All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy

All Thoughts Are Equal is both an introduction to the work of French philosopher François Laruelle and an exercise in nonhuman thinking. For Laruelle, standard forms of philosophy continue to dominate our models of what counts as exemplary thought and knowledge. By contrast, what Laruelle calls his non-standard approach attempts to bring democracy into thought, because all forms of thinkingincluding the nonhumanare equal.

John Ó Maoilearca examines how philosophy might appear when viewed with non-philosophical and nonhuman eyes. He does so by refusing to explain Laruelle through orthodox philosophy, opting instead to follow the structure of a film (Lars von Triers documentary The Five Obstructions) as an example of the non-standard method. Von Triers film is a meditation on the creative limits set by film, both technologically and aesthetically, and how these limits can push our experience of filmand of ourselvesbeyond what is normally deemed the perfect human.

All Thoughts Are Equal adopts films constraints in its own experiment by showing how Laruelles radically new style of philosophy is best presented through our most nonhuman form of thoughtthat found in cinema.