ONPhI : Controversy over the Possibility of a Science of Philosophy -

Controversy over the Possibility of a Science of Philosophy: Déjà lu : 1362

Jacques
Derrida and François Laruelle

JD: Mines
is not an easy task. After what youve just heard, you can see the risk I took
in speaking of François Laruelles ‘polemos.

You spoke in the name of a
certain peace. Yet I have to admit that, with regard to polemos and
terror, there were moments while I was listening to your description of
philosophical terror as transcendentally constitutive of philosophy, etc., when
I was sometimes tempted to see in your own description a rigorous analysis of
what you were in fact doing here. I say sometimes, because I did not succumb to
the temptation. I shall nevertheless attempt to say something else. I am
obliged here to play devils advocate.

Among the many questions I
would have liked to ask you, slowly, patiently, text in hand, in the manner
befitting a philosophical society or a scientific community; from among all
these questions, it seems natural for me to pick a few and to formulate them in
a schematic fashion, since we dont have much time, and to refrain, at least
for the time being, from referring to your latest book¹.

I shall state in a word or two,
bluntly, the questions which occurred to me while listening to you, and my
perplexities.

Would you say that the
scientific community, the community of science, of the new science which you
described, is a community without a socius, in the sense in which you
defined the socius?

This question is not about
whether or not you have been cautious enough, but rather about the way in which
your precautions run riot and counteract one another. When you talk about the
essence of science, while being careful to say that what is at stake is this
essence prior to its political and social appropriations, which is to say prior
to what is called its effectivity, its effectivity rather than its reality─where
do you find this essence of science, which science in its effectivity always
falls short of? What is it apart from its effectivity, its political and social
appropriations? This is a very general question, which I shall naturally try to
reiterate by means of other questions which I have prepared.

My first question ─a
massive one─ concerns the reality of this real which you constantly
invoked in your talk, or ─and this comes to the same thing─ the
scientificity of this science, this new science, since this reality and this
scientificity seem to be related. You oppose reality to a number of things; you
oppose it to totality ─it is not the whole, beings as a whole─ and
you also stressed its distinction from effectivity and possibility. The
distinction between reality and possibility doesnt look all that surprising.
But what is rather more surprising is when you oppose reality to philosophy. If
we were to ask you in a classical manner, or in what you call the
ontologico-Heideggerian manner “What is the reality of this real?”, and whether
it is a specification of being, you would I suppose dismiss this type of
question, which still belongs to the regime of ontologico-philosophical
discourse, and even to its deconstruction, since it is easy to assimilate the
latter to the former. Such a question would still be governed by this law of
philosophical society to which you oppose this real, the new science,
community.

What makes it difficult to go
along with the movement I would like to accompany you in, is that it sometimes
seems to me to consist in you carrying out a kind of violent shuffling of the
cards in a game whose rules are known to you alone… Which is to say that the
hand ends up being completely reshuffled. The only thing is that I seem to
detect ─and this is probably a philosophical illusion on my part, one
which I would like you to disabuse me of─ a real and philosophical programme
which has already been tried and tested. For example, when you say:

“By way of contrast, one can
ask another question, one about [sciences] conditions of reality. I am careful
not to say ‘conditions of possibility, these being the metaphysical and the
State combined together with the metaphysical and philosophical interpretation
of science, whereas I am talking about sciences transcendental conditions of
reality…”

Under what conditions is
research a real activity as opposed to a social illusion? This is all the more
crucial given that you go on to state:

“The problem then becomes
that of a critique of reason [let us say heuristical]; of a real rather
than merely philosophical critique.”

Is this distinction pertinent
for a transcendental philosophy? Can a transcendental philosophy distinguish
between the possible and the real in the way in which you yourself do?

