The role of the concept of “pre-individual” in philosophy Gilbert Simondon and Bernard Stiegler

Sayapin Vladislav Olegovich ORCID: 0000-0002-6588-9192 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor; Department of History and Philosophy; Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavin 392000, Russia, Tambov region, Tambov, Internatsionalnaya str., 33 vlad2015@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

So, Simondon's theory of "individuation" is based primarily on the metaphysical postulate of "relational realism", which was preceded by G. Bachelard (1884-1962), who along with J. Kangilem (1904-1995) and J. Hippolytus (1907-1968) had a significant influence on Simondon's work. In this case, this postulate of "relational realism" consists in the desubstantialization of the individual without his derealization, since, according to this theory, the ontogenesis of the individual develops through the multiplication of the relationships that make up this being. That is why the individual does not dissolve into the relationships that form it. Simondon believes that relationships are not preceded by the terms they connect, but he retains the idea that the individual is the "active center" of the relationship. That is why this postulate not only gives the value of being a relationship up to the conditions that are constituted within that relationship, but which also recognizes the value of being a relationship that has developed between two relationships, where those relationships themselves have the value of being. In addition, this analogous method of theory construction is applicable primarily to the sciences themselves, which are systems of more or less stable relationships between experimentally observed relationships and complex mathematical relationships. This explains the ease with which Simondon includes scientific schemes and concepts as genuine thought experiments capable of informing or reforming philosophical thought. In this regard, the physical schemes of phase relations and thermodynamic metastability, which, according to Simondon, constitute the hypothesis of a pre-individual state of being and provide an explanation for the genesis of the entire individualized reality. It is necessary to clarify here that the hypothesis of a pre-individual state of being functions not only contrary to substantialism, but also contrary to the hylomorphism of the Western philosophical tradition. For example, according to Simondon, the pre-individual state of existence is not one and can be understood as something more than unity and something more than identity ^{[1, p.31]}.

As a result, if we accept this hypothesis, then: "The non-identity of existence to itself denies the transition from one identity to another by negating the previous one, because existence has a certain potential, a certain reserve of becoming, and since the non-identity of existence is greater than identity, existence seems to transcend itself"^{[1, p.631]}. That is, the pre-individual state of being is a "real potential" that is not reduced to either an abstract possibility or an actual system. That is why the pre-individual is always a metastable state, and therefore any individuation can be understood as a system containing potential energy. Therefore, any pre-individual entities that are always in a metastable state contain incompatible potentials, since they belong to different dimensions of these entities, their states or phases. Moreover, the spiritual in the pre-individual manifests itself not only in the form of the individual's inadequacy to himself, but also is the very experience of the individual's incompleteness, which never ceases to double both in the past and in the future, both in memory and in imagination. Here the doctrine of the immortality of the soul finds meaning again. And, generally speaking, one of the strongest sides in Simondon's theory is the endowment of dyads with relevance, namely, the meanings of past eras, that is, earlier stages of social individuation.

It is obvious that the relational ontology formed in this way makes it possible to avoid the aporias of traditional substantialist ontologies, which are becoming more and more impractical with the development of natural sciences and which can be considered definitively obsolete with the advent of quantum mechanics. It follows that in this opposing theory of substantialism, the emerging Simondonian ontology of physical, biological, mental, and psychosocial phenomena is fundamentally procedural: a porcelain cup placed on a table is no longer a static reality. That is, it is not only the result of a technical process of transformation of a ceramic material, but also its amorphous nature means that, unlike a crystal on a different time scale, it never stops developing and flows very, very slowly. This points to another characteristic of the theory of "individuation": its non-reductionist materialism, since it is energetic and neotenic. Indeed, if every physical individuation eventually leads to a dissipation of potentials, then vital individuation consists of suspending this initial physical individuation, during which energy exchange with the environment allows the individual to retain certain potentials before he dies and, consequently, returns to purely physical communication with his environment. The same logic of potential conservation explains the neotenic emergence of the psychosocial (transindividual) phase of individuation from the life phase of individuation. Here, according to Simondon, the concept of "neotenic" is something alive, which is postulated as a slow and prolonged development of the physical phase of individuation.

