Chapter 2

In the previous chapter, we introduced a number of notions and figures that characterize how Technic acts upon the contemporary historical context as a reality-making force. We employed ideas of measure and seriality, notions of metaphysical nihilism and absolute language, and figures like the abstract general entity (AGE), to sketch out a general outline of how Technic has shaped our world and our present lives in it. By analysing the effects of Technic’s reign that are most apparent to our experience, we wished to draw a symptomatic depiction of Technic – in the same way that one would describe an illness by looking at its symptoms and at the clinical history of a patient affected by it. But however important, this historical outlook is not sufficient to provide a complete idea of what Technic is, and of how it operates as a cosmogonic force. Having already looked at its external effects, in the present chapter we shall shift our attention towards an analysis of Technic’s internal structure. This new course of analysis will recuperate some of the conceptual figures that we already encountered in their historical manifestations, though this time we will look at them in terms of their position within Technic’s inner architecture. These two approaches should be seen as complementary in any analysis of a cosmogonic force acting as the form both of reality and of a specific historical age.

We could liken this combined approach to that proposed by Sufi thinkers in reference to the different stages of the path to knowledge. According to Sufi doctrine, a correct approach to understanding reality as consubstantial with the principles that define it, should move from the initial stage of Shariat (jurisprudence) to that of Marifat (perfect knowledge through a mystical union) via the intermediate passages of Tariqat (‘path’ as spiritual brotherhood between Sufis) and Haqiqat (authentic truth). The movement from Shariat to Marifat, is one from what is most external, to what is most internal to reality and to its principles.1 Of course, any similarities between the Sufi path to knowledge and our investigation of the cosmogonic principles underlying contemporary reality should be taken very much mutatis mutandis. What makes them similar, in spite of their obvious differences, is a shared awareness that the historical symptom of a cosmogonic force (for the Sufis, the eternal force of God as revealed by the Quran, for us in this context, Technic as a historical force capable of shaping reality) should always be considered together with the internal architecture of said force or principle. Far from wishing to proceed all the way to a mystical union with Technic, we shall limit ourselves to sketching an analysis of its cosmogonic architecture that could be loosely comparable with the Haqiqat stage of Sufi esotericism. In other words, while the first chapter looked at our existential experience of the Gestalt or ‘form’ that Technic imposes over the world, this second chapter will look at Technic’s own, internal form. Indeed, the former is a direct consequence of the latter, and the analysis that will be developed in the following pages is aimed at clarifying the logic and origin of the historical elements discussed so far.

This passage from a symptomatic analysis of cosmology, to an analysis of the internal architecture of a cosmogonic force, comes with its own peculiar difficulties. Our initial reference to Sufism shouldn’t be taken as entirely off topic here; many of the challenges that we shall face have traditionally been discussed in theological circles, in reference to the problem of passing from an analysis of God’s creation, to knowledge of God’s own internal ‘structure’. From a perspective that considers reality as immediately shaped by God, acting as the ultimate principle of everything in existence, an enquiry into the ‘form’ of reality inevitably boils down to a theological examination of God’s own nature. Conversely, in an analysis like ours, that considers reality’s varying forms as contingent on the cosmogonic principles that characterize a certain historical age, such theological elements should be taken primarily in their methodological dimension. Regardless of their differences, our morphological approach to reality-systems and that of theology share a similar set of fundamental questions, and revolve around similar sets of possible answers.

In particular, the theological debate between ‘creationism’ and ‘emanationism’ will resonate with our attempt to investigate how an abstract principle can at once precede reality, while also informing and shaping it. The creationist side of the argument can be epitomized by the theory of eleventh/twelfth-century Iranian thinker Al-Ghazali,2 who advocated God’s complete control over reality-making, and reality’s absolute reliance on God’s will. According to Ghazali, we have to understand all forms of existence as the product of a deliberate decision by God Himself: the very unfolding of time amounts to nothing less than the constant re-creation, instant by instant, of the whole universe by God. Such is reality’s dependence on God’s merciful will, that, according to Ghazali’s vision, if God was ever to decide to interrupt His constant re-creation of the universe, this would suddenly vanish entirely. On the other side of this debate, we find what has been called the ‘emanationist’ approach, dating back to third-century Egyptian/Roman philosopher Plotinus. According to Plotinus’s philosophical theology, we have to understand the whole of the existent as the product of an original principle, exceeding any possible form of definition: the One. Although itself technically outside reality (as it precedes and originates it) and irreducible to it, the One interacts with reality via its successive ‘emanations’, in turn shaping the lower and more specific dimensions of existence. Unlike the creationist vision, the emanations that ‘flow out’ of the One, are not the product of its volition: rather, the One produces them necessarily, in accordance to its own nature. In the words of Plotinus, as related by his disciple Porphyry:

Given this immobility in the Supreme, it can neither have yielded assent nor uttered decree not stirred in any way towards the existence of a secondary.

What happened, then? What are we to conceive as rising in the neighbourhood of that immobility?

It must be a circumradiation – produced from the Supreme but from the Supreme unfaltering and may be co mpared to the brilliant light encircling the sun and ceaselessly generated from that unchanging substance.3

This process of emanation, which Plotinus compares to the sun’s radiation of light, allows a fundamental principle of reality to unfold along a series of successive sub-principles, each shaping a dimension of existence. Thus, the chain of emanations amounts to a chain of different ‘hypostases’, proceeding from the original principle or first hypostasis, to the point where its cosmogonic force exhausts itself.

All existences, as long as they retain their character, produce – about themselves, from their essence, in virtue of the power which must be in them – some necessary, outward-facing hypostasis continuously attached to them and representing in image the engendering archetypes: thus fire gives out its heat; snow is cold not merely to itself; fragrant substances are a notable instance; for, as long as they last, something is diffused from them and perceived wherever they are present.

Again, all that is fully achieved engenders: therefore the eternally achieved engenders eternally an eternal being. At the same time, the offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of the All-Perfect but that it can produce nothing less than the very greatest that is later than itself.4

Each hypostasis is an increasingly degraded version of the first one or first principle, and it looks back to the immediately preceding one with an ‘amorous longing’, as if seeking guidance.

The offspring must seek and love the begetter; and especially so when begetter and begotten are alone in their sphere; when, in addition, the begetter is the highest good, the offspring [inevitably seeking its Good] is attached by a bond of sheer necessity, separated only in being distinct.⁵

In the course of our discussion of the internal architecture of Technic’s cosmogonic force, we shall adopt many aspects derived from Plotinus’s emanationist theory. However, our morphological outlook will also present some important differences from Plotinus’s philosophical theology. While for Plotinus the One can be understood as the only true principle of reality, we shall consider Technic as merely one specific form of reality. To us, Technic and its principles constitute just one cosmogonic force among the many that are possible and that indeed have created several different realities throughout history. In the following pages we will look at Technic as a cosmogonic force or form, which is constituted by a chain of emanations proceeding from a first hypostasis or first principle (absolute language) through a succession of lower hypostases (measure, the unit, the AGE, life as vulnerability), until its original force is finally exhausted. As in Plotinus’s system, each hypostasis will be an increasingly degraded version of the preceding one, some of the crucial aspects of which it will take, while betraying some of the others.

Our borrowing from Neoplatonic philosophy will continue also as we will pair each hypostasis with its own ‘archetypal incarnation’. In later developments of Neoplatonic doctrine, from late antiquity 6 all the way to the Italian Renaissance⁷ and to the ongoing tradition of Islamic mysticism,⁸ each hypostasis was associated with a celestial body or with one of the ‘heavens’. In the intentions of many Neoplatonists, this was also a way to make clear immediately how seemingly abstract concepts had an actual effect in shaping reality, just like the planets and the heavens supposedly influenced the character and movements of whatever lay below them. In our architectural reading of Technic’s form, we will pair each hypostasis with a specific ‘archetypal incarnation’, as it can be found in our experience of reality. As with the Neoplatonists, this will allow us to make more apparent the connection between each layer of Technic’s internal architecture, and the layers that constitute the architecture of our experienced reality, as it is shaped by Technic. Thus, the first hypostasis ‘absolute language’ will have as its archetypal incarnation the equivalence stating that ‘truth is representation and representation is truth’. To the second hypostasis ‘measure’ we shall associate the ‘mathematical number’; to the third hypostasis ‘the unit’ we shall associate ‘information/data’; to the fourth hypostasis ‘the abstract general entity’ we will associate ‘the processor’. Finally, we will pair the fifth and last hypostasis ‘life as vulnerability’ with its archetypal incarnation, ‘possibility’.

We could also present our pairing of each hypostasis with an archetypal incarnation, in the terms suggested by the twelfth-thirteenth-century Andalusian Sufi thinker Ibn Arabi, in the course of his discussion of the relationship between astrology and theology. According to Ibn Arabi, the divine unity of God unfolds and manifests itself through the Divine Names that convey to the universe the effect of His cosmogonic attributes. However innumerable they may be, such divine qualities or Names can be grouped in a number of general categories, each determining an aspect of the architecture of the universe – that is, an aspect of reality. According to Ibn Arabi, it is possible to build a symbolic relationship between each group of Divine Names and each sphere or heaven in the traditional vision of the architecture of the universe. This relationship between the inscrutable essence of the Divine Names as cosmogonic principles, and the visible manifestation of the heavens, is well explained by Perennialist philosopher, Titus Burckhardt:

The Master [Ibn Arabi] makes the 28 mansions of the Moon correspond to as many Divine Names. On the other hand, these, which all have an active or creative character, have as complements or as direct objects the same number of cosmic degrees, so that their connection forms a second analogous cycle. The series of these cosmic degrees produced by the series of the Divine Names go from the first manifestation of the Intellect down to the creation of man. In its hierarchy it also comprises the cosmic degrees which correspond to the different heavens, that is to say to the heavens of the zodiac, to the heavens of the fixed stars, and to the seven planetary skies. … The Divine Names represent the determining essences of the corresponding cosmic domains.9

Once again, this mention of Ibn Arabi’s use of astrology to explain divine cosmology is meant to make explicit the theological quality of any attempt to analyse a cosmology through its founding and underlying principles. Indeed, as we begin to look at Technic’s internal cosmogonic architecture and at its ensuing cosmology, we are considering Technic as a unitary principle of reality (or, in this case, unreality), which is akin to a certain conception of God. This aspect is central, not only to our analysis of Technic’s cosmogony, but also to our understanding of what Technic is to our contemporary world – and, more generally, of what a cosmogonic force represents to the age in which it is hegemonic. To our contemporary world, Technic is God, in that it acts as the overall form encompassing all the various principles that structure our world. In this sense, any attempt at analysing the spirit of an age, understood as the structure of a specific reality-system, cannot do without the conceptual toolkit of theology – in particular, of the branch of theology that looks at the process of cosmogony and at cosmological architecture. Among the different theological and philosophical traditions that have tackled this issue, we have chosen in particular the variegated school of Neoplatonism, with its emanationist conception of reality-making.

