PO I. What is Metaphysics?

Being the first part of an inquiry into a communist metaphysics

Wire drawing mill near Nuremberg by Albrecht Dürer, 1494

“When foolish students hear about the Dao, they laugh at it out loud

If they did not laugh at it, it would not be the Dao”

(Dao De Jing, Chapter 41)

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“What is rational is real, what is real is rational”—in the present era, it is the communists, above all, who have placed the most unwavering faith in this formula of rationality, a faith realized in works, a faith in the tasks of the transcendental subject. It is under a banner of passionate red that humanity has surpassed the merely sentimental praise of the rational, verbal affirmations of its “value”, and have attempted to realize a rational order, practically, in the social and political sphere. If this project is to attain a world-historical endurance beyond modernity—not into the re-creation of an idyllic past, but into another modernity, an audacious modernity, a modernity more modern than itself—then it must face up to certain internal insufficiencies, theoretical impasses that have hidden themselves like stones in the belly of Saturn. The communist project has suffered though it knew neither how nor from what. These insufficiencies must be boldly confronted, not with a characteristically modern fatalism and exasperation, but with the audacious and terrible intent of triumphing over them, with a titanic—a Promethean—hubris, with an impossible will.

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To lay bare the insufficiencies plaguing the rational “world-spirit”, and hence also enfeebling its practical realization in the communist project, we must turn to this project's critics—not, however, in order to find some opposing point of view against which to balance our own, not to moderate our force, not to temper our ambition, not to take a little from here and a little from there until we are left with something squalid and mediocre, but to discover, as fully and as deeply as possible, that over which we must triumph. The opposition must be confronted directly, not merely refuted, dismissed, or suppressed—because reaction itself is an internal insufficiency of the communist project, not a force somehow opposing communism from outside. Communism is the global reality, the already-present reality of socialized labor, and to the extent that reaction subsists it necessarily does so within the sinews of that same world, that is, within communism itself. We turn to these critics, then, not for an “outside perspective”, but for an inside view, a tour through the dark and winding entrails of communism. There is not one world of communism here, and another of reaction there. Reaction and revolution dwell within the selfsame horizon, a communist horizon. Revolution does not bring communism to us, it actualizes the communism which is already here. Reaction does not prevent the emergence of communism, it occludes the communism that is already here.

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To vanquish an enemy, one must first uncover their weakness, and to uncover a weakness, on the ideological plane, necessitates a deep penetration that cannot rest content with the superficial word-juggling of “refutations”. We must fully and truly know that the enemy is wrong, not merely prove that it is so. Proofs are never a guarantee of understanding, and knowledge which does not furnish proofs of itself is not any less knowledge. Knowledge and proof are, in that respect, asymmetrical.

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The weakness of reaction is, in a sense, our weakness (after all, it is our world, the only world, that suffers from it)—and we confront it with hope of converting it into our strength. A weakness, an insufficiency, always takes the form of a “not enough”. On the plane of ideas (and the ideological confrontation between reaction and revolution always has its material analogues), that is, on the plane of essentiality, the most relevant weakness to be uncovered must itself possess an essential character, that is, essential to that idea—it consists in that which makes that idea what it is. That is, the “not enough” of the idea lies in its not being itself to a sufficient degree. In this case, the “not enough” of reaction lies in its not being sufficiently reactionary, and because the cowards of reaction lack the will to their own reaction, it is up to revolution to do what reaction could not—to “push it all the way through”. This “pushing it all the way” is revolution, and that cowardice which stops halfway is reaction. Therefore, revolution is not revolution until reaction is reaction—and reaction will never be reaction as long as it is left to the fumbling incompetence of reactionaries. Thus, it will be found that the chief ideological opponents explored in the coming reflections, Heidegger and the “traditionalists” (none of the critics of modernity fled deeper into its entrails than these two—whether fleeing from modernity or toward it, is unclear), suffered from precisely such an essential weakness, namely, that Heidegger was not Heideggerian enough, and the traditionalists (chiefly, Rene Guenon) were not traditional enough (or, alternately, that the perennialists were not perennial enough). Because they were not themselves, we are not ourselves. They, too, form a part of the body communist, if only as the black bile secreted by its spleen, the melancholy of modernity. Modernity, however, is not communism, but incipient communism, its preliminary stage. Are we really to place communism on the same plane as the Renaissance, the colonial era, absolutist monarchy, political liberalism, and all the other signposts of modernity? Yes and no—Communism is more modern than modernity, not less.

