GameLaboratory

Although not Cartesian in principle, our procedure is homologous with the one followed by Descartes in his Meditations, after he had successfully established the truth of the cogito in the second Meditation. Following Descartes’ example, we are attempting to move beyond a ‘cogito’ by accessing an absolute capable of founding science’s (ancestral) discourse. But the cogito in question is no longer the Cartesian cogito – it is a ‘correlationist cogito’ that encloses thought in a reciprocal relation to being, one which is merely the mask for thought’s underlying relation to itself. This cogito differs from the Cartesian cogito in at least two ways:

The correlationist cogito cannot necessarily be identified with a metaphysics

of representation, since it can be a function of a conception of the correlation between thought and being other than the one between subject

and object (e.g. Heidegger’s co-propriation of man and Being). 2. It is not strictly speaking a solipsistic cogito, but rather a ‘cogitamus’,

since it founds science’s objective truth upon an intersubjective

consensus among consciousnesses. Yet the correlationist cogito also

institutes a certain kind of solipsism, which could be called a ‘species

solipsism’, or a ‘solipsism of the community’, since it ratifies the impossibility of thinking any reality that would be anterior or posterior to

the community of thinking beings. This community only has dealings

with itself, and with the world with which it is contemporaneous.

To extract ourselves from this communitarian or intersubjective solipsism is to access a great outdoors that would perform the same

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function for the mathematics contained in ancestral statements as the veracious God performed for extended substance.

These then are the coordinates of the problem, according to what we have established so far:

If the ancestral is to be thinkable, then an absolute must be

thinkable.

We accept the disqualification of every argument intended to establish

the absolute necessity of an entity – thus the absolute we seek cannot

be dogmatic.

We must overcome the obstacle of the correlationist circle, while

acknowledging that within the strong model which grants it its full

extent, the latter not only disqualifies the dogmatic absolute (as did

the refutation of the ontological argument), but every form of absolute

in general. It is the absolutizing approach as such, and not just the

absolutist one (based on the principle of sufficient reason), which

seems to shatter against the obstacle presented by the vicious circle of

correlation: to think something absolute is to think an absolute for-us,

and hence not to think anything absolute.

What we seek then is a non-metaphysical absolute, capable of slipping through the meshes of the strong model, while acknowledging that:

– a realist absolute (e.g. Epicurean) cannot pass through the meshes of

the correlation (first principle of the strong model);

– a correlationist absolute (one that is subjectivist, i.e., idealist or vitalist)

cannot pass through the meshes of facticity (second principle of strong

correlationism).

How then is thought to carve out a path towards the outside for itself?

***

The position of the problem, and the drastic conditions for its resolution, both indicate what appears to be the only remaining path available. In order to counter the strong model, we must take as our exemplar the first metaphysical counter-offensive against Kantian transcendentalism – in other words, we too must absolutize the very principle that allows correlationism to disqualify absolutizing thought. This is precisely what

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various subjectivist metaphysicians did – they turned the correlation itself, the instrument of empirico-critical de-absolutization, into the model for a new type of absolute. In doing so, these metaphysicians did not simply ‘trick’ correlationism; they were not trying to ‘unearth’ an absolute that they could then deftly turn against critico-scepticism, with the help of its own argumentation. It was more a case of trying to think the profound truth from which this argumentation derived its force. They acknowledged correlationism’s discovery of a fundamental constraint – viz., that we only have access to the for-us, not the in-itself – but instead of concluding from this that the in-itself is unknowable, they concluded that the correlation is the only veritable in-itself. In so doing, they grasped the ontological truth hidden beneath the sceptical argumentation – they converted radical ignorance into knowledge of a being finally unveiled in its true absoluteness.

Yet this first wave of the counter-offensive against correlationism came to grief against the second principle of correlationism – that of the essential facticity of the correlation, which has proven to be its most profound decision – the one which disqualifies idealist as well as realist dogmatism. Accordingly, the trail we have to follow is already marked out for us – if an absolute capable of withstanding the ravages of the correlationist circle remains conceivable, it can only be the one that results from the absolutization of the strong model’s second decision – which is to say, facticity. In other words, if we can discover an ontological truth hidden beneath facticity; if we can succeed in grasping why the very source which lends its power to the strategy of de-absolutization through fact also furnishes the means of access to an absolute being; then we will have gained access to a truth that is invulnerable to correlationist scepticism. For this time, there will be no third principle liable to counter such an absolutization. Accordingly, we must try to understand why it is not the correlation but the facticity of the correlation that constitutes the absolute . We must show why thought, far from experiencing its intrinsic limits through facticity, experiences rather its knowledge of the absolute through facticity. We must grasp in facticity not the inaccessibility of the absolute but the unveiling of the in-itself and the eternal property of what is, as opposed to the mark of the perennial deficiency in the thought of what is. What could such propositions mean?

Initially, it seems absurd to think of facticity as an absolute, since the latter is supposed to express thought’s inability to uncover the reason why what is, is. By turning an inability into an absolute, do we not end

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up with an absolute inability? The answer is no – at least not if we follow the procedure which subjectivist metaphysicians adopted with regard to the correlation. As we saw, the former uncovered the veritable instance of absolute being in the very obstacle erected against absolutization. We must now endeavour to do the same with facticity. No doubt, this will require a ‘change in outlook’, but once the latter has been achieved, the supreme necessity ascribed to the correlationist circle will appear as the opposite of what it first seemed – facticity will be revealed to be a knowledge of the absolute because we are going to put back into the thing itself what we mistakenly took to be an incapacity in thought. In other words, instead of construing the absence of reason inherent in everything as a limit that thought encounters in its search for the ultimate reason, we must understand that this absence of reason is, and can only be the ultimate property of the entity. We must convert facticity into the real property whereby everything and every world is without reason, and is thereby capable of actually becoming otherwise without reason. We must grasp how the ultimate absence of reason, which we will refer to as ‘unreason’, is an absolute ontological property, and not the mark of the finitude of our knowledge. From this perspective, the failure of the principle of reason follows, quite simply, from the falsity (and even from the absolute falsity) of such a principle – for the truth is that there is no reason for anything to be or to remain thus and so rather than otherwise, and this applies as much to the laws that govern the world as to the things of the world. Everything could actually collapse: from trees to stars, from stars to laws, from physical laws to logical laws; and this not by virtue of some superior law whereby everything is destined to perish, but by virtue of the absence of any superior law capable of preserving anything, no matter what, from perishing.

Let us try to be more precise about what we mean by such an absolute, and first of all, let us try to explain in what regard this absolutization of facticity is capable of overcoming the obstacle presented by the correlationist circle.

The correlationist could object to our thesis as follows: ‘To claim that facticity must be understood as the knowledge of the actual absence of reason for anything is to commit an elementary mistake, for it is to conflate facticity with contingency. Contingency designates the possibility whereby something can either persist or perish, without either option contravening the invariants that govern the world. Thus, contingency

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is an instance of knowledge; the knowledge I have of the actual perishability of a determinate thing. I know for example that this book could be destroyed, even if I do not know when or where this destruction will occur – whether it will soon be torn up by my little girl, or rotted away decades from now by mould. But this is to know something positive about this book, viz., its actual fragility, the possibility of its not-being. However, facticity can no more be identified with contingency than with necessity, since it designates our essential ignorance about either the contingency or the necessity of our world and its invariants. By turning facticity into a property of things themselves – a property which I am alleged to know – I turn facticity from something that applies only to what is in the world into a form of contingency capable of being applied to the invariants that govern the world (i.e. its physical and logical laws). In so doing, I claim to know that the world is perishable, just as I know that this book is perishable. But I am no more capable of demonstrating that facticity can be equated with this contingency, considered as true in itself, than I was capable of demonstrating the existence of a supposedly necessary metaphysical principle from which our world originates. Accordingly, the correlational circle undermines the thesis of the absolute contingency of everything just as effectively as it undermined the thesis of the absolute necessity of a supreme being – for how would one know that the apparent unreason of the world is an unreason in-itself – i.e. the real possibility of everything’s becoming other without reason – rather than just an unreason for-us – i.e. simply a function of our inability to discover the true necessary reason for everything, hidden behind the veil of phenomena? This movement from the for-us to the in-itself is no more acceptable in the case of contingency than it was in the case of necessity.’

