. Here, I return to Platonov. Olga Meerson traced in his work a trope that she called “non-estrangement.”79 She refers to the famous “estrangement,” a literary technique that Victor Shklovsky, Platonov’s contemporary and interlocutor, named and described. “Non-estrangement,” in contrast to estrangement, consists in a casual mention and description of new surprising events (thus, in Platonov’s Foundation Pit, there appears a bear who works as a blacksmith: this fact is mentioned in just one phrase, as though it has been already introduced; no one is surprised about it, and there is no emphasis on its unusualness). The use of this trope is, I think, tightly linked to Platonov’s utopia of shared solitude. Communism, at least in the post-revolutionary imagination of Platonov, is a community of people who are not shocked by one another but do not ignore each other either. Empirically speaking, Soviet society was different from the Western one in this sense (and this difference still survives in postSoviet societies): there has been no developed culture of public politeness, so that if one pushes another person on the street, this is not accompanied by any excuses or



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comments on either side. People tend to relate to each other as to things (“creatures,” Benjamin would say) rather than persons, thus ignoring Kant’s famous imperative. There is no visible respect for the Other in the Lévinasean sense. But this is not mere savagery: in fact, this is the result of an active historical movement that could be called “communist” (in spite of the fact that it had never reached its desired end state). It is a society that is united, not by a shared respect (Achtung in German is both respect and attention), but by taking the presence of other humans as a normal, everyday occurrence. The danger of this society is of course mass butchery, in which human life has no value. But Western society has its own danger of butchery (as manifested in the Nazi genocides), where some select people (those precisely who teach about respect of the Other) are taken as so “other” as not to count among humans at all. The Stalinist terror, on the contrary, was irrationally indiscriminate, and the victims were not de-personified: on the contrary, they had to confess their “crimes” and to be murdered qua subjects of discourse. Torturing someone and making him/her into a slave did not contradict the recognition of this person as a human subject. The suspension of things and humans into the background may be a sign of an apocalyptic and/or utopian expectation, a re-orientation at an absent center (Sartre, in his analysis of searching for Pierre in a café, seems to make this point). Solitude is a negative connection, which may require an ongoing destruction/disappearance of the One as figure. But it may as well be fed by the unstable “triangulation” described by Sartre: the focus on the Other is shattered and decentered by a yet Other.

Conclusion From the phenomenological analysis above, which was conducted with the help of some key late Modern cultural texts, it follows that solitude (like melancholia) is not a unitary mood, and thus its intentionality is not one, but polar, consisting in a disjunction. However, in this disjunction, one term is, in my analysis, privileged over another. Solitude as a condition of partial presence, of openness, of collectivity and of non-thematic perception is one of the “authentic” or “pure” moods that can attune a human being to a rhythmic and reasoned coordination with other things and with its own parts. However, it is not theoretically separable from its “Others”: the solitudes of nihilism, of closure, of atomic individuality and of obsession, are a constant danger for a solitary person. This phenomenologically demonstrable duality can be rationally understood through the logical duality of one and zero. The one as a quantitative expression of being is analogous to zero, or void, as a quantitative expression of nothingness. Within the numerical universe, both one and zero play the roles of necessary empty operators: one plays the same role in multiplication that zero plays in addition. As for the philosophical concept of one, Hegel showed that it does not just use the void as its necessary other, but is itself identical with the void from a certain point of view, and is therefore a form of reflexive movement, a border delimiting a thing from itself.

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Solitude, as a mood, is closer to this border of oneself than to the one or zero as posited operators. It is the oscillation between one and zero, a mode of existence “at the edge of the void” which Badiou attributes to his “evental sites.” If the void is a concept of absolute negativity, of the total reduction of the world, the concept of one soberly points at the fact that there is always something remaining from this reduction: at least the very act of reduction. And it is this failure of destruction that can further serve as a measure and sign of being. Moreover, the unaccomplished negativity of solitude thus understood constitutes a minimal partial presence that allows next to conceive of an inclusive unity as a self-exceeding, sublime totality—precisely because a totality of all units, or sets, is as inconceivable as the void. It is thus that the force of destruction and negativity active in Modern society is the only potential of its genuine coming together in freedom and solidarity. Through Facebook and/or through a revolt.

Bibliography Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (CreateSpace, 2009). Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1975), 476–7. —The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958). —The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1978). Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924, [rev. edn 1958]). Cathérine Audibert, L’incapacité d’être seul (Paris: Payot, 2008). Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (New York: Continuum, 2005). —The Clamor of Being, trans. L. Burchill (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1999). Walter Benjamin, “Moscow Diary”, October, Vol. 35 (Winter, 1985). Etienne de La Boétie, “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude,” trans. Harry Curz, in The Politics of Obedience (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997), 42–86. Joseph Brodsky, Lullaby of Cape Cod, in A Part of Speech ( New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980). —Less Than One (London: Penguin, 1987). Pierre Clastres, Society against the State, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1989). Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Continuum, 1983). Jonathan Flatley, Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2008). Gottlob Frege, Foundation of Arithmetic (London: Harper Torchbook, 1960). Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004). Nicolas Grimaldi, Traité des Solitudes (Paris: PUF, 2003). G. W. F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures in Aesthetics (London: Penguin, 1994). —Science of Logic, trans. G. Giovanni (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (London: Harper and Row, 1962). —Nietzsche, vol. 2, The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. D. F. Krell (London: Harper and Row, 1984).



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—The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, trans. Gary E. Aylesworth (Amhurst: Humanity Books, 2003). Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. P. Guyer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971). Melanie Klein, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works (New York: Delacorte, 1975). Jacques Lacan, Seminar 7. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1992). Gottfried Leibniz, Discours de métaphysique et Correspondance avec Arnaud (Paris: Vrin, 1988). Émmanuel Lévinas, Time and the Other, trans. Richard Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 1987). Artemy Magun, La révolution négative (Paris: Harmattan, 2009). Jean-François Marquet, Singularité et événement (Paris: Jérome Millon, 1995). Olga Meerson, Svobodnaya Vesch. Poetika neostranenia u Andreya Platonova (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 2001). Jacques-Alain Miller, “Suture”, trans. Jacqueline Rose, Screen (1978). Available online at http://www.lacan.com/symptom8_articles/miller8.html (accessed 11 December 2011). Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans, A. S. del Caro (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). —Kritische Gesamtausgabe (KGW) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967). Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909). Christophe Perrin, “Levinas et l’autre solitude,” in Philosophie (Summer 2009), 102: 45–62. Erik Peterson, “Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem,” in: Theologische Traktate (1994), 23–81 Plato, Symposium, trans. B. Jowett, Project Gutenberg, 2008. Available online at http:// www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm (accessed 17 May 2012). Andrey Platonov, Zapisnye knizhki (Moscow: IMLI RAn, 2006). David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1993). Carl Schmitt, Théologie politique, trans. J.-L. Schlegel (Paris: Gallimard, 1988). —Ex Captivitate Salus (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2002). Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, trans. D. Leopold (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Amy Taubin, “A Naught so Sweet”, Art Forum, October 2011. Horace Williams, “The One and the Many,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 32, no. 2, March 1923: 208–11. Donald Winnicott, “The Capacity to be Alone,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, no. 39, 1958: 416–20.

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Leonid Zhmud, Pythagoras and early Pythagoreans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Johann Georges Zimmermann, La Solitude, trans. A. J. L. Jourdan (Paris: J. B. Baillere, Libraire, 1825).

Notes 1 Joseph Brodsky, Lullaby of Cape Cod, in A Part of Speech (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980), 107–18, cit. 109. 2 Aristotle, Metaphysics 985b25-986b10. But see Leonid Zhmud contesting the accuracy of Aristotle’s attribution of this idea to the Pythagoreans: Pythagoras and early Pythagoreans (Oxford University Press, 2012). 3 On this key problem of the early Greek thought, see Jean-François Marquet, Singularité et événement (Jérome Millon, 1995), 11–24. The one appears in between the unlimited even numbers and the limit of the odd. As Marquet writes, very precisely and beautifully, about the meaning of the “One” in the Pythagoreans and their distant follower Heraclitus: “It is because he has a reference to the unity of the common (xynon) that the human, alone among living beings, enjoys this community with himself which defines a conscious being (xyniemi, Alkmeon)—but the impossibility to join origin and end of his life condemns him to death. But, as a point of departure of the flux and as a terminal point of return (1=10 …), the One is not a pure simplicity but to praton harmosthen (Philolaos), a knot of the same”, 12. 4 Parmenides, Fragment 8 DK, lines 1; 5–6. G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge University Press, 1971), 273. 5 Heraclites, Fragment 41 (Diels and Kranz, further cited as DK), in ibid., 204. 6 Heraclites, Fragment 50 (DK), in ibid., 188. 7 DK 33; Plato, Symposium, 187 d. Plato, Symposium, trans. B. Jowett, Project Gutenberg, 2008. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm (accessed 6 June 2012). 8 DK 108. Absent in Kirk and Raven. 9 Aristotle, Metaphysics I. In Aristotle’s Metaphysics, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford University Press, 1924, [rev. 1958]), 1054a15. 10 Ibid., 1052a15. 11 Ibid., 1076а5. 12 Erik Peterson, citing Nazianzin contra Eusebius. Cf. Carl Schmitt, Théologie politique II, trans. J.-L. Schlegel (Gallimard, 1988), 173. 13 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 11, Section 2 (CreateSpace, 2009). 14 Ibid., Section 3. 15 G. Leibniz, Correspondance avec Arnaud, 30 April 1687, in Discours de métaphysique et Correspondance avec Arnaud (Vrin, 1988), 165. 16 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. P. Guyer (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 245–54 (B129–147). 17 G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. G. Giovanni (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 200. 18 Ibid., 132.



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19 Ibid., 133. 20 Ibid., 148. 21 Horace Williams, The One and the Many, The Philosophical Review, 32(2), March 1923, 208–11. 22 Artemy Magun, La révolution négative (Harmattan, 2009). 23 Williams, 210. 24 Williams, 211. 25 Gottlob Frege, Foundation of Arithmetic (Harper Torchbook, 1960), par. 75, 88. 26 Jacques-Alain Miller, “Suture.” Trans. Jacqueline Rose. Screen 18, Winter 1978. Available online at http://www.lacan.com/symptom8_articles/miller8.html (accessed December 11 2011). 27 All sets are “founded” on something, that is, there is an element that belongs to them but that does not have common elements with them. Such element is “at the edge of the void,” and all sets have at least the void that founds them. In this sense, the nothing, like in Heidegger, is the ground of all things, and any relation of grounding is construed on the model of the relationship to the nothing. This is the “axiom of foundation.” And, as Badiou says, it “delimits being by the prohibition of the event.” Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (Continuum, 2005), 190. Such is his implicit critique of Heidegger, for whom the nothing is still, in a way, a ground. 28 Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (Stanford University Press, 2000). 29 Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy (Indiana University Press, 1987). Original title: Le principe d’anarchie (Seuil, 1982). 30 Etienne de La Boétie, “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.” Trans. Harry Curz, in The Politics of Obedience (Black Rose Books, 1997), 42–86. 31 See a similar usage of the “one” in the twentieth century: in 1956 in the USSR, after Khruschev’s partial denunciation of Stalin, there was a campaign of explaining to the public the new version of recent history. One of the notes received by a lecturer on this issue was preserved in the archives; it reads: “Why does the bourgeoisie have two and more parties which serve it so far as they can, while the working class of the Soviet Union has just one?” Available online at http://urokiistorii.ru/history/soc/1367 (accessed January 21 2012). Thanks to Kevin Platt for drawing attention to this note. 32 Erik Peterson, “Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem,” in Theologische Traktate (Würzburg, 1994), 23–81. 33 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 7. 34 Pierre Clastres, Society against the State, trans. R. Hurley (Zone Books, 1989), 172. 35 Ibid., 173. 36 Ibid., 126. 37 Badiou, The Clamor of Being. Trans. L. Burchill (The University of Minnesota Press, 1999). But see in this volume the polemic of Keti Chukhrov against this argument of Badiou (51–62), which makes the two authors look much more alike than is usually accepted. 38 David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (Yale University Press, 1950). 39 Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (Indiana University Press, 2001). 40 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (Continuum, 1983), 190.

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41 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans, A. S. del Caro (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 36. 42 Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (KGW) vol. V-I, 368. Aph. 4157, early 1880 (De Gruyter, 1967ff.). 43 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1975), 476–7. 44 Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1978), 184–5. 45 Clastres, 107. 46 Walter Benjamin, Moscow Diary, vol. 35 (Winter, 1985), 9–135. 47 Nicolas Grimaldi, Traité des Solitudes (PUF, 2003). See for example 12, where both the joy and the pain of solitude are derived from the separation from others, and both are presented as purely “negative.” 48 Melanie Klein, On the sense of loneliness, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works. (Delacorte, 1975), 300–13. 49 Ibid., 309. 50 Émmanuel Lévinas, Time and the Other, trans. Richard Cohen (Duquesne University, 1987), 56. On Lévinas’s theory of solitude, and its transformation, see a fine article: Christophe Perrin, “Levinas et l’autre solitude,” in Philosophie. Summer 2009, 45–62. 51 Jacques Lacan, Seminar 7. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (W. W. Norton and company, 1992), 243–87. 52 The love metaphor between planets is briefly but correctly noted by one reviewer: Amy Taubin, “A Naught so Sweet,” Art Forum, October 2011, available online at http:// www.artforum.com/inprint/id=29028 (accessed 21 January 2012). “The movie begins with a vision of cosmic amour fou. Two planets kiss, and all life is consumed in the fire of their embrace. This prologue, its images revisited in the movie’s apocalyptic finale, is couched as a prophetic dream and scored to the ‘Liebestod’ section of the overture to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.” 53 See ibid.: “The anxiety of waiting for the end, and the pity one feels for the characters facing the extinction of all life, creates a classical catharsis. One has to marvel when this inexorably grim vision turns release into pure joy.” 54 G. W. F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures in Aesthetics (Penguin, 1994), 36. 55 Friedrich Hölderlin, “Sophocles” (1801), trans. M. Hamburger. 56 Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, trans. W. F. Trotter (P. F. Collier & Son, 1909), # 366–7; 122. 57 Johann Georges Zimmermann, Einsamkeit, tr. fr. La Solitude. Trans. A. J. L. Jourdan (J. B. Baillere, Libraire, 1825), 57. 58 F. Nietzsche, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. VIII–3, 361, #12671. 59 M. Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 6. 60 Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One (Penguin, 1987). 61 Joseph Brodsky, Lullaby of Cape Cod, 112. 62 Plotinus’s six Enneads are available online, in the translation of Stephen McKenna, at http://oaks.nvg.org/ennl.html#9 (accessed January 21 2012). I am quoting the sixth Ennead, Treatise # 9, the very last line (in the order of treatises as established by Proclus, this is the very last line of Plotinus’s work/corpus): “This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the escape of solitary to solitary.” (phyge tou monou pros to monon). McKenna translates: “passing of solitary to solitary,” but this departs from the literal meaning.



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63 Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, trans. D. Leopold (Cambridge University Press, 1995). 64 Donald Winnicott, The Capacity to be Alone, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39, 1958, 416–20. 65 The Heidegger–Jaspers Correspondence, trans. Gary E. Aylesworth (Humanity Books, 2003), 171. 66 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Harper and Row, 1962), 156. 67 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 2, The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. D. F. Krell (Harper and Row, 1984), 24–5; Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (Neske, 1961), 244. 68 M. Heidegger, Basic Writings (Harperperennial, 2008), 423. 69 There are 69 mentions of this word and its derivatives in Tchevengur, 30 mentions in Happy Moscow, though only 6 in the Foundation Pit. 70 Andrey Platonov, Zapisnye knizhki (IMLI Ran, 2006), 166. See also Jonathan Flatley, Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (Harvard University Press, 2008), a book dedicated in part to Platonov. Flatley affirms that melancholia (toska) is for Platonov a device allowing characters to form a community (including a homosexual one). 71 Cathérine Audibert, who gives a psychoanalytic theory of solitude and develops the aforementioned theory of D. Winnicott, interprets solitude, paradoxically, as an “incapacity of being alone” (Cathérine Audibert, L’incapacité d’être seul (Payot, 2008)). Thus, what we usually call solitude is in fact its opposite: an experience of its impossibility. (Think here of Frege and his thesis that the one is a number of an impossible, contradictory concept, a thing not equal with itself.)   “Behind the absence, there is solitude,” says Audibert (54), thus correcting Freud in the direction of Klein and Winnicott. She evokes the infantile symbiosis with mother and defends the “adult” capacity of overcoming it, but in fact is not this adult solitude a fiction that conceals the essential impossibility of being one, and the problematic character of the Two? Remaining physically alone, we can neither be unitary nor be a part of something. Anyway, one can only agree with Audibert when she concludes that an antidote to the traumatic solitude is learning how to be solitary. This implies, one could add, that being truly solitary is only possible with others, as a mutual and reciprocal relation of leaving alone.   Audibert further argues from experience that the (un-)solitary person develops addictions (what we here call “obsessions”), in order to compensate for the impossible solitude that he experiences as a threat of annihilation. One characteristic addiction is hypochondria (193–200): a hypochondriacal symptom is what is truly one; it binds the individual to being while expressing his/her solitude in a displaced form. Philosophers would add that hypochondria is particularly important here because it is a neurosis of reflexion. The transcendental Ego itself is decentered and “captured” into this or that bodily organ. Reflexion, which by definition identifies only through reduplication, suffers quite logically from “the impossibility of being one.” 72 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (Barnes and Noble, 2004), XXIX. 73 Ibid., 69. 74 Carl Schmitt, “Weisheit der Zelle,” in Ex Captivitate Salus (Duncker und Humblot, 2002), 79–92; on Stirner see 80–3.

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75 Lullaby of Cape Cod, VII, 114. 76 On the One as essentially ground (background), an “element,” see Chapter 11 by Susanna Lindberg in the present volume. Solitude is, in a way, an existential and noetic correlate of the “elemental” taken in this sense. 77 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes (Washington Square Press, 1993), 321–3. 78 Ibid., 416. 79 Olga Meerson, Svobodnaya Vesch. Poetika neostranenia u Andreya Platonova (Nauka, 2001).

Part II

Event of the One

4

Genesis of the Event in Deleuze From the Multiple to the General Keti Chukhrov

We know the works of Deleuze as an example of the harshest criticism of Universality, as the rejection of Platonic idealism and of Hegelian dialectics in favor of the centrifugal politics of multiplicities, repetitions, seriation, and temporal procedures. This anti-universalist stance was characteristic for the continental philosophy of the 1960s–80s (in the works of Derrida, Deleuze, Lacoue-Labarthe, Lyotard, Foucault) and was motivated by identifying universalism with stereotypes of which philosophy intended to rid itself—metaphysics, the history of Westernization, the statist rhetoric of sovereignty, neocolonialism, and globalization. The notion of the Universal was censored as the predestination of an ideal, as a concept representing power, and as the ignoring of the realms of experience, life, activity, etc. Today, along with further criticism of Universality in post-operaist theory as well as in post-colonial and de-colonial studies, there appear more and more attempts to reconsider the notion of the Universal via the dimension of the “general,” or “common” to all (Paolo Virno1), of the commonwealth (Negri, Hardt), of the generic (Badiou)2 that would question the political and social hybridization taking place in the frame of globalization policy. But, even after the general and the universal have been emptied of their imperialistic, authoritarian, and colonial connotations, the question still remains of how to understand the mode of what is common to all. Should we interpret it as the regime of communication, distribution, circulation, connection, sharing between groups, places, individuals? Or as something that is common to all which can be attained through the event of becoming open towards the general, i.e. generality as some quality which cannot appear without the act of conversion of consciousness, without some kind of metanoia?3 But let us return to Deleuze. As has already been said, he declines the dimension of the Universal and brings forth various concepts, describing multiplicities which have to cancel the necessity of referring to the universal: these are the concepts of rhizome, molecular semiotics, series, becoming. On the other hand, he invents other types of concepts—such as repetition, Event, sense, counter-actualization, double causality—which in some sense contradict the previously enumerated notions,

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marking contingent multiplicities. This contradiction was described in detail in Badiou’s Clamor of Being, where he makes a conclusion that Deleuze, despite his emphasis on the multiple, was nevertheless a philosopher of the One, of ontology and being—the dimension which, on the one hand, accepts the clamor and chaosmos of multiplicities, but, on the other hand, incorporates multiplicities into the monosemantic univocity of being. The question is whether this alternative—Deleuze as either the thinker of pure contingency and aleatoric microdynamics (in the vein of Lyotard), or the metaphysical thinker of the One as Badiou presents him—is justified. The specific discovery of Deleuze in connection with the Multiple is the following. The concepts that refer to an event—repetition, sense, counter-actualization, double causality (Logic of Sense)—do not just realize extreme singularity, but combine singularity with the plane of the “ideal” (the virtual and non-corporeal) or the plane of the “extra-being” as Deleuze himself puts it. His multiplicities are not coordinated directly with the One, they are not associations or combinations of singularities. But singularity, for its part, is an eventual intersection of multiplicities. The multiplicity of Deleuze is a synonym of dynamism. Also, Deleuze makes a difference among multiplicities. There are numerical, extended multiplicities—they can be divided; and durational, qualitative, molecular multiplicities—which are indivisible and should be taken as qualitative, nomadic metamorphoses, as the indivisibility of variability. For example, the line of flight or the abstract surface line, as evoked by Deleuze, are motions, effects of a nomadic shift of punctum, and not geometric forms. Deleuze believed that such a moving line cannot have a geometrical structure. While Alain Badiou, in his Clamor of Being, insists that each figure or line, be it a fold, a split (fissure), or an interval—that is, each indivisible dynamic phenomenon of multiplicity—has a scheme in the family of mathematical multiplicities.4 As Badiou puts it, Deleuze uses the multiplicity of multiplicities (and not mathematical multiplicities like Badiou). For Deleuze, the mathematical multiplicities of Badiou depended on the positions of things and references, i.e. were numerical; Deleuze rejects any pre-conditioned idea that could appear as a super-instance of correlations and movements within multiplicities. On the other hand, although the evolving, for Deleuze, occurs between the things and the empirical data, it still breaks through the empirical data to occur on the surface, on a plateau, as a result. In this case, the dimension of event is neither just unity, nor a pure interrelation of elements, as traditional interpretations of Deleuze imply (mostly in post-operaism), but is the very surge of being on a plateau as on a supra-surface. It is a verb or an act, which is genetically conditioned in being but has its effect as an after-being, or a super-being.5 Badiou insists that all proceedings in the Deleuzean realm are evolving in immanence, and that hence Being is the only Event in Deleuze, that it is not separable from the Event.6 At the same time, Badiou himself produces a complete ontological separation of event from being. He separates the actuality of an event from the virtuality of being. In this case, according to Badiou’s interpretation of Deleuze’s Being, it appears as a teeming of microelements, while Badiou conceives this multiplicity as



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inconceivable, thus in need of an “ontology” that counts the multiple for zero, and, in a next step, amplifies itself in the event. In other words, Badiou tries to prove that the event in Deleuze is not a breakthrough of being but is completely homogeneous with it. As a result, Deleuze—as interpreted by Badiou in his Clamor of Being—happens to be a semiotic relativist per se. In his Logics of Worlds, Badiou confirms his criticism of Deleuze for ignoring the power of separation inherent in the event and making it “coextensive with being and becoming,” for considering it as a homogenous result of life and identifying its purport rather with sense than with truth, as Badiou himself does. This, from Badiou’s point of view, locates event within the immanence of empirical data and does not enable it to acquire the function of exception.7 Such an approach as suggested by Badiou is often characteristic for the interpretation of Deleuze’s concepts in the vein of predominantly post-modern and post-structuralist beliefs. But in fact Deleuze rather happens to be a predecessor of Badiou in drawing the event from the mixtures and depths of the bodies to the surface as an emancipatory gesture motivated by an ethical and political conversion. It is true that, for Deleuze, event is not a complete exception, or separation, but neither does it reside in pure continuity absorbed by being and becoming. The procedure of becoming does not contradict the actualization and occurrence of the event, which in relation to being is defined by Deleuze as counter-actualization. Event is tied to Being genetically but is at the same time an irreversible and radical transformation, which makes event a universal singularity among all other appearances. Deleuze often speaks about the event as of a genesis of the ideal proceeding (actualization).8 This ideal, artistic element which Deleuze imposes on the event does not allow for dissipating it into the empirically inevitable goings-on and enables producing an alteration of the empirical regime through the counter-actualization of repetition. Deleuze just insists on the types of connection and realization that are not static and that are generated not according to the principle of affiliation, or of organism and its elements, but according to the principle of motion—of collisions, divergences, speeds, slowing downs, latitudes and longitudes, and their effectuations. Such ethology bears the dimension of transversality as its own super-effect. Transversality happens to be the convergence of the transcendental dimension, within the empirical, within the motion of multiplicities. By means of such a detailed topological description of the multiple, Deleuze not only declares the type of politics or of social organization, saying that from now on any structure or generation of a phenomenon should be perceived through micro- or molecular parameters. Rather, Deleuze’s topological and molecular descriptions reveal the procedures of causality, reveal the topology of be-coming and evolving and its genetic tie with the dimension of eventuality. The Event is thus understood artistically, and it is the artistic dimension that instigates the parameters of the political, of the general, of the ethical. The immanent procedures of becoming not only proceed, but be-come as a breach of chronic time, which presupposes the dimension of the “pure” (ideal) time

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of the event (Deleuze calls this non-chronic time, the Aeon). (This position of Deleuze is somewhat overlooked in post-operaist theory as well as in Badiou’s writings on Deleuze.) However, it is interesting that, in the Apostle Paul by Badiou, universalism is also seen as such an excess that breaks through being into a certain non-place. It intersects and crosses the quotidian differences which compose the material of the world. As Badiou puts it, it is the singularity of the subject of truth that pierces through this material. As is known, the Deleuzean concept of multiplicities was applied by the post-operaist thinkers (Hardt, Negri, Virno, Lazzarato) and paraphrased as a “multitude.” They share Deleuze’s artistic Spinozism, but in many works (e.g. those by Virno or Lazzarato)9 Deleuzean studies of immanence are translated into a sociological dimension, thus predominantly reducing Deleuze’s philosophical aspirations to the quasi-structures of immanence. For example, at the “Idea of Communism” conference in Berlin, Antonio Negri insisted that the event was not “a posteriori” with regard to the political or any other practice—the position to which, from his point of view, Badiou adheres—but that the transformative, eventful movement should be placed fully within practice: “the materialist pragmatic […] this transformative movement is valid only for itself, it sends back exclusively to its own potential.”10 Struggles take place within the biopolitical dimension—which means that the rebellion resides within the empirical realm. Likewise, the event in the writings of Deleuze is interpreted by Negri as an aleatoric procedure, as a subversive movement in the framework of capitalist institutions. Quite in the vein of criticizing Badiou’s focus on the Event, Saroi Giri, another speaker at the same conference, suggested declining the metaphysical purport of the “event” altogether. He quoted David Harvey who suggested that the insistent reference to the Event “led straight to a self-occupied narcissistic world […] in which the transcendence takes the upper hand over the true political engagement.”11 In taking the event for a kind of extra-ontological or extra-empirical leap, one can easily fall into the trap of idealism. An event would then be envisaged as a miracle unrelated to social reality or a political situation. In both interpretations of the event—by Badiou and by Negri—what stays unnoticed in Deleuze is the duality of his “event”—on the one hand, its genetic tie with the empirical realm without which the event cannot happen, and, on the other hand, its aspects of the coup de dès, which is described in the Logic of Sense as a throw-out from the empirical depths onto the surface, to the plateau. Hence there is no conceptual contradiction between the event’s transcendental “sterility” and ideal dimension, and its empirical background. The chaosmos of perturbations fulfills, in Deleuze, the function of genesis, to find a way out towards the dimension of the event, with its clarity. But such clarity remains, at the same time, irreversibly and genetically tied to its empirical and immanent origin. According to Foucault,12 Deleuze discovers the thought that is formed through a topological event, the role of which consists in the theatrical production of a phantasm—in the repetition of a universal event in its utmost point of singularity. This



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means that the singularity of the event and its “ideal” parameters include the topological dimension as well. As has already been mentioned, the molecular dimension is often claimed in some interpretations of Deleuze and Guattari (post-structuralist and postoperaist) as an embodiment of abstracted and aleatoric micro-dynamics of sheer immanence. But in fact the molecular dimension in Deleuze and Guattari does not enter into contradiction with the dimension of event. Molecularity means not only access to elemental post-structural concatenations but presupposes the quality and intensity with which the event is deployed and actualized. The molecular flows and the multiplicities are not so much the contingent elementary movements, but rather conditions of the all-embracing dimension of an occurrence, which traverse the body, the consciousness, the unconscious, and their outer surroundings. In other words, the molecular dimension is not just about dynamic quantities considered externally, but also about the procedures and effects of becoming that proceed internally and intersect with the external levels. This means that becoming (and consequently, the event) is something that cannot stay away from internal occurrences that imply consciousness and its change—as is the case with the act of metanoia. But, probably, the question arises: what renders such acts of metanoia general? In the case of Deleuze, the political cannot accomplish itself if it does not have a tie with the evental, with a procedure that is lived through (not only empirically, but ethically). This means that the common, or the general, is posited not only via technical means of participation, through the transformation of communication into institutional unit, or through any other technical tools of organization, but also through the universal singularity of the situation of addressing the Other (or others), which is imposed not just institutionally or technically, but also ethically and eventfully. In other words, the event—the dimension of metanoia—presupposes the intensified rethinking of the given ties between the subjectivity and the others, between the world and its parameters. Non-representational politics as well as production, as understood in the vein of Deleuzean thought, are meant not as a quasi-avant-garde productionism, in which technological means of distribution would acquire the significance of the socialized spheres of a commonwealth. Deleuzean production is production accomplished in an evental dimension that is not reduced to institutional, methodological, technological, organizational, or structural social grids, but traverses all of them. Therefore, the event, in its singular questioning of the true, the evil, the just, the other, and the others, is a machine that triggers the dimension of the general, where the “general” could mean the disclosure of the radically anti-narcissistic space of becoming the other, the non-I. Actually, the event (as well as metanoia and becoming) is never reduced to what happens to an individual, but is an effect of transcending individual parameters. It pushes an individual to exceed them in an outward direction, but it also means the contamination of the self ’s inwardness with the dimension of the non-self, and its outwardness. All of this is very important to keep in mind when observing the transformation that the dimensions of immanence and multiplicities acquire in post-operaist theory. Here the description of the topology of the dynamics of immanence is applied often as a formal structure; that is, in the works of post-operaists, the molecular mobility of

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multiplicities acquires to a certain extent some territorial, anthropometric characteristics and is applied sometimes in a positivist or sociological way—the stance that is impossible to evade in the society of communication and optimization where it is hard to discover the borders between creativity, cognitive management, and the creative industry. As a result, the dynamism and the machine of correlations, which constitute the genetic background of the event, for Deleuze often acquire, in post-operaist theory, features of communicative efficiency. For example, P. Virno in his Grammar of the Multitude quite correctly describes the ambivalences of cognitive capitalism, in which knowledge, language, and creativity constitute the commonwealth of the multitude and, at the same time, are subjugated by cognitive capital’s production. Virno describes the situation where surplus value is generated not only by labor time and commodity, but also by the artistic and creative components of the human being, by his/her enthusiasm. It is also quite justified that Virno differentiates universalism, as the embodiment of statism, imperial globalism and sovereignty, and the general as the case of the common that is not a sum of individuals, or its representation in this or that man, but is the interconnection and correlation, an intermediate space in the midst of the many.13 All of this is correct, in my view. But still, it is here that the questions arise. Recent political thought, when critically rethinking the notion of universality, resides in the premise that universality is false in the case that the values of art, philosophy, and culture cannot be shared by all and any. It is a very important presumption brought forward by Rancière and Badiou, among others. The utmost form of such false individualist universalism is mentioned in one of the examples by S. Žižek, when he asks why the Nazis from the SS who exterminated people were nevertheless able to perceive and even share the universal, common to all, “humanist” message of a work of art. Žižek’s answer is the following: it is because any human being is endowed with the dimension of the universal and the general.14 However, in this certain case such a dimension remains in the frame of personal and private aesthetic pleasure, which is the reason why such universality cannot really be general since it remains just an individual experience of the sublime. On the other hand, when the general and the common start to be understood only as a mode of sharing among the many, the eventful motivation for the dimension of the general is ignored. If the common becomes just a mode and medium of connection, then it remains unknown what exactly should be shared among the many, what should be communicated? Is then sharing just about sharing? That is, what remains unclear is why and in the name of what communication, connectivity and activism take place. Should there be anything in the name of which to connect and how would this “what” motivate the connection? In other words, the “commons” should not only have a form (a form of infrastructure and organization) but also a content. One more unresolved problem is whether the way the general intellect and creativity happen to function in post-Fordist society can be considered as “knowledge.” Perhaps what stands for the general intellect today happens to be predominantly a conglomerate of competences? If this is so, then can the creative activity that is unable to distinguish itself from the post-Fordist creative production and economics be considered artistic,



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intellectual, or truly cognitive? For Virno, the goal and the problem is in claiming the exodus of the general intellect that is appropriated by capitalist production but is interpreted still as a competence—as virtuosity. Meanwhile, the problem today might be in the fact that what the general intellect is reduced to cannot bear the goals of the general, of the generic humanist project. In other words, the general intellect does not attain the dimension of the general, since it only consists in the expansion of cognitive competences, rather than in an aspiration to the generic dimension of knowledge. Deprived of its ontological dimension, such “general intellect” evades the causality that could lead to an event. The unit of such generality is the mobile individual partaking in the languages, the codes of knowledge. But the question is whether the generic dimension of the human is limited to this. Can we interpret the general as the operation of connection, as a network and communicative efficiency, or should there be some extra-communicative genealogy of knowledge that might make it general? In other words, the general and the common cannot be just a relational interactivity between individuals, but should be something that could endow any individual experience with a dimension of the general, understood as a generic and non-individual dimension, thus questioning one’s individuality as such. In Badiou’s Saint Paul the event, its significance on the one hand, and its generalizing sharing on the other, intersect by means of the act of faith, faith in that which can unite. Such a uniting instance is the event of resurrection. Talking about Christ’s resurrection, Badiou claims that the universality of this event consists not just in piercing the differentiated matter of the world, but also in being addressed to all. It means that something can be shared by all only when it breaks through the world’s immanence, when it pierces being. In other words, generalization, or sharing something together, is not reduced to distribution (be it economic or intellectual), but proceeds from an ethology of the event that grasps the consciousness of the many and of each among the many.15 In the Logic of Sense, Deleuze writes that the event evolves as something impersonal and non-individual, neither collective nor particular or private. He says the same about sense. Sense is indifferent both to the universal and to the singular; as an event, it stands beyond the division into the common and the private, into the universal and the individual. But at the same time, it is the potentiality of the event as a leap that presupposes, according to Deleuze, “becoming the citizen of the world.”16 All of this sounds quite aphoristic. But what is meant is the following: Deleuze’s political thought is not motivated by the question of civil or political regulations. His starting point is the out of joint, the rupture. Moreover, he describes infrastructures, systematic shifts and movements, as a causality, procedures of actualization, and not as an organization or operation based on presumptions of the common good or common sense.17 He does not, like Nancy, contemplate togetherness or commonality as such, either. In his case such togetherness goes without saying in the case of the dimension of event. But it is clear that Deleuze refuses to deal with the systematic labels of civil collectivities and groups that are so indispensable for sociology. Nevertheless, the political stance of Deleuzean ontology is the following. He searches for liberation and for a revolutionary mode not in infrastructure, or in form,

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but sees it as an act of conversion on all levels—the empirical, mental, conscious, unconscious, and spiritual. And what is most important is that his focus on the event presupposes the potentiality of emancipatory change, the procedure of generating strength, not only in case of a possible and given situation of struggle and its institutional or administrative framework, but even when there can be no such possibility of struggle—i.e. in the conditions of utmost social weakness. Such a starting point for emancipation (through event) is based on the following premise: before anything can or cannot be shared in society, before any potentiality of sharing or of political and civil salvation ever emerges, anyone has the potential of a paradoxical maneuver of breaking through the mixtures and depths of given empirical conditions. This means that, before any consolidation, the dimension of the general can already be given as the potentiality of a revolutionary shift, as an open source of addressing the world and the others. In the event, there are no concepts like “person,” “individual,” or “collective,”—no names and labels—but rather the singularity of a procedure as of the overall, all-embracing, and honest involvement in what is being done. Such singular life is already the intersection of various multiplicities. The dimension of event enables such singular life to become worldly, or, as Deleuze puts it, to run over and through everything.18 So, for Deleuze, the general is not just prepositioned for common use, but is first and foremost the implication that the eventful is open for anyone as a potentiality to deploy. In other words, without the dimension of event, any sharing between the multitudes might lead to the automaton of communication. Since the general, apart from being shared, demands sharing something that would have had the genealogy of an event. One can share only a message. The possibility of sharing the general is affirmed by an eventful act—the act of artistic, political, and ethical conversion.19

Bibliography Alain Badiou, Clamor of Being, trans. by Louise Burchill (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). —Logic of Worlds, trans. by A. Toscano (London and New York: Continuum, 2009). —Saint Paul. The Foundation of Universalism, trans. by Ray Brassier (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). —(ed.) L’idée du communisme, II (Paris: Lignes, 2011). Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense, trans. by Mark Lester (London: The Athlone Press, 1990). —Difference and Repetition, trans. by Paul Patton (London and New York: Continuum, 2000). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2009). David Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). Maurizio Lazzarato, “Struggle, Event, Media.” Available online at http://eipcp.net/ transversal/1003/lazzarato/en (accessed 17 May 2012).



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—“Immaterial Labour.” Available online at http://www.generation-online.org/c/ fcimmateriallabour3.htm (accessed 17 May 2012). Mimesis, Masochism & Mime. The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought. Timothy Murray (ed.) (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2000). Paolo Virno, “The Dismeasure of Art,” interview with Paolo Virno by Pascal Gielen and Sonja Lavaert, Foundation Art and Public Space. Available online at http://www.skor. nl/article-4178-nl.html?lang=en (accessed 17 May 2012). —Grammar of the Multitude (New York: Semiotext, 2004). —“Virtuosity and Revolution, The Political Theory of Exodus.” Available online at http:// www.makeworlds.org/node/view/34 (accessed 17 May 2012).

Notes 1 Paolo Virno, “The Dismeasure of Art,” interview of Pascal Gielen and Sonja Lavaert with Paolo Virno, Foundation Art and Public Space. Available online at http://www. skor.nl/article-4178-nl.html?lang=en (accessed 8 June 2012). 2 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2009). 3 Metanoia, in Greek, is the conversion and change of thoughts, the act of transformation of consciousness, literally remorse, repentance. 4 Alain Badiou, Clamor of Being. Trans. Louise Burchill (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 43–54. 5 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (Continuum, 2000), 168–221. 6 Alain Badiou, Clamor of Being, 19. The question posed by Deleuze is the question of Being. From beginning to end, and under the constraint of the innumerable and fortuitous cases, his work is concerned with thinking thought (its act, its movement) on the basis of the ontological precomprehension of Being as One. 7 Along with the four axioms mapping event in the works by Deleuze, Badiou enumerates his own four axioms, according to which: 1. Event is implemented due to the upsurge of the previously in-existent. 2. It is an “atemporal instant which disjoins the previous state and object (site) from the subsequent state.” 3. “[T]he blow of the eventual One magnetizes multiplicities and constitutes them into subjectivizable bodies.” 4. Event is not a harmonious resonance as it happens to function in Deleuze, but it enters into decomposition of the worlds, rather than their composition. See Alain Badiou, Logic of Worlds. Trans A. Toscano (Continuum, 2009), 381–7. 8 Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense. Trans. Mark Lester (The Athlone Press, 1990), 7: “For the Stoics on the other hand, states of affairs and quantities and qualities are no less being (or bodies) than substance is; they are a part of substance and in this sense they are contrasted with extra-Being which constitutes an incorporeal as a nonexisting entity. The highest term therefore is not Being, but Something (aliquid), in so far as it subsumes being and non-being, existence and inherence. Moreover the Stoics are the first to reverse Platonism and to bring about a radical inversion. For if bodies with their states, qualities and quantities, assume all the characteristics of substance

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and cause, conversely, the characteristics of the Idea are relegated to the other side, that is to the impassive extra-Being which is sterile, inefficacious and on the surface of things: the ideational of the incorporeal can no longer be anything other than an ‘effect’. … Becoming-mad, becoming unlimited is no longer a ground which rumbles. It climbs to the surface of things and becomes impassive. … These are effects in the causal sense, but also sonorous, optical or linguistic ‘effects’—and even less, or much more, since they are no longer corporeal entities, but rather form the entire Idea. What was eluding the Idea climbed up to the surface, that is, the incorporeal limit, and represents now all possible ideality.” 9 E.g. Paolo Virno, Grammar of the Multitude (Semiotext, 2004); Virno, “Virtuosity and Revolution, The Political Theory of Exodus.” Available online at http://www. makeworlds.org/node/view/34 (accessed 8 June 2012); Maurizio Lazzarato, “Struggle, Event, Media.” Available online at http://eipcp.net/transversal/1003/lazzarato/en (accessed 8 June 2012); Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labour.” Available online at http:// www.generation-online.org/c/fcimmateriallabour3.htm (accessed 8 June 2012). 10 The “Idea of Communism” conference was held in Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre on 25–7 June 2010. Its proceedings have by now been published. See L’idée du communisme, II (Lignes, 2011), 210. Negri writes: “L’événement pour Badiou (la crucifixion du Christ et sa résurrection, la Révolution française, la Révolution culturelle chinoise, etc.) est toujours aposteriori, il est donc un présupposé et non pas un produit de l’histoire. … Mais, en l’absence d’une logique interne de production de l’événement, comment pourra-t-on jamais distinguer l’événement d’un objet de croyance?”, 208. 11 Ibid, 65. Saroj Giri quoting David Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom (Columbia University Press, 2009), 281. 12 Michel Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum,” in Timothy Murray (ed.) Mimesis, Masochism & Mime. The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought (University of Michigan Press, 2000), 216–39. 13 Virno, “The Dismeasure of Art.” 14 Zizek gave this example on 5 March 2007 at his public lecture at the Moscow President Hotel. 15 Alain Badiou, “Saint Paul,” The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford University Press, 2003), 81: The word pistis (faith or conviction) designates precisely this point: the absence of any gap between subject and subjectivation. In this absence of the gap, which constantly activates the subject in the service of truth, forbidding him rest, the One-truth proceeds in the direction of all. … Theoreme 1. The One is only in so far as it is for all, and follows not from the law, but from the event. It is in the retroaction of the event that the universality of truth is constituted. 16 Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester (The Athlone Press, 1990), 148: “It is a question of attaining this will that the event creates in us; of becoming the quasicause of what is produced within us; of producing surfaces and linings in which the event is reflected, finds itself again as incorporeal and manifests in us the neutral splendor which it possesses in itself in its impersonal and pre-individual nature, beyond the collective and the private. It is a question of becoming a citizen of the world.” 17 Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense, ‘The Thirty-third series of Alice’s Adventures’: 238. “On



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the contrary, to extract the non-actualizable part of the pure Event from symptoms (or as Blanchot says, to raise the visible to the invisible), to raise everyday actions and passions (like eating, shitting, loving, speaking or dying) to the noematic attribute and their corresponding pure Event, to go from the physical surface on which symptoms are played out and actualizations decided to the metaphysical surface on which the pure event stands and is played out, to go from the cause of the symptoms to the quasi-cause of the oeuvre …” 18 Ibid. 19 Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense, 149. “We are faced with a volitional intuition and transmutation. … From this inclination to this longing there is, in a certain respect, no change except the change of the will, a sort of leaping in place of the whole body which exchanges its organic will for a spiritual will. It wills now not exactly what occurs, but something in that which occurs, something yet to come which would be consistent with what occurs, in accordance with the laws of the obscure, humorous conformity: the Event. It is in this sense that the Amor fati is one with the struggle of free men.”

5

Truth and Infinity in Badiou and Heidegger* Alexey Chernyakov

I would like to propose from the very outset two observations that seem to be important for understanding Badiou’s project. First, in his elaboration of the concept of truth Badiou depends very substantially on Heidegger. Nevertheless his references to Heidegger’s works, his commentaries, interpretations, his assent and critique—lean almost exclusively on the late Heidegger, Heidegger after the so called “turn” (Kehre) at the beginning of the 1930s. To the contrary, my own intention is to show that the comparison of Badiou’s conceptual constructions and Heidegger’s elaboration of the “existential analytic of Dasein” are not less interesting. Or, perhaps, they are even more instructive. Second, for Badiou as well as for Heidegger the notion of truth is firmly connected with the ethical self-identification of a human being. Badiou understands his ethics as the “ethics of truths.” Its categorical imperative is: “enter into the composition of a subject.”1 Later on we shall clarify the meaning of this enigmatic phrase. It goes without saying that, de jure, the Heidegger of Being and Time does not deal with any sort of “moral philosophy.” Nevertheless, he says in section 62 that, understood ontically, authentic existence is “a factical ideal of Dasein.”2 Let me also underscore that, for Heidegger, the term “subject” is both foreign and misleading. But Badiou too in his turn transforms this concept in such a way that all possible allusions to the Cartesian or Husserlian transcendental subject are eliminated. And it is the latter that Heidegger tries, with all of his might, not even to deconstruct, but to destroy. Having said all this, I am proceeding to the main subject of my paper. A classical definition of truth, the one which we inevitably have to mention, posits truth in a mimetic way, as adaequatio intellectus et rei.3 Heidegger, in Being and Time, asks how this adequation is possible. It is clear that, within the context of his “newly rekindled gigantomachia peri tes ousias,”4 he is looking for an ontological foundation of truth. I shall omit the long chain of Heidegger’s analytical procedures in Being and Time, and recall only their result. To say that an assertion “is true” signifies that it uncovers the entity as it is in itself. Such an assertion asserts, points out, lets the entity be seen (apophansis) in its uncoveredness (Entdecktsein). The Being-true (truth) of the assertion must be understood as Being-uncovering (entdeckend-sein). Thus truth has by no means

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But it is not an assertion as such that uncovers the entities, but Dasein. Dasein is the only entity that is capable of encountering another entity and understanding it in its being. The possibility of understanding an entity in its being belongs, according to Heidegger, to the very Dasein’s state of Being. This is an existential called Erschlossenheit—disclosedness. “In so far as Dasein is its disclosedness essentially […] to this extent it is essentially ‘true.’ Dasein is ‘in the truth’.”6 Truth is therefore a subject of fundamental ontology in Heidegger’s sense. The truth of an assertion is in its turn a derivative mode of this fundamental–ontological one. Badiou refers to Heidegger, stating that, having become a characteristic of a proposition, truth not only shifts beyond its appropriate place but distorts its essence as well. And he continues: It should be understood as follows: not only the whole effect of thought’s decline or, which is the same, Being’s decline, reveals itself in the fact that after Plato truth is presented as something localizable in an assertion. This localization is at bottom the loss of truth’s own nature. The access to truth in its authentic aspects is blocked, if only we accept that the phenomenon of truth is an assertion.7

Thus in Heidegger, as well as in Badiou, truth shifts (or, maybe, returns) from the logical to the ontological order. Truth is not an adaequatio intellectus et rei, it is not located in a logical form. “Hegel has shown”—writes Badiou—“that truth is a path.”8 Heidegger thought that truth—in the chain of its historical transformations—forms the destiny of Europe, a sad destiny, because the primordial truth is forgotten. Badiou posits in this connection one important distinction, that between truth (vérité) and veridicity (véridicité).9 Both the true and the veridical are related to a definite situation. But truth appears or, better, comes up, germinates within a situation always as something new, I would say—something unheard-of and previously inconceivable. To the contrary, veridicity belongs to the order of knowledge—already present and fixed within a situation. Knowledge as such gives us only repetition: it reproduces, transmits itself within the situation, belongs to, so to say, its epistemic habit. Or, as Badiou phrases it in “Being and Event”, the veridical as a whole forms the encyclopedia of a particular situation.10 Therein everything is inscribed which is present within the situation (as in a Medieval verse: in quo totum continetur unde mundus judicetur).11 The rule of knowledge is always a criterion of exact nomination, that is discernment and classification.12 The nomina, the titles of the encyclopedia’s articles, name the entities that are seen from inside the situation. In order to support, to reproduce, and to amplify the encyclopedia there exist definite epistemic and institutional technologies. This maintenance of the status quo is, according to Badiou, simultaneously a concealing of truth. And it is not for nothing that Heidegger distinguishes between aletheia as unconcealment, on the one hand, and scientific knowledge



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and its technical embodiment as concealment, on the other hand. Of course, this distinction is exaggerated in Heidegger and appears time and again, in a, let me say, rather paranoiac manner. Hence—“science does not think.” From this also follows the denial to see in a speech that is structured according to a definite logical discipline as an expression of a possible truth. Only “the poet always speaks as if the being was expressed for the first time.”13 Here “the spirit towers above all that which one could call ‘pure science’, ” and “die unbegreiflich hohen Werke sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.”14 But let us come back to Badiou. He asks: “If all truth is something new, what is the essential philosophic problem pertaining to truth?”15 This is, of course, the problem of its appearance or its coming-to-be, because truth is comprehended now not as a logical term but as a process in the real. What is the process of truth? It is necessary to mention that all the categories Badiou uses to describe this process are negative: the undecidable, the indiscernible, the untotalizable, finally the unnamable. We know that to Badiou belongs the statement “ontology is mathematics.” And thus the philosophy of truth as an ontological theme is also firmly connected with mathematics. The first two terms (the undecidable, the indiscernible) are borrowed immediately from corresponding mathematical theory. The untotalizable as a characteristic of the generic is one of the basic facts of this theory. Let me try to clarify, skipping all technical detail, what Badiou has in mind. If, within the limits of a definite situation, knowledge is a sort of repetition and concerned only with what already is, then for truth to affirm its newness there must be a supplement. A supplement that is connected with an interruption of the repetition. This interruption Badiou calls “event.” Here are some examples of event: The appearance, with Aeschylus, of theatrical tragedy. The eruption, with Galileo, of mathematical physics. An amorous encounter which changes a whole life. Or the French Revolution of 1792. The question whether an event belongs to a situation (in this case it is nothing other than a deferred consequence of situational laws) is in fact undecidable. There is nothing in the “encyclopedia” that allows us to state: “here the truth begins.” If, using the rules of established knowledge, you can decide that this sentence is true or false, the event will not be an event. This phrase is only a wager in a future gamble. And those who decide to participate in the gambling must make their wagers: “Here an event is occurring named so and so (tragedy, reading of the book of nature written by God in the language of geometry, love, revolution, etc.).” Because the question concerning the eventfulness of something that has happened is undecidable, a subject of truth must reveal itself within the situation, someone who addresses himself with a sort of illocutionary force: “Something has taken place, which I can neither calculate nor demonstrate using the epistemic technologies of my situation, but to which I shall be faithful.” It is important to keep in mind that the subject of truth need not necessarily “coincide” with a particular human being. For example, the subject of a revolutionary politics is not an individual militant. To be sure, the militant enters into the composition of a subject (a Party for example), but the subject exceeds him or her. The subject of truth must be, so to say, spread diachronically. If a possible event has been named, it has a chance to live a trace within the situation. The

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destiny of truth depends upon the destiny of this trace: either it will be erased or it will generate the truth’s trajectory. A subject fixes the trace of an event and involves himself or herself in the infinite process of the “truth’s verification.” The series of choices accomplished by a historically extended subject (in the Logics of Worlds Badiou calls it a “sequence” of subjective points16) creates the trajectory of truth, the trajectory that cannot be regulated by any concept, or notion, or narrative that is on hand within the situation. In this sense, every subject is a local agent of truth, because he or she generates and creates a certain number of subjective points. None of these subjective points can be determined by the language and the logic of the corresponding situation. In Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics a proairesis (a rational choice) is defined as an orexis bouleutike, an aspiration resorting to reasoning, taking council with oneself or the Other.17 Here to the contrary one has to choose among the indiscernible, for the difference cannot be expressed in the language of the situation and thus cannot become an object of reasoning. As Badiou writes, referring to Mallarme: “A subject is a throw of the dice which does not abolish chance but accomplishes it as a verification of the decision which founds it.”18 What has been decided, due to the subject of truth, regarding the undecidable paves the way exactly through this subjective point, the point of decision. But another possibility cannot be definitely discerned from the chosen one within the scope of knowledge before the act of choice, but only through it. The Truth must be infinite because everything that is finite belongs to the encyclopedia of a situation as the result of a finite enumeration. In the formal language of ontology—that is, of mathematics—this should be expressed in the following way: the truth-procedure should be completed by the formation of an infinite subset of the situation, and thus its completion is always deferred. This subset must be indiscernible within the situation, that is, its characteristic is inexpressible in the language of the situation. Within the respective mathematical theory, this infinite indiscernible subset is called generic. Thus, the generic cannot be either constructed through a finite number of steps or comprehended as an extensional interpretation of a property defined in situational language, because it would mean that the process of truth had been governed beforehand by a definite law, which had acted in concealment. It is this law that was a real subject of the fake truth, and those who have been throwing the dice, and making wages, were only its blind instruments. Here, as it seems, I cannot proceed further on without Badiou’s mathematical technique. I believe that the discussion of truth has a promising continuation, which is not accomplished yet in the writings of Badiou and his followers. Now, let us come back to Heidegger. We have seen that, in Being and Time, the depth dimension of truth is the disclosedness of Dasein, its disclosed and disclosing Being-in-the-world. For Badiou, a human being, a someone, can, in principle, participate in different truth-processes, be involved in different truth-trajectories. But for Dasein there exists the fundamental or radical truth—the truth concerning Dasein itself, or its authentic Selfhood (das eigentliche Selbst). Heidegger writes:



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As something that understands, Dasein can understand itself in terms of the world and Others or in terms of its ownmost potentiality for being (Seinkönnen). The possibility just mentioned means that Dasein discloses itself to itself in and as its ownmost potentiality-for-being. This authentic disclosedness shows the phenomenon of the most primordial truth in the mode of authenticity. The most primordial, and indeed the most authentic, disclosedness in which Dasein, as a potentiality-for-being, can be, is the truth of existence.19

We have seen that the moments, the instances of decisions (what Heidegger calls die Augenblicke der Entscheidung and connects with the authentic choices of the ownmost potentiality-for-being), Badiou designates as subjective points. For Heidegger, too, the primordial truth, the truth of existence, is carried out as a sequence of such points. A choice (of a mode to exist), the resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) in the situation of choice—and here lies one of the most significant messages of Being and Time—is not determined beforehand by any law (a moral law, for example). It can be determined in fact by public opinion, by a sort of ethics understood literally—as Greek ethos—a public custom. But this sort of determination takes place only when Dasein has lost itself, lost its authentic Self, and is absorbed in the “they,” in das Man. The force that compels Dasein to decide in this or that way—or better, that attests the authenticity of a choice—Heidegger calls Conscience. Conscience does not cry out a verdict, when Dasein violates a certain moral law, when it deviates from truth understood in the Roman sense, as the verum, the correct. Conscience does not sentence to a punishment in the form of being conscience-striken, to sorrows that cruelly, as Erinyes, track down those who wrongly shed blood. And all this because the authenticity of existence is something undecidable, it cannot be decided on the basis of a certain list of criteria, the Tablets of Law, etc. Such criteria can be on hand only within the public sphere of das Man. Here, there are not the names of events, but only idle talks (das Gerede). But, in the situation of an authentic decision, das Man cannot come to the rescue of Dasein and deliver it from making a bet with itself. The fundamental truth, the truth of existence is, according to Heidegger, a departure from the Public Encyclopedia. Sometimes Badiou speaks on behalf of the subject. Then he sounds very much like Heidegger. A subject needs something to have happened, something that cannot be reduced to its ordinary inscription in “what there is” demands that something must happen that cannot be reduced to a simple entering into a multiple being that already has a place. Let us call this supplement an event […] which compels us to decide a new way of being.20

But right there, the similarity ends. And I would like now to point to a radical distinction between Badiou and Heidegger. For Badiou, the subject is the bearer of a fidelity, the one who bears the process of truth. This means that s/he cannot pre-exist the process. On the other hand the

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subject exceeds a particular human being, a “some-one.” The “some-one” thus caught up in what attests that s/he belongs to the truth-process as one of its foundationpoints is simultaneously him- or herself […] and in excess of him- or herself, because a trajectory of fidelity passes through him or her, transfixes the singular body and inscribes him or her, within time, in an instance of eternity. Sometimes Badiou openly names this diachronic excess “immortality.”21 Deeply absorbed by his or her inclusion into the composition of a some-one (a scientist, an artist, a political activist, a lover) the subject becomes absorbed into the truth which comes up through him or her, though he or she knows nothing for sure, indeed has no means to know the undecidable. Nevertheless he or she is inscribed, within time, in an instance of eternity and abides in the “oblivion of the sorrowful death” (as Mandelstam says22). And how do matters stand with the authentic existence of Dasein? We must answer: Quite differently. We know that, for Heidegger, the authenticity of authentic Dasein’s being is revealed in its most ample form at the intersection of two analytic lines. Moving along one of them Heidegger discloses that the authentic Being-towardsdeath is anticipation (das Vorlaufen), das Vorlaufen in die unbezügliche Möglichkeit des Todes. On the other hand, Dasein’s authentic potentiality-for-Being in its existential attestation (which is nothing other than conscience) has been exhibited as resoluteness. Now the two phenomena come together and we have “anticipatory resoluteness.” Heidegger writes: When Dasein is resolute it takes over authentically in its existence, the fact that it is the null basis of its nullity. Death is not added on to Dasein at its end; but Dasein as care is the thrown (that is, null) basis for its death. The nullity by which Dasein’s Being is dominated primordially through and through, is revealed to Dasein itself in authentic Being-towards-death.23

To be the basis of one’s own nullity means, for Heidegger, to be guilty, and it is exactly this being-guilty that is attested by conscience. If the “some-one” enters into the composition of a subject, the ethical problem he or she confronts is, according to Badiou, the problem of consistency. That is a paradoxical conjunction of the situational vitality belonging to a human animal, its conatus, its perseverance in being, a conjunction with something that breaks or opposes this perseverance. This something is belonging to the process of truth. The factical Dasein’s ideal which Heidegger sees in its authentic existence, that is, in the upshot, “anticipatory resoluteness,” requires sui generis humility, but at the same time, firmness or strength of mind, in the face of existential nullity or, which is the same, ontologically interpreted guilt. “This distinctive and authentic disclosedness, which is attested in Dasein itself by its conscience—this reticent self-projection upon one’s Being-guilty, in which one is ready for anxiety—we call ‘resoluteness’. ”24 Thus, according to Heidegger, the factical ethical ideal of Dasein is resoluteness for one’s own finitude, fidelity to finitude. For Badiou—this is the inclusion of the vital finitude of a human animal into the infinity of a truth-process, a fidelity to infinity.



