COLLAPSE IV
Spectral Dilemma1 Quentin Meillassoux
Mourning to come, god to come. 1
COLLAPSE IV
Meillassoux – Spectral Dilemma
That is to say: a dead person or whom the work o mourning, the passage o time, proves inadequate or a tranquil bond between them and the living to be envisaged. A dead person the horror o whose death lays heavy not only upon their nearest and dearest, but upon all those who cross the path o their history history.. Essential spectres are those o terrible deaths: premature deaths, odious deaths, the death o a child, the death o parents knowing their children are destined to the same end – and yet others. Natural or violent deaths, deaths which cannot be come to terms with either by those whom they beall, or by those who survive them. Essential spectres are the dead who will always reuse to ‘pass over’, who obstinately cast o their shroud to declare to the living, in spite o all evidence, that they still belong amongst them. Their end attests to no meaning, brings with it no completion. These are not necessarily shadows who declare their revenge, but shadows who cry out beyond all vengeance. Whoever commits the imprudence o lending an ear to their call risks passing the rest o his lie hearing their complaint. We will call essential mourning the completion o mourning or essential spectres: that is to say the accomplishment o a living, rather than morbid, relation o the survivors to these terrible deaths. Essential mourning assumes the possibility o orming a vigilant bond with these departed which does not plunge us into the hopeless ear – itsel mortiying – that we eel when aced with their end, but which, on the contrary,, actively inserts their memory into the abric o our contrary existence. To accomplish essential mourning would mean: to live with essential spectres, thereby no longer to die with them. To make these spectres live rather than becoming,
in hearing their voices, the mere shadow o a living being. The question which poses itsel to us is thus the ollowing: is essential mourning possible – and i so, under what conditions ? Is it possible, ater a twentieth century whose history was dominated by odious deaths, to live a non-morbid relation with the departed, or the most part unknown to us, and yet still too close or our lives not to be secretly gnawed away at by them? At rst glance, we seem to nd ourselves constrained to respond in the negative. For this essential mourning seems impossible to envisage i it is reerred to the general alternative o which the relation to the departed seems to admit. This alternative can be stated, summarily, in very simple terms: either God exists, or he doesn’t. Or more generally: either a merciul spirit, transcending humanity, is at work in the world and its beyond, bringing justice or the departed; or such a transcendent principle is absent. Now, it becomes rapidly apparent that neither o these two options – let’s call them or convenience religious or atheistic, however innumerable the ways in which they can be congured – allows the requisite mourning to take place. To To say that God exists, or that he does not – whatever is thought through these two statements, both are paths to despair when conronted with spectres. To demonstrate this, let us directly exhibit, in the orm o ‘cases or the deence’,, what appear to us to be deence’ b e the strongest responses o each position to the challenge o such a mourning. Take the ollowing religious apology: ‘I might hope to come to terms with my own death, but not that o terrible deaths. It is terror in conronting these past deaths, irremediably past, not my coming end, which makes me believe in God. Certainly, i my disappearance, by some chance, should be terrible, then I shall die hoping or mysel
COLLAPSE IV
Meillassoux – Spectral Dilemma
what I hope or spectres. But I mysel am but a spectre in waiting. I can be Sadducean or mysel, and or others, but I will always be Pharisean or spectres. Or again: I might be rigorously atheist or mysel, might reuse to believe in immortality or mysel, but I could never do so or them: For the idea that all justice is impossible or the innumerable massed spectres o the past corrodes my very core, so that I can no longer bear with the living. Certainly, it is they, the living, who need help, not the dead; but I think that help to the living can only proceed given some hope or justice or the dead. The atheist might well deny it: or my part i I were to renounce this, I could not live. I must hope or something or the dead also, or else lie is vain. This something is another lie, another chance to live – to live something other than that death which was theirs. theirs.’’ Now take the ollowing, atheist response: ‘You want to hope, you say, say, or something or the dead. Let’s L et’s look closer, then, at what you promise them. You hope or justice in the next world: but in what would this consist? It would be a justice done under the auspices o a God who had himsel allowed the worst acts to be committed, in the case o criminal deaths, or who himsel had committed them, in the case o natural deaths. You call just, and even good, such a God. But what would you think o this: the promise to live eternally under the reign o a being called just and loving, who has, however, let men, women and children die in the worst circumstances, when he could have saved them without any diculty whatsoever; who has even directly inficted such sorrows – And even this, He says, as a mark o his innite (and thus mysterious, unathomable) love or the creatures he thus aficts. To live under the reign o such a perverse being, who corrupts the most
noble words – love, justice – with his odious practices: isn’t this a good denition o hell? You say that in the dazzling presence o such a God, I will grasp the innitely loving nature o his attitude attit ude to his creatures? You You only succeed in in exacerbating the nightmare you promise: or you suppose that this being has the power to spiritually transorm me in such a radical ashion as to make me love He who allows such atrocities to occur occur,, or having let l et those atrocities occur occur.. This is a promise o a spiritual death innitely worse than a merely bodily death: in the presence o God, I will cease to love the Good, or He would have the power to make me love Evil as i it were Good. I God exists, the exit o the dead is thus aggravated to innity: their bodily death is redoubled in their spiritual death. To To this hell you wish or them, I preer, or them as or mysel, nothingness, which will leave them in peace and conserve their dignity, rather than putting them at the mercy o the omnipotence o your pitiless Demiurge. Demiurge.’’ We can see that each o these two positions is only supported by the weakness o the other: the atheist is atheist because religion promises a earul God; the believer anchors his aith in the reusal o a lie devastated by the despair o terrible deaths. Each masks his specic despair by exhibiting his avoidance o the other’s despair. Thus the dilemma is as ollows: either to despair o another lie or the dead, or to despair o a God who has let such deaths take place. We will call spectral dilemma the aporetic alternative o atheism and religion when conronted with the mourning o essential spectres.3 In this aporetic alternative, we 3. I have called ‘religious’ every position which brings together the thesis o a lie beyond the grave with the existence o a personal God; ‘atheistic’ every position
COLLAPSE IV
Meillassoux – Spectral Dilemma
oscillate between the absurdity o a lie without God, and the mystery o a God who calls ‘love’ his laissez-aire and production o extreme evil: the double orm o a ailure to accomplish essential mourning. On the contrary, we will call a resolution o the spectral dilemma a position which would be neither religious nor atheist, and which, because o this, would manage to extract itsel rom the double despair inherent to their alternative: despairing at the belie in justice or the dead, or believing despairingly in a God without justice. Our question concerning the possibility o essential mourning can be reormulated as ollows: Under what conditions could we hope to resolve the spectral dilemma ? How to think a bond between the living and dead which extracts itsel rom the twoold distress o the atheist and the religious believer? To sketch a possible response to this question, we must proceed in the ollowing ashion: we must exhibit the conditions o a solution to the dilemma, and evaluate the theoretical legitimacy o the latter along with its credibility. We do not exclude, o course, the possibility that this solution might eventually turn out to be illusory, and that we might have in the end to renounce extracting ourselves rom the atheo-religious alternative. But this potential renunciation must proceed only rom the precise examination o the solution. Not being able to present the
latter in its totality, we will content ourselves here with commencing its exposition.
