Шалагинов Денис_RESUME_04052018 (Проблемы имманентизма в нестабильных онтологиях), страница 2

At the sametime, the increase in uniformity necessarily entails the decrease in stability. Herewe should consider a concept of instability.Instability means the impossibility of applying the measure to Becoming, i.e. inability to predict changes: some events can change the course of evolution,which, therefore, is unstable10. Taking time and instability into account requires arevision of classical rationality. Here we should talk about “open rationality” (V.Budanov), which is focused not only and not so much on Being (identity), but onBecoming (difference).

The open rationality is postmetaphysical. It is necessary toclarify the meaning of the prefix “post”, which is possible through making clearwhat is attached to it. One can indicate four aspects of traditional understanding ofmetaphysics: first, we are talking about the theory of absolute totality; second, atheory which draws a distinction between being and phenomenon; third, theory,admitting that there is something above/below the natural; fourth, the theory of anentity that allows to know what is, through the separation of "meaninglessmereological amounts" from the fact that there is something rather than nothing11.These aspects presuppose the assumption of a "foundation", the last [reasonable]ground.

The term “metaphysics” refers to the teaching about the first reasons, thekey impulse of which is the search for the universals and the desire to build a totalsystem of the world. This impulse is inseparable from the axiological systemcentered around stability. To provide a ground for itself, metaphysical thought isforced to set a limit for itself, pre-defined basis, however ,”if physics finds no                                                            9Tarde G. Monadologiya i sociologiya. Perm, 2016. P. 46.Prigogine I., Stengers I.

Vremya, haos, kvant. М, 1994. P. 54.11Gabriel M. Metafizika ili ontologiya? Neytralnyj realism. M., 2017. P. 7-9. 10limits, it is completely unclear where there can be this beyond, in the sense ofmeta, which is beyond physics”12. In this sense, the refusal to establish the lastgrounds can be considered as a postmetaphysical step.Now let us turn to the concept of “unstable ontologies”. It was brought intothe philosophical vocabulary by Oliver Marchart in the mid-2000s13.

The Austrianscholar used it to identify the “convergence point” of the three directions in thefield of the continental philosophy of the XX-XXI centuries: “ontology of lack”,“ontology of abundance” and “ontology of difference”. These largely incompatiblephilosophical lines have at least one important similarity: they can be placed in the“post-foundational” horizon, i.

e. in the space of thought, eliminating the access tothe ground of being as a full presence. Hence the definition of unstable ontologiesas ontologies, within which the deconstruction of the sufficient reason, is carriedout. At this point three important remarks should be made.First, I assume the probability that the concept of “philosophy of instability”(I. Prigogine) may be more successful, because it better conveys the idea ofdesigning a stable theoretical system that would serve to describe the non-selfidentical (unstable) objects. However, I tend to use the original Marchart’s conceptfor two reasons: 1) any concept bears the signature of its author(Deleuze/Guattari); 2) “philosophy of instability” refers to synergetics, the appealto which would require serious physical and mathematical competence, which I inno way possess.Second, the notion of “ontology”, which emerged in the XVII century,connotes stability and functions as a requirement of order, which, in our case, leadsto the fact that the concept of unstable ontologies turns out to be a kind ofoxymoron.

However, I propose, this difficulty can be circumvented. If formula “toengage in fighting the metaphysics is still to engage in metaphysics”14 is true,                                                            12Kuznetsov V. Vzaimosvyaz edinstva mira I edinstva kultury. M., 2013. P. 67, 64.Marсhart O. The Absence at the Heart of Presence: Radical Democracy and the ‘Ontology of Lack’ // RadicalDemocracy between Abundance and Lack. Manchester, 2005.

P. 17-31.14Girard R. Nasilije i svyashennoje. М., 2010. P. 122.13nothing prevents us to extrapolate this schematic into the field of ontology. Basedon this, we will have to admit that the slogan “to turn over the ontology, to removethe foundation, to cancel the beginning and the end”15, despite the emphasized antiontological message, is still a purely ontological manifestation, because to engagein “turning over” the ontology – still means to engage in ontology.Third, this research is focused on working out the “plots” of Post/Deleuzianphilosophy, therefore, at first glance, it may seem that would be more appropriateto use the concept of “ontologies of becoming”16, coined by Andrew Pickering asan opposite to the “dualistic ontologies”.

