It would be easy to suppose that philosophical caution with respect to Plato, Aristotle, and Husserl and their emphasis on the unity and identity of things simply arose from seeing them as boring middle-agers who serve up retrograde ideas and from a desire to take fashionable cheap shots at these thinker so as to jump on the latest bandwagon. If this dismissal is particularly convenient, then this is because it treats criticism of these thinkers as arising from ad hominem motivations and therefore boils down to a series of fallacies of relevance. In other words, insofar as whether or not one is a boring middle-ager serving up retrograde ideas is irrelevant to whether or not these concepts are ontologically true, one could safely ignore these criticisms and continue as before. Unfortunately matters are not so simple.
As Deleuze and Guattari argue in What is Philosophy?, all concepts arise in response to problems that precede them, and this is above all the case with the concepts of multiplicity and difference. What is at issue here is not a simple desire to get with the latest fashion or youthful exuberance, but rather an attempt to develop an ontological discourse adequate to the real of being. If the concept of substance is to be retained– and I believe it should be preserved –this requires a significant reworking of this concept in light of these problems. Any ontology that fails to respond to these problems will prove inadequate to what we have come to know in our historical moment. Here it’s above all important to note that problems do not spell the ruin of a philosophical position, but rather are the motive force that leads to the genesis and formation of concepts.
In my view, the problems that motivate a criticism of Platonic, Aristotlean, and Husserlian orientations can be sorted into 1) intra-philosophical problems, 2) empirical problems, and 3) political problems. Here I will focus on Aristotle as he is the primary lineage from which object-oriented ontology draws its positions.
1:) Ontological Problems: Aristotle begins well. He makes a firm declaration that being qua being consists, in its primary signification, of what he calls “primary substances”. Aristotle’s primary substances are those things we refer to as individuals or objects. They are entities like rocks, trees, persons, cats, aardvarks, hammers, and so on. A primary substance will just be any individual thing that exists. Aristotle will argue that primary substances are subjects of predication that are not themselves predicated of anything else. Thus, for example, someone might predicate “brownness” of me when saying “Levi has brown hair”, but “Levi”, the person, is not predicated of anything else. Rather, I am an entity that exists as an individual in my own right and autonomously, rather than an entity that only exists in something else. Here a number of questions arise:
(a) Problems of Individuation: How are we to simultaneously think the being and becoming of substances? Substances both become yet persist as being that substance. What is it of substance that becomes and what is it of substance that persists? The Aristotlean conception of substance seems to fall into aporia insofar as it treats form as that which is identical in substance, while treating accidents as that which change. Due to this decision,
(i) The Aristotlean conception of substance is unable to account for the individuality of substances because forms are generically the same for all substances belonging to that type, e.g., the form of catness is the same for both Tasha and Tabbi. Form is thus unable to capture the individuality of a thing, yet we wish to claim that all substances are individuals. What concept of substance would allow us to capture the individuality of substances? Form won’t do it so we need a more refined concept of substance.
read on!
(ii) All we ever know of substances is known through the qualities of substance. Yet the qualities of substance are– as Hegel notes in the first moment of The Phenomenology of Spirit –the domain of the universal. Consequently, if substance is always individual, the substantiality of substance must be something other than qualities. As such, to find the substantiality of substance we must peel away all the qualities of substance to see what remains. But since the only determinations of substance are qualities, when we peel all those qualities away we find nothing. That is, the substantiality of substance turns out to be a bare substratum. Yet here we encounter a problem similar to that we encountered in (i): insofar as all bare substrata are bare, there is nothing left to distinguish one bare substratum from another. This would entail that all substances are identical to one another, once again erasing their individual identities.