Emanationism will function here as a method to interpret the architecture of a cosmogonic force, considered as a form with its own internal structure. Like any architecture and any form, and differently from Plotinus’s all-exceeding One, the chain of emanations that constitutes Technic is also shaped externally by all that exceeds it. The limits to the form of Technic will be described in reference to another concept borrowed from Islamic philosophy: hadd (plur. hudud).10 Primarily used in Islamic jurisprudence to indicate the restrictions derived from Quranic law, the notion of hadd is also adopted by Shia theosophy (a more apt term than ‘philosophy’, to define the prophetic philosophy of Shiism) to indicate the ‘limit’ of each layer of reality, and, consequently, of each type of knowledge that is appropriate to understand it. As shaped by its superior and inferior hudud, the form of Technic will thus require a further discussion to what exceeds and escapes it – like the analysis of an architectural object requires a discussion of the terrain on which it lies and of the neighbouring objects that negatively shape it by limiting it. Acting as the limits of Technic’s cosmogonic force and form, these hudud also go to define the limits of its reality and of its world. As it will become apparent in the next chapter on Magic, the limits to Technic’s cosmogony open the door to other alternative cosmogonies. We will refer to the limits of the chain of emanations of Technic, as the superior limit of the ‘Ego Absconditus’, and the inferior limit of the ‘Double Negation’. All these terms, mysterious as they may sound at first, will hopefully be fully elucidated in the course of our discussion.

First hypostasis: Absolute language

At the heart of Technic’s form, radiating like a merciless sun, stands the first principle and first hypostasis: absolute language. While in the first chapter we mentioned the historical manifestations of this figure, now we shall observe it in its own right as a constitutive element of Technic’s cosmogonic architecture. As seen through this perspective, absolute language acquires the role of first principle in Technic’s creation of the world and of its particular type of (un)reality. It is the emanating source of Technic’s entire creation, which it shapes according to its own rhythm and normative metaphysics.

Let us begin by considering separately the two elements of this first hypostasis: language, and its character when taken absolutely.

Since we are investigating the underlying principles that give rise to a specific kind of world, we shall look at language through the lens of what language ‘does’, that is, what it produces when it is used. Any time we put forward a linguistic statement, every time we express a linguistic unit, we are suggesting to our interlocutors that a certain figure (an object, property or relation) be admitted as legitimately present in the world. The interlocutors’ acceptance of our linguistic utterance as meaningful, grants legitimate presence in the word to the suggested figure – thus making it available to be employed in the larger game of linguistic exchange and recombination. The same happens in a soliloquy or at the level of one’s conscious thinking – though the rapidity with which we accept our own linguistic proposal as plausibly present in the world, tends to obfuscate this questioning process. And of course, the same also applies to cases in which the utterer or interlocutor is not a human, but a machine.

In this sense, language’s production is fundamentally ontological, consisting in a continuous negotiation on which figures could or should be included in the catalogue of the world. Every linguistic unit thus takes on the form of a candidature and of a proposition. Equally, the world becomes the negotiating table onto which the figures of our daily experience are alternatively granted or denied legitimate ontological status as ‘present’. In this sense, language functions as a way to manage what entities make it onto the catalogue of the communicable and operable layer of reality.

However, when language is taken absolutely, that is when it is unbound (ab-solutus) from any external constraint or from any other principle outside itself, the world that it creates suddenly becomes the only possible ontological field. When language becomes absolute language, its cosmogony ceases to be just one possible way of looking at the world (namely, in terms of which figures have a legitimate presence in it, as communicable and operable items) becoming instead an all-encompassing terrain. Outside of it, nothing is permitt ed; outside of negotiated linguistic ‘presence’, nothing is allowed, not even existence as it stands ineffably in itself. Existence is substituted by presence, and its stability is taken over by the negotiating process of language. Language creates the world in its own image, and when it becomes absolute, suddenly there is no longer anything outside the world.

The process of ontological negotiation that normally takes place at the level of language, now becomes fully internal to language itself; it is no longer an extra-linguistic interlocutor that accepts or rejects candidates to presence in the world, but it is the very fabric of language that absorbs or rejects possible figures as they emerge from language itself. In the state in which it becomes absolute, language presents itself as supposedly uttered by no mouth; rather, it claims to be at once its own creator and creation. “l suo fattore non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura.”11 Equally, absolute language presents itself as unrestrained by any specific extra-linguistic localization; a linguistic figure can take place anywhere within the field of language, and, what is more, can do so simultaneously in multiple instances. Taken in its absolute form, language thus condenses that principle of seriality which we observed in its symptomatic manifestations in the first chapter, during our discussion of measure as the geometric centre of Technic’s historical force.

To better elucidate the quality of language as understood absolutely, let us bring in our first example of an archetypal incarnation of a hypostasis. The archetypal incarnation of the first hypostasis in Technic’s chain of emanations, consists in a suggested equivalence between truth and representation, according to which: truth is representation and representation is truth.12 We can find this equivalence at work in countless aspects of our contemporary experience of the world, in all fields of human activity. Let us unpick it piece by piece, starting with its first element: truth.

For the sake of brevity, and being aware of endorsing one possible definition over others, we can say that predicating the truthfulness of something, means claiming that something is ‘the case’. If I say that it is true that a brick’s colour is red, for example, what I mean is that ‘it is the case’ that red is the brick’s colour. If I say that it is true that something happened, I mean that it ‘is the case’ that it happened, and so on. This might appear at first as merely a matter of plain description; yet, if we consider truth as a mechanism within a cosmogonic force, the extent of its influence will soon become apparent. Considered ontologically, truth’s reference to something ‘being the case’, takes the place of something simply ‘being’. By assuming the truth-mechanism as a crucial element in the architecture of a cosmogonic force, we witness a shift from a condition in which ‘existence’ was the basic attribute for something to be able to enter reality, to a condition in which this attribute becomes its ‘being the case’. In metaphysical terms, we can say that this is a passage from a world of ‘things’, to one made up of ‘states of affairs’. This passage is pregnant with consequences on several levels. While something can ‘be’ or ‘not be’ just in itself, the fact of its ‘being the case’ or ‘not being the case’ relies entirely on an external sanction. For something to ‘be or not the case’, we require both a context within which their ‘being or not the case’ takes place, and an enunciation of their truthfulness or falsehood as states of affairs. Whatever ‘is or not the case’, relies entirely on the enunciation that sanctions its claim, and on the context within which such claim to truthfulness or falsehood is meaningful. Thus, while ‘things’ can exist fully and autonomously, states of affairs are present only precariously and subordinately. Namely, they are subordinate to the sanction bestowed upon them by the linguistic context within which they are suggested as taking place. This aspect of truth, adopted as an ontological principle, refers to the way in which, within language taken absolutely, things are reduced merely to the ‘being the case’ (or, as we called it in Chapter 1, ‘activation’) of a grammatical position. Within absolute language, things are reduced to states of affairs that require the series in which they are inserted, both to acquire signification and to be enunciated. In themselves, before the series ‘speaks’ them and makes them present within itself, they are nothing at all, since they don’t even reach the stage in which they can be discussed in terms of existence and not-existence. We have seen in the previous chapter how this abstract mechanism translates in the daily functioning of historical series such as those of finance, big data, neuroscience, citizenship and so on.

But the role played by the notion of truthfulness within absolute language doesn’t end here. Another crucial aspect has to do with the semantic difference between existence, and the ‘being or not the case’ of states of affairs. While ‘being or not being’ are definitions that fall short of fully conveying their object, and thus are symbolic utterances (as it will be discussed at length in the next chapter), ‘being or not the case’ is a definition that entirely captures and conveys the object of its signification. While the very fact of existence is, in itself, an ultra-metaphysical category (as legions of philosophers, from the Eleatic school to the post-Nietzscheans have tirelessly repeated), that of ‘being or not the case’ does not exceed the process of descriptive signification. A good example of how the definition of ‘being or not the case’ can convey fully and functionally the object of its signification, is provided by the basic computing series 1–0, where 1 stands for ‘being the case’ and 0 for ‘not being the case’. Indeed, the digital series 1–0 can be taken as archetypal in reference to series in general. A series, understood in the context of an ontology of positions, is always fundamentally an articulation of the 1–0, ‘being or not the case’ sequence.

Within Technic’s equivalence between truth and representation, truth stands for the essence of language’s fundamental process of signification; what used to be the autonomous existence of things, is here degraded to a state of affairs that is entirely dependent on the sanction given to it by the series in which it is inserted. At the same time, truth indicates how the precarious and subordinate state of things reduced to states of affairs, is nonetheless the only possible for m of presence in Technic’s world; the 1–0 series is a functional series, on the basis of the metaphysical axiom that there is indeed nothing else apart from that which can be reduced to its ‘being the case’ or ‘not being the case’. In brief, truth refers to the ontological transformation undergone by the existent as it is subsumed within absolute language, and thus within Technic’s cosmology.

