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COLLAPSEPhilosophical Research and Development

VOLUME IIIDlited b1

RobinMackay

URBANOMICEALMOUTTI

-

COLLAPSE IIIGoldsrnithsUNIVTRS Y('r I oNDoN

r,) fcr tl1$ -riti,di', {)fItr*il nft{i ItiiSi l}l *f,nd$

LTCOII,.\:: :

s.{y/ utba.:

Speculstiue RealismA 0n*Day {llorhelrqp

t*7prn- Friday 27 April 2007Lecture Halt, Ben Pimloit EuildingGoldsmhhs, Univgrsity of LondonNew Cross, Lofldon SE14 gNW

Partlclpants: Ray Brassler (l$lddl0sex), lain llamilton Grant (UIIEIGraham llannan (Ameriean Unlyercity ln Gairo),Quentn Melllassoux (Ecole l{ormale Superieure)

Contehpo€ry 'continent€l'philosopht titati trid(* i.sli o. t.:rv[]g afetcotrLt\e age ar)rndiurr's cili irati:e! lelv/*I reijisnt iid tdeit,isF SUbjFcl.)bjsl dLri 6r w,l.r$ r?pti.itai.rnitsluolaclllt4cD'lclliitEdGiirCf Ctrn1enrFC.,ra,,tFnjry,, iat5f,ppose,:lf,,itre,iarstiolOlb,tl.j .ritj,l!s ol .qyil*yrtatir) :trvj $|i\tariet tt ls{ioijs wllai .)i tr[\k,fS trr Jond:(r.lalco1:leiica fiei{,*r: ir$Cii

"rrC wori-l

But Frhaps thi3 antFEpresentational li)r ?jL)r-.iahirjist,) i:oNser,s,Jij - i.., tch ?ya+c^.JsLrilcsoory |]iop€r afd i ti:ye: ri raty iir nta,alr tl ih? ltrmaa t,es arJ in+ tmial .:a Fnces _I [dC! i dla€, llarc ]nrl'p ali(l:Cjt :aie;::anl lC r:,al snt realit 3iJ ratye ^ j:\nd rs 1ne wlj:SDteid.j:srr)ig*ri ot rapro,sr t, tio,i :triij rLjla.ji! t) ' ), r.dhiij, ai licarl stin)oar 1 slr !j:1.y, aijirrLs r) L)4'?

ThiE wor*shop will baing together toj pi ia)9j,l)rreis r'r'tf,sr ltcik, :nti,cr!!r lr)rlEd lt!citige|j noic4rllj illeslerli ltayra fl tte bjls( i4reis !l a,i)!rrl.ettnl i:trrot!)^y i.,t:4ls:_heur.0 :rrtr ro,iil :rfn y,p?i!,1i,:e.r (al.aarn..rn-rerte lfr.:$u:tl:!rr .,rajiar ii tol ? il._cffi[.:!iili ilit ur,;li4i d lerr Jar a r;iirc[ af r&ei: rj r |tr.ugr,,.r (,a: ]. .:il rr :ir.J :u f,[.t!,drfg ||-,,3uhrryr} 4l p,dl[.r yr']:eher :n tl.e .px'ic.,t irnjlrc4i)(l4r:1ai !,it<j;(:ai:s.ir aiJjecFo,bat$jpiilisoFr,v O. ;l-isliail m3tFri;Lsn, iqa nit tre degrdih)R of it:ihrco):Oil.,<.1

Speculative Realism

Ray Brassier, lain

Graham Flarman,

307

Harnilton Grant,

Quentin Meiilassoux

.i qwe. M s ffip/,,ktr addeMs.e.&si.pIEF S€FI)fEHAiD By IUAUMi e.r@seSoM.&.*

COLLAPSE III

Howat4 as wmhshap nndtrator and. co-organiser Aherta Toscant

itldirnted, a commoniftature of tlw wmk presmted was tfu xrnpliulton

tlntfun a genuiru intemgation oftlw contiruntnl tral:itionruussaih

etusues a repudiation of tlu orthodoxbs rymptunatic of tlal tradifim':

cuwptual exlnusfion (tlu rnost uiriblz of whith being tlw waninglr

atdlzss dzluge of iru@d secondny lilerature ard thz X-inn'identihof its authors), thus radering tlu tarh of dning philasoplry in oru':

mtn nannz' essential once again. 'Speculatiue Realisml then, fmu:contanporo"ry phil*o?ly to mafu a dzcision, but it is not so much ont

concming idzali:m or realism. R"th.er, at stafrz hne is tln pwsibihh

of a funre for audadous and original Philosophiral thought as c

discourse on tlu nature of ool4 - ffi, 6 onc might othmtti:e call il:philwoplry it:ef

h,rsnxreuoN nv Rev Bnessrnn

Rather than reading a paPer, I'm just going to make

some general remarks about what I take to be the realls

significant points of convergence and divergence beftveen

Iain, Graham, Qrentin, and myself. The fundamentalthing we seem to share is obviously a willingness to re-inter-

rogate or to open up a whole set of philosophical problem-'

that were taken to have been definitively setded by Kanrcertainly, at least, by those working within the continenaltradition. This is why, as I'm sure everyone knows, the

term 'realist' in continental philosophy is usually taken to

be some kind of insult - only someone who really hasn't

understood Kant could ever want to rehabilitate somethinglike metaphysical realism, or any form of realism which does

not depend upon some kind of transcendental guarantor.

whether that guarantor is subjectively instantiated by pure

apperception, or consffued in terms of linguistic practices.

308

Speculative Realism

or a cotlmunicational consensus, etc. Much of themainstream of nineteenth and rwentieth century post-Kan-tian philosophy is about simply redefining, generalising,specifying, these transcendental structures or conditioruof cogrritive legitimation. And in a way, it doesn't reallymatter whether you claim to have replaced the subject andthe object with some form of communicational consensusor being-in-the-world or any variant of the latter on theseissues: The transcendental function has been variouslyencoded in different versions of post-Kaltian continentalphilosophy. But the thing that seems to be assumed withinthis tradition, the thing that actually Graham's work firstbrought out to me, is the notion that whatever structurethere is in the world has to be transcendentally imposedor generated or gua-ranteed, which is to say that objectivitycan only be a function of synthesis. And it's striking that inpost-Kantian philosophy the difference between Kant andHegel seems to be that where Kant will localise the syn-thesising function in something like pure apperception orwholly on the side of the subject, Hegel and the variousforms of objective idealism will say that reality itself is self-synthesising, that there is a kind of principle of synthesisencoded in objective reality itself. So that, famously, inHegel's objective idealism, the relational s;mthesis whichKant takes to be constitutive of objectivity is simply trans-planted from its localisation in the subject and construedrather as the relation befiveen subject and object, whichHegel recodes as the 'self-relating negativiry' that yieldsthe structure of reality. So the question is: If you refuse tosay that slmthesis - the slmthesis which produces objectivestnrcture - is anchored in a subject, does this mean that

309

COLLAPSE III

you have to idea,lise the real by attributing to it this capacitrfor self-relation? A capaciry for self-sl.nthesis whereby a

continuum of relation itself yields the rype of discontinuitr'that gives rise to discrete objects? In other words, is there a

principle of intelligibiliry encoded in physical rea-lity?

This is absolutely the key issue, I think. in Iain'sbook on Schelling.l And according to Iain's reconstruc.tion, Schelling proposes an a-lternative variant of objectiveidealism, one wherein structure and objectiviry are intrinsicto nature, but the ideal structures that are intrinsic to orinherent in physical reality are no longer construed interms of a dialectic of opposition and conrradiction. InIain's brilliant reconstruction of Schellingialism, wharyou get is something like a 'transcendental physics', a

physics of the All, where ideas are differential dlnamisms.attractors immanent to and inherent in material reality. So.nature is self-organising. And the idea-l stmcture of natureproduces the structure of thinking. But if cognition is a

result, a product - if it's every bit as conditioned as arrr'other natural phenomenon - the question then becomeswhether there's any reason to suppose that thought ca:.r

limn or grasp the ultimate structure of reality at any givenmoment, any specific historical juncture. Because the kevthing, if you're committed to a transcendental realism, oiwhich Iain provides a powerful reconstruction in his book,is that it is the sfucture of material reaJity that generatesthe structure of thinking. But this means that one musrdiscount aly appeal to intellectual intuition, which is to sar'.

the idea that thinking can simply transcend its own materia-l.

t Iain Hanilton Grant, Philosophb: o1f Nature Afr Schrlling (LondonContinuum,2006).

310

ionelithe

arl-scendentalism and a kind of pragmatism which would sar.that evolutionary history simply guarantees the cong:uencebetrveen representation and reality as a function of udapt"-tional neceisitl'. so that or-,ly ...ut,-r..s that have a cognti\.eapparatus that is appropriate to their kind of biophysicalenvironment will be able to survive. And this is a claim thatfuels much of naturalised epistemology', but one that I thinkis metaphysicalll'problematic. because there is no reason tosuppose that evolutionary adaptation would favour exhaus-tively accurate beliefs about the world. There's no reasonto suppose that evolution would infallibly provide humanorgan accuratelr.track of realitr.So iniblity ,ffi:i:t::

and s

ures oimply

usefulness as viable surwival strategies. And the force ofIain's book is to try to propose what he ca_lls a ,transcen-

dental naturalism' - which claims that you cal explainthe emergence of the structure of ideatioir from the idealstructure of phy'sical rea_lity, so rhat idearion would becapable of tracking the ideal dynamisms, the transcenden-tal dynamisms, that underlie merely empirical or merell.somatic reality.

Speculative Realism

311

COLLAPSE III

An important distincrion in Iain's book is between theAristotelian-Kantian reduction of rnaterialitv ro sonlaric olcorporeal reality - the idea that to be material means robe some sort of body rvith a set of perceprible properries- and the transcendental materialism that Iain ascribes toSchelling, where the real material stnrctures are the abstractdifferential dynamisms that generate and produce bodies.organisms, and spatio-temporal objects, but can never bereduced to them. But here's one consequence of this: if thestruclure of ideation is a futrction of the ideal strllcrure olrnaterial self organisation, thcn the process is ongoing -and Iain ernphasises this - so it's simpll' not tlle case tharbiologrcai history has reached sorne sort of apex in humalconsciousness. And if the process is still ongoing and 'rvil-keep going, then not only is there rnore to knorv about thestructure of rettlif,than rve currently knorl, just nolv; there'jalso rnore to know about the structure of idaatin than\'\re currently know. And I think this presents a quandarYfor someone who's conrmitted to a version of speculativerealisrn: transcendental ph1'sicalism insists that there ar-e

real conditions of ideation but that these conditions halean ideal structure. The question then is: can rhe specificconceptual details of these ideal physical structures be sat.isfactorily identified using thc currently available resource -.

of conceptual ideation? \Vhat does this mean? ft rnean.using either the available registers of mathematical for.-rnalisation available to contemporary science: or- if rve ar-e

thinking in terms of transcendental philosophl- - a ser uisuitably generic conceptual categories. But then. can rve besure that any of the abstract conceptual categories in term:of lvhich we propose to reconstrlrct these ideal structures

312

are applicable? Carr rve be sure that these self-organisingfeatures of naterial realiq.carr be linguistically encoded andencapsulated? In other words, are thc resources of natr-rral

goes back to Plato and Aristotle: Is it enough simph. to

Speculative Realism

313

COLLAPSE III Speculative Realism

generators of material structure?

