Over at AUFS Kotsko has a post up discussing his favorable impression of Meillassoux. I’m glad to see he’s reading him. I did, however, want to draw attention to one passage in Adam’s post. Adam writes:
What’s ironic to me is that this programmatic rhetoric has enabled people who are so “refreshed” by the way Meillassoux opens up new paths for us to get beyond commentary on figures and discourse directly about subject matter (for instance, Levi) to get stuck on the history of philosophy issues — we need to get rid of Kant, because Kant is bad, etc. No, it seems to me that for Meillassoux, Kant really did open up a radically new stage in philosophy by rendering metaphysics impossible, and we now need to push further. People who get stuck on the critique of correlationism — including the extremely simplistic methodological claims that referring to humanity or to anything human-relevant is a symptom of correlationism, and the obviously wrong claim that the way out of correlationism is simply to ignore the correlate rather than to work through it as Meillassoux himself effectively does (and again, yes, I’m talking about Levi here) — are in danger of getting stuck in yet another cul de sac, are in fact in danger of simply slipping back into pre-critical metaphysics.
For the record, I’m not a “Meillassouxian”. I have a great admiration for Meillassoux’s thought and have been influenced by him in a variety of ways, but I don’t share Meillassoux’s ontology, nor his particular critique of correlationism. Additionally, I just don’t think I, Graham, Bogost, or Morton are particularly obsessed with critiquing correlationism. The critique of correlationism is only a very small moment or element of what any of the speculative realists are up to. All the critique of correlationism is about– in its OOO variant, again they’re not all the same –is saying “hey, let’s not focus so obsessively on the relation between humans and everything else, on how humans project meaning, content, etc., onto nonhuman objects.” Having articulated that sentiment, most of us are busy working out our ontologies. I think most of us would be delighted to cease talking about correlationism. The problem is that we keep having arguments based on correlationist premises thrown our way and thereby find ourselves, once again, having to go through the rather dreary labor of articulating the problems with this orientation of thought and how it’s possible to get out of it. Believe me, endlessly responding to the same rejoinders again and again and again and again gets old really quick. I enjoy it far more when I’m writing and thinking about assemblages, mereologies, local manifestations, virtual proper being, exo-relations, systems, information, regimes of attraction, attractors, and all those sorts of neat things. In this regard, I think Scu has the right idea in just remaining agnostic about the issue altogether and just doing what he does. Alas, a lot of us weren’t that wise. The upside is that now everyone seems to want to be a realist. That’s some progress, I guess.
Likewise, I think it’s absurd to suggest that any of us are calling for a return to pre-critical metaphysics. What is the core of pre-critical metaphysics? It’s the idea that we can deduce, through pure thought, the existence of entities like God or the immortality of the soul, as well as the properties of entities like God and the universe as a whole. I can’t say that I’ve seen any of the speculative realists make claims even remotely approaching this. This was the key target of Kant’s first critique. You know, all that stuff about the soul, world, and God. That’s what Kant banished from philosophy. As far as I can tell, none of us are making metaphysical claims of this sort.
Adam suggests that Meillassoux is pretty much in line with Hegel. While Meillassoux certainly expresses deep admiration for Hegel, I’m not sure he can be characterized as a Hegelian. I think whether or not he is a Hegelian will only become clear as future publications become available. However, given that Hegel purports to demonstrate the identity of substance and subject, it would come as a surprise to discover that the philosopher who writes the following turns out to be a Hegelian:
… our question becomes: how is mathematical discourse able to describe a world where humanity is absent; a world crammed with things and events that are not the correlates of any manifestation; a world that is not the correlate of a relation to the world? This is the enigma which we must confront: mathematics’ ability to discourse about the great outdoors; to discourse about a past where both humanity and life are absent. (26)
This sounds like the exact opposite of an identity of substance and subject. Moreover, in the penultimate chapter 3, Meillassoux sides with the Kantian (the correlationist) against the subjective idealist (sic.) which presumably refers to Hegel (pgs. 54 – 59).
