Mikhail Epstein - A Philosophy of The Possible - Modalities in Thought and Culture-Brill Rodopi (2019)

A Philosophy of the Possible
Value Inquiry Book Series

Founding Editor
Robert Ginsberg
Executive Editor
Leonidas Donskis†
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volume 333
Contemporary Russian
Philosophy
Editor
Dr. Mikhail Sergeev, University of the Arts, Philadelphia (usa)
International Editorial Board

Dr. Anatoly Akhutin, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kiev
(Ukraine) – Dr. Alexander Chumakov, Vice-president of Russian philosophical
society, Moscow (Russia) – Dr. Mikhail Epstein, Emory University, Atlanta
(usa) – Dr. Boris Groys, New York University, New York, and The European
Graduate School / egs, Saas Fee (usa – Switzerland) – Dr. Vladimir Kantor,
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow (Russia) –
Dr. Ruslan Loshakov, Uppsala University, Uppsala (Sweden) – Dr. Natalya
Shelkovaya, Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University (Ukraine) –
Dr. Igor Smirnov, University of Konstanz, Kostanz (Germany) – Dr. Karen
Swassjan, Forum für Geisteswissenschaft, Basel (Switzerland) – Fr. Dr. Vladimir
Zelinsky, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Brescia (Italy)
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vibs and brill.com/crph
A Philosophy of the Possible
Modalities in Thought and Culture
By
Mikhail Epstein
Translated from the Russian by
Vern W. McGee
Marina Eskina
leiden | boston
Cover illustration: The Bridge of Possibilities (2010). The digital graphics created by the artist
Nikolai Bogoliubov. Used with his permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Epstein, Mikhail, author. | McGee, Vern, translator. | Eskina,

Marina, translator.
Title: A philosophy of the possible : modalities in thought and culture / by
Mikhail Epstein ; translated from the Russian by Vern W. McGee and Marina
Eskina.
Other titles: Filosofiia vozmozhnogo. English
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, [2019] | Series: Value inquiry
book series, issn 0929-8436 ; volume 333 | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | In English, translated from Russian.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019013208 (print) | LCCN 2019015925 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004398344 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004398337 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: lcsh: Possibility.
Classification: LCC BC199.P7 (ebook) | lcc bc199.p7 e6713 2019 (print) | DDC
123--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019013208
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I am off in search of a great May-be.
FRANÇOIS RABELAIS1
…
Maybe!
But who has the will to concern himself with such dangerous maybes?
For that, one really has to wait for the advent of a species of philosophers,
such as have somehow another and converse taste and propensity from
those we have known so far – philosophers of the dangerous “maybe” in
every sense.
And in all seriousness: I see such new philosophers coming up.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE2
1 “Je m’en vais chercher un grand peut-être.” These words, uttered by Rabelais on his deathbed,
are cited in Peter Anthony Motteux’s book The Life of Rabelais. Alexander Pushkin introduces
these words into his own definition of happiness: “Mais le bonheur … c’est un grand peut-être,
comme le disait Rabelais du paradis ou de l’éternité” (“But happiness … is that great ‘may
be,’ as Rabelais said of paradise or of eternity”), Letter to P.A. Osipova, 5 November 1830.
Aleksandr S. Pushkin, Collected Works, 10 vols (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1977),
vol. 9, pp. 345, 346.
2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Section 1,
Aphorism 2), transl. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1966), pp.
10–1.
Contents
Preface xi
Introduction: Fundamental Concepts of the Theory of the

Possible 1
1 The Problem of Modalities in Contemporary Thought 1
2 A Preliminary Definition of the Modality of the Possible 4
3 The Ontological Status of Possible Worlds. Nominalism
and Realism 6
4 The Principle of “Fullness” and the Problem of Realization
of Possibilities 9
5 Duality and “Demonism” of the Possible 12
6 A Possibilistic Approach to the Possible 15
7 The Plan of the Book 18
Part 1
The Possible in Philosophy
1 Criticism and Activism 23
2 Philosophy and Reality 29
3 Change of Modalities in the History of Philosophy 34
4 Philosophy as Possibilistic Thinking 45
5 The Area of the Thinkable: the Value of Thinking in Itself 59
6 Theory, Utopia, and Hypothesis 67
7 Catharsis of Thinking 72
8 Personified Thinking 81
9 Possible and Impossible: Aporia of Thinking 90
10 Language, Thinking, and Signifiability 98

viii Contents
11 Universals as Potentials: Conceptualism 108
12 From the General to the Concrete and Universal 117
13 Multiplication of Entities 124
14 Philosophy as Parody and Grotesque 130
Part 2
The Fate of Metaphysics: from Deconstruction to Possibilization
Introduction to Part 2 141
section 2.1
Reverse Metaphysics: Critique and Deconstruction
15 Beyond Being and Nothingness: the Feeling of the Possible 145
16 A Worldview, Not a Point of View: “A Net with No Knots” 152
17 The Possible in Jean Derrida 157
18 The Metaphysics of Deconstruction: the Main Terms 162
19 The Radical Nature of Difference: Profit and Transcendence 170
20 Center and Structure 175
21 Reverse Metaphysics: the Other, the Play, and the Writing 180
22 Différance and the Tao 187
section 2.2
Construction and Possibilization
23 From Deconstruction to Construction 197
24 Construction and Creativity 206

Contents ix
25 De- and Con- 213
26 Potentiation as Method: Eros of Thinking 217
27 What is “the Interesting”? Proposed Criteria 226
28 Small Metaphysics: the Unique 233
Part 3
The Worlds of the Possible
29 Society 251
30 Culture 258
31 Ethics 267
32 Psychology 278
33 Religion 287
Conclusion 303
Appendix
To Be Able, to Be, and to Know: a System of Modalities
1 Definitions of Modality 313

A Typical Definitions 313
B The Specific Definition 315
2 Оntic Modalities (Modalities of Being) 317

A “To Be” and “To Be Able” in the Ontological and Modal
Perspectives 317
B Existence and Non-existence 318
x Contents
C The Possible and the Contingent 318

D The Impossible and the Necessary 320
E Strong and Weak Modalities 321
F The General Scheme of Ontic Modalities 321
G Supermodalities: the Due and the Miraculous 323
3 Еpistemic Modalities (Modalities of Knowledge) 325
4 Pure (Potentialistic) Modalities 328

A Active Voice (Capacity, Need) 328
B Passive Voice (Permission, Coercion) 330
C Second-order Modalities 332
(1) Will and Power 333
(2) Desire and Love 334
5 The Final Tables 339
6 Modal Categories in Various Disciplines 343

A Be Able – Possess – Have Value: Modality in Economics 343
B Necessity and Immortality: Modality in Eschatology 345
7 Potentiology: the Prospects for the New Discipline 348
Index of Names 352

Index of Subjects 355
Preface
This book has a long history. In January 1990, I moved from Russia (then the
Soviet Union) to the United States, having been invited to teach at Wesleyan
and then at Emory University. I was immediately struck by the civilizational
differences between the two countries: not only in standards of living and so-
cial attitudes but, on a deeper level, in modalities of existence. In the USSR,
life was experienced as it actually was, in contrast with communist ideals and
official slogans of what it should be in the distant future. In the USA, life was
made of possibilities opening the present up to the future.
This is true even on the most mundane economic plane, such as the sys-
tems of credit and insurance that enrich “what is” with “what might be,” and
translate everyday life into the subjunctive mood. I live on resources (credit)
that I could potentially earn; I pay for services (insurance) that I could poten-
tially need. The modern West is a civilization of opportunities or possibilities
in the sense that, here, I do not “possess what I possess,” but rather “what I
might possess if…” Credit and insurance companies busy themselves with
estimating my life-chances; they deal not only with my actual existence, but
with my probable future states. Thus both the positive and negative sides of
life appear conditional. For people accustomed to a non-Western way of life,
with its hard realities and binding norms, it is quite difficult to switch into this
game of possibilities, where nothing exists “just-so,” in the indicative mood,
but more in terms of “as if.” One possibility opens onto another, and the whole
of reality consists of alternating possibilities that rarely achieve a point of full
realization.
This enormous difference inspired me to write this book on the philosophy
of modalities. I completed it in 1992 and then modified and refined it over the
course of a decade, until it was published in Russian in 2001.1 By that time, I had
authored several books on such diverse subjects as Russian literature, Russian
and American cultural theories, postmodernism, ideology and language, and
new trends in religion. However, only with The Philosophy of the Possible did I
come to understand the language I had been speaking, like Molière’s protago-
nist M. Jourdain, who suddenly discovers that all his life he has been speaking
in prose. My language is that of possibilism, or possibilist thinking.
The general direction of my work is the creation of multiple alternatives
to dominant sign systems and theoretical models. Within this continuum
1 Mikhail Epstein, Filosofiia vozmozhnogo [The Philosophy of the Possible], Tela mysli series
(St. Petersburg: Aleteia, 2001).
xii Preface
e xist various forms of the thinkable and conceivable: philosophical systems;

religious and artistic movements; life orientations; new words, terms, and
concepts; and new disciplines and approaches in the humanities. The most
complete embodiment of this method is in my later books: The Transforma-
tive Humanities: A Manifesto (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), From Knowledge to
Creativity: How the Humanities Can Change the World (St. Petersburg, 2016), and
A Projective Dictionary of the Humanities (Moscow, 2017).2 Briefly, possibilism
assumes that a thing or event acquires meaning only in the context of its pos-
sibilities, of what it may be as opposed to what it actually is. A world consisting
only of actualities would be devoid of meaning and significance. Possibilist
thinking is both critical and constructive. It generates many concepts, ideas,
propositions, rules, and disciplines as alternatives to existing ones – those
considered established, obvious, and rational. Thus possibilism broadens the
space of the thinkable, and demonstrates the relativity of the trends and can-
ons that prevail in the social and intellectual establishment.
Contrary to recent theoretical projections, our time is no longer a period
after something: postmodernist, poststructuralist, postcommunist, “post-this”
or “post-that.” The present era is “proto-,” a preface to something – but this
something can be articulated only in the plural and in a conditional mood.
It is proto-global, proto-informational, proto-quantum, proto-nano, proto-AI
… Proto- is non-coercive, non-deterministic, and non-predictive; it points not
to something that will be, but that which may be. A possibility never comes
alone, but only in the form of doubling and multiplying possibilities. Possibili-
ties clash, but do not exclude one another. A possibility that excludes all others
is a mere necessity. A possibility must remain a possibility, valuable and effica-
cious in itself.
Remarkably, until the 20th century, the word culture was used only in the
singular, in the sense of a norm or model; it was only gradually that the concept
emerged of multiple cultures. I wonder if a similar metamorphosis will take
place with the concept of futures; if the binding singular of be will become the
plural maybes. Discredited by utopian ideologies and totalitarian regimes, the
idea of future can be justified only as the coexistence and interaction of vari-
ous futures. Our reality is increasingly made up of potentialities; it is becoming
ever more conditional, with is transforming into if. Realities are transformed
2 Mikhail Epstein, Ot znaniia k tvorchestvu. Kak gumanitarnye nauki mogut izmeniat’ mir (Mos-
cow and St. Petersburg: Tsentr gumanitarnykh initsiativ, series Humanitas, 2016); Mikhail
Epstein, Proektivnyi slovar’ gumanitarnykh nauk (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie,
2017).
Preface xiii
into probabilities, theories into hypotheses, assertions into suggestions, and

necessities into possibilities.
It is a truism to state that nowadays material capital has given way to in-
formation as the basic resource of social wealth. However, a far from trivial
conclusion follows from this statement. The value of any communication is in
proportion to the unexpectedness of what is communicated. Surprise is a fluid
quantity; it increases to the extent that the probability of what has been com-
municated diminishes. Naturally, the information society is keen to increase
the volume of information it possesses, because that is its main source of
wealth and development. The growth of information presupposes an increase
in the probabilistic character of social life, while information itself grows only
to the extent that the world becomes less predictable and consists of fewer and
fewer predermined events.
This is the purpose of the book: to argue for a possibilistic mode of thinking
in contemporary philosophy as the foundation for paradigmatic shifts, cultural
innovations, and the path to open and multiple futures.
…
I am deeply grateful to Vern McGee and Marina Eskina for translating this
book from Russian to English. I was very fortunate that Vern Wesley McGee
(1939–2015), the famous translator of Mikhail Bakhtin’s late works,3 generously
devoted his time and talent to translating the initial sections of this book: the
Introduction and Chapters 1–4 of Part 1. Marina Eskina has responsibly and
accurately translated the rest of the book. Dr. Anesa Miller, a gifted writer and
Slavic scholar, has masterfully edited this translation. Finally, Elizabeth Stone
carefully prepared the copy-edited version of the manuscript.
I am sincerely grateful to the artist Nikolai Bogoliubov for permitting me to
use his digital graphics “The Bridge of Possibilities” for the book cover design.
I want to thank Grigory Tulchinsky, Professor of the Higher School of Eco-
nomic in St. Petersburg, for his support in my work on the Russian original
book, for which he wrote an extensive and encouraging Foreword; and Dr.
Mikhail Sergeev, the director of Contemporary Russian Philosophy series at
Brill, for kindly inviting me to contribute this book to the series. Without the
valuable help and support of these friends and colleagues, the publication of
this book would have been impossible.
3 M.M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1986).
Introduction: Fundamental Concepts of the Theory
of the Possible
1 The Problem of Modalities in Contemporary Thought
The differentiation of three modes of being and, correspondingly, three mo-

dalities of expression is among the most ancient subjects of philosophy.1 Ar-
istotle himself made careful distinctions among the actual, the possible, and
the necessary – a division later developed in medieval Scholasticism. Kant
proposed dividing judgment into assertoric (judgment of reality), apodeictic
(judgment of necessity), and problematic (judgment of possibility). “Problem-
atic judgments are those in which one regards the assertion or denial as merely
possible (arbitrary). Assertoric judgments are those in which it is considered
actual (true). Apodictic judgments are those in which it is seen as necessary.”2
Respectively, Kant divides modalities into three categories, each expressed
by a binary opposition:
Possibility – Impossibility
Existence – Non-existence
Necessity – Contingence
Accordingly, in language there are three varieties of sentence and three moods
of the verb: indicative (is), imperative (be), and subjunctive (were, would be).
Presumably the separation of the three modalities corresponds to a deep mod-
el of consciousness.
This trinity is of special interest because it in no way fits into a dialectical
schema: it does not break down into thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Each of
the modalities is defined with respect to another one, but none can be reduced
to a synthesis of the other two modalities or to their mediation. This is an
1 A good introduction to the history of modal problems can be found in the following works:
Scott Buchanan, Possibility (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1927; general classification of
various approaches, Aristotle, Kant); Simo Knuuttila (ed.), Modern Modalities: Studies of the
History of Modal Theories from Medieval Nominalism to Logical Positivism (Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic, 1988).
2 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, transl. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 209. The use of italic in quotations corresponds to the
original text unless otherwise noted.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:10.1163/9789004398344_002

2 A Philosophy of the Possible
e ssential triunity, not a modification of a dyad, or a combination of opposing

elements as in the majority of triune constructs.
During the past five decades the philosophy of modalities in the West,
above all in the English-speaking world, has undergone a renaissance associ-
ated with the growing criticism of logical positivism and “scientific” rational-
ism, including a skeptical reinterpretation of such concepts as “reality” and
“fact,” “ knowledge” and “truth.” The category of modality makes it possible to
consider plural, “fuzzy” modes of being and judgment – the possible and the
impossible, the necessary and the contingent – that cannot be reduced to judg-
ments about truth or falsehood or to a description of facts, examples, and evi-
dence. Standing behind the modalities are “intensional,” deep concepts, that
are irreducible to a set of “extensional,” empirically observable, facts or objects.
According to the description from a modern encyclopedia of philosophy, “the
heightened interest in modality may be regarded as a consequence of the de-
cline of the well-known metaphysical and methodological dogma that is the
legacy of positivism. In its metaphysical aspect this dogma insists on flexibility
of intentional concepts as compared to extensional ones … Modality has been
the main object of attack by this dogma, since modality has not provided a
clear means for a completely extensional interpretation of concepts.”3
Nonetheless, in modern, “post-positivist” philosophy an “atomic” approach
to modalities prevails. They are most frequently analyzed at the level of indi-
vidual logical judgments. The very concept of modality tends to become ex-
tremely narrow as it is relegated to the realm of logical disciplines that deal
mostly with technical problems: modal logic and the probabilistic logic, com-
parative studies of various kinds of logical calculus, quantification of modal
contexts, semantics of possible worlds, and so on.4 Let us stipulate at the out-
set that all these logical – semantic questions lie beyond the author’s interests
and competence and will not be discussed in this book. The scientific aspects
3 Donald M. Borchert (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Supplement (New York, London:
Macmillan, 1996), p. 345.
4 See Jaako Hintikka, Models for Modalities. Selected Essays (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969); Jaako
Hintikka, Time and Necessity: Studies in Aristotle’s Theory of Modality (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1973); Jaako Hintikka, The Intentions of Intentionality and Other New Models for Modali-
ties (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1975); Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: C
larendon
Press, 1974); Vitali V. Tselishchev, Filosofskie problemy semantiki vozmozhnykh mirov (Philo-
sophical Problems of the Semantics of Possible Worlds) (Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1977); Yury V.
Ivlev, Soderzhatel’naya semantika modal’noy logiki (Contents-Related Semantics of Modal
Logic) (Moscow, izd. mgu, 1985); Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics
and Modal Logic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Saul Kripke, Naming and Ne-
cessity (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991); Ruth Barcan Marcus, Modalities: Philosophical Essays
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Introduction 3
of the theory of probability, statistical laws, random (stochastic) processes, as

well as problems of virtual reality, also lie beyond the scope of the work. The
subject of our study is not formal – logical modality and not mathematical
probability, but possibility as a category of thinking in the humanities (meta-
physics, ethics, aesthetics, psychology, etc.).
It is obvious that the logical judgments (such as “A could possibly be B” or
“four must necessarily be an even number”) are only one, “atomic,” level of
modality. In the broader sense, modality encompasses all levels of textual and
conceptual activity. Not only individual propositions but even entire texts, ar-
tistic and documentary genres, literary and philosophical schools, even types
of public awareness can be distinguished from one another in terms of the
types of modality in which they are expressed.
For example, such genres of business parlance as the report, the instruction,
and the prognosis are distinguished mainly by their modalities, correspond-
ingly, the real, the necessary, and the possible. Differentiation of the three
most important literary schools also proceeded along the lines of modalities.
Predominant in Classicism was an orientation toward the rationally necessary,
that which should be. Romanticism revealed the potentiality of human beings,
the infinite that they may be for themselves. Realism proceeded from notions
of reality as it is. Whatever seems very vague and arbitrary in the mutual rela-
tions of these schools becomes considerably more distinct if the theory of the
three modalities is applied to them.
In general, the differentiation of the three modes is broader than the purely
linguistic one. In our day reality itself is increasingly being interpreted as a type
of information, a semantic code, a manifestation of the Word – at the genetic,
physical, technical, and, of course, cultural levels. The universe is conceived of
as a totality of texts, as an encoded communication, as a rejoinder in a dialog
between the Creator and His thinking creatures. In this context the applica-
tion of modal concepts to an analysis of existence becomes philosophically
justified and productive again, as it was in the days of Aristotle and Thomas
Aquinas. If existence is a manifestation of the Word, modality is a property of
existence itself and not just of a statement about existence.5
The difficulty, however, is that the differentiation of modalities, advanced
by philosophy since antiquity, as far as we know, has never been done
5 The Russian philosopher and mathematician Vasiliy Nalimov (1910–97) undertook a rigor-
ous approach to probabilistic ontology of physical and cultural worlds in his series of works:
Vasily V. Nalimov, In the Labyrinth of Language: A Mathematician’s Journey (Philadelphiа:
isi Press, 1981); Faces of Science (Philadelphia: isi Press, 1981); Realms of Unconscious: The
Enchanted Frontier (Philadelphia: isi Press, 1982); Space, Time and Life: The Probabilistic Path-
ways of Evolution (Philadelphia: isi Press, 1985).
s ystematically with respect to philosophy itself. What language does philoso-

phy speak? What modality is most natural to it at one or another stage of its
development? These are the questions that prompted me to write this book,
in which I try to consider general problems of humanistic thinking from the
standpoint of the theory of modalities. Special focus is placed on the modality
of the possible, the one least studied by philosophy and the most promising for
introduction into the new age of thinking that I call “post-critical.”
Both traditional problems (the specific nature of philosophy, the status of
ideas and universals) and new problems outlined by post-structuralist theory
(the signifier and the signified, the structure and the center, the play of differ-
ences) are considered in light of the possible. Moreover, a dual goal is pursued
here: to reveal the uniqueness of the category of the possible itself, to distin-
guish it from associated concepts (“probability,” “nothingness,” “freedom,” etc.)
and at the same time to reveal its universal significance in various spheres of
human activity (society, ethics, religion). I narrow the content of this concept
as much as possible (specification) and at the same time expand as much as
possible the range of its applications (interdisciplinary approach).
Critically analyzing a number of modern schools, and above all post-
structuralism, which undervalues the category of the possible or replaces it
by other categories, I have mainly attempted to outline the positive side of the
worldview that may be defined as the “philosophy of the possible.” I intend to
substantiate both new possibilistic methods of humanistic thinking and new
life positions that no longer fit anymore into the well-known phrase “realize
your possibilities.” In both the moral and especially the social sphere this uto-
pian phrase has outlived its usefulness, for the realization of one’s possibili-
ties nullifies the modal multidimensionality of existence and impoverishes
the sphere of possibilities. The new understanding of possibility establishes its
independent value and the impossibility of reducing it to mere reality, which
itself is only one of the possibilities, one of the manifestations of the “great and
dangerous may be.”
2 A Preliminary Definition of the Modality of the Possible
The “possible” is one of those categories that are frequently included in the
definitions of other categories, but which themselves are practically impos-
sible to define. It is sometimes thought that the “possible” can be defined only
in terms of itself, using such words as “may be” or “might have been,” that is, en-
tering into a closed logical circle. The typical opinion is expressed by the Amer-
ican philosopher Alan White: “Modalities are among the most fundamental
concepts and so, as certain grammarians and philosophers have emphasized,
Introduction 5
an analysis of modalities can only show their relationship to other concepts,

but not reveal in them other, more fundamental concepts.”6 It is possible to
define the specific nature of the possible with respect to other modal concepts,
but it is impossible to define the possible in and of itself, on the basis of non-
modal concepts.
Accepting this widespread opinion in part, we attempt to discover the ele-
mentary components of the language of modalities, its distinctive units, of which
there are only four. At the basis of all modal categories lie three predicates –
“to be,” “to know,” and “to be able.” All possible combinations of these with one
another and with the negative adverb “not” enable us to characterize the diver-
sity of all known modalities and their relationships. A systematic derivation of
modal categories from a single principle is given in the Appendix to this book.
Here we are limiting ourselves to a minimal set of definitions necessary to un-
derstand the category of the possible, which is traditionally considered one of
the “ontic,” or “alethic” (“true”), modalities.
The three main alethic modalities of “real,” “possible,” and “necessary” form
pairs with their opposites – “unreal,” “impossible,” and “contingent.” These are
the six most widespread and recognized modal categories, which can be se-
quentially defined by combinations of three signs “be,” “to be able,” and “not”:7
(1) The modality of the actual (its definition uses only one of the two
predicates, “be”)
Real: to be
Unreal: not to be
(2) The modality of the possible
Possible: to be able to be
Impossible: to be not able to be
(3) The modality of the necessary
Contingent: to be able not to be

Necessary: to be not able not to be
6 Allen R. White, Modal Thinking (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 3.

7 The Russian “moch’” corresponds to both the English “can” and “may” and conditionally is
translated here as “to be able.” An alternative translation could be Latin “posse,” from which
both “potent” and “possible” are derived.
As we see, the six basic modalities correspond to all possible combinations of

the adverb “not” and the predicates “be” and “to be able.” Without anticipating
further conclusions from such a set of predicative definitions (see Appendix),
one can only note so far that “the possible” is the only modality that combines
in positive form (without the adverb “not”) both predicates – that of “ableness”
and that of “existence.”
“The possible” correlates directly not only to its opposite, “the impossible,”
but also to the modality of “the contingent,” from which it is also distinguished
only by the adverb “not.” However, it is related not to “ability to be” but to “be-
ing.” The contingent (the accidental) is that which is but could also not be, while
the possible is that which is not but could also be. If I plan my travel in such a
way that I can make a stop in one of two towns, any of these two events pres-
ents a possibility. On the other hand, if during my trip I happened to stop at a
town where I did not plan to be and this was not essential for my route, then
this accident belongs to the category of “the contingent.”8
3 The Ontological Status of Possible Worlds: Nominalism

and Realism
The most important problem of the theory of the possible is that of “possible
worlds” and their relationship to the real world. The “possible world” is the
totality of possibilities (or possible existences) that can form a single non-
contradictory whole, that is, do not preclude one another’s possibility.9 The
idea of “possible worlds” goes back to Leibniz. He postulated it in order to
provide a metaphysical substantiation of God’s freedom in creating our world.
God’s will is not limited to a single reality but has before it a multitude of pos-
sible worlds and also a multitude of possible monads, individuals, and sub-
stances from which God is free to choose what is to be actualized in our world.
Leibniz’s philosophy of possibility has been criticized by modern research-
ers from two opposing positions: nominalist and realist. The nominalists deny
8 These categories are elaborated in more detail in Appendix (Chapter 2).

9 The majority of modern works devoted to possible worlds stay within the framework of
Anglo-American analytical philosophy: Raymond Bradley and Norman Swartz, Possible
Worlds (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979); Paul Davis, Other Worlds (London: Penguin Books,
1980); Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991); David Lewis, On
the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986). A good survey of rela-
tions among possible (alternative) worlds can be found in the book by Mihai I. Spariosu, The
Wreath of Wild Olive: Play, Liminality, and the Study of Literature (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1997), pp. 54–72.
Introduction 7
the existence of possible worlds as too strong a metaphysical assumption. The

possible, from this viewpoint, is not any special existence or any special world.
It is rather simply a conditional fiction that is useful for analyzing the existing
world, such as, for example, the concept of an “ideal gas” that is used for ana-
lyzing real gases, although the “ideal gas” itself does not exist in nature, it does
not exist in space and time, and so it does not exist at all.10
The American philosopher David Lewis expresses the opposing, extremely
realist viewpoint. According to Lewis’s theory of “modal realism,” Leibniz was
wrong to assume the existence of just one actual world (“this,” “our”). All pos-
sible worlds are real as well, since reality and possibility are two complemen-
tary properties of one and the same world. Each world seems real to itself and
sees other worlds as possible. In this view, actuality is a property of the world in
which the observer is located, and possibility is a property of all other worlds.
The “actual” and the “possible” are pronominal concepts that relate to one an-
other in approximately the same way as the pronouns “I” and “he” do. Each “he”
is an “I” for himself, and each “I” is a “he” for the other.
It must be noted that both these extreme positions essentially eliminate the
qualitative specificity of the possible, its distinction from the actual (real). In
the case of extreme nominalism, the “possible” turns out to be merely a name
that is used in utterances about the existing world. In the case of extreme real-
ism, paradoxically, almost the same thing happens. Possibility turns out to be
merely a means of interrelating among actual worlds, a sign of their distance
from one another. The possible is the real as it appears from the position of
an outside observer who belongs to a different world. David Lewis himself,
when defending his realism with respect to possible worlds, emphasizes that
this “possibleness” in essence does not distinguish such worlds from the actual
world.
Our actual world is only one world among others. We call it alone ac-
tual not because it differs in kind from all the rest but because it is the
world we inhabit. The inhabitants of other worlds may truly call their
own worlds actual, if they mean by ‘actual’ what we do; for the meaning
we give to ‘actual’ is such that it refers at any world i to that world i itself.
‘Actual’ is indexical, like ‘I’ or ‘here’, or ‘now’: it depends for its reference
10 This position is consistently defended in the book by the Australian philosopher D.M.
Armstrong, A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1989). The author defines this position as “naturalism,” since “in general nothing exists ex-
cept the single world in space and time” (p. 3.) With respect to the “possible” this position
acts as a kind of “fictionalism,” since it ascribes only a fictive significance to this modality
(p. 13).
on the circumstances of utterance, to wit the world where the utterance

is located. …You believe in our actual world already. I ask you to believe in
more things of that kind, not in things of some new kind.11
In other words, the possible is a thing “of the same kind” as the actual for the
person who is located inside this possible. As one of Lewis’s critics notes, from
the position of realism “the actual as such does not have a different status from
the possible as such.”12
My task is not to criticize these viewpoints, since I consider them quite ac-
ceptable, albeit one sided. Rather, I would like to define my own position with
respect to them, a position that may be described as possibilism. It is important
to me not to reduce the possible to different, broader categories such as real-
ity or language, existence or concept, but to proceed from the category of the
possible itself as fundamental. For me the “possible” is not some special reality
with its own physical dimensions or some spatiotemporal continuum; neither
is the possible a conventional fiction, symbolically reflecting the properties of
our real world. The possible is a special modus of “ableness” (mozhestvovanie)
that takes us beyond this reality, but by no means necessarily belongs to any
other reality. The special nature of the possible resides namely in the fact that
it cannot be reduced to the real, be it the reality of our world or that of other
worlds.
For me, possibilism is not something intermediary between realism and
nominalism; but rather, it is the position most removed from both of them. We
have already seen that the extremes of nominalism and realism converge, at
least in the sense that the possible turns out to be merely a relationship to
the real: to the single here-and-now reality in nominalism or the multitude of
other realities in realism. In such conceptions, the possible ends up being a fic-
tion of the here-and-now reality or a function of the other-reality.
11 David Lewis, “Possible Worlds,” in Michael J. Loux (ed.), The Possible and the Actual: Read-
ings in the Metaphysics of Modality (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979),
pp. 184, 185. For more detail on Lewis’s modal realism, see the chapter entitled “The Area
of the Thinkable: the Value of Thinking in Itsel” (this volume, Part 1, Chapter 5).
12 Robert Merrihew Adams, “Theories of Actuality,” in Michael J. Loux (ed.), The Possible
and the Actual, p. 194. Another distinction between these extreme positions is sometimes
made in terms of “actualism” and “concretism,” especially when it comes to the so-called
Meinong problem, the existential status of possibilia – objects that are possible and do
not actually exist. Actualism interprets possibilia as speech constructs or conventional
fictions while concretism interprets them as objects that actually exist in other, possible
worlds. See. William G. Lycan. “Possible Worlds and Possibilia,” in Stephen Laurence and
Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Contemporary Readings in the Foundations of Metaphysics
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), pp. 86–8.
Introduction 9
By contrast, I will argue that possibilism enables the creation of the

maximum distance between the possible and the real (this-worldly and
other-worldly) and allows us to define most clearly the modal specificity of the
possible in its distinction from the real. It is not so important how this displays
itself substantially – in thinking, reason, spirit, culture, or in something else.
The possible manifests itself in all of these spheres, as the course of this book
will show. It is important to take a position that will enable us to reveal the
modality of the possible in its qualitative specificity and irreducibility to any
types or spheres of reality, whether physical reality or the domain of eternal
ideas. The possible is not the existing or its negation, it is not that which is or is
not, it is a special mode of being that in general cannot be translated into the
language of real or ideal existence.
Therefore, it is possible preliminarily to designate my position in more pre-
cise terms as possibilism, the philosophy of possibility, which finds its premise,
its “arch-essence,” in the very category of possibility and then applies this cat-
egory to the concepts of “reality,” “idea,” “sign,” “language,” and so on.13
4 The Principle of “Fullness” and the Problem of Realization

of Possibilities
This also defines my attitude toward another extremely important modal

problem – the so-called “Principle of Plenitude,” according to which all pos-
sibilities that ever existed are conceived as fully realizable at some point; no
possibility will remain unrealized in the infinity of time. Conversely, that
which is never realized should be considered impossible. The “theorem of the
‘fullness’ of the realization of a conceptual possibility in actuality” assumes
that “no genuine potentiality of being can remain unfulfilled, and that the
extent and abundance of the creation must be as great as the possibility of
existence and commensurate with the productive capacity of a ‘perfect’ and
inexhaustible Source, and that the world is the better, the more things it con-
tains” – this is how this principle was formulated by the American philosopher
Arthur Lovejoy in his classic work The Great Chain of Being, which laid the
13 Here I proceed from a more general principle that can be called “reciprocity of the subject
and the method.” If the subject of a study were an apple, the only appropriate method
of such a study would be not realism or nominalism, not materialism or idealism, but
“apple-ism,” that is, a system of concepts developed out of the structure of the object
itself.
basis for the history of ideas as a special philosophical discipline.14 The great
philosophers, in Lovejoy’s opinion, had various attitudes toward the principle
of fullness. For example, Plato accepted it and Aristotle rejected it. (Inciden-
tally, contemporary researchers dispute some of these characteristics.)
Again, on the plane of orienting the present study, it should be noted that
the principle of fullness, as Lovejoy defines it, erases the qualitative specifics
of possibilities, making them dependent on their realization, even if this real-
ization occurs in infinite time. However, the possible belongs to a principally
different modality than does the real, and therefore by definition it includes
incomplete or non-obligatory realizability. After all, according to the principle
of fullness “the world is the better, the more things it contains.”15 Consequently,
a better world must also contain such different things as realizable and unre-
alizable possibilities. As traditionally formulated, the principle of fullness con-
tains an internal contradiction, presupposing “the greatest diversity of things”
and at the same time ruling out possibilities as “things” different from existing
things and precisely therefore not subject to realization.
Of course, certain possibilities or a certain stratum of possibilities may be
realized, but to reduce possibilities as a whole to the prospects for their real-
ization means not so much to enrich reality as to impoverish the possibilities
themselves. As Hintikka and Kannisto wittily note, the very name “Principle of
Fullness” should be called into question since it “only asserts an equation be-
tween possibilities and their realizations in time. It can therefore be as much
or as little a Principle of Paucity of Possibilities as a Principle of the Plenti-
tude of their Realizations.”16 These same authors correctly point out that the
substantiation of this principle cannot come merely from an expansion of the
sphere of the real, as was the case, for example, in the Renaissance – in fact,
throughout the whole of human history as the process of progressive realiza-
tion of possibilities.
[I]n spite of the tremendous expansion of the intellectual boundaries

of the actual world only such exceedingly speculative thinkers as Bruno
could find these boundaries wide enough to uphold the Principle. For
14 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), p. 52.
15 Ibid., p. 52.
16 Jaakko Hintikka and Keikki Kannisto, “Kant on The Great Chain of Being or the Eventual
Realization of All Possibilities: A Comparative Study,” in Simo Knuuttila (ed.), Reforming
the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theories (Dordrecht: D. Reidel
Publishing Company, 1981), p. 287, https://books.google.com/books?id=8B8yBwAAQBAJ
&pg=PA288&lpg=PA288&dq.
Introduction 11
all others, possibilities had multiplied even faster than their presumed
realizations.17
Hereinafter, this principle of more rapid movement of possibilities (“poten-

tiation”) will occupy a significant place in our exposition.18 As concerns the
“principle of fullness,” this name would better correspond not to the realiza-
tion of all possibilities but to a combination of the real and the possible in
the modal fullness of the universe. And the most important criterion for this
fullness would be precisely the inclusion in the universe of an area of unrealiz-
able possibilities. The concept of the universe as a “Great Chain of Being” – as
a maximum diversity of all possible things and types of existence, in which
the inexhaustible power of the Creator is manifested – originated in antiquity
and prevailed in Europe right up until the end of the 18th century. But if the
fullness of the universe, as follows from the “Great Chain of Being,” consists in
maximum diversity, it must include not only all possible existences and, conse-
quently, realizable possibilities, but also the possible per se as a special type of
being distinct both from the actual and from the impossible. In any case, such
an unrealizability of possibilities, even if it is not asserted indisputably, must
be admitted precisely as a possibility of the second order (that is, the possibil-
ity of pure, never realized, possibilities). Actually, this is what Aristotle has in
mind when he presupposes for potentiality the possibility of not being trans-
formed into anything actual, that is, to exist as pure potential. “[T]he potency
is prior to the actual cause, and it is not necessary for everything potential to be
actual. …[T]hat which has a potency need not exercise it.”19
The difficulties that arise in connection with the principle of fullness are
evident, for example, in the contradictory – as I see it – position that Karl
Popper takes regarding this question in one of his latest works. According to
Popper, our world consists not of empirically observable facts and not of ratio-
nally comprehended laws but of special potential conditions, which he calls
“propensities.”
[W]e live in a world of propensities, and that this fact makes our world
both more interesting and more homely than the world as seen by earlier
states of the sciences. …Propensities, like Newtonian attractive forces, are
invisible and, like them, they can act: they are actual, they are real. We
therefore are compelled to attribute a kind of reality to mere possibilities
17 Ibid., p. 288.
18 See especially Part 2, Chapter 26, and Introduction to Part 3, this volume.
19 Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” in Richard McKleon (ed.), The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York:
The Modern Library, 2001), pp. 731, 877.
… especially to those that are as yet unrealized and whose fate will only
be decided in the course of time, and perhaps only in the distant future.20
And so possibilities have their own reality, which cannot be reduced to the
reality they acquire as they are realized. This is contradicted, however, by Pop-
per’s own propensity for the principle of fullness.
All non-zero possibilities, even those to which only a tiny non-zero pro-
pensity is attached, will realize themselves in time, provided they have
time to do so … This law amounts to stating that there is a kind of horror
vacui [fear of empty space] in the various possibility spaces.21
But then if all possibilities are realized given the right amount of time and the
right conditions, they forfeit the reality they possessed as possibilities, which
means that ontological fullness turns into modal poverty, with depletion of
the area of the possible itself. As Stanisław Jerzy Lec has observed, “nothing is
ever lost in nature – except fulfilled hopes” (“Uncombed Thoughts”).22 In ex-
actly the same way, nothing disappears from reality except fulfilled possibilities.
Popper’s reflections themselves contradict the principle of fullness more than
they confirm it. More precisely, they presuppose a different, modal, and not
an ontological criterion for fullness: a world in which the relationship between
fulfilled and unfulfilled possibilities is optimized in such a way that each modality
has reached its maximum.
The world is no longer a casual machine – it can now be seen as a world

of propensities, as an unfolding process of realizing possibilities and of
unfolding new possibilities. …And new possibilities tend to realize them-
selves in order to create again new possibilities. …All this means that
possibilities – possibilities that have not yet realized themselves – have a
kind of reality.23
5 Duality and “Demonism” of the Possible
The possible is unrealizable in a more radical sense as well – not only because it
might not be realized, but also because in a certain sense it cannot be realized at
all without forfeiting its special modality. A surprising property of the possible
20 Karl R. Popper, A World of Propensities (1988) (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1997), pp. 9, 18.
21 Ibid., pp. 19–20.
22 https://books.google.com/books?id=IiQUCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq.
23 Popper, A World of Propensities, pp. 18–20.
Introduction 13
is that it has an impact on reality precisely to the extent that it itself is not real,
to the extent that it is not embodied. Тhe possibility of punishment is a more
powerful factor in preventing crimes than the severity of the actual punish-
ment. The possibility of ending up unemployed, poor, or ill frequently produc-
es a fear incomparably greater than that produced by these states themselves.
Both fear and hope are great magnifiers, and the human being is constituted in
such a way that many of his reactions are magnified as phenomena that move
into the category of the possible. In the darkness we are afraid that a stranger
will appear; when he appears we are afraid he will start talking to us; when he
starts talking we are afraid that he will strike us; when he strikes us we are afraid
that he will kill us; and only after he kills us are we no longer afraid of anything.
Ironically, illness cures a person at least of the fear of falling ill. Fear is a func-
tion of possible pain or loss, just as desire is a function of possible pleasure.
The possible remains possible only to the extent that it cannot be fully real-
ized, that is, it retains a grain of the impossible. Paul Valéry gives a paradoxical
description of his intellectual alter ego, Mr. Teste: “Why is Mr. Teste impossi-
ble? … For he is no other than the very demon of possibility.”24 Possibility is in
our hands and slipping out of our hands at the same time. It is effective pre-
cisely in its radical distinction from reality, and in this sense it is tantamount
to the impossible. This demonism of the possible, which hungers for and avoids
embodiment, that is, becomes impossible precisely in order to remain pos-
sible, is what constitutes the philosophical ambiguity, the “explosiveness” of
this category.
Here “demonism” should not be understood in the judgmental and nega-
tive sense that our rationalistic civilization has attributed to this concept.
A demon, according to A.F. Losev’s definition,
in Greek mythology is a generalized idea of some indefinite and unfor-

malized divine force, evil or (less frequently) beneficial, which frequently
determines a person’s fate. This is a terrible fateful force, appearing and
disappearing in an instant, which cannot be called by name, a force with
which there can be no communication. Suddenly surging up, it carries
out some action with lightning speed and immediately disappears with-
out a trace.25
Similarly the possible, having acted, immediately disappears, since as it be-

comes part of reality it loses its quality of the possible. The possible is active
24 Paul Valéry, “Preface. An Evening with M. Teste,” 1925, in Paul Valéry. Oeuvres (Paris:
Gallimard, 1957), t. ii, p. 14.
25 Mify narodov mira (Myths of the People of the World), 2 vols (Moscow: Sovetskaya entsik-
lopediia, 1980), vol. 1, p. 366.
without acting; it strikes without touching; it enters reality as air enters wa-
ter, forming sparkling and turbulent foam “out of nothing.” Coming “from no-
where,” it disappears “into nowhere.”
Slavoj Žižek generalizes this paradox as follows: “Possibility as such exerts
actual effects, which disappear as soon as it ‘actualizes’ itself. …This surplus of
what is ‘in the possibility more than a mere possibility’ and which gets lost
in its actualization is the real qua impossible.”26 In other words, possibility in-
cludes within itself the impossibility of its complete realization. Possibility is
never completely realized because as it is realized it disappears as possibility
and so its real consequences as possibility are lost. When presentiment or con-
jecture about a possible event are transformed into knowledge of an event that
has already occurred, there is a loss of the excitement, hope, and anticipation
that were associated precisely with the possibility of the event, not its actuality.
Possibility could be fully realized only if there were some kind of bifurca-
tion, so that it would both be a part of reality and remain in the form of the
possible, that is, it would have a dual force – for example, if a child could si-
multaneously experience satisfaction from sucking on a candy and the delight
of expectation and anticipation of it. But we have not been granted such a re-
doubling of the ontological status of the possible. It cannot simultaneously be
realized and remain possibility, and therefore when it becomes a part of reality
it loses part of the power of its influence. For example, in 1980 when the pos-
sibility of the nomination of Senator Edward Kennedy for president was in the
air, public opinion polls promised him victory over any other Democratic can-
didate. But as soon as he became a candidate his popularity sharply declined.
The reality of many phenomena disappears if you take away their fictiveness.
In general, if we look back in history, possibility has always exerted as much
of an influence on people’s deeds and passions as reality has. Potential is stron-
ger in terms of its impact precisely if it remains potential, acting, as it were,
ineffectively. Faith and doubt, striving and fear, expectation and disenchant-
ment, courage and cowardice, sanctity and insanity, and other of the strongest
emotional and moral conditions are brought about not by the actual state of
affairs but precisely by possibility: the possibility that God exists or that He
does not; the possibility that I will be rescued or destroyed, and so forth. Using
a multitude of examples to study the relationship between the possible and
the actual in emotional life, Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz reaches the conclusion
that “real feelings do not live up to our expectations; we feel less happy and
26 Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 159, 160.
Introduction 15
less unhappy than we expected to.”27 The multitude of feelings, abilities, and
attitudes determines both private and public life only to the extent that they
are intentionally directed to the area of the possible – and they disappear as
they are realized. Although the possible is by definition “that which is pos-
sible,” “that which can become reality,” this category’s modal depth includes its
opposite as well, the “impossible,” which constitutes one of the central prob-
lems of this book.
6 A Possibilistic Approach to the Possible
What is the existential status of these pure, deep, special, or “hard-core” pos-
sibilities, as they are called by the author of many special works on this subject,
the American nominalist philosopher Nicholas Rescher? Rescher thinks that
the possible, as distinct from the actual, exists only in language, in the pos-
sibility of speaking about the possible. To be sure, Rescher allows that such
possibilities exist because of our ability to perceive them mentally, conceptu-
ally, and not just express them linguistically. Moreover, according to Rescher,
possibilities still exist when we do not perceive them, and therefore it would be
more correct to speak of their being not as “conceived” (at the given moment)
but as “conceivable” (in general).28 It is precisely the linguistic structures, in
Rescher’s opinion, that provide this conceivability of the possible in the ab-
sence of a subject actually conceiving them. “The dependency of unrealized
possibilities on language gives them the objective ontological foothold they un-
doubtedly possess.”29
Rescher provides an interesting table classifying four philosophical positions
with respect to possibilities as one of the types of being. Nominalism asserts
that these types exist only in language (for example, Bertrand Russell, Willard
Quine); conceptualism, that they exist in the mind (the stoics, Descartes, Kant,
Brentano); conceptual realism, that they exist in the Divine Mind (certain
Scholastics, Leibniz), and realism postulates an area of the possible that exists
independently of human language and thought (certain Arab p hilosophers,
27 Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, O schast’e i naznachenii cheloveka (On happiness and destination

of humans) (Moscow: Progress, 1981), p. 116.
28 Nicholas Rescher. “The Ontology of the Possible,” in M.J. Loux (ed.), The Possible and the
Actual (Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1979), p. 181.
29 Ibid., p. 174. According to Rescher, possibility exists also when nobody thinks about it and
nobody expresses it, that is, it exists potentially, as the possibility of describing a possibil-
ity. “Means of describing this possibility exist and so it could be formulated even though
nobody has actually hypothesized it.”
Hugh MacColl, Alexius Meinong).30 Rescher considers realism and conceptual

realism to be absolutely unacceptable for modern philosophy since it prefers
not to glean through “contraband” – relying on theological constructs – those
conclusions that should be reached through “honest intellectual labor.” Even
conceptualism, in Rescher’s opinion, is not very attractive, since it makes the
possible dependent on the condition of the mind and not on stable linguistic
structures – hence Rescher’s avowed devotion to pure nominalism.
But one might question whether Rescher’s position is really so different
from conceptualism since for him the “purely possible” is not what is actually
thought (by someone, at some time), but that which is generally thinkable,
and thus obviously enters the sphere of reason itself. It is worth noting that
in his previously published book, which repeats verbatim the theses of the ar-
ticle quoted (see pp. 195–216), Rescher defines his position more in terms of
conceptualism: “We have accepted the conceptualist line in the assertion that
possibilities are mind-involving.”31 It would be absurd to equate reason with its
actual/transient content and to exclude from it the “thinkable,” that is, the abil-
ity of reason itself. After all, the very fact that language does not express every
existing possibility but only “offers means of describing this possibility” could
serve as a refutation of nominalism. Rescher himself, in regard to the status
of the “possible” in language, insistently points out the “distinction between
speech and speakability, between discussion and discussibility. Like yet unac-
tualized possibilities, nonexistent possibilities inhere in the very possibility of
language.”32
If we allow that language with respect to the discussed possibilities is mere-
ly the possibility of language itself, it follows that thinking with respect to
thinkable possibilities is merely the possibility of thinking itself. And then we
should discuss not the possible in terms of language or thinking but language
and thinking in terms of the possible, as the modal properties of “speakabil-
ity” or “thinkability.” Rescher, when considering the existence of possibilities,
constantly emphasizes that deep possibilities depend on thinking not because
they are thought but because they can be thought.
We would not want to go to the extreme and assert that the ‘being’ of
nonexistent ‘possible existences’ consists in that they are actually

conceived; rather, we think that it consists in their being conceivable. The
30 Ibid., p. 180.
31 Nicholas Rescher, A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Account of
Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975),
p. 218.
32 Ibid., p. 212.
Introduction 17
‘being’ of an unactualized essence does not depend on its relationship to

one or another specific mind but on its being conceivable by the mind in
general, in the sense of the linguistic resources that constitute the overall
ability of the intellect.33
The very distinction of the “mind in general” from specific minds is interpreted
here in modal terms, as the difference between the conceivable in general and
the conceived in particular. In other words, the general is nothing other than
the possible (conceivable, thinkable, speakable), as distinct from the particular
as the actual (that which is conceived, thought, spoken). As Rescher himself
observes, the “decisive point, in our view, is that individual possibilities cor-
respond to actual conceptual constructs, and general possibilities correspond
to potential conceptual constructs.”34 This far-from-accidental correlation be-
tween the “general” and the “possible” (as opposed to the “individual” and the
“actual”) determines our attempt at a modal approach to the problem of the
universals (see the chapter “The Universals as Potencies: Conceptualism”).
As we can see, even the most consistent nominalism, asserted by Rescher,
cannot avoid the language of possiblism in the question of the status of pos-
sibilities. By insisting that the possibilities reside in language, nominalism, or
conceptualism come to a conclusion about the possibilistic nature of language
and thinking themselves.
It is essential not to reduce the possible to one of the non-modal spheres but
to consider the action of this modality in each of them. What grounds do we
have for thinking that modality is a secondary category vis-à-vis the ontological,
epistemological, or linguistic categories? Why should the possible be attached
only to language? Rather language itself, and the semantic systems in general,
should be approached from a modal point of view, as forms of the possible. For
example, the relationship of language to speech can be viewed as analogous
to the relationship of the potential to the act. As Rescher recognizes, it is not
language itself that is adequate to the possible, but the possibility of language
(“language resources”); not thinking itself, but the possibility of thinking (“the
capability of the intellect”). But this means that the possible is not determined
by language or by thinking but itself gives them the forms of “speakability”
and “thinkability.” Possibility is no more “linguistic” or “epistemological” than
the meanings of words or the subjects of thoughts are possibilistic. Modal
categories intersect “as equals” with those that are linguistic, epistemological,
and so on. They cannot be derived from them nor can they be reduced to them.
33 Nicholas Rescher, “The Ontology of the Possible,” p. 173.

34 Nicholas Rescher, A Theory of Possibility, p. 213.
This means, further, that the very form of linguistic representation or theo-
retical comprehension of the possible may belong to the same modality that
is reflected in it. The place of the possible in language is related to the place
of language in the sphere of the possible. Our theoretical responsibility to
this category is determined not so much by the choice of nominalism or con-
ceptualism or realism in our approach to the possible, as by the possibilistic
approach to language, thinking, and reality.
In other words, it is not a matter of precisely which of these spheres the pos-
sible belongs to, but of how the possible is manifested in all these spheres. The
possible is not contained exclusively or primarily in language or in thought or
in existence. Rather, each of these spheres contains its own particular possi-
bilities and may be regarded in terms of its own potentiality. The possible is not
only a subject to which various methods of study are applied, but also the basis
of a methodology (possibilism) that in turn can be applied to any other subjects.
Possibilistic methods may be used to study the most diverse spheres of real-
ity and thinking, including elementary particles, the life of organisms, human
behavior, the development of society, artistic worlds, forms of thinking, and so
forth. But before possibilism can be applied to other subjects, this method it-
self must be formed according to the image and likeness of its specific subject,
that is, the possible.
This means that the study of the possible must first establish its own modal
status. Thinking about the possible itself unfolds in the modus of the possible.
That is why we are beginning this study with that which in the usual meth-
odological order of things could end it – with the modal status of philosophy
itself.
7 The Plan of the Book
This book will address two tasks: a philosophical understanding of the pos-
sible among other modalities (the “philosophy of the possible”) and a study of
the modalities operative in modern culture (“modal cultural theory”). In other
words, the subject of the study – the “possible” – will gradually be transformed
into a method, a “possibilistic” approach to humanistic disciplines and trends
in culture at the turn of the century. The language of modalities is studied first
so that subsequently it will be possible to use it for building a modal epistemol-
ogy, ethics, psychology, theology, and so on.
There will be a vacillating movement between the modal subject and the
method, including in the reverse direction, throughout the entire book. Possi-
bilistic approaches implicitly present in modern methods of post-structuralism
Introduction 19
and deconstruction will be “objectified” and “thematized” precisely as a special

modality whose theoretical recognition will enable us to take fuller advantage
not only of its deconstructive and critical but also of its constructive potential.
The study will consist of three parts. The first part, the most theoretical, con-
siders the category of the possible as a problem of historic self-determination
of philosophy itself and its emergence beyond the limits of the “actual” and
“imperative” modalities.
In the second part, the most critical and methodological, we shall turn to
the modern condition of philosophy and above all to deconstructionism, that
most consistent criticism of metaphysics, which still remains within the realm
of metaphysics itself. Our task is to substantiate a “potentiating,” constructive
character of thinking that will take it beyond the limits of both metaphysics
and philosophical criticism.
The third part, the most projective, outlines the processes in the develop-
ment of possibilistic practices and theories in such spheres as society, culture,
ethics, psychology, and religion.
Finally, in the Appendix, the most systematic section, we shall offer a con-
sistent description of the modal categories derived on the basis of a single spe-
cific feature (the predicate “to be able”) and substantiate the project of a new
philosophical discipline – potentiology, the science of potentiality or “able-
ness” (in the sense that ontology is the science of “being” and epistemology is
the science of “knowing”).35
35 Although the Appendix goes beyond the theoretical framework of the “philosophy of the
possible” and therefore is placed at the end of the book, it may be worth beginning to
read the book from the Appendix, since it serves as a general introduction to the theory
of modalities.
Part 1
The Possible in Philosophy
∵
Chapter 1
Criticism and Activism
Up to the present time philosophical development has passed through two

major epochs, the first of which may be defined as metaphysical and the sec-
ond as critical and activist. In its metaphysical period philosophy tried to ex-
plain the world and to establish certain indisputable truths about the nature of
things, God, and humankind. It was a search for essence in the object of phil-
osophical contemplation itself, without correction for subjective conditions
and preconditions of its perception. The world is such and such or so and so;
it exists in this or that way. Of course, this metaphysical orientation remains to
this day in certain thinkers as a relationship of unreflective, complacent iden-
tification of thought with its subject. That which is thought is imagined to be
the content of reality itself.
The second epoch, beginning with the Kantian revolution in philosophy,
at once both limited and expanded its possibilities. The possibilities of the-
oretical philosophy were drastically narrowed since it was denied a reliable
knowledge of the world as it exists in and of itself. The positive sciences such
as physics, biology, and sociology are increasingly recognized as having the
advantage in the comprehension of reality. Philosophy’s role ultimately boils
down to self-criticism, that is, to criticism of the language of philosophical ut-
terances, which must increasingly be purged of metaphysical content and re-
veal their conventionality and semioticity. This tendency’s development led to
deconstructionism, which views philosophy as nothing more than a reading
of philosophical texts in order to discover their internal contradictoriness and
ambiguity.
At the same time, during the post-Kantian epoch, the significance of practi-
cal philosophy increased sharply. This brand of philosophy does not explain
the world so much as it sets the task of transforming it. This is the point of
Marx’s well-known precept: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world,
in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”1 Philosophy as a project of
changing the world became a fundamental impulse for such thinkers as Fichte,
Saint-Simon, Fourier, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Mar-
cuse, the American Pragmatists, and in Russia N. Fyodorov, V. Solovyov, and
N. Berdyaev. In essence, the majority of the sociopolitical movements of the
1 Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 11, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/

theses/.

20th century were inspired primarily by philosophical ideas that were con-
veyed to the minds of the masses and became a “material force” (Marx). From
here on, philosophy is represented as a field of practical activity that must lead
reality to the embodiment of various great ideas, whether it be the idea of a
classless society (Marx), the omnipotent superman (Nietzsche), or universal
resurrection (Fyodorov).
It is important to understand the unity of the philosophical extremes of this
epoch: merciless criticism and indefatigable activism. Actually, the separation
was completed in Kant’s philosophy as a clear-cut differentiation between the
spheres of pure and practical reason. The question “What can I know?” was
strictly separated from the question “What should I do?” After this they were
to develop independently in the history of philosophical thought, increasing-
ly limiting the sphere of cognition and increasingly expanding the sphere of
action. At first glance it seems that these extremes rarely come into contact
with one another. What do the purely academic language studies of the British
analytical philosophers have in common with the raging of “militant material-
ism” inside the torture chambers of the Cheka and the nkvd during the same
1920s and 1930s? Stalin never would have understood the Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus, nor would he have recognized its author as a real philosopher,
just as Wittgenstein would never have considered the chapters on dialectical
and historical materialism (from the “Short Course in the History of the All-
Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)”) to be a philosophical work.
Yet Wittgenstein and Stalin are phenomena of the same philosophical para-
digm, the critical-activist one, which originated in the bosom of Kantianism.2
To the extent that the unknowable “thing-in-itself” has put an end to theo-
retical philosophy, space has been opened up for practical philosophy to trans-
form the “thing-for-us.” The critique of pure reason revealed its “impurity”: the
a priori schemas for perception, inherent in humankind as a collective subject,
constitute an insurmountable barrier to cognition along the path to the object.
2 A comparison of Wittgenstein and Stalin might seem grotesque and exaggerated. The philo-
sophical community recognizes the one as its own and the other it does not. But it is pre-
cisely the Leninist and Stalinist version of dialectical materialism that was studied for a long
time and still is being studied in the West as the most significant professional philosophy that
ever came out of Russia (more “philosophy” in the Western sense of the word than that of V.
Solovyev or N. Berdyayev). If the name of Stalin as the systematizer and catechizer of Soviet
Marxism has been cast out of modern philosophical encyclopedias, it is because of political
reasons and not purely philosophical ones. Recent research reveals not only a theoretical
connection but also a historical contact between these two thinkers, Stalin and Wittgenstein.
According to the biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein by Kimberley Cornish, The Jew from Linz:
Wittgenstein, Hitler and Their Secret Battle for the Mind (London: Century, 1998), by the begin-
ning of the 1930s, Wittgenstein had become an agent for the Komintern.
Criticism and Activism 25
But at the same time they manifest their own activity as transcendental ideas
that give meaning and purpose to existence. Practical reason – first of all hu-
mankind and then of a social class, party, or individual – has gained philosoph-
ical justification in order to establish the purposes of reality and to transform it
according to the postulates of “I will” or “I can.” Criticism has carefully purged
philosophy of naive speculations and figured out which illusions were to be
buried next, including religion, ethics, ideology, love of neighbor, freedom of
creativity, and truthfulness of cognition. Meanwhile activism filled these voids,
which were increasingly eating away at the fabric of philosophical knowledge,
with molds of achievable goals and ideals of philosophical action: revolution-
ary transformation of the world, justification of violence, militant materialism,
or party spirit in science. On the one hand the weapon of criticism was active;
but it had already revealed its reverse side – criticism with a weapon.
At times these two extremes have coalesced into a single movement of
thought: Marx’s criticism of ideology as the illusions of an estranged con-
sciousness was supplemented with the development of Marxist ideology as
a form of a revolutionary consciousness. At times these extremes moved so
far apart from one another that the connection between them almost disap-
peared: Stalin and Wittgenstein. And nonetheless the interconnectedness re-
mained. After all, if a thinker is allowed to describe only isolated facts, then the
connection and the significance of these facts must be given from outside, by
the will of a figure who determines the course of history. Paradoxical as it may
be, the very logic of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus leads to the philosophy of
the “Short Course in the History of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshe-
vik).” In the auditoriums at Cambridge, philosophical language was purged of
metaphysical elements – and transferred to the domain of Lubyanka, where
it became “guidelines for action.” Crudely put, if the existence of God cannot
be proved ontologically and is in general a “pseudo-problem,” then from that
point forward the society will deify whatever the political vanguard considers
useful for it. Everything that criticism has subtracted from theory as “unreliable,”
“unverifiable” knowledge, activism has added to practice as strategy and tactics
for revolutionary transformation of the world.
Western analysts purged, for example, the problem of the “ideal and ma-
terial” as a pathology of language that corresponds to no objective fact – but
Soviet “synthesists” posed this problem and resolved it by physically eliminat-
ing idealists in order to achieve a triumph of “materialistic ideals.” Criticism
and activism – although most often they have not recognized their mutual
conditioning – have worked together as the plus and minus of a new circuit
of philosophical energy. The connection between philosophy and reality was
purged so that the connection with philosophy and practical action could grow.
There are appreciable signs that this second period in philosophical de-
velopment is coming to an end. Both tendencies – critical and activist – had
exhausted themselves by the end of the 20th century. The failure of activism
needs no special explanation. The most powerful activist philosophy of the
20th century – Marxism-Leninism – lies in ruins. Nobody is tempted any lon-
ger by the philosophical project of restructuring the world. The result was, in
Richard Rorty’s famous judgment, the cultural marginalization of philosophy,
which is why the profession has become largely irrelevant to wider public dis-
course. “Most intellectuals of our day brush aside claims that our social prac-
tices require philosophical foundations.”3
Philosophy as an activist endeavor of thought aimed at changing real cir-
cumstances has lost all the confidence and the hypnotic sparkle of its power.
It has become clear that durable things that remain in reality and are at work
there are not created by the philosophical mind and not according to the phil-
osophical method. Several things are reliably at work in the modern world:
environment, sexuality, Islam, the commodity market, and technology. These
are products not of the philosophical mind but of other historical forces and
realities (environmental, religious, economic, scientific). Intrusions of philo-
sophical ideas into reality were alien to the very nature of reality. They con-
strained, oppressed, and artificially impeded the movement of life – and then
they themselves came to naught. The phantom of Communism prowling over
Europe disappeared into the realm of fantasy.
Hence it is necessary to revise the essence and calling of philosophy. It was
not created to improve this world; it was not called to change anything in it.
Any such attempts, beginning with Plato’s Republic and ending with Lenin’s
The State and Revolution, have turned out to be detrimental both to reality it-
self, which was sacrificed for the Idea, and to philosophy, which undertook to
remake reality and thus was transformed into a servant of ideology.
On the other hand, the critical bias in philosophy is apparently close to ex-
haustion as well. There is no longer anything to criticize. The very substratum
of metaphysics on which philosophical criticism could be based has already
dissolved, revealing a void. During the past two centuries throughout all of
Western philosophy there has been nothing but one wave after another of
ever more refined and merciless criticism. The first was, of course, the Kan-
tian critique of pure reason, which became the prototype for all subsequent
critiques. Thus Schopenhauer and Nietzsche heaped criticism on the system
3 Richard Rorty, “Universalist Grandeur, Romantic Profundity, Humanist Finitude,” Lecture at

University of Pécs in Hungary, 3 May 2004, https://books.google.com/books?id=k0Jqf7iItdoC
&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq.
Criticism and Activism 27
of ideal values, discovering at their basis a will to life and to power. Marx and
Engels criticized all ideological, “transmuted” forms of cognition, discovering
in them the basis of the system of social relations and the process of material
production. Existentialism, beginning with Kierkegaard, criticized the entire
history of Western metaphysics for giving preference to common ideas and es-
sences over individual existence. Freud heaped criticism on all of civilization
as a repressive system for suppressing primordial instincts and unconscious
impulses.
This kind of philosophical criticism almost undermined the basis of phi-
losophy itself, since the only positive remnants of the destroyed illusions were
subjects that were not philosophical at all. Material production as the primary
reality in Marx clearly belongs not to the realm of philosophy but to political,
economic, and technological spheres. In Nietzsche, the instinct to live, rising
up out of the ruins of Christianity, is ultimately a biological phenomenon (and
the philosopher himself thought that in time he would have to learn biology).
The result of Freud’s criticism of civilization was the primacy of psychology
and psychoanalysis among the humanities. In time this role would shift to lin-
guistics, since criticism of metaphysics led to an analysis of language as the
focus of all philosophical problems. Philosophy wanted to regulate language in
such a way as to erase any trace of its own presence in it, so that language would
produce only clear-cut judgments that would submit to empirical verification.
It turns out that, in the critical age, all philosophy did was to show the other
sciences how to crowd out philosophy as an obsolete, speculative discipline.
And, finally, the last wave of criticism, its “ninth wave,” also dooming criti-
cism itself, was deconstruction, which demonstrated that it is impossible even
to regulate language philosophically. There does not exist in nature a rational-
ity that could compel language to do correct, meaningful work. Language itself
is an eternal wandering, a collection of slips of the tongue and misinterpreta-
tions, which not only precludes verifiable formulation of philosophical prob-
lems, but even makes their wording self-contradictory. Any assertion contains
ambiguity or aporia. And the language in which we deconstruct philosophi-
cal language is itself subject to deconstruction, during the course of which
we discover that it consists of metaphors and self-fulfilling expressions. The
philosophy of deconstruction is nothing other than the last to occur and ap-
parently the final deconstruction of philosophy itself. Philosophy has nothing
left but a persistent habit of writing and leaving on paper tracks whose mean-
ings are known to be unclear and indefinable. If logical positivism came to the
conclusion that philosophical propositions could not be actually verified and
confirmed, the theory of deconstruction comes to the conclusion that philo-
sophical propositions cannot even be adequately expressed and interpreted.
Not only do they fail to designate anything true, they do not even designate
anything definite.
It was by no means an accident that the activist and critical philosophies
arrived at their logical completion at the same moment in history. After all,
they appeared not only simultaneously, but also within the framework of the
same Kantian teaching that had so sharply separated the paths of theoreti-
cal and practical reason. And at that same point in history when Gorbachev’s
perestroika finalized the movement of philosophical activism, Derrida’s de-
construction finalized the movement of philosophical criticism. Philosophy
revealed the futility of its two most important schools and the temptations of
practical might and theoretical precision. The strong worldly power built on a
philosophico-utopian basis turned out to be incapable of physically support-
ing or nourishing its citizens and collapsed in disarray. The precise meaning
which critical philosophy set out to find ended up as vacant cells in a semantic
grid work, empty forms of bygone meaning.
These two figures of the last historical moment have something in com-
mon, something grandly phantasmal. Both Gorbachev and Derrida tried to
bring the constructs of their predecessors, the philosophers of power and the
philosophers of meaning, to an ultimate perfection. But at the point where
the vault was to have been closed there was a fissure, which in an instant split
the entire edifice apart and turned it into a monument to their own ruins. And
philosophy will long be grateful to these last two architect-destroyers for the
opportunity to radically revise its assignment and enter the third period of its
creativity.
Chapter 2
Philosophy and Reality
Up to this point we have been considering the second, critical-activist peri-

od as distinct from the first, pre-Kantian, dogmatic one. Now we can pose a
broader question – what do the two have in common? Is this not the impasse
into which criticism-activism has entered – that same philosophical impasse
that dogmatic metaphysics entered more than 200 years earlier? Its essence
consists in that both pre-Kantian metaphysics and criticism-activism defined
philosophy’s tasks in terms of their relation to reality; either its comprehen-
sion or its transformation. The second period, having moderated the claims
of theoretical reason, made philosophy an instrument of practical reason that
was even more interested in its ultimate identification with reality.
This period brought to philosophy a passion and a quest that it had not
previously known in its purely abstract contemplation of the transparent
world. Thought, having lost its unmediated identity with reality, was agitated
by the dream and the duty finally to merge with it. Philosophers filled their
field to overflowing with all kinds of imperatives, both theoretical and prac-
tical. Already Fichte and Hegel use the imperative “be” when addressing the
self-developing “I” and the self-developing idea. With their thinking they drive
their historical movement forward and at the same time demand the kind of
political reality that would correspond to their philosophical ideas. The philos-
ophy of Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Stirner, Marx, Nietzsche, and
Fyodorov – with all its diversity and opposing directions of specific aspirations
– is an ever louder “be” addressed to existence, to the individual, to society, to
humankind. The 20th century reinforced even more this imperative modality
of thinking, transforming the “weapon of criticism” (whose subject was think-
ing) into “criticism by weapon” (whose subject became reality). “The time is
coming for a battle for dominion over the earth – it will be waged in the name
of basic philosophical teachings,” wrote Nietzsche,1 prophesying about the fate
of his own teaching as well. German recruits in two world wars, when setting
out for the front, placed little volumes of Zarathustra in their packs.
In other words, the second philosophical period, while mercilessly criti-
cizing the first, assimilated its basic prejudice that philosophy has some kind
of mandatory relationship to reality, and if it cannot cognize it objectively,
1 Nietzsche, Shriften und Entwurfe 1881–1885. Werke, ed. F. Koegel (Leipzig: Naumann, 1897), ,
vol. 12, part 2, p. 110.

it should undertake to revise it or else to establish the exact boundaries of a

reliable cognition of reality. If in the doctrinal period reality was interpreted
directly, in the modus of the “existing,” the critical period establishes a relation-
ship with it in the modus of the “necessary.” Philosophy, previously discussing
what there is in the world and how the world is constructed, now moved into
the modality of obligation: what the world should be to philosophy, and what
philosophy should be to the world.
“Philosophy must become knowledge not only of what is but also of what
must be, that is, it must be transformed from a passive, speculative explanation
of what exists into a project of active realization of what must be, the proj-
ect of the universal cause” (italics mine – ME).2 In this imperative statement
Nikolay Fyodorov has expressed in a remarkable way the mutual obligation
of p hilosophy and reality, two huge duties that have suddenly grown up out
of their disintegrated precritical unity. Philosophy “must become” knowledge
of what “must be.” And further comes one more doubling of duty: philosophy
“must” become a project of what “must be.” Not only is philosophy obligated to
the world – but the world is also obligated to philosophy.
Essentially we end up with a closed circle. Why is philosophy obligated?
Because reality demands it. However, reality is not yet what it should be either.
It still has to change in order to comply with the demands of philosophy. The
essential thing is that these two obligations lead into the same future, where
philosophy must merge with reality again and reality must become thoroughly
philosophical. This unity of the thinkable and the existent used to be posited
naively, as a metaphysical precondition for the act of thinking itself. But now,
in the age of imperatives, this unity is postponed until the future. It is present
not as a premise, but rather as a projected goal of all philosophical acts aimed
at mutual adjustment of thinking and reality. These two counter-obligations –
epistemological and political-utopian – arise out of the collapse of the previ-
ous metaphysics, as a means of restoring the initial identity in forms of the
future wholeness.
This wholeness is not always declared as directly as it is in Fyodorov’s The
Philosophy of the Common Cause, but the grounding of thinking in truth, that is
in allegiance to reality, and the grounding of reality in rationality, that is in alle-
giance to thinking, are in one way or another declared to be the main business
of philosophy. Moreover, the most refined epistemology cooperates within the
modal framework of the “obligatory” [imperative] modality with the crudest
kind of utopia. Both of them proceed from the mutual obligations of philosophy
2 Nikolai Fyodorov, Filosofiioa obshchego dela (The Philosophy of the Common Cause), cited in
V.V. Zenkovsky, Istoriia russkoi filosofii (Leningrad: Ego, 1991), , vol. 2, part 2, p. 138.
Philosophy and Reality 31
and reality. Epistemology finds philosophy guilty of metaphysical fabrications

and deviations from the world of “atomic” facts, demanding verification of all
its assertions by the criterion of correspondence to empirical reality. Utopia,
conversely, takes responsibility for the verification of reality from the stand-
point of its correspondence to philosophical ideals of truth, goodness, beauty,
unity, freedom, equality, and expediency, blaming the world for not turning
into a transparent concept and in every way driving it to a due condition –
through social revolutions, the generation of supermen, the creation of work
armies for transforming nature, and so forth.
One might say that epistemology exacts that minimum where philosophy,
in spite of its speculative nature, still corresponds to something real (be it an
observable fact or a logically non-contradictory statement or the cognitive
boundaries of reason). Utopia exacts that maximum where reality, in spite of
its arbitrary, chaotic nature, can still be regulated and brought into correspon-
dence with categories of thought (whether it be universal equality, or universal
immortality, or society as a wholly integrated work of art).
Thus the critical-activist epoch not only failed to eliminate philosophy’s
metaphysical focus on unity with reality, but also caused this focus to be es-
pecially pointed and goal-directed. This unity shifts from the sphere of what
is at hand to the sphere of the due. This due is interpreted now in a negative
(critical) and now in a positive (activist) form, but it always orients philoso-
phy toward a coincidence with reality in their future mutual development.
Epistemology says to thought: It is forbidden. You must not cross the boundary
of cognized reality. Utopia says to thought: It is necessary. You must cross the
boundary of cognition into the area of transforming reality. Reality functions
into epistemology as a criterion for the limitation of thought, and in utopia, as
a factor of its expansion. But in both cases it is namely the obligations to reality
that determine the goal and means of philosophical thought.
If this is indeed a break with pre-Kantian metaphysics, it is not radical
enough. True, the metaphysical focus ceases to be naive, but instead it be-
comes sentimental, using Friedrich Schiller’s terms for distinguishing these
two periods in art. According to his well-known theory presented in the trea-
tise On the Naive and Sentimental in Poetry (1795–96), naive art reproduces the
artist’s ideal as the content of reality itself, in a harmonious balance and com-
plete identity between the ideal and the real, the subjective and the objective.
In sentimental art the artist yearns for unattainable reality since he is aware
that all his aspirations and ideals are concentrated in himself. Hence arises a
new reflection – an awareness that one has been torn away from being – as
well as a new energy emerging from the need for reunification of oneself with
being.
The historical epochs Schiller outlined for these two types of art coincide
approximately with the precritical and critical development in philosophy. In
this sense all pre-Kantian philosophy may be called naive, and post-Kantian
philosophy right up to our day may be called sentimental, since philosophy
has already lost its unmediated unity with reality but is still striving to coin-
cide with it – both on the plane of reflection, that is, awareness of our having
been torn away from reality, and on the plane of energy, that is, attempts ef-
fectively to master reality. Here are some sentimental judgments that reflect
the yearning of alienated thought to apprehend the fullness of being: “The phi-
losophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however,
is to change it” (Marx);3 “The question is, to what extent is it life promoting, life
preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating” (Nietzsche);4
“Thought and being are not identical, i.e., thought is not realized but it should
be realized” (Fyodorov).5
Sentimentality as a frame of mind encompasses the most diverse philo-
sophical schools: materialism, and pragmatism, and existentialism, and logical
positivism – all these forms of skepticism and ecstasy, despair and rapture in
the face of reality, slipping away from cognizing thought or giving in to its as-
sault on the actual. Sentimentality reigns over all the second period of philo-
sophical development, determining the correlation of depressive and manic
moments within it. The tone of epistemology is mainly skeptical and depres-
sive since it is forced increasingly to confine the possibilities of philosophical
knowledge within the boundaries of analytical precision. The tone of utopia
is primarily manic since it is inclined increasingly to expand the range of
philosophical action, right to the point of transforming the world within the
boundaries of thinkable perfection. Maximalism in the ideology of action cor-
responds to minimalism in the theory of cognition.
But, as has already been said, both these frames of mind have been ex-
hausted. The latest impulse of philosophical science toward precision (struc-
turalism) led to the discovery of imprecision at subatomic levels of textual
significance (deconstruction). The latest impulse of “scientific philosophy”
(as Marxism called itself) toward the creation of a perfect Communist soci-
ety led to the destruction of its foundations (perestroika). Significance, under
the pen of the most precise analyst (Derrida), disintegrated into the totality of
3 Karl Marx. Theses on Feuerbach, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/

theses/.
4 Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Section 1,
Aphorism 4), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, Vintage Books (Random House), 1966), p. 11.
5 N.F. Fyodorov, “The Question of Brotherhood….,” part 4, in his Sochinenia (Moscow: Mysl,
1982), p. 426.
Philosophy and Reality 33
s ignifiers without signifieds. The society under the leadership of the most pre-
cise pragmatist (Gorbachev) disintegrated into the sum of asocial units – the
Mafia, gangs, tribes, and lonely individuals unprotected by the state.
It is no accident that “deconstruction” and “perestroika” (“restructuring”)
come from the same root and the same semantic cluster. Both movements
came into being as attempts to complete previous systems of theoretical and
practical thought that had finally come to an impasse. Pere-stroika (re-struc-
turing) was conceived as an act of rectifying the shortcomings of Communist
construction, as a method of self-criticism with the aim of more successful
implementation of the original project itself. The same role of internal criti-
cism was also initially assigned to de-construction within the framework of the
structuralist movement to which Derrida belonged. But in exactly the same
way as perestroika failed to correct the flaws of Communist construction and
buried this project itself, deconstruction failed to rectify structuralism and
buried the project of a precise description of the world of meanings.
Along with it was buried the projective direction of philosophy as such, its
desire to remake reality or to remake itself for the purpose of comprehending
reality. The romance of reason and reality, in which love and jealousy, pride
and envy, were so inseparably interwoven, had come to an end. Thinking and
reality were now free to follow their own paths, released from the mutual de-
mands of “you must” and “be mine.” The sentimental fever, the alternation of
cognitive depressions and transformative manias, gave way to a new philoso-
phy of hope, which belongs to the modality of the possible.
Chapter 3
Change of Modalities in the History of Philosophy
The change of large philosophical epochs is primarily a change of modalities of

thinking. Differences in modalities are much more profound and fundamental
than any differences in the content of thinking. Kant remarked: “The modality
of judgments is a quite special function of them, which is distinctive in that it
contributes nothing to the content of the judgment … but rather concerns only
the value of the copula in relation to thinking in general.”1 Thus the assertion
and denial, “there is a God” – “there is no God,” while opposite in content, are
formally included in the same indicative modality that asserts or denies God as
a fact of reality. Thinkers of the precritical period could hold the most diverse
opinions about the essence or the origin of the world, but their thinking un-
folded in the indicative modality as a description of what exists. The Kantian
revolution, having broken this thought/reality identity apart, established the
imperative modality for thinking, defining what reality and thinking should be
for one another.
The indicative modality, like the imperative one as well, will be preserved
forever in philosophy’s reserve because such general thought types do not die
out. They merely cease to predominate. The precritical type of philosophy con-
tinued to exist even after Kant. It simply began to be perceived namely as “pre,”
archaic in style and more amateur than professional. In exactly the same way
critical philosophy, with its epistemological and transformative imperatives,
will exist in the third millennium. It will be recognized as the preparatory stage
for post-critical, constructive thinking.2
At the present time, philosophy, having exhausted the modality of the na-
ively existing and the sentimentally necessary, is opening up within itself a third
modality – the modality of the possible. This is perhaps the only way out of the
impasse into which philosophy has been drawn by attempts to narrow its theo-
retical authenticity and expand its practical applicability. It has become clear
that philosophy cannot be reliable as a method of cognizing reality and it can-
not be productive as a method of transforming it. Philosophical thinking as
distinct from scientific thinking is not precise and it does not correspond to
1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 209.
2 Concerning the method of construction in philosophy, see Chapters 23 and 24 of the second
part of this volume.

Change of Modalities in the History of Philosophy 35
anything concretely existing. Philosophical action as distinct from ethical or

political action is not positive and, since it subordinates being to general ideas,
it does not benefit what exists but rather questions and undermines it.
Philosophy is by no means obliged to link itself to the world of the exist-
ing and obliging, to reality and to necessity. Philosophy’s calling, opening up
before it in the post-critical period, is the third modality, the world of the pos-
sible. Up to this point, philosophy has tried to explain or to change the world,
while its unexplored potential is to multiply possible worlds.
The idea that the possible is prior to the real – both in essence and in time –
was expressed as early as in ancient Greek philosophy, as Aristotle relates: “for
it is thought that everything that acts is able to act, but that not everything that
is able to act acts, so that the potentiality is prior.”3 For example, the ability
to play a musical instrument is a preliminary condition for the playing itself.
Aristotle himself, however, held the opposite conviction:
Actuality, or movement, is prior to possibility or capability … for he who

learns to play the harp learns to play it by playing it … It is surely clear,
then, in this way, that the actuality is in this sense also, viz. in order of
becoming and of time, prior to the potentiality.4
According to Aristotle, by no means everything that is possible becomes actual,

and if it becomes actual it is not only because it is possible but because there
is a certain principle of possibility (“Metaphysics,” 1071 b). This principle is not
only independent but is also primary in the order of things, because, although
a certain possibility precedes the given condition of reality, this possibility it-
self arose out of a preceding condition of reality. The seed did not precede the
man but “before the seed there is man” (“Metaphysics,” 1073 a). “One actuality
always precedes another in time right back to the actuality of the eternal prime
mover” (that is, the eternal being of the prime mover).5
The conviction that the actual has primacy over the possible, most authori-
tatively expressed by Aristotle, prevailed for a long time in European philoso-
phy and theology. For example, Thomas Aquinas directly follows Aristotle in
his third proof of the existence of God, which is constructed on the concept
of the necessary as opposed to the concept of the possible. Aquinas equates
the possible with the contingent since that which might be might also not
3 Metaphysics, 1071b, Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1984), , vol. 2, p. 1693.
4 Ibid., 1049b, 1050a, pp. 1657, 1658.
5 Ibid., 1050b, p. 1659.
be – and this means that possible things appear and fade away, and for them
eternal being is unattainable. Aquinas, further, allows that in time the poten-
tial precedes the actual, but not in essence. “For although in any single thing
that passes from potentiality to actuality, the potentiality is prior in time to
the actuality; nevertheless, absolutely speaking, actuality is prior to potential-
ity; for whatever is in potentiality can be reduced into actuality only by some
being in actuality.”6 This is almost a verbatim repetition of Aristotle: “For from
the potential the actual is always produced by an actual thing, e.g. man by man,
musician by musician.”7 Thus the possible is merely a moment of mediation
between two actual things, one of which makes the other possible. As con-
cerns the first thing itself, the first beginning or first mover, both Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas insist on its pure actuality. “There is always a first mover, and
the mover already exists actually.”8 “The first being must of necessity be in act,
and in no way in potentiality.”9
Such a categorical denial of potentiality in primary essence is based on
one simple non-distinction: between the potentiality of being and the being
of potentiality. Potential being is unembodied, changeable, emerging, and in
this sense, indeed, cannot serve as the first beginning as Aristotle and Aqui-
nas understand it. But potentiality itself can have eternal, self-sufficient, and
even “actual” existence, which makes possible all other types of existence and
gives them its potential.10 The “possible” in this sense is not that which itself is
merely possible and may be realized or not realized depending on some prior
conditions, but that which conveys the property of “being possible” to all other
existing things, which makes them possible, and, consequently, is itself a con-
dition for their existence.
Perhaps the first thinker to place potentiality, possibility and power at the
foundation of all foundations was Plotinus (c. 203–c. 269). The initial hypos-
tasis or reality of his philosophy – the “One,” the “Supreme” which is its own
cause – is above any being and cognition, and in it everything merges together
6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, q.3, 1c, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/

17611/pg17611-images.html.
7 Metaphysics, 1049b, Aristotle, p. 1658.
8 Ibid.
9 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1, q.3, 1c.
10 The American philosophers Hartshorne and Reese criticize Aristotle for his failure to
distinguish these two aspects of potentiality: as a potentiality to be something which
emerges and disappears and time; and as the eternal being of potentiality itself. Charles
Hartshorne and William L. Reese, Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 71.
and nothing is manifested as separate. Plotinus affirms that “The Supreme is

the potentiality of all things, above all actualization.” The explanation follows:
10. This Principle then is the potentiality of all. Without it, nothing would
exist, not even Intelligence, which is the primary and universal life.
Indeed what is above life is the cause of life. The actualization of life,
being all things, is not the first Principle; it flows from this Principle as
(water) from a spring.11
Indeed, since the One is not something apart from that which exists and at the
same time is not nothing, it is then placed outside existence in general and
non-existence – as infinite, as the very possibility of existence, pure power as
potentiality for all things (dynamis). If the All is not something and it is not
nothing, then it is located generally outside the dilemma of existence/non-
existence; it is defined in a different modality.12
But the first thinker to construct a systematic metaphysics of the possible
and in so doing reverse the relationship between the potential and the actual,
although without entering into a direct debate with Aristotle and Aquinas, was
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64). In a number of treatises, especially from the later
period – “De Possest” (On Possibility – Being), “De Venatione Sapientiae” (The
Hunt for Wisdom) and “De apice theoriae” (On the Summit of Contemplation) –
he laid the foundation for “potentiology,” possibilistic ontology, and episte-
mology. In search of the ultimate essence that can be revealed to the mind,
he approaches the category of “possest” (possibility – being) – the possibil-
ity of being as being of possibility itself. If substantiality – the primary “what”
or “whatness” – can be at all, it cannot be without possibility in and of itself,
which is then the initial substantiality.
11 Plotinus, Enneads, trans. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie (Alpine: Comparative Literature Press,
1918), 3rd Ennead, treatise 8, Ch. 10, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42931/42931-h/42931-
h.htm#iii_8.
12 In O. Langer’s work dynamis, Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik Plotins (Diss., Heidelberg,
1967), the concept of potency (Greek – “dynamis”) is presented as a universal category of
all of Plotinus’ thought, developed in his teachings about the three main hypostases – the
One, the Mind and the Soul. For a description of this concept and also a detailed para-
phrase of Langer’s work, see A.F. Losev, Istoriia antichnoi estetiki. Pozdnii ellinizm (History
of Ancients Aesthetics: Late Hellenism) (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1980), pp. 378–82. The con-
cepts of potency and energy in Aristotle and Neo-Platonism (in Plotinus and Proclus) are
also investigated in Losev’s work Antichnyi kosmos i sovremennaia nauka (Ancient Cosmos
and Contemporary Science) (Moscow: Rossiiskii otkrytyi universitet (Russian Open Uni-
versity), 1993), pp. 205–7, 307–15, 371–3, 439–58.
The [ultimate] Basis of things, or [ultimate] Subsistent-being of things,

is possible to be. And because it is possible to be, surely it cannot exist
apart from Possibility itself. For how would it be possible apart from Pos-
sibility? And so, Possibility itself – without which nothing whatsoever is
possible – is that than which there cannot possibly be anything that is
more subsistent.
So says Nicholas in the treatise written just before his death, “De Apice Theo-
riae” (1464).13
Nicholas of Cusa’s greatest accomplishment was to put possibility in the
center of his ontology and even theology, in direct opposition to Aristotle
and Thomas Aquinas and in support of Plotinus. Contrary to Aristotle, Nicho-
las of Cusa finds that “existence does not add anything to the possibility of
existing.”14 On the contrary, as it proceeds from the possible to the actual there
is a certain diminution of being.15 Only God is completely what He can be; in
Him absolute possibility coincides with absolute reality, while other types of
beings can be other than they are because their actuality is inferior to their
potential. The exceeding of the actual by the possible is a source of movement
and change in the created world. Since none of the creations embodies all the
possibilities of the Creator, any creation can become different, move in space
and change in time.
According to Aristotle, “no eternal thing exists potentially,” and, correspond-
ingly, only the existent can be eternal while the possible is perishable, as it can
be or not be.16 According to Nicholas of Cusa, conversely, everything actual is
13 Nicholas of Cusa, “De Apice Theoriae,” Opera Omnia, vol. 12: De Venatione Sapientiae. De
Apice Theoriae trans. Jasper Hopkins, ed. Raymond Klibansky and Hans G. Senger (Ham-
burg: Meiner Verlag, 1982), p. 1424, http://jasper-hopkins.info/DeApice12-2000.pdf.
14 Ibid., p. 1431.
15 One can hardly agree with this “hyperpossibilistic” assertion. Reality adds to the possibil-
ity of being new possibilities created by reality itself. The possibility of becoming a person
and not an animal, as soon as it is realized, creates a new possibility of becoming good
or bad, free or subservient, wise or vain, since an animal does not have such possibilities.
And at the moment of their realization each of these possibilities reveals a number of
new possibilities. This is potentiation, that is, the ascent of the possible from one stage of
realization to another. Possibilities change as they are realized, so the realization of one
possibility creates another possibility.
16 “Eternal things are prior in substance to perishable things, and no eternal thing exists
potentially. The reason is this. Every potency is at one and the same time a potency of
the opposite; for, while that which is not capable of being present in a subject cannot be
present, everything that is capable of being may possibly not be actual. That, then, which
is capable of being may either be or not be.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1050b, The Basic Works
of Aristotle, p. 830.
subject to change, for it does not include within itself all of its possibilities, and
only “possibility in and of itself” includes the fullness of the eternal. “Existence
does not add anything to the possibility of existing. Likewise, man does not
add anything to the possibility of being a man; nor does young man add any-
thing to the possibility of being a young man.”17
It is solely possibility that includes simultaneously both this and that, while
to be this or that in reality means loss, partiality, incompleteness, and the
changeability of each existence that ensues from this. Meanwhile, possibility
stays ahead of all possible doubts and questions addressed to it, since it makes
them possible, and so it acts as the most unquestionable, as knowledge within
the very lack of knowledge.
Since every question about what is possible presupposes Possibility, doubt

cannot be entertained about Possibility. …Possibility itself precedes all
doubt that can be entertained. Therefore, nothing is more certain than
is Possibility itself, since [any] doubt [about it] can only presuppose it,
since nothing more sufficient or more perfect than it can be thought.18
If the transition from Creator to creation is a fragmentation of the possible into

diversity and mutability of the existent, the mind seeking the essential begin-
ning, the foundation of everything, proceeds in the opposite direction – from
actual existences and particular realizations of the possible to the possible in
and of itself.
The loftiest level of contemplative reflection is Possibility itself, the Pos-

sibility of all possibility, without which nothing whatsoever can possi-
bly be contemplated. …Nothing can be added to Possibility itself, since
it is the Possibility of all possibility. Therefore, Possibility itself is not
the possibility of existing or the possibility of living or the possibility of
understanding. …Nevertheless, Possibility itself is the Possibility of the
possibility-of-existing and of the possibility-of-living and of the possibil-
ity-of-understanding. Only what is possible to exist does exist. …There
cannot be any other substantial or quidditative Beginning – whether for-
mal or material – than Possibility.19
17 Nicholas of Cusa, “De Apice Theoriae,” p. 1431.