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Bibliography Thomas Aquinas, Questiones disputatae de veritate, trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952). Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (London: Verso, 2001). —Theoretical Writings, trans. R. Brassier and A. Toscano (New York: Continuum, 2004). —Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham and Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum, 2005). —Infinite Thought, (New York: Continuum, 2005). —Logic of Worlds, trans. A. Toscano (New York: Continuum, 2008). Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, Prolog im Himmel. Available online at http://www. martinschlu.de/kulturgeschichte/klassik/goethe/faust/03.htm (accessed 22 May 2012). Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (London: Harper, 1962). —Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Ossip Mandelshtam, Kamen (Leningrad: Nauka, 1990).

Notes * This is the text of a talk delivered by Alexey Chernyakov at the conference “Politics of the One” in March 2010, shortly before his death in July of the same year. The text has been technically edited for grammar and references. It is being published here by the kind permission of Alexey’s daughter, Ekaterina Chernyakova. 1 Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (Verso, 2001), 43. 2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Harper, 1962), 358. 3 Thomas Aquinas, Questiones disputatae de veritate qu. I, art. I. Trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J. (Henry Regnery Company, 1952). Available online at http:// dhspriory.org/thomas/QDdeVer1.htm (visited January 25, 2012). 4 Being and Time, 21 (2). 5 Ibid., 261 (218). 6 Ibid., 263 (221). 7 Alain Badiou, “Philosophy and Truth,” in Infinite Thought (Continuum, 2005), 44. 8 Ibid., 45. 9 Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham and Ray Brassier (Continuum, 2005), 331–4. 10 Ibid., 331. 11 “In which all is contained Whereby the world shall be judged,” from the requiem hymn Dies Irae. 12 Cf. Badiou, Being and Event, 328. 13 Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (Yale University Press, 2000), 154, quoted by Badiou in “Philosophy and Truth,” 44. 14 “The incredibly high works are majestic like on the first day.” J. W. Goethe, Faust, Prolog auf Himmel. Available online at http://www.martinschlu.de/kulturgeschichte/ klassik/goethe/faust/03.htm (accessed January 25 2012).

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15 “Philosophy and Truth,” 45. 16 Alain Badiou, Logic of Worlds, trans. A. Toscano (Continuum, 2008), 83ff. “A subject is a sequence involving continuities and discontinuities …” 17 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (University of Chicago Press, 2011), Book 3, Chapter 2, 1111 b- 1112a25ff, 46–47; Book 6, chapter 2, 1139a20-1139b15, 116-117. 18 Alain Badiou, “On Subtraction,” in Theoretical Writings, trans. R. Brassier and A. Toscano (Continuum, 2004), 113. 19 Being and Time, 264 (221). 20 Alain Badiou, Ethics (Verso, 2001), 41. 21 See, for instance, Ethics, 15ff. 22 Ossip Mandelshtam, Kamen (Nauka, 1990), “Na bledno-goluboy emali,” 9. Mandelshtam is speaking of an artist drawing in “the consciousness of a momentary force.” 23 Being and Time, 354 (306). 24 Ibid., 343 (297).

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Suspension of the One Badiou’s Objective Phenomenology and Politics of the Subject Vitaly Kosykhin

The process of parting with Heideggerian thought, which may take different forms, apparently reveals itself in ontological investigations at the present time. However, the most concentrated position of rejection of the ontological perspective proposed by Heidegger (which, first of all, was connected with his demands of overcoming all of the previous metaphysical tradition through the categorical discernment of ontological difference and through the subsequent onto-historical re-thinking of the essence of nihilism) nowadays finds its expression in the recognition of necessity of the “Platonic gesture” or the new ontological turn proposed by Alain Badiou.1 This turn means, for Badiou, the encounter of ontology and mathematics, the possibility of which was ignored or even excluded from Heidegger’s “essentially historical” interpretation of being. Badiou’s fundamental work, Being and Event, was devoted to the exploration of the possibilities of such a step. The second volume of Being and Event, which was published 18 years after the first and entitled Logic of Worlds, is a further development and concretization of Badiou’s thought, focusing on the problems of the subject and on the possibilities of a new turn of phenomenology. Thus, our main task here is to clarify the phenomenological or, to say it more properly, the post-phenomenological dimension of his “Platonic gesture,” in the context of the continuation of Badiou’s project in Logic of Worlds. Unlike Plato, Badiou suspends the question of the One in a certain space of correlative duality between “what is” (the multiple) and “what is not” (the One). But this, in its turn, makes the “Platonic gesture” not so radically Platonic, because it never reaches (and it is not intended to do so) the monistic Platonic position on the essence of phenomenon as τὸ ἡνωμένον, “combined into one.” We shall try to demonstrate that the new “objective phenomenology” proposed by Badiou deals with the simultaneous disappearing and reappearing of the subject. The subject, like the ontological One, disappears in the phenomenal sphere of the multiple, where we can find no subject himself, but only

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his/her reactions to events or, as Badiou exposes, his “post-eventual body.” And thus, it also means the program of the liberation of the subject that loses its ontological deployment by losing its traditional abstract character of an essential entity, in the new forms of political subjectivity. As Badiou himself notes in the preface to Logic of Worlds: “Logics of Worlds stands to Being and Event as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit stands to his Science of Logic, even though the chronological order is inverted: an immanent grasp of the parameters of being-there, a local survey of the figures of the true and of the subject, and not a deductive analytic of the forms of being.”2 This inverted order of thinking, let us call it a kind of retrospective conversion, is also inherent in the logical and ontological positions of Badiou, no matter whether it is applied to being, event or the subject. But let us start, as Badiou himself often does, with dialectics. For example, in the Logic of Worlds Badiou states on many occasions that his fundamental position is that of materialist dialectics. The peculiarity of the materialist dialectics of Badiou, as opposed to a broader context of modern materialism and idealism, consists, as we believe, primarily in the fact that instead of the Hegelian triadic development of thought from thesis by anti-thesis to speculative synthesis, Badiou carries out a dualistic fixation of the opposition between thesis and anti-thesis, which preserves both in relation only to each other (one–multiple, ontology–philosophy, etc.) without the possibility of a third synthetic phase. Of course, one can see here a certain dialectics, especially in the case of the one and the multiple, where, as Badiou asserts, the multiple is and the one is not, but this is not a Hegelian kind of dialectics, because it does not allow the transition of opposites into each other. Hegel spoke of the essence, which was phenomenal, and of the phenomenon that, in its turn, was essential. But Badiou does not say, for example, that ontology is philosophical, and philosophy ontological. He always prefers to be more a logical formalist than a dialectician. A quite different example of positive dialectics can be found in Alexei Losev’s dialectical theory, which is deeply connected with the ancient dialectics of Neo-Platonism. According to Losev, dialectics should contain in itself both the logical construction and the eidetic contemplation of being. The constitutive aspect of this dialectics is precisely the doctrine of the interaction of the part and the whole. Losev poses the relationship between them as a basis for the whole dialectical methodology. This means, for him, that the one and the multiple enter a logically necessary contradiction, antinomy, because the one cannot be without the multiple, and the other way around. The whole is the dialectical synthesis of the one and the multiple. We can see an example of this dialectical attitude in Losev’s exposition of the relation between the subject and the object. First of all, the subject, for Losev, is something, and as such it can be perceived and thought. This means that the subject is an object in the dialectical sense, because we call “an object” the entity which exists and which can be perceived and thought. In a dialectical relationship, the subject and the object mutually presuppose each other. In other words, in dialectical contemplation we constantly change the perspective of our vision, moving from the subjective to the objective side and returning again to the subject, in the noetic sphere of contemplative wholeness.3



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On the contrary, the fixation of relations between opposites is, in Badiou, more mathematical than actually dialectical, but it plays the same role that the movement from the abstract to the concrete plays in classical dialectics. In some way, it resembles (in terms of the “excluded third”—of the stage of synthesis) Adorno’s project of negative dialectics, but the difference between Badiou and Adorno consists in three moments. First, unlike Adorno, Badiou gives no advantage to the negative over the affirmative. These two sides are, rather, equal and can even be considered as a positive unity in general. Second, synthetic unity nevertheless remains in Badiou’s ontology, but as a kind of suspension between two opposites, a kind of only hypothetical being as it is not present in any of them. Actually, this synthetic unity is absent; it acts like a horizon of thought, or pure possibility that can never reach its aim or be realized.4 Generally speaking, a dialectical position (Platonic, Hegelian, Losev’s, Marxist, etc.) presupposes monism (no matter if idealistic or materialistic), i.e. the one that is not suspended. Badiou is in no case a monist. Brian Smith, commenting on the well-known position of the ontology of Being and Event that the one does not belong to being, which is plural, and that it is therefore more appropriate to speak not about the one, but about the count-as-one as a structural operation of prescribing oneness to the multiple, rightly observes: “The One, for Badiou, must remain a process, therefore the one as this operation of the presentation of the count-as-one is never itself presented; it is only the structure of presentation. It is how the multiple is presented, not what the multiple is.”5 In fact, Smith’s note may serve as a good introduction to the problem of the suspension of the one, which is, as we suppose, fundamentally important for the purpose of better understanding the phenomenology and ontology of Badiou, and which we’ll discuss further. The third moment that distinguishes Badiou from the Adornian tradition, is certainly related to historicism and subjectivism, under the strong and not always recognized influence on Badiou of Husserl’s ideas on phenomenology in the period of Logical Investigations. After all, what else are Badiou’s unchangeable eternal onto-mathematical truths, than another form of Husserl’s philosophia perennis? However, the new conception of “objective phenomenology” presented by Badiou in his Logic of Worlds is significantly different from previous versions of phenomenology, whether Hegelian (dialectical), Husserlian (transcendental), or Heideggerian (onto-hermeneutical). To understand the place and importance of objective phenomenology in the system of Badiou’s thought we must first explore the meaning of retrospective phenomenological conversion conducted by Badiou. This conversion performs the function of something similar to the procedure of phenomenological reduction in Husserl’s approach, especially in regard to eliminating the prejudice of historicism. For Husserl, phenomenological reduction is a condition of access to the analysis of phenomena and structures of consciousness “as they are” and returns consciousness “to things themselves,” but for Badiou, the phenomenological return means access to the area of ontology, and we are told about the things themselves in the language of the ontologically rethought theory of sets. To make this return possible, phenomenology should

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become objective, i.e. it should not be verified by the introspection of the subject, whether in the form of Husserlian contemplation (Anschauung) or Heideggerian Dasein. Therefore, the early Husserl’s phenomenological critique of historicism takes, in the case of Badiou, the form of an ontological critique of historicism needed to acquire access to genuine ontology, which the set theory is. Badiou makes a methodological step that we previously called “the retrospective conversion of phenomenology.” Through this step of Badiou, Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology is converted back to Husserl’s, and, next (due to its connection with the mathematically conceived objective and universal truth), is objectified in the Platonic mathematical sense, perhaps with a subsequent replacement of idealism with materialism and of phenomenology with ontological dialectics (part of which is actually the objective phenomenology). Badiou goes back beyond Heidegger to Husserl and then intends to go back beyond Husserl towards Plato, but his Platonic gesture does not (so far) reach Plato (in the way it had previously led him from Heidegger to Husserl) and suspends itself in the centre of the triangle: early Husserl— late Heidegger—the unattainable Plato. In the context of what we have stated above, let us analyze the concept of “objective phenomenology” in more detail. It begins in the third book of The Logic of Worlds, where Badiou tells that he is introducing a new concept of the object, arguing that “The main novelty of this approach is that the notion of object is entirely independent from that of subject. […] The concept of the object pertains instead to the analytic of being-there and, like the transcendental, it does not presuppose any subject.”6 Badiou calls such a construction of the object, “as it is,” “subjectless” and associates it not with subjectivity, but with the one. That brings us to the mathematization of the ontological status of the object, or, in the language of Being and Event, to the ontology of pure multiplicity. It is worth mentioning here that Badiou devoted the previous, second part of his book to the analysis of the subject as the formal set of strata and sectors, without any reference to the object. In this part of the book Badiou does not resort to phenomenology, because the latter is radically separated from the subject— the feature which, in fact, distinguishes it from Hegelian and Husserlian versions of phenomenology. Thus, his new understanding of the object leads Badiou to a new understanding of the phenomenon. It is based on a fundamental difference between the two species, or planes, of being: being-in-the-world, which is being-multiple (the empirical datum to be studied within the framework of philosophy) and transcendent being which, not being given empirically, exists in the form of stable mathematical entities or unities to be examined by ontology. Based on this distinction, Badiou locates the discourse of ontology beyond the limits of philosophy and conjugates it with mathematics. He establishes that the concept of a phenomenon is a result of the indexation or correlation of a being-in-the-world (the object here appears in a variety of differences) with transcendent being. In this transcendent being, the object is subordinated to the logical order that makes it into an epistemologically conceivable and ontologically—which, for Badiou, means also, mathematically—meaningful identity. Here, the multiple meet with the one in the merging of empirical and ontological horizons.



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Or, as he indicates, “there is an effective link between the multiple-being and the transcendental schemata of its appearance—or of its existence.”7 It should be noted that the very concept of existence in Badiou’s thought is constituted as a consequence of the presence of unity in a multiplicity. For example, claiming that this chair exists, we affirm the unity of its existence as an object with many qualities and characteristics. Simply speaking, the question of the self-identity of an object is the question of bringing the unity of its essence from the sphere of the transcendental (ontological and mathematical) into the sphere of the empirical. Ed Pluth, in his careful analysis of Badiou’s notion of “transcendental,” pays attention to the central position it takes in objective phenomenology, since “a transcendental contains or consists of a scale of degrees of resemblances and differences among appearances, and every appearance in a world is going to have a transcendental indexation.”8 At the same time, he describes it as a “hybrid” and somewhat “risky” notion on account of the difficulties associated with its traditional usage, related to the subject in the case of Kant and Husserl. In his Second Manifesto, Badiou clarifies the notion of transcendental, defining it in a more simple way as a “logical organization of this world.”9 The world itself consists of ontological objects or phenomena. Properly speaking, a phenomenon, for Badiou, is a certain “one-multiple,” an integral and in some sense dialectical unity, a kind of wholeness that is available for philosophical and ontological analysis, on the side of the multiple and on the side of the one respectively. It should be noted that a phenomenon is absolutely objective, in both possible perspectives, that of its plurality, and that of its unity. Here’s how Badiou himself describes it: “Basically, indexing is a function which links every difference immanent to the multiple to its intensity of appearance in the world. With regard to this point, the formal exposition is as simple and clear as it can be: if x and y are two elements of a being A, and T is the transcendental of the world in question, indexing is an identity-function Id(x, y) which measures in T the degree of ‘apparent’ identity between x and y. In other words, if Id(x, y) 5 p, it means that x and y are ‘identical to the p degree’ with regard to their power of appearance in the world. The result of this transcendental evaluation of differences is what we call the phenomenon. It is noteworthy that within the space of phenomenality, it is possible exhaustively to examine the question of existence as a question which is entirely distinct from that of being.”10 The latest addition of Badiou clearly stands in opposition to the onto-hermeneutical method of questioning being, and it does not look accidental, in the light of Badiou’s further exposition of the objective of phenomenology in the Logic of worlds, with the three degrees (intensities) of the object—the maximum, average and minimum. Here, we are dealing with the construction of the “transcendental functor” of the object, “a kind of operator, which associates to every degree of the transcendental the set of the elements of the object whose common characteristic is that their existence is measured by this degree.”11 In other words, within the framework of objective phenomenology, we can speak of the completeness of expression of the object’s being-in-the-world from the moment of its appearance to the peak of its existence and finally to its extinction. This, in

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turn, makes possible a more detailed analysis of phenomena as a specific unity of “one-multiple”. For a better understanding of Badiou’s new version of phenomenology, it seems necessary to clarify its relation to Husserl’s phenomenology. This especially concerns the problem of comparison between two phenomenological (or, rather, post-phenomenological) concepts: the logic of worlds of Badiou and the life-world of Husserl. Badiou’s objective phenomenology is, in our opinion, just a good example of postphenomenological thinking. First of all, we should recognize that post-phenomenological philosophy is absolutely impossible from a strictly phenomenological point of view, like the science “of trapezia, or of lions”12 for Husserl in his early period of Logical Investigations. Even to this day we can periodically hear the repetitions of Heidegger’s phrase that ontology (in fact, even philosophy) is possible only as phenomenology, evoked as a proof of the vitality of the phenomenological project. This, of course, could be valid only in the case of the overcoming of metaphysics (otherwise, the force of the metaphysical position would be still preserved for any ontology while making doubtful the claim of phenomenological ontology for exclusive truth). But this still requires, as we think, a certain attitude to the problem of the relationship between the metaphysical and phenomenological modes of contemplation. The specific attitude to contemplation had determined, in our view, the development of the phenomenological movement as a series of different post-phenomenological expositions of the initial phenomenological project. This includes not only the cases of Heidegger or Ingarden, but also the case of Husserl himself in the period of Lebenswelt. The attitude to contemplation has a fundamental meaning also for understanding the essence of Badiou’s objective phenomenology. Therefore, as a preliminary step for understanding the post-phenomenological character of objective phenomenology and its relation to the phenomenological project as a whole, it is very important to identify the value of contemplation and of a number of related concepts for the constitution of Husserl’s post-phenomenological conception of “life-world.” This means (when we take into account the way the phenomenological movement had developed), paraphrasing Heidegger, that phenomenology is possible only as its own post-phenomenological exposition, i.e. that phenomenology can continue itself through going beyond its limits. All of this is fully present in Husserl’s concept of life-world. The problem that interests Husserl, from the very beginning of his exposition of the problem of “life-world” in §33 of The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, is the question of the nature of interaction between the objective world of science and the pre-scientific life-world. This world exists and persists in scientific research, while science, or, as Husserl calls it, “objectivist science,” prefers to ignore it. However, Husserl, unlike Badiou, poses the question not about the life-world in itself, but about the alienation from this world in the European paradigm of scientific thinking. Husserl believes that the available objectivist science does not exhaust scientific knowledge in general, and that the integration of scientific knowledge with the life-world could work out rules for another, more complete and universal science.



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And yet, the life-world contains a full range of cognitive acts, whether they are related to science or not. Moreover, a confirmation of these acts should not be conducted via a scientific verification procedure, but it should be based on an existential proof of life, that is, on the initial evidence of the life-world. Of course, scientific theories cannot directly relate to the life-world, existing in a particular area of scientific ideality, but, as Husserl writes, “this or any other ideality does not change in the least the fact that these are human formations, essentially related to human actualities and potentialities, and thus belong to this concrete unity of the life-world, whose concreteness thus extends farther than that of ‘things’.”13 Thus the problem of life-world in Husserl’s thought reveals itself as a universal problem for philosophy. The universality of this problem for Husserl appears as the question of the relationship between objective scientific thought and contemplation (Anschauung).14 If we oppose them, then the result is science separated from the lifeworld, lifeless knowledge and the life-world separated from knowledge, contemplation not rising to the heights of scientific theories. But if we could correlate contemplation with objective-scientific thinking, which then will act as a form of contemplation, in that case, Husserl says, “as soon as the magnitude and difficulty of this investigation take on enormous proportions as one seriously penetrates it, there occurs the great transformation of the ‘theory of knowledge’ and the theory of science whereby, in the end, science as a problem and as an accomplishment loses its self-sufficiency and becomes a mere partial problem.”15 In our opinion, proper analysis of the life-world should be based on the five key concepts contained in the post-phenomenological project of late Husserl. These five concepts are: contemplation (Anschauung), ideality (Idealität), horizon (Horizont), positing (Setzung), and creation (Stiftung). All of them constitute the structural matrix of life-world in the wider post-phenomenological context. So, if we look from this point of view at the life-world, it is, first of all, the contemplative world. Indeed, the verification of its truth does not require chemical tests or physical experiments, because the very experience of contemplation is a great experiment or the event of cognitive contact with the truth. Not only does phenomenology tell us about this contemplative experience. Contemplation of the universal intellectual life forms lies in the center of the ontological and epistemological thought of Neo-Platonists, who regard the very life of the mind on all its levels as a form of contemplation. The hierarchical structure of the universe in Neo-Platonism is, in fact, connected to the inner essence of contemplation. According to Plotinus, the soul contemplates a living world of intellectual forms, which is, in its turn, immersed in the contemplation of the One. But what is contemplated in contemplation? Husserl suggests that in answering this question we must take into account the aspect, which is common to all kind of contemplations. He reveals that, as far as all contemplations include the sphere of meaning, they are essentially ideal. So it is ideality that becomes the next key concept of the life-world. At this point, we can compare Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world (which is not just preserved, but even amplified in Badiou’s theory, which gives

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to it a somewhat different, but still essentially Heideggerian interpretation) to the “life-world” of Husserl as an alternative phenomenological project. In fact, it is the attitude to contemplation that determines the difference in the positions of thinkers on the question of “things themselves.” Heidegger’s phenomenology, unlike that of Husserl, puts aside intellectual contemplation in its various forms of ideation, in favor of a direct presence in being (Dasein). For this, Heidegger relies on an anti-contemplative and anti–idealistic experience of Nietzschean thought, in order to overcome idealistic metaphysics in general through a critical destruction of its “ontical” basis. A quite different approach characterizes Husserl’s thought: for him, contemplation is the area of interconnection among science, metaphysics, and life-world. Husserl does not try to overcome metaphysics, but, in fact, restores contemplative idealistic metaphysics on a new refined phenomenological level. At the end of his Cartesian Meditations he reminds us of the continuing importance of “prima philosophia”, which is paradigmatic for the critique of distorted, or as Husserl calls them, “degenerated” forms of metaphysics. Jacques Derrida, when analyzing the relationship between Husserl’s metaphysics and its phenomenological critique, comes to the conclusion that this critique is metaphysical in itself and, as he also points out, “the unique and permanent motif of all the mistakes and distortions which Husserl exposes in ‘degenerated’ metaphysics, across a multiplicity of domains, themes, and arguments, is always a blindness to the authentic mode of ideality.”16 Derrida demonstrates that the very beginning of metaphysics, for Husserl, is rooted in a particular ideal of the living present, to which he relates the notion of “transcendental life,” where the language of metaphysics brings together life and ideality. Here I think a parallel to Badiou’s event would be pertinent. Attitude towards ideality requires a certain horizon. The concept of the horizon intentionality, or phenomenological horizon, was introduced by Husserl as a refinement of the problem of the adequate evidence of intentions in contemplation, which had been previously discussed in the Logical Investigations. This horizon intentionality necessarily conveys every single experience of consciousness, providing for the realization of an intentional act and creating the possibility of moving on to a following act of consciousness with a different horizon. Such a horizon, in fact, is a horizon of contemplation, which, as Husserl asserts, cannot be objectified in its turn, as it is itself a condition of any objectification. We should recall that it is precisely this quality of the essential openness of horizon that characterizes the life-world in the latest version of Husserl’s phenomenology. Roman Ingarden17 insisted on two varieties of Husserl’s idealism even before the first appearance of the “life-world,” in the text of Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. The first variety was organized around the intellectual space of the first volume of Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913). This type of idealism found its concentrated expression in the concept of “positing” (Setzung), emanating from a hidden recognition of the pre-given world. The second type appears in the late 1920s, in the Cartesian Meditations and Formal and Transcendental Logic, where the concept of “positing” shifted to the



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concept of “creation” (Stiftung) of the world. This movement from Setzung to Stiftung changes the meaning and the function of every cognitive act. This important point should be considered concerning to the concept of “life-world,” which is not simply given as something completed, but is always in the situation of creation. The situation is different in Badiou’s Logic of Worlds. Badiou presents the conception of a plurality of worlds-objects, consistently analyzed through the process of transcendental ideation. This totally excludes the unity and contemplative activity of the subject. The subject’s activity is transferred into the practical plan of militant action, which makes us reconsider the notion of the subject, as well as the structure of the subject’s actions. For Badiou, the subject is an analogon of the One which, as we remember, “is not” in the sense that it does not appear as something substantially uniform. Already at the end of the Being and Event, the subject disappears and appears, on a long way to the truth, in the Mallarméan castle of purity and absence. Supporting the Lacanian interpretation of the subject, Badiou argues: “What must always be grasped is that there is no subject, that there are no longer some subjects.”18 Of course, these words of Badiou aim to describe the disappearance of the subject from the map of ontological modernity. This critical attitude towards the subject is largely inspired by Heidegger’s critique of subjectivity—even though Badiou then proceeds to reintroduce the subject, but this happens, I believe, already at the level of “ontologia specialis,” while, at the level of “ontologia generalis,” the subject does not exist. Heidegger’s Dasein comes into existence, where Descartes’s subject is disappearing, and the afore-cited phrase of Badiou is rather appropriate in the context of the meditations of late Heidegger about Dasein. For example, in Zollikon Seminars (1965) Heidegger says: “Thus, the analytic of Da-sein has nothing whatsoever to do with solipsism or subjectivism […] The all-determining projection of being human as extatic Da-sein is already ontological so that the idea of the human being as ‘subjectivity of consciousness’ is overcome.”19 The very privileged position of Dasein in the sphere of beings ensures not only uniqueness of access to the truth of being, but also the “primordial” predisposition to being-in-the-world as existence in the sphere of shared being with others. This enables, on the one hand, comprehension of understandable (by Dasein) beings, and, on the other hand, excludes the opportunity for solipsistic or subjective interpretations of Dasein. Hereby, the question concerning Dasein and dealing with the primordial opportunity of understanding, is the question concerning the sense of being as such. Heidegger characterizes this rooting of Dasein in being as such as a “fundamental happening” (Grundgeschehen) of “inabiding” (Inständigkeit), to which man owes the possibility of his very existence as a human being, his capacity of understanding. Just as the understanding of being in the fundamental ontology aims at overcoming the subjectivity of modern metaphysics, the analytic of Dasein aims, as Heidegger says, at overcoming “the idea of the human being as ‘subjectivity of consciousness’.” In principle, we can even say that Dasein itself is a sort of pre-subjective consciousness, or rather, the very possibility of all forms of consciousness, including the subjective consciousness as subject to overcoming, not even for the sake of destroying subjectivity, but rather for the sake of destroying the prejudice of European

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metaphysics concerning the subjectivity of consciousness as the only possible form of consciousness. It is in the light of Dasein that it is for the first time possible to authentically clarify the meaning of subjectivity. Heidegger conceives the overcoming of subjectivity as the overcoming of anthropologism in understanding the truth of being. His conception of human existence is opposed to the anthropological one, because Dasein is antianthropological in principle. Heidegger’s point of view is that the precondition for future anthropology of any kind is contained in the Cartesian interpretation of the human being as a subject, though anthropology as such has nothing to do with philosophy. The analytics of Dasein demonstrates that human existence as presence in being is totally different from the notion of the human being as subjectivity or a transcendental “ego-consciousness.” Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein is interesting just for its anti-subjective and antianthropological intention, which enables raising the question of being in a new way, thereby calling into question the traditional metaphysical understanding of being and putting on the philosophical agenda the transformation of the very understanding of being. In the light of such transformation, the human entity that understands being does not think of itself as a cognitive subject who would be at the center of the classical metaphysical questioning of the entity’s being and of the being of the inquirer himself. The main paradox, but at the same time the most logically conclusive point of the analytic of Dasein, is that an ontologically understood human being has nothing in common with the subject. Thus, we can see in Heidegger’s critique of the metaphysical subject a certain prehistory of Badiou’s “there is no subject.” Badiou’s subject “is” not, in the ontological sense. Its main characteristic is absence in general being which, of course, is subjectless. Instead of it we can see only the modes of subjectivity revealing themselves in their political and ethical (but not ontological) presence in the world. The subject is the myth of (political) philosophy, but his postevental body has nothing to do with the ontological dimension of being (the true dimension of what is or is not in the metaphysical sense). Our analogy between the question of the being of the subject and Badiou’s “the one is not” also helps to discover its Heideggerian origins. According to Heidegger, a certain “not-yet” belongs to the present, while it exists, i.e. what it will be. In other words, there is a permanent lack of this future in the present. Coming to its end (“death”), Da-sein eliminates this shortage, wherewith it puts itself on a par with all other kinds of things which are not preoccupied with their own future; though together with the elimination of this “not-yet” the meaning of Dasein itself as a special existing entity is gone. Thus, we can conclude that Dasein’s permanent incompleteness, “unwholeness” that is completed only with the death of presence itself, is unavoidable. Moreover, this very incompleteness is Dasein’s peculiarity. As Heidegger indicates in Being and Time: “The ‘not-yet’ has already been included in the very Being of the fruit, not as some random characteristic, but as something constitutive. Correspondingly, as long as any Dasein is, it too is already its ‘not-yet’. That which makes up the ‘lack of totality’ in Dasein, the constant ‘ahead-of-itself ’, is neither something still outstanding in a



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summative togetherness, nor something which has not yet become accessible. It is a ‘not-yet’ which any Dasein, as the entity which it is, has to be.”20 But let us get back to the additional extension of the subject in Badiou, as compared to Being and Event, or rather to its new interpretation that arises in Badiou’s Logic of Worlds and continues in the Second Manifesto. Previously, we called it the Kantian transcendental motif. Here, it is necessary to clarify that this motif is closely related to an understanding of the role and character of the transcendental inside the conception of objective phenomenology proposed by Badiou. Objective phenomenology involves a complete exclusion (or rather, as always with Badiou, a suspension in the actual non-presence) of the subject as a kind of unity or substantial entity. However, the subject does not disappear completely, but is regarded from the perspective of the formal conditions of the possibilities of his post-evental actions and the forms of subjectivities connected with them. However, as I suggest, it can be stated that the subject, while disappearing from the ontological and phenomenological areas, arises in the areas of ethics and politics which, speaking in terms of late Husserl, essentially limit his “life-world.” Thus, Kant’s transcendental motif in Logic of Worlds is manifested primarily in the formal understanding of the subject. Badiou proposes the following definition of the subject: “The mode according to which a body enters into a subjective formalism with regard to the production of a present,”21 stating that by subjective formalism he means “the different combinations through which a body enters into a relation with a present (and hence with the postevental stages of truth). These combinations employ the operations of subordination, negation, erasure and consequence.”22 Three types of subjective formalism—faithfulness, reactivity, and obscurity— define three types of actors and three types of subjectivities that orient a “postevental body in the world.”23 They arise as different reactions to events such as revolutions. These three types are decrypted by Badiou as psychological predispositions which correspond to political positions: enthusiasm—to the revolutionary one, reactive indifference—to the conservative one, and hostile obscurantism—to the fascist one. Of course, these types of reactions can include not only the political dimension, but other possible areas, such as an area of scientific discovery or politics, love, art, etc. The most important thing here is that they are post-evental and, therefore, are not constructive of an event (in the sense of Husserl’s “Stiftung”). They are only reactions to an event that has already happened, and in this sense they need no contemplation on their way to the truth of the subject. Let us make some conclusions. It seems to us that it is possible to ascertain the presence of a general direction in the movement of contemporary thought, in the frames of which ontological theories go from the analysis of φαινόμενον, as a separate entity, to the analysis of τὸ ἡνωμένον24—a complex unity of oneness and multiplicity. The ontological consideration of τὸ ἡνωμένον may take the form of “singular–plural,” as, for example, in thinking of J.-L. Nancy who continues, in critically renewed form, the tradition of Heidegger and Derrida; or it may occur in a mathematical materialist dialectics of the “one–multiple” of Badiou, the direction of whose thought is somewhat parallel to Plato’s Parmenides. In this way, phenomenology, as a mode of intellectual

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observation and appreciation of that which appears as existing, becomes objective, and ontology becomes essentially mathematical. The mathema itself, taken in the original Pythagorean and Platonic sense, is nothing more than rational knowledge (i.e. what can be calculated and contemplated by our mind) of the relations between being and truth, in so far as they are not alienated from our living and thinking presence. The transition from the single and isolated eventual being in its proper uniqueness (Eigentlichkeit), on which the phenomenologies of early Husserl and Heidegger focused their attention, though to a different degree, and a corrective criticism of which is performed by the objective phenomenology of the Logic of Worlds—to the post-phenomenological forms of unities that are inherent to the metaphysical tradition—turns ontological thought back to its Platonic sources. As Badiou writes in his Second Manifesto: “What I’m seeking to uphold is that the authentic life is a life marked by the Idea, and that Plato’s dialectical construction can, in many respects, be interpreted along my lines.”25 Ontology as mathematics suggests, since Plato, a dialectical eidetic contemplation of these forms of unity and implies the impossibility of a consideration of pure being as separated from being-knowledge. Ignoring this is what constituted a fatal mistake of Heidegger’s ontological project, which was criticized, but not fully corrected, by the deconstruction of Derrida. This deconstruction contained in itself, as is clearly seen today, the criticism of an anti-metaphysical hermeneutical historicism and the revision of Heidegger’s attitude to metaphysics. Badiou makes the next step in returning ontology and philosophy to their pre-Heideggerian problems through his two Platonic gestures as expressed in Being and Event and Logic of Worlds with their two corresponding Manifestos. Although this return is largely inconsistent and formal, yet it contains within itself the possibility of further movement to Plato’s, Hegel’s, and Husserl’s understanding of the subject as a place of forming and of the presence of knowledge. However, this possibility, though it is visible from the perspective of the systematic philosophy of Badiou, figures in it only as a sort of unreachable horizon of thinking which is constantly postponed to the future, because both the subject and the One settle themselves in the dimension that is inaccessible to contemplative cognition. Truth, object, subject, and event perform, in the system of Badiou’s thought, the functions of formal and critical procedures, in the situation where the one exists only on the condition of its empirical non-existence, in the situation of forcing a conscious choice of the suspension of the one. It would be wrong to suppose that the retrospective conversion which is characteristic for the thought of Badiou overcomes the historicism and nihilistic eschatology of “the end of metaphysics” by a simple turning of phenomenology or dialectics back to the doubtless and unchangeable dimension of the truth of being in the sense of Plato’s or Husserl’s idealism. Plato’s gestures, in the context of Badiou’s Second Manifesto, do not mean the restitution of the one; they rather mean to suspend it in a certain space of correlative duality. This suggests the separation or release of ontology from philosophy (the project of Being and Event), and of phenomenology from the subject (that of Logic



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of Worlds). However, Badiou speaks also of the liberation of the subject in the deployment of a new political subjectivity. The phenomenon, or the object, in Badiou’s conception, reveals itself as “one– multiple,” but not as the τὸ ἡνωμένον of Platonism, since it suspends the one, essentially excluding it from the theory as an instance of contemplation and replacing it with the instance of praxis. In Badiou’s theory, we can speak about the endless aspiration of the subject to proceed from multiplicity to unity, and this tendency, in fact, serves as a guideline for all the possible practical strategies of subjectivity, organizing their diversity around the non-existent limit or the empty center of the subject, around that which is not.

Bibliography Alain Badiou, Being and Event (New York: Continuum, 2005). —Logic of Worlds: Being and Event II (New York: Continuum, 2009). —Second Manifesto for Philosophy (Malden: Polity Press, 2011). Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973). Andrew Gibson, Beckett and Badiou: The Pathos of Intermittancy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001). —Zollikon seminars: protocols, conversations, letters (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001). Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Scintillation of the Event: On Badiou’s Phenomenology, in Symposium. Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 2, 2008, 93–109. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations (New York: Routledge, 2001). —The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970). Alexei Fedorovich Losev, The Dialectics of Myth (New York: Routledge, 2003). Ed Pluth, Badiou: A Philosophy of the New (Malden: Polity Press, 2010). Brian Anthony Smith, The Limits of the Subject in Badiou’s Being and Event, in The Praxis of Alain Badiou (Melbourne: re.press, 2006), 71–101.

Notes 1 Badiou reconfirmed his principal disagreement with the ontological historicism of Heideggerian thought and with any attempt of its continuation, which took place especially in France, in the Second Manifesto for Philosophy: “As I have already stated, the philosophical position I combated twenty years ago was principally the Heideggerian position in its French variants (Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy, but also Lyotard), which consisted in announcing the irremediable end of philosophy in its metaphysical form” (Alain Badiou, Second Manifesto for Philosophy (Polity

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Press, 2011), 117). It is not accidental that Badiou speaks of metaphysics as of a necessary component of the modern dialectics, because the very idea of destruction or overcoming of metaphysics in the contemporary post-Heideggerian ontology looks at the very least doubtful. 2 Alain Badiou, Logic of Worlds: Being and Event II (Continuum, 2009), 8. 3 Alexei Fedorovich Losev, The Dialectics of Myth (Routledge, 2003), 112–13. 4 Or, as Badiou specifies it, “The fact that the one is an operation allows us to say that the domain of the operation is not one (for the one is not) and that therefore this domain is multiple: since, within presentation, what is not one is necessarily multiple. In other words, the count-as-one (the structure) installs the universal pertinence of the one/multiple couple for any situation.” Alain Badiou, Being and Event (Continuum, 2005), 24. 5 Brian Anthony Smith, The Limits of the Subject in Badiou’s Being and Event, in The Praxis of Alain Badiou (re.press, 2006), 74. 6 Alain Badiou, Logic of Worlds, 193. 7 Alain Badiou, Logic of Worlds. 195. 8 Ed Pluth, Badiou: A Philosophy of the New (Polity Press, 2010), 70. 9 Alain Badiou, Second Manifesto for Philosophy. 91. 10 Alain Badiou, Logic of Worlds. 194. 11 Alain Badiou, Logic of Worlds. 278. 12 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations (Routledge, 2001), 12 13 Edmund Husserl,. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 1970), 130. 14 David Carr, in his English translation of Husserl’s Crisis, translates “Anschauung” as intuition, quite correctly, but there is another term for intuition in German: “Intuition.” We suppose that Carr did not take into account that, though in the early phase of the development of Husserl’s phenomenological thought, Husserl himself had not discerned between these two notions, later, under the influence of Paul Natorp’s severe criticism, beginning with Cartesian Meditations, Husserl started to make a difference between them, using “Anschauung” in the meaning of “contemplation.” Such phenomenologists as Ingarden and Fink considered this as a crucial step in the development of late Husserl’s theory. The translation of “Anschauung” as “intuition,” though possible, presents Husserl’s thought rather in a Bergsonian way and does not reflect the metaphysical turn of late Husserl which was rightly noticed by Derrida in his Speech and Phenomena. 15 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences, 134–5. 16 Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs ( Northwestern University Press, 1973), 6. 17 Gesammelte Werke – Band 4: Einführung in die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls, Osloer Vorlesungen 1967, Haefliger Gregor (ed.) (Max Niemeyer 1992), especially the last three lectures on the notion of transcendental idealism. 18 Alain Badiou, Being and Event, 434. 19 Martin Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars: Protocols, Conversations, Letters (Northwestern University Press, 2001), 116. 20 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 288. 21 Alain Badiou, Logic of Worlds, 594. 22 Ibid., 595.



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23 Alain Badiou, Second Manifesto for Philosophy, 105. 24 This term, which literally means the “united one” or “combined into one,” had been used in the Neoplatonic tradition by Proclus and Damascius as a fundamental feature or intrinsic nature of any being. 25 Alain Badiou, Second Manifesto for Philosophy, 124.

7

Unity in Crisis Protometaphysical and Postmetaphysical Decisions Jussi Backman

The metaphysics of unity: its end and its onset The notion of an end of metaphysics dominated twentieth-century philosophy. The roots of the theme trace back to Hume’s skeptical attack on the metaphysics of substance and Kant’s subsequent critical attempt to redeem the metaphysical mode of knowledge—the synthetic a priori—in the form of a de-absolutized transcendental philosophy. The sense of an imminent end of metaphysical modes of thought—the demise of traditional “cosmological values” such as aim, unity, and being/truth— becomes explicit in Nietzsche’s declaration that “[…] any comprehensive unity in the plurality of events is lacking […] the categories ‘aim,’ ‘unity,’ ‘being’ which we used to insert some value into the world—we pull out again […].”1 In the wake of Nietzsche, both Carnap and Heidegger—logical positivism as well as hermeneutics and deconstruction, “analytic” as well as “continental” philosophy— declared the end of metaphysics. For Carnap, this signified the acknowledgment of the meaninglessness of metaphysical (non-empirical and non-analytic) statements and the subsequent integration of philosophy into empirical science as a technique of logical analysis.2 For Heidegger, the end of metaphysics meant the Hegelian completion and Nietzschean inversion of Platonic–Aristotelian ontological foundationalism (“ontotheology”). The outcome of the demise of metaphysics is the ultramodern age of fulfilled techno-scientific nihilism in which beings are determined by a technical framework or “setup” (Gestell) as an inherently meaningless and homogenous “standing reserve” (Bestand) of material resources, and the human being accordingly becomes a “human resource,” an “employee” of an impersonal and subjectless “ordering” or “disposing” (Angestellte des Bestellens).3 The thesis of an end of metaphysics involved the diagnosis of a beginning of metaphysics, which both Nietzsche and the later Heidegger locate in Plato. Heidegger,

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however, extends Nietzsche’s genealogy of Platonism to what can be characterized as the protometaphysical approach of the pre-Platonic thinkers. It is here that Heidegger discovers what he designates as “first beginning” (der erste Anfang)—in a determinate, idiosyncratic sense of the word Anfang, distinguished from a beginning (Beginn) in the sense of a chronological start—of metaphysical thinking. With regard to Nietzsche’s description of Platonism as a “disease”4 and to the Heideggerian idiom of “getting over” (Verwindung) metaphysics,5 it is perhaps appropriate to translate Anfang as “onset,” in a sense analogous to an “onset of illness.” In his 1942–3 lecture course Parmenides, Heidegger notes: With regard to this early thinking in the Occident, among the Greeks, we distinguish between beginning [Beginn] and onset [Anfang]. “Beginning” refers to the coming forth of this thinking at a definite “time.” […] The “onset” is what, in this early thinking, is to be thought and what is thought. […] The onset is not something dependent on the favor of these thinkers, something with which they deal in such and such a way. On the contrary, […] [t]he thinkers are the ones who are set upon [An-gefangenen] by the on-set [An-fang], overtaken by it and gathered upon it.6

The onset of philosophy, for Heidegger, is neither a starting point left behind in the later development of philosophy nor the inaugural act of beginning to philosophize, but rather the motive and the task faced by the first philosophers. An onset is literally what “sets on” or “sets about” (fängt an), in the sense of addressing or capturing one’s attention. It is not an accomplishment of the early philosophers, but rather the initial philosophical issue that preoccupies them, a fundamental experience that “sets upon” thinkers and addresses them at the beginning of philosophy, thereby “bringing about” their thinking. Anfang can thus be understood as a rendering of the Greek archē. The Greek verb archō, archein means “to begin” and “to initiate” as well as “to govern,” “to preside over,” and “to rule.” Archē, Anfang, is the onset or outset that is precisely not left behind in the ensuing development, but rather governs and directs the unfolding of whatever issues from it. For Aristotle, the archē, the guiding principle of a thing, is also its peras, its limit, as well as its telos, its end and conclusion.7 Likewise, what Heidegger means by the Anfang of philosophy is a guiding “mission” or leading “quest” of Western metaphysics, a principle that delimits and defines, governs and directs, and thereby unifies the metaphysical tradition, marking the boundary within which it takes place. The onset delineates and determines, so to speak, the scene upon which the different episodes of Western philosophy are enacted: while the respective settings of the different epochs vary, the scene as such remains the same. In this sense, the Heideggerian Anfang is in many ways parallel to Badiou’s event, the singular temporal rupture that institutes the possibility of a new “fidelity,” of a new process of delimiting a new truth in terms of the historical event.8 In this sense, the onset of philosophy is also a crisis, a krisis in the literal Greek sense of the word: a de-cision or dis-tinction (Ent-scheidung), a de-limitation or dis-crimination of the proper domain of Western thought.



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By “onset” we understand the original decisions [Entscheidungen] that sustain in advance what is essential in Western history. […] The recollection of the onset of our history is the awakening of knowing about the decision that, even now, and in the future, determines Western humanity.9

These initial decisions—the protometaphysical crisis—are situated by Heidegger in the work of three pre-Platonic thinkers: Anaximander of Miletus, Heraclitus of Ephesus, and Parmenides of Elea. Anaximander, Parmenides and Heraclitus are the thinkers of the onset [die anfänglichen Denker]. They are this, however, not because they inaugurate Western thought and initiate it. Already before them there “are” thinkers. They are thinkers of the onset because they think the onset. The onset is what is thought in their thinking.10

What makes precisely these three protometaphysical philosophers the thinkers of the first onset? In Heidegger’s reading, they are all, first and foremost, thinkers of an ultimate unity. The “necessity,” “need,” or “usage” (Brauch, to chreōn) that, in the single preserved Anaximander fragment, governs the emergence and disappearance of beings11; the “fate” or “apportioning” (Moira) that preserves the self-identity and selfsufficiency of being in Parmenides12; the discursive articulation (logos) that constitutes the fundamental belonging-together of opposites and differences in Heraclitus13—all these are, for Heidegger, names for a fundamental unity of being as presence. […] the essence of being [Seins] is determined as the essence of the unifying One: Hen. […] the Logos which Heraclitus thinks as the basic feature of presencing [Anwesens], the Moira which Parmenides thinks as the basic feature of presencing, the Chreōn which Anaximander thinks as what abides [das Wesende] in presencing, all name the selfsame [das Selbe]. Each thinker thinks, in his own way, the unity of the unifying One, the Hen, in the concealed richness of the selfsame.14

Of the three, Parmenides was in many ways the most important for Heidegger. After completing his influential conversation with Aristotle in the early 1930s, it was first and foremost to Parmenides that Heidegger turned and kept returning until his last seminar in 1973.15 In regarding Parmenides as a paradigmatic beginner of metaphysics, Heidegger follows the guidance of Aristotle and Hegel. In De caelo, Aristotle indicates that, in addition to the philosophical beginning usually attributed to Thales of Miletus, there was also another beginning, namely, the thesis of Parmenides and his Eleatic disciples that being is one, ungenerated, and immutable. For Aristotle, this is the first, albeit inarticulate and confused, step towards discovering the proper realm of what he himself calls first philosophy and what later becomes known as metaphysics: the nonphysical, nonmaterial, and suprasensible sphere of pure intelligibility that necessarily unifies and grounds all intelligible reality.16 Hegel echoes Aristotle in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy:

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As we will see, the beginning of Western metaphysics is characterized by a powerful discourse of unity, on the one hand, and by a profound crisis, on the other—a crisis in the literal sense of a sharp distinction, disjunction, or decision. Both of these features are expressed in the Poem of Parmenides, a central textual site of the first onset of the metaphysical tradition. A reconsideration and reenactment of this original crisis lies at the heart of the later Heidegger’s philosophical endeavor and his thesis of the end of metaphysics. By contrasting Parmenides’ protometaphysical situation with the Heideggerian postmetaphysical situation, it is possible to trace a genealogy of sorts of certain themes operative in this end. Moreover, it thereby becomes possible to see an analogy between the initial crisis of Parmenides and the ongoing “postmodern” philosophical crisis: both are essentially crises of unity.

The protometaphysical crisis: Parmenides’ decision Parmenides of Elea, of whom we know next to nothing as a person, lived and worked in the Greek colonies of Southern Italy around 500 bce. His hexametric poem, known by the name Peri physeōs (“On Nature”), is one of the earliest extensive, consistent, and sustained philosophical texts of which parts have come down to us.19 No version of the entire poem has been preserved, but several of its passages—apparently many of the most important ones—have been transmitted by later authors in the form of quotations. Parmenides’ Poem as we know it does not really constitute a systematic theoretical account. It is perhaps best characterized as a phenomenological indication of an initial philosophical experience of being as such (to eon) as the absolute foundation of all thinking, apart from particular and determinate present things—as pure intelligibility, as accessibility to awareness or, to use Heidegger’s term, as active presencing, abiding in presence (Anwesen). To be more precise, the Poem shows how in every possible intentional awareness of anything, intelligibility itself is co-intended. The distinctive feature of Parmenidean “phenomenology” is this exclusive concentration on phenomenality as such, apart from any particular phenomena. Speaking literally, instead of phainomena, that which shows itself, Parmenides focuses on their phainesthai, their self-showing in the widest possible sense. The topic of his Poem is alētheia, “truth,”



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but to translate this word with the etymologizing Heideggerian “unconcealment” (Unverborgenheit) involves an un-Parmenidean reference to a prior concealment. For Parmenides, as Ernst Heitsch notes, truth as alētheia rather means phenomenal and intuitive evidence as the ultimate level of manifestness in beings—the source of all their “acceptability” and “convincing” power as accessible beings.20 Parmenides’ Poem begins with a metaphorical “transcendental reduction.”21 The introduction or Proem of the text (fragment B 1) is a semi-mythical narrative in which the narrator-thinker leaves behind the “trodden path of mortals” in a chariot drawn by divine horses, and enters the domain of an anonymous goddess, “beyond the gate of the roads of Night and Day,” i.e. beyond the binary oppositions that constitute the relative, articulated reality of ordinary experience.22 Far from being angered by this transgression, the goddess welcomes him and proceeds to indicate to him the absolute truth about all things, exposing the thinker’s task in the following manner: It is necessary that you learn all things, the unwavering heart of fully convincing Evidence [Alētheia], as well as the acceptances [doxai] of mortals, in which there is no   evident conviction [pistis alēthēs]. Even so, you will come to understand this: how the things that are   accepted [ta dokounta] had to be there acceptably [dokimōs einai], throughout, all of them   precisely as beings [panta per onta].23

To continue borrowing Husserlian terminology, the “path of mortals” can be understood as designating the “natural attitude” in which finite human beings normally live their ordinary practical lives, dealing with particular, individual things in particular practical situations. The attainment of a purely “philosophical attitude,” i.e. of a concentration on pure presence as such apart from its particular determinations and instances, requires an initial break with everyday and common-sense perceptions, an epochē, as well as a transition to a “transcendental” (in the sense of “absolutely universal”) point of view. However, contrary to a reading favored by such classical commentators as Nietzsche, Eduard Zeller, and John Burnet, such a break clearly does not mean that the everyday views (doxai) of the mortals should simply be abandoned or eliminated as false or illusive opinions or semblances.24 The goddess rather emphasizes that they are to be reconsidered and reinterpreted in terms of an absolute viewpoint. The word doxa, related to the verb dechomai, “to accept” or “to receive,” literally means “acceptance,” i.e. the way in which something offers itself and seems to be, as well as the way in which it is accepted or “taken” to be.25 The doxai are that which, in the “natural attitude,” is accepted as “being”; they constitute the relative “mortal” reality or realities. The goddess’s exhortation to the thinker is that this accepted constitution must be understood in terms of an insight into the absolutely universal aspect of reality, into being-there in the sense of presence, accessibility, or acceptability—into the “there is” or givenness inherent in, and presupposed by, every acceptance of some particular thing as “being there.” This is the basic premise of the

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“phenomenological” reading of Parmenides, introduced in modern times by scholars like Karl Reinhardt and Hans Schwabl.26 However, certain essential differences between Parmenidean “phenomenology” and modern phenomenological approaches should not be overlooked. Like Husserl, Parmenides sets outs from the intentional nature of awareness, but whereas modern transcendental phenomenology makes the reflective move from constituted objects toward the (inter)subjective structures of their constitution as correlates of an intentional, intending consciousness, Parmenides’ Poem puts the weight on the “intendability” of things, their givenness as intelligible to the primarily receptive human awareness. In Kant’s doctrine of transcendental apperception, every possible awareness of an object is potentially accompanied by a reflective awareness of the “I think,” i.e. of a subject of awareness; the unifying element in all individual acts of awareness is the transcendental I or self, the subject of the act.27 Parmenides’ Poem, by contrast, shows that every possible awareness of a determinate being is potentially accompanied by an awareness of the very accessibility of beings to awareness. It is intelligibility as such that is “transcendental” in the sense of transcending all particular determinations or instances of presence. What is distinctive of mortal reality is that it consists of particular things that both are and are not, in the existential as well as the predicative senses of “to be.” First, depending on the situation, determinate things either are there or not. For example, right here and at this moment, there is a cup in my hand, but there is no coffee in the cup. Moreover, all the things that are or are not there have a merely relative selfidentity. The cup in my hand is itself, i.e. is identical with itself, but it is not coffee, it is other than coffee. In the “natural attitude” of the mortals, human beings therefore live in what Parmenides’ goddess calls, literally, an “uncritical” (akrita) state, more precisely, in a “lack of crisis,” a “lack of decision.” There is a constant internal tension between relative being-there and relative not-being-there, relative identity and relative non-identity. This makes the mortals […] an undecided [akrita] tribe, for whom being-there and not-being-there are established as the same and not-same. For all of them, their path is internally tensional  [palintropos].28

How is this indecision, this tension between being-there and not-being-there, i.e. between presence and absence, to be resolved? Here lies Parmenides’ fundamental discovery. For the pure and simple apprehending of intelligibility as such that inherently belongs to all specific acts of awareness—perceiving, imagining, remembering, or anticipating something—there is only presence in the widest possible sense. “There is no coffee in my cup” means that coffee is not present here and now for my senses. However, in order for me to be able to meaningfully express this absence of coffee and to attribute not-being-there to coffee, I must be talking about coffee. In other words, I must refer to coffee, mean coffee, intend coffee. Coffee must, in some sense, be “there” for me, present to my awareness, although not in its full or “bodily” presence but in a deficient, only partially fulfilled or empty mode. Yet even the mere



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symbolic intending of coffee, mere talk about “coffee” with a minimum of intuitive content, remains a mode of the presence of coffee. Everything that can be meaningfully intended is intendable or rather intelligible, and in this sense it is present and accessible to thinking (noos), which, for Parmenides, means simply intentional awareness in the widest possible sense, intending or “meaning” anything in any way.29 It is essential to see that nothing can be intended as completely unintelligible. Even self-contradicting notions like “round square” are simply impossible combinations of elements (such as roundness and squareness) that are perfectly intelligible in themselves. While the embodied and situated senses encounter things as relatively present or absent, as given to the senses or not given, noos in the sense of meaningful intending encounters only pure and absolute presence. This is the main outcome of fragment B 4: Behold, all alike, absent things [apeonta] as firmly present  [pareonta] to awareness [noos]; for awareness will not cut off the “is there” [to eon] from its   consistency with the “is there,” neither as being distributed everywhere and in every way along a   universal order [kosmos] nor as being combined.30

When we enter the absolute realm of thinking, the internally differing and tensional path of the mortals—the way of “there is and there is not”—thus breaks apart, resulting in a fundamental crisis, a need for decision. From the perspective of situated sensory perceiving, relative presence and relative absence intertwine inseparably and presuppose one another. However, since intelligibility as presence-to-thinking is a simple and absolute form of presence, a thinking inquiry will not tolerate internal tension or context-specificity. It rather requires the thinker to choose one of two absolute alternatives: either the absolute “there is” (absolute presence, absolute intelligibility) or the absolute “there is not” (absolute non-presence, absolute non-intelligibility). These are the famous “two ways” of Parmenides. Very well, I will tell you—and do you listen to the account and take good heed— which ways of inquiry are precisely the only ones that can be grasped by awareness [noēsai]. Firstly: how there is [estin] and how there is no lack of being-there [mē einai]— this is the path of Conviction [Peithō], for it follows Evidence [Alētheia]. Secondly: how, in any event, there is not [ouk estin ge] and how it is necessary that a lack of being-there is there— this I explicate to you as being a path entirely devoid of conviction [panapeithea]. For you will not come to know that which in any event lacks “is there” [to ge mē eon]—for it is not accessible [ephikton]— nor will you explicate it.31

Awareness as such is simply reception or acceptance of intelligible presence, and being-there is simply the givenness and disclosure of intelligible presence to awareness.

