Such an assembly would only fulfill its task well on condition of be-
ing as sensitive as possible to the foreignness of what came to knock
on the door of the collective. Now, it cannot preserve this astonishing
property, so different from that of the societies of the Old Regime
(composed of humans and social factors), except on condition that the
strictest separation of powers reign between it and the lower house.
No one must impose on it the restriction implicit in the following
question: “Are these new beings compatible with the regulated exis-
tence of the collective?” This question is to be decided by the other
house alone. Here we find again the requirement of autonomy that the
scientists rightly defend but wrongly used to appropriate for them-
selves, along with the political distinction, a highly welcome one, be-
tween the freedom to discuss and the necessity to decide; finally, we
add the ethical requirement that the question of belonging be raised
continually and without preliminary conditions. All these obligations
reinforce one another to allow the indispensable separation of powers
to fulfill its function. How far we are from the impossible purification
of facts and values, which we left behind in the previous chapter!^53
If the collective is well managed, if the upper house possesses a high
degree of sensitivity, then a series of questionings begins, which we
could group into two sets of inquiries. First set: “You who are present-
ing yourselves at the door of the collective, what are your proposi-
tions? To what trials must we submit ourselves to make ourselves ca-
pable of understanding you and getting you to speak?” (task no. 1,
requirement of external reality). Second set: “Who can best judge the
quality of your propositions? Who can best represent the originality
of your offer? By what reliable witnesses can you have yourselves rep-
resented most faithfully?” (task no. 2, requirement of relevance of the
consultation).^54 Let us recall that speech is not the property of humans
alone, but that of heterogeneous assemblages whose quality is pre-
cisely in question before the upper house. Let us recall, too, that the
notion of proposition does not yet make a distinction, at this stage,
between wanting to be, having to be, and being. It is the responsibility
first of the upper house, and then of the lower house, to introduce
these differences gradually, differences thatdefine no longer states of
things, ontological qualities, but the successive stages of a procedure whose
forms must be scrupulously respected.Essences are yet to come, the inani-
mate form of nonhumans as well.
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167