Interview
“Philosophy is not science’s under-labourer”
A n in terview with R ay B ra ssier
Nikola Andonovski
"Speculative realism" is the buzzword
reverberating in Continental philosophy
circles with a vigor unseen since the era
o f 'deconstruction'. Originally coined for a
2007 conference at Goldsmith's, Speculative
Realism (SR) is less a designation for a
homogeneous philosophical movement
than an umbrella term for a
group of closely related
philosophical projects
sharing a common
enemy. The enemy picturesquely dubbed
'correlationism' by
SR pioneer Quentin
Meillassoux - is "the
idea according to
which we only ever
have access to the
correlation between
thinking and being,
and never to either
term considered apart
fro m the o th er"1-This (on
SR accounts) standard position
has been the reigning dogma o f
20th century Continental philosophy, from
post-Kantian philosophies of representation
to Heideggerian ontologizations of the
human 'lifeworld'. Taking its cue from the
paralyzing impasses of this standard view,
Speculative Realism defines itself as an
attempt to step out o f that "correlationist
deadlock" and question both the Kantian
restrictions of philosophical access and
the phenomenological privileging of
human experience. This imperative has
been a shibboleth o f the philosophies of
SR's front row quartet: o f the speculative
overcoming of correlationism in the works
of Meillassoux and Ian Hamilton Grant, of
the resolute nihilism of Ray Brassier, as
well as of the object-oriented ontology o f
Graham Harman.
Here we welcome Ray Brassier, the
'godfather' of Speculative Realism and the
author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment
a n d E xtin ction (2007). Brassier,
currently a professor at the
American University in
Beirut, has been a staunch
defender o f metaphysical
realism and one of the
most vocal advocates
of the scientific
disenchantment
of the world. In
his debut book, a
fascinating dialogue
with philosophers
as diverse as Sellars,
Churchland and
Gilles Deleuze, he
champions nihilism as
"a necessary consequence
o f the coruscating potency o f
reason, and hence an invigorating
vector o f intellectual discovery'14
Brassier's re-thinking of the relationship
between thought and reality is as much
o f a challenge to cognitive "radical
em bodim ent" theories as it is to
Continental orthodoxy. We asked Ray about
his general views on philosophy, as well as
about some of the specific aspects o f his
work.
Ray. the last 150 years can easily be seen
as a process o f gradual relinquishing o f
philosophical territory. First. ontology to.
physics, then (naturalized) epistemoloav
to psychology, and most recently even
ethics to the proponents o f the new neo-
"Philosophy is not science's under-labourer" I Nikola Andonovski
Darw inian consensus in evolutionary
theory.What are the consequences o f this
handing over? What, in your view, is the
role o f philosophy today? Is the m inim al
task o f conceptual clarification still the
benchmark for philosophizing? Or is there
something more? (Out o f all the "speculative
realists"you were arguably the least eager
'progress' of waves wearing away rock. The
history of philosophy is the progressive
unfolding of the conceptual labyrinths
implicit in apparently simple questions
about knowledge, truth, and thought. I'm
struck by the underlying continuity of
this fundamental problematic, however
convoluted its historical windings, from
Plato and Aristotle, through Kant and Hegel,
right up to contemporaries like Brandom
and Badiou.
I don't see the process as one of unilateral
So while I remain committed to the idea
relinquishment on philosophy's part. And
that philosophical theorizing cannot
although I think philosophy's historical
afford to ignore the findings o f the best
development is necessarily bound up with
contemporary science, I don't believe
that of the sciences, I don't accept the
philosophy is merely the handmaid of
Lockean 'underlabourer' conception of
j
empirical science either. Philosophy's
the relation between philosophy and
relation to science is neither one of
science, according to which the telos o f
grounding nor one of subordination.
all philosophical enquiry is to reach the
Philosophy
is at once continuous and
point at which conceptual analysis can
discontinuous with the sciences. On the
be supplanted by empirical investigation.
one hand, it cannot afford to ignore the
Certainly, philosophy has had to give up
ways in which biology and physics have
its naive pretension to legislate about
reconfigured basic conceptual categories
everything, and this relinquishment has
like species, individual, space, time, and
been part o f the process of its historical
causation; on the other hand, philosophy's
unfolding. But I think this pruning process
essentially abstract conceptual subject
is fundamentally conducive to philosophy's
matter is not such as could ever be farmed
growth. Philosophy is peculiar in that
out to empirical science.
