Metaontology. Toward a prehuman thinking

Chapter 1 - Why metaontology?

Marcello Vitali-Rosati

2020-02-05

Wonder

διὰ γὰρ τὸ θαυμάζειν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καὶ νῦν καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἤρξαντο φιλοσοφεῖν, ἐξ ἀρχῆς μὲν τὰ πρόχειρα τῶν ἀτόπων θαυμάσαντες, εἶτα κατὰ μικρὸν οὕτω προϊόντες καὶ περὶ τῶν μειζόνων διαπορήσαντες, οἷον περί τε τῶν τῆς σελήνης παθημάτων καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν ἥλιον καὶ ἄστρα καὶ περὶ τῆς τοῦ παντὸς γενέσεως. (Aristotle 1989, 1, 2982b 10, See annotation)1 μάλα γὰρ φιλοσόφου τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, τὸ θαυμάζειν: οὐ γὰρ ἄλλη ἀρχὴ φιλοσοφίας ἢ αὕτη, καὶ ἔοικεν ὁ τὴν Ἶριν Θαύμαντος ἔκγονον φήσας οὐ κακῶς γενεαλογεῖν. (Plato 1902, Theaet. 155d See annotation)2 Wonders. The world is full of wonders. Wonder is something captivating, charming and incomprehensible. Wonder thus calls for explanations. It calls for reflection, for thinking, for philosophy and, more generally, for mediation.

Θαύμας δ᾽ Ὠκεανοῖο βαθυρρείταο θύγατρα ἠγάγετ᾽ Ἠλέκτρην: ἣ δ᾽ ὠκεῖαν τέκεν Ἶριν. (Hesiod and Evelyn-White 1914, Th. 265. See annotation)3 In Greek mythology, Thaumas (wonder) is the son of Pontus (the sea) and Gaia (the Earth): the world—earth and sea—generates wonder. Thaumas is also the father of Iris, who is messenger of the gods and the goddess of the rainbow: during the war between gods and titans—the Titanomachy—she enables mediation between the earth and the Olympus—a mediation for which the rainbow serves as a metaphor. Iris allegorizes mediation.

Si el pensamiento nació de la admiratión solamente, según nos dicen textos venerables, no se explica con facilidad que fuera tan prontamente a plasmarse en forma de filosofía sistemática. […] Porque la admiratión que nos produce la generosa existencia de la vida en torno nuestro no permite tan rápido desprendimiento de las múltiples maravillas que la suscitan. (Zambrano 1939, Chapter 1.)4 This mediation between an immanent world and transcendence can be understood as a form of thinking. To think is to depart from the world and to connect it to something else, something external, and then to return to the world: exactly as a rainbow, exactly as Iris.

Here is a series of intertwined notions: world, wonder, mediation, thinking and, finally, philosophy which is a particular form of thinking instigated by wonder. This collection of words will be the starting point of this text.

La poesía perseguía, entre tanto, la multiplicidad desdeñada,la menospeciada heterogeneitad. […] Con esto tocamos el punto más delicado quiza de todos: el que proviene de la consideratión “unitad-heterogenitad”. […] El ser había sido definido con unitad ante todo […]. Las apariencias se destruyen unas a otras[…]. Quien tiene, pues, la unitad lo tiene todo. (Zambrano 1939, Chapter 1.)5 A text that questions this series of notions is necessarily philosophical, it is thus crucial to begin to identify philosophy as a particular form of thinking that comprises many particularities. So here is an initial, albeit tentative, definition of philosophy: philosophy is a desire, produced by wonder, to reduce the multiplicity of the world to a unity. La filosofía es un éxtasis fracasado por un desgarramiento. (Zambrano 1939, Chapter 1.)6 Philosophy is the bastard daughter of Thaumas. Thaumas is necessary multiple: wonder is a condition derived from the multiplicity of the world and from everything that the world contains. Philosophy is also a prodigal child who, struggling against her father, attempts to destroy this multiplicity and bring it back to a unity. To bring it back. This is the problem. From a philosophical standpoint, it is impossible to even think that multiplicity could precede unity. Unity comes first; the question can only be how to bring it back.

Starting from this fundamental problem, this first chapter will explain the necessity of metaontology as an approach to such questions. It will try to answer two interrelated questions. First: why is metaontology necessary? And furthermore: why it is necessary today? This indicates that metaontology requires two perspectives: from a timeless and ahistorical point of view, and from a contemporary, place and time specific and historical view. In fact, metaontology tries to answer some very general questions that have been at the centre of philosophical enquiry since its beginnings: in this sense, metaontology purports to be a possible answer to the main philosophical questions. It is consequently necessary to explain why these questions remain urgent. At the same time, however, metaontology emerges in a particular historical moment, in a particular society, within a series of very specific conditions: it is thus necessary to explain why metaontology emerges today, how it can be useful in the very moment of its emergence and how it can be related to the broader intellectual landscape that it surrounds.

Ahistorical reasons

Warum ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts? Das ist die Frage. Vermutlich ist dies keine beliebige Frage. »War- um ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts?« — das ist offensichtlich die erste aller Fragen. Die erste, freilich nicht in der Ordnung der zeitlichen Aufeinanderfolge der Fragen. Der einzelne Mensch sowohl wie die Völker fragen auf ihrem geschichtlichen Gang durch die Zeit vieles. Sie erkunden und durchsuchen und prüfen Vielerlei, bevor sie auf die Frage sto- ßen: »Warum ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts?« Viele stoßen überhaupt nie auf diese Frage, wenn das heißen soll, nicht nur den Fragesatz als ausgesagten hören und lesen, sondern: die Frage fragen, d. h. sie zustandbringen, sie stellen, sich in den Zustand dieses Fragens nötigen.
Und dennoch! Jeder wird einmal, vielleicht sogar dann und wann, von der verborgenen Macht dieser Frage gestreift, ohne recht zu fassen, was ihm geschieht. In einer großen Verzweif- lung z. B., wo alles Gewicht aus den Dingen schwinden will und jeder Sinn sich verdunkelt, steht die Frage auf. (Heidegger 1935, 3. See annotation)7
The world generates wonder. The world is a problem to solve. Metaontology emerges from this problematic dimension. And yet it is necessary to describe what poses the problem, to identify the obstacle. What is the problem that produces the need for metaontology and what exactly is the object of the wonder? Here is an initial and very broad formulation of wonder: why are there things?

This apparently banal question can be broken down into several questions. First of all, why is there something? This is the fundamental metaphysical question, that is: Why are there beings at all, instead of nothing? Then there is a second problem: why are there things, namely several things?; or better: how is it possible that there are things rather than one thing? This is the fundamental problem at the heart of metaontological enquiry, in its ahistorical formulation: how to think the relationship between unity and multiplicity? While these two questions are probably not entirely ahistorical—as this text will show by presenting the historical reasons why these questions seem so urgent today—, they are insofar as they intersect with the totality of the Western philosophical tradition (to briefly summarize, from Parmenides to Heidegger and beyond). This chapter will offer an analysis of these two sempiternal questions in order to prepare the intellectual terrain for this work on metaontology.

Being and thinking

À nouveau j’étais unique et j’étais exigée; il fallait mon regard pour que le rouge du hêtre rencontrât le bleu du cèdre et l’argent des peupliers. Lorsque je m’en allais le paysage se défaisait, il n’existait plus pour personne: il n’existait plus du tout. Mémoire d’une jeune fille rangée 165-166 Here is the sea.

The wonder appears and it manifests itself into a series of interconnected questions:

  1. First of all: is the sea here? Is there anything which can assure the validity of the above sentence, “here is the sea”? How can one be sure that the sea is actually here or there? What are the rules to follow to make sure that this sentence has an objective, universal value? 31. Nos raisonnemens sont fondés sur deux grands principes, celui de la contradiction, en vertu duquel nous jugeons faux ce qui en enveloppe, et vrai ce qui est oppose ou contradictoire au faux.
    32. Et celui de la raison suffisante, en vertu duquel nous considérons qu’aucun fait ne sauroit se trouver vrai ou existant, aucune énonciation véritable, sans qu’il y ait une raison suffisante pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement, quoique ces raisons le plus souvent ne puissent point nous être connues. https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Monadologie_(%C3%89dition_Gerhardt,_1885)(Leibniz 2008 see annotation)
  2. Second question: if one admits that the sea is here, then why is it here? Is there any reason, any principle, any fact that determines that the sea is here? Why, for example, is the sea here and why does it not take the form of a lake, or a dog, or a unicorn? What is the force that makes some things into being and others into nothingness?
  3. Third question: what does “here” mean? “Here” is an adverb which only has meaning when considered in relation to something else: the sea is here for a dog, a fly, a human being—the reader of this text?—, a rock. The sea can only be “here” when considered in relation to another element. Which element? And what is the nature of their relationship?
  4. Finally: can one simply say that the sea is without specifying that it is here? Or, in other terms, is the sea still here if nothing and nobody is in front of it in order to account for the fact that it is here?

A like reasoning will account for the idea of external existence. We may observe, that it is universally allowed by philosophers, and is besides pretty obvious of itself, that nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas, and that external objects become known to us only by those perceptions they occasion. To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.i
Now since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are derived from something antecedently present to the mind; it follows, that it is impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible: Let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produced. https://web.archive.org/web/20060824184722/http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/h/hume/david/h92t/chapter13.html
These questions are inseparable from one another, as the answer for each feeds into another’s answer.

Finally, in order to round off this brief exposition of the post- critical philosopheme, we must emphasize that the correlation between thought and being is not reducible to the correlation between subject and object. In other words, the fact that correlation dominates contemporary philosophy in no way implies the dominance of philosophies of representation. It is possible to criticize the latter in the name of a more originary correlation between thought and being. And in fact, the critiques of representation have not signalled a break with correlation, i.e. a simple return to dogmatism. On this point, let us confine ourselves to giving one example: that of Heidegger. On the one hand, for Heidegger, it is certainly a case of pinpointing the occlusion of being or presence inherent in every metaphysical conception of representation and the privileging of the present at-hand entity considered as object. Yet on the other hand, to think such an occlusion at the heart of the unconcealment of the entity requires, for Heidegger, that one take into account the co-propriation (Zusammengehb’rigkeit) of man and being, which he calls Ereignis 9 . Thus, the notion of Ereignis, which is central in the later Heidegger, remains faithful to the correlationist exigency inherited from Kant and continued in Husserlian phenomenology, for the ‘co-propriation’ which constitutes Ereignis means that neither being nor man can be posited as subsisting ‘in-themselves’, and subsequently entering into relation - on the contrary, both terms of the appropriation are originarily constituted through their reciprocal relation: ‘The appropriation appropriates man and Being to their essential togetherness.’(Meillassoux 2009, 17) In order to understand the following analysis, it is important to make explicit the meaning this text gives to two key notions: world and Being. For the purpose of this first chapter, the concept of world will be tentatively defined as follows: the world is everything which is. As for Being, the term may be defined as that by which what is is. Given that this definition poses many problems, it will be questioned and reframed over the course of this text, in particular in chapter 5. For now, this text will obliterate the difference between world and Being and temporarily dismiss the ontological difference between Being and that which is. The world and Being will, for now, be considered synonyms. This changes nothing regarding the relationship between thinking and Being addressed here.