18 Ibid., p. 1429.
19 Ibid., pp. 1431, 1434.
But if possibility itself is the highest object of apprehension, then comprehen-

sion cannot but be filled with that to which it aspires, that is, the principle of
the possible. As stated in Nicholas of Cusa, human knowledge has the character
of semi-knowledge, supposition: “precise truth is unattainable. Accordingly, it
follows that every human affirmation about what is true is a surmise.”20 Nicho-
las of Cusa himself was inclined to attribute this conjectural quality to “our
weak apprehension’s uncertain falling short of the pure truth,” that “implies
that our affirmations about the true are surmises.”21 But by comparing his early,
“epistemological” treatise, “On Conjectures” (no later than 1444) with the late
treatises on the ontology of the possible, we can conclude that it is precisely
the conjectural nature of philosophical knowledge that corresponds most fully to
possibility as its specific subject. For knowledge of the possible rather than the
actual presupposes, correspondingly, only the possibility and not the actuality
of knowledge, that is, a particular modality of thinking, in accordance with
a principle Nicholas of Cusa formulated: our intellect understands nothing
unless it likens itself to that which can be comprehended by the mind (“The
Hunt for Wisdom,” Ch. 29). Consequently, if real things, like the ones studied
by science, are given to us to know in reality, the possible, such as it is, as a
substantial principle, comprehended by philosophy, can be known only pos-
sibilistically, conjecturally.
This conjectural character of knowledge does not mean that it is limited.
On the contrary, it reflects more deeply the sphere of the “possible in and of
itself,” since it is not limited by any of its actual realizations. Hence Nicholas of
Cusa’s teaching on “learned ignorance,” on comprehension by means of non-
comprehension which imparts the possibilistic modality to understanding.
Truth may be likened unto the most absolute necessity (which cannot
be either something more or something less than it is), and our intellect
may be likened unto possibility. Therefore, the quiddity of things, which
is the truth of beings, is unattainable in its purity; though it is sought by
all philosophers, it is found by no one as it is. And the more deeply we are
instructed in this ignorance, the closer we approach to truth.22
20 Nicholas of Cusa, “De Coniecturis” (“On Conjectures”), in his Metaphysical Speculations,

vol. 2, trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 2000), https://vdocu-
ments.site/nicholas-of-cusa-on-conjectures.html.
21 Ibid.
22 Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance (De Docta Ignorantia) (Minneapolis: Arthur J.
Banning Press, 1990), p. 8, http://jasper-hopkins.info/DI-I-12-2000.pdf.
And so at the beginning of Modernity the first philosophical apology for the
possible was born. G.W. Leibniz subsequently developed the category of the
possible in depth, associating it with the question of freedom of will. In his
letters to Antoine Arnault, Leibniz advanced an idea about a multitude of pos-
sible Adams, a concept that his correspondent considered strange. It would
seem that Adam, as the first man, more than any other creation, would be ab-
solutely singular. But since Adam was created by the free will of the Creator,
there could have been other Adams as well. It is precisely this possibility that
is revealed to the mind of the metaphysician, while the mind of the dogmatic
theologian proceeds from the existence of one biblical Adam.
But when I speak of several Adams I do not take Adam for a determined
individual but for some person conceived sub ratione generalitatis [in a
relation of generality] … There might be several other disjunctively pos-
sible Adams … Everything that is actual can be conceived as possible …
In order to call something possible, it is enough merely to be able to form
a concept of it when it is only in the divine understanding, which is, so to
speak, the realm of possible realities. …If we wished absolutely to reject
such pure possibles we should destroy contingency and freedom, for if
nothing is possible except what God has actually created, whatever God
has created would be necessary, and, in willing to create something, God
could create only that thing alone, without any freedom of choice.23
Thus the modality of the possible for Leibniz was rooted in the basis of reality,
since reality does not exist by necessity but was created by God, which means
it includes the freedom to choose among many realities.
Later the category of the possible was brought to the fore by the German
Romantics – Novalis, Fr. Schlegel, Schelling – and also the existential thinkers –
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Berdyayev, Heidegger, and Sartre, although it was not
often treated under its own name; it was subsumed under the subjects of non-
existence, freedom and creativity.24 Among the thinkers of other schools one
should mention Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), the founder of the phi-
losophy and theology of process, and Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933), the founder
of fictionalism. For the former, “possibility” is primarily an ontological and cos-
mological category, and for the latter, an epistemological and pragmatic one.
23 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, trans. and ed. Leroy E. Loem-
ker, 2nd edition (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing, 1969), pp. 335–6.
24 Concerning the relationship between the categories of possibility and nothingness in ex-
istential philosophy see Chapter 15 of Part 2 of this volume.
In the works of Whitehead, who combined the Platonism of eternal ideas with
the physics of cosmic evolution, “the actual events from which the world pro-
cess is formed are presented as the embodiments of other things, which consti-
tute potential forms of definiteness for each actual existence.”25
The philosophy of “as if” developed by Vaihinger, proceeds from the Kantian
teaching about regulative ideas and anticipates many trends in postmodern
thought, particularly “constructionism.” According to Vaihinger, ideas aris-
ing in the most diverse areas of knowledge – from mathematics, physics, and
biology to economics, jurisprudence, and theology – are modal formations,
fictions, which do not correspond to any facts. Since these fictions work and
enable us to achieve success and orient ourselves in life, we adhere to them, as
though they were correct. And it is this conditionality, “as if,” that constitutes
the basis not only of human knowledge but also of human behavior.26
The latest example of a methodology that leads right up to possibilism is
the merciless criticism of the concept of “reality” undertaken by the French
philosopher Jean Baudrillard. He is responsible for the well-known theory of
hyperreality and simulacrum as created by the modern means of mass com-
munication – the theory that reminds fictionalism although the name of
Vaihinger has undeservedly disappeared from the postmodern context. Bau-
drillard’s theory is also partially consonant with the teachings of Vladimir
Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin concerning the noosphere – a new cosmic
stratum of reason that covers our planet. The geophysical layers are increas-
ingly covered by layers of civilization and are perceived as a distant mirage
through the prism of postmodern semantic electronic networks. As distinct
from Vernadsky and Teilhard, with their more traditional, evolutionistic ap-
proach to the noosphere, Baudrillard stresses the paradoxes of the new epis-
temology, above all the revolution in relations between the artificial and the
natural. Reality created by artificial means seems more genuine that the pri-
mary, ordinary reality.
In this connection the purpose of theory changes as well. Baudrillard lib-
erates theory (by which he means philosophy, not science) from the goals of
25 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Harper torchbooks, 1969), p. 53.
26 Hans Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als-Ob. System der theoretischen, praktischen und
religioesen Fiktion der Menschheit auf Grund eines idealisischen Positivismus (Berlin: Ver-
lag von Reuther & Reichard, 1911). Concerning Russian followers of Vaihinger see Yu.N.
Solonin and S.I. Dudnik, “Russkiy fiktsionalizm. Opyt istoriko-filosofskoy rekonstruktsii”
(“Russian Fictionalism: An Essay in Historical – Philosophical Reconstruction”), in Veche.
Al’manakh russkoy filosofii i kul’tury (St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Publishing
House, July–December 1997), vol. 10, pp. 39–49.
objective knowledge and the achievement of truth. He imposes on it the duty

of heroically challenging the real.
If it [theory] no longer aspires to a discourse of truth, theory must as-

sume the form of a world from which truth has withdrawn. And thus it
becomes its very object. The status of theory could not be anything but a
challenge to the real. Or rather, their relation is one of a respective chal-
lenge. For the real itself is without doubt only a challenge to theory. …
It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an
event in the universe it describes. …It must tear itself from all referents
and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost
of a deliberate distortion of present reality. What theory can do is to defy
the world to be more: more objective, more ironic, more seductive, more
real or more unreal, what else? … Let us be Stoics: if the world is fatal, let
us be more fatal than it. If it is indifferent, let us be more indifferent. We
must conquer the world and seduce it through an indifference that is at
least equal to the world’s.27
These excerpts are from the chapter “Why Theory?” in Baudrillard’s book The
Ecstasy of Communication. And so from now on theory does not follow reality
but competes with it, becomes more real than reality itself. Theory does not
imitate reality but distorts and outpaces it in the pursuit of the future. But this
revolution in the relations between theory and reality still does not constitute
a modal innovation. Baudrillard has a sense of theory’s tyranny-fighting pathos
in relation to reality, the desire to dethrone reality and place the crown on its
own head (to become more fatal, more objective, and so forth). Here theory
simply usurps all predicates belonging to reality instead of finding new predi-
cates for itself.
It seems that Baudrillard still does not go beyond Nietzsche’s paradigm in
his understanding of theory as a battle with reality. Sometimes he even falls
into a vulgar version of that same activist paradigm when he proclaims, quite
in the spirit of socialist realism, that theory must distort existing reality for the
sake of aligning itself with the future. At one time all Soviet schoolchildren
were taught that the truly typical is not what is but what should be; the general-
ization must stay ahead of reality, anticipating tendencies in its development.
All of Baudrillard’s discussion of theory as a challenge to the real corresponds
27 Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication (New York: Autonomedia, Semiotext(e),

1988), pp. 98–101.
in the epoch of the imperative modality, when philosophy was concerned pre-
cisely with keeping ahead of reality and bringing reality along behind it.
But if one agrees with the opinion of Baudrillard himself concerning the
hyperreal character of the modern epoch, with which reality should theory
wage battle? Can it really be that same one that Baudrillard has already de-
clared abolished? “Everything began with objects, yet there is no longer a sys-
tem of objects” – this is the sentence that opens the book from which I quoted
above.28 Baudrillard’s view of theory clearly lags behind his views on the na-
ture of reality, in which objects no longer exist – and hence theory’s aspiration
to become “more real” and “more objective” than reality itself lacks meaning in
Baudrillard’s own context.
In the first phase of its development, philosophy (or the theory of every-
thing) followed reality and tried to explain it, approaching it as closely as pos-
sible. In the second phase theory challenges reality and tries to surpass it. This
phase, in turn, passes through several points: scientific criticism of existing re-
ality; utopian construction of a better reality; practical – revolutionary altera-
tion of reality and so forth. Baudrillard fixes the last point in the development
of this phase, when theory no longer intrudes into the area of reality for the
purpose of historically altering it (“revolutionary theory”), but it still tries to
appropriate to itself the properties and modi of reality, to be more real than
reality itself. All that remains of reality, which is already disappearing in its
physicality, in its substance, is the modality of the real, which also shifts over to
theory, so that it strives to become an event of the real world and to push back
and crowd out any other reality.
This is the last formulation of the activist principle with respect to philos-
ophy itself. Philosophy is no longer tempted by anything in reality – neither
ethical prescriptions nor historical transformations. Philosophy is tempted in
reality only by the latter’s modality, by the fact that it is. Philosophy’s next step
is to overcome this temptation of the indicative mood as well – to understand
that theory determines itself not in the modus “to be” but in the modus “if it
were.”
28 Ibid., p. 11.
Chapter 4
Philosophy as Possibilistic Thinking
Our task does not include a consistent consideration of the category of the
possible on the historico-philosophical plane. It is important only to note that
even 20th-century thinkers who have tried to transform philosophy into a hard
science – based on phenomenology or logic – have observed a special, selec-
tive connection between philosophical thinking and the modality of the pos-
sible. Thus for Husserl philosophy, as the cognition of “first principles,” is the
cognition of possibilities, since they precede the reality made possible because
of them. “The old ontological doctrine, that the knowledge of ‘possibilities’
must precede that of actualities (Wirklichkeiten) is, in my opinion, insofar as it
is rightly understood and properly utilized, a really great truth.”1
We find a clearer indication of the possibilistic modality of philosophi-
cal thinking in Bertrand Russell, in the final chapter titled “The Value of
Philosophy” from his treatise “Problems of Philosophy” (1912):
Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true an-
swer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities
which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.
Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it
greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the
somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into
the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder
by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect. …Philosophy is to be
studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since
no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for
the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge
our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination
and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against
speculation.2
Based on the distinction Russell suggests, it is possible to say that philosophy

transforms our everyday knowledge of things as they are into assumptions
1 Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W.R. Boyce Gib-
son (New York: Collier Books, 1967), p. 213.
2 Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy: Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: The
University of Chicago/Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1990), vol. 55, pp. 292, 294.

about things as they might be; that is, it makes a transition from the modal-
ity of the actual to the modality of the possible. Even apart from the question
of which came first, the possible or the actual, the “egg” or the “chicken,” one
can assume that philosophy deals mainly with the “egg,” conceivable things
and even conceivability itself, which is richer in potential than in actuality. All
things enter into the realm of philosophy to the extent of their conceivability,
which in itself contains no indication of the existence of things but presup-
poses their possibility.
Thinking in the mode of the conceivable – possible is nothing new to phi-
losophy. Even the Skeptics, criticizing their contemporaries’ speculations,
considered it useful to release them from the affirmative modality and switch
to the probabilistic modality. In other words, every philosophical statement
should be prefaced by a switch word that translates it from an affirmation
into a supposition: “perhaps,” “possibly,” “probably,” “apparently,” “one can
assume.” But this Skeptical trick says little about the positive possibilities of
philosophy itself. Rather, it limits philosophy to the sphere of the possible. T
he fact is that the modality of the possible can act either to limit or to expand phil-
osophical judgments. If these judgments are based on the actual state of affairs
and are aimed at an objective description of them, the modus of the possible
when attached to such judgments limits the field of their action. The Skeptiks
use the modal word “possibly” as a limiting device to moderate the judgment’s
claim to truth. And consequently the danger of falsehood is reduced. Such
judgments as “the soul is immortal” or “worlds are innumerable” become less
risky when accompanied by the limiting device “possibly” (meaning “this is
only a possibility”).
But in this case we are dealing not with the modality of the possible itself
but merely with a reservation regarding the actual modality. Yet the “possible”
includes its own positive principles for thinking, which do not narrow but ex-
pand its sphere. In this case the word “possibly” acts not as a reservation com-
ing toward the end but as an initial condition of philosophical thinking that
proceeds beyond the limits of the existing.
It is at precisely this point, where philosophy is moderated by skepticism,
that it forfeits its attraction to the truth and its special constructive capacity
is circumscribed. Philosophy constructs possibilities out of positive facts. In
this respect philosophy always complicates and confuses things rather than
simplifying them.
Philosophy begins by questioning the notion that any subject is identical to
itself. Khemnitser in his well-known fable mocked the philosopher who after
falling into a pit was in no hurry to grasp onto the rope that had been lowered
Philosophy as Possibilistic Thinking 47
down to him. Instead he asks: “What sort of thing is a rope?” And after thinking
for a while, he answers: “A rope! – It is just a simple cord!”3 The philosopher’s
occupation seems like pure stupidity as presented in this fable. And in fact the
philosopher is a fool in the sense that he does not understand the simplest
things and does not use them for their intended purpose. The philosopher is
a professional idiot. He has so little understanding of ordinary things that he
invents them all over again in his mind. He begins to think about them starting
from zero, ab ovo (from the “egg”), from some kind of primary basis. And then,
in a roundabout way, from a distance, he arrives at a difficult understanding of
them – not because that is the way they are but because it is possible to think
of them in that way. Instead of grasping the rope with his hands, the philoso-
pher grasps it with thought – and he begins to develop the object, to transform
it from the actual into the possible.
Anyone knows what a rope is because anyone can identify the word “rope”
with the object, and the object with the word that designates it. And only the
philosopher allows himself to doubt this – precisely because the connection
between the object and the word seems far from unconditional to him. The
word (slovo) is always conventional (uslovno). In the object the word reveals its
possibility, its other, as the possibility of its being renamed. The philosopher
looks for unknown alternatives in places where others see only the known fact.
Philosophical inquiry takes the object out of its identity with itself because it
takes it out of its identity with the word that designates it. “What is a rope?” –
with this question the everyday knowledge that a rope is a “rope” and cannot
be anything else collapses.
This is where the realm of philosophical responses begins. The fabulist
presents the most banal in order to make the philosophers’ idle talk look ri-
diculous. But that ridiculous answer – “a rope is a simple cord” – is not a simple
tautology either. The renaming of the rope in and of itself reveals the possibil-
ity of something different, something that is not a rope. If a rope is a simple
cord, what is a complex cord? We shall not look for an answer to this riddle –
the only thing important to note is the constructive peculiarity of philosophi-
cal thinking, which seeks in each object its other, its possibility. As Slavoj Žižek
correctly observes,
3 The fable titled “The Metaphysician,” 1799 (Kapnist’s version became well known). I.I.
Khemnitser, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii (Moscow and Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1963),
pp. 141–2. In the Russian original, “rope” is “verevka,” “cord” is “vervie,” which can be also
translated “ropicity” or “ropeness.”
philosophy begins the moment we do not simply accept what exists as

given (“It is like that!” “The law is the law!”, etc.), but raise the question
of how is what we encounter as actual also possible. What characterizes
philosophy is this “step back” from actuality into possibility.4
Philosophy presents its actual subject as though it were merely possible – and
then studies the conditions of this possibility. But the possibility of a thing being
as it is always presupposes also the possibility that it can be different. Instead
of one reality that is equal to itself the possible contains a number of varia-
tions, multiple versions of what is. Heterodoxy is ingrained in the very nature
of philosophical thinking, which presents the world as different from what it
actually is. To demand verity from philosophy and to check to make sure it
corresponds to the facts would be like having a thirst for dry water. Philosophy
represents the world not as it is but as it might be, as fundamentally distinct
from what is. Philosophy creates a new class of objects about which it is impos-
sible to say anything either true or false.
We have already noted, using the example of the fable of the “Metaphysi-
cian,” how inquiry about a given rope and its definition as a simple cord hints
at the possibility of another – conceivable, ideal, potential object, a “complex
cord” that does not exist in actuality. Similarly, Plato constructed an entire
class of objects, which he called ideas. If a horse is an “individual” animal, what
is a “horse” as a “general animal”? This question is essentially no less absurd
than the question from Khemnitser’s metaphysician – it is absurd for every-
one except a philosopher, whose subject is namely the conceivable as distinct
from the existent. Plato arrives at the conclusion that the idea of a “horse”
includes something that cannot be found in a single existing horse. The very
word “horse,” since it refers to a set of the most diverse horses, opens up the
possibility of a different object from any single horse, and this is nothing other
than the “idea” of a horse.
It is usually assumed that there are many possible situations that corre-
spond to one actual one. For example, a train could arrive at the station at
7:00 or 7:01 or 7:02, and so forth. And of these possibilities, as the clock on
the platform shows, only one is realized. But the opposite relationship exists
as well. One possibility may be realized by various means, in various objects
or individuals. For example, a multitude of objects may be white or, in other
words, the possibility of whiteness is embodied variously in buildings, faces,
snowflakes, automobiles, sheets of paper, and so forth. It is precisely this kind
of inclusive possibility, embodied in a multitude of real objects, that is called a
4 Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative, p. 2.

universal, while we call those of which only one can be realized, thus preclud-
ing the realization of others, alternative, or exclusive, possibilities (the arrival
of the given train at the station at 7:00 precludes the possibility of its arrival at
other times). The alternative possibility presupposes a reduction of realities
as compared to many possibilities while the universal potential presupposes
increasing realities as compared to one possibility.
Thus there are expanding and narrowing passages from the possible to the
real: universals and alternatives. The world process is an alternation between
the two, a reduction of many possibilities to one reality and the burgeoning
of one possibility into many realities. One can speak of a kind of modal fun-
nel. When possibilities pass through it they are either diluted or condensed,
producing more or fewer actualities (individuals) when they exit. Were it not
for this quantitative difference, the distinctions among modalities would be ir-
relevant. If one possibility corresponded to only one actuality, how would their
modal difference be expressed?
One can assume that it is namely the modal differences that to some extent
determine the quantitative parameters of the universe as well – namely, the
fact that there are more individuals in the world than universals, and there are
fewer actual worlds than possible ones. The shifting of modalities involves a
quantitative shift: One possibility (universal) is realized in many ways, and of
a set of possibilities (alternatives) only one is realized. Universals and alterna-
tives establish two major axes of the universe – the world of essences and the
world of events. What is commonly called an event is namely a modal shift
of being, the realization of one possibility to the exclusion of others. What is
called essence is a modal shift of thinking in the other direction, from a set of
existing things to their common hidden property or “inclination.”
And so every philosopher reveals in the actual world a certain class of
possibilities – such objects as belong not to actuality but to the sphere of the
thinkable. The first philosopher known to recorded history, Thales, created a
new o bject that belonged to the class of the thinkables – the world of water. Of
course this metaphysical object is radically different from all existing objects
– it differs both from water, which is physically present in rivers, streams, and
oceans, and from the existing world, which consists of more than just water.
In some sense Thales could be right, since even according to modern scientific
ideas living matter originated in the ocean. But Thales went down in history not
as a scientist but as a thinker who created one of the first philosophical models
of the world as if it consisted entirely of water. The conceivability of such a
world, irrespective of its actual existence, forms the subject of philosophy.
All philosophers after Thales, regardless of whether they tried to explain
the world or to change it, supplemented the class of non-existent, p ossibilistic
objects. These objects may have content, such as Hegel’s “absolute idea” or
Nietzsche’s “superman,” or they may be lacking in content, such as the “com-
plex cord,” but they are all created according to the same model, leading from
the object to its other. “What kind of thing is a rope?” asked the fabulist’s phi-
losopher. “What is man?” asks Nietzsche, and just posing the question means
man is no longer equal to himself. The possibility of another – an overman
(übermensch) – is revealed in him. If a person is “merely” a person, regardless
of how we seen and know him – an average being, “merely a means” – this
means that a higher being, an overman, is possible. Kant’s Ding an Sich, Fichte’s
“transcendental I,” Kierkegaard’s “absolute individual,” Marx’s “classless com-
munist society,” Husserl’s “pure phenomenon,” and Heidegger’s “being” – all
these conceivable notions, “thinkabilities,” are built into being as distinct from
it, as others with respect to the thing, the empirical “I,” the empirical individ-
ual, the existing class society, everything that exists as such. All these conceiv-
able notions belong to the modus of the possible, which also lies at the basis
of such extremely important philosophical categories as “cause,” “objective,”
“meaning,” “problem,” and “freedom.”
We can ask why reality is the way it is and not some other way only because
it could be different. The question of the cause presupposes a way out of the
presence of the given thing into the sphere of those possibilities that preceded
it. If a thing could be only the way it is, we could not ask why it is that way. The
very question “why?” presupposes that the actual differs from the possible.
Included in a similar category of questions – no longer causal but purposive –
are those we ask ourselves at every step, as we become aware of the meaning
of one thing or another or the purpose of our own existence. The meaning
of one fact or another is determined by a comparison with a situation that is
exactly the same but without this fact. The purpose of being is determined by
the possibility of not being. Heidegger places at the basis of his metaphysic the
question: “Why being and not nothingness?” But this question presupposes
that being was preceded by the possibility of not being. If a thing did not in-
clude the possibility of its own non-existence, its existence would be devoid of
meaning. A given thing has its special meaning because it might be different
or it might not be at all. My marriage has meaning only because I could have
chosen not to marry at all or I could have married a different woman – it is the
totality of these possibilities that defines the meaning of my marriage. This is
why it is so difficult to solve the problem of the meaning of our own life – as
a whole, it extends beyond the limits of our possibilities. We are not given the
opportunity to live a different life. We are not given the opportunity to choose
whether to be born or not. But if we consider life from the perspective of its
end, that is, possible suicide, it acquires meaning – or meaningful absence of
it. The category of meaning is formed in the divergence of the actual from the
possible.
This pertains also to entire historical events. Although they belong to the
past, their meaning is determined by their “missed” possibility of being dif-
ferent, this openness before the future, which subsequently is established by
the historian. Already Alexander Pushkin noted: “Do not say: It could not have
been otherwise. If that were true, the historian would be an astronomer and the
events of the life of humankind would have been foretold on the calendars, like
solar eclipses. But providence is not algebra.”5 Outside the realm of possibili-
ties the event is deprived of meaning. The meaning of the Battle of Marathon
is determined by the fact that it might have been won not by the Greeks, as was
really the case, but by the Persians, and then the entire course of history could
have turned out different. The free, humanistic world of the ancient Greeks
would have been crowded out by the magic and theocratic culture of the Per-
sians. Referring to this event, Max Weber, a founder of modern sociology, notes:
Without an appraisal of those “possibilities” and of the irreplaceable cul-

tural values which, as it appears to our retro- spective study, “depend” on
that decision, a statement regarding its “significance” would be impos-
sible … When modern historians, as soon as they are required by some in-
quiry to define the “significance” of a concrete event by explicit reflection
on and exposition of the developmental “possibilities,” ask, as is usual, to
be forgiven their use of this apparently anti-deterministic category, their
request is without logical justification. …“History knows no possibilities.”
To this we must answer: that process [Geschehen] which, conceived as
subject to deterministic axioms, becomes an “objective thing,” knows
nothing of “possibilities” because it “knows” nothing of concepts. “His-
tory,” however, does recognize possibilities, assuming that it seeks to be a
science. In every line of every historical work, indeed in every selection
of archival and source materials for publication, there are, or more cor-
rectly, must be, “judgments of possibility,” if the publication is to have
value for knowledge.6
In other words, even the most dispassionate historian, if he wants to ex-

plain the significance of one fact or another, must approach it from a modal
5 “On the Second Volume of N.A. Polevoy’s History of the Russian People.” A.S. Pushkin, Collected
Works in 10 Vols (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976), vol. 6, p. 284.
6 Max Weber, On The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. and ed. Edward A. Shils and
Henry A. Finch (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1949), pp. 172–3.
v iewpoint and consider not only the historical givens but also the alternative
possibilities and pose the question “What if …?” The real acquires meaning
only in its divergence from the possible. Although it is generally accepted to say
that history has no subjunctive mood, only in the subjunctive mood does it acquire
any kind of meaning.
The reality studied in the humanities is shot through with meaning-forming
possibilities that fan out from each concrete fact. In M. Bakhtin’s words, “It
is hardly possible to speak about necessity in the human sciences. Here it is
scientifically possible to disclose only possibilities and the realization of one of
them.”7 The most important thing here is namely the difference between the
possibility and its realization; that is, the movement beyond the limits of the
real, through which reality itself acquires meaning.
In the natural sciences as well, particularly physics and biology, the search
for laws is more and more frequently conducted by comparing real processes
and their possible alternatives. Until recently scientists had only one reality at
their disposal: one expanding universe, one earthly form of life – the study of
which did not make it possible to arrive at generalizations about the nature of
substance or the nature of life precisely because they were accessible to ob-
servation only singly, while generalization requires a comparison of different
forms of the same phenomenon. Only after computer simulations of natural
processes had been developed did it become possible to compare alternative
universes and alternative forms of life. In the words of Christopher Langton,
the founder of artificial life theory, as a result of computer simulations:
you end up with a much larger set of possibilities. You can then probe
the set not just of existing chemical compounds but of possible chemi-
cal compounds. And it’s only really within that ground of the possible
chemical compounds that you’re going to see any regularity. The regular-
ity is there but you can’t see it in the very small set of things that nature
initially provided you with.8
7 M.M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1986), p. 139.
8 Quoted from book by John Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the
Twilight of the Scientific Age (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), p. 199. Horgan adds: “With
computers, biologists can explore the role of chance by simulating the beginning of life on
earth, altering the conditions and observing the consequences” (ibid.). More broadly, by us-
ing computers scientists are able to construct possible universes and forms of life and, by
comparing them with real ones, to formulate general laws of physics and biology and sepa-
rate them from more or less random properties of the universe and earthly life we know.
Overall, this possibilistic construction of “artificial life” in biology resonates

with Weber’s construction of “artificial,” that is imaginative or fictional history
undertaken with the purpose of studying the meaning of “real history” by “the
introduction of ‘possibilities’ into the ‘causal enquiry’” and “the relegation of
the determination of the ‘possible’ course of events to the ‘imagination’.”9
In this divergence between possibility and its realization the epistomologi-
cally important category of the question is also formed. What we ask about is
already a problematical entity that includes a number of alternatives. “Is that
an Englishman or a Frenchman? How old is he? Does he speak Spanish?” Even
these elementary questions from a foreign language textbook presuppose a di-
versity of possibilities to which the act of questioning as such is addressed. This
person might be an Englishman or a Frenchman. He might be thirty or forty
years old. He might speak or not speak Spanish. Any question reveals behind
the present phenomenon a number of ramified possibilities. But the answer
most frequently presupposes that only one of them is reality. And since any
dialogue consists of questions and answers, it is as if meaning pulsates modally
in this process, moving from the actual modus to the possible modus and back.
At the point of departure from reality into the sphere of the possible, our
idea begins to branch out and multiply so that one idea arrives in the form
of several alternative thoughts simultaneously. The idea of holy Rus comes
coupled with the idea of the damned and criminal Russia. The idea of a round
table comes coupled with the idea of a square table, and the idea of sin with
the idea of repentance. This explains how the thinker is constantly being cast
into the realm of opposing ideas, so that Dostoevsky’s idea moves simultane-
ously in the direction of the most audacious blasphemy and in the direction
of the most ecstatic faith; Marx’s thought in the direction of a deterministic
explanation for all historical processes and in the direction of revolutionary
nudging of them; Herzen’s thought in the directions of blessing and damning
the peasant commune.
What then does thinking itself do in the midst of these proliferating
thoughts; what is it called to do? Thinking is the movement toward the pos-
sibilities hidden within reality, so that the real world itself in light of think-
ing becomes only one of the possible worlds about which we gain the right to
inquire philosophically, solely because it could be different. The philosophical
question is addressed to the world on behalf of its multiple “alter-potencies”
(possibilities of something other). Thinking encompasses several divergent
ideas simultaneously because possibility that exists only in the singular is in-
distinguishable from actuality. The possibility of one thing presupposes the
9 Weber, On The Methodology of the Social Sciences, pp. 172–3.

possibility of another, and thinking multiples its conceptual projections to the

same degree that it is possibilistic.
As stated above, according to Leibniz, even the Adam we know from the
Bible was not necessary. God created him freely, which means that along with
this Adam other Adams were possible. Adam “was chosen from among an in-
finity of possible Adams.”10 Philosophy reveals this freedom at the basis of all
things, since any thing appears in philosophy precisely as the possibility of it-
self, which means also the possibility of an other, not-itself. The world is filled
with meaning and open to the joy of thinking, precisely because reality is em-
braced from all sides by an ocean of possibilities. If philosophy addresses the
essence of things, it is precisely because essence, according to Leibniz, can-
not be reduced to existence but includes the realm of the possible. “Essence is
fundamentally nothing but the possibility of the thing under consideration.”11
The essence of an object is not the abstractly general that it shares with other
similar objects but the totality of its own possibilities – those that preceded it
and those that ensue from it. The philosophical question is addressed to the
freedom contained in the object as its possibility of being other. A clarification
has to be introduced into the old debate between the essentialists and the ex-
istentialists: Philosophy considers not essence and not existence in itself but
precisely the gaps between them that are formed in the field of possibilities.
The essence of one thing or another is distinguished from its existence by the
fact that it includes unrealized and even unrealizable possibilities, which form
the precondition for philosophy as a discipline.
To philosophize about Adam means:
(1) based on the existence of the given Adam (existence),
(2) to establish the possibility of other Adams (possibilization);
(3) to study the entire range of “Adamness,” that is the features and laws in-
herent in Adam in general as possible and not just existing (universal,
essence);
(4) to determine the meaning of the existence of the given Adam based on
his difference from possible Adams; that is, to correlate existence and es-
sence again but now in the categories of meaning and difference and not
law and community (individuation, phenomenology);
(5) to define “Adamism” or “Adamosophy” as a direction of thought that re-
veals the conceivable essence of Adam in the multitude of other phe-
nomena such as the art of ancient Greece, Nietzsche’s first superman
10 G.W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, trans. and ed. P. Remnant and
J. Bennet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 335.
11 Ibid., p. 293.
(super-Adam), Acmeism-Adamism in Russian poetry of the Silver Age,

the project of reconstructing a universal, “Adamic” language, and so forth
(wisdom, philo-sophy as a search for Sophia).
In other words, to philosophize means continuously to expand the sphere of the
possible-thinkable as distinct from the existing, and, simultaneously to investigate
the meaning of the existing as distinct from the possible-thinkable. Meanwhile
philosophical thinking makes several modal shifts: from the present-existing,
the existential, to the alternative-possible, and then to the universal-essential,
unique-phenomenal, and finally to the Sophian-potential (possibilistic).
Aristotle observed that the source of philosophy is surprise. “For it is owing
to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.”12
This is one of the first and most profound revelations about the nature of phi-
losophy, which not only itself comes from surprise (on the part of the think-
er) but also is intended to surprise (the interlocutors or readers). But what is
philosophy surprised at and how does it surprise us? In our daily life we are
frequently surprised by various occurrences and facts we did not know about
previously, but that does not make us philosophers. We do not turn into philos-
ophers the minute we are surprised by some rare, unknown fact (in the news-
paper, in the Guinness Book of Records, and so forth), but at the moment when
a known fact surprises us because it is possible. Informational surprise comes
from the transition from innocence to knowledge, and philosophical surprise – by
the transition from knowledge to innocence, when the already known ceases to
be understood. We are surprised when we learn about the existence in Tibet of
a group marriage whereby one woman has several husbands who are brothers.
We are surprised when we learn that a woman we know has married someone
inappropriate for her. These are forms of informational and everyday surprise
brought about by new facts, unusual aspects of a foreign culture, or unexpect-
edness of someone’s actions.
But when we are surprised by the very possibility of marriage, by the fact
that two different people can spend their lives together – that is philosophical
surprise, from which the philosophy of marriage is generated. When we are
surprised by the fact that a thing is possible as a thing, something solid, final-
ized, impenetrable, and distinct from all other things in the world – the phi-
losophy of the thing is born. When we are surprised by the way our minds can
acquire new knowledge about the world, produce, in Kant’s words, “synthetic
judgment a priori,” the philosophy of cognition is born. In the words of Merab
Mamardashvili, “In general the question ‘How is that possible?’ is a method
12 Aristotle, Metaphysics, book 1, Ch. 2, 982 b. The Basic Works of Aristotle, p. 692.
and simultaneously a means of existence of living thought.”13 Philosophical

surprise, as distinct from everyday, profane surprise, is addressed not to the fact
itself but to the possibility of the fact, to the correlation between the actual and
its possibility. The mind is amazed when it finds a break in the chain of neces-
sary connections, causes, and effects. How is it possible for that cause to have
that effect, or for that effect to have that cause? Possibility is the point of that
break that puts us into a state of amazement.
Moreover the question “How is that possible?” is far from being the same
as “What is the cause of that?” The category of causality operates in the realm
of the existing and explains why a given object is the way it is; that is, it lies at
the basis of the positive sciences. Only the first question is actually philosophi-
cal: not why an object is but how it is possible. Hence Kant’s famous question:
“How is nature possible?” and Georg Simmel’s question, formulated according
to the same model: “How is society possible?” Such questions extend beyond
the realm of natural and social sciences, forming a foundation of philosophy of
nature and society, for it is precisely philosophy that asks about the possibility
of what already is and what is already known from experience.
Further consideration of philosophical aspects of the possible leads us to
the formation of another concept – the “possibilistic.” How is the “possibilis-
tic” different from the “possible” and why do we need this word, with its suf-
fixal protuberance “istic”? The “possible” applies to concrete events, to what
can happen – the possible meeting, the possible change, the possible event.
One can single out a class of possible objects and distinguish it from the class
of existing objects. For example, man’s flight to Mars, tomorrow’s snowfall, my
friend’s marriage, the creation of the single field theory in physics, the annexa-
tion of Siberia by China – all these belong to the class of possible events (with
differing degrees of probability). They can be studied by various methods, from
scientific predictions and fantasy literature to reading tea leaves, but they have
nothing to do with philosophy.
The “possibilistic” is not a possible object but an approach to the object
from the standpoint of its possibilities. The “possibilistic approach,” “possi-
bilistic vision,” “possibilistic interpretation,” “possibilistic description” – in all
these examples the word “possibilistic” designates not the level of the objects
(“possible”) but the modality of their interpretation and description. Philoso-
phy is a possibilistic approach to everything that exists – to the universe and
to language, to art and to life, to the individual and to society. Philosophy is
distinguished from cosmology and linguistics, from biology and history, from
13 Merab Mamardashvili, Kak ia ponimaiu filosofiiu (How I Understand Philosophy) (Mos-

cow: Progress, 1990), p. 17.
psychology and sociology, by the fact that it studies not the given but the con-
ceivable in the corresponding object. For example, the philosophy of language
(linguosophy) is distinguished from linguistics by the fact that it studies not
existing languages (their origin, vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and so forth)
but the conceivability of language in general, including everything that might
become language and everything that language may become. In a certain
sense, silence, a walk in the park, a cloud, stars, a tree, a city – all these contain
within themselves the possibility of language even though they are not facts of
language. Therefore the philosophy of language is nothing other than linguis-
tics in the modality of the possible, including also the set of non-linguistic phe-
nomena such as the linguistics of silence, the linguistics of stars, the linguistics
of furniture and automobiles – and not some specific one of these linguistic-s,
but the methodology of the possibilistic approach to language in general.
The philosophy of antiquity, as distinct from archeology, studies not actual
but conceivable antiquity, the phenomena that exist in the modus of antiquity,
such as, for example, mausoleums, or ruins, or myths, or tribal consciousness,
or the cult of leaders in modern history. The philosophy of antiquity is the
achaeosophy of the ancient, irrespective of the specific time of its existence,
addressed to the “antiquistic” (drevnostnoe); that is, created in the modus of
the ancient as a form of it, a conventional possibility and not historical reality.
The “form” in this case designates the preservation (symmetry) of the object
during its transition into a different modality. The antiquistic is born dead and
manifests itself in the form of the archeological subject, a relict or a relic. The
possibility of ancient formations remains in modern civilization as well, and,
of course, it is not appropriate for archeological science to study the antiquis-
tic as it manifests itself in Picasso’s painting, in Thomas Mann’s novels, or in
national-socialist ideology. This is the realm of achaeosophy, that is, the phi-
losophy of antiquity.
Philosophy does not limit itself to any especially philosophical subjects. It
studies the same subjects as other sciences, but in the modus of the possible,
or, using a traditional distinction, not as a “logy,” knowledge, but as a “sophy,”
wisdom. The realm of fact belongs to knowledge; the realm of potential to wis-
dom. The scholar knows; the sage is able to know. He knows that he knows
nothing, and at the same time he does not know how much he knows. His
knowledge is both less and more than actual knowledge, because it extends
into the broader but less manifest realm of the potential. Therefore alongside
every scholarly discipline one can designate a philosophical realm. Alongside
archeology archaeosophy, alongside linguistics linguosophy, alongside psy-
chology psychosophy, alongside biology biosophy. For example, the realm of
biosophy would include the currently discussed question of whether exact
computer simulations of life processes are living. The “sophical” cycle consid-
ers the set of alternatives and potentials included in the objects of the “logical”
cycle – the antiquistic beyond the antique, the linguistic beyond the realm of
language, life beyond the realm of the living being. Along with the knowledge
of language there is the “wisdom of language.” Wisdom is not actual knowledge
but the potentiality of the mind, unfettered by any axioms of science or dog-
mas of faith. Wisdom is to knowledge as potential is to actual. Philosophy in
itself is not even wisdom but only love for wisdom; that is, the potential of the
potential. The philosopher wants to be able to know.
Chapter 5
The Area of the Thinkable: the Value of

Thinking in Itself
Even in our daily speech we often use “thinkable” as a synonym for “possible,”
while “unthinkable” is often used as synonymous to “impossible.” Thus, the
very thinkability of an object already contains a certain condition of the pos-
sibility of its existence, since according to Leibniz’s definition, “Possible is that
which does not contain a contradictory term, that is A non-A. Possible is what
is not: Y non-Y.”1 The principal law of thought precisely requires that such con-
tradiction be avoided.
In the actual (indicative) mode, the water world of Thales and the fire world
of Heraclitus extinguish or burn each other, being mutually incompatible.
In the subjunctive mode, they peacefully coexist as two equal possibilities
of thought. If there exists a world consisting only of water, it is logically possi-
ble that there can exist another world consisting only of fire. The possibility of
the first not only does not exclude, but directly presupposes the possibility of
the other. It is not by chance that ancient philosophical systems took the form
of general propositions: the world is something, comes out of something, is
based on something (water, fire, air, number, idea, will, matter, movement, en-
ergy, mind, etc.). The world is the main category of philosophical thought.2
Water and fire, idea and will are components of the world, and as such are
analyzed by physics or chemistry, biology, or psychology. On the other hand,
philosophy is approaching the world as a whole and thus cannot apply the
methods of specific sciences. When philosophy thinks about water or fire, it
sees them as primeval essences of the world. For philosophy the world repre-
sents a primary concept, not unlike an elementary particle for physics, a state
organization for politics, or a work of art for aesthetics. Unlike other sciences,
which analyze various phenomena within the limits of a single world, phi-
losophy requires a broader terrain for its analysis: it needs the possibility to
compare different worlds. “Thinking with worlds,” specific for philosophy, is
1 Brandon Look (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Leibniz (London: Continuum, 2011), p. 122,
https://books.google.com/books?id=PTmmjB3nDyoC&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq.
2 “The world, the world, asses! this is the problem of philosophy, the world and nothing else!” is
a note of Schopenhauer from one of his manuscripts. Quoted in W. Schirmacher, “Schopen-
hauers Wirkung: Ein Philosoph wird neu gelesen,” Prisma 2 (1989), 25.

a ttainable only in the mode of the possible, for the mode of the actual consists
of the single world and is sufficient only for special sciences.
The field for the comparative examination of different worlds can be con-
ditionally termed the universum. The actual world in which we live is only one
of the worlds of the universum. The constituents of our world, such as fire and
water, idea and will, differ among themselves physically or psychologically, but
belong to a single mode and are described in terms of the actual. In relation
to the actual world, all the other worlds exhibit different grades of possibility,
necessity, and actuality, and the difference among them is greater than among
the substances of the actual world. A possible fire world differs more from a
possible water world than water and fire, two substances within our world, dif-
fer from each other, because in those possible worlds water and fire are not just
elements, but principles on which those worlds are entirely based: categories
of the thinkable.
The theory of multiple worlds has recently been revitalized in American
philosophy, in David Lewis’s conception of the so-called modal realism. It pos-
tulates separate worlds characterized, for example, by flying bears, blue swans,
Italy as an Orthodox country, and Russia as a Catholic one. A separate world is
projected for each seed not germinated in our world, and each blade of grass
which in our world withered but still grows somewhere else. According to this
theory, billions of new worlds are created each moment, worlds in which all
that is possible in our universe becomes actual.
There are so many other worlds, in fact, that absolutely every way that a
world could possibly be is a way that some world is. …The difference be-
tween this and other worlds is not a categorical difference. Nor does this
world differ from others in its manner of existing.3
It may seem that modal realism creates the conditions necessary for modal
thinking about the worlds, whereas, in fact, the contrary is true: modal real-
ism annihilates those conditions. Moreover, it makes the very concept of mode
meaningless, as it regards both the possible and the necessary as no more than
quantitative transformations of the actual existence. The system of modal
3 David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, p. 2. Lewis’s modal metaphysics resonates with the
so-called “many-worlds interpretation” offered by the physicist Hugh Everett in 1957, an in-
terpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of all possible alternate
histories and futures as real, each representing an actual “world” (or “universe”). There is an
infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our uni-
verse but did not has occurred in some other universe. Discussing Everett’s quantum theory
is beyond the philosophical scope of this book.
The Area of the Thinkable: the Value of Thinking in Itself 61
r ealism translates the qualitative difference of modalities, such as “this,” “cer-

tain,” or “each,” into the language of quantifiers; thus it becomes no more than
a quantitative analysis (calculus) of the worlds in which “possible” things exist
or do not exist. Lewis states: “So modality turns into quantification: possibly
there are blue swans iff, for some world W, at W there are blue swans.”4 The
possible in one world becomes the actual in another world, and all the worlds
consist only of actual events, because everything that we call “possible” is ac-
tual in the worlds where it exists. In Lewis’s realism the possible is understood
as something which exists in some worlds, whereas the necessary, according to
the same logic of quantifiers, is something which exists in all worlds. “As pos-
sibility amounts to existential quantification over the worlds, with restricting
modifiers inside the quantifiers, so necessity amounts to universal quantifica-
tion. …What is impossible is the case at no worlds; what is contingent is the
case at some but not at others.”5
David Lewis’s “modal realism” should be more exactly termed “anti-modal”
for precisely its realistic quality; that is, his concept of all the worlds as actually
existing or non-existing erases the qualitative difference among the actual, the
possible, and the necessary, among that which “is,” “can be,” and “cannot not to
be.” According to Lewis all which is only possible in our world forms the actual-
ity of some other worlds. This approach deprives the category of mode of the
modal sense which is not reducible to the analysis of actually existing worlds.
Possible worlds differ not by facts but by primary essences, universals; that
is, by the properties of a given world as a whole. For example, we may call pos-
sible a world where the primary essence is water, or fire, or pure spirit, or will.
Such a world is formed by a collection of compatible events which would be in-
compatible in other worlds. Then, evidently, if we accept these premises, then
the area of these thinkable worlds differing from one another only by their
principles, their primary essences, will be the area of philosophical thinking.
In the same vein, the category “world” is devalued if we identify the “mean-
ing formation” with “world formation” and postulate a separate world for each
individual, “atomic” fact and its meaning. The meaning of existence of N. as a
man, a philosopher, and a Frenchman consists in that he is not a woman, not
a medical doctor, and not an Indian. Should we suppose that in some other
worlds he exists as a woman, a doctor, or an Indian? How then would his iden-
tity be conserved? The meaning of his existence as a philosopher is defined by
the possibility for him to be a non-philosopher – but it does not mean that in
some other worlds he actually exists as a non-philosopher. The meaning here
4 Ibid., p. 5.
5 Ibid., p. 7.
is given in a possibilistic sense that does not require an actualization in some

other worlds. Every language works with certain meanings, but only the lan-
guage of philosophy works with the limits of the possible, with the broadest
scope of thinkability as a condition for postulating the possibility of other worlds.
The specific subject of philosophy in contrast with other sciences is, in
my view, not that which is thought or what actually exists but that which is
thinkable. In order to prevent possible misinterpretations of this definition we
should, above all, distinguish the philosophy of thinking about the thinkable
from Kant’s epistemologism and Hegel’s panlogism. What is meant by this for-
mulation is different from epistemology, or thinking about thinking itself, an
attempt to clarify the mechanisms of thinking and to find the criteria of its ob-
jective truthfulness. Analysis of thinking is turned on itself as pure reflection,
a self-referential analysis of thinking abilities and processes. Thinking about
the thinkable is not locked in this closed circle of hermeneutic self-interpreta-
tion; on the contrary, it is open to everything which lies beyond the limits of
the thinking as such.6 Philosophical thinking places the smallest units of the
observable (a concrete object, a fact, an event) in the context of the most com-
prehensive units of the thinkable (worlds, the universe, universum). Evidently,
the thinkable is not the thinking itself but that which the thinking finds in
everything beyond its own limits, all of which is connected to the thinking as
its immediate or remote possibility.
On the other hand, the formulation “thinking about the thinkable” allows
us to escape the opposite danger, panlogism, which reduces history to progres-
sive acts of thinking, to the movement of the self-developing concept. From a
seemingly innocent statement, that reality is the object of thinking, it is easy
to conclude that thinking is an active subject of reality and a source of its de-
velopment. This prompted the well-known Alexander Herzen’s definition of
Hegelian dialectics as “algebra of revolution.” If the reality itself develops ac-
cording to the dialectics of thought, then the power of thought can change
the reality. Hegelian panlogism already presupposes Marx’s idea of philosophy
changing the world.
6 Precisely this distinguishes philosophical “thinking about the thinkable,” which has a value
in itself among human intellectual capacities, from the Aristotelian divine thinking about
self: “And thought thinks on itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought; for it
becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with and thinking its objects, so that
thought and object of thought are the same” (Metaphysics, 1072b, The Basic Works…, p. 880).
Here Aristotle is speaking about the divine mind, which contains in itself the object of its
thought, “possesses” it, whereas the human mind has the object of its thought outside itself
and “strives” towards it.
Therefore, the object of philosophy is neither the thinking itself (epistemol-

ogism, as developed by Kant), nor reality as the object of thinking (panlogism,
as developed by Hegel), but the thinkable.
It is fitting that the very concept of “thinkable” (myslimoe) contains a cer-
tain ambiguity (dvusmyslennost’). The thinkable is at the same time that about
which we think and that what we think, a certain unity of the object and the
content of thought, of a “subject” and those numerous “predicates” that can
be attached to it. If a “flower” is an object of reality, all that can be thought
about it is its predicate. The concept of the “thinkable” encompasses this very
transition from the actual to the possible. Thinking about the flower we form a
certain philosophical thinkability for which we chose a name – “flowerness” –
just as for “good” there exists a philosophical thinkability “goodness” and for
“humane” “humaneness.” The suffix “-ness” is a special one which forms philo-
sophical categories and has the inference of potentiality. “Humanness” is the
ability to be a human; it refers to human beings as regards their potentiality.
Philosophy attaches to any of its objects the suffix “-ness,” thus transferring
them from the category of the actual to that of the thinkable: objectness, mate-
rialness, bookness, interestingness, oneness, allness, and so on.
The thinkable is the possibility of thought, as it is clearly shown by the mean-
ing of the suffix “-able,” which, as such, indicates ableness, ability. The think-
able is neither the reality of the thinking itself nor the reality outside thinking.
The thinkable is that which is contained in the thought as its object and at the
same time as a possible result of thinking about this object.
As we see, philosophy differs from logic, which could be understood out-
side the limits of philosophy as a science dealing with the laws of thought. For
logic, thinking is something actual and necessary; this is why logic clearly dis-
tinguishes true and false statements about an object and establishes necessary
rules of thinking. In this sense, logic is similar to physics or biology, the only
difference being that physics is a science dealing with the laws of inanimate
nature, biology with the laws of animate nature, and logic with the laws of
thinking. Unlike other types of thinking which deal with the actual and the
necessary, philosophical thought investigates the area of the possible.
This area of the thinkable should in no way be reduced to that what Teilhard
de Chardin and Vernadsky termed the noosphere; this concept is usually ap-
plied to the sphere of thinking, to the mind as a planetary phenomenon, the
mind which realizes itself in a form of material, energetic, cultural, industrial,
and technical activity, and as such has become a fast-growing part of both the
geosphere and the biosphere. On the other hand, the sphere of the possible
is much greater and has more dimensions than the noosphere; it consists of
a multitude of spheres with intersections in each point of their space: every

thinkability opens the horizon for new thinkabilities.
The ultimate goal of thinking, which follows from thinking itself but is not
reducible to it, consists in broadening the frontiers of the thinkable. We can
find a similar and very precise formulation in the writings of the philosopher
Merab Mamardashvili: “Consciousness, as well as thought, can be defined as
the possibility of a larger consciousness.”7 Consciousness cannot be defined in
terms of something outside it, nor can it be equated with itself. Consciousness
is, precisely, the possibility of a larger consciousness; that is, it reveals itself in
the possibility of consciousness, in the largest possibility of itself.
This formulation, “thinking about the thinkable,” does not contain any tau-
tology or circularity; on the contrary, it establishes the progressive movement
of the thought in its own sphere. This very movement of thought throughout
the depth and width of the thinkable is presupposed by the very term “philoso-
phy,” as with its root meanings “love of wisdom” and “love of thinking.” Philoso-
phy, as it was understood already by Socrates and Plato, is not the possession
of ready wisdom, but a possibility of wisdom in a non-wise being. Philosophy
is not understanding of something through thought; it is love directed towards
the thought itself and, as such, an infinite potentiation of new possibilities of
thought. Love includes a desire for the beloved to achieve his or her fullest po-
tential. Philosophy is the only area of thought which is not a means of explain-
ing or investigating something, but a goal and a value in itself.
To think philosophically means to love thinking itself, the infinite possibility
of thought and thinkability. Philosophy is neither the science of thinking nor
the practice of its usage; both these extremes, epistemological and utilitarian,
are foreign to the concept of “philia” – love. Love is not about studying or ex-
ploiting the object of love; in the same vein, philosophy is neither the study
of thinking (unlike epistemology, logic, and psychology), nor its utilization
(unlike ideology, politics, and technology); it is the working of thinking itself
towards the broadening of its own content and its potential.
Most people readily agree with the statement of Pascal: “Man is obviously
made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty
is to think as he ought.”8 It is, for some reason, much more difficult to accept
the conclusion that follows from this statement: if the goal of man is thinking,
7 M. Mamardashvili, Kak ia ponimayu filosofiiu, p. 63.

8 Pascal, “Pensées” (“Thoughts”), 146, https://books.google.com/books?id=4TELAAAAIAAJ&p
g=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq. The same favorite idea of Pascal is repeated in 346 (“Thought con-
stitues the greatness of man”), 348, 365.
then the goal of thinking is thinking itself. However, this conclusion is less
metaphysical than that of Pascal, who calls thinking not only the highest goal
of thinking, but also of human beings in general.
The idea that man is created for thinking would seem more acceptable if
thinking itself served some higher goals, such as the well-being and the devel-
opment of humankind. However, Pascal postulates thinking as the ultimate
goal. In general, the arguments closing the teleological circle arouse instinctive
mental resistance; it seems that they contain a dead end, whereas in fact there
appears in them a self-referential infinity.
Such a postulate of “thinking for thinking” may still seem strange if we fail
to draw a parallel with another sphere whose self-contained value is already
proven and generally accepted. I am referring to nature: for a long time it was
considered a source of resources and material for the development of human
civilization, a means for increasing human power and wealth. This attitude
resulted in such severe damage to the environment that the very existence of
humanity as a part of nature now comes under threat. Thus by trial and error
man gradually comes to understanding that it is necessary to protect nature, as
an absolute value, from his intervention.
But man is also a thinking being, and the instrumental usage of mind is
fraught with the same peril as the instrumental usage of nature. Thinking used
as an instrument for obtaining power and wealth becomes ideology, and its
destructive consequences in the twentieth century are incalculable. Ecology
of thinking is a new discipline of the evolved mind which cannot limit itself to
the applied questions of life’s betterment, but becomes an independent entity
whose goal is contained in itself.
It does not mean, of course, that we should altogether stop using our mind
instrumentally. Even in the epoch of ecological awareness, the industrial us-
age of nature is not totally curtailed but rather complemented by protective
environmental measures. Similarly, philosophy provides the ecological protec-
tion for thinking, which is constantly employed in the service of the sciences
and ideologies. Sciences tie thinking to the empirically verifiable facts of real-
ity, whereas ideologies connect it to social needs and political ambitions. Only
philosophy takes thinking back into the sphere of thinking as such, the sphere
where it displays and develops its own possibilities. In pre-Kantian times, phi-
losophy helped developing sciences and in post-Kantian times, inspired the
birth and spread of ideologies. Nowadays, however, its goal is to start playing a
new role defending thinking from both sciences and ideologies, to develop strate-
gies of thinking whose value may be recognized in and of itself.
Perhaps this growing self-justification of each kind of being represents a
general tendency of human development. Initially, this teleological self-worth
was thought to be a prerogative of nobody but the human being alone, who,
according to Kant, should be treated always as a goal and never as a means.
Later, the same quality of self-worth was also accorded to nature. Finally, this
self-worth, self-directedness, independence from instrumental goals will be
accorded also to the world of thinking.
Chapter 6
Theory, Utopia, and Hypothesis
If we consider the thinkability to be a goal in itself, then that which is now

somewhat condescendingly termed “hypothesis” will be established not as a
preliminary draft but as a mature and self-contained kind of thinking, in which
the thought observes its own possibilities.
It can be said that the relation between theory and hypothesis in philosophy
is opposite to that which we see in science. Science first postulates hypoth-
eses and then, having gathered facts to substantiate them, converts them into
theories; that is, passes from the subjunctive mode into the indicative. On the
other hand, philosophy has postulated theories over centuries, considering
them truthful explanations of facts and an authoritative basis of actions. Only
slowly did there emerge in philosophy an understanding of the hypothetical
nature of all its statements. As Nietzsche said, “where you are able to guess,
you hate to calculate.”1 The right to hypothesize is the achievement of a mature
philosophical mind, just as the right to calculate is the achievement of a ma-
ture scientific mind.
Precisely the rapid advancement of the hard sciences prompted philosophy
to desist from the naive cognitive approach to reality and occupy itself with its
own constructive critical ability, realized in the mode of necessity. In this sec-
ond epoch, philosophical discourse, having distanced itself from the objective
and cognitive, became ideological, trying to direct thinking towards the road of
utopia, that is, omnipotent ruling over all which exists. The collapse of modern
utopias, of states dedicated to totalitarian ideologies, convinces philosophy to
abstain also from the commanding–conjuring approach to reality and, instead,
venture into the area where thinking finds nothing but itself, its own possibili-
ties. Philosophy becomes an art of hypothesis, an art that neither reflects nor
transforms objects, but passes between the Scylla and Charybdis of scientific
and ideological approaches.
Each of these three types of discourse – theoretical (scientific), utopian (ide-
ological), and hypothetical (philosophical) – has its own mental intention, lin-
guistic intonation, and psychological rules of the game. Theoretical discourse
is extremely cautious in its suppositions and conclusions. It tries to correspond
to objective reality and not to attribute to things that they do not intrinsically
1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, chapter “Why I write such excellent books,” 3, https://books.
google.com/books?id=tc_mCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT39&lpg=PT39&dq.

possess. It tries to mimic its object, showing the presence of the theorist him-
self as little as possible. This is minimalist discourse, preoccupied by the com-
plete transparency and inconspicuousness of its own signs and their solubility
in the world of signifieds.
On the contrary, utopian discourse counterposes itself to the object as insuf-
ficient or absent, one which must be recreated or transformed. For Nietzsche
and his disciples, among whom we can count almost all Western philosophers
of the 20th century, signifiers swallow the world of the signifieds, reducing
them to the secondary projection of signs, to the shadows on the wall of the
Platonic cave. Utopian discourse impresses us by the boldness of its supposi-
tions and conclusions, striving to change the face of the world or restore an
ideal face that it has lost. The author of the utopian discourse imagines himself
a demiurge of a newly created universe.
Hypothetical discourse is marked by the irregularity and discontinuity of
its logical field. Its input is strikingly different from its output. Hypothetical dis-
course offers extremely bold suppositions that posit a new, never-before-seen
foundation of the world. At the same time, it is surprisingly soft and tame in
its conclusions pertaining to the practical application of mental constructs. A
philosophical hypothesis is a mental impulse that remains in the sphere of
thought itself and doesn’t lead to any activity outside the limits of the mental
domain. Thought reaches the state of ecstasy and catharsis – here we can le-
gitimately use this term from Aristotle’s Poetics. Thought is purified from two
opposite affects: a desire to coincide with reality (affect of compassion) and a
desire to overpower the reality (affect of anger or fear).
In the process of hypothesizing, thought turns to the area of the thinkable
and eliminates the theoretical purpose of understanding the actual world, as
well as of the utopian purpose of pursuing a program of action. In this way,
thought reaches extreme tightness and elasticity; it is not weakened by going
outside its limits but pushes off and starts from itself. The elasticity in this case
is not only a spatial metaphor – at least, it is no more a metaphor than long-
accepted philosophical terms such as “development,” “supposition,” “contrapo-
sition,” “sublation,” which have long taken roots in spatial imagery. Elasticity
is the ability of thought to expand from its starting point, while conserving its
primary form. It is not a self-development through antitheses and syntheses,
but rather the existence of thought in the form of a paradox that simultane-
ously pushes away from and holds onto its own supposition. The metaphor
of a compressed spring fits better here than that of a stretching rubber band
– extensive, outwardly directed development. In a hypothesis, thought con-
stantly returns to itself, for it is acting, “springing” in the space of the thinkable.
The boldness of suppositions in conjunction with the tameness of the conclusions
Theory, Utopia, and Hypothesis 69
makes this type of thinking the most paradoxical and explosive in comparison
with theoretical and utopian types of thinking, which try to free themselves from
internal inconsistencies in order to reach the most effective interaction with
reality.
Elasticity, as a specific state of a hypothetical thought, protects a hypothesis
from converting itself into a simple chaotic collection of clumsy suppositions.
The possibilistic mode of thinking presupposes the greatest tension of thought
and not its apathetic lethargy. Hypothesis is not the first possible opinion; it in-
cludes both the possible and the necessary, but is not reduced to them. In order
to demonstrate a pure possibility, a hypothesis needs a contrasting background
consisting of indisputable facts and undeniable imperatives. Ortega y Gasset
wittily remarks that modern artists, with rare exceptions, don’t replace the
painting of reality by pure abstraction; however, in contrast to realistic paint-
ers, they don’t aim at depicting reality itself. They reproduce reality in order to
overpower it. It turns out that it is most difficult precisely to break free from
reality, while at the same time showing the strength of its attraction.2
Likewise, thinking reproduces all forms of reality and necessity in order to
pass through them to the realm of the possible. The actual and the necessary
should be viewed as “victims” of the possible. Hypothesis comes from the anal-
ysis of all the available facts and all the necessary logical connections; it is an
exercise in finding of such a possibility that exists in the thinkable above facts
and above logic, but not in their absence. If, for the given type of thinking, the
mode of the possible is predominant, then the two other modes should be as-
similated and overcome by the force of thinking itself.
It should be stressed that in the 20th century science also came under the in-
fluence of hypothetical thinking. As a result of discoveries in quantum physics
2 José Ortega y Gasset in his The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and
Literature (1925; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968) states that the purpose of
modern art is not completely antirealistic, it rather aims to demonstrate the very process of
destruction of reality. One shouldn’t necessarily draw something totally unlike man – a house
or a mountain; rather one should draw a man who would resemble man as little as possible;
a house which would conserve only the absolutely necessary for us to unravel its metamor-
phosis. The crowd thinks that it is easy to get away from reality, whereas in fact it is the most
difficult thing in the world. It is easy to say or draw something totally devoid of meaning,
incomprehensible, useless: it is enough to mutter some disconnected words or draw a few
random lines. However, to create something that would not copy nature yet would have a
certain meaningful content presupposes a higher gift. “That is why he [the artist] has to drive
home his victory by presenting in each case the body of the strangled victim.” https://books.
google.com/books?id=NLRTwgX1G6cC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq. Paraphrasing Ortega, we
could say that the joy of the philosopher comes from transcending reality and necessity and
presenting them as “strangled” by possibility.
and in the new fields of chaos theory and complexity theory (“chaoplexity”),
the modal status of scientific theories began to change; these theories progres-
sively come closer to hypotheses, because the ideal of complete provability
is not reachable even in the most rigorous of sciences. To a certain extent,
this growing hypothetical character of science is connected to the influence
it experienced in the 20th century from philosophy and the general theory of
knowledge, which in the 19th century were themselves under the decisive in-
fluence of the natural sciences. Philosophers of science, such as Popper, Kuhn,
and Feuerabend, as well as philosophizing scientists, such as Prigogine and
Penrose, speak in favor of methodological indeterminism, from its moderate
varieties to extreme anarchism.
In one of his last works, Karl Popper comes to the conclusion that we can, at
best, only hope that a scientific theory will be true:
The results of science remain hypotheses that may have been well tested,
but not established: not shown to be true. Of course, they may be true.
But even if they fail to be true, they are splendid hypotheses, opening the
way to still better ones. … Those theories that we cannot refute by the
severest tests, we hope to be true.3
It turns out that hope belongs not only to theological, but also to methodologi-
cal virtues which are necessary for the development of science. Popper not
only postulates the hypothetical character of modern science, but advises sci-
entists to adopt “the method of bold, adventurous theorization” which should
be rigorously tested. Indeed, he points out that “this method of bold, adven-
turous theorizing, followed by exposure to severe testing is the method of life
itself as it evolves to higher forms.”4
It would be a mistake to see hypothetical thinking as a sum of formal pro-
visos which, in and of themselves, would in advance guarantee it the status of
hypothesis. If I write a 1000-page treatise and on the first page warn the reader
that I don’t claim that all said here is the absolute truth and that it should only
be taken as a hypothesis, all the following pages would not suddenly, as by a
touch of a magic wand, turn into a hypothesis.
Which is, then, a positive criterion for the hypothetical quality of thinking –
not just an insurance against possible error, but the movement of thought,
expanding on its own opportunities?
3 Karl R. Popper, A World of Propensities (1988) Bristol: Thoemmes, 1997, p. 6.

4 Ibid., p. 7.
Theory, Utopia, and Hypothesis 71
We should specify beforehand that hypothetism is far from being an easy,

wide road; rather, it is a narrow path lying between certainty and uncertainty,
between truth and untruth. It is easy to affirm that the Volga river flows into
the Caspian sea, and it is just as easy to mistakenly think that it flows into the
Aral Sea or to fantasize that it flows into the Dead Sea. However, none of these
statements are yet hypotheses, because all of them are easily verified or falsi-
fied by concrete facts. Hypothetical thinking lies beyond verification and fal-
sification; unlike a scientific hypothesis, it is at the same time unprovable and
undeniable. It chooses the narrowest path so that the least probable becomes
the most credible.
In other words, philosophy seeks the strictest substantiation of the strang-
est assertions. Precisely this combination of the strangeness of the conclusion
and the rigor of the argument determines the narrow criterion of what can
be termed hypothetical. We are talking here about revising the principle of
evidence which, according to Descartes, lies at the basis of European thinking.
Strange assertions are these statements that are the farthest from the evident
and in this sense are opposite to Descartes’ criterion of truth as “evident” or
“directly verifiable” knowledge. However, they are also opposite to that kind
of “common,” “traditional” opinions to which Descartes opposed his principle
of evidence and which were based on the power of customs and superstitions.
“Strangeness” as a category of statement also differs from common clichés and
logical evidence, because both “traditionally necessary” and “rationally true”
follow the principle of the greatest probability. Even though in the first case the
probability is understood as “the most probable opinion of the majority,” while
in the second one it is “the most probable conclusion of a non-biased mind,”
they both rely on the greatest probability which at its limits coincides with the
objective truth and universal necessity. On the contrary, “strangeness” consti-
tutes the least probable for the majority of people, as well as for the mind itself,
statements which contradict both the commonly accepted and the evident for
the mind itself.5
5 The correlation of the “strange” (unlikely) and “evident” (certain) will be analyzed in more
detail in the chapter “The Criterion of the Interesting” (Part 2).
Chapter 7
Catharsis of Thinking
Possibilistic thinking includes counter-thinking, or dissenting. This is the most

important component of hypothetical thinking. It has little in common with
political dissent (inakomyslie) opposed to some outer, ruling, legalized system,
for example anti-Marxist thought in a Marxist state. Dissenting thinking, or
alter-mentality (inomyslie) is the interaction of thinking with itself, erasing of
its own traces, overcoming its own intentions. It is something that Nietzsche
had in mind when he said: “My strongest quality is self-overcoming,”1 or about
which Michel Foucault spoke: “To write a book means in a certain sense to
eliminate the previous one.”2 It may be added that the same book in the pro-
cess of writing can be destroying itself, “dissenting” against itself (inomyslit’
sebe).
It should be added that dissent is not the same as inner dialog, when a single
consciousness splits into two and starts talking to itself. Dialogic thinking re-
mains modally unidimensional, because the voices here sound and meet each
other on the same plane; they face each other, hear each other, discuss with
each other. Such thinking splits into two only as far as it pertains to its con-
tent, the set of ideas – however, its mode remains unchanged. Alter-mentality,
on the other hand, is a different dimension, a different mode of thought it-
self. Alter-mentality doesn’t require splitting into different opinions or voices.
Rather, it is an apophatic moment in thinking when it moves simultaneously
in two opposite directions and puts into question its own suppositions and
conclusions. Thought counter-thinks itself (protivomyslit sebe).
I will try to clarify what I mean by alter-mentality, first with the help of an
imaginary example. Suppose that I’m writing an essay “Romance and Technol-
ogy,” trying to prove that modern technology is the most complete embodi-
ment of the romantic worldviews. This side of technology is rarely discussed;
what is usually stressed is the stereotyped evaluation of its anti-romantic, prag-
matic nature. But isn’t the telephone a conversation of two angelic, incorporeal
beings who penetrate each other afar with fine vibrations of their speech? Isn’t
the airplane a separation from the earth’s surface in order to look at it from
above “as souls look from above on the bodies they left”? This is why those
1 https://books.google.com/books?id=TIs90ImLckoC&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq.
2 Michel Foucault, “Le souci de la vérité” (interview with F. Ewald), Magazine littéraire, 207
(May 1984), 18–23, http://1libertaire.free.fr/MFoucault231.html.

Catharsis of Thinking 73
who are in love need technology. How could they, in the past, do without the
telephone? Was writing able to convey the emotional inflexions of the voice?
How could they earlier seclude themselves in speed, slipping past the frozen
universe in each other’s arms, if they had no motorcycles or automobiles? For
modern man, love is replete with technical means of overcoming; technology
itself, as a sign of people’s striving towards each other with their entire bodies,
voices, and minds, is а material expression of their loving impulse. In several
European languages the word “transportation” also means an emotional im-
pulse, “coming out of oneself.”
Already in this concise rendition the reader notices something farfetched.
The main idea seems to be correct – yet it is dubious. Technology overcomes
the physical limitations of man, yet accomplishes this through physical means.
Technical means, taking on a life of their own, show the emptiness and poverty
of the content that we convey with their help. If a lover in old novels exhausted
horses in order to see his beloved for a minute and whisper her a couple of
words, how much stronger must be the emotional impetus which sets in mo-
tion a plane motor with the power of several thousand horses! But why is our
hero rushing through the air, flying above the clouds, and contemplating their
silver inner side; where is this angelic path leading him? A thousandfold mag-
nification of his technical abilities doesn’t increase the strength of his emo-
tions; he takes his beloved one to a bar, to the one-armed bandits, or straight to
a hotel room. Technology which exceeds emotional capacities of man reveals
the poverty of his nature. Consequently, technology is not a loving impetus,
but rather a parody of it, for parody is precisely that: formal means surpassing
the content. Technology with its angelic voices and soaring is a farce of the
heavenly transparent world of love.
So, trying to paint technology as pure romanticism is, obviously, a strained
interpretation that requires its demystification. The goal of thinking, as I un-
derstand it, is to create a field of tension, of agreement–disagreement between
itself and the reader. The goal is to create catharsis in the mind of the reader,
who from one string of arguments would come simultaneously to two oppo-
site conclusions, feeling at the same time attraction to and repulsion from the
same thought.
If we turn now from this little essayistic experiment to well-known philo-
sophical systems, we would, as well, see in them an internal counter-thinking,
often hidden from the creators of these systems or even consciously hidden by
them. For example, Marx’s teachings contain very strong arguments in favor
of historic–economic determinism and, at the same time, make the strongest
emphasis on the necessity of preparing, actively and consciously, a proletar-
ian revolution. As Sergey Bulgakov sarcastically noted, Marx resembles an
a stronomer who predicts an inevitable eclipse and at the same time implores
humankind to unite all its forces in order for this eclipse to occur. Critics of
Marxism almost invariably aim at this inner contradiction; indeed, it revealed
itself in the self-destructive practice of ideocracy which at the same time
subjugates private life to social needs and subordinates the social laws to the
ideological aspirations of individual leaders. However, if we analyze Marxism
as a possiblistic form of thinkability (myslimost’), we will necessarily notice
that both determinism and revolutionism emerge from a single point of the
Marxist thought as two mutually dependent alternative possibilities. Precisely
this combination of diametrically opposite paths of thought may produce on
Marx’s readers a powerful effect of catharsis, a cleansing effect, more profound
than the one-sidedness of each of them alone.
Whereas in the second, critical–activist epoch with its imperative of prac-
tical feasibility for philosophical systems a horrifying act of self-destruction
of entire civilizations took place, in the third epoch of possibilistic worldview
philosophical catharsis, a broadening of the scope of the thinkable could take
place. Here we must remember the words of Kierkegaard: “Abstract thought
can get hold of reality only by nullifying it, and this nullification of reality con-
sists in transforming it into possibility.”3 Precisely the return of thought into
the sphere of the possible, the purely “thinkable,” could prevent its destructive
influence on reality.
In recent decades, with the birth and spread of deconstruction, the search
for internal contradictions in the works of great thinkers reached its highest
point. Derrida found fundamental contradictions in the systems of thought
of Plato, Rousseau, Levi-Strauss. Even the deconstruction itself, according to
Derrida, constantly deconstructs its own foundations. “The enterprise of de-
construction always in a certain way falls prey to its own work.”4 It turns out
that on the deep, microscopic level of signs any philosopher counter-thinks
himself and the meanings with which he tries to imbue those signs. For ex-
ample, Rousseau tries to place nature over culture, while at the same time ap-
plying to nature such culturally mediated concepts as reading and writing (in
the human heart).
Does this mean that in the end we come to a zero meaning, to the seman-
tic vacuum where “words and things,” signifiers and signifieds, mutually erase
each other? Or is it precisely the counter-thinking (protivomyslie), intrinsic to
3 S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Lowrier (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1941), p. 279.
4 Peggy Kamuf (ed.), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1991), p. 41.
any philosophical thought, that allows it to reach the highest tension in the
diversion of “persuading” and “dissuading” trends and to achieve the state of
catharsis, purifying mind from one-sided and evident beliefs? The goal of a
philosophical text is to dissuade the readers precisely from that of which it tries
to convince them, to draw simultaneously two lines which eventually meet each
other at the point of catharsis where the readers free themselves from both op-
posite opinions at once and purify their minds from one-sidedness. In present-
ing a thought, the author tries to press, to exaggerate it so much that the idea
starts to falsify itself. Philosophy differs from applied, practical, or ideological
thinking in that it not only postulates a number of ideas, but also demonstrates
their contingency; that is, it purifies the very process of thinking from its alien-
ated products, “thoughts.”
Catharsis, as it is usually understood on the basis of Aristotle’s Poetics, is the
internal purification of the spectator through the experiencing of two opposite
emotions. L.S. Vygotsky in his Psychology of Art deeply analyzes the interac-
tion of two emotional responses in the context of different genres. Vygotsky
believed that one response was produced by the thematic material, or physical
substance, the other by the artistic form. Vygotsky quotes Friedrich Schiller:
“Herein, then, resides the real artistic secret of the master, that he eradicates
the material through form.”5 This means bringing the reader into a paradoxical
state whereby the same thing that provokes terror or sadness makes him re-
joice and laugh. “An aesthetic reaction obeys only one law: it contains an affect
developing in two opposite directions, an affect which at the final point, as if
in a short circuit, finds its annihilation.”6
The point is that art enfolds its images in two modalities: its content belongs
to the represented reality, its form, to the possibilities of this representation
itself. The very conditionality of art lies in its method of separating these two
modalities. “Art divides in two and … for its full perception it is necessary to
observe at the same time both the real situation and the deviation from it.”7 We
empathize with the personages of a tragedy as if we shared their identity and
at the same time we experience this “if,” which alienates us from these person-
ages and translates our experience into the mode of the possible. Suffering on
the stage provokes in us the feeling of reconciliation, because it is only a pos-
sible suffering. An explosion of joy on the stage makes us simultaneously feel a
light, otherworldly sadness, because it is only a possible joy.
5 F. Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man (1793), Letter 22. Cited at https://books
.google.com/books?id=m2OMAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT118&lpg=PT118&dq.
6 L.S. Vygotskiy, Psikhologiia iskusstva (Psychology of Art) (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1986), p. 269.
7 Ibid., p. 328.
Vygotsky explains this effect of art by the fact that the human emotions can
be much more intense than they usually are in real life with its limited options
of possible circumstances. Man is given the capacity to live many potential
lives, yet he has to live only the real one – and he needs art in order to live
his unrealized, unclaimed emotions.8 Vygotsky clearly emphasizes the modal
character of catharsis:
Just as in nature the realized fraction of life is only a tiny part of life that
could have been realized, just as every born life is paid for by millions
of unborn lives, in the nervous system the actualized part of life is but a
small part of life which is really enclosed in us. … This very possibility to
live through art those greatest emotions which weren’t realized in real
life constitutes, probably, the biological basis of art. … It seems that art
complements life and broadens its possibilities.9
It is clear that passions experienced through art have a conditional, hypotheti-

cal character – they are artistic emotions, or, more exactly, possible forms of
emotions, forms of the feelable ( formy chuvstvuemosti), corresponding to the
possibilistic character of imaginary worlds themselves.
We could suppose that the same state of catharsis can be reached in the
area of thought. Philosophical thought is to practical thought as artistic emo-
tions are to real emotions. Speaking about philosophical thought, people often
overlook the fact that it is not thinking related to real objects and goals. There
exist different actual types of thinking – everyday thinking, business thinking,
scientific thinking – but philosophy differs from them in that it not only thinks,
but also produces forms of thinkability (myslimost’), just as art produces forms
of feelability (chuvstvuemost’). The mental potential of man is bigger than the
sum of given circumstances which could call for his thought and inspire him
to apply his thinking to real objects. Philosophy is the discharge of this mental
potential in the form of pure thinkabilities which purify our thought from any
one-sidedness, just as artistic catharsis purifies our emotions. This explains
why philosophy is thinking by universals; that is, by such capacious conceptual
constructs, or objects–hypotheses, which, like artistic images, have no direct
correspondence in reality.
Thought taken in its possibilistic form loses those traits it has in actual or
applied forms of thinking. First of all it loses its unidirectionality, its concrete
8 Here and elsewhere, the word “man” in English translation corresponds to the gender neutral
word chelovek (human being), not to the word muzhchina (man), in the Russian original.
9 Ibid., pp. 310, 311.
correlation with a fact or an action. An actual thought or an actual emotion

are monosemantic; they tell us what to do or how to react to a certain phe-
nomenon. For philosophy this is but the “first” level of thinking, just as for
art – emotions of real people. Philosophy alienates itself from these thoughts
through reflection, as art distances itself from these emotions through illu-
sion. Philosophy thinks as if; that is, it offers us not thoughts themselves, but
the possibility of them, their thinkability. This is where a special broadening,
catharsis-producing effect of a philosophical treatise comes from. This effect
is comparable with that of artistic text: different possibilities of thought seem
to accommodate themselves in our mind, broadening its frontiers. Philosophy
not so much communicates new thoughts to us as it changes our mind, opens
a multidimensional continuum populated by entire mental worlds. Like all
people, Hegel and Nietzsche had concrete thoughts about different subjects,
but their philosophical importance lies not in what they actually thought, but
in the fact that it is possible to think “ à la Nietzsche” or “à la Hegel”: these phi-
losophers left us forms of thinkability which are not reducible to any concrete
thoughts. Likewise, we received from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky not the feelings
which they, of course, experienced towards people who surrounded them and
different events of life, but the artistic forms of emotionality; so now we can
feel à la Tolstoy or à la Dostoevsky.
To participate in the process of thinking is not the same as to participate in
common conversation, when someone is sharing with us their actual feelings
and thoughts and we perceive them as a given fact, empathizing or not, agree-
ing or disagreeing, in other words unambiguously deciding about their factu-
ality. On the other hand, to agree or disagree with Hegel or Nietzsche is like
shooting from the auditorium at the evil Iago on the stage, or stabbing Ivan the
Terrible in the painting where he is killing his son, or dreaming about meeting
one’s favorite literary hero, a brave knight or a prince. Philosophical thinking,
when taken philosophically, that is as a form of thought and not the thought
itself, does not require any agreement or disagreement, but allows both at the
same time, broadening in this way the continuum of thinking.
It is usually expected that a philosopher’s goal is to try to convince the read-
ers, to make them accept the philosopher’s view of the world, to convey to
them his thoughts and to make them agree with those thoughts. In my opin-
ion, a philosopher’s goal is to cause the effect of agreement–disagreement, a
mental catharsis, an intellectual insight. Readers suddenly understand that it
is possible to think this way and the other way, that thinking intrinsically con-
tains counter-thinking and that this infinitely increases the sphere of thought.
This is how Pavel Florensky characterized his thinking method that allowed
him to reach the maximum in dissenting with himself: “Indisputable truth is
truth in which the strongest affirmation is coupled with the strongest nega-
tion … This is why all that can be said against the indisputable truth will be
weaker than this negation, contained within it.”10 Each thought toward which
the reader was led through a long chain of arguments is only one of the pos-
sibilities of thought, which, as it becomes more concrete, discovers another,
alternative possibility. Owing to the internal pressure of counter-thinking,
philosophical thought explodes from itself in order to give a primary impulse
to an expanding mental universe. What produces catharsis and purifies the
mind is precisely the philosophical “thinkability,” which cannot be reduced to
any definite thought, as every definite thought presupposes the possibility of
its own negation.
This does not mean that a philosophical treatise should not provoke dis-
cussions and disagreement. Likewise, a work of art may be liked or disliked;
its style, conceptions, and imagery can provoke empathy or antipathy. What
is important here is not to confuse the author with his characters, the level
of represented emotions, or expressed ideas with the respective levels of the
representation or expression. If a philosopher contradicts himself, this is no
basis to accuse him of contradiction, because contradiction may be a function
of the philosophical method itself. When Hegel qualifies the Prussian state as
the highest incarnation of the objective spirit, it should not be taken as a politi-
cal opinion, as a thought expressed by a “conservative citizen.” Rather, this is a
form of thinkability which presupposed the correlation of the entire develop-
ment of universal spirit with the development of political systems and their
coinciding with the self-consciousness of the philosopher himself at the final
point of history. A philosopher works with x and y replacing different num-
bers, including those which may produce mistakes when applied to the solu-
tion of concrete equations; the important point here is not these arithmetic
replacements but the algebra itself as a form of potential relation among the
quantities.
But what is the goal of this “discharge” of mental potentiality called phi-
losophy? The answer that Vygotsky gave in connection with the emotional po-
tential of art can hardly satisfy us. In accordance with the spirit of his time,
he believed that the relief of the “superfluous” emotions in the area of artistic
illusions is necessary, because it helps the organism to better adapt to the real
environment.
10 P.A. Florensky, “Avtoreferat” (“Synopsis”), Sochineniia (Works), 4 vols (Moscow: Mysl’,

1994), vol. 1, p. 40. The only thing which I would like to make more precise in this state-
ment is to replace “thought reaching catharsis” for “indisputable truth.”
All our behavior is nothing but the process of balancing of the organ-
ism with its environment. The unrealized part of life, this part of our
behavior which did not pass through the narrow bottleneck, must still
be in some way lived through. The organism is brought into some cor-
respondence with the environment, and the balance should be leveled
down, as it is necessary to open a valve in the boiler when the pressure
of vapor exceeds the resistance of the boiler itself. Apparently, art is pre-
cisely a means of such an explosive bringing into equilibrium in the criti-
cal points of our behavior. … Art is a necessary relief of nervous energy,
a complicated method of balancing the organism with its environment
during the critical minutes of our behavior.11
From this it can be concluded that the effect of art is negative: the emotions are
brought to life only to be annihilated in order to restore, on the lowest energy
level, the “healthy” balance of man and his environment. However, maybe the
“superfluous” emotions, as well as “superfluous” reflections, are provoked not
in order to lower the possible to the level of the actual, but, on the contrary, in
order to raise the level of human existence from actual to potential?
Perhaps, instead of criticizing Vygotsky’s point of view it would be better to
indicate its reversibility, since, as a result of the equilibrium attained, not only
the organism adapts itself to its environment, but the environment also be-
comes adapted to the organism, to its unrealized possibilities. This means that
art transfers the surrounding world into the state of potentiality. The essence
of catharsis, or relief, lies not just in burning the unnecessary emotions, but in
translating them into different forms of emotionality. Their very aimlessness,
separation from the real world, becomes a form of a higher goal-orientedness.
Likewise, philosophy apparently is not just a means of annihilation of super-
fluous, impractical, “abstract” thoughts, of healthy adaptation to the environ-
ment, even though this view of philosophy as a “valve” letting out the pressure
of “excessive” mental vapor also has a right to exist. Rather, philosophy is a
means of turning aimless thoughts into forms of teleological thinkability in-
creasing the modal dimensionality of the world.
A philosopher is not only a thinker who answers for his thoughts. A phi-
losopher is an artist of thinking, because he thinks multiple possibilities of
thought, just as an actor takes out to the stage the multitude of faces contained
in his selfhood. Philosophical thinking is a play of thinkables, and as soon as
11 Vygotskiy, Psikhologiia iskusstva, pp. 309, 311, 312.

some actual object enters this play, it is immediately transformed into a pos-
sibility of other thinkable objects. Thinking is producing the possible from the
actual. Philosophy finds in the basis of reality a world of potentials which em-
braces the world of actual objects and events. This is why philosophy is so im-
portant, not for the sake of cognition or transformation of the actual world, but
for entering other, potential, worlds.
Chapter 8
Personified Thinking
Philosophy is not a field of direct self-expression, as would be the case if I

shared my thoughts with an interlocutor and tried to convince him of their
correctedness. If I am thinking as a philosopher, I do not present my personal
thoughts, but possible thoughts, thinkabilities, with which I have no obligation
to identify myself as an individual. It is somebody else who thinks and speaks
through me. A philosopher needs a persona to whom he trusts his thoughts,
because he feels that they are not quite his own. From ancient times, and es-
pecially since Plato, philosophy has often presented itself as personified think-
ing (personazhnoe myshlenie). A philosophical persona, in distinction from a
literary character, is not an acting, but a thinking personality; it is the other
who dwells in me when I am thinking. My distance from this persona may be
conveyed by quotation marks.
It is the potentiality of philosophical thinking which produces the perso-
nas of fictive thinkers. Since the author–philosopher does not simply think,
but demonstrates the potentials of thought, he needs a mediator to actualize a
certain thought and at the same time prevent its identification with the author
himself, with the potentiality of the thought as such. When people say that a
philosopher holds “this or that view,” or “thinks this or that,” it is an exaggera-
tion. Rather he thinks that it is possible to think this or that, it is possible to
have these or some other views which in certain conditions, from a certain
stand-point, could be argued in this or that way. Hence the need of many phi-
losophers with the richest potential of thinking to put between themselves and
their thought a certain conventional figure, on whose behalf this idea would
be presented, which allows the author himself to take a distance in relation
to it. A persona thinks “as if” that is what the author is able to think. Such are
Socrates and all other numerous characters in Plato’s dialogues; a simpleton
for Nicholas of Cusa; Victor Eremita, Johannes Climacus, Anti-Climacus and
other pseudonymous thinkers (hetero-thinkers) for Kierkegaard; Zarathustra
and Dionysus for Nietzsche; the Elder Pansophy for Vladimir Soloviev; Mon-
sieur Teste for Paul Valéry; and “alter-egos” Pavel Medvedev and Valentin Vo-
loshinov for Mikhail Bakhtin.
As a rule, such philosophical personae are not presented as wholly, color-
fully, and palpably as characters in art and literature. Often it is sufficient only
to give him a name and a few characteristic traits (social, professional) in order

to separate the persona from the author and to crystallize in this new person-
ality a system of ideas and concepts that the author wants to put to the test.
To actualize thought in a persona while preserving its potentiality in an author
is the optimal way to achieve the double effect of persuasion–dissuasion, in-
tellectual sympathy, and intellectual withdrawal. The mental catharsis is pro-
duced by a “theatrical” effect of thought as performed actually by the persona
and presented at a distance from the author himself, as only one of multiple
possibilities of his reincarnation.
In a certain sense we have no way to know what a certain thinker thinks. In
fact he does not think anything, and in this respect he is similar to the most
thoughtless, empty-headed individual. According to Bakhtin,
the primary author cannot be an image: he escapes any image-like repre-

sentation … The creator of the image (that is the primary author) never
can enter any of the images created by him. … Nothing can be said on
behalf of the writer. … Therefore the primary author is cast in silence. … It
is conventional to talk about the authorial mask. But in which utterances
(speech performances) is the face [of the author] present and the mask
absent, i.e., there is no authorship?1
The point is that the face of the author remains invisible and his mouth re-
mains shut. Judging by their philosophical works we cannot know what Plato
or Kierkegaard “really thought.” Even this question, with its imposition of the
mode of the actual on the philosophical thinking, is useless and irrelevant.
The primary author cannot express himself in words; he can only hope that
behind the speech of his “others,” his doubles, we can hear his silence, the non-
actualized potentiality of his thought.
Similarly, language itself is always silent, though it constitutes the structural
foundation of all possible utterances. Nobody ever heard the voice of English
or Russian language. A writer and a thinker establish the order of their po-
tentiality precisely on the level of language itself. They position themselves as
language rather than speech; in order to start speaking, to move to the level of
speech, they need to diminish (sokratit’) themselves, to find their “Socrates,”
their figurehead who can produce actual utterances. A philosopher has the
ability to think, and thus is never identical to what is actually thought; for this
purpose he finds convenient names and characters, and appoints conditional
speakers of his thought. The real author is as silent as language. Philosophical
1 M. Bakhtin, Estetika slovesnogo tvorchestva (The Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity) (Moscow:

Iskusstvo, 1979), pp. 353, 357.
Personified Thinking 83
discourse, that is an actualization of philosophical language, functions only as

citation, as the voice of a persona, whether it is announced, explicitly or not.
What Bakhtin says about the author being cast in silence explains the enig-
ma of his own doubles, Pavel Medvedev and Valentin Voloshinov. The vague-
ness of Bakhtin’s own explanations is striking: it appears that he did write
these books, but he is not the author. In fact Bakhtin could not subscribe –
ascribe to himself – these works written under the names and on behalf of
his friends, but he also could not repudiate them. He expressed in them his
thoughts that he could not recognize as properly his own; they revealed the
potentials of a Marxist interpretation of language and literature that were alien
to Bakhtin himself, though nobody else ever actualized them as consistently
as he did in these heteronymic works. The situation is complicated by the fact
that Medvedev and Voloshinov were real persons (as Socrates and Shakespeare
were). Furthermore, Medvedev and Voloshinov were the authors of their own
scholarly works and at the same time they were Bakhtin’s reincarnations “Med-
vedev” and “Voloshinov.” Bakhtin is the creative potentiality of the thinking
that was actualized in “Medvedev’s” and “Voloshinov’s” writings. Bakhtin is
recognizable in these writings as a famous actor can be recognized in his char-
acters. In the discursive manifestations of Medvedev and Voloshinov Bakhtin,
brilliantly played the roles of Marxist critic and Marxist linguist required by
the ideological scene of the 1920s, giving the utmost force of conviction to the
voices of his characters. All these ideas were in Bakhtin’s mind but he him-
self was not completely within these ideas. Hence, attributing these works to
Bakhtin is complicated from the point of view of authorship. Perhaps it would
be more authentic to qualify these names as belonging to author–characters
rather than the authors themselves and to include them in subtitles, such as
“Thus Spake Medvedev.” For the same reason, Nietzsche wrote “Thus Spake
Zarathustra,” not “Thus Spake Nietzsche.” But at the same time, Nietzsche did
not present this speaker of his thoughts as the author of his book; he didn’t
sign the book by the name of Zarathustra. When something similar emerged,
and the heteronyms “Antichrist” and “Crucified” appeared in his writings, this
marked the onset of Nietzsche’s insanity.
Even Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais, signed by his own name, reveals voices
of some personas, as though deliberately inscribed in the horizon of the Sta-
lin era. What is the voice of Bakhtin himself? About this we can hardly judge
even by his later notes and essays, made as if for himself, but at the same time
clearly revealing the voice of the progressive-minded Soviet literary critic of
the 1950s–60s. Neither about death, nor about God, nor about fear, nor about
love, nor about anything that would directly reveal Bakhtin as the author in his
coincidence with Bakhtin the man, we will never learn from this mysterious
thinker. “Primary authorship,” the potentiality of his thought remained beyond

the limits of all actualizations, truly “clothed in silence.” Bakhtin expressed
himself only in his numerous, named and nameless, twins, never completely
merging with him.
Bakhtin’s theory of polyphony as the interaction of many voices belonging
to different individuals does not fully explain the phenomenon of divided and
multiplied authorship in his own work or in that of other thinkers. Bakhtin’s di-
alogical conception exposed in his book on Dostoevsky presupposes the inter-
action of two or more separate, individual, consciousnesses. Bakhtin’s vision of
personality is close to antiquity and Renaissance, suggesting the embodiments
of different consciousnesses as individuals, who are talking to each other.
More relevant for the problem of personified thinking is the fact that my own
consciousness is deeply “other” to myself. Paradoxically, none of us can truly
know any consciousness other than our own, which does not fully know itself,
remains alien to itself, and repels its own assertions. Thus the philosophical
consciousness expresses itself on behalf of multiple characters, putting their
utterances in quotation marks as citations from different sources, different
thinkers. Before we can even think about the consciousness of other persons
we must find this “otherness” in our own consciousness; my own consciousness
is the “other” for myself. To Socrates who said, “I know that I know nothing,” I
could add “I don’t know what I know. I know more than I can know preceding
only from the borders of my personal knowledge.” This was clearly proposed
by Plato in his theory of knowledge as anamnesis, recollecting something that
was known to us, even before our birth. We don’t know what we know, what
our mind has experienced before the development of our cognitive awareness
and independently of us. If my consciousness is beyond my own grasp, I find in
it a treasure trove of other thinkers besides myself.
In distinction from Bakhtin, the “other” implies for me my own, which is un-
known to me to such an extent that it may host a different person with a different
voice and worldview. It is “other” to such an extent that it cannot be even some-
body else’s “own,” to coincide with the self of any other real being. It cannot
be identified with any existing person in the world (past or present). There is
nobody who could accept the mask of Zarathustra as his own face; the last per-
son whom it could fit would be the historical Zarathustra. In the same way, the
mask of Medvedev cannot subsume the face of either Bakhtin or Medvedev
himself. There are such forms of otherness that are doomed to remain masks
or characters without bearers. This is what Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony
fails to account for because it was conceived within the framework of dialogi-
cal existentialism, with its primary concern for human identity, personality,
and authenticity. Conceptual characters that we are discussing are pure signs
of otherness that cannot be appropriated by any living individual. And this is
precisely because they are masks of philosophical thinking, in its radical dis-
tinction from any other type of thinking for which its living bearers take full
commitment and responsibility.
Philosophical thinking is beyond the mode of individuation and real-life
personhood. This explains why even those thinkers who did not resort to masks
and personae were still nonetheless anxious to demonstrate the “otherness” of
their thinking, as “speakers on behalf.” Hegel spoke on behalf of the Absolute
Spirit, Marx on behalf of the exploited proletariat, the future liberator of the
world, Heidegger on behalf of Being itself. Оf course this “on behalf” relates
only to their pronouncements as philosophers, not unlike the pope, who is
considered to be infallible only when he speaks ex cathedra. To speak ex cathe-
dra of philosophy means to speak in a different voice, on behalf of a different
person, or different entity than my human identity allows.
In fact, what another person is thinking is more comprehensible to us than
what we are thinking ourselves. The thought of another person is expressed
in her speech while our own thinking remains in the gap between the speech
and the unspeakable, between the actuality and potentiality of thinking.
My thinking permanently disqualifies my own speech and designates this
renunciation by placing it in invisible quotation marks. This can be called a
“non-dialogical” mode of otherness in speech. Paul Valéry puts it in this way:
“[A]ll those [words] I have myself spoken to others, I have always felt them
become distinct from my thought – for they were becoming invariable.”2 Each
consciousness is more complex and impenetrable within itself than in its
“dialogical” relationship to another consciousness. This self-alienating qual-
ity of consciousness accounts for its internal citational mode: each act of self-
expression is an act of self-alienation and self-citation. Personified thinking –
personified as related to personae, not personalities – dwells within my own
consciousness; it does not come from the others’ consciousness.
I will never believe that the struggling voices within me were also me.
Without a doubt they are some separate creatures, self-reliant and inde-
pendent from myself, who by their own will settled in me and inflicted
controversy and a cacophony in my soul.
2 P. Valéry, An Anthology, selected by, with an introduction by James R. Lawler (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 3.
So wrote Alexei Losev (1893–1988), a major Russian philosopher of the Sovi-

et epoch.3 Though Losev’s own philosophical works don’t reveal any named
characters, sensitive analysis finds sharp shifts of intonation in his discourse.
Particularly notable is the aggressive interposing of his double, a Marxist
phrasemonger, whose voice slightly caricatures late Losev’s writings, such as
the multivolumed History of Classical Aesthetics. Now and then an unnamed
Marxist scholar, a rather sophisticated one though not as bright and creative as
Losev himself, crudely intrudes into Losev’s discourse that is otherwise mostly
influenced by Hegelian idealist dialectics and Husserlian phenomenology and
eidology. If a philosopher did not want to grant personification to various ac-
tualizations of his thought, then the task of such persono-analysis falls to his
investigators.
In addition, a philosopher needs a thinking persona because it allows him to
experience different possibilities of thought in different existential situations;
that is, it gives to the thought the existential–experimental character, while at
the same time endowing a local, individual existence with a capacity to pre
sent itself universally.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari provide the best clue for such a possi-
bilistic framework in their book What Is Philosophy? Their argument goes as
follows. What makes a Western philosopher different from an Eastern sage is
his or her mediated relationship with truth and wisdom. He or she does not
possess wisdom (Sophia) as such, but is only in love with it, or, to use another
possible translation of Greek “philia,” he or she is a friend of wisdom. Thus he
or she finds himself or herself at a distance from the place of wisdom and has
to speak about it on behalf of somebody else who becomes his or her concep-
tual persona, for example a friend or a lover, an idiot or a dreamer. The authors
postulate the inevitable actualization of philosophical thinking in a thinking
persona or, as they call it, a “conceptual persona” – precisely because it is never
the author, but rather “someone else” who has thoughts; the author only may
think, is planting the seeds of possible thoughts. It must, however, be admit-
ted that Deleuze and Guattari underestimate the peculiarity of philosophical
discourse and confuse it with the ordinary language where the role behavior is
extremely rare and gives an impression of pomposity and pretense.
In everyday life speech-acts refer back to psychosocial types who actually

attest to a subjacent third person: ‘I decree mobilization as President of
the Republic,’ I speak to you as it is always a conceptual person who says
3 A.F. Losev, “Dialektika mifa,” in A.F. Losev (ed.), Filosofiia. Mifologiia. Kul’tura (Moscow: Nau-
ka, 1991), p. 81.
‘I’: ‘I think as Idiot,’ ‘I will as Zarathustra,’ ‘I dance as Dionysus,’ ‘I claim as

Lover.’ … Conceptual personae are thinkers, solely thinkers … they are
no longer empirical, psychological, and social determinations, still less
abstractions, but intercessors, crystals, or seeds of thought.4
Certain conceptual personae, which have never existed in actuality, think in-
side us, instead of being us. These doubles are mediators between thinking
and being. They exist in a certain space–time continuum, are involved in lo-
cal existence, and thus can be represented as figures of a certain gender, age,
profession, habits, and character traits. Precisely this position at the border
between being and thinking turns out to be the most dangerous and signifi-
cant, because it allows being and thinking to embrace, to surround each other.
The author casts his thought into the world in the form of a thinking persona
– while at the same time he himself, as a pure potentiality of thought, remains
beyond the limits of any local existence.
All these thinking figures stand close enough to the author as to convey the
movements of his thought – yet they are sufficiently distanced enough to allow a
sharp change of its existential conditions – thinking as a prophet or a cipher,
a genius or an idiot, a stutterer or a blind person, a lover or a petty bourgeois,
a political deportee or a tyrant, a victim or a slayer, an impostor or a gourmet.
The multitude of human walks of life allows us to develop a paradigmatic rich-
ness of thought that springs from different existential conditions (axioms) and
arrives at different metaphysical results.
In this way thought becomes rooted in a given persona’s existence while not
distorting the author’s real existence. On the other hand, the author does not
impose on thinking the biographical and historic limitations of his existence.
Thought and life are moving towards one another and at the same time they
are liberated from one another. The most interesting trait of this dynamic dual-
ism is not the opposition or identification, but rather the convergence and di-
vergence of the two principles, between which there remains a free space. The
figure of a thinking persona is a philosophical technique, making possible the
mutual freedom of thinking and being. Through thinking personae, the author’s
unique life is recoded into a number of systems of thought, without being split
by them and without reducing them to an impoverished identity within itself.
In the light of their irreducibility, the interconnectedness of thinking and
being enact a post-idealist and post-existential play of their mutual potentials.
In idealism thought is elevated over being and objectively considers it as a
4 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 64.
niversality to which only the thinking itself is not related and from which it is
u
independent. Therefore such a philosopher as Hegel does not need a separate
existential persona – thinking does not need any contact with its existential
bearer. On the other hand, a truly existential thinker does not need a separate
persona either, since his thinking is completely inscribed into the circle of his
being, inseparable from its bearer. Montaigne or Pascal do not need a thinking
persona, any more than Descartes or Hegel do. In rationalism or idealism, the
monism of thinking absorbs reality within itself; in personalism or existential-
ism, the monism of reality absorbs thinking within itself. Only the admittance
of their irreducibility to one another produces the figure of a thinking persona
in which the author’s thinking becomes alienated from his existence and at the
same time inseparable from the persona’s being. Thinking becomes alienated
from its bearer, and this trajectory can be seen as a series of figures lighting up
and extinguishing, so to speak – the long-distance runners who carry the au-
thor’s thought away from him. The philosophy of a purely idealistic (dogmatic,
transcendental) or a purely existential (materialistic, immanent) plane does
not need figures of doubles–mediators, for it is monistic by nature. Doubles are
needed there where dualism is present – a tense division of being and thinking.
There are many other ways to avoid this dualism of thinking and being, a
potentially thinking author and an actually thinking persona. Whereas the tra-
ditional way consists of a “naive” identification of the ideas–fictions created by
a philosopher with his own thought, the postmodern way is, on the contrary, a
“play” identification of the philosopher himself with the sum total of thinking
personae created by him. Precisely this reverse variant of the interrelation be-
tween the philosopher and his doubles is postulated by Deleuze and Guattari:
The conceptual persona is not the philosopher’s representative but,

rather, the reverse: the philosopher is only the envelope of his principal
conceptual persona and all the other personae who are the intercessors,
the real subjects of his philosophy. Conceptual personae are the philoso-
pher’s ‘heteronyms’, and the philosopher’s name is the simple pseudonym
of his personae. … The philosopher is the idiosyncrasy of his conceptual
personae. The destiny of the philosopher is to become his conceptual
persona or personae, at the same time that these personae themselves
become something other than they are historically, mythologically, or
commonly (the Socrates of Plato, the Dionysus of Nietzsche, the Idiot of
Nicholas of Cusa).5
5 Ibid.
Reversing the traditional outlook, Deleuze and Guattari are inclined to fully
reduce the philosopher’s position to his conceptual personae; this, again,
eliminates the potentiality of philosophical thinking, which in this case be-
comes entirely reduced to the worldviews of personae as “true subjects” whose
mouthpiece or even corporeal appearance is the author himself. Such a reverse
reductionism leads, in fact, to quite a traditional result: no matter whether it
is Socrates who is appointed a mouthpiece of Plato, or vice versa, the mutual
irreducibility of the author and the persona disappears, and thus philosophi-
cal thinking is identified with its actualizations, and its potentiality becomes
eliminated.
Chapter 9
Possible and Impossible: Aporia of Thinking
We should distinguish two categories which are close to the category of the
“possible”: the potential and the probable. The potential is the inner side of the
possible as the characteristic of some object or capacity of some being. We can
say that a plant is potentially contained in a seed or that the plant is a potential
of the seed, that a certain sportsman has a potential to become a champion, or
that in this player we see a potential champion.
On the other hand, the probable is the outer side of the possible as the sum
total of conditions defining the extent of realizability of a given potential. We
can speak of a probable victory or defeat of this or that player as about a factor
of some objective coincidence of circumstances, a possibility whose realiza-
tion depends on certain conditions. As a rule, potentiality characterizes sub-
jects of action, whereas probability is a characteristic of objective events. The
same mode appears in the “potential” as intrinsic to the given subject of action
and in the “probable” as a characteristic of external circumstances, a measure
of chance, a quantitative possibility of realization.
In this sense the category of the “possible” is a complex one, characterizing
the transition from the internal potentiality to the probability of external real-
ization. The concept of “possible” is used in both senses. For example, saying
“the possibilities of man are infinite” or “we have to evaluate our possibilities”
we express potentiality, whereas in such expressions as “heavy precipitation
is possible” or “he let a good possibility slip by” we refer to the probability of a
certain event. That is why we use “the possible” as the widest concept inside
a given modal category, covering all the steps of the transition between the
potential and the probable.
Philosophical thinking, being “possibilistic,” should be distinguished from
the probabilistic thinking, in order to avoid confusing it with the mathemati-
cal theory of probability. Probability is a quantitative concept measured by
degrees, whereas possibility is a qualitative concept which differs not from
another possibility by some quantitative value, but from the actual and the
necessary by some modal content. That is why the adjective “probable” has de-
grees of comparison (more, less, the most, the least), whereas for the adjective
“possible” such forms are much less typical. Philosophy of the possible is not
evaluating, to what extent events are possible in relation to reality; it analyzes
to what extent the possibility of a given event changes our understanding of
this event.

