At present, there are a number of sophisticated theoretical introductions to the works of François Laruelle available in English, so here we will limit ourselves to questions of translation.¹

In the French original, three of the text’s key terms are brought into even closer dialogue by their parallel, rhyming forms: mystique, pragmatique, topique. Unfortunately, the structure of English means we have not been able to preserve these echoes consistently. When mystique is an adjective we have rendered it as “mystical,” when it is the noun le mystique as “the mystical,” and when it is the noun la mystique as “mysticism.” When pragmatique is an adjective, it is “pragmatic,” when it is the noun le pragmatique, “the pragmatic,” and when the noun la pragmatique, “pragmatics.” When topique is an adjective, we have rendered it as “topical,” when the noun le topique, “the topic” and when the noun la topique, “topics.” What is thereby obscured in English is the parallelism between la pragmatique (pragmatics) and la topique (topics), on the one hand, and la mystique (mysticism), on the other. Although others have translated la mystique as “mystics” (in the works of Michel de Certeau, for example), “mysticism” remains closer to the meaning that la mystique normally carries in French. For example, la mystique rhénane, the thirteenth and fourteenth-century mystical movement that includes Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso, and Johannes Tauler, among others, is usually referred to in English as “German Mysticism.” The one time in the text that Laruelle uses the term mysticisme it is polemical, along the lines of the term “obscurantism”; we have made this different usage clear in the text.

In another case, the differences between French and English grammar and the precision of Laruelle’s terms have forced us to stretch English conventions. Laruelle uses three different French terms – individu, individuel(le), and individual(le) – for which the English “individual” is the appropriate translation. However, because each of the three terms does different theoretical work, we have found it necessary to distinguish between them in our translation, in one case using a neologism that echoes Laruelle’s French and evokes what we take to be his debt to Heideggerian terminology. Our terms are as follows: First, we translate the standard French noun for “individual,” individu, as “individual.” Second, we translate the standard French adjective for “individual,” individuel(le), as “individuel,” preserving the –el of the French. Third, Laruelle coins the peculiar adjective individual(le), a term we suspect is modeled after Heidegger’s distinction between existenziell and existenzial. Like the noun individu, we translate this form as “individual.” Context will make clear which is the noun and which the adjective. Of primary importance for the reader is the fact that the awkward English “individuel” is in fact a translation of the common French adjective individuel(le), whereas the deceptively familiar adjective “individual” translates the neologism individual(le). This counter-intuitive distribution of familiar and unfamiliar is necessitated, at least in part, by the stress Laruelle puts on the “a” in individuality when he writes it as individu-a-lity. Moreover, by translating Laruelle’s term individual(le) as “individual,” we avoid what Laruelle himself is trying to avoid, namely, leaving the duel, or “duel” – the contest between two adversaries so central to philosophy – in the individual.

Laruelle’s particular use in French – and thus our distinctive translations in English – of a group of terms related to thought and reflection also deserve explanation. While irréfléchi has a standard meaning of “thoughtless” or “unconsidered,” we have rendered it as “unreflective” so as to capture the critique of the specular found throughout the text, and also to retain some of the strangeness of Laruelle’s usage. Whenever “unthought” appears it translates impensé(e), while réfléchi usually becomes “reflected” or “reflective” rather than its more common definitions.

A number of terms that are likely to stand out to the reader are indebted to Heideggerian thought and the way it has been translated from German into both French and English. Indeed, translating this book has made us realize that the responsible translator of contemporary French philosophy really ought to have read at least Heidegger and Kant in French translation. We outline some of the most important Heideggerianisms here so that the reader understands their philosophical baggage.

• Although the standard meaning of the French éloignement is “remoteness,” when Laruelle uses the hyphenated term é-loignement he is referencing a Heideggerian terminology that has its own highly particular meaning and translation history: é-loignement is the standard French translation of Heidegger’s Ent-fernung (§23 of Being and Time) which we have, following Joan Stambaugh’s English translation of the same text, rendered as “de-distancing.” For the same reasons, we translate é-loigné as “de-distanced.”
• Laruelle draws a distinction between things comme tel and tel quel. The former is the standard French translation of Heidegger’s als solche, which is usually given in English as “as such.” (For example, Chapter V of Division I of Being and Time, “Das In-Sein als solches,” is translated into English by Stambaugh as “Being-in As Such,” and by Emmanuel Martineau into French as “L’Être-À Comme Tel”.) We have respected this, rendering comme tel as “as such,” in contrast to tel quel and its variants, which we translate as “as it is” (“as they are,” “as he is,” etc.). A similar term, which appears less frequently in the text, en tant que tel, we translate as “as is.”
• We have rendered originaire as originary, but it should be noted that in Martineau’s translation of Heidegger, originaire often translates ursprünglich, which is usually given in English translations of Heidegger as “primordial.”
• The French sens can be translated into English as both “sense” and “meaning.” Thus, for example, the phrase logique du sens is most commonly known to English audiences as the title of Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense, while le sens de l’être is the standard translation of Heidegger’s Sinn von Sein, which in English is usually rendered as “meaning of being.” (Both of these are obliquely referenced in the exposition of Theorem 113 below.) Unfortunately, in English there is no way to capture in one word the divergent denotations “sense” and “meaning,” so we have rendered sens as “sense” when it is used in colloquial expressions (“in the sense that,” etc.), but when sens is used technically (as in Chapter IV) we translate it as “meaning.”

