Minimal Existences

10.

Suddenly, as if by some immediate magical destiny that took over from an ancient
blindness, I raise my head, from my anonymous existence, towards the Clear
knowledge of the way in which I exist (…). It is difficult to describe what one feels,
since what one feels is that one really exists and that our soul is a real entity – so
difficult that I don’t know with which human words I could describe it. I have been an
other for a very long time – since my birth, since consciousness – and I wake today at
the middle of a bridge, bending over the river, knowing that I exist more firmly now
than I have until this moment. But the town is foreign to me, the roads are unfamiliar,
and the pain is without remedy. Thus, I wait, bending over on the bridge, for the truth
to leave me, for leaving me once again empty and fictive, intelligent and unaffected. It
had been but an instant, already past.

What happened? All of a sudden the monad that is Pessoa had been submerged by the
sentiment of existing really, as if included in the world again, carried into it. « To know
oneself, all of a sudden, in that lustral instance, it is to have a sudden notion of the intimate
monad, of the magical speech of the soul. » Very quickly, however, he returns to his old
certainties. He knows well that he doesn’t exist, that he has never existed and will never exist
again with such firmness as in that exact moment. Once again existence seems insignificant
to him, unreal. Instead of the thought assuring the thinker of its existence as with Descartes, it
confirms to him instead that he doesn’t exist, that he cannot exist. « I am not disconcerted by
all that I have been, in fact, I see it well, I am not. » It is clear what objection can be made to
those who assert they do not exist: that they exist anyway, since they are there to ask the
question, which they tangle in false problems. They seek an entry into existence, when they
are squarely there. This is the apparent absurdity of the problem : how can we doubt the
reality of existence when we are here, present in the world, doubting it ? But here two terms
are confused, existence and reality. Under one aspect, man in effect exists, occupying a given
time-space, gathering impressions, with thoughts crossing his mind. Yet, none of that is
entirely real. Beings, things exist, but they lack reality. What does it mean to « lack » reality ?
What can an existence lack to be more real ?

Are there not existences that become more real, in the sense that they gain in force, in
extension, in consistency : a love that intensifies, a pain that augments, a storm that
threatens ? Or a project that is realized, the construction of a building, a scenario brought to
the screen, a score performed? These are diverse ways of gaining reality, of acquiring a
greater presence, a stronger spark. These two series of examples are not on the same plane,
but but they bear witness to similar processes. In the first series, we are dealing with beings
that must change plane of existence to augment their reality. Possible or virtual first, they
modify their manner of being to become more real. In both cases, the general problem is the
same, how can what exists be made more real?

13.

How to explain this shift [to the art of Being, the infinite variety of its manners of being or its
modes of existence] ? To grasp it, it is necessary to begin with the « existential pluralism »
that Souriau begins with. The first affirmation of this pluralism is simply that there is not but
a single mode of existence for all the beings that populate the world, nor is there but a single
world for all these beings ; the extent of the world is not exhausted in traversing « all that
exists in one of these modes, for example that of physical or psychic existence. » Souriau
rather deploys and explores the range of the variety of modes of existence between being and
nothingness. The mode of existence of Hamlet is not the same as that of a square root, the
mode of existence of an electron is not the same as that of a table, etc. All exist, but each in
its own manner. Reciprocally, a being is not devoted to a single mode of existence, it can
exist in accordance to a plurality of modes and not only as physical or psychic entity ; it can
exist as a spiritual entity, as value, as representation, etcetera. It is the well known parable of
Eddington’s two desks, at the same time solid presence and cloud of electrons. Or again
Hamlet, who exists as character of Shakespeare, as presence in a scene, as reference in a
discourse, as hero in a film, etcetera. A being can see its existence be multiplied, in twofold,
threefold, in short, it can exist in multiple distinct planes, all the while staying numerically
one.

15-16.

