In comments Cogburn gives a really remarkable formulation of some of the points Graham and I make in response to Vitale. As Jon writes:
The point about language ties to Grahams’ claim that OOP adopts a not a third person “God’s eye” perspective, but a zero person perspective. If the infinitary third person perspective is thought of as the perspective from which all truths about the object are known, then OOP argues that this still leaves something out. Some of the things I want to think a *lot* more about are (1) in what sense such a creature would be impossible, (2) what exactly is left out by the closest possible version of such a creature (actually I think “closest possible” is probably the wrong way to put it), (3) how much of the denial trades on thinking of knowledge in too linguaform a manner.
On the third point, if properties in the world are radically non-linguistic, and if we have a more original non-linguistic kind of knowledge, perhaps a god-like being could have total knowledge of an object (via some kind of practical mastery of an non-rule governed infinite set of dispositions that the object has). I take it that whatever rules out the possibility of this kind of creature would be quite different from what rules out the creature who has propositional knowledge of a set of linguaform propositions that completely describe an object.
I hadn’t thought about the idea of a “zero perspective”, but this is exactly right. Object’s aren’t perspectives at all– though they all have perspectives –they’re just objects. In my constant bitching about the difference between epistemology and ontology, this is what I’m trying to get at (though I agree with Clark that this distinction can’t be made clearly in practice). The problem is that discussion keeps shifting back to points of view on objects, rather than just attending to objects themselves.
Cogburn’s remarks about the infinite refer, I think, some offhand comments I make about what an object-oriented theology would have to look like (repeating Graham’s points). Like any other object, an object-oriented theology would have to argue that God is withdrawn from both itself and that all other objects are withdrawn from God (i.e., that God has no privileged access to creatures).
I’m not sure if Jon caught my reference to Judge Schreber or not (or whether he’s familiar with Schreber). Schreber is a famous psychotic in Freudian, Deleuzian, and Lacanian circles who wrote an account of his illness entitled Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (which, incidentally, is a great read). My suggestion that Judge Schreber comes the closest to articulating an object-oriented theology was not a malicious dig at theology. Rather, I think Judge Schreber comes closest to articulating certain elements of what an object-oriented theology would look like. One of the running themes throughout Schreber’s Memoirs is that God has no access to the inner world of his creatures. OOT would have to argue something along these lines (and as Graham suggests, I think it would solve a lot of theological questions were such a theology developed– there’s also fertile cross-over with Zizek’s understanding of God as impotent in The Puppet and the Dwarf here).
Now obviously I’m having a little fun here and hoping others will take the time to read up a bit on Schreber and psychoanalytic readings of Schreber. No doubt some will say “you’re seriously claiming that a psychotic delusion can contain theological insight?!?!?!” and will see this as a mortal insult. Let’s not forget that Joyce, Goedel, Cantor, and Nash were all psychotics who taught us a lot about literature, mathematics, and the infinite. There’s no reason philosophers and theologians can’t occasionally learn something from a psychotic.
Larval Subjects . 
August 19, 2010 at 1:01 am
Here might be another point of convergence between OOP and Whitehead. The only thing I know about “process theology” is that it comes out of Whitehead and it’s defenders give independent reasons for denying some of God’s perfections (I don’t know if it’s omnipotence or omniscience). I really want to track that down now and do some comparing.
When I was a student at U.T. Hartshorne (process philosopher of religion who has a volume in the Library of Living Philosophers) was emeritus there and I met him at a couple of parties. Sadly, the only thing I talked with him about were various types of peppers.
August 19, 2010 at 1:54 am
To me it seems that monotheism, in its origins, is a kind of cosmological proto-correlationism. It posits a Great Subject on which everything depends: a worshipper’s humility before God conceives of ourselves not as people-in-ourselves but as people-for-Him. In practise, God is dependent on worshippers for their faith, and thus for existence (as a concept). It is in the _relation_ between God and man that this theology expresses itself: each constitutes the other.
Polytheism is a much more natural fit. “God is withdrawn from both itself and that all other objects are withdrawn from God” – this makes a nonsense of the very idea of the monotheistic God, but it makes sense with, say, the bickering pantheon of Olympus, in which the cosmic order is determined not by internal relations (the will of God) but by external ones – deities sometimes bickering, at other times cooperating.