As is clear from the mention of Deleuze in the final bullet point, Laruellian terms are also frequently related to the terminology of French thinkers. While “Other” is almost always a rendering of the French Autre, the several times Autrui (“other person” or “other people”) appears in the French original it is either in implicit or explicit reference to Levinas’s ethical thought. When necessary, we have drawn attention to the distinction between Autre and Autrui. And for the verb survoler, which has the standard meanings of “to fly over” and “to skim through,” we have followed the precedent of other translators (for example Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell’s in their translation of Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy?) and rendered it as “survey” throughout. The other meanings of the term should, however, be kept in mind. More generally, we have translated the prefix sur-, which appears throughout the text, sometimes as “sur-” and sometimes as “over-,” depending on readability.

A few final translation decisions should be noted: We have rendered scission throughout as scission for consistency, but readers should keep in mind the more common meanings “division,” “separation,” “split.” We have rendered occidental(e) as “western,” but compounds such as gréco-occidental have retained their original inflection and have become “Greco-occidental.” Additionally, we have rendered the French mixte in two different ways: in the adjectival form as “mixed” and in the substantive form (le mixte) as “mixture” rather than as “the mixed,” for readability. Finally, readers will encounter both “apriori” and “a priori” in the text. Both forms appear in the French original, and while their usage is not consistent throughout, it is clear that apriori functions predominantly as a noun and a priori as an adjective or adverb. In our translation, we have altered spellings when needed to regularize the pattern.

After this lengthy explanation of complex terminology, we offer one very simple word to those who helped us with this translation: thanks. Daniel Hoffmann, Anthony Paul Smith, Andrea Gadberry, Sanders Creasy, Dario Rudy, Kelsey Lepperd, and Ben Tran all generously shared their time and expertise with us as we translated. Their help was invaluable.

This book attempts a systematic foundation for a discipline that has, needless to say, already been signaled and hinted at in the history of thought: a rigorous science of man, but one different – this is its interest and its risk – from both Philosophy and the “Sciences of Man,” which derive from it. It is also a sort of manual or compendium of arguments for this discipline, whose principal domains and essential modes of description it will strive to cover, at times too briefly. It can be read in two ways: either following only the series of its “theorems,” or following also the explications or the commentaries that accompany each of them. Either way, its reading should be “linear” and follow the order of the parts as well as the order of the theorems in each part. We could not avoid certain preemptions intended to give a view of the whole and demonstrate, as it is said nowadays, the “stakes” of the project, but they do not undermine the necessary order of experiences, described here as those of the life of every man.

From this point of view, this essay, unlike The Minority Principle by the same author, finally unfolds in the rigorous order required by the transcendental science of individuals as such. The Minority Principle is a transitional book, a mixed attempt in the sprit of traditional philosophy to break with that philosophy, and in particular with the author’s earlier books. That book was a “breakthrough” that still proceeded pedagogically and philosophically, that is to say, by means of transcendence, starting from philosophical problematics (Kant, Husserl, Nietzsche, Contemporary Thinkers) towards a thought of the One or of individuals. The current attempt, by contrast, abandons this process and begins with the One or Minorities and draws its conclusions from them. It systematically describes the essence of the domain that still remained something of a promised land or a distant reality in the previous work. Finally, it attempts to reconcile a certain theoretical rigor, which is absent, for reasons that will be explained, from even the most rationalist forms of philosophy with a certain love of human truth that is no less absent from philosophy. The wager is obviously that the two absences share a reason. This reconciliation is a thought that will appear difficult to those who separate theory and affect into two different worlds.

The flaws inherent in this sort of enterprise are, regrettably, well known, and it is pointless to pretend to lament them. Naivety and naive statements, empty agendas, aggressive declarations, successive refusals designed to cordon off a territory, the deliberate omission of all citations, or putatively idle discussions, etc., not to mention what contemporary thinkers suspect to be the unconscious of a work, a suspicion that is treated here as merely a cunning joy that has nothing to do with the seriousness of the project: there is “much to critique” in this, but hopefully it does not mask the reality of the enterprise. By contrast, perhaps offense will be taken at the anti-philosophical vivacity of this wager, behind which will be imagined to be some disappointed passion or institutional disgrace. It will be said that this in fact is the human, the all-too-human, side of the researcher. Perhaps a certain Cartesian deception will also be memorable enough that the intimacy of the drama will be respected rather than overcome by either the weapons of philosophy or those of the institution.