François Laruelle, a French philosopher, introduced the concept of "philosophical decision" as a central element of his work on "non-philosophy." Laruelle critiques traditional philosophy for what he sees as its inherent structure of making a "decision" that divides reality into two parts: the immanent and the transcendent, or the subject and object, among other dualities.
### Key Points of Laruelle's Concept of Philosophical Decision:
1. **Decision as a Structural Act:**
Laruelle argues that all philosophical systems inherently involve a decision that structures how reality is divided and understood. This decision involves taking a stance on the nature of reality, often positing a transcendental aspect (such as an underlying principle or essence) that governs or explains the immanent reality (the world as experienced).
2. **Philosophy's Circularity:**
According to Laruelle, philosophical systems are circular because they presuppose what they aim to explain. By making a decision about reality, philosophy ends up structuring its inquiry based on assumptions that it then takes as foundational truths.
3. **Philosophy’s Claim to Sufficiency:**
Laruelle sees philosophy as claiming sufficiency—meaning that it believes its own methods and decisions are adequate to capture and explain reality in its entirety. He criticizes this by arguing that philosophy, through its decisions, limits and shapes reality according to its own terms, thus missing aspects of the real that lie outside its conceptual frameworks.
4. **Non-Philosophy as an Alternative:**
Laruelle proposes "non-philosophy" as an alternative to traditional philosophy. Non-philosophy does not reject philosophy but rather suspends the philosophical decision. It seeks to understand the world without imposing the dualities that come from philosophical decision-making. In non-philosophy, the real is seen as radically immanent, not divided by philosophical distinctions.
In essence, Laruelle's critique of philosophical decision is a critique of the inherent structure of traditional philosophy that, in his view, divides and limits reality through its foundational decisions. His work in non-philosophy aims to transcend this by treating the real as undivided and beyond philosophical categorization.