There is only one way for us to counter this argument: we have to show that the correlationist circle – and what lies at the heart of it, viz., the distinction between the in-itself and the for-us – is only conceivable insofar as it already presupposes an implicit admission of the absoluteness of contingency. More precisely, we must demonstrate how the facticity of the correlation, which provides the basis for the correlationist’s disqualification of dogmatic idealism as well as of dogmatic realism, is only conceivable on condition that one admits the absoluteness of the contingency of the given in general. For if we can succeed in demonstrating that the capacity-to-be-other of everything is the absolute presupposed by the circle itself, then we will have succeeded in demonstrating that one

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cannot de-absolutize contingency without incurring the self-destruction of the circle – which is another way of saying that contingency will turn out to have been immunized against the operation whereby correlationism relativizes the in-itself to the for-us. We can make things clearer by considering the following example. Let us suppose that two dogmatists are arguing about the nature of our future post-mortem. The Christian dogmatist claims to know (because she has supposedly demonstrated it) that our existence continues after death, and that it consists in the eternal contemplation of a God whose nature is incomprehensible from within the confines of our present existence. Thus, the latter claims to have demonstrated that what is in-itself is a God who, like the Cartesian God, can be shown by our finite reason to be incomprehensible for our finite reason. But the atheist dogmatist claims to know that, on the contrary, our existence is completely abolished by death, which utterly annihilates us.

It is at this stage that the correlationist comes along to disqualify both of their positions by defending a strict theoretical agnosticism. All beliefs strike her as equally legitimate given that theory is incapable of privileging one eventuality over another. For just as I cannot know the in-itself without converting it into a for-me, I cannot know what will happen to me when I am no longer of this world, since knowledge presupposes that one is of the world. Consequently, the agnostic has little difficulty in refuting both of these positions – all she has to do is demonstrate that it is self-contradictory to claim to know what is when one is no longer alive, since knowledge presupposes that one is still of this world. Accordingly, the two dogmatists are proffering realist theses about the in-itself, both of which are vitiated by the inconsistency proper to all realism – that of claiming to think what there is when one is not.

But then another disputant intervenes: the subjective idealist. The latter declares that the position of the agnostic is every bit as inconsistent as those of the two realists. For all three believe that there could be an in-itself radically different from our present state, whether it is a God who is inaccessible to natural reason, or a sheer nothingness. But this is precisely what is unthinkable, for I am no more capable of thinking a transcendent God than the annihilation of everything – more particularly, I cannot think of myself as no longer existing without, through that very thought, contradicting myself. I can only think of myself as existing, and as existing the way I exist; thus, I cannot but exist, and always exist as I exist now. Consequently, my mind, if not my body, is immortal. Death,

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like every other form of radical transcendence, is annulled by the idealist, in the same way as she annuls every idea of an in-itself that differs from the correlational structure of the subject. Because an in-itself that differs from the for-us is unthinkable, the idealist declares it to be impossible. The question now is under what conditions the correlationist agnostic can refute not only the theses of the two realists, but also that of the idealist. In order to counter the latter, the agnostic has no choice: she must maintain that my capacity-to-be-wholly-other in death (whether dazzled by God, or annihilated) is just as thinkable as my persisting in my self-identity. The ‘reason’ for this is that I think myself as devoid of any reason for being and remaining as I am, and it is the thinkability of this unreason – of this facticity – which implies that the other three theses – those of the two realists and the idealist – are all equally possible. For even if I cannot think of myself, for example, as annihilated, neither can I think of any cause that would rule out this eventuality. The possibility of my not being is thinkable as the counterpart of the absence of any reason for my being, even if I cannot think what it would be not to be. Although realists maintain the possibility of a post-mortem condition that is unthinkable as such (whether as vision of God or as sheer nothingness), the thesis they maintain is itself thinkable – for even if I cannot think the unthinkable, I can think the possibility of the unthinkable by dint of the unreason of the real. Consequently, the agnostic can recuse all three positions as instances of absolutism – all three claim to have identified a necessary reason implying one of the three states described above, whereas no such reason is available.

But now a final disputant enters the debate: the speculative philosopher. She maintains that neither the two dogmatists, nor the idealist have managed to identify the absolute, because the latter is simply the capacity-to-be-other as such, as theorized by the agnostic. The absolute is the possible transition, devoid of reason, of my state towards any other state whatsoever. But this possibility is no longer a ‘possibility of ignorance’; viz., a possibility that is merely the result of my inability to know which of the three aforementioned theses is correct – rather, it is the knowledge of the very real possibility of all of these eventualities, as well as of a great many others. How then are we able to claim that this capacity-to-be-other is an absolute – an index of knowledge rather than of ignorance? The answer is that it is the agnostic herself who has convinced us of it. For how does the latter go about refuting the idealist? She does so by maintaining that we can think ourselves as no longer being; in other words, by maintaining

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that our mortality, our annihilation, and our becoming-wholly-other in God, are all effectively thinkable. But how are these states conceivable as possibilities? On account of the fact that we are able to think – by dint of the absence of any reason for our being – a capacity-to-be-other capable of abolishing us, or of radically transforming us. But if so, then this capacity-to-be-other cannot be conceived as a correlate of our thinking, precisely because it harbours the possibility of our own non-being. In order to think myself as mortal, as the atheist does – and hence as capable of not being – I must think my capacity-not-to-be as an absolute possibility, for if I think this possibility as a correlate of my thinking, if I maintain that the possibility of my not-being only exists as a correlate of my act of thinking the possibility of my not-being, then I can no longer conceive the possibility of my not-being, which is precisely the thesis defended by the idealist. For I think myself as mortal only if I think that my death has no need of my thought of death in order to be actual. If my ceasing to be depended upon my continuing to be so that I could keep thinking myself as not being, then I would continue to agonize indefinitely, without ever actually passing away. In other words, in order to refute subjective idealism, I must grant that my possible annihilation is thinkable as something that is not just the correlate of my thought of this annihilation. Thus, the correlationist’s refutation of idealism proceeds by way of an absolutization (which is to say, a de-correlation) of the capacity-to-be-other presupposed in the thought of facticity – this latter is the absolute whose reality is thinkable as that of the in-itself as such in its indifference to thought; an indifference which confers upon it the power to destroy me. Even so, the correlationist might still make the following objection: ‘The speculative thesis is no more certain than those of the realists and the idealist. For it is impossible to give a reason in favour of the hypothesis of the real possibility of every envisageable post-mortem eventuality, rather than in favour of the necessity of one among those states proposed by the dogmatic hypotheses. Thus, both the speculative and the metaphysical theses are equally conceivable, and we cannot decide between them.’ But our answer to this must be that, on the contrary, there is indeed a precise reason for the superiority of the speculative thesis, and it is the agnostic herself who has provided us with it, viz., the agnostic cannot de-absolutize the capacity-to-be-other without thereby absolutizing it once again. For her objection, in effect, relies once more upon the conceivability of a capacity-to-be-other which must be thought of as absolute, thereby leaving every eventuality open, rather than closing them in favour of one

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of them alone, as the dogmatists do. The correlationist does the opposite of what she says – she says that we can think that a metaphysical thesis, which narrows the realm of possibility, might be true, rather than the speculative thesis, which leaves this realm entirely open; but she can only say this by thinking an open possibility, wherein no eventuality has any more reason to be realized than any other. This open possibility, this ‘everything is equally possible’, is an absolute that cannot be de-absolu-tized without being thought as absolute once more.