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At the same time, it will be found that the insufficiency of the communist standpoint, namely, that it bases itself on the “nothing” of rationality, is also what renders it basically unconquerable. To the fatalist temperament, an insufficiency feels like an objection, but an insufficiency is in no way an exceptional condition. Insufficiency is basic to manifest existence. The insufficiency of the rational is not a disease to be cured, but a strength to be cultivated, not that over which but that through which we triumph. For this insufficiency to realize the full scope of its subtle yet implacable strength, it must expose itself totally, be acknowledged in the full light of day, and stand naked and vulnerable before the mirror of its critics. That is, it should fully understand itself as an insufficiency if it is to realize itself as a strength. It is our strength to the extent that we skillfully make use of it, and that skillfulness is a function of the clarity and breadth of our knowledge. Cowards need not apply. In the world-historic contest of ideologies (though, there is much more involved here than “ideology” taken in its most diminutive sense), communism must be as courageous as it is cunning.

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To begin with, this inquiry must address the “problem of metaphysics”, namely, that metaphysics as domain and discipline has been so thoroughly doubted and discredited that it is no longer even a problem, that its doubter feels so secure in his doubt that the question need not even be raised, namely, “what is metaphysics?”.

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Who, then, is the doubter of metaphysics?—only one capable of doubting it. Who, then, is incapable of doubting metaphysics?—that faculty to which metaphysics eminently pertains. This faculty cannot doubt that which not only issues from it but, moreover, is identical with its operations. That faculty whose very content and operation is metaphysics we call “intellect”. One associate of the traditionalist school has described intellect as follows:

“In India it is known as buddhi, the faculty that understands directly, not indirectly by reflection through the lower mental faculties (manas, mind) among which reason rightfully dominates. Meister Eckhardt speaks of it when he writes: 'There is something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable; ... this is the intellect.' St. Thomas is on its track when he characterizes intellectus as intuitive knowing in contrast to ratio which thinks discursively. Plotinus, Proclus, Dionysius, St. Bonaventure, and Nicolas of Cusa all in one way or another make intellection central to their epistemologies; there is no point in adding other names. Intellectual knowledge is direct knowledge in that it operates without intervening concepts. It is adequational in that it adequates the knower to its object; it knows by becoming what it knows and thereby transcends the subject-object dichotomy. In so doing it offers itself as the only complete knowledge, for distinction implies distance and in cognition distance spells ignorance. As the object of the intellect is timeless and one and the intellect can be adequated to this object, indeed at some level is this object, it follows that the intellect too is trans-personal and eternal in some respect. Which is why Greek gnosis says, 'Know thyself,' Christ said, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,' and it is written in the Hadith, 'Who knows himself knows his Lord.'”

Intellect is not at liberty to doubt metaphysics—it is, essentially, metaphysics. We also find a confirmation of this essentially “antique” conception in the work of Martin Heidegger. In his “What is Metaphysics?”, as he puts it “metaphysics belongs to the 'nature of man.' It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself”. For the moment, we will have to set aside the very interesting question of “Dasein” and its relation to “intellect”, and return to metaphysics' doubter. That doubt must issue from elsewhere than intellect. That doubt, as Kant well knew, belongs to the transcendental subject. Metaphysics is transcendent with respect to the transcendental subject's world. Consequently, that subject is at liberty to doubt metaphysics.

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Yet, as if that were not enough, this eminently modern line of inquiry does not content itself with saying “transcendental subjectivity has no access to the transcendent”. It takes this proposition a step further by positing a formal identity, whether it does this explicitly or implicitly, between “transcendental subject” and “self”. This identity is a formal one because it never just is, but must be announced, and finds its sustenance in such announcement, attains conceptual fortification of its position through declaration, belief, and explicit perception (as a subject takes note of its situation in relation to some object). This line of inquiry therefore says “the transcendental subject knows nothing of metaphysics or the transcendent, and the transcendental subject is that which I always already am”. This identity between a presumed “self” and the state of transcendental subjectivity is extraneous to the really essential and reasonably veracious point forwarded by the Kantian inquiry, namely, that the transcendent lies outside the horizon of the transcendental. Why, then, is this superfluous identity heaped onto an otherwise reasonable proposition? Is there not a suggestion here, however covert, that the transcendent (whatever “transcendence” might be) ought to be disregarded altogether and, together with this imperative, an intimation that the transcendent is something too remarkable, fantastic, distant, or obscure to be worthy of credence—in other words, that it is a sort of “fairy tale”? If the transcendent has no relevance for the transcendental subject (in reality, as will be seen, it has a great deal of relevance for this subject) then so much the worse for the transcendental subject—what business is that of mine? Ah, but then I am the transcendental subject, and if the transcendent has no relevance for me than for whom or what should it have relevance? Naturally! Is it not obvious that “I” and “transcendental subject” refer to one and the same reality? After all, it is transcendental subject which continually says “I”—therefore, it must be “I”.

