Noah Horowitz: Reality in the Name of God

Having finished reading Noah Horwitz's Reality in the Name of God I will present a few points I found interesting:
Horowitz aims to combine Badiou, Cantorian set-theory, Lacan and the computational theory of Stephen Wolfram to argue that reality is information (or bits) emerging from the universe as a supercomputer processing the divine name. For him reality is mathematizable, Kabbalistic and God's name is really nameless or cannot be said ______.
1) God is one, but not number. Rather this oneness denotes a quality, a quality of being the absolute other or transcendent, 'insisting' outside the illusory whole.
2) Badiou's thesis concerning the one confirms Horwitz's inclusion of Kabbalistic thought, namely Shvirah - the breaking of the excess of the infinite which results in fractured or broken products 'all vessels of creation and creatures are exploded by what they cannot contain - the absolute infinite as such' pg 70.
3) The zero is the mark of the empty set or void, which is the necessary nothing or non-being out of which God creates all things. This is taken from the Cantorian set of the transfinite and Badiou's unpresentable.
4) The nothingness designated by the empty set is included in all other sets, 'the void is thereby everywhere and in everything, as much as not belonging to the empty set is universal' pg 117.Other sets, numbers, entities are forms remarking zero, emptiness or void. He says the matter of numbers is zero, or we could say their essence. This theory of number gives the mystical nothingness from which everything unfolds according to Kabbalah.
5) This nothing is a metaphysical void, a real lack, which is unpresentable. God is needed to allow information and things to arise, through an act of absolute givenness or love. God withdraws from creation to allow nothingness as a point to emerge - the nothingness left by his disappearance - tzimtzum. This tzimtzum is a primordial and singular point, a pure mark, a center, nothing's nihilation, it is the Name of God which constitutes the beginning of creation. Zero is the trace or remains of the void/nothingness, or 'primordial ooze'. There is a gap in God, and him and his name are not one, as he withdraws his name or mark makes present his absence.
6) We are made in the image of God, therefore the subject is zero in a Lacanian sense (premised on desire and lack, difference within incomplete identity) as that which signifies. But the subject for Horwitz becomes the empty set itself, thereby granting importance to the subject and its own constitution of itself and reality through speaking and language. The subject is not being, but becoming and desires/lacks being.
For me this Horwitz's work has many Schellingian parallels that have the potential to be drawn out, despite him trying to offer a structural realism, rather than a speculative physical realism/naturalism.

This is what Paul. J. Ennis had to say about the book at a panel discussion entitled: 'God, Futurity, Justice' at Thinking the Absolute Conference, Liverpool.

‘Only a Digital or Temporary Messiah can save us now’

Paul J. EnnisIn his recent monograph Reality in the Name of God (2012) Noah Horwitz, building on insights from Chalmers, Tipler, and Wolfram, argues that the messiah may turn out to be nothing more than the person who builds a powerful enough computer to simulate the information that constitutes us. He speculates that in the far-flung future the resurrection of the dead will be a gift from our curious descendants.According to Horwitz’s kabbalistic reading of the world as number/naming/informatics there isnothing more to resurrection than having all our bits in order. This digital messiah shares many features with the temporary, not-quite-divine messiah of Quentin Meillassoux’s fourth world of  justice. And just like Horwitz, Meillassoux is drawn to how number and symbol allow us to speculate on futural outcomes because through them we are able to access something absolute.And it is in thinking the absolute in this way that Horwitz and Meillassoux seem, on the surface, to distinguish themselves from the weak theologians – the stated opposition of both thinkers. But as many have come to notice, the same straining for justice, the same hopefulness, and the same taste for the future is evident in both thinkers. Where they stand apart is in the trust they share concerning the force of mathematics, language, and reason to bring us outside ourselves.Philosophy in their hands is not the merging of thinking and thanking, or a guard against the pernicious effects of calculative thinking, but, rather, it is only with calculation that there is any reason to hope.