This is a point worth labouring, for the entirety of the preceding demonstration depends upon it. What the correlationist tells us is this: ‘When I say that the metaphysical theses about the in-itself – call them M1 and M2 – are equally possible, the term “possible” here designates a possibility of ignorance. What I mean by this expression is that this possibility is merely a function of the fact that I do not know which is the correct thesis, M1 or M2. But I do not mean to claim that M1 or M2 are not necessary in-themselves, since the necessity of one of these eventualities could be real, but unfathomable. The speculative thesis is a third thesis which consists in maintaining that M1 and M2 are both real possibilities, either one of which is equally capable of being realized, perhaps even one after the other. But I maintain that we do not know which of these three theses – i.e. 1) necessity of M1; 2) necessity of M2; 3) real possibility of M1 and M2 – is true. Consequently, my claim is that what we are dealing with here is three possibilities of ignorance (1, 2, 3), and not with two real possibilities (M1, M2).’

Here now is the speculative philosopher’s response: ‘When you think of all three of these theses as “possible”, how are you able to access this possibility? How are you able to think this “possibility of ignorance”, which leaves all three eventualities open? The truth is that you are only able to think this possibility of ignorance because you have actually thought the absoluteness of this possibility, which is to say, its non-corre-lational character. Let me make myself clear, for this is the crux of the matter. So long as you maintain that your scepticism towards all knowledge of the absolute is based upon an argument, rather than upon mere belief or opinion, then you have to grant that the core of any such argument must be thinkable. But the core of your argument is that we can access everything’s capacity-not-to-be, or capacity-to-be-other; our own as well as the world’s. But once again, to say that one can think this is to say that one can think the absoluteness of the possibility of every thing. This is the price of distinguishing between the “in-itself” and the “for-us”,

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since this difference is based upon the conceivability of the absolute’s capacity-to-be-other relative to the given. Your general instrument of de-absolutization only works by conceding that what the speculative philosopher considers to be absolute is actually thinkable as an absolute; or better still, is actually thought – by you – as absolute, since were this not the case, it would never have occurred to you not to be a subjective (or speculative) idealist. The very idea of the difference between the in-itself and the for-us would never have arisen within you, had you not experienced what is perhaps human thought’s most remarkable power – its capacity to access the possibility of its own non-being, and thus to know itself to be mortal. What you experience in your thought draws its redoubtable power from the profound truth which is implicated within it – you have “touched upon” nothing less than an absolute, the only veritable one, and with its help you have destroyed all the false absolutes of metaphysics, those of idealism as well as those of realism.

‘Consequently, you are perfectly well able to distinguish between the possibility of ignorance and the possibility of the absolute. But this distinction will always be based upon the same argument – it is because one can think that it is absolutely possible for the in-itself to be other than the given, that what I believe to be really possible may not be really possible. Once this has been conceded, you are caught in an infinite regress, for every time you claim that what I call a real possibility is merely a possibility of ignorance, you will do so by way of an argument that works – i.e. continues to disqualify idealism, which is your other principal adversary – only by thinking as an absolute the possibility you claim to be de-absolutizing. In other words, one cannot think unreason – which is the equal and indifferent possibility of every eventuality – as merely relative to thought, since only by thinking it as an absolute can one de-absolutize every dogmatic thesis.’

We have now identified the faultline that lies right at the heart of correlationism; the one through which we can breach its defences – it is the fact that the argument of de-absolutization, which seemed unanswerable, can only function by carrying out an implicit absolutization of one of its two decisions. Either I choose – against idealism – to de-absolutize the correlation; but at the cost of absolutizing facticity. Or I choose, against the speculative philosopher, to de-absolutize facticity – I submit the latter to the primacy of the correlation (everything I think must be correlated with an act of thought) by asserting that this facticity is only true for-me,

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not necessarily in-itself. But this is at the cost of an idealist absolutization of the correlation – for my capacity-not-to-be becomes unthinkable once it is construed as nothing more than the correlate of my act of thought. Thus, correlationism cannot de-absolutize both of its principles at once, since it always needs one of them in order to de-absolutize the other. As a result, we have two ways out of the correlationist circle: either by absolutizing the correlation, or by absolutizing facticity. But we have already disqualified the metaphysical option by recusing the ontological argument; consequently, we cannot take the idealist path, which is still beholden to the idea of real necessity, according to which some determinate entity (Spirit, Will, Life), must absolutely be. It remains for us to follow the path of facticity, while taking care to ensure that its absolutization not lead back to a dogmatic thesis.

***

It seems we have reached our goal, which was to identify the faultline in the correlationist circle that would allow us to cut through it towards an absolute. We must now try to clarify the meaning of this absolutization of facticity. We said that the absolute we seek should not be a dogmatic absolute: the illegitimacy of the ontological argument convinced us that all metaphysics – including the subjectivist metaphysics that eternalized the correlation – had to be refused, and with it every proposition of the type: this entity, or this determinate kind of entity, must absolutely be. Our task was to uncover an absolute that would not be an absolute entity. This is precisely what we obtain by absolutizing facticity – we do not maintain that a determinate entity exists, but that it is absolutely necessary that every entity might not exist. This is indeed a speculative thesis, since we are thinking an absolute, but it is not metaphysical, since we are not thinking any thing any (entity) that would be absolute. The absolute is the absolute impossibility of a necessary being. We are no longer upholding a variant of the principle of sufficient reason, according to which there is a necessary reason why everything is the way it is rather than otherwise, but rather the absolute truth of a principle of unreason. There is no reason for anything to be or to remain the way it is; everything must, without reason, be able not to be and/or be able to be other than it is. What we have here is a principle, and even, we could say, an anhypothetical principle; not in the sense in which Plato used this term to describe the Idea of the Good, but rather in the Aristotelian sense. By ‘anhypothetical principle’, Aristotle meant a fundamental proposition that could not be deduced from any other, but which could be proved by

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argument.1 This proof, which could be called ‘indirect’ or ‘refutational’, proceeds not by deducing the principle from some other proposition – in which we case it would no longer count as a principle – but by pointing out the inevitable inconsistency into which anyone contesting the truth of the principle is bound to fall. One establishes the principle without deducing it, by demonstrating that anyone who contests it can do so only by presupposing it to be true, thereby refuting him or herself. Aristotle sees in non-contradiction precisely such a principle, one that is established ‘refutationally’ rather than deductively, because any coherent challenge to

it already presupposes its acceptance.2 Yet there is an essential difference between the principle of unreason and the principle of non-contradiction; viz. what Aristotle demonstrates ‘refutationally’ is that no one can think a contradiction, but he has not thereby demonstrated that contradiction is absolutely impossible. Thus the strong correlationist could contrast the facticity of this principle to its absolutization – she would acknowledge that she cannot think contradiction, but she would refuse to acknowledge that this proves its absolute impossibility. For she will insist that nothing proves that what is possible in-itself might not differ toto caelo from what is thinkable for us. Consequently, the principle of non-contradiction is anhypothetical with regard to what is thinkable, but not with regard to what is possible.

