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QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX a NEW FRENCH PHILOSOPHER Graham Harman

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QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX a NEW FRENCH PHILOSOPHER Graham Harman QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX A NEW FRENCH PHILOSOPHER Graham Harman This article is a review of Après la finitude, by Heidegger and Derrida. Neither of these the remarkable debut book of Quentin figures will soon disappear from radar, and Meillassoux.1 In my estimation, this work is Heidegger is now celebrated as a classic for the one of the most important to appear in conti- ages even by mainstream analytic thinkers. nental philosophy in recent years, and de- But since the mid-1990s, the Heideggero- serves a wide readership at the earliest possible Derridean brand of continental thought has date. An English translation by Ray Brassier faced increasing competition from new trends: will be published by Continuum in the near fu- initially from the books of Gilles Deleuze, and ture.2 more recently from the heterodox tag team of Meillassoux’s book is written in a lucid and Alain Badiou and a resurgent Slavoj ±Zi¡zek. economical style, covering abundant terrain in While major works by these “new” authors just 165 pages. It offers bold readings of the have been available for many years, what is history of philosophy—Aristotle is not realist more recent is their increased momentum enough, Hume not skeptical enough. It shows among the younger generation of continental bursts of scathing wit, as when drawing wry philosophers. In terms of background and ori- parallels between the anti-Darwinian reveries entation, Meillassoux is not difficult to place of creationism and major schools of present- among these currents. He was a student of day philosophy. Most importantly, Après la Badiou, and the preface to the book is written finitude offers a ruthless attack on virtually all by Badiou himself, who can barely find suffi- of post-Kantian philosophy, now labeled as cient words to praise it—by fusing absolute “correlationism,” and proposes an original logical necessity with a radical contingency of “speculative” solution (though not in Hegel’s the laws of nature, Meillassoux is said to “open sense) to the Kantian impasse. Meillassoux in the history of philosophy ...anewpath for- proposes nothing less than a return of philoso- eign to Kant’s canonical distribution between phy to the absolute, which for him means real- ‘dogmatism,’ ‘scepticism,’ and ‘critique.’”3 ity in itself apart from any relation to humans. Furthermore, despite the absence of set-theory The critical portions of the book strike me as notation and other known Badiouian flour- definitive: much of what we know as analytic ishes, there are obvious points of similarity be- and continental philosophy looks rather differ- tween teacher and student: the major role for ent following his assault on correlationism. mathematics, including the anointment of Meillassoux’s own ideas, plausibly described Georg Cantor as a pivotal figure for philoso- as the mere antechamber to a larger and still phy; the fondness for step-by-step logical ar- unpublished system, lie open to possible ob- gumentation; the absence of any especial in- jections. Nonetheless, his appeal to an “ances- terest in Heidegger or the phenomenological tral” realm prior to all human access succeeds tradition. Both authors also display grand sys- in defining an unexpected new battlefield for tematic ambitions of a kind that seemed un- continental thought. Barely forty years old, he thinkable in our field a short time ago. None- seems likely to emerge as one of the important theless, Meillassoux’s vision of the world is names in European philosophy in the decades not Badiou’s, and certain aspects of the former to come. even cut against the grain of the latter. Accord- We should begin by situating Meillassoux ing to published information, Meillassoux was among the more established contemporary born in 1967 in Paris, son of the economic an- thinkers. For many years, continental philoso- thropologist Claude Meillassoux (1925– phy in the Anglophone world was dominated 2005), an intellectual maverick in his own PHILOSOPHY TODAY 104 © DePaul University 2007 right. He is a graduate of the Ecole Normale philosophy revolve around humans at the pre- Supérieure, and has been employed at that in- cise moment when modern science had stitution for the past decade. Although Après plunged into the world itself. In the wake of la finitude is Quentin Meillassoux’s first book, Kant’s genius, we are too clever to believe in anecdotal evidence suggests that he was gener- direct access to things in themselves, but also ally known and highly regarded in Paris well too sober to construct wild solipsistic theories beyond Badiou’s circle even before the book that reduce the world to nothing but our own appeared. production. The favored middle-ground posi- The very title After Finitude will be enough tion for philosophers has been what to startle present-day continental