Notes Wrap-Up: Laruelle’s Les Philosophies de la différence

Below you will find the individual links to the posts on Laruelle’s Les Philosophies de la différence. Introduction critique. I have also uploaded a version to print or download (in a number of formats) at my Scribd site. I have cleaned up a few typos here and there in that final version, but they are still rough and ready reading notes.

I have considered writing a kind of synthetic post where I draw out the implications of the book and try to translate them into something that is more immediately graspable. The only problem with that is Laruelle’s gambit is to try and think differently, to think truly immanently, and so doing so might risk inscribing that project into some other philosophical decisions. Maybe this is unavoidable prior to the Gnostic apocalypse of the Real, but if I find some time I may still do this as a helpful exercise for the dissertation.

Theoretically the next book I should do this with would be Philosophie et non-philosophie, but I’ve already read that one with notes (though not ones I feel comfortable making public) and so I’m going to move on to his magnum opus Principes de la non-philosophie next. It is in this work that the method of non-philosophy becomes clear and thus what non-philosophy offers and does becomes more clear.

Index of posts:

• Instructions for Use
• Introduction: From the Aporias of Difference to the Vision-in-One
• Chapter II: Syntax of Difference
• Chapter III: Reality of Difference
• Chapter IV: Hegel and Heidegger
• Chaptter V: Derrida
• Chapter VI: Critique of Difference
• Chapter VII: Theory of the Philosophical Decision