This month Philosophy Portal is launching its fifth solo course on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Class starts May 18th, you can learn more or sign up here: Philosophy of Right.
This month in The Portal we are focused on the concepts of Home and Origin, and welcome three special guests, Alyssa Polizzi of The Artemisian, Daniel L. Garner of O.G. Rose and Michelle Garner of O.G. Rose. You can find out more or get involved here: The Portal.
To think within and yet beyond the law seems to not only be one of the most difficult things to do, but also the most important thing for us to do in our contemporary age, where authority is unstable and direct expression of affect reigns.1 On the one hand, the law is flawed, non-universalisable, riddled by negativities and contingencies which undermine its legitimacy and authority on the level of a transcendental guarantee. On the other hand, the law is structurally necessary, supportive and generative of long-term processes that are impossible without it because one will remain wedded to the immediacy of one’s own naive intuition about the nature of things.
While the above statement is abstract, I believe it applies concretely to everything from fatherhood to statehood, mentorship to social paradigmatics (as well as their beyond in the realisation of freedom).
We of course know that fathers/mentors or states/paradigms presupposing a universally valid law capable of overcoming all negativities and contingencies is a false path (i.e. the law as ALL); but we also know (or at least should know) that without fathers/mentors or states/paradigms, we find ourselves on an equally false path (i.e. the non-law as ALL). What we must do is learn to conceive of the law, not as ALL, nor as non-law, but rather the law as non-All, opening a crucial link to the spirit child.
Who is your father/mentor? What is your state/paradigm?
Or alternatively: to whom are you a father/mentor? To whom are you a state/paradigm?
The answer to these questions, whether in your contemporary state of becoming, or in reflection on your past, will give you a clue to either your current character, or the character that you are striving to build in your becoming. The father/mentor or the state/paradigm is what transforms the raw immediacy of your naive intuitions into a firmly rooted concept in-and-for-itself that can withstand the test of time, or rather, is the test of time. Moreover, this question can be answered in the abstract (as in the dead or distant theorists you read) or the concrete (as in the real relations that you build with the older generation).
Today, the lack of thinking these dimensions has led to the “crisis of initiation”, a term developed by philosopher and writer
in Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family.2 We have lost or are losing connection with the real relations that build generations, i.e. the concrete dimension. In my thinking the most general concept at work here is the breakdown of the child-elder link for the gap of a world without real and meaningful intergenerational connectivity. Of course, sometimes these dimensions of the child and the elder overlap, or are themselves mediations from the abstract to the concrete. In my life, I have had many abstract father figures or mentors in dead or distant theorists, from Darwin to Freud to Dawkins. But I have also had the privilege of building my character in relation to concrete figures, whether my early supervisors in university, to my doctoral supervisor, cybernetician Francis Heylighen,3 to various theorists outside of formal institutional settings, like Anthony Judge of the laetus in praesens blog.4Today, through Philosophy Portal, I try to keep the link to both abstract and concrete mentors alive. In the abstract I teach dead or distant theorists who have influenced me the most, and whom I think have the most to offer the next generation. But in the concrete I also in try to establish links to both theorists who are my elder, like Peter Rollins, Richard Boothby or Thomas Hamelryck, as well as theorists who are my contemporaries, but who could also provide a link to the next generation, like
, David McKerracher of , and Daniel L. Garner of . The point here is that Philosophy Portal is not only providing abstract but also concrete mediation. I have seen first hand how students at Philosophy Portal can benefit in building a sense of a world in relation to the “father/mentor” as law towards their own project. Whereas I fear those younger individuals who do not submit to such a process, find themselves in the tyranny of structurelessness, and without the capacity to lift themselves above the raw immediacy of their intuitions.As it relates back to the question of the law as itself a question in our day of immediate positive affect, can we conceive of traditional categories, like father/mentor or state/paradigm, not in terms of a critical negation (deconstruction), but also not in terms of transcendental reification (absolutism)? What would that mean? I have increasingly found it helpful to think of thinking within and beyond the law as thinking of the law as a process of vanishing mediation that, if navigated well, can open up something genuinely new. Thus, this process of the law as vanishing mediation does not bring one to a final stable resting place, but rather allows one to mediate the raw immediacy of one’s intuition towards the real of one’s own excessive drive that always-already escapes and eclipses any law, that is any possibility for a priori regulation. The reason why younger individuals resist the law, and struggle to overcome the immediacy of their affective negation of the law, is that they misrecognise the law as in an antagonism with the excessiveness of their drive which escapes and eclipses any law. The secret is that the law of vanishing mediation actually opens you to being able to reconcile with the excessiveness of the drive. The law is a ladder that brings you to the standpoint of drive through the mediation of desire.