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Therefore, awareness and being-there coincide. They are “one and the same” in that they are two aspects—receptivity and givenness—of intelligibility as a unified whole. This is what Parmenides’ famous and much-disputed fragment B 3, which has been preserved without context, seems to state: For being-aware and being-there are one and the same [to gar auto noein estin te kai einai].32

Inversely, the opposite or outside of being-there—not-being-there, nothingness, non-presence, non-accessibility—coincides with the opposite or outside of awareness. Awareness is defined by being exclusively bound to presence and excluded from non-presence. It is necessary to articulate this and to grasp this [to legein, to noein te]: that the “is there” is there [eon emmenai]. For there is being-there [esti gar einai], and there is no Nothing [mēden].33

It is obvious that no active “decision,” in the sense of a free choice between two options, is involved here. The outcome of the Parmenidean decision has always already been decided; the point is to acknowledge it. Thinking is powerless to do anything other than choose absolute presence and absolutely exclude absolute non-presence. Thinking, i.e. the intentional awareness of reality as meaningful and intelligible, and its rational articulation, can have no dealings with absolute unintelligibility. The way of “there is not” is a purely negative possibility, the negation of “there is.” The only function of this absolute “there is not” is to define the domain of thinking, to demarcate the absolute boundary of thought, precisely by being excluded by thinking. This, precisely, is Parmenides’ crisis. The decision [krisis] regarding these matters is this: either there is [estin] or there is not [ouk estin]. Now, it has already been decided [kekritai], as is necessary, that the other is to be left alone as unintelligible [anoēton] and nameless—for it is not there as an evident way—and that the other is to prevail and to be there as genuine.34

The crisis between “there is” and “there is not,” between presence and unpresence, has always already been resolved. It is a movement of exclusion that must be completed in order to leave behind the path of mortals, the way of “there both is and is not,” and to embark on the way of thinking, i.e. the way of “there is,” the way of absolute presence. For at no time will you impose this: that things lacking “is there” [mē eonta] are there; no, do divert your awareness [noēma] from this way of inquiry. […] Rather, decide, through discursive articulation [krinai logō], the controversial refutation [elenchon]



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that I have articulated. Only one account of a way still remains: how There is [hōs estin].35

From here, Parmenides’ Poem goes on to unfold absolute presence through a series of signs or indications (sēmata). This happens in the long fragment B 8, in which the most important section of the first part of the Poem, known as “Truth” or “Evidence” (Alētheia), has apparently been entirely preserved. The indications are “signposts” on the way of “there is.” They do not constitute a deductive or hierarchical system, but rather point out different perspectives upon a presence that has now been absolutely cut off from anything other than presence. Presence as such is absolutely identical with itself and absolutely devoid of any internal or external differentiation. Presence is not opposed to or differentiated from any other. Presence or being is not even different from non-presence or non-being, since a difference between them would already imply a relationship. Moreover, presence has no internal distinctions. It is absolutely simple and one-dimensional; the temporal and spatial differences between context-specific situated beings do not apply to being as such. Presence is finished, self-sufficient, self-contained, self-coincident, homogenous, one-dimensional, and unique. In a Heideggerian reading, all of these indications are gathered together by the indication of being-there as constant temporal presence that as such is never specific to a particular point of time, but rather constitutes the very now-ness of every singular now: At no particular time [pot’] there was [ēn] or there will be [estai], since there is now [nyn estin], all at once, unitarily-uniquely [hen], constantly [syneches].36

This is the only time that the word hen, “one,” appears in the Parmenides fragments.37 Nevertheless, unity has always been perceived as the key theme of Parmenides’ Poem. Both Plato and Aristotle considered Parmenides’ fundamental doctrine to be precisely the thesis that being (to on) is one (hen). In his late dialogue named after the Eleatic master, Plato has Parmenides visit Athens with his associate Zeno and reluctantly teach the art of dialectic—i.e. the discursive method of accessing the ultimate unity of discursive meaning—to the Athenians. In spite of his youth, the Socrates of the Parmenides is well aware of Parmenides’ fundamental doctrine: “I understand, Parmenides […] In your poetry you maintain that the All [to pan] is one [hen], providing tokens of this appropriately and well […]”38 And indeed, Parmenides’ masterful dialectical “exercise” in the dialogue is entirely about unity and being. It seems that the question that puzzles Plato in the Parmenides, as also in the Sophist, is precisely how Parmenides’ teaching concerning the unity of being should be understood. Aristotle echoes Plato: “Deeming that that which lacks being [to mē on] is nothing besides being [to on], he [sc. Parmenides] believes that, by necessity, there is only the one [hen] being and nothing other.”39 In the Poem, the indications of the absolute unity of pure presence are followed by a return to the doxai, the mortal “acceptances.” The second main part of the

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Poem, known as Doxai, apparently consisted of an extensive cosmological study of physical reality, of which only a few brief fragments remain. However, from the existing material we can infer that Parmenides’ goddess shows here how the discursive structure of ordinary human awareness takes apart the unity of presence by naming, conceptualizing, and thereby distinguishing (krinein) beings from one another, organizing reality into binary oppositions such as light–dark, warm–cold, and male–female. Doxai is introduced at the end of fragment B 8 in the following way: With this, I cease the convincing articulation [logos] and awareness [noēma] that I addressed to you regarding evidence [alētheia]. From here, come to understand mortal acceptances [doxai], hearing the universal order [kosmos], prone to deception, that emerges from my words. For they [sc. the mortals] established two notions [gnōmai] to name shapes [morphai]; of these, one cannot be [sc. established without the other]—in this, they are led into error. They differentiated [krinein] the structure into opposites and posited indications [sēmata] apart from one another […]40

By now, however, the thinker has learned that, in spite of appearances, none of these differentiations involves a reference to any absolute difference between “there is” and “there is not.” All oppositional and disjunctive predicates according to which a thing is A but is not B are ultimately just determinate modifications of the pure and simple there is. For example, from the mortal perspective, there is darkness and there is light, and darkness is not light: but the negative fact that darkness is not there as light can be translated into the positive fact that darkness is there as not-light. But now that all things are named “light” and “night” and these names, according to their respective capacities [dynameis], are given to one thing after another, everything is at once full of light and invisible night, equal to one another, for there is nothing [mēden] that belongs to neither side.41

With the Poem of Parmenides, the initial crisis of Western thought has been resolved through the protometaphysical de-cision, i.e. the separation of presence from all references to any other-than-presence, and the indication of the absolutely universal character of pure presence as the proper realm of philosophical thought. The metaphysical project properly introduced by Plato and Aristotle subsequently transforms this protometaphysical onset into the full-fledged metaphysics of presence, into what Heidegger calls the “ontotheology” of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle’s



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study of being qua being starts by acknowledging the “transcendental” character of being. Being—like unity—is “transcendental” in the Scholastic sense of “absolutely universal”: it transcends all categories of things but cannot itself be a category, kind, or genus, since Aristotle’s theory of definition denies the plausibility of a genus that would comprehend everything.42 In different contexts, “to be” has different senses that are irreducible to any simple overarching notion.43 There is no common denominator, no principle or structure common to all instances of “to be.”44 Nevertheless, everything that is said “to be” does share the structural feature of belonging to a hierarchy of being-more and being-less: to be something potentially is to be that thing less than to be it actually45; to be an attribute of a determinate entity is an inferior sense of being in comparison to being that entity itself, and so on. Ultimately, all beings refer to the top of this hierarchy of being, to a “standard” sense of “to be”—ousia, “Entity,” the beingness of determinate, particular, and actual entities (as opposed to attributes of entities, or merely potential entities and attributes)46 and in the final instance, to a supreme entity, which for Aristotle is God (theos) as absolutely self-sufficient self-awareness.47 Ontology, the study of being qua being, thereby assumes the form of theology, the study of a supreme being, of an absolute entity that would maximally fulfill the criteria of absolute presence (simplicity, uniqueness, self-sufficiency, permanence, supratemporality, etc.) and thus function as a standard for all inferior entities. The unity of being is no longer guaranteed simply by pure presence as such, but by the supreme instance of presence.

The postmetaphysical crisis: Heidegger’s decision After Parmenides, the initial crisis of presence and non-presence recedes as a crisis. Leibniz’s question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”48—in other words, “Why is there intelligible presence rather than not?”—is only a faint reverberation. Parmenides’ crisis is left behind, but its outcome continues to serve as an outset of Western metaphysics. In a Heideggerian formulation, the “basic question” (Grundfrage) of metaphysics—“Why are there beings at all, rather than nothing?”—is supplanted by Aristotle’s ontological “leading question” (Leitfrage)—“what is being qua being, what is the beingness of any being whatsoever?”—which subsequently becomes the ontotheological question, “What is the supreme instance of beingness that provides an ideal model for all beings?”49 Ontotheology, Heidegger claims, provides the basic framework of Western metaphysics up to Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, with whom the metaphysical tradition becomes complete in the sense of being completely developed and exhausted; Marx’s “overturning” of Hegelian idealism and Nietzsche’s “overturning” of Platonism are simply the final metaphysical moves before exhaustion.50 Nietzsche’s notions of the will to power and of the eternal recurrence of the same are the last unused conceptual resources available for thinking the relationship between the human being and being within the scope of metaphysics.51 This exhaustion of metaphysics is parallel

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to the rise of positive techno-science, which renounces the metaphysical quest for absolute foundations and concentrates on producing causally explanatory theories with maximal predictive power from which technological applications ensue. Francis Bacon’s maxim, “knowledge is power,” captures what Heidegger calls the “cybernetic,” i.e. inherently technical and manipulative, character of modern scientific inquiry.52 In his work of the 1930s, Heidegger accordingly comes to envision another beginning, made possible and topical by the end of metaphysics—an “other onset” of thinking (der andere Anfang) which, he maintains, contemporary Western thought is currently entering. With Nietzsche’s metaphysics, philosophy is completed. That means: it has traversed the sphere of prefigured possibilities. […] But with the end of philosophy, thinking is not also at its end, but in transition [Übergang] to another onset.53

Unlike Badiou’s purely contingent event, which constitutes a rupture with what precedes it,54 this new onset, which demands a new philosophical “fidelity,” retains a certain continuity with the first one: it is “other” precisely to the Parmenidean onset, in the sense of decisively transgressing its boundaries, yet essentially related to it. It therefore becomes accessible only by way of a thorough reexamination of the first onset and of the metaphysical tradition that emerged from it. We need to reflect here on the onset of Western thinking and on what occurred in it and did not occur in it, because we stand at the end—at the end of this onset. That is, we are standing before the decision [Entscheidung] between the end […] and the other onset [dem anderen Anfang] […].55

The required postmetaphysical reflection on the first onset of Western thinking is characterized by Heidegger as a decision (Entscheidung)—i.e. as a crisis, a critical reconsideration and “retrieval” (Wiederholung) of the first onset that would make its limitations visible and thus allow a discrimination and delimitation of a mode of thinking that would go beyond those limitations. This also illuminates the methodological character of his thesis of the end of metaphysics. It is not a prophetical declaration that there can and will be no more metaphysics in the future. Rather, it is a specific way of drawing the limits of the heritage of the first onset from the perspective of the contemporary situation—a historical decision. Might not the future still be open to metaphysical possibilities of which we suspect nothing? Surely, we do not stand “above” history […]. The statement concerning the end of metaphysics is, of course, a historical decision [Entscheidung].56

This postmetaphysical decision, this crisis between the Parmenidean onset and its other, is a theme that ceaselessly occupies Heidegger in his work of the 1930s, particularly his esoteric “second magnum opus,” Contributions to Philosophy, written in 1936–8 but unpublished until 1989. In the first part of Contributions, Heidegger names



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several decisions (Entscheidungen) that philosophy has to face in its contemporary situation: whether the human being is to be considered as a subject (as in modern, post-Cartesian metaphysics) or as Da-sein (as in Heidegger); whether truth is to be understood as correctness and certainty (as in modern, post-Cartesian metaphysics) or as un-concealment, relative dis-closure (as in Heidegger); and so on.57 What is ultimately at stake in these decisions is the basic decision between metaphysical (Cartesian, Kantian, Hegelian, Nietzschean) modernity and a post-metaphysical postmodernity, in the literal sense of what comes after the modern epoch but is other than modernity. Why must decisions be made at all? If so, then they are necessities that belong to our epoch […]. What is decision here? Its essence is determined by the essence of the transition [Übergang] from modernity into what is other than modernity. […] Do the “decisions” come about because there must be another onset?58

In the other onset, the initial crisis that was settled by Parmenides is reopened, but not in order to simply reverse Parmenides’ decision, not just to decide for non-presence rather than presence, for the nothing rather than the something. What is essential is to rethink and re-experience this crisis as such, to decide for a crisis instead of the uncritical indifference and universal equivalence that, in Heidegger’s analysis, characterizes the ultramodern nihilistic perception of reality as inherently homogeneous and meaningless. What is originally at stake in the decision is: either decision or non-decision. But decision means coming face to face with the either–or. Thus it means that a decision has already been made […].59 The one and only decision is the decision between […] indecision and readiness for decision.60

In the contemporary situation, re-experiencing Parmenides’ initial crisis would, of course, be an essentially different experience. It would be an essentially retrospective reconsideration, informed by a narrative of the history of metaphysics in which Parmenides is only the primordial outset: “[...] returning into the first onset is [...] precisely distancing from it, taking up that distant position which is necessary in order to experience what set on in and as that onset.”61 As Heidegger puts it in one of his last seminars, the point is not to “return to Parmenides” but simply to “turn towards Parmenides” from out of the contemporary situation.62 What would be essential in such a retrospective reconsideration would be the discovery that the entire Western tradition relies, to a certain extent, on an initial de-cision and exclusion of non-presence. It has therefore always been implicitly dependent on, in the sense of being defined and delimited by, non-presence. Only because be-ing [Seyn, i.e. the postmetaphysically reconsidered and “expanded” being] abides in terms of the “not” [nichthaft] does it have non-being

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[Nichtsein] as its other. […] But whence comes the utmost confinement [sc. in the first onset] to the One and the Other and thus to the Either–Or [sc. either being or non-being]? […] this seemingly most general and emptiest distinction [Unterscheidung] is the most unique and fullest decision [Entscheidung].63

This discovery, which results from the reawakening of the initial crisis of presence in the contemporary situation, is what Heidegger basically means by the other onset of post-metaphysical thinking. In the other onset, the traditional metaphysical indifference to the nothing and the reduction of reality to absolute presence is transformed into the experience that meaningful presence as such is based on its differing from non-presence, un-intelligibility, and un-accessibility: “[…] be-ing [Seyn] abides [west] thoroughly irradiated [durchstrahlt] by the nothing [Nichts].”64 The postmetaphysical experience of the fundamentally relative, differential, and self-transcending structure of meaningful presence, of its dependency on and correlation with its other, from which it is constantly differentiated—this is the “crisis” that is to replace reliance on the fundamental absoluteness, unity, and self-referentiality of presence. One way of describing this experience is as an experience of the radical contextuality and heterogeneity of presence, of the fact that any humanly accessible intelligibility is only the focal point of a singular meaningful experience, a focal point of attention that is irreducibly determined and constituted by a transcending context or horizon of meaning that is not itself immediately present or accessible as such but remains in the background, in the margin.65 This context-specificity is what Heidegger’s work basically attempts to convey in ever-changing forms, starting with the fundamental ontological project of Being and Time which tried to articulate, by way of the temporality of Dasein’s understanding of being, how the meaningful temporal present (Gegenwart) is contextually constituted or “temporalized” in terms of the relative non-presence of the temporal dimensions of open future possibilities (the forth-coming, Zukunft) and factical situatedness (having-been-ness, Gewesenheit).66 Heidegger failed, however, to complete the intended ultimate move from this temporal contextuality of Dasein’s understanding of being (Dasein’s timeliness, Zeitlichkeit) to the correlative temporal contextuality of being itself (its temporality, Temporalität), i.e. the sense of being (Sinn von Sein).67 The conceptual impasse and consequent failure of this approach led Heidegger to undertake a new, deepened reading of the metaphysical tradition in the early 1930s. In the most developed version of his approach, Heidegger addressed the contextualizing interaction between the foreground of presence and the background of non-presence as an event, as “taking-place” (Ereignis). Whereas metaphysics thinks of presence as an absolutely self-contained and self-sufficient state, an event entails a difference between the open place or scene in which meaningfulness takes place—the Da, the “there,” of Da-sein as “being-the-there”—and the latent background context from out of which it “takes place,” that is, in terms of which it is constituted. This background is articulated in Heidegger’s 1949 Bremen lecture “The Thing” with the help of the figure of the fourfold (Geviert) of four dimensions, named “earth,” “sky,”



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“mortals,” and “divinities,” which can be tentatively interpreted as standing for the meaning-dimensions of materiality, articulated appearing and visibility, the finite and historically situated human community, and the supreme aims or “values” of such communities.68 In this articulation, a spatiotemporally situated thing is meaningful as a focal point of a nexus of references to this four-dimensional context. The context is not static or stable but a dynamic process of contextualization, a “mirror-play” (SpiegelSpiel) of reciprocal references in which the four meaning-dimensions constantly interact and are indirectly present as reflections, traces, or references in their focal intersection, i.e. in the contextualized thing.69 Since a thing is thus constantly being recontextualized, it follows that it must be understood, in each instant of its presence, as a strictly speaking singular instance of presence: “Each thing arrests the fourfold into a simplicity of the world that, in each instance, is there for a while [je Weiliges]. […] Only what is compliantly conjoined [gering] from [the fourfold] world becomes a thing once.”70 Being (be-ing, Seyn) is no longer thought as something instantiated in singular instances, but as this instantiation and singularization as such. This instantaneity or singularity (Einzigkeit, Einmaligkeit) of being is what both the temporal approach of Being and Time and the later Heidegger’s fourfold approach seek to convey. Among the postmetaphysical decisions listed in Contributions, we find the following: […] whether beings [das Seiende] take being [Sein] as what is “most common” to them [sc. as in the metaphysical tradition since Parmenides] and thus hand being over to ontology and bury it, or whether be-ing [Seyn] in its uniqueness [Einzigkeit] comes to word and thoroughly attunes beings as singular [Einmaliges; sc. as in the other onset] […].71

The Parmenidean experience of being as pure accessibility and intelligible presence, as the absolute evidence (alētheia) that is de-cided, ab-solved from any background or context, grounded the unity of being in its universality: intelligibility as such is precisely what is common to all instances of intelligible presence and, as such, it is absolutely homogeneous and undifferentiated. By virtue of this “indifference,” being is also absolutely inarticulate, indeterminate, and indefinable. But what happens to this unity when being is rethought postmetaphysically as the radical contextualization of beings and their differentiation from a context, as the generation of an intelligibility that is, in each instance, radically singular and heterogeneous? This is extensively elaborated by Heidegger in a key passage of the final part of Contributions: That Greek interpretation of on hē on [sc. being qua being] as hen [one], that heretofore unclear priority which the One and unity have everywhere in the thinking of being […]. Seen more profoundly, that unity is merely the foreground—seen from the vantage point of gathering re-presentation [sammelnden Vor-stellens] (legein)—of presencing [Anwesung] as such, precisely the foreground in which a being has already gathered itself in its “what” and “that.” Presence can be conceived of as gathering [Sammlung] and thus as unity—and

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with the priority of logos must be so conceived. But by itself, unity itself is not an originary and essential determination of the being of beings. However, the thinkers of the onset necessarily come upon this unity, because […] it is important that presencing be maintained as what is first and nearest to being’s emergence; hence hen […]. In terms of the other onset, that unshaken and never inquired determination of being (unity) can and must nevertheless become questionable; and then unity points back to “time” […]. But then it becomes clear that with the priority of presence (the present [Gegenwart]) wherein unity is grounded, something has been decided, that in this most self-evident [priority] the strangest decision [Entscheidung] lies hidden, that this decisive character belongs to the abidance [Wesung] of be-ing and indicates the uniqueness, in each instance, and the most originary historicity of be-ing itself.72

As Aristotle already clearly realized, the unity of being is not the most fundamental thesis of Parmenides; it is based on a more fundamental thesis, “the strangest decision,” namely, that being is and non-being is not.73 As a retrospective experience of this initial crisis or decision, the Heideggerian other onset addresses presence as irreducibly contextual and relative, as embedded and situated in a nexus of background dimensions in terms of which the foreground of presence becomes singularly meaningful as a heterogeneous unity, as a “onefold of four.”74 The first, protometaphysical onset of philosophy says: “There is presence and there is no non-presence. The crisis of presence is therefore always already resolved and the unity of being is safeguarded as the pure homogeneity of presence, de-cided from its other.” Against this, the other, postmetaphysical onset would say: “There is presence only in terms of relative non-presence; the unity of presence is always situated, context-specific, singular, and utterly heterogeneous. The crisis of presence, its differentiation from non-presence, cannot be overcome, since it is constitutive of presence. Thinking is rather compelled to dwell in this crisis.”

Bibliography Aristotle. Metaphysics, 2 vols, David Ross (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924). —De caelo, Paul Moraux (ed.) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1965). Pierre Aubenque, “Syntaxe et sémantique de l’être dans le Poème de Parménide.” In Études sur Parménide, Vol. 2: Problèmes d’interprétation, Pierre Aubenque (ed.) 102–34 (Paris: Vrin, 1987). Alain Badiou, L’être et l’évènement (Paris: Seuil, 1988). —Being and Event. Trans. Oliver Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005). —Second manifeste pour la philosophie (Paris: Flammarion, 2010). —Second Manifesto for Philosophy. Trans. Louise Burchill (Cambridge: Polity, 2011). Rémi Brague, “La vraisemblance du faux (Parménide, fr. I, 31–2).” In Études sur



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—Nietzsche, Vol. 2: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). —Nietzsche, Vol. 3: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Trans. Joan Stambaugh, David Farrell Krell, and Frank A. Capuzzi. David Farrell Krell (ed.) (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). —Nietzsche, Vol. 4: Nihilism. Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi and David Farrell Krell. David Farrell Krell (ed.) (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). —Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 54: Parmenides, Manfred S. Frings (ed.) 2nd edn (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1992). —Parmenides. Trans. André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992). —Basic Concepts. Trans. Gary E. Aylesworth (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993). —Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 22: Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie, Karl Blust (ed.) (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1993). —Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic”. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994). —Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 79: Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge, Petra Jaeger (ed.) (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1994). —Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. 6th edn (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1996). —Wegmarken. 3rd edn (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1996). —Was heisst Denken? 5th edn (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997). —Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 69: Die Geschichte des Seyns, Peter Trawny (ed.) (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998). —Einführung in die Metaphysik. 6th edn (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998). —Nietzsche, 2 vols. 6th edn (Stuttgart: Neske, 1998). —Pathmarks, William McNeill (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). —Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). Trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999). —Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry. Trans. Keith Hoeller (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000). —Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. Richard Polt and Gregory Fried (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). —Vorträge und Aufsätze. 9th edn (Stuttgart: Neske, 2000). —Zur Sache des Denkens. 4th edn (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000). —Sein und Zeit. 18th edn (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001). —Identität und Differenz. 12th edn (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2002). —Identity and Difference. Trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). —Off the Beaten Track. Ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). —On Time and Being. Trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). —The End of Philosophy. Trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). —Four Seminars. Trans. Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003).



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—Holzwege. 8th edn (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2003). —Unterwegs zur Sprache. 13th edn (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2003). —Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 15: Seminare, Curd Ochwadt (ed.) 2nd edn (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2005). —Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008). —Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh, rev. Dennis J. Schmidt (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010). —Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 35: Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie: Auslegung des Anaximander und Parmenides, Peter Trawny (ed.) (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2011). Ernst Heitsch, Parmenides: Die Fragmente (Zürich: Artemis & Winkler, 1974). Klaus Held, Heraklit, Parmenides und der Anfang von Philosophie und Wissenschaft: Eine phänomenologische Besinnung (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980). Uvo Hölscher, Anfängliches Fragen: Studien zur frühen griechischen Philosophie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968). Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). —Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Jens Timmermann (ed.) (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998). Simon Karsten, Philosophorum Graecorum veterum operum reliquiae, Vol. 1.2: Parmenidis Eleatae carminis reliquiae (Amsterdam: Müller, 1835). Donald B. Kuspit, “Parmenidean Tendencies in the Epoché.” Review of Metaphysics 18, no. 4 (1965): 739–70. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Vol. 6, Carl Immanuel Gerhardt (ed.) (Hildesheim: Olm, 1960). —Philosophical Essays. Ed. and trans. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1989). Mitchell Miller, “Parmenides and the Disclosure of Being.” Apeiron 13, no. 1 (1978): 12–35. Alexander Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides: A Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in drei Bänden, 3 vols, Karl Schlechta (ed.) (Munich: Hanser, 1954–6). —The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968). —Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). —Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Trans. Marianne Cowan (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1998). G. E. L. Owen, “Eleatic Questions.” Classical Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1960): 84–102. Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian “Metaphysics”: A Study in the Greek Background of Mediaeval Thought. 2nd edn (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963). Plato. Platonis opera, Vol. 2, John Burnet (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901). Plutarch. Plutarchi moralia, Vol. 6.2, Max Pohlenz and Rolf Westman (eds) 2nd edn (Leipzig: Teubner, 1959). Karl Reinhardt, “The Relation between the Two Parts of Parmenides’ Poem.” Trans. Matthew R. Cosgrove and Alexander P. D. Mourelatos. In Alexander P. D. Mourelatos

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(ed.) The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, 293–17 (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1974). —Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie. 4th edn (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1985). Hans Schwabl, “Sein und Doxa bei Parmenides.” Wiener Studien 66 (1953): 50–75. Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965). Willem Jacob Verdenius, Parmenides: Some Comments on His Poem (Groningen: J. B. Wolters’ Uitgevers-Maatschappij, 1942). Jean Zafiropoulo, L’école éleate: Parménide-Zénon-Mélissos (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1950). Eduard Zeller, A History of Greek Philosophy from the Earliest Period to the Time of Socrates, Vol. 1. Trans. Sarah Frances Alleyne (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1881). —Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Vol. 1.1: Allgemeine Einleitung, Vorsokratische Philosophie, W. Nestle (ed.) 6th edn (Leipzig: Reisland, 1919).

Notes 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Aus dem Nachlaß der Achtzigerjahre” [1884–8], in Karl Schlechta (ed.) Werke in drei Bänden, Vol. 2, (Hanser, 1956), 678 (Der Wille zur Macht n. 12); The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (Vintage Books, 1968), 13. (Translation modified.) 2 Rudolf Carnap, “Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache,” in Erkenntnis 2, no. 1 (1931): 237–8; “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language.” Trans. Arthur Pap, in A. J. Ayer (ed.) Logical Positivism (Free Press, 1959), 77. 3 Martin Heidegger, “Überwindung der Metaphysik” [1936–46], in Vorträge und Aufsätze, 9th edn (Neske, 2000), 76–8 [hereafter, VA]; “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy, trans. Joan Stambaugh (University of Chicago Press, 2003), 93–4; “Das Ge-Stell” [1949], in Petra Jaeger (ed.) Gesamtausgabe, vol. 79: Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge, (Klostermann, 1994), 24–32 [hereafter, GA 79]; “Die Frage nach der Technik” [1953], in VA, 24; “The Question Concerning Technology,” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (Garland, 1977), 20. 4 Nietzsche, “Jenseits von Gut und Böse: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft” [1886], in Karl Schlechta (ed.) Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 2 (Hanser, 1955), 566; Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin, 1973), 14. 5 Heidegger, “Überwindung der Metaphysik,” in VA, 68–75; “Overcoming Metaphysics,” 85–91; “Zur Seinsfrage” [1955], in Wegmarken, 3rd edn (Klostermann, 1996), 416–25 [hereafter, WM]; “On the Question of Being.” Trans. and (ed.) William McNeill, in Pathmarks (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 314–21. 6 Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 54: Parmenides [1942–3], (ed.) Manfred S. Frings, 2nd edn (Klostermann, 1992), 9–11 [hereafter, GA 54]; Parmenides. Trans. André Schuwer



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and Richard Rojcewicz (Indiana University Press, 1992), 7–8. (Translation modified.) 7 Aristotle, Metaphysics, vols 1 and 2, (ed.) David Ross (Clarendon Press, 1924), Δ.17.1022a4–5, 10–12; Θ.8.1050a7–9. 8 Cf. Alain Badiou, L’être et l’évènement (Seuil, 1988), 193–475; Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (Continuum, 2005), 173–435. On the Badiousian notion of the event, cf. Keti Chukhrov, “Genesis of the event in Deleuze: from the multiple to the general,” and Boyan Manchev, “The One: composition or event? For a politics of the becoming,” Chapters 4 and 10 respectively in this volume. 9 Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 51: Grundbegriffe [1941], (ed.) Petra Jaeger, 2nd edn (Klostermann, 1991), 15, 21; Basic Concepts, trans. Gary E. Aylesworth (Indiana University Press, 1993), 13, 17. (Translation modified.) 10 Heidegger, GA 54, 10; Parmenides, 7. (Translation modified.) 11 Anaximander 12 B 1, in Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Griechisch und deutsch, vol. 1 [1903], 6th edn (Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1951) [hereafter, DK]. 12 Parmenides, DK 28 B 8.36–8. 13 Heraclitus, DK 22 B 50. 14 Heidegger, “Der Spruch des Anaximander” [1946], in Holzwege, 8th edn (Klostermann, 2003), 369, 371 [hereafter, HW]; “Anaximander’s Saying,” in Off the Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 278, 280. (Translation modified.) Cf. Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik [1935/53], 6th edn (Niemeyer, 1998), 104 [hereafter, EM]; Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Richard Polt and Gregory Fried (Yale University Press, 2000), 145. 15 Heidegger’s key texts on Parmenides include Gesamtausgabe, vol. 22: Die Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie [1926], (ed.) Franz-Karl Blust (Klostermann, 1993), 62–70; Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Indiana University Press, 2008), 52–8; Gesamtausgabe, vol. 35: Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie: Auslegung des Anaximander und Parmenides [1932], (ed.) Peter Trawny (Klostermann, 2011); EM; Introduction to Metaphysics; GA 54; Parmenides; Was heisst Denken? [1951–2], 5th edn (Niemeyer, 1997) [hereafter, WHD]; What Is Called Thinking? Trans. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (Harper & Row, 1968); “Moira (Parmenides VIII, 34–41)” [1952], in VA, 223–48; “Moira (Parmenides VIII, 34–41),” in Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (Harper & Row, 1984), 79–101; “Der Satz der Identität” [1957], in Identität und Differenz, 12th edn (Klett-Cotta, 2002), 9–30; “The Principle of Identity,” in Identity and Difference, Trans. Joan Stambaugh (University of Chicago Press, 2002), 23–41; “Seminar in Zähringen 1973,” in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 15: Seminare, (ed.) Curd Ochwadt, 2nd edn (Klostermann, 2005), 372–407 [hereafter, GA 15]; “Seminar in Zähringen 1973,” in Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul (Indiana University Press, 2003), 64–84. 16 Aristotle, De caelo, (ed.) Paul Moraux (Les Belles Lettres, 1965), III.1.298b12–24. Cf. Metaphysics Α.3.983b20–21. 17 G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen: Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte, vol. 7: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 2: Griechische Philosophie, 1: Thales bis Kyniker [1825–6], (ed.) Pierre Garniron and Walter Jaeschke (Meiner, 1989),

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52–4; Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825–6, vol. 2: Greek Philosophy. Trans. Robert F. Brown (Oxford University Press, 2006), 57–8. (Translation modified.) 18 G. W. F. Hegel, Werke, vol. 14: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 1, (ed.) Karl Ludwig Michelet (Duncker und Humblot, 1833), 296–7; Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1: Greek Philosophy to Plato. Trans. E. S. Haldane (University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 253, 254. (Translation modified.) 19 The tradition that regards Heraclitus as earlier than Parmenides is without a solid basis. It is based on the unreliable and conventional biographical dates indicated by Diogenes Laertius (Vitae philosophorum, vol. 1–2, (ed.) H. S. Long [Oxford University Press, 1964], IX.1.23) and Plato (Parmenides, in Platonis opera, vol. 2, (ed.) John Burnet [Oxford University Press, 1901], 127b1–c5). Since neither Heraclitus nor Parmenides makes an identifiable reference to the other in their preserved fragments, it is probable that they were roughly contemporaries and unaware of one another. 20 Ernst Heitsch, Parmenides: Die Fragmente (Artemis & Winkler, 1974), 90–8. 21 Cf. Donald B. Kuspit, “Parmenidean Tendencies in the Epoché,” Review of Metaphysics 18(4) (1965): 747: “Not merely is there a parallel between Husserl’s epoché and Parmenides’ journey, but Parmenides’ journey clarifies the character of the attitude of epoché. Each shows what happens to the original philosopher on his way to radical reality in strict science.” It should also be noted that the skeptical tradition of the Middle Platonic Academy regarded Parmenides as one of the early representatives of the skeptical methods of suspending judgment (epochē) and refraining from acceptance (akatalēpsia); see Plutarch, Adversus Colotem, in Plutarchi moralia, vol. 6.2, 2nd edn, Max Pohlenz and Rolf Westman (eds) (Teubner, 1959), 1121F3–A5. 22 Parmenides, DK 28 B 1.1–21. 23 Parmenides, DK 28 B 1.28–32. Even though the reading panta per onta, “all of them precisely as beings,” is attested in most manuscripts, it was rejected as impossible by most modern interpreters in favor of the variant panta perōnta, “pervading all things”; cf. Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton University Press, 1965), 214n. 32. Panta per onta was preferred by Jean Zafiropoulo (L’École éleate: Parménide-Zénon-Mélissos [Les Belles Lettres, 1950], 295–7), who was followed by G. E. L. Owen (“Eleatic Questions,” Classical Quarterly 10(1) [1960]: 84–9), W. K. C. Guthrie (A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2: The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus [Cambridge University Press, 1965], 9), Alexander Mourelatos (The Route of Parmenides: A Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments [Yale University Press, 1970], 214–16), and Rémi Brague (“La vraisemblance du faux (Parménide, fr. I, 31–2),” in Études sur Parménide, vol. 2: Problèmes d’interprétation, (ed.) Pierre Aubenque [Vrin, 1987], 44–68). 24 Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen” [1872/73], in Werke in drei Bänden, vol. 3, (ed.) Karl Schlechta (Hanser, 1955), 381–95; Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Regnery, 1998), 69–90; Eduard Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, vol. 1.1: Allgemeine Einleitung, Vorsokratische Philosophie [1844], 6th edn, (ed.) W. Nestle (Reisland, 1919), 724–5; A History of Greek Philosophy from the Earliest Period to the Time of Socrates, vol. 1, trans. Sarah Frances Alleyne (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1881), 605–7; John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy [1892], 4th edn (Adam & Charles Black, 1946), 182–7.



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25 On the doxai as “acceptances,” see Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides, 194–221; A. H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides (Van Gorcum, 1986), 170. Cf. Heraclitus, DK 22 B 28: “Indeed, acceptances [dokeonta] are what even the most reliable [dokimōtatos] man knows and maintains.” 26 Karl Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie [1916], 4th edn (Klostermann, 1985), 18–88; “The Relation between the Two Parts of Parmenides’ Poem.” Trans. Matthew R. Cosgrove and Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, in Alexander P. D. Mourelatos (ed.) The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays ( Anchor Press, 1974), 293–317; Hans Schwabl, “Sein und Doxa bei Parmenides,” Wiener Studien 66 (1953): 57. Heidegger (Sein und Zeit [1927], 18th edn [Niemeyer, 2001], 223n. 1; Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh [State University of New York Press, 2010], 214n. 39) credits Reinhardt with having been the first one to grasp the correlation between Alētheia and Doxai in Parmenides’ poem. 27 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [1781/87], (ed.) Jens Timmermann (Meiner, 1998); Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge University Press, 1998), B 131–32, B 134–35, B 134n. 1. 28 Parmenides, DK 28 B 6.7–9. 29 Cf. Willem Jacob Verdenius, Parmenides: Some Comments on His Poem (J. B. Wolters’ Uitgevers-Maatschappij, 1942), 10: “[…] the original meaning of noos does not imply any distinction between thinking and perception, and Parmenides does not make such a distinction here either. He uses the word in a wide and neutral sense which is best rendered by ‘knowing.’” 30 Parmenides, DK 28 B 4.1–4. 31 Parmenides, DK 28 B 2.1–8. Reading, with Proclus, ouk estin ge, “how, in any event, there is not,” and ephikton, “accessible,” instead of Simplicius’ ouk estin te and anyston, “feasible.” I interpret, with Hermann Fränkel (“Parmenidesstudien,” in Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen aus dem Jahre 1930: PhilologischHistorische Klasse [Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1930], 188n. 3), Tarán (Parmenides, 33–6), Mitchell Miller (“Parmenides and the Disclosure of Being,” Apeiron 13(1) [1978]: 22), Pierre Aubenque (“Syntaxe et sémantique de l’être dans le Poème de Parménide,” in Études sur Parménide, vol. 2, 110), and others, Parmenides’ unspecified use of as subjectless and absolute: “(There) is.” 32 Parmenides, DK 28 B 3. 33 Parmenides, DK 28 B 6.1–2. Néstor-Luis Cordero (“Les deux chemins de Parménide dans les fragments 6 et 7,” Phronesis 24 [1979]: 24n. 1; “L’histoire du texte de Parménide,” in Études sur Parménide, vol. 2, 19–20) has shown that Diels’s and Kranz’s version to legein te noein te, “[it is necessary] to articulate and to grasp,” is mistaken; in fact, the manuscripts have to legein, to noein te, “to articulate this and to grasp this.” 34 Parmenides, DK 28 B 8.15–18. 35 Parmenides, DK 28 B 7.1–2, 4–6, 8.1–2. 36 Parmenides, DK 28 B 8.5–6. Cf. Heidegger’s comment in GA 22, 67–68; Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy, 56: “The now […] is always constant in every now. Being is constant presence. The now is the same in every now. Being is, in what is, constantly without opposition or difference.” 37 The feminine form mia can be found in B 8.54. 38 Plato, Parmenides 128a4, a5–b1.

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39 Aristotle, Metaphysics I.5.986b28–30. 40 Parmenides, DK 28 B 8.50–56. This passage is quite ambiguous, but I follow the reading of Simon Karsten (Philosophorum Graecorum veterum operum reliquiae, vol. 1.2: Parmenidis Eleatae carminis reliquiae [Müller, 1835], 41, 113–14), Uvo Hölscher (Anfängliches Fragen: Studien zur frühen griechischen Philosophie [Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968], 103–7), Klaus Held (Heraklit, Parmenides und der Anfang von Philosophie und Wissenschaft: Eine phänomenologische Besinnung [de Gruyter, 1980], 552–3), and Coxon (The Fragments of Parmenides, 219–21), according to which the discursively articulated mortal perspective is irremediably twofold and referential: “light” cannot be conceived without “night” and vice versa. 41 Parmenides, DK 28 B 9.1–4. 42 Aristotle, Metaphysics Β.3.998b22–27. 43 Aristotle, Metaphysics Γ.2.1003a33–b19, Δ.10.1018a35–36, Ε.2.1026a33–b2, Κ.3.1060b32–33, Ν.2.1089a7–10. 44 Aristotle, Metaphysics Λ.4.1070a31–5.1071b2. 45 Aristotle, Metaphysics Θ.8.1049b4–1051a33. 46 Aristotle, Metaphysics Γ.2.1003b6–10, Ζ.1.1028a13–b6; Λ.1.1069a19–21. I borrow the translation of ousia as Entity from Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian “Metaphysics”: A Study in the Greek Background of Mediaeval Thought [1951], 2nd edn (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963), 137–54. 47 Aristotle, Metaphysics Ε.1.1026a19–32; Λ.6.1071b3–7.1073a13, 9.1074b15–1075a10. 48 G. W. Leibniz, “Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison” [1714], in Carl Immanuel Gerhardt (ed.) Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Vol. 6 (Olm, 1960), 602; “Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason,” in Philosophical Essays, trans. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Hackett, 1989), 210. 49 On the distinction between the leading question (Leitfrage) of metaphysics and the “basic” or “fundamental question” (Grundfrage), see, e.g. Heidegger, EM, 1–39; Introduction to Metaphysics, 1–54; Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65: Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) [1936–8], (ed.) Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Klostermann, 1989), 73–7, 171, 232–25 [hereafter, GA 65]; Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Indiana University Press, 1999), 51–4, 120, 164–6; “Die Wille zur Macht als Kunst” [1936–7], in Nietzsche, vol. 1, 6th edn (Neske, 1998), 64–6 [hereafter, N I]; “The Will to Power as Art,” in Nietzsche, vol. 1: The Will to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 67–9. 50 Heidegger, “Die Wille zur Macht als Kunst,” in N I, 202–13; “The Will to Power as Art,” 200–11; “Brief über den ‘Humanismus’” [1946], in WM, 335–6; “Letter on ‘Humanism,’” trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, in Pathmarks, 256; “Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens” [1964], in Zur Sache des Denkens, 4th edn (Niemeyer, 2000], 63 [hereafter, ZSD]; “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” in On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 57. 51 Heidegger, “Die Wille zur Macht als Kunst,” in N I, 1–4; “The Will to Power as Art,” 3–6; “Überwindung der Metaphysik,” in VA, 72, 77–86; “Overcoming Metaphysics,” 89, 93–102; “Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen” [1937], in N I, 415–23; “The Eternal Recurrence of the Same,” in Nietzsche, vol. 2: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. David Farrell Krell (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 198–208; “Der Wille zur Macht als Erkenntnis” [1939], in N I, 425–32, 585–94; “The Will to



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Power as Knowledge,” in Nietzsche, vol. 3: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics, trans. Joan Stambaugh, David Farrell Krell, and Frank A. Capuzzi (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 3–9, 150–8; “Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen und der Wille zur Macht” [1939], in Nietzsche, vol. 2, 6th edn (Neske, 1998), 1–22 [hereafter, N II]; “The Eternal Recurrence of the Same and the Will to Power,” in Nietzsche, vol. 3, 159–83; “Der europäische Nihilismus” [1940], in N II, 177–229; “European Nihilism,” in Nietzsche, vol. 4: Nihilism, trans. Frank A. Capuzzi and David Farrell Krell (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 147–96; “Nietzsches Metaphysik” [1941–2], in N II, 231–300; “Nietzsche’s Metaphysics,” in Nietzsche, vol. 3, 185–251; “Nietzsches Wort ‘Gott ist Tot’” [1943], in HW, 209–67; “Nietzsche’s Word: ‘God is Dead,’” in Off the Beaten Track, 157–199; “Die seinsgeschichtliche Bestimmung des Nihilismus” [1944–6], in N II, 361/ “Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being,” in Nietzsche, vol. 4, 197–250; WHD, 35–47, 77; What Is Called Thinking?, 90–110; “Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra?” [1953], in VA, 109–19/ “Who Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?” in Nietzsche, vol. 2, 222–30. 52 Heidegger, “Das Ende der Philosophie,” in ZSD, 64–5; “The End of Philosophy,” 58. 53 Heidegger, “Überwindung der Metaphysik,” in VA, 79; “Overcoming Metaphysics,” 95–6. (Translation modified.) 54 Alain Badiou, Second manifeste pour la philosophie (Flammarion, 2010), 78; Second Manifesto for Philosophy, trans. Louise Burchill (Polity, 2011), 81. 55 Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 45: Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausgewählte “Probleme” der “Logik” [1937–8], (ed.) Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Klostermann, 1984), 45; Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic”, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Indiana University Press, 1994), 108. (Translation modified.) 56 Heidegger, “Der europäische Nihilismus,” in N II, 179–80; “European Nihilism,” 149. 57 Heidegger, GA 65, 90–1; Contributions to Philosophy, 62–3. 58 Martin Heidegger, GA 65, 92; Contributions to Philosophy, 63–4. (Translation modified.) 59 Martin Heidegger, GA 65, 102; Contributions to Philosophy, 70. (Translation modified.) 60 Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 69: Die Geschichte des Seyns [1938–40], (ed.) Peter Trawny (Klostermann, 1998), 61. (My translation.) 61 Heidegger, GA 65, 185; Contributions to Philosophy, 130. (Translation modified.) 62 Heidegger, GA 15, 394; Four Seminars, 77. 63 Heidegger, GA 65, 267–8; Contributions to Philosophy, 188–9. (Translation modified.) 64 Heidegger, GA 65, 483; Contributions to Philosophy, 340. (Translation modified.) 65 On the elemental as such a background context of beings, cf. Susanna Lindberg, “Elemental Nature as the Ultimate Common Ground of the World Community,” Chapter 11 in this volume. 66 Heidegger, SZ, 323–31; Being and Time, 309–16. 67 Heidegger, SZ, 19; Being and Time, 18. 68 Heidegger, “Das Ding” [1949], in GA 79, 11–12, 17–21; “Das Ding” [1950], in VA, 164–6, 170–5; “The Thing,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Harper & Row, 1975), 172–4, 177–82. On the fourfold, see also “Die Sprache” [1950], in Unterwegs zur Sprache, 13th edn (Klett-Cotta, 2003), 9–33 [hereafter, US]; “Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 187–210; “Bauen Wohnen Denken” [1951], in VA, 139–56; “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 143–51;

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“Das Wesen der Sprache” [1957–8], in US, 157–216; “The Nature of Language,” in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (Harper & Row, 1982), 57–110; “Hölderlins Erde und Himmel” [1959], in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, 6th edn (Klostermann, 1996), 152–68; “Hölderlin’s Earth and Heaven,” in Elucidations of Hölderlins Poetry, trans. Keith Hoeller (Humanity Books, 2000), 175–208. For an early version of the fourfold, see GA 65, 310; Contributions to Philosophy, 218. 69 “Das Ding,” in GA 79, 18–21; “Die Gefahr” [1949], in GA 79, 46–8; “Die Kehre” [1949], in GA 79, 74; “The Turning,” in The Question Concerning Technology, 45; “Das Ding,” in VA, 172–3; “The Thing,” 178–9. 70 “Das Ding,” in GA 79, 20, 21; “Das Ding,” in VA, 173, 175; “The Thing,” 181, 182. On the uniqueness and singularity of being, cf. Jean-Luc Nancy’s essay “More than One,” Chapter 1 in this volume. 71 Heidegger, GA 65, 90–1; Contributions to Philosophy, 63. (Translation modified.) 72 GA 65, 459–60; Contributions to Philosophy, 323–4. 73 Aristotle, Metaphysics Α.5.986b28–30. 74 “Das Ding,” in GA 79, 17–21; “Das Ding,” in VA, 172–3; “The Thing,” 177–8.

Part III

The Singular Plural

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Vegetal Democracy The Plant that is not One Michael Marder

We, the other plants What is “the plant that is not one”? Does it, in keeping with the explicit negation of its unity and identity (in a word: unicity), still respond or adequately correspond to the form of the question that begins with “what is …,” ti esti? And what remains of democracy, when the subject, who or which is no longer human or primarily human, no longer counts as one, a self-contained unit to be tabulated following a meaningless decision it occasionally renders? The plant that is not one: the one (plant) that is not one. Least of all will the labyrinthine semantics of this quasi-sentence lead us to the multiplicity of plants belonging to the same species, or to so-called “biological diversity,” the dizzying variety of plant species threatened, today more than ever before, by rapid deforestation and by the prevalence of monocrops that militate against vegetal multiplicity in the name of agricultural efficiency and market considerations. Looking past systems of botanical classification and the ecological emphasis on biodiversity, it should still be possible to discern something of the seed in the plant that is not one, albeit a “something” quite different from an actualized potentiality: the plurality of the singular, the seed that is already many, the plant that is already legion. The plant, qua plant and qua this living growing being, is not one. The pine tree I am glancing at now from my window is not one but already more or less than one— an infinity of dispersed growths that do not amount either to the ideal unity of the concept (the plant as a metaphysical chimera that overrides and subsumes actually existing vegetal beings) or to a form of life gathered into an organismic totality (a self-sufficient, independent entity, whose parts are subordinated to the demands of the whole). The idea, the image, the eidos of the organism, wherein the concept recognizes itself as though in a living-breathing mirror, and the dialectical philosophy proper,

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wherein life is subsumed and idealized, prove to be impotent when confronted with vegetal life. That the plant is not one means, above all, that it is not one with itself; though it may be amenable to certain kinds of learning detectable in “plasticity in growth” or “adaptively variable growth,”1 it does not in so doing establish a self-identity, nor relates to itself, nor comes back to itself across the space of external difference. But if plant’s distance to itself is never completely bridged, if its mode of existence precludes a circular closure or enclosure in itself typical of animal and of human souls, then it holds the potential for welcoming everything and everyone the plant is not in the bio-existential fissure constitutive of its being. To tap this potential, which quietly underlies the more obvious kinds of energy flowing through plants, is the task of vegetal democracy, in which we, humans, are also invited to participate as a species of the plant that is not one. Of the classical Aristotelian categories, those most pertinent to vegetal ontology, containing the seeds of the political arrangement in question, are quantity, relation, and “substantive existence” or being (ousia).2 The many parts comprising what seems to be a self-contained plant do not behave in the same way as organs subordinated to the demands of an animal’s body; rather, as miniature plants within an infinitely divisible plant, they form a multiplicity provisionally held together by a common nutritive mode and ready, at any moment, to fall apart or to take root elsewhere, in a different context and configuration. The assemblage of plant parts, indistinguishable from vegetal wholes, takes the shape of a contingent and external articulation, free from the ironclad ties of the inner essence. Hence, one might say that the plant as a single being is not and, moreover, that plants are because the (one) plant is not. What Aristotle concludes apropos of the human (“human unit […] being one man and not more than one”3 — a statement silently presupposed by all subsequent democratic regimes, where every vote counts as neither more nor less than one, at least in principle) is utterly inapplicable to the plant that is always more than one and that exists as a community of relatively separate beings. At the apex of what, to ancient philosophy, will have appeared as chaotic and anarchic being, an ontology without either principle or order, the plant stands in violation of the law of non-contradiction, in that, not being one with itself and missing the essential core of any “self,” it turns out not to be fully itself. “The plant is not one” comes to signify “X is not X.” In the plant, the so-called kingdoms (the political overtones of this taxonomic category are yet to be assessed), classes (the political-economic meaning of this term should not go unremarked) of beings, and, even, distinctions between natural and artificial things collapse only to produce the uncanny figure of that which has been produced, brought forth, or grown, sprouted, and, in any case, engendered, generated. Observe, in this context, that the Greek word for the plant, phuton, means, more broadly, growing things or creatures and, thus, encompasses animals and human beings as well.4 Phusis as the totality of growth, generation, begetting, and passing away grows out of the same root as the plant before its Latin immobilization and the dilution of its sense in “that which is enchained to a place,” “that which is driven into the ground,” the planted, plantare. A part of nature



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oversteps its own boundaries and metonymically expresses the entire thrust of phusis, the movement of growth prior to its gathering in a totality that, dynamically, makes itself known in an ensemble of the vectors of life or in a harmony of destinations.5 Plants, despite their utter singularity on the hither side of the concept, are generic and capacious enough to accommodate all other “growing things,” to lend their name to non-vegetal, or not primarily vegetal, creatures, so much so that in certain Eastern philosophies they are deemed to be the fifth element, along with the classical elements of earth, water, etc.6 Rather than follow the—admittedly radicalized—Liberal program of broadening the scope of participation in society and politics to include all living creatures, those who take their cues from and are guided by the ontology of plants (“Follow the plants!” as Deleuze and Guattari recommend7) re-join the community of growing beings on the terms of the phutoi themselves. Defying formal logic, the plant that is not one turns out to be not a plant at all, or not only a plant. The living figures of non-identity and difference (to themselves), phutoi are growing things, multiple vectors and dispersed destinations of growth, clashing with each other sometimes even within a particular phuton that temporarily draws them together. Given that humans, animals, and plants—to mention but a few such “vectors” rendered static and thing-like in metaphysically inspired biological systems of classification—are growing beings, the question is not how growth, identified in its totality with phusis, is differently modulated in dissimilar phutoi. Nor is it, stricto sensu, appropriate to ask, keeping vegetal democracy in mind, how do (or can, or should …) humans participate in the movement of growth first stirred in plants. Instead, we ought to come to terms with the idea that human growth takes place in the difference of the plant to itself, in the “not one,” in the non-identity of the plant that invigorates and enlivens the very possibility of radically heterogeneous lives. If the plant is an instance of alterity so absolute and unprecedented that it exceeds the relativized opposition between the same and the other, if the plant in itself is the other, then it includes us, human beings, those other plants Plato once called “heavenly” (ouranion),8 folding the entire difference between immanence and transcendence into the figure of vegetation. But—let it be stated already—in the absence of conceptual and organismic interiority, it includes the human phuton on the outside, in the more or less superficial proliferations of growth devoid of completion and closure. We are, in other words, nothing but the difference of the plant to itself, supplements and frivolous additions to the plant that is not one. In the tradition of ancient “psycho-politics,” where various strata of psukhē are aligned with distinct political regimes,9 vegetal democracy is the democracy of growing beings, of phutoi that or who participate in one of the most basic movements of the vegetal soul, to threptikon, that made its first appearance on the philosophical scene in Aristotle’s De Anima. Further explication of vegetal democracy will require a sustained meditation on the meanings of growth and, especially, on its capacity to function as a hinge between different growing beings. For now, let us merely recall, incidentally, that whenever we say that “plants grow” (for example, “an olive tree grows in my backyard”) we mean to say, in the same breath, that they are physically situated or rooted in a determinate locale, that they live, increase in extension, and propagate

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there. For an olive tree, to grow is to be (not one), to live, to attain new heights, and to propagate in a certain place; its growth is semantically broader than the meaning of its being and is, thus, paradoxically, the ontic ground of vegetal ontology. Whether the same is the case for all other growing beings remains to be seen. Formally, in Aristotle’s thought, growth is the quantitative principle of movement, arkhēn kinēseōs, inherent to natural things.10 It proceeds incrementally, by additions and at the same time substitutions (prosthesei), bringing with itself more of X. The principle of this principle, we might say, is the wholly affirmative and open-ended conjunction “and … and … and …,” which is not equivalent to “one plus one plus one […]” and which Hegel will later dismiss as the linear “bad infinity” that falls short of the totality. With the emphasis on the unlimited, however, we reach the outermost edges of Aristotelian philosophy, where “it is impossible that an animal or a plant [zōon hē phuton] should exceed all limits in greatness or smallness” and where, moreover, “if the constituents of a thing are unlimited [apeiron] both as to magnitude and as to kind [kai kata plēthos kai kat’ eidos], we cannot know what that thing is.”11 Taking animal constitution for a model, Aristotle imputes an organic, organismic relation between the parts and the whole to plant nature, treating the two kinds of living beings as though they were interchangeable (“an animal or a plant”). A sense of symmetry and proportion between the whole and its parts overwrites the uniquely asymmetrical and thoroughly incomplete ontology of plants devoid of unity and identity. Granted: one may never really know what that thing called phuton is if, in its infinite proliferation, it eludes all enclosures, definitions, and delimitations. One may, as a consequence, never be able to narrow down the exact scope of vegetal democracy that inherits from growing beings their indefiniteness. Yet, what the philosopher condemns as not-knowing, experienced in the face of the apeiron of plant growth, is—far from being a symptom of deficiency—symptomatic of the refusal to objectify this dynamic “principle of movement,” to arrest it in the inquiry into what this thing is, ti esti. The absence of identity from the plant that is not one entails its non-identifiability—at least in so far as conceptual and formal logical philosophical apparatuses are concerned—and, therefore, its unobjectifiability and the indefiniteness of its ontology. Analogously, phusis in its entirety, ontologically and etymologically akin to phuton, cannot be reduced to an object, as Merleau-Ponty notes: “Nature is an enigmatic object, an object that is not an object at all; it is not really set out in front of us. It is our soil [sol]—not what is in front of us, facing us, but rather, that which carries us.”12 The enigma of nature is that, like the plant, it is the figure of non-identity, “an object that is not an object,” an ensemble of the vectors of growth, a ground without ground, forever shifting underneath our feet. Our soil, nature is that on which we grow; that which carries us, it is what steers the movements of our growth; not objectified, not separated from us, it is everything with which and everyone with whom we grow. And the same, mutatis mutandis, applies to plants that grow on, toward, and with others. Growing-on, growing-toward, growing-with: a de-formalization of Aristotle’s definition of growth into these three moments will disclose, at once, something about the plant that is not one and the political upshots of its ontology.



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Growing-on Both the literal ground—the soil—and nature as “that which carries us” are evocative of that which underlies and supports different kinds of vitality and growth, namely hupokeimenon, or sub-stance (literally, what lies beneath or stands below) in its most crude and material signification. It is quite obvious that plants grow in the soil, though the aerial roots of strawberries and banyan trees, as well as bamboo shoots and mangroves flourishing in water, are not unheard of. In any event, the material ground of vegetal life is elemental and the meaning of growing-on is, with respect to the elements, drawing nourishment from, subsisting on. But the world of the elements is not the only ground for growth; there is still another ground that shadows and doubles the first, rendering it abyssal. In the plant that is not one, plants grow on plants, symbiotically, even when it comes to what passes for a single vegetal being, for instance, this orchid. (Hegel should be credited with arriving at this conclusion in his Philosophy of Nature, where he infers that “the whole plant is rather the basis [Boden, ground] for these individuals [the distinct parts of a plant] than a subjective unity of members.”13) And they do so without relating either to themselves or to others, without finding an essential ground in the dispersed body that supports their growth and that consists of inorganic elements as well as of other plants. It is, indeed, a matter of utter indifference, from the vegetal standpoint, what or who the plant grows on, which is why the procedure of grafting, or the implantation of one vegetal tissue onto another, is generally so successful. Growing-on is, at bottom, at the abyssal “bottom without bottom of things,” as Derrida was fond of putting it, a growing-with, an infinite chain of additions and substitutions responsible for the interaction of plants, free of self-reflexivity, with a vast community of organic and inorganic entities and processes. Thus, the democracy of growing beings, vegetal democracy does not de facto exclude whatever does not grow—the elemental world as the first ground for growth—but, on the contrary, equalizes, by positing them on the same plane, the organic and the inorganic supports for life. The “ground for growth” can also refer to a foundation, understood as reason, cause, ratio, fond, Grund for vegetal vitality. Would not this interpretation border on an absurdity? Doesn’t growth, like existence itself, take place in the absence of reasons and of a deeper meaning that would underpin the extended, finite, material sense indistinguishable from the corporeality of growing beings? Growing is onticoexistential being, being as becoming. It proceeds from the middle, issues from what already exists, oblivious to the first “because.” Even here, however, it is impossible to dissociate the groundlessness of a growing thing (which is to say, a multiplicity of growths that constitute it) from the contingent community wherein it is situated. “It is not enough to say that ‘the rose grows without reason’,” writes Jean-Luc Nancy. “For if the rose were alone, its growth without reason would enclose within itself, by itself, all the reason of the world. But the rose grows without reason [croît sans raison] because it grows along with [croît avec] the reseda, the eglantine, and the thistle—as well as with crystals, seahorses, humans, and their inventions. And the whole of being, nature,

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and history do not constitute an ensemble the totality of which would or would not be without reason. The whole of being is its own reason […]”14 The economy of this dense passage from Being Singular Plural is exemplary in its sensitivity to vegetal democracy, to the conjunction of growths (some of them purely vegetative, others proceeding by inorganic accretions, still others verging on ideality), to the non-totalizing view of nature and of being as such. Only as a gentle rejoinder to the author of these lines should we object that the clause “if the rose were alone” couldn’t stand because, by itself, the rose is not alone since it is a juncture of multiple vectors of growth. The rose that is not one would fail to contain the reason of the whole world and would remain “without reason” thanks to the “with” that it is. The symmetry of growing-without, croît sans […], and growing-with, croît avec, in Nancy’s text is revealing, to the extent that the absence of reason in a single being—a plant—is supplemented with the germination of sense in the articulations of this being with other beings caught up in the processes of growth. Each growing thing, each phuton, grows on the community of beings it grows with, such that this whole assemblage does not amount to a totality invested with, or divested of, reason. The cause, ratio, or Grund is not merely displaced or projected onto being or nature as a whole; sense is not prefabricated but grows in between growing beings, in the différance of plants. The final line of the citation, which I have terminated somewhat abruptly—“The whole of being is its own reason […]”—may be taken for an endorsement of a certain Aristotelian idea of auto-teleology, of the highest telos and the most secure ground as an end-in-itself, striving toward and intending nothing but itself. But this is not at all what Nancy means, continuing as he does: “[…] it has no other reason, which does not mean that it is itself its own principle and end, exactly because it is not “itself.”15 The same goes for the plant that is not one, the plant that, consequently, is also “not ‘itself ’” and that is not “its own principle and end,” even there where plants grow on plants. To comprehend the stakes of this ambiguity plaguing the groundlessness of growing-on, we should resort to another exceptional facet of the Aristotelian theory of causality: the automaton. It is certainly not by chance (tukhē) that a given plant germinates from a corresponding seed (e.g. an apple tree grows out of an apple seed), but it is a matter of pure accident where the seed falls and whether it sprouts or not. The ground of growth, if there is one, is precisely the automaton, which, as Aristotle notes, derives from auto to matēn, “in itself for nothing, to no purpose.”16 The plant that is not one is, indeed, nothing in itself, because it is entirely outside itself, growing in and as the other. So, too, the multiplicity of vegetal democracy comes together automatically, for nothing, in the absence of a deeply buried, essential foundation, wherein dispersed growths would be gathered into a simple unity. Dissemination, dispersion, waste, throwing the seed for nothing, throwing it away—all these name the conditions of possibility for the growth of anything whatsoever, conditions of possibility that are coextensive with growth’s impossibility and untraceable to a single point of origin. And yet, both the Pythagoreans and much later Hegel have postulated that the ideal-geometrical basis, on which “things that grow” (phuomena) grow, is the seed seen as “analogous to the unit and point [to men sperma analogon monadi kai sēmeiō].”17 (Hegel echoes this view, giving it a dialectical twist, in the course of the transition from



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mineral to plant natures in Philosophy of Nature: “Plant-life therefore begins where the vital principle gathers itself into a point and this point sustains and produces itself, repels itself, and produces new points.”18) According to these theoretical accounts, the being-one of the plant hearkens back to its pre-history, so to speak, where “the vital principle gathers itself into a point,” or into something analogous to a point. Philosophically conceived, what growing things grow on, in light of this analogy, is an ideal foundation that has supplanted the groundlessness of vegetal life: the One of geometry, a simple and indivisible point, self-sufficient and independent (“this point sustains and produces itself ”). It is only thanks to the point’s negation of itself that the line (grammē) of the stem dialectically emerges at the commencement of growth, where we may begin counting up to two. The idealized plant, then, grows on a geometrico-dialectical foundation—furnished at the threshold and at the close of metaphysics—which assumes the shape of the simplest spatial representation of the One, the point of vitality, soon to be transcribed into temporal ideality, the atom of the pure present, the point of the Now. And so the analogy is extended: growth unfolds on the basis of what does not grow, i.e. the point that does not overstep the confines of its unitary identity; time arises on the basis of what is exempt from time; and community springs up on the basis of original unity, the “monarchy” of a principle gathered into a single point. But what of the others of the vegetal other, the other phutoi, namely humans? One would have to wait for the first yields of post-metaphysical thought to encounter an inverse analogy, whereby a de-idealized plant would become the ground upon which human phutoi grow. Hence, Novalis’s intriguing statement in Logological Fragments, recapturing the ancient proximity between phusis and phuton: “On nature, as a closed body—as a tree—on which we are the blossom buds [Über die Nature als einen geschlossenen Körper—als einen Baum—woran wir die Blütenknospen sind].”19 Growing on the “closed body” of nature, humans are plants (more specifically, blossom buds) growing on a plant (the tree), which, nevertheless, is conceived, in keeping with the metaphysical view of vegetal life, as “closed” (geschlossen), obscure, withdrawn from interpretation and understanding but also neither related to itself nor turned to the exteriority of its other. What is involved in growing on a “closed body,” if not opening this body up to the outside, as a blossom bud with its fragrance and color opens the plant to the senses and thus delivers it to the realm of spirit? Imagined in the form of buds, human beings are still nothing less than the spiritual completion and crowning achievement of nature, as opposed to radically egalitarian growths placed on the same footing as the vectors of other phutoi. While applauding this daring attempt to recover the ancient Greek nexus binding the plant to nature as a whole, we should remember that what metaphysical thought represents as the closure of the plant, unrelated to itself or to its other, is the very openness connoted by “vegetal democracy.” The alterity of the plant is not caught up in the nets of self-negation, which is indispensable for the dialectical construction of subjectivity, let alone of a community. Novalis tacitly agrees, in the continuation of the fragment I have just cited, that nature—or, better yet, natures written in the plural— operate as though they were infinite proliferations of vegetal life: “Natures [Naturen],

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on the one hand, are beings [Wesen]—such that the whole serves the parts—that the parts are ends in themselves [die Glieder Zwecke an sich sind]—the parts are independent.”20 The priority of parts over the whole and the dissipation of a coherent whole in an assemblage of independent parts are the effects of growing beings in general and of plants in particular. It is thus especially unfortunate that Novalis fails to sustain his meditation in the same promising key but, instead, introduces into it a rupture, contrasting the vegetal democracy of “natures” to the human community (“With persons, on the other hand—the contrary relation obtains.”21) A remarkable thing happens here: the human buds grow on a plant, to which they are opposed in the very logic and directionality of their growth. Dissimilar to plants, persons are the interdependent, thoroughly interrelated parts in a political totality, in the context of which they can never be “ends in themselves.” By relinquishing their independence as “natures,” as plants growing on a plant from which they would be easily separable, the human buds gain a certain measure of independence from nature, that is to say, from the dispersed tendencies of growth that take place in the difference of the plant to itself. At best, Novalis implies, the life of plants flashes before our eyes an image of Kantian ethics, too weak to lay the ground for political organization. For vegetal democracy, this weakness, precisely, represents a newly gained strength, the promise of uprooting politics from its foundation in oppositional formations. If plants grow “without reason” and without a single governing principle or cause, then the political arrangement that would be consistent with their ontology is not a democratized monarchy, but an anarchic democracy. Novalis, on the other hand, obliterates the qualitative difference between monarchy and democracy, detecting in the latter political regime the same sovereign head, albeit “a head made up of many minds.”22 An image-concept of multiplicity gathered into the One, the hydra of democracy remains tethered to a principle, an arkhē, a single head split into many minds, perhaps schizophrenic but nevertheless majestic in its highest authority. What this image-concept ignores is precisely the headless, acephalic, unprincipled, an-archic vegetal democracy (for, whenever one comes across the acephalon, one already treads on the ground of the phuton), more monstrous than Novalis’s allusion to the democratic hydra because, in it, in acephalic and anonymous growth, we fail to recognize ourselves altogether. And, failing to recognize ourselves, we mime the plant that is not one.