So, I guess whal I'm asking is: what is the status ot

tion of epistemology, but lvonderrvhether that re-inscriptior.l

providei a warrant for what he calls 'speculative physics '

\A4rat is the relationship between the d1'namic structure oi

the idea and the mathematical register deplol'ed for its for-

malisation? So my question to Iain then is really about the

materialisn:he pragmaticly evident. I

think there's an issue here about what articulates ideatior.r

and the mathematical resources of ideation that have beer.l

crucial in ridding us of this parochial Aristotelian model oi

physical reality. It was the mathematisation of nature that-definitively

ruined and shredded the medieva-l Rook of the

World. And the question is, can we rehabilitate a form of

transcendental or speculative materialism or realism thar

would also explain lhe success of mathematical formalisa-

tion in supplanting the old, pre-Galilean models of physics

and metaphysics?

One final point, concerning the nature of dynamism'

and this is a general point related to Process philosophr':

If you privilege productiviry if drese ideal generanved;.rramisms that structure and constitute materia-l realin'cal be characterised in terms of the primacy of producrionover product, then the question is, how do we account forthe interruptions of the process? How do we account lordiscontinuity in the continuum of production? And rvhile

I have no doubt that it's possible to do so, I think it's asignificant problem for any process philosophy that wants

to defend or prosecute a form of ontological monism based

on something like 'pure productivity', 'pure becoming',

'duration', or whatever one chooses to call it' Because then

it seems that you always have to introduce or posit some

sort of conceptual contrary some principle of decelera-

tion, intermption, disintensification or whatever' in order

to account for the upsurges of stabiliry and continuiry and

consistency within this otherwise untrammelled flux ofbecoming and pure process. So even if one then goes on

to reintegrate it into the former as a mere moment, one

still has to explain why there is anything but pure Processor why the processual flux is ever momentarily stabilized.

It's striking that you see this in Bergson: the idea that youneed something to explain what interrupts the Process,what produces or introduces discontinuity into the flux ofbecoming.

And I think Graham's contribution lies precisely in this

key area. The idea is that if you begin with some formof prelirninary methodological dualism of production and

product or, in its classic Bergsonian articulation, somethinglike duration and space, then you need to explain whatinterrupts the continuum - how duration ever externalises

itself or coagrlates into something like a spatial fixity or

315314

COLLAPSE III

stasis. And Graham gets around this problem by simph

having a rnetaphysics of objects, which in a way remove-s

the question of .synthesis altogether. \Arhat's strikineabout Graham's account is that you don't need to explainhow objects are s1'nthesised, because you simply tal<e

objects as nested within one another. You have this kindof infinite nesting of objects wiftin objects within object-.

... Every relation between objects itself unfolds withinanother object. So Graham turns the question around br'showing how the problem consists in showing how discon'tinuous, autonomous objects can ever enter inlo relationwith one another - his answer is that they do so on the

inside of another object. In other words, every relation is

itself another object. So what you have then is a kind oiegalitarian objective univocity, a kind of ontology of pureobjectiviry: there are nothing but objects, objects nested

within one another, and the really significant metaphysical

cha-llenge is explaining their interaction.

But I have two questions vis-A-vis Graham's project:First, Graham explains the interaction between objects

in terms of their sensual properties! i.e., no object everexhausts the ultimate realiry of arother object. It engages or'

interacts with it on the basis of a set of sensual or perceptibleproperties, arrd it is these that provide the basis for the

reciprocal interaction between objects. And my question is:

what is the criterion for distinguishing sensible from non-sensible properties for any given object? Is it possible to

provide such a criterion without giving it some sort of epis-

temological slant or formulation? In other words, in orderto interact with one another, it seems that objects need to'know' something about one alother. The fire must 'knott"

3r6

that the cotton is not rock; the rock must (know, that rheice is not water. \4lhatever kind of interaction obj..t, hur-..

the fact that their interface is possible ";;"-basis .f thi.

Speculative Realism

317

COLLAPSE III Speculative Rea,lism

319

really fundamentally different in kind from explaining horv

fire is able to burn cotton' or how a marble is able to interacr

with a table. But I think I want to problematise this issue

does not exhaust the task ofphilosophy'few things about

vis his work' Nft

ellectual intuition'

318

COLLAPSE III Speculative Rea_lism

either stumbled upon or had bestorved upon them by some

mysterious sort of process' and whic

to understand in more rudimentary t

arguably the most : Philoof the twentieth ce Ie eme

cognition; that is, the idea that the Process of cognition can

be"re-integrated into the realm of objective phenomena

studied by" the empirical sciences' In other words' there's

acirclehere,andacirclewhich.Ithink,istooquicklydis'q,r.fin.a as vicious by transcendental philosophl" Husserl

tiied to disqualify psychologir m on the grounds that if yott

reduce ideaiion to a set of psychological processes' then yot'i

remove the dimension of necessity, of logico-mathematica-

validity, which is the guarantor for the cognitive authorin'

ofthe natural sciences. In other rvords' you reduce scientific

discourse to a discourse like any other discourse' simplr

a way of speaking, and you basically turn into Richar.c

Rorty.

So, as I see it, the key challenge for speculative realisr:-

is: Can one be a realist about the sorts of enlities al.processes postulated by the sciences 'r'vithout having :

,ho.. .tp thut .o-toit-ent to realism with some sort ( -

p.ugu,ir* on the one hand, or transcendentalism on tl-'

otn!.? Can one be a naturalist 'rvithout turning into Richa -

Rorty, and can one maintain that lvhat science says is tn 'rvithout becoming a Husserlian or something of that il'<

And I think this ii a really interesting question: I think tl-

is where sorne kind of communication is needed benve':

lhe speculative audacitv which is a characteristic of so-callt '

i.orrtir..r-rtul philosophi,' and the really admirable level

engagement with the empirical sciences which is a feat'"-

320 321

COLLAPSE III

PnnsnvreuoN nv IerN fleuu-roN Grervr

The basic thing I want to talk about is the philosophu'

cal problem of nature. and I think this is a springboard for

speculation - not opportunistically, bul necessarily. I thinlthat if philosophy of nature is follorved consistently it entail,

that speculation becomes necessary as the only means nolof assessing the arcess that we have. but of rhe production olthought.

I'll start from lwo things that I think everyone wouldaccept and see if we can work outwards from there. I thinkthat, unless you're some kind of convinced dualist, it's

absolutely necessary that we accept that there's something

prior to thinking, and that there are several layers ofdependency amongst what is prior to thinking. It's not just

one thing, il's an entire complex series of events. Now lve

could articulate that by means of some form of causation.

We could try to establish, as it were, a direct line between

the event we're trying to alalyse, the event we're tryingto account for in naturalistic terms, and all the causes that

might have contributed toward its production, ald so on.

Such a task is inexhaustible in principle. not merely infact. It's inexhaustible in principle because the conditions

that support the event that's produced also support the

production of other events. So if we accept that there are

naturalistic grounds for the production of thought, then

we have to accept that the naturalistic grounds for the

production of thought a-re not themselves e'uident in thought

except in so far as thought is regarded as part ofnature.

So that's the starting point, and I take this to be

Schelling's central contribution to philosophy. Schelling.

of course, is known as a transition engine' He was a son

Speculative Realism

of facilitator, a go-between, for phi_losophical history.He sits between Fichte - who we all equally understandbecause, after all, Fichte talks about ethics - and Hegel -who no one understood but who everyone would like to.Schelling had neither of rhese benefirs nor deficits, and inconsequence, no one could understand him nor wished rolHoweveq Schelling also produced this monumenral s::.e .of works on the philosophy of nature, this extraord-:-.--series of overdy speculative works - and when I sar. =..there's partially a descriptive element here. It's like a Er--.of writing, at one level. That is to say, the commitmen: :

getting it down as it's coming out, is not merely that o: .poet under inspiration - it's also an ideational requireme:-:really. If the thought as it's happening is to have any imprc:whatsoever on the world in which it's happening, then it _.

absolutely necessary that it be got down. So if you look aiSchelling's output, it's hideous, it's absolutely frightening.No wonder people hated his guts: he was writing six booksa yeu - and that's not counting essays and journals editedald so on. It was frightening - he rurned out more than anovelist. So there's this extraordinary record of productionof works on the philosophy of nature. And to distinguishthe philosophy of nature as Schelling propounds it orexplicates it successively, again and again - and not alwaysin the same way or according to central shared principles -it's convenient to call it 'speculative physicsl as indeed hedid in the journal he edited under rhar name, the Journal oJ

Seculatiue Plryszci. I don't know about you, but the very ideaof combining those two things seems an absolute recipefor heaven on Earth. This is building particle acceleratorsthat cost billions, that bankrupt countries, sinking great

335334

COLLAPSE III Speculative Realism

capture

- this i-.

,:':T1:coming out of a philosopher's works.

So those redJy are the &vo things. Speculative physics:

what is entailed, on the one hald, vis-i-vis the nature of

philosophy; and on the other, what it entails for the nature

tf tno"gnt. Those are the tvvo a-reas I'm particularll'

interested in. And the reason I think these are signifrcant

does. I'm very concerned that we see ald acknowledge this

to be the case, because the speculative tools that it has buih

into it are immense. This is from a book that Bosanquet

wrote called Logil, or tlw Morpholog of knuledge- It's a book

on logic. One quesrion is, why are the idealiss so fascinateC

by logic? \44:ry are they all experimenters in logic? \Alhr'

do we get vast tomes, repeatedly, from idealists on logic?

There are many possible answers to this, and I'll come to

one of them later. But this is what Bosanquet has to sar'

at the very conclusion of his book. Upon starting it our

he has rwo epigrams, one from Hegel' from the Scicrrcc c''

Logic, the other from Darwin, frorn TIw Uigin of $eac:.and his avowed aim is to bring these two things together. I

won't use the phrase 'evolutionary epistemologyl althougl:

obviously there's a certain kinship berween these strategies

- but there is certainlv something "bo.r,

k.ro*I.affientails that it is .-rol.rtiorr-y, if it is knowledge of narure.This is what he has to say:

ar-y terms, pher,there. But thatthe univer theirexpression that

thisthe

and,To

know it is to endow itthat form is the form ::TlT:universe, manifesting elf against

; B. -Bosanquer,

Ingn, "r

rto AI\bl. II. 322

336 oDa

COLLAPSE III Speculative Realism

fruit of the stated mechanism. It rvould be one and the san.re

cause, bul from nature.

Now if we accept that, it seems to me that idealisn-

is comrnitted to a realism about all things. a realism tha:

applies equally to nature and to the Idea. And in generl

terms I ttrlnk ttris is true, I think this is rvhat all idealisr:-

this is fundamentally a physics. The Idea is a content-fi'e'

point that denies accessibility, that delermine-s' as it wele

ih. chuos around it to be chaos around it' Why? Becau"

the chaos around it cannot be what it is, because it is tl--:

only self-identical thing there is. There are several Ideas c'

course, so it's not just one, despite certain splits toward cl-:

end of he RePublic.