If we are to situate this distinction in terms of systems theory, we might say that traditional approaches to the law as absolute operate as forms of homeostasis, that is, self-regulating processes governing internal stability in relation to external changes or conditions. Law brings order to chaos, if we are to put it simply, and in terms that are expressed in popular culture by figures like Jordan B. Peterson.5 Traditionally speaking, the achievement of homeostasis allowed or allows us, to cultivate a sense of home or belonging as self-regulation or discipline in relation to a chaotic and uncertain environment which may destroy us at any moment.
The law as homeostatic self-regulation is why traditional Christian society perceived the family home as led by the father as crucial to lift the human species out of its pagan origins (which was lost in its excessive unmediated immediacy). The law as homeostatic self-regulation is also why the traditional state was often referred to as the fatherland in giving an ordered direction in history, and in creating a distinction from a mere homeland (simply put, where you were born). In this sense, the father and the state as homeostatic law was both our home and our origin, not in the womb of undifferentiated unity, but rather in the process of self-regulating our differences in the real of history. From this ground the mentor was also abstracted in “father-figures” outside of one’s direct immediate upbringing, and from this ground paradigms were established enabling us to explore art, religion, science, and philosophy.
However, the problem with this traditional approach is that it it fails to explain or help us deal with the real of the inevitable disruption of homeostasis. Even Jordan B. Peterson had to write a sequel to 12 Rules for Life that made room for a “beyond” of order.6 Today we cannot avoid or escape this real: whatever homeostatic regulation we have achieved is doomed to be undermined, leaving us with either the (bitter) position of a lawless universality, or the (courageous) challenge of law as vanishing mediation. What is at stake in the distinction between lawless universality and law as vanishing mediation is the distinction between finding home in slavery to immediacy (lawless universality, or the non-law as ALL), or the condition of possibility to find home in an unlikely place that is hard to conceptualise, and yet is the result of a process of conceptualisation (the law as non-All).
We might want to call this unlikely place the opposite of homeostatic self-regulation, but importantly an opposite that emerges on the terms of a reconciliation that is internal to homeostatic self-regulation itself. This is the place of the excessive-ecstatic drive, the location where we find something that is “in me more than me”, or what psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan seems to suggest is the indestructibility of the libido itself.7 There is something incredibly powerful here, and at the same time something incredibly innocent.8 Both dimensions of incredible power and incredible innocence are dimensions we guard against in either the absolute reification or the absolute negation of the law. I would suggest we call these dimensions the biological and the spirit child, as the source of biological creativity and cultural creativity.9
Here the biological child represents the direct continuation of the indestructibility of life (libido) in the emergence of a novel concrete body (biological creativity); but the spirit child represents the direct continuation of the indestructibility of life (libido) in the emergence of a novel concrete spirit expressing freedom (cultural creativity). We might say that the goal of the law as father is to successfully facilitate, via a process of vanishing mediation, the production and maturation of the biological child; but we might also say that the goal of the law as state is to successfully facilitate, via a process of vanishing mediation, the production and maturation of the spiritual child, that is concrete freedom.
The paradox at work here in the law, crucial to understand for our century, is that it is at once eternal in its temporality (in the form of the ladder towards the standpoint of freedom), and giving birth to eternity as temporality (in the form of the novel spiritual singularity as such), or also the becoming-other of eternity itself (in the form of the spiritual singularity as such in its own self-standing process beyond homeostatic regulation).
