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A Kantian Reply to Meillassoux's Argument

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A Kantian Reply to Meillassoux's Argument Back to the Great Outdoors? A Kantian Reply to Meillassoux’s Argument Toby Lovat A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University of Brighton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2018 2 For Lucy and Ben 3 ABSTRACT In this thesis I develop both immanent and extrinsic critiques of Meillassoux’s argument, principally as it is developed and articulated in his book After Finitude. Meillassoux’s ambitious project is assessed in detail. While I concede that the anti-realism developed in the shadow of Kant’s legacy has a produced a profound rift between philosophical and scientific discourse, I contend that Meillassoux’s argument tacitly conflates epistemology with ontology. Most pressing, however, is that his central argument is predicated on a misreading of Kant’s idealism. I defend the epistemological interpretation of Kant’s idealism over the traditional metaphysical reading, and argue that Kant’s transcendental idealism and his empirical realism not only accommodates the ‘literal’ truth of ancestral claims but also demonstrates that what counts as real depends on an intuitive-epistemic framework: a standpoint. Moreover, I demonstrate that Meillassoux’s argument is predicated on, and permeated by, what Kant refers to as transcendental error, the upshot of which is a tacit adherence to dogmatism and the generation of antinomies. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without the support of family, friends and colleagues I could neither have started nor completed this thesis. My thanks go to the University of Brighton. The institution has not only made it financially possible for me to undertake this work, but the administrative and academic staff in the Doctoral College have been unfailingly supportive. Thanks also to my colleagues in the School of Humanities, all of whom have consistently encouraged my doctoral work and acknowledged its pressures and time demands. I thank my supervisors, Bob Brecher and Mark Devenney, for their steadfast commitment throughout. My deep gratitude to Bob cannot be expressed adequately here – or perhaps anywhere. Bob, without your patience, dedication and friendship, not to mention your fierce intellectual rigour, I would not have completed this work. Further thanks go to my PhD examiners, Alberto Toscano and Ray Brassier, for both reading my thesis and putting me through my paces in a highly stimulating viva. I am also grateful to my colleagues Clare Woodford, Andy Knott, Tom Hickey and Tom Bunyard for helping me to prepare for the viva. Further thanks go to attendees at the Kant, Sellars and Meillassoux conference at University College Dublin and the 2017 winter school at the University of Tübingen, as well as to colleagues in the Critical Studies Research Group at the University of Brighton. The ideas presented in this thesis are, in no small measure, the outcome of discussion with, and feedback from, these excellent people. Speaking of which; I wish to extend a special thanks to Nicola Clewer, Tom Bunyard, Doug Elsey, Rob Dunphy and Pete Wolfendale, whose intellectual support and stimulation have been instrumental in shaping my thinking. I am exceptionally fortunate to have a loving and understanding extended and immediate family, whose enduring moral and practical support, especially when they have been most needed, are the grounds upon which this thesis rests. I extend my deepest thanks to Trisha, Constantine, Hannah, Joe, Matthew, Emily, Mervyn and Linda; and above all to Lucy and Ben without whom neither joy nor perseverance would be possible. 5 CONTENTS Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 Contents 5 Declaration 6 Introduction: A Kantian Reply to Meillassoux’s Arguments 7 Chapter 1: Correlationism and the Challenge of the Ancestral 13 Chapter 2: Ground Clearing and the Road to Speculative Materialism 59 Chapter 3: The Trouble with Correlationism? 93 Chapter 4: Strong Correlationism and its Enemies 139 Chapter 5: Kant’s Transcendental Deduction 165 Chapter 6: The Illusion of Causal Necessity? Hume’s Problem and Meillassoux’s Solution 197 Chapter 7: Kant’s Empirical Realism and Meillassoux’s Transcendental Illusion 243 Conclusion: Speculative Guilt 267 Bibliography 273 6 AUTHOR’S DECLARATION I declare that the research contained in this thesis, unless otherwise formally indicated within the text, is the original work of the author. The thesis has not been previously submitted to this or any other university for a degree, and does not incorporate any material already submitted for a degree. Toby Lovat November 2018 7 INTRODUCTION: A KANTIAN REPLY TO MEILLASSOUX’S ARGUMENT Flammarion engraving, Paris 1888. Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.1 A slight change in the meaning of terms has caused all this commotion.2 Flammarion engraving, Paris 1888. It is not difficult to see why Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude ‘provoked a genuine thunderstorm in the philosophical sky’.3 His ambitious crusade against what he takes to be the anti-realism stitched deep into the metaphysical backdrop of contemporary philosophy begins with a seductive philosophical provocation: if we cannot know reality as it exists independent of our minds, how do we explain the fact that we do?4 The interest in Meillassoux’s argument lies in both his diagnosis of this question, and in the striking originality of his approach to its resolution. He contends that although Kant’s idealist revolution laid the groundwork for a fundamental rift between the predominant position in philosophy – correlationism – and the clear success of science in grasping things as they are in themselves, this rift cannot be overcome by a simple rejection of the former. Instead, correlationism must be refuted by immanent critique; by accepting and clarifying its argumentative procedures and demonstrating that they lead to contradiction. To borrow a line Slavoj Žižek borrows from Richard Wagner’s 1 William James, The Principles of Psychology Vol 1 (New York: Dover, 1950), 145. 2 G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, ed. Austin Farrer (Charleston, South Carolina: BiblioBazaar, 1985), 161. 3 Catherine Malabou, ‘Can We Relinquish the Transcendental?’ The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 28, no. 3 (2014), 242. 4 The ambiguities in this question are a central feature of this thesis. Although this anti-realist stance is especially characteristic of philosophers working within the so-called continental tradition – typically associated with phenomenological, postmodernist and hermeneutical approaches – because it emerges from the critique of traditional metaphysics and hence of metaphysical realism it is a fairly common current in the so-called analytic tradition. Thinkers as different as Carnap, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Rorty and Putnam argue for the elimination, rejection or deconstruction of metaphysical realism. 8 Parsifal – ‘The [correlationist] wound is healed only by the spear that smote’ it.5 This ‘critique of Critique’ serves as a proof of Meillassoux’s contention that the only non-dogmatic means by which to account for our capacity to know things in themselves is to transform the sceptical principle grounding the correlationist critique of metaphysics into a necessary truth about the universe, and the possibilities and actualities therein; namely, the necessity of everything’s contingency.6 Rendered ontological this is to say that reality is a ‘hyper-Chaos’ in which anything at all (except a contradictory entity or the existence of nothing) is possible. In his preface to After Finitude Alain Badiou conveys the courageous novelty of Meillassoux’s argument: ‘Quentin Meillassoux has opened up a new path in the history of philosophy …; a path that circumvents Kant’s canonical distinction between “dogmatism”, “skepticism” and “critique”.’ 7 In 140 pages of typically clear and concise argument Meillassoux attempts to overturn Kantian finitude and reconcile thought and being by demonstrating the necessity of everything’s contingency, while also studiously avoiding either naïve realism or dogmatic idealism. This is why Meillassoux’s ‘thunderbolt’ has generated considerable interest and why his argument calls for serious consideration.8 My critique of Meillassoux’s argument is developed along both immanent and extrinsic lines. I assess his chain of reasoning by means of explication and critique, analysing its details and the interpretations of the historical arguments upon which it is based. Accordingly, my critique ranges widely across the history of Western philosophy. I argue that despite their robust appearance Meillassoux’s central arguments fail to convince. At the heart of my critique, however, is the contention that his project is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of Kant’s transcendental idealism, and that it consists, therefore, in an effort to burn down a straw man. Indeed, I demonstrate that his failure to engage robustly with Kant’s Critique is evident throughout. I draw on and defend Henry Allison’s groundbreaking epistemological interpretation of Kant’s idealism to argue that Meillassoux has not only misunderstood Kant’s correlationism, but also that it provides a critical perspective through which to identify both 5 Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke Unversity Press, 2004), 170. 6 Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier (London: Continuum, 2008), VII. Hereafter abbreviated as AF. 7
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