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Philosophy as Aesthetics
Or, the Age of the Object-Oriented World-Picture
Over in the comments section of Kvond’s recent post on Harman, commenter Eli has written a lengthy and formidable remark that sums up and extends the critiques that have thus far been made, revealing the absent center, the constitutive lack, which appears to structure object-oriented philosophy as both a movement and a theory. While the comment itself surely deserves the status of its own complete post, for the time being a few excerpts will have to suffice in order to simply draw attention to his response:
Harman’s attitude toward just about everything is an “aesthetic” one, and he even says that we should regard aesthetics as “first philosophy”. But note that he means nothing remotely sophisticated by “aesthetics” here. Philosophy for him is about liking and disliking things – quite literally – and he views it as a purely aesthetic pursuit – not because he has some theory about how aesthetics judgement supplants all others or what have you; there’s no judgment, no cognitive dimension whatsoever involved: it’s literally as primitive as “x feels good”, “I like x”: hence his love of travelogue, catalogues, lists, photographs with pretty colours: the world is a vast aesthetic sensorium featuring the pleasing and the displeasing and philosophy is the catalogue and guide.
…What puzzles me most when he gives papers saying how philosophy should forget about epistemology and should instead concern itself directly with fire and cotton, monkeys, tornadoes and quarks, is why no-one just asks him straight out: “Could you give me an example of what a philosopher might have to say about monkeys or comets or neutrinos that’s not covered by the sciences?” What would he have to say? “Errm, well … when a monkey eats a banana, there is actually no interaction between the monkey and the banana, because monkeys and bananas are vacuum-sealed objects which forever infinitely withdraw from one another. No-one has ever seen a monkey or a banana in the purity of their individual essences, and they can only interact on the inside of an intention, and all objects relate to each other by means of intentions”. Why don’t people just start howling with laughter and derision when he says such things?
I strongly urge our readers to read Eli’s damning commentary in its entirety, and hopefully within a few days I’ll be able to muster up the time to sketch out some further thoughts of my own (namely, where I agree with what has thus far been said, and also where I disagree).
Harman’s Commodification of Paper Writing
Kvond offers another pointed critique of Harman’s work, reflecting on some past remarks written by Harman on the now-deleted version of his old blog in light of the recent discussion of the “deferral of debt” in Harman’s work. Carl, over at Dead Voles, cited some hilarious quotes, the best of which I think is definitely this:
Always good to bring an older classic thinker into the mix. My choice in this case is Giordano Bruno, who has so much in common with Grant. A critical analysis of Bruno’s Cause, Principle, and Unity would work perfectly here. Put it on the smaller bookshelf where I keep books currently in use for projects, where I will see it each day as a reminder to reread it when I have the time.
Instead of going off on my own commentary, I want to just quote Kvond’s comment on this, since anything I have to say in response would be largely derivative of what he has said:
The blog is now deleted…but at least this past discussion over at Dead Voles points us in the direction of much of Harman’s “allure” thinking about what makes good philosophy. In this his theory of causation and his methodology coincide. Personally I find this production-line thinking combined with Harman’s “shock value” and “great idea” esteem to be antithetical to what philosophy should be about, and carries with it some substantive comparisons to Capitalist Speculative Bubble debt deferral. As such it draws our attention to the problems with the underlying theory itself, and the values that underwrite or inspire it. This is only to say that both his thinking and his methods should be shown in a more socially critical light, a light that ultimately goes to the question of cause and to the purpose of philosophy itself. Is philosophy ever anything more than “black box” making as Harman claims?
Object-Oriented Philosophy as Ponzi Scheme: On Financial and Metaphysical Bubbles
I was inspired by Kvond’s excellent post at his blog Frames /sing—please do read it—responding to my informal comments over at this Perverse Egalitarianism thread, where I wrote a brief critique of the work of Graham Harman and the object-oriented philosophy (henceforth, OOP) movement that has recently coalesced around him, to formalize them a little bit into a post here at the Howler.
Read more on Object-Oriented Philosophy as Ponzi Scheme: On Financial and Metaphysical Bubbles…
Realism and Correlationism: Truth
I haven’t had a chance to read Quentin Meillassoux’s much-discussed After Finitude yet, but this post over at Grundlegung, which, among other things, defends the complexity of the Kantian “thing in itself” against speculative realist reduction, is a pretty marvelous read. It’s also probably one of the few, if only, somewhat inspiring posts I’ve read throughout the rather asinine Realism Wars™. The real bite of the post comes here:
Even with these revisions in place, it seems to me that Meillassoux mischaracterises the thrust of the Kantian strategy. Kant is not trying to redefine truth or objectivity in intersubjective terms, under the pressure of epistemological constraints introduced by transcendental idealism. Instead, he attempts to vindicate certain a priori concepts — such as the categories of the understanding — as being objectively valid. For example, these concepts include like causality, as a necessary connection between two events. These concepts figure in Kant’s attempt to provide a reformed and legitimate metaphysics, able to justify the concepts to which it appeals. In contrast with empirical concepts, such as bear or atom, we supposedly cannot give a full defence of them by simply looking to the world and seeing whether there is anything which corresponds to them (recall Hume’s scepticism about justifying causality). For Kant, these concepts have a special status: “since they speak of objects through predicates not of intuition and sensibility but of pure a priori thought, they relate to objects universally, that is, apart from all conditions of sensibility.” (B120) Not being based upon experience, they “arouse suspicion.”
If Kant had argued that truth is reducible to universalizable intersubjectivity, then the first Critique would’ve been far less devastating for both traditional metaphysics, as well as skepticism. What Kant is really after with his transcendental philosophy is a critique of introspection by way of introspection.
Laruellian / Lacanian Clones
An interesting take on Lacan’s borromean knot and the notion of “cloning,” taken from the non-philosophy of Francois Laruelle. I’m not totally sure how reading Lacan through speculative realism (or vice versa) illuminates anything in particular, but then again I don’t think I quite understand what the author is getting at. It’s definitely an article worth reading though.
Correlationism
If anyone read the article linked from Non-Linearity and Momentum, but, like me, had no idea what it meant, this post over at Larval Subjects does a really great job of explaining what, exactly, is being attacked: that is to say, it explains what correlationism is. Of course, I’m still curious as to how the ideas of speculative realism might impact transcendental materialism, but I suppose this requires reading After Finitude, at the very least.
Non-linearity and Momentum
Over at NaughtThought there is a really interesting, albeit difficult to comprehend, critical analysis of speculative realism (Brassier [specifically the theories and concepts developed in his Nihil Unbound] and Meillassoux) from a transcendental materialist (Zizekian) perspective. I wonder if (hope that) Zizek’s next “theoretical” book will deal at all with the challenges brought up by speculative realism, as it seems that they, unlike mechanical determinists, offer a lot of theoretically credible alternatives to Zizek’s Hegel-inspired account of subjectivity and free will.