The second element in the equivalence outlined above, is the notion of representation. With ‘representation’ we don’t indicate merely the production of a copy of an original, where the original and the copy stand in a relationship of uniqueness and similarity. Rather, the essence of representation is to be found in the process of replication and reproduction, raised in turn to the status of an ontological principle. To briefly introduce this notion: whereas truth acts upon the autonomous existence of things, wiping it out entirely in favour of their ‘being or not the case’, representation acts upon their localization. This passage becomes clearer if we consider the difference between a ‘thing’ and a state of affairs. A thing (inasmuch as it is an existent, rather than a purely linguistic construct or a state of affairs) exists not only in itself, but also in a specific ‘localization’. A thing, anything, is always both autonomous in its existence, and also ‘that’ specific thing, in ‘that’ unique time and/or place, within ‘those’ specific limits and so on. For example, it is on the basis of a thing being ‘that’ unique thing, that the principle of non-contradiction can become operative. Even ideas, considered as immaterial ‘things’, exist autonomously not only in themselves, but also in a specific relationship with their emergence within reality as ‘that and that’ idea. It is this combination between autonomous existence in itself, on the one hand, and the specific localization of an existent as ‘that’ existent, on the other, that makes things possible objects for subjects and vice versa. Conversely, once things have been turned into states of affairs, they are no longer endowed with existence in themselves, nor are they constrained by any other localization but their belonging to a series. They have neither existence ‘in themselves’, nor any unique ‘that-ness’. This means that they can appear simultaneously in different locations, at the same time as part of different historical series referring to culture, economics and so on. In fact, they are merely their own simultaneous presence within multiple series, that is, they are nothing more than the simultaneous activation of positions in different series. The availability of the object of truth (i.e. a state of affairs that ‘is or not the case’) to feature simultaneously in several different locations or series, amounts to its ability to be re-presented infinitely. This form of infinite replicability, raised to the level of an ontological principle, does not refer to the case of an original being copied countless times, but rather to something being simultaneously present in a potentially infinite number of locations.

Since this ability to be limitlessly re-presented is a specific and constitutive aspect of state of affairs within absolute language, we can take it as one of their defining ontological qualities. Understood as such, representation has to do at the same time with the non-specificity and non-substantiality of the ‘stuff’ that makes up Technic’s cosmology, and with its availability to be replicated indefinitely, that is to be the object of production. This notion of representation can be immediately found at work in the field of contemporary finance, particularly in the derivatives market; there, ‘things’ that are valourized as (i.e. mutated into) states of affairs, are made to be simultaneously present in several locations, potentially limitlessly, since the only constraint to their reproducibility is that imposed by their belonging to the general linguistic series of finance.

Having observed separately the notions of truth and representation, as they take place within the hypostasis of absolute language, we can now attempt to bring them together into Technic’s original equation. Truth as representation and representation as truth, indicates an ontological scenario in which the ‘stuff’ that makes up the world is merely a ‘state of affairs’, at once devoid of autonomous existence, uniqueness and substantiality, and so radically un-situated at an ontological level as to be available for limitless reproduction – better, corresponding exactly to its own reproduction. Assumed as the archetypal incarnation of absolute language, this equivalence addresses the way in which the first hypostasis in Technic’s chain of emanations constitutes the fundamental dimension of Technic’s cosmogony, and thus Technic’s very essence. As the first principle in the chain of emanations that make up the internal structure of Technic’s cosmogonic force, absolute language sets the parameters and the rhythm that will apply to all subsequent hypostases. Its structuring energy, at its purest here, will progressively degrade in the following hypostases, until it will reach its exhaustion.

Needless to say, since we are talking about the architecture of a cosmogonic principle, our description of it in successive steps has to be considered conceptually rather than chronologically. The first hypostasis precedes the last one only in terms of hierarchy, while in fact they are all simultaneous and co-present as principles within Technic’s cosmogony.

Second hypostasis: Measure

From the first hypostasis, like rays out of a sun, the second hypostasis emanates. The first structuring principle of Technic’s cosmogonic force produces out of itself a second principle, which is more specific and less powerful, but still largely faithful to the same conceptual paradigm. This second hypostasis is at once grounded in the previous one, while acting as the ground for the hypostases that will follow. We can imagine this passage of ‘genetic information’ between hypostases, as a game of Chinese whispers, in which a message is transferred until its original meaning is finally lost. But we shouldn’t be too concerned with the issue of distortion at the level of the second hypostasis. The hypostasis ‘measure’ looks back towards ‘absolute language’, as if seeking instructions, both for itself and to pass them on.¹³ As it receives absolute language’s crucial cosmogonic settings, however, measure reinterprets them as methodological instructions rather than as self-contained principles. Thus, measure takes up absolute language’s fundamental series, the 1–0 digital series, and by applying it, allows it to proliferate in specific cultural/historical/economic/political series, among others. What was the essence of language as an absolute cosmogonic principle, here becomes a general method running through countless instantiations; it is as if from the essence of fire, countless individual blazes had had their origin. The second hypostasis of measure is thus responsible for the fragmentation of the self-contained abstraction of absolute language, into a proliferation of particular cases in which the principle of seriality is taken up as a structuring method: from the principle of the series, to the plurality of possible series; from reproduction as a principle, to the actual emergence of series of production.

The level of the second hypostasis in Technic’s chain of emanations also emphasizes a particular aspect of the interaction between the series and the items that compose them. While absolute language insisted on the fact that anything wishing to claim legitimate presence in the world has to rely on its belonging to the structure of a series, measure adds that it also has to consider the series as its ultimate goal. It is not enough that the ‘stuff’ of the world under Technic, has to mutate in order to be suitable to enter a series: it also has to understand the ever-expansion of its series as its overarching ethical goal. Measure, thus, inserts an ethical dimension within Technic’s cosmogony, setting the general direction for action in all subsequent hypostases. While absolute language defined the general ontological coordinates of Technic’s cosmogony, measure allows for a proliferation of particulars to emerge and to proceed in the direction of an ‘ultimate good’ – the infinite expansion of seriality as such, that is, the limitless triumph of the essence of absolute language.

In the course of the first chapter, we looked at measure in reference to its function both towards language, for which it acts as an operative principle, and towards the notion of instrumentality, to which it provides the necessary foundations. Since we already outlined there many of the fundamental characters of measure, as one of Technic’s constitutive principles, let us now proceed directly to summoning its archetypal incarnation: the mathematical number.

Talking about mathematical numbers might be misleading at first. If we look at the etymology of the word mathematics, from mathēmatikē tekhnē, the art of knowing, in turn deriving from manthanein, to learn, we might be induced to consider mathematics as the purest form of knowledge, and, consequently, mathematical numbers as neutral conceptual items. However, like all cultural forms, mathematics also is subject to be moulded by history.14 Thus, only some aspects of the pre-modern understanding of the term mathematics have been retained in our modern and contemporary use, while several others have been discarded entirely. In the context of our present analysis, when we refer to ‘mathematical numbers’, we do so in the contemporary sense and use of the term, in opposition to a certain pre-modern understanding that is today generally described as ‘numerological’. Indeed, the archetypal importance of mathematical numbers to incarnate Technic’s principle of measure appears all the more evident if we consider it in opposition to the notion of numbers as understood numerologically.

At its most fundamental level, the series of mathematical numbers, as it is currently understood, presents itself as a pattern of infinite positions. Each number corresponds to a position in the infinite pattern, and each position differs from the others only within the mathematical series (i.e. they are not unique or different in themselves). The ontological weight of each number, however large or small, is exactly identical. The numbers one and ten, for example, refer to different positions in the series, but do not carry any essentially different ontological characters. Once again, it is a matter of positional ontology, in which the activation of a possible position is ontologically equivalent to the activation of any other position. We already observed this phenomenon in Chapter 1, when we looked at the way in which existents that are reduced to serial entities, ultimately become nothing more than activators of one or the other position. The ‘thing’ that activates a position in a series, is no longer a thing, but, as we saw in the first hypostasis, it becomes merely the ‘being the case’ of a state of affairs. For example, within a financial series, it is of little or no importance whether one dollar comes from child slave labour or from the increase in the estimated value of a property; the ‘thing’ that occupies the position of a dollar is ontologically void, and in any case entirely equivalent in each of its infinite possible manifestations. Likewise, within such an ontology, the death of one soldier and that of one thousand civilians are just a matter of positions within a series, while the ‘thing’ that went lost in either case is ontologically equivalent and, ultimately, void. Or again, considering citizenship and migration within such a perspective, the positions of citizen and illegal migrant remain fixed, while the ‘things’ that activate them case by case, regardless of their quantity, remain in themselves ontologically equivalent and ultimately devoid of autonomous existence. Only the position exists, and yet it too doesn’t truly exist in itself.

In themselves, mathematical numbers are nothing but empty positions, and as they emerge meaningfully within Technic’s world (1 citizen, 2,000 civilians, 7 drowned migrants, 3 tonnes of timber, 10 billion dollars), the thing that activates them is in every case ontologically equivalent and ultimately empty. Mathematical numbers thus exemplify a fundamental ontological principle that is operative in each and every series within Technic’s cosmology. It is not a matter, as many well-meaning humanists have often repeated, that in our contemporary world things have been turned into numbers, rather both things and numbers have been reduced to one same type of annihilating ontology.15

Yet, numbers have not always been like we know them today. The nature of what we know as mathematics has itself progressively changed as reality-systems have taken over the stage of history.¹⁶ If we observe the mathematical tradition of the Eastern Mediterranean (though also in China and in India, and later in Western Europe), up until the onset of early modernity, we find a form of arithmetics that would be more precise to describe as arithmology or, as it is called today, numerology.¹⁷ The relationship between numerology and philosophy is a well-documented albeit often overlooked historical fact; the first philosopher to claim this appellative, Pythagoras, was at the same time a philosopher, a magician, a theologian and a numerologist. As René Guénon pointed out at the beginning of his programmatic volume The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of the Times:

The Pythagorean numbers, envisaged as the principles of things, are by no means numbers as understood by the moderns, whether mathematicians or physicists, just as principal immutability is by no means the immobility of a stone, nor true unity the uniformity of beings denuded of all their qualities.18

Central to Pythagoras’ philosophy, and indeed to the pre-modern mathematical tradition, was a notion of numbers, not as mere positions in a series, but as things in themselves. So powerful were the unique essence and existence of each number, particularly of those in the first decade, that these encompassed fundamental aspects of the way in which reality was thought to be built. If we consider the number one, for example, we don’t simply encounter a signpost for one indifferent unit, but a thing which is in itself a principle of reality. One doesn’t just mean unity, but, as the monad, it is the principle of unity personified. Indeed, strictly speaking, ‘one’ isn’t even a number, but the origin of all numbers. Likewise, two doesn’t simply stand for the duplication of one, but, as the dyad, it is the personification of the principle of multiplicity. And so on. On this basis, Pythagorean mathematicians could see a network of affinities or sympathies connecting all numbers. In his Placita Philosophorum, the Hellenistic doxographer Aetius of Antioch clearly outlines these aspects of ancient mathematics, as they were expressed in Pythagoreanism:

Pythagoras the Samian, the son of Mnesarchus, from another origin deduces the principles of all things; it was he who first gave philosophy its name. He assigns the first principles to be numbers, and those symmetries resulting from them which he styles harmonies; and the result of both combined he terms elements, called geometrical. Again, he enumerates unity and the indefinite binary number amongst the principles. … Moreover the nature of number (he saith) consists in the ten. … Further he avers the virtue of ten consists in the quaternion; the reason whereof is this, – if any person reckon from one, and by addition place his numbers so as to take in the quaternary, he shall complete the number ten; if he exceed the four, he shall go beyond the ten; for one, two, three, and four being cast up together make up ten. The nature of numbers, therefore, if we regard the units, resteth in the ten; but if we regard its power, in the four. Therefore the Pythagoreans say that their most sacred oath is by that God who delivered to them the quaternary.