By way of contrast, the principle of unreason is a principle that reveals itself to be not only anhypothetical, but also absolute – for as we have seen, one cannot contest its absolute validity without thereby presupposing its absolute truth. The sceptic is only able to conceive of the difference between the ‘in-itself’ and the ‘for-us’ by submitting the ‘for-us’ to an absence of reason which presupposes the absoluteness of the latter. It is because we can conceive of the absolute possibility that the ‘in-itself’ could be other than the ‘for-us’ that the correlationist argument can have any efficacy. Accordingly, the anhypotheticity of the principle of unreason pertains to the ‘in-itself’ as well as to the ‘for-us’, and thus to contest this principle is already to have presupposed it. Similarly, to query its absoluteness is already to have presupposed the latter. This point becomes readily understandable if we relate this capacity-to-be-other-without-reason to the idea of a time that would be capable of bringing forth or abolishing everything. This is a time that cannot be conceived as having emerged or as being abolished except in time, which is to say, in itself. No doubt, this is a banal argument on the face of it: ‘it is impossible to think the disappearance of time unless this disappearance

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occurs in time; consequently, the latter must be conceived to be eternal.’ But what people fail to notice is that this banal argument can only work by presupposing a time that is not banal – not just a time whose capacity for destroying everything is a function of laws, but a time which is capable of the lawless destruction of every physical law. It is perfectly possible to conceive of a time determined by the governance of fixed laws disappearing in something other than itself – it would disappear in another time governed by alternative laws. But only the time that harbours the capacity to destroy every determinate reality, while obeying no determinate law – the time capable of destroying, without reason or law, both worlds and things – can be thought as an absolute. Only unreason can be thought as eternal, because only unreason can be thought as at once anhypothetical and absolute. Accordingly, we can say that it is possible to demonstrate the absolute necessity of everything’s non-necessity. In other words, it is possible to establish, through indirect demonstration, the absolute necessity of the contingency of everything.

Yet this ‘contingency’ must be distinguished from the concept of the same name invoked earlier when we spoke of the empirical contingency of material objects. Facticity can be legitimately identified with contingency insofar as the former must not be thought of as comprising a possibility of ignorance, but rather as comprising a positive knowledge of everything’s capacity-to-be-other or capacity-not-to-be. But absolute contingency differs from empirical contingency in the following way: empirical contingency – which we will henceforth refer to using the term ‘precariousness’ – generally designates a perishability that is bound to be realized sooner or later. This book, this fruit, this man, this star, are all bound to perish sooner or later, so long as physical and organic laws remain as they have been up until now. Thus ‘precariousness’ designates a possibility of not-being which must eventually be realized. By way of contrast, absolute contingency – for which we shall henceforth reserve the term ‘contingency’ – designates a pure possibility; one which may never be realized. For we cannot claim to know for sure whether or not our world, although it is contingent, will actually come to an end one day. We know, in accordance with the principle of unreason, that this is a real possibility, and that it could occur for no reason whatsoever; but we also know that there is nothing that necessitates it. To assert the opposite, viz., that everything must necessarily perish, would be to assert a proposition that is still metaphysical. Granted, this thesis of the precariousness of everything would no longer claim that a determinate entity is necessary, but

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it would continue to maintain that a determinate situation is necessary, viz., the destruction of this or that. But this is still to obey the injunction of the principle of reason, according to which there is a necessary reason why this is the case (the eventual destruction of X), rather than otherwise (the endless persistence of X). But we do not see by virtue of what there would be a reason necessitating the possibility of destruction as opposed to the possibility of persistence. The unequivocal relinquishment of the principle of reason requires us to insist that both the destruction and the perpetual preservation of a determinate entity must equally be able to occur for no reason. Contingency is such that anything might happen, even nothing at all, so that what is, remains as it is.

It now becomes possible to envisage a speculative critique of correlationism, for it becomes possible to demonstrate that the latter remains complicit with the fideist belief in the wholly-other insofar as it actually continues to remain faithful to the principle of reason. If the strong model of correlationism legitimates religious discourse in general, this is because it has failed to de-legitimate the possibility that there might be a hidden reason, an unfathomable purpose underlying the origin of our world. This reason has become unthinkable, but it has been preserved as unthinkable; sufficiently so to justify the value of its eventual unveiling in a transcendent revelation. This belief in an ultimate Reason reveals the true nature of strong correlationism – far from relinquishing the principle of reason, strong correlationism is in fact the apologia for the now irrational belief in this very principle. By way of contrast, speculation proceeds by accentuating thought’s relinquishment of the principle of reason to the point where this relinquishment is converted into a principle, which alone allows us to grasp the fact that there is absolutely no ultimate Reason, whether thinkable or unthinkable. There is nothing beneath or beyond the manifest gratuitousness of the given – nothing but the limitless and lawless power of its destruction, emergence, or persistence.

***

We can now claim to have passed through the correlationist circle – or at least to have broken through the wall erected by the latter, which separated thought from the great outdoors, the eternal in-itself, whose being is indifferent to whether or not it is thought. We now know the location of the narrow passage through which thought is able to exit from itself – it is through facticity, and through facticity alone, that we are able to make our way towards the absolute.

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Yet even were one to grant that we have indeed broken the circle, it would seem that this victory over correlationism has been won at such a cost, and with so many concessions to the latter, that ours is actually a Pyrrhic victory. For the only absolute we have managed to rescue from the confrontation would seem to be the very opposite of what is usually understood by that term, which is supposed to provide a foundation for knowledge. Our absolute, in effect, is nothing other than an extreme form of chaos, a hyper-Chaos, for which nothing is or would seem to be, impossible, not even the unthinkable. This absolute lies at the furthest remove from the absolutization we sought: the one that would allow mathematical science to describe the in-itself. We claimed that our absolutization of mathematics would conform to the Cartesian model and would proceed by identifying a primary absolute (the analogue of God), from which we would derive a secondary absolute, which is to say, a mathematical absolute (the analogue of extended substance). We have succeeded in identifying a primary absolute (Chaos), but contrary to the veracious God, the former would seem to be incapable of guaranteeing the absoluteness of scientific discourse, since, far from guaranteeing order, it guarantees only the possible destruction of every order. If we look through the aperture which we have opened up onto the absolute, what we see there is a rather menacing power – something insensible, and capable of destroying both things and worlds, of bringing forth monstrous absurdities, yet also of never doing anything, of realizing every dream, but also every nightmare, of engendering random and frenetic transformations, or conversely, of producing a universe that remains motionless down to its ultimate recesses, like a cloud bearing the fiercest storms, then the eeriest bright spells, if only for an interval of disquieting calm. We see an omnipotence equal to that of the Cartesian God, and capable of anything, even the inconceivable; but an omnipotence that has become autonomous, without norms, blind, devoid of the other divine perfections, a power with neither goodness nor wisdom, ill-disposed to reassure thought about the veracity of its distinct ideas. We see something akin to Time, but a Time that is inconceivable for physics, since it is capable of destroying, without cause or reason, every physical law, just as it is inconceivable for metaphysics, since it is capable of destroying every determinate entity, even a god, even God. This is not a Heraclitean time, since it is not the eternal law of becoming, but rather the eternal and lawless possible becoming of every law. It is a Time capable of destroying even becoming itself by bringing forth, perhaps forever, fixity, stasis, and death.

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How could such a disaster provide the foundation for scientific discourse? How could Chaos possibly legitimate knowledge of the ancestral?

In order to tackle this problem of the movement from our primary (chaotic) absolute, to our derived (mathematical) absolute, we must take a closer look at the transformation which we have wrought in the notion of facticity, by discovering in the latter a principle, rather than an ignorance of principle. So long as the proposition ‘everything is possible, even the unthinkable’ remained a correlationist proposition, we were dealing with a possibility of ignorance. What the sceptic meant by this proposition was that any thesis about the in-itself could, by right, be true, without anyone being able to discover which. And it seems that by maintaining the absoluteness of chaos we have gained nothing in terms of knowledge of the in-itself relative to the position of the sceptic – for instead of saying that the in-itself could actually be anything whatsoever without anyone knowing what, we maintain that the in-itself could actually be anything whatsoever and that we know this. What the sceptic construed as ignorance – everything is possible – we now construe as knowledge, but a knowledge whose content seems as indeterminate as the most complete ignorance.

