CHAPTER THREE
▲▲▲A New Separation of Powers
We are beginning to understand how to separate the wheat from the
chaff in the notion of nature. It is not theexternalityof nature, by itself,
that endangers public life, for it is only thanks to such an externality
that public life survives: the expanding collective is constantly nour-
ished through all its pores, all its sensors, all its laboratories, all its in-
dustries, all its skills by such a vast exterior. Without the nonhuman,
humans would not last a minute. It is not theunityof nature, by itself,
that threatens public life, either: it is normal, in fact, for public life to
seek to collect the world that we hold in common, and it is normal for
it to end up obtaining this world in partially unified forms. No, if we
have to give up nature, it is neither because of its reality nor because of
its unity. It is solely because of the short-circuits that it authorizes
when it is used to bring about this unity once and for all, without due
process, with no discussion, outside the political arenas, and when
something then intervenes from the outside to interrupt—in the name
of nature—the task of gradually composing the common world. The
breach of what is called thestate of law,a traditional concept that we
are simply extending to the sciences, is what spoils any utilization of
nature in politics. The only question for us thus becomes the follow-
ing: How can we obtain the reality, the externality, and the unity of na-
tureaccording to due process*?
We have also understood why (political) epistemology could not
be taken as a well-formed procedure, despite its high moral claims. It
was gravely lacking in respect for procedures when it drew from the
expression “There exists an external reality” the illogical conclusion
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