First paper, presented at the SEP in Manchester Met, Sep 2012

Ravaisson and Schelling

In this paper I propose that there are inherent similarities in the work of Schelling and Ravaisson, and that there exists a morphogenic zero point, or synthetic archetype, when both of their philosophies are combined.

Writing on Schelling, Bruce Matthews says Schelling’s universal archetype or ‘centre of gravity’ is ‘a form of thinking, which, like Kant’s schema, straddles the boundary between literal and figurative and is, in this sense, more of a symbol than a formula…Schelling understands the universal archetype of philosophy as mediating the maximum of the absolute.’[1] Insofar as the universal archetype is that which mediates Schelling’s Absolute, A=A, it can be marked as the zero point before Absolute Identitiy fractures into two opposing potencies, or that which lies behind the Absolute’s antithetical activity. The zero point denotes that which grounds the ground of Absolute Identity – the Ungrund. For Schelling the Ungrund forms Absolute Identity’s essence and its complete indifference to that which is produced from it. In his Freedom Essay Schelling says, ‘there must be a being before all ground and before all that exists, thus generally before any duality – how can we call it anything other than the original ground or the non-ground (Ungrund)? Since it precedes all opposites, these cannot be distinguishable in it nor can they be present in any way. Therefore it cannot be described as the identity of opposites; it can only be described as the absolute indifference of both.’[2] And, ‘Indifference is not a product of antitheses, nor are they implicitly contained in it, but rather indifference is its own essence separate from all antithesis, an essence against which all antitheses are ruined, that is nothing else than their very not-Being [Nichtsein] and that… has no predicate, except as the very lacking of a predicate, without it being on that account a nothingness or a non-thing.’ (VII, 406) For Schelling this Ungrund is the ‘unthinged’, the unconditioned, or ‘no-thing’, yet not nothing, but something, somehow. It is a primordial site of non-being, or the not-being in any way predicable or antithetical. Essentially it is the dark, chaotic abyss that precedes all. Zero is apposite as a symbol of the Ungrund, as it signifies nothing/‘no-thing’ in itself, or the dark empty void which thought runs up against in trying to conceive of absolute foundations. The zero is not the Ungrund itself, because zero itself can be cognized and thus is a product of nature as identity,  as much as everything else is for Schelling. Yet, this cognition results in a Schellingian way of thinking that which vastly exceeds the human subject as a singular finite product, a thinking of the unprethinkable that always arrives at zero. Accordingly, the search for the generative core of nature gives us not a being, nor nothingness, but, more precisely, the zero of non-being from which being itself must have arisen, and thus the preconditions or the grounds for a physical idealism.

In what way can we say that this archetype is synthetic or morphogenic for Schelling? Unlike the Kantian analytic ideal, confined to the unchanging realm of the noumenal, Schelling’s archetype is synthetic insofar as it forms Absolute Identities own being, which is itself a dynamic unity. Through its autopoesis and own self-organization it informs the evolution and development of all of nature.[3] Schelling's transcendental ideal is ‘made immanent to account for how the integration of the physical and metaphysical might occur and thereby engender a wholeness and completeness in philosophy that would make it capable of realizing’[4] the very same archetype whose metaphysical status is necessarily prior to it being thought consequently. The zero is synthetic and morphogenic in the sense of being a prototype and reiterating the Ungrund into a conceptual form at a higher level, i.e nature ideates with the conscious individual. For as Schelling argues ‘Reason is not activity…but rather indifference; the measure and, so to speak, the general place of truth, the peaceful sight in which primordial wisdom is received, in accordance with which, as if looking toward the archetype [Urblid], understanding should develop.’[5] Insofar as the archetype is described as primordial, indifferent and the direction towards  which reason should develop this can be nothing other than the zero point, because it is nature, as reason, arriving back at the sign that designates what grounds its very being, much like the Kantian ‘form of all knowledge’ which provides systematic unity.