Growing-toward It would be fair to conclude that Novalis remains ambivalent with respect to the vegetal legacy lodged in the political organization he describes. So, in another fragment, he writes: “The basis of all eternal attachment is an absolute tendency in all directions. Herein lies the possibility of a universal republic.”23 The “absolute tendency in all directions,” betraying uncontrollable proliferation, will be readily recognized as a salient feature of plant life that grows toward the light of the sun as much as the darkness of the soil, toward the dryness of air as much as nutrient-rich moisture. Growing-toward,



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a tending that expresses phenomenological intentionality at its most embodied and concrete, typically presupposes a unitary destination, a coherent telos that is fulfilled so long as this movement reaches its preordained target. A multi-directional tendency, however, shatters the ideal concept of intentionality; one could even say that the plant is not one because its destination, destiny, or future is not one, for it does not aim at a single thing wherein its being would be realized. Novalis’s “universal republic,” synonymous with vegetal democracy, is thus rooted in the untamable proliferation of the plant, a tendency that is absolute because absolved from all limits and, ultimately, free from the particularity of a species, a genus, a kingdom, a nature, a singular vector of growth, a destination. It conveys the liberty of the plant, free from a self, from its self, from itself. In classical metaphysics, too, the destination of the plant is split, divided into external and internal moments: 1) self-production, the spatial tending of a vegetal being toward the light of the sun; and 2) reproduction, the temporal striving toward the telos consummated in fruition, in the seed from which another like it emerges. (But what exactly is meant by the self-production and self-reproduction of a being that lacks a unified, self-related, coherent self?) Dialectically viewed, these antithetical moments are, of course, synthesizable into a higher unity, given that “[i]n the plant, these processes [of self-production and reproduction] are not so distinguished as they are in the animal, but coincide; and this precisely is the source of the difficulty in expounding the nature of the vegetable organism.”24 A single destination, a universal destiny is predetermined for the vegetal being that will either live up to its proper “end” or perish, coming to its end in non-germination or non-fruition. The dialectical unification of the already much impoverished metaphysical re-orientations of vegetal growth—the ordering and integration of what we may call “vegetal intentionality” into a coherent whole—is, without a doubt, a violation of the ontology of plants and the stamp of ideality imprinted onto their vitality. The anarchic multiplicity of growths, loosely comprising the plant that is not one, gets suppressed as it is conceptually organized by the one and only destination of their proliferation: the light of the sun. For it is in the light, Hegel suggests, that the plant finally becomes itself, becomes one. To be sure, it becomes one only when it is “drawn out of itself [äußerlichen Selbsthinausgerissen] by the light,”25 when it physically ceases to be one with itself, is expelled from the material shell of its self and set on the path toward the ideal Self. “The self does not become for the plant, but the plant becomes a self only in the light; its lighting-up, its becoming light [ihr Erleuchten, Lichtwerden] does not mean that the plant itself becomes light, but that it is only in light [am und im Licht] that it is produced.”26 Growing-toward-the-other is brought back into the fold of mediated unity, where the plant grows toward its ideal Self, becoming-light in this process interpreted from the perspective of Spirit. Yet, even if the idealized destination of vegetal growth were its one and only target, this goal would have never been reached despite the infinite striving of plants outwards and toward it. Vegetal growth is infinite, open-ended, and essentially incomplete, not only because the light of the sun, which is neither a possession nor a finite resource, cannot be captured once and for all (though for Goethe, Hegel, and Lorenz Oken,

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among others, color symbolizes the objective capturing of light in the flower) but also, and more importantly, because, for the plant to survive, its extension upward must be supplemented with the root’s burrowing deep into the dark recesses of the earth, growing in and toward obscurity. The plant as plant is produced in growth that tends absolutely in all directions—at once as a lighting-up and a dimming-down. Its “universal republic,” vegetal democracy, is universality without the One, having broken (with) the unity of ground that characterizes pure idealism, as much as materialism; and it is a republic, res publica, in the sense that it directs itself toward the inappropriable (light, vitality as such) and excludes, by virtue of being “not one,” the very principle of appropriation.27 Returning to Hegel’s text, we witness how, without consciousness but with a clear unity of purpose, the dispersed multiplicity of growths are organized and channeled in a single direction, anticipating the political community of those other plants, the humans, who will join together in a state: “Just as a human being in his relationship to the State, which is his ethical, substantial nature, his essence and the absolute power over him, becomes in this very identity independent and for himself, a mature and substantial being, so too does the plant in its relation with light give itself its particularity, its specific and robust quality.”28 Whatever it is that one grows toward, be it the light or the State, one—the one—strives toward and finds oneself in the medium of universality that dispenses to one one’s proper being, substantiality, and particularity. This is because it is presupposed, without further ado and without explanation, that what or who grows is the one (plant or human being), which merely attains its more robust, more fully developed, more mature version in the One toward which one strives. But even in the context of Hegelian Naturphilosophie such a presupposition is unjustified, given that the plant lacks subjective unity, self-relationality, or organic interdependence of parts subservient to the whole. “One grows” elliptically means “one grows toward oneself,” masking the indomitable “they grow,” the dispersed multiplicity of growths devoid of a single destination. This dialectical trick, substituting “one” for “they,” paves the way for the naturalizing analogy—“so too does the plant […]”—that turns the political state into a spiritual given, the essential condition of possibility for becoming, on a par with, if not higher than, the light. In relation to the state, we are all, Hegel implies in the best traditions of philosophical heliocentrism, sunflowers, seeking our orientation from and turning toward this luminous source of our mature being. As political animals, we still are or remain the other plants, spiritualized and sublimated, on the condition that the plants, too, lose their quality of being absolutely other and rediscover themselves in the ideal unity of light. Vegetal democracy, in contrast, exposes itself to darkness as well as to light, unconscious being as well as consciousness, which may, as a whole, turn out to be nothing but an excrescence, an outgrowth of what I have elsewhere termed “plant-thinking.” Thus understood, the plant, which does not grow toward one thing but toward many, does not have one, circumscribed, determined nature, where nature is both the ground that carries phutoi and a coherent destination of their growth, both their thrownness and their projection. The most typical and, indeed, prototypical thing of nature, sharing nature’s root etymologically and otherwise, animated from within by



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the movements of growth, is nothing natural, since it is, as pseudo-Aristotle writes in De Plantis, “an incomplete thing,” ateles pragma,29 a thing without a telos or a purpose, though certainly not without use. Far from a deficiency, with which it has been all too often associated in the history of Western thought, the oversaturation of teloi, the excess of the destinations of growth pursued by the plant that is not one, denatures vegetal being that is generic to the extent that its soul, with the capacity (dunamis) for growth, binds itself to, inhabits, and sets in motion—if not haunts—the bodies of all living beings.30 Phutoi do not possess one nature and are not limited to a determinate form of life; growing toward dissimilar things, they a posteriori, i.e. with reference to the orientations of their growth traced back to the orienting beings as such, escape inscription in and circumscription to the logic of phusis. Any telos whatsoever may stand in for the underdetermined (and, at the same time, overdetermined) purpose of plants. Any telos may function as a supplement, as an addition to and a substitute for the vacant place of vegetal teleology. The plant that is not one is quodlibet ens, ample enough in its goodness to offer hospitality to everything that lives (and not only! think of how it turns itself into a passageway to the mineral and inorganic substances that— lacking an interiority, be it a stomach or a deeply seated soul—it channels without appropriating them) because it does not occupy any space and has no proper place reserved for it on the teleological ladder. Our enigmatic participation—at once ontological, biological, and political—in plant vitality, which blurs the difference between the part and the whole (and, therefore, problematizes the very idea of participation), resembles the dynamics of democracy in the writings of Claude Lefort, where the lacuna of power left over from absolute monarchy, rather than being decisively occupied by any one political actor, group, or party, persists, in the last instance, as undetermined.31 The indeterminacy of Lefortian democracy is not its purely abstract and formal (because disincarnated) feature but that which forever defers the double closure of identity and identification of the body politic. Now, the place of absolute difference is similarly pre-occupied by the plant that, instead of laying claim to it, extends its hospitality to all other living beings. The supplementary character of everything and everyone hosted in the fissure of vegetal non-identity—that, like life itself, cannot be filled once and for all—invalidates the hierarchy of ends and the typology of growths. The growing ateles pragma affects everything that endeavors to complete its missing end with the purposelessness of plant life. The absurdity of human existence, emphasized in certain strands of existentialism, is but the trace of vegetal a-teleology. Vegetal democracy implies the egalitarianism of ends, not to mention the equality between that which has a determinate telos and that which seems to eschew teleology altogether. Having no proper end, the plant has no relation to “having” and lives outside the purview of appropriative subjectivity, which aims to grasp and take a hold of itself in what would be the first usurpation of “one’s place under the sun.” Exempt from teleological constraints, it welcomes everything and everyone in the fissure of identity that it is. Other to itself, it grows toward the other excessively, without moderation, in the absence of an internal limit or measure. So much so that its destiny or its nature, which is nothing in itself, becomes indistinguishable from that of the other.

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Growing-with The reader will be right to infer that growing-with is the ontico-phytological transcription of the Heideggerian Mitsein, being-with—a crucial attribute of existence adopted to the vegetal mode of being. Indeed, the existential sense of nature as a “liaison” of the destinies and destinations for growths, already apparent in the Stoic interpretation of phusis,32 shines through this transcription. We will do well to remember, none the less, that the plant’s bond of sociality is unbound from itself and that vegetal growing-with happens in the spacing of difference, the non-privative being-without that underlies the liaison of growths. The plant that is not one grows with the other only because it does not grow with itself; being with the other is non-transcendentally possible for a vegetal being that is not, in any case, with itself. Growing-with is the expression of growing-without, an infinite chain of supplementations to the absence of vegetal unity and identity. As such, it is to be rigorously distinguished from growing-together and, especially, from the notion of co-evolution—e.g. of honeybees and the clover flowers they pollinate—where new capacities for adaptation are mutually shaped thanks to the ongoing contacts of distinct species. If growing-with really expresses growing-without, dissemination, and being-not-one of and at the origin, then the conjunction of growths comprising, on the one hand, what appears to be a single, discrete being and, on the other, a community of beings must be understood in terms of its inherent falling apart into a non-totalizable multiplicity. There is no growing-with without falling apart: such is the axiom of vegetal democracy. In discussions of “coexistence in nature”, derivative from the more elemental phenomenon of growing-with, the temptation to project a particular human sociopolitical arrangement onto the nonhuman world is at its strongest. Perhaps one of the most common projections is informed by the worldview of classical Liberalism, detectable for example in the text of Georges Canguilhem, “The Living and its Milieu.” “Vegetation grows in natural ensembles,” Canguilhem writes, “in which different species limit each other reciprocally and where, in consequence, each contributes to creating an equilibrium for the others. The ensemble of these plant species ends up constituting its own milieu.”33 The reciprocal limitation of each individual plant or species by all the others and the birth of “natural balance” from the sum total of such limitations are the unmistakable features of liberalism transposed onto the world of plants. Vegetal equilibrium is achieved thanks to the mutual restrictions that keep in check the otherwise unlimited capacity for growth, while co-existence becomes possible only after the imperialism of the individual has been moderated. Although “the ensemble of plant species” acquires the character of a collective subject, related to and transforming its own milieu, vegetal sociality does not, on this view, preexist the species that limit each other’s claims to space. But were Canguilhem to take into account the non-identity of plants, the independence of their “parts,” etc., would he still have been able to maintain a strong emphasis on the mutual limitation of beings that are, in and of themselves, multiple and that do not set themselves apart from their milieu? And, more pertinently for us, what is the fate of “growing-with”



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in a community—the natural ensemble of species—constituted through the mutual limitation of its members that, in the first instance, grow against each other? In this respect, it would be unforgivable to pass in silence Nietzsche’s famous projection of the will to power onto the world of plants. Avowing the notion of growth as resistance, as growing-against, he asks in a fragment composed at the end of the 1880s, “For what do the trees in a jungle fight each other? For ‘happiness’?—For power!—”34 Accepting and, to some extent, radicalizing Liberal premises, though not their conclusion, Nietzsche imputes a certain imperialism of the self to plants (the trees in the jungle) and construes vegetal life, as well, in terms of a struggle. There is no chance for the establishment of a natural equilibrium in the Nietzschean universe, so long as it is alive, that is to say, so long as the tension of life prompts living beings to grow against something or someone else and, therefore, to grow in power. Growing-with, if at all possible, can only assume the form of growing-with-against: an allied opposition to another quantum of power, the one against the other. The plant that is not one—to which Nietzsche is, on occasion, attuned more than anyone else—is irretrievably lost in the jungle of vegetal beings fighting for power. A potentially infinite series of articulations within and between phutoi is the cornerstone of vegetal ontology as much as of the democracy predicated upon it. Growth without either friction or opposition is the mark of beings that do not objectify themselves on the way to becoming subjects, do not oppose themselves to themselves or to their milieu, live in perpetual peace. And it is this principle of pure affirmation, which at the limits of language can be named only thanks to a multiplication of negations and non-dialectical negations of negations, that animates the political arrangement we might learn from plants. But how to think growing-with free of oppositionality? Once again, the plant that is not one points toward the outlines of an answer.35 Only a being that does not oppose itself will, by the same token, not oppose the other: a being without the unity of consciousness and self-consciousness, a being whose subjectivity does not exist “as the One that pervades the whole [als die durchdringende Eine des Ganzen].”36 In the plant, the subjective One has not yet pierced or penetrated (durchdringende) the whole, which, consequently, is not one. The whole is not whole—which is not to say that it is incomplete—because it does not know itself as one; it grows without knowing it, without knowing itself as the one set up against the other. The plant grows with the other “because […] the subjective One of the plant is fused with its very quality and particularization”37; rather than the One pervading the whole, it is the sensuous, qualitative dimension of vegetation that fuses with the entire plant, which falls apart, is particularized, practically analyzed into a multiplicity of growths, such that this analysis is its very life. The unconscious tendency of vegetal existence is the end product of the plant’s subjective “particularization” but also a sizeable aspect of animal and human psychic living. In so far as I am unconscious, I am not one—I, the other plant, grow with the other. Here, at this very moment, vegetal democracy approximates Derrida’s democracyto-come, uncoupled from the sovereignty of the conscious subject who renders decisions and is highly attentive to the non-totalizable multiplicity of the unconscious:

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“What is to be done with what is called the unconscious, and thus with the spaced divisibility […] it imposes on the sovereign identity? How many voices, how many votes [voix], to an unconscious? How are they to be counted?”38 If count them we must, these votes and voices, or non-votes and non-voices (since the plant has no voice, while the voice of the unconscious is, most often, not heard, not registered by the ideal subjectivity that hears itself speak) will count for “not-one,” either more or less than one. The “spaced divisibility” of that part of the psyche which is not in touch with itself, does not feel itself, and, above all, does not feel itself feel, is the reminder of its vegetal provenance, of its extended character overwhelming the ideality of the ego, the intrusion of res extensa into the sphere of subjectivity. The one who votes is, like a vegetal being, not one. The growing-with (and the growing-up) of democracy hinges on fostering the capacity to live with the countless voices, and especially with the dispersed multiplicity of non-voices and non-identities, that target us both from within and from without: to fall apart in growing-with.

Bibliography Aristotle, Physics (Harvard University Press, 1987). Georges Canguilhem, Knowledge of Life. Trans. Stephanos Geroulantos and Daniela Ginsburg (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Trans. Michael Naas and Pascale-Anne Brault (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Nature: Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part II. Trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). Claude Lefort, L’Invention Démocratique: Les Limites de la Domination Totalitaire (Paris: Fayard, 1981). Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969). Dalsukh Malvania, Jayendra Soni, and Carl H. Potter (eds) The Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophies: Jain Philosophy, Vol. X, Part 2 (New Delhi: Motital Banarsidass, 2007). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France. Trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003). Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert Richardson and Anne O’Byrne (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000) 86/109. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968). Novalis, Philosophical Writings. Ed. and trans. Margaret Mahoney Stoljar (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997). Plato, Timaeus, in: Plato, Dialogues, IX (Harvard University Press, 1975). Anthony Trewavas, “Aspects of Plant Intelligence,” Annals of Botany, 92(1), 2003, 1–20.



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Notes 1 Cf. Anthony Trewavas, “Aspects of Plant Intelligence,” Annals of Botany, 92(1), 2003, 1–20. 2 Aristotle, Physics V, 1, 225b. 3 Aristotle, Physics III, 7, 207b. 4 The Russian rasteniye (plant) is similarly derived from the verbs rasti (to grow), rastit’ (to tend to a growing being, whether a plant or a child), and vyraschivat’ (to cultivate; literally, “to grow out”). 5 On nature as destination, see Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, trans. Robert Vallier (Northwestern University Press, 2003), 7. 6 On the plants as the “fifth element” in Jain philosophy, cf. Dalsukh Malvania, Jayendra Soni, and Carl H. Potter (eds) The Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophies: Jain Philosophy, vol. X, part 2 (Motital Banarsidass, 2007), 165. 7 Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 8 Plato, Timeaus, 90a. 9 The case in point of such an alignment is, of course, Plato’s Republic. 10 See, for instance, PhysicsII, 1, 192b. 11 Aristotle, Physics I, 4, 187b. 12 Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 4. 13 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Nature: Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part II, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford University Press, 2004), 303. 14 Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert Richardson and Anne O’Byrne (Stanford University Press, 2000), 86, 109. 15 Nancy, Being Singular Plural, 86. 16 Aristotle, Physics II, 6, 197b. 17 G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge University Press, 1963), 255. 18 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 303. 19 Novalis, Philosophical Writings. Ed. and trans. Margaret Mahoney Stoljar (SUNY Press, 1997), 80. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 44. 23 Ibid., 36. 24 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 322. 25 Ibid., 336. 26 Ibid., 337. 27 On res publica, see Novalis, Philosophical Writings, 17. 28 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 338. 29 Aristotle, De Plantis [attributed], 316b. 30 Cf. Aristotle, De Anima, 412a. 31 Claude Lefort, L’Invention Démocratique: Les Limites de la Domination Totalitaire (Fayard, 1981), 286. 32 Merleau-Ponty, Nature, 7. 33 Georges Canguilhem, Knowledge of Life, trans. Stephanos Geroulantos and Daniela Ginsburg (Fordham University Press, 2008), 109.

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34 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale (Vintage Books, 1968), 375. 35 To insist on the non-oppositional character of growth is not to ignore the realities of invasive plant species, weeds, or parasitic plants, such as ivy, that sometimes hinder the growth of other plants. Let us just register a simple objection to this objection that believes to have found a set of empirical counter-examples to the purely affirmative dimension of vegetal being. The proliferation of certain species at the expense of others in the vegetal world is far from being a war of all against all, as it is sometimes presented by means of a perverse anthropomorphic justification. Plants are opposed to other plants no more than they are opposed to themselves—hence, not at all. They welcome the other as much as they welcome themselves, others that they are. Everything Nietzsche has to say on the vegetal form of “the will to power” and the struggle for the place under the sun in the jungle should be read through the lens of this quasi-principle. 36 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 350. Non-oppositional growth also announces itself there where the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas bleeds into the political, in the section of Totality and Infinity titled “Beyond the Face,” Au-delà du visage. The centerpiece of this section overflowing the confines of the ethical face-to-face relation, which itself exceeds the scope of ontology, is fecundity. Borrowed from vegetal life, where it names one of the most crucial functions of “plant soul,” fecundity proves that the I is not one, that it breaks free from itself and from the “Eleatic unity” of its identity. “I am my child … In this ‘I am’ being is no longer Eleatic unity. In existing itself there is a multiplicity and a transcendence. In this transcendence the I is not swept away, since the son is not me; and yet I am my son. The fecundity of the I is its very transcendence” [Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Duquesne University Press, 1969), 277]. 37 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 306. 38 Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Michael Naas and Pascale-Anne Brault (Stanford University Press, 2005), 54.

9

Dividuum and Condividuality* Gerald Raunig

Which With for the Many? Which form, which “con-formity” can the concatenation of singularities assume? How can this kind of “con-formity” be envisioned without deriving it from the One or merging it into One? Which terminology is appropriate for a specific form of association that insists on dividing and sharing? How can this concatenation elude the sad figures of the victim, of guilt and duty? Finally, how do social and conceptual singularities concatenate without becoming merely a smooth lubricant for the transformations of capitalist modes of production? For these questions, which play a central role in current post-operaist, post-Marxist, and post-structuralist research, there is certainly no perfect and meta-historical solution. Yet exactly such a solution seems to be promised by terms like those affiliated with the conceptual family of the Latin communis or the German Gemeinschaft—even in the form of a “challenged,” “unavowable,” “inoperative,” or “coming community”. The problems of the terms affiliated with communitas/Gemeinschaft are still before and beyond their resonance with totalitarian originary and ethnic communities (Volksgemeinschaften), also before and beyond the problematic dichotomy of individual and community: on the one hand they cling to uncritical, identitary forms of composition, on the other they remain bound to the mode of reduction, subtraction, diminishment. And even where both aspects are dialectically conjoined— such as in the works of the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito1—they remain on this side of communion. The entire conceptual line of the commune, the community, the common, even communism itself, to the extent that dogma and avowal have been and are practiced in its name, are thus cast in the dubious light of a double genealogy of identitarianism and reduction.

Dilemmas of the community In addition to the extensive literature on questions of community in the field of communitarism theories, in the past thirty years a number of authors from the leftist spectrum of political philosophy have also become interested in the concept of community. With some delay in the reception, there has been an increase

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in international interest in books with titles containing the terms communauté, communità, communitas, where these terms are further differentiated with various adjectives. Jean-Luc Nancy’s (1983, 2001), Maurice Blanchot’s (1983), or Giorgio Agamben’s (1990) works on the inoperable, the confronted, the unavowable or the coming community are probably the most well known examples of this tendency. There is a whole conglomeration of dilemmas here, which I would first like to describe in the words of Jean-Luc Nancy, the French philosopher who wrote two small but highly influential texts for this discourse with the “inoperable” and the “confronted community.” In the second text, published in 2001, Nancy wrote several sentences critically distancing himself from his first text in 1983—and critically distancing himself altogether from the use of the term communauté, community—that could hardly be more clear: “Little by little I have preferred replacing it [the word ‘community’] with the awkward expressions being-together, being-in-common, and finally being-with. […] I could see from all sides the dangers aroused by the use of the word community: its resonance fully invincible and even bloated with substance and interiority; its reference inevitably Christian (as in spiritual, fraternal, communal community); or more broadly religious (as in Jewish community, community of prayers, community of believers, or umma) as it is used to support an array of so-called ethnicities. All this could only be a warning. It was clear that the emphasis placed on this necessary but still insufficiently clarified concept was at least, at this time, on par with the revival of communitarian trends that could be fascistic.”2 This is the clearly expressed distancing of one of the authors who are still misunderstood as proponents of the philosophy of community. In the tradition of ancient Rome and the etymology of communitas, as well as in the tradition of Christian community between communion and (early) Christian community, there are two repeatedly recurring problematic aspects. One is well known and has often been discussed, essentially summarized in Nancy’s criticism quoted above: the community as a term for an identitary mode of closure, of protection and of simultaneous exclusion, basis and ground for a heterosexual, patriarchal gender order as well. The other, less illuminated side of communitas relates to the question of the obligatory bond, which binds singularities to the community. The Latin term communitas is derived from the prefix con- for “with,” “together,” and the noun munus. Munus generally means a gift. In Roman use, however, there are fewer indications of gifts in the sense of a voluntary exchange, but rather of the obligation to pay duties, levies. This “tax obligation” constitutes the community, just as it is the reason for the acceptance of the individual into the community. For this reason, in her historical, etymological, and political-theoretical analysis of munus and communitas, Isabell Lorey speaks of a “logic of tribute, levy (Ab-gabe),” which in Roman law was by no means based on equality.3 So even from a historical and etymological perspective, it could be said that the diminishing aspect of the concept of community is an essential component of its use. In this respect, the community can never be understood as a surplus, as a multiplying sharing/dividing, as solidarity and as gain at the same time. Rather, everything



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revolves around a logic of obligation and duty, of giving over and sometimes even of giving oneself up. The munus is a minus. Community implies becoming less, in order to become more.4 Against this background of two lines of problems, which permeate the entire family of terms of the common, I would like to more closely examine the dilemmas of current (leftist) community discourses. First dilemma: vagueness. Agamben’s Communità che viene (1990),5 “the coming community,” is a small book that detaches somewhat eclectic fragments from the history of philosophy and actually concerns itself very little with community. Rather, it is what is to come that is at the center, what is coming, what should come. The coming being,6 the coming politics,7, a coming world.8 Specifically in relation to the latter, Agamben refers to Walter Benjamin’s messianism: In the world to come, as Agamben quotes Benjamin, “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.” This is also the starting point for Agamben, when he speaks of the coming, the small difference, the “whatever.” Somewhat unexpectedly and breaking with the philosophical ductus of the book, Agamben describes coming politics as a struggle between the state and the non-state, or, more precisely, as the “insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularities and the State organization.” Yet alongside this claim of the messianiccoming as overcoming the state apparatus of protective identity and obligatory social bond, the concept of the coming community remains strangely unclear and without evidence. This also makes it open to all possible romantic-affirmative interpretations and reinforces the emergence of a much too vague appeal to that which is coming or should come, without giving that which is to come a conceptually clearer formulation—which is also wholly opposite to the much clearer right-wing attempts to occupy the concept of the community (I will come back to this later). Second dilemma: minus. In 1983 Maurice Blanchot,9 in dialogue with Jean-Luc Nancy, set a critical reflection on the work of his friend Georges Bataille in motion. Starting from Bataille’s also quite problematical attempts to deploy concrete communities in the 1940s, Blanchot describes the problem of the community that is absorbed “in its communion”,10 but also the search for anti-identitarian forms of concatenating singularities, following the “pell-mell of associated differences.”11 He writes: “They are side by side, and that contiguity, passing through every form of empty intimacy, preserves them from playing the comedy of a ‘fusional or communional’ understanding.”12 Blanchot thus recognizes the necessity of naming the paradoxical bond of singularities in their disconnectedness, instead of the suspension of differences into a higher and universal unity. However—and there is a resonance with the figure of the munus as minus here—he can only understand this bond as a negative one. This is why there is so much in his writing about insufficiency, incompleteness, impossibility, absence, unrepresentability, inadequacy, unavowability. The “abandonment,” the “sacrifice” is needed, which first “founds the community.”13 Traces of the etymological genealogy of communitas are all too evident here. The community of the munus can

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only be understood as levy and surrender, as duty and obligation, as debt and indebtedness. These figures of deficiency and diminishment culminate explicitly in Bataille’s and Blanchot’s undoubtedly elegant formulation of the “negative community” as a “community of those who have no community.”14 Third dilemma: appropriation. It is not first in Nancy’s later self-criticism, but already in Blanchot’s writing from 1983 that there is an implicit warning, a distancing, a response to the uncritical affirmation of the community. However, this warning, this cautious stance, did not protect Blanchot at all from appropriation by a completely different concept of community, which in turn ties into the fascist-totalitarian figure of the “ethnic community,” the “Volksgemeinschaft.” It is not without irony that specifically Blanchot’s text The Unavowable Community has been transposed into German by a conservative right-wing radical thinker of the former “New Right.” Gerd Bergfleth, who translated Blanchot’s text for the Berlin publishing company Matthes & Seitz,15 is infamous for his anti-Semitic and right-wing nationalist rants. Although such explicitly right-wing tones are not found directly in the translation of Blanchot’s text, it could be interesting to undertake a closer linguistic examination of the German text in comparison with the original French. What is glaringly obvious in our context, however, is the appropriation and turning of Blanchot by his translator in a quite obvious procedure. Bergfleth appends a roughly 70-page commentary to the 90 pages of the Blanchot text. This commentary is both a critique and a misappropriation. It is a misappropriation to the extent that the well-known text by a prominent author is not only misused as a podium for a new, clearly right-wing connotation of the community concept, but also in that the personal and theoretical relationship between Blanchot and Bataille is transformed into a mumbling amalgam of “lonely commonality” and the “sublime idea of the passion of death.” It is a critique to the extent that Bergfleth can only grasp Blanchot’s concept of community as a “caricature of community” and launches a general polemic against deconstruction. In Bergfleth’s terms: “One divests the community work of all meaning and purpose and continues to operate until the patient gives up his ghost.”16 In a certain sense, this quotation has the advantage of clarity. In fact, giving up every “community work” is indeed an effect of the leftist debates on community, but not one to be regretted, but rather welcomed.

Gilbert de la Porrée and the invention of the dividuum With the first of my initial questions, I chose a particular allusion. “Which With for the Many?” is a variation of a theological–philosophical debate which has been relevant since antiquity and especially became a central debate in the Scholastic discourses of the Middle Ages. The question of the “With for the many” alludes not only to the conin communitas, and also not only to the assumption of the Heideggerian “being-with” through Jean-Luc Nancy, but also and especially to the old question of the relation between the one and the many. Naturally there is a difference between the question of the one for the many and that of the With. The alternative, the question of whether the many unfolds, multiplies from the one or conversely strives for the one, following



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the motto e pluribus unum, can seemingly also be played through with the With and the many, but as will become implicitly evident in the following, it must undergo a more fundamental critique. In order to develop this difference more clearly and finally arrive at a new terminology of the “With for the many,” it will be necessary in the following to draw a broader arc which leads us deeper into the theologicalphilosophical debates of the High Middle Ages. A terminological invention is found with a very early exponent of the medieval discussion of the one and the many which is crucial for the conceptualization of my text. This terminological invention, which has been underestimated for centuries even up to the present and almost remained undiscovered, is due to an equally underestimated outsider in the theological discourses of the early Scholastic period. Gilbert de la Porrée (Gilbertus Porretanus, ca. 1080–1155), bishop of Poitiers, was a theologian, logician and language theorist in the first half of the twelfth century.17 He developed a specific terminology oriented to the Aristotelian theory of categories, but gained in conceptual originality in the transfer of Greek philosophy to early Scholastic theology. Gilbert’s “doctrine” expanded through the influence of his “pupils” around the mid-twelfth century into a small geography of aftereffects; like most of the theologians of the early Scholastic era, however, Gilbert and his work were eclipsed by the dominance of Thomas Aquinas and the writings of high Scholasticism.18 However, Gilbert was also hounded by theological and ecclesiastical conflicts throughout his life, which also limited his impact. At the urging of Bernard de Clairvaux, he was accused of heresy before the papal consistory of Paris in 1147 and a further consistory following the synod of Reims in 1148. Unlike his contemporary Abelard, however, who was accused by Bernard in 1141 and sentenced to monastery arrest and lifelong silence, Gilbert managed to escape condemnation throughout his lifetime. A substantial reason for this non-condemnation was probably to be found in Gilbert’s manifold caution. At first, Gilbert’s language was hard to understand even for the scholars of his day, especially due to the strictly logical ductus of his work that was unfamiliar to his contemporaries. In addition, Gilbert authored no explicitly independent writings. He worked primarily in spoken form through sermons and lectures. In written form he made use of the apparently servile and marginal genre of the commentary, specifically as a commentator of the Neoplatonist and Aristotle translator of late antiquity, Boethius, from the early sixth century. The genre of the commentary allowed Gilbert to make use of the authority of the church father he was explicating, in order to develop his own theory from this and to go far beyond the text upon which his commentary was based. In the early twelfth century, when seemingly purely theological questions were the issue, such as the unity of the trinity or Christology, these were always very concrete questions about the legitimation and questioning of relations of dominance. Exactly these dangerous border areas were also the spaces of operation for Gilbert’s theoretical work. His differentiation of singularity, individual, and person is only to be understood against the background of the early Scholastic debates about the concept of the person in the trinity and the traps of the relevant discourses. This game of truth

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comprised finely chiseled formulations, which were intended to avoid the abysses of “dualism” and “pantheism,” to actively distance themselves from heretical genealogies and the fine categorizations of heretical illusions. Before proceeding to the terminology that is central to our question of the With for the many, I must explain several peculiarities of Gilbert’s vocabulary and his early Scholastic context. To understand his theoretical positions, one of Gilbert’s fundamental decisions must first be emphasized, namely the sharp separation of the realms of two forms of being, which he attributes to different modes of observation: the methodical distinction of theologicae rationes and naturalium rationes corresponds to a divine being and a natural being. According to Gilbert, observations of the divine sphere and of nature are completely separate from one another and cannot be joined in any way through analogies. Mixing the two rationes, making them communicate, would be a heretical deception. Based on this sharp separation, another distinction is significant for Gilbert, namely that between quo est, “through which something is,” and quod est, “what something is.” This distinction applies in both the divine and the natural realm, but different terms follow from it in the respective realms. For the naturalium rationes, Gilbert uses a term that is new in this meaning: he calls the quo est subsistence (subsistentia),19 the quod est that which subsists (subsistens). In contrast to the more commonplace pair in theology, substance and accident, the relation between subsistence and that which subsists is not hierarchically striated, but is instead a relationship of mutual exchange. That which subsists does not first evolve from subsistence, but is co-emergent. Therefore, it emerges neither through concretion out of something abstract, nor as a multiplication from a One. Although that which subsists is only “through something,” it is singular at the same time, and “its” subsistence (that through which it is) is also singular. Every instance of what subsists has its singular subsistence. In the theologicae rationes, however, Gilbert runs into substantial linguistic and theological difficulties. Here the quo est is called essence (essentia); for the quod est Gilbert only once uses the term essens, in analogy to the terms from the natural realm. Gilbert usually changes over to a different line of terminology, designating the quo est of the divine essence as divinitas (divinity), the quod est of the trinity as three— numerically distinguished—persons of the one deus. Here the quo est thus remains an absolute unity, whereas the quod est assumes an unusual, namely divine form of multiplicity. Gilbert is experimenting here on shaky ground: the differentiation between divine essence and God is by itself sufficient grounds for suspicion, because the divine essence must be thought as a single, simple, unique unity, as unum, simplex, singulare. According to conventional interpretation, multiplicity belongs in the natural and creaturely realm. God and the world are parted in the opposition between unity and multiplicity. What probably appeared even more suspicious to the guardians of dogma affiliated with Bernard de Clairvaux (especially the Augustinian line of interpreting the trinity) was the fundamental separation between the divine and the natural realms. For Gilbert there can be no encounter, no mediation between the two realms. He envisions separation and opposition dialectically and attempts to develop exemplary



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derivations in several places—for instance in his creation theory—and thus to avoid the condemnation of dualism. Nevertheless, the heavy emphasis on the opposition, the differentness of the realms of being, remains obvious. Since the two realms cannot be mediated in any way, multiplicity cannot emerge, develop from unity, nor can there be any correlation or analogy between the two realms. The radical multiplicity of singular subsistences and that which subsists is grounded in itself, it needs no divine essence. Gilbert’s world needs neither God nor trinity. What Bernard found sufficiently suspicious for an accusal provides us with an opportunity to envision the realm of the natural in a strictly immanent way, multiplicity without the burden of unity, without God and also without the trinity. Gilbert’s most consequential invention for the history of philosophy was the differentiation of singularity, individuality, and personality.20 In the development of the doctrine of the trinity, a threefold step was necessary, which leads from Augustine through Boethius to Gilbert and which had very different effects on the view of the natural realm outside theology as well. For Augustine the concept of the personality, the three personae of the divine essence, was still the sole center. Augustine draws consequences of the doctrine of the trinity for the natural realm through the analogy between God and man, thus working into anthropological and psychological realms. For Boethius individuality comes into play, yet the terms of the singular and the individual are still used congruently. It is in Gilbert’s commentaries on Boethius that the term of singularity gains a different and further area of application than that of individuality. In the full differentiation of the three terms, singularity becomes the terminological starting point with Gilbert which describes the individual in its broadest expansion. Gilbert writes in his Boethius commentary: Let us distinguish: Depending on the point of view, a property of something is called “singular”, “individual” or “personal”. For although every individual is singular, and every person is singular and individual, not every singularity is an individual, and not every singularity or every individual is a person.21

This differentiation results in a distinction along various extensions: the smallest extension is attributed to the personality, the middle extension to individuality, the greatest to singularity. Yet this differentiation of extensions does not necessarily correspond to a hierarchization either, nor in any way to relationships of unification or the unfolding of the one from the other. This is a distinction at the level of terminological extension: the individual comprises a broader area than the person; singularity in turn comprises individuality and personality and more than that. An interesting precondition for Gilbert’s thinking is that none of the three terms is necessarily related solely to the human being. In his stringently logical method, Gilbert does not follow Boethius’s extremely influential constriction, according to which a person is the indivisible substance only of rational nature (natura rationabilis), which applies to God, to the human being, and at most to angels as well. With his concept of the persona, Gilbert neither separates between humans as rational beings and animals or things, nor does the term differentiate—as in the meaning from

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antiquity—human beings from one another, as those that are persons sui iuris and others (such as women, children, slaves, who could be categorized as things according patriarchal Roman law). Without following this specific line of exclusion, Gilbert’s concept of the person is still much smaller in its extension than that of individuality or singularity. For Gilbert, persona is quite generally the name of a part of that which subsists that are individuals. In the natural realm, Gilbert no longer pursues this line of personality, as important as it is in the divine realm for explaining the trinity; instead he concentrates on the differentiation of the two further extensions, individuality and singularity. Individuality vertically orders all the subsistences found in or on a single thing into a whole. What is specific about this “individual” mode of ordering singularity is that all singular substances of a thing are to be united precisely according to the formation in which it is concretized. At the same time, individuality truncates the connection with other conforming singularities in other things. The crucial components of individuality are thus the exclusion of conformity, the truncation of connection, hence becoming-dissimilar, finally wholeness. However, there is also another mode of ordering singularity, a horizontal mode, which collects singular elements without consideration of their belonging to an individual formation. This form of collecting is not a unification, but traverses the realms of individual things, collecting all subsistences that belong together according to their conformity. For this second, horizontal or transversal mode, there is a term as well, which—as it seems to me—holds an astonishing potential for the further development of our question about the concatenation of singularities. It is not the community, society, or another collective term that is contrasted here with the individual, but rather—linguistically quite obvious—the dividuum. The dividuum and dividuality describe a non-individual singularity, which is specifically not distinguished by the properties of individuality, in other words wholeness and dissimilarity. The Latin word dividuum appears repeatedly in the meanings “divided, separated, distributed” and “separable, divisible” throughout Roman antiquity, from Plautus and Cicero to Horace, but only as a rarely used and weak term. The use of the term in late antiquity and the Middle Ages is similar, so that the terminologically significant “invention” of the dividuum can certainly be attributed to Gilbert. In the central relevant passage, Gilbert writes: In the realm of natural observations, everything that is, exists through something else than what it is itself. And because that, through which something is [subsistence], is singular, that through which something is [that which subsists], is also singular. Numeric multiples can no more be something One without number, than they can be through a singular. However, numerically distinct singularities are often conform, in keeping with their subsistences. Therefore, not only the subsisting, but also conforming subsistences are unum dividuum. And therefore, no conforming subsistence is an individual. If the dividuum makes up similarity, it follows then that the individuum makes up dissimilarity.22



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These rather difficult statements contain an entire theory of dividuum in a nutshell. First of all, it can be stated that even if the individual was the starting point for our considerations of the dividuum, the dividuum logically and ontologically precedes the individuum. Singularities are primarily dividual, the individual develops as a special, vertical, totalizing differentiation of singularity. To this extent, the dividuum is to be understood at least linguistically and logically, if not chronologically, as pre-individual. Therefore, it probably makes more sense to reverse our path from the person through the individual to singularity and to consider the dividuum at the level of the broadest expansion as being parallel, in a certain sense, to the concept of singularity. What are the conceptual components of the dividuum? 1. Separatedness. Dividuality means literally, first of all, “separatedness,” “being divided,” or “separability” and “divisibility.” Yet even in this narrower sense of the word, there is also a connotation of “dispersedness” and “dispersion.” This implies an extension, a movement, a nomadic distribution moving through various individual things. This form of distribution, extension, and dispersion is not to be understood as a generalization. Dividuality is something that is neither individual nor personal, and yet it is also no universal and no ground. The dividuum does not stand one-sidedly as the general opposite of the individual, but is one of Gilbert’s terms that breaks through the dichotomy of the individual and the general, introducing a new dimension, in which that which something is, and that through which it is, are placed in relation to one another. 2. Similarity. If the dividuum is determined by separatedness, how can the non-universal, transversal function of dividuality be understood? In a specific form of the correlation of these seeming opposites, separatedness and transversality, and in the relation of similarities and conformities.23 The individual is a whole, a one, something not arbitrarily composed. It is something of its own, it has—as Gilbert emphasizes—the property of dissimilitudo, it evinces no similarity. In contrast, that which literally makes up the dividuum is its second conceptual component: similarity (similitudo). Whereas individuality, and with it dissimilarity, emphasizes differentness, being set apart from everything else, the dividual singularity is always one among others. The dividuum thus has one component or multiple components, which constitute it as something separable and connect it at the same time with other dividuals that are similar in their components. Here it is a matter of similarities, not identities, specifically in relation to only some components. 3. Con-formity. As the Gilbert quotation describes, singularities (as numerically distinct) share their forms with other singularities, thus first becoming dividual. Unum dividuum is then both subsistence and that which subsists: that which is and that through which what subsists is not only something, but is also “conform.” Conformity is not to be understood in today’s usage as a moral term of compliance, but rather as con-formity, as the fact that not only subsistences but also that which subsists share their form with others. Whereas the concept

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of individuality tends toward constructing the self and others as secluded, dividual singularity emphasizes the plurality and the con-formity of all that is, thus also openness for intercourse and concatenation. The dividuum traverses various single things or beings according to their similar properties. Conformitas, conformity does not imply sameness, not total congruency or compliance, but rather specific correspondence in form, the sharing of formal components. This con-formity that is simultaneously multi-formity, constitutes the divisible as unum dividuum.

Condivision, condividuality, condividuals The dividual thus means the specific form of the singular many as what is separable and similar/con-form. This brings us somewhat closer to the question of the With for the Many, but still not close enough. To put it in a (post-)Marxist way: we still find ourselves in the terrain of the “technical composition” of the multitude. The dividual designates an aspect of social reality, but this aspect is not to be understood as a meta-historical constant. Rather, there are indications that the term developed in early Scholasticism today in post-Fordist modes of production becomes determinant for the technical composition, as the thoroughly ambivalent becoming-dividual of social relations.24 Which perspective of the dangerous proliferations of the dividual is assumed is a matter of situativity—whether the concept of the dividual is used to describe the most recent capitalist transformations or as a component of social struggles that—depending on political and theoretical preferences—precede capitalist modes of production or wrestle with them hand to hand. In this ambivalent high of dividualism between new forms of machinic subservience and the search for new weapons, the question of an offensive concatenation and its terminologies appears all the more urgent. Whereas the components of multitude and singularity may seem to be sufficiently described by the dividual, despite the aspect of con-formity, there is still something missing on the side of the “With,” of concatenation, of political articulation and organization, of the “political composition” of the multitude.25 It is only when the With is added that a term for the concatenation of singularities emerges which not only names their exchange, their mutual reference, their intercourse with one another, but also implements it. The word for this that I suggest as a neologism is con-division. In con-division, the dividual component, the separation does not indicate a surrender, a reduction, a sacrifice, but rather the possibility of an addition, a plus. A community does not first have to emerge in order to achieve the re-composition of previously separated individuals: the concatenation and the dividuality of singularities are co-emergent as the con-dividuality of condividuals.



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Bibliography Maurice Blanchot, Die uneingestehbare Gemeinschaft (Berlin: Mattes & Seitz, 2007). Roberto Esposito, Communitas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Harvard University Press, 2009). Nikolaus M. Häring, The Commentaries on Boethius by Gilbert of Poitiers (Toronto: Ponitifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1966). Isabell Lorey, Figuren des Immunen (Zürich/Berlin: Diaphanes, 2011). Jean-Luc Nancy, Die kommende Gemeinschaft (Berlin: Merve, 2003). —“The Confronted Community.” In Andrew J. Mitchell and Jason Kemp Winfree (eds) The Obsessions of Georges Bataille: Community and Communication (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009). August Neander, Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche, vol. 10 (Gotha: Perthes, 1845). Lauge Olaf Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert Porreta’s Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation during the Period 1130–1180 (Leiden: Brill, 1982). Martin Schmidt, Gottheit und Trinität (Basel: Verlag für Recht und Gesellschaft, 1956). Dieter Teichert, Personen und Identitäten (Berlin and New York: Gruyter, 2000)

Notes * This text, translated from German by Aileen Derieg, is based on outlines for a book on dividuum and condividuality. I am grateful to Nikolaus Linder and Isabell Lorey for essential remarks and discussions. 1 Cf. especially Roberto Esposito, Communitas (Stanford University Press, 2009). 2 Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Confronted Community,” in Andrew J. Mitchell and Jason Kemp Winfree (eds) The Obsessions of Georges Bataille: Community and Communication (State University of New York Press, 2009), 24–5. 3 See the detailed explanations in Isabell Lorey, Figuren des Immunen (Diaphanes, 2011). 4 Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s approaches in Commonwealth (Harvard University Press, 2009) could be understood as an answer to the problem of the munus as minus, contrary to the etymological line of the common. As the two authors write in the introduction, on the one hand the common is the name for “the common wealth of the material world—the air, the water, the fruits of the soil, and all nature’s bounty—which in classical European political texts is often claimed to be the inheritance of humanity as a whole.” On the other hand, and this is the aspect that Hardt and Negri emphasize, the common encompasses “all those results of social production that are necessary for social interaction and further production, such as knowledges, languages, codes, information, affects, and so forth” (VIII). In this second view, the common means the practices of interaction, of care, of living together in a common world. These are practices that do not allow for understanding human beings as separate from nature, neither in the logic of exploitation nor in that of protection. This is where a conceptual tie is found to the line of the commons, which allows for understanding the sharing of the common not as a becoming-less, but

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rather as an excess. Nevertheless, I remain skeptical in this case as well: what is still missing in the common—as in the entire family of concepts of communitas—is the aspect of the many, of their division and their singularity. The conceptual composition and connection between common and multitude is needed to express sharing and division, in order to subvert the identitary and reductive turn of the commune. 5 Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 6 Ibid., I. 7 Ibid., XIX. 8 Ibid., XIII. 9 Maurice Blanchot, The Unavowable Community (Station Hill Press, 1988). 10 Ibid., 7. 11 Ibid., 6. 12 Ibid., 49. 13 Ibid., 15. 14 Ibid., 24. 15 Maurice Blanchot, Die uneingestehbare Gemeinschaft (Mattes & Seitz, 2007). 16 Ibid., 172. 17 For Gilbert’s bio-bibliography, cf. Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie 1, 775; Lexikon des Mittelalters IV, 1449f. For a more extensive introduction to Gilbert’s texts and contexts, cf. Lauge Olaf Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert Porreta’s Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation during the Period 1130–1180 (Brill, 1982), especially 25ff. For a more exact interpretation of Gilbert’s commentaries on Boethius, cf. Martin Schmidt, Gottheit und Trinität (Verlag für Recht und Gesellschaft, 1956). 18 His controversial positions in ecclesiastical politics and his complex, sometimes rather dark argumentation gave Gilbert a somewhat objectionable reputation, which predominated into the nineteenth century (and beyond): the Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche by August Neander still described him in 1845 as a “man of unclear, confused, abstruse manner of depiction” (August Neander, Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche, vol. 10 (Perthes, 1845), 899). 19 The term subsistence (late Latin for “something remaining in existence”) is basically the same as, for instance, in sustainable living: something that is self-sufficient through and for itself. 20 Cf. Dieter Teichert, Personen und Identitäten (Gruyter, 2000), esp. 117–19. 21 Gilbert of Poitiers, De Trinitate (quoted below as “DTrin”), I,5,22: distinguamus: scilicet quod alicuius proprietas alia ratione ‘singularis’, alia ‘individua’, alia ‘personalis’ vocatur. Quamvis enim quicquid est individuum, est singulare—et quicquid est persona, est singulare et individuum—non tamen omne singulare est individuum. Nec omne singulare vel individuum est persona. I am using the text of Gilbert’s commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate as published in Nikolaus M. Häring, The Commentaries on Boethius by Gilbert of Poitiers (Ponitifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1966), 62–157. 22 DTrin I,5,23-24: In naturalibus enim quicquid est, alio, quam ipsum sit, aliquid est. Et quoniam id, quo est aliquid, singulare est, id quoque, quod eo est aliquid, singulare est. Nam plura numero sicut uno singulari non sunt aliquid ita unum aliquid sine numero esse non possunt. Itaque singularitate eius, quo est, singulare est etiam id quod eo aliquid est. Sepe autem diversa numero singularia secundum aliqua eorum, quibus sunt,



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conformia sunt. Ideoque non modo illa, que sunt, verum etiam illa, quibus conformia sunt, unum dividuum sunt. Ac per hoc neutrum illorum, quibus conformia sunt illa que sunt, individuum est. Si enim dividuum facit similitudo, consequens est, ut individuum faciat dissimilitudo. 23 On this, see also Dtrin I,1,12 on the mutual conditionedness of diversity and conformity. 24 For a cautious attempt in this direction, cf. the first pages of my text “Dividual Desire”, http://www.skor.nl/artefact-4825-nl.html (accessed 9 June 2012). 25 In Hardt’s and Negri’s Commonwealth, the concept of the common is also intended to stand in for this—naturally not simply as one side of the dualism of the natural development of the multitude and voluntarist Leninism, as some critics of Negri/ Hardt erroneously presume. Alongside the two conventional basic aspects of the common as explained in the introduction, a third aspect can be recognized in the course of the book as a whole, which exactly thematizes our question of the concatenation of singular currents: the common as the self-organization of social relations (176). Self-organization here does not mean a simple empirical fact nor a natural automatism, but rather the political project of instituting the common. This instituting of the common implies on the one hand that the common cannot be understood as a being-common, but rather only as a becoming-common, as the production of the common. And it also implies that the common and singularities are co-emergent, not only compatible, but mutually constitutive (124f.).

Part IV

Unity of the World

10

The One: Composition or Event? For a Politics of Becoming Boyan Manchev

In the presentation of the conference “Politics of the One” (Saint Petersburg, April 4–5 2010) we could read the following statement: Unity of the world is in the process of practical realization—and this is why it reappears as a problem. Some suggest a post-metaphysical abandonment of the one in favor of the multiple: the fulfillment of unity would lead to the overcoming of the one. Some, on the contrary, suggest that the true unity requires an irreducible singularity: the singular one (understood, this time, ontologically and not as exception) should rise against the one-as-a-form. Some, like Jean-Luc Nancy, propose a synthesis (“being singular plural”).

My first question then would be: what is the relation between the notions of unity (“Unity of the world is in the process of practical realization”) and the One? Can it be conceptually articulated? Are they synonymous? Second question: What does this mean, unity of the world? The question of the One could not be other than the question of Being (or, of course, of the Supreme Being): the formulation of our problem suggests a radical ontological turn. Therefore one preliminary but fundamental question needs to be formulated: the question of the relation between the One (or Being) and politics. Do we need ontological categories (and the first among them, the One) when trying to remobilize the concept of politics? For the moment, let me only express my initial intuition: re-establishing the relation between ontology and politics—an operation radically different from re-affirming the ontopolitical paradigm, stabilized in Plato’s line—seems to be a burning critical demand for contemporary philosophy. Articulating in a new way the major categories necessary for thinking politics and the political subject—singularity, universality, potentiality, praxis, labor, resistance, struggle, event, transformation, the common, justice, the world—means nothing less than re-opening their ontological potential.

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Politics of the One as politics of being Thus, the question of the relation between the fundamental ontological concepts of world and being is inevitably at stake. Let me take a contemporary example. It might seem surprising that a virulent anti-Heideggerian like Badiou continues to re-enact today, several decades after Heidegger, the opposition between being and world(s). He opposes the concept of the One—the concept of Being—to the concept of becoming, which, generally speaking, would be the concept of the world(s) (Parmenides stands up once more against Heraclites). Badiou consequently was excluding movement and change from the region of the One until Logiques des mondes, where he started to elaborate systematically the connection between the categories of movement, change, and Event—which makes it possible indeed to identify what Badiou calls “worlds” as the site of becoming. From this point of view, a politics of transformation would not be possible in the ontological region of Being. In the Badiousian perspective, a politics related to the subject would be of the order of the exception of Event, a regime radically heterogeneous to the regime of Being. If the Politics of the One equals the Politics of Being, what could we say about the Politics of the World? Even if the One could be seen as a concept for the world: the world, is it only a concept? The world—is it only the physical substratum of the world—the “Earth,” or it is an ideal noetic sphere? Is the idea which moves the world from inside transcendent to the world? Is the sense of the world always transcendent to the world? We could make the following suggestion in order to approach possible answers to this series of fundamental questions by establishing a parallel between the dichotomy being/world and a new dichotomy, the dichotomy I introduced in the beginning: one/unity. If the One is the name of the Being which is Parmenidean—immobile and univocal, then the world would be the place of unity—dynamic and plurivocal: according to the same statement of the Saint Petersburg conference, unity is “in the process of practical realization.” I would suggest radicalizing this thesis by saying: the unity of the world is only possible through the process of its becoming. The world’s only “unity” is its becoming, which is to be thought always as the multiple becoming of its multiple modes. The question of unity is a question of becoming. And since the One cannot be thought as substance or subject any longer, we have to face the demand to think of it as either a force (or a sense) of the world, which is transcendent to the world, or as a force, immanent to the world—as either an Event or a construction—the One as the becoming-world of the world. In other words, if we step beyond the Hegelian–Heideggerian duality of Being and its excess, which is still at stake in Badiou, we can approach the One as the becoming itself. This is the Heraclitean task before philosophy today, and this conceptual transformation is political in itself.