(ii) If we are not to fall into this problem we thus need a concept of substance that locates the individuality of substance elsewhere than in their qualities and that doesn’t lead to a bare substratum that renders it impossible to distinguish one substance from another. It is something like this problem that has led some object-oriented philosophers to argue that the individual being of substances is withdrawn. Here one argues that there are a set of qualities that distinguish one substance from another, but that these qualities are withdrawn from us. There seem, however, to be a few problems with this strategy. First, this strategy seems to conflate epistemological questions with ontological questions. Withdrawal seems to be an epistemological phenomenon, not an ontological phenomenon, yet the issue was one of determining what those features are (haecceities) that individuate one being from another, not whether we have access to them. Second, one might respond that the question has been answered insofar as it is “real qualities” that are doing the work of individuation, yet here, once again, we encounter the problem of the gap between the universal and the particular: the domain of quality is the domain of universality and essence, yet an ontology of substance requires us to get at the individuality of substances. Regardless of whether or not qualities are withdrawn, they still have the feature of being indifferent universals, thereby failing to capture what is individual in the substantiality of substances. Third, it does not seem that object-oriented philosophers present an argument for withdrawal that isn’t based on an appeal to authority. It is said that we can conclude that objects are withdrawn based on Heidegger’s analysis of tools or Husserl’s analysis of objects. In and of itself this is not a problem insofar as the object-oriented philosopher could contend that the appeal to authority is just shorthand for the arguments those authorities make, but the problem is that it’s not clear that arguments drawn from the descriptive domain of phenomenology can be deployed to drawn ontological conclusions. In other words, the fact that things withdraw from us in our interaction with them does not entail that objects in themselves are withdrawn. One would require a different sort of argument to demonstrate that withdrawal is an ontological or metaphysical fact.
(iii) Endurance. At the level of their materiality substances are constantly changing. In an organism cells are born and die. In inorganic entities atoms are constantly lost and gained. What is it, exactly, that remains this individual across these changes? If we say that substances are individuated by the matter, then we will be forced to claim that each material change entails the formation of an entirely new substance. Yet this seems wrong. Just because my cat loses hair it does not seem that we should claim that my cat is an entirely new individual. Rather, my cat remains this cat. So if the individuality of my cat does not reside in her matter, where does it reside? Once again, form seems like a good candidate as my cat’s pattern can persist while the matter of which my cat is composed changes. Yet, once again, this leads to problems pertaining to the generic index of form. On the one hand, if two entities share the same form are we then to conclude that they’re the same individual? Why, for example, should we claim that my car is a distinct individual from other cars of the same make? On the other hand, if we do wish to claim that my car is a distinct individual it follows that what individuates the individuality of substance must reside elsewhere than in form.
(b) Development, Creation, and Destruction: Additional problems with the concept of substance with respect to issues of development, creation, and destruction. (i) If we wish to follow Aristotle in claiming that it is form that accounts for the individuality of substances then we’ll run into problems when attempting to think the development of entities. Remember form was supposed to account for the identity of substance or that which remains the same in a substance despite changes in accidents. Form would thus be that which persists as the same and which therefore guarantees the fact that this substance is still this substance. However, a developmental process is not a change pertaining to the accidents of a substance, but rather is a change pertaining to the structure or form of a substance. In other words, development seems to be the becoming-other of form. Yet if this is the case then it would seem to follow that form can no longer do the work of maintaining the identity of substance. We’re thus led to claim one of two things: Either substances have no identity because forms change in developmental processes or the form of substances never changes and all developmental change is really accidental change. Neither conclusion seems acceptable.
(ii) Similarly, how, within an Aristotlean framework, are we to think the emergence or creation of new substances? Clearly if being is, as Aristotle suggests, composed of substances then it follows that new substances must emerge from substances that already exist. Substances have to be born of substances. So far so good. However, in thinking the emergence of form we must think transitional states where the substances out of which a substance emerges are both themselves and something else and where the substance that is emerging both is and is not. Yet if form is that which accounts for the identity and individuality of substance, then such transitional states seem to be foreclosed insofar as form must remain identical to ground this identity and individuality.
(iii) Additional problems emerge with the destruction of substances. The destruction of something or its death is a radical change. It is the dissolution of that thing or its collapse into entropy. However, if we relegate change to a substance’s accidents and treat form as that which remains the same throughout change, then it is difficult to see how a radical change like destruction could ever take place. Destruction is a change that pertains not simply to the qualities or accidents of a substance, but that dissolves the very form of a substance. Consequently destruction requires us to think a form of change that affects the form of substance. Yet if we’ve concluded that form is 1) withdrawn, 2) independent of all relation, and 3) that which remains the same throughout changes, then it is difficult to see how any type of change can affect the form of substance. Object-oriented philosophers have attempted to argue that objects are destroyed through a destruction of their parts. In other words, the destruction of a substance’s form takes place through a destruction of of a substance’s parts. Yet here, once again, problems arise: First, granting that objects can gain and lose material parts as in the case of a body gaining and losing cells or a person getting a haircut, how are we to distinguish the destruction of parts where the form of the substance nonetheless continues and the destruction of the parts of a substance that lead to the destruction of form? Second, do we not here encounter the problem of transitional states where the form of a substance both is and is not itself? And finally third, how is it possible for the parts and accidents of a substance to interact with the form of a substance when that form is withdrawn from all relation?