By th’ founder of the sacred number four,

Eternal Nature’s font and root, they swore.19

Several aspects of this brief description of Pythagorean mathematics (and generally of most pre-modern conceptions of mathematics), are of interest here, especially if we compare them with what we said in reference to our contemporary notions of mathematical numbers. Numerological numbers are ‘things’ so steeped in their unique existence, to have a power of their own, corresponding to a certain power to structure the world. They have a relationship to each other as things, and their symmetries and harmonies are the concrete particulars that we encounter daily through our senses. As the fundamental existents, they are the building blocks of reality, though each retaining its own unique character, as if they were divinities in an atomic pantheon of the world.²⁰

What interests us here, however, is not so much Pythagoras’s metaphysical vision, but the metaphorical echo that his notion of numbers has in reference to our question of how things can exist in the world and thus, of how different realities can take place. While mathematical numbers, as the archetypal offspring of measure, exemplify a form of cosmology where nothing exists autonomously and in itself, numerological numbers act as the counter-example of an alternative cosmology in which things exist uniquely and powerfully. What is more, Pythagorean numbers are also capable of pointing towards a dimension that exceeds their immediate linguistic definition. Following the fragments of what Aristotle called the ‘unwritten doctrines’ of his teacher Plato, we can see how entities like the one-monad, two-dyad, three-triad and so on, are at the same time things, principles and symbols of something beyond language. Numerological numbers present to us an immediate and tangible case of an alternative reality-system, in which reality allows the existents to emerge as autonomous and unique, while being at the same time open to a dimension that we can only define as ‘ineffable’. But we shouldn’t move too far ahead of ourselves. We will have time to discuss all this at length in the next chapter on Magic.

For now, we shall conclude our considerations on the second hypostasis by pointing to another crucial difference between mathematical and numerological numbers, which brings to the fore the ‘ethical’ aspect of the hypostasis ‘measure’. As we said in our introduction to this level of Technic’s internal chain of emanations, measure sets the ever-expansion of the series as the ultimate goal of whatever activates its positions. We could of course bring in examples that refer to our contemporary experience of exploitation within the capitalist system of production, where humans, as the activators of positions referring to work/consumption/citizenship/repression/etc., are made to consider the infinite growth of the productive series to which they belong, as the ultimate goal of their activity and existence. But it might be more poignant at this point to refrain from exceeding in historical examples, and to remain on the level of cosmogonic mechanisms and of their archetypal incarnations. If we consider the series of mathematical numbers, as it is understood in our contemporary age, we see a limitless pattern of positions, an infinite radiation of series spanning in every direction. As we suggested in the earlier pages of this book, within Technic’s cosmology infinity and measure go hand in hand as sibling principles. Yet, a more specific aspect of their brotherhood should be emphasized here: the infinite expanse of series of mathematical numbers, rests upon the orderly succession of numerical positions, one after the other. In order for such infinity to function, we should always assume that there is no constitutive interruption in a series, like a wire stretching continuously or a line of soldiers perfectly contiguous to each other. If we consider it from this geometrical perspective (i.e. considering the spatial dimension of measure, as it expands indefinitely), we can see that the very function of each position is ultimately to allow the following one to take place. No position has any ontological weight in itself, as they are all mere guardians to the treasure of ‘presence in the world’, which is hoarded by the dragon-like principle of seriality. What truly justifies their presence, however subordinate and feeble, is their function as implementers of infinity within measure. The imperative of limitless production is their only possible ethics.

Conversely, in the numerological conception of numbers, we don’t have either measure as their ontological principle, nor the infinity of series as their ultimate goal. Every number is incommensurable or irreducible to any other, thus defying the very possibility of applying measure as their defining ontological principle. Rather, they themselves act as the measuring principle for whatever is the product of their combination. More importantly, their succession doesn’t take place in series, but in cycles. Ancient treatises on numerology, such as Iamblichus’s Theology of Arithmetics,21 tend to focus on the first decade, with the addition of a few relevant numbers outside of it. The reason for their specific attention to numbers from one to ten lies in the numerological idea that all other numbers are simply composite forms of the original cycle of ten, of which they take up and combine the characters. It is on the basis of this conception, for example, that numerology has been applied to the alphabet, as the sum of the numerical value of letters (which in ancient Greece were often used to symbolize numbers) can be reduced via a ‘theosophic sum’ or ‘reduction’, to a number-value between one and ten.²² The contained horizon of numerology immediately points, however metaphorically, to a conception of reality as a finite space. Indeed, as Spengler acutely (though disparagingly) noted, a fundamental character of what he called the ‘Apollonian’ civilization is the idea that existence can take place within reality, only if reality banishes from itself any attempts at a practical implementation of infinity. While infinity is not denied legitimacy altogether – for example in Anaximander’s cosmological vision of the apeiron, or infinity, as the genealogical origin of all things 23 – yet it is kept away from the field of reality, in which existence emerges as a world. Like Pythagorean numbers, ‘Apollonian’ humans are aware of the possibility for infinite proliferation (after all, the dyad was the principle of infinity as multiplicity), but they reject it as their geometrical and ethical horizon. If Technic sets infinite expansion as the goal of its inner workings, numerological numbers point to a form of absoluteness which escapes the notion of infinite repetition.

Third hypostasis: Unit

Out of the second hypostasis, like a gleam from the reflecting surface of the moon, the third one emanates: the unit. Once again, it is a game of Chinese whispers, in which the message of absolute language, as received by measure, is passed on to the unit in a degraded form. Considering abstract language as the first principle of Technic’s cosmogony, and measure as its implementation in the multiplicity of the possible, the third hypostasis of the unit functions as the level where such infinite proliferation is observed in the detail of its constituent steps. So far, we have discussed the general principle of seriality in its infinite replication of individual series, positions and activations of position; now, we shall move on to consider the single instance of activation of a position in a series. From the infinite expanse of a beeping noise, to the brief moment of a single beep.

This hypostasis is particularly significant within Technic’s chain of emanations, also because it is here that the notion of radical unsituatendess, discussed in reference to absolute language, slowly begins to wither. While unique ‘that-ness’ is entirely banished at the level of absolute language, it begins to resurface as we reach the unit. Despite absolute language’s efforts to enforce a state of perfect equivalence, and to completely eradicate any uniqueness to the ‘stuff’ of the world, the event of a single activation of a serial position silently brings in something that begins to resist this fundamental uprooting. Whenever a single tree activates the position of ‘timber’, or a single human being activates that of ‘migrant’, something emerges as if mysteriously, timidly reclaiming a ‘this-ness’ to itself. Nonetheless, it would be premature to consider this point as the Waterloo of Technic’s cosmogony. Approaching the third hypostasis is still part of our sailing through the open sea of Technic, though to a keen eye the shape of the clouds up above might suggest that a land somewhere far away might still resist the all-encompassing embrace of the waters.

The cosmogonic energy of absolute language, as mediated by measure, is still very much in place at the level of the unit. After all, this is the place where Technic finds the rough material for the creation of its world. The unit, as the single activation of a position in a series, is the minimum building block of all historical series, whether referring to culture, politics, economics, etc. It is the single instance of the ‘being the case’ of a position within a series, or, negatively, of its ‘not being the case’. Hence, the unit has a double dimension, in accordance with its double role as the inheritor to measure’s message, and the messenger to the hypostasis that will follow. On the one hand, the unit is shaped by the specific positions which it goes to activate in part icular historical series, and in this sense, it can vary from case to case; a ton of timber is not the same exact form as a particular human emotion leading to impulse-buy. On the other hand, however, at an ontological level each unit is perfectly equivalent to any other. One activation is the same as another, because they are all merely instances of the event of activation; the ‘stuff’ that activates the position of a ton of timber, and the stuff that activates that of a desire to buy a snack at the till, are perfectly ontologically equivalent within Technic’s cosmology. Precisely, neither of them exists in themselves as unique, autonomous ‘things’. To bring back a concept that we discussed during our brief summary of philosophical takes on Technic in the twentieth century, the unit is the cosmogonic model of an instrument, and as such it embodies the fundamental aspects of Technic, both in its abstract and in its historical configurations.

If we are to consider the piece of information as the archetypal incarnation of the unit, itself the minimum building block of reality, we must take into account a further process that necessarily accompanies it. As positions in a series are activated, each such activation, as a piece of information, needs to be duly observed, recorded and declared. If we consider this aspect at a cosmogonic level, we can understand how the ‘spectacular’ character of our contemporary society, has more to do with an ontological requirement than with reasons of cultural or political propaganda. Hand in hand with the unit-as-information, goes the spectacle that observes, records and broadcasts it. In the absence of such broadcast, even if only targeted to an imaginary audience or to the intranet of a police department, the single activation of a position wouldn’t count as information and thus, ultimately, would not take place at all. Information relies on a series which is, at once, a series of production and one of recording and broadcast. Within this perspective, we can also interpret the multitude of meanings contained in the currently ubiquitous term, ‘data’. Data, as the plural of datum, refers to something which is ‘given’, stable and true. A datum is guaranteed, both because nothing before it can exist, and because it takes place as something ‘given’ to someone, that is, passed on to a further entity that can collect it, record it and pass it on in turn. Yet, today we talk about these ‘givens’ in a plural form: data. This is because a piece of information is never alone, and it cannot possibly exist in isolation. To explain it with a metaphor: while in ancient mathematics pebbles were used to act as numbers, contemporary mathematics adopts the information-technology format of the bit – unlike a pebble that exists in isolation as well as in a mathematical pattern, a bit can never truly stand on its own. Likewise, the world turned into a stockpiling of information necessarily tends to the structure of an ever-expanding network of production and distribution. Infinite growth is at the same time an ethical imperative imposed by the hypostasis of measure, and, at the level of this third hypostasis, a requirement for information to be able to stand at all. If the process of expansion was to suddenly stop, and the universal archive of information that we call ‘world’ was to find a closed and permanent form as the greatest possible piece of information, its already feeble presence would immediately sink into complete darkness. In terms of its cosmogonic function, infinite growth is Technic’s version of soteriology, since it is the only, anxious way it knows to save the world-as-information from vanishing entirely.