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Politics of the world as politics of becoming Of course, Marx is the one who rehabilitated in modernity the idea of becoming or of transformation as immanent to the world: he is the one who tried to think becoming without its fulfillment, which is also its excess—without the Hegelian Absolute Spirit, i.e. the becoming of the world without the radical event which would interrupt the immanence of the world in order to posit it as a transcendent force of becoming: becoming without telos, without Ziel. Of course, there are traces of messianic logic in Marx—but this should be the matter of another discussion. At any event, Marx’s immanence of the world is not the Spinozist substance anymore. It is a modern concept, a concept implying the forces of history, that is to say, presuming Man as a finite mode of the praxis of transformation of the world. It also posits the immanence of the world—the movement of history—as polemic, thus rediscovering the Heraclitean concept of the world as the polemical, critical—dividing, judging— force of fire. Therefore, as a matter of transformationist praxis, since its Modern origins, the world is a political concept. Nevertheless, the Modern concept of transformation of the world, and Marx’s in particular, is not only an emancipatory one. The modern concept of the world as a site of transformation, as becoming, is ambiguous, is double-sided. If we wish to find a way out from the dead end of the current situation, the situation which I call “post-transformationist” and which is paradoxically the situation of the alteration of “our” world, we urgently need to shed more light on the obscure side of the Modern concept of world.1 For the deduction of a concept of the world equals its expulsion, its rejection-as-substratum: the scission of world into the substratum and concept—the raw mass of the Earth and the “regulative” concept of the world as a directive horizon of the becoming-world of the world. Thus, the world is originally split into two. Having an idea of the world means having posited (i.e. excluded—negated) a substratum: having negated the materiality of the world. But the world is not the expulsed substratum either: it is not a rejected abject, a formless mass or an idealless void. The world-assubstratum, the negativity of the world, is fiction itself: it takes place only with the constitutive split, with the raising of the concept of world. This means that being and world are not radically heterogeneous categories. It is impossible to make a distinction between ontological and phenomenal world: they are two sides of the same coin. Hence the origin of the autonomous concept of the world (the “modern” concept, including its most influential and radical version, the Marxist one) is ambiguous. Positing the world as immanent transformation of the world means simultaneously two things: on the one hand that the world is becoming, i.e. that the world is not given, that it is not a substance, that it is making itself world; on the other hand, this also supposes that the concept of the world is a prospective concept, it demands the transformation of the world-substratum, through which alone the world becomes a world. This is the idea of a paradoxical poïetic praxis, which Marx borrowed in order to develop further the route of the Romantics rather than of Hegel. Such is the modern imperative of the praxis of transformation: the world is only thinkable as a

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world in becoming, that is to say as a world-to-be-transformed and in transformation. Thus becoming-world through the poïetic praxis of man is only possible through the transformation of the substratum of the world: through the exploitation of nature, offered “gratis” (according to Joseph Dietzgen’s expression criticized by Benjamin in his On the concept of history). Thus, liberation of labor, through labor and perhaps at the end from labor (resulting in Kojevian post-Marxist inoperativity), which equals the creation of the world, equals also the negation if not the annihilation of nature—of the world-substratum. The substratum having to be negated, annihilated, is the nihil from which the world is made: ex nihilo fit ens creatum. Therefore, annihilation of nature appears as the transcendental structural condition of the becoming-world of the world: or, to put it in a more radical fashion—of the con-sumption of world (according to the conceptual insight of Frédéric Neyrat2). Hence consumption 5 con-sommation of world. The transformation of the world means the becoming-world of the world (or the creation of the world), but the paradox is that the world becomes (“today”) only in the form of “the end of the world.” Or, can the “unity of the world” only be understood in an eschatological way? Is the end of the world—the con-sumption of world—the ultimate name of the becoming of the world? In fact, this paradox has a profound structural determination: catastrophic change corresponds to the messianic eschatology necessary for establishing the double regime of being—the split of being and its excess, common to the philosophical systems of Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. The structural matrix of the radical transformation of the world, i.e. of the radical modern philosophical concept of the event, is the revolutionary event.3 From this point of view, (the philosophy of) the politics of event, which is still dominant today in radical political philosophy, is profoundly ambiguous: the radical transformation of the world, the revolutionary event concerns first and only the prospective dimension of the world but neglects the immanent force of the world, the force of its becoming. We could suppose that Nietzsche’s will to power or Bergson’s life were the most influential conceptual attempts to “inject” some active, “prospective” potential into the immanence of the world—but the risk of the substantialization of these immanent forces immediately made problematic these alternatives to the Hegelian–Marxist schema of becoming. Yet, is it possible to avoid the messianic trap of the paradigm of the event? Even if the echoes of political ontotheologies are still coming to us in the shape of the fetishization of radical political events, or as the eventful void of the end of history or politics, we know it today: political ontotheology is over. There is no pro-ject for the world any longer, or for its transformation. The One is gone, the “One” is not there yet, and perhaps it will never (be)come. Who/what is the One? No-One? Or every-one?

The end of the world: the post-transformationist condition The theoretical questions formulated until now have their turn to respond, and urgently so, to the critical demand of actuality. The condition we live in is that of



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a radical transformation—of absorption not only of the potentiality of life but also of the potential for resistance and transformation of political subjects. The decisive question in this situation of constitutive transformation appears today in the following way: how to persist in the totalizing flow, in the biopolitical and techno-esthetical fluidity, how to resist the absorption of the transformability of life without abolishing the possibility for emerging of the event-subject? How to liberate the tekhno-aisthetic matter of world in order to re-open the potentiality for transformation: the force of the becoming-world of the world? For the question of the becoming-One as becoming multiple of the world is first of all a question of struggle: struggle to destitute the power tending to homogeneity (of course, we all know that the vague and suspicious name of the techno-esthetical pseudo-“unification,” i.e. homogenization of world, today is globalization). Of course techno-economic, financial, and political power are far from being homogeneous; but their common principle is the principle which destroys the common: by establishing a type of link pretending to universality, it fosters powerful effects of homogenization: the universality of the equivalence, or simply of the relation, of the “link.” Yet, we have to insist: it is not the link itself which is responsible for the current post-transformationist situation; this is not its “fault.” Instead, this is the hegemonic taking over of the place, which is being transformed into a “channel,” into a “network” which functionalizes the link. The production-consumption of the world is not a becoming of the world, it is the reduction of its becoming and therefore of its oneness too. The Universal is not possible without the singularities that compose it. The One is not totality or globality. It is not an equivalence through connection and exchange but an equality of singularities that is the only condition of the becoming-world of the world.4 Therefore, the destitution of the homogenizing power of the process of “globalization,” the process of the production of the world, is only possible as a radical shift: as a transformation of the paradigm of event itself. Each other form of taking over power would simply be a new reproduction of the hegemonic matrix. The transformation of the transformation designates, then, a radical materialist praxis, which is taking over not only the production of the world but also its becoming, which is absorbed today in the circuit of production-consumption. To liberate the potential of the world to become world does not only mean to prevent and resist the attempt to reduce the world by producing it as a world-product, but also to end with the reduction of becoming to production. And this reduction is nothing else than the structural condition of the production of the concept of the world: the split between the concept and its substratum. In other words, the condition of the production of the world is the production of the substance of the world, of the substratum of the world. Yet, to liberate the world from “exploitation,” that is to say from monstrous homogenization through the techno-political-economical device that aims at the production-consumption of the world, means to liberate its matter, the matter of the world, from the fiction of the substratum: not to reduce the potential of the world to a substratum. The matter of the world is the movement of its becoming, its dynamis, which does not actualize a substance but modalizes itself

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through transformation. The production of substance is the necessary condition for any exploitation; it is the only way to dominate the potential, which is also a potential for transformation. In this sense, the production of substance is not only the first bio-political practice but also the first onto-political practice.5 Hence the most important question—and my final question—would be: what is the matter of world? What are the horizon and the concept of radical transformationist materialist praxis? What is a non-substantial but also not-producible matter of world? What matter(s) for the world?

The transformation of transformation, or, the persistence of the world Therefore, we are facing, today more urgently than ever, the necessity to think a politics of the world as the emancipation of the world and as the emancipation of its transformation: a transformation of its transformation. In other words, the question of the (no-)One, that is to say the question of becoming, has to be formulated today as a question of the transformation of the transformation. For doing so, we need new active forms of thought, new tekhnai, new conceptual tools, new practices. Yet, this claim risks at the end repeating the exemplary stance of modern philosophy: the prospective claim of philosophy as a project, an unfinished project for an unfinished world. Though if the world today appears as “finishable,” consciousness of this could offer the critical chance not to embrace once more the messianic-eschatological paradigm of event but to foster a new paradigm—the paradigm of what I call persistence: the co-incidence of the event and change. It is possible to avoid, or rather to break through, the aporia of the One only by reformulating the question of the One as a question of persistence—that is to say the co-incidence of the com-position (of singularities), i.e. of the process of the construction of the common (world), and of the event as of an opening of the world in the form of metamorphosis. This is the articulation of the event(s) (the irreducible singularities composing the multiple) and metamorphosis—the potential to open a singularity to another singularity. In this way, the subject-one is the duration of the event or the agent of the metamorphosis: on the one hand, it is a metamorphic continuum, a permanent process of becoming; on the other hand, it is a disruptive force—an event (the event of justice: insurrection). Every singular affirmation is a just act; all justice is disruptive. In this way, the concept of persistence severs the political aporia of the (collective) subject (a continuous event), the aporia of its resistance and of its affirmative action. The concept of persistence aporetically com-poses the disruptive force of the justice-event—that disruptive universal—and the persistent continuity of struggle. Therefore, persistence could be defined as the becoming-multiple of the event, that is to say as the complexity of the One. The One is not simple.6



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Becoming multiple of the event: the One as becoming, or politics of no-One What can be said then about the politics of the world, of the politics of becoming? My hypothesis would be the following: the politics of the one is only possible as an emancipatory politics of the world7: this is what I call the politics of becoming. Yet, the question of becoming is the question of becoming multiple, i.e. the question of collective subjectivization. Therefore the question of the common is the question which follows by necessity and which has the potential to articulate conceptually the question of the One. Contrary to the opposition individual—total, where totality appears as the accumulation-negation of the individuals, the tension singular-common is the intensity of becoming-common. Singularity is only possible in tension (extension, intensity) with other singularities. It always operates in a (pre-subjective) field of (subjective) forces, which is being constantly recomposed through the trajectory of singularities; the process of re-composition is precisely becoming-common. The common is only possible as collective subjectivization, that is to say as a co-incidence or co-appearing (according to the term of Jean-Luc Nancy and Jean-Christophe Bailly,8 la comparution) of singularities. Collective subjectivization is a process of a polemic becoming-multiple of the world. Therefore, a new unity, solidarity, or a collective subject, a new common, is not possible without thinking the world, and furthermore, without acting through the world as the only regulative horizon of the act of (its) becoming. Let me finally resume the series of theoretical hypotheses: ●● ●●

●●

The question of unity is the question of becoming. The question of becoming is the question of becoming-multiple, or of a collective subjectivization: it is the question of the common. The unity, the becoming of the One, is only possible as collective subjectivization. Collective subjectivization is a process of a polemic becoming-multiple of the world. The becoming of the One is only possible as a becoming of no-One—of the multitude of everybody, that is to say, at the end, of every-one.

Persistence: resisting within the metamorphosis Hence, we have to insist on our answer. To affirm the persistence of the forms of life through transformation, to affirm the metamorphosis of subject-politics against the quasi-substantial validity of the new totalizing powers, to re-open and re-mobilize the transformationist potential of political praxis, not in order to pose again the demand to transform the world but in order to transform its transformation, to operate a radical polemic rupture. We will not persist in the event of the becoming of the world if we do not face it at the level of its proper demand: the demand of the permanent revolution of metamorphosis, which is not a quasi-messianic interruption but an

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anarchic immanence—a transformationist immanence which persists as the force of an unimaginable, incommensurable justice: the irreducible force of freedom.

Bibliography Alain Badiou, L’être et l’événement (Paris: Seuil, 1988). —L’Etre et l’événement, vol. 2, Logiques des mondes (Paris: Seuil, 2006). Gilles Châtelet, “L’enchantement du virtuel”, in Les Enjeux du mobile: Mathématiques, physique, philosophie (Paris: Seuil, 1993). Roberto Esposito, Catégories de l’impolitique (Paris: Seuil, 2005). André Gorz, Métamorphoses du travail (Paris: Galilée, 1988). Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke in 20 banden, bd. 3: Phänomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998). Artemy Magun, La révolution négative (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009). Boyan Manchev, L’altération du monde. Pour une esthétique radicale (Paris: Lignes, 2009). —“Vermögen, Ausbeutung und Wiederstand der Subjekt-Körper. Für eine transversale Veränderung”, in Isabell Lorey, Roberto Nigro, and Gerald Raunig (eds) Inventionen (Berlin: Diaphanes, 2011). Karl Marx, Les Manuscrits de 1844, in Oeuvres/Economie II, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). —Grundrisse, in Oeuvres/Economie II, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). —Werke, XXVI, t. I (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1957–68). Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London and New York: Verso, 1993). Jean-Luc Nancy, La vérité de la démocratie (Paris: Galilée, 2008). Jean-Luc Nancy and Jean-Christophe Bailly, La comparution (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1991). Jean-Luc Nancy and Boyan Manchev, “La métamorphose, le monde,” in Rue Descartes #64:“Le métamorphose,” Boyan Manchev (ed.) (Paris: PUF, 2009). Antonio Negri, Fabrique de porcelaine (Paris: Stock, 2006). Frédéric Neyrat, “Heidegger et l’ontologie de la consommation,” in Rue Descartes #49: “Dernières nouvelles du capital,”Frédéric Neyrat and Jérôme Maucourant (eds) (Paris: PUF, 2005). Jacques Rancière, La Mésentente. Politique et Philosophie (Paris: Galilée, 1995). —“Dix thèses sur la politique,” Aux bords du politique (Paris: La Fabrique-Editions, 1998). Paolo Virno, Grammaire de la multitude (Nimes: Editions de l’éclat; Montreal: Conjonctures, 2002).

Notes 1 For more detailed presentation of this thesis, see Boyan Manchev, L’altération du monde (Lignes, 2009), and the conversation of Jean-Luc Nancy and Boyan Manchev, “La métamorphose, le monde,” in Rue Descartes 64: “Le métamorphose”, (ed.) Boyan Manchev, 2009.



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2 See Frédéric Neyrat, “Heidegger et l’ontologie de la consommation,” in Rue Descartes 49: “Dernières nouvelles du capital,” (ed.) Frédéric Neyrat and Jérôme Maucourant (PUF, 2005). 3 In this respect, see Artemy Magun’s book La révolution negative. Déconstruction du sujet politique (L’Harmattan, 2009). 4 See Jean-Luc Nancy’s critique of the notion of équivalence in La vérité de la démocratie (Galilée, 2008). 5 For more detailed elaboration of this issue, see my article “Vermögen, Ausbeutung und Wiederstand der Subjekt-Körper. Für eine transversale Veränderung”, in Isabell Lorey, Roberto Nigro, and Gerald Raunig (eds) Inventionen 1. Gemeinsam. Prekär. Potentia. Dis-/Konjunktion. Ereignis. Transversalität. Queere Assemblagen (Diaphanes, 2011). 6 This was perhaps the fundamental affirmation in common of the two philosophers who established the modern conceptual regime of the concept of the One, Leibniz and Spinoza—the One is complex, it is only possible as unity or composition of singularities. Spinoza’s substance is far from being a simple homogeneity; it is the One-as-complexity, as potential for complex becoming. 7 Not eco-logy but world-politics, to the extent that the legitimate eco-logical claims could easily turn to a conservative stance praising immobilism under the form of conservation. Thus, on a structural level ecological projects risk maintaining another form of reduction of the world to substratum and therefore of erasure of its immanent transformability. In contrast, world-politics would not only mean politics concerning the world as a whole or even politics-for-the-world, but politics which proceeds from the question of the world as the political question: the question of movement, dynamics, and transformation. At this point, parallels could be made between my thesis and Susanna Lindberg’s proposals in Chapter 11 of this volume. 8 Jean-Luc Nancy and Jean-Christophe Bailly, La comparution (Christian Bourgois, 1991).

11

Elemental Nature as the Ultimate Common Ground of the World Community Susanna Lindberg

I would like to examine with you a hypothesis: the world is no more, the world has gone out.1 As Derrida says, quoting Celan: die Welt ist fort, the world has gone away.2 By “world” I principally mean the site of the so-called “world community”: there is no world community of the inhabitants the globe, and there is no “globalization” either, at least if “globalization” were to mean what its French version “mondialisation” seems virtually capable of meaning, that is to say, the becoming inhabitable of the entire Earth for all human beings. The world in all senses, from our intimate worlds to the cosmopolitan world of all, is crumbling away, decomposing, dispersing. As Marcia Cavalcante Schuback says in her article “The Fragility of the One,” in the contemporary globalized world the singular has become fragile and collectivity is imploding because of its “too much.” When the world is failing, we are left on the elemental ground of being itself. As you may have noted already, my terminology originates in Heidegger. Heidegger defines the Dasein of the human being as his or her being-in-the-world.3 According to him, the human being’s being consists of opening a world and of letting the world “world” (die Welt welten lassen).4 The human being cannot make up his or her world, but he or she can “build” it5 when his or her speech says the being-world of a world, although when this takes place, the world prevails already and the human being finds him- or herself already thrown in it. Saying that “the world is no more” boils down to doubting the aptness of this conception of being-in-the-world, or at least to wanting to formulate it otherwise in today’s context. On the one hand, the human being has changed since the days when Heidegger defined his or her ownmost existence (or what he calls his or her “authentic” Dasein) as his or her relation to his or her own death (Sein zum Tode): for a long time now, the selfness revealed by being-towards-death has appeared as too disembodied and too estranged to touch the most problematic aspects of our being-in-the-world (its Un-heimlichkeit is not revelatory but alienated). What characterizes our existence more intimately today—because it weighs on us more heavily—is our being-with others (Mitsein) and in particular our ordinary daily togetherness that Heidegger hardly noticed, that is to say also our material, bodily, impersonal, unconscious and

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irresponsible existence.6 Starting from this perspective, many contemporary thinkers have examined the human being not as the “mortal” but as the “living being,” the “animality” or “naked life” of which is at stake. (To make a long story short, I name Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, and Agamben, although I do not want to reduce the problematics only to them, nor to overlook their differences.7) On the other hand, the world has changed. The world does not open up as the horizon of a possible sense anymore. In particular, we have lost faith in the possibility of installing the truth of a world through a work of art (like in Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art” or his “Clarifications” of Hölderlin’s poetry8). Of course, Heidegger did not see an accomplished, readily installed world of truth either, but rather its lack, which was disclosed by the memory of such a world and the waiting for another. But nevertheless, he defended the principle of a world of truth against the “lack of world” (Weltlosigkeit) or “lack of homeland” (Heimatslosigkeit) that characterizes our careless “world of technique.”9 It seems to me that such a nostalgia does not (seriously) determine our world anymore. The idea of a loss of sense as the very horizon of sense has also been accepted for a long time already. In particular since the beautiful books of Nancy (La communauté désœuvrée10) and of Blanchot (La communauté inavouable11) it has been possible to think of community without the assumption of a common sense, as a sharing of nothing and as the sharing of the nothingness of death—which precisely separates us definitely from one another: we do not need a common world anymore to think our togetherness. However, it seems to me that we cannot stop at the thought of death as the unique experience of nothingness, but that we need to penetrate further on into the “nothingness” beyond the world and describe in more detail the apparently deserted space in which living human animals have circulated ever since the disappearance of the mortal Dasein’s world—for no one can live in pure nothingness, and the dead do not live (but only those who have sur-vived the experience of their death, as Blanchot and Derrida have written12). I will call this “space” that remains after the disappearance of the world “elemental nature” or the “elemental background of being.”13 I will explain below the philosophical sense of the expression in order to motivate its choice. But I can already say that it is in this constellation that I propose to think: “our time” abandons us as “simply living beings” directly on “elemental nature.” In order to close my introduction, I would still like to remark that I keep something of Heidegger’s original determination of Dasein as being-in-the-world: if Dasein proper has worn off and if the world has gone away, their relation remains, the “in,” the being-in, the finding-oneself-in: some kind of a “one” is still in some kind of a “place” or worldless space, and moreover, somehow he or she opens and produces it. My aim, in this chapter, is to try to figure out, starting from this being-in, what the human being and the world have become, connected as they still are by this “in.” The world is no more, the world does not “world” anymore (die Welt weltet nicht). We are abandoned directly on the elemental background of being. What is the concrete background of this experience of the disappearance of the world and of the appearance of its elemental background? The world has started to



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disappear when we have lost, in addition to the rational onto-theo-logical foundation of life, the volatilization of which was well shown by Heidegger, also the finite historical world that his phenomenology described as the condition of proper existence and as the horizon of genuine thinking. Our time is definitely what Heidegger called the “era of technique,” which he also characterized as the era of homelessness. We do not know how to inhabit the total global space: the space of so-called globalization is like an illimited transit hall in which nobody can rest, not to speak about living in it. In this sense, our contemporary existence is without site, our thinking is without horizon and “disoriented.”14 This is why the contemporary non-world has sometimes been described by words like desert, devastation, desolation […] to quote another well-made word by Nancy, the non-world has appeared as the “im-monde.”15 I would nevertheless like to articulate the bottom that we are touching in terms of discovery and not of loss, in a tone of fascination and not of deception. The first approximation would be to say that the reverse side of the world is connected to something like the natural or material ground of the world. The second approximation (that I will develop elsewhere) will consist in asking how to learn to inhabit the globalized world. In particular, how to understand our political existence when no world citizenship comes to mend the erosion of the meaning of national citizenship: if the entire idea of citizenship becomes hollow, can we rethink our political being in terms of a right of residence (here, there, everywhere)? This would be my answer to Boyan Manchev’s question about the possibility of a worldpolitics, which cannot be reduced to an eco-logy. In the present article, however, I limit myself to the question of the “natural” bottom in which we have “fallen”, and which may be devoid of sense but which is endowed with imposing materiality. In a sense, I am looking for a new existential or “archi-political” sense of the Earth understood as the ultimate natural foundation of the world community; as such a natural fact the Earth itself is not simply a prerequisite of the political community and therefore it cannot be analyzed, e.g. as the national soil described by Heidegger in his readings of Hölderlin, or as the wilderness described by Carl Schmitt as an “empty land” that could be “taken” (Landnahme) in order to establish a territorial state.16 The Earth has famously been understood as a purely natural foundation of the political community in Kant’s 1795 treatise of Perpetual peace. The third definitive article of perpetual peace runs: “The rights of man, as citizens of the world, shall be limited to the conditions of universal hospitality,” which does not presuppose any “love of thy neighbor,” close or distant, but simply the right of a “stranger entering foreign territory to be treated by its owner without hostility.”17 Here I only draw attention to the justification of the article, which is disarmingly evident—so evident that its mention would seem naïve if we did not know its violations to be so frequent: cosmopolitan right is grounded on the “common right of possession of the surface of the earth on which, as it is a globe, we cannot be infinitely scattered, and must in the end reconcile ourselves to existence side by side.” The right of universal hospitality is the consequence of a natural given and of the natural law that aims at the establishment of world citizenship. Kant had insisted on the natural origin of

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the cosmopolitan ideal already in his 1784 essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan aim, in which he presumed that, although the actions of human beings and states do not seem to be reasonable at all, nature nevertheless follows a secret plan aiming at the establishment of reason in the human species (in the form of individual freedom and perpetual peace 18). According to Kant, the Earth, a spherical body, is the only truly incontestable ground of the community of all human (and more generally living) beings. Being a “natural” ground of life, the Earth is much more constraining than any social or political contract, and it gathers living human beings much more imperatively than any supposedly universal humanist, religious or scientific principle. Ever since the general realization of climatic change and the imminent ecological threats that it triggers, the Earth, understood as the whole of our planet’s nature, has appeared more and more insistently as the common ground of all. The Summits of Copenhagen and Cancún are among the latest symptoms of this realization, and their failure shows (except for the appalling irresponsibility of many instances of power) also the difficulty of figuring “the Earth” in terms of politics. The general public (or rather its “representatives” and “decision-makers”) still often regards the Earth as if it were the same spherical body as in Kant’s time: a scientific object whose laws do not depend on our desires and which can be contemplated disinterestedly; because of this indifference it can also appear as a reserve of economic objects that can be possessed and cultivated. Its parts can become political trophies of the “lord and master of nature,” but it cannot appear as such at the domain of existence and politics. The Earth is neither a subject nor an object nor even a place of politics, and this is why it remains beyond the human “world”, at its other side or at its reverse side. The Earth as the reverse side of the world is extremely obscure, but it appears nevertheless evident that it is One, a singular totality. In reality, however, nature and in particular our perception of it have greatly changed since Kant’s time. Here I can only list three capital elements of this change. 1. “Nature” is not the “other of culture” anymore. Instead, nature and technique (which is one of the constituents of “culture”) have merged inextricably, and now this techno-nature forms the other of the world. The new techno-nature is best understood in terms of Heidegger’s idea of Ge-stell: it develops as a bunch of independent quasi-rational processes that can turn against supposedly “savage” nature (which technique was supposed to supplement and complement) and against humanity (which thought that it increased nature with the surplus of its culture). It developed as an analogon both of what used to be called “nature” and of what used to be called “humanity,” for it functions like a force of nature—but it follows fundamentally its own course and can also turn against the nature and humanity that it was supposed to supplement and imitate. In order to articulate contemporary techno-nature, the sense of Ge-stell has to be specified in two respects. First, it seems to me that Heidegger does not recommend a return to a “purer” nature that would be hidden behind the technological Ge-stell: he is not a spokesman of any “ecology of authenticity” but on the contrary the thinker of the era of technique.19 Second, although the



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contemporary world can very well be exposed in terms of Ge-stell, one major difference remains. Ge-stell is a singular word that evokes a unique technological system, but contemporary techno-nature is not one totality and it does not realize a single process. On the contrary, it consists in innumerable “collectives” (as Bruno Latour would say) that are temporally and locally limited and that consist in human and non-human elements or “hybrids” (as Donna Haraway would say).20 Techno-nature is a swirl of multiple, often contradictory processes that develop (if it can be called a “development”) only by seizing chances and enduring blows given and inflicted by one another. As Bruno Latour might say, techno-nature is not the correlate of Science but of multiple, fragmented sciences that do not pretend to give a unified sense of the totality of nature.21 Techno-nature is the other of the world of sense and of the human community dependent on it: this is why it appears in the contemporary political community as the very thing that it is impossible to understand and control. 2. Our scientific view of nature has changed. The ideal of “science” is changing into “research,” which is rather motivated by a desire to reproduce and to modify the productive processes of nature than by a desire to discover its fundamental laws and ideas. Correlatively, the paradigmatic natural sciences today are not mathematics and theoretical physics anymore but Life and Earth sciences and their changing applications, like diverse bio-techno-logies and in particular the new climatology. Their motivations are technological before being theoretical. Their primary aim is not to construct ideal models of “laws of nature,” but to interpret living nature also when it overflows the ideal laws, to produce modifications and to forecast unpredictable events. (Of course the ideal models remain, but they function as tools and not as unquestionable aims of the new techno-science). In order to describe the change in sciences with a simple sentence, I would say that in Kant’s time, nature was the kingdom of eternal laws without events, whereas today’s “science” does not reject uncertain unpredictable events as meaningless contingencies but looks for them and aims at the irregular and the modifiable. Today the nature of events dethrones the nature of laws; natural sciences and not only humanities look for the event capable of changing the course of the world. 3. Our political perception of nature has changed—both of technically domesticated and of “savage” nature. “Nature” is no more a simple economic object to be used nor an environment to be regulated. It also appears as an elemental un/ground of life that gives the very possibility of life—and can also destroy it (the best philosophical description of its force and ambiguity is Schelling’s description of the abysmal unground of nature, best known from his Freedom essay). Today, we are conscious of the limits of our power over nature: every unusual tempest, drought and flood—and also every major “bug” of the World Wide Web— reminds us a bit more clearly of techno-nature’s uncontrollable over-power. Today, this overpowering force constitutes the panic dimension of existence— while we had thought that only presumably ignorant and superstitious “primitive people” fall prey to such panics. We have realized that no human community

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can entirely appropriate its own ground, for the ground is by definition a strange disquieting force outside of the polis that it grounds. The “elemental ground” is not a firm, subsistent thing but rather a bottomless non-ground (Schelling’s Ungrund); it is the nothingness that delimits the familiar world, but here the nothingness is not reassuringly empty (like in the metaphysical sentences on being and nothingness): it is an active nothingness that can claim, attract, and threaten us (to frighten us, it does not need to send “monsters” upon us, for generally it is enough to show that there is an abyss under our feet). This is how, abandoned in techno-nature, it has turned into our elementary ground which— by definition—cannot be changed into a political place nor integrated into political practices and discourses: there is no place for the inhuman in human affairs. This is why we are politically so lost in front of “nature.” My initial hypothesis was: the world has gone out, and we are abandoned to the elemental un/ground of being. “The elemental” is an old philosophical word that may seem outdated and even suspicious. I remind you first quickly of its historical origins. Elemental thinking was born in the Presocratics’ reflection of the phusei of the world (water, air, earth, fire, etc.) and in the Pythagoreans’ meditation of its mathematical elements, the stoikheia. In his Timaeus, Plato combines this inheritance in his idea of the khora, which is the receptable (womb or matrix) that gives a place for the union of the intelligible and the sensible but which is not visible or knowable itself, although it is somehow imaginable (as Derrida has underlined in his beautiful commentary22). The ancient idea of the elemental is an intellectual metaphysical fiction that had been forgotten for a long time, until its principle was rediscovered in German idealism, which transferred it into the heart of the absolute subject. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, each in their own way, magnified Kant’s idea of the “secret art” of transcendental imagination by transforming it into an “element of thinking,” which is a dimension of pure rationality in which the human consciousness finds itself and by means of which it thinks, but that the human consciousness cannot objectivate or know immediately: knowledge of the element of thinking can only take place within the experiences of philosophical reflection or intellectual intuition. Finally the principle of the phusei reappears in the phenomenological ontology of the twentieth century when the latter opposed the “invisible, unknowable” reverse side of the world or its unfathomable negativity, to the ideal otherworld of reason that is more real than nature. This version of the elemental sketches a new materialist ontology, in which the abstract, general primordial “matter” of the world is signified either by redefining the ancient phusei (after Heidegger, for instance Eugen Fink, Kostas Axelos, and Luce Irigaray have proceeded in this way23) or by giving new names to the elemental being, for instance the muffled hurly-burly of the il y a (Emmanuel Lévinas24) or the nocturnal obscurity of the “flesh of the world” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty25); analogically, in this volume, Michael Marder refers vegetal life to an ambiguous elemental ground. Nevertheless, in contemporary philosophy elemental thinking remains marginal: it is difficult to justify it in front of the natural sciences,



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because it describes a nature that cannot be observed and a “science” which has the tendency of diminishing into a mythology. And one might as well say in passing that it is evident that we cannot solve our problematic relation to nature by returning to a pre-Socratic cosmology; moreover, appealing to some obscure forces of the Earth would undoubtedly be politically harmful. Against such temptations, I would like to remind that even in ancient Greece, the elemental forces of Chaos, Night, Sleep, Death, Kronos, etc. were not among the political gods of the Olympus that maintained the order of the city: they were the Titans who preceded the venerable gods and were not worshipped in specific public cults. How should we, then, approach the elemental reverse side of the world, in which we would be abandoned? In the tradition of elemental thinking sketched above, the elemental is not another domain of reality behind the visible and intelligible world. It is not the cause of its being but only the dimension that makes possible the articulation, configuration and figuration of a sense of a world. Saying that the world has gone away means that the world of sense has gone out and its departure has left us directly on the reverse side of the world. But this “reverse side” is nothing, it is nowhere and actually it is not, and although we may be “aware” of the elemental depth of the world, we can neither see nor comprehend it. We do not see its sense in the place of the sense of the world; instead, we bathe in multiple possibilities of configuring the world but we cannot stop and fix any one of them. We have not discovered the proper element of our world, the mythology of which we could tell (it would be ridiculous to fancy being the children of the earth, of the sky, of the fire—or of the gene, of the quark, or of the bit). At the uttermost depth of our world and of ourselves there is not a single determined element enforcing its sense, but the elemental itself, which we do not see or understand but whose force we nevertheless feel. To put it in other words, the elemental depth does not hide a particular image or archetype of this world, but the imagination itself as a capacity of producing and destroying images and types. My aim is simply to disclose a little bit this dimension of being and this modality of thinking. Here I can only sketch this task. I do it by presenting three propositions concerning finiteness, the world and thinking. 1. Within finite thinking, the elemental adds the question of the origin and the becoming of the forms of beings to the question of the origin of their being, which is generally articulated through “nothingness.” Although the elemental is an unlimited dimension of being, it belongs to finite thinking. It thinks the infinite as a lack of finitude (and of its “end”); and it thinks the unlimited as a lack of limit; and this is how it designates an infinity without positivity, without substantiality, without subjectivity, and without reason. Thinking is capable of finite thinking when it takes the limit of the thing for its origin and not for its end. When the thing is seen from its limit, its form is not defined “positively” by an intelligible form, but “negatively” by a quasi-unthinkable

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nothingness: this is how negativity allows the determination of the thing, death reveals the Dasein in the human being, and the heart of the work of art is formless and unpresentable. When the thing is determined in function of a limit, it is not self-sufficient. On the contrary, finite thinking always exceeds and transgresses its limits, refers outside of itself, even when it sees on the other side of the limit only nothingness, nonbeing and non-sense. Heidegger is no doubt the first to have elaborated a thoroughly finite thinking. First he demarcated his thinking from all forms of infinite thinking, which he understood as a thinking of an ontotheological reason settling down as the firm and clear fundament of the totality of being. Trying to formulate a finite thinking that does not ground itself on a logos, he started by defining being in relation to nothingness and human existence in relation to death. But such a thinking of “nothingness” is dangerously close to the vertiginous slopes of “nihilism”—for a consequent thinking of the nothingness of being leads to silence and the end of thinking. There is nothing to be thought in this “nothing,” except precisely the impossibility of thinking it. Besides, the thinking of nothingness remains at the shadow of the onto-theology that it had challenged. It has dethroned the god of creation, but it continues to echo its dilemma of ex nihilo by describing the coming to presence of being as if being was “created ex nihilo” (in quotation marks) by a “god” (in quotation marks)—by the “god without being” that haunts contemporary phenomenology.26 In order to avoid the void of nothingness, many thinkers27 have tried to explore what is beyond the limit as the outside of the thing (le dehors). Outside of the thing is not only its “nothingness” but also everything that precedes and overflows it: its context, its world, its background. It can be understood in two ways: either as the whole (or more precisely the ensemble) of everything, or as the place in which everything is. In the first case, one thinks that if the thing is not self-sufficient, that is because it is neither alone nor unique: it is its relation to other things outside of itself—which may be more intimate to it than itself. Being is the “singular plural being” finely conceived by Nancy,28 and the plurality is “realized” as a kind of an “interaction” required by the ecstatic and unaccomplished character of the singulars. It is impossible to define the singulars entirely by following their interactions: either these are only generalizations, or it is impossible to understand (or even notice) all the tiny inter/ actions that form a singular thing. This is why finally the infinitely multiple, complex, and often insignificant “interaction” of singulars is melted in a general “background,” in which beings are hardly distinguished from the obscure background of their “life.” The background opens up as the question of the essence of this “life”: how does the “background” produce the form and the being of things? This is a passage from a dialectical to a phenomenological look on the world. Beings, once they are emancipated from their transcendental foundation, are not determined only in relation to one another, but their interactions melt together and form a “world,” against which singular beings are distinguished, but in which they nevertheless remain. After “nothingness” and “others,” “the world” is the third form of “outside” indicated by the limit.



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2. The world contains the sense, the elemental background contains its sketch and defeat. But the elemental ground is neither a horizon nor a world. At least in Heidegger’s thinking, a “world” is a familiar region of being in which we can “dwell” and which we can also “build” and “think.” The elemental background of the world is the reverse side of such a “world,” or its outside. Following another current image that fascinated Blanchot and more recently Pascal Quignard, it is the “night” “preceding” and “surrounding” the luminous place or the Lichtung of a world. In other words, a finite world is always already a preliminary articulation, within which it is possible to configure a sense. The limits of a thing are the limits of its world. But outside of the limits of the thing-world, there is a background without depth, which is like an unlimited background out of which it is possible to cut a limited thing. It is never familiar; on the contrary, it appears when the familiar world breaks down and we cannot grasp the principle of its configurations anymore. It is nothing, it is not possible to know anything about it, and yet we are in it. Nevertheless the world is. Although nothingness is not a resource, it is productive. The elemental is the positive, productive aspect of negativity. Maybe you remember Bataille’s indignation before the idea of a “productive negativity,” against which he wanted to conceive an “unemployed negativity.” Let us note that this is a correct observation in the Hegelian context, but let us add that the elemental ground of being does not produce being or reason, which aroused Bataille’s suspicions. It is closer to Schelling’s way of thinking being as “gravity” which is of course the origin of the “light” of reason, but which can never be entirely converted into “light”, because it is defined as containing an irretrievable nocturnal “remainder.” As we saw, the elemental background of the singular existent does not produce its being. Furthermore, it contributes to the formation of the singular but does not determine its form. In this sense, it is the very contrary of the ideal background which determines the object’s form in classical metaphysics and science, for instance Platonism’s “heaven of ideas,” or its avatars, like the Newtonian conception of nature as the realm of unchanging natural laws, or its metaphysical counterpart, the infinite functioning of ideal relations described in Hegel’s Science of Logic. In such models, the rational background of beings—the “element of thinking,” as Hegel puts it—is either a domain of archetypes or a set of rational relations, but in any case an order of transcendent models of finite beings—which can be more or less perfect imitations of their ideal models (and if they are very imperfect, they are regarded as “deviations” and “monsters”). On the contrary, finite thinking discovers, instead of an ideal superstructure, just an elemental background of beings. It is the domain created by the factual interaction between singular existents, in which their forms gradually develop (and in this context one cannot really justify a discourse differentiating between models and monsters, and hybrid is the rule).

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The elemental background of singular beings, containing no models of the singulars or of their relations, is quite simply the field of differentiation created by the singulars’ activity. It appears to us as a field of differentiation in which things can be distinguished (or remain indistinct). In this way, it draws a preliminary sketch of the world against which the thing can appear as a phenomenon (or not). Let us be precise: the elemental background of beings is a force of figuration and defiguration which allows an infinite number of distinctions, and also the very figuration of the thing: not according to a model but according to the singulars’ individual histories. But the background in itself does not stop in any precise configuration, and this is why it is not a world of a horizon. A world fixes a determinate configuration of intelligibility, the elemental ground makes us pass from one configuration to another infinitely. To put it in other words: because the elemental ground does not fix a model or a theory, it does not produce a repetition of a given form, either, like in the classical science of nature. It fits a more modern conception of nature, for it can as well maintain the known as produce the unknown. The elemental ground of nature is a power of event; its surprises can be good or bad, but they never lead towards a general end or a general sense of the world. No doubt, the best contemporary illustration of such a nothingness that engenders surprises is the new climatology, which forecasts future weather while declaring its uncertainty, and this is how it foretells that there are unforeseeable events in the future. In order to give a better idea of the elemental background of singular beings, a classical metaphor may be helpful. If the elemental background does not resemble the heaven of ideas, it rather resembles the night filled with dream images that are so easily constituted and dissipated. Why so? Because it is not a question of truth in the glorious, absolute, classical sense of the word, but only of the possibility of articulating and organizing perceptual experience or particular fields of knowledge. Contrary to the element of thinking of traditional metaphysics and science, with its ideal models and regular laws, the elemental background presents images instead of models, provisional constellations instead of regular laws, and this is why its figurations resemble what classical philosophy called myths and fictions, rather than scientific truths. In the last instance, however, the elemental background of beings cannot be submitted to the classical opposition between truth and fiction. On the contrary, it seems to me that contemporary sciences function precisely in this way: there is no definitive Science, there are multiple, fairly irreconcilable sciences, many of which are hardly anything more than technologies, which emerge, change, and disappear ever more quickly (think of the histories of phrenology, cybernetics, and nanoscience). Outside of pure mathematics, nobody presents definitive truth claims anymore; even the truth claims of sciences have become regional and not absolute. In this sense, the general field of sciences is rather a swirl of disparate images than a heaven of rational ideas. But this does not prevent it from functioning very efficiently. But of course, this also means that sciences and technologies, too, lay on an abysmal, uncertain ground. As such, the elemental background does not contain any definitive images or laws: it is nothing else but the very power of imagining, pure imagination in act.



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3. I originally formulated my third proposition in French: la pensée élémentaire est un effort pour dé-penser le monde connu. What I cannot translate in one word is the word dé-penser, which is of course constructed with a clin-d’œil to Derrida’s word dé-construction. As penser means “thinking,” dé-penser is meant to suggest a turning-away from thinking, a thinkingaway, an un-thinking. Of course, the idea is not to pass from reason to the idiocy of a lack of reason, but on the contrary to criticize the known modes of thinking by using them in an unlimited and maybe even unreasonable way. Such an unreasonable use of reason is inscribed in the proper sense of the word dépenser: to spend and to waste. This is why my third proposition means at the same time: Elemental thinking is an effort of turning against the familiar ways of thinking, and elemental thinking is an effort of using, spending and even wasting all the known figures of thought of the world. In this way, elemental thinking would start as an effort to abandon oneself to the very element of thinking. These considerations arise from the question: what kind of an elemental thinking permits us to approach the elemental ground of being? It goes without saying that the task of thinking about the elemental requires a particular approach. As the elemental is not an entity but a dimension, it cannot be objectivized: things appear as objects when they are distinguished against a background, but the background itself is generally figured as the formlessness out of which things are cut. Obviously the elemental does not address us like a subject, either. At most, in some cases, the elemental can appear as an indistinct affective atmosphere: however, it is not the Stimmung or “affective tonality” in general that determines the world in which the Dasein is thrown in Heidegger’s Being and Time, but rather a breakdown of a habitual Stimmung, like a panic mood that suddenly gets hold of us and spreads over a reassuring world. Neither an object nor a subject, the elemental is a kind of nothingness. In nothingness, there is nothing to be thought, except, precisely, an end of thinking itself, a catastrophe of reason, a benumbing of senses. Such an end of thought is the paradox that a number of important thinkers of the twentieth century have confronted: how to think the end of thought, how to follow thinking to its end while still thinking, what kind of a detour is required in order to approach something that disappears as soon as one addresses it directly. An effort to think a “positive nothingness” instead of an empty one is motivated by a desire to refuse such an apocalyptic end of thinking— because, after all, the end of thinking has not taken place but rather functions as a limit condition of thinking. This is why I look for eventual detours, by exploring, using, spending, and wasting traditional figures of thinking—like that of the “abyss of the elemental night.” In contemporary thought, the elemental is mainly a phenomenological concept. It has been used as a name for a general background of things and events. Things are visible because they are distinguished from their element, but the element itself is invisible. In a phenomenological experience, the elemental is like a space in which

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things appear as superficial or profound, but which does not have a proper depth— except, maybe, a general feeling of sinking that it can arouse. This is also why the elemental is not a horizon: we can still “see” our horizon, it determines the contours of our world: the elemental is the night behind the horizon that we cannot see. The elemental is more distant than the horizon, and nevertheless it is everywhere around us, close and intimate. Almost paradoxically our elemental background is everywhere around us like the air that we breathe, and yet it flees our thinking and appears always further. We bathe in it, we are in it, but we cannot “see” the “in” of this being-in. This is why the elemental background of existence must be thought of in the same way as time—which is similarly never present and cannot be objectivized, but must be thought of as a “transport” between the two absences of past and future. How do we know that the elemental ground is there and takes place around us? Quite like Heidegger’s “world,” it actually is not but only appears affectively. This is why it can very well not show itself nor disturb us at all. But when it shows itself, rejoicing, oppressing or terrifying us, we are called to confront it in thought. Modern versions of elemental thinking—from the intellectual intuition and the ecstasy of thinking imagined by Schelling through the letting-be of later Heidegger—are always thoughts of a kind of receptivity that corresponds to the “affective” way of being of the element that is being thought of. The element appears as a “fiction of reason” or a “dictation of being,” which cannot be criticized according to the truth and falsity of its propositions but which must be judged according to its capacity of orienting the thinking subject in its situation. Like in these ways of thinking, also in our world it is impossible to invent an elemental fiction: it rises by itself and is already “there” when we pay attention to it. To put it very briefly, it seems to me that the elemental ground of our world develops in particular as the omnipresent techno-nature in which we live. This ground wants to be thought in us, and our task as philosophers is to think its figures (cultivate and exploit them) and also to think against it (resist their becomingmyth). Refusing its mythologies, wastefully spending its figures and deconstructing them (il s’agit de dé-penser ses figures), and learning to live with them.

Bibliography Giorgio Agamben, The Open. Man and Animal. Trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1967). Kostas Axelos, Vers la pensée planétaire (Paris: Minuit, 1960). —Le jeu du monde (Paris: Minuit, 1969). Maurice Blanchot, The Unawovable Community. Trans. Pierre Joris (New York: Station Hill Press, 2006). Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).



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Jacques Derrida, Rams, Uninterrupted Dialogue. Between Two Infinities, the Poem, in Derrida, Sovereignities in Question. The Poetics of Paul Celan. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen (eds) (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). —Rogues. Two Essays on Reason. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). —Without Alibi. Trans. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). —“Khôra”. In Thomas Dutoit, On the Name (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). —Parages (Cultural memory of the present). Trans. by Tom Conley and James Hulbert (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010) —The Animal that Therefore I Am. Trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). Eugen Fink, Spiel als Weltsymbol (Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2010). Michel Foucault, La pensée du dehors (Paris: fata morgana, 1986). Rodolphe Gasché, Europe, or the Infinite Task. A Study of Philosophical Concept (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). Michel Haar, The Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of Historical Being (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993). Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149–81. Annette Hilt and Anselm Böhmer, Das Elementale. An der Schwelle zur Phänomenalität (Königshausen: Orbis Phaenomenologicum, 2008). Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: State University of New York Press, 2010). —Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.) (New York: Harper and Collins, 1977). —The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Trans. William Mac Neill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001). —Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971). —The Question of Being. Trans. Jean T. Wilde and William Kluback (New Haven: College and University Press Services, 1958). —The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1982). —Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry. Trans. Keith Holler (New York: Humanity Books, 2000). —Einblick in das was ist, Bermer und Freiburger Vorträge, GA 79 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005). Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. Trans. Gillian B. Gill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). —Elemental Passions. Trans. Joanne Collie and Judith Still (New York: Routledge, 1992). —The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger. Trans. Mary Beth Mader (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999). Dominique Janicaud, Jean-François Courtine, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Michel Henry, and Jean-Luc Marion, Phenomenology and the theological: A French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press 2001). Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life. Towards a Philosophical Biology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001).

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Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan aim, in A. Oksenberg Rorty and J. Schmidt (eds) Essays on Kant’s ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan aim’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). —Perpetual Peace, a philosophical essay (New York: Cosimo, 2010). Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “Fidélités”, in Marie-Louise Mallet (ed.) Animal autobiographique, autour de Jacques Derrida (Paris: Galilée, 1999). Bruno Latour, “To modernize or to Ecologize, That is the Question”, in N. Castree and B. Willems-Braun (eds) Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 221–42. —Politics of Nature. How to Bring Sciences into Democracy. Trans. Catherine Porter (Boston: Harward University Press, 2004). Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents. Trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001). Susanna Lindberg, “Stepping over the World. Technique after Heidegger”, in Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo and Timo Miettinen (eds) Phenomenology and the Transcendental, forthcoming. Susanna Lindberg and Gisèle Berkman (eds) La limite et l’illimité, questions au présent, forthcoming. Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman. Reflections on Time. Trans. Rachel Bowlby and Geoffrey Bennington (Oxford: Polity Press, 1991). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible. Trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969). Jean-Luc Nancy, Inoperative Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). —Corpus. Trans. Richard E. Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). —Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert Richardson and Anne O’Byrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). John Sallis, Chorology. On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999). —Force and imagination. The Sense of the Elemental (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000). Frank Schalow, The Incarnality of Being. The Earth, Animals and the Body in Heidegger’s Thought (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006). Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. Trans. G. L. Ulmen (New York: Telos Press, 2003). Bernard Stiegler, Technics and time 2, Disorientation. Trans. Stephen Barker (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). Lazló Tengelyi and Hans-Dieter Gondek, Neue Phänomenoloogie in Frankreich (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011).

Notes 1 An earlier, French version of this text, “Du fond élémentaire,” is forthcoming in Susanna Lindberg and Gisèle Berkman (eds) La limite et l’illimité, questions au présent (Les Éditions Nouvelles Cécile Defaut, Paris, forthcoming in 2012). 2 The theme of the absence of the world was coined beautifully by Jacques Derrida in his reading of Paul Celan’s verse “Die Welt is fort / ich muß dich tragen” (Jacques



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Derrida, Rams, Uninterrupted Dialogue. Between Two Infinities, the Poem, in Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen (eds) Derrida, Sovereignities in Question. The Poetics of Paul Celan (Fordham University Press, 2005). In this text, Derrida refers to Heidegger’s motif of “wordlessness,” that he develops further in Rogues. Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford University Press, 2005), 155. Derrida’s notions of “world” and “worldlessness” are exposed brilliantly by Rodolphe Gasché in Europe, or the Infinite Task. A Study of Philosophical Concept (Stanford University Press, 2009), Ch. 11: “De-closing the horizon.” Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (State University of New York Press, 2010), §12. The world worlds is a translation of die Welt weltet (Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art”, trans. Albert Hofstadter, Poetry, Language, Thought (Harper and Row, 1971), 44–5. It is possible to translate the English globalization and the German Globalisierung into French by “mondialisation”; and as Derrida observes, “mondialisation” maintains “a reference to the world—monde, Welt, mundus—which is neither the globe nor the cosmos. (Derrida, “The University Without Condition,” in Derrida, Without Alibi, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford University Press, 2000) 203, 223). In French, die Welt weltet has also been translated by le monde se mondialise; Catherine Malabou once noted that this could also be translated by the world globalises itself, “Hegel and Freud of the process of mourning”, in Radical Philosophy, MarchApril 2001. The human being is “world-builder,” “Weltbildend” (Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William Mac Neill and Nicholas Walker (Indiana University Press, 2001), §42, §64 s.q.q.); the human being can “build, dwell and think” (“Building, Dwelling, Thinking”, trans. Albert Hofstaeter, Poetry, Language, Thought (op. cit.). The necessity of rethinking fundamental ontology from the point of view of being-with (Mitsein), that is to say from the point of view of the singular plural of origins, has been put forward most forcefully by Jean-Luc Nancy in Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert Richardson and Anne O’Byrne (Stanford University Press, 2000). See for instance Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), in particular the planes 10 and 11; Jacques Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, transl. David Wills (Fordham University Press, 2008); Giorgio Agamben, The Open. Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford University Press, 2002). Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” (op. cit.), and Heidegger, Elucidations of Höderlin’s Poetry, trans. Keith Holler (Humanity Books, 2000). See Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (Harper Torchbooks, 1982); Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism”, in David Farrell Krell (ed.) Basic Writings ( Harper and Collins, 1977); Heidegger, The Question of Being, trans. Jean T. Wilde and William Kluback (College and University Press Services, 1958); Heidegger, Einblick in das was ist, Bermer und Freiburger Vorträge, GA 79 (Vittorio Klostermann, 2005), 51, 66. Hannah Arendt writes in the chapter “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man” of The Origins of Totalitarianism (George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1967; 267–302) that the word die Heimatslosen also described the stateless people (apatrides) that were created in Europe by the Peace Treaties of the First World War— Jews especially found themselves in such a situation, but also millions of Slovakians, Hungarians, Germans, and so forth.

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10 Jean-Luc Nancy, Inoperative Community (University of Minnesota Press, 1991). 11 Maurice Blanchot, The Unawovable Community, trans. Pierre Joris (Station Hill Press, 2006). 12 See Jacques Derrida, “To Survive,” in Parages (Cultural memory of the present), trans. Tom Conley and James Hulbert (Stanford University Press, 2010); Philippe LacoueLabarthe, “Fidélités,” in Marie-Louise Mallet (ed.) Animal autobiographique, autour de Jacques Derrida (Galilée, 1999), 215–30. 13 I say “background” to make a difference with the notion of “ground”; in French one would say “fond” instead of “fondement.” 14 The phenomenon of disorientation has been investigated in particular by Bernard Stiegler, Technics and time 2, Disorientation, trans. Stephen Barker (Stanford University Press, 2008). 15 Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus, trans. Richard E. Rand (Fordham University Press, 2008). 16 Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth of the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, trans. G. L. Ulmen (Telos Press, 2003). 17 Immanuel Kant, “The third definite article of the project for Perpetual peace,” in Perpetual Peace, a philosophical essay (Cosimo, 2010), 17–18. 18 Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan aim, in A. Oksenberg Rorty and J. Schmidt (eds) Essays on Kant’s “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan aim” (Cambridge University Press, 2009). 19 While for instance Frank Schalow looks for a sketch of a new ecology in Heidegger’s thought (see his The Incarnality of Being. The Earth, Animals and the Body in Heidegger’s Thought [State University of New York Press, 2006]), Hans Jonas and Michel Haar claim on the contrary that Heidegger ignores the question of non-human, non-historical nature (Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life. Towards a Philosophical Biology [Northwestern University Press, 2001]; Michel Haar, The Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of Historical Being [Indiana University Press, 1993]). 20 Bruno Latour, “To modernize or to Ecologize, That is the Question,” in N. Castree and B. Willems-Braun (eds) Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium (Routledge, 1998), 221–42. Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Routledge, 1991), 149–81. See also Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman. Reflections on Time, trans. Rachel Bowlby and Geoffrey Bennington (Polity Press, 1991). I explain in more detail the posterity of Heidegger’s thinking of the technique (e.g. in Stiegler, Foucault and Eldred) in my “Stepping over the World. Technique after Heidegger,” in Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo and Timo Miettinen (eds) Phenomenology and the transcendental, forthcoming. 21 Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature. How to Bring Sciences into Democracy, trans. Catherine Porter (Harward University Press 2004). 22 J. Derrida, “Khôra,” in T. Dutoit On the Name (Stanford University Press, 1995). See also John Sallis, Chorology. On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus (Indiana University Press, 1999), and John Sallis, Force and imagination. The Sense of the Elemental (Indiana University Press, 2000). 23 See Eugen Fink, Spiel als Weltsymbol (Verlag Karl Alber, 2010); Kostas Axelos, Vers la pensée planétaire (Minuit, 1960); Axelos, Le jeu du monde (Minuit, 1969); Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Gillian B. Gill (Columbia University Press, 1991); Irigaray, Elemental Passions, trans. Joanne Collie and Judith



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Still (Routledge, 1992); The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger, trans. Mary Beth Mader (University of Texas Press, 1999). In the 1940s, Gaston Bachelard had used the theme of the elementary, but for him the elements are only principles of articulation of the human spirit, a kind of collective inconscience, whereas the other thinkers mentioned above develop phenomenological ontologies of the elemental. 24 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Duquesne University Press, 2001). 25 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Northwestern University Press, 1969). For a contemporary perspective on a phenomenology of the elemental, see Annette Hilt and Anselm Böhmer, Das Elementale. An der Schwelle zur Phänomenalität (Orbis Phaenomenologicum, 2008). 26 For a general overview of the debate see Dominique Janicaud et al., Phenomenology and the theological: A French Debate (Fordham University Press, 2001). A wider context is presented by Lazló Tengelyi and Hans-Dieter Gondek, Neue Phänomenologie in Frankreich (Suhrkamp, 2011). 27 See in particular Foucault’s text on Blanchot, La pensée du dehors (fata morgana, 1986). 28 Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert Richardson and Anne O’Byrne (Stanford University Press, 2000).

Part V

Politics of the One

12

Negative Imperialization Artemy Magun

The concept of empire today While we usually tend to think of a state as the privileged form of political unity in Modernity, today, from many sides, we hear that the state model is in crisis. Some, on the liberal side, speak in this context of “globalization” and of other processes that weaken state sovereignty for the benefit of international organizations. Some, whether more critically or more realistically minded, point at empire as the alternative political form of Modernity. The question then arises of what this concept actually means now, beyond its clear ideological meaning, whether anti- or pro-imperialist. Unlike the state, empire means not just the unity of an integrated unit, but a unity of the world. In the late Middle Ages, when the Modern states came to existence, they did so in competition with the universalist emperor, so that many maintained by way of compromise that, in the words of Sebastian de Covarrubias, “Omnis Rex imperator in regno suo.”1 The absolutist aspirations of Modern monarchies for the “sovereignty” of their power were from the start paradoxical, because territorial limitation rendered any sovereignty limited. And indeed, throughout Modern era, territorial, dynastic, and nation states kept aspiring to foreign territories and conquering the world, while at the same time moving towards national integration. There is, in the supreme unity of the Modern state, a trace of suppressed imperial ambition: if it is a monarchy, or the rule of a united people, then why is its unity not universal? And this imperial ambition keeps resurfacing today. Do we deal here, as Negri and Hardt for instance suggest, with the desire of monist metaphysics to subsume the whole world, with the totalitarianism of a closed repressive totality? Or perhaps the current “imperialization” of politics is a consequence of a deeper negative henosis, of a crisis of the Modern state-subject-unit, which discovers its own ecstatic solitude, in the sense elaborated in my chapter on solitude (Chapter 3)? Today, from many sides at once, we hear the word “empire” returning to the foreground of political discussion. Those dissatisfied with the politics of US administration accuse it of imperialism.2 At the same time, some distant but benevolent

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observers of American politics use empire (namely, the British Empire) as a positive example.3 The integration of the European Union also reminds some of empire: thus, Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande use this term positively and propose a plan for organizing the European supra-state into a “cosmopolitan empire,” with loose expanding borders and primarily non-representative forms of democratic participation.4 Beck and Grande also inquire into the sociological conditions of the new “imperial” politics and find them in the emerging “risk society” where threats are no longer possible to fix or even locate, and thus, subjectively, the world becomes more and more insecure.5 Beck and Grande directly maintain that the perception of risks contributes to the need for “cosmopolitan empire” which would have a larger scope of control, and at the same time would be more flexible and mobile than current bureaucratic representative institutions. They see the need for European empire derived from the existence of the weak “risk states” that poses a threat to the European security.6 In Russia, which domestic public opinion considers to be a “loser” of international politics, where internationalist liberalism has lately become unpopular and a power-based view of the world dominant, “empire” is conjured both by right-wing revanchists and by aggressive pro-Western liberals.7 In what is perhaps the most innovative usage of the term, Negri and Hardt, in their recent two-volume work [Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004)], speak, paradoxically, of the single, non-localized global Empire which is run not exclusively by the US, but by a network of international organizations and capitalist corporations, for whom the US plays only the role of a forceful executive. Empire, to them, coincides with the very process of globalization. They treat it as a return to the pure non-anthropomorphic immanence of the world, that is, to the Spinozist all-encompassing “substance,” which “empire” helps to reunite and to reveal, but which has finally to abandon empire and to leave the world to the “multitude.” Blandine Kriegel (2002) also attacks imperial tendencies in thought and practice, but does this from a fundamentally conservative point of view, which rejects the whole Modern revolutionary tradition (including Negri’s thought) as the origin of Modern empire and imperialism. For her, “empire,” along with “revolution,” is a fruit of the Modern metaphysics of the sovereign subject, while the “rule of law” in a Modern republican state would follow the logic of substance which is that of natural law. It is easy to see how the arguments of Negri and Hardt, and of Kriegel, cross over the Hegelian opposition between subject and substance. Today, at the moment when the idea of the world unity almost achieved, encounters violent resistance, and the establishment of such unity increasingly involves violence; when, to some, the ongoing unification of the world is marked by the hegemony of the USA or of the Western world in general, by the imposition of their particular traits under the disguise of the Universal, the discourse of empire acquires a negative sounding. Now, do we have to take this discourse seriously, or are we dealing with an “archaic” notion that does not do justice to the qualitatively new political reality marked by the spontaneous consolidation of the world through the forces of a postindustrial economy and consumer society, as well through the values of liberal democracy?



