While Lucian continues his journey in search of the traces left by Igniatius...
...Félix tirelessly pursues his own through letters, notebooks, journals, sketches, and scattered documents... Here the question is no longer merely one of linguistic curiosity, but of a genuine philosophical difficulty, almost an internal contradiction within language itself.
Félix's Notebook
I stopped here... yesterday... I know that... and today I return to what may not be a detail after all. I was speaking of the word one, which, curiously enough, possesses a plural. We speak of one and of ones. Yet the more I think about it... the more nearly impossible it seems to me. For one is precisely that which should not admit of a plural. It designates what is unique, unity itself, that which by definition escapes multiplication. The moment several ones appear, each immediately ceases to be the one. It becomes one among others. The plural silently destroys what the singular had designated.
This small grammatical absurdity reminds me of another. We readily speak of truths.
Yet as soon as truth becomes plural, something slips away. Truths may be opinions, points of view, interpretations, local truths, provisional truths. But precisely because they have become many, they are no longer the truth. It is as though the plural transformed the very nature of the concept.
Perhaps the same holds true for identity.
We speak of identities. Yet identity first designates that by which a thing remains itself. If several identities coexist within the same being, are we still speaking of its identity, or are we already speaking of its figures, its roles, its affiliations?
Language accepts these plurals without hesitation.
Thought hesitates much longer.
I encounter the same difficulty before the drawings.
There are dozens of images before me.
That is what comes spontaneously to mind...
And yet I cannot rid myself of the feeling that they are not truly numerous. It is as though each one were merely an attempt to allow an older, more secret image to appear—one that itself remains one.
Perhaps images are like truth.
The plural belongs to their manifestations.
The singular belongs to that which makes those manifestations possible.
Images would then stand to the Image as truths stand to Truth. Approaches... fragments. Never the thing itself. And perhaps that is why their style remains so obstinately unified. Not because the same draftsman produced them all, but because they revolve around a unity that has not yet become an object... and that unity does not repeat itself. It only allows itself to be approached.
I even wonder whether the word identical does not arise from the same paradox. Two identical objects are, precisely, not identical.
If they were absolutely identical, there would no longer be two of them.
The very possibility of counting them already introduces a difference. Number destroys perfect identity.
To say "two identical things" is already to acknowledge that they are not entirely identical.
Language thus lives by contradictions it seems not to notice. It pluralizes the one. It multiplies the identical.
It distributes truth...
And it goes on speaking as though nothing had happened.
Perhaps this, too, is what is taking place in the drawings. There are many of them... Certainly, I can count them and classify them. I can even arrange them in rows upon a table... yet the more I look at them, the less multiplicity I see. I have instead the curious feeling... that a single image is tirelessly trying to recognize itself.
If each drawing is an attempt... then none of those attempts is definitive. And if all are necessary... none is first... nor last. They do not repeat an original image—the image of the origin. They circle around a unity that can never itself become an image without ceasing to be that unity. Perhaps that is what fascinates me so deeply.
And if the One does not become many... it remains one precisely by giving birth to a plurality that never ceases seeking it...
I even believe there is a profound kinship between this reflection and the one Igniatius developed elsewhere concerning being.
The infinitive to be has no plural. We do not speak of "beings" when referring to the verb, but when referring to beings—to entities that are. In the same way, there are not "truths" in the sense that there might exist several absolute truths; there are true propositions, perspectives, interpretations. And perhaps there are no "ones" either. There are things that participate in unity, but the One itself, the moment it becomes ones, has already been transformed into something else.
I stopped here... yesterday... I know that... and today I return to what may not be a detail after all. I was speaking of the word one, which, curiously enough, possesses a plural. We speak of one and of ones. Yet the more I think about it... the more nearly impossible it seems to me. For one is precisely that which should not admit of a plural. It designates what is unique, unity itself, that which by definition escapes multiplication. The moment several ones appear, each immediately ceases to be the one. It becomes one among others. The plural silently destroys what the singular had designated.
This small grammatical absurdity reminds me of another. We readily speak of truths.
Yet as soon as truth becomes plural, something slips away. Truths may be opinions, points of view, interpretations, local truths, provisional truths. But precisely because they have become many, they are no longer the truth. It is as though the plural transformed the very nature of the concept.
Perhaps the same holds true for identity.
We speak of identities. Yet identity first designates that by which a thing remains itself. If several identities coexist within the same being, are we still speaking of its identity, or are we already speaking of its figures, its roles, its affiliations?
Language accepts these plurals without hesitation.
Thought hesitates much longer.
I encounter the same difficulty before the drawings.
There are dozens of images before me.
That is what comes spontaneously to mind...
And yet I cannot rid myself of the feeling that they are not truly numerous. It is as though each one were merely an attempt to allow an older, more secret image to appear—one that itself remains one.
Perhaps images are like truth.
The plural belongs to their manifestations.
The singular belongs to that which makes those manifestations possible.
Images would then stand to the Image as truths stand to Truth. Approaches... fragments. Never the thing itself. And perhaps that is why their style remains so obstinately unified. Not because the same draftsman produced them all, but because they revolve around a unity that has not yet become an object... and that unity does not repeat itself. It only allows itself to be approached.
I even wonder whether the word identical does not arise from the same paradox. Two identical objects are, precisely, not identical.
If they were absolutely identical, there would no longer be two of them.
The very possibility of counting them already introduces a difference. Number destroys perfect identity.
To say "two identical things" is already to acknowledge that they are not entirely identical.
Language thus lives by contradictions it seems not to notice. It pluralizes the one. It multiplies the identical.
It distributes truth...
And it goes on speaking as though nothing had happened.
Perhaps this, too, is what is taking place in the drawings. There are many of them... Certainly, I can count them and classify them. I can even arrange them in rows upon a table... yet the more I look at them, the less multiplicity I see. I have instead the curious feeling... that a single image is tirelessly trying to recognize itself.
If each drawing is an attempt... then none of those attempts is definitive. And if all are necessary... none is first... nor last. They do not repeat an original image—the image of the origin. They circle around a unity that can never itself become an image without ceasing to be that unity. Perhaps that is what fascinates me so deeply.
And if the One does not become many... it remains one precisely by giving birth to a plurality that never ceases seeking it...
I even believe there is a profound kinship between this reflection and the one Igniatius developed elsewhere concerning being.
The infinitive to be has no plural. We do not speak of "beings" when referring to the verb, but when referring to beings—to entities that are. In the same way, there are not "truths" in the sense that there might exist several absolute truths; there are true propositions, perspectives, interpretations. And perhaps there are no "ones" either. There are things that participate in unity, but the One itself, the moment it becomes ones, has already been transformed into something else.
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