I should say that I often felt
myself in agreement with you. For instance, with your initial description of
the researcher, of research insofar as it seemed to follow a certain
Heideggerian logic, in the description you gave of the principle of reason, and
what you said about programming and about non goal-oriented research, which in
fact re-institutes a goal…; I was willing to subscribe to all this. Then you went
on to oppose to this description this new science, which you distinguished from
its political, social, etc., appropriations, and there, obviously, I had the
impression you were reintroducing philosophemes ─the transcendental being
only one of them─ into this description, this conception of the new
science, the One, the real, etc. There, all of a sudden, I said to myself:
hes trying to pull the trick of the transcendental on us again, the trick of
auto-foundation, auto-legitimation, at the very moment when he claims to be
making a radical break. So if, for example, the distinction ‘real/possible is
pertinent independently of philosophies of the transcendental type, another
hypothesis arises, which I immediately have to dismiss along with you: isnt
this distinction already characteristic of a Marxist or neo-Marxist type
programme? Real and no longer philosophical: at least insofar as the
philosophical would seem to be restricted to a theoretical rather than
transformative interpretation and hence would remain confined to what you call
the social illusion. But you rule out this hypothesis for us by telling us that
when you say ‘real, you are not referring to material structures. So I seemed
to understand that this kind of Marxist-style interpretation was also among the
things you wanted to rule out.

You claim that:

“This amphiboly of
philosophy and the real, which is the secret of philosophical decision, can
only be discovered in accordance with another, generally non-philosophical
experience of the real.”

Here, I would like you to
explain very pedagogically what you mean by a ‘generally non-philosophical
experience of the real.

You also claim that:

“Philosophy and unconstrained
research are the abundant forgetting of their real essence; not of their
conditions of possibility but of their conditions of reality. There is no
forgetting of philosophy; on the other hand, there is a forgetting by
philosophy as principle of sufficient philosophy of its own real essence.”

A little further down, we
encounter this notion of ‘force, about which I have many questions I would
like to ask you:

“[I]t is this latter thesis
that must be radically contested in order to found a critique that would be
more forceful than all the deconstructions of philosophical sufficiency.”

This motif of force reoccurs forcefully
but associated with a project of auto-foundation, of transcendental
legitimation ─these are the terms you use, albeit in inverted commas, and
my question concerns these inverted commas. I could have been very quick and simply
asked you: what is the status of inverted commas in your text?

For example, when you say “This
instance must be real rather than material; it must be of a cognitive order in
order to measure up to philosophy and to research; finally, it must have its
foundation and legitimation in itself, without requiring the mediation of
philosophy, which is to say it must be transcendental in its own way.”
─ my question, my perplexity, the point on which I am asking for
illumination is: What is a transcendental project of auto-foundation and
auto-legitimation when it is non-philosophical? And when you then go on to
attribute this non-philosophical project of transcendental auto-foundation,
auto-legitimation, to a science, to what you call science insofar as you
distinguish it from all of its appropriations, and which you also call the
force-of-thought (you yourself underline the ‘the), my question is: What is it
in this force, this science, that is not philosophical, etc?

This force will be a force
capable of ─I dont want to go too far and say that it will be capable of
imposing peace─ but it is nevertheless a force in the name of which the
peace proper to this community founded by the new science will be possible.
What is this force belonging to a subject whose undivided identity, without
identification, anterior to division, will ultimately found a community? When
one knows, having read you, that the One to which you refer in your discourse,
and on the basis of which you critique ─you prefer ‘critique to
‘deconstructing─, or rather send philosophy packing; when this force,
this subject, this science, this undivided subject, is a ‘One which you tell
us is not the identical, must not be understood in the classically philosophical
sense of ‘One; what then is the difference between this One and the entire
chain that accompanies it, i.e. science, the real, the entire community,
enforced peace, free peace?

What is the difference between
this One and what others call ‘difference, since it is not identity?

Ultimately, all the questions I
wanted to ask you come down to this schema: Why do you reduce ─and isnt
there a violence here of the kind you denounce in philosophical society?─
so many gestures which could accompany you along the path you wish to pursue?
To take just one example among many: the gesture of proposing scientific
approaches which would no longer conform to the conception of current
practices, to the philosophical concept of science; of interrogating certain
discourses which claim to be scientific, of helping science make critical
progress through movements which would no longer conform to what is understood
in those appropriations which you talked about?

Why ignore the existence of
this gesture in the various deconstructions which you evoked in passing?

Why, in this or that approach
putting forward propositions very similar to yours─ for example, with
regard to constitution, given that you said that some things were
un-constituted─ why class these gestures among everything else you
dismiss? It is obvious that among movements of the deconstructive type, which
you have thought about and whose analysis you have developed at greater length
in your book, there is among other things a movement to deconstruct the model
of constitution, to avoid that constitutive or constitutional schema which you
identify with everything you want to reject.