thought, Meillassoux calls “correlationism” (18). The since human finitude has been perhaps the cen- correlationist holds that we can neither con- tral credo of the field from the time of its birth. ceive of humans without world, nor of world The book consists of two opening critical without humans, but must root all philosophy chapters followed by two longer and more sys- in a correlation or rapport between the two. tematic chapters, closing with a short fifth The term “correlationism” strikes me as a chapter that harks back to the opening critique. devastating summary of post-Kantian thought. Since Meillassoux himself agrees that Chap- On the continental side, we find Husserl plead- ters 1, 2, and 5 can be taken as a unit,4 quite ing for objectivity against psychologism while apart from whether the reader accepts the also defending ideality against the natural sci- philosophical standpoint outlined in Chapters ences; we have Heidegger claiming that reality 3 and 4, the present review is organized ac- neither exists nor fails to exist in the absence of cording to this schema. Beginning with Dasein; more recently, we see ±Zi¡zek describe Meillassoux’s onslaught against the Coperni- the Real as solely a gap in the world posited by can Revolution of Kant, I will move to his the mad human subject, even while denying more challenging attempt to establish a mathe- that he is an idealist. On the analytic side, there matical ontology that abandons the principle is the “as if” of Blackburn’s quasi-realism; the of sufficient reason, before closing with a brief internal exile of Putnam’s internal realism; and assessment of the book as a whole. Davidson’s refusal to take the realism/anti-re- alism dispute seriously. All these positions, Against Correlationism and countless others, join in allegiance to what Meillassoux calls the “correlational circle” One of the typical features of recent conti- (19). As he wonderfully puts it: “we will nental thought is its contempt for so-called henceforth term correlationism every current “naïve realism.” The human being is now of thought that upholds the uncircumventible firmly established as the point of entry for all character of the correlation understood in this serious philosophy, even if redefined as a pure way. Thus, we can say that every philosophy ego, linguistic agent, embodied animal, sub- that claims not to be a naïve realism has be- ject of power-plays, or historically rooted come a variant of correlationism” (18). The Dasein. The notion of an objective world-in-it- correlationist argument, often left vague or en- self seems to elude our grasp. Nonetheless, tirely unstated, holds that any attempt to think few authors have faced this predicament with reality-in-itself automatically turns it into full-blown absolute idealism à la Berkeley—if something not in-itself—since, after all, we not quite “naïve,” such extreme idealism are now thinking about it (17). On this basis, strikes most of us as gratuitous and bizarre there is supposedly no way to reach the world amidst the undeniable blows of the world. This an sich, but only a global correlation of human leaves philosophy in an ambiguous position, and world. Philosophy has lost what neither realist nor idealist. The obvious roots Meillassoux calls le Grand Dehors, “the Great of this ambiguity lie in the Copernican Revolu- Outside.” In its place, we find that “this space tion of Kant, still the basic philosophical hori- of the outside is hence only the space of that zon of both the analytics and the continentals. which faces us, of that which exists only on the Meillassoux’s book ends with the daring claim basis of a vis-à-vis with our own existence. that Kant’s Revolution is in fact “a Ptolemaic We do not transcend very far beyond ourselves Counter-Revolution (163),”5 one that makes when diving into such a world: we are content A NEW FRENCH PHILOSOPHER 105 © DePaul University 2007 to explore the two faces of something that re- correlationist will not admit that a being actu- mains a face-to-face” (21). This correlate need ally exists prior to being given to humans, but not take the form of the old subject/object du- only that it is given to humans as existing prior alism. Indeed, most present-day philosophers to such givenness (32). They will say that “the unite in heaping scorn upon the antiquated physical universe is not really known to pre- model of subject and object. But this does not cede the existence of humans, or at least the ex- prevent them from remaining locked in the istence of living creatures; the world has modern dance-step of correlationism. In par- meaning only as given to a living or thinking ticular, Meillassoux cites Heidegger’s suppos- being” (33). They will try to reduce scientific edly “more originary” correlation of being and statements about ancestral stellar explosions thought in Ereignis as an example of how the and mudslides to the means of scientific rejection of subject and object does not quite givenness of these events, just as in positivism get us off the correlationist hook (22).
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