Шалагинов Денис_RESUME_04052018 (Проблемы имманентизма в нестабильных онтологиях)

National Research UniversityHigher School of Economicsas a manuscriptShalaginov Denis SergeevichTHE PROBLEMS OF IMMANENTISM IN UNSTABLE ONTOLOGIESEXTENDED ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATIONsubmitted for the degree of Candidate of Science in PhilosophyScientific SupervisorGasparyan Diana EdikovnaPh.D. in Philosophy, DocentMoscow - 2018GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF WORKThe relevance of a research topicBecoming is a fundamental problem of philosophy: the question of how toconceive Being as one and unchangeable, not excluding time as a source ofvariability, occupies an important place in Antiquity, because “if changing, the onecan no longer be the one”1 and self-identical2.

One of the classic solutions to thisproblem is an ontological separation of Being and Becoming, accompanied by theepistemological division of truth and opinion: if the first is related to the “access”to Being as unchangeable reality, the second refers to Becoming3. The separationof a single Being as a transcendent limit from the multiplicity and Becoming,which are immanent to the world, became a means of substantiation of theimperative of stability, formulated ontologically, because this operation implied thedivision of Being/Nonbeing4, which ordered all other distinctions: what is –doesn’t become, what becomes – is not. From this perspective, Becoming isthought as a transition from Nonbeing to Being, and the priority remains for thesecond one.

Thus, Becoming and instability primarily pass under the rubric ofNonbeing, and it puts those who risk asking a question about the possibility of theunstable ontology in a difficult situation. A hypothetical condition ofthispossibility is radical immanentism, i.

e. the denial of assumptions of anytranscendent foundations. Therefore, it is necessary to briefly describe the“mechanisms” of metaphysical thinking, and then outline the contours of theproblem field, along the way clarifying the main concepts I use (unstableontologies, virtual, actual, etc.).Without any risk of harming the dual terminological frame in this context thenotions of “Being” and “Nonbeing” can be substituted by such notions as“possible” and “real”. The “real” means existing in the given moment of time. The                                                            1Plato.

Parmenides // Sobraniye sochineniy v 4 t. T. 2. M., 1993. P. 363.“The thesis of eleates, if to express it formally-logically, would be reduced to... the law of identity: A is A”(Gaidenko P. P. Istoriya grecheskoy filosofii v ee svyazi s naukoy. M., SPb., 2000. P. 117).3Prigogine I., Stengers I.

Vremya, haos, kvant. М, 1994. P. 7.4The division Being/Nonbeing is itself derived from a primary distinction of the observer and the observed(Luhmann N. Samoopisaniya. M., 2009. P. 38).2“possible” refers to something that is not yet arisen (not existing), but which canarise. This conceptual apparatus helps to describe the world in the aspect of itschangeability. But the real is ontologically primary, because, according toParmenides, there is no Nonbeing.

That’s why, despite the fact that thedevelopment of such a world implies some degree of indeterminacy, the latter isvery insignificant, because the possible means an always determined non-existent,which is prescribed some purpose of realization. For example, the seed is possiblein relation to the real plant. Here, one might recall Aristotle’ s idea of the seeds ofthings, which refers to the idea of Anaxagoras that each body corresponds to acertain form of basic origin. Thus, every object (real) corresponds to some "seed"(possible). In this case we are dealing with a kind of “metaphysical preformism” –a philosophical position, which consists in the fact that any existent initially has acertain individual purpose. The primary ontological distinction and all itsderivatives allow to reduce the world to its current image: “the deep ontologicaldistinction introduces quasi-normative postulate, which should be understood asthe requirement of the order”5.

Thus, the ontology acts as a stabilizing tool, theultimate expression of the “cinematic mechanism of thought” which allows us tothink Becoming only with the help of its reflection in a series of discrete images.To find the way out of this epistemological situation one can try to supple the dualterminological frame with the third term, the way Hegel did it; for him theuncertainty of pure being requires the transition to its negation, and then theconnection of assertion and negation in the third notion. However, this decisionwould not seem so innovative if we assume that since the time of Thales“philosophers have argued about whether the idea should focus on Three or Two,whether it should achieve One or, at least, should strive to achieve it; in truth, allconverged on a Dyad”6 – in contrast to Hegel, who chose to stay on the triad.

This“answer to the question of preferences” allows us to think Becoming as a historicalprocess, controlled by the cunning of the mind, and therefore – the teleological                                                            5Ibid. P. 38.Kojeve A. Predisloviye k proizvedeniyam Zhorzha Bataya // Tanatografiya Erosa: Zhorzh Batay I frantsuzskayamysl serediny XX veka. SPb., 1994. P. 315.6process. In the Hegelian perspective, the purpose of history is to achieve One, i. e.its end7 as the completion of negative human activity and the elimination of thegap between human and natural, Nonbeing and Being.

However, in this case westill think the change as a transition from point to point, but not a continual processof non-teleological becoming. Hence, Becoming is understood as a linearprogressive process.Thus, in hastily outlined above philosophical positions the change occursprogressively – from simple to complex or vice versa; however, taking similarapproaches seriously, we, nonetheless, will be compelled to admit that we think notBecoming but the fixed existents, not time, but its spatial incarnations.

In addition,it is impossible not to question the novelty of the new8: if the "beginning is also theend", how appropriate it is to talk about novelty in principle? To circumvent thesedeadlocks arising from the orientation towards dualistic models, we need to rethinkthe very idea of change. Common sense tells us that the new is so only in relationto the old, from which it differs.

Thus, the new “initially” is subordinate to thealready visible, its difference is considered secondary to the identity, i. e. weexclude time and think Becoming in a “cinematographic” way, as “something”discrete. But abandoning the idea that gives priority to identity can help us makethe necessary change of perspective: what if conceiving identity as a starting pointis a mistake? The means for such a shift, in particular, one can find in a conceptionof Gabriel Tarde, whose thesis is that existence is differentiation, while identity isjust a quite rare species of difference (like quietness is a special case of themovement, or the circle – a kind of ellipse).

In this sense, Tarde, in fact, performsthe inversion of the traditional metaphysical dogma. This inversion leads to theconclusion that the change is changing itself and there can be no evidence that thedegree of change increases or decreases over time.

It undermines the idea of                                                            7According to Hegel, becoming as an "unrestrained movement" is not able to resist in its " abstract mobility, for,since being and nothing disappear in becoming, and only this disappearance is contents of the concept of becoming,it is itself, therefore, a kind of disappearing fire that fades in itself, devouring its material» (Hegel G. W. F.Entsiklopedtya filosofskih nauk.

T. 1. Nauka logiki. M., 1974. P. 228).8“…How should we understand the new... in a world governed by deterministic laws?” (Prigogine I., Stengers I.Vremya, haos, kvant. М, 1994. P. 7). Becoming as a linear process: the construction of the railway station, for example,is simpler and slimmer than the construction of the medieval castle, but theconstruction of the first requires a more complex set of tools and specialties. It’simportant that the difference is always accompanied by the repetition: despite thefact that “the development of civilization makes people in many ways moredifferent, this occurs not otherwise as a result of the equation of them in other waysthrough increasing uniformity of the laws, habits and languages”9.