The Shaking Gate (from the history of the Immanent Impossible)

Abstract

The text is part of a study on onto-economics devoted to the history of the Immanent Impossible (II) in modern philosophy. It traces how Kant's critical philosophy, reducing the question of holding-together-the-divided to the problem of givenness/non-givenness, sets the framework for the subsequent development of thought. The article focuses on an analysis of Hegelian dialectics as the “gateway” to this history, revealing its structure as a series of unsuccessful attempts to achieve absolute equilibrium—an ideal that proves possible only as a “rebalancing of the unbalanced.” The history of IN appears as a history of decline, which must be gone through to the end in order to understand its mechanics and go beyond its limits. Particular attention is paid to Hegel's transition from phenomenology to logic, which is interpreted as a procedure of double purification, an attempt to move from the absolute-for-us to the absolute-in-itself. However, this transition, like previous attempts in Hegel's early theological texts (where love or religion take the place of logic), turns out to be a tautological doubling, an “idle run” within the framework of the ontology of IN. The text ends with the image of the “crocodile” from the Zohar as a symbol of the hidden source of the “shudder” of the very soil of thought, which makes it impossible to move forward steadily. Only coincidental philosophy, capable of seeing and separating “holding-together-the-divided” from the logic of givenness/non-givenness, offers a path to true liberation.