This is a much different conception of eternity than the concept we tend to find in traditional thinking, that of a “one” from which we fall and return, as in the fall from an original undifferentiated state in birth, and the return to an undifferentiated state in death. This “one” is often represented in Plato as the “perfect forms”, and Aristotle as the “unmoved mover”. While this “one” is meant to reify a particular historical transcendental law to establish our “true home” (which is not of this world, but before birth/after death in the perfection of the unmoved mover), what it obfuscates are not only the painful struggles of self-differentiation itself, but also the fact that our differentiation is not sterile, but rather produces something positive, where we can derive contact, or better reconcile to, a more unconventional sense of home: creativity itself as an imperfect movement.
This more unconventional sense of home could be conceptualised with the help of Jacques Lacan who proposed the concept of sinthome to describe the elementary link of libidinal enjoyment and language in an “atom” which repeats like a compulsive tic.10 The sinthome, while not homeostatic, still represent an entity capable of “holding together the subject’s universe”.11 Importantly this holding together is not via link to another unmoved perfect world, but in the repetition of the unity of ‘libido and signifier’, taking us from the “one” to a “one by one”.12 The “one by one” both represents the repetition of the sinthome qua atom of enjoyment unifying libido and signifier in a new singularity, and also the way in which we must relate to each other “one by one”, in relation to the differences of our singularity. While it is quite simple in a sense to create a political discourse and a school under a traditional notion of the “one”, Lacanian theorist and theologian Mark Gerard Murphy notes how difficult it is to construct a political discourse and a school with recourse to the complexities and fragility of the “one by one”.
Nevertheless, in thinking with and yet beyond the law, from homeostasis (law as self-regulating one) to sinthome (joy unifying libido-signifier as a one-by-one), this is what precisely seems to be our task today. One could call this the move from the society of universality to the society of singularities, and from the society of singularities to the society of singular-universalities.13 The same form appears in the recent works of
in Belonging Again: An Address in the meta-structure from childless unviersality to the child spirit (society of universality to society of singularities),14 and from the child spirit to the scaling of the child spirit (society of singularities to a society of singular-universalities).15Here a political-economy of sinthome is indispensable, with this unity between ‘libido and signifier’ allowing us to relate to a father/mentor or state/paradigm as an agent of vanishing mediation. In this process the libido of the child is capable of mapping onto the father/mentor or state/paradigm where we hope to find the emergence of our concrete spiritual freedom, which then makes us, potentially, an appealing father/mentor or state/paradigm for the next generation.
What is essential to note here is that the unity at work in the emergence of our concrete spiritual freedom is not necessarily a unity between subject and world, but the unity of the subject itself in a repetitive division of the cut of the ‘libido-signifier’ (which could in fact introduce something new into the world). The unity between subject and world is something that is only necessary in the process of coming-to-be free vis-a-vis child and father/mentor or state/paradigm as world. Here the father/mentor or state/paradigm as world provide an external transcendental guarantee, which, as mentioned above, is eternal in its temporality, and responsible for birthing eternity as temporality capable of becoming-other without an external transcendental guarantee. In the history of the human species, we might argue, figures like Plato and Aristotle were performing this function, both concretely for those of their day, and abstractly in the distanced mediation after death (i.e. Western philosophy and society as but footnotes to Plato as recognised by Alfred North Whitehead as well as the blog title of philosopher
).When we move, or if we are capable of moving, from a notion of home that is one of traditional homeostatic regulation, towards a conception of home that is one of repetitive enjoyment in the unity of libido and signifier, we may find that home is where our (biological or cultural) creativity is. We may find that we have the chance to think what the human species has been at such a loss to think in the modern world, or ever: that of the unity between our contradictory capacities to give birth biologically and spiritually.