So: the sea is here. It is big, vast. It is blue. It is, maybe, beautiful, sublime. It is

the connected body of salty water that covers over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. It moderates the Earth’s climate and has important roles in the water cycle, carbon cycle, and nitrogen cycle. (“Sea” 2018).

It seems that the only way to affirm that the sea is here and to respond to the four above questions would be to have something or someone before it. One can say that the sea is here because it is before something. This can be described as a very formal definition of thinking: the connection between the world—in this example, the sea—and something else—whatever this “something” is. In this sense, thinking is understood here as the formal word to describe any kind of relationship between a thing and something else: perception, imagination, memory…

The sea is here because there is something that relates to it; Being is always related to a form of thinking.

But what happens when there is nothing there to witness the sea? Is it still there? Is it still big, vast, blue, beautiful, sublime? Is it still “the connected body of salty water that covers over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface”?

In fact, nobody knows, for the very reason that in order to “know” it, someone, or something, must “think” it. Apparently, nobody can know anything about what the world is, although this may seem absurd. In order to know whether the sea is there, it is necessary to have someone in front of it: the sea must be, once again, “before someone” or “before something”.

This problem is one of the most common obsessions of Western thought. It is an obsession — and a paradox — that has haunted philosophical history since its beginnings; it constitutes a primary preoccupation for countless philosophical texts.

9. Primary Qualities of Bodies. Concerning these qualities, we, I think, observe these primary ones in bodies that produce simple ideas in us, viz. SOLIDITY, EXTENSION, MOTION or REST, NUMBER or FIGURE. These, which I call ORIGINAL or PRIMARY qualities of body, are wholly inseperable from it […] 14. They depend on the primary Qualities. What I have said concerning colours and smells may be understood also of tastes and sounds, and other the like sensible qualities; which, whatever reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us; and depend on those primary qualities, viz. bulk, figure, texture, and motion of parts and therefore I call them SECONDARY QUALITIES. (Locke 2004, Book II, 9, 14, see annotation) A possible solution to this problem is to distinguish between things in themselves and things for someone. Each thing would be something in itself, which means regardless of whether it has any relationship to something else. The world is —or Being is— regardless of its relationship to thinking. The same thing can also have some other qualities which depend on what relationships this thing has with something else. For example: how it is perceived and by whom or what. These qualities define what a thing is for someone or something. In this case, the world, Being, is, but only in relation to some form of thinking.

To return to the sea: it is something in itself; it has, probably, some qualities regardless of the relationships it can have with something in front of it. If nobody is before it, the sea in itself remains the same. On the other hand, some properties depend on the relationship the sea has with some particular form of thinking: for example, a fly, compared to a human will perceive that it is a different colour. Therefore, for instance, the colour of the sea is blue only because a human being is perceiving it as blue; once there is no longer a human being in front of it, the sea is no longer blue.

Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. (Emmanuel Kant 1902, Part I Remark II, See annotation)8 It can, however, only be stated that the sea “probably” has some qualities in itself. It is impossible to respond to the first question without imagining someone or something “before it”. This means, in other words, that it is impossible to state that “the sea is”, without adding the adverb “here” (question 3) which implies a relationship to something in front of it. And finally, this means that the only reason that the sea is here (question 2) is that someone or something is before it and looking at it, or imagining it, or remembering it, or more generally thinking it—according to the very formal and broad definition of thinking proposed above—, and therefore that there is no sea if nothing and nobody is in front of it (question 4). In other words: there is no world without thinking—and, more generally, there is no Being without thinking.

Any distinction between a thing in itself and a thing for someone or something cannot be proven and is thus dogmatic. Indeed, how can one know the qualities that would be specific to the object—what an object is in itself, independently of something or someone thinking it—if one can only refer to it while one thinks it?

Es ist hiemit eben so, als mit den ersten Gedanken des Copernicus bewandt, der, nachdem es mit der Erklärung der Himmelsbewegungen nicht gut fort wollte, wenn er annahm, das ganze Sternheer drehe sich um den Zuschauer, versuchte, ob es nicht besser gelingen möchte, wenn er den Zuschauer sich drehen und dagegen die Sterne in Ruhe ließ. In der Metaphysik kann man nun, was die Anschauung der Gegenstände betrifft, es auf ähnliche Weise versuchen. Wenn die Anschauung sich nach der Beschaffenheit der Gegenstände richten müßte, so sehe ich nicht ein, wie man a priori von ihr etwas wissen könne; richtet sich aber der Gegenstand (als Object der Sinne) nach der Beschaffenheit unseres Anschauungsvermögens, so kann ich mir diese Möglichkeit ganz wohl vorstellen. https://korpora.zim.uni-duisburg-essen.de/Kant/aa03/012.html9 Once again: the only way to assure the validity of the sentence “the sea is here” is for someone or something to witness or to bear witness to it.

But what is this “something” that has a relationship with the world? A first answer, which seems quite obvious—and which will, from chapter 2, be interrogated—, is that the only possible thing one can imagine “before” the world in order to think it is a human being. This answer is strongly supported by the particular form of philosophical discourse. Philosophy is often interpreted as the discourse of a particular human being, the one who is writing or saying a philosophical statement. This human being refers to oneself as “I”, and to other human beings as “us”. This text avoids such formulations. The enunciator here is, always, the text, as this alternative enables a more apt description of the real, material situation of this discourse, which is in reality a textual inscription. The analysis of this particular situation is an integral interest of this text. For now, suffice to say that identifying the “something” which is “in front” of the world with a human being is probably an assumption determining the problems described in this first chapter. This is one reason necessitating metaontology. Metaontology is—among other things—an approach focusing on the very material forms of the production of text; it questions the idea that the origin of the philosophical discourse is necessarily a human being.

In fact, the idea that “Being is” only if something relates to it and that this something is necessarily a human being, leads to a strange paradox: on the one hand, there is a world that exists independently of human beings, but which, for that very reason, is totally inaccessible to them—and so they cannot affirm anything about its properties, not even that it exists; on the other hand, there is a world that exists only because human beings have access to it, but its existence is determined by their relationship with it. The former statement implies that there is a world without access to the world, whereas the latter affirms that there is an access to the world without a world. This is the paradox of access.

Albeit somewhat caricatured, these two philosophical positions can be defined as “dogmatic realism” and “correlationism”, respectively.

By ‘correlation’ we mean the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other. We will henceforth call correlationism any current of thought which maintains the unsurpassable character of the correlation so defined. (Meillassoux 2009, 13.)10

Dogmatic realism requires dogmatism in order to be realist: to affirm that there is a reality, it must disregard all experience and base its affirmation of reality on an a priori which is neither demonstrable, nor rational. The world, says the dogmatic realist, exists independently of human beings. There is no way to prove this, and their assertion is therefore dogmatic. Correlationism consists in avoiding the realist’s dogmatic naivety by asserting that human beings can only talk about what they can access.

If one insists that metaphysical realism is incoherent (because we cannot even discuss realism outside of language or outside our context of practices), then one is openly stating that philosophy can be concerned only with our access to things. And this is idealism pure and simple, whether “transcendental” or not. (Harman 2002, 123)

But in doing, so correlationism risks falling into a radical constructivist logic whereby the world is no more than a product of the human mind. If the world is only what human beings think or perceive, they risk being unable to prevent everyone from seeing the world that they would like and to build reality as they see fit. How is it possible to avoid historical negationism, for example? Is it possible to refer to a sense of reality as a means of countering fake news or conspiracy theories?

Je supposerai donc, non pas que Dieu, qui est très bon, et qui est la souveraine source de vérité, mais qu’un certain mauvais génie, non moins rusé et trompeur que puissant, a employé toute son industrie à me tromper ; je penserai que le ciel, l’air, la terre, les couleurs, les figures, les sons, et toutes les choses extérieures, ne sont rien que des illusions et rêveries dont il s’est servi pour tendre des piéges à ma crédulité ; je me considérerai moi-même comme n’ayant point de mains, point d’yeux, point de chair, point de sang ; comme n’ayant aucun sens, mais croyant faussement avoir toutes ces choses ; je demeurerai obstinément attaché à cette pensée ; et si, par ce moyen, il n’est pas en mon pouvoir de parvenir à la connoissance d’aucune vérité, à tout le moins il est en ma puissance de suspendre mon jugement : c’est pourquoi je prendrai garde soigneusement de ne recevoir en ma croyance aucune fausseté, et préparerai si bien mon esprit à toutes les ruses de ce grand trompeur, que, pour puissant et rusé qu’il soit, il ne me pourra jamais rien imposer. https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/M%C3%A9ditations_m%C3%A9taphysiques/M%C3%A9ditation_premi%C3%A8re The problem of a radical form of correlationism is that it allows for any form of doubt about the world. The only answer that a correlationist can give to question 2 is that “things are there” only because somebody thinks them. This implies that nothing guarantees that the world is only the hallucination of a particular human being. This fear is a topos present in philosophy as well as literature, cinema and the arts. This topos seems to be renewed at the time of digital technologies—an issue that will be addressed later in this text.

Brain in a vat. Famous thought experiment in analytic philosophy. Source Wikipedia by Wivel. Last. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Brain in a vat. Famous thought experiment in analytic philosophy. Source Wikipedia by Wivel. Last. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Another philosophical problem tied to correlationism is that some statements regarded as scientifically valid appear to be void of meaning if we do not accept the existence of the world beyond our perception of it.

Let us proceed then from this simple observation: today’s science formulates a certain number of ancestral statements bearing upon the age of the universe, the formation of stars, or the accretion of the earth. Obviously it is not part of our remit to appraise the reliability of the techniques employed in order to formulate such statements. What we are interested in, howevei, is understanding under what conditions these statements are meaningful. More precisely, we ask: how is correlationism liable to interpret these ancestral statements? (Meillassoux 2009, 21)11

This is particularly true for scientific statements concerning a time anterior—sometimes very anterior—to the origin of the human species. What would be the meaning of statements concerning geological eras, for example, when at that time there could be no access to the world simply because there were no human beings? According to a correlationist approach, statements that relate to eras prior to mankind have meaning only after a “retrojection of the past on the basis of the present”: this past exists only now, for human beings today. And yet, this does not take into account the fact that this kind of scientific statement refers to a real past entirely independent of human access.

