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Realism and Representation: on the Ontological Turn

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Realism and Representation: on the Ontological Turn DANIEL SACILOTTO that is, which unquestioningly privileges a certain temporal modality in its understanding of being. EALISM AND EPRESENTATION R R The existential analytic of Dasein carried forth by ON THE ONTOLOGICAL TURN phenomenology is thereby supposed to supplant the representational account of reason advanced by critique, suspending the equation of being and §1 - THE TWO MEANINGS OF THE “ONTOLOGICAL TURN” substance to which Kant would have remained be- holden to.4 This investigation is said to be ontological The views associated with the title “speculative then not in overcoming the question of access or realism” are often coordinated with a so-called in having resolved the quandaries concerning the “ontological turn” that is said to have taken place relation between man and the world. Rather, it purg- in recent Continental philosophy.1 Yet it is rather es this problematic from philosophical centrality unclear what exactly such a turn is supposed to by showing how the question about the disclosure entail. If, as Meillassoux argues, it is Kant’s name of being is necessarily propadeutic to the question that sets the horizon for the anti-realist denouement about the knowing of being. But since Dasein’s own that presumably characterizes both correlationism being is defined by being the agent of this disclosure, and idealism, then something like the overcoming phenomenology is nothing but fundamental ontology. of the critical turn in philosophy would seem to be At the end of this vector of radicalization, we see the centrally at stake.2 The turn towards ontology pro- repeated operation of a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” posed by the new realists would then be the obverse progressively revealing further prejudices in the of a turning away from Kantian epistemology and philosophical text, pushing critique towards the its implications. And, yet again, there are at least two limit of self-reflexivity, e.g. Derrida’s deconstruction historical vectors which we can intuitively link to of the phallogocentric tradition, Levinas’ avowal for an “ontological turn,” conceived as the overcoming the primacy of ethics and infinity against totality, of the critical paradigm. Foucault’s archeology of knowledge, Laruelle’s We can trace one vector as proposing a radicaliza- non-philosophical avowal of radical immanence tion of the critical method, in complicity with what against philosophical Decision, etc. Meillassoux calls strong correlationism. For this ori- The second vector of thought we can trace histor- entation of thought, the incipient problem with the ically does not propose a radicalization of critique critique of metaphysics is, put simply, that it is not as much as an overcoming of critique in the name taken far enough. The critical attempt to undertake of ontology. For these thinkers, the ontological turn a transcendental investigation into the conditions designates a metaphysical return or, more precisely, of possibility of metaphysics ends up, in the form of the return of metaphysics. Some of the canonical an epistemology, harboring all sorts of undetected names in this vector are Hegel, Bergson, Deleuze and commitments of its own. Paradigmatically, Heide- Badiou.5 Indeed, rather than seeking to expunge the gger questions whether the investigation into the residual metaphysical assumptions from thought, or problematic of the subject’s representational access fatally indulge in our inevitable immersion within to the world must not already be contaminated by the contaminated waters of discourse, these think- metaphysical prejudices, ultimately partaking in ers aim to recover the propriety of metaphysical the amnesia of a tradition which he defines through the label “metaphysics of presence.”3 A tradition, rie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco: Harper, 1962). 4 This holds true even if, for Heidegger, Kant’s business 1 I would like to thank the editors of Speculations for the was indeed never to undertake an “epistemology.” For opportunity to participate alongside such distinguished Heidegger, the transcendental enquiry that is “laying the authors in this issue of the journal. Also, I would like to ground for metaphysics” cannot but be ontological, insofar specially thank Ray Brassier for his generosity and intel- as it asks how it is that being appears to, or is disclosed lectual guidance, which has helped orient my thinking by, thought. See Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem into new, exciting directions. Also, the insights in this of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: Indiana paper would have not been possible without the dialogs University Press, 1997). I have had with Pete Wolfendale during these past couple 5 One might be weary of characterizing Hegel as a meta- of years; an ongoing conversation that has been nothing physician, since in identifying logic with metaphysics, short of transforming in many crucial ways. one might argue that what he offers is indeed a dialectical 2 Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude. An Essay on the resolution of the split between epistemology and ontology, Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier (London: or concepts and objects. Below I will specify why I think Continuum, 2006). this operation of identification or indistinction amounts, 3 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquar- finally, to an avowal of idealist (or subjectalist) metaphysics. Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism IV (2013) Daniel Sacilotto 53 ISSN: 2327-803X http://speculations-journal.org speculation, a positive and systematic account of cultural or discursive conditions, these thinkers the Real as such. align their ontological vocation in the name of a But whereas the “strong correlationist” tendency sort of materialism that would in turn disarm the of the first vector sought to explore the necessary paralyzing drudgery of critique. At the other end, disclosure of being by human Dasein, the meta- those who insist on the pertinence of a critique physician of the second vector lays claim before bloated in the form of a generalized hermeneutics the absolute in some form or other. For example, of suspicion routinely cast doubt over the innocence the Bergsonist vitalist or (to use Meillassoux’s of a return to metaphysics or ontology. A return that, term) “subjectalist” absolutizes the psyche’s power they deem, short of taking at heart the lessons of of disclosure itself, and disseminates intuition’s critique, chiefly works to reassert the authority of synthetic potency across the non-human domain, philosophy and its dubious legacy.8 The labor of the thereby avowing panpsychism. The Ideal synthesis negative is tethered to a state of perpetual vigilance, of the psyche is immanently folded back onto the curbing the pretences of philosophical affirmation material, rather than serving as the transcendental in the name of a matured historical, ethical and condition for the representation of the material. political consciousness. Epistemology is once again superseded, but this In light of these two senses of what an “ontolog- time in the name of a dissolution of the question ical turn” would imply, it is not difficult to see how of access, requiring the disarming of conceptual the four inaugural figures associated with the label intellection and finally of the fourfold axis of rep- “speculative realism” would, in a self-declared gesture resentation.6 Alternatively, for Badiou, philosophy against post-Kantian anti-realism, be distributed assumes the meta-ontological task to suspend the disparately along this axis. In continuity with the inaugural identification of being with the One, a second vector outlined above, Meillassoux readily historical decision that requires the identification endorses a kind of mathematical Platonism inspired of ontology with mathematics, and which sets out by Badiou’s appropriation of the dialectical meth- to think for the first time being qua being as pure od, arguing for a materialism that would be both multiplicity. The formal vacuity of mathematical rationalist and “speculative” rather than (naively) inscription promises to prove adequate to advance metaphysical or ontotheological. The correlationist a radically anti-phenomenological and anti-sub- scenario that follows the radicalization of critique jectivist conception of being, where the latter is no appears under the revived promise of an absolute longer defined in terms of its being-for-a-subject. accessible to thought not only as a regressive gesture, It is clear that, however divergent in their ulti- like Badiou claims, reinforcing the straightjacket mate vision, these two vectors of thought are not of the human in a sophistic triumph of relativism. without profound connections. The proposal for a More dramatically still, the reification of the cor- new metaphysics or ontology in the second orien- relation ends up enacting a counter-revolutionary tation is also consciously an attempt to overcome “Ptolemaic turn” against modern science, which the Heideggerean diagnosis against classical meta- brandishes an experience of the mystical beyond physics or ontotheology. And insofar as they attest the saying of the word and which is recalcitrant the to the primacy of the multiple both Deleuze and imperatives of reason. The saturation of being to Badiou seek more than a mere return to the naive the rational is thereby not only an affirmation of realisms of pre-Kantian thought. By the same token, subjective creation above the ideological shackles it is just as clear that these thinkers are motivated by of the sophists,
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