(c) Some Conclusions: From the foregoing we can see why the concepts of multiplicity and difference arise. Far from being a fashionable rejoinder to “retrograde concepts of middle-agers”, problems internal to the nature of substance necessitate the invention of the concepts of multiplicity and difference. In other words, if the concept of substance is to be retained and the aporia it generates are to be overcome, then the concept of substance must be substantially revised. The concept of difference arises out of issues of just how to account for the individuality of substance. Aristotle had undermined substances by seeking to locate their individuality in form. This treatment of individuality renders it impossible to distinguish one substance from another when both of those substances belong to the same type, thereby erasing the individuality of substance. Arguing that the individuality of substance is there but withdrawn doesn’t help insofar as 1) we continue to treat what is withdrawn as an essence or qualities, thereby encountering the problem of the universal yet again, and 2) we fall into a night in which all cows are black insofar as nothing can be said of this withdrawn essence beyond the fact that it exists. The concept of difference would be that which allows us to get at the individuality of substance.
Similar exigencies call for the concept of multiplicity. Wherever the identity of substance is conceived as a hpokeimenon or substratum serving as a support for accidental qualities, all sorts of aporia emerge. Multiplicity invites us to think the identity of substance not as an unchanging substrate but rather as an activity on the part of substance over the course of its ongoing life. The advantage of this concept of substance as multiplicity is that it allows us to think the temporal endurance of entities while these entities nonetheless change, while also allowing us to think both the developmental unfolding of entities and their eventual demise in those instances where ongoing activity cannot continue.
2) Empirical Objects: A number of discoveries we have made pertaining to the natural world call into question the traditional concept of substance. Here my remarks will be brief. In treating the substantiality of substance as enduring form, Aristotle’s conception of substance directly contradicts evolutionary theory. Because form can neither be created nor destroyed, Aristotle is led to an ontology in which species are eternal and unchanging. Just as the form or essence of a triangle neither comes to be nor passes away, the form of the human neither comes to be nor passes away. Individual entities are, for Aristotle, just variations of these enduring forms. Moreover, for Aristotle, form comes first and individuals second. That is, forms are primary both ontologically and epistemologically. Yet Darwin reverses all of this. In a vein that is more Aristotlean than Aristotle, Darwin argues that individuals are ontologically primary and that they precede the formation of species. Far from being eternal, species are both precipitated out of individuals as statistical populations or averages, and can pass away. If our ontology is to be adequate, it needs to begin from the premise of a genesis of forms out of individuals, rather than treating forms as enduring substrates lying beneath accidental changes and providing the support of their being. It is this that the concepts of difference and multiplicity attempt to provide.
Similarly, neurology seems to call into question the existence of forms as substrates beneath accidental changes. When we investigate the nature of mind we do not seem to find anything like enduring persons, but rather instead encounter only distributed networks where unity and identity only exist as enacted rather than as a substrate supporting accidental changes. In other words, it increasingly looks like self and personhood are processes and activities, like they are multiplicities, rather than substrates lying beneath change and activity. It would be easy to argue that things only appear this way because substance is withdrawn and science “knows nothing about objects”, yet if we make this move we’ve thrown all empirical investigation out the window, undermined all possibility of falsification, and granted ourselves the right to claim whatever we might like. Given that this is a very high price to pay to preserve the concept of substance as an enduring substrate supporting accidents, it seems better to revise our understanding of substance along process-oriented lines and treat substances as multiplicities.
Finally, of course, quantum mechanics significantly call for revisions of our concept of substance at the level of questions of individuation. Traditionally substances are thought as individuated by their location in time and space, yet phenomena such as non-locality present significant challenges to such a concept of individuals. Quantum mechanics calls for us to revise our understanding of substance in terms of findings such as wave-particle duality, non-locality, and subatomic particles that seem capable of continuously popping in and out of existence like Schroedinger’s notorious cat.