Traditionally speaking, the homeostatic law as home meant that cultural structures protected our capacities to create biologically (within the confines of pre-modern religious ideation), but what was sacrificed in this process was the singularity of creativity capacity itself.16 That is why today there is such a mega-tension between traditional religious identification and the families that they produce, and the singularity of creative capacity, where individuals demand to strive for differentiation. If we continue to fail to think this contradictory tension, we will continue to widen the rift between what
and Malcolm Collins, authors of The Pragmatists Guide to Crafting Religion,17 call the “global monoculture” (which is sterile, incapable of giving birth to biological children), and “traditional cultivars” (which are religions capable of resisting the global monoculture in reproducing the next generation).18What the “global monoculture” has to wrestle with is its absolute negation of the law as a homeostatic process towards freedom from it (child without father); and what the “traditional cultivars” have to wrestle with is the absolute reification of the law as a homeostatic process which bars its own children from freedom (father without child). To think both together we will have to get creative, creative with metaphors that may remind us of traditional religions, while not being reducible to traditional religions.19 However, if we can think both together, we will be able to endure the imperfections of creation, and see these very imperfections of creation as our doorway to new creation in an infinite process of individuation. Here
of blog says it better than myself:20“The original state of undifferentiated wholeness is not the goal. Through the process of living, we are changed. Forever altered, we carry scars and burdens we never did before. […] We are meant to venture out once again, clash against the environment, and harvest the riches that come from being truly in oneself as well as out in the world. In this sense, the odyssey never ends, just as the process of individuation is never over.”
This month Philosophy Portal is launching its fifth solo course on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Class starts May 18th, you can learn more or sign up here: Philosophy of Right.
This month in The Portal we are focused on the concepts of Home and Origin, and welcome three special guests, Alyssa Polizzi of The Artemisian, Daniel L. Garner of O.G. Rose and Michelle Garner of O.G. Rose. You can find out more or get involved here: The Portal.
This is why the next Philosophy Portal course will focus on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which invites us to think of our freedom inclusive of law, as opposed to in a direct antagonism with it, see: Philosophy of Right.
Tutt, D. 2022. Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family: the Crisis of Initiation. Palgrave Macmillan.
Creator of the Principia Cybernetica blog, as well as originator of the concept of the Global Brain, see: Heylighen, F. 2011. Conceptions of a Global Brain: an historical review. Evolution: Cosmic, Biological, and Social, p. 274-289.
See: laetus in praesens, which is another fantastic cybernetic resource.
Peterson, J. 2018. 12 Rules for Life: An antidote to chaos. Random House Canada.
Peterson, J. 2021. Beyond Order: 12 more rules for life. Penguin UK.
Lacan, J. 2005. Position of the Unconscious. In: Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 718.
Navigating the contradiction between the source of biological and cultural creativity is increasingly where my work is orbiting/centring, see especially: Portal Thinking in the SOT 2024 Seminar, but also my contributions to the Logic for the Global Brain conference.
Žižek, S. 2011. Vacillating the Semblances. In: Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Verso. p. 58.
Žižek, S. 2011. The Limits of Hegel. In: Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Verso. p. 484.
The importance of this notion of “one by one” came up in dialogue with Duane Rousselle and Mark Gerard Murphy regarding their co-edited volume Negativity in Psychoanalysis, see: NEGATIVITY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS (w/ Duane Rousselle and Mark Gerard Murphy). Philosophy Portal.
The dangers of moving from a society of universality to a society of singularities is well-identified in: Reckzwitz, A. 2020. Society of Singularities. Wiley.
Rose, O.G. 2024. Part 1: Coming to Terms with Childhood. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose.
Rose, O.G. 2024. Part 2: The Problem of Scale. In: Belonging Again: An Address. O.G. Rose.
Owen Cox of
is working with the political notion of “The Paglian Right” in part because this singularity of creative capacity itself requires a far less repressive notion of sexuality (clearly on display in emancipation of the counter-cultural revolution) and traditional religiosity. Here The Paglian Right stands as a right-wing populism which distances itself from traditional religiosity, and develops a much more open relationship to the results of the counter-cultural revolution. These ideas are also at work in his participation in the Philosophy Portal conference Writing For (a) First Cause, see: Psychoanalysis and Thelema. Will, Law, Ethics, Desire, and Love.Collins, S. & Collins, M. 2023. The Pragmatists Guide to Crafting Religion: A Playbook for Sculpting Cultures that Overcome Demographic Collapse & Facilitate Long-Term Human Flourishing. Omniscion Press.
You can find our conversation on this topic here: THE PRAGMATISTS GUIDE TO CRAFTING RELIGION (w/ Simone and Malcolm Collins). Philosophy Portal.