Adam seems to doubt that Graham and I are not particularly familiar with Meillassoux’s text or that we haven’t read it closely. He’s welcome to use the search function in the right-hand sidebar and read the numerous commentaries I wrote over After Finitude and judge for himself. The fact that I don’t talk often about hyper-chaos, the principle of factiality, etc., is simply because I don’t find Meillassoux’s argument particularly convincing (though I do believe it’s a heroic effort) and because I don’t share his ontology. As for Graham, I guess Adam doesn’t keep up with the news, but Harman is pretty tight with Meillassoux, is currently completing a book on his thought that will include translations from L’inexistence divine, and is an advance reader of that text as well. I suspect that Meillassoux would be pretty reluctant to put such work in Harman’s hands if he felt that he had an incompetent grasp of his thought.
Adam also expresses frustration as to how we use the word “correlationism”, suggesting that we don’t understand it and are generating needless confusing. This, I think, is a curious argument that’s a bit akin to lambasting Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Heidegger for each developing their own particular concept of “phenomena”, each marking deviations from Husserl’s concept. Meillassoux indeed coined the term “correlationism”, but having brought it into being he doesn’t ultimately own it. I’m surprised that Adam, who so vehemently defends Derrida, fails to apply the elementary principle of iterability to a term like “correlation”. I think that Meillassoux hits something fundamental at the heart of contemporary continental philosophy in coining the term correlationism, but recognizing that and taking up the term for oneself does not entail that one need embrace Meillassoux’s way out of correlationism or his ontology.
At any rate, lots of folks seem to be under the impression that OOO and SR are identical. Graham has a nice write up on the differences between these beasts here.
Larval Subjects . 
September 2, 2010 at 6:54 am
[…] 2, 2010 I have nothing at all to add to THIS FINE REJOINDER. Posted by doctorzamalek Filed in Uncategorized Leave a Comment […]
September 2, 2010 at 10:05 am
Strauss (and his friend Klein) were criticizing “modern idealism” (aka correlationism) at least sixty years ago. I remember Stanley Rosen criticizing Kant and and talking about cows and pens and the rest way back in the 90s. Harman was a student of Rosen, right? That’s probably where he picked it up.
September 2, 2010 at 10:09 am
I am a general reader just getting into OOO and SR.
Here is a story. Ask a Republican “what are the consequences of blocking legislation?” The answer is that the Democrats do it also. Probe and find out that he cannot go any deeper. The argument is talking points from the two factions that is not connected to the constitution, separation of power, principles or the law.
Could it be that along with the collapse of the American empire, we are also seeing a collapse of reason?
September 2, 2010 at 10:39 am
Hello Levi,
I think that is Adams point, from a certain perspective the anti-correlationsim is underdeveloped and indeterminate which is odd given the clarity and rigor usually applied elsewhere. Given that OOO focus in on objects in general, anti-correlationism just becomes a by-word for pointing to a thinker who ostensibly spends too much time on the human object. What is done I think without too much leg work is cashing in that transcendental realism (so defined by Kant) allows for the certitude in knowing and positing limits. Therefore the human is given an unproblematic place, a place authorized by OOO being first philosophy which to the uninitiated looks more like an article of faith which when questioned get robotic replies i.e…
Which, from your perspective, is arguments from “correlationist premises” (expend too much time on the human), which only have traction if OOO is pre-comprehended and swallowed without a problem. When the reaction to questions stemming from ostensibly correlationist premises is not – or should not be – to assimilate it within the apparent existing framework authorized in advance by OOO being “first” and therefore the sole sovereign adjudicator to pronouncing problems apparently solved.
Will.
September 2, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Will,
The arguments against correlationism have been developed in pretty elaborate detail. How many times do they need to be repeated? Having made those arguments I feel entirely justified in adjudicating on these issues.