Yet if we look more closely, we can detect a specific and significant difference between these two statements. If the correlationist’s statement amounts to a pure avowal of ignorance, this is because she is incapable of disqualifying any hypothesis about the nature of the absolute – her claim is that it could be anything at all. But this is no longer the case when we construe facticity as an absolute. For we know two things that the sceptic did not: first, that contingency is necessary, and hence eternal; second, that contingency alone is necessary. But from this absolute necessity of contingency alone we can infer an impossibility that is every bit as absolute – for there is in fact something that this primary atom of knowledge ensures us is absolutely impossible, even for all powerful chaos, and this something, which chaos will never be able to produce, is a necessary entity . Everything is possible, anything can happen – except something that is necessary, because it is the contingency of the entity that is necessary, not the entity. Here we have a decisive difference between the principle of unreason and correlational facticity, for we now know that a metaphysical statement can never be true. We could certainly envisage the emergence of an entity which, as a matter of fact, would be

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indiscernible from a necessary entity, viz., an everlasting entity, which would go on existing, just like a necessary entity. Yet this entity would not be necessary, and we would not be able to say of it that it will actually last forever, only that, as a matter of fact, and up until now, it has never ceased to be. So what theoretical advantage can we expect to gain from these propositions, viz., ‘only non-necessity is necessary’, and ‘nothing can exist that cannot but exist’?

These propositions are crucial because they harbour the principle of an auto-limitation or auto-normalization of the omnipotence of chaos. We can only hope to develop an absolute knowledge – a knowledge of chaos which would not simply keep repeating that everything is possible – on condition that we produce necessary propositions about it besides that of its omnipotence. But this requires that we discover norms or laws to which chaos itself is subject. Yet there is nothing over and above the power of chaos that could constrain it to submit to a norm. If chaos is subject to constraints, then this can only be a constraint which comes from the nature of chaos itself, from its own omnipotence. Now, the only necessity proper to chaos is that it remain chaos, and hence that there be nothing capable of resisting it – that what is always remain contingent, and that what is never be necessary. However – and here we come to the crux of the matter – our conviction is that in order for an entity to be contingent and unnecessary in this way, it cannot be anything whatsoever. This is to say that in order to be contingent and unnecessary, the entity must conform to certain determinate conditions, which can then be construed as so many absolute properties of what is. We then begin to understand what the rational discourse about unreason – an unreason which is not irrational – would consist in: it would be a discourse that aims to establish the constraints to which the entity must submit in order to exercise its capacity-not-to-be and its capacity-to-be-other.

What are these conditions, and how are we to obtain them?

We distinguished between two models of correlationism, the weak or Kantian model, which maintained the conceivability of the in-itself, and the strong model, which contested even this conceivability. The chaos which we have described thus far amounts to the ‘objectification’ of the possibility commensurate with the strong model, insofar as we described the former as capable of bringing about the unthinkable, the illogical, and the self-contradictory. Could we not ‘curb’ the potency of this chaos, so as to turn the latter into an ‘objectification’ of the weak or Kantian model

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instead? Might it not be possible to establish that chaos, in order to remain chaos, cannot actually bring forth the unthinkable? More precisely, we are asking whether the necessity of contingency might not impose the absolute truth of the two statements which Kant had formulated about the in-itself, and which ensured its conceivability:

The thing-in-itself is non-contradictory;
There is a thing-in-itself.

We are now going to see that these two statements about the in-itself, which Kant simply assumed without attempting to provide any further justification for them, can be demonstrated to be absolutely true through the principle of unreason. Let us see how.

***

We have obtained two ontological statements about unreason:

A necessary entity is impossible;
The contingency of the entity is necessary.

Although both these statements say more or less the same thing, their separate formulations are going to allow us to infer from them the truth of both of Kant’s statements about the in-itself.

Here is the first thesis: a contradictory entity is absolutely impossible, because if an entity was contradictory, it would be necessary. But a necessary entity is absolutely impossible; consequently, so too is contradiction. Since there is every likelihood that the reader will dismiss such an argument as nonsensical, it is probably best that we begin by examining the principal reasons why she is liable to refuse such an inference. More precisely, we will begin by expounding the objections against the very idea of a demonstration concerning non-contradiction, before entering into the internal logic of the argument.

a) First, it will be objected that there is nothing to say about a contradictory entity, since the latter is nothing, and nothing can be asserted about what is nothing.

But this is already to assume precisely what needs to be demonstrated, for how do we know that a contradictory entity is nothing? No doubt, a real contradiction is inconceivable, but the whole problem is to know what allows us to infer an absolute impossibility from this inconceiv-

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ability. Thus, the objection that nothing can be said about contradiction because the contradictory is nothing simply begs the question, since one is indeed thereby asserting something about the contradictory entity, viz., that it is absolutely nothing, yet one is doing so without justifying this assertion, unlike the argument which one is supposedly criticizing. b) Second, it will be objected that this argument is necessarily circular, since non-contradiction is presupposed in all rational argumentation. Consequently, the very claim to demonstrate the truth of non-contradiction is contradictory, since one’s reasoning already assumes what is supposed to be demonstrated.

This objection also misconstrues what we are seeking to establish. We are not contesting the fact that non-contradiction is the minimal norm for all argumentation. But this principle by itself cannot suffice to guarantee the absolute impossibility of contradiction, since it stipulates the norm of the thinkable, not of the possible. We saw this in the case of Aristotle’s construal of non-contradiction – the latter managed to establish this principle’s necessity for thought, but not for the in-itself. There is no doubting the fact that our reasoning conforms to this principle, but this does not make it circular, since it proceeds only from the inconceivability of contradiction (which we assume), in order to infer the latter’s impossibility, which is a distinct thesis. Our reasoning would only be circular if we assumed at the start the impossibility of contradiction. But it is not the absolute impossibility of contradiction which allows the argument to function; it is the absolute impossibility of necessity, which has been independently established through the anhypothetical principle of unreason. It is because the entity cannot be necessary – and not because the entity must be logically consistent – that we infer the impossibility of contradiction.

c) Now comes the third objection, which claims that our reasoning is well and truly circular, because in order to work, it has to presuppose what it is supposed to demonstrate, viz., the absolute impossibility (and not just the inconceivability) of contradiction. For if one does not assume the absolute status of contradiction, why then only infer from contradiction the necessity, and not also the contingency, of the entity? It is because it seems contradictory to us to maintain that an entity could be at once necessary and contingent that we infer from its being contradictory a determinate proposition, i.e. its being necessary, rather than its being contradictory, i.e. its being contingent. But why should chaos, which is supposed to be capable of producing the unthinkable, not be capable of rendering true the proposition ‘what is necessary is contingent’? To

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deny this possibility is already to have assumed what one claimed to be demonstrating, viz., the absolute status of non-contradiction. This third objection is the most serious. In order to refute it, we must explain the internal logic of our argument.

It is customary to construe those thinkers who affirmed the sheer becoming of all things as thinkers who maintained the reality of contradiction. The notion of real contradiction is then interpreted in terms of the idea of a flux in which every thing ceaselessly becomes other than it is, and wherein being passes ceaselessly into non-being, and non-being into being. Yet it seems to us profoundly inaccurate to associate the thesis of real contradiction with the thesis of sovereign flux. We have already put forward our own account of the universal becoming of all things: the latter consists in a chaos so chaotic that even becoming may arise and perish within it. But the only thing that could never arise and perish in such a chaos, the only thing that would remain exempt from all becoming as well as from all modification, the utterly Immutable instance against which even the omnipotence of contingency would come to grief, would be a contradictory entity. And this for the precise reason that such an entity could never become other than it is because there would be no alterity for it in which to become.

Let us suppose that a contradictory entity existed – what could possibly happen to it? Could it lapse into non-being? But it is contradictory, so that even if it happened not to be, it would still continue to be even in not-being, since this would be in conformity with its paradoxical ‘essence’. It would exemplify the truth of the proposition: ‘what is, is not, and what is not, is.’ Perhaps it might be objected that in such a case, one could neither say that it is or that it is not? But this is not an option, since we are already assuming that such a contradictory entity exists. Therefore, by hypothesis, this entity exists, and so we must be content simply to examine the way in which this contradictory entity can exist. But it then becomes apparent that one of the defining characteristics of such an entity would be to continue to be even were it not to be. Consequently, if this entity existed, it would be impossible for it simply to cease to exist – unperturbed, it would incorporate the fact of not existing into its being. Thus, as an instance of a really contradictory being, this entity would be perfectly eternal.