3. Political Problems: Perhaps the place where object-oriented philosophy has fared most poorly in its polemics with critical theory and post-structuralist thought has been the domain politics. In this connection, object-oriented philosophy has repeatedly demonstrated a sort of remarkable tone-deafness with respect to ethics and politics, ignoring what motivates critical theorists to approach essences, objects, and substances with suspicion and treating these issues as if they were abstract technical, philosophical problems. Here we must be careful, for we don’t wish to claim that ones politics ought to determine one’s ontology. But this is really the crux of the matter. While it is certainly true that politics doesn’t dictate ontology, it is also true that we can draw nefarious conclusions from ontology. And in this regard, ontologies can have very real social and political consequences.
If critical theorists have been extremely cautious with respect to concepts like “essence”, then this is because they recognize that these concepts are not merely descriptive but that they are normative as well. Insofar as the concept of essence is designed to capture that which is common to all instances of a kind, it also functions as a rule for determining what belongs and what doesn’t belong. In other words, essence decides who gets to speak and participate and who does not. Essences are rules for inclusion and exclusion in the social sphere. This entails that talk of essences has very real and concrete consequences in the political sphere. It is based on claims about the essence of the human that the Nazis authorized themselves to exclude and exterminate the Jews and other races. It was based on certain claims about the essence of the human that those that drafted the American Constitution entitled themselves to exclude slaves and women. It is based on certain essentialist claims about “normality” that people authorize themselves to exclude certain people from getting married or citizenship. And likewise, it is based on certain essentialist conceptions of masculinity and femininity, that individual men and women temporalize what is possible for them in the future.
In this regard, criticisms of the category of essence in the social sphere do not arise from any desire to be “fashionable” or out of a hostility to boring middle-agers and their retrograde ideas. Rather, these criticisms arise directly from the concrete role these ideas play in producing oppression and inequality. Yet again and again we find object-oriented philosophy running roughshod over these concerns, ignoring them altogether, and treating rejection of the category of essence as if it were borne of some irrational malice that does not arise from an honest place. Instead we get an abstract philosophical defense of essences completely divorced from the context of these problems that fails to recognize the way in which essences function self-reflexively in the social sphere as both descriptions and norms. In our view, if object-oriented philosophy is to be relevant to these discussions it is necessary that it respond to these concerns and demonstrate how it is capable of ably responding to these problems.
The issue is similar when it comes to discussions of objects and the debate surrounding objects and relations. Those critical of the category of objects are treated as if they have an irrational hostility towards objects based on the concept of objects somehow not being “sexy” compared to relations. We are then given an argument as to how relationism is incoherent so long as it doesn’t posit the existence of autonomous objects. Yet this rejoinder misses the whole point. From the standpoint of the critical theorist, the problem with the category of objects is not ontological in character, but lies in how this concept is politically deployed to obfuscate the nature of the social world in which we exist. What is at issue is not the ontological issue of objects versus relations, but the political issue of conceiving the social as a mere collection of individuals. When society is conceived of in this way our only recourse is to claim that individual people are solely responsible for their place in society as a result of the decisions that they have made and that those in more fortunate positions are entirely deserving of the privilege they enjoy as a result of how it arose from their labor and their labor alone. In other words, object-oriented philosophy unwittingly leads to an ideology in which our society is seen as just, and where any inequality and oppression that exists results purely from the action of individuals who are themselves responsible for where they are. As such, object-oriented philosophy prevents us from analyzing those dynamics that lead to these inequalities despite the well-intentioned efforts of individuals, making it more difficult to change these things.
Again, in our view, if object-oriented philosophy does not wish to embrace these conclusions it is obligated to show us how it can do at least as well as critical theory in explaining these inequalities and devising strategies for changing them. However, this requires object-oriented philosophy to engage in concrete analysis of how social assemblages function rather than repeatedly approaching these issues abstractly as an ontological debate over the primacy of substances or relations. Enough for now.
Larval Subjects . 
February 13, 2012 at 7:26 pm
Things are getting a bit tasty between OOO and OOP of late. You have given voice to some of the major bugbears I have with OOO.
Will.
February 13, 2012 at 8:07 pm
Levi :
You write:
“What is at issue is not the ontological issue of objects versus relations, but the political issue of conceiving the social as a mere collection of individuals.”
…and…
“As such, object-oriented philosophy prevents us from analyzing those dynamics that lead to these inequalities despite the well-intentioned efforts of individuals, making it more difficult to change these things.”
