Speculative Grace: The Principle of Irreduction

A. Stage Setting

In previous posts, I've worked to set the stage for the following question: if we were to port the notion of "grace" into the context of a non-theistic ontology, what modifications would the concept need to undergo? 

In the first post, I laid out the nature of the experiment. In the second post, I addressed at least one reason why we might want to conduct such an experiment. In the third post, I offered an initial (though admittedly abstract) formulation of a non-theistic conception of grace. In this post, I'd like to look more carefully at some of the details of a non-theistic ontology and the implications of these details for a non-theistic understanding of grace.

B. The Principle of Irreduction

It is not my aim here to work out all the details of an ontology of multiplicity. But I do want to be able to say enough about what such an ontology would entail to undertake a trial insertion of grace into such a platform. To this end, allow me to propose one basic principle that, at least roughly, would need to characterize an ontology of the multiple. Borrowing from the work of Bruno Latour, let’s refer to this principle as the “principle of irreduction.” 

(For additional information, one might consult the related work of my colleague Levi Bryant on these questions. This post in particular may be helpful. Graham Harman's recently released book on the philosophical implications of Latour's work, Prince of Networks, is also an excellent introduction.)

As I formulate it, the principle of irreduction has two parts:

Given an original multiplicity, (1) no multiple can be entirely reduced (without remainder) to any other multiple or set of multiples, and (2) no multiple is a priori exempt from being reducible in part to any other multiple or set of multiples.

The first part of this principle ensures multiplicity (and, thus, a non-theistic ontology) because it prevents a complete unification of multiples under any given heading. Every relation will always entail an unsubsumed remainder. The One as a totality is banned.

The second part of the principle guarantees the general flatness or immanence of this multiplicity because it ensures the possibility of overlap and communicability. No multiple is exempt from being reducible in part to other multiples. Here, the One as a sovereign exception exempt from co-conditioning is banned.

In general, then, the principle of irreduction renders co-conditioned multiplicity unconditional and absolute. In order to avoid the unconditioned exception of a founding One, it unconditionally imposes conditioning. In this sense, the principle simply describes the parameters of a non-supernatural or immanent “transcendence.” Such transcendences must be neither entirely reducible nor entirely exempt from reduction.

C. Initial Implications

For our purposes, two implications worth noting follow from the principle of irreduction.

First, the principle enjoins us to understand multiplicity in terms of “assemblages.” An assemblage is a multiple that is distinguishable from but also composed of other multiples. Such assemblages are not reducible to their constituent parts and they are not totalizable into wholes without remainder. Thus, assemblages are organized around both an external difference or tension that distinguishes them from other assemblages and a set of irreducible differences or tensions that are internal to their composition.

Second, the principle of irreduction imposes an absolute requirement of “work.”

Because an assemblage cannot be exempt from the possibility of reduction to other multiples, it is characterized by an unavoidable availability. However, because it can also never be entirely reduced to other multiples (even those that compose it), it is also characterized by an unavoidable resistance. Let’s use the term work to designate this double-bind of resistant availability.

Work: the double-bind of a multiple’s being necessarily available for but resistant (and irreducible) to relation.

In light of ontological multiplicity, “to be” is “to be an assemblage” that is (1) in working relation with other, external assemblages, and (2) composed of working relations with the assemblages that are internal to it.

D. Grace and Irreduction

This returns us, then, to the question of grace. Let’s preserve the traditional idea that grace ought to be associated with transcendence. However, if transcendence is no longer defined as a unique, sovereign exception to the rest of reality, than grace itself will be associated with the distributed plurality of non-supernatural transcendences that characterize the differential multiplicity of the world. In other words, grace will be defined by the ubiquity of work.

Let’s offer this preliminary definition of grace. Grace: the double-bind of a multiple’s resistant availability.

In my initial post, I identified four baseline features of grace. I said that grace must be: prodigal, enabling, absolute, and unmasterable. As the double-bind of resistant availability, grace fits this bill.

(1) Grace is prodigal because its resistance to complete reduction entails a remainder that is both in excess of every relation (or commensurable set of relations) and immune to any one kind of rational transparency.

(2) Grace is enabling because it marks every assemblage’s unavoidable and excessive availability for working relation.

