nor in our idea of things can there be any question of presenting this
disorder as the substratum of order, since it implies the two kinds of
order and is made of their combination.
But our intelligence is not stopped by this. By a simple _sic jubeo_ it
posits a disorder which is an "absence of order." In so doing it thinks
a word or a set of words, nothing more. If it seeks to attach an idea
to the word, it finds that disorder may indeed be the negation of order,
but that this negation is then the implicit affirmation of the presence
of the opposite order, which we shut our eyes to because it does not
interest us, or which we evade by denying the second order in its
turn--that is, at bottom, by re-establishing the first. How can we
speak, then, of an incoherent diversity which an understanding
organizes? It is no use for us to say that no one supposes this
incoherence to be realized or realizable: when we speak of it, we
believe we are thinking of it; now, in analyzing the idea actually
present, we find, as we said before, only the disappointment of the mind
confronted with an order that does not interest it, or a swaying of the
mind between two kinds of order, or, finally, the idea pure and simple
of the empty word that we have created by joining a negative prefix to a
word which itself signifies something. But it is this analysis that we
neglect to make. We omit it, precisely because it does not occur to us
to distinguish two kinds of order that are irreducible to one another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account