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Some8 have been ready to see empire and imperialism as an actual but nevertheless archaic rudiment of the past, and others9 insist that today’s technological and economic situation renders impossible the forceful maintenance of world-scale imperial power from one center. However, there are indeed reasons to think that the discourse of empire might not be completely irrelevant to the contemporary situation. To start with, this discourse has not at all been alien to the discourse of Modernity, and did not always play an archaic, retrospective role in Modern history. On the contrary, the imperial reality and/or discourse have been closely interwoven with the very phenomena that we consider as Modern, and of which we see ourselves, and our liberal democratic, capitalist world, as successors.

Empire: a short history In fact, the European empires were at their largest and strongest in the Modern age, although they have not always used this concept. Modernity started with the conquest of the New World, and with the formation of huge universal monarchies.10 This movement of expansion was directly linked to the prior consolidation of territorial states under newly absolute monarchs—which is particularly salient in the case of the Spanish Conquista which directly followed the “Reconquista” (in fact, also a conquest) of the Iberian Peninsula by northern Christian royalties.11 However, while these worldwide monarchies were often informally called empires,12 they were not officially recognized as such. Even the huge, and messianically disposed, Holy Roman Empire under Charles V, upon which “the sun never set,” was only called an empire in relation to its European territories. The fact that the kingdoms did not want to speak of colonies as empires had precisely to do with their non-willingness to compete with the only Holy Roman Empire, or to share its problems with a Pope who aspired to superiority over the Emperor. Also, the status of newly acquired colonies was seen as so heterogeneous that they would not even qualify for the role of imperial provinces. Thus, empire as a word was suppressed, censored, and overseas colonies became an enormous state of exception (slavery, ruthless wars, politics of extermination). Nothing, really, came to replace the word “empire”: in a sense, the failure of the colonial empires was partly a consequence of their failure to find an adequate universalist concept that would legitimize them. It is because of this conceptual failure, James Muldoon argues, that Spanish rulers proved unable to build a workable model of local governance of their colonies, with a reasonable measure of autonomy and delegated power.13 Interestingly, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the destiny of the word “revolution” was the same: its political meaning, which had existed earlier, was censored by conservative ideologists.14 Both suppressed names were to return later in a spectacular fashion. But that these words were suppressed is due to some special qualities of empires and revolutions. As we will see further, they both deal with the negative— empty space and unstructured time—and, as such, they tend to escape

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attention. Why do we need to give special attention to revolution, if it only fixes age-old injustice? Why speak of empire, if we actually have universality, globalization, and whoever rebels against it takes us completely by surprise? We generally tend not to notice our negative acts but to emphasize the positive target they are directed at, and the positive state of affairs they are meant to protect. Thus, empire, like revolution, is often “unconscious”. This was particularly true, for instance, of early Rome, so that Paul Veyne speaks, in its regard, of “unconscious imperialism.”15 In fact, the very word “empire” is a euphemism, because it calls a monarchy by a republican legal term, and this is true both of Rome and of Napoleon’s France. Thus, “empire,” like “revolution” (according to Claude Lefort16) and the Modern democracy that stems from it, bears the mark of illegitimacy. This also means that we deal, in the case both of revolution and of empire, with something that resists conceptualization. Actually, Rome did not have a “positive” conception of its empire during the most intense phases of its expansion. Thus, Paul Veyne notes that Rome, unlike Athens with its Greek “Arkhe,” had a very archaic, egocentric notion of international relations, viewing itself as the only real city in a world which was surrounded by barbarians and in need both of securing itself and of gaining land for its ever growing population. Its imperialism started therefore as an “archaic isolationism.”17 In the context of the present volume, we could speak here of the collective solitude of an imperialist republic. Later, in the second century b.c., after Rome had defeated Carthage, it started increasing its mostly indirect control over the rest of the Mediterranean world, filling adjacent countries with its merchants and “capitalists.” When these merchants and capitalists were increasingly threatened by local powers, Rome started to annex the countries in question. Guiglielmo Ferrero, telling this story in his “The Greatness and Decline of Rome” (1902–7),18 draws obvious parallels with the conquest of the world by European countries in the nineteenth century. He calls, for instance, the war of Mithridates against Rome (starting in 88 b.c.), “not a mere struggle between an Eastern and a Western Power but an organized and widespread revolution against capitalist domination. Mithridates was posing, not simply as the hero of Hellenism, but as the scourge of the cosmopolitan plutocracy under the patronage of Rome.”19 At that time, Rome never called itself an empire because it considered its actions as simply protective of the interests of its citizens. Romans started to speak of the “imperium” of Roman people only in the middle of the first century b.c., when conquests led to the establishment of dictatorship, and then monarchy, inside Rome itself. It is in this very period that Cicero wrote his book “On the Republic,” which would later become a classic plea for a republican constitution. The book is mostly dedicated to various public institutions, but its conclusion is striking: it is “Scipio’s dream” where the ghost of Scipio the African reminds his posterity of the futility and vanity of the republic, and of its empire, from the perspective of an inhuman universe: I perceive that you are still employed in contemplating the seat and residence of mankind. But it appears to you so small, as in fact it really is, despise its vanities, and fix your attention for ever on these heavenly objects. Is it possible that you should attain any human applause or glory that is worth contending for? The



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earth, you see, is peopled but in a very few places, and those too of small extent; and they appear like so many little spots of green scattered through vast uncultivated deserts. And those who inhabit the earth are not only so remote from each other as to be cut off from all mutual correspondence, but their situation being in oblique or contrary parts of the globe, or perhaps in those diametrically opposite to yours, all expectation of universal fame must fall to the ground.20

This image of collective solitude in space, which sounds so Modern, is clearly a metaphoric commentary on the imperial transformation of the Roman city-state, where global considerations undermine republican institutions and mores—unity of the world against the unity of a subject. By making a full circle, the Roman republic passed from solitary egocentrism to solitary universalism. I will not expand here on the history of empire in Medieval Europe: this conceptual history has been largely documented. Generally speaking, the concept was widely used with regard to the two attempted “remakes” of the empire, the one by Charlemagne and the other by Otto I. In both, the “empire” stood not just for statehood and for the right of succession to the Romans, but for universality, proclaimed but never realized. “Empire” had an overtone of usurpation in it, as well as a melancholic-nostalgic spirit. Nevertheless, this was a strong claim to legitimacy and to unitary sovereign statehood, and indeed the Holy Roman Empire of the Hohenstauffens was one of the cradles of the Modern centralized bureaucratic state,21 so that in the independent sovereign states that were forming in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was suggested, as I already evoked, that a king was emperor of his domain. Due to these multiple claims on universality, the concept of empire was temporarily abandoned and supplanted by the concept of the state—even if the practice of “imperial” expansion was precisely at its peak. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, “empire”—the main model of which was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation—was considered “monstrous,”22 in comparison with the rapidly developing model of a sovereign, administrative state (compare the insistence of Negri and Hardt on the “monsters” that form the multitude inhabiting the empire of today23). The Holy Roman Empire, with its local self-government of Electors and estates conventions, was too decentralized, in a sense too “democratic,” for the standards of the Modern state of that time. In the baroque epoch (the seventeenth century), the state was seen as an avantgarde innovation suited to the new chaotic world (such was the view of Machiavelli and Hobbes). In the eighteenth century the state was perceived as a classical orderly institution in contrast with heterogeneous, porous, and federative empire. In addition, “empire” was believed to be subject to the historical cycles of “rise and fall,” while the state was supposed to withstand all those. Thus, for a long period of time, “empire” became a word for political weakness and moral corruption, not of the military force originally inherent in the meaning of the term. Importantly, the seventeenth and, more so, the eighteenth centuries, far from being solely focused on atomic states, were preoccupied with the construction of a

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common political space within Europe (where such states could exist and interact). This common space of the Ius Publicum Europaeum (alias Res Publica Christiana), was, however, never framed as a federation or empire. Carl Schmitt suggests that this could only be possible on the condition that the essential struggle for world hegemony was transferred into non-European space, the space of the war for colonies.24 After this period of disfavor, “empire” comes back into the foreground of European politics with Napoleon, to be abandoned only after the Second World War. For Napoleon, empire was primarily a part of the general drive of the resurrection of Roman antiquity that had been started by the American and French Revolutions. (American revolutionaries, Hamilton and Jefferson, were not afraid of this word either.) Bonaparte did not wish to be named a king, but, instead, chose a word that was new for France, and which recalled the succession from republic to monarchy in ancient Rome. In 1804, he was crowned by the Pope as Emperor of the French. Due to his military victories, Napoleon’s empire ousted the medieval Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1806. Here, “empire” is clearly not an archaic, but an avantgarde, future-oriented notion.25 Even in spite of the many conservative tendencies of Napoleon’s politics, precisely the “imperial” side of it—that is, its foreign policy—was mostly not conservative. Napoleon modernized old feudal institutions by introducing new French institutions in many of the countries he conquered. The use of the concept went back to the revolutionary legitimacy of the regime, and the universalism that it implied consisted in the expansion of the French model of the post-revolutionary state (empire did not oust the state, but in fact fully developed it, as though in the folds of its spacious gown—as had happened before in the epoch of the Hohenstaufens). One even remembers Napoleon’s talk of returning to the Carolingian empire and the role of the Pope in his crowning ceremony; this talk is not simply archaic either, because it announces a project of returning to the early medieval unity of Europe, in contrast to its feudal, then dynastic, and only then national fragmentation. The French Revolution brought about the utopian drive of universality (liberty, equality, and fraternity), as well as the sense of war as civil, mass-driven, and limitless: Napoleon, long before the wars of the twentieth century, was famous for not observing the rules of war, such as invading the territories of neutral countries without announcement. It is also not by chance that it is during his wars we encounter, in Spain, the first Modern partisan campaign. In this sense, revolution and empire in France were anti-classical, barbaric, monstrous, in the sense of the eighteenth century. But it is this non-classical sense that became, at that time, future-oriented and avant-garde. After the fall of Napoleon, there came an interlude during which the state, armed with dynastic legitimacy, became the dominant political form again—Napoleon’s administrative and legal reforms became a model—but in their statist, not imperial aspect.26 However, at this time, the second wave of colonialism was going on in Europe. England had already started it with its conquest of India in the eighteenth century, but now, after the example of conquest shown by Napoleon, more and more European countries started to conquer overseas territories. The second wave of conquest, unlike the first, was driven by ideas of progress, of gradually civilizing



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non-European peoples and then setting them free. But, even more so than in the first colonization of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European countries abstained from including colonial territories in their sovereign territory and, this time, usually abstained even from sending permanent settlers there. Imperialist policy was tightly linked with liberal political ideology in the metropolis and even with the continuation of the revolution. Thus, when France, in the 1830s, ventured to conquer Algeria, Alexis de Tocqueville supported this war because he thought that it would help reinvigorate the French people—like many of his contemporaries, at least since the French Revolution, he saw the essence of politics in public activity, and was worried that the people, under monarchy, were becoming too passive.27 After 1848, the empire came spectacularly back in Europe itself. First, Napoleon’s nephew was able to repeat his adventurous career and become Emperor of France. Second, the great European powers launched the second wave of colonization—now for the purely exploitive purposes of acquiring resources and sales markets. This time, in the aftermath of the two Napoleons, few were ashamed to call themselves “empires.” This title even helped the old legitimate monarchs to present themselves in a new, more Modern form. The politics of force was rehabilitated, and the commercial bourgeoisie showed its other, militarist face. Like the revolutionary career-makers, the growing entrepreneur class was enjoying the growing sense of force, without being able to conceive a direct political despotism of their own within the country (they depended on a free labor force and on its unpopular exploitation, and they were competing among each other and thus unable to act in concert)—or at least the government was able to stop this ambition and redirect it into colonies. Twenty years after Napoleon III came to power, his Prussian neighbors, who had learned all the indispensable lessons and reunited the German states under their hegemony, defeated Louis Napoleon on the battlefield and proclaimed themselves an empire (Reich). At the same time (since the 1850s) some authors—such as Constantin Frantz and Bruno Bauer—began criticizing and analyzing “imperialism.”28 They perceived the growing disposition of European countries towards conquest, for both economic and political purposes, as the continuation of Napoleon’s epoch. Thus, it was not surprising that this conquest brought not only capitalist development and the exploitation of colonies but also tendencies toward charismatic autocracy (such as the rule of Napoleon III in France, and Disraeli in Britain). Later, in the early twentieth century, when “empire” had already become an accepted term both for its critics and for its proponents, there appeared theories of imperialism that were even more considerate of its economic aspects. The first book on imperialism was written in 1902 by John Hobson; then there followed the Marxist theories of imperialism: Rudolf Hilferding, Rosa Luxembourg, Vladimir Lenin, and Nikolai Bukharin.29 All of these authors associated imperialism with capitalism, particularly with the need to invest capital once it is accumulated. After the First World War, which was widely seen as a clash of imperialist interests, an attempt was made to return to the logic of sovereign states and their cosmopolitan cooperation. But post-revolutionary Russia ended up preserving the empire de facto when it encountered the external limitations of its potentially universal project. When the German extreme right took power

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in 1933, they proclaimed Germany the third Reich (the first was the Holy Roman Empire, and the second the Reich proclaimed by Prussia in 1871). The idea of the Nazis was the Grossraum, “large space,” controlled by Germany: by that time, it was clear that the colonial empires were about to dissolve, but Germany was not content to be satisfied with the “natural borders” of its nation: instead, it aspired to the large sphere of imperial rule, recalling that of Napoleon, but under the principle of the German nation. Alexander Kojève, a French Russian philosopher who was later to become one of the architects of the European Union, criticized the Nazis in 1945 for their illegitimate confusion of empire with nation, but nevertheless considered the institution of empire as an indispensable intermediate step upon the road from the nation-state to world unity.30 Kojève proposed to form a “Latin” empire of “kindred nations” where France would have not a monopoly on power, but a solid hegemony. Kojève was not alone in his project of the partial reunion of Europe—but at that time, decolonization made the word “empire” into an insult, and both sides of the Cold War used it to caricature their adversary (US propaganda portrayed the USSR as an autocratic empire, and US President Reagan finally called it an “evil empire,” while the Soviets traditionally accused the Americans of “imperialism”). In fact, both sides did pursue policies that are hard to qualify other than as imperial or imperialist, but, like the Early Modern colonial empires, they never formalized this relationship.31 During the Cold War, these “empires” were commonly allegorized in science fiction, which, apart from referring to the USSR and the US, reflected the growing unification and domestication of a world that was torn between the two legitimate enemies. At that moment, the imagination of conquests in outer space reflected a growing sense of collective solitude and exhaustion: imperial ambitions on Earth as a counterpart to the anxiety of humans in the face of the immense world, and their sense of alienation from it. Thus, “empires” became associated with something non-anthropomorphic, strange and alien. The “post-modern” philosophy that appeared at the same time, in the 1960s, also attempted to build an estranged and non-anthropomorphic picture of the world. The 1960s’ disappointment with the liberal state and economy found expression in non-anthropomorphic genres, but at that moment it could not offer any positive model of a non-liberal and non-classical polity. Now, after the fall of the Soviet bloc, the global situation has lost its traditional coordinates. The proliferation of local conflicts, the rapid expansion of Westernstyle political institutions and ways of life was accompanied by growing military and economic asymmetry between the US and the rest of the world. Many voices in the European Union want it to further unification, to become a counter-power to the US. The forces of the US unilaterally, or sometimes of the US and Europe together, exercise “humanitarian” operations across the world, to quench and stall the aforementioned local conflicts. In these circumstances, the concept of “empire” is back, and, for the first time in 50 years, it is even used by many in the positive sense. Still, it has not been accepted by any country as an official title. In sum, the new phenomenon of imperialism, and the discourse of empire, can be explained in two main ways: as failed universality and as an overly successful universalization. Each time “empire” appears on the table, this means that a universal



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project has failed. Napoleon’s empire meant that the French Revolution was over, and that one had to master the chaos it had opened up by purely military means. Similarly, the German Reich meant disappointment in the colonial empires. Today, even though Negri and Hardt use the word in the sense of world dominance already achieved, “empire” means the failure of the Soviet emancipatory project, and the growing opposition that economic and cultural globalization encounters throughout the world, so that it has to be backed by force. Today’s Western society is obsessed with security. This society, where crime is comparatively low and which is equipped with the most advanced means of control, imagines itself as being the society of the unlocalized and unpredictable “risk,” “precarity,” etc. The decenterment and chaos that are brought about by globalization increase social anxiety, both on the part of elites, who are obsessed with security, and on the part of immigrant populations which feel powerless and turn to terror. This is a kind of war of position, which at times shows signs of turning into a war of maneuver thanks to unbalanced impatient decisions of the stronger party.

Universalism positive and negative The empire’s universalism (whether it is limited or excessive) can, in its turn, be understood differently: positively or negatively. Anthony Pagden, in his book The Lords of all the World, argues that the imperial universalist project was first Roman and civilizational, and then, in the Middle Ages, Christian. This Romano-Christian universalism, according to him, provided for the conquest of overseas colonies, and later became imprinted in the Enlightenment, and in the present-day messianism of liberal democracy in the United States. Pagden’s account is persuasive, but it tells a continuous story and does not allow for any breaks in the narrative. Also, after having discussed in detail the history of the concept of “empire,” Pagden includes in his narrative those periods and countries that did not consider themselves as empires, or did not apply the word “empire” to what Pagden treats as such. Finally, because of the continuous character of the story and of the way he links the present to the future, Pagden presents imperialism as a rudiment of political theology from which, as becomes clear from his conclusion, he would like the world to be free. However, since empire, even in his own account, is so intertwined with the most important achievements of Modernity, one should be very careful in seeking what opposes it. According to Negri and Hardt, the contemporary Empire is the fruit of a long revolutionary process, which has globalized, unified the world and made it entirely immanent, self-enclosed. At the same time, in this immanent world, Empire represents a reactionary force that still bears the imprint of now-extinct transcendence, because it subjects immanence to the forces of mediation and representation, which are exterior to the truly immanent process of production. The other force in today’s world, which is opposed to “empire,” is the “multitude”—the heterogeneous mass of people who actually live and produce, and do not really need any mediating mechanism imposed upon them. Negri and Hardt compare this multitude to the Church and the way it

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lived, on the move, in Augustine’s “City of Earth.” Empire, for Negri and Hardt, is no longer a particular power that aspires to universality: it is in fact a universal power of the actually unified world. But its domination is not necessary for the world to remain one. Negri and Hardt assume that the unification of the world is already complete, which gives them a productive universalist point of view, but this assumption fails to explain actual political struggles: proliferating local conflicts, growing terrorist activity and the military interventions of the US and its allies that lead many to speak of the imperialist turn in its policy. Now, in both of these accounts empire and the situation in which it emerges appear as positive, substantial forces. For Pagden, and for Negri and Hardt, empire represents a theology or metaphysics that imposes itself over the world. In what follows, I will argue that the logic of empire follows not only the positive and messianic principle, but also the negative and inertial one. As we saw above, both Negri and Hardt, for their part,32 and Kriegel, for her part,33 consider the concepts and phenomena of revolution and empire to be closely related, and opposed to the more “classic” concept and phenomenon of the state. For Negri and Hardt, empire usurps the achievements of revolution, imposing on them from outside, and for Kriegel, revolution and empire equally build upon the notion (pernicious in her view) of the decision-making sovereign subject. Both Negri and Hardt and Kriegel see the emergence of revolution and empire as a singular modern phenomenon, and neither of them develops upon the precise logic through which revolution gives way to empire. First of all, we need to have in mind the devastating destructive effect of the French Revolution. Many theorists of the French Revolution, such as Jules Michelet, Georg Hegel, and, in our days, Claude Lefort, see the main meaning of this event as negative: the destruction of the theologico-political principle and the creation of a “void” in the place of the sovereign: the void that is frightening, sterile, but also characteristic of a democratic culture.34 The Revolution, by destroying the internal structure of French society, also transformed the system of international relations among the European powers. When, in 1792, France, by what it thought was a preemptive strike, started a war against the Austrian empire, the new war was immediately overdetermined ideologically, even if the elites of the European powers mistakenly thought that ideological difference would be a pretext for them to simply weaken France and annex some of its territories. Austria and Prussia feared the threat that the principle of popular sovereignty posed to the previously accepted criteria of legitimacy. Thus, the rights of German nobles in Alsace and the rights of the Pope in Avignon, which were violated with reference to the sovereignty of people, were major pretexts to the 1792 war. The widespread opinion that France was weakened by its revolutionary events contributed to the carelessness of hostile rhetoric on the part of Austria and made Prussia hope for territorial acquisitions from France. However, both countries were not that eager to go to war, which finally erupted due to an escalation of mutual suspicions and misperceptions. Interestingly, the universalist aspects of the revolutionary ideology did not originally privilege the “export” of revolution. The role of revolutionary France was rather



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that of a magnet for the radicals of other countries who were the first to speak in universalist terms (thus, a German immigrant to France, Anacharsis Cloots, spoke in 1790 of the Revolution as “a trumpet that has reached to the four corners of the globe”35) and to push France to go to war. France was also a point of attraction of sympathies among the enlightened circles of all European countries. Only when the war started in 1792 did French leaders largely turn from nationalist to universalist rhetoric (“war of the people against kings,” “crusade for universal liberty,”36 etc.). Because of the opposition between the revolutionary and monarchic principles of legitimacy, France found itself alone in the face of other European countries (nine of them, including Austria, Prussia, England, and Spain, opposed France in 1793). Its revolutionary government knew that losing the war would mean the end of the Revolution and the Restoration (a change of regime which would not at all be on the agenda in the case of a “normal” European war). This created an anxious state of alert, of exception, of which the Terror—the anxious search for internal enemies—was one of the consequences. At the same time, in this extreme solitary situation, France soon found itself militarily superior to its enemy, because of the new, popular character of its armies and the new strategies of its generals that went against the “regular” war of the eighteenth century. The old monarchies, with their regular professional armies, started to crumble under the blows of French troops—already in 1792 the French invade Belgium, where they are, originally, warmly greeted. In this situation, the French, still feeling themselves alone against the whole world, saw a desert around them and no reason not to conquer enemy territories. Thus, revolutionary France promptly turned from defense to conquest. One of the dominating ideas during the Directory period was the old doctrine of “natural borders.” However, even this doctrine was left behind when Napoleon Bonaparte was charged with the expedition into Italy. During the Italian campaign, French troops constantly crossed the borders of neutral countries (such as Genoa), and their Austrian enemies did the same. At the end of this operation, when negotiating peace with Austria, Napoleon agreed to offer a large part of Venice in exchange for recognition of French conquest in Italy and Germany. To fulfill this promise, Napoleon promptly conquered Venice (which was neutral in the war and did not give any pretext for the conflict). The story shows that the French Revolution transformed the whole security structure of the continent, by exploding the borders among sovereign states and turning the whole of Europe into a continuous theater of war, where France, alone against all adjacent countries, attempted to rally supporters of its cause from within the European states. The borders, the lines of division remained, but they were now indeterminate, fluid—a situation homologous to the state of revolutionary society within France. In a sense, France gradually drew the rest of Europe into a funnel of indeterminacy and illegitimacy. Steven Walt, in his book Revolution and War, argues that post-revolutionary wars start not because of the immediate desire of revolutionaries for expansion or because of their ideological hostility to other powers but because of the new indeterminate situation where each side radically misperceives the intentions of the other,

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and the revolutionary state seems weak to others and threatened to itself. Two of the major factors that drive states to war in a revolutionary situation are, according to Walt, “the window of opportunity” and “the spiral of suspicion.” Perceived weakness creates the seductive empty spaces to be conquered, and at the same time cherishes fear and draws the other side to hostile action. Both processes further undermine international structures of legitimacy and enhance the sense of fragility and opportunity that invites to adventure. Long before Walt (and probably without his knowledge), a similar account was advanced, in relation to the Napoleonic wars, by Guiglielmo Ferrero, a well-known (but now mostly forgotten) Italian historian of the early twentieth century whom I have already mentioned with regard to the history of Ancient Rome. Ferrero was not just an historian but a political theorist and a public figure of a liberal/ conservative orientation. Already during the First World War (which he calls a “destructive revolution”), he criticizes the “quantitative” civilization of capitalism and democracy that threatens the world with the “madness of the unlimited” (folie de l’illimité).37 The same line of thought is continued in the dark period before and during the Second World War, when Ferrero composed two books on the era of Napoleon I, “The Gamble. Bonaparte in Italy” (1936/1961) and “Reconstruction. Talleyrand in Vienna.” (1941). In these books, Ferrero, who is highly critical of Bonaparte, describes the whole story, from the start of the French Revolution in 1789 to the final fall of Napoleon in 1815, as the story of fear. Ferrero links together the phenomenon of “Great Fear”—the mass panic in the French provinces in the summer of 1789,38 the Terror of 1793–4, and the “panic” provoked among the European powers in the 1800s by Napoleon’s victory. European monarchies might have been stronger than Napoleon militarily, but they were mortally afraid of him. Moreover, the behavior of Napoleon himself, in particular his adventurous marches and surprise strikes, were also a sign of fear rather than courage: of disorientation and blindness. Ferrero agrees with some French historians39 who show that most of Napoleon’s wars, at least until 1806 inclusively, were in fact defensive wars: legitimate borders once transgressed, and legitimate government overthrown, Bonaparte had every reason to see dangers all over the new borders. Even though Napoleon, in the Memorial of Saint-Helena,40 gives a “positive” version of his policy, driven, according to him, by the desire to establish a lasting peace in Europe, the fundamental condition of his wars was the fact that, for France, there were no more “external” countries, and the continent was united by war, the extreme fragility of old armies, and competing claims of illegitimacy. Napoleon’s bulletins and proclamations written during his rule all blame the war on the adversary, mainly on England.41 Appeals to peace are constant, but they are precisely used not as a positive goal of policy but as a status quo ruined by the aggressor. Of course, this is a standard rhetoric of legitimation but, given our knowledge of the circumstances, for instance the fact that Napoleon preserved the sovereignty of the great European powers he conquered, we have to take it into account. As Ferrero writes:



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The Republic was a precarious creation, inconsistent, unstable; it could only maintain itself if France was strong in Italy. […] In 1805 Bonaparte decided to conquer Italy by defeating Austria […] After the peace of Pressburg, Napoleon lived in terror of the immense conquest he had made […] To make sure of what it had acquired in Italy, the Revolution stepped out of its natural frontiers a second time, this time on the German side, and provoked a general war.42

One of Napoleon’s main strategic principles was always (even in an unfavorable situation) to attack first, which means to use the offensive as a defensive tool.43 One also has to mention that the ultimate decision of Napoleon to consolidate the whole of Europe under French rule was taken in the frame of his “continental blockade” of England. This blockade, however, was an attempt at a symmetrical response to the more traditional sea blockade of France exercised by England. Thus, applying the logic that Carl Schmitt, as cited earlier, develops in relation to the overseas empires of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one can say that Napoleon’s European empire was born as the internalization of the limitless law of the sea displaced onto the continent. According to Ferrero, the whole epoch of the French Revolution and Empire was one of a continuous “Great Fear” which was caused by the destruction of the principle of legitimacy. “The Revolution abused force because it was afraid: afraid of France, afraid of Europe, afraid of itself.”44 This principle, after the fall of Napoleon, was “courageously” reconstructed by Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna. Thus, in Ferrero’s account, the Revolution appears as a destructive whirl, and Napoleon’s Empire, which seemingly stalls and masters it, in fact only moves within the unlimited space that is left open by it. This account is clearly inspired by the experience of the fatal panic that drew Europe into world war in the summer of 1914. Projecting this event, retrospectively, upon earlier history, Ferrero seeks to turn common opinions upside down: to see inertia and reactivity in Napoleon’s action which had usually been seen as an example of utmost activity and initiative. Respectively, Talleyrand, with his accepted reputation as a corrupt, treacherous man, turns out to be truly active and constructive. While the general argument of Ferrero, which undermines the military genius of Napoleon and his independent initiative during the Italian campaign, has been many times contested, his general historiosophic interpretation of the Napoleonic wars is well founded on the facts and remains influential. Now, if we see empire, at least the Modern empire, in a negative rather than a positive light, then we may obtain a new perspective on the current global security crisis. The founding event of this crisis was the democratic revolution45 that happened in the Eastern bloc at the end of 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, started from “above” by the Soviet leadership and then continued from below. The content of this revolution was predominantly negative, destructive: it did not give way to any new ideas, it did not bring forward a lasting mobilization, and, in most countries, it did not have a strong ideological avant-garde that would then massively come to power. However, this event should be considered as revolutionary, judging by the profound

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changes that it made in society, and by the emancipatory, secularizing thrust that was directed against the ideocratic and authoritarian rule of the Communist party. Anthropologically, the post-communist revolution was accompanied by widespread melancholia and apathy—but the same processes were under way during the French Revolution, as Michelet persuasively shows. These processes, as I have tried to show elsewhere, have to be considered not as arguments against the revolutionary character of the event, but as its symptoms, symptoms that the revolution, having destroyed the outer oppressor, applied to itself. By the year 2000 and the election of Vladimir Putin as Russian president, the regime started showing clear “Bonapartist” features (as it is now common in Russia to characterize it)—the leader is a charismatic autocrat who maneuvers among several powerful groups, none of which is able to monopolize power. The lamentations and self-humiliation characteristic of the 1990s gave place to defensively aggressive nationalism and consumerist rage. While inside society, the fall of socialist regimes broke the sharp border that divided society from the party-state and put society, for a while, into a suspended and even stagnant state, on the international level this event also led to the collapse of a fixed, external border (the Iron Curtain), and respectively to the internalization of the world. The unification and internalization of the world, which many baptized as “globalization,” did not, however, contribute to the solution of local conflicts, but instead led to their proliferation, on the one hand, and their suspension (failure of finding a determinate–durable lack of ultimate solution)—on the other. Because, in the new situation, any conflict is an internal one, its solution can only be a “policing” or “peace-keeping” operation on the part of a hegemonic power. But such operations cannot solve conflict, they can only suspend it. The very principle of sovereignty was—like in the 1790s—put into question, partly because of the growing power of the non-state actors, partly because the large friend–enemy divisions that had earlier given meaning to state sovereignty collapsed and gave way to indeterminate and fluid groupings. The central political figure becomes that of a stranger (immigrant, suspected terrorist), an internal alien. The same was true by the end of 1790s and in the 1800s, but then the fascination with the foreigner was fearful but admiring, while today it is closer to fearful repulsion. Negri and Hardt, however, speak enthusiastically of the “monsters” and “pilgrims” who constitute, in their view, the “multitude” of today’s empire. In the newly reunited world, there were many new zones and political subjects that emerged as neutral and in need of “development.” This led to the new wave of expansion by Western states, capital, and culture. But, to the extent that this expansion transformed the sovereignty of the concerned zones, it was immediately seen as a threat by subjects where globalization had not gone that far but which were not inherently hostile to the West or to the particular Western countries responsible for expansion. Thus, the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe in 1999 and 2004 was not motivated by any immediate security reasons but rather by the political and military vacuum that appeared after the fall of the Warsaw Pact.46 This expansion might be beneficial for Eastern European countries, but it largely contributed (along with the bombardment of Serbia in 1998) to anti-Western sentiment among Russian



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elites and in Russian public opinion, which further led to the growth of authoritarianism in Russia. Seemingly, the withdrawal of the USSR from the Middle East was immediately followed by the Gulf War and the subsequent increase in US military and economic presence in the region, which in turn led to growing anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world. Steven Walt, in his 1996 book, recognizes the events of 1989–91 in Eastern Europe as revolutions, and takes time to explain why, contrary to his argument, they did not lead to a large-scale war. He explains this in terms of a relatively peaceful international situation at the moment and fears escalation only within the former USSR.47 However, subsequent events have shown that there were things to fear throughout the world, primarily in the relations between the West and the Middle East. I suggest that the present international situation is directly linked to the dissolution of the Yalta system of legitimacy as a result of anti-communist revolutions. The post-revolutionary crisis that internalized global conflicts only gradually led to imbalance, which happened far from its epicenter. Therefore, this crisis appears to us today in the shape of empire rather than of revolution. My task here is to show that the two are inherently linked, and that the indeterminate expansion of empire(s) is made possible by the collapse of authority or legitimacy that precedes it.

Philosophy of passive agency If we now want to understand the situation in terms of the fundamental philosophy of history, we need to turn to another thinker who reflected on the negative character of the French Revolution and attempted to conceive its aftermath. This thinker is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. We need to pay particular attention to his early Phenomenology of Spirit—the work completed on the day Napoleon defeated Prussian forces at Jena and that contained a severe analysis of revolution as an advent of empty negativity and, in a more or less veiled form, praise of Napoleon as the figure completing and overcoming (“sublating”) the Revolution. Alexandre Kojève, the famous interpreter of Hegel whom I have already mentioned, insists on the “Bonapartist” subtext of the Phenomenology that, according to him, celebrated the Napoleonic state as the end of history. This may not be exactly true, but it is nevertheless clear that Hegel does see his time as the triumph of the absolute that had passed through the negativity of revolution but overcame and absorbed it into a positive political and ethical order. However, Hegel’s view of history can be used to derive some other, less optimistic conclusions about the post-revolutionary situation in Europe. The central concept of this work of Hegel is “negativity,” to which corresponds the empirical phenomenon of death. Both are involved in dialectical movement, which means that they are treated ambiguously. On the one hand, negativity is a condition of historical movement, due to which the spirit (Geist) rises above material “substance” or nature, demonstrates its independence from it and transforms it by gradually turning itself into nature, and nature into spirit. However, on the other

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hand, negativity, together with death as its phenomenon, constantly threatens spirit itself with its “inactuality,” “void,” and inertia. But it is only by facing and absorbing this danger, says Hegel, that the spirit can hope to elevate itself above nature and to actualize itself in it. To quote the most famous passage from this book of Hegel: Death, if that is what we want to call this non-actuality, is of all things the most dreadful, and to hold fast what is dead requires the greatest strength […] but the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. […] Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it.48

The whole narrative of the Phenomenology is penetrated by the interplay between these two sides of negativity, as a principle of movement and action, and as a principle of paralysis and passivity.49 To understand this logic better, let us consider three narratives where it is most clearly developed by Hegel. The first is the famous dialectic of “lordship and bondage”50 which, nominally, is supposed to describe the spiritual movement of the ancient world of slaveholders but in fact has important connotations in the time contemporary to Hegel, since it is the time where bourgeoisie rose above the aristocracy and finally came to claim its privileges. Here, as the story goes, the “lord” is the one who risks his life and thus establishes his superiority over the “bondsman.” The lord does not die, because, if both sides actually die, we would be dealing with a “lifeless unity which is split into lifeless, merely immediate, unopposed extremes,”51 and the dialectic would stop. So, the bondsman accepts his defeat without mortal combat, and the lord appropriates his death without dying. But, in the same way that death was actual to him only for a fleeting moment, the negativity of his relationship to nature is fleeting, too. He can only consume, “enjoy” the thing, perform its “sheer negation,”52 leaving its transformation to the bondsman. The bondsman, ultimately, enjoys a lasting relationship with death that he fears as his “absolute master”—and, ultimately, it is the bondsman who achieves a higher degree of self-consciousness. Thus, negativity and death fall into two moments: sheer unproductive negation and the perpetual active transformation of nature. The aristocrat, who openly and boldly acts (while the bondsman works) remains, in fact, static, unproductive—one can say, passive—in his very activity. Now, let us pass to another great dramatization of Hegel—the one that describes the “ethical order” and that is largely based on a philosophical interpretation of Sophocles’ “Antigone.” Again, we deal with the clash of two opposite principles: human and divine law, or, the state and the family (as embodied in Creon and Antigone). The “passage” that mediates between the two sides is, again, that of death: the state needs war to reinvigorate the civic spirit,53 but when a civic hero (Antigone’s brother Polynices) is dead, he returns to the sphere of the family which deals with his sheer being, life or death, not with his civic identity. The interesting thing here is that the family—personified in Antigone—transforms the sheer materiality and inertia of death into a spiritual act.



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The dead individual, by having liberated his being from his action or his negative unity, is an empty singular, merely a passive being-for-another, at the mercy of every lower irrational individuality and the forces of abstract material elements, all of which are now more powerful than himself […] The Family keeps away from the dead this dishonouring of him by unconscious appetites and abstract entities and puts its own action in their place, and weds the blood-relation to the bosom of the earth. […]”54

Thus, Antigone actively takes on the essentially inert and passive work of nature, substance. Because the collision of the passive substantiality of family with the active spirit of the state takes an active, dramatic form, it is ultimately sublated and superseded, in Hegel’s account. Thus, if in the case of the lord and the bondsman the activity of the latter was fundamentally passive, in the case of Antigone, on the contrary, passivity itself is acted out. In the first case, the threatening emptiness of negation consisted in its fleeting, inactual character. In the second case, however, the danger of death appeared as the inertness of a corpse, sheer materiality abandoned by spirit. In both cases, death appears with its non-sublime, depotentializing side. Let us finally consider Hegel’s analysis of the French Revolution in the subsection entitled “Absolute freedom and terror.”55 Here, after the Old Regime has collapsed (as a result of the process of Enlightenment, which had “permeated all its moments” by negativity), the vacuum is filled by the reign of the purely universal principle, embodied in Rousseau’s general will. The problem is that the actualization of it in a particular, individual being becomes impossible—an individual form of this universality would constitute its betrayal. Thus, this “universal freedom […] can produce neither a positive work nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the fury of destruction.”56 “The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolute self. It is thus the coolest and meanest of all deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water.”57 Thus, Hegel states what Michelet will later develop: the boring and uninspiring character of the Revolution, which is negative in the bad sense of the word. Moreover, the “fury of destruction,” which is a negative but a sublimated, dignified image, and certainly an active one, ends with the loss of meaning and in the automatic compulsion of cutting off heads at the guillotine. The situation is similar to the dialectic of the lord and the bondsman: the bold, self-disclosing activity of the lord puts him ultimately in an essentially static, passive condition. But in the case of (any) revolution, in fact both are the negative revolutionary drive that cannot be incorporated or actualized, and the sheer dead corpses it leaves after itself. We can extrapolate this picture to any revolution, noting that, in its process, revolutionary negativity, on the one hand, is by definition fleeting and incorporeal, and increasingly turning against itself, while, on the other hand, the material elements of the old society that it leaves behind are deprived of their ideological legitimation, becoming thus a source of boredom and/or of playful amusement.

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Such, generally speaking, is the work of revolution: the fierce activity of emancipation that ends, after the collapse of the Old Regime, with self-negation and paralysis. But what happens next? For Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the situation is resolved, once again, with the fear of death as “absolute master” and the return to the organic subdivisions of society, but now with the full consciousness of everyone’s moral freedom and even sovereignty. Kojève even thinks that Napoleon appears precisely at this juncture. However, if we look at these events from our time, keeping in mind the historical parallels, we can suspect that the imperial situation, which comes to replace the revolutionary one, inverts the latter in the way of a chiasmus. Revolution was a bold, destructive activity that had the inertia of sheer death and social apathy as its product. We can say that revolutionary negativity, being active, gradually takes the form of passivity (under which we should still be able to discern it). In the imperial situation, we have hectic activity in the foreground, and inertial passivity in the background: passivity in the form of activity. Such, in the accounts of Michelet and Ferrero, was the situation of Napoleon, and we can extrapolate it to any political actor who suddenly finds himself in solitude, in the midst of empty, homogeneous, and threatening political space. (The recent international activity of the US vividly provokes such conclusions.) The revolutionary society discovers the void, so to speak, in its midst, in its center of power, and it finds in its temporal suspension the miraculous historical festival produced by revolution. The collapse of international borders is then egocentrically viewed by this society as the reorientation of the whole world towards its ideals and/or its sufferings. In the imperial situation, the center is displaced, and the void is perceived as spatial rather than temporal, and external rather than internal: if, earlier, the revolutionary society looked at itself with the eyes of the whole world, now, it rather looks outside into the world emptied by its own work, and is passively “sucked” into this void by fear and will to power.

Conclusion The current movement of globalization does indeed have affinities with the “imperial” politics of the early nineteenth century—the time when this concept returned into the foreground of political discourse after long disregard. In both cases, we deal with the post-revolutionary world, where the internalization and suspension of conflicts endangers sovereignty and legitimacy, both externally and domestically. The implosion of sovereign borders leaves the subject alone in the face of an indeterminate totality, and “empire” names the point of view of this negative totality upon the stateless and therefore powerless multitude. Today, the post-Cold War world is also a world inheriting the revolutionary fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. In the same way that, in Russia, after the long revolutionary suspense of the 1990s, there is now a recognizable Bonapartist regime, the overall structure of international relations now shows the signs of US hegemony, the legitimacy of the US being increasingly built on its military and financial force.58



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Thus, the reason to introduce the notion of empire today is not simply the fact that apparent globalization is led in the interest of one hegemonic power (the US) or the Western powers taken together, and not the bureaucratic, authoritarian mode of global governance (as Negri and Hardt would have it), but the situation of a global crisis, where abundant lacunae, suspensions, and indeterminate conflicts make it easy for the great powers to expand peacefully their sphere of control as well as of economic and cultural hegemony, but where, in the second turn, the same lacunae, suspensions, and indeterminate conflicts can draw the world into a panic and escalation, precisely because of their indeterminacy. Beck and Grande thus follow a good tradition when they derive the need for European empire out of indeterminate and unpredictable “risk” (or the fearful exaggeration thereof) as a social and political condition. In other words, we can speak of the process of imperialization, which shows itself in a growing political anxiety, or sense of security. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde recently suggested, with great success, the notion of securitization (Buzan, Waever, de Wilde, 1998)—and it is not by chance that it is at this historical moment that “securitization,” or the discursive construction of an issue as existentially threatening, became so salient as to obtain a name. At the same time, we can give Ulrich Beck, with his theory of risk, the credit to have noticed this process much earlier, in 1986, but recently to have emphasized its link to the return of imperial and imperialist politics. “Empire” signifies a world that aspires to universality but stops short of it and encounters limits it cannot surpass. At the same time, this imperial world lives its limited universality as a closed totality, which produces the images of “aliens” or “barbarians” to appear and the empty space to conquer. It seems that this internal limitation is produced by the clash of the two contradictory political principles of late modernity: the principle of subject and the principle of substance: the idea of a sovereign individual and the sovereign state, on the one side, and of free, impersonal, global exchange and communication, on the other. Thus, it is not accidental that Negri and Hardt, on their part, and Blandine Kriegel, on hers, associate the contemporary empire, respectively, with the substance and the subject: empire lies precisely at the moment where the two clash. Will there follow a new synthesis of substance and subject, or will the contradiction lead to the further escalation of the crisis and, ultimately, to further destruction and dissolution—this, at this historical juncture, remains in suspension. However, it is clear that this situation requires not just the classical conceptual apparatus of the sovereign legal state, but also the non-classical Modern political concepts of revolution and empire.

Bibliography William Banks and Jeffrey Strausmann, “A New Imperial Presidency? Insights from U.S. involvement in Bosnia,” in Political Science Quarterly, 114(2), 1999. Bruno Bauer, Disraelis romantischer und Bismarcks sozialistischer Imperialismus (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1969 [1882]).

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Ulrich Beck, “Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity.” Trans. Mark Ritter (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992). Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007). Bernard Biancotto, La pensée politique de Guglielmo Ferrero (Marseille: Presses universitaires d’Aix-Marseille, 1994). Napoleon Bonaparte, “Supper in Beaucaire,” in Christopher Frayling, Napoleon Wrote Fiction (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1972), 117–35. —Oeuvres littéraires et oeuvres militaires (Paris: Bibliothèque des introuvables, 2001). Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy (New York: International Publishers, 1929). Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde, Security. A new framework for analysis (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998). Comte de las Cases, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hèlène (Paris: Flammarion, 1983). Cicero, The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero: Comprising his Treatise on the Commonwealth; and his Treatise on the Laws. Trans. Francis Barham (London: Edmund Spettigue, 1841–2). Elisabeth Fehrenback, “Reich,” in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (eds) Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 5 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972) 423–508. Niall Ferguson, Empire. The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2003). Guiglielmo Ferrero, The Greatness and Decline of Rome (London: Heinemann, 1907). —The Gamble. Bonaparte in Italy, 1796–1797 (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1936/1961). —The Reconstruction of Europe. Talleyrand and The Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941). Jörg Fisch, “Imperialismus,” in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (eds) Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972), 171–5. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000). —Multitude (New York: Penguin Press, 2004). Georg Wolf Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1807/1977). Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). Hobson, John A., Imperialism: A Study (New York: James Pott and Co, 1902). Annie Jourdan, L’empire de Napoléon (Paris: Flammarion, 2000). Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, 1194–1250 (New York, F. Ungar, 1957). Alexander Kojève, “Esquisse d’une doctrine de la politique française,” in La Règle du jeu, no. 1, 1990 [1945], Paris. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time (Irvington, NY: Columbia University Press, 2004). Blandine Kriegel, Etat de droit ou l’empire (Paris: Bayard, 2002). George Lefebvre, La grande peur de 1789 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970). Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell, 1988). Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1939). Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968). Artémy Magun, La révolution négative (Paris: Harmattan, 2009)



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Vladimir Mau and Irina Starodubrovskaya, The Challenge of Revolution. Contemporary Russia in Historical Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). James Muldoon, Empire and Order. The Concept of Empire, 800–1800 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). Antony Pagden, Lords of all the world, Ideologies of empire in Spain, Britain, and France c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Jennifer Pitts, “Empire and Democracy: Tocqueville and the Algeria question,” in Journal of Political Philosophy, 8(3), 2000, 295–319. Philip Pomper, “The History and Theory of Empires,” in History and Theory, 44, 2005, 1–27. Samuel Pufendorf, The Present State of Germany (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2007). Ilan Rachum, Revolution. The entrance of a new word into Western political discourse (Lanham, MD, New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1999). James Rosenau, “Illusions of Power and Empire,” History and Theory 44, 2005, 73–87. Bruce Russett and Allam C. Stam, “Courting Disaster: An Expanded NATO vs. Russia and China,” Political Science Quarterly, 113(3), 1998, 361–85. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason (London: NLB, 1976). Vladimir Sogrin, “Zakonomernosti russkoy dramy,” Pro et contra, Moscow, 4(3), 1999, 155–69. Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1997 [1950]). Arnaud Teyssier, Le Ier Empire. 1804–1815. De Napoléon Ier à Louis XVIII (Paris: Pygmalion, 2000). Paul Veyne, Le pain et le cirque (Paris: Le Seuil, 1976). —“L’empire romain,” in Maurice Duverger (ed.) Le Concept d’Empire (Paris: PUF, 1980), 120–35. —L’Empire gréco-romain (Paris: Seuil, 2005). Steven Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996). Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, “Hierarchy Under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State,” in International Organization, 49(4), 1995.

Notes 1 Tesoro de la lengua castella o española, cited in Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the world (Yale University Press, 1995), 43. 2 In fact, the accusations of “imperial” presidency have been heard already during the Clinton era, because of his tendency to decide military questions independently of Congress and the Senate. See, for instance, William Banks and Jeffrey Strausmann, “A New Imperial Presidency? Insights from U.S. involvement in Bosnia,” Political Science Quarterly, 114(2), 1999. 3 See Niall Ferguson, Empire. The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (Basic Books, 2003). 4 Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe (Polity Press, 2007), 50–93. 5 The theory of risk society—the society concerned above all with risks, that is, with security, rather than with various needs or goods—was developed by Ulrich Beck

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earlier, in his Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter (Sage Publications, 1992). 6 Cosmopolitan Europe, 212–14. 7 Anatoly Tchubais, Speech at the Saint-Petersburg State University of Engineering and Economics, 09.25.2003. Available (in Russian) online at http://www.prpc.ru/library/ civ_09/01.shtml (accessed 10 June 2012). 8 For example, Philip Pomper, “The History and Theory of Empires,” in History and Theory, 44, (2005), 1–27. Pomper predicts that empire “has joined the other forms of power receding into evolutionary past” (27) and that its current popularity is due to the reaction of men against the growing influence of women in politics (9). One of the ironies that Pomper does not perceive is that the current interventions of Western countries into the Middle East are in part legitimated precisely by the ambition to liberate Islamic women from male domination. 9 See James Rosenau, “Illusions of Power and Empire,” History and Theory, 44, 2005, 73–87. In today’s world, Rosenau writes, “[p]eople are too skillful and wise, organizations are too plentiful, and global structures are too disaggregated for power to be concentrated in the way that empires require” (81). The whole enterprise of Negri and Hardt is meant to combat this view, and show that decentralization does not prevent the exercise of global power. Furthermore, one may add, the skill of the citizens and the quantity of groupings may increase, and not decrease, the capacity of control: these new possibilities of power in Modern societies are something that Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault demonstrated already in 1960s and 1970s. 10 Cf. James Muldoon, Empire and Order. The Concept of Empire, 800-1800 (St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 11 See Antony Pagden, Lords of all the world, Ideologies of empire in Spain, Britain, and France c. 1500–c.1800 (Yale University Press, 1995). 12 For example Hernan Cortes, the famous conquistador, wrote that the size and scope of his conquests in Mexico were “so many and of such a kind that one might call oneself the emperor of this kingdom with no less glory than of Germany,” cited in Muldoon, Empire and Order, 116. 13 Ibid., 127. 14 Ilan Rachum, Revolution. The entrance of a new word into Western political discourse (University Press of America, 1999). 15 Paul Veyne, Le pain et le cirque (Seuil, 1976), 384. 16 Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell, 1988), 89–114. 17 Paul Veyne, “L’empire romain”, in Maurice Duverger (ed.) Le Concept d’Empire (PUF, 1980), 120–35, referring to 122–3; Paul Veyne, L’Empire gréco-romain (Seuil, 2005), 175–6. 18 Guiglielmo Ferrero, The Greatness and Decline of Rome (Heinemann, 1907), chapters II–IV, 18–86; see particularly 18–20. 19 Ibid., 84. 20 The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero: Comprising his Treatise on the Commonwealth; and his Treatise on the Laws, trans. Francis Barham (Edmund Spettigue, 1841–2), vol. 1, book 6, section 19. Available online at http://oll.libertyfund. org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=546&chapter=83314&layout= html&Itemid=27 (accessed February 11 2012). 21 See Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, 1194–1250 (F. Ungar, 1957).



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22 S. Pufendorf, The Present state of Germany (Liberty Fund, 2007), 6, 9, 176–7. “There is nothing left for us to say but that Germany is an irregular body, and like some mis-shapen monster if, at least, it be measured by the common rules of politics and civil prudence, and that nothing similar to it, in my opinion, exists anywhere on the whole globe. […] From a regular kingdom it has sunk and degenerated to that degree, that it is not now so much as a limited kingdom […] nor is it a body or system of many sovereign states and princes […] but something that fluctuates between the two […] Germany […] can never be reformed or reduced to the laws of a just and regular kingdom, but it tends naturally to the state of a confederate system. It is a conclusion of the long argument (6) explaining why emperor is no sovereign, estates are no aristocratic, regime is not mixed in the Aristotelian sense, etc.” 23 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2004), Multitude (Penguin Press, 2004), 194–6. 24 Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde. (Duncker und Humblot, 1997 [1950]), 54–68. 25 Reinhart Koselleck, in his book Futures Past (2004), as well as elsewhere, speaks of the “Sattelzeit” of the late eighteenth – early nineteenth century where many historical concepts changed their temporal orientation and acquired a new, future-oriented, markedly Modern sense. “Empire,” which Koselleck does not name in this context, is one such notion. 26 We can compare this situation with the post-Second World War interlude where, as a result of decolonization, the notion of empire retreated for a while. 27 Cf. Jennifer Pitts, “Empire and Democracy: Tocqueville and the Algeria question,” in Journal of Political Philosophy, 8(3), 2000, 295–319. 28 See Jörg Fisch, “Imperialismus,” in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (eds) Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 3 (Klett-Cotta, 1972), 171–5; Bruno Bauer, Disraelis romantischer und Bismarcks sozialistischer Imperialismus (Scientia Verlag, 1969 [1882]). 29 John A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (James Pott and Co, 1902); Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981); Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (Monthly Review Press, 1968); Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (International Publishers, 1939); Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy (International Publishers, 1929). 30 Alexander Kojève, “Esquisse d’une doctrine de la politique française,” in La Règle du jeu, no. 1, 1990 [1945], Paris. 31 Compare Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim, “Hierarchy Under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State,” in International Organization, 49(4), 1995. 32 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Harvard University Press, 2000). 33 Blandine Kriegel, Etat de droit ou l’empire (Bayard, 2002), 195–234. 34 See Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell, 1988). 35 A. Cloots, cited in Steven Walt, Revolution and War (Cornell University Press, 1996), 57. 36 G. Brissot and M. Isnard, cited in Walt, Revolution and War, 67. 37 Guiglielmo Ferrero, “La folie de l’illimité: le grand problème du monde moderne,” in Revue de Paris, 15 May 1917, 234, cited in: Bernard Biancotto, La pensée politique de Guglielmo Ferrero (Presses universitaires d’Aix-Marseille, 1994), 59. 38 See George Lefebvre, La grande peur de 1789 (Armand Colin, 1970).

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39 Cf., for example, Arnaud Teyssier, Le Ier Empire, 1804–1815, De Napoléon Ier à Louis XVIII (Pygmalion, 2000). Of course, one can argue that the “defensive” picture of Napoleon’s wars is simply a cunning justification of what in fact was a striving for world domination. But, curiously, Napoleon uses very little of this rhetoric: he prefers the “imperialist” legitimization because it appeals to the French. Both the “positive” and the “negative” aspects of expansion can serve as justifications, or as thoroughly concealed motives. 40 Comte de las Cases, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hèlène (Flammarion, 1983), vol. 2, 233 passim. Some authors today see Napoleon as consciously seeking to establish the eternal peace in Europe, in the manner of Abbé Saint-Pierre or Rousseau. See, for instance, Annie Jourdan, L’empire de Napoléon (Flammarion, 2000). 41 See Napoléon Bonaparte, Oeuvres littéraires et oeuvres militaires, vol. 3 (Bibliothèque des introuvables, 2001). See, for instance, 69–70, 271–2 etc. 42 Guiglielmo Ferrero, The Gamble. Bonaparte in Italy, 1796–1797 (G. Bell & Sons, 1961 [1936]), 294. 43 See already his early “Supper in Beaucaire.” “In the art of war, it is an axiom that whoever remains in his trenches, will be defeated: experience and theory agree on this”: Napoleon Bonaparte, “Supper in Beaucaire,” in Christopher Frayling, Napoleon Wrote Fiction (Saint Martin’s Press, 1972), 117–35 (reference to 132). 44 Ferrero, The Gamble, 296. 45 On the revolutionary essence of post-communism in Russia, see Artémy Magun, La révolution négative (Harmattan, 2009); Vladimir Mau and Irina Starodubrovskaya, The Challenge of Revolution. Contemporary Russia in Historical Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2001). 46 For criticism of the decision to expand NATO, on the grounds of “organizational inertia,” among others, see for instance Bruce Russett and Allam C. Stam, “Courting Disaster: An Expanded NATO vs. Russia and China,” Political Science Quarterly, 113(3), 1998, 361–85. The fact that the expansion of NATO was the result of the insistent requests of the Eastern European conuntries themselves only supports my point: the countries that find themselves “in the void” are even more threatened, and thus even more likely to play by the imperial logic, than the metropolies. We can think here of Serbia during the First World War, for example. 47 Walt (1996), 344–9. 48 Georg Wolf Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford University Press, 1977 [1807]), 19. 49 A very similar interplay is at work in Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (Vintage Books, 1989), where the dialectic opens up between “action” and “reaction,” so that for priests, for instance, the reaction, in a qui pro quo, takes the role of creative action. The “slaves,” in their “ressentiment,” have always to start with something external, for the slave morality, “action is fundamentally reaction” (On the Genealogy of Morals, 1.10, 37). Nietzsche’s point, however, is to show that today’s unfortunate situation of apathy, where “we are weary of man” (On the Genealogy of Morals, 1.12, 44) is originally produced by the active spirit, which was intercepted by the “priests” and turned for the reactive purposes, but still actively used to denigrate, humiliate, and torture life. Ascetic men even direct the active energy against themselves, and against their own activity. Reaction is a displacement of action, or rather a modification of it. In the beginning, there was action. In the priest and ascetic man, one can say, action results in reactivity (see, for instance, 3.11, 118, where force



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is empoyed by the ascetic man “to block up the wells of force”). But in the figure of “will to nothingness” which is preferable to not willing at all (On the Genealogy of Morals: 3.1, 97; 3.28, 163), it is the form of action that conceals the profoundly reactive and ascetic purposes. The same can be said of the Chiristian love that has the affirmative appearance but serves the purposes of resentment (op cit., 1.8, 34–5).   That human activity is often passively conditioned, is often passive in its essence, was also an important point made by Jean-Paul Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (NLB, 1976). In this late book, Sartre designated the whole sphere of human activity, the one that is dedicated to the satisfaction of needs and the competition for resources and is therefore mediated by material instruments, as “practico-inert.” According to Sartre, only the higher forms of human activity, those pertaining to the self-organization and self-rule of a group, are truly, actively active. 50 The Phenomenology of Spirit, B IV A, 111–19. 51 Ibid., 114. 52 Ibid., 116. 53 Ibid., 289. 54 Ibid., 271. 55 Ibid., BB VI, B III, 355–64. 56 Ibid., 359. 57 Ibid., 360. 58 On the parallels between today’s international structure and a domestic political regime (namely, what they call a “mixed regime”), see Hardt and Negri, Empire, 3–21. These authors see the possibilities of the “constitutionalization” of the present world order.