(3) Grace is absolute because the double-bind of resistant availability applies absolutely, universally, unconditionally, and without exception to everything that is.

(4) Grace is unmasterable because every relation requires work and work unfolds only in terms of more or less effective uses of influence. Characterized by the ubiquity of both external and internal resistance, there is no leverage point for any claim (even any limited claim) to mastery or control.

A number of productive consequences follow from this non-theistic understanding of grace.

E. Productive Consequences

First, a non-theistic understanding of grace does not oppose grace and work. Rather, here, grace, as the double-bind of resistant availability, is work. The unconditional and exceptionless imposition of work is the gift given by grace.

Also, a non-theistic understanding of grace links grace with passibility. Roughly, to be passible means that one is susceptible to feeling, suffering, or external impression. Passibility, at root, belongs to that same cluster of words as passivity, passion, patience.

Classically, theism defines God as the giver of grace because he is a founding exception to passibility. That is, classically, God is impassible: he is not available for feeling, suffering, or external impression. In a non-theistic ontology, however, grace unfolds as the exceptionless universality of passibility. Here, to be is to be passible. And God would be no exception to this rule. God would be one being, one particularly complex multiple, among many others: available, passible, resistant, and graced by the unavoidability of hard work.

Further, to say, then, that grace unfolds as the exceptionless universality of passibility is to say that grace guarantees the universality of suffering.

To be is to suffer, and this in two senses. Outside of theism, suffering characterizes both activity and passivity. Unavoidably available for relation, every assemblage passively suffers its passibility to being enlisted, entrained, or re-distributed by other assemblages. Even in actively influencing other multiples, an assemblage suffers their irreducible and unmasterable resistance. Further, composed of assemblages, every assemblage (God included) must also suffer itself.

But this universality is not (simply) bad news because suffering, as we’ve just pointed out, is itself the universal mark of grace: without exception, and with an absolute and unmasterable excess, grace comes, enabling us to act, think, feel, love, and be.

Finally, as the double-bind of resistant availability, grace is the mark of the real. Grace gives us the gift of what is real as real.

Grace marks what is real as real because reality is itself essentially characterized by this same double-bind. 

In what way? In order to be real, something must be at least potentially available. It must suffer the rule of passibility. That which is not available and cannot in principle be either reduced in part to some other multiple or enlisted as part of some other assemblage is not real. Further, however, that which is available without also manifesting resistance likewise fails to be real. Our fantasies, for instance, are preeminently available to us, but, because they do not resist us, those fantasies fail to be real (or, at least, they fail to be real as something other than “real” fantasies). To be real, a multiple must be both available and resistant — and these are the gifts of grace.

As a side note, an interesting additional consequence follows from this convergence of grace with the real: to be committed to ontological multiplicity is to be committed to realism.

By “realism” I mean that, in the absence of any original unity, the world’s multiplicity is characterized as such by the fact that (1) it is available for relation (it is accessible, at least in part, to our epistemic investigation of its history, qualities, composition, etc.), and (2) the world’s multiplicity cannot be reduced to the horizon (be it transcendental, linguistic, or cultural) imposed upon it by our relationship to it. In this sense, unlike many postmodern epistemologies of multiplicity that are, in essence, anti-realist, an ontology of multiplicity is, as a result of the principle of irreduction, by definition realist. Where many postmodern epistemologies of multiplicity draw the conclusion that nothing is knowable in itself in the absence of an original, founding unity, an ontology of multiplicity must conclude, by virtue of what constitutes it as such, that there are no a priori exceptions to what may be knowable because there can be no exceptions to the rule of resistant availability.

This is likely more than sufficient for the moment. Next week I'll elaborate on the kind of soteriology this approach may entail.

Comments

[Bruce]

Have you read Latour's talks on religion? (They are on his website.) He is, apparently, a Catholic.

[willy]

Very stimulating and hopeful...up to a point.

Your key characterization of 'theistic'/God would be "the absence of any original unity"? ...or more specifically, though rather implicitly it seems to me, the absence of any 'undivided/multiple' original unity. And so you elaborate much of intriguing value re the irreducible multiplicity.

