CHANGING TRAJECTORIES: Deleuze, Badiou, Laruelle

In my preceding post (GRATITUDE TO HEIDEGGER?) I was tying together what Sean Kelly says about his own trajectory over the last eight years in the first three posts (i.e. Rising from the Ashes?, Gratitude for what has been, How do you make a decision?) published on his revived ALL THINGS SHINING blog and what he says about trajectories in general in his last post (Ontological gratitude) as background to his current problem concerning his future possible trajectories in relation to the interpretation of Heidegger.

Behind the question about the relation between Heidegger’s unacceptable political views and his more general philosophical thought, it seems that Kelly is posing the question of saying goodbye to Heidegger, or at least to a certain understanding of Heidegger.

This problem resonated with me, as my conclusion suggests, since I explain elsewhere on my blog that I am undergoing a similar process of saying goodbye (or not) to Deleuze (my biggest influence) in view of my projected changing of trajectory.

My recent analyses of Laruelle’s TETRALOGOS are conducted from this point of view. As I have explained, Deleuze and Guattari’s final collaboration, WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?, is a brilliant work, but fundamentally flawed.

When I read Badiou’s THE IMMANENCE OF TRUTHS last year it crystallised out some of my misgivings. In WIP? Deleuze and Guattari talk constantly about the « absolute », the « outside »,  and the « infinite », but their thinking of infinity remains too poetic, and so is unable to fully resist relativism.

Reading Laruelle’s TETRALOGOS further consolidated this problem for me. My overall impression of Laruelle’s own process of saying goodbye to Deleuze is that when he talks explicitly about Deleuze, he is not very convincing, and I remain in disagreement. On the other hand, when Laruelle is producing his general movement of thought in this book he provides a useful perspective for re-visioning Deleuze and for highlighting the limits of his thought.

It is this attempt of Laruelle’s to isolate out and to go beyond certain limitations of his predecessors that I hope to bring out in my reading of TETRALOGOS.

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