The archetypal incarnation of this hypostasis as the piece of information, makes apparent the relationship of enmity between two terminological false friends: unit and unity. Unity, as represented for example by the Pythagorean monad or by the Neoplatonic One, is a principle that presents completeness and a state of self-containment, as the pinnacle both of the perfection of a thing and of its existence. The unitary One exists above all else, because nothing else is as stable and self-sufficient. Conversely, the unit indicates a state of necessary disintegration of the world. It is not just that a unit can never be complete, but that it shouldn’t; was it ever to exit the endless chain of production and of limitless growth, it would suddenly lose any possibility to reclaim citizenship in the world. In the face of this imperative to be reduced to the level of pure instrumentality, we begin to sense that subtle, silent form of resistance to which we referred at the beginning of this paragraph on the third hypostasis.

Within Technic’s cosmogony, any existent (or, better, anything ‘previously k nown as existent’) is reduced to the number of activations which it can simultaneously operate – the greater their number, and the more inducing to further activations in the interest of expanding each series, the more legitimate its presence in the world. Thus, a human being is all the more legitimate in his/her presence within the world, the more s/he is able to be the simultaneous activator of several positions at once in various different series. The trite model of capitalist femininity, proposing a superwoman-like person who is capable of multitasking tirelessly to the point of near ubiquity, functions as a good example of this kind of ontological demand. The same applies to any other thing to which we assign an individual name: plants, animals, minerals, meteorological events and so on. The moment they slow down in their process of activation, or if they ever begin to limit themselves to a few or even just to one series, their legitimacy in the world begins to wane. If they were to exit all available historical series, their presence in the world would suddenly end.

Yet, a human being who is reduced to a pure assemblage of pieces of information, that is, of instrumental units, finds him/herself stuck under such a level of pressure and exploitation, to challenge the weight of any boulder in the Tartarus. At once mutated, torn apart and chained to the mill of the information-process, a human being, like every other existent, cannot but scream in pain. This might be a silent scream, like that of depression or of the stoic suicide of animals in captivity, but the pain which it conveys remains all the more authentic. Indeed, this pain is the first symptom of that ‘something’ which we saw mysteriously emerging as a form of resistance. It is the pain of the existent, as it goes through the torture wheel of Technic, that here begins to remind us that Technic’s cosmogony, after all, is bound to remain incomplete. Something alien still survives within it, although, at this point in the implementation of absolute language’s principle over the world, it is just a murmuring pain.

Fourth hypostasis: Abstract general entity

The fourth hypostasis emanated from the third, like a beam of light filtered through a cloud. Once again, here we encounter a figure that featured in the first chapter of this book. This time, however, we see it under a different light, as a different kind of entity. No longer an existential figure, as seen through human eyes living within history, but a supra-historical hypostasis in the internal architecture of Technic’s cosmogonic force. Within this perspective, the AGE is the fourth hypostasis in a chain of emanations, begotten by the unit, in the lineage of measure and absolute language, and in turn begetting of the fifth and final hypostasis that will follow. Thus, the AGE has to be considered consistently with the spirit of increasing specification that so far has led us from the general principle of absolute language, through the multiplicity of actual series of measure, to the unit’s single instance of activation of a position in a series. The AGE maintains the same cosmogonic geography of the unit, remaining at the level of the single activation of a position in a series. Yet, it considers this instance not in its generality, but in its particular cases: the AGE doesn’t refer to the phenomenon of activation in itself, but specifically to actual activations as they take place in specific patterns. Like at the level of the unit, here too we find ‘something’ that further intensifies its protest and resurgence. How could we even talk of a specific pattern of activations, if we weren’t at least doubting, at this point, that some other presence, outside of the series, contributes to determine the form of such emerging patterns? As the light of absolute language progressively runs out of its cosmogonic energy, an alien shadow begins to grow.

While the unit referred to the phenomenon of activation of a position in a series, and the AGE as seen historically pointed to the existential experience of Technic’s world, the AGE as the fourth cosmogonic hypostasis defines the appearance of patterns of activation in Technic’s world. It is to these patterns that still, with superstitious and nostalgic spirit, we often attribute the name of individual things: this tree and this horse, this human being and this pebble, this idea and this cloud. Within Technic’s cosmology, each of these individual names corresponds to a specific pattern of activations – and to nothing else. For example, inasmuch as I claim any legitimacy as this specific individual human being that ‘I’ supposedly ‘am’ within Technic’s world, I coincide with a certain pattern of activations: the specific gender-position, citizenship-position, work-position, set of desire-positions, skill-positions, health-indicators, etc. that I activate – or better, whose activation constitutes ‘me’. But what is this ‘me’, within Technic’s cosmology? What place is assigned to it, and to all individual names, in this cosmogonic architecture? Considered ontologically, the nothingness that ‘I’ am, and my complete reduction to a set of instrumental units in a number of historical series of production, is here slightly mitigated by the provision of a category into which ‘my’ nothingness can find a place, however fictitious. Within Technic’s cosmology, in accordance to the form of Technic’s cosmogonic architecture, I can claim my individuality only as an AGE. The same goes for any other pattern of activations that wishes to claim its own individuality, or to which anybody wishes to assign a level of specificity and individuality: plants, rocks, climate, ideas and so on. Of course, the AGE is a purely nominalistic construct, in that it is little more than a name defining a specific pattern. Indeed, within Technic’s cosmology, nothing makes the specific pattern that I call ‘myself’, more essentially appropriate than, say, another pattern that includes parts of myself, aspects of a cup, the level of ozone in the atmosphere and a number of moments from the Battle of Verdun.24 What, however, makes certain patterns more eligible for an individual name that is to be elevated to the status of AGEs, is their specific functionality to the expansion of the series in which their activations take place. The specific pattern of activations which we commonly define as ‘this tree’ is easier to include simultaneously in different historical series (environmental/economic/touristic/etc.), than one composed, say, by the rhythm of the oscillation of its leaves and the fluctuation in the GDP of Mongolia. ‘This tree’, as a purely nominalistic entity, is particularly suited to enter a number of different systems of production, while creating a certain synergy between them. Thus, rather than looking at the AGE just as an ontological figure, we should see it as a functional construct, the same way in which we would consider a specific department or job position in a sprawling corporation; its presence, however empty and arbitrary, is justified by its role in the overall process of growing production.

It is in reference to these aspects, that we can find the archetypal incarnation of this hypostas is in the figure of the processor. The processor can be considered here as the peculiar evolution of the traditional notion of subject, of which it retains the ‘subjecthood’, while doing without the aspect of autonomous existence and volition. The subject, as the centre of activity, becomes here the nominalistic figure to which are assigned certain moments in the progression of several processes. The responsibility for such activities (i.e. activations of positions in the interest of the expansion of the series) also befalls the processor, as if it could have decided to do otherwise. In fact, neither the processor has any autonomous will to decide to act one way or another, nor can it decide to stop its activity. The processor is the pattern of its activity, and were it ever to give up some of them, that is to exit certain series, it would do so either to enter new ones (i.e. from ‘worker’ to ‘unemployed aka benefit scrounger’, or from ‘citizen’ to ‘migrant aka criminal’, etc., all equally legitimate in the eye of Technic, and functional to it in their own way), or as part of a process of vanishing that would affect its very presence in the world. Stripped of its autonomy and volition, the processor cannot even be said to be part of a deterministic mechanism, since for determinism to take place there should be at least a theoretical possibility for things to be different than they actually are; on the contrary, within Technic’s cosmogony, the only thing that can be truly said to exist is the ever-expanding ‘being the case’ of the series-system, the alternative to which would be absolute nothingness. The processor is the archetypal figure that takes up the fundamental paradigm of the system in which it is inserted (in the case of Technic, the ever-expansion of the series-system through the relentless activation of serial positions), and implements it in practice. It is the centre of activity, since, in truth, it is nothing else but the name assigned to a specific pattern of activity.

The figure of the processor, if applied to our everyday experience of Technic’s world, helps to clarify certain aspects of our current, seemingly gratuitous enslavement to total-work. Humans (or farmed animals, or waterfalls, etc.) are subjected to a condition of hyper-exploitation, stretching from traditional forms of work to the exploitation of our emotions, because our very ontological position in the world is merely that of specific patterns of activities. We seem to have become nothing else but workers, because in Technic’s cosmology we are nothing but work. Needless to say, within this perspective, the widespread tendency to attribute other names to this process, in particular when we blame our exploitation onto supposedly existing ‘capitalists’ or to a particular economic system, should be taken once again as a form of nostalgic superstition. Considering work merely in its specific historical dimension, as economic/social/political/etc. activity, means remaining oblivious to the cosmogonic quality which it has acquired under the current unreality-system. There is no ghostly 1 per cent of the population that authentically enjoys all this, or truly benefits from it, or specifically wills for us to be enslaved – because technically there is nothing at all, except the ever-expansion of the series that composes Technic’s cosmology. This is not to say that nobody can ever be considered responsible for any action, but rather that, within the present structure of the world as an unreal entity which is entirely comprised by absolute language, the very notion of responsibility doesn’t make sense. Nor does it make sense to attribute desires to anybody, since within the present world as ruled by Technic there is no distinction between desire, activity, people and things; none of these things exist, but they are all merely present as instances of activations of positions in series.