Ainsi, à cause que nos sens nous trompent quelquefois, je voulus supposer qu’il n’y avoit aucune chose qui fût telle qu’ils nous la font imaginer ; et parcequ’il y a des hommes qui se méprennent en raisonnant, même touchant les plus simples matières de géométrie, et y font des paralogismes, jugeant que j’étois sujet à faillir autant qu’aucun autre, je rejetai comme fausses toutes les raisons que j’avois prises auparavant pour démonstrations ; et enfin, considérant que toutes les mêmes pensées que nous avons étant éveillés nous peuvent aussi venir quand nous dormons, sans qu’il y en ait aucune pour lors qui soit vraie, je me résolus de feindre que toutes les choses qui m’étoient jamais entrées en l’esprit n’étoient non plus vraies que les illusions de mes songes. Mais aussitôt après je pris garde que, pendant que je voulois ainsi penser que tout étoit faux, il falloit nécessairement que moi qui le pensois fusse quelque chose ; et remarquant que cette vérité, je pense, donc je suis, étoit si ferme et si assurée, que toutes les plus extravagantes suppositions des sceptiques n’étoient pas capables de l’ébranler, je jugeai que je pouvois la recevoir sans scrupule pour le premier principe de la philosophie que je cherchois. https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_de_la_m%C3%A9thode_(%C3%A9d._Cousin)/Quatri%C3%A8me_partie

Both dogmatic realism and correlationism therefore have impossible consequences. Philosophical history, in its totality, can be interpreted as an attempt to find solutions to this opposition. Many philosophers propose convincing solutions to this antinomy by working on the nuances of concepts, on the complexity of structures of reasoning, on different models of thought. In other words, no philosophy worth its salt falls into the naivety of either position.

La pensée moderne a réalisé un progrès considérable en réduisant l’existant à la série des apparitions qui le manifestent. On visait par là à supprimer un certain nombre de dualismes qui embarrassaient la philosophie et à les remplacer par le monisme du phénomène. Y a­ t-on réussi ? Il est certain qu’on s’est débarrassé en premier lieu de ce dualisme qui oppose dans l’existant l’intérieur à l’extérieur. sartre beginning of etre et néant It is also important to underline that the formulation of the problem proposed here would have no meaning for some philosophical traditions based on the idea of going beyond the opposition of thinking and Being. For example, the 20th century’s phenomenological approach. However, this problem remains open, and it is renewed today—for many reasons, this will be identified later in this text—giving rise to other perspectives and modes of reasoning: it continuously appears necessary to readdress this opposition and to propose new solutions. This is owing to the very nature of the philosophical gesture, which consists in proposing new structures of thought and inferring logical pathways in order to overcome paradoxes and to (re)interpret the world. This need is justified by the fact that thought always corresponds to the material conditions of its production. These conditions are simultaneously technical, historical, political, social and economic… They are the reasons why it still makes sense to philosophize even after 2,600 years of philosophy. They are some of the reasons determining the necessity of metaontology, a concept which aims to propose a new solution to this old problem.

The problem of multiplicity

As explained, there are two ahistorical reasons justifying the need for metaontology; the question “why is there something?” has a corollary: why are there things, that is, several things? This is the problem of multiplicity. It can be expressed in a very simple way: multiplicity seems to be impossible for many reasons and, despite this impossibility, it seems to be—or to exist. To be more precise: multiplicity seems incompatible with Being. It is impossible to state that there are many things; and yet, it seems that there are many things. There are many things, but the multiplicity to which “many” refers cannot be, thus it is nothing but an illusion.

This problem is deeply linked with the possibility of thinking around difference and otherness and with building theoretically consistent approaches to political and sociological problems like relationships between people, genders, species, etc. One of the main goals of metaontology is to find a solution to this paradox: metaontology aspires to an ontology of multiplicity.

This text will start by identifying four main reasons that demonstrate the impossibility of multiplicity, in order to better understand the problem that metaontology aims to solve. There is, respectively, a logical, an etiological, an epistemological and an ethical reason, and each undermines the possibility of multiplicity.

The logical impossibility of multiplicity

What is your meaning, Zeno? Do you maintain that if being is many, it must be both like and unlike, and that this is impossible, for neither can the like be unlike, nor the unlike like–is that your position? (Plato 2008, 127e. See annotation)12 First of all, multiplicity is impossible from a formal, logical point of view. This impossibility can be expressed as a formulation of the problem of difference and can be summarized as follows:

  1. There are 2 things: A and B
  2. This means that A is and B is
  3. But this also means that A is not B.
  4. This means that, at the same time, A is and is not; this is impossible.

This formulation is related to two fundamental principles of logic: the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of identity. According to the first one, two contradictory propositions cannot be true: A cannot be and not be. Formally ¬(p ∧ ¬p). According to the second, each thing is identical to itself, and thus A is A.

A possible objection to this formulation is that it confuses two different uses of the verb “to be”. In fact, in the first and in the second sentence (“There are 2 things” and “A is and B is”), the verb “to be” is used to signify the existence of a thing. Is means that A exists. In the third sentence, the negative form of the verb “to be” is used to signify “to be different”: “A is not B” means that A is different from B and not that A is not, meaning that it does not exist.

Sic ergo patet quod prima pluralitatis vel divisionis ratio sive principium est ex negatione et affirmatione, ut talis ordo originis pluralitatis intelligatur, quod primo sint intelligenda ens et non ens, ex quibus ipsa prima divisa constituuntur, ac per hoc plura. Unde sicut post ens, in quantum est indivisum, statim invenitur unum, ita post divisionem entis et non entis statim invenitur pluralitas priorum simplicium. Hanc autem pluralitatem consequitur ratio diversitatis, secundum quod manet in ea suae causae virtus, scilicet oppositionis entis et non entis. Ideo enim unum plurium diversum dicitur alteri comparatum, quia non est illud. [Aquinas (1959), pars 2 q. 4 a. 1 co. 3 annotation13 But the problem is more complex than that: what this paradox shows is that it is impossible to take into account the difference between two things without calling into question a negative structure. This means that difference itself can be conceived only in relation to non-Being. What this formulation shows is not only that the particular things A and B cannot “be” at the same time, it shows that difference is nothing and thus there is no difference. Multiplicity can only be based on difference, but difference is non-Being; it is nothingness.

Another formulation of the logical reason is linguistic: the only way to express multiplicity is to reduce it to a unity with a name. Starting from the name “multiplicity”, it is impossible to express plurality without using a unique notion or concept. Even in the first formulation, it is a matter of 2 “things”, which means that the number two is subordinated to a unity, the concept of a “thing”, which merges with the plurality and reduces it to a unity. This argument should be taken very seriously, especially in the context of a philosophical text. The logic argument means that if a philosophical text aims to develop an ontological approach to multiplicity, it shall question the principle of non-contradiction and of language itself.

The etiological impossibility of multiplicity

εἰ δὴ ἀνάγκη πᾶν τὸ κινούμενον ὑπό τινός τε κινεῖσθαι, καὶ ἢ ὑπὸ κινουμένου ὑπ’ ἄλλου ἢ μή, καὶ εἰ μὲν ὑπ’ ἄλλου [κινουμένου], ἀνάγκη τι εἶναι κινοῦν ὃ οὐχ ὑπ’ ἄλλου πρῶτον, εἰ δὲ τοιοῦτο τὸ πρῶτον, οὐκ ἀνάγκη θάτερον (ἀδύνατον γὰρ εἰς ἄπειρον ἰέναι τὸ κινοῦν καὶ κινούμενον ὑπ’ ἄλλου αὐτό· τῶν γὰρ ἀπείρων οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν πρῶτον)—εἰ οὖν ἅπαν μὲν τὸ κινούμενον ὑπό τινος κινεῖται, τὸ δὲ πρῶτον κινοῦν κινεῖται μέν, οὐχ ὑπ’ ἄλλου δέ, ἀνάγκη αὐτὸ ὑφ’ αὑτοῦ κινεῖσθαι.(Aristoteles 1831 Phys. VIII, 5 see annotation)14 The second group of reasons denying the possibility of multiplicity can be defined as etiological. The argument on which these reasons are based relates to the impossibility of infinite regress and the subsequent necessity of a first cause.

Secunda via est ex ratione causae efficientis. Invenimus enim in istis sensibilibus esse ordinem causarum efficientium, nec tamen invenitur, nec est possibile, quod aliquid sit causa efficiens sui ipsius; quia sic esset prius seipso, quod est impossibile. Non autem est possibile quod in causis efficientibus procedatur in infinitum. Quia in omnibus causis efficientibus ordinatis, primum est causa medii, et medium est causa ultimi, sive media sint plura sive unum tantum, remota autem causa, removetur effectus, ergo, si non fuerit primum in causis efficientibus, non erit ultimum nec medium. Sed si procedatur in infinitum in causis efficientibus, non erit prima causa efficiens, et sic non erit nec effectus ultimus, nec causae efficientes mediae, quod patet esse falsum. Ergo est necesse ponere aliquam causam efficientem primam, quam omnes Deum nominant. (Aquinas 1888 Pars 1, questio 2, art 3. See annotation)15 This argument can be expressed as follows:

  1. Everything has a cause
  2. A cause must have a cause
  3. It is impossible to regress to infinity
  4. It is necessary that a first cause exists that has no causes

εἰ οὖν ὅπερ ἄν τις ἢ εἴπῃ ἢ νοήσῃ τὸ ὄν ἐστι, πάντων εἷς ἔσται λόγος ὁ τοῦ ὄντος, οὐδὲν γὰρ ἔστιν ἢ ἔσται πάρεξ(Simplicius 1882, 86, annotation)16

When there are several things, these things should have one or some causes. Each cause will have a cause and, in the end, there will be a reason justifying these causes; there will be a final cause. Multiplicity itself must have one cause.

Another way of framing this argument is ontological: everything which is can be understood in the horizon of Being. This formulation is based on the possibility of separating Being from the world, the ontological difference which has been put in parentheses above. According to this idea, Being is not all that is, but it is the reason or the principle for which everything that is, is. Being is thus separated from things that are, i.e. beings. But this separation only strengthens the necessity of reducing everything to unity: if there are many things, these things can be reduced to one single, first principle: Being. In this way, Being can be understood as the one principle that reduces everything to a single unity: in order to be, the many should have one—and only one—principle in common: one must be; otherwise, the multiple will not be. In order to be able to think multiplicity, one should always think it as second to something which precedes it: the unity of Being. Multiplicity is perhaps possible, but always as something issued by unity. Multiplicity can, therefore, never be originary, as it is always derivative.

37. Et comme tout ce détail n’enveloppe que d’autres contingents antérieurs ou plus détaillés, dont chacun a encore besoin d’une analyse semblable pour en rendre raison, on n’en est pas plus avancé, et il faut que la raison suffisante ou dernière soit hors de la suite ou séries de ce détail des contingences, quelque infini qu’il pourrait être.
38. Et c’est ainsi que la dernière raison des choses doit être dans une substance nécessaire, dans laquelle le détail des changements ne soit qu’éminemment, comme dans la source, et c’est ce que nous appelons Dieu. (Leibniz 2008 see annotation)17
In order to have an original multiplicity, one should have a multiple Being, which seems impossible and illogical. This is why metaontology tries to define an originary multiple Being, challenging logic itself—this challenge will be addressed in the middle of chapter 4.