Why proceed thus, if not on
account of a gesture tantamount to socio-philosophical war? There, bluntly put,
are all the questions I would like to have been able to formulate better, in a
situation other than one of improvisation and haste.

To what do you tie your concept
of democracy, what does ‘democracy mean, once this concept is emptied of all
its philosophemes?

FL: I notice that all
your questions are interrelated, obviously; they form a coherent whole, just as
one might expect. These questions are indicative of the resistance of the
Principle of sufficient philosophy.

JD: No surprise there,
needless to say…

FL: Which is to say that
your questions have a very particular style, which I found highly interesting,
that of retortion: “Youre just like those you criticize”; “Youre doing just
what you claim to abhor”. You taught me in your work that one should be wary of
retortion. So I would like to suggest that to the extent that you are making a
certain use of retortion, and this is a theme that recurred throughout, right
up to the end via the accusation of socio-philosophical war, then it is
necessarily the case that some of your objections in a certain way say
precisely the opposite of what I said.

Let me take your first
question. You tell me I am practising terror [prostestations from Jacques
Derrida].

Do I practice terror? There are
obviously two readings of my text. There is a philosophical reading, one in
which I do practice terror. And there is a non-philosophical reading, which is
obviously my reading. And from the latter point of view, I am reluctant to
concede that I am practising terror. I would like to suggest to you why not.

I was careful to say that
terror was bound up with overturning. I only used the word ‘terror in contexts
that related it to overturning.

So, are the relations I
described between science and philosophy relations of overturning?

Absolutely not. The whole
problem for me, having studied your work along with that of other contemporary
philosophers, lay in defining a point of view on philosophy that would not be acquired
philosophically; which is to say, a point of view that would not be acquired
via philosophical operations, be they those of doubt, controversy, or
overturning as principal philosophical operation, and even displacement insofar
as it is of a piece with overturning. From science to philosophy ─and I
will return to this point, since this is the direction that governs everything
I write─ there is no overturning. There is merely a limitation, but one
which does not take the form of an overturning. Perhaps it should be stated
more explicitly: there is a limitation of philosophy by science; that is all.
But I absolutely do not overturn philosophy; were I claiming to overthrow it,
it would be a pointless gesture, a zero-sum game. The entire enterprise would
then be contradictory.

JD: When you
say you are calling into question the sufficiency of philosophy, in what way is
that particular gesture different from a host of others, mine among them…? Why
erase the latter gesture and consign it to the realm of sufficiency?

FL: You
often claim that I conjoin ontology and deconstruction. Obviously, I only
conjoin them under certain conditions, not generally, and I have sufficiently
emphasized in other works how seriously I take the difference between certain
forms of metaphysics and your own work on and in metaphysics. But if I allow
myself to conjoin them, it is in the name of the struggle against the Principle
of sufficient philosophy, and in that regard alone. What is more, I do not call
any philosophy into question, since I posit the equivalence of all
philosophical decisions.

What is probably wounding for
philosophers is the fact that, from the point of view I have adopted, I am
obliged to posit that there is no principle of choice between a classical type
of ontology and the deconstruction of that ontology. There is no reason to
choose one rather than the other. This is a problem I discussed at great length
in my book [Les philosophies de la différence]: whether there can be a
principle of choice between philosophies. Ultimately, it is the problem of
philosophical decision. And I sought a point of view ─one may then query
the way in which I arrived at it, or constituted it─ which implies the
equivalence of all philosophical decisions, or in other words, what I call
democracy and peace.

Obviously, I defined democracy
and peace only insofar as these might be pertinent for a community of
philosophers, and only within the bounds of that framework. So I am in no way
conflating your work with a classical ontology, not at all. But in the name of
the principle of sufficient philosophy, and since I adopt a point of view which
allows one to discover the latter principle, I am obliged to stipulate that
equivalence. Because the principle of sufficient philosophy cannot be
discovered from within philosophy. It can only be discovered from elsewhere.

But I would like to return to
this point about terror, because it is really close to my heart.

