Plasticity’s mechanism is the substance-subject seesaw between essence and accident

Evidence

Remaining irreducible to self-presence, this chance is hard to grasp (saisir). Have I grasped it? To justify the subject’s explosive nature, I have tried to show what constitutes its mechanism or its apparatus: the ontological seesaw of the substance-subject. The process of substance’s selfdetermination leans from side to side. Of necessity, one of its slopes will become larger than the other: either the ‘becoming essential of the accident’ in the Greek moment of subjectivity, or the ‘becoming accidental of essence’ in the modern moment. In the first case I showed how the ‘exemplary individuals’ of Greece tended on their own to acquire the force and the ontological dignity of essence. And then I looked at how the essential being of a revealed God, who enters into his own kenosis and into the life of contingency, completes the process of its own accidentalization. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1256

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘becoming essential of the accident’ vs ‘becoming accidental of essence’ oscillation is a resonance structure that could map onto how flexibility in neural networks modulates between stabilisation and reconfiguration. — connects to: The concepts of accident and essence are themselves historically contingent. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 173; Plasticity inverts the Greek form-creation into the becoming-accidental of essence — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 859; Philosophy reveals how accidents become essential and essence becomes accidental (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Plasticity names the dialectical union of form-seizure and form-annihilation. #expands (0.88) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 247
• Plasticity holds origin and self-abandonment together in one capacity #expands (0.85)
• Plasticity also means the ability to change one’s own determination #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 64
• Plasticity means formative change through rupture, not smooth continuous adaptation #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 258