Archetype derives from the Greek term Arche, meaning first principle, beginning or origin, the active cause. It also means the ‘original pattern, from which copies are made, arkhetypos – ‘first moulded’. It is morphogenic in the sense that the zero is carried forward through nature, to its highest product – man. Schelling argues ‘the human will is to be regarded as a bond of living forces; now, as long as it remains in unity with the universal will, these same forces exist in divine measure and balance. But no sooner than self-will itself moves from the centrum as its place, so does the bond of forces as well; in its stead rules a mere particular will that can no longer bring the forces to unity among themselves as the original will could and, thus, must strive to put together or form its own peculiar life from the forces that have moved apart from one another.’[6] And ‘Man, even though born in time, is nonetheless a creature of creation’s beginning (the centrum)’[7] ‘Thus, in general, I-hood, individuality is now admittedly the basis, foundation or natural centrum of any creature’s life’’[8]
Again the idea of a centrum is similar to the zero point in so far as it denotes a void, sphere, or gap of emptiness demarcated by a line, border or horizon, which cannot be stepped beyond i.e (a horizon or limit to thought) from the position of the individual, which blocks attempts to find or comprehend what lies within this original and primordial dark zero-void. We can say that for Schelling the centrum is both the primordial and original site, but also the individual.  A person can have its unique ground or centre and yet be linked to a larger meaningful whole and creation’s centrum. A person is something both similar and different to Absolute identities essence, a difference of Absolute identities power of iteration, and a difference in repetition. Both close to yet far removed from it's own beginning, historically, naturally and intellectually, which can only be recovered partially through intellectual intuition, but never fully. This also means that the individual can be dislocated or removed from the absolute whole and thus far removed from nature. It is within this gap or distance from the absolute and the Ungrund to the ontology of the individual that allows Schelling to conceptualise the freedom of individual emergence and self-determination.[9]

If the zero morphs from the Ungrund, to nature’s highest product – man then it’s structure is also analogous to the biological properties of a living cell. If the human individual is conceived as a large dynamic membrane (in the sense that Simondon uses it) which folds interiority and exteriority upon itself, it is also that which is continually folded with what is not it, or what lies outside or beyond it– an otherness then exits within identity, an element of non-being, or the absolute zero of being. 

The zero can also be conceived as the structure of the psyche and existential experience of the individual (in a Lacanian sense) insofar as there exists a void/hole/or emptiness designating a lack at its centre, and thus a lack of complete identity. We can then argue that an element or hidden remainder of non-being which is made immanent is carried forward from the Ungrund. This missing portion of identity twists experience into a topology of un-presence.[10] For Schelling man is not God, or Absolute being and thus is not complete but is always in a process of becoming. Neither is he non-being, but occupies a middle-ground between both where an obscure bond between the divine and the individual is established, as well as a new synthesis between self and creation, or the universal and individual.

In what way can we say that the zero exists for the French philosopher Felix Ravaisson? He too uses the term archetype where,  in French, ‘type signifies ‘type’ or ‘form’ not only in the philosophical sense of the essence of a being, but as mentioned, in the sense of a prototype, mould, figure or symbol’.[11] Ravaisson uses the term with reference to habit and consciousness – that which forms the being, or essence, of the individual. Throughout his text Ravaisson makes numerous reference to the ‘middle term’, ‘middle ground’, ‘site of equilibrium…the common limit of opposites…where extremes touch’[12], ‘its dividing line is everywhere and nowhere’[13], ‘it is a moving middle term…which advances by an imperceptible progress from one extremity to the other’[14]. It is in this mediating centre that habit operates, that reveals the ‘intimate essence and necessary connection’[15] of the real and ideal, subject and object, spontaneity and necessity. For Ravaisson habit is defined as a way of being of the individual and if the archetype is found principally in consciousness as effort, which constitutes the experience of the individual through felt activity, then we can equate the individual with this middle ground.  If for Ravaisson the middle ground is a medium or milieu then no opposites are present in it, and neither in a Schelligian way is it predicable or contains any qualities or properties. Rather it is a site or source in which two forces acquire their opposition through it.