it grows intensively, not extensively. It
So in answer to your question: yes,
progresses by refining and sharpening the
conceptual
analysis is the minimal
scope of certain persistent yet empirically
benchmark for philosophizing, the very
intractable questions, which every
least one has to do in order to qualify
sustained attempt at thinking, whether
as
engaging in philosophy. But although
empirical or a priori, runs into sooner or
conceptual clarification is necessary,
later. Cynics like to depict the history of
it is not a sufficient condition for
philosophy as the sterile reiteration of
philosophizing. The analysis of conceptual
conceptual confusion. This disparagement
structure remains the prerequisite for
of philosophy is common to both skeptics
constructing a bridging theory of the
and positivists. Unlike these cynics, I
divide between conceptualization and
do perceive a kind of progress in the
reality.
Thus I don't believe philosophy
history of philosophy, but it's one that
is or ought to be essentially speculative.
is not straightforwardly linear. It's the
S ch o o l/ 7
But is the situation really this blackSpeculation can be given a positive valence,
and-white? The last two decades saw
if it means a theorizing uninhibited by
the emergence o f movements such as
utilitarian constraints. But even the most
enactivism. fo r example, which attempt
abstract speculative register, harbours
to steer clear from the pitfalls o f both
latent ideological implications; the question
extreme
positions. Does your adherence to
being whether or not those implications
naturalism necessarily com m it you to a full
are predictable. More often however,
abandonment o f folk theorizing?
speculation serves as a pretext for arbitrary,
self-indulgent fancy.
Ultimately, philosophy is at
Nothing is ever black and
once analytic and synthetic.
white, but sometimes it is
It analyses in order to
philosophically necessary
synthesize. This is not
to render it so. I am
an original definition;
aware o f enactivism,
it is venerable, perhaps
embodied cognition,
even hackneyed, but
and the extended mind
it's one I believe to
hypothesis, and while I
be essentially correct.
think these approaches
The role o f philosophy
perform a philosophical
today is to reformulate
service by pointing out the
venerable questions about
explanatory deficiencies of
the nature o f mind, meaning,
a certain representationalist
and reality not only in light
orthodoxy in the philosophy
o f physics, biology, and cognitive
o f mind, I find claims about
science, but also taking into account the
enactivism's philosophical radicality to
most theoretically sophisticated varieties
be much exaggerated. Much o f it strikes
of social theory, particularly in the Marxist
me as Aristotelianism in a cognitive
tradition.
scientific dress. Enactivist critiques
of representationalism are certainly
You are particularly interested, in the
instructive, but their proposed alternative
fit between hum an experience and the
is all too familiar. Enactivism invites us
scientific understanding o f the world.
"to understand the regularity o f the world
In an interview with Bram leven. you,
we are experiencing at every moment,
characterized the issue in terms o f a
but without any point o f reference
decision: "Contemporary philosophers can
independent o f ourselves that would give
be sorted into two basic camps: in the
certainty to our descriptions and cognitive
first, there are those who want to explain
assertions. Indeed the whole mechanism
science in terms o f human experience;
o f generating ourselves, as describers
in the second, there are those who want
and observers tells us that our world, as
to explain hum an experience in terms o f
the w orld which we bring fo rth in our
science ...I side with those in the second
coexistence with others, will always have
camp"J_
precisely that m ixture o f regularity and
"Philosophy is not science's under-labourer"/ Nikola Andonovski
mutability, that com bination o f solidity
and shifting sand, so typical o f hum an
experience when we look at it up close."*
This is as succinct an encapsulation o f the
correlationist credo as one could wish for. I
confess I fail to see what is philosophically
challenging about it. Certainly, it challenges
Cartesian dualism, but is this really still
the hallmark of contemporary philosophical
radicality? The enactivist critique of
representationalism is too easily co-opted
by the brand of tubthumping anti-dualism
whose affinities with new-age spiritualism
have been rightly denounced by 2izek
and others. I don't find it coincidental
that a philosophical ideology that
places such a metaphysical premium
on embodiment and affect should
arise precisely at that juncture where the
full spectrum dominance of neoliberal
capitalism has successfully extirpated the
ideals of rationalist universalism both in
theory and in practice. A metaphysics of
embodied affect is a retreat rather than
an advance from the impasses o f subjectobject dualism, I think the challenge now
is to re-conceive the theory and practice
of rationalist universalism in postcomputational (i.e. non-anthropological)
terms. Inferentialism provides some
of the resources required to do just
this. It preserves the normative kernel
of rationalism, while discarding its
metaphysical shell. This is to say that
Sellars and Brandom retain Hegel's
insight into the historicity of reason,
while jettisoning the neo-Aristotelian
substantialization of mind which mired
orthodox Hegelianism in theology.
