Yes; one could say ‘divinity’. I think the problem, as some people have talked about elsewhere, is what that term incorporates; hence the ‘need’ for commitment, what I could term, conventional commitment, or maybe a commitment to the institutionalized-ideologized State, the incorporated arena thereof that has been designated (conventionally) ‘x-ism’, or even for another arena, ‘family’ – the need for commitment because the journey ends in the wilderness, one never leaves, and so far as one might say ‘divinity’ and holds to the term as it is supposed to convey something ‘already known’, she has made a commitment to that presumption. But the presumption often misses the meaning because one is attempting to place some meaning gained in the wilderness into reality. Yet, the one stays there because the wilderness is that one-ness, the place where one is, and reality is not of oneness, and ‘divinity’ thus mis-represents – that is unless one then has made a decision for commitment. Here then one type of faith may arise out of the wilderness for its longing to bring the wilderness into reality, but reality is civilization, it is idea-ology, community, multiplicity: reality is humanity. If one needs no commitment but rather decides upon a commitment it is because she has no one to bring with, but sees reality as One, as The One, The Only One; she is the individual, the subject of multiple discourses, the pure multiple of the One. By this, as a methodological reduction, I would venture the commitment of decision is likewise the non-philosophical Real under which the (non-) article in the ‘last-instance’ of conventional methodology resides. The wanderer into the wilderness knows she is one, has encountered the one in communion, and wishes reality could be this, wishes the one-ness could be brought into reality – but alas, what is romantic? Why else would she have found herself there? Why would there even be an issue?

*

Maybe it is not so novel; perhaps this is very much like Francois Laruelle’s essay about ‘The Call’, his ‘tearing away’ from philosophy, except here the tearing has already happened. Inso much as it still might happen or is happening, as in philosophies of progress, violence appears to explain reality in a quite interesting manner. See, correspondingly, it seems, I am tending toward violence, of a type, maybe a dialectic of violence of non-violence. The ever-present violence and the ever-present effort to counter it; reality and its philosophical discursive acrobatics based in, basically, an effort of denial, of ‘covering up’ the violence. It appears that violence is the real standard, the evil that always peers its head and makes itself be known without effort.

Anger, frustration, conflict, suffering, desperation, self righteousness, deceit; these seem the given of life. Peace, contentment, happiness, openness; these are taught to us early in childhood, but the teaching is instigated by violence. We recall here the discussions around prohibitive “Thou Shalt Not” religions, a violence, as well ironically and by contrast Socrates’s ‘daimon’ that behaves to indicate where he should not proceed, as an indicator of non-violence. The point here is that the former dictates movement, where the latter guides. Indeed, the child is initiated into human life through violence that is confirmed by the ‘no’; it is the parent saying by perfect parenthood, “you, the child shall have no contentment, no peace until your first learn that life is not acceptance, all is not good. You child need know what life really is, and it is proper assertion of who you are, and to know who you really are, you have to compete.” From birth we are taught violence against what we are. Every parental kindness, act of love and compassion is tempered by the effort for the development of the child’s real identity, of being able not only to function in the world and be able to absorb or deflect life’s inherent crassness, but to excel amidst this violence to oneself; indeed, to make by example the real effective denial of violence. A distinction between what is violent and not violent is the difference between being told the truth and knowing the truth; non-violence as a bridge between these worlds appears to seek telling without telling.

Excellence. A commonly heard standard for human life. It is no wonder that we can arrive with conventional reality, that consciousness is a retreat from the world. The human being must become something it is not, it must learn from that which is not of itself, to be itself. One must excel, endeavor for excellence, in becoming something he or she is not, so if life can be said to be a movement of coming to know oneself, then already we have a confusion involved in the effort toward, what can be called, self awareness, effectiveness, or maybe even authenticity; a confusion based in what it means for what we do to be excellent. The meaning of some centers of philosophy seem to resonate this maxim as a sort of mantra; we need only arrange terms in a excellent way and this excellence will thus be the truth, by proof that the terms could be arranged in such a way. The irony settles here and the description of where it settles evidences a prohibition that cannot be reconciled, except through a violent act of departure, and thus only of ‘witnessing’.