I don’t really recognize object-oriented philosophy in a lot of what you have written above, but this particular statement, that OOP tends to a view of society as “a mere collection of individuals,” and it, therefore, actually “prevents” us from analyzing inequalities of a social nature…I don’t really know what to say. Where, anywhere, does OOP even suggest that society is a mere collection of individual persons? I am almost literally speechless as to these remarks here under your “political problems” of OOP. Nowhere in your remarks is there any indication that you are aware of OOP and Graham’s care to draw a radical distinction between ontotheology and its pernicious political effects and his ontology of substance.
Most of the philosophical remarks above that would be fine, if OOP was simply Aristotle, tout court. But it isn’t and you know it isn’t, which makes much of these statements and criticisms above so, I’m sorry, ridiculous.
February 13, 2012 at 8:31 pm
Joseph,
I think there’s ample evidence for these charges. First, throughout the writings of OOP there’s a repeated focus on mid-level objects such as persons and individuals to the detriment of larger-scale entities. This is because larger scale entities such as institutions, social groups, markets, etc., are treated as overmining objects. This is why I’ve spent so much time in my own onticology with theorizing issues of mereology and the existence of individuals at different levels of scale. With the exception of Morton’s hyperobjects, this strategy has not, however, been taken up by OOP which is one major reason that it’s necessary to distinguish between object-oriented philosophy and onticology. At any rate, it is a refusal to attend significantly with these larger-scale objects that repeatedly invites the charge of neoliberalism by critical theorists. Second, insofar as object-oriented philosophy has a tendency to throw its hat in with Latour, it perpetuates a marked distrust of larger-scale objects such as groups, societies, markets, and so on. At the level of practical theorizing this leads to a project of undermining these larger-scale objects by claiming that they have no efficacy of their own but are instead merely effects of the actions of mid-sized individuals such as persons, tools, and so on. Here I would invite you to attend carefully to the actual concrete political claims made within the framework of object-oriented philosophy. Again and again you will find that they focus entirely on mid-sized substances to the detriment of larger-scale substances such as groups, institutions, and markets. How else were we to understand the hostility towards, for example, Marxism that we encounter from object-oriented philosophers? Finally, I fail to see how Harman’s critical remarks directed at ontotheology can do the work he wishes it to do so long as he continues to insist that individuals posses essences. Minimally this critique needs to be spelled out with greater clarity and he would need to develop an account of both how essence functions in social assemblage and why it necessarily fails.
February 13, 2012 at 8:33 pm
[…] writing the following in response to Levi Bryant’s most recent post on “Some Scattered Thoughts on the Problem of Substance.” There is much to read in Bryant’s post and I am only going to focus on two of his […]
February 13, 2012 at 8:54 pm
Joseph,
I would also add that every time critical political observations about the concept of substance arise, OOP treats these issues as a debate over whether objects or relations are primary, ignoring 1) the reasons that social and political theorists are particularly concerned with relations (i.e., because there are processes above and beyond the level of persons that sort people into certain class and identity relationship), and 2) failing to recognizing the problems with essentialism I outline in this post. As a consequence, OOP tends to reinforce the impression that 1) it is indifferent to these criticisms and believes these observations to be mistaken, and 2) that it provides actual support for these sorts of political orientations. Now OOP can insist that it is not at all sympathetic to this sort of politics, but if so it is obligated to show how it’s own ontology might entitle it to a critique of these political orientations and how the orientation of object-orientated philosophy can do the same explanatory work that critical theory can do with respect to explaining social stratification and inequality. So far I haven’t seen this work.
February 13, 2012 at 8:54 pm
There has to be a better way to distinguish your work from Graham’s than this, Levi. You are being systematically unfair and inaccurate to a philosophy that, in your own very recent book, you continually cite and obviously gain inspiration from, not to mention your encounter with Graham’s work over the past years on your blog.
There are responses to be made to your points but I am not going to be the one to make them. I find this turn here to be really disappointing, and it has nothing to do with multiplicity, difference, substances or Aristotle.
February 13, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Joseph,
I think you misunderstand the nature of this post. In a recent post Harman dismissed appeals to multiplicity and difference in contrast to unity and identity as “cheap shots”, implying that these concepts do not arise out of genuine and honest considerations pertaining to how to best conceive substance. As Harman writes:
These remarks were clearly a response to my own work as articulated in my previous post on withdrawal and multiplicity and my debt to Deleuze. The suggestion seems to be that there is no internal motivation for embracing concepts such as difference and multiplicity. This post is not a criticism of Harman’s ontology but is rather an attempt to show how certain aporia arise when we attempt to think the being of substance and how the concepts of multiplicity and difference are attempts to respond to these problems. When I approach the issue of politics I try to show how the failure to address these issues and take them seriously give rise to the sorts of concerns people have with object-oriented philosophy and how the deployment of concepts such as multiplicity and difference might ameliorate these worries.