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… et unus non solus, sed in pluribus A Citizen as Eikon* Oleg Kharkhordin

The topic of this essay was suggested by a usual parallel between political and artistic representation. Since early modernity raised the issue of whom and how legislatures and elected representatives represent, an answer very frequently given by politicians and political theorists alike has been that a representative or a legislature should mirror his/her or its constituency as a painting mirrors life—i.e. be a true copy of the represented. For example, as John Adams held in his defense of the new US Constitution, in representative assembly, as in art, “the perfection of the portrait consists in its likeness.”1 But if representative art frequently serves as a model for representative politics, why cannot non-representative art serve as a model for non-representative politics? This article will consider one of the implications of such a question. I will ignore many strands on non-figurative art of the twentieth century (others are welcome to consider this possibility), and will go back to Christian icons, which are a classic example of non-representative images. Cannot they offer us an analogy, if not a model for what has been frequently called non-representative, direct or participatory democracy—e.g. for the politics of classical republics, Hannah Arendt’s emphasis on briefly existing, but self-organizing and non-bureaucratized Soviets, experiments with self-governing communities after the 1960s, etc.?

Icons as non-representative images For many Russian thinkers of the twentieth century, attention to icon painting, one of characteristic traits of Russian culture, is nothing new. Let me briefly restate the most frequently occurring interpretations, which popularized the idea that an icon is essentially a piece of non-representative art. Of course, rich theological argumentation was initially offered in central works by Florensky (1922/1996), Trubetskoi (1922/1973), Bulgakov (1931/1996), and Ouspensky (1960/1978),2 but their secular

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followers in art history and criticism would mostly stress the following points. First, according to a conception of “inverted” or “reverse perspective,” the Byzantians knew the law of perspective, perfected and refined later by Renaissance painters like Brunelleschi and Dürer, but intentionally subverted it, making flat, two-dimensional paintings. The idea was to give access to God, rather than depict him, or—even—make God look at the spectator as if from the icon, rather than make the spectator look at divinity. Thus the imaginary rays do not all come from one point in the spectator’s eye (forcing a Renaissance painter to depict things that are far away as smaller objects in a painting); rather, these rays all emanate from God’s eye behind the icon. It is as if the existing world is being perceived by God, rather than vice versa. A different version of a (phenomenological) defense of the efficiency and veracity of this iconic depiction technique would hold that it shows things as they appear to us in the field of our most proximate vision—where only faces matter, and we ignore the background of the figures in the foreground. Such technique allows for depicting the phenomena most proximate and dear to us. However, many interpretations insist that what is important is not this or that technique of painting, but the anagogic and commemorative experience offered to an icon viewer. Icons remind us of something higher, set us on the road to this higher phenomenon, give us access to this higher realm and perhaps make the observer partake in the sacred act, rather than just see a depiction of it. In the words of a familiar rock song, an icon is a stairway to heaven. Venerating an icon, kissing it or falling in prostration in front of it, a believer is set on this road to a higher realm. Contemporary mundane analogies to what a religious icon does would of course include screen icons as part of computer programs: they do not so much depict or represent a program, but rather are a way of getting access to it, or of setting it into motion: by clicking on it, we get the program going. The same might be argued about a sacred image—by a correct “double-clicking” on a church icon a believer gets access to a realm where Christ sets Himself into motion. Other mundane things which have icon-like anagogic properties are, for example, a wedding ring or a Communist party card during the Soviet days. They are not so much a representation of marriage or party membership, but something that is part of the game called marriage or membership, which makes the possessor of these a participant in this game. Imagine the consequences of losing a wedding ring or read the descriptions of many people fired from the party for not keeping their card well enough. Such a ring and such a card are not just innocent representations, which thus could be easily replaced; rather, they are part of this phenomenon of special significance, and they are a means of setting it into motion and keeping the process going. Let us map this argument now onto participatory democracy. If, following Durkheim, we replace God with an overpowering reality of society or a group of people, then we see that iconic politics might be first and foremost about such participation in a higher reality. A member is in the same relationship with the group or a whole society as an icon is with Christ. It does not represent; rather it partakes in the superior existence of the prototype. As a corollary, we then find the following. First, because each icon offers equally



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relevant access to God, then each member of the group, conceived on the model of non-representative iconic politics, is well-suited for the role of a primus inter pares of this group, if only for a moment. The icons could be said to be equi-glorious, iso-doxic, venerating the prototype with the same force and basically in the same way. This isodoxic experience should apply to citizens conceived on the model of icons as well. Second, such iconic mechanisms eliminate concerns with the adequacy of representation: it does not matter whether an iconic citizen resembles the group it is part of (as the representative should) or whether s/he does not—because it is only through him or her (who does not represent, but maintains an iconic relationship with the group) that the group is able to exist at all. Access to Christ is given to us through icons; access to the higher reality of a group is given to us through an iconic performance of one of its members. Destroy this iconic performance and the group becomes inaccessible.

Mondzain’s contribution Bernard Manin’s summary3 of the history of classical republics shows that they offered an effective possibility of more or less equal direct access to the main positions in the legislative, executive and judicial powers, but actual participation of all citizens in governance, given the size even of these city-states, was not what mattered most. Thus, let us also eliminate the stress on taking part in the reality of the group (in its religious version—on partaking in Christ) from our consideration of iconic mechanisms, and concentrate on other aspects of icon-like performance in finer detail. Here, Marie-José Mondzain’s brilliant interpretation4 of the defense of icons during the iconoclast age will help us a lot in the examination of non-representative mechanisms, both in painting and in politics. Discourses on the icon, relevant to our consideration, had been spelled out by three Christian authors of the eighth and ninth centuries ad—St. John of Damascus, Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople, and St. Theodore the Studite (of Studium). Stated briefly and in an oversimplified way, the last two held the position that icons do not represent or embody God; the divine prototype and its image are linked in the same way as correlated categories (in Greek: pros ti) in Aristotle, Categories 6a35–6b2, 7b15.5 Thus Theodore wrote: “the prototype and the image [eikon] belong to the category of related things [ton pros ti estin], like the double and the half ”.6 For Aristotle, something is related as when we say that master and slave, half and double, more and less imply one another—for the most part, such a related pair comes into existence together, and one part of the pair is impossible without its correlated another part. One cannot say what is the double of something, unless one knows what is half of this double. However, the phenomena designated by these pairs should not be of the same substance, consubstantial. This reliance on Aristotle helped the Church Fathers to escape the accusation, coming from iconoclasts, that they implied a presence of the divine nature of God in

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the fallen material of an icon. An icon does not embody, circumscribe by its contour line, or represent God; it is just correlated with its existence. The presence of an icon just implies that God exists. One can single out in Mondzain’s exposition, who relied more on the arguments of St. Nicephorus than on his other saintly contemporaries, an attention to the three principal Greek terms that capture the most important aspects of an icon. First, it is graphe, an inscription, a trace. We should understand that this is a trace of someone who is not there. Icons do not partake in Christ; He always retreats from the space to which the icon points. In French, the tracing function of the icon is revealed in the following phrase: le trait est un retrait. A sign, a trace is always a sign of the retreat of something which is not there.7 Christ is always absent from the icon: if He were there, the icon would risk circumscribing the infinite and the icon would be consubstantial with God, which is impossible. Even though an image (eikon) and its prototype (Christ) are linked like Aristotelian correlates, one does not even touch the other. That is why the Aristotelian category of the related is important for this originary theology of the icon. This Aristotelian category of the correlated is different from a modern notion of relation, since in Greek pros ti means “pointed towards something,” as the double is pointed towards a half, or a perception is always pointed towards what it is a perception of.8 For modern understanding, this vision of relatedness is strange, because it is not reciprocal, but it allows our authors of the theology of the icon to stress this pointedness. An icon points to an ever-retreating Christ, to a void, where he is not: L’icone est vers le Christ qui ne cesse pas de s’en retirer.9 For Christ to incarnate Himself in an icon was not to materialize in some thing or object, but rather to set up a relation of pointedness between an observer and His ever retreating self. In this sense, an icon is not an incarnation, a carnal embodiment of Christ, but it is an en-imageination. One should not think of the relation icon/prototype on the Platonic model of body/soul, because the invisibility of Christ is a type of invisibility different from that of the soul. It is the invisibility of God’s Word, access to which is established through the Aristotelian mechanics of pointedness. Second, there is a Greek term perigraphe—a circumscription or a contour. If the prototype and the eikon are not identical or consubstantial, they nevertheless maintain a relationship of sending the observer in the direction of divine existence. The contour of the iconic image does not encircle or enclose (perigraphé) divinity; rather it is an engraved trace, which is filled with the burst (in French, l’éclat) of divine light. In other words, apart from the usual dogmatic insistence on the non-circumscribed character of the divine, we should also mark in the notion of perigraphé a whole field of encircling light. That is why the icon painters use so much gold and try to eliminate the background: an observer, whose natural perception is blinded by this light, is supposed to be given access to divine existence through this experience. The icon does not supply to us an unskillfully drawn anthropomorphic figure, but gives access to the absent prototype, whose modus of existence is an eidos revealed in the icon’s shining and blossoming. Mondzain notes that the Greek word anthe (“brightness, brilliancy, as of gold or bright colors in general”) comes from anthos, which means “flower” and



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“flourishing,” “being in full bloom.”10 To blind with light and overwhelm with flourishing and blossom is the second function of an icon; this is radically distant from what we mean by the verb “represent” in our modern perception of the term. Third, there is an epigraphe—the name on the icon. It is not a contingent designation, not just a word added to the picture, contrary to what we may think now. Given the schematic profiles of saints with no resemblance to actual historic figures, one could hardly guess to whom the icon was sending an observer, if the epigraphe did not say it explicitly. In an episode in 1438, some members of the Orthodox delegation to discuss the Florentine Union with the Catholic Church could not pray in the churches of Florence because they could not see or read the inscriptions. But even more important is the fact that the epigraphe is needed to set up the mechanism of homonymy in action. The eikon and its prototype are in a homonymic relationship: that is, they bear the same name, even though they have completely different essences. This statement comes, once again, from the Aristotelian tradition and its definition of homonymy: a man and an image of a man bear the same name, even though their essences are different. A commonplace in iconographic treatises applied the same judgment to the king and the image of the king, or Christ and the icon of Christ. One should stress that homonymy is different from metonymy or metaphor: an icon is not part of something (thus it does not represent something metonymically) and it does not substitute for something (thus it is not a metaphor of something else). In other words, an icon is neither about participation (being part of something), nor about representation.

Applying this theory of the icon to non-representative politics Pierre Bourdieu once noted that the real mystery of political representation lies not in the mechanism of a metaphor (when one person, a delegate, substitutes for the group and starts speaking and acting for it), but in metonymy—when the words and actions of a part, i.e. of a delegate, are taken to be words and actions of the whole, i.e. of a group.11 But if a citizen relates to a group not in a metonymic or metaphoric way, but in a non-representative way—as an icon relates to a prototype—then an eikon-like citizen displays the following qualities. First, such a citizen cannot claim to be part of the group, even though s/he sets into motion a mechanism of access to the existence of this group. The reality of group existence is ever-retreating, in a way similar to how Christ retreats from the graphic grip of an icon, as we remember. Sociologists like Bourdieu or Latour, of course, have long claimed that groups do not exist in some eternal ether, they have to be constantly formed by the actions of their delegates or performed, like a dance: no continuation, no group. A representative can claim that s/he represents a group, but except for the photos from yesterday’s rally or bureau meeting that serve as props to persuade us that it exists, who can claim that s/he has seen or touched a group in toto or a group as such, an entity separate from its members? An iconic citizen is characterized by understanding this absence and by a determined pointedness to this ever-retreating group

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existence. Even a magistrate chosen by lot—as in many classical republics—cannot be said to embody a group or represent it. S/he has access only to the space of absence, a void or emptiness which the group establishes while retreating from the magistrate’s claims to be part of it or to act on its behalf. This magistrate has never touched or physically sensed the group that s/he allegedly sets into motion—s/he has seen just separate individuals who are allegedly part of it—yet, it is there somehow, although always retracting from his or her grasp. But an eikon-like magistrate helps this group to appear as a group with the help of him- or herself, i.e. its correlate—otherwise we would not be sure of the existence of the group at all. Furthermore, an icon-like citizen points, like an arrow towards a target, to a group, but their link is co-relational in the sense of the Aristotelian category of pros ti. That is, this term—“relation”—should not be taken lightly, as a seemingly non-problematic sociological concept, as if “relation” was always the most generic term to designate links between people or their way of living together. This is not true even if one looks at the time of Elizabethan England and the final lines of “Othello,” in which Lodovico promises to “to the [Venetian] state this heavy act with heavy heart relate.” Relazione were one-way dispatches from the ambassadors and warriors of Venice, not reciprocal “relationships” the way we see them now in sociology. Re-latio is thus about moving something from one place to another, about sending—and this activity is different, for example, from trans-latio (another seemingly generic term for social processes that has become fashionable after the sociology of translation of Latour and Callon). Only by understanding the character of this sending (do I hear Derrida12 here?) can we hope to gain access to iconic, non-represented communities. If we draw parallels with the second, perigraphe, feature of iconic mechanisms further, we can see that an iconic sending to or into group existence overwhelms a viewer—if it is skillfully executed—by a burst of something bigger, by an overflow, by access to something that cannot be circumscribed by a contour or expressed in a word, but can command allegiance like some higher reality. This sending thus exacts neither forced obedience nor consent, as happens in authoritarian or liberal politics, but rather what the icon treatise writers called proskynesis, prostration. This prostration in front of something bigger should not hide the void that it effectively hails. Walter Benjamin once described a central cathedral in Marseilles as a railway station, a grand hub on a way to heaven. But in contrast to this elevator to heaven, an iconic citizen is sent to what s/he can never hope to reach: the higher existence always retracts. Third, an iconic citizen is homonymic with the group. If s/he is a magistrate, s/ he bears the same name as the group, but is not linked with the group by relations of political delegation à la Bourdieu, of the metaphorical or metonymical kind. Thus, a homonymic primus inter pares is not a metonymic leader, a part of the group monopolizing a mystical power to speak and decide for the whole. An iconic citizen and the group have different essences but the same name, and s/he is not part of the everretreating group. And since all icons are equal in their veneration of Christ, all citizens (conceived on the model of an icon) have equal access to this ever-retreating reality of group existence. Hence equal access to a claim to put the group into existence: the iso-doxia of equi-glorious icons becomes here the iso-nymy of iconic citizens,



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an equal claim for the right to bear the name and for the power of naming itself. However, in contrast with icon-painting, the name does not predate and preexist the image. Naming with proper names is what brings an iconically-conceived group into existence. The first successful namer sets the game of homonymy into action; his or her actions are thus essential for the creation of such groups. Not many are successful, though. For example: the phrase “we are all oppressed women!” changed the face of politics at the end of the twentieth century, but hardly ever resulted in a proper name for that group, even though there were many failed attempts to occupy the equi-glorious position of a namer. Instead many just tried to point towards an essence, a generic name of how a woman should be defined. By contrast, what changed politics at the beginning of the twentieth century resulted in a new proper name—”Soviet,” giving the world a new entity called the Soviet people and its horrible organizational form—a Soviet state. Of course, some would claim that during the first year or so of its existence this name was not a misnomer and presupposed democratic self-governing mechanisms. By contrast, others would say that iconic politics is not inherently benign, and attempts at its implementation, given the absence of emphasis on checks and balances, individual rights and separation of powers, should be undertaken with utmost caution. Whether the first view or the second is correct, it is clear that in iconic citizenship one enters a realm of the politics of naming. Being homonymic with a group, an eikon-like citizen, trying to challenge it into existence, should find a proper name for it. I can hardly elaborate more here, given the shortage of space, on what type of speech acts should be studied in this search for the politics of iconic nomination or non-representative naming. Perhaps this is very close to the naming in proper names that Walter Benjamin explored in his early essay On Language as Such and on the Language of Man.13

Icon defenders on communities Now I would like to consider how the authors of iconographic doctrines themselves treated non-representative politics rather than art, notably to explore briefly their views of monastic communities. In this respect St. Theodore the Studite is better than St. Nicephorus. Theodore is usually credited with a reform in coenobitic life, because he had made decisive innovations in the typical routines of a Byzantine monastery. He thus perfected the existing monastic rules of St. Basil the Great and the Desert Fathers. Also, the resulting Studite Typikon or statute of monastery life became the main statute in ancient Rus’, after it had been accepted by the first Russian monasteries. Thus, one may suspect that medieval Russians held him in high esteem for his reform of the monastery rather than for his defense of icons. When St. Joseph Volotsky (early sixteenth century) introduced his new coenobitic monastery statute— an almost universal model for Russian cloisters thereafter—he cited St. Theodore the Studite and his sources, primarily St. Basil the Great.14 The major innovation, however,

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which Joseph’s writings introduced into Russian coenobitic life was ubiquitous horizontal discipline enforced by “council” or “preeminent” or “bigger” brothers—an inversion or diversion of Foucault’s Panopticon—which finds striking parallels with Stalinist mutual surveillance techniques.15 Another innovation—for Russia, not for Byzantium—was the demand to elect a new bishop, substituting for the deceased one, by a decision of the bigger brothers.16 Let us take a look at Theodore’s injunctions before their interpretation by his Russian followers. First, some grounds for a future imposition of ubiquitous surveillance were there, since Theodore introduced several monks/overlookers in his monastery, making them subordinate to his deputy—otherwise, how could he control behavior in a body of monks numbering over a thousand?17 Second, on his deathbed he allegedly advised the election of future bishops by a council opinion. Thus: “elect someone by a common vote in a godly fashion and in the manner which the fathers have established, for my desire is to support whomever the community finds suitable”18 (ipsi communi calculo divinitus, paterno consilio praeeunte). Third, his vision of the monastic community is characterized by iso-doxia, equi-gloriousness, which we have already found in his approach to icons, even though monks in a cloister, by contrast to icons, have functional specializations like the diverse parts of a human body. Thus he writes in his Grand Cathechism, ch. CXVII: “If I am a hand [of a given body—O.Kh.], I am not deprived of the glory of an eye; if I am a leg, I am nevertheless not excluded from the glory destined for the mouth. Because I am in all of them, and share the common glory and the common shame.”19 And as he says in The Short Cathechism, following St. Basil the Great, a monastery is “an equi-glorious body of Christ and a common harbor of salvation.20 Finally, the main rite of the monastery is the Eucharist, because “this sacrament is a summation of all the oikonomia, and in its main part it by synecdoche signifies all”: totius eius dispensationis summa quaedam est hoc mysterium; ex praecipua parta totum per synecdochen significans.21 Perhaps the writings of St. Basil the Great, whom Theodore frequently cites, will help us understand this vision. The oikonomia in Greek, or dispensatio in Latin, mentioned in the last quote from Theodore, is the subject of the whole first part of the book by Mondzain. It is not mundane household governance, the term we find in the famous pagan book by Xenophon; rather, the Church Fathers used the term oikonomia frequently, but for other significations. First, for them it is the plan of salvation, predestined to us by God, that is, he governs the oikos that befits him, the whole world. Second, since primordial sin has broken the initial unity of nature, oikonomia is a visible structure of this disjointed world, the way this world runs. Thus, Basil writes in Ascetical Constitutions: “The most important in the Savior’s oikonomia in flesh is to bring the human nature in a singular union with itself and the Savior, and, having eliminated the cunning dissection into parts, restore the primordial unity.”22 Basil frequently used the metaphor of a doctor who mends or restores a unified body, torn asunder, and the term oikonomia was also used by early Christian authors to designate the structure of such a torn body, its bones, ligaments, and intestines, opened to a startled external gaze.23 Oikonomia is thus understood here



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as the disjointed body of Christ, an initial unity of the world and the church broken into many warring factions and contradictory pieces. Restoring this body happens from time to time in the central sacrament of the Eucharist, when Christians partake in the flesh and blood of Christ, but in everyday life it can also happen when austere and ascetic monks live together without quarrels over property or over the interpretation of God’s words: the humankind and nature that had been dissipated into a thousand parts is gathered by them into a union, as much as they can. In Basil’s words: I call that communion of life most perfect (perfectissimam vitae societatem), from which property of goods is excluded (possessia propria), the contradiction of dispositions is chased away, from which strife, factions, and quarrels have been torn out with their roots, and everything is common—souls and dispositions, bodily forces and what we need for alimentation and support of the body, in which there is one common God, one common pool of piety, common salvation, common feats, common labors, common crowns, in which many constitute one, and each is not alone, but with others (ubi multi unus, et unus non solus, sed in pluribus).24

This is a view not only of an ideal life, of course, but a description of a direction, where a good monastery is going. One difference, of course, between a monastic life and what will be achieved in the future divine reconciliation is that in a monastery there is a temporal head, an abbot. If we hold on to a parallel between treatises on iconography and monastic community-building (i.e. communo-graphy, so to say), the problem with an abbot is that he can be seen by many observers as not exactly equiglorious with the other brethren: it is as if one icon had a more privileged link to Christ in comparison with others.25 Here a metaphor of the human body helps the argument again. A good, cohesive monastery is like a body, the recognized head of which is an abbot. This statement, of course, recalls apostolic teaching in its Orthodox Christian version: the Church is the body of the Christ, the head of which is Christ himself. So there is paramount equality between brethren, on the one hand, and one accepted sort of inequality, between brothers and an abbot, but this is the natural inequality which the members of the body have in relation to the head of the body, which guides all the members. The monks are thus in such a relation with the abbot as the Apostles were with Christ. As Basil the Great says in the 18th chapter of Ascetical Constitutions, “as the Savior, having assembled the choir of the disciples [choros in Greek, coacto discipulorum in Latin], has made even Himself common to them all, so the monks, being obedient to their leader [Greek—kathegoumeno], finely following the rule of life together, are exactly imitating the life of the Apostles and the Lord.”26 In Russian translations this theory of monastic community found some sort of overlap with a theory of iconic mechanisms. For example, when St. Joseph Volotsky was grappling with difficult passages on this oikonomia of Church-building from Theodore the Studite, or with his source, St. Basil the Great, he was looking at the

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quotes which I have already mentioned above. Thus, as he writes, echoing in the second sentence the just-quoted instance from Patrologia Graeca 31: 1384: “Basil the Great says: if the abbot [in Russian—nastoiatel’] carries our God’s legislation with precision, he is nothing less than someone with the persona [in Russian—litse, a Russian term for a face and a person] of our Lord, while preeminent brothers under him carefully imitate the life of the Apostles and the Lord. And as He assembled the chorus [lik, Russian word for Greek choros] of 12 disciples, 12 preeminent and senior brothers have been selected so that they carefully imitated the life of the Apostles and the Lord. In the place of Lord Christ, they have the persona [litse] of the abbot, and in the place of the 12 Apostles they have chosen 12 brothers preeminent in worthiness and intelligence.”27 There are two links with the iconic mechanisms discussed in the previous section of this article. First, we have a sudden burst of homonymy in the midst of Joseph’s argumentation. Indeed, he implies that Christ has made Himself into a lik (Greek—choros, a choir) of disciples, and when after His death they constituted His Church, it became the body, the face or persona of which (litse or lik in the sense of Greek prosopon) was Christ himself. Every virtuous monastery can try repeating this feat. Now, what is baffling here is neither the intricacies of the dogmatic ecclesiology, nor the oikonomia of the visible Church, but the fact that the same Russian word, lik, might translate both prosopon and choros almost in one sentence. Contemporary Russian linguists vehemently assert: these two instances of lik are clear cases of homonymy, since the meanings are so radically distant, and dictionaries register that the word lik in the sense of litse (face, person) appeared only after the fourteenth century, while lik as “chorus” or “dance” has existed since the eleventh. But is homonymy between these words just a strange coincidence? So far, I have stressed only the Aristotelian homonymy between a man and his image, or the icondefenders’ homonymy between a prototype (Christ) and an icon. Here, it seems, we have a case of radically dissimilar phenomena called by the same word. But are they so dissimilar? To what extent are the persona and the face of the Church, on the one hand, and its body, which is a choir or another form of a venerating assemblage of true believers like monks or apostles, on the other, radically dissimilar and non-related? Cannot we start thinking of their homonymy on the model of the icon, but applied to a group: the body of a group and the face/persona of a group have the same name, but do not partake in one another, and this face/persona always points to an ever retreating or disappearing reality of the group body? The second link with iconic mechanisms is a clear demonstration of how Joseph kills the idea of the iso-doxia, the equi-gloriousness of the brethren. As I already mentioned, his statute of monastery life, which became dominant in Russia from the sixteenth century, had a decisive innovation in that it demanded the establishment in the cloister of the novel positions of “bigger” or “preeminent brothers,” who would help the abbot in the constant and ubiquitous discipline of the brethren. These bigger brothers in their very name sound painfully familiar to a modern-day reader; they were supposed to be the most decisive pillars of mutual surveillance that would prop up the saintly cohesion of the monastery. Joseph had to stretch the lines of the statutes of St. Theodore and St. Athanasius to claim that they also demanded the existence



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of at least 12 bigger brothers; to fortify his novel argument he had to appeal to the 12 Apostles as an analogy, in the example I quoted above; and then, fearing a rebuke for such innovations, he went into a lengthy polemic with an imaginary enemy who would claim “There is no need for so many council brothers.”28 Unleashing the picky and minute terror of small righteous bosses was one of the secrets of the Russian Revolution, which resembles Joseph’s injunctions, as I have tried to argue elsewhere.29 Not one Big Brother, but a zillion smaller, but still “preeminent,” “council,” or “bigger” (all of these terms Joseph used as synonyms) brothers were responsible for turning a dream into a nightmare. Nevertheless, Joseph’s innovation, which had such horrible success in Russian history, is based on a willful reading of bigger brothers into the texts of St. Theodore and St. Basil the Great. For example, take a look again at the quote from Basil: one can see that all the monks are imitating the Apostles, and not only the 12 carefully selected bigger brothers. By contrast, when the abbot starts relying on privileged helpers in mutual surveillance to enforce piety, the iconic mechanisms of the equi-distance and equi-gloriousness of monks disappear. Rotation is thwarted; the prevalence of proto-bureaucracy and small oligarchic councils is rampant. St. Joseph not only stressed the role of preeminent or bigger brothers, which we do not find in St. Basil and St. Theodore without the risk of distorting their texts, but he also limited the conception of the abbot to governance and control, as if he were just the head of a cloister and nothing else. However, even the lines of St. Basil that Joseph was quoting offer other conceptualizations of this role. For example, chapter 22 of Basil’s Ascetical Constitutions says about the role of an abbot that he “is nothing else than the one in whom the person of the Savior is contained [o tou Sotêros epekhon prosopon in Greek, personam Servatores sustinet in Latin], who has become a mediator between God and people, and who does holy deeds [in Greek—hieroergon] in front of God for the salvation of those who are obedient to Him.”30 The end of this quote presents an element ignored by Joseph—the mediation that an abbot (or, for our purposes, another type of a non-representative delegate of a group) performs in front of divinity, facing it and shielding the group, i.e. substituting for the group, but acting for its good and salvation. In the final section let us consider this early Christian conception further. Perhaps it could clarify for us the role of an iconic citizen when s/ he acts for the group.

Standing in front of, rather than sitting in front of or presiding over a group The relevant term for the abbot in the citation just quoted is kathegoumenos in Greek. Other terms for the bishop or abbot who is the head of the cloister, which we find in St. Basil, Theodore the Studite, and other early Christian authors are episkopos (which later developed into the English word “bishop”) and proistamenos. The last term is still the official title of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. In Russian

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it sounds as predstoiatel’, which distinguishes it from the mere head of a monastery— nastoiatel’, with both terms produced by adding different prefixes to the same Russian root verb stoiat’, “to stand.” Given the differences in prefixes, the contrast between the two could be rendered for an English-speaking reader as the difference between a “pre-stander” and an “over-stander.” But instead of analyzing these unreliable and perhaps misleading terms, let us closely consider the important differences between the original Greek words. First, both hegoumenos and proistamenos are sometimes translated in Patristic literature as “leaders,” i.e. those who lead the crowd and who are first on the way. But the first term is derived from the Greek verb hegeomai, meaning “to lead the way,”31 while the second comes from the verb proistemi, “to set before or in front” or “to put oneself before or in front.” Standing in front is not necessarily linked to leading, so proistamenos is more of a front-stander than a leader. Second, the verb proistemi is frequently used also in a derivative sense of “to stand over,” which leads to an interpretation of proistamenos as a governor, the head of a congregation, similar to episkopos, coming from epi- and –skopos, and meaning “an overlooker” or “an overseer.” Here, however, one should stress an important difference between these last two Greek terms. Proistamenos as a term, similar in its structure to the term prostates (coming from the same root and also meaning “standing in front”—we find this word frequently used in Aristotle’s Athenaion Politeia, for example, for leaders of the demos) can be contrasted with epistates, the term also sometimes used to designate the head of an assembly or a household. The prefix epi- in this last term is the same as in epi-skopos, thus they both are above and over, overseeing and controlling, rather than next to and in front of a group. In the dictionaries one learns that only epistates is used with inanimate objects (in the genitive clause): in contrast to prostates, who deals with the people, epistates deals with goods and property also. And John Chrysostom even claims that a man is an epistates of a woman.32 Thus, proistamenos, in contrast to episkopos, is next to the people, in front of them, and not over them or overtly concerned with controlling them and governing goods and property.33 Why does he stand in front? Two immediate interpretations come to mind. He is in front because of a higher social status, and thus here prostates-proistamenos recalls proedros, “the one sitting in front,” from which the concepts of presiding and president later developed. Proedria refers to some privileged places, i.e. seats in the front rows during public games or in a Greek theater; but the root verb is “to sit,” rather than “to stand.” Both terms thus reflect a privileged status, but the first one is about pre-standing or standing in front, so to speak, while the second one is about pre-sitting or sitting in front.34 The second interpretation, however, would describe the position “in front” as the position of a mediator, an intercessor, and thus a defender or an advocate—rather than a superior. A proistamenos could thus be a defender or caretaker of the group. In some cases it could be its replacement, offering him/herself instead of the group in front of a powerful menace. Most Biblical commentary, of course, interprets proistamenos as “a ruler” or “a leader,” relying on the Apostle Paul’s use of the term in Rom. 12.8, as well as on I Thess. 5.12–13 and I Tim. 3.1, 5. This interpretation was supported by standard



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translations of the Bible into vernacular languages (see, e.g. the King James and the Louis Segond versions) and was, perhaps, reinforced by Calvin’s defense of presbyterianism (the recommended rule of a congregation by the elders, not by a priest) in his Institutes of Christian Religion IV, xx: 4, when he stressed his view of Rom. 12.8 thus: “This is clearly taught by Paul, when he enumerates governments (o proistamenos) among the gifts of God, which […] ought to be employed by the servants of Christ […] He is properly speaking of the council of the elders who were appointed in the primitive church to preside over the regulation of the public discipline.”35 We can find an equation of proistamenos with the task of government not only in Western Christianity, but in Orthodox theology as well, e.g. in Schmemann,36 who interprets this Greek term as equivalent to kyberneseis, found in I Cor. 12.28, i.e. “governing.” However, there are numerous authors who stress the need to translate proistamenos, the present-medio-passive participle of the verb proistemi, in relation with the noun prostates, and thus see in proistamenos a caretaker and a “patron”, in the sense of the one who protects the interests of the socially vulnerable.37 The most astute commentators on the historical context of Pauline theology point to the fact that the “welfare service” of the early church included three ministries—distributing food and clothing, giving financial aid, and “championing the cause of those who had no one to speak and act for them,” with proistamenos being the name of this third ministry, to which Paul allegedly referred in Rom. 12.8.38 Such a defender, advocate, caretaker does not stand over, but stands in front, to submit petitions or articulate demands and give a voice to the heretofore silent group. At the least, such an interpretation would explain the need for a separate word proistamenos to be kept as the title of a key Church office (in Russian—predstoiatel’), in contrast to nastoiatel’ (Greek epi-skopos, meaning “overseer”, thus “bishop”) and predsedatel’ (Greek proedros, meaning “the one who presides,” “president,” “chairman”). We can now notice that this notion of proistamenos as a front-standing intercessor fits the role of the leader of a cloister or congregation that was articulated in the last quote from St. Basil we have been considering: “a mediator between God and people, […] who does holy deeds in front of God for the salvation of those who are obedient to Him.” Could it be, then, that a leader is a front-stander, interceding between the overwhelming power of God and a group, rather than an over-looker or an over-seer? Could it be that a leader is thus a front-stander to take the first blow and God’s wrath, if it happens, and not a front-sitter, to get the best views from a privileged seat? Given this hypothesis, let us get back to the three features of an iconic citizen, formulated above, in the light of what happens to these features when an iconic citizen takes the role of a proistamenos, a temporary intercessor and mediator for the group, offering him/herself first for the incoming blow. First, an iconic front-stander still points to an ever-retreating reality of the group, but s/he has to have more courage than other members of the group, access to which s/he allegedly sets into motion. S/he stands in for the group, s/he takes the place of the group, but the problem is that this group is not there. Thus s/he can be crushed for nothing, it would seem to many, since s/he does not stand for any real group, this group being impossible to touch or to hold upon with other senses.

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Second, an iconic front-stander starts to intercede for a group, offering him/herself as a shield, an agent that should first receive an external blow instead of the group, suffer for their sins or fulfill their duties, but may end up as a mediator between two overwhelming forces—the one of external power, in front of which s/he intercedes on behalf of an ever-retreating group, and another one—the power of the group itself. In other words, if the iconic front-stander is artful enough to invoke in observers a sense of the overflowing power of the empirically non-observed and non-observable group, this higher experience that demands prostration and awe moves these observers to make wonders. If s/he fails, s/he gets crushed or proclaimed insane or inept; if s/ he succeeds—a very rare event indeed—then you have one overwhelming power suddenly facing another. Third, an iconic front-stander is homonymic with the group on behalf of which s/he intercedes in the face of an overwhelming external power. Here, however, lies the real mystery of proper naming. Only a proper, not a generic, name, will make a group proper to itself, will make its proper existence evident and obvious, even if non-sensory. I have already called for a study of the politics of naming by proper names. But perhaps here political theory ends, and art begins.

Bibliography Efrain Agosto, “Paul and Commendation”, in J. Paul Sampley (ed.) Paul in the GrecoRoman World: A Handbook (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 2003). Vladimir Baranov, The Theology of Byzantine Iconoclasm (726–843): A Study in Theological Method, Unpublished PhD Dissertation (Budapest: Central European University, Medieval Studies Department, 2002). —“The Second Commandment and ‘True Worship’ in the Iconoclastic Controversy,” in Andre Lemaire (ed.) Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, 133): Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Walter, Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” in One-Way Street, and Other Writings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott (London: New Left Books, 1979). Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). Sergei Bulgakov, Ikona i ikonopochitanie [An Icon and the Veneration of Icons] (Moscow: Russkii put’, 1996 [first published in Russian in Paris, 1931]). Jacques Derrida, “Sending: On Representation,” Social Research, Summer 1982. James Dunn, D. G., Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996 [first published in Russian, 1922]). David M. Goldfrank (ed.) The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2000). Irina Gorbunova-Lomax, Ikona: pravda i vymysly [The Icon: Truth and Fantasies] (St. Petersburg: Statis, 2007). Daniel J. Harrington, The Church According to the New Testament. What the Wisdom and Witness of Early Christianity Teach Us Today (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).



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Alexander Kazhdan, “Vizantiiskii monastyr’ XI-XII v. kak sotsialnaia gruppa [A Byzantian Monastery of the XI-XII Centuries as a Social Group],” Vizantiiskii vremennik [Byzantian Chronicle, Moscow, USSR Academy of Sciences], vol. 31. 1971. Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). V. M. Lurie, Istoria vizantiiskoi filosofii. Formativnyi period [History of Byzantian Philosophy: The Formative Period] (St. Petersburg: Axioma, 2006). A chapter on the iconoclastic controversy was co-written with Vladimir Baranov. Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). J.-P. Migne (ed.) “Sanctus Basilicus Magnus,” Patrologia Graeca, vol. 31 (Imprimerie Catholique, Paris, 1857). —“Joannis Damasceni Opera Omnia,” Patrologia Graeca, vol. 96 (Imprimerie Catholique, Paris, 1864). —“S. Theodorus Studita,” Patrologia Graeca, vol. 99 (Imprimerie Catholique, Paris, 1903). Marie-José Mondzain, Image, icône, économie: Les Sources byzantines de l’imaginaire contemporain (Paris: Seuil, 1996). Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1978, [first published in French, 1960]). Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). David Rankin, Tertullian and the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Alexander Schmemann, Church, World, Mission. Reflections on Orthodoxy in the West (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979). Miguel Tamen, Friends of Interpretable Objects (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Theodore the Studite, Tvoreniia otsa nashego i ispovednika Feodora Studita [Works of the Our Father and Confessor Theodore the Studite], vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1907). —“Testament,” in J. Thomas and A. C. Hero (eds) Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents, vol. I (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2000). Eugene N. Trubetskoi, Icons: Theology in Color (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973; first published in Russian in 1921). Vassily Velikii [Basil the Great], Tvoreniia [Operae], vol. 5: O podvizhnichestve [On Ascetics] (Sergiev Posad, 1892). Eric Voegelin, Religion and the Rise of Modernity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin), vol. 23 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998). Joseph Volotsky, “Dukhovnaya gramota prepodobnogo Iosifa [A Spiritual Testament of St. Joseph], Velikie minei chetii [Grand Church Reading Books, Assembled by Metropolitan Makarius], 1–13 sentiabria (Imperial Academy of Science, St. Petersburg, 1868). Ben Witherington, 1 and 2 Thessalonians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).

Notes * A first draft of this text was first presented at a seminar of Groupe de sociologie politique et morale at EHESS, Paris, on January 13, 2005. I should like to thank Luc

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Boltanski, Laurent Thevenot, Marie-José Mondzain, and Cyril Lemieux for a most productive discussion there. But it was exchanges with Alexei Chernyakov, Artem Magun, and Dmitrii Vilensky during the UNUM conference that made me want to perfect and finish this piece—I am grateful to them all. I should thank Boris Maslov in particular for his help in the study of Patristic terminology. The last sections were written against the background of the December 2011 rallies in Russia, hence they should be eventually rewritten in calmer times, perhaps. Quoted in Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (University of California Press, 1967), 61. Of course, Pitkin stresses that this is only one of the key aspects of representing as “standing for,” another being the fact the representation substitutes for something absent. Thus a symbol, not resembling the original at all, could serve as a representation in certain situations. She calls this second aspect “symbolic represenation” in contrast to the first, “descriptive representation.” The other two dominant views on political representation treat it as an activity, but either formalistically (a representative is a formally authorized agent) or substantially, as “acting for the represented” in their true interests. Edmund Burke offers a good example of this mandate/independence controversy as Pitkin calls it: a representative should not only “stand for” his constituency, but also “act for” it. This argument implies that a delegate should act in the interests of the electorate even if the electorate does not understand its own interests—hence a representative is more than just a mirror image. (Pitkin, Chapters 2–7). This “Paris School” of Russian emigré theology of the icon has become subject recently to a very interesting criticism coming from practicing Russian icon painters, who assiduously enumerate its mistakes and stretchings. See Irina Gorbunova-Lomax, Ikona: pravda i vymysly [The Icon: Truth and Fantasies] (Statis, 2007). Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge University Press. 1997), Chapters 1–2 Marie-José Mondzain, Image, icône, économie: Les Sources byzantines de l’imaginaires contemporain (Seuil, 1996). A translation of this book into English was done by Stanford University Press in 2005, but relevant sections of it were unavailable at Google Books at the time of writing this text, hence I quote from the original French edition. The ultimate Russian authority writing now on the theology of the Iconoclasts and the Iconodules, Vladimir Baranov, though agreeing with the centrality of pros ti argument, would disagree with Mondzain’s emphasis on the complete non-presence of Christ in the icon. For example, in his letters (esp. 528), the Studite claims that Christ’s hypostasis is present in the icon (V. M. Lurie, Istoria vizantiiskoi filosofii. Formativnyi period [History of Byzantian Philosophy: The Formative Period] (Axioma, 2006), 484), while the word “character” that the Iconodules used after the first treatises of John of Damascus to describe which features of Christ entered the icon, was coming from the Greek verb meaning “to engrave,” “to make a mark,” and reflected the common understanding: icons are receptacles of divine energeia (Lurie, 431, 435). Also see Vladimir Baranov, The Theology of Byzantine Iconoclasm (726–843): A Study in Theological Method, unpublished PhD dissertation (Central European University, Medieval Studies Department, 2002); Vladimir Baranov, “The Second Commandment and ‘True Worship’ in the Iconoclastic Controversy,” in Andre Lemaire (ed.) Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, vol. 133: Congress Volume, Ljubljana, 2007 (Brill, 2010).



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6 Quoted in Miguel Tamen, Friends of Interpretable Objects (Harvard University Press, 2001), 43 7 Mondzain, 123. 8 In the translation of Aristotle 6a36–6b2 by Edghill we read: “Those things are called relative, which, being either said to be of something else or related to something else, are explained by reference to that other thing.” 9 Mondzain, 117. 10 Mondzain, 126. 11 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Harvard University Press 1991), 206. 12 Jacques Derrida, “Sending: On Representation,” Social Research, Summer 1982. 13 Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” in Benjamin, One-Way Street, and Other Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New Left Books, 1979). 14 David M. Goldfrank (ed.) The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky (Cistercian Publications, 2000), 62–3, 66; his other main influences were the Jerusalem statute, introduced in Russia in late fourteenth century and originating from the monastery of St. Sabas, and two typica (statutes), of St. Athanasius of Mt. Athos and from the Pandects of Nikon of the Black Mountain, a Syrian monk, who is little known outside of Russia. 15 Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (University of California Press, 1999), 117–22. 16 Goldfrank, The Monastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky, 79. Some Byzantine monasteries elected bishops by drawing lots (Alexander Kazhdan, “Vizantiiskii monastyr’ XI–XII v. kak sotsialnaia gruppa [A Byzantian Monastery of the XI–XII Centuries as a Social Group],” Vizantiiskii vremennik [Byzantian Chronicle, Moscow, USSR Academy of Sciences], vol. 31. 1971, 66–7, and fn. 146). 17 See Theodore’s vita in Theodore the Studite, Tvoreniia otsa nashego i ispovednika Feodora Studita [Works of the Our Father and Confessor Theodore the Studite] (St. Petersburg, 1907), vol. 1., 20; PG 99: 1486. 18 Theodore the Studite, “Testament.” in J. Thomas and A. C. Hero (eds) Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents (Dumbarton Oaks, 2000), vol. I. 77, PG 99: 1818. 19 Theodore 1907, 951. 20 Theodore 1907, LXXXVIII, 458. 21 Theodore 1907, 126, PG 99: 340. 22 Vassily Velikii [Basil the Great], Tvoreniia [Operae], vol. 5: O podvizhnichestve [On Ascetics]. (Sergiev Posad. 1892), 391; PG 31: 1386A. 23 Thus, John of Damascus writes of St. Artemius, the martyr who was crushed with huge bolders: “the human form has vanished. He is naked, his bones are crushed, his members disjointed. One could see in bare daylight the economy of his human nature [Greek—ton oikonomian tis andropinis physeos]” (trans. in Tamen, 26; original—S. Artemii Passio, PG 96: 1309A). 24 Vassily 1892, 391; PG 31: 1386A. 25 Indeed, as we remember from Theodore’s exposition, each monk has a distinct function—one is an ear, another an eye, etc., but all are equi-glorious with each other (similar to icons in their access to an ever retreating God, if we invoke Mondzain once again). 26 Vassily 1892, 390; PG 31: 1384 B-C. 27 Joseph Volotsky, “Dukhovnaia gramota prepodobnogo Iosifa” [A Spiritual Testament of St. Joseph], Velikie minei chetii [Grand Church Reading Books, Assembled

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by Metropolitan Makarius], 1–13 sentiabria (St. Petersburg, 1868), column 583; Goldfrank, 266, translation slightly changed. 28 Goldfrank, 265–7. 29 Kharkhordin, op. cit. 30 Vassily 1892: 410; PG 31, 1408D-1409A. 31 The Greek word hegemonia also comes from the same root verb. 32 John Chrysostom, Orations 30.5. 33 The exposition in this section would have been impossible without the invaluable help of Boris Maslov, who had first pointed me to many of the relevant contrasts between the Greek terms. Possible mistakes in conclusions or in accurately rendering the details of these contrasts are all mine, of course. 34 Tertullian adapted these two terms to Latin, rendering proistamenos as praepositus and using the verb praesidere for its counterpart term, relying here on the root “sit” rather than “stand.” The second term after him could apply to translate the Greek term for an abbot—hegoumenos—as well, but it came straight from the language of Roman provincial government and was not used to describe church offices heretofore. Some commentators thus see praepositus as an essentially ecclesiastical term, opposed to secular praesidens, “president” or “chairman” (David Rankin, Tertullian and the Church (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 154–5). 35 Quoted in Eric Voegelin, Religion and the Rise of Modernity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 23) (University of Missouri Press. 1998), 48. 36 Alexander Schmemann, Church, World, Mission. Reflections on Orthodoxy in the West (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979), 168. 37 See, e.g. Efrain Agosto, “Paul and Commendation”, in J. Paul Sampley (ed.) Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook (Trinity Press, 2003), 112–13, 131; Daniel J. Harrington, The Church According to the New Testament. What the Wisdom and Witness of Early Christianity Teach Us Today (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 63; Ben Witherington, 1 and 2 Thessalonians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Eerdmans, 2006), 160. 38 James Dunn, D. G., Theology of Paul the Apostle (Eerdmans, 1998), 555.

14

Drawing Lots in Politics The One, the Few, and the Many Yves Sintomer

In 1439, the humanist Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444), Chancellor of the Florentine Republic and doubtless the most celebrated European intellectual of his time, published a short treatise in Greek: On the Florentine Constitution.1 Florence was at the height of its splendor and power: during this period, it had seen the invention of perspective in art; it had also witnessed the development of new techniques in textile manufacturing and banking and, most important for our purpose, the rise of civic humanism. In this essay, Bruni positively valued Florence, in an Aristotelian vein, as a mixed constitution. The social composition of its citizenry, he claims, results from two exclusion principles: noble families (the magnates) are excluded from the most important offices (this is the anti-aristocratic principle), and manual workers are excluded from political life (this is the anti-democratic principle). Three other main elements sustain the democratic dimension: the ideal of liberty (vivere libero, vivere civile, vivere politico) is at the core of its institutions and political system; offices are held for short-term periods, usually two to four months, including the most important of them, the Signoria; those who hold the offices are chosen through random selection (tratta). The executive, the legislative councils, and part of the judiciary are chosen in this manner.2 On December 11, in 2004, after nearly 12 months of deliberation, a Citizen Assembly, selected by lot from the citizens of British Columbia in Canada, presented its Final Report on Electoral Change to the B.C. Legislature. It proposed to change the electoral system by introducing more proportionality (replacing the existing electoral system, the so-called First-Past-the-Post, with a new Single-Transferable Vote system).3 This recommendation was then put to the electorate-at-large in a referendum held concurrently with the 2005 provincial election. Gordon Gibson, the creator of British Columbia’s Citizen Assembly and councilor of the Prime Minister, justified the initiative in the following manner: We are […] adding new elements to both representative and direct democracy. These new elements differ in detail but all share one thing in common. They add to

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the mix a new set of representatives, different from those we elect. As things stand now, both streams of decision-making are highly influenced—almost captured— by experts and special interests. The idea of deliberative democracy is essentially to import the public interest, as represented by random panels, as a muscular third force. The traditional representatives we elect are chosen by majority consensus, for an extended period, as professionals, with unlimited jurisdiction to act in our name. The new kinds we are talking about are chosen at random, for a short period, as ordinary citizens for specified and limited purposes.4

The decision seems only to have been the prelude to a larger wave of similar experiments. Ontario, the most populous Canadian state, followed British Columbia’s example in 2005. More recently, Iceland has begun a process that aims at adopting a new constitution. After the financial collapse of the country following the banking crisis, huge social movements pushed the right-wing government to resign and elections brought a new Social-Democrat and Green government in April 2009. In November 2009, the social movement organized a first Citizen Assembly in order to discuss the values on which the country could be rebuilt. One year later, with the official support of the left-wing government, a second Citizen Assembly discussed the axes that the new constitution should follow. An election of a special kind was organized to elect a constituent committee: a non-electoral campaign was permitted, so that no politician could be a candidate, and 25 “ordinary” citizens were elected in November 2010. They wrote the new constitution project, in a process where citizens could make proposals online, and gave it to the Parliament in July 2011. The project is to be put to the electorateat-large in a referendum in 2012. It is surprising to see how many different participatory and deliberative devices where random selection plays a role have been created in the last two decades, in very different contexts.5 It would be ridiculous to strictly compare Early Renaissance Florence and British Columbia or Iceland: their contexts, institutions, and political cultures are completely different. Nevertheless, two important questions arise. Can we claim that the recent interest in random selection marks the resurgence of a democratic tradition that was invented in Athens during the classical period and reinvented in the Italian city-states? What does this parallel teach us about deliberation, participation, and representation? And to what extent are these experiments ways of combining the one, the few, and the many? In what follows, I will proceed in two steps. First I will briefly describe the republican self-government based on random selection that characterized the Florentine Republic, explore the ambiguous role that deliberation played in it, and analyze the peculiar combination of the one, the few, and the many it represented. I will then contrast this polity with current experiments in deliberative democracy based on randomly selected mini-publics and will discuss what this reveals about deliberation, participation, and decision-making, together with the balance between the one, the few, and the many.



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Random selection and republican self-government in Early Renaissance Florence As we know from the seminal works of Baron,6 Pocock,7 Skinner,8 and Hankins,9 the Florentine notion of libertas has been decisive in the formation of modern political thought. Nicolai Rubinstein10 has shown that that the ideal of the vivere libero included not only independence from foreign powers, the rule of law, political equality among citizens (or at least among those who were full citizens), and the right to take an active part in public affairs, but also the right to participate directly in the government of the Republic.

Random selection of public office holders In fact, most magistrates were randomly selected and held their offices for only a few months. This feature has been well documented by historians11 and has recently garnered interest in political theory.12 From 1282 onwards, the Signoria, which was similar to what we would now call an executive, was the most important power in the city. Its members represented the various corporations (the arti) through a complex system of quotas. It was in charge of foreign policy, controlled the administrative bodies, and had the right to initiate the laws of the Republic. Up to 1494, when a Major Council was created following the Venetian model, the Signoria decided when the two legislative councils had to meet. Even though this institutional system was continually evolving, its basic features remained the same until the end of the fifteenth century. During this period, some of the most important political debates in the city concerned the repartition of political and administrative positions among the various corporations and the role of sortition in that process. From 1328 onwards the majority of official positions were attributed by lot (called la tratta). The candidate names were put in pouches (borse) and sortition provided the way of selecting those who would be in charge for a certain period. The members of the Signoria were selected by lot, and, during the republican period, most political and administrative offices were attributed according to a similar process. The selection process actually took four steps.13 1. In the first step, selection committees in each neighborhood had to choose those citizens who were considered suitable to hold the office, according to strict personal and political criteria. 2. During the second phase the list of those who had succeeded (the so-called nominati) was scrutinized by a city commission composed of preeminent citizens, the arroti. The names of those who achieved a qualified majority (two thirds of the ballots, in a process called squittino) were put in leather pouches (imborsati). For those offices that were attributed through quotas, there were different pouches for the major and the minor guilds.

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3. Sortition itself only took place in the third step when the names were drawn from the pouches. Ad hoc officials, the accopiatori, were in charge at this crucial moment. The names of those who had not been selected were left in the pouches for the next sortition. After an unusual or important political event (such as a revolution or a drastic change within the regime) had taken place a new squittino would be organized before the old pouches were empty. 4. The last step consisted in eliminating the names of those who had been selected but who did not fit the necessary criteria for office (the so-called procedure of the divieti.) If any of those chosen still owed taxes, had served in a similar capacity in the recent past, had been sentenced in respect of certain crimes, had a parent in a similar position, or already held an important office, they would not be allowed to take up their posts.

Sortition and deliberation What was the relation between sortition, election, and deliberation in the Florentine Republic? It was very peculiar and very different from both how it operated in Athens and how it is used in our modern democracies. In the Attic city-state, offices were allocated either by random selection or, for the 10 percent most important, by election.14 In the Florentine system, election and sortition were combined. In addition, we have to be aware of the different political values denoted by the term “election” in different historical periods and political cultures. Modern readers see elections as a process by which the grassroots select those who will then speak and act for them. Ancient Athenians would have had a similar understanding. Conversely, elections were a top-down process in Florence, a kind of co-option of worthy citizens by the political elite or “inner circle” where the political power of the state was concentrated. This only changed with the formation of the Major Council in 1494. The meaning of the word “deliberation” also varies in respect to the language and context in which it is used. In English, it usually implies a careful discussion of all sides of a question. It is with reference to this meaning that the concept of “deliberative democracy” was created, and it is only in specific contexts that deliberation necessarily leads to a decision—most notably with trial juries. In Early Renaissance Italy, the word had quite a different meaning. It implied the decision of a collective body, but not necessarily a collective discussion.15 Francesco Guicciardini, a famous intellectual and politician who was Machiavelli’s contemporary and one of the first theoreticians of representative government, wrote for example in 1512: “I easily accept that laws could be decided in the [Great] council (che la deliberazione ne sia in consiglio), because they are something quite universal and concern every city member; but I like the fact that it is impossible to discuss them publicly, or only following the orders of the Signoria and in favor of what it proposes—because if anybody were allowed the freedom to persuade or dissuade others, this would lead to great confusion.”16 Discussions on public matters were very lively and quite important for the decision-making process in the Florentine Commune. Where did they take place?



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There were political discussions in non-public places, for example in the big palazzi belonging to the most important families in the city. Such discussions also took place in intermediate spaces between the private and the public arenas: public meetings of a kind were regularly organized on the banks which existed at the bottom of the palazzi, and in the open shops and loggie in front of them. In this respect the Florentine inner city was in some way similar to the Athenian agora or the Roman forum. The general assembly of the people, called the parlamento, never had the role it had played in Athens. It had no regular meetings, was not an institution in which one could deliberate, and usually had a plebiscitary function. A lot of discussions took place in the guilds, the arti, which were a basic feature of the medieval communal system. The arti could make decisions for themselves, had specific institutions, and could partly designate candidates for offices. Their meetings were only open to members. With the Early Renaissance, their importance strongly decreased and they gave place to a more unified political body. Discussions leading to decisions also took place in the numerous electoral commissions that selected those whose names were to be put in the pouches. These were not open public affairs, as previously noted, except during the short period at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth when the Major Council (consiglio maggiore) was in place. Most offices—including the most important, the Signoria—were collegial. This meant that although discussion took place, again it was not in public. Executive decisions were taken in these offices. The two legislative councils, selected by lot within much larger lists than the one used for the Signoria, had the power to pass or refuse the bills proposed by the executive; but they could not propose any bill by themselves and it was forbidden to criticize the proposals.17 The only speeches allowed were in favor of the measure in hand and it is this arrangement that Guicciardini advocated in the above quotation. In addition, the sessions of the legislative councils were not public, i.e. open to all citizens. A much deeper discussion took place in advisory bodies called pratiche, which the Signoria could call at will and which were selected by the most important political leaders. The quality of discussion was high in these bodies, they served to enlighten the public mind and forge a majority consensus, but they took no decisions and were not open to the public.18 Their role was a crucial factor in the progressive loss of republican substance from Florentine institutions at the time of the early Renaissance for they heralded the emergence of a political class that was dedicated to politics on a full-time basis, that was hegemonic in the electoral commissions, and whose members could regularly pass from one public office to another.

Republican self-government: the one, the few, and the many In this complex system, deliberation, in the sense of public discussion that is used in most theories of deliberative democracy, was an essential dimension. Even though none were democracies, it is for this reason that we can claim that the Florentine Republic along with the other Italian communes that developed similar systems

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“reinvented politics.” As Moses I. Finley,19 Cornelius Castoriadis,20 and Christian Meier21 suggest, politics is something very peculiar and has not existed in all societies and at all times; it implies not just the struggle for state power, which takes place in every state society, but also the existence of a public sphere.22 The articulation of deliberation and decision-making in Florence was nevertheless very peculiar, and very different from what we find in modern democracies.23 The decision-making bodies were not open to the public; the deliberative institutions that were most open to the public did not take any decisions. The randomly selected legislature could take decisions but could not discuss the bills in question; the general assembly of the people could decide but not deliberate; and the body in which discussion was most lively, the pratiche, was co-opted by the inner circle and was neither open to the wider public nor entitled to take decisions.24 Sortition in this context had therefore an ambiguous relation to deliberation. In fact, its main function was to ensure an impartial resolution of conflicts between the different factions that deeply divided the Republic.25 However, this was not its only value, for it also played a crucial role in establishing citizen self-government. Due to random selection and the rapid rotation of offices (usually from two to six months), nearly all those who had full citizenship were able, in theory, to have regular access to public office. Citizenship was essentially defined through membership in one of the 21 officially recognized guilds. At the beginning of the fourteenth century this included between 7,000 and 8,000 persons from a population of about 90,000. In 1343, three quarters of the citizenry were nominated to take part in the squittino for the Signoria; around 800 passed the test and became imborsati—and were thus destined to hold one of the major offices in the years following the vote. In 1411, at the time of the birth of civic humanism, more than 5,000 citizens were nominati and more than 1,000 imborsati. The Major Council created in 1494 had around 3,000 members. Apart from the highest executive positions, there were plenty of other offices that used sortition as a means of selection during this period. The rule was clear: the more important the office, the harder the competition.26 Florentine citizenship was clearly restricted to a minority of the population. The ratio of full citizens to population was larger than that of Venice during the same period,27 smaller than that of classical Athens,28 and comparable with the proportion of full citizens to the population of Great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century.29 Florence was not a democracy in the meaning we presently give to the term. It was not self-government by all and, as we have seen previously, a large part of the power tended to be de facto in the hands of the inner circle during much of this period. Despite this, it was more self-government than representative government. The discrepancy between constitutional ideal and political practice in this matter, moreover, was probably no greater than in a modern democracy. The ideal of the vivere libero, which was at least partly embedded in the real life of the Republic of Florence, included the equal participation of the full citizen in public life and an equal—and real—opportunity to hold public office. This ideal was realized through random selection and the rapid rotation of offices—techniques that were used in order to avoid or limit any division between state power and the citizenry. This polity was thus very different from the absolutist



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regimes that were emerging in the European countries at the same time, but also very different from the representative democracies that appeared two or three centuries later. It was not a democracy but it was a mixed constitution, as Leonardo Bruni rightly concluded. It was at that time that this concept of mixed constitution, imported from Aristotle and Polybius, became a tool for understanding the Florentine commonwealth. The debate between the “democratic” and the “aristocratic” dimensions was explicit, and we find it both in the archives and in a large number of contemporary analytical works from the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. The old Aristotelian opposition between elections, considered as basically aristocratic, and sortition, which was seen as a democratic tool, seemed to revive in Florentine politics,30 and was well synthesized in a dialogue that was resuming the debates in the Great Council after 1494 by Francesco Guicciardini.31 The lower guilds’ spokesman argued that elections distinguish a special group of men, those who had chances in life because born in rich families. Those are the few who dominate society. If offices were only selected by elections, they would also take all political positions. That was why a mix of election and sortition should be used, so that everybody could have a chance to take part in the benefits and the prestige of the state. Sortition was a necessary component of the government of the many (governo largo) and, compared to other regimes of its time, Florence did embody this ideal. The upper guilds’ spokesman gave one of the first historical conceptualizations of representative government: the wiser shall govern, but they must be freely elected among all citizens (concretely, in Florence at that time, among the members of the Great Council). In this way, the government of the few (governo stretto) would be more efficient than the government of the many, but it would also be legitimated by the people. The regime would still be popular, and in such a regime, “it is the people, not chance, who shall be the ruler, and it is the people, and not Fortune, who shall confer public honors32”. In the short term, the lower guilds could impose their views and sortition remained used for the designation of offices. But at the beginning of the sixteenth century, another element was introduced: with the election of the president of the state (the Gonfaloniere) for a life mandate, the power of the many was balanced by the power of the one. And in 1530 the Medici succeeded in imposing their rule and abolished the republican regime.

