This article connects François Laruelle's non-philosophical experiments with the axiomatic method to non-philosophy's anti-hermeneutic stance. Focusing on two texts from 1987 composed using the axiomatic method, "The Truth According to Hermes" and "Theorems on the Good News," I demonstrate how non-philosophy utilizes structural mechanisms to both expand and contract the field of potential models allowed by non-philosophy. This demonstration involves developing a notion of interpretation, which synthesizes Rocco Gangle's work on model theory with respect to non-philosophy with Laruelle's critique of (...) hermeneutics. I use Alexander Galloway's interpretation of "The Truth According to Hermes" as a case study of the limits non-philosophy sets upon its use as a basis for philosophical models, in contrast to arguments by Gangle regarding non-philosophy's greater genericity in comparison to philosophy. (shrink)

An interview with the philosopher Howard Caygill, primarily concerning his book 'Resistance', conducted in December 2013.

This essay argues that Laruelle’s ‘non-philosophical’ practice is connected to its performative language, such that to the question 'what is it to think?, non-philosophy responds that thinking is not “thought”, but performing, and that to perform is to clone the world. Non-philosophy is equally described by Laruelle as ‘transcendental practice’, an ‘immanent pragmatics’, or a ‘universal pragmatics’ that is ‘valid for ordinary language as well as for philosophy’. It is notable, however, that Laruelle objects to the focus on activity within (...) the concept of a speech act, and instead emphasizes the ‘descriptive passivity’ that an immanent pragmatics obliges. Laruelle calls this a ‘Performed-Without-Performation’ which would be an action of the Real: philosophical language seen as a performed, but without a ‘we’ – or any others – performing it. It is this notion of the performative, without either active human or philosophical adumbration, which is the topic of this essay. (shrink)