Pericles and Verdi: The Philosophy of Francois Chatelet

François Châtelet always defined himself as a rationalist—but what kind of rationalism? He refers incessantly to Plato, Hegel, and Marx, but is above all an Aristotelian. What then distinguishes him from a Thomist? Undoubtedly, it is his way of impugning God, along with all transcendence. Châtelet terms all forms of transcendence, all beliefs in another world, outrecuidances [arrogance]. There never was a more quietly godless philosopher, except of course for Nietzsche. His is a tranquil atheism, that is, a philosophy in which God is not a problem—the nonexistence and even the death of God are not problems, but rather conditions that should be treated as givens so that the real problems can then emerge: this is the only humility. Never has philosophy located itself more firmly within a field of pure immanence.

In our philosophers' jargon, the term for a principle that is posited as both a source of all explanation and as a higher reality is transcendence—a pretty word, which I find quite suitable. Presumptuous types, great and small, from the leader of a tiny fringe group to the president of the United States, run on transcendence like a wino runs on red wine. The medieval God has been dissipated without losing any of his force or deep formal unity: his avatars include Science, the Working Class, the Country, Progress, Health, Security, Democracy, Socialism—the list is too long to give in full. These forms of transcendence have taken his place (which is another way of saying he is still there, omnipresent), carrying out their plans for organization and extermination with increased ferociousness.¹

Immanence, the field of immanence, consists of a relation between Potentiality and Actuality [un rapport Puissance-Acte].² These two notions can only exist in relation to one another; they are inseparable. This is the sense in which Châtelet is an Aristotelian. Indeed, he seems to have had a kind of fascination for power or potentiality: man is power, man is matter. . . .

Political power does not attract me at all. Being against power, seeking to "check" its activity—in my view, these are traps. What interests me is power as potentiality, that which makes power what it is. Now, potentiality is, strictly speaking, "one for all." I enjoy actualizing my potential—doing what I can—in order to understand and disclose the mechanisms of the imprisonment of power, here and there, when I have "information." Maybe this keeps my taste for potentiality alive, and awakens it around me. Potentiality was once a word for freedom.³

How does one "act" on something, and what is the act or actuality of this potential? The act is reason. Notice that reason is not a faculty but a process, which consists precisely in actualizing a potential or giving form to matter. Reason is itself a pluralism, because nothing indicates that we should think of matter or the act as unique. We define or invent a process of rationalization each time we establish human relations in some material form, in some group, in some multiplicity.⁴ The act itself, qua relation, is always political. Reason, as a process, is political. This may well be the case within a city, but it goes for other, smaller groups as well, or even for myself—and nowhere but in myself. Psychology, or rather the only bearable psychology, is politics, because I am forever creating human relationships with myself. There is no psychology, but rather a politics of the self. There is no metaphysics, but rather a politics of being. No science, but rather a politics of matter, since man is entrusted with matter itself. The same even applies to sickness: we have to "manage" it when we cannot conquer it, and thereby impose on it the form of human relationships.

Consider the case of sonorous matter. The musical scale, or rather a musical scale...