August 19, 2010 at 2:42 am
Joshua,
I have to disagree with your point about monotheism. What you describe is certainly one (and perhaps a historically dominant) formulation of the relation between God and the world – viz, that this relation takes place primarily or exclusively through humans. But there’s nothing in principle that would preclude articulating this relation via non-human objects, which of course are also creatures. Additionally, this sort of approach would open up thought about God beyond the idea of a Great Subject. I’m put in mind, from my own experience, of recent pneumatological currents in Christian theology. It’ would also be worth checking out Latour’s “Will Non-Humans Be Saved?”, especially the section where he takes on Jan Assmann.
August 19, 2010 at 2:53 am
I wonder if the psychoanalytic concept of psychosis–in general, not just with regards to theology–might provide an interesting perspective on OOO. Your mention of Schreber got me thinking of Lacan’s seminar on psychosis and his discussion of metonymy. Is it just me or do OOO’s object-lists resemble the metonymic chains of the psychotic’s speech? (The infant Anna Freud: ‘Big Strawberries, raspberries, cakes, porridge’) I do not mean to imply that object-oriented ontologists are crazy, but rather, that what the psycho does at the level of subjectivity (forecloses metaphor, rejects the name-of-the-father) OOO does at the level of philosophical discourse (disregards academic structuring principles, more interested in signifieds than signifiers). In any case, it would be interesting to link psychosis/metonymy to Harman’s idea of metaphor.
August 19, 2010 at 10:42 am
Levi:
Ah, finally! I wanted to broach the relationship of OOO with theology, since philosophy of religion is an important part of my own work, but I was waiting for an appropriate opening, and wondering if such would ever come. :)
How new metaphysical approaches relate to traditional religion is for me a critical factor – since all one needs to found a religion or non-religion (e.g. Marxism) is a narrative that sustains both a metaphysical and an ethical perspective, and it’s all too easy to end up in a cul-de-sac this way.
In this regard, I was interested in the idea that “flat ontology need not mean flat ethics”, because if it *did* entail flat ethics what you’d have is a philosophical perspective almost certainly doomed to found a non-religious cult – doubtless against the objections of its originators! (Not that such objections ever matter in these cases, but…)
Anyway, you say:
“Like any other object, an object-oriented theology would have to argue that God is withdrawn from both itself and that all other objects are withdrawn from God (i.e., that God has no privileged access to creatures).”
The premise of flat ontology as I understand it is that all entities have equal *ontological* status but differ in spatio-temporal scale… it’s hard to make any of the classic theological positions work with this (except for a child’s view of God, perhaps), in part because of the requirement that objects be determined in spatio-temporal terms, and this affordance is not normally assumed with the more sophisticated God-concepts which are necessarily trans-temporal.
For instance, both the panentheism of Vedic tradition and Sufi Islamic perspectives of God as instantaneously reforming the universe in a continuous fashion do not lend themselves to a spatio-temporal reading. So if OOO requires this, all that’s left to be an object is the God-concept itself, which only the committed atheologist would concede was equivalent to God as such.
(A related, although tangential problem, is that of certain Dharmic traditions which operate on principles of disbelief – which, interestingly, are not unalike Harman’s “overmining” in some respects except overmining seems to imply assertion of some other criteria whereas the kind of Buddhist et al position I’m thinking of here would deny even this. Perhaps this point is best pursued separately…)
The less anthropomorphic God-concepts increasingly gesture at Being as the nexus for situating “God”, per se; Harman’s tool-being spin on Heidegger would thus lead to a God-concept of the kind mentioned above necessarily being sited not in the ontology as an object but *as* Harman’s “dark subterranean reality” itself…
My question is: can OOO tolerate this interpretation? If it can, then it is open to use by (at least some) people with traditional religious metaphysical beliefs and is wildly more likely to have wider applicability. If it doesn’t, then OOO is forced into atheology (or at least theological “hand wringing” i.e. agnosticism) at least in so much as it cannot court the concept of an object *except* in a spatio-temporal sense.