which recuses both o these theses. One might certainly conceive o positions which derogate rom this convenient classication: Sadduceanism, evoked above, conjugates the belie in a personal God with the reusal o immortality; Spinozism, on the other hand, conjugates the recusal o a personal God with the thesis o a possible immortality. However, such positions do not change the essential point o the analysis: the incapacity o the principal systems o representation to resolve the spectral dilemma. In the case o Sadduceanism, I add to the despair o an evil God the despair o the non-resurrection o the dead; in the case o Spinozism, I must renounce all hope o a happy immortality or those who perished too soon to accede
2. conditions for thE rEsolution thE divinE inExistEncE
of thE
dilEMMA:
Let us begin by exposing what we shall call the ‘ormal’ conditions or a resolution o the dilemma. These conditions constitute at once the irreducibly legitimate part o the two preceding positions – atheistic and religious – and the source o the aporia. Each o these positions o the dilemma exhibits, we believe, an indispensable element o essential mourning: – the religious position establishes that mourning is not possible unless we can hope or the dead something other than their death. The spectres will not pass over to the other world until the day we might hope to see them rejoin ours. – The atheistic position establishes that the existence o God is an insurmountable obstacle to the elaboration o such despair, or only a perverse God could permit terrible deaths, and only an even more perverse God could make himsel loved or doing so. The aporia stems rom the act that these two conditions, equally indispensable, appear incompatible. There is only one way, then, to lit this impasse: we must prove that the incompatibility between these conditions is only apparent, and that there exists a third option, neither religious nor atheistic, capable o coherently combining the two elements o the response. From this point on, our path is clear: resolving the dilemma comes down to making thinkable the statement
COLLAPSE IV
Meillassoux – Spectral Dilemma
conjugating the possible resurrection o the dead – the religious condition o the resolution – and the inexistence o God – the atheistic condition o the resolution. These two elements will be synthesised in the ollowing statement, which will occupy our attention rom now on: God no longer exists. This statement ormulates a thesis which we will call the thesis o divine inexistence , an expression that must be understood in the twoold sense that permits its equivocity. Firstly, in an immediate ashion, the divine inexistence signies the inexistence o the religious God , but also the metaphysical God, supposed actually existent as Creator or Principle o the world. But the divine inexistence also signies the divine character o inexistence : in other words, the act that what remains still in a virtual state in present reality harbours the possibility o a God still to come, become innocent o the disasters o the world, and in which one might anticipate the power to accord to spectres something other than their death. The position o the divine inexistence allows us to grasp the source o the apparent insolubility o the spectral dilemma. The latter comes rom the act that atheism and religion seem to constitute an alternative exhausting all the possibilities: either God exists, or he does not. But the two theses are in truth stronger than these actual statements: or their sense lies in the supposedly necessary character o either the inexistence or the existence o God. To be atheist is not simply to maintain that God does not exist, but also that he could not exist; to be a believer is to have aith in the essential existence o God. We now see that the thesis o the divine inexistence must, to gain ground against such an alternative, shit the battle to the terrain o modalities:
It is a question o maintaining that God is possible – not in a subjective and synchronous sense (in the sense that I maintain that it is possible that God currently exists), but in an objective uture sense (where I maintain that God could really come about in the uture). uture). At stake is the unknotting unknotting o the atheo-religious link between God and necessity (God must or must not exist) and its reattachment to the virtual (God could exist). The question then takes on a greater precision: resolving the spectral dilemma comes down to exhibiting the exact sense o the divine inexistence, at the same time as establishing that one can legitimately adhere to it. The thesis – God no longer exists – can be decomposed according to two poles o signication which must then be studied consecutively: 1. What must be signied by a ‘no longer’, in order or a god to be thought as one o its eventualities? Such an examination comes down to thinking the signication o a time compatible with essential mourning: What is time, i it contains the divine as one o its virtualities, and what could legitimate our belie in the eectivity o the latter? 2. What does the signier ‘god’ really mean once the latter is no longer posited as existing – as possible and to come, but no longer as actual and necessary? Such an examination would necessitate, notably, an elaboration o the elements o a discourse on the divine distinct rom all theology ounded on the thesis o an eternal God. Within the connes o the present article we can only broach the rst point. We will thus t hus agree here to understand
COLLAPSE IV
Meillassoux – Spectral Dilemma
by ‘god’ the minimal sense required or an essential mourning to be envisaged: the emergence o a regime o existence in which, or the spectres, something begins other than their death.