The epistemological impossibility of multiplicity

Le Moi est identique jusque dans ses altérations. Il se les représente et les pense. L’identité universelle où l’hétérogène peut être embrassé, à l’ossature d’un sujet, de la première personne. Pensée universelle, est un “je pense”. (Lévinas 2009, 25)18 The third reason is epistemological: knowledge implies the reduction of each multiplicity to unity. Multiplicity is known by some_one_. This is why metaphysics seems impossible as a form of knowledge. Metaphysics desires to address something that surpasses discourse itself, which seems logically impossible.

I term all transcendental ideas, in so far as they relate to the absolute totality in the synthesis of phenomena, cosmical conceptions; partly on account of this unconditioned totality, on which the conception of the world-whole is based—a conception, which is itself an idea—partly because they relate solely to the synthesis of phenomena—the empirical synthesis; while, on the other hand, the absolute totality in the synthesis of the conditions of all possible things gives rise to an ideal of pure reason, which is quite distinct from the cosmical conception, although it stands in relation with it. Hence, as the paralogisms of pure reason laid the foundation for a dialectical psychology, the antinomy of pure reason will present us with the transcendental principles of a pretended pure (rational) cosmology—not, however, to declare it valid and to appropriate it, but—as the very term of a conflict of reason sufficiently indicates, to present it as an idea which cannot be reconciled with phenomena and experience. See annotation

This argument is deeply entwined with the relationship between Being and thinking: if, as it seems necessary, it is impossible to separate Being and thinking without being dogmatic, this means that the only way to speak about the world is from the point of view of a subject who thinks the world. But this implies that the multiplicity of the world is always reduced to the unity of a subject who thinks it. This is why the very desire of metaphysics—which is to develop a discourse about something which goes beyond what a subject can think and perceive—is impossible.

This argument makes clear, once again, the relationship between the possibility of multiplicity and the possibility of otherness. Saying that multiplicity is impossible is the same as stating that otherness is impossible: everything is necessarily reduced to the unity of the I, which is the subject of an “I think”.

The ethical impossibility of multiplicity

Εἰ γὰρ αὐτὸς τὸ ἀγαθόν, τί ἔδει ὁρᾶν ἢ ἐνεργεῖν ὅλως; Τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλα περὶ τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ διὰ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἔχει τὴν ἐνέργειαν, τὸ δὲ ἀγαθὸν οὐδενὸς δεῖται· διὸ οὐδέν ἐστιν αὐτῷ ἢ αὐτό. Φθεγξάμενος οὖν τὸ ἀγαθὸν μηδὲν ἔτι προσνόει· ἐὰν γάρ τι προσθῇς, ᾧ προσέθηκας ὁτιοῦν, ἐνδεὲς ποιήσεις. (Plotinus 1964 III,8,11)19

The fourth argument is ethical. Even if it seems that an argument of this kind should be weaker than the others, this is not true: ethics is probably the field that orients philosophy the most. Even when this is not explicit, discourses and texts cannot ignore ethical principles because these principles always drive them.

The argument can be expressed as follows:

  1. The Good must be perfect
  2. Something perfect cannot lack something
  3. Multiplicity implies a lack, because an element of multiplicity is without the other elements
  4. The Good must be one

Oportet igitur idem esse unum atque bonum simili ratione concedas; eadem namque substantia est eorum quorum naturaliter non est diuersus effectus.[ III, 21 annotation]20 From an ethical point of view, it is necessary to claim that the Good is originary and ontologically first, compared to Evil. Thus, the origin must be the One and multiplicity can only be a derivative of the One.

Metaontology’s ambition is directly proportional to the strength of these arguments. In order to be able to develop an ontology of multiplicity, metaontology should find a solution to these four arguments and thus:

L’ensemble de ce travail tend à montrer une relation avec l’Autre tranchant non seulement sur la lo g ique de la contradiction où l’autre de A est le non-A, négation de A, mais aussi sur la logique dialectique où le M ême participe dialectiquement de l’Autre et se concilie avec lui dans l’Unité du système.(Lévinas 2009, 161)21 1. Metaontology must propose a new logic which allows contextualization of the validity of the principle of non-contradiction. This will be the goal of chapter 4 2. Metaontology must propose an understanding of Being which allows an originary multiplicity. This implies a change to the very concept of Being in order to avoid the prospect of Being as a final, homogeneous horizon on which each multiplicity is destined to be reduced. This will also be addressed in chapter 4 3. Metaontology must propose a new conception of thinking in order to avoid the epistemological reduction of everything to an “I think”. This will be the goal of chapters 2 and 3 4. Metaontology must propose a new basis for ethics which allows for a multiple Good. This will be the goal of chapter 6.

Historical reason

Idee uniformi nate appo intieri popoli tra essoloro non conosciuti,debbon’avere un motivo comune di vero. (Vico 1999, 144 see annotation)22 This chapter started by presenting what has been defined as the “ahistorical” reasons justifying metaontology. It is worth asking if such reasons can even exist. It is clear that all the arguments proposed above are actually historical. They are all situated in a specific context and time. It is easy to identify that some formulations of these arguments are typical of ancient Greek philosophy, while others are the result of the analyses and commentaries of Greek philosophy, which developed during the Middle Ages in the context of scholastic philosophy, that is, as part of a particular approach to ancient texts. Some other formulations are modern and reflect the preoccupations of a specific society, as in English society during the 18th century. What has been presented as “ahistorical” is, in reality, always situated in space and time.

Natura di cose altro non è, che nascimento di esse in certi tempi,e concerte guise;le quali sempre,che sono tali,indi tali,e non altre nascon le cose. (Vico 1999, 147 see annotation)23 The idea of “ahistorical reasons” may thus be considered a fiction produced in order to address some problems. The idea behind the notion of “ahistorical reasons” is that some problems can be envisioned as constants within the whole philosophical history even if they are presented in different ways. But is it really possible to abstract a specific formulation in order to grasp a particular problem? It seems that this fiction is simultaneously useful and dangerous. It is useful because it helps to understand the diachronic continuity of some philosophical issues and to avoid the rhetoric of revolution. It is dangerous because it risks implying that a “problem” can be understood as something ideal or abstract that lies behind—or goes beyond—a particular formulation. Before analyzing what has been called “historical reasons”, it is necessary to consider these two opposing claims. This analysis will clarify that the only way to consider some constants in the history of philosophy is to look at them from a specific historical point of view, which will make them historical too. In other words: ahistorical reasons are historically ahistorical, which means that, in order to understand them, one should clearly define the historical motive for which they seem ahistorical today. Metaontology emerges today because the material, historical and place and space-specific context in which this approach is inscribed produces a particular view on the history of philosophy that transforms many place and space specific formulations into constant abstract problems. What has been presented before is a situated fiction that accounts for specific, inscribed problems and abstracts their particular character in order to produce something which can be considered today as a philosophical constant.

His cognitis quaesivi deinde, quid id fuerit, propter quod Hebraei Dei electi vocati fuerint ? Cum autem vidissem hoc nihil aliud fuisse, quam quod Deus ipsis certam mundi plagam elegerit, ubi secure, et commode vivere possent, hinc didici Leges Mosi a Deo revelatas nihil aliud fuisse, quam jura singularis Hebraeorum imperii, ac proinde easdem praeter hos neminem recipere debuisse ; imo nec hos etiam, nisi stante ipsorum imperio, iisdem teneri. (Spinoza 1670 see annotation)24 Why is this fiction useful? Because enables a deeper understanding of the actual, historical grounds for the emergence of metaontology. A certain kind of discourse should be avoided, that is, a discourse that presents some problems and characterizes contemporary discourse as something completely and absolutely new. This is what can be defined as a “rhetoric of revolution”. The danger of this rhetoric relates to the potential to imagine that some specific, historical facts determine a radical shift; this shift demands an entirely new analysis. Completely new, in this case, risks being interpreted as something “absolutely” new, which means—in etymological terms—something that has no relationship with the rest of the history. It is, on the contrary, crucial to understand that history is always continuous and that the only way to avoid an abstract and idealized discourse on today’s problem is to situate them in the continuity of this history. In other words: the fiction producing ahistorical constants is useful in order to historically situate a discourse.

This is why this fiction is paradoxically dangerous at the same time. If one absolutizes the ahistorical aspect, this fiction risks producing the opposite of the desired effect. This text’s first goal is to present thinking as a very material, specific, inscribed object. Thinking is always something inscribed, as will be addressed in chapter 3. Abstracting this material inscription leads to deforming philosophical approaches, making them say something that they actually do not say. Now, this text tries to let other texts speak for themselves, to avoid reducing them to a single interpretation. This text can be understood as a set of commentaries, glosses circulating today in the interstices of other texts, without trying to replace or substitute them. The plurality of voices must remain; this is the goal, the ambition and the challenge of the metaontological approach.

Thinking otherness today

Comme la guerre moderne, toute guerre se sert déjà d’armes qui se retournent contre celui qui les tient. Elle instaure un ordre à l’égard duquel personne ne peut prendre distance. Rien n’est dès lors extérieur. La guerre ne manifeste pas l’extériorité et l’autre comme autre; elle détruit l’identité du Même. La face de l’être qui se montre dans la guerre, se fixe dans le concept de totalité qui domine la philosophie occidentale. (Lévinas 2009, 6)25

After two world wars, it is impossible to think the problem of multiplicity outside of its political implications. The formal tension between unity and multiplicity—which has been expressed above as an ahistorical constant within philosophical discourse—is summarized in an urgent, concrete formulation: how is it possible for philosophy to avoid violence?

From this point of view, the logical reasons that make multiplicity impossible become philosophical principles to justify violence or, even worse, to explain its necessity. If difference can be expressed by the sentence “A is not B” and it can thus be identified with non-being and nothingness, then, from an ontological point of view, it is necessary to reduce B to A. The verb “to reduce” here acquires a very material, and even horrendous, meaning: reducing means physically destroying. Ontology becomes violent politics.

Incapables de respecter l’Autre dans son être et dans son sens, phénoménologie et ontologie seraient donc des philosophies de la violence. A travers elles, toute la tradition philosophique aurait partie liée, dans son sens et en profondeur, avec l’oppression et le totalitarisme du Même. Vieille amitié occulte entre la lumière et la puis- sance, vieille complicité entre l’objectivité théorique et la possession technico-politique ’ « Si on pouvait posséder, saisir et connaître l’autre, il ne serait pas l’autre. Posséder, connaître, saisir sont des synonymes du pouvoir » (TA, p. 190) (Derrida 1964, 337)26

Formal sentences like A and B are embodied in some concrete formulations involving men, women, communities, social classes, animals. “A is not B” can thus be embodied in sentences like: “a woman is not a man” or “an animal is not a human” or “this community is not my community”, “this social class is not the most powerful social class”. An ontological interpretation of sentences like these implies that the first instances of comparison are defined by their lack: there is a unity, the essence of which is complete and what is different from this essence is less than this unity. “A woman is not a man” means that one can define women based on only the purported “completeness” of man. Women are reduced to men because the full essence is on the side of men and the essence of women depends on that of men. The second term of comparison is not only the unit of measure for the first, but the completion or perfection that the first term cannot embody.

