(10:53 PM) | Dave Belcher:

Immanence without End

The ‘apparent’ world is the only world: the ‘true world’ is just added to it
by a lie" (Nietzsche, Twilight of Idols, 18, emphasis
original).

The affirmation that the virtual is the real becomes, in its turn…a hymn to
creation" (Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, 49).

There is a strict continuity between the religious thought
that accords that same power above nature to Man. The transcendence of God is
simply transferred to Man. Like God before it, this Man that stands separate
from and above nature has no place in a philosophy of immanence. Like God, too,
this transcendent figure of Man leads quickly to the imposition of social
hierarchy and domination. Antihumanism, then, conceived as refusal of any
transcendence, should in no way be confused with a negation of the vis viva, the
creative life force that animates the revolutionary stream of the modern
tradition. On the contrary, the refusal of transcendence is the condition of
possibility of thinking this immanent power, an anarchic basis of philosophy:
‘Ni Dieu, ni maître, ni l’homme (Hardt and Negri, Empire, 91-2, one of
those emphasis sections…so, emphasis original).

The death of God, and of transcendence in general (see Hardt and Negri above), is constitutive for the continual self-creation and re-creation of our world. For those who want a revolutionary politics, this seems to be a necessity. Even John Milbank, the accused "post-secular theologian," pushes toward this direction even as he hangs on to a thread of transcendence. It is quite fair, and actually historically accurate, to originate this notion in Spinoza’s philosophy—though traces can most definitely be found earlier, in Duns Scotus, for example, according to Deleuze and Milbank. Spinoza is the foundation for Leibniz’s "integrity of creation," which is then picked up three hundred years later (through the Feuerbachian Marx) by Deleuze, his disciples Hardt and Negri, and now Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek. Now, of course it would be absurd to suggest that these thinkers are all doing the exact same thing. However, even as Deleuze says about the histories of philosophies he has written, “All the authors I dealt with had for me something in common" (which include Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson, Leibniz, and Foucault. "On Philosophy" in Negotiations, 135. Here, also Deleuze mentions that Leibniz should be included in "the great Nietzsche-Spinoza equation"). I have already suggested that the common thread running throughout our contemporary political thinkers is that of immanence.

The key to the immanence at stake is the demystification of eschatology, which incidentally is not limited to philosophy. Rudolf Bultmann’s project of demythologization is the first that comes to mind: "[M]ythical eschatology is untenable for the simple reason that the parousia of Christ never took place as the New Testament expected. History did not come to an end, and, as every sane person knows, it will continue to run its course" ("New Testament and Mythology" in Kerygma and Myth). Even Milbank adheres to a certain form of creational integralism such that an "extra" act added on to the fullness of the good creation is superfluous. Thus, his ecclesiology is a thoroughly intra-human affair, not limited to the divine workings of apocalypse, since the gap between the human and divine is collapsed. But, because the notion of eschatology is peculiarly religious, the strenuous (and especially Spinozist) separation of philosophy from theology results in a particularly philosophical denial of eschatology. As Žižek says, drawing on Hegel, “For an authentic philosopher, everything has always-already happened" (On Belief, 125). And this notion is in fact the ground of political action for Žižek: “what is difficult to grasp is how this notion not only does NOT prevent engaged activity, but effectively SUSTAINS it” (ibid.). The destruction of eschatological transcendence is the opening for something like Žižek’s “universalism” of love, which without that eschatological transcendence is not specifically Christian....

Which means that, without such, you--meaning Badiou, Žižek, and all their sundrous accolytes--cannot have Paul.

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