must say o the sought-ater God not only that it must be posited as inexistent and possible, but also that it can only be conceived as contingent and unmasterable . This God, in act, cannot be posited except as contingent, in the sense that, i its thinkability supposes that nothing prohibits its advent, inversely, no destinal law can be supposed to guarantee its emergence, or such a supposition is still theoretically exorbitant. It must be able to be, but nothing can be thought that constrains it to be. And this God can only be thought as unmasterable in its advent, in the sense that it must exceed all phantasmatic hopes o absolute domination o nature on the part o man. Neither Prometheanism o death vanquished, nor providentialism o a god to come – which are just exacerbated versions o atheism and religion conronted with the spectral dilemma – can ound the hope o a solution. Taking as g ranted the ollowing hypotheses: 1. The laws o nature do not allow all ow us to hold out any serious hope o a uture rebirth o the departed. 2. Neither is there any hope o a transcendent Order o laws o nature, a bringer o justice or living and dead, whether actually at work, or in the course o emerging. What outcome remains to us? It suces, in response to this question, to determine what it is in such hypotheses that constitutes an obstacle to essential mourning: What seems to prohibit any resolution o the spectral dilemma, once I renounce the idea that a law exists, either natural or supernatural, capable o realising my hopes? The response is obvious: I I admit that there only exist natural laws incapable o resolving my dilemma, then this dilemma is
3. spEculAtivE trEAtMEnt
of
h uME’s
problEM
What would a time capable o divine emergence be? And what could make us decide to adhere to the idea o such a time, knowing that our all-too-evident desire to believe, ar rom rendering the task easier or us, can only increase our suspicion in regard to every plea which fatters our hopes? Beore entering into the heart o the subject, let us beg in by distinguishing the so-called ‘occult’ senses o the divine inexistence, that is to say those which rest upon the thesis that a hidden law exists, unknown or the moment, but capable o being at the origin o a redemption to come. This thesis comes down to an atheistic or religious interpretation o the divine inexistence, depending on whether it will b e a question o ounding the hope o rebirth on the Promethean mastery o death by a uture humanity supposed technically capable o eectuating it; or a question o maintaining that a necessary process o divinisation o the world is already secretly in progress, which will culminate in universal justice or the living and the dead alike. In both cases, one maintains that an occult law exists upon which all hopes must rest: a natural law not yet known, o the resurrection o bodies, a providential law o progressive emergence o the divine – indemonstrable, even antastic, theses, incapable in any case o supporting any serious hope. But as soon as we prohibit ourselves any such path, we
COLLAPSE IV
Meillassoux – Spectral Dilemma
insoluble, in so ar as – but only in so ar as – I admit also the necessity o the laws o nature . It is not the incompatibility between the laws o nature and the divine which prevents essential mourning: it is the belie in the necessity o such laws. And it is indeed this modal thesis which ounds the atheistic belie in the impossibility o the existence o God, as o any event contradicting the attested constants. The rst question we must treat is thus as ollows: ol lows: what ounds my adhesion to the necessity o laws, and thereby my reusal o any possible event’s contradicting them? Now, this problem is well-known since it is precisely the question posed by Hume concerning the rational justifcation o our belie in causal necessity. We are consequently conronted once more by this question, but – let us note well, or this is the speculative interest o the matter – we must tackle it ‘backwards’ in relation to its traditional treatment. Let us explain. The usual way o posing the question o causal necessity proceeds with the interrogation as ormulated by Hume himsel, and which can be stated as ollows: it being understood that we believe in the necessity o laws, can this belie be ounded in reason, so as to guarantee that laws will be in the uture what they are today, all other circumstances being equal? The aporia encountered by Hume consists in the act that neither logi c nor experience are able to oer any such justication. For, on one hand, there is nothing contradictory in the observable constants being modied in the uture; and, on the other, experience teaches us only about the present and the past, not the uture. So that the supposed necessity o natural laws becomes an enigma since the Principle o Sucient Reason cannot be eectively applied to it: We cannot rationally discover any reason why laws should be