Okay, so I think basically there are grounds to assur':

that idealism is realism about nature coupled with rea-lis::

about an Idea. In terms of the situation in which we findourselves today, my question really is: does this or does this

ternal to the thinker that has

rhe thinker and the thoughr T;tH: ,H:.rufl:::'j:'lseries of exteriorities between thinker, thought, Idea, theI'anous strata of the nature necessary to produce that event- necessary but not sufficient, it should be stressed. So 1.oucan't say that this and only this nature could produce that

338 339

COLLAPSE III

event, but we can say that it's necessary. I've said a litde

about why, and that's a huge problem acrualll'. It's simph'

that the problem of ground, naruralistically understood.

presents us with a tremendous series of problems. If it is the

case that the Idea is exterior to the thinl<ing, the thinkingis exterior to the thinker, and the thinker is exterior to the

nature that produced it, then, inevitably, we no longer have

a series of interiorities within which it's possible for anyone

to recognise themselves in the production of their thoughts

It's simply a banal accident that we know what it feels like to

have thoughts. That is not particularly significant. \4/hat's

significant is the thought. The thought is the product' anc

of course there are events taking place that surround thal

thought. It's very difficult to imagine, as I said, that what's

necessary for the production of a particular event in nature

is sufficient for the production of that and only that event

In other words, we have no reason whatsoever to assume

that our perception of our ourn interiority guarantees

that that interioriry is somehow reproduced in reality. I:just isn't: that the Ideas are sepa-rate from the thinker tha:

thinks them, the thinker that thinks them is separate fron:

the thinking that he or she thinks, arrd the seParateness o:

the thinker from the nanlre that necessaily produced it isn':

suffrcient un its ou)n to produce it, seems to me to guilantee

that.

So that's idealism. \Arhat does idealism therefore offe:

speculation? Why does it make it necessary? There are hvc

reasons why, and I'm really going to concentrate on one -and this is part of an answer to one of the questions that Rar

asked earlier concerning, 'how do you a-rrest the process c i

production, as it were?', 'how does the product intervene

340

as it were, in a process of production such that in somesense the process of production has an outcome?', becausewithout that surely it isn't a process of production. So is rh-is

i d"{t:.T-d principles or is there sometbing else going onthere?_I'll begin this wirh a re-arriculation oi*h"t 5.h.ilingdid to Kant. This is brutal. If thought had an anatomy, anJif a thinker were to have done this to an anatomy, then theowner of that anatomy would be completely dismembered.In other words, this is Schelling being the Furies chasingafter Orestes in rhe forest. He iends k-rt to shreds. Hetakes the apn*i and the aposterioriand totally inverts theirqurpose. The a lrimiis intended to gua_rantee that prior tothe production of any thought, theie are certain laws inplace,of that thought that entail that that thought and onJythat thoughr can be legitimate within rhe sphJre it's beingthought. Schelling turns it around arrd suys, ,No this is noia ?rioi, this is a prius.It,s firstnessl A pwtmori, Kant wants toclaim, is a matter of almost total inaifference. Any sciencethat studies, for example, as chemistry does, ,mere; sensiblea posteriori evidences, is basically mistaking the product forthe-_law that produced it, and is therefoie poinrless, notreally a science but a cataloguing exercise - something,incidentally. that both Hegel and barwin complain aboJtrn the epigrams in Bosanquet,s book, this ,cataloguingexercisel T\e ponerias and the prius for Schelling

'_ 62i

from.representing rhis divide between whar is a fioi r:uefor a-ll knowledge, for all knowing, and what is^a posterion.going to be given, that a priori once granted - is to iay thatthis is simply a firstness and secondness that belongs to ageneratlve program. The firstness is firstness not mereir. br_the nature of thoughr but by rhe nature of what it is ihar

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thought is. In other words, it's not al internal problem ofthought that there is firsmess - apriority, if you like - it's

rather a problem of nature that there is a problem, thatthere is a question or al apriority. The a pnoi is nature .

Unless there were a nature there would be no thinking, Ithink we can agree. If there were no nature there would be

no thirrking. T\e priu of thinking is necessarily nature. Butthe prius never goes, is never a ?i^, unless there's a posteriu.:

for it to be ltrius to. In consequence, the product and the

productiviry the posterius and the prius, arc two co-presenr

and constalt elements in the articulation of process. It'ssimple. It's a formal nugget at one level. but at anotherlevel, it's actually the way in rvhich firstness and secondness

- tirne, in other words, or its production - becomesparticular, becomes particular entities, becomes particularthoughts, whatever kind of entities are produced down theline. All we have is sequencing, and the sequence is priu.a:ad posterius. But a ltosterius can never, no matter what it is.

capture the sum total of the causes of its production. Thisapplies to physical entities, it applies to mountains: Imaginea mountain trying to contain within itself and catalogue.lay out, merely to lay out and catalogue, all the elemenrsthat went into its production. '4.5 billion years. By God.that's a long lifel says the mountain. 'How much furtherhave we got to go? Only another 10 billion years, till we getback to the point where I cata-logue all the events that are

necessary to my production', alld so on. It's as importalrlo the production of physical entities, such as is commonJr'understood, as it is to thought. \Arhat is it that happens whenthought pretends to chase its own tail? - the Ourobourosdiagram from the front of the Macmillan edition of Kemp

342

Smith's translarion of Kant,s first Critique. fUfru, i, ii_,happens when thoughr rries ro catch iis own tail. tries totrap rts own conditions of production in its product? Firstof all. it can't happen, because, as for the mountain. theconditions. of the production of the thought are simplr. far.too extensive for it to be in principle posslble for a thoughtto recover them. So there,s u ,r...rru.y asymmetry. if r:or-rlike, between thought and what pr...d.r'it, and it,s thisasynxnetr)' lvhich means that thought is always differentfrom rvhat precedes it and always at ihe same time requir.eswhat precedes it as its necessar)r ground _ necessary but notsufficient. So there we have u'pio..r, of generation that.sunderstood as one then the next, that is iemonstrated. ifyou like. by the incapacity of thought or mountains, by thelithic or the noetic. to go back and"to recover its conditionsol production. ft's simply not doable.

^. l. :n1, is the beginning of a problem, the beginningor a naturallstlc lnter?retarion. a speculative physical

interpretation, of the question of gror-,rrd, of the problemof ground, which, it seems to me, is a problem that we,reall addressing. Several consequences flow from it which itseems h explicating, not in so far as theyrelate s project b.rt"i., so far as they relate, i,littk, g.tr..ul. I would like to make cerrainclarms I would like to make the claim thatspeculation is entailed by natural producivity. We don,thave, in other words, the comfort zone of an interioritr.rvhich re flex. We aorr,t t urr. tnu,comfortrook,we :r:il.:"#;:tff:"f;which thought is possible, and ontlpossible,. We don,t har.e

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that comfort zone, that interioritl', and that's one reason

why speculation's entailed ... It also means somethingvery bizarre epistemically at a quite mundane level, at the

level of reference. \A4eat is it that happens rvhen lve have

thoughts about things? Two drings happen: there are things

and there are thoughts. \Arhat's the basis of their relation?

Well, the thought that specifically occurs at that point is

the means by which they are related, and that if there is no

other body of reference, are we talking about a rvorld? No.the world's talking. Now, the question therefore becomes:

If the world talks, if the world is articulate, and if, that is.

nalure thinks - ald however many strata lve want to Placein between the agent and its product is fine by me, rvell, there

ought to be loads ... however many strata we want to Placebetween the agent and its product, betlveen the thinker and

the thought is fine - but it seems to me that if nature thinks.

then it follows that nature thinks just as nature'mountainsor nature 'rivers' or nature 'planetises', or *'hat have you.These things are the same to all intents and purposes. L.r

other words, there are new products every time there are

thoughts, which creates the problem of ground. And as Isee it, the problem as it presents itself through these lenses

seems to me to focus on a single question: Are there one or

many grounds? If there is one ground for example, the larr

of non-contradiction, such as Bosanquel espouses, beinsa fruit of nature - if there is one ground, then all of the

fruits of nature can be related to that ground. Necessarilr',

Certainly. But sufficiently, no. If there is more than one

ground, if there is ground every time there is event, ther:

that becomes a question of what job it is that the ground is

doing. Is the ground a pius or a posterius? And as a product

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Speculative Realism

arr entitl', it must be posterius. So the reformulation oi -i--:

question of ground, it seems to me, is the means bv n'hucrwe can guaranlee a consistent speculation concerning rheorigins of thought as much of as the origins of stones. Anithat's where I'll stop and open it up ...

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COLLAPSE IIISpeculative Realism

h.lsrrvrerroN sy GRAHAM HanvaN

Firstly, I'd like to thank Ray Brassier for conceiring o:this evenr and organising it. This all started for me abour a

'Speculative Realism,, first of a_ll, is a very apr title.because realism, of course, is very out of

'fashion in

philosophy. And I rhink one of the r.uro.r, it's out of fashionis that ofthe bo

esald fo re

in any of it. The conclusions are very strange in all fourcases. In Ray's case you have a reductive e'iiminativism.and you end his book with the husks of burnt-out stars and

9. A one-day conference, 'Weird Realism: Lovecraft arld Theory,, heldund_er the auspices of Goldsmiths Centre for Culnrral Snrdies on dO ep.,t2007.

366367

COLLAPSE III

In Iain's book you have a pre-individual dynarnic flux lhar

somehow meets with retardations and becomes encrusteC

into rivers and mountains. In my work you get object-'

infinitely withdrawing from each other into vacuums anc

only barely managing to communicate across some sort olqualitative bridge. And of course in Qrentin's philosophryou get no causal necessiry whatsoever. Everything's purecontingency. These are not the sorts of notions one usualh'associates with realism. Metaphysics is usua,lly thoughtto be concerned with wild, speculative sorts of ideas, andspeculation is usually not considered a form of realism,You hear 'speculative idealisml not ' speculative realism'.Another obvious common link is a kind of antiCoperni-canism. Kant is still the dominart philosopher of our time.Kant's shadolv is over everyone! and many of the attemptsto get beyond Kant don't get beyond Kant at all. I thinkHeidegger is a good example of this. Heidegger's a greatexample of the 'correlationist'. in Meillassoux's sense.I0Obviously, we all think of Kant as a great philosopher. Butlhat doesn't mean he's not a problem. It doesn't mean thatKant is the right inspiration for us, and in fact, I hold thatthe Kantial alternatives are now more or less exhausted.

One of the things I did to prepare for this conferenceis to put each of our names on an index card, and I wasshuffling them around on my table in Cairo, trying togroup us together in different ways. And you can come upwith different combinations in this way, various differencesbetween us despite the shared similarities. I came up withsome interesting ones; but if you were going to say whatdistinguished each of us, I think it's fair to say - and they

10 For 'correlationism' see Cor-rersn Vol II (March 2007).

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_ Specularive Realism

that Ray is really. the o:*is the only dlmamrst. I.:-Qrentin is rhe onh- ore

necessaryrelationsbetween".r:-l;;':J;;i*t""jrt:world. And you can also ,.. diff...Irrt influences in eachcase. In Ray's case, I rhink: Badiou and Laruelle. Tho:eare the two chapters that seem most central to me in htsmaluscript. And cognitive science, of course. In Iain.s case.German Idea-lism, Deleuze, Bergson, and his own readilqof Plato. In my case: Husserl and Heidegger, with a bit ofLeibniz and a bit of Latour. And in the cas"Jof Meillassous:Badiou, of course, but also. I see a lot of simi_larities be.r.eenhim and David Hume in many ways; nor only the clarin.of his writing style, but even some of the arguments. seemHumean in inspiration.