February 13, 2012 at 10:11 pm
thank your for your thoughts – I find them engaging and very stimulating. They raise a few questions and reflections that I would appreciate hearing your response to, not because I am challenging anything that you have written (I definitely do not possess the philosophical nous to do so), I simply wish to broaden my own developing understanding by seeking further clarification.
In terms of the question regarding the nature of substance, and the problems you outline relating to form, you briefly dismiss the ‘traditional’ idea that ‘substances are individuated by their location in time and space’, drawing for your argument on the paradoxical insights of quantum physics, which include the empirical observation that ‘sub-atomic particles seem capable of continuously popping in and out of existence’. Can this ‘traditional’ viewpoint be so easily dismissed? I would love to hear more. I am a novice in philosophical matters, so I apologise for asking a question that has been well covered and laid to rest in established philosophical discourse. I would be keen to hear of any authors you can recommend who can give me deeper understanding of the arguments behind the dismissal of the space-time causation perspective.
The questions that arise in me from the above that I anticipate would be laid to rest by exposure to the relevant ideas and literature are these: Given that sub-atomic particles are the building blocks of material reality (or the building blocks of the building blocks!), surely the ubiquitous phenomenon of being able to randomly appear and disappear unbounded by the limitations of spatio-temporal factors is a paradox not of abstract thought, but of material reality. Yet object reality is distinguished by the fact that ‘forms’ self-cohere in some form or fashion. Obviously the paradox is to do with how this is possible given what is happening at the deepest possible level of ontological reality. So the question that comes to mind is: What exactly is this ‘cohesion’ factor? It must be something that is extremely strong (excuse the clumsy way of expressing this) to resist the inherent capacity for an object’s sub-atomic inhabitants/constituents to completely disregard space-time constraints.
So now I’m intrigued: What allows some’thing’ to take and then maintain hold of its bit of space-time real estate (to which death or destruction is an obvious relinquishing)? (Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely not getting into the even more archaic territory of ‘souls’.)
The other question (and I’m sorry this also has to do with the space-time thing), concerns my superficial reflection on the advantage that the space-time argument seems to posit regarding the question of how ‘difference’ comes about. I can quite easily perceive that, if something were to be completely the same as something else, then the two objects would not only have to be identical in form, but they would have to occupy exactly the same space-time location. In which case of course, they would cease to be ‘two’. And so two blue cars off the same production line that are practically identical in every respect, or two (or more) digital copies of a piece computer data, maintain their distinction because they cannot simultaneously occupy the same space-time location. Surely this has more than significant implications. And if or when a thing does occupy the same space-time as something else, it is not without radical consequence, such as the growth of a new individual within the body of another.
More specifically, what this leads me to speculate is the importance of the space-time location factor in terms of the role of environments and systems. If the term ‘space-time’ relates directly to the specificities of actual environments and environmental forces, factors, contingencies, ‘accidents’, systems, and the like, then it is these that surround and impact (I think you use the word ‘perturb’ in your work?) object reality, not any abstract space-time concept. How can these contingent environmental forces and factors be anything less than crucial when it comes to theorising and determining ‘difference’? (Hmmm… I recall you giving an example in ‘The Democracy of Objects’ of trees being shaped by wind.) Isn’t this an argument for rather than against the traditional space-time argument, if or when the latter is perceived as an environmental system with all its contingent specificities?
So I find myself thinking that universality of form is displayed in multifarious ways in empirical reality due to spatio-temporal contingencies that exist from one location to the next. And if it were possible to remove the ‘location’ factor from the spatio-temporal equation, then objects simultaneously occupying exactly the same spatial location, as per the observation above, would automatically erase ‘difference’. In such a situation, multiplicity would disappear and what would be left would be ‘uni-versal’ in a sense that seems quite easy for me to understand.