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In the first place, then, let us abandon this superfluous identification, and let us set aside for later examining the rather nebulous “self”. If the transcendental subject, essentially, constitutionally, knows nothing of the transcendent then so much the worse for the transcendental subject. That is no objection to transcendence.

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To locate and assess transcendence within the horizon of the transcendental is to abandon its assessment altogether. If the transcendental subject cannot grasp at the transcendent, that tells us something about this subject but little about transcendence. Therefore, let us examine transcendence on its own terms, that is, in terms of its characteristic faculty, the faculty “classically” referred to as “intellect”. At the present time, however, “intellect” does not readily assimilate itself to our understanding. It is foreign to our modern way of thinking. It is characteristically unmodern. Transcendental subjectivity is eminently rational and intellect is not—and, yet, it is neither “irrational” nor basically inconsistent with rationality. Since it is somehow related to rationality, we can perhaps approach it indirectly, as it were, through an understanding of rationality.

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To understand rationality we should first grasp its basically mediate function. It does not stand somehow on its own. It mediates between this and that, and consists in a kind of comparative ratio of this to that and that to this. “This and that”, therefore, are rationalized through this mediation, but are not rational “in themselves”. Indeed, the moment this and that enter into any kind of relation with each other, something like rationality can be supposed to have intervened as a precondition of this relationship. If this rationality (or “something like it”) were simply another “thing” along with this and that, then it too would be involved in the relationship, it too would be subject to the mediation of some intervening mediator. Therefore, rationality is no “thing” at all, but a nothing. Wherever any sort of nothing intervenes, we either have rationality or “something like it”, that is, something performing a function analogous to that of rationality, a nothing which mediates.

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In order for this and that to enter into a relationship with one another, they must first be divided one from the other. The same motion which mediates also separates. Separation is already a relationship, a relation of opposition or difference or otherness. It is the intervention of a nothing which makes this relationship possible, which makes difference and separation possible, and therefore also comparison and proximity. This nothing is not necessarily rational, but it is, at least, something like rationality. Rationality is a particular sort of nothing, a particular kind of “negation”.

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We can refer to this division (between this and that) as an “analysis”. Analysis is not yet an analytic judgment, which is rational procedure, in the most conventional sense, but it is something like it. Analysis causes certain latent possibilities to emerge from out of an undivided region. Which is to say that by dividing in such and such a way this and that emerge and, by dividing in another way, this and the other emerge.

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Rationality, therefore, as a type of nothing, is analytical and mediate—that is, “analysis” (which is not yet necessarily an analytic judgment) and “mediation” are two features by which rationality can be recognized, or something like it. Intellect, by contrast, is synthetic (which is not yet a synthetic judgment, in the Kantian sense) and immediate. It “relates” (or, more precisely, identifies) itself to the undivided region, to every region insofar as it is undivided. This also implies that intellect is not something different from that region, otherwise a division would subsist between intellect and region. Moreover, if intellect were basically different from that region to which it “relates”, the relationship between intellect and region would necessarily be a mediate one, that is, non-intellective.

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This and that, too, are regions, regions produced through analysis. They, too, can be “related” to in an immediate fashion. Intellect is synthetic because it deals with undivided unities (“syntheses”). It is immediate because it “relates” through identity. It is non-different from that to which it “relates”.

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The rational faculty “knows” that this is such and such. The intellective faculty knows this because it is this. Intellect is what it knows and knows only what it is. Nothing extraneous enters into intellect. Extraneity is relative and therefore implies the intervention of something (or, rather, a nothing) like rationality, an intervention which is the precondition of relations.