There is no overturning of
philosophy. There isnt even a reduction in the Husserlian sense, or a
bracketing of philosophical decision. There is, if one wants to take up the term
reduction ─but you will take me up me on my use of philosophical
vocabulary so I will come back to this in a moment─ what I call an
already accomplished, already actual reduction of philosophical decision by
science. Because science is precisely not constituted in the way in which a
philosophy is constituted, through a set of operations among which there may be
transcendental reductions; science is already a transcendental reduction in
act. And that is why the order I follow, the real order, is the order which
proceeds from science to philosophy. If you follow the opposite trajectory ─and
as a philosopher, someone who is in a certain sense governed by the principle
of sufficient philosophy, you cannot but follow the opposite trajectory─
you will necessarily register my gesture as a particularly aggressive one. But
I am bound to tell you ─and this is the consistency proper to my own
position─ that your impression of terrorism and aggression is an
impression that is internal to philosophical resistance; it is a philosophical
self-defence mechanism.

On then to the second problem,
that of the new science. It seems to me that, unless I made a mistake, I did
not speak of a ‘new science?

JD: I am
absolutely sure of it.

FL: If I did
then it was in a certain sense a philosophical lapse, precisely. Philosophy is
always stronger than one imagines. In no way do I want to talk of a ‘new
science, precisely because what I mean by science is what everyone else means
by science. What I dont want to do is reiterate the philosophical distinction
between the so-called empirical sciences and transcendental science. This is
precisely the distinction I dont want to make because to do so would be to
reconstitute a hierarchy whereby philosophy can characterize itself as thinking
while relegating science to the status of a merely blind, technical production of
various kinds of knowledge.

Since my concept of the
transcendental differs from the use to which philosophy puts it, likewise, my
concept of the empirical will also differ from its use in philosophy. For me,
all sciences, even those philosophy degrades by calling them ‘empirical; all
these sciences partake of transcendental structures. They are already
consistent in themselves, they already have access to the real. On the other
hand, what is possible is a science, maybe a new one ─or at least one
that could be called ‘new insofar as it still has to be constructed─ , a
science that I will call transcendental and whose goal will consist simply in
describing the transcendental constitution of those sciences which philosophy
calls ‘empirical. But this transcendental science is not superior to those empirical
sciences, since it no longer relates to them in the ways in which philosophy
related to them. It is a science absolutely on the same level as the others.
There is in a certain sense a community, a kind of equivalence among all
sciences, whether ordinary or transcendental. I wanted to break the relation of
domination which philosophy enjoys over the other sciences.

JD: This is
what you wrote:

“Thus a community of
researchers in philosophy will be democratic and peaceful only if it refrains
from founding itself upon the principle of sufficient philosophy in order to
consider itself as the subject of science. And if it then contents itself with
treating philosophy simply as the object of a new science and new practices
elaborated upon that foundation…”

FL: lang=EN-GB>What I describe with the term ‘essence of science are the
structures of any science whatsoever. Once these transcendental structures have
been elaborated, or rather once these already existing structures have been
described (it is not my description which creates them), it then becomes
possible to envisage a specific science for philosophy and to extend, so
to speak, scientificity as I understand it to the study of philosophy itself.
So in this sense, yes, there would indeed be a new science to create, but the
science I describe is the most banal, most ordinary kind of science.

You also asked me: Isnt there
also a socius in science? Yes, obviously; I alluded to it when I said,
with regard to the politics of science, that the latter are an
overdetermination of transcendental structures, which I have not analyzed here.
I left it to one side precisely because it is an overdetermination. But obviously,
the sociological, political, economic intrications of science need to be
analyzed, and its transcendental structures include or may be affected by the
effective conditions for the production of forms of knowledge. I do not deny
this.

You ask: Where does this
essence of science come from?

This is obviously the principal
question, in a sense, because it means: From where do you derive what you are
telling us? There are two ways of answering this question: a philosophical
answer, which I dont want to give, and a rigorously transcendental answer. The
philosophical answer would be to say: Having reflected upon the philosophical
decision and the ultimate prerequisites for transcendence, for the mixture of
transcendence and immanence, I concluded that philosophy assumed something like
the One and the One had always been presupposed by philosophy but that the
essence of the latter had never been elucidated by philosophy.

But I have to say that this
answer did not satisfy me at all, because it led me to position myself in your
territory, which is that of philosophy, and to want to give a ‘false (the term
is not quite right) description of what is at stake. The true answer I must
give to you ─maybe it will seem rather cavalier to you─ but
ultimately it is just as simple as the question:

“Where do I get this from?”

I get it from the thing itself. This is as rigorous an answer I am able to give. Because the
criterion for my discourse was a rigorously immanent or transcendental criterion,
there is no other answer I can give on pain of placing myself upon the terrain
of effectivity, and I neither can nor want to think science on the basis of
transcendental effectivity.