So conceptually concertining (hope this is a word, my word-processor doesn’t like it!) and compressing diverse objects into the same spatial location seems to provide a perspective on universality which, when reversed by the act of space being fanned out again, creates a warped, stretched strata whose pulling apart is birth to many individuated ‘parts’. (Please excuse my gradual slide into indulgence and an over-lengthy ‘comment’!)
Before I finish, I would like to say something quickly about the ideas that emerged for me in your ethical section. Going back to the image of sub-atomic space-time anarchy sitting at the core of object reality that is itself determined by the self-cohering properties of forms, that these contradictory factors exist as a coextensive/co-dependent simultaneity implies/provides an example for an ethics that equates individuation with group, and vice versa. That the seeming opposition between these two ways of functioning is, in all instances, ‘form’ building.
So I agree with your last challenge to object-oriented philosophy; ethical and political questions may fruitfully be assisted by a focus on the nature of the (to me at this point in time) ‘mysterious’ relations that make disparate elements (assemblages) cohere. There is obviously no lack of theory or wisdom regarding this ‘coherent’ (relational) factor from diverse fields – sociology, psychology, politics, economics, philosophy, etc. – but what new insights may an object-oriented philosophy grounded in empirical reality bring to the party? And from this, crucially, what ‘forms’ may emerge or be selected that are conducive to better socio-political relations between people?
I hope these thoughts are of some interest. I know your posting provided me with a lot more than I am able to counter-provide as a response. Mostly, I want to thank you for your stimulating ideas and clarity of insight. (Also, feel free to remove this comment if it is too long.)
Kindly
C.J.
February 13, 2012 at 10:44 pm
Can someone help me figure out who is representing Object Oriented Philosophy in this post? I’m still trying to figure out the distinctions among OOP, OOO, and speculative realism.
February 13, 2012 at 11:29 pm
Hi Jacob,
The relationship between SR, OOO, and OOP is a relation between genus and species. SR is a genus that refers to contemporary realist ontologies as opposed to anti-realist ontologies. The genus divides into various species: speculative materialism, object-oriented ontology, transcendental materialism/neo-vitalism, transcendental nihilism/methodological naturalism. Object-oriented ontology functions, in its turn, as a genus that breaks down into further species: object-oriented philosophy (Harman), onticology (Bryant), actor-network theory (Latour), agential realism (Barad), vitalistic materialism (Bennett), etc. All variants of object-oriented ontology share the thesis that the world is composed of substances, but they differ as to the nature of these substances and their positions regarding relations.
February 14, 2012 at 2:49 am
Joseph,
Do you identify yourself as a great defender of OOP? Because It seems to me you are more concerned with defending the OOP system than you are with considering the arguments.
If you have arguments against what Levi has written here please share them.
February 14, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Michael:
I am public supporter and fan of both onticology and object-oriented philosophy. Onticology and OOP have had, up to this point, nonantagonistic differences and fault lines due to different heritages, French and German, respectively. I don’t wish either to be homogenized in the other.
There can and should be disagreements between them. This post above isn’t a series of disagreements but an actively contentious and belligerent attack on object-oriented philosophy. You want a good response to these remarks above? Try the introduction to The Democracy of Objects for a start. Then read chapter 2.2, “Aristotle, Substance, Qualities.” And 3.3, “Virtual Proper Being.” Then 5.2, “Parts and Wholes: The Strange Mereology of Object-Oriented Ontology.” All of these arguments show onticology’s real indebtedness and difference from Aristotle, Deleuze and OOP. But where is the repudiation and criticism of Deleuze in this post above? Or Luhmann? Or Lacan? Onticology takes from all these thinkers, but always in a critical fashion. Why single out OOP for such intense critique? No, something else is at work here.
This isn’t about onticology v OOP, or Levi v Graham. It’s more onticology against itself, or against this now unrecognizable sibling.
I will continue to publicly to support onticology and OOP for their dedication to a thoroughly speculative realist approach to the world. But this post above is, just in purely philosophical terms, and in a way that won’t serve an onticological approach to social and political questions, intellectual recidivism.
Levi, you want good philosophical reasons why abandoning any and all sense of unity or identity won’t work? Read your own book. It’s quite excellent on these very points.
