The Multitude Will Never Be Philosophers

Abstract

This short piece reflects on an early text by François Laruelle called “Le philosophe sans qualités,” the fourth issue of the self-published journal Pourquoi pas la philosophie? It considers the opening remarks reflecting on The Republic and the statement “the multitude will never be philosophers” as a framework in a positive light: insofar as people and democracy are key factors of non-philosophy, people do not need to become philosophers in order to change the world. Instead, it is a matter of accepting that ordinary people, in the sense deployed by Laruelle and the author, determine a democratic order of thought intimately woven with their existence, what the author calls the en-demic. In this way, people are the touchstone of philosophy and themselves.