So in answer to your question: my
adherence to methodological naturalism
commits me to discriminating between
epistemically perspicuous accounts o f the
structural links between phenomenology
and folk theorizing, as exemplified
by Metzinger's self-model theory o f
subjectivity, or Pascal Boyer's work on folk
metaphysics, and the metaphysical inflation
of phenomenological experience that leads
philosophers like Maturana, Varela, and
Thompson to promote a kind of new-age
Protagoreanism.
Tn the hum anities, it has alm ost become a
cliche to lament the three big blows to the
"primary narcissism" o f man: Copernicus.
D arw in and Freud. But. you have been
a staunch defender o f the traum atic
disenchantment o f the world. In Nihil
Unbound vou, propose a view that can
perhaps best be captured by the slogan
"the prim acy o f the theoretical". You write:
"Nihilism is nat an existential quandary
but a speculative opportunity. Thinking has
interests that do not coincide with those
o f liv in g "^ Whv exactly does nihilism carry
this liberating potential?
Because it's not possible to carry on making
sense of ourselves or the world in the way
we have been for the past two and half
thousand years. Or rather, it's no longer
possible to do so in good intellectual
conscience. Of course, one can always
silence the latter by abandoning reason
and truth in name of sensation and life.
I've tried to show why the attempt to do
sogenerates incoherences that stymie
philosophical thought altogether. But even
for those who are unwilling to forego truth
in the name of life, the question is whether
philosophy is to be mere nostalgia for some
supposedly prelapsarian harmony between
man and world, or whether on the contrary
S c h o o l/9
it should reassert its originary kinship
with the sciences and strive to push our
cognitive capacities to their limits in order
to test the grip o f our organic equilibrium.
Obviously, this assumes that thought can be
compelled by interests that transcend those
o f the organism, and this is of course an
idealist-—ultimately Platonist— trope, which
I not only admit but embrace, since I hold,
along with Plato and Hegel, that
the compulsion o f the concept
allows reason to incorporate
death. But Nihil Unbound
only skims the surface of
the underlying issue: if
one believes, as I do, that
the imperative to think is
compelled by irrecusable
rational obligations,
then the acknowledgment
that the validity o f the
categories o f sense that have
been available to us for two
millennia have now lapsed irrevocably,
carries with it the injunction to transform
the structure o f sense. However, I now
realize the issue is more dialectical than
I thought in N ihil Unbound, because the
boundary between sense and senselessness
is historically determined and the formal
structure o f sense allows for a fundamental
reconfiguration in what can and cannot
be meaningfully experienced. What is
conspicuously absent from Nihil Unbound,
but what I am currently trying to elaborate,
is an account o f the generative status of
the negative that would not lapse back
into some sort o f dubious emanationism.
The problem consists in articulating the
relation between the dialectical structure
o f conceptual discourse and the nondialectical status o f the real, in such a
way as to explain how real negativity fuels
dialectics even as it prevents dialectics
from incorporating its own negativity. Real
negativity splits the logos from within,
while from without it splits signification
from reality, The goal is to understand
how non-conceptual negativity determines
dialectical negation, while preventing
negation in the concept from fusing with
real negativity.
You.£IlzLNihil Unbound with
an emphatic portrayal o f
philosophy as an "organon
o f extin ction ". The "will
to know", marked by the
trauma o f extinction is.
via philosophy, rendered
commensurate with
the objective reality o f
extinction. But, does this sort
o f position not simply echo the
Hmdeaaerian pathos o f finitude?