*

Duality insists upon the human being at its conception, for it is this conception that is the individual in reality, a conception involved with de-cision, a reiteration of the One. The violence I speak of against the One occurs due to ‘re-cision’ (or maybe even as I have said “recede”), for reality is a move of joining that which has been put asunder or is truthfully segregate. The unity of the universe is in decision since if we are part of the universe then our functioning is not segregate from its operation and we cannot be separated enough from the universe to gain any true understanding of its functioning; we have no ability to be excellent, to make progress well, to excel. So ironic it is, reality is typically and routinely the Idea that excellence is not innate to the human being, which is to say that the individual by itself is nothing – as nothing is validated in nothing, some essentially empty or null ‘no-thing’, some transcendental non-unknown but not even unknown as known…we could go on infinitely attempting to describe this nothing – and so requires an Idea outside of oneself that is true, something one must necessarily appropriate of the world, such that excellence in the world must become the object. More so, as now the individual must achieve against others in the world, a proper method arises, and the True Object is born. The individual is an inherently violent manifestation, being at odds with itself for the sake of itself, and then for this sake of itself is at odds with the things of the world. The real violence is the presentation of the individual in existence by an orientation of being re-presented by the terms of reality, as well, the terms that designate what is true of reality. One could say that this particular orientation moves linearly, progressively.

It is possible ( but I have yet to see how this can be so, beyond the witnessing mentioned above) non-violence could be seen as a revealing the curve unto its violent linearity, but the representation of this significance risks violence unto itself, since if the violence is the linearity, and this linearity is real, then to show that such linearity is really not linear and not non-linear is a violent act upon reality, for reality always transcribes for what is real. Besides, the revealing of the curvature is always done linearly, maybe to say, conventionally represented; by contrast, the curvature’s revealing is presented ironically.

Capitalization upon presented subjects is the maturity of the real individual as excessive violence (overdetermination, representation) taken in course as reality, the activity of ‘bending straight’ the divergent. Reality is then an acquiescence, non-acceptance (if you will permit) of the real individual, its necessary violence. The will against what cannot be willed, infinite strength applied upon an immovable object. Violence itself is the discrepancy inherent of the individual in reality that allows for the gaining of the upper hand in the stalemate, and its application, its effort, its assertion, what I have called ‘conventional faith’, the faith that is ‘taught’ of reality, which, as an orientation upon True Objects, arises as method, the method by which faith diversifies, as objects contain no truth in themselves, but give rise to new objects of the terms, new (conventional philosophical) Faiths of the True Universe. The universe is the clash of faiths, the arena of the ‘faithful’.

*

It might be important to delineate the situation, to bring into relief for the sake of purchase the point of contention. The point arises between the question of choice, determinism and contingency. I see the performance of non-violence as having to do with mitigating that damage that is ‘already’ done, yet acting from a position where violence is ‘not yet’ done. Violence as the basis from which human beings may exist as humans, the real issue becomes scale or degree such violence is left unchecked; the practice of non-violence then would be in reference to this ‘place’ in which we find ourselves in the world; in practice we find ourselves in conventional reality, the violence being done, making a claim as to the particular manifestation of violence in reality, such as, social equality, gender and race inequality, human abuse, drug abuse, gangs, and political justice, to mention a general few. This can be said to be the real violence.

The true violence, I dare say, is the more significant issue with regards to our existential situation, consciousness presented as consciousness of human existence and the conventional individual. That we have been taught of reality, which is to say, in hindsight we were taught, is violence already enacted and denied. The compounding of violence is already enacted by the viewing of our birth as an act of (neutralized) violence, as well as our indoctrination into reality, for here we are viewing the situation through the violent lens, the lens that is already situated to show only ‘no-violence’, ‘just’ reality, the film that violently arranges us to avoid the violence involved with the seeing that our ‘double’ birth is twice removed from the infraction. Our doctrine of reality sees neutrality where violence is occurring, because in truth, we were not taught faith, but such faith is the necessary determination of reality. Conventional faith here is the standard, the Law, for what is real.