No doubt all manners of being can be reduced to the shared ground from which they come –
that of Being – and hold philosophy as a foundational ontology. But also the inverse path can
be followed : to explore the variety of manners of being. This no longer concerns reducing
the modes to a ground or foundation – or to a non-ground even more profound than all
foundation – but to study the manners of being in their emergence in this ground, from which
they puncture Being « like the tip of the sword. » Sometimes the manners are manners of
being and steer towards a foundational ontology ; sometimes the manners are manners of
being and steer towards a modal or mannerist ontology.

32-33.

That is why they are apart. They are awaiting the art that can make them do exist more and
differently. Their art is to spark or call forth art ; their gesture proper is to spark other
gestures. They need another being – a creator – who mobilizes all for making them do exist
more and in another mode. Inversely, the creator needs that cloud of virtuals to create new
realities, she feeds on their incompleteness. Said different, it are the virtuals that introduce a
desire for creation, a will to art in the world. They are the source of all art practiced. Art,
philosophy, and science do not stop to feed of the endless cloud of « atoms of truth » that fill
our world.
This does not mean that [the virtual modes of existence] constitute a universe apart,
separate from the real world. They are on the contrary fully immanent to this world. Shreds of
a conversation become the seed for a story, the traits of a face transform into a possible
portrait, some notes form the start for a melody, a scenario becomes film, an intuition
becomes a system, etcetera. No reality is not accompanied by a cloud of potentialities that
follows it like its shadow. Each existence can become an incentive, a suggestion or a seed of
something else, the fragment of a new future reality. All existence becomes in right
incomplete. In other words, with the virtuals a second dimension of Souriau’s philosophy
unfolds. It now abandons the initial atomism which allowed for an inventorization of the
modes of existence as elements or « sémantèmes » of a modal ontology. Now the existences
can modify, transform, intensify in reality and pass from one world to another, in
conjugation. It is the entry into the domain of the transmodal. If there is a privilege of the
virtual with Souriau, it is because they are the principal operators of the passage from modal
to transmodal. It is the passage from a static world where the modes of existence are
described in themselves, to a dynamic world where it concerns but transformations,
augmentations and diminutions.
This does not mean either that, when the virtuals pass into existence, they stop to exist
as virtual. On the contrary, it are the virtuals that dictate the conditions of their passage into
existence, despite their indistinction. Every effort of creation, every advance is like a
proposition of existence to which the virtual consents or not, according to the changing
requirements of the drawn architecture. Propositions of words, of colours, of lines or spaces,
of framings, of forms, each time it concerns a possibility that is presented implicitly to the
virtual, where one turns towards it to know if it accepts the choice in question. Each virtual
has a manner that is its own in accepting or rejecting what it expressed inadequately ; it takes
shape as much in successive affirmations as negations by which it is surrounded and which
make a being problematic. More so, every instauration of a new reality must dispel the
phantoms of which it takes the place or which take over its.

37-38.

I am thinking of a little child that has carefully arranged diverse objects, some big
some small, in a way that the child thinks is nice and attractive, on the table of its
mother for making do « much joy » with. The mother comes. Slowly, distracted, she
 takes one of the objects which she needs and puts another in its normal place, undoing
everything. When the desperate explanations that follow the tears of the child reveal
to her the extend of her mistake, she cries sorry : ah ! my child, I hadn’t seen that it
was something !

I hadn’t seen … What is it then that she did not see ? What is the « something » that the
mother does not see ? It could be the arrangement of the objects that witness the presence of a
precise point of view of the child. It could be said that it is the « soul » of the child –
completely enveloped in the arrangement of the objects. Both cases would be right ; she sees
clearly the objects because she arranges them herself, but what she does not see that is the
mode of existence that is theirs in the point of view of the child, the shaping architecture
under her eyes. What she does not see is the point of view of the child ; she does not see that
there is a point of view which exists in its own manner. It is a virtuality that she does
perceive, in the same way that a distracted person taking a walk does not see the shaping of a
virtual bridge in the succession of the aligned rocks across a stream. They are a sort of
spectator that is before an anamorphose without seeing what it represents, where it is
necessary to find the right angle which permits to decipher it. There are thus, in the cosmos of
things, innumerable openings of importance drawn; but even more rare still are those that
cross these openings in a creative experimentation.