A ren't vou proposing here a form o f
authenticity o f the disappearing self an
ethics o f nihilism, perhaps?
-
Yes and no. Yes, if by 'authenticity' one
understands the rationalist imperative
to transform the structure o f sense
in accordance with the norm o f truth,
according to an impersonal ideal o f
collective cognitive authenticity that would
be Hegelian rather than Heideggerian.
No, i f 'authenticity' is understood in a
personal-existential register in terms o f
the ontological propriety o f the individual
self. Extinction is not just the cosmological
transcoding o f Heideggerian finitude, but
its speculative sublation in the form o f a
new synthesis o f thought and object, or
subject and death—a dead subject. This
"Philosophy is not science's under-labourer" / Nikola Andonovski
I mean by 'binding extinction'. But such
binding can only be collectively realized at
the level o f rational reflection, this being
understood not in terms o f individual
consciousness, but as the conceptual
explicitation o f the implicit content o f
impersonal rational norms. {I
owe this insight to Robert
Brandom's brilliantly
reconstructive reading o f
H egeUThe suggestion
is that the 'subjectof-death' emerges
as the historically
appropriate form
for contemporary
rational collectivity.
How this 'subjectof-death' might be
collectively realized
as a new form o f
reason is what I am
currently trying to
elaborate by examining
what Hegel, Sellars, and
Brandom have to say about the
link between reason, nature, and history.
In the past few years, you have been
increasingly engaged with the work o f
W ilfrid Sellars. Why is he so im portant for
your developing system? And, concurrently:
what is your take on tfye possible
idealistic resonances o f Sellars' rejection
o f the 'given'? How do you com bine the
unavoidable entrapm ent in discourse
with the claim that you ‘ve defended $o
adamantly: the scientific uncovering o f
truth?
Only belatedly have I come to realize how
indispensable Sellars' work is fo r my
project. Sellars helped me realize that the
autonomy o f conceptual rationality is the
indispensable precondition for defending
the truth of nihilism and hence for
prosecuting the kind o f radical conceptual
revision which I believe nihilism entails.
What is most important for me in
Sellars' thought, but what
I'm still trying to properly
grasp, is his two-tiered
account o f the relation
between mind
and world. What
prevents Sellars'
rejection o f the
given from lapsing
into conceptual
idealism is his
difficult but crucial
account o f the
interplay between
the normative,
rule-governed
domain o f linguistic
signification and the causal/
neurophysiological dimension of
what Brandom calls 'reliable differential
responsive dispositions'. Like Kant before
him, Sellars synthesizes insights from
rationalism and empiricism. His emphasis
on the autonomy o f the conceptual aligns
him with rationalism, but it is tempered
by a naturalistic acknowledgement of the
mind's evolved status. This has important
consequences for his conception of
truth. Sellars believes it is possible to
reconcile truth as coherence, which in his
system amounts to rationally warranted
assertibility, with truth as correspondence,
which he describes in terms o f the relation
o f 'picturing' between linguistic utterances
construed as 'natural linguistic objects'
School 1 11
and the empirical events or objects to
which they are causally connected and
which the signifying counterparts o f these
natural linguistic objects are about. Thus,
Sellars maintains, one can dispense with
any invocation o f the empirically given
while preserving the representational
link between linguistic assertion and
empirical reality. Obviously I'm caricaturing
what is in fact an exceptionally subtle
and complex theory, but I take Sellars'
crucial proposal to be that it is possible
to abjure all recourse to the given while
acknowledging the mind's determination
by the physical order. I hope to be able
to do justice to the power and subtlety
o f Sellars' thought in the future, i f only
to amend for my woefully inadequate
treatment o f him in N ihil Unbound. He is
an extraordinary- philosopher and the full
extent of his philosophical achievement has
yet to be realized.
The criticism o f speculative realism very
often revolves around a single issue, the
idea that the general antipathy towards
'correlationism ' entails a concom itant
antipathy towards any form o f critique,
a price that m any contem porary
philosophers are unw illing to pay. What
is your view on this? Is the project o f
'de-transcendentalization' in dan per a f
restoring some sort o f syecu.lative naivete?