JD: I dont
understand what ‘transcendental means outside of philosophy. But when you tell
us: My answer is the thing itself, I want to put two questions to you: Isnt
this a philosophical move, the appeal to the thing itself? What; which; what
is the thing itself?

FL: The One
is the thing itself.

JD: You
think that the relation to the One as the thing itself is a non-philosophical
relation or experience?

FL: Yes,
precisely because it is not a relation. This is the crux of the
misunderstanding, which is to say that you insist on wanting to make a
philosophical reading, through the prism or optic of the philosophical
decision, albeit a decision which has been worked upon ─you persist in
trying to read what I am doing through the medium of philosophy.

No doubt, you will object: “But
you yourself constantly use philosophy. In the name of what do you allow
yourself to use the term ‘transcendental or the term ‘One if not in the name
of philosophy?”

I have to tell you that this is
an absolutely standard, normal, common objection; it is always the one people
put to me first: “You use philosophy in order to talk about something which you
claim is not philosophical.” Listen…the objection is so fundamental that it is
tantamount to indicting me of a crude, rudimentary self-contradiction. It is
entirely obvious that I allow myself the right, the legitimate right, to use
philosophical vocabulary non-philosophically.

It is a defining characteristic
of philosophy, of the principle of sufficient philosophy and its unitary will,
to believe that all use of language is always ultimately philosophical, whether
sooner or later. Philosophy, which I characterize as a ‘unitary mode of
thought, cannot imagine for an instant that language can be used in two ways:
there is the use of language in science, which is not at all philosophical,
contrary to what philosophy itself postulates in order to establish itself as
epistemology or fundamental ontology of science; and the use of language in
philosophy. Philosophy postulates that every use of language is a use with a
view to the logos, or what I call a use-of-the-logos, language being taken as
constitutive of the being of things. From this point of view, if this were the
only possible use of language, then obviously an escape from philosophy would
be out of the question. But I postulate ─actually, I dont postulate it,
since I begin by taking them as indissociably given together from the outset
─the block of the real as One and a certain use of language which
corresponds to this particular conception of the real. Since I take as
indissociably given from the outset a certain use of language, which is not the
use of the logos, and the One which founds it, I do not contradict myself, I do
not relapse into philosophical contradiction. Philosophy has a deeply ingrained
fetishism, which is obviously that of metaphysics, but which may not be
entirely destroyed by philosophical critiques of metaphysics, and this is the
belief that ultimately all use of language is carried out with a view to being,
in order to grant being, or to open being, etc.; that all use of language is
‘positional.

But science ─I dont have
time to develop this here─ makes a non-positional, non-thetic use of
language. There is an entire theory of scientific representation waiting to be
elaborated, because the latter does not have the same ‘ontological structure
as philosophical representation. I think that most of the objections put to me
are a consequence of this belief that there is only one use of language, and
that not only does being speak through language, but as soon as you begin to
speak, it is ultimately being that speaks and you are no more than an
intermediary. It is this belief that science extirpates. That is why I allow
myself the right to use the term ‘transcendental under conditions that are no
longer ontological, my only problem then being to display a requisite degree of
internal rigour or consistency, which is to say, to transform the word
‘transcendental so as to render it better suited to describe this non-thetic
experience which the One is. So if I continually oppose the One of science,
which from my point of view explains scientific thoughts profoundly realist
character, its blind aspect, its deafness to the logos, its unbearable
character for philosophy; if I distinguish this particular One from
philosophical unity, this is for reasons that are relatively precise, ones
which provided the starting point for these investigations. It seems to me that
philosophy cannot help but deploy itself through a hybrid structure that
combines transcendence and immanence. Whatever their modes, however varied these
two coordinates, philosophical space is a space with two coordinates,
transcendence and immanence. It may be that metaphysical transcendence has a
kind of tain or lining of alterity; that may well be possible, in which case
there would no longer be just two dimensions, but three or four, one could try
to discover them. But it seems to me to be a defining characteristic of
philosophy to combine something like a position with something like a decision,
and hence to deploy unity, but to always deploy unity along with its opposite.
This opposite may not always be immediately given, one may have the impression
that it has been expelled from immanent unity, but in reality transcendence
returns in the form of a pedagogy: you are told that the soul has to identify
itself with the One…Philosophy thereby shifts to a pedagogical stance which
reintroduces transcendence, and as a result the One of philosophy…(there is no
doubt that the subject is obliged to identify with the One) simultaneously
transcends the subject.