On this basis, we can also attempt to understand our contemporary crisis of action and imagination, which we mentioned at the very beginning of this book. The present paralysis – which we experience both at an individual level as psychopathology, and collectively as that form of akrasia due to which we are unable to tackle even unambiguously lethal threats such as global warming – is in fact just our arbitrary attribution of a pejorative name to a normal state of the world under Technic. We are unable to act differently, or to think and imagine differently, because of the absence, within the present system of unreality, of the basic requirements to implement any alternative course of action and imagination. Who could act differently, if the only method to affirm our legitimate presence in the world, as abstract general entities, is to coincide with our very actions, which we undertake as processors within series, and in the exclusive interest of their expansion? How could we think differently, if the seemingly endless horizon of possible alternative courses of action is in fact reducible to their function as productive series in Technic’s own cosmogony? How could we approach action and imagination with a renewed spirit and desire, as long as we, AGEs, are constitutively unable to function as centres of volition? The very notion of desire, which in common parlance we still continue to attribute to ourselves, has to be interpreted in the light of Technic’s cosmogonic project. Since AGEs are not distinct from their productive activity, they are not different from what we usually call their ‘desire’. Desire for something, within Technic, is just the passage to a new activation in a different series. As I desire to buy a product, for example, I merely activate a new position in the consumer-series, specifically in the sub-series related to that product or service. This ever-growing expansion in the number of simultaneous activations, which we could call ‘infinite desire’, is, in fact, the very process through which Technic’s cosmogony unfolds. Within this perspective, all types of desire are equal and equally legitimate, since they all ultimately boil down to the same process, fulfilling the same, fundamental, cosmogonic function.

The only type of desire that finds no legitimacy here is, of course, that which is entirely negative – a form of total anhedonia that seeks no redemption or supplement. And indeed, we find this form of disobedience rapidly expanding throughout the world ruled by Technic. The contemporary epidemic of depression, the radical emptying of all pleasure that is still desperately covered by the enforcement of ever-stricter injunctions to enjoy, is a signal of this terrifying form of resistance. Once again, that which manages to escape Technic’s cosmology does so as pain and suffering, as a slow form of stoic suicide. Life, constricted into the vaporization chamber of the AGE, finds in its own sabotage the only possible form of resistance against its oppressor. Unless, of course, it was to challenge the very metaphysical foundations on which our world currently rests.

Fifth hypostasis: Life as vulnerability

Out of the fourth hypostasis, like a sinking light reflected by the surface of the sea, shines out the fifth and last one: life as vulnerability. At this level, the energy of the first principle of absolute language finally extinguishes itself, but not without a last shimmer – which announces the possibility for Technic’s cosmogonic chain to restart anew. As it ends, Technic’s cosmogony also reaches its own perfection, and goes back to its roots.

What marks the closing of Technic’s chain of emanation is its progressive entanglement, its fading absoluteness. The principle of language, originally self-sufficient to the point of acting as its own ground and of denying any form of ulterior localization, now finds itself constrained by new, emerging limits. It is here, at the level of this final hypostasis, that Technic encounters a dimension of time which isn’t entirely its own.

Considered serially, time doesn’t quite exist, neither linearly nor cyclically. Within the ever-expanding movement of purely abstract, linguistic series, time is just the rhythm of their expansion; it runs after itself, and its only mode of presence is that of ‘lateness’. At the heart of Technic there is neither present, past nor future, as they all coexist simultaneously within a chain of production that runs uninterrupted. What we encounter instead, is each moment of production repeating itself obsessively, in increasing acceleration. Any such instant, that is any instance of activation of a position in a series, has to be repeated again and again to maintain or to accelerate the pace of expansion. Technic’s time – as ceaseless repetition – doesn’t quite flow, but beeps at a paroxystic pace. Its dimension is geometrical, as it coincides with the terrain on which production takes place – better, it coincides with production itself. Within Technic, moments and events are never temporally ‘present’, since their presence is only retrospectively confirmed by the act of their recording and broadcasting within the series of production. Nor are they ever truly ‘future’, since their potential presence is already, in itself, productive. Equally, they can never be said to be ‘past’, since their past activation of a position in a series remains always active as the foundation on which later instances of expansion take place. Rather, every moment and event within Technic is defined temporally only as ‘late’, that is as ‘not fast enough’. Time is infused by Technic’s ethical dimension, and accordingly it can’t be said to simply ‘pass’: following its cosmological imperatives, it always accelerates – though never fast enough.

Yet, this dimension of lateness as the rhythm of Technic’s time in its accelerating expansion, encounters at the level of the last hypostasis, a source of unbreakable opposition. ‘Something’ else, another temporal dimension, appears to place fetters on the galloping pace of production. As it grounds production on the integrated functional units of the AGEs, the diktats of Technic’s cosmogonic force finally break against the resurgence of ‘something’ that affects time itself. An individual living being, however metaphysically reduced to the nominalist entity of the AGE, still brings in, almost mysteriously, a different temporality. To use a metaphor from IT, as the software meets the hardware and gets entangled in it, it also encounters the specific temporality that befalls material objects. This is particularly evident whenever Technic attempts to impose its absolute domain on living creatures, such as animals and plants. At this level, the ontological mutation operated by Technic, and its project to eradicate existence from the world, encounters an obstacle that appears to be insurmountable. Living creatures (both as traditionally understood, and as understood more fundamentally and broadly, as we will discuss at great length in the next chapter) have a temporality of their own; they have a kernel of existence and a ‘this-ness’ that resists all attempts at annihilation.

Unable to break it, Technic thus attempts to recuperate this obstacle by including it, however partially and negatively, within its own cosmogony. From the perspective of the cosmogonic force springing out of absolute language, ‘life’ is presented as mere ‘vulnerability’. The mysterious emergence of a new set of rhythms and limits, of a new temporality that is connected to life, is included within this cosmology as the obstacle that has to be overcome, the problem that has to be fixed. In recent years, such ‘problematization’ of life has practically unfolded along two main, parallel directions: on the one hand through an attempt to overcome materiality; on the other by integrating Technic at the very heart of materiality itself, thus planning to overtake this emerging otherness though hostile mimesis. We can find examples of the first strategy particularly in the organization of industrial production and in certain branches of information technology – as the productive software is progressively emancipated from the hardware, despite the fact that a clean cut from the material support is as yet practically impossible. Examples of the second strategy of a hostile takeover are found especially in the field of biotechnology, where the mixing of vulnerable living material and pure linguistic sequences of production is pursued to the utmost limit.25 In either case, the result is that the emergence of life within Technic’s world (and more generally, of anything depending on a different form of temporality), is presented in the form of a problem, an obstacle and a vulnerability. As it is included within Technic’s cosmology, the living dimension of the existent (better, the existent in its living dimension, as we will see in the next chapter) is assigned the role of that which needs to be redeemed. Despite its apparent secularism, Technic has retained and enforced a number of categories deriving from the religious tradition – among them, that of sin, which re-emerges here with particular strength.²⁶ Life as vulnerability is the ontological sin that needs to be purged, the impurity that demands to be cleansed. As long as it remains available to be ‘saved’, however partially (and thus, infinitely), the living dimension of the existent is granted citizenship in the world. But whatever remains totally impenetrable to Technic’s attempt to redeem it – that is, to mutate it into a stockpiling of units ready for the infinite proliferation of productive series – is discarded as absolutely implausible, as radical non-presence.

Although it comes at the end of the chain of emanations, and at the setting of the sun of absolute language, this fifth and last hypostasis plays a fundamental role in the economy of the whole chain. We can better appreciate the importance of this cosmogonic level, if we approach it via its archetypal incarnation as possibility.

If the ever-expansion of Technic’s productive chain is limited only by the obstacle of life, understood as problematic vulnerability, then it is also enhanced and made possible by this challenge. Within the limitless expansion that constitutes Technic’s very form of presence, life’s unbreakable resistance is resolved in the figure of an ever-receding horizon that the productive apparatus is made to chase endlessly. Every instance of the obstacle is a problem that needs to be fixed, that is, it’s a possibility for Technic’s further expansion. This method of resolution of a structural failure could be described as ‘resolution through simulation’.27 What is impossible to resolve in its totality, is considered in its parts as a cluster of individual possibilities of resolution. By selecting increasingly minute portions of the impossible, and by turning them into small possible victories, Technic denies its own limits while progressing indefinitely in its infinite chase after itself. In this perspective, we can also appreciate the role played by incremental innovations in all fields of contemporary activity, and the conspicuous absence of any authentic instance of groundbreaking innovation in recent decades.

A possibility is thus to be understood, not as a radical form of indeterminacy, but rather as a gap that exists only inasmuch as it is possible to fill it. A possibility is a ‘not-as-yet’ that, in Technic’s own conception of time, is always-already resolved, since its presence is exactly as ‘that which can be resolved’. The problem that can be fixed is always-already resolved exactly in its being resolvable, that is, in its being reducible to the productive discourse of seriality. On the contrary, what escapes entirely the discourse of productive resolution, that is, of ontological mutation and annihilation, is not even allowed a negative form of presence. Nothing is impossible, because the impossible, by claiming to be irreducible in its nature, also claims a nature of its own, that is, a nature which isn’t reducible to the linear seriality of Technic’s cosmogony – and to anything advancing such claims, no form of presence whatsoever is allowed.

The irreducible mystery of life, stubbornly escaping Technic’s capture, is converted into a theme park for Technic’s triumph. By resolving its resistance into a case of vulnerability – that is as endless possibility for resolution – life is turned into the stage for Technic’s denial of its own limits. Resolution by simulation indicates exactly this condition of ceaseless postponement of the end. This is what happens, for example, when we consider most contemporary discourses over health and illness, and particularly mental health and mental illness. That which most stubbornly resists the process of reduction-to-work operated by Technic, is turned into a medical problem, that is, into a problem that functions as a not-as-yet-accomplished possibility of resolution. From this angle, we can understand more generally the contemporary focus over illness, diseases, catastrophes, even pseudo-apocalypses (as in most contemporary cultural productions), as a further case of possibility. The crumbling support that life as vulnerability offers to Technic’s unfolding, and which would eventually lead to Technic’s own demise, is frozen in the very instant of its crumbling; it is never a resolved situation, or a complete defeat. The permanent state of crisis that characterizes most contemporary discourses in virtually every field, from politics to economics, from medicine to culture, embodies exactly this aspect. By maintaining its relationship with its own limit as a state of endless crisis, Technic is able to freeze it into a suspended condition. For example, the current epidemic of mental illness is not presented as a symptom of Technic’s own limit, as it encounters the resistance of life, but rather as a problem of life itself that Technic has to tackle and fix through socio-medical means. Like Saint Augustin denied the existence of evil, defining it instead as the contingent absence of good, so Technic denies the existence of anything that would authentically escape it, defining it instead as a possibility that hasn’t as yet been fulfilled. For example, life’s mortality is included within Technic’s cosmology as an as-yet-unreached (but by no means unreachable) state of immortality; medicine and medical technologies are working on it, and it is only a matter of time – or so the discourse goes – before we can achieve it. Of course, the notion of immortality as infinite presence is not in the slightest a discourse over life as such, but merely an application to life of the very temporal structure of Technic itself.

