Logos, as I said before, is the force that gives birth to the object. The logos-force is therefore the morphogenic principle—the ontic chemical responsible for the origination and arrangement of the object’s structure. As a being-in-process, the object is always evolving, such that its structure is best described as a growing-form. The growth-object is always-forming according to the capacity for creation of the logos. The logos, then, is a formal cause without a target form, without an end of formation. It is the compass pointing north, not the destination that determines and demands arrival.

Telos, on the other hand, is this destination. It is Aristotle’s final cause, the termination of movement. It is also, therefore, the total cessation of life—purpose become nihilism. After all—when all is finished—being would lurch to a halt, the point of absolute zero, and succumb to nonexistence. Dead and buried, dirt in the ground.

Yet, life is creative, generative of further life. It does not limit itself, but constantly flows beyond its extremities. It is only possible, then, that a limit be imposed through the violent usurpation, and transmutation into telos, of logos. But because it naturally destroys itself upon consummation (ah! la petite mort!), telos is virtual, as fleeting as the power that established it.

Based on the above, I cannot embrace humanism. As Michael writes in the comments to The Horror of Humanism, humanism can be one or both of the following: (a) “that which emphasizes the magnificence of humanity” and/or (b) “that which claims ‘there is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity.” As a telos-assigning species, humanity introduces death—or the collapse of being—into its morphology. This is far from magnificent, rendering humanity ineligible to fulfill the condition of humanism a. Luckily, as Dr. Ian Malcolm once said, “Life will find a way.” Were human being to reach extinction, as it is so desperately endeavoring to do, life would carry on, and the universe would hardly know the difference. Thus, humanism b also fails to obtain on my view, thereby demonstrating fidelity to anti-humanism.

To summarize, ethologists view the term “alpha wolf” as misguided, applying only to artificial packs. Organization and leadership are not the result of a violent struggle culminating in the dominance of one animal over the many others. Rather, it is achieved through the production of life. Though there may be some struggle for the right to breed with a particular wolf, it is ultimately the fact of procreation—and the resulting generation of a new family group—that places a wolf “at the head of the pack”.

This model of organization based on sourcehood, rather than dominance, is how I would like to envision my Leibnizism of forces. (After all, if Bergson has taught me anything, it’s that life is creative, not domineering.) A force, or set of forces, reproduce(s) (a)sexually. The resulting pack of forces gathers, taking shape and direction from its head—which is, for the object, the logos (not a telos).

(An aside: Crudely put, the distinction between logos and telos, for me, is somewhat analogous to that between a compass and a geographical destination. I don’t think teleology exists in nature apart from virtual teleologies created by humans, but I do think nature is fraught with logoi. More on this some other time, I suppose.)

What about it is anti-realist, though, if it (notice that I am unwilling to take responsibility for the post’s contents!) concedes a really-existing, though formless, world? In other words, is it really dead? The answer lies, I believe, in Levi’s Epistemic Fallacy. It states that the reduction of ontology to epistemology is fallacious. Assuming this to be true—and why shouldn’t it be?—we can see clearly that the “really-existing world” of “Inkblots and Infinity” undergoes a metamorphosis when it is given over to the perceiving human; the human, in other words, calls beings into being from the muddled nothingness of being-without-Man. This is the same as Sartre’s view in La Nausée (cf. Word Vomit), which sees the human subject as hammering the world, like a throbbing lump of aluminum, into shape. The world’s way of being is thus determined by the human intellect, rather than by the world itself. Furthermore, we might point out that it is suggested that world is incapable of determining itself, since it wallowed flabbily in a state of nothingness until Das Man whipped it into shape. What can be said of the being of such a world? It is truly nothing, as the term is defined in the post’s comments.

Our indictment is heavy. But, in spite of this, I believe there are ways of treating the corpse-post that will enable us to extract some useful organs for transplant. To do this, I will rely heavily on two more of Levi’s principles—the Ontic Principle and Latour’s Principle. I quote his definitions:

Ontic Principle – There is no difference that does not make a difference. This is to be understood in three ways: 1) Ob-ject-iles are compositions of difference (here “composition” should be understood as both having musical connotations and connotations of “material composition”), 2) Ob-ject-iles differ in themselves insofar as they are constantly changing through their adventure in time and “autopoiesis” or enlistment of other ob-ject-iles to produce themselves, and 3) ob-ject-iles make differences on other entities. Minimally, “to be” signifies to make a difference.

Latour’s Principle – There is no transportation without translation. Follows from the Ontic Principle. Insofar as there is no difference that does not make a difference, it follows that no assemblage or ob-ject-ile can transport or convey its difference to another assemblage or ob-jectile without a process of translation or weaving of differences in which singularities must contend with one another in the production of a state-change in one or both of the assemblages involved.

(For definitions of unfamiliar concepts mentioned above, such as “ob-ject-ile”, I highly recommend Levi’s original post “Principles of Onticology“.)

Again assuming Levi’s principles to be true, we must immediately excise any mention of a metaphysics of presence—the flab of presence- and absence-to-hand, the gauche appeal to differance. “Minimally, ‘to be’ signifies to make a difference.” If we are careful in our reading, it is clear that this does not imply presence or absence, but only the disseminating action of force, a causal relation that can be initiated from any point(s) in the continuums of being, space, or time. An important feature of this observation—this peeling away of the flab—is that it allows us to be distinctly realist. In order to be at all, beings must differ from each other, and so, for a human to be at all, let alone exert mental influence upon the world, beings must already populate that world.

This realism has a further advantage in that it accommodates certain of anti-realism’s most important insights without committing the Epistemic Fallacy—and becoming anti-realist. Of these, “Inkblots and Infinity” attempts to shore up the notion that the human exerts some kind of creative influence on the world, and that the quality of the human’s access to (and, thus, impact on) the world is determined by the underlying structures of the mind, though this latter point is made more explicitly in Word Vomit. Both insights are easily transported into our newfound realism by re-reading them in light of Latour’s Principle.

First, humans, like any other beings, have their being in virtue of making a difference. Their activity of differing pushes against other beings, which are in turn forced to “translate” these differences. As the differences are conveyed from the human to another being—and onward to other beings—the field of differences is upset into “the production of a state-change.” The second insight is accounted for if we note that the conveyance of differences is not unilateral, but bidirectional. Humans do not send forth their differences, thus creating a new world by some kind of apotheotic fiat, but they are mere beings-in-the-world that are also subjected to the differences of beings. The differential activity of beings is, thus, reciprocal.

We are finished with surgery, having successfully removed the necrotic tissue and dispelled the stink. Post-op care is nothing more than a bit of physical therapy for maintenance. There are, however, surgical scars that will guide some of my questioning from this point: articulating an Orthodox anti-humanism, as well as elaborating on differential ontology, beings as acts, etc. Despite these lacunae, I believe that this post puts the final nail in the coffin of my anti-realism, which had long been a point of great inner struggle for me. My home and my rest are for now taken with Speculative Realism.