Before I comment on the work of the other rhree or-rthe panel, maybe I should give a quick summary of mr.own work. It all started for me with Heidegger. I donrr

:hi"k I was ever quite an orthodox Heideggerian. burI certainly loved Heidegger very much. And Jarly on ilmy graduate studies, I was focusing on the tool_analr-sis.the way *rings hide behind their faiades as we use them,And it occurred to me at a certain point fairly early thatall of Heidegger boils down to this. 'il,rere's really just onefu.ndamenta-l opposition that keeps recurring, whether he.stalking about being or tools or Dasein or anything else:a constallt, monotonous reversa_l between the hiddennessof things and their visible presence-at-hand. Arrd it startedas just a reading of Heidegger, and there wasn't rea1h.any metaphysical inclination whatsoever at that poinr

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COLLAPSE IIISpeculative Realism

What first started doing it for me was when I tvas writingan article on Levinas a couple years after that. and tryingto piece together Levinas's theory of how the humansubject breaks up the unity of being and hypostatises it intoindividua-l things. And this srruck me as so inherently pre-posterous. I'd never really thought ofir thar clearly before.but the more you think about it, why should it be that thehuman subject breaks the world up into parts? This actuallr.has a precursor in the pre-Socratics; it was Anaxagoras, forwhom zoasmakes the apeirutrotate very quickly, ald it startsbreaking up into fragments, and so it's mind's fault that theworld has parts, and each of the parts contains all the othersand mirrors all the others. But you see that in Levinas, too.And I realised I was opposed ro thar, but I didn't quitehave the language to start defining why that *umo. Th.rr.for my dissertation - which is now %ol-Being,tt the book -if you look closely at Heidegger's tool-ana_lysis, what he's

like the old reversal berween theory and practice. One olthe great things about playng with an idea in your mindfor a long time is that you become bored with it after a ferryears. That's why I think we often make progress, because

we have- a great idea, then we become bored *rth ir ::rc:._.--t:

s,h-r::d8: - and rhat's what happened ro n-:

1I. Graham Harman, %ol-Bring: Hrtlzgger and tfu Metaphl:ia of Objr:(Chicago: Open Court. 20021.

I, started reatising. this_ is^not goi.rg to U.-'urry*rirrg rrro..than 'practice comes before ,i.ori,l *J ,prr*i, breaLdonn when the hammer fails'. It a.o o..rl.r.a to me rha:Iru*ir. does not get at the realiry of the object an). more,hT.ft:ory does - rhat was.the next step. ier, q.i,rrrn=at this chair I don'r exhaust its being, U,ri Uy sitting in ir ialso don't exhaust it. There u.. ,o *"urry deep layers to rlierealiry of that chair that the human

".t of sitirrg is ner-ergoing to exhaust. Even if hu: als created the chair. even if

the depths. But thereally can't say that

and they're irrelevarrt to thebecame to clear to me that as soon as you move away fromthe idea that the world is u ho*oge.r.o.r, uJ, as Levinasor Anaxagoras think,parts. AtrJ

", ,oor, ",

man)-

they're goi.rg to i.rte.a 11",o hurr."tt."ru*.-..futio.rrfrry :tT:

37037t

COLLAPSE III

that we have. And reading \Arhitehead at about the same

time really cemented that idea, that you cannot privilege the

human relationship to the world of over arry other kind ofrelation. Whitehead's still the best source for that, I think.

even better than Leibniz, because for \A4eitehead it can

happen at all different levels and sizes' With Leibniz there's

always a privileged caste of substances that are natural, and

you cal't talk about an intemational corporation having

relations with real things. But for Whitehead you can, and

for Latour you also can. So Whitehead was one key, and

another key was Zubii, Xavier Zubiri, a Basque ontologist

who studied with Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset, who's

not as well known as Whitehead, of course, but who I think

is a pivotal fwentieth-century thinker. Because his idea ,.that the essence of the thing is never adequately expressibiein terms of any relations or arry interactions with it. and sothat's where the kind of vacuum-sealed objects withdraninefrom all relations came into my work, from Zubiri.

And then whar I did n %ol-Bring was thar I more orless showed how a lot of things - Heideggeriurr concepcssuch as time and space and referential contexture. arrdall these things - boiled down to the tool-analysis: rharwas Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, I took that and used it asa weapon against all the things cornmentators usualll, 521.about Heidegger. In Chapter 3, I simply tried to rurn rna more speculative direction. And I can make this short.because the rea-l speculative problem that arises from thisimmediately is that if you have objects that are incapable ofcontact, why does arrything ever happen? Given that it is

in Iraq you had the Ash'arite school of theology. And ofcourse this fits a lot more easily in Islam thal it does inChristianiry which never had any real occasionalists inthe pre-modern period, because for the Muslims, in thatperiod at least, if God sends an innocent man to hell, sobe it. God is all-powerful. It doesn't create a paradox offree will, as it did for many Chrisrians. So you see rhar firsrin the Arabs. It's not only a threar ro God if other entitiesa-re creators, in the sense of creating the whole universe- obviously there has to be only one entity that can do

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COLLAPSE III

that - but things like creating furniture and brewing coffeewould also somehow denigrate God's poweq if individualagents were able to do this themselves. And so God is thereto explain all actions, recreating everything constantly. Andalthough the theology seems a bit outrageous to us now,it's a very profound metaphysical idea, the idea that thingsca-nnot relate, inherently, that things-in-themselves aretotally sealed off from each other. We see this come back inthe seventeenth century in Europe of course, and historiansof seventeenth-century philosophy are often extremelyfinicky about who they allow to be called an occasionalisr:just Malebranche, Cordemoy, and maybe a couple of otherFrench names. I see no reason not to expand it to includeDescartes, and I would also say Spinoza, ald Leibniz, anddefinitely Berkeley. I take the name occasionalism in a veryvery broad sense: any time that individual entities do nothave causal power you're giving in to a kind of occasional-ism. And then Hume is the important final step. Skepticismin many ways is simply an upside-dorvn occasiona-lism, andit's no accident that Hume was a great fan of Malebranche.Hume owned Malebranche's books, marked themcopiously, and here you have a hardcore theist and therenn unrepentant atheist. The connection benareen them isthe fact that in both cases you have the problem of thingsbeing unable to relate directly, and the difference of courseis that for the occasionalists, in the classical sense, you haveindependent things in rhe world rhat are apart from eachother from the start and the question is how they relate. Ina sense, with Hume you already have their relations. We'realready born into a world where there are habits. Thingsare linked in my mind already, and the question is only

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t2, See Conersn Vol. II. 1Zl-205

375

the world itself. But in Heidegger we have these tool-beings.these objects; they're rea-l objects, they withdraw from us.they do things in the world outside of our access to them.\44rat you have in Husserl - which is often confused withHeidegger's own discovery - are the intentional objects.If you read the whole first half of the Logital Inuestigatioru.after he's done refuting psychologism, his real enemy isBritish empiricism, and what he is up against is the notionthat what we encounter are qualities, and that somehott,the qualities are bundled together by us. Somehow theobjects are not given for British empiricism. What,s givenare qualities, and those qualities are fused together by thehuman subject. That's what the enrire phenomenologicaltradition most opposes, I would say, because in Husserlyou have intentional objects. You have this table, whichI'm only seeing the top surface of, I'm not seeing the fronrof, as these people [indicates audiatce] are. I'm not seeing thebottom of it. I could circle around it. crawl beneath it and

like the real table would be. It's here. I look at ir. I see thetable. I'm not seeing all aspects of it at once, but I am seeingthe table, notjust scattered qualities. Furthermore, this tableis not the szure as the real table in the world. doing its orvnindependent work, because the one I think I see might notexist - hallucinations do occur. And so intentiona_l ob;..,:are not the same as rea_l objects, despite what Husserliar.alrvays tell me. There was a big fight in Iceland last year withthe 'Husserlian mafia' - they tried to tell me that intentionat

Speculative Realism

objects are the sarne as the tools. because ther.*r.a_nr ro ..,that Husserl discovered everything that HeiJegg.. did e igi::years earlier. It's not rrue!

COLLAPSE III

,other point about Husserl: Husserl made anorherbizarre discovery that no one ever ta-lks about. rr.hich isthat.one object contains others: namely, consciousnes_.My intentiona_l relationship wirh the rable for .Flusserl car_rbe viewed as a unit, the ielation itself as a whole. \\,hr.,rBecause I can talk about rhis relation, I .r, ;;;".;.,.i.think about it, I can have other people analyse i;i;;;; _because, that is, other phenomenologists .Jrr

"rrr_11,r. ,rr.,

relationship to the table - and none oi those analyses er.ermake it an objecr.solid, hard thing.

t is not exhaustede intention as a whole is one

thing. But then within that intention, notice there are rn.othings contained. There's the table and there,s I myseli. both

the other direction, the tableand I am the phenomela] object being reduced by the tableto a caricature of myself. I know it sounds strange. But I

meeting a sensual or intentio

376o/ I

COLLAPSE III

third rea-l object. And there are incredible problems tryingto work out exactly how this happens. There are paradoxesthat arise, arrd I started putting together the puzzle piecesin Collapse 1lin that article 'On Vicarious Causation'. Andthat's where the project is today. So I hope that gives someidea of what I'm doing so I carr better situate it with respectto the other three, who I think are a very good match forwhat I'm doing. I think Ray chose exquisitely in this case.

I'll start with Ray since he went first. \{trat is alwaysrefreshing for me in dealing rvith Ray and conversing withRay is his knowledge of arrd symparhy for the empiricalsciences, which is extremely rare in our discipline. Especialll-in the case of cogeitive science, because, probably like mostof you, I grew up in an environment where the name of theChurctrlands lvas always spoken with a wince ald a sneer.I don't know the work of the Churchlalds nearly as wellas Ray does. I just picked up Metzinger and am lookingfor-ward to reading that, but I don't know these things thatwell. So that's extremely refreshing. Ray, Iike the rest ofus, does not want to see the human subject privileged inits relation to the world. The idea that our relation to theworld is special could be eliminared, that it is a kind of folkpsychology, perhaps, I agree with him on all that, definitelr'.The two ways in which we may differ ... Ruy is somethingof a reductionist, because you heard his objections to meearlier about the hobbits, and he's mentioned the tooth fain-to me before. These are good objections. Are they reallr-as real as solid physical objects? I'll address that one fust.The point is well-taken, and this is a flaw in the Latouriarposition, I think - the position from which I come. Since Idiverged from Heidegger, Latour was one of the first life

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COLLAPSE III

I thought I knew about you were false and yet I'm still

pointing at the sarne person. So there is something there

that I stipul.ate to be you that is deeper than the qualitiessomehow And he even criticises Strawson and Searle, whogive us the watered down 'cluster theory': 'well, you onlyhave to be right about most of the qualities you knew aboutthe person'. But does that mean 51 percent of them, or a

group of the most important? Arrd so I follow Kripke in hiscritical portions, that you have to be pointing at somethingdeeper that is essential and the same, that is not reducibleto surface qualities. But the reason I call it 'disappointingrealism' is because it ends up being the physical structureof things, for Kripke, that is real about them. So what'sreal about gold is that it has seventy-nine protons. I findthat very disappointing. What's real about each of you isthat you had to have the two parents that you had - which,first of all, is genetically false, right? You could get the same

DNA, by some outlandish chance, through rwo differentpilents. And it just doesn't quite seem like it's my essence.

somehow, to have come from those two pa-rents. So, yes, Iwould like to know if you are committed to such a reduc-tionism. For me, it's easy to escape that problem because Ihave all these different levels, Latour has all these differentlevels, and even if we have a problem in showing how thingsreduce, the reductionist position has the more profoundproblem of explaining what that final level is that endow-s

something with reality. Is it just the physical sffucture or isit something more? If it's not a physical structure then youcould be in some kind of weird idealism, where you have.I don't know, brain-states floating around ... Pan-psychismseems to be coming back in fashion among some of these

380

people. Even rocks a'd tomatoes have some primirir-e for-of intentionality. So I'd like to know *h* R;i;"ds up *iur* tt Fd srage once eliminativism tu. ,rr'....a.d. Tharwould be my question to him.

