How to Behave Like a Non-Philosopher

Abstract

François Laruelle’s message for philosophy is, prima facie, simple: not everything is “philosophisable.”3As soon as we gloss this message a little further, however, things become somewhat more com-plicated: not everything is reducible to “standardphilosophy.” Or, even further, what counts as phi-losophy must mutate in order for some things to be philosophisable at all. The mutation, here, is of both the so-called subject (standard philosophy) and its object (purportedly non-philosophical materials), being both “object-oriented” and “subject-ori-ented” at once within a mutation that re-orients thought-as-an-orientation. As we will see, for Laruelle, this mutation is also a re-direction: thought that was directed from philosophy to the Real reversesto being directed from the Real to philosophy. This short essay will concern itself with the meaning of this re-direction, both in terms of its significance for speculative thought as well as its connection to a type of philosophical behavior (though without any consequent behaviourism—the philosophy that reduces behaviour to one or two over-determined variables, such as “conditioning” or “disposition”). To précis our two opening epigraphs from Laruelle: in thought, there are only lines, vectors, and, perhaps, re-orientations.

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