Existence, Insistence

Reflecting on two notions

The flaws of our epistemology can be summed up in a word: existence. What is real, is what exists, isn’t it? But what is, what exists, is what ex-ists. It is what is out-there, what is put forward. Being is not merely in any manner whatsoever, being is always a be-ing, a putting forward of what is. What is, is not passive, but is active, its is is an activity. What is, is the designation for what is put-forward by grace of an activity of putting forward. What ex-ists is the world, what is out there, natura naturata, that which shows itself. That which has exited into the light of being, into the light of the world. But from whence comes this ex-istence, from where has it exited? In our term, existence, we grasp what has exited, what is put forward. But do we truly grasp this activity of putting forward, of ex-isting itself, when we do not know from whence it came? What exists, is what exits that from which it ex-ists. What ex-ists, is what is thrown away into the world. Scattered. Existence does not remain, but designates its own expenditure, its own fleeting nature, its own nature of never abiding in what comes before its existence, but in always perishing as soon as it is thrown out into itself. The fleeting nature of existence is grasped in ex-istence, for ex-istence is nothing else but that which is fleeting, it is fleetingness and change itself. Existence is what is ex - sistere, it is what removes itself from a place, it is that movement of going out of or away from what is firm, what is remaining. Away from what? Away from that which is forever self-same, what in all throwing forth of existence is itself never thrown away, it is what is always remaining. An eternal remaining, foreign to the change that is the world. 

If we accept existence as all that is real, and we accept that we only know existence, then how do we know what remains? If we only know what we can see being put forward into the world, then how do we know what remains? If our epistemology knows only that movement of going-away, then how do we know what never goes away, but always remains? There is a different movement, insistence. What in-sists, is not what goes away, but what remains, it is that movement of abiding within where it came from. In-sistence is a staying-within-itself, it is that act of standing and not exiting from this stance. Insistence is what ceaselessly insists throughout all ex-istence. It is the act of remaining with that from which all flows, without joining this flow. Insistence is the act of remaining with that which forever expends itself, but which is itself never expended. Remaining with what continually exits from itself, but which itself never ex-ists. Two modes of activity, two modes of orientation, two attitudes towards that which remains, to that which stands firm behind the ex-istence of the world. Two roads, one reality. What exists is, by grace of its ex-istence, always secondary. What exists is always already a first falsification, a first failure, a first falling into. A falling away from what precedes, and into the world. A fall, that is, the incapacity to abide, to remain firm with that which remains. An incapacity to uphold oneself, to stand firmly in its place. The lie, what is false, is inherent to existence. Not just any lie, nor any falsity, but the archetype for falsity as such: that which goes away from what is, from truth. But however much lie might exist, however much ex-istence, truth will always insist. For the process of ex-istence, as much as it is exit, as much as it is expenditure, it never brings that from which it came with it. It is said that the world wants to be deceived. But in a radical and perhaps ontological sense, the world itself, as ex-istence, is deception. Not just any deception, but the archetypal form of that which distracts from that which truly is. As ex-isting, it shines forth, and by its brightness grabs our attention, gladly making use of this human tendency “pour courir plus vite vers des objets nouveaux et plus relevés.”(Descartes, Règles pour la direction de l’esprit, IV). Mesmerized by this appearing, this shining forth of existence, we forget to look from whence it came. We forget, to insist, on that which never fails to insist.