Speculative Realism

I'll go on next to Iairr _ I'm going in the order of theas I u.as

the ideae one of

lirgh:I would say. t doesn,t ever really raise the ,lin:tlror me, ot what causation is, for example. It arguis abourwhether causation is statistica_l o. -h.th.. itt retroactivelr-caused by the observer, but it never really gets into ,fr. ""r,lld.b:l:r of what happens when one rhi.rg"ro.r.h.. a_norher.I thrnk rt needs to become more metaphysical, ald in ,On

that this is how philosophr.ve been so terrified by thed arrd rwenty yeurr. We firrd

and power - i::'ffff11tililh;onto the level that we don,t have theresources, but think in Iain,s book you cansee there are tools for this that we already have. I,m alsovery sympathetic to his idea that inversions of platonismare completely useless, becausin the same two-world theory.flips it over - but then you srillbetween appearance and platonic Ideas. Another thing Ilove about Iain's book is that it firully -ade serrse of th.Tarueus for me. There was a great fad for the Tarueu: tnthe 1990s due to Derrida,s ,ioro ,rruy u.rd,

".,.r, worse.

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COLLAPSE III

throughJohn Sallis, which really turned me o{fl So I never

really understood it. Three years ago I had to teach the

Timaeus because I had to take over the class for someone

at the last nrinute. and I wished he had ordered any other

dialogue than the faruuul But finally, after reading Iain's

book, it's sta-rting to become real to rrre'. funacus is the site

of a one-world physics, a physics of the Idea in Plato - it'swonderful. Your critique of Kant, I like that, and you cite

Badiou as saying we need to overturn Kant. not Plato. Iagree with that. I also completely agree with the idea that

life-philosophy is always an alibi. Life-philosophy is an alibi

for refusing to deal with the inorganic. \,\rhy do people

like David Farrell Krell always go straight to life and nevertalk about rocks? \Arhat's so sexy about life? You see, it's

an alibi, and it's a way to stay close to the human whileclaiming that you're going deeper than that somehow. Iainalso leans toward anti-eli-rninativism, as I do in my own

temperament, which makes us different from Ray, to some

exlent. And finally, I think, another thing that unites us,

maybe more than the other two palelists, is that we are

more ambivalent towards Badiou, I've noticed, althoughwe both respect him. You criticise Badiou for giving us onlythis alternative of 'number and animal', and say that this is

not a real alternative. You point out that it fails to capture

the geological and other things, and I would tend to agree

with that. And I also miss a philosophy of nature in Badiou.For me, the problem is - as I said in my review of Meil-lassoux's book in Philosoplry 'frd"q,t3 - is the inconsistentmultiple in Badiou really multiple? It doesn't really seem

13. Graham Harman, 'Qrentin Meillassoux: A New French Philosopher'.

Philuophy'frfuy,Yolune 51, no. 1, Spring 2007: 104-117.

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Specularive Realism

to do anything other than haunt ot-,r .rr.r.* .o,rr.. oulcurrent situation. But the proper multiple would accuallrneed to interact aparr_from th. ,ub;..t.'ii doesn.t ;;;;"me that it does so in Badiou, ,rd irutir-*hy I would norcall myself a Badiouian, though ur*; ;; ;;*l is a fantas riclork gf specul_at1ze philosopty, ,fr.

-U.r,'..* I can think ofsrnce Betlng and Tnne. I lealy uppreciate the ambition of irand many of his strategi.s fo. utia.kirrf...iri" rhings.

So those are some of the things *. ugr.. on. There .s

really just one central disugr.emeri, U.i*i" me and Iain.and.it's a huge one, and it ieads i"r";;;;:qreemenr abortthe history of philosophy. The big;ff;;;.e is that Iaints against what he calls ,,somatir]-,, -J- t,_ toaty i'favour of it. For him. philosophy ;;-;J;out the bodies.it's about a deeoer force prior io the bodies {rom whichthe bodies emerge. For T. ,1,, nothing but objects, there isno pre-individuat dynamic flux that,;;;; up irrto variousspecific individuals. And I suspe., ,t,..?1, Jj_. ir_,flr.,.,..

tion. The objects themselvesto lnteract, it all happens atto a big disagreement about

use he sees Aristotle as beingees Aristotelia., substarrce aiantian phenomenon, which

e are hmes when Aristotleent to the logos, but I thinke says the rea_l can never be

go so

perception of a chair for Kant as m)'

.i,r'. g..J;;;;i;;",r. " alist. He ,*on "ri ili383

COLLAPSE III Speculative Realism

time. Something Ray said over coffee either last night orthis morningis that analyticphilosophers would be shockedif they read this. They would say 'This isn,t the French

he's actually makngeductive arguments.mselves on doing. as

tradition. At first theargument about causation using the Cantorian transfilitewas less convincing to me thal the others in the book. ButI've been thinking about this more for the past few weeks.and it's growing on me. So are there other ways to usethe transfinite to solve other problems like this, such as thebogeyman of the infnite regress? Could you talk abour a

there must be a bigger universe, and physics seems inclinedto support this lately.

Disagreements? The main disagreement here is obviousas well, which is: causation is the key for me, and forMeillassoux causation disappears. In some ways he leadsus to a more chaotic universe than Hume does. because asMeillassoux himself says, Hume really doubts whether Ican know that there's a causal relationship berween things.whereas Meillassoux hnows that it's absolutely continge;r.the way things happen. He absolutely hnows that thire'sno causal necessiry between things. And that might bea brand new gesture. I don't know anyone else who hasdone this. He's doubting the Principie of Sufficienr Reasonwhile keeping rhe concept of non-contradiction, and he's

been seen that way, so Iain's

saying Aristotle's actuallY on Kus - counterinruitive, but interto retain Aristotle on our team. I would say the Aristote-

lian forms are not mathematical formalisations' They are

substantial forms, and substantial forms can hide from the

Causation is productive because there's always more in the

effect than there was in the cause. It's also true thal there

is less in the effect than there was in the cause. because I

unlike Latour, talks about technological objects - oil rigs

and things like that - because the different kinds of objects

are Iess important for Iain than the deeper natural forces

that all objects stem from.

Now on to Meillassoux. There are so many things to

admire about Meillassoux's book. Stylistically, it's ven'

clear and economical. You never feel that he's wasting your

384 385

COLLAPSE III

thereby doubting necessity. But he actually goes furtherthan this, ard he doesn't ta-lk about this much explicitly, but

in my view, since he is saying that everything is absolutely

contingent, what he's really doubting is that there's anyrelationality at a-ll. Everything's absolutely cut off fromeverything else, because if one thing could be connected

to another or could influence another thing, then he

wouldn't have absolute contingency an)rrnore. He lvouldsometimes have relations between things and sometimes

not. So it seems to me that absolute contingency entails

no relations at all between anything, and this is why I have

called Meillassoux a hyper-occasiona-list. because he doesn'teven have a God to save us from this problem. And unlikeHume, he does believe there's an ancestral rvorld outside ofus that exists, and it's totally outside of our minds. and n'e

seem to have no access to that either, because that rvouldrequire a relationship between me and what's outside ofme, and that also seems impossible. So maybe I can knowa pioi that there's an ancestral world, and I may also have

these qualities in my mind that are somehorv linked in mymind, but - according to my reading of his system - there's

really no hope of linking these things. It seems to me thatin his system nothing touches anything else at all. not even

partially, so in that way we're very close in our positions.The difference is that I try to find some solution so things

can relate through the back door somehoq and he doesn'tdo this. And this leads to several other related problems.

So my first question to Meillassoux is: Does a thing touchits orvn qualities? He may disagree with my assessment thathe's saying that nothing relates to anything else or touches

arrything else, but if he accepts that reading of his system.

the question will come up as to whether u ,t irrg .* .r.,touch its own qualities. \Ahat is the relarion of aihing to irs

Speculative Realism

ou'n qualities? Within the mind, things do seem to relare.because there are mary things in my #nd at once, so therealready is a kind of relationsiip This is the lriticism I madeof.Hume - you're starting with u relation. I see differentsplotches and colours anJ shapes around the room, andthey are somehow related, beca.,se they're all in my mindat once. Also, if it,s true, then there would be no ielationbenveen my perception of elf. Sothat even if we know thro at thebeginning of the book that rea-lmoutside ofHow doeswith whatand so does unveiling, on Mmy mind relare to the world? And finally, what are thethings outside the mind? Because if it,s true thar rhere,s aproblem, for Meillassoux, of linking a thing to its qualities,this

.means you have nothing but"disco#ected qualitiesoutside the mbecause, as I to me'

blackis alread ry the

brackness. so t is the

ald I would say. rhen, in causor objection to Meillassoux _with this reading completely _;necessiry and contingency. Isn'risn't that middle gr6.lrrd a relation or interface? Becausewhen two things relate, when you talk about a relation_ship, well, that's not absolute contingency, b*.,r. they are

386387

COLLAPSE III

affecting each other, right? And necessiry implies almost

a lack of separation between them, since it implies a kindof searnless mechanical whole in which an action already

contains its effects. What a relation really consists of is

two things that are somehow partly autonomous yet still

manage to influence each other. And so my question is: Is

there any possibility of interface in Meillassoux's system?

Can one thing influence another without there being a

necessary relationship between them? And fitttllX my real

objection to him is that he hasn't published his system yet'

because I'd love to stay up the next three nights and read

it! That would be great reading. He says he's got multiplevolumes coming, six or seven hundred pages. I would be

delighted to read this right noq so please hurry! Alright,now I'll listen to the responses from my fellow palelists.

Speculative Realism

388 389

COLLAPSE III Speculative Realism

hlsnrvrerroN By QJENIIN MEILLASSoUX

I would first of a-tl like to give my thanks to theorganisers of this conference. I'm very proud to participatein it, considering the exceptional quality of the contributors.And I am very happy to have this opportunity to expressmy admiration for the books of Ray Brassier, GrahamHarman, and Iain Grant. I think that the very existence ofsuch a philosophical configuration of origina-l conceptualprojects is in itself remarkable. I rhink thar we also must havein common, the four speakers, the difficulty of explainingour jobs to our familiesl But as I said ro Graham, I think itis a configuration of what could be called a 'weird realism',four modalities of 'weird realism'. I'd like to discuss hereone of the theses of Ray Brassier's beautiful book, NihitUnbound, and try to respond to some of his stimulatingobjections, supporred by the non-philosophy of FranqoisLaruelle. Thanks to this discussion. I will expose and markout the fundamenta-l decisions of Afer Finitude, especiallyconcerning correlationism and the principle of factuality.