It is here, just when it fades, that Technic’s cosmogony hits back and recoils, returning to its first principle as a new beginning for a repetition of its cosmogony. A possibility, considered in itself is the most primordial measure of absolute language; it is the pure virtuality of that which, in the end, cannot be but abstract language. It is a question with only one possible solution, since it is drawn negatively according to the solution itself. As it reaches life, and encounters it as an obstacle, Technic is capable of regenerating its own cosmology by declaring life as a mere vulnerability, a problem awaiting a solution: pure possibility. And what other solution can there be to such a problem, what other form of health can function as the resolution of this illness, but the re-establishment of Technic’s own original cosmogonic principles? If we understand mental illness merely as a lack of mental health, and if we consider health simply as a state of functional presence within the serial system of production, then we imply that it is exactly in the form of absolute language that we seek our redemption. We shall be healthy, we shall be immortal, only in that dimension of our presence in the world that perfectly carries the energy of absolute language. If the whole world is a stockpiling of standing-reserves, it is only in its integration into Technic, in its digestion by Technic, that its incomplete presence shall find redemption. Likewise, digestibility and functionality to the consuming organism, is what determines the difference between food and inedible waste. By painstakingly selecting the digestible portions of life as vulnerability, that is, by circling around its unbreakable and irreducible core, which always escapes reduction to the unfolding of serial production, Technic at once reaffirms its infinity by simulating its limitlessness, and reinforces its own central principle.28

Yet, despite all efforts, an indigestible kernel continues to remain at the heart of the world. Something irreducible to absolute language, something constitutively unfit for serial production, always lingers, not at the periphery, but at the very centre of Technic’s own world. Although unwilling and una ble to be granted citizenship within it, and despite being permanently banned from the catalogue of what is legitimately present, this mysterious something remains there. Something so mysterious, at the heart of life itself, that even calling it ‘something’ would be misleading. Indeed, it belongs to the field of what is ineffable. But once again, we’re racing ahead of ourselves. Just about, this time. The ineffable will be the elusive protagonist of our next chapter. A few more pages, exploring the periphery of Technic’s cosmogony, where the limits to its systems draw the contours of its shape, and we shall venture into another possible form of reality-system.

Upper and lower limits: Ego absconditus and double affirmation

Every form is defined both by its internal principles, and by the external constraints that limit it. Already at the beginning of this chapter, during our discussion of the emanationist form of cosmogony, we briefly hinted at how the general form of Technic’s cosmology finds its outer shape in its relationship with what exceeds it. The hadud (sing. hadd), the limits that befall each layer of its chain of emanations, also befall the chain as a whole. While the internal architecture of Technic is structured in accordance to the character of its own principles, its outer shape is defined by their specific negation. Since Technic’s principles act through a process of absolute reduction to a common language of seriality, capable of being perfectly transparent and conveniently smooth for production, then their outer limits are shaped around the irreconcilable case of the paradoxical form. While the alternative reality-system of Magic, which we shall begin discussing in a few pages, takes the paradoxical form as the accomplishment of its cosmogony, here this represents exactly its insurmountable limit. We can find such cosmogonic paradoxes surrounding Technic’s system from all sides, and particularly at its uppermost and lowermost borders.

As the uppermost limit to Technic’s chain of emanations, we find a form of paradox that could be defined as the Ego Absconditus, the ‘hidden I’. We noticed how the first hypostasis and first principle of absolute language shuns any notion of situatedness or of external enunciation; absolute language presents itself as a language spoken by no mouth, in no place or time. By abolishing the very possibility of anything existing outside of its own terrain, absolute language wishes to deny also its own origin as deriving from anywhere outside of itself. Yet, the serial linearity of its discourse cannot but sink into that very evident paradox which it wished to avoid. How can there be a language that is not spoken? How can we have something absolute without any preceding figure or principle that ‘absolves’ it? Once again, we can find a similar question at the centre of a theological debate, of which, mutatis mutandis, we can here endorse the spirit and the method. The eighteenth-century Iranian Shi’i philosopher Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa'i, posed a similar question in particularly poignant terms. Quoting from a rare piece of Western scholarship on him, by the excellent Henry Corbin:

Shaykh Ahmad Ahsa’i and his successors have strictly adhered to the consequences of Shiite apophatic theology. The idea of ‘absolute’ being, as it is commonly employed by philosophers, is not even an initial idea for them, for the passive participle ‘absolute’ presupposes an absolvens, an ‘absolution’ of being, liberating being by putting it not in the infinitive (esse), nor in the substantival participle (ens), but in the imperative (esto).29

In order to function, absolute language must deny any possibility of anything preceding or even just existing outside of itself. Yet, in order to take place and to be at all possible, such an external figure has to be present. Regardless of how categorically absolute language states to be the product of its own enunciation, as language it still requires a non-linguistic source in order to be able to emerge as a phenomenon. And as an absolute, it still requires a preceding absolvens. Of course, both these aspects of Technic’s cosmogony are equally and simultaneously valid, despite the fact of this being impossible; absolute language is its own source of enunciation, yet at the same time it can’t be. This paradox marks the uppermost limit of the chain of emanations, fencing off the desire for the roots of the first hypostasis to stretch indefinitely into the absolute origin, to the point of becoming their own ground.

An equally unsolvable challenge awaits Technic’s chain of emanations at its lowermost point, at the southern border of the fifth hypostasis, where its original energy exhausts itself and then bounces back to its source. There, we found Technic’s attempt to resolve the unbreakable resistance offered by something ineffable lying at the heart of life, through its congealment in the form of problematic possibility. Despite its spectacular attempts at deflection and resolution through simulation, this mysterious ‘presence-exceeding-presence’, still remains. Indeed, if the obstacle encountered by the fading energy of absolute language was reducible to mere presence, it would have been possible to subsume it back within Technic’s cosmology, and to turn it into an object of ontological mutation and blackmail like everything else. Conversely, its presence is at once present enough to allow Technic to draw from it aspects of possibility and to play its game of postponement through simulation, while also exceeding presence altogether and escaping any attempt at capture by Technic’s cosmogonic force. As we shall see in the next chapter, this ineffable obstacle lying at the heart of life is characterized by this double aspect, at once metaphysical (and as such in part available to be discussed linguistically), and ultra-metaphysical, thus exceeding language and defusing any threat of capture. We could try to sum up its paradoxical nature by defining it as a case of Double Affirmation, a ‘yes-yes’. The first ‘yes’, stands for its available level of presence, that allows for its possibility and its inclusion within Technic. The second ‘yes’, clearly redundant and bewilderingly paradoxical, hints at its ultra-metaphysical ultra-presence, which is so intense that it escapes presence and thus capture. As it will become clearer at the end of the next chapter on Magic, this definition of ‘double affirmation’ borrows from that of ‘double negation’, as developed by twelfth-century Persian philosopher Suhrawardi, who applied it to the issue of how to define God in relation to its attributes.

This paradoxical entity, apparently pushed to the furthermost periphery of Technic’s cosmology, is nonetheless indispensable for it to take place and to endlessly regenerate itself. Although the princip le of absolute language wishes to eradicate any possibility of autonomous presence, and to convert any ‘thing’ into a mere instance of activation of a serial position, it nonetheless requires exactly what it denies, to be able to function. The ineffable dimension, so prominent in what we traditionally understand as life, can be found also in places that we don’t usually consider as living (although as we shall see in the next chapter, such traditional distinctions could be rethought in the perspective of an alternative reality-system). In fact, the ineffable dimension is constitutively part of existence altogether, even when existence is seemingly crushed into mere ‘presence’ by the principle of seriality, as it happens in Technic’s unreality-system. The treasure guarded by the principle of seriality is at the same time the poison that will be able to sabotage its guardian. Once again, both these aspects are present in the scheme of Technic’s cosmogony: existence has to be negated in its ineffable dimension, but its ineffability has to remain in force. If indeed the principle of seriality was able to fully annihilate ineffable existence, the racing pace of its production would immediately run out of ground on which to unfold. Its suspension, functioning through postponement and simulation, still requires the solid bedrock of the possibility (and thus of what escapes it) in order to continue to regenerate itself.

This ineffable dimension, that at once exceeds and necessarily grounds Technic’s cosmogony, can be also considered in its own right as the first principle of an alternative reality-system. Of course, if we are to choose exactly what denies Technic’s cosmogony, our alternative cosmology should have characters that are specular to those examined so far. Regardless of the desirability of this alternative reality-system, such specularity alone would be sufficient reason to explore this alternative at length, since it would be the perfect example of how we can think of a system of reality, that is alternative to the current state of radical unreality. And in fact, the next chapter will be dedicated to an alternative form of cosmogony that is centred around the principle of ineffability, which so far we have encountered only negatively as the nemesis of absolute language. Accordingly, the chain of emanations that we shall observe in the next chapter will be specular to that which we have explored in this one. Yet, the cosmogonic experiment that will soon follow shouldn’t be considered purely as a philosophical exercise. Like the peculiarity of Technic’s internal architecture have produced dramatic consequences on the world around us, so an alternative reality-system would have an equally profound impact on life in the world, according to its own peculiar structure. Seeking an alternative to the contemporary condition of metaphysical nihilism, epidemics of mental illness, hyper-exploitation and environmental devastation, has to pass first and foremost through a fundamental rethinking of the reality-conditions that allow such processes to take place. Imagining a cosmology that is truly and starkly alternative to that which rules our world today is a matter of necessity rather than of philosophical solipsism. Like everything dictated by urgency and by necessity, its edges might be rough and its character worryingly experimental, yet the spirit that animates it infuses it with its own intensity. Whether the end result will be able to match the expectations, and the urgency that originated it, is for the readers to judge.

Conclusion

We have reached the end of the first part of this book, which has focused on exploring the mark impressed by the reign of Technic on history and on our everyday experience in the world (Chapter 1), and the internal architecture of Technic as a cosmogonic force (Chapter 2). Before moving on to the next section, which will be dedicated to the alternative cosmogony of Magic, it might be worth-while to quickly recapitulate some of the main aspects of our discussion so far.

