LGS thoughtpiece

I was at the London Graduate School site for something else, and was surprised to see this on the front page, by John Mullarkey:

“Contra Harman’s faith in the transparent singularity and worthiness of notions such as ‘clarity’ and ‘proof’, a non-philosophical approach would contest whether their meaning is singular at all. Do we have a clear and universal concept of ‘clarity’, for example (that would avoid the obvious circularity of the question in its answer)? Harman remains insensitive to the force of such questions, seeing ‘method’ and ‘form’ as issues only concerning effectiveness (in capturing reality) and communicative facility (in convincing others of one’s mastery).”

I believe this was part of his response a few months ago to my review of Laruelle’s book last August.

Mullarkey’s a nice guy, but I think he’s off base with this one.

In the first place, anyone familiar with my work will know that I do not have “faith in the transparent singularity and worthiness of notions such as ‘clarity’ and ‘proof’.” Instead, I have repeatedly challenged the notion that clarity in its own right is enough to make for good philosophical writing, and have also repeatedly saluted Whitehead’s criticisms of the model of philosophy as a system of deductive proof. But beyond that, I think you’re in a tough spot if you’re having to defend an author by challenging the very validity of clarity and proof as binding standards.

I do find Laruelle to be an unusually poor writer, and don’t see why I should be the one on the defensive about that. It’s Laruelle who writes poorly. I don’t think one needs to have any sort of oppressive or benighted view of “clarity” and “proof” to make that observation. Besides, lack of clarity isn’t Laruelle’s biggest problem as a writer. Lack of vividness is. On a passage by passage basis, it is not always clear whether one is reading actual thoughts or mere strings of words. Reading that book to write that review was one of my most painful reading experiences in the past decade.

My sense of Laruelle so far is not by any means that he is worthless. For example, I find him to be exceptionally good in identifying the basic differences between Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida. (On Derrida in particular I’ve learned a lot from Laruelle’s remarks.) However, I do find him to be a wretched stylist, and so far have been unimpressed with the merits of the non-philosophical approach more generally. It seems to be an obscure trump card, a golden ticket that allows its possessors to be sweepingly dismissive of writers who seem to be more insightful than Laruelle himself.

The question is why so many people are already so heavily invested in him. Time will tell what the Anglophone Laruelle circle will eventually look like when at peak membership, and what its demands will be. I’ll try to keep an open mind until then, but an open mind does not preclude negative commentary along the way when warranted. (Besides which, I was asked to review the book by NDPR. If someone asks you to review a book, you have a professional duty to give a frank assessment. I’m sure John Mullarkey would agree on this point.)