It can be noted that the thesis about the neotenic character of man originally appeared in Louis Bolk (1866-1930), an anatomist and biologist who really became famous for his theory of the "fetalization of the human body." According to this theory, the development of a human embryo will paradoxically consist of such slowdowns that will become permanent by the end of its life. That is why the adult age in primates is only temporary and juvenile. This thesis about human neoteny was later picked up by the psychoanalyst J. Lacan (1901-1981) was an American paleontologist, theorist of the evolution of life Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) and B. Stigler. However, this hypothesis of generalized neoteny, in our opinion, does not provide an operational key to Simondonian thinking about life any more than the concept of "polarization" inherited from Cangillem, which Simondon extends to the physical regime itself.

As a result, the general scheme of individuation is as follows: regardless of whether individuation is the radical beginning of a physical or living individual, or whether it is a continuation and individualization of an already individualized living individual, it always consists of a phase shift of potentials in the individual and the environment associated with him. In this regard, an individual always maintains an energetic relationship with the environment that determines the (partial or complete) actualization of his potentials. The originality of this theory of individuation is to emphasize the relativity of any phase of individuation to orders of magnitude: "While potential energy (a state of a higher order of magnitude) is actualized, matter is ordered and distributed (a condition of a lower order of magnitude) into individuals structured at a certain level (an average order of magnitude) developing as a result of an indirect amplification process"^{[2, p.27]}.

It is in this context that the Simondonian hypothesis of the pre-individual is not only similar to the quantum hypothesis in physics, but also analogous to the theory of "relativity of potential energy levels." In this case, individuation does not exhaust the entire pre-individual reality, that is, the metastability regime always exists in the individual and is supported by him. Simply put, Simondon finds an inventive solution, according to which substantialism becomes radically impossible within the framework of the theory of "quantum physics" developed by M. Planck (1858-1947) and must give way to the realism of relations. Moreover, such substantialism does not find a place in the updated Simondonian theory of "information ontology", which took as its starting point the concept of "information" from the mathematical theory of communication by K.E. Shannon (1916-2001)^[3].

Thus, in a strict sense, pre-individual being denotes the ontological basis that the theory of "individuation" finds in quantum and cybernetic realities. That is why, at this submolecular level, it makes no sense for Simondon to distinguish between inorganic, organic, or organized matter. However, recent developments in the field of nanotechnology can undoubtedly lead to a complication of our perception, not only in the processes of individuation, but also in assessing the relationship between nature and the artifact. Therefore, there is always room for updating in Simondon's approach. However, there is no doubt, for example, that another French philosopher, B. Stigler, did not have this Simondonian radical preindividuality in mind when he initially argued for the technological nature of the preindividual. Rather, Stigler sought to outline a set of potentials that make possible the transindividual individuation of human beings.

Thus, Stigler, relying on Simondon, sought to consider technosocial reality in an anti-anthropological context and reduce technology to a set of tools for human labor^[4]. However, Simondon himself, on the contrary, considered labor as a part of technology, and technological progress as progress in functioning, which has its own laws and is irreducible to any human use of an object. Therefore, although Stigler pays tribute to Simondon, he criticizes him for making technology just a "phase" of culture, where this phase should include technical entities in the form of knowledge and values, instead of making them a means by which the psyche would always be constituted as a psychosocial (transindividual) reality. Moreover, despite the fact that Simondon showed the notorious machine alienation of the worker from technology, however, according to Stigler, culture in modern times has not yet transferred the status of a "technical individual" to the machine. It follows that the obvious understatement of Simondon's work "On the mode of existence of technical objects" (1958)^[5] lies in the fact that in the third and final part of this work he develops the theory of "phases of culture", representing the initial "magical stage" in which there is no place for technical reality. In other words, Simondon interprets the magical stage as the starting point of a phase shift that leads to the emergence of other cultural phases – religion and technology. In this case, art is a cross between religion and technology, which offers the restoration, though always imperfect, of the lost original (primitive) unity.