September 2, 2010 at 12:52 pm
The implication that you had not understood Meillassoux’s argument was unfair, obviously untrue, and not really my intention, and I explicitly retract it in the comments. I still maintain that you take Meillassoux’s slogans without taking what he actually does with it or how he supports it — and you admit as much — but I also say that they seem to me to be genuinely separable aspects of Meillassoux’s text (hence Harman can reportedly claim that M. himself is a correlationist). You seem to me to have taken the less interesting part of Meillassoux, but that’s just a matter of taste and inclination.
Also, when I talk about Hegel, I’m basically always talking about Zizek’s understanding of Hegel. (Ironic, I realize, given that I’m critiquing you for an idiosyncratic use of the term correlationist.) M.’s specific relationship to Hegel is not really important for this discussion, and we probably don’t have enough evidence anyway, as you point out. My main point was just that he was repeating the gesture of post-Kantian German Idealism, albeit in a new way — which is exactly the kind of thing that Gabriel and Zizek call for in their book.
I do understand the frustration of having to answer basic questions over and over. In fact, I was trying to do my homework here and read one of the primary sources on correlationism — and now it’s frustrating to me that you reject it for totally different reasons and have totally different arguments for getting around it. For purposes of discussing with you, I feel like I’ve learned nothing relevant or new from reading Meillassoux. In fact, the gap is so significant that to me it feels like you’ve gone beyond “iterability” and are just being misleading in using the term when anthropocentrism would work just as well and be much less confusing.
Reusing a term that’s in wide circulation like “phenomena” is one thing — but since Meillassoux is basically the only one using correlationism, doesn’t it seem a bit premature to take it in a completely different direction? Can’t you at least sympathize with people who are confused by the gap between your use of correlationism and Meillassoux’s? Imagine if I came up with my own new definition for objet petit a and, after a few posts explaining, used objet petit a only to refer to my own meaning. That would be weird, right? That would be confusing. That would even be misleading.
September 2, 2010 at 12:57 pm
I don’t see how Zizek’s Hegel changes matters here. Zizek also endorses the thesis of the identity of substance and subject. A good example of this (but it’s a point he makes again and again) can be found in the first chapter of The Parallax View. I take it that M is at odds with Zizek’s ontology.
September 2, 2010 at 1:01 pm
And the root meaning of correlationism remains the same in our usage: the thesis that being can only ever be spoken of in terms of thought (or language or society) and that being is necessarily sutured to thought and givenness or manifestation for thought. That’s not a deviant or idiosyncratic usage of the term and M has never objected to our use of it.
September 2, 2010 at 1:32 pm
I repeat: it’s not really important to me that we define M. as specifically “Hegelian,” in Zizek’s sense or anyone else’s. To quote myself: “My main point was just that he was repeating the gesture of post-Kantian German Idealism, albeit in a new way.”
And since I’m commenting again, I have to say that I don’t particularly care if I’m a realist or not — so your claim that everyone is scrambling to be a realist is false. I don’t even care if I’m a correlationist.
September 2, 2010 at 2:43 pm
I believe that the categorization of correlation has been belaboured to great length and in several different ways but agree with you that they are essentially different manifestations of….
However in your precision of definition lies the ambiguity which on my reading is the proximity of the subject and object distinction (prior to the intervention of OOO) on the question of the “in itself” – itself. On this ground I have great sympathy with what Adam wrote above about Hegal and a kind of negative dialectics of OOO. There is something of this indeterminacy carried through to OOO which to my mind has not been explored, and that which motivates my interest in OOO.
In a certain sense it is this ambiguity that allows for a (mis)representation of OOO tenets in terms of what you would call correlationism.
Will.
September 2, 2010 at 3:13 pm
… à la Godel’s Undecidability Theorem.
September 2, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Fib fact: Goedel developed his incompleteness theorems to defend a realist position in mathematics against anti- realist constructivisms.
September 3, 2010 at 12:50 am
First, I don’t see how Levi’s use of the term correlationism is at odds with Meillassoux’s at all. At most it is expanded, but completely consistent with it: philosophy must deal with the humanly accessible for-itself, and no more. This is a form of philosophical anthropocentrism. I don’t see the problem here.