Power seemed to be more than an exchange between subjects or a relation of constant inversion between and subject and an Other; indeed, power appeared to operate in the production of that very binary frame for thinking about gender. I asked, what configuration of power constructs the subject and the Other, that binary relation between “men” and “women,” and the internal stability of those terms? Preface (1990) p. xxviii This violent situation is deeply related to the interpretation of the relationship between Being and thinking, as described above. Based on the relationship between Being and thinking, it is possible to identify 4 different perspectives that enable or undermine the possibility of difference and to define the very meaning of difference in distinct ways. The four interpretations are as follows:

  1. Being is separate from thinking and human beings can know it. This implies that difference is ontologically and epistemologically impossible.
  2. Being is separate from thinking and human beings cannot know it. This implies that difference is ontologically impossible but epistemologically possible.
  3. Being and thinking are inseparable and thinking is universal. This implies that difference is epistemologically and ontologically impossible.
  4. Being and thinking are inseparable and thinking is not universal. This implies that difference is epistemologically and ontologically possible.

Le sujet traité ici est manifestement dans l’air du temps. On peut en relever les signes: l’orientation de plus en plus accentuée de Heidegger vers une philosophie de la Différence ontologique; l’exercice du structuralisme fondé sur une distribution de carac- tères différentiels dans un espace de coexistence; l’art du roman contemporain qui tourne autour de la différence et de la répéti- tion, non seulement dans sa réflexion la plus abstraite, mais dans ses techniques effectives; la découverte dans toutes sortes de domaines d’une puissance propre de répétition, qui serait aussi bien celle de l’inconscient, du langage, de l’art. Tous ces signes peuvent être mis au compte d’un anti-hégélianisme généralisé: la différence et la répétition ont pris la place de l’identique et du négatif, de l’identité et de la contradiction. (Deleuze 1994, 1)27 There are, therefore, two perspectives in which difference is in some way possible: the second one that allows a weak form of difference (only epistemological) and the fourth one that allows a strong possibility of difference.

It is now necessary to analyze, in detail, each of these perspectives and their consequences.

  1. Being is separate from thinking and human beings can know it. This is the position which has been defined above as “dogmatic realism”. It affirms that Being is something absolute which is independently from any relation that someone or something can have with it. This position is dogmatic because there seems to be no rational way of demonstrating it, for the simple reason that the only fact of affirming the absolute character of Being involves creating a relationship with it: this is why this idea is dogmatic. But from the point of view of difference, this position is untenable not only because it is dogmatic, but especially because it strongly refuses any form of difference. In fact, if Being is separate from thinking and human beings can know it, it is necessary that:
    1. Being is one
    2. essence is one
    3. difference is defined by lack
    4. difference is thus identified with nothingness

L’Autre n’est pas la négation du Même comme le voudrait Hegel. Le fait fondamental de la scission ontologique en Même et en Autre, est un rapport non allergique du Même avec l’Autre. La transcendance ou la bonté se produit comme plura­ lisme. Le pluralisme de l’être ne se produit pas comme une multiplicité d’une constellation étalée devant un regard possible, car ainsi déjà, elle se totaliserait, se ressouderait en entité. Le pluralisme s’accomplit dans la bonté allant de moi à l’autre où l’autre, comme absolument autre, peut seulement se produire sans qu’une prétendue vue latérale sur ce mouvement ait un quelconque droit d’en saisir une vérité supérieure à celle qui se produit dans la bonté même. On n’entre pas dans cette société pluraliste sans touj ours, par la parole (dans laquelle la bonté se produit) rester en dehors; mais on n’en sort pas pour se voir seulement dedans. L’unité de la pluralité c’est la paix et non pas la cohérence d’éléments constituant la pluralité.(Lévinas 2009, 340–41)28 This is true from an ontological point of view but, given that Being is knowable, knowledge must also refuse difference. Therefore, difference is also impossible from an epistemological point of view. The true knowledge is the knowledge of unity and any difference is nothing but an illusion.

  1. Being is separate from thinking and human beings cannot know it. This position is a weak form of what has been called “correlationism”. In order to avoid dogmatism, it stipulates that it is impossible to know Being. This means that, from an ontological point of view, difference is impossible (for the same reason as the previous point), but it is possible that there are many ways of thinking. Plurality can thus exist in the way someone or something sees or thinks the world. Being is one, but it can be seen in different ways, from different points of view. The argument goes like this:
    1. Being is one
    2. essence is one, but human beings cannot know it
    3. there are different points of view on the world
    4. difference depends on points of view for human beings
    5. but there is actually an essence and thus, from an ontological point of view, difference is defined by lack, as in the first point.

Un tel type de métaphysique peut sélectionner diverses instances de la subjectivité, mais elle se caractérisera toujours par le fait qu’un terme intellectif, conscientlel, ou vital sera ainsi hypostasié: la représentation dans la monade leibnizienne; le sujet-objet objectif, c’est-à-dire la nature de Schelling; l’Esprit hégélien; la Volonté de Schopenhauer; la volonté de puissance (ou les volontés de puissance) de Nietzsche; la perception chargée de mémoire de Bergson; la Vie de Deleuze. etc. Même si les hypostases vitalistes du Corrélat (Nietzsche, Deleuze) sont volontiers identifiées à des critiques du «sujet», voire de la «métaphysique», elles ont en commun avec l’idéalisme spéculatif la même double décision qui leur garantit à elles aussi de ne pas être confondues avec un réalisme naïf, ou avec une variante de l’idéalisme transcendantal: 1. rien ne saurait être qui ne soit pas un certain type de rapport-au-monde (l’atome épicurien, sans intelligence, ni volonté, ni vie, est donc impossible); 2. la proposition précédente doit être entendue en un sens absolu, et non pas relativement à notre connaissance.(Meillassoux 2012, 51)29 This perspective allows a weak form of difference: there is no difference from an ontological point of view and, if one could know Being, one would see that it is one. But because it is impossible for knowledge to grasp Being, it is possible to have many—always imperfect—views of and on it. Multiplicity can exist from an epistemological point of view because of the weakness of knowledge. This perspective is less violent than the first one because it avoids the fact that someone or something can decide where the real and the true unity stand. But difference is again defined as a lack. This perspective has another problem: how is it actually possible to state that Being is separate from thinking if no one can know it? This statement seems to be as dogmatic as the first perspective. Also, for difference to be possible, it is necessary for thinking to be multiple and thus non-universal; this has some complex consequences, as observable in the fourth point.

  1. Being and thinking are inseparable and thinking is universal. If Being and thinking are inseparable, this inseparability must be understood as identity. Otherwise, this perspective could be assimilated to perspective 2. Being and thinking are inseparable because they are the same thing. Ontology and epistemology are thus merged together. The possibility of multiplicity will therefore depend on how thinking is structured. If thinking is universal, this means that it does not take many forms: it is impossible to have a plurality of points of view because, if they exist, they can be reduced to a unique, final, correct point of view. The identity of thinking and Being has thus the same consequences as perspective 1: it determines an epistemological impossibility of difference, which also corresponds to an ontological impossibility.

  2. car la raison corrélationnelle, en se découvrant marquée d’une limite irrémédiable, a légitimé d’elle-même tous les discours qui prétendent accéder à un absolu, sous la seule condition que rien dans ces discours ne ressemble à une justification rationnelle de leur validité. Loin d’abolir la valeur de l’absolu., ce que l’on nomme volontiers, aujourd’hui, la «fin des absolus» consiste au contraire en une licence étonnante accordée à ceux-ci: les philosophes semblent ne plus en exiger qu’une seule chose, c’est que rien ne demeure en eux qui se revendique de la rationalité. (Meillassoux 2012, 61)30Being and thinking are inseparable and thinking is not universal. This perspective is the only one allowing a strong possibility of difference. If Being is identical to thinking—which is another way of stating that there is nothing but thinking—and thinking is multiple, there is something like an originary difference, which is irreducible to any unity. This perspective seems to solve the problem of difference, but the price to pay is very high for two reasons. The first one relates to the fact that an originary, multiple thinking implies the impossibility of any form of rationality and understanding, a situation that also affects perspective 3. From an epistemological point of view there is no longer a principle of non-contradiction or a principle of identity because different forms of thinking are on the same level. A and not-A could be simultaneously true because there is no unique, universal point of view. But what is even more problematic is the fact that this situation is also true from an ontological perspective if Being and thinking are inseparable (which is not the case for perspective 3). If perspective 3 implies the impossibility of rationality and understanding, perspective 4 seems to imply the impossibility of any reality.

The ambition of metaontology is to embrace perspective 4 without losing the possibility of rationality and reality. This is why metaontology aims to produce an ontological—as opposed to a purely epistemological—discourse that is capable of thinking otherness and difference without reducing it to a unity. This means that metaontology should think of difference without reducing it to the thinking of metaontology itself. Metaontology will need to solve the paradox that, if otherness and difference are thinkable, then they are no more other and different; if they are not thinkable, it is impossible to speak about them. In other words, metaontology aims to think an ontologically and an epistemologically originary multiplicity and to develop, from this multiplicity, the possibility of a multiple reality.

Where is the real today?

Le fanatisme contemporain ne saurait donc être tenu simplement pour la résurgence d’un archaïsme violemment opposé aux acquis de la raison critique occidentale, car il est au contraire l’effet de la rationalité critique, et cela en tant même - soulignons-le - que cette rationalité fut effectivement émancipatrice - fut effectivement, et heureusement, destructrice du dogmatisme.(Meillassoux 2012, 67)31 The 20th century’s philosophical struggle has often tried to make difference possible without reducing it to rationality and to reality. The strongest the possibility of difference—as in perspective 4—, the weakest the rationality and reality. As shown above, there are two parallel strategies that must combine in order to make difference possible: the first strategy involves avoiding the separation of thinking and Being; the second involves deny the possibility of universal thinking.

