Notebook 21 2016

Speculative realism remains a highly discussed and indeed contested tendency in contemporary thought. Rather than a direct confrontation between its various strands and the post-Kantian or correlationist philosophy, the present article intends to provide a more nuanced and open reading of some of its elements in order to foster dialogue rather than extrapolation. I draw on the work of Quentin Meillassoux, namely on his inaugural essay After Finitude as well as on an extension of his attack on correlationism on to subjectalism, confirming his more explicit engagement with poststructuralism. In such course I aim to show not only some critical or controversial aspects of his theory, but also its point of conjunction with the critical tradition in philosophy. The whole text is intertwined with an exposition of Michel Houellebecq’s The Map and the Territory to illustrate the potential of literary fiction to contribute to philosophy, namely in respect to its ambition to reach out to the “Great Outdoors” of a world independent from our anthropocentric imports.

Recent years have seen the ascendance of a new trend in continental philosophy called “the speculative turn”, “speculative realism”, “continental materialism”, or “object-oriented ontology” (OOO). I focus on the work of one of the proponents of this new trend, Graham Harman, in particular his recent attempt to extend his “object-oriented” approach to art and aesthetics. In part 1, I start with a brief characterization of the new trend in terms of the shared opposition of all its proponents to what Quentin Meillassoux calls “correlationism”, which is, roughly, anti-realism. However, there is a split among the new realists as to whether they accept materialism. As I explain in an exposition of OOO in part 2, Harman does not accept it, but he has an inadequate view of materialism. This affects his defense of the Greenbergian formalism as an alternative to materialism, which I outline in part 3. I believe Harman’s favorite formalism is quite unfit for understanding the art of the period that interests him, that is, post-1960s art. I close with a few notes on an alternative, namely a certain branch of materialism which, however, has as its source psychoanalysis rather than the metaphysical doctrine which usually goes by this name.

The main aim of the article is to compare Alfred North Whitehead’s speculative philosophy and Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology, and to consider Harman’s claim that Whitehead can be described as an object-oriented philosopher. The text is divided into two parts. The first part introduces Whitehead’s philosophical method of imaginative generalization, and shows how this method leads Whitehead to extend the meaning of the traditional philosophical terms behind their established use. In this method, metaphor is seen as an indispensable tool of philosophy. This extension of the terms and Whitehead’s explanatory scheme is highly appreciated by Harman. Harman sees this extension as one of the rare examples of overcoming the so-called correlationism and relates it to his own model of objectoriented ontology. It is demonstrated that however similar these two philosophical schemes may seem, they differ radically in their main aim. While Whitehead looks for a scheme which could successfully interlink final and efficient causality, Harman is trying to develop a theory of objects based on a new version of formal causality. The second part of the article is devoted to the role of aesthetics and art theory in the schemes of both philosophers. In both cases, aesthetics is located at the base of the whole philosophical system. In Harman’s case, the key aesthetic notion is allure, which is described as a way to overcome the crust of sensual objects and meet the hidden nonrelational real object, while Whitehead supports the notion of beauty conceived as the process of harmonization of diverse data. The key problems of Harman’s aesthetic theory are suggested, along with the possible aid of Whitehead’s solutio.

This paper presents a blueprint for a new aesthetic theory which is informed by recent developments in the philosophy of speculative realism on the one hand, and capable of addressing issues arising from the ecological crisis and the emergence of artificial intelligence on the other. The primary point of departure here is the philosophy of Quentin Meillassoux and Immanuel Kant. Aesthetics is understood as a speculative investigation of the realm of possible assemblages (or compositions) of entities. Such assemblages manifest xenorationality – that is, non-human principles of association and composition. Drawing on the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Steven Shaviro, I define rationality as the investment of external objects into the human mind, rather than an autonomous subjective faculty. General genetics of xenorationality uncovers the original exteriority and ancestrality of rational principles vis-à-vis the human subject. Furthermore, xenorational aesthetics is demonstrated on the example of Google AI AlphaGo program’s surprising move in the 2nd match against the world’s top Go player, Lee Sedol. This move was described by viewers as “inhuman” yet “beautiful”, and it will be argued that it was a manifestation of AlphaGo’s xenorationality. Lastly, the argument can be generalised to planetary ecosystem processes, leading to an assessment of the aesthetic experience of xenorationality in the process of cognitive mapping as the major driver of socio-political practices in the Anthropocene.

Text was published in English.