February 14, 2012 at 4:51 pm
Joseph,
I am deeply perplexed by your remarks and am particularly troubled by the way in which the Lacanian Imaginary is entering into what should be a philosophical discussion. Nothing you cite from The Democracy of Objects differs from what I have argued in this post. I have argued for years that identity and unity are not foundational to objects, but rather are effects of more primordial activity arising out multiplicity and difference. This is the whole point of my repeated discussions of the problem of entropy with respect to objects, and I have even written articles on Derrida such as “The Time of the Object” attempting to show how the unity and identity of the object arise out of differential processes. All I have attempted to do in this post is respond to some rather cheap criticisms Harman recently directed my way regarding the role that multiplicities and difference (shots that he’s directed my way on a number of occasions). In those remarks– and I don’t care to link to them because I don’t want to make this personal as you’re doing here –suggested that there weren’t any compelling reasons to deploy these concepts but rather that criticism of Aristotle, Plato, and Husserl simply arise– and this is almost a verbatum quote –out of seeing them as “boring middle-agers with retrograde ideas”. In other words, he charges my motivations with being ad hominem. In this post I try to show what considerations about the problematic nature of substance lead me to deploy the concepts of difference and multiplicity in my own ontology. In other words, I try to recount the problems and philosophical soil out of which my own concepts and solutions arise. I have also attempted to indicate those points at which I believe the solutions of object-oriented philosophy are inadequate and why I therefore do not advocate Harman’s ontology.
I have never hidden the fact that I believe onticology and object-oriented philosophy are quite different ontologies that are even opposed on a number of points. To be sure, I’ve often passed over these points of strong disagreement in silence or without naming names because I thought it best simply to develop my own positions and because I do share Harman’s commitment to the existence of substance while disagreeing significantly with how he conceptualizes substance. I have also had strong concerns with the politics I see arising from object-oriented philosophy for quite some time, but rather than directly criticizing this I have instead attempted to show how I believe onticology is able to resolve these problems. Nothing in my remarks here anywhere approaches the harshness of Harman’s public treatment of figures such as Parikka, Robin Mackey, Brassier, Metzinger, Laruelle, and a host of others at the level of graduate students. I have attempted to keep things above board, at the level of philosophical problems, arguments, and concepts, rather than getting personal and do not feel anything I’ve said rises to the level of those attacks. You, however, seem to be treating this as some sort of personal betrayal and as beyond the pale, rather than treating it as a perfectly legitimate run of the mill set of philosophical divergences. You seem to be stirring the post trying to instigate a blog flamewar by personalizing thing rather than attending to the issues and their merits. I especially don’t like being placed in the position of making these remarks publicly as you have forced me to do, as it personalizes what should instead be a matter of philosophical thought independent of personalities and alliances. Given the choice between a anti-realist constructivist and Harman I absolutely side with Harman, but that doesn’t entail that I share all of his positions or don’t see problems with his anti-materialism, rejection of process, his account of withdrawal, or the underdeveloped politics I see in his position. I don’t really think this is news to either Harman or the attentive reader.
February 14, 2012 at 10:47 pm
Can’t wait for the debate to really get going– I’m sure it will be a great one and I’ll be taking notes!
February 14, 2012 at 10:58 pm
And one addendum: I hope it goes down in such a way that OOO is still a somewhat unified object at the end, whatever internal frissions erupt from it’s molten core. All of you OOOers have created something very unique together, and I for one hope to see it survive and grow beyond its first major internal debate.
February 15, 2012 at 12:40 am
its not it’s
February 15, 2012 at 8:26 pm
In the above to Joseph, Larval Subjects remarks that much of OOP has focused on persons and not on larger group objects/institutions. I was thinking about this a long time ago and a colleague of mine suggested that for ethical inquiry you need a mid-level metaphysics. You need values, persons and the intersubjectivity to name a few things. You do not need anything larger, and so the question posed to LS: Is there an ethical orientation that might explain why so many of the thinkers have given preference to persons and not institutions?
March 4, 2012 at 7:07 pm
[…] Here are some remarks from Levi Bryant on the Aristotelian concept of Substance. Among other thesis, he argues that accounting for individual objects as (primary) substances needs to be borne on the concepts of difference and multiplicities instead of on that of form. Bryant highlights three areas in which Aristotelian Substance (or the “essentialism”) seems to be problematic: Ontological problems, Empirical problems and Political problems. The Political problems are of great relevance because, it seems to me, the OOP needs to detailed account for ethical principles and political practices from an ontological perspective (what remains to be done). Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. This entry was posted in OOP and tagged Aristotle, Difference, Substance by charles borges. Bookmark the permalink. […]