So the deeper, or maybe, anti-meta talk about violence enters when we have the conception that we were taught (or that which could be taught); it is taught with danger, but not the danger of the wilderness, for that was already manifest, not taught. It is, as someone, I’m sure, has said, the situation of violence that we attempt to reconcile non-violently, the real situation; there are two arguing parties, and I, a third, as a vehicle of non-violence in their dispute. I am the interventionalist for the violence. When we consider the situation already brought, as I am brought into the world, (“thrown”, “held out into”, ala Heidegger) we cannot but see that a disruption has occurred somewhere. The third party is proposing by his intervention to be a one relieved of the violence. His disclaimer is only relevant by the occasion of violence; since the violent parties are obviously real, they have a possibility of referring the violence to the intervention. Yet this real situation of the interventionalist is that he has understood the issue, and thereby makes a commitment of a sort (a decision upon ‘violence is X) to teaching others (the world) the manner by which he himself has been ‘dismissed of’ or has otherwise reconciled the violence. Because he himself has been taught through the violence of his humanity (from childhood) and has understood the issue, the discrepancy involved there as to the commitment had to have occurred, further, by some third party that is not prone or ‘responsible’ to the violence, and this element is the proposed transcendent interlocutor, by which the interventionalist mediates the real violence, but also by which he is a mediator between the real and the ‘non-real’, the world and the transcendent, an agent of non-violence.

Here I am, now, using the method I was taught to speak about that the method was taught to me, implying by this talk that the method is violence, and that somehow I am going to rely upon the method, by introspection and thoughtful consideration of the issue, to counter its violence, but indeed it is this very method by which I have been able to come across the transcendent interlocutor as if the interlocutor were already operating in their life and they just need to be taught how to find it. Indeed, if I may shine a spot over to Francios Laruelle’s non-philosophy; the crux to the meaning of non-philosophy is its admitting that philosophy is the staple, the given, the present form of what is true, or the true form of what is present, by the very act of the annexation of the ‘non-‘. By this act, non-philosophy proclaims that philosophy is King of the Real, and the ‘non’ merely presents its kingdom, and at this so to suggest that the revealing of the kingdom to its King will somehow transform the King, or reveal to Him that his obligation is to step down, for the kingdom will not rise to overthrow the King because it is itself, by its very nature, the King’s-Dom-ain. It is no more ‘of the last instance’ to accompany the King on a tour of his kingdom than it is to assassinate the King. The King is dead; long live the King. Without the King there is no kingdom, and without philosophy there is no non-philosophy; non-philosophy may be able to show the King his kingdom, but it shows no more than the last guide showed of the kingdom to the last King; it was the same plot of earth. The non-philosophical Ego, regardless of how it is situated and due to its philosophical (read, methodological) basis of representation, is nothing less than the ‘Kether’ of the philosophical beast, the King of Kings, so as it may be, of non-philosophy, the ‘Future Christ’, the ‘one day as now’ God in Man. So it is with violence and non-violence.

Hence, it is just as well if I wish to enact a revolution I should not propose to be radical or reformist; I am not sure if the apocalypse, the ‘revealing’ or ‘uncovering’ is possible as a future, but it may be possible as a past for a present. The violence I wish to incite is what had already been mentioned, and it is so much that this mentioning again reveals the ‘monsters be here’ part of the Real, the place where the Real does not go or even reach but only indicates. It is not ‘non-Real’, because Laruelle already designates the Real as a realm of non-philosophy; it is ridiculous and beyond any good meaning for the intent, to then say the ‘non-non-real’. This type of reasoning is what gets is to the Real. The End. The No More but now we have to come up with a More that somehow leaves the no more behind: conventional reality is all this all is. A reaffirmation that reality is real, and that the real is One, and that the One is all there is: the real-ization of violence involved with a responsive non-violence only reifies that violence is justified, but in the Real, violence is justified by the implication of the progressed incorporated State, which in this case is non-violence as a real practice.

