It is customary to see contemporary philosophy in terms of a set of responses to Kant. On the one hand, Anglo-American thought is seen in the lineage of Kant’s first Critique; while, on the other hand, Continental thought might be seen as a set of responses to Kant’s third Critique. But what if the relevant split were not between two different readings and reactions to Kant, nor a response to a geographical division across an ocean? What if, instead, the real split were to be located in those orientations that find their heritage in Descartes, and those orientations that find their orientations in Spinoza? On the one hand, we have those philosophies of the subject that obsess over the relationship of the subject to the object, asserting the transcendence of the object to the subject and endlessly raising questions as to how it might be possible for a subject to relate to the object. Here we would find the prodigious domain of all those monotonous inquiries into knowledge, all those various forms of skepticism such as linguistic idealism on both sides of the ocean, as well as those political philosophies that argue for the necessity of a subject free of all overdetermination from a social field as in the case of Badiou or Zizek, but even Ranciere and Laclau. On the other hand, there would be the Spinozist orientation, emphasizing not the subject, but assemblages, holism, fields, relations, and tendencies unfolding within these fields. Here there would be questions about freedom, about how everything is not already overdetermined by the organization of the field, and how the project of critique might be possible within a universe where individuation always implies a pre-personal field. Today we even have our Leibniz in Graham Harman who has resurrected occasional causality without God under the title of “vicarious causation”, defending the rights of the object against any subjectifying gaze, thereby trying to strike a middle way. Would situating critical thought in these terms function to shift debate at all, taking it out of the endless rut of variations of Kantian correlationism and attempts to move beyond this form of correlationism? Yet were we to take this route, how would we have to transform the questions of epistemology? Already in the case of Spinoza, it is clear that epistemological questions bleed on to ontological questions, such that we must think of the formation of bodies as they “grock” with the world.
December 12, 2008
Two Orientations of Contemporary Thought
Posted by larvalsubjects under Epistemology, Immanence, Individuation, Materialism, Multiplicity, Ontology, Overdetermination, Spinoza[3] Comments
December 13, 2008 at 1:07 am
L, this synchronizes nicely with a recent blast from the past:
“In Spinoza as in Leibniz three levels may be distinguished: mechanism, force, and essence… According to Leibniz, CONATUS has two senses: physically it designates a body’s tendency toward movement; metaphysically, the tendency of an essence toward existence. Spinoza could not share such a view. Modal essences are not ‘possibles'; they lack nothing, are all that they are, even if the corresponding modes do not exist. They thus involve no tendency to come into existence… A mode comes to exist when its extensive parts are extrinsically determined to enter into the relation that characterizes the mode: then, and only then, is its essence determined as a CONATUS… A simple body’s CONATUS can only be the effort to preserve the state to which it has been determined; and a composite body’s CONATUS only the effort to preserve the relation of movement and rest that defines it, that is, to maintain constantly renewed parts in the relation that defines its existence” (Deleuze, EXPRESSIONISM IN PHILOSOPHY: SPINOZA, 229-230).
What’s just as interesting is the VICARIOUS cause of this reading; namely, a search on Malabranche after reading Michael Dirda’s 11/30 Washington Post review of Steven Nadler’s _The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil_ where the account of Malabranche seems quite different from what I’ve (mis)read(?):
“Malabranche refined Leibniz’s view by imagining that God needed to establish a world that wouldn’t require constant adjustment or interference, one that ran on its own, following what He had determined were the simplest, most efficient general principles… In essence, Leibniz believes in God’s goodness & wisdom, and Malebranche further emphasizes His rationality, but to Arnauld God is simply pure, omnipotent will”.
I’m sure you’ll recognize, here, three trends that are still in play today. As Nadler writes: “Do we inhabit a cosmos that is fundamentally intelligible because its creation is grounded in a rational decision informed by certain absolute values? Is the world’s existence the result of a reasonable act of creation and the expression of an infinite wisdom? Or, on the other hand, is the universe ultimately a nonrational, even arbitrary piece of work?”
(Perhaps some resonance with your Critique of the Void ?)
“God appears to Zippy [today] in VARIOUS guises – as both an imp and a stern father..”
December 19, 2008 at 3:25 am
I apologize in advance if this is a stupid question (I’ve not been keeping up…) have you read After Finitude? I’m reading it now and am really blown away (not that I have anything interesting to say about it yet; my excuse is grading…)
December 19, 2008 at 4:57 am
I read AF a while back and it had a similar impact on me. I’m currently putting together an edited collection with Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman on realist and materialist trends in contemporary continental thought which will both include a piece by Meillassoux, as well as responses to his work by Nathan Brown, Peter Hallward, and Hagglund. It will also include contributions from Badiou, Zizek, Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Manuel DeLanda, Ray Brassier, Alberto Toscano, Adrian Johnston, Francoise Lauruelle, Cahterine Malabou, Ian Hamilton Grant, Nicole Pepperell, and John Protevi. While I don’t ultimately share Meillassoux’s position AF is certainly a remarkable book and a challenge to all constructivist orientations of thought.