Translation of Vision-in-One: Additional Definition to Laruelle’s Dictionary of Non-Philosophy

The following is an entry from Francois Laruelle’s Dictionnaire de la non-philosophie. Paris: Editions Kimé, 1998. Original translation by Sid Littlefield, 10/31/07.

Vision-in-One (One, One-in-One, Real)

Primary concept of non-philosophy, equivalent with “One-in-One” or the “Real.” What determines the theory of in-the-last-instance and the pragmatics of the Thought-World (“philosophy”). The vision-in-one is radically immanent and universal; it is the given-without-givenness of the givenness of the Thought-World.

Philosophy is the desire and oppression of the One, divisible or associated with division. The problematization of Being (Heidegger included) supposes this barred One without really thematizing it. Philosophies of the One (Plato, neo-Platonism, Lacan) suppose a final convertibility with Being based on the fact that Being is given a final objectivity, that is ordered by the criteria of Being or abstracted from them. All ‘thoughts of the One’ are still structured like that of metaphysics: They hold an ultimate bound between the metaphysics of the science of Being and the science of the One. Hence the necessary disqualification of the One of the Greek from its empirical component, the one of the count or counting (Badiou), a point of extreme conflict between Being and the One and the ‘death’ of the former. The philosophy that wishes to be post-metaphysical oscillates, in the best cases, between the end of Being and the end of the One, while never ceasing to honor metaphysics.

Non-philosophy enunciates a series of axioms on the One understood as vision-in-One and no longer as the desire of the One:

(1) The One is radical immanence, identity-without-transcendence, not associated with transcendence or division.

(2) The One is in-One or vision-in-One and not in-Being or in-Difference.

(3) The One is the Real in so far as it forecloses all symbolization (thought, knowledge, etc).

(4) The One is the given-without-givenness and separation-without-separation—of the given.

(5) The One is that which determines in-the-last-instance the Thought-World as given (the object of givenness).

Non-philosophy renounces the thought-of-the-One or the desire-of-the-One, but this renunciation has a higher purpose than the renunciation of desire: the One-in-One is the unknown of philosophy, that which is correctly foreclosed but, by confusing the transcendental One with the transcendent One, philosophy believes the former is within its power to think, sometimes close to repression. Philosophy represses its own ‘One’ but forecluses the being-foreclosed of the One-in-One in its own way. This confusion is the faith and sufficiency of philosophy which starts by raising the vision-in-One. Non-philosophy is installed on a different terrain than philosophy or, better still, on “the absurd” that is the Real. Philosophy occurs upon a ground which it delusionally takes as the Real but which is ‘real’ only for experience, while non-philosophy takes its departure from the utopia of the Real. This is not a ‘utopia’ ‘in the vulgar philosophical sense, but a thought-according-to-utopia. Utopia determines-in-the-last-instance thought which takes the Thought-World for its object. Rather than the interminable end of metaphysics, it is a question of its identity, such that this identity (of) metaphysics invalidates or unilateralizes its sufficiency and its authority. With this substitution of the thought-according-to-the-One for the thought of the science of the One, the triumph or victory over the Greek One, over the desired One, whether it is conveyed or spoiled by the Multiple (Deleuze/Badiou), is of little importance: the philosophical adventures of the One are property of the objects of non-philosophy as vision-in-One, and nothing more.

In any case, the vision-in-One ‘gives’ the One and it alone; it is “the” given entirely, the given as the identity of the given, as the given-without-givenness, unfolding or doublet of the given and givenness. It is thus radical phenomenon, without the background phenomenological world in its vastest sense: without Being behind the phenomenon or related to it. But if it does not give the One and if it neither exceeds it nor is alien to it, it also gives the Thought-World, but it still gives it in-One or in the form of the given-without-givenness. The givenness-of –the-given (Thought-World) is the object of a non-philosophical givenness by force (of) thought, the latter itself given-without-givenness or given-in-the-last-instance. The vision-in-One is thus universal-in-immanence instead of universal by transcendence, extension, generality, etc. It is necessary to write uni-versal: with the sense of the One, while remaining in an immanence foreclosed as the Thought-World, receiving it without being effected by it, or offered and opened to it as an openness-without-horizon, from a completely immanent in-stasis [instase]. In a sense the One is ‘for the World’, understanding that ‘for’ does not signify any end, internally or externally, but is available through indifference (and not an indifference through abstraction as this abstraction is generally understood).

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