As you may know, I have given the name ,correlation-

ism' to the contemporary opponent of any realism. By thisterm, I walted to avoid the usual 'parade' of transcenden-tal philosophy and phenomenology against the accusarionof idealism - I mean answers such as: ,Kantian criticismis not a subjective idealism since there is a refutation ofidealism in the Gitique of Pure Reann': or ,phenomenology

is not a dogmatic idea-lism. since intentionality is ori..rtuted

always-already correlated to a point of view, to a subjecrir.eaccess - this is the thesis of any correlationism.

By the term 'correlationl I also walted to e-r-ilbi:

means: 'X is the correlate of thinking' in a Cartesian sen_ie.That is: X is the correlate of an affection, or a perceprio:r.or a conception, or of any subjective act. To be is to be .

In my opinion, the hinciptes of the Scienrc oJ'Kn;.,1..;i.,.wrirren by Fichte in 1794, is the chefct'oruui of sucl. .

408 409

COLLAPSE III

correlationism.Tlte Scimce of l{nowkdge is to date rhe mostrigourous expression of the correlationist challenge opposedto any realism. I'd like to begin this talk by rememberingthe principal aspect of rhis philosophy. so that we canbe conscious of the very nature of this anrirealism at itsclimax. I won't speak, of course. about the details of thisvery difEcult book, but I shall onl1. recall the heart of itsargumentation: the principle of its conceptual production,rvhich appears to me as the most precise form of the obstaclethat a contemporary realism has to surmount. I lvill rely,on a recent interpretation of the Scjettce of Kttowkdge, whichhas completely changed the comprehension of Fichte, atIeast in France: in 2000 Isabelle Thomas-Fogieltr proposeda devastating criticism of the dorninant interprerarionof Fichte in our country - Philonenko's interpretation -and allowed us at last to read the true Science o1f l{nouledge,instead of the extraordinary but also eccentric reconstruc-tion elaborated by Philonenko in 1966.15

Briefly: Philonenko claimed that the three first principlesof the Science oif IGtozuledge - including the famous 'I : I'- were not true principles, but dia,lectical illusions thatFichte undertook to deconstruct throughout his system. So,in the Scjnce of Knowkdge, you have three principles, andhe deduces all that follows from rhese three principles?- No, it's not true! According to Philonenko, they wereillusions that Fichte deconstructedl Therefore, of course,Philonenko also had to explain that Fichte was a srr:rnge

14 I. Thomas-Foglel, Gittgue de Ia relvaentatim: Etude sur Fithte (paris: Vrin,2000).

t 5 A. Philonenk o . La libertd httmaine dnn: la philo:ophte dc Fihte (Paris : Vrin,I 966).

4r0

else already knew!

How must we read Fichte, consequently? Accordirgto Thomas-Fogiel, as a thinker of the pragmatic .orlo"ldiction: Fichte is a thinker who intends io Jrrul.,ut. ....r.,philosopher by his capaciry to do whar he says and to sarwhat he does. A pragmatic contradiction consists. as \.ouknow, in contradicting the content of a sentence br. rheenunciation of this very sentence. It is not a logical conrra-diction - such as: 'Peter thinks and peter does not *rinl.

Austin,r6 to interpret the Science of l{nowted.geas a philosophv

16 J. Hintikka, 'Cogtto, ergo sum: lnference or performance .).. pln.,, _ .: ::..:.Rnim. Yolume 71. No. I . Ja:r. 1962: 3-32. included in Kno , I, ,!;. :: : .. .

Speculative Realism

4Ir

COLLAPSE III

written under the systematic constraint of pragmaticnon-contradiction. In particular, the Scinte of (vtowledge

destroys any attempt at realism by proving it is always and

immediately self-contradictory in a pragmatic way. \A&rat is

a philosopher really doing when he claims to have access

to a reality independent of the I? He posits, says Fichte, an

X supposed to be independent of any position. In otherwords, he posits the X as non-posited. He pretends to thinkwhat is independent and exterior to ary conceptualisation,but in doing so he doesn't say what he effectively does. Hesays his X is indifferent to thought, but what he does, ofcourse, is simply to conceptualise an X perfecdy dependenton his own thinking. Hence, according to Fichte, the

pragmatic contradiction between the acts and the thesis ofany realist.

But Fichte's very originaliry in which he anticipates

Hegelian dialectics, is that his contradiction is essentially

fruitful. Contradictions produced - notably, by realism - inthe Science ofI{nowlcdgedo not lead to the end of the discourse,

but to the creation of new concepts able to temporarilyneutralise the mortal opposition between content and act.

Only temporarily, since such concepts allow one to shiftthe contradiction again and again bul not to abolish it - at

Ieast in the sphere of theory the resolution of the initialcontradiction being the privilege of practical reason, not oftheoretical reason.

To be more precise, we could say that there is forFichte a sort of 'double bind' for philosophy itsell it has

both to posit the secondariness of thinking relative to

Known (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974);'Cogio, ergl rum as an Inference and a

Performance', Philosophtcal fuuieu, Volume 72, No. 4. Oct 1963: 487-96.

412

an independent real - otherwise we couldn't expia-:: -_-=

passivity of sensation - and at the same time ir can.: p,-!::such a reality without contradiction. This ,double br:.:.which is ultimately still what ,realism, means for con:er--porary philosophy - we need it, but we cal,t claim ir. sl'we cllm and. deny it - this double bind never o\.ersceps.according to Fichte, the limits of the I, because the acrir.e i rs

therein invented, and whose principle is always the same:If you think ,{ then you think X. That is what I called the

governed my own investigations and which I shall examirein relation to the non-philosophy of Frangois Laruelle. onthe one hand, and the principle of facnraliry I set our inAfier Finitudz, on rhe other. But why this comparison nirhLaruelle?

In his wonderfully radical book, Nihit (Jnbourul. RarBrassier devotes a chapter to A,ficr Finitudl7 and, anorher

17. I'fi.hil Unlound, Chapter 3; also see Cor,lepsn Vol. II, l5-5j

Speculative Rea-lism

413

COLLAPSE III

to Laruelle's non-philosophy.l8 Brassieq who is a firsl-class

reader, tries to show that Laruelle's 'transcendental

realism' is a more reliable and rigorous way to root out

the philosophy of correlationism than that which I propose.

Even if Brassier's reading is generally kind towards AferFmitude, he points out what he sees as some weaknesses

in my argument, and particularly the fact that I speak ofan intellectual intuition of facticiry. In this expression -'intellectual intuition' - Brassier suspects a possible abso-

lutisation of meaning, and maybe a rernnart of speculative

idealism that threatens my will to escaPe from the circle ofcorrelation. I shall try to respond to this objection in the

following way: First, I will show why the non-philosophy

of Laruelle, despite its admirable rigour, fails, in my view. to

efficiently fight the argument of the correlational circle. And

I will demonstrate this point by applying to non-philosophy

a Fichtean model of refutation - that is, a refutation based on

the pragmatico-genetic contradiction. Then, I'll show that

what I called 'intellectual intuition' tn Afer Futitudz - and

what I shall now call, more precisely, 'dianoetic intuition' -is able, unlike non-philosophy, to neutralise correlationism,

even in its Fichtean version - that is, even at the high point

of its rigour.

The funny thing is that I discovered, after I decided to

confront Laruelle with Fichte, that Laruelle himselt in his

fuinciples of Non-Philwoplry,'n compated his own reasoning

with Fichte's in the Scienre of lGowlzdge. But Laruelle is a

tributary of the outdated commentary of Philonenko; that's

why his confrontation is disappointing.

18. Nilil Unbound, Chapter 5.

19. Frarrgois Laruelle, hincipes fu k nm-philosophie (Paris: PUF, 1996)corresponds to the transcendental deduction. From *ris lasr

4t54t4

Speculative Realism

COLLAPSE III Speculative Realism

representation - perceptual or imaginative - of a hor=: : =

wall, but you cal't have arry representation of a repre .e:_-=tion. If you want to think what a represenrarion is - j..: -.a unity of dtilum and a ltriori - you need somerhirs o-j-_-rthan objective knowledge, this being itself consdnrtec b,.the unity of datum and a priori. This was Ka_nt's essen:-.'failing, according to Fichte: Kant didn't explain horr- ir rr..possible to write the Gitique of Pure Reason. He describe call knowledge in rerms of objectivity - that is. in cenns r,:represenration, constituted by the slnthesis of categodesand space-time - but his own phihsophimt knorr-ledgeabout objective knowledge, that is, about representario,,.couldn't be described in the same terms. How n'as Kari:able to elaborate transcendental notions such as matterand form, categories and representation? This operatio::needed, according to Fichte, another faculty which rvrralmost described by Kant: the faculty of reflection. -\ldthis faculty, reflecdon - contrary to the apparent opiruon ofLaruelle - is essentially different from objectiviq'. Reflecrionis a non-representative, non-objectivating faculry n.hich isthe condition for conceiving objectivity as such. Reflecrionis what allows Lamelle himself to stand outside the circle oiobjectivity when he conceives its unity. Laruelle is outsidethe circle of objectivity when he describes ir. becausedescribing it means not being in it anymore. But this is alsothe case with every philosopher who was able to descr-ibethis circle: a-11 of them adopt, consciously or nor. rhe poin:of view of reflection, but Fichte was the first to conscioush-and systematically adopt this point of view in order roconstruct his system.

Consequently, lf you want to escape from rhe circle o:correlationism, you must not only escape from dee cl:;.;

417

by intellectual intuition. Let's see how Laruelle proceeds

to extricate himself from the field of philosophy - that

is, correlationism, in Brassier's version. I can't of course

reproduce all of Laruelle's reasoning, which is complex and

evolves from one book to another, but I won't need to do

so to explain my objection.

First, I remark that there is a precise reason' different

from Brassier's own reason, to refuse the identification of

philosophy with the circle of objectiviry. Brassier claims

it lt "uitt

to look for an etemal essence of philosophy,

philosophy being constitr-rted by the contingent history ofiexts. But I think there is another reason, a structural one,

to refuse the idea that philosophy should be encapsulated

in the circle of objectiviry one that Fichte was probably

the first to conceive. Ttris reason is: if you want to think

the circle of objectivity - what Fichte calls the representa-

tion, the unification of dntum and fartum and the o pn-i -

416

COLLAPSE III

of objectivity, but also from the larger circle of reflection,which is outside Laruelle's circle and includes it. Correla-tionism, as I define it, includes reflection, since reflectionis position. \44ren you conceive the circle of objectivity,you are outside this circle, but still in the circle of corre-lationism, according to me. So i! like Laruelle, you positsomething outside the circle of objectiviry - in his case theReal outside 'Philosophy' - this Rea-l will still be, accordingto me, in the circle of correlationism. Because it will be aposited Real: a Real posited by reflection outside of repre-sentation. This is exactly what Fichte calls, in his technicalvocabulary, the 'independent activiry' - that is, to simplifya great deal, the notion of the 'thing in itself', outside rep-resentation - Kaltian representation - and impossible toconceive through this representation.

Let's demonstrate this point more precisely. Here is mystrategy: as I said previously, I propose to apply to Laruellethe Fichtean way of reasoning - not his precise thesis, butthe pragmatico-genetic contradiction which constitutes theprinciple of his argumentation. I am going to reconstructLaruelle's position in a correlational way, showing howwhat he calls 'the Real' is nothing but a posited Rea-I, andhow the concepts created by non-philosophy just shift thiscontradiction without being able to abolish it. We shall see

clearly, then, why I think that Laruelle doesn't really escapefrom the circle of correlation.