In fact, as will quickly become clear, to deploy the diversity of felicity conditions it would do no good to settle for saying that it is simply a matter of different “language games.” Were we to do so, our generosity would actually be a cover for extreme stinginess, since it is to language, but still not to being, that we would be entrusting the task of accounting for diversity. Being would continue to be expressed in a single, unique way, or at least it would continue to be interrogated according to a single mode—or, to use the technical term, according to a single category . Whatever anyone might do, there would still be only one mode of existence —even if “manners of speaking”—which are not very costly, from the standpoint of ordinary good sense—were allowed to proliferate.(Latour 2013, 20) The first point seems necessary for at least two reasons. First of all, it is impossible to claim an independence of Being and thinking without falling into dogmatic realism; it is impossible to talk about something with which there is no relationship. The very fact of “talking” about something is already a relationship. Secondly, if Being is separate from thinking, this means that any thinkable plurality will be ontologically reduced to the unity of Being. It is thus necessary to deny the separation of Being and thinking. This has a first important consequence: if Being and thinking are not separate, then thinking cannot be interpreted as a representation of Being. From a perspective like the first one, there is, on one hand, Being and, on the other hand, thinking which represents Being. There is a cow—which is, regardless of any form of thinking—and then there is the fact of thinking a cow. The thought cow is a representation of the cow itself. But if there is no longer a separation between Being and thinking, this dual relationship no longer functions; thinking is no longer thinking something. The mimetic relationship is broken and there is just the thought-being. This thought-being does not refer to something else: the thought cow is not a representation of the cow. There is no referent to thinking. This means that there is no way of deciding whether the thought cow is the result of a correct form of thinking. Therefore, if there are two thought cows, both of them are ontologically on the same level of legitimacy.

The second strategy consists in denying the possibility of a universal form of thinking. If thinking is universal, there is only one thought cow and one therefore faces the same problem as if Being and thinking were separated: every multiplicity is eventually reduced to a universal unity—in this case, not one of Being, but that of thinking.

After these two strategies are actualized, there is no more a stand-alone Being—something like a cow—and there is no way to compare two or more different thought cows.

On 8 November 2016, as the writing of this book neared com- pletion, the voters of the United States elected the ​­scandal-​ ridden businessman and reality television star Donald J. Trump as their next President.[…] As usual, one of the most contrarian pos- itions was taken by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who persisted in his pre-​­ ​­ election claim that a Clinton victory would simply lead to more neoliberal mediocrity, while a win for the aspiring strongman Trump would at least serve to galvanize new and surprising political coalitions. 1 A more common reaction, however, was to condemn Trump’s victory as the sign of a world that no longer has any respect for truth. Subtly leading the charge was no less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary, which enshrined ‘​­post-​­truth’ as its 2016 word of the year, defining the term as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. 2 No one could miss the implied refer- ence to a specific, newly minted American politician. If we believe the OED ’s definition, the best remedy for our supposedly ​­post-​­truth condition would be ‘objective facts’.(Harman 2018, 3–4.) Post- modernism is retreating, both philosophically and ideologically, not because it missed its goals but, on the contrary, precisely because it hit them all too well. The massive phenomenon— and, I would say, the main cause of the turn—was precisely this full and perverse realization that now seems close to implosion.(Ferraris, De Sanctis, and Harman 2014, 3.) These two strategies seem necessary to allow difference and otherness, but, if they are radicalized, they deny the possibility of rationality and reality. Continental philosophy in the 20th century, in attempting to make difference possible, generated a reaction in the beginning of the 21st century: it seems that the issue no longer relates to allow difference, but to bringing reality back. What is curious is that both the tendency of making difference possible and that of bringing back reality stem from complementary political concerns. War, violence, domination and exploitation seem founded on the idea of unity. Everything can be reduced to a unity: one good, one ethics, one society, one humankind. From this standpoint, it is always possible—and even necessary—to fight and destroy everything which does not correspond with predefined unity. In merging Being and thinking, philosophical discourse during the 20th century stated that these unities, which were grounds for violence, were actually the result of power and not a requirement of “nature”. The notion of “Being is thinking” means, for example, that the essence of human beings is not as it is for an ontological, unchangeable reason; the essence of human beings is a production of discourse and this discourse is driven by power. The same essence can be produced in many different ways. This statement can be used as a starting point to condemn violence. It is impossible to justify the reduction to unity because each unity is the result of power. Ethically, there is no way of basing a reduction to unity on an ontological principle. For example: one cannot state that one race is better than another because it is closer to a predefined essence of human being. One cannot state that women have a particular place in society because of their nature. One cannot say that a particular sexual behaviour is to be condemned because it is not natural. There is no such thing as the essence of human beings or the nature of women or natural sexual behaviour, simply because all these ideas are nothing but the product of a particular power-driven form of thinking. Once again: the same essence can be produced in many different ways.

But is it possible to limit this “many” in order to prevent it becoming “any”? If not, essences can be produced in any way: the world is production and it is impossible to identify boundaries to this production. This is what has been labelled above as a radical constructivist point of view. The political problem is now a different one: how is it possible to avoid some forms of violence which are based on the idea that one can build reality as one likes? If the world can be produced in any way, then all these productions are on the same level of legitimacy. A scientific statement about the mass of the Earth is on the same level as a Flat Earth Theory. A historical statement could be replaced by any other statement. There are no more facts, just discourse, and this discourse has no limits, no boundaries. Violence is no longer founded on the impossibility of difference, but on a difference which is so radical that it makes everything undifferentiated again. A philosophical approach aiming to promote tolerance, in this way, implies the impossibility of objectivity.

Nell’ultimo anno il dibattito filosofico italiano è stato occupato dalla rinata disputa tra realisti e antirealisti. Con una serie di articoli su riviste specialistiche come MicroMega e con una impegnativa campagna condotta sulle pagine dei principali quotidiani italiani, da Repubblica al Corriere della Sera, Maurizio Ferraris ha proposto di riportare al centro della discussione il concetto di “realtà”, a suo dire liquidato nei passati decenni dal postmodernismo e dalla decostruzione, dall’ermeneutica e dal pensiero debole (FERRARIS 2011). Quest’ultimo in particolare viene individuato come responsabile della polverizzazione della realtà, processo dalle imprevedibili conseguenze reazionarie: una volta misconosciuto il valore dei fatti, la molteplicità delle interpretazioni non ha favorito l’emancipazione e la libertà degli individui ma, paradossalmente, ha assecondato il «populismo mediatico» trasformando la realtà in «reality» (FERRARIS, VATTIMO 2011). Mosso dunque da istanze teoretiche ed etiche, il Nuovo Realismointerviene a riabilitare il valore inemendabile dei fatti contro la deriva delle interpretazioni. (Oliva 2012, 53) It is important to underline that this disappearance of reality and objectivity is not claimed or determined directly by philosophical discourse. A close reading of any text of what has been labeled as “post-structuralism” will show that this risk was very clear and that many strategies were deployed in order to avoid it. The tension between the possibility of difference and otherness and the possibility of an objective reality has been at the centre of philosophical discourse since its beginnings and all philosophical texts address it in some way or another. It is true, however, that some 20th century texts, as it has been transferred in less specialized discourses—like mass-media or literature—, seem unable to help with the contemporary feeling that reality becomes less and less graspable.

What is interesting about this situation is that this problem does not concern only—nor mostly—the philosophical field, but society at large. Topics like the relationship between ontology and epistemology, Being and thinking, difference and reality—which were once relegated to very small, specialist communities—become issues of public interest.

But why speak of an inquiry into modes of existence? It is because we have to ask ourselves why rationalism has not been able to define the adventure of modernization in which it has nevertheless, at least in theory, so clearly participated. To explain this failure of theory to grasp practices, we may settle for the charitable fiction proposed above, to be sure, but we shall find ourselves blocked very quickly when we have to invent a new system of coordinates to accommodate the various experiences that the inquiry is going to reveal. For language itself will be deficient here. The issue—and it is a philosophical rather than an anthropological issue—is that language has to be made capable of absorbing the pluralism of values. And this has to be done “for real,” not merely in words. So there is no use hiding the fact that the question of modes of existence has to do with metaphysics or, better, ontology —regional matters, to be sure, since the question concerns only the Moderns and their peregrinations.(Latour 2013, 19 annotation) One particular manifestation of this debate relates to the status of scientific knowledge. If reality is always the production of power, how can one affirm the objectivity and the validity of scientific knowledge? In 21st century western societies, there is a tension between the impact and the presence of scientific discourses—inherited from modernity—and the idea of a power-driven reality.

At issue was a book with the French title Impostures intellectuelles, published by Odile Jacob and authored by two physicists, the American Alan Sokal and the Belgian Jean Bricmont. The two authors dissect what they call the “jargon” and the “charlatanism,” the “veritable intoxication with words,” and the “disdain for facts and logic” on the part of an intellectual current which they present, “for convenience” (or as they put it in the French version, “pour simplifier”), as “postmodernism.”2 This current is characterized by “the more or less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment” and “a cognitive and cultural relativism that regards science as nothing more than a ‘narration,’ a ‘myth,’ or a social construction among many others.” Its targets were almost all French, authors such as “Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Felix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Serres and Paul Virilio,” to whom they add, as the book progresses, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva, and Michel Foucault. Sakal and Bricmont denounce “the manifest irrelevance of the scientific terminology” sometimes used by these authors, which leads them not only to “confused thinking” but also to “irrationalism or nihilism.” The 1996 Sokal affair and the 2008 Grievance studies affair are examples of this tension. What they show is that the academic system of legitimation is not able to draw the line between multiplicity and undifferentiated thinking. Within North-American academic institutions, the two strategies of merging thinking and Being and of denying the possibility of a universal thinking lead to the impossibility of limiting discourse on the world: it is not only possible to produce many worlds, it is possible to produce whatever world one likes. Within such a theoretical framework, which has naturalized these two strategies, it is impossible to discern a serious paper from a hoax. This is probably not due to the lack of attention in reviewing papers, it is constitutive of the very structure of this discourse: there is actually no difference between a serious paper and a hoax; the only difference is perhaps the intention of the authors. The problem is that this possibility of producing any discourse contradicts the approach that scientific disciplines have in the same institutions: it is possible to decide if a paper in physics is valid or not. There is thus a clash of academic cultures: one representing a certain field of humanities—whose fundamental political goal is to make difference possible—and one representing scientific disciplines that are structured by a universal mathematical and experimental method and that allow consensus on what is real.

Metaontology’s ambition is to propose a solution on the tension between the possibility of difference and the possibility of reality: metaontology is an ontology of originary multiplicity, which tries to draw a precise line between multiplicity and undifferentiated thinking. This constitutes an ontology and not an epistemology because its ambition is to address the problem of an originary difference which can never be reduced to unity. It is an ontology that avoids dogmatism and that is thus based on the identity of Being and thinking. It refuses the idea of one universal thinking so as to adopt the perspective 4 described above. Starting from this standpoint, difference is possible. There is no more a Being, but a plurality of multiple-Being which constitute multiple thinking. But how is it possible to limit this multiplicity? This limit is the only possibility of a form of rationality and objectivity. Reality can be multiple, but this multiplicity should not become an empty object that can be filled with anything.

Metaontology identifies this limit with the materiality of inscriptions. A material inscription is the very concrete, physical way in which something exists as a trace or a sign, or more generally as material elements. Thinking is always inscribed. Being is therefore always inscribed. This inscription is the key for carving out a distinction between multiplicity and undifferentiated thinking. Metaontology is the multiple ontology of the material inscriptions that constitute Being.