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That the intervention of a nothing is the precondition for the emergence of a separate and distinguishable this and that, that is, for the emergence of “things”, has just been noted. Added emphasis is necessary, however, as concerns the implications of this principle for rational discourse, namely, that rational propositions emerge in the selfsame manner as “things”. Thus, rational propositions are distinguishable from the rationality which is partly (the other part belongs to intellect) responsible for their emergence. A rational proposition, in other words, at a basic level, is something fundamentally distinct from rationality. The rational proposition is, for all intents and purposes, a “thing”, a this or a that. The rational proposition is rational, to speak somewhat redundantly. It stands in relation to other rational propositions, and consists in a mutually illuminating relation of its own internal parts. Rationality itself is not rational. There is no common measure between rationality itself and any other thing. It is the precondition for comparisons between this and that. It is the common measure between this and that.

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Rational discourse, therefore, is not possible without an element transcendent to rationality, on which element the unity and intelligibility of the rational proposition's content depends, that is, the unity of a this and a that. This same reasoning, as will be seen more fully later on, applies to the transcendental categories themselves, and if to the transcendental categories then also to the transcendental subject, which is essentially identical with its categories. Each category is, “in origin”, intelligible, that is, “intellective”—which is also to say, transcendent. This “transcendent mode” of the categories does not refer to the categories as we generally know them (e.g. in Kantian philosophy). Nevertheless, this mode is always already implied in these categories—these categories are rationalizations, and therefore the rationalizations of something, of some basically and immediately intelligible reality. Transcendental concepts are rationalized expressions of that which was, “at the first”, transcendent and intelligible.

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Here, again, we must fly from the temptation to see in the transcendent something lofty, distant, beyond us. What is it, exactly, that transcendence transcends?—it is the transcendental which is transcended through transcendence. Transcendence is beyond the reach of transcendental subjectivity (when taken as a limiting horizon), thus of transcendental subjectivity's world (but by no means anything like “world as such”). It is beyond the reach of transcendental subjectivity, but it is not beyond our reach (whatever it is that “we” are). Truly, nothing could be nearer, for to know it is to be it (and to be it is to know it). In the words of the Quran, it is “nearer to us than our jugular vein”, or, as Meister Eckhart puts it “God is in all things as intelligence, and is more truly in them then they are in themselves”.

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Thus, “knowing”, eminently, means “intellection”. Rationality, therefore, and in a manner of speaking, is a process of unknowing, of progressively vacating intelligibility, of reducing knowledge to a threadbare skeleton. Rationality, though related to the intelligible (or, put another way, that which relates intelligibles), is itself basically unintelligible. Rationality, which we take for a source of security and “intellectual” surety, is really something confusing and difficult to comprehend. It may tell us that this or that is such and such, but one statement follows another, leading us on perpetual and circuitous paths, and at no point does does the journey terminate in a final and definite “is”, an “is” which just is what it is and has no need to tell us so. The tall tales of rationality are without end.

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That intellect somehow is what it knows may sound, at first, too remarkable, even “magical”, like the description of a shapeshifting Polyphemus. This way of defining intellect lends itself to imagery of metamorphoses, as if the intellect belonged to a domain of strange happenings outside of the ordinary operations of life. Intellect, however, is nothing if not the very benchmark of the usual. Its domain (at least “half” of this domain—more on this later) is that of the utterly ordinary, grounded, and concrete. If the earlier definition continues to sound like something fantastic to our ears, that is only because we fail to appreciate the stunning simplicity of the word “is”. We imagine, somehow, that intellect becomes this or that. There is no question here of fantastic transformations, however. Intellect is the unadorned intelligibility of that which is. It is the utter simplicity of this phenomenon that causes us to pass it over. This utterly simple, grounded, and concrete dimension of intellection already seems to hint at a certain value it might have for communist theory, a theory which concerns itself not with the abstract materiality of Epicurus but with a concrete and historically intelligible materiality.

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Rationality, therefore, relates this to that, and it is in this relation that rationality, or something like it, subsists. The “this and that” which are related one to the other do not, “in themselves”, possess a rational character, but rather an intelligible one, an eminently and directly intelligible character. To be intelligible is to be transparent to the operations of intellect.

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Intellect, in a manner of speaking, knows “things-as-they-are-in-themselves” because it is “things-as-they-are-in-themselves”. The “thing-in-itself” is not some obscure mystery secreted away behind the veil of perceptible form. It is something, in many respects, entirely ordinary and, if the “thing-in-itself” is entirely ordinary then so too is metaphysics. Indeed, as Aristotle puts it, metaphysics consists in the knowledge of that which is most knowable—what could be more ordinary than that?