Second, as I read Meillassoux, the pre-critical approach was not simply talking about things, but talking about an absolutely necessary entity — that is, ontotheology. This metaphysical, logical and mathematically necessary entity is what Kant’s philosophy makes impossible, not talk about entities per se. OOO is in complete agreement with this aspect of Kant, in fact, it is central to its de-anthropomorphizing of philosophy.
Third, OOO takes the ancestral argument against correlationism as more damaging than Meillassoux does. For Meillassoux, it is an opportunity to reinvigorate correlationism — which he says is irrefutable — and to use this very correlate to discover the absolute. OOO is by far more modest and tentative (and this is why it is more attractive to me) in that it denies logical, mathematical and experiential access to the thing itself — not even maths get us to “primary,” that is, absolute, qualities. In this way, OOO preserves an ontological autonomy in a way that Meillassoux (and like him Badiou) cannot. I don’t see what is so controversial about this thesis. It’s a clear compromise between naive realism and (strong/weak) correlationism and absolute idealism — the tension between the “for-itself” and the “in-itself” is not a unique human rift or exception, but the mode of all entities and their relations and, secondly, knowledge is not absolute, direct and exhaustive deduction of the thing itself, but translated and transformed models and images of the thing which are open to further and further subtilization. I don’t see why OOO’s move here is any less plausible than Meillassoux’s move of making facticity into an ontological principle where the unreason of the correlate becomes the necessary ontological property of the real. OOO takes a different view which seems to sidestep necessity and strict logical deduction of the absolute for an autonomous ontological realm incommensurate with any model of that realm.
September 3, 2010 at 4:11 am
Arrrggghh! I wrote “for-itself” twice above when I obviously meant “for-us.” I’m…an idiot.
September 3, 2010 at 4:30 am
Levi:”All the critique of correlationism is about–…–is saying “hey, let’s not focus so obsessively on the relation between humans and everything else, on how humans project meaning, content, etc., onto nonhuman objects.” Having articulated that sentiment, most of us are busy working out our ontologies….I enjoy it far more when I’m writing and thinking about assemblages, mereologies, local manifestations, virtual proper being, exo-relations, systems, information, regimes of attraction, attractors, and all those sorts of neat things.”
I take this (I suspect not quite in the spirit in which Levi means it) to mean: Given these object-oriented, let us see what ontologies can be elaborated. In this sense (and I think this is a perfectly fine way to do philosophy) OOP is a set of gedankenexperiments. It’s no fun to keep reiterating the premises (the critique of correlationism), any more than it is to keep reading the rules of the game.
Of course, one could argue, does have to buy into the critique lest one “fall back” into naive realism, a.k.a. dogmatism or “metaphysics.”
Or, alternately, one could argue that to view the whole thing as a thought-experiment, a language-game, is itself too correlationist. But I harbor the expectation that someday, “correlationism” will be remembered as just another swear-word. Like “phalogocentric.”
September 3, 2010 at 6:14 am
obviously, during my editing of my comment I left out a word. Should have read:
“Given these object-oriented premises, let us see what ontologies can be elaborated.”
November 1, 2010 at 1:00 am
Fib fact: Goedel developed his incompleteness theorems to defend a realist position in mathematics against anti- realist constructivisms.
Hi, not a philosopher here just a student of mathematics, but Goedel’s incompleteness theorem was not a defence of “realist position” in mathematics; in fact it problematised what’s known as the “Hilbert’s Program”, which postulated that all mathematical theories can be formally reduced to a finite set of internally consistent axioms. Goedel showed that even for the simple case of natural numbers there will always be valid statements within the system that cannot be proved, which while consistent with Goedel’s particular realism is not diametrically opposed to say intuitionism. So certainly while Goedel himself was an avowed Platonist his methodology did not reflect his belief as such; it just problematised certain other forms of mathematical realism.
(apologies for commenting in a 2 months old thread)