Time was when Critical Philosophy was queen of the philosophical sciences. But in the two hundred years since the inauguration of transcendental thought we have witnessed nothing but endless disputes. One camp announces that the mind conforms to objects rather than objects to mind, thereby declaring mind the ultimate principle of transcendental philosophy. Another camp declares that objects and minds conform to language rather than language to objects. Yet another camp declares that objects and minds conform to history rather than history to objects and minds. Yet another camp declares that objects conform to Dasein, or the body, or power, technology, writing, or language games. Between all these rival camps we discover that the ultimate principle or ground to which objects must conform is undecidable. For each of these camps is able to declare that it has discovered the nearest of the near and that which must therefore function as the regulative ground for our access to all else.
Given the utter failure of Critical Philosophy as evinced by its endless and irresolvable disputes, let us see whether we do proceed further in the thorny and obscure domain of metaphysics by beginning with the ultimate transcendental principle upon which all of these other principles are necessarily dependent. Let us see whether we do not, at last, resolve these endless disputes by arguing that minds and objects conform to oxygen rather than oxygen to mind, Dasein, history, texts, language, power, the lived body, language games, society, systems, or any of the other wrecked proposals for the ultimate transcendental principle upon which all else is grounded. After all, if oxygen is the ultimate transcendental principle, if it is the principle of principles, the principle without peer, is this not because there can be no mind, Dasein, history, texts, language, power, the lived body, language games, society, or systems without oxygen?
In proposing oxygen as the principle of principles, as the principle that outstrips all other principles as the ultimate ground of access, I will be charged with being arbitrary and absurd. However, if, up to this point, oxygen has not been recognized as the principle that outstrips all other principles, then this is because oxygen is the nearest of the near and as the nearest of the near it is further than the far, perpetually receding from the gaze as the tain of all mirrors, both allowing all access or givenness while perpetually withdrawing from the given. Is this not the true lesson of the dispute over the existence of phlogiston? That those seeking the secret of fire objectified that which is rather a condition for all objectification and subjectivization, for all access whatsoever?
Moreover, could Descartes have declared “I think therefore I am!” without the vital power of breath? And does not John tell us that in the beginning there was the word? And here, would we not find confirmation that this is the principle that outstrips all other principles and beginnings, the beginning that has always already begun without ever commencing, in the fact that the pre-Socratics, in their own way, already had a more originary and authentic access to this origin of origins without origin in their e-levation of ele-mental air to a fundamental principle of all being? Indeed, does not the nomination of oxygen as elemental already disclose its status as an ultimate arche presiding over the disclosedness of all beings?
What must above all be shown is how the failure of self-reflexivity in the elevation of other critical principles suffering from an objectification that clothes or disguises this most airy of principles to pride of place generates a series of irresolvable paralogisms and antinomies that perpetually haunt reason, preventing the end of all dispute once and all, thereby initiating the march of knowledge and emancipation at last. Not only this, but with oxygen we discover a principle that at last resolves the vexed antinomies of the subject and the object, for air is at once both material and spiritual, as can be discerned in its status as both elemental and breath. As such, we must first proceed with a deconstruktion of all history hitherto, demonstrating the paradoxically silent functioning of the principle that outstrips all principles, the principle that perpetually evades and precedes all objects and subjects while nonetheless and simultaneously, yet under erasure, only following from objects and subjects, illustrating how air is both the condition of possibility and impossibility for all other beings. Only then will we at last accomplish the End of philosophy and the beginning of thinking, ushering in, if I may put it like this, a breath of fresh air.
January 21, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Finally! : )
January 21, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Not sure about the satire-y bits here, but didn’t Luce Irigary make precisely the same argument in her book on Heidegger, unsatirically called, The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger?
January 21, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Haven’t read it.
January 21, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Actually, as I pointed out in my non-satirical bits before, the whole thing about mind conforming to object or objects conforming to mind is a pure caricature – so this is really not a satire at all, but a kind of desperate mocking, like a student who after a frustrating evening with Descartes declares in class: “This is bullshit, why will I ever need to know this?”
“Critical Philosophy” was never a queen of anything, if Critical Philosophy is Kant.
“Endless disputes” are not an evidence of failure, otherwise mathematics, physics, neuroscience, chemistry and many other sciences that still dispute data and interpretations are failed sciences.
if oxygen is the ultimate transcendental principle, if it is the principle of principles, the principle without peer…
I think I’m starting to see my issues with your “principle” – oxygen is a word, not a principle, principle is a statement, if you are going to mock something, at least give it a bit of brains, I suppose.
Moreover, could Descartes have declared “I think therefore I am!” without the vital power of breath?
Of course, and he did – my students just wrote papers on that yesterday! I mean I like the funnies as much as the next man, but this is not really funny at all, it’s mostly mocking of what you either don’t understand or refuse to consider. It’s kind of sad – where exactly is the humor? Do you really think that someone like Kant proceeds in this way? This sort of explains things…
January 21, 2009 at 11:31 pm
In CYCLONOPEDIA, Reza Negarestani makes a distinction between the hazy old Greek AER and the more clear and distinct modern AIR
January 22, 2009 at 2:29 am
[…] Difference, Doxa, Epistemology, Grounds, Metaphysics In a rather humorous response to my satire on transcendental philosophies, Mikhail writes: Actually, as I pointed out in my non-satirical bits […]
January 22, 2009 at 5:56 am
Mark, I think you’ve put your finger on one of the central fault-lines informing debates among variants of Transcendental Oxygenism.
January 22, 2009 at 6:06 pm
My copy of Cyclonopedia got lost in transit and I still await it (I read the draft of the book but don’t remember the air part). This is very funny by the way, Levi.