A Biography of Ordinary Man

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.

Auteur

François Laruelle is Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris X (Nanterre).

Résumé
A Biography of Ordinary Man is a foundational text for our understanding of Francois Laruelle, one of France s leading thinkers, whose ideas have emerged as an important touchstone for contemporary theoretical discussions across multiple disciplines.

Contenu

Translators' Introduction

Foreword

Introduction: A Rigorous Science of Man

1) From the Sciences of Man to the Science of Men

Five human theorems. The Sciences of Man are not sciences and man is not their object. Heterogeneous sciences, not specific, not theoretically justified, and devoid of humanity. Critique of difference and of anthropo-logical parallelism. The essence of man is "theoretical," not anthropo-logical.

2) Man as Finite or Ordinary Individual

Man is not visible within the horizon of Greek ontological presuppositions. Man is really distinct from the World and from the All. Man as finite transcendental experience of the One. The finite subject, without universal or authoritarian predicates. Human Solitudes. Man is out (of) the question.

3) From Philosophy to Theory: the Science of Ordinary Man

The characteristics of the science of men and what distinguishes it from philosophy: 1) naïve and not reflexive; 2) real or absolute and not hypothetical; 3) essentially theoretical and not practical or technical; 4) descriptive and not constructive; 5) human rather than anthropological.

4) The Scientific and Positive Meaning of Transcendental Naiveté

Thinking outside of all representation or ob-jectivation. Finite individuals are absolutely invisible to unitary philosophy, though thinkable. The unitary field and its two parameters. Man outside-the-field and his radically immanent essence that is non-positional (of) itself. The minoritarian is not the micro-. No "example" of minorities. Rigorous science of the invisible. Against the fantasy of philo-centrism.

5) Towards a Critique of (Political, etc.) Reason

Ordinary man and his precedence over the "new logics." A possible political version of minorities. Critique of the stato-minoritarian concept of the individual. Transcendental and real criteria of minorities. From the statist hypothesis on minorities to the minoritarian thesis on the State. Political forgetting and non-forgetting of the essence of the State

CHAPTER I: Who Are Minorities?

6) The Two Sources of Minoritarian Thought

The stato-minoritarian or effective minorities as "difference." The properly minoritarian or the real individual before the World and the State. How minorities determine Authorities in the last instance. Determination in the last instance: irreversible or uni-lateral causality of the individual. The One rather than Being: real foundation of the minoritarian individual.

7) How to Think Individuals?

Individuals are not modes of transcendence or of the beyond (of power), margins or remainders, or the Other of history. The individual is not beyond the World; it is the World that is beyond the individual. Minorities do not fall under the human and social sciences. Conditions of a radical thought of individuals (term, object of immediate experience before any relation; real or unreflective rather than remainder of exteriority). Apriori of the individual and of the multiple. Two criteria of the individual (its essence or the One; its causality as unilateralization of the World).

8) Theory of Uni-laterality

Real uni-laterality is not a "difference" or a logical asymmetry, a relation in general, but precedes any relation (of predication, of power, etc.). Uni-lateral: a single side, a primitive asymmetry induced by the One. The One is not unilateral but affects the World with a unilateriality or determines it in the last instance. Uni-lateral: the specific form of order of the real and the non-philosophical. Uni-lateral and unitary forms of order: the relational, the transversal, the differential, the logo-centric. Specific causality of ordinary or finite man.

9) The Essence of the One or of the Finite Subject

The forgetting of the essence of the One is not the forgetting of Being. The experience (of) indivision precedes that of division or transcendence. It is given (to) itself in a mode that is non-positional (of) itself, in an unreflective experience. The difference between the One and Unity: The One does not divide into two or synthesize a manifold. The real is not dialectical, but determines the dialectic in the last instance. The One is the element of the mystical and grounds an "ordinary mysticism."

10) Minorities and Authorities

Minority: unreflective transcendental experience, real phenomenal content of techno-political universals. Individual and individuel. Individual and relation. Against the equation: minoritarian = relative, minoritarian = different. Individuals are invisible in the unitary horizon. Uncountable and politically and ontologically unspeakable. They refuse to be compatibilized in the revolutionary calculation.

CHAPTER II: Who Are Authorities?

11) Individuals and the World

The finite subject, without ob-jets, is the real critique of the Copernican Revolution. Contingent experience of the World and Authorities. The One does not negate the World but lets it affect man from its unilaterality. Authoritarian denial of the One. Experience of being remote-in-Theworld and what distinguishes it from being-in-the-world.

12) The Absolute Science of the World and of Authorities

The mystical and its effect, the As It Is, precede unitary "existence" or Being. Individuals are the absolute science of the World and Authorities because they do not objectivate them. Absolute science of Wholes or Mixtures as they are.

13) On Authority as Individuel Causality

Authority: political concept and ontological concept. Authorities, aprioristic structures of all experience in the World. From ontological concept to individual experience. Individuel or universal causality, individual or finite causality. Authority: transcendent form of human causality. Its two complementary forms. The authoritarian mixture precedes its terms and is not created by the One, which it follows as a "second principle." Authorities, irreducible and non-deficient mode of reality. The One does not alienate itself in the World: autonomy of the World.

CHAPTER III: Ordinary Mysticism

SECTION I: The Unitary Illusion

14) The Possibility of a Unitary Illusion

The dual, the order of successive givenn…