That is why this theory of "phases of culture" is so beautiful, which in some respects resembles the Hegelian theory of "objective reason"^[6,7] but replaces dialectics with a transductive phase shift in the sense that Simondon gives this term, which ultimately creates the problem of the absence of artifacts within the primitive "magical stage" of this theory. The fact that Simondon gives the concept of a "technical object" a narrow enough meaning to make technology a reality here, radically different from religion, based on a phase shift of magical unity, rather than constituting the same religion. In addition, the very concept of a "technical object" was first introduced into philosophical circulation by Simondon himself, where he means a technical object.: 1) a thing that can be taken with you, which implies that it has certain dimensions that allow it to be handled in one way or another; 2) an object that can be lost, forgotten, or found again, namely, something that has some autonomy and individual destiny. "When an industry produces objects that it puts on the market, then loses interest in them, then their individual existence begins. In general, they are like organisms, just not alive. That's why we can talk about objects"^{[8, p.400]}.

It follows from this that artifacts in a broad sense are absent from the origin of the Simondonian culture, and this is connected only in the interests of natural "key moments". Therefore, Stigler, with good reason, reproaches Simondon for suggesting that in his theory of "phases of culture", "... like Rousseau, there is a pre–technical magical humanity: magical unity is really something that, with the exception of these key points, has not yet analytically separated from the essence of the form, or rather, the schemes that are in They become removable objects as technical tools.… <...> Thus, these theses suggest that the technicism with which Leroy-Houran, unlike Simondon, defines the process of mental and collective individuation (usually referred to as a person) as a process of exteriorization is something that arises as an imbalance and violation of magical unity completely in accordance with Rousseau's scheme"^[4,p.333].

At the same time, it can be noted that Stigler's thesis about the "prosthetic" character of the transindividual as a whole can be deduced, in our opinion, from the internal criticism of Simondonian thought. Simply put, Simondon interprets, for example, a living individual as a subject to the extent that he acts, perceives and experiences emotions. According to Simondon, there are two types of emotions: emotions in the usual everyday sense and emotions in the sense of emotional latency, which is structured in individual living individuals and leads to a collective phase of individuation. "Emotional latency," writes Simondon, "the inadequacy of the subject to himself, the incompatibility of his charge of nature and his individualized reality indicate to the subject that he is more than an individualized entity, that he harbors energy for subsequent individuation; but such subsequent individuation cannot occur in the entity–subject; it can happen only through such an entity-the subject and through other entities acting as a transindividual collective" ^{[1, p.236]}. In other words, emotional latency is the beginning of a new structuring that can only stabilize when the team is open. Emotional latency explains what processes occur both in the collective phase of the individuation of a social subject and in the individuation of a collective, since there is a transindividual connection, or, in other words, the structuring of emotions between internal and external. However, action is the individuation of a community, realized on the side of the collective, while emotion is the same individuation of a social subject, realized on the side of this individual. The ability to act is a property of a community that manifests itself externally. Therefore, as Simondon emphasizes: "... emotion is not a hidden sociality or disordered individuality; it is something that hides possible participation in subsequent individuations in the individuated entity, incorporating what remains in the subject from the pre-individual reality" ^{[1, p.236]}.

In this regard, Simondon also considers a living individual as a whole formed by existence and its "burden" of pre-individual reality. In this case, affectivity for Simondon becomes the "place" of this pre–individual charge, and for this reason, emotion is something that can cause even temporary deindividualization of a living individual, since his affective pre-individual potential is constantly depleted during life. In the future, if this subject does not allow himself to plunge into anxiety and suffering, he can continue to individualize his pre-individual affective potential into a psychosocial (trans-individual) personality or, in other words, a social subject. Simondon clearly seeks mediation, which would allow in this phase transition of individuation from the psychosomatic individual to the transindividual subject to understand what he calls the external and internal. As a result, he argues that: "... there is an advantage of the transindividual over the individual, and this prevents the definition of the relation of transcendence or immanence" ^{[2, p.304]}.

