A crucial text in the development of François Laruelle's oeuvre and an excellent starting point for understanding his broader project, Philosophies of Difference offers a theoretical and critical analysis of the philosophers of difference after Hegel and Nietzsche. Laruelle then uses this analysis to introduce a new theoretical practice of non-philosophical thought. Rather than presenting a narrative historical overview, Laruelle provides a series of rigorous critiques of the various interpretations of difference in Hegel, Nietzsche and Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida. From Laruelle's innovative theoretical perspective, the forms of philosophical difference that emerge appear as variations upon a unique, highly abstract structure of philosophical decision, the self-posing and self-legitimating essence of philosophy itself. Reconceived in terms of philosophical decision, the seemingly radical concept of philosophical difference is shown to configure rather the identity of philosophy as such, which thus becomes manifest as a contingent and no longer absolute form of thinking. The way is thereby opened for initiating a new form of thought, anticipated here with the development of a key notion of non-philosophy, the Vision-in-One.
Utilizing François Laruelle's "non-philosophical" method, Smith constructs a unified theory of philosophical theology and ecology by challenging environmental philosophy and theology, claiming that and engagement with scientific ecology can radically change the standard metaphysics of nature, as well as ethical problems related to "the natural".
In Principles of Non-Philosophy, Laruelle develops the concepts and method of a more democratic form of thought where neither science nor philosophy is subjected to one another, but brought together in a more productive theoretical and practical relationship. While the potential importance of this project is clear, Laruelle remains famously difficult. Anthony Paul Smith provides an introduction and guide to the text that situates you amongst the figures and concepts Laruelle engaged with, provides a foothold for your own understanding and, more importantly, potential use of the project of non-philosophy.
This compelling and highly original book represents a confrontation between two of the most radical thinkers at work in France today: Alain Badiou and the author, François Laruelle. At face value, the two have much in common: both espouse a position of absolute immanence; both argue that philosophy is conditioned by science; and both command a pluralism of thought. Anti-Badiou relates the parallel stories of Badiou's Maoist 'ontology of the void' and Laruelle's own performative practice of 'non-philosophy' and explains why the two are in fact radically different. Badiou's entire project aims to re-educate philosophy through one science: mathematics. Laruelle carefully examines Badiou's Being and Event and shows how Badiou has created a new aristocracy that crowns his own philosophy as the master of an entire theoretical universe. In turn, Laruelle explains the contrast with his own non-philosophy as a true democracy of thought that breaks philosophy's continual enthrall with mathematics and instead opens up a myriad of 'non-standard' places where thinking can be found and practised.
"A departure at right angles to thinking in the modern Western world. An important, original work, that should get the widest possible hearing" (Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary) Middle Way Philosophy is not about compromise, but about the avoidance of dogma and the integration of conflicting assumptions. To rely on experience as our guide, we need to avoid the interpretation of experience through unnecessary dogmas. Drawing on a range of influences in Buddhist practice, Western philosophy and psychology, Middle Way Philosophy questions alike the assumptions of scientific naturalism, religious revelation and political absolutism, trying to separate what addresses experience in these doctrines from what is merely assumed. This Omnibus edition of Middle Way Philosophy includes all four of the volumes previously published separately: 1. The Path of Objectivity, 2. The Integration of Desire, 3. The Integration of Meaning, and 4. The Integration of Belief.
"Principles of Non-Philosophy is a treatise on the method, axioms and objectives of non-philosophy and represents Franȯis Laruelle's mature philosophy. As well as presenting the method and principles of non-philosophy, it includes a history of the development of non-philosophy, a novel conception of science, a discussion of non-philosophical causality and new theories of the subject and object of thought. Providing an introduction to Laruelle's novel theory of 'non-epistemology' or 'unified theory of thought', this volumes challenges the way we think about the traditional philosophical problems. Bringing together all the elements of his thought developed over twenty years and laying the foundations for his later work, Principles of Non-Philosophy is arguably Laruelle's magnum opus."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze takes up Deleuze's most powerful argument on the task of contemporary philosophy in the West. Deleuze argues that it is only through a creative engagement with the forms of non-philosophy--notably modern art, literature and cinema--that philosophy can hope to attain the conceptual resources to restore the broken links of perception, language and emotion. In short, this is the only future for philosophy if it is to repair its fragile relationship to immanence to the world as it is.A sequence of dazzling essays analyze Deleuze's investigations into the modern arts. Particular attention is paid to Deleuze's exploration of Liebniz in relation to modern painting and of Borges to an understanding of the relationship between philosophy, literature and language. By illustrating Deleuze's own approach to the arts, and to modern literature in particular, the book demonstrates the critical significance of Deleuze's call for a future philosophy defined as an "art of inventing concepts."
This book is a foundational text for our understanding of François Laruelle, one of France's leading thinkers, whose ideas have emerged as an important touchstone for contemporary theoretical discussions across multiple disciplines. One of Laruelle’s first systematic elaborations of his ethical and "non-philosophical" thought, this critical dialogue with some of the dominant voices of continental philosophy offers a rigorous science of individuals as minorities or as separated from the World, History, and Philosophy. Through novel theorizations of finitude and determination in the last instance, Laruelle develops a thought "of the One" as a "minoritarian" paradigm that resists those paradigms that foreground difference as the conceptual matrix for understanding the status of the minority. The critique of the "unitary illusion" of philosophy developed here stands at the foundation of Laruelle’s approach to "uni-lateralizing" the power of philosophy and the universals with which it has always thought, and thereby acts as a basis for his subsequent investigations of victims, mysticism, and Gnosticism. This book will appeal to students and scholars of continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, ethics, aesthetics, and cultural theory.