Let's begin with the Rea-l as described by Laruelle. TheReal, he says, is radically indifferent to and independentof the circle of objectiviry. The Real precedes thought, butthought, conversely, is always dependent upon the Rea1,

which is essentially unaffected by thought. That is whar

418

Laruelle says, this is the content of his discourse B_:- Fichtean question - what does he do? ll}rar is rie .::of his discourse? Laruelle, of course, posits such a Re-as independent of any thought. Co.rrequ..rdr-. he Cr_re-,exactly the contrary of what he says. He ,a1.r. .rhe Re:-precedes thought - in particular, philosophical thought _and is indifferent to it] but the oider of what he does i.the opposite of rhe order of what he says: he begrns br,Ifrlg,. and especially by thinking what philoslphicJthought is, and then progresses to tle Real. The Real istruly a notion of the Rea_l which is dependent on thinliins.and which is post-philosophical, elaboiated from his nononofphilosophy. The real order - or the order ofacts. nor ofcontent - is manifest in the very name of Laruelle's theon.:'non-philosophy'. Non-philosophy is supposed to thinJi r1rerelation of thinking with a Real which piecedes philosophr,.

pragmatic contradiction between what Lamelle says abourthe ReaI and what he does when elaborating this norion.

But ofcourse this contradiction, this pragmatic conrradic_tion, is far too trivia-l to worrythat he could easily respondnew concepts. So the contradiction, becomes fruitful because it compels the thinker roshift it so that he can avoid a gap which in fact will ner.er befilled in. Laruelle could first dimonstrate thar our objecrionproceeds from a series of confusions. The Real is a negarror-of nothing: it is relative to nothing, according to bjm. a:rc

Speculative Realism

419

Speculative RealismCOLLAPSE III

especially can't be identified with the concept of the Otherwhich presupposes the X whose other it is. The Real, onthe contrary, is radically autonomous, without relation tothought. Thought, on the other hand, can distinguish itselffrom the Real if it ceases to identify itself with philosophy,locked up in the circle of objectivity, to think under theaxiom of the Real. Then thought knows itself as deter-rnined-in-the-last-instance by the Real, says Laruelle. Thatis: thought knows itself as relatively, but not radically,aulonomous. This means that thought can produce byitself its own concepts, but has to avoid the sufficiency ofabsolute autonomy proper to philosophy and which is itsintrinsic illusion.

We now have a series of new concepts: radical andrelative autonomy, sufficiency, determination-in-the-last-instance, etc. But have we then escaped from the correla-tional circle? Of course not; we have only deduced what isnecessary to think a ltosited Real, if we admit that this Realeffectively precedes any position. But Laruelle gets this firstposition just by force, just by a coup de force. The Reai ispoited as indifferent to its positing and as non-related tothought. After that, Lamelle reflects on the possibility of hisown theory by claiming the relative autonomy of thought;bul in fact, it seems, on the contrary that his thought is

able to posit the Real itself and its relation to the Real.That is, to posit that the Real has no relation to thought,and that thought has a relation of relative autonomy to theReal. He also posits all these concepts as essentially non-dialectical, but what he does is of course easy to dialecticise.For the Real is now linked more than ever to his concepts,more dependent on more and more intricate elaborations

420

every rhesis add_ed by Lamelle will only male rhe si:u.: -.w?rs:. That's why the only solution foi Lan,elle rril be _- .solution, according to me, of every modern rea.hsm jgj:-_i,correlationism or idealism: as it seems impossible ,o .:*._f.r.om this position, from this objection, rhe;d\.;olu;;;,:

_

disqualify what you can,t refu"te. The solution for Lan;e -.can only be: First, to say that the Real is posited br-al a-r:c,::--.that is, something that can be neither demonsrrated n,,:discussed - and secondly, to introduce a precise conce::which will disqualifr in advance anyone who cor-rrests .r-,..-an axiom; that is, the concept of ,resistancel I rvrll end -r-..Fichtean reconstmction of Laruelle with this concepr in::I propose to examine, considering its genealogv aIrd -:-.strateg'ic importance for any contemporary realism.

aiming at the exhibition of its independenc.. *O , ,: . ..:..

42r

COLLAPSE III

But of course, each time he removes it with another finger,the plaster sticks immediately onto it! And since the process

is endless, Haddock quickly loses his temper. The plasteris identical to the 'that is what you thinh' that the correla-tionist just has to add to any realist thesis one might tryto assert. The realist always has to posit more concepts toprove he has accessed pre-conceptual realiry. The situationseems desperate: how could you refute that whenever youthink something, you thinh somerhing? That's why therealist, conscious that his reasoning is apparently in vain,has generally renounced any attempt to refute the corre-lationist and has adopted what I call a 'logic of secession'

towards him. This secession is a blunt refusal addressed tothe correlationist: an 'I won't discuss with you anlanore, Iwill rather discuss aboutyou'. This is a logic of unbinding,of independence, but this independence is not the originaryindependence of the Real towards the correlation but thatof the realist towards the discussion with the correlationist.This logic of secession, it seems to me, takes two principalforms in modernity.

422

Speculative Reaiism

423

COLLAPSE III

we exarnine wlg,he says what he says. It is the well-knownIogic of suspicion that we find in Marx, with the notion ofideology, or in Freud. with precisely the notion of resistance.

The realist fights every form of idealism by discovering thehidden reasons behind these discourses - reasons that donot concern the content of philosophies, but the shamefulmotivations of their supporters: class-interest, libido, a/c. Inthis way, the realist explains in advance why his theoriesmust be refused by those rvho are unable to see thetruth for such and such objective reasons. Hence he willneutralise any refutation as an already-described symptomof social or psychological resistance, unconscious resistancewhich is, according to the realist, often unavoidable. Butwhat is interesting, from my own point of view, is that thiswell-known strategy of suspicion can be understood as

the necessary result of arr inabiliry to rationally refute theinsipid and implacable argument of the correlationist. Andwe could say the same about the Netzschean suspicion ofthe sickly Kantians of the University. Laruelle inherits these

strategies through his oun concept of resistance: he says,

of course, that his non-philosophy must necessarily excitegreat resistance from philosophy - he predicts that philoso-phers will reproach him for a coup dejbrce, exactly as I did -and he claims that any refutation he will encounter from thepoint of view of the circle of Decision is the necessarT effectof his theory of the Real upon philosophical sufficiency.

Brassier makes an interesting suggestion regardingLanrelle's theory: he says that one of his major concepts -unilateralisation - is a 'surgical interwention upon the bodyof transcendental synthesis; severing terms from relations,

424

amputating reciprocity and sharpening one-sicied:-;.. ,

Unilateralisation is a complex concept in Larrelle rhar I -:_. :explore now Br-._-:in his book. uen;e :the thought tor..Lithought. Wh Lanie-_introduces into the transcendental circle - conscirutei :,..the reciprocal syrthesis befvveen categories and inrur:1,:-- the essential as1-mmetry of the Real and thoughl. =:ras).rnmetry which disjoins the correlations of crirical r-:idealist philosophies. But my ovm hypothesis abour -;::_.

power of disjunction is that it proceeds more profour:C-.,from the strategy of secession towards correlationism. Th.radical autonomy of the Reis produced by the radicalpher, of Laruelle himseltthe correlationist. Laruelleald then he posits his refusal to discuss the correlaac,::.

th the concept of resisra:-1c..

n without answering ro il. i:correlationist which cre:.r:.

in the discourse the effect of the radical autonomr. of '.ee

es all the e{Iects of surdc -ntal slmthesis. The meanl--;e's secession rather thal ---

severing of the Real.

The concept of resistance is an effect, as \re s3-cof the theory of suspicion. Bur, in my vieq and er.en :I admire Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, realists shoulC :.:last start becoming suspicious of this venerable rheon, -,:

20. Nihil Unbound,, 147.

Speculative Realism

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COLLAPSE III

suspicion. Because, as I said, it seems to me that we czultrace a genealogy of suspicion and its favourite notion,resistance. which discovers at its root an inabiliry to refute.precisely and simply, the unbearable argument of the circle.I refuse suspicion because realism, in my view, must remaina rationalism. The circle argument Lr an argument and mustbe treated as such. You don't refuse a mathematical dem-onstration because the mathematicians are supposed to besickly or full of frustrated libido, you just refuse what y-ourefute! I clearly understood the calamitous consequencesof the notion of resistance when I heard arr astrologer.answering placidly to a sceptic, that the larter's incredulitywas predictable since he was a Scorpio!

What is at stake, consequently, is to build up a realismreleased from the strategy of suspicion: a realism whichdoesn't need to di:quaffi the correlationist because ithas clearly refuted hirn. I want that easy and implacablerefutation to be transferred to the other side, from cor-relationism to realism; and, conversely, the argument ofresistance to become the last possible defence of corre-lationism itself. But I don't want to refute only to refuteand win the discussion. As we sha-ll see, I'm looking for acreative refutation. That is, a refutation which discovers atruth, an absolute truth, inside the circle itself. That's whyI propose an access to the Real not grounded on an axiom,but on a clemonstrated pt-tipk - the principle of factuality thatI'm now going to set out.

The mainproblem I try to facenAferFinitudcispreciselythat of building a materialism - or a realism - able to refuteclearly the conelational circle in its simplest form, which isalso the form which is the most difficult to fight with: thar is,

426

the argument that we never have access to sonte LLr_:from that access - that the ,in-itself, is ,rr],r-ro... . -'-_ :only know the 'for-us1 Here is my strateg\.: rhe r,.61.: ;., :.

correlationism consists in the dualiry of irs oppone:::.. r.relationism is not, in my definition, an anri-r;alsr:: iri..anti-absolutism. Correlationism is the modern \\.a\. :,r i,- ::-all possible knowledge of an absolute: it is the cl:_r,n j--=: - ,.are closed up in our representations - whether con_i.- -.-:linguistic, or historical - with no sure access to an e\:-:.-,:reality independent of our specific point of r,"ierv. Bur ,-:-.:.are two main forms of the absolute: the rea,list one. rr.i::_-- -,a non-thinking realitl, independent of our access ro ir. .._:the idealist one, which is the absolutisation of rhe correl:*,:-.itself. Therefore, correlationism must also refute spe cu1::....idealism - or any form of vitalism or pan-psy.chism _ -: .:wants to reject all dre moda-lities of the absolute. Bu: --.argument of the circle is useless for this second refi-rr:;r _:_

because idealism and vitalism consist precisell.in cla:r:-::-:that it is the circle itself which is the absolute.

I ist ald vitalist argume :t__.

de #d'ilyl'.11":";:--tivist]

-for.breviry the sup subjec:-..metaphysics. Correlation beir-rs h.-.maly different forms: the r soi.- _,these relations, or indeed nor o:r-,,.of men, but of being itself. He projects into rhe thi.-::themselves a correlation which mighibe perceprion. ,,1;3,.lection, desire, etc., and makes it the absolute it-.ell-. O:course, this process is far more elaborate than I can desc:..'.here, especially in Hegel. Bur the principle of subjec;,,--_.:_-

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COLLAPSE III

is always the same. It consists in refuting realism and cor-relationism by the following reasoning: Since we cannotconceive a being which would not be constituted by ourrelation to the world, since we cannot escape from the circleof correlation, the whole of these relations, or an eminentpart of this whole, represents the very essence of any realiry.According to the subjectivist, it is absurd to suppose, as thecorrelationist does, that there could be an in-itself differentfrom any human correlation to the world. The subjectivistthus turns the argument of the circle against the correlation-ist himself: since we can't think any reaJity independent ofhumal correlations to the world, it means, according to thesubjectivist, that the supposition of such a reality existingoutside the circle is nonsense. Hence, the absolute is thecircle itself, or at least a part ofit.