When we no longer wish to be radical in our approach to reality, we are left only to the revolution that comes from what is not real. In a way of speaking, one no longer practices, or develops a praxis, instead, one performs. The actor, instead of returning a play of the script and replaying the method of reality, improvises. She is no longer reading and playing His script. She takes cues from the audience and responds accordingly; no interpretation is needed, and no director. The actor no longer acts, as in pretends to be a character of the play that she is not, rehearsing backstage, secretly in mind of ‘himself’, the actor, awaiting her praises after the scene, the character of herself; instead, the actor plays the role that is given to her by the crowd. There is no longer distinction between the actor on the stage and the actor of rehearsing and praise, between the scene and the audience. She no longer ‘takes’ her place, but rather she ‘has’ a position. This is no non-violence; it is a complete rejection of the real method of violence: a violence upon violence. She has not revolted from the abyss of freedom to come able to enact a new agency. She has become freedom; she has absolutely withdrawn, to the place of relative violence, but in the position of absolute violence, absolute peace.

Perhaps, we can now speak of the elements of violence.

*

The issue is the term.

The real problem is deconstructing the conventional term, but then, once that is seen as impossible to its real end, and we ‘commit’ to radical practice, then the stakes become all the more threatening, the theatre all the more violent. For this much I think (I wonder) we can concur; the place is a madhouse, the audience is rioting.

I would venture, the move into the wilderness was already deconstruction. Indeed, perhaps that ‘(maybe) irreducible point of singularity’ is/was the impetus, the ‘prime mover’,so to speak, by virtue thereof that the wilderness was the only option, maybe in Laruelle’s terms, the Real option, but I would think the Real encompasses the possibility of retaining the wilderness in civilization. Maybe the difference lay in what the romance entailed/entails, the romance being the possibility of the deconstructed universe to its universal bias, the ‘scenario’ upon which the terms of civilization ‘take’ place.

The issue that arises, though, concerns the point at which and the manner in which the commitment takes shape. How do we situate the bias in real terms, in the scheme of which for meaning the terms are relying upon (the bias) for conventional-civilized-reality? The situation of the non-philosophical Real serves irony; while its author(s) propose to recoup all possible meaning unto itself while relieving itself from that responsibility, the seriousness of its being proposed as Real removes it as a true viable method by excluding the individual through a restating of an encompassing reality, as if the individual exists by this Statement. It is a discursive trick of mirrors. Yet if we make fun of the seriousness of the author(s), the project practitioners, and take their statements with tongue in cheek, then we begin to see how violent such peaceful and innocuous encompassment that is non-encompassing may be, how its seriousness reveals its bad faith, and how offense is the basis of the conventional faith of reality.

What we learn from the ‘post-modernists’, but Kierkegaard and Wittgenstien at least, is that the meaning they intend is/was not comprehended by the majority of people, even by people who’s interest and skill is deep critical thinking, never mind what rough interpretation has gleaned from an incomplete reading (for example, existentialism, post-modern itself, but we can include all the critical ‘turns’), and not to mention the ‘popular’ meanings that serve to justify whatever occasion through fad out of context quoting and name dropping. In effect, we have not only a misconstruing of their meaning, but we have a meaning that has taken effect as the meaning of what they said. Such it is that there was a ‘post-modern’ era and PM writers and such. The irony of the authors is that they are (were) speaking of themselves, about themselves, in reality. Their meaning is just facts, but the facts are seen as advocating an agenda (which, if argued of the authors themselves, may be said to be based in a commitment to themselves – which brings to mind the issue of commitment itself! ). The facts indicate the solution, but do not lead to a solution through the consideration of their discourse as method, as terms are ‘to be’ schematized, properly put in their place, when the terms of their discourse are taken to refer as identity to True Things. Hence, I see that such discourses have occurred throughout what is usually known as human history, and have likewise been misunderstood and misappropriated. The misappropriation, or Lacan ‘mistake’, taken as an apparent whole, is what I call reality. The nature of the misappropriation cannot be disclosed to reality as a method of understanding, but only is understood correctly when it is already understood. The nature of reality, convention, is to usurp the, maybe intended, but true, meaning for the real meaning. Deconstruction as a conventional method to truth fails, except to show that the present temporally manifested truth is faulty and needs a reworking; in reality, again, this has been the basis for the discourse of social justice. Hence, also, this ‘problem of problem’ is ‘how we found each other’, or more correctly, you found me, this as evidence of “the Crowd is Untruth” (Kierkegaard): how is one oriented?