It is in this understanding that Simondon will focus on the idea that not an artifact as a whole, but a technical object is the support and mediator of human relations, which represent a model of transindividuality^{[5, p.247-248]}. Moreover, he endows the technical object with the essence of the pre-individual being contained in the individual when he transindividually individualizes himself. That is why an object that arises as a result of a technical invention carries something of the being that produced it, that is, it expresses what is least relevant to the here and now. "One can say," writes Simondon, –that human nature is present in technical existence in the sense that the word nature can be used to denote what remains primordial, preceding, even humanity, constituted in man"^{[5, p.248]}.

It should be emphasized that in his book "The Origins of Animal Culture" (2001)^[9] philosopher Dominique Lestel (born 1961) criticizes Stigler for falling back into an anthropological dead end by making technology human-like. In this sense, Stigler's radicalization of the non-anthropological nature of the idea of technology, which is now constitutive for humans to the same extent that it was created by him, would have been carried out at the expense of the non-anthropological nature of the idea of man as coming from a living being. At the same time, Stigler's consideration of this issue is rather ambiguous and causes a completely different discussion: a discussion concerning the nature, the main problem of philosophy, for which Stigler eventually gives a new definition of a pre-individual being. Therefore, it turned out that where Simondon turns technology into an extension of life, and the technical object is a simple "support" of human relations, which are a "model of transindividuality," Stigler turns the artifact into the very basis of the transindividual as a whole. And if Stigler now tendentiously identifies this "prosthetically" created transindividual being with a person, it is only because the artifact becomes, in his understanding, a "pillar of reason", inseparable from the specific language itself. Moreover, Stigler's fundamental gesture is intended to be reflective and critical in the Kantian sense: it is at least about the projective, technical conditions of cognition and, consequently, about the whole philosophy of nature, established by what is "always already" a human being.

As a result, this is a grandiose break with Simondon: Stigler refuses to make the theory of knowledge something that will proceed from the idea of the transindividual, which itself stems from the philosophy of nature, considered as the "first philosophy." In this regard, Stigler's understanding of the significance of an artifact, which he discussed in the third volume of Technique and Time^[10], is more reminiscent of what M. Heidegger (1989-1976) gives Dasein to be the only being questioning its existence. Indeed, this approach is neither purely Simondonian nor purely Kantian, but it redefines Heidegger's being-in-the-world as something that is not rooted in any philosophy of nature, but must be capable of generating a theory of knowledge without yet providing it on its own. As a result, Stigler is characterized, contrary to his former teacher J. Derrida (1930-1974) abandoned Heidegger's Kehre (turn) in order to return to the understanding of "being and time" and introduce there the artifact dimension of Weltgeschichtlichkeit (world historicity). According to Stigler, Heidegger's Dasein is essentially not only a prosthetic, but also an addition to something without changing the qualitative aspects of what it was attached to. That is why there is nothing outside of what is outside of Dasein, and what it is outside of itself. For it is only because of this that it experiences, without even proving it, its mortality, which it anticipates. In addition, Dasein's access to his past is also prosthetic^[11]. It is in accordance with this condition that Dasein has or does not have access to this past, no matter how firmly it is fixed or not fixed. It follows that Dasein itself may or may not be in a permanent fixed state. That is, Dasein is essentially factual, where this facticity is not the end result, but an "intermediate instance". At the same time, the actual realization of ethical values in Dasein is expressed in determination, steadfast commitment to the chosen historical heritage, and sensitivity to all aspects of the current situation.

Of course, Stigler can rely on Simondon himself when he reminds that knowledge about individuation is in itself the individuation of knowledge. But the question arises whether this declared loyalty to Simondon is preserved when Stigler comes to the conclusion that the pre-individual in modern times can only be understood as already "internally technological". In this case, Stigler uses what Simondon designated as the transindividual, which is not only the reality that carries with it an individualized being, but also the preindividual charge of being that is used in future phases of individuation^{[2, p.303]}. Here, indeed, the pre-individual and the trans-individual seem to merge into one. This is why the transindividual phase of individuation will never again lead to a simple individual. Since such an emergent and complex phase of individuation is made possible only by the being as an individually-pre-individual ensemble of charges, and leads to a subject for whom the social is no longer a simple associated environment, but an individualized reality in itself, possessing its own individual environment that "coexists" with it: "In reality, beings are attached they treat each other in a collective not as individuals, but as subjects, that is, as entities containing the pre-individual" ^{[2, p.310]}.