Possible and Impossible: Aporia of Thinking 91
Our reality includes a multitude of possibilities, some of which will be real-

ized today, others tomorrow or in a hundred years, yet others never. For ex-
ample, there is a possibility that it will rain tomorrow, that in a hundred years
people will live on Mars, and so on. All these possibilities exist inside reality
itself, and they interest philosophy no more than atmospheric storms on Earth
or temperatures on Mars. These possibilities existing inside reality are objects
of study of concrete disciplines, such as geography or astrophysics; that is, the
same disciplines which study reality itself using scientific methods to make
predictions of future outcomes. Prognoses form part of scientific disciplines,
just as possibilities form part of reality.
A possibility, taken as a part of reality and studied by scientific methods, is
nothing but probability calculated mathematically. In this, possibility loses its
qualitative character, not reducible to reality, because what is studied here is
the very characteristic which makes a possibility a part of reality. Probability
is always the likelihood of transformation of the possible into the actual. We
could say that probability is a degree of the actuality of the possible itself, is
a possibility evaluated by the measure of its realizability. The possibility that
people will populate Mars is calculated by probabilistic methods on the basis
of the data of development of aeronautics, energy research, and other compo-
nents of modern technology. The probabilistic approach looks at the possible
from the point of view of the actual and doesn’t depart from this theoretical,
indicative mode, which is characteristic of science and used to characterize
philosophy in its first, “naïve,” epoch. After all, one can calculate how many
angels can fit on the point of a needle or how many people will live on Mars at
the end of the 21st century – in both cases one uses a positive kind of thinking
which ascribes its own content to the reality under consideration.
Philosophical understanding of the possible should be distinguished not
only from scientific understanding, but also from common sense understand-
ing. Common sense understands possibility as something that can occur in
reality given certain conditions. In other words, possibility is defined in terms
of its realization and opposed to the impossible as to something which cannot
occur in reality. The possible approaches the existent; together they are contra-
posed to something which is not and cannot be.
On the contrary, the philosophical approach draws together the existent
and the non-existent and contraposes them to the possible–impossible as
two different modalities. The concept of the possible includes two different
meanings: (1) something that can become a part of the actual, and in this dif-
fers from the impossible; (2) something which is not a part of the existent,
and in this differs from the actual. In different contexts, different meanings of
this concept predominate. For example, saying that “this event is possible,” we
mean that it is realizable, can be transferred from the possible to the existent.
However, saying “this event is only a possibility,” we establish a fundamental
difference between this event and a real fact, its belonging to another modality.
While everyday consciousness stresses the proximity of the possible to the
actual (realizability), philosophical consciousness puts more emphasis on the
proximity of the possible to the impossible (the state of being unrealized).
The mode of the possible includes both positive and negative constructs. The
impossible (cannot be) belongs to the mode of possible, in the same vein as
the negation of the existent (is not) belongs to the mode of the actual.
The existent and the non-existent are united by philosophy in the category
of becoming, coming into being: the non-existent becomes the existent and
vice versa. In its turn, the possible is united with the impossible through the
category of thinking. Such thinkable objects as Plato’s “idea,” Nietzsche’s “over-
man,” or Marx’s “classless society” can be called in equal degree possible and
impossible. The fact is that they belong to the sphere of the thinkable, that is to
a mode different from the actual one; therefore, the question whether they can
or cannot become real is meaningless. The thinkable is possible because it can
be thought, and it is impossible, because it cannot be realized other than in
thought. That is why thinking itself removes the difference between the possible
and the impossible, just as the process of coming into being forms a transition
between the existing and the non-existing.
As a rule, under the “impossible” in philosophy is understood something
which cannot be thought of, for example, such as a perfect circle which would
be at the same time a perfect square. The thought of a square circle contains an
internal contradiction and is, therefore, impossible. However, if we go deeper
into the content of any thought, we will find there precisely the same impossi-
bility. Let us take the simplest thinkable object: for example, a table. In general,
this object by definition includes the characteristics of all existing tables. Yet
tables can be high or low, metal or wooden, round or square. Thus such a thing
as a table, a table in general, is absolutely impossible in reality, because a table
cannot be at the same time iron and wooden, round and square. A thought
object, precisely because it is thought, is such a possibility which contains in
itself also the impossible.
It can be objected that the idea of table doesn’t contain such a contradiction
in terms as does the “square circle.” We create the idea of table, proceeding
from those of its characteristics which may mutually contradict and exclude
each other. We think of a table as a piece of furniture which consists of a hori-
zontal surface and with some type of vertical support. Such is the minimal
content of the concept of “table.” However, it is quite evident that such a “non-
contradictory” table cannot exist in reality either, while a horizontal surface
is, in itself, a mental abstraction: in reality it must have a certain form – either
round or square, for example.
Thus the difference between the “round square,” supposedly impossible, and
the “table,” supposedly possible, becomes a difference in degree. The “round
square” is a more abstract concept, because neither a circle nor a square ex-
ist as such, independently from round and square objects. There exist only
round or square coins, tables, buildings, and so on. Since tables can be both
square and round, this contradiction is inherent to the very concept of “table”
(or “building,” or “coin”). Every concept contradicts its own content, while it
includes mutually excluding characteristics: a big building – a small building,
a golden coin – a silver coin.
Every idea carries in itself the aporia of “possible–impossible,” for it can only
be thought to a degree at which it cannot be objectified. “Table” in general,
as an idea, is thinkable, that is representable potentially, precisely because it
cannot be represented materially as an individual object with all the potential
characteristics of the table. Contrariwise, this concrete table at which we sit
and on which we write is the most difficult, almost inscrutable object for think-
ing. It cannot be thought, because it exists. The possible and the thinkable in it
are displaced by its actual existence; we can think of this table only to the ex-
tent to which we can transcend its “thisness” and move towards the thinkable
as the possible: we imagine a possible moving of this table, its replacement by
another table, its similarity with and its difference from other tables, and so
on. While the thinkable remains possible, feasible (such as moving furniture),
we stay in the area of the practical, applied, functional thought; only when
the thinkable enters the area of impossible, unrealizable (the table as such, an
idea, a universal), does our thinking acquire a philosophical dimension.
Now we will consider an example of the aporia of “possible–impossible”
which shows the difficulties of its analysis from the modal viewpoint. In his
Being and Time, Heidegger regards the existential “being-towards-death” as
Being to a Possibility, to such a possibility which can be understood authenti-
cally only as a possibility, non-reducible to the actuality of existence. When I
imagine death, falsely, as something given, physically realizable, it becomes a
part of my life and stops being transcendental to it, that is, to my own death.
“There exists a tendency to annihilate the possibility of the possible by making
it available to us,”1 in some kind of anticipatory actualization. This is why the
only authentic method for understanding the possibility of death as a possi-
bility is to imagine it as the impossibility of one’s own further existence and,
1 M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York and
Evanston: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 305.
therefore, the impossibility of realization of this possibility. Death as the end

of existence includes its own impossibility. “The more unveiledly this possibil-
ity gets understood, the more purely does the understanding penetrate into
it as the possibility of the impossibility [Unmöglichkeit] of any existence at all.”2
Possibility appears in its modal purity as impossibility.
In his treatise Aporias, dedicated to the analysis of the concept of “death” in
Heidegger, Derrida comes to the further conclusion that “my death” is a possi-
bility which always remains an impossibility. “The death of the other, this death
of the other in ‘me,’ is fundamentally the only death that is named in the syn-
tagma ‘my death,’ with all the consequences that one can draw from this.” The
non-access to death as such is also what Heidegger calls the impossible: “An
ultimate possibility is nothing other than the possibility of an impossibility.”3
Deconstructing “death,” Derrida, following Heidegger, shows that this concept
contains a contradiction: only the others die, and even in myself it is somebody
else who may die, whereas my own death is impossible. Moreover, if Heidegger
still accords to “death” the ontological status of “being-towards-death,” and
even considers this being-towards-death-as-towards-a-possibility to be a test
of the authenticity of the existence in general, Derrida stresses the impossibil-
ity of death, since the sign “death” lacks any ontological signified.
Similarly, in his writings of 1990s, Derrida deconstructs some other con-
cepts, seemingly based on empirical experience: “gift,” “testimony,” and so on:
For finally, if the gift is another name of the impossible, we still think it,
we name it, we desire it. We intend it. And this even if or because or to the
extent that we never encounter it, we never know it, we never verify it, we
never experience it in its present existence or its phenomenon.
And further he generalizes:
Death, as the possibility of the impossible as such, is a figure of the aporia

in which ‘death’ (78) and death can replace – and this is metonymy that
carries the name beyond the name and beyond the name of name – all
that is also possible as impossible, if there is such a thing: love, the gift,
the other, testimony, and so forth.4
2 Ibid., p. 307.
3 J. Derrida, Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 76–7.
4 Derrida, Aporias, pp. 78–9.
A question arises, to which extent this analysis of “being-towards-death” and

“my death” by Heidegger and Derrida is specific to the concept of “death.”
Could it be that it represents an aporia intrinsic to the category of the p
ossible
itself? Even though Derrida analyzes very thoroughly the specific character-
istics of each of the deconstructed concepts, it seems that he does not distin-
guish b etween two completely different aporias: the unique aporia of death
and the aporia of any general concept as an aporia of “possible–impossible.”
Moreover, in his final formulations of all aporias – gift, death, and so on – he
disregards the specific character of these concepts and formulates the gen-
eral aporia of “possible–impossible” without thematizing its specific modal
character.
We will try here to draw a distinction between the concrete aporia of the
concept of “death” and the modal aporia of all the concepts in general. The
aporia of death as specific to this concept was most concisely formulated by
Epicurus:
Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that,
when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It
is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is
not and the dead exist no longer.5
In other words: it is either me or death. In this description modal categories are

absent; rather, logical disjunction (“either–or”) is used. In fact, both Heidegger
and Derrida analyze in detail precisely this aporia of death, but do so in terms
of another, more general, modal aporia which they do not analyze separately.
As regards the modal aporia of “possible–impossible” itself, it can be formu-
lated not only about death or gift, but also about any general concept whose
content is thinkable and thus possible – and unrealizable and thus impossible.
“Love,” “beauty,” “fate,” and even such concrete concepts as “red” or “loud,” “ta-
ble” or “tree,” carry in them the same aporia of “possible–impossible” as “death”
in Heidegger’s and Derrida’s analysis. Many objects can be red, but “red” as such,
by itself, cannot exist. All people can die, but death as such in my experience
is impossible. Each general concept, whatever its content (death, gift, beauty),
contains an aporia which can be formulated as “impossibility of the possible.”
Incidentally, the “possibility of the impossible” about which Derrida speaks
(“Death – a possibility of the impossible as such – is a figure of aporia”) is not
necessarily an aporia. Here we must distinguish between two formulations: “it
is possible that something is impossible” and “something is possible which is
5 Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html.

impossible.” The first one is a banal tautology, whereas the second is an aporia.
It is possible that many events, such as, for example, the transfer of Jupiter to
the orbit of Saturn, are impossible. “My death” belongs to such modally empty
“possible impossibilities,” while death, the possibility of which is corroborated
by my experience, always is related to someone else. The possible and the im-
possible here are distributed according to different aspects or, more exactly,
different faces of death, and this is why modal aporia here does not appear
(that which is possible in the third person is impossible in the first one).
An aporia appears only in the case in which that which is possible is impos-
sible precisely because of its modal status of the possible. Such an aporia is
contained in all that is thinkable and can be resolved only through thinking itself.
In the same sense, in which Zeno’s famous aporia “Achilles will never catch up
to the tortoise” is solved through admitting the continuity of movement, the
aporia “the thinkable cannot be realized” is solved through admitting the con-
tinuity of thinking which connects the potentially thinkable with the actual
thinker.
One of the first who expressed this integral mode of thinking, connecting
the possible with the impossible, was Goethe: “To live in the idea means to
treat the impossible as if it were possible.”6 Since “life in the idea,” that is think-
ing, connects the possible with the impossible, this category is just as synthetic
as the category of becoming, which connects the existing with the non-existing.
It is senseless to ask whether that which is coming into being exists, because
the non-existing becomes existing, and vice versa. Both belong to the actual
mode. Similarly, it is senseless to ask whether that which is in the process of
thinking is possible or impossible. It is possible since it is thought and impos-
sible because it is “only” thought. Further, while describing the possibilistic
mode of thinking we will tacitly suppose that it includes both the possible and
the impossible.
It is precisely thinking that has this characteristic of connecting the possible
with the impossible. In nature there is no such possibility that would at the
same time include the impossibility. Possibilities in nature are connected to
the necessity and in the process of realization become actual. It was precisely
upon observing nature that Aristotle formed his modal concept, according to
which the actual precedes the potential: “before the seed there is a man, – not
the man produced from the seed, but another from whom the seed comes.”7
6 J.W. Goethe, Sprüche in Prosa: Maximen und Reflexionen, https://books.google.com/books?id

=9UIkAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA155&lpg=PA155&dq.
7 Aristotle, Methaphysics, book 12, Ch. 7, 1073a, The Basic Works of Aristotle, p. 881. This concep-
tion is analyzed in Part 1, Chapter 3 of this volume.
Such an interpretation of potential deprives it of all which is strictly poten-

tial and which could not become actual in the process of coming into being.
As a modern researcher states, “the traditional scholastic discussion about the
‘chicken and the egg’ would be definitely solved by Aristotle in favor of the
‘chicken’.”8
The egg does not contain anything which would not already be in the chick-
en, whereas in the chicken there is something which the egg lacks: the very
capacity to be actual, not only possible.
Indeed, the possibility in the natural world does not contain anything that
could not also be contained in reality. A seed is a potential tree, but it can give
(or not give) birth to only this tree and nothing else. A seed is destined to be-
come a tree; this destiny is already contained in it as its future. Of course, a
seed may fall on a stone and fail to grow, but this possibility is not within the
seed itself but in a concatenation of external circumstances, such as the direc-
tion of the wind. The seed itself, however, necessarily contains the future tree.
This is why it is far from sufficient to analyze the possible only in its inter-
relation with reality. The area in which the mode of the possible is most clearly
delineated in its specifics is thinking in its relation to language.
8 A.V. Lebedev, Akt i potentsiia (Act and Potency), Filosofskiy Entsiklopedicheskii slovar (Mos-
cow: Sovetstkaia entsiklopediia, 1989), p. 19.
Chapter 10
Language, Thinking, and Signifiability
Ferdinand de Saussure formulated the well-known postulate that the signifier

and the signified are connected arbitrarily in language. Between the word table
and the object, so called, there is no identity or even similarity. This arbitrari-
ness of sign can be understood as the possibilistic aspect of meaning. The dis-
tance between the signifier and the signified is the space of possibilities. The
word table signifies something that could be signified differently, which is the
case in other languages. In Russian the words slovo (word) and uslovie (con-
dition) are of the same root: each word is a conditional “as if” in relation to
what is said. To identify the signified with its signifier presupposes a violence
over language. Such linguistic fetishism is characteristic of totalitarian regimes
which regard the signified and the signifier as one identity. Words become in-
cantations aimed at manipulating things rather than offering one of their pos-
sible descriptions. This regime can be called semiocracy (semiokratiia) – the
absolutist reign of signs allegedly indistinguishable from the signified reality.
The struggle against semiocracy is a way to demonstrate the conditional and
possiblist mode of signification.
Each word has a broad range of probabilities regarding its relationship with
the signifieds. The direct meaning of the word indicates its most probable sig-
nifications; a figurative idiomatic meaning indicates less probable ones; a po-
etic metaphor even less probable. For example, eyes could refer to stars and a
gunshot can signify a dawn. In Osip Mandelstam’s expression, “a living word
does not signify an object but freely chooses, as if selecting a home, a certain
significant object, thingness, a dear body. A word wanders freely around a
thing like a soul around an abandoned but still unforgotten body.”1
But the point is not only in the liberating, possibilistic relationship of a word
and a thing – it is essential that the word itself is the potency of a thing, while
the thing is the actualization of this potency. Alexei Losev in his Philosophy of
the Name understands the name as the “semantic seed of a thing,” as the “intel-
ligent energy” of a thing in its potential state. When names become actualized,
they shape the being; they “plant and decorate the dead and gloomy deserts”
of an unnamed substance.
1 O. Mandelstam, “Slovo i kul’tura” (“Word and Culture”), in Osip Mandelstam (ed.), Sobr. soch
v 3 tt., t. 2 (New York: Mezdunarodnoe literaturnoe sodruzhestvo, 1971), p. 227.

Language, Thinking, and Signifiability 99
The name of a thing is the semantic germ of a thing, actively forcing things
to emerge and grow … The name is a great force and a non-decreasing en-
ergy, but it is a force in possibility and energy in potency.2
The thing itself arises from an indifferent substance, takes shape and boun
daries through the word. For example, there is no such thing as a stone indepen
dent of the word and the concept of “stone,” since nowhere in nature is there
a sign of the boundary between solid rock formation and the soil on which it
lies. We distinguish a stone as a certain individual thing on the grounds that
the word “stone” differs from the words “soil” or “earth.” The word “stone” does
not simply refer to an existing stone, but creates the very possibility of a stone
as something different from land, rock, grass, sand, and so on. The thing itself
(veshch), according to its etymology, is the “message” (vest’); that is, it absorbs
that semantic form, that distinctive feature which is set up by word.
Language and speech are the mediators between the potentiality of think-
ing and the actuality of things that can be presented in the sequence thinking–
language–speech–thing. For example, the idea of beauty is a pure potentiality,
the capacity of many things to be beautiful. Contrary to the philosophical doc-
trine of realism, this capacity or quality cannot be actualized, as such, in any
one real object. The words “beauty” and “beautiful,” as they exist in language,
mark the first step in the actualization of this idea. When used in speech, these
words further actualize the idea of beauty by relating it to certain specific phe-
nomena: “beautiful face,” “beautiful dress,” “beautiful painting.” Finally, the
propensity of being beautiful becomes fully actualized in things as the beauty
of this face or this painting. Language and speech serve as mediators between
potentiality of ideas or universals and actuality of singular objects.
In this order of transition from potentialities to actualities, philosophy takes
one of the first steps over the border between ideas and language. Distinct
from the artistic use of words in fiction and poetry, philosophy deals with words
on the level of language, not speech; with pure meanings or, more precisely, sig-
nifying potencies of words. In this respect, a philosopher is similar to a lexi-
cographer who gathers and compiles a variety of word usages in the form of
a dictionary. The task of the lexicographer is not to use a word in any specific
way but to describe its possible usages. Philosophical discourse, in its distinc-
tion from a novel or a poem, is deployed on the dictionary level of semantic
potencies, not specific utterances.
A novelist writes: “Herman has gone mad” or “Lizaveta has married” (from
Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades”), whereas a philosopher discusses: What is mind
2 A.F. Losev, Being. Name. Cosmos (Moscow: Mysl’, 1993), pp. 832–3.
and madness? Where is the boundary between them? What does it mean to
marry? What is male and female and their union? The object of philosophy is
the thinkability of these concepts and the signifiability of these words. Words
in philosophy are marked by their greatest potentiality. They are not incor-
porated in the images of things, in life events and occurrences, where their
meanings would be actualized, visualized, and exemplified in the context of a
specific speech act. Words in philosophy do not depict or represent anything,
but they suggest infinite thinkability.
This possibilistic approach to the paradigm “thinking–language–speech–
thing” challenges the still dominant post-structuralist methods that focus only
on the two middle elements of this chain, almost excluding its polar elements.
In post-structuralism, both thinking and reality are presented as “metaphysi-
cal” projections of language. While fighting logocentrism, post-structuralism
reproduces its main assumptions in its own theoretical cult of linguistic signs.
Derridian deconstruction, as is well known, reveals in texts much more
fuzzy, indeterminate meanings than more pointed and discrete structural
analysis allows. Classical deconstruction ascetically limits itself to the interior
of the text, without transcending the territory of its internal paradoxes and se-
mantic discrepancies. In this sense, deconstruction is a theoretical flatland: its
inhabitants can observe some abnormalities occurring on the surface of their
land but cannot understand them because the third dimension – from where
these objects came and to where they may disappear – remains beyond their
reach. To observe inconsistencies and self-contradictions within certain texts
is a necessary, but only preliminary, step of analysis. The next step would lead
to the perception of those three-dimensional objects of thinking that cross the
plane of language and leave their enigmatic traces upon it. Each disruption,
each inconsistency within the text points to a new possibility of thinking that
makes words oscillate and vibrate in their meaning. Thinking relates to words
as a potentiality relates to actualization. If a word suddenly reveals its polyse-
mic, antinomic, oxymoronic, paradoxical character, this is because the word
is immersed and dissolved in the flow of thinking. It loses its self-identity and
plays with meanings as thought plays with words.
As Russian mathematician and philosopher Vasily Nalimov has noted, “we
need to assess the extent to which words are fuzzy in order to move from the
analysis of language to the study of thinking.”3 Thinking as the domain of
pure potentiality infinitely dissolves, modifies, and multiplies the meaning of
3 Vasily Nalimov, Veroiatnostnaia model’ yazyka. O sootnoshenii estestvennykh i iskusstvennykh

iazykov (The Probabilistic Model of Language. On the Relationship between Natural and Artifi-
cial Languages), 2nd edn (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), p. 273.
words, until they become semantically foreign to themselves. This foreignness

– the shift from direct to figurative meaning – is what thinking introduces into
language. Post-structuralism, however, avoids the sphere of thinking and think-
ability, focusing exclusively on language as an actualized form of thinking. In
this sense, post-structuralism echoes Marxism and even Stalin’s assertion that
thought does not exist outside language.
One can “dialectically” object to this by saying that language does not ex-
ist outside thinking either. This gives a special importance to Vasily Nalimov’s
“probabilistic” model of language. Nalimov assumes that language is essen-
tially discrete, dividable into particles, atoms, molecules, such as words, sen-
tences, texts, whereas thinking is continuous, like a wave.
We can never assert that it is impossible to invent one more phrase that
could expose the meaning of the given word differently than it was done
before. It is in this, and only in this sense, that we can speak about the
continuous character of thinking, if we proceed from the semantic analy-
sis of language. The semantic field of words is infinitely divisible. Though
logical semantics needs the idea of the atoms of meaning, on a psycho-
logical plane, it is nothing but an illusion.4
The internal contradiction of post-structuralism is explained by the fact that

it shares with structuralism the illusionary idea of the atoms of meaning, of
semantically identical language units, while at the same time it moves be-
yond structuralism by demonstrating that such atomic structure is an illusion.
Post-structuralism attempts to move beyond structuralism in its critique of
linguistic atomism, but this would suggest the next theoretical move toward
the critique of linguacentrism which is so characteristic of post-structuralism
itself. One cannot transcend the atomic structure of language while operating
only on the level of language. Thus, post-structuralism brings us, through its
criticism of structuralism, close to that fuzzy, continuous character of thinking
that blurs or liquefies the solid particles of language and possibilizes words’
meanings which cannot be exhausted by any dictionary definitions.
We may suggest the term “to infine” to indicate this capacity of thinking
to give infinitely diverse meanings to the same language units. If a dictionary
defines the meaning of words, then thinking infines them, suggesting more and
4 Ibid., p. 217. It would be interesting to trace the connection between Nalimov’s dichotomy
of continuous thinking and discrete language and the concept of A.N. Whitehead about the
continuous nature of the potential that forms an “extensive continuum,” in contrast to the
discontinuous nature of actual events.
more definitions that are never ending. We indicated above that philosophy op-
erates on the level of dictionaries, not speech acts. But what makes philosophy
different from dictionaries is that it offers infinitions rather than definitions
of those concepts and terms that humans believe to be the most important
in their dictionaries. Philosophy is a never-ending enterprise in defining such
terms as truth, beauty, justice, knowledge, spirit, matter, and others.
The entire corpus of Western philosophical texts, for example, presents a
series of infinitions for such terms: “idea,” “matter,” “form,” “unity,” “identity,”
“contradiction,” “dialectics,” that were first defined by Plato and Aristotle but
then infinitely redefined by their successors. Infinition is the liquid form of
definition, always transgressing the borders of the “said,” in order to resay it
again and again. Examples of infinitions can be found in both Eastern and
Western traditions: such as in Lao Tsu’s infinition of “Tao” or Dionysius the
Areopagite’s infinition of the first cause of everything. “Tao (The Way) that can
be spoken of is not the Constant Tao. The name that can be named is not a
Constant Name” – this beginning of Tao Te Ching is an instance of infinition.
One of the most recent examples would be Derrida’s infinition of deconstruc-
tion. But these infinitions that occur within the work of a single thinker are
only small mirrors of those intertextual infinitions that connect many thinkers
as they develop multiple variations of the same topic. For example, infinition
of truth can be found in the megatext comprising the works of Plato, Aristotle,
Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. It is precisely because philosophy
is the field of thinking in its potentiality that the same linguistic units, words,
phrases, and sentences are subject to such diverse and mutually exclusive
modes of interpretation.
Among the favorite objects of deconstruction are aporias, those self-con-
tradictory propositions that are created by the presence of evidence both for
and against their truthfulness. The very term “contradiction” indicates the rela-
tionship between various “dictions,” or units of language. Such aporias cannot
be solved within language because they are signs of an extralingual, or trans-
lingual dynamics of thinking. According to Nalimov’s profound remark, “Con-
tradictions arise because words are ascribed to rigid meanings. These crude
contradictions will immediately disappear as soon as we will employ the prob-
abilistic model of language.”5 Deconstruction proceeds from the rigid mean-
ings of words in order to question and undermine them. The next step would
be to approach the polysemy of words constructively as the evidence of the on-
going process of the thinking. By deconstructing language, post-structuralism
exposes a realm of new theoretical significance – the constructiveness of t hinking,
5 Ibid., pp. 97–8.

which plays with language and potentiates its infinite meanings. Thus, post-
structuralism “from the opposite” leads us to possibilism.
This “line of flight” from language, through the zone of its fuzziness, leads us
not only beyond deconstruction but beyond philosophical criticism in general.
It is not sufficient to understand, as in a deconstructive procedure, a philo-
sophical term as a metaphor, as a possibility for a paraphrase, for a different
formulation. These possibilities can be actively used for the creation of alter-
native terms, alternative conceptual systems, alternative philosophies that
would constantly paraphrase and “paralogize” (J-F. Lyotard’s term) their own
foundational principles. In Nalimov’s words, “Metaphors can be set up only
constructively – by new phrases that would reflect a new life situation or a new
direction of thought. This is how language is enriched: it reveals something
that it has already potentially contained.”6 Thinking is contained in language
as its potentiality that ignites the sequence of actualizations: thinking actu-
alized in language, language in speech, speech in actions, actions in things.
Each sequential actualization reveals its own deficiency, a resource of unreal-
ized possibilities and alternatives, the play of potencies that impart fuzzy, and
even contradictory, character to all forms of actualization. Any thought can be
expressed in various sets of linguistic units; every set of words can be actual-
ized in various speech acts; every speech act can be realized in various modes
of action. In particular, this explains why the same philosophical utterances
and prescriptions have led to very different and even opposite modes of their
practical implementation (the fate of Marxism and its multiple offshoots is an
example). Every set of signs and values serves as a paradigm, which immedi-
ately turns into a variety of operational units at the next level of actualization.
Each actualization of thinking in a word is simultaneously the possibilization of
the word itself, that is the multiplication and blurring of its meaning.
The written sign, gramma, acquires a special weight in post-structuralism.
It would be interesting to trace how the process started by the Kantian anthro-
pologization of a thinking subject moved subsequently through the stages of
historical, political, biological, psychoanalytical, and linguistical specification
of this subject, and was completed in the post-structural cult of “homo scriptor.”
The status of pure reason or universal mind was gradually relegated to the
linguistic mind, the mind possessed by linguistic apriorisms, by grammatical
preconditions. The last stage in this progression is marked by the post-struc-
turalist absolutism of writing as a precondition of all other forms of human
activity. Such is the condition of a theoretician who produces written signs and
therefore is doomed to project the properties of writing on everything that he
6 Ibid., p. 218.
or she is writing about. Great religious teachings and philosophical systems are
characterized as “narratives,” in terms of genre, style, story, and rhetorics; ethi-
cal problems are reduced to the types of discourses, or the relationship between
speakers and their utterances. Writing as the method of professional activity
is absolutized as its own universal subject matter. With post-structuralism, the
means of theoretical discourse became the message of theory itself. For an ac-
tor, the entire world is a stage; similarly, for a theoretician, who doesn’t produce
anything except writing, the entire world is a text. This grammatocentricism
has proven to be exceptionally convenient for the humanistic scholars and
other representatives of academic professions because their activity of writ-
ing was converted into the measure of all things, a method for understanding
everything that is outside writing. Post-structuralism is an intellectual dictator-
ship of writing scholars, the strategic textualization of everything.
This limitation of post-structuralist writing by the framework of writing
itself explains its success, on the one hand, among all writing professionals;
on the other hand, it reveals its main conceptual weakness. The strength and
intensity of language can be truly assessed only in its capacity to transgress its
own borders in two opposite directions: reaching out to thinking as the realm
of the extralingual potency of words, and reaching out to things and actions as
extralingual actualizations of utterances.
Energy of discourse is revealed in the disembodiment of its own linguistic
identity and in its capacity to represent ideas and things outside discourse.
Post-structuralism ignores this great self-forgetfulness of words in their aspi-
ration toward the “other,” the world of ideas, concepts, and material objects.
While exposing heterogeneity in the texts of major thinkers, the classics of
literature and philosophy, post-structuralism itself produces homogeneous,
“monotonously variegated” texts in which discourse is built in accordance
with theory of itself. Skeptical in relation to everything that is outside the text,
such discourses are devoid of both terminological precision and metaphori-
cal audacity, because the play of actualization–potentiation does not dare to
transgress the intermediary zone where words exists in themselves and for
themselves.
Of course philosophy cannot avoid using language, but it operates on a
transverbal level where language acts as a form of thinking. In most of its every
day applications, language deals with actions and things as lower modes of
potentiality than language itself. In their practical usage, words are related to
the objects they are describing or to actions they are prescribing. This narrows
their meaning to the scope of their pragmatic function. Through philosophy,
language finds itself rerooted in the potentiality of thinking. Philosophy is an
ecology of language, the protection of its pure conditionality from reification
in its functional monosemic usages.
By locating philosophy in the space of maximum tension between thinking

and language we avoid both realistic and nominalistic temptations of old and
new metaphysics. Philosophy can be reduced neither to the realm of things, as
pre-Kantian dogmaticism would allow, nor to the realm of signifiers, “the lan-
guage itself,” as post-structuralism would insist. Philosophy is the realm of the
thinkable, and therefore philosophical language is the realm of the signifiable
which introduces possibilist dimensions in the relationship between signifiers
and signifieds, “language” and “reality.” The signifiable (znachimoe), or seman-
tically valuable, is the mode of possibility, specific for philosophical discipline.
Philosophy creates new thinkables and signifiables just as the economy cre-
ates new valuables. Finally, the relevance of a certain philosophical method
is defined by its creative potential, the intensity of meaning formation, that is
by the measure of signifiability which, in its turn, is defined by the intensity of
transverbal aspirations of philosophical discourse.
Signifiability (znachimost’) should not be confounded with signification
(oznachivanie) or meaning (znachenie). Signification is the relation of the sig-
nifier to the signified, whereas signifiability is only a possibility of significance,
more precisely a possibility of different meanings. Signifiability is a domain of
the thinkable inside the sign, and philosophical thinking greatly extends this
domain, giving all its signs the greatest signifiability. We read, for instance, in
Hegel: “This last shape of Spirit – the Spirit which at the same time gives its
complete and true content in the form of the Self.”7 Or in Nietzsche: “To live –
is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature?”8 We feel the
extreme signifiability of these words (“spirit,” “live”), whose potentiality cannot
be actualized in any signified.
In philosophy the signifiability of language, its potentiality, appears in the
purest form. In a literary text the words “spirit” or “live” refer to some imaginary
characters and concrete events happening in the plot. Theological discourse
uses the word “spirit” in a specifically referential sense, denoting by it the spirit
which was bestowed by the Lord onto the people of Israel, or the Spirit of Con-
solation which is sent to the world by Jesus Christ. Precisely this historic and
textual concreteness of theological discourse constitutes the basis of its con-
vincing power. On the other hand, in Hegelian or Nietzschean use the words
“spirit” and “live” are not reduced to any concrete meaning or literary context;
they do not characterize any imaginary or historic personages. They are simply
significant, infinitely significant, as a pure potentiality of all meanings which
can be ascribed to them. “Thus the spirit is a spirit knowing itself” refers to the
7 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit §798, http://dbanach.com/archive/mickelsen/hegel@20

glossary.html.
8 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Ch. 1, 9.
spirit in general, to everything which can be spirit in a system of freely chosen

philosophical definitions.
Just as the significance of a literary text, the significance of a philosophical
discourse cannot be reduced to concrete information. The literary text can be
paraphrased, but philosophy in its non-informativeness approaches lyrics: it
is “silent” outside the limits of its own language. Signifiability as potentiality
which surpasses its actualization in words can be perceived as the profundity
of silence. As V.V. Bibikhin has noted, “the signifiability of a word is not in-
formation; it is close to significant silence.”9 However, whereas in lyrics the
signifiability of a word is put into the context of a concrete emotion speak-
ing from a definite point in time, from “now,” in philosophy the word sounds
from “always” and its signifiability is not limited to a reference to a concrete
individual, a lyric “I,” manifesting itself in a definite moment in time.
The signifiability of a philosophical word is such that it cannot be reduced
to one meaning and, therefore, cannot change its sign – which is presupposed
by paraphrase. Paraphrase (pere-skaz) (in prose) and allegory (ino-skazanie)
(in poetry) are means of ascribing to a given meaning a different sign, or to a
given sign a different meaning. Philosophy, however, cannot be rendered in
the form of a paraphrase or an allegory. Signifiability embraces all actual and
potential meanings of a given sign and thus can neither change its own sign,
nor give it a different meaning. Semantically, a philosophical word is broader
not only than a scientific term, but also than a literary metaphor: it is not mono-
semantic or allegoric, but omni-semantic.
It is precisely the degree of signifiability which distinguishes philosophi-
cal discourse from any other type of text. This signifiability does not pass into
the plan of meanings from which certain rules of conduct, precepts, instruc-
tions, and recommendations follow (which is characteristic for a religious dis-
course). Philosophical text is meaningful, but we cannot utilize its meaning,
cannot embody it in action, or ascribe it to any concrete person or event. Its
signifiability has a self-valuable character: the word does not serve as a symbol,
does not direct from lower meanings to higher ones, does not contrapose a
direct meaning to an indirect one, as happens in religious and literary texts.
Potentiality of philosophical discourse is most clearly seen in aphorism. The
same thinkable object can be denoted as subject and object, as the internal
and the external; this gives rise to aphorisms containing a certain paradoxical
statement about the object. For example, a famous aphorism of the ancient
Greek lawmaker Solon, “Before commanding, learn to obey,” contains two op-
posite signs attached to the same individual. He who wants to become a sub-
9 V.V. Bibikhin, Iazyk filosofii (The Language of Philosophy) (Moscow: Progress, 1993), p. 32.
ject of power must also become its object. In the same vein, the well-known
aphorism of Hegel, expressing the conclusion of his system, “All the rational is
real, all the real is rational,” is built upon the reversibility of the subject and the
predicate. The “rationality,” which is the subject of the first statement, becomes
the predicate in the second one, whereas the “reality,” which is the predicate
of the first statement, becomes the subject in the second one. Aphorism is the
extreme concentration of signifiability in one statement, when the signified
changes its signs, being transformed from the subject into the object, or from
the subject into the predicate, and back. This explains why, in fact, an aphorism
does not signify anything, but rather possesses the highest form of signifiabil-
ity, as it demonstrates the very capacity of a sign to acquire opposite signifieds.
Aphorism is a pure potentiality of meaning – the maximum of signifiability in
the minimum of signifiers.
Chapter 11
Universals as Potentials: Conceptualism
Having delineated in the previous chapter the potentiality of thinking in its

relation to language, let us now come back to the issue of nominalism and
realism as the main philosophical systems that even in our time continue to
oppose each other in such forms as
“post-structuralism” – “rationalism”
“deconstruction” – “metaphysics”
“grammar-centrism” – “logo-centrism”
“postmodern” – “enlightenment.”
What is the place of philosophy in these debates?

It is well known that philosophy gravitates towards universals; that is, con-
cepts of the biggest range of meaning, such as “good,” “beauty,” “spirit,” “will,”
“movement,” “quality,” “substance,” “humaneness,” “freedom,” “intellect,”
“equivalence,” “eternity.” It was precisely in connection with universals that the
biggest discussion in philosophy took place. Do these universal entities exist
in reality (realism) or do they belong only to the realm of words (nominal-
ism)? Does beauty exist as such, or is it only the word “beauty”? This question
gave rise to perennial debates between different philosophical systems. What
is philosophy? Is it but a language, used in a special way, or is it cognitive and
transformational work with entities belonging to the existent universe?
Let us remind the reader that the universal is a common characteristic
shared by all the individual objects of a certain kind. For example, all horses,
independently of their gender, color, or breed, possess the attribute of “horse-
ness.” The question is, what is this “horseness,” and where and in what does it
exist? Can it be imagined as a “horse in general,” the “idea of a horse” devoid of
those concrete characteristics which distinguish real horses from one another?
From the nominalistic point of view, universals are only words which we
apply to different objects based on their similarity, for example, similarity of
different horses (“horseness”) or similarity of all beautiful things (“beauty”).
However, as shown by Bertrand Russell, similarity on the basis of some char-
acteristic presupposes the existence of this characteristic; that is, the existence
of a universal. If white things are similar according to their color, it means that
this color is intrinsic to these things. Russell thought that, unlike concrete ob-
jects, universals do not exist but

Universals as Potentials: Conceptualism 109
have being, where ‘being’ is opposed to ‘existence’ as being timeless …

The world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the math-
ematician, the logician, the builder of metaphysical systems, and all who
love perfection more than life. The world of existence is fleeting, vague,
without sharp boundaries, without any clear plan or arrangement, but it
contains all thoughts and feelings, all the data of sense, and all physical
objects1
The first and the greatest realist, Plato, postulated for the universals a special
domain – a “world of ideas,” “truly existing,” even though in speaking about this
world, so different from the real one, it would be more appropriate to use the
mode of the possible. Unlike “concrete” horses, a “horse in general” is related
to the sphere of the thinkable as a potential which is actualized in different
ways in black, white, brown, and other types of horse. The “horse in general”
does not exist in the same modal sense as does this individual horse – Black
Bess, Bucephalus, or Rocinante; it exists only as a possibility for the multitude
of the living beings that have the common characteristics of a horse. The im-
portant point here is not only the difference of the general and the individual,
but also the fact that the general exists differently from the individual; to wit,
as the potential to be a horse, which is actualized in the multitude of different
horses.
If a “horse in general” could actually exist, what would it look like? Would
it be black or while, young or old, a mare or a stud? Indeed, not a single horse
can be devoid of concrete characteristics – color, age, gender. Consequently, a
“horse in general,” a Platonic idea of horse, is not a fact, not an actually exist-
ing entity, but a capacity or a potential “to be a horse.” Similarly, “grayness”
or “brownness” do not exist as such, as some abstract entities, but represent
“potentials” of concrete objects, for example horses – a potential to be gray or
brown.
What philosophy calls universals – and philosophy is itself a science of
universals – are not actual objects, individuals, “this” or “that,” but characteris-
tics, capacities, “propensities,” according to Popper, which are realized in con-
crete objects but are not themselves any concrete objects. Precisely that, which
Nicholas of Cusa considers “a possibility in itself,” constitutes the principal
object of philosophical cognition: “The loftiest level of contemplative reflec-
tion is Possibility itself, the Possibility of all possibility, without which nothing
1 B. Russell, The World of Universals. Universals and Particulars: Readings in Ontology, ed. M.J.
Loux (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), p. 31.
whatsoever can possibly be contemplated.”2 It is these various “mays,” ener-

gies, and potentials, that constitute the world of so-called universals.
The term “universal” distorts somewhat the modal nature of the potential,
representing it as a noun, an object, whereas it should be rather represented as
a modal predicate or a category of state: “to be able,” “to be able to be,” “it is pos-
sible.” Zoology, history of civilization, aesthetics, and other disciplines study
horses, their physiology, their role in transport, sport, military, their images in
the arts – but only philosophy analyzes “horseness” as a state and a capacity
“to be a horse” as a “potential,” rather than horses as real beings. Universals are
potentials. More exactly, a “universal” is a non-modal look at a potential, as if it
were a certain entity that presupposes its own objective existence.
Let us remind the reader that in the Middle Ages philosophy used to give yet
another, “intermediate” answer, besides realism and nominalism, to the ques-
tion of universals: universals do not belong to either language or reality, but to
thinking itself, to conceptual activity. This position, expressed in particular by
Abelard and later by Locke, Kant, and John Stuart Mill, is usually referred to
as conceptualism: it is precisely in the conceptual, thinkable space where the
domain of universals belongs.
It is important to notice that even Aristotle took the conceptual middle in
this question; his position is usually characterized as “moderate,” “mild” real-
ism.3 According to Aristotle, universals exist only in thinking, whereas in real-
ity they show themselves only potentially. Mortimer Adler in his commentary
to Aristotle notes that “the universal exists potentially, not actually, whenever
a number of individuals have something in common. …Aristotle’s doctrine
that the universal exists potentially in individual things and actually in the
abstract concepts of the mind, later comes to be called ‘moderate realism.’”4
In other words, a universal is actual thinkability and potential existence. Uni-
versals, such as “beauty” or “horseness,” are not actually present in things, but
are composed of a potential of things which is realized only in thinking. On
2 Nicholas of Cusa, Opera Omnia, vol. 12, p. 1431.

3 In general, the term “conceptualism” is less popular than its extreme alternatives, “nominal-
ism” and “realism,” even though in the context of contemporary philosophy it deserves to be
revived in connection to the birth of artistic “conceptualism,” which adopts also philosophi-
cal and theoretical functions. See M. Epstein, “The Phoenix of Philosophy: On the Mean-
ing and Significance of Contempory Russian Thought,” in Symposion: A Journal of Russian
Thought (Los Angeles, CA: Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1996), vol. 1, pp. 35–74 (Chapters “Conceptual-
ism” and “Conceptualism vs. Metaphysical Radicalism”).
4 Great Books of the Western World, editor-in-chief M.J. Adler, The Synopticon, 1990, vol. 2,
p. 765. Such realism is called “moderate” because the actual existence of universals is as-
cribed not to reality itself, but to the sphere of “mental concepts,” which in essence is equiva-
lent to conceptualism.
the contrary, individuals – concrete things – are actually present in reality and,
potentially, in thinking.
The philosophy of romanticism, which often turned to such “double” con-
cepts as “name of names” or “flower of flowers,” made a great contribution
to understanding universals as potentials. “Flower of flowers” is a thinkable
potential of flowerness, common to all flowers, rather than one more flower,
added to the multitude of already existing ones (even though such Platonic
“hypostatization” of an idea became a sort of independent object in Goethe’s
natural scientific morphology as the “pre-phenomenon” of all the plants, a cer-
tain pre- or superplant). The process of universalization, that is the recreation
of a single universal from many objects of the same name, was known among
romantics as “potentiation.” According to Novalis, “each individual consisting
of individuals is an individual in second potential, or Genie. …A Genie in the
second potential is a nation.”5 A genie is a potential to be many individuals, to
combine and alternate them. If a common, natural development is the actual-
ization of some initial potentials and possibilities, art and philosophy are, on
the contrary, potentiations (potentsiatsii) of that which in reality is displayed by
nature. Potentiation is a transition from development to the “undevelopment,”
so to speak, from the physical mass of a plant to the energetic intensity of a
seed, from a multitude of different individuals to the universality of a genie
that contains them all. According to the romantics, potentiation is a process
of not only cognitive, but also ontological ascension to the highest synthesis
where all the actualities return to the state of potentials of growing degrees or
categories (of the type “individual–genie–nation”).
The connection between universals and potential can be clearly seen in
A.N. Whitehead’s philosophy, which has influenced both the methodology of
natural sciences and the process theology. Central to Whitehead’s realism is
not existence, but events. Correspondingly, universals, even though they are
named “eternal objects,” represent not the objects in the Platonic sense, but
rather possibilities which, after being realized, form the world of real events.
“Thus the metaphysical status of an eternal object is that of a possibility for
an actuality. Every actual occasion is defined as to its character by how these
possibilities are actualized for that occasion. Thus actualization is a selec-
tion among possibilities.”6 In Whitehead’s view, universals possess not only
5 Novalis, Schriften. Die Werke Friedrich vom Hardenberg, 4 vols, ed. R. Samuel and H.-J. Maehl
(Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1960–75), vol. 2, pp. 645–6, fragment no. 466–467. For more de-
tails about potentiation in German romanticism see Olga Vainshtein, Yazyk romanticheskoy
mysli. O filosofskom stile Novalisa i Fridrikha Shlegelia (Moscow: Russkiy gosudarstvennyi gu-
manitarnyi universitet, 1994), pp. 22–7.
6 A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1967), p. 159.
otentiality, but also a potential, a certain energy that is realized in objects and
p
events. Such universals as straightness, curvedness, whiteness, blackness, and
so on are actualized in an infinite number of straight or curved lines, white
and black objects. However, the whiteness or straightness in itself is not some-
thing which exists, but only something which “is able to exist” or “may exist.”7
Our concept of entities as potential constructs modally different from their
actually existing counterparts finds essential support in the works of Husserl.
Husserl considered that philosophical intuition stays in a purely potential rela-
tion to those facts of reality whose essence it describes. “The positing of the es-
sence … does not imply any positing of individual existence whatsoever; pure
essential truths do not make the slightest assertion concerning facts”8 Accord-
ing to the commentary of Schoedinger, for Husserl “Essential intuition carries
with it the possibility that other individual objects can possess the same es-
sence, but does not entail that they do in fact so possess that essence. The in-
tuition of essence carries with it no assertion concerning facts. In that sense
essential intuition entails only possibilities.”9 In other words, essences are
modally connected to existing entities and form a world of possibilities which
can be realized in concrete objects and so become actually existing. “Redness”
constitutes a purely conceptual object, a “thinkability” – an object of philo-
sophical meditation or, in Husserl’s terms, “ontological intuition.”
The conceptualistic solution to the problem of universals sets a framework
which allows philosophy to understand its own specific character. Both real-
ism and nominalism make a similar mistake when they ascribe to universals
existence either in reality or in words, because universals belong not to the
ontological sphere, but rather to an altogether different modality. The place of
universals is neither among the signifiers (language), nor among the signifieds
(reality), but rather in between, in the realm of significance, or the potential
of meaning. Such universals as beauty or good do not belong to the world of
the existing, even though in this world there are good people and beautiful
things. However, good and beauty are not just conventional signs; they cannot
be reduced to their signifiers in language. For good and beauty it is necessary
to postulate a specific area of potentials which are always partly realized and
partly stay unrealized; and the more they are realized, the more we feel their
unrealizability. Good, beauty, and other universals belong at the same time to the
7 Universals demonstrate common modal characteristics of potency (might) and possibility

before their separation into “can” and “may”; they belong to the fundamental concepts of
potentiology as a philosophical discipline (see Appendix 7).
8 Husserl, Ideas, 4, quoted in The Problem of Universals, ed. and with Introductions by Andrew
B. Schoedinger (Atlantic Highlands, N.J. and London: Humanities Press, 1992), p. 98.
9 Ibid., p. 94.
realm of the possible and the impossible, to the modality which unites them. To
understand these universals, man has to use special, reconnoitering capacities
of his mind – faith, hope, imagination – turned to the sphere of the possible–
impossible. Precisely because universals represent eternal possibilities, they can-
not be realized as such but can be infinitely thought, while remaining possibilities.
Universals can exist only as a possibility of something that is not identi-
cal to them. Things can be light, hot, beautiful only because lightness, heat,
beauty cannot exist by themselves, separately from things, but only as their
possibilities. Had lightness, heat, beauty existed per se, as actual objects, they
would not be able to be potentiated in other things as their possible properties
(characteristics) (svoistva). Iron could not be hot had heat existed as a separate
object alongside iron. Then properties could not be combined in things; that
is, things could not be at the same time light and hot, or hard and cold, just as
a single real object cannot be at the same time another real object: this table
cannot be another table, and iron cannot be wood. Properties can combine
in things precisely because they represent potentials that are not realized per
se, as objects, but only as possibilities of other objects. Belonging to different
modes creates compatibility of things and properties, as well as compatibility
of multiple properties in the same things.
…
Universals are components of the universum which contains in itself all pos-
sible worlds, including those which are actual and necessary. In this sense we
can speak about a philosophical universum in which reality is one of the compo-
nents, together with worlds of different modality. The philosophical u niversal
is an extremely wide concept precisely because it characterizes the universum
as a whole, as the totality of all worlds. In other words, it is not reducible to
actual realizations of good or beauty, but includes their infinite potential. The
realm of philosophy is not the actual, but this universum. “Philosophical real-
ity” is almost an oxymoron, for the same reason that “philosophical universal”
is almost a tautology. As already indicated, philosophical thought never can be
realized in anything, because thinking itself combines the possible with the
impossible. Philosophical ideas thereby differ from political, ethical, technical
ideas, which not only look for their realization, but actually can be realized.
The philosophical concept as an universal – its linguistic counterpart can be
termed “universeme” – can never be reduced to a scientific term. The term is al-
ways strictly monosemantic, because its meaning is defined by the signified,
that is from outside, from that reality which it is defining. This reality does
not have to be physical, perceivable reality – it can be mathematical or even
ystical. Mysticism possesses its own terminology, because the reality of the
m
other world also forms a specific plane of existence with a multitude of very
specific events. The works of Helena Blavatsky or Rudolf Steiner are full of
terms which have a purely technical meaning in occult practice and theory,
such as “arcanes,” “astral,” and “ethereal” body, “pentagram,” “ginnungagap”
(“gaping abyss”) “uchchaih-sravas” (model horse), and so on.10 There exist oc-
cult geometry, history, geography, numerology, astronomy, and physics. Even
though this occult plane of existence is transcendental to the real world, it is
described in quite actual terms, dry and unambiguously defined by the spe-
cific occult objects they are referring to. In alchemy and astrology there are no
universals, as there are no universals in chemistry and astronomy. A science
can be true or false, but every science is defined by its relation to the actually
existing (in any ontological plane), and that is why it admits the criterion of
true–false.
Unlike terms, universemes do not denote anything. They simply signify, irra-
diate significance as rays in an infinite sphere. What, for example, do such state-
ments as “existence defines consciousness,” “man is something that should be
overcome,” and “beauty will save the world” denote with their combinations of
such universals as “existence” and “consciousness,” “man” and “world,” “beauty”
and “salvation”? They do not reflect anything in the objective, referential sense.
Attempts to apply these universals to a future turn of events, to use them as a
basis of a program of aesthetic education, or to apply it in world politics are
futile and can lead only to farce or tragedy. Yet these statements are extremely
important. The idea that the world can be saved by beauty, that beauty may
cause not only aesthetic, but also religious–expiatory effects (as the very word
“save” indicates) opens a new horizon in the thinkable, creates a new possibil-
ity in the universum. Every meaningful statement is an event in the universum,
even though it does not reflect reality and, in its turn, does not have to be re-
flected in it.
Moreover, man himself is not reducible to his position in the real world. He
is more a potential than an actual being, as proclaimed already by classical
European philosophy. Let us remember the famous “Speech about the dignity
of man” by the Renaissance thinker Pico della Mirandola: God did not give
man any special place and image in the universe, but gave him the possibility
of freely choosing himself, adopting any image, and being more than any ac-
tual existence. Not only plants and animals, – considers Pico della Mirandola –
but even angels, “highest spirits,” are assigned a particular sphere of existence
10 See, for example, H.P. Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary (London, 1892), http://www
.hermetics.org/pdf/theosophy/H.P._Blavatsky_-_Theosophical_Glossary.pdf.
with which their essence coincides. Incidentally, this explains the technical
language of esoteric sciences, which, analogously to botany and zoology, study
the other worlds and their inhabitants, angels and demons in their hierarchi-
cal society, as actually existing. “But upon man, at the moment of his creation,
God bestowed seeds pregnant with all possibilities, the germs of every form
of life.”11 Such is the possibilistic nature of humanness as envisioned by the
Creator.
We have given you, Oh Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endow-

ment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form,
whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may
have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature
of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have
laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your
own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself
the lineaments of your own nature. …We have made you a creature nei-
ther of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that
you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself
in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the
lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision,
to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.
So speaks God to man at the moment of his creation.12 “You may” – this is the
modality of being human. “Who then will not look with awe upon this our
chameleon?” exclaims Pico della Mirandola.13
Indeed, man is a universal being precisely because he is a potential being;
that is, he is not reducible to any actual forms of existence and thus capable to
belong to the universum as a whole. This is why philosophy, being a possibil-
istic thinking, stands in the center of all the attempts and desires of man as a
“chameleonic” creature. Thanks to philosophy, man discovers his potential in
the world surrounding him and searches for his place in the panorama of pos-
sible worlds. Philosophy is universal thinking not only because it works with
universals, but also because it acquaints man with the life of the entire univer-
sum, puts him in touch with other possible worlds.
11 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, trans. A. Robert Caponigri
(Chicago: a Gateway Edition, 1956), p. 8, http://www.andallthat.co.uk/uploads/2/3/8/9/
2389220/pico_-_oration_on_the_dignity_of_man.pdf.
12 Ibid., pp. 7–8.
13 Ibid., p. 9.
Since universals belong to the sphere of the thinkable, only the “third” the-
ory, conceptualism, allows us to understand why it is precisely philosophy, as
opposed to poetry, politics, or science, that is attached to extremely general
concepts. Had universals belonged to the linguistic sphere, as claimed by nom-
inalists, it would then have been poetry, valuing the language per se, and its
aesthetic function, that would have gravitated towards them. However poetry
– at least, good poetry – avoids such general words as “beauty” or “good.” Rather
than universals, it prefers concrete imagery, working with metaphors or sym-
bols that include concrete, objective meaning. Had universals belonged to the
sphere of the actual, then they would have been used by science, as it studies
real facts, as well as by politics and technology, changing reality. H
owever, sci-
ence and technology, as well as politics, avoid universals and prefer concrete,
unambiguous terms or current ideas and slogans. Not nominalism or realism,
but only conceptualism–possibilism precisely defines the place of universals
between language and reality, in the space of thinkable potentials. The pure
meaning of universals, the biggest volume of their signifieds, does not allow
them to be used either as poetic metaphors or scientific terms, but only as
philosophical concepts. The fact that it was precisely philosophy that raised
the question of universals and split into different schools according to differ-
ent answers given, clearly indicates that universals exist inside philosophical
thought and define its specifics.
The extremes of realism and nominalism have been felt throughout the
entire period of the development of philosophy. Post-Kantian nominalism, as
presented in the schools of logical positivism and analytic philosophy, reduced
philosophy to the special use of language. Post-Kantian realism, as presented
in absolute idealism and dialectic materialism, forced philosophy into solving
the historic fate of the world. In fact, what was said earlier about the critic–
activist paradigm, is applicable also to the dichotomy of nominalism–realism,
where both opposite extremes at the same time presuppose and fortify each
other. New Age criticism is a development of medieval nominalism, whereas
activism can be correlated with medieval realism. Thus we can regard nomi-
nalism–realism as a general mental paradigm, trying to rid itself of its own
potentiality, cross the frontier of the thinkable and identify itself with either
linguistic signs or real objects. Nominalism and realism are two extreme varie
ties of actualism; they are similar only because they extract universals from the
possibilistic process of thinking and attempt to give them a different ontologi-
cal status – that of actual words or things.
Chapter 12
From the General to the Concrete and Universal
The teaching of nominalism–realism had grave consequences for philosophy

itself; that is, impoverishment of its language and object. Universals were iden-
tified with definite (abstract) entities in reality and definite (categorial) words
in language. The proper objects of philosophy were considered only general
categories: substance, characteristic, attribute, subject, object, mind, ideal,
truth, good, beauty, and so on.
Correspondingly, the philosophical vocabularies of the greatest thinkers
contained but a few dozen categorial terms, often repeated and, as a rule, form-
ing related pairs. “Numena” and “phenomena,” “immanent” and “transcen-
dent,” “existence” and “consciousness,” “thesis” and “antithesis,” “analysis” and
“synthesis.” The technical lexicon of a professional philosopher scarcely sur-
passes the vocabulary of Ellochka the Cannibal from The Twelve Chairs by Ilf
and Petrov; to express all her thoughts she used only about thirty words. Why,
then, does “learned” philosophy confine itself to this linguistic minimum?
The point is that universals, taken outside the limits of thinking itself, turn
out to be special, “general” objects and words, different from other objects and
words. Such general objects and words are few in number, since, by definition,
the general, departing from the particular and individual, always becomes less
numerous. When philosophy concentrates on the general, it becomes a very
specific science, for example mathematics and botany. Like botany, philosophy
has its own terms. Botany is a science about plants, while philosophy stud-
ies “general principles.” However, the number of plants in the world is bigger
than that of general principles. In this way, philosophy turned out to be a sci-
ence even more special than botany or mechanics, which have at their dis-
posal thousands of terms. Philosophy turned out to be a special science about
the general, because the general itself was understood in a specific, “exclusive”
manner, as non-individual and non-concrete. Universals were taken out of the
area of thought and objectivized as particular, special entities and words.
In fact, no universals exist outside the potentiality and universality of think-
ing itself. As far as philosophical thinking is concerned, it is universal precisely
because it has no special object or specific vocabulary. It thinks about all which
is thinkable, particular or general, stones and stars, objects of mechanics and
objects of botany. It makes use of all the words that exist in language; more-
over, it is constantly completing the language with neologisms, new thinkables
and meanings. Philosophy finds unrealized possibilities in language itself, as it

thinks about objects in the mode of the possible. While the vocabulary of bot-
any is sufficient to describe the existing plants, for the description of possible
plants, an “alternative garden,” a different, non-botanical vocabulary is needed.
Philosophy is an alternative consciousness which focuses on any object and
completes it with all the sum of its other, different, possibilities. Philosophy
is an additive thinking, which adds to a flower a certain “flowerness” as a sum
total of all the potentials of that flower. Philosophy describes flowerness as
something which makes possible the existence of that flower, as well as the
existence of other flowers, possible and impossible. It defines the place of flow-
erness in the universum in its interrelations with starness, sunness, grassness,
dewness, and insectness.
This is the peculiarity of all philosophical categories: they are not abstract,
but potential. That is why the number of philosophical categories is unlim-
ited, and there is no limit to philosophical vocabulary and neologisms. Each
thing in the universe can appear as a possibility of itself and thus as a think-
able characteristic of other things. In every speck of dust there is dustness, in
each drop dropness, in each rose roseness, in each rustle rustleness. All these
are rightful philosophical categories, just as the well-known universals, such
as “substance” and “attribute,” “truth” and “good.” While botany is studying the
actuality of the rose, philosophy concentrates on its potentiality, its thinkabil-
ity. Precisely this constitutes specifics of philosophy as non-special thought: it
has no objective limits, because its method of thinking is universal. Objects of
sciences and arts, events of everyday life – all these in their potentiality are also
objects of philosophy. Any individual object can be thought of philosophically
if taken as a sum of its possibilities, only one of which corresponds to the reality
of the given object.
In general, the question of universals, as it was traditionally approached in
philosophy, constitutes only a part of the question of the universality of philo-
sophical thinking. We can define at least four directions in which philosophy
will develop, stepping outside the limits of the sphere of universals narrowly
understood as general concepts and terms.
1. The group of universals as the most general, abstract concepts will be
widened by including in it more concrete concepts, which can be regard-
ed as fundamental for a particular system of thought or hypothesis about
the world. Separation into types and classes caused a considerable dam-
age to philosophy, while the content of an individual object was reduced
to its type, and the content of the type, to the class, and so on, from less
to more abstract. A “drop” was not able to find its way into philosophy,
because it was covered by a more general concept of “water” as one of
four elements, and this, by even more abstract categories of “substance,”
From the General to the Concrete and Universal 119
“matter.” An “apple” was covered by categories of “fruit,” “plant,” “nature,”

“life,” and so on. Only the upper, the more abstract members of these ru-
brics were considered worthy of philosophical analysis. Philosophy spoke
about “life” and “matter,” but not about an apple or a drop, which, taken
as thinkables, in their “appleness” or “dropness,” may become objects of
philosophical reflection. Literature takes apples or drops as individual
objects, uses them as story details or poetic symbols, but “dropness” or
“appleness” do not enter the sphere of art or any scientific discipline; they
belong to the sphere of the thinkables; that is, philosophical thinking.
2. Universal is a general concept or characteristic of many individuals.
However, each individual belongs to a multitude of universals, and in this
sense also possesses universality.
For example, even in such a “poor” individual object as a grain of sand
come together the universals of “hardness,” “dryness,” “discreteness (sep-
arateness),” “yellowness,” “smallness.” Each individual is a small univer-
sum, a union of universals, and the goal of philosophy appears to be not
only analysis of universals as such, but also analysis of the universality of
individuals. Specifics of philosophy are defined not by the universal as its
special object, but by universality as a property of various objects. Any in-
dividual object can be an object of philosophy – man, plant, cloud, build-
ing, grain of sand – because philosophy discovers in this individual object
its universum, the interaction of different universals.
3. Not only does an individual contain a multitude of universals, it can it-
self act as a universal, as an “ability to be the given individual,” or, more
exactly, “to have characteristics of the given individual.” For example, love
can have certain characteristics associated with the individual Plato –
idealness, inclination towards the eternal – defining Plato’s individual
style of thinking. In this case, a type of love can be named after Plato
“Platonic love.” A truly universal philosophy is not limited to general
terms and categories (“substance,” “existence,” “three-dimensionality”),
but works with the words denoting concrete objects, including proper
names, giving them the status of universals. “Platonic” or “Hegelian”
are not the only possible universals made out of proper names and ap-
plicable to many things (“Hegelian slave and master,” “Hegelian state,”
“Platonic ideal”); any proper name can be turned into a universal (or
philosophical concept) if it denotes a certain characteristic which in the
given individual is expressed more strongly than in others, and thus can
be called by his or her name. “John” or “Mary” can be name universals
and denote this special type of objects and events which show “Johnness”
or “Maryness,” that is clear individual characteristics of these concrete
eople. For example, one might think of “Maryness” in a certain type of

p
curtains, cakes, home atmosphere, manner of speech which carry impres-
sion of this given Mary’s personality. It is possible that future philosophy
will operate more with proper names, with the thinkability of individual
persons, the universality of their individual characteristics, converting
proper names into “-ness,” a special potential which is realized in differ-
ent ways also in other individuals.1
4. And finally, among individuals can be found the properly universal ones
that possess not only general characteristics of a given class, but also
characteristics of other individuals.
The very word “uni-versal” includes the concept of one, of uniqueness
(Latin unus); literally it means “around one.”2 For example, Leonardo da
Vinci is recognized as the most diversely talented person ever to have
lived and as the most universal genius of all time. In the creative work
of a given universal writer can be found potentials of different writers,
different genres and styles (such was Pushkin in relation to a number of
themes, heroes, and genres of Russian literature that can be traced to or
derived from his works). Universal does not mean abstract, leading away
from individual; rather it is the potentiality of this individual. A universal
mind, being actually one, is potentially a multitude by virtue of being in-
volved in various spheres of knowledge. The impoverishment of philoso-
phy resulted in large part from identifying the universal with the general
and abstracting from concrete objects. In fact, the universal is much or
“all,” as these properties combine in one item. We can say “a universal
writer” or “a universal genius,” meaning that the given individual is gifted
in many creative spheres; on the other hand, expressions such as “gen-
eral writer” or “general genius” make no sense. Universal means many
characteristics inherent in one person or object; it is the capacity of an
object to be potentially many things, while actually remaining one. An
individual, in its actuality different from everything else, in its potential can
have characteristics of everything else. It is the transition from abstract and
general to concrete and universal that promises the greater development of
philosophy in its third epoch. Philosophy works with universals and the
universal in the same sense in which, according to the Renaissance idea,
1 An attempt at such thinking was undertaken, in particular, by Ivan Solovyev in creating

“helenology” – a science about the personality of Helen. See Mikhail Epstein, “Ivan Soloviev’s
Reflections on Eros,” in Genders 22, a special issue; also published as Postcommunism and
the Body Politic, ed. Ellen Berry (New York and London: New York University Press, 1995), pp.
252–66.
2 Versus (Latin) is the past participle of vertere – “to turn, turn back, be turned.”
man himself is universal: in his actual existence he is different from all

other beings, from beasts and angels, whereas in his potential existence
he possesses their characteristics.
Further on we will analyze in more detail one of the trends of universalization –
expansion of the philosophical thesaurus through the inclusion of concrete
things into the domain of universals. For example, a “drop” as a universal is
not a class abstraction such as a “humid element” or “physical substance”; it
conserves the uniqueness and particularity of the given object (“a drop of
blood,” “a drop of mercury”), but exhibits “dropness” as a potential character-
istic of many things. “Dropness” in the philosophical sense is the smallest unit
of liquid, fluid state of matter, such a state of divisibility which includes both
diffusion and the possibility of fusion. “Dropness” at one and the same time
includes an idea of separateness and hints at the possibility to overcome it.
This is why it is possible to speak about the dropness of an individual in the
postmodern society or about the dropness of a sign in a linguistic system.
Let us look at two more concrete concepts which have been excluded from
traditional metaphysics – “whisper” and “rustle.” “Whisper” is a special manner
of speaking – in a low voice, barely audibly, furtively, in secret from surround-
ing people. Now let us pose a question. How was the Word by which the world
was created pronounced? (“And God said, let there be light. And there was
light.”) Was it a cry or a whisper? Does the world cry to us about its creation,
or does this proto-word, which “was with God and was God,” address us in a
whisper, so that each of us could hear it inside, as if it were meant personally,
sounding from the profundity of one’s soul? Similarly, the genetic code, speak-
ing through the face and the bodily structure of a person, comes to us not as
intertwined bands and spirals of dna, but in the delicacy of facial traits, the
elasticity of muscles, the softness of skin. The language of biological informa-
tion speaks to us in a whisper, hiding in visible and tangible forms of the body.
The physical universe also speaks to us in a whisper, as it hides its informa-
tional code, atomic and molecular structures, in the palpable forms of objects.
Isn’t the very material character of the world a merciful way to soften the hard
information codes that might otherwise shock living beings? Our universe is
constructed in such a way that its structures speak to us not in a loud voice but
in a whisper, so that each one of us might better hear his or her personal mes-
sage. Loudness would immediately deprive us of our precious solitude, of the
capacity to hear in ourselves and for ourselves. Each thing speaks in a whisper
and says something different to each of us. “Whisperness” is one of the deepest
characteristics of the universe, the most important universal on which phi-
losophy will have to ponder for a long time, relying on it to understand such
phenomena as logos and information.
“Rustleness” resides not far from whisperness; however, it is an altogether

different universal – air or wind speaking the language of leaves and grass.
A rustle is an inanimate whisper, produced not by breath and lips, but rather
by the aerial element coming into contact with soft, yielding matter. Leaves,
grass, shoots, paper, clothes, curtains – these are things that can rustle; they are
all similar by nature to the soft world of plants, they all respond to the move-
ment of air, are obedient to and harmonious with the air. Rustleness is one
of the possibilities of sound; such a sound of inanimate matter is the closest
to the human language because it is produced by air, similar to breathing, and
by the soft, humid plants, similar to lips, palate, and tongue.
Such are some universals – “dropness,” “whisperness,” “rustleness” – which
were unthinkable in traditional metaphysics. Detailed analysis of each of them
is outside the scope of this book. It is important, however, to understand that
the world of the universal is not limited to a set of general categories, that each
object can be regarded as revealing an aspect of objectness, as a particular
point of view towards the universum.
Possibly, the most interesting thing going on in modern thinking is the dis-
covery of the universality of common things, of the philosophical content of
day-to-day language. In fact, Husserl’s phenomenology has long permitted the
philosophical description of concrete things, but this was limited to the gen-
eral methodological substantiation of such descriptions and burdened with
such special terminology as “intentionality” and “reduction.” The point, how-
ever, is not to describe a concrete thing in an abstract philosophical language,
but to help philosophy learn the language of concrete things. This project was
partly realized by Heidegger in his ontology of a “bowl” and “peasant’s shoes”
(“The Thing,” The Origin of the Work of Art), by Sartre in Being and Nothingness
(Sartre elevates “stickiness” and “snow” to the rank of universals); by Gaston
Bachelard in his cycle of works dedicated to the “material imagination” (“The
Psychoanalysis of Fire” and “Water and Dreams,” among others).
Towards the end of the 20th century, art had been providing more and more
impulse for the rapprochement of philosophy to concrete things; art itself had
been “conceptualized” and precisely on these grounds became closer to philos-
ophy, in its turn charging it with the energy of the possible and the imaginary.
According to Joseph Kosuth, whose works of the late 1960s laid the foundations
of conceptualism in painting, “The twentieth century brought in a time which
could be called ‘the end of philosophy and the beginning of art.’ …Art is itself
philosophy made concrete.”3 The artist and thinker Ilya Kabakov, one of the
3 J. Kosuth, Art After Philosophy and After: Collected Writings, 1966–1990 (Cambridge and
London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991), pp. 14, 52.
founders of Russian conceptualism, places in the center of his philosophical

discourse such concrete concepts as “fly” and “rubbish.” His treatise-installation
“A Fly with Wings,” according to the author, “almost visually demonstrates the
nature of any philosophical discourse – in its basis can lie a simple, unpreten-
tious and even nugatory object, such as, for example, a common fly.”4 A “fly”
is regarded as a philosophical foundation of all foundations, playing the same
role as “idea” for Hegel or of “matter” for Marx; the whole system of related and
derived categories – political, economical, aesthetic – is built around the “fly.”
Such an elevation of a fly into the rank of an “elephant” – of universals –
discovers a conventional character of universals themselves: like algebraic
variables, they may adopt different values. It is not the common characteristic
of different numbers which is understood under “x,” but rather an empty form,
a potentiality which can be realized in any concrete number.
In this sense philosophy can be called algebra of thought – it operates with
pure meanings, such as “life” or “thought,” which mean everything and yet de-
note nothing concrete. The art critic and philosopher Boris Groys terms such
words-universals “jokers,” because, just as the corresponding playing card, they
can assume any values. Unlike “actual” terms-concepts of science or “slogans-
judgments” of ideology, philosophical concepts – “jokers” – have a vacuous,
purely potential form of meaning. According to Groys,
Kabakov converts the word ‘fly’ into such a word-joker that can poten-
tially be applied to anything … In this it is possible to see irony concern-
ing the “high” concepts of philosophy which, in essence, are not different
from a fly. At the same time, in the capacity of an ephemeral word lacking
the noble philosophical tradition to reach the high status of words which
do have this tradition, we can see a historic chance, open even for a fly, to
build its own fly paradise, its own world of fly Platonic ideals.5
The universum gives each object a philosophical chance to become a universal

– a basis of yet one more of possible worlds.
4 I. Kabakov, Zhizn’ mukh (in Russian, German and English). (Cologne: Kolnischer Kunstverein.
Edition Cantz, 1992), p. 54.
5 Ibid., pp. 15, 16.
Chapter 13
Multiplication of Entities
Yet another methodological precept of philosophy is connected to “generaliza-

tion,” the transition of many to one: that of “economy of thought” or “reduc-
tion of entities.” For centuries, the goal of philosophy has been understood as
generalization, reducing of the different to the similar, of all flowers to “vegeta-
tion,” and of all plants to “nature”; thus, each philosopher ultimately arrived at
a single entity from which he then deduced all the rest. All the individual phe-
nomena were but forms and variations of the general principle. This situation
in philosophy started with Thales, who postulated that the universe originated
from water. It meant that all the world – trees, earth, sky – are “watery,” and out
of any object, as out of a sponge, it is possible to “squeeze” its primeval essence,
the proto-ocean. As a result of such squeezing, only illusory, hollow outlines of
objects will remain. Similarly, according to Plato, out of any object it is possible
to squeeze an ideal, and, according to Hegel, an absolute idea. Philosophers
competed in finding the most general concept and deducing from it all phe-
nomena. “Being,” “existence,” “property,” “substance,” “mind,” “consciousness,”
“economic basis,” “will to power,” “unity,” “evolution,” “freedom,” “nothingness,”
“libido,” “episteme,” “sign,” “structure” – these are some of these general con-
cepts from which, with a varied degree of success, everything else has been
derived. At first, all the concrete variety of the world was reduced to the most
general concept, and then all the variety of phenomena was deduced from
this concept. Sergey Bulgakov wrote: “all philosophical systems, known in the
history of philosophy, are … consciously and notoriously one-sided: one side
strives to become everything, to prevail over everything else. …A system is re-
ducing everything and all to one, and vice versa, deducing everything from this
one.”1 Even more concisely this trick of reduction–deduction was described by
Elias Canetti: “The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something
trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear
in the palm of the hand.”2
Philosophy has worked out this two-part system to perfection and en-
joyed its simplicity. The world was reduced to a general principle and at once
1 S. Bulgakov, Tragediia filosofii // Russkie filosofy. Konets xix – seredina xx veka (Moscow:
Knizhnaya palata, 1993), p. 90.
2 E. Canetti, The Secret Heart of the Clock: Notes, Aphorisms, Fragments 1973–1985 (New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991), cited in Andrews R. Cassell, Dictionary of Contemporary Quota-
tions (London: Cassell, 1998), p. 342.

Multiplication of Entities 125
r eproduced from it. Philosophy resembled the sweeping gesture of a country

accordion player, who closes and immediately dashingly opens his accordion,
the sun playing on the golden strips. Seemingly, the world did not lose any-
thing, reemerging from the general principle almost the same as it had entered
it. And yet it was becoming an already reducible world. Its concepts lost their
elasticity and worth. It became like a wrinkled and smoothed-out sheet of pa-
per, passed through the press of the general principle. Now, all the details looked
just like decorations, because they only emphasized and shaped the general.
The general found by the previous thinkers was also taken into account, tran-
scended, and, as a particular moment, incorporated in the even more general.
Hegel included all the history of nature and society into the development of
his absolute idea, while Marx incorporated the absolute idea itself into the de-
velopment of capitalist industry, as a product of its ideological self-alienation.
Philosophy was inventing an ever more perfect press under which it could pass
the previous generalizations and attain an ultimate generality.
The generalization principle worked inside every philosophical system, and
the only thing that saved philosophy and maintained interest in it was the dif-
ference among those very systems. This difference appeared outside the lim-
its of philosophies themselves, as all of them were striving to reach the most
complete generalizations. This principle notwithstanding, every subsequent
thinker endeavored to change philosophy, making it somewhat different – and
that was the most valuable thing of all. The possibility of one generalization
immediately presupposed the possibility of yet another generalization: if the
world springs from the absolute idea, then why not from the absolute will?
And why can’t the absolute idea itself spring from production? The possibility
of Schopenhauer and Marx already existed in the times of Hegel. One thought
contains the possibility of another, and that is why systems follow one another
as alternative hypotheses.
But what stops philosophy from direct construction of alternative worlds,
each time admitting their hypothetical character? Instead of reducing all con-
crete things to a single universal, it could discover the possibility of a universal
in each concrete thing. That which appeared in philosophy accidentally, that
is the growing variety of universals, could become the very intention of phi-
losophy, the open horizon of the thinkability. The failure of each particular
philosophical system, which could not reach the final generalization, becomes
good luck for philosophy as a whole, which opens the potential significance
of different elements of the macrocosm – it may be water, or idea, or writing.
Why not return philosophy to itself, as something that remained outside the
limits of systems, as their unintended variety, with an ever growing number?
Maybe the multiplication of universals should become a conscious philosoph-
ical project?
Such a project was hindered by a famous postulate, attributed to William

of Ockham though known long before the 14th century: “Entities are not to be
multiplied beyond necessity” (Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate).
Obeying this principle of “ontological parsimony,” philosophy tried to reduce
the variety of phenomena to the minimum of entities, ideally to the single en-
tity that was identified with God or given the divine status (“the divine Mind,”
“the divine Will”). De facto, the prohibition to multiply entities meant a call for
their annihilation. It was not by chance that this principle received the name
of “Ockham’s razor”: it presupposed cutting off the “unnecessary” entities. In
the end, all the entities of the universum would be cut down to just one entity,
an approach that turned philosophy into a branch of theology. With Ockham’s
razor, philosophy cut its own throat. In the works of Hegel and other “mono-
essential” thinkers, philosophy still conserves its theological character, in the
language of thought retelling the truth of belief – even when it is a belief in the
absence of God and in the “material unity of the world.” This model of theo-
logical, mono-essential thinking is relevant also for atheist philosophy, even
though its object may be some other entity instead of God – “history,” or “will,”
or “life.”
Yet the characteristic of philosophy that distinguishes it from theology is
precisely the search for many entities, not reducible to each other, just as the
smallest particles of the universe are not reducible to each other. If one speck
of dust would, even for a moment, become totally identical to another speck
of dust, it would mean the collapse of space, time, identity, and all that exists.
In this sense, philosophy cannot be satisfied even with the variety of natural
phenomena described by science, since in every real phenomenon there are
hidden the possibilities of other phenomena. Precisely this is the special goal
of philosophy: multiplication of essences not only beyond the necessary, but also
beyond the actual. The potential is bigger than any actuality, and it is this dif-
ference between them, the zone of surplus, which is the domain of philosophical
thinking. Every existence conceals in itself many essences, and philosophy can be
defined as their multiplication, their prevalence over the actually existing.
“Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” But from what does
it follow that philosophy should be guided by necessity? It is possible to think
anything that is thinkable. Entities are multiplied according to logical pos-
sibility.3 It does not behoove philosophy to act in the categories of rarity or
3 We call a logical possibility that which logically follows from other possibilities. For exam-
ple, from the possibility of a one-eyed Cyclops follows the possibility of a unicorn; that is,
the possibility of such creatures whose paired organs are replaced by their single counter-
parts. However, from a possibility of a Cyclops does not follow a possibility of centaurs or
overty, looking for the single essence among the multitude of entities, a single
p
universal among the multitude of individuals, because every object, even such
a simple one as a stone or a drop, not only contains in itself a variety of univer-
sals (weight, color, form, etc.), but itself acts as a universal which can be found
in other objects (“stoneness,” “dropness”).
What we call here “multiplication of entities,” or a transition from ontologi-
cal parsimony to ontological generosity, was outlined by Paul Feyerabend in
the methodology of science as a principle of “proliferation”: multiplication of
both theoretical and non-theoretical bases of knowledge (this position some-
times is referred to as “methodological anarchism”):
Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that

converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to the truth.
It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and per-
haps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy
tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into great-
er articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competi-
tion, to the development of our consciousness.4
Russian humanistic thought also tried to dull the cutting edge of Ockham’s
razor. The principle of multiplication of entities is used in Bakhtin’s theory of
polyphony: the truth has many voices and requires a multitude of interacting
minds. One of the leading ideas of the “life–thinking” (zhiznemyslie) of G.D.
Gachev was that the world is rich in essences and not reducible to a unique
primary essence. Having in mind that Russian thought has been under the
strong influence of V. Solovyev’s “philosophy of total unity,” we can give the
principle of multiplication of essences the name of “pan-difference” or “total
difference.”5
hoenixes. It is possible to imagine the worlds of Thales or Heraclitus, consisting of water or

p
fire; however, the possibility of a Thales–Heraclitus world sounds dubious, owing to the well-
known antagonism of these two elements (water and fire).
4 P. Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: New
Left Books, 1975), p. 30.
5 This philosophical metaposition is presented in detail in: Mikhail Epstein, “Uchenie Yakova
Abramova v izlozhenii ego uchenikov” (“The Teaching of Iakov Abramov in the Exposition of
his Disciples”), LOGOS, Leningradskie mezhdunarodnye chteniia po filosofii kul’tury, vol. 1: Ra-
zum. Dukhovnost’. Traditsii (LOGOS. Leningrad International Readings on the Philosophy of
Culture, vol. 1: Reason. Spirituality. Traditions) (Leningrad: Leningrad University Press, 1991),
pp. 211–54.
This changes the philosophical mode, switching it from generalization to

supposition: if one universal, containing the whole world, pretends to be abso-
lute and real, then each one among the multitude of universals becomes a pos-
sible foundation of the world. It is not only the mode that is changing, but also
the principle and the self-substantiation of philosophy. In the past, philosophy
“appeared unintentionally” outside the limits of the consciously built systems,
as their transcendent aggregate, described only by the metalanguage of philos-
ophy, by its history or methodology. Now, philosophy can be built directly on
the metalevel of simultaneously or alternatively thought systems, consciously
admitting and substantiating the multitude of universals and their possibilist
character.
Already Nietzsche noted “how unfailingly the most diverse philosophers al-
ways fill in again a definite fundamental scheme of POSSIBLE philosophies.”6
But if this scheme has already entered the philosophical mind, as it has af-
ter Nietzsche, then it can express itself in the form of possible philosophies,
each one of which is hypothetical and presupposes in advance its alternatives.
Philosophy becomes metasystematic, using different systems for working with
different universals. If, in the frame of the Hegelian system, it is appropriate to
work with such universals as “absolute idea,” “quality,” “quantity,” “right,” such
universals as “life,” “power,” “game,” “value” better fit the Nietzschean system. If
in the past the place of philosophy, as an extreme generalization of all things
existing, was inside systems, now the systems themselves are placed inside phi-
losophy, as an interplay of its own possibilities. Philosophy could now speak of
itself with the words of Fyodor Sologub: “And who can stop me from building
all the worlds allowed by the rules of my game?” The game has rules, but they
are as consensual as the game itself.
When the goal of philosophy was generalization, individuation sprang from
the “failure” of this project, from the ineradicable individuality of philosophers
themselves. Now the goal of philosophy becomes precisely this individuation,
when every object is seen as unique, understood “on its own terms,” as a uni-
versal which can be applied to other objects and serve as a foundation of one
of the possible worlds. At the same time, it seems that the epoch of authorial
systems and insurmountable differences among them is coming to its end. As
Boris Groys noted, “unlike theoretical thought, philosophical thought is not
a thought about the general having as its object the individual, but a thought
6 Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil, Ch. 1, 20, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/

nietzsche/1886/beyond-good-evil/ch01.htm.
of the individual having as its object the general.”7 Of course, this statement
cannot be applied to all philosophies; rather it characterizes the tendencies of
post-critical philosophy, in which a single thinker tries to actualize all the pos-
sible directions of thought.
7 B. Groys, “Znanie, bezumie, individual’nost’” (“Knowledge, Madness, Individuality”). Beseda.