And yet, our God, _the_ God, does not fit your characterization. In that many of 'our traditions' are afflicted with your characterization, your work grants something fresh and hopeful. To the extent that your own alternative falls short of orthodoxy, there would be a danger...yet another ontological heresy?

[Adam Miller]

Bruce, thanks for the note. I'm aware of them, but haven't had a chance to look at them. Are you familiar with them?

[Adam Miller]

Willy,

I appreciate the comment. You're right that this "God" - or, at least, this conception of a nontheistic grace - falls short of orthodoxy.

A couple of responses:

1. I've adopted a nontheistic ontology here as an experimental framework. I want to see what grace can/may look like in such a framework. The results, I think, even if ultimately incompatible with orthodoxy, will likely also benefit an orthodox or theistic understanding of grace.

2. It is true, in general, though, that I'm not especially concerned about orthodoxy for orthodoxy's sake.

3. It seems to me that question of God's passibility (or impassibility) is a central issue that, if we are to address it, will force us to have a loose sense of orthodoxy. The problem of God's passibility is a very old problem - perhaps one of the oldest problems in Christian thought - and I think its central to the question of grace.

More soon.

[brad]

what? a non-theistic ontology? i'm looking forward to your non-theistic soteriology too, albeit experimental. what is your impetus behind such experiments?

[Adam Miller]

Brad,

Good question. The impetus (apart from sheer curiosity) is twofold. Quoting myself from an earlier post:

"First, in light of contemporary science, we have good reason to take seriously the claim that complex, dynamic, material systems are capable of producing extremely rich patterns of self-organization without the superaddition of any higher, designing, goal-oriented intelligence. My aim is to see what happens to our conception of grace if we experimentally adopt a non-theistic ontology that takes seriously such non-directed self-organization as fundamental (rather than incidental) to the way things are.

"Second, and more importantly, it seems to me that a great deal of valuable work has been done in Continental thought (from Nietzsche to Heidegger to Derrida to Marion) to show that we may have good reason to be suspicious about the spiritual viability of some of the theoretical, ontological, and political baggage woven deep into the fabric of theistic ontologies."

Does that help?

[willy]

Adam, thanks for your reply. Of course 'we' are not interested in orthodoxy as a museum piece. How shall we then talk about 'truth', 'the way it is', 'reality', knowing the true and living God, to quote Paul, the truth that sets us free, true life, etc. All such terms are problematic, and we belong to an historical moment that prides itself on wanting to get beyond 'just terms', just traditions, lifeless religion, etc. Amen.

But full play for diversity (within trinitarian unity...as itself even understood in terms of diversity), and the passability of (the triune) God has been and is being challenged and explored in many ways by many folk in many traditions, many of them quite orthodox, in a somewhat standard historical sense.

And I welcome that...as well as your 'experiment'. Nonetheless, if I had the time (or if someone else might), it would not be too difficult to show how your experiment presupposes and uses a notion of unity at least equally ultimate with your notion of multiplicity. Explicating that notion of unity would be fun, but we'd all have to be in the right mood. ;-) And with even more time, I'd like to show that your "nontheistic ontology" is actually neither. Such could be one benefit of your experiment. But that might require a bit more than "the right mood."

Regardless, I am also rather sure that your experiment will indeed benefit an orthodox or theistic understanding of grace. (see p.s. comment #2 below)

courage...and all the grace you may need to complete your project,

willy

p.s. just a comment or two re your reply to Brad:

1. re "complex, dynamic, material systems are capable of producing extremely rich patterns of self-organization without the superaddition of any higher, designing, goal-oriented intelligence"

QUITE right; it's the 'superaddition' which is problematic...such need not be 'superadded' to be present and operative, even constitutive of 'matter' per se.

2. re "we may have good reason to be suspicious about the spiritual viability of some of the theoretical, ontological, and political baggage woven deep into the fabric of theistic ontologies."

I'D SAY, even more strongly, "we DO have..." ...and your experiment will help to ferret out such, and hopefully open up better alternatives.

[Adam Miller]

Brad, thanks for the additional comments. Hopefully we'll be able to work through some of these issues as I continue to spool things out. I think there's more than a pinch of truth to the qualifications you've offered above.

[Adam Miller]

Sorry, Willy (and Brad)! My previous comment was meant as reply to Willy's most recent comment.