This is why I disagree with Brassier's identificationof what I call correlationism with what Laruelle calls

'philosophy'. It seems to me that Laruelle's notion ofphilosophy as a circle of Decision includes Hegel as well as

Kant - idealist speculation with transcendental correlation-ism. In my view, it is on the contrary essential to distinguishbetween them since this distinction demonstrates thenecessity for correlationism to produce a second argumentable to respond to the idealist absolute. This necessiry of asecond argument is extremely important, since, as we shallsee, it will become the flaw of the circle-fortress. This secondargument, as I claimed in Afer Finitudr, is the argument offacticity, and I must now explain its exact meaning.

I call 'facticity' the lack of reason of any reality; that is, theimpossibiliry of giving an ultimate ground to the existenceof any being. We can reach conditional necessiry but never

428

phrsical lar..5 1-sffect must follor,laws and causes.

except eventually other ungrounded causes ald lau.s: ther:is no ultimate cause, nor ultimate law, that is a cau_.e o:a law including the ground of its own existence. Bul ir!

Pe:inr::'l

,.: l:is not necessary thatl should think. From the inside of rhecorrelation, I have access to myfacticiry of the world correlatedit. And this because of the lackmusa sui, able to ground my existence.

Facticity so defined is, in my view, the fundamenra,answer to any absolutisation of the correlation. for f

we are existing. But we can reply, this time, that rve c.a],rconceive our facticiry even from the inside of the corre_

Speculative Realism

429

COLLAPSE III

not necessa-ry. We choose whether or not to posit our ownsubjective reflection, and this choice is not grounded on any

necessa-ry cause, since our freedom is radical. But to say

this is just to recognise, after Descartes, that our subjectiviry

cannot reach an absolute necessify but only a conditionalone. Even if Fichte speaks abundandy of absolute and

unconditional necessiry his necessiry is no longer dogmatic

and substantial necessiry but a necessity grounded upona freedom itself ungrounded. There can be no dogmatic

proof that the correlation must exist rather than not. Hence

this absence of necessiry is sufficient to reject the idealist's

claim of its absolute necessity.

Correlationism, then, is constituted of two arguments:

the circle of correlation against narve realism - let's use this

term for a realism unable to refute the circle; and facticiry

against speculative idealism, agairut subjectivism. Theidealist, the subjectivist, claims to defeat the correlationist

by the absolutisation of the correlation; I believe that we

can defeat the correlationist only by the absolutisation offacticity. Let's see why.

The correlationist must claim, against the idealist,

that we can conceive the contingency of the correlation,

that is: its possible disappearance; for example, with the

extinction of humaniry. The correlation is contingent: we

can conceive the contingency of the correlation. But, in this

way, the correlationist must admit that we can positivelythink of a possibfity which is essentially independent ofthe correlation, since this is precisely the possibility of the

non-being of the correlation. We can draw an analogy

with death: to think of myself as a mortal' I must admitthat death doesn't depend on my own thinking about my

death. Otherwise, I would be able to disappea_r- orir. ,:-_ _ -:.condition; that I was still alive to *rlnt<-of mr. di.,p,i_1.alce and make this event a correlate of m;. access ro ^: i_other words, I could be dying indefinitely, but I coulci ne -,,e :pass away, because I would have to exist to malie of Ce .--a correlate of my own subjective access ro it. If facric-:.can be conceived, if it is a notion that we cal effecdr.e -,.conceive - and this must be the case for the coneladc,:-.ist if he wants to refute the idealist - then it is a nocrc,::we can think as an absolute: the absolute lack of re i.so:_of any realifi or, in other words, the effective abilin. r:every deterrnined entiry - event, thing, or law of subjeclr.-tty - to appear and disappear with no reason for its behs o:non-being. IJnreason becomes the attribute of ar-r abso'iuretime able to destroy and create arry determined encin, _event, thing or law - without any reason for thus creari:niand destroying.

\Atrat I try ro show by this thesis concerns the condirior:of the thinkability of the essential opposition of correlarion-ism: the opposition of the in-itself anj the for-us. The thesrsof correlationism is that I can't know what the realin. rroulcbe without me, without us, without thinking. uithourthought. According to the correlationist, if I remove mr.se lffrom the world, I can't know the residue. But this reasonir.rEsupposes that we have access to an absolute possibilin:the possibility that the in-itself could be different from rhefor-us. And this absolute possibiliry is grounded in rurron the absolute facticiry of the correlattn. It is becauseI cal conceive the non-being of the correlation thar I canconceive the possibiliry of an in-itself essentiallv differerrfrom the world as correlated to human subjecdrin.

Speculative Rea_lism

430 437

COLLAPSE III

Consequently, I can refute the correlationist refutation ofrealism, grounded as it is on the accusation of pragmatic

contradiction, because 1 discover in correlational reasoning

a pragmatic contradiction : the correlationist's fundamental

notions - for-us and in-itself - are grounded on an implicit

absolutisation: the absolutisation of facticity. Everything can

be conceived as contingent, dependent on human tropism

- everything except contingency itself. Contingency, and

only contingency, is absolutely necessary' Facticiry and

only facticity, is not factual, but eternal. Facticity is not

a fact, it is not 'one more' fact in the world. I call this

necessiry of facticity 'factuality'; and the principle which

announces factuality, the necessity of facticiry the non-fac-

ticity of facticity, I call the 'Principle of Factuality'' Finally, Icall Edcutntionfactuale speculation which is grounded on the

principle of factuality. Through the Principle of Factualiry

I cal access a speculative realism which clearly refutes,

but no longer disqualifies, correlationism. I think an Xindependent of any thinking, and know it for sure, thanks to

the correlationist himself and his fight against the absolute'

the idealist absolute. The principle of factuality unveils the

ontological truth hidden in the radical skepticism of modernphilosophy: to be is to be factual - and this is not a fact.

I shall now move on to my last point: intellectual

intuition. I used this expression in Afer Finitufu to char-

acterise the intellectual access to factualiry - that is, the

access to facticiry as an absolute - and Brassier wrote that

such a notion threatens to close me again into the circle

of correlation. Intellectual intuition, with its hear,y idealist

connotation, seems to entail an absolutisation of mearring,

hence an absolutisation of thought. It seems to be a

432

dangerous concession made to correlationism. Let s r.- :_respond, to give an :rnswer to this objection.

What did I mean, exactly, by this expression. 'inte'.;tual intuition'? Why did I take the risk of using an idea--_.:expression in order, of course, to subvert its meani:e:,From now on, I shall use, if you prefer, the o-xrmoro:::term intuitim dianodtique, 'dianoetic intuition'. I mean ':..these words, the essential intertwining of a simple inruic::-and of a discursiviry a demonstration - both being enrailecby the access to facruality. Let me explain this point.

\Alhy do I think that Laruelle fails to escape correl=,tionism? It is because he doesn't begin by refuring corre-lationism but by positing as an axiom, a Real supposed ic,

If you begin with the Real. r-ou c::r':the circle - that is, the Real is a p,,;::. !he Real as autonomous and deduces

from this axiom that thought is contingent for the Rea_l Ibelieve, on the contrary, that you must begin with correl:-tionism, then show that correlationism must itself posir rlefacticity of the correlation, and demonstrate in this rvar- rhe:this facticiry is absolute contingency. Then, finallr-. r'ou rril_accede to an independent Real. Hence, the onlr- n'ar- to -ieReal, according to me, is through a proof, a clemoutrain,... .demonstration unveils that facticity is not an igtoranre of .he

hidden reasons of all things but a hnowledge of rhe absolultcontingency of all things. The simple intuition of facici;-.is tralsmuted by a tlianoia, by a demonstration. irlco "::intuit r\the si i:I had i,-iry. I ::

Speculative Realism

433

COLLAPSE III

truly an intuition, a radical intuition - that is, a relation tothe Great Outside. We have a nous unveledby a dianoin, arr

intuition unveiled by a demonstration. This is why I calledit an intellectual intuition: not, of course, because it is anintuition which creates its object, as Kant defined it, butbecause it is an intuition discovered by reasoning.

I'd like to conclude with a final comparison berweenthe principle of factuality and other philosophies in the

twentieth century rvhich tried to access a Real outside thecircle of subjecti\,'1ty, from Heidegger to Derrida. The maindifference between these philosophies and specuLttionjutuale

is that the latter avoids what I'd like to call the syndromeof a 'Real without realism'. Philosophies of the twentiethcenlury even when they tried to escape correladonism,generally - not always, but generally - denigrated realism,which was identified with narve or dogmatic realism. In his

book, Brassier excellently presents the significance of these

ways of thinking. I quote:

Thus for much of twentieth-century continental philosophy,from Heidegger and Derrida to Levinas and Adorno, the on-lyconceivable alternative to the Scylla of idealism on the one

hand, whether transcendenta-l or absolute, and the Charybdisof realism - which it seems is only ever naive - on the other, lies

in using the resources of conceprualisation against themselvesin the hope of glimpsing some transcendent, non-conceptual

exteriority.2l

I think we can say the following: this Real, as a non-conceptual residue ofthe concept, separates itselffrom anyrealism, because it forbids any possibiliry of a conceptual

2r Nihil Unbourul,729

Speculative Realism

discourse about the ReaI in itself. We can speJi ab ,.::the ReaI as the impossibiliry of any conceprllalisaoon. c:_we car't conceptualise the Real. There is a disjunc:_-_between the Real and logos. A realism is. on rhe conlrei-,-according to me, a logos which turns to the Rea_l irr.le::of turning around it. But what do I meal br- 'rurnins :_the Real' as regards spiailntiun jutuale? My rhesis is th-:there are specific conditions of contingencl'. rvhich I c''''figures'. For exarnple, I try to show that non-connadicrio;:is a condition of contingency, since a contradicton- rea.ii:-.-

couldn't change since it would already be what it is nc,:The necessiry of non-contradiction is for me a conseque:t.eof the falsiry of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: sincenothing has any reason to be and stay what ir is. sincteverything cal change without any reason, nothing carr beconradictory. That is what I try to demonstrate in ^J;,-Finitudr, so that a conceptual discourse about the properce _.

of the Real proves to be possible. We are not condemned rc,

a'Real without realism'. I refuse this 'Real without realirp'because if I don't have a rational procedure to discor-erspecific properties of the ReaI, those properties threaten :obe arbitrarily posited. My own work consisrs in elaboradnsthis procedure - which I call 'derivation' - grounded on &ePrinciple of Factualiry and the conditions of conringencr-.Producing a procedure of this sort is for me one of rhe mahchallenges of a contemporary realism.

To conclude, I would say that what contemporil_-,-philosophy lacks is not so much the Real as realism: d:eReal with realism is the true challenge of philosophr-. ardthat's why I think that the title of our day - speculair-erealism - was perfecdy chosen, arrd is in itself a sor: :,:event.

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