I find the expression 'speculative realism'
increasingly meaningless. What I admire
about Meillassoux's A fter Finitude is
the challenge it sets out to continental
philosophers who think Kant resolved the
issue of the relation between philosophy
and the natural sciences and who continue
to invoke Kant as their excuse for ignoring
the latter. Thus I wholeheartedly applaud
Meillassoux's attempt to wake continental
philosophers from their "correlationist
slumber". But I think it would be a grave
mistake to throw out the baby o f Critique
with the correlationist bathwater. In fact,
I think the proper import o f the critique
of correlationism has been misunderstood
(perhaps even by Meillassoux himself?). In
my eyes, it is not Kant but rather the neo
pragmatist and post-Heideggerian strains
of contemporary anti-Kantianism that
exemplify what is most objectionable about
correlationism.
A fter Finitude is a philosophical
intervention, not a historical treatise .
and so to complain that its account of
post-Kantian philosophy is somewhat
cavalier would be to completely miss the
point. Nevertheless, it would be fair to say
that the book is not sufficiently attentive
to the question that precipitated Critical
philosophy—namely, "What is the root
o f the relation between representation
and reality?"This inattentiveness tends
to vitiate the credibility o f Meillassoux'
own speculative solution to the problem o f
ancestrality, given that the latter essentially
recapitulates Kant's original question, viz.,
"How is mathematized natural science able
to tell the truth about reality? "I now believe
that Kant's 'weak' or purely epistemic
correlationism is, ironically enough, far
stronger than its 'strong correlationist'
successor, which presumes to be able to
dispense with the problem o f the 'in-itself'
altogether. In this regard, Sellars' critical
reconstruction o f Kantianism is exemplary
precisely insofar as it revises Kant's 'weak'
empirical realism by according science
access to noumena, while avoiding the
difficulties that dog Meillassoux's own
"Philosophy is not science's under-labourer " / Nikola Andonovski
resort to 'dianoetic intuition'.
These reservations notwithstanding,
Meillassoux's speculative materialism
is in no way naive— on the contrary, it
is an exemplary tour de force of critical
rationality. However much one might
want to take issue with their contentions,
it would be absurd to accuse thinkers
like Meillassoux or Iain Grant of being
'uncritical'. Perhaps those leveling the
charge are hoping it w ill absolve them
of the obligation to produce convincing
rebuttals of Meillassoux's critique o f
fideism or o f Grant's critique of practicism.
But Meillassoux and Grant have been
commendably circumspect in relation
to the blather surrounding 'speculative
realism'. The trouble is that those who
have seized upon the label to promote their
own work are precisely those who have
been most vocal about their antipathy to
critique. Their chief inspiration is Bruno
Latour (see Latour's 'Why Has Critique Run
Out of Steam?'). The brand of Latourian
metaphysics advertising itself under the
banner o f 'speculative realism' strikes me
not only as confused but as profoundly
regressive. Those who, unlike Meillassoux
or Grant, think they can afford to sidestep
the Kantian problem o f the relation between
conceptualization and reality are peddling
cartoon metaphysics for a philosophically
benighted readership. Theirs is a
'realism' about anything and everything,
as indiscriminate as it is inane. It is
'speculative' in the worst sense: arbitrary,
self-indulgent, and frivolous.
Ray, thank you very much for vour time. In
the end. a more fun question: i f you had
to choose five philosophical books you wish
you had w ritten, what would they he? Any
contemporaries on that list.?
Thanks for the questions... I'll pass on the
final question— there are plenty of hooks
I admire but none I w ish I'd written.W hat
I fervently do wish is that I'd written a
better book and that the next one w ill be far
superior.
Notes
1.Quentin Meillassoux, AfterRnitude <2008. p.5), London:
Continuum
2.RayBrassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction
(2007,y.xiJ, !U:Palgrave Macmillan
3Jeven,B. Against an Attthetc ofNoise:An Inierview with
RayBrassier
Available at: http://^^w.ny-web.be1transitzone/againstaesthetics-noise.Html
4.Hu>nberto Maturana &Francisco 'Varela, The Tree
of Knowledge: the Biological 11ootsofHuman
Understanding (1992, p. 241). Shambhala:Rev Sub
edition
5.Ray
Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and
Extinction (2007, p.xi), NY: Palgrave Macmillan