But, to my mind, the concept of ontologyof becoming does not convey the unstable character of the latter: Becoming takesplace even in the ontology of Plato, but that doesn’t make it less stable.It is critical to give a brief description of the three types of unstableontologies, selected by Oliver Marchart, and to explain why my attention will befocused on the so-called ontology of abundance. Let us begin with the “ontology oflack”, which is associated with Kojevian interpretation of “The Phenomenology ofSpirit”.

Kojeve divides the world into two poles – identity (nature) and negativity(subject). If natural being is always equal to itself and, in this sense, is not lackingin anything, then the existence of the subject is determined by its ability to negate:the subject can’t be conceived as something “complete” – it’s given only as a lackof itself.

The subject, which has lost its capacity for negation of the given,according to Kojeve, ceases to be a human subject – a being negative and,therefore, historical. It is in this sense that I say that in the ontology of lack, thepresence (subject) is determined by the constitutional absence (lack of both selfidentity and identity with the surrounding [nonhistorical] natural world).

Thus, thekey characteristic of the ontology of lack is, to my mind, the appeal to the motiveof “anthropological negativity”, i. e. the conceptualization of a human being as an“agent of negativity”. In the “ontology of difference”, which originates in the workof Heidegger and subsequently developed by Derrida, we find the problematization                                                            1516Deleuze G., Guattari F. Тysjacha plato: Каpitalizm i shyzofreniya. Ekaterinburg; М., 2010.

P. 45.Pickering A. Novyje ontologii // Logos. 2017. Т. 27. № 3. P. 157. of difference, the concept of which serves to fix the phenomenon of constantdifference of presence from itself, not allowing to reach any stable basis of Being.The ideas of the representatives of the line of difference can be briefly described asfollows: the traditional Parmenides’ ontological paradigm presupposes the divisionof Being and Nonbeing: the first is, and the second is not. But this opposition itselfrefers to the primary operation of differentiation, thus there is a difference betweenBeing and Nonbeing, identity and negativity, but the difference itself, according tothe logic of the representatives of this philosophical line, cannot be conceived as abeginning, because the beginning must be identical to itself, and the differenceremains different from itself – in this sense it can’t become an ontological“foundation”.

The key concept of deconstruction – “differance” – is by no meansanother name of negation, lack. This Derridian neologism contains two semanticaspects: [1] differentiation, i. e. the process of differentiation, during which binaryoppositions arise (for example, ontological (general) and ontical (private)) and theterms of these oppositions gain certainty, and [2] temporalization, i. e. the constantpostponing of access to the fullness of presence (and meaning): each term (or sign,because the basic theoretical referent of the deconstruction is, in addition to theHeidegger’s philosophy, the linguistic theory of Saussure) contains a trace ofanother term (sign) and refers to it, being incomplete, not self-identical.

Thus,“Being”, which in Derrida and his followers’ pantextualist philosophy is thought ofrather as a “cultural text” than directly given reality, becomes a network ofsignifiers referring to each other, but forming no totality. The “ontology ofabundance”, which has been developed by Deleuze and his followers, comes fromthe principle “there is always more”, which replaces the ontological question “whyis there something and not nothing?” I suppose, the two key concepts inDeleuze/Guattari’s philosophy are “actual” and “virtual”. Virtual and actual –unlike possible and real – do not form a stable opposition, because virtual iseverything that is immersed in the process of actualization.

The virtual is not theopposite of a real or a copy of it – it is the abstract power of existence that pushesthe process of actualization, being resolved in a string of phenomena and, thus, actsas the engine of continuous becoming17. One, therefore, should talk here not aboutvirtual reality, but about the reality of the virtual. Here we are dealing with “being”in the aspect of its fundamental uncertainty, formlessness. The actual is representedby discrete assemblages of the existent, whereas the virtual is continuous and nondiscursive.

The virtual is in any case not possible, rather the contrary (conceptmobilized as a tool of radical critique of a category of possible).Virtual is different from the possible, because the second lacks reality,whereas the virtual, without being actual, nevertheless has it. The process ofrealization of the possible is subjected to the rules of similarity and restriction: thereal “exists in the image of the possible, which it realizes”, but the realization iscarried out selectively: “realization implies a restriction, according to which someopportunities... are rejected or suppressed, while others «pass» into reality”18. Therules of actualization of the virtual are the other ones: these are difference anddivergence: “...in order to be actualized, the virtual cannot be developed byelimination or limitation, but must create its own lines of actualization in positiveacts.