Randomly selected mini-publics and deliberative democracy However, the Florentine Republican experiment, which at that time was frequently compared to Athens or Rome, and its mixed constitution have played an important role in the development of the modern republican tradition.33 Our analysis of its political system provides a valuable viewpoint from which to understand the specific features of modern deliberative democracy and the challenges it might have to face. According to most supporters of participatory instruments based on random selection, the return of this technique in politics, after centuries of eclipse, implies that some of

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the ideals of ancient democracies are coming back. A good example of this can be found in the writings of Lyn Carson and Brian Martin, two of the most coherent advocates of random selection. They write: The assumption behind random selection in politics is that just about anyone who wishes to be involved in decision making is capable of making a useful contribution, and that the fairest way to ensure that everyone has such an opportunity is to give them an equal chance to be involved. Random selection worked in ancient Athens. It works today to select juries and has proved, through many practical experiments, that it can work well to deal with policy issues […] For democracy […] to be strong, it must contain the essential element of citizen participation, not just by a self-selected few but by ordinary people who rightly can determine their own futures. Given the difficulty of involving everyone in such a deliberative process, we argue that random selection is an ideal means by which a cross section of the population can be involved.34

For sure, there are evident and huge differences in the social, political, economic, and institutional contexts of modern democracies on the one hand, and of Athenian or Florentine Republics on the other. Nevertheless, can we speak of a partial resurgence of the ideal of self-government taking place in the contemporary experiments in deliberative democracy? These experiments might well be signs of a new democratic trend in the early twenty-first century, which could develop further or could remain trapped in a niche. The experiments themselves embody a larger critique of those paternalist traditions that tend to reduce democracy to representative government and the de facto rule of the few. Their supporters consider that civic participation of the many is crucial for the good health of our political system. They claim the political equality of all citizens in public discussion and, in some cases, in decision-making. They think that democratic legitimacy is closely linked to the expansion of deliberation in the sense of public debate: the more a decision comes from a lively and well organized public debate, the more it will be legitimate, both normatively and empirically.35 This line of thought is clearly a response to growing distrust of the political system by the citizenry, which is a current and significant trend, at least in Europe. In the deliberative democracy corpus, sortition has a visible space.36 Nevertheless, it is important to stress the obvious differences between Florence and experiments like British Columbia’s or Iceland’s Citizen Assemblies. In these countries, nearly all adults are full citizens. The technique of random selection is not a routine, nor part of the normal constitutional device; it is only used at particular moments, when a public authority freely decides to organize a citizen assembly, a citizen jury, a consensus conference or another kind of deliberative device. Up to 2010, no law has made sortition mandatory beyond the judicial domain. The political experiments based upon sortition usually operate on the margins of politics, and the British Columbia experiment is the exception rather than the norm.



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Representative sample and descriptive representation A further, less evident but crucial difference concerns the meaning of random selection. In Florence, as in Athens, sortition and rapid rotation of offices enabled citizens to govern and be governed in turn. This is why, at least to a certain extent, one can speak of self-government of the many, and this is why, in classical political thought from Aristotle to Guicciardini, random selection had been associated with democracy and elections with aristocracy.37 The contemporary use of random selection is quite different. The real chance of being selected in the British Columbia Citizen Assembly or in any other device of this type is very low. The idea, clearly expressed by Lyn Carson and Brian Martin, is to use sortition in order to select a microcosm of the citizenry, a group that has the same features and the same diversity as the citizenry, but on a smaller scale. This would form a “minipopulus,” as Robert A. Dahl38 first said, or a “mini-public,” which is now the most common term. This possibility is statistically plausible when one takes a representative sample of the citizenry. A fair cross-section of the people tends, at a small scale, to be similar to the population at large. The notion of a representative sample is familiar to the twenty-first century reader based on decades of its intensive use in statistics and opinion polls. This is why it seems “quite rational to see lotteries as a means to the end of descriptive representation.”39 However, the representative sample is a late nineteenth-century invention. There could be no relation between random selection and descriptive representation in Athens or Florence, where the idea that random selection statistically leads to a cross section of the population was not scientifically available. At that time, chance had not yet been “tamed” in the political sphere.40 The “microcosmic” reasoning that implied that political representatives had to be the social or cultural mirror of the people became important during the age of the French and North American Revolutions. For example, John Adams could write that the legislature “should be an exact portrait, in miniature, of the people at large.”41 But because it was impossible to rely on the notion of a representative sample, its promoters ignored sortition and put forward other technical solutions.42 The Anti-Federalists proposed small constituencies in order to favor the lower middle-class—a proposal that was not particularly convincing and that was successfully criticized by the Federalists.43 Another solution suggested the separate representation of different social groups through corporatist methods44—a proposal that was too closely identified with the Old Regime to convince radical democrats. In the nineteenth century, the higher class’s de facto hegemony among representatives regularly led to the idea of the specific representation of subordinate groups, and particularly of the working class.45 The representative sample was first introduced in politics with opinion polls in the middle of the twentieth century46 and it only became the instrument for selecting trial juries and various political juries and committees at the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s.47 Bernard Manin48 was the first to ask why selection by lot disappeared from the political scene with modern revolutions. He gave an answer based on two elements.

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On the one hand, the founding fathers of the modern republics wanted an elective aristocracy, a government of the few in a popular commonwealth, rather than a democracy, and so it was logical that they should reject random selection. On the other hand, the theory of consent, deeply rooted in modern conceptions of natural law, had gained so much ground that it seemed difficult to legitimate a political authority not formally approved by the citizens of the state. These two arguments are important, but they cannot tell the whole story. In particular, they fail to explain why radical minority currents did not demand the use of selection by lot in politics, even though they campaigned for a mirror-like representation in which the representative body would resemble the people in its entirety. To understand these developments, one has to point to a number of other factors.49 We have to abandon the realm of “pure” political ideas and look at the way in which they take material shape through techniques of rule and various tools and mechanisms. (In this respect, the history of political ideas would gain much from the lessons of science studies—STS—as they have developed in the last few decades.) The lack of a statistical concept of representative sampling at the time of the French and American Revolutions, when probability calculus was already well developed, is a decisive reason why political selection by lot seemed doomed in modern democracies with their large populations—and why those who upheld a descriptive conception of representation inevitably had to choose other tools for the advance of their ideals. Conversely, the question of the present comeback of random selection in a growing number of experiences also appears open to an answer largely centered on representative sampling. Random selection as it is practiced in politics today is inseparably bound up with that concept. In modern democracy, the deliberation of a cross section of the people is not the same as the self-government of the people. It gives everybody the same chance to be selected; but because this chance is very small, it does not allow all citizens to hold public office in turn. It leads instead to a mini-public counterfactual opinion that is representative of what the larger public opinion could be. John Adams could write that the microcosmic representation he was advocating “should think, feel, reason, and act” like the people. For the contemporary politics of presence,50 the statistical similarity between “descriptive” representatives and the people is only a starting point. The mini-public has to deliberate, and in this process, it changes its mind. It begins to think somehow differently, and this is precisely the added value of deliberation. This is quite clear when we read James Fishkin, who invented the deliberative poll, one of the techniques of deliberative democracy that uses random selection: Take a national random sample of the electorate and transport those people from all over the country to a single place. Immerse the sample in the issues, with carefully balanced briefing materials, with intensive discussions in small groups, and with the chance to question competing experts and politicians. At the end of several days of working through the issues face to face, poll the participants in detail. The resulting survey offers a representation of the considered judgments of the public.51



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Where traditional polls consist only in a “statistical aggregation of vague impressions formed mostly in ignorance of sharply competing arguments,” deliberative polls allow us to know “what the public would think, had it a better opportunity to consider the questions at issue.”52

Challenges of deliberative mini-publics Another difference between the Florentine Republic and contemporary randomly selected bodies is the relation between deliberation and decision-making. The modern schemes based on random selection tend to reveal a larger dynamic of deliberative democracy. In this paper I will not discuss deliberative bodies such as supreme courts or administrative committees such as the Food and Drug Administration. I will focus instead on deliberative mini-publics. Schemes of this type offer a number of promises, such as to limit the distance between the political class and the citizenry and to promote better communication between them. At the same time, however, they are confronted with three sets of challenges. The first one is that the counterfactual opinion can differ from the real opinion of the people. When the proposal of British Columbia’s Citizen Assembly was put to the electorate-at-large in a referendum in 2005, it failed to pass the test. Because it was considered a constitutional matter, the referendum required approval by 60 percent of voters and simple majorities in 60 percent of the districts in order to pass. Final results indicate that the referendum failed with only 57.7 percent of the votes in favor, although it did have majority support in 77 of the 79 electoral districts. When the proposal was put again in a referendum in May 2009, the gap was even larger: only 38.7 percent of valid votes and 7 of 85 electoral districts were in favor of the proposal. In Ontario, the Citizen Assembly proposal convinced only a minority of voters and there will be no second chance. The tension between the counterfactual deliberation of the mini-public and the public debate at large seems to be inherent to deliberative democracy, as far as it takes an institutional form. It has not been widely addressed in political theory.53 This tension appears in several dimensions: Learning process. The more the members of a representative sample learn in a Citizen Assembly, the more their knowledge and opinion will differ from the public opinion at large. The most interesting schemes, which lead to a real empowerment of the participants, tend to differ more from the average public opinion than the bad ones. Publicity. Jon Elster54 and others have shown that publicity of the debates does not necessarily lead to a better discussion. In some contexts at least, a discussion behind closed doors will be of a better quality. Most citizen juries discuss without any audience. In this context, it is more difficult to involve the wider public and to increase its understanding of the case in question. Thus the meetings tend to be schools of democracy for the few, not for the many.

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Learning through discussion or through action. The deliberative devices are conceived in order to foster and improve political education. However, they usually allow participants to meet only “for a short period, as ordinary citizens for specified and limited purposes,” as Gordon Gibson55 puts it. In social movements or in NGOs, the deliberative quality is probably lower but the intensity and emotional commitment of the participants is much higher. In some cases personal ambition, rather than a desire for democratic progress, could even become the main motivating factor. Numbers. When the number of participants grows, the deliberative quality of the discussions tends to decrease. This is why deliberative democrats often prefer the democratic deliberation of the few—the few being ordinary citizens selected by lot—to the deliberative democracy of the many.56 Deliberative democracy also has to face another set of challenges. Because it focuses on the (deliberative) rule of the game, it often tends to forget or at least to underestimate power relations and the relationship between deliberative schemes and the broader democratic transformation of society at large. Those participatory devices that select individuals by lot, without any ties between them, constitute an instrument that is not embedded in actual social relations. It therefore makes it difficult for these mechanisms to change existing power structures. This induces serious difficulties: Power in the deliberation itself. One of the most discussed problems is the influence of power on the deliberative process itself. A formally equal procedure can lead to unequal outputs if it remains blind to the differences in social, economic, or cultural capital that strongly influence the input side of the process. This has been widely discussed, and techniques have arisen in order to reduce social inequalities in deliberation, such as the succession of plenary sessions and discussions in small groups. Top-down and bottom-up. In addition, most deliberative mini-publics are top-down processes. It is therefore not very probable that radical changes will take place in which the power of those who have set up these instruments would be truly challenged. Individual versus organized citizens. Many deliberative designs, especially those that employ random selection, valorize individual citizens. They consider organized interests, including NGOs and community organizations, with some diffidence because they are supposed to defend particular interests. These deliberative instruments can even be used against organized civil society, without which any progressive civic change is hardly conceivable. Consensus and dissent. In consensus conferences, citizen juries and many other devices (although not in deliberative polling), deliberative democracy is supposed to lead to a consensus. But do real changes usually come through consensual arguments? Historically, the progress of justice and democracy has been imposed



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through huge social struggles, not through reasonable consensual discussions. Deliberative devices often tend to be inhospitable to politicization. Argumentation and passions. As suggested by Jürgen Habermas,57 a good deliberation is usually considered to favor the force of the better argument. However, in order to make real transformations in a world in which structural resistances are huge, passions seem necessary; such transformations are hardly the product of mere rational argumentation. Rhetoric and emotions are crucial. In order to be strong enough to regulate the world markets, politics has to make people dream of another world. In this process arguing can only be one dimension among others. Deliberative democracy and social justice. The relation between deliberative democracy and social justice remains unclear. Most of the instruments that deliberative theory has analyzed are linked with movements of emancipation of the subordinate classes or of outsider groups. Experiments based on random selection barely address the critique of the new forms of inequality that are produced by contemporary capitalism. This has mostly been done in other participatory instruments such as the participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre.58 Enlightened decision-making versus counter-power. Finally, to summarize these points, deliberative democracy based upon mini-publics often tends to be a way of producing more enlightened decision-making and a more enlightened consent. This is important but hardly enough—and if it does not contribute to the development of counter-powers,59 interest in deliberative democracy will start to decline.

The legitimacy of random selection There is an apparent trade-off between deliberation in the English meaning (good discussion) and deliberation in the meaning found in Latin languages (decision of a collective body). The deliberative bodies open to ordinary citizens are not usually entitled to make decisions. Among the collective bodies that theorists tend to present as good examples of deliberative democracy, those that are entitled to take decisions, or whose advice is directly integrated with decision-making bodies, are mostly expert commissions such as supreme courts, ethics committees or neo-corporatist bodies. Among those open to “ordinary” citizens, most are only consultative or advisory boards: they are only “weak publics.”60 Why is this? Is it only a contingent phenomenon? Can we expect the situation to change in the near future? The classical Athenian and Florentine Republics relied on a principle of selfgovernment (combined with the rule of law). Representative democracy relies on another principle, the consent of the people expressed through elections (articulated within the rule of law and human rights). Both strongly rely on the legitimacy of number, and especially on the majority principle. However, an important feature of our political regimes is that many decisions are taken by expert committees. In some cases

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these committees apply the majority principle; in others they function by consensus. Their legitimacy has a strong epistemic dimension: it relies on expert knowledge and on well-designed procedures that favor good (non-public) deliberation. Mini-publics made up of ordinary citizens selected at random cannot rely on the legitimacy of number nor on the legitimacy of expert knowledge. This is why they are not usually entitled to take decisions. Nevertheless, they have their own kind of legitimacy. First of all, contemporary participatory devices are most often employed in order to enable an enlightened discussion to take place. One of their basic assumptions is that a careful deliberation will lead to reasonable results. This is why the counterfactual opinion tends to be more reasonable than the wider public debate. In fact, the epistemic quality of deliberative devices based on random selection is important. In addition, deliberative participatory devices may have some epistemic advantages compared to representative government or expert committees. Most deliberative democrats rely on a negative argument, well expressed by John Dewey: “A class of experts is inevitably so removed from common interests as to become a class with private interests and private knowledge, which in social matters is not knowledge at all.”61 This statement can be extended to the political class. Deliberative democrats also propose more positive arguments. One of the most common is that good deliberation needs to include various points of view, so that the range of arguments can be enlarged, and reasons better balanced. In this line of thought, randomly selected mini-publics tend to be better than participatory devices based on voluntary involvement or on organized civil society because they rest on a cross-section of the people and maximize the epistemic diversity of their deliberation. This is why they can bring something valuable to what is, in fact, a context of increasing complexity. A third argument for participatory deliberative devices is political. Their promise comes from the fact that discontent is growing against the actual functioning of representative democracies. There is a perceived need to counter the tendency to reduce politics to rhetorical shows, to limit the autonomy of the political class and to make it more accountable to the citizenry. Participatory deliberative devices are instruments that promote better communication between the political class and the citizenry. Those based on a representative sample of the population enable political communication to take place among ordinary people and not merely between “professional citizens.” The fourth argument is also political, but is more radical than the third. Democratic theoreticians of representative government (as opposed to its elitist advocates) often concede that the best democratic system would be self-government, but add that, because self-government is impossible in the large communities typical of modern democracy, the second-best solution is representative government. One could however argue that: since the best democratic system is self-government; and because self-government is impossible in the large communities typical of modern democracy, the second-best solution is actually to give a voice to counterfactual mini-publics selected by lot. In this way at least it offers citizens an equal chance to participate in decision-making. The fifth argument for participatory devices based on a representative sample of the population is impartiality. Elected representatives, experts, and organized interests



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tend to be moved by particular interests rather than by the notion of the common good. In contrast, random selection ensures that the large majority (or even nearly everybody, due to the possibility of recusal as in a trial jury) will judge according to what they consider best for all without taking a partisan stance in any controversy. This advantage of impartiality may be strengthened when the advice or decision has to be taken by a qualified majority or reached through consensus.

Advising, controlling, judging, deciding Taking into account these five types of legitimacy that participatory devices based on random selection can claim, what can be said about the potential of these contemporary experiments? When the imperative of impartiality is high in respect to a particular topic, random selection offers a worthwhile method by which to select those who will deliberate. An important distinction has to be made, however. It is interesting to note how Hegel defends the institution of the trial jury composed of laypersons. Their participation is justified, he writes, in so far, and only in so far, as what is at stake is not the universal, the right, or the law, but a concrete and subjective judgment about a particular case.62 One can be less strict, but one has to recognize that it is not the same thing to deliberate on concrete particular cases and to enact a law. In particular cases, participatory instruments based on random selection have enough legitimacy to advise, but also, at least in some contexts, to control,63 to judge, as in trial juries,64 or even to decide—this has been the case in the Berlin citizen juries that, in 17 neighborhoods, have decided the attribution of half a million Euros each to sustain local projects in the frame of the urban renewal policy.65 This could be developed much further. On the other hand, in cases where impartiality is crucial but where a law is at stake, as in British Columbia, it would seems promising to couple a proposal made by a Citizen Assembly with a referendum, as was done in the Canadian provinces—that is, to articulate the mini-public with the people at large. It is undeniable that expert committees have an important role to play in cases that rest on highly technical questions. To ensure impartiality, however, it would be necessary to include laypersons in the decision-making, for example at particular moments in the proceedings, such as in the consensus conference on scientific issues invented in Denmark. In cases where general political issues are at stake, participatory devices based on random selection do not have enough legitimacy to make a decision: the counterfactual opinion is not the same as actual self-government. Two options could be considered. The first is to give these devices a mere consultative function and then let elected representatives decide. The idea is to produce a more enlightened consent and a more enlightened government. This is the mainstream option, and we will probably see many experiences of this kind proposed and adopted in the next decades. An alternative would be to combine mini-publics with larger participatory processes.

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This would be a movement in the direction of participatory democracy. It would combine representative government and deliberative democracy with forms of direct democracy. It could be worth making some steps forward in this direction. For who could claim that the status quo is satisfactory?

Deliberation, the few and the many The idea of deliberative democracy is an important contribution to the renewal of politics and could improve the efficiency and legitimacy of public policies. It is precisely because we live in a complex world that the need for public deliberation increases. Deliberative democracy is a good counter-tendency to populist tendencies, and to the domination of charismatic leaders. However, deliberative democracy, in order not to be reduced to a peculiar government of the few, has to be combined with participatory democracy, which is different and which has something to do with the principle of republican selfgovernment of Early Renaissance Florence. Participatory democracy implies the actual participation of a large proportion of the citizenry in politics, and in particular the involvement of dominated groups. It relies not only on institutional devices, but also on social movements. The good deliberation of a few ordinary citizens selected by lot has to be linked with a better debate of the many in the larger public sphere. The British Columbia scheme, which couples a Citizen Assembly with a referendum, indicates a path we could follow if we were to go in this direction. Deliberative democracy and participatory democracy, even taken together, cannot stand alone. They are part of a broader evolution that modifies the meaning of political representation, and they are dimensions—until now, secondary dimensions—in the development of multilevel governance. However, in the global balance between the one, the few, and the many, they bring something new and modify the equilibrium. While this makes the situation more complex, and a good equilibrium is not easy to find, this is a promising path. Random selection has a role to play in this process. Coupled with the rapid rotation of offices, it was crucial in Early Renaissance Florence, where it enabled a limited but real self-government of the many to emerge. Contemporary schemes based on random selection rely on the notion of a representative sample, which was unavailable before the end of the nineteenth century. These mini-publics embody the counterfactual opinion of a few “ordinary” citizens—what the many could think if they could truly deliberate. They are therefore closely linked to the ideal of deliberative democracy, which is something very different from the Florentine vivere libero. They offer sources of legitimacy that have to be combined with, rather than opposed to, the legitimacy of either representative or direct democracy.



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Notes 1 Previous versions of this article have been published with the titles: “Random Selection, Republican Self-Government, and Deliberative Democracy,” Constellations, 17(3), 2010, 472–87, and “Random Selection and Deliberative Democracy. Note for an Historical Comparison,” in Gil Delannoi and Oliver Dowlen (eds) Sortition. Theory and Practice (Imprint Academic, 2010), 31–51. A special thank to Oliver Dowlen, who has edited a previous version of this chapter. 2 Leonardo Bruni, “Costituzione politica di Firenze”, in P. Viti (ed.) Opere (Torino, 1996). 3 R. B. Herath, Real Power to the People. A Novel Approach to Electoral Reform in British Columbia (University Press of America, 2007); Mark E. Waren and Hillary Pearse, Designing Deliberative Democracy. The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge University Press, 2008). 4 Gordon Gibson, “Deliberative Democracy and the B.C. Citizens’ Assembly,” Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy, 02/23/2007, available online at http://www.ccfd. ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=409&Itemid=284 (accessed 10 June 2012). 5 Lyn Carson and Brian Martin, Random Selection in Politics (Praeger Publishers, 1999); Anja Röcke, Losverfahren und Demokratie. Historische und demokratietheoretische Perspektiven (LIT, 2005); Yves Sintomer, Le pouvoir au peuple. Jurys citoyens, tirage

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au sort et démocratie participative (La Découverte, 2007); Hubertus Buchstein, Demokratie und Lotterie. Das Los als politisches Entscheidungsinstrument von der Antike bis zur EU (Campus, 2009); Yves Sintomer, Petite histoire de l’expérimentation démocratique. Tirage au sort et politique d’Athènes à nos jours (La Découverte, 2011). 6 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 1966); In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism (Princeton University Press 1988); Loïc Blondiaux, La fabrique de l’opinion. Une histoire sociale des sondages (Le Seuil, 1998). 7 J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2003). 8 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols, (Cambridge University Press, 1978). 9 James Hankins (ed.) Renaissance Civic Humanism (Cambridge University Press, 2000). 10 Nicolai Rubinstein, “Florentine Constitutionalism and Medici Ascendancy in the Fifteenth Century,” in Nicolai Rubinstein (ed.) Florentine Studies. Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence (Northwestern University Press, 1968); “Florentina libertas,” Rinascimento, Second series, vol. XXVI (Leo S. Olschki, 1986). 11 Gene A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton University Press, 1977); Brucker, Florence. The Golden Age, 1138–1737 (University of California Press, 1990); Giorgio Cadoni, “Genesi e implicazioni dello scontro tra i fautori della ‘tratta’ e i fautori delle ‘più fave’. 1495–1499,” Lotte politiche e riforme istituzionali a Firenze tra il 1494 e il 1502 (Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, Fonti per la storia dell’Italia medevale, Subsidia 7, 1999), 19–100; Guidubaldo Guidi, Il governo della città-repubblica di Firenze del primo quattrocento (Leo S. Olschki, 1981); John Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400 (The University of North Carolina Press, 1982); A History of Florence 1200–1575 (Blackwell, 2008). 12 Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge University Press, 1997); Oliver Dowlen, The Political Potential of Sortition. A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office (Imprint Academic, 2008); Buchstein, Demokratie und Lotterie; J. McCormick, “Contain the Wealthy and Patrol the Magistrates,” American Political Science Review 100(2), 2006, 147–63; Sintomer, Petite histoire de l’expérimentation démocratique. 13 Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 169ff. 14 Moses I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge University Press, 1983); Mogens H. Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles, and Ideology (University of Oklahoma Press, 1997). 15 This meaning globally remains the same in contemporary Italian and Portuguese. French and Spanish are somewhere in between. In German, conversely, deliberation excludes decision and a “deliberative Stimme” (a deliberative voice) is only consultative. 16 Francesco Guicciardini, “Del modo di ordinare il governo popolare” [so-called Discorso di Logrogno, 1512], Dialogo e discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, Roberto Palmarocchi (ed.) (Laterza, 1932): 218–59, 230–1. 17 Along with the exclusion from citizenship of the working class, one of the most important aristocratic features that Leonardo Bruni (“Costituzione politica di



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Firenze”) mentioned was precisely this point: that the legislative councils could not really discuss nor modify the bills proposed by the Signoria, but only approve or reject them. According to him, the other non-democratic elements were that the councils could not decide their own schedule, and that there was no more conscription but a professional mercenary army. 18 Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence. 19 Finley, Politics in the Ancient World. 20 Cornelius Castoriadis, Domaines de l’homme (Seuil, 1986). 21 Christian Meier, The Greek Discovery of Politics (Harvard University Press, 1990). 22 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (MIT Press, 1991). 23 This explains the mixed feelings of familiarity and strangeness that we get when reading Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine (see Niccolo Machiavelli, Florentine Histories (Princeton University Press, 1988)). 24 Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence, 251. 25 Manin, The Principles of Representative Government; Dowlen, The Political Potential of Sortition; Buchstein, Demokratie und Lotterie; Sintomer, Petite histoire de l’expérimentation démocratique. 26 Guidi, Il governo della città-repubblica di Firenze del primo quattrocento, vol. 2, 43–4; Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 177, 275; Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence; Brucker, Florence. The Golden Age, 253. 27 Venetian citizenship was basically restricted to the Great Council members: around 1,100 persons for a population of 90,000 at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and 2,600 for a population of 250,000 before the 1575 plague (F. C. Lane, Storia di Venezia (Einaudi, 1978), 120, 295–7, 372). 28 Between 30,000 and 50,000 citizens, for a population of 250,000 to 300,000 people. In both cities, women were excluded from citizenship, but in addition, in Florence, manual workers (the popolo minuto) had only access to citizenship during the revolt of the Ciompi in 1378, when for a few months 13,000 new persons got access to citizenship through the creation of three new guilds. Peasants from the neighborhood (the contado) remained totally excluded, together with the people living in territories under Florentine domination (the dominio). 29 338,000 persons out of 8.5 million people. Patrice Gueniffey, Le Nombre et la Raison (EHESS, 1993), 97. See also J. H. Plumb, “The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600 to 1715,” Past and Present 45 (1969). 30 Cadoni, “Genesi e implicazioni dello scontro tra i fautori della ‘tratta’ e i fautori delle ‘più fave’ 1495–1499.” 31 Guicciardini, “Del modo di eleggere gli uffici nel consiglio grande,” in Dialogo e discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, Roberto Palmarocchi (ed.) (Laterza, 1932): 175–95. 32 Guicciardini, “Del modo di eleggere gli uffici nel consiglio grande.” 33 Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance; Search of Florentine Civic Humanism; Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment; Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 34 Carson and Martin, Random Selection in Politics, 2, 13–14. The “fair cross section of the community” is the notion that the U.S. Supreme Court referred to when it imposed the reform of trial juries at the end of the 1960s in order to select them by

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lot among the all citizenship and not only among a particular group of it (“The Jury Selection and Service Act,” 28 U.S.C., secs 1861–9, quoted in Jeffrey Abramson, We the Jury. The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2003), 100). 35 Manin, The Principles of Representative Government; Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (MIT Press, 1996); Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; John S. Dryzek, Discursive Democracy. Politics, Policy and Political Science (Cambridge University Press, 1990); Jon Elster, Arguing and Bargaining in the Federal Convention and the Assemblée Constituante, Working Paper, 4, The University of Chicago, Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe, 1991; Jon Elster (ed.) Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 1998). 36 James Fishkin, The Voice of the People. Public Opinion and Democracy (Yale University Press, 1996); Peter Dienel, Die Planungszelle (Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997); Waren and Pearse, Designing Deliberative Democracy; among many others. 37 Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy (Verso, 2007). 38 Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics (Yale University Press, 1989), 340. 39 Peter Stone, “The Logic of Random Selection,” Political Theory 37 (2009), 375–97, 390. 40 Yan Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge University Press, 1990). 41 John Adams, “Letter to John Penn,” The Works of John Adams (Little, Brown and Co., 1851), 4, 205. 42 Sintomer, Petite histoire de l’expérimentation démocratique. 43 Manin, The Principles of Representative Government. 44 See, among others, Comte de Mirabeau, “Discours devant les états de Provence,” January 30, 1789, Œuvres de Mirabeau, Paris 1825, t. VII, 7, quoted in P. Rosanvallon, Le peuple introuvable. Histoire de la représentation démocratique en France (Gallimard, 1998). 45 See, among others, the “Manifeste des Soixante,” L’Opinion nationale, February 17, 1764, quoted in Rosanvallon, Le peuple introuvable. 46 L. Blondiaux and Y. Sintomer (eds) “Démocratie et déliberation,” Politix 15(57) (Hermès, 2002). 47 The “fair cross section of the community” is an approximation of the representative sample when the group is too small to be truly representative. 48 Manin, The Principles of Representative Government. 49 Sintomer, Petite histoire de l’expérimentation démocratique. 50 Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Clarendon Press, 1995). 51 Fishkin, The Voice of the People, 162. 52 Ibid. 53 Robert E. Goodin and John Dryzeck, “Deliberative Impacts: The Macro-Political Uptake of Mini-Publics,” Politics and Society 34 (2006), 219–44; Archon Fung, “Minipublics. Deliberative designs and their consequences,” in Shawn W. Rosenberg (ed.) Deliberation, Participation and Democracy. Can the People Govern? (Palgrave, 2008); Simone Chambers, “Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned Mass Democracy?” Political Theory, 37(3), June 2009, 323–50. 54 Elster, Arguing and Bargaining in the Federal Convention and the Assemblée Constituante.



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55 Gibson, “Deliberative Democracy and the B.C. Citizens’ Assembly.” 56 Chambers, “Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned Mass Democracy?” 57 Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Between Facts and Norms. 58 Rebecca Abers, Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil (Lynne Reiner Publishers, 2000); Leonardo Avritzer, Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America (Princeton University Press, 2002); Y. Sintomer, The Porto Alegre Experiment: Learning Lessons for a Better Democracy (Zed Books, 2004); Gianfranco Baiocchi, Militants and Citizens. The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford University Press, 2005). 59 Archon Fung and Erick O. Wright (eds) Deepening Democracy. Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (Verso, 2001). 60 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” Justice Interruptus. Critical Reflexion on the “Postsocialist” Condition (Routledge, 1997). 61 John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Swallow Press and Ohio University Press Books, 1954 [1927]), 207. 62 Georg W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge University Press, 1991): §227–8). 63 McCormick, “Contain the Wealthy and Patrol the Magistrates.” 64 J. Abramson, We the Jury. The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy. 65 A. Röcke and Y. Sintomer, “Les jurys de citoyens berlinois et le tirage au sort: un nouveau modèle de démocratie participative?” in M. H. Bacqué, H. Rey, and Y. Sintomer (eds) Gestion de proximité et démocratie participative: les nouveaux paradigmes de l’action publique? (La Découverte, 2005), 139–60.

15

More than Two The One as Singularity in Ambiguity* Gerald Raunig

A very different One At the “Politics of the One” conference held in St. Petersburg in April 2010, Jean-Luc Nancy presented a talk entitled “Plus d’un,” or “More Than One.” Now that talk has become the chapter that opens the present volume. In a statement that initially seems rather cryptic, Nancy argued that “more than one” refers to the difference between fundamentally different meanings of the one. “More than one,” he writes, “in truth, it simply means ‘one,’ any given unit.” What does Nancy mean by this apparently paradoxical turn of phrase that “more than one” is “any given unit,” any given one-ness, simply one? He is implicitly referring to a philosophical distinction whereby the whole is at issue—or perhaps precisely not the whole. On the one hand, being one in the sense of a wholeness, an identity, a full, a complete and perfect unity: nothing can be added to this unity. “More than one” would here be a contradiction. Addition is impossible: the possible techniques that presuppose a whole, full, unified identity are division, distinction, subtraction. At the same time, a very different one in the sense of particularity, uniqueness, singularity: the second meaning of oneness in the sense of a singularity is what Nancy is referring to when he speaks of “more than one.” More than one, more than two, several; being more, becoming more, multiplication; not a majority, for it is not about the domination of a majority over minorities, a universal as well as standard measure over accidentals, a constant central issue over fleeting coincidences. Instead of distinguishing and establishing a majority and a minority, at issue is multiplicity, multiplication, addition. In his lecture, Nancy emphasized the distinction between multiplication and distinction. “But the plurality of ‘ones’ opens straight away the question of its nature: is it addition, multiplication or else distinction, dissimilarity?” Translated into my

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own terms, the question is: Do the many as singularities stand in a relationship and exchange with a mass-one, a multitude, a molecular manifoldness—or do they subject themselves as identitarian differences to an all-one, an identity, a universal unity? To quote Nancy more extensively: If plurality results from addition or multiplication, “more than one” may extend indefinitely like the series of numbers, of all possible numerations […] The principle is that of numeration or numerality: more than one, which is to say not only some ones but also many. More precisely, there are never “some ones” without there being “many” at the horizon. Many, the multitude, i.e. the multiplication of the ones that are not brought back to the jurisdiction of a One, simply because there is neither a jurisdiction nor a “One” with a capital, but only the enumeration of “ones.” Enumeration is the principle of the crowd, the numerous, the number of which continually increases. Addition brings always further the indefinite sum that will never make up a unity.1

The more refers to the horizon of the many. Being more than one always already means more than two, more than several. It indicates a plurality, a multi-plication of the numerous, it signifies a concatenation of ones, a specific concatenation that does not seek to dominate or even to sublate them, that does not place the singular under the command of a whole, a full one One.

“They Don’t Represent Us!” By the twentieth century, at the latest, ambiguity and ambivalence had become ubiquitous: Verena Krieger makes this point in her introduction to Ambiguität in der Kunst, a collection of essays she co-edited with Rachel Mader. This ubiquity is true not only of art, but of many discourses, but none the less—and I think this is decisive—it takes on a different valence in various realms. In the following, I would like to relate the philosophical problematic discussed above to two different social realms—that of activism and that of art—suggesting different, even contrary interpretations of the relationship between ambiguity and disambiguity, the many and the one. My first example comes from the realm of social movements. Here—first in 1968, then in the 1990s around the Zapatist movement, and finally increasingly in the first decade of the new century with the anti-globalization movement, the social fora, queer/feminist activisms, and the Euro Mayday movement of the precarious—multiple practices have developed against the unification of struggles, against representation by state apparatuses such as parties and unions, against subjection under identitarian positions. In the conflict and concatenation of social machines with the Foucauldian and Deleuzian currents of the 1970s, later with new feminist theories around and after Judith Butler, then with the popular linkage of Marxism and post-structuralism in the international bestsellers by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, molecularity, ambiguity, and multitude found their expression in social movements as well.



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But counter to trends, in recent years there has been an identitarian opposing wind. The one One is returning, and, with it, a jurisdiction of the one. The molecular struggles, movements, and discourses are—in a returning simplification—accused of culturalization, an anti-materialist attitude, and depoliticization: the Anti-Germans try out an anti-fascist, negative identity politics, feminist identitarianisms surface against the queer movement, German-speaking representatives of critical-whiteness studies tend towards an anti-racist identitarianism. I am rather skeptical of those in the art context who exercise a fundamental critique of political activisms, who undertake an aesthetic critique of political posters at art history conferences instead of intervening at the activist meetings and work groups in the process of aesthetic political production. It is partially for this reason that my example is explicitly not intended as a critique of identitarianism, but as an affirmation of a renewed movement against disambiguation, identity politics, and the domination of the one One. Radical inclusion and representational critique are two outstanding components of the new occupy movements, especially the Spanish 15-M movement—founded around the demonstrations on May 15 2011—and the Occupy! movement since September 2011: No nos representan!, “They don’t represent us!,” is one of the most important slogans of these movements. This not only means that “they,” the politicians, are doing something wrong or that they are the wrong politicians, but rather something more fundamental: that the politics of representative democracy do not work or no longer function, that its hegemonic model of organic representation is necessarily based on the logic of the one One, the identity. I would like to discuss something from the recent past in more detail, for in my view the specific genealogy of the occupations of 2011 can be directly linked to the university occupations of 2008 and 2009. Not unlike the re-appropriation of smooth, deterritorialized spaces in the centers of Arab, Spanish, Israeli, and US cities, the movement of reterritorialization that took place in years prior at the universities of Europe could be seen as similarly paradoxical. Already in the fall of 2008, the Italian onda anomala triggered a wave of protests, strikes, blockades, and demonstrations that here and there spilled across the borders as well, emerging in different forms in France, Greece, and Spain. In April 2009, however, something new emerged. The protests over education policy turned into an occupy movement. Zagreb students did not just occupy a lecture hall, but took over the entire division of the humanities and the social sciences. It remained under student control for 35 days, and the occupation then expanded to other cities in Croatia. Especially interesting when it came to subsequent developments was the trend toward the broad introduction of representational critique and non-representationist practices. What was alluded to in the social movements of the 1990s and 2000s already on a smaller scale now expanded and became a central focus of sociality and organization. In Zagreb, this could be seen first in the constitution of the plenary assemblies themselves. The plenum was fundamentally open, even to those who were not students, staff, or members of the faculty, and it was the only location where decisions were made. The plenum was neither a territory nor a community, but a temporary

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assembly that only existed as long as the assembly lasted. There were accordingly no members, but just the act of assembly, discussion, and decision, without any identification or organic representation. The other complex of representational critique at the Zagreb occupation consisted in the occupiers’ media strategy. Quite consciously, they avoided the media trap of being identified and instrumentalized as a protest movement that was young, naïve, and politically somewhat confused. This image is routinely introduced in the mainstream media to describe new protest movements: in the first weeks quite affirmatively (the young should protest, after all!) decorated with “human” features of the activists, and then, after some time—and always according to the same patterns—turning into the opposite: the occupiers are irresponsible, because there are no constant faces or names representing them, they have no plan, because they present no concrete demands, and ultimately they are “ready for violence.” The Zagreb occupiers subvert this mass media logic by defining their representation themselves: above all, by way of depersonalization and permanently rotating spokespersons. As a rule, each spokesperson only appeared before the press once. The exact articulation of the movement was secured primarily by the press releases written daily, making it possible to keep the representation of the occupation’s goals under the control of the collective. While the Zagreb students occupied the division of arts and social sciences, at Vienna’s Kunstakademie an initially small number of students and young faculty members began holding discussions with members of the transnational platform Edu-Factory, critical of university education, and smaller actions directed against the imminent implementation of the Bologna reform. In October 2009, four months after the end of the Zagreb occupation, the main lecture hall at Vienna’s Akademie der bildenden Künste was occupied, and two days later so was the largest lecture hall in all of Austria, the Audimax at Universität Wien. This occupation lasted for two months, longer than any other in the history of Austria. Using the slogan #unibrennt, the movement organized its own teaching, meals, and secured places to live and sleep at the occupied university. After five days, the occupation movement spread to other Austrian cities, and by early November there was an unbelievable chain of Audimax occupations all across Germany, Switzerland, and in other European countries, and in California as well. The Audimax occupiers in Vienna acted from the very start on the basis of radical inclusion, representational critique, and promoting individual voices, declaring the plenum to be the central location of decision making and establishing a large number of working groups. While in Zagreb the central achievements were clarity and unity of speech, the primacy of the collective, and anonymity of statements, the Audimax occupiers went a step further. The singular quality of the many ones of the many was not hidden behind the collective and anonymity, but took the multiplicity of positions within the plenum and even differences over forms of organization or approaches to sexist or racist practice toward the outside in more or less clear ways. Exemplary for this work of multiplication of positions was the discussion held already during the



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first weeks about the necessity of establishing a queer/feminist space as the result of incidents of sexual harassment. And there is yet another difference between the spring and fall of 2009, between Zagreb and Vienna: while the Zagreb occupiers only allowed small parts of the plenum to be filmed or photographed, the Vienna occupiers radically opened themselves up to the public. The permanent live-streams from the Audimax not only allowed people outside Vienna to follow the occupation and its self-administration, but also allowed local protagonists to add additional layers to the aspect of direct communication. Social machines and technological machines operated together: being plugged into electronic devices this time did not have the character of dependence, and the technological procedures of tweets, live-streams, and social media created a certain degree of independence from the spectacular currents of the mainstream media. In recent struggles, the promotion of singular voices and their multiplication can be recognized. The relationship between ambiguity and disambiguity takes the form of a struggle against political unities, against the unidimensional programs of representative democracy, against central contradictions of all kinds. The multitude does not represent the singularities. The multitude, that is the multiplication of the ones, cannot be “brought back to the jurisdiction of a One.”2 The ambivalence intended here is not meant in the sense of a juxtaposition resistant to concatenation or even a hierarchical differentiation, but rather as the always already new attempt to concatenate singularities without an identitarian claim.

What Would It Mean to Win? In her introduction to Ambiguität in der Kunst, Verena Krieger discusses in extremely clear terms how ambiguity in the field of art has become a quasi-natural, stereotypical, ultimately “normative” category. Whether as an “aesthetic paradigm” of modernism, as a “postmodern metanarrative,” ambivalence becomes a “program,”3 the “absolute criterion for judging the actual art character of each work,”4 an “all-encompassing principle,”5 finally a fetish.6 Alongside earlier positions, Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic theory, with its focus on the artwork as a riddle, as a question mark, is above all taken as a main point of reference for the different variants of an ambiguity that is declared to be a norm. In comparison to the recurrent political attempts at disambiguation or unification that the variety of social movements is repeatedly subject to, in the realm of art the situation is almost the inverse. In the discourse of the bourgeois art world, ambiguity seems to be the norm, and disambiguity seems to be something of a criterion of exclusion. The question mark becomes imperative. With the “assertion of a tolerance of ambiguity,” as Tom Holert describes this tendency in his contribution to Ambiguität in der Kunst,7 Adorno’s elitist-authoritarian gesture becomes a hegemonic perspective in the field of art, a normativity, sometimes gently concealed, sometimes aggressive, that for its part causes closure.8 In an extreme case, this closure leads to denunciatory

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evaluations of non-ambiguous art practices as “bad art” or “non-art.” Particularly when ambiguity and the manifold have become a ubiquitous norm in the art field (and at the same time an object of post-Fordist value creation), it is a good idea to explore the one as a singularity, as a manifold uniqueness that triggers multitude, to reinvent a singularity on the non-foundation of ambiguity, that does not oppose the many as a one, subjecting it, but emerges from it and will collapse into it. Here, several positions from the historical avant-garde would apply, above all the post-revolutionary practices and theories of Tretjakov, Arvatov, and Eisenstein, but also the epic theater and above all Bert Brecht’s “learning plays.” I would like to conclude with a more recent example, a film collaboration between the Australian artist Zanny Begg and the Austrian artist and filmmaker Oliver Ressler. Begg and Ressler first presented their film about the Anti-G8 protests at Germany’s Heiligendamm in the summer of 2007, soon after the protests, and in so doing intervened in debates within the social movement. The title of their work ends in a question mark, but not in Adorno’s sense. What Would It Mean to Win? But in the work itself, there’s also an implicit exclamation mark, a singular imperative, a disambiguity. A core statement of the film is that “winning,” in the figure of a unified revolutionary subject taking over state power, has no great future. Instead, the multitude of the activists of Heiligendamm that pose this question of the significance of winning takes the form of a question, the form of an undefined movement, a stumbling and perhaps stuttering, like the music used for the animation fragments in Begg and Ressler’s film that complement the actions and theoretical commentaries. Just as this fragmented, molecular multitude refuses all definition and all organic representation, it also makes sense that Begg and Ressler, instead of exploring the spectacular riots in Rostock at the start of the summit or Greenpeace’s actions on the shores of Heiligendamm, immediately immerse themselves in the depths of the micropolitical assemblages in the fields and camps around the G8 summit. The images and sounds that both artists captured from the actions and social forms of organization around Heiligendamm poetically summon the blockades and the attempts to break though the police lines in the hinterland of Heiligendamm, above all the effectiveness of the “five finger” tactic in the broad fields along the Baltic, the strategy of the repeated division of larger groups upon making contact with police lines, until their gaps ultimately led to a breakthrough. The exclamation point that stands against the non-foundation of the question mark emerges as the affirmation of a new political practice in the event, not as dogmatic jurisdiction. The film adds something to this practice. It is a piece of counter-information, and to that extent an exclamation point. It reports on a practice that did not surface in the media’s reporting at the time. It affirms the little actions, the organizational forms, the aesthetics and the debates among the activists around Heiligendamm. These distractions, bifurcations, multiplications correspond to the film’s demand, borrowed from Zapatism, that life need not mean the same film each day, but rather that each day should be a new film. Instead of affirming the one world of machinic capitalism, but also without just being satisfied that another world is possible, at issue



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is inventing many different worlds. This implies on the one hand the multiplication of the one other world in a multiplicity of other worlds, but at the same time the concrete actualization of possibilities in the here and now, as a singular exclamation point. Herein lies the power of the work of Begg and Ressler in comparison to other examples of visual representation of the anti-globalization movement: it furthers aspects of counter-information and counter-propaganda, but also integrates several layers of reflection that avoid suggesting and taking an all too simple solution to questions of the “we,” of “power,” of the nature of winning. At issue here is not dismissing disambiguity in favor of the ambiguity and ambivalence that is promoted by the art world, but disambiguous singularities emerging in the event that seek their explosive power on the non-foundation of the multitude. The disambiguity, the clarity at issue here does not promote identity and the all-one. It emerges as a risky singularity that sets something at stake, adding something to the multiplicity. It explodes the all-one. The exclamation point is here not a scolding finger, but a singular imperative, a plea for concatenation and contagion that does not devour the many question marks, but actualizes them. Disambiguity, oneness not as identity, but as a singularity that is more than one.

Bibliography Verena Krieger and Rachel Mader (eds) Ambiguität in der Kunst: Typen und Funktionen eines ästhetischen Paradigmas (Vienna: Böhlau, 2010). Jean-Luc Nancy, “More than One,” in Politics of the One (London: Continuum, 2013).

Notes * Translated from German by Brian Currid. The first version of this text was written as a lecture for the conference Radikal Ambivalent, held by Rachel Mader and the Institute for Contemporary Art, at Zurich Art Academy, 1–2 December 2011. 1 See 5 of this volume. 2 Ibid. 3 Verena Krieger, ‘‘‘At War with the Obvious’: Kulturen der Ambiguität,” in Verena Krieger and Rachel Mader (eds) Ambiguität in der Kunst: Typen und Funktionen eines ästhetischen Paradigmas (Böhlau, 2010), 13–49; Quot. 30. 4 Ibid., 36. 5 Ibid., 41. 6 Ibid., 48. 7 Tom Holert, “Resonanzen, Streifen, Scherenschnitte. Formen und Funktionen von Ambiguität seit 1960,” in Ambiguität in der Kunst, 241–59; Quot. 243. 8 In recent decades, these closures can also and primarily be seen as components of economic developments. The imperative towards ambiguity takes on a structural analogy to contemporary forms of production. Ambivalence and ambiguity are here by no means to be understood as weapons of the bourgeoisie in the sense of the old

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and rather static Bourdieuian mechanism of distinction between classes and social strata, but as a variously hierarchized differentiation. In recent years, this complicated analogy has been made clear by queer/feminist positions such as that of Antke Angel and Brigitte Bargetz: if today post-Fordist economics operates as a capitalism of difference, differences of all kinds are substantialized and hierarchized. In this settting, the flows between the singularities, their exchange, their being placed in relation to one another are converted into value.

Index of Names Adams, John 203, 229, 230, 237, 242 Agamben, Giorgio xvi, 132, 133, 142, 168, 171 Akhmatova, Anna 13, 19–22 Aquinas, Thomas 4, 9, 11, 25, 42, 135 Arendt, Hannah ii, 28, 31, 32, 33, 42, 45, 171, 203 Aristotle xii, xiv, xxii, 4, 18, 21, 24, 25, 28, 42, 66, 70, 88–9, 95–7, 102, 107, 110, 116–18, 120, 125, 128–9, 135, 205, 214, 217, 219, 227, 229 Audibert, Cathérine 42, 47 Augustine, Aurelius 7, 137, 186 Averroes 4 Badiou, Alain xii, xiv, xvi–xvii, xix, xxi, 11, 27, 30 42, 45, 51–85, 88, 98, 102, 107, 148 Basil the Great, St 209–17 Bataille, George 18, 133–4, 141, 165 Begg, Zanny 250–1 Benjamin, Walter 33, 41, 133, 150, 208–9 Blanchot, Maurice 10–12, 61, 132–4, 158, 165, 173 Boethius, Manlius Severinus 135, 137, 141, 142 Bourdieu, Pierre 207, 208, 252 Bruni, Leonardo 221, 227, 240 Bulgakov, Sergey 203 Carson, Lyn 228, 229, 241 Castoriadis, Cornelius 226 Clastres, Pierre 29, 32 Cues, Nicolas von 15, 18–19 Dahl, Robert 229 Deleuze, Gilles xi, xiv–xvi, xix, 11, 28, 30–1, 51–61, 117, 158, 171 Derrida, Jacques xv, 4, 6, 11, 51, 78, 81–2, 84, 119, 127, 157, 158, 162, 167, 170–2, 208, 219

Dewey, John 234 Eckhart, Meister 18 Eliot, T. S. 19 Elster, Jon 201, 242 Epictetus 32 Esposito, Roberto 131, 141, 154 Finley, Moses 226, 240 Foucault, Michel 51, 54, 60, 158, 172, 173, 198, 210 Frege, Gottlob xv, xvi, xxii, 27, 28, 47 Gibson, Gordon 221, 232 Guiccardini, Francesco 224–5, 227, 229, 240 Habermas, Jurgen 233, 242–3 Haraway, Donna 161, 172 Hardt, Michael 54, 59, 141, 143, 177–8, 181, 185–6, 190, 195, 198–201, 246 Hegel, Georg 4, 7, 25–7, 35, 41–2, 44, 51, 64, 72–4, 82, 87, 89, 97, 99, 107–8, 118–20, 124, 129, 130, 149–50, 164, 171, 178, 186, 191–4, 200, 235, 243 Heidegger, Martin xiv, xix, xxi, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 28–9, 31–2, 36, 40, 63–70, 71–84, 87–90, 97–112, 126, 124, 148, 154–5, 157–60, 164–5, 167–8, 169–73 Heraclitus 4, 9, 24, 44, 89, 108–9 Holert, Tom 249, 251 Hume, David 87 Husserl, Edmund 63, 73–84, 91–2, 108 Ingarden, Roman 76, 78, 84 Kandinsky, Vasiliy 17, 21 Kant, Immanuel 25, 41, 43, 44, 75, 81, 87, 92, 159–62, 172 Kantorowicz, Ernst 199

254

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Klein, Melanie 33, 46–7 Krieger, Verena 246, 249, 251 La Boétie, Étienne xi, 29, 42 Lacan, Jacques xi, xv, xvi, xx, xxii, 27, 33–5, 79 Latour, Bruno 161, 170–2, 207–8 Lazzarato, Maurizio 54, 8, 60 Lefort, Claude 125, 129, 180, 186, 196, 198 Leibniz, Gottfried 4, 25, 28, 37, 97, 110, 155 Levinas, Emmanuel 33, 39, 41, 46, 128, 130, 162, 173 Losev, Alexey 72–3, 84 Lyotard, Jean-François 51–2, 83, 172 Machiavelli, Niccolo 181, 224, 239–41 Manin, Bernard 205, 218, 229, 240–2 Martin, Brian 228–9, 239 Marx, Karl 12, 97, 149–50 Merleau-Ponty 118, 129, 162, 173 Miller, Jacques Alain 27–8, 43 della Mirandola, Pico 3, 8 Mondzain, Marie-José 205–6, 210, 218–19 Nancy, Jean-Luc xv–xxii, 3–12, 57, 81, 83, 112, 119, 129–34, 141, 153–5, 158–9, 164, 245–6, 251 Negri, Antonio xi, xiii, xiv, xxii, 54, 59–60, 141, 143, 177–8, 181, 185–6, 190, 195, 198–201, 246 Nietzsche, Friedrich 4, 31–9, 78, 87–8, 91, 96–8, 107–8, 110–11, 127, 130, 150, 200 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) 121–3, 128–9 Ouspensky, Leonid 203, 217

Parmenides xi, xix, 24–5, 81, 88–99, 102, 106–10, 148 Peterson, Eric 28, 44–5 Plato xi, xxii, 14, 18, 21, 24, 35, 64, 71–4, 77, 82–3, 87–8, 95, 117, 129, 147, 162, 165, 206 Platonov, Andrey 39–40, 44, 47–8 Plotinus xii, xxii, 4, 37, 46, 77 Porretanus, Gilbert xix, 134–42 Proust, Marcel 33 Quignard, Pascal 165 Ressler, Oliver 250–1 Rubinstein, Nicolay 223, 239–40 Sartre, Jean-Paul 40–1, 43, 48, 197–201 Schelling, Friedrich 18, 161–2, 165, 168 Schmitt, Carl 28, 40, 44, 47, 159, 172, 182, 189, 199 Schürmann, Rainer 15, 21, 28, 43, 45 Smith, Brian 73, 84 Stirner, Max 4, 37, 39–40, 47 The Studite, Theodore 205, 209, 211, 213, 217–19 Tennyson, Alfred 16, 21 von Trier, Lars 33–5 Trubetskoy, Evgeny 203, 217 Virno, Paolo 51, 54, 56, 59–60, 154 Volotsky, St Joseph 209, 211, 216–19 Williams, Henry Horace 26, 45 Winnicott, Donald 37, 47 Žižek, Slavoj 56, 60

Index ambiguity, disambiguity 14–15, 31, 120, 245–51 being xi, xiv–xvi, xix, 3–12, 14–20, 24–8, 42, 52–3, 59, 64, 72–5, 79–82, 94–5, 97–102, 116, 130, 136, 147–50, 57, 164–5 ontology xi, 11, 17, 23–8, 32, 52, 63–8, 71–83, 97, 116, 118, 130, 139, 147–9, 162, 171, 173 Cold War 184, 194 democracy xii, xix–xx, 115–30, 178, 180, 185, 188, 203–4, 221–36, 247 dividuality 138–40 element 157–73 empire, imperialism xiii, 37, 126, 177–96 event xiv, xvii–xix, 7–8, 11, 28, 35, 40, 42, 45, 51–61, 65–7, 72, 81–2, 88, 98, 100, 147–55, 161, 166, 186, 189–91 exile xvi, xviii, 17–19 finitude xxi, 18, 31, 68, 163 fragility xviii, 13–22, 157, 188 globalization, anti-globalization 6, 30, 51, 151, 157, 159, 171, 177–8, 180, 185, 190, 194–5, 246, 251 growth 30, 115–30 icon xviii, 203, 220 individual, individualism xii, xv, 5, 14, 20, 25, 29–48, 55–60, 119–26, 131–43, 153, 193, 195, 208, 217, 232, 248 infinity xv, xviii, 3, 8, 10, 12, 18, 26, 28, 37, 65–70, 115–16, 118–19, 121, 123, 126–7, 163–6, 206

lots xii–xiii, 219, 221–43 melancholia 26, 32–5, 39, 41, 47, 190 metaphor 17, 91, 207–11 metonymy 207–8 monotheism xvi, 25, 28, 39 Multiplicity, The Many xi, xiv–xx, 9–11, 27, 29–31, 51–61, 71–6, 81–4, 115–30, 131–43, 148, 151–2, 164, 245–51 nature 8, 10, 18–20, 118–30, 157–73, 191–3 negativity xv–xviii, 24–8, 35, 42, 149, 162, 164–5, 192–4 neoplatonism 11, 16, 25, 85, 135 nihilism 3,5, 31, 34, 41, 71, 87, 104, 111, 164 number, the numeric xvii–xviii, 5–10, 14, 24, 27–8, 31, 44, 47, 66, 7, 131, 138, 166, 232–4, 246, 248 Occupy Movement 247 other, aliud xv, 17–19, 38, 40–1, 55, 100, 125 phenomenology ii, 71–84, 90, 92, 159, 164, 173 plants xi, 115–30 representation xii, xiii, xviii, xx, 3, 55–6, 121, 185, 203, 205, 207, 216, 218, 222, 229–30, 246–8, 251 republic, republicanism xiii, xix, 28, 122, 124, 178, 180–2, 189, 203, 205, 208, 221–40 revolution xiii, 16, 20, 26, 31, 39–40, 57–8, 60, 65, 81, 150, 153, 178–95, 224, 229–30, 250 Rome, Ancient 132, 138, 180–1, 185, 220, 225

256 Index singularity xiv, xvi, xix, 10, 14, 16–20, 23, 30, 37–8, 57–8, 68, 81, 101–2, 115, 117, 120, 123, 133–43, 147, 151–3, 160, 164–6, 245–52 solitude xiv, xviii, xx, 23, 48, 177, 180, 184, 194

tragedy 35, 65 Trinity 4, 7, 25, 135–8 truth xii, xv, xvii, 53–4, 60, 63–9, 73–82, 87–8, 91, 95, 99, 135, 158, 166, 168