Никакого предела. О том, что мысль действительно может делать Часть I Ж. Бенуа

Abstract

In the article “No Limit” Jocelyn Benoist criticizes the idea of a constitutive lim­itation of human cognitive and thinking abilities, which has spread in modern and postmodern philosophy. The author explores the notion of finite being, which has its origins in late scholasticism, and its evolution. The discourse of limit is linked to the motif of finitude, which goes back to Kant. For critical philosophy, the notion of ‘finitude’ is not reduced to the simple status of ‘being finite’. Finitude of human beings is conditioned by the fact that only the world of phenomena, not things in themselves, is accessible to them. For postmodern philosophy, which asserts the overcoming of finitude, to be is to be represented. Postmodernism abuses the idea of the performativity of language, which leads to a form of linguistic neo-idealism – the idea of the performativity of thought. De-literalising ontology, it attributes to thought an unconditional ontological fruitfulness. This is an insurrection not only against the fact that things are as they are, but also against the normativity of the notion of reality. In fact, things do not depend on their representation and discourse. And representations them­selves cannot easily be changed. Thought adapts to reality, not produces it. The postmodern limitlessness of knowledge and thought is the inverse of the modern limitation. The post-postmodern speculative realism of Q. Meillas­soux, which announced the end of finitude, in fact shares the premise of critical philosophy. To the end of finitude in the very terms of finitude Benoist opposes its end in the sense of refusing to reason in these terms. There is no limit that Meillassoux and neo-metaphysicians attempt to overcome.