Pierre Raymond, Logic and Causality

If we believe the philosophical tradition, and more precisely that of the

philosophy of science, every theoretical order simultaneously combines logical
elements and causal elements: logical elements, the order of reasoning, in short,
everything that depends on the relation of principles to consequences; causal
elements, or everything that depends on the real relation of causes to effects.
And for the entire tradition what is logical dominates what is causal. The goal
pursued by any theory, in some science that it takes place, always consists in
passing off real, temporal moments for moments of reasoning, to insert in a one way
or another the relation of causality into the logical relation. That does not mean to
confuse them, to take a cause for a principle, but to subordinate causes and effects to
logic. To such a point that the limit can be attained when there remains only logic
without causality: the case of theories of probability, in which the logical order
remains, but in which the causal order has disappeared. The inverse situation does
not exist. It cannot exist. In order for the theoretical order to be realized, for this
tradition, when one can integrate, for examplewhich interests us herehistory to
logic. In other words, to make predictions. In fact, in scientific theories in which
there are uncertainties of prediction, in which the prediction occurs with a margin
of error, that passes for an inadequacy of theory, and one says that reality escapes
theory as if it were a mystery. What Einstein said in a text already quoted: Photons
individually make a choice. We dont know why individuals behave in an
unpredictable way, we can, however, apply statistical method.
This conception of the theoretical order has rested explicitly on philosophical
idealism: the aim of any theory would be to represent the world. Not only in space
but also in time. The aim of theory is, therefore, indeed to integrate time to logic,
since it is a question of representing today future time. This is why, from a
philosophical standpoint, we will be confronted with difficulties in order to think
about history and political action.

Pierre Raymond on Eternity and History

Various philosophers have developed an original connection between the
theory of history and rational eternity. This very ambiguous theme can be presented
in two quite distinct manners: a first one that is close to materialism, and a second
that is idealist.
The first is that of Althusser and Balibar in Reading Capital (The Object of
Capital, IV and On the Fundamental Concepts of Historical Materialism, IV, 4). It is
the theory of puppets: if one wants to formulate the theory of the function of a
puppet whose strings one pulls, one cannot offer this functioning according to a
chronology. In fact, according to such a perspective, one simply wills that by pulling
a certain string one will generate a certain movement. On the contrary, one must
offer, as Marx says for the economy, the interconnections of all possible
combinations. To show how all the movements of strings cause in a coherent way
all the movements of a puppet, but understanding that all the movements of string
and all the movements of a puppet exclude one another in time. Marx develops this
theme well in Capital, where he talks about the interconnections of the cycles of
capital, and he says that one cannot formulate the theory of capitalism without
showing how at every moment the functioning of an enterprise, in its various
phases, does or does not coincide with the functioning of all the others. These
formulations can give rise to the idea that it is a question of a kind of eternity.
Althusser tried to connect this with what one notices in Spinozas Ethics: The
knowledge of the relations of dependence and articulation [of the organic whole], is
eternity in Spinozas sense. [Reading Capital, p. 119 (Trans.)]
Some remarks on this first presentation. First of all, if theory is in eternity, it
is not exclusive of time, for its goal is to disarticulate reality in order to show it flat
a little like the owner of an article of clothingbut not to exclude reference to real
causality (as opposed to the movement of a demonstration that is, however, situated
outside of time, since the end coexists with the beginningthis is the sense that
Plato places theory into eternity). Next, the search for articulations must not be
confused with the idealist hypothesis that they would necessarily be coherent or
harmonious: the fundamental existence of contradictions as the essence of things
requires that theory must not be conceived in the harmony of their movements, the
law of their mechanisms. History presupposes an exit beyond the mechanisms of
capital: time returns here, then, against eternity. Not only the time of contradiction
but also the time that requires that in history reality is not the state of things, the
mechanism of their movements, but the totality of the transformations of this state
and of these mechanisms. That is to say, it is the practice of things, along with the
risk that carries for the exploitation of possibilities.
A second presentation in the philosophical tradition associates the theory of
history with eternity. It is unfortunately sometimes confused with the first. One
finds it, for example, developed in this way by Cournot: time is only theorizable
provided that one escape the accidents of history and attain either the regularity of
a measure or the order that statistics discover even in the chance of accidents. The
theory of history is purely conceived according to the relation of principles to
consequences and not of causes to effects.
Regarding the relations of he theory of history with rational eternity, there
are, then, two philosophical positions that are quite distinct. One excludes time. But
the other, Marxs, which does not exclude time, nonetheless has difficulties with it.
Marx was a man like us, who advanced into unknown domains and who was
exposed to commit errors and even to say foolish things. And he bequeathed these
difficulties.