Religiozno-filosofskiy zhurnal (Leningrad and Paris, 1987), vol. 6, p. 122.
Chapter 14
Philosophy as Parody and Grotesque
In the philosophical sense, possibility is not necessarily a certain striving to-

wards the future, a heroic aspiration, an impulse to break out of the limits of
the existing. The heroic interpretation of the possible puts it inside the limits
of reality, the limits of growth and development, while the hero by his behav-
ior already realizes the possibility that was thought impossible before him.
However, how should we interpret a possibility that is known to belong ex-
clusively to the sphere of the possible, so the question about its realization
does not even arise? How to interpret, for example, the possibility that besides
real horses there exists also a certain eternal idea of a horse? How to relate to
the idea of a superman, or to the idea of Communism, if we proceed from the
premise that they belong entirely to the world of potentials which can be actu-
alized only in the thinking itself, but not in reality?
Since thinking takes place in the gap between actual things and their po-
tentials, each philosophy has an inherent quality of being parodic. The idea of
a horse is a parody of a real individual horse. The idea of superman, whatever
the author himself may think of it, is a parody of a real man. But in what sense
is it a parody?
Generally, the parody is understood as a representation of something which,
by exaggerating, condensing its traits, ridicules it, provoking laughter. But ev-
ery idea is precisely such an exaggeration of a real object, a condensation of
its formal or potential traits, simultaneously emptying the object of its real
content. It is impossible to take to pasture or to harness the idea of a horse.
The idea of a horse is parodic, because it possesses characteristics of all the
horses in the world and at the same time is devoid of the characteristics of a
single real horse.
Every parody borrows the form of the thing it imitates, extracting from it
the actual content or replacing it by some other content. For example, the poet
Nikolai Oleinikov created a famous parody of a love declaration, using its el-
evated spirit in order to express his love of meat. The most popular Russian
book of parodies, Parnassus on End (Parnas dybom, 1925), imitates a simple
children’s poem “An old woman had a gray goat,” in the style of the greatest
poets of the time:
In the sparkles of the moonlight streaming brightly through the night,

In the purview of my dim sight came the woman and her goat

Philosophy as Parody and Grotesque 131
This parody of Konstantin Balmont uses his sing-song intonation, love of

multiple, inner rhymes, and of luminous, atmospheric images, while replacing
the elevated and exotic subject, proper for such style, by the plain image of the
gray goat. Using Aristotle’s language, we can say that the potentiality of the
given poet is contrasted with the actuality of the given text; style is contrasted
with the theme.
In the same way philosophy constantly finds a contradiction between the
potentiality of an object, the way it appears in thought, and its actuality, its
absence in reality. A philosophical concept represents everything of the think-
able world and nothing of the real world. This creates a propitious situation for
a parody. The more an idea absorbs the potential content of an object, the less
it has of its actual characteristics. “Horseness” is devoid of the characteristics
of a horse: it neither neighs, nor gallops. “Horseness” includes pinto, bay, chest-
nut, and other colors of horses, but it also means that it is devoid of color, since
no horse can be at the same time white and black. Philosophical concept, or
universal, contradicts its own content.
From it follows that each universal has not only a parodic, but even a gro-
tesque character. By grotesque is understood an impossible combination of
varied characteristics in a single object, for example, an intertwining of plant,
animal, and human forms in ancient cave ornaments. Similarly, in general
philosophical concepts characteristics of disparate bodies and substances
are whimsically intertwined. For example, under the category of “substance”
comes a body of a man, a body of a pig, gold, diamond, rusty iron. Such widely
dissimilar objects would rarely be considered in one category, were they not
connected by the concept of “substance.” In his treatise “Categories,” Aristotle
cites as examples of substance "man" or "the horse." Substances are individual
beings or things, such as Socrates or the bull. The association of man and the
horse in the definition of substance is not a relic of mythological belief in cen-
taurs, as could be supposed; such total amalgamation is an intrinsic trait of
any philosophical thought, because the substance can be actualized in the body
of Socrates, as well as in the body of a bull. The very concept of “substance” is
highly comical, because it intimately links an infinite number of unrelated things.
Every universal is internally grotesque, for it makes a human head grow out of
the body of a caterpillar on elephant’s legs – such is the universal of a “living
being,” a “creature of nature.” Equally grotesque is the universal of “beauty,”
unifying the ideal of both peasant and city beauty and consisting of red cheeks
and pale face, plump body and wasp waist.
Parody and grotesque are two mutually related qualities of universals. A uni-
versal is grotesque, because it combines characteristics of different objects, and
parodic, because it has none of these characteristics. Unlike traditional parody,
which is directed at some outer object, a universal is self-parodic. It parodies

its own universality, demonstrating the emptiness of its own actuality.
The comical is often defined as a discrepancy between the pretentious form
of an object and its mundane content. Turning to the most famous literary
characters, examples of the comical are Molière’s Tartuffe, Gogol’s Khlestakov,
Baron Munchausen, and Tartarin of Tarascon. In each philosophical idea there
is something Khlestakovesque or Munchausenesque, an unmeasured boast-
ing, incommensurability of the pretensions and the actual content.
Khlestakov pretends to be an important state figure, on whose orders are
riding “forty thousand of couriers,” yet he cannot pay for a bowl of soup. In the
same vein, the idea of a horse represents all the horses of the world, condenses
the concepts of velocity, power, rapidity – yet it is unable to make a single step.
It is understood that different properties and individuals are united in the
concepts of every science, but it is uniquely the philosophical concepts that
are characterized by the greatest degree of generalization, connecting the non-
connectable, such as the concept “substance” or a “living body,” uniting a pig
and Socrates. The bigger the volume of a philosophical concept, the poorer is
its content, which in itself creates a comic effect. The volume of a concept is
stretched to the entire universe, while its content does not fill even a tiny crack
in space and time.
Let us, for example, turn to the concept of “alienation,” so much loved by
the philosophy of the 19th and the 20th centuries. According to many philoso-
phers in this tradition, man is not a master of his creations that tend to escape
his control. In this sense, under the category of “alienation” come a basket of
apples, grown by a peasant and sold by him in the market; nuclear warheads,
threatening to wipe out the humanity in spite of its survival instinct; the un-
natural mask on the face of a madman; the artistic creation before which, at
the moment of the final stroke, the artist feels a useless day-laborer; Stalin,
getting rid of those very people who helped him come to power; God, in whose
image man supposedly incarnates his own spiritual might and knowledge; the
sun, which, according to N. Berdiaev, should have shone and pulsated in the
human heart and not in the distant cosmos; stockings, provoking the mor-
bid longing of a fetishist; a cancerous tumor, alienated from the integrity of
the wholesome organism; and a healthy body, with its vicious temptations in
which the soul suffers the painful alienation from itself. Wares, nuclear weap-
ons, a brilliant work of art, the face of a madman, Stalin, God, the sun, a fetish,
a cancerous tumor, a healthy body – all these are, in the philosophical sense,
products of alienation. However, the concept of alienation itself is also to a
great degree alienated from the reality of different things, even though it lumps
them together in a certain grotesque thinkability. Philosophical concepts are
extremely significant, and at the same time denote very little, showing their
comical character precisely in the correlation of their potential significance
with the absence of actual signifieds.
When this comical character of philosophical thought was noted in the
past, it was ascribed to the behavior of philosophers themselves, to their clum-
siness in practical affairs, their worldly and bodily vulnerability, which stands
in strong contrast to their sovereign, all-embracing thinking. Maybe we find
the most concise expression of this in Shakespeare.
For there was never yet philosopher

That could endure the toothache patiently,
However they have writ the style of gods
And made a push at chance and sufferance.1
There even existed a joke about the first philosopher in history, retold by Plato.
Once, while observing the heavenly bodies, Thales lost the ground under his
feet and fell into a pit; a witty housemaid made fun of him.2 Plato concludes
that this mockery applies to everyone who passes his life in philosophical con-
templation. Thinking about the universe, a philosopher does not know what
his neighbor is doing; trying to understand the nature and goals of man, he
often forgets that he himself is one of them.
Really it is only his body that has its place and home in the city; his mind,
considering all these things petty and of no account, disdains them and
is borne in all directions, as Pindar says, “both below the earth,” and mea-
suring the surface of the earth, and “above the sky,” studying the stars, and
investigating the universal nature3
However, Plato himself finds that the philosopher is comical only from the
point of view of “ignorant folk,” “Thracian girl,” and other “mobs.” Philosophy
per se is the most serious of all occupations; not only does it belong to the true
world of ideas, but its goal is to realize and incarnate those ideas in the form
of an ideal state. People laugh at philosophers, but they would be in no mood
for laughter if they were to become citizens of a state ruled by philosophers.
1 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 5, Scene 1, lines 35–8.
2 “While he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty
Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in
the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet.” Plato. The Theaete-
tus. 174 a.
3 Ibid., 173 e.
Philosophy admitted of the worldly clumsiness of some thinkers, but did so in

exchange for the recognition of its rights to define the structure of the whole
state. Even Lenin looked “comical” when he was angry about losing a game of
chess; yet the “progressive” philosophy helped him win on the battlefields. Phi-
losophy itself always treated ideas and universals very seriously, and likewise
the philosophical mode of thinking; if one philosophy was ridiculed, it was in
the name of another, more serious and truer, philosophy.
Contemporary philosophy comes closer to the barrier beyond which the
parodic and the grotesque can be seen as its very basis; however, it does stop
before crossing this barrier. Foucault remarks that
There is always something laughable about philosophical discourse

when it attempts, from the outside, to lay down the law for others, to tell
them where their truth really lies, and how to find it, or when it takes it
upon itself to make clear what it is in their procedures which can be seen
as naive positivity. Yet it is the right of philosophical discourse to explore
that which, in its own thought, can be challenged by the use of a form of
knowledge which is alien to it.4
We must agree with Foucault that the goal of philosophy is to change not the
surrounding world, but its own way of thinking about this world. However,
does it mean that philosophy, once again, should, laughing, diverge from its
past to become, finally, very serious? Or is there something intrinsically laugh-
ing and laughable at the very basis of philosophical thinking, and the more it
comes back to itself, the more it will find clumsiness and absurdity in its basis?
The point is that philosophical thinking almost invariably was placed inside
the limits of the indicative or the imperative modes. Thought was always actu-
alized in some way: in linguistic signs, in the self-realization of an individual, in
ethical precepts, in revolutionary struggles. Idealism, materialism, positivism,
existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism – each of them could ridicule
the others and even the philosopher himself, but never the acts of thinking.
Philosophy of the third epoch does not conceal its conditional character.
Its open form of signifiability (znachimost’) is devoid of any concrete mean-
ing (znachenie). It means nothing either for the world, or for an individual, or
for social well-being. Such words as “horseness,” “dustness,” “dropness,” “rustle-
ness” may not exist in the language (unlike the practically necessary words, de-
noting concrete objects – “horse,” “drop”). When someone forms these words
4 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 2 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p. 15, http://
www.geocities.ws/nythamar/foucault.html.
and thinks with them as universals, he is aware of their arbitrary character and
willy-nilly laughs in the very act of his thinking. Each moment of such arbitrary
thinking is, at the same time, an act of creation and understanding of the in-
congruence between the thought and its object.
But what is the meaning of this silent laughter, constantly present in the
depth of philosophical thinking? In ridiculing itself, potentiality testifies that it
cannot be reduced to any realizations, to which “serious” thinking pretends. It
is the laughter of the redundant consciousness at its own redundancy. It is the
laughter of beauty and good at their own absence in the world where there are
only beautiful things and good people; the laughter of universals at their own
unrealizability in the world of the individual.
Universals are ludicrous, but it is precisely the universals that form the uni-
versum, the sum total of the worlds among which there is one real and many
possible worlds. Through laughter, the universal separates itself from the actual,
states its own different modality. Only having lived to the end of this new era of
thinking, having understood the whole extent of its own conditionality, will
philosophy be able to come back to the universum with its full integrity, not
separating itself from reality anymore, while at the same time not identifying
itself with reality.
“Parody” and “grotesque” are aesthetic concepts. The fact that I apply them
to philosophy presupposes the rapprochement of the latter with art. Indeed,
if in its first, precritical era philosophy approached science, the mode of the
actual, and in its second, critical–activist era it approached ideology, the mode
of necessity, the development of philosophy in the mode of the possible brings
it closer to art. Art also describes possible worlds, creates in the conditional
mode “as if.” This new rapprochement, known already to the German roman-
tics, received special importance in Russian philosophy with its rejection of
philosophical scientism and logicism.
Lev Shestov expressed a thought which anticipated many anti-rationalistic
schools of the 20th century: “Philosophy should not have anything to do with
logic; philosophy is an art, striving to break through the chain of logical con-
clusions and taking man into the boundless sea of imagination, of the fan-
tastic, where everything is similarly possible and impossible.”5 However, the
comparison of philosophy with art on the grounds of their mutual fascination
with “possible/impossible” permits us not only to link them together, but also
to distinguish them, avoiding the danger of identification. A modern move-
5 L. Shestov, Apofeoz bespochvennosti. Opyt adogmaticheskogo myshleniia (The Apotheosis of

Baselessness. The Experience of Adogmatic Thinking) (Leningrad: Leningrad State University
Press, 1991), p. 59.
ment in philosophy, deconstructionism, has a tendency to erase the border

between literary and philosophical texts, emphasizing the fact that both use
metaphor, symbols, and rhetoric figures. Since the pretensions of philosophy
to possess a unique, unambiguous truth proved unfounded, philosophy can,
with good reason, be seen as one of the genres of literature; that is, the infinite-
ly polysemantic play with signifiers devoid of their signifieds. It is difficult to
fully agree with this thought, if only because of the fact that every reader intui-
tively feels an enormous difference between, for example, Goethe’s Faust and
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; between Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and
V. Solovyov’s The Justification of Good; the difference here lies in the basic prin-
ciples of building the hypothetical and imaginary worlds.
Art describes a possible world as if it were a real one. Philosophy, on the other
hand, describes the real world as if it were a possible one. Art starts from fram-
ing itself, separating itself from reality; but, having proclaimed its own condi-
tionality, it begins moving toward reality, describing possible worlds in colorful
and vivid images, giving them characteristics of something visible, hearable,
imaginable. This is why artistic worlds are given a particular time and place of
action where concrete heroes and events combine to form a plot, details form
pictures, and the possible is described in the form of the real. For example, its
narrative quality ties literature to the temporal forms, while lyricism presup-
poses the form of the first person. And even though this illusory quality is often
revealed as a conventional technique, the generic characteristic of art is pre-
cisely the actualization of the possible, the creation of an illusion.6
Philosophy does not create illusions, it does not possess its own plasticity,
its own space–time continuum where imaginary events could occur. Philoso-
phy does not present possible worlds as if they were real; on the contrary, it
presents the real world as if it were one among many possible ones. Aristotle
in his Poetics contrasts history and poetry: history speaks about the things that
were, while poetry describes the things that could be. In this sense, philosophy
unites history and poetry, posing the question, how can that be which already
6 Lately, aesthetics and literary theory turn with increasing frequency to the conception of
possible worlds in order to define the special logical status of narrative and ontological char-
acteristics of artistic worlds. It is in part related to the emergence of the Internet and, con-
sequently, of art as a virtual reality. See D. Maitre, Literature and Possible Worlds (London:
Pembridge Press, 1983); Ryan Marie-Laure, Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narra-
tive Theory (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991); R. Ronen, Possible
Worlds in Literary Theory (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); G.S.
Morson, Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1994). Evidently, the time has come for the conceptualization of virtual worlds in philosophy
as well, the task which this book attempts to fulfill.
is? Reality, weighed on the scales of thought, ceases to be a simple reality, turn-
ing into an amplitude of its own swings between the existing and the possible.
Unlike artistic creation, philosophical thought does not present this possible
world as the “second” reality, but demonstrates the conditional character of
the “first” reality, a relative character of each of its elements in the light of the
probing and inquiring reflection. We may presume that, having tried itself in
all modalities, having in turn approached science, ideology, and art, philoso-
phy will enter into a transmodal kind of consciousness. After all, the division
into the real, the necessary, and the possible is the mark of a fragmentary ap-
proach to the universum. Art describes that which is possible; science that
which is real; politics that which is necessary. However, the universum as a
whole contains possibility, reality, and necessity together. The holistic method
of cognition, corresponding to the holistic character of the universum, could
not confine itself to a single modality. At present we still cannot conceive of
such a super-mode in which a statement would be simultaneously indicative,
imperative, and conditional, in other words would not be tied to just one of
the modes. Maybe it is up to philosophy to develop such a universal viewpoint,
corresponding to the wholeness of the universum itself. For this, however, it
would have to overcome the limitations of the modalities with which it used
to identify itself. The entrance into the mode of the possible is the third philo-
sophical epoch; hopefully, it will not be the last.
Part 2
The Fate of Metaphysics: from Deconstruction
to Possibilization
⸪
Introduction to Part 2
Part 1 of this book dealt with the “possibilities of the possible”; that is, it exam-
ined the category of the possible in a positive key. Part 2 focuses in more detail
on nature and the limits of metaphysics, and consists of two large sections:
the first is a critical exploration of the modal aspects of deconstruction as an
important, but limited stage in the development of possibilistic thinking; the
second proposes further strategy of possibilistic thinking, which I call “poten-
tiation,” or, oxymoronically, “constructive deconstructive.”
This part discusses modality in the context of different ways of transcending
metaphysics; that is, philosophy’s claim to a universal and systematic under-
standing of reality. Metaphysics is an attempt to establish a foundation of all
foundations, one which is entirely based on itself (primeval identity) and gives
birth to all the variety of existing things. Metaphysical thinking is intimately
tied to the modalities of the actual and the necessary, “existence per se,” as it
asserts such basic principles which are not only thought as entirely real, but,
moreover, constitute the very basis of any reality, are their own cause and “can-
not not to be.”1
The danger of metaphysics consists not only in that it creates an illusion of
total knowledge, but also in that it establishes the supremacy of the knower
over the known, a hierarchy of power, a correlation of the thinking subject
with the object of thought. “Knowledge is power” – this maxim of Francis
Bacon defines the instrumentality of knowledge and thus the danger of
metaphysics in the Western world. Metaphysics presupposes such ultimate
knowledge – of the first causes of ultimate goals – on the basis of which the
thinker (or his disciple, the practitioner), on behalf of a certain omnipotent
entity – a center standing over the world or outside it – can rule the world,
colonize it, and subjugate all that exists. Even though the term “metaphysics”
1 M. Heidegger labeled metaphysics “onto-theology,” emphasizing its twofold relation to ontol-

ogy as the study of existence and to theology as the study of the absolute. A philosophical
encyclopedia provides the following definition: “Metaphysics is a broad area of philosophy
marked out by two types of inquiry. The first aims to be the most general investigation pos-
sible into the nature of reality: are there principles applying to everything that is real? … The
second type of inquiry seeks to uncover what is ultimately real, frequently offering answers
in sharp contrast to our everyday experience of the world. Understood in terms of these two
questions, metaphysics is very closely related to ontology, which is usually taken to involve
both ‘what is existence (being)?’ and ‘what (fundamentally distinct) types of things exist?’.”
Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2000),
p. 567.

was coined incidentally, to signify Aristotle’s works which came after physics,
its literal meaning turned out to be prophetic: “meta” means “beyond,” “over,”
and suggests a high priority position in respect to the world, a position based
on a certain eternal truth or self-identical foundation.
The criticism of metaphysics, undertaken by Kant, became one of the main
objectives of the post-Kantian philosophy and served to unite such thinkers,
otherwise quite different, as Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl,
Wittgenstein, Sartre, and Heidegger (the latter clearly stated both the goal and
the term in his article Überwindung der Metaphysik, 1936, published in 1954).
However, metaphysics is also dangerous because each of its successive refu-
tations contains in itself the seed of a new metaphysics. Materialist or exis-
tentialist critiques of traditional (idealist) metaphysics immediately lay the
foundations for materialist or existentialist metaphysics. In this sense, Western
philosophy resembles a mythical hero, trying in vain to overpower a mythical
monster: when one head is cut off, several others immediately grow back. This
explains the pessimistic views on the captivity of Western spirit, which, even
more than a hero fighting a monster, resembles the monster itself as it bites its
own tail and thus becomes a symbol of self-repeating infinity.
Since the 1970s, the criticism of metaphysics has received a new impulse
in the movement of post-structuralism and deconstruction, which will be the
main topic of Part 2 of this book. We see deconstruction as the ultimate and
the most compelling of all the criticisms (in the Kantian sense). Nonetheless,
this critique also rebuilds the very same metaphysical foundations which it
criticizes. We will endeavor to show that any criticism of metaphysics unwill-
ingly contains the intention to revive metaphysics and thus revolves in its or-
bit. Then we will analyze the possibility of breaking this vicious circle, not by
critically transcending the “big” metaphysics, but by proliferation of the “small”
versions of metaphysics.
Section 2.1
Reverse Metaphysics: Critique and Deconstruction
∵
Chapter 15
Beyond Being and Nothingness: the Feeling

of the Possible
In the 20th century, the strongest opponent of metaphysics was existentialism,

which declared metaphysics a zone of human disaster, alienation, and objec-
tification. The culprit was the “existing,” the “present,” seen as a certain inert
mass, the “it” which acts as the source of metaphysical objectification. What
can be contraposed to this world of the “presence” and its objectivity? For such
existentialist thinkers as Berdiaev, Heidegger, and Sartre, “nothingness” served
as the primary contrast. It was precisely in the “nothingness” where they found
a certain “leak” or “lack” of existence, the openness in which the stuffy flesh of
the objects was disembodied and the world of objectivation was overcome –
and, with it, the pretension of metaphysics to provide objective knowledge
about it.
For all three of these philosophers mentioned, nothingness was a place for
the exit of man outside the limits of the existing, a place where his relation-
ships with the present and with himself become free. For Berdiaev, who fol-
lowed the mystical intuitions of Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme, freedom
is not created by God but precedes existence itself; it is rooted in the “ground-
less,” “baseless,” Ungrund. According to Heidegger,
in Nothingness, our existence at any moment is placed above reality as a

whole and outside its limits. We call this passage beyond reality transcen-
dence. Were our existence not inherently transcending, i.e., as we can
now say, were it not, in advance, always reaching for Nothingness, it could
not have been placed in relation to reality, and thus, to itself. Without the
primeval openness of Nothingness there exists neither self, nor freedom.1
The same bind between freedom and nothingness is noted by Sartre: “If some-
one asks what this nothing is which provides a foundation for freedom, we
shall reply that we cannot describe it since it is not.”2 In addition, in Being and
Nothingness Sartre gives much attention to the concept of possibility, which
1 M. Heidegger, “Was ist Metaphysik?” in Wegmarken. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1964), p. 12.

2 The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. and introduction by R.D. Cumming (New York: Vintage
Books, 1972), p. 122.

he defines as the “primary relation of a human being to Nothingness.” The

questioner “nihilates himself in relation to the thing questioned by wrenching
himself away from being in order to be able to bring out of himself the possi-
bility of a non-being.”3 In this way, the possible is produced from nothingness.
Possibility is a certain shortage: “It has the being of a lack and as lack, it lacks
being.”4 However, at the same time Sartre considers that the possible depends
on its actual realization. Sartre examines
the most common situations of our life, those in which we apprehend

our possibilities as such by actively realizing them. …But I can also find
myself engaged in acts which reveal my possibilities to me at the very in-
stant when they are realized. In lighting this cigarette I learn my concrete
possibility, or if you prefer, my desire of smoking. It is by the very act of
drawing toward me this paper and this pen that I give to myself as my
most immediate possibility the act of working at this book.5
Here possibility is interpreted in a quite naturalistic way, as a possibility to do

something; it is understood a posteriori, from the act itself. However, continu-
ing inside the frame of Sartre’s philosophy of “nothingness,” we could add that
such a possibility appears only owing to the possibility of not doing something;
that is, through the connection to “nothingness.” I can write a book only be-
cause I also can choose not to write it. Possibilities are recognized in the pro-
cess of their realization precisely as something different from the reality that
they bring. Therefore, a correction is in order. “I learn that I have a concrete
possibility to smoke, or that I have a desire to smoke” not when I have lit a
cigarette, but when it is still not lit, and I can choose between smoking and not
smoking. Sartre should find no contradiction whatsoever between the rooted-
ness of the possibility in nothingness and its thrownness into reality, because
the possibility itself is the ejection of nothingness into existence.
However, even with this correction, Sartre’s interpretation of possibility does
not take into account its modal specifics. The possible is not a choice between
smoking and not smoking, writing or not writing a book, but between the exis-
tence of a book and its non-existence. The possible is not the rejection of one
reality and the acceptance of another one. The possible should not be reduced
to the choice between possibilities, because this choice already belongs to the
3 Ibid., p. 115.
4 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington
Square Press, 1966), p. 155.
5 The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, pp. 124–5.
Beyond being and Nothingness: the Feeling of the Possible 147
mode of the real, the ontologically poor plane in which the possibilities are
filtered, pruned out: only one of them is chosen and becomes reality.
There are many ways to interact with the possible – faith, doubt, hope, de-
spair, love, fear, creativity – which do not have anything to do with the problem
of choice. The choice is oriented towards reality and presents it in the form of
“yes” or “no,” because one reality excludes another. However, one possibility
does not exclude another, but rather presupposes it. I can smoke a cigarette
only because I can opt for not smoking. It is not the choice that gives birth to
the possibility, but the possibility that begets choice – and kills it. Possibility is
a crossroads that does not want to become a single route.
In reality, a book can be written or not written; I have a choice whether to
write it or not. However, in a different modality I have not a single choice, but
a “collection” of various possibilities which is, in principle, infinite. The pos-
sibility of the book will never be fully realized. I am writing my book to the
same degree to which I am not writing it. It is being written and, simultane-
ously, escapes being written, remains not written. Precisely this constitutes the
hope and pain of creative work, the play of its possibilities, not reducible to the
choice of a single one among many. The existence-non-existence of the book
is exceeded by the area of its possibilities–impossibilities, which stay intact
and even grow when the book is already written – both as the impossibility to
finish it inside the given text and the infinite possibilities of its further inter-
pretation. Even having already finished writing the book, I suddenly see that,
in fact, I have not written it, that it has stayed in the sphere of the possible, and
what lies in front of me on the table is some other book, which is not my con-
cern anymore. In the life of a man there does not exist such an ultimate point
of realization, after which there would no longer be a sphere of the possible.
Not only the completion of the book, but even the completion of life does not
eliminate the field of this modality; to the contrary, it only extends it. That is
why on his deathbed Rabelais said “I am off in search of a great May-be.”
Modifying Sartre’s simple observation, I may say that “I learn that I have
a concrete possibility to smoke” not at the moment I light the cigarette, but
when I see a modal void, or pause, in the reality in which I am still not smok-
ing. For example, a point of bifurcation suddenly appears in a conversation – a
possibility to end the conversation, to change the subject, or to introduce a
new party, naming only a few of the communicative possibilities of this act.
Or, in the process of my work on this book, there comes a pause, a break that
can be filled by smoking. According to Sartre, with his accentuation of choice,
only the action itself transports us to a possibility – more exactly, to the pos-
sibility of itself, whereas it should be the whole gamut of possibilities, all of
them experienced simultaneously. Moreover, the unrealized possibilities often
occupy the biggest part of the emotional field. It is precisely an act which was
not realized, a letter which was not written, a word which was not pronounced,
a confession which was not made that are chiefly realized in the emotional and
intellectual sphere, sometimes even turning into paranoid states and ideas.
The inner world of man is filled with unrealized possibilities – and, to an
even larger degree, with the possibilities that cannot be realized at all. We
think about our possibilities and live them through with an intensity that our
real experience lacks.
He rides a horse who is not riding

But taps a knife on his wine-glass
He dances, who’s not really dancing
But shouts and watches people pass.
But he who really is dancing
Who gallops on a real horse
He’s very tired of all this prancing
And doubly, of the horse’s course.6
The Russian poet Alexander Kushner expresses in this way the emotional in-
tensity of the conditional mode. The most intensive experience is connected
with living through the possible as possible. We experience most sharply the
possibility of smoking not when we light a cigarette, but when we, non-smok-
ing, are looking at someone else who smokes, or when we, smoking, do not
have matches or cigarettes. This tiny example only emphasizes the depths of
emotions hidden in the possibilities of love, separation, death, salvation.
Consequently, possibility cannot be reduced either to the problem of choice
or to the problem of freedom. Possibilities change the world the most not when
they are realized, but when they are created and exist as possibilities. Only in
this modal, but not social-revolutionary or existent-rebellious sense can we
say that philosophical thinking is free thinking. Freedom is often understood
as freedom of realization, not as the creation of possibilities; as free will, not
restrained by the will of others; as freedom of action leading to the reduction
of the sphere of the possible. In this sense, freedom can be correlated with the
possible, but is not identical and equal to it. Philosophy of the possible does
not proclaim a freedom that must be gained by somebody else’s hands – as a
rule, enslaving and tying its perpetrators.
6 A. Kushner, Kanva. Iz shesti knig (Canvas: Of the Six Books) (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’,
1981), p. 39.
Semyon Frank, who created a version of religious existentialism, is right

when he deduces freedom from the potentiality of existence, but is hardly
right when he identifies freedom with potentiality and reduces potentiality
to freedom. “In its [existence’s – M.E.] ultimate foundation lies potentiality,
the possibility of becoming something which one is not; this is what we call
freedom.”7 Indeed, freedom is based on potentiality, but freedom has as well a
real dimension that is found in the so-called “liberating” wars and revolutions,
in opposition to the existing regimes, in political actions that negate potenti-
ality to the same degree in which they realize it. Thus we cannot agree with
Frank that “potentiality coincides with freedom.”8
Undoubtedly, both nothingness and freedom are part of the experience of
the possible. The possible, as already mentioned, is understood as the non-
existing, and in this sense it overlaps with nothingness. However, it is hardly
appropriate to define the possible as nothingness thrown into the world of re-
ality and subverting it from the inside. To define the possible from the point of
view of nothingness is similar to defining the possible from the point of view
of reality: both viewpoints are based on the modality of the actual and distort
the perspective of the possible.
In general, the category of nothingness is greatly overestimated in existential
philosophy as the reverse side of its preoccupation with reality. N othingness is
the counterpart category to that of reality; it is entirely defined by reality and
depends upon it, even when philosophers try to deduce reality from nothing-
ness. However, the possible cannot be understood either in terms of “reality” or
in terms of “nothingness”; in general, it cannot be defined solely in the indica-
tive mode, as reality or its negation.
The possible has its own circle of manifestations, experienced in love and
fear, in play and creative activity, in close relationships with people, in religious
practice, and is not reducible to the order of existence or non-existence, pres-
ence or absence. Maybe I will be able to write a book about which I do not even
dare to dream at the present moment; maybe it will write itself through me.
Maybe I will see my father, who died twenty years ago. Maybe we will speak in
a way, different from how we spoke when he was alive. Maybe Job’s children
never died. Maybe I will never die. All those “maybes” do not pretend to come
true as facts of reality and lose nothing from the impossibility of coming true.
To perceive them, man has a special organ, sometimes called imagination.
7 S. Frank, Nepostizhimoe. Sochineniia (The Incomprehensible. Works) (Moscow: Pravda, 1990),

p. 254.
8 Ibid., p. 253.
However, imagination does not always correspond to the possible, but can
also render images of something future or absent; that is, existing on a differ-
ent plane of reality. Imagination is broader than the world of the possible, and,
at the same time, narrower than it, because the possible is not always depicted
in forms of visual or any other sensuous imagery. When I think about possible
meetings with my father, I do not imagine anything. There is no physical re-
semblance, no shadows, no landscapes of the other world, nothing imagined
at all. Thus, here it is better to speak not of imagination, but of yet another ca-
pacity which Robert Musil termed the sense of possibility – Möglichkeitssinn.9
This sense of the possible rarely leaves us, even when we are not imagining
anything, making plans, or daydreaming. When I am reading a book, I dimly, in
some peripheral sense, perceive those possible thoughts that I will never find
in this book. Sometimes I leaf through the whole book looking for a thought I
had seen in it, only to find that the thought in question was only a possibility of
this book and is not printed in it. When I meet a man, I feel what he could have
been like in his childhood and what he could be like in his old age; what par-
ents he could have; how he may be in love or anger; what book he could write.
Such a feeling of the possible is a form of intuition which broadens our knowl-
edge about other people and does not require any facts, since man is bigger
than the sum of the facts about him: he is a form of the possible. Such a feeling
of the possible accompanies us everywhere, even in the tiniest and most insig-
nificant details of everyday life. When we speak, we perceive the possible turns
of the conversation which are absent in the actual conversation, even though
they might constitute the most important part of it. When we are approaching
a turn of the road, we are aware of the possible space that will open beyond
the corner, the position of the walls and the shop windows, the cars and the
people on the street. This feeling cannot be reduced to expectation, foreseeing,
or presentiment, because it is not correlated with the reality of future events,
but glides on the crest of possibilities as a modal fluctuation of a sort, brought
about by an incessant play and change of modal attitudes. We participate in
concrete events – and simultaneously experience their many variants, their
saturation with other possibilities.
In traditional language, the main modes of human existence in the world
of the possible are called faith and hope. Man believes and hopes not because
he lacks some firm knowledge about the object of his faith and hope; were he
sure that this object exists, he would stop believing and hoping, but would,
instead, know. Faith and hope are justified and meaningful in themselves, and
9 For more detail about Musil’s conception of the possible and essayism, see the Chapter “Cul-
ture,” Part 3, this volume.
not because they are cognitively correct. On the other hand, if faith and hope
are taking us outside the limits of the existing, does it mean that they are born
from nothingness and are directed towards it? This would be ill conceived. That
to which faith and hope are directed is, of course, not real, but it is not nothing-
ness either; rather, it belongs to the world of the possible–impossible.10
In the view of existentialism, nothingness acquires great depth as some-
thing into which man exits from reality in order to establish his “otherness”
from reality. However, the concept of “nothingness” does not take us away from
reality but leads us towards it, as its shadow. The negation belongs to the same
plan that is being negated. Measuring all that is different from reality with the
measure of nothingness, we do not exit the limits of the existing but return
everything to the same modality. In general, transcendence between reality
and nothingness, between the existing and its negation, is not possible. The
passage between them represents coming into being, emergence, disappear-
ance – but it is still not transcendence, which presupposes the exit not into
“not,” but into “other.” The transcendence of reality is, at the same time, tran-
scendence of nothingness; that is, the exit outside the limits of the opposition
itself of these two concepts.
Consequently, existential “nothingness” is not radical enough an attempt
to overcome the metaphysical objectification of reality, because this “nothing-
ness” itself is enclosed in the frame of the same modality and develops its own
“shadow” metaphysics of non-existence.
Such is the paradox of many anti-metaphysical movements of the 20th cen-
tury: they create a “reverse metaphysics” because they rebel against reality on
the modal plane of reality itself (or of the opposite to it, but the same-natured
nothingness). Philosophy seems to be hypnotized by this modality and stays
under the power of reality and nothingness, even as it struggles to get free.
10 Faith, hope, and love as theological categories are analyzed in Chapter 33, “Religion,”
Part 3.
Chapter 16
A Worldview, Not a Point of View: “A Net with

No Knots”
The most consequent and all-embracing attempt to overcome metaphys-

ics was undertaken by Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, to which
several of the following chapters are dedicated. The ideas of Derrida greatly
influenced Western thought of the last third of the 20th century and created
the entire field of new problems, categories, and objectives, known under the
general names of “deconstruction,” “theory of differentiation,” and “gramma-
tology.” Analysis of these problems helps delineate more clearly the boundary
of metaphysical discourse and its critique, beyond which the positive area of
philosophy of the possible may begin.
Since 1967, Derrida has undertaken a critical revision of the entire “proj-
ect” of Western philosophy, based on the analysis of its internal inconsis-
tency and the general vagueness of its postulates. Through the detailed
analysis of texts, deconstructionism discovered that philosophy contra-
dicts itself nearly in every word, postulating something different from what
it really means. For example, as is shown in the book Sur la grammatologie
(1967), when Jean-Jacques Rousseau advocates a return from civilization
to pure nature which is “writing in the human heart,” he uses the image of
writing, while at the same time condemning the conditional character of
writing as compared to the natural primordial quality of voice. Which, then,
was the real viewpoint of Rousseau? Might it be that, in philosophical texts,
all definiteness is effaced, creating a new field of thought where different
viewpoints cross?
Even in antiquity, this principle was expressed by Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu),
who compared the multitude of things with a net which has no beginning.
That the shadowy and still is without bodily form; that change and trans-
formation are ever proceeding, but incapable of being determined. What
is death? What is life? … All things being arranged as they are, there is
no one place which can be fitly ascribed to it. …(He discussed them), us-
ing strange and mystical expressions, wild and extravagant words, and
phrases to which no definite meaning could be assigned. He constantly

A World View, Not a Point of View: “A Net with No Knots” 153
indulged his own wayward ideas, but did not make himself a partisan,
nor look at them as peculiar to himself.1
Not having a definite viewpoint of things, nor “looking at them as peculiar to

himself,” is, probably, what the comprehensive worldview is about. To see is to
change one’s viewpoint. A single viewpoint equals all but blindness. The very
nature of sight requires a change of standpoint. If, in trying to achieve a perfect
clarity, we fix our eyes on any object, the object starts to look blurred. A frozen,
immobile look makes us think of madness or demonic possession. No matter
how we wish it, our gaze cannot be uninterrupted; physiologically, our eyes
are constructed in such a way that the pupils are periodically submerged in
darkness. For this brief moment, the object stops being visible and turns from
the given into the possible. We cannot be absolutely sure that we will find it
in the same place, in the same position, or that it will be the same object. The
blinking of the eye transfers the visibility of the object from self-identity into
the area of the possible. The very act of seeing already opens in the object a
zone of potentiality; to an even higher degree, this observation is applicable to
intellectual acts, which initially construct the object of thought from the sum
of its possibilities. The thought object acquires its volume gradually, as it is be-
ing viewed from different angles. How many points of view have to be changed
in order for something to get close to a worldview! A preacher, a politician, a
moralist all have viewpoints, but the philosopher, in distinction from a “parti-
san,” has only a worldview; and the more possible points of view of the world it
embraces, the more complete it becomes.
In this way we define the possibility of the “mind’s eye” which would not be
reduced to a single outlook, “ism,” partisanship, or direction of thought, but
would work with all conceptions – idealist, materialist, religious, atheist – cre-
ating the whole field of the thinkable. Such philosophy would not limit itself
by anything and would give itself full freedom in strange expressions, “wild
and extravagant words, and phrases to which no definite meaning could be
assigned.”
This ancient Tao intuition is paradoxically confirmed by the fruits of post-
structuralism. “Change and transformation are ever proceeding, but incapable
of being determined.” Zhuangzi’s vision reminds us of the net of distinctions
created in the works of Derrida. As Brogan notes,
1 The Writings of Chuang Tzu, Book 33.Thien Hsiâ, trans. James Legge, https://books.google
.com/books?id=NKurBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT368&lpg=PT368&dq.
One of Derrida’s favorite ‘metaphors’ for deconstruction is weaving … The

web of writing is not constructed along the lines of simple hierarchies
that interrelate fixed points that we call concepts and words. The woven
text has a texture that stretches and shrinks, can expand, can be grafted
onto, can fold, warp, and unravel. To follow the patterns and interlacing
of the composition requires the weaver’s art of looping and knotting.2
This fabric of language, about which Zhuangzi and Derrida speak, is devoid
of any beginning, center, or source, all of which could stop or substantiate the
play of the infinite replacement of signs. The definite philosophical viewpoint
with which the thinker could identify himself is absent. “There is no one place
which can be fitly ascribed to it.” Even though in the history of philosophy such
identification constantly occurs, it happens only when the net is artificially
torn: a thinker postulates a certain ultimate signified – nature or idea, God or
man. This signified, to which all the signs supposedly point, is proclaimed to
be the beginning of everything – and, turning into a frozen metaphysical con-
struction, puts an end to the play of philosophy itself. Every thinker puts an
end to philosophy at the very moment of proclaiming its beginning. The net is
tied into a tight knot, grasped in the philosopher’s hand, and all the universe
is caught in this net, in the system of categories that reduce it to the primeval
principle.
Is such a philosophy possible, which would follow the infinite links of this
boundless net without stopping them at a certain all-tying and all-ending
knot? In the end, that very “ultimate signified,” at which all the signs point,
turns out to also be a sign, pointing at other signifieds; thus, it is interwoven
into this eternal net of reference-replacements. When all historic events point
to the self-development of an “absolute idea,” the absolute idea itself, such as
it had once appeared in the mind of Hegel, is interwoven into the fabric of
history and points to such events as “French revolution,” “Prussian monarchy,”
or “German romanticism,” which explain this idea not worse than it explains
them.
According to Derrida,
the nature of the field – that is, language and a finite language-excludes
totalization. This field is in fact that of freeplay, that is to say, a field of
2 W. Brogan, “Plato’s Pharmakon: Between Two Repetitions,” in Hugh J. Silverman (ed.), Der-
rida and Deconstruction (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), p. 12. About the image of
weaving in Derrida’s works see also R. Gasche, The Taint of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philoso-
phy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 95 ff.
A World View, Not a Point of View: “A Net with No Knots” 155
infinite substitutions in the closure of a finite ensemble. This field per-

mits these infinite substitutions only because it is finite, that is to say,
because instead of being an inexhaustible field, as in the classical hy-
pothesis, instead of being too large, there is something missing from it: a
center which arrests and founds the freeplay of substitutions. One could
say-rigorously using that word whose scandalous signification is always
obliterated in French-that this movement of the freeplay, permitted by
the lack, the absence of a center or origin, is the movement of supple-
mentarily. One cannot determine the center, the sign which supplements
it, which takes its place in its absence-because this sign adds itself, occurs
in addition, over and above, comes as a supplement. The movement of
signification adds something, which results in the fact that there is al-
ways more, but this addition is a floating one because it comes to perform
a vicarious function, to supplement a lack on the part of the signified.3
In other words, in the place of a signified a new signifier is placed, a new sign
that writes itself into the field of language. This very movement of lacks and
supplements is, precisely, the history of thought. The thought pauses on some
signified – for example, on the Absolute Idea – but then the Absolute Idea
itself is transformed by the following thought into a sign pointing to other sig-
nifieds. In this way, Marx’s absolute idea refers to material production and is
regarded as a sign of its alienation; Freud’s absolute idea points at the libido
and is regarded as one of the signs of its repression and sublimation. In its turn,
Marx’s “material production” and Freud’s “libido” are ultimate signifieds, which
become new signs of the new, post-Marxist and post-Freudian, discourse.
What is established as the ultimate signified, on which the thought comes to
a halt, emerges as a sign for the next thought. Thus, in the vacant place of the
signified, a new sign is found, a supplement which must fill up the lack in the
center, the absence of the signified. From this follows the “floating” character
of thinking: it moves because it has no foothold, it produces new waves, creates
new signs as it cannot reach the bottom, because the firm foundation, or the
ultimate signified, simply is not there.
Any kind of metaphysics, as Derrida understands it, is based on the cate-
gory of the “presence.” “Presence” is something evident, indubitable, given in
itself, a certain reality which cannot be eliminated, which is imminent. It is
denoted as “entity,” “existence,” “goal,” “beginning,” “truth,” “idea,” “energy,” “the
transcendent,” “God,” “man,” “consciousness,” and so on. From Plato’s idealism
3 J. Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.:Critical Theory
since 1965, ed. H. Adams and L. Searle (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1990), p. 91.
to Husserl’s phenomenology, from Descartes’ mind to Heidegger’s existence,

philosophy has always tried to break through to existence, bypassing all the
intermediate mediating categories, all conventional signs and hierarchies of
meaning, standing in the way of direct reality, the cherished goal of philoso-
phers. This is why in such oppositions as “inner–outer,” “primary–derivative,”
“voice–writing,” the first component was considered the privileged one. The
inner, primary, unconditional sounding – such were the variants of that cov-
eted presence, or signified, to which the “outer,” “derivative,” “conditional” signs
of “writing” pointed. However, from these privileged terms came the main
metaphysical illusion – the idea that, hidden behind conditional signs, there is
something primary, a certain entity as pre-sence, “the transcendental signified,
which, at one time or another, would place a reassuring end to the reference
from sign to sign. I have identified logocentrism and the metaphysics of pres-
ence as the exigent, powerful, systematic, and irrepressible desire for such a
signified.”4 In reality, all that is given are the signs themselves, as an infinite
chain of conventionalities, closed onto itself. On the other hand, we cannot
even say directly “in reality,” as this metaphysical expression presupposes a real
nature of things, different from signs, whereas it is only conventional signs of
reality, and not the reality itself, which exist. In this sense, the “primary” or the
“inner” are only signs whose sense is defined by their difference from the signs
of the “derivative” and “outer.” When, for example, we are contraposing the
conventionalities of culture to the non-conventionality of nature, we simply
produce the additional signs of “non-conventionality” and “nature” – signs that
are even more conventional than the signs of “conventionality” and “culture”:
they have double significance, for they successfully mask the conventionality
and thus conceal their character as signs. “What broaches the movement of
signification is what makes its interruption impossible. The thing itself is a
sign.”5
4 J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins

5 Ibid.
Chapter 17
The Possible in Jean Derrida
Derrida’s ideas lead us to the comprehension of the possibilistic character of

signs. Indeed, if the “metaphysics of presence,” “metaphysics of foundation” is
radically eliminated, it means that the sign system passes into the modality of
the possible. The “deconstruction of transcendental signified” brings about a
free play of signs, pointing at each other. However, in order to keep their status
as signs, and not simply turn into things, signs should signify something; that
is, retain their relation to signifieds as to a certain possibility, never fully realized,
and never transformed into presence. If signs are deprived of their possibilistic
character, the metaphysics of presence will be restored, but from another side –
from the side of signs deprived of their potential to signify, and so converted into
empirical objects.
Metaphysics threatens thinking from two sides – that of extreme realism
and that of extreme nominalism; either signifieds or signifiers are objectified
and acquire the status of actual, existing things. Realism is the metaphysics
of signifieds, the presence of general concepts as real things. Nominalism is the
metaphysics of signifiers, the presence of signs themselves as real things. Elimi-
nating the realistic metaphysics of signifieds, deconstruction risks entering
into the nominalistic metaphysics of signifiers, because it is supposed that all
signs denote only other signs. Thus, signs are deprived of depth and transferred
into the plane of objective existence where one thing is associated with anoth-
er thing, just as a spoon is associated with a bowl and a coat with a coat hanger.
Even if we agree with Derrida that “a thing itself is a sign,” it should be added
that the sign is still not a thing. A sign is different from a thing in that the sign
has significance; that is, the conditional mode of meaning, a property of refer-
ring to something else outside the limits of the sign itself (even though this
possibility does not have to be realized in a transcendental signified, as an ob-
ject existing in reality). Significance is the mutual intentionality or the mutual
possibility of the signified and the signifier which does not become either reality
or necessity. Following the logic of Derrida himself, presence and signified lose
their actual or necessary status, but do not disappear. Instead, they pass into
the domain of the possible, enter the play of signs as the play of meaningful
possibilities. Indeed, the presence, in Derrida’s view, is not eliminated, but re-
placed or postponed; that is, it creates a supplement in the form of its own pos-
sibility. The signifier is that which makes possible the signified; the signified is
what makes possible the signifier. If we eliminate this possibilistic character

of meaning, we are doomed to remain inside the limits of the metaphysics of

presence. Whether it will be manifested on the plane of nominalism or on the
plane of realism, on the plane of signifiers/objects or signifieds/objects, is a
secondary question.
In fact, the Derridean theory of deconstruction explicitly or implicitly in-
cludes the modality of the “possible” in the definition of practically all its con-
cepts. Derrida constantly uses the concept of the possible, for example, when
speaking about the “possibility of trace” and the “possibility of writing” – or,
more precisely, characterizing trace and writing as “possibilities.” It is obvious
that, in all these cases, possibility precedes the event which it makes possible.
We will cite a series of examples from a single chapter “The Outside Is the
Inside” from the book Of Grammatology.
(1) “The very idea of institution – hence of the arbitrariness of the sign – is
unthinkable before the possibility of writing and outside of its horizon.”1
(2) “[T]he concept of the graphie implies the framework of the instituted
trace, as the possibility common to all systems of signification.”2
(3) “The trace, where the relationship with the other is marked, articulates
its possibility, in the entire field of the entity.”3
(4) “The field of the entity, before being determined as the field of pres-
ence, is structured according to the diverse possibilities – genetic and
structural – of the trace.”4
(5) “The general structure of the unmotivated trace connects within the
same possibility, and they cannot be separated except by abstraction.”5
(6) “[T]he trace whereof I speak is not more natural … than cultural, not
more physical than psychic, biological than spiritual. It is that starting
from which a becoming-unmotivated of the sign, and with it all the ulte-
rior oppositions between physis and its other, is possible.”6
(7) “[S]ince writing no longer relates to language as an extension or frontier,
let us ask how language is a possibility founded on the general possibility
of writing.”7
As we have seen, Derrida often turns to the notion of the possible, using it
in relation with the most important concepts of his method – “trace,” “sign,”
“writing.” He uses the term “possible” in three different senses. First, he speaks
1 Ibid., p. 44.
2 Ibid., p. 46.
3 Ibid., p.47.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., pp. 47–8.
7 Ibid., p. 52.
The Possible in Jean Derrida 159
about the possibility of writing or of trace, the possibility preceding these and
other events (examples 1, 3, 7b). Secondly, he speaks about writing and trace as
a possibility common also to other events (examples 2, 5). Thirdly, he speaks
about writing and trace as a possibility creating other events (examples 4, 6,
7a). The possibilistic approach permeates all levels, according to the three
groups of examples: (1) before writing and trace, as their own possibility; (2) in
writing and trace, as a possibility they share with others; (3) after writing and
trace, as a possibility of other events following from them.
In many cases, Derrida sees the starting point not in writing or trace per se,
but in their possibility (examples 1, 3): the idea of established nature, that is
of arbitrariness, of a sign is unthinkable before the possibility of writing; the
opposition of nature and culture become meaningful only after the possibil-
ity of trace. It is precisely the possibility of writing and trace, and not their
presence, that makes possible signs, opposition of nature and culture, passage
of time, and so on. We can say that writing and trace, as they appear in Der-
rida’s system, are nothing but the possibility of writing and trace, the possibil-
ity that makes possible other differences – which, in their turn, make possible
language, culture, philosophy, and so on.
“The (pure) trace is difference. It does not depend on any sensible pleni-
tude, audible or visible, phonic or graphic. It is, on the contrary, the condition
of such a plenitude. Although it does not exist, although it is never a being-
present outside all plenitude, its possibility is by rights anterior to all that one
calls sign (signified/signifier, content/expression, etc.), concept or operation,
motor or sensory.”8 In other words, trace creates a possibility for differentiating
all sensory objects, even though it itself has no sensory existence and thus “is
not.” Trace is the possibility of differentiating between the heard and the seen,
the signifier and the signified, the motor and the sensory, and, consequently, it
is a condition for creating signs, concepts, and actions in their inner and outer
differences.
Play itself – the free play of signs which, according to Derrida, precedes both
reality and its division into presence and absence – is, in turn, preceded by the
possibility of play.
“Play is always play of absence and presence, but if it is to be thought radi-
cally, play must be conceived of before the alternative of presence and absence.
Being must be conceived as presence or absence on the basis of the possibility
of play and not the other way around.”9 Earlier we spoke about the possibility
of presence, which is the same as the possibility of absence, in relation to the
8 Ibid., p. 62.
9 Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play, p. 93.
problem of significance (substitution as a characteristic of signs refers at the

same time to both the presence and the absence of the substituted–signified).
It turns out that this possibility of presence–absence is mediated even more by
the initial possibility of the play itself.
Even in the definition of the basic concept of “différance” (despite the fact
that, according to Derrida, this is not a concept) the concept of possibility is
introduced (which, in this sense, can even less be considered a concept). Here
I quote two important definitions from the work Différance.
“ [I]f différance is (and I also cross out the ‘is’) what makes possible the pre-
sentation of the being-present, it is never presented as such. It is never offered
to the present.”10 In other words, différance is what makes the presence possi-
ble, even though it is never present itself. Différance makes possible something
which it itself is not. About différance it cannot be said that it exists or does
not exist; the predicate “to be” does not apply to it. Différance “derives from no
category of being, whether present or absent.”11 All this clearly indicates that
différance belongs to another modality, beyond “is” or “is not.”
The second definition: “Such a play, différance, is thus no longer simply a
concept, but rather the possibility of conceptuality, of a conceptual process
and system in general.”12 The structure of this definition is identical to that
of the first one: différance makes conceptualization possible, even though it
itself is not a concept. In both cases, différance appears as the possibility of all
differentiation, and, consequently, of all events and concepts (“the possibility
of the presentation of existence–presence” or “the possibility of the cognitive
process and system in general”).
Derrida takes the concept of the “possible” in its own sense, purified from
any shade of realizability. Possibility is a pure form of the possible which, men-
tioned earlier, includes also the impossibility of its own realization. “Différance
produces what it forbids, makes possible the very thing it makes impossible.”13
The “possible” establishes the possibility of the other, but this “other” itself is,
according to Derrida, impossible.
Now it becomes clear why Derrida invariably, almost mechanically, attaches
the sign of the possible to many decisive categories of his method – in this way
he fights against the metaphysics of presence, which can easily invade the cat-
egories of “writing,” “trace,” or “différance,” if they are understood as substances.
10 Because différance does not belong to the mode of existence. In the original, both words
“is” are crossed out.
11 Différance, in J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 6.
12 Ibid., p. 11.
13 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 143.
The Possible in Jean Derrida 161
And yet, constantly resorting to the “possible” (and “impossible”) in all lev-
els of analysis, Derrida avoids thematizing and conceptualizing this notion,
avoids ascribing to it the decisive significance which, in his theory, is given to
the terms “différance,” “trace,” “deferment,” “writing.” Derrida uses the concept
of the “possible” mechanically, and now we need to understand the meaning
of such a usage. Why can’t Derrida do without it in formulating his most im-
portant concepts, and yet fail to give it a decisive character, does not enter it
into the system of his most cultivated categories, and does not rationalize it?
Indeed, it is the “possibility of trace” that presents more consistent c hallenge
to the metaphysics of presence than does the “trace” itself, which inherently
contains some material for presence, for visual demonstration. Maybe it is pre-
cisely the depth of this modal layer, from which the possibilities of other sign
and play layers spring, that impedes its exposure and rationalization?
Chapter 18
The Metaphysics of Deconstruction:

the Main Terms
In order to answer this question, let us analyze the concepts that Derrida
takes the most pains to rationalize and which are most fundamental and em-
blematic of his system: “différance,” “deferment,” “trace,” “supplement.” Several
other concepts, such as “sign,” “play,” “writing,” are commonly used in the hu-
manities, even though in Derrida’s works they receive a somewhat different
interpretation.
The four above-mentioned concepts, the most characteristic for Derrida,
have something in common, and if we understand what this “something” is,
we will also understand why the “possible” is not found among these catego-
ries. All these concepts entail a negation of the metaphysics of presence and,
at the same time, the negative intention of presence which can be seen in the
very forms of its elimination.
Let us show this with the example of “différance,” the most important of
terms, derived from the French diffèrer (Latin differre) which has two mean-
ings – “differentiate” and “defer.” According to Derrida, the sign not only enters
into the relation of differentiation with all other signs, but also enters into the
relation of deferment with the signified. “The sign, in this sense. is deferred
presence.”1 The classical theory of sign postulated that the signified – that
which is replaced by the signifier – is absent only temporarily and condition-
ally, that the sign is meant, precisely, to retain the signified, to remind about
its presence in the past and anticipate its presence in the future. Derrida dis-
putes the ontological status itself of the signified as present or absent. “If the
displaced presentation remains definitively and implacably postponed, it is not
that a certain present remains absent or hidden. Rather, différance maintains
our relationship with that … which exceeds the alternative of presence and
absence.”2
Among many different spheres of the signified, we could single out that
which Freud called the “unconscious.” The unconscious sends us a multitude
of signs and replacements without a single indication that it can come out from
behind its “temporary” barriers and reveal its immediate presence. According
1 Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, p. 9.

2 Ibid., p. 20.

The Metaphysics of Deconstruction: the Main Terms 163
to Derrida, the unconscious “differs from itself,” “defers itself” in a variety of its
traces – neuroses, dreams, slips of the tongue, and so on – but does not exist in
itself as a certain thing and never reveals itself as a certain reality.
The alterity of the “unconscious” makes us concerned not with horizons

of modified – past or future – presents, but with a “past” that has never
been present, and which never will be, whose future to come will never
be a production or a reproduction in the form of presence.3
Even though, in the statements cited above, Derrida specifies that “deferment”
cancels all possible presence, this reasoning contradicts the very meaning of
the word “deferment,” which means postponement of an event, not its annul-
ment. As a rule, Derrida chooses for his pool of terminology such words that
he can specify, to which he can ascribe the opposite sense, and which he can
turn inside out. Yet, made into their own negatives, they continue to precisely
convey the form embodied in them – in this case, the form of presence. “Defer-
ment” means later on, not now, but both moments are marked on the scale of
time, on the map of presence.
Moreover, this difference between “now” and “later on,” in Derrida’s opinion,
constitutes time itself, which lasts and continues precisely as a result of de-
ferment, as the impossibility of presence. In French, différer means both “dif-
ferentiate” (or “be differentiated”) and “defer,” “postpone,” “delay something,”
which, taken as a definition of time, converts it into a pure interval. “Différer
in this sense is to temporize, to take recourse, consciously or unconsciously, in
the temporal and temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends the accom-
plishment or fulfillment of ‘desire’ or ‘will’.”4
Thus it may be said that deferment is not simply an attribute of sign, which
always postpones the signified, but the nature of time, that interval which in
itself is time. But if time is nothing but deferment, then the very form of pres-
ence, though seemingly invalidated, as “metaphysics,” is, however, preserved
and even gives form to time, in fact, form of emptiness. Time is structured by
the transfer of presence from one moment to another; the latest moment is
realized as supplement and completion of the unrealized previous moment.
Between these moments nothing happens except mechanical stretching, the
ticking of a clock and the turning of the hand, because time neither changes
nor adds anything – it just postpones, “defers.” “Presence” vanishes – instead
3 Ibid., p. 21. About the unconscious (“it”) as potentiality, see the Chapter “Psychology” in Part
3, this volume.
4 Ibid., p. 8.
time itself appears as a remnant of this vanished presence, as its abstraction,

since the vanished event is replaced by the “presence of its absence,” that is
time itself. Deferment means empty, featureless time, in which the following
moment is but deferment of the previous one. We know this aspect of time
from Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, where Godot’s arrival is indefinitely
postponed. Deferment is a difference acting inside the frame of identity: time
becomes self-identical and is canceled as qualitative time, because the same
“something” is transferred from one moment to another.
Futhermore, the action of differentiation (différance) creates both spatial
and temporal intervals, thus annulling the radical distinction between time
and space. “In constituting itself, in dividing itself dynamically, this interval is
what might be called spacing, the becoming-space of time or the becoming-
time of space (temporization). …And it is this constitution of the present that
I propose to call archi-writing, archi-trace, or différance. Which (is) (simulta-
neously) spacing (and) temporization.”5 Time lasts and unfolds like space,
because between its moments there is no qualitative difference, but only
distancing and delay when nothing passes. Time is replaced by an infinitely
stretchable interval which can be called both time and space in their indistinc-
tiveness. Différance turns into indifference.
However paradoxical it may seem, the very same deferment which, accord-
ing to Derrida, establishes time and allows its movement, annuls time itself,
converting differentiated moments into identical ones, because the latest ones
are but deferment of the former. Time does not differentiate or change any-
thing, it is but a function of deferment. Mark Taylor, a follower of Derrida, in
his book-manifesto about postmodern theology, depicts the reign of the eter-
nal interval: “The universality of the medium implies that what is intermedi-
ate is not transitory and that what is interstitial is ‘permanent.’ Though always
betwixt ‘n’ between, the ‘eternal’ time of the middle neither begins nor ends.”6
This is why the post-structuralist paradigm, to a large degree created by Der-
rida’s ideas, excludes time: understood as deferment, it becomes deferment of
time itself. On the level of différance, “later on” sounds like “never.” With the
words “later on!” we denote the possibility that is postponed for a later time,
known to be unrealizable, while remaining a possibility and, consequently,
inherently containing something of the impossible. A girl is saying to her fa-
ther, “Let’s go for a walk!” He, reading on a sofa, answers, “Later on!” A citi-
zen, addressing the state, “When will we finally build a fair society?” The state,
5 Ibid., p. 13.
6 M.C. Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology, in From Modernism to Postmodernism. An An-
tology, ed. Lawrence Cahoone (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), pp. 526–7.
i ncreasing its military and bureaucratic power, “Later on!” The man, addressing
God, “When will the innocent stop suffering?” God, allegedly preoccupied with
establishing ecumenical contacts among churches, “Later on!”
This “later on,” having become part and parcel of our epoch, turns into the
post-time, a temporal realm envisioned as coming after the flow of present
time but therefore never arriving. The very concept of postmodernism, this
cheerful life-hereafter, “all” after all, follows from the philosophy of deferred
expectations. Neither history as the continuation of time, nor eschatology as
the end of time, fills this gap; it conserves its significance as pure deferment.
Postmodern people have to await the coming of time with the same fear and
hope as they had awaited, in the past, the end of time. However, “aftertime”
is neither time, nor eternity, but the metaphysics of pure repetition, because
one and the same moment of time, when postponed, is recreated in the form
of perpetual return. The girl repeats her question to her father; the citizen, to
the state; the man, to God (Godot), but in the interval nothing happens, and
interval expands to infinity.
This explains why in his later works dedicated to the cultural signs of gift,
death, and evidence, Derrida even more stresses the absence of the signified,
which is not only absent but in principle cannot be present. Consequently, the
concept of the “impossible” gradually replaces that of the “possible” from the
predication of the main concepts of Derrida, such as “gift,” “death,” “evidence”;
“the gift is another name of the impossible.”7 While the “possible” still appears
in Derrida’s writings, it is only for emphasizing the possibility of the impossible
itself; such is, precisely, the nature of the “aporias” which Derrida finds in the
seemingly clear and understandable concepts. “The biggest possibility is noth-
ing else but the possibility of the impossible.”8
We find a similar motive also in Derrida, when différance, in connection with
Nietzschean philosophy, is interpreted as a myth of perpetual return. “Perpet-
ual return,” the most metaphysical of all Nietzsche’s ideas, was the price he
paid for the destruction of all previous metaphysics. Infinity, from which after
“God’s death” the moment of transcendence had been eliminated, the moment
of a breakthrough into the different, acquired traits of self-identity, which al-
ways departs from itself and always overtakes itself, because it has nowhere to
go, because the way found by the prophets of the different reign is closed for
it. Différance, since it works against any metaphysics, against anything radi-
cally different from trace or sign, also turns out to be a form of self-identity.
7 Derrida, Given Time, p. 29.

8 Derrida, Aporias, p. 77. This is analyzed in more detail in Part i, Chapter 9, this volume: “The
Possible and the Impossible: the Aporia of Thinking.”
The d ifference in it only creates gaps between the elements of repetition. “And
on the basis of this unfolding of the same as différance, we see announced the
sameness of différance and repetition in the eternal return.”9
However metaphysical, the idea of perpetual return is but an expression of
hidden metaphysics of the idea of différance. If différance is temporal, then af-
ter it, after Godot’s arrival, another time may begin. For this to occur we have to
admit that Godot can come, that the “transcendental signified” can be realized
and incarnated, that “truth,” “entity,” “eternity” are more than just conditional
signs. If, however, différance is not temporal, if, as Derrida insists, there is no
“signified” beyond its limits, then the same deferred moment will repeat itself
again and again, precisely because it cannot be realized and yield to the next
moment, just as the needle of a gramophone, stuck in a groove and caught in
the trap of “deferment,” repeats the same musical phrase over and over.
In the similar way, Derrida works with the non-concept of “trace,” which is
also critically set against the metaphysics of presence. For Derrida, “trace” is a
more convenient term than “sign,” since sign, by definition, is the relation of
signifier and signified – and it is precisely the latter that has to be eliminated
in order to present the world as a play of signifiers alone. That is why Derrida,
in a stricter sense, prefers to speak about “structure of traces,” the “free play of
traces,” trying by the use of the term itself to eliminate the metaphysical shade
of “signified” marking the term “sign.”
However, “trace” also presupposes a certain presence of the “one who left
this trace”; about trace, just as about sign, one can ask, “trace of what?” If we
are to trust the meaning of the word, then we have to admit that it is precisely
trace that gives a strong impression of the presence of the one who left it; the
trace that is possessed by the idea of being on the trail of the one who left this
trace. Trace excludes alibi; it is always a trace of something or someone. We
point at the trace as at an indubitable testimonial and proof of presence, as at
a moment of truth. Trace often marks the beginning of detective stories, where
all the interest consists in the deciphering of the trace as evidence that helps
find the criminal. This is why Derrida’s usage of this term becomes a proviso,
contrary to the direct meaning of this word. “[T]he concept of trace is incom-
patible with the concept of retention, of the becoming-past of what has been
present. One cannot think the trace – and therefore, différance – on the basis
of the present, or of the presence of the present.”10
It may seem that, in order to avoid the smallest hint of any transcenden-
tal meaning, Derrida could replace “trace” with a more convenient concept,

10 Ibid., p. 21.
self-sufficient and not having any connotations – such as “line” or “thing.” How-
ever, then the metaphysics of presence would be completely restored already
“on this side”: “thing” would not refer to any other presence, but would be such
a presence itself. This is why Derrida chooses the terms that suggest the edge
between two metaphysical systems, and thinking moves along this sharp edge,
as along the blade of a knife. On the one side there is the presence of the signi-
fiers, on the other side of the signifieds, and the way between them is made
in the absolute thinness of trace, which does not replace anything and, at the
same time, does not represent itself either, thus being different from both the
sign and the thing.
“Always differing and deferring, the trace is never as it is in the presentation
of itself. It erases itself in presenting itself, muffles itself in resonating, like the
a writing itself, inscribing its pyramid in différance.”11 Trace can be represented
only as a certain minimal difference, for example, a difference between two
hues on a picture, or two sounds in music, or two signs in writing. However,
the trace itself is neither colorful, nor sounding, nor written, but only makes
possible the distinction of colors, sounds, and letters. It erases itself in colors,
silences itself in sounds; it is only present to the same degree in which it is ab-
sent. Better to say, it is a possibility of everything else.
However, trace in Derrida’s interpretation, all the provisos notwithstanding
– or, more precisely, thanks to them – becomes that what the author is trying
to avoid, a metaphysical entity. Indeed, the author purifies trace of all traces
of something different to it – so much, that it becomes something identical to
itself. It does not take part in the intense interrelations between two presenc-
es, between the signifier and the signified. It is in this field between two pres-
ences, each one of which makes the other possible, where the presence itself,
as well as the absence, disappears, giving way to the modality of the possible.
Non-metaphysics is possible only in the gaps of metaphysics. However, when
the metaphysical is so radically eliminated that trace remains the only reality
between two empty spaces, two gaps, then this reality itself acquires the meta-
physical character of a special entity, a particular primary essence, or origin.
The trace is not only the disappearance of origin – within the discourse
that we sustain and according to the path that we follow it means that the
origin did not even disappear, that it was never constituted except recip-
rocally by a non-origin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the
origin. From then on, to wrench the concept of the trace from the classi-
cal scheme, which would derive it from a presence or from an originary
11 Ibid., p. 23.
nontrace and which would make of it an empirical mark, one must in-
deed speak of an originary trace or arche-trace.12
In other words, trace substitutes that arche-entity, that source-origin, which

it was supposed to erase. Or course, Derrida could have avoided such an obvi-
ous inversion of metaphysical conclusion, such a direct interchange of meta-
physical place (arche-origin) and anti-metaphysical non-concept (trace), the
interchange, the result of which is arche-trace. Of course, Derrida could have
made a proviso that “arche” in his system is something totally different from
the archetype and the origin, that this arche-trace does not exist in the same
sense in which Rousseau postulated the primary existence of “nature,” Hegel
of “idea,” Nietzsche of “life,” Heidegger of “existence.” In Derrida, we find such a
proviso after the text, cited above: “if all begins with the trace, there is above all
no originary trace.”13 This proviso, however, betrays, rather than conceals, the
metaphysical move permitting him to establish such an all-embracing begin-
ning – arche-trace – that it cannot be objectified historically or empirically as
a temporal or causal origin. Inasmuch as “everything” begins with a trace, then
there cannot be any “arche-trace” different from “everything.” However, this
means only that the arche-trace itself acquires the meaning of the metaphysi-
cal beginning and is eliminated from the historic order of things.
In general, any radical eliminating of metaphysics itself leads to metaphys-
ics; categorical eradication of presence on the other side of trace as its “tran-
scendental” original restores this presence on this side, in the immanence of
the trace itself. The world, understood as an interplay of traces, is, indeed, not
different from the world, understood as an interplay of natural elements, or an
interplay of abstract concepts. In all these cases we have a flat, one-level world,
compounded of “one” reality which does not include a relation with anything
else. Trace, purified of all that left it and has been associated with it, becomes
indistinguishable from a thing or a concept in their self-identity. A deferment,
purified of all it defers, becomes indistinguishable from existing in one mo-
ment of time, allowing its elasticity only as repetition, or “perpetual return.”
“Deferment” and “trace” stand in one row with “supplement,” which belongs
to the most “sly,” anti-metaphysical terms of Derrida. Their slyness consists not
only in the ambivalence by which the author tries to “outflank” the monosemy
of metaphysical concepts. They are also sly in the sense that they outflank the
intentions of the author himself, establishing metaphysics at the rear of his
own thought.

13 Ibid.
“Supplement” has two meanings: (1) supply, furnishing something lacking

and necessary; (2) addition, annexation of something supplementary, extra.
Describing the relation between signifier and signified, the author plays with
these two meanings.14 At the first glance, signifier is but a “supply,” that is, it
must temporarily substitute for the missing signified; it must compensate for
a lack. In fact, signifier is an addition, because the signified is not there, is de-
ferred to “nowhere.” From this follows the constant surplus of signifiers in rela-
tion to signifieds: the same event is described in many different ways.15 Sign
is added to sign, the sign system is growing in place of an absent, or, more
precisely, never present, signified. In this way, “supplement” is introduced as a
deceptive maneuver in relation to metaphysics: signifier substitutes signified
and takes its place; it compensates for a lack – and creates an addition in the
sign system itself.
However, the strong emphasis on the second meaning of “supplement” –
as well as on the second meaning of “différance,” that of “deferment” – plays
the same double game against the author’s intention, in favor of other meta-
physics, which the author hardly meant to establish – the metaphysics of sig-
nifieds. “The overabundance of the signifier, its supplementary character, is
thus the result of a finitude, that is to say, the result of a lack which must be
supplemented.”16 A certain ontological quality is subtracted from the signified
and added to the signifier, in such way that “a sign is added and a surplus re-
sults.” Here, by the way, the same term is used as in Marx’s theory of “additional
value” – indeed, signifiers grow at the expense of signifieds, as if sucking all of
their life juices, increasing their own capital at the expense the absolute im-
poverishment of “proletarian” signifieds.
14 See Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play, p. 91.

15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., p. 92.
Chapter 19
The Radical Nature of Difference: Profit and

Transcendence
“Supplement” as a unidirectional model in relation to signifiers and signifieds

fits well the metaphysical thought of the 19th century, which was dedicated
to finding a certain balance between “profit” and “loss,” since it was based on
the self-identity of existence. Something is taken from workers and added to
capitalists (Marx). Something is taken from God, from creationism and added
to nature, to evolution (Darwin), or to the life instinct (Nietzsche). Something
is taken from the conscious and added to the unconscious (Freud). Something
is taken from the signifieds and added to signifiers (Derrida).
At the base of all these critiques – the Marxist critique of capitalism, the
Nietzschean critique of Christianity, the Freudian critique of civilization – lay
an unstated idea of balance, not unlike the law of conservation (of mass or
energy). It was supposed that one thing was developing at the expense of an-
other, and now the lack should be compensated, the balance restored, a revolu-
tion made in favor of workers and against capitalists, in favor of instincts and
against religion, in favor of psychic health and against too repressive civiliza-
tion. This is the model of “zero-sum game,” upset and restored balance, the
model of inversion, commutivity, while conserving the total. This is the model
of economy which, while spending on something, immediately tries to com-
pensate by saving on something else.
However, the model of différance could work in a totally different way: it
creates profit without presupposing any loss; it fortifies the life instinct while
strengthening rather than weakening religious belief; it creates capital growth,
while at the same time enriching the workers; it removes barriers from the
unconscious, thus reinforcing the working of consciousness. The strengthen-
ing of the one makes possible the strengthening of the other. The principal
event in this model happens not as a revolution, but as a bifurcation, an instant
doubling, an explosion of differences at that point where reality discloses its
different character, the doubling – or multiplying – of its possibilities. Such an
“economy” – economy of pure profit, of surplus – is created by Bataille, whom
Derrida often quotes. We could also refer to Nietzsche in Deleuze’s interpreta-
tion, to the statement of the latter which Derrida quotes in his “Différance”:
“Quantity itself, therefore, is not separable from the difference of quantity. The

The Radical Nature of Difference: Profit and Transcendence 171
difference of quantity is the essence of force, the relation of force to force.”1

In other words, the difference of the forces strengthens both of them and not
one at the expense of the other – and this is what is new in the Nietzschean
life-building model, which in its most “revolutionary” – that is traditionalist –
characteristics, in its atheism and biologism still worked within the old model
of upset balance.
If we follow this new economy of pure gain, then the difference between
signifier and signified by no means works unilaterally in favor of the signifier;
it does not bring abundance to one through impoverishment of the other, per-
mitting the signs to proliferate in the place left by the signified. The work of
differentiation constantly creates new mutual possibilities for signifiers and
signifieds, fostering their metaphoric play and the transfer of meaning from
one to the other; it augments the significance of the text, as well as of what the
text refers to.
The idea that in the sign system signifiers are more numerous than signi-
fieds and so compensate for the lack of the latter is characteristic of the new,
“reverse,” metaphysics of post-structuralism, which does not stand up to em-
pirical testing. It is true that several signifiers can refer to just one signified:
for example, the sun can be drawn in a picture, pointed at, denoted by the
words “sun,” or “soleil,” or “sol,” or “Apollo’s chariot,” or “heavenly eye.” However,
the opposite is also true, and one signifier can denote many signifieds: for ex-
ample, the word “sun” can refer to the star of our planetary system, to other
stars (“myriad of suns”), to spots of light (“the sun played on the water”), to
Pushkin (“the sun of our poetry”), or to a feeling of joy (“the sun shone in his
soul”). On this is based the metaphoric and metonymic usage of words, which
is, precisely, the “movement of signifying” between signifiers and signifieds in
the space of multiplying possibilities: for each signified, all signifiers are pos-
sible, and vise versa.
The very concept of the unilateral surplus of signifiers over signifieds seems
metaphysical, while the empirical evidence speaks rather in favor of signifieds,
as their number is always bigger than the number of signs in any language: a
single signifier “tree” refers to a million possible signifieds. However, it would
be more correct not to speak about a predefined surplus of one side of the sign
over another, but to say that signifiers and signifieds are always in surplus in
relation to each other, because for each signified there are many possible signi-
fiers, and for each signifier, many signifieds. A possibility always presupposes
1 Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, p. 17; G. Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: Universita-

ires de France, 1970), p. 49.
a certain excess over that reality, in relation to which it appears as possibility.

Witness Leibniz’s “multitude of possible Adams,” without which it is impossible
to imagine the freedom of the Creator. It is precisely the possibilistic character
of relations between signifiers and signifieds that creates their mutual surplus
and, consequently, the dynamics of the thought moving between two shores
and not disembarking at any of them: between the metaphysics of signified, for
which sign is but a transparent means of expression, and the metaphysics of
signifier, for which reality serves merely as a conventional projection of signs.
The metaphysical limitation of philosophy working with the concepts of
“deferment,” “trace,” “supplement,” and other related terms lies not in the fact
that it uses the principle of differentiation, différance, but in the fact that it
does not use this principle sufficiently. Differentiation is supposed only on the
level of the distinctions themselves, in their one-dimensional plane. Traces
are different among themselves. But why not suppose that there exists some-
thing different from the traces and the distinctions themselves – a certain pres-
ence, different from trace, a certain identity, different from distinctions? Why
must differentiation work only in the domain of the distinctions themselves,
instead of posing a certain “transcendental,” “metaphysical” domain, radically
different from itself? Interpreted radically, the principle of differentiation is not
exclusively confined to the level of signifiers, to the horizontal cross-section of the
structure, but must also build a multidimensional architectonics of differences,
including the level of signifieds and even the level of arch-entities, or essences.
The constant referring to the “other” in Derrida’s theory, as well as in post-
modern philosophy in general, resembles sliding along an infinite chain of
traces not leading anywhere, a chain of cultural signs referring to each other
on the same textual plane. This methodology prohibits stepping outside the
limits of the sign system; and any realities transcendental in relation to this
system, that is truly “different,” are criticized as “transcendental signifieds.”
The concept of the “different” in the postmodern theory marks some differ-
ences in ideological signs or cultural traditions, at the same time eliminating
everything radically different, other-dimensional, other-worldly, the very idea
of which is rejected as “metaphysical.” Other concepts are likewise rejected:
the center and the periphery, the top and the bottom, the spiritual and the
carnal, the essence and the phenomenon.2 The “different” is introduced as
2 According to the contemporary philosopher Mihai Spariosu, both Deleuze and Derrida try
to prove that the main difference in Plato is the difference not between the model and the
copy, or the Idea and the phenomenon, but between the very phenomena (simulacra) that
can be good or bad. The overturning of Platonism, therefore, is not so much a revolution in
the hierachy of the model and copy, or Idea and image, as the proclamation of the power of
simulacra. Spariosu, The Wreath of Wild Olive, pp. 78–9.
The Radical Nature of Difference: Profit and Transcendence 173
“difference” among the signs, or, more precisely, the traces; however, a much
more profound difference between sign and signified, between phenomenon
and essence, surface and depth is eliminated.
For Derrida the world is a “system in which the central signified, the original
or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of dif-
ferences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and
play of signification infinitely.”3 It is meant that the “signified” is introduced
into the system of signifiers and is absent beyond its limits. In fact, the tran-
scendental signified cannot be absolutely present either inside or outside the
system of its signifiers, according to the definition of sign and to the charac-
teristic of transcendence. Moreover, the complete “absence” of the transcen-
dental signified postulated here limits the system of differences just as much
as does the notion of “presence” of this signified, for the principal difference,
the difference that gives dynamism to the entire semiotic system, is the one
between the immanent and the transcendent.
Above all, we should define what is understood under the “transcendent”
and the “transcendence,” and in what sense we still can retain these concepts,
even after they have been so heavily criticized. Kant defines: “We will call the
principles whose application stays wholly and completely within the limits of
possible experience immanent, but those that would fly beyond these bound-
aries transcendent principles.”4 Usually, under transcendent are understood
certain universals, invisible and imperceptible entities which possess the same
actuality of existence in another, intelligible, world as do the real objects of our
world. However, the modal understanding of the transcendent makes it not
only other-worldly, but also other-dimensional, giving it a different modality
of existence. Paraphrasing Kant, we could say that the immanent is that which
“stays inside the limits of the possible experience,” whereas the transcendent
is that which goes outside the limits of the possible experience and constitutes
the experience of the possible, including the experience of possible worlds.
Transcendent things differ not only by the “locus,” but also by the “modus” of
their existence; that is, they exist not only outside the limits of empirical real-
ity, but also outside the limits of the very mode of existing. Transcendence is
potentiation, a transfer from the realm of the existing into the realm of the
possible.
The system of differences without transcendence, the play of giving signifi-
cance without the possibility of the transcendental signified, is but an infinite
3 J. Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1978), p. 280.
4 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 385.
unidimensionality, devoid of the most radical of all differences – that between

the immanent and the transcendent, between worlds of different modalities.
Even if we interpret it in the frame of the “play of giving significance,” which
in all grammatological postulates of Derrida is regarded as the primary source
and the goal-in-itself, we must admit that the infinitely immanent has a lesser
potential of play and of meanings than does the interplay between the imma-
nent and the transcendent. The play of giving significance in Derrida’s system
resembles a game of chess played by a chess player against himself. He makes
moves for both himself and his “partner.” There is no one on the other side of
the board. And no matter how big the board is – it could even be infinite – and
how many squares and chess pieces are on it, this game is devoid of one true
characteristic of a game – impredictability; it does not suppose the possible
moves from the “other side.”
Chapter 20
Center and Structure
Let us now take a look at the negative personage of the post-structural theory,
the concept of “center,” which is given various – yet invariably pejorative –
names in different branches of this theory: “logocentrism,” “essentialism,” “rul-
ing canon” (in the conception of multiculturism). Structure, as it is interpreted
by post-structuralism in its polemics with structuralism, is a field of infinite
replacements, in which the “principal thing” – or, more precisely, that which
had traditionally been understood as the principal thing, “a center which ar-
rests and grounds the play of substitutions,” is missing.1 And, vice versa, “this
movement of play [is] permitted by the lack or absence of a center or origin.”2
However, if moved outside of the limits of the “metaphysics of decon-
struction,” even the “center,” this horrible, forbidden concept, can be partially
restored – not as a barrier in the way of the free play of differences, but as
a condition and the highest wager of this play. The structure itself, following
the play of differences, must contain something, different from itself – and
this something is called the “center.” This is why the “nostalgia for the primi-
tive,” the “ethnographer’s complex,” and the “primacy of nature” which Derrida
finds in Levi-Strauss’s works and classifies as a sign of inconsistency, a tear in
the structure of the structural thinking, are all quite consistent from the point
of view of différance; that is, such a total differentiation (vserazlichie) which
searches in the structure its most radical difference from itself. The differentia-
tion of the elements inside the structure, including the separation into the cen-
tral and the peripheral, is a manifestation of the same play of différance. On the
other hand, the central and the peripheral positions as dynamic functions of
elements should not be converted into the substantial ascribing of these func-
tions to some particular, forever predefined elements. The concepts of center
as substance and the center as function should themselves be differentiated.
For a structure to be able to play in the true sense of the word, in each of
its elements, the possibility of a center as related to all other elements should
be present. A strictly centered structure, that in which only one element has
the function of the center, has just the same tendency of excluding the play as
does a homogeneous structure, devoid of any center. In this sense, just as the

2 Ibid.

centerless structures of post-structuralism, so too the centered structures of tra-

ditional metaphysics: each in its own way hinders the play of différance.
Metaphysical thinking ascribes the function of the center to a single ele-
ment of the structure, for example, “Nature” or “Idea,” and subjugates to it all
the other elements, so that instead of the free play of meanings there is their
constant recoding in relation to the center. Any sign of culture is recoded as
the corruption of Nature (Rousseau); any sign of history is recoded as the in-
carnation of Idea (Hegel).
However, let us imagine a structure devoid of the center, where all the signi-
fiers refer only to other signifiers. In such a structure only very short chains of
signs would be possible, the chains that would not refer to the entire body of
signs. Any semantic process would almost immediately be caught in the mass
of signifiers, not connected among themselves through the common center.
Such is the “anarchic” society, divided into small self-governed unities which
do not have access to each other through the center, since this has been elimi-
nated, but are connected only through the nearest “communal” unities.
А process taking place in one of the “communes” would never reach the
other communes; it would get bogged down in the nearest neighborhood. The
same would happen to a literary work if all the words referred only to one an-
other, not having a common reference, a common signified (plot, character,
thought, or general atmosphere). A structure totally devoid of a center could
not play, because its remote elements could not semantically react to each oth-
er. It is precisely the center, or rather the centrality as a dynamic function of all
elements, that provides the semantic conductivity of the system and broadens
the horizons of the play.
Many literary texts written in strict correspondence with post-structuralist
canons that reject any canons, hierarchies, and centers, turn out almost un-
readable precisely because of great dispersion of their meanings. Such is
a considerable portion of the French “new novel” or the later prose of the
Russian “arrière-garde” that is radically “decentered.”3 Such writings are not
3 About decentered prose, as opposed to centralized and excentric prose, see Mikhail Epstein’s
discussion of Russian postmoderrnist style: “A net of distinctions is cast over the world – one
that has no semantic knot that would allow it to be either tied or undone. There are no stub-
born repulsions or passionate attractions between words. There is no subordination, hierar-
chy, directive …. One could place periods not only between sentences, but indeed between
words – so indifferent are they to one another. “When. It grows dark. The bath. Is filled. For
Marat. For a brother. For an in-law.” Metonymy keeps objects in a holding pattern, mak-
ing no claim to the place of the center. You make your way through back alleys and back
streets, knowing in advance that there is no center in the city of the text, that it consists
entirely of outskirts.” Mikhail Epstein, After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and
Center and Structure 177
just fragmentary – they have an “atom-like” or “dust-like” character as the last

limit of the dispersion of meanings, in accordance with the post-structuralist
theory. The reader becomes bored and cannot continue reading, because the
interest is generated by the dynamic hierarchy of elements, the crossing of se-
mantic borders, the transfer between the center and the periphery. Lack of
hierarchies, borders, and center creates the homogeneous space of a semantic
zero and an emotional paralysis.
A center is necessary for any structure as the most important element of the
play – on the condition that the center itself will participate in the play; that is,
pass from one element to another. Decentralization and recentralization are
the most important characteristics of a structure, the measure of its reactiv-
ity, its ability to resonate. In one instance of play, the center can be defined
as “nature,” whereas in another play, which may be conducted in parallel or
crosswise with the first one, it can be defined as “culture.” The same elements –
“book,” “tree” – can participate in a semantic interplay, recoding their meanings
from nature to culture and back (“the book of nature,” “the tree of k nowledge”).
Centralization immediately mobilizes the meaning of all the elements and
brings them into play – on the condition that a center has something to play
with, that there are other centers. Any structural play is a play among centers,
as centralization means, precisely, the readiness of the elements to take part
in the play, their sensitivity in relation to other elements, the existence of a
code, and the possibility of recoding. A center is a possibility for all elements
to interconnect intensively, with a minimum of indirect connections – in one
or two steps instead of a hundred or a thousand steps, as would be necessary in
the case of extensive, indirect interconnection of all the elements.
How then can the relation between the center and an element of a playing
structure be defined? It is a relation of possibility. Not a single element is iden-
tified with the center, as this would put a stop to play and replace it by relations
of subjugation and reigning. However, every element can be a center, in that it
contains the potential of centrality. This creates the possibility of play among
different centers, which, in their constant shifting, mobilize the maximum
number of elements. A center-nomad is wandering over the whole structure,
not putting roots in any of its elements.
This dynamic quality of creating multiple new centers – but not the lack of
a center – is what can be called the intensity or meaningfulness of thinking.
Contemporary Russian Culture, introduction and trans. Anesa Miller-Pogacar (Amherst: The
University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), p. 93. Decentered prose is metonymic: it connects
elements by their proximity, as opposed to metaphors, metaboles, and symbols, which di-
rectly connect distant elements of the text, piercing it right through.
Intensity аs the most important aspect of every act of thinking is defined by

the variety of elements (concepts) participating in the structural interplay,
and the diversity of their recodings. Absolutely meaningful thinking – if such
a term is at all possible – is such thinking in which every element is central in
relation to all the others, playing the role of, alternatively, signified and sig-
nifier of other elements. In such thinking there are no uniquely subordinate
or uniquely dominant elements; instead, the constant recoding of meanings
takes place. Such thinking could be based on totally different foundations – on
anthropocentrism or theocentrism, technology or ecology, truthfulness or sin-
cerity, universality or existentiality. However, each one of these foundations,
used in an appropriate moment, would increase the intensity of thinking;
that is, would introduce a new centering element and intensify the play of the
meanings around it.
It is quite possible that the entirety of all philosophical systems, past and
future, is precisely such a maximally meaningful act of thinking; individuals,
living in different epochs, have difficulty understanding it as such, because of
the great number of its various elements. An example of a maximally mean-
ingful, “content-full” form of thinking is aphorism: it has the minimal number
of elements (several verbal units), yet all of them “play,” or mutually recode
each other. The category of meaningfulness, as a rule, is applied to the medium
number of elements which participate in the play on the level of a single text
by one author. The ultimately meaningful text exhibits the characteristics of an
aphorism and, at the same time, of world philosophy as a whole. This means
that it brings into the system the possibilities of all other philosophical systems
and, at the same time, demonstrates the impossibility of such an all-embracing
system. The significance of the text lies not in finding a certain center of all
centers, an arch-essence, but in introducing this center into the further play
of variously centered elements – so to speak, in rekindling the flame dancing
over the firewood.
Derrida’s theory admits that “center” and “nature” and even “presence” can
be introduced into the play of traces – but only as signifiers with no reference
to any signified. In practice, this leads to a unidimensional structure that is
caught in the trap of its own extensivity; the play is reduced to recoding of
several meanings in a short chain of elements. This undermines the différance
itself, the very characteristic of differentiation, which presupposes that one
cannot be reduced to another, and vice versa. If all the signifieds are totally
absorbed into the world of signifiers and play with them on the level of traces;
if a signified is but one more signifier; if a center is but one of several equi-
poised elements; if the vacant place of presence is filled up only by the sign
of presence, – then is there any radical difference between the signified and
Center and Structure 179
the signifier, the center and any other element, or the presence and the sign
of presence? If, as quoted before, “the thing itself is a sign,” then what is the
difference between the thing and the sign? The entire structure is leveled to
homogeneity, and différance is turned into indifference.
Différance as a principle of productive differentiation not only works inside
a given semantic structure, but also defines its relations with extratextual,
extrastructural phenomena, including things radically different from signs,
signifieds radically different from signifiers, presence radically different from
supplement, original radically different from its trace, eternity radically differ-
ent from time.
Chapter 21
Reverse Metaphysics: the Other, the Play, and

the Writing
Does the foregoing mean that we are doomed to return to the previous meta-
physics, that the center still has to govern all the other elements of structure,
so that any historic event has to be read as a sign of the Absolute Idea (Hegel),
and any idea as a sign of historic means of production (Marx)?
Total radical differentiation does not at all lead back to traditional meta-
physics, even though it does restore its concepts, including “eternity,” “pres-
ence,” “logos,” and “primary essence.” Those concepts, however, are restored in
a different modality. Eternity should not be regarded as only a metaphysical
illusion, a derivative of time, or its “deferment.” It is impossible to think about
time without also thinking about eternity, to think without thinking about an
alternative to the object of thought, because thinkability is, in itself, a possibility
of the other. In time, we think its “other,” radically different from it – eternity. In
signifier, we think its “other,” radically different from it – signified.
This can also be applied also to the “other,” which Freud, as noted by Der-
rida, called “the metaphysical name of the unconscious.” This is the “other” of
the mind, the “signified” of all supplements, replacements and sublimations
that are signified in consciousness. What is the status of this “other”? If the
unconscious is only a “metaphysical name,” an imaginary entity, a false projec-
tion, then all its symbolic replacements passing through the mind are not, in
fact, replacements, but the place of the consciousness itself, its “here-ness,” its
self-identity and self-recreation – and we again get a world tinged by meta-
physics, only this time not transcendental, but immanent. The metaphysics of
the other world is substituted by metaphysics of this world.
Derrida himself admits that anti-metaphysical thought, even while shaking
the foundations of metaphysics, still cannot do without its concepts.
We have no language – no syntax, and no lexicon – which is foreign to

this history; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which
has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postu-
lations of precisely what it seeks to contest.1

Reverse Metaphysics: the Other, the Play, and the Writing 181
But if metaphysics is unavoidable, should we try to renounce it? Or should we

face metaphysics not only as something unavoidable, but also as something
redeeming for thinking? The paradox here lies in the fact that only by actively
using and fostering such metaphysical concepts (universals) as “presence” (be-
yond trace), “essence” (beyond existence), or “eternity” (beyond time) can we
free our thinking about metaphysics from metaphysics itself. It is precisely the
metaphysical thinkables that, by establishing a possibility of the other, radi-
cally different, “otherworldly,” allow us to think non-metaphysically, but pos-
sibilistically, differentially.
On the contrary, anti-metaphysical thinking, the finest examples of which
we find in Derrida, creates only an inversion of metaphysics, puts anti-
metaphysical concepts, such as “trace” or “deferment,” in a metaphysical place
(that of an original or eternity). Derrida stipulates that the structure of trace is
“the structure of the relationship with the other.”2 However, the “relation with
the other” remains only a philosopher’s wish, if the very possibility of the other
is not recognized, if time defers that which never happens, if the messianism
does not need a Messiah, if after the Apocalypse there is no possibility of the
last revelation and of the end of all time. If all the radically different is elimi-
nated just as radically, then there can be no trace as a relation to the other –
there only remains a reality of the trace itself as of the first and the last reality
engulfing all the “other.” Such metaphysics is not worse than any other, provid-
ing that we are aware of the fact that it is still metaphysics.
Only if we admit a special, non-reducible, transcendental status of the “oth-
er,” will trace, sign, and writing become truly relations to the other, instead of
independent metaphysical entities. But how could we characterize this sphere,
different from trace, writing, and the play of signifiers? Here we face a compli-
cated problem, haunted by the phantom of dualism. Does the “other” belong
to the other world? If we postulate that trace is secondary in respect to pres-
ence, or, vice versa, that presence is secondary in respect to trace, we fall into
the metaphysics of monism, but if we postulate that each of them belongs to
its separate reality not reducible to the other, we fall into the metaphysics of
dualism, which is just as limiting.
It appears to me that there exists only one way out of this contradiction
between two monistic metaphysics, without leading into the dead end of du-
alistic metaphysics. This way out is the acceptance of modal relations between
signifier and signified. There is a free interplay between them, in the sense that
they make each other possible – only possible and nevertheless possible. The

space of possibility limits their rights to each other (“only”) and broadens their
own rights (“nevertheless”).3
The idea that the other is related to the category of the possible is expressed
by Hegel. The possible presupposes the existence of the other, whereas the ne-
cessity establishes only the existence of self-identity. “What is necessary can-
not be otherwise; but what is simply possible can; for possibility is … essentially
otherness.”4 Here Hegel draws a distinction between a formal possibility which
is a transfer into something different, and a real, that is realizable, possibility
which is much closer to necessity and conserves the self-identity of actual ex-
istence. “ [R]eal possibility, because it contains the other moment, actuality, is
already itself necessity. Therefore what is really possible can no longer be oth-
erwise … Real possibility and necessity are therefore only seemingly different.”5
But if we consider a pure possibility, possibility as a form, we will see that it is,
precisely, that “other” that is contained in a thing and that drives it out of its
self-identity.
Therefore, without the “possible” it is impossible to understand the “other.”
Reality – and any part and particle of it – inherently contains the possibility
of the other; or, more precisely, it contains the other as its own possibility. The
eternal is the “other” in relation to the temporal, because the possibility of time
is also the possibility of eternity. Culture is the “other” of nature, because the
possibility of nature is, at the same time, also the possibility of culture. Any model
of differentiation conceived without the modality of the possible falls into the
metaphysics of monism or dualism: the one is either subjugated by or opposed
to the other.
Now we can come back to the question of why Derrida constantly uses the
word “possible” in the context of his most important concepts (even though
he does not develop it into an independent concept). The semiotic process
becomes possible thanks to the possibility of trace; the possibility of language
is born from the possibility of writing, for example.6 It seems that here we
have a correlation of pure possibilities and not of the entities or beings. Join-
ing the main concepts of deconstruction, the “possible” strengthens their anti-
metaphysical momentum and erases the metaphysical hue attached to such
3 It is that very flickering of the bounding and broadening forces in the concept of the possible
which was discussed in the chapter “Philosophy as Possibilistic Thinking.”
4 G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. George Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), Book 2: The Doctrine of Essence, Section 3, Actuality, Ch. 2. B Relative Neces-
sity, or Real Actuality, Possibility and Necessity, § 1217, https://www.marxists.org/reference/
archive/hegel/works/hl/hlconten.htm.
5 Ibid., §§ 1217–18.
6 See the examples in Part 2, Chapter 3, “The ‘Possible’ in Jacques Derrida.”
concepts as “trace,” “writing,” “differentiation.” Indeed, Derrida’s thought turns

to the “may be” (even though he does not thematize this modality), when he
proposes to put “into question the authority of presence, or of its simple sym-
metrical opposite, absence or lack.”7
However, the “possible” in Derrida is used predominantly in the critical
sense, as a proviso erasing the natural, existential status of things, in the sense
of the “only” possible. The “possible” is not conceptualized as something posi-
tive, as a statement of the possible, as the “nevertheless” possible. This is why
the “possible” is constantly used in Derrida but is not conceptualized, does not
become an independent theme and concept. Yet in his later works of the 1990s,
Derrida gradually starts to possibilize his terms more and more, introducing
corresponding suffixes and constantly deducing institutions, entities, and laws
from their own possibilities. Thus, the “Revelation,” put in the foundation of
any religion, is preceded by “Revelability,” which can become a basis of the
unifying, all-human faith of the future:
In its most abstract from, then, the aporia within which we are strug-
gling would perhaps be the following: is revealability (Offenbarkeit) more
originary than revelation (Offenbarung), and hence independent of all
religion? … This abstract messianicity belongs from the very beginning
to the experience of faith, of believing, of a credit that is irreducible to
knowledge … The universalizable culture of this faith, and not of another
or before all others, alone permits a “rational” and universal discourse on
the subject of “religion.” This messianicity, stripped of everything, as it
should, this faith without dogma … The indecisive oscillation … (between
revelation and revealability, Offenbarung and Offenbarkeit, between
event and possibility or virtuality of the event) must it not be respected
for itself?8
However, also in Derrida’s later texts, the “possible,” even though introduced
into other concepts and bearing a theoretical hope for a new, constructive
stage after deconstruction, stays outside the scope of attention. The possible
for Derrida is a collapse of metaphysical concepts, a sum of the “undecidables,”
rather than a space of new “decidables” created by the play of differentiation.

