Harman does an excellent job in contextualizing and in addressing the claims of the book. The review really shines in the last section, however, in which he lays out three obstacles to Laruelle's bid for nomination to the "recent Supreme Court of French thinkers from Derrida and Foucault through Deleuze and Badiou":
The first is Laruelle's prose style, which is generally abominable.... to compile the chapter summaries above was never a pleasurable experience for this reviewer, and was often a downright painful one. Laruelle will get away with it only if he can prove that the payoff is sufficient to warrant the effort.
The second obstacle is the remarkable arrogance with which Laruelle's theory is presented. Badiou raised eyebrows when, in his Author's Preface to the English version of Being and Event, he told us that this is a great book destined to be read throughout the centuries. But at least Badiou made room for numerous peers in the kingdom: authors of other great past and future books destined to be read alongside his own.
Laruelle goes immeasurably further, telling us that given his model of the One it is useless to make distinctions among the blur of philosophies melting Hegel and Heidegger together with Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Derrida. Nor is he merely belittling this relatively recent list of names: all philosophy, he says, falls into "decision" while overlooking the immanent One that is obvious to everyone but philosophers.
Nor is Laruelle always polite in this claim. Shifting from the tone of a mystic to that of a misanthropic Lex Luthor or Grand Moff Tarkin, Laruelle refers to past philosophers as "larvae," whose "hesitations . . . stumblings . . . skiddings" are designed "to prove to themselves that they still exist when in truth they exist only as fleeting larvae on the earth." (179) If there is a more bizarre passage in recent philosophy, or a more twisted sentiment, it is unknown to me.
But even arrogance is forgiven when it comes from the great illuminators. And here we reach the third and most serious obstacle to the reception of Laruelle's work. For it is not at all clear that his central insight is of value.
First, it can be questioned whether we really have a direct experience of the One at all -- yet this is the whole foundation of Laruelle's often extreme claims.
Second, he gives no proof for the assertion that his is a different sense of the One from that of the neo-Platonic philosophers.
And finally, even if Laruelle can handle these objections: so what? What good would it do to install an opposition between the One as a unilateral "determination in the last instance" and the cosmos of difference where the "larvae" become entangled in their pointless games? Laruelle's One is not the night, but the daylight in which all cows are black.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to conclude a book review!
UPDATE [15 Aug 11 am CDT]: A strong critique of Harman's reivew by Anthony Paul Smith is here.
Recent Comments