It should be noted that if this is the end of the Stigler–Simondon agreement, is it now necessary to assert that the pre-individual in modern times can be considered not only as internally technological, but also trans-individual? As a result, Stigler intends to surpass Simondon this time, and he argues that there is an eternal return of the transindividual individual to the preindividual stage, where the transindividual once again becomes impulsive material (and not just instinctive). Moreover, what makes up this scheme is the technical phase of individuation. In this regard, the technological modality of incompleteness, which has been called existence since the twentieth century, is what constitutes Stigler's psychosocial (transindividual) phase of individuation. It follows that such technological incompleteness individualizes the oversaturated pre-individual potential no longer as the formation or ontogenesis of a living species, but as the joint individuation of an individual, a mental and social group within which it is individualized, causing in it a process of internal resonance, in which a certain set of technical elements is also individualized, passing through technical individuals^{[4,p.327-328]}.

Therefore, "eternal return" and "existence": These two concepts are not innocent, but, on the contrary, suggest that Stigler, as part of overcoming Simondon, declared himself the possessor of a certain determination, "reflective and critical" in the Kantian sense, and began to move in the opposite direction. That is why in their works on M. Heidegger and Z. Freud (1856-1939) Stigler is rather moving towards what we call the "fundamental ontology" of F. Nietzsche (1844-1900), which will replace the philosophy of nature, closing the entire history from the pre-individual to the trans-individual. Stigler's strength then lies in the fact that he can refer to the fact that Simondon himself spoke of inconsistent phases of being. That is, about that unique phase of being, which: "... can move forward with an ever-changing step and spread into the area of heterogeneity ..." ^{[12, p.49]}.

But the next question arises. How can we make viable the thesis that technology is both what is individualized as the "third branch" of mental and collective individuation, and what constitutes the pre-individual reserve of this mental and collective individuation? In this case, Stigler's overcoming of Simondonianism can be characterized as a new, rather than Nietzschean, deep social psychology. At the same time, emphasizing that it was precisely to the question of the transindividual that Simondon addressed the figure of Zarathustra. That is why Simondon's conceptual development of the transindividual is unusual. He does not explicitly use the term "transindividual" to describe social relationships in his early works. Instead, he often uses the term "collective phase of individuation" or "group phase of individuation." If we take an exegetical and genetic approach to the concept of the "transindividual", we can see that Simondon for the first time presents this concept as a frank life test using the example of the character Zarathustra, taken from F. Nietzsche's novel "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (1883-1885)^[13].

In other words, it is a kind of transindividuality that undermines the whole meaning of an individual's life. Does a transindividual have a normative or descriptive meaning from this moment on? At first glance, one might think that it has a normative meaning based on the example of Zarathustra. Here, the transindividual is presented as a test that must be passed in order to become part of the collective. Moreover, this ordeal represents a radical exclusion experienced by an extraordinary individual, unlike the rest of society, which is viewed as a vulgar and anonymous crowd. In other words, Simondon's understanding of the transindividual precisely avoids thinking about the technological conditions of psychosocial individuation and, on the contrary, prefers a religious formulation in terms of immanence and transcendence. "If we assume that the transindividual is self–constitutional," says Simondon, "then we will see that the scheme of transcendence or the scheme of immanence reflects this self–constitution and only because of their simultaneous and mutual position. Indeed, it is at every moment of Self-Constitution that the relationship between the individual and the transindividual is defined as those that go beyond the individual and at the same time expand it"^{[2, p.381]}.