Yet this entity would also prove incapable of undergoing any sort of actual becoming – it could never become other than it is, since it already

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is this other. As contradictory, this entity is always-already whatever it is not. Thus, the introduction of a contradictory entity into being would result in the implosion of the very idea of determination – of being such and such, of being this rather than that. Such an entity would be tantamount to a ‘black hole of differences’, into which all alterity would be irremediably swallowed up, since the being-other of this entity would be obliged, simply by virtue of being other than it, not to be other than it. Accordingly, real contradiction can in no way be identified with the thesis of universal becoming, for in becoming, things must be this, then other than this; they are, then they are not. This does not involve any contradiction, since the entity is never simultaneously this and its opposite, existent and non-existent. A really illogical entity consists rather in the systematic destruction of the minimal conditions for all becoming – it suppresses the dimension of alterity required for the deployment of any process whatsoever, liquidating it in the formless being which must always already be what it is not. Thus it is not by chance that the greatest thinker of contradiction, that is to say, Hegel, was not the thinker of the sovereignty of becoming, but on the contrary, the thinker of absolute identity, of the identity of identity and difference. For what Hegel saw so acutely is that the necessary entity par excellence could only be the entity that had nothing outside it and that would not be limited by any alterity. Thus the Supreme Being could only be the being that remains in itself even as it passes into its other, the entity that contains contradiction within itself as a moment of its own development, the entity that verifies the supreme contradiction of not becoming anything other even as it becomes other. It is supreme, reposing eternally within itself, because it absorbs both difference and becoming into its superior identity. And it harbours the superior form of eternity because it is at once temporal and atemporal, processual and immutable.

We are now in a position to see why the third objection outlined above is invalid. This objection claimed that by inferring the necessity of the entity from its being-contradictory, we were already presupposing the absoluteness of the principle of non-contradiction, for otherwise we could just as well have inferred the entity’s contingency. To this we must reply that one may certainly say of a contradictory entity that it is at once necessary and unnecessary, but in doing so, one continues to describe it as a supremely necessary entity, since one continues to preclude any dimension of alterity through which the entity could be subjected to change. Although one may say anything at all about a contradictory

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entity, nevertheless, one is thereby doing something very specific, because one is indistinguishing everything, and consequently eliminating any possibility of thinking this entity’s being-otherwise. The only possibility of reintroducing difference into being, and thereby a conceivable becoming, would be by no longer allowing oneself the right to make contradictory statements about an entity.

Consequently, we know by the principle of unreason why non-contra-diction is an absolute ontological truth: because it is necessary that what is be determined in such a way as to be capable of becoming, and of being subsequently determined in some other way. It is necessary that this be this and not that, or anything else whatsoever, precisely in order to ensure that this can become that or anything else whatsoever. Accordingly, it becomes apparent that the ontological meaning of the principle of non-contradiction, far from designating any sort of fixed essence, is that of the necessity of contingency, or in other words, of the omnipotence of chaos.

Leibniz founded metaphysical rationality upon two principles whose scope was considered to be absolute: the principle of non-contradiction

and the principle of sufficient reason.3 Hegel saw that the absolutization of the principle of sufficient reason (which marked the culmination of the belief in the necessity of what is) required the devaluation of the principle of non-contradiction. Strong (Wittgensteinian-Heideggerian) correlationism insisted upon de-absolutizing both the principle of reason and the principle of non-contradiction. But the principle of unreason teaches us that it is because the principle of reason is absolutely false that the principle of non-contradiction is absolutely true.

We move now to the second question. This time it is a matter of demonstrating the thesis which states that the thing-in-itself actually exists, and that there is a realm of the in-itself, and not just the phenomenal realm of the ‘for-us’. We will call this the thesis of the ‘there is’. Ultimately, this boils down to confronting the Leibnizian question: ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ It is a matter of demonstrating that it is absolutely necessary that the in-itself exists, and hence that the latter cannot dissolve into nothingness, whereas on the contrary, the realm of the ‘for-us’ is essentially perishable, since it remains correlative with the existence of thinking and/or living beings. We must demonstrate that everything would not lapse into nothingness with the annihilation of living creatures, and that the world in-itself would subsist despite the abolition of every relation-to-the-world.

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But we do not propose to formulate (or resolve) this question in the manner of metaphysicians, which is to say, by unveiling the existence of a Prime Mover or Supreme Being which would supposedly provide the reason for the fact that there is anything at all. What we propose to do is offer a resolution of this problem which would be at once non-theological (foregoing any appeal to an ultimate reason) and non-fideist. Our aim is to recuse both of these attitudes to the question – the metaphysical attitude, which resolves it by using the principle of reason and by invoking a Supreme Reason; and the fideist attitude, which maintains ironically that the question has no meaning for philosophy – not in order to abolish it, but only so as to hand it over to some non-rational discourse. Our suggestion here is that it is not the atheist but rather the believer – in his contemporary sceptico-fideist incarnation – who insists that Leibniz’s question has no rational meaning. For in doing so, the believer is able to endow the question with a purely religious significance, whereby being is construed as the manifestation of a prodigy, a miraculous deliverance from nothingness – a miracle which, since it is gratuitous and unnecessary, can be construed as fragile and reversible. Ultimately, the fideist is someone who marvels at the fact that there is something rather than nothing because he believes that there is no reason for it, and that being is a pure gift, which might never have occurred.

Consequently, there are two positions which we have to counter: the one that claims to provide a rational answer to the question by invoking a God or Ultimate Principle, and the one that claims to deliver the question from the jurisdiction of reason to the benefit of God or some instance of the Wholly Other. In other words, we must criticize the dogmatic resolution of the question as well as its ironic dissolution, whose theoretical scepticism actually perpetuates (whether avowedly or not) its religious meaning, which alone is deemed capable of extolling its profundity.

Faced with these two ways of endowing the problem with an elevated meaning – a meaning which in both cases leads straight to the divine – the speculative stance requires that we treat the question prosaically. The point is to de-dramatize this question, to reduce it to its proper degree of importance, which is not zero, but secondary. Thus the question must be resolved, since claims that it is insoluble or meaningless are just another way of legitimating its continuing exaltation. But instead of elevating us to the eminence of a first cause, its resolution should serve rather as a reminder of the latter’s eternal absence. We must free ourselves of

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the question – but this requires not just that we resolve it, but that we formulate an answer to it which is necessarily disappointing, so that this disappointment becomes its most instructive aspect. The only proper attitude when confronted with such a problem is to maintain that there is little at stake in it, and that the spiritual tremulousness which it inspires, whether sardonic or profound, is inappropriate. Among the speculative criteria for the proper solution to the problem should be the sobering effect induced in the reader when she understands the solution, and says to herself, ‘so that’s what it was . . .’

So let us attempt a deflationary solution.

Ultimately, this derivation of the ‘there is’ is a matter of specifying the meaning of the statement from which we began: facticity is absolute, it is not a fact which might not be the case. The meaning of the principle of unreason consists in the claim that facticity is not just another fact in the world – facticity is not on the same level as facts, like an extra fact which could be added to the latter. I can doubt the permanence of facts, but I cannot doubt the permanence of facticity without thereby reiterating it as an absolute. Yet this statement about the non-facticity of facticity can be understood in two ways, which we will refer to as the weak and strong interpretations of the principle of unreason.

