Transcript
Claire ParnetIt's the soul, as we say in German, the Gemut. So, "U" is the "One." So, "U" is the "One."
The "One."
Claire ParnetThe "One," O-N-E. . . So, philosophy and science concern themselves with "universals." However, you always say that philosophy must always stay in contact with singularities. lsn't there a paradox here?
No, there's no paradox because philosophy and even science have strictly nothing to do with universals. These are ready-made ideas, ideas derived from general opinion. Opinion about philosophy is that it concerns itself with universals. Opinion about science is that it concerns itself with universal phenomena that can always be reproduced, etc. But even if you take a formula like, "all bodies fall," what is important is not that all bodies fall. What's important is the fall and the singularities of the fall. Even if scientific singularities-for example, mathematical singularities in functions, or physical singularities, or chemical singularities, points of congealing, etc. - were all reproducible, well fine, and then what? These are secondary phenomena, processes of universalization, but what science addresses is not universals, but singularities, points of congealing: when does a body change its state, from the liquid state to the solid state, etc. etc. Philosophy is not concerned with the one, being. To suggest that is just stupid. Rather, it is also concerned with singularities. One would almost have to say. . . In fact, one always finds oneself in multiplicities. Multiplicities are aggregates of singularities. The formula for multiplicities and for an aggregate of singularities is n - 1 , that is, the One is what must always be subtracted. So there are two errors not to be made: philosophy is not concerned with universals. There are three kinds of universals, yes, that one could indicate: universals of contemplation, ldeas with a capital I. There are universals of reflexion. And there are universals of communication, the last refuge of the philosophy of universals. Habermas likes these universals of communication. This means philosophy is defined either as contemplation, or as reflexion, or as communication. In all three cases, it's quite comical, really quite farcical. The philosopher that contemplates, ok, he's a joke. The philosopher who reflects doesn't make us laugh, but is even stupider because no one needs a philosopher in order to reflect. Mathematicians don't need a philosopher in order to reflect on mathematics. An artist does not need to seek out a philosopher in order to reflect on painting or on music. Boulez doesn't need a philosopher in order to reflect on music. To believe that philosophy is a reflexion on anything is to despise it all, to despise both philosophy and what philosophy is supposed to reflect on since, after all, you don't need philosophy to reflect. . . Ok. . . As for communication, let's not even talk about it. The idea of philosophy as being the restoration of a consensus in communication from the basis of universals of communication, that is the most laughable idea that we've heard since... For philosophy has strictly nothing to do with communication. What could it possibly. . .? Communication suffices very well in itself, and all this about consensus and opinions is the art of interrogations. Philosophy has nothing to do with this. Philosophy, again as I have been saying from the start, consists in creating concepts, which does not mean communicating. Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. It's creative, that's all. Hence, the formula is n - 1 , suppress the unity, suppress the universal.
Claire ParnetSo you feel that universals have nothing to do with philosophy?
No, no, they have nothing to do with it.