Reality and Its Double

Reality and Its Double is a test on the illusion writes by the philosopher Clément Rosset, appeared in 1976 at Gallimard.

Summary

The paradoxical structure of the double (to be at the same time itself and the other) take its source in the illusion, i.e. the scission of a single event in two events. This scission is made possible by propensity, at the human being, of the setting to the écard of reality when this one is unpleasant. The human being expresses a quite relative tolerance with regard to reality, tolerance conditional and provisional which can be suspended any time. But " if he insists and absolutely makes a point of being perceived, he (reality) will be able to always go to show himself elsewhere ". The illusion constitutes for this author a " perception inutile" , because, if the latter can prove to be right, it is not accompanied then by a behavior adapted to it: there is unfolding of the event.

The topic of the double is present in a cultural center much larger than that of the romanticism or psychology of the split personality.

One thus finds it in the oracular illusion of the Greek tragedy. Henri Bergson underlined already the bond between the oracular structure and the topic of the double. For Clément Rosset, oracle, such as that pronounced in the Oedipus king of Sophocle, or that of Sigismond in the life is a dream of Pedro Calderón of Barca, or that of the Vizier in This evening in Samarkand of Jacques Deval, oracle thus is not other than a figure of the destiny whose prediction is realized, but in very an other way that awaited and imagined. That which is awaited does not realize but takes figure of reality. The other way, that which is effective, real, curiously seems the double of the first, usurping: " the other it is this reality, that is to say the double of another reality which would be him the reality even, but which always escapes and from which one will be able nothing to never say nor nothing savoir". For C. Rosset, this reality is not accepted like such, because it to some extent replaced that which should have occurred, more waited and more plausible. This reality becomes the different one of nothing , a bad reality, a copy, misleading and perverse lining. This fraud is in fact only the mirror of that which was made trap by waiting of an event which did not take place where it would have had. Oracle has this of surprising that it " gum the possibility of all duplication" and single the forces to think, where coexisted two aspects of the same event, taking each one an autonomous existence.

For Cl. Rosset the oracular structure of any event involves a duplication of reality. And metaphysics, of Plato at our days, including at Hegel and Lacan, is a company of setting to the variation of reality by duplication of the event, " making of this last an image of another event of which it appears only one imitation more or less réussie". Reality is doubled by reality, it is the back of the real-world, its shade, its double, and metaphysics is a metaphysics of the other, in particular because the research of the direction is provided by the other. With the setting with the variation of the Reality, with softest this carelessness with the life, most extremely this denial of the present, the human being is deprived of the immediacy, i.e. the event first, to reach the world of the representable one directly. The representation would be at the man only the only way of approaching the unbearable glare of the present, too worrying, even invisible and not perçue.
The great drama of single would be thus the triumph to be only in the world but also humiliation to be only that one, " i.e. almost nothing, and soon more nothing the tout". So in the oracular structure of the reality, which is a metaphysical structure of the double, the past and the future gum the present, depriving the human being of this present, i.e. of reality, there exists a nonmetaphysical structure of the duplication which leads to enrich the present by all the potentialities, as well future as last. It is the stoical topic and nietzschéen of the eternal return, to which is also attached the poetry of Gerard de Nerval ( the dreams ) which succeeds " not with an escape of here towards elsewhere, but on the contrary with a quasi magic convergence of all elsewhere towards the ici" , in a gift of the moment and an absolute offering of very lasted.

The topic of the double in the literature, the music or painting can take several forms: that of the unfolding in its simplest form ( Petrouchka of Igor Stravinski), that of the obsession by the double which one was ( the Love wizard of Manuel of Falla), and that which presents the shade like the materiality and the unicity of one here and now ( the Woman without shade of Richard Strauss). At the difference of Otto Rank, for which the split personality is related to a fear of death, C. Rosset rather locates it in the anguish of the subject in front of its not-reality and its non-existence. This lack with being would be entreated by the double, which places with dimensions one of reality thus, whereas the subject places itself of with dimensions of the shade, subject whose existence appears doubtful. The anguish not to be not oneself, not to even be nothing constitutes the vertiginous shipwreck of reality. The obsession of the double in the romantic literature is the anguish to know that one is unable to establish his existence by oneself. Its implementation is not that a tragic loophole with the fate which dedicates the subject with itself. But this false safety is a trap and constitutes the exact place of the perdition of the subject: the loss of double has a malefic value indeed. " To burn the double, it is at the same time to burn the unique". The error of narcissism would be thus to choose the image rather than soi-même.
The recognition of oneself (the return to oneself), requires an exorcism (an abandonment) double whose matter coincides with the refusal of the life. The elimination of the double, for that which gave up being seen, sign " the return in strength of reality and merges with the one morning joy all neuf". There exists a bond between the indifference with oneself and the pleasure of the life, such as one perceives it in autoportait Johannes Vermeer (the Atelier ). The reconciliation of oneself with oneself at the end of the Amour wizard of Handbook of Falla is accompanied by a plénitude.
Death would be the end of any distance from oneself with oneself, of this imagination to be another, joining the proverb of André Ruellan: " death is an appointment with oneself: it is necessary to be exact at least once " ( Manual of Knowledge-Dying ).

Random links: