유한성 이후 우연성의 필연성에 관한 시론 | 개정증보판
퀑탱 메이야수 저자(글) · 정지은 번역
b · 2024년 06월 28일
가장 최근에 출시된 개정판입니다. 구판보기
책 소개
이 책이 속한 분야국내도서 > 인문 > 철학 > 교양철학
“사변적 실재론,
이제 절대적인 것을 사유할 때가 되었다.”
1. 이 책을 발행하며
「유한성 이후: 우연성의 필연성에 관한 시론 」는 도서출판b에서 2010년에 완역 출간된 바 있던 퀑탱 메이야수의 Après la finitude: Essai sur le nécessité de la contingence (Éditions du Seuil, 2006)의 개정증보판이다. 저자 메이야수는 2012년에 1장의 후반부를 증보하여 재출간하는데, 이번에 새롭게 재출간하는 한국어판은 그 증보된 내용을 모두 반영했다.
이 책에서 메이야수는 데카르트, 칸트, 흄에 대한 비판적 독서를 통해 형이상학적 신과는 다른 절대자, 절대적인 것을 추론해 낸다. 이를 위해 그가 문제 삼는 것은 근현대 철학의 주류, ‘상관주의’다. 대상과 주체 간의 관계에서 주체는 대상에 대해 인식할 수 있는 것만을 알 수 있으며, 주체가 인식할 수 없는 것은 그에게 존재하지 않는다는, 즉 주체와 대상 간에는 언제나 ‘상관적’(correlational) 관계가 있음을 주장하는 상관주의는 칸트의 인식론에서 시작해, 하이데거와 니체, 비트겐슈타인을 거치며 철학의 주류가 된다. 알 수 없는 것은 알 수 없다는 상관주의는 결국 상대주의를 낳았으며, 인간의 유한성을 확고하게 함으로써 허무주의로 향할 수밖에 없다. 메이야수는 모든 절대자에 대한 사유를 폐기하는 데 결정적인 역할을 했던 ‘상관주의’를 비판의 표적으로 삼으면서, 사변적 사유에 의해 절대자에 대한 사유를 회복시키려고 시도한다.
메이야수는 우선 철학사에서는 존재하지 않았던 ‘선조성’이라는 신조어를, 즉 인간이 존재하기 이전의 사실들을 진술하는 과학 담화의 성격을 지시하는 단어를 만들어 낸 후 질문을 던진다. ‘인간적인 것을 비워낸 세계, 사물들, 그리고 현시와 비-상관적인 사건들로 가득 찬 세계의 기술을 허락하는 것은 무엇인가?’, ‘어떻게 존재는 현시에 대한 존재의 선행성을 현시할 수 있을까?’ 다시 말해, 그는 인간과 인간적 사유가 존재하지 않을 때도 존재하는 것이 실재적이라는 것을 어떻게 증명할 수 있을지를 묻는다. 이 책의 목적 가운데 하나는 상관주의가 그런 진술들의 객관적 타당성을 설명할 수 없다는 것을 증명하는 데 있다. 게다가 우리는 이 책을 읽으면서 상관주의라는 현대의 지배적인 철학이 그토록 오랫동안 선조적 진술의 자명성을 부인해 왔다는 데 놀랄 것이다.
모든 형태의 상관주의는 ‘선조적인 것’의 연대를 추적할 수 있는 가능성을 부인하지 않지만 조건을 단다. 그런데 이 조건 자체가 절대자를 인식할 수 없다는 자신의 유한성을 증명하는 결과를 낳는다. 그리하여 메이야수는 선비판적 독단주의로 다시금 추락하지 않으면서도 절대자를 감당할 수 있는 절대론적 절차를 제시한다. 그것은 ‘비(非)이성’의 원리의 공식화이며, 그 요지는 사유 형식의 사실성 자체를 사실성을 넘어서는 것으로 고려하는 것이다. 따라서 실재는 근거 없이 존재하는 존재자의 우연성을 필연적인 것으로 정립할 때 획득된다.
메이야수의 논증적 절차는 두 개의 존재론적 진술들로 요약된다: ‘필연적 존재자는 불가능하다’, ‘존재자의 우연성은 필연적이다.’ 이 두 테제는 메이야수의 사변적 유물론의 토대를 형성한다. 그리하여 이제 절대자는 사유에 의해 도출되는 것이 아니라 수학적 사변에 의해, 신이나 뛰어난 지성으로부터 빌려온 신비적인 물리적 필연성의 옷을 입지 않고도 존재할 수 있게 된다.
결국 메이야수는 과학의 뒤를 따라붙던 철학의 위상을 전복시키고, 과학의 실효성을 인정하면서 그로부터 절대자에 대한 사변을 시작할 것을 요청한다. 관건은 과학이 철학에게 건네는 다음의 질문을 어떻게 해결하는가에 달려있다. ‘거기에 사유가 없는데도 불구하고, 어떻게 사유는 실제적으로 존재할 수 있는 것을 사유할 수 있는가? 그러한 사유는 어떻게 재정의되어야 하는가?’
메이야수 철학의 적극적 소개자이자 프랑스 철학 박사인 정지은은 이번 개정증보판 발간을 위해 2010년의 초판 번역을 전면적으로 손봤다. 현대철학의 가장 강력한 조류가 된 사변적 실재론의 주창자인 메이야수의 주저를 읽음으로써, 우리는 다시금 절대적인 것을 찾으려는 새로운 철학 운동의 맨 앞을 함께 할 수 있을 것이다.
작가정보
저자(글) 퀑탱 메이야수
인물정보
철학자 대학/대학원 교수
(Quentin Meillassoux)
1967년 파리에서 태어나 고등사범학교를 졸업하고 1997년 파리1대학 팡테옹-소르본에서 베르나르 부르주아의 지도하에 「신의 비실존, 잠재적 신에 대한 시론」으로 박사 학위를 받았다. 2002년에 알랭 바디우, 이브 뒤루와 함께 국제 현대 프랑스 철학 연구 센터(CIEPFC)의 창립에 참여하였다. 2007년 영국 골드스미스 칼리지에서 레이 브래시어, 그레이엄 하먼 등과 함께 상관주의 철학을 비판하고 절대를 복권시키려는 새로운 철학 운동을 주창함으로써 오늘날 ‘사변적 실재론’이라 불리는 철학 조류를 이끌고 있다. 현재 파리1대학 팡테옹-소르본의 교수로 재직 중이며, 저서로는 「유한성 이후」, 「수와 사이렌」, 「생성 없는 시간」 등이 있다.
접기
형이상학과 과학 밖 소설
번역 정지은
인물정보
대학/대학원 교수 철학자
홍익대 교양대학 조교수. 연세대 생물학과를 졸업하고 홍익대 대학원 미학과에서 수학한 뒤, 프랑스 부르고뉴대학교에서 철학석사 및 박사학위를 취득했다. 주요 연구 분야는 프랑스 현상학과 예술철학이다. 저서로 「말: 감각의 형태」, 「처음 읽는 프랑스 현대철학」(공저), 「신유물론: 몸과 물질의 행위성」(공저) 등이 있고, 옮긴 책으로 「유한성 이후」, 「동물들의 세계와 인간의 세계」, 「몸: 하나이고 여럿인 세계에 관하여」, 「철학자 오이디푸스」 등이 있다.
접기
초연결시대의 그늘 치유론적 탐색
말: 감각의 형태
신유물론: 몸과 물질의 행위성
몸
철학자 오이디푸스(양장본 Hardcover)
동물들의 세계와 인간의 세계
작가의 말
옮긴이의 말
“메이야수는 강한 상관주의가 절대자의 불가능성을 선언하면서 이성을 온갖 종교적 신화에 노출시켰다고 진단 내린다. 형이상학과 절대자의 관념이 낡았다는 주장과 함께 종교는 유일신을 증명하려는 노력을 포기하고, 대신 온갖 종류의 신앙을 허용하게 되었다. 현대 철학 역시 종교의 이런 탈절대화적 양상을 좇고 있는 것처럼 보인다. 이렇듯 상관주의로부터 파생된 사유의 경향들 속에서, 메이야수의 사변적 실재론은 바디우가 서문에서 말하고 있듯이 ‘사유의 운명이-‘종교적인 것의 복귀’가 영혼의 허구적 보충물을 제공해 주는 가운데 우리가 자족해 하는 저 단편들과 부분적 관계들이 아니라-절대적인 것이라는 사실을 다시금 정당화한다’. 그는 이 첫 저서에서 회의주의적, 혹은 신앙절대론적인 경향의 현대 철학에 맞서서 다시금 절대적인 것에 대한 사변을 시작할 것을 우리에게 촉구한다. 그렇지만 그는 현재의 시각에서 일종의 사유의 감행일 수 있는 절대자의 회복을 단순히 주장하는 대신-사실상 우리가 대다수의 현대 철학자들에게서 발견하는 것은 어떤 프로파간다적 형태다-매우 세련된, 그렇지만 동시에 매우 과감한 논증의 방식으로 그 타당성을 전개하고 있다. 그리하여 아리아드네의 실을 따라가듯이 그의 논증을 따라가는 것이 이 책의 독서에 있어 또 다른 즐거움을 안겨줄 것이다.”
접기
목차
서문 알랭 바디우
선조성
형이상학, 신앙절대론, 사변
본사실성의 원리
흄의 문제
프톨레마이오스의 복수
책 속으로
“용어를 정하자. -우리는 인간 종의 출현에 선행하는-심지어 집계된 지구상의 전 생명 형태에 선행하는-실재 전부를 선조적인 것이라고 명명한다. ” (1장. 선조성)
“과학자는 자신이 기술하는바 선조적 사건이 확실히 일어났다고 단호한 방식으로 말하지는 않을 것이다. 적어도 칼 포퍼 이래 우리는 실험과학을 통해 발전된 모든 이론이 원리상 수정될 수 있다는 것을 잘 알고 있다. 다시 말해 우리는 더 다듬어지거나 경험에 더 일치하는 이론을 위해 선행하는 이론이 거부될 수 있다는 것을 잘 알고 있다. 그렇지만 그렇다고 해서 자신의 진술이 참이라고 가정할 이유가 있다고 과학자가 생각하는 것을 막지는 못할 것이다. 사건은 결과적으로 그가 기술하는 바대로 일어났을 수 있고, 또 다른 이론이 그의 기술을 밀어내기 전까지 그가 재구성한 기술로 사건의 실존을 인정한다는 건 합법적이다. 그리고 어찌 되었든 그의 이론이 거부된다면, 이는 여전히 선조적 영역에 대한 또 다른 이론을 위해서, 그 또한 참이라고 가정된 또 다른 이론을 위해서일 뿐이다. 그러므로 데카르트적 관점에서, 선조적 진술들은 실험과학이 발전하는 가운데 주어진 어느 순간에 바로 그 과학에 의해 유효성을 인정받는 한 그 지시물들이(과거의 것이라고 할지라도) 실재로서 제시될 수 있는 진술이다.” (1장. 선조성)
“그러므로 우리는 질문을 이렇게 재정식화할 수 있다. 어떤 조건에서 우리는 현대 과학의 선조적 진술들을 합법화할 수 있는가? 이것은 특수성을 지닌 선험적 방식의 질문이다. 그리고 그 특수성이란 선험적인 것의 포기를 제1조건으로 삼는다는 것이다. 이 질문은 우리가 선조성을 문제처럼 여기지 않는 두 가지 방식인 소박한 실재론과 상관주의적 능란함, 모두에 대해 동등하게 거리를 유지할 것을 요청한다. 우리는 (소박한 실재론자와는 반대로) 상관관계적 원환의 외관상 피할 수 없는 힘을, 그리고 (상관주의자와는 반대로) 그러한 상관관계적 원환과 선조성의 돌이킬 수 없는 양립 불가능성을 머릿속에 새기고 있어야 한다. 요컨대 이와 관련해서 우리는 비-철학에 비해 철학이 갖는 이점은, 강력한 의미에서, 철학자만이 선조적 진술의 오로지 문자 그대로의 의미에 대해 놀라워할 수 있다는 것임을 이해해야 한다. 선험적인 것의 덕은 실재론을 환영적인 것으로 만드는 데 있는 것이 아니라 몹시 놀라운 것으로- 사유 불가능한 것처럼 보이지만 참된, 그런 자격에서 근본적으로 문제적인 것으로-만드는 데 있다.” (1장. 선조성)
“이제는 형이상학적 질문들을 제기하는 게 중요하지 않은데, 왜냐하면 그 질문들은 질문의 외양만을 가진, 혹은 회복 불가능할 정도로 시효를 상실한 질문들이기 때문이다. 그러나 그것들은 궁극적으로 형이상학에 대한 질문들이거나 그것과 관련된 질문들이다. 그런데 이제 우리는 형이상학적 질문들의 불용성[해결 불가능성]에 대한 현대적 믿음이 이성 원리에 대한 항구적 믿음의 결과일 뿐이라는 것을 포착한다. 왜냐하면 사변은 결국 그와 같은 존재의 궁극적 이유를 발견하는 것이라고 계속해서 믿는 자만이 또한 형이상학적 질문들이 그 어떤 해결의 희망도 제공하지 않는다는 것을 믿기 때문이다. 형이상학적 문제에 대한 대답의 본질이 하나의 원인, 하나의 필연적 이유를 발견하는 데 있다고 믿는 자만이 그러한 문제들이 해답을 결코 얻지 못할 것이라고 판단할 수 있으며, 이는 정당하다. 사유의 한계들에 대한 담화, 이제 우리는 그것이 형이상학에 대한 부인을 유지하는 태도에서 유래한다는 것을 안다. 따라서 형이상학의 진정한 종언은 용해로부터 과거의 질문들의 침전을 끌어내는 것을 목표로 하는 기획처럼 우리에게 드러난다- 결국 형이상학적 질문들은 최고의 합법성을 되돌려 받게 된다. 왜냐하면 형이상학의 질문들을 해소하면 할수록, 우리는 형이상학의 본질을, 형이상학이 자신의 근본적인 공준을 포기하지 않고서는 해결할 수 없는 문제들의 산출처럼 이해할 수 있을 것이기 때문이다. 즉 오로지 이성 원리의 포기만이 형이상학적 문제들에 의미를 부여할 수 있다.” (4장. 흄의 문제)
“틀림없이 사람들은 이와 같이 공식화된 질문이 여전히 모호하다고 생각할 것이다. 그러나 우리의 의도propos는 여기서 해결 그 자체를 다루는 게 아니었다. 과학의 코페르니쿠스주의와 철학의 프톨레마이오스주의 사이의 불일치가-그러한 분열이 유지될 수 있게 하는 부인否認들이 무엇이든지 간에-한없이 깊어만 가고 있는 시점에서, 사유의 절대적 영역을 재발견하는 게 가능할 뿐만 아니라 시급하다는 것을 설득시키려는 시도만이 우리에게 중요했다. 흄의 문제가 독단주의적 잠으로부터 칸트를 깨어나게 했다면, 사유와 절대적인 것 사이의 화해를 약속하는 선조성의 문제가 상관주의적 잠으로부터 우리를 깨어나게 할 수 있으리라고 기대해 보자.” (5장. 프톨레마이오스의 복수)
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발행(출시)일자 2024년 06월 28일
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종이책구매자so*****|2024.07.13|신고/차단
/최고예요
알라딘 중고에서 9만원이 넘게 팔리는 것을 보았다. 이번에 개정증보판으로 재발매되서 속 시원하다. 특이한 점은 책 표지가 고무재질로 코팅되었다는 것이다.(이전판은 양장본) 개인적으로 표지그림이 너무 촌스러운데 고무재질 때문에 고급스러운 것으로 왜곡?되어 보인다.
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종이책구매자lu********|2024.07.05|신고/차단
/추천해요
번역이 아주 만족스럽습니다.
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종이책구매자si******|2024.07.02|신고/차단
/집중돼요
우연성(으로서의 대상)의 (개연적 추론이라는) 필연성(을 통한 논증.) (feat. 바디우의 수학)
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문장수집 (2)
구매 후 리뷰 작성 시, e교환권 100원 적립내 독서기록문장수집 작성
경우들의 총체[총합]라는 개념, 즉 그로부터 분석에 놓이게 될 사건들이 나오게 되는 우주-전체의 이념을 없애라. 그러면 사행적 추론은 의미를 잃어버린다.
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ai****|2024.08.14| 신고/차단
메이야수의 증명은 (...) 사유를 (...) 고전 형이상학의 '필연론적' 주장을 해체함과 동시에 (...) '비판적' 분할을 해체하는 관계 안에 자리잡게 한다.
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si******|2024.07.02| 신고/차단
함께 구매한 상품
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Paperback
$39.99
After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency Paperback – Import, 5 November 2009
by Quentin Meillassoux (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 69 ratings
Offers readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy. This book introduces a philosophical alternative to the forced choice between dogmatism and critique.
Review
"After Finitude will certainly play a central role in ongoing debates on the status of philosophy, on questions pertaining to epistemology and, above all, to ontology. It will not only be an unavoidable point of reference for those working on the question of finitude, but also for those whose work deals with political theology, and the status of the religious turn of philosophy. After Finitude will certainly become an ideal corrosive against too rigid assumptions and will shake entrenched positions." - Gabriel Riera, University of Illinois, Chicago, in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2008
"Talented and exciting new voice in contemporary French philosophy" Bookseller Buyers Guide--Sanford Lakoff
"There is something absolutely exhilarating about Meillassoux's argument, and it is not difficult to see why his book has already aroused so much interest. The exposition and critique of correlationism is brilliant and Meillassoux is at his best when showing the philosophical complacency of contemporary Kantians and phenomenologists. The proposal of speculative realism is audacious and bracing, particularly when he defends the idea of nature as a 'glacial universe', cold and indeifferent to humans. Such is Pascal's 'Eternal silence of infinite spaces', but without the consolation of a wager of God's existence. However, by Mellassoux's own admission, his proposal is incomplete and we await its elaboration in future books. Although, his style of presentation can turn into a sort of fine-grained logic-chopping worthy of Duns Scotus, the rigour, clarity and passion of the argument can be breathtaking." - Simon Critchley, TLS, Feb 2009
'In his clearly argued essay, now available in an excellent English translation, the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux shows that subjectivity and objectivity must be conceived of independently of each other ... It is a truly philosophical work in that it develops the original idea of a speculative materialism with uncompromising passion and great consistency.' Alexander Garcia Duttmann, Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
'You may entirely disagree with the author's solution (I do) but not with the courage with which he proposes to escape from the prison of discourse and to put the much abused metaphor of the Copernican Revolution right at last.' Bruno Latour
'Rarely do we encounter a book which not only meets the highest standards of thinking, but sets up itself new standards, transforming the entire field into which it intervenes. Quentin Meillassoux does exactly this.' Slavoj Zizek
"Meillassoux addresses the question whether natural laws are necessary, and if so why, raised by Kant and gnawed by subsequent philosophers from Hume to Foucault. He offers a logical proof that the only feature of the laws of nature that is absolutely necessary is that they are contingent. He explores the ethical and metaphysical implications. Brassier translates Apres la finitude, which was published in 2006 by Editions du Seuil." -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc.
'A penetrating critique of the post-Kantian "correlationism" that has dominated philosophy on the European mainland over the last 250 years.' - Books of the Year, Times Literary Supplement
'An exceptionally clear and careful writer... Quentin Meillassoux launches a stinging attack upon the state of philosophy in general, and takes initial steps towards a form of speculative philosophy which, he thinks, overcomes the shortcomings he has identified.' - John Appleby, The Philosopher's Magazine, Issue 43, 4th Quarter 2008
"It's easy to see why Meillassoux's After Finitude has so quickly acquired something of a cult status among some readers who share his lack of reverance for 'the way things are'. The book is exceptionally clear and concise, entirely devoted to a single chain of reasoning. It combines a confident insitence on the self-sufficiency of rational demonstration with an equally rationalist suspicion of mere experience and consensus....[this] is a beautifully written and seductively argued book." - Peter Hallward, Radical Philosophy, 2008
Book Description
Now available for the first time in paperback, the remarkable debut of a former student of Alain Badiou. A work which makes a strikingly original contribution to contemporary French philosophy and is set to have a significant impact on the future of Continental philosophy.
About the Author
Alain Badiou teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, France. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works.
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Product details
Publisher : BLM ACADEMIC UK; 1st edition (5 November 2009)
Language : English
Paperback : 160 pages
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Matthew Rapaport
5.0 out of 5 stars Great example of modern philosophy bridging the realist-antirealist divideReviewed in the United States on 22 May 2017
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Meillassoux's writing reminds me much of other top tier philosophers of the present day like E. J. Lowe (recently passed away), David Chalmers and a few others. Not in what he says of course his starting points and subject are different, but stylistically, carefully crafting his arguments and at each point stopping to describe and evaluate alternatives advanced by his contemporaries and historical predecessors. In "After Finitude" he begins, conceptually, with Hume and Kant, accepting with the latter that the proper starting point for philosophy is the world experienced by humans; what can be thought, but rejecting in both the idea that we cannot come to "know", in the sense of rely-on experience, to deliver genuine insight into the world in itself.
Meillassoux rejects speculative metaphysics (mostly coming down these days to religion) and accepts the generally anti-realist notion that the Principle of Sufficient Reason, need not apply to the world apart from human experience of it, but holds that the principle of non-contradiction should not be abandoned. Even if we cannot conceptually embrace infinite possibility (totalize the world), it cannot be that the world contradicts itself. All of this comes down to there being no absolutes, no "necessary being" and no "thinkable totality of all possibility" except for the fact of contingency. The only absolute for Meillossoux is that everything is contingent and might have been other than it is.
But all of this leaves historical and present day (postmodern) anti-realists in the position of claiming that we cannot know anything beyond our experience at all, and it is this mistake that he aims to rectify. Despite his general acceptance of the Kantian starting point, he insists that the achievements of science over the last two centuries well demonstrate that we can discover (through an objectivity emerging from shared experience, the results of repeated observations and experiments) much that is true about the world of the past and the present even if such truth lacks the a priori assurance of mathematics.
That problem comes down to why, if it is correct to reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason for the world apart from human experience, the world, that is the laws of physics, seem to be so stable? If the history of the universe comes out to its not-necessary "facticity", that it is the way it is merely by chance, why aren't the laws and regularities constantly changing rendering our ability to comprehend anything, even to be conscious at all, impossible? Kant's answer to Hume was that the stability is only the effect of the categories of our consciousness, and if the in-itself (Kant's noumenon) were not stable there couldn't be any consciousness in the first place. But Kant accepted the Principle of Sufficient Reason which Meillassoux rejects. Instead he points out than an unstable in-itself might appear stable for long periods (essentially an anthropic argument). Instability need not mean moment-by-moment instability.
Meillassoux argument rests itself on our ability to "mathematize" our shared experience. That we can describe phenomena in-the-world in mathematical terms and discover not only that 2+2=4 (a priori) but also that E=mc^2 (a posteriori) speaks to us of the world's stability. But he never quite gets around to telling us how mathematics grounds the stability. Indeed I do not see how it can because if it did, that would render the world necessary.
But there is a further problem here. If instability were really a quality of the in-itself and the universe was infinitely (or trillions of years) old, a few tens of billions of years of stability would not be problematic. But if he is right about the meaningfulness of scientific discoveries, then the universe is only 13.8 billion years old and yet the laws have been stable at least since the moment of nucleosynthisis a second or so after the big bang. That means the laws have been the same for 13.8 billion years minus 1 second! Extraordinary stability indeed!
To sum up, a beautifully written book, well argued, a delight to read, with many insights into the relation between human experience (the for-us) and the antecedent (the for-itself) world. But it doesn't quite finish the job, something Meillassoux says he must let go of (for now I presume) at the end of the book. A fantastic example of how good philosophy is done even if, in my humble opinion of course, he begins from the wrong starting point and never quite finishes.
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5 people found this helpfulReport
Iain Cameron
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 April 2018
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fine
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Nicole des Bouvrie
4.0 out of 5 stars Important book in contemporary thoughtReviewed in Germany on 14 February 2016
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A short yet very provocative book which outlines the present clash between idealism and realism - and tries to overcome it in a new and thought provoking way. I'm not sure I agree with it all, but definitely a book I will refer back to many times in the future.
Very readable, although it probably helps if you already have a little of a background knowledge in philosophy. Yet he explains everything very simply, and his kind of dialogue between the different schools of thought as a kind of theatre play make it come alive for the reader. Very well done!
3 people found this helpfulReport
ghostfinder
1.0 out of 5 stars 誰もかれもこれを理解しやすいというが、私はかなり難儀した。まだわかったと言う自信はないReviewed in Japan on 3 July 2020
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なぜ相関主義が正しいのか。いかなる主観によっても存在の絶対性に到達するからである。カントが間違っているのは、彼のいわゆるヌーメノンが未来の、あるいは想像上の視点をも巻き込む限り、神の視点でも到達不可能になってしまうからだ。つまりそれは宇宙の全体性（＝神）をもってしても存在に到達できないということで、最初から矛盾含みだから
その意味で、カント以降の哲学に対する批判はある程度その通り。しかし、その向こう側を探るのではなく、全く放棄してしまうことが唯一の対処法だと思われる
数学とは、特殊な言語活動であり、その意味で限りなく主観的な行為である。だから、客観の向こう側に達するために数学的手法に頼るのは本末転倒ではないか。この点で、科学が数学的記法に傾くことを誤解する向きが多いが、それは主観と客観を対立概念と間違って考えているからである。主観と客観は同じ方向に存在する（だからいかなる主観も存在の絶対性に到達可能なのだ）。純粋数学は純粋な言語活動であり、世界の形式を数学的に述べることは主観を突き詰める行為である。しかしメイヤスーの哲学は言語の暴走、全くのファンタジーではなかろうか
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Arch Stanton
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 June 2016
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Superb!
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Szplug
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August 21, 2016
Incredibly interesting and, in all likelihood, philosophically important, but not something I'd call a whole whackadoodle of fun. For the second time in a row, a French philosopher has—at least via translation—composed his thought in a way that strives for clarity and readability, which has so impressed me that I shall no longer sub in the words Benelux(er*) Bay when I'm singing along to Ænema.
And as for Meillassoux's contention?** More or less, as far as I can determine it, a hearty Hey, you Post-critical Correlationists, Ancestrality has fucked you up, big time, such that you're either retrojecting or dogmatizing. Deal. Plus, something about math—All those aspects of the object that can be formulated in mathematical terms can be meaningfully conceived as properties of the object in-itself. What really tugged on my lederhosen was Meillassoux's meticulously-drawn contention that the current prevalence of what he calls strong correlationism—the offshots of Wittgenstein and Heidegger—have beaten back the weak correlationism held by the Kantians such that the absolute and the in-itself have been released from unthinkability beyond that of the rationally knowable, to the degree that Fideism has become the obverse of Correlationism. The death of metaphysics means that every religion has been freed to abandon (sufficient) reason and embrace faith as its sole source, consequently leaving philosophy incapable of challenging its determined belief on anything other than the moral/ethical plane; so it is that the waning of dogmatism has seen a waxing of fundamentalism, fideism making claims about an Absolute unknowable and unthinkable through reason but unchallengeable by the same against faith due to the very constraints of strong for-ourself correlationism. It's yet another Post-Enlightenment Festivus miracle!
And while I'm not tooting my own horn, I have to cop to having pondered, back in my Cyclonopedia days, how philosophy would account for the cosmos during those several billions of years pre-conscious beings; or, to be more precise, back in the period of inflation and/or the Big Bang, considering that the latter would have consisted of a singularity, unimpeded by the physical laws of spacetime, and, un-as an absolute thing-in-itself plus every conceivable future thing-in-itself and subjectivity compressed into an infinitely massive null point in an unformed space fully potential with forthcoming extension and manifestation, I pondered How would one account for this wombed universal pre-ejaculate? Unfortunately, contra Meillassoux, my considered conjecture ended up being, as often has proved the case, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever. Yet it remains so intriguing, particularly in the light of the quantum indeterminacies that were such a revelatory part of twentieth century science; in a universe sans any manner of sentient being, does the lack of observer mean that the universe, notwithstanding its more primordial, hotter composition, would not be progressing/expanding/cohering in a manner that would be logically and chronologically consistent to our own mental processing of spacetime? Impossible to calculate, because any intervention by thought, even retrojected from our current cosmo-temporal position, would bring to bear all of the formational properties of an observing eye; but does its unthinkability necessitate that it was a universe of unbeing? Could it, more or less, be stated to have not properly existed, as we understand the meaning of that word, ere sentient witnesses? But how, then, to account for the rise of those sentient beings in the first place? This is the realm into which Meillassoux attempts to bring philosophy, through his conception of Ancestrality, roughly the first 4.5 billion years of the universe; and I found it rewarding, even though yet quite confusing in its multiplicity of specific terminologies and meticulous reasoning, whose important positions within Meillassoux's argumentative chain I frequently (and unfortunately) had to implicitly accept in order to proceed with the whole. The bottom line is that this, as with most every philosophical work I have encountered, requires multiple readings if all of its speculative potentialities are to be realized in an effective manner by the reader—most especially this reader. What's wonderful about it is that Meillassoux writes so lucidly and agreeably that doing so will prove an anticipated pleasure, not a chore. I hold that to be a significant accomplishment within the world of modern philosophy.
*This admittedly awkward -er was appended purely to maintain the syllable meter.
**I hope to flesh this out more in the manner that Meillassoux's hard work deserves. It's just that it's too nice outside to be slipping into the critical form required to wend a non-return to Cartesian primary and secondary qualities to take account of mathematics as an entity-less Absolute since Ancestrality and its Arche-Fossil have forced Post-critical philosophy to contemplate the Great Outdoors of an absolutely contingent Speculative Realism such that a resurgent Fideism may be challengeable, via the non-Entity, Un-Givenness Absolute derived from Correlational Facticity, on its own faith-limned grounds and beyond the merely moral/ethical.
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Jonathan Norton
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January 1, 2013
This book is mainly interesting for what it reveals about the state of French philosophy at the time it was written, rather than breaking any new ground for philosophy in general. Apparently the author and his colleagues are completely unaware of any analytic philosophy since about 1950, and think that it can be covered with brief references to "positivism" and a short discussion of one remark from the Tractatus.
Meillasoux starts with 2 key propositions: first, that "modern philosophy" is committed to varying forms of what he calls "correlationism". Secondly, he says that correlationism cannot accommodate "ancestrality", which is the problem that modern science posits events and entities that existed before any sentient beings existed to observe them. With regard to "correlationism", the first thing to note is that it is simply not true that modern Anglophone philosophy is in any way committed to it, in fact plenty of its practitioners would find nothing problematic about ancestrality. Only on the assumption that some form of logical positivism still reigns would that be the case.
But never mind about that. Meillasoux does not seem to have a consistent characterisation of what "correlationism" is, at least not one that has a *specific* problem with ancestrality. If we are to read it as a form of what Kant dubbed "empirical idealism", then it has to declare ancestral statements meaningless; but it has to do the same for objects that lack present observers. QM portrays the correlationist as rejecting such a view, and instead claiming something more like Kant's transcendental idealism, capable of appealing to counterfactuals about possible-but-not-actual observers. In which case the correlationist has no problem with ancestrality, and they would also be quite correct to rebut QM as mistaking transcendental conditions for physical ones, which is the next reply he considers. But QM thinks this strategy fails due to the requirement for *actual observers* to exist at a time. In that case correlationism fails, but it fails because it is in fact empirical idealism over again (a charge QM also suggests against it, at various places), and again, there is no *special* problem about ancestrality.
It strikes me the author simply doesn't have a consistent target in "correlationism" and is conflating together quite distinct positions; in any case the question he doesn't ask (which a genuine positivist like Ayer would do) is in what sense "correlationism" differs from realism, if it can avail itself about counterfactuals about unobserved things. What makes those counterfactuals true?
But never mind: if it were true that science and correlationism conflict, what of it? Who has the higher authority? Why not take the stand of philosophy against mere "scientism"? The accusation usually made against post-Quinean naturalist Anglophone philosophy is that it cedes all to the scientists and leaves out all the human-centred insights that only the continentals still care about. Meillasoux seems quite uncritical with regard to statements about "arche-fossils", and the nearest we get to an argument for their acceptance is that rejecting ancestrality would be tantamount to agreeing with Young Earth Creationists. I suppose YECism is a genuine case of correlationism (God, being eternal, always observes all that exists), but merely agreeing about that detail doesn't make one a reactionary. It seems that QM is drawing his metaphysics to suit his politically-charged outlook, and being quite "scientistic" about it.
He also has a line that correlationism has encouraged attitudes of cultural relativism in the West and prevents intellectuals challenging the rise of new religious attitudes; all that sounds jolly good but it is simply recapping the anti-postmodernist polemics of the 90s. This is all right, but it isn't new.
The middle section of the book is taken up with the attempt to break "the correlationist circle", by demonstrating that the law of non-contradiction applies to statements about the noumenal world. The trouble with this demonstration is that it depends on treating the "contradictory object" as if it were contradictory in ALL respects; but only 1 aspect would be needed for a contradictory object. Surprisingly, QM immediately acknowledges to problem, and that his demonstration is treating of *inconsistent* rather than contradictory objects. Unfortunately he simply brackets the problem for later resolution, which means the book doesn't exactly live up to the billing Alain Badiou gives it in the introduction.
The final section of the book is QM's attempt to sketch how he relates science at the phenomenal level to the "absolutist" basis he tried to establish earlier. The argument depended on the denial of any necessary beings or connections in the universe; so we need an explanation of how science could be possible in such a realm. It's here that QM really could do with having read some analytic metaphysics from the past 40 years, since the view he is trying to ground seems not very far away from the one David Lewis worked on and published so much about. Non-necessitarian theories of laws are not new, they were the prevailing view in Anglo departments, at least up to the 90s.
Altogether none of this seems to me as wrong or definitely misguided, though the central argument about contradiction and necessity is inadequate (as admitted), and I am not convinced about exactly what "correlationism" is, or whether it has a crucial problem with ancestrality. I think Meillasoux and the rest of the "speculative realists" could gain a lot from engaging with Theodore Sider and at least a dozen other writers writing about metaphyics and epistemology in English; I'm not sure they have anything startlingly different to offer in exchange. This seems to mark the end of "continental philosophy" as an antithetical project to the analytical one.
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Jonfaith
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September 3, 2020
There is no longer a mystery, not because there is no longer a problem, but because there is no longer a reason.
This was a struggle, a text deserving a week of holiday rather than the first days of the month at work. After Finitude required extensive rereading in order to convince this addled wastrel. Kant's Transcendental Idealism is limited to what the author deigns correlationism: the relationship between subject and object and as such doesn't allow matters outside this dynamic, all the while announcing the end of Absolutes and other metaphysical suppositions.
Meillassoux announces that mathematics as an underpinning of science i.e. repeatability is the longed for triumph, a lodestar on the quest for a speculative realism. There's a certain darkness in this explanation. I did appreciate despite my being an idiot that this text wasn't a polemic but rather an effort at a secular however abysmal illumination. That's me, still searching for a metanarrative.
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Michal Lipták
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April 10, 2020
I’ve been trained in phenomenology but I’m open to criticism. And Meillassoux does provide a criticism – o boy, is he fed up with phenomenology. The problem is, tho, that his criticism is quite straw-man-y.
To be more precise, Meillassoux’s beef is with what he calls “correlationism”, a mixture which includes Kant as original sinner and then various folks from Nietzsche to Deleuze to Wittgenstein. But also phenomenology, of course. So let me assume he means phenomenology: I’ll say “phenomenology” where he says “correlationism” from now on.
Meillassoux somehow thinks that since phenomenology is so focused on consciousness – and its constituting power –, it can’t make sense of “ancestral” statements – statements about the being of the universe before the conscious life came to be. OK, I never stumbled on this being a particular problem in my years of studying Husserl (it is a problem, sure, but so are many other things, see below), but I’m curious what M. has to offer. The things are not to a good start when M. thinks that this is somehow a gotcha question (p. 16):
“Now, why is this interpretation of ancestrality obviously insupportable? Well, to understand why, all we have to do is ask the correlationist [phenomenologist] the following question: what is it that happened 4.56 billion years ago? Did the accretion of the earth happen, yes or no?
In one sense, yes, the correlationist [phenomenologist] will reply, because the scientific statements pointing to such an event are objective, in other words, intersubjectively verifiable. But in another sense, no, she will go on, because the referent of such statements cannot have existed in the way in which it is naïvely described, i.e. as non-correlated with a consciousness.”
Eh, false. Phenomenologist will simply say “yes” to that question. The question is posed within what Husserlians call “natural attitude” – an attitude which considers the worldly being as existing – and any phenomenologist would therefore respond with the same attitude according to his best knowledge – yes, accretion of the earth is most probably what happened 4.56 billion years ago, so scientists teach us, and they know best. The question is actually not much different in this matter than “did you have a coffee in the morning?”
Then there is “philosophical” or phenomenological attitude. That’s that famous bracketing [Einklammerung] of natural attitude, or phenomenological/transcendental reduction, or epoché – as you wish. In this attitude, the thesis of the natural world is not posed – translated: no position with regarding to actual existence of the given is taken. Again, the question “what happened 4.56 billion years ago?” does not differ here from the question “did you have coffee in the morning?” If phenomenologist is in phenomenological attitude, she will remain mute – she will not answer such ontologically-loaded questions.
Phenomenologist has no particular motivation to doubt the scientific consensus about the accretion of earth, creation of universe, and so on. Meillassoux, nonetheless, falsely claims she does. And he then proceeds wantonly to accuse phenomenologists of terrible things: you see, the support all this sort of relativism. They undermine science. They don’t allow scientists to say that “what comes before comes before” (p. 123). According to them, Young Earthers are as valid as scientists. They undermine reason, re-legitimize all kinds of wacky religions and even religious fanaticism! Somehow, throughout the middle of the book, Meillassoux’s straw-phenomenologist turns into an agnostic.
In the end, M. is outright malevolent. He accuses Husserl of “eternalization of the transcendental ego, which supposedly survives the death of every empirical ego” (p. 122). Wow, I thought, how could I missed such wacky claim in those thousands of pages I’ve read?
M. refers to one of the late unpublished manuscripts (the only work of Husserl in the bibliography, btw) – one of those thousands pages of scribbled messy thoughts that every student of Husserl dreads:
“What sense could the collapsing masses in space, in one space constructed a priori as absolutely homogenous, have, if the constituting life were eliminated? Indeed, does that elimination itself have the sense, if it has any at all, of an elimination of and in the constituting subjectivity? The ego lives and precedes all actual and possible beings [, and anything existent whether in a real or irreal sense.]”
Admittedly, this may be kind of confusing – this being the personal note not intended for publication anyway. But Husserl doesn’t claim there what M. assigns to him. At all, Meillassoux’s reformulation amounts to imbecile claim. What is there is this: in Husserlian terminology, ego is sense-giving [Sinngebung], so without ego it is meaningless to speak of sense [Sinn]. Ego precedes beings insofar their sense is concerned. M. gets sure to cut out the part in brackets, though, to make Husserl appear more crazee.
But let’s get back. Phenomenologists allegedly cannot make sense of statements about events “prior to givenness in its entirety” (p. 21). Which means – before people. This allegation is based on complete misinterpretation of the term “givenness” in phenomenological philosophy. It’s actually a trivial mistake: what is analyzed as transcendental relationship is interpreted by Meillassoux as relationship partes extra partes, relationship between objects. So there is, I dunno, a rock, just like, laying there, quietly for thousands years, until some Homo sapiens came to be and transforms the rock by his mental power into “given”. “Givenness” is here considered a property of object. But it’s not.
Meillasoux tries to anticipate this objection – oh, you’re going to accuse me of mixing transcendental and empirical! – and his prepared retort is this (p. 25): any transcendental ego “remains indissociable from its incarnation in a body”. “That the transcendental subject has this or that body is an empirical matter, but that it has a body is a non-empirical condition of its taking place – the body, one could say, is the ‘retro-transcendental’ condition for the subject of knowledge.” Wow, I mean, man! Actually, you know, phenomenologists are aware of it, and call it not “retro-transcendental” condition, but… well… “transcendental” condition. Husserl quite famously distinguished between body-as-object [Körper] (let’s say body in empirical sense) and lived-body [Leib], in transcendental sense. He does so actually already in that very short manuscript Meillasoux decided to include in bibliography. And, you know, there’s this French guy called Merleau-Ponty who wrote a fucking book on the topic of incarnation of ego and it’s kind of famous.
Whatever. Let’s get back to those horrible things phenomenologists are allegedly guilty of – all the relativism, anti-science, agnosticism, and so on…. and to Meillasoux’s misunderstanding of the term “givenness” – more specifically, of the kind of problem it poses in phenomenology, because “givenness” is ultimately a problem there.
Let’s start with the fact that none of the sins Meillassoux assigns to phenomenology are true. Phenomenologist analyze the given without taking position on the existence of the given, but that doesn’t mean there’s no distinguishing. Let us quote Husserl’s quite famous principle of all principles, which one finds in Ideen I. but also e.g. on IEP:
“Every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originally (so to speak, in its 'personal' actuality) offered to us in 'intuition' is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.”
OK, Husserl isn't the most thrilling writer – but what this means is that you try to describe the given as it is given. Meillassoux will make you think that faith in Holy Trinity is for phenomenologist the same as perception of a coffee mug or conviction about the age of Earth. That’s not true, simply because these experiences are not given in the same way. Phenomenologists constructing these experiences as identical would immediately infringe the most central principle of phenomenological investigations. Given is not construed.
But as I said, given and givenness are problems. E.g., when delving to analysis of time-consciousness, given crumbles to infinitesimal now-occurrences which are already passively synthesizing. Given is determined as always structured. Merleau-Ponty tries to analyze perception in greater detail and gets stuck with depth-perception. It’s almost impossible to actually describe what’s given. In years, Merleau-Ponty will experiment with separation [l’écart] of time and consciousness. In one word – important in context of Meillassoux’s book – what is stumbled upon here as a kind of limit of phenomenological investigation is “facticity” of the given – yes, its ultimate contigency. This is not due to our necessary “ignorance”, as M. alleges, it is really the nature of any given that it’s rooted in facticity.
The goal of all these laborous inquiries is not to undermine science, but to provide grounding for the science. And the fact that science provides actual knowledge is never really in doubt – in The Idea of Phenomenology Husserl stresses that we could not do critical philosophy if there were not some scientific knowledge ready-at-hand. It’s true that phenomenological solution involves a return to intersubjectivity – a scientific community – as ground for scientific knowledge, but this in no way interferes with the ways science is done. Phenomenology only tries to teach us that similar grounding can be found in ethics, aesthetics, politics, and so on. Its stance is actually completely opposite to agnosticism or relativism.
M. is, however, dismissive of this intersubjectivity-led explanation. Surely, scientist don’t need such backing – but they can live without Meillassoux’s backing, too. Anyway, what M. offers us after this hatched job, what glorious philosophical advance? It’s “speculative realism”, which is realism that’s not naïve, and which is speculation that’s not metaphysical. In it, he transfers the “facticity” from the given to the resurrected Kantian thing-in-itself. This “facticity” is unreason – the wholly-other of consciousness. Being unreasonable, unthinkable, this facticity is ominous, it’s hyper-Chaos (p. 64; I’m not shocked by this stuff after Merleau-Ponty’s hyperdialectics, la chair etc.). Two ontological statements can be made about this unreason (p. 67):
“1. A necessary entity is impossible;
2. The contingency of the entity is necessary.”
After some speculation, we can resurrect two Kant’s statements about thing-in-itself, although now on firm ontological ground:
“1. The thing-in-itself is non-contradictory;
2. There is a thing-in-itself.”
How does hyper-Chaotic contigency of the thing-in-itself help to boost scientific ancestral claims against phenomenologist hordes? Things get tricky now. Meillassoux goes on to say that he faces basically Hume’s problem of (lack of) causality. Here things get a bit muddy, but what I got from this was this: M. considers metaphysical realist, skeptical and Kantian-transcendental responses to Hume’s problem, proceeds to reject them all and as speculative realist maintains Hume’s problem as unsolvable – there’s actually no reason the things are the way they are. But (!) he is able to maintain this position only by help of mathematics! Namely with help of Cantor and his notion of “transfinite”. And if it's math that helps us finally understand the truth of necessity of hyper-Chaos, there’s no reason not to confine to mathematics and mathematics only (p. 108):
“the most powerful conception of the incalculable and unpredictable event is provided by a thinking that continues to be mathematical – rather than one which is artistic, poetic, or religious. It is by way of mathematics that we will finally succeed in thinking that which, through its power and beauty, vanquishes quantities and sounds the end of play.”
Mathematics are the way. And since science now proceeds by way of mathematics, it can ultimately make ancestral statements that are objective statements about distant past (p. 114-5):
“Once again, the fundamental point at issue is not the fact that science is spontaneously realist, since the same could be said of every discourse, but rather the fact that science deploys a process whereby we are able to know what may be while we are not, and that this process is linked to what sets science apart: the mathematization of nature.”
It’s difficult to follow this last line of argument. Alas, the last pages are only filled with kind of rant against modern “correlationist” philosophy. You see, as Galileo came with mathematization of physics, and Copernicus decentered the man with his heliocentric model, philosophy underwent its Ptolemian counter-revolution (which Kant ironically called “Copernican revolution”), abandoned pre-critical metaphysics and put the man into the center – thus undermining sciences on every step, increasing jealously their counter-revolutionary verve with every scientific progress.
So, what do we get in return for this thorough misrepresentation of phenomenology and the amount of strawmanship? We get “facticity” taken from phenomenological inquiries, hypostatized as Kantian thing-in-itself, redefined as hyper-Chaos – but stripped of links to rich phenomenological tradition because we are now on ground zero, in new philosophical school, supposedly. Then, by some kind of homologous poetic device, mathematics become a skeleton key to this hyper-Chaos. And thus mathematical physics – which were always doing quite well – are saved. And straw-phenomenologists with their anti-science, relativism and agnosticism are demolished.
Sounds familiar? In the end it’s actually every fucking naturalist, reductionist and whatever shouting “Science works, and it gives us stuff, while you talk gibberish!” And sure, when you point to problems of politics, ethics, aesthetics you’re always referred to infinite scientific to-do list which may be completed sometimes, or not, but no one can do it other but Science™. Been there, done that, fuck that. Meillassoux is not naturalist – actually, to a naturalist he would sound like the very same “gibberish” he criticizes. That’s kind of brave move, sure. But it doesn’t make the book good.
Check out Dan Zahavi’s dissection of SR.
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Ronald Morton
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February 25, 2016
Every once in a while it's nice to let a philosophy book kick the shit out of me. This was quite good, but sadly fragmentary (by the author's own admission). I guess I need to figure out if he's written more on this, because what he's proposing here is pretty damn great and sits at the intersection if philosophy and science (though it leans heavily towards philosophy).
I probably also need to read a lot more philosophy so I don't struggle so much with the more modern stuff. I always feel like I'm missing some critical links - because I am - and the same holds true here. The author does a pretty good job of providing clarifying information for a lot of this, but some of the basics of phenomenology escape me, and Meillassoux isn't slowing this thing down for me to catch up. (Gotta love the Internet or filling in gaps though)
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Goatboy
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ReadMay 1, 2023
I tried and tried and tried to continue enjoying this book but in the end I just couldn't. At some point his argumentation between himself and the perceived voices of his antagonists just felt like too much circling round and round a point I lost interest in. If you have to argue this meticulously around and about something it is probably a topic that you will never convince someone of unless they already agree with you. It felt like someone taking hours to try to prove to me the existence of god or something similar. I can see others maybe really getting into something like this, but it's not for me. Oh well...
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Maddy
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July 22, 2015
Reading Meillassoux is like watching someone skin a hare.
2013 in-translation non-fiction
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Alex Lee
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October 30, 2021
2021 Review
Meillassoux's criticism of correlationism is astounding. While he does not offer a concrete solution about how to discover facticity (the truth in our experience, only so much hinting that mathematics and science is perhaps one way) his real charge is on what we think is out there and what is meaning. I do think the book could be written better if it was not so deep in the philosophical tradition, but someone had to say it.
Combine this book with Barad's agential realism, in particular their idea of the agential cut and we have the beginnings of a revitalization for natural philosophy.
What makes Kant so problematic is that in his attempt to meld empiricism and rationalism, he puts rationalism in a position that allows for it to rule without empiricism. This is beyond Kant's ideal of understanding, which is a balance between the two. Kant warns that rationalism alone, can lead to metaphysics. Meillassoux does not seem to acknowledge that Kant is somewhat aware of the problems of his philosophical structure instead seeming to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. What we need is in a similar direction as Lakatos noted in his exploration of the analysis-synthesis method, whereby analogous imitation of the synthesis method (prizing Euclid) bringing in the appropriate cuts (rather than assuming that corollary mechanisms can do the trick). That is however, beyond Meillassoux's exploration, and so I will leave this at that.
Still, 5 stars. On a second reading this book still holds up.
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2014 Review
I haven't read any clearer reading of the philosophical tradition in a while, and that's saying quite a bit. While Meillassoux is mostly interested in the philosophical tradition, and its constraints (extending it somewhat to religion and science) he is able to dance within that tight framework and come up with a clear summation of the larger picture.
Many thinkers tend to fight in the nitty-gritty, and that's most likely because in the process of spending so much time learning what the "greats" have said, they become invested themselves. And because academia encourages people to disagree with one another. How else could they jockey for position?
I agree with most of the comments around; that Meillassoux has managed to say something different. And how he says is intensely fascinating. He sums up the aesthetic goals of so many familiar names: Kant, Hegel, Descartes, Leibniz in so many terms. He brings us around to Badiou and demonstrates in slightly different terms, Badiou's genius and how that enables us to begin to formulate a new beginning, one that does not rely on Being or totalization in order to guarantee meaning. He leaves us then with a new project, one in which to find a new totem to anchor as the absolute reference, one that isn't Kant's old hat.
While I find his book and direction exhilarating, and agree with his reading (especially how he puts many terms) I do believe that there are other ways to put the pieces.
Here is another conception of philosophy: Philosophy isn't so much about truth as it is about managing complexity. Much of the time you do need to have some way of organizing discourse so as to be able to relate to one another. This much is certainly how people interact with one another or how discourses are able to connect. Meillassoux ultimately wants us to find an anchor as to how to arrange understanding... the anchor he finds for us is to match whatever mathematics does, which in itself is very intriguing. I suppose math is a safer bet for legitimacy than any of the traditional absolutes to which philosophy has in the past adhered. The last pages of his book is basically an outline of a non-metaphysical but speculative absolute based off facticity should look like. I'd like to find out how this kind of speculation works too. But I think Meillassoux goes a little too far in his search for Truth and tosses some of the baby out with the bathwater because in a way, he takes too much for granted even though in another way, he takes nothing for granted.
I don't believe that consciousness or causation or non-contradiction are necessary even if I find that the connection of the parts is what is most interesting as to what meaning is. In a way, perhaps that still makes me a correlationist in Meillassoux's book... because I don't adhere to the absoluteness as being external to our experience...that Meillassoux so wishes to determine. Yet if any axiometric is available -- as Meillassoux admits -- then why facticity? Why science? Certainly not the form of science! Science will not permit the asking of questions it cannot answer, because that is bad science. So he must be talking about the content science produces and in what way this kind of dia-chronicity should be found to be meaningful or not...perhaps as meaningfulness can be modifications of how we understand ourselves today, rather than as positions to be justified by where we are now, that reversal of a reversal he calls the counter-revolution of Ptolemy's revenge. It sounds good to speak by naming "where we are" in this way, but then again, I am not so sure we even yet know where we are now. In this way then, I think I don't really even show up on his radar because he takes the productivity of meaning in its mechanics to be beyond question, at least in this inquiry.
Meillassoux also didn't talk about certain other positions contemporary philosophers have taken either. I'd be interested in hearing him on that regard.
All the same this is a highly charged book. It requires a familiarity with the tradition, and a willingness to consider thoughts from another angle, a difficulty many of us have if we are not able to distill this vast amount of information into its more fundamental terms.
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Rhys
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June 8, 2020
A well written exegesis and critique of correlationism. The main motivation for this book, that I had to try to keep in mind while reading it, was the author's effort to curb the new relativism of fanaticism:
"But it is clear to what extent the fundamental decisions that underlie metaphysics invariably reappear, albeit in a caricatural form, in ideologies (what is must be), and to what extent the fundamental decisions that underlie obscurantist belief may find support in the decisions of strong correlationism (it may be that the wholly-other is). Contemporary fanaticism cannot therefore simply be attributed to the resurgence of an archaism that is violently opposed to the achievements of Western critical reason; on the contrary, it is the effect of critical rationality, and this precisely insofar as – this needs to be underlined – this rationality was effectively emancipatory; was effectively, and thankfully, successful in destroying dogmatism. It is thanks to the critical power of correlationism that dogmatism was effectively vanquished in philosophy, and it is because of correlationism that philosophy finds itself incapable of fundamentally distinguishing itself from fanaticism. The victorious critique of ideologies has been transformed into a renewed argument for blind faith." (p.49)
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宗儒 李
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March 13, 2020
Don't waste your time on this book. Meillassoux claims victory over correlationism, yet the correlationists he discusses do not exist outside of his imaginations. Also it is quite intriguing to see him quote, praise and blindly follow his doctoral advisor's philosophical methods. There are a lot of interesting fields in mathematics that offer alternatives as a foundation of mathematics to set theory, like homotopy type theory and category theory, the former being a field currently under active research. The fact that these philosophers chose to use a theory that is older than 100 years, offered no reinforcement or rectification to it and just treat it as a given starting point for their philosophical research completely baffles me.
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Charles
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January 18, 2022
I had learned about, or rather wandered upon, speculative realism a while ago, but I recently returned to it after a debate I had with two friends, in which, as a proponent of phenomenology, I was forced to conclude, controversially, that humans and the world are co-dependent in order for life to meaningful. Speculative realism arose as a movement precisely to combat the anthropocentrism, idealism, anti-realism, and perceived "solipsism"—which is a straw man—of phenomenology, or what Meillassoux here calls correlationism.
After Finitude is essentially the rallying cry for speculative realism, and in it Meillassoux wants to argue that science and mathematics are capable of describing the world as it is, independent of humans. He does so by appealing to "ancestrality," or the fact that fossils, for example, clearly point to a pre-human or pre-representational world.
What I respect most about the book is Meillassoux's ability to steel man his opponents in order to create his arguments. He always gives the strongest and most thorough counterarguments to his own position so that he can clarify his views or else challenge his opponents'. However, my appreciation ends there, for after reading this book, I remain a phenomenologist/correlationist. Of course, I am biased because I came into reading this already in support thereof.
Ultimately, throughout my reading, I felt as if the whole thing were a work of desperation, because even though I found many of his arguments convincing (purely logically), I did not find them persuasive. Meillassoux wants to vindicate scientific realism, yet he goes about it in the most outlandish and counterintuitive way, and you have to ask: at what cost?
Despite being a staunch atheist and scientific materialist, he posits something called "hyper-chaos," which he describes as "omnipotent" and "fickle" and which, of its own accord, can choose blindly to generate and destroy all things—in short, in hypostasizing "absolute contingency," it feels like he ends up doing exactly what he accuses believers of doing with God and phenomenologists with correlations. Additionally, he says that an essential building block of his philosophical system is the contingency of physical laws, which I find rather funny: in order to prove that science tells us how the world really is, we must accept that scientific laws, like the universal law of gravitation, are not only (1) unnecessary but (2) endangered—by hyper-chaos. In this sense, scientific realism seems to become scientific irrealism: what science describes are ways in which the world "might" and "currently be" but not how it is "in itself"; after all, according to Meillassoux, the world—nature, the Universe—is literally pure chaos. He seems to undermine science's authority and validity rather than the reverse. In my opinion, he also never really escapes the correlationist circle, which, I'll admit, is technically a cheap argument, perhaps a sophism, amounting to the chicken-egg problem: Humans perceive the world, but only if the world is perceivable, but only if humans perceive it as perceivable, but only if... etc., etc. I guess the other two questions that bother me are: (1) Why do correlationism and anthropocentrism annoy him so much? Sure, they might go against science, and at one point he alleges that post-Kantian philosophy fuels religious extremist violence—which I think is quite a stretch—but in themselves, why must they be eradicated as he so forcefully argues? (2) What does he achieve? And why should we care? Suppose science tells us what life will be like after we go extinct—what do we do with this? How does this help or inform us in any way whatsoever? It's pure, pointless information. Sure, science is thereby legitimated, but Meillassoux is so, so, so preoccupied with showing what the world is like independent of humans—but where does that leave us? What do we gain thereby? What do we do with this information? Ok, cool, the Earth preceded us by billions of years... now what? A world independent of humans, ironically, only matters to those very humans from which it is supposedly independent! My two final contentions, then, are as follows: (1) If Meillassoux wants to believe in his scientific realism, then he can do so at the cost of absolute nihilism, as I see it. He wants to remove all meaning, value, and significance whatsoever and nullify the importance of life as such (2) His main goal, of describing the world as it really is, is never even accomplished here. Granted, he might have succeeded in giving a philosophical justification for science, but even with this, he leaves us with little-to-no determinate information: All we are left with is that the world is (1) inherently mathematical—what does this, then, tell us? What do we do with this? (2) literal "hyper-chaos," which seems to contradict any and every claim to "absolute truth," which is what Meillassoux is after.
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Filip Wijnings
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March 18, 2024
Altijd te vinden voor een Franse filosoof die terug naar Descartes wil
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Pedro
33 reviews20 followers
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July 12, 2023
li o primeiro capitulo
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Shulamith Farhi
324 reviews64 followers
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May 17, 2021
The first two chapters of this are fantastic, but after he introduces the principle of non-contradiction by fiat, the book takes a sharp turn downhill. Meillassoux's orientation towards chaos is symptomatic of what's wrong with the text.
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Mark Broadhead
325 reviews38 followers
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March 29, 2015
What jibber jabbery. He takes everything back to an argument against Kant as if post-structuralism, etc, hadn't already questioned idealism.
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Hind
438 reviews8 followers
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May 6, 2018
So interesting. But so incomprehensible. It messes with the brain just a tad bit. Make sure you know your philosophy before you attempt this.
needs-a-re-read non-fiction philosophy
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Marcelo
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ReadAugust 21, 2024
Bueno errr... ¿Es "solo" un esbozo? ¿De algo que si le sale bien podría ser un bombazo de proporciones inusitadas en la historia de la filosofía? Es un libro divertido de cojones, pero ¿da la impresión de que sus demostraciones no son tan sólidas como la extrema confianza de Quentin hace parecer? Es decir, una vez demostrado el principio de irrazón (genial, maravilloso, 10/10, preciosa y muy verdadera cabriola hasta ese momento) se comporta como si las normas lógicas se aplicaran al en-si para, acto seguido, "demostrar" que el principio de no-contradicción se aplica en el en-sí. Hay alguna cosa así que tiene que pulir, porque a partir de ese punto el libro no me lo tomé en serio (después de ese descuido, no demuestra nada porque todo se apoya en algo no demostrado).
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KeyForLocked
5 reviews3 followers
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January 10, 2022
Mortal body, Shoulder the infinity！
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Walker
5 reviews1 follower
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July 18, 2017
After completing my BA in Philosophy in 2005, I floundered in menial jobs and let my reading mind wander more into literature, comic books and music theory/technology, all things I had not had time to encounter much of during intense philosophical study. As time went on and I continued this philosophical detox, I occasionally lapsed back in but felt a slight lack of the wonderment I once had when studying philosophy. In short, it seemed like philosophy was stuck in two paths (and at the time, the analytic-continental split was probably seen as more or less unbridgeable). The first path being the limited-scope logic/science/math argument papers of analytic philosophy, where relative certainty was seen to be achievable but the big questions that brought me to philosophy were mostly unexplored, and the second path being the more worldly land of continental philosophy, where knowledge is always conditional, certainty is a fabrication at best, and theory consists mostly of jamming on various effects of these conditions. I continued to find the continental side much more interesting and relevant, but also found that almost every reading I made led me to some variation on the open-ended conclusion that it was in fact art, not philosophy, that should be the way forward, at least for me.
Meillasoux’s book is the biggest attempt I have yet encountered to bridge this divide. It speaks to me for several reasons. One of the biggest is that while it spends much of its time grappling with Kant, it also reads very similarly to Kant himself in the way it lays out the problems it is attempting to solve without holding them up as examples of “wrong” thinking that must be smashed. In particular, the sewing up of so much of post-Kantian philosophy under the banner of “correlationism”, the sympathy toward the plight of the philosopher when confronted with these problems, and the rigorous step-by-step journey down the path of attempting to find a way around it.
This journey leads into direct confrontations with chaos, unreason, “contingency” and related notions that had me staring into the abyss more directly than I have since I first started studying philosophy and ingesting psychedelic drugs as a teenager. It was a wild ride full of cliffhangers, and I look forward to a re-read now I have reached the end.
Meillasoux clearly positions this text as if it is to be a major disruption of all that came before, a reboot of everything post-Kant. This is ambitious and probably ultimately misguided, and I love it. For the person like me who is interested and conversant in philosophy, but not steeped in academia, it is good to know that people out there are attempting to be the next in the line of giants whose shoulders we are all standing on, and to grapple with the big questions not only in terms of the many piles of text out there, but directly at the questions' roots.
My only real complaint about this book is that the end comes quite abruptly and I am left wanting to know where to go from here. The speculative realist “school” is said to have “died off” by now, but my understanding is that this text and others have led to a resurgence of attempted metaphysics and ontology in Continental philosophy, and although I am not 100% convinced of Meillasoux’s path into that realm, I nonetheless find it liberating and exciting, and look forward to exploring further.
A note regarding difficulty/accessibility of this text: It had been a long time (probably close to ten years) since I read any primary text in philosophy that I had not previously encountered. Luckily, I had brushed up on Kant several times in the past decade, and that knowledge was enough to get me through this work with only a few sections seeming excessively difficult. I’d say anyone with a passing familiarity with Hume and a slightly more-than-passing familiarity with Kant should be able to get through this with as much excitement as I did.
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Eric Phetteplace
414 reviews67 followers
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May 13, 2010
An essential work for understanding where contemporary philosophy is--or could be--heading. Meillassoux's style of argumentation is unique and refreshing: far from pitting texts against one another as if trying to win the prize for most citations per page, he pits theorems against one another and thoroughly investigates their underlying presumptions. It's clear that concepts are what's at stake and not personae. He anticipates counterarguments and, what's more, explicitly uses them as opportunities to better explicate his contentions rather than merely bash on fools for not being rigorous enough.
If anything the book is a little too mathematical and jargon-filled in its execution: there are a few definitions and technical terms which could've been left out, and the sections which rely on mathematics are not particularly lucid. As a math major, I thought I would enjoy such reasoning, but I actually find someone like Deleuze's use of math more interesting than M and Badiou's applications of set theory to philosophy. Actually, the whole style isn't to my liking (only the section on Fideism in Chapter 2 was really enjoyable) but After Finitude is well-written and important nonetheless.
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R Montague
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June 3, 2016
Meillassoux’s amazing nut-kick aimed square at the last two centuries of Continental Philosophy. Mr. Q intends to loosen the stranglehold of what he terms “correlationism”: the position that world and idea cannot be conceived of independently from the other, and can only be understood in correlation to the other. This pernicious belief forces the advocate of correlationism to commit to the unthinkability of an objective world outside or separate from the existence of subjects -- The world is held as inconceivable if not a World-for-us. To this end, Q-Man deploys some fancy logical judo wherein cosmic background radiation and the Maths proves that Principle of Sufficient Reason is bad and don’t real, and the only Necessary is noncontradictory Contingency... All of which means Ia! Ia! Azathoth! The omnipotent idiot Sultan, gyres and gnaws at the heart of reality!
So yeah, it’s pretty awesome and you should totally read it. 10/10 would eat at again.
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J. Moufawad-Paul
Author 14 books266 followers
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August 23, 2016
Read this over a year ago but forgot to add here… Reminded because of other things I read.
In any case, looking back on this read (and in the context of Thacker's first volume of Horror of Philosophy), although I'm not sure if I fully agree with its arguments (or completely remember them) I still think they deserve five stars because of the rigour and precision that Meillassoux brings to his chosen theoretical terrain. If only philosophy produced in the continent, particularly France, provided the same rigour, clarity, and precision. With Meilloussoux we finally are given a thinker who can, regardless of what you think of his project, bridge the gap between analytics and continentals. He speaks with the clarity of the former but with the significance of the latter.
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Michael A.
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December 18, 2023
A fantastic little book to think with and against. The main question this book raises for me is: is correlationism actually a position held by philosophers or is it a strawman? The philosophers he associates with correlationism are Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. I've certainly seen critiques (some on this website!) that his history isn't up to snuff and correlationism isn't really a position held. But still, this book was interesting to think with and a fun read.
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