But I claim that sciences
paradoxical nature for philosophy, its fundamentally obscure, non-reflexive
character from the viewpoint of philosophy ─which explains why philosophy
has denigrated it throughout the centuries, since Plato at least and right through
to Heidegger (“science does not think”)─ follows from the fact that with
science immanence is given right from the outset in itself and solely by
itself. Absolutely immanent data, Husserl used to say, are without “the
slightest fragment of world”. I am in fact very close to Husserl, obviously,
but with one slight difference, which is precisely the crucial,
non-philosophical difference, and which is that with Husserl, in spite of
everything, a transcendental reduction is required in order to actualize the
transcendental ego. But I claim that in science, no preliminary transcendental
reduction is required: we already necessarily start from the One. Which
obviously seems very odd: this is not where we expected to find science! We
start from the One, we dont arrive at it. We start from the One, which is to
say that if we go anywhere, it will be toward the world, toward Being. And I
frequently use a formulation which is obviously shocking for philosophers,
particularly those of a Platonist or Plotinian bent: its not the One that is
beyond Being; its Being that is beyond the One. Its Being that is the other
of the One.

Hence this great upheaval, this
seismic shift in philosophical concepts, which philosophy is in a certain sense
obliged to suppress. But as I have often repeated, it is neither a permutation
nor an overturning.

As for the distinction between
the possible and the real, obviously, it is initially a philosophical
distinction. But in philosophy one distinguishes between the empirical real and
the possible (the a priori), and then the real of possibility; one envisages a
synthesis or mixture of possibility and the real. All I am saying is that
science is a type of thinking that is realist in the last instance and that it
is exclusively realist. At least initially, or in the last instance, because
obviously I have not developed the analysis of science, particularly the
problem of objectivity, which would have complicated matters a bit. But science
in its principle or absolute foundation does not acknowledge the possible, it
knows only the real. Obviously, it will make use of the possible and
effectivity, but it will make use of them on this basis, which is to say that
contrary to philosophy, which very often starts from the empirical in order to posit
the possible or the a priori in opposition to the empirical ─and you know
all the problems this generated for Kantianism, and how the neo-Kantians tried
to overcome this problem of the a priori posited in opposition to the empirical,
a problem the disciples of Kant and Fichte were already aware of─ science
starts directly from the One, which is to say from the most radical experience
there is. You have to start from the real, otherwise youll never get to it.

Who wants the real?
Philosophy. And because it wants the real, it never gets it, which is to say it
has realization instead, in other words, war.

The force in the name of which
peace is imposed?

If I grant myself this force as
One, through a use of language which corresponds to this anteriority of the
real over representation, then I am quite straightforwardly obliged to deduce
peace from it, an undivided peace, as I said; I must deduce it from science, I
cannot do otherwise, it is simply a matter of rigour. So either youre saying
that this entire project is an act of force, in which case, obviously, all of
its details are also acts of force; or we have to start from this One and this
real.

As for this interpretation in
terms of an ‘act of force, I am perfectly willing to acknowledge its plausibility
if I position myself on the terrain of philosophy. But I think that once one
has, not made the leap, because it is precisely not a leap, but rather realized
the ‘stance proper to science, there is no act of force. I did not claim to be
exiting philosophy, that is not my project at all… My project is
quasi-scientific and science is not governed by any practical ends, at least
not to my knowledge. In this regard, I am very Spinozistic: all teleology must
be absolutely eliminated. Science contents itself with description and my
attitude is purely descriptive. In reality, science contents itself with
describing the order of the real, and the order of the real goes from science
toward philosophy. It is philosophy which transcends science; science is not
some sort of black block or black transcendence for philosophy, contrary to
what some claim.

I understand why one may have
the impression of terrorism or of a totally uncompromising set of demands. I
think that in theory there can be no compromise, unless compromise is
constitutive of the real. But since I dont think that compromise is
constitutive of the real, I make none, I remain content with being consistent,
which is to say that I try to elaborate a rigorous science.

1-Les philosophies de la différence, Paris: P.U.F.,
1986.

Paru en français dans La décision philosophique n°5.