8 J. Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason
Alone,” in J. Derrida and G. Vattimo (eds), Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998),
pp. 16, 18, 21.
Meanwhile, the play itself, the central concept of the “decentralized” post-
structural discourse, is merely an activity in the domain of the possible, where
the characteristic of the possible is ascribed to subject, object, or action itself
(“player,” “plaything,” “play”). For example, a theatrical play assumes that one
person (an actor) demonstrates the possibility of another one (a personage).
If one person truly turns into another, the condition of play ends and we enter
either into the moral realm (a person works to perfect himself) or the realm of
psychopathology (a person believes that he is someone other than himself).
The main rule of a play is to remove the mask at the right time and to go off
stage; that is, to maintain the possibilistic character of action, not transferring
it into the indicative mode. The play occurs precisely in the gap between the
potential and the actual; it has its own value as a revelation of potentials be-
yond their limits of actualization.9
The expression “play of differentiation,” which Derrida and other (post-)
structuralists so often use, generally without thematizing or problematizing
the concept of “play” itself, points at the world of possibilities, in which man
can differ from himself while not really becoming a different man. Every object
in such a play reveals its “other” – not as a real transformation into or iden-
tification with something else, but as a role, a possibility. “Play of the mind”
presupposes the construction of naive, weird, absurd, silly statements, differ-
ing from “mindfulness” as such.10 Play is the construction of possible ways of
existence which never acquire the seriousness of such activities as work, fight,
or knowledge.
Finally, the most important concept in Derrida, the concept which he op-
poses to the entire logocentrist tradition of European culture, is écriture, “writ-
ing.” What is writing in its most radical distinction from voice? Is it not the
transfer of logos, sounding here and now as a speech directed at the interlocu-
tor, into the mode of the possible, into the traces on paper as a possibility of
reading – somewhere, sometime, by someone, in the infinite potentiality of
subjects, times, places, contexts, circumstances?
In contrast to speech, writing is not an actuality, but a potential of semiotic com-
munication. This explains the infinite number of meanings in a text – meanings
that cannot be reduced to a certain primary, unique, original m eaning. The
9 The reader may find a more detailed analysis of the concept “play” and its relation with
the realm of the serious in the chapter “Igra v zhizni i iskusstve,” in M. Epstein, Paradoksy
novizny. O literaturnom razvitii 19–20 vekov (Moscow: Sovetskiy pisatel’, 1988), pp. 276–303.
See especially the part “The playful and the serious” (pp. 298–303).
10 A trait of truly intelligent people, such as were, for example, A. Pushkin and Vl. Solovyev,
known by their “silly” statements and acts.
meanings are “spread out” by the text in the same sense in which the possi-
bilities of interpretation are spread out, taking the reader far away from the
text and, at the same time, springing out from its own “emptiness,” constantly
producing new possibilities of reading. Indeed, using Derrida’s metaphor of
semantic process as “sowing,” it can be said that the very seeds are not actual
realities, but potentials, embryos of possible worlds. The text, in comparison
with oral communication, is a collection of hints, expectations, possibilities
that are never fully realized. The text cannot have an ideal reader, because
there is no real author speaking here and now who, by his presence, would
confirm the true sense of what he is saying. Any interpretation passes through
the text as through a sieve, leaving empty spaces. The three presences – the
speaker, the listener, and the object of conversation – which are combined
in the oral discourse remain as vacuous places in the text, places destined to
be filled ever anew and impossible to fill up completely. Hence the semantic
greediness of text which, like a sponge, sucks in ever new interpretations, not
satisfied with any single one. The entire culture can be represented as a succes-
sion of vacuous texts which, like vampires, suck out the blood of the next gen-
erations of readers. Of course, a text is not a pure vacuum; it is rather a sieve,
where the empty spaces are woven into the lace of signs. It is not an indifferent
emptiness, but a positive possibility which incites the reader at the same time
to the actualization of his thoughts and moods and to the understanding of the
infinite potentiality of the text itself.
If writing is a specific modality of logos, different from that of voice, then
that gives us an answer to one more question, to which Derrida dedicates many
pages in his Grammatology without ever fully solving it – the question of arch-
writing. According to the traditional views of the history of language, oral lan-
guage always precedes its writing form. This can be seen both in children and
in primitive peoples. Speaking man comes before writing man. Derrida, how-
ever, tries to invert this relation and to show that writing precedes oral speech
in the sense that speech represents a system of differences, of traces initially
interpreted as “arch-writing,” which precedes and enables the very difference
between writing and speech, as well as all other differences. For example, the
difference between speech and silence precedes speech, and this difference
already constitutes some trace, a fragment of arch-writing, if we understand it
as a system of supplements and references that also act in oral speech (though
not so consequently as in writing).
The practice of a language or of a code supposing a play of forms without

a determined and invariable substance, and also supposing in the prac-
tice of this play a retention and protention of differences, a spacing and a
temporization, a play of traces – all this must be a kind of writing before

the letter, an archi-writing without a present origin, without archi-.11
Of course, arch-writing differs from “secondary” writing, writing in the proper

sense of the word, that which is based on oral speech, because the arch-writing
is not writing by hand, a sequence of letters or hieroglyphics, but rather a col-
lection of traces, understood as any marks having a sign meaning. The very
difference between writing and speech is a unit of arch-writing.
Without turning to the category of the possible, it is difficult to define the
status of arch-writing in its difference from common writing and in its priority
in respect to oral speech. Derrida himself cannot avoid using this modality:
“Arche-writing, at first the possibility of the spoken word, then of the ‘graphie’
in the narrow sense.”12 This explains the paradoxical quality of arche-writing: it
is “without a present origin, without archi-.”13 As is customary for Derrida, the
possible, while appearing in his decisive definitions, is not defined itself and
passes theoretically unnoticed.
However, it is precisely the “possibility” that decisively removes the ambigu-
ity. If, as proposed earlier, writing – a common written text – is yet another,
possibilistic, modality of logos, does it not mean that writing as a possibility
precedes speech itself – not in the chronological, but in the ontological sense,
as a possibility of an object preceding this object? In this sense, arche-writing
is the possibility of logos-voice, the possibility which precedes it (ontological-
ly) and springs out of it (historically) already in the form of textual activity, or
secondary writing. Indeed, any object contains a certain possibility that is ac-
tualized in it and can return to the potential state. Thus, speech as reality, as an
object–presence, is surrounded by two potentials: that from which it is being
actualized (arche-writing) and that which is potentialized from it (secondary
writing, a written text). The modal approach to writing allows us to solve the
riddle of its strange ambiguity, when historically it follows speech and onto-
logically precedes it: such is a characteristic of potentiality.

Chapter 22
Différance and the Tao
It is not by chance that the term “deconstruction,” which gave the name to the
corresponding method, includes the preposition “de,” meaning “an opposite
action, an action to the contrary.” To “deconstruct” something means to take
something apart, to bring it down to its initial, basic elements. For Derrida it
means taking apart the building of metaphysics and bringing it down to the
initial play of differences. All the binary oppositions should be overturned,
the hierarchies and subordinations shaken and weakened, and the critical text
should not oppose them with other, truer, hierarchies. Deconstruction con-
stantly deconstructs itself. The shift of metaphysical constructs should itself
be shifted, the winning term itself is put in doubt, the trace of victory is erased,
because even victory should leave no trace.1 The only thing which stays after
deconstruction is the play of differences.
This somewhat resembles the technique of permanent revolution. If we re-
member that Derrida proposed his method of deconstruction in 1967, when
the Chinese cultural revolution (1966–76) was at its height and Mao Zedong
was a great authority among the leftist French intellectuals, this similarity will
not seem too surprising.2 Of course, Derrida’s method has much less similarity
with Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution than it does with the ancient philoso-
phy that, consciously or unconsciously, lay at the foundation of this politics
and made it easily understood among the Chinese. I refer to the surprising
correspondence between deconstruction and Taoism.3
Earlier I pointed out one similarity. Derrida, following Zhuangzi, explores
“the words and phrases to which no definite meaning could be assigned.” How-
ever, if we look more closely we will see more similar traits. Above all, they are
related to the main concepts–non-concepts of both systems. Derrida’s defini-
tion of “différance” is analogous to the definition that Laozi and Zhuangzi give
to the concept of the “Tao,” “Way.” The Tao is identical to itself and different
from itself – and at the same time it is neither the one nor the other. The Tao
1 See the preface of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to the book Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp.
lxxvi–lxxvii.
2 In 1967, the first three books by Derrida were published – Voice and Phenomen, Of Gramma-
tology, and Writing and Difference.
3 For mostly impressionist thoughts about Taoist motives in Derrida, see R. Magliola, Derrida
on the Mend (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1984), especially Part i, “Between the
Tao: Derridean Differentialism,” pp. 3–54.

makes possible high and low, big and small, first and last – and yet it is neither
that nor the other, neither the first nor the last. The Tao makes all things pos-
sible, yet it is not itself one of these things. Tao makes possible all the names,
but does not have any name itself; what is called the “Tao” is not the Tao. The
only definite thing that can be said about the Tao is that it makes possible all
that which it is not. However, even this is not a precise definition, since the Tao
makes and at the same time does not make: it precedes the very separation
into the active and the passive.
In the deconstruction, différance occupies approximately the same place as
the Tao in Taoism: it is non-definable, since it itself makes possible and defin-
able all that it is not.
Already we have had to delineate that différance is not, does not exist,
is not a present-being (on) in any form; and we will be led to delineate
also everything that it is not, that is, everything; and consequently that it
has neither existence nor essence. It derives from no category of being,
whether present or absent.4
Différance does not have and cannot have a name, and even the name “dif-
férance” itself is only one of many names born out of its act of differentiating.
For us, différance remains a metaphysical name, and all the names that
it receives in our language are still, as names, metaphysical. And this is
particularly the case when these names state the determination of dif-
férance as the difference between presence and the present (Anwesen/
Anwesend), and above all, and is already the case when they state the
determination of différance as the difference of Being and beings. “Older”
than Being itself, such a différance has no name in our language. But we
“already know” that if it is unnameable, if is not provisionally so, not be-
cause our language has not yet found or received this name, or because
we would have to seek it in another language, outside the finite system
of our own. It is rather because there is no name for it at all, not even
the name of essence or of Being, not even that of “différance,” which is
not a name, which is not a pure nominal unity, and unceasingly dislo-
cates itself in a chain of differing and deferring substitutions. ‘There is no
name for it’: a proposition to be read in its platitude. This unnameable is
not an ineffable Being which no name could approach: God, for example.
This unnameable is the play which makes possible nominal effects, the

Différance And The Tao 189
relatively unitary and atomic structures that are called names, the chains
of substitutions of names in which, for example, the nominal effect dif-
férance is itself enmeshed, carried off, reinscribed, just as a false entry or
a false exit is still part of the game, a function of the system.5
In other words, “différance” is only a false label for différance, one of many
names, whose variety and interplay are created by différance itself. In the same
way, in the system of Taoist thought, the Tao causes all the variety of character-
istics and names, while not having any name or characteristic. Here are some
excerpts from Zhuangzi (Kwang-tze), which show an amazing similarity with
the basic ideas of the theory of différance:
That which makes things what they are has not the limit which belongs
to things … We speak of fullness and emptiness; of withering and decay.
It produces fullness and emptiness, but is neither fullness nor emptiness;
it produces withering and decay, but is neither withering nor decay. It
produces the root and branches, but is neither root nor branch.6
No-beginning replied, “The Tao cannot be heard; what can be heard is
not It. The Tao cannot be seen; what can be seen is not It. The Tao cannot
be expressed in words; what can be expressed in words is not It. Do we
know the Formless which gives form to form? In the same way the Tao
does not admit of being named.”7
Notice the similarity between Derrida’s “arche-writing without arche-,” “begin-

ning without beginning,” and the Taoist “non-beginning”; that is, such a begin-
ning that has no limit or separation and thus precedes the very separation into
the beginning and the end, into any periods of time.
Moreover, both différance and Tao are similar in that each of them is one
and the same, which is not one and the same. Derrida writes, “We provisionally
give the name différance to this sameness which is not identical.”8
The same, precisely is différance (with an a) as the displaced and equiv-

ocal passage of one different thing to another, from one term of an
5 Ibid., pp. 26–7.

6 The Writings of Zhuangzi (Kwang-tze), Book xxii. The Sacred Books of China. The Texts of Tao-
ism, Part 2, trans. James Legge, in F. Max Muller (ed.), The Sacred Book of the East (Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidas, 1988), vol. 40, p. 67.
7 Ibid., p. 69.
8 Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1973), p. 129.
opposition to the other. Thus one could reconsider all the pairs of op-
posites on which philosophy is constructed and on which our discourse
lives, not in order to see opposition erase itself but to see what indicates
that each of the terms must appear as the différance of the other, as the
other different and deferred in the economy of the same (the intelligible
as differing-deferring the sensible, as the sensible different and deferred
… culture as nature different and deferred, differing deferring … And on
the basis of this unfolding of the same as différance, we see announced
the sameness of différance and repetition in the eternal return.9
In the same way, Lao-Tzu points out that the Tao is the unchangeable from
which all the changeable emerges, and every thing is what it is due to its differ-
ence from another.
All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing this they
have (the idea of) what ugliness is … So it is that existence and non-
existence give birth the one to (the idea of) the other; that difficulty and
ease produce the one (the idea of) the other; that length and shortness
fashion out the one the figure of the other.10
All this difference springs from the Tao, but the Tao itself stays always the same,
unchanged; that is why nothing changeable and different can be identical to
the Tao.
“The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The
name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.”11
In addition, there are many other particular traits that coincide in the the-
ory of différance and Taoism. The concepts of “trace” (and “erasing of trace”),
“origin” (and “lack of origin”), “place” (and “replacement when the place is
missing”), which Derrida so often uses, are already found in Zhuangzi in a very
similar, non-metaphysical sense:
The Luminous was produced from the Obscure; the Multiform from the
Unembodied … After this all things produced one another … But their
coming leaves no trace, and their going no monument; they enter by no
door; they dwell in no apartment.12

10 Lao-tzu, The Tao-te Ching, Part 1, Ch. 2, 1–2, transl. James Legge, http://classics.mit.edu/
Lao/taote.1.1.html.
11 Ibid., Part 1, Ch.1, 1.
12 Writings of Zhuangzi, book xxii, pp. 61, 63; book xxxiii, p. 227.
In essence, the goal of deconstruction coincides with that of Taoist medita-

tion: to deprive each thing of its definite character, to deprive each statement
of metaphysical evidence, to purify the mind of illusions, fixed truths, and un-
shakable ideas. “He constantly indulged his own wayward ideas, but did not
make himself a partisan, nor look at them as peculiar to himself,” says Zhuang-
zi about himself.13 The knowledge itself is for a Taoist way of liberation from
knowledge; each thing exists only because it does not exist and each question
can be answered only by changing or “unasking” the question.
Starlight asked Non-entity, saying, “Master, do you exist? or do you not

exist?” He got no answer to his question, however, and looked steadfastly
to the appearance of the other, which was that of a deep void. All day long
he looked to it, but could see nothing; he listened for it, but could hear
nothing; he clutched at it, but got hold of nothing. Starlight then said,
“Perfect! Who can attain to this? I can (conceive the ideas of) existence
and non-existence, but I cannot (conceive the ideas of) non-existing
non-existence, and still there be a nonexisting existence. How is it pos-
sible to reach to this?14
The Starlight does not receive any answer from the Non-Entity, which it initial-
ly asked, and when it receives an answer from the void, it gets entangled in the
evasive difference and similarity of existence–non-existence, and finally asks
whether it is possible to reach all this about which it is asking. This zigzagging
thought, which consists of answers escaping from questions and questions es-
caping from answers constitutes a characteristic trait of deconstruction.
What form could this play of limit/passage have, this logos which posits
and negates itself in permitting its own voice to well up? Is this a well-
put question? The analyses that give rise to one another in this book do
not answer this question, bringing to it neither an answer nor an answer.
They work, rather, to transform and deplace its statement, and toward
examining the presuppositions of the question.15
Deconstruction not only refuses to give answers, but also unasks those ques-
tions which could have answers. What is left is only the play of provisos
13 Ibid., p. 227.
14 Ibid., Book xxii, p. 70, http://ctext.org/zhuangzi/knowledge-rambling-in-the-north.
15 Derrida, “Tympan,” in his Margins of Philosophy, p. xvi.
stipulating their own conditional character; that is, deconstructed in the very
process of their creation.
I would like to stress the fact that deconstruction is more akin to the ancient
Taoist meditation than to those constructs of European negative theology, the
proximity to which Derrida himself denies. It seems that in defining différance
as the source of all creation eluding any names and definitions, Derrida fol-
lows a respected, well-established tradition of apophatic theology, which de-
nies God any attributes or predicates that can refer to His creation, including
the predicate of existence. However, such apophatism is already formed by the
European “metaphysical” concept of God as arch-entity, arch-existence; the
negation of His earthly attributes and predicates helps deeper to understand
His true nature. Negative theology and even atheism still remain theology and
atheism: they include the very form which they are negating and model the
negation after this form – “theos,” “God-Individual,” “God-Unity.”
On the other hand, différance and the Tao appear before this established
form and before its negation: they do not contain any idea of God, but at the
same time make possible this concept as well as its negation. The Tao is pre-
theic; différance post-theic – if such a reference to theism is possible at all
here.
[T]hose aspects of différance which are thereby delineated are not theo-
logical, not even in the order of the most negative of negative theologies,
which are always concerned with disengaging a superessentiality beyond
the finite categories of essence and existence, that is, of presence, and
always hastening to recall that God is refused the predicate of existence,
only in order to acknowledge his superior, inconceivable, and ineffable
mode of being.16
This is why deconstruction can be more appropriately related not to the apo-
phatics of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, but to the Taoist meditation
which removes the very opposition between negation and assertion, showing
behind them the (non-)reality of the forking Way.
Is it accidental that Derrida ends his critique of Western metaphysics at the
precise point where Eastern thought starts? The similarity between decon-
struction and Taoism is not incidental precisely because deconstruction was
conceived as the ultimate self-critique of Western metaphysics, a search for its

radical alternative.17 Moreover, since it is an alternative to the entire tradition

of Western metaphysics, it can be found only outside it, in those philosophi-
cal sources which are least affected by metaphysics. In search of this source,
Nietzsche and Heidegger, earlier critics of Western metaphysics, delved into
the pre-Socratic past of European philosophy, claiming that metaphysics was
initiated by Socrates. However, Derrida proposes a more radical challenge
to the metaphysical tradition, including in it both Nietzsche (metaphysics
of “Life”) and Heidegger (metaphysics of “Being”); that is, the entire extent
of Western philosophy. From it follows that the alternative to this tradition
can be found only beyond its limits, not in Nietzsche or even pre-Socratic
philosophers, but in ancient Eastern texts (only Taoist ones, or also Hindu
and Buddhist? This question deserves a separate study). Derrida, as far as I
know, never made Eastern philosophy a special object of his research. Yet
it is not at all accidental that he explains in great detail the meaning of the
term “deconstruction” in his “Letter to a Japanese Friend.” He does it in such
a way that does not leave the term a single positive definition: deconstruc-
tion, according to Derrida, is neither analysis, nor critique, nor a method, nor
a methodology, nor a collection of rules, nor an act, nor an operation, and,
finally,
What deconstruction is not? everything of course!

What is deconstruction? nothing, of course!18
By their content and form, such definitions as “everything is not” and “is noth-
ing” belong, of course, to the culture to which the letter about deconstruction
is destined. Since all these non-definitions are found in the context of recom-
mendations on the translation of the term “deconstruction” into Japanese,
the best variant of translation would, evidently, be a blank where that word
should have been, a meaningful space. In order to “overturn” metaphysics, a
17 Olga Vainshtein notes: “Purely hypothetically, it could be supposed that the further search
for the antithesis of logocentrism will bring deconstructionists to the East, since in the
Eastern cultures, especially in Zen Buddhism, a vast experience of non-verbal cognition,
of overcoming the discrete nature of linguistic thinking, is accumulated. The ‘pilgrimage
to the East’ has long been the refuge of Western culture in moments of crisis.” (“Leopardy
v khrame (Dekonstruktsionism i kul’turnaia traditsiia)” (“Leopards in the Temple: decon-
struction and cultural tradition”), in Voprosy literatury (Moscow) 12 (1989), 192. As shown
by the comparative analysis of the Tao and différance, the movement of deconstruction-
ism towards the East is not a hypothesis, but already a fait accompli.
18 “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” in Kamuf, A Derrida Reader, p. 275.
fulcrum outside its limits, which in this case can be intuitively found in the “all-
differentiating nothing” – in the language of the West différance – is necessary.
The unintentional proximity of a modern Western philosopher to the think-
ers of the ancient East proves the radical character of Derrida’s challenge to
the Western tradition. A challenge can hardly go any further, remaining a chal-
lenge. A critique can hardly go any further, remaining a critique. The question
is whether the only possible choice is between metaphysics and critique of
metaphysics. Is it possible that the thought goes further, leaving the terrain of
critique without returning to that of metaphysics?
Section 2.2
Construction and Possibilization
∵
Chapter 23
From Deconstruction to Construction
As mentioned at the beginning of this book (Part 1, Chapter 1), deconstruction

is the latest and the most consistent of all philosophical critiques. It decon-
structs the results of the previous critiques, which took the form of new meta-
physical doctrines – in Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger. Deconstruction
itself is not free from some metaphysical moments, apparent in the pure im-
manent nature and self-identity of such concepts as différance, signifier, trace,
deferment. These concepts also await a critique, a rough draft of which can
be found in the previous section (Part 2, Section 2.1). It is conceivable that de-
construction, as it develops, will deconstruct also this residual metaphysics in
its own foundation. The question arises as to how to deconstruct that domain
of critique, or anti-metaphysics, where the deconstruction itself operates. Evi-
dently, deconstructing this domain means stepping outside the limits of de-
construction, which remains critique and self-critique, and opening, beyond
critique, a new realm of thought – the realm that becomes possible only as a
result of deconstruction, but is not reducible to it.
What is meant here is the potential of deconstruction itself, which is hidden
in its cognitive and terminological base. In the deconstructive thought, enor-
mous constructive possibilities are hidden. Both metaphysics and the critique
of metaphysics, each in its own way, put limits on this constructive potential,
while at the same time working towards its revelation as a limitless possibil-
ity. Deconstruction takes us to the frontier beyond which its own “other” is
revealed – a new constructivity.
In order to delineate this “post-metaphysical” possibility, we should re-
member what metaphysics is and what the object of the attacks of its critics
was entailed. The term “metaphysics” was introduced by the systematizer of
Aristotle’s work, Andronicus of Rhodes (1st century b.c.), who gave this title
to a group of treatises that came after Physics and analyzed “being in itself.”
“There is a science which investigates being as being and the attributes which
belong to this in virtue of its own nature,” begins the fourth book of Aristotle’s
“Metaphysics.”1 This definition already contains the principal characteristic of
metaphysics – that of thinking in terms of self-identity. What in itself is being?
idea? substance? water? In this self-identity lay the main trait of metaphys-
ics, the trait that distinguished it from concrete sciences studying individual
and changeable aspects of existence. Metaphysics worked with self-identities
1 Aristotle. Metaphysics, Book 4, Ch. 1, 1003a. The Basic Works of Aristotle, p. 731.

which included the entire content of existence and reduced it to “existence

in itself.” The identities were not necessarily posited as physically simple and
homogeneous, as in the first metaphysical conceptions about the world, cre-
ated from water or fire. The identity could be internally different, hierarchi-
cally structured, include various phases of historic development, as in the
Hegelian “absolute idea.” Yet the development itself was analyzed inside the
frame of identity, as a means of its expression and progressive return to it-
self. All the phases of the historic development were but the moments of self-
differentiation of an absolute idea, which went outside its own limits in order
to come back to itself on a higher level, to coincide with itself once again.
As a rule, metaphysics establishes a certain “origin,” “principle,” “arch-en-
tity,” from which all the variety of things is drawn and to which everything
eventually returns. “The most complete systems of metaphysics,” wrote Vladi-
mir Solovyev, “postulate one primary source and try to find its internal logical
connection to all other sources; in this way they attempt to create a whole-
some, all-embracing and complete picture of the world.”2 The philosophy of
total unity, developed by Solovyev himself and his followers, up to P. Florensky,
S. Bulgakov and S. Frank, was the purest example of such metaphysics, so to
speak, metaphysics squared, since the principle behind such a total unifica-
tion was not an idea, matter, or will, but unity itself. Thus self-identity became
not only a prerequisite of all metaphysical thinking, but also its final, self-
sufficient, result.
During the last two centuries, metaphysics has been criticized so insistently
and so unsuccessfully that the question arises whether such a critique can be
based on the same principles of thinking as metaphysics itself? It is more or
less accepted by now that the result of such critique, as a rule, is the creation of
a new, more sophisticated metaphysics. Metaphysics has been criticized from
the standpoint of existentialism, of an individual who does not fit in the gen-
eral order of things, who is not identical to anything, including himself – but
on this basis a new metaphysics was built, the metaphysics that derived all the
world of “essences” from existence, expectation, presentiment, fear, anxiety,
looking-ahead-in-time, and so on. Metaphysics has been criticized from the
materialistic standpoint – but on this basis a new metaphysics was created,
the metaphysics that derived all the world of “idealities” from the processes of
2 V. Solovyov, Sobranie sochinenii (Collected Works), 10 vols (St.Petersburg: Prosveshchenie,

1911–1914), vol. 10, p. 243. A similar definition was given by F.A. Golubinsky: “Metaphysics will
take a uniform look at everything which experience presents as varied; it will unify all the
individual ideas, subduing them to this main idea of the Infinite Unified,” Golubinskiy, Lektsii
po filosofii (Moscow: Tipografiia L.F. Snegireva, 1884), vol. 1, p. 74.
From Deconstruction to Construction 199
aterial production and postulated new categories of identity in which histo-

m
ry could show its final “transparent” nature, come back to the “primary source”:
“revolution,” “Communism,” “reign of work,” “total equality,” for example. The
world was turned upside down and back again; it was assigned one fulcrum
after another. The goal of metaphysics was to make sure that the world was
standing solidly on just one basis, that its foundation was something self-
identical – life “in itself” (Nietzsche), or existence “in itself” (Heidegger), or the
unconscious “in itself” (Freud), or phenomenon “in itself” (Husserl).
Or, finally, difference “in itself” (Derrida). For deconstruction, difference
becomes this “first” and “ultimate,” or, more precisely, “beginningless and end-
less,” to which all identities are reduced and from which they are derived. In
this sense, the difference plays for Derrida the role of an identity, though not
identical to itself. “We provisionally give the name différance to this sameness
which is not identical…”3
It is not clear how such an absolute identity differs from, say, the Hegelian
“absolute idea,” which in its development is also not identical to itself and cre-
ates all the historic world of differences, various phases, and forms of its alien-
ation from itself and returns to itself. Yet we must admit that différance as a
basis is unlike all other bases that were postulated in the previous history of
metaphysics and its critiques.
First, the previous critiques of metaphysical “arch-essences” postulated es-
sences other than the formerly accepted ones – “individual,” “history,” “will,”
“life,” “existence.” All these primary entities share the same trait: they reduce
the variety of the differences to a certain all-explaining identity; yet the pri-
mary entities are different here. The theory of différance establishes the su-
premacy of différance in relation to all other types of identity. Secondly, even
if différance is self-identical, then in order to remain a difference it must con-
stantly differentiate itself from itself and differentiate its subsequent differenc-
es from the previous ones. The self-identity of différance as an arch-entity can
be reached here through the maximal multiplication of its differences from
itself.
This is why the theory of différance permits the most radical critique of
metaphysics – deconstruction, which reveals in every identity the play of dif-
ferences, in any presence the play of presence and absence, and so on. Such
play is, precisely, a process of self-differentiation: when we say that something
is “playing,” we mean that it is differentiating itself from itself while remaining
itself. Likewise, an actor, in order to remain himself, that is an actor, must be not
3 J. Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern Univer-
sity Press, 1973), p. 129.
himself but rather the personage. While the previous critique of metaphysical
identities limited one identity and replaced it by another, more complete and
basic, deconstruction for the first time presents a more or less consistent cri-
tique of identity as such, doing so from the standpoint of difference as such.
However, in this unavoidable caveat “as such” lies the limitation of decon-
struction that it cannot overcome by itself – its critical tenet. Deconstruction
needs the presence of a certain metaphysical object that it can then decon-
struct. Deconstruction lives on metaphysics, on those metaphysical mono-
semantic essences in which it reveals their polysemantic character, on those
metaphysical identities in which it reveals the play of différance. Deconstruc-
tion starts from metaphysics; its energy is the energy of analysis, of a decon-
structed identity, the energy of the text it criticizes.
In consequence, deconstruction accepts the existence of nothing but texts,
since only a text, as a collection of signifiers, can be metaphysical. Metaphysics
is found not in the “signifieds,” in their presence, but in the signifiers, in the text
in relation to which all the things are understood as “signifieds.” Text, which is
not just an object, but is also the horizon and the “ultimate all” of deconstruc-
tion, produces that very metaphysics with which deconstruction struggles
against, again and again recreating its defeated enemy. There is no metaphysics
in nature, in things, or in the physical make-up of the world. In order to under-
take deconstruction, it is necessary first to represent a certain phenomenon
as a text, identify it with a text.4 Only on the condition of textualization of an
object can deconstruction work with it; first it must give metaphysical status to
that which it is to deconstruct.
Is there a possible escape from this circle, in which metaphysics is tied in one
bundle with its critique? The entire history of Western metaphysics convinc-
ingly shows that it cannot be defeated by critique, since the critique of meta-
physics, the anti-metaphysics, is based on the same metaphysical a ssumptions,
4 In his analysis of Rousseau, Derrida comes to the following conclusion: “There is nothing
outside of the text [there is no outside-text; il n’y a pas de hors-texte]. … [W]hat one calls
the real life of these existences of ‘flesh and bone,’ beyond and behind what one believes can
be circumscribed as Rousseau’s text, there has never been anything but writing; there have
never been anything but supplements, substitutive significations which could only come
forth in a chain of differential references, the ‘real’ supervening, and being added only while
taking on meaning from a trace and from an invocation of the supplement, etc. And thus to
infinity, for we have read, in the text, that the absolute present, Nature, that which words like
‘real mother’ name, have always already escaped, have never existed; that what opens mean-
ing and language is writing as the disappearance of natural presence,” Of Grammatology,
pp. 158–9.
springs from them, and returns to them. Not only the result, but also the very
premise of “critique” belongs to the metaphysical domain of thought, which,
having established a certain static target, an “arch-entity,” then proceeds to
shoot arrows at it. The critical arrow and the metaphysical target form a sin-
gle circle of divergence–convergence, moving away – returning to the point
of origin. Metaphysics does not stop before its critique stops. Only in the point
of differentiating, différance, where this circle closes (“deconstruction”), is the
escape possible.
However, for this the difference itself should not be understood as self-
identical and self-sufficient, as yet one more “fulcrum” from which to shoot
against a static metaphysical target. Such a conceptualization of “différance”
leads to a critical approach: “difference” is directed against all the other iden-
tities, because it is understood as an identity of a special kind itself. This is
deconstruction, the ultimate of all the critical metaphysics – the metaphys-
ics of such an identity that is difference; the metaphysics of such a beginning
that denies its primeval character. Deconstruction closes the metaphysical
circle, turns the critique against itself, and converts the process of speech into
a chain of provisos. This is why deconstructive discourse seems to be full of
constraints, as if pronounced “through clenched teeth”; it swallows itself as it
is spoken, erases its own traces, and leaves traces of the deleted traces. Each de-
constructive statement demonstrates its own impossibility, swirls onto itself,
and contains a small funnel of semantic emptiness. It is not catharsis, which
enhances the opposite meanings of discourse, but a zero point where the spo-
ken constantly makes reservations about itself and annuls its significance.
However, difference is not the “identity which is not identical” (a definition
formulated as a reservation); rather it is a non-identity which creates identities
different from itself. When analyzing these two categories, difference and iden-
tity, we should not equate them with each other, derive them from a certain
common entity equally far from or close to both. Difference and identity are
not just one more pair of opposites, such as high–low, left–right, white–black.
All those binary concepts are equivalent and become possible as a result of dif-
ference. However, difference itself is not equivalent to identity.
Indeed, identity is unlike difference, and difference is not similar to iden-
tity. As noticed already by Hegel, “If Identity is viewed as diverse from Differ-
ence, all that we have in this way is but Difference.”5 Difference not only differs
5 G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, Part One, Logic. § 116, https://www
.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slessenc.htm. However, Hegel himself be-
gan the construction of his system from nothing else but the pure identity, withought any
from identity, but also makes possible the very distinction between itself and
identity. In any system containing a certain number N of identities, there are
N+1 differences. The number of differences is always bigger than the number
of identities, because the very relation between differences and identities is a
difference. Such characteristics as movement, disequilibrium, and asymmetry
are inherent to the universe precisely because of the initial prevalence of dif-
ferences over identities. From this follows the progressively self-differentiating
character of such oppositions as culture–nature, intellectual–emotional, signi-
fier–signified, the oppositions in which the first concept already includes its
distinction from the second. The opposition of culture and nature itself be-
longs to the system of culture; the opposition of signifier and signified belongs
to the plan of signifier. Difference precedes the separation into difference and
identity.
Consequently, identity has a special status as something “different from dif-
ference.” Identity is difference in the second degree. Following its own way,
in other words differentiating from itself, difference turns into identity. Oth-
erwise it cannot act as difference, which as a first step postulates something
different from itself, a non-difference, that is an identity. Identity is the first
differentiation. “Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate
immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diver-
sity within itself nor any with a reference outwards” (ibid., § 130.) Consequently, the system
comes to the state of non-differentiation: “So the logic also has returned in the absolute idea
to this simple unity which is its beginning; the pure immediacy of being, in which all deter-
mination appears at first as extinguished or removed by abstraction, is the idea that through
mediation, that is, the sublation of mediation, has come to the likeness corresponding to it.”
(Hegel, The Science of Logic, p. 752). https://books.google.com/books?id=hvFzyR3mNpQC&
pg=PA752&lpg=PA752&dq. This is an example of metaphysical thinking which starts from
identity and through succession of differentiation–mediation returns to the same identity
which has already absorbed all the world differences. For a more detailed analysis of the
correlation of identity and difference in Plato and Hegel and of the significance of these cat-
egories in modern philosophy, see “Uchenie Yakova Abramova v izlozhenii ego uchenikov,”
pp. 211–54. The protagonist of this work, Yakov Abramov, a teacher of total difference, tries
to counterbalance the one-sided tendency of total unity adopted by Russian philosophy at
the initiative of Vladimir Solovyev. Disciples of Yakov Abramov, interpreting his teachings in
various ways, turn them into something opposite to the initial idea, i.e., into the mythology
of a terrible and destructive Slavic god Raz (meaning both One and Dis–, like in “disunity”).
Thus, metaphysics of differentiation has its own dangers, its own totalitarian temptation, as
any other metaphysics which springs from the idea of “everything,” an “identity,” even when
it is the self-identity of total difference, or différance. It is precisely the concept of the “pos-
sible” which allows one to understand total difference as a possibility of the other, including
various forms of identity, while preventing its interpretation as a real arch-entity.
other of difference, the first actualization of its infinite potential to differenti-

ate from itself.
Precisely this explains why metaphysics cannot be removed from the objec-
tive acts of thinking. If thinking is differentiating, then the first object of think-
ing will be something different from it, something self-identical. The first act of
culture is the postulation of nature, the first act of intellect, the postulation
of signified. Only after the first identity has already been established does the
further differentiation of objects become possible, the differentiation based on
this identity and going beyond it. However, while difference has nothing but
itself, it can reveal itself objectively only through self-differentiation, that is,
postulation of an arch-identity. Such an arch-entity, with which all the rest is
identified, can be fire or water, idea or matter. This thinkability in form of iden-
tity is necessary in order to make possible thinking itself, so that it can postu-
late something different from itself. The metaphysical way of thinking springs
out from the capability of thinking itself, which as a first step establishes a certain
identity, an “arch-principle.”
But if the process of thinking takes as its starting point an identity, then
this self-identical beginning becomes a starting point of ever new differences.
The fate of thinking can be that all these differences will be brought back to
the identity from which everything began: the world as fire, world as water,
world as will and idea, world as the self-development of Idea. Such is the fate
of thinking in Hegel:
the advance is a retreat into the ground, to what is primary and true, on
which depends and, in fact, from which originates, that with which the
beginning is made. …This last, the ground, is then also that from which
the first proceeds, that which at first appeared as an immediacy. …The
progress does not consist merely in the derivation of an other, or in the
effected transition into a genuine other; and in so far as this transition
does occur it is equally sublated again. Thus the beginning of philosophy
is the foundation which is present and preserved throughout the entire
subsequent development, remaining completely immanent in its further
determinations.6
However, thinking can overcome this initial metaphysical pole of attraction,

constructing more new identities which differ from each other, and thus
6 Hegel, The Science of Logic, §§102, 103, p. 29, http://www.inkwells.org/index_htm_files/hegel

.pdf.
reestablishing the primary difference in all its potential – as the play of many
identities in their mutual distinction. Precisely the constructing of new identi-
ties and the play on their differences is the process by which Western meta-
physics is overcoming its metaphysical character. True, this process has been
going on throughout the entire history of philosophy, whereas, as a rule, in the
mind of an individual thinker it would freeze on a particular metaphysical mo-
ment. However, there are no convincing arguments against this process going
on in the mind of a single philosopher while he or she constructs of identities,
which, owing to their variety, will absorb the play of differences, or, more pre-
cisely, will be constructed from différance itself.
Other results are obtained by the deconstructive critique which, in the name
of différance, proclaims the imaginary character and the end of every identity
and finds in its place the play of differences. In the moment in which identity
is removed, difference itself stops being a difference, since it no longer (pre)
supposes anything different from itself. Différance itself becomes in this case
a form of identity, revealing its self-identity in that it does not find anywhere
anything but itself; that is, difference. However, différance, understood in this
way, does not create anything distinct from itself; it acts only as a critical prin-
ciple and loses its constructive potential. In place of the previous metaphysics
of different identities it establishes the ultimate metaphysics of difference it-
self, as something self-identical that deconstructs everything that is not itself.
Nevertheless, from this act of deconstruction, already springing from dif-
ference but still in the Hegelian way moving only backwards, towards differ-
ence itself, comes a new potential of thinking – the constructive one. Such
a construction performs inside difference something that difference, indeed,
presupposes – it creates something different from difference; that is, identity –
or more precisely, many identities, “foundations,” “arch-principles,” which dif-
fer from each other, as well as from difference itself.
Such a method of overcoming metaphysics through metaphysics itself,
through the creation of many metaphysical systems/centers/potentials showing
their difference and non-reducibility to just one metaphysics, is the one I call
construction. Thinking starts from difference and ends with difference, but in
this process it passes through an unavoidable middle phase, the metaphysical
one, where difference is revealed in creating something distinct from itself,
that is, identity, and in the interplay of these identities. Contrary to Hegel, the
movement of difference consists precisely in deriving something different; a
transition into “something truly different” is made. Contrary to Derrida, the
movement of difference consists precisely in posing identities, in the constant
potentiation of new metaphysical systems that do not dissolve in the play of
difference but make this play possible.
Construction is nothing else but the “other” of deconstruction, its immediate

possibility. Deconstruction is based on the postulate of difference and reveals
in each identity only its hidden, suppressed play of differences. However, iden-
tity is not necessarily the hiding and suppression of differences: identity is a
revelation about difference which differs from itself and creates its “other,” not
identical to it – the world of identities.
Chapter 24
Construction and Creativity
Properly constructive constructionism was introduced into philosophy by

Schelling, precisely as an alternative to Kantian criticism:
Without introducing the method of construction (in all its rigor) into
philosophy it is impossible to go beyond the narrow limits of Kantian
criticism nor to advance on the path pointed out by Fichte towards posi-
tive and apodictic philosophy. A doctrine of philosophical construction
will in the future comprise one of the most important chapters of scien-
tific philosophy: it is impossible to deny that the absence of the proper
notion of construction hinders the participation of many in the develop-
ment of philosophy.1
If criticism limits the domain of theoretical reason, then construction pro-

ceeds from within these limits and transcends them, reunifies these capacities
of reason, theoretical and practical, which were strictly divorced by Kant. But
unlike pre-Kantian naive or dogmatic unity, construction is the conscious pro-
duction of a self-reflective unity: it is aware of those boundaries that it aims to
overcome. Such is the creative impulse of reason which seeks adventures by
breaking beyond the purely theoretical realm of contemplative and specula-
tive knowledge. Eventually all borders, including those posited by Kant, are
established in order to be transgressed; to generate the events of thinking and
transformations of meaning by rupturing the homogeneous and inert space
of thought’s nomadic migrations. An adventurer of post-Kantian, or Schellin-
gian, type differs from the nomadic philosopher of the pre-Kantian epoch in
that he knows which borders he transgresses, which risks he takes in breaking
the epistemological taboos. Constructive thinking dares to overcome cognitive
obstacles which, it knows, cannot be overcome, and thus brings the impossible
into being. Invention is a true adventure of mind; these terms are conceptual
cognates which allow us to coin the neologism “inventure,” invention as adven-
ture. The inventurer knows, as Socrates and Kant did, how much he does not
know, but in deploying this paradox further, he knows that he does not know
1 F.W.J. Schelling, Über die Konstruktion in der Philosophie (On Construction in Philosophy)
(1803). Sämmtliche Werke, ed. M. Schröter (Munich: Beck, 1927), vol. 3, p. 545.

Construction and Creativity 207
in advance what knowledge he will attain; with this initial “ignorance” he pre-
pares for his departure.
Constructivity is the eventfulness of thinking. Such an event can be defined
as a transgression of the border between conceptual fields. Narrative texts are
also built on the category of the boundary, as Jury Lotman has convincingly
demonstrated.2 A hero moves from the world of the living to the kingdom of
the dead, or from a province to a city, or a conformist becomes a revolutionary.
In the same way, a philosophical text transgresses borders between concepts
and conceptual fields, between various spheres of reason. Conceptual event-
fulness of a text depends both on the firmness of the border and on the energy
of its transgression. This explains why the demarcation of various capacities
of reason, which was rigorously established by Kantian critiques, provided a
powerful impulse for conceptual events in the thinking of the 19th and 20th
centuries. By establishing limits of reason, Kant made possible subsequent in-
tellectual events that broke these limits – inventures of thought.
In aesthetic and semiotic terms, the demarcation of concepts serves as an
initial setting, or expository part, of a philosophical work, whereas its plot can
be described as a sequence of adventurous crossings of the initially posited
borders. An aphorism may serve as an example of a conceptual event, as a
microplot of thinking, where the order of concepts, as they have been estab-
lished by tradition and common sense, is suddenly overturned. An aphorism
is too concise to have an expository section, but the latter’s role is played by
a national language, or a cultural tradition, which serves as a resource of the
established order of concepts. “Jealousy has more to do with egoism than with
love.” Traditionally jealousy is associated with love as its attribute and con-
sequence, whereas La Rochefoucault, the author of this aphorism, connects
jealousy with the direct opposite of love – selfishness. “Before you command
learn to obey” (Solon). “In order to create something one has to be somebody”
(Goethe). These aphorisms transcend the borders between such concepts as
“command” and “obedience” and “creating” and “being” in such a way that the
second element of the opposition turns out to be a necessary part and precon-
dition of the first.
In Russian the events of thinking (myshlenie) and being (bytie) are related
even by the structure of the corresponding derivative terms: s-mysl, literally
co-think, is the Russian word for “sense” or “meaning”; so-bytie, literally co-
being, is the Russian word for the “event.” Both terms contain this very prefix
“con” (Russian “s” or “so”) that indicates the creative, disruptive, con-structive
2 Yury Lotman, Universe of the Mind. A Semiotic Theory of Culture (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 2001), Ch. 9: The Notion of Boundary, pp. 131–43.
factor in structure formation. Smysl, literally “co-think,” or “con-cept,” is an in-

tellectual event, a crossing of conceptual borders demarcated by the analytical
distinction of concepts. Usually methodological and conceptual consistency
is regarded as a positive, even as a crucially important, quality of philosophi-
cal thought, but the eventfulness of thinking presupposes precisely the oppo-
site: the h
eterogeneity of methodological concepts and the resulting tension,
as well as the intensity of this very “con-,” which underlies any act of con-
ceptualization. Methodologically pure, consistent philosophical strategies,
such as idealism or existentialism, are deployed in a homogeneous continuum
of thought.
We can envision, however, instead of Platonic Ideas or Heideggerian Being,
which seem to be antagonistic in everything except their internal conceptual
homogeneity, a philosophy which is based on the complex of “event” and “in-
vent.” (Both English words are derived from the same Latin root venire, with the
original meaning “come out” and “come in.”) The eventfulness and inventiveness
of thought becomes the measure of its philosophical potency and maturity.
The development of philosophy, in this case, is not a succession of schools and
movements, but the acceleration of meaningful events and eventful meanings,
their growing con-densation in units of time. Now, applying the principle of
alternative modality and possibilization of thought, philosophy discovers its
own dimension of “thinkability,” which leads us beyond Karl Marx’s dilemma
of explaining or changing the world. Philosophy does not reduce the world to a
structural unity and does not intervene into history, but creates its own history
of thought-events and cosmosophy of possible worlds.
Thus, with the exhaustion of indicative and imperative paradigms, philoso-
phy is shifting towards a new modal domain of subjunctive mode. Schelling
and his philosophy of construction and potentiation can be considered as a
major predecessor of this trend. According to Schelling, constructive discourse
in philosophy involves the so-called “transition from infinite to finite, the
emergence of limitation in the unlimited in-itself, which is completely homo-
geneous and absolute.”3 In the infinite realm of the thinkable (myslimoe), the
first think-able (myslimost’), a certain “-ness” (-ost’) is posited that separates
it from the thinkable in general. Remarkably, Schelling postulates pure con-
tingency of the first act of thinking and of the first posited principle: this may
be water (waterness), as is historically the case with Thales, or fire (fireness),
as with Heraclitus, or “flower-ness,” or “tree-ness.” Accordingly, philosophy can
methodologically define itself as “water-ism,” “fire-ism,” or “flower-ism.”
3 Schelling, Über die Konstruktion in der Philosophie, p. 562.

Pay attention to the fact that in this way the first principle is thought as
something contingent. The first, the existent – this primum existens, as I
called it – is therefore the first contingent [element] (the original contin-
gency). Thus all this activity of construction begins with the emergence
of the first contingent [element]– this non-identical with itself, – begins
with a dissonance, and, indeed, must begin in this way.4
Schelling means that thought cannot enter the process of construction as long
as it simply contemplates the foundational One or the primary Unity that re-
mains identical to itself. By contrast, constructive discourse takes as its first
principle not the One or the Oneness, but a certain singularity (such as water or
flower) in all its contingency, arbitrariness, and dissonance with the Oneness.
Such is the difference between the constructive method and m etaphysical
methods of postulating the absolute beginning that is completely identical
with itself. But this dissonant singularity is posited as contingent exactly be-
cause the activity of construction proceeds from the self-reflective infinity of
thinking, in relation to which any thinkable principle is only one of its pos-
sibilities. “Thus, the very finitude [of the chosen principle – M.E.] serves for
him [thinking subject – M.E.] as means of positing himself as an infinite one.”5
The activity of construction according to Schelling is such an actualization of
the infinite that posits its finitude and contingency by the same act by which
it transcends them. A constructive philosopher would be a personification of
all possible philosophies, Thales and Heraclitus, flowerist and applist, materi-
alist and idealist, because the very work of construction brings forth not the
immutable self-identical principles of existence, but the possibilities of their
conceptualization. A thinkable principle is constructed not as actually exis-
tent, but as a possibility for thinking.
Schelling emphasizes that “construction creates only possible objects.”6
Thus reality itself can be determined only within a broader concept of “ab-
solute possibility:” “In construction, the idea of which is significant for this
author, not only relative or purely ideal possibility is given, but also the abso-
lute possibility which embraces the actuality.”7 In other words, reality is seen
as potentiality, as a special kind of thinkability, in its radical distinction from
4 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, “Die Naturphilosophie,” in his Zur Geschichte der neueren
Philosophie (On the History of Modern Philosophy) (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam, 1966), pp. 118–46.
http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Schelling,+Friedrich+Wilhelm+Joseph/Zur+Geschicht
e+der+neueren+Philosophie/Die+Naturphilosophie.
5 Ibid.
6 Schelling, Über die Konstruktion in der Philosophie, p. 553.
7 Ibid., p. 554.
thinking as such. The activity of construction is like building a plot, which has
to depart from the status quo and infinite potentiality of the expository situ-
ation in order to bring about an event. Positing a hypothesis, the creation of
an imaginary universal, or a controversial or counter-factual statement, –such
are transgressive events in the “plot of thinking,” serving as triggers for chains
of subsequent events, crossings of conceptual borders. The first thought of a
philosopher is to the same extent specific, contingent, and dissonant with the
abstract capacity of thinking, as the first principle introduced by this thought
is dissonant with the self-identical Unity of the universe.
Here is the reason why the synonym of “construction” in Schelling is “po-
tentiation” – a term which Schelling shares with his romanticist friends
Schlegel and Novalis, and which he often uses to characterize his philosophi-
cal method. Schelling gives the name of potencies to the “ideal definitions”
that reveal in the variety of specific phenomena the ultimate whole as the
goal of philosophical thinking and aesthetic contemplation (at the highest
point of their convergence). In his book The Philosophy of Art Schelling posits
that philosophy is revealed in its perfect form only in the totality of all po-
tencies, for it must be equal to the absolute, revealed in the completeness of
all ideal definitions. Between innumerable entities found in the empirical
world and the “absolute” as understood by Schelling, there are potencies of
multiple orders and levels. At each of them the actuality is transformed into
potentiality, the finite into infinite. This explains why Schelling often uses
the expressions “the object of philosophy goes through the following poten-
cies” or “essence posited in the first (in the second, in the third) potency.”
Thinking, according to Schelling, is an progressive potentiation of its object,
the ascension from lower to higher potencies. At the very end of his Sys-
tem of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling states that all internal integrity of
transcendental philosophy is based only on constant potentiation, from the
first and simplest potency of self-awareness and up to the highest aesthetic
potency.
On the surface, construction (potentiation) appears equivalent to the con-
cept of creativity. But these two activities have different modalities. Creativity
is the actualization of thought and its implantation in being, whereas con-
struction is precisely potentiation of what may be. A constructed entity in dis-
tinction from a created one wholly admits its contingency, its incompleteness,
and its irreality. The work of construction “subjunctivizes” the creative act and
involves the awareness of its failure, its incompleteness, its dissimilitude with
the real world. In the 20th century Paul Valéry wrote about the joys of con-
struction in artistic and intellectual activity, in a sense close to Schelling: “the
word construction – which I purposely employed so as to indicate more forc-

ibly the problem of human intervention in natural things.”8
Nikolai Berdiaev, a Russian philosopher who advanced a coherent and com-
prehensive philosophy of creativity, believed that any creative act, as it is im-
plemented in earthly life, is a failure, because it does not recreate the world in
reality, but does it only symbolically and conditionally, within the framework
of artistic, scientific, political activity. The creative impulse (artistic, emotion-
al, volitional, intellectual) cools down as soon as it withdraws from the depth
of spirit and acquires the form of a book, sculpture, political institution, or
family union. Instead of recreating the world, one more artifact is added to the
world: a quantitative infinity of cultural production. “Culture in all its manifes-
tations is a failure of creativity, the impossibility to achieve creative transfigu-
ration of being. Culture crystallizes human failures. All cultural achievements
are symbolical, not real.”9
Creativity, as it is understood by Berdiaev, is in fact a theological category: it
is the prerogative of God to create the world out of nothing. This is why human
creative acts are always doomed to failure. The activity of construction differs
from creativity by the very fact that it is aware of this immanent flaw and is
resigned to it as a conscious self-limitation of the creative impulse restricted
to conditional and possibilistic forms. Only God can create, while humans are
destined to construct, to demonstrate the failure of creation in each of their
acts, to produce constructs and concepts instead of living creatures. Construc-
tion is the creation of multiple possibilities of being, not of the one truly exis-
tent world.
In this sense humans are Demiurges, to use a Gnostic term designating infe-
rior creators of lower universes. Humans can also be called Semiurges, in both
senses of “semi”: “half” and “related to signs” (semes). They are half-creators,
not of the real world, but of signs and significations. Constructing in this sense
is potentiation (precisely as it was understood by Schelling), transformation
of the real into the possible. Such human potentiation of being should not be
regarded as inferior to the actualization of possibilities and fulfillment of proj-
ects. It is a remnant of the old metaphysical mentality to believe that the actual
is ontologically superior or preferable to the possible. Elsewhere we have ar-
gued that the strongest human emotions are connected with the realm of the
8 Paul Valéry, “Introduction to the Method of Leonardo Da Vinci,” in his book An Anthology, p.
79.
9 N.A. Berdiaev, Filosofia svobody. Smysl tvorchestva (The Philosophy of Freedom. The Meaning of
Creativity) (Moscow: Pravda, 1989), p. 521.
possible: faith and doubt, fear and hope, intentions and apprehensions, love
and anxiety. Berdiaev presents creativity too “realistically”: as the realization
of a spiritual design in the forms of existence; for this reason he regards culture
as a failed transformation of reality. But if culture goes beyond the physical
universe owing to its symbolic nature, then the further development of culture
will be directed towards even greater artificiality and symbolicity, rather than
towards the realization of the existing symbols.
For Berdiaev, creativity is metaphysical reality, revealed by God, and an
ethical imperative imposed on humans, whereas constructing belongs to the
subjunctive mode, “as if.” The result of constructing is a variety of worlds con-
tingent on the assumptions and presuppositions of the author. The very term
“contingency” shares with construction the prefix “con.” “Contingent” initially
signified co-tangent, con-junctive, coming together, something that is unfore-
seen, unpredictable, deviates from expectations, comes with the structure,
while remaining different from it.
On the one hand, constructing deconstructs creativity, demonstrates its
contingencies; on the other hand, it creatively oversteps the limits of decon-
struction. Rather than revealing contingency in existing structures, construc-
tioning creates new structures in the form of contingency, in the subjunctive
mood.
Chapter 25
De- and Con-
Without entering into further details of the history of the method of construc-
tion–potentiation, we will try to define its role for contemporary thought.
The very difference between the two previous theoretical paradigms –
structuralism and deconstruction – entails the possibility of the next para-
digmatic shift towards constructionism. In contrast to widespread conviction,
deconstruction, at least terminologically, does not present a direct opposition
to structuralism. The significant asymmetry between them is manifested in the
prefix “con.” “Con” is absent in structuralism, and is present in deconstruction
only negatively. What, then, does “con” add to the concept of structure, and
what does deconstruction subtract from “con”?1
It is known that structuralism is based on the assumption of fully ordered,
logically and semiotically organized textual objects, whereas deconstruction
detects internal contradiction and ambiguity in its object, an infinite defer-
ral of meaning, which is never given as presence. Derrida, however, insistently
argues against the equation of deconstruction with destruction, that would be
a purely negative act, a denial of structure and structuredness. What makes de-
construction different from destruction is precisely this enigmatic “con,” which
Derrida never clarifies. It is simply inscribed in the concept of de-con-struc-
tion. We shall try to thematize and problematize it, because “deconstruction”
as a term reveals its distinction both from structuralism and from destruction-
ism exactly because of this asymmetrical prefix “con.”
Deconstruction assumes that there is something in structure which is dif-
ferent from the structure itself: a generator of its self-differentiation, a certain
non-structural or super-structural X. That is why deconstruction is not sim-
ply the undoing of structure, its “destruction,” but elucidation of a certain
unstructurable residue, trace, contamination, supplement in it, something
that is designated by “con.” This Latin prefix means “with,” a sort of together-
ness. To “de-con-struct” means to single out “con” with-in structure as distinct
from the structure itself, as its surplus, or with-plus, as that with which it is.
Structure is always with something that is not structure: it is the indispensable
1 Explaining the origin of the term “deconstruction” in his “Letter to a Japanese Friend” (Ka-
muf, A Derrida Reader, p. 272), Derrida emphasizes in this term a combination of structural-
ist and anti-structuralist “gestures,” but does not dwell on asymmetry, introduced into this
relationship by the prefix “con.”

con-structivity, con-structedness of this something. Construction is the cre-

ation of structure, a process which reveals itself in the resulting structure as its
“con,” as its incompleteness. The creation of structure cannot be fully structur-
al in itself, if only because elements in structure coexist simultaneously, while
in the process of construction they emerge one after another. Therefore each
element in a given moment has no counterpart, and in the absence of binary
opposition there is no structure. Classical structuralism relies on an assump-
tion that structures are neither born nor created; they either are or are not.
Language serves an example: there never was a condition when language was
a semi-language or less-than-a-language. Language always “already is.”
Deconstruction, however, introduces a temporal dimension as the process
of deferral, postponement of structure, its non-equality with itself, the non-
correspondence of the signifier with its permanently absent and only poten-
tial signified. Difference is the non-structural and constructive beginning of
structure. The classical example of structural binary opposition is “difference–
identity.” But the relationship between these two elements is not symmetrical,
and therefore not completely structural. Difference is structurally related to
identity, and at the same time con-structively precedes this opposition and
makes it possible. The point is that the category of “identity” differs from the
“difference,” whereas the “difference” is not identical to the “identity.”
Difference is con-structive precisely because it both structures the binary
opposition as a whole and is structured as one of its elements. Whenever de-
construction is applied, construction has already been in place, as present in
structure and distinct from it, as that which has created the structure itself.
Constructionism is a movement arising from the depth of deconstruction,
from that “con,” which abides in the heart of this word, between its other con-
stituents – “de” and “struct,” and as irreducible to both of them. The fact that
“con” emerges first from deconstruction can be justified methodologically:
the planet Neptune was first detected as a sequence deviation in the calcu-
lated path of the planet Uranus. Deconstruction arose through the detection
of numerous deviations of textual meanings from the rigorous order that was
consistently presupposed or imposed by structuralism; thus, the connection
of “con” with the prefix “de,” implying the deviation from and overcoming of
structuredness. But the connection between “con” and “de” is not inevitable. If
“de” overcomes structuredness and reveals “con” in its foundation, then “con,”
as a result of such discovery, does not need “de” anymore and acts indepen-
dently, like a measurable and observable gravitation of the planet Neptune,
and not merely as the cause of deviation of Uranus from its pre-calculated
orbit. “Con” is revealed not as a deficiency, a minus of structure, but as a surplus
of meaning constructing new structures and irreducible to any of them. This
De- and Con- 215
“con” grows beyond the limits of deconstruction itself as the beginning of the
new movement “constructivism.”
Deconstruction, with is poetics of negativity, indeterminacy, non-presence,
non-origin, developed out of structuralism as a demonstration and disman-
tling of the limits of rationality, as a moment of transition to new methods
of thinking. Not unlike skepticism which demonstrates the limits of classical
metaphysics, but cannot function as a self-propelling form of thinking, in the
same way deconstruction is not an autonomous methodology, but only an in-
terval between rational–positivist and positively creative forms of thinking,
between structuralism and constructionism.
In defining deconstruction in his “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” Derrida
attempts to avoid any positivity, consciously construing Taoist or Zen-Buddhist
play of non-definitions. Deconstruction is neither methodology nor analysis
nor principle nor technique nor movement nor… Constructionism, on the
contrary, does not mind to being defined in positive terms. In fact it is pre-
occupied with the construction of all possible self-definitions. It would tell
about itself: I am methodology, and therefore nothing methodological is alien
to me.
The term “constructionism” is used in American philosophy narrowly, most-
ly as a name for a new criticism directed against medieval realism and classi-
cal rationalism. Critical constructionism recognizes that all our knowledge is
“constructed”; it does not reflect any external “transcendent” realities, but re-
lies upon convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed
that even physical and biological reality, including race, nation, and gender,
are socially constructed (orthodox Marxism obviously pales in the face of such
an ambitious expansion of social determinism). A series of articles published
in 1991 in the journal Critical Inquiry served as a manifesto for this movement
of critical constructionism in various disciplines, including the natural scienc-
es. Not only truth and reality, but also “evidence,” “document,” “experience,”
“fact,” “proof,” and other central categories of empirical research (in physics,
biology, statistics, history, law, etc.) reveal their contingent character as a so-
cial and ideological construction: the “realist” or “rationalist” interpretation is
subjected to criticism.
While recognizing the constructedness of reality, many representatives of
this critical paradigm feel an almost mystical aversion to the creative construc-
tion of reality. They eagerly criticize realistic judgments, but they do not as-
pire to anything beyond analytic procedures based on subtle tautologies. They
wish to remain in the critical paradigm and consider it as a standard of sci-
entific philosophy per se. The problem of critical constructionism is that it is
excessively critical and insufficiently constructive.
In one phrase, Nietzsche revealed the uselessness of the so-called “critique”

that criticizes intellect for its inability to comprehend the true reality, as if
this critique has already comprehended it and risen above intellect in order to
demonstrate the latter’s inferiority.
The intellect cannot criticize itself, simply because it cannot be com-

pared with other species of intellect and because its capacity to know
would be revealed only in the presence of “true reality,” i.e., because in
order to criticize the intellect we should have to be a higher being with
“absolute knowledge.”2
In order to assert the incomprehensibility of something, one has to compre-

hend this incomprehensible.
The very concept of critique is inherently ambiguous. The term “critique”
has two meanings: (1) negative judgment, refutation, disagreement; (2) analy-
sis and evaluation. It appears that these two meanings are internally uncon-
nected, but in fact any sort of critique, even the most positive and laudatory
one, approaches a work of art, literature, or philosophy, precisely in a critical
mode; that is, in a mode of deficiency. A critic acts like a judge in bringing in a
verdict of guilty or not guilty. The English word “critic” always has overtones of
“censurer, faultfinder.” Hence “to convict” means both to persuade and to con-
demn (in Russian the words sudit’ – to judge and osudit’ – to condemn are also
of the same root). Any judgment, even a positive one, involves a sort of convic-
tion in both senses, because the critic–judge knows what the work is supposed
to mean. The critical dissection of the work entails also the selection of its “true”
meanings in opposition to the “false” ones, thereby limiting the potential of its
meaning-formation.
2 Nietzsche, Will to Power. Book 3, fragment 473, http://nietzsche.holtof.com/Nietzsche_the_

will_to_power/the_will_to_power_book_III.htm.
Chapter 26
Potentiation as Method: Eros of Thinking
We could envisage, however, a different approach; not selection but celebra-

tion of multiple meanings of a text. Judging is always exclusive, whereas cel-
ebration is marked by the sense of exuberance. The category of scarcity is the
foundation of society’s economic and political life, which belongs to the mode
of actuality, “what is.” There is always a shortage of natural resources, means of
production, consumers, of social privileges and positions of authority, which
brings about market competition, class struggle, social stratification and hier-
archy, political power, all forms of domination and subjugation. By contrast,
the mode of the possible, “what could or might be,” presupposes an abundance
of meanings, the excess of potency over act.
Such is the difference between a critical constructionism and a creative,
“constructive” constructionism, which we will further denote by the Schellin-
gian term “potentiation.” Potentialism, as it is understood here, celebrates the
event of the text and itself becomes a feast of “excessive” thinking, in the sense
of “excess” postulated by the French philosopher George Bataille and further
developed in the methodology of science by Paul Feuerabend. According to
Bataille, most types of human activity are characterized by the criterion of
utility, whereas the ultimate goal of any activity that no longer serves any oth-
er goal is inutility, lavish expenditure without reimbursement, pure surplus.
Whereas intellect analyzes all events by the criterion of their utility, eros, or
the sphere of desire, is a self-oriented, useless expenditure of energy. Bataille
poses a question as to whether eroticism can enter into the sphere of intellect
and give an impulse to theoretical activity.
Bataille himself postulates intellect and eroticism as two separate domains
and further makes use of more or less traditional intellectual procedures in
order to explain erotic phenomena. In this sense his method differs little from
psychoanalysis, which he criticizes for studying the erotic and the unconscious
from the point of view of scientific reason – whereas the goal should be to
transform the reason itself, introducing in it an erotic impulse.
Bataille notes that “the object of desire is the universe, or the totality of be-
ing”; in contrast, “the intellect fails, in fact, in that with its first impulse it ab-
stracts, separating the objects of reflection from the concrete totality of the
real.”1 Such a division seems too schematic; intellect does not need erotization
1 G. Bataille, The Accursed Share, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1993), vol. 2: The
History of Eroticism, pp. 111, 112.

“from aside,” since it itself is a potent tool of desire. The intellect is much more
passionate and demanding than any organ of the human body. Intellect can
embrace a much larger wholeness of being than can sexual desire, directed
at an individual being and, moreover, prone to fetishization; that is, the divi-
sion of its object into coveted fragments. It is precisely the intellect that is the
organ of the wholesome desire. The mind is more lascivious than the body,
since the body needs only another body or several bodies, whereas the mind
needs the universe – the infinity of thinkable and potentiated worlds. The in-
tellect enlarges the scale of desire and makes it impossible to satisfy. Just as
the flesh gets excited while looking at alluring beauties, the mind is excited
by such profound concepts as “being,” “possibility,” “the infinite,” “world,” “uni-
versum.” A kind of “orgasm” is reached when the mind constructs a “theory of
everything.” The “unified theory,” which has been a central subject of modern
physics in the sense of unification of all natural forces and interactions, can-
not be only physical, or even only scientific; it should also be poetic, musi-
cal, and philosophical. It should be “whole,” “metaphysical”; that is, it should
reflect the universality of the object in the universality of the methods of
cognition.
Among all the intellectual dreams, metaphysics is the most lascivious one.
If the sum total of worlds – or, as Bataille put it, “universe or wholeness of be-
ing” – can become an object of desire, then metaphysics is the greatest of all
desires, the most passionate and burning one, the quintessence of eroticism,
for it is lured by the sum total of the existing and the possible and searches for
the possession of the entire world. In metaphysics desire grows to the point
of universalizing its object, which at the limit coincides with the universe and
with God. This is why philosophy and theology are the most capacious reser-
voirs of desire: in them we desire everything, wish to understand the primary
cause and the ultimate goal of everything. The intellect is a mechanism of sub-
limation of desire, which means not only the spiritualizing of the latter, but
also its intensification as desire, the overcoming and the transcendence of the
erotic.2
However, if we recognize the theoretical potential of desire, we must go a
step further and recognize erotica as methodology. “To desire a work of art”
means to build on its basis an endless universe of meanings, a multitude of
discourses which would vary its images and subjects in terms of different
2 Bataille himself admits that “in the embrace the object of desire is always the totality of be-
ing, just as it is the object of religion or art, the totality in which we lose ourselves insofar as
we take ourselves for a strictly separate entity,” (ibid. p. 116). Therefore, religion and art are
forms of desire whose object is the wholeness of being.
Potentiation as Method: Eros of Thinking 219
s ciences, ideologies, and arts. After Bataille has delineated the theory of ex-
cess and transgression (surplus and trespassing), the next step should lead to
the excessiveness and transgressiveness of the theory itself. Potentiation is the
methodology of desire as excess and transgression. The theory does not only
concentrate on the object, but transcends it, creating a multitude of possible
and desired objects that remain in a relation of jealousy and provocation to
the initial object. Desire has a double meaning: desire is directed at the desired
object, wishing to make it real and, at the same time, to distance it and make it
unrealizable. Desire creates a sphere of the desired that transforms the given
reality into unreachability.
The terms “potentiation” and “construction” are not synonyms. “Potentia-
tion” implies that the process of construction transforms the modality of its
object. This meaning is not evident in such cases of material construction, as
for example in constructing a house or a machine. Though even in material
construction we can indicate the growing possibilization of the object: if the
material substance at the beginning of the construction belongs to the order
of actuality, then the output of the construction reveals one of the possibilities
initially hidden in this substance. The term “potentiation” signifies the chang-
ing modality of thinking in its transition from thematic level (the object of
thought) to the level of hypotheses and conclusions, the outputs of thinking.
To potentiate means to introduce excessiveness and transgressiveness into
a type of theoretical thinking that does not judge a work of art or a literary
text, but looks at the multiplicity of its meanings and opens the horizons of
its signifiability. Criticism as such, a judicial approach, turns into “potentics,” a
multiple transformation of the texts, strengthening each of its possible inter-
pretations, even the conflicting ones. The task of theory is not to utilize, but
to potentiate text; not to reduce, but to multiply its meanings and interpretive
possibilities.
One can apply potentiation on the various levels of exploration of a text:
genetic, compositional, teleological. For example, the study of drafts and mul-
tiple versions of a given text (published simultaneously as a digital hypertext)
helps to reveal variation as the intrinsic property of literary texts. It is usually
believed that a literary work is created as the implementation of an initial au-
thorial design or idea; but the study of drafts shows that the design or idea
in fact results from the alternation and competition of various versions that
finally are condensed in one resulting text. It is not the case that an author
tries to convey the preestablished idea in the variety of draft texts; but rather
that the final text reveals the density of accumulated ideas and therefore the
possibility of multiple interpretations. It is not the case that earlier versions are
discarded as failed attempts to express a “true” original meaning of an author,
while the final version expresses it most authentically. On the contrary, the
earlier versions are implicitly inscribed in the final version; they are read and
interpreted through it. The text matures as it absorbs all its previous versions
and converts all stages of its writing into the multiple potencies of its reading.
This is potentiation: from many possibilities of writing only one is actualized,
but precisely the one that creates many possibilities of reading. The authentic
text of a literary work is, in fact, a hypertext, a collection of all its versions.
The last version differs from previous ones by its condensation, the number of
those versions that it succeeded in combining and integrating in itself. Even
those versions discarded by an author leave a certain trace in the final ver-
sion, as a piece of marble detached from a statue has its impact on the final
shape.
The Russian literary scholar Sergei Bocharov shows in his analysis of Eugene
Onegin that various versions of the fate and relationships among the charac-
ters are not discarded but accumulated in the novel, constructing its “possible
plot,” or rather a number of possible plots. Onegin could have immediately
fallen in love with Tatiana as they first met: “I would have chosen another [sis-
ter] if I had been a poet like you.” The duel between Onegin and Lensky might
have not taken place: “If he had known which a wound burnt the heart of my
Tatiana! If Tatiana had been aware, if she could have known” “If … had” (by) is
this “magical crystal” of the novel (to use Pushkin’s own expression) through
which the entire “was” (bylo) is refracted. The meaning of one event is contin-
gent on the possibility of another: heroes are unhappy, precisely because “the
happiness was so possible, so near.”
Bocharov concludes:
Pushkin, as he was writing the novel, like any other author, crossed out
and left in rough drafts many [options unused in the final version]. How-
ever, he preserved, as if not crossed out, many possibilities of the heroes’
destiny, plot development, and of his own authorial solutions. Pushkin
showed them clearly in the final text of the novel as possibilities, “rough
drafts,” of life itself, which he found so important to preserve for us. In
Pushkin’s novel, moreover, in his entire creative world, in his poetic phi-
losophy, possibility serves as a special reality along with the reality which
is actualized.3
3 Sergei Bocharov, “The Problem of Real and Possible Plot (Evgenii Onegin),” in Genezis khu-
dozhestvennogo proizvedeniia (The Genesis of an Artistic Work: The Materials of Soviet-French
Colloquium) (Moscow: Izd. imli an sssr, 1986), pp. 144, 145.
Thus we see in this example how various versions are brought together in one
text, increasing its suggestiveness. The genesis of a work is the process of its
potentiation: not the selection of one version from many, but the condensation of
many in one.
At the level of composition the potentiation of a text reveals the play of
possibilities in each new move of the plot: it plays not just with the reader’s ex-
pectation, but also with his understanding of the plot by providing reasons and
motives for reinterpreting the earlier events. For example Gogol’s comedy The
Inspector General includes a double perspective on the character Khlestakov:
each of his actions, for example looking into the plates of the eaters, can be
perceived both as a sign of his hungry need and as an evidence of his extraordi-
nary administrative power. Khlestakov invests his utterances and gestures with
one meaning, whereas city bureaucrats take them to mean quite the contrary,
and spectators enjoy the very process of their mutual transformation. This
play of possible readings can extend beyond the boundaries of the text: for
example, in A. Tairov’s project of staging The Inspector General the play ends
with the scene in which the real Inspector General turns out to be Khlestakov
himself.
The American literary scholar Gary Saul Morson argues in his book Narra-
tive and Freedom: The Shadows of Time that literary narrative employs three
modes of play with the possibilities: “foreshadowing,” when the narrative indi-
cates the possibility of future events, “backshadowing,” when the past events
reveal their hidden meanings and possibilities, and “sideshadowing,” when
various versions of the same event are represented as equally possible, as co-
illuminated. “A haze of possibilities surrounds each actuality. … Sideshadow-
ing relies on a concept of time as a field of possibilities.”4 For example, in The
Devils of Dostoevsky two mutually exclusive possibilities coexist and interact:
that Stavrogin did have an intimate relationship with Matryosha, and that he
invented the whole episode. Similarly Petr Stepanovich Verkhovensky is pre-
sented as the son of Stepan Trofimovich Verhovensky, but at the same time
there is a possibility that he was not his real son.
The potentiation of the text can be traced in the direction of its genetic
past and compositional present, as well as in the direction of its hypothetical
future. There are many works of art, literature, and philosophy that were never
created, but the very possibility of which becomes a part of cultural history or
a part of an imaginary museum of the future. A major Russian semiotican and
linguist Viacheslav Ivanov recently remarked:
4 Gary Saul Morson, Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1994), pp. 118, 119.
A new wave of methodological Sturm und Drang is needed in history and

theory of literature. It appears to me that one of the possible ways for this
new wave to occur is through the study of the “third world” in the sense of
Karl Popper: unwritten books which can exist as ideal essences. By study-
ing all novels (and drafts and other archival materials) of Dostoevsky, it is
possible to outline a novel that he did not write, for example The Life of a
Great Sinner, which Komarovich once attempted to compose.5
The combination of different methods in interpreting a text does not mean

eclecticism as a weak theoretical position – quite the contrary: a strong theo-
retical position consists in that different methods, crossing and competing, in-
tensify the eventfulness of research as a thought adventure.
Further, it must be noted that the area of humanities is not limited to the
task of text interpretation, even though this is characteristic for the methodol-
ogy of criticism. The humanities have their own creative side, which has not
yet found methodological acceptance in the system of disciplines. As we know,
academic disciplines are subdivided into three categories: natural, social, and
the humanities. The first two have practical attachments – the methods of
transforming that which these sciences are studying.
Subject Sciences Practice
Nature Natural Technology

Society Social Politics
Culture Humanities ?
The role that technology plays in relation to natural sciences – namely, trans-
forming nature – and the role that politics plays in relation to the social sci-
ences – transforming society – has not yet been defined in the case of the
humanities. But there is a great need for a transformative dimension of the
humanities – as demonstrated by constant attempts to technicize or politicize
humanistic thinking, to disregard its specifics in order to enter the practical
dimension.
The philosophy of the possible allows us to substantiate the construc-
tive character of humanistic thinking without losing its specifics and without
5 Sed’mye tynianovskie chteniia. Materialy dlia obsuzhdeniia. Tynianovskie sborniki (The Seventh
Tynianov’s Proceedings), Vyp. 9 (Riga and Moscow, 1995–1996), pp. 24–5.
t echnicizing or politicizing the phenomenon of culture. This potentiation of cul-

ture on the basis of humanistic study might be called culturonics. Culturonics
is a creative activity in the sphere of the humanities, constructing of new alter-
natives in culture, new possibilities of interaction and cognition which would
be specific for culture and at the same time would serve to transform it.
For example, there is a science of linguistics, the queen of humanities of
the second half of the 20th century. But why was this discipline formed and
developed around words and sounds disturbing the silence, and not around
the silence itself, from which its objects were taken? Silence establishes the
limits of language activity and the form in which the language consciously
disjoins itself. Hence the possibility emerges of an alternative discipline – the
linguistics of silence, silentics or silentology (in Russian it can be called mol-
cheslovie). This is a science about pauses, forms of omission and reticence,
about the silentemes (molki), units of silence that form the speech and de-
fine the depth of its semantic transfers, metaphorical shifts, and figurative
meanings.
Potentiation is the multiplication of thinkabilities by creating alternatives,
variations, and competing models. Beside each discipline, theory, concept, and
term there lives its “shadow,” which could, with a change of lighting, become
an independent, primary object of analysis. Such civilizations are conceivable
where the main discipline of the humanities would be silentics instead of lin-
guistics; where philosophy would be the science of the particular instead of
the general; where the head of the pagan pantheon would not be Jupiter, the
god of heaven and thunder, but Terminus, the god of boundaries and limits. In
contrast with the dogmatically and relativistically understood deconstruction-
ism that became popular in academic circles in the 1980s and 1990s, potentia-
tion does not just undermine the foundations of a system of concepts, showing
its shaky and relative character and leaving the reader with an ironic “nothing,”
but rather creates a multitude of alternatives for each theory and term; it does
not criticize, but rather potentiates them; that is, introduces them in a diverg-
ing set of concepts, each one of which is alternative to another one, interpret-
ing the same event in a different way.
Potentiation of sciences, arts, lifestyles, theoretical models, and so on is a
procedure of broadening each concept via its multiplication and introduction
into virtual fields of consciousness. The logic of potentiation is not inductive
or deductive and, of course, it radically differs from reduction, which reduces
the multiple to the unique. On the contrary, in this case the unique reveals its
multiplicity, difference from itself, and becomes divided into a series of other-
nesses. Such a logical method can be called “abduction,” a term introduced
by Charles Peirce for the logic of hypothetical thinking. Abduction literally

means kidnapping – in this case, the kidnapping of a concept from its tradi-
tional paradigm and transferring it into other, multiple, diverging paradigms
of concepts. For example, the subject of a certain science is kidnapped (“lan-
guage” is taken from linguistics, “the ancient” from archeology) to become the
object of another science (“silentology,” “archeosophy”). Or a science is kid-
napped from a certain area of the sciences and transferred to another one (this
is how Michel Foucault created his “archeology of knowledge,” even though ar-
cheology itself has to do with material culture.) In a way, abduction resembles
metaphor, the transfer of meaning by similarity; however, abduction is not a
poetic technique but rather a logical one, based on the broadening of a theo-
retical concept, which, “nomad-wise,” moves across different conceptual fields,
crossing the borders of disciplines and methodologies.
Potentiation continues the work of deconstruction on the “diffusion” of
meanings, but does so not in a critical, but rather in a positive vein; using an
oxymoron, we could call it “positive deconstruction.” The author of deconstruc-
tion himself warned against using it as a tool of critique, because in this case a
single, “more correct,” interpretation of the text is opposed to the other, which
produces not the “diffusion,” but rather the rarefaction of meanings. However,
the term “deconstruction” had its own fate, its own logic of negativity, as Der-
rida himself admits: “The negative appearance was and remains much more
difficult to efface … That is why this word (“deconstruction” – M.E.), at least on
its own, has never appeared satisfactory to me.”6
As the analysis in the previous chapters has shown, not only the word, but
the very idea of deconstruction has a tendency toward criticism. In its practical
application deconstruction played the role of a process of “decay, decomposi-
tion, disintegration” of structures, even though the initial intention, accord-
ing to Derrida, was not a “negative operation.” “[U]ndoing, decomposing, and
desedimenting … was not a negative operation. Rather than destroying, it was
also necessary to understand how an ‘ensemble’ was constituted and to recon-
struct it to this end.”7
On the basis of this definition of deconstruction we can give a contrasting
definition of potentiation: it is the reconstruction of possibilities contained in
a given cultural ensemble, in order to construct alternative ensembles. Decon-
struction establishes in the text of the “undefinability of meanings,” whereas
6 “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” in Kamuf, A Derrida Reader, p. 272.

7 Ibid.
a constructive transformation of this method would consist in working with

“infinite meanings” from which new ensembles of culture grow.8
8 One of the attempts of potentiation is my online Book of Books (Kniga knig), an anthology
of alternative humanistic disciplines and theories. See Mikhail Epstein, chapters “InteLnet:
Web Projects in the Humanities” and “The Interactive Anthology of Alternative Ideas: an In-
troduction,” in Ellen Berry and Mikhail Epstein (eds), Transcultural Experiments: Russian and
American Models of Creative Communication (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 276–301.
See also M. Epstein, Kniga, zhdushchaia avtorov (The Book Expecting its Authors), Inostran-
naia literatura 5 (1999), 217–28; M. Epstein, Iz totalitarnoi epokhi; M. Epstein, v virtual’nuiu:
Vvedenie v Knigu knig (From the Totalitarian Epoch to the Virtual One: An Introduction to the
Book of Books), Kontinent 102 (1999), 355–66, http://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/kniga_knig.
html.
Another of my online projects, Dar slova. Proektivnyi leksikon (The Gift of a Word: A Pro-
jective Lexicon), is an attempt to potentialize the lexical and morphological system of the
modern Russian language, to develop the system of roots and create alternative models of
word-formation, http://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/darO.html.
Chapter 27
What Is “the Interesting”? Proposed Criteria
It would, of course, be an unacceptable luxury – or, more precisely, poverty – of

over-permissiveness to assert that in the sphere of methodology everything is
possible, since the possible is itself a criterion of methodology. We must intro-
duce a restrictive factor that allows us to correlate the possible with another
modal category, that of the necessary. It is precisely the tension between these
two modalities that makes the theoretical work interesting and holds the read-
er’s attention.
The “interesting” is perhaps, at present, the most viable transdisciplinary
category that is routinely applied to all aspects of culture, from science to fic-
tion. It is more frequently used than other evaluative concepts, such as “truth-
ful,” “beautiful,” “instructive,” “progressive,” and “tasteful,” which were popular
in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Even prior to the
analysis of the work in a certain critical framework, we qualify it as interest-
ing, and therefore as inviting our analytical efforts. Furthermore, the concept
of the interesting not only introduces the discussion, but often concludes and
crowns it. The “interesting” is our intuitive evaluation of the initial, intuitive
quality of the work and, simultaneously, the resulting synthesis of all its ana-
lytical definitions.
The category of the interesting may be easily questioned on the basis of
its subjectivity. Different things are interesting for different people. The con-
cepts of the beautiful and of the good are susceptible to the same line of criti-
cism; however, few critics question the relevance of aesthetics and ethics as
sciences of the beautiful and the good. Our question is not what is interesting
for various people, but what constitutes the category of interesting itself: What
does it mean to raise interest and to be interesting? Thus this chapter does not
enumerate “what is interesting” in the listing manner of Sei Shonagon’s Pil-
low Book. Our question is, what is the interesting itself as a cultural concept?
Whereas many people are interested in hockey or in soccer, in philosophy or
poetry, our concern here is the phenomenon of the interesting.
I would like to propose that the interesting is related to the modal catego-
ries of the possible and the impossible, the probable and the improbable. The
oscillation between the two and their mutual transformation constitutes the
phenomenon of the interesting. For example, what makes a certain theory
interesting is a consistent and plausible proof for what appears to be least
probable. In other words, the interest of a theory is inversely proportional to

What Is “The Interesting”? Proposed Criteria 227
the probability of its thesis and directly proportional to the provability of its
argument.
This criterion may be applied to such different fields as religion and phys-
ics. For example, the probability of a human being’s resurrection after death
would appear to be extremely small, and for this reason the Christian narra-
tive, which builds a consistent argument in favor of resurrection, has been the
focus of interest for a significant part of humanity for two millennia. Similarly,
among the most interesting theoretical propositions of the 20th century are
those of relativity and quantum physics, the conclusions of which challenge
common sense to the extreme.
The concept of the interesting is related to what Aristotle called wonder, or
surprise, as the basis for philosophizing. We are surprised by something that
challenges our expectations and the rules of our reasoning. Our response to
this challenge is to bridge the gap between reason and surprise. Reason is ea-
ger to assimilate everything that defies its laws. The category of the interesting
emerges as the measure of tension between wonder and understanding, or, in
other terms, between the alterity of the object and reason’s capacity to inte-
grate it. On the one hand, a proliferation of wonders without any explanation
diminishes the potential of the object to be interesting as we give up hope of
integrating such a confusing phenomenon. On the other hand, an elimination
of wonder that guarantees the easy triumph of reason undermines our interest
as well. If wonder involves the measure of improbability, then reason provides
the measure of provability.
Thus, as the probability of the thesis increases, or as its provability decreases,
a theory becomes less interesting. The least interesting are those theories that
(1) prove the obvious but nothing more, (2) speculate about the improbable
without solid evidence or proof, or (3), worst of all, fail to prove even the obvi-
ous. The interesting is the relationship of provability to probability: a fraction,
where the numerator is the reliability of the argument and the denominator is the
validity of the thesis. The degree of the interesting grows with the increase of
the numerator and the decrease of the denominator.
The same double criterion of the interesting is valid for a literary text. An
interesting plot development is one that is perceived on the one hand as in-
evitable and on the other as unpredictable. As in scientific theory, the logic
and consistency of fictional action has to be balanced by its provocative
novelty.
Voltaire’s famous saying “All genres are good except for the dull ones,” is
applicable also to scientific genres and methods. The dull is the opposite of
the interesting and is characteristic for research whose conclusions repeat its
premises and do not offer anything unpredictable in between.
The concept of the interesting is often utilized in contemporary science.

The physicist Freeman Dyson develops the principle of “maximal diversity,”
according to which
the laws of nature and initial conditions are such as to make the universe
as interesting as possible. As a result, life is possible but not too easy. Al-
ways when things are dull, something turns up to challenge us and to stop
us from settling into a rut.1
As soon as life becomes dull and balanced, something unpredictable occurs:

comets or meteorites strike the Earth, a new ice age arrives, wars break out,
or computers are invented. The utmost diversity leads both to an increasingly
stressful life and to more complex and interesting modes of cognition. Experts
in the theory of chaos often use the term “interesting” to denote what is “com-
plex,” “non-linear,” and “non-susceptible to simplification and prediction.”2
The word “interest” derives from the Latin “inter esse,” which literally means
“to be between, in the interval.” Indeed, the interesting is what fits into the gap
between two extremes, between order and freedom, between evidence and
wonderment, between logic and paradox, between system and chance. The
interesting occurs between thesis and antithesis, if (1) they are both relevant
for the situation, (2) their synthesis is impossible, and (3) the victory of ei-
ther side is precluded. As soon as one of these extremes eliminates the other,
the interest disappears, lapsing into detached respect, indifference, or despair.
What is interesting is not oddity or madness in and of themselves, but a kind of
madness that has its own method, “a mind of its own,” or an idea that contains
some madness within it. To rephrase Niels Bohr, this idea is not crazy enough
to be interesting.
The category of the interesting has recently attracted the attention of post-
modern philosophers. Deleuze and Guattari sharply contrast the interesting
with the outdated paradigms of knowledge and truth:
Philosophy does not consist in knowing and is not inspired by truth.

Rather, it is categories like Interesting, Remarkable, or Important that
determine success or failure … a concept must be interesting, even if it
1 Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 298.
2 Talking about specialists in chaoplexity at the Santa Fe Institute, John Horgan remarks that
“Santa Fe’ers often employ ‘interesting’ as a synonym for ‘complex.’” John Horgan, The End of
Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (New York: Broad-
way Books, 1997), p. 197.
is repulsive. … [T]hought as such produces something interesting when

it accedes to the infinite movement that frees it from truth as supposed
paradigm and reconquers an immanent power of creation.3
Thus the interesting, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is an alternative to

the truthful. The interesting is what repels and resists, breaks the positive con-
ventions of knowledge, and contradicts both the factual evidence and public
taste. In my view, however, such a concept of the interesting, which derives
only from the “infinite movement” and “power of creation,” is too romantic
and, in its own way, as narrow as the purely rationalist concept of truth.
It is no wonder that post-structuralist views on the irrelevance of truth have
offended the majority of scientists and drawn their sharp criticism. Usually the
merit of a scientific theory is measured by the three interconnected factors:
truthfulness, correctness, and verity. Theory is truthful when it corresponds to
external reality, correct when it is free from internal contradictions, and verita-
ble when it is verified by tests and experiments. Of course, these three criteria
are necessary but insufficient conditions of being interesting because they lack
the dimension of surprise or improbability. On the other hand, wonderment
without search for proof and evidence also becomes empty.4
The interesting is constituted not merely in opposition to truth but in its
bifurcation and juxtaposition of the truthful and trustworthy on the one hand,
and improbable and wondrous on the other. The romantic is interesting when
it discloses its rational side, and vice versa. Edgar Allan Poe and Jorge Luis Borg-
es are justly considered among the most interesting writers because they ratio-
nally decode the mysterious; at the same time, this decoding does not abolish,
but rather intensifies the sense of mystery. Similarly, in science, thought that
resists facts and despises evidence is as trivial and boring as thought that relies
solely on facts without rising above them. The interesting is what comes in
between two mutually exclusive and equally indispensable aspects of the phe-
nomenon. If post-structuralism dismisses truth as an outdated episteme and
renounces its conceptual status, then the next, possibilistic, intellectual para-
digm restores the value of truthfulness within the broader category of the inter-
esting. The truth regains its significance as unpredictable and impossible truth,
not a reflection of what is, but an anticipation of what might be.
3 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, pp. 82, 83, 140.

4 A study, even trivial in its results, can be interesting if it unfolds in an unexpected area, if
the subject of research is non-trivially chosen. There are many factors of “improbability” in-
cluded in the play of thinking, beginning with the choice of the topic and the definition of
terms and ending with the substantiation of the main thesis.
The interesting interlaces truth and wonder, the obvious and the incredible,
the actual and the possible, increasing the intensity of their interrelationship.
Now and then one side starts to prevail over another; for example, the obvious
is scrupulously argued, or the incredible is bluntly asserted. In that case, the
interesting tends to be lost, lapsing into the boredom of easy consent or the
frustration of disbelief.
In some cases, a work may be devoid of internal interest but may simulta-
neously present an external interest, as reflective of surprising tendencies in
public tastes, literary markets, publishing policies, and so on. A mediocre col-
lection of poetry or an incompetent work of scholarship can be interesting as
a symptom of certain intellectual or social trends. A dull book that has been
published by a prestigious publisher, or has achieved inexplicable success with
the public, creates a paradox and sometimes even a scandal; it attracts inter-
est not to itself but to the situation as a whole (some vulgar “reality” TV shows
might be an example of this). We can call exteresting such phenomena that
appear to be interesting exactly because they are devoid of intrinsic interest.
Thus, it would be useful to discriminate between a work that is interesting in
itself and one that is exteresting as part of a larger, external situation. This latter
case is often described by the expression “presents an interest as.” For example,
a work may present an interest as evidence of the degradation of public taste
or as indicative of a crisis in the writer’s creativity. There are interesting people
and books and there are interesting situations that involve boring people and
books as focal “intriguing” elements.
It is desirable for any writer to produce an interesting work. But this does
not mean to fabricate interest for its own sake. As a rule, such an artificially
enforced interestism is quickly recognized and fails to arouse genuine interest.
On the contrary, it dulls the attention and curiosity. Interestism is a contortion
of the interesting, a quick discharge of its resources, an intellectual coquetry,
a spasm, an explosion of the unexpected too early, wherein the expectation
is aborted. In this case, the interesting is condensed in certain short passages,
while the text on the whole lacks energy and intrigue. In fact, a good writer
often needs to sacrifice an interesting fragment in order to build up the mo-
mentum of the expectation. This accumulation of the trivial may be puzzling
in itself and help to direct the interest towards the future unexpected develop-
ment (of the thought or action).
The most interesting books are usually written not for the sole purpose of
being interesting, but for the sake of exploring the world and human nature,
for emotional and intellectual self-expression, for inventing new stories or cre-
ating original images. Such is the dialectics of the interesting: it reaches its
goal more effectively when it deviates from it. Ironically, the interesting has
to be independent of those “consumers” whose interest it aspires to arouse.

