Decrypting Time

By deploying, yet pushing against the grain of, Meillassoux’s hyper-chaos through the theory of encryption of power, this book articulates a radically new ontology of democracy.Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo radically reframes our understanding of reality and time to expose the ontological basis for true democracy and legitimate power, proposing that time is not a single line but a rupture articulated across two irreducible dimensions. The first—Meillassoux’s hyper-chaos—is the radical, unbridled contingency where no law, trajectory, or final state is necessary, creating a world that is 'rational' precisely because it lacks any fixed necessity to be the way it is. The second is the emergence of meaning and irreversible succession when and if hyper-chaos acts. Since being is radically contingent, no meaning can be given in advance; it therefore arises as a collective, conflictual labor. By connecting these two dimensions through the theory of encryption of power, the book forges a new political ontology that grounds democracy in the unqualified power of becomingness.This book, rather than being about a philosophy of temporality, is about the radical power of time to create without necessity, the rationality of unreason, and the worlds that emerge when meaning arises without ground. It concerns how such emergences shape the orders and distributions of the sensible of the world, while holding fast to our central proof: being is contingent. And it explores a radical democracy that serves as the political horizon where no identity or order can be imposed as necessary.