Digital conjunctures

The hermeneutics which appears to me much more interesting is that which, when one attempts to use the word in more conventional terms, refers to works by a learned community of Alexandrines, active three centuries before Jesus Christ: philologists, grammarians, librarians, archivists, cartographers, astronomers, who associate the quest for meaning with the research of highly reliable manuscripts, the description of forms with the material arrangement of objects, linguistic tools with the historicity of cultural styles, the science of the stars with the world’s dimensions. The most interesting element in fact being that there is no relation between a god, priests or soothsayers and ignorant humans bound by a necessarily vertical relationship, but an entire community of scholars working on and with objects in a way that is, so to speak, horizontal. (Méchoulan 2017, Cf. annotation)32 The fact that metaontology attributes such importance to material inscription is another characteristic that historically locates this text and its theoretical approach. Metaontology is necessary and possible today because of a particular situation of inscriptions. This situation can be identified with the label “digital conjunctures”.

To begin, it is crucial to avoid what has been identified as the rhetoric of revolution and thus to affirm that a digital revolution and “the digital” do not exist. In order to understand and analyze the particular situation of material inscription at the beginning of the 21st century, it is necessary to consider that it is a multiplicity of heterogeneous forms of material inscriptions; each of these inscriptions belongs to a continuous history. In order to clarify this statement, it is useful to identify some principles that characterize material forms of inscription and that elucidate the metaontological position.

Autant dire que la culture numérique, en partie à cause de son succès et de son rôle économique de plus en plus important, effectue un basculement et une transition qui sont à la fois politiques et sociologiques, et en dernière analyse culturels. C’est à cet égard que nous pouvons comparer cette culture en plein essor, avec sa tendance universaliste, à la religion. Je soutiendrai que, dans la période actuelle, la culture numérique est, de fait, la seule rivale de la religion en tant que présence universelle.(Doueihi 2011a, 23) 1. Material forms of inscription are heterogeneous and always changing. This change is continuous; there are no important ruptures in their evolution and therefore no revolutions. This text can be taken as an example: it is a material, digital inscription. It is the material inscription of thinking. It is written in a particular format —markdown—and then converted into HTML. Each character is expressed in base 2 thanks to the ASCII encoding. The sets of 1 and 0 are stored in the form of a series of magnetic states on a hard disk. Then there is a set of protocols (TCI/IP, DNS, HTTP, to mention just a few) allowing to transfer this information to a remote machine. One could continue to list the very large set of material elements involved in this particular—and apparently very simple—form of material inscription (a graphical card, an operating system, a screen, a cable, and so on). By decomposing this form in many aspects, it is easy to identify that each of them forms part of a continuous history: the history of language—this text is written in a particular form of English—, the history of letters, the history of mathematics, the history of algorithms, the history of networks, the history of protocols, the history of physics, the history of chemistry… This text is deeply different compared to a PDF or epub or XML versions that one would also call “digital”. It is another text, it tells something else, it is another form of thinking, another thought. And, in fact, “this” text is something quite difficult to identify, as it is always changing: which one? The one which is being written on a Linux laptop using vim? The one some machine is transferring from this laptop to another machine situated somewhere in Canada?
2. This change is not linear or teleological. A particular form of inscription is the result of a complex conjuncture of forces, dynamics and histories. There is no linear history moving toward a particular goal. Interpreting digital forms of inscription as the realization of some generic goal of utility, velocity, performance, transparency, simplicity… is just the result of a fictive discourse. A discourse which is very useful for companies who want to sell devices or software. There is no progress or evolution. Digital environments renew, in some ways, some very old and forgotten notions and make more recent ones obsolete. To give a quick example: the conception of the author in most digital practices more closely resembles the medieval idea of knowledge production than the modern one. At the same time, what has been called “digital” combines very different—and sometimes even opposite—forms of inscription. What is the relationship between a picture of a white cat on a couch on Instagram and the manuscript of the Greek Anthology digitized and published online by the Palatine Library? And between a Google Search result list and the French SNCF mobile application where one can search and buy a train ticket? Putting all these different realities together and defining them as “digital” is a very dangerous shortcut that forces assimilation to heterogeneous things for often unclear reasons—are they “recent”? Do they use computers? We could argue that digital photography is a separate medium that emerges as a result of the development of preceding media, while obviously remaining separate from these phenomena. Indeed, it is a particular technique that puts in place specific conditions that can thereby be described by a series of essential and defining features. But separating digital photography from preceding media is not commensurate with actual practices. We could say that digital techniques allow us to immediately capture a particular moment, without the need of posing subjects, in at once obtaining the photographic result of the photo – which does not need to be printed in a laboratory. But we could also consider things differently by trying to capture the mediating conjunctures that constitute the photographic moment (the moment wherein one triggers the shutter open). We will see that a series of ideas, of tendencies, of conditions constitute the elements put into play which trigger the shutter open. These tendencies are not specific to digital photography: what brings about a digital photo is the conjuncture of these tendencies that converge when the camera ‘clicks’. In particular, the idea of having subjects that are not posing. This idea is already present in photography prior to the digital. From the 1930s, we have in fact begun to take portraits of ordinary situations, without staging the photographic subjects. In family albums, we can notice that the portraits, where everybody is positioned and posing for the photograph, have been replaced with more ‘natural’ photos. In the field of artistic photography, we could reference Doisneau and his ‘stolen moments’. But this tendency existed even before the photo: let us think, for example, of Caravaggio’s portraits. Saint Matthew, for example, with his dirty foot pointed towards the viewer, is a painting profoundly marked by this tendency.
As for the rapid acquisition of the final product – the digital photo does not need to be developed and printed –, we notice that this tendency is identifiable prior to digital photography: in 1948, for example, the Polaroid appeared. But also, before the Polaroid, one described the skill of a painter by pointing out their speed, and their ability to capture a moment – such as the impressionists. To these, we add a particular technique, that of the camera obscura which, if it was undeniably at the center of photographic development, also characterized painting, at lease from the Venetian Veduta. Instead of identifying digital photography as a separate medium, we could therefore concentrate on the practice of taking a photo – the very moment that the photo is taken – and analyze the ensemble of tendencies that are activated at this precise moment: this is what it means to account for mediating conjunctures. (Larrue and Vitali-Rosati 2019, 59–60.)
3. It is possible to identify some conjunctures, enabling a consideration of heterogeneous forms of inscription. If material inscriptions are heterogeneous and if there is no such thing as “the digital”, what is the meaning of the label “digital conjunctures”? It is necessary to understand the non-essentialist meaning of the term “conjunctures”: digital conjunctures are not a stable and easily identifiable object. They are more like a set of patterns that assemble in order to identify a posteriori a kind of zone or field of vision. Digital forms of inscription are different and they are characterized by many forces and elements, as it has been mentioned in the example above. However, it is possible to identify some recurring patterns, which are common to two these different forms of inscription. These patterns are not new if considered one by one, but their conjuncture determines the emergence of something that seems new or at least identifiable. The importance of protocols, formats, material means of transmission is an example of these patterns. The fundamental role of mathematical modelization is another. It is impossible to identify all elements composing the patterns: depending on how one describes them, one will have a very different conjuncture. This is why this text will use the plural form to refer to digital conjunctures.
4. Digital conjunctures are particular conjunctures which roughly characterize 21st century forms of inscription. If they are analyzed as an object—which they are not—then they can give a sense of transformation when, in reality, they are the result of a series of small changes within a set of historical patterns. But the feeling of transformation is there, and it has an impact on global forms of thinking.
5. Digital conjunctures produce a new interest for forms of inscription and draw attention to their materiality. This is probably the main implication of digital conjunctures. The set of minor changes considered together as a general pattern has the effect of focusing attention on the materiality of inscriptions. This attention is not new, but it has not always been at the centre of philosophical discourse. In some historical periods, the relative stabilization of some forms of inscription gives a sense of their naturalisation. The result is that one attributes less importance to the materiality of inscription. Some ideas of text, or orality, or discourse as immaterial objects is the result of this sense of naturalisation. The material forms of inscription are stable and they become almost transparent. The 21st century is thus—globally—characterized by an “opacification” of forms of inscription because of the set of changes observable in digital conjunctures. This determines a renewed attention to the materiality of inscription, which one can identify in philosophical discourse at the end of the 20th century and even more during the early 21st century. 6. Changing conjunctures always determine a global change in theories. In the particular context of this text and its creation, one can easily identify a global tendency to question some stabilized notion as the place of human beings in the materialization of thinking, or a particular idea of the relationship between nature and technique. These ideas were quite stable in the modern age and they seem to be shifting now.

This is the context in which metaontology emerges. These are the historical reasons that metaontology is an ontology of inscriptions founded on the importance of material forms of thinking and its manifestation. Metaontology presents itself as a particular material inscription of thinking; it determines a specific theoretical discourse. The material form of inscription is the real enunciator of metaontology, which is not the result of the thinking activity of an author, but that of the output of a complex set of technological, social, cultural and historical forces. The meaning of this discourse depends on this material form of inscription.

Temporary conclusion

It is time to summarize the results of this first chapter and, in particular, the ambitions of metaontology.

  1. It is necessary to avoid dogmatism. It is impossible to speak about a world without having access to it. This implies that Being and thinking must merge. Metaontology will accept this identity between thinking and Being.
  2. It is necessary to grant a strong possibility of multiplicity and difference. In order to do so, Being and thinking must be multiple and there must be no possible reduction to unity. Metaontology must be an ontology of original multiplicity.
  3. It is necessary to grant the possibility of reality and rationality. There must be a clear distinction between what is real and what is not real, what is rational and what is not rational. Metaontology must be a realistic ontology.
  4. It is necessary for thinking to be material and inscribed. This will be the only way of avoiding dogmatism and antirealism. Metaontology must be an ontology of inscriptions.

These four points demonstrate that metaontology must start by analysing the material inscription of thinking: this will be the goal of chapter 2.

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Plato. 1902. Platonis Opera; Edited by John Burnet. Oxonii, e typographeo Clarendoniano. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0172%3Atext%3DTheaet.%3Asection%3D155d.

Plato. 1921. Plato: In Twelve Volumes, with an English Translation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0171%3Atext%3DTheaet.%3Asection%3D155d.

———. 2008. Parmenides. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Parmenides.

Plotinus. 1953. Enneads. Translated by Stephen Mackenna. Boston: C.T. Branford Co. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Enneads/Nature,_Contemplation,_and_the_One.

———. 1964. Opera. Edited by Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer. Oxonii: e Typographeo Clarendoniano. http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/Iris/Cite?2000:001:558017.

Simplicius, Hermann Diels. 1882. Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Quattuor Priores Commentaria. typis et impensis G. Reimeri. http://archive.org/details/simpliciiinaris00goog.

Spinoza, Benedictus de. 1670. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Continens Dissertationes Aliquot, Quibus Ostenditur Libertatem Philosophandi Non Tantum Salva Pietate, & Reipublicae Pace Posse Concedi: Sed Eandem Nisi Cum Pace Reipublicae, Ipsaque Pietate Tolli Non Posse. Hamburgi: H. Künraht.