This “disinterestedness” of the interesting issues from the same paradox that we
have discussed earlier: the combination of provability and improbability. This
implies that the interesting itself should not be overwhelmingly and straight-
forwardly interesting, but should stand out from the contrastive background of
the “usual,” as a surprise rather than a predictable pattern. The interesting usu-
ally sparks and glimmers rather than shines brightly and evenly. “Interestism”
ignores this paradox and attempts to arouse the interest from the very start
and without interruption, which often ends in failure, as the feeling of wonder
disappears if it becomes routine. On the surface it seems as if “pleasing” the
consumer, the reader, should lie at the very core of the interesting. But what
interests us deeply, is interesting only to the extent to which it does not seek to
cater to outside interests. It grips us, rather than submits to our desires.
What makes a certain person interesting? Even the most talented people
are sometimes so full of their own personality, bright ideas, and deep emotions
that they leave no space for anyone else to communicate and participate cre-
atively. Strangely enough, this makes them similar to superficial people, who
have nothing substantial in them and cannot lead the listener or the reader
anywhere. Along with the tragedy of a poor man who has nowhere to go (e.g.
Marmeladov in Dostoevsky), there is the tragedy of a dull man who has no-
where to lead. Thus some people are like fountains, emanating their rich con-
tents. Others are like cotton wool, so entirely dry that nothing can be squeezed
out of them. Finally, there are a few who, like sponges, can both absorb and
emit. The latter are the most interesting personalities.
It is noteworthy that in Russian “interesting” can be synonymous to “being
pregnant”: “the woman is in an interesting state.” She is interesting in that al-
though she is one, there is another entity within her. The interesting is a form
of potentiality, a kind of pregnancy, when a person carries within her a differ-
ent self.
The interesting involves us in the “inter-being” of external objects, but the
root of the “inter-esse” is within ourselves. There is an interior relation between
my actuality and my potentiality: I can be unpredictable and surprising to my-
self. The interesting functions as a kind of mediator between me and myself,
to the extent to which I may be different from what I am. In fact, what we find
interesting in the world around us are those things that enrich our life with a
range of possibilities. Even trivial interests suggest a discrepancy between the
actual and the potential self, between what one is and what one can be. For
example, while doing athletics, a person is interested in exercising not simply
her body; she is actually exercising her alterity, her capacity to surprise her-
self. She is finding her different self as an “athlete,” exploring the possibility to
become faster and stronger than she is. The interesting plays a central role in a
person’s self-potentiation, in her self-definition as a potential being. Whatever
our external interests are (professional, social, recreational), our engagement
in a variety of activities reflects our desire to wonder and puzzle ourselves, to
experience something in ourselves that is, as yet, unknown and undiscovered.
There is a certain dynamic between individuals and interests. One individ-
ual can have multiple interests. One interest can also be shared by many indi-
viduals. In this respect interests are similar to universals (general concepts).
Interests can be characterized as “universals-for-individuals,” unlike “univer-
sals-in-individuals” that traditionally belong to the realm of philosophy. In this
conventional sense, the universals are objective attributes of an individual (be
it a person or a thing) and do not depend upon the individual’s conscious-
ness or desire. For example, such universals as “nation,” “class,” “temper,” “cog-
nition,” and “language” (the ability to think and speak) cannot be considered
as interests. But “reading,” “science,” “art,” “politics,” and “sport” can be viewed
as universals-for-individuals and, thus, as interests, in that they are matters of
conscious choice. Unlike traditional universals that establish our identities, in-
terests are dynamic: they do not relate to the properties but to the intentions
of their subjects.
Chapter 28
Small Metaphysics: the Unique
Possibilism transforms the deconstructionist critique of metaphysics into the

creative construction of multiple “minor” metaphysic-s (in the plural). Dur-
ing its third, constructive epoch philosophy, turning from truthfulness and
usefulness to the criterion of interest, will partly return to the metaphysical
bases which the epoch of critique and activism attacked so vehemently. Even
though Plato and Aristotle, Bacon and Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz were
building their systems on the rather shaky foundations of metaphysical knowl-
edge, they had a powerful metaphysical imagination. Of course, having already
experienced its death, metaphysics cannot be revived in its dogmatic quality,
when it directly identified its principles with reality and applied them to the
whole of the universe. The new metaphysics cannot avoid taking into accounts
the results of the previous critical epoch which ridiculed the naive character of
the first metaphysics.
The new metaphysics, or hypermetaphysics, is the sum total of the possible
metaphysics, which are in a constant interplay and postulate ever new “arch-
essences” as a sign of growing difference among metaphysics. “Hyper” is such
an excess of quality (in this case, the metaphysical one) which at the same time
means its transgression. In contrast to the prefixes “ultra” or “super,” “hyper”
means not only a very strong, but an extremely strong degree of quality (which
can be seen in such words as “hypertension,” “hypertrophy,” “hyperinflation,”
“hyperbole”): stepping over its own boundaries, it turns into its own antithesis.
This is why “hyper” can be appropriately used in definitions of events which
are marked by an extreme intensification and, simultaneously, transgression
and exhaustion of a given quality.
“Hypermetaphysics” is the transcendence of the metaphysical quality via
its surplus. The circle of metaphysics in interplay is replenished by ever new,
unthinkable, and unprecedented metaphysics, the very structure of which in-
cludes “as if.” We can think not only about the metaphysics of general concepts,
such as spirit and matter, but also about metaphysics of less general and even
individual concepts: metaphysics of garden, metaphysics of tree, metaphysics
of kitchen. Any word or concept can serve as an impulse for creation of one
more metaphysics, the metaphysics which would substantiate the movement
and self-differentiation of concepts inside of the given identity. In fact, the
very presence of a word in the language is already that minimal identity, that
ready-for-use universal from which a small metaphysics can be derived. (Every

word indicates the fact that all the objects it describes are in a way identical to
each other.) For example, a “hair” can be a primary metaphysical concept as
the minimal tangible distance between things (metaphysics of “thinness”), or
“table,” as a support of human existence above the ground in the sphere of writ-
ing and culture (metaphysics of “support”), or “umbrella” as a portable folding
shelter for a lonely man in the open (metaphysics of “shelter”), and so on.
Each word contains a meaning which could be central for a given meta-
physics, just as “reason” became central for Hegel’s metaphysics. Needless to
say, such metaphysics would not likely to become universal; they would apply
only to a restricted domain of the derivatives of the primary concept. Thus, be-
sides the central concept, the metaphysics of “support” would include objects
of close semantic domains: various surfaces and planes representing human
support as such (chair, armchair, sofa), as well as the objects which lean against
the surface of a table and serve for table talks and work (dishes, silverware,
books, paper, lamp, etc.). These are compact, chamber metaphysics, the diver-
sity of which reveals the distinction among them, but does not convert this
différance into the subject of a big (anti-)metaphysics.
Small metaphysics are not metaphysics in the proper sense of the term, as
they do not contain any assertions about transcendental, unchangeable, and
all-embracing essences. They are built as a metaphysical gesture, eliminating
its metaphysical character precisely by being a gesture. Here metaphysics dem-
onstrates only its possibility, which includes possibilities of other metaphysics.
Every discourse produced by such small metaphysics may be enclosed with-
in quotation marks, since it is only a sign of another consciousness, a sign en-
gendered by the fundamental difference among consciousnesses. However, as
a rule the quotation marks are only understood and not actually used in these
hypermetaphysics, since the “other” here is not any other, really existing author,
who is being “quoted,” but rather the “other” of philosophical consciousness
itself, which acts in forms of the other and distinguishes itself from itself in
the form of other consciousnesses. In this case, a single quotation mark would
have been more appropriate – at the beginning of the text, but not at the end
of it, since the text, allegedly created by another consciousness, is not enclosed
within this other, not identified with any particular author, but rather contin-
ues to move in the forms of endless self-differentiation from which there is no
exit, no return to the direct speech of the author.
The familiar pair of quotation marks assumes the hermetization of another
person’s speech, a prison cell of a sort (hence the penitentiary shade of the
expression “to enclose within quotation marks”). However, the “otherness” of
speech is not an isolated fact inside the homogeneous narrative of the thought,
but rather the constant process of “otherization,” distortion of linguistic space
Small Metaphysics: the Unique 235
in which thought is contraposed to itself. The succession of such distortions–

otherizations could be denoted (in places of especially strong pressures and
twists) by the introducing quotation mark (“) which never receives its coun-
terpart – the end quotation mark (”). Quotes are not ended since the process
of quotation, distortion, replacement of the subject of speech is never interrupted.
Speech bends onto itself and twists like the Moebius strip – there is no escape
from this distorted space. While the big, “Newtonian,” metaphysics creates an
illusion of the uniformity of mental space, small metaphysics not only minia-
turize, but also “relativize,” distorting the linguistic space “à la Einstein.” The
metaphysics of hair or umbrella cannot be created by the mind which imag-
ines itself the lord or creator of the universe, but only by the mind of a hair-
like man or an under-umbrella queen, New Melusina (see below), whose voice
comes out of the small chest-palace which she is holding on her lap.
Thus metaphysics receives the prefix “hyper,” discourse receives a single,
opening quotation mark. But are metaphysics and its discourse really necessary
if they say something quite different or not quite that with which philosophi-
cal consciousness could identify itself? However, philosophical consciousness
does not ever say anything with which it could totally identify itself. All it says
is something other in relation to consciousness itself – quotations, introduced
by a pairless quotation mark, from other virtual thinkers who belong to the dif-
ferentiating activity of consciousness itself.
Thinking creates thinkabilities different from thinking itself, and each
thinkability contains another thinker, another metaphysical voice. If thinking,
for instance, says that the world is based on water, this is the voice of one of
the thinkers, born out of the same possibility of thinking out of which there
spring other thinkers who trace the world back to fire or to absolute idea. In
reality, there exist people who identify themselves with one of the possibilities
of thinking. Then they acquire proper names, Thales, Heraclitus, Hegel, and
then their texts become enclosed within complete, double quotation marks as
belonging to real authors.
Thinking in the subjunctive modality begins with quotation marks because
it presupposes a different thinker, but does not end with quotation marks since
it does not oblige him to have actual existence and a name outside the limits
of thinkability itself. Everything which is said is said by someone else, by the
other – but this other does not have many chances to come into existence and
claim the authorship of that which had been said, because this other is but
the very possibility of thinking. Thinking cannot reveal itself in any other way
except by supposing other thinkers with whom it will never be able to identify
itself completely and from whom it will never be able to dissociate itself. This is
why thinking cannot do without quotation marks and yet cannot be enclosed
within the full pair of them: thinker is always “another” in relation to thinking,
but this “other” is precisely the thinking as “postulating of the other.”
Our previous definition of philosophy as “thinking about the thinkable”
must now be refined. The thinkable is not simply a possibility of thinking, but a
possibility which presupposes something different from thinking itself, postu-
lating a certain identity, an “essence” with which this or that thinker may iden-
tify himself. Of course, the possible thinkers constructed by our mind are more
numerous than the real ones, and the horizon of new, post-critical philosophy
encompasses all the possible thinkabilities, not dependent on the actual exis-
tence of certain philosophers. Possibility given by thinking does not depend on
somebody’s readiness to realize it.
Without hypermetaphysics, those “half-quoted” discourses, the play of
difference itself, creating worlds of otherness, worlds of supposed identities,
would not be possible. Breaking the space of big metaphysics into the areas of
small metaphysics we deprive metaphysics of its privileged position but con-
serve the field of metaphysical possibilities necessary for the play of difference
itself.
Thinking that works in the mode of small metaphysics can be titled mi-
crometaphysics.1 As the world becomes larger, each object in it grows smaller,
passes into the class of “micro.” Such is the ontological fate of any material
or ideal individuality in the expanding universe. Goethe allegorically repre-
sented this law in his parable about Melusina, a beautiful princess of gnomes:
“Since nothing in the world is eternal and everything great is bound to abate
and wane, we have also been getting smaller and diminishing in stature since
the days of Creation; and, because of the purity of their blood, it is the royal
family which shrinks the most quickly.”2
The same fate – reduction – awaits also the metaphysical categories of the
purest, “royal” blood: “idea,” “substance,” “causation.” We live under the sign
1 In general, the invention of new terms is one of the manifestations of the play of difference
which creates identities and corresponding names and at the same time constantly renames
them as a sign of otherness in relation to itself. Metaphor is a possibility of representing an
object as another one without endowing it with the heavy identity of this other. This is why
renaming is so essential for the play of difference. Paul Valéry said that the strength of think-
ing is revealed precisely in the ability to multiply variants of one text rather than in creating
new texts. A new writing is identical to itself whereas the variants of one writing remove it
from the state of self-identity. The writing is thus potentiated as the universe of many pos-
sible writings. Leibniz would have said that the might of the Divine mind was revealed in the
creation of many variants of one Adam.
2 J.W. Goethe, Die Neue Melusine (The New Melusine), cited in Rudolf Steiner, Origin and Des-
tination of Humanity, Lecture xiy, Goethe’s Secret Revelation, http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lec-
tures/GA053/English/UNK2014/19050302p01.html.
of the “red shift,” in the accelerating cosmos and with the culture constantly
becoming more complex; hence a relativistic consequence of it – the miniatur-
ization of each object and concept. Consequently, new forms of understanding
these miniature things come into being. Theodore Adorno defined this change
of scale as a passage from metaphysics to micrology:
Enlightenment leaves practically nothing of the metaphysical content of

truth – presque rien, to use a modern musical term. That which recedes
keeps getting smaller and smaller, as Goethe describes it in the parable
of New Melusine’s box, designating an extremity. It grows more and more
insignificant; this is why, in the critique of cognition as well as in the phi-
losophy of history, metaphysics immigrates into micrology. Micrology is
the place where metaphysics finds a haven from totality. No absolute can
be expressed otherwise than in topics and categories of immanence, al-
though neither in its conditionality nor as its totality is immanence to be
deified.3
The point here is not only in the relativistic miniaturization of each thing,
but also in a keener eye of metaphysics, which starts to discern the details of
the universe, previously hidden behind general categories. Each thing in its
uniqueness, irreducibility to any general category, becomes a unit of this new,
post-critical, metaphysics. Just as science analyzes the structure of the micro-
world in its search for the unique, indivisible quantum bases of matter, meta-
physics searches for the minimal distinguishing units of meaning. Here it is not
enough to speak about micrology, about metaphysics turning to small things
– we are talking about the elementary excitation of meaning fields. Meaning,
like energy, can only be radiated and absorbed in individual indivisible por-
tions, or quanta. Therefore, using the already familiar idiom of quantum phys-
ics, we could call this new area of philosophy, its shift into the microworld of
meaning, quantum metaphysics.
As a philosophical discipline, quantum metaphysics is a plurality of inter-
pretation of meaning quanta of the universe. Miniaturizing the object of its
analysis, quantum metaphysics at the same time possibilizes its method. Just
as microphysics, studying the world of extremely small, elementary particles,
discovers their probabilistic nature, “micrometaphysics” explores the world of
extremely small meanings and discovers their possibilistic nature. On such a
3 T.W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1992), p. 407,
https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/theodor-adorno-negative-dialec-
tics.pdf.
microlevel as “table” or “paper” – words with a “small,” concrete meaning – a

possibility is discovered for them to enter into different metaphysical systems
(“metaphysics of support,” “metaphysics of surface,” “metaphysics of white-
ness”). In a special category there stay the service words and morphemes –
prepositions, conjunctions, particles, prefixes, suffixes – those quanta of gram-
matical meaning which show the biggest variety of metaphysical meanings
and interpretations.4
The “big” metaphysics of general concepts – Reason, Being, Idea, Matter –
tends to determinism, to the category of necessity, since it embraces in one
category of identity a multitude of thinkable objects and presents itself as the
only right one. The world represented by the physics of big masses, which are
subject to the forces of gravity and the internal connections of particles, is
just as determined. The movement from macrophysics to microphysics is the
discovery of the probabilistic world of microparticles inside determined mac-
roobjects. Analogously, the movement from one big metaphysics toward many
small metaphysics discovers the possibilistic world of micromeanings inside the
laws of “big” logic.
The small metaphysics, originating from specific concepts, naturally grav-
itate towards concrete, objective words as their basic terms (“snow,” “table,”
“branch”). In relation to the problem of concrete words and even such “abso-
lutely unique individualities as utterances” (Bakhtin) which refer in concrete
circumstances to individual objects, we could ask a question: are they subject
to the philosophical, that is extremely “generalizing,” approach? Here is how
Bakhtin answers this question: “First, at the starting point of any science are
unique singularities and throughout its way science remains connected to
4 The fact that the grammar words are the most frequently used ones in the majority of lan-
guages speaks about their primary importance for thinking, precisely because they possess
the hightest semantic potential and are open for a variety of meanings, in contrast with the
lexically charged words such as “matter” or “cause.” I will cite the philosopher and philologist
Yakov Abramov (1893–1968): “The first words on the frequency list are ‘in,’ ‘and,’ ‘not,’ ‘on,’
‘I’… These are words whose meaning does not abide to anything, does not push anywhere,
passing through thought as a quivering of the very first, shy and pure touches to reality. Oh
language, a great thinker! It does not insist on anything, but just plants seeds of meaning
in the field of possibilities… All these arch-words are necessary only because they presup-
pose a free choice and combinations of any other words. Their auxiliary character denotes
humility and readiness to serve us. These are the words without which people could not do
in their daily conversations, in thousands of thoughts and utterances on different subjects –
the words without which the world itself couldn’t have started: if there were no ‘in,’ no ‘and,’
no ‘not’… As the initial gift of freedom, language only offers to our service these shortest and
mildest function words: prepositions, conjunctions, particles…”: “Uchenie Yakova Abramova
v izlojenii ego uchenikov” (chapter in Theism: The philosophy of words’ frequency), pp. 226–7.
them. Second, science – and before all, philosophy – may and should study a
specific form and function of this individuality.”5
It follows that we can also imagine metaphysics of extra-word identities,
sub-sign objects, which until now have been ignored by the “big” metaphys-
ics. Indeed, even the most concrete word always generalizes, even the word
“travinka” (a blade of grass) is a semantic giant among single blades of grass,
myriad of which can be denoted by this single word. We are talking about the
identities that are “smaller” than a single word – about unique objects which
also can enter the metaphysical domain as extremely small, “elementary” units
of meaning. It is possible to think of the metaphysics of a single blade of grass,
so unique that its presence in the treatise would be necessary to complete
and to build the given metaphysics. The single object inscribed into the trea-
tise (pasted in, built in) becomes the last metaphysical word, whose signifier
is identical to the signified, as a highest sign of the identity itself. In a treatise
about a blade of grass only this very blade of grass can represent itself, as that
ultimate presence toward which any metaphysics is directed.
After all, what is the unique, if not the last limit of all differences, something
different coming rising after another different thing – and so on, ad infinitum:
different from different from different? The play of difference continues up to
this blade of grass, different in relation to grass in general, to the grass growing
in this garden, and even to the nearest blade of grass growing from the same
root.
At the same time it is the limit of the thinkable which runs against a pure ac-
tuality, “this.”6 Precisely the “thisness” constitutes the last temptation of philos-
ophy and its decisive self-control: does it allow for anything staying outside the
thinking itself? How can one think about “this” if it exists only here and now
and cannot be reduced to any general concept or characteristic, even to the
concrete word “travinka”? Precisely this is the case in which the expression “to
think the unthinkable” becomes fully justifiable, for even such “unthinkable”
things as a round square are quite easy to ponder in comparison with any sin-
gle object; in fact, thinking creates them for nothing else but itself. The round
5 M. Bakhtin, “Problema teksta v lingvistike, filosofii i drugikh gumanitarnykh naukakh” (“The

Problem of Text in Linguistics, Philosophy and other Humanities”), in M. Bakhtin (ed.), Este-
tika slovesnogo tvorchestva (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979), p. 287.
6 About modern approaches to the metaphysics of “thisness” (“haecceitas”) see R.M. Adams,
“Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity,” in Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa (eds), Metaphys-
ics: An Anthology (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). pp. 172–83. “Thisness” can
be defined as a pure quality of uniqueness, from which all those general characteristics and
predicates that it shares with other unique objects are removed – the characteristic of being
itself and nothing else.
square can be thought of as an idea of the utmost perfection, as reconciliation

of opposites, as a resolution of the contradiction between the squarely earthly
and the roundly heavenly, and so on. The singleness, however, presents to the
mind a much harder riddle than any generality, even a contradictory one, does.
Approaching individual things, thinking meets with the strongest resistance
and constantly slips back into something more general – class, kind, species,
category. Individual objects are pariahs in the caste society of “big” metaphys-
ics, and the measure of the (self-)transcendence of metaphysics will be not
only its new, concrete language (including the language of proper names), but
also its readiness to step outside the limits of language and into the domain of
the “untouchable,” “extra-sign,” objectness.
Consequently, it appears that the fate of thinking will be solved on the way
to the individual. In difference from deconstruction which eliminates any “illu-
sion” of presence, such philosophy will admit the ultimate reality of presence
and try to portray “this” as lying beyond the borders of thinking. Objects will
be included in the volume and continuity of philosophical texts as gaps in the
chain of signifiers – gaps occupied by signifieds themselves. Philosophy will
gravitate toward objects not in order to prove the verity of its statements, but
rather in order to prove the value of its silence, to find gaps in the chain of
signifiers. Thinking is searching for itself beyond the limits of the thinkable.
The individual as the smallest, the “extra-small,” also belongs to the domain
of quantum metaphysics, searching for the ultimate, the vanishingly small par-
ticle of meaning at the border of the generally thinkable. Theodore Adorno
defined this change of scale as a passage from metaphysics to micrology:
Represented in the inmost cell of thought is that which is unlike thought.

The smallest intramundane traits would be of relevance to the absolute,
for the micrological view cracks the shells of what, measured by the sub-
suming cover concept, is helplessly isolated and explodes its identity, the
delusion that it is but a specimen [of a general concept. – ME]. There
is solidarity between such thinking and metaphysics at the time of its
fall.7
The “fall of metaphysics” means that the play of difference goes to the end, to
the individual as the smallest identity which remains after all differentiations
as the other of all the other.
7 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 408.

Thus, the entire historic path of philosophy would be represented as move-

ment from unity as the biggest identity to singularity as the smallest identity,
with the triumphal play of differences all throughout this way. It is precisely
the difference that leads to the splitting of unity into plurality and further, to the
isolation of the unique from the plural. The different from unity is plurality; the
different from the plural is the unique.
Difference is asymmetric – it would not have been a difference, had it not
included difference inside the very relation of difference. A is not different
from B in the same way as B is different from A. In this difference contrasts
with opposition, which is based on the identity of the opposing trait. White is
contraposed to black by the same differentiating trait by which black is con-
traposed to white. On the other hand, Marx differs from Nietzsche not by the
same trait by which Nietzsche differs from Marx. Marx differs from Nietzsche
by his belief in the decisive role of economics, whereas Nietzsche differs from
Marx not by his disbelief in the decisive role of economics, which did not
interest him at all, but rather by his belief in the eternal return – which, in
its turn, did not interest Marx. Only if we decide to reduce the difference be-
tween Marx and Nietzsche to the bare opposition, will we be able to charac-
terize them in terms of presence/absence of the same characteristic: belief in
Communism – absence of such belief, and so on. However, the absence of this
belief was not important for Nietzsche – it is just an extrapolation of Marx’s
view and its negation. The distinction presupposes precisely the difference be-
tween positive values, rather than an opposition of plus and minus. Indeed,
the ontological defect of opposition consists in that one is defined through the
other as its absence or negation, its “antithesis,” while the trait being opposed
turns out identical for both sides. On the other hand, difference is a relation
in which the subjects participate with their different sides. Difference pre-
supposes a non-identity to oneself and, therefore, leads to the burgeoning of
differences.
In addition, difference is not symmetric because it grows out of the abil-
ity of self-distinction, that is, a dynamic process. The closest distinction from
an egg is, obviously, the chick that has hatched from it, whereas the closest
distinction from the chick is not the egg but rather the adult bird. To differ is
to “differ oneself,” that is, to be in the process of differing from oneself. In this
sense it can be said that plurality differs from unity; but that which differs from
plurality is not unity anymore, but rather something unique, a singularity: the
further self-differentiating of plurality.
What singularity has in common with plurality is that they both include
the concept of a unit, an identity. However, there exists a unit which includes
e verything else and a unit which excludes everything else. An all-embracing

unit is a unity, while a unit different from everything else is a singularity.8 The
key word of the first one is “all”; the key word of the second one is “this.” Be-
tween “all” and “this” there lies at least a twofold process of differentiation: that
differentiation of “many things” from “all” – and the differentiation of “this”
from “many things.”
As it gradually transcends metaphysics, philosophy moves from unity (edin-
stvo), which absorbs all the differences, to uniqueness (edinichnost’), which
remains after all the differentiations. It is the movement from eternal idea and
universal spirit toward a blade of grass, a pebble. The very existence of singu-
larity already presupposes the work of all differentiations which preceded it
and made it possible. This blade of grass is the result of all the possible logical
differentiations between the living and the non-living, the green and the red,
the flexible and the inflexible, the growing here and the growing there, the
growing now and the growing then.
This is why philosophy approaches any singularity as its innermost result.
The acceptance of the singular, isolation of the singular, its introduction into
the text, are for philosophy a way of discovering the greatest play of differences
in the text itself. As a component of the text, a single thing is maximally differ-
ent from the text, is extraposed to it, plays with it, yields to it and escapes from
it, acquires in it a certain meaning and becomes liberated from all meanings.
The metaphysics of a single thing is inscribed in the text in order to erase the
metaphysical status of the text itself.
Theodore Adorno designated the approaching to the unthinkable being as
the proper, but unattainable, goal of philosophical thinking:
Philosophy, indeed theoretical thought in general, suffers from an ide-

alistic prejudgment because it deals only with concepts, never directly
with what these concepts refer to. … Philosophy cannot paste an ontic
substratum into its treatises. It can only talk about it in words, and in so
doing it assimilates that substratum, whereas it should want to keep it
distinct from its own conceptuality.9
The question is precise, but the pessimistic answer raises doubts.
8 The combination of these two characteristics of a unit as something all-embracing and all-
excluding takes us into the domain of theology and creates the monotheistic concept of God
unique and all-embracing, that is, having neither boundaries nor the like. However, philoso-
phy, staying in its own domain, tries to differentiate between these two concepts and not to
mix unity (edinstvo) with uniquness (edinichnost’).
9 T. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 365.
Is it true that philosophy cannot paste an ontic substratum, the singular,

into its treatises? Indeed, the treatises themselves are somehow pasted into
this substratum, dragged into the world of singularities. Even the manuscript
of the Science of Logic at one time lay on Hegel’s table, together with quills
and an inkwell. If things can surround a treatise, why can’t a treatise surround
things, inscribe them in itself? It is possible to imagine such treatises (pos-
sibly texts in the virtual, electronic space) which would be built around in-
dividual objects – this house, this blade of grass – and will paste this ontic
subject into the text, at the same time stressing its difference from concepts,
its irreducibility to the general. It is possible to imagine philosophy in a role,
completely different from the commonly accepted discursive–argumentative
forms of its isolation from the singular: as thinking inscribed into the circle of
its objects and interacting precisely with the strangeness of the unthinkable, in
this peculiar connection to the referents of thought in which philosophy nei-
ther distances itself from them, nor dissolves them in itself, but rather coexists
with them in the same metatextual space.
Thinking itself points at the unthinkable and situates itself next to it as
something inseparable from it and irreducible to it.
Therefore, transcendence of metaphysics is the movement from the forms
of unity to the forms of singularity, from generalization to differentiation, up
to the inclusion of individual things into the very fabric of the philosophical
treatise. There are two ways of transcending metaphysics: through elimination
of trace or multiplication of traces. This situation reminds us of an old fairy-
tale – “The Tinder–Box” by Hans Christian Andersen. An old maid of honor
tracked down a dog who had abducted the king’s daughter and put a chalk
cross on the gate of the house to which the daughter had been taken. It was
possible to erase the trace, but the clever dog did something else – by the next
morning all the gates of the town had identical chalk crosses, so that the lady-
in-waiting might not be able to find out the right door. “There were crosses on
all the doors in every direction.”10
A trace disappears either through elimination of the trace or through multi-
plication of traces. The first way is deconstruction, which erases the privileged
sign of “presence,” “arch-essence” from this or that metaphysical system. The
second way is potentiation, which draws metaphysical signs on all the houses
of the town, creates an alternative multitude of metaphysics among which the
privileged place of metaphysics itself disappears.
10 H.-C. Andersen, The Tinder-Box, http://hca.gilead.org.il/tinderbx.html.

Part 3
The Worlds of the Possible
⸪
Introduction to Part 3
In the first two parts of this work we analyzed the philosophical understand-
ing of the possible and the significance of this category in the development of
philosophy itself. In the third and last part we will examine the modality of the
possible outside the limits of philosophy, in the life of modern society, in vari-
ous areas of culture, morality, psychology, and religion. If in the previous parts
the analysis was concentrated on the category of the possible in its difference
from the actually existing, this part will regard reality itself as a sphere of con-
stantly growing possibilization (ovozmozhenie). In other words, here we will
analyze not possibility itself, but rather the possibilization of reality, its gradual
historic and cultural transition into another modality.
The simplest and clearest example of how potentiation acts on the level
of daily life can be found in the novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Viktor
Shklovskiy discovered in this novel a mechanism of “defamiliarization,” or
“estrangement”: the well known and customary is perceived as something
strange. This mechanism, which, according to Shklovskiy, lies in the basis of
art, is found, for example, in the scene in which Natasha Rostova perceives an
opera performance freshly, naively, and with surprise. However, yet another
mechanism, “possibilization,” can be found in Tolstoy’s works; evidently, it is
connected to “defamiliarization.” If reality is presented as something strange,
it means that it is regarded from a different point of view. Defamiliarization
(ostranenie) shows where this “surprised” perception comes from, while pos-
sibilization (ovozmozhenie) suggests in which direction it goes. One could say
that possibilization is the obverse of something, of which defamiliarization is
the reverse.
It is not surprising that this play of modalities shows both of its sides pre-
cisely in the character of Natasha. Doomed to a one-year separation from her
fiancé Prince Andrey, Natasha strolls around her mansion in the village, grieves
because everything is the way it is, and tries to introduce in this “is” the “may
be,” those possibilities that are not meant to be realized yet open the narrow
horizons of life.
“What can I do with them?” thought Natasha.

“What can I do with them [servants]?” thought Natasha.
“Oh, Nikita, please go … where can I send him? … Yes, go to the yard and
fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some oats.”
“Just a few oats?” said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
“Go, go quickly,” the old man urged him.

“And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk.”…

“O Lord, O Lord, it’s always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am I to
do with myself?”…
Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which were
plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing
whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha sat down,
listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got up
again.
“The island of Madagascar,” she said, “Ma-da-gas-car,” she repeated, ar-
ticulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame Schoss
who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.1
What occupies Natasha in this scene? She does nothing, but creates possi-
bilities that hang in the air like soap bubbles. From the grey stuff of life she
extracts multicolored airborne drops that burst as soon as the area of the
possible, represented here by Natasha herself, goes away. “Madagascar” is a
pure possibility, valued for itself, in the reality in which Moscow and Odessa
represent the actually existing.
Potentiation, or possibilization (ovozmozhenie), is the growth of the degrees
of the possible in reality itself, the process of transforming facts into probabili-
ties; theories into hypotheses; statements, into suppositions; necessities, into al-
ternative possibilities. The meaning of the word “potentiate” can be conveyed
descriptively as “to make something possible.” Evidently, it is not the same as
to “make the possible,” that is to actualize the potential. On the contrary, to
“make something possible” means to potentiate the actual, to transfer the ex-
isting into the mode of the possible. To potentiate, or to “possibilize,” an object
means to reveal in it the possibilities that preceded its actual existence and/or
came out of it – the possibilities of other objects that could exist in the past
or in the future. To potentiate means not only to make something possible as
a condition of its future realization, but, on the contrary, to transfer the actual
into the realm of the possible.
In our language there are no words to denote possibility as an action; thus
I propose such neologisms as “possibilize” or “potentiate.”2 However, this does
1 L. Tolstoy, War and Peace, vol. 2, part 4, chapter xi, http://www.literaturepage.com/read/

warandpeace-726.html, http://www.literaturepage.com/read/warandpeace-727.html.
2 These two terms can be used as synonyms in many contexts, as they refer to the transition
between modalities: from the “real/actual” to the “possible/potential.” Possibilization is more
related to mental processes, to the realm of thought and speech, whereas potentiation is
more connected with the realm of being and becoming. However, possibility and potentiality
belong to the same modality, to the domain of potentiology which is radically different from
other philosophical disciplines, epistemology and ontology (see Appendix).
not testify to the lack of such a process, but rather presupposes its depth, which
resists being named and often prefers to stay nameless. The “possible” and the
“possibility” are the results of the process of “possibilization,” which continu-
ously goes on in the belly of existence and makes the existence itself possible.
All modern reality is permeated by such “possibilistic” constructs. Reality pass-
es from “is” (est’) into the mode of “if” (esli) and thus requires a corresponding
“possibilistic” approach. Potentiation is not only a method of thinking, about
which we spoke in Part 2 of this book (especially in Chapter 26), but also a
process, objectively occurring in civilization, since the latter is itself powered
by the energy and the potentiality of human thought.
I should explain why the title of Part 3 speaks not about “possible worlds”
but rather about “the worlds of the possible.” The expression “possible worlds,”
introduced by Leibniz, is accepted both in modal logic and in philosophical
teachings about modality. It presupposes certain separate worlds, different
from ours and consisting of possible events, comparable with one another
and forming a wholesome system, a “world”; for example, worlds with differ-
ent physical constants, or with different chemical bases of life, with different
structures and compositions of amino acids, and so on. However, here I speak
not about possible worlds, different from our world, but about the worlds of
the possible as revealed in our world. I speak about the possible that is com-
parable to our world and constantly transforms and potentiates it – in ethics,
psychology, and other so-called “universes of discourse.” Thus what I analyze
here is not the logic of other worlds where possibilities are combined with
themselves, but rather new historic signs of possibilization of our actual world.
In the following five chapters, the features of the new model will be delin-
eated as they appear in the social, cultural, ethical, psychological, and religious
domains.
Chapter 29
Society
European metaphysics, which has created a realm of common ideas, had its
reverse side – European history, which revealed the striving to bring these ab-
stract ideas back to earth, and to implement them in political, ethical, and ju-
ridical norms and institutions. Nothing attracted educated Europeans as much
as abstractness. In this sense, history and metaphysics can be regarded as two
phases of a back-and-forth movement of ideas. The idea was abstracted from
real life (metaphysical act) in order to be, with a renewed force, used in the
transformation of this reality (historic act). Ideas of freedom, equality, nation-
al, religious, and racial greatness actively influenced historic progress. The very
abstractness of these ideas made them attractive, required them to play a role
in history.
Even the opposition movements, threatening to blow up European civiliza-
tion, changed little in this mentality, but rather strengthened it and pushed
it to the extreme. It is well known what role the cult of abstract ideas under
the common name of “ideology” played both in Communist Russia and Nazi
Germany. The more abstract the ideas were, the greater was the desire to bring
them to life. The slogans that could be heard on the student barricades in Paris
in 1968 – “All the power – to the imagination!” and “Paradise – now!” – were an
act of deep self-expression of European civilization. Imagination was called to
power, to action. Everything that existed only in dreams and hopes was to be
brought into life, actualized. “Everything existing must be perpetuated, every-
thing unrealized must be brought into existence!”1
So possibility was related to reality in European consciousness: possibilities
were leading away from reality in order to return to it again. “Realize your pos-
sibilities, bring them into life here and now!” This imperative reigned both in
social and individual consciousnesses – and even in religious consciousness,
which aspired to revive the dead and establish the thousand-year kingdom
here, in this world, so that the existing would be perpetuated and the unreal-
ized would join the existing. Doubting Thomas wished to touch the stigmata
of the resurrected Christ in order to feel the reality of immortality – and in
Christian civilization this act of disbelief was understood as a characteristic of
true faith. Faith should be realized; hope fulfilled; love crowned.
1 A. Blok, The poem “O, ia khochu bezumno zhit’…” (“Oh, I want madly to live!…”).

However, this model, having served the development of Western civiliza-

tion for many centuries, is now refusing to work. It is not only the metaphysi-
cal abstractness that no longer inspires Westerners, but also participation in
history. The end of the 20th century was the time of talk not only about the
end of metaphysics; talk about the end of history became popular as well. In
fact, it is the same end – the point of intersection of two straight lines coming
together. In his much-quoted essay “The End of History?”, Francis Fukuyama
comes to a conclusion about the exhaustion and abolition of all monumental
ideas (Fascist, Communist, nationalist, religious fundamentalist), which had
earlier competed with the liberal-democratic idea. However, the gist is not in
the fact that some ideas replace others, but in the exhaustion of the ideologi-
cal principle itself as an active historic factor. The metaphysical period of his-
tory, when ideas, first abstract, were then actualized in reality is coming to a
close.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, in his critique of Jürgen Habermas, stresses that the
main European project of Enlightenment stayed unrealized not because it was
discarded, but because it was destroyed in the process of its realization, having
led to Auschwitz and Kolyma.
This Idea (of freedom, “enlightenment,” socialism, etc.) has legitimizing

value because it is universal. It guides every human reality. It gives mo-
dernity its characteristic mode: the project … I would argue that the proj-
ect of modernity (the realization of universality) has not been forsaken
or forgotten, but destroyed, ‘liquidated’.2
Precisely in such a historic point where the project gets destroyed in the pro-
cess of its realization, where the historic dialectics of the idea of Enlighten-
ment is exhausted, a new movement towards potentiation of reality begins.
Liberal-democratic society no longer produces such abstract ideas that can
be put at the service of society. A different model, a different modality is now
at work: a continuous creation of ever new possibilities that do not require
realization, but are self-sufficient and efficacious while staying in the realm of
possibilities.
The 20th century demonstrated two main developmental models. The
first, a revolutionary one, crowned the centuries-old European experience,
even though it was enacted in Eastern Europe and in Asia. This is the model
of “realization of possibilities,” which reduced them to a single, desired, and
2 Cited in D. Sawyer, Lyotard, Literature and the Trauma of the Different (Dordrecht: Springer,
2014), https://books.google.com/books?id=QzxvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT26&lpg.
Society 253
necessary reality. Revolution is the logical outcome of the type of mentality

that had developed in the West; according to this, history is a succession of
realized possibilities that are perceived by the mind and imagination and then
brought to life. Here the possible is sacrificed to the real and some possibilities
are sacrificed, so that others can be actualized. Tested in Soviet and interna-
tional Communism, the revolutionary model, as it is well known, gave negative
results.
However, in the West, beginning approximately from the middle of the
20th century, an alternative model began to bear fruit, as a reaction against
Fascism and Communism, which had brought humanity to a world war for
distribution of the “predestined future possibilities.” This alternative model
eventually permitted the West to avoid the violence of revolution. This his-
toric model is based not on sacrificing the possible to the real, but rather on
developing the real into the possible. Let us remember the well-known ex-
pression that is often used in North America and Western Europe: “the land
of opportunity.” Is it accidental that this modal term is applied to a civilization
or to a social organism?3 Or does the society itself, as a collective individual,
gradually eliminate the categories of the “real” and the “ideal,” the “existing”
and the “necessary,” growing more and more accustomed to the mode of the
possible?
Here one can refer to such phenomena of modern Western life as the all-
embracing systems of credit and insurance, the systems that transfer the every-
day life into the mode of the possible. I live on the money I could earn – this
is credit. I pay for the service I could need – this is insurance. I pay not for the
medical treatment, but for the possibility of treatment – normally the treat-
ment itself does not cost much if you pay for insurance. From the economic
viewpoint, the reality of the illness fades into the background in front of the
possibility of an illness. The modern West is a civilization of possibilities, in
the sense that they make the economic basis of society and are woven into the
fabric of daily life. I pay not for a visit to a park or a museum, but rather for a
possibility of visiting them in the course of a year, or ten years, or the rest of
my life (under the system of long-term memberships or subscriptions). I live
not in my house, but rather in a house that will become mine if for thirty years
I continue regularly paying for it. This house is given to me in the mode of the
possible. I have not that which I have, but that which I could have, if… (in these
3 The definition of the word “opportunity” includes the modal semantics of possibility: “A time
or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something” (Oxford English Dictionary);
“an occasion or situation which makes it possible to do something that you want to do or
have to do, or the possibility of doing something” (Cambridge English Dictionary).
parentheses all sorts of life circumstances can be included: finding a job, losing
a job, marrying, divorcing, etc.).
Credit and insurance companies are occupied with exactly calculating all
the possibilities of my life, based on my financial state, age, education – and
then they deal not with me, but rather with a projection of my possibilities.
Insurance and credit are two related conventions. Buying an insurance pol-
icy, I pay beforehand for possible misfortunes – illness, accident, unemploy-
ment, untimely death, or injury – that may occur. Buying on credit, I pay for the
possible forms of prosperity – house, car, TV – that I might acquire.
However, both positive and negative sides of life turn out to be completely
conventional from the point of view of economics, which is based on statistics,
on calculating the probabilities, and not on singular facts. In modern society,
reality is vanishing, just as in physics.
People used to a non-Western lifestyle with its hard realities and even more
demanding idealities have difficulty getting used to this play of possibilities,
where for each “if” there is a “then,” and for each “then” an “if.” For immigrants,
it can be a shocking experience of uncertainty. Nothing exists only in the indic-
ative mode; instead, everything glides on the edge of “maybe,” one possibility
leads to another, and the entire reality is but a chain reaction of possibilities,
most of which are never realized. Americans often sell houses for which they
still haven’t finished paying and buy, again on credit, still more expensive resi-
dences, thus becoming richer in the realm of their financial possibilities. They
switch from one line of credit into another one, just as an automobile changes
lanes on the road when passing another car. It is an endless chain of possibili-
ties in which it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish even one real link.
The same happens in social life. While traditional, authoritarian, and totali-
tarian societies subjugate their citizens’ lives to strict regulations, Western de-
mocracy rightly calls itself a free society, whose citizens are free in their choice
of government, occupation, ways of making money, places to live, and so on.
However, the definitions of a “free society” and the “land of opportunity” char-
acterize Western democracy from different sides. Social and political freedom
opposes despotism and violence and thus remains in the same modal and se-
mantic plane with oppression and political repression. This explains why the
definition of Western society as a free one begins to sound obsolete, especially
after the death of the Communist regimes opposed to it. Freedom is defined in
relation to violence, slavery, despotism; the disappearance of one brings about
the disappearance of the other. Moreover, on the structural level Western so-
ciety is far from being free; in fact, it is bound even more tightly by internal
economic and technological interactions than are totalitarian societies; this
explains its amazing historic stability.
Society 255
Yet another dimension of Western society, not its “freedom” but its “possi-
bilistic” character, takes on an ever bigger significance. In contrast to freedom,
possibility does not present a challenge to real powers; instead, it is a transi-
tion into a different, subjunctive, mode of existence. A voter is free to chose
and vote for his or her candidates – this is an old, deeply rooted tradition of
American society. But what could be said about primary elections when the
possible results of the future national elections are already being predicted? Or
about regular national polls representing a hypothetical model of the elections
that nonetheless seriously influence the final results? Indeed, primaries and
polls are nothing but politics in the subjunctive mode. What would the voting
be if the elections started right now? How would the blacks vote? the whites?
students? retirees? single women? the unemployed? Catholics? urbanites?
Southerners? families with annual incomes above $50,000? Every population
group is analyzed according to its voting possibilities, and it is on the results
of this analysis that candidates’ platforms are based. Thus, the real elections
represent a complex conglomerate of all the previous “conditional” elections.
American observers note that polling has strongly influenced the electoral
system of the usa, having converted it into a many-level spectacle in which
the next conditional assumptions depend on the previous ones, where one as-
sumption or illusion is superimposed on another one, one stage is nested into
another one. It is not accidental that in the usa a quote from Bismarck is very
popular: “Politics is the science of the possible.” Here it has been transformed
into “Politics is the art of the Possible,”4 and has acquired a different meaning.
Politics is not only the art of measuring and realizing the possible, but also the
art of “possibilizing” reality, to give it a conditional character.
I am far from considering this model of development an “ideal” one; indeed,
the very category of ideal has been strongly discredited by the old, progressiv-
ist–revolutionary model. Here I am talking not about an ideal, but about the
de-actualization of the Western lifestyle that increasingly falls under the sway
of “as if” and “may be.” The dictatorship of the possible, potentiocracy, has its
negative aspects, such as the overwhelming power of credit, insurance, and
advertising companies selling the “air of possibilities.” Potentiocracy can be
seen not only in the American electoral system, but also in the entire system of
social communications; it gives a feeling of a phantasmagoria, which produces
in representatives of more traditional societies, even many West Europeans,
the reaction of rejection.
4 R.A. Butler, “Politics is the Art of the Possible,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations,
ed. Tony Augarde (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 43.
In advertising, for example, things are separated from their direct “thing-
ness” and represented as signs of human possibilities. A drink represents not
simply a possibility to slake thirst, but a possibility to feel the aroma of the jun-
gle, to exchange a passionate kiss with one’s beloved, to look at the sea through
the prism of a foamy glass; a possibility to refresh the taste of life, to bring back
the light-heartedness of youth, to find the answer to the secret of life. Adver-
tising does not lie, does not contradict the facts (which would be illegal and
unprofitable); rather, it inserts facts in subjunctive constructions: what would
happen if this car became yours; what experiences of travel, dates, unexpected
meetings would then be yours (shots of desert, sea, nature reserve, gracious
animals, pretty companion)? A fact is placed into a scenic frame and played as
an image of fantastic possibilities. One can complain that such an advertise-
ment is very primitive; however, it is not more primitive than the object it is
advertising. On the contrary, it makes this object seem more complicated by
multiplying its projections and creating from it an illusion of a different life.
Even while criticizing advertisements, we succumb to this illusion and start
judging them by the laws of art – that is why it seems to us so primitive. Indeed,
the advertisement is the lowest form of art, but it is the highest kind of objec-
tive reality of the product, the means of magically transferring it into the world
of “may be.”
The “society of unlimited possibilities” is also a society of information. It
produces and consumes not so much objects, units of physical reality, as texts,
information units. It has become a truism that in the post-industrial era capital
is replaced by information as the basic social resource. However, some very
non-trivial conclusions can be drawn from this fact, conclusions that are rarely
pursued to the end. In any text, the information it carries is defined by its un-
predictability; this is a probabilistic quantity which grows as the probability of
the message, contained in the text, becomes smaller. The news about the first
flight of the man to the moon has more information than a report about the
tenth or the hundredth flight. It is to be expected that the information society
strives to increase the volume of information it possesses, since that is its main
wealth. This tendency is as indisputable as the laws of capital growth or profit
growth.
But what is the growth of information if not an increase in the probabi-
listic character of social life? Information grows as the world becomes more
and more unpredictable, consists of ever less probable events. Thus the cult
of the new, the striving of each person to be the best in something – this is
the main condition of the information enrichment of society. In this sense,
the expressions “the land of infinite possibilities” and “the information society”
are synonymous. The more possibilities emerge from the given unit of reality,
Society 257
the more informative it is. The volume of information in the society grows
through the increase in possible variants of each events. For example, in a to-
talitarian or traditionalist society it is almost always predictable beforehand
who will be the head of the government or which party will be in power. The
facts that A, once again, became the General Secretary, and that B is, as usual,
appointed the Prime Minister, contain almost no information. In the society of
possibilities the same event, a presidential election, carries much more infor-
mation precisely because it is not predetermined. Thus, the society built on the
basis of information resources, owing to the internal logic of its development,
gradually becomes to an ever greater degree a society of possibilities.
In the developed societies, the accent is transferred from reality to possibil-
ity, because life full of possibilities is perceived as richer and more eventful
than life reduced to the plane of actual existence. After all, the reality of life
is limited by spatial and temporal parameters, inherent in the human species
and more or less similar for all civilizations. It is impossible to eat more than
can be eaten, to see more than can be seen; this limit of reality has been nearly
reached in developed countries of the West, at least for a significant portion of
the population. However, the richness of life depends more on the variety of
the possibilities it presents than on the degree of their realization. Reality is a
constant denominator; possibility a constantly growing numerator of civiliza-
tion. This ratio is what defines the internal meaningfulness of life, its intense-
ness and significance. As civilization develops, the number of possibilities for
one unit of reality constantly grows. This is precisely the transcendental side of
progress, usually eclipsed by its practical side.5
5 Multiple aspects of possibilistic development of society are outlined in the anthology of uto-
pian and science fiction writings on the social subject: Richard Ofshe (ed.), The Sociology of
the Possible (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1970).
Chapter 30
Culture
Culture is all that which has been created by man and is creating man, giving
form to the very phenomenon of humanity. In this sense, literature, art, and
philosophy are the most unquestionable components of culture, because they
are created by humankind for understanding and transforming humankind.
The situation with technology is not so simple. A machine is created for the
production of material objects; it is devoid of the cultural mission of trans-
forming men. However, if an ancient machine is displayed in a museum of
history, it acquires a cultural function, because now it is destined not for pro-
duction of some material items, but for production of man’s knowledge about
himself and his past. There are no such things in the world that could not ac-
quire a cultural function, if man sees and understands himself in them.
Thus, culture differs not only from nature – by its artificial and creative char-
acter – but also from technology – by its self-creating character, for through cul-
ture man creates himself. This means, however, that in culture man becomes
split into himself and his own possibility: man becomes not only that which
he is, but also that which he could become. In terms of information theory,
culture is man’s communication with himself. In this it differs from nature, the
“sender” of which is not man, and from religion, the “receiver” of which is not
man either. But where man himself splits into a sender and a receiver, a space
of suppositions opens in him; he becomes neither one nor the other, he passes
into the subjunctive mode as a possibility to be someone else.
One of the distinctive traits of culture is its conditional character. Whereas
the natural (nature) and the supernatural (God) are, in themselves, uncon-
ditional, culture acts through signs and symbols which are completely con-
ventional; that is, possibilistic. An object acts as a sign if its own reality is
overshadowed by a possibility of something else – as happens in words, colors,
mathematical symbols, in all the systems of linguistic codes and messages, the
sum total of which constitutes culture.
The principle of the probabilistic universe found its way into natural scienc-
es, and, more precisely, into the strictest and the most fantastic of all the 20th-
century sciences, physics. In the ultimate limit of analysis, nature itself cannot
be described by the language of the indicative mode, because the behavior of
its smallest particles is unpredictable and is calculated probabilistically. In the
same way, the newest research on the theories of chaos and self-organization

Culture 259
reveals a non-linear character, a certain disequilibrium in such familiar natural

processes as weather change, distribution of clouds in the atmosphere, or the
position of snowflakes in the patterns painted on a window by the frost. Ac-
cording to Ilya Prigogine, one of the founders of the complex systems theory,
“the new laws of nature deal with the possibility of events, but do not reduce
these events to deductible, predictable consequences.”1 At the basis of physical
reality lies not the “is” but rather the “may be”; correspondingly, the develop-
ment of science requires more radical hypotheses, negating the previous axi-
oms and striving to reach the limit of the incredible. There is a famous saying
by Niels Bohr alluded to earlier: “This idea is not crazy enough to be true.” Such
is the situation in natural sciences, that is, in that part of culture which is the
closest to the “reality as it is,” to the world of “lawful and law-abiding nature.”
Literature and art, owing to the character of imaginative thinking, cannot help
competing with physics in the production of “crazy ideas.”
The growth of the possible in culture can be seen in the example of differ-
ent literary genres. Analyzing the genre of the novel in its difference from epic
literature, Mikhail Bakhtin comes to the conclusion that whereas the epic is
dominated by the necessary, it is the possible that reigns in novels. “The epic
world … is finished, complete, and unchangeable as a fact of reality, meaning,
and value.”2 Not only does the hero of the epics act in the sphere of the nec-
essary, but the author himself depicts the epic reality as something uniquely
correct, indisputable, absolute in its worth and factual value.
The man of high, distanced genres is a man of absolute past and far-away
image. … All his potential, all his possibilities are fully realized in his
external social status, in his entire destiny … He became everything he
could become, and he could have become only what he became.3
In a novel, on the other hand, characters reveal themselves as pure potential

that cannot be realized in any external status, let alone frozen in the “far-away
image” of a legend or a teaching.
Man cannot be fully realized in the existing social-historic fabric. There

are not enough forms to embody all human possibilities and needs. …
1 I. Prigogine, The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature (New York and
London: The Free Press, 1997), p. 189.
2 M. Bakhtin, “Epos i roman” in M. Bakhtin (ed.), Literaturno-kriticheskie stat’i (Moscow: Khu-
dozhestvennaya literatura, 1986), p. 405.
3 Ibid, p. 421.
The reality of the novel itself is but one of possible realities: it is not nec-
essary, but optional, and contains other possibilities.4
The protagonist of a novel is involved in various situations that try to “embody”

him, to force him into a certain social role, make him a part of reality; however,
the mechanism of the novel is such that the character is never equated with
these situations or with himself. He is a pure possibility that does not accept
any realization, always retains its hypothetical character, its “may be,” all the
tricks and claims of reality notwithstanding.
Even more possibilistic is the genre of the essay, born in the Renaissance
era. The essay is situated on the intersection of literary, philosophical, and
documentary genres. Whereas the novel belongs to the domain of literary in-
vention, the treatise lays claim to logical precision of concepts, and the diary
prefers true and accurate facts, the essay plays with possibilities of all these
genres, but does not fit into any one of them. Montaigne, the founder of the
genre of essay, wrote: “I love these words which mollify and moderate the te-
merity of our propositions: ‘peradventure; in some sort; some; ’tis said, I think,’
and the like.”5 “May be” is the formula of the genre of the essay, pertaining, in
contrast to the novel, not only to the depicted reality, but to the very methods
of its description as well – a certain “meta–hypothesis,” including literary nar-
ration, philosophy, science, diary, confession, and historic document as trial
forms of consciousness.6
Robert Musil dedicated to the genre of essay as the “art of life,” characteris-
tic of the 20th century, an entire chapter in his novel–treatise Der Mann ohne
Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities), which in itself is an example of
a long essay. The essay is a means of “living hypothetically,” converting each
trait fixed in culture – the “precision” of science, the “soul” of poetry – into one
of the possibilities of “becoming someone else.” Man has no intrinsic, innate
characteristics; rather he is a “quintessence of human possibilities, a potential
man,” “a porous underlying sense for many other meanings.” Therefore the es-
say is a model of possibilistic universe.
4 Ibid, p. 424.
5 M. Montaigne, Essays, book 3, Chapter 11, “Of Cripples”, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/
The_Essays_of_Montaigne/Book_III/Chapter_XI.
6 Essay as a kind of a “meta-genre,” hypothetical literature and experimental mythology, as
well as the “essayization” of various genres, is analyzed in Mikhail Epstein, “At the Crossroads
of Image and Concept: Essayism in the Culture of the Modern Age,” in After the Future, pp.
213–52.
Culture 261
It was approximately in the way that an essay, in the sequence of its para-
graphs, takes a thing from many sides without comprehending it wholly –
for a thing wholly comprehended instantly loses its bulk and melts down
into a concept – that he believed he could best survey and handle the
world and his own life.7
Whereas aestheticism, so important in the culture of the 20th century, tried to

convert life into a piece of art, the genre of essay converts life into a convention
of a much higher order, that of culture itself, combining the possibilities of dif-
ferent arts, sciences, and professions. Man wishes to be everything, but can do
it only in the subjunctive, and not in the indicative mode.
In Musil’s opinion, the sense of possibility (Möglichkeitssinn) is no less in-
tense and important than the sense of reality (Wirklichkeitssinn).
If there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifica-
tions for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense
of possibility. … If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think:
Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibil-
ity could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there
might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than
to what is not. The consequences of so creative a disposition can be re-
markable … Such possibilists are said to inhabit a more delicate medium,
a hazy medium of mist, fantasy, daydreams, and the subjunctive mood.8
However, according to Musil, the possible is not only a minus – departure or

separation from reality. There are
people in whom the lack of a sense of reality is a real deficiency. But the
possible includes not only the fantasies of people with weak nerves but
also the as yet unfulfilled intentions of God. A possible experience or
truth is not the same as an actual experience or truth minus its “reality
value” but has – according to its partisans, at least – something quite di-
vine about it, a fire, a soaring, a readiness to build and a conscious utopia-
nism that does not shrink from reality but sees it as a project, something
7 Musil, Robert, The Man without Qualities, trans. from German by Sophie Wilkins (New York:
A.A. Knopf, 1996), vol. 1, Ch. 62, https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/musil-1.pdf.
8 Ibid., vol. 1, Ch. 4, http://braungardt.trialectics.com/literature/german-lit/possibility-and
-reality-in-robert-musil/.
yet to be invented. After all, the earth is not that old, and was apparently
never so ready as now to give birth to its full potential.9
A similar program for the essayization of literature and the possibilization of

the world in the same epoch (1920–30) was proposed by Paul Valéry:
Without doubt the unique and perpetual object of the soul is that which
does not exist: that which was and no longer is; that which will be and is
not yet; that which is possible, and impossible – all that is the soul’s con-
cern, but never, never that which is!10
For Valéry, this possibility shows itself also in the body, since it is transformed
by the soul during creative acts. In this sense, dance as a direct corporal mani-
festation of the mode of the possible is the basis and the prototype of any art.
Look at that body, which leaps as flame replaces flame, look how it spurns
and betramples what is true! /…/ And the body, which is that which is: see
it here unable to contain itself in extension! … This One wishes to play at
being All. It wishes to play at the universality of the soul! … [A]nd just as
in our mind hypotheses take shape symmetrically and possibles line up
and are counted – so this body exercises itself in all its parts, joins in with
itself, assumes shape upon shape, and goes out of itself incessantly!11
The essays of Paul Valéry, the predominant genre of his writings, resemble a
dance of concepts and images, through which thought strives to join the Ab-
solute, the “foundation of everything,” while understanding the purely possi-
bilistic, subjunctive character of such unification. (This explains, in particular,
why the main work of Valéry’s life, Cahiers, was never completed – it was, by
definition, impossible to complete.)
Not only can the different kinds and genres of culture be perceived as pos-
sibilities of new, experimental wholeness, but culture itself can be understood
as one of the possibilities of multicultural or intercultural existence. In the last
third of the 20th century, so-called “multiculturalism” became popular in the
West. It denies the predominance of any single type of culture, which earlier
was identified with Culture as such, and affirms the existence of alternative,
independent cultures, valuable in themselves: “black,” “feminist,” “youth,” and
9 Ibid.
10 Paul Valéry, “Dance and the Soul,” in An Anthology, p. 321.
11 Ibid., pp. 320, 321.
Culture 263
so on. At the end of the 20th century man found himself not immersed in the
reality of a certain unique culture, but faced with the possibility of many cul-
tures, which he can realize in himself only partially.
A possibilistic approach to culture steps outside the frame of “multicultur-
alism” and creates a new conceptual field that I call “transculture.” Whereas
“multiculture” establishes equality and self-sufficiency among different cul-
tures, the concept of transculture presupposes their openness and interaction;
the principle at work here is not differentiation but interference, “dispersion”
of the symbolic meanings of one culture through other cultures. While multi-
culture insists that an individual belongs to “his/her” own, biologically prede-
termined culture (“black,” “feminine,” “youth,” etc.), transculture presupposes
the diffusion of the initial cultural identities as individuals cross the borders of
various cultures and become assimilated into them. Transculture is a state of
virtual belonging of a single individual to many cultures. On the basis of the es-
tablished national cultures, transculture continues the movement that began
when man emerged from nature into culture. Whereas culture liberates the
“natural man” from material dependence through the system of symbolic me-
diations and conventions, transculture further liberates the cultural man from
symbolic dependence and the presuppositions of his initial culture. Instead
of a well-defined cultural identity there appear not only such hybrids as an
“African-American” or a “Turkish emigrant in Germany,” but rather a set of po-
tential cultural characteristics, a universal symbolic palette from which any in-
dividual can freely chose colors and mix them, while drawing his self-portrait.12
Therefore, the possible not only takes more space in culture, but is repeat-
edly refracted through problematization and virtualization of the cultures
involved. This process can be named condensation of the possible; in my opin-
ion, it is this very process that defines the latest cultural formation, usually
called postmodernism. Condensation of the possible can be easily found in the
writings of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the founders of literary postmodernism.
Whereas writers customarily recreate possible worlds in their books, Borges
began to create possible books about possible worlds. Moreover, some traits of
12 I am not presenting a detailed analysis of the concept of transculture here, since it can
be found in E. Berry and M. Epstein, Transcultural Experiments: Russian and American
Models of Creative Communication (New York: St. Martin’s Press (Scholarly and Reference
Division), 1999). In this book, transculture is defined as “a way of expanding the limits of
our ethnic, professional, linguistic, and other identities to new levels of indeterminacy
and ‘virtuality.’ Transculture builds new identities in the zone of fuzziness and interfer-
ence and challenges the metaphysics of discreteness so characteristic of nations, races,
professions, and other established cultural configurations that are solidified rather than
dispersed by the multiculturalist ‘politics of identity’.” (p. 25).
these possible worlds begin to coincide with the characteristics of our world, to
such an extent that, in our eyes, the latter starts losing its reality. Thus the short
story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” describes a secret society that has created an
encyclopedia of an imaginary planet – Tlon – where “subjective–idealist” laws,
opposite to the laws of Earth, are at work. For example, things disappear if
people forget about them. At the end, the influence of this society becomes so
great that Earth is gradually transformed into Tlon, adopting its fictive history
and language. Borges’s stories are not only constructed in the form of literary
fantasies and hypotheses, but also incite the reader to treat reality as one of the
many imaginary worlds.
The characteristic trait of postmodernism is that it appropriates the genres
and styles of past epochs, freeing them from that historic reality in which they
were created and perceived. Postmodernism is a condensation of possibilities
born during all the previous periods of the development of culture. Archi-
tecture, poetry, and fiction all pass into the subjunctive mode. Postmodern
buildings show the possibility of many historic styles, while none of them is
fully realized. Books are written which comprise a possibility of many books,
many variants of reading, a model for the creation of many texts (A hundred
thousand billion poems by the French poet Raymond Queneau, the novels Hop-
scotch and 62: A Model Kit of the Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar, Dictionary
of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel by the Serbian writer Milorad Pavić, et al.).
True, the very term “postmodernism” still shows an orientation towards the
previous epoch; in essence, however, it is the beginning of a new era when
all culture will unfold in the modality of the possible. The art of the modern,
especially in the German and Russian traditions, often tried to step outside the
limits of its conventional character. It can be seen in the revolutionary aesthet-
ics of Wagner, as well as in the ritualistic utopia of V. Solovyev. “Perfect art as its
ultimate goal must embody the absolute ideal not just in imagination, but in
real deeds as well – it must spiritualize, transubstantiate our real life.”13 Similar
ideas were nurtured by N. Fyodorov and N. Berdyaev – and they were embod-
ied in the avant-garde movements of the first half of the 20th century which
were, precisely, an attempt to convert word into deed, to transform the world
by the power of art. This utopia reaches its height in the totalitarian state as a
“wholesome, synthetic” work of art.
As a result of such a negative experiment, the vectors of artistic development
change abruptly in the second half of the 20th century – from a vant-garde to
13 V.S. Solovyov, “Obshchiy smysl iskusstva” (“The General Meaning of Art”), in his Filosofiia
iskusstva i literaturnaya kritika (Philosophy of Art and Literary Criticism) (Moscow: Iskusst-
vo, 1991), p. 89.
Culture 265
postmodernism, from an attempt to make art an operative force to the artistic

possibilization of reality. Art does not subjugate the indicative mode anymore;
on the contrary, reality itself is transferred into the plane of its conditional
reflections, multiple possibilities. The magic words “like,” “as if,” which defined
the specifics of artistic images, now increasingly characterize daily life, its
many variants and suppositions.
A particular theme which can be only briefly touched on here is the comput-
er “as if” reality of the 1990s, “virtual” spaces – cities, museums, clubs, universi-
ties situated on the Internet; all these transfer our communicative experience
into a different modal dimension. Virtuality can be defined as the reality of
potentiality itself, its modal state before and beyond the process of realization.
New electronic means allow potentiality to effectively work in its own modal
regime. For example, the concept of “the university” describes a system of ed-
ucational and research possibilities – and at the same time, those buildings,
territories, institutions, and administrative and economic practices in which
these possibilities are realized. When, however, the educational potential of a
university is realized outside its material structures (buildings, territories, etc.),
we have the phenomenon of a virtual university. Virtual shops and interest
clubs work just as efficiently – new technologies reflect a new ontology of the
correlation of the potential and the actual.14 The very concept of the “virtual”
unites two seemingly opposite meanings: “possible/imaginary” and “factual/
real.” In the 1980s–90s, the word “virtual” enjoyed a brilliant career in Eng-
lish and then in many other languages (including Russian), precisely because
it refers to a special quality of “being real in its irreality,” “being actual in its
potentiality.”15 When we say “factually,” we presuppose a certain gap between
the meaning of this word and the fact itself. For example, the statement “factu-
ally, he became a specialist in three areas at once” presupposes that he is not
really a specialist in all the three – say, does not have official qualifications in
each one of them – but he is a specialist on some conditional assumption; that
is, his experience, his way of earning a living, his colleagues’ judgments, or his
vast knowledge give him the right to be called “as if” a specialist. The English
“virtual(ly)” and the Russian “fakticheski(i)” – factual(ly) – are amazing words,
seemingly contradicting themselves, deconstructing their own meaning, re-
vealing the irreality of what they themselves state as real (and vice versa).
14 In more detail virtual literature and the modalities of the Internet are analyzed in Mikhail
Epstein, chapters “InteLnet: Web Projects in the Humanities” and “The Interactive An-
thology of Alternative Ideas: an Introduction,” in Berry and Epstein, Transcultural Experi-
ments, pp. 276–301.
15 The closest translation into Russian would be the adjective “fakticheskii” (factual),
“bukval’nyi” (literal) or a conditional comparison “kak by” (as if, like).
Hence all these “virtual” worlds, spaces, cities, museums: electronic, digital, il-
lusory, matrix, situated on the computer net.16
As has already been noted, the modern economy functions in the subjunc-
tive mode without losing its efficiency, buying and selling the “air” of pure pos-
sibilities. What is more, the prоspects of artistic and intellectual culture are
defined by the progression of “empty” forms that can retain the possible, and
be enriched by it, without transferring it into the domain of real facts, into the
indicative mode.
16It is noteworthy that in the 1990s the expression “kak by,” approximately in the same
meaning in which Americans use the words “as if,” “like,” “a sort of,” “virtually,” became
very popular in the jargon of Russian youth and intelligentsia, as a sign of broadening
modalities and weakening borders between reality and possibility. It can also be under-
stood as a failing of the sense of reality in the nearly incredible conditions: the “magical”
collapse of the Soviet regime and the incessant chain of following crises undermining
the sense of stability. “Kak by” means “maybe yes, maybe no”; it contains the semantic
continuum of all the transitions from the “real” to the “fictitious,” where no discrete sepa-
ration into “truth” and “falsehood” can take place. Mind, with its rich experience of faith
and doubt, hope and fear, is not eager to translate suppositions into actual statement of
facts. Virtuality, in the form of the all-pervasive “kak by,” permeates the Russian language,
world view, and social relations, as if preparing them in advance to the total and voluntary
computerization… Anyway, independently of technical means, virtuality in Russia has
become a part of daily life and does not need any specific electronic devices, codes or
switches. Everything becomes “kak by”: as if departed and as if arrived, as if money and
as if contracts, as if society and as if family, as if life and as if non-life. The brilliant prose
of Viktor Pelevin is built precisely upon this virtuality of reality itself which melts in the
flickering signs of its own possibility, escapes into the monitor and becomes a computer
game.
Even a presidential candidate by his vacillating speech patterns weakens the sense of
reality in his listeners. Moreover, the institution of candidacy, new for Russia, signifies the
transition of the entire political life into the subjunctive mode. Here is a political press
release: on 11 April 1996, on the rise of the electoral campaign, in the Moscow Press House,
Grigory Yavlinsky addressed journalists with the following words: “It seems to me that if
you paid more attention to the problem of debates, so it would become something like an
urgent necessity, it would be very interesting and useful for the country.” This grammatical
construction is very noticeable not only because it repeats the conditional meaning five
times (see italics), but also because its lexical content pursues the opposite goal – to prove
the “urgent necessity.” Through the multiplication of the vacillating subjunctive particles
(Russian “by”), necessity turns into a phenomenon of an almost insignificant probabil-
ity. “Something like a necessity” becomes a nearly grotesque formulation of a new style
which, in its subjunctive modality, becomes all the more blurred, the more it focuses on
a certain semantic imperative. Form annuls content, almost according to Vygotsky (Psy-
chology of Art), achieving a kind of catharsis and once again illustrating the thesis that
politics is the art of the possible.
Chapter 31
Ethics
Having analyzed social and cultural projections of the possible, let us look at
how this modality operates in ethics.
Ethics has been traditionally considered a domain of normative statements.
Its provisions have been formulated as necessary for all members of human-
kind.1 The most convenient and accepted form of ethical statements was the
imperative mode: “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not commit adultery,” “do
not do unto others that which you do not wish to be done to yourself,” and so
on. Kant’s “practical philosophy,” the most influential teaching in Western ethi-
cal thought, is summarized in his “categorical imperative”: “Act only according
to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a
universal law.”2
It is obvious that the imperative of the ethical mandates is connected to
their universality. The universal in relation to the individual plays the role of
the necessary. Thus the first and the last words in the Kantian imperative are
inseparably bound: “act” stays in the imperative mode because one must act
in such a way so that the maxim of one’s behavior becomes a “universal law.”
However, as has been mentioned above, the common or general should not be
confused with the universal.3 For example, the genre of portrait is common,
whereas the art of Leonardo da Vinci can be called universal. The common is
the method, the universal, the ability. The universal is not something abstract-
ed from the individual; rather it is contained in the individual and thus acts not
as an obligation, but as a possibility. It is possible to imagine a universal ethics
constructed not in the imperative, but in the subjunctive mode; the ethics of
possibilities, not of duties.
The critical introduction to such an ethics can be found in Nietzsche:
Let us finally consider how naive it is altogether to say: “Man ought to

be such and such!” Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the
1 True, in the 20th century, on the initiative of the English philosopher George Moore, the
“descriptive” ethics was created which rejects all mandatory statements, describing only the
meaning of ethical terms and categories. However, this discipline, which uses the language of
the indicative mode, rightly received the name of “meta-ethics,” since its object is ethics itself
rather than human behavior and its moral norms.
2 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (New
York: The Library of Liberal Arts, 1959), p. 39.
3 See Part 1, Chapter 11, this volume: “Universals as Potentials: Conceptualism.”

abundance of a lavish play and change of forms – and some wretched

loafer of a moralist comments: “No! Man ought to be different.”4
However, if we agree with Nietzsche that man should be taken for what he is,
in the “enchanting wealth of types,” then every possibility of ethical judgment
disappears. It is not enough to eliminate from ethics the moment of obliga-
tion, since “reality” itself is totally devoid of ethics and is to be described, not
judged. This is why the Nietzschean rebellion against the obligation and in de-
fense of “life as it is” often turned into а rebellion against morality as well, with
its inherent “unnaturality” and normativity. Nietzsche famously proclaimed:
“We, the immoralists!” Ethics by definition cannot be just the ascertaining of
the existing, a description of man as he is. If it does not call him to the fulfill-
ment of his duties, then it must appeal to his possibilities.
Nietzsche himself finds a new moral – beyond immoralism – precisely
through appealing to the possible in man.
Can you provide yourself with your own good and evil and hang your
own will up over yourself like a law? Can you be the judge of yourself your
own judge and the avenger of your own law? It is terrible being alone
with the judge and avenger of your own law. Thus a star is thrown into
empty space and into the icy breath of aloneness.5
Here the old concept of law is still conserved, but it has already left the sphere
of universality and obligation to become a law that an individual can establish
for himself.
The idea of creative ethics was further developed by Nikolay Berdyaev,
whose philosophy, mostly ethical, was free from any attempt to establish laws.
In this the thinker saw the positive essence of the moral crisis that struck the
world at the beginning of the 20th century. “This essence consists above all of
a revolutionary transition from a consciousness for which moral means obedi-
ence to the average general law toward a consciousness for which moral is a
creative task of an individual.”6
Nietzsche’s and Berdyaev’s ideas suggest an opportunity for further mod-
al development. My “I” has different levels – social, physical, emotional,
4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 4, https://genius.com/Friedrich-nietzsche-

twilight-of-the-idols-chap-4-annotated.
5 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra p. 1, Ch. “On the Way of the Creator,” trans.
Thomas Wayne (New York: Algora Publishing, 2003), p. 48.
6 N. Berdyaev, “Smysl tvorchestva. Opyt opravdaniia cheloveka” in Sochineniia (Works), 4 vols
(Paris: ymca-Press, 1985), vol. 2, p. 299.
Ethics 269
intellectual – but deeper than all those levels lies not the reality, but the pos-
sibility of me. My deepest feeling tells me that I am not yet, but I am possible.
I can be. This “can be” is always present under the surface of all the “be” with
which a person constantly identifies him- or herself. Individuality is a possibil-
ity of itself which cannot be exhausted by any self-realization. I can realize
myself in a family, in art, in science, in politics, but as soon as my actions take
on a form of actuality I feel that my “I” once again becomes unreal and plunges
into the depth of its own possibilities. “I” is an eternal non-realizability, and if
immortality is possible, then it is because an individual is never fully realized
in anything and thus cannot disappear as a possibility.
However, in the ethics of Nietzsche and Berdyaev the very world of the
possible is limited by the sphere of its realization, even though this sphere is
claimed to be unbounded. For Nietzsche, the question “can you?” is a question
about daring, about the capacity of realizing the desires of one’s will. Berdyaev
transfers the ethical question into the sphere of creativity: “The moral wishes
to be a creative work of the highest truth of life and the highest reality.”7 How-
ever, acts of will and creativity are means for the realization of the possible,
and even in their highest development they do not exhaust its depth, which is
impossibility. Will and creativity increase the volume of actualized existence;
but the question is whether the modal dimensionality of existence, the volume
of its potentiality, increases as well. Berdyaev sees the tragedy of human cre-
ativity in that it remains potential, symbolic; he prophesies the coming of a
new epoch, or, more precisely, of a super-historical eon when everything just
hinted at by culture will be truly realized as a transformation of earth and
heaven. It is, however, conceivable that precisely the impossibility of the full
actualization of man’s creative potential gives rise to the potentiation of reality
itself, for its transition from the actual into the possible. In art, one seeks not
the realization of all possibilities, but the possibilization of reality itself. Berdy-
aev’s philosophy of creative acts still remains inside the frame of the modality
of utopia and ideology, ordering the possible to become real and ignoring the
reality of the possible itself.
Creativity that is not illuminated by the sense of something impossible, un-
reachable, entails an element of manic obsession. A man pursues his possi-
bilities, not suspecting that the highest in him cannot be realized. The highest
sobriety and, by consequence, also the highest moral consists in not getting
inebriated either by creative acts, or will, or any of the forms of (self-)realiza-
tion, but in conserving a sense of other, transcendent knowledge that is given
to us in the form of “may be.”
7 Ibid., p. 298.
In consequence, there are two mutually related moral criteria: (1) to what
extent man retains himself as possibility; (2) to what extent he allows others
to realize their possibilities. The decisive question here is whether you can be-
come a possibility for another person. What is she for you – a mystery or a
confirmation of something already known? Something unsaid or a repetition?
There are people who make us feel totally completed; talking with them does
not change anything either in us or in them; all attempts at mutual develop-
ment meet with the wall of an already fully realized existence. I am what I am
and you are what you are – what can we do with each other? On the other
hand, there are people who make us feel open and unpredictable, ready to
find in ourselves something unknown. A multitude of possible worlds open
their doors, worlds in which we can be together. Everything between us sud-
denly passes into the subjunctive mode. Such people with whom one feels that
everything is possible are the best of moralists: they have mastered the ethics
of the possible. The most important criteria of this ethics are to treat man as
possibility and to maintain oneself as possibility.
In all these cases, possibility should not be understood as a refusal of real-
ization, but rather as the impossibility of the full realization. Only through an
intense realization of one’s possibilities can one become enlightened about
oneself, understanding that these possibilities are, in principle, unrealizable.
In Russian, the word “moch’” has two meanings: that of ability and that of pos-
sibility. In some other languages these meanings are separated; for example
“can” and “may” in English. Correspondingly, we distinguish “existential” pos-
sibility (it is possible for someone to do something) from “problematic” pos-
sibility (it is possible that someone will do something).8 “I can be” refers to
will power, an ability to realize one’s possibilities. “I, maybe” means that my “I”
remains a possibility which does not fully realize itself in anything. Only hav-
ing fully experienced one’s own might can one begin to experience oneself as
“possibility.” In other words, I can perceive myself as an unrealized possibility,
as a problem, only in the process of realizing my possibilities.
This is why people who have never tried to become someone, to reach
some ideal, are just as morally dead as people who have successfully equated
themselves with their self-realization. In Ivan Goncharov’s emblematic novel
Oblomov (1859), the protagonists, the idler Oblomov and the slogger Shtolts,
are two extreme cases of this extinguishing of possibilities owing to their non-
realization or super-realization. In the first case we have the reality of lethargy,
in the latter the reality of practicalism, and in both the death of the possible.
8 For an informative analysis of this problem see A.R. White, Modal Thinking (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1975), pp. 5–18.
Ethics 271
The most attractive, mythically mysterious individuals, such as Mozart and

Goethe, Nietzsche and Rilke, Pushkin and Solovyev, are those who realized
themselves to a large degree but not fully: in them a surplus of new possibilities
was growing, and those possibilities trespassed upon the limits of their lives,
the limits of their biographies and history, and remained in our consciousness
as myths. What is mythological here is precisely the possibility, historically un-
realizable and thus fated to immortality. We write biographies and historic re-
search about people fully and completely realized; people who did not realize
themselves completely, who left behind a mystery, become subjects of myths
as well.
Thus, ethics of the possible includes two mutually dependent criteria: the
degree of realization of possibilities and the degree of their unrealizability.
It is equally wrong to think that all possibilities must be realized and that a
possibility does not need realization at all. In a man who has worked on his
self-realization, possibility gets purified of all that can be realized in it and be-
comes a pure possibility that trespasses the limits of any actuality. The pos-
sibility that has been buried together with Mozart or Pushkin is, at the same
time, the impossibility – something that will never be realized by anyone. It is
conceivable that culture is defined precisely by the level of its achieved impos-
sibilities. They are yet to be achieved. Possibility separates from reality only in
the process of self-realization – then it reaches its limit and becomes one with
the impossible. Man’s highest goal is to leave after himself a possibility that
he himself could not realize and which teases and torments generations to
come.
…
Ethics enters into the world of the possible not only at its highest levels but also
at the most elementary one – the level of the social rules governing behavior.
These rules are rich in the “conditional,” but this conventionality is the means
of converting obligation into possibility. For instance, language etiquette tells
us to avoid the imperative by all means and to replace it by the subjunctive.
Instead of “Bring some water!” we say “Could you please bring me some wa-
ter?” or “Would you be so kind as to bring me some water?” This may seem an
empty formality, but the form in this case possesses a profound content of its
own. Polite people do not burden each other with their needs, but gently give
each other a possibility to fulfill them. I need that you do such and such, but I
do not force you to do it; I suppose that you have a possibility to do it by your
own will. The need that we ourselves feel is conveyed to another person as
one of her possibilities which she is free to fulfill or not. Some people’s needs
are transformed into other people’s possibilities – such is the alchemy of courtesy.
Etiquette is the liberating priority of possibility over obligation in relations
among people.
This confirms one more time that the “categorical imperative,” an obli-
gation to fulfill duty, cannot be the basis of ethics, if only because the very
form of the imperative breaks the elementary rules of courtesy. It is easy for
a thinker to dictate his rules to humanity – but let him try to do so in public,
to order people to follow a certain imperative. “You must do such and such!”
or “You ought to behave in this and that way!” “Your duty requires!” Society
will simply reject such a strict moralist, and this reaction of repulsion will be
well founded from the point of view of ethics, as a protest against spiritual
coercion.
True, one might counter that in his coercion of society, the moralist is guid-
ed not by his personal needs, but by the needs of all humanity, that he himself
obeys the same imperative. However, his behavior does not become more po-
lite simply because he himself starts to follow his own orders first and gives
others an example of such a laudable obedience. Anyone may force himself to
fulfill the duties he chooses, but no one has the right to force his imperatives
onto other people – if only because they are others.
It could also be objected that the highest ethical considerations need not
have anything in common with the rules of politeness, and that when it is awk-
ward to order someone to bring one a glass of water, it is perfectly all right to
demand from people that they give their blood in the name of general moral
principles of freedom, equality, justice, and so on. It seems dubious, however,
that the highest ethics should require the annulment of the basic etiquette,
rather than its full development. If the primary moral intuition consists in ex-
pressing one’s duty in the form of a possibility for another person, then the
purpose of ethics can be defined as the broadening of the sphere of the pos-
sible. Politeness is still only formal, since it masks its own interest by an invit-
ing gesture towards others – “could you, please?” Transition to the highest ethics
does not reject the rules of courtesy but rather eliminates their formality: the pos-
sibility that we give others stops being a refined means for the fulfillment of our
own necessities and becomes a goal in itself – the revelation of the possibilities
of the others. The others are perceived in the mode of their spiritual, creative,
professional, emotional possibilities, and if I help in their self-fulfillment, then
the formal courtesy between us has grown into a profoundly meaningful ethi-
cal relationship.
In daily life and speech we constantly come across the ethics of the pos-
sible in the form of proposals or propositions. To propose something means
to give others a space for unconstrained action, to make something an object
Ethics 273
for a free analysis or choice. I do not require, demand, insist, or entreat; I do

not impose my will, either roughly or gently. I only propose; that is, I create a
possibility for the other, and this possibility becomes, at the same time, also my
possibility. A proposal is a secular initiation, an introduction into another mo-
dality. Together we leave the reality of our existence and meet in the domain
of the possible. It is not in vain that the word “propose,” without any further
modifiers, presupposes a marriage proposal. The decisive turn in life is made in
the form of the initiation of a possibility. “He proposed to her.” Not a demand,
a requirement, nor even a plea defines the modality of this act, but precise-
ly a proposal as a creation of a pure mutual possibility (even a humble im-
ploration is already a self-humiliating attempt of one will to subjugate another
will).9
Even though rules of etiquette have existed for a long time, their transfor-
mational meaning becomes clear only today, in the epoch of the crisis of the
imperative mode (as described in Chapters 1–3 of Part 1). Morality is the pos-
sibilities we create for each other.
…
On the highest level of possibilistic ethics, the “golden rule,” the most ancient
embodiment of the moral wisdom of humankind, undergoes revision and re-
finement. The golden rule was independently formulated by Confucius, the
Jewish sage Hillel, and Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore, whatever
you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Proph-
ets” (Matthews, 7:12).10 Hence the commandment “not to do unto others that
which you do not wish to be done unto you” (Acts, 15:29). The golden rule is
based on the mutual quality of human wills and needs and, finally, on that
which unites people – their ideal identity. In the same way in which I must
behave towards others, others should behave towards me, and vice versa.
It has to be noted that the golden rule was also used by some misanthropic
systems whose proponents, while destroying themselves, destroyed others as
well, following the same law of moral equality. For example, the golden rule
9 A proposal in the modality of act corresponds to a supposition in the modality of knowl-

edge. Supposing something we do not dare to assert something as a ready truth, but situ-
ate our knowledge in the area of the possible. Ethics of cognition, as well as ethics of
behavior, is related to the modality of the possible. Epistemic modalities are analyzed in
more detail in the Appendix, Ch. 3.
10 Similar recommendations can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam. See An-
drew Wilson (ed.), World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts (New York:
Paragon House, 1995), pp. 114–5.
is quoted in The Declaration of Human Rights by Robespierre, who executed

thousands of his compatriots and was then executed himself. Gracchus Ba-
beuf, the author of “The Conspiracy of the Equals” (1796), also based his ideas
on the golden rule, while trying to prove that the supremacy of talent and ini-
tiative are but a chimera, a masked lie. Of course, we cannot blame a moral
maxim for its misuse, but, probably, the very form of the identification, of
“reversibility” of the object and the subject of moral acts, must be revised in
the light of the revolutionary and totalitarian movements of the 18th–20th
centuries with their postulate of equality. The ethics of identity of moral
subject and object should be completed with the recognition of their non-
identity.
However, is it at all possible to create an ethics that takes into account
the differences among people as they enter moral relationships, their non-
reducibility to each other? People strongly differ in their gifts and abilities.
Hence the teachings of the Apostle Paul about the difference of spiritual gifts:
one is given the word of wisdom, another the word of knowledge, yet another
the word of faith. This person can perform miracles and that one has a gift of
languages (First Epistle to the Corinthians, 12:4–11). Precisely this difference of
gifts, human capabilities, lies in the basis of the possibilistic ethics which can
be summarized in the following principle:
Act so that your maximal capabilities may serve the maximal needs of
others.
At the basis of both the golden rule and, later, the categorical imperative, lies
the replaceability of moral subject: one should place oneself in somebody
else’s place, treat him as you wish him to treat you, or act so that the maxim of
your behavior could serve as an example for others. This is the very essence of
the classical understanding of morality: you are an object of the same actions
that you perform as subject. Hence the law of justice: you are treated in the
same way you treat others.
However this is only the first epoch of moral consciousness, an epoch that
lasts thousands of years. A new need becomes more and more insistent: the
moral law should be defined on the basis of the absolute uniqueness and ir-
replaceability of each moral subject. The highest moral value lies in my dis-
tinction from others and their distinction from me, everyone’s difference from
everyone else. The goal of ethics is to formulate as the general law precisely this
right and duty of everyone to be different from everyone else.
Do that which others need and no one else could do in your place.
Ethics 275
In the “axis epoch” (8th–2nd centuries b.c.), when, according to Karl Jaspers,
the foundations of the universal, super-tribal, all-human morals were laid, the
orientation towards the differences among individuals could have undermined
and destroyed these foundations. However, today it has become obvious that
only the ethics of total differentiation (vserazlichie) can be the salvation from
relativism, as a purely negative reaction against the traditional morals, their
universal norms and canons. Man cannot completely identify himself with
someone else, generalize, or socialize his “I” – and that is why he starts to in-
terpret his subjectivity as non- or anti-moral, as a right to all-permissiveness.
Nevertheless, it is precisely this irreducibility of the individual to the general
which may become a source of a new moral energy, flowing into the world
not along the old, dried up channels. Russian philosophers, such as Berdyaev,
Shestov, and Bakhtin, thought much about this subject; Bakhtin in his “Phi-
losophy of Act” built an ethics of the “obligatory uniqueness” (dolzhenstvuiush-
chaia edinstvennost’). Even though Bakhtin stresses the “obligation” and not
the “empty possibilities,” in his most precise formulation of the moral principle
he makes use of the language of possibilities.
That which can be done by me can never be done by anyone else. The
uniqueness or singularity of present-on-hand Being is compellingly
obligatory. This fact of my non-alibi in Being, which underlies the con-
crete and once-occurrent ought of the answerably performed act, is not
something I come to know of and cognize. but is something I acknowl-
edge and affirm in a unique or once-occurrent manner.11
Thus possibility itself – that which only a given person can accomplish – is
elevated to the rank of obligation. It is moral to do for others that which no one
else except me can do, to be for others, but not like others.
Hence such formulations which do not annul the general character of the
golden rule, but rather put into its “golden frame” the precious stone of the
individual gift, the “diamond” criterion of uniqueness:
The best action is that through which the biggest capacity of oneself an-
swers to the biggest need of the other.
Do that which everybody, including yourself, could wish, and which
no one else but you can do.
11 M.M. Bakhtin “K filosofii postupka” (“Toward a Philosophy of the Act”), in I.T. Frolov (ed.),
Filosofiia i sotsiologiia nauki i tekhniki. Ezhegodnik, 1984–1985 [Philosophy and sociology
of science and technology. Yearbook, 1984–1985] (Moscow:Nauka, 1986), p. 112.
Two questions form the moral criterion:

1. Would you yourself wish to become an object of your own actions?
2. Could anyone except you be a subject of your actions?
The best action is that which corresponds to the needs of the biggest num-
ber and the capacities of the smallest number of people; such an action whose
subject would like to become its object and, at the same time, such an action
whose subject cannot be anyone else but he himself. The first criterion is the
universal character of moral acts, the second their uniqueness. Morality is im-
possible without either one.
Therefore,
Act in such a way that you yourself would like to become an object of
your actions, but no one else could be their subject.
Do that which everyone should do in your place, but no one but you
can do.
Ethics has always been necessarily formulated in the form of commandments,

imperative statements; however, it would be incorrect to identify the content
of these statements with their imperative form. Even the freedom from all
commandments can itself be expressed in the form of a commandment. When
Jesus says “learn the Truth, and it will make you free,” the imperative form and
the liberating sense of this sentence mutually reinforce each other. Ethical
statements exist precisely in this modal tension between the imperative form
and the possibilistic content. If it becomes completely imperative both in its
form and its content, it loses its ethical character and enters the domain of the
law. The law is imperative in its form and content, whereas morality must be
imperative in its form, but cannot be only imperative in its content. Morality
contains a profound aporia – the compulsory character of the unnecessary, the
necessity of the possible. Ethics represents a dynamic equilibrium between
the normative and the individual; moreover, in the “diamond-golden” rule, for-
mulated above, it is precisely the individual difference that becomes the norm
of behavior, and precisely the difference among people that becomes the basis
of their similarity.
Of course, the ancient moral rules, such as the Ten Commandments, are
imperative both in their form and content, but this is explained by the fact that
in the time of religious legislation the legislative and the moral spheres were
not separate.
The holy law, given by God to an immature humankind, is at the same time
moral and juridical; only later do these spheres become independent. “Thou
shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery” are at
Ethics 277
the same time moral and juridical laws, for above all they are religious laws.
However, it must be remembered that the commandments are given by God
to people, and not by man to man – by Father to children, so to speak, not by
brother to brother. By contrast, it is not the orders we give to each other, but
the possibilities we create for each other that are ethically correct in human
relations.
Chapter 32
Psychology
Nowadays there exist many kinds of psychotherapy, among them the play ther-
apy and the meaning therapy. If we look at them closely, we will notice that
their common denominator is precisely the exit of man into the sphere of the
possible. The sources of psychic depression are the “principle of reality” and
the “dictatorship of the Super-Ego”; that is, the unidimensionality of reality
existing on the plane of the actual and the necessary.
It could be supposed that Freud’s triple separation of the psychic sphere into
the “super-ego,” the “ego,” and the “id” corresponds, to some extent, to the cor-
relation of the three modalities. In any case, the ties of the “super-ego” with the
sphere of the necessary are evident. This sphere, according to Freud, is formed
by the child’s perception of his parents as the highest beings, legislators and
judges, and later forms the basis of traditional religion and morals. “The super-
ego arises … from an identification with the father taken as a model” and is “the
source of the general character of harshness and cruelty exhibited by the ideal
– its dictatorial ‘Thou shalt’.”1 Therefore, “even ordinary normal morality has a
harshly restraining, cruelly prohibiting quality. It is from this, indeed, that the
conception arises of a higher being who deals out punishment inexorably.”2
On the other hand, it is just as evident that the ego represents the principle of
reality and its flexible adaptation to the environment, guided by the need for
survival. According to Freud,
the ego seeks to bring the influence of the external world to bear upon
the id and its tendencies, and endeavours to substitute the reality princi-
ple for the pleasure principle which reigns unrestrictedly in the id. … The
ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast
to the id, which contains the passions.3
Already the correlation of the super-ego and the ego with the modalities of the
necessary and the actual suggests that this correlation can be extended onto
the third position in these isomorphic systems. If the zones of the psychic are
1 Sigmund Freud, “The Ego and the Id,” in Peter Gay (ed.), The Freud Reader (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1989), p. 655.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p. 636.

