Immanence, Abundance, Democracy
William E. Connolly
Johns Hopkins
Immanence and Transcendence
In a rich and compelling essay, Daniel Smith reviews a
series of differences between a philosophy of transcendence and
one of immanence. He selects Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze
as exemplars. The terms of comparison between them are
fascinating because each has significant affinities to the other
and develops a subtle version of the tradition he invokes.
Derrida, for instance, does not support a traditional
monotheistic image of transcendence, in which the commands of
God are revealed through scripture and the human obligation to
obedience follows from those commands; nor does he adopt a
Platonic view of Ideas realized by exceptional figures through
arduous work. Rather, the transcendence Derrida seeks is
constantly sought but never attained and urgently demanded but
essentially uncertain in content. The human pursuit of
transcendence assumes the shape of a double bind, in which you
are first bound to an imperative that is unattainable and then
obligated to accept this condition as itself constitutive of
being. For the idea of pure transcendence exceeds possible
experience.