Chapter 3: The Principle of Factiality
- See Aristotle (1928), Metaphysica in The Works of Aristotle. Vol. VIII, W. D.
Ross (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press), b G .3, 1005, pp. 5–30.
-
For this demonstration, cf. Aristotle (1928), G.4. 3. See for example Leibniz (1990), §31–32, p. 184.
-
Cf. Newton C. A. Da Costa (1997), Logiques classiques et non-classiques
(Paris: Masson).
-
[‘Anything follows from a contradiction’ – translator]
-
Meillasoux has coined the French neologisms ‘factual’ and ‘factualité’
to designate what he calls the ‘non-factical’ in such a way as to mark its distinction clearly from the ordinary meaning of the French ‘factuel’ (‘factual’ in English). In order to provide an English rendering of this contrast between ‘factuel’ and ‘factual’ in French, I have decided to retain the word ‘factual’ for the French ‘factuel’ but I have coined the English neologisms ‘factial’ and ‘factiality’ to translate Meillassoux’s own French neologisms ‘factual’ and ‘factualité’. This coinage is intended to indicate clearly the difference between the ordinary meaning of the word ‘factual’ in English and Meillassoux’s philosophical meaning here. Existing terms such as ‘factical’ or ‘facticity’, which have been used to translate Heidegger’s ‘Faktizatät’, cannot be used to render Meillassoux’s ‘factual’ or ‘factualité’, since Meillassoux also uses the former in their accepted Heideggerian sense precisely in order to contrast his own conception of absolute contingency to the more familiar Heideggerian notion of ‘facticity’ (translator).
- When a student pointed out to him that there was a South American
plant that did not correspond to his concept of a plant, Hegel is alleged to have replied that this was too bad – for the plant. cf. J-M. Lardic (1989) ‘La contingence chez Hegel’, in Comment le sens commun comprend la philosophie (Arles: Actes Sud). [The latter is a French edition of G. W. F. Hegel (2000), ‘How the Ordinary Human Understanding Takes Philosophy (As Displayed in the Works of Mr. Krug’, in Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, G. D. Giovanni and H. S. Harris (eds) (Indianapolis: Hackett), pp. 292–310. On the contingency of nature, see also G. W. F. Hegel (1970), The Philosophy of Nature, J. M. Perry (ed.) (London: Allen and Unwin), §248, ‘Remark’, p. 209; and §250, ‘Remark’, pp. 215–16 – translator]
- On Hegel’s notion of contingency, cf. the commentary cited in J. M.
Lardic’s note to Hegel’s text on p. 108 of Lardic (1989). See also J. C. Pinson (1989), Hegel, le droit et le libéralisme (Paris: PUF), esp. chapters I and II; and Bernard Mabille (1999) Hegel. L’épreuve de la contingence (Paris: Aubier).
133
A F t E R F i n i t u d E