Philosophy has gone stale?
The following is from the preface to Laruelle’s Philosophy & Non-Philosophy.
Rather than a new philosophy, this work proposes a new practice of philosophy that detaches it from its own authority and includes it within a thought whose origin is wholly other than philosoph ical … We all sense the extent to which philosophical practice, such as it has been determined by the Greeks, remains constricted, repetitive and superbly sterile. Without knowing the reason for it, we necessarily sense it, but we almost always deny it, too happy to identify with the mores we baptize as “reason,” “tradition,” “fact” and now “Being,” “Destiny,” ontological or metaphysical “Necessity,” etc. Without realizing it, philosophy has functioned as a conservative and reactive enterprise. … On the one hand, there is a perpetual implosion of philosophy within its own limits and prejudices. This allows philosophy to believe it is renewing itself by multiplying its objects and its encyclopedic busywork or even by delving deeper into its history, its texts and its archives, its corpus and its institutions,
1.
In effect, I believe Laruelle is sting that philosophy as a verb has become predictable and sterile. In a sense the practice of philosophy (again, as a verb) is something that has become a set of instructions, a manual that (academic/professional) “philosophers” can and do follow to the letter.
There is very little unpredictability in philosophy that is done in this institutional (academic/professional) way, and unpredictability is the proof of life. Therefore, there is no life in philosophy (verb) as it is practiced today.
What I find interesting about this is that what Laruelle is saying about philosophy is how I feel about contemporary social work and much of psychotherapy today.
2.
I think Laruelle is also saying professional philosophers have built a wall around what philosophy (noun) is, and in doing that they have kept people from doing philosophy (verb).
The professional says “Only one who is a trained philosopher can do philosophy!”
I believe Laruelle’s project is to create a non-philosophy (noun & verb) outside of the walls that have been build abound philosophy. Non-philosophers can meet outside of these walls and do non-philosophy. (Whatever non-philosophy is…)
