enowning
Monday, January 17, 2011
 
Slavoj Žižek on what Meillassoux is talking about when he discusses correlationism.
I think that, in its very anti-transcendentalism, Meillassoux remains caught in the Kantian topic of the accessibility of the thing-in-itself: is what we experience as reality fully determined by our subjective-transcendental horizon, or can we get to know something about the way reality is independently of our subjectivity. Meillassoux’s claim is to achieve the breakthrough into independent ‘objective’ reality. For me as a Hegelian, there is a third option: the true problem that arises after we perform the basic speculative gesture of Meillassoux (transposing the contingency of our notion of reality into the thing itself) is not so much what more can we say about reality-in-itself, but how does our subjective standpoint, and subjectivity itself, fit into reality. The problem is not ‘can we penetrate through the veil of subjectively-constituted phenomena to things-inthemselves’, but ‘how do phenomena themselves arise within the flat stupidity of reality which just is, how does reality redouble itself and start to appear to itself ’. For this, we need a theory of subject which is neither that of transcendental subjectivity nor that of reducing the subject to a part of objective reality. This theory is, as far as I can see, still lacking in speculative realism.

P. 415
 
Comments:
I am not familiar enough with either of the advocates to comment on the issue. (Thanks for the prompt to the download of the new book.)

I am familiar with the problem of subjectivity for Kant's transcendentalism. The alternative of "transposing subjectivity" seems to me a version of Husserl's "bracketing," a strategy that Heidegger rejected, even while it avoided the problems of "in-itself."

The results of scientific methodology are close enough to "present-at-hand" to suit me, even while its theory remains a hodge-podge. That leaves me with MH's "mystery" as horizon of the whole. Merleau-Ponty works with the problems of perception to my satisfaction, for the moment.
 
Didn't my comment just appear here?

It's cool if you don't want --it's a combox, so I don't go for the most refined prose--yet seems if you post once, you allow it.

Really I suspect the Speculative Realists' occasional non-PC thoughts (like...Lovecraft??) offend Zizek, who lest we forget, still rides with the PC--Parti Communiste--with few qualms. Not to say I agree with the SR--but they at times seems slightly....apolitical, even nihilist...

Sort of like reminding people that Heidegger did not care for jews or blacks, or that he actually respected Descartes and catholic tradition, offends the PoMo crew, even though that appears to be the case: behind the philosophizing, the ID politics still functions.
 
I just checked the comments spam folder (lots invitation to download the Green Hornet flick) and the other folders, and don't see your missing comment. I generally approve all non-spam comments as soon as I get the email, except when someone's just pointing out typos in the post, which I correct. I only have comment approval turned on to keep the spam away. I'm generally fine with all legitimate comments. In this blog's lifetime, I've only ever stopped a couple non-spam, non-typo comments because I thought they were drunk-commenting that would cause shame in the commenter when they sobered up. But that was so long ago, I don't remember any details.
 
some interesting manga may be found in the Spec.Real pdf (phree!), including Herr Zizek's latest defense of Hegelian tradition, or Hegelian tradition as reinterpreted by...Zizek. As with this chestnut:

The true (spiritual) meaning of war is not honour, victory, defence, etc., but the
emergence of absolute negativity (death) as the absolute Master which reminds us of
the false stability of our organized finite lives. War serves to elevate individuals to their
‘truth’ by making them obliterate their particular self-interests and identify with the
State’s universality. The true enemy is not the enemy we are fighting but our own finitude—
recall Hegel’s acerbic remark on how it is easy to preach the vanity of our finite
terrestrial existence, but much more difficult to accept this lesson when it is enforced
by a wild enemy soldier who breaks into our home and starts to cut members of our
family with a sabre ….


One can nearly hear the ghost of Schopenhauer (or.....Kierkegaard) muttering some witty retort to this sort of patriotic neo-stalinism--War is reality, and the individual-particulars should realize that their purpose on earth consists of sacrificing their lives for the State-universal (whatever that State may be...tho sounds rather...germanic), yet...since life's finite (Zizek's atheism also quite clear in his essay--though Hegel was not exactly an atheist), the individual-particulars are not to expect any earthly or ...spiritual reward. The communist-soldier owes a duty to the Idea, then.
 
That said, critiques of Latour's views are not the worst intellectual sin IMHE--but they don't just come from Zizekians, but from science people. Or John Searle.

Within a combox we can't really do much in depth analysis but there was a significant...gap between the early pragmatists..ie James and Peirce--and the postmod/Rorty/Latour types (with Heid. in the later camp). The SpecRealists seem to be reacting to the PoMo's (or marxists perhaps...). Not so much to someone like James or Peirce, who while aware of the cash value of truth and shall we say...small c constructivism, were not anti-realists per se. Measurability still played a part in the prag. criteria of truth. What appear to be "the facts" might change...be revised, or falsified (Newton updated by Einstein...). But many basic facts don't (the boiling point of H20). One's aware of the...language issues, but we posit...extra-linguistic reality. tor

In some circumstances the prag. theory runs into problems; in others, ...one notes something like...process, or malleability. It's not an all or nothing thing (tho I think PoMo errors were greater than ...realists in this regard). Or something. Which is to say, Searle's critiques of Latour and Pomo still carry some weight with me--as does Bricmont- , even if one objects to their reductionist tendencies. The continentalists at times want both--they may oppose the platonic Truth, and yet want some massive Weltanschauung (usually an update of Vati Hegel) which can account for...everything. Everything can't usually be accounted for--by science, or metaphysics, or politics. Hegel and Wm James have to shake hands, or something (tho...perhaps an irish priest supervises).
 
I don't need war. The arrival of April 15, tax day, is enough to notify me of the State-universal. I only need look at the obituaries in my local paper to be reminded of the universality of death. War is for sadists and fools.
 
For the combobox restricted, there's the option to post in depth analysis themselves, and email me the link. Or just email a post. I'm delighted to host guest posts here. There have been a few over the years. Also, beyng.com has more disk space than it used, and can host PDF files and such.

I'm a fan of working within constraints. Presumably less room leads to more succinct comments, in theory,...I'm speculating
 
J writes, "The continentalists (...) want (...) some massive Weltanschauung."

Speaking only for myself, as one who identifies with the continental tradition, what I want is some alternative to totalistic contingency. That's what MH seems to offer. Not sure if he is an update to Hegel or lives up to his call for "another beginning." His respect for Heracltian change as beying understood historically leaves lots of room for the pragmatic theory of truth, within the context of the truth of beyng.
 
Wasn't Hegel the Heraclitean, par exemple?? The sun is new every day. And Hegel also fathered the pragmatic theory of truth,arguably...and the "process thought" some of the SpecReal. types seem infatuated with (tho via Whitehead that old WASP-platonist).

Zizek has that sort of fire as well. Troubling a bit. He's a hero of sorts, I guess. I don't think most of the hipsters understand what Zizek's arguing for

(Was Heid.a Heraclitean, or closer to Parmenides' thinking? the Heid. people seem to change their opinion on that routinely).
 
Post a Comment

<< Home
For when Ereignis is not sufficient.

Appropriation appropriates! Send your appropriations to enowning at gmail.com.

View mobile version