An important question, then, is the ontology of such a structure, rather than what it is or means for consciousness alone (e.g the felt phenomenality of such a middle ground for the individual). We would argue that such a structure is the zero itself, but one that has morphed from the Ungrund as Absolute indifference to modal plenum or point of balance within the individual. Harmony or equilibrium exists where it is neither one thing or another, and still not specifically  any-‘thing’. Therefore in a Schellingian way it remains the ‘unthinged’. Again it denotes a site or point of non-being. It could be argued that Ravaisson seems to offer a correlationist account due to the fact that he has a tendency to ascribe this middle ground to that which pre or already exists – life- however, we would argue that the generation of opposition is acquired through the activity of the individual. This is confirmed by Ravaisson describing the individual’s soul as ‘the centre of opposing forces on a lever…with the capacity to measure and dispense force.’[16] It is the individual as centre, as zero or mediation itself analogous to the primordial, self-caused initial act between antithetical potencies of Absolute identity or its mediating between two polar forces before it is ruptured or sundered into difference, i.e. before unity is broken into opposition. Again this establishes an intimate connection between what is necessarily prior to what is and the individual. Yet, for both Ravaisson and Schelling, the individual must always traverse/waver/oscillate between any divide, it must always feel a predominant degree, or asymmetry between either element to constitute experience, life, activity, effort and dialectical striving. Subjectivity is what is after this event, an activity of becoming between poles.
For both philosophers nature, and thus life exists as difference, a differentiation of all inclusive sameness.  If there were no divide or difference in what is, then nature and the individual would be like the inorganic, primordial Ungrund, in which it would be impossible to experience anything, including ourselves (essentially there would no-thing/nothing). What this middle is is, for Ravaisson, that which is ground laying [zu Grunde liegend], denoting activity to-wards in a directional sense – a thinking towards that which precedes thought – the Ungrund. Again this recalls a Schellingian cyclical re-turn to the zero.
This reveals that what exists – what is as identity – is founded upon a ground: the ground of Absolute Identity insofar as it is the ground of existence. But the essence of that ground itself is grounded in something other than it - that which is antecedent to all ground – which cannot itself be ground but ungrounded. Thus the activity of identity always moves towards grounds that in the end are ungrounded precisely because if a ground exists it must be consequent upon what is neither grounded nor already ground. The antecedent is thus always antecedent to a consequent, of which the realisation of that antecedent is consequent. Does this mean that there is the antecedent zero only because there is a consequent at all – i.e. it being thought? If there were no consequent there is no sense in which the antecedent could be either. However this is an isolated antecedent which would offer a similar sense of no-‘thing’/non-being/Ungrund, and the real antecedent in question – the Ungrund, or zero– is that which is necessarily prior to what is, if what is has come into existence at all, for Schelling, and as it has just been argued, for Ravaisson. The thought of the antecedent is thus included in the production of all things, yet this does not mean that the Ungrund is imagined or is just a correlation of thought, it is necessarily prior but always consequent within nature.
It is the zero that is a symbol or sign denoting the evolutive and organistic aspects of the Ungrund that are later trans-figured i.e. put into a figure denoting the Ungrund’s very being. The zero is thus both product – nature as thought- and productivity, a productivity of mediative activity between opposition that is generative. It exists prior to nature as ground, but which is thought consequently (it has morphed), and as such exists within/immanent to nature as grounds, existing last in the genetic series of nature’s products. We can never reach the unprethinkable in itself, but only zero. Nature’s historical past, its sheer excessive productivity is non-totalitizable. It points to an intellectual and rational limit of thought and a darkness that attempts to block nature’s apriori status. It also demonstrates the transfinite, temporary and limited status of being. In trying to think the unprethinkable the individual’s ego is disrupted and it is thrown back into the chaos that is outside thought but which precedes it, which threatens the dissolution of the grounds of individuality. There is always a missing part or experience, or rather an absence or latent otherness that is never made present, where a portion of identity is concealed creating an internal difference and an external opposition between our very finitude against that which lies beyond – infinite and eternal complete being. For both philosophers the individual exists always slightly off balance or de-centred. In a process of continual becoming it is contrasted against the necessary completeness of God’s form of Absolute being, an insurmountable otherness, yet intractably related. Premised on lack, and desire for complete fullness we want to move beyond becoming, but this demands the very annihilation or dissolution of the self, the ungrounding of the subject and the complete takeover of non-being – where opposition and difference is undone, neutralized and erased into the void. Our highest aspiration becomes the destruction of our personality in trying to reach beyond. Schelling admits as much quote ‘The fear of life itself drives man out of the centrum into which he was created: for this centrum, as the purest essence of all willing, is for each particular will a consuming fire; in order to be able to live within it the man of all particularity must become extinct [absterben], which is why the attempt to step out of this centre into the periphery is almost necessary in order to seek there some calm for his selfhood.’ If man were to stay in this zero-void of non-being, in this centrum, then his self would be extinct, in order to be and become he must always be partly outside it, always slightly distanced from it.
Finally the zero, analogous to non-being, ‘no-‘thing’, is that which, in both Schelling and Ravaisson, is the goal towards which finite rational consciousness strives towards, and which is the cyclical turn or re-turn of nature back upon itself : the site of primordial univocal oneness, a void of open ambivalence and indifference, a return to a whole where all particularity is dissolved including the self, a black horizon ungrounding and undoing all difference, a complete affirmation of negation.
So to finish. What exactly does this zero give us? It demonstrates that a form of nothingness is originary and also consequent philosophically when thinking speculatively. But does nothingness exist in being or is Being really nothing? I would answer for both philosophers being is not any-‘thing’, but what is in itself as itself, it is therefore not entirely nothing, but somehow exists – the how indicating for Schelling, the importance of modes of being that arise from a powers metaphysics and the activity of forces that produces an ontology. Nothingness exists in beings in terms of non-being being reiterated within nature from the dynamic zero, where nothing is just a negative determination of being or that which is not x. Does this give us a topography of nihilism – where being and nothing come together, the essential null place of the origin of nihilism? It is not a question of reducing everything to zero, which would obliterate the plenitude, the creativity and vibrancy of the world but to offer something far more positive. Yes zero has been couched in negative terms – nothing, void, lack, incompletion which says something essential about life, but it also positive at the same time. It indicates the void which contains all the potential of the universe and all the potential of empty space, a zone of indetermination but which has the future potential to be determined. Insofar as the zero is that which mediates, always occupying a centre ground or field beneath and within nature, it forms a milieu that is morphogenic for individual themselves. They can draw upon its background layer that lies in excess of themselves. It is virtual field of latent possibility waiting to be actualised. The zero then becomes an open zone, a rupture or gap in thought that has yet to be traversed or articulated fully, a symbol standing for something beyond itself where being and nothing are gathered together.