The weak interpretation of the principle can be formulated as follows: to say that contingency is necessary is to say that if something is, then it must be contingent. The strong interpretation, by way of contrast, maintains the following: to say that contingency is necessary, is to say both that things must be contingent and that there must be contingent things. The weak interpretation claims that it is not just a fact – one more fact alongside others – that existing things are factual, as opposed to necessary; but the strong interpretation also claims that neither is it a fact – one more fact alongside others – that factual things exist, as opposed to not existing.

If one accepts the principle of unreason, one is at least committed to its weak interpretation – this is the minimal sense of the principle, according to which if something is, then it must be contingent. To reject the weak interpretation would be to reject the principle of unreason. But since, by hypothesis, we have already accepted the principle, then we must also accept its weak interpretation. But one could very well accept the principle of factuality while rejecting its strong interpretation – thus one could maintain that if something exists, then it must be contingent, while insisting that this in no way entails that something must exist – if

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things exist, then they necessarily exist as facts, but nothing necessitates that there be factual things. Consequently, the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ takes the following form for us: can one, contrary to the preceding thesis which confines itself to the weak interpretation, justify a strong interpretation of the principle of unreason? If this interpretation were to be accepted, then we would have succeeded in establishing that it is necessary that something exist, because it is necessary that contingent things exist.

In order to try and legitimate the strong interpretation, let us begin by assuming that only the weak interpretation is valid. If so, what exactly would this entail? We would have to say that it is a fact, not a necessity, that factual things exist. Thus, the very existence of facticity would have to be described as a fact, for if nothing existed, then nothing would be factual, and consequently there would be no facticity. But the only way for me to maintain such a thesis would be by asserting a facticity of facticity, which is to say, a ‘second-order’ facticity. I would have to claim that there is a first-order facticity, which would be the facticity of things, and which entails that it is possible for every determinate structure or thing not to exist; but also a second-order facticity, a facticity of the facticity of things, which would entail that first-order facticity might not obtain in the absence of the actual existence of factual things. But if we recall how we established the principle of unreason, it is easy to see that this thesis is self-refuting. For as we saw earlier, in order to doubt the necessity of something, I must grant that the facticity of this thing can be thought as an absolute. Moreover, in order for the world in its entirety to be thought as capable of not being, or of not being as it is, I must assume that the possibility of its not-being (its facticity) can be thought by me as an absolute (and thus as not just the correlate of my thought). Or again, as we saw above, in order to grasp my own mortality, I must construe my death, the possibility of my not-being, as an absolute possibility. Accordingly, I cannot doubt the absoluteness of facticity without immediately reinstating it as an absolute. When I claim that the facticity of things (first-order facticity) is a fact, I also assume that the facticity of facticity (second-order facticity) can be thought as an absolute. But then I become caught in an infinite regress, for if I claim that second-order facticity is also a fact, I can only do so by assuming that there is a third-order facticity which is itself absolute, and so on.

In other words, the act of doubting the necessity of facticity is self-refuting, because it assumes an absoluteness of facticity in the act of

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thinking while simultaneously denying it in the content of this same thought. Accordingly, facticity cannot be thought of as another fact in the world – it is not a fact that things are factual, juts as it is not a fact that factual things exist. Thus the only coherent interpretation of the principle of factuality is the strong one: it is not a fact but rather an absolute necessity that factual things exist.

Yet here we can envisage another objection, which we will once more set forth in the form of a direct discourse: ‘Your thesis is invalid for the following reason: contingency designates not only positive facts pertaining to existing things or events that could have not existed (such as, for example, the fact that “this leaf is on my table”), but also “negative facts” pertaining to non-existing things or events that could have existed but didn’t (such as for example the fact that “it is not raining today”). Thus to say that contingency is necessary is to say that it is necessary that there be non-existing things that could exist (negative facts that have no reason to remain negative), as well as existing things that could not-exist. Why then not say that contingency could subsist as the contingency of negative facts alone? This would mean that there are non-existing things capable of existing, but there are no existing things capable of not-existing. Everything would remain “potential” in the midst of chaos without facticity being abolished, since a negative fact remains a fact. Contingency would pertain only to eventualities or propensities to be, none of which would have been actualized – it would be contingent that propensities remain mere propensities, yet in fact, none of them would have been actualized. For after all, if one is willing to admit that something that exists could, in fact, continue to exist indefinitely, then one must also admit that anything that does not exist could, in fact, continue to persist indefinitely in its virtual-being.’

This objection can be refuted as follows: although our interlocutor does not deny that facticity can be thought as an absolute, she maintains that this absoluteness can be thought as the (eventual) absoluteness of negative facts alone. Thus the necessity of facticity is no longer the guarantor of the existence of positive facts. Yet to admit that facticity can be thought as an absolute is a fortiori to admit that it can be thought full stop. But I cannot think facticity merely as the possibility that existing things could not exist, or that non-existing things could exist – the persistence of the two realms of existence and non-existence provides the very condition for the conceivability of facticity. For although I can think the contingency of this existing thing, I cannot think the contingency of existence as such

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(or of the fact that something exists in general). Thus, I am perfectly incapable of thinking the abolition of existence, and so becoming-inexistent is only conceivable as the becoming of a determinate existent, not as the becoming of existence in general. To claim that an existent can not exist, and to claim moreover that this possibility is an ontological necessity, is also to claim that the sheer existence of the existent, just like the sheer inexistence of the inexistent, are the two imperishable poles which allow the perishability of everything to be thought. Consequently, I can no more conceive of the contingency of negative facts alone than I can conceive of the non-being of existence as such. Since contingency is thinkable (as an absolute), but unthinkable without the persistence of the two realms of existence and inexistence, we have to say that it is necessary that there always be this or that existent capable of not existing, and this or that inexistent capable of existing.

Thus the solution to the problem is as follows: it is necessary that there be something rather than nothing because it is necessarily contingent that there is something rather than something else. The necessity of the contingency of the entity imposes the necessary existence of the contingent entity.

In the context of transcendental idealism, the unsurpassable facticity of the a priori forms of representation prohibited the identification of the latter with the properties of the thing-in-itself – this facticity precluded the speculative deduction of the categories as necessary properties of the in-itself. Thus, facticity constituted the core of Kant’s Critical de-absoluti-zation. Yet Kant infringed the limits he had imposed upon our ability to think the in-itself on two counts, without making any serious attempt to justify this infringement – he assumed that the thing-in-itself existed, and he assumed that it was non-contradictory.

By way of contrast, non-metaphysical speculation proceeds in the first instance by stating that the thing-in-itself is nothing other than the facticity of the transcendental forms of representation. Then, in the second instance, it goes on to deduce from the absoluteness of this facticity those properties of the in-itself which Kant for his part took to be self-evident.

***

Philosophy is the invention of strange forms of argumentation, necessarily bordering on sophistry, which remains its dark structural double. To philosophize is always to develop an idea whose elaboration and defence require a novel kind of argumentation, the model for which lies

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neither in positive science – not even in logic – nor in some supposedly innate faculty for proper reasoning. Thus it is essential that a philosophy produce internal mechanisms for regulating its own inferences – signposts and criticisms through which the newly constituted domain is equipped with a set of constraints that provide internal criteria for distinguishing between licit and illicit claims.

