François Laruelle: Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-philosophy (1986/2010)

A crucial text in the development of François Laruelle’s oeuvre and an excellent starting point for understanding his broader project, Philosophies of Difference offers a theoretical and critical analysis of the philosophers of difference after Hegel and Nietzsche. Laruelle then uses this analysis to introduce a new theoretical practice of non-philosophical thought.

Rather than presenting a narrative historical overview, Laruelle provides a series of rigorous critiques of the various interpretations of difference in Hegel, Nietzsche and Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida. From Laruelle’s innovative theoretical perspective, the forms of philosophical difference that emerge appear as variations upon a unique, highly abstract structure of philosophical decision, the self-posing and self-legitimating essence of philosophy itself. Reconceived in terms of philosophical decision, the seemingly radical concept of philosophical difference is shown to configure rather the identity of philosophy as such, which thus becomes manifest as a contingent and no longer absolute form of thinking. The way is thereby opened for initiating a new form of thought, anticipated here with the development of a key notion of non-philosophy, the Vision-in-One.

Originally published in French as Les philosophies de la difference Univeritaires de France, 1986
Translated by Rocco Gangle
Publisher Continuum Intl Pub Group, 2010
ISBN 0826436633, 9780826436634
228 pages

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Oliver Marchart: Post-foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau (2007)

“A wide-ranging overview of the emergence of post-foundationalism and a survey of the work of its key contemporary exponents. This book presents the first systematic coverage of the conceptual difference between ‘politics’ (the practice of conventional politics: the political system or political forms of action) and ‘the political’ (a much more radical aspect which cannot be restricted to the realms of institutional politics). It is also the first introductory overview of post-foundationalism and the tradition of ‘left Heideggerianism’: the political thought of contemporary theorists who make frequent use of the idea of political difference: Jean-Luc Nancy, Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou, and Ernesto Laclau. After an overview of current trends in social post-foundationalism and a genealogical chapter on the historical emergence of the difference between the concepts of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, the work of individual theorists is presented and discussed at length. Individual chapters are presented on the political thought of Jean-Luc Nancy (including Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe), Claude Lefort, Alain Badiou, and Ernesto Laclau (including Chantal Mouffe). Overall the book offers an elaboration of the idea of a post-foundational conception of politics.”

Publisher Edinburgh University Press, 2007
ISBN 0748624988, 9780748624980
198 pages

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PDF (updated on 2020-10-23)