We began by looking at the ‘symptoms’ of the reign of Technic over our contemporary world. Similarly to the ‘hyperobjects’ described by American philosopher Timothy Morton³⁰ – of which we can only see the traces, rather than ever them in their entirety – a cosmogonic force such as Technic can only be detected through the traces that it leaves on the world, which its own peculiar form of reality has allowed to the emerge. In the case of Technic, we have observed how the paralysis of action and imagination that characterizes our contemporary Westernized world, points to a form of radical unreality rather than to any form of reality as such. The present condition of metaphysical nihilism, that strips all things of their essence and existence, turning them into mere instances of an ontology of positions, signals towards a complete disintegration of reality – a collapse of the background that allows the characters to act on stage, as per the metaphor that opened this book. When the frame of reality refuses to act as a frame, thus preventing the existent from emerging within it as a ‘world’, reality’s disintegration begins. In the course of the first chapter we have looked both at the history of this disintegration, which is the history of Technic’s triumph as a hegemonic cosmogonic force, and at the way such process has at once reinforced and expanded its own historical justifications. In doing so, we suggested a cosmogonic reading of that seemingly unstoppable expansion of the productive apparatus, which is usually the object of socio-economic and political analyses. This was not to deny the importance of looking at the world using tools from the social and economic disciplines, but rather to suggest that such tools should be complemented with those from other fields, typically closer to theology and mythology. This initial discussion of Technic’s traces on history has been punctuated with frequent examples taken from our contemporary world, so as to make more apparent what might have otherwise seemed merely abstract and obscure speculations. Conversely, the second chapter on the internal architecture of Technic as a cosmogonic force has not shied away from such risk of obscurity and seeming abstraction.

While the beginning and end of this book are meant to act, respectively, as entry and exit points to our analysis of cosmogonies via examples that can be found in the world, the central part of this volume focuses on the very cosmogonic structures that allow certain types of world to emerge. We have thus dedicated the whole of the second chapter to an experimental use of typically Neoplatonic concepts and language, in the service of our philosophical reconstruction of the elements and processes that constitute Technic’s cosmogonic force – and thus, via their creation of a specific form of (un)reality, that also define the type of world in which we find ourselves living in today. In the course of our examination, we have often used the metaphor of a cosmogonic architecture as a means to provide a visual support through which the reader might better follow the unfolding of our discussion. However, this was also paying homage to the symbolic language usually employed in the philosophical traditions to which our project looks back, particularly to the ‘memory palaces’ created in antiquity and in the Renaissance through the so-called ‘met hod of loci’.31 Like a house develops in height as far as its foundations can hold the weight, so the architecture of Technic’s cosmogonic force unfolds through successive stages, until the point when the sustaining energy of the original principle finally exhausts itself. Yet, we wished to present such an original principle not only as a support to the unfolding of its architecture, but also as a powerful normative element, shaping and directing all successive stages or hypostases. Thus, we saw how the principle of absolute language gives origin to the unfolding of four successive hypostases that progressively actualize its founding directives, while at the same time also inevitably betraying them. Two parallel processes appeared to be running through Technic’s whole cosmogonic building, like ogival ribs through an arch; the progressive monopolizing of existence by the principle of seriality, on the one hand, and the expulsion from the world of anything that would in any way attempt to resist this destiny, on the other. While this annihilation of the existent echoed our previous examination of the consequences of Technic’s reign over the present world, towards the end of the second chapter we also introduced the ‘pain’ of the existent as a constitutive symptom of the exhaustion of Technic’s own internal cosmogonic energy. This mysterious ‘something’, emerging as a form of painful resistance to Technic’s regime, refers at the same time both to the beginning of our discussion and to its continuation in the next part of this book. However horrible it might be to our existential experience, this fundamental symptom of Technic’s reign also silently points towards an alternative cosmogony, that could give rise to a different reality-system and thus to a different world. An alternative that is already present today, at the heart of Technic’s own cosmogony, however disguised as a danger whose call we are supposed to flee rather than follow.32

Notes

1 Interestingly, the earliest recorded theorization of the Marifat stage of (gnostic) knowledge is attributed to the Neoplatonist-leaning, ninth-century CE Egyptian Muslim mystic Dhu’n Nun – who opposed it to ilm, discursive learning and knowledge. See A. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975, p. 43.

2 See al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2002.

3 Plotinus, Enneads, 5.1.6, Burdett, NY: Larson Publications, 1992, p. 428.

4 Plotinus, Enneads, pp. 428–9.

5 Ibid., p. 429.

6 Such as Porphyry’s lost book Introduction to Astronomy in Three Books, largely inspired by the work of second-century CE astrologer Antiochus of Athens, and his Letter to Anebo, in Porphyry, Letters to Marcella and Anebo, translated by A. Zimmern, London: The Priory Press, 1910; but particularly Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, Atlanta, GE: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003. Also see Proclus, Hypotyposis; and fourth-century CE Sicilian astrologer Julius Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis, translated by J. H. Holden, Tempe, AZ: American Federation of Astrologers, 2011.

7 See for example, M. Ficino, De Vita Coelitus Comparanda, in M. Ficino, Three Books on Life, edited and translated by C. V. Kaske and John R. Clark, Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1998, book 3.

8 For an overview of the debate on astrology in the Islamic Neoplatonic milieu, see N. Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religion, New York and London: New York University Press, 2012, pp. 173–87. See also Burckhardt, T., Mystical Astrology According to Ibn Arabi, Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2001.

9 T. Burckhardt, Mystical Astrology According to Ibn Arabi, Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2001, p. 37.

10 For a discussion of the notion of hadd in Shia philosophy, see H. Corbyn, History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 80–4.

11 ‘Its great Maker did not scorn, Himself, in his own work enclos’d to dwell!’ D. Aligheri, Divine Comedy, Paradise XXXIII, 5–6, Translated by the Rev. H. F. Cary, London: Wordsworth, 2009.

12 For a fascinating and in-depth discussion of the ontological problem of representation and truth (though from a perspective much closer to Magic than to Technic), see The Problem of Representation, in M. Cacciari, The Necessary Angel, translated by M. E. Vatter, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994, Chapter 3, pp. 39–53.

13 For a discussion of the different notions of ‘measure’ in ‘Technic’ and ‘Magic’, see Measure and Manifestation in R. Guenon, The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of the Times, Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2001, pp. 23–30.

14 For a detailed examination of the ever-changing relationship between philosophy, theology, culture and mathematics throughout history, see P. Zellini, La Matematica degli Dei e gli Algoritmi degli Uomini, Milano: Adelphi, 2016.

15 As beautifully and lapidarily put by Tadeusz Rozewicz, ‘The extinction of the Absolute destroys / the sphere of its manifestations’ (in Kredowe Kolo (The Chalk Circle) – my translation from the Italian edition, T. Rozewicz, Bassorilievo, Milano: Libri Scheiwiller, 2004, p. 65).

16 See Varieties of Mathematical Experience, in P. J. Davis and R. Hersh, The Mathematical Experience, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981, pp. 31–65.

17 The numerological approach has profoundly influenced other fields of thought outside mathematics. Examples of the impact of its symbolism span from ornaments and architecture (particularly in the Islamic world; see, for example, K. Critchlow, Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach, London: Thames and Hudson, 1976) all the way to music (see, for example, the remarkably visionary work on musical architecture, M. Schneider, Singende Steine: Rhythmus-Studien an drei romanischen Kreuzgängen, Munich: Heimeran, 1978 – which I consulted in the Italian edition, M. Schneider, Pietre Che Cantano, Milano: SE, 2005 – or Gurdjeff’s work on the connection between numerology, cosmology and music, as summarized and recounted in P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, San Diego and London: Harvest Books, 2001).

18 R. Guenon, The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of the Times, Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2001, p. 5.

19 Aetius of Antioch (Pseudo-Plutarch), Placita Philosophorum, Book I, Chapter 3 – in Plutarch, Plutarch’s Morals, translated from Greek by several hands, corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874, Vol. 3, pp. 109–10.

20 For a comprehensive anthology of later Pythagorean writings on numerological numbers and their cosmological significance, see D. Fideler and K. S. Guthrie (ed.), The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1988.

21 Iamblichus, Theology of Arithmetics, Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1988.

22 See A. Schimmel, The Mystery of Numbers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

23 For a critical anthology of the extant sources on Anaximander’s philosophy, see Anaximander, in G. S. Kirk et al. (eds.), The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 100–42.

24 A defence of this claim for a ‘nonconventional ontology’ about objects, defined as ‘the fusion principle’, can be found in M. Heller, The Ontology of Physical Objects, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 49–51.

25 During the twentieth century, this tendency has found its early philosophical and aesthetic foundations in the work of the Russian Cosmists, whose influence is still felt today in the so-called ‘Transhumanist’ currents of thought. For an overview on Cosmism, see G. M. Young, The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

26 For a discussion of the religiosity of Technic, in particular with reference to the cult of work, see my F. Campagna, The Last Night: Anti-work, Atheism, Adventure, Hants: Zero Books, 2013.

27 I am indebted to the late Mark Fisher for this expression – characteristically poignant and brilliant, as it was always in his style.

28 This same process of ‘digestion’ can be found lyrically described in Zbigniew Herbert’s poem Preliminary Investigation of an Angel, in which an ineffable angel, who first arrives still ‘composed of light of the aeons’, is progressively turned by its ‘interrogators’ (or it might be better to say, translators) into something linguistically graspable and exploitable, until ‘the leather throat of the angel is full of gluey agreement / how beautiful is the moment / when he falls on his knees / incarnate into guilt / saturated with contents’ (Preliminary Investigation of an Angel, in Z. Herbert, The Collected Poems, London: Atlantic Books, 2014).

29 H. Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1993, p. 354.

30 T. Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

31 Of which Frances A. Yates offers a comprehensive exposition in her 1966 book The Art of Memory – F. A. Yates, The Art of Memory, London: The Bodley Head, 2014.

32 ‘Wherever there is a ruin, there is hope for treasure / why do you not seek the treasure of God in the wasted heart?’ Jalaluddin Rumi, in J. Rumi, Diwan-i kabir ya Kulliyat-I Shams (7 vols.), edited by Badi’uz-Zaman Furuzanfar, Theran: Theran University, 1957, poem n. 141.