Psychology 279
defined by Freud through the principles of reality and necessity, it is natural to

suppose that the third zone, the id, structurally correlates with the principle of
the possible.
Indeed, Freud identifies the id with the principle of pleasure, with the un-
conscious force of the sexual drive, with that which in the broad sense can be
called potentiality, and in the narrow, biological sense, potency. It is not ac-
cidental that these concepts are linguistically related – they both come from
the Latin root meaning “capacity” and, above all, “male capacity.” Apparently,
for Freud, precisely the sexual potency served as the most evident prototype of
potential existence as a philosophical concept that includes all the transitional
steps from the possible to the actual: seemingly – maybe – possibly – probably
– evidently – certainly. Incidentally, the philosophical concept of act, related
to potency, has an unequivocal sexual connotation as well. In other words,
the concepts “potential” and “actual,” which have been used in philosophy for
centuries, represent, according to their original meaning, a correlation of two
states of masculine potency: the latent–capable and the motor–active. Thus, it
is far from being accidental that Freud uses modal definitions of psychological
zones: he gives modalities back the primeval, picturesque, and natural mean-
ing that they used to have in pre-philosophical language.
The coincidence of the three modalities with the three spheres of the psyche
can be interpreted in various ways. It is possible that Freud, consciously or
unconsciously, recreated in his psychoanalytical construct the scheme of the
three grammatical modes known to him from grammar books and, moreover,
inherent for human mentality as such.
He gave each of the modalities a specific psychological function and sub-
strate. According to Freud, (1) the imperative mode has traits of parental
authority, the super-ego, since it is precisely from parents that the child re-
ceives most imperative statements (eat! read! don’t run!); (2) the conditional–
subjunctive mode has traits of sexual drive, libido, reigning in the id, since
from this prohibited zone come most desires expressed in this mode (“I would
like!” “I would do!”); (3) the indicative mode, which states facts and events,
has traits of the conscious “I,” which relies on the neutral principle of reality.
Acting in this zone, “I” tries to regulate and neutralize the powerful influence
of the super-ego and the id, of the necessary–obligatory and the possible–
desired.
However, it would also be natural to suppose the contrary: the psychologi-
cal zones discovered by Freud, these most ancient sources of spiritual dynam-
ics, were primary, and the philosophical construct of the three modalities was
born later from their further rationalization: the super-ego became identified
with the necessary, the id with the possible, and the ego with the real.
Finally, we could also proceed from the structural correspondence (isomor-

phism) between all these levels – linguistic, logical, ontological, and psycho-
logical, without trying to establish their hierarchy. In this case, three verbal
modes, three logical modalities, three existential modes, and three psychologi-
cal zones, these “hypostases” of the Freudian “trinity,” could be understood as
a manifestation of the general principle of triplicity. Verbs in the subjunctive
mode, probabilistic statements, possible existence, and the libido zone will re-
veal their structural affinity, making unnecessary any further discussion about
their right to superiority.
Thus the id can be seen as a potentiality inherent in our internal life. Of
course, there is no necessity to stick to the narrow, biological interpretation
of potentiality as “libido,” “potency” – this narrow interpretation was already
rejected by Freud’s immediate followers. For Jung, the unconscious was a re-
pository of archetypes, defined in his system as forms of pure potentiality: they
become actualized only in contact with concrete material. Jung compares ar-
chetype with
the system of axes of a crystal, which to a certain degree preforms the de-
velopment of the crystal in the mother solution, even though this system
itself does not exist in the material world. … Archetype per se is an empty
formal element, nothing else but the capacity for preformation, a given
possibility for shaping ideas. (italics mine – M.E.)4
Archetype is only a formal possibility of those countless images that are crys-
tallized around it in the “mother solution” of various epochs and cultures;
hence its fundamental inexhaustibility and openness to new actualizations.
In other psychoanalytical theories, the role of the unconscious can be as-
signed to striving for power, the search for meaning, or linguistic structures
not yet actualized in speech. In all these examples, the id acts as potentiality,
special cases of which are sexual potency, the principle of enjoyment, libido,
and language (which, according to Saussure and Lacan, is related to speech as
a potential to an action).
From here a new, more generalized psychological approach to human po-
tentiality follows; this approach is not limited to libidinal, archetypal, political,
linguistic, or any other of its aspects. Potentiality of the internal life is always
bigger than its actualization – and at the narrow junction of these modalities
internal conflicts, neuroses, fears, phobias, and depressions arise.
4 C.G. Jung, Von den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins (Zurich: Rascher, 1954), pp. 95–6.
Psychology 281
There exist different therapeutic methods. One of them recommends real-

izing and living the potential as fully as possible, to live it through. This was
the point of view of the Freudian–Marxist psychoanalyst from Austria, Wil-
helm Reich, who advised his patients to lead a more active sexual life and
helped some of his female patients to do so. This road led him, already at the
edge of insanity, to the search for a mysterious cosmic substance, orgon, rep-
resenting a chemical and biological equivalent of desire. An injection of or-
gon would make a person completely happy and balanced and would reduce
to zero all the individual differences among people (for, according to Reich,
people differ by their neuroses, while good health increases the affinity among
individuals).
However, it is obvious that the person who has fully realized his or her po-
tential would be even more unhappy than the person who cannot realize any
of it. There is a basis for believing that what lies at the roots of depression
is the realization of all possibilities. They become included in the sphere of
reality here and now and thus shroud the horizon of another life and other
possible worlds. Such is the state of being tired of life, when possibilities them-
selves are seen as part of external reality, since they are also “given,” “existing,”
made part and parcel of the surrounding world. Depression is a psychological
prevalence of the actual over the possible; this is seen even on the primary,
physiological level. Even Aristotle noticed that after a coitus every animal
becomes sad. A natural cause of sadness in the animal kingdom is the trans-
formation of sexual potential into a sexual act and, by consequence, a sharp
predominance of the actual over the possible in the “post-coital” modality of
existence.
Similarly, any creator feels sadness and depression precisely at the moment
of completing his work, reaching the embodiment of his creative ideas.
The desired moment came: my long-term work has been completed.
But why do I feel this strange sadness?
This is how Pushkin conveys this state in his poem “Trud” (Work).5 The
modal meaning of the “seventh day,” which comes after the six days of cre-
ation, consists not simply in a respite from working, but in the struggle against
the “melancholy of conclusion,” the overcoming of depression, the inactivity
as accumulation of new possibilities; in this way, the potentiality of existence
again begins to prevail over the actuality of that which was accomplished.
5 As shown by psychological research, people of creative professions suffer from depression

much more often than the rest of the population, precisely because they are professionally
occupied with “self-realization.” See, for example, K.R. Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-
Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993).
Consequently, intense realization of sexual and other potentials as facili-

tated through psychotherapy can rather make unhappy an individual who has
been completely “cured,” by removing from his psyche that which makes him a
personality, a potential being.
There exists yet another way: the actualization of unrealized possibilities
in an illusionary world, a world into which the unrealized surplus of human
potentiality is poured. This is the basis of the psychotherapeutic meaning of
art in general and, in particular, of a psychodrama in which the suppressed,
neurogenic desires of patients are realized through group interaction and
role playing, conditionally actualizing that which has been rejected by reality
itself.
Finally, there is also the third way, not practical or illusionary, but rationalis-
tic – the main road of the Freudian psychoanalysis: the patient, with the help
of the doctor, comes to understand his or her suppressed desires and drives
them out of the sphere of the unconscious, subjugating them to the princi-
ple of reality; that is, realizing them on the plane of consciousness and will.
“Psycho-analysis is an instrument to enable the ego to achieve s progressive
conquest overcome of the id.”6
However different among themselves, these therapeutic methods are simi-
lar in that precisely the realization of displaced desires and suppressed poten-
tial – whether actual or conditional; in reality, on stage, or in mind – serves to
heal man of his psychic disorders.
Nevertheless, there exists one more way. The “I” understands itself as a form
of infinite, incompletable potentiality which, in archetype and libido, in play
and thinking, transcends all its real manifestations. This fourth way, most radi-
cally different from all the others, consists in the potentialization of psychic re-
ality, as opposed to its realization.
L.S. Vygotsky compared the nervous system to a station; five tracks lead into
it, but only one goes away from it, so the trains, gathered together at this sta-
tion, collide and crash, until one of the five gets onto the only track leading to
reality itself.
Thus the nervous system resembles a battlefield where a continuous bat-

tle is fought, and our realized behavior is but an infinitesimal fraction of
that behavior which is actually contained in our nervous system in the
6 Freud, “The Ego and the Id,” p. 656.

Psychology 283
form of possibility and had even been triggered but did not find its way
out.7
Earlier, a similar image was used by one of the greatest physiologists of the
20th century, Charles Sherrington, who showed that the human psyche resem-
bles a funnel, the wide part of which is turned inwards, whereas the narrow
one looks towards the world.
However, a question can be posed as to whether the wide opening always
serves as the entrance (perception, consciousness) and the narrow one as the
exit (expression, behavior). Indeed, at the same time the opposite is true: a
single track leads into the station from which many tracks depart. While per-
ceiving a single event, we interpret it in many different ways. There are many
distinct meanings corresponding to a single fact; many imaginary projections,
images, and distortions corresponding to a single real object. In this sense,
the nervous system not only restricts the potentiality inherent in man (acts
of behavior, self-expression, realization), but also semantically broadens
the real phenomena; like waves from a stone thrown into the water, the in-
terpretations of those phenomena spread through the psychic world of man
in circles of new meanings, emotions, fantasies. The metaphor of a funnel
is reversible: not only is the internal potentiality of man narrowed at its exit
into reality, but reality itself extends, becomes wavy and probabilistic at its
entrance into the inner world. Reversing Vygotsky’s image, one can say that
there is a single track (reality) which leads to the nervous system, whereas
there exist many tracks leading from this station into the depth of human
psyche (possibilities of perception, interpretation, emotional reaction, and
behavior).
This is the very principle of potentiality, according to which not only the
potential enters the real, passing by constriction, suppression, accumulation
of unused energy, and the development of neurosis, but also the real, in turn,
enters the potential. The method of modal therapy may consist in overturning
the psychic funnel and returning the accumulated psychic energy to its origin,
to the state of potentiality. In other words, neuroses develop at the bottleneck
of the psyche, when it is oriented outwards; that is, when it obeys the principle
of realization. However, the current in this funnel can be reversed in such a
way that it washes away the neuroses accumulated at the bottleneck on the
way into reality. The current of psychic life then goes from the real to the po-
tential, where the road is wider. All those dams and stagnant ponds on the way
7 Vygotsky, Psikhologiia iskusstva, p. 311.

to the single channel into reality are purified by the opposite current of the
potentialization of reality. A person’s state changes when she perceives herself
as an unrealized and unrealizable possibility, as a being-in-possibility instead
of just a-possibility-in-being.
Psychology of the possible can be defined as a generalized discipline that stud-
ies all types and levels of human potentiality.8 Freud’s psychoanalysis, Jacob
Moreno’s play therapy, and Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy are all variants of this
potentiotherapy which aims at the harmonization of reality with suppressed
human possibilities. Therapeutic play or psychodrama, during which patients
discover hidden aspects of their individualities, is one of the methods of switch-
ing modalities. A child switches modalities constantly, easily jumping from play
to reality, from the subjunctive mode to the indicative one and back, barely no-
ticing the transition; however, for an adult such shifting represents a disturbing
problem, since the possible is separated from the actual by all his experience
of “self realization”; that is, persistent adaptation to the only existing reality.
Logotherapy, founded by Viktor Frankl, is based on understanding poten-
tiality, which in this case appears as a potentiality of meaning. According to
Frankl, the founder of the “third Viennese school of psychotherapy,” the pri-
mary motivation of human life is the search for meaning (not for pleasure or
power, as postulated by the two previous generations of Viennese psychoana-
lysts, Freudians and Adlerians). Meaning itself is understood as a form of po-
tentiality. “[Man] is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of
his life.” However, Frankl insists,
What is called self–actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the

simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would
miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect
of self-transcendence.9
An important moment of “unpredictability” and “unexpectedness” is for-

mulated, inherent in the world of the possible: the internal life should not
be subjugated to the preset goal of self-realization, for this self-realization is
8 Psychology of the possible should not be confounded with “psychology of aptitudes,” a

known branch of psychology analyzing human talent and ways of its revelation, predisposi-
tion of individuals to certain professions, etc. Aptitude is a special case of possibility – such
a possibility which requires professional working out; it is a socially required and intensely
realized possibility. Individuals who exercise it are praised by society and their needs are
satisfied in exchange. This is why aptitude is defined as something stable, limitedly selective,
professionally chosen from the sphere of possibilities.
9 V.E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (New York: Simon &
Schuster, Inc., 1984), p. 115.
Psychology 285
achieved only when we are the least concentrated on ourselves and our rela-
tions with reality. Going away from oneself is the best way of coming to oneself.
The goal is not to actualize some potential meaning of one’s life, but to keep its
potentiality after and beyond any realization.
Logotherapy has its own “categorical imperative,” which translates the en-
tire meaning of life into the modality of the possible: “‘Live as if you were living
already for the second time and yet had acted the first time as mistakenly as
you are about to act now!” It seems to me that there is nothing which would
stimulate a man’s sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which in-
vites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may
yet be changed and amended.10 In other words, this maxim tells the patient to
translate his present into a conditional past, in order to correct this past from
the point of view of a conditional future. Write your book in such a way as if
you had already written it in the past and now can write in a different way, or
not at all. In other words, act in such a way that the possibility of your action
will differ from its reality, which is already in the past.
It may seem that such a complicated construct of tenses and conditions
is unnecessary: is it not simpler to act the right way at once? However, logo-
therapy strives to transfer acts into a different modality, so that man can face
the reality of his acts while staying already or yet outside this reality. Precisely
in this approach lies the healing power of logotherapy as a kind of potentiother-
apy. It returns to man the world of his possibilities; that is, the entire universe
in which he perceives himself as a universal being. The maxim proposed by
Frankl presupposes that man does not simply commit a certain act, but keeps
a possibility of this act after it has been committed.
Consequently, one of the active branches of modern psychology is named
“possibility therapy.” This method, essentially, consists in revealing the possi-
bilistic nature of each situation which is seen by a patient as something given,
unchangeable, forever there, and thus painful and traumatic. During his talks
with patients, a psychotherapist helps them to discover that every “is” which
builds their identity is only a “maybe,” every situation has an alternative, and
their “I” is in fact a spectrum of possibilities to be someone else.11
From the modal point of view, the desires and impulses that appear in the id
but do not achieve the level of the “I” or are repulsed or suppressed by it, often
10 Ibid., p. 114.
11 This therapeutic method is comparatively little known, partly because it is meant to be a
short-time treatment taking only a few sessions. See W.H. O’Hanlon, A Field Guide to Pos-
sibility Land: Possibility Theraphy Methods (Omaha: Possibility Press, 1994). See https://
www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/possibility-therapy.
under the influence of the punishing super-ego, have the status of possibilities
that were denied realization. This incessant play of possibilities is what con-
stitutes our unconscious life. The goal of traditional psychotherapy is to drive
these suppressed possibilities to the surface and to include them in the con-
scious. However, this does not mean that the richness of our psyche should be
subject to the principle of reality. The conscious understanding of possibilities
is a reversible two-way process. Reality itself becomes included into the play of
these possibilities and interpreted as one of them.
Chapter 33
Religion
Probably, to no other discipline is the question of modality as important as it

is to theology. Many other disciplines can describe their object without posing
the question of the mode of its existence and, consequently, about the modal
state of its description itself. However, in theology, it is precisely the modality
of its “object” that constitutes the main question, which this discipline answers
by the indicative modality of its assertions and negations.1
To begin with, an absolute prerequisite of Judeo-Christian theology is, as it
seems, the existence of God. “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14), God says in reply
to Moses’ question about His name. But if the proper name of God, yhwh,
means “The Existing One,” can this existence be understood in the same sense
in which other things, His creations, exist? Or is some special existence that
distinguishes Him from the rest of existing things and which he consequent-
ly cannot share with them, the same modality? “There is none like Me in all
the earth” (Exodus 9:14). Precisely because “The Existing One” is God’s proper
name, it cannot be applied to Him as a common name, the same for all things
sharing the predicate of existing. God’s existence is His exceptional property.
The indicative mode, which is usually applied to other things, cannot be as-
cribed to Him.
This is why in theology there exist two traditions or methods that conscious-
ly contradict and complement each other at the same time. One of them is
cataphatic theology, which ascribes to God predicates of positive existence:
God is light, good, reason, mercy, power, greatness, and so on. Even though it is
generally accepted that all these definitions are conditional, symbolic, or even
metaphoric and are not identical to God Himself, they are, nonetheless, used
in the sense in which we think that God exists and thus can be conditionally,
by analogy (but not in essence), compared to the phenomena and characteris-
tics that have the absolute value.
The other method is apophatic theology, which denies all positive defini-
tions of God. God as
the pre-eminent Cause of all things intelligibly perceived is not itself any
of those things. … It is neither soul nor intellect … nor can it be expressed
or conceived, since it is neither number nor order; nor greatness nor
1 In this chapter we will limit ourselves to questions of Judeo-Christian theology.

smallness … nor is it science nor truth, nor kingship nor wisdom; neither
one nor oneness, nor godhead nor goodness; nor is it spirit according to
our understanding, nor filiation, nor paternity; nor anything else known
to us or to any other beings of the things that are or the things that
are not.
Thus wrote the founder of the apothatic theology, Pseudo-Dionysius the

Areopagite.2
Moreover, it cannot be said about God not only that He does not exist, but
also that He does exist, since He is beyond existence as we know it. If, for ex-
ample, this house exists and this tree exists, then it would be correct to say
that God does not exist. He does not exist in the same sense as do all the other
things to which we apply this predicate. This idea constitutes an unexpected
theological finesse and depth of atheism as a phase in the apophatic under-
standing of God.3 Apparently, it was not accidental that atheism developed
and became so popular precisely in that area of Eastern Christianity where the
apophatic method dominated and strongly influenced first the Byzantine and
later the Russian Orthodoxy. Atheism is that ultimate position of negative the-
ology that negates even itself, its own theological character. Whereas apophatic
theology negates the existence of God in order to make faith transcendental,
atheism rejects faith itself, since, from this point of view, it is absurd to believe
in something non-existent.
Thus, two complementary theological methods accept as equally true the
existence and the non-existence of God. This means that for theology the
question goes beyond the limits of the indicative mode, since “yes” and “no”
turn out to be equally true and equally false. “It is incomprehensible that God
should exist, and incomprehensible that He should not exist,” wrote Pascal.4 In
which modality, then, can we understand God? Without giving an answer to
this question, let us quote S.L. Frank: “About what can it be said that it exists
and does not exist? About something which is in the state of pure potentiality.”5
Another modality usually stressed in theological statements is necessity.
God is defined as Ens Necessarium, “Necessary Being.” In the famous five proofs
2 Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite, Mystical Theology, Ch. 5, http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Volu-

meII/MysticalTheology.html.
3 Obviously I do not mean that sort of atheism which destroys churches and kills believers, if
such a stipulation is still necessary.
4 B. Pascal, Pensees, Section iii: “Of the Necessity of the Wager,” 230, https://oregonstate.edu/
instruct/phl201/modules/texts/pascal/Pascals_Wager.pdf.
5 S.L. Frank, Real’nost’ i chelovek. Metafizika chelovecheskogo bytiia (Reality and Man. Metaphys-
ics of Human Spirit) (Paris: ymca Press, 1956), p. 316.
Religion 289
of the existence of God, the mode of “necessity” usually crowns the entire pro-
cess of reasoning. The fact that each thing has a motor force that sets it in mo-
tion leads to the necessity of an arch-motor force, which is God. The fact that
each thing has a cause that moves it leads to the necessity of the arch-cause,
which is God. The third proof is based on the reasoning that not all things
can be just possible, since then they might not exist; but since something does
exist, then some things should be necessary, and at least one of them should
receive necessity not from other things but from itself. According to Thomas
Aquinas, “we cannot but admit the existence of some being having of itself its
own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others
their necessity. This all men speak of as God.”6
However, the paradox here consists in that the necessity of God, asserted
by medieval theology, does not presuppose the belief in Him. It is possible to
consider God necessary, while being totally indifferent to or alienated from
Him. When the cynic Diogen was asked if the gods exist, he replied: “I don’t
know, but I know that it is expedient that they should.”7 This gap between “I
don’t know whether they exist” and “should exist” contains everything that
later developed into the concept of “cynicism,” which knows the value of ev-
erything, including Gods, but values nothing. Later, the same necessity of God,
coupled with the lack of personal belief in Him, was stated by Voltaire: “If God
did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”8 The necessity of God may
be demonstrated not only through logical reasoning or mystical revelations, as
in medieval theology, but also through moral, political, mercenary, or ideologi-
cal ideas, as, in fact, later took place – but this has no relation to the essence of
faith itself. Let us remember that Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor also believes
God to be necessary – in fact, so much that he does not leave Him a place in
actual existence and chases Christ away when He descends to Earth. “Your In-
quisitor does not believe in God, that’s his entire secret!” exclaims Alyosha, and
Ivan agrees: “That’s the idea. At last you’ve understood.”9
Of course, both God’s existence and His necessity are important dimen-
sions of religious experience. However, if God only existed, He could have be-
come an object of positive knowledge – and then what would be the need for
faith? If, on the other hand, God were only necessary, He could have become
6 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, q. 3. art. 3. Great Books of the Western World, vol. 19, Chicago:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., University of Chicago, 1982, p. 13.
7 Cited according to Tertullian. Dictionary of Quotations (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1980),
p. 161, https://books.google.com/books?id=BaUwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq.
8 Ibid., p. 428.
9 F.M. Dostoyevsky, Brat’ia Karamazovy, complete works in 30 vols (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976),
vol. 14, p. 238.
an object of moral or political necessity – and then what would be the need
for hope? According to Oscar Wilde, “Religions die when they are proved to be
true. Science is the record of dead religions.”10 It could be added that religions
also die when dominated by pure obligation, as died some of the medieval
forms of religion (such as inquisition, indulgence, and the persecution of her-
esies). The barren moralism of the following epochs is a depository of these
dead obligations.
Without rejecting either the ontological or the deontological dimensions
of faith, we must admit that the core of religious experience, in which God
appears to our mind as live and ineffable, is revealed in a different dimension
– that of the possible–impossible. We believe in God because it is impossible
to believe in Him; a miracle is a miracle precisely because it is impossible. Ter-
tullian expressed this in a single sentence: “Credo quia incredibilis est” – “I
believe because it is unbelievable” (in other translations, the terms “absurd” or
“incongruous” are used – but, in any way, the sense remains “against faith”). In
the 20th century, faith is defined in terms of possible–impossible by the dialec-
tic theologian Karl Barth:
God stands in contrast to man as the impossible in contrast to the pos-

sible, as death in contrast to life, as eternity in contrast to time. The solu-
tion of the riddle, the answer to the question, the satisfaction of our need
is the absolutely new event whereby the impossible becomes of itself pos-
sible, death becomes life, eternity time, and God man. There is no way
which leads to this event; there is no faculty in man for apprehending it;
for the way and the faculty are themselves new, being the revelation and
faith.11
Faith is a relation of possibility–impossibility, a bridge uniting the edges of a

precipice. Faith is preceded by the state of impossibility which Descartes called
“doubt” and Kierkegaard “despair.” Reality fades, consciousness does not find
any support, because the other world – immortality, salvation, God – all this
is illogical and incredible from the standpoint of experience, knowledge, and
reason. Faith sprouts precisely out of this incredibility. It is nourished by the
belief that salvation is, nonetheless, possible: maybe God exists. This “maybe”
is the sole nourishment of belief: faith immediately withers when transplanted
to the soil of the “is.” The object of faith is situated in a dimension different
10 Dictionary of Quotations, p. 440.

11 K. Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man. Great Books of the Western World, vol. 55
(1990), p. 509.
Religion 291
from that of certainty; it cannot be fully verified. The object of faith is inac-
cessible for knowledge and yet it is not lost in ignorance; “is” and “is not” lose
their sense in the attempt of faith to touch the possible, pushing off from the
impossible. Faith is an attitude towards a miracle, and a miracle is the possibil-
ity of the impossible. If we eliminate this modality, then all that remains of a
miracle is a magic trick or a fact, and all that remains of faith is amazement or
observation. Faith is the “may be” born out of the “may not be.”
In Søren Kierkegaard we can find a profound observation that to believe
in Christ means to be His contemporary: not to leave Him behind, in remote
past history, as a fait accompli, or ahead, as the perspective of the End of the
World and the Second Coming, but to perceive Him in the same way as He was
perceived by the people who lived near Him and at the same time. How can
“faith” be considered something that has already become a positive fact? To
know that Jesus, born in Galilee and crucified in Jerusalem, was Christ, the Son
of God, does not mean to believe in Him, but to believe in what people and
books say about Christ. But if Christ is eternal, He cannot be only in the past or
in the future; He is the contemporary of all those who think themselves Chris-
tians, and they are Christians only inasmuch as they feel themselves His con-
temporaries. They are part of His life on earth. This means that, when people
discover Him for themselves for the first time, for them Jesus is still not Christ,
but maybe Christ … maybe Savior.
Precisely this “maybe” is the beginning of faith – that which suddenly opens
to me in Jesus when I still don’t know that he is Christ. When I am convinced
beforehand that God, infinitely distanced from people, God, who didn’t show
His face even to Moses, cannot have a son, and that even to think of it is already
a sacrilege, and from this complete impossibility suddenly a voice sounds in
me, saying: “And maybe this is the son of God?” The very expression “Jesus
Christ” contains, as a concentrated symbol of faith, a hidden modal connec-
tion: “Jesus maybe Christ.”
This “maybe” remains in our attitude towards Christ as a gift of faith, its
confusion, fear, bewilderment, its initial “may not be.”Of course, one can imag-
ine faith without any “maybe,” but would it remain a true faith? Here it is ap-
propriate to quote Karl Barth: “Whoever can say ‘Jesus Christ’ need not say ‘It
may be’; he can say ‘It is’. But which of us is capable, of himself, of saying ‘Jesus
Christ’?”12
Indeed, in order to believe in God one must clearly assume His impossibil-
ity. In order to believe in salvation, one must assume its impossibility. “‘But
12 Ibid., p. 516.
who can be saved?’ the apostles ask Christ, and He responds, ‘What is impos-
sible for men, is possible for God’” (Luke, 18:27).
Jesus explains faith through the image of the possible–impossible in his par-
able about a mountain and a mustard seed. “Because you have so little faith.
Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this
mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossi-
ble for you’” (Matthew, 17:20). Here faith also starts from something impossible
which it makes possible. However, it doesn’t follow that faith becomes a mate-
rial force, magically moving mountains – in this case, the literal interpretation
of the parable distorts its meaning. Let us imagine that the apostles, upon Je-
sus’ words, exerted their faith and moved the mountain from one place to an-
other: we would have been astonished by the absurdity and non-gospel spirit
of such an event. Faith, indeed, can move mountains, but the faith directed
towards moving a mountain would stop being a faith and turn into a supersti-
tion, because instead of God it would now have a material object. The point is
that true faith which can displace mountains does not displace mountains but
moves beyond mountains, into that “mountainous” region where it becomes
more and more potent. Faith does not do that which it can accomplish, precisely
because it can do more than can be done – more than moving a mountain, more
than triumphing over its enemies.
In its prevalence of the possible over the accomplished, faith is directed to-
wards that which at its limit coincides with the will and deed of God Himself.
Christ does not destroy those who torture and crucify Him, because He can do
it with the power of his faith. It is the very strength of His faith that does not
allow Him to do so but leads Him farther, to something that only the Father can
do – the resurrection. In other words, the same strength of faith that can do,
does not, in order to climb up the steps of the possible towards the will of God
Himself and to reach the biggest accordance with it.
This modality of the possible is clearly revealed in the concentration of faith
as in prayer. A common kind of prayer represents an appeal to God for help
and mercy and is expressed by verbs in the imperative mode: “Give us our daily
bread … pardon us our debts … free us from temptations.” But it is just as in-
correct to imagine God only in the indicative mode, existing like all common
objects, as it is to imagine a prayer only in the imperative mode, inciting God
to some action. A prayer is testing the possibility of divine action, question-
ing Him about this possibility. We are not telling God “do such and such,” but
rather are asking Him, “is it possible to do so? Would it be in accordance with
Your will?” We are addressing Him not as a servant who carries out our orders,
but as the Lord whose will we are trying to guess. Even in the polite forms of
addressing people, as was already noted in the chapter “Ethics,” we are not as
Religion 293
much inciting people to do something as inquiring about the possibility of a

certain action, since an action can come only from them (or with their permis-
sion) and presupposes their free will. However, that which in relations among
people is a form of politeness, in relation between man and God becomes the
essence, since the distance between the needs of one and the capacities of
the Other is not comparable to any distance among people. Among people,
the subjunctive mode is only a polite form of expressing a necessity; in con-
trast, when man addresses God in the form of a prayer, the imperative mode is
only a form of presupposing a possibility, telling Him how He can show Him-
self in his life if He so wishes.
The more insistent is our need for divine help and mercy, the more impor-
tant it is for the imperative mode to change into the subjunctive, so this need
which compels and subjugates us would not compel God. In this sense, a pro-
totype of any extreme prayer is the prayer of Christ: “Going a little farther, he
fell with his face to the ground and prayed, My Father, if it is possible, may
this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew, 26:39).
What can be more important to Christ-man than the salvation from the cross
and death! But this is precisely why he not only implores God about it, but
adds “if possible,” thus placing God’s will above his own. The point is not only
that a passionate desire can freely or unwillingly be forced upon God, making
Him into a slave of human needs. The point is that a prayer about the most im-
portant, something decisive for one’s fate, must be concerned with something
even more important – one’s fate in eternity. If I believe that, out of love for me,
God may save me from death, violence, human hatred, then I believe that God,
out of love for me, wants to save me from an even worse evil, from the “Evil
One” himself. This is why the more profound a prayer is, the more concern it
contains – the ultimate concern about the salvation of the soul. A prayer ema-
nates from this greatest concern, descending to the enumeration of smaller
needs and climbing up to the top again, which is expressed by the words “not
as I want it, but as Thou doth.” Not always does a prayer mention its utmost
concern, but while mentioning the smaller concerns – and even the concern
about saving one’s life is the greatest among smaller needs – the prayer adds “if
possible.” Do it, Lord – heal, protect, help, deliver – if all this is possible without
harming the salvation of my soul.
This is why every need contained in a prayer is internally tested by this pos-
sibility and is itself one of the possibilities of salvation. As a result of every
prayer – if we can speak about results here – man does not subjugate God to
human needs, but accepts His grace. That which man perceives as a necessity
becomes a possibility when shared with God. That which he brings to God as
his need, he receives back as grace. It is not important whether the prayer is
answered. Through prayer that which man asks for is transformed for him into
grace which God bestows upon him or not. Receiving something or not, being
healed or not become for him possibilities of salvation, since by praying he
submits his need to God’s judgment. Prayers speak to God about human needs
in Christ’s words – “if possible” – and thus transfer man’s existence from the
sphere of the necessary for him into the sphere of the possible for God.
Even though Kierkegaard stresses that “possibility and necessity are equally
important to our ‘I’s development,” for him faith is connected precisely with
the possible:
salvation is humanly speaking the most impossible thing of all; but for
God all things are possible! This is the fight of faith, which fights madly (if
one would so express it) for possibility. For possibility is the only power
to save. When one swoons people shout for water, Eaude-Cologne, Hoff-
man’s Drops; but when one is about to despair the cry is, Procure me pos-
sibility, procure possibility! Possibility is the only saving remedy; given a
possibility, and with that the desperate man breathes once more, he re-
vives again; for without possibility a man cannot, as if were, draw breath.
… The loss of possibility signifies: either that everything has become nec-
essary to a man/or that everything has become trivial. The determinist
or the fatalist is in despair, and in despair he has lost his self, because for
him everything is necessary.13
Just like faith and prayer, other religious states – hope and love – are modes of
the possible in human existence. Whereas faith is turned towards God, hope
is directed towards salvation, and love towards a fellow man as the image of
God. Neither hope nor love can include obligation: the obligation of hope or
love appears only after love or hope themselves die. Similarly, hope does not
have before it any concrete reality about which one could say “is” or “is not.”
That for which I hope may happen or not. We cannot see the reality of our
own salvation; all that we can do is save ourselves by hoping. “For in this hope
we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he
already has? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait
for it.” (Romans, 8:24–5). It is precisely the lack of guarantee that creates hope,
a patient waiting which, climbing the steps of the possible, does not meet in its
way anything but the way itself.
13 S. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941),
pp. 40, 41–2, http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/TheSicknessUn-
toDeath.pdf.
Religion 295
In love, I see in front of me a real being who is transformed by my love. Love

does not simply attempt to realize the possible, but transforms it into some-
thing that already exists; in this lies love’s special trial and labor. In a real be-
ing, I suddenly find the possibility of his or her total fusion with my being and
of shared immortality. The experience of love shows especially convincingly
how the entire world becomes suddenly “potentialized,” how a possibility of
becoming many different people opens in the beloved person. As Gaston Ba
chelard noted, the reality of love disappears, if separated from its illusoriness.
This oscillation of the world that only yesterday stood firmly in place and today
is trying to fly somewhere, showing instability in its ontological foundations, is
a sign of the beginning of love.
According to Plato, Eros is the attraction of a lower entity to a higher one, a
poor to a rich one; it is related to need or necessity whose object has something
which the subject lacks and thus is superior to him in some respect.
Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already,
and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and is not,
and of which he is in want; these are the sort of things which love and
desire seek? Very true, he said.14
Love is longing for something that man does not have, but without that he can-
not be; by consequence, love is a state of pure potentiality, in which man can
melt into something that is not himself. Two people, while staying separate,
“make one flesh,” adhere to one another, carry each other’s burden. Love is the
potential unity of two actually separate beings; the degree of such a unity may
grow indefinitely, without ever reaching the limit of the actual identity.
In contrast to faith and hope, which initially spring from the impossible and
become possible, as happens in a miracle, love is born out of the most real
thing in the world – the reality of another human being. This is why the apostle
Paul calls love the biggest gift and merit of all. It is easier for God to make the
impossible into the possible than for a man to discover the possible in the exis-
tent, to realize a possibility of merging with something which has been created
as other. Hence such virtues of love which express at the same time both its at-
tachment to reality and its capacity for transforming and transcending reality.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps
14 Plato, Symposium, trans. Benjamin Jowett, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium

.html.
no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians, 13:4–7
The fact that faith and hope make part of the definition of love tells us that
love is striving to reach the possible through the impossible, that, together with
faith and hope, it seeks a transformation and a miracle. However, love is more
than faith and hope, because it is patient, always protects, always perseveres;
that is, gives itself without reservations to the reality of the beloved that it
wishes to transform and by which it desires to be transformed in order to make
possible the melting of two into one.
If faith, hope, and love are modes of the possible, does it not mean that even-
tually they will stop existing when the possible is fully realized and becomes
the reality of the other world? Light is perceived as such only in the darkness,
but were we to find ourselves in the kingdom of light, we could perceive it as
the total darkness, or stillness, or something else, not necessarily “light” in our
present understanding, for we simply have not yet had the experience of being
surrounded by pure light. Maybe a possibility lived through in the world of the
possible is what we understand by absolute reality, which is indistinguishable
from its potential and thus represents that all-embracing potentiality–actual-
ity, that light which is not perceived as light anymore, since it is deprived of a
dark, contrasting background? May it be that what we call the possible is only
our attitude towards the Other that we still cannot see and touch as an absolute
reality that has no separation into the actual, the necessary and the possible?
It may seem that this is the very interpretation suggested by the apostle
Paul, since for him faith, hope, and love are states of this world in its hypotheti-
cal relation to the other world.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part: But when that which is
perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was
a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but
when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through
a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I
know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, these
three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians, 13:9–13
Does it mean that faith, hope, and love exist only “now,” as temporary states
of man that will become eliminated with his coming of age, as are gradually
eliminated the ignorance of childhood and the semi-knowledge of youth? And
Religion 297
when the faith will be realized, hope fulfilled, and love crowned – in God, sal-
vation, and immortality – will “these three,” which have not yet reached the
truth but only imagined it, be eliminated?
It may be supposed that even guessing about immortality already deserves
immortality, striving towards salvation deserves salvation, and that faith does
not only seek God, but also abides in Him beyond any realization. This is,
indeed, what Paul is speaking about while seemingly contradicting himself,
“Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether
there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish
away” (1 Corinthians, 13:8).
How is it possible that love will not be eliminated, when it is said that the
three – faith, hope, and love – abide only now, in the state of partial ignorance?
However, it is not accidental that Paul says, “the greatest of these is love.” Faith
and hope will cease, but love will never end – and, therefore, faith and hope will
never cease, for they are inside love and preserved by it. Love “always trusts, al-
ways hopes” – therefore, faith and hope will survive even knowledge, the totali-
ty of which will eliminate them. Faith and hope as hypothetical knowledge are
eliminated only by total knowledge – but love is more than knowledge about
God, since God Himself is Love. Faith and hope as such will die, but will be
preserved in love as its characteristics and actions. It can be said that they will
be eliminated cognitively, but preserved ontologically. The divine reality, being
actualized, eliminates the hypothetical as subjectively possible, but preserves
the possible as the objective state of the world. The subjective modality – all
these “it seems,” “probably,” “maybe,” “possibly,” “presumably,” “likely” – with
which we denote the approximate and insecure character of our knowledge
will be eliminated like the “dark glass” when we finally see “face to face.” How-
ever, the possible describes not only a limitation of our knowledge, but also the
state of reality itself, its openness and potentiality.
One of the main questions in any theory of modality is the distinction of
its subjective and objective aspects, or modality de dicto and de re. The first
case describes the modality of a statement, the certainty or uncertainty it
expresses. The second case describes the mode of an event itself, which can
be more or less possible. In the following two statements, “maybe this has al-
ready happened” and “it still may happen,” the difference between a subjective
conjecture and an objective possibility is evident. The subjective (epistemic,
cognitive) and the objective (ontic, alethic) modalities are mutually indepen-
dent.15 Subjective doubt can be applied to objective reality (possibly, in the
15 In more detail these modalities and their systematic relations are described in the
Appendix.
city N. there was a thunderstorm) and, vice versa, subjective certainty can be
applied to objective possibility (it is certain that in the city N. a thunderstorm
can occur).
Theology must distinguish these two categories, de dicto and de re as strictly
as possible, in order not to confuse the human and the divine, not to replace
one with the other.16 When our knowledge changes from partial to total, it
eliminates faith and hope as categories of the subjective modality. However,
since faith and hope abide in love, they are modalities of the very existence of
God, who is love. Love “always trusts, always hopes,” meaning that it does not
limit itself to the sphere of the actually existing, but strives to reach the limits
of the possible/impossible; it reveals the infinite potentiality in that beloved
being which I am for God and which someone else becomes for me.
If God is Love, then not only we, people, believe and hope, but God Himself
believes and hopes as well. And if faith is eliminated by the full understanding
of God by man, could the love directed from God to man be eliminated? Quot-
ing the metropolitan Antony of Sourozh, a prominent Russian theologian, “ev-
ery time when man enters the world, it is an act of the Divine faith in him: God
believes in us, individually and collectively, in the whole of mankind and in
every one of us. And this is a marvelous thought: God believes in us, God hopes
to receive everything from us.”17 It follows from this that God is love, faith and
hope – not as a limited knowledge about Him, but as the infinity of His exis-
tence, its inexhaustible possibility.
...
God is not only Love, but also “God the Almighty,” the “King of kings,” and
the “Lord of lords.” The most often mentioned among the attributes of God
is “might,” with the corresponding predicate “may.” Everywhere in the Bible
He is the One who may, is able – is able to be able and is able not to be able,
may perform the possible and the impossible. “He ruleth forever by his power”
16 Such a replacement occurs, among others, in pantheism. The founder of pantheism

Spinoza, for whom God coincided with all things extant, thought that the “possible” ex-
ists only in the subjective modality, as a mark of insufficient knowledge. If, however, the
knowledge becomes complete, the “possible” disappears, for it has no place in the deter-
ministic world. For the convincing critique of such subjective understanding of modality
as the reverse side of Spinoza’s objectivism see: Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp. 96–7.
17 From the talks “Khristianstvo segodnia” (“Christianity Today”) in Mitropolit Antony Suro-
zhsky, O vstreche (On Encounter) (St. Petersburg: Satis, 1994), p. 62.
Religion 299
(Ps. 66 (65):7).18 One of the most difficult questions in theology refers to the
special character of God’s participation in human life, that is, with the evident
infrequency or absence of His direct supernatural intervention, a fact that has
served as a basis for various skeptical movements, from deism to atheism. If
God is almighty, if He is the Lord of the universe, then how is His power mani-
fested, besides via the working of natural laws, whose explanation doesn’t re-
quire the personal will of the Creator, and those legendary miracles that can
easily be ascribed to the fantasy and mythogenesis of our ancestors?
In order to answer this question we should analyze the connection be-
tween possibility and power, potentiality and potency, or intention and inten-
sity. Though not etymological, this kinship is nonetheless important. Mighty is
someone who may, for whom many things are possible. Might and power come
not from the actual, but from the potential state of reality. Might is one of those
real qualities which are born out of an unrealized possibility. Quoting an apt
formulation of Slavoy Žižek, “power is actually exerted only in the guise of a
potential threat, i.e. only insofar as it does not strike fully but ‘keeps itself in
reserve’.”19 Only acting outside the actual existence, as something different from
it, as a potential or reserve, can a power embrace and sustain its kingdom. The
total of realized possibilities stops being a power, becoming rather a situation
inside reality, in which he who was powerful exhausts his power and becomes
an object for the application of other forces. For example, a king has the power
to execute any of his subjects, but were he to realize all the possibilities of his
punishing power, he would empty his kingdom and cease to be a king. If some
physical body were to move in all possible directions at once, it would lose the
characteristics both of a physical body and of movement, that is identity and
direction. The possible is so much broader than the real that the realization of
all the possibilities means the death of all that exists, the absolute nothingness,
and thus the impossibility of realizing the possible, that is its own death.
It is important to distinguish a first-order possibility – that which is at all
possible – from a second-order possibility – that which can be realized in par-
allel and together with the realization of other possibilities. For example, in the
weather forecast for a certain region, rain, fog, and sunny weather can all be
indicated as first-order possibilities. However, it is evident that, being realized,
the sunny weather excludes both of the other possibilities, while rain and fog
most probably exclude the sunny weather, but not each other. According to
18 See also, “The Lord reigns, he is robed in majesty; the lord is robed in majesty and is
armed with might. Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the
breakers of the sea – the Lord on high is mighty” Ps. 93: 1, 4.
19 Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative, p. 159.
Whitehead’s observation, that which is realized in a certain event inevitably

excludes the infinite totality of other possibilities. “This principle of internal
incompatibility has an important bearing upon our conception of the nature
of God. The concept of impossibility that even God cannot overcome has for
many centuries been on theologians’ minds.”20 Power keeps all its first order
possibilities open, because the realization of each one of them eliminates and
excludes others; that is, it leads to the diminishing of the power. Actualization
is necessary only insofar as it helps to symbolically, “homeopathically,” denote
the potentiality behind it. The state of power wisely and flexibly combines
the maximum of potentiality with the minimum of actuality. The greatest ruler
keeps his power “in reserve,” precisely because his power is infinite; realizing
one of his possibilities, he loses some others and ceases to be almighty.
The power of God, as the sum total of all His possibilities, is so immense
and boundless that it can be fully realized only in the absolute fragility – in the
image of Christ. Such is, in general, the law of the greatest power, if understood
not in the political, but in the religious sense: “my power is made perfect in
weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). This is the difference between the power of a
saint and the power of a ruler, between the power of the Heavenly King and
the power of an earthly king. A man of faith can move mountains, and this is
precisely why he does not move them. May it be that it is precisely this infinity
of power that explains the infrequent intervention of God in earthly affairs?
It may also be an answer to an infamous paradox: God is almighty and in-
finitely good. Seemingly, one characteristic contradicts the other – and taken
together they contradict the undeniable existence of evil. If God is infinitely
good, then He is not almighty, for He wishes to eliminate evil, but cannot do so.
If God is almighty, then we must assume He is not infinitely good – he could, but
does not wish to eliminate evil. In fact, the contradiction here is not between
omnipotence and infinite goodness, but between the concept of “all” and those
characteristics of power and goodness that exclude each other when being real-
ized. In order to remain “all,” these capabilities must not become too concrete.
The existence of possibilities is different from possibilities of their realization.
God can bring the Earth closer to the Sun and can also make the distance be-
tween them greater, but the realization of one possibility excludes the other.
This resembles a well-known scholastic question: can God create such a
weight (a huge stone) that He Himself won’t be able to lift it? The answer is
yes, since the impossibility of lifting this weight would be a manifestation of
His ability of not being able. Indeed, the ability of not being able broadens
the spectrum of possibilities, and if God may lift any weight then He may do
20 A.N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 277.
Religion 301
the opposite – not be able to lift it. If God has all the subjective possibilities,
then His objective possibilities will include the impossible. If God is able to do
everything, then He is also able to be unable.
The archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov, 1896–1993), one of the most author-
itative Orthodox figures and writers of the 20th century, recalls a small episode:
–If you had an absolute power, what would you do with those whom you
believe guilty of that evil? …
–If I had such an absolute power, I would not be able to move: this power
would have paralyzed me.
And paralyzed before us we see Jesus Christ, who said, “Do not resist
an evil person”
Matthew, 5:3921
In the figure of God’s Son, this capacity of God to be unable, the power of weak-
ness, the voluntary paralysis of absolute power, is expressed especially clearly.
Everything is possible for God, but the impossible lies in the very nature of pos-
sibilities: that which is possible in the first order, is impossible in the second
one. God can eliminate any evil, but the evil in general cannot be eliminated,
for then the possibilities of good would be equally eliminated, since good op-
poses evil and can be defined only in comparison with it. Were the evil of suf-
fering to be eliminated, it would also eliminate the virtues of patience and
courage. Were the evil of lust to be eliminated, the virtues of abstinence and
chastity would be eliminated with it. This is why God is almighty to the degree
of being infinitely good, and infinitely good to the degree of being almighty.
Еvil is born from the separation of these capabilities that bind and constrict
each other insofar as God Himself is boundless. The evil exists precisely be-
cause God is both infinitely good and infinitely almighty. The existence of the
evil does not contradict a combination of the infinite goodness and infinite power,
which limit each other just inasmuch as to allow each one to leave a possibility
for the other.
Now it can be understood why the presence of God in the world is felt less
and less, that is, its weakness grows. The potentialization of reality always goes
ahead of the actualization of the nascent possibilities. In each act in which the
previous potential is realized, the array of new potentials is born. This is why in
the history of the world the Divine (and not only the human) passes more and
more into the sphere of the potential, and is actualized less and less in the acts
21 Sophrony Archimandrite, Pis’ma v Rossiiu (Letters to Russia) (Essex; Moscow: Sviato–

Ioanno–Predtechenskii monastyr’, 1997), p. 39.
of Divine revelation and Divine incarnation. Likewise, a text passes from the
potential state into the actual one through a series of rough drafts, where the
last, the most perfect variant differs from the previous ones in that it contains
the greatest potential of its future readings and interpretations. The presence
of the author in the book is revealed not through the continuation of the acts
of writing, not through additions, corrections, new epilogues and conclusions,
but through the absolute completeness and, therefore, the openness of the text
itself, the openness for the readers’ interpretations which do not need any fur-
ther explanations from the author.
Conclusion
The reader may ask whether the philosophy presented here isn’t just one more
variant of metaphysics – the metaphysics of the possible as a certain arch-
essence from which all other essences, including the reality of the existent,
emerge. The answer to such a question would be yes and no. Yes, it is one more
possible variant of possible metaphysics; but this metaphysics emphasizes its
own possibilistic character, admits of other philosophical possibilities, estab-
lishes the plurality of metaphysics as the most radical means of eliminating
the imperious evil of metaphysics, while preserving and developing its creative
potential. To accept a metaphysics of the possible is to accept it as a possibility
of creating other metaphysic-s (in the plural).
If the philosophy of the possible exposed in this book has any value, it is
only as one possible philosophy and as a foundation of the possibilistic char-
acter of philosophy in general. It does not exclude the possibility and even
necessity of other philosophical systems or anti-system constructs. Probably
its only difference from other systems consists in that it applies to itself the
same modal criterion that it applies to others. When philosophy loses its
modal self-consciousness, it easily comes to the affirmation of its own general
and prescriptive character, which does not agree with the admittance of other
philosophies. The philosophy of the possible is proposed in order to make it
possible for some other, alternative philosophies to be formed in its presence,
in its atmosphere of questioning and conjecturing. For the author, the success
of this philosophy would not consist in the degree of agreement, but rather
in the degree of difference of opinions it will evoke, in the number of other
philosophical positions which can be formed around it, in the number of new
philosophical possibilities it will bring to life.1
The particularity of our approach consists in that first, the modal concepts
developed by philosophy are applied to the language of philosophy itself and,
more broadly, to the methodology of the humanities; and secondly, modality
is analyzed not only in its purely logical dimension, but also in the temporal
sense, as the process of succession of the predominant modalities in the his-
tory of thought.
1 Naturally, the author does not exclude himself from the field of the possible alternatives of
thought opened by the philosophy of the possible. In particular, the work on this book had
given me an idea of another book, in which the emphasis will be made on the correlation of
different modal planes of thought and reality, on the quality of intensity which is born out of
the conjunction of the necessary and the impossible, or the “most necessary” and the “least
possible.”

In other words, philosophy is seen through the prism of modality, and mo-
dality through the prism of history. The modalization of philosophy and histor-
ization of modality are two innovative additions to the traditional p hilosophical
approach to the problems of the actual, the necessary, and the possible.
In sum, what is the result of our analysis? Without repeating all the p articular
conclusions proposed earlier, here we will try to convey their simplest spiritual
and practical meaning. In our existence, a process constantly goes on, con-
verse to that which is usually called realization. Everyone understands what
realization is: it occurs when some plans, ideas, schemes – generally speak-
ing, some mental concepts – are actualized on paper, in granite, in metal, in
words, in behavior, or in relations with other people. The history of humankind
is permeated by a striving to realize the most attractive and inspiring possibili-
ties. However, the converse process is often overlooked: the reality itself passes
into the state of possibility. It becomes more and more hypothetical, from “is” it
passes into the mode of “if.”
Even the past, which undoubtedly was what it was, unwittingly let this con-
ditional modality seep into its fixed, complete world, since every fact, as it gets
more and more remote in time, becomes a hypothesis, opens a vast space for
interpretations, for numerous conjectures about “what would have happened,
if.” The conceptualization of history adds to it those possibilities which were
not realized but that had made possible the events that happened later and
continue to happen now. If this or that event of Russian history became pos-
sible owing to the Decembrist Revolt (1825) – for example, the abolition of
serfdom, the Populist (narodnik) movement, the writing of War and Peace, ter-
rorist acts, the conflict between the government and the intelligentsia – then
the historic fact of Decembrism comes to be perceived through the prism of
these later possibilities, just as when a ship leaves port the bottom of the sea
is seen more and more vaguely and dimly through the growing mass of water.
The further from us an event is, the broader is the field of its meanings, refract-
ing through the prism of the later events, made possible by it. The waves of
possibilities, reaching us, obscure and dissolve our memory of the past. We
start guessing about that which we knew before. Yesterday’s facts become to-
day’s hypotheses.
According to Max Weber,
the problem: what might have happened if, for example, Bismarck had
not decided to make war, is by no means an “idle” one. It does indeed
bear on something decisive for the historical moulding of reality, namely,
on what causal significance is properly to be attributed to this individual
decision in the context of the totality of infinitely numerous “factors,” all
Conclusion 305
of which had to be in such and such an arrangement and in no other if

this result were to emerge, and what role it is therefore to be assigned in
an historical exposition.2
History, from the point of view of a historian, is not only that which happened,
but also that which could have happened. Precisely the growing number of
events that did not happen establishes the “historic meaning” of events that
have already happened. If there is a certain progress in history, it consists of
the increase of historic values, in which every following fact turns out to be
less probable and thus more meaningful in relation to the previous one. Hence
the understanding of history as a process of accumulation of possibilities: each
subsequent epoch absorbs the significance of the possibilities of the previous
ones. Each following epoch contains more possibilities than the previous one,
even though the measure of “real” time stays the same – day, year, century.
But the capacity for significance of each following time segment constantly
grows, as each event is shrouded by a cloud of “non-events,” defining its his-
toric value. Hence the strange feeling that history is accelerating and reality be-
comes more and more transparent, saturated with bubbles of non-embodied
possibilities.
Arnold Toynbee aptly termed this progressive movement “etherification,”
referring to the rarefaction of the material substrate of history and its trans-
fer into a more spiritual, “ethereal,” state. One of the manifestations of this
process is the change of modalities. The world is created by the Word and is
continually recreated by it – but does the Word itself remain unchanged? If
the creative Word, which has brought the world into existence, is a verb, Word–
Action, could not the history be read as a paradigm of this verb’s conjugation,
of its passing from the indicative mode into the subjunctive one?
This applies not only to the movement of world history, but also to that of
the small history of each human life. Apparently, the modal wisdom of each life
is very simple: childhood and youth represent the time of possibilities which,
as the child becomes older, are realized through work and devotion; old age
produces the sum total of all the realized possibilities as a permit for admission
to the afterlife. However, this view of life in terms of progressive realization is
too simple a wisdom, if not a false one. Those youthful possibilities that are
realized in adult life pave the way for new possibilities of which youth usually
has no idea. With age, spiritual space broadens and youth appears a tiny corner
that had enough room only for one’s own “I.” imagining itself universal.
2 Weber, On The Methodology of the Social Sciences, p. 164, http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/

www/Class%20Readings/Weber/weber_on_methodology_of_social_sciences.pdf.
This illusion does not live for long. Somewhere around the age of forty, the
so-called midlife crisis begins: it seems that all the possibilities are already
known and a person can only repeat him- or herself.3 Life loses its appeal
and its horizon. In “middle age,” the number of suicides and senseless self-
destructive acts tends to increase. Man cannot bear outliving his possibilities,
knowing that from now on he will have to exist in reality as it is and to obey the
mandates of duty and necessity. Indeed, “middle age” appears to be a divide
between two epochs of life. During the first epoch, possibilities precede their
realization; when these youthful plans and capacities are more or less exhaust-
ed, and life appears terminated. However, during the second epoch, a reverse
process begins. Man starts growing again as a potential being who knows that
he cannot be fully realized in this life and who takes his possibilities with him.
Late adulthood and old age accumulate such possibilities: new patience, keen-
ness, sensitivity to details and symbols, tolerance towards other opinions and
cultures. In the impossibility of their full realization, these possibilities point
to the horizons of the other world.
Of course, this separation of life into two epochs is only tentative. The build-
ing of new potentiality, of this “posthumous potential of the soul,” continues
throughout an entire lifetime, simultaneously with the realization of life pos-
sibilities. Indeed, this adds interest to the difficult and humdrum process of
existence: there is no better way to revive withering joie de vivre than to look at
each thing from the point of view of the possible, as if it had not yet existed,
but only could come into being. Why are we so fascinated by a flickering flame,
boiling of waves of the sea, or a flock dancing in the air; why can’t we take our
eyes away from them? Such is the visible existence of the possible. “Everything
gets dull. Only you cannot become tiresome,” Boris Pasternak addresses the sea
in his poem “Volny” (Sea Waves). On graphs, the probabilities are marked with
curves, resembling waves – and waves themselves are outlines of probabilities,
with a separate sinusoid for the movement of each drop. To regard the sea, the
flames, the waving of trees and grass in the wind represents an enormous in-
terest for the soul, for so it joins the familiar element of possibilistic existence.
The same waves of possibilities run through all the areas of the universe,
from physical microobjects (particles–waves) to the religious experience of
faith, hope, and love. The strongest human emotions are connected precisely
with the area of the possible, with something expected, divined, unpredict-
able. Man lives on the possible: this is his natural environment in contrast with
lower life forms that exist in the actual, are identical to themselves, and only
3 Of course, these age parameters apply only to certain social classes and historical conditions
in the West, given a certain life-expectancy, etc.
Conclusion 307
react to environmental changes. From a stone to a tree, from a tree to an ani-

mal, from an animal to a man, from a slave to a free man, the possibilities of a
being in relation to reality continue to increase. Apparently, society in its devel-
opment from despotism to democracy also follows this principle.
The multiplication of possibilities is a characteristic of life in its develop-
ment, in its progress, and, probably, this multiplication is also the answer to the
question about the ultimate meaning of life, for the possibilities grow faster
than do the means of their realization. Immortal is that which is unrealizable;
probably, the world which opens to us after death is the endless, all-embracing
“May Be,” in search of which Rabelais departed from his deathbed (“I am set-
ting out in search of the great May Be”). If all we can know about immortal-
ity is that it “may be,” then it is also true that the “may be” itself is immortal.
The nature of the possible is such that it can be realized (otherwise it would
have been “impossible”) and at the same time cannot be realized (otherwise it
would have been identical to the “actual”). This presupposes a certain “hover-
ing” of the possible between the actual and the impossible, between “now”
and “never.” “Always” is that very modal crack, a “pause” in which the possible
gets trapped, remaining both only possible (non-actual) and yet possible (non-
impossible). Thus, “to be possible” means “to be eternal.” The eternal originates
from the possible as a constant “deferment” of its realization, as something
that can exist but does not start existing. The possible as a source of hopes,
dreams, worries, preoccupation, presentiments, presuppositions cannot dis-
appear completely precisely because it cannot be completely realized. It is the
very non-realizability of pure possibilities, which move into the area of the
“other” as they are partially realized, that constitutes the modal characteristic
of something we call “eternity.” It can be supposed that the area of the eternal
is expanding in time, since the rise of new possibilities increasingly surpasses
the rate of their realization. The eternal is a function of this modal surplus
– the flow of the possible into the area where it remains in itself, not disap-
pearing and not being realized; that is, it stays only and exceptionally possible.
According to Leibniz, “essences are everlasting because they only concern
possibilities.”4
Now we can see all this only “through a glass darkly.” However, in this life, we
clearly see that which with hope and love we suppose to be in the other world:
on all levels, from cellular to historic, the possible in life constantly increases.
At present, the actual world is still serving as a starting point for the majority
of human activities directed towards understanding, using, and transforming
4 G.W. Leibniz, New Essays of Human Understanding, trans. and ed. P. Remnant and J. Bennet
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 296.
reality. However, as the mental sphere expands, the human world passes more
and more into the mode of the possible. The factual universe gets progressively
dissolved in the universe of texts, signs, information, and computers.
Philosophy, creating concepts on the basis of given facts, directs and leads
this process, which can be defined as change of world modalities. The once
reigning modalities of the real and the necessary look more and more like is-
lets of the obsolete in this ocean of possibilities. At the doors of the new histor-
ic epoch reality passes into the subjunctive mode. Now we strive to possibilize
reality while in the past we attempted only to realize possibilities. This modal
philosophy inspires us to become a possibility for other people and perceive
them as open possibilities. The subjunctive mode is a huge sphere of new spiri-
tual experience, new tact, tolerance, and intellectual generosity, to which the
philosophy of the possible can serve only as an introduction. The best of all
possible worlds is the world that is still possible; more precisely, it is the world
of possibilities themselves.
Appendix
⸪
To Be Able, to Be, and to Know: a System of
Modalities
In Philosophy of the Possible we concentrated on only one of the modal categories,

which, as it seems, is the most significant for the contemporary development of the
humanities. In this Appendix we propose a general classification of modalities. Our
goal was to build a system with a minimum of basic definitions which would allow us
to construct a maximum of known modalities, as well as to characterize such modal
properties that have not yet been described. The maximum of conclusions from the
minimum of premises – such is the goal of any theory.
The proposed system of construction of modalities is far from being ideal. However,
at least in regard to premises we hold ourselves to a minimum, deriving all the modali-
ties from the predicate “to be able” (moch) in combination with the particle “not” and
the predicates “to be” and “to know.” In other words, the code from which all the variety
of modal statements are derived consists of four signs: “to be able,” “be,” “know,” and
“not.” Consequently, we could describe twenty modal categories, exhausting all the
possible combinations of the given predicates, and eight categories that we character-
ize as premodal and super-modal.
Modalities are divided into three main groups: ontic,1 epistemic, and pure, or poten-
tionalistic, based solely on the “to be able” predicate.
The ontic modalities are constructed with all the possible combinations of the pred-
icates “to be able” and “to be” (possibility, necessity).
The epistemic modalities, with the combinations of the predicates “to be able” and
“to know” (certainty, doubt).
The potentional modalities, with the predicate “to be able,” which may be monomial
(consisting of one predicate) or binomial, that is combined with another predicate “to
be able” (power – ability to be able, etc.)
The further introduction of one more parameter allows us to distinguish active and
passive voices inside the pure modalities (“I am able” – “it is possible for me”).
Consequently, a systematic derivation of modal categories from all the possible
combinations of the predicates “to be able,” “to be,” and “to know” allows us:
(1) to define a specific property of modality in sufficiently broad, yet restrictive
terms;
1 The modalities of the actual, the possible, and the necessary are often called alethic (from
the Greek “aletheia,” truth); however, the term “ontic” (from the Greek “ontos,” existence)
appears more appropriate, since these modalities include the predicate “to be” and correlate
“ableness” (potency) and existence.

(2) to relate all modal categories according to the principle of minimal differences;
that is, to show that in the language of modality, as well as on other structural
levels of language (phonetic, grammatical), each category relates to others on
the basis of presence or absence of some minimal attribute, in this case one of
the four signs of the modal code – “be able,” “be,” “know,” and “not”;
(3) to delineate more precisely the area of modalities, including categories which
are traditionally seen as modal (“the possible,” “the necessary,” etc.) and catego-
ries that show modal properties, not usually analyzed in this respect.
One could draw analogies with Dmitry Mendeleev’s periodic table of the elements: by
taking as a basis the atomic numbers of all the known elements and calculating their
relations, it is possible not only to describe the already known elements, but also to
predict or synthesize some unknown ones. Having defined a principle of correlation
of known, accepted, modal categories, we can apply this principle to the description of
such actions that have not yet been analyzed as modal.
Appendix 1
Definitions of Modality
A Typical Definitions
Modality is one of the most mysterious categories of language and thought. Most of-
ten, it is defined by listing of different types of modality, such as “possible” and “impos-
sible,” “necessary” and “contingent.” For example, Webster’s Dictionary, one of the most
authoritative dictionaries, defines modality as “That qualification of logical proposi-
tions according to which they are distinguished as asserting or denying the possibility,
impossibility, contingency or necessity of their content.”1
This definition can hardly be considered successful, since it is circular and contains
a tautology. Yet another definition from a different edition of Webster’s Dictionary de-
fines modality as the predication of an action or a state in a way which differs from
stating a simple fact.
However, the predication of a state as a “simple fact” constitutes itself one of the
modalities – namely, the “actual” one. Is it possible to introduce in the definition of
modality something which would presuppose a certain number of modalities, but
would be more than a simple listing of them?
Let us turn to philosophical dictionaries and encyclopedias. Almost all of them give
extremely broad and general definitions of modality, allowing a number of various
categories and predicates to fit them.
(1) “A way (ways) in which something exists or occurs (ontic M.) or is thought of
(epistemic and logical M…).”2
(2) “A way of existing of an object or occurring of an event (notice/ ontological M.)
or a way of understanding of a statement about an object, phenomenon or event
(gnostic and logical M.).”3
(3) “A type and way of being or event.”4
1 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Chicago:
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1986), vol. 2, p. 1451.
2 Filosofskaia entsiklopediia v 5 tt (The Philosophical Encyclopedia in 5 volumes) (Moscow:
Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1964), vol. 3, p. 478.
3 Filosofskii entsiklkopedicheskii slovar’ (The Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary) (Moscow:
Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1989), p. 373.
4 Kratkaia filosofskaia entsiklopediia (The Short Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (Moscow: Progress,
1994), p. 273.

(4) “The manner in which the proposition (or statement) describes or applies to
its subject matter. Derivatively ‘modality’ refers to characteristics of entities or
states of affairs described by modal propositions.”5
(5) “The modal value of a statement is the way or ‘mode’ in which it is true or false…”6
(6) “In logic, the alternatives for classifying propositions with respect to their rela-
tions to existence. The three widely recognized modes are those of possibility,
actuality, and necessity.”7
(7) “The way in which a sentence may characterize another related sentence or
proposition as true, that is, the mode in which it is true. For instance, a logical
modality may be attributed to a proposition p, by saying that it is logically neces-
sary, or contingent, or logically impossible that p.”8
The definitions of modality as “the way of being,” “the manner of relating to existence,”
or “the way of characterizing a sentence as true or false” may, in principle, be applied
to any statement or predicate. For instance, could it not be said that “to grow” is a way
of existence; “to see” a manner of relating to existence; “to lie” a way of characterizing
a sentence as false? That’s why after those vague and too general definitions there usu-
ally follows a list of commonly accepted modal categories, which, as a rule, contains
three items: “actual,” “possible,” and “necessary.”
For example, in the five-volume Philosophical Encyclopedia, after the general defini-
tion of modality as “the way in which something exists or occurs … or is thought of”
(see #1 of our list), there follows a list of modal categories: “into the ontic category
enter possibility or impossibility (of existence of something), actuality (factual exis-
tence of objects or events), necessity or contingency (of processes or events).”9 Here a
logical jump can be seen between the general (defining) and concrete (enumerating/
listing) parts of the definition. Why were precisely such categories as the “possible”
and the “necessary” chosen as “the ways of existence or thought”? Why not “evident,”
“essential/substantial,” “favorite,” “unity,” “difference,” and so on? In the same way, the
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, after the above-quoted definition (see #4), im-
mediately offers a list of modalities: “modalities are classified as follows: Assertoric
propositions are expressions of mere facts. Alethic modalities include necessity and
possibility” and so on.10
5 The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, gen. ed. Robert Audi, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1999), p. 574.
6 Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford
7 William Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion. Eastern and Western Thought
(Atlantic Highlands, N.J. and London: Humanities Press, 1999), p. 486.
8 Antony Flew (ed.), A Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: St. Martin Press, 1979), p. 235.
9 Filosofskaia entsiklopediia v 5 tt, vol. 3, p. 478.
10 The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 574.
Definitions of Modality 315
There is no logical connection between the general (too general) and the specific
(too specific) parts of these definitions, between the definition itself and the concrete
examples. It is impossible to conclude from the given list of modalities which substan-
tial and necessary characteristics unite them in a way that excludes from this list any
other varieties of predicates or attributes.11
B The Specific Definition
The system proposed below allows us to start with such a definition of modality that
logically develops into a classification of modal categories in which each category rep-
resents a necessary special case of the general principle. Preliminarily, we could define
modality as (1) the type of proposition which (2) is characterized by the predicate “be able”
(3) by itself or combined with the predicates “be” or “know” (4) and may be expressed posi-
tively as well as negatively (with the adverb “not”).
In other words, modality is the sum total of relations and meanings, the description
of which necessarily includes the predicate “be able” (Latin “posse,” “Russian “moch”).
Further analysis will show that it is precisely the concept of “be able” that is a common
element of such fundamental modal categories as possible, necessary, and contingent
(“ontic” modalities); assumption, certainty, and doubt (“epistemic” modalities). In ad-
dition, the selection of the predicate “to be able” allows us to conduct further analysis
of modalities and to systematize such concepts as “ableness” and “need,” “permission”
and “prohibition,” “coercion” and “tolerance,” “will” and “desire,” “power” and “love,”
“marvelous” and “due,” which are rarely or never analyzed from the modal point of
view.
11 In a number of authoritative editions modalities are not discussed at all. For example,
the largest English language philosophical encyclopedia, Routledge Encyclopedia of Phi-
losophy, 10 vols, ed. Edward Craig (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) offers only an
entry about modal logic and its philosophical implications, defining the subject of this
discipline extensionally, that is, by enumerating modalities: “Modal logic, in the narrow
sense, is a study of the principles of thinking connected to necessity and possibility. In
a broader sense, it encompasses a series of structurally similar schemata of derivation”
(an indication to deontic and epistemic logic follows) (vol. 6, p. 417). The same approach
to the definition of modalities through listing is characteristic also for many philosophi-
cal encyclopedias of other countries. For example, the French Dictionary of Philosophical
Concepts states, “In the narrow sense, we speak about modality when the content of a
statement is not only asserted, but modified (that is, made stronger or weaker) by the
idea of necessity, impossibility, possibility, or contingency.” According to this dictionary,
modality in a broader sense encompasses any statement including an adverb, i.e., a char-
acteristic of action, such as “well” or “quickly.” Les notions philosophiques. Dictionnaire,
vol. 2, ed. Sylvain Auroux (Paris: Press universitaires de France, 1990), p. 1645.
The predicate “to be able” is central to the definition of specific modal characteris-
tics of propositions and of all the modalities: ontic and epistemic, which include the
predicates “be” and “know,” as well as pure modality, based solely on the predicate “to
be able.” Such an analysis places the category of modality outside the scope of ontol-
ogy and epistemology and calls for the creation of a different philosophical discipline.
(More about this can be found in the final section “Potentiology.”)
Appendix 2
Оntic Modalities (Modalities of Being)
A “To Be” and “To Be Able” in the Ontological and Modal Perspectives
As a concept, “to be” has always been of far more importance and influence in the
history of thought than the concept “to be able.” Since antiquity, philosophy has been
“possessed” by the concepts of “existence” and non-existence,” which constituted the
core of the basic philosophical systems. On the other hand, “to be able,” as the integral
category that, in its turn, gives rise to the concepts of “possibility” and “potency,” was
relegated to the periphery of thought. Probably it was for this reason that the category
of “modality” was formalized and regarded as pertaining primarily to the area of logic
and grammar. It was not related to the meaningful and strictly philosophical category
“to be able,” which in its metaphysical and theological depth can be compared only
to the category “to be.” The status of modality in philosophical research can, without
much exaggeration, be compared to a hypothetical case in which existence would have
been analyzed only as the linking verb “be” in grammar and logic (“A is A,” “A is not not-
A”), and there would not be any of those profound concepts of existence, “existing as
existing,” which constitute the basis of the “eternal tradition” of Western thought from
Parmenides to Heidegger.
Nevertheless, “existence,” the widest of all philosophical categories, constitutes
only one of the modalities alongside the possible and impossible, necessary and
contingent – namely, the actual one. Consequently, for a meaningful formulation of
modal problems we need to step outside the frame of ontology, which is mostly con-
cerned with categories of existence and essence. The difference between “to be” and
“to be able” is deeper than that between “existence” and “essence,” since both of the
latter are strictly ontological and represent the splitting of the single characteristic of
“being” into the existence of a quality, a universal – and the existence of an individual.
An essence, at least in its traditional interpretation, answers the question “What is
this object?” and presupposes an even more stable, perpetual existence than that of
an individual. The philosophy of modality transcends the limits of essentialism, which
postulates the existence of independent essences; as well, it surpasses the limits of
existentialism, which considers that the basis of everything is the existence itself, pure
being, or its negation, “nothing.”
The true “other” in relation to being is not its negation (“not being,” “nothing”), but
“to be able” as a specific mode or state, untranslatable into the language of existence.
Something “able” or “possible” cannot be called either existent or non-existent. Since
the philosophy of existence (existentialism) during the 19th and 20th centuries stood

in such a strong and fruitful opposition to the philosophy of essence (essentialism),

we can expect that the 21st century, in search of alternative ways of philosophy, will
base philosophy on the category “to be able” (posse) and so will become the era of
possibilism.
B Existence and Non-existence
The ontic mode includes two basic predicates, “to be able” and “to be,” and denotes dif-
ferent ways and degrees of “ableness” in respect to reality, different degrees of intensity:
power and weakness (infirmity) of existence and non-existence. We will use the term
“ableness” as a substantivization of the predicate “to able,” a terminological counter-
part of “existence” and “knowledge.”1
In the construction of a modal system, it is important to define a “modal level” that
unites two modes differing only by the negative adverb “not.” Whether the predicate is
expressed in a positive or a negative form does not change the manner of predication.
For example, statements such as “Rhinoceroses exist in the observable universe” and
“Unicorns don’t exist in the observable universe” share the same – indicative – level of
the modal scale.
We are going to start our construction from the level on which the modes “be” and
“not to be,” or “existence” and “non-existence,” are found. This is the only level that does
not include the predicate “to be able”; consequently, we will call it “pre-modal.” On the
intensity scale, it occupies the medium position, since all other ontic modes express
either stronger or weaker levels of existence or non-existence. The categories of “ex-
istence” and “non-existence” are considered modal precisely owing to the significant
lack of the characteristic of “to be able” (just as in the grammar of a language a zero
ending is a part of the paradigm of declension or conjugation of a word).
Essentially, a modality consists of different modes and gradations of “to be able” in
its relation to existence (as well as to knowledge and other, more concrete states and
actions). If there were no other modalities with the characteristic of “to be able,” then
the categories of “existence” and “non-existence” would be regarded not as modal but
as purely existential.
C The Possible and the Contingent
The next modal level introduces the predicate “to be able” and connects it to the predi-
cates “to be” and “not to be.” It allows for alternative ways of constructing the system,
1 The original Russian terms are “moch” (to be able) and “mozhestvovanie” (ableness).
Оntic Modalities (Modalities of Being) 319
depending on which of the two predicates, “to be” or “to be able,” is considered de-
terminant in the system of ontic modalities. For example, “possible” and “impossible”
can be unified on the second level as something that “is able to be” and “is not able to
be.” Here “possible” and “impossible” are united by the predicate “be” and contrasted
by the predicate “is able” – “is not able.” However, if we consider the predicate “be
able” determinant here, then on the second modal level we would place “possible” and
“contingent,” united by the predicate “is able” and distinguished by the negation “not,”
applied to the predicate “to be.” The possible is that which is not, but is able to be. The
contingent is that which is, but is able not to be.
In principle, both solutions are logically valid; however, since the antithesis
“possible”–“impossible” is obvious and has already been analyzed in the main part of
this research, we consider it more interesting to place the possible on the same level
with the contingent in such a way that the contingent will correspond to the realm of
existence, and the possible to non-existence. The contingent is existence which can
pass into non-existence, whereas, conversely, the possible is non-existence which can
pass into existence.
In this way “to be able” (unlike the mere “to be” and “not to be”) plays a role in
the definitions of both the contingent and the possible. From the contingent and the
possible starts the history of relations between “to be” and “to be able,” and, at the
same time, the history of “power” or might of existence itself in its opposition to non-
existence. The possible and the contingent are weak modal categories, because in them
the opposition of existence and non-existence is neutralized to a considerable degree:
that which is not but is able to be, and that which is but is able not to be. Through the
possible and the contingent, we discover those characteristics of existence and non-
existence in which these categories are not yet strongly opposed, but contain each
other.
Some thinkers who give preference to the actual, such as Aristotle or Hegel, are
inclined to identify the possible with the contingent. “That, then, which is capable
of being may either be or not … and that which may possibly not be is perishable”
(Aristotle2). “When thus valued at the rate of a mere possibility, the actual is a Con-
tingent or Accidental, and, conversely, possibility is mere Accident itself or Chance”
(G.W.F. Hegel3). However, even though, ontologically, the contingent and the possible
are barely distinguishable, there exists between them the same modal opposition as
between the possible and the impossible: their modal definitions differ by the adverb
“not.”
2 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1050b, p. 830.

3 Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, vol. 1, Science of Logic. § 144, https://www
.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slactual.htm.
D The Impossible and the Necessary
The further development of modal categories adds negation to the predicate “to be
able” itself, which had an affirmative form on the previous level of the possible-con-
tingent. The possible, “is able to be,” through negation becomes the impossible, “is not
able to be.” The contingent, “is able not to be,” through negation becomes the neces-
sary, “is not able not to be.” It follows that between the possible and the necessary there
are consequent negations of two predicates: the necessary is that what “is not able not
to be.” The correlation between the possible and the necessary via double negation
constitutes the very basis of the system of modalities and, consequently, is not easy to
define through more elementary concepts. If the possible is that which “is able to be,”
then the negation of the first of the two predicates gives impossibility (“is not able to
be”), while the negation of the second predicate results in contingency (“is able not to
be”). Taken together, these two negations produce necessity (“is not able not to be”).
Usually, double negation is regarded as emphatic assertion. According to a linguistic
encyclopedia, “repetition of negation results in affirmative meaning. ‘It is impossible
not to admit’ means ‘it must be admitted’.”4 It is obvious, however, that the original af-
firmative form of the given statement is “It is possible to admit.” Consequently, double
negation not only preserves or emphasizes the meaning of possibility (otherwise we
would have ended up with statements such as “It is quite possible”), but also transfers
the statement in question into an altogether different modality, “must.” Most probably,
it occurs because double negation affects not just one, but two, different predicates
(compare: “not cannot” = “certainly can”; “cannot not” = “must”). In the stage of simple
negation of each of them, completely different modalities are formed: impossibility
(“is not able to be”) and contingency (“is able not to be”), which, united in double ne-
gation, produce the category of necessity. In this way the necessary is defined as the
double negation of the possible, or the impossibility-of-the-contingent. Etymologically,
the word “necessary” itself contains a double negation. The root of this word comes
from “cedere” (Latin for “yield,” an action which is related to something that is not
necessary and can be done without). “Necessary” literally means “unyielding,” “making
impossible that something could not happen or not be.”
From the above it follows that the necessary is logically derived from the possible
as the negation of the fact that something could not exist/happen. It is important to
notice that such double negation is characteristic exclusively of the predicate group
“to be able,” and that all the examples of assertive meaning resulting from double ne-
gation contain, as a rule, this modality. It should be added that double negation is not
only exclusively characteristic of the modal predicate: it is also a way of converting one
modality into another.
4 E.V. Paducheva, “Otritsanie” (“Negation”), in F.P. Filin (ed.), Russkiy iazyk. Entsiklopediia
(Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopedia, 1979), p. 186.
E Strong and Weak Modalities
In its degree of intensity, the predicate “to be able” never equates with the actuality:
it is either less intense (in the case of the possible) or more intense (in the case of the
necessary). The possible appears less actual and the necessary more actual than the ex-
isting. Graphically, the predicate “to be able” can be represented as a system of two co-
ordinates that show discontinuity precisely at the point of their expected crossing. The
actual (real, existing) has no projection on the axis of ableness, just as ableness, both in
its positive and negative forms (“is able” and “is not able”), does not correspond to any
moment of the actual existence. Ableness either falls short of the actual (the possible)
or surpasses it (the necessary), but is never identical to it and thus lacks an exact on-
tic equivalent. Consequently, the modalities can be divided into weak (hypointensive)
and strong (hyperintensive) according to their degree of intensity. The necessary is
more intensive and the contingent, less intensive than the actual. The contingent ex-
ists but is able not to be. The necessary not only exists, but is not able not to exist. The
possible is less intensive, while the impossible is more intensive than non-existence.
The possible is not, but is able to be, whereas the impossible not only is not, but is
not able not to be.
The necessary and the contingent can be seen as two opposite, namely strong and
weak – subcategories of the actual – while the impossible and the possible can be re-
garded as strong and weak subcategories of the non-existent. In this way, the necessary
and the impossible become, in their turn, mutually opposed categories. Moreover, they
are absolute opposites, because the existing and the non-existing are expressed here
in their strongest, categorical forms, as something that is not able not to be and some-
thing that is not able to be. The opposition between the actual and the non-existing
is a relative one, because these two categories are connected through the category of
“becoming.” What is becoming does not yet exist and, at the same time, already ex-
ists. On the other hand, such connection is absent in case of the necessary and the
impossible. As we will see later, these two can be connected only through superstrong
(supermodal) categories.
F The General Scheme of Ontic Modalities
The contingent and the necessary, the possible and the impossible are described by
four combinations of “be” and “be able” with the negation “not.”
Possible: is able to be;

Contingent: is able not to be;
Impossible: is not able to be;
Necessary: is not able not to be.
We see that all of the four categories are combined in pairs: the possible is paired with
the contingent, and the impossible with the necessary, according to the positive or
negative characteristics of “can”; the same pairs of categories are contrasted by the
characteristic of “be.” The possible is paired with the impossible, and the contingent,
with the necessary, according to the positive or negative characteristic of “to be,” and
the same pairs are contrasted by the characteristic of “to be able.” In this, (1) the pos-
sible and the impossible and (2) the contingent and the necessary form two separate
modal categories inside which the members are connected as assertion and negation.
Two other pairs (1) the possible–contingent and (2) the possible–necessary form
two different modal levels of intensity, the weak and the strong one (in comparison
with existence–non-existence as the middle level). The possible–contingent represent
the weak level of intensity, on which existence and non-existence find in themselves
each other’s potential (the contingent is the potential of the existent not to be; where-
as the possible is the potential of the non-existent to be). The impossible–necessary
represent the strong level of intensity, on which existence and non-existence strongly
oppose each other.
Ascribing numbers to these three levels of intensity, weak, medium, and strong, will
result in the following scheme. It will be given according to different combinations of
predicates and then, according to names of the categories.
Predicates: Categories
1. Weak: is able not to be, contingent – is able to be, possible;
2. Middle: be, existence – not be, non-existence;
3. Strong: is not able not to be, necessary – is not able to be, impossible.
In correspondence with these levels, the following relations can be distinguished: the
weakest opposition, mutual convergence between the contingent and the possible;
the middle opposition, mutual transition (coming into being) between the existent
and the non-existent; the strongest opposition, mutual exclusion between the nec-
essary and the impossible. In the contingent and the possible, existence and non-
existence take a step towards each other; in the necessary and the impossible, they
diverge even more, becoming, in terms of their intensity, double existence and double
non-existence. Conversely, the contingent can be called half-existence, and the pos-
sible half-non-existence. The resulting gradations of modalities may be seen on the
following scheme:
1. half-existence – half-non-existence;
2. existence – non-existence;
3. double existence – double non-existence.
From the first to the third level, the intensity of existence and non-existence in relation
to each other grows, as well as the intensity of their mutual opposition.
The highest intensity is represented by the relation that pertains between modali-
ties, when the least possible becomes the most necessary. Such is the state of miracle
and faith, which will be considered below.
G Supermodalities: the Due and the Miraculous
In comparison with the impossible and the necessary, there exists an even higher level
of intensity in the mutual relation of modalities. It is the case when the “double,” strong
modalities of the impossible and the necessary, combine with the medium modalities
of the opposite group – correspondingly, existence and non-existence. These are “su-
permodalities,” whose intensity reaches the level of paradox since the necessary, that
which is not able not to be, turns out to be non-existent, and, vice versa, the impossible,
that which is not able to be, turns out existent.
In the first case, we have the supermodality of duty or obligation (dolg); in the sec-
ond, the supermodality of miracle (chudo). The due is defined as the necessary which
is non-existent in general, or non-existent at present, even though it is not able not to
be. When we say “the planets necessarily orbit the Sun,” this is a pure modality of the
necessary. We do not say “the planets ought to orbit the Sun,” or “boiling water must
turn into vapor,” in the sense of duty or obligation, because the necessary in these
cases not only is not able not to be, but also is. When, however, we say “people should
love each other,” this is the necessary which does not take place in reality and thus is
defined as an obligation. If we believe that people are not able not to love each other
because they are brothers, children of the same father, or because they belong to the
same species of intelligent beings, but that in reality this is not the case, fails to occur,
then we define the moral necessity in terms of the due; that is, of something which is
not, but nonetheless is not able not to be.
In the same vein, the marvelous is the impossible defined as existent: that which
is not able to be, but is. For instance, according to the laws of nature, resurrection or
immaculate conception are impossible, and if this impossible happens nonetheless, it
is called a miracle.
There is a deep structural similarity between the due and the miraculous on the
level of the “supermodal” tension between the “double” modalities of one group and
the “medium” modalities of the opposite group; the relation between them is adver-
sative (the conjunction “but” can be inserted). In the scheme presented above, the
supermodalities can occupy the additional fourth line:
4) is not able not to be, but is not: duty – is not able to be, but is: miracle.
It is on the basis of superstrong modalities that religious texts are constructed; see, for
example, the Gospels, where the “due” (dolzhnoe) and the “miraculous” (chudesnoe)
constantly complement each other. The actions of God in relation to men appear in
the mode of the miraculous, whereas the actions of men in relation to God appear in
the mode of the due. Events in Christ’s life are miraculous, while the actions of people
whom He addresses are due. The miraculous and the due are directed towards each
other, because the impossible (Christ) already is, while the necessary human actions
are not yet. The miracle has happened, but the due is still not done. The due and the
miraculous presuppose and potentiate each other as the greatest tension in the modal
relations between the existent and the non-existent. It is precisely this connection of
the impossible with the existent and the necessary with the non-existent that lies in
the core of religion, establishes the connection of two worlds. The impossible is that
which cannot be in our world, because it is different; the necessary is that without
which our world cannot exist, because it is different.
In this way, both the due and the miraculous denote an extremely intense relation
of the given world to the other one, as the existence of the impossible and the non-
existence of the necessary.
The modal analysis shows the futility of all the attempts to rid religious texts of the
miraculous, leaving only the due; such was the Protestant “demythologization” of the
Holy Scripture in the spirit of Leo Tolstoy or Rudolf Bultmann. In the domain of super-
modalities where the events described in the Scriptures occurred, the due cannot be
separated from the miraculous. The due is defined as human will ascending towards
God, and the miraculous, as Divine will, descending towards men (absolution, healing,
redemption, resurrection). It is impossible to cross out one and leave the other; the
ethical side of the Bible is tightly connected with its mystical side. If we eliminate the
miraculous on the basis that it is impossible and serves solely as a moral symbol and a
stimulus for men to fulfill their duty, then, on the same basis, we could eliminate the
due. “The necessary which does not exist” is just the same contradiction in terms as
“the impossible which exists.” The understanding of religious texts is possible only on
the level of the superstrong modalities.
The general scheme of ontic modalities on all the levels of intensity (weak, me-
dium, strong, and superstrong) is as follows:
Table A Ontic modalities on all the levels of intensity: (1) — weak; (2) — medium; (3) —
strong; and (4) — superstrong
(1) possible contingent
(2) existent non-existent
(3) necessary impossible
(4) due miraculous

Appendix 3
Еpistemic Modalities (Modalities of Knowledge)
While the combinations of “to be able” and “to be” form the domain of the ontic mo-
dalities, epistemic modalities are constructed by the combinations of the predicates
“to be able” and “to know”; that is, they appear at the intersection of epistemology
and potentiology. We will not repeat here all the categorial classifications of the previ-
ous chapter: the epistemic modal plane mostly repeats the configuration of the on-
tic one, with the sole difference that “ableness” of existence become here “ableness”
of knowledge: presupposition and doubt, evidence and non-evidence, certainty and
uncertainty.
The middle zone of the epistemic modality contains the predicates “know” and “not
know,” which correspond to the ontic modalities of “be” and “not be.”
to be to know;
not to be not to know.
These “zero” categories are inscribed in the circle of modalities precisely because of
the significant lack of the predicate “to be able.”
Further, weak and strong modalities of knowledge are defined, in parallel with
the same degrees of intensity in ontic modalities. In the group of weak modalities,
supposition (hypothesis) corresponds to the possible and doubt (skepticism), to the
contingent. Supposition is a possibility of knowledge, a passage from ignorance to
knowledge; doubt is a possibility of ignorance, a passage from knowledge to igno-
rance. In the first case, it is assumed that I am able to know something; in the second,
that I am not able to know something (by analogy with the modalities of the possible
(“is not, but is able to be”) and the contingent (“is, but is able not to be”).
is able to be is able to know

Possibility Supposition (hypothesis)
is able not to be is able not to know
Contingency Doubt
The two other epistemic modalities represent modal assertions and negations that
are stronger than the first statement of knowledge or ignorance. Certainty is such an
epistemic state in which I suppose something to be existent regardless of my factual
knowledge: I do not simply know, but I am not able not to know. In our analogy with
the modalities of knowledge and existence, certainty corresponds to necessity, just as

its antipode, doubt, corresponds to contingency. He is certain who is not able not to
know; that is necessary which is not able not to be.
Impossibility has an epistemic analog as well: incomprehensibility (nepostizhi-
most’), inscrutability, unthinkability, unrepresentability, inadmissibility. If ignorance
is the lack of knowledge, then incomprehensibility and other synonyms of this modal
row denote the impossibility of knowledge in principle, that which philosophy calls
“agnosticism.”
is not able to be is not able to know

Impossibility Incomprehensibility
is not able not to be is not able not to know
Necessity Certainty
Finally, on the basis of the combination of the modalities of the third row with the
opposite modalities of the second row, the superstrong modalities of faith and wisdom
appear. They correlate with the superstrong ontic modalities of the miraculous and
the due.
There exists an epistemic necessity which does not correlate with any actual
knowledge, “I don’t know, but I am not able not to know.” The Socratic formula of
“knowing-nothing,” “I know only that I know nothing,” and the Platonic formula of
“omniscience,” “anamnesis,” “I know that which I have never known,” both fall into the
modality of wisdom and complete each other. In both cases, we have the gap between
the necessary knowledge and the factual ignorance: “I know that I am not able to know
anything” (Socrates); “I am not able not to know that which I do not know” (Plato).1
There exists also an epistemic impossibility which, nonetheless, is correlated to
knowledge: “I am not able to know, but I know.” I am not able to know whether God ex-
ists or what awaits my soul after death. However, the knowledge of these things, which
are impossible to know, is given by faith. “I believe because it is absurd.”2 Tertullian’s
1 According to Plato, knowledge is acquired through anamnesis, i.e., remembering of things

which the immortal soul already knows, having learned them beyond experience before its
birth (the dialogs Menon, Phaedo). In this way, a slave boy is not able not to know that which
he actually “does not know”: he has never studied geometry, but in response to Socrates’s
questions reveals the knowledge, inherent in human soul. “The soul, then, as being immortal,
and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this
world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should
be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything …
for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection” (Plato, “Menon,” trans. Benjamin Jowett,
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/meno.html).
2 “The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And He was
buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible” (Tertullian, On the Flesh of
Christ, 5; http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0315.htm). Here one can see an obvious connec-
tion between faith and miracle, which is analyzed below.
Еpistemic Modalities (Modalities of Knowledge) 327
statement reveals the modality of faith as impossible knowledge, knowledge of that in

which it is impossible to believe, because it contradicts both experience and common
sense. If wisdom is knowledge in the mode of superstrong necessity, faith is knowledge
in the mode of superstrong impossibility.
Consequently, the epistemic modalities can be represented in the following table
according to their degree of intensity:
Table B Epistemic modalities on all the levels of intensity: (1) — weak; (2) — medium; (3) —
strong; and (4) — superstrong
1. Weak
Supposition Doubt
2. Medium
Knowledge Ignorance
3. Strong
Certainty Incomprehensibility
4. Superstrong
Faith Wisdom
(I am not able to know, but I know) (I do not know, but I am not able not
to know)
As we can see, all the ontic modalities have their counterparts in the configuration of
the epistemic field. In ontic modalities, faith is correlated with the miraculous, that
which is, even though it is not able to be. Wisdom is correlated with the necessary,
that which is not able not to be, even though it is not. Wisdom and faith constitute two
epistemic aspects of modally superstrong religious discourse, just as the miraculous
and the due constitute its ontic aspects. Faith overcomes the incomprehensibility,
knows that which is impossible to know. Wisdom overcomes the self-confidence of
knowledge, does not know that which is impossible not to know and necessarily knows
that which it does not know from experience. Faith and wisdom are just as inseparable
in religious discourse as are the miraculous and the due, and their foundations are
laid together. This is evident from such Bible books as Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of
Solomon. It is precisely the religious discourse that is marked by this superstrong
modality of faith and wisdom, the miraculous and the due, when the impossibility
is connected with existence and knowledge, and necessity, with non-existence and
non-knowledge.
Appendix 4
Pure (Potentialistic) Modalities
Finally, the third group is constituted by potentional modalities,1 which can be called
“pure,” since their definitions do not contain the predicates “be” and “know” and are
based solely on different combinations of the predicate “be able” with the adverb
“not.” Here ontology and epistemology do not make part of the definition of the
purely modal predicate “be able,” which, thus, can be regarded as the basis of pure
potentiology.
In contrast with “be” and “know,” “be able” is such a predicate which is logically
and grammatically “self-valent”; that is, it can combine not only with other predicates
(“to be able to do”) but also with itself (“to be able to be able”). In the first case, we
have a monomial potentialistic modality, in the second case a binomial potentialistic
modality. In addition, a significant difference between the potential and the two other
groups of modalities, ontic and epistemic, is connected with the grammatical category
of voice. “Existence” does not divide into a subject and an object for the same reason,
because “to be” is not a transitive verb. “To know,” on the other hand, is a transitive
verb, and that is why epistemic modalities may be in either in the active or in the pas-
sive voice: “knowing – known,” “to feel doubt – to provoke doubt,” and so on. However,
since “to know” is not in itself a modal predicate, these differences of voice in the epis-
temic domain are devoid of modal characteristics.
Potentialistic modalities, formed by the predicate “to be able,” have two modally
specific voices: the active, characterizing the subject of a modal action (his capacities
and needs), and the passive, characterizing the object of a modal action (permission,
prohibition, etc.)
A Active Voice (Capacity, Need)
The first level of pure “ableness” is created by the single use of the predicate “to be
able,” with or without the negation “not”:
to be able to be not able
1 In our context the term “potentialistic” refers to the type of modalities based on pure potenti-
ality. The terms “potentialistic” and “potential” correlate similarly to the terms “possibilistic”
and “possible”: the former indicates the metalevel of modal description, the latter, its object.