so rather than otherwise, that is to say why they should remain in their current state rather than being arbitrarily modied rom one moment to the next. Now, our perspective is the inverse o Hume’s: or we propose on the contrary to start out rom the eective possibility that natural laws might break down without reason, in avour o an eventality incompatible with them. For we pose the ollowing question: since Hume has convinced us that we could a priori (that is to say without contradiction) conceive a chaotic modication o natural laws, why not have condence in the power o thought, which invites us to posit the contingency o the laws o nature, rather than in experience, in which alone the presentation o the apparent xity o observable constants nds its source? Why extrapolate the empirical xity o laws into a belie in their necessity, rather than adhering to the intellection o a radical Chaos which Hume has masterully, i implicitly, revealed to us? Why not, in other words, absolutise the ailure o the Principle o Sucient Reason, by maintaining that the meaning o that absence o reason or laws which we run up against in the Humean problem is not an incapacity o thought to discover such reasons, but a capacity o thought to intuit a priori , in the real itsel, the eective absence o the reason o things as laws, and the possibility o their being modied at any moment? It would be a question o making o contingency the absolute property o every being, laws as well as things – a property which a redened reason, a reason emancipated rom the Principle o Sufcient Reason , would take as its task to conceive and to describe. Thus the idea presents itsel o an inverted , rather than a reversed Platonism, a Platonism which would maintain that thought must ree itsel rom the ascination or the phenomenal xity xi ty o laws,
COLLAPSE IV
Meillassoux – Spectral Dilemma
so as to accede to a purely intelligible Chaos capable o destroying and o producing, without reason, things and the laws which they obey. Does this mean that we will have resolved Hume’s problem when we have posited the contingency o laws rather than their necessity? No, indeed, or we are then conronted by another problem, in the orm o an objection expressing the reason why our thesis does not appear credible, namely: I laws could be modied without reason at any moment, it would be extraordinarily improbable i this possibility were never to maniest itsel. And in truth, i matter could incessantly, in the least o its parts, ollow innumerable dierent laws, the disorder would be such that there would not even be maniestation. This argument, as we know, is the very core o Kant’s transcendental deduction: the contingency o laws is incompatible with the constitutive stability o representation. But our task is more precise now: to resolve the reormulated Humean problem, we must reute such an inerence, rom the contingency o laws to a requent, even renetic, disorder, whether o matter or o representation; we must establish that the maniest stability o laws does not demand that we maintain their necessity. Such is the rst problem – which is ar rom being the last – that the spectral dilemma obliges us to resolve i we would recuse the impossibility o a counter-natural event coming to pass. From this point point on, God must be thought as the contingent, but eternally possible, eect o a Chaos unsubordinated to any law . Let us agree to call speculative all philosophies which accord to thought the capacity to accede to an absolute, and metaphysical all philosophies which ground themselves on a modality o the Principle o Sucient Reason to accede to
the absolute. All metaphysics, according to this reading, cannot but be speculative; however, not all speculation is necessarily ated to be metaphysical. For speculation which ounded itsel on the radical alsity o the Principle o Sucient Reason would describe an absolute which would not constrain things to being thus rather than otherwise, but which would constrain them to being able not to be how they are. We can thereore ormulate the conclusion at which we wished to arrive at, namely that the existential resolution o the spectral dilemma passes by way o the spec ulative, but non-metaphysical, resolution o Hume’s problem. * * * A ew words, to conclude, on the inexistent god. How – according to what principles o investigation – might one attempt to designate its nature, once the latter is dened as a contingent eect o Chaos? On this point, we must agree to pose again, outside the transcendental eld, a Kantianstyle question: What am I permitted to hope or, now that I can hope? What is a god which would be once more desirable, lovable, worthy o imitation? I one supposes granted the real eventuality o emergences in rupture with the present laws o nature, what will be the most singular possible divinity, the most interesting, the most ‘noble’ in a sense (paradoxically) close to Nietzsche’s? Must this uture and immanent god be personal, or consist in a ‘harmony’, a becalmed community o living, o dead, and o reborn? We believe that precise responses to these questions can be envisaged, and that they determine an original regime o thought, in rupture with both atheism and theology: a divinology , yet to be constituted, through which will be abricated, perhaps, new links between b etween men and those who haunt them.