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[1] Matthews, B (2011) Schelling’s Organic Form of Philosophy: Life as the Schema for Freedom. g. 222.

[2] Schelling, F.W.J. (2006) Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom trans. J. Love & J. Schmidt. 406, pg. 68.

[3] B. Matthews, Life as a Schema for Freedom. pg. 16.

[4] Ibid., pg. 17.

[5] Schelling, F.W.J. (2006) Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom trans. J. Love & J. Schmidt. 415, pg. 76.

[6] Schelling. Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. J. Love & J. Schmidt, 366, pg. 34.

[7] Ibid., 63.

[8] Footnote in Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. J. Love & J. Schmidt, 367, pg. 35. From the treatise ‘On the Assertion that There Can Be No Wicked Use of Reason’, Morgenblatt, 1807, No.7, and in ‘On Solids and Liquids’, Annuals of Medicine as Science, vol. III, No.2.

[9] Ffytche, M. The Foundation of the Unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the Birth of the Modern Psyche. pg. 195.

[10] Ffychte, M. pg. 166.

[11] Carlisle, C. & M. Sinclair (2008) Commentary on Ravaisson’s Of Habit. pg. 89.

[12] Ravaisson, F. (2008) Of Habit. trans. C. Carlisle & M. Sinclair. pg. 43.

[13] Ibid., pg. 57.

[14] Ibid., pg. 59.

[15] Ibid., pg. 67.

[16] Ibid., pg. 37.