Pure (Potentialistic) Modalities 329
This level is defined as the modality of capacity or incapacity. In contrast with the
ontic modality “is able to be”–“is not able to be,” that is the possible–impossible, the
modality of capacity is purely potentialistic. It is not related to the predicate “be,” to
the characteristic of existence or non-existence, but characterizes that which a certain
subject is able or not able to do.
The second level of potentialistic modality follows; here the single predicate “to be
able” is conserved, but the negation “not” is added:
to be not able not to… to be able not to…
In language, this seemingly complicated combination of the predicate “to be able”

with a double “not” is called simply “need.” “I feel a need” or “I want” is translated into
the modal language as the double negation around the predicate “to be able”: “I am
not able not.” Thus, “I need to sleep” can be expressed as “I am not able not to sleep.”
“I need a place to live” as “I am not able not to have a place to live” or “I am not able to
do without a place to live.”
Need as a pure modality is most closely related to necessity as an ontic modality.
Their predicate transcription shows this affinity:
is not able not to be – necessity

is not able not to do – need
This is why in the daily language a need can be expressed in terms of neces-
sity: “I need to sleep” – “It is necessary for me to sleep” – “I am not able not to
sleep.”
In its turn, “to be able not,” that is the lack of need, corresponds to contingency as
an ontic modality. “Is able not to be” corresponds to “is able not to sleep,” “is able not
to eat,” “is able not to read books.” The most often used expression for this modality is
“do without”: “do without sleep, food, books”; the noun that corresponds to this modal-
ity is “restraint” (“renunciation,” “abstinence,” “asceticism”). Interestingly, the relation
of need to capacity is that of double negation – of the predicate “to be able” and of
a concrete action attached to it: “to be not able not to do (something).” Need is “not-
capacity-not”: the incapacity of doing without sleep, food, for example, indicates that
one needs sleep or food.
In this sense, capacities and needs are reversible: need is a capacity, reinforced by
its double negation. A person who is able to play the violin is often not able not to play
the violin; that is, feels a need to play the violin. The higher the capacity, the deeper the
corresponding need. It means that c apacities and needs tend to converge in their do-
mains: we usually feel a need to do s omething which we are able to do. This is, in part,
why the famous Marxist s logan “from each according to his abilities, to each according
to his needs” acted upon people so convincingly, if not hypnotically: it contains

a hidden element of self-repetition. A person’s capacities come back to him under dou-
ble negation as his own needs: he is not able not to do something which he is able to do.
Thus, capacity and need in the domain of the pure modalities are analogous to possi-
bility and necessity in the domain of the ontic modalities, with the difference that instead
of the ontic predicate (“be”), in the pure modalities any other predicate (“do”) is used.
is able to be – possibility
is able to do – capacity
is not able to be – impossibility

is not able to do – incapacity
is not able not to be – necessity

is not able not to do – need
is able not to be – contingency

is able not to do – restraint
B Passive Voice (Permission, Coercion)
It has already been mentioned that the ontic modality, connected to the predicate
“be” lacks the category of voice. On the other hand, the predicate “do” presupposes a
separation into a subject and an object of action (“someone does something”). Con-
sequently, in the group of pure modalities there is a s eparation into two voices, active
and passive, since the subject of “ableness” can also play the role of its object. Whereas
in the active voice the subject “is able to do” something, in the passive voice he be-
comes an object of modal actions.
Capacity (“is able to do”) is translated into the modality of permission (allowance)
if the subject in this case of ableness appears as an object, he who is “allowed to do”
something. “Is not able to do” is translated into the modality of prohibition; “is not able
not to do” into the modality of command (order); “is able not to do” into the modality
of tolerance. The object of the predicate “is able” is defined by the modal actions of
permission, prohibition, command, or tolerance.
The modality of permission corresponds to the possible (“is able”) in the ontologi-
cal sphere; the modality of prohibition (“is not able”) to the impossible; the modality
of command to the necessary (“is not able not”); and the modality of tolerance to the
contingent (“is able not”).
Thus, in the potential, or pure, modalities, the grammatical category of voice

acquires modal characteristics, forming parallel rows of categories in the active and
passive voice. Capacity in the active voice corresponds to permission in the passive
voice (the analog of the possible); and need (necessity) in the active voice corresponds
to command (coercion) in the passive voice (the analog of the necessary).
Further, the lack of capacity (“I am not able”) in the active voice corresponds to
prohibition in the passive voice (“you are not allowed” as an object of modal action).
Finally, restraint, lack of need, capacity to do without something (“I am able not”) in
the active voice correspond to tolerance, permissiveness, non-obligatoriness in the
passive voice (“you are allowed to” as an object of modal action).
The following verbs correspond to the four predicates in the passive modal voice:
made to be able to is permitted (allowed)

made to be not able to is prohibited (forbidden)
made to be not able not to is commanded (ordered, coerced)
made to be able not to is exempt (tolerated, excused, released)
For example, “he is permitted to go abroad” can be modally rephrased as “he is made to
be able to go abroad.” If prohibited, he “is made to be not able to go abroad.”
These predicates correspond to the four ontic modalities:
permit – make possible

prohibit – make impossible
command – make necessary
tolerate – make contingent
Between “permit” and “prohibit,” as well as between “possible” and “impossible,” the
relation of exact opposition exists. The predicate “command” (“coerce”) lacks an exact
single antonym that would correspond to the “contingent” in the opposition “neces-
sary/contingent.” There exists a general modal field of such predicates as “let,” “let go,”
“allow to happen,” “yield,” “tolerate,” “neglect,” “release,” “excuse,” and so on – the fact,
which probably corresponds to the very character of the contingent, to the weak mod-
al position of the predicate “is able not to.” In contrast with “permit,” or give a positive
possibility of doing something, the verbs and expressions of this group mean a pos-
sibility of not doing something, of giving control over to anarchy, allowing a deviation
from the norm, from the necessary order, and so on. “Neglected garden,” “let oneself go,”
“tolerate dishonest practices,” “let the matters drift,” “release from obligation,” “admit
a violation” – all these expressions show characteristics of this modality, which cor-
responds to the ontological status of the contingent. The opposition between “permit”
and “tolerate” is the weakest one in the passive modal voice, as well as the opposition
between “possible” and “contingent” in the ontic modality.
Each one of the modalities of the passive voice has a phrase-operator: “it is pos-
sible/permissible,” “it is not possible/permissible,” “it is necessary/obligatory,” “it is not
necessary/obligatory.” In the passive voice, the predicate often acquires the form of the
past participle: “I am allowed to,” “I am forbidden to,” “I am ordered to,” “I am let to.”
The subject of the modal action sometimes plays the role of an indirect complement:
““it is permitted for me,” “it is forbidden for me,” “it is required from me,” “it is excusable
for me.”
There exists a large number of other verbs with varied modal shades, that is
verbs that include “to be able” into their lexical meaning: “authorize,” “grant,” “force,”
“impose,” “exempt,” “release,” “evade,” and so on. All of these are, to a certain extent,
synonymous with the above-mentioned principal verbs and belong to the four passive
modalities: permission – prohibition – coercion – tolerance. In all of them, the predi-
cates “to be able,” “to be not able,” “to be not able not,” and “to be able not” characterize
not the subject but the object of a given modal action. For example, “he is not able
not to go abroad” means, in the active voice, that he needs to go abroad; in the passive
voice, that he is coerced (commanded) to go abroad.
Thus, between the modalities of the active and the modalities of the passive voice
the following relations emerge:
active voice passive voice

(“ableness” of the subject) (“ableness” of the object)
to be able capacity permission

to be not able incapacity prohibition
to be not able not need coercion
to be able not restraint tolerance
C Second-order Modalities
Having analyzed the eight categories of pure modalities expressed by the monomial
predicate “be able,” we are now turning our attention to the group of binomial modal
predicates, expressed by the combination of “be able” and “be able.” Here the object of
ableness is neither the category of existence, as in the ontic modality, nor a concrete
action, as in the monomial predicates of pure modality, but the ableness itself. Here we
deal with, so to speak, pure modalities squared: capacity of capacity – will, and need
for need – desire.
1) Will and Power

The reduplication of the predicate “be able” produces the following modal opposition:
to be able to be able (moch moch) to be not able to be able (ne

moch moch)
On this level, the opposite relations of dominance and submission, power and lack of
power, and will and lack of will are defined. Will is the capacity of being capable, “be
able to be able,” whereas lack of will is the incapacity of capacity, “be not able to be
able.” Such is the second-order potentialistic modality; a concrete verb, coupled with
the predicate “be able,” is replaced here by the same predicate “be able,” in other words
the modality is reduplicated. While capacity is “be able” plus a concrete action, will is
“be able” plus itself, that is the capacity of enabling the ableness itself.
Compare, for instance, the following statements:
He shows capacity to learn.

He shows will to study.
Will is the capacity of forcing oneself to be capable: not only a capacity of performing
some action, but the capacity of creating capacity itself.
“Be able to be able” is the capacity, elevated onto the level of power; that is, the level
on which the ableness itself is enabled and the potency itself is potentiated. Whereas
the first-order capacity is related to concrete actions (occupations, professions, etc.),
the second-order capacity, expressed by the binomial predicate “be able to be able,” is
related to itself as the power of ableness, valuable in itself.
In will, this capacity is applied to capacities of the same subject, and in power, to
capacities of other people. Power is a pure second-order modality: the capacity of
delegating one’s own capacities to others, or of using others’ capacities as one’s own.
Powerful is not he who simply is able to do this or that, to play the violin or to solve
equations (the level of capacities), but he who possesses a more abstract and general
capacity – the capacity of being able in general, of being able to do that which differ-
ent people can do, and, especially, of being able to make others able or not. In contrast
with pure will, power presupposes different subjects of double ableness. The formula
of will reads: “X is able to make X able.” The formula of power reads: “X is able to make
Y able (not able, able not, not able not).” To have power means not only to be able to do
something, but to be able to make others be able or unable to do something; that is, the
capacity of permitting or prohibiting, of coercing or tolerating. The four modalities,
which have been described in the category of the passive voice, presuppose precisely
the powerful subject as the active subject of ableness:
I am able to make others able – I permit (allow)

I am able to make others not able – I prohibit (forbid)
I am able to make others not able not – I command (order)
I am able to make others able not – I excuse (exempt, release, admit, tolerate)
Ableness that plays the role of an object in the passive voice presupposes an active,
powerful subject, for whom the possibilities and impossibilities, necessities and con-
tingencies of the subordinate subject are but the four types of manifestation of his
own ableness. On the opposite end stands lack of power, inability of a subject to make
other subject(s) able or unable to do something. He may be able to perform concrete
actions and have concrete occupations, but he does not have the ability to exercise
power, to have somebody else’s ableness as an object to his own might.
2) Desire and Love

The following category of pure modality is defined as desire and abstinence:
is not able not to be able (ne mozhet ne moch)

is able not to be able (mozhet ne moch)
Desire (zhelanie) is related to need (potrebnost’), as will (volia) is related to capacity

(sposobnost’): this is a second-order subjective modality, where a concrete action con-
nected to a modal predicate is replaced by this predicate itself. Consequently, if the
ability of ability is will, then the need for need is desire. The difference between desire
and need, as well as that between will and capacity, consists in the vague and general
character of the object of desire, as well as of the object of will. Capacity and need are
modal relations of the subject to a concrete action, whereas will and desire are modal
relations of the subject to ableness itself.
The difference between need and desire is expressed by the pair of verbs “want
(khotet’) – wish (zhelat’),” which are synonymous only at the superficial level. Both
verbs are translated into the language of modal predicates as “be not able not”; how-
ever, in “want,” this common element is completed by some concrete object or action
(most frequently, “to have,” “to possess”) and in “wish,” by the second modal predicate
“be able.”
Even in the daily language, the word “wish” (zhelat’) is usually applied to such states
or objects that cannot fully satisfy one’s needs, which can be wished forever – for ex-
ample, “to wish for fame,” “to wish for riches,” “to wish for peace,” “to wish for happi-
ness,” “to wish for immortality” (but “to want (khotet’) jam,” “to want tea,” “to want a
kiss”). These are states which are either unreachable, or reachable only to a certain
degree; it is impossible to satiate such desires completely, because they contain an
inexhaustible source of new desires. Wealth and fame have no limits beyond which
one would stop wishing for them. Desire is, as a rule, a wish for something infinite, im-
possible: this defines its intensity in comparison with need, as well as the intensity of
will in comparison with ability. One may want a glass of water, but one may only wish
for some rare delicacy, such as, for example, pineapples in champagne. One may wish
for water only if one is in the desert, since then even water becomes something distant,
abstract, and nearly impossible to get.
The Dictionary of Word Combinability of the Russian Language gives the following
examples of usage for these two words:
To want (khotet’): bread, milk, cheese, tomatoes, sweets

To wish (zhelat’): happiness, good health, success … money, fame, power.2
Wanting refers to concrete objects, wishing, to such objects of which one can never
have enough; it is not that “it is not possible not to have them,” but “it is not possible
not to be able not to have them”; that is, objects without which one cannot do po-
tentially, rather than actually. “To want” is to feel a need: “I want to sleep,” “I want to
eat.” We rarely say “I wish to sleep” or “I wish to eat,” because sleep and food belong
to the level of regularly satisfied needs. Desire is free from that will impulse, leading to
practical satisfaction, which constitutes the basis of want.3 Desire wishes something
bigger than want does and, as it seems, is specific to humans. When the word “desire”
is used without complements and explanations, it means sexual desire (“He was full
of desire”), and precisely in this most general and normative meaning the difference
between desire and want can be especially clearly seen.
Sexual instinct in animals does not become desire, which needs ever new ways of
its satisfaction and creates a number of illusions, fantasies, deferments, symbolic re-
placements expressing the impossibility of its ultimate satiation. A satisfied need re-
mains the same need, whereas a satisfied desire looks for a new object of desire and/or
new ways of its satisfaction. Need is conservative; desire revolutionary. The desired is
constantly passing beyond the horizon of the reachable. New needs are born in human
2 P.N. Denisov and V.V. Morkovkin (eds), Slovar’ sochetaemosti slov russkogo iazyka (Moscow:
Russkii iazyk, 1983), pp. 155, 647.
3 Yury Apresyan makes the following distinction in the semantics of the two verbs: “The specif-
ics of the synonym “to want” (khotet’), especially in contrast with “to wish” (zhelat’), is that
it points at the efficiency of subject’s will. In other words, besides pure desire it presupposes
also the readiness of the subject to make efforts for its realization. /…/ The readiness to act,
in its turn, is motivated by the fact that the subject is convinced that the object he wants is
needed to maintain the normal conditions of his existence, including the simplest of them,
such as food, sleep, etc,” J.D. Apresyan (ed.), Novyi ob’iasnitel’nyi slovar’ sinonimov russkogo
iazyka (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 1997), p. 457. Thus, desire is want, purified of volition
directed towards its satistfaction, so to speak, desire that desires itself.
society when human needs turn into desires: for instance, a need for food becomes a
desire for ever finer delicacies, eventually turning into a new social need. Whereas a
need for food is manifested in the feeling of hunger, the need to eat cakes with straw-
berries and cream does not express the feeling of hunger anymore, but rather a need
to be hungry in order to have a possibility of satisfying the hunger again and again,
without ever becoming completely satiated. Need is a thirst that seeks to be quenched.
Desire, on the other hand, seeks to be quenched only to wish for more. Desire changes
its objects so easily, precisely because it is turned not towards concrete objects, but
towards the very need for these objects. Desire is a need to have a need, a longing for
longing itself.
In essence, desire is infinite, just as will, because they contain a modal mechanism
of self-reproduction, the self-referential mechanism of ableness. Will seeks infinite
power; desire, infinite pleasure. Whereas ability and need are finite modalities, will
and desire are infinite, because they contain an inbuilt mechanism of self-reproduc-
tion, self-duplication. “Be able to be able” presupposes a possibility of being continued:
“be able to be able to be able to be able,” which defines the infinity of will as the growth
of ableness. In the same vein, “be not able not” presupposes the infinite growth of de-
sire as the impossibility of not being able, an inability to do without something, a need,
constantly potentiating itself, going beyond the limits of everything it uses. The further
multiplication of predicates, constructing five- or ten-member modalities, does not
add anything significantly new to the modalities of will and desire, since they have an
inherent capacity of reduplication and are directed into infinity.
For the same reason, the word “wish” has one more meaning: not only to wish some-
thing for oneself, but also to wish something to someone else. It is not possible to say
“I want you good health” or “I want you a good trip,” but we say “I wish you.” “Want” is
connected to subject’s own needs, whereas desire, since it goes outside the limits of
needs, may be transferred to someone else, similarly to the way in which will, unlike
ability, can be transferred. The power function of will turns others’ will into the object
of my will, turns their “be able” into the tools of my ableness. In the same way, desire
can be transferred to others: “I am not able to do without your being able to be (happy,
healthy, loved, etc.).”
A wish directed towards someone else is always directed to infinity; not only does
its realization not depend on me, but it does not depend on the other person either.
This wish turns to impersonal forces – luck, chance, mercy – which can help the ad-
dressee of the wish, but cannot take the form of a satisfied need. In this gap between
desire and need, in the capacity of desire for referring to someone else, its potential
infinity, the condition of its impossibility, unrealizability, are manifested.
As power is the intensity limit for will, love is the intensity limit for desire. Love is
the “impossibility to be without”; that is, such a degree of desire that it is constantly
directed at the one object, without ever becoming satisfied and satiated with it. In
the same way, power is the constancy of will, fully concentrated on the subordinate
sphere, on the will of other individuals, and based on the structure of personal and
social interrelations. As institutionalization of power creates a state, institutionaliza-
tion of love creates a family. Love is the highest need for another being, whereas power
is the highest capacity of command over another being. We could say that love and
power are, to a certain extent, reversible: to love is to be in the beloved one’s power.
However, it has to be specified that this power does not come from the beloved’s capac-
ity of might, but from the one who loves, as his need to endow the beloved with such
a power.
Finally, “is able not to be able” (mozhet ne moch) is yet another modality of the same
order, counterposed to desire. In the everyday parlance, such a predicate combina-
tion is understood as a capacity to show abstinence, the ableness of being able not to
do something, a capacity to renounce one’s own capacity of doing something;
whereas “is not able” of the first order is the expression of incapacity, abstinence,
restraint, or self-control represent the power of powerlessness, the power of control
over one’s own power. Abstinence means renouncing desire, that is the power of being
powerless.
Double potentialistic modalities, where the predicate “be able” is reduplicated,
form the following table:
To be able to be able. Will (volenie) To be not able to be able. Lack of will power
(bezvolie)
To be not able not to be able. Desire (zhelanie) To be able not to be able. Absti-
nence (vozderzhanie)
It is noteworthy that on this higher level we can also see a correspondence between
the systems of ontic and potentialistic modalities. Such is the relation between mir-
acle and abstinence. A moderate person is able (subjectively) not to be able, just as
the person who performs miracles is able (objectively) to do something impossible.
A miracle is the existence of that which cannot be, whereas abstinence is the power
of the renouncing power. This is why abstinence and the capacity of performing mir-
acles together form the figure of a saint who can do the impossible and is powerful in
his powerfulness (infirmity). Stories about saints reach their culmination at the point
where the holy person abstains from using their power and, at the same time, performs
the impossible. Such is the Biblical scene of the death and the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. He dies because he is able not to be able, is able not to save himself; and he is
resurrected because he is able to do the impossible, is able to transcend death. To be
able to be powerless and to be able to do the impossible – such are the most intense
points at the scale of potentialistic and ontic modalities, and they intersect at the most
important event in scriptural history, in the death and the resurrection of Christ, in the
death of God and the resurrection of man, in the power of the powerlessness and in
the power of the impossible. “Might is done in weakness.”
In this way, all the predicates “be able” on which the system of modalities is based
reveal the scale of increasing power, which reaches its peak in the power of the mani-
festation of the lack of power and in the power of doing the impossible.
Appendix 5
The Final Tables
The above-described modalities are shown in the following tables, where each of the
categories is related to all others both vertically and horizontally. The first table shows
all the possible combinations of the modal predicates (“be able,” “be,” and “know”); the
second one replaces them with the corresponding modal categories.
It can be seen that the ontic and the epistemic modalities are more numerous
than the potentialistic ones. Indeed, the ontic and epistemic rows comprise the “zero”
Table 1 Modal categories
Modalities
Ontic Epistemic Potentialistic
Monomial Binomial
Active Voice Passive Voice
Premodalities
existence knowledge
nonexistence ignorance
Modalities Proper
possible supposition capacity permission will

impossible incomprehen- incapacity prohibition lack of will
sibility
necessary certainty need coercion desire
contingent doubt restraint tolerance abstinence
Supermodalities
miraculous faith
due wisdom

Table 2 Modal predicates
Modalities
Ontic Epistemic Potentialistic
Monomial Binomial
Active Voice Passive Voice
Premodalities
to be to know
not to be not to know
Modalities Proper
is able to be is able to is able made to be is able to be

know able able
is not able is not able is not able made to be is not able to
to be to know not able be able
is not able is not able is not able made to be is not able
not to be not to know not not able not not to be
is able not is able not is able not made to be is able not to
to be to know able not be able
Supermodalities
is not able is not able

to be, but is to know, but
knows
is not, but is does not know,
not able not but is not able
to be not
to know
modalities of “be” and “know” (and their negations), which do not include the pred-
icate “be able” and thus acquire modal characteristics only in relation to categories
which contain this predicate. “Existence” as such is an ontological category; only in
The Final Tables of Modalities 341
relation to “is able to be” or “is not able not to be,” that is in relation to the possible or
the necessary, does it become a modal category. We term “premodal” such “zero mo-
dalities,” in which their modal characteristic is expressed by the lack of the predicate
“be able.”
In addition, these two rows, the ontic and the epistemic (in Tables 1 and 2), include
the supermodalities, in which the predicates “be” and “know” are reduplicated. The
miraculous is that which is not able to be but is. The faith is that which I am not able
to know but do know. In this way, premodalities and supermodalities increase the
number of onto-modal and epistemo-modal categories, precisely because they consist
of either sole predicates of existence and knowledge (with the lack of the predicate
“be able”) or the reduplication of the same predicates.
Rows of pure, or potentialistic, modalities, built solely on the predicate “be able,”
turn out to be shorter vertically, but longer horizontally. Three rows are needed to ac-
commodate them, instead of only one. This is related to the specifics of the predicate
“be able,” which has two voice categories and can combine with itself, forming bino-
mial (double) predicates.
Thus, the definition of modalities which lies at the basis of our classification allows
to distinguish twenty modal categories proper, forming four rows in five columns. In
addition, we distinguish four premodal and four supermodal categories. This list, es-
pecially in the section of supermodal categories, is far from being exhaustive; it is pos-
sible that the most interesting discoveries await us precisely in the area of superstrong
modalities, where the impossible and the necessary, the actual and the impossible, and
the necessary and the non-existing are paradoxically combined.
Judging by Tables 1 and 2, the category of the possible, on which our research is
centered, occupies a rather modest place in the system of modalities: it is a weak
category (according to its intensity) of the ontic modality. However, if we analyze the
correlation of the modal predicates “be able,” “be,” and “know” in more detail, we will
notice that the possible plays the role of the central, axis, category, joining all three
predicates in their direct positive form: “to be able to be” and “to be able to know.”
Thus, the possible is that very point, at which the interests of the three most important
philosophical disciplines, the theory of existence (ontology), the theory of knowledge
(epistemology), and the theory of ableness (potentiology) cross.
It is also important to notice that the concept of “possibility” embraces not only the
“actually possible,” that which is “able to be”; it is used also for a nominative descrip-
tion of the characteristic of “being able” in general, as a noun with a broad semantic
spectrum (a more precise philosophical term for this is “ableness” or “potentiality”).
Whereas the category of the possible is ontological, that is includes the predicate “be,”
“possibility” in a broader sense, as the characteristic of “ableness,” can combine with
any predicate (a possibility of being, knowing, acting, working, etc.) Consequently, all
other modalities may be described in terms of possibility, as transformations of this
central category:
possibility: possibility of being

impossibility: impossibility of being
necessity: impossibility of not being

contingency: possibility of not being
supposition (hypothesis): possibility of knowing

incomprehensibility: impossibility of knowing
certainty: impossibility of not knowing
doubt: possibility of not knowing
capacity and permission: possibility of doing

incapacity and prohibition: impossibility of doing
need and command: impossibility of not doing
restraint and tolerance: possibility of not doing
will: possibility of being able

lack of will: impossibility of being able
desire: impossibility of not being able
abstinence: possibility of not being able
Appendix 6
Modal Categories in Various Disciplines
Whereas the previous chapters of the Appendix have been concentrated on the sys-
tem of modalities, the last two chapters will be dedicated to the system of the study of
modalities.
Modal categories are related to the most general characteristics of the universe and
human behavior. In virtually any discipline, we can find a specialty or sub-area that
studies the main categories of the given discipline from the point of view of their mod-
al aspects. We have already mentioned the category of the possible in ethics, psychol-
ogy, and theology. However, the modal sections of the corresponding disciplines cover
not only the possible, but also the most varied aspects of ableness, including necessity
and contingency, capacity and need, will and desire. We will cite examples from two
disciplines, situated on the opposite ends of the spectrum of human knowledge: eco-
nomics and eschatology.
A Be Able – Possess – Have Value: Modality in Economics
The central categories of economy and law – property and value – are based on the
modal categories of capacity and need. Property is a legalized form of ableness, the
object of which is material goods. The very predicate “possess,” as its etymology shows,
is related in many European languages to the root “able” and has the modal meaning
of ableness. In Latin, this connection is seen especially clearly: posse – to be able, pos-
sidere – to possess. Characteristically, the English words “possible,” “possess,” “potency,”
and “power” originate, via Latin, from the same proto-Indo-European root poti- mean-
ing “potent,” “powerful.”1 This etymological connection demonstrates the common
modal origins of the major categories of economics, law, and politics.
As a rule, the predicate “be able” refers to an action and is grammatically connected
to verbs/predicates: “be,” “know,” “do.” A special characteristic of possession, or prop-
erty as a modal category. consists in that here the object of ableness is not an action
but a thing. The meaning of the predicate “have” is defined as “be able + a noun denot-
ing an object”; “be able” acts here as pure potentiality in contrast with “be able to do
something,” in other words actually use some object. “Have” does not mean manipulat-
ing objects, doing something with them, using them in a particular way with particular
1 Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/word/*poti-?ref=etymonline

_crossreference.

goals in mind, but just being able to do all this potentially, to master the entire poten-
tiality of the given object. The famous dichotomy of two predicates, “be” and “have,” is
but a particular case of a more general dichotomy of “be” and “be able.” “Have” is to “be
able” as a characteristic of an integral relation of the subject to the object of ableness.
“To play the flute” is different from “to be able (= to possess) the flute itself”; that is, to
have it in one’s possession, “posse” as “possidere.”
Property is a more abstract form of ableness, which, however, relates to a more de-
fined, individual object. A flute player is capable of playing all the flutes, but, on the
other hand, he can only play them. In contrast, a proprietor can have only a particular
flute or flutes, but he can do anything he wants with them: to play them, trade them,
sell them, give them as a gift, destroy them. Possessing a particular thing (flute, clock,
house, factory) is not different from possessing other things, but each of these things
requires a certain mastery, an ability to use it. Possession of a thing relates to its use as
a potential relates to an action.
The category of property embraces the entire potential of a given subject in relation
to objects, whereas the category of power embraces his entire potential in relation to
other subjects. (In societies based on slavery or serfdom, there is no clear-cut distinc-
tion between of the spheres of power and property: in the latter, subjects also can be
objects of possession.) Possession is a potential that can be either realized or not in the
practical use of a possessed object. It is a pure form of ableness, which, precisely in its
abstract quality, is akin to power, when one subject possesses an ability in relation to
another subject. Governing people is as different from having power over them, in the
same way in which using a thing is different from possessing it.2
Whereas property is defined by the formula “I possess the given thing,” the value
of an object is defined by the extent to which “It is not possible for me to do without
it.” Value is a modal category that characterizes not the potential of a subject in regard
to an object, but the potential of an object in regard to a subject. It can be either a
direct relation (use value), or an indirect one, taken in comparison with the potentials
of other objects (exchange value). To possess and to have value are, to a certain ex-
tent, reversible categories that relate to each other approximately as capacity relates to
need: “that which I am able” and “that without which I am not able to do.” Possession
is my power over an object; value, on the other hand, is the power of an object over
me (to what extent it is “able me”). Property is related to the modality of the possible
(potential), whereas value is defined in terms of necessity: a thing has value only in-
asmuch as people need it, want it, are not able to do without it or are not able not to
possess it.
2 In Russian and other Slavic languages, “vlast’” (power) and “vladenie” (possession) have also
common etymology (proto-Indo-European root walǝ-).
Modal Categories in Various Disciplines 345
However, this subjective relation does not suffice for a strict economical definition
of value, which includes yet another aspect of necessity: the socially necessary work
and the socially necessary time, required to produce an article under the “normal,”
“average,” conditions of production on the level of technical development of a given
society. Value is a correlation of consumers’ need – how much people need a given
thing – and production necessity – how much time and work it takes to produce it. If
one of these necessities is absent, the thing has no value, just like air, which is needed
by everybody, but no time is needed to produce it, or a heap of broken furniture, the
production of which required an enormous expenditure of time, but which is needed
by no one.
Thus, in the world of economic relations, property and value are related in the same
way, in which possibility and necessity relate in the sphere of ontic modalities.
B Necessity and Immortality: Modality in Eschatology
Now we will turn to a sphere, maximally distanced from the laws of material
production and consumption. The most spiritual, “fleshless” discipline of theology is
eschatology, which analyzes the possibilities of human existence after death, as well
as the possibilities of existence of humankind after the end of the world. The modal
character of eschatological questions follows from the fact that the physical end of
man can mean stepping outside the limits of the modality of existence itself.
Life and death are usually contrasted in the sphere of the actual as existence and
non-existence. How then can the problem of immortality be formulated? Is it a catego-
ry of the actual modality, an infinite, though invisible, continuation of actual existence
as we know it? Or is it a transfer into another modality, defined as necessary – not
something that is, but something that is not able not to be? Through the possibilities
given to him by life, man gradually transforms himself from a contingent being, which
he was at birth, into a necessary one, which is not able not to be even when he stops
physically existing.
Traditionally, theology has solved the question of immortality substantially, that is
by postulating the existence of a special substance in man. The characteristic of be-
ing immortal has been ascribed to this substance, “soul,” thus distinguishing it from
the physical, mortal substance of the body. However, in the Scriptures, the modal
language is used at least as often and meaningfully as the substantial language. The
Scriptures speak not as much about the immortality of the soul in difference from
the body, as about the conduct necessary to be able to enter the Kingdom of God. The
Apostle Paul said, “The dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For
this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality”
(1 Corinthians, 15:52–53). Here it is clearly said that incorruptibility and immortality
are categories of the due, related not to some special substance in man, but to the
man as such, in his corruptibility and mortality. In the “Acts,” Paul and Barnabas talk
to their disciples, “exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through
much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts, 14:22). Also here, immortality
is discussed in modal, not substantial terms: it is “we,” humans, who must enter the
Kingdom of God, and not any separate part of us.
Without rejecting the possibility of substantialist interpretations, we must none-
theless admit that immortality is a category of the due, related to the man in his integ-
rity. This is why not only the soul, but also the body must be resurrected. The question
is not what becomes immortal, but how to become immortal: immortality is an obliga-
tion, that which must be in man, that which he must acquire.
Each individual is immortal to the degree and in the form in which he made himself
“obligatory,” that is transformed his “is” into “is not able not to be.” The question lies
not in existence as such, but in the multiple existence, which passes through a num-
ber of modal transformations and negations: “to be able to be” (possibility of birth),
“to be” (life), “to be able not to be” (contingencies and misfortunes of life), “not to be”
(death), “not to be able to be” (impossibility of the eternal prolongation of life), “not
to be able not to be” (impossibility of destruction, necessity of immortality). The last
one is termed “again-existence,” “double-existence,” in full accord with the superstrong
modal predication of that which not only is but is not able not to be.3
In the modal sense, immortality is a form of predication. It can be supposed that,
after the actual existence of individuals comes to an end, they stay precisely in those
modal worlds that they created in their lifetime by the forms of their predication.
Death does not alter anything: individuals and their predicates remain unchanged,
except that one of the predicates, namely, “be” (to exist) is crossed off the list, since it
becomes inaccessible. The modal system in which individuals will remain after death
depends on the predicates they choose while alive. Some individuals exist in the mo-
dality of the obligatory; others in that of the possible; others in the modality of will;
3 Earlier (in the Conclusion) it was said that the “other world” can be understood as a con-
tinuum of pure possibilities which exist eternally precisely because they cannot be realized.
In principle, these two views do not contradict each other. If the eternal is a continuum of
possibilities not finding realization, then the existence of an individual in this continuum is
defined by a different modal predicate, that of the necessary. In the domain of all that which
is only able to be, solely that which is not able not to be exists. This follows from the significant
difference between the volumes of the “receptacle” and that which is “contained” in it, i.e.,
the transcendental environment and its inhabitants. The “possible” is an inclusive, collective
criterion, while the “necessary” is exclusive and selective. In general, the problem of the cor-
relation of the possible and the necessary is so complicated, especially in the eschatological
questions of eternity and immortality, that it requires a separate study in the context of “su-
perstrong” modalities, such as “due,” “miraculous,” “faith” and wisdom.”
Modal Categories in Various Disciplines 347
yet others in the modality of desire. In substantial terms, this is projected as different
levels and areas of the other world, the images of hell, purgatory, and paradise.4
We have cited only two examples of modal themes appearing in different disci-
plines. It would also be appropriate to think of modal sub-areas in such disciplines as
physics, biology, history, political science, psychology, and law. For example, the study
of history from the modal point of view would be directed at its “missed” possibilities
and their meaningful role in understanding events of the past and present. The corre-
sponding branch of law would study the modal nature and structure of such categories
as law, permission and prohibition, freedom and compulsion.
4 For example, that which is called “hell” can be understood as the modality of pure volition,
which in the absence of objects turns into the suffering of a vicious circle – “an insatiable
worm,” “an inextinguishable fire.” A. Schopenhauer, an incomparable expert on volition,
wrote that the strenghtening of will leads to suffering: the will to live, stepping outside of
the limits of life, i.e., becoming a predicate without an object, grows more desperate and
tormenting. “The more intense the will is, the more glaring is the conflict of its manifesta-
tion, and thus the greater is the suffering. A world which was the manifestation of a far more
intense will to live than this world manifests would produce so much the greater suffering;
would thus be a hell.” A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. R.B.
Haldane and J. Kemp. 7th edn, (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015), p. 511.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_World_as_Will_and_Representation/Fourth_Book.
Appendix 7
Potentiology: the Prospects for the New Discipline
As it becomes clear from our systematic description of modalities, the predicate “to be
able” plays a central role in the definition of such important characteristics and rela-
tions of the universe as faith and hope, desire and will, permission and prohibition,
capacity and need, contingency and necessity, miracle and duty, power and love, prop-
erty and value. “Be able,” together with “be” and “know,” is one of the three most im-
portant predicates on which the entire thinkable universe is constructed. The modal
universe embraces even more than the universes of existence and knowledge, since it
includes the continuum of possible worlds.
However, the history of philosophy reveals a significant disproportion of interest in
the study of these “three whales” of the universe. Whereas the theory of existence and
the theory of knowledge constitute two main branches of philosophy, namely ontol-
ogy and epistemology, the theory of ableness, which could be called potentiology, still
remains very vague and poorly defined. In the study of “ableness,” there is no historic
continuity, no understanding of potentiology as an independent theoretical area, no
generally accepted terminology; instead, there exist only some individual philosophi-
cal systems that give a certain place to the category of “ableness.” However, the con-
nection between these systems has not yet acquired that regularity which would allow
them to form a stable, independent, philosophical discipline.
We could indicate at least six types of systems, six disconnected areas, in which the
problems of ableness are raised:
(1) Metaphysical doctrines of the act and of potency (actuality and potentiality), of
the possible and the necessary, going back to Aristotle and later developed by the
Stoics, scholastics, Leibniz, and Kant.
(2) Modal logic, also going back to Aristotle, as well as modern systems of formal
analysis of modal predicates, of quantification of possible worlds – Alexius Mei-
nong, Rudolf Carnap, Clarence Lewis, Jaakko Hintikka, Saul Kripke.
(3) Theological studies concerning faith and hope, salvation through faith, relation
of faith and reason, law and grace, will and providence – from Tertullian, St. Au-
gustin and Thomas Aquinas to Barth, Tillich, Maritain, and Bloch.
(4) Voluntarist doctrines of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, based on the concept of
the “world will” and “the will to power,” the kingdom of human “I am able”; the
concepts of libido, desire, unconscious, the will to pleasure and will to domi-
nance also belong here – Freud, Adler, Reich, Bataille.
(5) Political philosophy, studying social and historic forms of power, and related to it
philosophy of law, centered around the category of permission and prohibition –
from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Dewey, Marcuse.

Potentiology. The Prospects for the New Discipline 349
(6) The philosophy and methodology of mathematics, cybernetics, and natural sci-
ences, studying the probabilistic nature of the universe, the role of chance and
statistic laws of the microworld, random and chaotic processes, digital models of
information transfer, etc. – from Pascal to Bohr, Heisenberg, Wiener, Prigogine.
All these intellectual traditions, strong and influential enough in themselves, show
their fragmentary character in regard to the main concept that could unify them –
the concept of “being able.” All these branches approach the category of “ableness”
independently from one another and often do not have even the slightest idea about
the affinity of their objects of study. Political philosophy knows nothing and, probably,
does not even want to know anything about the theory of probability, the modal logic,
or about the Nietzschean voluntarist conceptions. Leibniz’s metaphysics of possible
worlds does not relate to Freud’s teachings about Eros and libido. It is difficult to find
any historic connection between Schopenhauer’s philosophy of will and the proba-
bilistic approach of Bohr to quantum phenomena, or between the analysis of modal
predicates in Lewis and the “courage to be” in Tillich. Yet will, possibility, probability,
potential, desire, power, faith are but various forms of ableness, its political, ethical,
psychological, physical, theological, and other projections. The predicate “to be able”
(posse) inevitably forms part of the description of all these phenomena.
Whether we speak of state power, the ruling capacity of a social class, legal or moral
prohibitions, strength of individual will, erotic desires, belief in divine revelation, possi-
bility of the existence of other worlds, or probability of collision of elementary particles,
“ableness” is present as a universal characteristic, an all-embracing potential of man and
the universe, which has not yet found a unifying discipline in the system of knowledge.
Just as different forms and methods of cognition are studied by the philosophical
discipline of epistemology, different forms of ableness need a unifying philosophical
discipline which could be called potentiology. The Indo-European root “poti,” mean-
ing “ableness, power,” developed a system of derivations in Latin (posse – to be able;
potens – the able one; possidere – to possess; potentatus – power), as well as later, in
new European languages. English has a variety of words with this root as well: possible,
possibility, potency, potent, potential, potentiate, possess, possession, power, power-
ful.1 In general, the term “potentiology” shows an etymological connection to the main
aspects of ableness – political (power), economic and legal (possession), modal (pos-
sibility), volitional (might), physical and metapysical (potentiality).
We define potentiology as a discipline whose status is comparable to that of two
main philosophical disciplines, ontology and epistemology. Traditionally, the principal
question of philosophy was defined in the sphere of the correlation of existence and
knowledge (reality and consciousness) and solved differently in various predominant
systems of thought, such as monism and dualism, realism and nominalism, idealism
1 See these entries, for example, in Robert K. Barnhart (ed.), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of
Etymology (New York, HarperCollins, 1995).
and materialism. Developing this tradition, we could isolate two more groups of fun-
damental questions, interest in which has arisen throughout the history of philosophi-
cal thought; however, no methodical study of them has yet been undertaken. These
are questions about the correlation of (1) existence and ableness and (2) knowledge
and ableness; that is, questions of the ontic and epistemic modalities. The questions
of the first group arise on the intersection of ontology and potentiology and target the
correlation of real and possible worlds, act and potential, necessity and contingency,
determinism and voluntarism, natural and social influences versus personal will. The
questions of the second group arise on the intersection of epistemology and potentiol-
ogy and address the correlation of knowledge and faith, reason and revelation, theory
and hypothesis, experience and intuition, certain and alleged information, empirical
and probabilistic models in science, culture, information and communication sys-
tems. All these questions belong to the sphere of potentiology in its interaction with
the theories of being and knowledge and are as fundamental as questions arising at the
intersection of ontology and epistemology.
Eventually, as often happens in the development of new methods or disciplines, the
transfer of some traditional philosophical problems and concepts from the spheres of
ontology and epistemology to the domain of potentiology can occur. For instance, the
nature of thinking, the role of the hypothesis, and the problem of universals, as ana-
lyzed in this book,2 belong to potentiology not less than to ontology or epistemology.
It is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to the question of why potentiology en-
tered our self-awareness and was recognized and isolated as an independent discipline
later than ontology and epistemology, which already in the 17th century were given
the status of separate philosophical disciplines (Descartes, Leibniz, Christian Wolff).
Maybe it was the complicated and varied character of the relations connected to the
predicate “to be able” that predetermined their branching throughout various philo-
sophical and non-philosophical disciplines. It has proven especially difficult to estab-
lish a connection between the modalities of existence (actual, possible, necessary, and
contingent) and knowledge (knowledge and faith, axiom and hypothesis, evidence
and supposition, expression of certainty and uncertainty), as well as between these
two modalities and the sphere of political, legal, and moral philosophy, where modal-
ity acts as volition and desire, possession and power, permission and prohibition.
All these various manifestations of “be able” were dispersed among different dis-
ciplines, because only in the 19th century and especially the 20th century a tendency
which unites them was discovered – the tendency of the growth of the status of “be
able” in the humanities as well as in natural sciences. In the works of Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Stirner, Feuerbach and Marx, the characteristic of
2 See especially Part i, Chapter 11, this volume: “Universals as Potentials: Conceptualism.”
Potentiology. The Prospects for the New Discipline 351
“ableness” was a critical, explosive force in regard to the political foundations of exis-
tence and theoretical foundations of knowledge. As shown in this book, by the end of
the 20th century possibilistic and probabilistic methods of moral and psychological
orientation moved into the focus of cultural and scientific thought. This movement
from the actual to the possible, from tradition to experiment, from the real to the virtu-
al, from theory to hypothesis, from determinism to probabilistic and random processes
created social and methodological conditions for the establishing of a new philosophi-
cal discipline. In this sense, potentiology is more than just the sum total of the studies
of ableness, earlier scattered throughout different disciplines: it is an expression of the
spirit of the 20th century, which puts in doubt the categories of “reality,” “knowledge,”
or the “truth,” and draws a sign of “Maybe” over the entrance into the third millennium.
1990–2000
Index of Names
Page numbers in bold refer to the pages specifically devoted to the given author or person.
Abelard, Pierre 110 Darwin, Charles 170

Abramov, Yakov 127n5, 202n5, 238n4 Deleuze, Gil 86, 87n4, 88, 89, 170, 171n1,
Adler, Mortimer 110, 284, 348 172n2, 228, 229
Adorno, Theodore 237, 240, 242 Derrida, Jacques 28, 32, 33, 74, 94–95, 102,
Andersen, Hans Christian 243n10 152–155, 156n4, 157–168, 169n14, 170,
Andronicus of Rhodes 197 171n1, 172–175, 178, 180–187, 188–194,
Antony of Sourozh, Metropolitan 298 199, 200n4, 204, 213, 215, 224
Apresyan, Yury 335n3 Descartes, René 15, 71, 88, 156, 233, 290,
Aquinas, Thomas 3, 35–38, 289, 348 350
Aristotle 1, 2n4, 3, 10, 11, 35–38, 55, 62n6, 68, Dewey, John 348
75, 96, 97, 102, 110, 131, 136, 142, 197, 227, Diogenes 289
233, 281, 319, 348 Dionysius Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius the
Arnault, Antoine 41 Areopagite) 192, 288n2
Augustin, St. 348 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 289
Dyson, Freeman 228
Babeuf, Grachus 274
Bachelard, Gaston 122, 295 Eckhart, Johann (Meister Eckhart) 145
Bacon, Francis 141, 233 Engels, Friedrich 27
Bakhtin, Mikhail xiii, 52, 81–84, 127, 238, Epicurus 95
239n5, 259–260, 275 Epstein, Mikhail XIn1, XIIn2, 110n3, 120n1,
Balmont, Konstantin 131 127n5, 176n3, 184n9, 225n8, 260n6,
Barth, Karl 290, 291, 348 263n12, 265n14
Bataille, George 170, 217–219, 348
Baudrillard, Jean 42–44 Feuerabend, Paul 70, 217
Berdiaev, Nikolai, see Berdyaev, Nikolay Feuerbach, Ludwig 23, 29, 32n3, 350
Berdyaev, Nikolay 132, 145, 211–212, 264, Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 23, 29, 50, 206
268–269, 275 Florensky, Pavel 77, 78n10, 198
Bibikhin, Vladimir 106 Foucault, Michel 72, 134, 224
Bismarck, Otto 255, 304 Fourier, Charles 23
Blavatsky, Helena 114 Frankl, Viktor 284, 285
Bloch, Ernst 348 Frank, Semyon 149, 198
Bocharov, Sergey 220 Freud, Sigmund 27, 142, 155, 162, 170,
Boehme, Jakob 145 180, 197, 199, 278–282, 284, 348,
Bohr, Nils 228, 259, 349 349
Borges, Jorge Luis 229, 263–264 Fukuyama, Francis 252
Brentano, Franz 15 Fyodorov, Nikolay 23, 24, 29, 30, 32, 264
Bruno, Giordano 10
Bulgakov, Sergey 73, 124, 198 Gachev, Georgiy 127
Bultmann, Rudolf 324 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 96, 111, 136, 207,
236–237, 271
Carnap, Rudolf 2n4, 348 Gogol, Nikolay 221
Confucius 273 Goncharov, Ivan 270
Cortázar, Julio 264 Gorbachev, Mikhail 28, 33
Index of names 353
Groys, Boris 123, 128, 129n7 Lovejoy, Arthur 9, 10

Guattari, Felix 86, 87n4, 88, 89, 228, 229 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 103, 252
Habermas, Jürgen 252 Mamardashvili, Merab 55, 56n13, 64

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 14n26, Mandelstam, Ossip 98
29, 50, 62, 63, 77, 78, 85, 86, 88, 102, Mao Zedong 187
105, 107, 123–126, 154, 168, 176, 180, 182, Marcuse, Herbert 23, 348
182n4, 201, 202–204, 234, 235, 243, 319, Maritain, Jacques 348
348 Marx, Karl 11, 23, 24, 32, 73–74, 125, 208, 241
Heidegger, Martin 41, 50, 85, 93–95, 122, 142, Medvedev, Pavel 81, 83, 84
145, 156, 168, 193, 197, 199, 208, 317 Meinong, Alexius von 8n12, 16, 348
Heisenberg, Werner 349 Mill, John Stewart 110, 348
Heraclitus 59, 127n3, 208, 209, 235 Montaigne, Michel 88, 260
Hillel 273 Moore, George 267n1
Hintikka, Iakko 2n4, 10, 348 Moreno, Jacob 284
Hobbes, Thomas 348 Morson, Harry Saul 136n6, 221
Husserl, Edmund 45, 50, 86, 112, 122, 142, 156, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 271
197, 199 Musil, Robert 150, 260–261
Ivanov, Viacheslav 221 Nalimov, Vasiliy 3n5, 100–103

Nicholas of Cusa 37–40, 81, 88, 109, 110n2
Jaspers, Karl 275 Nietzsche, Friedrich 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 32,
Jung, Karl 280 41, 43, 50, 54, 67, 68, 72, 77, 81, 83, 88,
92, 102, 105, 128, 142, 165, 168, 170, 171,
Kabakov, Ilya 122, 123 193, 197, 199, 216, 241, 267–269, 271,
Kannisto, Heikki 10 348–350
Kant, Immanuel 1, 10n16, 14n26, 15, 34, 63, Novalis 41, 111, 210
66, 102, 110, 142, 173, 206, 207, 267n2, 348
Kennedy, Edward 14 Ockham, William 126, 127
Keno, Raymond 264 Oleinikov, Nikolai 130
Khemnitser, Ivan 46, 47n3, 48 Ortega y Gasset, Jose 69
Kierkegaard, Søren 27, 29, 41, 50, 74, 81, 82,
142, 290, 291, 294, 350 Parmenides 317
Kosuth, Joseph 122 Pascal, Blaise 64, 65, 88, 288, 349
Kuhn, Thomas 70 Pasternak, Boris 306
Kushner, Aleksandr 148 Paul (apostle) 295–297
Pavic, Milorad 264
Langton, Christopher 52 Peirce, Charles 224
Lao-Tzu (Laozi) 187, 190 Pelevin, Viktor 266n16
La Rochefoucault, François de 207 Penrose, Roger 70
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 6, 7, 15, 41, 54–55, Pico della Mirandola 114, 115
59, 172, 233, 236n1, 249, 307, 348–350 Plato 10, 26, 48, 64, 74, 81, 82, 84, 88, 89, 92,
Lenin, Vladimir 26, 134 102, 109, 119, 124, 133, 154n2, 155, 172n2,
Levi-Strauss, Claude 74, 175 202n5, 233, 295, 326, 348
Lewis, Clarence 348 Plotinus 36–38
Lewis, David 6n9, 7–8, 60–61, 267n2 Poe, Edgar 229
Locke, John 110 Popper, Karl 11–12, 70, 109, 222
Losev, Aleksey 13, 37n12, 86, 98–99 Prigogine, Ilya 70, 259, 349
354 Index of names
Pushkin, Alexander 51, 99, 120, 171, 184n10, Steiner, Rudolf 114, 236n2
220, 271, 281 Stirner, Max 29, 350
Quine, William van Orman 15 Tairov, Aleksandr 221

Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 14, 15n27
Rabelais, François 83, 147, 307 Taylor, Mark 164
Reich, Wilhelm 281, 348 Teilhard de Chardin 42, 63
Rescher, Nicholas 15–17 Tertullian, Quint Septimius Florence 289n7,
Rilke, Reiner Maria 271 290, 326, 348
Robespierre, Maximilian 274 Thales 49, 59, 124, 127n3, 133, 208, 209, 235
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 74, 152, 168, 176, Tillich, Paul 348, 349
200n4 Tolstoy, Leo 77, 247, 248n1, 324
Russell, Bertrand 15, 45, 108, 109n1 Toynbee, Arnold 305
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rovrois 23 Vaihinger, Hans 41, 42

Sartre, Jean-Paul 23, 41, 122, 142, 145–147, Vainshtein, Olga 111n5, 193n17
298n16 Valéry, Paul 13, 81, 85, 210, 211, 236n1, 262
Saussure, Ferdinand de 98, 280 Vernadsky, Vladimir 42, 63
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm 41, 206, Vinci, Leonardo da 120, 211n8, 267
208–211, 217 Voloshinov, Valentin 81, 83
Schiller, Friedrich 31, 32, 75 Voltaire 227, 289
Schlegel, Friedrich 41, 210 Vygotsky, Lev 75–76, 78–79, 266n16, 282–283
Schoedinger, Andrew 112
Schopenhauer, Arthur 23, 26, 29, 59n2, 125, Wagner, Richard 264
347n4, 348–350 Weber, Max 51–53, 304–305, 305n2
Shakespeare, William 83, 133 White, Allen 4, 5n6, 267n2, 270
Sherrington, Charles 283 Whitehead, Alfred North 41, 42, 101n4, 111,
Shestov, Lev 135, 275 300
Shklovskiy, Viktor 247 Wiener, Norbert 349
Simmel, Georg 56 Wilde, Oscar 290
Socrates 64, 81–84, 88, 89, 131, 132, 193, Wittgenstein, Ludwig 24, 25, 102, 142
206, 326 Wolff, Christian 350
Sologub, Fyodor 128
Solovyev, Vladimir 24n2, 120n1, 127, 184n10, Yavlinsky, Grigory 266n16
198, 202n5, 264, 271
Sophrony (Sakharov, Archimandrite) 301 Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) 152–154, 187,
Spariosu, Mihai 6n9, 172n2 190–191
Spinoza, Benedict 233, 298n16 Žižek, Slavoj 14, 47, 48n4, 299
Stalin, Josef 24, 25, 83, 101, 132
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec 12
Index of Subjects
Page numbers in bold refer to the pages specifically devoted to the given subject.
Abduction 223, 224 Art, literature 75–79, 135–137. See also

Ableness 6, 8, 19, 63, 311n1, 315, 318, 321, 325, Culture, Novel
328, 330, 332–334, 336, 337, 341, 343, vs philosophy 104, 75–79, 135–137, 221
344, 348–351 and post-structuralism 104
Abstinence 301, 329, 334–339, 342 schools of 3
and miracle 337 “As if” (kak by), in Russia 98, 265, 266n16
Act and potency (modal and erotic Atheism 171, 192, 288, 299
sense) 97n8. See also Potential, Author and persona/personage (in
potentiality philosophy) 75, 105, 175, 184, 199
Activism 23–28, 116, 233. See also Criticism.
Actual and potential (actualization and “Be” (predicate) 5, 6, 19
possibilization). See also Possible, “Be able” (predicate) 316, 319, 321
possibility; Potential, potentiality; and “be” 6, 321, 328, 344
Potentiation; Realization, actualization and “know” 311, 312, 315, 316, 328,
(of possible) 339–341, 343, 348
and play 103, 184 Beginning and non-beginning (in
and psyche 279, 282, 283, 286 thinking) 189
and virtual 183 Being and nothingness 145–151
and writing 158, 159, 184, 220, 257 Being, modalities of 316–324
Actualism and possibilism xi, xii, 8n12, 9, 18, Biology 52–53
42, 103, 116, 233, 318
“Adam” 8n12, 41, 54, 55, 115, 155n3, 172, 236n1, Capacity
239n6 in ethics 269
Adventurous character (of thought) 70, 207 as modality 328–330
Advertising 255, 256 and need 328–338
Age 4, 27, 30, 52n8, 55, 87, 109, 116, 150, 228, and volition 349
254, 260n6, 296, 305, 306 Categorical imperative. See Imperative
“Alienation” 85, 125, 132, 145, 155, 199 Catharsis (in art and philosophy) 68, 72–80,
Alternative, and universal 49 82, 201, 266n16
Anamnesis 84, 326 Cause 11, 30, 36, 37, 50, 56, 77, 102, 114, 141,
Anti-metaphysics. See Metaphysics 214, 218, 238n4, 281, 287, 289
Antiquity 57 Center and structure 175–179
Aphorism 32n4, 106, 107, 124n2, 178, and decentralization 177, 184
207 Christ, Christianity 291–293
Aporia 90–97, 102, 183 Comical, the (in philosophy) 131–134
of general concepts 95 “Con” (in concepts of “construction” and
modal 95, 96 “deconstruction”) 207, 213–216
moral 276 Conceptualism 15–18, 110–116, 122, 123,
of possible and impossible 90–97 267n3, 350n2
Archeosophy 224 Conceptual person 86–89. See also
Archetype 168, 280, 282 Thinking, thinking persona
356 Index of Subjects
Concrete 117–123. See also Unique De– and Con– (prefixes) 213–216
Conditional xi, xii, 5n7, 7, 42, 60, 75, 76, 82, Deconstruction 157–158, 162–168, 191–205,
98, 104, 134–137, 148, 152, 156, 157, 162, 213–216. See also Post-structuralism
166, 192, 211, 237, 255, 258, 265, 266n16, and constructionism 213–216
271, 279, 282, 285, 287, 304 critical and positive 19
Construct, and creation 211, 214 as end of the critical epoch 233
Construction 197–216. See also and (anti)metaphysics 157, 162–168,
Constructionism, Potentiation 199–200
and creativity 206–212, 214 and the perestroika, and potentiation 33
and criticism 28 and the possible 157–161
and deconstruction 19, 23, 27, 28, 32, 33, and Taoism 187, 192
74, 100, 102, 103, 108, 136, 141, 142, 152, Deduction and reduction 124–125
154, 157, 158, 162–169, 175, 182, 183, 187, Defamiliarization (ostranenie) 247
188, 191–193, 197–205, 212–215, 223, 224, Demonism (of the possible) 12–15
233, 240, 243 Depression 33, 278, 280, 281
definition 204, 205, 206 Desire 334–338
Schelling about 206, 208–210 vs wanting 335
and structure 213 Development, and thinking 62
Constructionism 42, 206, 214–215, 217. See Différance 160–170, 172, 176, 178, 179,
also Construction 187–194, 197, 199–201, 202n5, 204, 234.
critical and creative 206, 215, 217 See also Difference
Contingent (a modality) 2, 5, 6, 35, 61, 209, and Tao 152–154, 187–194
210, 212, 215, 220, 313–315, 317–322, 324, Difference 170–174, 241. See also
325, 330–332, 339, 345, 350 Differentiation, total
definsition 318–319 asymmetry of 202, 241
Creativity 206–212, 258, 269 in ethics 274
and construction 206–212 and opposition 214, 241
Berdyaev on C. 211–212, 269 primeval difference 201
Creative activity 149, 223 radical 165, 170–175, 178, 180
Credit and insurance (as possibilistic Differentiation, total 175, 275
forms) xi, 253–254 Dissent 72, 77
Criticism, critique (in philosophy) 2, 19, Double negation 320, 329, 330
23–28, 33, 42, 44, 101, 103, 116, 142, 206, “Drop” “dropness,” 118, 119, 121, 122, 127, 134,
215, 216, 219, 222, 224, 226, 229, 264n13. 248, 294, 306
See also Deconstruction; Epochs Dualism and monism 12–15, 87, 88, 181, 182,
(philosophical); Metaphysics 349
vs celebration 217 Due, obligation. See also Imperative
definition 216 and the miraculous 323–324, 326, 327,
Culture xii, 9, 18, 19, 51, 55, 69n2, 74, 98n1, 341
127n5, 150n9, 156, 159, 176, 177, 182–185, and the possible 267, 271, 272, 275
190, 193, 202, 203, 207n2, 211, 212,
222–226, 234, 237, 247, 258–266, 269, Ecology
271, 280, 306, 350. See also Transculture of language 104
and the possible 258–266 of thinking 65
Culturonics 223 Economics xi, xiii, 26, 27, 42, 73, 123, 124, 217,
241, 253, 254, 265, 343–345, 349
Dance 87, 262 Elasticity (of thinking) 68–69
Death 38, 83, 93–96, 147, 148, 152, 165, 227, Entity. See Multiplication of entities
233, 254, 270, 290, 293, 294n13, 299, 307, Epistemic modalities 273n9, 311, 315,
326, 337, 338, 345, 346 325–328, 339, 350
Epistemology 17–19, 30–32, 34, 37, 40–42, Existentialism 27, 32, 84, 88, 134, 145–146,
62–64, 206, 248n2, 316, 325, 328, 341, 149, 151, 198, 208, 317. See also Essence,
348–350 and existence
and utopia 30
Epochs (philosophical) Fact, “factually” (virtually) 265, 266n16, 343
first, metaphysical (pre-Kantian) 29, 31 Faith 14, 53, 58, 113, 147, 150–151, 183, 212, 251,
second, critical (post-Kantian) 23, 29 266n16, 274, 288–298, 300, 306, 322,
third, post-critical (constructive) 34 326, 327, 339, 341, 346, 348–350
Eros. See also Love and hope 150–151, 294–297
act and potency 97n8 Feelings, emotions 14, 15, 45, 73, 75, 77, 109,
and metaphysics 31 145–151, 171, 231, 255, 269, 305, 336
as methodology 217–225 “Flowerness” 63, 111, 118
in Plato 295 “Fly” 60, 73, 123, 173, 295
of thinking 217–225 Freedom, and possibility 148–149, 254–255
Eschatology 165, 343, 345–347 Fullness, principle of 10–12
Essay xiiin3, 2n4, 42n26, 52n7, 54n10, 69n2, Funnel
72, 73, 83, 150n9, 252, 260–262, modal 49
307n4 psychic 283
essayism 150, 260n6
Essence General, generalization 117–123
and event 49 and unique 237–239, 275
and existence 54, 181, 188, 192, 198, 317 and universal 117–123
reduction and multiplication of 126, 127 Genesis (as potentiation) 220n3, 221
Eternal, eternity 9, 27, 35, 36, 38, 39, 42, Genius 87, 120, 268n4
108, 111, 113, 119, 130, 142, 154, 164, 166, God, Creator 287–294, 298–302
179–182, 190, 236, 241, 242, 269, 290, 291, and creativity 211
293, 307, 317, 346. See also Time and due and necessary 288–290, 324
eternal return 166, 190, 241 existence of 25, 35, 287–289, 298
Ethics 267–277 infinite goodness and infinite power 301
Bakhtin on 275 and possible 145, 154, 155
diamond rule 275, 276 and potential of 115, 338
golden rule 273–277 Golden Rule, the (in ethics) 273–275
Nietzsche on 268–269 and diamond rule 275, 276
of the possible 267, 270–272 “Grass, blade of” 60, 239, 242, 243
uniqueness in E 273–277 Great Chain of Being 9–11
Etiquette 271–273 Grotesqueness 24n2, 130–137,
Event xii, xiii, 6, 14, 42–44, 49, 51, 53, 56, 61, 266n16
62, 75, 77, 80, 90–92, 96, 100, 101n4, 105,
106, 111, 112, 114, 118, 119, 136, 150, 154, “Have” (predicate) 343
158–160, 163, 164, 169, 170, 180, 183, 198, Hell 347
206–208, 210, 217, 220–223, 233, 249, History 51–52, 303–308
253, 256, 257, 259, 279, 281, 283, 290, as accumulation of possibilities 305
292, 296, 297, 300, 304, 305, 313, 314, 323, and the end of 252
324, 336, 337, 347, 350 and metaphysics 168
eventfulness (of thinking) 207–208 and myth 88, 271
Evil 13, 32n4, 77, 95, 105n8, 128n6, 221, 268, and the possible 51–52, 304–305
293, 296, 300–303 Hope 12–14, 33, 70, 82, 113, 137, 147, 150,
Existence (Reality, Being) 317–318. See also 151, 165, 183, 212, 227, 251, 266n16, 290,
Being, Existentialism, Ontology, Reality 294–298, 306, 307, 348
and nothing xin11, 145, 146 and faith 150–151
“Horse,” “horseness” 48, 73, 108–110, 114, Intellect 216–218

130–132, 134, 148 Intensity (modal) 34, 287
Humanities xii, 3, 4, 18, 26n3, 27, 51, 65, 104, Intentional and extensional 2, 15, 122, 157,
112n8, 127, 132, 162, 222–223, 225n8, 227, 315n11
236n2, 239n5, 253, 258, 265n14, 272 Interests
“Hyper” 233, 235 and the truth 236
hypermetaphysics 233, 234, 236 and universals 232
Hypothesis, hypothetism 67–71, 118, 155, Interesting (modal interpretation) 226–232
193n17, 210, 260, 304, 325, 342, 350, 351 and exteresting 230
definition 68–69 and interestism 230
and potential 227, 231, 232
Idealism 9n13, 87, 88, 116, 134, 155, 208, 210, and probability and
349 improbability 227–229
Identity 29–31, 34, 47, 61, 75, 84, 85, 87, 98, Invention, inventure 206–207
100, 102, 104, 126, 141, 153, 164, 165, 168,
170, 172, 180, 182, 197–205, 214, 232, 233, Jurisprudence 42
236, 238, 240, 241, 263, 273, 274, 285, 295,
299. See also Difference Kantianism, Kantian revolution in
as different from difference 202–204 philosophy, the 23, 24, 34
Ideology xi, xii, 14n26, 25–27, 32, 57, 64, 65, “Know” (predicate) 315, 325, 328,
67, 74, 75, 83, 123, 125, 135, 137, 172, 215, 339, 341
219, 251, 252, 269, 289 Knowledge, modalities of 325–327
“If” 249, 254 Language 57, 98–107. See also Text; Word;
Imagination 149–150 Writing
Immortality 26, 31, 251, 269, 271, 290, 295, and lingustics 223
297, 307, 334, 345–347 of philosophy 23, 62, 106n9, 303
Imperative (mode) 134, 267, 272–274, 279, and play 103
285, 292, 293. See also Due, obligation and silence 57
categorical 267, 272, 274, 285 vs speech 99
imperative vs subjunctive 272–274 and thinking 16, 17, 98–107
Impossible xiii, 2, 4–6, 9, 11, 13–15, 27, 48, 51,
59, 61, 90–97, 101, 113, 118, 130, 131, 135, “Later” xii, 1, 37, 40, 41, 66, 83, 110, 163–165,
151, 156, 160, 161, 164, 165, 172, 180, 182, 176, 183, 274, 276, 278, 279, 288, 289, 304,
185, 206, 218, 226, 228, 229, 257, 262, 321, 348–350
269, 271, 276, 290–292, 294–296, 298, Laughter (in philosophy) 130, 133, 135
301, 303n1, 307, 313–315, 317, 319–324, Law 3, 11, 12, 48, 52, 54, 59, 63, 74, 75, 115,
326, 327, 329–331, 334, 335, 337–339, 341 134, 170, 183, 215, 227, 228, 236, 238,
Indicative mode (modality) 256, 259, 264, 267, 268, 273, 274, 276,
and the conjunctive mode 212 277, 299, 300, 323, 343, 345,
and the imperative mode 134, 267, 273, 347–349
279, 292, 293 and morals 277
Individuals Libido 124, 155, 279, 280, 282, 348, 349
and interests 232 Linguosophy 57
and universals 108–110 Literature. See Art, literature
Individualization and generalization 128 Logic 2, 25, 45, 61, 63, 64, 69, 135, 157, 180,
Infinite goodness and infinite power of 182n4, 201n5, 202n5, 203n6, 223, 224,
God 301 227, 228, 238, 243, 249, 257, 314, 315n11,
Infinition (infinite definition) 101–102 317, 319n3, 348, 349
Information xii, xiii, 3, 55, 106, 121, 256–258, Love 25, 33, 58, 64, 73, 83, 86, 94, 95, 109, 119,
308, 349, 350 130, 131, 147–150, 151n10, 207, 212, 220,
251, 260, 293–298, 306, 307, 315, 323, active and passsive voice 328–332
334–338, 348. See also Eros alethic 5, 297, 314
vs faith and hope 295–297 change of modalities 34–44
definition 4–6, 313–316
Man (as potential being) 115, 306 de re and de dicto 297, 298
Marxism 24n2, 26, 32, 74, 101, 103, 215 epistemic 273, 311, 315, 325–327, 328,
“May be” 4, 183, 259, 260, 291, 307 339, 350
Meaningfulness (of thought, of text) 27, 50, and eschatology 345–347
69n2, 106, 114, 150, 157, 159, 177, 178, 193, and history 34–44
208, 257, 272, 305, 317, 345, 347 intensity of 325, 341
Meaning, giving of 25, 50–51, 106 and the interesting 226
and event 51 knowledge 325–327
Metaphor 27, 68, 98, 103, 104, 106, 116, 136, and law, economics 343–345
154, 171, 177n3, 185, 223, 224, 236n1, 283, meanings 53
287 ontic M. 317–324
Metaphysics 145, 155, 157, 162–169, 180–186, and ontology 316
197–201, 204–205, 233–243 See also and politics 290
Philosophy potentialistic (pure) 328–338
anti-metaphysics, reverse M. 151 and psyche 279
big M. 238–240 in psychology 278–286
criticism of 141–142, 198–201 and quantification 2, 61
of deconstruction 157, 162–168 and religion 287, 288, 291, 292,
definition 23, 197–198 297, 298
and desire, Eros 218 strong and weak M. 321
and history 168, 251 study of 343
hypermetaphysics 233–236 subjective and objective 297
and language 100 supermodalities 323–324, 341
little M. 251 superstrong M. 323, 324, 326, 327, 341,
micrometaphysics 236, 237 346n3
of presence 156, 157, 161, 162, 166 system of 311–312, 320, 338, 341, 343
overcoming M. with M. 204 tables of 339–342
reverse M. 180–186 threesome character of 331
quantum M 237, 240 in various disciplines 215, 343–347
(self) transcending of 141, 243 and words 315
small M. 233–243 Modal realism 3, 6–8, 9n13, 15, 16, 18, 43,
Methodology 2, 18, 19, 42, 51n6, 53n9, 57, 70, 60–61, 99, 108, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117, 157,
111, 122, 124, 127, 128, 172, 193, 208, 214, 158, 215, 349. See also Nominalism and
215, 217–219, 222, 224, 226, 303, 305n2, realism, Realism
349, 351 Mode (verbal) 280
Micrology, micrometaphysics 236, 237, 240 Modern and postmodern xi, xii, 2, 4, 6,
Might. See also Power 11n19, 16, 18, 19, 24n2, 26, 41, 42, 44,
of God 132, 298–301 49, 51, 57, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 88, 91, 97,
and possibility 112n7 108, 121, 122, 135, 164, 165, 172, 176n3,
of weakness 338 194, 218, 225n8, 228, 237, 247, 249,
Miracle, miraculous (as modality) 274, 290, 252–254, 255n4, 260n6, 263–266,
291, 295, 296, 299, 322–327, 337, 339, 285, 348
341, 346n3, 348 Monism. See Dualism and monism
Modality 311–347. See also Imperative, Morals. See also Ethics
Indicative, Modal realism, Mode, criteria 270
Subjunctive normative and individual 276
Multiplication (of entities, essences, 295, 297, 313, 316–319, 329–331, 340, 341,
possibilities) 35, 103, 124–129, 199, 348–350. See also Existence, Reality
223, 243, 266n16, 307, 336 vs potentiology 348–350
of metaphysics (in plural) 204 Other, the 180–186. See also Difference
otherization 234–235
Naive and sentimental (in philosophy) 25,
30–34, 67, 88, 91, 134, 184, 206, 233, 247, Panlogism 62, 63
267 Paradox 7, 13, 14, 25, 42, 68, 69, 75, 84, 100,
Name, proper (as universal) 119, 120, 235, 106, 151, 153, 164, 176n3, 181, 186, 206,
240, 287 228, 230, 231, 289, 300, 323, 341
Nature, possible in 5, 8, 307 Parody, parodic character of philosophy 73,
Necessary, necessity 130–137
as double negation of the possible 320 Perestroika and deconstruction 28, 32, 33
and immortality 345–347 Personified thinking 81–89
and the impossible 2, 320 persona in philosophy 81–89
in theology 288–289 Philosopher 3n5, 4, 7, 9, 10, 15, 23, 24, 27–29,
and value 344–347 32, 36n10, 40, 42, 46–50, 55, 58, 61, 64,
Need 68, 69n2, 70, 74, 77–79, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88,
and desire 334–337 89, 99, 100, 117, 123, 124, 128, 132–134, 145,
in ethics 271–276 149, 153, 154, 156, 172n2, 181, 193, 194, 204,
and love 334–337 206, 209–211, 217, 228, 236, 238n4,
as modality 328–338 267n1, 275. See also Thinker,
Need and compulsion 347 philosopher; Thinking, thinking
“-ness” (suffix) 637 personage
Net (as metaphor of the world) 152–156, Philosophizing 55, 70, 227
176n3, 266 Philosophy (specifics and goal). See also
Nominalism and realism 3, 6–8, 9n13, 15, 16, Epochs (philosophical); Metaphysics;
18, 43, 60, 61, 99, 108, 110–112, 116, 117, Sophia; Thinkable, thinkability (as
157, 158, 215, 349 philosophical subject); Thinking
Noosphere 42, 63 vs art 122, 135–137
Nothing, nothingness xi, 4, 7n10, 12, 14, and dictionary 314, 315n11
17, 23, 26, 27, 34, 37–41, 46, 48, 50, 51, definition of 64, 67, 76, 100–109, 113, 115,
54, 56, 57, 59n2, 67, 79, 82, 84, 91, 94, 118, 119, 126, 136, 236, 303–304
95, 97, 101, 109, 122–124, 131, 133n1, 134, goal of 134–137, 303–304, 308
145–151, 159, 163–165, 190, 191, 193, 194, and hypothetical character 70, 76, 125,
200, 201n5, 203, 205, 211, 215, 223, 227, 260
231, 236, 237, 239, 248, 251, 254, 255, 280, and language 25, 27, 83, 105, 122, 279
285, 289, 292, 298n16, 299, 317, 326, 349 and laughter, comical aspect of 133–135
Novel 57, 73, 99, 176, 220, 222, 227, 247, 259, vs literature 99–100, 135–137
259–260, 264, 270 and logic 24, 25
and love 64, 132
Ockham’s Razor 126, 127 naive vs sentimental 32–33
Ontic (actual, alethic) modalities 311, 313, as non-special universal thinking 118
315, 319, 321–322, 324–327, 329–332, 337, as parody and grotesque 130–137
341, 345 personage character of 75, 105, 175, 184,
Ontology 3n5, 6–9, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 25, 37, 199
38, 40, 41, 45, 94, 109n1, 111, 112, 114, 116, as possibilistic thinking 35, 45–58, 182n3
122, 126, 127, 136n6, 141n1, 147, 162, 169, post-critical 129, 236
186, 211, 236, 241, 248n2, 265, 280, 290, and potentiology 348–351
and practical life 23, 24, 267 Hegel 14n26, 29, 50, 62, 63, 77, 78, 85, 86,
and reality 29–33 88, 102, 105, 107, 119, 123–126, 128, 154,
and stages of thinking 103 168, 176, 180, 182, 198, 199, 201, 202n5,
as strict substantiation of strange 203, 204, 234, 235, 243, 319, 348
statements 71 Heidegger 41, 50, 85, 93–95, 122, 141n1,
vs theology 105, 126 142, 145, 156, 168, 193, 197, 199, 208, 317
as thinking about the thinkable 62, 64, Husserl 45, 50, 86, 112, 122, 142, 156, 197,
236 199
three epochs of development of 34 Kierkegaard 27, 29, 41, 50, 74, 81, 82, 142,
and the unique 233–243 290, 291, 294, 350
and universals 108–116 Leibniz 6, 7, 15, 41, 54–55, 59, 172, 233,
worlds as subjects of 1, 271 236n1, 249, 307, 348–350
Play 159–160, 180–186 Lewis 6n9, 7–8, 60–61, 267n2, 348, 349
and language 103 Musil 150, 260, 261
and structure 177 Nalimov 100–103
Politeness 271–272, 293 Nicholas of Cusa 37–40, 81, 88, 109, 110n2
and prayer 293 Nietzsche 128
Politics, and modality 255–256, 290 Pico della Mirandola 114, 115
Possession, property 343–345 Plotinus 36–37
Possibilism 8–9, 15–19 Popper 11–12, 70, 109, 222
definition 8 Prigogine 70, 259, 349
Post-structuralism 18, 100–105, 108, 134, 142, Rescher 15–17
171, 175, 176, 229 Russell 15, 45, 108, 109n1
Possibilistic xiii, 4, 15–19, 37, 38n15, 40, Sartre 23, 41, 122, 142, 145–147, 298n16
45–58, 62, 69, 72, 74, 76, 86, 90, 96, 98, Schelling 41, 206, 208–211, 217
100, 115, 116, 141, 157, 159, 172, 181, 182n3, Skeptics 46
184, 186, 211, 229, 237, 238, 249, 255, Spinoza 233, 298n16
257n5, 258, 260, 262, 263, 273, 274, 276, Vaihinger 41–42
285, 303, 306, 328n1, 351 Valéry 13, 81, 85, 210, 211n8, 236n1, 262
definition of 56–57 Vygotsky 75–76, 78, 79, 266n16, 282, 283
possibilistic thinking 45–58 Weber 51–53, 304–305, 305n2
Possibilization 54, 103, 197–243, 247–249, Whitehead 41, 42, 101n4, 111, 300
262, 265, 269. See also Potentiation Žižek 14, 47, 48n4, 299
definitions 208, 219, 247–249 Possible, possibility. See also Modality,
and “defamiliarization” 247 Possibilism, Potential, Potentiology,
vs potentiation 248n2 Probability, Subjunctive mode.
“Possible” in different philosophers and actual 38, 56, 63, 91
Aquinas 35–36 and causation 236
Aristotle xiii, 1, 2n4, 3, 10, 11, 35–38, 55, and choice 18, 146, 147, 194
62n6, 68, 75, 96, 97, 102, 110, 131, 136, 142, and contingent 319, 322
197, 227, 233, 281, 319, 348 in culture 258–266
Bakhtin 52, 81–84, 127, 238, 239n5, 259, definition 4–6
275 and deconstruction 157–161
Barth 290, 291, 348 and demonism of 12–15
Baudrillard 42–44 and difference 54
Derrida 28, 32, 33, 74, 94, 95, 102, 152, and eschatology 345–347
154–161 and eternal 113
Frank 149, 198, 284, 285, 288 in essay 260–262
Goethe 86, 111, 136, 207, 236, 237, 271 in ethics 267–277
Possible, possibility (cont.) Possible worlds 2, 6–9, 16n31, 35, 53,

and faith and hope 150–151, 290–291 60, 61, 113, 115, 123, 128, 135–137, 173,
feeling of 145–151 185, 208, 249, 263, 264, 270, 281, 308,
of the first and second order 299 348–350
and freedom 255 Post-critical epoch in philosophy 34, 35, 129,
and giving meaning 50 236. See also Epochs (philosophical)
and God 14 Postmodern xi, xii, 42, 88, 108, 121, 164, 165,
and history 51, 303–308 172, 176n3, 228, 263–265
and hope 70 Post-structuralism. See also Deconstruction
and the Id 279 as dictatorship of writing 107
and imagination 53, 113, 122, 135, 149, 150, and possibilism 18, 100–105, 108, 134, 142,
253, 264 171, 175, 176, 229
and impossible 90–97 and structuralism 101
and language xii, 15, 17 Potential (pure) modalities
in literary genres 259–262 active voice 328–332, 339, 340
logical P. 1n1, 2, 27, 32, 116, 126 binomial 311, 328, 332, 339, 340
and love 334–338 monomial 311, 328, 332, 339, 340
and meaning 157 passive voice 311, 330–334, 339, 340
and might 112n7 Potential, potentiality 108–116. See also Act
in nature 96 and potency (modal and erotic sense);
and necessary 2, 3, 5, 69, 137, 236, 312, Actual and potential, Potentiology
314, 348 and existence 79, 87, 93, 110, 121, 279
and nothing 145–151 and intention 299
and novel 220–221, 259–260 and interesting 227, 231, 232
and the other 36, 167 in language and thought 15, 313
and other modalities 18, 341 and love 334–338
and plurality 303 potency 11, 37n12, 38n16, 97n8, 98, 99,
and possibilization 54, 103, 208, 219, 104, 112n7, 208, 210, 217, 279, 280, 299,
247–249, 262, 265, 269 311n1, 317, 333, 343, 348, 349
and potential 11, 149 potentiocracy 255–256
vs probability 90–91 and probability 90
and problem of choice and in psyche 282, 283
freedom 148–149 in Schelling 210, 217
problematic and existential P. 1, 8, 53, in theology 111, 126
270 and universals 108–116, 117–123
in psychology 278–286 Potentiation 38n15,64, 111, 210, 217–225,
and question 17, 55, 56 247–249. See also Construction;
and real (actual) 51, 252 Possibilization
and realization of 9–12, 252, 271 and construction 219
and religion 287–302 and deconstruction 108
and skepticism 32, 46, 325 definition 217, 219–220, 223, 224–225,
in society 56, 251–257 248–249
and structure 158 and desire 218–219
and the Tao 188 logic of P 223–224
in texts 324 potentialism 217
and virtual 183, 243 of text 215, 217, 220–222, 224
and writing 158, 159, 182 Potentiocracy 255
Potentiology (branch of philosophy) 19, 288, 290, 292, 297, 299, 300, 303,
37, 112n7, 248n2, 316n11, 325, 328, 341, 307, 317, 320, 326n1, 345, 346,
348–351 349, 350
definition 349 Quotation 1n2, 81, 84–85, 124n2, 234–235,
vs ontology and epistemology 348, 349, 255n4, 289n7, 290n10
350 Quotation marks (single) 81, 84, 85, 108,
Potentiotherapy 284, 285 234, 235
Power 255–256, 298–301, 333–334 See also
Possibilism; Potential, potentiality; Realism. See Modal realism; Nominalism and
Potentiation realism
of God, in theology 298–301 Reality 29–33, 151, 252, 257, 304–307
and love 348 critique of 42–44
paradox of P 299–301 and philosophy 29–33
and potentiocracy 255–256 Realization, actualization (of possible)
and property (possession), and 9–12, 271, 304. See also Fullness.
science 344, 348 in ethics 267–271, 273
Prayer 292–294 in psyche 279, 283–285
Presence 27, 50, 68, 102, 145, 149, 155–164, Religion xi, 4, 19, 25, 151n10, 170, 183, 218n2,
166–168, 172, 173, 178–181, 183, 185, 186, 227, 247, 258, 287–302, 314n7, 324. See
188, 192, 199, 200, 213, 215, 216, 233, also Eschatology; Theology
239–241, 243, 301–303, 312 Reverse metaphysics 151, 171, 180–186
Probability, probable 227–229 Revolution 23, 25, 26, 31, 34, 42–44, 53, 62,
and information 256–257 73, 74, 134, 148, 149, 154, 170, 171, 172n2,
and the interesting 227–229 187, 199, 207, 252–253, 255, 264, 268,
and provability 227 274, 335
restrictive and broad interpretation permanent
of 226 Romanticism 3, 73–74, 111, 154
Propensities 11, 12, 70n3, 99, 109 and technology 73–74
Property (possession) 3, 7, 8, 12, 36, 44, “Rope” 46–48, 50
49, 52n8, 61, 64, 103, 113, 119, 120, 124, Rough draft 197, 220, 302
132, 153, 157, 218, 219, 232, 287, 311, 312, “Round square” 93, 239
343–345, 348–350 “Rustle” 118, 121, 122, 134
Proposal 272, 273
Psychology 3, 18, 19, 27, 57, 59, 60, 64, 67, Saint 23, 300, 337
75, 87, 101, 163n3, 247, 249, 266n16, Science 3n5, 11, 19, 23, 25, 27, 32, 37n12, 40,
278–286, 343, 347, 349, 351 42, 45, 51, 52, 56–60, 62–65, 67, 69, 70,
Psychotherapy 278, 281–282 91, 109, 111, 114–118, 120n1, 123, 126, 127,
logotherapy 285 132, 135, 137, 155n3, 182n4, 197, 201n5,
modal therapy 283–286 202n5, 203n6, 215, 217, 219, 222–224, 226,
possibility therapy 285 228, 229, 232, 237–239, 243, 255, 257n5,
258–261, 269, 275n11, 288, 290, 305n2,
Question, questioning 2, 4, 10, 11, 16, 17, 24, 319n3, 347, 349, 350
29, 32, 35, 39, 41, 45–48, 50, 52–57, 65, Scientology 223, 224
72, 82, 92, 95, 102, 108, 110, 116, 118, 121, Self-realization. See Realization, actualization
130, 136, 141n1, 146, 150, 158, 162, 165, 182, (of possible)
183, 185, 191, 193, 194, 197, 198, 217, 226, Signifiability 98–107
238, 242, 258, 269, 270, 276, 283, 287, definition 105
Significance xii, 4, 7n10, 23, 25, 51, 102, 105, apophatic and cataphatic 192, 287–288
106, 110n3, 112, 114, 125, 133, 156, 157, 160, atheism 288
161, 165, 171, 173, 174, 178, 201, 202n5, 229, vs philosophy 105, 126
247, 255, 257, 304, 305 Theory 67–71
Sign, meaning 186 and hypothesis 67
signifier and signified 74, 171–172 and reality 29
Silence 57, 82–84, 106, 167, 185, 223, 240 and utopia 67–71
of author 82, 83 Therapy
Singularity 209, 238–243. See also Unique logotherapy 284, 285
“Smoking” 146–148 potentiotherapy 284, 285
Society of possibilities 256–257 Thing. See also Unique
Sophia 55, 86 and little metaphysics 251
sophian disciplines 57–58, 86, 198 and sign 98–107
Strangeness (in philosophy) 71, 243 Thinkable, thinkability (as philosophical
Structuralism 32, 33, 101, 134, 175, 213–215 subject) xii, 8n12, 16, 17, 30, 32, 49, 55,
and construction, 59–66, 68, 69, 74, 79, 80, 92, 93, 95, 96,
constructionism 213–215 105, 106, 109–111, 114, 116–119, 122, 126, 131,
Structure 158, 175–179, 214 153, 158, 181, 208, 209, 218, 233, 236–240,
Subjunctive mode 59, 67, 208, 212, 255, 258, 242, 243, 348
264, 266, 267, 270, 279, 280, 284, 293, forms of, xii 18, 76, 77, 215
308 Thinkables (examples of concepts and
vs imperative M. 272–274 universals). See “Adam,” “alienation,”
vs indicative M. 49, 59, 91, 184, 254, 258, “drop,” “flowerness”, “fly”, “grass”,
261, 265, 266, 267n1, 279, 287, 288, 292, “horse,” “rope,” “round square”, “rustle”,
305 “smoking,” “table,” “whisper”
Substance 6, 38n16, 44, 52, 60, 75, 98, 99, 108, Thinker, philosopher 10, 23, 24n2, 25,
117–119, 121, 124, 131, 132, 160, 175, 185, 197, 34, 36, 37, 41, 45, 49, 53, 55, 74, 79, 81,
219, 236, 281, 345, 346 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 96, 102, 104, 114, 117,
Supplement 2n3, 25, 49, 155, 157, 162, 163, 122, 125, 126, 129, 134, 141, 142, 145, 154,
169, 170, 172, 179, 180, 185, 200n4, 213 194, 204, 235, 236, 238n4, 268, 272,
Surplus, profit 170 294n13, 319
Surprise xiii, 55–56, 227, 229, 231, 247 Thinking 59 -66, 235–236
Systems (in philosophy) xii, 59, 73, 74, 104, and being 65
108, 124, 125, 178, 303, 317, 348 catharsis of 72–80
comic character of 132, 133
“Table” 93, 95, 238 constructive 206
Tao, Taoism 102, 153, 187–194 content of 34
Technique 87, 136, 187, 215, 224 counter–thinking 74–75
Technology, and romanticism 72–73 definition 53–54
Term, and proper name 119, 120, 235, 236n1, development of 62, 65
240, 287 and difference 49, 63
vs universeme 114 as dissent 72, 77
Text. See also Language; Word; Writing elasticity of 68–69
and potentiation 221 goal of 64–66
and the unique 234, 235 and language 16, 17, 98–107
Theology 18, 35, 38, 41, 42, 111, 126, 141n1, and “life thinking” 127
164, 192, 218, 242n8, 287–289, 298, love of 64
299, 343, 345. See also Religion as philosophy 45–59
and the possible, and reality 45, 48, 49, and individuals 108–110
57, 60n3, 63 and interests 232
in subjunctive mode 59, 67, 208, 212, 255, as parody and grotesque 131–135
258, 264, 266, 267, 270, 279, 280, 284, as potentials 108–116
293, 308 and specifics of philosophy 118, 119
of the thinkable 59–66 Universe 3, 11, 43, 49, 52, 56, 60, 62, 68, 73,
personified thinking, thinking 78, 108, 113, 114, 118, 121, 124, 126, 132, 133,
personage 81–89 154, 202, 207n2, 210–212, 217, 218, 228,
and the unique 235–240, 242, 243, 249 233, 235–237, 249, 258, 260, 285, 299,
value in itself 62n6, 64 306, 308, 318, 343, 349
“Thisness” 93, 239, 239n6. See also Unique Universeme, vs term 113, 114
Three epochs in philosophy. See Epochs Universum 60, 62, 113–115, 118, 119, 122, 123,
(philosophical) 126, 135, 137, 218
Threesome character Utopia 30–32, 67–71, 264, 269
of modalities 1, 35, 331 and epistemology 30
of psychic zones 278
Time. See also Eternal, eternity Value xiii, 4, 27, 34, 45, 51, 59–66, 90, 103,
as deferment 163, 164, 168, 180 123, 128, 169, 184, 229, 240, 241, 248, 252,
and eternity 165, 182, 290 259, 261, 274, 287, 289, 303, 305, 314, 319,
and space 7, 132 343–345, 348
Tolerance (as modality) 306, 308, 315, Virtuality 183, 263, 265, 266n16
330–332, 339, 342 Vocabulary (lexicon) 57, 117, 118
Trace 166–168, 243
arche-trace 168 Western civilization 251–253
erasing and multiplication of traces 243 “Whisper” 73, 121, 122
Transcendence 145, 151, 165, 170–174, 218, Will, volition 333–334
233, 240, 243, 284 and hell 347n4
and difference 170–174 and love 336
and the immanent 173, 174 Wisdom 37, 40, 55, 57–58, 64, 86, 273, 274,
Transculture and multiculturalism 262, 263 288, 305, 326, 327, 339, 346n3. See also
Truth 77–78, 228–229 Sophia
and the interesting 228–229 and knowledge 58
Word. See also Language
Unconscious 3n5, 27, 162, 163, 170, 180, 187, auxiliary 238n4
199, 217, 279, 280, 282, 286, 348 and thought 100
Unique 233–243. See also Concrete, grammar words 238n4
Singularity, Thisness World (universe) 3, 11, 43, 49, 52, 56, 60–62,
in ethics 274–277 68, 73, 78, 108, 113, 114, 118, 121, 124, 126,
“this,” “thisness” 93, 239 132, 133, 154, 202, 207n2, 210–212, 217,
and unity 241–243 218, 228, 233, 235–237, 249, 258, 260,
Universal and general 117–123 285, 299, 306, 308, 318, 343, 349
Universality 88, 111, 117–120, 122, 132, 164, 178, Worldview 4, 72, 74, 84, 89, 152–156
218, 252, 262, 267, 268 Writing 103–104, 147, 180–186
Universals 108–116, 117–123, 131–135 arch-writing 185, 186
and alternatives 49 grammatocentricism 104
definition 108, 118–121 and speech 184–186
and humor, grotesque and parody
131–135, 137

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A Philosophy of the Possible

Value Inquiry Book Series

International Editorial Board

Translated from the Russian by

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Epstein, Mikhail, author. | McGee, Vern, translator. | Eskina,

Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Introduction: Fundamental Concepts of the Theory of the

1 Criticism and Activism 23

2 Philosophy and Reality 29

3 Change of Modalities in the History of Philosophy 34

4 Philosophy as Possibilistic Thinking 45

5 The Area of the Thinkable: the Value of Thinking in Itself 59

6 Theory, Utopia, and Hypothesis 67

9 Possible and Impossible: Aporia of Thinking 90

10 Language, Thinking, and Signifiability 98

11 Universals as Potentials: Conceptualism 108

12 From the General to the Concrete and Universal 117

13 Multiplication of Entities 124

14 Philosophy as Parody and Grotesque 130

Introduction to Part 2 141

15 Beyond Being and Nothingness: the Feeling of the Possible 145

16 A Worldview, Not a Point of View: “A Net with No Knots” 152

17 The Possible in Jean Derrida 157

18 The Metaphysics of Deconstruction: the Main Terms 162

19 The Radical Nature of Difference: Profit and Transcendence 170

20 Center and Structure 175

22 Différance and the Tao 187

23 From Deconstruction to Construction 197

24 Construction and Creativity 206

25 De- and Con- 213

26 Potentiation as Method: Eros of Thinking 217

27 What is “the Interesting”? Proposed Criteria 226

28 Small Metaphysics: the Unique 233

Introduction to Part 3 247

To Be Able, to Be, and to Know: a System of Modalities

1 Definitions of Modality 313

2 Оntic Modalities (Modalities of Being) 317

C The Possible and the Contingent 318

3 Еpistemic Modalities (Modalities of Knowledge) 325

4 Pure (Potentialistic) Modalities 328

5 The Final Tables 339

6 Modal Categories in Various Disciplines 343

7 Potentiology: the Prospects for the New Discipline 348

Index of Names 352

e­ xist various forms of the thinkable and conceivable: philosophical systems;

into probabilities, theories into hypotheses, assertions into suggestions, and

1 The Problem of Modalities in Contemporary Thought

The differentiation of three modes of being and, correspondingly, three mo-

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e­ ssential triunity, not a modification of a dyad, or a combination of opposing

of the theory of probability, statistical laws, random (stochastic) processes, as

s­ ystematically with respect to philosophy itself. What language does philoso-

2 A Preliminary Definition of the Modality of the Possible

an analysis of modalities can only show their relationship to other concepts,

(2) The modality of the possible

(3) The modality of the necessary

Contingent: to be able not to be

6 Allen R. White, Modal Thinking (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 3.

As we see, the six basic modalities correspond to all possible combinations of

3 The Ontological Status of Possible Worlds: Nominalism

8 These categories are elaborated in more detail in Appendix (Chapter 2).

e xist various forms of the thinkable and conceivable: philosophical systems;

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e ssential triunity, not a modification of a dyad, or a combination of opposing

s ystematically with respect to philosophy itself. What language does philoso-

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:10.1163/9789004398344_004

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r ealism translates the qualitative difference of modalities, such as “this,” “cer-

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