I recall from a conversation something like us both having a resistance to be ‘boxed’, confined, labeled. I suppose that is indeed a type of risk we accept when we make the commitment; the risk ventured and lost is the coming upon the value less individual, that the value lay only in that we do (in all we do) and that the consideration of such doing by the individual ( am I doing or thinking about what to do; am I thinking about how doing is distinct from thinking ?) devalues the actual presence for being of service, in the service of love. In reality, the risk ventured and won is always won by reality through methods that are constantly developing in the effort to reconcile these questions and ideas, but they achieve only more method, and more thoughts about actions, actions of thoughts and the eternal recurrence. Perhaps this is a similar movement of K, his aesthetic, ethical and religious. That the commitment may be into the ethical, but the substance or the fidelity to the romance of the aesthetic in reality is in turn religious. It is interesting; the basic problem with which K dealt and reconciled with the ‘true’ Christian – but he could not overcome the discrepancy for his person himself, except through faith, and his discursive assertions, but even that was despairing; for his moment, his is the evidence of a qualitative movement of history – seems to be what Laruelle, and so much as I have, come to terms, and you (? -it seems) – is that the terms are the problem, not the Objects that the terms seem to be indicating, for the Objects are the terms. Hence Laruelle attempts to ‘fully deconstruct’ the Object, as he sees, of the ’cause’ of this repeating mistake, philosophy. But more so, his invocation of the Ego remains, as I see it, ‘in the last’ a bastion of this history of oneness, with his Real. A true irony that non-philosophy is of ‘in the last instance’, for he is speaking of the last words of the subject-object of a particular history of terms. Yet, as with all historical discourses on the point of contention, his will not be ‘the last’, but will, or has already become, another philosophical object to be one day set aside or placed in its category (Is Lyotard’s “The Differend” really a piece of literary critique?) in the never-ending march for reality’s one truth. His may mark a type of peak-point in the oscillating wave of meaningful existence of human consciousness, but conventional faith will not cease in its operation, as I said above, just because he, or me or you, for that matter, said something. I step from NP method, as NP announces, to aphilosophy, the rebuttal of method for the True Object. Hence, as to faith, I speak of orientation upon the Object as the issue of the point of contention.

‘From where’ does the Object take hold? Does it ‘already’ have hold? Or do I ‘hold it’? (Be-hold?) If it already has hold, then the terms, the situating of terms in or of reality is the issue; but not ‘how might I go about this’, but rather, ‘how I do go about this’. If I hold it, as I may posses and consider the Object as it is a True Thing, an object In-itself, then I find reality as the omnipotence, of which I am subject, an individual in reality. These – though I am still working – present absolute situations, partitioned in essence, that which cannot be resolved, except in a re-solution, that avoids history, and thereby avoids reality. The indication that serves to establish me in reality, amounts to the commitment that is never made, the choice that is no choice, except in reality. If I have to decide, then I am lost; the true choice made is the choice that could not be made.

So, the commitment can also be made in fidelity to the significant event, the romance, through various situations of terms. ‘How do I speak about it’, I see, as not deriving from any choice I have, but rather, how the occasion presents a correspondence of terms. Maybe our role, between us, through our interaction, is to map out some of these possibilities. But maybe this is just my part; perhaps I am just as intimately involved in yours too. For you see, just as there is the true meaning of what I intend, am obligated to say/act, so there is also a real meaning that takes shape, likewise entailing or implying an obligation. The apprehension of this is the effective conception of the State, but where the despair moves through the dreadfulness, through the offense against faith, there we have a true comprehension, just as reality itself is comprised comprehensively.

—

SIGHTINGS and Further Readings.

* Blog: Adfontem: Beyond Categories: Aquinas’ Commitment to Christianity (Part III). 2014.

* Book: Principles of Non-Philosophy. Francois Laruelle. 1996. English translation 2013.

* Essay: The Call and the Phenomenon. Francois Laruelle. 2013. Published in “The Journal of French and Froncophone Philosophy”.

*Book: Being and Event. Alain Badiou. 1988. English translation 2005.

* Book: The Differend. Jean-Fancois Lyotard. 1983. English translation 1988

* Essay: Letter on Humanism. Martin Heidegger. 1947.

* Any of Soren Kierkegaard’s writings.

*Essay: concerning convention; Link: http://darkecologies.com/2014/02/12/gilles-deleuze-on-humes-theory-of-society/