———. 1997. Theologico-Political Treatise — Part 1. Translated by R. H. M. (Robert Harvey Monro) Elwes. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/989.

Vico, Giambattista. 1948. The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Translated by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Harold Fisch Max. Cornell University Press. http://archive.org/details/newscienceofgiam030174mbp.

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  1. It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe.

  2. For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy, and he who said that Iris was the child of Thaumas made a good genealogy. (Plato 1921)

  3. And Thaumas wedded Electra the daughter of deep-flowing Ocean, and she bore him swift Iris.

  4. Si la pensée a trouvé naissance dans el seul étonnement, comme nous le disent des textes vénérables, il n’est pas facile d’expliquer qu’elle en soit venue si rapidement à prenrde la forme d’une philosophie systématique. […] Car l’étonnement que produit en nous la généreuse existence de la vie autor de nous ne permet pas un aussi rapide détachement des multiples merveilles qui la suscitent.

  5. La poésie poursuivait, entre-temps, la mltiplicité dédaignée, l’hétorogénéité méprisée. Nous touchons là au point peut-être le plus sélicat de tous: celui lié au problème de l’"unité-hétérogénéité. […] L’Être avait été défini avant tout comme unité.i […] Les apparences se détruisent les unes les autres. Qui donc possède l’unité possède tout.

  6. La philosophie est une extase qu’un déchirement fait échouer.

  7. Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? That is the question. Presumably it is no arbitrary question. “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?”—this is obviously the first of all questions. Of course, it is not the first question in the chronological sense. Individuals as well as peoples ask many questions in the course of their historical passage through time. They explore, investigate, and test many sorts of things before they run into the question “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” Many never run into this question at all, if running into the question means not only hearing and reading the interrogative sentence as uttered, but asking the question, that is, taking a stand on it, posing it, compelling oneself into the state of this questioning.
    And yet, we are each touched once, maybe even now and then, by the concealed power of this question, without properly grasping what is happening to us. In great despair, for example, when all weight tends to dwindle away from things and the sense of things grows dark, the question looms.

  8. Ich dagegen sage: es sind uns Dinge als außer uns befindliche Gegenstände unserer Sinne gege[63]ben, allein von dem, was sie an sich selbst sein mögen, wissen wir nichts, sondern kennen nur ihre Erscheinungen, d. i. die Vorstellungen, die sie in uns wirken, indem sie unsere Sinne affizieren. Demnach gestehe ich allerdings, daß es außer uns Körper gebe, d. i. Dinge, die, obzwar nach dem, was sie an sich selbst sein mögen, uns gänzlich unbekannt, wir durch die Vorstellungen kennen, welche ihr Einfluß auf unsre Sinnlichkeit uns verschafft, und denen wir die Benennung eines Körpers geben, welches Wort also bloß die Erscheinung jenes uns unbekannten, aber nichtsdestoweniger wirklichen Gegenstandes bedeutet.

  9. We here propose to do just what Copernicus did in attempting to explain the celestial movements. When he found that he could make no progress by assuming that all the heavenly bodies revolved round the spectator, he reversed the process, and tried the experiment of assuming that the spectator revolved, while the stars remained at rest. We may make the same experiment with regard to the intuition of objects. If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Critique_of_Pure_Reason_(Meiklejohn)/Preface_2

  10. Par « corrélation », nous entendons l’idée suivant laquelle nous n’avons accès qu’à la corrélation de la pensée et de l’être, et jamais à l’un de ces termes pris isolément. Nous appellerons donc désormais corrélationisme tout courant de pensée qui soutiendra le caractère indépassable de la corrélation ainsi entendue. Dès lors, il devient possible de dire que toute philosophie qui ne se veut pas un réalisme naïf est devenue une variante du corrélationisme.

  11. Repartons alors de ce simple constat : la science formule aujourd’hui un certain nombre d’énoncés ancestraux, portant sur l’âge de l’univers, la formation des étoiles ou la formation de la Terre. Il ne nous appartient évidemment pas de juger de la fiabilité des techniques employées en vue de la formulation de ces énoncés. Ce qui nous intéresse, en revanche, c’est de savoir à quelles conditions de sens répondent de tels énoncés. Et plus exactement, nous demandons quelle interprétation le corrélationisme est susceptible de donner des énoncés ancestraux ?

  12. πῶς, φάναι, ὦ Ζήνων, τοῦτο λέγεις; εἰ πολλά ἐστι τὰ ὄντα, ὡς ἄρα δεῖ αὐτὰ ὅμοιά τε εἶναι καὶ ἀνόμοια, τοῦτο δὲ δὴ ἀδύνατον: οὔτε γὰρ τὰ ἀνόμοια ὅμοια οὔτε τὰ ὅμοια ἀνόμοια οἷόν τε εἶναι; οὐχ οὕτω λέγεις; See annotation

  13. So, therefore, it is evident that the first reason or, principle of plurality or division is from affirmation and negation, as the order of origin of such plurality is understood, because first there must be understanding of being and non-being, by which first divisions are constituted, and by this, there are the many. Hence, just as first being, inasmuch as it is undivided, is immediately recognized as one, so after division of being and non-being there is immediate recognition of the plurality of first simple beings. The nature of diversity, moreover, follows upon plurality according as there remains in it the virtue of its cause, that is, the opposition of being and nonbeing. Therefore one of many diverse things is said to be related to another because it is not that other.

  14. If then everything that is in motion must be moved by something, and the movent must either itself be moved by something else or not, and in the former case there must be some first movent that is not itself moved by anything else, while in the case of the immediate movent being of this kind there is no need of an intermediate movent that is also moved (for it is impossible that there should be an infinite series of movents, each of which is itself moved by something else, since in an infinite series there is no first term)-if then everything that is in motion is moved by something, and the first movent is moved but not by anything else, it much be moved by itself.

  15. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. annotation

  16. If anything one thinks or says is what it is, the reason of all things will be one, namely Being; nothing is or will be outside Being.

  17. 37. And as all this detail again involves other prior or more detailed contingent things, each of which still needs a similar analysis to yield its reason, we are no further forward: and the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the sequence or series of particular contingent things, however infinite this series may be.
    38. Thus the final reason of things must be in a necessary substance, in which the variety of particular changes exists only eminently, as in its source; and this substance we call God. (

  18. The I is identical in its very alterations. It represents them to itself and thinks them. The universal identity in which the heterogenous can be embraced has the ossature of a subject, of the first person. Universal thought is an “I think”. (Levinas 1979, 36)

  19. It cannot be, itself, The Good, since then it would not need to see or to perform any other Act; for The Good is the centre of all else, and it is by means of The Good that every thing has Act, while the Good is in need of nothing and therefore possesses nothing beyond itself.
    Once you have uttered “The Good,” add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency. (Plotinus 1953 III,8,11, see annotation)

  20. ‘Then, thou must on similar grounds admit that unity and goodness are the same; for when the effects of things in their natural working differ not, their essence is one and the same.’ see annotation

  21. The whole of this work aims to show a relation with the other not only cutting across the logic of contradiction, where the other of A is the non-A, the negation of A, but also across dialectical logic, where the same dialectically participates in and is reconcilied with the other in the Unity of the system. (Levinas 1979, 150)

  22. Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.(Vico 1948, 144)

  23. The nature of things is nothing but their coming into being (nascimento) at certain times and in certain fashions. Whenever the time and fashion is thus and so, such and not otherwise are the things that come into being. (Vico 1948, 147)

  24. Next I inquired, why the Hebrews were called God’s chosen people, and discovering that it was only because God had chosen for them a certain strip of territory, where they might live peaceably and at ease, I learnt that the Law revealed by God to Moses was merely the law of the individual Hebrew state, therefore that it was binding on none but Hebrews, and not even on Hebrews after the downfall of their nation. (Spinoza 1997, Preface)

  25. Not only modern war but every war employs arms that turn against those who wield them. It establishes an order from wich no one can keep his distance; nothing henceforth is exterior. War does not manifest exteriority and the other as other; it destroys the identity of the same. The visage of being that shows itself in war is fixed in the concept of totality, which dominates Western philosophy. (Levinas 1979, 21)

  26. Incapable of respecting the Being and meaning of the other, phenomenology and ontology would be philosophies of violence. Through them, the entire philosophical tradition, in its meaning and at bottom, would make common cause with oppression and with the totalitarianism of the same. The ancient clandestine friendship between light and power, the ancient complicity between theoretical objectivity and technico-political possession. “If the other could be possessed, seized, and known, it would not be the other. To possess, to know, to grasp are all synonyms of power” (TA).(Derrida 1964 translated in @katz_emmanuel_2005 p. 100-101)

  27. The subject dealt with here is manifestly in the air. The signs may be noted: Heidegger’s more and more pronounced orientation towards a philosophy of ontological Difference; the structuralist project, based upon a distribution of differential characters within a space of coexistence; the contemporary novelist’s art which revolves around difference and repetition, not only in its most abstract reflections but also in its effective techniques; the discovery in a variety of fields of a power peculiar to repetition, a power which also inhabits the unconscious, language and art. All these signs may be attributed to a generalized anti-Hegelianism: difference and repetition have taken the place of the identical and the negative, of identity and contradiction. (Deleuze 2015, 1)

  28. The other is not the negation of the same, as Hegel would like to say. The fundamental fact of the ontological scission into same and other is a non-allergic relation of the same with the other. Transcendence or goodness is produced as pluralism. The pluralism of being is not produced as a multiplicity of a constellation spread out before a possible gaze, for thus it would be already totalized, joined into an entity. Pluralism is accomplished in goodness proceeding from me to the other, in which first the other, as absolutely other, can be produced, without an alleged lateral view upon this movement having any right to grasp of it a truth superior to that which is produced in goodness itself. One does not enter into this pluralist society without always remaining outside by speech (in which goodness is produced) - but one does not leave it in order to simply see oneself inside. The unity of plurality is peace, and not the coherence of the elements that constitute plurality.(Levinas 1979, 305–6)

  29. Meillassoux (2009)

  30. Meillassoux (2009)

  31. Meillassoux (2009)

  32. L’herméneutique qui me paraît bien plus intéressante est celle qui, lorsqu’on se met à employer le terme de manière courante, désigne les travaux de ce milieu de savants alexandrins du IIIe siècle avant Jésus Christ : philologues, grammairiens, bibliothécaires, archivistes, cartographes, astronomes, qui associent la quête de significations à la recherche des manuscrits les plus fiables, la description des formes aux classements matériels des objets, les appareillages linguistiques à l’historicité des styles culturels, le calcul des astres aux mesures du monde. Le plus intéressant étant justement qu’il ne s’agit pas d’une relation entre un dieu, des prêtres ou devins et des humains en manque d’interprétation dans une relation nécessairement verticale, mais de tout un milieu de savants travaillant sur des objets différents d’une manière, pour ainsi dire, horizontale.