A Dark Precursor

Introduction

Originally published in 1981, Le principe de minorité, the title of which can be translated as The Minority Principle, is the first in the series of works that Laurelle would eventually designate ‘Philosophy II.’

The following short foreword, subtitled “The Immediate Givens of Multiplicities,” lays out the general plan of the work and announces its major aims. The first of these is a critique and of the major theoretical treatments of “the contemporary problem of Difference, that is to say of continuous and relative multiplicities that it still inscribes in the hypostasis of Being, or of minorities that it still implants in the body of the State—hypostases that it only causes to stretch without daring to break them.” Evidently, the text anticipates important elements of the extended critique that Laruelle would level against Nietzsche, Deleuze, Derrida, and Heidegger in Philosophies of Difference—though here his announced targets are Nietzsche, Bergson, and Heidegger.

But Laruelle also aims to present an alternative to these inadequate approaches, which he figures under the sign of a type of multiplicity that he distinguishes from two others: the ‘discrete or arithmetic’ type and the ‘continuous’ type, which he associates with the philosophers of difference. The third type, which Laruelle proposes here, are  “dispersive, Unary Multiplicities or Minorities, which” he goes on to say, “are the absolute concept or the essence of multiplicities.” It is this notion which sets him over and against the traditional global categories that are typically held to encompass differences of various sorts: “Being, the Idea, the State, History, etc.” Against these, he argues for “the absolute, non-relative autonomy of parts, differences, minorities, beings [étant], events, singularities, etc.” And from here, he will proceed to argue that in treating these dispersed elements as absolutes, as ‘immediate givens,’ we shall be led to reconcile “a thought of the multiple and of becoming [. . . ] and a thought of the absolute, but of the Absolute as such, a thought of the One, but of the One without unity, beyond the Idea, Logos, Being itself [l’Etre même].” It is in this ‘One without unity,’ this absolute One beyond Being, that, Laruelle contends, we shall find the genuinely “immediate givens” to which the philosophies of Difference ultimately failed to keep its promises at both a theoretical and a political level. And again, readers familiar with the general outlines of Laruelle’s oeuvre will see in all of this an early formulation of themes that remain central to his more recent thought, including texts like Future Christ and its companion, Mystique non-philosophique à l’usage des contemporains.

Textual Notes and Acknowledgements

This translation is a draft. It has not been reviewed by Laruelle. Please do not publish it without permission. I would also appreciate prior notice if you intend to quote from it or cite it.

I have generally hewed fairly closely to Laruelle’s syntax, and left the original French in brackets where it seemed to me that his meaning might be subject to various readings, or where the original French terms had resonances that were difficult to render adequately in English. Two sentences, especially, proved very difficult to translate and I have supplied the original French in footnotes, which readers are invited to consult.

Finally, this translation has benefitted enormously from a careful review by Tyler Harper. He made a number of excellent suggestions for revisions, many of which I have incorporated in what follows. All mistakes and infelicities are, of course, my own.

The translation follows after the break, or can be downloaded in .pdf form here.

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