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References to “de-mystification” are abundant in Marxist literature, and a fairly strict identification is assumed between “mystification” and “metaphysics”. It is metaphysics which mystifies and its absence which is the same as de-mystification. On the contrary, however, if intellection is the benchmark of the ordinary and concrete, then metaphysics is not only something different from mystification but the presence of metaphysics can be assumed to exercise a positively de-mystifying influence. In order for metaphysics to de-mystify, however, we must first de-mystify metaphysics. There is metaphysics and then there is metaphysics. We must learn the difference.

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The mystifying sort of metaphysics we can roughly equate with what Kant calls “dialectical illusion”. This “dialectical illusion” is not something that takes place when the domain of transcendental subjectivity is left behind for some fantastic and “metaphysical” region in the sky. On the contrary, this sort of metaphysics is something eminently transcendental. If it passes itself off as transcendence then it is a counterfeit transcendence. “Dialectical illusion” is a confused condition of the transcendental subject, a transcendental subject that takes itself to be transcendent, which makes pronouncements bearing the stamp of a pseudo-transcendence.

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Intellect, in any case, is immediate accessibility, and therefore pure simplicity. If this simplicity is not apparent to us then that is only because we have complicated ourselves. “Self”, in other words, or something like it, is a precondition for this manner of complication and confusion.

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This “self” has intruded itself into a condition of primordial simplicity and, through a formal identification with the state of transcendental subjectivity, has established itself as the precondition of the most labyrinthine complications in conceptual thought and perceptual experience. This formal self-ness is not a “thing”, not a this or a that with its own intelligible content but, on the contrary, a factor which lends a semblance of solidity to the rupture between this and that by lending to each its own “self-nature” so that this may be itself and that may be its own self apart from this. It is, in other words, one and the same with transcendental subjectivity and rationality—or, in any case, something like them. Which is to say, this “self”, too, is a nothing, a particular sort of nothing with its own operative peculiarities. “Self” has the particularity of its nothing-ness in its merely “leeching” off of all that with which it identifies itself. It adds nothing to that with which it affiliates itself—quite literally, it adds a veil of nothingness to things, a shimmering self-hood with no substantive content. That a table is mine adds nothing to its tableness—that is, the nothing of self-hood has been added to it. At the same time, it takes nothing away from that to which it affiliates itself—both in the sense that nothing is detracted from this and that, “in themselves” (the table is not any less of a table just for being mine), and in the sense that self receives its own nothingness from this and that, that is, it is a self only in relation to that which it “selfs”, namely, the this and the that.

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If, indeed, this “self” is a nothing, then no object, let alone any intelligible reality (which is something prior to the split between subject and object, that is, prior to the transcendental state), can truly correspond to it. It, too, consists essentially in the intervention of a nothing, and can thus be more appropriately characterized as a process or procedure (this, in any case, is preferable to characterizing it as a “thing” or an “entity”). This is precisely what is done in the Samkhya philosophy of India, where this “self” is known under the technical term “ahamkara”, a compound of “aham”, meaning “I” or “self”, and “kara”, cognate with the better known “karma”, meaning “action” or “to make”. Thus, “ahamkara” is the continual procedure of attributing a self-nature to things, or of relating things to a self. Self, as ahamkara, is the procedure which posits self as entity. “Apperception” approaches this idea, but is too limiting an expression. “Ahamkara” involves more than mere “perception” in a narrow sense. It extends itself to thought, feeling, and a basic, underlying sense of “attachment”, to use a term with Buddhist overtones. Moreover, “apperception” is centered in the condition of the subject. The subject perceives this or that in relation to itself. “Ahamkara”, on the other hand, extends itself more generally and indifferently. Not only do I perceive this table in relation to my self, but a self-nature is also attributed to the table. The table is itself and not something else—a fact which neither adds nor subtracts anything from the table, or, as suggested above, adds nothing to it and subtracts (or extracts) nothing from it.

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Since this “self” really consists in a procedure of attributing “self-form”, to put it generically, we can also render it by the term “automorphosis”, rather than rely on the Sanskrit “ahamkara”. Automorphosis, transcendental subjectivity, and rationality, then, are all types of nothing. Since nothing could possibly distinguish one nothing from another nothing, automorphosis, transcendental subjectivity, and rationality are all essentially one and the same phenomenon. However, since they are each specified forms of nothing, they are, at the same time, not the same. They are the same and not the same. Indeed, to identify this as being either the same or not the same as that, as already discussed above, assumes the intervention of a mediator, a mediator which is essentially a nothing. This is a rather tangled paradox. It cannot be untangled through any ordinary hermeneutic. A hermeneutic of paradox will be necessary.