Meillassoux, it seems to me, is committed to materialism and thus must take this fork – but OOO doesn’t need to as far as I can tell. That said, perhaps flat ontology is committed to this direction – if it *denies* the validity of anything but an object sited in (or as) the “dark subterranean reality”, the underreality if you will. If it is merely agnostic to claims as to the nature of that underreality, it may be all the better for its ultimate popularity. Such claims wouldn’t be any use in contemporary philosophical investigations, but religious metaphysics necessarily require extra breathing room in this regard. :)
If OOO tolerates the idea of “God as underreality” this opens the door to some fascinating theological readings since a theist, pantheist, panentheist et al must accede a central role to unknowing or withdrawal, and this could in fact bridge the Abrahamic and Dharmic religions in a manner that Hinduism and Sufi Islam are already quite open to. To paraphrase Vattimo “it is because of God that I cannot know God.” :)
Okay, well these are just my off-the-cuff remarks, and I need to give my usual disclaimer that I am enmired in philosophy of art reading materials and won’t get to the speculative realist texts for another year or so at least, but since I’ve been burning to explore this issue I thought I’d take this opening. :)
All the best!
Chris.
August 19, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Michael,
I didn’t express myself clearly. In saying monotheism is a kind of proto-correlationism, I meant that God stands in for the human subject on a cosmic scale, providing a convenient answer to ‘if a tree falls when no one is there to see it’ type questions – or on a less trivial level, Meillassoux’s arche-fossil – because He is always there to see everything. The infinite subject.
How similar or different our relation to God is from the relation non-human creatures have with Him doesn’t make much difference, because we are not the ‘true’ subject – He is. We (and every other creature, human or non-human) are properly or ultimately considered in terms of how He sees us, and as such, we are not things-in-ourselves but things-for-Him.
There are many currents in the monotheistic religions (Christianity in particular is heavily inflected by Indo-European ideology, the One becomes Three) but I think this is the basic premise of the God concept. Once you say God is an object, you step outside monotheism – a good move, in my book, but a move nonetheless.
I will check out Latour’s article, thanks for pointing me in its direction. Julian Baldick’s “Black God” is a fascinating read on the origins of monotheism.
August 19, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Joshua,
But this is just my point: even in radically monotheistic traditions, God does not necessarily need to be thought of as the absolute or infinite subject. Differences or similarities between God’s relation to humans and to non-humans only make little difference if we have posited God as a (more or less anthropomorphic) subject in the first place. What I wanted to say was that monotheistic positions are no more committed in principle to such anthropomorphism than polytheistic (or non-theistic, or atheistic) positions.
It’s also worth noting that, if I understand it correctly, Levi’s and others’ OOO disrupts the subject/object dichotomy in such a way that treating God as an “object” (or gods as objects) wouldn’t automatically be simply a negation of the tradition of treating God as Subject (and please, Levi or someone else, jump in to correct or adjust this). Questions about divine subjectivity and those about divine object-hood would be separate sets of questions.
At any rate, if one were to from the beginning refrain from positing God as Subject and begin instead with creatures (objects), I don’t foresee anything that would necessarily prevent one from formulating a monotheistic position (albeit perhaps not a traditional one). Jon seems right to point to process theology as one possible resource, at least within the context of monotheism (though I’d wager that it would be helpful in polytheistic contexts as well) – in that it does restrict, if I remember correctly, BOTH God’s power and knowledge in such a way that can account for inwardness (ie, withdrawal) and novelty within creation.
Also, thanks for the pointer to Baldick. I’ll check it out.
August 19, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Joshua, I think that’s right and goes back at least to Berkeley where god explicitly fulfills that role. I should note though that this is merely one potential trajectory of monotheism which became dominant (probably as much due to Greek thought as Christian or Jewish thought). There are views of monotheism. A great book on this in terms of ancient Hebrew thought is Levenson’s justly praised Creation and the Persistence of Evil. Injecting that earlier layer of monotheism (of a sort) into the debate is quite interesting.
August 19, 2010 at 8:51 pm
[…] and perspectives. We are in fact subtracting something from it. This may sound more or less as the zero perspective that OOO teaches us. However, I am rather referring to the work of Henri Bergson and his concept of […]
August 21, 2010 at 12:33 am
Michael,
I’m enjoying this discussion; it’s good to hear your take on these questions. I have to concede that monotheism is not as monolithic as I was making out. However, I am reminded a little of the distinctions drawn between Marxist theory and actually existing communism. The history of the Abrahamic traditions are marked by (often violent) exclusion of multiplicity in the divine sphere, in favour of the One. A picture of the universe that posits a single God and sets up a strong taboos against both images of God and the use of His name is not one that encourages flat ontology, or viewing such a God as an object; such a view flirts with blasphemy.
Clark, thanks for the reference, I will have to look up that book.
August 21, 2010 at 5:00 pm
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