Chapter

The Coup de Dés, or the Materialist Divinization of the Hypothesis

EXCERPT

Readers of After Finitude will no doubt ask why I became interested in Mallarmé’s Coup de dés, what link my study The Number and the Siren could possibly have to the speculative positions that I developed there concerning the necessary contingency of every being. I would simply say the following: The Coup de dés is, as far as I know, the greatest poem ever to be dedicated entirely to eternal Chance; and to the role of the human (and specifically of the poet, in Mallarmé) confronted with this dark absolute, the only one recognised by the moderns…