Far from seeing in criticism a threat to its consistency, the examination of the determinate conditions for absolute unreason should strive to multiply objections, the better to reinforce the binding texture of its argumentative fabric. It is by exposing the weaknesses in our own arguments that we will uncover, by way of a meticulous, step by step examination of the inadequacies in our reasoning, the idea of a non-metaphysical and non-religious discourse on the absolute. For it is by progressively uncovering new problems, and adequate responses to them, that we will give life and existence to a logos of contingency, which is to say, a reason emancipated from the principle of reason – a speculative form of the rational that would no longer be a metaphysical reason. Here is but one example of such a problematization of the speculative approach. We claimed to have established the necessity of non-contra-diction because a contradictory being would be a necessary being. But it could be objected that we have conflated contradiction and inconsistency. In formal logic, an ‘inconsistent system’ is a formal system all of whose well-formed statements are true. If this formal system comprises the operator of negation, we say that an axiomatic is inconsistent if every contradiction which can be formulated within it is true. By way of contrast, a formal system is said to be non-contradictory when (being equipped with the operator of negation) it does not allow any contradiction to be true. Accordingly, it is perfectly possible for a logical system to be contradictory without thereby being inconsistent – all that is required is that it give rise to some contradictory statements which are true, without permitting every contradiction to be true. This is the case with ‘paraconsistent’ logics, in

which some but not all contradictions are true.4 Clearly then, for contemporary logicians, it is not non-contradiction that provides the criterion for what is thinkable, but rather inconsistency. What every logic – as well as every logos more generally – wants to avoid is a discourse so trivial that it renders every well-formulated statement, as well as its negation, equally valid. But contradiction is logically thinkable so long as it remains ‘confined’ within limits such that it does not entail the truth of every contradiction.

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Consequently, our thesis is inadequate on two counts: 1. We maintained that contradiction is unthinkable, whereas it is logically conceivable.

We claimed that a contradictory being would be indistinguishable from every other being, whereas in fact this would only be the case for an inconsistent being. For only with regard to an inconsistent being could one maintain every proposition as well as its negation. Yet it is possible to conceive of a world wherein one particular contradiction would be true (e.g. a mare that is not a mare), but not another contradiction (e.g. a featherless biped that is not a biped). Accordingly, it becomes possible to think a plurality of contradictory worlds, each different from the other. These worlds could be considered to be contingent in conformity with the speculative criteria outlined above, since it would be perfectly conceivable for them to become other than they are now – thus, a world embodying contradiction A could become a world no longer embodying contradiction A but contradiction B, or both A and B, etc. But if a contradictory being can be thought as contingent, then we have not refuted its possibility in light of the principle of unreason. Such considerations might also lead one to conclude that we have not convincingly refuted the Hegelian dialectic, since the latter never maintains the being-true of every contradiction, but only of certain determinate contradictions that give rise to other determinate contradictions – thus, the dialectic is contradictory, but not inconsistent.

Yet far from undermining our speculative enquiry, this objection from paraconsistent logic provides us with an opportunity to flesh it out. We would need to do this in two steps:

In the first step, we would need to correct our thesis by reformulating it in terms of consistency – what we have actually demonstrated is that an inconsistent being is impossible because it would be necessary if it existed. Thus, our first task would be to verify that the reasoning through which we arrived at the impossibility of contradiction also manages to establish the claim ‘nothing can be inconsistent because nothing can be necessary’.
In the second step, the speculative enquiry would need to be extended so as to include contradiction itself. This time the question would be to know whether or not we could also use the principle of unreason to disqualify the possibility of real contradiction. We would need to point out that paraconsistent logics were not developed in order to account for actual contradictory facts, but only in order to prevent

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computers, such as expert medical systems, from deducing anything whatsoever from contradictory data (for instance, conflicting diagnoses

about a single case), because of the principle of ex falso quodlibet.5Thus, it would be a matter of ascertaining whether contradiction, which can be conceived in terms of incoherent data about the world, can still be conceived in terms of non-linguistic occurrences. We would then have to try to demonstrate that dialectics and paraconsistent logics are only ever dealing with contradictions inherent in statements about the world, never with real contradictions in the world – in other words, they deal with contradictory theses about a single reality, rather than with a contradictory reality. Dialectics and paraconsistent logics would be shown to be studies of the ways in which the contradictions of thought produce effects in thought, rather than studies of the supposedly ontological contradictions which thought discovers in the surrounding world. Finally, our investigation would have to conclude by demonstrating that real contradiction and real inconsistency both violate the conditions for the conceivability of contingency.

We will not pursue this investigation any further here – we merely wished to suggest that, far from culminating in irrationality, the principle of unreason allows us to generate a domain of specific problems wherein the logos may progressively unfold the axes of its argumentation.

***

Let us settle on a terminology. From now on, we will use the term

‘factiality’ [factualité]6to describe the speculative essence of facticity, viz., that the facticity of every thing cannot be thought as a fact. Thus factiality must be understood as the non-facticity of facticity. We will call ‘non-iterability of facticity’ the impossibility of applying facticity to itself – this non-iterability describes the genesis of the only absolute necessity available to non-dogmatic speculation – the necessity for everything that is to be a fact. Accordingly, from now on, we will replace the expression ‘principle of unreason’, which has the inconvenience of being purely negative, with the expression ‘principle of factiality’, which provides a positive determination of the actual domain of our investigation, viz., that of the non-factual essence of fact as such, which is to say, its necessity, as well as that of its determinate conditions. To be is necessarily to be a fact, but to be a fact is not just to be anything whatsoever. We will call ‘factial’ [factuale] the type of speculation which seeks and identifies the conditions of factiality (but we will sometimes say ‘the factial’ for short when speaking of this speculative register). We will

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call ‘derivation’ the demonstration which establishes that a statement is a condition of facticity. Lastly, we will refer to these conditions, which include non-contradiction and the ‘there is’ (i.e. that there is something rather than nothing), as ‘figures’.

Accordingly, the principle of factiality can be stated as follows: only facticity is not factual – viz., only the contingency of what is, is not itself contingent. But it is important to bear in mind the following: the principle of factiality does not claim that contingency is necessary; its precise claim is that contingency alone is necessary – and only this prevents it from being metaphysical. For the statement ‘contingency is necessary’ is in fact entirely compatible with metaphysics. Thus, Hegelian metaphysics maintains the necessity of a moment of irremediable contingency in the unfolding of the absolute; a moment that occurs in the midst of nature as the pure contingency, the reality devoid of actuality, the sheer finitude whose chaos and gratuitousness are recalcitrant to the labour of the Notion, but through which the infinite – to which nothing can remain external, for this would limit it and render it finite – must pass. Accordingly, for Hegel, the fact that nature only partially corresponds to the Hegelian concept of nature is the mark of the former’s necessary defectiveness – a defectiveness through which the absolute must pass in order to be absolute. For it is necessary that there be a moment of sheer irrationality in the midst of the unfolding of the absolute – a contingency that is peripheral yet real, providing the Whole with a guarantee that the irrational does not subsist outside it, and thereby ensuring that the latter

truly is the Whole.7 But this contingency is deduced from the unfolding of the absolute, which in itself, qua rational totality, is devoid of contingency. Thus, in Hegel, the necessity of contingency is not derived from contingency as such and contingency alone, but from a Whole that is ontologically superior to the latter. This is precisely what separates the factial from the dialectical – or to put it more generally, and using our own terminology, what separates the speculative from the metaphysical.7 By formulating a speculative principle and identifying a specific procedure of derivation, we have managed to put in place what we set out to look for, viz., the possibility of resolving the problem of ancestrality by absolutizing mathematical discourse. Consequently, the problem can now be stated as follows: we have derived from the principle of factiality two propositions – non-contradiction and the necessity of the ‘there is’ – which have allowed us to secure Kant’s thesis about the conceivability of the thing-in-itself. In our determination of chaos, we moved from

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the thesis of strong correlationism (chaos can do anything whatsoever), to the thesis of weak correlationism (chaos can do anything except for the unthinkable). Thus, for the moment, we ‘occupy’ a Kantian in-itself. Consequently, in order to legitimate science’s ancestral discourse, we must now realize, by way of a factial derivation, the transition from the truth of the Kantian in-itself to the truth of the Cartesian in-itself – a transition wherein it is no longer the logical principle of non-contradiction that is absolutized, but rather the mathematical statement qua mathematical. As we said earlier, we cannot present the complete resolution of the problem here. So we shall content ourselves with providing a more precise formulation of the question of ancestrality by further specifying what we mean by ‘mathematical’ and what we mean to absolutize through this vocable.

Chap.3 the Principle of factiality