Thus, Stigler's interpretation is to interpret this problematic of self-constitution, expressed by Simondon in accordance with the schemes of the religious phase in terms of the technical phase, using the fact that the prosthetic reality of technology is exactly what goes beyond the individual, expanding it from a material point of view. In this sense, it is indeed a corrective step, highly faithful to the materialistic inspiration of the theory of "individuation." Nevertheless, this idea of the "ontogenesis of the individual" is not without the risk of idealistic deviations, to the extent that it closes an irreducible set of phase systems. Strictly speaking, by turning technological development into the only modality of being that precedes existence through its presence, Stigler thereby establishes a break with the "cosmic" dimension of being-in-the-world, which Zarathustra embodies^{[2, p.288]}. And that's when he embodies when he climbs to the top of the mountain after the death of his friend the tightrope walker.

It is important to note that the example of Zarathustra interests Simondon most of all, because it shows that the test itself is often initiated by the spark of an extraordinary event. For Zarathustra, meeting a tightrope walker is an event that opens up a test for him. And such an event is like a spark that spurs the unfolding of an isolated process of transindividual constitution. In other words, we only see the transindividual as the final term from an external point of view, and in the case of a test, the transindividual is self-constituted, and in a sense loneliness is the condition or environment of this self-constitution. Therefore, in passing through loneliness, which Simondon makes a paradoxical condition for encountering the transindividual, we cannot help but find a resonance with another, already caused by solitary experience, namely the experience of anxiety. These two experiences of loneliness, however, are so opposite that they allow us to see anxiety as an inverted reflection of the experience of transindividuality. The experience of anxiety begins with the individual's exposure to his pre-individual charge and ends in the endless and catastrophic dissolution of individual structures. As a result, the individual unfolds completely in the element of loneliness, which is always characterized by the absence of any other individual.

It follows that if the artifact and the fetish are overlooked in this concept of Simondon's magical thinking, then there is also a risk that by focusing only on the outside of the artifact, one may forget the geographical affiliation of the magical network, its key points and goals. The disappearance of virgin forests and sea ice thus represents an equally serious and more irreparable catastrophe for our ability to love the world and give it meaning and value than the audiovisual pollution that Stigler says defines the "dirty" nature of our existence. Paradoxical as it may sound, the exceptional attention paid to changing the technological conditions of human existence leads to a form of idealism, since it emphasizes the temporary irreversibility of the process, the dynamic deployment of which in space should be constantly questioned. From this point of view, Stigler's analysis often boils down to a description of linear formation. Just like Karl Marx (1818-1883), although he was more sensitive than anyone else to the real and geopolitical structures of his time, he found himself forced by the play of dialectics to express his thought in a historical perspective.

Consequently, it is in this understanding that Simondon relies on an article by R. Ruyer (1902-1987) entitled "The limits of human progress".^[14] and offers a new, "multiphase" theory of progress^[8]. In this case, according to Simondon, having passed through the philosophical and scientific stages, progress in our time is mainly technological in nature. However, the task that opens before us is to relativize the meaning of each of these stages, rather than trying to find the truth of the first two at the last stage. Moreover, the current crisis between spiritual culture and technical civilization, according to Simondon, arises only because of the gap in scale between the expansion of networks of cultural values and networks of technological values: people who no longer share any values, nevertheless use the same technological artifacts. This epistemology of scale, which explores Simondon's entire thought, always fits processes into a spatiotemporal, historical, and geographical reality that makes linear evolutionary patterns and absolute synchronicity obsolete.

What does all of the above mean for modern philosophical research? Stigler was one of the most attentive and inspired observers of Simondon among all modern philosophers. However, the fact remains, and he accurately marks his difference from Simondon, showing that it is Simondon who best allows us to understand the situation in which he finds himself. This is the paradox of the self-constitution of the transindividual, which can be interpreted as "self-transcendence of meaning" and which, in our opinion, forbids us to believe in the simplicity of successive "overcoming" or "spiritual unity" of an era where preindividuality remains relevant today. By discussing Simondon in the light of Heidegger or Freud, and at least teleologically, based on Nietzsche, that is, through the prism of multiple and relative interpretations, Stigler thus simultaneously gives us the opportunity to discuss him in the light of Simondon himself.