Skip to main content

Arché: contingency, agency. (and a note on the an-arché of Spinoza)

I realize a lot of what has worried me recently really revolves around the idea of arché - as commandment and commencement. Absence of arché is a possible understanding of contingency (lack of command, lack of a starting point that starts anything) and a world without agency is arguably a world where chaos reigns - of Meillassouxian hyperchaos. Agency and contingency are two sides of the issue of arché. This is why Leibniz was adamant in exorcizing Epicurean indetermination by random swerves in order to make sure real agents were ubiquitous. This is also why there is no agency in Meillassoux, fragile space for it in Hume (which is dependent, as in Kant, of a duality or realms, a realm of subjective autonomy and a realm of objective anomy) and a limited space for it in a cosmology of swerves - something is slightly out of control because otherwise there is no novelty, which means that the ordinary fabric of being is not laden with novelties. In general, I've been trying to thing the an-arché: the absence of government that could be considered in terms of a lack of agency or as a proliferation of agents each of them in friction with the others - contingency not as anomy but as plurinomy or polynomy. The general task is maybe to think beyond the old western link between onto and arché and try to figure out whether there is an ontology where no arché (or absence of it) plays a central role. This still puzzles me.

When considering a world without agency, I thought of a Meillassouxian hyperchaos but also of Spinoza's immanent substance. His is not an acting substance - not anything with purpose, with sense of fulfillment, with creative capacity or placed in a commanding position. Immanence when complete is very close to necessary contingency: in both cases there is no starting point and nothing follows anything. Spinoza's one-substance system has no place for contingency (no place for plurality) because it has no place for agency - Leibniz's God, in contrast, is an agent because it could have done differently. Yet, the consequence is that things take place without any foothold other than sheer existence.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev...
1 comment
Read more

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Me...
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I ...
Post a Comment
Read more